Drag Archives — Page 42 of 53 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Top 10 reasons to move to Spain — right now

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July 1, 2009

Text and photos by Ariel Soto — hey, we’re Spain crazy!

I’m addicted to Spain. I’ve been there three times and I still want to go back to explore every single corner of what I consider to be one of the most unique and exciting countries I’ve ever visited. Here are some reasons why Spain is so amazing and why we should all pack our bags to move to the land of sangria and tapas.

1. Pintxos The Northern Basque regions version of the tapa, these two bite snacks cover every surface of the bars at all hours of the day. For the true pintxo experience, you’re supposed to have one or two (they cost about 1 Euro each) with a glass of vinegary sidra, then throw your napkin on the floor and head on to the next bar and repeat.

2. Bachelor Parties Instead of the usual bar hopping, men in Spain dress up in drag and then parade around town taking photos with people, while their friends blow away on whistles. Awesome!

3. The Markets The food markets, especially La Boqueria in Barcelona, are magnificent. Everything is fresh and delicious and reasonably priced.

4. Antonio Gaudi Probably the world’s most quirky and imaginative architect, whose work like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, is worth going back to see time and time again.

5. Biking Naked While we have Critical Mass, the Spanish do a similar bike outing called “Desnudos frente el trafico” (naked in front of traffic) to promote bike safety and car speed limits in the city.

Paging all freaks

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June 24, 2009

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johnny@sfbg.com

QUEER ISSUE As May gave way to June, news arrived that a veteran gang of gay magazines — Honcho, Inches, Mandate, Playguy, and Torso — were printing their last glossy naked pages, no thanks to the unending onslaught of Internet porn and hookup sites. For print fetishists of the queer variety, this would seem like a sign of the gloomy end times. But signs can be wrong. In fact, a teeming variety of small publishers are bringing a mix of sex and sensibility to those underground seekers who revel and rebel outside the eye of the computer monitor. Here’s a brief, far from complete, guide to the action.

BAITLINE

In a recent interview on the Guardian‘s Pixel Vision blog, the artist Matt Keegan talks about the subversive social potential of gay calendars and magazines during past eras. You could say Baitline revives this potential. It’s the anti-Craigslist. Hallelujah! Hand-drawn and stapled, this local community resource can help you find your next pervy playmate or like-minded roommate, or assist you in stoking an artistic project and finding a job.

70 Richland Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94110. sywagon@gmail.com

BUTT

Not-so-straight from the Netherlands comes the gay version of Playboy for the 21st century to tease your nether lands even though you buy it to read the interviews. BUTT’s been around long enough to be anthologized as a book. The latest issue is SF-centric, with appearances by Hunx from Hunx and his Punx, and Hunx’s sometime partner in crime, Brontez.

Klein-Gartmanplantsoen 21-I, 1017 RP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. www.buttmagazine.com

CHECK OUT THESE GUNS

Artist Nathaniel Fink is interested in documenting male body types. This simple and cute little zine finds a shirtless and slim subject flexing against a big blue sky.

nathanieljfink@gmail.com; www.morephotosaboutbuildingsandfood.blogspot.com

FAG SCHOOL

Your teacher at Fag School is the one and only Brontez of Younger Lovers and Gravy Train!!! fame. Brontez knows how to turn funny anecdotes and sexy pics into an old-school queer zine for our ADD moment. Not as simple as it sounds. He’s also good at making straight guys takes off their clothes and model.

www.myspace.com/1256201

FOR LONELY ADULTS ONLY

The most recent example of Regis Trigano’s photo zine presents a man alone in bed having some fun. Well shot.

www.proun.us

GOTEBLUD

This isn’t a zine, but instead a zine store run by Matt Wobensmith, the queer punk stalwart behind Outpunk Records and the zine of the same name in the 1990s. Opening night last month revealed a small emporium of countercultural wonders — queer stuff is just one facet. Just try to resist the Wuvable Oaf memorabilia.

Sat–Sun, noon–5 p.m. 766 Valencia, SF. www.goteblud.livejournal.com

HANDBOOK

Men, oft-scruffy, sometimes tattooed, taking care of themselves — based in San Francisco, this publication reaches all over the country to create images that owe a debt to old amateur raunch hands such as Old Reliable.

handbooksf@yahoo.com; www.hanbookmen.com

PINUPS

Christopher Schulz’s three-times-a-year publication featuring one or two models is bearish and cuddly, whether depicting a light wrestling bout or a sandy frolic with a beach ball.

contact@pinupsmag.com; www.pinupsmag.com; www.myspace.com/pinupsmag

QUEER ZINES

This book lists and shares samples from the ever-expansive realm of queer zines. As a zinester from the early days who attended the Chicago SPEW conference decades ago, I can say it isn’t definitive — but it is wonderfully, revealingly comprehensive.

Printed Matter, 195 10th Ave., New York, NY, 10011. aabronson@printedmatter.org. www.printedmatter.org

SPANK

I’d call this the My Comrade of today, replacing that primarily 20th century zine’s drag comedy with boyishness. In other words, here’s a rag for partying NYC art fags.

www.spankzine.wordpress.com

STRAIGHT TO HELL

Still raunchy at 66 issues old, this is a classic, the daddy of them all, the one that exposes Penthouse Forum as boredom. Images by the late, great photographer Al Baltrop appear in the latest edition along with stories bearing titles like "Jockey Rides Teen’s Face — Wins Race" and "Appaloosa Stud with ‘Epic Torso’ Overwhelms Startled Shutterbug."

S.T.H., Box 20424, NYC, 10023. sth@straight-to-hell.net; www-straight-to-hell.net

Detroit rock city

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June 24, 2009

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Last year, Motor City troubadour Rodriguez’s 1970 recording Cold Fact (Light in the Attic) rightfully topped many critics’ lists as the best reissue of 2008. This year, another Detroit act, Death, is experiencing a similarly vital revival, through its jaw-dropping proto-punk onslaught For the World to See (Drag City). As Rodriguez hits SF in conjunction with the reissue of 1971’s Coming From Reality, I caught up with him by phone as he visited the office of his new label. I corresponded with Death’s Bobby Hackney by e-mail, with some help from Drag City’s Nicole Yalaz. (Johnny Ray Huston)

SFBG What were some of your favorite haunts and places in Detroit?

BOBBY HACKNEY (OF DEATH) Of course the Grand Ballroom, and later on, the Michigan Palace. Most of the shows we would see would be either at the Cobo Arena or Olympic Stadium.

SFBG Rodriguez, have you spent time with John Sinclair?

RODRIGUEZ Only as of late. We did a show together that involved music and poetry on a [street] corner. He’s quite a hero. We burned one.

SFBG Rodriguez, how important was Detroit and your experience of it to the lyrics on Cold Fact and Coming From Reality?

R I consider myself urban as opposed to rural or suburban. Any city has its heart, and my background is in the social realism of the urban setting.

SFBG Bobby, will the reformed version of Death be touring soon?

BH What a timely question. We have just finished a four-month process of production and rehearsals and this past Friday announced our first show at the Majestic Theatre in Detroit on Sept. 25.

RODRIGUEZ

With Fool’s Gold, Sam Flax and Higher Color

Fri/26, 9 p.m., $17–$19

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

Velvet goldmine

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June 24, 2009

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They came from outer space (via Haight Street) sometime in 1969, and first to prominence as the palpably 3-D entr’acte between late-night underground and vintage movie reels at the old Palace Theater in North Beach. There they mounted a sort of acid-fueled, glitter-bearded, hippie drag-queen free-for-all, causing immediate convivial mayhem among the rowdy stoners there assembled. This was only the beginning. The Cockettes were a streak of homegrown countercultural iridescence registering profound if indeterminate influence on the lives of us all — even if you’ve never heard of such musical revues as Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma.

Midnight movie sequel of sequels: after 40 years they’re back, as Thrillpeddlers presents a devilishly sharp and inspired revival of the Cockettes’ Pearls Over Shanghai. Perhaps their most polished gem — indeed, their first scripted production, penned by Cockette Link Martin — Pearls is a rousing mock-operetta of strikingly elaborate low-budget design (notoriously padded in its original incarnation with the contents of a costume trunk pinched from the visiting Peking Opera), catchy music, and highly questionable taste, loosely based on an unabashedly Orientalist 1926 Broadway play, The Shanghai Gesture. Wonderfully arch and exquisitely fashioned, this pungent bit of business is a triumph for director Russell Blackwood (who broods and bellows and taps beautifully in the role of Mother Fu) as well as his winning cast and crew — which in addition to special guests like Connie Champagne, includes original Cockettes Scrumbly Koldewyn (composer, musical director and accompanist), Rumi Missabu (unforgettably reprising his role as the evil Madame Gin Sling), and Tahara and Bill Bowers (collaborating with Kara Emry on the eye-popping costumes and makeup).

Pearls hasn’t just aged well — it may be even more offensive than when it premiered. But somewhere too, amid all the jade and jaded ladies, is a whiff of the innocence and insouciance, glamour and naughtiness of those earlier years. Not to mention the "complete sexual anarchy," which, as John Waters counsels sagely in The Cockettes, Bill Weber and David Weissman’s excellent 2002 documentary, "is always a wonderful thing."

PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI

Through Aug. 16

Fri–Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 7 p.m. (starting July 26), $30-$69

Hypnodrome, 575 10th St., SF

1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com

Shake, shimmy, subvert

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June 24, 2009

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molly@sfbg.com

The tradition of burlesque has always been about subverting the norm and challenging the privileged class. So it should be no surprise that queer performers make up a significant percentage of the new burlesque movement. Or, as Amelia Mae Paradise, cofounder of the queer femme burlesque troupe Diamond Daggers, puts it: "The burlesque world has always had room for freaks and queers and fat ladies."

A quick look at the current Bay Area burlesque scene confirms Paradise’s theory. The cabaret outfit Hubba Hubba Revue regularly features queer and straight performers. Though burlesque dancer Dottie Lux identifies as queer, both her Red Hots Burlesque showcase (www.myspace.com/redhotsburlesque) and the classes she teaches are geared for mixed audiences. And queer performers — from soloists like Kentucky Fried Woman and Alotta Boutte to groups like Twilight Vixens and sfBoylesque — find themselves performing for straight audiences nearly as often as queer ones. In the burlesque world, queer and straight performers bump up against each other so often (pun intended), it might seem arbitrary to distinguish them at all.

But most queer performers agree that there is a difference — however subtle. Queer performers tend to mix their burlesque with spoken word, lip syncing, or drag, and also tend to be more subversive and political than their straight counterparts. Some attribute this to the fact that many queer performers are already schooled in other kinds of politically-based performance art.

"There’s a strong component of the queer performance community who are extremely politically conscious and recognize the power they have when they’re on stage," said Kentucky Fried Woman, a.k.a. KFW (www.myspace.com/kentuckyfriedwoman), who founded the Queen Bees in Seattle before becoming a major force in the SF burlesque community. "You have this whole room of people looking at you, so you can make them focus on any issue you want."

Queer burlesque performers also seem more comfortable with comedy, farce, and a diversity of body types, ages, and races on stage. "I think queers are better at burlesque than non-queers," said Maximus Barnaby, founder of sfBoylesque (www.sfboylesque.com). "They’re not afraid to be outsiders."

And all agreed that it’s different performing for a queer audience than a straight one — even if it only comes down to how many people get your jokes. "Queer audiences already arrive loose and ready to have a good time," says KFW, a phenomenon she hasn’t always witnessed with straight audiences.

KFW also pointed out that there are places where the distinction between queer and straight audiences is even more pronounced — and where having queer-friendly events like Debauchery (www.myspace.com/debaucherydivine), a strip club night for queers of all genders, is even more important.

While some performers might be considered queer exclusively because of their sexual preferences, others — like Twilight Vixens (www.twilightvixen.com) and Diamond Daggers (www.diamonddaggers.com) — employ the title as a part of their subversion of the norm.

Indeed, when Paradise cofounded the Daggers with Cherry Lix (who later went on to found Twilight Vixens) and Fannie Fuller in 2003, the idea was to create empowering, queer performance as femme dykes. "We’re so invisible so much of the time, people assume that we’re straight," Paradise said.

Melding elements of musical theater, Hollywood glamour, and showgirl choreography, the Daggers created a campy cabaret troupe whose purpose was femme visibility.

In 2005, the Daggers birthed the Twilight Vixens. While the Daggers headed toward comedy, gender-pushing, and narrative performances — featuring the bearded Paradise and her six-foot-tall bearded butch wife Sir Loin Strip — Cherry Lix took the Vixens even further towards vintage Vegas showgirl glam. "In San Francisco, you have a lot of men imitating women being showgirls," said Lix. "This was: let’s be women being women who like women being showgirls."

Interestingly, Paradise says the lesbian audience hasn’t always been the easiest for femme troupes like the Daggers and Vixens. "It’s confusing," she said. "They ask, ‘Is it feminist? Not feminist? It’s hot, titilutf8g, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.’"

On the other hand, gay men have always loved them, especially in the beginning, because those groups and gay men tend to speak the same language of camp.

Gay men are also the primary audience for sfBoylesque, the all-male dance revue founded nearly three years ago. But they weren’t an automatically easy audience either. "People have different expectations of men in burlesque," said Barnaby. "The point of reference is Chippendale’s … this perfect, chiseled body. We are absolutely not Chippendale’s."

Whereas burlesque has traditionally been a place that empowers women of all body types, Barnaby said his troupe has had to create an audience to expect and accept the same from men. As for the troupe identifying as queer? Barnaby says that’s mostly because he likes the inclusiveness of the term.

When it really comes down to it, though, performers like Simone de la Getto, cofounder of all-black burlesque review Harlem Shake and the queer event Cabaret de Nude, thinks the titles are stupid — but necessary. "I guess I’m a queer black burlesque performer who’s a single mom," she said. "Once we get past all the labels, life will be easier."

Plus, the lines between queer and straight burlesque are becoming ever more blurred, as Getto — who joined the burlesque scene as a straight woman and then came out — should know.

"People like to see people taking their clothes off. It doesn’t matter who you’re sleeping with," she said. "That pretty much seals the deal for everyone."

The price of normal

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June 23, 2009

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news@sfbg.com

With a 2010 state proposition on gay marriage in the works and a national gay rally on the Washington Mall being planned for October 10-11 of that year, it’s obvious that more and more of the LGBT community’s resources are being funneled into the battle for marriage equality, while other causes go begging.

Already gay marriage has become a black hole that is sucking untold amounts of money, time, and energy out of our community. In the 2008 election alone, gay marriage supporters raised $43.3 million to defeat Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative that California voters passed by 52 percent. It may be the biggest chunk of change the community has ever spent for a single fight.

A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES

I’m not against gay marriage. If queer couples want to be as miserable as straight ones, that’s their choice. Marriage is a failed institution. With a 54.8 percent divorce rate nationally and a 60 percent rate here in California, there’s no doubt in my mind that heterosexual "wedded bliss" is more of an oxymoron than a reality.

What’s troubling to me as a queer activist of almost 40 years (much of that time spent on economic justice work) is that, with the tremendous amount of homelessness, poverty, and unemployment in our community, we are spending so much dough on the fight to give a minority of folks — those who opt for tying the knot — rights and privileges that straight married folks have.

Sure, it’s unfair that married straights get tax breaks, not to mention the status of next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions when one partner is ill, and queers don’t. Altogether, married couples have 1,400 benefits, both state and federal, that domestic partners and single people don’t enjoy. It’s a matter of simple justice that the playing field be leveled. Only a right-wing idiot could disagree with that. Now, if only we could fight to give everyone (including singles) those 1,400 benefits.

For me it’s a question of priorities. We are living in scary times. Unemployment is sky-high; millions are without healthcare, including children; foreclosures are robbing homeowners and tenants alike of their housing; and business collapses are leaving a lot of people out in the cold and unable to pay the rent or the mortgage.

DINKS NO MORE

The queer community is no better off.

It’s a popular misconception that queers have a lot of disposable income. The "double income, no kids" (DINK) myth was promoted in the 1980s by gay publishers who wanted to expand their advertising base and their profits. These days, to read many gay publications, you’d think that all queers are going on fabulous vacations and buying expensive clothes, jewelry, and electronic gizmos.

That myth was easily dispelled by a recent study, "Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community," published this March by the Williams Institute at UCLA. Like "Income Inflation: the myth of affluence among gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans," the groundbreaking 1998 study by M.V. Lee Badgett of the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Williams report found that many members of our community aren’t shopping ’til they drop. They can barely afford to put food on the table.

Nationally, 24 percent of lesbians and bisexual women are poor compared to 19 percent of heterosexual women; 15 percent of gay and bisexual men are poor compared to 13 percent of heterosexual men.

Queers aren’t just low on cash — we’re homeless, too. A 2006 report, "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness" from the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force and the National Coalition on Homelessness, showed that 20 percent to 40 percent of the 1.6 million homeless youth in America identify as LGBT. In San Francisco, the number of queers in the homeless youth population (estimated at 4,000 by the Mayor’s Office) is "roughly 44 percent," according to Dr. Mike Toohey of the Homeless Youth Alliance in the Haight.

Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance says that 40 percent of people with HIV/AIDS, in the city once acclaimed for its care of those with the disease, are either "unstably housed or are homeless." In the Castro, Basinger said, there are only "12 dedicated HOPWA beds" for people with the disease. HOPWA (Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS) is a federal voucher program for low-income people with AIDS that is similar to federal housing assistance program Section 8.

Certain members of our community don’t fare much better in the area of employment. A 2006 survey by the Guardian and the Transgender Law Center reported that 75 percent of transgender people are not employed full-time, and 59 percent make less than $15,299 a year. A mere 4 percent of respondents earned more than $61,200, the then-median income average for San Francisco.

Fifty-seven percent of trangendered people said they suffered employment discrimination, demonstrating the need for the inclusion of "gender identity" in the federal Employment Non-discrimination Act. Human Rights Campaign, a national gay organization, and out Congress member Barney Frank (D-Mass.) cut transgenders out of that legislation the last time it was up before Congress.

It could all get a whole lot worse.

AXING THE FUTURE

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to lop at least $81 million from California’s AIDS budget, including money for AIDS drugs, leaving low-income people stranded without their medication. Senior services are also on his cutting block, including $230.8 million from in-home services and $117 million from adult health-care programs. (As we go to press, the state Legislature is working to restore the AIDS money to the budget.)

Mayor Gavin Newsom, in his proposed city budget cuts, is axing $128.4 million from public health and $15.9 million from human services. There’s no doubt these cuts in health and human services will severely affect people with AIDS, seniors, youth, the homeless, and others in our community who can least afford to pay for the city’s budget shortfall.

The millions spent on gay marriage in the past few years could have gone a long way in these lean times. It could have helped make the proposed queer senior housing project, Open House, a reality. With 88 units in the works at 55 Laguna St., the site of the old UC extension, it will be the only such housing for LGBT seniors in San Francisco.

The money also could have funded housing in the Castro for homeless queer youth or people with AIDS. It could have been used as seed money for a much-needed war against poverty in the LGBT community.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIBERATION

The queer movement hasn’t always been this obsessed about getting hitched. Forty years ago this week, drag queens and others fought back against the cops who were raiding a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s West Village. Three days of protests led to the creation of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), a revolutionary group dedicated to the sexual liberation of all people. GLFers weren’t looking to walk down the aisle or form binary couples. In a desire to "abolish existing social institutions," as the NYC branch of GLF said in its statement of purpose, some GLFers explored polyamory (more than one relationship at a time).

That’s why I edited Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation, just published by City Lights Books, a collection of writings by former GLF members and other gay liberationists. I wanted to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall and the birth of GLF with a reminder of who we were and what we did. After all these years, I still don’t want to head to the chapel to get married.

When it really comes down to it, gay marriage is a conservative issue. It’s about wanting to fit in, to be like everyone else. Beyond the important issues of tax breaks and next-of-kin status — and the fact that if any institution exists, it shouldn’t discriminate against queers — marriage is ultimately a means of normalizing binary queer relationships, especially for gay men who have always enjoyed the freedom to be promiscuous. It’s a way to try and rein in our libidos, though the prevalence of extramarital sex among straight couples — 50 percent for women, 60 percent for men, according to a recent issue of Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy — shows that marriage doesn’t come with a chastity belt.

It also doesn’t come with any guarantees, as researchers discovered in Sweden, where queers were able to contract for same-sex partnerships from 1995 until recently, when full same-sex marriage was instituted. According to a study by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Swedish queers have been divorcing in high numbers, like their straight counterparts, who have a divorce rate that’s just a little higher than the United States.

For queers in Sweden, that’s the price of being normal.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who has been a queer activist since he was involved with the Gay Liberation Front at Temple University in Philadelphia in the early 1970s, is editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation (City Lights Books).

Bill Callahan

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June 23, 2009

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PREVIEW If Bill Callahan is a shepherd of the lo-fi reformation, his musical evolution suggests a shell-like spiral. His initial releases in the late-1980s to early-1990s were ramshackle home recordings, mostly instrumental. In the realm of the professionally recorded, his mid- to late-1990s creations utilized more instrumentation and experimented with lyrics, while allowing him to hone his vocal style; his post-2000 releases mildly reduce the instrumentation while maintaining the consistent, almost affect-less, baritone singing Callahan developed under the Smog moniker.

After Dongs of Sevotion (Darg City, 2000), Callahan changed his alias to direct attention toward the music itself, rather than the idea of "Smog." After 20 years, the dissipation of Callahan’s Smog marks another transformation. Disposing of the nom de plume, he’s become more direct, plain, and open. The woeful and despair inherent to Smog has lifted — the sky seems visible once again, albeit occasionally cloudy.

Bill Callahan as Bill Callahan has already revealed a mini-spiral, like a mirror reflection of the larger spiral of Smog: his initial releases in 2007 reveled in a rhythm-driven aesthetic that abandoned most of his lo-fi leanings. But this year’s Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle (Drag City) returns to the intimate, acoustic-based Smog sound. "Jim Cain," the opener on Eagle, starts like a Callahan thesis. Using poetic enjambment for effect, he declares, "I started out in search of /ordinary things … I started telling the story /without knowing the end /I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again." Brian Beattie’s subtle string arrangements compliment the sentiment in Callahan’s slight reversal from the lightness of Woke on a Whaleheart (Drag City, 2007). But the sun peeps out when "Rococo Zephyr" finds Callahan momentarily "jaunty as a bee."

On Eagle, Callahan radically confesses an inherent inability to know everything. Not knowing the end of the story allows for ideas to evolve, and each Callahan album captures his sentiment at that moment. But a shepherd never strays too far from his flock, and even as Callahan’s overall travels take the form of a spiral, he returns to similar themes and sounds. "Well maybe this was all /Was all that meant to be /Maybe this is all /Is all that meant to be," he sings at one point on "Rococo Zephyr." Sounds like an epiphany, even if it takes him a few tries to get it out.

BILL CALLAHAN With Bachelorette. Tues/30, 8 p.m., $16. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365, www.bimbos365club.com

Super Ego: Grab your Ongina, it’s Pride

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June 22, 2009

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By Marke B.

We all love drag gadabout Monistat — even if we want to pinch her little chubby cheeks to death for sending us 20 texts a week demanding to be on the Guardian cover. Love! Now, she’s making up for all her cray-cray by starting a weekly Tuesday night affair called Chaser, which offers a safe haven at EndUp for transgender people on the prowl, and dishes up some fierce drag performances to boot (recent theme nights: “The Aporkalypse: Swine Flu vs Avian Flu” and “Steampunk Circus.”) Basically, it’s almost beloved Trannyshack all over again. And Monistat possesses some real talent.

To kick off Pride — or continue kicking off, if, like me, you went to far too many Pride kickoffs this past weekend (Kick it already, Lucy!) — she’s bringing in someone, someone apparently big, from RuPaul’s Drag Race to make us all a bit fiercer, if perhaps also more amateur-fabulous. This person is named Ongina.

I think she’s gonna do a few numbers? According to her bio: From one of the thousands of tiny islands in the Philippines comes a mighty, powerful force called Ongina! She’s a mighty wind!

Chaser with Ongina
Tue/23, 10 p.m., $10
The EndUp
401 Sixth St., SF
www.theendup.com

Juicy gotcha krazy

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June 17, 2009

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO Oh, who the hell cares what I think this week? It’s summer and our party hormones — partymones — are totally going apeshit. Before I get into the upcoming party musts, though, I will leave you with one quasi-abstract musing. The thing I’ll miss most about analog TV, besides the term "vertical hold," is the sound of someone frantically banging the top of the box to stabilize the picture. If anyone’s thinking of sampling that in a killer track, now’s the time. Slap that bitch!

NINJA TUNE

It’s been a coon’s age since the forward-thinking label threw one of its freaky bashes here in San Francisco, and despite some questionable recent signings (Thunderheist? Er, pass), it’s pulling out its new big guns with this one. Before he brought down the house on the Brainfeeder tour last year, I couldn’t look at foppish L.A. synth-master Daedelus without flashing back to my more ill-starred ’80s sartorial choices. But he proved himself up to the minute with edgy future bassism and over-the-top Beethoven-like symphonic flourishes. New New Romantic? Sure. Montreal dancehall warper Ghislain Poirier is back as well, and will benefit from Mighty’s mighty bass boost. Opening up is Daly City’s underground patron saint, Mochipet.

Thu/18, 9 p.m., $10 advance. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

"THE CREATIVES"

There’s nothing more terrifying to me than a drag queen out of drag. Here I’ll be all gossiping tipsily with someone and say something like, "Oh gurl, that Ambrosia Salad mess truly sucked a big one with her number last Friday." And then he’ll say in a deep voice, "I’m Ambrosia Salad, asshole" — and I’ll have to backtrack faster than Scooby and Shaggy from Bluebeard’s tacky ectoplasm. Luckily, hottie photographer Molly Decoudreaux provides a key with her new exhibition, "The Creatives: Daytime Portraits from a Queer Nightlife," in which she ingeniously snaps notorious movers and shakers in their casual home habitats. Who knew these queens had homes? The opening party should be darling.

Sat/20, 7 p.m.–10 p.m., continues through July 10, free. A.Muse Gallery, 614 Alabama, SF. www.yourmusegallery.com

SUREFIRE

That lively Bay nexus for all things dubstep, Surefire Sound, has gone monthly at Triple Crown (yay) and has a stellar June lineup planned. Distance, a hurricane force from the U.K. whose "Night Vision" track on Planet Mu pummels the darkness into submission, brings his streetwise wobble to the tables. Toronto’s XI gets gnarly, his ragamuffin moments reflective of Canada’s simmering melting pot. And much-admired local DJ Antiserum possesses the just-right combination of longtime jungle and breaks experience and wild viral style to crank the party up madly.

Sat/20, 10 p.m., $10. Triple Crown, 1760 Market, SF. www.triplecrownsf.com

GREEN VELVET

True eccentricity is still a rarity on the techno scene, which tends to forego stand-out personalities in favor of mix-friendly assimilation. This can be a good thing: we don’t need another Prodigy, surely. But Green Velvet, the wacky track producer also known as house pioneer Cajmere, gets the balance between dance floor motion and the conceptually bizarre perfectly. The influence of his earworm cuts like "The Stalker," "Flash," and the oddly Eminem-summoning "La La Land" is strongly felt on recent underground Berlin styles and throughout the goofy Dirty Bird label technoverse. He’ll be in town with bonkers duo Designer Drugs, who manage to make electro-sleaze still relevant-sounding, to help celebrate the birthday of one of my favorite SF DJs, Richie Panic.

Sat/20, 9 p.m., $15 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

DJ SAID

A decade ago, when the Internet was still booming, Said Adelekan brought some serious dance floor spirit to that oft-soulless go-go period with his local Afro-House movement, his Fatsouls label, and his lovely Atmosphere parties. I’m absolutely delighted that he and Fatsouls have resurfaced — goddess knows we could use a little more Afro-injection — to release a new full-length Fatsouls joint, Sun of Gao. Joining Said (and many familiar friendly faces from those days, I hope) will be the luminous DJ Dedan of the great Brothers and Sisters party in Oakland. Expect everything deeply felt, from Afrobeat to minimal techno — oh, and Nigerian legend Rasaki Aladokun on the talking drum.

Friday, June 26, 10 p.m., free. Otis, 25 Maiden Lane, SF. www.otissf.com

India Jones

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June 10, 2009

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Small may be beautiful, but so is big — especially if it is spelled "Bolshoi," Russian for big. The Moscow company’s current production, La Bayadère, a tale of love and revenge, is set in an India whose Orientalism will make politically correct viewers shudder but that called up paroxysms of delight from the balletomanes who packed the Bolshoi Ballet’s recent performances at Zellerbach Hall.

As a huge unwieldy spectacle, this Bayadère is a hoot and a wonder. Some of it — the flailing fakirs; the high-leaping "Indians" — could have come straight out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Everything is huge, from the extensions and leaps to the speed and elevations. The excess is impressive and fun to watch, although the show does drag.

In the wedding scene, divertissements spilled over each other: a fan dance, a children’s dance, a parrot dance, the water jug "Manu" (a sprightly Chinara Alizade), and a "Golden Idol" (Ivan Vasiliev) who sits in the air like Buddha. The packed stage left little room for the royal couple’s pas de deux except to dance in parallel — which they do. For the finale, the bride (Maria Alexandrva) topped off a pyramid of adoring bodies.

This Bayadère is probably the only ballet in which two ballerinas try to kill each other by launching themselves as missiles in grand jeté. The duel between the strong-willed Gamzatti (Alexandrova) and Nikiya (Svetlana Zakharova) injected a much-welcome sense of drama. The man they fight over is Solor (Nikolay Tsiskaridze), an Indian noble. Tsiskaridze is a little self-involved but a spectacular dancer in terms of speed, elevation, and ballon.

With beautiful comportment, Alexandrova’s nuanced Gamzatti evolves from young girl to a revengeful wife. With her arms interwined and her liquid torso, Zakharova’s Nikiya looked like a fragile flame. But there is steel in that spine and those feet. But Bayadère‘s heart beats in the 32 women in tutus who make their way down a ramp in long arabesques. Zellerbach’s stage was too shallow to carry it off, and the overlapping lines didn’t coalesce. But when, as if by magic, they melted into a block of shimmering white, it was heart-stopping.

Bull feathers

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June 3, 2009

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO I recently found myself in Navajo Nation, munching on frybread at Kate’s diner in Tuba City with Hunky Beau after rocking out to, I shit you not, tech-navajo on the local FM station in the rental. I looked fantastic. We’d just witnessed a fierce two-spirit working the sandwich counter at the Bashas’ supermarket down the street. She/he looked fantastic. Back here in the city, on the nightlife scene, things weren’t so fantastic — another big underground party got busted, Pink Saturday ran into permit snafus, and neighborhood complaints mooted even more regular shindigs. And has anyone else noticed the skyrocketing price of a drink in this town? I’m not saying you need a buzz to bust out (alcohol sales are banned on the rez, so I’m grateful for the option), but dropping a Hamilton for a weak well screwdriver certainly has me rethinking my hollow leg. Still, as immortal shamans ABBA sang, "I can fly like an eagle, I can learn to spread my wings". Spread ’em, children, toss your hair, and let’s keep flying high.

ROLLER DISCO!

The only party in the city where I’m never alone falling on my luscious ass returns — skate rental provided, balance and expertise optional. I can’t lie, I have a total blast at this gig, even if the tunes are fun-yet-familiar and there’s always that one amazingly cute girl whose backspins and pirouettes make me bite my knuckles and wish I were a lot gayer. Like, Brian Boitano gayer.

Thu/4, 9 p.m., $5. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

"25 YEARS OF HOUSE MUSIC"

Dates and times, dates and times — why quibble? Most approaches to the evolution of house are more organic than any "x" on a calendar. But if a quarter-century celebration, complete with art exhibition, of the underground global movement that foretold the Internet’s interconnectivity is a big enough excuse to get Chicago genius Jesse Saunders behind the decks at Club Six, I’m way down.

Fri/5, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., $15. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

ZOMBIE BEACH PARTY

"Guaranteed to put the laughter in slaughter" is a tagline that’ll get me every time. And so will any appearance by the Living Dead Girlz, those jaw-dropping undead dancer with a taste for semi-clothed flesh. They’ll be waving, not drowning, from the stage at this tongueless-in-cheek beach blanket bingo bacchanal, along with Sparkly Devil, Honey Lawless, and a mass grave of others. Plus: an undead beachwear costume contest. Paging Annette Funicello …

Fri/5, 9 p.m.– late, $10 street clothes/$7 surfer zombies. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.dnalounge.com

BIG IDEA: RITUAL AND REDEMPTION

Oh, crap. Is it really Pride month again? Time to haul that sequined rainbow thong from out the mothballs and try to get married or whatever. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is going homo-humongous for its latest, starlet-studded Big Idea party — rounding up the city’s fiercest alternaqueers with its golden lasso, including fab drag disasters Anna Conda and Monistat, DJ Dirty Knees, Pansy Division, Honey Soundsystem, Ex-Boyfriends, and the ever-present, never-sleeping Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Fellini-inspired spectacle also promises free tattoos, after-hours dancing, a taco truck, and "Project Nunway," heh. Best of all, the whole shebang is free — and not sponsored by Miller Lite, Altoids, 2Xist, Olivia Cruises, or Tylenol PM.

Sat/6, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., free. YBCA, 701 Mission, SF. www.ybca.org

WIGHNOMY BROTHERS

Monthly throwdown Kontrol at EndUp breeds absolutely bonkers dancefloor results that are far less fussy than its minimal techno focus, meticulous taste in talent, and somewhat daunting prevalence of miniscule eyewear would suggest. For the party’s fourth anniversary, it’s bringing in Germany’s superstar Wighnomy Brothers, two proudly unkempt vodka-swillers whose Seth Rogen-like public image belies a sizzling bromance with the more lovable, devil-may-care side of dance. The tipsy pair of teddy bears with a penchant for unpronounceable titles (recent release: Metawuffmischfelge) refused to visit the U.S. during that whole Bush thing. Laudable, but we could have used their balls-to-the-wall wig-outs to help us through such foulest ick. Good thing we’ve still got problems!

Sat/6, 10 p.m.–6 a.m., $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.kontrolsf.com

For your earholes

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May 20, 2009

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johnny@sfbg.com

AFRO-SURREAL

Afro-Surreal is a crackling transmission from the tightest tunnels and recesses of inner space, and the furthest, darkest outposts of outer space. Afro-Surreal is androgynous — butch and femme on a whim. Afro-Surreal is a sonic realm that can morph any millisecond. It is a single body with many voices. Afro-Surreal might sound like gospel, but it ain’t, or if it is, it’s Goth gospel. Afro-Surreal is a Puya-like bloom from the root of a manifesto named "Black Sabrina." Afro-Surreal is a flawed masterstroke from the most unjustly under-known "popular music" recording artist of the 21st century. Afro-Surreal is the sound of Chelonis R. Jones.

Right now, the sound of Chelonis R. Jones is Chatterton (Systematic), his second solo album after the equally deep and fantastic Dislocated Genius (Get Physical, 2005). It’s named after a poet, and it’s a place where Giorgio Moroder-meets-Donna Summer to soundtrack an eight-minute minimalist epic sung from the perspective of the ungrateful sole survivor of a plane crash. It’s a place where rehab is a "recreant blur," and Fleetwood Mac’s "Dreams" are buried beneath threatening street wisdom from an ex-.

"’WELL SHUT MY MOUTH WIDE OPEN!’is an old surrealist term of expression that Afro-Americans created when they were emancipated, due to the fact that emancipation wasn’t a reality, but a much dreamed of condition that they hoped would become a reality." So writes Ted Joans — as tedjoans — in the liner notes for the recently-reissued 1974 album King of Kings (Pyramid/Ikef) by the Pyramids, Bay Area artist and musician Idris Ackamoor’s revelatory group. Joans was referring to the free jazz sounds of the time, but he could just as well have been referring to Death’s definition of rock ‘n’ roll, as demonstrated on …For All the World to See (Drag City), a previously unreleased true treasure of black Detroit rock that also dates from 1974. Brothers David and Bobby Hackney don’t just invent punk — "Freakin Out" is like the Buzzcocks if they were muscular — they create agit-punk on the epic "Politicians in My Eyes."

The arrival of Death couldn’t be better timed to match the black rock signs of life within the surreal electronic solar system of Jones’ Chatterton. Jones’ braiding of word and sound is subliminal, like when Pornography (as in a song that sounds like that particular era of the Cure) arrives in the wake of a track called "Tornogrpahy." In the audio "Che-ography" he has created with dozens of studio collaborators (charted on his MySpace), a cat-lady character from a 12" single (2007’s "Helen Cornell") can cameo in a song by another recording endeavor about a girl who suffers when "the pimps and crack dealers hit her…where the good lord split her."

All the lonely people, framed by "Pompadour," Chatterton‘s penultimate track that pays homage to an idol by stampeding to finality like "Speedway" on Morrissey’s Vauxhall and I (Sire, 1994). "’Twas said, ’twas said: Black singers are … well, so very very … uh … cliché," Jones, well, sings — and sings from a bottomless well. "And still, and still you know you’ll screw for them … you’ll screw in private anyway!"

MORE AT WWW.SFBG.COM

Afro-Surreal-List and writing by Chelonis R. Jones

Editor’s Notes

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May 20, 2009

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

It was not what you’d call a banner day in the big leagues. On May 12, the progressives — who celebrated sweeping victories in last fall’s election — lost three significant battles, leaving me more than a little nervous about the upcoming epic fight over Mayor Newsom’s 2009-10 budget.

In separate votes, with different members going the wrong way each time, the Board of Supervisors sided with Newsom on a private deal to build a solar-power project in the Sunset District, then approved his Muni service cuts and fare hikes.

And while the final Muni vote was going on at City Hall, the School Board was meeting nearby and voting to restore a military recruiting program to the public high schools.

This is not what any of us had in mind during last fall’s campaigns.

The vote to approve the Recurrent Energy project came early in the day and left me shaking my head. The idea was fine — build solar panels on the Sunset Reservoir — but the contract the mayor’s Public Utilities Commission put forth was full of serious problems. For starters, nobody was ever able to explain why the city never looked seriously at a way to build the project itself instead of giving the land to a private, for-profit company that will charge very high rates for the power. It was the kind of deal you’d expect the fiscal conservatives to wince at, but no: Sean Elsbernd was all in favor.

That left Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos to raise the questions about this use of public resources and public money. The problems should have been hammered out in committee, and the deal amended before it ever came to the board. But to my surprise, John Avalos voted with Carmen Chu to pass it out of Budget and Finance.

Then, again to my surprise, Eric Mar broke with the progressive bloc and sided with the Newsom camp to approve the thing.

I wasn’t thrilled with the outcome, but you can’t win ’em all — and I figured that at least the Muni fare hikes were going down. After all, Board President David Chiu had done an outstanding job of challenging Muni on its assumptions and its spending on plans, and was leading the charge to reject the budget. Six other supervisors signed on to his move.

Then the backroom talks started — right in the middle of the board meeting. The Mayor’s Office offered a few tidbits, but insisted that the fare hikes and service cuts had to be passed or the entire city budget would be out of whack. And to my surprise, in the end, Chiu blinked. He voted to table his own resolution, effectively approving the Muni plan.

What was missing in all of this, I think, was visible progressive leadership. Chiu has done some good things, but he’s still very new — and in this case, he didn’t stand up to the mayor. I think that’s partially experience, learning how Newsom plays the game and realizing that you can’t let him threaten you or push you around, that compromise is fine and open communications are great, but that in the end, the supervisors have to call their own shots.

And there’s nobody else on this board stepping into that role right now.

The progressive majority on the board is fractious, but that’s always going to be the case. The reason there’s no left-wing "machine" in San Francisco, and never will be, is that people on the left are always too independent and too unwilling to be herded. There’s still room, though — and now, a desperate need — for leadership, for someone who can be the majority whip and make sure the six votes are there when we need them.

If the progressives can’t stick together on Newsom’s budget, it’s going to be a long, and painful, year.

I wish Mark Sanchez had decided to stay on the School Board instead of running for supervisor. He would have been re-elected, and either Jill Wynns or Rachel Norton would have lost, and this whole JROTC fiasco would never have happened.

There are plenty of problems in the schools, plenty of issues for the board to work on, and with the deep budget problems, it’s going to be important for the members to work together. The decision by Wynns and Norton to dredge up a done issue and drag it back before the board was needless and wrong.

I’m way against JROTC in the schools, but even some of the people who ended up supporting it — like board member Norman Yee — never wanted to see it back before the board again. Now we’re going to be fighting over this for months to come. There may be litigation, and it didn’t need to happen.

Now any hope of finding an alternative leadership program that doesn’t involve the military is gone for at least the next two years, and we’re stuck with the Army as part of our high school curriculum.

Not a banner day, folks. Not a banner day. *

Madcap laughs

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May 19, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "I told you so" are the sweetest, shortest words in the lexicon of raving visionaries and maligned prophets, but Sir Richard Bishop is far too gentlemanly to resort to such snack-sized snarkery. Still, I’m thinking the world’s attentions and the brothers Bishop and their many projects might finally be harmonically, magically converging as I park myself on a thrift-store coach beside the charming Bishop in the airy, uncannily tidy West Oakland flat he shares with Mark Gergis (Porest, Neung Phak, Mono Pause).

After the 2007 death of Sun City Girl Charles Gocher, attentive underground music fans — who’ve revered the band for its determinedly DIY, cassette-culture cussedness — collectively blinked, rubbed their eyes, and wondered why they hadn’t paid closer attention to the endlessly productive Girls (even now issuing rarities via the new Napoleon and Josephine: Singles Volume 2 [Abduction]). Attention from figures like Bonnie "Prince" Billy (who told me that the Bishop Brothers’ Brothers Unconnected show at Slim’s was the best he saw last year) and labels such as Sub Pop, which talked to the Bishops about doing a best-of, soon followed.

Likewise Sublime Frequencies — the label Richard and Alan Bishop toiled on for years amid accusations that they were ripping off artists, failing to follow academic protocol, and simply not applying enough polish to their rough aesthetic — began to get its due as a groundbreaking disseminator of obscure sonic gems from such far-flung, seldom documented sites as Burma, Laos, and Western Sahara. Richard, who is less involved with the imprint these days, says they’ve become adept at tracking down and paying the performers. Today, the label gets the kind of praise it richly deserves, including a hefty feature by onetime naysayer Clive Bell in Wire. Sublime Frequencies is also producing the first European, non-Mideast tour by breathtaking Syrian folk-pop legend Omar Souleyman, whose Highway to Hassake (Sublime Frequencies, 2006) positively shreds with phase-shifted Arabic keyboard lines and frenetic beats.

Meanwhile Sir Richard is concentrating on his new Oakland life, bathed in the soft light and BART train roar streaming in from the ‘hood. "It seems like it’s alive here — whereas in Seattle it’s kind of dying and not just musically," he says happily. "This is not the best neighborhood, but when I go out the door, I’m alive, and I’m totally aware of what’s going on, and there’s just some cool creative energy to grasp onto."

Guitars and instruments are neatly clustered in an alcove across from a massive TV rigged to catch Mideast channels — perfectly tuned into Bishop’s current obsession with and studies into the music the half-Lebanese musician first heard his grandfather play on old cassettes. Here in Oakland — aided and abetted by the half-Iraqi Gergis and his collection of Middle Eastern MP3s, cassettes, VCDs, and vinyl — he’s been digging deeply into the music of Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, a homecoming of sorts since Bishop started out studying Egyptology around the time of Sun City Girls’ early ’80s inception.

When Bishop started tracking his fine, even sublime new The Freak of Araby (Drag City) in Seattle, the switch from making a poppy electric-guitar album to one centered on Middle Eastern-related originals and covers was a natural one — a tribute to his latest fave, Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid. Bishop scrambled to learn new songs in six days, but he’s pleased with the result, which he’ll fill out live with tour mate Oaxacan as his backing combo. The disc "was very rushed, and I didn’t have time to hash out a lot of the ideas," he says. "There are people who are not going to like it, but that’s okay, it never bothered me before!" And with that, the jolly Sir Richard laughs. *

SIR RICHARD BISHOP AND HIS FREAK OF ARABY ENSEMBLE

Fri/22, 9:30 p.m., $10

Stork Club

2330 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.storkcluboakland.com

FITS AND WIGGLES

OBITS

Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes are in the Brooklyn post-punkers’ past, now gathering steam with Sub Pop singles and SXSW blather lather. Wed/20, 9 p.m., $10–$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com.

BLK JKS

Don’t fear the guitar solo, all ye Johannesburg black-rockers. Fri/22, 9 p.m., $12. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

NOMO

Out now with Invisible Cities (Ubiquity), the polyrhythmic Midwestern mind-blowers destroyed all reservations at their last BOH show. Fri/22, 10 p.m., $10–$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com.

LADY SOVEREIGN

The pint-sized electro-grime poobabe finds a Cure with "So Human." Sun/24, 9 p.m., $18. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. rickshawstop.com

Sour grapes

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May 13, 2009

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le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Wish I could take the two parties I went to on Saturday and superimpose them onto each other, so that the Rockridge moms and dads could mix with the young trans men, drag kings, and queer burlesque performers.

When I mentioned this seemingly surreal idea to Alice Shaw after our soccer game Sunday, she said, simply, "Do it. You can!" And she teaches photography, so I decided to believe her.

Not only that, but since my own training is technically as a fiction writer, I think I’ll bring my buddy Earl Butter with me to both parties, even though in real life I only ate lunch with him and then dropped him off at his house.

Earl Butter deserves a bigger piece of pie. Don’t you think?

"My whole life has been a series of disappointments," Earl Butter really did say, at lunch. "One after the other after the other, and eventually you reach the point where one more thing … well, it might just be the one that breaks you."

We were both looking at his piece of pie, and it was, in fact, astonishingly small. Small enough to put inside a teacup. Small enough to break anyone’s spirit.

I gave him half my piece. To be honest, I didn’t miss it. If I go back to Mission Pie, it will be for a cup of coffee.

Now, to show you what a great friend and altruistic farmer I really really am, after lunch I took Earl Butter with me to this Kentucky Derby party in Oakland. Of course you heard that a 50:1 long-shot won, by a mile, and that gives me more hope than Susan Boyle gave everyone else.

But I already had more hope than is good for me, anyway.

Anyway, so I met this big fat queer stripper chick stage-named Kentucky Fried Woman at a burlesque show. "I’ve heard all about you," I said, because I had. I’d heard that she has a Derby party every year and makes buttloads of the Best Fried Chicken Ever.

Praise the Lard … it’s true!

And there were biscuits, and corn bread, and mac ‘n’ cheese, and every possible shade of white and yellow things to eat, but I have a confession to make: I went to two shows in one week and didn’t get the burlesque thing. I mean, song and dance and comedy I understand, but the part that ends in swirling pasties? … Nothing. I’m sorry.

This probably seems like sour grapes coming from an uncurvaceous woman with sour grape-sized tits, so it probably is sour grapes. And/or to me, life itself is almost unbearably sexy as it is, with it’s fried chicken and red umbrellas, its beautiful people, licking their lips.

A friend had to explain it to me. But I still didn’t get it. Maybe the striptease, like fried chicken itself, is simply not for everyone. That was how I decided to leave it.

Then I went to this party. Then, later that night, I went to this other party. I was on the dance floor talking to my two new favorite people: the woman whose children I watch, and the mom next door, our hostess, who was wearing a wig, false eyelashes, it being her birthday.

Perhaps giddy at having found sitters, one or two other people were wearing wigs. That was it. Oh, and one guy was wearing a cowboy hat. I was wearing what I always wear: a skirt, a shirt, and a little mascara.

"I’ve been watching you," Cowboy Hat blurted, as soon as we’d been introduced. He seemed unable to contain himself. "And I have to say," he spilled, "that you have really impressed me with your outfit!" I think he was a doctor. He had to notice the life leaving me as he went on and on, congratuutf8g me on my get-up, my costume, how well I’d done!

Worst of all, he meant all this as a kindness, so vodka and tonic in his face was not an option.

The only way to shut him up, which didn’t hit me soon enough, sadly, was to unbutton my shirt, swing it over my head, and let it fly. I undid my bra, my skirt, the music erasing the rest as I danced down to my exact body, the song, finally getting it. *

MISSION PIE

Mon.-Thu., 7 a.m.-9 p.m.;

Fri., 7 a.m.-10 p.m.;

Sat., 8 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.-9 p.m.

2901 Mission, SF

(415) 282-1500

No alcohol

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Labelmania: Stones Throw and Smalltown Supersound

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May 1, 2009

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What role do labels have in the world of music today? I recently put that question and four others to a number of people, including Chris Manak (aka Peanut Butter Wolf), of the hip-hop mainstay Stones Throw Records, and Joakim Haugland of Norway’s Smalltown Supersound, home to Lindstrøm and to S.F.’s Tussle. The fact that their answers could be so different yet not in opposition or disagreement says something about the versatile love of music that powers smaller labels.

SFBG What meaning do you think a label has today?
CHRIS MANAK, STONES THROW A label definitely means something different now than it did before, but people seem to attach a certain meaning to my label, so we’re still doing OK. There are some artists who have played on big stages at Coachella without having a label, and others who’ve been on the cover of magazines (or cover of MySpace) with no label or not even more than a song or two recorded, so it goes to show that some artists can achieve “success” and get fans on the strength of having a strong image and a catchy song.
JOAKIM HAUGLAND, SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND I think labels today are even more important, as one needs to be more creative these days and a creative label can be very important for a band or an artist. In my opinion, running a label is an artform. I am in general a label fan and have read most books available about the good indie labels like Elektra, Impulse, Creation, Rough Trade, Factory and so on. When you read these books you also understand that it’s all about the music and that there are strong and creative personalities behind these labels. Most of the time they’re crazy music- obsessive people. Amid all the chaos of drugs and madness at Creation Records, they also put out some of the best albums ever.
With digital distribution and illegal downloading, I think it is important for labels to be creative. It is easier and cheaper to reach out to your audience now with the Internet, but one also has to be smart.

Peanut Butter Wolf as a wolf

The cover of Lindstrøm’s Where You Go I Go Too, on Smalltown Supersound

SFBG What are your favorite labels for newer artists, and your favorites for reissues?
STONES THROW Stones Throw for both. That label jibes best with my personal taste and if I didn’t believe in myself, how could I expect others to believe in me and spend their money on me? Some other new labels I like are Big Time, Minimal Wave, Gloriette, Human Ear, Now Again, Soul Jazz, Humble Magnificent/Lewis, Paw Tracks, Soul Cal, Peoples Potential Unlimited, and Liger Vision (if they ever get a record out). I’m sure I’m leaving some great ones out.
SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND My favorite labels of today: Sub Pop, Matador, WARP, Domino, DFA, Dischord, Drag City, XL Recordings. Favorite labels of the past: Creation, SST, Factory, ESP, Touch and Go, Impulse, BYG, Rough Trade. When it comes to re-issues I like Soul Jazz, Honest Jon`s and Light In The Attic. I also like SPV`s reissue series of the Brain Records label.

Great expectations?

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April 29, 2009

0

Equality has been achieved: this recession is kicking everyone’s arse. But I couldn’t help but squirm at a few recent music-biz disjunctions. How does one reconcile the scene at a South by Southwest "Great Expectations" label panel last month, listening to Tony Kiewel describe 2008 as one of the Sub Pop’s best years, with the bad news from Touch and Go’s Chicago HQ a week later? After shuttering its distribution — which once supported imprints ranging from Drag City to Estrus — in February, the 25-year-plus label laid off its entire staff. Owner and ex-Necros bassist Corey Rusk was going to run the enterprise solo.

A second major blow, especially when one considers Touch and Go’s history releasing important discs by Big Black, Scratch Acid, Die Kreuzen, Slint, Jesus Lizard, and of course, the Butthole Surfers (though the label’s 1999 loss in a legal battle with that band likely hasn’t helped). "Touch and Go basically allowed Merge to exist as something other than a singles label," Mac McCaughan of Merge Records stated in February. "If a company that did everything the right way can’t survive in this environment, then who can?"

Are these simply the latest surges and sucks of free-market capitalism’s death throes and toilet-bowl flows? And what’s the state of independence for local labels eking it out in this still-roiling stew of sorry economic news?

"The black and white fact is that [Sub Pop] is not Touch and Go," opines Cory Brown, owner of Bay Area independent Absolutely Kosher and general manager of Misra Records. He notes that Sub Pop is partially owned by Warner Bros. and that Touch and Go had the tough luck of losing some of its biggest artists, including TV on the Radio, Blonde Redhead, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Those departures "all went down not very well," says Brown, who believes Touch and Go’s contraction was "as much an emotional decision as a business one," considering the company had big releases by Pinback and Three Mile Pilot planned.

Rusk declined to comment, although one wonders what will become of his label’s newer bands, among them the Bay Area’s Mi Ami and Sholi. Still, should he strike up a new alliance, all systems could be go at Touch and Go once again. As Brown puts it, "Geoff Travis has closed Rough Trade multiple times now and come back with it."

What of the local label landscape? Lookout! and Jackpine Social Club have ceased new releases, whereas Tigerbeat6 and Anticon have left town. Slumberland is surfing a twee rock revival, and hip-hop’s SMC has taken on bigger fish like Killer Mike. As newbie Bright Antenna appears on the horizon, veterans such as Alternative Tentacles, Fat Wreck Chords, Runt/Water, Quannum Projects, Birdman, Daly City, Dirtybird, and Hook or Crook are staying alive. AT celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. "As music and media become increasingly accessible instantly from anywhere, the role of curator is more important than ever – if I can access 10 millions songs instantly from my phone, how do I choose?," Isaac Bess, director of business development at SF’s IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) writes via e-mail.

Business is bright, thanks to smart planning, for SF distributor Revolver USA and Midheaven Mailorder, which supports labels such as Gnomonsong and DiCristina Stair Builders. "We’re doing well, and I think that has a lot to do with what our expectations are, and not looking for a big record to be carried by Walmart and Target," says general manager Mike Toppe, who thinks it’s more important to "keep connecting with people who are passionate about music."

Fat Mike, who started Fat Wreck Chords to put out music by his bands NOFX and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, has a more hardcore perspective. "In the ’90s, every fucking band we signed sold a shitload of records and got popular all over the world. It was ridiculous," he e-mails from NOFX’s current European tour. "Now only the really good bands can sell a decent amount. That’s okay, though. This industry collapse is mostly killing mediocre bands." As for the decline in CD and recorded music sales, the SF road warrior believes that’s not going to stop: "The record industry party is over, but great live bands will always do okay."

But what about the groups that can’t pick up blogosphere buzz? Both Jacobs and Brown acknowledge the difficulty in developing emerging or even mid-level bands via traditional avenues. Add in the complicating factor of so-called 360 deals, in which a label takes a percentage of all artist revenue in exchange for promotion, and you have what Brown calls a "destructive" outlook. "The bottom line is musicians should get paid," he said. "Forget about how labels are doing — how are musicians doing in this climate?

"I think new ideas really have to come into play, and those have to be based on the quality of life for the musician, not the company that comes up with an application," he continued, touching on the lack of public funds for musicians and lack of official recourse for bands if, for instance, they don’t get paid by a club. "It’s basic stuff, but it’s harder to look past those things. It has to go back to the content provider."

Zazang Korean Noodle

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April 28, 2009

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paulr@sfbg.com

The words "Korean" and "barbecue" might never be woven into an eternal golden braid to compare with Gödel, Escher, and Bach, but they are definitely interwoven, perhaps even fused. When you say you want Korean food, you almost certainly will be understood to mean the kind served at the barbecue joints that line Geary Boulevard in the blocks just east of Park Presidio. These meals begin with a bounty of small dishes — pickled vegetables, bean sprouts, and so forth — before culminating in some kind of meat course in which you do your own grilling on the hibachi in the middle of your table.

There’s nothing wrong with this drill, but if you’re looking for something different yet still want Korean — and don’t want to go upmarket at Namu — what do you do? Why, you go to Za Zang Korean Noodle, of course, which, despite a name that sounds like one of the sounds written out on the old Batman television series when the bad guys were getting it (like biff! bam! boom! and pow!), is a nifty Korean noodle house on an almost invisible stretch of Geary between Divisadero and the Masonic underpass.

Yellow (almost gold!) is a theme here. The restaurant inside is largely done in tones of this cheerful color, and the pickled radishes on their complimentary plate are as pure an example of the hue as I’ve seen outside a box of Crayola crayons. They are like slices of the summer sun as depicted in a grade-school child’s drawing. They’re also mild — though tasty — and in this sense are something of a rarity on a menu otherwise laden with spice-charged possibilities. Perhaps their lone companion in mild-manneredness is the platter of boiled potstickers ($7.55 for a dozen); the cloud-shaped flour pouches have a softness I associate with shumai or other dim sum and are filled with gingery minced pork and chopped scallions. (You can also get them deep-fried, which brings a vegetarian option and a choice of headcounts, either four or eight.)

The noodle courses are, first, big. Just immense, easily enough for two people even if they’re hungry. The noodles themselves are housemade and resemble fresh spaghetti. They turn up in both the soupy dishes (zam pong, udon) and the un-soupy ones. In the second category, I found the spicy gan za zang ($8.95) to be unusually satisfying: a hemispherical bowl the size of a halved canteloupe, filled with noodles and slivered scallions, and a second bowl, smaller and shallower, filled with diced beef and vegetable (mostly eggplant, I guessed) in a thick black-bean, or za zang, sauce. (Hence the restaurant’s name.) Our server’s somewhat garbled advice, as I understood it, was to spoon the beef mixture gradually over the noodles. I did so and was happy, although I also took the occasional spoonful of the beef sauce neat and was just as happy with its dark, slightly fruity heat.

Black-bean paste figures in many of the non-soups, with the main variable being protein: seafood and pork are also offered, there is a flesh-free version, and the beef can be had in non-spicy guise. The wonderful noodles, meanwhile, figure in soups and non-soups alike. And vegetarians will note that all the soups are made with beef broth. This is bad for vegetarianism but good for flavor.

You are unlikely ever to find a more flavorful soup than zam pong ($7.95), which is like a bouillabaisse, only much, much livelier. The beef broth is charged with garlic and red chilis and is absolutely swimming with calamari tentacles, clams, shrimp (still dressed in their shells, making them tastier but a drag to eat), and slivers of onions and green bell peppers. Rice instead of noodles? That’s zam pong bap ($8.95). Udon, the other soup offering, is Japanese in origin and is neither spicy nor available with rice.

The cars hurtling along Geary are terrifying, like jets speeding down a runway en route to the great beyond, but in the slipstream of all that traffic, one can find surprisingly easy parking. The restaurant’s human traffic, meantime, is of the cheerful neighborhood sort: families, young couples, take-out loiterers, perhaps an oddball wearing a woolen beanie even on an eerily warm evening. At dinnertime I would skip the tall glass of complimentary warm tea the server brings. Too tall, too hot, too stimuutf8g — or, as John Madden used to say, boom!

ZAZANG KOREAN NOODLE

Sun.-Thurs., 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.

Fri.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.

2340 Geary, SF

(415) 447-0655

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Noisy, but not too

Wheelchair accessible

Ask a Porn Star: Wendy Williams on straight lust and sex objects

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April 24, 2009

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In which super sexy porn people answer questions — each week — from Bay Area locals. View the last installment here
By Justin Juul

Fielding your questions this month is AVN’s current “Transsexual Performer of The Year,” Wendy Williams. Check out some of her stuff and then send some questions here.

SFBG: You’re known for using blogs and video diaries to develop and maintain a really intimate relationship with your fans. Can you tell us a little about them? Are they mostly straight men?

Williams: Yeah, they are. You gotta understand that my fans are attracted to the feminine qualities they see in me and that many of them just consider the dick to be a fetish. Transsexual porn has a very divided fan base, actually. For example, there are people who want to see the transsexual as a bottom only. For them, the fact that she has a dick is just kind of a best-of-both-worlds thing. They would never do it in real life, but they like to see it. I don’t know what that means as far as sexual orientation goes, but I do know that most of my fans identify as straight men. They’re never gonna go to a gay bar and try to pick up guys because they’re not attracted to masculine qualities. They like long hair, breasts, and asses. Obviously, since I have a cock, there’s some question about their actual straightness, but that really doesn’t matter. I’m sure I have bi-sexual fans and I’m sure there are people out there who just want to fuck anything with legs. Whatever. I don’t believe in rigid labels.

SFBG: Yeah, the lines always get blurry when you really start to look at this stuff. I think smart people view sexuality as a continuum that shifts around throughout life. The labels don’t really fit anyone perfectly.
Williams: Yeah, it’s hard not to use the labels sometimes though. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that transsexual porn is marketed to and made for a straight male audience. Ask any gay guy if he’s attracted to transsexuals and you’ll get the same sort of answer: “God, no! I don’t want titties on my back. That’s disgusting!” Transsexuals and drag queens have a place in the gay community, but we’re not sex objects. We are a form of entertainment.

Pics: Cherry Blossom Parade brings warmth and beauty

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April 20, 2009

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Photos and text by Ariel Soto

Protected from the extreme heat beneath their colorful rice paper umbrellas, Japanese beauty queens (and a few drag queens too) made their way through downtown for the Cherry Blossom Festival Grand Parade this Sunday, April 19th. Although a large highlight of the parade were the Japanese beauties, there was also a posse of anime fans and a boat filled with children waving colorful handkerchiefs while dancing to Abba. And of course the parade included several groups of highly energized taiko drummers who kept the parade going all the way to Japantown.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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April 17, 2009

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Tim, Market and Castro

Tell us about your look: “Cowboy drag”

Sick pleasures: Sebastien Timberlake, I mean Tellier, returns to SF

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April 15, 2009

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By Andre Torrez

Is it just me or do the over-produced vocal stylings on A-Trak’s “Kilometer” remix resemble Justin Timberlake? Prepare for more heavy, dark, French synth pop from a stylishly hairy Parisian: Sebastien Tellier returns to SF on Friday at Mezzanine — in a precursor performance to his part in Coachella‘s blowout weekend, where he’ll be juxtaposed with the likes of Calexico, Throbbing Gristle, and Paul McCartney.

Speaking of Sir Paul, Tellier looks a bit like a cross-hybridization of John and Yoko from the hair peace-bed peace, gurus in drag phase. A white suit outfit, scraggly beard, straight long brown mane, and oh-so-Yoko wraparound shades have never looked better combined on one person.

Is Sebastien Tellier a cyborg fusion of these two?

Yoko took wraparounds to another dimension in her wack-wonderful Starpeace phase

Go into the light

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April 1, 2009

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In an online interview, experimental filmmaker and violin drone pioneer Tony Conrad relates a story: one night, underground drag superstar Mario Montez wandered into the apartment Conrad shared with filmmaker Jack Smith, and at Smith’s behest began an impromptu performance. When Smith flicked on a beaten up 16mm projector to serve as a makeshift spotlight, he and Conrad became transfixed by the play of light that reflected off Montez’s sequined outfit. While it would be glib — and certainly fun — to declare that 1960s structural film was born from the glittering gyrations of a drag queen, Conrad’s anecdote is but one development in his longstanding fascination with the excessive sensory effects of shooting light out into the void. Conrad’s 1965 16mm film The Flicker is perhaps his purest and best-known manifestation of this — 30 minutes of black and white stroboscopic bliss (or hell) that cast its long shadows over Brian Gysin’s dream machines, and more contemporarily, Anthony McCall’s striking digital light and fog projections. You’ll have the chance to see how much flashing light your eyes can take when San Francisco Cinematheque presents screenings of Conrad’s films in conjunction with the New York-based polymath’s weekend-long residency at the concurrent Activating the Medium Festival. While Sunday night’s program features The Flicker, it also puts it into context as a jumping off point for Conrad’s subsequent process-based films and public access video works, in which activities such as electrocution and cooking take on a rhythm as mesmerizing as staring into the pulsating light of a film projector.

TONY CONRAD: FLICKERING JEWEL

Fri/3, 5 p.m. (Program One: "Window, Perspective Shadow")

Sat/4, 8 p.m. (Program Two, with Conrad in performance)

Sun/5, 7:30 p.m. (Program Three: "Flicker and Process Films/Works on Video"), $15

San Francisco Art Institute, 300 Chestnut, SF

www.sfcinematheque.org

Don’t fear Bonnie “Prince” Billy – ‘Beware’ marks his most accessible effort to date

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March 27, 2009

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BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY
Beware
(Drag City)

After multiple career tangents, name changes, and rambles hither and yon, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, ne Will Oldham, appears to have finally arrived. The accolades are pouring in from NPR to small-town daily newspapers — a marvel when one considers the fact that the Louisville, Ky., post-punk scene that Oldham sprang from was so roundly ignored during its most vital years in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when Squirrel Bait, Slint, and later Oldham and brothers Ned and Paul performed as Palace (Brothers/Songs/Music).

The most accessible, clean, and least eccentric recording to date from Oldham, Beware might be considered the recording in which the songwriter assumes his rightful place in the current rock canon as the music-maker who prefigured the so-called freak/out-folk scene and the enabler and encourager of such talents as Joanna Newsom and Dawn McCarthy.

This time, his roving sensibility finds its soothingly smooth fit with help from Josh Abrams of Town and Country, Emmett Kelly of Cairo Gang, Akita Youssefi, Jon Langford of the Mekons, Rob Mazurek of Isotope 217, and renowned pedal steel session player Greg Leisz, among others – likely his most accomplished set of contributors to date. Still, despite Beware’s full-bodied, country-soul sound, I feel almost nostalgic for the humanizing glitchy folk Palace and early Bonnie “Prince” Billy was known for – perhaps that’s just my indie rock values rearing their scruffy heads.