Election

SF School Board members are suddenly pals

Zelda Bronstein
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SF School Board members are suddenly pals

I’m used to negative campaigning in San Francisco School Board races. Two years ago, much of the effort candidates were putting forward seemed to be about trashing Margaret Brodkin. These days, I’m getting emails from all sides telling me IN CAPITAL LETTERS who the Guardian should never endorse.

And the board itself has been bitterly divided at times; Rachel Norton and Jill Wynns used to constantly fight with Sandra Fewer. There were two factions on the board, and there’s no way either side would support a member of the opposing crew.

But a funny thing is happening this fall. Among the torrent of trash-talk, the three incumbents — Norton, Wynns, and Fewer — have nothing bad to say about each other. In fact, everyone agrees that the board is working more closely together than it has in years, and while they aren’t always saying so in public, Wynns, Fewer and Norton are quietly helping each other out with their campaigns. All three told us they’d be happy to see their colleagues win re-election.

And it’s all because of the teacher’s union.

Back in March, the school board, by a 5-1 vote, did something almost unheard of in this union town: They discarded the rule of seniority and protected the jobs of 70 mostly newer teachers while issuing layoff notices to teachers with time on the job. The superintendent, Carlos Garcia, wanted to end the cycle of high turnover at 14 school with historically low performance rates, so he created a special “superintendent’s zone.” Teachers who agreed to work in schools that veterans often sought to avoid received extra training and support. Principals sought to build working teams that would stick together.

Then came the annual pink-slip ritual.

The SFUSD administration doesn’t know in the spring how much money it’s going to have for the next fiscal year. That’s because the state doesn’t finalize it’s budget until summer. And by law, the district is required to give teachers notice in March if they might be laid off come September.

So every year, the district issues pink slips to several hundred teachers — and most years, most of those layoffs are later rescinded.

Layoffs are mostly, but not entirely, done by seniority — teachers with advanced skills that are hard to find (special-ed teachers and some math and science teachers, for example) are exempt from the normal layoff process. But the union didn’t consider the 70 Superintendent Zone teachers as fitting that description — and when the board sided with Garcia and protected those teachers from pink slips, union leaders were furious.

Fewer, a staunch progressive who had never so directly defied the union before, told us she was so nervous before the vote that she wasn’t sure she could speak. But speak she did — making a strong statement that the visible, measurable progress in those 14 schools justified a tough decision. Four of her colleagues, including Wynns and Norton, backed her up.

For the United Educators of San Francisco, this was unacceptable. Seniority is at the heart of most union contracts, and once you carve out exceptions like this, the union argued, you go down a very dangerous path. An administrative law judge agreed, and ruled in May that the district acted improperly.

As it turns out, enough layoffs were rescinded that it isn’t really an issue any more — but the bad blood is still there. UESF has refused to support a single incumbent for re-election. Ken Tray, a UESF representative, told me that the superintendent was “at war with the teachers union” and called the vote “a toxic mess.”

But the ire of the union has brought the incumbents closer together. Wynns and Fewer have something in common now. They feel like they’ve been through — to use Tray’s term — a war together.

Not, I suspect, what UESF had in mind. But it’s happening. And it could affect the outcome of the election.

Reinstate Ross! Reinstate Ross!

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More than l00 women supporters of suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi gathered on the City Hall steps Sunday  to stand with Ross in a show of support and  a photo shoot.

The women held signs reading “Stand with Eliana and Ross, Reinstate our Sheriff” and “I believe Eliana” in English and Spanish.

Ross told the women that Mayor Ed Lee was seeking his ouster as sheriff as a way to knock out the top elected progressives in the city and to consolidate power against the progressive community.

But, he said, “as a community we stand our ground and we maintain the principles of what is just and fair.”

He said that Lee was orchestrating the supervisorial vote on his ouster to come before the November election and thus put maximum pressure on the supervisors.  He called on the community to fight back, contact the supervisors and the media and let them know that the public wants Ross to be reinstated as sheriff.

His outreach information, distributed at the event, stated: “Let the Board of Supervisors and media hear from you on behalf of Ross Mirkarimi.  He is a good man who has dedicated himself for years to serve the citizens of San Francisco.  Ironically, although his career is in Justice, he has experienced the lack of Justice at the hands of City Hall.”

And: “We elected Ross and should be the only ones to determine who is our sheriff.  Not the mayor, not the Ethics Commission, but the voters.”

The statement noted that Ross got more votes in November than did Lee for mayor and that the voters have been disenfranchised by Lee.  It also noted that “there is no precedent for suspending an official without pay.  What a terrible, unjust thing to do to a man.”

Hoping for change in Obama’s acceptance speech

Sasha Cuttler
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Hoping for change in Obama’s acceptance speech

Four years ago, when I watched Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in Denver’s Mile High Stadium, I was hopeful about the prospects for change, but disappointed by his safely centrist acceptance speech. This year, opting to watch tonight’s speech on television rather than being there, the only hope I feel is that Obama will finally focus on fighting for the 99 percent, which seems like his best chance of keeping his job.

Frankly, I had just about given up on two-party politics – cynical about the feckless Democrats, refusing to be driven by fear of Republican boogie-men, ready to advocate for the Guardian to endorse Green Party nominee Jill Stein – when the Democrats speaking at the DNC rediscovered their populism and turned their rhetorical guns on the predatory rich who are exploiting most Americans.

“People feel like the system is rigged against them,” Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Senate candidate from Massachusetts, told the convention last night. “And here’s the painful part: They’re right.”

Yes, they are right. Most people understand that both the political and economic systems are rigged games controlled by powerful interests, for powerful interests. And it’s good to hear top Democrats sounding that theme again, as First Lady Michelle Obama did Tuesday night and former President Bill Clinton did last night.

Obama has been battered by his bi-partisan approach these last four years. Aggressive conservatives fought his every move, demonizing the first black president in ways that defy reason, labeling him a socialist taking over the health care for pushing health care reform that left insurance companies in charge and requires people to buy coverage, an idea long advocated by Republicans. And Progressives felt like Obama sold them out on issue after issue, from extending tax breaks on the rich to propping up predatory banks to escalating the wars on drugs and Afghanistan.

Now, Obama finds himself in a tight race with a Republican ticket that insanely wants to “double down on trickle down,” as Clinton put it. And if Obama thinks his centrist approach of four years ago is going to win this race – and, more importantly, break the debilitating political gridlock that his conciliatory approach and conservative intransigence have created – then all of us concerned about rising plutocracy could be sorely disappointed.

At this point, I’m not yet ready to place my hope back in a president whose unwillingness to fight for traditional Democratic Party values has delayed meaningful action on this country’s most pressing problems. But tonight, in setting the tone and themes for this election and his second term, my hope is that he makes a change and begins to fight for my side and my vote.

Where to watch: Rather than surrounded by tens of thousands of hopeful Democrats in a stadium, like four years ago, I’ll be surrounded by a few dozen hopeful Democrats at a watch party sponsored by the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee. Join us at the Laborer’s Local 261, 3271 18th Street, San Francisco. It is from 6-8:30pm and the suggested donation is $25.

The Dems open with a contrast

Zelda Bronstein
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The Dems open with a contrast

You couldn’t have scripted it better (and that’s what it was, carefully scripted). The contrast between the mayor of San Antonio, Julian Castro, grandson of immigrants, child of a working-class family, and the first lady, Michelle Obama, daughter of a disabled blue-collar public employee, teling their life stories just reminded everyone about the life of that other candidate. Yeah, the one who told students to borrow money from their parents to start a business.

Castro was good because of who he is, and he’s a fine speaker, and the HuffPo  thinks he’s been vaulted into the national spotlight, but this wasn’t a speech that’s going to change anyone’s life. Not like the keynote eight years ago. It was good campaign speech, some nice slaps at the Republicans, and a good line: The GOP wants to take back America — back to what and to when?

But Michelle Obama stole the show. I was listening in the car with my daughter, on the way home from her gymnastics class, and Viv — who generally tolerates nothing on the radio except Katy Perry and Lady Gaga and Kesha and J. Lo and like that — was actually quiet for a few minutes, and at one point asked me the same question I was asking myself:

Why isn’t she the president?

But she isn’t and her husband is, and we all have a lot of issues with him, and I’m not here to defend this administration. But the stark contrasts between the candidates and the conventions can’t be ignored. Davey D, who’s doing an awesome job of covering both conventions, talked about walking around the RNC and not seeing any black people (Colorlines looked carefully and found exactly 89) and from his perspective (and he’s certainly not a Democratic synchophant) the DNC was worlds away.

By most accounts, Mitt Romney didn’t get much bounce from his nomination speech, but most accounts — that is, the national polls — mean very little at this point. The next election will be won or lost in about six swing states, and the GOP clearly thinks it will be a “base” election, that there are enough right-wing types in those states to make the difference if they’re motivated. I don’t know if Obama can say or do anything that will change that.

But for those handful of undecided voters, most of whom are not rich, the Dems have a tailored message. And so far, it’s working well.

 

False idol

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False idol

arts@sfbg.com

FILM It’s easy to make fun of religion — particularly this election year — but when people aren’t trying to kill or control one another over it, it’s best to leave the subject alone. Why begrudge anyone whatever makes sense of the world for them, or gives comfort when in need?

All the major prophets — let’s exclude those who self-appointed themselves to the job within the last 150 years or so — had very useful things to say. It’s not their fault if some contemporary followers distort their teachings or choose only to emphasize the parts concerned with “thou shalt not do this,” “go smite that,” etc. For most people, religion is a balm, not an incitement. A strident atheist calling believers idiots can seem just as insufferable as a fundamentalist certain you’re going to hell.

Ergo, just as there was a certain bullying pride of snark that made Bill Maher and Larry Charles’ Religulous (2008) more mean-spirited than necessary, the new Kumaré leaves a sour, smug aftertaste. Raised in New Jersey by a first-generation immigrant family of Hindus, Vikram Gandhi proclaims himself a skeptic who started out wanting to make a documentary about the opportunistic charlatans one can find passing as spiritually enlightened gurus in both India and around the booming US yoga industry. “I wanted to prove to others looking for answers that no one is more spiritual than anyone, that spiritual leaders are just illusions,” he tells us.

A noble impulse. Yet somehow this took the form of growing his hair and beard out, wearing saffron robes, adopting a Kwik-E-Mart Apu accent, and posing as Sri Kumaré, a fresh-off-the-boat guru who arrives in Phoenix, Ariz. to open up shop as a one-stop spiritual guide for the gullible. He asks “Could people find the same peace in a made-up religion that they would in a real one?” But too often the real question here seems to be “How silly can I make these chumps look while starring in my very own nonfiction version of The Love Guru?”

Actually the comedy Kumaré has been primarily compared to is 2006’s Borat, another Larry Charles joint (Charles was, unsurprisingly, solicited for some input on this new film), and one as hilariously subversive as Mike Myers’ 2008 flop was just dumb. But as unhappy as their portraiture in Borat made its duped participants, it was hard to feel sorry for them — given enough rope they gladly hung themselves expressing racism, homophobia, sexism, and sheer Ugly Americanism.

But those who fall under Kumaré‘s farcical spell don’t deserve to be exposed and ridiculed. They aren’t even, it seems, the kind of trust-fund folk with “white people’s problems” and too much time on their hands one finds represented in most New Age circles. They’re just people with real-world issues — financial struggles, low self-esteem, empty-nest loneliness, etc. — looking for somebody to tell them what to do. Of course they could tell themselves; the answers aren’t that mysterious. But a voice of authority always provides motivation. After all, something like “You could lose some weight” sounds very different when a doctor says it, as opposed to your own nagging inner voice.

Using nonsense chants and rituals he’s invented, giving himself a silly backstory, Gandhi duly magnetizes followers who take the bait and then some, attributing him with radiating light, energy, bliss, and healing. He’s called “a living embodiment of the divine;” one woman gushes exposure to him “changed my DNA!” When he says things like “I am the biggest faker I know,” it’s assumed he’s talking about some deep reality vs. illusion stuff. Ha ha.

With his earnest narration attempting to soften the snideness of the joke, Gandhi claims to have realized he’s connected with people more deeply as Kumaré than he ever did as himself. And several acolytes really do appear to benefit, making life changes for the better. When finally does his big “unveiling,” revealing his true identity, some actually applaud him for underlining that the real guru is the one inside each of them.

But what about the others who leave, furious or humiliated? We don’t hear their reactions, or find out how the woman who confided on camera to “Kumaré” about her family’s rampant sexual abuse feels now that her revelations are preserved in the context of a comedic hoax. Gandhi’s slick feature never feels more staged than when he’s supposedly alone, looking pensive and guilty over the possible consequences of his ruse — a performance of conscience that’s as disingenuous as anything here. 

KUMARÉ opens Fri/7 at the Roxie.

The latest insurance scam

Andrew Lam
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The latest insurance scam

steve@sfbg.com

Mercury Insurance and its billionaire founder George Joseph are trying, for the second time in two years, to charge infrequent drivers more for car insurance.

Only this time, the measure has the surprising support of a progressive advocacy group that represents low-income communities of color — and that recently received a substantial donation from Mercury.

Proposition 33 — which so far has received fairly little news media attention in an election dominated by talk of taxes — is a reprise of a similar measure, Prop. 17, that went down to defeat in 2010.

The measure seeks to allow insurance companies to set premiums based in part on whether consumers have had continuous coverage. In other words, Mercury wants to raise rates on people who take a break from driving for economic, environmental, or other reasons.

The new measure contains a few exemptions targeted at sympathetic groups singled out by opponents in the last campaign, including active-duty soldiers and those unemployed due to layoffs.

And Prop. 33 also has a significant new backer, the Berkeley-based Greenlining Institute.

That alliance has drawn the ire of Consumer Watchdog, the nonprofit group that created California’s regulated car insurance system with Prop. 103 in 1988 and has been fighting to defend it ever since.

“It raises rates on the people that Greenlining claims to represent,” Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court told us.

GOLDEN STATE GOLD

Mercury got its start in the 1960s, selling insurance to car owners who had spotty records, charging high rates — and aggressively challenging claims. About 80 percent of its business is in California.

And Mercury has been trying for some time to challenge the landmark Prop. 103, the 1988 ballot measure that set tight regulations on what car-insurance companies can charge — and what they can use to set rates.

Under that law, insurance companies can only use three basic rating factors: how long someone has been driving, vehicle miles traveled per year, and a driver’s safety record. There are 16 more factors that the state has allowed to have a smaller impact on rates, including the “persistency discount” that rewards drivers for staying with a single company.

Court said there are good reasons for that discount, noting that it costs companies more to market to and administer new customers than to serve existing ones.

Prop. 33 would allow consumers to shop around and still keep that discount — something that Court said only makes sense if you want to give insurance companies the power to divide customers by class and punish people who choose to give up driving for a while.

“It’s sleight of hand,” Court said. “Some drivers get a discount, everybody else is going to get a surcharge.”

Two years ago, every single legitimate consumer group in the state opposed Mercury’s efforts. So why is the prominent Greenlining Institute changing its tune?

Greenlining says the new measure is better. But the group’s staffers also acknowledge that Mercury is now a significant donor to Greenlining. Joseph appeared as a panelist at Greenlining’s 19th Annual Economic Summit in April, and the company donated $25,000 at that time.

Greenlining General Counsel Sam Kang, who pushed for the new position and is the designated point person in defending the stance, told us the new exemptions make the measure worth supporting. “The protections are what really distinguish Prop. 17 from Prop. 33,” Kang said. “It’s better than what we’ve got now.”

Kang argues that the increased competition it could foster among insurance companies might lower premiums for everyone. “If customers are willing to walk away” from their current insurance provider and still keep their continuous coverage discount, Kang told us, “that’s how it will drive down rates.”

Court called it “ridiculous” to claim this corporate-sponsored measure — Joseph has personally given almost $8.3 million to the Yes on 33 campaign, the lion’s share of its total funding — would drive down premiums through increased competition for customers.

“There’s no dispute on that and Greenlining is using tactics that are really reprehensible, and it’s a shame because they are likely to be the centerpiece of Mercury’s campaign,” he said. “George Joseph is trying to get cover from a group that has no business doing this.”

Greenlining Executive Director Orson Aguilar acknowledged the organization was divided on this measure, and that is still open to being convinced it made the wrong call. “This was hotly debated. This was not an easy issue for us,” Aguilar told us. “Frankly, if we’re wrong, we’re happy to be convinced.”

GREENLINING’S CAMPAIGN ROLE

Yet it may be too late for that: The state voter handbook has already been printed, and the Yes on 33 campaign has been touting the group’s support. “The Greenlining Institute — a consumer group founded to fight unfair business practices — supports Proposition 33 because it protects consumers and allows this discount to everyone who has followed the law,” says a ballot argument that signed by Kang and CDF Firefighters President Robert T. Wolf and California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President Julian Canete.

“As you know, we opposed Prop. 17 and we opposed it quite vigilantly,” Kang told us. And the main reason was the organization didn’t buy Mercury’s spin that it would simply lower rates for those with continuous coverage. “If someone is going to get a discount, someone else is going to pay more,” Kang acknowledges.

Yet he is now parroting the Yes on 33 campaign’s rhetoric that the measure simply rewards drivers who “followed the law” and maintained continuous insurance coverage, saying the exemptions that Mercury wrote into the new measure actually give those groups — soldiers and the unemployed, which he notes are disproportionately poor people of color — more protections than they now enjoy.

“If you have continuous coverage for five years, you are eligible for a persistency discount,” Kang said, casting the measure as simple and straightforward.

Court and his group strongly object to that simplistic approach, asking why an insurance company would sponsor a measure that lowers premiums. The reality, consumer advocates say, is that this is a duplicitous measure that relies on a flawed premise and is really about giving insurance companies a new tool to capture certain customers and bilk those who can least afford it.

“These exemptions are bullshit, and they are written to be very narrow. It’s lipstick on a pig,” Court said. “It exposes how it raises rates for all low-income people who don’t meet these very narrow exemptions.”

In fact, the official summary by the Attorney General’s Office makes it clear that prop. 33 “Will allow insurance companies to increase cost of insurance to drivers who have not maintained continuous coverage.”

Kang disputes that objective analysis, telling us, “The ballot title and summary is up for discussion as far as what it meant.”

Kang admitted that Mercury is supporting Greenlining. “They gave us $25,000 in anticipation of the summit, and we anticipate they they’ll help us out in the advocacy of this measure,” Kang said. “Corporations regularly contribute to us, and it has never guaranteed our consent or dissent on anything.”

He defended the approach, telling us, “Sometimes working with corporations is the only way to make monumental changes,” citing their successful efforts to improve the billing practices of PG&E, which regularly makes six-figure donations to Greenlining.

Aguilar also strongly defended the organization’s integrity. “To say that just because we got a stipend from Mercury Insurance” that bought their support, Aguilar said, is simply wrong. “Money comes from somewhere.”

Greenlining’s allies in various campaigns to protect low-income communities say they’re willing to give the group the benefit of the doubt. Joshua Arce, executive director of the SF-based Brightline Defense Project, doesn’t think donations from Mercury Insurance influenced the group’s position, noting that it has also received contributions from PG&E and AT&T then subsequently joined campaigns that opposed those companies’ practices.

Instead, he said Greenlining was probably just offering support to the measure because Mercury had addressed Greenlining’s criticism of Prop. 17 two years ago. “That’s one of the things about Greenlining,” Arce told us, “they say, ‘If you fix all the things we laid out, if you address them, then we’ll support it.” Yet Court said the minor changes made between Props. 17 and 33 shouldn’t have won over such a potentially influential ally. “I’m told they’re going to use Greenlining in the commercial. It’s clearly a transactional relationship,” Court said. “When the billionaire behind Mercury Insurance says it, it’s hard to believe, but it’s easier to believe coming from an organization called Greenlining.”

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

Asteroids: Live! Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; (415) 401-7987. $20. Opens Fri/7, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 29. Interstellar comedy “based very, very loosely on the arcade game.”

Kiss of the Spider Woman Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; secondwind.8m.com. $15-35. Opens Fri/7, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 29. Second Wind presents Manuel Puig’s acclaimed drama about cellmates in a Buenos Aires jail.

Placas Lorraine Hansberry Theater, 450 Post, SF; www.sfiaf.org. $13-35. Opens Thu/6, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 16. San Francisco International Arts Festival, Central American Resource Center, and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts present Paul S. Flores’ world premiere drama, starring Ric Salinas as a former gang member who tries to mend fences with his family when he gets out of prison.

Port Out, Starboard Home Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.foolsfury.org. $12-35. Previews Fri/7-Sat/8, 8pm. Opens Mon/10, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat and Sept 19, 8pm; Sept 23, 2pm. Through Sept 23. foolsFURY performs the world premiere of Sheila Callaghan’s black comedy.

The Real Americans Marsh Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Opens Fri/7, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Sept 29. Dan Hoyle’s hit show about his trip across America returns.

“San Francisco Fringe Festival” Exit Theatreplex, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sffringe.org. Most shows $10 or less (five-show pass, $40; ten-show pass, $75). Sept 5-16. The 21st annual fest of unconventional, raw theater presents over 200 performances of 42 shows in 12 days.

Strange Travel Suggestions MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Opens Sat/8, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm. Through Sept 29. Author and Ethical Traveler founder Jeff Greenwald (Shopping for Buddhas, Snake Lake) has done his solo show Strange Travel Suggestions dozens if not hundreds of times and still has no idea where it’s going. No wonder he and his audience keep coming back for more. The unknown, an aphrodisiac to the traveler, also makes great catnip for the storyteller. Still, there are consistent elements. There is no need to reinvent the wheel — or the impressive Wheel of Fortune that sits just off center stage, painted with a map of the globe and ringed with symbols abstract and evocative enough to conjure up myriad adventures, peak experiences, and humbling encounters from the vivid grab-bag memory of an accomplished travel writer and inveterate globetrotter. There’s also a real grab bag, just in case, and an oversize tarot card, a sort of visual aid cum talisman sporting a classic image of the Fool, patron saint of the traveler’s heedless leaps of faith. Greenwald’s stories possess a fine sense of humor and a knack for the shrewd detail and telling observation. They also contain a Zen-inflected homespun wisdom no doubt born of leaving home on a regular basis. If slightly self-conscious at times, these tales are always genuine and appealing. In the end, Greenwald’s show, as reliable as it is unpredictable, mimics a genie-from-a-bottle experience: What you get is three spins, three stories, and a lot of unexpected truth. Note: capsule condensed from 2008 feature review of this production. (Avila)

Tripping on the Tipping Point Stagewerx, 446 Valencia, SF; (707) 322-5731. $15-20. Opens Thu/6, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 29. Human Nature performs a new comedy about global warming.

ONGOING

Henry V Presidio of San Francisco, Main Post Parade Ground Lawn, SF; www.sfshakes.org. Free. Sat-Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 23. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival celebrates the 30th anniversary of Free Shakespeare in the Park with this history play.

My Fair Lady SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 29. SF Playhouse and artistic director Bill English (who helms) offer a swift, agreeable production of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The iconic class-conscious storyline revolves around a cocky linguist named Higgins (Johnny Moreno) who bets colleague Colonel Pickering (Richard Frederick) he can transform an irritable flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Monique Hafen), into a “lady” and pass her off in high society. A battle of wills and wits ensues — interlarded with the “tragedy” of Alfred Doolittle (a shrewd and gleaming Charles Dean) and his reluctant upward fall into respectability — and love (at least in the musical version) triumphs. The songs (“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and the rest) remain evergreen in the cast’s spirited performances, supported by two offstage pianos (brought to life by David Dobrusky and musical director Greg Mason) and nimble choreography from Kimberly Richards. Hafen’s Eliza is especially admirable, projecting in dialogue and song a winning combination of childlike innocence and feminine potency. Moreno’s Higgins is also good, unusually virile yet heady too, a convincingly flawed if charming egotist. And Frederick, who adds a passing hint of homoerotic energy to his portrayal of the devoted Pickering, is gently funny and wholly sympathetic. (Avila)

Rights of Passage New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 16. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the world premiere of Ed Decker and Robert Leone’s multimedia play, inspired by global human rights laws in relation to sexual orientation.

Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sun, 7pm. Extended through Sept 16. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.

Twelfth Night San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, Hyde Street Pier, 2905 Hyde, SF; www.weplayers.org. $30-80. Opens Fri/7, 5:30pm. Runs Fri-Sun, 5:30pm (also Sat-Sun, noon; matinee only Sept 22; no performances Sept 29; evening performances only Oct 6-7). Through Oct 7. We Players board the Balclutha and the Eureka for this jazzy take on Shakespeare’s romance.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through Sept 29. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events` in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

War Horse Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $31-300. Wed/5-Sat/8, 8pm (also Wed/5 and Sat/8, 2pm); Sun/9, 2pm. The juggernaut from the National Theatre of Great Britain, via Broadway and the Tony Awards, has pulled into the Curran for its Bay Area bow. The life-sized puppets are indeed all they’re cracked up to be; and the story of a 16-year-old English farm boy (Andrew Veenstra) who searches for his beloved horse through the trenches of the Somme Valley during World War I, while peppered with much elementary humor too, is a good cry for those so inclined. The claim to being an antiwar play is only true to the extent that any war-is-hell backdrop and a plea for tolerance count a melodrama as “antiwar,” but this is not Mother Courage and no serious attempt is made to investigate the subject. Closer to say it’s Lassie Come Home where Lassie is a horse — very ably brought to life by Handspring Puppet Company’s ingenious puppeteers and designers, and amid a transporting and generally riveting mise-en-scène (complete with pointedly stirring live and recorded music). But the simplistic storyline and its obvious, somewhat ham-fisted resolution (adapted by Nick Stafford from Michael Morpurgo’s novel) are too formulaic to be taken that seriously. And at two-and-a-half-hours, it’s a long time coming. A shorter war, the Falklands say, would have done just as well and gotten people out before the ride began to chafe. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Chinglish Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-99. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm; no show Oct 5; no 2pm show Sat/8; additional 2pm shows Thu/6 and Oct 4); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through Oct 7. Berkeley Rep presents the West Coast premiere of David Henry Hwang’s Broadway comedy.

The Death of the Novel San Jose Rep, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose; www.sjrep.com. $23-69. Opens Wed/5, 7:30pm. Check web site for schedule. Through Sept 23. Vincent Kartheiser (a.k.a. Pete Campbell from Mad Men) stars in Jonathan Marc Feldman’s drama about creativity in post-9/11 America at San Jose Rep.

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 30. Playwright Kristoffer Diaz, a self-professed fan of the aggressively-theatrical spectacle that is professional wrestling, delivers much more than a “wrestling 101” primer for the uninitiated with The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. Beneath the razzle-dazzle of the arena lighting (Kurt Landisman), the gaudy costuming (Maggie Whitaker) and the giant televised image of a hot bikini babe (Elizabeth Cadd, video by Jim Gross) lies the trampled luster of an American Dream. The dreamer, Macedonio “The Mace” Guerra (Tony Sancho), a wiry fall guy for THE Wrestling, wrestles not for money or glory (he is rarely privy to either), but for his love of the strange ballet that occurs in the ring. Guerra’s job is to make his opponents look good, including the pec-flexing, bling-booted Chad Deity (Beethovan Oden), leaving him to wrestle alone with the identity politics of being a marginalized but fully capable warrior battling perennially stacked odds. Willing suspension of disbelief does get stretched pretty thin when the character Vigneshwar Paduar, a smooth-talking hustler chance-met on the basketball courts of Brooklyn, rises to championship levels in record-breaking time as the truly cringe-worthy persona known as “The Fundamentalist,” but Nasser Khan’s skillfully self-possessed performance as Paduar makes it impossible not to root for him all the way. Rod Gnapp as foul-mouthed bossman “EKO” and fight director Dave Maier as a whole squadron of hapless B-list wrestlers round out the excellent cast. (Gluckstern)

The Fisherman’s Wife La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 29. The latest from playwright Steve Yockey (Bellwether, Skin) is an exercise in pure pleasure, not least for the devious sea creatures preying lustily and unashamedly on the hapless human flesh of a small coastal town. There, in cracked fairytale fashion, an unsuccessful fisherman named Cooper Minnow (an endearingly nerdy but passionate Maro Guevara) is preparing to set out to sea, leaving at home frustrated wife Vanessa (a wonderfully, volcanically bitchy yet complex Eliza Leoni) and their sinking marriage, when he meets an oddly brazen pair of sexy, sassy bathers in old-fashioned beach attire (the swimmingly synchronized duo of Sarah Coykendall and Roy Landaverde). At more or less the same moment, a devilishly dashing yet prim traveling salesman (poised, nicely offbeat Adrian Anchondo) is offering a clearly aroused Vanessa an erotic woodcut featuring monstrous tentacles groping human victims at a very familiar-looking dock. Will she take the woodcut? Will she ever! And later she’ll defend her husband’s honor and swap places with him too, much to the commercial advantage of the ever-accommodating salesman who — like Yockey’s smart and sure sex farce — has a little something for everyone. Directed with smooth precision by Ben Randle for Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, The Fisherman’s Wife again finds Yockey playing productively with the fine fuzzy line separating human nature from nature at large (as in Large Animal Games, the winning 2009 co-production from Impact and Dad’s Garage). The animals come through for playwright and company once more, with a thoroughly enjoyable comedy whose borrowed maritime mythos has just enough metaphorical pull to lead those so inclined out beyond the shallow waters. (Avila)

Keith Moon/The Real Me TheaterStage at the March Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sept 13, 20, and 27, 8pm. Mike Berry workshops his new musical, featuring ten classic Who songs performed with a live band.

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Oct 14. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 890 Belle, Dominican University of California, San Rafael; www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Check website for schedule. Through Sept 30. Marin Shakespeare Company performs the Bard’s classic, transported to the shores of Hawaii.

Our Country’s Good Redwood Amphiteatre, Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake, Ross; www.porchlight.net. $15-30. Thu/6-Sat/8, 7:30pm. Porchlight Theatre Company presents an outdoor performance of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play about Royal Marines and prisoners in an 18th century New South Wales prison colony.

Precious Little Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $18-25. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/8, 3pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 16. Shotgun Players presents Madeleine George’s new play about an expectant mother who studies near-dead languages and befriends a “talking” gorilla.

Time Stands Still TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, SF; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 16. TheatreWorks performs Donald Marguelis’ drama about a couple — one a photojournalist, one a war correspondent — struggling with their recent experiences covering a war.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm. $10-25. This week: “An Improv Team Named Desire and Flux Capacitor” (Thu/6); “25th Annual Gala and Fundraiser” (Fri/7); “BATS Improv SF vs. Impro Theatre LA” (Sat/8).

“Comedy Returns to El Rio!” El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.koshercomedy.com. Mon/10, 8pm. $7-20. Stand-up with Diane Amos, Malcolm Grissom, Jill Bourque, Kevin Young, and host Lisa Geduldig.

“Dancing Poetry Festival” Florence Gould Theater, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, SF; www.dancingpoetry.com. Sat/8, noon-4pm. $4-15. The 19th annual fest celebrates poetry and dance as a unified art form.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Through Nov 6. $15-50. Veteran political comedian Will Durst emphasizes he’s watching the news and keeping track of the presidential race “so you don’t have to.” No kidding, it sounds like brutal work for anyone other than a professional comedian — for whom alone it must be Willy Wonka’s edible Eden of delicious material. Durst deserves thanks for ingesting this material and converting it into funny, but between the ingesting and out-jesting there’s the risk of turning too palatable what amounts to a deeply offensive excuse for a democratic process, as we once again hurtle and are herded toward another election-year November, with its attendant massive anticlimax and hangover already so close you can touch them. Durst knows his politics and comedy backwards and forwards, and the evolving show, which pops up at the Marsh every Tuesday in the run-up to election night, offers consistent laughs born on his breezy, infectious delivery. One just wishes there were some alternative political universe that also made itself known alongside the deft two-party sportscasting. (Avila)

“A Funny Night for Comedy” Actors Theater of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.natashamuse.com. Sun/9, 7pm. $10. Natasha Muse and Ryan Cronin host this comedy show, presented in talk-show format, with guests Caitlin Gill, Kaseem Bentley, and Jesse Fernandez.

“Mary Mack Comedy Show” Gallery and Bar 4N5, 863 Mission, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Tue/11, 7:30pm. $15. Mandolin-infused folk comedy with Mary Mack.

“A Pinoy Midsummer” Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). Through Sept 15. $10-20. A re-imagining of Shakespeare with Philippine folklore, shadow puppets, and other Pinoy elements.

“10 Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/7-Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 2pm. Yuseff El Guindi’s comedy is about a conflicted Muslim family during the month of Ramadan in post-9/11 America.

Dick Meister: Clint wasn’t always this politically inept

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister is a San Francisco columnist and serious ice cream aficionado who has covered politics for more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com

You might reasonably think Clint Eastwood lacks political savvy, given his bizarre presentation at the Republican National Convention.  But he was once plenty savvy, as he showed clearly during his two-year stint as mayor of tourist favorite Carmel, California.

Prior to his election, folks in Carmel and elsewhere tended to think of Clint as just a rugged, handsome movie actor playing at politics. But, boy, were they wrong. Listen to what Carmel resident Jean Lajigian said after Eastwood took office in 1986:

“When I voted for Clint Eastwood, I knew that democracy worked, that we could change things. Since he’s been mayor, there’s been just an upbeat feeling in the community.”

Mrs. Lajigian and her husband Michael were merchants in heavily-touristed Carmel and, as such, had been at odds with local politicians. The politicians did not share the great fondness for tourists expressed by the Lajigians and other merchants. At best, the political leaders believed, tourists were to be endured. They were not to be encouraged, despite the many dollars they spent in the coastal village, aka Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Carmel has marvelous beaches, spectacular ocean views, a loveable colony of sea lions and much more of special interest that draws a large and seemingly endless stream of visitors. Although not fond of tourists, Carmel authorities did allow merchants to set traps for the tourists – but discreet traps.

The use of neon or any other garish means to identify businesses, advertise goods for sale or otherwise attract customers was outlawed. Small wooden signs with elegant lettering were preferred. Nothing was permitted that could cheapen the tasteful display of goods, including cashmere, Shetland and plaid from England, the home country of many residents’ forebears, and the other often imported and invariably expensive merchandise that filled Carmel’s shops – or “shoppes.”

You know those resort towns where stores display notices asking that shoppers carry “no food or drink, please”? In Carmel, the request covered the whole town. Under an ordinance adopted by the City Council a year before Eastwood took office, for example, the sale of take-out food of any kind was forbidden – not even fish and chips to go.

“Litter was a concern – the idea of having people walk around on the streets with pieces of pizza or plastic containers with sundaes and milkshakes . . . the trash tends to end up on the ground,” explained Ken White, chairman of Carmel’s Planning Commission.

Ice cream cones were a particular worry. You know, the way ice cream tends to melt in the sunlight and drip on sidewalks, the way people carelessly toss aside the remains of cones after eating up the ice cream, or drop entire cones on the street, ice cream and all.

The city council took care of that by simply banning the sale of ice cream cones within city limits.

Black market cones might be had occasionally if you knew the right ice cream vendor, but generally there were none to be had anywhere in downtown Carmel. That deeply troubled lots of Carmel citizens.

Ah, but then came Clint to end the suffering, just as he had promised he would during his pro-merchant, pro-tourist and assuredly pro-ice cream campaign for office.

One of the first acts of the newly-elected mayor and the pro-Eastwood majority on the newly-elected city council was to adopt an ordinance that allows the sale of cones. The first permit allowing the sales went to Jean and Michael Lajigian and their store, where they soon were selling Italian gelato cones, along with their chocolate truffles and other treats.  The day they got the permit, declared Michael, was “one of the happiest days of my life, a dream come true.”

You may certainly have considered Clint Eastwood’s convention bit politically lame, but at least, once-upon-a-time, he did show evidence of effective political skills. He brought ice cream back to Carmel!

Dick Meister is a San Francisco columnist and serious ice cream aficionado who has covered politics for more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com

D5, Mirkarimi, and 8 Washington

Zelda Bronstein
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D5, Mirkarimi, and 8 Washington

Everybody knows that the timing of the Board of Supervisors vote on ousting the sheriff for official misconduct is bad for Ross Mirkarimi. We’re talking about a huge, high-profile decision just weeks before some of the key board members are up for re-election, two of them in hotly contested races. For Sups. Eric Mar and Christina Olague, it’s going to particularly difficult: Mar’s in a moderate district, and he’ll be attacked from the more conservative David Lee if he supports Mirkarimi. Olague’s in a progressive district where Mirkarimi was a popular supervisor, so no matter what she does, she’ll take heat.

But I was a little surprised by Randy Shaw’s analysis, which suggests that Olague will be motivated entirely by political spite:

D5 Supervisor Christina Olague once faced a tough decision on Ross, but since Mirkarimi allies have attacked her on a number of issues it would be very unlikely for her to support him.

That’s pretty insulting. Shaw, who has supported her in the past, is saying that Olague won’t make up her own mind based on the actual issue and case in front of her. She was pretty clear when I called her: “I will vote on the merits of this issue,” she said. “If I was motivated to vote based on who had pissed me off I’d have a hard time voting on anything.”

I’ve disagreed with Olague quite a few times, and one could easily argue that she’ll be under immense pressure from the mayor. (“The mayor doesn’t want a lot from Christina, but he does want this,” one insider told me.) But is it impossible for Shaw to imagine that, in one of the toughest matters she will ever have to handle, the supervisor might actually listen to the testimony, consider the merits of the case, and vote to do what she thinks is right?

Meanwhile, Joe Eskenazi at the Weekly has already announced the Guardian’s endorsement in D5 — which is interesting, since we’re barely started interviewing the candidates. Eskenazi calls Julian Davis “the Guardian’s fair-haired boy” (which, speaking of insults, is not a terribly appropriate way to refer to an African American man), indicating that he’s already our candidate.

For the record: We have not made an endorsement in District Five. We plan to endorse a slate of three candidates for the ranked-choice ballot, and we’ll publish that endorsement the last week in September or the first week in October.

 

 

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

Henry V Presidio of San Francisco, Main Post Parade Ground Lawn, SF; www.sfshakes.org. Free. Opens Sat/1, 2pm. Runs Sat-Sun and Mon/3, 2pm. Through Sept 23. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival celebrates the 30th anniversary of Free Shakespeare in the Park with this history play.

Twelfth Night San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, Hyde Street Pier, 2905 Hyde, SF; www.weplayers.org. $30-80. Previews Sat/1-Sun/2, 5:30pm. Opens Sept 7, 5:30pm. Runs Fri-Sun, 5:30pm (also Sat-Sun, noon; matinee only Sept 22; no performances Sept 29; evening performances only Oct 6-7). Through Oct 7. We Players board the Balclutha and the Eureka for this jazzy take on Shakespeare’s romance.

BAY AREA

Chinglish Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-99. Opens Wed/29, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm; no show Oct 5; no 2pm show Sept 8; additional 2pm shows Sept 6 and Oct 4); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through Oct 7. Berkeley Rep presents the West Coast premiere of David Henry Hwang’s Broadway comedy.

The Death of the Novel San Jose Rep, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose; www.sjrep.com. $23-69. Previews Thu/30, 7:30pm; Fri/31-Sun/2, 2pm (also Sun/2), 7pm. Opens Sept 5, 7:30pm. Check web site for schedule. Through Sept 23. Vincent Kartheiser (a.k.a. Pete Campbell from Mad Men) stars in Jonathan Marc Feldman’s drama about creativity in post-9/11 America at San Jose Rep.

ONGOING

Daughter of the Red Tzar Thick House Theatre, 1695 18th St, SF; www.thickhouse.org. $30. Fri/31-Sun/2, 8pm. ScolaVox and First Look Sonoma present the world premiere of Lisa Scola-Prosek’s chamber opera about a meeting between Churchill, Stalin, and Stalin’s teenage daughter.

My Fair Lady SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 29. SF Playhouse and artistic director Bill English (who helms) offer a swift, agreeable production of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The iconic class-conscious storyline revolves around a cocky linguist named Higgins (Johnny Moreno) who bets colleague Colonel Pickering (Richard Frederick) he can transform an irritable flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Monique Hafen), into a “lady” and pass her off in high society. A battle of wills and wits ensues — interlarded with the “tragedy” of Alfred Doolittle (a shrewd and gleaming Charles Dean) and his reluctant upward fall into respectability — and love (at least in the musical version) triumphs. The songs (“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and the rest) remain evergreen in the cast’s spirited performances, supported by two offstage pianos (brought to life by David Dobrusky and musical director Greg Mason) and nimble choreography from Kimberly Richards. Hafen’s Eliza is especially admirable, projecting in dialogue and song a winning combination of childlike innocence and feminine potency. Moreno’s Higgins is also good, unusually virile yet heady too, a convincingly flawed if charming egotist. And Frederick, who adds a passing hint of homoerotic energy to his portrayal of the devoted Pickering, is gently funny and wholly sympathetic. (Avila)

Rights of Passage New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 16. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the world premiere of Ed Decker and Robert Leone’s multimedia play, inspired by global human rights laws in relation to sexual orientation.

Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. New show day and date: Sun, 7pm. Extended through Sept 16. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm (starting Sept 6: also Thu, 8pm); Sat, 5pm. Extended through Sept 29. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events` in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

War Horse Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $31-300. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 9. The juggernaut from the National Theatre of Great Britain, via Broadway and the Tony Awards, has pulled into the Curran for its Bay Area bow. The life-sized puppets are indeed all they’re cracked up to be; and the story of a 16-year-old English farm boy (Andrew Veenstra) who searches for his beloved horse through the trenches of the Somme Valley during World War I, while peppered with much elementary humor too, is a good cry for those so inclined. The claim to being an antiwar play is only true to the extent that any war-is-hell backdrop and a plea for tolerance count a melodrama as “antiwar,” but this is not Mother Courage and no serious attempt is made to investigate the subject. Closer to say it’s Lassie Come Home where Lassie is a horse — very ably brought to life by Handspring Puppet Company’s ingenious puppeteers and designers, and amid a transporting and generally riveting mise-en-scène (complete with pointedly stirring live and recorded music). But the simplistic storyline and its obvious, somewhat ham-fisted resolution (adapted by Nick Stafford from Michael Morpurgo’s novel) are too formulaic to be taken that seriously. And at two-and-a-half-hours, it’s a long time coming. A shorter war, the Falklands say, would have done just as well and gotten people out before the ride began to chafe. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Blithe Spirit Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; www.calshakes.org. $35-71. Wed/29-Thu/30, 7:30pm; Fri/31-Sat/1, 2pm; Sun/2, 4pm. Noël Coward’s 1941 comedy, not exactly a paean to marriage, is nevertheless a romantic romp with just enough meat on its ethereal subject to make a meal of its triangular love affair. Appearing as the relevant points on that geometric form are a witty Coward-esque writer, Charles Condomine (Anthony Fusco), his confident equal and second wife Ruth (René Augesen), and the uninvited ghost of his first wife, Elvira (Jessica Kitchens). The unwieldy ménage arises from Charles’s invitation to a local medium (Domenique Lozano), from whom he hopes to cull a juicy detail or two for his next book. He and Ruth, as well as their other dinner guests, Dr. and Mrs. Bradman (Kevin Rolston and Melissa Smith), do get a fine show out of the eccentric soiree, but soon Charles finds he’s also now being haunted by Elvira, who only he can actually see and hear and who adamantly refuses to leave. Um, yeah: awkward. Anyway, what happens next is solidly entertaining in director Mark Rucker’s polished production for Cal Shakes. Fusco and Augesen are a droll pair, while a beaming Kitchens brings a much appreciated brightness to the proceedings, even as Lozano’s exuberant innocent, Madame Arcati, comes over as perhaps the most persuasive of all. (Avila)

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Previews Wed/29, 8pm. Opens Thu/30, 8pm. Runs Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 30. Aurora Theatre Company opens its 21st season with Kristoffer Diaz’s comedy about pro wrestlers.

The Fisherman’s Wife La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 29. The latest from playwright Steve Yockey (Bellwether, Skin) is an exercise in pure pleasure, not least for the devious sea creatures preying lustily and unashamedly on the hapless human flesh of a small coastal town. There, in cracked fairytale fashion, an unsuccessful fisherman named Cooper Minnow (an endearingly nerdy but passionate Maro Guevara) is preparing to set out to sea, leaving at home frustrated wife Vanessa (a wonderfully, volcanically bitchy yet complex Eliza Leoni) and their sinking marriage, when he meets an oddly brazen pair of sexy, sassy bathers in old-fashioned beach attire (the swimmingly synchronized duo of Sarah Coykendall and Roy Landaverde). At more or less the same moment, a devilishly dashing yet prim traveling salesman (poised, nicely offbeat Adrian Anchondo) is offering a clearly aroused Vanessa an erotic woodcut featuring monstrous tentacles groping human victims at a very familiar-looking dock. Will she take the woodcut? Will she ever! And later she’ll defend her husband’s honor and swap places with him too, much to the commercial advantage of the ever-accommodating salesman who — like Yockey’s smart and sure sex farce — has a little something for everyone. Directed with smooth precision by Ben Randle for Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, The Fisherman’s Wife again finds Yockey playing productively with the fine fuzzy line separating human nature from nature at large (as in Large Animal Games, the winning 2009 co-production from Impact and Dad’s Garage). The animals come through for playwright and company once more, with a thoroughly enjoyable comedy whose borrowed maritime mythos has just enough metaphorical pull to lead those so inclined out beyond the shallow waters. (Avila)

For the Greater Good, Or The Last Election This week: Nicholl Park, Richmond; www.sfmt.org. Free (donations accepted). Thu/30, 7pm. Also Dolores Park, 19th St at Dolores, SF; www.sfmt.org. Free (donations accepted). Sat/1-Mon/3, 2pm. Various venues through Sept. 8. “Don’t they understand that without us they don’t have anything?” asks Gideon Bloodgood (Ed Holmes), investment banker at the top of the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s vivisection of the “real” American Dream, For the Greater Good, Or the Last Election. But surely the hero of a Mime Troupe show cannot possibly be a billionaire? Well, sort of. Though Bloodgood enriches himself dishonestly with precarious investments and outright theft in this Occupy-era melodrama, he actually does occasionally spare a sentiment for Mom and apple pie, or anyway his daughter Alida (Lisa Hori-Garcia) and cookies baked by the unsuspecting victim of his ill-gotten gains, the Widow Fairweather (Keiko Shimosato Carreiro) — now living at the last Occupy encampment standing in the city. Alida, however, displays no compunction in throwing aside his affection and her prospective seat in Congress, running off to join the occupiers for reasons that truthfully appear about as politically motivated as her father’s parasitic avarice, leaving him to join forces instead with the most unlikely of allies — the impeccable, ingenuous Lucy Fairweather (Velina Brown), heiress to a stolen legacy, and staunch patriot. Based loosely on 19th century play The Poor of New York, The Last Election attempts to turn a presumptive ode to the free market into its swan song with good-humored, if predictable, results. (Gluckstern)

Keith Moon/The Real Me TheaterStage at the March Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sept 13, 20, and 27, 8pm. Mike Berry workshops his new musical, featuring ten classic Who songs performed with a live band.

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Oct 14. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 890 Belle, Dominican University of California, San Rafael; www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Check website for schedule. Through Sept 30. Marin Shakespeare Company performs the Bard’s classic, transported to the shores of Hawaii.

Our Country’s Good Redwood Amphiteatre, Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake, Ross; www.porchlight.net. $15-30. Thu-Sun, 7:30pm. Through Sept 8. Porchlight Theatre Company presents an outdoor performance of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play about Royal Marines and prisoners in an 18th century New South Wales prison colony.

Precious Little Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $18-25. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/1 and Sept 8, 3pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 16. Shotgun Players presents Madeleine George’s new play about an expectant mother who studies near-dead languages and befriends a “talking” gorilla.

Time Stands Still TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, SF; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 16. TheatreWorks performs Donald Marguelis’ drama about a couple — one a photojournalist, one a war correspondent — struggling with their recent experiences covering a war.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 8. $10-25. This week: “The Fosse Posse and From Scratch” (Thu/30); “Romantic Comedy Musical” (Fri/1); “Bond…Improvised Bond” (Sat/2).

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Through Nov 6. $15-50. Veteran political comedian Will Durst emphasizes he’s watching the news and keeping track of the presidential race “so you don’t have to.” No kidding, it sounds like brutal work for anyone other than a professional comedian — for whom alone it must be Willy Wonka’s edible Eden of delicious material. Durst deserves thanks for ingesting this material and converting it into funny, but between the ingesting and out-jesting there’s the risk of turning too palatable what amounts to a deeply offensive excuse for a democratic process, as we once again hurtle and are herded toward another election-year November, with its attendant massive anticlimax and hangover already so close you can touch them. Durst knows his politics and comedy backwards and forwards, and the evolving show, which pops up at the Marsh every Tuesday in the run-up to election night, offers consistent laughs born on his breezy, infectious delivery. One just wishes there were some alternative political universe that also made itself known alongside the deft two-party sportscasting. (Avila)

“RAWdance presents the Concept Series: 12” 66 Sanchez Studio, SF; www.rawdance.org. Sat/1-Sun/2, 8pm (also Sun/2, 3pm). Pay what you can. Informal and intimate salon of contemporary dance, with Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts, Yayoi Kambara, Palanza Dance, detour dance, and Chris Black.

Brian Regan Cobb’s, 915 Columbus, SF; www.cobbscomedyclub.com. Fri/31, 8 and 10:15pm; Sat/1, 7:30 and 9:45pm. $45. The comedian performs a rare club date.

“The Romane Event Comedy Show” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.pacoromane.com. Wed/29, 8pm. $10. Comedy with Joe Tobin, Mike Spiegelman, Sergio Barajas, Sandra Risser, and host Amy Miller.

“Tagabanua” Union Square Park, Geary and Stockton, SF; www.kularts.org. Sun/2, 2pm. Free. Kularts attempts a world record for largest Palawan dance event with an outdoor performance of Jay Loyola’s folkloric work. Learn the choreography at Kularts’ website and join the flash mob.

The agri-chem industry’s secrets

Andrew Lam
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OPINION This November, California voters will decide on a question that affects us all: Do we have the right to know what’s in the food we’re eating and feeding our families?

This high-stakes food fight has become the most expensive issue of the upcoming election. Pesticide and junk-food corporations have already poured $25 million into an effort to defeat Proposition 37, a simple labeling measure that would inform California consumers about whether our food has been genetically engineered.

What is it that these corporations don’t want us to know?

Right now, many foods on supermarket shelves, from baby formula to corn chips, contain genetically engineered ingredients that are hidden from consumers. Also called GMOs, these are crops that have been artificially altered in a lab with the DNA of other species in ways that cannot occur in nature.

Numerous studies link genetically engineered foods to allergies and other adverse health effects. But the U.S. government requires no safety studies of GMOs, no long-term health studies have been conducted, and no labeling is required to notify consumers so we can make our own choices about whether we want to eat these foods.

Genetically engineered foods are also linked to serious environmental concerns, including an overall increase in pesticide use, a rise in super weeds that are threatening farm land, and the unintentional contamination of organic crops.

These concerns have led 50 other countries to require GMO labeling. But here in the U.S., the agri-chemical companies have deployed their massive lobby power to stop the federal government and at least 19 U.S. states from passing simple labeling bills.

Now it’s up to the voters of California — and the heavy-artillery corporate lobbying campaign is heading our way.

The Yes on 37 Campaign is currently tracking far ahead in the polls. But the voters have not yet been subjected to the wave of deceptive television ads designed to convince us that GMO labeling is too scary or too expensive.

When you see these ads, consider the source. The largest funders of No on 37 are Monsanto and DuPont, two corporations that hardly have a track record of integrity when it comes to truth in advertising. These are the same companies that told us DDT and Agent Orange were safe.

Major funders of the No campaign also include junk-food companies that have a long history of opposing common-sense labels to give consumers information about their food. Look for these companies to spend tens of millions trying to convince voters that adding a few words to food labels will force them to raise the cost of groceries “hundreds of dollars a year.”

Over on the Yes on 37 side is a true people’s movement made up of millions of moms, dads, and consumers in California, and the many farmers and California businesses that are part of the state’s thriving natural and sustainable food industry.

Now is the time and this is our chance to make sure we have the right to know what’s in our food. Visit Yes on 37 at Carighttoknow.org to volunteer, donate and stay up to date with the latest news about this historic campaign.

Stacy Malkan is the media director for Yes on 37, the California Right to Know campaign to label genetically engineered foods.

Diamond Dave’s report from Romneyville

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Activists from San Francisco and around the country are descending on Tampa this week to protest the Republican National Convention. I got a call this morning from Diamond Dave Whitaker, the poet who hung with the beats and the hippies in his 75 years, CCSF student senator and San Francisco legend. He’s has been serving food to protesters at election-season conventions for almost three decades. His first was 1984, the Democratic Convention here in San Francisco before he got hooked and headed to Dallas to protest the Republicans. Along with a few hundred others, Diamond Dave braved the rain, but missed the full effects of Hurricane Isaac on the tent city last night. The RNC starts officially starts today (though many of the day’s events have been called off due tot the hurricane warning.)

“I’m talking in the midst of Romneyville,” he said. “Folks came from far and wide to camp out together, cause a ruckus and be here.”

What’s Romneyville? “It’s a homeless camp, a poor peoples camp,” said Dave. He’s been there a week setting up the Food Not Bombs kitchen, and Romneyville grew up around him. It now has few hundred tents, he said. But most people arrived today, so as the convention gets started, it will probably grow. “Two buses from Zuccotti Square came today,” he said.

Romneyville is put together in part by the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign. Dave said Green Party vice presidential nominee Cheri Honkala, a formerly homeless mother herself who works with the Poor Peoples campaign, is a fixture around the camp.

“Our demands are housing for all, food for all, healthcare for all, and living wages for all. We call for an end to foreclosures and homelessness, an end to the war on the poor, both here and abroad. An end to criminalization of poverty. Money for jobs and housing, not for war!” says a statement from the group.

More protesters are staying over at the Occupy Tampa encampment.

A permitted march left this morning, and Diamond Dave says there’s another, unpermitted, planned for 3pm est. Many citizen journalists and livestreamers are documenting the events, one can be found at mobilebroadcastnews.com.

But so far, his work has been handing out free meals with Food Not Bombs.

“We fed the masses this morning for sure,” he said.

Political corruption is “trumped up?”

Zelda Bronstein
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Political corruption is “trumped up?”

The truly shocking aspect of the latest fallout from the City College scandal is the response of incumbent Trustee Natalie Berg, who is up for re-election.

Bad enough that Berg allowed Stephen Herman, who was directly involved in the scandal and pled guilty to two felonies, to hold a fundraiser for her. But his offenses were reduced to misdemeanors, he’s paid his fine — and Berg has every right to say that he’s learned his lesson and deserves a chance to continue in the political world.

That’s not what she’s saying, though:

Berg, first elected to the college’s board in 1996, saw nothing wrong with having Herman host the fundraiser, calling him, “completely honest and honorable.” Of the criminal charges, she said: “The whole thing was trumped up. Nobody benefited from that, and it ruined people’s careers.”

Trumped up? Seriously?

Nobody has thus far disputed the basic evidence: Former Chancellor Phil Day and Herman diverted tens of thousands of dollars in public money into political campaigns. They never denied doing it. The documents showing what happened were completely clear. And just about everyone with any sense of law or ethics agrees it was a serious problem.

Nobody benefited? How about the taxpayers and the students, who have the right to honest oversight of their money?

Wow. I knew Berg was a bad trustee, but this is over the top.

 

 

Election 2012: Here’s the beef

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Election 2012: Here’s the beef

Fabulous food-and-junk-drawer-oriented collage artist (and legendary SF club denizen) Jason Mecier is back in our virtual orbit lately. His meme explosion beef jerky portraits of Obama and Romney seem to be everywhere. And his wonderful makeup-y likeness of Phyllis Diller, RIP, is giving us sad LOLs. But wait, the “meatraits” of Obameat and Meat Romney are sponsored! And there’s a video! Let’s go to the jerky tape:

Endorsement interviews: John Rizzo (D5 supervisor)

Zelda Bronstein
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Endorsement interviews: John Rizzo (D5 supervisor)

We’re underway with our endorsement interviews for the November election, and I’ll be posting the full sound file of all the interviews as we finish them (and as I have time to upload them). First up: Community College Board member John Rizzo, who is running for supervisor in District 5.

Rizzo told us he has the political experience to take on the district’s, and the city’s, tough problems. Among other things, he wants to eliminate the fund that developer pay into for affordable housing and require market-rate builders to construct affordable units on site. He discussed a “scientific approach” to managing Muni and wants a closer audit of the $600 million the city gives to nonprofits providing public services every year.

You can listen after the jump.

Good propaganda ain’t cheap. Sorry, no rebates for errors.

Sasha Cuttler
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Good propaganda ain’t cheap. Sorry, no rebates for errors.

UPDATED AND CORRECTED BELOW It wasn’t surprising to read Randy Shaw’s misleading praise of Mayor Ed Lee for appointing Rodrigo Santos to the City College board. Much of Shaw’s salary comes from the city contracts that his Tenderloin Housing Clinic administers, so he has turned his Beyond Chron mouthpiece into the equivalent of Pravda in touting the party line of Lee and his supervisorial apparatchiks.

For that blind loyalty, Shaw has been handsomely rewarded. On July 31, the Board of Supervisors even approved a Lee-proposed balloon payout of $91 million to THC for its contract administering the Mayfair Hotel that was retroactive all the way back to 2009. Can anyone imagine another nonprofit that could dig so deeply into city coffers, for work that has supposedly already been done, who wasn’t giving a little something back to these ambitious politicians who sponsored it?

But apparently Shaw – who used to have some progressive credibility before so blatantly selling the movement out a couple years ago – doesn’t need to even get the facts right in his propaganda posts. When I asked him at yesterday’s Lee/Santos press conference whether and why he supported Santos – a villain in most progressive circles – he argued Santos was needed to help win support for Prop. A, the parcel tax for City College.

Shaw said the measure needed a two-thirds vote to be approved, a claim he also made in today’s piece. That didn’t sound right to me, and the Elections Department confirms that it isn’t: Prop. A needs only a simple majority to pass. [[8/23 UPDATE AND CORRECTION: Ernestine at the Department of Elections told me yesterday Prop. A needed only a simple majority, but she called back today to say she was mistaken and that it does indeed require a two-thirds vote.]] Shaw also claimed a couple weeks ago that the Board of Supervisors would delay the Mirkarimi decision until after the election, which also wasn’t true: the Charter requires the board to act within 30 days of receiving the Ethics Commission recommendations.

I sent Shaw a message asking about whether his erroneous beliefs affected his analysis, and to explain the basis for THC’s $91 million kickback, and he hasn’t responded to the questions, as usual. But when you’re a poverty pimp feeding off of political patronage, you’re probably golden as long as you get the politician praise right. Cha-ching!

 

Howdy, strangers

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Howdy, strangers

arts@sfbg.com

FALL ARTS Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse were obsessed with Americana long before the two Bristol-based performance makers (known collectively as Action Hero) ever set their cowboy boots in the United States. In fact, they’d performed their site-specific first piece, a barroom exploration of the Western (called simply A Western) for years before lobbing it into the belly of the beast, where it appeared as part of Austin, Texas’ Fusebox Festival in 2010.

“We were shitting it,” remembers Paintin, in a British phrase meaning mighty fretful. But the crowd loved it; Paintin calls it their best audience ever. She and Stenhouse have worked together since 2005 on pieces that engage the audience as co-conspirators as well as subjects in their own right. A good example is their piece, Watch Me Fall, which had the audience cheering on a series of ridiculous, slightly risky stunts from either side of a long runway, a work that Paintin explains was inspired by the duo’s interest in motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel.

>>VIEW OUR FULL FALL ART 2012 PREVIEW

A diminutive woman with bright blond bangs, Paintin spoke last week at a sidewalk table outside BrainWash Café, fresh from a rehearsal at CounterPULSE, where she and James were in the fifth day of leading a collaborative performance workshop with a selected group of Bay Area–based American artists (Laura Arrington, Andrea Hart, Xandra Ibarra, Richie Israel, Elizabeth McSurdy, Mica Sigourney, and Ernesto Sopprani).

Stenhouse was not able to join the conversation — rehearsal had run long and he was following its willy-nilly course to a local karaoke bar, where he and the rest of the group were planning to take turns singing Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man.” A couple of days earlier, the group had gone tailgating at a pre-season NFL game in Oakland. Such are the trails, happy or otherwise, down which the adventurer in Americana must travel. (You can follow some of the research results thus far — in a process McSurdy calls “aesthetically polyamorous” — in the group’s blog posts at www.counterpulse.org.)

The workshop sets out to investigate American cultural mythologies using the concept of the stranger or outsider as starting point. Hosted by CounterPULSE with leadership from program director Julie Phelps, the program is part of a major cultural exchange project by CounterPULSE’s collaborator on Stranger in a Strange land, the arts-based University of Chichester in the South of England.

“All the work of the Department of Performing Arts is about making radical new work, and we have a reputation for working with exciting and challenging artists, hence our connection to Action Hero,” explained Ben Francombe, head of the department, by email. “The University of Chichester has instigated this overall project as a way to explore different interdisciplinary working methods,” he continues, “which involve the idea of exchange.” Francombe adds that the University is keen to continue having a presence in the Bay Area.

“It’s been really fun actually,” enthuses Paintin, clearly pleased with how experienced and open-minded her American counterparts have proven with collaboration. “We’re trying to just be about the process.”

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

Mon/27, 8 p.m., $10-$20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.counterpulse.org

 

TAKE ANOTHER BOW, LAZARUS

The fall theater season includes several worthy returns (in addition to shiny new premieres) worth keeping in déjà view:

Chinglish The new comedy about East-West miscommunication from David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) has already been to Hong Kong but rebounds to the West Coast courtesy of Berkeley Rep. Aug. 24–Oct. 7; www.berkeleyrep.org

San Francisco Fringe Festival It’s a phoenix, really, rising each September like a sassy, gangling, 41–headed bird of play. Sept. 5–16; www.sffringe.org

Invasion! Crowded Fire delivers its own politically pointed comedy of miscommunication and cultural misconceptions in its West Coast premiere of Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s 2011 Obie-winner. Sept. 6–29; crowdedfire.dreamhosters.com

Geezer and The Real Americans The Hoyle boys — veteran clown and physical actor Geoff Hoyle and bounding son Dan, a theater sensation in his own right — return to the Marsh for re-runs of their respective, wildly popular solo shows. The Real Americans: Sept. 7–29; Geezer: Oct. 6–Nov. 18; www.themarsh.org

The Normal Heart Larry Kramer’s 1985 play returns (in the new Broadway revival directed by George C. Wolfe) at a time when the history of the AIDS crisis has become endangered by a vague “normalizing” narrative of American progress, or what Sara Schulman aptly calls “the gentrification of the mind.” Here’s an opportunity to remember lots of things, not least those who died and fought, a great play, a vital movement, a continuing health emergency, and the importance of mass resistance. Sept. 13–Oct. 7, www.act-sf.org

Roughin’ It 2: Theater. Oysters. Campfire. Booze. Again. Fresh from sold-out success with Duck Lake, PianoFight heads back up to Point Reyes for a second season of woozy waddling, shucking and jiving along the shore of Tamales Bay, featuring everything in the subtitle including brand new short plays harvested from a bed of delicious local playwrights. Sept. 15 and 22; www.pianofight.com

Assassins Shotgun Players mount the Sondheim musical about presidential recalls made and attempted from John Wilkes Booth onward, an election-year favorite directed by Susannah Martin. Sept. 26–Oct. 28; www.shotgunplayers.org

Rhinoceros Paris-based Theatre de la Ville’s production of the Ionesco play — a modernist classic on individual resistance to tyrannical conformity — is a remounting of the company’s acclaimed 2004 production, making its first US tour. Sept. 27–28, www.calperformances.org

Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass “Be Here Now” all over again in Lynne Kaufman’s new play — not so much a theatrical return as a serious flashback — starring the exceptional Warren David Keith as the titular giant of 1960s counterculture, a Harvard prof turned LSD advocate and spiritual teacher. Oct. 4–Nov. 24, www.themarsh.org  

Einstein on the Beach Composer Philip Glass and director Robert Wilson reinvented the opera in 1976 as an enthrallingly weird-ass piece of avant-garde spectacle and the world has not been the same since. This remounting —overseen by the original team of Glass, Wilson, and choreographer Lucinda Childs — marks the first performances of the five-hour formalist extravaganza in 20 years. The international tour takes its highly anticipated Bay Area bow courtesy of co-commissioner Cal Performances. Oct. 26–28, www.calperformances.org

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

Daughter of the Red Tzar Thick House Theatre, 1695 18th St, SF; www.thickhouse.org. $30. Opens Fri/24, 8pm. Runs Sat-Sun and Aug 31, 8pm. Through Sept 2. ScolaVox and First Look Sonoma present the world premiere of Lisa Scola-Prosek’s chamber opera about a meeting between Churchill, Stalin, and Stalin’s teenage daughter.

BAY AREA

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Previews Fri/24-Sat/23 and Aug 29, 8pm; Sun/26, 2pm; Tue/28, 7pm. Opens Aug 30, 8pm. Runs Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 30. Aurora Theatre Company opens its 21st season with Kristoffer Diaz’s comedy about pro wrestlers.

The Fisherman’s Wife La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Previews Thu/23-Fri/24, 8pm. Opens Sat/25, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 29. Impact Theatre performs Steve Yockey’s tentacle-porn-inspired sex farce.

Time Stands Still TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, SF; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Previews Wed/22-Fri/24, 8pm. Opens Sat/25, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 16. TheatreWorks performs Donald Marguelis’ drama about a couple — one a photojournalist, one a war correspondent — struggling with their recent experiences covering a war.

ONGOING

Believers Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. $20-25. Thu/23-Sat/25, 8pm. As a couple of research scientists and a former couple to boot, Rocky Wise (Casey Fern) and Grace Wright (Maria Giere Marquis) are simply mad about love in Wily West’s world premiere of local playwright Patricia Milton’s exuberant but patchy comedy. Employed by a small, less than scrupulous pharmaceutical firm reeling from a product recall and attendant lawsuits, reclusive Rocky toils away after a formula for a drug that will inoculate the user against love — a secret agenda of his own inspired by the broken heart Grace left him with several years earlier. His boss (a comically brassy Jon Fast) thinks he’s working on a commissioned "love activator," and to that end woos back former employee Grace to keep the fires burning in the lab. The strained reunion does the trick, if not exactly in the way intended. Meanwhile, a wacky born-again receptionist (Kate Jones) —"only recently come to the Lord" (and her Texan drawl by the sound of it) — fields calls from desperate people in a world despoiled by corporate greed and seemingly already in the throes of the end times. There are some moments worthy of a titter or two, but director Sara Staley’s cast is less than precise or compelling with dialogue that is already hit-and-miss. Despite a promising scenario, Believers remains too uneven and muddled to generate much love beyond the stage. (Avila)

Dog Sees God Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $16. Wed/22-Sat/25, 8pm. There was always a lightly subversive if not latently radical bent to Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts strip, with its implicit championing of nonconformity, its restless and half-confused longing, and its convincing blend of gentleness and cruelty. Playwright Bert V. Royal mines it all with inspired confidence and fighting spirit in his portrait of the Peanuts gang as a fractured set of contemporary fucked-up if formidable teens. First among them is a sullen but resilient CB (Andrew Humann), blockhead of the title, reeling from the death of his dog and his awakened love for broodingly gifted, deeply estranged pal Beethoven (Bobby Conte-Thornton). In Boxcar’s winning production, the boisterous, often hilarious and poignant story — which includes real-life issues of grief, abuse, abortion, homophobia, and suicide — comes animated by a talented and thoroughly persuasive young cast under beautifully calibrated direction by artistic director Nick A. Olivero. (Avila)

Les Misérables Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market, SF; www.bestofbroadway-sf.com. $83-155. Wed/22-Sat/25, 8pm (also Wed/22 and Sat/25, 2pm); Sun/26, 2pm. SHN’s Best of Broadway series brings to town the new 25th anniversary production of Cameron Mackintosh’s musical giant, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. The revival at the Orpheum does without the famous rotating stage but nevertheless spares no expense or artistry in rendering the show’s barrage of colorful Romantic scenes (with Matt Kinley’s scenic design drawing painterly inspiration from Hugo’s own oils) or its larger-than-life characters — first and foremost Jean Valjean (a slim but passionate Peter Lockyer), nemesis Javert (Andrew Varela), and rescued orphan beauty Cosette (Lauren Wiley). Chris Jahnke contributes new orchestrations to the rollicking original score by Claude-Michel Schönberg (music) and Herbert Kretzmer (lyrics) in this flagrantly sentimental, somewhat problematic but still-stirring meld of music and melodrama in dutiful overlapping service of box office treasure and powerful humanist aspirations. (Avila)

My Fair Lady SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 29. SF Playhouse and artistic director Bill English (who helms) offer a swift, agreeable production of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The iconic class-conscious storyline revolves around a cocky linguist named Higgins (Johnny Moreno) who bets colleague Colonel Pickering (Richard Frederick) he can transform an irritable flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Monique Hafen), into a "lady" and pass her off in high society. A battle of wills and wits ensues — interlarded with the "tragedy" of Alfred Doolittle (a shrewd and gleaming Charles Dean) and his reluctant upward fall into respectability — and love (at least in the musical version) triumphs. The songs ("Wouldn’t It Be Loverly," "I Could Have Danced All Night," "Get Me to the Church on Time," and the rest) remain evergreen in the cast’s spirited performances, supported by two offstage pianos (brought to life by David Dobrusky and musical director Greg Mason) and nimble choreography from Kimberly Richards. Hafen’s Eliza is especially admirable, projecting in dialogue and song a winning combination of childlike innocence and feminine potency. Moreno’s Higgins is also good, unusually virile yet heady too, a convincingly flawed if charming egotist. And Frederick, who adds a passing hint of homoerotic energy to his portrayal of the devoted Pickering, is gently funny and wholly sympathetic. (Avila)

The Princess Bride: Live! Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; foulplaysf.com/princessbride. $20. Thu/23-Sat/25, 8pm. Dark Room Productions presents a live tribute to the cult fairy-tale movie.

Rights of Passage New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/22-Fri/24, 8pm. Opens Sat/25, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 16. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the world premiere of Ed Decker and Robert Leone’s multimedia play, inspired by global human rights laws in relation to sexual orientation.

Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat/25, 8:30pm. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm (starting Sept 6: also Thu, 8pm); Sat, 5pm. Extended through Sept 29. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events` in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar "doood" dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

War Horse Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $31-300. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 9. The juggernaut from the National Theatre of Great Britain, via Broadway and the Tony Awards, has pulled into the Curran for its Bay Area bow. The life-sized puppets are indeed all they’re cracked up to be; and the story of a 16-year-old English farm boy (Andrew Veenstra) who searches for his beloved horse through the trenches of the Somme Valley during World War I, while peppered with much elementary humor too, is a good cry for those so inclined. The claim to being an antiwar play is only true to the extent that any war-is-hell backdrop and a plea for tolerance count a melodrama as "antiwar," but this is not Mother Courage and no serious attempt is made to investigate the subject. Closer to say it’s Lassie Come Home where Lassie is a horse — very ably brought to life by Handspring Puppet Company’s ingenious puppeteers and designers, and amid a transporting and generally riveting mise-en-scène (complete with pointedly stirring live and recorded music). But the simplistic storyline and its obvious, somewhat ham-fisted resolution (adapted by Nick Stafford from Michael Morpurgo’s novel) are too formulaic to be taken that seriously. And at two-and-a-half-hours, it’s a long time coming. A shorter war, the Falklands say, would have done just as well and gotten people out before the ride began to chafe. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Circle Mirror Transformation Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $20-57. Wed/22, 7:30pm; Thu/23-Sat/25, 8pm (also Sat/25, 2pm); Sun/26, 2 and 7pm. Annie Baker has enjoyed a wave of Bay Area premieres this year, beginning with Aurora’s sharp staging of Body Awareness, followed by SF Playhouse’s triumph with The Aliens. Now Marin Theatre Company and co-producers Encore Theatre Company offer Baker’s other "Vermont play," set in a community center drama therapy class run by baby-boomer groovy lady Marty (Julia Brothers). She’s joined in a series of drama exercises (and ill-masked personal convolutions) by her husband James (L. Peter Callender), fretting over his estrangement from his daughter by his first marriage; Schultz (Robert Parsons), a middle-aged recent divorcé smitten with the cute girl in the class; Theresa (Arwen Anderson), said cute girl, a nubile 30-something and recent New York transplant; and Lauren (Marissa Keltie), a reluctant, cloudy teen perpetually absent her mother’s check for the class. If Boxcar Theatre’s current production, Dog Sees God, builds flesh and bone from a comic strip, Baker’s amusing, bite-sized scenes (separated by blackouts) tend to lean in the other direction. Despite elaboration of a certain dramatic metaphor flagged in the title, the play’s thematic possibilities are restrained by an easy if highly palatable humor that flirts knowingly with caricature but to only middling affect. There’s a move in the final scene that nicely expands the reach of the action, but that limited if affecting turn is two hours in the making. That said, this fine production insures it’s no great burden getting there. The cast under director Kip Fagan is uniformly enjoyable. Brothers is terrific in giving Marty a bounding personality and just enough ambiguity to make her positive vibes suspect, and Callender finds wonderful opportunities for fleshing out the character of a charming but frustrated man who has not realized his potential. Parsons’ at first foolishly giddy then bitterly imploded Schultz is wholly convincing opposite Anderson’s zany but compelling Theresa. And Keltie’s sly and sullen teen is rightly the smartest tool in the shed. (Avila)

For the Greater Good, Or The Last Election This week: Montclair Ball Field, Montclair; www.sfmt.org. Free (donations accepted). Thu/23, 7pm. Willard Park, Berk; www.sfmt.org. Free (donations accepted). Sat/25-Sun/26, 2pm. Various venues through Sept. 8. "Don’t they understand that without us they don’t have anything?" asks Gideon Bloodgood (Ed Holmes), investment banker at the top of the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s vivisection of the "real" American Dream, For the Greater Good, Or the Last Election. But surely the hero of a Mime Troupe show cannot possibly be a billionaire? Well, sort of. Though Bloodgood enriches himself dishonestly with precarious investments and outright theft in this Occupy-era melodrama, he actually does occasionally spare a sentiment for Mom and apple pie, or anyway his daughter Alida (Lisa Hori-Garcia) and cookies baked by the unsuspecting victim of his ill-gotten gains, the Widow Fairweather (Keiko Shimosato Carreiro) — now living at the last Occupy encampment standing in the city. Alida, however, displays no compunction in throwing aside his affection and her prospective seat in Congress, running off to join the occupiers for reasons that truthfully appear about as politically motivated as her father’s parasitic avarice, leaving him to join forces instead with the most unlikely of allies — the impeccable, ingenuous Lucy Fairweather (Velina Brown), heiress to a stolen legacy, and staunch patriot. Based loosely on 19th century play The Poor of New York, The Last Election attempts to turn a presumptive ode to the free market into its swan song with good-humored, if predictable, results. (Gluckstern)

Happy Hour with Kim Jong Il Cabaret at the Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750,l www.themarsh.org. Free. Fri/24, 6pm. Comedy work-in-progress by Kenny Yun, with live music by cabaret singer Candace Roberts.

Henry V Sequoia High School, 1201 Brewster, Redwood City; www.redwoodcity.org. Free. Sat/25, 7:30pm; Sun/26, 2pm. San Francisco Shakespeare Festival presents the Bard’s history play as part of its "Free Shakespeare in the Park" series.

Keith Moon/The Real Me TheaterStage at the March Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sept 13, 20, and 27, 8pm. Mike Berry workshops his new musical, featuring ten classic Who songs performed with a live band.

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Oct 14. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 890 Belle, Dominican University of California, San Rafael; www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Check website for schedule. Through Sept 30. Marin Shakespeare Company performs the Bard’s classic, transported to the shores of Hawaii.

Our Country’s Good Redwood Amphiteatre, Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake, Ross; www.porchlight.net. $15-30. Thu-Sun, 7:30pm. Through Sept 8. Porchlight Theatre Company presents an outdoor performance of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play about Royal Marines and prisoners in an 18th century New South Wales prison colony.

Precious Little Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $18-25. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sept 1 and 8, 3pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 16. Shotgun Players presents Madeleine George’s new play about an expectant mother who studies near-dead languages and befriends a "talking" gorilla.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

"Along the Way" Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.caitlinelliotdance.com, www.detourdance.com. Fri/24-Sun/26, 8pm. $15-30. Caitlin Elliott Dance Collective and Detour Dance present this evening of world premieres, including performances Fancy and Imitations of Intimacy, and the dance film Pedestrian Crossing.

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 8. $10-25. This week: "Original Broadway Cast and Moments of Transition" (Thu/23); "Double Feature" (Fri/24); "The Naked Stage" (Sat/25).

Circus Finelli 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.circusfinelli.com. Thu/23, 7-10pm. $6. Clowns, cocktails, comedy, and klezmer rule in this performance of "Big Time and Little Something’s Big Adventure."

"Elect to Laugh" Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Through Nov 6. $15-50. Veteran political comedian Will Durst emphasizes he’s watching the news and keeping track of the presidential race "so you don’t have to." No kidding, it sounds like brutal work for anyone other than a professional comedian — for whom alone it must be Willy Wonka’s edible Eden of delicious material. Durst deserves thanks for ingesting this material and converting it into funny, but between the ingesting and out-jesting there’s the risk of turning too palatable what amounts to a deeply offensive excuse for a democratic process, as we once again hurtle and are herded toward another election-year November, with its attendant massive anticlimax and hangover already so close you can touch them. Durst knows his politics and comedy backwards and forwards, and the evolving show, which pops up at the Marsh every Tuesday in the run-up to election night, offers consistent laughs born on his breezy, infectious delivery. One just wishes there were some alternative political universe that also made itself known alongside the deft two-party sportscasting. (Avila)

"Jump Into Dance! ODC School Family Day Open House" ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell, SF; www.odcdance.org. Sun/26, 8:45am-3:30pm. Free. Children, teens, and their families are invited to check out the ODC School Youth and Teen Program, with sample dance classes and faculty on hand to answer questions.

Rome Kanda Main Pagoda Stage, Japantown’s Peace Plaza, Geary and Buchanan, SF; www.j-pop.com. Sat/25, 2:30pm; Sun/26, 1pm. Free. The Japanese comedian stops by the J-Pop Summit Festival for a stage appearance and signing of his new digital manga series, Samurai Spirit: The Story of Rome Kanda.

Maurya Kerr/tinypistol Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon/27, 8pm. $18-23. WestWave Dance presents this evening of works, including world premiere FreakShow.

"Measure for Measure" Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; sftheaterpub.wordpress.com. Mon/27, 8pm. Free ($5 suggested donation). SF Theater Pub performs the Shakespeare play.

"San Francisco Drag King Contest" DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.sfdragkingcontest.com. Thu/23, 9pm. $20-35. The popular, raucous contest returns for its 17th annual incarnation.

"San Francisco Improv Festival" Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; www.sfimprovfestival.com. Wed/22-Sat/25. $5-35. With local improv talent including BATS Improv, Un-Scripted Theater Company, San Jose ComedySportz, and more.

"Sea Music Festival" San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, Hyde Street Pier, SF; nps.gov/safr. Sat/25, 9:30am-5pm. $5 (15 and under, free). Singers, intrumentalists, and dance troupes perform in celebration of maritime heritage to coincide with the America’s Cup races.

"Soundwave 5: Revelation Zen" San Francisco Zen Center, 300 Page, SF; www.projectsoundwave.com. Sat/25, 6-9pm. $12-25. Performances by En, Sean McCann, and Marielle V. Jakobsons.

"Work More!" CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Thu/24-Sat/26, 8pm. $15-20. Theater performance meets nightlife experience in this drag installation with Mica Sigourney/VivvyAnne ForeverMORE and Ox.

Full circle

Andrew Lam
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Full circle

steve@sfbg.com

When Mayor Ed Lee suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi in March, he publicly took the position that it was an act of official misconduct when Mirkarimi grabbed his wife’s arm during a Dec. 31 argument, subsequently pleaded guilty to false imprisonment, and was placed on probation for three years.

Lee and his allies said that under those conditions, Mirkarimi could no longer effectively function as the city’s top elected law enforcement officer and that his actions clearly violated the City Charter’s ban on "conduct that falls below the standard of decency, good faith and right action impliedly required of all public officers."

The City Attorney’s Office, through deputies Peter Keith and Sherri Kaiser, has maintained that position throughout the investigation and Ethics Commission proceedings over the last five months. On August 16, on a 4-1 vote, the commission agreed and recommend the Board of Supervisors find its former colleague guilty of official misconduct, which would almost certainly result in his removal from office.

But that simple set of facts and interpretations belies the ugly spectacle that Lee and the City Attorney’s Office actually decided to create — at great cost to taxpayers, Mirkarimi’s reputation, and the public’s faith in the proceedings — over the last five months.

Instead of sticking by their initial position, Lee and his attorneys decided to pile on a long list of other official misconduct charges: dissuading witnesses to his crime, impeding a police investigation, abusing his authority in several ways, engaging in a pattern of abuse of women, refusing to cooperate with a city investigation, lying to officers in a scheme to keep a gun, and other charges.

Almost all of those accusations were included in the original written charges that Lee filed on March 21 — before the city had actually begun its investigation to learn whether there was any evidence to support them. Keith and Kaiser continued to make all those accusations right up until the end.

When the Ethics Commission finally deliberated on August 16, going through each of the main factual allegations against Mirkarimi, one by one, it unanimously agreed that there wasn’t enough evidence to support any of those other charges, even using the "preponderance of evidence" standard that is lower than the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard used in criminal cases.

So in the end, the case against Mirkarimi ended at the same place where it began: with the question of whether pleading guilty to a misdemeanor act of domestic violence warrants the removal of an elected official. But the implications and repercussions of what has transpired over these last five months could be felt for many years, in ways that it’s impossible to predict today.

WHAT IS OFFICIAL MISCONDUCT?


With very few legal precedents to guide them, the commissioners spent most of the nine-hour hearing on Aug. 16 wrestling with how to interpret the city’s untested new official misconduct language, how directly the wrongful behavior must relate to the office, and whether broadly interpreting those two issues gives too much power to the mayor.

Underlying that discussion is the question of whether the statute and the city’s interpretation of it will eventually be struck down as unconstitutionally vague by the courts, which Mirkarimi will likely turn to if the board removes him from office. But the commission pointedly refused to enter that debate, with Commissioner Jamienne Studley saying, "I don’t think determining constitutionality is what I signed on for as a commissioner."

Chair Benedict Hur, the sole dissenter in recommending a finding of official misconduct, expressed far more concern about the precedent they were setting than with the fate of Mirkarimi, whose actions he strongly condemned as "clearly wrongful and unlawful."

"There has to be a direct relationship of the behavior to the office held," Hur said. "If we don’t find a nexus, we are opening this provision up to abuse down the road."

Commissioner Paul Renne led the charge in interpreting misconduct in the broadest possible way, arguing it didn’t even have to be related to his official duties. "There’s nothing in that clause that says the misconduct has to relate to the office," Renne said.

But Hur called that a "dangerous precedent," saying he has "grave concerns" about how such a broad interpretation could be applied in the future. "I have a lot of concerns about where you draw the line if you don’t relate it to official duties," he said.

For example, could members of the Board of Supervisors be removed after getting arrested at demonstrations — as has happened many times before in connections with labor and other disputes — or even for using colorful language with constituents or colleagues that might violate a future mayor’s "standard of decency?"

Mirkarimi attorney Shepherd Kopp said there’s a good reason why recall is the preferred means of removing an elected officials accused of wrongdoing, calling the charter "an imperfect document" that can’t cover all circumstances — indeed, it doesn’t allow for the removal of mayors, even those who commit serious crimes — noting that "this is a rarely brought proceeding and it can have the effect of contravening the will of the electorate."

"These proceedings," Kopp said, "are far too susceptible to the vagaries of politics."

THE PILE-ON


Lee’s decision to overcharge Mirkarimi could be a costly one. The City Attorney’s Office won’t release expenses associated with ongoing legal actions like this one, but most indications are that it will run into the millions of dollars, perhaps many millions depending on how Mirkarimi fares in the courts if he is removed and challenges the city’s actions.

According to the City Attorney’s Office, the official misconduct proceedings against former Sup. Ed Jew in 2007 cost the city $381,505 in legal fees, but that was a relatively short and simple proceeding, with just one Ethics Commission hearing and couple of state court appearances before the case was settled.

By contrast, the case against Mirkarimi has already entailed five months of detailed exchanges between the two sides’ attorneys, covering a wide array of legal issues, and months-long investigations of matters only tangentially related to the core charge. The city has paid out money for expert witness. Mayor Lee cast a wide net to catch the fish that he had already hooked before setting out to sea.

Even if the Jew case had played out to completion, it would likely have cost just a fraction of what Mirkarimi’s will, for a simple reason: Mayor Lee acted quickly and brought a broad array of charges before investigating them. Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom investigated whether Jew really lived in the city and then brought just that narrow charge.

The simple residency question was enough to warrant Jew’s removal, and Newsom didn’t even need to get into the far more serious corruption charges related to Jew being caught with $80,000 in marked bills as part of an FBI extortion sting, for which Jew is still serving a five-year term in federal prison.

Lee has refused to justify his decision to pile on the charges and introduce defamatory declarations unsupported by direct evidence, such as the long declaration of key witness Ivory Madison, most of which was stricken from the record after Commissioner Paul Renne called it "clearly hearsay, clearly having the intention of poisoning the well" and said "a first-year lawyer should know that much of it is inadmissible and it should not have been given to us."

Even though Keith apologized to Renne and the commission, Lee and his lawyers continued to defend much of that declaration and use it as the basis for many of their most incredible accusations.

"You received a great deal of evidence, most of it from the mayor and most of it unchallenged," Keith said in his closing statement, glossing over the multitude of challenges and the fact that most evidence doesn’t support the city’s charges.

Mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey wouldn’t address a list of Guardian questions about overcharging the case and continuing to rely on discredited evidence. Instead, the Mayor’s Office stands by this Aug. 16 prepared statement: "I am pleased that the members of the Ethics Commission, following a careful review of the evidence, and in the face of a sustained campaign to distract and misdirect them from the facts, agreed with me that Ross Mirkarimi’s actions constitute official misconduct and fall below the ethical conduct we expect of the sheriff."

City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey said his office also stands by the process: "We respect Ethics Commissioners’ differing opinions about the remaining counts. But nothing about the commission’s conclusions would cause us to pursue these charges of official misconduct differently if we had to do it over again."

But Mirkarimi’s team says it is Lee who has repeatedly sought to distract and misdirect the public, whether through unsubstantiated claims in his charging documents or Lee’s public statements that Mirkarimi "beats his wife" and other comments that blow a single arm-grab out of proportion.

"What the commission has effectively done is agreed with us that’s the only issue," Mirkarimi attorney David Waggoner told reporters after the hearing, noting that he had offered to stipulate to those facts from the beginning and avoid a prosecution that his closing brief deemed "a dog and pony show." Mirkarimi also told reporters that "the piling on of these charges has weighted us down" and complicated his defense. He added, "I leave this process concerned that the will of the voters is being undermined."

THE PRICE OF OVERKILL


Perhaps it was understandable for the city to use over-the-top tactics on Mirkarimi, who has certainly been weakened by proceedings that generated reams of fodder to be used against him in future elections if he survives the board’s removal vote. But the tactic also seems to have hardened the stance of Mirkarimi’s supporters and fed their conviction that this was a politically motivated prosecution and misuse of public resources.

During more than three hours of public testimony on Aug. 16, with each speaker strictly limited to less than two minutes each, speakers overwhelmingly favored Mirkarimi and condemned the city case as overkill.

"Some of the things done in this case, and the levels this has gone to, is outrageous," said Brenda Barros, who works in the city’s public health clinic and said these resources could be better applied to help the "seriously abused women" she works with. Barros called the city’s case "a political witch hunt."

"I think Mayor Lee has overstepped his boundaries and I think you should find that as well," said Pedro Fernandez, a private investigator and former San Francisco Police officer.

David Elliott Lewis, a member of the city’s Mental Health Board, noted that the Sheriff’s Department has no civilian oversight, making the role of an elected sheriff who is progressive and independent of the city’s good-old-boy police culture all the more important. "Those who claim otherwise are really politically motivated," he said.

One issue left unresolved by the Ethics Commission is whether Mirkarimi should be removed even though the case against him was substantially whittled down. In fact, several commissioners indicated during the hearing that they thought the findings and punishment were separate issues.

"Do you agree that it is a two-step process we have to deal with?" Renne asked Keith, referring to the official misconduct finding and whether Lee abused his discretion by removing Mirkarimi.

"There is a determination of, are the consequences appropriate to the wrongful action," Keith replied.

But later, when attorney Scott Emblidge — who is volunteering his legal services to both the Ethics Commission and Board of Supervisors on this case — offered his interpretation that the charter language requires removal of officials found to have committed official misconduct, the commission accepted that and opted not to consider recommending a lesser punishment to the Board of Supervisors.

Mirkarimi’s team objected to the commission’s rewriting of new charges based on its evidentiary findings, and things got so confusing by the end that the commission decided to meet one more time in early September to finalize its recommendation.

So the case probably won’t get to the board until mid-September. Nine votes are required to remove Mirkarimi and the charter requires the board act within 30 days, meaning that final vote will be just a few weeks before the Nov. 6 election, timing that will only increase perceptions that politics will largely determine its outcome.

Dick Meister: The billionaire’s bill of rights

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Billionaire corporate interests and other well financed anti-labor forces are waging a major drive to stifle the political voice of workers and their unions in California that is certain to spread nationwide if not stopped – and stopped now.

At issue is a highly deceptive measure, Proposition 32, on the November election ballot, that its anti-labor sponsors label as an even-handed attempt to limit campaign spending. But actually, it would limit – and severely – only the spending of unions while leaving corporations and other moneyed special interests free to spend as much as they like.

Unions would be prohibited from making political contributions with money collected from voluntary paycheck deductions authorized by their members, which is the main source of union political funds.

 But there would be no limits on corporations, whose political funds come from their profits, their customers or suppliers and the contributions of corporate executives. Nor would there be any limit on the political spending of the executives or any other wealthy individuals. What’s more, corporate special interests and billionaires could still give unlimited millions to secretive “Super PACs” that can raise unlimited amounts of money anonymously to finance their political campaigns.

The proposition would have a “devastating impact” on unions, notes Professor John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, writing in  the Hill’s Congress blog.  As he says, it would likely all but eliminate political spending by unions while greatly increasing political spending by business interests and wealthy individuals.

 Anti-labor interests are already outspending unions nationwide by a ratio of more than $15 for every $1 spent by unions. Between 2000 and 2011, that amounted to  $700 million spent by anti-labor forces, while unions spent just a little more than $284 million.

 Proposition 32 would even restrict unions in their communications with their own members on political issues. That’s because money raised by payroll deductions pays for the preparation and mailing of communications to union members, including political materials.

Unfortunately, there’s even more – much more –to Proposition 32. It also would prohibit unions from making contributions to political parties and defines public employee unions as “government contractors” that would be forbidden from attempting to influence any government agency with whom they have a contract.

That restriction applies not only to unions. It also would cover political action committees established by any membership organization,  “any agency or employee representation committee or plan,” such as those seeking stronger civil rights or environmental protections.

Proposition 32 seeks to weaken, that is, any membership group which might seek reforms opposed by wealthy individuals or corporations and their Republican allies.  It’s no wonder the measure is actively opposed, not only by organized labor, but also by the country’s leading good-government groups, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters.

Yet the proposition’s sponsors have the incredible gall to bill their measure as genuine campaign finance reform. They obviously hope that claim, which Common Cause accurately describes as a “laughable deception,” will win over the many voters who have been demanding reforms and who, in their eagerness, will fail to recognize the measure’s true nature.

“This is not genuine campaign finance reform,” as San Francisco State’s John Logan says, “but a bill of rights for billionaires.”

The losers would include teachers, nurses, police, firefighters and other union members and those who benefit from the essential services they provide – students, the elderly, and the ailing, the poverty stricken, those who work and live in unsafe conditions and other needy citizens, and consumers, environmentalists and others who also are neglected by the profit-chasing corporate interests that dominate political and economic life.

Make no mistake: Lots of money is being funneled into the Proposition 32 campaign by some of the same wealthy backers who bankrolled such anti-labor efforts as the campaign that blocked the massive attempt to recall virulently anti-labor GOP Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin this year.

Should the anti-union forces also prevail, it will undoubtedly lead to what Logan says “will promote a tsunami of ballot initiatives in 2013 at the local level and in 2014 at the state level designed to drive down working conditions in both the public and private sectors.”

Logan adds, “Lacking the ability to oppose these reactionary measures under the new election rules, California’s workers could soon face the weakest labor standards in the country”. But if the measure is rejected, it “may slow the momentum behind other attempts to increase the corrosive impact of money in politics.”

It’s true that some states already have laws and regulations seriously limiting labor’s influence. But it’s certain that victory by the anti-labor forces in California will slow any attempts at reform in other states and lead as well to attempts to impose anti-union measures elsewhere, as well as expanding those that already exist.

The stakes are huge. If the 1 percent have their way in California, the country’s largest state, other states are certain to follow.

For more from John Logan, check his piece in the East Bay Express, “If you liked Citizen United, you’ll love Prop 32.” http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/if-you-liked-citizens-united-youll-love-prop-32/Content?oid=330613

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

Dog Sees God Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $16. Opens Wed/8, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 25. Boxcar Playhouse performs Bert V. Royal’s darkly comedic take on a moody, grown-up Charlie Brown and his Peanuts buddies.

Rights of Passage New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Fri/17-Sat/19 and Aug 22-24, 8pm; Sun/20, 2pm. Opens Aug 25, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 16. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the world premiere of Ed Decker and Robert Leone’s multimedia play, inspired by global human rights laws in relation to sexual orientation.

BAY AREA

Our Country’s Good Redwood Amphiteatre, Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake, Ross; www.porchlight.net. $15-30. Previews Thu/16, 7:30pm. Opens Fri/17, 7:30pm. Runs Thu-Sun, 7:30pm. Through Sept 8. Porchlight Theatre Company presents an outdoor performance of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play about Royal Marines and prisoners in an 18th century New South Wales prison colony.

Precious Little Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $18-25. Previews Sat/19, 8pm; Sun/19, 5pm. Opens Mon/20, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sept 1 and 8, 3pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 16. Shotgun Players presents Madeleine George’s new play about an expectant mother who studies near-dead languages and befriends a “talking” gorilla.

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $32-50. Thu/16-Sat/18, 8pm. A multi-character solo show about the unique residents of San Francisco.

Believers Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. $20-25. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 25. As a couple of research scientists and a former couple to boot, Rocky Wise (Casey Fern) and Grace Wright (Maria Giere Marquis) are simply mad about love in Wily West’s world premiere of local playwright Patricia Milton’s exuberant but patchy comedy. Employed by a small, less than scrupulous pharmaceutical firm reeling from a product recall and attendant lawsuits, reclusive Rocky toils away after a formula for a drug that will inoculate the user against love — a secret agenda of his own inspired by the broken heart Grace left him with several years earlier. His boss (a comically brassy Jon Fast) thinks he’s working on a commissioned “love activator,” and to that end woos back former employee Grace to keep the fires burning in the lab. The strained reunion does the trick, if not exactly in the way intended. Meanwhile, a wacky born-again receptionist (Kate Jones) —”only recently come to the Lord” (and her Texan drawl by the sound of it) — fields calls from desperate people in a world despoiled by corporate greed and seemingly already in the throes of the end times. There are some moments worthy of a titter or two, but director Sara Staley’s cast is less than precise or compelling with dialogue that is already hit-and-miss. Despite a promising scenario, Believers remains too uneven and muddled to generate much love beyond the stage. (Avila)

Enron Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.enron2012.com. $25. Thu/16-Fri/17, 8pm. In OpenTab’s production of British playwright Lucy Prebble’s 2009 Enron, tragedy plus time equals comedy plus puppets (in imaginative designs by Miyaka Cochrane), as fast-paced satire delivers a timely reconsideration of yet another infamous financial scandal. Some fictional elements shape the plotline but simplifying strategies serve well to clarify the real-life actions and consequences of Ken Lay (GreyWolf) and Jeffry Skilling’s (Alex Plant) deceptive energy-trading juggernaut, the onetime darling of Wall Street and the financial pages. There’s also much verbatim information (echoing the book and documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) enlivening the quick dialogue and underscoring the reckless, hubristic malfeasance that famously preyed on California’s electricity grid and threw Enron’s own employees under the bus. Director Ben Euphrat gets spirited and engaging performances from his principals, with especially nice work from Plant as a cruelly superior Skilling, Laurie Burke as ambitious straight-shooter Claudia Roe (a fictionalized composite creation of the playwright), and Nathan Tucker as manic sycophant Andy Fastow, feeding poisonous Enron debt into three beloved “raptors” (the pet names for some animated shadow companies arising from Fastow’s fast work in “structured finance”). At the same time, the staging can prove rough between concept and execution, with scenic elements sometimes confusing as well as aesthetically ragged (a red fabric serving as a large profit graph, for instance, just looks like some droopy inexplicable drapery at first; and the first puppets to appear are too small to be very effective either). Despite this messiness in terms of mise-en-scène, however, the play is generally clear-eyed and good for more than easy laughs — since no single villain but rather a system and culture are the proper targets here. As Prebble notes, the strategies developed by Enron, far from remaining beyond the pale, are now standard practices throughout the financial and corporate world. That, in some circles, is known as progress. (Avila)

Humor Abuse American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $25-95. Wed/15-Sat/18, 8pm (also Sat/18, 2pm); Sun/19, 2pm. “This is a show about clowning,” advises Lorenzo Pisoni at the outset of his graceful solo performance, “and I’m the straight man.” It’s a funny line, actually — funny because it’s true, and not true. In the deft routines that follow, as well as in the snapshots cast on the atmospherically dingy curtain hung center stage, the career of this Pickle Family Circus brat (already alone in the spotlight by age two) never veers far from the shadow of his father. That fact remains central to the winning comedy and wistful reflection in Humor Abuse. Reared in the commotion and commitment of the famed San Francisco circus founded by his parents Larry Pisoni and Peggy Snider, Lorenzo had a childhood both enviable and unusually challenging. The fact that he shares his name with both a grandfather and his dad’s famous clown persona is instructive. His trials and his triumphs are further conflated — along with his father’s — in such elegant catastrophes as falling down a long flight of stairs. And in his good-humored and honest reflections, the existential poignancy at the heart of such artful buffoonery begins to rise to the surface. The spoken narrative feels a little pinched or abbreviated, in truth, but there are no shortcuts to the skill or wider perspective inculcated by the charming Pisoni and (under direction of co-creator Erica Schmidt) set enthrallingly in motion. (Avila)

The Merchant of Venice Gough Street Playhouse, 1622 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thu/16-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 7pm. Custom Made Theater presents director Stuart Bousel’s generally sharp staging of Shakespeare’s perennially controversial but often-misunderstood play. The lively if uneven production ensures the involved storyline cannot be reduced to the problematical nature of its notorious Jewish villain, Shylock (played with a compellingly burdened intensity by a quick Catz Forsman), but rather has to be seen in a wider landscape of desire in which money, status, sex, gender, political and ethnic affiliations, and human bodies all mix, collide, and negotiate. To this end, this Merchant is set amid a contemporary financial district coterie (given plenty of scope in Sarah Phykitt’s thoughtfully pared-down scenic design), where titular melancholic businessman Antonio (Ryan Hayes) sticks his neck out (or anyway a pound of flesh) for his beloved friend Bassanio (Dashiell Hillman) — no doubt the unspoken source of Antonio’s brooding heart as staged here — as the latter seeks a loan with which to court the lovely and brilliant Portia (a winning Megan Briggs). While the subplot concerning the wooing and flight of Shylock’s daughter, Jessica (Kim Saunders), is less adeptly rendered, fluid pacing and a confident sense of the priorities of the drama overall offer a satisfying encounter with this fascinatingly subtle play. (Avila)

Les Misérables Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market, SF; www.bestofbroadway-sf.com. $83-155. Tue-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Aug 26. SHN’s Best of Broadway series brings to town the new 25th anniversary production of Cameron Mackintosh’s musical giant, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. The revival at the Orpheum does without the famous rotating stage but nevertheless spares no expense or artistry in rendering the show’s barrage of colorful Romantic scenes (with Matt Kinley’s scenic design drawing painterly inspiration from Hugo’s own oils) or its larger-than-life characters — first and foremost Jean Valjean (a slim but passionate Peter Lockyer), nemesis Javert (Andrew Varela), and rescued orphan beauty Cosette (Lauren Wiley). Chris Jahnke contributes new orchestrations to the rollicking original score by Claude-Michel Schönberg (music) and Herbert Kretzmer (lyrics) in this flagrantly sentimental, somewhat problematic but still-stirring meld of music and melodrama in dutiful overlapping service of box office treasure and powerful humanist aspirations. (Avila)

My Fair Lady SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 29. SF Playhouse and artistic director Bill English (who helms) offer a swift, agreeable production of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The iconic class-conscious storyline revolves around a cocky linguist named Higgins (Johnny Moreno) who bets colleague Colonel Pickering (Richard Frederick) he can transform an irritable flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Monique Hafen), into a “lady” and pass her off in high society. A battle of wills and wits ensues — interlarded with the “tragedy” of Alfred Doolittle (a shrewd and gleaming Charles Dean) and his reluctant upward fall into respectability — and love (at least in the musical version) triumphs. The songs (“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and the rest) remain evergreen in the cast’s spirited performances, supported by two offstage pianos (brought to life by David Dobrusky and musical director Greg Mason) and nimble choreography from Kimberly Richards. Hafen’s Eliza is especially admirable, projecting in dialogue and song a winning combination of childlike innocence and feminine potency. Moreno’s Higgins is also good, unusually virile yet heady too, a convincingly flawed if charming egotist. And Frederick, who adds a passing hint of homoerotic energy to his portrayal of the devoted Pickering, is gently funny and wholly sympathetic. (Avila)

The Princess Bride: Live! Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; foulplaysf.com/princessbride. $20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 25. Dark Room Productions presents a live tribute to the cult fairy-tale movie.

Project: Lohan Costume Shop, 1117 Market, SF; www.projectlohan.com. $25. Thu/16-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 7pm. D’Arcy Drollinger pays tribute to the paparazzi target with this performance constructed solely from tabloids, magazines, court documents, and other pre-existing sources.

“Un-Abridged: The Best of Ten Years of Un-Scripted” SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu/16-Sat/18, 8pm. The veteran Bay Area company celebrates its tenth anniversary season with a four-week retrospective of its favorite long- and short-form improv shows. Check website for schedule.

Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through Aug 25. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through Aug 25. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events` in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

War Horse Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $31-300. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 9. The juggernaut from the National Theatre of Great Britain, via Broadway and the Tony Awards, has pulled into the Curran for its Bay Area bow. The life-sized puppets are indeed all they’re cracked up to be; and the story of a 16-year-old English farm boy (Andrew Veenstra) who searches for his beloved horse through the trenches of the Somme Valley during World War I, while peppered with much elementary humor too, is a good cry for those so inclined. The claim to being an antiwar play is only true to the extent that any war-is-hell backdrop and a plea for tolerance count a melodrama as “antiwar,” but this is not Mother Courage and no serious attempt is made to investigate the subject. Closer to say it’s Lassie Come Home where Lassie is a horse — very ably brought to life by Handspring Puppet Company’s ingenious puppeteers and designers, and amid a transporting and generally riveting mise-en-scène (complete with pointedly stirring live and recorded music). But the simplistic storyline and its obvious, somewhat ham-fisted resolution (adapted by Nick Stafford from Michael Morpurgo’s novel) are too formulaic to be taken that seriously. And at two-and-a-half-hours, it’s a long time coming. A shorter war, the Falklands say, would have done just as well and gotten people out before the ride began to chafe. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Circle Mirror Transformation Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $20-57. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Thu/16 and Aug 25, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Though Aug 26. Marin Theatre Company and Encore Theatre Company co-present the regional premiere of Annie Baker’s comedy about a drama class.

A Doll’s House Willows Theatre, 1975 Diamond, Concord; www.willowstheatre.com. $20-29. Wed/15-Thu/16, 7:30pm (also Wed/15, 3:30pm); Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm (also Sat/18, 2pm). The large stage at Willows Theatre is a sunken living room with walls the color of butterscotch pudding, a long rumpled powder-blue sofa, scattered seasonal decorations, and a single translucent panel that brings to mind a Bob Barker-era game show set. It’s like a cross between a showroom and homeroom without meaning to be either, but that less than winsome amalgam hits the right note for Irish playwright Frank McGuiness’s modern adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play. Here, the Helmers are just a couple of upstate New Yorkers with slightly funny-sounding names circa Christmas 1959: Nora (a captivatingly buoyant yet subtly shaded Lena Hart) is a bubbly young mother of three, and Torvald (a credibly oblivious Mark Farrell) is a smug but affable bank executive on the rise. A secret intervention in Torvald’s career by a devoted Nora, his up-to-now happily caged “little songbird,” once saved them from ruin (via a reckless loan borrowed on a forged signature), but now it invites a calamitous mixing of formerly separate spheres as the man who loaned Nora the money, once-disgraced Nils Krogstad (a fine, persuasively desperate yet smooth Aaron Murphy), blackmails her to insure his precarious position at her husband’s bank. A panicked Nora confides in old friend and reluctant single-lady Christine (an impressively stoic, subtly wounded Kendra Oberhauser). Meanwhile, terminally ill family friend Dr. Rank (an initially wooden, later warmer Dale Albright) watches Nora from a devoted but helpless vantage. If the plot feels at times like a mirthless episode of I Love Lucy, that again may speak to the aptness of McGuiness’s transposition as much as the sometimes forced way playwright Ibsen has of rearranging the dramatic furniture. But the generally strong cast under Eric Inman’s able direction offers enough vivid dramatic tension to keep us engaged, while suggesting the continuing relevance and limits of the play’s robust critique of marriage and patriarchy. (Avila)

Dolores: Out from the Void Subterranean Arthouse, 2179 Bancroft, Berk; www.subterraneanarthouse.org. $10-15. Thu/16, 8:30pm. On a bare floor at one end of Subterranean Art House’s Berkeley storefront, physical theater maker Carolina Duncan, as her Colombian grandmother, pops opens her cranium like a steamer trunk and retrieves the scrapbook of a boundless life. Here memory and imagination exist in equal measures, as Duncan traces key moments and fleeting images from an arc of days defined by family, romance, and at least one titanic battle between an Amazonian dinosaur and a new secret-agent boyfriend. Combining mime, scattered dialogue, physical comedy, and a live soundscape (a sinuous score courtesy of musician Carlos Kampff, stage left), this loving and whimsical homage, directed by Nikolas Strubbe, comes gracefully delivered and almost always vividly expressed. All the while, Duncan (a recent graduate of SF’s Clown Conservatory and James Donlon and Leonard Pitt’s Flying Actor Studio) exudes an infectious enthusiasm for her subject, who proves as alive in a passing but concrete image of first childhood steps as she does in her final outing, a prolonged spacewalk into the familiar and unknown. (Avila)

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum Woodminster Amphitheater, Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd, Oakl; www.woodminster.com. $12-56. Thu/16-Sun/19, 8pm. Woodminster Summer Musicals presents the Sondheim comedy.

Happy Hour with Kim Jong Il Cabaret at the Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750,l www.themarsh.org. Free. Fri, 6pm. Through Aug 24. Comedy work-in-progress by Kenny Yun, with live music by cabaret singer Candace Roberts.

Henry V Sequoia High School, 1201 Brewster, Redwood City; www.redwoodcity.org. Free. Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Aug 26. San Francisco Shakespeare Festival presents the Bard’s history play as part of its “Free Shakespeare in the Park” series.

Keith Moon/The Real Me TheaterStage at the March Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri/17, Sept 13, 20, and 27, 8pm. Mike Berry workshops his new musical, featuring ten classic Who songs performed with a live band.

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Aug 26. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 890 Belle, Dominican University of California, San Rafael; www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Check website for schedule. Through Sept 30. Marin Shakespeare Company performs the Bard’s classic, transported to the shores of Hawaii.

Noises Off Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $15. Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs Michael Frayn’s backstage comedy.

Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Thu/16 and Sat/18, 7pm (also Sat/18, 2pm); Sun/19, noon and 5pm. Berkeley Playhouse performs a musical based on the candy-filled book, with songs from the 1971 movie adaptation.

“TheatreWorks 2012 New Works Festival” TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; www.theatreworks.org. $19-25 (fest pass, $65). Various times, through Sun/19. The 11th annual festival features a developmental production of The Trouble With Doug by Will Aronson and Daniel Maté and staged readings of Sleeping Rough by Kara Manning, The Loudest Man on Earth by Catherine Rush, Being Earnest by Paul Gordon and Jay Gruska, and Triangle by Curtis Moore and Thomas Mizer.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 8. $10-25. This week: “Five Deadly Improvisors and No Gnus is Good Gnus” (Thu/16); “Director’s Cut” (Fri/17); “Theatresports: Battle to Play LA” (Sat/18).

“Carmina Burana” Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.cityboxoffice.com. Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm. $28-34. The San Francisco Choral Society promises “no ordinary” rendition of the classic, presented as a semi-staged rendition featuring Perceptions Contemporary Dance Company, the Contra Costa Children’s Choir, and other guests.

“Comikaze Lounge” Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.comikazelounge.com. Wed/15, 8pm. Free. Comedy showcase with headliner Natasha Muse.

“Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction” Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF; www.hemlocktavern.com. Wed/15, 6pm. $10. Ten comedians write and perform erotic fan fiction, with audience input.

Ian Edwards Punchline, 444 Battery, SF; www.punchlinecomedyclub.com. Wed/15-Fri/17, 8pm (also Fri/17, 10pm); Sat/18, 7:30 and 9:30pm. $15-21. The stand-up comedian performs.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Through Nov 6. $15-50. Veteran political comedian Will Durst emphasizes he’s watching the news and keeping track of the presidential race “so you don’t have to.” No kidding, it sounds like brutal work for anyone other than a professional comedian — for whom alone it must be Willy Wonka’s edible Eden of delicious material. Durst deserves thanks for ingesting this material and converting it into funny, but between the ingesting and out-jesting there’s the risk of turning too palatable what amounts to a deeply offensive excuse for a democratic process, as we once again hurtle and are herded toward another election-year November, with its attendant massive anticlimax and hangover already so close you can touch them. Durst knows his politics and comedy backwards and forwards, and the evolving show, which pops up at the Marsh every Tuesday in the run-up to election night, offers consistent laughs born on his breezy, infectious delivery. One just wishes there were some alternative political universe that also made itself known alongside the deft two-party sportscasting. (Avila)

“Electile Dysfunction: The Kinsey Sicks for President” Rrazz Room, 222 Mason, SF; www.therrazzroom.com. Wed/15-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 7pm. $35-40. The “dragapella beautyshop quartet” satirizes the upcoming election.

“House Special” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Sat/18, 8pm. $10-30. ODC Theater presents works-in-progress by David Schleiffers, Anna Sullivan, and Kim Yaged.

“Landscape of the Body” Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thu/16-Sat/18, 8pm (also Sat/18, 3pm). $15. Bigger Than a Breadbox Theatre Co. presents John Guare’s play about a single mother in 1970s Greenwich Village.

“Live at Deluxe” Club Deluxe, 1511 Haight, SF; comedyatdeluxe.wordpress.com. Mon/20, 9pm. $5. Comedy showcase with headliner Sammy K. Obeid.

“Measure for Measure” Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; sftheaterpub.wordpress.com. Aug 20-21 and 27, 8pm. Free ($5 suggested donation). SF Theater Pub performs the Shakespeare play.

“Merola Grand Finale” War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, SF; www.sfopera.com. Sat/18, 7:30pm. $25-45. The operatic training program celebrates its final concert of the summer season.

“Richmond-Ermet AIDS Foundation presents a Special One-Night Only Benefit Concert” Marines Memorial Theater, 609 Sutter, SF; www.helpisontheway.org. Mon/20, 7:30pm. $25-45. With Katya Smirnoff-Skye, SF Gay Men’s Chorus ensemble Vocal Minority, and cast members from Les Misérables.

“Ricky Star’s Planet: One-Man Comedy Show” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; youtube.com/rickystar5. Mon/20, 8pm. The stand-up comedian performs.

“San Francisco Improv Festival” Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; www.sfimprovfestival.com. Aug 16-25. $5-35. With local improv talent including BATS Improv, Un-Scripted Theater Company, San Jose ComedySportz, and more.

“Stepology presents the 2012 Bay Area Rhythm Exchange” Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.cityboxoffice.com. Sat/18, 8pm. $17-25. This dance and live music performance is part of the Bay Area Tap Festival’s 10th anniversary celebration.

“Sunk in Sleep” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/17-Sun/19, 8pm. $20. Bianca Cabrera’s Blind Tiger Society presents a new evening-length dance work.

On the Cheap Listings

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

WEDNESDAY 15

Smack Dab open mic Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF. www.magnetsf.org. 8pm, open mic sign-up starts at 7:30pm, free. Magnet, the Castro’s neighborhood health clinic hosts this open mic for all ages and genders. Lewis DeSimone, author of Chemistry and The Heart’s History, will be the night’s featured reader but everyone is welcome to bring in up to five minutes of shareable words.

Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com. 6-8pm, $10. The San Francisco debut of LA’s sexy comic showdown, this installation of CEFF brings 10 comics to the stage to share their fan fic-themed smut. Some even take audience suggestions in their creative process, so bring your dirty minds.

THURSDAY 16

Ruben Martinez The Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. (415) 863-8688, www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The Western plains of the United States that once were home to Native American tribes and later, roaming cowboys, are now the scene of an entirely different wild frontier. Post-colonial author Martinez reads from his time spent researching Marfa, Texas; the banks of the Rio Grande; and the Tohono O’odham reservation in his research for Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New “New West.”

“Discover the Birds of Honduras” Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, Berk. (510) 843-2222, www.northbrae.org. 7-9pm, free. The Golden Gate Audubon Society sponsors this talk by Robert Gallardo, who has opened butterfly farms and spent 12 years as a bird guide. Today, Gallardo presents some of the 750 bird species of Honduras, home to nearly 10 percent of the planet’s winged species.

Squeeze This! A Cultural History of the Accordion in America Accordion Apocalypse, 255 10th St., SF. www.accordionapocalypse.com. 7pm, free. Author Marion Jackson penned this look at our country’s relationship with the squeezebox. Should you be inspired to tickle the ivories yourself, you can buy an accordion of your own from the lecture’s gracious hosts.

San Jorocho Festival Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., SF. (415) 641-7657, www.brava.org. 8pm, $6-$35. Brava’s celebration of the Veracruz region of Mexico kicks off tonight with filmmaker Marcos Villalobos presenting his documentary on three Son Jorocho musicians. Son Siglos looks at the cross-border translation of culture – particularly pertinent to this Northern Cali look at Mexican tradition.

SATURDAY18

Street Food Festival Folsom between 20th and 26th Sts. and some other streets, SF. www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. 11am-7pm, free. Some of SF’s hautest eateries and best food entrepreneurs take to the Mission streets for this foodie heaven: hundreds of dishes for $8 and under from across the world, not to mention bars selling artisan cocktails and more.

Balboa Park grand re-opening San Jose and Sgt. Young Drive, SF. www.tpl.org. 11am-2pm, free. The Balboa Park playground has a fresh new look, and the whole neighborhood’s invited to come out and give it a swing. The Trust for Public Land and SF Rec and Parks will be hosting and providing snacks, music, and activities.

Haute Pool Show Chambers at Hotel Phoenix, 601 Eddy, SF. www.hautepoolshow.eventbrite.com. 1-8pm, $5-$15. Shop local fashion by the pool at the city’s rock ‘n’ roll pool while DJs like Omar from Popscene and Brandon Arnovick from Rondo Brothers spin. 30 independent clothesmakers will be participating – the perfect stop-off if you’re looking for weekend threads.

Tell Your Tattoo Story video shoot Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. (415) 671-0507, www.sfiaf.org. 6:30pm, free. RSVP necessary. The new play Placas (part of the SF International Arts Festival this fall) centers around street gangs and the implications of tattoo removal – but that doesn’t mean that those involved in the production are anti-ink. Sign up to show off your tats and explain their provenance. Footage will be shown as a companion piece when the play debuts.

Alamo Square Flea Market South side of Alamo Square Park, SF. www.alamosquare.org. 9am-3pm, free. Sidestep the Full House-house-seeking tour buses and search for your own vision of superlative San Francisco – the 29th year of this neighborhood-sponsored flea market will feature clothes, housewares, dogs for adoption from Rocket Dog Rescue, and much more.

Pedalfest Jack London Square, Broadway and 1st St., Oakl. www.pedalfestjacklondon.com. 11am-8pm, free. Bikes for days! Art bikes, acrobatic bikes, stunt bikes, foldable bikes, kids bikes, food for bikes – okay, maybe just food for riders, who will also enjoy live music and cavorting with their two-wheeled community. The East Bay Bike Coalition also sponsored last year’s Pedalfest, which attracted over 18,000 attendees.

SUNDAY 19

SF Mime Troupe Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission and Fourth St., SF. www.sfmt.org. 2pm, free. Check out the Bay’s historic radical theater troupe in the rolling hills of downtown’s greenest field. This year’s production is called The Last Election. Shall we reflect on a world without political monkeying about? At least electoral shenanigans birthed a spectacular community theater troupe.

Indie Mart Wisconsin between 16th and 17th Sts., SF. www.indie-mart.com. Noon-7pm, free. Because you know somebody that deserves an August handmade gifty, this regularly-occurring craft fair is coming to Potrero Hill with 100 of the city’s finest makers. Thee Parkside is included in the festivities, so grab some tots and a Bloody before you shop – pricetags will go down way easier.

 

Why?

Andrew Lam
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44
Why?

steve@sfbg.com

Just a couple years ago, it seemed like the golden age of marijuana in San Francisco, the birthplace of the movement to legalize medical pot and a national leader in creating an effective regulatory framework to govern an industry that had become a legitimate, respected member of the business community.

More than two dozen patient cooperatives jumped through a variety of bureaucratic hoops to become licensed dispensaries, most of them opening storefront businesses that were often the most attractive, clean, and secure retail outlets on their blocks, sometimes in gritty stretches of SoMa, the Tenderloin, or the Mission.

“Pretty much everyone involved agrees that San Francisco’s system for distributing marijuana to those with a doctor’s recommendation for it is working well: the patients, growers, dispensary operators, doctors, politicians, police, and regulators with the planning and public health departments,” I wrote in “Marijuana goes mainstream” (1/28/10).

Since then, San Francisco’s medical marijuana industry has only become more established and professional, complying with new city regulations (such as changing how edibles are packaged to avoid tempting children), paying taxes and fees — and making very few waves. According to city officials, there have been almost no complaints from anyone about the dispensaries — and in San Francisco, people complain about everything.

But in the last six months, the full force of the federal government has brought the hammer down hard on this budding business sector, forcing the closure of eight brick-and-mortar dispensaries and instilling paranoia and insecurity in those that remain.

In just the past few weeks, two of the city’s oldest and most respected dispensaries –- HopeNet and the Vapor Room -– were forced to close their doors.

There’s been little rhyme or reason to which clubs get those dreaded letters warning operators and landlords to shut it down or be subject to asset forfeiture and prison time — and the officials involved have refused to explain their actions, except with moralistic anti-drug statements or unsupported accusations.

“These are people who played by the rules and paid their taxes, and now they’re being punished for it,” said Assembly member Tom Ammiano, a leader in creating a state regulatory framework to govern the distribution of medical marijuana, which California voters legalized in 1996. “This is pure thuggery. They are ignoring due process out of blind prejudice and ambition.”

Ammiano met with Melinda Haag, the US Attorney for the Northern District of California, who has coordinated the local crackdown from her 11th floor office in the Federal Building near City Hall, shortly after she announced her intentions to go after medical marijuana. He said she was like a throwback to a less enlightened era.

“In talking to Haag, not only is she a bit of a bully, but she’s totally uneducated about the issue,” Ammiano told us. When she told him that her office has received many complaints about the dispensaries, he asked to see them -– even making a formal Freedom of Information Act document request –- but she has yet to produce them. “Her duplicity is very moralistic, it’s like going back 100 years.”

Neither Haag nor anyone from the White House or Justice Department would grant an interview to the Guardian to discuss the reasons for and implications of the crackdown, or to answer the list of written questions her office asked us to submit. Instead, Haag gave the Guardian this statement and refused to respond to our follow-up questions:

“Although all marijuana stores are illegal under federal law, I decided to use our limited resources to address those that are in close proximity to schools, parks and playgrounds and operations so large that they constitute marijuana superstores. I hope that those who believe marijuana stores should be left to operate without restriction can step back for a moment and understand that not everyone shares their point of view, and that my office has received many phone calls, letters and emails from people who are deeply troubled by the tremendous growth of the marijuana industry in California and its influence on their communities.”

But in San Francisco, where more than 80 percent of residents consistently support medical marijuana in polls and at the ballot box, most people don’t share Haag’s point of view. And city officials contest many of her claims, from saying the dispensaries are “left to operate without restriction” to her implication that they promote crime or endanger children to the haphazard way she has targeted dispensaries to the characterization that many people are “deeply troubled by the tremendous growth of the marijuana industry.”

In fact, to talk to city officials, virtually nothing Haag says is true.

“We’re not getting nuisance complaints [about the dispensaries],” Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, the city’s medical director who oversees regulation of the dispensaries by the Department of Public Health, told the Guardian. “We’ve had very few complaints over the years and good cooperation with the storefront part of the regulations.”

Almost across the board, city officials and club operators praise one another and the cooperative relationship they’ve established over the last four years. Some of San Francisco’s biggest dispensaries have somehow avoided Haag’s wrath, but their once-open operators are now afraid to speak publicly, warily checking the mailbox each day. A thriving industry eager to pay its taxes and submit to regulation is being driven back underground, with all the uncertainty and hazards that creates.

“The question everyone is asking: Why here, why now, why these businesses? Nobody knows the answer,” Bhatia said. “We’re left to speculate and guess about motives.”

MULTI-AGENCY ATTACK

The federal crackdown has been stunning in both its speed and breadth, with various federal agencies coordinating their attacks. The IRS is auditing the biggest clubs and denying write-offs for routine business expenses, the DEA is threatening asset forfeiture efforts, and Haag and the DOJ are threatening prison time and court injunctions.

Underlying all of that is President Barack Obama, who pledged not to use federal resources to go after those in compliance with state law in the 17 states where medical marijuana is legal. Then, last year, Attorney General Eric Holder suddenly announced a new policy: “It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal.”

When we sought an explanation and clarification from the White House Communications Office about why well-established medical marijuana collectives carefully operating under California law were suddenly deemed “drug traffickers” that wouldn’t be tolerated, they refused to answer and referred us to a statement Obama made to Rolling Stone magazine.

“What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana -— and the reason is, because it’s against federal law. I can’t nullify congressional law,” Obama told the magazine.

That simplistic explanation – which conveniently ignores how people are supposed to get this medicine – has infuriated local growers and patients. It’s particularly galling for those who supported Obama and took him at his word in the last election, and who don’t understand why he is suddenly escalating the federal war on drugs, ignoring local laws and values, and re-criminalizing their communities.

FUNERAL PROCESSION

Hundreds of medical marijuana supporters gathered on Aug. 1 for a New Orleans-style funeral procession at the Lower Haight intersection near where Vapor Room had operated -– without incident and with praise as a model business from three successive district supervisors –- from 2004 until the previous day.

The mood was festive and defiant on that sunny afternoon, where advocates from both sides of the bay gathered to express solidarity with the closed clubs and resolve to battle through the recent setbacks.

“I’m feeling the fight,” Steve DeAngelo, star of the reality television show Weed Wars and head of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, which received Haag’s shut-down-or-else letter last month, told the Guardian. “I don’t think we can allow taking a few hits to break our spirit….We started this struggle to win it and we’re not going to stop until we do.”

Local politicians and business leaders also came to offer their support.

“As president of the Lower Haight Merchants Association, I’m upset that Vapor Room had to shut down,” Thea Selby, who is also running for the District 5 supervisorial seat, told us. “The Vapor Room did a lot of good for this neighborhood and was a great business.”

Marchers, most clad in black, carried “Cannabis is Medicine: Let States Regulate” and other signs -– as well as a makeshift coffin and massive puppet depicting a scowling Haag -– and danced down the middle of the street as Brass Mafia horns belted out lively jazz tunes. By the time the procession reached Haag’s office at the Federal Building, a chill fog had darkened the skies and the mood.

DeAngelo took the bullhorn first and called out Obama directly: “Either you were lying, sir, or your employees are out of step with your policies.” Steph Sherer, executive director of the DC-based Americans for Safe Access, told the crowd, “We need to tell Obama to lose Haag or lose California.”

Ammiano and the other mostly Democratic Party politicians who spoke tried to avoid putting Obama directly into the crosshairs of the angry activists, although he did say those executing this crackdown “are harming Obama’s chances of winning.” He also urged activists to put the pressure on politicians in Sacramento and Washington DC: “We need to be a voice in reshaping what’s happened in these last few months.”

Ammiano said the crackdown “empowers the cartels and the people who use violence,” contrasting that with San Francisco’s civilized approach to regulating marijuana.

“We in San Francisco have been a model for how to regulate this industry and we have been successful. We are not going to let the federal government interfere with our rights in this city,” Sup. David Campos told the crowd.

Cathy Smith, the founder of HopeNet, who was still reeling from watching her club gutted and shuttered the day before, also sounded an angry and defiant tone, urging supporters to make their voices heard by Haag and others.

“Everybody that’s here needs to go up to this evil woman’s office tomorrow and tell them what we think,” Smith said.

The general feeling was that if the feds can target model clubs like HopeNet and Vapor Room –- which had deep community roots and generous compassionate care programs for low-income patients -– then all clubs are in danger.

“I’m very upset that we’re losing two great medical marijuana dispensaries where patients could medicate on site,” said David Goldman, a local ASA activist and member of the city’s Medical Cannabis Task Force, noting how important that is for patients who live in apartments that ban smoking.

HopeNet and Vapor Room were some of the only dispensaries in town where smoking was allowed on site, because they were more than 1,000 feet from schools, playgrounds, or day care facilities, the city’s standard. Bhatia said that’s a very strict standard in a city as dense as San Francisco, which is why only four clubs ever met it.

Yet the feds saw things differently, ostensibly targeting HopeNet because a small private school opened two blocks away last year, and the Vapor Room because the feds didn’t use the city’s standard of being more than 1,000 feet from the playground at Duboce Park, instead deciding the dispensary was a community menace because it was a little under 1,000 feet from that dog-friendly park’s nearest patch of grass.

LAST DAYS

Vapor Room founder Martin Olive was a bundle of complicated emotions on the club’s last day in business (it will still operates as delivery-only, just like HopeNet, Medithrive, and a few other shuttered clubs have done). Initially, he didn’t want to talk to us: “I’m trying to keep a lower profile because it’s scary out there now.”

But he slowly opened up and tried to describe the feeling of watching his proudest accomplishment so rapidly undone by the one-two punch of a letter from the merchant services company cutting off credit card access (just like every dispensary in the city, returning pot sales to a cash-only status) followed days later by Haag’s shut-down letter.

“It’s complicated emotions that I’m feeling -– let down, confused. At the end of the day, I don’t understand why this is happening,” Olive said. “It’s a community tragedy, it really is.”

Vapor Room was a welcoming gathering place for its members and a supporter of a variety of community events and causes.

“I’ve always treated this as if it were just a nice coffee house. I’m not an outlaw,” Olive said. “I almost forgot I was breaking federal law. It was so normal, so legitimate.”

In fact, some club owners say their establishments helped clean up rough streets. “We took care of the entire block. Before us, it was all dealers, so there’s a safety issue,” HopeNet’s Smith told me as the once-welcoming club on 9th Street near Howard was reduced to bare walls.

Patients were also feeling the pain, including a 48-year-old ex-con who said he was paroled two years ago after serving 25 years in prison for attempted murder. “I have anger issues, big time. The only thing that keeps me calm and quiet and not blowing up is medical marijuana,” he told us, seething, before praising HopeNet’s “homelike environment” and supportive community. “It’s important to sit and relax in an environment that is comfortable and safe. All this is doing is pushing us into the streets.”

DRIVEN UNDERGROUND

Before going through his latest official misconduct battles and fighting to return to his job as the elected sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi was the District 5 supervisor who sponsored the creation of the city’s medical marijuana regulatory system, the product of a long and arduous legislative process.

“We developed the system out of stark necessity because neither local government nor state government gave a roadmap to the dispensaries,” Mirkarimi said. “Prop. 215 legalized medical marijuana, but there were no rules around it.”

After an intensely collaborative process that lasted more than a year, the city in 2005 adopted a process for licensing dispensaries that balanced the needs of this nascent industry with concerns by police, patients, disability rights activists, neighborhood groups, and health officials. Mirkarimi said that maybe it’s time for city officials to consider an idea he floated a few years ago of having the city itself directly distribute medical marijuana through General Hospital.

“I still think that’s a good idea, particularly if the feds are going to force medical marijuana dispensaries back into the dark ages.” For all his praise of the city’s dispensaries, Dr. Bhatia will admit that the industry still needed better oversight -– dealing with issues such as standards for growing and transporting cannabis, fiscal transparency, and potency and dosage standards –- but the federal crackdown has scuttled his efforts to expand the city’s regulatory system.

“This DEA action stops us from making progress on the regulation of clubs that we need to make,” Bhatia said. “There are lots of issues, but we had just finished getting the clubs into their housing.” Now the industry is being driven back underground.

Ironically, Haag and other federal officials have accused dispensary operators of profiteering, which they’ll certainly be more free to do now that local officials have lost their leverage to begin regulating the finances of the supposedly nonprofit patient collectives that officially operate each dispensary.

“That was one of the areas that we never developed the tools or capacity to look at,” said Bhatia, who proposed more transparent record-keeping by dispensaries last year, only to have the operators express concern about how the feds might use that information, which turned out to be an understandable fear.

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