June 20-27
ARIES
March 21-April 19
Just party, Aries, OK? Seriously. There’s nothing but major good-time rays beaming down on you people, so do what the universe wants you to do and just go nuts. It’s like the cosmos has thrown an intergalactic Aries block party. Muster up the best, most positive, and honest version of yourself and take it out on the town.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
Taurus, what the hell do you want for yourself? Do you know? We seriously hope you do, because this week is a great one to kick up your efforts toward manifesting your hopes. We think that working toward making your personal life more satisfying and supportive of your ambitions is a good way to exploit this excellent energy.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
Gemini, this week marks the cosmic beginnings of a very major, long-term project in Gemini land. You can prepare for it by spending some time getting grounded in the people and things you’ve invested in emotionally. It’s time to look at how you can participate in intimacy without giving up your sense of security.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
Oh Cancer, ye of many scarcity issues. You’re not going to let your crummy, pain-in-the-ass problems prevent you from leaping wholeheartedly into some brand-new endeavors, are you? Hells naw! Adopt a pace that lets you engage in you new projects and is steady enough to calm your freaky feelings.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
Leo, don’t spend your free time daydreaming about what dive bars and thrift stores you’re going to pillage on your cross-country trip. Instead, get your tires rotated, pay your car insurance, and make sure you’ve got enough minutes on your celly when you hit the road.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
You’ve got a big challenge, Virgo, and it’s in the relationship realm. You’ve got to look at the larger picture and directly confront both your need for things to be different and your participation in bringing them to the point where they currently are. Your relationships require tending — get to it.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Silly Libra, boundaries aren’t just for bad times. In fact, it’s ignoring boundaries when things are going swimmingly that leads to people having massive unbounded meltdowns when shit gets hard. So while you’re having a blast this week, take a minute here and there to playfully enforce your rules.
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
Scorpio, you might not know what the hell we’re talking about. ’Cause we’re predicting the beginning of a closure on something that’s been a wide-open wound for a wicked long time for you folks. It’s going to be a very long process, healing this thing, so we understand if you don’t even notice the first twinges yet.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Sometimes you just have to decide to be OK, Sag. Sometimes it’s just that simple. it appears that a humble and sane resolve to be fine will do wonders for you. The sadness you’re processing right now isn’t terribly tragic, but it’s real, and we encourage you to play your way through it.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
OK, curmudgeons. We’ve got the ultimate challenge for the crankily inclined. We dare you to sustain maximum positivity throughout the coming days. We dare you to remain totally open to the buckets of joyfulness, idealism, and potential the universe is dumping on you right now.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Aquarius, what’s the damn problem with you people these days? You’re all jumpy and sketchy and inconsistent and scattered. We’d just send you to the disco and have you work it out on the dance floor, except we think you might have some important decisions and details to attend to. Get it together.
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
Pisces, some of the methods you’ve come up with to handle life are dazzling and genius. The rest suck ass. It’s now your job to figure out which systems really benefit you and which are absurdly outmoded. Don’t be scared of what you’re losing — what you’re perfecting are tools for handling stress. SFBG
Energy
Meth-y behavior
Perhaps a good indicator of a social problem’s gravity is the number of documentaries it inspires. This year crystal meth addiction, specifically in gay urban communities, brings us two, Meth (Todd Ahlberg, 2005; Fri/16, 3 p.m., Castro) and Rock Bottom: Gay Men and Meth (Jay Corcoran, 2006; Sat/17, 1:15 p.m., Victoria). Watching two treatments certainly seems like a good way to get to the truth — what might be downplayed in one can achieve its rightful resonance with reiteration in the other. And the irony of cautionary tales is that because they admonish by example, they’re inherently fun.
Still, the two films, while stylistically dissimilar, are enough in accordance with one another detail-wise that only one ticket need be purchased. Even the ambivalence in the two, where it shows up, is similar. Another commonality is high quality. When the interviewees in either film aren’t perceptive and articulate about their own predicaments, which is rarely, their evasions and delusions are just as revealing.
The one you decide to see may come down to a packaging preference. Meth is a sleek number whose visuals and soundtrack slyly evoke the circuit parties that took meth abuse under their wing and add the appropriate energy to rapturous accounts of nine-hour sex marathons and wholesale exterminations of self-doubts before serving as an effectively creepy counterpoint to descriptions of the drug’s eventual toll. The film relies solely on interviews with users, however, and though they’re surely an important source for information on the subject, it can feel a little claustrophobic with regard to perspective. Rock Bottom: Gay Men and Meth’s editing will appeal to those who like fewer hospital corners; it also offers more voices, from health care professionals, family, and friends, without skimping on first-hand accounts and without ever sliding into brochure-speak. Either choice is quite an education. (Jason Shamai)
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June 7-June 13
ARIES
March 21-April 19
Hmmm, what’s this opportunity we’re detecting in your sphere, Aries? Is it a new phase of development you’re entering, or just a breath of fresh air come to revive your sagging spirits? Whichever it may be, the potential to create something of actual meaning is real, as long as you keep your ego in check.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
Taurus, we’re sooo happy that the shit has finally stopped hitting the fan. You needed a break. Now that life has calmed down some, we’d like you to think about how you maintain balance and interdependence outside of conflict. We think you might need to make some adjustments to the way you deal with life when it’s peaceful.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
Can you find some flow, Gemini? Some way to get right with the various vibes and energies swishing around you? Not to be a hippie, but if you don’t, it looks like you run the risk of feeling some anxiety. And if you do, we think you’ll find yourself optimistic about the future without attachment to any specific outcome.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
Cancer, what’s wrong with you? It looks like you’ve found something or someone that makes you wicked happy, and now all the happiness has begun to make you wicked sad! Well, indulge your melancholy if you must; unlike the happiness, it’s not going to last much longer.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
While you’re in the midst of totally overhauling and restructuring your entire life, Leo, we urge you to make room for freedom. Don’t hop out of one set of binding circumstances only to fling yourself into something equally constricting. That would be dumb. Put some wild cards into the fabulous deck of your life.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
Virgo, we meant to write "don’t let the bumps on your path distract you from the excellentness you’re capable of," but instead we wrote “sexcellentness”! And that’s it, Virgo — you’re burning with potential and creativity this week, and sex and art are two great ways to be present with yourself in the midst of so much sexcellent energy.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Libra, can you go swimming and keep your hair dry? Can you say no to someone without rejecting them? These are the sorts of questions you are grappling with this week. And the answer is yes, but we can see that you haven’t figured that out yet. So you’re going to worry and worry and worry. Oh, well.
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
It’s okay for you to fake it ’til you make it, Scorpio. In fact, we encourage such fakery. We think it will be the secret to your success. If life requires you to have a glowing tan but you’re too scared of melanoma to bake yourself, then by all means spray it on. No one will know but you. We promise.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Sag, you’re not going to feel very clear this week. But you can still be out and about in the world without creating tons of damage. Go and participate in your life, stay open and active, just don’t make any commitments. Offer yourself in an authentic way, but without giving everything away.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
No jumping around from idea to idea, Capricorn. You’ve got to focus. Get very clear about your intentions, then sit back and let it all play out. You don’t have much control, but if you can muster up some faith in things panning out OK, you’ll manage not to stress.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Aquarius, there are too many cooks in the proverbial kitchen, and you’re confused about whose ass gets the boot first. There are creative ways to handle the strains and stresses of firing a fleet of chefs, but you better be present with your needs if you want to pull it off well. It all looks really overwhelming.
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
Your feelings aren’t going to go away, Pisces. You’re going to have to deal with them. We do hope that you find a way to indulge your heartless drama queen emotions without looking to everyone watching (and yes, everyone is watching). Figure out why, just when you were having such a good time, you freaked out. SFBG
Don’t relicense the Diablo nuke
EDITORIAL The Pacific Gas and Electric Co. made one of the dumbest moves in modern environmental history some 40 years ago when company executives decided to build a nuclear power plant on an active earthquake fault. The seismic issues and serious construction and safety problems — along with a powerful antinuclear movement — kept the Diablo Canyon plant from opening until 1984. It’s licensed to keep generating power (and generating highly toxic nuclear waste) until 2021.
But as we reported back in 2005, the company is already talking about renewing its license, which could mean the nuke would keep operating until 2051 — far longer than the plant was designed to last. Not only does that increase the risk of a catastrophic accident (the Hosgri fault is going to slip some day), but it increases the amount of radioactive waste PG&E is going to have to store on the site.
The California Public Utilities Commission will be holding hearings this month on PG&E’s application to spend $19 million of ratepayer money on an in-house relicensing feasibility study. The relicensing study is a terrible idea.
For starters, there’s absolutely no rush here: Diablo has another 15 years to go on its current license, and there’s absolutely no way to predict what the state’s energy situation will be in 2021. Then there’s the waste problem: Since there’s no place to safely dispose of radioactive waste, PG&E has to keep it on-site, and the existing storage space is rapidly running out of room. There’s very little progress on any federal program to create a long-term disposal center, so the deadly stuff will have to sit there, right on the San Luis Obispo coast, for the indefinite future.
The California Energy Commission has called for an independent analysis of the costs, benefits, and risks of continuing to rely on nuclear power in California, which make sense: Solar technology is improving rapidly, energy needs are changing, and by the time Diablo’s license winds down, it may be relatively cheap and easy to replace the power it now pours into the grid.
The CPUC should reject PG&E’s request, with prejudice — and the state legislature should ban any further action on nuclear plants until there’s a detailed analysis of the state’s energy future. SFBG
For information on the Diablo Canyon relicensing, the CPUC hearings, and the need for a full energy study, go to www.a4nr.org.
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› tredmond@sfbg.com
I sat in the second row at McKinley Elementary School’s “junior Olympics” last week, right behind Superintendent Gwen Chan, who is doing a pretty good job so far, and district spokesperson Lorna Ho, who remains the most annoying public relations person I’ve ever had to deal with, and as I watched the kids do this amazing opening ceremony on the playground, I realized how much I love San Francisco public schools.
I don’t always love the school board, and I don’t always love the flacks at headquarters, and I really, really didn’t love the last superintendent, but on some level, that doesn’t really matter. On the ground — in the places where teaching actually happens, in the classrooms, in the auditorium, on the playground — my public school is amazing.
There’s nowhere near enough money. It’s not an easy, upper-middle-class student population. But the principal, Bonnie Coffey-Smith, is fantastic, the teachers are all full of energy, and the students — all of the students — are learning.
I could have spent tens of thousands of dollars a year on a private school, and I don’t think my son, Michael, could possibly have gotten a better educational experience than the one he’s getting now.
Onward: It’s been 25 years, exactly, since the first AIDS cases were documented, and 10 years, more or less, since Paul O’Connell died.
Paulo was my best friend. We met in college, smoked a lot of pot, and dreamed about world revolution. After we both (narrowly) emerged with our diplomas, we drove out west, escaping a nasty law enforcement problem in upstate New York, losing all of our worldly possessions to burglars in Chicago, scrounging some blankets from an old motel so we wouldn’t freeze when we slept on the ground in the Rockies, and finally running out of gas and money in San Francisco. We stayed for a while, then hit the road again and wound up in an apartment in East Hartford, Conn.; in a commune (of sorts) in the New England woods; in a house in Croton, NY; and on a buffalo ranch in Oklahoma before we eventually came home, to a slum on Hayes Street with no shower and no doors.
And always, everywhere, Paulo loved life.
We lived together for three years or so, all told, until I moved in with my girlfriend and Paulo went to work for Ralph Nader in DC. I saw him a few times a year, usually when the Grateful Dead were in town. It was about 1987 when he told me he was gay, which was a big whatever — except that Paulo was never good about safety, and that was a dangerous time. He loved to party, hated condoms because they never seemed to fit right, and figured if he got an AIDS test every couple of months, he’d be OK.
Then one of the tests came back positive.
Paulo fought bravely: He never once complained, never slowed down, and refused to give up the pursuit of happiness. But that was before the drug cocktails, when there wasn’t any truly effective treatment. In the end, the plague was stronger than Paulo. I still miss him, every damn day.
And here’s the thing: There are 80,000 stories like that one, just in San Francisco alone.
As long as the rest of us live, that’s something we should never forget. SFBG
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May 31-June 6
ARIES
March 21-April 19
Hmmm, what’s this opportunity we’re detecting in your sphere this week, Aries? Is it a new phase of development you’re entering, or is it just a breath of fresh air some to revive your sagging spirits? Whichever it may be, the potential to create something of real meaning is real, just as long as you keep your ego in check.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
Taurus, we are soooo happy that the shit has finally stopped hitting the fan. You needed a break. Now that life has calmed down some, we’d like you to think about how you maintain balance and interdependence outside of conflict. We think you might need to make some adjustments to the way you deal with life when it’s peaceful.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
Gemini, can you find some sort of flow this week? Some way to get right with the various vibes and energies swishing around you? Not to be a hippy, but if you don’t it looks like you run the risk of feeling some anxiety. And if you do, we think you’ll find yourself optimistic about the future without attachment to any specific outcome.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
Cancer, what is wrong with you? It looks like you’ve found something or someone that makes you so wicked happy, and now all the happiness has begun to make you wicked sad! Well, indulge your melancholy is you must; unlike the happiness, it’s not going to last much longer.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
Leo, while you’re in the midst of totally overhauling and restructuring your entire life, we urge you to make room for freedom. Don’t hop out of one set of binding circumstances to then fling yourself into something equally constricting. That would be dumb. Put some Wild Cards into the fabulous deck of your life.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
Virgo, we meant to write ‘don’t let the bumps on your path distract you from the excellentness you’re capable of’, but instead we wrote ‘sexcellentness’! And that’s it, Virgo — you’re burning with potential and creativity this week, and sex and art are two great ways to be present with yourself in the midst of so much sexcellent energy.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Libra, can you go swimming and keep your hair dry? can you say no to someone without ejecting them? These are the sorts of questions you people are grappling with this week. And the answer is yes, but we can see that you haven’t figured that out yet. So you’re going to worry and worry and worry. Oh, well.
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
Scorpio, this week it’s okay for you to fake it ‘til you make it. In fact, we encourage such fakery. We think it will be the secret to your success. If life requires you to have a glowing tan, but you’re too scared of melanoma to bake yourself by all means, spray it on. No one will know but you. We promise.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Sag, you’re not going to feel very clear this week. But you can still be out and about in the world without creating tons of damage. Go and participate in your life, stay open and active, just don’t make any commitments. Offer yourself in an authentic way, but without giving everything away.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
No jumping around from idea to idea this week, Capricorn. You’ve got to focus. Get very clear about your intentions, and then sit back and let it all play out. You don’t have much control, but if you can muster up some faith in things panning out okay, you’ll manage not to stress.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Aquarius, there are too many cooks in the proverbial kitchen and you are confused about who’s ass gets the boot first. There are creative ways to handle the strains and stresses of firing a fleet of chefs, but you better be present with your needs if you want to pull it off well. It all looks really overwhelming.
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
Your feelings aren’t going to go away, Pisces. They’re your feelings, you’re going to have to deal with them. We do hope that you find a way to indulge your emotions without looking to everyone watching (and yes, everyone is watching) that you’re a heartless drama queen. Figure out why, just when you were having such a good time, you freaked out.
Award-winning writer MichelleTea and intuitive counselor JessicaLlanyadoo have been fraternizing with fate for the past lucky seven years. Call Lanyadoo for an astrology or tarot reading at (415) 336-8354. Write to Double Team at lovedoubleteam@hotmail.com.
Multi-angle magic
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
If you have any doubts about the imagination’s ability to transform time and space, you can find proof positive by going to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this weekend. Thanks to Margaret Jenkins’s new A Slipping Glimpse, the YBCA’s Forum — that ugly box of a multipurpose theater — has been changed into a place of magic reality. Jenkins’s 75-minute piece (plus a 10-minute prologue performed outdoors) is a rapturous celebration of fragility and resilience, a canticle of what it means to be alive. And yet how ironic: This is a work whose fierce physicality is as ephemeral as a gust of wind or the felt presence of something that may not be there.
Jenkins has been choreographing and collaborating for more than 30 years. She has always chosen carefully, but rarely has a piece of hers emerged so completely from its mold. It helps that she has worked with three of her collaborators — poet Michael Palmer, designer Alexander V. Nichols, and composer Paul Dresher — for a very long time. Still, Slipping shows a remarkable congruence of spirits and style.
Major credit has to go to Nichols’s brilliant design of red-hued, multilevel platforms and elevated walkways positioned between four wedges of seating areas. The effect is of a theater in the round with a nondirectional performance space, where perspectives are shaped by where you sit. The musicians are placed on opposing balconies above everyone else. Dresher’s score is full of rich textures, sometimes percussive, sometimes ballad-like, with a quasi rock beat now and then, plus Joan Jeanrenaud’s cello soaring like a lark. While not offering much of a rhythmic base, the music provides its own commentary — and often envelops the dancers in a multi-colored sonic mist.
Poet Michael Palmer’s suggestive texts, read on tape, give just enough of a grounding to set signposts for Slipping‘s four sections. First, he suggests oppositions to be considered; later he evokes a group of dancers’ dreams about sailing on a frozen lake.
Slipping is the result of a partnering between the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and the Tanusree Shankar Dance Company from Kolkata, India, where the Jenkins company had a residency in 2005. Choreographer Shankar also worked with Jenkins’s company in San Francisco. The resulting work is performed by 15 dancers, including four from India. At times the two groups intermingle, but the Indian dancers also perform by themselves. It is gorgeous to observe how the Americans and the Indians — so differently trained despite the fact that both perform in contemporary styles — move from a common base. The details of the gestural vocabulary and use of levels, for instance, are varied, but similarities are striking and unforced.
Slipping opens with a tableau on one of Nichols’s red platforms. One by one the dancers find individual ways to lower themselves onto the equally red floor. In a traditional greeting gesture, they fold their hands in front of their faces, then open them as if peering into a mirror or a book. Then off they go, on communal, loping runs that move forward and also recoil back. Picking up gestures from each other, they pull and they yield. Twice, multi-level chains form and simply dissolve when lifted dancers cannot breach the space between the two groups; overhead horizontal lifts often freeze in time.
Jenkins also showcases her dancers individually. Heidi Schweiker, whom I have never seen dance better, roams the stage on her own while everyone else is busy on platforms. Melanie Elms burrows into a knot of bodies only to emerge on the other side. When the stage is packed with multiple activities, Ryan T. Smith runs around its periphery tying them all together. Levi Toney is all over the place, holding Schweiker and “dropping” her to the floor; he later partners a splendid new dancer, Matthew Holland, who has his own jaw-dropping solo.
Slipping recalls Jenkins mentor Merce Cunningham’s Ocean, particularly in the way the choreography is multi-focused. Even though the lighting cues provide some direction, audience members make their own choices about what to watch. At one point, my eye caught four dancers on one of the platforms as they deeply inhaled and exhaled toward their colleagues. Were they sending them energy or were these movements a coincidence? At another moment, the four Indian dancers appeared high above, posing as temple statues, as a vigorous male duet unfolded on the floor. Why then, why there? Right in front of me, a woman pulled away from another dancer who had reached out to her. Who else saw that gesture?
Slipping doesn’t have a linear trajectory, but its ebb and flow, the way hyperactivity balances stillness, suggest purpose and something like an underlying unity — and maybe even order. SFBG
A Slipping Glimpse
Wed/24–Sat/27, 7 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum
701 Mission, SF
$18–$25
(415) 978-ARTS
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May 24-30
Aries
March 21-April 19
Every life has dominant themes, Aries. It’s sort of like how you can always identify a Guns N’ Roses song — they’ve got that sound. Your own dominant sound, or theme, or whatevs, will be playing itself out majorly, and we urge you to get grounded in the present so you can handle it creatively and hold on to your power.
Taurus
April 20-May 20
Taurus, check your ego. Seriously. You need to be sure that your ego is your amigo. Make a little bumper sticker about it and slap it on your ass. The reason your ego is so crucial is that it’s a great week to be putting yourself out there, and we want it to be a success. Take care and you may even get laid.
Gemini
May 21-June 21
Don’t let the vibrant, wonderful energy you have turn you into a scatterbrain, Gemini. It would be such a waste of beautiful potential. Harness your mind and brush away any details that do not serve the larger picture of what you want for yourself. Think big; the tiny stuff will fall into place once you understand your limits.
Cancer
June 22-July 22
Cancer, you have Olympian potential, a tremendous capacity for achievement and growth. You’ll find that your greatest strengths emerge when you are emotionally checked-in, engaged with all your energy, and fabulously open to all that has cropped up in your sphere.
Leo
July 23-Aug. 22
It’s time to bump your game up to the next level, Leo. Are you ready? Like, really ready? If you’re going to take it to the next level, you’re going to have to leave behind things that are still unresolved. Sometimes we have to cut our losses and move on; this is one of those times.
Virgo
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
Virgo, when your head turns into your worst enemy, we’ve got some suggestions. Stay focused on openness. Imagine doors swinging open, a big fat pretty flower blooming wide, whatever imagery floats your boat. Stay positive, and don’t isolate.
Libra
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Damn, Libra, are the people around you freaking out or what? Well, at least it’s not you this time. It would be nice for you to show up for your friends, but make sure you’re balancing their needs with your own. You can be sort of codependent, and you need to lovingly challenge that.
Scorpio
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
Scorpio, the universe has given you a whopping gift. You are being presented with the opportunity to love yourself in the presence of someone you love! Whoa, that’s extra-double love! We at Double Team Psychic Dream love all things double. Be clear about what you need to keep the love flowing both ways.
Sagittarius
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
It’s time for us to have that talk with you, Sag. You know, the love and sex talk. We think you’re old enough, and you should hear it from us and not on the street, or from a sex advice columnist. You need to figure out what you want from love and sex. Let yourself get mushy. This is the best way for you to spend your week.
Capricorn
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Capricorn, you’re allowing yourself to get distracted. And by what? Details and anxiety! These little bastards are tripping you up, making it hard to stay present with the larger things manifesting in your life right now. There’s a few ways you could handle this, and we’ll suggest a classic: Go slowly and breathe.
Aquarius
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
It’s like a bunch of magical little fairies are buzzing around you, Aquarius, offering you baskets of fruit. And you love fruit. But this shit ain’t ripe yet. It’s sort of bumming you out. Feel your crummy feelings, but know that things will turn around by the end of the week.
Pisces
Feb. 19-March 20
Pisces, we’ll tell you what you want to hear: It’s a great week to fall in love, your favorite activity. But it’s an even better week to invest in what you already love. Either way, your week is chock-full o’ luv, and we urge you to enjoy it. Put yourself in situations that support your emotions. SFBG
Award-winning writer Michelle Tea and intuitive counselor JessicaL lanyadoo have been fraternizing with fate for the past lucky seven years. Call Lanyadoo for an astrology or tarot reading at (415) 336-8354. Write to Double Team at lovedoubleteam@hotmail.com.
Endorsements: The Greens
EDITORIAL We’ve long encouraged the California Green Party to focus its energy on local races, and in San Francisco, the Greens have had considerable success: Matt Gonzalez and then Ross Mirkarimi were elected supervisor as Greens (and Gonzalez made a hell of a run for mayor). Sarah Lipson and Mark Sanchez won school board seats. The idea of someone from the Green Party running citywide is no longer all that unusual, and if the party can continue to generate energy and enthusiasm over the next few years, it will become even more of a source of progressive leaders and provide competition to the Democrats who have controlled city politics for decades.
We focused in last week’s endorsements issue on a few contested Democratic primaries for state assembly and senate, but there are several Greens worthy of note who are challenging entrenched incumbents. Our Green primary endorsements:
For US Senate: Todd Chretien
Chretien is one of the most exciting Green Party candidates in the country. He’s trying to turn a nonrace into a referendum on war and abuse of power. This East Bay resident has spent years fighting for social justice, first as a socialist and then as a Green. He’s smart, passionate, eloquent, and right on the issues. He’s clearly not going to beat Dianne Feinstein, but if he gets any media attention, he’ll be able to raise some important issues.
For US Congress, District 8: Krissy Keefer
Keefer, a dancer and Guardian Goldie winner, has long been an active part of the city’s arts community. She’s always been political, and became an antigentrification activist during the dot-com boom. She has virtually no hope of beating incumbent Nancy Pelosi, and her platform is a little, well, abstract. But we’ve always liked Keefer and we appreciate her spirit in trying to hold Pelosi accountable.
For State Assembly, District 12: Barry Hermanson
Hermanson spent 25 years putting his ideals into action as the owner of a small employment agency, where he sought to raise pay rates for temporary workers. His strategy: reduce his own commission, and pay the temps more. He put a bunch of his own money into a successful citywide campaign to raise the minimum wage. If Janet Reilly wins the Democratic primary for this seat, most progressives in town will probably stick with her — but if Sup. Fiona Ma comes out on top June 6, Hermanson could emerge as the only alternative. SFBG
Next: Shut down Mirant
EDITORIAL It’s taken years, even decades of fighting, but the noxious, deadly Hunters Point power plant finally shut down this month. After a string of lies and broken promises, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bowed to community pressure and pulled the switch May 15, stopping the flow of asthma-causing pollution from the ancient smokestacks and immediately offering cleaner air to a neighborhood that has been plagued by respiratory illness.
It was huge victory for groups like Greenaction, which has been pushing for a shutdown, and community leaders like Marie Harrison, who helped keep the plant on the political agenda. The deal they finally forced on PG&E: The company had to agree that as soon as state regulators agreed that San Francisco had adequate electricity sources without the plant, it would be closed.
And now it’s time to use the momentum to go after the other pollution-spewing power plant in the southeast — Mirant Corp.’s Bayside behemoth. The Mirant plant not only spews pollution into the air, but it also causes extensive environmental damage to the bay. According to Communities for a Better Environment, the Mirant plant uses 226 million gallons of bay water every day for cooling. The water is sucked in, circulated to cool the turbines, and then discharged. The process stirs up sediments at the bottom of the bay that are laced with toxic mercury, dioxin, copper, and PCBs — and then those sediments are drawn into the plant, whirled around, heated up, and sent back out into the bay, where they contaminate fish and generally wreak environmental havoc.
The old-fashioned cooling system doesn’t meet modern environmental standards, but Mirant wants to keep using it. There are alternatives — including so-called dry cooling, which uses little water — but the company doesn’t want to pay to retrofit the plant. Instead, Mirant has applied for an extension of its existing permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed an opposition brief, and a decision is pending. The water board should deny the permit and force Mirant to either abide by modern standards or close the place down.
In fact, that ought to be the endgame anyway: Mirant has never committed to shutting down the plant, even if it becomes unnecessary as a local power source. The Board of Supervisors should pass a resolution establishing as city policy the need to close the facility, and should demand that Mirant agree to a schedule to turn off its fossil-fuel power generation program as soon as the city can replace the energy with renewables.
This is exactly the sort of decision a public power agency could and would make — and Mirant’s intransigence is another sound reason for San Francisco to proceed at full speed with plans to implement a full-scale public power system, in which elected officials, not private corporations, control the city’s energy mix. SFBG
No way of knowing
› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS I was sick. I couldn’t get out of bed, and I couldn’t sleep either. If I tried to talk on the phone, I sounded like Don Corleone smoking helium. People didn’t know who I was, and after a while I didn’t know who I was either.
Weirdo the Cat remained Weirdo the Cat and tried her best to keep me oriented.
Weeks in the woods are not very conversational for me, anyway. I express myself, cry out to the universe, assert my existence, and endear myself to my neighbors by tapping on steel with an eight-pound sledge hammer. When that gets old, I clack plastic and make a little poem or Cheap Eats happen. Sometimes I talk to myself. Sometimes I laugh out loud, which weirds out Weirdo and makes me feel crazy — which, in turn, helps me to know that I’m not.
Now I had no way to know. I couldn’t hammer, clack, or blabber, and nothing was funny. I’m not a sickness reviewer, but laryngitis I find to be every bit as discombobuutf8g, almost, as an inner ear infection. Pretty much, more or less.
Well, I’d asked for it. I hadn’t been sick, really, in two years. Which was long enough to notice, and so I noticed and then started to talk about it.
"I haven’t been sick in two years!" I said. Out loud. To people.
Bad medicine. This is not a matter of juju; it’s mental and physical and automatic: You start bragging, you let your guard down. Bam! No voice, no sleep, no energy, no soup, no NyQuil, no more Jane Austen novels to read, no one to go to the library for you, and nothing to watch on video except The Deer Hunter.
Ever watch The Deer Hunter? Bad medicine. Good movie, bad bad medicine. Now even if I could’ve slept I couldn’t have slept. Me!
But enough about me. Eventually you just get tired of being sick, and you realize that lying around in bed isn’t going to get you better, so you kiss Weirdo the Cat on the lips, drag yourself out to your pickup truck, drive down to Balboa Park, tie on your spikes, strike out twice, ground weakly to second, ground even weaklier to third, take a shower, and go look for a bowl of duck noodle soup.
There you have it. All better. New favorite Vietnamese restaurant: Pho Ha Tien, just down the road, toward the Sunset, on Ocean. Duck noodle soup ($4.95/$5.95). Jalapeños, hot sauce, that other kind of hot sauce, and . . . you can talk again, if you’re me.
"Blah blah blah, blah blah," I said. "Blah blah blah."
There was even someone there to hear me. Yay! My cousin the Choo-Choo Train and his boyfriend, Ding-a-Ling-a-Ling, meaning I can also tell you these things: goi cuon chay ($4.50). Bun bi thit nuong ($6.50). And com ca nuong sa ($6.75).
Got that? That’s cold vegetable spring rolls, which were good, shredded pork and barbecued pork over vermicelli, which was good, and a charbroiled sole filet, over rice, which was also good. Allegedly. I didn’t get any. Choo-Choo eats so fast his plate was clean by the time I’d finished applying all the proper hot sauces, cilantro leaves, bean sprouts, jalapeños, and other medicinal touches to my soup.
And letting Ding-a-Ling-a-Ling taste some before I infected it, which favor he kindly and gentlemanlikely returned by chopsticking some of his pork and pork onto a little plate for my particular pig-partaking pleasure.
"Thank you, sir," I said.
"Thank you, Chicken Farmer," said he.
Meanwhile, the loco locomotive is licking his plate, wondering what’s for dessert.
Anyway, the soup was good, but not as good as my old favorite duck soup because the noodles were overdone, one, and, two, it had too much slimy bamboo in it that could have been ducks. And the ducks that there was didn’t have skin, just bones. A lot of bones. You have to eat with your hands and leave a big pile somewhere on the table.
Other atmospheric touches: general quaintness, funny little 3-D paintings, TV, and my personal favorite: side-by-side, the requisite Buddha shrine and a gratuitous wooden plaque of Mickey and Minnie Mouse saying, Welcome.
You know what I say to that, Mickey, Minnie, now that I have my voice back? I say, "One shot." SFBG
Pho Ha Tien
Wed.–Mon., 10 a.m.–9:30 p.m.
1900 Ocean, SF
(415) 337-2168
Takeout available
Beer and wine
D/MC/V
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible
When the lights go up
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
"I wanted to make something that was really grand and epic, that was really composed, and maybe kind of mythic, in the way that a lot of those protometal bands were trying to do," Ezra Feinberg of Citay says, his postpsychedelic, postmetal outfit. Feinberg is inspired by hard rock–metal bands of the late 1960s and 1970s, such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple, whose used power chords as the basis for their grand, jazz-inspired, narrative song structures. Favoring melodies interwoven with narratives over power chords, Feinberg has turned Citay into a kinder, gentler incarnation of the archetypal headbanging unit. "I wasn’t writing the songs with a drummer, you know, where it’s about power chords and physical energy," he explains. "Instead, it was more melody-driven composition and harmony."
Anyone who has listened to Citay’s carefully crafted, self-titled debut will tell you that composition is clearly Feinberg’s modus operandi. Each song is knit tightly around melodies that aren’t so much meandering as on a journey with a distinct destination. Though Feinberg is admittedly obsessed with Led Zeppelin, and Citay’s emphasis on instrumentation wears its classic rock–metal influences on its sleeve, it is the disciplined melodies and more nuanced harmonies, à la the Beach Boys and the Byrds, combined with a scampering mandolin and lackadaisical tambourine, that make Citay’s music accessible and original. Citay’s forthcoming Mission Creek performance and upcoming summer tour with Vetiver might make a comparison to the psych-folk movement an apt one, even though Feinberg is quick to distance Citay from any such categories.
The 29-year-old Boston native wrote and composed the album using a cache of instruments and a multitrack computer program in his Excelsior apartment, the results of which he brought to Louder Studios to collaborate with Tim Green (the Fucking Champs, Nation of Ulysses), with whom Feinberg had worked previously in Brooklyn when Green produced the album by Feinberg’s "sludge metal" band, Feast.
Feinberg credits Green with much of the Citay sound and with adding another dimension to his music. "If the record is any good, a lot of it is because of Tim," he says. "I had the songs, which were written — the parts and the melodies were already there — but he added so much." Tim Soete, of the Fucking Champs, also contributed backing vocals and guitar.
Not only is Green’s Louder Studios the home of Citay the band, but it was also the home of Feinberg for about a month after he moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco in 2004. Having spent four years in Brooklyn working with Feast and a few other musical endeavors, Feinberg felt as though he was "done" with the Brooklyn music scene and considered moving to be an opportunity to focus on writing music for himself, outside of a collaborative band environment. "I felt that I needed to musically be alone for a little while, which sounds really juvey and dramatic, but I had just been doing the band thing for so long. I knew that I wanted to keep writing music, but I knew that I wanted to do it in another way."
Now that the Citay album has been released, on Important Records, to largely glowing reviews, the challenge for Feinberg has been transutf8g that sound in performance, a process that has always evolved the other way around for the songwriter. He’s still solidifying Citay’s live lineup, which currently includes eight friends drawn from Crime in Choir, the Dry Spells, Ascended Master, By Land and Sea, Skygreen Leopards, and Tussle. "It’s the first time that I’ve ever gone from the studio to the stage," he says. SFBG
Citay
With Silver Sunshine, Persephone’s Bees, the Winter Flowers, and Willow Willow
May 20
7 p.m.
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
$10 advance, $12 door
(415) 861-2011
Those lovable peckerheads
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
An aggro dance-punk explosion of smart-ass energy and drunk-kid shit, Clipd Beaks can be summed up in an endless bout of name-game banter: They’re tweaked shoegazer for the top 40 soul. Nauseated psychedelia. The guitar-driven grittiness of Prince’s "Darling Nikki" meets the smooth-as-glass PM Dawn faux-original "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss." Man, fuck Prince. He doesn’t have shit on PM Dawn. What did he give us after Sign of the Times?
Needless to say, the tugboat of inspiration doesn’t drop anchor there. Since migrating from the Purple One’s old stomping grounds of Minneapolis to Oakland, the quartet hasn’t shied away from any particular aspect of the music world — they’ll pump your ears full of all types of loud, freaked-out noise.
The band wallows in a hearty hybrid of electrofunk and kraut rock ambience, cavorting amid tropical storms of sonic upsurges and acid-laced melodies. Colorful aural washes seem to crawl up your nostrils like billows of tonic mist and pulsate down your brain stem. If this flavorsome visual doesn’t have your toes tingling for the nearest club floor just yet, maybe you’ll think otherwise when the band’s latest EP, Preyers (Tigerbeat6), latches itself onto your hindquarters. CB fabricate a cluster of feel-good turbulence with proggy synth bursts, octopuslike drumbeats, and the hollow resonance of vocal distortion. Add jumbled samplers and grimy bass squawks thick enough to saw through your ankles and you have what Beaked vocalist Nic Barbeln refers to as a "total meltdown."
CB’s kick-out-the-dance-jams ethos grew out of the merging of two bands that shared a practice space back in Minneapolis in early 2003. Searching for something more invigorating than the mellower waters each group’s sound was treading on, Barbeln, synth player Greg Pritchard, bassist Scott Ecklein, and drummer Ray Benjamin chose to align.
After building up a fan base in Minneapolis and self-releasing a couple of homemade CD-R EPs, Pritchard departed for the Bay Area just after the recording of Preyers while the other Beaked players continued working at home. "I knew that they were still recording and doing Clipd Beaks," Pritchard says. "But when I heard the music, I said, ‘This cannot exist without me being involved with it.’<\!q>”
The rest of the group soon packed their bags and joined Pritchard on the West Coast, and before long fate came knocking. Pritchard had been mailing the band’s music to the Bay Area’s Tigerbeat6 through another friendly community: MySpace. Pritchard laughs: "I happened to ask them to be our friend on MySpace, and they wrote back and were like, ‘You guys are awesome.’<\!q>”
"They asked us to send more shit than what we had, and then a half an hour later, they were like, ‘Do you want to put out a record?’<\!q>” Barbeln continues.
Grateful for the massive amount of support they’ve received from the label and their fans in such a short amount of time, CB will spend the summer recording their full-length debut. Seeking to expand beyond the layered walls of sonics that hatched two years ago during the recording of Preyers, the band has expended a great deal of time perfecting the gem that’ll capture the intensity of their live performances and have the Bay Area party people passing out on the dance floor.
"We’re trying not to have jobs," Barbeln says.<\!s><z5><h110>SFBG<h$><z$>
Clipd Beaks
With Kid 606 and Friends, Dwayne Sodahberk, Eats Tapes, and Gregg Kowalsky
May 19, 9 p.m.
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
Call for price.
(415) 552-7788
Brass in pocket
› kimberly@sfbg.com
Considering its bodacious flag team and its players’ general inclination to treat every day like birthday-suit day, Extra Action Marching Band has boasted its share of fleshy, fantastic, and extra-weird gigs, though none quite so intimate as the time they were hired by a would-be groom to crash his marriage proposal. Let into their client’s abode by a friend, about 20 members of the drum corps, horn section, and flag team stomped into the couple’s bedroom just after the "act." "His girlfriend was naked, jumping up and down on the bed, going, ‘Yaaarrr!’" modified-bullhorn manipulator Mateo remembers. "She was totally psyched."
Sit down with whichever members of the 30-odd, proudly odd members of the Bay Area troupe you can rustle up, and you’ll get an earful of many similar stories. There was the time they transformed a school bus into a 60-foot-long, 50-foot-tall Spanish galleon, a.k.a. La Contessa, to drive around Burning Man. "But they started to get really strict and created a five-mile-an-hour speed limit," trombone player Chad Castillo explains after a recent practice in seven-year vet Mateo’s cavernous Oakland warehouse space, the Meltdown. "We were always going faster because we always had been going faster and never had problems. So they finally banned us from Burning Man."
As with most tales, the exact events are in question, and Castillo and Mateo argue good-naturedly about whether their school-bus-run-amok was actually, er, expelled, before the trombonist continues: "The point is, they banned us, and we brought it back, and we took it on a maiden voyage and crashed it," putting a four-foot-high hole in La Contessa’s side.
Hunter Thompson’s wake and East Bay Rats soirees aside, performance highlights include opening for David Byrne on his 2005 SoCal tour, stopping at the Hollywood Bowl and later careening through a pelvic thrust–heavy version of Beyoncé’s "Crazy in Love." And then there was a Mardi Gras tour that re-created Black Sabbath’s heavy metal debut classic, with plain ole heavy eXtreme Elvis on vocals, and special, sexy rifle and fan-dance routines, flag team dancer and original member Kelek Stevenson relates.
The band upped themselves two years ago, when they played the Balkan Brass Bands Festival in Guca, Serbia, deep in the heart of gypsy horn country, one of the inspirations for Extra Action’s cosmopolitan mosh pit of Sousa, Latin, and New Orleans second-line sounds. A recent DVD by Emmy-winning nature documentarian and Extra Action flag girl Anna Fitch supports the stories and catches the combo in action as villagers cheer, fall to their knees, and hug the ensemble as they blow through the streets. One grandmotherly onlooker even gets some extra, extra action, copping a feel of a manly member’s bare chest.
But with the anarchic joys come the passionate battles, such as the recent knockdown blowout over the possibility of doing a Coke commercial, one of many battles regularly undergone in the collective, which has only one CD to its name, last year’s self-released Live on Stubnitz. "There was this huge firestorm between those who wanted to take the gig and use the money to further social change in the world and show that we don’t support Coke and its policies," Mateo explains.
"And a bunch of people threatened to quit the band," Castillo adds. "This band is so big — you’ve got homeowners and you’ve got people who are basically living in their campers — and when it came to doing the Coke commercial, there were a lot of people who just don’t like the big multinational corporations."
It’s remarkable that such an unruly, perpetually shifting, shiftless bunch has managed to hold it together for all of seven or eight years with few agreed-upon "leaders" (although Castillo asserts, "the original members always walk around like aristocracy"). The wireless, untethered energy they bring to the trad rock lineup is impressive. When they marched onto the stage at Shoreline Amphitheatre to join Arcade Fire (after crashing the women’s room) at last year’s Download Festival — ragtag horn and drum corps ripping through a few numbers as the flag girls and boy bumped and grinded in blond wigs and glittery G-strings — you realized what was really missing from indie at this performance, at so many performances: sex appeal. Theater. A drunken mastery of performance and the dark arts of showmanship, along with the sense of team spirit linked to so much marching band imagery bandied about in today’s pop.
As Castillo quips, "Record companies are interested in having us play with their bands because their bands are so boring onstage. People pay big money to go to these concerts because the music is all great and produced, and then they go to these shows, and these guys are sitting there bent over their Game Boys. Oh, that’s really exciting. Where’s the show?"
This show emerged from the ashes of Crash Worship, the legendary SoCal "cult, paganistic drum corps," as Castillo describes it, "where people would just strip naked and writhe in orgiastic piles." Extra Action was the processional that would cut through the heaps, eventually marching north to a Fruitvale warehouse, at the behest of ex-Crash Worshipper Simon Cheffins.
"I’ve been pretty much kicked out of every band I’ve been in," Castillo says, who has played with the group for five years. Members — many of the sculptor, performance artist, or "computer geek" persuasion — come and go, sometimes after a few practices, spinning off into combos like the As Is Brass Band. But it’s a family of sorts — a band-geek gang cognizant of the Bay Area’s countercultural/subcultural performance traditions and the unchartable wildness extending from the Diggers to the Cacophony Society. And only "one thing seems to be a requirement," Castrillo continues. "People have to have some problem that needs to be expressed. Everybody’s an exhibitionist. We like to take off our clothes." Those are family values we can get behind. SFBG
Extra Action Marching Band
With Death of a Party, Sugar and Gold, and Hank IV
May 18, 8 p.m. door
Eagle Tavern
398 12th St., SF
Call for price.
(415) 626-0880
{Empty title}
May 10–16
ARIES
March 21-April 19
Aries, you’re either foolishly impulsive or nobly courageous — we can’t see beyond the wild blur of energy that is you. We beg of you to quit being such a spaz; this manic high won’t last forever. Put it to good use, and don’t leave yourself a mess to clean up after you crash.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
It’s hard for a person who finds inspiration all over town to stay rooted in a single project, Taurus. We get it. But you’ve got to narrow your scope, lest you risk earning the "jack of all trades, master of none" mantle. Which goals are most important? Prioritize them.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
Gemini, if your week were a psychological affliction, it would be a large-scale panic or anxiety attack. Not to trigger one or anything. Your time is best spent keeping your head above water and differentiating between actual reality and your anxious, fear-based phony reality.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
Even though things are working out quite nicely in the real world, Cancer. You’re tuned into some inner world that broadcasts a 24-7 marathon of fears about not having enough and reasons why you’ll always have to struggle. It’s pretty grim, friend. Investigate the demons that pop up when your life is going well.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
Situations may arise that make you feel so frustrated you want to tear that famous Leo mane from your head. You may feel so thwarted by circumstances, or other people, or other people’s circumstances, that you’ll want to put yourself in permanent exile from humanity. Instead, extend yourself as a diplomat! Seriously.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
Virgo, you can trust that you’ve got a very good handle on what’s going on in your life, from a cerebral point of view. You could draw up the graphs and the charts and the topographical maps, and they’d all be spot-on. Now what you need to do is cultivate a more emotional presence in your own world.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Libra, you’re overwhelmed. We’re sorry life has been so hard on you gentle flowers. Things just aren’t moving in the direction you want them to be moving in, and all the pressure is inhibiting your precious creativity. But believe it or not, you’re okay. You’re even capable of staying emotionally present. Just try it.
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
Maybe you’re involved in a relationship that’s stunting your personal will, Scorpio, and you’re acting out. Or maybe nobody is oppressing you at all — shit just isn’t going the way you want it to go, and you’re acting out. Either way, you’re acting out. Quit being such a baby.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Sag, you’ve got to carve a little downtime out of your chronically busy life and engage in some good old-fashioned soul-searching. You know, some reflection and introspection. A nonjudgmental self-evaluation is called for. You need a breather so you can take a look around and see where you’re at.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Capricorn, you’re going to be really happy to hear that your job this week is to assert some fucking boundaries. You love boundaries! No one loves ’em more than you. And it is oh so obvious where the boundaries need to go, so it’ll be easy as pie for you to start flinging them up.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Once we saw Jude Law in person, Aquarius. And he was glowing with the otherworldly glow that comes from a celebrity (and having access to really incredible skin care products). You are like the Jude Law of the zodiac this week, only not an infidel. The universe is poised to give you whatever you want.
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
Well, Pisces, your week is full of destruction and mayhem, but, believe it or not, it is positive destruction and mayhem. Like, all this tired old shit that was plaguing you is being destroyed, and a lot of fools won’t know what to do about it. You’re moving into uncharted territory, and we are proud of your bravery. SFBG
SFPUC: Get on the stick
EDITORIAL The goal of San Francisco’s energy policy ought to be to remove all private interests from the generation, distribution, and sale of electric power, and the fastest way to get there is to condemn, buy out, and municipalize Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s local grid. But community-choice aggregation — a system under which the city acts as the equivalent of a buyer’s cooperative and purchases power in bulk to resell at a discount to consumers — is a good first step.
Even Mayor Gavin Newsom seems to realize that. Under pressure from CCA advocates, including Sup. Tom Ammiano, Newsom has earmarked $5 million in his next budget to begin implementing an aggregation system that the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), under chair Ross Mirkarimi, has been putting together.
Now it seems the last roadblock is the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, whose members suddenly and unexpectedly had issues with the budget allocation when it came up a couple of weeks ago. They wanted more information. They wanted to hold hearings. We understand their concerns — CCA is complex and important, and it has to be done right.
But the SFPUC should have been the lead agency pushing for public power years ago. The commissioners should have been holding hearings long ago — on the high costs of PG&E power, on the city’s legal mandate to run a public-power system, and on the value of CCA. They should have been pushing the mayor to allocate a few million dollars for a full public power feasibility study and pushed for this CCA allocation as part of their regular budget discussions.
Instead, it’s been up to the supervisors to analyze, promote, and advocate for the program, and it’s been Ammiano, Mirkarimi, and the LAFCO people who have done most of the work.
It’s really annoying that the mayor is willing to put up $5 million for CCA when advocates have had to fight tooth and nail for a few hundred thousand dollars for a municipalization study. But it’s the first time in decades that any mayor has done anything but stand in the way of anything that looked even a tiny bit like public power, so it’s a historic moment (of sorts). The SFPUC needs to actively support this project and begin talking about the next step — how to get rid of PG&E for good. SFBG
NOISE: Coachella cracked open?
Guardian intern Jonathan Knapp checked out Coachella last week and lived to tell the tale:
Jose Luis Pardo of Los Amigos Invisibles
holds forth Sunday at Coachella.
Photo: Mirissa Neff.
As someone who has lost his once-vigorous passion for indie rock and large music festivals, I approached my trip to Coachella with caution and confusion. Why the hell was I driving 500 miles to spend two days in the brutally hot desert sun to see a bunch of bands that I had, at best, an intermittent interest in? All right, my girlfriend really wanted me to, and our companion — a good friend and a guitarist from local post-hardcore outfit And a Few to Break — was the perfect guide: He’d been before and has been largely responsible for turning me on to the little new music that excites me.
It’s not as if I now hate indie rock — I’ve just become preoccupied with the music of the past. I’d much rather, for instance, discover nearly forgotten gems like O.V. Wright’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Cry” and Wanda Jackson’s “Fujiyama Mama” than be the first to herald the Bloc Party or Clap Your Hands. There were definitely some newer bands at Coachella that had already easily won me over — Animal Collective, TV on the Radio — and some holdovers from my indie rock youth: Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power. Additionally, Madonna was playing; though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the height of my Drag City- and Merge-fuelled ecstasy, this was unquestionably exciting.
To a relatively recent East Coast transplant, Coachella’s setting is nothing short of alien. Set aside the heat (which is consuming and oppressive) and what remains is a beautiful, if stark and bleak, atmosphere: palm trees, miles of flat, bush-littered sand, and — when the Los Angeles smog recedes — snow-capped mountains. This year’s fest brought a mostly predictable mix of inappropriately black-clad SF/LA hipsters, shirtless/bikini-topped OC trust-funders/frat types, Arizona college hippies, and — given that this was Tool’s first show in five years — metalheadz. Though people-watching is certainly fruitful and entertaining, Coachella does not provide as much craziness as one might expect — but it certainly does exist.
The festival, held over Saturday and Sunday, April 29 and 30, on the incongruously green and groomed Empire Polo Fields, is a whirlwind of simultaneous activity and overstimulation. If you’re really only there to see one act (like Depeche Mode), it’s no problem. But for those whose interests are a bit more catholic, the prospect of navigating five separate stages that feature virtually nonstop, and eclectic, music from noon till midnight is daunting.
Do you choose Kanye West or My Morning Jacket? Wolf Parade or Jamie Lidell? In my case, both these choices proved easy, if not fully satisfying. For the former: With tickets on Kanye’s late-2005 tour being at least $45, the relatively reasonable one-day Coachella pass of $85 (about $190 for both days, including service charges) makes it
the best opportunity to see him.
West’s set was entertaining, if not transcendent. Mindful of the temperature (he played a still-blistering 6 p.m. slot), West substituted the angel-winged getup he’s favored recently for a white Miles Davis T-shirt and jeans. Backed by live drums, turntables, backup singers, and a string section, he offered a respectable but awkward approximation of his increasingly ornate recordings (no Jon Brion in sight). The highlight: West inexplicably announced his DJ would play a few of his biggest influences, moving from Al Green and Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson to a-ha’s “Take on Me,” dancing around the stage with a goofiness that, though obviously calculated, seemed charmingly unselfconscious.
Following West on the main stage, Sigur Ros created one of the festival’s moments of impossible beauty, bringing their ethereal noise to day one’s lofty sunset slot (7:00-7:50 p.m.). Admittedly, I’ve been a bit hesitant to embrace the beloved Icelandic group. Though I’ve enjoyed much of their work, I’ve been turned off by what I’ve interpreted as delusions of grandeur: a made-up language (there’s already one Magma), bullshit declarations of “creating a new type of music,” and the hushed reverence with which they’re frequently discussed. However, I can’t think of a better band to accompany a desert dusk, or a better setting for the band — apart from a glacier, perhaps. Backed by a mini-string section, they played a set that, at that time and in that place, was astonishing. My gratitude goes to the man and woman who danced behind the netting just immediately off stage right: Their undulating silhouettes would have brought me to tears, had dehydration and hours of standing not already beaten them to it.
My other day one highlight was Animal Collective, a band whose aesthetic of psych-pop, tribalism, and general weirdness was perfectly suited to the surreal setting. Though I’ve adored many of their recordings (they’re one of the few current bands that I’m genuinely excited to watch evolve), I’d heard that their propensity for wandering and wanking can be their downfall live. I found that they kept this mostly in check, grounding their less accessible and more abrasive experimentations with hypnotic rhythms and a convincing feeling that this was, in fact, going somewhere. Much of the crowd didn’t seem to know what to make of it. Too bad: To my ears, few artists approach their inventiveness, live or recorded.
That day I also caught some of Deerhoof (appropriately erratic, with some fantastic moments), Cat Power (as expected, the Memphis Rhythm Band has given her a new sense of confidence and composure, and they sound fucking great), Wolfmother (energetic, but dull), White Rose Movement (I’ll stick to my Pulp records, thank you), the New Amsterdams (nothing new about them), and the Walkmen (solid).
After returning to the grounds Sunday (we fortunately camped at the much-less-populated Salton Sea, about 20 minutes away), we immediately went to catch Mates of State (adorable and infectious), who closed with a decent version of Nico’s “Time of the Season,” and Ted Leo, who was reliably engaging. To try to get close for Wolf Parade, we headed to the medium-sized tent (there were three) and watched Metric. I’d been intrigued by their Broken Social Scene connections, but their set of dancey agit-pop left me cold and bored (my companions disagreed).
I separated from my friends to stand in the back for Wolf Parade, so I could head to the main stage for Sleater-Kinney. After starting late, Wolf Parade apologized for technical issues (“Everything’s fucked”) and began a set that, from my perch hundreds of feet away, sounded slight and thin. Disappointed, I left after three songs. I’ve been told that the experience up-front, however, was quite different, and among the best of the festival.
I fell in love with the women of Sleater-Kinney about a decade ago when I was 16. I’ve tried to see them a number of times over the years, but something always fell through: sold-out, unbreakable engagements, etc. I usually don’t think about them, except when they release a new album and, maybe once or twice a year, when I put on Call the Doctor or Dig Me Out — briefly reminding myself why they once meant so much to me.
Clearly, this has been a huge mistake: Focusing mostly on songs from the past couple albums, the trio played a fierce, powerful set that all the years of hearing about their live show hadn’t prepared me for. At a festival that celebrated scenes that I’ve mostly abandoned, this became my essential moment. Mses. Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss reminded me not only why I loved them, but why I loved going to shows in the first place — for the sheer raw, sweaty energy. These women deserve to fill stadiums.
After watching a bit of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who impressed me more than I expected, I headed to the dance tent, joining an apparent majority of festivalgoers in an attempt to see Madonna. Unable to get anywhere near the stage, we settled for a spot outside it, where our view was of a large screen and, when we were lucky enough to be able to peek through the massive throng at a distant stage.
Several minutes before the set (which unsurprisingly started late), a line of people carrying parasols and decked out in lingerie bondage gear made their way through the crowd on stilts. Managing the seemingly impossible feat of reaching the front of the stage, they were easily the festival’s smartest and most inventive attendees.
When Madonna finally took the stage, all hell broke loose — an appropriate response, perhaps, but not one that the performance itself warranted. Predictable and short, Madonna’s set started with the superb “Hung Up,” then moved on to “Ray of Light” and four more songs, most of them newer material. Most surprising was her guitar playing (or at least the appearance of it) and the rock-like arrangements of all the tunes. She occasionally provoked the audience (“Don’t throw water on my stage, motherfuckers,” “Do you want me to take my pants off?”), but nothing here was shocking. That said, the woman looks fantastic and commands a stage in a way that few could. After six songs, she left abruptly. It was anticlimactic, yet still somehow thrilling. It was, after all, fucking Madonna.
Immediately after, we ran into Andy Dick, who stood talking to a pair of starstruck 13-year-old girls. Far more behaved than the blogs have reported he later would be, Dick seemed as amused with the girls as they were with him. Though he claimed to have to go meet his “girlfriend,” he talked to them for several minutes: “Oh, I love Madonna too. Hey — how are you even here? Aren’t people, like, drinking? Where are your parents?”
After catching a fantastic, fun set from the Go! Team (who had Mike Watt guesting on bass), we attempted to see Tool. Unable to get anywhere close to the stage (this seemed by far to be the most crowded show, though Madonna was close), we sat down, expecting to watch the band on the giant screens on either side of the stage. While the band played, however, their videos (you know: internal organs and jittery, alien-looking people doing painful things) were projected on the screens. Bored and wary of the inevitable hours of traffic that we’d hit if we stayed for the set, we bid Coachella adieu.
Acts I wished I had caught, but couldn’t for various reasons: Lady Sovereign, Jamie Lidell, Gnarls Barkley, Seu Jorge, My Morning Jacket, Phoenix, Mogwai, Depeche Mode, Coldcut, and TV on the Radio. Biggest regret (by far): missing Daft Punk. Word of their closing Saturday night set hovered all day Sunday, discussed in whispered, but rhapsodic tones.
I left the festival exhausted, anxious to return to San Francisco, and — most importantly — reminded why I devoted so many years to indie rock. Will I stop seeking out New Orleans R&B, rockabilly, and Southern soul? No, but that doesn’t mean I have to ignore this wave of postpunk, does it? That said, I’ll take Gang of Four, Wire, and Pere Ubu over Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand any day.
But, right now, I just want to listen to Sleater-Kinney.
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APR. 26–May 2
ARIES
March 21-April 19
Aries, you’ve reached total system overload. It’s like you’re having your own little personal Mercury retrograde. You’re managing too much, and we suggest that you start prioritizing responsibilities, placing your obligation toward your own emotional needs at the top of the list.
TAURUS
April 20-May 20
Whatever it is you’re dealing with looks pretty frickin’ monumental, Taurus. You’re going to have to figure out how to make self-loving choices in the midst of all the bullshit. The least you can do is make sure you’re feeding yourself at least one good meal a day.
GEMINI
May 21-June 21
Gemini, there appears to be some sort of conflict happening in your relationships. What’s making it worse is your total reluctance to tackle this problem, either out of fear of making everything worse or just a plain ol’ aversion to confrontation. But being open, honest, and direct is the only way to fix things.
CANCER
June 22-July 22
If you’ve been waiting for a time to be scandalous and risqué in the pursuit of getting what you want, it’s now, Cancer. Go on, sleep your way to the top. Put yourself out there and snag what or whom you want like a Venus flytrap. It’s a great moment, with lots of sexy amour for the snatching.
LEO
July 23-Aug. 22
Leo, we have a prescription for your ennui. It’s a party. We think it would be great, on so many levels, for you to gather together all the people in your life and watch what magical and surprising things occur. Don’t strategize who would benefit you by their attendance; compile your guest list from the gut.
VIRGO
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
We know a family who did this adorable thing, Virgo. They planted fruit trees in their yard on the birth of each of their kids, so their kids could gauge their often imperceptible growth by the more obvious stretching and blooming of the trees. We suggest you do something similar to tangibly mark your progress.
LIBRA
Sept. 23-Oct. 22
Our psychic eyes show us a poor little emotionally tapped Libra. Are you going to start taking care of yourself or what? Can you trust that your life won’t fall apart if you cease your consistent, perhaps manic, tending to it in order to nurse your frayed well-being?
SCORPIO
Oct. 23-Nov. 21
It’s time for Ego Investigation, Scorpio. Send in the squad. You need to take a serious look at how you have been handling your ego and honestly assess if it’s helping or hurting you. We think you might actually need some good, healthy ego energy to help take care of yourself in the coming weeks, so make sure that thing is working right.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Sag, we’re sorry to report that your horoscope is boring as hell. You’re destined to have a week steeped in the mundane, which, come to think of it, may make the next seven days not only boring but shitty for a thrill-seeker like yourself. Make sure you’re dealing with the minutiae of your life to prevent petty frustrations.
CAPRICORN
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
There are positive changes happening, Capricorn. Stop rolling your eyes. We know you think that the phrase positive change puts the moronic in oxymoronic, but you’re wrong. Your fear of change is preventing you from seeing how great all these new shifts are and puts you in danger of sabotaging them.
AQUARIUS
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Aquarius, we gave you a vague warning about overextending yourself last week, but apparently we need to bang you over the head. Or, rather, we would bang you over the head, but your life is already smacking you upside it. Deal with the balls you already have in the air; don’t introduce any new ones to your act!
PISCES
Feb. 19-March 20
You’ve always had the potential to be efficient and productive, Pisces. You’ve just resisted it, like a teenage stoner skipping class for another bong rip in the quad. But the time has come to say goodbye to your underachievin’ ways and embrace your capacity to harbor ambition. Think big. SFBG
Pombo on the issues
To say that Richard Pombo is an environmental skeptic is putting it mildly. When asked if Pombo accepted the worldwide scientific consensus that global warming is a fact, his spokesperson, Wayne Johnson, shilly-shallied. "What I have heard him say is the jury is still out," Johnson cautiously ventured. "For those absolutely convinced, I would not put him in that category."
Pombo entered Congress determined to "reform" the Endangered Species Act and other tree-hugging depredations on the rights of private property owners. Before arriving in Washington, he cowrote a book titled This Land Is Our Land: How to End the War on Private Property, in which he declared that he’d become politically active after a skirmish with the East Bay Regional Park District about the creation of a public right-of-way through his property. He later switched his story to say that his family’s property values had been hurt when their land was designated a San Joaquin kit fox critical habitat.
Both claims were entirely without merit. But Pombo is not one to let the facts get in the way.
Pombo says the ESA, which is widely regarded as one of the more successful pieces of environmental legislation ever, is a failure. Pombo’s “reforms,” however, recently ran into a brick wall in the Senate. If passed, the reforms would have removed the concept of critical habitat from the ESA, which means that a threatened species would have been protected, but its home territory would not have received such protection.
Pombo has hit numerous other environmental high points. Among them was his idea to allow ham radio operators to erect antennae on the Farallones Islands. He proposed selling 15 sites within the national parks as a way of raising money for energy development. He was one of the original sponsors of the legislation to allow drilling on Alaska’s north slope.
And the 11th Congressional District representative has taken interesting stands on all sorts of other issues, from civil rights to drugs to gun control to gay rights. Because he has such a wide range of conservative interests, a short list of his Congressional voting record will suffice.
Pombo has opposed stem cell research, supports banning “partial birth” abortion, and has a 0 percent rating from NARAL, the pro-choice group. He voted for the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and against allowing gay adoption in Washington, DC.
He has voted in favor of making the PATRIOT Act permanent and supports a constitutional amendment to oppose flag burning and desecration. He supports more prisons, the death penalty, and more cops. He voted to prohibit medical marijuana and HIV-prevention needle exchange, in Washington, DC.
Pombo has a 97 percent approval rating from the US Chamber of Commerce. He opposes gun control and product-misuse lawsuits against gun manufacturers. He got an A-plus rating from the National Rifle Association.
For a more in-depth appreciation of Richard Pombo’s politics, go to www.ontheissues.org/CA/Richard-Pombo.htm, which gives him a 70 percent hard-right conservative rating. (Tim Kingston)
Research assistance by Erica Holt
Sweet squares
SUPER EGO Hi, sexy. I’m a bored robot. I’m doin’ the strobe-lit worm on linoleum irony. I’m freakin’ worn poses in the mirror of YouTube. Klink klank klunk. Drink drank drunk.
Blunk.
Yesterday morning I had a Technicolor waking dream. I was flipping through the Gospel of Judas, standing outside Trendy Hair Fixin’s on Seventh and Howard at 6 a.m. under a sky that looked like God shit his underpants. The ice-blue veins of the overpasses crisscrossed in the distance, the distance you feel when you realize your absent-eyed friends are all television addicts. (Not you, though. No, never you.) I was shivering wet in my "Bitch or Slut?" spray-painted halter top, Leslie and the Lys’ "Gem Sweater" rocking my knockoff iPod. It was cold, but if I layered on even one spare shred of poly blend, my Bang Bus implants would be partially obscured, and then what krunkhed mens would want me? I’d be childless forever.
Suddenly, my nueva amiga Frankenchick coughed up a pair of fake eyelashes and gasped, "When I was a little kid, I use to own a frog named Sweet Squares!"
It’s so boring reading other people’s dreams. But, of course, it wasn’t a dream. It seemed, just then, my life. And more important, my nightlife. When it feels like your whole being’s been dunked once too much in the reborn-again media stream, there are only two ways out: You can either blow up or get down. Drop the cooler-than-thou attitude completely, or go all in and get extreme.
DJ Jefrodisiac’s our homegrown version of NYC club whiz Larry Tee, and his wild nights are our closest energy-equivalent to the world’s reigning name-drop weekly, Misshapes, in Manhattan. Of course, Jefro’s been eating postirony for breakfast since way before Misshapes tossed up its hectic brand of antiposeur-poseur Corn Pops (cf. his long-running Frisco Disco, at Arrow Bar, every Saturday), but no one takes our club scene seriously. We’re too dang "out-there." Like most top jocks today, he’s less a turntablist than a mood meddler; his clubs may draw in more literal-minded people with one-off Bloc Party B-side remixes but just as quickly drive them out for a smoke with Eric Prydez’s "Call on Me" (an endless, cheery loop of Steve Winwood wailing "Valerie" … eek). The folks who say "fuck it" and stay on the dance floor, anyway, win.
Blow Up, at Rickshaw Stop, is his best joint yet, and every third Friday he and table partner Emily Betty whip their fan base into an antitaste frenzy with records from the outer bins up front and outré sex acts on the side. (What is it with all the het-porn lesbo action at clubs these days? I love it.) If some see the supertight, dressed-to-the-tens crowd as impossible snobs, they don’t get it — it’s rising above by screwing it all. User-friendly nihilism on a MySpace Mountain level. It’s Blow Up’s first anniversary this week, and the guests are apocalypto-emblematic: LA street-whore rapper Mickey Avalon, London’s shambolic DJ teeth-kickers Queens of Noize, the Star Eyes of Syrup Girls from NYC, and our very own Richie Panic. Too cool for school? Nah. This is school.
And then there’s something completely different. Blow Up’s the go-all-in, but also this weekend’s let-it-all-out. Believe it or not, square dancing just got fierce. Seriously. Pimping itself as a "thriving, boisterous DIY alternative to the queer bar and circuit scenes" (thank you!), the San Francisco Queer Contra Dance may just be the perfect antidote for today’s style-fatigued clubbers. At the very least, it’s a return to what we loved about going out in the first place: meeting up with like-minded strangers at someplace new (a church, even) to dance new dances to music you can’t hear anywhere else — attitude free. Contra dancing’s a venerable form of folk dancing, all whirling skirts and changing partners and whatnot, and while it may seem goofy — well, look what you’re wearing, hot stuff. Everything’s goofy right now, and in this case it’s also sweet. The monthly event has taken off (even organizer Robert Riley has been shocked by the unbridled turnout), and Saturday marks its second anniversary. Dances will be taught, punch will be imbibed, and new friends will be made. Kilts and Mohawks encouraged. All bored robots welcome.
Blow Up’s One-Year Anniversary
Fri/21
10 p.m.–2 a.m.
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
$8
www.blowupsf.com
SF Queer Contra Dance Second Anniversary
Sat/22
7:30-10:30 p.m.
United Methodist Church
1268 Sanchez, SF
$10 sliding scale