Energy Archives — Page 56 of 103 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Obama blows his chance to confront oil addiction

Sasha Cuttler

-

June 16, 2010

Obama blows his chance to confront oil addiction

President Obama had the right Oval Office setting, a moment in time of genuine public outrage with the oil industry, and even an eloquent setup, telling Americans “the time to embrace a clean energy future is now” and saying we shouldn’t deterred from bold action by “a lack of political courage and candor.” And then…nothing. Once again, Obama has failed to follow up his rhetorical candor with the courage to do what needs to be done.

As with the health care debate and casino culture on Wall Street, Obama did a good job of diagnosing the problem. In this case, he cited the billions of dollars we send to despots in oil-rich countries, how China is leaving us in the dust in developing clean energy, and the myriad problems created by Americans accounting for 20 percent of world oil consumption, from global warming to the BP spill.

With that kind of setup, he could have just said the magic words — carbon tax – and completely changed the national debate over energy and environmental policy, finally linking the two interconnected realms. He could have called for a steep tax on oil companies and a gasoline tax on consumers, correctly arguing that subsidies on fossil fuels must end now and those who have long benefited from them need to help fund our transition to renewable energy.

Instead, he mentioned a few tepid reforms, and he wouldn’t even pledge his support for any of those ridiculously inadequate half-measures, telling the audience, “The one approach I will not accept is inaction. The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is too big and too difficult to meet.”

Pretty words and a fine sentiment, but it means nothing in a political climate in which leaders of both major parties are more concerned with maintaining the flow of political contributions than stopping the flow of oil. Meanwhile, climate scientists say we need to cut our use of fossil fuels in half in the next couple decades to avoid the worst global warming impacts, and all that even the most ambitious legislation in the country would do now is slow the rate of growth over that time.

The only person in this country who could change the political dynamics to really meet this challenge is Obama, and last night, when he had the best chance to do so, he failed.

Tale of two landfills

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

-

June 15, 2010

2

Sarah@sfbg.com

Everyone should make a pilgrimage to the landfill where their city’s garbage is buried. For San Francisco residents to really understand the current trash situation — and its related issues of transportation, environmental justice, greenhouse gas reduction, corporate contracting, and pursuing a zero waste goal — that means taking two trips.

The first is a relatively short trek to Waste Management’s Altamont landfill in the arid hills near Livermore, which is where San Francisco’s trash has been taken for three decades. The next is a far longer journey to the Ostrom Road landfill near Wheatland in Yuba County, a facility owned by Recology (formerly NorCal Waste Systems, San Francisco’s longtime trash collector) on the fertile eastern edge of the Sacramento Valley, where officials want to dispose of the city’s trash starting in 2015.

Both these facilities looked well managed, despite their different geographical settings, proving that engineers can place a landfill just about anywhere. But landfills are sobering reminders of the unintended consequences of our discarded stuff. Plastic bags are carried off by the wind before anyone can catch them. Gulls and crows circle above the massive piles of trash, searching for food scraps. And the air reeks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide as a manmade cause of global warming.

It’s also a reminder of a fact most San Franciscans don’t think much about: The city exports mountains of garage into somebody else’s backyard. While residents have gone a long way to reduce the waste stream as city officials pursue an ambitious strategy of zero waste by 2020, we’re still trucking 1,800 tons of garbage out of San Francisco every day. And now we’re preparing to triple the distance that trash travels, a prospect some Yuba County residents find troubling.

“The mayor of San Francisco is encouraging us to be a green city by growing veggies, raising wonderful urban gardens, composting green waste and food and restaurant scraps,” Irene Creps, a San Franciscan who owns a ranch in Wheatland, told us. “So why is he trying to dump San Francisco’s trash in a beautiful rural area?”

Behind that question is a complicated battle with two of the country’s largest private waste management companies bidding for a lucrative contract to pile San Francisco’s trash into big mountains of landfill far from where it was created. This is big and dirty business, one San Francisco has long chosen to contract out entirely, unlike most cities that at least collect their own trash.

So the impending fight over who gets to profit from San Francisco’s waste, a conflict that is already starting to get messy, could illuminate the darker side of our throwaway culture and how it is still falling short of our most wishful rhetoric.

TALKING TRASH

The recent recommendation by a city committee to leave the Altamont landfill and turn almost all the city’s waste functions — collection, sorting, recycling, and disposal — over to Recology (see “Trash talk,” 3/30) angered Waste Management as well as some environmentalists and Yuba County residents.

WM claimed the contract selection process had been marred by fraud and favoritism, and members of YUGAG( Yuba Group Against Garbage) charged that sending our trash on a train through seven counties will affect regional air quality and greenhouse gas emissions and target a poor rural community. Observers also want details such as whether San Francisco taxpayers will have to pay for a new rail spur and a processing facility for organic matter.

Mark Westlund of the Department of Environment told the Guardian that negotiations between the city and Recology are continuing and the contract bids remain under seal. “Hopefully they’ll be concluded in the near future,” Westlund said. “I can’t pinpoint an exact date because the deal is still being fleshed out, but some time this summer.”

Under the tentative plan, Recology’s trucks would haul San Francisco’s trash across the Bay Bridge to Oakland, where the garbage would be loaded onto trains three times a week and hauled to Wheatland. Recology claims its proposal is better for the environment and the economy because it takes trucks off the road and removes organic matter from the waste before it reaches the landfill and turns into methane gas.

But WM officials reject the claim, noting that both facilities will convert methane to electricity, energy now used to fuel the trucks going to Altamont. The landfill produces 8.5 MW of electricity annually, some of which is converted into 4.7 million gallons of liquid natural gas used by 300 trucks. The Ostrom Road facility would produce far less methane, using it to create 1.5 MW of electricity annually.

Recology officials say removing organic matter to produce less methane is an environmental plus because much of the methane from Altamont escapes into the atmosphere and adds to global warming, although WM claims to capture 90 percent of it. Yet David Assman, deputy director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, doesn’t believe WM figures, telling us that they are “not realistic or feasible.”

State and federal environmental officials say about a quarter of the methane gas produced in landfills ends up in the atmosphere. “But they acknowledge that this is an average. Some landfills can be worse, others much better if they have a good design. And there is no company that has done as much work on this as Waste Management,” company spokesperson Chuck White told us, citing WM-sponsored studies indicating a methane capture rate as high as 92 percent. “The idea of 90 percent capture of methane is very credible if you are running a good operation.”

Ken Lewis, director of WM’s landfills, said the facility’s use of methane to cleanly power its trucks has been glossed over in the debate over this contract. “We’re just tapping into the natural carbon cycle,” Lewis told us.

But Recology spokesperson Adam Alberti (who works for Singer & Associates, San Francisco’s premier crisis communications firm) counters that it’s better to avoid producing methane in the first place because some of it escapes and adds to global warming, which Recology claims it will do by sorting the waste, in the process creating green jobs in the organics recycling and reducing the danger of the gases leaking or even exploding.

“But what has Recology done to show us that the capture rate at their Ostrom landfill is on the high side?” Lewis asks. “Folks in San Francisco say it’s not possible, but we’ve got published reports.”

Assman admits that San Francisco won’t be able to ensure that other municipalities that use Ostrom Road will be focusing on organics recycling. While questions remain about how that facility will ultimately handle a massive influx of garbage, Altamont has been housing the Bay Area’s trash for decades. And even though San Francisco’s current contract will expire by 2015, this sprawling facility nestled in remote hillsides can still handle more trash for decades to come.

ZERO SUM

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Altamont landfill is the 30-foot-tall fence that sits on a ridge on the perimeter of the facility. It’s covered with plastic bags that have escaped the landfill and rolled like demonic tumbleweeds along what looks like a desolate moonscape.

Wind keeps the blades turning on the giant Florida Power-owned windmills that line the Altamont hills, but it also puffs plastic bags up like little balloons that take off before the bulldozers can compress them into the fill. Lewis said he bought a special machine to suck up the bags, and employs a team of workers to collect them from the buffer zone surroundinge site.

Although difficult to control or destroy, plastic bags are not a huge part of the waste volume. San Francisco has already banned most stores from using them, and the California Legislature is contemplating expanding the ban statewide in a effort to limit a waste product now adding to a giant trash heap in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

“Plastic bags are a visual shocker,” said Marc Roberts, community development director for the city of Livermore. “In that sense, they are similar to Styrofoam. It’s pretty nasty stuff, can get loose, and doesn’t break down. But they’re not a major part of the volume.”

Yet Roberts said that these emotional triggers give us a peek into the massive operations that process the neverending stream of waste that humans produce and don’t really think about that often.

“Our world is so mechanized,” Roberts observed. “Stuff disappears in middle of night, and we don’t see where it goes.”

San Francisco officials confirm that the trend of disappearing stuff in the night will continue, no matter which landfill waste disposal option the city selects.

“No matter what option, it’s going to involve some transportation to wherever,” Assman said. Currently, Recology and WM share control over San Francisco’s waste stream. But that could change if the waste disposal contract goes to Recology.

A privately-held San Francisco firm, Recology has the monopoly over San Francisco’s waste stream from curbside collection to the point when it heads to the landfill. Waste Management, a publicly-traded company that is the nation’s largest waste management operation, owns 159 of the biggest landfills in the nation, including Altamont, the seventh-largest capacity landfill in the nation.

San Francisco started sending its trash to Altamont in 1987, when it entered into a contract with Waste Management for 65 years or 15 million tons of capacity, a level expected to be hit by 2015, triggering the current debate over whether it would be better to send San Francisco’s waste on a northbound train.

TRAIN TO WHEATLAND

Creps, 76, a retired school teacher, warns folks to watch out for rattlesnakes as she shows them around this flood-prone agricultural community.

“This is an ancient sea terrace, and now it’s fertile grazing ground between creeks,” Creps said as we walked around the ranchland that Creps’ grandfather settled when he came to California in 1850. Today he lies buried here in a pioneer cemetery, along with Creps’ adopted daughter, Sophie, who was killed at age 27 after she witnessed a friend’s murder in Oakland in 2006.

Creps’ cousin, Bill Middleton, who grows walnuts on a ranch adjacent to hers, worries about the landfill’s potential impact on the groundwater. “The water table is really high here, so you’ve go a whole pond of water sitting under this thing,” Middleton said.

Wheatland’s retired postmaster, Jim Rice, recalled that when the landfill opened on Ostrom Road in the 1980s, individual cities had veto power over any expansion plans. “But Chris Chandler, who was then the Assembly member for Sutter County and is now a judge, carried a bill in legislature to do away with veto power,” Rice said.

“So we lost out and ended up with a dump,” Middleton said.

Creps believes the landfill should be for the use of local residents only. “There’s a lot of development going on around here and the population is going to grow,” she said. “But at this rate, this landfill will be used up before Yuba and the surrounding counties can use it. And that’s not fair. They think they can get a foothold in places off the beaten path.”

Yet not everyone in Yuba County hates San Francisco’s Ostrom Road plan. On June 7, the Yuba-Sutter Economic Development Corporation backed Recology’s plan to build a rail spur to cover the 100 yards from the Union Pacific line to the landfill site.

EDC’s Brynda Stranix said the garbage deal is still subject to approval by San Francisco officials, but will bring needed money to the county. “The landfill is already permitted to take up to 3,000 tons of garbage a day and it’s taking in about 800 tons a day now,” Stranix said.

If the deal goes through, it would triple the current volume at the landfill, entitling Yuba County to $22 million in host fees over 10 years.

Recology’s Phil Graham clarified that Ostrom Road is considered a regional landfill, one that has already grown to 100 feet above sea level and is permitted to rise another 165 feet into the air. “So even with the waste stream from San Francisco,” he said, “we’ll still be operating well under the tonnage limits.”

“The world has changed. Federal regulations come in, and landfill operations change,” Recology’s Alberti said as we toured the site. “And there really are no longer any local landfills. This one is already operating, accepting regional waste.”

He claimed that Livermore residents had similar concerns to those now expressed in Yuba County when San Francisco’s waste started going to Altamont. Livermore and Sierra Club brought a lawsuit around plans to expand the dump, a suit that forced WM to create an $10 million open space fund.

Alberti said he understands that people like Creps are concerned. “But we are not seeking an expansion. The only thing we are asking for is a rail track.

“From our point of view it’s simple,” he continued. “We have the facility; Ostrom Road is close to rail; and it’s not open to the public. So it’s a tightly contained working area.”

Graham, the facility’s manager, also dismissed concerns that the landfill might harm the groundwater or the health of the local environment. “A lot of people don’t know how highly regulated we are,” he said. “That’s why we are having public meetings. Our compass is out in the community. These are people we work and live with.”

Alberti said YUGAG and other opponents of the landfill aren’t numerous. “If we draw the circle wider to the two-county area, how many people even know a landfill is operating here?”

Graham takes that as a testament to how well the facility is operated. “I consider that a compliment. Obviously, we weren’t causing any problems.”

TRASH MONOPOLY

Those who run both landfills say they recognize that their industry’s heyday is over, and that the future will bring a more complicated system that sends steadily less trash to the landfills.

“Eventually we will be all out of business,” Alberti predicted. “One reason we changed our name was knowing that landfills are not sustainable. And that’s a significant difference. Waste Management is the largest landfill owner in the world. Recology is a recycling company that owns a few landfills and, for that reason, does innovative things like the food scraps program.”

But the company with the new green name has traditionally been a powerhouse in San Francisco’s trash industry, becoming a well-entrenched monopoly after buying out two local competitors — Sunset Scavenger and Golden Gate Disposal and Recycling — a triad that has long held exclusive rights over the city’s waste.

The 1932 Refuse Collection and Disposal Ordinance gave the company now calling itself Recology a rare and enviably monopoly on curbside collection, one that had no expiration date and would be difficult to change. “So legally, it’s not an option,” Assman said.

Retired Judge Quentin Kopp, a former member of the Board of Supervisors and California Legislature, got involved in an unsuccessful effort to break Recology’s curbside monopoly in the 1990s when the company then known as NorCal Waste asked for another rate increase. But he found the contractual structure to be almost impossible to break.

“The DPW director examines all the allowable elements and makes recommendations to the Rate Board,” Kopp said. “And the Rate Board consists of three people: the chief administrative officer, the controller, and the general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.”

SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington says Recology’s curbside monopoly is unusual compared to other places, but it also makes the company a strong contender to the landfill contract. “It comes down to economies of scale. If you don’t have a contract with a facility that does recycling or waste disposal, you can collect the garbage, but where are you going to take it?”

Harrington said the situation was better before Recology purchased Sunset Scavenger, which mostly handled residential garbage, and Golden Gate, which mostly handled commercial garbage. Today, he said, the city has little control over commercial garbage rates or Recology’s overall finances. “That made it more difficult, and we only set the rate of residential garbage collection,” Harrington observed. “They have never come before the rate appeal board over commercial rates. I have asked who subsidizes whom, the commercial or the residential, and they say they think the commercial. But we have no ability to govern or manage those rates.”

WM’s Skolnick said a positive outcome of the current contract negotiations would be to break Recology’s monopoly on curbside collection. “We have to work to keep our business. That’s the competitive process. But we have a competitor that can encroach into our area even though we can’t encroach on San Francisco. And they claim to have one of the most competitive rates in the country — but try getting those numbers,” he said.

WM’s David Tucker added: “We’d like if San Francisco jumped into the 21st century and had a competitive bid process.”

DIRTY BUSINESS

The battle between WM’s local landfill option and Recology’s plan for a longer haul but with more diversion of organic materials is complicated, so much so that the local Sierra Club chapter has yet to take a position.

Glen Kirby of the Sierra Club’s Alameda County chapter told the Guardian that the Sierra Club’s East Bay, San Francisco, and Yuba chapters are taking a “wait and see what becomes public next” stance for now. But insiders say the club’s national position is against landfill gas conversion projects like that at Altamont, possibly favoring Recology’s bid.

Recology proponents claim the Sierra Club didn’t initially oppose landfill gas conversions because its members in the East Bay benefit from an open space fund that WM pays into as mitigation for a 1980 expansion at the Altamont. And Alberti claimed that WM’s analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from the competing waste transportation plans was flawed.

“Their calculation is a shell game. And it relies on Recology using diesel when we are using green biodiesel trains. This is not your grandfather’s train any more. One train equals 200 trucks,” Alberti said.

But WM’s Lewis defends the company’s analysis, which showed Recology’s bid to be worse for greenhouse gas emissions than WM’s.

“Landfill gas is a byproduct of an existing system,” Lewis said, noting that 43 percent of the trash buried at Altamont comes from San Francisco. The implication is that a large part of the methane in the landfill comes from — and benefits — San Francisco.

“We are delivering waste products that contain organics,” he said. “We realized that we could flare methane [to burn it up] or produce electricity. California has very aggressive landfill gas requirements, and the collection rates are relatively good at most sites. But once you’ve collected it, what to do? Historically, they flared the gas. Twenty years ago, there was not a lot of technology to allow anything else.”

Lewis says WM began producing electricity from the gas in 1987. “What we do in the future is decoupled from what was giving us the methane in the past,” he said. “Today we are managing what was brought here 15-20 years ago. It’s your hamburger, cardboard, and paper that has been sitting up there since 1998. We’re doing something good with something that we used to flare.”

“If Altamont was closed today, the gas yield coming off it would be enough to produce 10,000 gallons a day for the next 25 years,” WM’s Bay Area president Barry Skolnick interjected.

And Lewis observed that if you take organics out of the waste stream, as Recology proposes, that matter has value, whether in a digester to produce energy or a composting operation. That complicates the comparison of the two bids.

“We agree that if you can get that waste out in a clean form, that’s a good thing,” Lewis said. “But composting is a very highly polluting approach. In the process of degrading, it gives off a lot of volatiles and carbon dioxide. So air districts have not traditionally been very positive on sitting aerobic composting facilities.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

The contract that San Francisco has tentatively awarded to Recology is for 5 million tons or 10 years, whichever comes sooner. As such, it’s a much smaller contract than the city’s 1987 contract with WM, mostly because the future is uncertain.

But trucks will remain a part of the equation. Recology is proposing to continue driving 92 truckloads of garbage over the Bay Bridge per day, possibly to keep the Teamsters happy, frustrating transportation advocates who believe direct rail haul or barges across the bay would be greener options.

In December 2009, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Bob Morales, director of the Teamsters Union Waste Division, cowrote an op-ed in the Sunday Sacramento Bee, in which they argued the case for increased recycling and composting as a “zero waste” strategy for California and as a way to generate green jobs and reduce global warming.

“Equally important for the future of our green economy is that recycling and composting mean jobs,” Newsom and Morales wrote. “The Institute for Local Self-Reliance reports that every additional 10,000 tons recycled translates into 10 new frontline jobs and 25 new jobs in recycling-based manufacturing.”

Newsom and Morales clarified that they do not support waste-to-energy or landfilling as part of their zero waste vision.

“It makes no sense to burn materials or put them in a hole in the ground when these same materials can be turned into the products and jobs of the future,” they stated.

Yet WM’s Skolnick sees a certain hypocrisy in San Francisco turning its back on the methane gas that its garbage helped create at Altamont over the past three decades. “Here’s a very progressive city, and we want to take their waste from the last 30 years and use gas from it to fuel their trucks,” he said. “But they want to haul waste three times as far to Wheatland. What does that say about San Francisco’s mission to become the greenest city?”

David Pilpel, a political activist who has followed the contract, agreed that San Francisco officials can’t simply walk away from Altamont and call it a green move, but he would like to see the city use rail rather than trucks. “Instead of putting stuff on long-haul trucks, put it on a rail gondola and haul it around the peninsula to Livermore,” he said. “The Altamont expansion was for San Francisco’s purposes. So to say now, ‘We’ll go elsewhere,’ is lame.”

Sally Brown, a research associate professor at the University of Washington, acknowledges that landfills have done a great job of giving us places to dump our stuff and can be skillfully engineered to release less methane and capture more productive biogases.

“However, we are entering a new era where resources are limited and carbon is king,” Brown wrote in the May 2010 edition of Biocycle magazine. “In this new era, dumping stuff may cease to be an option because that stuff has value. and that value can be efficiently extracted for costs that are comparable to or lower than the costs — both environmental and monetary — associated with dumping.”

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on the contract later this year, deciding whether to validate the Department of the Environment’s choice of Recology or go with WM. Either way, lawsuits are likely to follow.

Stage listings

David Talbot

-

June 15, 2010

0

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.

THEATER

OPENING

BAY AREA

Les Liasons Dangereuses Redwood Ampitheatre, 30 Sir Francis Drake, Ross; (415) 251-1027, www.porchlight.net. $15-30. Previews Thurs/17-Fri/18, 7pm. Opens Sat/19, 7:30pm. Runs Thurs-Sun, 7:30pm; also June 28, July 7, 7:30pm. Through July 10. Porchlight Theatre Company presents a production of Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of the 1782 novel.

ONGOING

Abigail: The Salem Witch Trials Temple SF, 540 Howard; www.templesf.com. $10. July 8, 29, Aug 5, 12, 19, 26, 9pm. Through Aug 26. Buzz Productions, with Skycastle Music and Lunar Eclipse Records, presents an original rock opera based on the Salem witch trials.

All My Sons Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.ticketweb.com. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. Actors Theatre performs Arthur Miller’s masterwork.

Andy Warhol: Good For the Jews? Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida; 292-1233, www.tjt-sf.org. $15-45. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sun/20. Renowned monologist Josh Kornbluth is ready to admit his niche is a narrow one: he talks about himself, and more than that, he talks about his relationship to his beloved late father, the larger-than-life old-guard communist of Kornbluth’s breakthrough Red Diaper Baby. So it will not be surprising that in his current (and still evolving) work, created with director David Dower, the performer-playwright’s attempt to “enter” Warhol’s controversial ten portraits of famous 20th-century Jews (neatly illuminated at the back of the stage) stirs up memories of his father, along with a close family friend — an erudite bachelor and closeted homosexual who impressed the boyhood Josh with bedtime stories culled from his dissertation. The scenes in which Kornbluth recreates these childhood memories are among the show’s most effective, although throughout the narrative Kornbluth, never more confident in his capacities, remains a knowing charmer. (Avila)

Bone to Pick and Diadem Cutting Ball Theater, Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sun/20. Cutting Ball Theater closes its tenth season with a pair of plays by Eugenie Chan.

Boys Will Be Boys New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 26. What happens when you realize you have Gay Attention Deficit Disorder? This comedic musical aims to find out.

Die Walküre War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, SF; www.sfopera.com. $15-360. Sat/19, Tues/22, June 25, 30, 7pm. Through June 30. San Francisco Opera presents the second installment of Wagner’s Ring cycle, directed by Francesca Zambello.

“Durang Me!” Next Stage, 1620 Gough; 1-800-838-3006, www.custommade.org. $10-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (no show July 4). Through July 10. Custom Made performs two comedies by Christopher Durang: Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, and The Actor’s Nightmare.

La Fanciulla Del West War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, SF; www.sfopera.com. $15-360. Opens Wed/9, 7:30pm. Fri/18, July 2, 8pm; June 24, June 29, 7:30pm; June 27, 2pm. Through June 17. San Francisco Opera presents Puccini’s opera, with Deborah Voigt as Minnie.

Forever Never Comes Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. Crowded Fire performs Enrique Urueta’s world premiere “psycho-Southern queer country dance tragedy.”

Giant Bones Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (650) 728-8098, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-50. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/19. Cobbled from the stories of Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn, this frolic into the fantasy genre is a multi-corn misstep from writer-director Stuart Bousel. The only good thing about the convoluted plot—which, in addition to the requisite assortment of wizards, dragons, and whatnot has a play-within-a-play dimension featuring a band of caviling actors—is that it is so convoluted you can safely stop paying attention to it almost immediately. For the rest, you will have to endure two hefty acts’ worth of amateurish theatrics, whose look and tone suggest an Interstate mishap between giddy vanloads of Renaissance Fairegoers and Star Trek conventioneers. (Avila)

Gutenberg! The Musical! Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy, SF; www.beardsbeardsbeards.com. $20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. A Theatre Company presents a musical about two writers who scheme to create a Broadway musical about Johann Gutenberg.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Thurs, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 27. On the principle that when you’ve got it you should really flaunt it, San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers essay their second revival of a musical by the storied Cockettes. Hot Greeks, which premiered in midnight performances at the old Palace Theater in 1972, was the gleefully crazed cross-dressing troupe’s only other fully scripted musical besides, of course, Pearls Over Shanghai.

While not the Oresteia or anything, Hot Greeks is more than an excuse for a lot of louche, libidinous hilarity. Okay, not much more. But it is a knowing little romp — supported by some infectious songs courtesy of Martin Worman and Richard “Scrumbly” Koldewyn — wedding trashy high school romance with the trashy ancient Greece of Aristophanes and the Peloponnesian War. (Avila)

*How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lost My Virginity SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Sun, 7pm. Through June 27. A natural born charmer and a comedic actor with hard-won training behind her, Aileen Clark wins over an audience within about ten seconds. But her stories (co-scripted by John Caldon and ably directed by Claire Rice) turn out to be just as solid: all of them loving, irreverent, and unfailingly hilarious autobiographical accounts of coming of age across three cultures. Born to a Nicaraguan mother and a Scottish father and raised principally in Brazil, Managua and San Francisco, Clark’s perfectly pitched monologue comes liberally spiced with Spanish and Portuguese, sweetened by an affecting but never maudlin honesty, and stirred with a feisty humor clearly a lifetime in the making. As well paced and energetic as this Guerilla Rep and Ann Marie co-production is, it could probably be tightened further by shaving some 10 minutes off the 90-minute run time. Nonetheless, you are not likely to regret a minute of this frank and funny, wise and sassy visit to Aileen’s world. (Avila)

KML Goes Undercover Zeum Theater, 221 4th St, SF; www.killingmylobster.com. $10-20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 7pm, 10pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 27. Killing My Lobster returns with a series of comedic vignettes based on the theme of espionage.

Krapp’s Last Tape Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through July 3. Cutting Ball Theater remounts its strong recent production of Samuel Beckett’s hour-long solo play, featuring a full-fledged and satisfying turn by a hearty, slyly comic Paul Gerrior as the titular Krapp, reflecting on the fleeting sense of self recorded on reel-to-reel tapes over the course of a long life. Artistic director Rob Melrose approaches the material with supreme assurance and passionate but never stifling fidelity. David Sinaiko provides the recorded voice of the younger Krapp, expertly balancing a passion and unselfconscious pomposity that has Gerrior’s Krapp alternately bemused, euphoric, and wincing through one of Beckett’s most autobiographical and surprisingly affirming pieces. Melrose’s choice use of scenic elements, meanwhile, including the palpably solid 1950s-era tape machine, places Gerrior (suitably odd and natty in costumer Maggie Whitaker’s dapper vest, high-water trousers and white shoes) in a kind of communion with the reel and the real—an affecting and quietly unsettling relationship, pitched against an infinite blackness all around, that has Krapp at one point resting his head gently on the machine as he and the insubstantial voice of his younger self relive a moment of intimacy with a long-gone lover. (Avila)

Marga Gomez is Proud and Bothered New Conservatory Theater Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $18-40. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show June 25); Sun, 2pm. Through June 26. Gomez performs her GLAAD Media award-winning comedy.

The New Century New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun/20, July 11, 2pm. Through July 11. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Paul Rudnick’s bill of short comedies.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St.; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. Starting July 10, runs Sat, 8pm and Sun, 7pm. Through August 1. Thrillpeddlers presents this revival of the legendary Cockettes’ 1970 musical extravaganza.

Peter Pan Threesixty Theater, Ferry Park (on Embarcadero across from the Ferry Bldg); www.peterpantheshow.com. $30-125. Tues and Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 2pm; Sun, 1 and 5pm. Through August 29. JM Barrie’s tale is performed in a specially-built 360-degree CGI theater.

Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show Marines’ Memorial Theater, 609 Sutter; 771-6900. $30-89. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 27. From somewhere before the Beatles and after Broadway “Beatlemania” comes this big band cigarettes-and-high-ball nightclub act, recreating the storied Vegas stage shenanigans of iconic actor-crooners Frank Sinatra (David DeCosta), Dean Martin (Tony Basile), and Sammy Davis Jr. (Doug Starks), and sidekick comedian Joey Bishop (Sandy Hackett). The band is all-pro and the songs sound great — DeCosta’s singing as Sinatra is uncanny, but all do very presentable renditions of signature songs and standards. Meanwhile, a lot of mincing about the stage and the drink cart meets with more mixed success, and I don’t just mean scotch and soda. The Rat Pack is pre-PC, of course, but the off-color humor, while no doubt historically sound, can be dully moronic. (Avila)

“Something C.O.O.L.: The Summer Cabaret Festival” Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; www.brownpapertickets.com. Free-$10. Mon-Tues, 7:30pm; Wed, 8pm. Through June 27. Cabaret singer Carly Ozard presents six diverse showcases (Mon-Tues nights) and hosts open mics (Wed nights) with professional performers.

Speed the Plow Royce Gallery, 2910 Mariposa; 1-866-811-4111, www.speedtheplowsf.com. $28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/19. Expression Productions performs David Mamet’s black comedy.

*The Tosca Project American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2ACT, www.act-sf.org. $15-87. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Wed, Sun, 2pm. Through June 27. Four years in the making, this ACT–SF Ballet collaboration unfurls a lushly romantic, whimsical pageant of San Francisco history through movement, character, mise en scène, and an irresistible cultural lens: the famed North Beach bar lending the project its setting and name. Co-created by ACT’s Carey Perloff and SFB choreographer Val Caniparoli, the storyline traipses over every iconic period since Prohibition—sometimes too cursorily but generally with vigor and a quietly gathering intoxication—meanwhile centering on three characters: the tragically lovelorn Italian bartender-owner (Jack Willis); a Russian émigrée and regular (Rachel Ticotin) who eventually inherits the establishment; and an African American musician (Gregory Wallace) arriving on the lamb, who becomes another permanent fixture of the place. Never far away either is the incarnation of the Bartender’s lost love, played by SFB’s enchanting Sabina Allemann. Although the story is conveyed without dialogue, there are moments when words take the stage too—how could they not in Beat-era SF, especially with a neighbor in poet-publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti (played here by the consistently winning Peter Anderson). The truly rare treat, of course, is watching the dancers of SF Ballet—not least the radiant and commanding Allemann (who retired from SFB in 1999), with added power and charisma in key scenes from Pascal Molat—relatively up-close and personal, mingling persuasively with their formidable actor colleagues, enveloped in an exquisite stage design (courtesy of Douglas W. Schmidt, gorgeously lit by Robert Wierzel) and a moody soundscape (by Darron L West) featuring choice period songs. (Avila)

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through July 30. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

BAY AREA

The Drawer Boy Marion E. Greene Black Box Theatre, 531 19th St, Oakl. www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 4. TheatreFIRST presents Michael Healey’s comedy about two aging farmers with a family secret.

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri/18, 9pm; Sun/20, 7pm. Through June 20. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

“Fireworks Festival” Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $25-35. Through July 3, showtimes vary. This performance festival includes work by John Leguizamo, David Sedaris (whose show is already sold out), Dan Hoyle, and Wes “Scoop” Nisker.

God’s Ear Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-28. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; and Sun, 5pm. Through Sat/20. Against a frozen, deceptively empty-looking landscape of perpetual winter, an anguished married couple stagnates in grief over the accidental death of their young son. Estranged by the sorrow and guilt they feel, they spend most of the time apart but not alone: Mel (Beth Wilmurt) stays at home, where she loses herself in obsessive domestic projects while fielding questions from their surviving daughter — the equally traumatized but far more resilient Lanie (Nika Ezell Pappas) — with assists from the Tooth Fairy (Melinda Meeng) and G.I. Joe (Keith Pinto); meanwhile, Ted (Ryan O’Donnell) wanders in his business suit through a string of airports and airport bars commiserating with other lost souls (Joe Estlack and Zehra Berkman). New York-based playwright Jenny Schwartz’s whimsical meditation on the process of grieving is something like The Rabbit Hole as written by Ionesco, fueled by dialogue that makes an overly showy and eventually tedious hysterical poetry of the banalities, clichés, and platitudes spoken by her stricken characters as a kind of prefab linguistic armor — everything and anything to avoid saying something. Director-choreographer Erika Chong Shuch stages the action in this Shotgun Players production with warm energy and imagination, however — and a handful of tuneful, clever songs from composer Daveen Digiacomo — compensating somewhat for the motionless plot. Moreover, Shuch undercuts the play’s maudlin tendencies by moving her able actors and even the stage properties around in swift, comical, aptly dreamlike fashion, as the stunned couple continue their largely separate meanderings, meaningfully spouting “meaningless” lines about bucking up, or settling in, or riding off, etc. The problem is there is not much beneath this frozen surface of clichés beyond more cliché. (Avila)

*In the Wake Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $13.50-71. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinee Thurs/17; no show June 25); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 27. Brilliantly weaving the political and the personal, New York playwright Lisa Kron takes on the myth and mayhem of American exceptionalism through the prism of a compelling lefty smarty-pants named Ellen (Heidi Schreck) and her “alternative” family circle, as it slowly unravels during the first decade of the 21st century. From her modest Manhattan perch — shared with adoring, wise-cracking longtime boyfriend Danny (Carson Elrod) — Ellen rails against the ineptitude of the Democrats in the face of the rising Right and its season of havoc. But she’s already told the audience she has a problem with “blind spots,” much like the country. Projections of headlines and sound bites, intermittently splayed across the fortified proscenium arch, locate the action at precise moments in the dreary political timeline of the last decade, beginning with the 2000 election coup that has put a damper on Thanksgiving festivities (despite inclusion of Pilgrim smocks). Her sister (Andrea Frankle) and sister’s wife (Danielle Skraastad) are there too, along with Ellen’s older friend Judy (Deidre O’Connell), a cranky, deceptively oblivious relief worker just back from a refugee camp in Africa. As time goes by, and Ellen turns to an open relationship with a woman filmmaker (Emily Donahoe), our protagonist’s bedrock assumptions about the natural order of things get sorely tested. Leigh Silverman directs a top-notch cast in a remarkably engaging mix of political dialogue and personal entanglements, written for the most part with stirring intelligence and incisive humor. If the play loses focus and momentum by the second act — despite a wonderfully charged scene between Ellen and Judy that is the play’s most memorable — its wit, real anger and constructive irreverence still make it too good to miss. (Avila)

John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Wy, Orinda; (510) 548-9666, www.calshakes.org. $34-70. Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also June 26, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through June 27. Cal Shakes leads off its season with an original staging of John Steinbeck’s early story cycle, a collaboration with Word for Word theater company gracefully adapted by acclaimed San Francisco playwright Octavio Solis (Lydia, Ghosts of the River). Artistic director Jonathan Moscone directs a fine 11-actor cast in lively performances across a smoothly intertwining set of ten tales, all revolving around two specific households—one, the Munroe family, settled upon a notoriously “cursed” patch of land—in the central California valley that a Spanish explorer once dubbed “the pastures of heaven.” Irony anyone? Steinbeck went for broke in the themes and taboos he touches upon here, from incest, madness, infanticide—he misses one or two, but not many. It’s sometimes somber yet rarely heavy going, however, with many lighter stories and situations in the mix, and director Moscone’s staging missing few opportunities for added humor along the way. At the same time, the stories are not equally compelling—the overly crowd-pleasing “song” story of two Mexican American sisters (Catherine Castellanos and Joanne Winter) who segue almost unconsciously from a failed restaurant venture into prostitution, for instance, is cute but surprisingly ho-hum. But if you lie back and let the play’s frontier landscape unfurl (as you do literally anyway in the hill-saddled Bruns Amphitheater), the evening has a dependable charm and several dramatic highlights—not the least of which features the powerful Rod Gnapp in the role of a man desperate to appear prosperous before his family and neighbors. (Avila)

Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri/18, June 25, July 2, 9, 7pm; July 3, 5pm; Sun/20, July 11, 2pm. Ann Randolph’s comic solo show about an irreverent woman’s trip back to her childhood home in Ohio.

1001 Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 488-4116, www.justtheater.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sun/20. Just Theater performs Jason Groete’s Arabian Nights-inspired tale of post-9/11 life.

Opus Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $27-62. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 27. TheatreWorks performs Michael Hollinger’s drama, set in the world of chamber music.

Speech & Debate Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm, 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through July 18. Aurora Theatre closes its 18th season with Stephen Karam’s comedy about three teen misfits connected to a small town sex scandal.

*Woody Guthrie’s American Song Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-54. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 27. Marin Theater Company presents director-adapter Peter Glazer’s graceful, dynamic staging of the life and times of Woody Guthrie using the famed folk singer’s own enduring words and music (impressively, rousingly orchestrated and arranged by Jeff Waxman). Traveling alternately hard, light, and stirringly through the 1930s and 1940s before leaping ahead to alight briefly on the present (which is never far, in fact, from any of the concerns of the much abused but resilient working people channeled so brilliantly in Guthrie’s social poetry), five charismatic cast members (Lisa Asher, Berwick Haynes, Sam Misner, Matt Mueller, Megan Pearl Smith) sing, act, and play their own instruments beautifully, backed by a smooth and irresistible band under multi-instrumentalist and musical director Tony Marcus. You don’t have to know a lick of Guthrie’s material to immediately understand its relevance and beauty in these cleverly staged set pieces, which are as humorous and crowd-pleasing as they are unapologetically damming and defiant of the rule of capital. For Guthrie fans, of course, this is a must. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $10-50. Sun, 11am. Through June 27. The Amazing Bubble Man, a.k.a. Louis Pearl, performs his family-friendly show.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Ball-ist-ic CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; 626-2060, www.counterpulse.org. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm and 9:30pm. $18-22. Scott Wells & Dancers present a performance with seven dancers and a lot of balls.

Fauxgirls! Kimo’s Penthouse Lounge, 1351 Polk; 885-4535, www.fauxgirls.com. Sat/19, 10pm. Free. The female impersonation revue’s ninth anniversary show.

Liss Fain Dance Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Thurs/17-Sat/19, 8pm. $15-30. The company presents its home season, with two premieres, How It Ends and Speak of Familiar Things.

Marsh’s 20th Anniversary Performance Marathon The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Sat/19, noon-midnight. A full-day of performances, including appearances by Charlie Varon and David Ford, and a late-night party.

Mortified SF Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St; 647-2888, www.makeoutroom.com. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm. $12-15. Share the shame with firsthand stories of embarrassment.

“San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival” Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon; 474-3914, www.worldartswest.org. Sat-Sun, 2pm (also Sat, 8pm). Through June 27. $22-44. Nearly 600 Bay Area performers representing 20 cultures participate in this 32nd annual festival.

Sherri aka Cherchez La Femme Club Six, 60 6th St; 863-1221, www.cherchezlafemme.eventbrite.com. Fri/18, 9pm. $10-15. Performing along with Ariellah and Deshret Dance Company, Freyja, Auberon, Calamity Sam, Mirtara, blackhoodygrrrl and Superkate.

Music listings

David Talbot

-

June 15, 2010

0

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bernadette, Stripmall Architecture, Conspiracy of Venus, Ziva Independent. 8pm, $14. With a burlesque performance by the Cheese Puffs.

Better Than Lahar, Last Ambassadors Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Jay Brannan, Terra Naomi, Jhameel Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Brother Raven, Golden Retriever, Moholy-Nagy Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

David Broza, GE Smith Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $35.

Delphic, Butterfly Bones, Delle Vellum Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Genius and the Thieves, Victory and Associates, Hi-Nobles El Rio. 8pm, $7.

Cathy Lemon and Johnny Ace with guests Tommy Castro, Kid Andersen, and Ron

Thompson Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Pink Noise, Spiro Agnew, Sharing Type Kimo’s. 9pm, $5.

Ray Collins Hot Club, Go Getters Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.atownagency.com. 8pm, $15.

Spindrift Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

Tea Leaf Green Café du Nord. 9pm, $30.

Wheels on Fire Pissed-Off Pete’s, 4528 Mission, SF; www.pissedoffpetes.com. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Athlete, Carney Independent. 8pm, $15.

Electric Sister, Deeva, Royal Highness Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Melody Gardot Fillmore. 8pm, $35.

Jeremy Jay, My First Earthquake, Attachments Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Eilen Jewell, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Kill Moi, Cinematography, Fake Your Own Death Independent. 9:30pm, $6.

Mallard, Wolf, Ryan Moritz, Camp Out Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

Moanin’ Dove, Geographer, Leopold and His Fiction, DJ John Vanderslice Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Moonalice, Eoin Harrington, Barry "The Fish" Melton Great American Music Hall. 7:30pm, $25. Benefit for Haight Ashbury Free Clinics.

Nachtmahr, Underbyte DNA Lounge. 9pm, $15.

Thrones, Hot Victory Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $10.

*US Bombs, Forgotten, Druglords of the Avenues, Cunt Sparrer Slim’s. 8pm, $14.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

JimBo Trout and the Fishpeople Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-7. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz and special guest Frank(e) spin Afro-tropical, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

Solid Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, free. With DJs Daddy Rolo and Tesfa spinning roots, reggae, dancehall, soca, and mashups.

FRIDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Birdmonster, Dynamite Walls, King Baldwin Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Bryan Minus and the Disconnect, Baker London, Odd Owl Brainwash Café, 1122 Folsom; www.brainwash.com. 8pm.

Junip, LoveLikeFire Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $15.

Jamie Lidell Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; (415) 831-1200. 6pm, free.

Jamie Lidell, Alex B Independent. 9pm, $20.

LSD and the Search for God, Meek, Fuxa, DJ Darragh Skelton Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Manicato, Band Data Elbo Room. 10pm, $13.

"Mix Tape: A Night of Music with Locus Favorite and Emerging Artists" ARC Studios and Gallery, 1246 Folsom; http://kearnystreet.org. 8pm, $10. Benefit for Kearny Street Workshop.

Moccretro, Borneo Epicenter Café, 764 Harrison, SF; (415) 543-5436. 7pm, free.

Portugal the Man, Builders and the Butchers, Morning Teleportation Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

*Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express, Stephanie Finch and the Company Men, DJ

QM, Rec-League, Adverse, Parable Paul Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

EC Scott Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Shellshag, Grass Widow, Dirty Marquis, Street Eaters El Rio. 9pm, $8.

Kelley Stoltz Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Tha Dogg Pound (Daz and Kurupt), thekeenone, Beatiki, Sincere, DJ Mr. E Rock-It Room. 10pm, $25.

Thou, Molloch, Fell Voices, Pale Chalice, DJ Rob Metal Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Wang Chung, Notorious Slim’s. 9pm, $25.

Devon Williams, Impediments, Haunted Tiger, Blue Jungle, Cum Stain, Cosmonauts Pissed-Off Pete’s, 4528 Mission, SF; www.pissedoffpetes.com. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Karen Segal Group Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

Lalah Hathaway Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $22-30.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Bonanza Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Ila Mawana Mojito. 9pm, $7.

Amy Obenski, Liz Ryder Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 7pm, free.

Pine Box Boys, Good Luck Thriftstore Outfit, Shitkickers Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Rob Reich and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 6pm, free.

Tempo: A Brazilian Musical Journey Icthus Gallery, 1769 15th St., SF; (415) 563-3896. 7:30pm, $20. Featuring Brazilian popular music, prayer songs, bossa nova, poetry, movement, and more.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10. With rotating DJs.

Carl Craig and Amp Fiddler Mighty. 10pm, $12.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

Electric Kingdom Eve Lounge, 575 Howard, SF; www.trueskool.com. 10pm, free. With DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist spinning electro, breaks, and house.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Hubba Hubba Revue: Hell DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Burlesque.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Loose Stud. 10pm-3am, $5. DJs Domino and Six spin electro and indie, with vintage porn visual projections to get you in the mood.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. Doo-wop, one-hit wonders, and more with DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat.

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Followed by Warm Leatherette at Space Gallery, 1141 Polk, SF; (415) 377-3325. 9pm. A back to back traveling Cold Wave night with DJs spinning danceable post-punk and psychedelic.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Too Cool for (Pre)School Som. 9pm, $10-$20 donation. With DJs Space Cowboy, Mancub, Shissler, and more. Proceeds to benefit the Silverspot Cooperative Nursery School.

SATURDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Earthless, Dirty Power, Hot Fog, Carlton Melton Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

"Epic Daze: Cannabis Cup USA" Mezzanine. 6:30pm. With Eagles of Death Metal, Lyrics Born, and more.

Terry Hanck Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

*He Who Cannot Be Named, White Barons, Lords El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Head Like a Kite, Jonesin’, Smoosh Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Jim Lauderdale Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 8:15pm, $22.

Mensclub, Bar Feeders, Sassy, Thinger El Rio. 4pm, $8.

*Murphy’s Law, Hoods, Pressure Point, Wolves and Thieves Thee Parkside. 9pm, $12.

Playing for Change Band Slim’s. 9pm, $35.

Point of View, Binky, New Hope for the Dead Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Super Adventure Club, PC Muñoz’s Left Hook, Punk Funk Mob Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Thumper Pissed-Off Pete’s, 4528 Mission, SF; www.pissedoffpetes.com. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Al Coster Group Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $5.

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Lalah Hathaway Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $30.

Rita Lackey and friends Caffe Trieste, 1667 Market, SF; www.caffetrieste.com. 6:30pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Infamous Stringdusters Café du Nord. 9pm, $14.

Andy Irvine Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Keep the Faith: New Old Time Chautauqua Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, Marina at Bay, SF; (415) 345-7575. 7:30pm, $28. A benefit for KPFA.

Sun Araw, Jealousy Amnesia. 9pm, $6.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Booty-shaking hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Club Skirts Orson, 508 4th St., SF; (415) 777-1508?. 9pm, free. With Topp Twins performing live and more. Honoring the women’s films at Frameline.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. Locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm and hostess Felicia Fellatio.

Dead After Dark Knockout. 6-9pm, free. With DJ Touchy Feely.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Blondie K and subOctave spinning indie music videos.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

Larry Heard aka Mr. Fingers Som. 9pm, $20.

Gemini Pride Party Supperclub. 9:30pm, $10. With DJs Mei Lwun, Nuxx, Kipp Glass, and Tristan Jaxx and dance performances throughout the night.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Non Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $20. Bhangra beats with Dholrhythms and DJ Jimmy Love.

Prince vs. Michael Madrone Art Bar. 8pm, $5. With DJs Dave Paul and Jeff Harris battling it out on the turntables with album cuts, remixes, rare tracks, and classics.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Sixties soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*BellRays, Hank IV, Carlos, Primitivas, Ezee Tiger Bottom of the Hill. 2pm, $12.

Christian Mistress, Serpent Crown Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Drag the River, Famous, Stacey Dee and Lil Jen Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Angélique Kidjo, Sarazino Sigmund Stern Grove, 19th Ave at Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. 2pm, free.

Little Wings, Aaron Novik’s Thorny Brocky, NoHow On Make-Out Room. 8pm, $8.

Andy McKee, Johnny Dickinson Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

A Place to Bury Strangers, Light Pollution, Weekend Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $14.

Rescues Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

"Soundwave Festival ((4)): Rock the Bike at Sunday Streets Mission" 24th St and Valencia, SF; www.projectsoundwave.com. 1pm, free. Bike-powered music with Kemo Sabe.

Bobbie Spider Webb Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

William Control, Mankind Is Obsolete, Savi0r, Cystem Cex DNA Lounge. 8:30pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lalah Hathaway Yoshi’s San Francisco. 5 and 7pm, $5-30.

Cal Keoola and Jon Rubin Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Tango #9 Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kally Price Band, SF Bourbon Kings Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10.

Kitchen Fire Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Ray Martinez and Azabache El Rio. 4pm, $8.

Darcy Noonan, Richard Mandel, Jack Glider and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

2010 Country Throwdown Tour Shoreline Amphitheatre, One Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View; (650) 967-3000. 1pm, $21-$41. With Montgomery Gentry, Jamey Johnson, Little Big Town, Jack Ingram, Eric Church, Eli Young Band, Lost Trailers, Heidi Newfield, and more.

DANCE CLUBS

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with Vinnie Esparza and Ludichris.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Boyce Avenue, Tamar Kaprelian Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $14.

Brian Jonestown Massacre, Federale Fillmore. 9pm, $22.50.

Gregory Isaacs Independent. 9pm, $30.

Peggy Sue, Pepper Rabbit, todayokay Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Pulse Right Bullet Vibe, Great Magnet Band, Rules to Ruin El Rio. 7pm, $5.

Smokin’ Joe Lubeck with Bnois King Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Yelawolf, DJ Quest, Z-Man, DJ B. Cause Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Homespun Rowdy, Bluegrass Jam Amnesia. 6pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Ceremony Knockout. 10pm, free. Darkpop, goth, industrial, and more with DJs Deadbeat and Yule Be Sorry.

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

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Brier Rose, Big Blue Whale, American Studies Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Fat Freddy’s Drop, Jeremy Sole Independent. 9pm.

Gema, Sang Matiz Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Dave Hause, Chon Travis, Travis Hayes and friends Thee Parkside. 8pm, $6.

Hot Air Platoon, Storming Stages and Stereos Knockout. 9pm, $3.

Kate Miller-Heidke Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Old Tunnel Road, Wee the Band El Rio. 7pm, free.

Psychedelic Furs, She Wants Revenge Fillmore. 8pm, $32.50.

Rooney, Young Veins, Black Gold Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

Shants, Il gato, Jen Grady Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Topp Twins Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 8pm, $20.

DANCE CLUBS

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Matmos, So Percussion, Lexington Mountain Boys Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Editorial: PG&E’s greed backfires

David Talbot

-

June 15, 2010

1

The defeat of Prop. 16 showed that unlimited corporate spending on a ballot initiative doesn’t guarantee victory.

EDITORIAL The single most important number to come out of San Francisco on election night was this: 67.49 percent. That’s how many people in this city voted against Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s monopoly measure, Proposition 16. It’s a statistic that ought to be posted somewhere on a wall at City Hall to remind everyone in local government that the voters sided overwhelmingly against PG&E and in favor of a public option for local electricity.

It’s a landmark victory. On the state level, the defeat of Prop. 16 showed that unlimited corporate spending on a ballot initiative doesn’t guarantee victory, that an underfunded coalition can defeat a giant utility — and that a majority of those in PG&E’s own service area are unhappy with their electricity provider. Public power activists all over the state should take this as a signal that PG&E, and its once-formidable political clout, are on the wane.

In San Francisco — the only city in the nation with a legal mandate for public power — the vote was the most lopsided of any California county. It was the strongest local mandate for public power since the passage of the Raker Act in 1913.

That should be a huge boost for the city’s community choice aggregation (CCA) program. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who has been leading the fight for CCA, was pushing hard to get a contract signed before the June 8 vote; like a lot of observers, he feared that PG&E’s vast war chest would overwhelm the opposition. But now that Prop. 16 is dead — and nothing like it will be back in the near future, if at all — the city has a bit of a breather.

That doesn’t mean all work on the contract should slow down. The San Francisco PUC has been mucking around with this deal for more than a year, and needs to bring it to a close. And the city needs to start preparing to answer PG&E’s propaganda campaign with a concerted effort — from the mayor’s office on down — to remind San Franciscans that CCA power will be greener, safer, and in the long run, cheaper than the energy we’re now forced to buy from PG&E.

Any San Francisco politician who stands with PG&E and opposes CCA will do so at his or her peril.

And while San Francisco is moving to implement a modest public power program, state Sen. Mark Leno is moving in Sacramento to limit PG&E’s ability to try another Prop. 16 move — or to spend tens of millions of dollars trying to block local power initiatives. Leno has introduced a bill that would limit the utility’s ability to use ratepayer money on political or public relations campaigns.

The measure doesn’t have a number yet, but the language is brilliant. It directs the California Public Utilities Commission to disallow any political spending that PG&E tries to add into its regulated rates. And since the company has no source of income other that the money it gets from ratepayers, the impact would be to deny PG&E the ability to spend money working against the interests of ratepayers and the public.

"Over the past 10 years, PG&E has probably spent $150 million on political campaigns — and that’s money that came from the ratepayers," Leno said. "This bill is to protect ratepayers."

PG&E will howl about its First Amendment rights — and, indeed, the Supreme Court has of late given corporations who want to influence political campaigns and legislative issues a good bit of leeway. But the fact remains that PG&E is a regulated utility in California, and the state has every right to determine how much the company can charge its customers and to limit how that money is used.

Leno’s bill, of course, could radically change local politics. If PG&E couldn’t spend millions to defeat public power measures, the city would have far more options — and activists should be thinking about how a future campaign to take over the company’s infrastructure might work.

The Board of Supervisors should pass a resolution endorsing Leno’s bill, and the coalition that worked to defeat Prop. 16 should be working to get other cities and counties around the state to sign on.

PG&E’s greed in putting Prop. 16 on the ballot is starting to backfire — and it can’t happen too soon.

PG&E’s greed backfires

David Talbot

-

June 15, 2010

0