Event Archives — Page 11 of 149 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

ABC7’s pedestrian safety coverage courts controversy

Erica Hanna

March 6, 2014

ABC7’s pedestrian safety coverage courts controversy

ABC7 News Investigative Team’s new “investigative report” on pedestrian safety stirred controversy this week as street safety advocates called out the video for its insensitivity towards pedestrian deaths and lax attitude towards unsafe drivers.

Streetsblog SF and others in San Francisco said the report engaged in “victim blaming.”

ABC7’s pedestrian safety coverage comes on the heels of a number of high-profile traffic collision deaths, including that of 6-year-old Sofia Liu, killed on New Year’s Eve. Since then, the Walk First program to create safer streets has garnered more attention, culminating in Mayor Ed Lee’s announcement today to partially fund safety improvements to the city’s most dangerous intersections, to the tune of $17 million — improvements that languished due to funding gaps since the program was announced in April.

But making all the needed improvements though would cost $240 million, according to city estimates, and that funding has yet to be identified. Suffice to say, the traffic enforcement debate still rages in San Francisco, with emphasis on the word ‘rage.’

“We’ve seen ‘blame the pedestrians’ from police and in the media,” Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition, said at a pedestrian safety hearing in January. Police Chief Greg Suhr that night apologized for his officers’ lax enforcement of drivers, and focus on pedestrians, and pledged to change policies to focus on drivers going forward.

It’s too bad ABC 7’s I-Team didn’t get that memo.

“In San Francisco, simply stepping off the curb can be deadly,” ABC reporter Dan Noyes narrates in their video report. The word ‘deadly’ is capped off with a Hollywood-style musical flourish, like a horror movie moments before the big scare.

“Pedestrians are making mistakes over and over again,” Noyes narrates. The video cuts to pedestrian after pedestrian looking at cell phones, jaywalking, or otherwise engaging in unsafe behavior. It’s fair to say the piece, headlined “I-Team investigates what’s causing pedestrian deaths,” places responsibility of pedestrian safety squarely on the shoulders of pedestrians.

In the report, Noyes stops many pedestrians and calls them out for looking at cell phones — but doesn’t attempt to stop a single driver to do the same. Exacerbating the approach, the I-Team asked for San Franciscans to call out unsafe behavior via Twitter with the hashtag #DidntLook, which was emblazoned over the image of a pedestrian crossing the street.

That may have been what sparked the reaction that followed.

“Should peds look so that last memory is the car who killed them? What should peds do when facing pending death, push a car away?” Kate McCarthy, president of Walk SF, wrote via Twitter.

Twitter user Sonn St Paul told Noyes “your editorial staff #didntlook at this before giving the okay, huh?” Noyes replied, “We’ve investigated cars and bikes, now it’s pedestrians.

Beyond the pedestrian advocates and Twitter users, StreetsBlog SF’s Aaron Bialick was probably the harshest critic of the piece.

“Noyes didn’t let facts get in the way of producing a pedestrian-shaming piece,” he wrote. “ABC did put some of those pesky facts in the segment, like the SFPD statistics that two-thirds of pedestrian crashes are primarily the fault of the driver. But why should the I-Team’s ‘investigation’ allow rigorous data to spoil the slant of the segment?”

“Noyes is capable of better stuff,” he wrote.

The Guardian spoke with KGO-TV/ABC7 Vice President of News Tracey Watkowski, who defended the piece.

“Our goal for the story is to raise awareness for safety overall in San Francisco,” she said. “It’s all about everyone sharing the road. We’ve done a lot of stories on drivers, and we stand by this story.”

Chief Suhr addresses pedestrian safety after a hearing in January.

When we told Watkowsi that the story seemed to echo the anti-pedestrian slant that Chief Suhr had just apologized for, and that the police (and mayor) are now shifting away from with new outreach efforts focusing on drivers, she again defended her news team.

“Pulling in an event with Greg Suhr would not have made the story better,” she said. “For us it was about overall safety.”

@dannoyes If a ped is distracted they are blamed, if driver is distracted they “just had an accident” even if they kill. @ABC7

— Transit Diaries (@transitdiaries) March 4, 2014

@mabmierau @MeghanCArnold @mikesonn You don’t have the right of way if the crosswalk is red.

— Dan Noyes (@dannoyes) March 4, 2014

@dannoyes @kateatyrownrisk The call to tweet is disgusting.

— cynthia (@cynthia_says) March 4, 2014

@dannoyes @abc7newsBayArea I will watch. I’d also invite you to come to 9th & Mission, where every day I’m almost hit by turning vehicles.

— Meghan Arnold (@MeghanCArnold) March 4, 2014

If you help perpetuate the attitude that drivers have no responsibility for making streets safe you have blood on your hands. #didntlook

— Antoni Reezz (@printtemps) March 5, 2014

.@dannoyes This six year old #didntlook. Guess she #shouldalooked, huh? You should tell her mom that. http://t.co/4kWmpZNoA8

— Alex Halpern (@HalpernAlex) March 4, 2014

Really @dannoyes? Your focus on pedestrian safety is to encourage #didntlook tweets to blame peds? Seems like you didn’t look at the facts.

— Jeremy (@JspiderSF) March 4, 2014

.@dannoyes I dare you to say #didntlook to Sofia Liu’s mom. What part of the conversation seems unreasonable again?

— Kate McCarthy (@kateatyrownrisk) March 4, 2014

Three upcoming events on housing in San Francisco

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

March 6, 2014

Three upcoming events on housing in San Francisco

There are a few upcoming opportunities to have your say in the ongoing dialogue about the San Francisco tenants’ struggle as long-term renters grapple with rising rents and the threat of displacement.

Amid the housing pressure, a thriving tenants’ rights movement has unfolded in the city to spur multiple legislative pushes for reform. These conversations (and the art exhibit to piece these issues together on a deeper level) are timely.

Wed/12: San Francisco Neighborhoods on the Brink: A Panel Discussion on Displacement, Gentrification, Rising Rents & the Loss of Affordable Housing

Hosted by San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia, this panel discussion will feature comments by District 11 Sup. John Avalos, Public Policy Director of the Chinatown Community Development Center Gen Fujioka, and SFUSD teacher and Ellis Act target Sarah Brant.

An announcement description says the discussion will focus on the “dilemma facing long-time residents and renters of modest means — and the gutting and gentrification of San Francisco — as real estate speculation and a quickly widening income gap drive rents to dizzying heights while the rental supply dwindles.”

Details here.

“There’s a difference between a neighborhood changing—which is natural and organic—versus the destruction of a neighborhood, its history and legacy, which is what is happening right now in the Mission District.” —Alejandro Murguía

Wed/12: “Sólo Mujeres: HOME / inside out” – An interdisciplinary exhibit at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts

Curated by Susana Aragón and Indira Urrutia, this exhibition features 24 women artists in exploring the symbolic space of home through a variety of mediums, including installation, painting, photography, sculpture, poetry, video and mixed media. Artists include Yolanda Lopez, Xuchi Eggleton, Ximena Sosa, Windsong, Susana Aragón, Sofía Elías, Tina Escaja, Tanya Marie Vlach, Rebeca García Gonzales, Solange Bonilla Leahy, Natalia Anciso, Melanie Lacy Kusters, Marta R, Zabaleta, Mariella Zevallos, Indira Urrutia, Gabriela Luz Sierra, Flor Khan, Fan Warren, Cristina Ibarra, Clara Cheeves, Carmen Lang, Camila Perez-Goddard, Anna Simson, Alejandra Rassvetaieff, Adriana Camarena.

From the announcement: “A home is a place that is close to our heart, it triggers self-reflection, thoughts about who someone is or used to be or who they might become. Each room or space is connected to memories, feelings, ideas, dreams, etc. As part of the exhibit, the gallery will be transformed into a house which rooms will be delimited by see through fabric to show the fragility of housing in The San Francisco’s Mission District.

It opens at 7pm with a live performance by María José Montijo and Diana Gameros. Details here.

Wed/19: Affordable housing from multiple perspectives

The Noe Valley Democratic Club is hosting what it calls “a distinguished and authoritative panel of experts” who will speak about affordable housing in the Bay Area. What’s interesting about this event is that it will bring together folks who are leading a citywide push at the grassroots level to strengthen tenants’ rights, as well as people from more developer-friendly entities such as SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Research Association) and the San Francisco Housing Action Committee.

The panelists will include:

Sarah Karlinsky, (panel moderator), Deputy Director of SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Research Association)

Douglas Shoemaker, President of Mercy Housing California, a non-profit dedicated to affordable housing development, fundraising and services.

Teresa Yanga, Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing

Tim Colen , Executive Director of San Francisco Housing Action Committee

Fernando Martí, Co-Director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO)

Sara Shortt, Executive Director of the San Francisco Housing Rights Committee

Details here.

One final tidbit, tangentially related at best. Salon has a great article, Gentrifying the dharma” How the 1 percent is hijacking mindfulness, which thoughtfully examines a trend that has led Buddhists to fear that “their religion is turning into a designer drug for the elite.”

(A few weeks ago activists with Eviction Free San Francisco disrupted a Google panel about mindfulness, triggering a decidedly unenlightened onstage tug-of-war over a banner.)

Best quote is from the Dalai Lama, who sees things this way: “Capitalism only takes the money. Then, exploitation.”

SF votes to ban plastic water bottles on city property

Sasha Cuttler

March 4, 2014

SF votes to ban plastic water bottles on city property

San Francisco continues to lead the way in the nation’s environmental policy, with the Board of Supervisors today [Tues/4] voting unanimously to bar the city from buying plastic water bottles and to ban distribution of plastic water bottles smaller than 21 ounces on city property starting Oct. 1. The ban excludes city marathons and other sporting events.

“We all know with climate change, and the importance of combating climate change, San Francisco has been leading the way to fight for our environment,” Board President David Chiu, who authored the legislation, said at the hearing. “That’s why I ask you to support this ordinance to reduce and discourage single-use, single-serving plastic water bottles in San Francisco.”

Chiu held up a water bottle at the board meeting, a quarter of the way full with oil, to illustrate how much oil is used in the production and transport of plastic water bottles. He also reminded San Franciscans that the current fad of buying bottled water only started in the 1990s when the bottled water industry mounted a huge ad campaign that got Americans buying bottled water.

Somehow, Chiu noted, “for centuries, everybody managed to stay hydrated.”

Proponents say they hope the ban will put a dent in the nearly 60 million water bottles Americans use daily and decrease the amount of plastics that take up room in the oceans and landfills.

“We applaud Supervisor Chiu and San Francisco’s leadership in the movement to think outside the bottle,” said Katherine Sawyer, Campaign Organizer of Think Outside the Bottle at Corporate Accountability International, which took part in a taste test event comparing SF tap water to bottled water before the hearing. “By taking this step, San Francisco continues to be a pioneer, paving the way for cities, states, and national parks across the country to follow suit and buck the bottle. Not only does this measure eliminate wasteful spending on such an eco-unfriendly product, but it also opens doors to increased investment in the most essential of municipal services—water.”

The ban will return to the board next week for a final vote, after which it will head to Mayor Ed Lee for his signature.

Yesterday, today, and Tomorrow

Michael Redmond

March 4, 2014

cheryl@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART Tom Tomorrow’s real name is Dan Perkins. This is important information if you ever happen to call him up, because you will have to squelch the urge to blurt out “Hi, Tom!” when he answers the phone.

“It happens! That’s what I get for coming up with a pen name,” the editorial cartoonist laughs from his home in Connecticut. “When I was starting out, I was in San Francisco running in a little anti-corporate ‘zine called Processed World. A lot of the contributors used pen names, because there was always a sense that you might get blacklisted or boycotted or something if you were associated with it. So I started using this pen name, which was a misremembered version of an old cartoon character. I didn’t quite realize that I was going to have this 25-year career, and would be stuck with this thing!”

He chuckles before adding, “I would also say, even more than the anonymity in the early days, I thought it would be a mnemonic [device]. The cartoon was called This Modern World. It wasn’t about politics so much in those days, it was riffing on technology and consumerism, and ‘Tom Tomorrow’ seemed appropriate to this kind of retro-futurist thing I was doing.”

Longtime Guardian readers need no introduction to Perkins’ work. This Modern World — which satirizes current events with wry humor and laser-sharp intelligence — has appeared weekly in these pages for nearly 20 years; it’s also syndicated in other papers across America. In addition, he’s authored a children’s book and several cartoon anthologies, including 2012’s The World of Tomorrow, which features an introduction by rocker Eddie Vedder (Perkins drew the album art for Pearl Jam’s 2009 Backspacer, which elevated him to a level of fame he never expected: “There are people who have tattooed [my art] on their flesh!”) Last year, he added the prestigious Herblock Prize to his list of cartooning and journalistic accolades. Though he’s East Coast-based these days, he’ll be heading to California next week for events at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco and the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.

Long before he made his name with This Modern World, Perkins says he was “always drawing little comics and cartoons, as far back as I can remember. I’ve been putting together a new PowerPoint show for this Cartoon Art Museum event, and I’ve actually dug up some of these old cartoons. I have this political cartoon that I drew at the age of 14! It’s terrible [laughs], but it’s kind of funny to show it. It’s about Jimmy Carter! Because when I was 14, Jimmy Carter had just given an interview to Playboy magazine, and was being widely mocked for saying that he had lusted after women in his heart. So here I am at 14, drawing a cartoon about that, which is very funny to me in retrospect.”

As he got older (“like every young cartoonist in the 1980s, I went through a phase of trying to do a Gary Larson rip-off, because The Far Side was at the height of its popularity”), he began combining collage with cartooning “in order to riff on advertising culture and technology and so on,” before circling back to politics.

“I’m just doing this one cartoon — it’s not a comprehensive news source — so each week has to be some mixture of something I’m really interested in; something that maybe, hopefully has a news hook; and something that I have something interesting to say about,” he says. “Something that I can be funny about. It may not always show, but I really don’t want to waste the reader’s time.”

Though he admits George W. Bush was an easier politician to make fun of, the Obama administration has also supplied him with plenty of material. “I have a recurring character named ‘Droney’ — the friendly surveillance drone. I do a lot of stuff on the NSA, and the fact that Guantanamo has not been closed, and so on.”

A veteran of the alt-weekly publishing world, Perkins has a unique perspective on how the industry has changed over the years. “I think the short answer is, alt-weekly cartoonists — and there’s maybe a dozen of us working right now — are truly an endangered species. We came into a certain ecosystem and set our own rhythms around that ecosystem,” he says. “Obviously, between the financial crash in 2008, and the ongoing influence of the Internet, that’s been a more tenuous ground. I’m profoundly grateful to the papers that still run cartoons like mine, but it’s an era of entropy. We’re all kind of just hanging on. I’m not the only content creator ever to point out the fact that it’s tricky to figure out how to make a living online. It’s ironic, because [thanks to the Internet], my reach as a cartoonist has never been greater.” (His semi-joking advice to young cartoonists: “Marry someone with tenure.”)

For his Cartoon Art Museum gig, he’ll be sharing the spotlight with a special guest: one of San Francisco’s famed Doggie Diner heads. “To me, the Doggie Diner heads represent my San Francisco. They represent the San Francisco of artists and pranksters. I have a real affection for them. Sometimes, when I have a dream sequence and I need to convey something strange and surreal, I’ll have a Doggie Diner head say a few words, floating in the background.” *

THE WORLD OF TOMORROW: AN EVENING WITH TOM TOMORROW

Tue/11, 7-9pm, $5

Cartoon Art Museum

655 Mission, SF

www.cartoonart.org

March 15, 2pm, free with admission ($5-$10)

Charles M. Schulz Museum

2301 Hardies, Santa Rosa

www.schulzmuseum.org

www.thismodernworld.com

This Week’s Picks: March 5 -11, 2014

Michael Redmond

March 4, 2014

WEDNESDAY 5

San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival

Between Jaws (1975), Shark Week, and last year’s campy hit Sharknado, pop culture’s fascination with sharks is nearly as mighty as the predators themselves. Expand your knowledge beyond fact, fiction, and science fiction at the 11th San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival, which devotes an entire program (Sat/8) to our toothy friends, with a shorts program capped by hourlong doc Extinction Soup, about efforts to ban shark fin soup, followed by a panel of filmmakers and marine experts discussing “Shark Sanctuaries and Ecotourism.” Elsewhere in the fest, you’ll also find films about whales, surfing, and diving, as well as a spotlight on youth filmmakers. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/9, most programs $8-$15

Bay Theater

Pier 39, SF

www.oceanfilmfest.org

“Castro Theatre Remembers Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014)”

In a time when nobody can agree on anything, a single event in recent weeks united us all: grief over the sudden, shocking loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the most universally beloved

actors of our time. He commanded respect (while also seeming like a cool, regular dude) by making interesting choices and fully committing himself to every role, even in sillier movies like Twister — which is, alas, not part of the Castro Theatre’s tribute. What is, however: his Oscar winning turn in Capote (2005), as well as The Master (2012), Boogie Nights (1997), Doubt (2008), Happiness (1998), and several others, all offering indelible performances. (Cheryl Eddy)

Wednesdays through March 26, plus March 28

Tonight, Capote, 7pm; The Master, 9:30pm, $8.50-$11

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

Personal & the Pizzas or The Pizza Underground (feat. Macaulay Culkin)

The “Pizza War” shows have grabbed San Francisco headlines like an appetite with the munchies does a Little Caesar’s “Hot-N-Ready.” It’s funny how local punk band Personal and the Pizzas had been laying low for a bit, but the recent news of former-child actor, one-time MJ playmate Macaulay Culkin forming a Velvet Underground-Lou Reed cover band seems to have awakened a sleeping giant. Everybody loves a good turf battle and high-profile beef. On March 5, SF has an opportunity to either swear allegiance to local favorites — or they can take a walk on the wild side and see how Hollywood does. (Andre Torrez)

The Pizza Underground

With Windham Flat and Toby Goodshank

Early show 6pm, $12

Neck of The Woods

406 Clement, SF

www.neckofthewoodssf.com

Personal & The Pizzas

9pm, free

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

THURSDAY 6

Glasvegas

Glasgow’s Glasvegas is Europe’s best-kept secret. The doo-wop tinged indie rockers have had albums chart at number two in the UK, number two in Sweden, have a platinum and a gold record under their belt, and are in total obscurity here in the colonies (despite spending half a year living on the best coast in 2010). Thank God they remain beautifully under-the-radar stateside, because who doesn’t want to see a band this good in a venue as small as the Rickshaw Stop? Old-school melody and new wave melancholy dominate the foursome’s body of work, perfect for slow dancing or single tears. If you’re not already sold, take into consideration the delicious thickness of James Allan’s brogue and the importance of supporting totally rad female drummers (Jonna Löfgren is a total badass). (Haley Zaremba)

With Popscene DJs

10pm, $17

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Midday Veil, White Cloud, 3 Leafs

A show can benefit greatly from atmospheric conditions. Lights, visuals, and sound are all conducive elements to what could enable the perfect night out. Seattle’s Midday Veil have played SF before and despite a name that might suggests a laid-back tone, it’s actually a slow burn that warms up to an incendiary frenzy that will get your attention. Expect visuals, experimental mind-melting noise and a solid bill of opening bands to bring the energy. (Torrez)

With White Cloud and 3 Leafs

9:30pm, $6

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

www.theknockoutsf.com

“Meditations on Silk” Opening Reception

The ancient discipline of silk painting goes back thousands of years in Tibet. Silk painting, also known as “thangka” served as important teaching tools in Buddhism and the path to enlightenment. Ellen Brook has been creating silk designs in California for over 15 years. Focusing on the art form’s long tradition of enlightenment, the SF-based artist has created a collection of colorful abstract paintings on silk canvas, on display at the Hilliard Architects Gallery. Through her explorations with meditation, Brook discovered the parallels between painting and consciousness, and the vibrant hues and refined abstract composition pay homage to her meditative approach to art. The contemporary designs are a direct result of “getting out of the way” and “letting it flow,” as the artist puts it. “It’s a truly enlightening experience.” (Laura B. Childs)

5pm – 7pm, free

Hilliard Architects & Gallery

251 Post, Suite 620, SF

www.ellen-brook.com

FRIDAY 7

Ani DiFranco

When Ani DiFranco hit the scene in 1990 with a shaved head and a battered acoustic guitar, singing raw and emotive folk songs in noisy bars, she was easily and quickly pigeonholed as radical-lesbian-angry-women-with-guitars-man-hater music. Twenty years and nearly as many albums later, DiFranco is still oft-dismissed for the same small-minded reasons, but to this I say: Good. Because a) I love me some angry womanist music and b) any concert that repels people who have a problem with angry womanist music sounds like a great concert to me. DiFranco’s DIY ethic and career-long resistance to major labels is an inspiration. Her fierce autonomy, social activism, and brutally honest storytelling have inspired an uncountable number of artists and fans over several decades. Now in her forties, DiFranco is more of a Righteous Babe than ever. This show is not to be missed. (Zaremba)

With Jenny Scheinman

9pm, $33.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-3000

www.thefillmore.com

Pump & Dump: A Parentally Incorrect Comedy Show

Postpartum depression be damned! Shayna Ferm and MC Doula are two new mothers who don’t take motherhood too seriously. Together, the comedian duo has created “Pump & Dump,” a two-hour “parentally incorrect” show filled with comedy, inappropriate music, drinking, swearing and commiseration. Through standup and song, they maintain that you don’t have to give up your life BC — before children. It’s not therapy per se, but the comedy show will prove to be quite cathartic. With segments including “Never Have I Ever – Parents Edition” and “Fucked up Things Your Kids Did This Week,” the live comedy event is designed to celebrate motherhood in all its throw up-filled glory. Don’t take parenthood too seriously: these MILFs embrace the insanity of motherhood with a musical set including songs like “Eat Your Fucking Food” and “I Wanna Come Back as a Dad.” “I’ve got a baby on my nip almost 24 hours a day. Sometimes I just wanna take a sip of my husband’s Tanqueray,” sings Ferm in the show’s theme song. “So I pump and dump, I’m not trying to get my baby drunk.” Go ahead mama, order another drink. (Laura B. Childs)

8pm, $20

Verdi Club

424 Mariposa, SF

www.verdiclub.net

SATURDAY 8

Nick Waterhouse

In this digital age, when many of us are scouring Spotify or Soundcloud to learn about artists and music, Nick Waterhouse credits Lower Haight’s cherished Rooky Ricardo’s Records as his primary source for inspiration and education. “I got my Master’s and my Ph.D in American music there,” Waterhouse told Seattle’s KEXP-FM in 2012. “All I wanted to do was hang out there and listen to records.” The troubadour’s dissertation, 2012’s “Time’s All Gone” (Innovative Leisure), embraces listeners with a soulful blend of R&B, blues and rock along with its warm, analog production. Waterhouse manages to evoke the electric rock style of Jim Morrison and the vocal power of James Brown, all while summoning a sound that is fresh and all his own. (Kevin Lee)

With Boogaloo Assassins, DJ Donnell

9 pm, $21

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

Midnite Snaxxx, The Shanghais, Quaaludes, No Bone, Bestfriend Grrlfriend

The Deli Magazine and The Process Records have come together to pack SUB/Mission with the Bay Area’s best grrl power punk rock. Headed by Oakland-based punk trio Midnite Snaxxx, this show is an opportunity not only to support the current local scene but to ensure the presence of female-fronted rock in the future. Proceeds from the show will go to the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, an Oakland nonprofit organization striving to create a safe space where students can build confidence and learn to creatively collaborate with one another while challenging gender stereotypes. Spend 7 bucks on a show that passes the Bechdel test so that more young girls can get the opportunity to take stages and break boundaries. What could be a better cause than that? (Kirstie Haruta)

8pm, $7

SUB/Mission

2183 Mission, SF

(415) 255-7227

www.sf-submission.com

SUNDAY 9

Scarlett Fever

Calling all greasers, punks, hot rodders or anyone who just wants to have a blast while supporting a good cause — check out Scarlett Fever 2014 this afternoon and evening, a benefit for Miss Scarlett James, who suffers from Rett Syndrome, a childhood neurodevelopmental disorder. The annual benefits help pay for her care and for research into the disease, and this year’s outstanding lineup includes live music from The Chop Tops, Memphis Murder Men, Stigma 13 and more, along with burlesque, art shows, car clubs in attendance and raffle prizes from several TV shows and even Scarlett’s godfather Mike Ness’ band Social Distortion. (Sean McCourt)

1-9pm, $15

DNA Lounge

375 11th St, SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

Richie Ramone

Though he was in the Ramones for only five years, Richie Ramone’s contributions to the iconic punk band have had a lasting impression on their legacy—in fact, the late Joey Ramone once said that he felt that the drummer had saved the group in the early 1980s. First hitting the skins on Too Tough To Die, Richie also wrote several songs that are now considered classics during his brief but important tenure, including “Somebody Put Something In My Drink.” He released his first solo record—Entitled—late last year—here’s your chance to hear the new material, and joyously sing along with some old favorites as well. (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $12-$15

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

TUESDAY 11

Litquake Presents: Scott O’Connor and Eddie Muller at the Epicenter

Set in Cold War-era San Francisco, Half World, the new novel from LA-based writer Scott O’Connor was inspired by a program that sounds like the work of a conspiracy theorist but did, in fact, exist: Project MKULTRA, a CIA-run series of mind-control experiments on Americans that lasted for two decades. O’Connor’s literary thriller takes readers into one agent’s tug-of-war between duty and conscience, then transports us to 20 years later, when, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, another troubled government worker risks everything to uncover the crimes and secrets of the past. Eddie Muller, filmmaker and director of the Noir City Film Festival will interview the author. (Emma Silvers)

7pm, $5-$15 suggested donation

Glass Door Gallery

245 Columbus #B, SF

www.litquake.org

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Freedom of Choice

Steven T. Jones

March 4, 2014

It’s 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon in East Oakland, and on stage in the amphitheater at Castlemont High School, Kev Choice is trying to keep a straight face. Seated behind a keyboard in jeans, a button-down shirt, purple sneakers, and a baseball cap, the musician — who’s been Lauryn Hill’s bandleader, and the go-to keyboard player and sideman for Lyrics Born, Goapele, Michael Franti, Too $hort, and the Coup, among others — is serving as accompaniment today for a slightly different type of artist than usual: There are about 20 of them, for one, performing solo or in small, nervous groups, and they’re all at various stages of puberty.

One young lady sings a respectable SWV cover. Two boys rip wordless electric guitar riffs. Then a young man scream-raps a song about hoes and twerking, to the delight of a dozen or so girls in the front row, and punctuates it by ripping his shirt off — much to the chagrin of his teachers and school administrators (one of whom runs on stage to try to cover him, unsuccessfully, just as the song is coming to a close). In other words, just your average high school talent show.

“I was actually surprised he did that bit,” Choice says of the teenager, laughing, a few hours later. The musician began mentoring at Castlemont just a couple months ago, but he already knows some students pretty well. “He can do other things. He came into class singing one of my songs at me last week. But I think he was maybe trying to impress a certain, you know…demographic.”

As someone who grew up rapping for his friends in the schoolyard, then going home to study Beethoven’s piano sonatas, the pitfalls of trying to appeal to a certain demographic — and the difficulty of not fitting neatly into a given category — is a somewhat familiar topic for Choice. He’s an Oakland native who’s always had one foot firmly in the hip-hop world, and one in the world of academia, classical music, and jazz; it’s a balancing act made all the more delicate by the fact that, regardless of his chops as an emcee or producer, no matter what instruments he plays (and he plays a lot of them), he’s always been known predominantly as a sideman. A talented, hard-working, and in-demand sideman, to be sure, but a sideman nonetheless.

It’s from the side, then, that he’s watched as Oakland has changed around him these past few years. He’s seen First Fridays come and blow up, has quietly observed as rent has nearly doubled around Lake Merritt — where he spent his teenage years, and where he currently lives again — and working-class people move elsewhere. He was there at the Oscar Grant protests, he was in the streets for Trayvon Martin, but he’s not generally one to get on a bullhorn.

All of which is to say that, when Choice’s solo record Oakland Riviera dropped in late January — a warm, lush, ambitious album that swerves fluidly between genres, weaving jazz instrumental interludes named for Oakland streets between tracks of Choice’s dynamic, live-band hip-hop — it sounded distinctly like the work of a man with something to prove. Boasting a guest roster that reads like a who’s who in East Bay music, with rappers from Zion I‘s Zumbi to Mistah F.A.B. to local R&B and jazz greats, the album is a determined step into the limelight, drawing a sprawling yet cohesive map and love letter to the town where Choice grew up — a town that’s changing very quickly or not quickly enough, depending on whom and where you’re asking.

“There’s a lot on this album that I’d been thinking about for a long time, but hadn’t really had the chance to say,” Choice explains during an interview back in his neighborhood, at a shiny new burger joint on Lakeshore Avenue, when I ask about the first track that stood out to me, the upbeat anthem “Shed Light.” It’s built around a John Coltrane tune, with Choice rapping lyrics about the development of Oakland’s Uptown District: “No matter how many fancy restaurants sprout up/the menus don’t cater to the issues around us…tale of two cities, the pretty and the gritty/the welcome and neglected, the prosperous and profitless/we got some issues to address, can’t build up part of the city and neglect the rest.”

“I wanted to showcase the beauty of Oakland, and talk about all the possibilities here, but also the struggles,” he says, noting that the record’s name was inspired by traveling to the south of France recently and, upon returning home, wanting to “take people on a trip here, remind people that Oakland is just as beautiful as some of the most beautiful places in the world.”

“The social activism on the album is just a reflection of what I see going on in my city, things I’ve been hearing about for a long time,” he says. “What does gentrification mean? How do we address the crime rate? How does a black man succeed here, or even just escape the violence, escape police harassment? And what can I say and do as an Oakland native to be a positive influence on that?”

At the moment, what he’s not doing very much of is sleeping. Today he has a two-hour break between mentoring at Castlemont (in one of Oakland’s poorest neighborhoods) and a birthday party downtown for the soul singer Jennifer Johns (whom he’s produced, and who guests on his album) that doubles as a fundraiser for the Creating Sustainability campaign, a new project to help build an economic stability plan for the city. When he gets home sometime after 2 am, he’ll do some work on a record a singer just emailed him about producing, practice some lightning-quick Herbie Hancock licks on the piano, and maybe prep for the Black History Month event he’s part of at Laney College the next day.

Last week he was in Atlanta for a Lauryn Hill show; next week he’ll be in the Pacific Northwest on a quick Coup tour. And 10 minutes ago, an elderly woman with glasses interrupted him while he was eating a turkey burger to chastise him for not returning a CD she loaned him a few weeks back.

“I’m so sorry, I’ve been out of town. I promise!” he says, as she smiles and waves him off. “Reverend E — it’s music she wants me to learn for church,” he explains sheepishly after she’s gone. “I need to do that.” Two other neighbors, a middle-aged man with a little boy, and a 20-something kid with a buzz cut, stop to say hi within the span of half an hour. This section of Lakeshore is basically his living room, he admits; he always winds up stopping to talk to folks: “My daughter doesn’t even like walking down the street with me here on a Saturday.”

Of course, should you ever find yourself needing directions in Oakland, he’d be a good person to run into. Kev Choice — real name: Kevin Choice — has spent roughly 30 of his 38 years in this town. One of two boys raised by a single mother, a secretary, in three different Oakland neighborhoods, he was a precocious kid, he says. At Brookfield Elementary in East Oakland, he skipped the first grade after blowing through the workbooks for the year in a month or so.

“I knew how to focus on education, because my mother stressed that was important,” he says. “I caught a little bit of a hard time for that — I was short, and I was smart. But I just knew what I was supposed to do, and I did things fast.”

In seventh grade at Westlake Middle School, an 11-year-old Choice picked piano class as his elective, and within a few months had learned a Muzio Clementi sonata, practicing rigorously and constantly at home, entirely of his own volition. “I think my family was kind of shocked,” he says. “My mom always had music around the house. She liked early Prince, Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross…but here I was playing Bach, Beethoven. Like, where did this come from?”

Still, all he listened to was hip-hop: Run DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, LL Cool J. He started rhyming around age 13, an art form he quickly found brought him a little more respect from his peers than classical piano. He kept them separate, but he kept at both: He was accepted into the competitive Young Musicians Program for teens at UC Berkeley, and joined the jazz band at Skyline High — all of which led to a full scholarship to study piano at Xavier University in New Orleans, where he moved on his own at 17, and where, at his professors’ urging, he dug into jazz history for the first time. “They kind of politely said ‘You suck,'” he recalls. “‘Now go listen to this Thelonious Monk. Really listen.’ And I did. I’d practice eight, 10 hours a day back then. That’s what gave me the foundation I still stand on today.”

After getting his master’s in piano at Southern Illinois University, he landed back in Oakland in 2000, with seven years of rigorous musical education behind him — and zero job prospects. So he started playing cafe and restaurant gigs with a jazz trio here and there. It was at the Java House in Oakland that the bassist from Spearhead first noticed him and suggested he come audition. Shortly afterward, Choice found himself leaving the US for the first time on tour with Michael Franti, playing for stadiums of 10,000 people. Aside from the basics of how to be a touring musician — “pacing yourself, sleeping on a bus” — Choice watched how Franti dedicated himself to causes, how seamlessly he infused his music with activism.

“He inspired people,” says Choice. “That was the first time I saw that you could be socially conscious, be involved in the community, and be a successful artist. You gotta stand behind what you say — you can’t just say shit and not be willing to live it on the day-to-day basis.”

The tour with Spearhead led to a tour with Goapele; the tour with Goapele led to putting together a band for Lyrics Born, after Lyrics Born decided he wanted to rap with a full band in 2006. And the day after he got fired by Lyrics Born (final straw: missing a flight to Hawaii when they were opening for the Black Eyed Peas), Choice got a call from a producer friend, who informed him he was one of three guys who would be auditioning for Lauryn Hill the following afternoon at a studio in Emeryville.

As it turned out, he was the only one of said guys who could keep up with Hill — who entered and exited the audition without saying a word to any of the musicians — when she started playing guitar in an odd time signature. From that point on, Choice was her bandleader for a year and a half, putting together a live band under her orders out of his musician friends around the Bay. She would text him music to learn in the middle of the night, he says. “Go download this, teach the band this by tomorrow.” Once, she flew him to LA, and sent him to a hotel room where there was a box full of studio equipment waiting. Her instructions: Put together a studio, then go to a record store and buy every Bob Marley CD he could find — she wanted to him to re-create the instrumentals for the bulk of Marley’s catalog.

“Which, on the one hand, why am I in this hotel room trying to remake 30 Bob Marley songs?” he says, laughing. “On the other hand, it felt like a mystical guidance kind of test — ‘Once you do this, I know you’re ready.'” This was 2007, and despite overseeing her band during a tour that would make headlines largely for Hill’s antics (some would say meltdowns), Choice maintains she was crucial to his growth, pushing him and exposing him to Ethiopian and other world music.

“She was hard, but she was also really encouraging,” he says. “She’d say, ‘You have what it takes, but you gotta be sharp at all times. And if you wanna be one of the best, you can’t conform to what other people you think you should do.'”

In the years between leaving Hill’s band and putting out this new record, Choice has been taking steps toward center stage: At the helm of the Kev Choice Ensemble, a jazz-funk-hip-hop band he created with the idea of a modern Duke Ellington in mind, on a handful of solo mixtapes, and on a 2009 record, The Power of Choice, a compilation of his recorded work from the previous five years. But Oakland Riviera represents a true premiere for the musician — an unmistakable coming-out by someone who’s been hustling for a solid decade and a half.

“He has an unstoppable work ethic,” says the Coup’s Boots Riley, of his experiences with Choice. “On tour, he’ll have a keyboard and a laptop in his lap, recording music while we drive in the van. And I don’t know when he sleeps, because then he’ll be up ’til five in the morning in the hotel room fiddling away on the keys, nodding off, waking back up a second before his head is going to fall into the desk, blinking his eyes while waking up, rewinding the recording he was working on, and playing for a few more minutes before nodding off again…and sure enough, each day he’ll have posted a new song on Facebook or wherever, often based on whatever’s been happening.”

“I’ve written maybe 100 songs in my career,” adds Riley. “I’m sure Kev Choice has made 100 songs since October.”

If early reviews are any indication, the 15 that made the cut for this album have the potential to take Choice, as an emcee and as a solo artist, to a new level in the public eye. “This album was, I feel like I could be one of the dopest artists out of the Bay Area, so why not just show people?” he says. His personal life was one driving force. Over the last couple years, both his mother and his best friend/former girlfriend passed away — the latter from cancer, at age 34 — and he realized something. “When you lose the closest people to you, you got nothing really left to lose. Why not get this out? Why not go for it all?”

Part of the story he’s apparently been waiting to tell: a loving portrait of a city whose profile is similarly, if problematically, on the rise.

“When people talk about Oakland as the new, hip place to be — it’s always been that,” he says. “Aside from LA, Oakland is the cultural center of the West Coast. There is so much art here. The music, the history, the politics…but when you start seeing Oakland on lists of top destination spots, why are they saying that? Because there’s a certain amount of five-star restaurants now, or cool little hipster bars?” he says, in the few minutes before he has to leave to head toward Uptown, into the heart of them. “That’s starting to get away from the essence of what Oakland really is, which is about the people.”

“At the same time, there are people within 20-mile radius of us right now who are literally scared to come here. ‘Oh, they’ll shoot you over there, they’ll rob you.’ Look, there is a possibility that will happen,” he says. “There’s also a very real possibility that you’ll meet a very intellectual person and have a great conversation, or go to a club and hear some great music, or walk up the street and see people doing capoeira, doing some crazy, creative shit.

“People block out what Oakland is because of their perception, and perception is everything. If you never spend time here, believe me — it’s something entirely different from what you’d expect.”

Events: March 5 – 11, 2014

Michael Redmond

March 4, 2014

Listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.

WEDNESDAY 5

Bikes to Books beer and map social Bender’s Bar and Grill, 806 S. Van Ness, SF; www.burritojustice.com. 7-9pm, free. Gather to talk lit history, maps, and urban cycling with like-minded folks.

David Grand City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. The author reads from Mount Terminus. Also reading: Wesley Stace, author of Wonderkid.

“Twelve Brief Moments: Reading and Publication Launch’ Southern Exposure, 3030 20th St, SF; www.soex.org. 7pm, free. Culminating event of a year-long series of readings by artist Michael Swaine, who performed a short text-based work every month from February 2013 through this event.

THURSDAY 6

“A Curious Menagerie” Creativity Explored Gallery, 3245 16th St, SF; www.creativityexplored.org. Opening reception 7-9pm, free. Exhibit runs through April 16. Over two dozen Creativity Explored artists interpret various members of the animal kingdom, both real and imaginary, in this new gallery show.

“Shipwreck: Wind in the Willows” Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, $10. Six writers “destroy” one great book and character using their literary skills and creative imaginations. This month’s participants include Alan Leggit, Sean Keane, Alitzah Oros, Christopher Steffen, Kate Santos, and one more TBD.

“Urban Air Night Market” SoMa StrEat Food Park, 428 11th St, SF; www.urbanairmarket.com. 5-10pm, free. Ongoing every Thursday. It’s not just food trucks anymore: Urban Air Market brings its array of independent designers, artists, and other vendors for a weekly event at the park.

FRIDAY 7

Anchee Min Books Inc., 1344 Park, Alameda; www.booksinc.net. 7pm, free. The best-selling author (Red Azalea) reads from her long-awaited memoir sequel, The Cooked Seed.

“Quiet Lightning with San Francisco Center for the Book” San Francisco Center for the Book, 375 Rhode Island, SF; www.quietlightning.org. 7:30pm, $7-10. Celebrate the release of a “live literary mixtape,” the latest issue of Sparkle + Blink.

“What Do the Women Say: A Celebration of International Women’s Day” La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; www.goldenthread.org. 8pm, $15. Golden Thread’s annual celebration of International Women’s Day features an eclectic array of Middle Eastern female artists, including filmmaker Maryam Keshavarz, comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh, author Ayesha Mattu, and others.

SATURDAY 8

“Babylon Salon” Cantina SF, 580 Sutter, SF; www.babylonsalon.com. 6:30pm, free. With readings by Daniel Alarcon, Katie Crouch, Robin Sloan, Melissa Stein, and Molly Antopol.

“Benefest 2014: Subterranean Arthouse’s Fifth Anniversary Party” Subterranean Arthouse, 2179 Bancroft, Berk; www.subterraneanarthouse.org. 6-11pm, $20-100. The nonprofit, volunteer-run arts venue presents a fundraising night of live music, plus a visual art exhibit and a silent auction.

“In Love and Struggle: A Celebration of International Women’s Day” La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; www.lapena.org. 7:30pm, $10-15. Hip-hop and spoken word performance, plus a dance party, to benefit Berkeley Copwatch.

“Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013” San Francisco Main Library, Fourth Flr, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Exhibit runs through June 5. Photos, letters, comic books, artwork, and more highlight this exhibition showcasing female cartoonists past and present.

“World Naked Bike Ride: San Francisco Southern Hemisphere Edition” Justin Herman Plaza, One Market, SF; facebook.com/wnbrsf. 11am, free. Back for its fifth year, this “as bare as you dare” ride propels packs of naked or nearly-naked cyclists through Fisherman’s Wharf, the Embarcadero, and other popular spots to draw attention to the dangers of global dependency on oil. Don’t forget the SPF!

SUNDAY 9

Philip B. Choi Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University, Berk; www.asiabookcenter.com. 3pm, free. The architect and Chinese American studies pioneer discusses San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide to Its History and Architecture.

MONDAY 10

Julian Hoffman Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The author reads from Being at Home in a Beckoning World.

TUESDAY 11

Clifford Chase Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; www.booksinc.net. 7:30pm, free. The author of Winkie reads from his new memoir, The Tooth Fairy: Parents, Lovers, and Other Wayward Deities.

D. Foy City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. The author reads from his new novel, Made To Break.

Shaham Mufti Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The author discusses The Faithful Scribe: A Story of Islam, Pakistan, Family, and War.

“Edith Wharton at Home: Life at the Mount” Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, SF; deyoung.famsf.org. 7:15-9pm, $15. American Decorative Arts Forum of Northern California presents this talk about Edith Wharton and her “autobiographical house” by Richard Guy Wilson. *

Sturm und drang

Michael Redmond

March 4, 2014

arts@sfbg.com

FILM It is awkward, no doubt, living in a land whose 20th-century legacy was becoming synonymous with evil — “Nazi,” “Hitler,” and “Holocaust” are still terms we use in describing or comparing the absolute worst human behaviors. Toward the end of Generation War, a three-part TV miniseries being shown here as a two-part movie, one character anticipates the cultural amnesia of peacetime by saying “Soon there will only be Germans and not a single Nazi.” That’s a canny statement in a nearly five-hour soap opera that doesn’t have quite enough of them.

Postwar Germany willed itself not only into economic rehabilitation, but into becoming one of the world’s more politically progressive and socially tolerant societies. (With exceptions, of course.) No doubt part of this was a function of guilt, and younger generations’ determination not to repeat the past. But it must also have been driven by a desire to bury that past as discreetly as possible without actually seeming to do so. Neo-Nazi freaks aside, you won’t likely now meet anyone in Germany who pledged allegiance to Hitler. Nor would you have 30 or 50 years ago. Even (or especially) guards at Auschwitz shared in the selective national amnesia that followed capitulation and the subsequent revelations of war atrocities. It’s understandable, if not entirely to be sympathized with: How do you live publicly with being on the side of the exterminators? You don’t, that’s how. You gradually build up personal distance until it’s a wall scarcely more abstract than the one that came down to reunite Germany in 1989.

Generation War was originally called Our Mothers, Our Fathers, to underline the relevancy of the discussion it’s presumably trying to stir at home — even if for many viewers the war generation would have been their grandparents’. Directed by Philipp Kadelbach and written by Stefan Kolditz, it starts out in dismayingly hackneyed fashion as we’re introduced to our youthful protagonists. Celebrating a birthday in 1941 near the war’s start, when Axis victory seems assured, they pose for a photo you know damn well is going to be the heart-tugging emblem of innocence horribly lost for the next 270 minutes.

There’s true-blue Wilhelm (Volker Bruch), who’s already served one tour of duty to the west, and is now heading to the Eastern front with younger brother Friedhelm (Tom Schilling), a dreamy pacifist. In love with Wilhelm but annoyingly reluctant — for years on end — to say so is sugary Charlotte (Miriam Stein), herself headed to the front as a nurse. Staying behind are Greta (Katharina Schüttler), who fancies herself the next Marlene Dietrich, and her boyfriend Viktor (Ludwig Trepte), who can’t convince his willfully oblivious parents that German Jews like themselves are in mortal danger.

Needless to say, all illusions are eventually dashed. Amid the grueling, endless, disastrous campaign against the Soviet Union, Wilhelm is embarrassed by his “cowardly” brother until the latter adapts to pervasive inhumanity by becoming a cold killing machine himself. Charlotte overcomes her squeamishness at the daily hospital carnage while retaining her compassion. Greta does become famous, thanks to the high-ranking Gestapo patron (Mark Waschke) she sleeps with. But the prima donna arrogance she develops proves perilous, and her attempts to get Viktor smuggled out to safety go awry — escaping a train headed to a concentration camp, he joins a group of Polish partisans scarcely less anti-Semitic than the Nazis.

Fast-paced yet never achieving the psychological depth of similarly scaled historical epics, Generation War grows most interesting in its late going, when for all practical purposes the Allies have already won the war (at least in Europe), but Germany continues to self-destruct. Imminent peace provides no relief for protagonists who’ve survived only to find themselves fucked no matter what side they stay on, or surrender to.

That moral and situational complexity is too often missing in a narrative that aims for sympathy via simplicity. None of the protagonists are “really” Nazis — they’re mysteriously free of racial prejudice and other drummed-in ideological points, even if (for a while) they dutifully speak about serving der Fatherland. (Only bad, subsidiary people seem to buy into those concepts; Wilhelm is never shown killing women or children, and the death camps remain off-screen.) The underrated recent film version of The Book Thief (2013) was criticized for soft-pedaling the era, but it was about (and from the viewpoint of) somewhat sheltered Aryan children living in a civilian wartime. Generation War‘s characters are of exactly the age to be fully indoctrinated young zealots, yet none of them seems touched by National Socialist dogma. Even though it’s mid-1941 when we meet them, they act like official anti-Semitism is still a some minor, misguided inconvenience.

Of course such naiveté is designed to maximize their later disillusionment. But War doesn’t even try to approach the serious analysis of national character in something like Ursula Hegi’s great novel Stones from the River, in which we come to understand how time, propaganda, and preyed-upon weaknesses can turn a town of perfectly nice Germans into fascists capable of turning a blind eye toward the Final Solution. Embarrassingly, this shallower fiction tries in the end to pass itself off as truth: Before the closing credits we’re given birth and death dates of principal characters as if they were inspired by real people. (One purportedly lives still.) It’s one thing when some dumb horror movie opens with “Based on a true story” — wanna buy a bridge too? — but in this context, the fib is worse than disingenuous, it’s slimy.

In addition to being hugely popular at home, Generation War stirred considerable controversy (not least among insulted Poles), which is good. “Never forget,” indeed — but for such a big populist cultural event, it’s an awfully soft reminder. If it were one of the 1970s miniseries it recalls, it wouldn’t be relatively hard-hitting Roots, but Rich Man, Poor Man, in which tough sociopolitical issues of postwar America were whipped into sudsy melodrama cloaked in somber self-seriousness. *

GENERATION WAR opens March 14 in San Francisco.

Bar none

Michael Redmond

March 4, 2014

SUPER EGO So a toothy blonde pretend social media exec, a blindingly sequined Latina drag queen, a huge rack of elk antlers with hot-pink panties on them, and a pair of Google Glasses walk into a “punk bar” …

What the holy highballs is happening on our bar scene lately? Rowdy Mission hangout Pop’s Bar closed over the weekend. (Who got all those panties, I wonder?) Last week, 40-year-old Mission gay hangout Esta Noche announced it was shutting down (new owners and a hetero-craft cocktail concept). And then there was that oddball Google Glass kerfuffle at Molotov’s, wherein a social media starlet claims she was the victim of a tech hate crime when the patrons allegedly got in her privacy-violating face.

The Esta Noche situation hits close to my floppy liver’s home most, though. With the recent closures of Marlena’s, Deco, and Ginger’s Trois (and the Transfer, Mister Leeona’s, and practically every gay watering hole on Polk Street shuttering in the past decade), there are hardly any queer bars outside the Castro and SoMa left. Lady, can you pour a fierce cosmo out those Google Glasses of yours? Until then, I won’t have what she’s having. I need my queer space to get sozzled!

JAY TRIPWIRE

There are DJs to love, and then there are DJs to love. Fiercely intelligent yet laidback, shaggy in that classic rave-dude way, Vancouverite Jay Tripwire has been honing his deep, deep techno sound for more than two decades and 200 releases. Like every great DJ wizard, he transforms the records on his tables into other beasts entirely. You just hear differently after his masterly sets. At the Housepitality weekly, he’ll get a warm reception.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n7ahLdh8yM

Wed/5, 9pm, free before 11 with RSVP at www.housepitalitysf.com/rsvp, $10 after. F8, 1192 Folsom, SF.

BAREM

The splendid Direct to Earth and Public Works crews bring in Buenos Aires- and Berlin-based Mauricio Barembuem, aka Barem of Minus Records, for some good old fashioned Germano-Latin post-minimal techno swing. Bring a couple pairs of (cute) shoes, because he’ll wear your kitten heels right out.

Fri/7, 9pm-4am, $13–$20. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

HOUND SCALES

It’s a great weekend for hard-driving and esoteric techno in the Bay. It’s even getting into our more melodic parties, like the monthly Play It Cool, which is showcasing wiggy Brooklyn-based, SF-native “junta rave” purveyor Hound Scales of the Fifth Wall label. The speaker bins, they will explode I think. Jolly good show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEr-zgTrh7Y

Fri/7, 10pm-3am, $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

DRINK

Hey, $35 all you can drink from dozens of local spirits concocters, brew houses, and wineries? Plus: cosmic tunes from Cosmic Amanda (she’s cosmic), tarot readings by the zebra-leotarded Dr. Zebrowski, and one last time to party in the glorious Old Mint building before it gets renovated into the SF History Museum? Why am I still asking questions? Our sister-paper SF Weekly’s Drink event is sloshy, superb.

Sat/8, 2pm-5pm, $35 advance. Old Mint, 88 Fifth St, SF. drink2014.strangertickets.com

FOUR TET

Please immediately check out the fantastic new Neneh Cherry album, produced by this wide-eared, super-innovative UK genius, who can jet from bright, ecstatic jazziness to haunting bass apocalypse in the blink of a strobe. A trippy treat in store, indeed.

Sat/8, 9pm, $30. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

POUND PUPPY

Go-go boys are probably my least favorite things at clubs. (We were mercifully mostly free of them until a few years ago: They were “an LA thing” then. Sock’s on the other cock now!). But apparently, once a month, if they are dressed up like leather-fetish puppies, dancing to cutting-edge tunes in cages at the gay biker bar, and being petted by the sexiest characters of the SF queer underground, I’m totally down. I still refuse to say “woof,” though. With DJs Taco Tuesday and Chip Mint, hosted by Blake and Jorge.

Sat/8, 9pm, $7. SF Eagle, 398 12th St, SF. www.sf-eagle.com

VOICES FROM THE LAKE

Hyper-atmospheric ambient techno delight from this duo, composed of acclaimed Italian players Donato Dozzy and Neel. Don’t worry, you’ll still end up dancing. With Jason Kendig, Christina Chartfield, Carlos Souffront, and MossMoss at the As You Like It party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooxO0VaZt9M

Sat/8, 9pm-4am, $20–$25. Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF. www.monarchsf.com

Barroom backchannel

Michael Redmond

March 4, 2014

joe@sfbg.com

Amid the political turmoil in the city around evictions of longtime San Franciscans, tech workers and progressive political activists are beginning to come together to brainstorm ways to address displacement.

Tech workers have started to attend meetings meant to spark conversation between the two opposing groups, hosted by local restaurant Casa Sanchez. Those interviewed by hyperlocal website Mission Local described the dinners as “heavy and charged,” with blame for the housing crisis pointing to all sides.

Last week, Tech Workers Against Displacement Happy Hour was the latest opportunity for the two communities to come together and talk. But can tech workers become effective partners in the search for solutions to the affordable housing crisis? The happy hour was promising, but it exposed some of the obstacles.

The happy hour was partially organized by a politician running for office (Sup. David Campos, who is now running for the California Assembly), but was mostly the brainchild of two unlikely allies: SEIU labor representative Gus Feldman and Rolla Selbak, an employee at a multinational tech giant that she asked us not to name.

And therein lies one of the challenges: Will the well-paid tech workers be willing to rise up and challenge the corporate and capitalist interests that have overheated the local economy and fed the displacement crisis, the very forces that have allowed them to afford skyrocketing local rents?

AWKWARD CONVERSATION

Virgil’s Sea Room was an apt choice for the happy hour. Five months ago and just a few blocks away on 24th Street, hundreds marched in the “Our Mission No Eviction” protest, where 71-year-old Mission muralist Rene Yanez told a tale of an artistic, vibrant Mission District in danger of losing its Latino population and its character.

The night was a mostly positive exercise in bridge-building, though it started under a blanket of tension. Activists spoke of the housing crisis at a microphone to an audience of nearly 200 tech workers and activists. Sparks flew and some left early, unhappy with what they called “activist lecturing.”

At Tech Workers Against Displacement Happy Hour, just starting up. Can tech and activists come together to help SF? pic.twitter.com/nindzM1L3B

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) February 26, 2014

But as the empty beer cans grew in number, many tech workers came up to the microphone, and even more still mingled with the housing activists in the crowd. Riders of corporate buses figuratively (and maybe literally) clinked glasses with Erin McElroy, one of the leaders in the Heart of the City protests that have blockaded Google buses.

Yet most tech workers didn’t want to come out of the closet and identify with this nascent movement. Seeing a reporter with a notepad in hand, they shrank away. Those that did speak identified themselves in hushed tones accompanied by furtive glances. One man who identified himself as a tech worker laid down some rockin’ slam poetry at the microphone. When we told him we tweeted his performance, the tall, broad-shouldered techie flew into a panic.

“Please, please, please, you have to delete it. They can’t know I was here,” he told the Guardian, with panic in his eyes and sweat dripping down his forehead. He wasn’t alone in his worry.

One verified Google employee the Guardian initially spoke with on Twitter mingled with activists as well. “We’re not so different, we all want the same thing,” he told us. But even he was adamant that he not be identified.

One software engineer from a rideshare company, Eric Butler, did not want his company named. When asked why he came out to talk to housing activists despite his concern, he said, “The issue of displacement hits everyone.”

In recognition of that, the communities of the Mission and San Francisco that night called for tech workers to advocate for change from the inside, where they carry the most leverage and the most power. But that hasn’t happened yet, at least not publicly.

“They want to talk, but their bosses have ordered them not to,” McElroy told us. “It’s pretty intense.”

The tech workers could be the city’s strongest allies, if only they would challenge their employers and those invested in their companies. Already, a few tech workers are joining in solidarity.

IN BOTH CAMPS

Kelsey Gilmore-Innis lives in the Excelsior District and works at a tech startup. “I’m part of the system,” she told us. But she’s also a San Francisco native.

“My friends are SF native dirtbags who freestyle rap at any party, anywhere,” Gilmore-Innis, 27, said of her San Francisco roots. And like many of us, she had an eviction story to tell.

“We weren’t formally evicted, but were bought out, a precursor to the formal eviction processes. Eventually our whole block in Bernal Heights was replaced,” she said.

Her experience with eviction galvanized her. Though she has one foot in the tech camp, her other foot is firmly in the world of activism.

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project targets serial real-estate speculators responsible for the evictions of long-term San Franciscans in the effort to make a buck, and in her off hours Gilmore-Innis works side by side with McElroy, the project’s rabble-rousing leader.

To tech workers, that may sound like an Uber employee working side by side with a cabbie. But for Gilmore-Innis, it’s a part of her San Franciscan heritage. She’s proud of one of San Francisco’s rich activist history, speaking fondly of inheriting the legacy of Harry Bridges, leader the historic 1934 General Strike in San Francisco.

She channels activism in a uniquely technological way, gathering campaign finance data for the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, aiming to build a searchable database to track money from shady real estate speculators flowing into San Francisco elections.

It’s public knowledge for public gain, a sentiment tech workers inspired with their fight for net neutrality and internet freedom. But that’s a fight tech workers are familiar with. Eviction may not be in their realm of experience.

“I’ve been evicted and know people who were evicted. I think the grand majority [of tech workers] thinks it’s an abstract plight. It’s not real to them,” she told us.

Maybe she’s right, but not every tech worker is at a billion-dollar corporation. For some in the startup world, displacement is all too personal.

ART AND TECH

Matt Conn was one of the many new tech workers in the city who’s built a startup from the ground up. His former company, Root Music, cashed in big, raising over $20 million and morphing into BandPage. Conn is now CEO and founder of the video game company MidBoss. He and a few others created the first LGBT video game convention, “GaymerX,” which drew national attention from the gaming and mainstream press. Put simply: he’s made it.

But just a few years ago, Conn often slept on BART trains. And no, we’re not talking the occasional nap. This was life.

“I would get on really early in the morning and ride it four or five hours. You get on at Powell and you get a really good nap for $1.50. When I first came out to the West Coast, I knew I wanted to be here. I ran out of money, and it was a cost-effective way to stay in San Francisco,” he told the Guardian.

Now he’s calling out the tech industry’s practices through MidBoss’ new game “Read Only Memories,” a science fiction game featuring a journalist as protagonist who is trying to save a kidnapped friend from a shadowy tech company.

In Conn’s game, cyberpunk future San Francisco will be a frightening free-for-all grab for people’s data, even more so than now. It also features many queer characters throughout, an effort to show a future where the LGBTQ community is accepted in everyday life.

Like many San Franciscan artists before him, his game allegorically challenges the city’s future, showcasing a highly gentrified city from Chinatown to “New Candlestick” — a not too subtle jab at the city’s culture war today.

Conn has been there. He’s lived displacement. Is that why he’ll speak out against tech where others won’t? His answer was different than the one Gillmore-Innis gave us.

GaymerX Presents Read Only Memories, Adventure Game Throwback With Queer Sensibilities pic.twitter.com/tDF6xNZITu

— Eddie Garou (@EddieGarou) November 13, 2013

“It’s a culture that’s very cult-like in a way, where people don’t want to focus on the negative,” he explained. His company is now crowdfunded, but that wasn’t always the case. “At BandPage, we had multiple investors who also represented Netflix and other big names. I had to be careful in public not to knock something one of our investors had a holding in. You don’t want to be ‘that guy.'”

It all goes back to the money, he said.

“For most, like Google, their money came from billionaire and multi-millionaire venture capitalists. No one wants to be the one speaking out against them,” he said.

He may have a point. The powerful venture capitalist Ron Conway, “The Godfather of Silicon Valley,” is ever-present at Mayor Ed Lee’s side. That’s power in the tech world and the municipal one. Maybe it takes a bigger player in the tech industry to “come out,” to inspire tech workers to push for egalitarian values.

CHANGING THE CONVERSATION

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff , head of one of the largest tech companies in the city, echoed sentiments made by every activist who’s ever blocked a Google bus.

“(Speculators) are using the Ellis Act during this unbelievable boom time to toss everyday residents out of their homes,” he said. “I think it’s unfair and I think it has to change. I think these buses — which if you hang out in the Mission, [they come] every five minutes — they’ve got to be massively regulated… (and) we need to get the tech community giving back more aggressively.”

As a native San Franciscan, he has reason to be invested in this place, and reason to call for change. Maybe some will listen. In fact, some of the biggest players may be starting to get the message.

Google’s $6.8 million donation to Free Muni For Youth may stall talks about permanent funding, City Hall insiders told us, but at least its heart seemed to be in the right place. Conway pledged to form working groups that may bring computer coding education into SFUSD schools, though no formal plans have been announced. Last week tech companies joined in the fight for Ellis Act eviction reform on the state level.

One of the organizers of the Tech Workers Against Displacement Happy Hour, Rolla Selbak, said she may host another one just like it, or help someone else do it. The demand is high.

Tech workers and activists expressed ardent interest in another night just like it on the group’s Facebook page. Others wrote into the San Francisco Chronicle to lambast its negative slant to the event, saying the event led to frank and honest discussions.

Though we spoke with her at some length, Selbak encapsulated the night best in a piece she wrote for the Huffington Post the day we went to press.

“By the end of the night, it was very apparent that the imaginary divide between fictional groups had melted, and we all saw each other as simply people, working together to bring change,” she wrote. “A tech worker and an activist walked into a bar… and it was awesome. You should try it, too.”

SFBG Wrap

Michael Redmond

March 4, 2014

No coal for Oakland Port

A company that operates a coal mine in Colorado has been looking to ship its fossil fuel products to Asia via the Port of Oakland.

A coalition of environmental organizations sounded the alarm that the Board of Port Commissioners was considering a lease proposal from Bowie Resource Partners to operate a coal export facility at Oakland’s Charles P. Howard Terminal.

Another proposal submitted for consideration, from California Capital Group/ Kinder Morgan/ MetroPorts, could also lead to coal exports, said Jess Dervin-Ackerman, conservation organizer for the Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club.

“We’ve really reduced our use of coal in this country, but that means we’ve just been sending it to Asia,” Dervin-Ackerman noted.

In addition to the global concerns about exacerbating climate change by shipping coal to be burned in power plants in Asia, where there are weaker environmental protections, environmentalists are worried that Oakland neighborhoods could be impacted by pollution from rail operations and fine coal dust that could leave airborne traces behind as it is transported to the marine terminals.

Bowie proposed to ship not only coal, but petroleum coke, a pulverized fossil fuel that is illegal to burn in California. Already 128,000 barrels of this product, called petcoke for short, are shipped daily from throughout the state.

Port of Oakland staff, however, has recommended rejecting the proposals from both entities.

“Staff believes that Bowie’s proposed use and operation of the property raises environmental concerns related to the handling of commodities such as coal. Environmental concerns about handling commodities such as coal stem primarily from issues of fugitive dust and climate change,” a staff report noted. “Port staff believes that operations such as those proposed by Bowie conflict with recently adopted Port policies and programs intended to create or support environmental sustainability.”

In the face of opposition from environmentalists and the staff, the board voted against the proposals on Feb. 27. (Rebecca Bowe)

A new program registering San Francisco bicycles and their owners enrolled just over 500 bicyclists in its first two weeks, a small success story in the effort to reunite riders with their stolen bicycles.

The program in question is Safe Bikes, a joint venture between the SFPD and SF Safe. Cyclists can log onto its website, register their bike’s make and model, and when victims report a bike theft to police they can be reunited with their two-wheeled friend just as easily. There are 75,000 bike riders a day in San Francisco, according to the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office, a buffet of tantalizing goods for bike thieves.

More than 500 bikes are a small dent in that number, but for only a two-week start it isn’t too bad. Safe Bikes Manager Morgan St. Clair said it’s only just begun its outreach. Next month, it plans to host an event at Twitter headquarters, where it will give away 50 Kryptonite locks, funded by the San Francisco Police Officers Association.

“We’ve only gone to three bike shops so far,” she said. But in the coming months St. Clair and her team of 15 volunteers have a city full of shops they plan to visit.

An estimated 4,000 bicycles were stolen from riders in 2012, though only 812 were reported to police. St. Clair said there is a perception problem.

“They think the police department isn’t doing anything and say ‘oh, what the heck,’ and don’t think they’ll ever get it back,” she said. “We’re trying to change that mentality.”

In fact, the SFPD has been a strong driver of getting bikes back into the hands of owners, mostly at the behest of Officer Matt Friedman. He runs @SFbiketheft, a Twitter handle that tries to recover stolen bicycles and link them to owners.

“We really want people to report more bicycle thefts,” St. Clair said. And to have those reports be effective, people need to register their bikes. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

Newsom misses the train

As California struggles to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and meet the long-term transportation needs of a growing population, officials from Gov. Jerry Brown to Mayor Ed Lee have steadfastly supported the embattled California High-Speed Rail Project, which Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently withdrew his support from. California now has until July 1 to find funds to match the federal grants.

It’s not exactly surprising that this calculating and politically ambitious centrist would cave in to conservatives like this, particularly as Newsom tries to set himself up to succeed Brown in four years. But it’s a sharp contrast to more principled politicians like Brown, and to those trying to create the transportation system future generations will need, as President Barack Obama took a step toward doing by announcing new federal transportation funding.

US Transportation Secretary Anthony Fox is also taking part in the three-day High Speed Rail Summit, sponsored by the United State High-Speed Rail Association, that began Feb. 25 in Washington DC. Its theme was Full Speed Ahead.

“Secretary Foxx’s experience at the local level as mayor of Charlotte is extremely valuable for shaping national transportation policy. We look forward to working with the Secretary to advance high speed rail in America across party lines,” USHSRA President and CEO Andy Kunz said in a press release.

While Newsom’s new tack may play well with myopic, penny-pinching, car-dependent moderate and conservative voters, many of his allies and constituents were furious with his about-face on a project that promises to get riders from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in less than three hours.

Among those unhappy is San Francisco resident Peter Nasatir, who forwarded the Guardian a letter that he sent to Newsom’s office, which concluded, “High-speed rail is coming. The economy demands it, the environment demands it, and Central Valley population growth demands it. You may get some votes from moderates in the short run, but in the long run, you have positioned yourself as the most prominent person in the state to be on the wrong side of history.” (Steven T. Jones)

App for homelessness

Mayor Ed Lee, Sup. Jane Kim, and representatives from tech firm Zendesk gathered at St. Anthony’s in the Tenderloin Feb. 28 to announce the launch of a new smartphone tool, Link-SF, to help homeless and low-income people access services.

Zendesk is a customer-service software company near Sixth and Market streets. It was the first tech company to move into mid-Market in 2011 and take advantage of the city’s Central Market Payroll Tax Exclusion Zone (aka the “Twitter tax break”), a controversial bid to attract tech companies to an area that has historically had the city’s highest concentration of poverty.

Financially speaking, Zendesk is doing quite well. In 2012, it raised $60 million in new funding and hired 160 new employees. That same year, the city’s Central Market tax exclusion resulted in about $1.9 million in forgone revenues that the city would have otherwise collected from 14 companies that took advantage of the payroll-tax exclusion zone. Zendesk has 350 San Francisco employees, and Public Affairs Director Tiffany Maleshefski told the Bay Guardian that the company has contributed a collective 1,400 hours of volunteer service to uphold the company’s end of a community benefit agreement deal with the city, a requirement for those receiving the local tax breaks. “Link-SF was part of the community benefit agreement,” Maleshefski confirmed. The smartphone app, designed for use by homeless and low-income people seeking services, provides data on food, shelter, medical, or employment assistance programs. “It’s empowering for the users.” (Rebecca Bowe) RIP, Bush Man II San Francisco has lost one of its own. Gregory Jacobs passed away of heart failure on Feb. 23. He’s less known by his full name, but better known by his moniker, “The Bush Man.” No, he’s not the original Bush Man. That would be David Johnson, who’d been there for 36 years, compared to Jacobs’ 30. Little matter. Jacobs was a San Franciscan through and through. Like many San Franciscans, he came here from somewhere else, in his case the “somewhere else” was Arkansas. But Jacobs was known and loved here in the city. The man was dedicated to his work: sitting along Jefferson street and spooking tourists by shouting “boo!” from behind two large and bushy tree branches. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

Staying alive

Michael Redmond

March 4, 2014

By all accounts, Tez Anderson shouldn’t be alive today. When he contracted HIV in 1981, doctors gave him only two years to live. Somehow, he managed to outlast that prognosis by three decades.

“People ask me how I’m still here, and honestly, I don’t know,” he told the Guardian during an interview in his small office above Harvey’s Restaurant in the Castro. “I would get these little reprieves — two more years here and there — and I just got used to living like that.”

Muscular and energetic, Anderson has a surprisingly light-hearted demeanor for someone who has lived with death for his entire adult life, but there’s no denying that he has been through a severe and sustained trauma.

By 1992, AIDS had killed more residents of San Francisco than all four major wars of the 20th century combined. As a result, Anderson watched an entire generation of his friends — people whom he cared for and loved — succumb to the virus.

The loss has taken its toll. For years, Anderson suffered from severe anxiety, deep depression, and rage. At times he even considered suicide. While driving the windy hills of San Francisco, Anderson would occasionally imagine letting go of his steering wheel, sending his car careening down the hill.

“I was planning it out so that it would look like an accident,” he said. “I didn’t want people to be hurt by the fact that I killed myself.”

Like Anderson, many AIDS survivors suffer emotional ailments akin to post-traumatic stress disorder or survivor’s guilt. Walt Odets, a Berkeley-based psychologist who has worked with hundreds of gay men who lived through the AIDS epidemic, is convinced that a mental health crisis is unfolding among long-term HIV survivors.

“There’s an inability to live with vitality, to live with richness, to get up in the morning and feel like you have a future, if only for the day,” he told us. “We’re losing a lot of vital lives over this.”

Anderson believes that many AIDS survivors have a definable psychological syndrome. Last January he decided to give it a name: AIDS Survivor Syndrome, or ASS for short (the acronym was intentional). He and two friends, Michael Siever and Matt Sharp, have since formed the group Let’s Kick ASS.

Every Tuesday, they host a meditation class, and on Saturdays they convene at the Church Street Café for coffee and conversation. On the third Wednesday of each month, the group puts on large workshops and forums.

Just like during the 1980s and 1990s, when HIV-positive people built a social movement around AIDS, Let’s Kick ASS is trying to unite the community in the face of hardship.

“There’s nothing that will take away or fully heal this wound,” said Gregg Cassin, who has had HIV since the 1980s and works closely with Let’s Kick ASS. “But as we learned from the early days of the epidemic, coming together as a community is where the healing takes place.”

COMING TOGETHER

On a warm evening last September, Anderson hustled to set up tables and chairs in a large event space at the LGBT center on the outskirts of the Castro. It was the first town hall meeting for Let’s Kick ASS, and he had no idea what to expect. At most, he thought that 50 people would show up.

At around 6:30pm the first guests started to arrive. Then a few more people trickled into the room. By 7pm, every seat in the house was taken, and people were wedging into any available nook and cranny. Some of the attendees hadn’t seen each other in years and were hugging each other.

“I was blown away by how many people wanted to hear about the group,” Anderson recalled. “It felt like a class reunion.”

In the end about 200 people — almost all HIV-positive men over the age of 50 — came to the town hall. People shared stories from the past and discussed how to support each other in the future. Siever noted that many of those who came to the meeting had lost touch with the broader gay community.

“We opened up a space for them to come together that needed to be opened up, but wasn’t there anymore,” he said. “It was, and still is, amazing.”

It may seem odd that only now, more than 30 years after the Center for Disease Control first reported HIV in the United States, survivors are showing symptoms of severe emotional trauma. But such a delay isn’t uncommon; it wasn’t, for example, until the mid-1960s that psychologists first noticed “survivor guilt” among those who lived through the Holocaust.

“Many people believe that after a huge disaster, whether it’s AIDS or something else, it takes about two decades for people to finally get to a place where they’re ready to process and heal,” said Robert Grant, who has studied AIDS since 1982 and is now a researcher at UCSF’s Gladstone Institute. “People are just now starting to figure out what happened to them.”

Processing such a massive loss can cause a host of psychological ailments. Last year the San Francisco AIDS Foundation started a group for aging gay men called the 50-Plus Network. When asked what their “biggest issue” was, an overwhelming majority of the participants said social isolation.

“If you have strong connections with people and they keep dying, pretty soon you pull back,” said Jeff Liephart, senior director of programs and services at the SF AIDS Foundation. “The unconscious sense is, ‘if I create a new relationship, they’re just going to die too’.”

Along with feelings of isolation, Liephart said many AIDS survivors are bewildered by the fact that they survived the epidemic. Being HIV-positive during the crisis years was like knowing you had a time bomb inside of you that could go off at any moment.

“If you’re in a life-threatening situation like that you can’t process stuff,” he explained. “Your brain just won’t let you do it.”

STILL HERE

Anderson has spent over three decades fighting HIV. In 1993 — just prior to being diagnosed with AIDS — he had his first opportunistic infection and came down with pneumocystis pneumonia. Several years later his T-cell count dropped to 12, a dangerously low level. Today, Anderson suffers from severe neuropathy in his hands and feet and is technically disabled.

Still, he has the virus more-or-less under control, and in 2005 he decided that AIDS wasn’t going to kill him in the immediate future. This seemingly positive insight triggered a full-blown psychological crisis.

While working on a movie production with an ex-boyfriend (Anderson co-wrote the screenplay for the 2006 movie The Night Listener starring Robin Williams) he became noticeably agitated and was quick to get into verbal altercations. Within a year he had pushed away most of his friends.

Anderson partially attributes his self-destructive behavior to the realization that he might live into old age, a thought he never considered during his entire adult life.

“I spent so many years planning my own funeral, preparing everyone around me for my death, and I never planned for my future,” he explained. “Being so intimate with death does something to your head. It makes you unable to make long term plans.”

Only now, at age 53, is Anderson getting ready to live a full life. When asked about retirement, he let out a chuckle. He has no 401(K), Roth IRA, or contingency plan. Many of his HIV-positive friends over 50 are in a similar predicament, but he’s optimistic that if they come together, they’ll be able to figure out a solution.

Over half of the people with AIDS in San Francisco are older than 50. As a result, AIDS service providers in the city have started paying much more attention to the mental and physical health ailments unique to long-term survivors. In 2012 UCSF started the Silver Project, which offers medical and social services to older people with HIV. The AIDS Foundation runs the 50-Plus Network, and the Alliance Health Project has been running a support group for gay men over 50 for the past five years.

These organizations all do similar work to Let’s Kick ASS, but Anderson believes his group is different in one fundamental way: It’s a nonhierarchical grassroots effort focused on peer-to-peer support. This philosophy was apparent at a recent Let’s Kick ASS town hall meeting, where a group of about two dozen men — mostly older, gay, and white — sat in a circle and shared why they had come to the event.

“I’ve put all of my experiences into a box, and I’m here to open up that box,” one man said. “I’m here to find my community again,” another added. Anderson was quiet throughout most of the meeting, but he chimed in a few times. At one point, he reminded everyone in the room that the space belonged to them.

“We have 20 years until the real curtains fall,” he said, “and we have a chance to make those next 20 years amazing.”

After Anderson made his comments, he sat down, crossed his arms, and listened closely as the group continued sharing its stories. The man, who had recently contemplated suicide, now has a new appetite for life.

“I read Joseph Campbell a while ago, and I remember him saying, ‘follow your bliss’, find that thing that you’re passionate about and do it whatever it takes,” he said. “I’ve found my passion, and now I’m not angry, I’m not depressed, I’m not anxious, I have a happy home life. I’ve found my passion, and I have a community again.”

On March 15, Lets Kick ASS is hosting a benefit at the Castro Theatre, where actress Rita Moreno will be interviewed on stage after the screening of her film, Putting on the Ritz. The group is also planning the first National HIV/AIDS Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day on June 5.

Matthew Dear presents Audion, in a shipping container of LED triangles

Steven T. Jones

February 28, 2014

Matthew Dear presents Audion, in a shipping container of LED triangles

At this point I have no idea when this show is going to start, but it’s 9:22 and there’s another loner type rubbing the wood grain pillar in the middle of Mighty. He’s got his hood up as if keeping a low-profile, but
blowing it otherwise. It looks like he took the wrong drugs, slowing down when he might want to speed up. Because at this point in the evening, with some crew members apparently still wiring up the massive amount of lights on stage, he might be in for a wait.

Matthew Dear, the headliner for the night under his Audion moniker, is wandering around the club. Seems typically calm and collected, but I wonder if there’s panic behind the scenes. The show — complete with a custom visual installation — was originally scheduled to be at the Regency Ballroom but was moved to this much smaller venue due to poor ticket sales. (You could see the marketing urgency increasing with each email, first listing the show discreetly as “Audion,” and then “Audion Live: Subvertical,” before finally throwing all the names out in a final push with “Matthew Dear Presents Audion Live: Subvertical.”) After changing venues and dropping the ticket price, Noise Pop also announced all previously issued tickets would now come with a +1. Maybe it’s the rainy weather, but there’s hardly anyone on the dancefloor yet.

Except for squeaky-shoes, which is a good sign. A ubiquitous figure around SF clubs, in my experience if squeaky-shoes is at a show, you’ve made a good decision about your evening entertainment. (We call him squeaky-shoes because his shoes are really squeaky, especially when he’s dancing, in an individual style that involves leaping sideways/backwards a solid five feet at a time, pausing just before colliding with someone, and then walking away as if nothing happened.) He also always wears a comparatively silent ballcap. Look for him. He may be your spirit guide.

As far as I’m concerned, Matrixxman can not go on soon enough, as the same track has been playing over the P.A. for nearly 45 minutes. Aside from the dull bass, the music is drowned out, as if coming from the Chinese restaurant next door. Enduring this together, the woman besides me strikes up a conversation. She doesn’t know Matrixxman, Audion, or even Matthew Dear: she’s here for the lights, knowing that the visual setup was designed by the same team who did the mind-bending work on Amon Tobin’s ISAM.

WhenI last saw Matrixxman, it was at the same venue, and he was doing a closing set for Le1f. One track he played — “C.U.N.T.” by Tronco Traxx — is permanently lodged in my brain. Google it. Your expectations will be met. Tonight he’s keeping things a bit more in pocket, setting up the headliner with a less potentially alienating mix dominated by jacked up house, chopped diva vocals, and something that sounded like Prince (and may well have been Prince).

When the main event starts, all I can think of is packaging. Maybe it’s the corrugated plastic material that Matthew Dear is encased in, a neat sphere made up of interlocking LED-lit triangles; if Amon Tobin had a spaceship, Dear has a shipping container. It’s even branded in a way: the press release pointed out the resemblance between the triangles and the A in Audion. To me they look like a swirl of tracking buttons, with larger “reverse” and “play” arrows on each side of the stage. Like the comprehensive 10-year-spanning collection Audion X, this production seems designed to deliver Dear/Audion in an iconic form.

Tobin once impressed on me that not all electronic music is meant for dancing, so having a visual production like ISAM made sense. But while Tobin via ISAM warped around to places feet can’t easily follow, this isn’t really the case with Audion. Dear, particularly in this format, is clearly making dance music, heavily indebted to Detroit. (Not just the techno, but the car industry: his set drives along with little pause, frequently punctuated by a slow pulsing swell, revving and switching gears. See: “Mouth to Mouth” or “Motormouth.”)

A lot of the crowd dancing up front seems capable of following along unfazed, as if it’s just another night at Mighty. I’m more conflicted and end up with the ones in the back, stunned in place, not sure which
way to go. From back there, it could be a jaded rock show.

I look for the support beam molester from earlier, but don’t see him at all under the lights.

He’s probably fine.

Synthesizers, saxophones, and one African grey parrot: The Other Minds music festival is a magnet for the avant-garde

Steven T. Jones

February 26, 2014

Synthesizers, saxophones, and one African grey parrot: The Other Minds music festival is a magnet for the avant-garde

By Micah Dubreuil

When Charles Amirkhanian was 5 years old, he received a John Cage record as a gift from his father. It was a mistake — the elder Amirkhanian had taken it to be an album of traditional Armenian music, their cultural heritage. Instead, young Charles was introduced to a sound that was anything but traditional, and in that music for prepared piano, he found a life’s calling. Some 60-odd years later, the director of the Other Minds festival — the West Coast’s premiere experimental music event, now in its 19th incarnation — points to that accident as a fairly fortuitous one.

Music is everywhere. Not just in the headphones mashed in every pocket, but in the sounds and systems of the world around us, from raindrops and birdcalls to trains and electronic circuits. That might, at first, sound overly lofty — but this concept has been a driving force for, among other things, hip-hop, arguably the dominant form of popular music over the last few decades. The impulse to investigate these sounds in unconventional and inventive ways has been equally significant in what’s usually called avant-garde, experimental, or simply “new” music. Other Minds 19 will celebrate this music Feb. 28 and March 1, when the festival takes over the SFJAZZ Center for the first time. Nine composers, all with ties to Northern California, will present works that aim to explore and reveal the world of sound through a variety of mediums, including wildly futuristic synthesizers, saxophones of unusual proportion, and one African grey parrot.

Of course, as more mainstream music has evolved over the course of the past two decades, so has the meaning of “avant-garde,” says Amirkhanian; much of what was once considered radical has become ubiquitous. “Now that everybody has the ability to use GarageBand, and can take a sample of something and turn it into a hi-hat cymbal, I don’t know if [needing to introduce avant-garde] is really a problem anymore,” he says. While some pieces in the festival could be seen as quite challenging, the goal is “to surprise people pleasantly rather than violently” with what Amirkhanian calls “revealationary” as opposed than “revolutionary” new music.

Wendy Reid, with Lulu

Composer Wendy Reid, a lecturer at Mills College in Oakland, has always been fascinated by natural processes and the beauty of bird song. She takes a direct route to revealing these sounds: She writes and performs with Lulu, an African grey parrot.

“I love birds,” says Reid simply. “They’re the greatest musicians that we have.” African grey parrots, in particular, are considered by many to be the most intelligent birds in the world. They can live more than 50 years, and have been known to carry out conversations with humans (not in the wild, presumably). Reid has always had birds as pets, or “family members,” as she likes to think of them. She records the birds’ songs, improvises along to the recordings, and composes bird-like sounds in order to engage Lulu, who responds as she feels fit.

Lulu is, to be sure, not a trained musician. She does not have notated parts or learned responses, and Reid stresses that this is “not a circus act” — to train or direct Lulu would compromise the natural musical responses that Reid finds so fascinating. “I let [the birds] be who they are; they are their best that way. People are their best that way, too.”

The festival is named, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, after an obituary of John Cage, wherein the author dismissively wrote that Cage “[merely] created music in other people’s minds.” (If you’ve heard of any avant-garde composer, you’ve heard of Cage. Philip Glass might be a close second, and he performed at the first Other Minds in 1993). Cage’s wide-ranging musical interests set a precedent that persists through this program. From Mark Applebaum’s sound sculptures, to Charles Celeste Hutchins’ live-generated digital projections (produced by self-developed software), to Myra Melford’s solo piano performance (seemingly old-fashioned in this context, though it will sound nothing of the sort), the festival’s intentionally non-thematic lineup covers an enormous variety of work. If ours are the “other minds” in question, they will be kept quite busy.

Roscoe Mitchell

Widely referred to as an “American iconoclast,” living saxophone legend and prolific composer Roscoe Mitchell will present his composition Nonaah, arranged for four bass saxophones. If you’ve never heard or seen a bass saxophone, you’re not alone: it’s a rarely used instrument, larger then the more common baritone sax and with a deeper range, a full octave below the tenor. “One of the aspects of music that engages me is the sound, and the desire to know how all music works,” Mitchell says of his penchant for performing on unusual woodwinds. Nonaah itself is a composition that dates back to 1976, when Mitchell performed it on solo alto saxophone for an initially skeptical crowd in Europe. He thoroughly won the room, and has been exploring the piece ever since.

“When I first imagined this work for alto saxophone, I had no idea that this composition would take on a life of its own,” Mitchell says. After arranging the piece for alto sax quartet, he went on to write a completely notated version for four cellos, followed by flute, bassoon and piano, chamber orchestra, orchestra, and now bass saxophone quartet. Multiple doctoral theses have been written on Nonaah, and Mitchell is currently planning on writing a book about it. “For me it’s a kind of musical journey — it starts out a piece for alto saxophone, and now it’s a piece for full orchestra.” [See a video of Mitchell performing at a recent Exploratorium series below.]

Mitchell’s is not the only journey that leads to Other Minds 19. The festival’s line-up includes Donald Buchla, a prolific creator and founding father of sound synthesis who will be presenting the U.S. premiere of his composition Drop by Drop, as well as Joseph Byrd, one of the earliest adopters of synthesizers in rock ‘n’ roll. The entire program, in fact, is filled with either giants of the field or emerging stars.

Don Buchla

Yes, there will also be animals, instruments you’ve never seen before, and electronic controllers that may well remind you more of Star Trek than a concert hall. But, as Wendy Reid says, this is not a circus act: These are composers and improvisers pushing the boundaries of serious music. “There’s a thirst among maybe 2 percent of the population to hear this music,” says Amirkhanian, but the people in this dedicated group hail from every corner of the globe — and, as young Charles personally discovered, from every demographic.

Other Minds 19
Fri/28 – Sat/1, 7pm discussion and 8pm concert both nights
$25 – $65
SFJazz Center
201 Franklin, SF
www.sfjazz.org
www.otherminds.org

Bike registry program nets 500 in first two weeks

Erica Hanna

February 26, 2014

Bike registry program nets 500 in first two weeks

The program in question is Safe Bikes, a joint venture between the SFPD and SF Safe. Cyclists can log onto their website, register their bike’s make and model, and when victims report a bike theft to police they can be reunited with their two wheeled friend just as easily. There are 75,000 bike riders a day in San Francisco, according to the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office, a buffet of tantalizing goods for bike thieves.

More than 500 bikes is a small dent in that number, but for only a two week start it isn’t too bad. Safe Bikes Manager Morgan St. Clair said they’ve only just begun their outreach. Next month they plan to host an event at Twitter headquarters, where they’ll give away 50 Kryptonite locks, funded by the San Francisco Police Officers Association.

“We’ve only gone to three bike shops so far,” she said. But in the coming months St. Clair and her team of 15 volunteers have a city full of shops they plan to visit.

An estimated 4,000 bicycles were stolen from riders in 2012, though only 812 were reported to police. St. Clair said there is a perception problem.

“They think the police department isn’t doing anything and say ‘oh, what the heck,’ and don’t think they’ll ever get it back,” she said. “We’re trying to change that mentality.”

In fact, the SFPD has been a strong driver of getting bikes back into the hands of owners, mostly at the behest of officer Matt Friedman. He runs @SFbiketheft, a Twitter handle that tries to recover stolen bicycles and link them to owners.

Plz RT: Sent to me from a Mission Unit, homeless guy had three bicycles attempting to find the rightful owner pic.twitter.com/vgnFL28c17

— SFPD Anti Bike Theft (@SFPDBikeTheft) February 26, 2014

And if you want to see a sight that’ll make a San Franciscan cry, show them the SFPD’s graveyard of stolen bikes.

There, hundreds of bicycles sit unclaimed, some of which may find their way into a children’s program at the behest of a Board of Supervisors resolution proposed by John Avalos.

But ideally, the bikes would be reunited with their owners.

“We really want people to report more bicycle thefts,” St. Clair said. And to have those reports be effective, people need to register their bikes. You can register yours now by clicking here.

P.S. Guardian Editor Steven T. Jones had been planning to register his three bikes with the program, and then two of those bikes were stolen from outside his third floor apartment yesterday. They were a Trek Fast Track 420 road bike, purple with green tires, and a black Rocky Mountain bike with knobby tires and red handlegrips. Let his loss be a lesson to the rest of us: Don’t procrastinate, register today.

Tweets from https://twitter.com/sfbg/lists/primary-coverage-2014

Music Listings Feb. 26-Mar 4, 2014

February 26, 2014

WEDNESDAY 26
ROCK
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. The Ever After, The Proofs, 8pm, free.
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Noise Pop Happy Hour: CCR Headcleaner, Skate Laws, Bicycle Day, 5pm, free.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Strange Vine, French Cassettes, Dante Elephante, Irontom, 7pm, $10-$12.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: The Fresh & Onlys, Cool Ghouls, Sandy’s, Luke Sweeney, 8pm, $12-$14.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Papercuts, Vetiver, The Donkeys, Eric D. Johnson, DJ Britt Govea, 8pm, $15-$18.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Beast Fiend, Neurotrash, Twat, 8pm, $5.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Dancer, Gravys Drop, 8:30pm, free.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Thieves of Malta, Great Highway, Future Us, 8pm, $8.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Little Person, April & The Paradigm, Harriot, The Tender Few, DJ Ryan Smith, 8pm, $5-$8.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. The Midnight Snackers, Spooky Flowers, Jet Trash, Friends W/O Benefits, 8pm, $5.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Ty Segall, Burnt Ones, Endless Bummer, 8pm, sold out.
SFSU Campus, Cesar Chavez Student Center: 1650 Holloway, San Francisco. Midnight Sons, Adult Books, Wyatt Blair, Bicycle Day, 6pm, free.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Cibo Matto, Salt Cathedral, 8pm, $26.
DANCE
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “BroMance: A Night Out for the Fellas,” 9pm, free.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Sticky Wednesdays,” w/ DJ Mark Andrus, 8pm, free.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bondage A Go Go,” w/ DJs Damon, Tomas Diablo, & guests, 9:30pm, $5-$10.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “Electro Pop Rocks,” 18+ dance night with Borgeous, DJ Audio1, Non Sequitur, Self Dustrukt, Nano Sage, LegitSoda, more, 9pm, $10-$20.
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “1964,” w/ DJ Matt B & guests, Second and Fourth Wednesday of every month, 10pm, $2.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Bodyshock,” w/ Chrissy Murderbot, Blk Rainbow, DJ Crackwhore, Unit 77, 9pm, $8-$10.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Housepitality,” w/ Acidman, Tyrel Williams, Bai-ee, Mrs. Blythe, 9pm, $5-$10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Indulgence,” 10pm
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “What?,” w/ resident DJ Tisdale and guests, 7pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Rock the Spot,” 9pm, free.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ DJ Big Bad Bruce, 10pm, free.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Booty Call,” w/ Juanita More, Joshua J, guests, 9pm, $3.
HIP-HOP
Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement, San Francisco. “Over the Hump,” w/ Children of the Funk, 10pm, free.
The NWBLK: 1999 Bryant, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, Stones Throw Records showcase featuring performances by Peanut Butter Wolf, J Rocc, Jonwayne, and Knxwledge at 8pm, preceded by a screening of the documentary Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton: This Is Stones Throw Records at 5pm, $20-$25.
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Mixtape Wednesday,” w/ resident DJs Strategy, Junot, Herb Digs, & guests, 9pm, $5.
ACOUSTIC
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, 7pm, free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, Every other Wednesday, 9:30pm, free/donation.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. The Toast Inspectors, Last Wednesday of every month, 9pm
JAZZ
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session, The Amnesiacs, 7pm, free.
Balancoire: 2565 Mission St., San Francisco. “Cat’s Corner,” 9pm, $10.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Royal Jelly, 9:30pm, $5.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6pm, free.
Club Deluxe: 1511 Haight, San Francisco. Patrick Wolff Quartet, 9pm, free.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. The Cosmo Alleycats featuring Ms. Emily Wade Adams, 7pm, free.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Michael Parsons Trio, Every other Wednesday, 8:30pm, free/donation.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Sebastian Parker Trio, 8pm
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Ricardo Scales, Wednesdays, 6:30-11:30pm, $5.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Thelonious Monk Institute All-Star Sextet with Ambrose Akinmusire & Lisa Henry, 8pm, $16-$20.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Amanda King, 7:30pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Baobab!,” timba dance party with DJ WaltDigz, 10pm, $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Bachatalicious,” w/ DJs Good Sho & Rodney, 7pm, $5-$10.
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Individúo, 8pm
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “International Freakout A Go-Go,” 10pm, free.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cafe Latino Americano, 8pm, $12.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Redwood Tango Ensemble, 8pm, free.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. The Cash Box Kings, 7:30 & 9:30pm, $15.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Big Bones & Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Takezo, 9:30pm
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Loop 2.4.3, Prism, 8pm, $5-$12.
SOUL
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Color Me Badd,” coloring books and R&B jams with Matt Haze, DJ Alarm, Broke-Ass Stuart, guests, Wednesdays, 5:30-9:30pm, free.

THURSDAY 27
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. “Mods v. Rockers,” w/ Little Wild, The M-Tet, DJ Dutch Crunch, 8:30pm, $5-$7.
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Noise Pop Happy Hour: Dude York, A Million Billion Dying Suns, A-1 & Rawdad, 5pm, free.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Hibbity Dibbity, Big Baby Guru, Wag, 9:30pm, $5 advance.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Bottomless Pit, Kinski, Vir, Wild Moth, 8pm, $15.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Mark Mulcahy, Mark Eitzel, Vikesh Kapoor, Whiskerman, 8pm, $12-$14.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Mother Falcon, Foxtails Brigade, Kan Wakan, The Airplanes, 8pm, $15.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: The Limousines, Nova Albion, The Hundred Days, Taxes, DJ Immigre, 8pm, $15 advance.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Bad Bad, Talk of Shamans, Pleasure Gallows, 8pm, $5.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Pleistocene, Lauren O’Connell, The Jerfs, 8:30pm, $6.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Popscene with Broods, ASTR, DJ Aaron Axelsen, 9:30pm, $13 advance.
S.F. Eagle: 398 12th St., San Francisco. Ritchie White Orchestra, Deep Teens, Younger Lovers, Club Meds, 9pm, $8.
SFSU Campus, Cesar Chavez Student Center: 1650 Holloway, San Francisco. Cool Ghouls, Mystic Braves, Mr. Elevator & The Brain Hotel, Knits, 6pm, free.
DANCE
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Digital Mystikz, DJ Rashad, Paradigm, Nebakaneza, Lud Dub, Johnny5, Mr. Kitt, 10pm, $17.50 advance.
Abbey Tavern: 4100 Geary, San Francisco. DJ Schrobi-Girl, 10pm, free.
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “Tubesteak Connection,” w/ DJ Bus Station John, 9pm, $5-$7.
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Men at Twerk,” 9pm, free.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “¡Pan Dulce!,” 9pm, $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” ‘80s night with DJs Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests, 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “XO,” w/ DJs Astro & Rose, 10pm, $5.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “The Crib,” 9:30pm, $10, 18+.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Afrolicious,” w/ DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, and guests, 9:30pm, $5-$8.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “I Love Thursdays,” 10pm, $10.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Night Fever,” 9pm, $5 after 10pm
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Com Truise, Phantoms, Kauf, DJ Dials, 9pm, $15-$17.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Gen-Y, Witowmaker, Fever Witch, Dirty Coyote, Alice Cunt & Myst Connection, DJ Doggie Chow, 8pm, $5.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursday,” w/ DJ Jay-R, 9pm, free.
Raven: 1151 Folsom, San Francisco. “1999,” w/ VJ Mark Andrus, 8pm, free.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Mardi Gras,” w/ Jerome Isma-Ae, Riggi & Piros, 9pm, $15-$20 advance.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bubble,” 10pm, free.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Base,” w/ Nic Fanciulli, 10pm, $5-$10.
HIP-HOP
Eastside West: 3154 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” w/ DJ Madison, 9pm, free.
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Quattro,” w/ DJ Dino, Fourth Thursday of every month, 9pm
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Peaches,” w/ lady DJs DeeAndroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, Umami, Inkfat, and Andre, 10pm, free.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Shabazz Palaces, Cities Aviv, Extra Classic, Raw-G, 8pm, $20-$22.
SPARC: 1256 Mission, San Francisco. Jel, Maus Haus, Grown Kids Radio DJs, 7pm, free with RSVP.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. Thugg Chains Launch Party, w/ Indaskyes, VNDMG, Chains & Frames, Sayer, Groucho, Free Fall Crew, Intellitard, more, 10pm, $5.
ACOUSTIC
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Jam Session, Last Thursday of every month, 8-10pm, free.
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Acoustic Open Mic, 7pm
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Wendy Colonna, Kendra McKinley, 9pm, $10.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Emperor Norton Céilí Band, 9pm
JAZZ
Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Doug Martin’s Avatar Ensemble, 7:30pm, free.
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Nova Jazz, 7:30pm, free.
Cafe Royale: 800 Post, San Francisco. The Hexaphonics, 9pm
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Charged Particles, 8pm
Feinstein’s at the Nikko: 222 Mason, San Francisco. Paula West, 8pm, $35-$50.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Swing Fever, 7:30pm
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Art Lewis Trio, 7pm, free.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Charlie Siebert & Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin, San Francisco. Terrence Brewer Jazz Quartet, Mosaic CD release party (in the Joe Henderson Lab), 7 & 8:30pm, $20.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Stompy Jones, 7:30pm, $10.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Jackie Ryan, 8 & 10pm, $16-$25.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 7:30pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Pa’Lante!,” w/ Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky, 10pm, $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. VibraSÓN, DJ Good Sho, 8pm, $12.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Jueves Flamencos,” 8pm, free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Therianthrope, Ian Faquini & Rebecca Kleinmann, 7:30pm, $10-$15.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Gary Flores & Descarga Caliente, 8pm
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. The Verdi Club Milonga, w/ Christy Coté, DJ Emilio Flores, guests, 9pm, $10-$15.
REGGAE
Pissed Off Pete’s: 4528 Mission St., San Francisco. Reggae Thursdays, w/ resident DJ Jah Yzer, 9pm, free.
BLUES
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. Bill Phillippe, 5:30pm, free.
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Alan Iglesias & Crossfire, 7:30 & 9:30pm, $20.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. T-Wrex & The Primitive Rhythm, 4pm; Cathy Lemons, 9:30pm
Tupelo: 1337 Green, San Francisco. G.G. Amos, 9pm
COUNTRY
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Twang Honky Tonk & Country Jamboree,” w/ DJ Little Red Rodeo, 7pm, free.
EXPERIMENTAL
The Luggage Store: 1007 Market, San Francisco. Collin McKelvey with Paul Clipson, HeadBoggle, Eric Sanchez, 8pm, $6-$10.

FRIDAY 28
ROCK
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Noise Pop Happy Hour: Future Twin, Cocktails, Blood Sister, 5pm, free.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Sofa Kings, 9:30pm, $10 advance.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: No Age, Hindu Pirates, Dune Rats, Creative Adult, 9pm, $12-$14.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Stu Allen & Mars Hotel, 9pm, $15-$18.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: The Soft White Sixties, No, The She’s, Cannons & Clouds, 8pm, $13-$15.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. The Moth & The Flame, The Trims, Ghost Town Jenny, Frozen Folk, 8pm, $10-$12.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Friday Live: Tiburona, DJ Emotions, 10pm, free.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Sonny & The Sunsets, Penny Machine, 9pm, $12.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Pebble Theory, Silver Griffin, Van Aragon, 9pm, $9.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Real Estate, The Shilohs, Dream Boys, 8pm, $20.
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco: 3200 California, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Throwing Muses, Mark Eitzel, 8pm, sold out.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Tournament of Hearts, Tall Fires, Midnight DJ set, 9pm, $5.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Bleached, Terry Malts, Mystic Braves, Tropical Popsicle, 9pm, $13-$15.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Cold Cave, Painted Palms, Dirty Ghosts, Happy Fangs, 8pm, $16-$18.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Dave Hause, Northcote, 9pm, $10.
Vacation: 651 Larkin, San Francisco. Breakarts, Murder Murder, Planes of Satori, 9pm, free.
DANCE
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Scene Unseen III with Mr. Carmack, Kelela, Majical Cloudz, Supreme Cuts, Purple, plus DJs from Honey Soundsystem, Popscene, Push the Feeling, Trap City, Isis, and more, 9pm, free with RSVP.
Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. Prok & Fitch, Festiva, 9pm, $10 advance.
BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Eye Candy,” w/ VJ Bill Dupp, 9pm, $10.
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Manimal,” 9pm
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Boy Bar,” w/ DJ Matt Consola, 9pm, $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Dark Shadows,” w/ DJs Daniel Skellington, Melting Girl, Panic, and Skarkrow, 9:30pm, $7 ($3 before 10pm).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “F.T.S.: For the Story,” 10pm
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Trap & Bass,” w/ HeRobust, UltraViolet, Napsty, Harris Pilton, Smookie Illson, 9pm, $10-$20.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “120 Minutes,” w/ Little Pain, Sad Andy, Santa Muerte, Chauncey CC, 10pm, $8-$10.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Trade,” 10pm, free before midnight.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “A Night of Rong Music,” w/ DJ Spun, Jeffrey Sfire, Corey Black, Ken Vulsion, 9pm, $10.
The Grand Nightclub: 520 Fourth St., San Francisco. “We Rock Fridays,” 9:30pm
Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. Richie G, 9pm
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Flight Fridays,” 10pm, $20.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “HYSL: Handle Your Shit Lady,” 9pm, $3.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “I ♥ the ‘90s,” w/ DJs Samala, Teo, Mr. Grant, & Sonny Phono, Fourth Friday of every month, 9pm, $5.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “F-Style Fridays,” w/ DJ Jared-F, 9pm
Mercer: 255 Rhode Island, San Francisco. “SoulHouse,” w/ Le Charm, Lawrence Petty, Timoteo Gigante, 9pm
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Beardyman, The Genie, Matt Haze, 9pm, $19-$21.
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Night Moves: 2-Year Anniversary,” w/ John Tejada, Shiny Objects, J-Boogie, Deejay Theory, Papa Lu, 9pm, $10-$20.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “Resonate,” w/ Esgar, DJ Nobody, Ruff Draft, Mophono, Citizen Ten, Bdot, Mr. Muddbird, Tone, Joe Mousepad (in the OddJob Loft), 9pm, $5-$10; Danny Tenaglia, Nikita, John Kaberna, in the main room, 9pm, $20-$30.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Pump: Worq It Out Fridays,” w/ resident DJ Christopher B, 9pm, $3.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Mardi Gras,” w/ Manufactured Superstars, Niko Zografos, Daun Giventi, 9pm, $20 advance.
Supperclub San Francisco: 657 Harrison, San Francisco. “Spin,” w/ Eric Lee, WhiteNoize, DJ Taj, 10pm
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bionic,” 10pm, $5.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Project X,” w/ Sebastian Concha, Clarisse & Josephine, Rose, 10pm, $10-$30.
Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bridge the Gap,” w/ resident DJ Don Kainoa, Fridays, 6-10pm, free.
HIP-HOP
EZ5: 682 Commercial, San Francisco. “Decompression,” Fridays, 5-9pm
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Flow,” w/ The Whooligan & Mikos Da Gawd, Fourth Friday of every month, 10pm, free befoe 11pm
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. “Back 2 the Basics,” w/ Andre Nickatina, J. Espinosa, J-Pro, Chuy Gomez, Fran Boogie, 10pm, $15-$25 advance.
Sloane: 1525 Mission, San Francisco. “Lift Off: The Darling Society Edition,” w/ DJ DC Is Chillin & DJ Amen, 9:30pm, $20.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Tommy P, M.J. Lee, Wesley Woo, 7pm, free.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. “Hillbilly Robot: An Urban Americana Music Event,” w/ The Harmed Brothers, Emily Bonn & The Vivants, 9pm, $10-$15.
The Sports Basement: 610 Old Mason, San Francisco. “Breakfast with Enzo,” w/ Enzo Garcia, 10 a.m., $5.
JAZZ
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Jazz at the Atlas, 7:30pm, free.
Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Johnny Smith, 8pm, free.
Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Chuck Peterson Quintet, Fourth Friday of every month, 5:30pm
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Jinx Jones Jazz Trio, 7:30pm, free.
Feinstein’s at the Nikko: 222 Mason, San Francisco. Paula West, 8pm, $35-$50.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30pm, free.
The Palace Hotel: 2 New Montgomery, San Francisco. The Klipptones, 8pm, free.
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Frank Tusa Band, 8pm, free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Broken Shadows Family Band, 7:30pm, $10-$15.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Jules Broussard, Danny Armstrong, and Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Trio, 7pm, $8.
SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin, San Francisco. Terrence Brewer Latin Jazz Quintet, Mi Historia CD release party (in the Joe Henderson Lab), 7 & 8:30pm, $20.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Black Market Jazz Orchestra, 9pm, $10.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Joyce Grant, 8pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Baxtalo Drom, International shimmying for lovers of Balkan music, bellydancers, and burlesque., Fourth Friday of every month, 9pm, $5-$10.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10pm, $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Taste Fridays, featuring local cuisine tastings, salsa bands, dance lessons, and more, 7:30pm, $15 (free entry to patio).
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Candela, 10pm
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cuban Night with Fito Reinoso, 7:30 & 9:15pm, $15-$18.
Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “Stereo,” w/ DJ Chico X & Monchis the DJ, 9:30pm, $5-$10.
REGGAE
Gestalt Haus: 3159 16th St., San Francisco. “Music Like Dirt,” 7:30pm, free.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Alan Iglesias & Crossfire, 7:30 & 10pm, $22.
Cafe Royale: 800 Post, San Francisco. Allister’s Chicago Blues Jam, Last Friday of every month, 9pm
Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson, San Francisco. Nat Bolden, 6pm
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Jan Fanucchi, Last Friday of every month, 4pm; Ron Thompson, 9:30pm
FUNK
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Loose Joints,” w/ DJs Centipede, Damon Bell, and Tom Thump, 10pm, $5-$10.
SOUL
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Soul Crush,” w/ DJ Serious Leisure, 10pm, free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Sissy Strut,” w/ The Handsome Young Men (DJs Ponyboy, Lil MC, Katie Duck, & Durt), Fourth Friday of every month, 10pm, $3-$5.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Dave Hollister, 8 & 10pm, $34-$45.

SATURDAY 1
ROCK
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Noise Pop Happy Hour: Winter Teeth, Tiger Honey Pot, Disastroid, 5pm, free; Fatso Jetson, The Grannies, 10pm, $5.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Free Salamander Exhibit, Black Map, Lasher Keen, Happy Diving, 9pm, $15.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: No Age, Cheatahs, GRMLN, Straight Crimes, 8pm, $12-$14.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Mikal Cronin, Blood Sister, Old Light, Vertical Scratchers, 8pm, $13-$15.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Fang, Texas Thieves, Trouble Maker, 9pm, $10.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Buffalo Tooth, Creative Adult, The Vibrating Antennas, Culture Abuse, 9pm, $8.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Real Estate, The Shilohs, Dominant Legs, 8pm, $20.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Nomad, Permanent Ruin, Pig DNA, Apriori, 5pm, $7.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Bedrücken, Hazzard’s Cure, Butt Problems, Szandora LaVey, benefit show for Miss Eva von Slüt, 8pm, $7.
The Riptide: 3639 Taraval, San Francisco. Jinx Jones & The KingTones, 9:30pm, free.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Moistboyz, Qui, 9pm, $16.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Madball, Twitching Tongues, Born Low, Never Healed, 9pm, $15.
DANCE
Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. Amtrac, Light Echo, Jayko, 9pm, $10 advance.
BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Industry,” w/ DJs Joe Gauthreaux & Jamie J. Sanchez, 10pm, $20 advance.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Leisure,” w/ DJs Aaron, Omar, & Jetset James, First Saturday of every month, 10pm, $7.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Bootie S.F.,” w/ DJs Adrian, Faroff, Tripp, Fox, Kool Karlo, Medic, Starr, Tannhäuser Gate, and more, 9pm, $10-$15.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Play,” First Saturday of every month, 10pm
Il Pirata: 2007 16th St., San Francisco. “Requiem,” w/ DJs Xiola, Calexica, and Noveli, 10pm, $5.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Bounce!,” 9pm, $3.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “The Prince & Michael Experience,” w/ DJs Dave Paul & Jeff Harris, First Saturday of every month, 9pm, $5.
Mercer: 255 Rhode Island, San Francisco. “Surface Tension,” w/ Powell, Beau Wanzer, more, 10pm, $10-$15 advance.
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. Opel 12-Year Anniversary, w/ Elite Force, Meat Katie, Syd Gris, Melyss, Kimba, Alain Octavo, DJ Denise, Andy P, DJ Dane, A.M. Rebel, more, 10pm, $18 advance.
The NWBLK: 1999 Bryant, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Ladytron (DJ set), Jimmy Tamborello, 9pm, $20.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. Sixth Annual Eye Heart SF Mardi Gras, w/ Party Favor, Manics, The Schmidt, MyKill, R3y, more, 9pm, $15-$50.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Trapeze XI: The Big-Bass Burlectro-Swing Affair, Smokey Joe & The Kid, The Klown, and DJ Delachaux provide the music for burlesque routines by Bunny Pistol, Reagan Riot, Double Dang Duo, and more., 9pm, $12-$15.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Mardi Gras,” w/ Super8 & Tab, Jaytech, Nick G, 9pm, $20 advance.
The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Go Bang!,” w/ DJs Shawn Ryan, Glenn Rivera, Steve Fabus, and Sergio Fedasz, 9pm, $7 (free before 10pm).
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Push the Feeling,” w/ Nitemoves, Al Lover, Yr Skull, Epicsauce DJs, 9pm, $6.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Swank,” w/ Plastik Funk, Pheeko Dubfunk, 10pm, $10-$30.
HIP-HOP
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “N.E.W.: Never Ending Weekend,” w/ DJ Jerry Ross, First Saturday of every month, 9pm, free before 11pm
Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “Touchy Feely,” w/ The Wild N Krazy Kids, First Saturday of every month, 10pm, $5 (free before 11pm).
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Afrika Bambaataa (DJ set), DJ Jahi, 10:30pm, $24-$26.
ACOUSTIC
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. The Wild Reeds, The Herbert Bail Orchestra, 9pm, $7-$10.
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Craig Ventresco and/or Meredith Axelrod, Saturdays, 4-6pm, free.
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Migrant Pickers, Dinner with the Kids, Jonny Mac, 7pm
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Sugar Ponies, Andrew Levin Band, Tim Brochier Band, Thunderegg, 9pm, $10.
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Slow Motion Cowboys, 9pm
Pa’ina: 1865 Post, San Francisco. Kapala, 6:30pm
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Paddy O’Brien with Richard Mandel, Opening night of the Crossroads Irish-American Festival., 9pm, $15-$20.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Seth Augustus, First Saturday of every month, 9pm, free/donation.
JAZZ
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. Oakland Byrds, 7pm, $8.
The Emerald Tablet: 80 Fresno, San Francisco. Faith Winthrop with Tammy Hall, Aaron Germain, and Carmen Cansino, 8pm, $15 suggested donation.
Feinstein’s at the Nikko: 222 Mason, San Francisco. Paula West, 7 & 9:30pm, $35-$50.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30pm, free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Trio, 7pm, $8.
SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin, San Francisco. Amina Figarova Sextet, in the Joe Henderson lab, 7 & 8:30pm, $25.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Robert Stewart Experience, 9pm
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 8pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco. “Pura,” 9pm, $20.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10pm, $5.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “El SuperRitmo,” w/ DJs Roger Mas & El Kool Kyle, 10pm, $5 before 11pm
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Eddy Navia & Pachamama Band, 8pm, free.
Roccapulco Supper Club: 3140 Mission, San Francisco. 47th Friends of Brazil Carnaval Ball, w/ Sotaque Baiano, Fogo na Roupa, Aquarela, DJ Elle, DJ Kblo, more, 9pm, $30 advance.
Space 550: 550 Barneveld, San Francisco. “Club Fuego,” 9:30pm
REGGAE
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. J Boog, Los Rakas, Bayonics, DJ Jah Yzer, 9pm, $30.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Janiva Magness, 7:30 & 10pm, $22.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Jukes, First Saturday of every month, 4pm; Daniel Castro, First Saturday of every month, 9:30pm
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Bones to Breakers, Benefit for motorcycle accident victim Vanessa Bezerra featuring blues music by The Blue Swamis., 3pm, $5.
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Choreographies of Creation & Destruction: The Live Cinemas of John Davis & Greg Pope, Experimental film screenings with live soundtrack performances., 7:30pm, $5-$10.
FUNK
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Willie Waldman Project, 9:30pm, $15-$20.
SOUL
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Hard French,” w/ DJs Carnita & Brown Amy, First Saturday of every month, 2pm, $7.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Saturday Night Soul Party,” w/ DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, & Paul Paul, First Saturday of every month, 10pm, $10 ($5 in formal attire).
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Will Downing, 8pm, sold out.

SUNDAY 2
ROCK
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Rogue Wave, Trails & Ways, 4pm, $20.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Marbler, The Krypters, The Yes Go’s, 8pm, $5.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Big Tits, Warm Soda, Dimples, 8:30pm, $6.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. The Hodges, Shot in the Dark, 8pm, $7.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Lydia (performing Illuminate), Saint Motel, Golden Sun, 7pm, $15.
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. Rainbow Beast, 12:30 & 4:30pm, $10-$20.
DANCE
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Full of Grace: A Weekly House Music Playground,” 9pm, free.
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “Replay Sundays,” 9pm, free.
The Edge: 4149 18th St., San Francisco. “’80s at 8,” w/ DJ MC2, 8pm
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Dub Mission,” w/ Alpha Steppa, DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm).
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “T.Dance,” 6 a.m.-6pm; “BoomBox,” First Sunday of every month, 8pm
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Stamina,” w/ DJs Lukeino, Jamal, and guests, 10pm, free.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Sweater Funk,” 10pm, free.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Jock,” Sundays, 3-8pm, $2.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Bounce,” w/ DJ Just, 10pm
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ Tara Brooks, Lee Reynolds, Dmitry Purple, Jamie Schwabl, Zach Walker, 9pm, $5-$10.
The NWBLK: 1999 Bryant, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Closing Night Party with Machinedrum, 6pm, $10.
Otis: 25 Maiden, San Francisco. “What’s the Werd?,” w/ resident DJs Nick Williams, Kevin Knapp, Maxwell Dub, and guests, 9pm, $5 (free before 11pm).
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” w/ DJ Marc deVasconcelos, 9pm, free.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Gigante,” 8pm, free.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Sunset Arcade,” 18+ dance party & game night, 9pm, $10.
HIP-HOP
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Return of the Cypher,” 9:30pm, free.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Swagger Like Us,” First Sunday of every month, 3pm
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Shooz,” w/ DJ Raymundo & guests, First Sunday of every month, 10pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Bernal Mountain Bluegrass Jam, 4pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Spike’s Mic Night,” Sundays, 4-8pm, free.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church: 1755 Clay, San Francisco. “Sunday Night Mic,” w/ Roem Baur, 5pm, free.
Tupelo: 1337 Green, San Francisco. “Twang Sundays,” w/ The Gravel Spreaders, 7pm, free.
JAZZ
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Kally Price Old Blues & Jazz Band, First Sunday of every month, 9pm, $7-$10.
Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Jinx Jones’ Jazzabilly All-Stars, 4:30pm
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” 10pm, free.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Jazz Revolution, 4pm, free/donation.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin, San Francisco. Amina Figarova Sextet, in the Joe Henderson lab, 5:30 & 7pm, $20.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Chris Duggan, 7:30pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Atmosphere: 447 Broadway, San Francisco. “Hot Bachata Nights,” w/ DJ El Guapo, 5:30pm, $10 ($18-$25 with dance lessons).
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Brazil & Beyond,” 6:30pm, free.
Thirsty Bear Brewing Company: 661 Howard, San Francisco. “The Flamenco Room,” 7:30 & 8:30pm
REGGAE
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. J Boog, Los Rakas, Thrive, DJ Jah Yzer, 9pm, $30.
BLUES
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Blues Power, 4pm
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 8pm, free.
Swig: 571 Geary, San Francisco. Sunday Blues Jam with Ed Ivey, 9pm
CLASSICAL
San Francisco Conservatory of Music: 50 Oak, San Francisco. Hot Air Music Festival, Fifth annual student-run showcase of avant-classical compositions featuring free performances by the Ignition Duo, Mobius Trio, Friction Quartet, New Keys, and more., 12:30-9pm, free.
COUNTRY
The Riptide: 3639 Taraval, San Francisco. “The Hootenanny West Side Revue,” First Sunday of every month, 7:30pm, free.
EXPERIMENTAL
Musicians Union Local 6: 116 Ninth St., San Francisco. Noertker’s Moxie, Ze Bib!, 7:30pm, $8-$10.
SOUL
Delirium Cocktails: 3139 16th St., San Francisco. “Heart & Soul,” w/ DJ Lovely Lesage, 10pm, free.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Will Downing, 7pm, $55-$75.

MONDAY 3
ROCK
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. PigPen Theatre Co., The Tragic Thrills, 9pm, $7-$10.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. We Butter the Bread with Butter, King Loses Crown, Honour Crest, Lions Lions, 7:30pm, $10-$13.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. The Wild Feathers, Saints of Valory, Jamestown Revival, 8pm, $13-$15.
DANCE
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Death Guild,” 18+ dance party with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, & guests, 9:30pm, $3-$5.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Wanted,” w/ DJs Key&Kite and Richie Panic, 9pm, free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Vienetta Discotheque,” w/ DJs Stanley Frank and Robert Jeffrey, 10pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Front Country, First Monday of every month, 9pm, free.
The Chieftain: 198 Fifth St., San Francisco. The Wrenboys, 7pm, free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, 9:30pm, free/donation.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Open Mic with Brendan Getzell, 8pm, free.
Osteria: 3277 Sacramento, San Francisco. “Acoustic Bistro,” 7pm, free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Peter Lindman, 4pm
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Nicole Atkins, Arc Iris, Davey Horne, 8pm, $15.
JAZZ
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Rob Reich, First and Third Monday of every month, 7pm
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Eugene Pliner Quartet with Tod Dickow, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Le Jazz Hot, 7pm, free.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “The Monday Make-Out,” w/ Talk More, Eli Wallace’s Platform, Timothy Orr Ensemble, 8pm, free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. City Jazz Instrumental Jam Session, 8pm
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Riley Bandy, 7:30pm, free.
REGGAE
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Skylarking,” w/ I&I Vibration, 10pm, free.
BLUES
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Bachelors, 9:30pm
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Mchtnchts, John Shiurba’s 3-3 on 3/3, Crystal Moon Cone, 7:30pm, $8-$10.
SOUL
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “M.O.M. (Motown on Mondays),” w/ DJ Gordo Cabeza & Timoteo Gigante, 8pm, free.

TUESDAY 4
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Cellar Doors, Cool Ghouls, 9:15pm Starts . continues through March 25, $7-$10.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. The Casket Girls, The Stargazer Lilies, Dott, Dreamend, 8pm, $10.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Kevin Moan & The Reptiles, Vamos, 8:30pm, $5.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Bend Sinister, Grand Tarantula, Ensemble Mik Nawooj, 8pm, $8.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Ava Luna, Chastity Belt, Dude York, Krill, 9:30pm, $7.
DANCE
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “High Fantasy,” w/ DJ Viv, Myles Cooper, & guests, 10pm, $2.
Laszlo: 2532 Mission, San Francisco. “Beards of a Feather,” Enjoy classy house records, obscuro disco, and laid-back late-’80s jams with DJ Ash Williams and guests, First Tuesday of every month, 9pm, free.
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Soundpieces,” 10pm, free-$10.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Switch,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & Andre, 9pm, $3.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Shelter,” 10pm, free.
Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Tight,” w/ resident DJs Michael May & Lito, 8pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Songwriter in Residence: Lonnie Lazar, 7pm Starts . continues through March 25.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Mariee Sioux, Yesway, Honey.Moon.Tree., 8pm, $10.
JAZZ
Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Gerry Grosz Jazz Jam, 7pm
Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Kally Price & Rob Reich, 7pm, free.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Mardi Gras with Wil Blades featuring the Jazz Mafia Horns, Stanford Marching Band, Brass Band Mission, 8pm, $12-$15.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6pm, free.
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Chris Amberger, 7pm
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Clifford Lamb, Mel Butts, and Friends, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, 7pm
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. West Side Jazz Club, 5pm, free; Conscious Contact, First Tuesday of every month, 8pm, free.
Tupelo: 1337 Green, San Francisco. Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz Band, 6pm
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. “Tuesday Night Jump,” w/ Stompy Jones, 9pm, $10-$12.
Wine Kitchen: 507 Divisadero St., San Francisco. Hot Club Pacific, 7:30pm
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Emily Hayes, 7:30pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Salsa Tuesday, w/ DJs Good Sho & El de la Clave, 8:30pm, $10.
The Cosmo Bar & Lounge: 440 Broadway, San Francisco. Conga Tuesdays, 8pm, $7-$10.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Carnaval Fat Tuesday with Fogo na Roupa, DJs Elan & Carioca, 9pm, $10.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Underground Nomads,” w/ rotating resident DJs Amar, Sep, and Dulce Vita, plus guests, 9pm, $5 (free before 9:30pm).
REGGAE
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. “Bless Up,” w/ Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi, 10pm
BLUES
Fillmore Center Plaza: Fillmore (at O’Farrell), San Francisco. Fat Tuesday in the Fillmore with Bobbie Webb, 5pm, free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Lisa Kindred, First Tuesday of every month, 9:30pm, free.
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Joseph Van Hassel: New Music for Snare Drum, 7:30pm, $10-$15.
FUNK
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Mardi Gras with the Fat Tuesday Band, 7:30 & 9:30pm, $15.
SOUL
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. The JRo Project, First Tuesday of every month, 9:30pm, $5.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Lost & Found,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and guests, 9:30pm, free.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Moonchild, 8pm, $12-$14. 2

This Week’s Picks: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

WEDNESDAY 26

Fresh and Onlys

Yeah, Ty Segall moved to LA and Thee Oh Sees are on an indefinite hiatus, but chin up! The Fresh and Onlys aren’t going anywhere. Keeping the SF garage rock scene alive, these hometown heroes are tireless, performing almost constantly around the city since their inception in 2008. Sure, you’ve seen ’em before and you’ll probably see ’em again, but this is prime: headlining the city’s greatest (and most fitting) down n’ dirty rock club as a part of Noise Pop, the city’s greatest (and most affordable!) arts festival. And if you haven’t seen ’em before, get on it! These dudes can write a catchy tune with just the right amount of melancholy like nobody’s business. (Haley Zaremba)

With Sandy’s

8pm, $14

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

THURSDAY 27

Com Truise

It is only fitting that Com Truise embarks on a national tour at the same time the new RoboCop film is in movie theaters. Both the electronic funk producer and the futuristic peace officer are products of the ’80s, borrow heavily from the era, rely on shiny technological weaponry, and owe a shout-out to Michigan. Since 2010, Ann Arbor’s trendy Ghostly International label has championed Truise’s artistic exploits, including the shimmering Wave 1 EP released this year. Truise concocts muddled, vintage, bass-heavy synthwave, the type of emphatic sound that might arise if Joy Division or New Order were selected for RoboCop reprogramming. (Kevin Lee)

With Phantoms, Kauf, DJ Dials

9pm, $19

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

Jel

Forget the music, watching Jel repeatedly punch drum machine pads and twist sampler knobs on bulky, last-gen machinery would be worth the price of admission. The East Bay-based electronic hip-hop producer manages to keep his appendages intact while stabbing out a dizzying array of kick drums, snares and percussion in ever-shifting breakbeat arrangements and tempos. On his latest LP, Late Pass (Anticon), Jel balances bass with shoegaze melodies, hints of psychedelia, electric guitar chords and some of his own emceeing. In line with the political undertones throughout the album (“Don’t get comfortable,” the title track advises), this show marks the two-year anniversary of the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, a medical cannabis nonprofit. (Lee)

With Maus Haus, Grown Kids Radio DJs

7pm-10 pm, free (RSVP required for non-Noise Pop badge holders)

Sparc

1256 Mission, SF

(415) 252-7727

www.sparcsf.org

FRIDAY 28

Bleached

It won’t surprise anyone to learn that Bleached’s Clavin sisters are longtime friends of Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino. Bleached dishes out the same brand of blissed-out, beach-blonde pop morsels that has been pouring out of Southern California (San Fernando Valley, in the Clavins’ case) for the past few years. This isn’t to say that there’s nothing special about this sister act: The Clavins have an amazing aptitude for earworms and feel-good noises paired with feel-bad lyrics, and Bleached’s recent debut album establishes that the band is not to be dismissed as one of the crowd — the sisters have been sneaking into punk shows and honing their musical chops for years, and it shows. (Zaremba)

With Terry Malts, Mystic Braves, Tropical Popsicle

8:30pm, $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Other Minds Festival

What do jazz saxophone legend Roscoe Mitchell, experimental composer Joseph Byrd, and an African grey parrot have in common? They’re all sharing a bill at the 19th annual Other Minds Festival, a two-day celebration of avant-garde music, taking place for the first time at the SFJAZZ Center. This year’s festival also includes performances by award-winning pianist Myra Melford, the premiere of synthesizer superstar Donald Buchla’s Drop by Drop, and a specially commissioned performance of Roscoe Mitchell’s Nonaah for four bass saxophones — a rare instrument in its own right. The LA Times calls this the “West Coast’s premier festival of new music,” so if you’re not afraid to get a little out there, this is the place to be. (Emma Silvers)

8pm, Fri/28 – Sat/1, $25-$65

SFJAZZ Center

201 Franklin, SF

(866) 920-5299

www.otherminds.org

SATURDAY 1

James Bond

While most people are probably familiar with James Bond as a character from the film and literary worlds, the iconic spy has also had his danger- and damsel-filled missions and adventures featured in comics and newspaper strips around the globe. Suit up and join Alan J. Porter, author of the book James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007, for a discussion and slideshow highlighting the secret agent’s other realm of action. Cartoon Art Museum chairman Ron Evans and artist Mike Capozzola will host this evening’s festivities, which will also include a look at vintage Bond memorabilia, prizes, an auction, and of course, martinis — shaken, not stirred, naturally. (Sean McCourt)

7:30-9:30pm, $7

Cartoon Art Museum

655 Mission St, SF

(415) CAR-TOON

www.cartoonart.org

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.

Perhaps Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. should transition into full-time DJ work. On one track of their new (and free to download) mixtape Produce Vol. 1, indie rockers Joshua Epstein and Daniel Zott cheekily layer vocals from both the Notorious BIG and the Beach Boys over 16-bit video game beats, creating an unexpected and playful mashup. “Beach Blanket Biggie” epitomizes the irreverent approach and wide-ranging musical influences of the Detroit-based duo. Their sophomore LP The Speed of Things (Warner Bros. Records) collects bright vocals, moody folk, electronically shifted acoustic samples, and a splash of uptempo synth-pop, as evidenced by the recent single “If You Didn’t See Me [Then You Weren’t On The Dancefloor]”. (Lee)

With Chad Valley

9 pm, $20

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

Afrika Bambaataa

Without Afrika Bambaataa, hip-hop as we know it would not have existed; he is credited for coining the term “hip-hop” back in 1982, more than three decades ago. That same year, Bambaataa released his seminal single “Planet Rock,” a daring electrofunk track featuring vocoders and synthesizers that transformed rap and electronic music genres. Part of the hip-hop patriarch’s staying power can be attributed to the connections he fostered in the ’70s and ’80s, when he hosted gatherings to promote peace and social change, and shaped a generation of artists. Continuing to DJ and produce tracks that mix funk, breaks, fusion, and rock also helps to ensure fans that hip-hop’s godfather isn’t going anywhere. (Lee)

With DJ Jahi

10:30 pm, $26

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com/sanfrancisco

SUNDAY 2

SF History Expo

With the city by the Bay going through yet another period of transformation, now is the perfect time to look back on its incredible history and learn some of the stories that shaped the modern metropolis we know and love today. The 2014 San Francisco History Expo will feature more than 50 exhibitors creating special “mini-museums” and booths onsite, along with a variety of presentations, films, displays, and more — all taking place at the Old Mint, one of the few buildings to survive the earthquake and fire of 1906. (Sean McCourt)

$5, 11am-5pm Sat, 11am-4pm Sun

The Old Mint 88 5th St, SF

www.sfhistoryexpo.org

Isness Productions Presents First Sundays Yoga

Who’s trying to get downward dog tonight? For those who like to get down on the dance floor as well as on their yoga mats, head to the Regency for an evening of yoga, live music, organic food, eco-vending and holistic healing. Isness Productions’ Scott Franklin Manning has been using music as a healing power and a means to break down barriers since the ’90s, but this event marks the grand opening of his First Sundays gatherings. Practice yoga with two Yoga Tree instructors, Laura Burkhart and writer/spiritual man-about-town Mark Morford, with an electronic soundtrack by DJ Little John. Later on, DJ Garth will start the dance party, followed by an all-vinyl set by Wicked Sound System. The all-ages event will also feature a yoga class for kids and holistic activities from tarot reading to collective chair massages and an organic tea and raw chocolate lounge. As if it couldn’t get anymore wholesome, 100 percent of the proceeds fund school garden projects in San Francisco. (Laura B. Childs)

3pm – 9pm, $35

The Regency

1290 Sutter, SF

www.firstsundays.com

Murder in Pigalle launch party with Cara Black

French private investigator (and magnet for trouble) Aimée Leduc is back at it again in Murder in Pigalle. San Francisco Library Laureate and best-selling author Cara Black celebrates her latest installment in the French mystery series with a book reading and signing. Inspired by a true-crime story during the summer of 1998, Murder in Pigalle follows Aimée Leduc as she tries to slow down her hectic lifestyle — until a serial rapist wreaks havoc on Paris’ Pigalle neighborhood. When the criminal strikes too close to home, Aimée can’t help but become involved. The suspense will leave you au bout de souffle. (Childs)

3pm, free

Books Inc. at Laurel Village

3515 California, SF

www.booksinc.net

MONDAY 3

Marshall Elementary School Second Annual Best Tamales Contest

There are few Central American delicacies as exceptional as the tamale. Wrapped up like a present, the masa dish can be filled with gooey cheeses, spiced meats, or an assortment of veggies. But what makes a tamale the best tamale? Marshall Elementary School is a on a quest to find el major tamale de la Mission. After its immense success last year, the tamale contest will once again bring the community together to help raise money for the underfunded school. Parents of students and the school’s Mission neighbors will cook up a variety of homemade tamales based on their places of origin, ranging from the Yucatan to right here in San Francisco. Expect tastes from many other regions of Mexico and Latin America as well! (Childs)

6pm – 8pm, $30

Roosevelt Tamale Parlor

2817 24th St, SF

TUESDAY 4

Tosca

Tosca is the sound you hear in a dimly-lit lounge, resplendent with plush velvet seats and sensual wisps of scented candle smoke. Austrian downtempo luminaries Richard Dorfmeister and Rubert Hubert make a rare foray this side of the Atlantic with a six-stop trip through North America. Sophomore studio album Suzuki (!K7 Recordings) remains a gold standard in the lounge music genre, as refreshingly lush and catchy today as when it was released at the turn of the millennium. Their newest LP, Odeon, is a vocal-laden voyage that entices listeners through layered atmospherics and dramatic tones. This live performance will feature the longtime pair alternating between piano and electronics, accompanied by vocalists and visuals from Austria’s Ars Electronica Futurelab. (Lee)

With Cath Coffey and Robert Gallagher

8pm, $35

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF (415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

Rep Clock: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

Schedules are for Wed/26-Tue/4 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $5-12. Cine+Mas SF Latino Film Series: Lemon (Brownson and Levison, 2012), Wed, 7. “Adjectives in the Halting Speech: Films by Jonathan Schwartz,” Thu, 7. Noise Pop: Revenge of the Mekons (Angio, 2013), Fri, 7; Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker (Keber, 2013), Fri, 9; Kids Like You and Me (Cody, 2013), Sun, 4. Other Cinema: “SisPics:” The Motherhood Archives (Lusztig, 2014), Sat, 8:30. With Irene Lusztig in person; a percentage of proceeds goes to SF’s Internet Archives.

BALBOA THEATRE 3630 Balboa, SF; cinemasf.com/balboa. $7.50-10. Broken Eggs: The Looming Retirement Crisis in America, Wed, 5. “Popcorn Palace:” The Secret of NIMH (Bluth, 1982), Sat, 10am. Matinee for kids. Academy Awards party with live commentary by MC Reed Kirk Rahlmann, Sun, 4. Advance tickets advised.

BAY MODEL 2100 Bridgeway, Sausalito; www.tiburonfilmfestival.com. Free. Decoding Deepak (Chopra, 2012), Tue, 6.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •No Country for Old Men (Coen and Coen, 1997), Wed, 7, and A Serious Man (Coen and Coen, 2009), Wed, 9:15. •Star 80 (Fosse, 1983), Thu, 7, and Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001), Thu, 9. “Lesbians Who Teach Summit,” Fri. More info at lesbianswhoteach.org/summit. Call for Sat-Tue program info.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. times. “Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014,” call for dates and times. Gloria (Lelio, 2013), call for dates and times. If You Build It (Creadon, 2013), Sat, 7.

“CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL 2014” Various venues, San Jose; www.cinequest.org. Film festival with narrative, documentary, and short films, plus tributes to Neil Gaiman, Christopher Meloni, and others, March 4-16.

GOETHE-INSTITUT SAN FRANCISCO 530 Bush, SF; goethe.de/ins/us/saf/enindex.htm. $5. Sisters (Wild, 2013), Wed, 6:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Villains We Love:” Ripley’s Game (Cavani, 2003), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Film 50: History of Cinema:” There’s Always Tomorrow (Sirk, 1956), with lecture by Emily Carpenter, Wed, 3:10. “African Film Festival 2014:” Nairobi Half Life (Tosh Gitonga, 2012), Wed, 7. “The Brilliance of Satyajit Ray:” Rabindranath Tagore (1961), Thu, 7. “Against the Law: The Crime Films of Anthony Mann:” Side Street (Mann, 1950), Fri, 7. “Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema:” Une femme mariée (1964), Fri, 8:45. “Afterimage: Kamran Shirdel:” “The Films of Kamran Shirdel (1965-80),” Sat, 5:30. With Kamran Shirdel in person. “Jokers Wild: American Comedy, 1960-1989:” The Apartment (Wilder, 1960), Sat, 8:30. “Rediscovered:” Too Much Johnson (Welles, 1938), Mon, 7.

PARAMOUNT THEATRE 2025 Broadway, Oakl; www.ticketmaster.com. $5. Roman Holiday (Wyler, 1953), Fri, 8.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. 7 Boxes (Maneglia, 2014), Feb 28-March 6, 7, 9 (also Sat-Sun, 3, 5). “Hump! Tour,” films from the Hump! Film Festival, Fri-Sat, 6, 8, 10 (also Sat, 3). This event, $20; more info at www.humptour.com.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; Facebook: The Vortex Room. $10. “The Last Rites of the Vortex Room:” •Spectre (Donner, 1977), Thu, 9, and Shadowman (Franju, 1975), Thu, 11.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “Design and Architecture Films Showcase:” Design is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli (Brew and Guerra, 2013), Thu-Sat, 7:30; Sun, 2. *

Rocked worlds

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

THEATER

There are two sides to every road. But ask a long-haul trucker, a traveling salesman, or a pair of wandering minstrels like the Bengsons, and they’ll remind you that those sides converge at the horizon line.

The Bengsons — married musician-songwriters Abigail and Shaun — met randomly through a gig in New York City back in the late aughts. A mutual attraction, immediate and fierce, led them to become engaged within weeks of their first conversation. Both then in their early 20s, with serious and eclectic musical backgrounds, they recall the courtship as a whirlwind of powerful new emotions, bright and dark. Fast on the heels of marriage came five years of traveling across the country as their own band — a sure blend of musical influences that slips across various genres, in a sort of indie folk, neo-vaudevillian, truck stop cabaret, and drive-by rock opera that more or less dovetails with their daily selves. Among much else, living and learning as peripatetic artists and lovers has given them the opportunity to explore the meaning of all those feelings that led to their highly creative, itinerant relationship.

The fruit of that exploration is in the world premiere this week of Hundred Days, a major musical-theatrical venture carefully nurtured by Z Space and three years in the making. Directed by Anne Kauffman and with a book by Bay Area–based playwright Kate E. Ryan — both fully collaborative partners in the project, the Bengsons readily acknowledge — Hundred Days is something like a real-life Once: a true love affair cast through a darkly playful fictional story about Sarah (Abigail Bengson) and Will (Shaun Bengson), two 20somethings who find their powerful new love comes with a serious expiration date.

The production is no mere concert (though it rocks, loudly and well), but every inch a theatrical experience. Ryan provides a complete and involving narrative spine to the at times raucous, at times haunting musical set pieces. Moreover, Hundred Days features a large and talented cast of actors and musicians (including El Beh, Melissa Kaitlyn Carter, Geneva Harrison, Kate Kilbane, Jo Lampert, Amy Lizardo, Dalane Mason, Joshua Pollock, and Reggie D. White); a moody and mercurial set design by Kris Stone (aglow with a sort of post-industrial romanticism courtesy of lighting designer Allen Willner); and choreography by renowned San Francisco dance maker Joe Goode.

But at its heart are a body of songs of surprising force and subtlety, in dynamic arrangements that showcase both the Bengsons’ hard-won skills as musicians and composers, as well as their exhilarating ability to convey a rare sense of emotional honesty, of uncensored feeling, in their work. Before a recent rehearsal ahead of the show’s first previews, the couple sat down and shared musings on the journey that brought them here.

SF Bay Guardian You’ve described your courtship as being a kind of existential crisis, in that it suddenly put life in an unsettling new perspective.

Shaun Bengson It did start to feel incredibly short.

Abigail Bengson It’s life’s irony that in rushing to live life fully you do collide more quickly with the end of it. Rushing towards life is inevitably rushing towards death. That’s true of everybody. In the play, we put a timer on it, to help us talk about it in a more concrete way. But that’s just how we feel every day anyway [laughs] It’s just sort of the situation.

SB They’re such big feelings, it’s taken a really long time to sort them out and figure out what’s going on there — a lot of the wonder, and also the neurosis and the fear — all of that is where the show came from.

AB The more we’ve unpacked what was initially just an enormous feeling of life and dread in one package, the more we’ve discovered how ordinary that is. I’d say that’s been my primary comfort. In that moment I felt like, “I am struck by lighting. I am going to die.” My experience of life is no longer separate from my experience of death. I’m finding that that is true for so many people.

Any big love, not necessarily for a spouse, but for a child or for a parent, can have that same effect of making life an emergency and making death feel near. But also, in living with that breath in my throat for long enough, I’ve started to be able to soften into that and say, “OK, so now we make a sandwich.” I mean, how do we live in an ordinary way in the face of this thing that feels so enormous? Why is it all we’re thinking about all the time? I don’t know. I guess that’s why we ended up writing all those songs about it.

SFBG And that led you out on the road. How did five years of traveling, your day-to-day life on the road, actually come about?

SB We were living in an apartment in Brooklyn, and I had one year left on my teaching contract. We were playing in our band and working on the show. At the end of my school year, I still had the whole summer [paid]. At the same time, our very dear friend David was going back to South Africa, so he said, “You can stay in my house for the summer.” So we had these two months when we’d still have money from my teaching gig and we’d have a place to live. So we went and lived in the Berkshires for a couple of months, finished a show and set up tour dates, and left from there. We thought maybe we’d go back—maybe I could go back to teaching, if things didn’t work.

AB I never felt that. [Shaun laughs.]

SFBG It felt right to leave?

SB It felt really good. It felt like such a relief.

AB It felt honest. It felt right. True to the way I think and what I am. It meant our life became, you know, gas money and Taco Bell, but it also became playing a lot of shows, doing a lot of service work in different places and learning a lot through that. We got to be students again in that sense, by putting ourselves in situations that were intensely uncomfortable over and over again, and writing music about them. It was a little songwriting boot camp of our own design. And we were getting to know each other’s styles and how we would write. I also feel, like, thank god we were married. I don’t know how you could be a musician and not marry a musician.

SFBG You hit the road five years ago and haven’t turned back. Was there a point early on where you hesitated? Were there any gigs that made you think again?

AB The first crappy gig I remember being really educational — and making me want to do it more even, though it was painful — was when we were at this biker bar…

SB Oh, yeah, this was in the Valley outside of Los Angeles. What was it called? Something like—it’s not Topanga. Tujunga? Is that place?

AB Fact-check all of this, we’re totally full of crap. [Fact check: Sunland-Tujunga sits in northeastern Los Angeles.] But we were playing this bar. Everybody was angry looking, a lot of shaved heads. I was [looking around the room, thinking], “What is going on with you?” Scared. So we got up and we played all the songs that we had written to date that were the most ferocious and aggressive and loud — and then we were kind of running out of those. So at the very end of the night we played this one song. It’s actually about a woman we knew well, whose daughter had passed away, and her struggling with that. And we sang for her and about that, in the moment sort of ready to get booed.

Then, when the set ended, this pack of — now, I know, lovely gentlemen, but at the time, terrifying — figures came towards me, and were weeping. They just said, “That one. Wish you had played more like that.” And I was like, “Fuck, me too.” I mean, I love those aggressive songs, too, they’re a big part of what we do, but it was such a lesson in prejudice for me — that I had judged what they would like, and assumed that it wouldn’t be anything honest for me.

SB It’s the lesson I’m still constantly learning. It takes so much more courage to be actually genuine in a moment. If I’m not careful, my tendency can be to play towards what I perceive people’s expectations are for the event, versus when we try to play the songs we most want to play and are most “us.”

AB But I also think it’s incredible training to play in rooms that are not receptive at first. Because part of the task then is to create the space where people can lean forward. I feel it was one of the best trainings for me. Play somewhere where they wish you were just playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. Where they wish you were a DJ. That’s the best place to go.

SFBG Have you two every attempted anything on the scale of Hundred Days before?

SB and AB No.

AB That was part of why we called it an opera at first. Because opera, they say, is the most collaborative art form — that you need every possible kind of artist to come in and make it happen. And that’s what Z Space has done, is allow for that.

SB It’s been really amazing.

AB It’s been a dream. *

HUNDRED DAYS

Through April 6, $10-$100

Previews Wed/26, 7pm; Thu/27-Fri/28, 8pm; opens Sat/1, 8pm

Runs Wed and Sun, 7pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

www.zspace.org

Theater Listings: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

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

Mommy Queerest Exit Studio, 156 Eddy, SF; www.divafest.info. $15-25. Opens Fri/28, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 29. DIVAfest and Guerrilla Rep present Kat Evasco (who co-wrote with John Caldon) in an autobiographical solo comedy about the relationship between a lesbian daughter and her closeted lesbian mother.

“Risk Is This … The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival” Tides Theater, 533 Sutter, Second Flr; www.cuttingball.com. Free ($20 donation for reserved seating). Opens Fri/28, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. (Starting March 14, venue changes to Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF). Through March 29. Five new works in staged readings, including two from Cutting Ball resident playwright Andrew Saito.

Tipped & Tipsy Marsh Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Sat/1, 5pm. Runs Sat, 5pm; Sun, 7pm. Through April 6. Solo performer Jill Vice performs her Fringe Festival hit.

ONGOING

The Altruists Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.shewolftheater.com. $19-34. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through March 8. She Wolf Theater performs Nicky Silver’s “politically incorrect” play that exposes the real motivations behind altruistic behavior.

Children Are Forever (All Sales are Final!) Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 22. W. Kamau Bell directs Julia Jackson in her solo show about adoption.

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (Sun/2, performance at 2pm; March 9, performance will be a reading of Charlie Varon’s Fish Sisters). Through March 16. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Hundred Days Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $10-100. Previews Wed/26, 7pm; Thu/27-Fri/28, 8pm. Opens Sat/1, 8pm. Runs Wed and Sun, 7pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through April 6. Z Space presents the world premiere of a folk rock odyssey conceived and created by Abigail and Shaun Bengson.

An Indian Summer Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.wehavemet.org. $20-40. Thu/27-Sat/1, 8pm. Multi Ethnic Theater presents local playwright Charles Johnson’s parable of race relations in the Deep South of the 1980s. On a small stage split into two alternating scenes by a movable wall in director-designer Lewis Campbell’s set, two sets of working-class residents of rural Alabama, one white and one black, have their discrete worlds unexpectedly collide. Musician Charlie Ray (a less than convincing Kevin Wisney) is fresh from the pen and living with girlfriend Pearle (AJ Davenport). Plucking at his guitar, he dreams of getting some money to afford time in a recording studio. But his brother Bobby (Paul Rodriguez) has a way of talking him into sketchy schemes, which has Pearle worried, especially after a visit from the Sheriff (Richard Wenzel). For his part, Bobby is hoping to make some money to appease his pregnant wife, Sarah (Bree Swartwood), who wants Bobby to move her and their baby to Maine. Meanwhile, Junior (a forceful Bennie Lewis, alternating nights with Stuart Hall) is a feisty wheelchair bound African American man living in a small trailer. Junior’s friend Emmitt (Fabian Herd, alternating with Vernon Medearis) tries to convince him he should put his money in a bank rather than keeping it in his trailer — especially now that Junior is selling his land for a tidy sum — but Junior doesn’t trust banks. Next, Junior gets a letter from a lawyer claiming half the profit from the land sale on behalf of a long lost, half-white relative — the offspring of an illicit romance between Junior’s father and a white woman, related to Pearle. The situation, of course, spells trouble. But while we see it coming, there’s meant to be pathos in the tangled connections among these parallel stories. Unfortunately, the artificial nature of the plot makes it hard to credit, while the desultory pace and uneven acting make the going harder still. (Avila)

Jerusalem San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through March 8. SF Playhouse presents the West Coast premiere of English playwright Jez Butterworth’s West End and Broadway hit, a three-act revel led by a larger-than-life rebel, a stout boozed-up drug-dealer, habitual fabulist, and latter-day Digger of sorts named Johnny “Rooster” Byron (Brian Dykstra). The dominion of this Falstaffian giant is the English countryside outside his squalid trailer door, not far from Stonehenge, where he seems to incarnate a rather dissipated version of an ancient English independence, like one of the great mythical beings of rural lore. Aptly enough, it’s Saint George’s Day, the feast day of England’s national saint, but it’s not all a party this time around. Authorities have issued a final 24-hour eviction notice on Rooster’s tin door; there are luxury apartments in the works; and there’s concern in town about the underage teens who flock to Rooster like so many fledglings — one, in particular, has gone missing: Phaedra (Julia Belanoff), who we see at the very outset of the play donning a fairy costume and singing the title song, based on the Blake poem and England’s unofficial national anthem. The next 24 hours will be either the breaking point or the apotheosis for all Rooster has made himself out to be. In Butterworth’s big-eyed comedy, we are meant to feel a stake in this outcome whether we actually like Rooster or not — his independence, the scope of his life and vision, suggests the outer limit of possibility in an ever more disciplined and circumscribed world. Director Bill English (who also designed the impressive bucolic-trailer-park set) and his large cast (which includes a strong Ian Scott McGregor as longtime Rooster sidekick, Ginger) dive into the comedy with gusto. But somehow the drama, the larger stakes in the storyline, falls short. A certain requisite intensity and momentum are only fitfully achieved. Dykstra, as the expansive antihero, has the biggest burden here. And while he has an appealing swagger throughout, his wayward brogue and unconvincing bellicosity undercut the culmination of the play’s (admittedly somewhat overwrought) mythopoeic proportions. (Avila)

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 15. Theater artist and comedian Marga Gomez presents the world premiere of her 10th solo show, described as “a rollicking tale of incurable romantics.”

Napoli! ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $10-120. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm; Tue, 7pm (Tue/4, show at 8pm). Through March 9. American Conservatory Theater offers Bay Area audiences a rare look at one of the Neapolitan plays by Italy’s famed writer Eduardo De Filippo (1900-1984). Set in a humble home in working-class Naples during and just after World War II, amid the transition from Fascism to the postwar order, the play’s broad comedy comes with a strong undercurrent of social drama, as well as unexpectedly poignant moments. Its hero is the head of the household, Gennaro (former ACT core company member Marco Barricelli in a boisterous and gently moving performance), whose upright nature proves increasingly out-of-step with the times and indeed his own family, as his wife, Amalia (a commanding Seana McKenna), begins a black-market trade in coffee beans that becomes an all-out family crime ring by war’s end. While this dynamic offers fodder for some rather hokey if not unenjoyable comedy, the play gathers itself into a serious and timely indictment of privilege and its corrosion of community, as well as the need for solidarity as the only viable, indeed the only satisfying way forward. If the message and the playwright-messenger (De Fillipo, also an actor, originated the part of Gennaro himself) come across today as somewhat heavy-handed, it remains hard to dismiss Napoli! as just a museum piece. That’s due in part to director Mark Rucker’s large and graceful cast, as well as a buoyant new translation by Linda Alper and ACT’s Beatrice Basso. But it’s also the prescience and appositeness for us, all these many years later and miles away, of the play’s fundamentally social and political concerns. (Avila)

The Scion Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-60. Thu/27-Fri/28, 8pm; Sat/1, 5pm. Brian Copeland’s fourth solo show takes on “privilege, murder, and sausage.”

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri/28-Sat/1, 8pm. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blonde innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: the energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $60-90 (add-ons: casino chips, $5; dance lessons, $10). Thu-Sat, 7:40, 7:50, and 8pm admittance times. Through March 15. Boxcar Theatre presents Nick A. Olivero’s re-creation of a Prohibition-era saloon, resulting in an “immersive theatrical experience involving more than 35 actors, singers, and musicians.”

Twelfth Night Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.calshakes.org. $20. Thu/27-Sun/2, 8pm (also Sun/2, 2pm). California Shakespeare Theater kicks off its 40th anniversary season with a touring performance of Shakespeare’s classic romance, featuring an all-female cast.

Ubu Roi Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Cutting Ball Theater performs Alfred Jarry’s avant-garde parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, presented in a new translation by Cutting Ball artistic director Rob Melrose.

The World of Paradox Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.paradoxmagic.com. $12-15. Opens Mon/24, 8pm. Runs Mon, 8pm (no show March 10). Through April 7. Footloose presents David Facer in his solo show, a mix of magic and theater.

Yellow New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 23. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs the Bay Area premiere of Del Shores’ Mississippi-set family drama.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through March 9. The popular, kid-friendly show by Louis Pearl (aka “The Amazing Bubble Man”) returns to the Marsh.

BAY AREA

Can You Dig It? Back Down East 14th — the 60s and Beyond Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-35. Fri/28, 8pm; Sat/1, 8:30pm. Don Reed’s new show offers more stories from his colorful upbringing in East Oakland in the 1960s and ’70s. More hilarious and heartfelt depictions of his exceptional parents, independent siblings, and his mostly African American but ethnically mixed working-class community — punctuated with period pop, Motown, and funk classics, to which Reed shimmies and spins with effortless grace. And of course there’s more too of the expert physical comedy and charm that made long-running hits of Reed’s last two solo shows, East 14th and The Kipling Hotel (both launched, like this newest, at the Marsh). Can You Dig It? reaches, for the most part, into the “early” early years, Reed’s grammar-school days, before the events depicted in East 14th or Kipling Hotel came to pass. But in nearly two hours of material, not all of it of equal value or impact, there’s inevitably some overlap and indeed some recycling. Note: review from an earlier run of the show. (Avila)

Escanabe in da Moonlight Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 8. TheatreFIRST performs Jeff Daniels’ raucous comedy.

Geezer Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Thu/27, 8pm; Sat/1, 5pm. Geoff Hoyle moves his hit comedy about aging to the East Bay.

Gideon’s Knot Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 9. Aurora and director Jon Tracy’s Bay Area premiere of Johnna Adams’ two-hander features strong acting, strong enough almost to make us believe in its premise. A harried mother named Corryn (a terrific Jamie J. Jones) arrives at the empty middle-school classroom overseen by a distracted teacher, Heather (a subdued yet agitated Stacy Ross). Corryn, proud but somehow desperate, admits to having not slept. Heather initially doesn’t know why she’s there — until it becomes clear she’s the mother of a recent suicide, who has come to keep her appointment for a parent-teacher conference. The two women await the arrival of the absent principal, but Corryn presses for answers now to the circumstances surrounding her child’s final days, which included his suspension from school and a beating received at the hands of fellow students. Heather, who seems to be hiding some separate anxiety or grief of her own (and is, though what we don’t learn until nearly the end of the play), does her best to deflect any such conversation until the principal arrives but is soon embroiled in an argument with the headstrong and canny mother in front of her, a literature professor at a major university. Their dance centers on Corryn’s son’s last assignment, a short story, one his teacher sees as nothing but “hate-filled poisonous attacks,” but his mother calls “poetry.” In addition to the clash between a teacher’s authority and a mother’s regard, there’s a class component to these differing perspectives, we presume. Yet there is a real issue here, somewhere, about art and education and authority — or would be if it did not end up buried along with the young writer we never meet. Playwright Adams advances the dramatic tension by tacking this way and that around her subject, but loses sight of the shore meanwhile, as her characters debate whether or not the short story contains a virtuous accusation against an instance of child abuse, only to drop this crux a moment later in a hard-to-credit squeamishness on Corryn’s part over the potentially homoerotic longings of her deceased son. The final note lands in an even hokier key of mutual sorrow and understanding. (Avila)

The House That Will Not Stand Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-59. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and March 13, 2pm); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. July 4, 1836: As a white New Orleans patriarch (Ray Reinhardt) passes from the scene, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, his longtime mistress, Beartrice (an imposing, memorable Lizan Mitchell), and their daughters (the charmingly varied trio of Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Flor De Liz Perez, and Tiffany Rachelle Stewart) — all free women of color — vie for dominance while trying to secure their respective futures in Berkeley Rep’s sumptuous and beautifully acted world premiere. Nationally acclaimed playwright and Oakland native Marcus Gardley (And Jesus Moonwalked the Mississippi; This World in a Woman’s Hands) brews up a historically rich and revealing, as well as witty and fiery tale here, based on the practice of plaçage (common-law marriages between white men and black Creole women), grounding it in the large personalities of his predominately female characters — who include a nosy and angling intruder (played with subtlety by Petronia Paley) — and lacing it all with a delirious dose of magical realism via the voodoo charms of Beartrice’s slave, Makeda (Harriett D. Foy, who with Keith Townsend Obadike also contributes lush, atmospheric compositions to the proceedings). Gardley delves productively into the history overall, although he sometimes indulges it too much in awkward and ultimately unnecessary expository dialogue. When he allows his characters full scope for expression of their personalities and relationships, however, the dialogue sails by with brio and punch —something the powerhouse cast, shrewdly directed by Patricia McGregor, makes the most of throughout. (Avila)

An Ideal Husband Douglas Morrison Theatre, 22311 N. Third St, Hayward; www.dmtonline.org. $10-29. Thu/27-Sat/1, 8pm; Sun/2, 2pm. Douglas Morrison Theatre performs Scott Munson’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic, reset in 1959 Washington, DC.

Lasso of Truth Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $37-58. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/1 and March 15, 2pm; March 6, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. Marin Theatre Company performs Carson Kreitzer’s new play about the history of Wonder Woman.

The Lion and the Fox Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 30. Central Works performs a prequel to its 2009 hit, Machiavelli’s The Prince, which depicts a face-off between Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia.

A Maze Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.justtheater.org. $20-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Following a well-received run last summer at Live Oak Theater, Just Theater’s West Coast premiere of Pittsburgh-based playwright Rob Handel’s 2011 jigsaw drama gets a second life, courtesy of presenter Shotgun Players, in this remounting at Ashby Stage. Half the pleasure of a play like this is the unfolding of its serpentine plot, which becomes much more linear in the second half but initially seems to hover around three very disparate situations: 17-year-old Jessica (Frannie Morrison), recently escaped from eight years of captivity in the home and cellar of her kidnapper, prepares for an interview with a Barbara Walters-like TV journalist (Lauren Spencer); Oksana (Sarah Moser) and Paul (Harold Pierce), who head up their own highly successful rock band (suggestively titled the Pathetic Fallacy), are in the midst of a tough transition as Oksana checks Paul into rehab; and a fairytale King (Lasse Christiensen) responds to the Queen’s (Janis DeLucia) news that they are about to have an “heir” by beginning construction on a gigantic, seemingly endless maze emanating outward from their cozy den to the furthest reaches of the kingdom. Meanwhile, the director of the rehab clinic (Carl Holvick-Thomas) introduces Paul to another artist-resident, a fussy, eccentric author named Beeson (Clive Worsley) at work on a multi-volume graphic novel of maddening intricacy. As the three storylines begin to coalesce, the play asks us to consider questions about artistic liberty, authorship, responsibility, human connection — big themes like that. It does so in a mostly playful, only slightly eerie way, despite the grim central situation revolving around the bright and surprisingly outgoing Jessica. Employing almost the identical cast as last time, again under director Molly Aaronson-Gelb, the proceedings unfold with generally solid acting, if not always persuasive dialogue, at least where things are meant to be more or less realistic (to an extent, the fairytale segment comes across more compellingly for being strictly bound by the artificial nature of its narrative). There’s a quirky quality to the play, and the production, that amuses, even as the coy plotline bemuses. And much like an amusement park adventure, the play makes sure no one really gets lost. This is a play that is happy to tell you the various ways the central “maze” might be read metaphorically, for instance, so that everything is tidy and clear — like a fairytale, or a graphic novel — not so mysterious in the end, just tinged with a kind of comfortable melancholy. (Avila)

The Music Man Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-60. Fri and March 20, 7pm; Sat, 1 and 6pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through March 23. There’s trouble in River City! See it unfold amid all those trombones at Berkeley Playhouse.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“The Aftermath Affair” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Fri/28-Sun/2, 8pm. $20-35. Blind Tiger Society performs a world premiere by choreographer Bianca Cabrera.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sat/1, March 8, 16, 22, and 30, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Collected Stories” Cartwright Hotel, 524 Sutter, SF; www.collectedstoriessf.com. Thu/27-Sat/1, 8pm (also Sat/1, 2pm); Sun/2, 2pm. $21-28. Expression Productions performs a “pop-up theater” take on Donald Margulies’ drama about a university professor and her protégé.

“Dream Queens Revue” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/26, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, and more.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: Paula West, Thu/27-Fri/28, 8pm; Sat/1, 7 and 9:30pm, $35-50.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“The Magic Flute” Center for New Music, 55 Taylor, SF; themagicflute.brownpapertickets.com. Thu/27 and March 7, 7pm; Sun/2, 2pm. $15-20. Waffle Opera performs a stripped-down version of Mozart’s classic, with new English dialogue.

“Partyiac Arrest: A Post-Valentine’s Hangover Cabaret” Mojo Theatre, 2940 16th St, #27, SF; www.mojotheatre.com. Fri/28-Sat/1, 8pm. $10-15. Raucous variety show (comedy, music, circus acts, short films, and more) with Mojo Theatre.

“Point Break Live!” DNA Lounge, 373 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. March 7 and April 4, 7:30 and 11pm. $25-50. Dude, Point Break Live! is like dropping into a monster wave, or holding up a bank, like, just a pure adrenaline rush, man. Ahem. Sorry, but I really can’t help but channel Keanu Reeves and his Johnny Utah character when thinking about the awesomely bad 1991 movie Point Break or its equally yummily cheesy stage adaptation. And if you do an even better Keanu impression than me — the trick is in the vacant stare and stoner drawl — then you can play his starring role amid a cast of solid actors, reading from cue cards from a hilarious production assistant in order to more closely approximate Keanu’s acting ability. This play is just so much fun, even better now at DNA Lounge than it was a couple years ago at CELLspace. But definitely buy the poncho pack and wear it, because the blood, spit, and surf spray really do make this a fully immersive experience. (Steven T. Jones)

“The Romane Event Comedy Show” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.pacoromane.com. Wed/26, 8-10pm. $10. With Bay Area comedy all-stars Paco Romane, Will Durst, Karina Dobbins, and Nick Palm.

BAY AREA

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now” This week: Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Fri/28-Sat/1, 8pm. $10-25.The festival, which runs through March 8, continues its 10th anniversary with “BCF Oakland,” featuring works by Joanna Haigood, Gregory Dawson, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Portsha Jefferson, and Kendra Kimbrough Barnes.

“The Buddy Club Children’s Shows” JCC of the East Bay Theater, 1414 Walnut, Berk; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/2, 11am. $8. With acrobat and juggler Dana Smith. Also Sun/2, 11:30am, $8, Kanbar Center for the Performing Arts, 200 N. San Pedro, San Rafael; www.thebuddyclub.com. With magician Brian Scott.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“Poetry Express” Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University, Berk; poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com. Mon, 7pm. Free. Ongoing. This week: Zora Raab, plus open mic. *

Events: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

Listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.

THURSDAY 27

Lisbeth Haas California Historical Society, 678 Mission, SF; saintsandcitizens.eventbrite.com. 6pm, $5. Author and UC Santa Cruz professor Haas discusses her book Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California.

Rachel Kushner City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. The author celebrates the paperback release of The Flame Throwers.

Michelle Richmond Drew School Theater, 2901 California, SF; (415) 409-3739. 7pm, free. The author (The Year of Fog) discusses her new novel, Golden State, and her new short story collection, Hum.

FRIDAY 28

“Michio Kaku: The Scientific Quest to Understand and Empower the Mind” First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. 7:30pm, $15. The San Jose native, theoretical physicist, author, and co-creator of the string theory discusses “the future of the mind” in this event hosted by KPFA Radio.

SATURDAY 1

“The Art of Living Black Open Studios” Oasis Gallery at American Steel Studios, 1960 Mandela Parkway, Oakl; facebook.com/TheArtOfLivingBlack2013. 11am-6pm. Through Sun/2. Free. One stop on a multi-gallery tour highlighting works by over 50 local African American artists; check out the Facebook page (it’s updated to 2014, despite that URL) for more details.

“Mardi Gras Weekend at Playland-Not-at-the-Beach” Playland-Not-at-the-Beach, 10979 San Pablo, El Cerrito; www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org. 10am-5pm. Through Sun/2. $10-15. Enjoy the museum’s historic amusement games, plus take part in mask-making and other Mardi Gras special activities.

“San Francisco History Expo: Piecing Together Our Past” Old Mint, 88 Fifth St, SF; www.sfhistoryexpo.org. Today, 11am-5pm; Sun/2, 11am-4pm. $5 (children under 12, free; no one turned away for lack of funds). The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society presents this fourth annual event, bringing together over 60 local history groups, genealogists, small museums, and libraries to celebrate the unique history of San Francisco. Plus: films, storytelling, a treasure hunt, presentations about the histories of Angel Island and the Presidio, and more.

“White Elephant Sale” White Elephant Sale Warehouse, 333 Lancaster, Oakl; www.whiteelephantsale.org. 10am-4pm. Through Sun/2. Free. Calling all bargain hunters: Now in its 55th (!) year, this sale hosted by the Oakland Museum Women’s Board benefits the Oakland Museum of California. Expect a huge array of clothing, books, household goods, sports equipment, furniture, and more.

SUNDAY 2

“A Home Bringing for Amiri Baraka” Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF; www.emtab.org. 7pm, free. Musicians and poets — including Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and David Meltzer — pay tribute to the late writer and activist.

“Poetry Unbound #10” Art House Gallery, 2905 Shattuck, Berk; berkeleyarthouse.wordpress.com. 5pm, $5 (no one turned away for lack of funds). With featured readers Joan Gelfand, David Shaddock, and Todd Temkin, plus a brief open mic hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger.

Nellie Wong Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University, Berk; www.asiabookcenter.com. 3pm, free. The Chinese-American poet and activist reads from her latest, Breakfast Lunch Dinner, inspired by her Oakland childhood working in her family’s Chinese restaurant.

MONDAY 3

“Going Rogue: Planets Without Parent Stars in the Galaxy” Morrison Planetarium, California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.calacademy.org. 7:30pm, $8-12 (advance tickets required, as seating is limited). Jacqueline Faherty, Hubble Fellow at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, discusses how “free-floating planets” help us understand planet formation and evolution.

TUESDAY 4

Eleven/Eleven Journal release party City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. Hugh Behm-Steinberg hosts this celebration of issue 15, with readings from contributors.

“Reel San Francisco Stories: An Annotated Filmography of the Bay Area” Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. 6pm, $15. Christopher Pollock discusses his book showcasing films shot in the Bay Area, as well as actors and directors who call the Bay Area home. *

Spooked

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

rebecca@sfbg.com

The world’s largest computer security conference, RSA, got underway in the Moscone Convention Center on Feb. 24. It’s a huge deal: Speakers will include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and closing remarks will be given by comedian Stephen Colbert.

Started in 1991, the RSA Conference has grown exponentially. But this year, 13 digital security experts have canceled their scheduled talks in protest of recent revelations that RSA cooperated with the National Security Agency to use a flawed tool for safeguarding sensitive information.

Speakers who are boycotting include technology experts from Google and various security firms. They’re concerned about allegations that RSA, a pioneer in the security software industry, agreed to incorporate a flawed encryption formula into a widely used security product in accordance with a secret $10 million NSA contract.

“In my opinion, RSA has a serious trust issue,” said Jeffrey Carr, CEO of a security firm called Taia Global Inc. and one of the speakers who has decided to cancel his talk and boycott the conference. “I think they’ll just let it die down. There’s been little uproar, even among the security people,” he added.

Carr authored a blog post explaining his decision. He also organized a “town hall” debate, part of an event series called Suits and Spooks, to be held at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco on Feb. 27, featuring commentary from security industry representatives as well as insiders from the national intelligence community.

RSA used the encryption algorithm as a default for its security products, meaning users would have had to actively switch to a different formula to avoid exposure to the security threat.

According to a Reuters article published in December, the NSA arranged the contract as part of a campaign to embed breakable encryption software into security products that are widely used to safeguard personal devices.

Previous reporting by The New York Times, based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, showed that the NSA had generated the weak encryption formula to create a “backdoor.”

EMC, the parent company that owns RSA, issued a response in December that didn’t specifically address the allegations. The company stated that in 2004, when it agreed to use the algorithm, “the NSA had a trusted role in the community-wide effort to strengthen, not weaken, encryption.”

But Carr said researchers within the security industry had suggested the algorithm might be flawed as early as 2006, and RSA did not abandon its use until after the Snowden leaks were publicized.

Other speakers who are boycotting have issued statements publicly condemning RSA. “Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim. Eventually, NSA’s random number generator was found to be flawed on purpose, in effect creating a back door. You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it,” wrote chief researcher Mikko Hypponen of the Finnish company F-Secure.

“As my reaction to this, I’m canceling my talk at the RSA Conference USA 2014 in San Francisco in February 2014,” Hypponen went on. “Aptly enough, the talk I won’t be delivering at RSA 2014 was titled ‘Governments as Malware Authors.'”

Meanwhile, Colbert is also taking some heat for agreeing to speak at the RSA conference.

“We know you, Stephen, and we know you love a good ‘backdoor’ joke as much as we do — but this kind of backdoor is no laughing matter,” activists from Fight for the Future wrote in a petition urging him to join the other speakers who are boycotting the RSA conference. “Companies need to know that they can’t betray our trust without repercussions. We want to hear your speech, but give it somewhere else!”

Happy Hour: The week in music

Steven T. Jones

February 21, 2014

Dearest clock-watchers! If you hadn’t noticed, it’s almost the weekend. In the event that your excitement is currently tempered with social anxiety about which pop culture topics to discuss over happy hour beverages — a very sad and all-too-common affliction — here are a few gems from the music world that the Internet bestowed upon us this week.

— The 5th annual Burger Boogaloo, one of the spunkiest (and most affordable!) festivals in the Bay Area’s grand feast of summer festival offerings, announced its lineup yesterday, and it’s a good one. What says “summer” more than the legendary Ronnie Spector crooning “Be My Baby” as hipsters play drunken kickball around you in Mosswood Park?

— Oakland noir-pop rockers DRMS released this epically and mysteriously engaging 17-and-a-half-minute film set to some of the most experimental music we’ve heard from them yet. They’re at the Rickshaw Stop tomorrow night [Sat/22], if you wanna get good and dreamy.

— The city of Abderdeen, Wash., home of one Kurt Cobain, celebrated its first annual “Kurt Cobain Day” yesterday, Feb. 20, on what would have been the rocker’s 47th birthday. With what, you ask? Why, a giant, weird, crying, Jesus-like Kurt Cobain statue, of course. Because that definitely seems like something he would have wanted.

— The SFJAZZ Center is a very precocious one-year-old. [SFGate]

— Kelis will finally get to share her milkshake recipe with the world — or at least viewers of the Cooking Channel — thus eliminating the need for boys to even come to her yard at all.

— Cranky dude at the Thermals show last night at The Chapel: You’re unhelpful. [via Mission Mission]

Go forth, my friends. Stay hydrated.

Speakers boycotting security conference to protest collaboration with NSA

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

February 21, 2014

Speakers boycotting security conference to protest collaboration with NSA

On Feb. 24, the world’s largest computer security conference, RSA, will commence at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. It’s a huge deal: Speakers will include Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and closing remarks will be given by comedian Stephen Colbert.

Carr authored a blog post explaining his decision. He also organized a “town hall” debate, part of an event series called Suits and Spooks, to be held at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco on Feb. 27 featuring commentary from security industry representatives as well as insiders from the national intelligence community.

RSA used the encryption algorithm as a default for its security products, meaning users would have had to actively switch to a different formula to avoid exposure to the security threat.

Previous reporting by the New York Times, based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, showed that the NSA had generated the weak encryption formula to create a “backdoor.”

But Carr said researchers within the security industry had suggested the algorithm might be flawed as early as 2006, and RSA did not abandon its use until after the Snowden leaks were publicized.

Other speakers who are boycotting have issued statements publicly condemning RSA.

“Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim. Eventually, NSA’s random number generator was found to be flawed on purpose, in effect creating a back door. You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it,” wrote chief researcher Mikko Hypponen of the Finnish company F-Secure.

“As my reaction to this, I’m cancelling my talk at the RSA Conference USA 2014 in San Francisco in February 2014,” Hypponen went on. “Aptly enough, the talk I won’t be delivering at RSA 2014 was titled ‘Governments as Malware Authors.'”

Meanwhile, Colbert is also taking some heat for agreeing to speak at the RSA conference.

“We know you, Stephen, and we know you love a good ‘backdoor’ joke as much as we do—but this kind of backdoor is no laughing matter,” activists from Fight for the Future wrote in a petition urging him to join the other speakers who are boycotting the RSA conference. “Companies need to know that they can’t betray our trust without repercussions. We want to hear your speech, but give it somewhere else!”

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