Event Archives — Page 125 of 149 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

A space colony in Wisconsin

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June 4, 2008

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Every year in late May, several thousand people descend on Madison, Wis., to create an alternate universe. Some want to build a galaxy-size civilization packed with humans and aliens who build massive halo worlds orbiting stars. Others are obsessed with what they’ll do when what remains of humanity is left to survive in the barren landscape left after Earth has been destroyed by nukes, pollution, epidemics, nanotech wipeouts, or some combination of all four. Still others live parts of their lives as if there were a special world for wizards hidden in the folds of our own reality.

They come to Madison for WisCon, a science-fiction convention unlike most I’ve ever attended. Sure, the participants are all interested in the same alien worlds as the thronging crowds that go to the popular Atlanta event Dragon*Con or the media circus known as Comic-Con. But they rarely carry light sabers or argue about continuity errors in Babylon 5. Instead, they carry armloads of books and want to talk politics.

WisCon is the United States’ only feminist sci-fi convention, but since it was founded more than two decades ago, the event has grown to be much more than that. Feminism is still a strong component of the con, and many panels are devoted to the work of women writers or issues like sexism in comic books. But the con is also devoted to progressive politics, antiracism, and the ways speculative literature can change the future. This year there was a terrific panel about the fake multiculturalism of Star Trek and Heroes, as well as a discussion about geopolitical themes in experimental writer Timmel Duchamp’s five-novel, near-future Marq’ssan series.

While most science fiction cons feature things like sneak-preview footage of the next special effects blockbuster or appearances by the cast of Joss "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Whedon’s new series Dollhouse, WisCon’s highlights run toward the bookish. We all crammed inside one of the hotel meeting rooms to be part of a tea party thrown by the critically-acclaimed indie SF Web zine Strange Horizons (strangehorizons.com), then later we listened to several lightning readings at a stately beer bash thrown by old school SF book publisher Tor.

One of the highlights of the con was a chance to drink absinthe in a strangely windowless suite with the editors of alternative publisher Small Beer Press, whose authors include the award-winning Kelly Link and Carol Emschwiller. You genuinely imagine yourself on a spaceship in that windowless room — or maybe in some subterranean demon realm — with everybody talking about alternate realities, AIs gone wild, and why Iron Maiden is the best band ever. (What? You don’t think there will be 1980s metal in the demon realm?)

Jim Munroe, Canadian master of DIY publishing and filmmaking, was at WisCon talking about literary zombies and ways that anarchists can learn to organize their time better, while guest of honor Maureen McHugh gave a speech about how interactive online storytelling represents the future of science fiction — and fiction in general. Science fiction erotica writer/publisher Cecilia Tan told everybody about her latest passion: writing Harry Potter fan fiction about the forbidden love between Draco and Snape. Many of today’s most popular writers, like bestseller Naomi Novik, got their start writing fan fiction. Some continue to do it under fake names because they just can’t give it up.

Perhaps the best part of WisCon is getting a chance to hang out with thousands of people who believe that writing and reading books can change the world for the better. Luckily, nobody there is humorless enough to forget that sometimes escapist fantasy is just an escape. WisCon attendees simply haven’t given up hope that tomorrow might be radically better than today. They are passionate about the idea that science fiction and fantasy are the imaginative wing of progressive politics. In Madison, among groups of dreamers, I was forcefully reminded that before we remake the world, we must first model it in our own minds.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who bought way too many books at WisCon and can’t wait to read them all.

Beyond the budget spin

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June 4, 2008

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OPINION Local government is frozen. The mayor’s office and the Board of Supervisors have been engaged in open warfare for months. This week, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that in order to balance San Francisco’s budget, city services and community-based organizations will have to undergo draconian cuts.

In a preemptive move against embarrassing protests, the mayor’s press office did not reveal the location of the annual budget presentation to the news media until late Friday afternoon. Even the supervisors, who will be debating and voting on the budget during the month of June, were left in the dark until then.

While the mayor didn’t blame city workers for the financial crisis, he did suggest that Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents the low-wage, frontline, service-providing city workers, should "help out."

Well, we have. SEIU members stepped up to "help out" in fiscal years 2003–04 and 2004–05 by agreeing to wage freezes and self-funding our pensions. All the recent midyear cuts were in public health agencies and among SEIU-represented nonprofits.

Most recently we stepped up by helping draft and vigorously campaigning to pass Proposition B, which freezes city workers wages for two years and tightens eligibility for retiree health care benefits in exchange for a modest increase in city pension benefits.

The mayor’s budget director repeatedly has said that this is a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Talk about spin.

Moreover, in his June 2 budget presentation, the mayor made no mention of raising revenue as an answer to our fiscal problems. You could almost hear Gov. Schwarzenegger’s voice as Newsom presented a slash-services budget with a "no-new-taxes" slogan waiting in the wings for his next campaign.

Everyone knows it’s expensive to live in San Francisco. Paying city employees a wage that allows them to stay in the community they serve isn’t a budget "problem." It ought to be a basic part of what City Hall does and cares about. And if that means looking at bringing in new sources of money, we should have that conversation.

We believe there are various revenue sources that make more sense to explore than some of these service cuts, including a real estate transfer tax increase for high-level properties.

Fortunately, the mayor’s proposal is just a starting point. Soon we will be proposing specific alternatives.

Toward that end, the San Francisco Human Services Network and Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth have organized a citywide forum on the mayor’s proposed budget cuts. SEIU 1021 is cosponsoring this event. The San Francisco budget and revenue town-hall meeting will be held June 9 from 2-4 p.m. in the San Francisco Main Library’s Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin (at Grove)

Don’t get angry. Get organized.

Robert Haaland

Robert Haaland is a longtime San Francisco activist who works for Local 1021.

An everywoman at war

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June 4, 2008

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Erykah Badu disappeared for a bit, taking her musical incantations and majestic head wraps on a retreat into motherhood. In 2006, she flitted back onto the mainstream radar in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, a concert film that takes place in a Brooklyn neighborhood and includes the comedian’s closest muso pals. Badu’s appearance stops the hustle and bustle of the event cold with her tiny frame and a huge glorious Afro, which blows off during her duet with Jill Scott during the Roots number "You Got Me." The movie audience I was with that day gasped in admiration as Badu let her trademark locks sail away while she continued to sing, her head and soul apparent for all to see — a diva whose resplendence and power does not rest on borrowed plumage alone.

Back then searching out Badu’s whereabouts led to a stripped-down MySpace page with a selection of songs off her 2003 EP, Worldwide Underground (Motown/Island), and not much else. At one point an old press release showed up, but interjected between the normal publicist-speak were "additions" in block capital letters, which were gentle mockeries of her multiputf8um accomplishments and declarations about "paying bills" and other roadblocks appearing in her life. Her words had the feel of new life forcing its way up through the old. Two years on, that same page is a tricked-out site to behold: a dizzying pastiche of acid-rock tableaus and neo-propagandist political imagery that bears Badu’s likeness — many a result of an art contest held for her fans. It was here that she chose to debut many tracks from her new album, New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War (Universal/Motown).

The recording begins with an aural soup: the noise of a ghetto train ride and the booming voice of a marauder telling folks to drop off their valuables while backing vocals exhort the "Amerykahn Promise." Badu’s voice emerges from this cacophony asking for explanations, a metaphor for her own post-sabbatical rebirth. With a quick costume change and tinkling prayer bells, Badu becomes a prophet with "The Healer," a meditation on the restorative properties of hip-hop, which she describes as "bigger than religion / Bigger than my niggas / Bigger than government." Never one to shy away from her role as everywoman — cue those propaganda posters — Badu emerges amid the muted horns and mellow groove of "Me," underscoring an autobiographical letter to listeners explaining her hesitance to be in the spotlight, her life as a single mother of two, and her fears of martyrdom at the hands of the entertainment industry. Her resolve at the close of the song is evident as she proclaims, "They may try to erase my face / But millions spring up in my place."

Such resolve lies at the crux of Badu’s brilliance, her unerring ability to carry her vulnerability on a dais of steely resilience. Downtrodden tunes like "That Hump" offer funk-laced pipe dreams of a solo mom trying to break even: "We just need a little house / That comes with a spouse." But no matter how broken-down Badu’s New Amerykah gets, there is always an undercurrent fed by the missions for social justice that Badu feels she has been called upon to fight. "Soldier" is both an exhortation and rallying cry: "To my folks think they living sweet / They gonna fuck around and push delete," she warns. Expect the woman to bring this message and attitude to the stage with the help of longtime friends and collaborators the Roots during her "Vortex Tour 2008."

ERYKAH BADU

With the Roots

Sun/8–Mon/9, 7:30 p.m., $45.50–$83.50

Paramount Theatre

2025 Broadway, Oakl.

(510) 465-6400

www.paramounttheatre.com

Mark Leno’s party packed

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June 3, 2008

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Mark Leno’s election night party has been a stark contrast to what we saw earlier tonight at Joe Nation’s event, which was situated at the unfortunately named “Wipe Out” restaurant in Greenbrae. Leno’s campaign office in San Rafael is packed wall-to-wall, the crowd noisy and erupting in frequent applause when new figures from the secretary of state show up on a projector putting Leno ahead.

He told a radio reporter earlier tonight that overall during the election, he’s had to raise $1.2 million (we’ve seen it in the piles of slick, anti-Nation mailers that have mounted in our mailbox). But he says there’s got to be a way to overcome the cost of operating a modern campaign election, most of which put people with big ideas but no connections out of the bidding. Leno just thanked a litany of campaign staffers and volunteers for backing him over the last 15 months before heading off to San Francisco where we’ve heard he also has an event planned for the Lime club in the Castro.

We were situated in a Leno war room with campaign staffers — including Leno’s manager, Tom, described by colleagues as “eternally pessimistic” — who still seem wary of calling the election for Leno. The numbers, however, are looking more and more inevitable. If he wins, Leno’s gonna have to work on the music he rock, representing a district like this and all, which includes San Francisco. Someone just put the Dirty Dancing theme on the sound system. Not good. As far as North Bay events went tonight, Leno’s has been much more electric than what Nation had going on earlier.

On the left, Leno field organizer Carole Mills, and on the right, volunteer coordinator Evelyn Woo.

Marriage equality activists and Leno supporters Dolores Caruthers, on the left, and Laura Espinoza, on the right.

Joe Nation’s election night party

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June 3, 2008

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We showed up at Joe Nation’s election night party in the Marin County town of Greenbrae around eight o’clock. The event’s being held at a restaurant called the Wipe Out Bar & Grill in a quiet strip mall here. State figures are showing Leno ahead of the pack by five percentage points. By the time we arrived at Wipe Out, the candidate wasn’t around.

The restaurant’s proprietor, Bob Partrite, told us Nation’s crew was supposed to be here at a quarter of eight. Long after the hour, Nation was still missing in action. In fact, for much of the time we were hanging around, reporters outnumbered Nation supporters, as seen in the photos below. But Wyatt Buchanan of the Chronicle insisted on acknowledging that by half past the hour, a few people were trickling in. Most of the chairs remained empty, however, and a whole bunch of utensils went unused, at least while we were there. Just sayin’.

Joe Nation’s supporters weren’t filling any of the chairs. Those are reporters in the background from KPFA.

We came upon stacks of unused utensils at eight o’clock when we showed, 15 minutes after the candidate was supposed to be here. But some food did start to fill plates at around 8:30. The candidate still wasn’t around, however.

More empty chairs.

Cyclonudistas unite! World Naked Bike Ride hits SF

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June 3, 2008

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Yes, but who’s riding the testicycle?

Put your balls to the Brooks and your petals to the metal, shrinking violets — raucous global event the World Naked Bike Ride hits SF this Saturday at noon (as posted on “nakedwiki.org” — how, oh how, has this wiki escaped me???).

I think my gearshaft just shifted

“We face automobile traffic with our naked bodies as the best way to defend our dignity and exposing the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians as well as the negative consequences we all face due to dependence on oil and other forms of non-renewable energy,” say organizers, who seem to be as comfortable with run-on sentences as baring all on the mean streets of the naked city.

But who are we to argue — the pics make the participants look a lot hotter than those way-too-smiley Bay to Breakers nudists. Roll on, 10-speed tatas and phallic fixies.

Coming soon: A movie!

Date: Saturday June 7, 2008
Time: 12 noon
Location: Meet at the Justin Herman Plaza
Web: sanfrancisco.worldnakedbikeride.org

Will the real Newsom stop campaigning?

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June 2, 2008

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As we predicted , Mayor Gavin Newsom used today’s budget announcement at at the Hunters Point Shipyard to campaign.
But there were, in fact, two Newsom’s at today’s event, but only one was told to shut it.

‘You can’t campaign here, it’s city property,” police told the guy, who was wearing a Newsom mask and protesting the Mayor’s Budget.

“I’m not campaigning,” the guy replied, his voice muffled by his mask, as his friend, who was wearing a Ronald Reagan mask handed out fliers that listed nine ways in which “Mayor Newsom terminates poor with massive budget cuts.”

(These included closing the Ella Hill Hutch shelter, Caduceus Outreach services, SRO Families United program, and a 22 percent cut of residential substance abuse and mental health treatment programs budgets.)

But no one said diddley when the guy who one was wearing a very well tailored suit and presenting the Mayor’s $6.5 billion budget, began to campaign by unashamedly pushing Prop. G, which out-of-town developer Lennar has spent $4 million to promote.

“You can’t have a budget speech about the future of the City and the structural challenges we face without talking about it,” Newsom said.

Nor did anyone say squat, when Newsom began to bash the competing Prop. F, which requires that 50 percent of housing built at the Shipyard and Candlestick Point be affordable to families of four who make $65,000 and under, which is the average median income for that size household in the Bayview.

Yes, it was cool to be inside the SFPD’s unit, without being on the wrong side of the law.

Pelosi talks hunger

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May 30, 2008

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Nancy Pelosi with Paul Ash, executive director of the San Francisco Food Bank. Photo by Steven T. Jones

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi toured the San Francisco Food Bank today to highlight her concern with rising food costs and the need for a reordering of national priorities to address poverty. But she also showed how her party’s cautious approach to the issue has contributed to the grim reality that one in four San Francisco children are at risk of hunger.
“It’s an unthinkable notion that any child in the U.S. can go hungry,” Pelosi told the crowd of volunteers, care providers, politicos and journalists. She also stressed, “It’s important that we think of it one person at a time, or as I think of it as one child at a time,” peppering her address regularly with Biblical calls to feed the hungry. Personally, I would have rather heard an admission of how Congress helped oversee an unconscionable consolidation of wealth and how she plans to redistribute it to the families of these poor hungry kids.
Pelosi touted this year’s omnibus farm bill for new spending on nutrition and ethanol production, food safety improvements, and reductions in subsidies to corporate agri-business, a bipartisan bill that overcame a Bush veto. But many in the Bay Area’s growing food movement criticized the bill as basically business as usual, ignoring evidence that demonstrates the importance of moving from our heavily subsidized, industrial food production system to more local and sustainable models, criticism that I asked her about at the event.
Pelosi responded that, “I associate myself with the concerns that you represented,” noting that she signaled to Washington DC power brokers that this is the last farm bill that will so heavily subsidize big business. She would have hoped to do so this year — rather than three years from now when this bill expires — but that, “It was harder than I had hoped to go cold turkey.”
Similarly, she blasted President Bush with both barrels, particularly for the Iraq War and tax cuts on the wealthy, saying “The last eight years of the Bush Administration have done great harm to this country.”
Yet despite acknowledging this “grotesque mistake” of an Iraq War was sold with lies, and that top officials have violated the constitution, Pelosi has been unwilling to pursue impeachment or anything substantial to hold those officials accountable. But she is willing to intervene in the current presidential race to end the fight by next week and avoid letting it be worked out in August at the convention.
“I think if we take this to the convention, it will harm our chances in November,” Pelosi said, drawing her biggest applause of the morning.

Big balls

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May 30, 2008

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By Marianne Moore

My friend’s rich older boyfriend—well, rich relative to my friend, who makes her living pretending to be a fairy at birthday parties (Her fairy name is Ginger-Snap. We know it’s a stripper name. We’re over it.)—is taking her to the Black and White Ball on Saturday, and I’ve been drafted into shopping. We’re now faced with a pretty awkward question: what do normal people wear to the fancy-pantsiest occasion on the San Francisco calendar?

Other people must have faced this problem before. After all, tickets to the party are $200, not cheap by any means but still well within the reach of many modest-living San Franciscans. Maybe some are kept away by the event’s reputation; personally, even if I had $200 to throw around, I would be way too scared to go. Whatever the case, there’s no information out there about how to dress for the B & W if you’re not immensely rich. One thing we know for sure: the boyfriend, while he may be shelling out $400 for tickets, isn’t about to spring for a $10,000 gown. That leaves us to dress on a fairy’s budget.

I figure we have three options:
(1) try and find a cute discounted dress a la TJ Maxx,
(2) go completely casual, or
(3) go vintage.

It’s pronouced “Oo-vuh:” Uwe Boll, Part One

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May 29, 2008

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Just so you know. It’s not “Oo-way.” This is the first thing I learned while gearing up to interview Uwe Boll last August, on the occasion of the uncut version of his film Postal‘s world premiere at the 2007 Dead Channels Film Festival. The film played to a small but enthusiastic Castro Theater crowd, many of whom were surely lured more by the Boll’s presence than by the film itself. Boll, who has embraced video games as cinematic source material the way other directors have embraced, say, Shakespeare, is so fond of controversy it’s difficult to read a news story about him that doesn’t include something ridiculous, like a Boll vs. critics boxing match or an anti-Boll petition. The first picture of him furnished by a Google search features a grinning Boll flipping off whoever’s behind the camera.

Postal, as a whole, is kind of an exercise in fuck-you cinema: in addition to making light of 9/11, it pokes fun at everything from new-agers to trailer trash to coffee snobs to midgets to Nazis … and more. (Read my shockingly positive review here.) The long-delayed film is finally getting a theatrical release; it rocks the Roxie starting tomorrow. Such an event affords me the chance to dust off my interview with Boll and cast members Zack Ward (who plays “Postal Dude,” and also appeared in 2007’s Transformers) and Larry Thomas, Seinfeld‘s “Soup Nazi” — who plays Osama Bin Laden. Read on for part one, if you dare.

“Fuck Lennar!”

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May 28, 2008

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I’ve witnessed my share of political rallies, but Prop. F’s “We Shall Not be Moved” event at 3rd Street and Palou in the Bayview takes the bumpin’-block-party prize.

Wedged between three cash checking stores, a beauty parlor, and a T-Third station, the rally was awash with multilingual “Yes on F” signs, edgy urban chic and fighting words.

But beyond the many powerful speakers who showed up to stir up the crowd, the afternoon’s three most memorable moments involved song, dance and the spoken word.

Turfaholics’ Johnal performed to a funky remix of “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair).

Prop. F supporters put a smile on the crowd’s face with their soulful attempts at the Cha Cha Slide.

And last but not least was hiphop emcee Cobe Obeah

Stay with the following video for a minute and you’ll get to the part where Cobe announces that he doesn’t usually cuss, then gets the crowd joining in a “Fuck Lennar!” chant, before delivering a final FU to San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Lit: Erick Lyle on rehab for Newsom and SF, the awful flair of Willie Brown, book box mansions and life in the City

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May 28, 2008

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This week’s Lit features a review of Erick Lyle’s new book On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City (Soft Skull Press, 272 pages, $14.95). Liam O’Donoghue recently talked with Lyle, who will be appearing at Get Lost Travel Books on June 4th and AK Press Warehouse in Oakland on June 5th:

By Liam O’Donoghue

SFBG: The phase “secret history” is in the subtitle of your book and the term “urban archeology” is used to describe it. Did it feel like an archaeological project — like you were digging up this buried history of the city — when you were compiling the book?
Erick Lyle: When I moved to San Francisco I was lucky enough to be around a lot of older folks who told me their stories about the city and I fell in love with this place instantly. I feel like I’ve got all those stories filed away in my mind, so that when I’m out, riding my bike around the city, if I’m at a certain intersection, for example, I’ll think, “Oh, this is where that punk club was in 1988, but it’s also where so-and-so broke up with her boyfriend in 1995 and there was that one time when a guy tried to hit me with a 2×4.” But I can see all these layers simultaneously in my mind, and for me, part of the enjoyment of living here for awhile is seeing how these layers fit together over time. It gives an added dimension to, for example, a protest event you might be doing, to understand how that event fits into the longer history of the area.

Erick Lyle, in his secret mansion enjoying the high life

As far as thinking about it as archeology at the time, I wouldn’t say that we were so self-conscious that we would do generator shows in the street so we could say, “This is history.” But if we don’t write this shit down, no one is, it’s not making it in the Chronicle or anywhere else. The things that happen in the doorsteps of the Mission or on the dance floor at the punk club or are spray-painted on the walls: these are the things that make up our lives. That’s the fabric of life in the city.

I against I

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May 27, 2008

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CULT FILM Nothing exerts quite the same simultaneous attraction-repulsion magnetism like a really world-class vanity project. You know, the kind in which the writer-director-star-editor-caterer-fluffer — usually playing a thinly disguised version of moi in a world that does not at all fully appreciate them — reveals more of their off-screen inner workings than one ever wanted to know.

Typically these things occur just once in a talent’s life, then are never allowed to happen again, like Babs’ 1996 The Mirror Has Two Faces or Los Angeles weirdo Tommy Wiseau’s so-bad-it’s-surreal cult microhit The Room (2003). Some inexplicably get to make several, like Vincent Gallo, Ed Burns, or such determined wrong-medium meddlers as Bob Dylan and Norman Mailer. It’s possible to strangle whole movies with manifest-destiny egotism even when one merely stars in them. It’s even possible to overexpose oneself without actually appearing onscreen: what are The Passion of the Christ (2004) and Apocalypto (2006) but coded maps of Mel Gibson’s soul?

For full effect, however, the more personal credits, the better. In 1969 Brit multitalent Anthony Newley conceived, cowrote, produced, directed, starred, and pretty much jacked off for the world to see in something called Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? This "erotic" autobiographical musical phantasmagoria cast Newley’s actual then-wife (none other than Joan Collins) and children as his endlessly cheated-on wife and neglected children — not to mention Milton Berle as Satan.

Though it was a major-studio release made for the then not-inconsiderable sum of $1 million, Merkin has since become more rumor than reality, with bootleg TV dupes sought by a few while most simply forgot it existed. Could it really have been that bizarre? Yup. That bad? Well, anything this out-there pretty much transcends ordinary quality measures. An extremely rare chance to taste its unique flavors — indeed, the only revival screening I’ve ever heard of — occurs June 4 at the Roxie when the Film on Film Foundation pairs it with another legendary cliff-jumper, Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971).

Newley conquered the West End and Broadway with shows mixing Chaplinesque whimsical bathos and big-ballad bombast. They gave some critics hives — but not audiences. Covered by every mid-1960s crooner, his songs (like "What Kind of Fool Am I?") topped charts. A ubiquitous variety-show guest, he looked set to become a movie star too. Result: carte blanche for Merkin, the type of freedom that ought to have set off alarm bells from Hollywood to Hampstead.

The film tells the tender tale of an angst-ridden famous writer-singer-actor who, like Newley, was born a "bastard" (at a time when that really mattered), a former child star now on his second marriage — to Collins’ piquantly named Polyester Poontang — while incessantly screwing the likes of Filigree Fondle and Trampolina Whambang. Liberally partaking of Fellini’s 8 1/2 model, this "sum total of my life to date" (as the auteur then stated) operates on many levels, from flashbacks of Merkin’s professional rise to fantasy sequences to onscreen ersatz producers and critics critiquing the movie-in-progress. There’s a zodiac dance, a bestiality number, a mime alter ego, and an acid trip (not to be confused with the black mass) — plus the queasy running theme of Newley-Merkin’s jones for Lolita-esque girls, as personified by Playboy playmate Connie Kreski’s defiled innocent, Mercy. She’s his true love — or as close as it gets for a character who finally admits, "Not only do I have no respect for women, I may well hate them."

In her memoirs, Collins notes, "I had a sick, horrible feeling when I first read the script. Tony seemed to have spelled out the end of our marriage." (Indeed, that event promptly occurred.) The commingled massive egotism and masochism in this "totally revealing picture of his life" (her words) had a similar effect on most real-life critics, a typical notice saying Newley "so overextends and overexposes himself that the movie comes to look like an act of professional suicide … [it] is as self-indulgent as a burp."

Roger Ebert, however, thought it "strange, wonderful, original, and not quite successful," applauding its sheer nerve if nothing else. Indeed, Merkin remains such an oddity and perfect warts-and-all memorial to Newley (who died in 1999, his long, post-Merkin career slide actually highlighted by 1987’s The Garbage Pail Kids Movie) that, like most spectacular follies, it commands a certain awed respect.

CAN HIERONYMUS MERKIN EVER FORGET MERCY HUMPPE AND FIND TRUE HAPPINESS?

June 4, 9:15 p.m., $7

with The Last Movie, 7 p.m.

Roxie Film Center

3117 16th St., SF

www.filmonfilm.org

Mixed doubles

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May 27, 2008

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A new work by Robert Lepage is always a major event. In theater, the Quebecois director, actor, and filmmaker stands with the likes of Robert Wilson or Peter Sellars at the pinnacle of theatrical invention and global acclaim. Little wonder that, like Wilson and Sellars, Lepage has found opera a logical outlet for his extraordinary capacities and grand, all-encompassing visions. (His last Bay Area bow was in November 2007 at the San Francisco Opera, where he staged Stravinsky’s 1951 opera The Rake’s Progress.) But while he is a truly international force wielding the largest of canvases, there’s an intimate and personal side running through much of his work, perhaps nowhere more poignantly than in his stunningly staged solo plays The Far Side of the Moon (2003) and The Andersen Project (2005). The latter, which slyly folds layers of personal and cultural doubt (as well as biting cultural satire) into a glancing exploration of Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen’s troubled psyche, makes its local debut courtesy of Cal Performances.

As with Far Side, Andersen was developed with Lepage playing dual roles that together define a kind of split personality and serve as starting point for a series of thematic dyads. In this case, the main characters are a corrupt French opera director and a French Canadian musician-songwriter named Frédéric Lapointe, who arrives in Paris on a commission to write an opera based on an Andersen story. Also as with Far Side, Lepage eventually handed off the roles to Yves Jacques. An extremely gifted theater and film actor in his own right (probably best known to Americans through several Denys Arcand films), Jacques shares a history and affinity with Lepage (they’ve known each other since their twenties) that make him the best, and perhaps the only, person capable of stepping into these demanding, idiosyncratic solo shows, with their half-hidden strands of autobiography and fraught national identity. I recently spoke with Jacques by phone from Montreal.

SFBG Before Andersen, you took over another Lepage solo play.

YVES JACQUES It started with Far Side because it was a story very close to him. So he wanted someone with the same sensibility. I was able to understand his feelings about [the subject matter]. So afterward he said, ‘Why not continue with The Andersen Project?’

SFBG Was it at all intimidating to take over these plays from their originator?

YJ Oh, yes. I felt a big responsibility to be at least equivalent to Robert — just to reach the level of the acting he puts into the show. But he liked [what I was doing] and was very happy because for once he could see his own work. When you play in a solo show you don’t always understand what you’re doing. Now he could see himself, or himself through me.

SFBG How did you approach the part?

YJ I never feel I’m doing a one-man show; I’m doing a play. I’m doing the yin and the yang of the same character, in a way. Far Side was the story of two brothers, and this is quite the same. You have the director of the Paris Opera and then you have Lapointe. They’re very different but they’re played by the same actor. In a way, it’s the yin and the yang of the same personality, which is Hans Christian Andersen. Lepage is using two different characters to describe [the complexity of] Andersen. It’s very clever. You see Andersen only twice in the show but he’s not talking; he’s just a silhouette. The only way to know him is to understand the other two.

SFBG The assertion of a Quebecois identity against the dominant Anglo culture of Canada is a theme in much of Lepage’s work.

YJ Lapointe comes to Paris because he wants to be approved of by Parisians — [but] he says at the end, I came here for the wrong reasons. I came here for approval, and we shouldn’t do that. We should be proud of what we are. And Andersen had the same problem in his own country. People in Denmark loved his fairy tales but they didn’t take him seriously as a writer because he was writing for children. So he needed to come to Paris as well, and be approved of by Balzac or George Sand or Victor Hugo — just as we need to be approved of by the old country. It’s like being in a colony sometimes [laughs]. That’s why I’m very proud of working with Lepage, because he [raises] Quebec to another standard. His work is totally amazing. *

THE ANDERSEN PROJECT

Wed/28–Sat/31, 8 p.m.; Sun/1, 3 p.m., $62

Zellerbach Playhouse

Bancroft at Dana, UC Berkeley, Berk

(510) 642-9988

www.calperfs.berkeley.edu

Fork This

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May 27, 2008

0

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

This is probably the only time the Alt Sex column will cover the same territory as my new venture, a nice, moderately wholesome blog about kiddie consumer culture (www.gogetyourjacket.com). I was prepared to let the "expectation of blow jobs on Mother’s Day" thing go, especially since US Mother’s Day itself is a few weeks gone, but now the Father’s Day press releases are trickling in — they’re not gushing manfully yet, but I suppose that’s to follow — and the picture that’s emerging of the state of sex in the modern Western (hemisphere, not yippee-yi-yo-ki-yay) bedroom is so weird I can’t let it alone.

First there was the Mother’s Day gift basket meant to get horny, aggrieved husbands with feelings of entitlement to bug their wives for sex instead of going out and getting them a pain au chocolat (the baskets contained paint au chocolat, but that is not at all the same thing). To me, this implies a target audience of couples who aren’t having sex, the female halves of which have to be jollied into it with cheesy "romantic" gifts and who, even more weirdly, can be jollied into it with cheesy "romantic" gifts.

And now I have a "New! For Father’s Day!" ad from the last place I’d expect to produce a sleazy and ultimately sad commentary on the perceived state of modern child-having marriage: a mom ‘n’ pop, organic, non-sweatshop-made "family fashion" (novelty T-shirt) company. I mean, women, would you get your husband a shirt that says "Daddy needs some love’n?" How about one that reads, "My wife likes to spoon but I prefer to fork?" Bear in mind that these are supposed to be gifts. What are we saying here? Why not just go to CafePress and make him a shirt that says, "You’re not getting any and I think that’s pretty funny, har har har!"?

Oh, and men, would you wear it? Would you write to me and tell me why? And if you’d order it yourself and wear it out to lunch (real men don’t brunch, right?) on Father’s Day to mortify your wife, explain that too. By e-mail, please, you don’t sound like the sort of people I would like to meet in real life. I’m embarrassed for those women and I don’t even know any of them.

I truly don’t. I swear I know a goodly number of heterosexuals — one does run into them now and then — and the cartoony vision these products are promoting is just not something I see a lot of. I’m happy to report that I don’t hear from or even hear about a lot of marriages in which the wives refuse sex out of contempt, complete loss of interest, or utter lack of concern over whether their mates are happy or not. Recently I’ve been meeting a lot of women who are hoping to regain lost sex drives and lives after having babies, and even they (of course these particular women are the ones who are motivated enough to talk about it) never show a hint of contempt for the men they aren’t doing it with. They’d like to do it. They want to want to do it. They’ve just lost touch with it. Desire disorder is the dysfunction of the day — just wait till the drug that fixes that hits the market. People will be all, "Viagra who?"

And while cheesy dad gifts are on the table, I would like to register one more complaint. I don’t know what the gift-promoters are trying to pull here, but it struck me as quite completely unfair that after the stupid Mother’s Day come-ons, which were both sexed-up and creepily infantilizing, the first thing I got that was aimed at dads said simply that you should get him a bottle of really nice single-malt scotch. What, no boxer shorts on a stick?

Also, on the subject of knowing a few heterosexuals here and there, I was asked if I would comment on the California Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage (um, they were for it). Sure. I have to admit I have nothing particularly pithy to say about legal gay marriage. I’m for it. I’m a lot more for it than some of my gayest friends are, as a matter of fact: they’re in the "Why should we beg you to let us pretend to be just like you?" camp, while I’m over here in the "It’s not fair that I should get to claim a certain kind of legitimacy for my relationship that you don’t get for yours" camp. They pat me on the head. Me, I’m just dorky enough to be all rejoice-y about this, and hope that my Midwestern friend’s "spousal unit" gets to make an honest woman of her after, oh, 15 years and two kids. And how can any event that occasions this headline — "Star Trek’s George Takei to Marry Longtime Partner" — fail to produce a "Woo!" and a "Hoo!"?

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Andrea is also teaching two classes: "You’ve Really Got Your Hands Full" — a realistic look at having twins — at Birthways in Berkeley, and "Is There Sex After Motherhood?" at Day One Center in San Francisco and other venues.

Do people remember Chevron’s abuses? People do

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May 27, 2008

1

By Maria Dinzeo
The agenda at Chevron’s annual shareholders meeting will be slightly different this year, as representatives from Nigeria, Ecuador, and Burma descend on the meeting to finally have their say. For years, Chevron has been accused of myriad human rights and environmental abuses, from having nonviolent protestors gunned down in Nigeria to the dumping of toxic waste into Amazon waterways in Ecuador.
Tomorrow, representatives from these countries will voice their concerns directly to shareholders and executives. Amazon Watch Director of Communications Simeon Tegel told us the event was designed to “potentially help shareholders become more active” in pressuring Chevron executives to finally address and rectify Chevron’s abuses.
“One hopes they are human beings too, although sometimes it’s hard to tell. But perhaps they will be motivated to do something, either from pressure from their shareholders or from the kindness of human nature,” said Tegel.
Chevron’s human rights violations are not limited to abuses abroad. Richmond has long felt the sting of Chevron’s environmental negligence, despite the company’s soaring profits. While Chevron promises more energy efficient oil refining methods, they continue to belch toxins into the air over Richmond, and plans for a $1 billion expansion of their Richmond refinery has increased resident’s health and safety concerns.
“Change is a long time coming,” said Rosi Reyes, spokesperson for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. “Unfortunately, the citizens of Richmond have read through Chevron’s Environmental Impact Report and they feel that there are empty promises. Chevron continues to use equipment that is over 35 years old, and everything in the report points to [Chevron] refining heavier crude oil.”
Reyes said that the City of Richmond’s aims to wean itself of its oil dependent relationship with Chevron: “We want Chevron to put a cap on crude oil and put money into green energy,” she said.
Though contacted repeatedly, Chevron’s Media Relations Department was unavailable for comment.
Although Richmond representatives will not be allowed inside the meeting, they hope to confront Chevron executives through their protest outside. Said Amazon Watch spokesman Mitchell Anderson, “[Chevron] may not be listening, but they will definitely hear us tomorrow.”

Lit: Rediscovering Philip Lamantia

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May 23, 2008

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An upcoming article will feature Tau by Philip Lamantia and Journey to the End by John Hoffman (City Lights, 138 pages, $12.95), the latest — and 59th — volume in City Lights’ Pocket Poets Series, edited by poet, hip-hop devotee and Guardian contributor Garrett Caples. For now, I’d like to get the word out, if it ain’t too late, about a reading and book party this Sunday. Caples hosts the event, which justifiably celebrates the publication of the lost second book by the influential surrealist Lamantia, who in turn was devoted to the writing of the comparatively obscure Hoffman, who died at the age of 25. Here’s the info, and after the jump, a choice Hoffman poem from the book.

Sun./25, 5 p.m., free
City Lights Books
261 Columbus, SF
(415) 362-8193

Driving to death

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May 23, 2008

2

With all the understandable concern about global warming lately, we tend to forget that our over-reliance on automobiles also has a more immediate impact: death, lots and lots of death.
Research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration already shows that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people ages 3-6 and 8-34, and is the third leading cause of death for all Americans after cancer and heart disease, some of which can also be traced back to the automobile.
Today’s Chronicle reports on new research showing that particulate matter, much of it from automobiles, causes far more premature death than previously thought, up to 24,000 annual deaths in California alone. In another piece, the Chron speculates that people might be driving less on Memorial Day weekend, the mother of all road trip holidays, but I still know lots of people who drove down to Lightning in the Bottle and other spots without pausing to consider the externalities.
Yet even after cutting more than $1 billion in transit funding last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned around and did the same thing this year, cuts that would cost the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency $37 million in the coming fiscal year. This isn’t just stupid and short-sighted: it’s deadly.
But there are countervailing forces fighting back, from a strong local bicycle movement to this fall’s high-speed rail bond measure to the international car-free movement, whose biggest annual event, the International Carfree Conference, will be held in Portland next month, the first time it has been in the U.S. And the Guardian will be there (arriving by train) with live daily coverage and interviews with leading thinkers and activists. Stay tuned.

Dancers without borders

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May 20, 2008

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

What do you need to create a first-rate hot product that is of value to others besides yourself? A great idea, a support structure, and money are good places to start. But what if you had no support structure and no money? If you believe in your idea, you’d plow ahead anyway — just like Andrew Wood, executive director of the San Francisco International Arts Festival.

In 2002, Wood began to think about something he felt this city full of artists and tourists needed: an arts festival that would bring the two together. The event would also focus local attention on a large, vibrant arts community that thrives in the shadow of the three big ones — the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Symphony, and the San Francisco Opera.

"Lots of artists here are bursting with ideas," Wood explained during a recent interview. "We need an entity that supports them because they need more opportunities to show their work."

That a similarly ambitious undertaking called Festival 2000 went belly-up in 1990 didn’t deter the string bean–thin Brit, who talks faster than a cattle auctioneer. But Wood wasn’t about to let the fate of another festival stop him. Soon he was everywhere, talking to anyone who was willing to listen — and even to some who weren’t.

Mostly he encountered closed doors. The city had no extra cash. Foundations were already overcommitted. Wood — onetime director of ODC Theater — had no track record when it came to producing a such a large-scale event. Artists were suspicious that already-scarce funds would be siphoned off for a project that might have no room for their work. And another thing: did Wood know how to balance a budget?

He remained undeterred, largely because he had seen something happening in the Bay Area that others had noted as well, even if they hadn’t yet connected the dots. The community was supportive of young artists who were willing to put up with just about anything to get their work out — but once they got to the level where they needed decent rehearsal spaces, performers they could pay, and offices beyond their bedroom floors, the going got tough. Traditionally, local artists at this stage either called it quits or moved away. No longer.

HAVE ART, WILL TRAVEL

In scouring the local arts scene, Wood noticed what he calls the advent of "journeymen" artists. He named them after the century-old tradition of skilled professionals who traveled long distances and practiced their craft wherever they were hired. Propelled by a desire for adventure and professional improvement, they also managed to support themselves, often handsomely, whether they were roofers, storytellers, or healers.

"Dancers like Janice Garrett, Kim Epifano, Scott Wells, Jess Curtis, Shinichi Iova-Koga, and Stephen Pelton work part-time in Berlin, or London, or Tokyo, or Mexico City. They create work where they are supported and bring it back," Wood explained. In addition, these artists return home with news from abroad about who is doing what, and where.

Despite his admiration for the vitality of the Bay Area arts scene, Wood recognized that "not a lot of artists come through here [on their own]. This place is insular in many ways." As one working artist told him, "You don’t need to see Merce Cunningham for the umpteenth time. You want to see something that resonates within you."

There is a huge pool of artists all over the world whose work has simply not yet hit the radar screens of local presenters. When the San Francisco International Arts Festival launched in September 2003, Wood presented the astounding Quasar Dance Company from Brazil; Indian British dancer Akram Khan (now a megastar); and Compagnie Salia nï Seydou, the first in a succession of contemporary African dance companies that have been seen here since. In 2005 (there was no 2004 festival), the festival showcased extraordinary performances from the AKHE Group (Russia); Fabrik Companie (Germany); Manasku no Kai (Japan); and — one of the wildest of them all — the Moe!kestra, from Manteca.

A focus of SFIAF has become fostering international collaborations that make local artists into journeymen citizens of the world. "We need to support artists here but they also need to realize that there are opportunities somewhere else," Wood said.

This process of cross-fertilization started in 2006 and continued in 2007, when the festival highlighted art from Latin America and the African diaspora. Since the city has yet to commit to any direct funding — Wood called local arts leadership "miserable and petty" — he has become a wizard at patching his budget together, creating cosponsorships, acting as an umbrella organization, and linking artists with individual funding sources. He also has become adept at handling the Department of Homeland Security’s onerous (and expensive) visa process for performers. "They all have visas!" he exclaimed.

A monthlong visual arts exhibit loaned SFIAF 2008 its name: "What Goes Around … The Truth in Knowing/Now." This year’s fest kicks off Wednesday, May 21, and runs until June 8, when it will be capped with a free Yerba Buena Gardens concert by the Omar Sosa Afreecanos Quartet, with local Latin percussionist John Santos.

DANCE PLUS

The festival also includes operatic and theater pieces, as well as choreographers whose work might not be seen locally if not for SFIAF. For example, SFIAF enabled Idris Ackamoor, co-artistic director of Cultural Odyssey, to bring Brazilian dancer-choreographer Cristina Moura to San Francisco. "I was struck by her innovative movements," said Ackamoor, who encountered Moura while scouting for the National Performance Network’s Performing Americas Project, which he co-curated. "She moves like no one else, with a pedestrian and a highly physical vocabulary. She also has a unique way about storytelling." Moura’s solo like an idiot (2007) also resonated with him, as did the title. "Isn’t that the way we all sometimes feel?" he said, speaking of the work, which holds its California premiere at SFIAF.

Wood caught Shlomit Fundaminsky’s emblematic SkidMarks at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival and this year SFIAF is copresenting it with SF’s Israel Center. Speaking from Tel Aviv, Fundaminsky describes the work, a duet for herself and Gyula Csakvari, as inspired by "the home life of a man and a woman who live so close to each other — really as one person — that they lost their ability to communicate. They are creating this box for themselves and are unable to break out of it."

The Kate Foley Dance Ensemble may be familiar to Bay Area audiences because of Foley’s 10-year local performance history. In 1998 she moved to Croatia, where she is in residence at a newly constructed arts center. When Wood sent out a call for SFIAF participant proposals, John Daly of the Croatian American Cultural Center suggested her. Yet the Oakland-born Foley’s homecoming has not been without pain. "I have been so ashamed of what I have had to put my dancers through for the visa process," she said on the phone from Rijeka, Croatia. Her US premiere, Angels of Suderac, is a dance theater work using modern dance and what she calls "reconceived" folkloric material. The piece is based on her research into shamanistic practices that connect fairies and herbal medicine women.

By contrast, new to the Bay Area is the young AscenDance Project, which formed in 2006. German-born director Isabel von Rittberg joined Dancers’ Group when she moved to San Francisco, where she heard about SFIAF. The world premiere of Levitate, which combines rock climbing with dance, will be shown as part of "Jewels in the Square," a festival-spanning series of free performances in Union Square. *

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

May 21–June 8, various venues, most shows $20

For complete schedule, visit www.sfaif.org

When tools race

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May 16, 2008

0

San Franciscans love to make shit and they love weird spectacles. And the The Power Tool Drag Races is the perfect combination of both. The name says it all: drag racing between custom vehicles made from belt sanders, skillsaws, grinders or other power tools. This quirky event has garnered national recognition and was even briefly a television show, but there’s nothing like just spending the day in the beautiful sunshine out at Ace’s Junkyard, drinking too much beer, watching the weirdness, and flirting with the gearheads behind these strange Frankenmachines.
PTDR put on a good show at the Maker’s Faire a couple weeks ago, but that was sanitized for families and prudes. This weekend’s show is the one to attend if you want racing sex toys and other adult thrills. Check it out this Saturday and/or Sunday.
small phil.jpg

A perfect San Francisco day

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May 15, 2008

1

The superlatives are flowing in San Francisco today. “What a wonderful, wonderful day,” was how City Attorney Dennis Herrera opened the giddy press conference in City Hall today, a love fest event discussing and celebrating this morning’s California Supreme Court ruling legalizing same sex marriage.
“What a day for San Francisco!” beamed a jubilant Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose decision to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples in 2004 set off the legal struggle that resulted in the most important civil rights ruling in a generation. He told a large, smiling crowd how proud he was of this city, its values, and its courage to push hard for meaningful sociopolitical change.
“At the end of the day, that’s what I’m so proud of, San Francisco and the values we affirm,” Newsom said. “This is a great day for California, a great day for America, and a great day for the constitution.”
It was also a just plain great day, with hot weather contributing to a record-breaking Bike to Work Day. During the morning commute, a city survey counted twice as many bicycles as cars on Market Street, a 30 percent increase from the number of bicyclists last year.
Today is just one of those days when you fall in love with San Francisco all over again, when it feels like we have the power to really lead the rest of this troubled country in a new direction.

Joey Ramone Day birth bash deets

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May 15, 2008

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Good to know Joey Ramone Day marches on – just as it was fun to hear, at last night’s Eric Lyle reading/event at CounterPULSE for his new book, On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City, the Guardian contributor talk about his own personal observance of Joey Ramone Day – playing Ramones songs on a boombox through the streets, meditating on the frontman.

Well, it happens on every coast. This just in – the details for this year’s Joey Ramone Birthday Bash on May 19 in NYC:

“Celebrating what would have been the 57th birthday of punk-icon Joey Ramone, the annual Joey Ramone Birthday Bash will take place Monday, May 19, at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza. Mickey Leigh, event organizer and brother of Joey Ramone, has announced that, as part of the eighth annual Bash, fans will be treated to a special reunion appearance from Manitoba’s Wild Kingdom featuring Handsome Dick Manitoba, Andy Shernoff, Ross the Boss, and JP Thunderbolt.

The Internet dystopia

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May 14, 2008

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION A couple of weeks ago I went to the annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, an event where people from all over the world gather for a giant DIY technology show-and-tell extravaganza. There are robots, kinetic sculptures, rockets, remote-controlled battleship contests, music-controlled light shows, home electronics kits, ill-advised science experiments (like the Mentos–Diet Coke explosions), and even a barn full of people who make their own clothing, pillows, bags, and more. Basically, it’s a weekend celebration of how human freedom combined with technology creates a pleasing but cacophonous symphony of coolness.

And yet the Maker Faire takes place against a backdrop of increasing constraints on our freedom to innovate with technology, as Oxford University researcher Jonathan Zittrain points out in his latest book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (Yale University Press). After spending several years investigating the social and political rules that govern the Internet — and spearheading the Net censorship tracking project OpenNet Initiative — Zittrain looks back on the Net’s development and predicts a dystopian future. What’s chilling is that his dystopia is already coming to pass.

Zittrain traces the Net’s history through three phases. Initially it was composed of what he calls "sterile" technologies: vast mainframes owned by IBM, which companies could rent time on. What made those technologies sterile is that nobody could experiment with them (except IBM), and therefore innovation related to them stagnated.

That’s why the invention of the desktop PC and popularization of the Internet ushered in an era of unprecedented high-tech innovation. Zittrain calls these open-ended technologies "generative." Anybody can build other technologies that work with them. So, for example, people built Skype and the World Wide Web, both software technologies that sit on top of the basic network software infrastructure of the Internet. Similarly, anybody can build a program that runs on Windows.

But Zittrain thinks we’re seeing the end of the freewheeling Internet and PC era. He calls the technologies of today "tethered" technologies. Tethered technologies are items like iPhones or many brands of DVR — they’re sterile to their owners, who aren’t allowed to build software that runs on them. But they’re generative to the companies that make them, in the sense that Comcast can update your DVR remotely, or Apple can brick your iPhone remotely if you try to do something naughty to it (like run your own software program on it).

In some ways, tethered technologies are worse than plain old sterile technologies. They allow for abuses undreamed of in the IBM mainframe era. For example, iPhone tethering could lead to law enforcement going to Apple and saying, "Please activate the microphone on this iPhone that we know is being carried by a suspect." The device turns into an instant bug, without all the fuss of following the suspect around or installing surveillance crap in her apartment. This isn’t idle speculation, by the way. OnStar, the manufacturer of a car emergency system, was asked by law enforcement to activate the mics in certain cars using its system. It refused and went to court.

Zittrain’s solution to the tethering problem is to encourage the existence of communities like the ones who participate in Maker Faire or who edit Wikipedia. These are people who work together to create open, untethered technologies and information repositories. They are the force that pushes back against companies that want to sterilize the Internet and turn it back into something that spits information at you, television-style. I think this is a good start, but there are a lot of problems with depending on communities of DIY enthusiasts to fix a system created by corporate juggernauts. As I mentioned in my column ("User-Generated Censorship," 4/30/08), you can’t always depend on communities of users to do the right thing. In addition, companies can create an incredibly oppressive tethering regime while still allowing users to think they have control. Tune in next week, and I’ll tell you how Zittrain’s solution might lead to an even more dystopian future.

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who thinks up dystopias in her spare time.

Cow tipping in Daly City

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May 13, 2008

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Daly City’s desperate campaign to shut down the famous Cow Palace and sell the land it’s located on to developers continues.

In the newest twist, promoters of shows and conventions that have long been held at the Cow Palace are being approached by officials from an expo center in San Mateo County about moving their events, which could increasingly drain the Cow Palace’s income and kill efforts to stop Daly City and its allies in Sacramento from selling it.

Some promoters also contacted the San Mateo County Event Center about a possible move, worried that efforts to demolish the Cow Palace will make it difficult for them to schedule future events. Chris Carpenter, general manager of the San Mateo center, refused to name the shows because the promoters have asked him not to say anything.

"We are very interested in filling as many dates as we can for the Event Center," Carpenter told the Guardian. "We have a very active sales department."

Carpenter denied that Daly City officials encouraged him to steal business from the Cow Palace, saying no one from the city had contacted him. But Daly City manager Pat Martel eagerly promoted the alternative venue on the KQED radio show Forum March 28.

"Today we have state-of-the-art facilities throughout the Bay Area where a number of events currently at the Cow Palace can continue…. The San Mateo County Expo Center would welcome the opportunity to keep that kind of business in the county," Martel said.

The San Francisco Flower and Garden show announced in late April that it was leaving the Cow Palace after 12 years and heading to San Mateo, where flower show proprietor Duane Kelly signed a five-year agreement. Kelly said he made the move because the state had long ago promised certain renovations and improvements would occur at the Cow Palace, but they never happened.

In the meantime, the San Mateo center received a $3 million renovation that included fresh paint and new carpet and draperies. It was simply a better situation for a show that relies on aesthetics, Kelly said.

Kelly added he wasn’t impressed with how Daly City officials and state senator Leland Yee have handled the discussions about the proposed sale by trying to exclude Cow Palace officials from deliberations about the venue’s future. He said it looked more to him like a land grab, and despite the construction of new, glitzy convention centers elsewhere, the Bay Area remains underserved.

"Particularly [San Francisco’s Moscone Center] does not lend itself to public shows because of the parking issue, and it’s a very expensive building to work in," Kelly said.

Following a March public meeting on the Cow Palace’s fate, officials at the San Mateo center approached the organizer of the Great Dickens Christmas Faire about moving that event. Kevin Patterson, who runs the fair and has since helped lead a campaign to save the Cow Palace, said the San Mateo center isn’t suitable because of the amount of space he needs and the cost required to alter his event logistically. Besides, he said, he likes the Cow Palace.

"Daly City just got greedy and pushed too hard and tried to get too much," Patterson said.

In December, Daly City officials voted to dispatch their lobbyist for a chat with Yee about developing the land after complaining that two years of lease negotiations over a 13-acre plot of Cow Palace property had gone nowhere. The lobbyist, Bill Duplissea, is a former Republican member of the State Assembly whose firm, Cline and Duplissea, has earned $266,000 from Daly City since 2001, according to state records, to "monitor budget issues" and hit up lawmakers like Yee.

Weeks after Daly City sent Duplissea after Yee, the senator introduced Senate Bill 1527, originally designating as "surplus" all 67 acres of state-owned property the Cow Palace sits on so that Daly City could purchase it, flip the valuable real estate to a developer, and await the local boost in tax revenue coming from new condos, storefronts, and a retail grocer.

Daly City was so determined to circumvent the Cow Palace on the issue that when the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which oversees the property, tried to convene peace talks between the Cow Palace and Daly City, Duplissea sent a letter to the state declaring that his client would prefer to deal only with Sacramento.

After the bill was introduced, Yee and Daly City officials embarked on a media blitz condemning the Cow Palace as a decrepit relic with event income that couldn’t sustain it. Many of the events Cow Palace hosts, Daly City complains, are offensive to the sensibilities of locals or don’t match the neighborhood fabric, like an annual gun show and the San Francisco–centric Exotic Erotic Ball, "a celebration of flesh, fetish, and fantasy," according to the ball’s Web site.

"Every single neighborhood association surrounding the Cow Palace asked the senator to carry this legislation," Yee spokesperson Adam Keigwin told us. "This was always about revitalizing the neighborhood."

After Cow Palace supporters mounted a resistance campaign, Yee came up with a mid-April "compromise" bill that would result in the sell-off of the 13-acre parking lot adjacent to the Cow Palace while appearing to protect the historic venue for now.

Patterson of the Great Dickens fair said a lease provision in the bill would be preferable so revenue could go toward giving the Cow Palace an earthquake retrofit and other needed improvements. But Keigwin said that’s not something the senator’s interested in.

The California Senate Government Organizational Committee was debating the bill as we went to press. That committee includes Yee and Sens. Jeff Denham and Mark Wyland, two Republican cosponsors of the bill who represent districts that aren’t affected by the Cow Palace at all.

Denham, whose District 12 contains the cities of Modesto and Salinas, tellingly promoted legislation two years ago asking the state to study transferring control over agricultural fairs to local governments, but it died in the assembly’s Appropriations Committee.

Opponents of Yee’s bill are concerned it could set a precedent for the state to declare other agricultural districts "surplus" and sell them to developers without local supporters and promoters of fairs and expos having a say in the matter, not unlike what the Cow Palace faces now.

A capitol insider also told us that because Yee declared SB 1527 "urgent" in hopes of rushing it through the legislature, it requires a two-thirds vote, hence the cosponsorships from two minority GOP lawmakers.

As for the future of the Cow Palace’s clients, we contacted the Grand National Rodeo, the San Francisco Sport and Boat Show, and the Golden Gate Kennel Club Dog Show, but didn’t hear back from representatives of any of these events.

Baba, a tattoo artist in Los Angeles, said San Francisco’s Body Art Expo, held at the Cow Palace, secured an agreement with the venue for another year, but he wouldn’t offer further details. Mega Productions, which hosts the event, didn’t return our call.

Howard Mauskopf, executive producer of the Exotic Erotic Ball, said he recently looked at other possible venues, but he’s keeping them confidential for now. The Moscone Center is big enough, Mauskopf said, "but they wouldn’t touch an event of this ilk." He added that the ball’s coordinators regularly receive letters from law enforcement commending them on the lack of trouble they cause.

"There are things we really like about the Cow Palace, which includes the fact that they kind of let the event happen the way it needs to happen," Mauskopf said. "It’s big enough. That’s the most important thing. And they have a very high-quality ticket office that really knows how to deal with consumers."