Event Archives — Page 16 of 149 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

San Francisco Color Fight 5K

Maria Poblet

November 26, 2013

The Color Fight celebrates health and happiness, to create a three-mile canvas of colorful fun where thousands of participants are doused from head to toe in various colors.

Participation and buzz for The Color Fight has exploded since its debut last year on Facebook. While the event brings together friends and family in a unique, healthy, and relaxed environment, there’s only one rule: you’ve got wear white!

About the Color Fight: The Color Fight is a feel-good, happy, colorful event. “Color Fighters” of all shapes and sizes happily go from wearing pristine white clothing, to being covered in prismatic color. At each stage (kilometer), a different color of powder fills the air and covers the participants, creating an ever-increasing spectrum of color and beauty. At the finish line, the color festival kicks off and the air is filled with millions of vivid color combinations as participants get in on the color throwing fun as well. For more information follow this link.

Saturday, December 7 at 11am @ Candlestick Park, SF

Music Listings: November 20-26, 2013

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

November 20, 2013

WEDNESDAY 20
ROCK
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Screaming Females, Upset, Peace Creep, 9 p.m., $10.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. U.S. Girls, Chasms, Ether Island, 9 p.m., $7-$10.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. The Reverend Horton Heat, Larry & His Flask, Deke Dickerson, 9 p.m., $25.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Apt H, Neon Satori, Pharaohs, 8 p.m., $5.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Rocket Queens, BROFX, 9 p.m., $7.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Qui, Roland, Big Long Now, 8:30 p.m., $7.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Josh Berwanger Band, Mammoth Life, The Silhouette Era, 8 p.m., $10.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Self-Inflicted Wounds, Balms, Demimonde, DJ Ryan Smith, 9:30 p.m., $6.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. City Tribe, We Arsons, The Wooden Suns, 8:30 p.m., $5.
DANCE
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Sticky Wednesdays,” w/ DJ Mark Andrus, 8 p.m., free.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bondage A Go Go,” w/ DJs Damon, Tomas Diablo, & guests, 9:30 p.m., $5-$10.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “Electro Pop Rocks,” 18+ dance night with DJ Dan, SwitchBlade, Frank Nitty, more, 9 p.m.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Tainted Techno Trance,” 10 p.m.
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Housepitality,” w/ Marcel Vogel, James What, Tyrel Williams, Ben Bean, 9 p.m., $5-$10.
Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. “Qoöl,” 5 p.m.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Indulgence,” 10 p.m.
Lexington Club: 3464 19th St., San Francisco. “Friends of Dorothy,” w/ DJ Sissyslap, 9 p.m., free.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “What?,” w/ resident DJ Tisdale and guests, 7 p.m., free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Rock the Spot,” 9 p.m., free.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Burn Down the Disco,” w/ DJs 2shy-shy & Melt w/U, Third Wednesday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ DJ Big Bad Bruce, 10 p.m., free.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “We Are Monsters,” w/ Sammy D, Mozhgan, Jason Greer, 10 p.m., $5-$10.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Booty Call,” w/ Juanita More, Joshua J, guests, 9 p.m., $3.
Showdown: 10 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Nokturnal,” w/ DJs Coyle & Gonya, Third Wednesday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
HIP-HOP
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Lunice, Rockie Fresh, B. Bravo, 8 p.m., $10-$15.
Double Dutch: 3192 16th St., San Francisco. “Cash IV Gold,” w/ DJs Kool Karlo, Roost Uno, and Sean G, 10 p.m., free.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Latyrx featuring Skins & Needles, Forrest Day, DJ Aaron Axelsen, hosted by Blackalicious, 9 p.m., $25.
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Mixtape Wednesday,” w/ resident DJs Strategy, Junot, Herb Digs, & guests, 9 p.m., $5.
ACOUSTIC
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, 7 p.m., free.
Club Deluxe: 1511 Haight, San Francisco. Happy Hour Bluegrass, 6:30 p.m., free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, Every other Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., free/donation.
The Lost Church: 65 Capp St., San Francisco. Drea Muldavin, 8 p.m., $10.
JAZZ
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session, The Amnesiacs, 7 p.m., free.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6 p.m., free.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30 p.m., free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. The Cosmo Alleycats featuring Ms. Emily Wade Adams, 7 p.m., free.
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Ned Boynton & Friends, 6 p.m., free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. The Suppression of Sound: An Evening of Poetry and Music, with Thomas Sayers Ellis, James Brandon Lewis, and Raina J. León, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Michael Parsons Trio, Every other Wednesday, 8:30 p.m., free/donation.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. “Cat’s Corner,” 9 p.m., $10.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Fran Sholly, 8 p.m.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Ricardo Scales, Wednesdays, 6:30-11:30 p.m., $5.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Anya Malkiel, 7:30 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. Timba Dance Party, w/ DJ WaltDigz, 10 p.m., $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Bachatalicious,” w/ DJs Good Sho & Rodney, 7 p.m., $5-$10.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Cafe LatinoAmericano,” 8 p.m., $5.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Jorge Ben Jor, 8 & 10 p.m., $35-$55.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Mitch Woods & His Rocket 88s, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $15.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Big Bones & Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Takezo, 9:30 p.m.
SOUL
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Soul Train Revival,” w/ Ziek McCarter, Third Wednesday of every month, 9:30 p.m., $5.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Daley, 7:30 p.m., sold out.

THURSDAY 21
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Nova Albion, The Foreign Resort, 9 p.m., $7-$10.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. The Rock Collection, featuring Stu Allen, Greg Anton, Mark Karan, Melvin Seals, and Robin Sylvester, 9 p.m., $10-$13.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Howe Gelb, 9 p.m., $18-$20.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Norma Jean, Vanna, KEN Mode, Exotic Animal Petting Zoo, Name, 7 p.m., $13-$18.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Lemme Adams, Hungry Skinny, Fox & The Law, Electric Shepherd, 8 p.m., $7.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Dengue Fever, Seventeen Evergreen, 8 p.m., $16-$18.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Build Them to Break, The Trash Pop Icons, Protected Left, 8:30 p.m., free.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. The Kimberly Trip, Poeina Suddarth, Claire on a Dare, Drivers, 8 p.m., $8.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Albert Hammond Jr., Rathborne, 9 p.m., $21.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. White Barons, Hornss, Winter Teeth, Rock Bottom, 9:30 p.m., $7.
DANCE
Abbey Tavern: 4100 Geary, San Francisco. DJ Schrobi-Girl, 10 p.m., free.
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “Tubesteak Connection,” w/ DJ Bus Station John, 9 p.m., $5-$7.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “¡Pan Dulce!,” 9 p.m., $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” ‘80s night with DJs Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests, 9 p.m., $6 (free before 9:30 p.m.).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “XO,” w/ DJs Astro & Rose, 10 p.m., $5.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “The Crib,” 9:30 p.m., $10, 18+.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Turbo Drive,” w/ Anoraak, Marrow, plus DJs Devon, MyKill, and Mr. Smith, 9:30 p.m., $15.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Afrolicious,” w/ DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, and live guests, 9:30 p.m., $5-$8.
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Beat Church,” w/ Mint, Humpfree Lowgart, residents, 9 p.m., $5-$10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “I Love Thursdays,” 10 p.m., $10.
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “SoLuna,” w/ resident DJ Miquel Penn, Third Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Never Knows, Exotic Club, Bézier, DJs Nihar & Mashi Mashi, 9:30 p.m., $6.
Laszlo: 2532 Mission, San Francisco. “Werk It,” w/ DJ Kool Karlo, Third Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Night Fever,” 9 p.m., $5 after 10 p.m.
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. Alland Byallo, 10 p.m., $10 before 11 p.m.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursday,” w/ DJ Jay-R, 9 p.m., free.
Raven: 1151 Folsom St., San Francisco. “1999,” w/ VJ Mark Andrus, 8 p.m., free.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. “Popscene,” w/ Deptford Goth, Sohn, 9:30 p.m., $13-$15.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Awakening,” Coldharbour Recordings Night with Khomha, Beat Service, Grube & Hovsepian, 9 p.m., $20 advance.
SPARC: 1256 Mission, San Francisco. “Surya Dub Mission,” w/ Kush Arora, J-Boogie, DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, 7-10 p.m., free with RSVP (must be 18+).
The Tunnel Top: 601 Bush, San Francisco. “Tunneltop,” DJs Avalon and Derek ease you into the weekend with a cool and relaxed selection of tunes spun on vinyl, 10 p.m., free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bubble,” 10 p.m., free.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Base,” w/ Nathan Barato, 10 p.m., $5-$10.
HIP-HOP
Eastside West: 3154 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” w/ DJ Madison, 9 p.m., free.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Cypher,” w/ resident DJ Big Von, 10 p.m., $5-$10.
Park 77 Sports Bar: 77 Cambon, San Francisco. “Slap N Tite,” w/ resident Cali King Crab DJs Sabotage Beats & Jason Awesome, free.
Showdown: 10 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Tougher Than Ice,” w/ DJs Vin Sol, Ruby Red I, and Jeremy Castillo, Third Thursday of every month, 10 p.m.
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Peaches,” w/lady DJs DeeAndroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, Umami, Inkfat, and Andre, 10 p.m., free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Acoustic Open Mic, 7 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Yesway, TaughtMe, Magic Magic Roses, 8:30 p.m., $8.
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. The Neckbeard Boys, 8 p.m.
The Lost Church: 65 Capp St., San Francisco. The New Thoreaus, Ghost Lore, 8 p.m., $10.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Tipsy House, Third Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
JAZZ
Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Doug Martin’s Avatar Ensemble, 7:30 p.m., free.
Bottle Cap: 1707 Powell, San Francisco. The North Beach Sound with Ned Boynton, Jordan Samuels, and Tom Vickers, 7 p.m., free.
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Dick Fregulia’s Good Vibes Trio, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Ralph Carney’s Serious Jass Project, 9 p.m.
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Art Lewis Trio, 7 p.m., free.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Shannon Wolfe & Grant Levin, 8:30 p.m., free.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Charlie Siebert & David Udolf, 7:30 p.m., free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Jam with Eddy Ramirez, 7:30 p.m., $5.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 7:30 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. “1002 Nights: A Celebration of the Life & Music of Cheb i Sabbah,” w/ Jai Uttal, Sukhawat Ali Khan & Party, Jef Stott, Momo Loudiyi, Opium Sabbah, Eva El Beze, Karsh Kale & The Midival Punditz, DJ Rekha, Dub Gabriel, Janaka Selekta, Shabi Farooq, Radiohiro, Fabian Alsultany, Little John, DJ Sep, Tarun Nayer, DJ Dragonfly, Jimmy Love, Bob Duskis, Maneesh the Twister, DJ Amar, many more, 7 p.m., $10-$20 suggested donation.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Pa’Lante!,” w/ Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky, 10 p.m., $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Julio Bravo y Su Orquesta Salsabor, 8 p.m., $12.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Jueves Flamencos,” 8 p.m., free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Gary Flores & Descarga Caliente, 8 p.m.
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. The Verdi Club Milonga, w/ Christy Coté, DJ Emilio Flores, guests, 9 p.m., $10-$15.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Septeto Nacional de Cuba, 8 & 10 p.m., $23-$28.
REGGAE
Pissed Off Pete’s: 4528 Mission St., San Francisco. Reggae Thursdays, w/ resident DJ Jah Yzer, 9 p.m., free.
BLUES
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. Bill Phillippe, 5:30 p.m., free.
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Jarekus Singleton, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $18.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Chris Ford, Third Thursday of every month, 4 p.m.; Wendy DeWitt, 9:30 p.m.
COUNTRY
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Twang Honky Tonk & Country Jamboree,” w/ DJ Little Red Rodeo, 7 p.m., free.
EXPERIMENTAL
The Luggage Store: 1007 Market, San Francisco. Erors, Mountain vs. Building, 8 p.m., $6-$10.
Swedish American Hall: 2174 Market, San Francisco. Thomas Dolby: The Invisible Lighthouse Live, The synth-pop pioneer turns his attention to film for this transmedia event that combines documentary movie footage, live narration, and — naturally — electronic music and sound design., 8 p.m., $25-$60.
SOUL
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Soul: It’s the Real Thing,” w/ The Selecter DJ Kirk & Jon Blunck, 10 p.m., free.

FRIDAY 22
ROCK
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. The Rabbles, The Wearies, Red Elk, Feed Me Jack, Modern Kicks, 8 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Papa, Panic Is Perfect, Bent Shapes, 9:30 p.m., $12.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Lumerians, Factrix, Li Xi, 9 p.m., $12-$15.
Connecticut Yankee: 100 Connecticut, San Francisco. Pony Fight, 1906, The Quart of Blood Technique, 10 p.m.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Friday Live: The Whoa Nellies, DJ Emotions, 10 p.m., free.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Moonbeams, Slowness, Venus Beltran, 9:30 p.m., $7.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Wax Idols, Metal Mother, Opulence, DJ Omar, 9 p.m., $10.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. John Vanderslice, Doe Eye, 8:30 p.m., $15.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Protest the Hero, Architects, The Kindred, Affiance, 7:30 p.m., $20.
Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery): 2183 Mission, San Francisco. Brave Ulysses, Downfall, Waterfly Spigot, Black Bones, Rundown Radio, 8 p.m.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Brocas Helm, Hatchet, Exmortus, Midnight Chaser, 9 p.m., $10.
DANCE
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. SnowGlobe Pre-Party with Amon Tobin (DJ set), Machinedrum, Just Blaze, G Jones, Mr. Rogers, Vin Sol, Stylust Beats, Digital Rust, Bogl vs. Dials, plus many more, 10 p.m., $20-$30 advance.
Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. Poolside, Pacific Disco, Papa Lu, 9:30 p.m., $10 advance.
BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “U-Haul,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & China G, 10 p.m., $5-$10.
Cafe Flore: 2298 Market, San Francisco. “Kinky Beats,” w/ DJ Sergio, 10 p.m., free.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Boy Bar,” w/ DJ Matt Consola, 9 p.m., $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Dark Shadows,” w/ DJs Daniel Skellington, Melting Girl, Owen, and Mz. Samantha, 9:30 p.m., $7 ($3 before 10 p.m.).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “F.T.S.: For the Story,” 10 p.m.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “120 Minutes,” w/ House of LaDosha, Santa Muerte, Chauncey CC, 10 p.m., $10-$15.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Fever,” 10 p.m., free before midnight.
The Grand Nightclub: 520 4th St., San Francisco. “We Rock Fridays,” 9:30 p.m.
Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. Sharam Jey, J. Remy, Laura Lisbona, Jeff Hinchman, 9 p.m., $10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Escape Fridays,” 10 p.m., $20.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “HYSL,” 9 p.m., $3.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “I ♥ the ‘90s,” w/ DJs Samala, Teo, Mr. Grant, & Sonny Phono, Fourth Friday of every month, 9 p.m., $5.
Manor West: 750 Harrison, San Francisco. “Fortune Fridays,” 10 p.m., free before 11 p.m. with RSVP.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “F-Style Fridays,” w/ DJ Jared-F, 9 p.m.
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. “Dirtybird Players,” w/ Catz ‘N Dogz, Cause & Affect, J.Phlip, Leroy Peppers, Worthy, 9 p.m., $10-$20.
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. Aphrodite, Jamal & Audio Angel, Kimba, Chris the Junglist, Audio 1, Micah J, Kirin Rider, Sychosis, 10 p.m., $13 advance.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Acid Test,” w/ D’Marc Cantu, Tyrel Williams, Bai-ee, Miguel Solari, Fil Latorre, 9:30 p.m., $12-$15.
Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. 100% Silk Label Tour, w/ Octo Octa, Magic Touch, Coyote Clean Up (on the upstairs stage), 9 p.m., $13-$15.
OMG: 43 6th St., San Francisco. “Release,” 9 p.m., free before 11 p.m.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. Dubfire, DJ Rooz, Mossmoss, Bob Campbell, Bardia F, Keith Kraft, 9:30 p.m., $13-$20.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Pump: Worq It Out Fridays,” w/ resident DJ Christopher B, 9 p.m., $3.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. Super8 & Tab, 9 p.m., $20 advance.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. Blaus, Lenny Kiser, King James, Twin Spin, 10 p.m., $15.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bionic,” 10 p.m., $5.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Project X,” w/ Matth, Kepik, Beau Kelly, Rose, 10 p.m., $10-$30.
Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bridge the Gap,” w/ resident DJ Don Kainoa, Fridays, 6-10 p.m., free.
HIP-HOP
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Hella Fresh Fest,” w/ Zion I, Tribal Seeds, CunninLynguists, Pacific Dub, Richie Cunning, Rey Resurreccion, Rglnd & Duckwrth, MK Smth, more, 8 p.m., $25-$50.
EZ5: 682 Commercial, San Francisco. “Decompression,” Fridays, 5-9 p.m.
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Flow,” w/ The Whooligan & Mikos Da Gawd, Fourth Friday of every month, 10 p.m., free befoe 11 p.m.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Homesick Elephant, 7 p.m.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Supermule, Cahalen Morrison & Eli West, The Barbary Ghosts, 9:30 p.m., $9-$12.
Dolores Park Cafe: 501 Dolores, San Francisco. Keeva, Beryl Baker, 7:30 p.m.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Jason Powers, Karmina, XY Unlimited, 9 p.m., $10.
The Lost Church: 65 Capp St., San Francisco. “Once Silent Hollows,” w/ Jean Marc, Vessna Scheff, and David Colon, 8 p.m., $10.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Get Offa My Lawn, 9 p.m.
The Sports Basement: 610 Old Mason, San Francisco. “Breakfast with Enzo,” w/ Enzo Garcia, 10 a.m., $5.
Swedish American Hall: 2174 Market, San Francisco. William Fitzsimmons, Denison Witmer, 8 p.m., $20.
JAZZ
Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Johnny Smith, 8 p.m., free.
Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Chuck Peterson Quintet, Fourth Friday of every month, 5:30 p.m.
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Jerry Oakley Trio, 7:30 p.m., free.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Palace Hotel: 2 New Montgomery, San Francisco. The Klipptones, 8 p.m., free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Voices for the Poppy: A Special Benefit Concert, Meklit Hadero hosts music and poetry by Tiffany Austin, Tom Sway, Prasant Radhakrishnan, Todd Thomas Brown, Schuyler Karr, and Michael Warr., 7:30 p.m., $15-$50.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Steve Lucky & Carmen Getit, 7:30 p.m., free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Carol Luckenbach, 7:30 p.m., $8.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Sebastian Parker Quartet, 9 p.m.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Black Market Jazz Orchestra, 9 p.m., $10.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Joyce Grant, 8 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Baxtalo Drom, International shimmying for lovers of Balkan music, bellydancers, and burlesque., Fourth Friday of every month, 9 p.m., $5-$10.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10 p.m., $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Taste Fridays, featuring local cuisine tastings, salsa bands, dance lessons, and more, 7:30 p.m., $15 (free entry to patio).
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Orquesta Borinquen, 8 p.m.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cuban Night with Fito Reinoso, 7:30 & 9:15 p.m., $15-$18.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Septeto Nacional de Cuba, 8 & 10 p.m., $26-$30.
REGGAE
Gestalt Haus: 3159 16th St., San Francisco. “Music Like Dirt,” 7:30 p.m., free.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. The Green, Kimie, Extra Classic, 9:30 p.m., sold out.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Jarekus Singleton, 7:30 & 10 p.m., $20.
Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Eldon Brown, 8:30 p.m.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. David M’ore, 4 p.m.; Eugene Huggins, 9:30 p.m.
Tupelo: 1337 Green St., San Francisco. Marshall Law Band, 9 p.m.
FREE
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Danilo y Universal, 8 p.m., free.
FUNK
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Loose Joints,” w/ DJs Centipede, Damon Bell, & Tom Thump, 10 p.m., $5.
SOUL
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Marcus Cohen & The Congress, Kev Choice Ensemble, 9 p.m., $12-$15.
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Soul Crush,” w/ DJ Serious Leisure, 10 p.m., 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, 10 p.m., $3-$5.

SATURDAY 23
ROCK
Amoeba Music: 1855 Haight, San Francisco. Nik Turner’s Hawkwind, 2 p.m., free.
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Wild Eyes, Buffalo Tooth, 10 p.m., $5.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. That’s Not Her, Scissors for Lefty, Vela Eyes, 9:30 p.m., $10-$12.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Nobunny, Nubs, Primitive Hearts, G. Green, DJ Kevin Spaghetti, 9 p.m., $12.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Lee Gallagher & The Hallelujah, Coo Coo Birds, Be Calm Honcho, 9:30 p.m., $10-$12.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. The Entrance Band, Raw Geronimo, 9 p.m., $12-$15.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “The Hop,” w/ The Royal Deuces, Cole Walker & His Rhythm Section, Kountry Kittens Burlesque, DJ Tom G, more, 9 p.m., $13.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Brother JT, Carlton Melton, Life Coach, Suzuki Junzo, 9:30 p.m., $8.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Shine On,” w/ Electro Group, Cruel Summer, Corey, Tepid Joy, 9 p.m., $6.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. The Impersonations, Mane, 7:30 p.m., $8.
Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. The Parmesans, Cash for Gold, Mary Jones’ Lights, Staring@Stars, 9 p.m., $8-$10.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Finntroll, Blackguard, Metsatöll, 9 p.m., $25.
Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery): 2183 Mission, San Francisco. Garrett Miranda, The Resistance Panel, Skitzofrenik, The Residuals, 8 p.m., $5.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Attik Door, Moxie Kids, Field of Stones, Rage Against Florence & The Machine, 9 p.m., $8.
DANCE
BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Evolution,” w/ Marco Da Silva, Christopher B, 10 p.m., $10-$15 advance.
Cafe Flore: 2298 Market, San Francisco. “Bistrotheque,” w/ DJ Ken Vulsion, 8 p.m., free.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Villainy: The Dance Club with a Dark Side – Celebrating 50 Years of Doctor Who,” w/ DJs Tomas Diablo, Donimo, Chris Zachos, Daniel Skellington, and Prince Charming, 9:30 p.m., $5-$8.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Bootie S.F.,” w/ A+D, DJ Dada, Smash-Up Derby, DJ Tripp, DJ Lex, Barney Iller, Teknacolor Ninja, more, 9 p.m., $10-$15.
S.F. Eagle: 398 12th St., San Francisco. “Sadistic Saturdays,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., free.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. Shangri-La, Asian queer dance party., Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $15-$20 (free before 11 p.m.).
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Trap City,” w/ DJ Sliink, UltraViolet, Napsty, Audio 1, Lé Swndle, Astro, WolfBitch, Thizz Markie, 10 p.m., $15 advance.
Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. Helena, Spektor, D-Bryk, 9 p.m., $10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Set,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $20.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Bounce!,” 9 p.m., $3.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Blunted Funk,” w/ resident DJs Sneak-E Pete & Chilipino, Fourth Saturday of every other month, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 10 p.m.).
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. “Bass Cabaret: A Titanic Experience,” w/ Stephan Jacobs, Gydyr, Jake Lamante, Nebakaneza, plus burlesque & circus performers, 10 p.m., $22-$60 advance.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. Monarch 2-Year Anniversary, w/ Danny Daze, DJ M3, Shiny Objects, Dust Red Skies, Queen Majesty & Saboteur, Columbo Ahmed, Mozhgan, Jacob Fury, 9 p.m., $10-$20.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “Thanksgifting,” w/ Deekline, DJ Icon, Brad Robinson, Barney Iller, Ejagz, Nugz, Clarkie, Mystr Hatchet, DJMK, Alvaro Bravo, DJ Dane, 9 p.m., $15-$20.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. “Gameboi S.F.: Annual Thanksgiving Dinner & Canned Food Drive,” w/ VJ LaRock, 9:30 p.m., $8-$15.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “World Town,” w/ Chocolate Puma, Trevor Simpson, 9 p.m., $25 advance.
The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Porno,” w/ DJs James Torres & Trixxx, 9 p.m., $5.
Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery): 2183 Mission, San Francisco. “Requiem,” w/ DJs Xiola, Owen, and Calexica (in the back room), 9:30 p.m., $5.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Life,” w/ David Garcia, David Paul, The Whooligan, Tim Brown, Frankie Jr., J-Trip, 10 p.m., $20.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. Chris Garcia, 10 p.m., $10-$30.
HIP-HOP
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “Nice,” w/ DJ Apollo, Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $5.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Alexander Spit, 9 p.m., $8.
ACOUSTIC
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, Saturdays, 4-6 p.m., free.
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Wave the Sea, 7 p.m.
The Lost Church: 65 Capp St., San Francisco. Erin Brazill & The Brazillionaires, Rusty Stringfield, 8 p.m., $10.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Br’er Rabbit, 9 p.m.
St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church: 2097 Turk, San Francisco. Anne & Pete Sibley, The T Sisters, 8 p.m., $12-$15.
JAZZ
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Lori Carsillo, 7:30 p.m., free.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Panique, 9 p.m., free.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Steve Lucky & Carmen Getit, 7:30 p.m., free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Octobop, 7:30 p.m., $10.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Robert Stewart Experience, 9 p.m.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Lisa Lindsley, 8 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Pura,” 9 p.m., $20.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10 p.m., $5.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. La Gente, La Chamba, DJ Kush Arora, 9:30 p.m., $10-$15.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Somos el Son, DJ Good Sho, 8 p.m., $15.
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Saboriche, 8 p.m.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Mango,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 3 p.m., $8-$10.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “El SuperRitmo,” w/ DJs Roger Mas & El Kool Kyle, 10 p.m., $5.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Peña Eddy Navia & Pachamama Band, 8 p.m., free.
REGGAE
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. The Green, Kimie, Skins & Needles, 9:30 p.m., sold out.
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Barrington Levy, Mango Kingz, DJ Smoky, Rozone, 9 p.m., $25-$45.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, 7:30 & 10 p.m., $22.
Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Robert “Hollywood” Jenkins, 7:30 p.m.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Dave Workman, Fourth Saturday of every month, 4 p.m.; Curtis Lawson, 9:30 p.m.
SOUL
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Nightbeat,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and Dr. Scott, Fourth Saturday of every month, 9 p.m., $3.

SUNDAY 24
ROCK
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. The Shivering Lilies featuring Lily Holbrook, Matt Jaffe & The Distractions, 7 p.m., $10.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Thy Art Is Murder, I Declare War, Fit for an Autopsy, The Last Ten Seconds of Life, Kublai Khan, 6:30 p.m., $10-$12.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Mercury in Retrograde, Bitter Fruit, DJ Adee Roberson, 8 p.m., $5-$10.
DANCE
440 Castro: 440 Castro, San Francisco. “Sunday Furry Sunday,” Last Sunday of every month, 4-10 p.m., $1.
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “Replay Sundays,” 9 p.m., free.
The Edge: 4149 18th St., San Francisco. “’80s at 8,” w/ DJ MC2, 8 p.m.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Dub Mission,” w/ Mr. E, DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, 9 p.m., $6 (free before 9:30 p.m.).
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “T.Dance,” 6 a.m.-6 p.m.; “Sunday Sessions,” 8 p.m.; “Local Love,” Fourth Sunday of every month, 8 p.m.
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Stamina Sundays,” w/ DBridge, Method One, Lukeino, Jamal, 10 p.m., free.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Sweater Funk,” 10 p.m., free.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Jock,” Sundays, 3-8 p.m., $2.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Bounce,” w/ DJ Just, 10 p.m.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Direct to Earth,” w/ Marc Houle, Solar, Bob Campbell, Max Gardner, Patrick Gil, 9 p.m., $15.
Otis: 25 Maiden, San Francisco. “What’s the Werd?,” w/ resident DJs Nick Williams, Kevin Knapp, Maxwell Dub, and guests, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 11 p.m.).
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. DJ Marc deVasconcelos, 10 p.m., free.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Gigante,” 8 p.m., free.
The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Cognitive Dissonance,” Fourth Sunday of every month, 6 p.m.; “No Parking on the Dancefloor,” w/ resident DJs Dutchboy & Gehno Aviance, 11 p.m., $5.
HIP-HOP
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Return of the Cypher,” 9:30 p.m., free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Br’er Rabbit, The Family Crest, 6 p.m.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Don DiLego, Misisipi Mike, The California Sons, 8 p.m., $8-$10.
Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Sam Johnson, 4 p.m.
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Sunday Bluegrass Jam, 4 p.m., free; The Ring of Truth Trio, 8 p.m.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Spike’s Mic Night,” Sundays, 4-8 p.m., free.
Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. “iPlay,” open mic with featured weekly artists, 6:30 p.m., free.
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. The Barren Vines, 6 p.m., free.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Seisiún with Marla Fibish, 9 p.m.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Happy Family Singers, Yard Sale, 5 p.m., free.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church: 1755 Clay, San Francisco. “Sunday Night Mic,” w/ Roem Baur, 5 p.m., free.
JAZZ
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30 p.m., free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” 10 p.m., free.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Jazz Revolution, 4 p.m., free/donation.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 7:30 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
Atmosphere: 447 Broadway, San Francisco. “Hot Bachata Nights,” w/ DJ El Guapo, 5:30 p.m., $10 ($18-$25 with dance lessons).
Balancoire: 2565 Mission St., San Francisco. “Tardeadas Tropicales,” 3 p.m.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Brazil & Beyond,” 6:30 p.m., free.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Salsa Sundays,” Second and Fourth Sunday of every month, 3 p.m., $8-$10.
Old First Presbyterian Church: 1751 Sacramento, San Francisco. Melody of China: 20th Anniversary Concert, 4 p.m., $14-$17.
Thirsty Bear Brewing Company: 661 Howard, San Francisco. “The Flamenco Room,” 7:30 & 8:30 p.m.
REGGAE
Il Pirata: 2007 16th St., San Francisco. “Ragga Ragga,” w/ DJs Vinny Ras, Kure All, & Theory, Last Sunday of every month, 7 p.m., free.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Sean Chambers, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $18.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. HowellDevine, 8:30 p.m., free/donation.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Blues Power, 4 p.m.; The Door Slammers, 9:30 p.m.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 8 p.m., free.
Swig: 571 Geary, San Francisco. Sunday Blues Jam with Ed Ivey, 9 p.m.
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor St., San Francisco. Into the Thicket, w/ Anne Rainwater, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.
SOUL
Delirium Cocktails: 3139 16th St., San Francisco. “Heart & Soul,” w/ DJ Lovely Lesage, 10 p.m., free.

MONDAY 25
ROCK
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Social Studies, Ash Reiter, The She’s, 9 p.m., $6.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Paws, Surf Club, Tiaras, Pro Fan DJs, 9 p.m., $10.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Will Sprott, Devotionals, DJ Neil Martinson, 9 p.m., $10.
DANCE
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Death Guild,” 18+ dance party with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, & guests, 9:30 p.m., $3-$5.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Wanted,” w/ DJs Key&Kite and Richie Panic, 9 p.m., free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Vienetta Discotheque,” w/ DJs Stanley Frank and Robert Jeffrey, 10 p.m., free.
HIP-HOP
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Jel & Serengeti, 9 p.m., $10.
ACOUSTIC
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. The Pick Bluegrass Jam, Fourth Monday of every month, 6 p.m., free; The Earl Brothers, Fourth Monday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. West Coast Songwriters Competition, 7 p.m.
The Chieftain: 198 Fifth St., San Francisco. The Wrenboys, 7 p.m., free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, 9:30 p.m., free/donation.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Open mic with Brendan Getzell, 8 p.m., free.
Osteria: 3277 Sacramento, San Francisco. “Acoustic Bistro,” 7 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Peter Lindman, 4 p.m.
JAZZ
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Le Jazz Hot, 7 p.m., free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. City Jazz Instrumental Jam Session, 8 p.m.
The Union Room at Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. The Session: A Monday Night Jazz Series, pro jazz jam with Mike Olmos, 7:30 p.m., $12.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Gayle Wilhelm, 7:30 p.m., free.
REGGAE
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Skylarking,” w/ I&I Vibration, 10 p.m., free.
BLUES
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Bachelors, 9:30 p.m.
Tupelo: 1337 Green St., San Francisco. Chris Ford, 9 p.m.
SOUL
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “M.O.M. (Motown on Mondays),” w/ DJ Gordo Cabeza & Timoteo Gigante, 8 p.m., free.

TUESDAY 26
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. French Cassettes, Black Cobra Vipers, Waterstrider, 9:15 p.m., $7.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Rode Down, Spooky Flowers, FayRoy, 9 p.m., $8.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Rare Monk, Vinyl Spectrum, 7:30 p.m., $8.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Ego Likeness, Servitor, The RaZor Skyline, DJ Unit 77, 9 p.m., $10.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Future Twin, Week of Wonders, Twin Steps, Randumbly Chillaxin, 8:30 p.m., $6.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Monster Magnet, Royal Thunder, Anti-Mortem, 8 p.m., $25.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. The Nerv, Go Time, Nihilist Cunt, DJ Mashi Mashi, 9:30 p.m., $6.
DANCE
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “High Fantasy,” w/ DJ Viv, Myles Cooper, & guests, 10 p.m., $2.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Soundpieces,” 10 p.m., free-$10.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Switch,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & Andre, 9 p.m., $3.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Shelter,” 10 p.m., free.
Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Tight,” w/ resident DJs Michael May & Lito, 8 p.m., free.
HIP-HOP
Double Dutch: 3192 16th St., San Francisco. “Takin’ It Back Tuesdays,” w/ DJs Mr. Murdock and Roman Nunez, Fourth Tuesday of every month, 10 p.m., free.
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “True Skool Tuesdays,” w/ DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist, 10 p.m., free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Andy Padlo, 7 p.m. continues through.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Julianna Barwick, Mark McGuire, 8 p.m., $12.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Claes Cem, Kingsborough, Austin James Hicks, 8 p.m., $7.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Song session with Cormac Gannon, Last Tuesday of every month, 9 p.m.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Toshio Hirano, 8:30 p.m., free.
JAZZ
Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Gerry Grosz Jazz Jam, 7 p.m.
Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Kally Price & Rob Reich, 7 p.m., free.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6 p.m., free.
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Chris Amberger, 7 p.m.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. M.B. Hanif & The Sound Voyagers, 7:30 p.m., free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, 7 p.m.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. West Side Jazz Club, 5 p.m., free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Eric Wiley, 8 p.m.
Tupelo: 1337 Green St., San Francisco. Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz Band, 6 p.m.
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. “Tuesday Night Jump,” w/ Stompy Jones, 9 p.m., $10-$12.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Tommy Igoe Big Band, 8 p.m., $22.
INTERNATIONAL
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Descarga S.F.,” w/ DJs Hong & Good Sho, 8 p.m., $12.
The Cosmo Bar & Lounge: 440 Broadway, San Francisco. “Conga Tuesdays,” 8 p.m., $7-$10.
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Underground Nomads,” w/ rotating resident DJs Amar, Sep, and Dulce Vita, plus guests, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 9:30 p.m.).
REGGAE
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. “Bless Up,” w/ Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi, 10 p.m.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Ron Thompson & The Resistors, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $15.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Dr. Mojo, 9:30 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Powell Street Blues Band, 9:30 p.m.
FUNK
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Boogaloo Tuesday,” w/ Oscar Myers & Steppin’, 9:30 p.m., free.
SOUL
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Lost & Found,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and guests, 9:30 p.m., free.

On the Cheap: November 20 – 26, 2013

Michael Redmond

November 19, 2013

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 20

“The Diversity of Habitable Zones and Their Planets” Randall Museum, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.randallmuseum.org. 7:30pm, free. San Francisco State astrophysicist Dr. Stephen R. Kane discusses, among other things, advancements in knowledge about “planets in highly eccentric orbits” and “super-Earths.” Geared for adults but all ages are welcome.

“Lyrics and Dirges” Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-1320. 7:30pm, free. Reading with a mix of prominent, emerging, and beginning writers, including Charles Kruger, Monica Wesolowska, Airial Clark, and others.

Michael McClure City Lights, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. The legendary Beat author reads from his recently reissued Ghost Tantras.

THURSDAY 21

Bay Street Tree Lighting Bay Street Emeryville, 5616 Bay, Emeryville; www.baystreetemeryville.com. 6-8pm, free. The shopping center ushers in the winter-holiday season with the lighting of its 34-foot tree, plus a light and sound show, photos with Santa, hot chocolate, and more.

Holiday Craft Fair Simple Family Health, One Rio Vista, Oakl; www.simplefamilyhealth.com. 6-9pm, free. Nine different craft artists — fleece hats, cute polka-dot items, fascinators and headbands, and more! — share their wares.

Paul Koudounaris Bone Room Presents, 1573 Solano, Berk; www.boneroompresents.com. 7pm, free. The author discusses and signs copies of his macabre, beautifully-photographed books The Empire of Death and Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs.

Karen Luk Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF; thirdthursdaysf.wordpress.com. 5-8pm, free. The author and illustrator discusses her new release, Steampunk ABCs, at an appropriately steampunk-y event (hint: costumes encouraged!)

“Survival Not Extinction: A Fundraiser for Tribal Rights” Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, 2323 Mission, SF; (415) 503-1254. 6pm, free. A gallery, short film, raffle, photo booth, and other activities highlight this happy-hour fundraiser for Survival International, an international rights organization working to assist the Awá tribe of Brazil. The bar will donate 10 percent of its proceeds from the evening, so show up thirsty.

FRIDAY 22

“Pancakes and Booze Art Show” Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF; www.pancakesandbooze.com. 8pm, $5. Through Sat/23. Over 75 underground and emerging artists display their works — plus a performance by Xpander Xperience, a photo booth, body painting, and an all-you-can-eat pancake bar.

“Rude, Glued, and Screwed” Red Door Studios, 50-A Bannam Place, SF; www.collagemuseumsf.com. 7-10pm, free. Opening exhibition celebrating the launch of the Collage Museum of San Francisco, curated by Winston Smith.

SATURDAY 23

“Art and Ideas Day Festival” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Noon-9pm, free. In conjunction with its current “Dissident Futures” exhibit, YBCA hosts a festival aiming to inspire explorations of “possible futures,” with workshops, lectures, performances, interactive media and more presented by robotic experts, food activist, designers, environmentalists, and other experts.

“Magic Makers: The Bay Area’s Queer Art and Craft Fair” Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th Ave, Oakl; themagicmakers.wordpress.com. 1-8pm, free. A marketplace and showplace for Bay Area queer artists. Hey, the gift-giving season is approaching — and what better presents than jewelry, prints, body-care products, candles, and other items created by local makers?

“Operation: Fork 4!” Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl; (510) 444-6174. 6pm-midnight, five cans of food or $10. Cobra 1st Legion hosts this costume party-dance party-food drive (with help from the Bay Area Ghostbusters). The Alameda County Community Food Bank benefits from donations, and Disastroid, Victoria and the Vaudevillians, MHA, and Maritime Wilderness provide the tunes. Costumes are encouraged.

“Ukranian Holodomer: Genocidal Famine of 1932-33 (80th Anniversary)” Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF; (650) 281-6927. 2pm, free. Speakers, including survivors and witness accounts; music; and a documentary screening highlight this historical commemoration of the Ukraine’s tragic famine.

SUNDAY 24

“Patchwork Indie Art and Craft Festival” Jack London Market Building, 55 Harrison, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. 11am-5pm. Over 140 local artists gather to sell handmade goods, including art, housewares, paper crafts, and clothing. Plus: food trucks, free DIY craft stations, a DIY gift-wrap booth, and more.

“Thangs Taken: Rethinking Thanksgiving” La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; www.lapena.org. 7pm, $10-25 sliding scale. Artists and activists come together to explore Thanksgiving’s complex history through music, dance, spoken word, and other avenues. Produced by the Free Land Project and curated and hosted by Ariel Luckey. *

This Week’s Picks: November 20 – 26, 2013

Michael Redmond

November 19, 2013

Gossip! Guns! Girl power!

THURSDAY 11/21

Shipwreck: The Hunger Games Edition

Erotic fanfiction writing gets competitive at Booksmith’s monthly literary event, Shipwreck! Six writers are given a popular literary work to destroy in whichever filthy ways their hearts desire, and the audience votes for its favorite. This month’s sacrificial prose is none other than Suzanne Collins’ post-apocalyptic, YA novel The Hunger Games. Pregame for that midnight screening of Catching Fire with hilarious, smutty fiction and an open bar. All works will be read by Shakespearean Thespian in Residence, Sir Steven Westdahl, to ensure that voting is done fairly. The winning writer gets to pick the next ship to wreck and will defend his or her title. Will Katniss find time to choose between Peeta and Gale while she’s, you know, fighting a war? Will Peeta and Gale choose each other? Anything is possible! (Kirstie Haruta)

7pm, $10

Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

www.booksmith.com

THURSDAY 11/21

BiteLife

Thursdays provide a portal to unpredictable adventures for those who wander into the weekly NightLife series at Cal Academy. This week’s 21+ event, BiteLife, allows attendees to snack and sip while learning what the hell is happening while they snack and sip (internally). Get a backbone and learn about your guts from Gladstone Institute’s associate investigator Dr. Katie Pollard. Guests will also be able view their own microbes with Academy researcher James Angus Chandler and dance their butts off to music by ’80s-spinning soul-funk DJs, Sweater Funk, in the same night. Local, bite-sized, sustainable food from Earl’s Organic Produce, Whole Foods, and 4505 Meats will be available for the gourmands in the crowd. (Hillary Smith)

6pm, $12

California Academy of the Sciences

55 Music Concourse Dr., SF

(415) 379-8000

calacademy.org/events/nightlife

THURSDAY 11/21

“Behind the Scenes: Randy Thom on Sound Design”

Music is the ultimate mood-setter, not only in our iPod, laptop, and stereo-spotted lives, but in the lives we escape to on the big screen. Academy Award-winning sound designer Randy Thom, who’s worked on films ranging from Cast Away (2000) and The Incredibles (2004), discusses his use of sonic design to cut through the endless possibilities of noise, in order to set the stage, manipulate a mood, and craft a unique, cinematic story. He’ll take examples from Wild at Heart (1990) starring Nicolas Cage, where an overtly sensual sound design, along with Angelo Badalamenti’s entrancing score, transform the realism of a Southern fugitive romance into a lyric, tender escape. Stick around after the discussion to enjoy the film! (Kaylen Baker)

7pm, $9.50

Pacific Film Archive Theater

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-1412

bampfa.berkeley.edu

THURSDAY 11/21

Marijuana Deathsquads

Indie “super group” GAYNGS, dedicated to delivering a tongue-through-cheek tribute to ’80s easy-listening R&B and white-suited soul, represented “The Gaudy Side of Town.” This other project from Poliça’s Ryan Olson must reside in the darker part of, well, Minneapolis. Its latest LP, Oh My Sexy Lord, sounds like something that crawled out screaming from the same sort of despairing (yet somehow cozy) pit Crystal Castles call home. A cavern crowded by an excessive amount of drums and haphazard wires supporting any number of laptops, controllers, and a Nintendo. (Plus a couch for guests like Justin Vernon or Har Mar Superstar to crash.) (Ryan Prendiville)

With Poliça

8pm, $25

Fillmore

1850 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

FRIDAY 11/22

“Let Us Compare Chronologies”

Even if you are not doing aerial work — for which Joe Goode Annex’s two-story ceilings are ideally suited — the studio’s spaciousness makes it a welcome option compared to other local performance venues, which can too often hem the dancers in. Now with risers in place, even the sightlines have improved. Katharine Hawthorne, a fiercely intelligent thinker, debuted as choreographer at the Annex last February. She is now returning in a double bill with dancer-choreographer James Graham, still best known locally as a Gaga teacher. Calling their joint endeavor “Let Us Compare Chronologies,” since both works examine the concept of time, Graham’s quartet Guilty Survivor takes a look at what the 1980s represented in a gay man’s life; Hawthorne’s Timepiece delves into the connection of time to order and disorder. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/23, 8pm, $15–$30

Joe Goode Annex

401 Alabama St., SF

eventbrite.com/event/9028407209

FRIDAY 11/22

“3-Minute Reads”

Though “the Writer” almost always calls to mind a solitary figure — J. D. Salinger wrapped in a blanket by his Cornish hearth, Jane Austen bent and scribbling over a desk — most writers agree that having a community of peers creates unparalleled motivation and feedback. The Grotto creates such a space, while offering classes to new writers on topics like the short story and the memoir. Come cheer on more than 50 of these fledglings as they each read fresh, cheeky three-minute snippets from a variety of works-in-progress. (Baker)

6pm, free

Book Passage

1 Ferry Building, SF

(415) 835-1020

www.bookpassage.com

FRIDAY 11/22

“All Good Things Must Come to An End”

We hear it for every lost keepsake, graduation, and heartbreak. Usually, the words fall short of comforting and land somewhere closer to stale. But SOMArts is breathing new life into the phrase with “All Good Things…,” an ephemeral art exhibition featuring such pieces as a caramelized sugar installation, a sand mandala, and a massive camera obscura throughout the gallery that choreographs the sun’s changing light. The opening reception will glorify transience with edible art, chess with melting pieces, and a performance piece in which the audience shatters dishes. The expression “once in a lifetime” has never been truer; the only record of the exhibit will be audience impressions dictated to cassette recorders. (Janina Glasov)

Through Dec. 21

6-9pm, free

SOMArts Cultural Center

934 Brannan, SF

(415) 863-1414

somarts.org/allgoodthings

SATURDAY 11/23

9 to 5

Pour yourself a cup of ambition and head to the Castro for Peaches Christ’s first tribute to 9 to 5, the 1980 comedy about three office mates (Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda) battling their sexist pig of a boss (Dabney Coleman). The movie has it all (gossip! guns! girl power!), so the stage show that accompanies the screening, Work!, should be one to remember, especially with Pandora Boxx (of RuPaul’s Drag Race), Heklina, and Peaches filling the leads — three among few performers with hair bigger than Parton’s. (Cheryl Eddy)

8pm, $25-55

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

SATURDAY 11/23

Magic Makers Queer Art & Crafts Fair

Love arts and crafts? Tired of running up against heteronormativity and cultural appropriation in art spaces and craft fairs? Then join Magic Makers for a stunning array of arts and crafts in a safe, queer-friendly space. From the zines of womyn, trans*, genderqueer, API collective Moonroot, to the herbal remedies of Shooting Star Botanicals, to the dazzling accessories of burlesque beauty the Lady Miss Vagina Jenkins, Magic Makers will feature some of the Bay’s craftiest queer artists. This fair is all about storytellers, healers, and dreamers, so come on out and support these friendly, socially aware creators, and get inspired to create something of your own. (Haruta)

1pm, free

Temescal Art Center

511 48th St, Oakl.

www.themagicmakers.wordpress.com

SATURDAY 11/23

The Entrance Band

If the sometimes sing-song lyrics of this recent Mazzy Star opener feel superfluous (the latest maudlin goth single “Spider” off new album Face the Sun or earlier jam “Still Be There” being notable exceptions) it’s to the credit of the instrumentals. Singer Guy Blakeslee’s guitar, hung upside-down and strung in a manner that perhaps only he understands, singularly emits distinctive, appropriately captivating sounds. When given space to just play, as is the case on the latter half of “Fine Flow,” Blakeslee exhibits exactly that, speeding off towards psych horizons and looping back on himself effortlessly. With drummer Derek James and bassist Paz Lenchantin fitting so comfortably in that groove with him, words often can’t help but break the spell. (Prendiville)

With Raw Geronimo

9pm, $12-15

Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com

MONDAY 11/25

PAWS

In its purest form, pop music is the sound of growing up. It doesn’t require a theory for what matters; if it feels significant, it must be. On Cokefloat!, the debut from Glasgow’s PAWS, the lessons come quickly but at cost. Opening with “Catherine 1956,” Philip Taylor regards the loss of his mother and her lasting words, “Toughen up because/Life goes on/You can’t live your life in fear.” If the ferocious fun trio fearlessly cribs its riffs from decades old alternative rock — Dinosaur Jr., the Breeders, Violent Femmes — at least it does that old guard justice. I’d like to say it sounds dated, but I must not have outgrown this yet. Does anyone? (Prendiville)

With Surf Club, Tiaras

8pm, $10

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

TUESDAY 11/26

The Moth: “Temptation”

Temptation is otherwise known (at least according to the dictionary) as “the action of tempting or fact of being tempted, especially to evil; enticement, allurement, attraction.” While the desire to do and obtain things is universally shared, this definition can’t begin to explain why humans find evil so attractive, nor why our vices come to us in such personal, wrapped-and-beribboned shapes and sizes. Audience members at this round of the Moth StorySLAM should come with a their own tale of temptation in mind, because names will be pulled from a bag throughout the night, giving 10 people the chance to tell wicked, funny, failed, or won stories of allure for five minutes onstage. Each storyteller gets a score, and the winner gets a chance to perform in the GrandSLAM. (Baker)

6pm, $8

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 779-6757

moth.org/events

Rep Clock: November 20 – 26, 2013

Michael Redmond

November 19, 2013

Schedules are for Wed/20-Tue/26 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ATA GALLERY 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $4-10. “Periwinkle Cinema: Smoke and Ruin,” short films, Wed, 8. “Double Feature,” two short films by Lawrence Rickford, Thu, 8. “GAZE #6: Luminous Impulse,” all-animation show, Fri, 8. “Other Cinema,” works about the “(no-zones) of the American West” by Jeanne Finley, Katherin McInnis, and others, Sat, 8:30.

BALBOA THEATRE 3630 Balboa, SF; cinemasf.com/balboa. $10. “Popcorn Palace:” The Iron Giant (Bird, 1999), Sat, 10am. Matinee for kids.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS’ HALL 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.bfuu.org. $5-10 suggested donation. JFK: The Case for Conspiracy (Groden, 2003), Thu, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-12. Contempt (Godard, 1963), Wed, 4:45, 7, 9:15. •Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955), Thu, 7, and Rumble Fish (Coppola, 1983), Thu, 9:05. “Happy 100th Birthday to Benjamin Britten,” Fri, 7:30. This event ($20) presented by the Asawa SOTA Instrumental Music Department; more info at sfsota.org/britten. “Peaches Christ Productions presents:” 9 to 5 (Higgins, 1980), with stage show premiere of Work!, starring Pandora Boxx, Heklina, and Peaches Christ, Sat, 8. More info for this event ($25-55) at www.peacheschrist.com. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939), presented in 3D, Sun, 1, 3:30, 5:45, 8.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. The Armstrong Lie (Gibney, 2013), call for dates and times. Blue is the Warmest Color (Kechiche, 2013), call for dates and times. Running from Crazy (Kopple, 2013), call for dates and times. Persistence of Vision (Schreck, 2012), Thu, 7. The Singularity (Wolens, 2013), Sun, 7. Filmmaker Doug Wolens in person.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $10. “Midnight Movies:” Oldboy (Park, 2003), Fri-Sat, midnight.

COPPOLA THEATER Fine Arts Building, SF State University, 1600 Holloway, SF; creativestate.sfsu.edu. Free. “Hungarian Film Festival,” documentary and narrative films, Fri, 4-10; Sat, 9am-10pm; Sun, 5-10.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Dark Star: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck:” Forty Guns (Fuller, 1957), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” Your Day Is My Night (Sachs, 2013), Wed, 7. “Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema with Randy Thom, Sound Designer:” Wild at Heart (Lynch, 1990), Thu, 7; Colors (Hopper, 1988), Sat, 6; The Incredibles (Bird, 2004), Sun, 3. “Fassbinder’s Favorites:” Vivre sa vie (Godard, 1962), Fri, 7. “Afterimage: Agnès Varda on Filmmaking:” Cléo From 5 to 7 (1961), Fri, 8:45. “Love Is Colder Than Death: The Cinema of Rainer Werner Fassbinder:” Lola (1981), Sat, 8:45; Veronika Voss (1982), Sun, 6.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. American Promise (Brewster and Stephenson, 2013), Wed-Thu, 6:15, 9. The Counselor (Scott, 2013), Wed, 7, 9:15. City College of San Francisco’s Festival of the Moving Image, two different showcases of student films, Thu, 7, 8:45. “SF Film Society’s Cinema By the Bay Festival:” Holy Ghost People (Altieri, 2013), Fri, 7 and 9:30; The Genius of Marian (Fitch, 2013), Sat, noon; Redemption Trail (Sjogren, 2013), Sat, 2:15; American Vagabond (Helke, 2013), Sat, 4:30; Along the Roadside (Lisinac, 2013), Sat, 6:45; “Street Smarts: YAK Films’ Dance Then and Now,” Sat, 9:30; “The SF State of Cinema: Shorts from SFSU Alumni,” Sun, noon; The Other Side of the Mountain (Jang, 2012), Sun, 2:15; “Essential SF,” honoring the Bay Area film community, Sun, 5; The Illness and the Odyssey (Minott, 2013), Sun, 7; Dear Sidewalk (Oelman, 2013), Sun, 9:15.

SWEDISH AMERICAN HALL 2174 Market, SF; www.cafedunord.com. $30-60. “The Invisible Lighthouse,” live music and film with Thomas Dolby, Thu, 8.

TANNERY 708 Gilman, Berk; berkeleyundergroundfilms.blogspot.com. Donations accepted. “Berkeley Underground Film Society:” Holy Ghost People (Adair, 1967), Sun, 7:30.

VICTORIA 2961 16th, SF; www.savethewaves.org. $5-50. “Save the Waves Film Festival,” docs about ocean conservation and surfing, plus live music and speakers, Fri, 6.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “Films by Fassbinder:” Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970), Thu, 7:30. *

House party

Michael Redmond

November 19, 2013

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC It was decided — my BFF-roommate and I would host a rock ‘n’ roll show, and like many of our favorite activities (feasting, boozing, twirling), we became set on throwing said party from the comfort of our own home. Denying our fears of venue hunting, financial commitments, and general hassle, we focused on the power rewarded to the classic hostess with the mostest; the ability to control all elements of a dirty bash and adjust them to our liking.

What bands will play? Ones we like, who also like each other. What kind of liquor will be present? Whiskey, no exceptions. What kind of snacks might we serve? None, people should bring us burritos (or in my case, homemade kimchi and quinoa — a foul smelling food for a social event that did wonders for curbing my potential hangover). Not only was this party to be at our house, but this little rock shindig would blast from our backyard on a (hopefully sunny) Sunday afternoon. Day drinking to shredding guitars? The neighbors were going to love it.

We nailed down a date and who would play, rounding out the bill with some hip DJ acquaintances. A buddy drafted a flier and the process of inviting humans began. The presence of close friends was expected and offers for help were not denied. Then we cast the net, awkwardly approaching yoga teachers, favorite baristas, local celebrities, and secret crushes. The boyfriend promised to roll deep with eligible males of various sexualities and I may have plotted some (later to be discovered unsuccessful) matchmaking. We urged bands to cart along their musician homies and peed at the thought of John Dwyer or Wymond Miles walking up our stoop in the halo of afternoon light.

Of course we had no legitimate way of predicting who would actually show up. Expect everyone who confirms to flake and everyone who rejects to bring a pack of wingmen. We crossed our fingers and braided our hair, then calmed our nerves by remembering that even if all bailed, the bands were confirmed. A show in our yard is still a show in our yard. Guaranteed win. Oh yes, and we had a fuck-ton of beer — free of charge. We miraculously managed to get the party “sponsored,” which allowed us to collect donations for the dudes on stage. Major bonus.

While party planning seemed to be sailing, our biggest concern loomed: the noise complaint. A similar party we hosted in June garnered 22 calls to the SFPD — thankfully our only injury was a slap on the wrist and some sneers. In anticipation of upset, I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies from mom’s recipe and skipped up the stairs of the neighboring stoop, treats in tow.

With the oldies next door sugared up, I called the SFPD for the lawful scoop and learned that cop arrival is completely tattletale-based. Officers can only issue a citation if the party pooper signs a citizen’s arrest. This is why you ALWAYS INVITE THE NEIGHBORS. If the uniforms still rap on your door: answer it, shoot the shit, and promise to cool it, ASAP. Our biggest takeaway: short sets. By the time the doorbell rings, they’ll be singing the encore. “It’s their last song, officer. I promise,” perfectly compliments a drunk wink.

So, after weeks of planning and a morning full of chaotic setup, we were crazy high on anticipation. I forgot to shower. I drank everyone’s coffee. I zoomed down the block for incense — “to set the mood,” I shouted. And then all we could do was wait for the madness to begin.

Heads banged. Hair was tangled. Happiness was found at the bottom of countless empty cases. People climbed the fire escape for a better view of the bands, while my exes pleasantly mingled in the garden below. The cops dropped by, as anticipated, but left without trouble. My dream of getting a mug shot will have to wait.

The freedom of a privately hosted show put everyone in a tender mood and it felt overwhelmingly blissful to support local music in independent fashion. The party was a complete success, depending on how you measure extreme happiness and unfathomable coolness. And OK, we were hammered. Everything is a delightful blur and I ended up wrestling in the gravel. You can do what you want at your own house — people can’t say shit. All the more reason why we’re already planning the next round. See you there.

We are back

Michael Redmond

November 19, 2013

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO All of a lately, my inbox has been flooded with so many bangin’ all-night underground party invites — real underground, not just some dude from Ibiza who doesn’t play Afromaus or whatever — that I’ve had to hike my virtual pants up to my gloriously toned calves. I look like a Williamsburg 2k7 thrift store hipster, minus the neon shutter shades. (Well, at least we’re not in clamdigger territory … yet.)

I don’t know what gives, but I like it. I haven’t seen so many undergrounds go off since the heyday of the Compound and Odyssey a few years back. Real estate prices, annoying neighbors, an overeager alcohol board, and too many bored police have always foiled a thriving underground scene in SF. Oakland has fared much better — and even there I’ve seen a recent uptick in quality basement throwdowns.

Good. No matter how nifty our big clubs and regular parties — and they’re pretty nifty — they can always use some competition as corrective, especially when they’ve become too bright, or too crowded, or wrong-crowded, or expensive, or not nearly loud or bass-heavy enough. And the parties themselves have been fantastic. I’ll always heart the kandi kids, but it’s nice to pack into an extralegal venue rocking some batshit techno and a friendly crowd — with no fear of losing an eye to any errant Glo-Sticks. Thanks, rave unicorn!

SURYA DUB MISSION

So perfect. Two of our legendary bass crews, the Indian-flavored Surya Dub and the Jamaican-rolled Dub Mission jamming together… at a pot club. One of the city’s sleekest and most innovative cannabis dispensaries, at that: SPARC, teaming up with Grown Kids Radio. With Kush Arora, Sep, J-Boogie, and Maneesh the Twister.

Thu/21, 7-10pm, free and 18+ but must RSVP to www.sparcsf.org/gkr before the event. 1256 Mission, SF. www.facebook.com/sparc

1002 NIGHTS

Hard to believe the guiding light of global electronic music, Cheb i Sabbah, is no longer with us, having passed away from cancer last week at the age of 66. But the music will always remain: This gala celebration, named for the party he put on for almost 20 years, will honor his contribution to the musical melting pot and bring the classic SF nightlife community out to honor Chebiji’s legacy. With more than 30 performers and Djs from around the world, including DJ Rekha, Dub Gabriel, Sep, Little John, Radiohiro, Jimmy Love, and Opium Sabbah.

Thu/21, 7pm-late, $10–$20 suggested donation. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com

ALLAND BYALLO X NIKOLA BAYTALA

Two Bay Area techno greats get together to rock Mighty’s sound system. Alland decamped for Berlin several years ago to run his successful Bad Animal imprint and Nikola, despite playing host to nearly every foreign DJ who blows through town, has been far too absent from the decks lately. Don’t sleep.

Thu/21, 10pm-late, $10 advance. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

RETRO FUTURE

Oh hey, we’re throwing a party. The Bay Guardian that is. The latest in our series of evening soirees at the de Young Museum, this Friday evening happening pays homage to the new David Hockney exhibit by giving you a little retro-future zazz. DJs from neato Italo disco monthly Galaxy Radio shine like stars, with interdimensional face-painting, living statues, cool jewelry-making, and art, art, art (and cocktails).

Fri/22, 6pm-8:45pm, free. de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park, SF. deyoung.famsf.org

DIRTYBIRD PLAYERS

Before you feast on that T-bird next week at your folks’, stuff your face with some bass and gravy, courtesy of the Bay’s notoriously lowdown Dirtybird family. With special guest Polish duo Catz ‘n Dogz, whom I adore.

Fri/22, 9pm-late, $20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

DANNY DAZE

Caught this young ‘un (DJing raves since 13) at Detroit’s Movement festival last year, when he was riding atop a bouncy castle of Latin-flavored tech-house hype. Skinny Cuban cutie turned it out with some smooth grooves.

Sat/23, 9pm-late, $20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF. www.monarchsf.com

DELTRON 3030 ORCHESTRA

Del the Funky Homosapien in the captain’s chair, Dan the Automator on navigation, and Kid Koala at the teleporter: This collab of Bay underground hip-hop and trip-hop greats, a tribute to the seminal Deltron 3030 project of the early 2000s, should be one cosmic mindtrip/blastoff. With a live orchestra, OK?

Sat/23, doors 8pm, show 9pm. $32.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. www.thefillmore.com

Pop shop

Michael Redmond

November 19, 2013

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE For an event with a reputation for wall-shaking energy, the first program of the 15th Annual San Francisco International Hip Hop DanceFest turned out to be an oddly muted experience. The mix of acts — which in the past has always opened new perspectives on an art that has moved from the street onto the stage (and even reality TV) — simply wasn’t potent enough. Also, with only one company from abroad, the evening just barely warranted its claim of being “international.”

But even though the program disappointed as a totality, it did include individual acts of quality. In an aesthetic that so often emphasizes virtuosic use of the torso and the legs, Struggle for Pleasure — from a sextet of dancers of the London-based Far From the Norm Company — captivated because of its gentle and controlled employment of the arms. They snaked, embraced, and coiled into tendrils, perhaps embodying the human spirit, maybe with a sense of longing. Performed to violins, the choreography, much of it presented as a group endeavor, dipped the dancers into a hypnotic state in which they froze or tried to break open. One of them readied himself for a sprint that never happened. Another exploded into a whirlwind. Struggle felt subdued, dreamlike, and yet true.

In their first appearance at this festival, New York’s Bones the Machine and DJ Aaron sent gasps through the audience with the decidedly uncommon Bonebreakkings. It was a truly astounding contortionist act in which they pretzled their arms into joint-crunching positions — accompanied by appropriate sound effects. Even though the act has been widely circulated thanks to America’s Got Talent, to see these two dancers live was a pleasure, though a somewhat chilly one.

Another excellent first-timer was the Embodiment Project, one of the Bay Area’s most fascinating hip-hop troupes, in part because of the way it collaborates with MoonCandy LiveHouse’s fine musicians who, once again, performed on stage. In the sinister Dare To Love, choreographer Nicole Klaymoon and Michelle “Mystique” Lukmani slithered in and out of d. Sabella Grimes’ slippery embrace, paying what looked like a heavy price. Grimes, a former member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, and an extraordinarily sinewy and seductive popper, finally snared himself vocalist Shamont Hussey. This was hot theater, over so fast you hardly knew what hit you.

Also fun to watch was the return of four members from FootworKINGz. These speed demons developed a virtuosic style of footwork, based on one that originated in Chicago as a response to house and juke music. In addition to delivering razor-sharp attacks at dizzying tempos, the quartet performed with wit and charm.

It is understandable that the fest wants to honor the Bay Area’s diverse hip-hop community, which offers training in dozens of local studios and schools. These are also places where many youngsters find a welcoming environment to develop skills and in which to express themselves, so there has always been place for them at the annual Hip Hop Fest. But this year’s selection short-changed the audience. Whatever the curating process, it needs to be improved. Openers Funk Beyond Control is one of the largest and most well-established Bay Area schools, but the group did not look as good as they had at previous festivals. The choreography looked tired and lacked care.

The premise for After Hours was intriguing enough. It took a popular dance trope — the doll that acquires life — and translated it into mannequins that take over a department store once it closes its doors. After opened with a sextet of women fighting over some hats on sale before being kicked out. Then the black-clad ensemble descended from its pedestal for elastic group dancing, some modestly intriguing solos, including the compulsory tot — here cast as the janitor. But the whole thing felt dutiful and uninspired. Also, not waiting for the traditional community bow at the end of the evening was disrespectful to fellow artists and the festival’s producer, Micaya.

Another first appearance, by the Great House of Dance, showcased a huge company from Sacramento. It was big but not great. Its group sequences seemed strung together willy-nilly, and went on for much too long. There was nothing that held this presentation together besides the good will by the performers — some who had real talent.

Illstyle & Peace Productions Ain’t No Party Like a Illstyle Party, sent individual performers into competent, sometimes athletically-impressive solos, but this was a thrown-together, clumsy, applause-milking endeavor, unworthy of a group that has done much better work. Why?

Also part of the festival were San Francisco’s well known and solidly performing SoulForce Dance Company, and Oakland’s spunky, in your face, all-women Mix’d Ingrdnts. *

The Presidio Strikes Back

Michael Redmond

November 19, 2013

joe@sfbg.com

On the coast of San Francisco’s national park, the Presidio, a battle is underway that may define what this unique place is really about.

Is the Presidio a historically significant natural area with a heritage worth celebrating and protecting? Or is the Presidio just the last great piece of undeveloped land in San Francisco, with the added benefit of being outside the jurisdiction of city regulators and taxes? Maybe it’s both.

The embattled parcel that could illuminate those questions is a 15-minute walk east from the Golden Gate Bridge, just off the beach of Crissy Field, which now houses Sports Basement. Once a slab of concrete and now a bustling waterfront teeming with bicyclists and joggers, it seems almost too beautiful and prosperous a place for a sporting goods store to be housed.

That may be why, a year ago, the powerful people who preside over the Presidio asked for a bevy of museum proposals to replace Sports Basement and its building.

For months, three teams with multi-million-dollar museum proposals hotly competed to rent the soon-to-be vacant property: an institute devoted to sustainability, an interactive science museum based around Presidio history, and a museum housing the extensive art collection of filmmaker George Lucas, the wealthy creator of the Star Wars empire.

Decisions made behind closed doors will seal the deal in the next few weeks and the winning pitch may shape the future of the Presidio. And like the Highlander, there can be only one. At least, that was the original thought.

Ultimately the decision won’t rest in the hands of the mayor, the Board of Supervisors, or any other elected official. For better or for worse, decision-making in the Presidio is entrusted to a seven-person “trust,” mostly appointed by the president of the United States: the Presidio Trust.

“I think, at times, you think that we all know what we’re doing,” Presidio Trust President Nancy Bechtle, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2008, told a crowd of hundreds at an Oct. 24 public meeting about the museum decision. “I don’t think that any of us have made up our minds on anything yet.”

But if recent reports from the San Francisco Chronicle are to be believed, the Trust is pushing to please everyone and disappoint no one. Citing anonymous sources, longtime media bromance Matier and Ross reported last week that the Presidio Trust was leaning towards Lucas’ museum proposal while feeling out alternative sites for the remaining projects.

Presidio Trust spokesperson Dana Polk admitted they were putting out feelers. “We don’t have specific sites identified, we’re just speaking to the teams to see if they are willing to consider other options,” she told the Guardian.

For a stretch of land that has moved slowly to bring in new development, each one a laborious and controversial process, the idea of allowing a trilogy of museums could have blockbuster implications for the Presidio and its tony surrounding neighborhoods.

As many advocates from different sides of the debate have said, any major development there could make the Presidio that much denser: bringing more cars, more tourists, and more San Franciscans to the remote northwestern corner of the city that many residents seem to ignore.

More than 400,000 annual visitors would flock to Crissy Field under any of the existing plans, while multiple proposals could more than double that. The two lead proposals, Lucas’ art museum and the Presidio Exchange, tell a tale of two Presidios. One is an interactive museum that celebrates the history of the natural setting of the park around it, and the other celebrates the digital history of the surrounding Bay Area.

It’s techies versus naturalists.

There are six criteria the Presidio Trust laid out for the projects, but only two of those divide the projects sharply: firstly, is it economically viable, and secondly does the project complement the Presidio as it is today?

Which proposal defines the Presidio’s present depends on how you see its past.

EMPIRE OF ART

Palo Alto of 1878 was as driven by technology as it is today. There and then, a young Eadweard Muybridge lined up a series of photo cameras with strings tied to their shutters along a racetrack, all to settle a bet. Do all of a racing horse’s hooves leave the ground as it runs?

The horse’s galloping legs pulled each string one by one, inadvertently making the world’s first series of sequential photographs (and yes, the hooves all left the ground). Out of technological advancement, cinema was born.

There’s a reason Lucas’ Presidio-based Lucasfilm studio houses a statue of Muybridge reaching to the sky. The man who pioneered Star Wars is really the man who pioneered the golden age of cinematic special effects, and he modeled his career after techno-artists like Muybridge. The heart of his proposed museum embodies that work.

Technology shapes art, Lucas believes, and film technology was birthed in the Bay Area.

“When I moved here in 1969 right out of college, I stayed here, I built my business here, I never made a film in Hollywood,” Lucas said at a public meeting on the mid-Crissy Field site, pitching his museum idea to the Presidio Trust and to the crowd. “I’m proud of being a San Franciscan.”

At 95,000 square feet, the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum is a love poem to the history of technological art. Statues of Star Wars and other cinematic characters line the walls in mock-ups. Promotional videos for the museum show kids staring excitedly at laptops and levitating X-Wings, the spacecraft of Jedi hero Luke Skywalker, with the push of a button.

In his videos and speeches about the museum, Lucas touts the Bay Area as a hub of cinema, promising his museum would draw Pixar and LucasFilm luminaries to teach and inspire the next generation of filmmakers. The museum has hands-on digital workshops cooked into the design of the building.

“This is our chance to show young people what cinematic design is,” Lucas said. He’s shown that dedication through his nonprofit, Edutopia, bringing digital lesson plans into public school classrooms.

But as much as Lucas values the technology of cinema he also values pop art, and Star Wars is the ultimate pop adventure fantasy.

Lucas said that storytelling art, “derisively called illustration,” never gets a fair shake in museums. Now is the time, and the main event in his museum would celebrate an artist made famous by Christmas cards and Boys’ Life Magazine.

The Star Wars director’s collection of Norman Rockwell paintings is widely known in the art world, touring the US and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. As with all art that appeals to the masses, ex-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown loves it.

“Lucas has what amounts to a museum of Hollywood, mixed with the kind of art you don’t need a curator to explain,” Brown wrote in a July edition in his Chronicle column, Willie’s World. “Think the Empire meets Middle America.”

Willie Brown isn’t the only luminary to back the Lucas proposal. At each public meeting and in every public letter written to the Trust, an empire of rich folks and techies sang songs of praise for the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum.

Mayor Ed Lee, tech venture capitalist Ron Conway, Pixar film director John Lasseter, Saleforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, MC Hammer, and Tim Ritchie, president of San Jose’s The Tech Museum of Innovation, all actively support the Lucas proposal.

The morals and mores of tech are all over the letter that Conway, the godfather of Silicon Valley, wrote to the Presidio Trust: “As you know, I have a passion for making and keeping San Francisco at the forefront of innovation. Certainly, there is no greater innovator around than George Lucas. His businesses have transformed the tech sector, specifically digital technology. San Francisco deserves this museum. It demands it.”

Though monied interests backed Lucas, it isn’t like he needs their cash. He pledged to personally finance the creation and operations of his museum.

The Star Wars franchise grossed more than $33 billion for Lucas, according to a study by Wired magazine. Lucas also owned Industrial Light and Magic, a pioneer in the special effects industry with a hand in everything from Back to the Future to the newest Harry Potter and Iron Man flicks. Now Star Wars and his special effects studios are owned by Disney, a deal penned just last year.

Some of that work came out of their studio in the Presidio, where the studio Lucas created pays $5.8 million annually in rent. The Letterman Digital Arts Center is one of two locations of ILM, and it’s an embodiment of Lucas’ plan for the area.

It’s a manicured campus, to be sure. A man-made creek runs down its center towards a serene pond, much lovelier than the swamps of Dagobah that Yoda called home. The white buildings with red shingled roofs confuse visitors into thinking they were erected by peoples long ago. And that’s the point, Lucas spokesperson David Perry told the Guardian.

“It looks like something that could’ve been built at the turn of the century,” he said.

Inside the Lucas museum is an homage to the tech history of the Bay Area, but the architecture’s Mission Revival style is an homage to the birth of San Francisco itself.

A LONG TIME AGO

Long before the rise of the hipsters, the first peoples to chill out in our foggy peninsula were the Ohlone tribes, dating back to the year 700. But the first who built what we know as San Francisco were Spanish soldiers driven by the fires of religion and conquest.

Lt. Col. Juan Bautista de Anza settled two areas when he first came to San Francisco in 1776: Mission Dolores and today’s Presidio. He argued with his superiors long and hard for settling the Presidio. They thought the fog and cold too harsh and inhospitable for colonization. How little things have changed.

Since the Ohlone were displaced or enslaved, the Presidio has long housed the military, segueing from the Spanish to the United States military, where it became an important installation during World War II.

Massive gun batteries sprouted on the hills of the Marin Headlands across the bay and in the Presidio, keeping a watchful eye to sea and airborne invaders from the west. Some of the barracks that housed the soldiers still stand today.

As recently as the ’90s, a lone cannon fired there every day as the flag was lowered, signaling the Marina and Richmond districts that evening was on its way. In 1994, the cannons were silent.

After the military ended its occupation of the Presidio, its fate remained uncertain. In what news reports at the time characterized as a Republican swipe against Rep. Nancy Pelosi, in 1996 Congress deemed that now San Francisco’s national park should be self-sustaining. Thus a novel quasi private-public institution was born: the Presidio Trust.

The Trust was mandated with making the Presidio a self-supporting entity, earning money with rents and development, and it has now finally achieved the goal of covering its own operating costs with no help from the federal government. It’s the only national park with a profit motive, and that changes the calculus of what’s built.

The Presidio is an entity in San Francisco, but not of San Francisco, in financial and political terms. Guardian investigations from Lucas’ first move to the Presidio catalogued an estimated $60 million in savings he achieved by not paying local San Francisco taxes. The new museum site may benefit from the same deal.

The Presidio of today is taking halting baby steps towards commerce. The main post houses a high school, a YMCA, and the Disney Museum. The cannon rests unused adjacent to a bowling alley.

The Presidio houses 3,000 residents, according to federal data, and 3,000 workers come in from the surrounding Bay Area to work. Since 1996, the area has transformed. But beyond just making money, the Presidio Trust is also tasked with maintaining its parkland and curating its past, and it’s that past that the other museum proposals celebrate.

The Presidio Exchange museum proposal focuses on the Presidio itself, its history and future.

OF AND FOR THE PRESIDIO

First off, this is not a rebels versus the empire tale. The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy — a nonprofit affiliated with the Golden Gate National Parks Recreation Area — is at the helm of the Presidio Exchange site. Even though it isn’t George Lucas, its not a ragtag band of outliers either.

The Parks Conservancy built and currently maintains visitor attractions all over San Francisco’s national parkland, from the Warming Hut at Fort Point to Alcatraz. It has raised more than $300 million to support these projects since 1981, all in the name of curating its slice of important Bay Area history.

Its Presidio Exchange (PX) proposal is about about celebrating the area’s natural history. In physical terms, the PX architecturally embodies its name: A great big X. Each wing houses a different focus on Presidio’s natural world and history through interactive workshops, taking exhibit cues from local favorites like the Exploratorium.

One end houses “park place,” where arts will intersect with the environment. A great example that exists now is Spire, a construct of trees that forms a sculpted point near the Presidio’s Arguello gate. Another wing houses a demonstration kitchen, where food grown on-site will be fricasseed and fried in the name of education.

If the home and workplace are first and second spaces for people to live, the Parks Conservancy touts the PX as a “third space,” with a living room area built-in to look out on the water of the bay.

Stepping upstairs is a two-story spiral of differently angled screens, allowing visitors to choose their history lesson based on sightline — Ohlone or Spanish colonialists, or to ditch humanity altogether and learn about the ecosystem.

A third museum proposal, called the Sustainability Institute, has gained little political traction, but also follows the PX ideal of celebrating natural settings of the Presidio. That proposal describes it as “a place to explore the critical social, economic, and environmental issues of our time.”

More than celebrate history though, the PX also has spaces for visiting artists to perform in its “world stage.” Renderings of dancers litter its website. “It’s progressive and, most of all, inclusive,” said Janice Berger, a Parks Conservancy board member, in a promotion for the PX.

Nature aside, what the Parks Conservancy also does well is drum up support. At a public forum on the museum proposals on Oct. 24, a portion of the over 35,000 annual parks volunteers and networks that shaped the Golden Gate National Parks were united against the force that is George Lucas.

WHO IS IT FOR?

Those used to the public meetings of the Board of Supervisors would be in for a rude awakening at the Presidio Trust as the atmosphere was jovial and friendly, at least within the museum proposal fiefdoms. The meeting to discuss the mid-Crissy field site was divided into discernible camps: Tanned and weathered naturalists, upper crust folks with pocket squares in their coats, Presidio neighbors, and a handful of Lucas employees.

The windows of the former military cafeteria looked out onto the Golden Gate Bridge, and with the foghorn as musical accompaniment the commenters pleaded for their preferred Presidio project.

“Relatively speaking, the Lucas building is unrelated to the site,” former Presidio Trustee Amy Meyer said at the microphone, addressing the current board and the audience. The crowd thumped and cheered as she spoke.

Danya Sherman, who works in community engagement at Friends of the Highline in New York City, said the PX was like a sister-project with that train-track-turned-museum, with many of the same local benefits.

“Our plans were opposed by the mayor at the time, including much of the business community and others,” she said. “But after a tidal wave of community support, the High Line now is one of the top three most visited sites in New York. And its economic impact is estimated to be over $2 billion.”

“How do we get complete engagement?” asked Charles Jennings, questioning the Lucas proposal’s ability to do so. “Not just next door to the Presidio, but in the entire city?”

Ray Holland of the Planning Association of the Richmond said a coalition of neighborhood groups also thought the PX was the right way to go.

“They’re going to be some very tough [decisions] because all three of them are very solid proposals,” he said. “It’s our feeling that only one of them actually meets all of the criteria in your solicitations for those proposals, and that’s the Presidio Exchange.”

Becky Evans, local chair of the Sierra Club, lampooned the Lucas plan for not tying into the local natural area. Choosing the PX, she said would let the Trust “leave a legacy of something with monumental status.”

Over 30 speakers touted the benefits of the PX, but there were just a handful of Lucas supporters in tow that night, most of them his employees. Only two supporters for the sustainability institute spoke. Letters flew into the Trust as well, posted for the public to see.

As a general rule, parks and surrounding neighborhood groups sent letters of support for the PX, and tech groups and monied interests (like the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce) wrote in favor of the Lucas Cultural Arts Center.

At the end of the night, Presidio Trust President Bechtle told the Guardian that there were so many good reasons for each of the proposals she was flummoxed. She mimed her head bursting, hands flying outward.

As this issue goes to print, she and the board planned to meet privately to discuss interviews they conducted with project heads over the past two weeks. Perry, the Lucas project spokesperson, said Lucas made his case for over an hour to the board.

“This was about answering some of the individual board members’questions,” he said. Of the critique of not fitting with the natural setting like the PX, “I think it’s safe to say there’s not much in the Presidio now that was there in the beginning — including the eucalyptus trees.”

But other questions might provide a clue as to who’ll win the contract.

The Trust asked about compromise in the construction by scaling back the building to make it fit more harmoniously into the surrounding area. “Was there room for give and take in compromise?” Perry said Lucas was asked. “The answer was yes.”

Does that mean it’s in the bag?

With the serenity of a Jedi, Perry answered simply: “I can’t say.”

Throughout, all admitted the decision is difficult. Should the site be used as a beautiful backdrop for one man’s art collection to be enjoyed by all, or an inclusive science museum dedicated to the history and natural setting of the Presidio?

In just a few weeks we may see what the Presidio Trust’s vision is for the northwest corner of San Francisco.

Developing divisions

Michael Redmond

November 19, 2013

steve@sfbg.com

With the clink of champagne glasses, kudos to the development team and its community partners, and the cutting of a red ribbon, the new housing development at 38 Dolores St. had its grand opening celebration on Nov. 14, a couple weeks after the Whole Foods on its ground floor opened its doors to Market Street.

In many ways, 38 Dolores is pretty typical of the new housing opening in this part of town these days. It took seven years to complete the project, “on time and under budget in a way this community can be proud of,” developer Dan Safier of The Prado Group told the assembled crowd.

That process included countless meetings with various community groups, who successfully pushed for progressive features that include some key pedestrian safety improvements and limiting the number of parking spaces to just one spot for every two units.

“It was an amazing example of a developer working closely with the various neighborhood associations,” area Sup. Scott Wiener told the well-dressed crowd at the event, a sentiment also voiced by his predecessor, Bevan Dufty, who said, “They’ve been the gold star as far as listening to people.”

But not everyone agrees with that praise. Peter Cohen, a housing activist who also works for the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations, said Safier broke longtime assurances that he would satisfy his affordable housing obligations by building below-market-rate (BMR) units on site, rather than just paying an “in-lieu” fee to the city, two options under Inclusionary Housing Ordinance.

“They basically did a bait and switch. It was a real bullshit move,” Cohen told the Guardian, noting how desperate the city is for more affordable housing now. “The bottom line is they promised to do affordable housing on site and they didn’t do it.”

“There are so many nuances to how affordable housing works,” Safier told us, vaguely explaining why he couldn’t do on-site BMR units, including the demands of project funders. He worked with the city on doing a land dedication for off-site affordable housing, but the Mayor’s Office of Housing was resistant, and it would have required a change in city codes to do in this part of town.

“They wanted to develop faster than we had to capacity to develop,” MOH Director Olson Lee told the Guardian, explaining that his office was dealing with transitioning affordable housing projects under the old Redevelopment Agency and it didn’t have the capacity to help Safier build the BMR units now. Instead, it accepted a check for about $5 million.

“We felt there should be more options for developers,” Safier said. “But the reality is the city needs the fees.”

Yes, over the long haul, the city does need those fees to build more BMR units, which require big public subsidies to build in San Francisco. But those will take many years and much effort to build. Lee said the $37 million now in the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund will eventually translate into 185 BMR units.

“That’s why we want the units on site,” Cohen said, “because the clearest path is to build the damn units in your building.”

By time the party started at 38 Dolores, 40 of its 81 units had already been rented, and the developers expected even more to be rented out by the end of the party, after attendees had toured the open units sipping free champagne or cocktails.

“If you’ve brought your checkbook, you can even rent a unit,” Safier told the crowd.

Prices ranged from $2,950 per month for one of a half-dozen 505-square-foot studio apartments to $4,395 for the two-bedroom, two-bath, 1,099-square-foot units that the event was really pushing up to $8,100 for a few three-bedroom apartments with the balcony and killer views on the seventh floor.

Compare those rents to San Francisco’s median rent of nearly $1,500, the highest in the nation, according to a recent US Census report, which also noted that occupants in 38 percent of rental units in the city pay more than 35 percent of their income on rent. And then you get a pretty good idea how San Francisco is changing.

FLOOD OF HOUSING

Thousands of newly constructed housing units are now coming online in San Francisco, spurred by the city’s hot housing market, pent-up demand and capital following the 2008 financial crisis, and approval of city plans that regulate development by neighborhood, such as the Market and Octavia Neighborhood Plan, which has unleashed a flood of development along mid- and upper-Market Street.

The good news is apartments are finally being built in a city where nearly two-thirds of residents rent — even in projects like 38 Dolores that are permitted as condos — but the bad news is that they’re really expensive and the city isn’t building anywhere near enough affordable units to address demand by current residents. And most developers are opting to “fee out” rather than build BMR units, meaning it will take several years to address this growing economic imbalance.

The trend in what’s being built in San Francisco and what those units are going for only increases the pressure on tenants in rent-controlled apartments, who are now being displaced at rates not seen since the last dot-com bubble, both through evictions and buy-outs. Contrary to the supply-and-demand arguments made by pro-development cheerleaders, there’s no evidence that the housing supply now being built is doing anything to help most San Franciscans.

“Trickle down theory is going to fuck San Francisco, it’s not going to help it,” Cohen said.

San Francisco’s Housing Element, a study of housing needs mandated by state law to ensure that cities are addressing their affordable housing obligations, called for the city to build 31,193 housing units from 2007-2014. Partially as a result of the 2008 financial meltdown, San Francisco fell far short of that goal, with just 11,130 units getting permitted, most of those market-rate units.

But that was enough to meet 60.6 percent of the projected need for serving those earning 120 percent of area median income and above, whereas the city entitled just 360 units for moderate income San Franciscans — 5.3 percent of the projected need — and 3,313 units for low-income (80 percent of AMI and below), or 27.3 percent of the need.

So it isn’t that San Francisco is facing a “housing crisis,” as Housing Action Coalition and others often proclaim, it’s that the city is facing an affordable housing crisis driven by not building enough below-market-rate housing and allowing real estate speculators to cannibalize the city’s rent-controlled housing.

Even though voters last year approved Prop. C, creating the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to address the real crisis, it won’t generate nearly enough money to meet the long-term need. And in the short-term, it actually reduced the number of on-site BMR units that developers must build, from 15 percent to 12 percent.

“The reason for changing the inclusionary to 12 percent was to incentivize the on-site,” MOH’s Lee told us, although he admitted that it had limited success so far.

BATTLING FOR BMR

That’s not to say there aren’t any BMR units going up.

The Mayor’s Office says there are 6,168 housing units now under construction in the city, and 1,182 of those are affordable housing. Most of those are in projects that were required to do so because they got a gift of public land, including Lennar Urban’s housing development at Hunters Point Shipyard and the housing development that’s part of the Transbay Terminal rebuild in SoMa, where the Block 6 project starting next year that will have 70 BMR units out of 479 total.

“The city got that state land and as a requirement of law, it has a high affordable housing requirement,” MOH’s Lee told us. “Transbay is a great example of how we’re encouraging the affordable and market rate to go hand-in-hand, because they really do go hand-in-hand.”

Other developers were encouraged by the change in Prop. C, including the massive, 754-unit NEMA apartment complex on Market Street next to the Twitter headquarters, which opted to do the 12 percent BMR on-site rather than 17 percent off-site or the pay of an in-lieu fees that roughly equivalent to 20 percent. Trinity Housing’s huge project at 1167 Market will also have 232 BMR units out of 1,900 units total.

“Getting on-site inclusionary has lots of benefits,” Lee said. “One, we aren’t doing it. Two, it gets done faster. And three, we get a better mix around the city.”

While Wiener told us “we need all sorts of different housing,” he also said that “we need to do more to have on-site affordable units.”

But Cohen said the city isn’t doing nearly enough to encourage affordable housing construction, particularly giving how much market-rate housing is being built, which is gentrifying the city and hurting its diversity. He says MOH should increase the in-lieu fees, which are based on construction costs and not what the red-hot market is actually paying for units right now.

“The opportunity cost is far higher to do the unit on site,” Cohen said. “The fee is too cheap.”

So for now, Cohen works with neighborhood associations and groups such as the AIDS Housing Alliance and the Milk Club to put pressure on developers to do on-site affordable housing, as they’ve recently been doing to the Texas-based Greystar, which is proposing a 90-unit housing project at on Market at Sanchez.

Activists have pushed and pushed, and they finally felt like they got a commitment from Greystar at the Nov. 11 meeting of the Duboce Triangle Neighbors Association, which is spearheading the effort. But when the Guardian asked the company detailed questions about the issue and its commitment, we got back this vague statement from Randy Ackerman, Senior Director of Development: “We recently met with Duboce Triangle Neighbors Association and had a good discussion, where we received a lot of helpful feedback on the BMR units and the overall project. We plan to incorporate their feedback as we finalize our plans with city staff.”

Cohen said that’s typical of developers these days. “This is the economic reality, is it’s a place to make a lot of money off of real estate,” Cohen said. “They can very easily play the community like a fiddle, so I’m hoping I can help the Upper Market community beat Greystar.”

Safier said he doesn’t think it’s fair or helpful to demonize developers. “I’m not one of those evil developers,” Safier said, who criticizes the rich-vs.-poor political dynamics in the city. “I don’t think that tug and pull of this city is very productive.”

But Cohen said activists need to be vigilant to protect the character of the city in the face of growing profit motives. “It’s 24/7 and it just wears people down, and we have to have wins along the way,” Cohen said, noting the importance of defeating the 8 Washington project in the last election. “We have to be very loud about how difficult it is to maintain this city’s diversity.”

The Performant: Louder, faster, more!

Sue Vaughan

November 19, 2013

When a friend of a friend held his 33 1/3rd birthday party, he filled the rooms of his apartment with turntables and stacks of LPs for his guests to play themselves. It was basically the best party ever, and a good argument for propagating the tradition of celebrating that particular milestone. And of course what better milestone to celebrate if you’re in the music business, like long-time independent label Alternative Tentacles? Particularly in a business climate unkind to independent anything, to be able to celebrate three-plus decades of sticking it to the establishment at all is some cause for jubilee.

Of course there are pitfalls to growing older, which I only discovered when I got to the Alternative Tentacles blowout anniversary show at Slims at the perfectly respectable club-going hour of 11pm, to discover that I had missed most of the show. Well, I never! Not only had a missed out the rare opportunity to see one of my personal musical heroes, Mojo Nixon, tear it up in his indomitable, breakneck way, but I didn’t really get a chance to soak in the atmosphere building up to the main event: headliners Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine.

Fortunately even if my flow was off, the band’s was not, and the fast and furious set punctuated by politicized bon-mots and observations was classic JB. Jello Biafra, of course, is the founder and overlord of Alternative Tentacles, former frontman of the Dead Kennedys, spoken-word raconteur extraordinaire, and occasional political candidate, and while he was sporting the unlikely trimmed beard and mustache combo of “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” his voice was still the strident, yodel of days of yore, and his stage persona full of ham.

Humor and politics have always been the hallmarks of Jello’s work, which songs like “Burgers of Wrath,” “Pets Eat Their Master,” and “Kill the Poor,” perfectly encapsulate, and except for an awkward stagedive that didn’t quite go anywhere, Biafra’s stage performance was as energetic as ever, thankfully proving that aging doesn’t have to be about being graceful, and a punk show that ends at midnight can still rock.

Meanwhile on the other side of the city, an unexpected Alternative Tentacles connection represented at the Emerald Tablet, where Philadelphian Joseph Gervasi held a screening of his Philly punk-scene archive project, Loud! Fast! Philly!, and his co-host/co-organizer turned out to be Jesse “Luscious” Townley, formerly of the Philly scene, and general manager of Alternative Tentacles, who DJ’d an eclectic set before the show.

Originally compiled in the earlier part of the year, Loud! Fast! Philly! was originally shown at the Cinedelphia Film Festival as an “interactive” audio-visual presentation combining old home movie-style footage of various Philly punk bands with live commentary from members in attendance. But in compiling the project, Gervasi realized it was the stories behind the videos he really wanted people to have access to. Thus began the second arm of the project: an audio archive of interviews with a variety of old school Philly punks, which lives in perpetuity online.

Truthfully the archive is probably the most fascinating part of the project. The video clips, while offering a fascinating peek at a particular time and place (and substandard quality of recording devices), don’t offer nearly the same breadth and depth of history as do the interviews. That said, rare footage of bands like More Fiends, Flag of Democracy, Dead Milkmen, and R.A.M.B.O. were unique and frankly humorous enough to transcend their shaky amateur quality and insider appeal, and provided a weirdly cohesive portrait of an ever-morphing scene, from the 80s to the present.

Parents under pressure

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

November 15, 2013

134

In recent weeks, the San Francisco Unified School District has held a series of community forums to ask parents what they think kids need in order to thrive in school. The meetings were held as part of a policymaking process leading up to next year’s renewal of two important funds – the Children’s Fund and the Public Education Enrichment Fund, which account for some $100 million in funding combined.

There were huge turnouts – a Chinatown forum, where Mayor Ed Lee was reportedly in attendance, attracted more than 180 participants, while a Nov. 14 meeting at Cesar Chavez Elementary in the Mission District drew a crowd of between 80 and 90.

The parents weren’t exactly asking for more museum field trips for their kids. During breakout sessions where facilitators wrote group members’ concerns on flip pads, a few recurring themes emerged. “Job security for parents,” one read. “Affordable housing,” another stated. “It’s a shame to have to talk about lack of funds given wealth and corporations in SF,” more parent feedback stated.

Maria Su, director of the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and their Families, thanked parents for coming and told them, “We know how hard it is and how challenging it is to survive in the city. But that doesn’t mean we should give up.”

The event provided a glimpse into just how tough it is for families to get by in a city where a hefty cost of living amounts to serious pressure. “The sacrifices they make is, their children will have access to resources you can’t get anywhere else,” said Mario Paz with the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, who works with a lot of Latino immigrant families.

A report digesting the findings of stakeholder focus groups distilled the pressures facing families. “Many participants commented on … the extraordinarily high cost of living in San Francisco,” it noted, which “contributes to both financial and emotional strain on the part of our many working class and lower income residents.”

O+ Festival trades health care for music and art performances

Sasha Cuttler

November 14, 2013

Artists struggle for their art, but they shouldn’t also have to also sacrifice their health. That’s the basic premise behind this weekend’s three-day O+ Festival in San Francisco, where musicians and other artists will perform in exchange for medical, dental, and wellness services at a pop-up clinic at The Center SF art space on Fillmore Street and other offices around town.

“Bartering the art of medicine for the medicine of art,” is the tagline for a festival that is making its debut outside of New York, where it began. The lineup includes local folk rockers Papa Bear & Friends, soulful singer Quinn DeVeaux, mashup DJ Zack Darling, and many more, performing in venues that include Inner Mission and the Make-Out Room.

The festival began in 2010 in Kingston, NY, when painter Joe Concra had a dentist friend who had the idea of bringing a band he liked up from Brooklyn and paying them in free dental services. The idea resonated with Concra, who knew well how much New York’s artists struggled to make ends meet.

“Artists are not only being pushed out, but they’re not able to get the healing they deserve,” Concra told the Guardian, saying the first festival was such a hit that it took on a life of its own. “Once we do it, once people go, then they really get it. And it goes back to the age-old idea of trade.”

Long before modern health insurance debacles, doctors and dentists were members of their communities, and people would pay them with whatever they had to offer. But today, larger and larger companies providing care in collaboration with insurance companies, even the basic community clinic is becoming a thing of the past.

“We’re breaking down that access to care barrier, because some many people don’t know where to start,” Concra said, saying he was surprised at the flood gates opened by his simple idea. “Now, we’re at the point where we have 220 bands applies for 40 spots…We were not prepared for the amount of need in the artist community.”

Concra had started thinking about where to expand the festival when he was contacted by Deborah Gatiss, San Francisco-based artist and event coordinator, who had heard about the concept from a friend in the Burning Man Project.

“It goes back to May of last year, and I was lamenting the fact that I have no health care, because I had a really bad toothache. I was talking with a friend of mine and we were discussing things people could do for health care when they have no dental insurance and this was one of the things that came up,” she told us.

Concra was already talking about a Bay Area event with Aimee Gardner, who he knew from an art gallery in Kingston before she moved to California, and Gardner and Gatiss ended up spearheading the creation of O+ Festival-San Francisco.

“Coming from New York, I feel like San Francisco is going a similar direction,” Gardner said of artists who can’t afford to live here. “I think it’s a really revolutionary idea. It’s activism in a very thoughtful way.”

The pair managed to line up sponsors and a list of volunteer health practioners from a variety of disciplines, people that Concra called “the real rock stars of this event.” So while the performers get free health care, those who buy the $25 tickets get three days of free music and art, discounted drinks at various venues, and even free yoga classes at Yoga Tree’s new Potrero Hill studio.

The festival opens tomorrow (Fri/15) at 6:15 at The Center SF, 548 Fillmore, with a health care panel discussion featuring Concra, Artist Xavi Panneton, Dan Kitowski of the Actors Fund, and me, Guardian Editor Steven T. Jones.

Gatiss said it’s been a challenge to pull together such an ambtious festival and she hopes that Bay Area residents — who love art and music and are accustomed to gift and barter economies through things like Burning Man — will turn out to show their support.

“I thought that people were used to that mindset, so they’d be up for the idea of bartering their musical talents for health care and vice versa,” Gatiss told us. “It’s been harder than I thought. But it’s been fulfilling and magical and I’m glad that I did it, and I think Aimee would say the same thing.”

This Week’s Picks: November 13 – 19, 2013

Michael Redmond

November 12, 2013

WEDNESDAY 11/13

Chinese American Film Festival

San Francisco has a number of film series that pluck programming from recent international runs and festivals (see “New Italian Cinema” write-up elsewhere in Selector), but the Chinese American Film Festival is unique in its embrace of genre and popcorn movies. Where else are you gonna see Dante Lam’s MMA drama Unbeatable, starring the sweaty torsos of Nick Cheung and Eddie Peng, or NBA-sanctioned sci-fi Tron-meets-hoops mash-up Amazing? Also featured: rom-coms, historical dramas, crime thrillers, a disease-epidemic disaster movie, and a haunted-elevator horror flick. All films in Chinese with English subtitles. (Cheryl Eddy)

Wed/13-Tue/19, $6–$8

Four Star Theater

2200 Clement, SF

www.lntsf.com

WEDNESDAY 11/13

Cults

In 2010, two New York art students posted three songs on their Bandcamp page under the name Cults. Their insanely catchy glam earworm “Go Outside” immediately began catching the attention of the blogosphere, landing them on “Bands to Watch Out For” lists everywhere. Now, three years and one successful album later, they’re facing the second-album hurdle and a breakup. After four years of being romantically involved, Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion have ended their relationship for the sake of the band. After post-breakup depression (Follin) and a soul-searching drug binge in Japan (Oblivion) the pair has reunited to focus on music, and the result is not the breakup album you might expect, but a fuzzed-out dreampop gem. (Haley Zaremba)

With Sacco, Mood Rings

8pm, $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

WEDNESDAY 11/13

New Italian Cinema

The San Francisco Film Society continues its autumn of international showcases with “New Italian Cinema,” unspooling new works by Paolo Sorrentino (whose The Great Beauty opens theatrically later this month), Silvio Soldini (Garibaldi’s Lovers), and others, plus a Neapolitan cinema spotlight that includes Napoli 24, an omnibus film composed of 24 three-minute shorts about the iconic city. Bobbling alongside the mini-fest’s many selections set in contemporary Italy is Mario Martone’s star-studded costume drama We Believed, which celebrates the country’s 150th anniversary. (Eddy)

Wed/13-Sun/17, $10-25

Clay Theater

2261 Fillmore, SF

www.sffs.org

THURSDAY 11/14

Feminism in Action Open Mic

Here’s your chance to speak out against domestic violence during Feminism in Action’s first ever open mic night. FIA, an SF State organization, is working to break silences and to heal and support through artistic expression. Bring your music, poetry, or prose and share in a safe, positive space. The pieces you share do not have to be explicitly about domestic violence, as FIA recognizes art in general as a way to transform and heal. The event includes musical performances by local artists Bedroom Witch and Zamora. FIA will also use the evening to debut their first zine on domestic violence. Get vocal and get involved. (Kirstie Haruta)

7pm, $3–$5

Dolores Park Cafe

501 Dolores, SF

(415) 621-2936

www.doloresparkcafe.com

THURSDAY 11/14

Theatre Flamenco’s “Con Nombre y Apellido”

While flamenco will always be associated with Spain despite its roots in Gypsy, North African, Jewish, and Indian traditions, it has truly become part of world culture. Go to any flamenco school in Sevilla — more than half of the students will be from abroad. There is something about that tension, the give and take between the music — both melodic and percussive — and the dancer that is irresistible no matter where you are born. This is what Theatre Flamenco, now in its 47th year and the oldest company of its kind in the country, is exploring in its newest show, “Con Nombre y Apellido” (“With Name and Surname”). Carola Zertuche and Marién Luévano learned their first rhythms in Mexico; Cristina Hall at SF’s High School for the Performing Arts. (Rita Felciano)

Thu/14-Sat/16, 8pm; Sun/17, 2pm, $34–$40

Southside Theater

Fort Mason Center, SF

brownpapertickets.com/event/454980

THURSDAY 11/14

“Remembrance of Things Proust: 100th Anniversary of Swann’s Way“

Though our material landscape drastically technologized since Marcel Proust’s Belle Époque, the manner in which we humans digest and respond to our world remains the same. Music, be it Pandora or a live string quartet, continues to mold our emotions; art, found on Pinterest or in Beaux Arts museums, still disguises the ordinary through resemblance; parties, in the elusive Sub or Villeparisis’s salon, let us get wild and loose; and words, on Twitter or in novels, allow us to capture a present and cling to the past. In honor of Swann’s Way‘s 100 year anniversary, Mrs. Dalloway’s hosts an evening featuring readings from William C. Carter’s new translation, live period music, signed copies of painter David Richardson’s Resemblance: Portraits of Characters from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and tea with madeleines, to take you back. (Kaylen Baker)

7pm, $10

St John’s Presbyterian Church

2727 College, Berkeley

(510) 704-8222

www.mrsdalloways.com

THURSDAY 11/14

“The Intergalactic Nemesis: Book One: Target Earth“

The planet is in the crosshairs of a slimy race of extraterrestrials and only valiant reporter Molly Sloan and trusty sidekick Timmy Mendez, with help from an enigmatic librarian, can save it in this family-friendly multimedia spectacular from Austin, Texas. First performed in an Austin coffee shop in 1996, Jason Neulander’s live-action radio serial cum graphic novel has grown in size and following, but still has a spare quality leaving room for the imaginations of its audience to do the really heavy, CGI-type lifting. To get you going: three versatile actors, a hard-working Foley artist, a keyboard accompanist (delivering an original score by composer Graham Reynolds), a period-style narrative in the vein of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and over a thousand illustrations by Tim Doyle projected onto a 20-foot screen. The program includes a children’s one-hour school-time performance on Wed/13, as well as Cal Performance’s second annual arts learning forum for educators, administrators, and policy makers. (Robert Avila)

8pm, $18–$42

Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley

Bancroft Way at Dana Street, Berk.

(510) 642-9988

www.calperformances.org

FRIDAY 11/15

“Miles’ Wish To Be a Superhero”

The Make-A-Wish foundation transforms San Francisco into Gotham City for a day, and suddenly the entire city is caught in its own worst nightmare — fatal accidents occur on the cable cars, while an evil villain by the name of the Puzzler robs a bank and takes the fate of the San Francisco mascot Lou Seal into his own treacherous hands. But fear not, denizens! Batkid, also known as five-year-old Miles, infamous for his heroic battle against leukemia, comes to save the day. Join your fellow terror-stricken neighbors at specific lookout spots throughout the day (see the website below for details) to watch the action and cheer Batkid on. (Baker)

12:45am and 2pm, free

Various locations in SF

(415) 402-2775

sf.wish.org

FRIDAY 11/15

Cass McCombs

For most people, the idea of wandering around, homeless and aimless, surrounded by drugs, drug addicts, and general debauchery for the duration of your adult life sounds like some sort of nightmare. For Cass McCombs, this is reality. The nomadic singer-songwriter thrives on the alternative nature of his existence and anchors himself not to a home, family, or possessions, but to music. Lots of music. This year sees the release of his seventh studio album, and it’s a doozy. At 22 songs long, Big Wheel and Others is an enormous undertaking. Filled with his trademark flair for imaginative storytelling, compelling characters, and black humor, Big Wheel is a delicious slice of Americana and skilled songwriting. (Zaremba)

With Meg Baird

9pm, $16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

SATURDAY 11/16

Bay Area Rainbow Symphony Concert

Continuing the tradition of “community and visibility through artistic excellence,” the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, formed in 2008, brings its newest performance to the St. Mark’s Lutheran Church this weekend. Led by guest conductor Cyrus Ginwala, this group of talented musicians tackles Kenton Coe’s Ischiana Overture, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, and Britten’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell with readings from “Letters from a Life.” Acclaimed violinist Jassen Todorov joins symphony for the Mendelssohn and Coe pieces. Join BARS for a weekend of music in a space that is safe and welcoming for musicians of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. (Haruta)

11/16, 7pm, 11/17, 4pm, $15-35

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church

1111 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 578-4652

www.bars-sf.org

SATURDAY 11/16

“Fashioning Women”

San Francisco fashion designer Kate Mitchell’s lifelong dedication to dance, combined with her wry take on culture and academic interest in American history manifests in her most recent work, “Fashioning Women.” Both a mock-magazine book and a faux couture collection, this project parodies the contemporary fashion industry while exploring the boundaries between women’s bodies, movement, and the absurd constrictions of the feminine ideal. Featuring several guest artists, 25 women in a dance and theater performance, a catwalk of the couture collection, and copies of the book, this show is sure to fabricate an interesting trend story. (Baker)

8pm, $25

SOMArts Cultural Center

934 Brannan, SF

(415) 863-1414

www.fashioningwomen.com

TUESDAY 11/19

“Light Up the Night 2013: March for Inclusion and Tolerance”

In observation of Transgender Day of Remembrance, head over to City Hall and join the march to the Castro in loving memory of the transgender people we have lost to senseless violence and transphobia. The organizers emphasize that this event is about visibility rather than protesting, so lend your support and let the silenced be heard. Come together as a community and celebrate by stomping out transphobia all the way to Midnight Sun, where the festivities will continue. And to show its support, Midnight Sun will donate 10 percent of its bar sales that evening to the Transgender Law Center. (Haruta)

5pm, free

SF City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, SF

(415) 621-2936

www.doloresparkcafe.com

War of the roses

Michael Redmond

November 12, 2013

emilysavage@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY Rock ‘n’ roll guitarists do not typically have the opportunity to play with full, live orchestras. Though legendary avant-punk composer Rhys Chatham has long challenged that notion.

“I thought it would be nice to write a piece for a literal orchestra of guitars, both for its unique sonority, as well as for the social element of massing so many guitarists together, to give them the experience of playing in an orchestra, the way classical musicians do,” the 61-year-old writes from his home in France.

His first piece for multiple electric guitars was back in ’77 — Guitar Trio — and by ’84 he upped the number to six. But this is where the electric guitar orchestras of Chatham took a huge leap: 100 guitars, wailing, riffing, battling, rising in unison and twisting on their own windy paths.

Since then, Chatham has launched multiple pieces based on 100 to 400 electric guitarists, including An Angel Moves Too Fast to See (1989), and A Crimson Grail (2005). His newest piece, A Secret Rose, is back to 100 and will have its Bay Area premiere Sun/17 (7pm, $10–$75. Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbour, Richmond. otherminds.org).

The difference? A Secret Rose was a piece intended to be learned quickly, without placing “unreasonable demands” on the participating musicians’ time.

“An added plus as far as ease of mounting the piece is concerned is that I wrote the piece for guitars in a standard tuning, so the musicians can simply arrive with the strings they normally use, cutting down on the time it takes to restring the guitars, not to mention the purchasing of special strings for 100 guitarists!”

Like much of his other work, A Secret Rose is informed by Chatham’s strong connection to the roots of the ’77 punk scene, a world the minimalist composer cracked open in his early 20s. He says at the time he was trying to find his voice as a composer.

He grew up in New York City playing his father’s harpsichord, which he first picked up at age six. By age eight he was playing clarinet, and at 12, he switched to flute. “Luckily, my flute teacher was a contemporary music specialist, so she taught me Density 21.5 by Varèse, Sonatine for flute and piano by Boulez, and many others.”

In his early 20s, he first became entranced with the burgeoning loft jazz scene in NYC.

“I switched to tenor saxophone because the fingering is almost the same as flute, also because it was louder.”

There, he studied alongside the greats, including La Monte Young — he even sang in his group, the Theater of Eternal Music — along with Terry Riley. He was an early member of Tony Conrad’s the Dream Syndicate, and played alongside Charlemagne Palestine.

Around this time though, there was the punk awakening. Everything changed with an electrifying Ramones concert in 1976 at CBGB.

“I had never seen anything like it in my life. Wow! I felt that I had something in common with their music. I mean, as a hardcore minimalist composer, I was only using one chord in the music I was doing at the time — the Ramones were using three — but I loved the repetition, and that’s when I decided to embrace this music into my own.”

He dropped the sax and picked up a Fender Telecaster guitar, and he was soon playing minimal music in a rock context at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB.

The classic Fender is still integral to his performances more than three decades later. For A Secret Rose, each guitarist will bring her or his own electric guitar. Says Chatham, “The piece was written for a Fender kind of sound…so we ask the guitarists to bring guitars that have a Fender type of sound.”

As for finding those 100 talented guitarists to join the orchestra? It was a collaboration with the Other Minds new music community nonprofit, which is presenting the West Coast premiere of A Secret Rose, and Chatham’s manager Regina Greene. The application process was wide open, so the end result is a batch of musicians from all over the world, including the UK, Argentina, and Canada. The Richmond performance in the dramatic waterfront Craneway Pavilion includes musicians from Guided by Voices, Akron/Family, Tristeza, Hrsta, Sutekh Hexen, and Girls Against Boys.

Many of the guitarists are also local: Other Minds received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation that focuses on “nonprofessional and professional musicians from low-income and ethnically diverse communities in Contra Costa and Alameda counties” to help put the event on. After the applications came in, Other Minds and Chatham went to work mixing in musicians with backgrounds in jazz, folk, noise, psych, metal, experimental, classical, and punk.

The final blend includes Oakland’s Carolyn Kennedy, Alameda’s Kurt Brown, Berkeley’s Becky White, and more, plus Chatham alumni (who’ve played in different electric guitar orchestras with him) including John Banister of San Francisco and Brian Good of Walnut Creek.

All those guitarists will be backed by electric bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, and drummer Jordan Glenn, both from the Bay Area. In a much smaller scale preview of A Secret Rose earlier this year, Mezzacappa and Glenn did Guitar Trio (version for eight musicians) with Chatham at the Lab in the Mission. “They are excellent musicians. Well, they’d have to be to accompany 100 electric guitars,” Chatham says. “They are the rhythm section, the wind, indeed the hurricane that lights the fire of the playing of the guitarists!”

The performance itself is structured similar to a symphony, starting with an introduction and slow prelude, followed by an allegro movement

“[And] then I break with sonata form and have a structured aleatory movement, followed by an adagio section, ending with a brisk allegro, although having a vastly different character than the first one,” explains Chatham.

“All the music is notated, even the aleatory section has specific prose instructions. When we mount the piece it will probably be one of the few times the guitarists make use of a music stand!”

HOT TODDIES

For this third annual Friends of Tricycle Records comp release show, the favored local indie label brings out Oakland lady trio Hot Toddies. The Toddies make sunny though rough-edged beach pop with sugary multipart harmonies, and released their Bottoms Up EP on Tricycle earlier this year. The Tricycle Records comp, produced by Julie Schuchard, includes the slow-burning Hot Toddies’ track “Summertime Blues,” along with songs by James & Evander, Happy Fangs, Swiftumz, WOOF, and more. With Tambo Rays, Kill Moi, Odd Owl, Blaus (DJ set).

Wed/13, 8pm, $6–$9. Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF. www.brickandmortarmusic.com.

MELT-BANANA

Melt-Banana has always been a curious subject: rapid, triumphant grindcore matched to yelpy staccato vocals tinted with Japanese accents, like Spazz meets Deerfhoof. And with each album, the group — formed in 1993 — has proved itself still endlessly fascinating, complex, even fun. Its latest, Fetch (A-Zap), is its first in six long years, and it comes speeding back to the present, not a moment of chaos lost. Check “The Hive” — it’s like riding a terrifying roller coaster on acid with a screeching sprite on your shoulder. With Retox.

Sat/16, 8pm, $15. Oakland Metro, 630 Third St, Oakl. www.oaklandmetro.org.

Build a Jonestown memorial

Michael Redmond

November 12, 2013

By Court Haslett

OPINION Five years after the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was decimated and 168 people perished, the Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated to the victims. On Sept. 12, 2011, 10 years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the 9/11 Memorial was open to the public. By all accounts, both sites are solemn, powerful tributes to the people who died in those tragedies.

Prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, the record for the most American lives lost in one event, excluding war and natural disasters, belonged to the victims of the Jonestown Massacre, where 918 Americans died on Nov. 18, 1978. While the tragedy occurred in Guyana, the victims were almost entirely from the Bay Area, where the Peoples Temple had operated throughout the 1970s.

Yet here we are, 35 years later, and there is nothing honoring the victims of Jonestown anywhere in San Francisco. There is a memorial in Oakland’s Evergreen cemetery, where over 400 people from the massacre are buried in a mass grave, but San Francisco, the place where the seeds of this tragedy were sown, hasn’t seen fit to honor the victims of Jonestown in any way.

Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple were an integral part of San Francisco’s political power structure during the 1970s. From the Temple’s headquarters at 1859 Geary Street, two doors down from the Fillmore Auditorium, Jones marshaled the bulk of his congregation and rose to power. Key to this rise was the support Jones received from the city’s elected officials, all of whom coveted Jones’s approval for good reason: Jones could mobilize thousands of voters for any given candidate in a moment’s notice.

The 1975 mayoral election was a prime example of that power. By order of Jones, Temple members turned out strongly for George Moscone, tilting a close election in his favor. As Jim Jones Jr. explained to David Talbot in his book Season of the Witch, “We loaded up all 13 of our buses with maybe 70 people on each bus, and we had those buses rolling nonstop up and down the coast into San Francisco the day before the election,” recalled Jim Jones Jr. “We had people going from precinct to precinct to vote. So could we have been the force that tipped the election to Moscone? Absolutely.” Moscone thought so. After the election, he rewarded Jones by appointing him to the Housing Authority.

Moscone was by no means the only elected official who courted Jones. Then-Assemblymember Willie Brown described Jones as “a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein, and… Chairman Mao.” Harvey Milk, perhaps Jones’s biggest supporter, defended Jones until the end, stating, “My name is cut into stone in support of you—and your people.”

Lester Kingsolving wrote a series of articles for the Examiner as far back as 1972, alleging misconduct by the Temple. In 1977, New West magazine published an article by Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy detailing many of the horrors that were happening at the Temple, including beatings, sexual humiliation, and financial malfeasance.

The widespread belief that what happened in Jonestown was a mass suicide further underlines the need for a memorial in San Francisco. While a number of people who drank the cyanide-laced Flavor Aid did so willingly, many of the victims only drank the poison to avoid the alternative—a gunshot to the head. It is also unequivocally not the case for the 276 children who were forced to ingest the cyanide.

San Francisco should stop trying to whitewash Jones from its history books. Building a memorial to the victims of Jonestown in San Francisco, the city most responsible and most affected by the massacre, seems the least we can do to honor the 918 people who lost their lives 35 years ago.

Court Haslett is the author of Tenderloin, a crime novel based in 1970’s San Francisco. You can follow him on Twitter @courthaslett

BART’s safety culture slammed at Assembly hearing

Sasha Cuttler

November 7, 2013

BART was slammed by legislators and its workers today for refusing to make a key worker safety improvement demanded by state regulators since a 2008 fatality, instead choosing to aggressively defend the “simple approval” process that contributed to two more fatalities on Oct. 19, after which the district finally made the change.

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment had already planned today’s San Francisco hearing into why BART spent years appealing rulings by the California Occupational Safety and Health Administrations before the recent tragedy, but that incident sharpened criticism of the district for valuing efficiency over safety.

“The culture of safety at BART must change,” said BART train operator Jesse Hunt, who gave dramatic testimony about the callous culture at BART that led to the Oct. 19 tragedy. “It’s not a single incident, it’s a pattern of disregard for safety.”

The hearing also delved into why BART had an uncertified trainee at the helm of the train that killed Christopher Sheppard and Laurence Daniels on Oct. 19, despite warnings by its unions that district preparations to run limited service during the strike would be unsafe.

“Simple approval” made employees doing work on the tracks responsible to avoid being hit by trains moving silently at up to 80mph. When BART exhausted its administrative appeals of Cal-OSHA’s rulings in June, it filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court and continued to defend the practice, which its unions had long sought to end.

“BART challenged that citation and continues to do so to this day,” Chair Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) said in his opening remarks, noting that it took two recent fatalities for BART to drop its stance. “I’m deeply troubled this decision wasn’t made much earlier.”

For BART, the hearing only went downhill from there as state regulators testified to the district’s litigious refusal to adopt important safety precautions, employees painted a picture of a district hostile to them and their safety concerns, and legislators chastised BART managers for not having reasonable answers to their questions.

In response, BART Assistant General Manager of Operations Paul Oversier denied the district undervalues safety and said that it defended the simple approval process because it had been used tens of thousand of times and, “We had a track record in mind of a procedure that was working well.”

Asked whether he continues to defend it after the Oct. 19 incident, Oversier said, “Irrespective of what our opinion might be, we suspended the simple approval process,” a decision that he said could disrupt service, increase costs, and “that may cause us to look at what our hours of operation are.”

That suggestion drew murmurs of outrage from the union members that packed the hearing, including those who had just testified about how the district refuses to work collaboratively with its workers, who even had to learn of the district’s decision to end simple approval from evening news reports rather than directly.

“Shifting the burden from people in the field to the control center is not a long term solution,” testified Sal Cruz, a BART train controller of 15 years who was on the contract bargaining team. “Time and time again, we’re never really involved in these decision-making processes.”

Christine Baker, director of the Department of Industrial Relations, and Juliann Sum, acting director of its Division of Occupational Safety and Health (better known as Cal-OSHA), testified as to their agency’s long, trying history of getting BART to comply with its rulings, with Baker calling the resistance to reform “clearly an issue of grave concern.”

Legislators probed why that might be the case, asking whether abating the problems might be seen as an admission of liability to either the agency and a victim and whether it was the norm for those cited. Baker said no to both questions: “It is not an admission of guilt if they abate…Many employers abate as soon as there is a citation.”

So why is it standard practice at BART to avoid correcting the 40 violations it received from Cal-OSHA in the last 12 years?

“In most cases, the district has acted in good faith to try to abate the citations,” Oversier testified, but he said that BART often disagreed with Cal-OSHA’s findings and that “the investigation doesn’t really start until you appeal.” He said BART has paid just 22 percent of what it has intially been fined by OSHA, casting that as smart stewardship of ratepayer money and saying, “It’s the appeal process that brings closure to the process.”

Meanwhile, Baker, Sum, and Cal-OSHA attorney Amy Martin said they are currently investigating the Oct. 19 incident for both civil violations and penalties and the possibility of criminal prosecution of BART officials if “they intentionally took the action that led to the fatality,” Martin said.

The hearing was called by Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-SF, who said in his opening remarks, “I was very concerned to read many of the OSHA findings, that it found BART was in violation of California state law,” which prohibits employers from making workers responsible for their own safety in dangerous situations.

Later, Ting questioned BART Chief Safety Officer Jeff Lau — whose testimony came almost entirely from prepared statements he read, in a way that didn’t inspire much confidence in the material — about how many of OSHA’s safety violations it had taken steps to correct versus how many it continues to resist. Lau said that he couldn’t answer the question, even though Ting noted that he first called this hearing back in June and Lau should have been prepared to answer that central question.

“I’m extraordinarily disappointed in your response,” Ting told Lau, demanding that he prepare a detailed written response to the questions and submit it to the committee, which plans to revisit the issue once more details emerge from the NTSA investigation of the Oct. 19 incident.

Most of the panel criticized BART’s foot dragging and called for reforms.

“This latest accident, a terrible tragedy, could have been avoided,” said Assemblymember Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), decrying Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent veto of Assembly Bill 1165 by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Oakland), which would have expedited Cal-OSHA appeals and perhaps required BART to fix the problems pending its appeal.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (S-SF) recounted his own history of difficult dealings with intransigent BART officials, from trying to improve station safety when he was a supervisor starting in the mid-‘90s to his work as a legislator trying to provide some oversight of the BART Police after the Oscar Grant shooting.

“I feel like it still has a long way to go. Transparency and accountability will be very important around this issue,” Ammiano said.

Later, Ammiano asked Cruz whether the ill-fated Oct. 19 train should have been traveling slower than 60-70mph, and Cruz responded, “With knowledge of people being wayside [a term that means on the tracks], you would think that.”

The most scathing and dramatic testimony came from the nine workers called to testify at the hearing, three from each of BART’s three unions, all of which had made safety reforms a big part of their recent contract negotiations, with varying degrees of success.

“We are dealing with a culture at BART that doesn’t take workers seriously or the safety of workers seriously,” began AFSCME District Council 57 Executive Director George Popyack. “Our objective today is to make BART a better and safer place to work.”

Several workers said the district’s main imperatives are to cut costs and keep the trains on time, which causes safety compromises on an almost daily basis. “We’re so pushed to keep that schedule sometimes we push on the edge,” said train controller Ken Perez.

While BART officials refused to discuss details of the Oct. 19 incident, as per a gag order from the NTSB, union members that testified said it’s clear that the district’s disregard for safety and its desire to break the strike are what led to the tragedy.

“BART was planning to run a limited service with people not trained to run those trains and that was connected to this accident,” ATU Local 1555 President Antonette Bryant testified.

“The train that hit the workers was a manager being trained to run the train in the event of an extended strike,” Poyyack said, noting how irresponsible it was to be running a train at what the NTSB said was 60-70mph on the one line where there were workers on the track. He and others said there was no good reason for the district to do so, calling it an example of the district’s flagrant disregard for safety.

“The culture of BART is a significant contributor to the incident,” said BART train operator Jesse Hunt. “The culture is one of gambling with worker and rider safety.”

Hunt said BART’s safety culture directly caused the Oct. 19 tragedy: “There was no reason for a trainee train to be operated or for employees to be on the ground.”

John Arantes, president of the BART Professional Chapter of SEIU Local 1021, said the district took an extremely aggressive posture in labor negotiations — “a scorched earth strategy encouraged by directors like Zachary Mallet,” the newest elected member and one critical of unions in the press — forcing the strike and the unnecessary Oct. 19 tragedy.

And he posed a question that remains unanswered, despite the hearing and the Guardian’s attempts to get an answer: “Who authorized the training exercise and to what extent were the BART directors involved?”

Promo: Shop local, shop unique this holiday season

Maria Poblet

November 7, 2013

Promo: Shop local, shop unique this holiday season

This Saturday, November 9, the brand new Jack of All Trades Market at Jack London Square features over 150 locally curated vendors selling a range of antiques, vintage apparel, handmade jewelry, new fashion and design, handmade items, and up-cycled furniture.

In addition to the shopping there will be a lineup of food trucks, holiday drinks, craft beer, and live music!

Held every second Saturday, market hours are from 11am to 5pm. Entry is free and dog friendly.

Join the event on Facebook to win a $100 shopping spree!

See more at JackofAllTradesOakland.com.

Barbie gets a makeover, San Francisco-style

Sue Vaughan

November 6, 2013

Last Wednesday, Shotwell 50 Studio launched its 11th annual San Francisco AlteredBarbie Exhibition, “The Doll That Has It All!” The show features the doll that dominated so many of our childhoods as she has never appeared before. Statues, dioramas, paintings, and photographs created by dozens of artists test the limits of the familiar figure in this unusual creative reuse exhibit. “To alter Barbie is almost a religious thing,” states Julie Andersen, who curates the exhibit each year. “It’s very blasphemous. That’s how strong the icon is.”

Whether you revere Barbie’s beauty and envy her abundance of accessories, or you despise the provocative hussy’s unearthly perfection and ravenous consumerism, these pieces are sure to fascinate viewers. At the entrance of the gallery, Beyond the Web of Illusion features a partially-nude Barbie trapped in a spider’s web. The doll’s honor is preserved by the cover that the giant tarantula devouring her provides.

In the far corner, Ghost Barbie stands looking like a gothic showgirl, adorned in a skimpy outfit and eerily opaque head mask made of over 1,000 Swarovski crystals. All-Barbie Centaur Dance Ensemble is placed in the center of the space, a collection of six-limbed, two-headed creatures with animal-print bodies made from pairs of Barbie dolls. Framed photographs from a Barbie show that a Dutch artist mounted inside a cathedral capture such scenes as a Princess Barbie under attack by a group of dirty, naked Barbies in chains (The Last Barbie Part One); and a statue of the Virgin Mary with the Baby Jesus sitting beside a Princess Barbie in a matching dress with her own baby doll on her lap (Two Madonnas).

Here, Barbie lies under the blade of a guillotine. There, a picture of her and Ken on their wedding day shows their skin melting to bone. Near the door, two skeletons dressed for the prom stand in a box with the words “Memento Mori” above their heads and “Barbie + Ken” at their feet. At some points humorous, at others haunting, the profusion of works featured in this year’s exhibition nearly overwhelms the small space.

Collectors, take note: all of the pieces featured in the AlteredBarbie Exhibition are for sale. On Nov. 17, the public is invited to meet the artists from 3-10pm at the closing reception. The event will feature live music, cabaret, and a drag performance by the Ethel Merman Experience.

Through Nov. 17, free

Shotwell 50 Studio

50 Shotwell, SF

www.alteredbarbie.com

Hearing to probe safety at BART and issues related to recent tragedy

Sasha Cuttler

November 6, 2013

Hearing to probe safety at BART and issues related to recent tragedy

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment will hold a hearing in San Francisco tomorrow (Thu/7 at 10am) looking at workplace safety issues in the BART system, one initially prompted by the district’s record of unaddressed safety violations, but which took on special resonance when two BART workers were killed on the tracks on Oct. 19.

Assemblymember Phil Ting called for the hearing back in June, but he postponed it until the district resolved a protracted contract impasse with its three unions that resulted in two four-day strikes this year, with an agreement finally reached two days after the tragedy — and at least partially prompted by it.

Ting told the Guardian that he was motivated by dozens of violations from the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration that the district has received since its last fatality in 2008 — which were highlighted by the unions and reported by us — and the fact that “BART ended up appealing them instead of going to fix them.”

“It’s so unfortunate that we have this tragedy, which will create a greater sense of urgency on this issue,” Ting said, noting that he wants to focus on, “How do we move forward and fix these problems?”

Beyond those safety issues lurk another important issue that we at the Guardian have been raising, but which most journalists have ignored and the district has tried to avoided addressing: Was the district ignoring safety concerns by its unions to train replacement drivers on that ill-fated train, and did its preparations to run limited service during a strike harden its negotiating stance and force the strikes and ultimately the tragedy?

It may be many months before the National Transportation Safety Board investigation arrives at conclusions about what caused the fatalities, but it has already said that a trainee was at the helm at the time. Although the NTSB has told the district not to publicly discuss the accident, that doesn’t cover the labor negotiations that led up to it, and the Guardian has finally been able to get some responses from the district to our questions (below, you can find an extended exchange between me and BART spokesperson Alicia Trost), but key questions remain unanswered.

Will tomorrow’s hearing illuminate the connection between the labor impasse and the tragedy? “We’ll have to touch on some of it,” Ting told us. “But I’m not sure what they’ll say.”

BART Board President Tom Radulovich discussed the issues with the Guardian, and he cautioned about any rush to judgement about the cause of the Oct. 19 accident and whether it was connected to preparations that the district was making to possibly offer replacement service, which the board would have had to approve.

Although he said the board was briefed by district officials about the possibility of offering service, Radulovich said he didn’t consider the idea feasible and that “a lot of directors had misgivings about even the possibility of running replacement service.”

Radulovich also defended the eventual deal as resulting from compromises on both sides and not simply the district sweetening its offer and dropping some of its work rule demands — which the unions had blamed for the Oct. 17 breakdown in negotiations — and “I don’t think [limited replacement service] would have broken a strike.”

But SEIU Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly, who was part of the union’s negotiating team, said the district was “bargaining toward a strike” all year and that the threat of running replacement service was taken seriously by the unions, all of whom warned the district it would be unsafe.

“We would have lost this fight if they had put limited service on,” Daly told us, noting how that would have allowed the district to weather a strike long enough to break the will of union members.

Daly also disputes the district’s characterization that relaxed work rules demands by the unions settled the impasse, telling us, “In the end, the deal was a little more compromise on substance, but not as much as that would have occurred in the binding arbitration that we proposed before the strikes.”

The district rejected that offer, setting the stage for the latest strike, and Daly said the only reason why BART softened its stance was because the tragedy made BART realize its plan to run replacement service was not longer a viable option: “There is not question in anyone’s mind that was the breakthrough.”

Both Radulovich and district officials insist there were no active plans to run replacement service, although BART spokesperson Alicia Trost made clear that the district had publicly raised that possibility and that training to that end was already underway at the time the tragedy.

Radulovich insists that the district wasn’t bargained toward a strike and that “we just wanted a balanced package.” But he also wasn’t at the bargaining table, and he says that he’s not aware of how much driver training had been done and whether it was being done on the ill-fated train in preparation for replacement service.

“I still have a lot of questions and I do want to see the facts,” Radulovich told us.

We at the Guardian also still have a lot of questions, which Trost was dodging until just a few days ago, when my last blog post on the topic finally prompted a substantial response. So here’s our most recent email exchange:

SFBG: Who at the district proposed training replacement drivers and did the board approve that training?
Did the district discuss warnings from the unions that such training would be unsafe? Why was the decision made to go ahead with the training anyway?
Why did it take days for BART to admit a trainee was driving the train that killed those men? And wasn’t casting that train as solely on a maintenance run deceptive?
Does the district regret the decision to train replacement drivers?
What role did the tragedy play in BART’s decision to sweeten its final offer and end the strike?
Did anyone at the district discuss with Tom Hocke how running replacement service could help break a strike? Do you deny that running limited service would help to break a strike?
Did the possibility of running replacement service allow the district to take a tougher stance at the bargaining table? And did this tragedy help the district conclude that running such service wasn’t a viable option?
Can you characterize what you meant by an “extended strike” and explain why training took place immediately at the onset if the strike?

BART: The District wanted a plan in place to run limited train service in the event of a prolonged strike. The intent was never to replace workers, as our workers would be welcomed back once a strike ended, but to provide some limited congestion relief if the Bay Area was faced with a long, crippling and economically devastating strike.

If the district was going to provide this limited service for the public it would need more certified managers which is why we were training. At the same time we were negotiating in good faith and trying to prevent a strike from happening in the first place. Our priority was always to get to a deal and avoid an unnecessary strike. Once the unions went on strike for the second time we continued to negotiate and leave the door open for a deal. Which is exactly what happened. A deal came together and BART never needed to go to the board with a limited train service plan. Safety is always our top priority and is always the first, second and third consideration in everything we do.

The NTSB immediately put a gag order on BART officials just hours after the tragic deaths, which remains in place today. Only the NTSB can provide information surrounding the incident. The NTSB announced the train was being used for both maintenance and training purposes. Under the gag order, BART is allowed to site what the NTSB has reported to date.

The tragedy certainly redoubled everyone’s efforts to get to a deal. The breakthrough came when the unions presented language on Beneficial Past Practice on Sunday night. This opened the door to continue to work off the progress that had been made on the economic components with the mediators just days before and resolve the remaining issues.

SFBG: Thanks for finally getting back to me, but I don’t think you directly answered any of the questions that I posed.

BART: Did BART management consider the warnings (include one in the form of a

lawsuit) that running that service was unsafe? Safety is always our top priority and is always the first, second and third consideration in everything we do.

And did the tragedy reinforce that safety question and signal to the district that running trains during a strike was probably unwise and that the district should sweeten its contract offer?

We have to run trains during a strike to exercise the system (details sent in a earlier email.) If you are talking about running passenger service, we never needed to move forward with such a plan as we were not faced with a prolonged strike. The tragedy certainly redoubled everyone’s efforts to get to a deal. The breakthrough came when the unions presented language on Beneficial Past Practice on Sunday night. This opened the door to continue to work off the progress that had been made on the economic components with the mediators just days before and resolve the remaining issues.

Who at the district proposed training replacement drivers and did the board approve that training?

The Operations Department was conducting the training as publically discussed by Paul Oversier to the MTC and to the media. The board does not need to approve training. (on background: I do not know if or who officially “proposed it.” The first I learned of the concept was the MTC meeting.)

Did the district discuss warnings from the unions that such training would be unsafe? Why was the decision made to go ahead with the training anyway?

Safety is always our top priority and is always the first, second and third consideration in everything we do. The District wanted a plan in place to run limited train service in the event of a prolonged strike.

Why did it take days for BART to admit a trainee was driving the train that killed those men? And wasn’t casting that train as solely on a maintenance run deceptive?

During the press conference immediately following the accident, a reporter asked where the train was going. Mr. Oversier explained the train had just dropped off the graffiti train and was headed back to Concord. He said he didn’t know who was driving the train as he had just arrived to the scene. The NTSB immediately put a gag order on BART

officials just hours after the tragic deaths, which remains in place today. Only the NTSB can provide information surrounding the incident. The NTSB announced the train was being used for both maintenance and training purposes. Under the gag order, BART is allowed to site what the NTSB has reported to date, which is why we can now point out the fact the train was both a training train and a maintenance/inspection trains we routinely run during strikes to exercise the system and deploy staff to assignments.
Does the district regret the decision to train replacement drivers?

This is a difficult question to answer without a summary of findings from the NTSB.
What role did the tragedy play in BART’s decision to sweeten its final

offer and end the strike?

Did anyone at the district discuss with Tom Hocke how running replacement

service could help break a strike?

No, the intent was to provide some contingencies for the travelling public being adversely impacted by the unions decision to strike.

Do you deny that running limited service would help to break a strike?

The intent was never to replace workers, as our workers would be welcomed back once a strike ended, but to provide some limited congestion relief if the Bay Area was faced with a long, crippling and economically devastating strike. Skeletal service would never be able to replace BART’s normal operation but it could provide a tiny bit of
congestion relief to the public. BART’s bargaining team was always focused
on getting a deal with union leadership- one that would be approved by the
workers as well.

Did the possibility of running replacement service allow the district to take a tougher stance at the bargaining table? And did this tragedy help the district conclude that running such service wasn’t a viable option?

Our priority was always to get to a deal and avoid an unnecessary strike. Once the unions went on strike for the second time we continued to negotiate in good faith and leave the door open for a deal. Which is exactly what happened. A deal came together and BART never needed to go to the board with a limited train service plan.

Can you characterize what you meant by an “extended strike” and explain why training took place immediately at the onset if the strike?

There was never an exact time period placed on what an “extended strike” would be, but
union leadership indicated publically they were prepared for a month long strike which would be the “longest and bloodiest strike” we’ve ever seen. We began initial training weeks before the strike- as widely covered by the media. If the district was going to provide limited service for the public it would need more certified managers than we had.

Tale of two parties: Was the 8 Washington defeat a referendum on City Hall?

Sasha Cuttler

November 6, 2013

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From tonight’s victory party for opponents of the 8 Washington waterfront luxury condo project, the overwhelming defeat of developer-backed Propositions B&C seemed to go beyond just this project. It sounded and felt like a blow against Mayor Ed Lee’s economic policies, the gentrification of the city, and the dominion that developers and power brokers have at City Hall.

“What started as a referendum on height limits on the waterfront has become a referendum on the mayor and City Hall,” former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin told the large and buoyant crowd, a message repeated again and again tonight.

Former Mayor Art Agnos also cast the victory over 8 Washington as the people standing up against narrow economic and political interests that want to dictate what gets built on public land on the waterfront, driven by larger concerns about who controls San Francisco and who gets to live here.

“This is not the end, this is the beginning and it feels like a movement,” Agnos told the crowd. “We’ll have to tell the mayor that his legacy,” a term Lee has used to describe the Warriors Arena he wants to build on Piers 30-32,” is not going to be on our waterfront.”

Campaign Manager Jon Golinger also described the victory in terms of a political awakening and turning point: “We are San Francisco and you just heard us roar!”

Campaign consultant Jim Stearns told the Guardian that he thought the measures would be defeated, but everyone was surprised by the wide margin – the initiative B lost by 25 points, the referendum C was 33 points down – which he attributed to the “perfect storm” of opposition.

Stearns cited three factors that triggered the overwhelming defeat: recent populist outrage over the city’s affordability crisis, concerns about waterfront height crossing ideological lines, and “a tone deaf City Hall that didn’t want to hear there were any problems with the project.”.

Among the key project opponents who have sometimes stood in opposition to the city’s progressives was former City Attorney Louise Renne, who blasted City Hall and called the Planning Department “utterly disgraceful,” telling the crowd, “Get your rest, more to come, San Francisco.”

Both progressive and political moderates often share a distrust of the close connections between powerful developers and the Mayor’s Office, and that seemed to play out in this campaign and at the polls.

“San Francisco, this victory is for you. And to all those developers out there: Do not mess with our waterfront. We’re not going to stand for it,” Renne said.

Two supervisors who opposed 8 Washington – David Chiu and Davis Campos – also spoke at the event, with the latter starting to define their political differences as they each run for the Assembly seat being vacated after next year by Tom Ammiano.

“Tonight, San Francisco said we stand for affordable housing and not luxury condos,” said Chiu, who played a pivotal role in appointing Lee as mayor and ending the progressive dominance on the Board of Supervisors.

Campos followed by noting, “I’ve been criticized for saying we’re seeing a tale of two San Franciscos, but that’s what we have here,” referencing a theme that echoes (as Chiu’s campaign operatives have critically noted) that of progressive Bill de Blasio, who also won a resounding victory tonight in the New York City mayor’s race.

“We have a City Hall that, quite frankly, doesn’t get it,” Campos continued, referencing the redevelopment of Parkmerced’s rent control housing and today’s board vote to close city parks at night, both of which Chiu was the swing vote in approving. “When City Hall doesn’t get it right, the people of San Francisco step in.”

Peskin also stoked the class warfare fires by saying, “Your voices are being heard loud and clear in Simon Snellgrove’s penthouse,” referencing the 8 Washington developer who spent nearly $2 million on this unsuccessful campaign. And Peskin said he had a message directly for Mayor Lee: “Wake up, San Francisco is talking!”

Judge Quentin Kopp, who fought downtown’s aggressive push for more high-rise development as a Westside supervisor back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, called tonight’s victory “history repeating itself,” mentioning the work that the Bay Guardian did in opposition to “the Manhattanization of San Francisco.”

Kopp also took a swipe at Mayor Lee, the protégé of Kopp’s old nemesis, former Mayor Willie Brown, when he said, “This is the beginning of the end of five more years of Willie Brown’s administration.”

Indeed, the current political moment is beginning to feel a little like 1999, when Brown won a narrow re-election victory against the upstart write-in campaign of progressive hero Tom Ammiano and a movement stirred by the evictions and gentrification of the last dot-com bubble. The next year, progressive candidates won a majority on the Board of Supervisors and held it for almost a decade.

One of those supervisors was Chris Daly, now political director of SEIU Local 1021, who was at the North Beach party and told the Guardian that while Mayor Lee has been trying to defend bad policies like his Twitter tax break and support for 8 Washington, the voters tonight really had their fingers on the pulse of the city: “I’d call this a referendum on Ed Lee’s policies in San Francisco.”

Meanwhile, it was a very different scene over at the Yes on B&C party:

The party was held at Coqueta, an upscale waterfront establishment just a stone’s throw from the 8 Washington project site. Despite the trays of gourmet hors d’oeuvres and frothy mojitos floating past, the guests were subdued and the mood was not celebratory.

Developer Simon Snellgrove, whose 8 Washington project was essentially being flushed down the tubes tonight, was in no mood to comment. “I’m having a little private party tonight,” he told us, “and I don’t want to talk to the press.”

Rose Pak, a consultant for the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce who is well-known for her ties to powerful interests in the city, had a small circle of guests around her throughout the night and spent some time catching up with Snellgrove. Asked to comment, Pak said, “I don’t know the Bay Guardian,” and stopped making eye contact. At previous events, Pak has lectured Guardian reporters about what she sees as the paper’s shortcomings.

Other notables included Jim Lazarus, who works on public policy for the Chamber of Commerce, P.J. Johnston, a former communications director for Willie Brown, and of course Tim Colen of the Housing Action Coalition and former planner Alec Bash, both of whom campaigned publicly for the project.

Mayor Ed Lee was expected to make an appearance but if he did, it was after the party’s prime and after the Guardian had already left the scene.

After the first round of results came in, Colen addressed the crowd. “The returns are coming in and I have to tell you they don’t look good,” he said. “It’s pretty likely we’re not going to prevail tonight.” Then went onto recognize “some really magnificent warriors” in the room, including Snellgrove and Alicia Esterkamp Allbin, a Principal at development firm Pacific Waterfront Partners.

“We ran a wonderful campaign we can all be proud of,” he added. “It was going to be a wonderful activation for the waterfront. I think what we didn’t see coming was how .. it somehow morphed into something much larger and was defined in different ways.”

Lazarus told the Guardian, “I’m not optimistic,” when asked early on in the night what he thought about the outcome. He added, “I think this project got caught up in a lot of other things.”

“If it loses … There was a lot of I think mistaken concern about the impact.”

Noting that the project went through months of approval but then was subject to a referendum and finally wound up on the ballot, he criticized the focus on building heights and the idea that it was about something more than just a waterfront development project. But this was the outcome, he said, because “An unholy alliance of people got together to oppose the project.”

Perhaps “unholy alliance” is in the eyes of the beholder, but tonight, the voters of San Francisco seemed to prefer the alliance that opposed 8 Washington and all that it has come to represent in San Francisco.

Alive, not well

Michael Redmond

November 5, 2013

[Update: La Luz was in a car accident during its tour and will no longer be playing these shows. The accident totaled the van, destroyed the gear, and band members suffered injuries. To donate, click here]

TOFU AND WHISKEY Sometimes the unexpected can rip you apart. It can gnaw at your insides, leave your stomach in knots, and twist your thoughts into a confused, messy blur. And sometimes, those rare unanticipated moments can inspire you anew. All the hurt and bewilderment and dark emotions reconfigure and morph into a project, such as an album.

La Luz guitarist-vocalist Shana Cleveland felt this molten wave firsthand and the end result is a striking, blackened surf rock album with four-way doo-wop melodies and churling riffs smacking against the seawall. It’s the full-length debut from the Seattle all-lady quartet: It’s Alive (Hardly Art). The group tours to SF this week, opening up for of Montreal (Fri/8-Sat/9, 9pm, $21. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.slimspresents.com).

It’s Alive was built from death. “When something that dramatic happens, it could either crush you or give you a crazy energy,” Cleveland says. “For me it was like, after I came out of just being really depressed for awhile I was really inspired to….I don’t know exactly how to phrase it. It’s kind of a weird thing to talk about, I guess. It’s so heavy.”

That heavy moment took place May 30, 2012, when a deranged shooter burst into a Seattle café — Café Racer, where Cleveland and her friends routinely hung out — and killed five people. Around the corner from her house, it’s where she first met La Luz bassist Abby Blackwell. On that spring day last year, it’s where her friend Drew Keriakedes (otherwise known as “Shmootzi the Clod”), a vaudeville-style singing circus clown, died, slain in the rampage.

She describes him as always giving open, honest performances that made everyone fall in love with him — that performance style informed her own artistry. And the months after the shooting informed her songwriting. Though she also notes an intuition affected the record.

“It’s weird because a lot of the lyrics I wrote before the shooting happened and then a lot of them I wrote after. But then when I looked back…I kept seeing these weird premonitions. It just seems like the air was really heavy with this insane event and I was sort of channeling this crazy shit that was about to happen. This sounds kind of New Age-y. But when I looked back over the lyrics I was just like, ‘holy shit!’ I think I just felt something in the air.”

That gloom bled into It’s Alive, a record equally inspired by legendary surf guitarist Link Wray, who also lent a darker edge to the style.

“So it’s sort of a haunted album. It’s kind of cool that it’s coming out around Halloween, it seems fitting.”

It’s the band’s first real record, though before it played a single show, it recorded a demo tape called Damp Face. Both were recorded with the group’s friend Johnny Goss, who was living in a trailer park on the outskirts of town at the time. Goss, who “accumulated all this really cool old recording gear,” took a leisurely approach to It’s Alive, hanging out with La Luz and working together to add new vocal overdubs or extra fuzz.

Cleveland describes it as a highly collaborative process between Goss and the rest of La Luz — bassist Blackwell, drummer Marian Li Pino, and keyboardist Alice Sandahl — though she wrote the bulk of the lyrics before they started playing together. Once La Luz came together, the group altered the music and included everyone’s input.

But Cleveland is also comfortable making art on her own. In addition to La Luz, she’s also a poet (she actually majored in poetry at Columbia College in Chicago) and a visual artist, known for drawings and paintings of other bands and singers, often with big retro hairstyles or matching vintage suits.

“I found this record in a thrift store once and someone had done like, a ballpoint pen drawing of Buffalo Springfield. It was tucked inside of the record and I was really fascinated by it..and I kind of became obsessed with it. I’ve [always] been kind of obsessed with bands I guess, because my parents were both in bands too so it’s my whole life.”

Her dad plays in country and blues bands, her mom sings and plays blues harmonica. They met on tour, in fact — her dad was traveling with a band and stopped in her mom’s Colorado town, then she joined him on the road.

Cleveland grew up playing the instruments her parents — since divorced — had strewn around the house in Kalamazoo, Mich. She picked up guitar around 15 and began playing Veruca Salt songs.

After college, Cleveland headed west to LA but says she hated living in the San Fernando Valley. One day her mom brought her a copy of Seattle alt-weekly, The Stranger, and on a whim, she decided to move there.

“I packed up my Oldsmobile and moved. I don’t know if [The Stranger] knows that yet! I kind of want to tell them.”

Seattle became home and she has since ingrained herself in the local music scene, ticking off favorite Seattle acts like Rose Windows — “They’re doing this like, ’60s psych Jefferson Airplane kind of thing, they’re all really amazing players” — blues combo Lonesome Shack, and Pony Time.

For now, La Luz is touring on It’s Alive, and revving up for a first ever European jaunt in early 2014. While the songwriting began on a darker note, Cleveland is now seeing brightness in the future, at least when I pry out her band goals: “I really want to tour with Ty Segall. That’s just a dream of mine because I would like to see him play every night. I hope that happens. I really want to play with Shannon and the Clams too, because we’re all huge fans of theirs. And the Growwlers. We just played with them but I think it’d be fun to play more shows with them in the future too. They’re one of our favorite bands.”

SIX WEEKS RECORDS 20TH ANNIVERSARY

Two decades is a long lifeline for a DIY record label — especially one known for such short songs. Six Weeks Records, founded in ’92 by Athena Kautsch and Jeff Robinson, has distributed dozens of grimy grindcore, breakneck punk, and loud-as-hell hardcore albums from bands around the world. Clearly dedicated to the art of deafening music, the label also publishes the Short, Fast & Loud fanzine. This two-night anniversary fest features acts of the Six Weeks Records family including LA powerviolence legends Despise You, Tokyo’s Slight Slappers, NY’s Magrudergrind, Capitalist Casualties, Backslider, Coke Bust, P.L.F, and more.

Fri/8-Sat/9, 7pm, $17 each ($30 two-day pass). Oakland Metro, 630 Third St, Oakl. www.oaklandmetro.org.

MINOR ALPS

With Matthew Caws of Nada Surf and Juliana Hatfield of guest-starring-angel-on-My So-Called Life fame forming an intricate new pop band together — Minor Alps — it’s clear the ’90s resurgence beats on. The guitar-swelling, melodious new act, which just released debut LP Get There (Barsuk), plays the Independent Mon/11. And with it comes openers Churches, whom we previewed here at the Guardian before. The Nirvana-loving Bay Area band just released two new tracks: “Pretty in Black” and “Goths on the Boardwalk.” Says frontperson Caleb Nichols, “‘Goths on the Boardwalk’ is the culmination of my two years of living in Santa Cruz. It’s been weird — goths everywhere. [It’s] an ode to my love-hate with this place.” The angst continues.

Mon/11, 8pm, $20. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com.

CRASHFASTER

Local Nintendo-blasting electro rock group crashfaster released the track “Beacon,” the first single of its forthcoming sophomore LP, Further, this week. Like its earlier work, “Beacon” is a bouncy, nostalgic, digi-ride through ’80s video game culture, backed by motorcycle revving guitarwork and sound effects, in rock’n’roll chiptune style, which looks good for the rest of Further. Recorded at Different Fur Studios, that new full-length sees release Nov. 19 — but before that there’s a show at DNA Lounge. With Bit Shifter, Trash80, Unwoman.

Nov. 14, 9pm, $15. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF. www.dnalounge.com.

On the Cheap: November 6 – 12, 2013

Michael Redmond

November 5, 2013

On the Cheap 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 6

“The Big Book of Orgasms: 69 Sexy Stories” Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF; www.goodvibes.com. 6:30pm, free. Contributors read from editor Rachel Kramer Bussel’s latest erotica anthology.

David Henry and Joe Henry Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College, Oakl; www.dieselbookstore.com. 7pm, free. The brothers (David’s a screenwriter; Joe’s a musician) discuss their new book, Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him.

THURSDAY 7

Bill Ayers Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The author discusses Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident, a sequel to his Fugitive Days that delves into his life after the Weather Underground.

Travis Smith and Chris Bale Books Inc., 2275 Market, SF; www.booksinc.net. 7:30pm, free. The authors discuss their best-selling travel book, Guide for the Modern Bear, at this official SF Bear Pride Week (www.sfbearpride.com) event.

FRIDAY 8

“Last Word Reading Series” Nefeli Caffe, 1834 Euclid, Berk; (510) 841-6374. 7pm, free. Poets Ivan Arguelles and Mary-Marcia Castoly read, followed by an open mic.

“A Planned Disappearance Of” Proxy, 432 Octavia, SF; www.deptofarchitecture.com. 6-9:30pm, free. Also Sat/9, noon-8pm, free. Dept. of Architecture gallery presents this pop-up event with sound performances, temporary exhibitions, talks, music, and more.

SATURDAY 9

Daniel Alarcón Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College, Oakl; www.dieselbookstore.com. 7pm, free. The San Francisco-based author discusses his latest novel, At Night We Walk in Circles.

“Celebration of Craftswomen” Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, Buchanan at Marina, SF; www.fortmason.org. 10am-5pm. Through Mon/11. $7-9 (free for children 12 and under; two-day pass, $15). Over 190 female artists showcase their wares and skills at this 35th annual juried event. Proceeds benefit the Women’s Building.

“Come Out & Play Festival” Today: Everett Middle School, 450 Church, SF; www.comeoutandplaysf.org. 11am-7pm (Journey to the End of Night, pre-registration required, 7pm), free. Sun/10, Mission Recreation Center, 2450 Harrison, SF. 11am-4pm, free. Local and visiting designers and street-game enthusiasts take to the Mission for smart phone-based games, alternative sports, sidewalk chalk-based adventures, and more.

“Diwali: The Festival of Lights” Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center, 401 Baker, SF; www.bksanfrancisco.com. 6-8pm, free (register online). Celebrate the Indian festival of Diwali, or “festival of lights,” with music and meditation to envision “the dawn of the era of peace, happiness, and prosperity.” Supervisor London Breed is the special guest.

“Issue in Focus: The Chocolate Industry” Eric Quezada Center for Cultura and Politics, 518 Valencia, SF; www.518valencia.org. 6-9pm, $5-10. Food Empowerment Project screens two short films (The Dark Side of Chocolate and The Shady Side of Chocolate) at its first-ever public event.

San Francisco Opera Free Community Open House War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, SF; www.sfopera.com. 10:30am-2:30pm, free. Onstage musical demonstrations, stage combat workshops, makeup and costume demos, a costume photo booth, scavenger hunt, food trucks, and more highlight this second annual event. Register online to win tickets to The Barber of Seville or The Barber of Seville for Families at sfopera.com/openhouse.

SF Green Festival Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St, SF; www.greenfestivals.org. 10am-6pm; Sun/10, 11am-5pm. $10-15. Two-day festival celebrating sustainability and ecology, with cooking demos, environmental films, speakers, activities for kids, a green-biz marketplace, and more.

SUNDAY 10

Novemberfest in Temescal Alley Temescal Alley, 49th St at Temescal, Oakl; www.temescalalleys.com. Noon-4pm, free (beers, $5; all-you-can-drink tasting glass, $15-25; proceeds benefit Walk Oakland Bike Oakland). Live music and a showcase of local craft brewers, including Linden Street Brewery, Calicraft, Ale Industries, Drakes Brewing Company, and others.

MONDAY 11

Gail Carriger Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia, SF; www.borderlands-books.com. 7pm, free. The steampunk author reads from Curtsies and Conspiracies, the second title in her “Finishing School” series.

TUESDAY 12

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft, Berk; www.universitypressbooks.com. 6pm, free. The author discusses indigenous resistance and the re-release of The Great Sioux Nation: Sitting in Judgment on America. There will also be a poetry reading by Julie Thi Underhill, a descendant of the indigenous Cham of Vietnam.

“The Fabulous World of Queer Pulp Yesterday and Today” Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. 6pm, free. Pulp icon Ann Bannon, historians Martin Meeker and Jenny Worey, and authors F. Allen Sawyer and Monica Nolan gather to discuss queer pulp paperbacks.

Warren Lehrer Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The artist and author discusses A Life in Books: The Ride and Fall of Beau Mobley. *

Media let BART slide

Michael Redmond

November 5, 2013

BART continues to stonewall important questions about whether it was training scab drivers to break the recent strike by its unions when its trainee-driven train killed two workers on Oct. 19 — a stance made possible by the failure of the mainstream media to connect the dots or correct the anti-union bias that characterized its coverage of this long labor impasse.

Local journalists have failed to highlight the connection between that tragedy and the subsequent decision by the district to suddenly soften its stance and sweeten its offer, within hours of the National Transportation Safety Board revealing that a trainee was driving and that BART’s “maintenance run” story was a deception.

Local media outlets did dutifully report that a trainee was driving, but they failed to point out to readers and viewers the significance of that disclosure or ask the district whether the training was intended to break the strike and whether that plan fed the district’s hardline bargaining stance.

We have asked those questions of the district, and when we got misleading obfuscations, we asked again and again, and our questions are still being largely ignored. And here’s why they matter: Because if the district was planning to run trains during the strike, it reinforces the unions’ contention that the district forced a strike that it was preparing to break, a plan that became untenable when two people died, just as the unions warned might happen if the district ran trains without experienced drivers.

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost did finally confirm to us that, “BART has been training some non-union employees to operate limited passenger train service in the event of an extended strike if so authorized by the Board of Directors,” but she and BART Board President Tom Radulovich have each ignored our follow-up questions and requests to discuss this is greater detail.

This should be a huge scandal, the kind of thing that might force General Manager Grace Crunican to resign and BART directors to lose their seats — except for the fact that the media are ignoring this simple, obvious narrative and failing to do their job.

The East Bay Express, a rare exception on the local media landscape, published an excellent article on Oct. 30 about how the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area News Group (which includes the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and San Jose Mercury News) misled the public about the BART standoff.

Not only have these daily newspapers written some truly atrociously anti-worker editorials, but even the supposedly objective news stories have been clearly biased in their emphasis and omissions, including the current failure to demand accountability.

But this could backfire considering the truth will probably come out eventually, even if it’s long after the media spotlight has moved on. NTSB investigations can take up to a year, but they are remarkably thorough and it will probably eventually discuss why these drivers were being trained.

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment announced on Oct. 29 that it will also hold a hearing to “get to the bottom” of the tragedy, and one can only hope that someone on that committee will grill the district about its intentions in running that ill-fated train and conducting new driver training just one day into the latest strike.

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