Event Archives — Page 64 of 149 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Some joy in Mudville

Andrew Lam

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November 15, 2011

caitlin@sfbg.com

“I like the way you trim it/I got to bag it/Bag it up.” A ganja-fied version of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” was playing over the speakers the night of Saturday, November 12 at 847 Lounge, an event space above the SoMa dispensary Green Door. The party’s mood was — yes — high as patients awaited the announcement of the winners in three categories of cannabis products at the Patient’s Choice awards ceremony, conversation with the activists and patients assembled in the room veered towards the serious.

Medical marijuana activist Mellody Gannon enjoyed the scene from a table in the center of the room: “As a patient, it’s really important right now that things like this are going on,” she said. Amid puzzling federal crackdowns, the future of her medicine is smoky. Recent pressure from the Department of Justice on landlords and banks has caused many dispensaries to consider shutting their doors (see “Feds crack down,” 10/12/11).

Which is why she was heartened to see cannabis connoisseurs coming together to celebrate the best of what California cannabis producers have to offer.

This year’s Patient’s Choice event was a much more intimate affair. Attendance was open to the public in 2010, but this year was limited to dispensary staff, activists, and the patients who had paid the $350 for a judge’s testing package. Judges had to sample over 30 strains (not to mention other products) in the 10 days leading up to Friday, when their votes were tallied and winners announced to stoned elation.

The event, sponsored by many of the city’s best-known dispensaries, was a fundraiser for Americans for Safe Access (ASA), an organization that promotes secure and available ways for prescribed patients to access medical marijuana.

Gannon, a patient since 1996, said that ASA’s advocacy is important — many times her doctors have turned up their nose at the medical efficacy of her marijuana prescription. “They tell you that you’re crazy or just a pothead,” she said.

After breaking a host of bones in a car accident, she relies on cannabis to mitigate chronic pain. “If they start closing these clubs, where are you going to go?” she asked.

Lynette Shaw sat nearby, smoking a strain home-grown buds she’s named Bonanza Jellybean. Shaw founded the Marin Alliance dispensary in Fairfax in 1997 after working on the Proposition 215 campaign the year before. She obtained special zoning from the city for the dispensary and insisted “we’ve done everything they told us to, even when the rules changed. We’re completely regulated to the satisfaction of the community.”

Nonetheless, one of the Department of Justice’s cease-and-desist letters landed in the mailbox of her landlord. Now unless something changes, Shaw’s dispensary — located in a county with one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the nation — will be out on the streets. Her landlord was threatened with 40 years in prison for renting to an illegal drug trafficker.

While others have pegged the Obama administration’s about-face on the tolerance of medical cannabis to election year grandstanding, Shaw thinks the persecution of state-legal marijuana operations like her own is a harbinger of much more dire civil rights violations.

“They’re trying to break the Constitution over marijuana. That’s why it’s important that we fight back now,” she said.

It was clear from the crowd at 847 Lounge that the medical marijuana movement wasn’t going to lose their meds without a fight. Perhaps strangely, the family producers that proudly hoisted their glass, Stanley Cup-looking trophies for best strain and other products still had an air of winning about them.

Occupy 101

Andrew Lam

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November 15, 2011

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By Raj Jayadev, director of Silicon Valley DeBug, a multi-media platform for covering San Jose and the South Bay communities such as youth, immigrants and low-wage workers.

OPINION The One Percent are not only the bankers and traders on Wall Street — they’re alive and thriving in Silicon Valley. And yet no one is encamped outside of Google in Mountain View or in front of Facebook. The protestors have rather targeted Wall Street and the government. But the new super rich of Silicon Valley have managed to come up in an economy that as shed jobs and houses and social safety nets — and their money allows them to set its rules.

President Obama flies to Silicon Valley and is flattered by the company of the valley’s One Percent. Steven Jobs even famously criticized the way the president was doing his job. And the president took it.

At the southern end of Silicon Valley, in front of San Jose’s City Hall, there are dozens of Occupy San Jose protesters, championing the call to action that originated with New York’s Occupy Wall Street. But at the Martin Luther King Library around the corner, a young rapper named Ookie is showing a photo essay on the impact of closing youth centers and libraries. It’s the image of a baggie stuck on a fence of a closed city community center that raises the most anger in the audience. They held an event called “Growing Up Poor” where young people — through photo, video, spoken word — are sharing to a group of policy-makers, advocates, and media what their Silicon Valley looks like in a time when family poverty has climbed to unprecedented levels, and in a place with such a high cost of living, the impact is even more acute.

In San Jose, the city that used to promote itself as the capitol of Silicon Valley, city budget cuts have either eliminated or dramatically slashed hours for youth sanctuaries like libraries and community centers. And for young people, libraries had been the only public spaces left where they could shelter themselves from the fall out of the economy — the escalating violence on the streets, cops, the cold — and as one young poet from a neighborhood in East San Jose that has seen multiple stabbings and shootings in the past few months shared, “A place where you can read James Baldwin before you die.”

After Ookie’s photo display, the event becomes an amped up strategy session; everyone is ignited to save the libraries and centers. They shout about taking over library commission meetings, or marching on City Hall. But the truth is, City Hall is still part of the 99%, and is broke too.

San Jose is different than all the other Occupy’s across the county. For us, the 1% are just up the street — the 101 to be precise. Those tech giants exist in the same Silicon Valley that cannot even keep its library doors open. Why have they not given? Why have we not demanded?

In Silicon Valley, the 99% demanding from the 1% is not hypothetical; we can literally knock on their doors, or more in the spirit of the moment, occupy their space.

Occupy Wall Street has inspired the world in what it started by lifting the veil on a corrupt economic setup. And the general strike at Occupy Oakland turned that protest into an action so real it literally disrupted the flow the economy when it shut down the ports. But an Occupy the 101 might be able to accomplish the most tangible result of all, even if it sounds less revolutionary. It could keep our library doors open. And what’s more radical then allowing kids to read Baldwin?

Alerts

Andrew Lam

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November 15, 2011

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alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 16

Confront the UC Regents

Editor’s Note: The UC canceled this meeting as we were going to press, citing public safety concerns, and protest organizers were figuring out how to respond. Check our Politics blog or www.makebankspaycalifornia.com for the latest.

The UC Board of Regents will be meeting at the UCSF Mission Bay Campus at 10 am, and students have been organizing for months to make their voices heard. The message: stop tuition hikes, budget cuts, and privatization of public schools; tax the 1 percent.

ReFund California and the Northern California Convergence will join up with OccupySF and Occupy encampments being set up on various college campuses this week to “Shut down the UC Regents meeting and take control of our education and our future.” ReFund California is also threatening to march on the Financial District to shut down banks if the Regents don’t support their five-point pledge of action (see “The growing 99 percent,” 11/9).

OccupySF will be marching from their encampment at Justin Herman Plaza (Market and Embarcadero) to the Mission Bay Campus starting at 7 am. UC Berkeley students can board a ReFund California bus at 7 am at Bancroft and Telegraph in Berkeley.

10 a.m., free

UCSF Mission Bay Campus

1675 Owens, SF

(650) 238-4821

www.occupyed.org

makebankspaycalifornia.com

occupyoureducation@gmail.com

rose.goldman@gmail.com

THURSDAY 17

Changing Congress

San Francisco Progressive Democrats of America hosts a discussion with Norman Solomon, a prolific progressive political writer who is running for Congress to replace retiring Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Marin), a member and former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The event opens the floor for questions and concerns regarding future legislation.

7-9 p.m., free

Harry R. Bridges Memorial Building, ILWU, 4th Floor

1188 Franklin, SF

sig4re@comcast.net

www.pdamerica.org

SATURDAY 19

Addiction & Society

Our capitalist society may be to blame for our addictive tendencies and obsessive consumerism. Dr. Gabor Mate, an author and physician who focuses on mental illness, explains how our market economy drives us crazy and leads us down a path toward dependency. Speak Out Now’s colloquium event will help listeners connect the dots between two of our country’s most prevalent concerns.

5-7 p.m., $2 suggested donation

South Berkeley Senior Center 2939 Ellis, Berk.

contactspeakout@gmail.com

www.speakout-now.org

MONDAY 21

“Gay Politics in Africa”

Beyond our own shores, homophobia persists to infiltrate government and subjugate people with leaders who use religion and law as instruments to thwart the freedom of sexual expression. Dr. Sylvia Tamale, renowned African feminist, analyzes the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill and opines on the roots of homosexual suppression in Africa and Western societies.

6- 7:30 p.m., free

Berman Hall in the Fromm Building, USF Golden Gate and Parker, SF

510-663-2255

priorityafrica@priorityafrica.org

www.priorityafrica.org

Let’s get lost

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 15, 2011

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FILM Dragonslayer tags along with Josh “Skreech” Sandoval, a Fullerton, Calif. skater celebrated for shredding pools and living a vagabond’s life. First-time director Tristan Patterson fronts with the kind of side-winding portraiture that prizes sensory impressions instead of back-story, but whittle away Dragonslayer‘s loose ends and you end up with an unremarkable lost generation romance, a Bonnie and Clyde with lower stakes. If Dragonslayer‘s Sundance awards and Christine Vachon executive producer credit are any indication, Patterson’s combination of familiar character packaging and cool reality effects has already been a lucrative one.

The film meets Skreech at 23: he’s turned his back on sponsorship gigs and a romance that produced a son (no trace of the mother here). In an arbitrarily defined chapter structure, Skreech investigates freshly abandoned pools, squats in a friend’s backyard, shows off his medical marijuana license, and cracks tallboys in Southern California’s magic light. He’s stunned by a pretty girl’s red lipstick and fades into a relationship with her (it takes a while before the movie treats her as anything more than scenery). He takes a few earnest stabs at fatherhood and rehearses his principles of no principles to the soundtrack’s well-stocked bangs.

There are a few genuinely poignant moments — Skreech’s taking a call from his estranged mother in a bus full of punks — but in general Dragonslayer is too caught up in its own glossy reverie to register emergent emotions. Patterson’s tendency to use editing as dramatic shorthand is evident in an early sequence of Skreech muffing a skate contest abroad: repeated shots of Skreech wiping out are cut with the eventual winner’s triumphs and then back to our hero’s defeated expression. Arranged in the foregone style of reality television, the actual event is given no room to breathe. This kind of telescoping becomes even more calculating when Patterson treads into Skreech and Leslie’s garbled romance. Patterson seems eager to place the movie in the tradition arty wasted youth pics (take your pick), but Dragonslayer‘s riskless form makes like Real Skaters of Orange County.

Skreech’s interesting face is the only thing that counts. Like a punk Giacometti, he appears very differently from one angle to the next. His rotating hairstyles and t-shirts provide visual fizz, and he’s also good for sweetly stoned bits of dropout philosophy. With all that said, it’s difficult to imagine Patterson pulling off the same frictionless portraiture with one of the punks squatting in Oscar Grant Plaza — someone, that is, who would necessitate difficult editorial decisions. I didn’t love Matthew Porterfield’s 2010 Putty Hill — another portrait of lost youth with plenty of other elements in common — but its canny diffusion of grief and formally inscribed layers of knowledge make for an instructive comparison with Dragonslayer‘s shallow depths. The filmmaker’s hand is both invisible and inescapable in Dragonslayer, its main purpose to score the artistic equivalent of a contact high.

After inking Skreech with a tribute to his son, a tattooist speaks wistfully about how the young man’s wild style hearkens back to the days before skateboarding was another ESPN sport. For his own part, Skreech listens to the Germs when he’s cruising Fullerton with his infant son. There’s an interesting question of punk nostalgia lurking here, but Dragonslayer is too caught up banking a pretty picture to address it.

DRAGONSLAYER opens Fri/18 at the Roxie.

The great divide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 15, 2011

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steve@sfbg.com, rebeccab@sfbg.com, tredmond@sfbg.com

Of all the election night parties held in San Francisco Nov. 8, the two that most closely illustrated the city’s political divide were the ones hosted for the winner of the mayoral contest, Mayor Ed Lee, and for the progressive candidate who came in second, Sup. John Avalos.

Lee’s campaign held its own event at Tres, but the really eye-catching bash was thrown in his honor by former Mayor Willie Brown and billionaire tech investor Ron Conway in the decadent, high-ceilinged Garden Court of the prestigious Sheraton Palace Hotel. It attracted high-profile businesspeople, political operatives, tech executives, and celebrities.

Brown and influential Chinatown business consultant Rose Pak — both of whom played key roles in Lee’s appointment as interim mayor and his decision to run for office — attended the Palace event. Real-estate developers, public relations representatives, and others circulated around the room, sipping $17 martinis. MC Hammer, a legend of the 1990s who recently started his own search engine, hovered over his laptop onstage while a cluster of his fans tore up the dance floor.

When Lee arrived, he appeared with Brown, Hammer, and Conway, a Republican who spearheaded an independent expenditure committee (IE) to bolster Lee’s campaign. “He said San Franciscans have spoken,” Lee spokesperson Christine Falvey explained, summarizing the mayor’s comments, which were delivered before the Guardian arrived. “They like what they’ve seen in the last 10 months.”

When we approached Conway, he said he supported the mayor because “Ed Lee’s going to bring jobs to San Francisco.” Asked to comment on the influence of the independent expenditure committee he funded to alter the outcome of the race, Conway dismissed the question and repeated, “Ed Lee’s going to bring jobs to San Francisco.”

The Avalos event was at the jam-packed Roccapulco Supper Club in the Mission. The party drew a host of young, progressive supporters, many of whom are deeply engaged in social justice organizing, promoting workers’ rights, and protecting affordable housing. At least two bicycles were locked to every parking meter and street sign for more than a block in each direction, many sporting Avalos signs in the rims or attached to their frames.

There were live musical performances by The Bayonics and a mariachi band, plus rousing speeches cheering Avalos on as the peoples’ choice for mayor. Former Sup. Chris Daly was there, as was Sup. David Campos and a host of progressive movers and shakers.

Twitter updates offered snapshots of what was happening in the different venues. “This is how I’m doing it tonight! The ‘Too Legit To Quit’ Party! Ed Lee, Willie Brown & MC Hammer,” tweeted DJ MindMotion, who performed at Lee’s event. Later, he offered a few more updates. “Rocking with SF politicians! Getting my parking tickets cleared!” And a few minutes later, “I have a lot of parking tickets.”

At Roccapulco, Avalos’ wife Karen Zapata introduced her husband with a rallying cry for progressives to keep up the fight. She offered a long view of this struggle, a people’s movement battling for the city’s soul and future. If Ed Lee hangs on to win, she said, “We could be screwed unless we work together and organize…We have to stick together and we have to push from outside the system.”

It was a theme and a feeling that would permeate the event, this sense that Avalos and the progressives enjoyed a resurgence in the last month thanks to what’s happening in the streets, both with this campaign and the OccupySF movement that Avalos has taken a lead role at City Hall in supporting. “We’ve got everyone here,” Avalos said when he took the mic. “Except for the 1 percent!”

They were at the Palace, celebrating with Ed Lee.

HOW LEE WON

Lee had the support of establishment politicians at every level. “He is my man. He’s genuine, he’s competent, he’s no flash in the pan,” Rep. Jackie Speier told us at district attorney candidate Sharmin Bock’s campaign party at Yoshi’s. “He’s going to put San Francisco first and check his ego at the door.”

Yet other politicians — even moderates like Sup. Scott Wiener, who supported Dennis Herrera — felt the outcome of the election was skewed by the advantage Lee enjoyed from incumbency that he attained under false pretenses and the huge spending on his behalf by outside groups.

“When you have that big a curve ball thrown three months before the elections, those are the dynamics,” Wiener said.

Part of Lee’s victory was due to turnout — heavy turnout in areas where he won, and low turnout in areas where he didn’t. There’s an important lesson for progressives here — Lee’s campaign (and the independent expenditure groups that supported him) spent considerable money and time on an absentee voter program and on GOTV.

The result: Avalos actually got more votes than Lee on election day — but Lee still came in far ahead, thanks to absentees.

Some of the absentee efforts created controversy and may have been illegal — videos taken by workers with Leland Yee’s campaign showed Lee backers helping voters in Chinatown fill out their ballots (using a stencil to make sure Lee’s name was properly marked) and collecting those ballots in a bag. And while District Attorney George Gascon has announced an investigation, it’s not likely much will come of it: The people caught on film were not senior campaign aides, and the effort was run by one of the Lee IEs.

At any rate, whatever the Lee supporters were doing, legal or not, it worked. An analysis of voting results shows that in Lee strongholds, far more than half the ballots cast were absentees. For example, in Chinatown, where Lee beat Avalos by a margin of more than 4-1, 4,200 of the 7,161 ballots cast — that’s 60 percent of the total — were vote by mail (VBM). In Bayview/Hunters Point, where Lee (with the strong backing of former Mayor Willie Brown) topped Avalos by a 3-1 margin, 64 percent of the turnout was VBM.

Avalos had almost twice as many votes as Lee in the Haight Ashbury, but turnout there was lower than usual — and only 34 percent was VBM. The same pattern appeared in the Mission and Bernal Heights.

Overall, Lee’s support was strong in most parts of the city — of the 26 neighborhoods identified by the Department of Elections, Lee beat Avalos in 18.

Leland Yee, who came in surprisingly low for an elected official who has held public office for more than 20 years and has been elected citywide several times, ran strongly only in the Sunset, the Richmond and the Excelsior. City Attorney Dennis Herrera demonstrated fairly broad-based (but more limited) support, running consistently in second or third place around the city and doing particularly well in the Marina and Upper Market/Castro. Board President David Chiu ran strongest in his district (Chinatown/North Beach), the Marina and the Sunset and Richmond.

And there’s no question that the Asian vote was critical to this race. For perhaps the first time in history, Asian voters turned out in heavy numbers and demonstrated that they are a major factor in San Francisco politics. Some of that was the presence of four major Asian candidates on the ballot, but a lot was due to the excitement of supporting the city’s first Chinese mayor.

“There are really two elections going on in San Francisco,” one longtime activist told us. “There’s the election in the Chinese community, and then there’s everywhere else.”

But Lee also won in the traditionally more conservative parts of town, beating out the other centrist candidates and even former Sup. (and conservative darling) Michela Alioto-Pier.

THE AVALOS FACTOR

Six months ago, when John Avalos first decided to get in the race, a lot of people (including some of his supporters) figured he was running primarily to get his issues out and make sure the progressive perspective was represented. He was up against three people who had won citywide races (Herrera, Yee, and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting) as well as the president of the Board of Supervisors. Later, of course, the incumbent entered the contest. A first-term district supervisor didn’t seem that formidable.

But the Avalos campaign worked wonders, pulling together hundreds of volunteers, working precincts, getting out the progressive vote and giving tens of thousands of people a candidate to believe in. His strong second-place showing did two things: It demonstrated that the left vote in the city is still strong, and it established Avalos as a credible new leader of the progressive coalition, someone who was able to attract votes across the city and position himself for future runs for higher office.

While Avalos didn’t win any districts outside of the traditional progressive strongholds on the east side of town, he did surprisingly well citywide.

Even moderates like political consultant David Latterman praised the race Avalos ran. “Next to Ed Lee, Avalos had the most solid base in the city,” Latterman said at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s regular post-election wrap-up. “With John Avalos, it’s fair to say he maxed out his base. He ran a positive campaign.”

Alex Clemens, the other political analyst at the SPUR event, agreed: “John Avalos cemented his base and they turned out.”

Election reform activist Steven Hill went even further, noting that Avalos picked up a significant number of second- and third-place votes to hang onto his solid second place standing throughout the ranked choice voting tabulations to finish with about 40 percent of the vote.

“What this election showed is John Avalos had a strong core, and then he broadened his appeal,” Hill said.

Contrary to characterizations that the outcome of this election represented a shift to the right, Latterman noted that voters sided with the endorsements of the Bay Guardian and other progressive entities on more of the ballot measures than they did with the San Francisco Chronicle and others entities to the right of the progressives. Voters aligned with Guardian endorsements on six of the eight measures (almost seven, given that Prop. H, the neighborhood schools measure, won by a fraction of a percentage point).

WHAT’S NEXT?

After Avalos spoke, Daly offered us some insights into a race whose outcome he predicted months ago, consistently telling skeptics that even though the power play that put Lee into office was all but assured of victory, he believed the progressive movement was still strong and that Avalos would place second, ahead of a large field of well-qualified candidates with high name recognition.

“We did as well as we could have,” Daly said, “because the whole thing was juiced from a year ago, with their dirty backroom deal at City Hall and all their dirty money.”

Daly said he saw a new political narrative beginning to take shape, one with the potential to revive the progressive movement in San Francisco. Infused with energy from the campaign volunteers and the rise of the Occupy movement, Daly said it was notable that Avalos got more election day votes than Lee.

“That momentum, we didn’t have it a month ago when the absentee ballots went out,” he said. So now what? “We just keep going. We now have a leader of the progressives in San Francisco and his name in John Avalos,” Daly said. “John has a broad, active base of appeal.”

Avalos echoed similar themes when we spoke on election night, emphasizing the importance of the long struggle of the progressive movement over whether he won the mayor’s race. When we asked him whether election night felt like a victory for him, Avalos replied, “I felt like it was a victory yesterday.”

“All I wanted is for people to be turned out big time for this campaign, and they did that,” Avalos said. “So now, we’ll see what’s next.”

Here’s what’s happening now: The Avalos campaign did, to a significant extent, what the mayoral campaigns for Tom Ammiano in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez in 2003 did — it got the progressives excited and brought a new generation of activists into the world of local electoral politics. As Avalos called up his key supporters to the stage at Roccapulco on election night, it was clear that a broader progressive coalition was forming, with new faces, young organizers, and people of color.

The left in this town has a long history of winning by losing: The Ammiano campaign created the movement that took back the Board of Supervisors a year later, and the Gonzalez campaign drew more activists into the movement. Gonzalez, of course, left office a year later — but Avalos shows no signs whatsoever of backing down from the leadership role he has created.

The other very good news for progressives is the victory of Ross Mirkarimi, who won the race for sheriff and became the first staunch progressive to win a citywide race in more than two decades. He is also positioned to take more of a leadership role, and possibly to run for the mayor’s office at some point down the road. Since there are no term limits for the sheriff, he doesn’t have to rush.

A DIVIDED CITY

One of the key decisions Lee now faces — and one that will define his administration — is choosing a replacement for Mirkarimi. District Five is probably the most progressive district in the city, one that voted overwhelmingly for Avalos. And while Lee will want a loyalist in that job, most of the people who are likely to be able to win an election in 2012 supported another candidate. If Lee puts someone who will vote with the centrists on the board in that seat, he — and his anointed supervisor — will take a big loss in the fall.

He will also have to deal with the city budget — and it won’t be easy. Nonprofits like the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, where he had strong support, are already clamoring for more money for raises for their underpaid staff who have effectively had pay freezes for the past four years. Prop. G, the sales tax measure that Lee was hoping would fill part of the revenue gap, went down in flames. And the big-money people who spent so much getting him elected are supporters of tax breaks for business, not tax increases on the wealthy.

He’ll have to figure out whether to join Avalos and support OccupySF — or join with the more conservative law-and-order types who want the encampment evicted. At press time, as police erected barricades around the encampment, it seemed like that decision was imminent.

And Lee will have to face the fact that, for all his talk about unity and consensus, this is a city deeply divided. There is a huge political and economic gap between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, the 99 percent and the 1 percent, the folks at the Palace Hotel with their limousines and $17 cocktails and the folks in the Mission with their bicycles and beer. Their interests are often directly and unalterably opposed — and on Nov. 8, the powers-that-be made it very clear whose side they think Mayor Ed Lee is on. Additional research by Nena Farrell

Appetite: Insects and mezcal

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 11, 2011

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A new twist on the tequila worm at Don Bugito dinner at Headlands Center for the Arts

Nestled near the ocean in the wilds of the Marin Headlands sits Headlands Center for the Arts, an artists’ haven in a reclaimed military barracks that is inspiring just to be in, as it must be for its artists in residence. Known for the culinary care and special event meals they host in their warm, open kitchen and dining room, I was intrigued to check it out. So what better excuse than for a five-course insect and mezcal dinner?

You heard right. Don Bugito, a new La Cocina business that premiered at SF Street Food Festival this August (which I wrote about here), hosted this unique meal.

Paired with Mexican juices, a take on the Michelada (a beer and spice-based imbibement), and the Mission’s De La Paz Coffee, the drink highlight was San Honesto Mezcal, a bright, grassy, gently smoky mezcal that is not yet available in the US but should be by early next year.

Having eaten mealworms and wax moth larvae with Don Bugito before, I was hoping for even further challenges at this meal. As an intro to bugs, the textures and tastes of the five insects served were inoffensive (yes, even to those who fear bugs), even tasty, proving the points made in a pre-dinner educational session: eating insects is nutritional, ecological and sustainable. One could see this becoming a micro movement in urban centers such as ours, just as beekeeping and urban farming have become.

Don Bugito owner, Monica Martinez, says, “Our goal is not to introduce insects as a novelty, but as something that will last.” I’d say with the palatable insect-tinged dinner we experienced, she is introducing an approachable, realistic way to eat insects.

The Headlands Center’s next dining event is December 7, a speakeasy-style, small plates dinner with cocktails from the incomparable Bon Vivants.

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot at www.theperfectspotsf.com

AIDS vigil returns at Occupy SF

Zelda Bronstein

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November 10, 2011

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A coalition has come together to bring a striking new component to OccupySF: a rebirth of the ARC/AIDS Vigil. The vigil created an encampment similar to OccupySF’s at UN Plaza in the 1980s and remained there for ten years, protesting the federal government’s refusal to put resources into research and support for people with HIV/AIDS. Some who were involved in the vigil are currently part of the OccupySF encampment as individuals. Now, many hope to make that relationship more direct and active.

Brian Basinger, a longtime activist in several capacities including work with the AIDS Housing Alliance, is one of those involved in this effort. Says Basinger, “We are resurrecting the ARC/AIDS Vigil at 11/11/11 at 11:11 am. We are going to provide housing counseling, bring needle exchange, providing HIV testing, distributing organic vegetarian brown bag lunches, holding a speak-out, and presenting our demands to mayor Ed Lee to cure homelessness for people with HIV/AIDS, LGBT youth and transgender San Franciscans.”

All of this will take place tomorrow from 11am-2pm at Justin Herman Plaza, the site of Occupy SF’s encampment. Or, says Basinger, “Ethel Merman Plaza, as we like to call it.”

Those interested in the speak-out should be sure to get there by 11:11, as that will likely be first on the agenda. The food distribution is planned for the end of the kick-off event.

The group will provide services to the OccupySF encampment and anyone who comes through it. “We’re looking to create a safe space for homeless LGBT youth to gather…queer homelessness is invisible. We experience homelessness differently than the non-gay world.”

Like the ARC/AIDS Vigil of the 1980s and the Occupy Movement today, this event has the potential to be ongoing. Said Basinger plainly, “We won’t leave until we get our demands are met.”

Basinger warns: “It’s going to rain. But we want to highlight that people with fullblown AIDS and cancer are out in the goddamn rain everyday because the mayor has failed. ‘Ed Lee gets it done’- he’s not ‘getting it done’ for people with AIDS.” Basinger added that San Francisco “has the highest rate of homelessness for people with AIDS in the country.”

The group is putting out a call for “Rain gear to keep us warm- tarps and umbrellas.” Added Basinger, “Umbrella, ella, ella. Also, we put out a call for Rhianna. Rhianna, if you’re listening, come tomorrow.”

And with the impossible to predict explosion of the Occupy Movement- hey, anything could happen.

Hot sexy events: November 10-15

Andrew Lam

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November 10, 2011

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The mayoral elections are over. San Francisco politicos have long since rolled out of rumpled election night beds, kissed their partners for the first time in months, and tossed those worn-down precinct-walkers out for something a little more comfortable. Now our eyes turn to the presidential election, which despite Ed Lee’s mustache is decidedly less sexy (blame it on the overexposure, c’mon Republican ladies and gentlemen can you leave nothing to our imagination?)

And now Herman Cain’s lawyers are telling sexual harassment victims to “think twice” before coming forward to accuse their inspirational speaker-cum-client? Sound like they need to attend the first sex-positive get-together on our list… read on.

What You Really Really Want reading

We’re too frumpy or too slutty, too forward or trampled-upon – the world can be a frustrating place when it comes to women constructing their sexuality. Enter author Jaclyn Friedman, whose new book What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety, hold wisdom for those who wish to cut through the advice column grief. She’s elaborating on her findings tonight, at the Center for Sex and Culture.

Thu/10 7 p.m., donations suggested

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

Pink

How about a full Friday night of Pink? Mission Control’s women-only play party can’t stop adding onto the party. First it was the “playshop” before the party that teaches the skills you need to land the ladies. Dance moves and the laws of attraction have been featured in the past and this week Tim Emert and Francesa Gentille will be sharing the secrets of soulful flirting. If that’s not enough for you, venture to the roof of Medjool for a special menu of yes, pink drinks with your companions for the evening.

Pre-party: 7:30-9 p.m., free

Medjool

2522 Mission, SF

Playshop: 9-10:15 p.m., free with entry to Pink

Play party: 10 p.m.-3 a.m., $30 with free membership at door

Mission Control

www.missioncontrolsf.org

“Outside the Box: Celebrating the Queer Body Erotic”

A group therapy-style rejection of binary notions of beauty, this three-day workshop focuses on developing the body’s innate wisdom, and unlocking it in others through full-body massage. Couples are welcome to come play – with each other or other participants.

Fri/11-Sun/13, $150-$395

RSVP for time and location

(415) 377-4107

www.thebodyelectricschool.net

The Cook, the Thief, the Wife, and Her Lover screening

A movie featuring adultery, book-eating torture, and cannabalism? Sexy. At least it will be tonight at Oakland’s playspace. Stop in for this movie night and stay after the film ends for a 90-minute play session.

Sun/13 7:30 p.m.

The Looking Glass

RSVP for location

www.thelookingglassarts.com

Hot Rod launch party

It’s the first installation of Powerhouse’s new party for naughty boys – you’re promised tunes by DJ Dirty Knees, a make-out photo booth, the club’s standard enticements (slutty men), and A FREE HOT DOG.

Sun/13 6-10 p.m., $3

Powerhouse

1347 Folsom, SF

www.powerhouse-sf.com

Women’s comedy night

Given that Occupy Oakland isn’t on the move again (a march caused the Oakland lounge to reschedule this night last month) tonight will host a whole passel of XX-fueled yucks. Or is that XXX? The Facebook event insists that the line-up’s material won’t be all about sex but a. they had to say so and b., the night is sponsored by Oakland’s sex-positivity hub (and our favorite new queer-oriented sex shop) Feelmore510, so there’s sure to be something naughty coming out of these womens’ mouths.

Tue/15 8:30-10 p.m., free

The Layover

1517 Franklin, Oakl.

www.oaklandlayover.com

The Road to Shameless: A Survivor’s Tale of Sexual Assault and Healing reading

When Nancy Donoval was 19, she went out one night and was raped by a “friend.” She didn’t know that was called rape, but she does now. Donoval is the author of The Road to Shameless, the tale of how she took that extreme violation and learned from it. Her stories are well-known for being gut-wrenching and hilarious in one fell swoop – this is a great chance to see pathos and play mashed into a single stage performance.

Tues/15 7:30-10 p.m., $12-$15

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

The (theater)-sporting life: BATS Improv turns 25!

Sue Vaughan

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November 10, 2011

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The (theater)-sporting life: BATS Improv turns 25!

It was 1986, the year of Top Gun, Dallas, “Hands Across America,” and “Papa Don’t Preach.” In San Francisco, a comedy troupe called Fratelli Bologna joined forces with Seattle Theatresports’ Rebecca Stockley, and the rest was history. Bay Area Theatresports, now known as BATS Improv, marks its 25th anniversary this year with a special show Sat/12 — a one-off celebration smack-dab in the company’s already-packed calendar of weekly shows. How does an arts organization stay so energetic after 25 years? Could a certain flair for improv have something to do with it? I spoke with BATS artistic director Kasey Klemm to get the scoop.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What’s your history with the company?

Kasey Klemm: I started taking classes at BATS when I was 17, back in 1997. I’ve been with the organization ever since. I just became artistic director in April of this year. I’m just at the beginning of my three-year term.

SFBG: Is that an elected position?

KK: It’s an open job position, so anyone in the main stage company is allowed to apply for it. People put together their artistic vision for where they want to develop and see the company grow, and move toward, as well as some organizational stuff. How they kind of functionally see the company working with each other, and developing as artists as well, so that we’re not just staying stagnant and doing the same stuff, and we keep challenging each other. And also, a proposed six-month calendar.

SFBG: How do you think BATS has managed to stick around for 25 years?

KK: This organization has got a tremendous amount of heart behind it, and it really is the people that make it [that way]. We were just looking at some old photos that we had blown up for our lobby for the 25th anniversary display, and we have this company photo from, I think it was 1989. And it was about nine people who were with us in ’89, still with us today. Phenomenal actors, and not people who are staying here because they have no other choice, but because the work that we do is so rewarding, both for the audience and personally as an artist. It’s really a thrill to literally go do something new every night. It’s exciting and the craft of it keeps you coming back for more.

I also think it’s because we’re an organization that really values stories, and stories that are driven by relationships and truth, versus trying to make something funny happen. That keeps people connected and interested much more than trying to be funny, or if this were a group where people were trying to outshine each other. But there’s a real passion for telling truthful, connected stories. And what happens is, because it’s being improvised, the result is often much more hilarious than anything that could have been written.

SFBG: So does BATS identify as a comedy group, or more just as a theater troupe?

KK: We self-identify more as a theater group. In some of our marketing, we started using the term “comedy theater,” but the word theater is really important and central to what we do, because it’s not about doing sketches or telling jokes. It’s about creating theater that an audience can connect with and can be moved by, whether it’s moved to uproarious laughter, or tears sometimes. We’re after that sincere stuff, the sincere human experiences that are traditionally at the roots of theater.

SFBG: Do you think having strong improv skills has helped the company beyond just performing onstage?

KK: Absolutely. There’s a culture of yes, and being inclusive, so it’s an organization where everybody’s voice gets to be heard. We’re really good at communicating with each other, because you need to be. And we honor that kind of direct and honest communication with each other. Everybody knows that everybody else is here for the same reason: because we love doing theater-based improvisation. We’re a group that all has the same goal: we’re all artistically in pursuit of a very special kind of theater that we think only gets created through making it up on the spot.

With that, you get to know each other very well. Our main stage company is 19 people right now, some of whom have been around for the whole 25, some who are as new as having joined us last year. But because of the way we work onstage, we’re very connected to each other.

SFBG: Why do you think Bay Area audiences love improv so much?

KK: Well, it’s not boring! There’s a lot of theater out there that for whatever reason, doesn’t connect with every audience. An experimental new play might not be any good. But if we’re in the middle of something, we’ve got the ability to go, “Hey, this is not very good. Let’s change it up, let’s start again.” And everybody can laugh with the release of that kind of tension or pressure, so you don’t have to sit through stuff that’s not working.

As an audience member, when you’re watching the improv happen onstage, you’re much more engaged than in a scripted play, because you know the actors are creating it on the spot, so there’s a part of you that’s always creating these shadow stories: “Oh, I bet those two characters are going to end up romantically linked together.” So they’re creating the story with us. And it’s a much more engaging type of theater than one that’s just being told to the audience.

I think that’s why you get those moments where 200 people laugh at the same time, because we’ve just put our finger on something that everybody was thinking, whether it was conscious or subconscious. We tap into this kind of group experience with it, and there’s this explosion of laughter that happens from just hitting some sort of primal truth that exists in that moment, in that theater, with these particular actors onstage, and these particular audience in the house.

SFBG: What’s the backstory on the 25th anniversary show this weekend?

KK: This weekend we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first Theatresports show in San Francisco. So 25 years ago there was a group of local actors that was kind of housed by a group called Fratelli Bologna, who brought their friend down from Seattle, Rebecca Stockley, who’s now with us here at BATS. And she started teaching some workshops on the Theatresports format, which is creating theater with this kind of imaginary hook of it being a competition that draws people forward in their seats the same kind of way that a sporting event would, and gives the actors a lot of opportunities to create a lot of different types of theater in one night.

For a scene where there wasn’t much improvisation happening, there were mostly scripted actors, to be able to work in film noir, and Tennessee Williams, and play a silly game all on the same night created this kind of magic that everyone got really inspired by. So 25 years ago on November 10, 1986, they did the first public performance of Theatresports in San Francisco, and there was such a great response from the audience and from the players that those players went, “There’s something here. We want to keep doing this!” So that group went on and formed Bay Area Theatresports, which is now known as BATS Improv.

On Saturday night, we’re going to have a Theatresports match that’s going to be hosted by one of our founding members, and it’s going to feature two teams of improvisers that are a mix of some of our most veteran players, and some of our newest players, and they’re going to do about a 70-minute Theatresports match, and after that we’re going to hold a champagne and dessert reception with the cast and audience. We’re going to have people there from our history who’ve been important to us, longtime fans, etc. So it’s going to be a big community celebration.

SFBG: What else is coming up for BATS Improv?

KK: More great theater! We’re doing Theatresports on Friday nights through the end of the year. On Saturday nights in November we’re doing a format called “Family Drama,” which is an improvised three-act play, done very much in the classical stage play format. It’s a single set that the audience helps endow at the beginning of the show; each actor only plays one character, there are no cuts or time jumps. It’s a very straight-ahead, relationship-driven, three-act play.

In December, we’re bringing back a show called “Very Merry Murder Mystery!,” which is a British whodunnit with the hook being that not even the improvisers know who committed the murder. It’s a very strongly character-driven piece that feels very much like a big, silly Agatha Christie play. It’s a really fun show filled with a bunch of surprises.

“BATS Improv 25th Anniversary”
Sat/12, 8 p.m., $30
Bayfront Theater
Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF
(415) 474-6776
www.improv.org

Wag the dog: The SF kennel that makes your apartment look like kibble

Andrew Lam

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November 10, 2011

2

Wag the dog: The SF kennel that makes your apartment look like kibble

Wiggle that paw into your trusty Birkin for a spare $150 this holiday season — you’re staying in the best room in town. Of course, the hospitality staff there is going to be a little hands-on. They’ll wake you at 6 a.m., feed you breakfast, put you in a play group with future-friends that share your weight, age, and temperment. They’ll read you a short story during nightly “cuddletimes” and make sure your owners can see you on the livefeed at all times. Also, in this scenario you are a dog.

“People don’t want a kennel these days,” Jose Gonzales, director of guest services at the Mission’s Wag Hotel, is showing me through his kennel’s state-of-the-art facilities. “They want a safe, clean, convenient place to leave their pet.”

Wag’s first branch opened in Sacramento in 2005, at which time Gonzales tells me “we really, literally redefined pet care.” Redefined it to mean luxury summer camp for the dander set, that is.

Where’s my mint. Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

The center is open 24 hours a day. In Wag’s parlance, its human customers are “parents,” individuals who need only peek at their iPhones and the hotel’s playroom livestreams shown thereon to determine whether Pawla Abdul needs another dog biscuit (Gonzales says he is wont to call in requests that employees give snacks to his own pooch when he leaves his furry friend to Wag).

Wag smells more like air freshener than canine as the two of us explore its bowels, Gonzales imparting a stream of information and myself dutifully following after. Here are the glistening, occasionally flatscreen-bedecked two-room enclosures that house steerage boarders (the dog bowl in the door means the “room” has been serviced), the vast playrooms looked down upon by even more vast skylights.

There are 239 of these quarters at Wag. Usually there are less than 100 dogs staying in them, although at peak times over holidays, there can be enough to necessitate 50 to 60 employees, when it’s “all paws on deck,” as Gonzales puns. There is a rooftop garden for dogs that love to feel the sun on their furry faces, even report cards given to each parent at their offspring-from-another-bitch’s terminus at Wag. These rate Puppy’s bowel movements, and cite the friends they’ve made at Wag by breed and name. There are special activities planned intermittently, like the 12 Days of Winter event from Dec. 1-16 that will afford the dogs opportunities to take photos on Santa’s lap and have staff members design stockings for them that suit their personalities.

Reading selections in the Wag Suite. Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

But for some, this comfort is not enough. And there is still a chance for your young pup to be the first guest at the $150 a night Golden Gate Suite.

This is the grand finale of Gonzales’ tour. Here, in a secluded hallway far from the whines and yelps of steerage, a genteel canine can while away the three to four days that constitute the average stay at the hotel, in jet-setting style.

A double bed (slung low to the floor, no jumping for the dogs of the one percent) with organic sheets, layers of pillows, and a faux fur throw is the centerpiece of the room, which rather resembles a slick private double in a high-end hostel. Upon the pillows rest a box of doggy “chocolates” made by a local artisan and a plush remote control, which does not operate the large flatscreen on one side of the room where room occupants will view their owners each night for a heart-warming Skype chat.

There is also a stack of books for storytime on a coffee table. “I personally like The Giving Tree,” Gonzales tells me. “But that’s a personal favorite.”

“A lot of people thought that the room was built to be over the top,” he reflects, shortly before we call in a golden labrador named Montana to lounge for my camera on the bed and whine impatiently for the box of artisan treats Gonzales has safely hid behind his back. “But we built it to be practical. We looked at what a dog needs and what will make the client and dog super-happy.”

This super-happiness, Wag has decided, lies in bridging the gap between pet and human when the two must be geographically separated. To mimic the home environment, Golden Gate Suite patrons can even sit down with hotel employees to determine which Pandora channel their beloved four-legger will listen to.

On the occasion of my visit, classical is playing throughout the hotel. “We’ve had different feedback from clients that they don’t want their dog listening to classical,” says the director of guest services. “Maybe they want movie noise. Yeah, dogs don’t watch movies. But we want them to feel at home.”

Wag Hotel

25 14th St., SF

(415) 876-0700

www.waghotels.com

Lee, Mirkarimi, and Gascon win first ranked choice tally

Sasha Cuttler

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November 9, 2011

67

San Francisco’s first run of ranked choice voting tallies for yesterday’s election shows Ed Lee winning the mayor’s race (with progressive favorite John Avalos in second), George Gascon remaining district attorney, and Ross Mirkarimi becoming the new sheriff in town.
“Progressive victory, citywide, that’s huge,” Sup. David Campos told Mirkarimi this afternoon outside the Elections Department, where a scrum of journalists and politicos gathered to get the results. It would indeed be a rare citywide victory for progressives, which analyst David Latterman says constitute about 19 percent of the electorate, compared to 39 percent who identify as moderate and 36 percent who call themselves liberals.
About 7,500 provisional and 24,000-25,000 absentee ballots remain to be counted over the next few days, said Elections Chief John Arntz, telling reporters, “I’m not saying these are the final results by any stretch.” But there is good reason to believe these winners will stick.
In the sheriff’s race, where Mirkarimi faced off against three candidates with long law enforcement backgrounds, David Wong was the first to be eliminated, and the lion’s share of his 9,487 votes went to fellow Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Miyamoto rather than Chris Cunnie, the former head of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, knocking Cunnie out of the race.
Of Wong’ votes, 3,828 went to Miyamoto, 2,637 were exhausted (meaning Wong voters had no second choice), 1,682 went to Mirkarimi, and just 1,325 went to Cunnie, who had been in second place. That gave Mirkarimi almost 40 percent of the vote, compared with 30.7 percent for Miyamoto and 29.8 percent for Cunnie.
On the next round, Cunnie’s 42,877 votes were redistributed as follows: 16,820 to Miyamoto, 14,675 exhausted, and 11,322 to Mirkarimi, giving him 53 percent of the vote. “I’m optimistic, but I’m not declaring victory,” Mirkarimi told reporters. He said that he hopeful that he’ll get the chance to continue the 30-year progressive legacy of retiring Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who endorsed Mirkarimi.
The only real variable in the sheriff’s race is how Cunnie’s second place votes break in the event that incoming ballots change who gets eliminated after Wong, but Mirkarimi said he was happy with how well progressive campaigns did in this election.
“I want to say how proud I am of the Avalos campaign. It did a good job at getting people out who have felt disenfranchised,” Mirkarimi added.
Indeed, Avalos surprised much of the political establishment by finishing strongly in second place with 18.3 percent of the vote compared to Lee’s 31.5 percent and Dennis Herrera’s 11.3 percent. In the first ranked choice run, it took 11 rounds of eliminations for Lee to break the 50 percent threshold of victory. And when he did, he jumped all the way to 61 percent, mostly because voters who chose Herrera as their third choice exhausted their ballots.
When Herrera was eliminated in Round 10, 18,276 of his 29,717 votes were exhausted, and of the balance, 6,683 went to Avalos and 4,705 went to Lee, where they had been at 28 percent and 49 percent respectively. Avalos then finished second with 39 percent of the vote.
Other notable rounds in the mayoral runoff were when fourth place finisher David Chiu was eliminated and his nearly 20,000 votes broke most heavily in favor of Ed Lee and being exhausted, reinforcing the idea that he draws his support mostly from moderates and is no longer part of the progressive movement that helped elect him to the Board of Supervisors.
Avalos got just 2,376 of Chiu’s second place votes, compared to 5,894 for Lee and 3,832 for Herrera. By contrast, when Leland Yee was eliminated a round earlier, his votes were redistributed fairly evenly among Lee, Chiu, Herrera, and Avalos. Part of the reason that Avalos never gained ground on Lee was that the mayor got more second place votes than his progressive challenger on every elimination between Round 3 and the final round.
In the DA’s race, Gascon’s 42 percent total of first place votes is an insurmountable lead, particularly given that he also did well on the second place votes, showing that attacks on his secrecy and police connections didn’t do much to hurt him. When third place finisher Sharmin Bock was eliminated in the third round, Gascon got 13,301 of her votes, compared with 10,430 for David Onek, and 11,840 exhausted.
The Elections Department will run new totals every day at 4 pm

Maximum Consumption: the Turntable Kitchen interview

Tony Robles

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November 9, 2011

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I’d venture a guess that no one in this town knows the frosting tipped appeal of hand-mixing music and food more than the couple behind Turntable Kitchen. What started one year ago as a simple (yet highly aesthetically pleasing) website mashing up recipes and records, has grown into a celebrated multi-headed creative output machine, with food+music news, event sponsoring, giveaways, and the newly added physical pairings boxes – on top of the drool-inducing/stunning posts.

Last week I caught up with the duo to find out, among other queries, what ingredient you simply must have on hand – and the records every collection should include:

San Francisco Bay Guardian: For people who have never heard of Turntable Kitchen, can you give a brief rundown on how the concept came together?
Matthew Hickey: Turntable Kitchen is a website combining food and music. We do that by pairing recipes Kasey creates in the kitchen with some of my favorite albums. I try to find albums that share the same characteristics as her recipes, pairing them together the way a sommelier would pair wine with food. The idea to start the site was Kasey’s, but we were pairing food and music in our own foggy Inner Sunset apartment long before we launched the site. I’ve always been obsessive about music and Kasey loves to cook. Part of our evening ritual involved her explaining the recipe we were going to make and me then hitting my record collection to find an album to compliment our meal.
SFBG: What is it about food and music that goes so well together?
MH: For us, a good meal is about more than just consuming food. It is about creating an experience that pleases all of your senses. We believe that the soundtrack to that meal is a hugely important element of that experience. In fact, a recent study published in the British Journal of Psychology demonstrated that when people consume wine while listening to music they perceived the wine to share the same characteristics as the music. The result is something that Kasey and I instinctively felt to be true whether drinking wine or enjoying a good meal.
SFBG: How did you come up with the Pairings Box idea?
MH: We liked the idea of sending goodies to our readers in the mail, but we weren’t sure what form that would take. Whatever we did, we wanted it to stay true to the theme of our site. Speaking to the music specific elements: they just made sense for me. I love vinyl records and have an ever-growing record collection. With the ease of digital distribution, though, some of my favorite new music isn’t yet available on vinyl. So the singles we release feature music that I wanted for my collection, but which didn’t already exist on vinyl. I’ve been making mixtapes for my friends for as long as I can remember, so the digital mixtape we include gives me yet another opportunity to share music I love with our supporters.
Kasey Fleisher: I have always thought that a big barrier to cooking for many people is having a pantry. A lot of times, a recipe calls for a lot of expensive and/or hard to find ingredients and when you don’t cook often, it’s hard to think, “why not give this a try?” The concept of giving people three recipes and one to two premium dried ingredients gives them that nudge to experiment (and a reason to invite a few friends over to share the experience.). As for the sustainability of the Pairings Box, we think there’s still room to expand, but no matter what, we want to keep it limited. So far, we’ve sold out of every month’s box.
SFBG: What’s in the November pairings box and when does it go out? Is it sold out yet?
MH: The November Pairings Box had a harvest theme. We featured three new, original recipes; a hand-numbered, limited-edition (250 copies) 7″ vinyl single featuring Evenings (a.k.a. Virginia-based Nathan Broaddus); an exclusive digital mixtape; and our premium ingredient for the month was a French Grey Sea Salt and French Lavender blend.And, yes, we’re all sold out.
SFBG: December pairings box orders can start coming in Nov. 15, correct?
MH: Yes, we’ll start accepting new subscriptions for the December Pairings Box on November 15. We have a sign-up form on the site where you can enter your email and we’ll drop you an email to notify you of when we’re ready to start taking payments.
KF: We’ll have additional boxes available for the holidays.
SFBG: On the site, what have been the most popular pairing(s) so far?
KF: Some of the most (recent) popular pairings have been our Multi-Grain Pumpkin Donuts, paired with St. Vincent and Creamy White Grits with Chanterelle Mushrooms paired with Iron & Wine.
SFBG: What are your own personal favorite pairing(s)?
MH: One of my recent favorite pairings has been Kasey’s Fig, Mint and Honey Galette, paired with Brazilian artist Jorge Ben.
KF: One of my favorite pairings was our Wild Mushroom and Crescenza Pizza, paired with Revolving Birds. Matt loves mushrooms and pizza, and we’re both really into good
cheese…I could totally see myself cozied up on rainy day making this pizza and listening to Revolving Birds…what could be better?
SFBG: What’s the most important ingredient to keep in your cupboard?
KF: That is a tough question! But I’d probably have to say salt.
SFBG: What’s the most important album to keep in your record collection?
MH: That is a tough one. If you are going to listen to it by yourself then you’d want your favorite album – whatever that may be. If you want versatile music that sounds great and
can be played on any occasion, I highly recommend owning a few Motown records. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone – young or old – who hates The Four Tops, The Jackson 5, The Supremes, Al Green, etc.
SFBG: You both have day jobs, correct? How feasible is it for you to cook together every night?
MH: Yes, we both have day jobs that can be relatively time consuming. Nonetheless, I’d say we normally find time to cook together at least five days a week or more. No matter how tough my day was at work, when I come home and start a record, open a bottle of wine and start cooking in the kitchen with Kasey, I feel great.
KF: I agree…Even though I like my day job, there’s nothing more that I love than making something with my hands after sitting in front of a computer. It’s a nice break until I
have to get back on the computer to work and/or blog/edit pictures, etc.
SFBG: On an off cooking night, what’s your favorite restaurant in the Bay Area?
MH: I have many favorite restaurants, but a few favorites are: Koo, NOPA, and Aziza.
KF: I would add Outerlands, Delfina Pizzeria, Lavash, and Contigo to this list.
SFBG: What are your future goals for Turntable Kitchen?
KF: Our goal is to continue producing great content, expand the food and music experiences that we’re offering offline, and grow our audience organically. In our opinion, food and music are some of the best things in life, and we think we’re making the two more fun and accessible to a broader range of people.

Live Shots: Das Racist at Ruby Skye

Tony Robles

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November 9, 2011

2

The disgruntled bouncer at Ruby Skye begrudgingly admitted my entry to the Das Racist show on Friday night, only after I managed to flag down the event’s promoter to confirm my legitimacy. It was a telling kick off to an evening riddled with problems on behalf of the club, but I wanted to approach with an open mind.

Leaving my issues with the hyper-vigilant door staff outside, I grabbed an $11 drink at the bar and headed toward the stage to wait for opener Danny Brown. I didn’t need to wait long, as I later learned Das Racist fans would be evacuated from the venue by 10 p.m. to make room for the usual clubutantes.

In his signature skinny jeans and choked-voice delivery, Brown pulled off a riveting set. The Detroit, Mich., rapper asked the audience to “give it up for all the beautiful ladies” before launching into verse after maniacal verse about sex, drugs, and debauchery.

Shortly after Brown stepped off, Das Racist sauntered on stage to soak up a feverish response from fans. The large, intoxicated dude in front of me would go ape throughout the night, knocking people’s drinks over and demanding more than his share of high fives from the group.

Right off the bat, Victor Vazquez (a.k.a. Kool AD) took a dive into the collegiate looking audience. As the microphones began to malfunction, Vazquez appeared to lose interest and spent much of the show seated in various places on stage. Vazquez did, however, manage to yank Hypeman Ashok Kondabolu by the collar of his jumpsuit just as he was about to pounce on some guy for getting too grabby.

Himanshu Suri (a.k.a. Heems) seemed less fazed by Ruby Skye’s sound problems. Suri mimed some air guitar and flashed rock star devil horns at fans between verses. In a hilarious moment of self-parody or unprecedented narcissism, Suri lifted his black Das Racist shirt to reveal yet another Das Racist shirt beneath it.

The group’s many collaborators doubled as stage hands, dipping backstage to find new microphones as others shorted out. The best cameo of the evening goes to the swagger-drenched re-work of Dr. Dre’s “Xplosive” by Boots Riley of the Coup. Newcomer Lakutis performed the absurdly catchy track “Lakutis In Da Haus” from his upcoming EP and re-appeared for Das Racist’s “Rapping 2 U.” Brown and Despot contributed verses on “Power.” Due to sound issues, I couldn’t really tell what Trackademicks was doing, but he was there, too.

Despite the unfortunate setting, fans went totally berserk for Das Racist, shouting along to hits like “Michael Jackson” so enthusiastically that the technical difficulties became nearly inconsequential.

Avalos campaign revives the progressive movement

Sasha Cuttler

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November 9, 2011

40

As I walked into the John Avalos campaign party in Roccapulco around 11 pm, Sup. David Campos told me, “It’s the best party in town!” And he was right. The speeches were just getting underway on the stage and there was a palpable energy in the large crowd even though many of them had been out campaigning since early in the morning.
Avalos’ wife, veteran progressive organizer Karen Zapata, set the tone. First, she recognized Eric Quezada, the longtime housing rights activist who died in August, and the rest of the progressive leaders, such as Tom Ammiano and Chris Daly, who laid the foundation for a campaign that finished the night strongly in second place, less than 13 percentage points behind with voters’ second and third choices still to be tallied.
If Ed Lee hangs on to win, she said, “We could be screwed unless we work together and organize.” It was a theme and a feeling that would permeate the event, this sense that Avalos and the progressives are enjoying a resurgence in the last month thanks to what’s happening in the streets, both with this campaign and the OccupySF movement that Avalos has taken a lead role at City Hall in supporting.
“We have to stick together and we have to push from outside the system. We have to push John and we have to push everyone in the system,” Zapata said, firing up the young crowd as she introduced her husband.
Avalos praised the campaign for having so much heart and with filling his. “This has been a campaign of the people,” Avalos said, seeming genuinely touched by the energy in the room.
The progressive movement has been fighting for the soul of this city for a long time, he said, citing the anti-displacement movement that became a political force in 2000-01, a struggle that continues today with the latest tech boom. “In a way, we’re embracing change that is accelerating our displacement here in San Francisco,” Avalos said.
But he said people are waking up to the idea that the people need to stand up to the super rich and their political enablers. “The Occupy Wall Street movement is changing the consciousness of this country,” Avalos said, noting how it is echoing themes that progressive San Franciscans have been sounding for years. “Everyone is talking the same language we’ve been talking, because we’ve been talking about the 99 percent for a long time.”
But between that movement and this campaign, he said the battle was just beginning, praising the “new generation of leadership, that’s what this campaign is about. We’re going to take back this city one way or another!”
And he closed with a chant from the streets: “Whose city?” Avalos shouted, and the crowd roared back, “Our city!”

Chris Cunnie draws big supporters

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 8, 2011

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Chris Cunnie’s event at the Delancey Street Foundation was packed early with top pub safety officials — San Francisco police chief Greg Suhr, San Francisco Firefighters Union president John Hanley, San Francisco Police Officers Association president Gary Delagnes.

Cunnie was greeted with applause when he arrived, saying “We’re going to win tonight — stick with me.” Numbers suggest he’s currently not leading, but the air of “It’s not over” is palpable.

Suhr told the Guardian, “I can’t tell you how much I’m hoping I get to work with Chris.”

California Attorney General Kamala Harris said, “The night is early and we’re in it for the long haul.”

Upstairs, former police chief turned district attorney gascon is also having an event. He’s bearing much better in the polls: supporters, clustered around a TV, cheered when early returns came back putting him at 48 percent with one percent of precincts reporting.

GOLDIES 2011 Lifetime Achievement: Ingrid Eggers

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 8, 2011

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GOLDIES 2011 Lifetime Achievement: Ingrid Eggers

GOLDIES In a city that boasts far more film festivals than movie theaters, one of the most singularly focused is the annual Berlin and Beyond Film Festival — the largest German-language film festival in the United States. Carefully curated for 14 years by Dr. Ingrid Eggers, former program coordinator of the San Francisco branch of the Goethe-Institut, Berlin and Beyond has showcased an eclectic mix of movies by established filmmakers, debut features, documentaries, shorts, and silent films, from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Eggers’ major criteria — that the movies be filmed primarily in German, a language she felt was often missing from San Francisco’s foreign film scene — still left plenty of room for variety. Over the years, quirky documentaries about East German break dancers (Nico Raschick’s 2006 Here We Come) have shared screen space with gritty culture clashes such as Fatih Akin’s 2004 Head-On, wartime dramas such as Margarethe von Trotta’s 2003 Rosenstrasse, and non-traditional romances, such as Andreas Dresen’s 2008 Cloud 9.

Now, two-and-a-half years after her unanticipated removal from the Berlin and Beyond helm, which shocked the San Francisco film community, Eggers insists on looking forward. “We have made our peace,” she says genially, referring to the current incarnation of Berlin and Beyond, which just celebrated its sweet 16 in October.

When Eggers talks film, whether in a café in the Mission or on the stage of the Castro Theatre, her whole face lights up, a beatific glow. She may have reached Germany’s mandatory retirement age of 65 a few years ago, but her youthful vigor attests to a university background in physical education (along with history and literature) and her personal propensity for sport. Every film of the over 500 she’s presented — from the smallest short to the biggest blockbuster — has received a notably warm introduction, and more than one person has remarked in my presence that it is as if she were born to be a festival host. Yet it’s Eggers’ unassuming, collaborative nature rather than any kind of cult of personality that made Berlin and Beyond so successful. For example, it was by working closely with Anita Monga, former Castro programmer, that Eggers learned the ropes of festival scheduling.

“For our opening night in 1996 she insisted we show Fassbinder’s Martha,” Eggers reminisces. “A very difficult film; we had people walk out.”

From early partnerships with the then-San Francisco-based International Film Financing Conference and Kinofest Lünen, a sister festival in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state, to later ones with corporate sponsors such as Kuehne + Nagel, who underwrote the shipping costs of the film canisters, Eggers’ ability to forge unique partnerships has served her in good stead. Her current film festival project — the smaller-scale German Gems — is set to screen for a third year in January 2012.

After that, Eggers is not so sure. “It’s incredibly expensive to put on even such a small festival,” she admits ruefully, though her many years of festival directing has provided her with the unquantifiable currency of influence. The first German Gems festival, a jam-packed day in 2010 at the Castro (with an encore performance in Point Arena), included von Trotta’s biopic of Hildegarde von Bingen, Vision, and received an official blessing from Dieter Kosslick, director of the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival.

Since she’s less interested in competing with than enhancing the selections at Berlin and Beyond, Eggers has shifted German Gems’ focus toward student and first feature films, one of her favorite components of B and B festivals past. But like any proud parent, she still speaks fondly of her first-born festival, pointing out the big-name film personalities who graced Berlin and Beyond’s stage: Bruno Ganz, Michael Verhoeven, and Wim Wenders — coups that put the event on the map, even in Germany. It won’t ever be quite the same without her, but thanks to Eggers’ persistent efforts over the years, the future of San Francisco’s premiere showcase of German cinema seems assured.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam

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November 8, 2011

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Schedules are for Wed/9-Tues/15 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. “Brazil on Screen:” Bandido de Luz Vermelha (Sganzerla, 1968), with “O Vermelha Luz do Bandido” (Jorge, 2009), Fri, 8. “Other Cinema:” works by archival compilation master Bill Morrison, Sat, 8:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. “Woody Wednesdays:” •Annie Hall (Allen, 1977), Wed, 3, 7, and Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen, 1986), Wed, 4:50, 8:50. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Roeg, 1976), Thurs, 2:30, 5:15, 8. “Midnites for Maniacs: Lost in No Man’s Land:” •FernGully: The Last Rainforest (Kroyer, 1991), Fri, 7:30; Romancing the Stone (Zemeckis, 1984), Fri, 9:30, and Ishtar (May, 1987), Fri, 11:45. $12 for all three films. “3rd I International South Asian Film Festival:” Gamperaliya (Peries, 1964), Sat, noon; I Am Sindhutai Sapkal (Mahadevan, 2010), Sat, 2:30; A Letter of Fire (Handagama, 2005), Sat, 5:10; Delhi Belly (Deo, 2011), Sat, 9:15. More info at thirdi.org/festival. •Flash Gordon (Hodges, 1980), Sun, 2, 4, and Dune (Lynch, 1984), Sun, 4:10, 9:15.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. Le Havre (Kaurismäki, 2011), Nov 11-17, call for times. Crimebuster: A Son’s Search for His Father (Dematteis, 2011), Sun, 2. Between Two Worlds (Kaufman and Snitow, 2011), Mon, 7.

EMBARCADERP CENTER CINEMA One Embarcadero Center, SF; www.sffs.org. $12-20. “New Italian Cinema:” A Quiet Life (Cupellini, 2010), Sun, 1; The First Assignment (Cecere, 2010), Sun, 3:45; Our Life (Luchetti, 2010), Sun, 6:30, 9:30; It’s Happening Tomorrow (Luchetti, 1988), Mon, 6:30; Ginger and Cinnamon (Luchetti, 2003), Mon, 9; 20 Cigarettes (Amadei, 2010), Tues, 6:30; One Life, Maybe Two (Aronadio, 2010), Tues, 9:15.

EXPLORATORIUM McBean Theater, 3601 Lyon, SF; www.exploratorium.edu. $5. “The Last Kodachrome Movie: Recent Works in Obsolete Color,” Wed, 7:30.

NINTH STREET INDEPENDENT FILM CENTER 145 Ninth St, SF; www.artwithimpact.org. Free. Slingshot Hip-Hop (Salloum, 2008), Thurs, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” El Valley Centro (Benning, 1999), Wed, 7:30. “Romani Culture:” The Shutka Book of Records (Manic, 2005), Thurs, 7:30. “Southern (Dis)Comfort: The American South in Film:” House by the River (Lang, 1950), Fri, 7; The Fugutive Kind (Lumet, 1960), Fri, 8:50. “Abbas Kiarostami: The Fragility of Life:” And Life Goes On… (1992), Sat, 6 and Sun, 3. “Jeanne Moreau: Enduring Allure:” Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 1961), Sat, 8; Touchez pas au grisbi (Becker, 1953), Sun, 4:50. “Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov:” Stride, Soviet! (The Moscow Soviet in the Present, Past, and Future) (1926), Tues, 7.

PALACE OF FINE ARTS 3301 Lyon, SF; (415) 554-0525, www.americanindianfilminstitute.com. Free-$20. “36th Annual American Indian Film Festival,” Thurs-Sat.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “3rd I International South Asian Film Festival:” Big in Bollywood (Bowles and Meehan, 2011), Wed, 7:20; “The Family Circus: Local Short Films,” Thurs, 7:20; Ashes (Naidu, 2010), Thurs, 9:30; Patang (Bhargava, 2010), Fri, 7:20; Semshook (Kumar, 2010), Fri, 9:45; Flying Fish (Pushpakumara, 2011), Sun, noon; Way of Life (Driver, 2011), Sun, 12:20; The Boxing Ladies (Nandakumar, 2011), plus shorts, Sun, 2:30; The Image Threads (Vijay, 2010), Sun, 2:40; Play Like a Lion: The Legacy of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan (Mellars, 2011), Sun, 4:30; What Is Time? (Pasha, 2009), Sun, 6; Pudhupettai (Selvaraghavan, 2006), Sun, 7:20. More info at thirdi.org/festival. Gainsbourg: The Man Who Loved Women (Forneri, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9. “International BowWow Doggy Film Festival,” Sat, 12:30. This event, $10-90. Public Speaking (Scorsese, 2010), Mon-Tues, 7, 8:45.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. “Bay Area Community Cinema Series:” We Still Live Here (Makepeace, 2011), Tues, 5:45.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $5 donation. “The Vortex Incarnate:” •Bedazzled (Donen, 1967), Thurs, 9, and The Car (Silverstein, 1977), Thurs, 11.

WALT DISNEY FAMILY MUSEUM 104 Montgomery, the Presidio, SF; www.waltdisney.org. $12-20. “The 11th Hour: A Sampling of Shorts from World War II,” Fri, repeats throughout the day starting at 11am.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. Urbanized (Hustwit, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 4, 6, 8. “Manila! Manila!”, reading and screening with author R. Zamora Linmark, Fri, 7 (free event). The Dream of Eleuteria (Zuasola, 2010), Sat, 7:30; Sun, 2.

Our Weekly Picks: November 9-15

Andrew Lam

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November 8, 2011

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WEDNESDAY 9

Keep Shelly in Athens

Grecian downbeat band Keep Shelly in Athens is an enigmatic act. Not in the annoying, contrived, hype-craving way — rather, this duo keeps its public persona as laid back as its chilled out, ambient music, allowing the material to speak for itself. Keep Shelly in Athens’ new EP, Our Own Dream (Forest Family), is refreshingly accessible. There are enough enchanting vocal melodies to snare pop enthusiasts, enough heavy beats to satisfy the most voracious electro-heads, and plenty of mellow, spaced out vibes for the chillwavers. (Frances Capell)

With Kisses and Blackbird Blackbird (DJ Set)

8 p.m., $14

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

Lykke Li

A few years back, it seemed Swedish singer Lykke Li was most known for a certain frailty, a breathless, whispered seduction on songs like “Little Bit.” With her last album, 2011’s boldly dark Wounded Rhymes, every weakness has been inverted into a strength. The pining 1950s bubblegum on “Sadness Is A Blessing” is not the song of teen heartbreak it appears to be, revealing an emotional maturity and confidence beyond what you would expect from any of her peers. From other 25-year-olds, the chorus of “Get Some” — “I’m your prostitute/you’re gonna get some” — would be little more than a sleazy come on. From Lykke Li, it’s a threat. (Ryan Prendiville)

With First Aid Kit

8 p.m., $35

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oak.

www.thefoxtheater.com

THURSDAY 10

Holy Ghost!

With the release of the first single in 2007, Holy Ghost! set a high bar for itself. An electropop track with a debt to Italo, “Hold On” announced the duo of Alex Frankel and Nick Millhiser (two session musicians with ties to DFA in NYC) as a group to watch. Also, taking the title seriously, a group to wait for, as a full album wouldn’t be released until this year (they may have been busy opening for LCD Soundsystem and Cut Copy.) On the self-titled LP, though, “Hold On” is easily overshadowed by songs including the New Order referencing “It’s Not Over,” “Some Children” featuring soulful white man Michael McDonald, and the saddest dance song, “Jam for Jerry,” (a tribute to deceased !!! drummer Jerry Fuchs, who also had worked with Holy Ghost!).(Prendiville)

With Jessica 6 and Eli Escobar

8 p.m., $16

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

Blek le Rat

Xavier Prou, a.k.a Blek le Rat, has been stenciling political art on city walls since 1981 — decades earlier than Banksy. “Every time I think I’ve painted something original,” Banksy has said, “I find out Blek Le Rat has done it as well, only 20 years earlier.” Blek le Rat’s stirring and elegant stencil work has become a model for others. He’s pushed the limits of what graffiti can do, and helped elevate it to the respected art it is today — as one court judge in Paris said of his work, “I cannot condemn it. It’s too beautiful.” Arts Publishing Ltd. has released an immense 30-year retrospective book of Blek le Rat’s work. And at SFMOMA, the artist appears for a signing party in the Schwab Room. (James H. Miller)

6:30 p.m., free

SFMOMA

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.com

FRIDAY 11

Big Troubles

It was difficult to discern just how much talent was buried within Big Troubles’ ultra-fuzzy lo-fi debut, Worry. There were a few promising glimpses of My Bloody Valentine, but altogether the band came across as a little one-dimensional. Then the baby-faced boys from Ridgewood, NJ, got serious for the more mature, infinitely more polished follow-up, Romantic Comedy (Slumberland). Its songs convey angst, heartache, and ennui with a delightfully diverse array of influences: shoegaze, jangle-pop, even slacker rock. Big Troubles makes modern pop music for the teenager in all of us. Let your inner teen out, if only for a night. (Capell)

With Real Estate

9 p.m., $17

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

“Bring on the Lumière”

Don’t fence in Catherine Galasso. She is intrigued by smashing distinctions between the virtual and the real, the present and the historic and, of course, conventional artistic disciplines like dance, music, drama, and film. Her instinct for the theater is clear; her craft impressive. Still, expending all that talent on a work about Emperor Norton seemed distinctly odd. Given that her father was a composer of music for films — she uses some of his scores — her present project, “Bring on the Lumière,” an evocation of cinema inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière, makes a lot more sense. She couldn’t have done better than collaborating with pioneering lighting designer Elaine Buckholtz. Or with dancers Cristine Bonansea and Marina Fukushima as the brothers. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sun/13, 8 p.m. $17-$20.

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

“Lost Together in No Man’s Land”

Midnites for Maniacs’ latest triple bill at the Castro highlights exotic road adventures with two familiar features, the animated Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992) and 1984’s Romancing the Stone. Both were hits, but the midnight show was a notorious flop. Like Heaven’s Gate before it, Ishtar‘s 1987 release was preceded by embarrassingly public reports of a production wildly over-budget, over-schedule, and over-run by the clashing of several monumental egos. Thus it was considered a failure before it was ever seen, and became a cultural joke rejected by both critics and public. But Elaine May’s salute to the 1940s Hope/Crosby Road to… comedies, with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman as talentless NYC lounge singers incongruously caught up in Middle Eastern political upheavals, is overdue for re-evaluation — it has moments of sublime silliness. Still unavailable on DVD, Ishtar gets a rare 35mm showing tonight. (Dennis Harvey)

7:30 p.m. (Ishtar at 11:45 p.m.), $12

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.midnightsformaniacs.com

SATURDAY 12

“International BowWow Doggy Film Festival”

I just finished reading Susan Orlean’s Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, so I’ve got canine cinema on the brain. That famous German Shepherd (or shepherds, as the book discusses) doesn’t factor into the Roxie’s first-ever dog-centric film festival, but plenty of other pooches do, from the sad-faced, snappily-dressed Weimaraners onscreen (in a program of William Wegman shorts), to the dog show judged by celebs like Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin and former child actor Jon Provist (a.k.a. the always-imperiled Timmy from Lassie). A good portion of the audience will be on four legs, too: hounds under 35 pounds get in free, and while bigger Fidos do need their own tickets, it’s all for a good cause — Muttville senior dog rescue. Alert the pup-arazzi! (Cheryl Eddy)

12:30 p.m., $10–$40

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

They Might Be Giants

The Fillmore’s page for this show includes a video of They Might Be Giants from 1991, performing a couple of traditional gateways into the band, “Istanbul” and “Birdhouse In Your Soul.” But it doesn’t really answer important questions like “Are these guys still any good?” or “Are they still making children’s music?” For that, you could check out the recent albums Join Us and Album Raises New and Troubling Questions, but a shortcut would be John Flansburgh and John Linnell’s performance for the Onion AV Club’s cover song competition, “Undercover.” With a bombastic version of Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” the veteran band destroys a host of hip chillwave acts and bearded indie rockers, proving that yeah, the two Johns still got it.(Prendiville)

Also Sun/13,

8 p.m., $27.50

Fillmore

1850 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

Austra

Austra’s sound has been described as “harkening back to the sleazier side of new wave” — is there anything more appealing than that notion? Sleaze-wave; it rolls off the tongue. Led by Latvian-Canadian vocal powerhouse Katie Stelmanis (a former solo artist known for her youthful opera training and her Fucked Up album guest appearance), the Toronto based trio creates classically driven electronic dance music with spiffy beats and supernatural female vocals — it’d fit well in an impassioned 1980s montage scene, perhaps one where our main girl has a revelation of sudden power. This is especially true of “Lose It,” the heart-pumping single with scattered operatic highs off this spring’s debut, Feel It Break. It’s a modern, electro-“Total Eclipse of the Heart” meets “Sweet Dreams,” only you know, sexier. (Emily Savage)

With Grimes, Sister Crayon

9 p.m., $16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

SUNDAY 13

The Two Man Gentlemen Band

Calling all hep cats and swing kids. The Two Man Gentlemen Band is jumping and jiving its way across the country with a brand new vinyl seven-inch, and an exuberant retro sound. Sounding like a cheeky cross between a Django Reinhardt revival and a late-night drinking session with Broke-Ass Stuart, the gents of the Two Man Gentlemen Band honed their craft on the unsympathetic streets and subways of the Big Apple, and like other buskers-turned-legit, their sound is much bigger and far tighter than you might expect from a bare bones string duo whose favorite themes are inebriation, indiscretion, and ladies. A toe-tapping, seriously swinging good time for all. (Nicole Gluckstern)

With Colin Gilmore, the Barbary Ghosts

9 p.m., $10

Amnesia

853 Valencia, SF

(415) 970-0012

www.amnesiathebar.com

TUESDAY 15

Future Islands

The only thing more intense and cathartic than a Future Islands record is a Future Islands show. Each release from this Baltimore, Md., synth-pop trio is more haunting than the last, but its dramatic performances have been legendary from the get-go. Thunder-throated singer Samuel T. Herring has been known to call forth the beast within by slapping his own face and beating on his chest as he takes to the stage. Future Islands’ dreamy synth and bass tunes are as danceable as they are tragic; you won’t know whether to sweat or cry. You’ll probably do both. (Capell)

With Ed Shrader’s Music Beat and Secret Shopper

9 p.m., $14

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam

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November 8, 2011

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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

Fela! Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $31-200. Opens Tues/15, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm; no show Nov 24); Sun, 2pm (also Nov 27, 7:30pm). Through Dec 11. The life and music of Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti is captured in this show with choreography by Bill T. Jones.

Forgetting the Details Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.nicolemaxali.com. $20. Opens Thurs/10, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun/13, 3pm. Through Nov 19. Nicole Maxali performs her solo work about the effects of Alzheimer’s.

The Importance of Being Earnest Notre Dame Senior Plaza, Community Room, 347 Dolores, SF; (650) 952-3021. Free. Opens Fri/11, 7:30pm. Runs Fri, 7:30pm; Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 20. 16th Street Players perform the Oscar Wilde classic.

Language Rooms Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-28. Previews Thurs/10-Fri/11, 8pm. Opens Sat/12, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 24); Sun, 7pm (no show Sun/13). Through Dec 4. Golden Thread Productions and Asian American Theater Company present the West Coast premiere of Yussef El Guindi’s dark comedy.

SexRev: The José Sarria Experience CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; (415) 552-4100, www.therhino.org. $10-25. Previews Thurs/10-Sat/12 and Nov 17-18, 8pm (also Sat/12, 10:30pm); Sun/13, 3pm. Opens Nov 19, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 10:30pm; no show Nov 24); Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 27. Theatre Rhinoceros performs John Fisher’s musical celebration of America’s first queer activist — a hit for the company in 2010.

BAY AREA

The Soldier’s Tale Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Previews Fri/11-Sat/12 and Nov 16, 8pm; Sun/12, 2pm; Tues/15, 7pm. Opens Nov 17, 8pm. Runs Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 18. Aurora Theatre presents a re-imagined version of Igor Stravinsky’s 1918 musical by Tom Ross and Muriel Maffre.

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; (415) 992-8168, www.thealcovetheater.com. $32-50. Sun, 6pm; starting Nov 19, Thurs and Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 29. Not Quite Opera Productions presents Anne Nygren Doherty’s musical about San Francisco, with five characters all portrayed by Mary Gibboney.

Almost Nothing, Day of Absence Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 20. The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre christens its grand new home near Union Square with two well-acted one-act plays under sharp direction by artistic director Steven Anthony Jones. Almost Nothing by Brazilian playwright Marcos Barbosa marks the North American premiere of an intriguing and shrewdly crafted Pinteresque drama, wherein a middle-class couple (Rhonnie Washington and Kathryn Tkel) returns home from an unexpected encounter at a stop light that leaves them jittery and distracted. As an eerie wind blows outside (in David Molina’s atmospheric sound design), their conversation circles around the event as if fearing to name it outright. When a poor woman (Wilma Bonet) arrives claiming to have seen everything, the couple abandons rationalization for a practical emergency and a moral morass dictated by poverty and class advantage — negotiated on their behalf by a black market professional (Rudy Guerrero). Next comes a spirited revival of Douglas Turner Ward’s Civil Rights–era Day of Absence (1965), a broad satire of Southern race relations that posits a day when all the “Neegras” mysteriously disappear, leaving white society helpless and desperate. The cast (in white face) excel at the high-energy comedy, and in staging the text director Jones makes a convincing parallel with today’s anti-immigrant laws and rhetoric. But if the play remains topical in one way, its too-blunt agitprop mode makes the message plain immediately and interest accordingly pales rapidly. (Avila)

Annapurna Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Opens Wed/9, 8pm. Showtimes vary, through Dec 4. Magic Theatre performs Sharr White’s world premiere drama about love’s longevity.

How to Love Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.pustheatre.com. $15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 20. Three demigod-like personalities at the center of the earth are charged with answering life’s mysteries, big and small, but find themselves stymied by their latest task, namely, explaining “how to love.” They have only a week to do it, for some reason, or humanity will be consigned to everlasting consternation, or something like that — coherence is not a priority here — anyway: stakes are high. Their boss, the Magistrate (Geo Epsilanty), has them present their findings each day, but each of them — the Very Sexy One (Jessica Schroeder in sassy lingerie), the Stern One (Gloria MacDonald in girl-school uniform), and the Young One (Brian Martin in caped crusader outfit) — comes up with bupkus. Finally, the Young One gets the inspiration to kidnap a surface-dwelling earthling (Valerie Fachman) to help them figure it all out. Local playwright Megan Cohen’s mumbling comedy, directed with robust attention to blocking and movement by Scott Baker for Performers Under Stress, is far too skit-like a conceit to merit its two plodding acts. More to the point, its humor is very silly but generally dim. Despite being set at the center of the earth, this is too shallow and glancing an investigation of love to intrigue or tickle the genuinely curious. (Avila)

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat/12, 8:30pm; Sun/13, 7pm. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Making Porn Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-50. Thurs, 8pm; Thurs, 8pm; Fri-Sat, 9pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Nov 27. Ronnie Larsen brings back his crowd-pleasing comedy about the gay porn industry.

*”Master Harold” … and the Boys Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $18-40. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Based loosely on personal history, Athol Fugard’s drama explores institutionalized racism in South Africa’s apartheid era ensconced in the seemingly innocuous world of a Port Elizabeth tea room. The play opens during a rainy afternoon with no customers, leaving the Black African help, Willie (Anthony Rollins-Mullens) and Sam (LaMont Ridgell), with little to do but rehearse ballroom dance steps for a big competition coming up in a couple of weeks. When Hally (Adam Simpson), the owner’s son, arrives from school, the atmosphere remains convivial at first then increasingly strained, as events happening outside the tea room conspire to tear apart their fragile camaraderie. The greatest burdens of the play are carried by Sam, who fills a range of roles for the increasingly pessimistic and emotionally-stunted Hally — teacher, student, surrogate father, confidante, and servant — all the while completely aware that their mutual love is almost certainly doomed to not survive past Hally’s adolescence, and possibly not past the afternoon. Ridgell rises greatly to the challenges of his character, ably flanked by Rollins-Mullens, and Simpson; he embodies the depth of Sam’s humanity, from his wisdom of experience, to his admiration for beauty, to his capacity to bear and finally to forgive Hally’s need to lash out at him. It is a moving and memorable rendering. (Gluckstern)

More Human Than Human Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; (415) 401-7987, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. B. Duke’s dystopian drama is inspired by Philip K. Dick.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 3pm. Extended through Dec 17. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

*The Odyssey Aboard Alma, Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, SF; www.weplayers.org. $160. Fri/11-Sat/12 and Nov 18, 12:30pm. Heralding their hugely ambitious Spring 2012 production of The Odyssey, which will take place all over Angel Island, the WE Players are tackling the work on a slightly smaller scale by staging it on the historic scow schooner Alma, which is part of the Maritime National Historical Park fleet docked at the end of Hyde Street Pier. Using both boat and Bay as setting, the essential chapters of the ten-year voyage — encounters with the Cyclops, Circe, the Underworld, the Sirens, Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, and Calypso — are enacted through an intriguing mash-up of narration, choreography, sea chanteys, salty dog stories (like shaggy dog stories, but more water-logged), breathtaking views, and a few death-defying stunts the likes of which you won’t see on many conventional stages. High points include the casual swapping of roles (every actor gets to play Odysseus, however briefly), Ross Travis’ masked and flatulent Prometheus and sure-footed Hermes, Ava Roy’s hot pants-clad Circe, Charlie Gurke’s steady musical direction and multi-instrumental abilities, and the sail itself, an experiential bonus. Landlubbers beware, so much time facing the back of the boat where much of the action takes place can result in mild quease, even on a calm day. Take advantage of the downtime between scenes to walk around and face forward now and again. You’ll want to anyway. (Gluckstern)

Oh, Kay! Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 20. 42nd Street Moon performs George and Ira Gershwin’s Prohibition-set comedy.

*On the Air Pier 29 on the Embarcadero (at Battery), SF; (415) 438-2668, love.zinzanni.org. $117 and up (includes dinner). Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Dec 31. Teatro ZinZanni’s final production at its longtime nest on Pier 29 is a nostalgia-infused banquet of bits structured around an old-time radio variety show, featuring headliners Geoff Hoyle (Geezer) and blues singer Duffy Bishop. If you haven’t seen juggling on the radio, for instance, it’s pretty awesome, especially with a performer like Bernard Hazens, whose footing atop a precarious tower of tubes and cubes is already cringingly extraordinary. But all the performers are dependably first-rate, including Andrea Conway’s comic chandelier lunacy, aerialist and enchanting space alien Elena Gatilova’s gorgeous “circeaux” act, graceful hand-balancer Christopher Phi, class-act tapper Wayne Doba, and radio MC Mat Plendl’s raucously tweeny hula-hooping. Add some sultry blues numbers by raunchy belter Bishop, Hoyle’s masterful characterizations (including some wonderful shtick-within-a-shtick as one-liner maestro “Red Bottoms”), a few classic commercials, and a healthy dose of audience participation and you start to feel nicely satiated and ready for a good cigar. Smoothly helmed by ZinZanni creative director Norm Langill, On the Air signals off-the-air for the popular dinner circus — until it can secure a new patch of local real estate for its antique spiegeltent — so tune in while you may. (Avila)

*Pellas and Melisande Cutting Ball Theater, Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thurs, 7:30; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 27. The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, the Swan Maiden: shimmering strands of each timeless tale twist through the melancholy tapestry of the Maurice Maeterlinck play Pelleas and Melisande, which opens Cutting Ball Theater’s 12th season. Receiving a lushly atmospheric treatment by director and translator Rob Melrose, this ill-fated Symbolist drama stars Joshua Schell and Caitlyn Louchard as the doomed lovers. Trapped in the claustrophobic environs of an isolated castle at the edge of a forbidding forest and equally trapped in an inadvertent love triangle with the hale and hearty elder prince Golaud (Derek Fischer), Pelleas’ brother and Melisande’s husband, the desperate, unconsummated passion that builds between the two youngsters rivals that of Romeo and Juliet’s, and leads to an ending even more tragic — lacking the bittersweet reconciliation of rival families that subverts the pure melodrama of the Shakespearean classic. Presented on a spare, wooden traverse stage (designed by Michael Locher), and accompanied by a smoothly-flowing score by Cliff Caruthers, the action is enhanced by Laura Arrington’s haunting choreography, a silent contortionism which grips each character as they try desperately to convey the conflicting emotions which grip them without benefit of dialogue. Though described by Melrose as a “fairy tale world for adults,” the dreamy gauze of Pelleas and Melisande peels away quickly enough to reveal a flinty and unsentimental heart. (Gluckstern)

*Race American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-85. Opens Wed/26, 8pm. Wed/9-Sat/12, 8pm (also Wed/9 and Sat/12, 2pm); Sun/13, 2pm. A very rich older white guy (Kevin O’Rourke) accused of sexually assaulting a poor woman of color looks for representation from the racially diverse firm headed by Jack (Anthony Fusco) and Henry (Chris Butler) with assistance from Jack’s African American protégé, Susan (Susan Heyward). With shades of Oleanna and Speed the Plow, David Mamet’s fleet new play mixes race and gender in the so-called justice system (in fact solely adversarial in the playwright’s unsurprising view, with winning being the only point). The result is an ultimately vindictive struggle both volatile and familiar. Some of that familiarity naturally stems from the world beyond the playwright’s immediate control — especially with the odor of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair still in the air — but the play’s action feels managed throughout by a political worldview too, um, black-and-white to register as up-to-the-moment. That said, muscular writing and the strong and appealing cast under intelligent direction by Irene Lewis guarantee an enjoyable, crackerjack production from American Conservatory Theater. (Avila)

Savage in Limbo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs John Patrick Shanley’s edgy comedy.

“Shocktoberfest 12: Fear Over Frisco” Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $25-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. In its annual season-scented horror bid, Thrillpeddlers joins forces with SF’s Czar of Noir, writer-director Eddie Muller, for a sharply penned triplet of plays that resurrect lurid San Francisco lore as flesh-and-blood action. In the slightly sluggish but intriguing Grand Inquisitor, a solitary young woman modeling herself on Louise Brooks in Lulu (an alluringly Lulu-like Bonni Suval) believes she has located the Zodiac killer’s widow (a sweet but cagey Mary Gibboney) — a scenario that just can’t end well for somebody, yet manages to defy expectations. An Obvious Explanation turns on an amnesiac (Daniel Bakken) whose brother (Flynn de Marco) explains the female corpse in the rollaway (Zelda Koznofski) before asking bro where he hid a certain pile of money. Enter a brash doctor (Suval) with a new drug and ambitions of her own vis-à-vis the hapless head case. Russell Blackwood directs The Drug, which adapts a Grand Guignol classic to the hoity-toity milieu of the Van Nesses and seedy Chinatown opium dens, where a rough-playing attorney (an ever persuasive Eric Tyson Wertz) determines to turn a gruesome case involving the duplicitous Mrs. Van Ness (an equally sure, sultry Kära Emry) to his own advantage. The evening also offers a blackout spook show and some smoothly atmospheric musical numbers, including Muller’s rousing “Fear Over Frisco” (music composed by Scrumbly Koldewyn; accompaniment by Steve Bolinger and Birdie-Bob Watt) and an aptly low-down Irving Berlin number — both winningly performed by the entire company. (Avila)

Shoot O’Malley Twice StageWerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.viragotheatre.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 24). Through Nov 26. Virago Theater Company performs Jon Brooks’ world-premiere existential comedy.

Sitting in a Circle Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, Ste 109, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Fri/11-Sat/12, 8pm. We are here to question the ways we present ourselves, communicate, and commune, but the masks never really come off and — unlike, say, a general assembly meeting down at Occupy SF — a circle of equals never really forms in this new work by the Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project, debuting at Intersection for the Arts’ new downtown space. The audience sits in or around a large circle of chairs, initially bathed in the harsh glow of office-space fluorescence. This much is as expected. But as the room transforms (amid production designer Allen Willner’s protean, mood-shifting lighting scheme) into some in-between world of personal-transformation workshop, talk show confessional, art therapy session, and psychic retreat, the accompanying conceit of spontaneous open-ended “coming together” gives way to a highly choreographed, largely jocular entertainment managed by a group of seven performers planted among the assembled. The results are varied, sometimes amusing, sometimes pushy, and usually too stylized or arch to be very moving or discerning. But a dance solo by adroit 13-year-old Rio Mezey Anderson comes as an unexpected, mesmerizing moment that — in its channeling of pure, unguarded expression — is also the evening’s most authentic. (Avila)

Sticky Time Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; www.vanguardianproductions.com. $15-40. Wed-Sat and Mon/14, 8pm. Through Nov 18. Crowded Fire and Vanguardian Productions present playwright-director Marilee Talkington’s multimedia science fiction about a woman running out of time in the worst way. The prolix and histrionic story is the real sticking point, however, in this otherwise imaginatively staged piece, which places its audience on swivel chairs in the center of Brava’s upstairs studio theater, transformed by designer Andrew Lu’s raised stage and white video screens running the length of the walls into an enveloping aural (moody minimalistic score by Chao-Jan Chang) and visual landscape. Thea (Rami Margron) heads a three-person crew of celestial plumbers managing a sea of time “threads,” an undulating web of crisscrossing lines (in the impressive video animation by Rebecca Longworth). The structure is plagued by a mysterious wave of “time quakes” that Tim (Lawrence Radecker) thinks he may have figured out. Coworker Emit (Michele Leavy), meanwhile, goofing around like a hyperactive child, spots some sort of beast at work in the ether. When Thea gets stuck by a loose thread, she becomes something of a time junky, desperate to relive the color-suffused world of love and family lost somewhere in space-time as reality starts to unravel (with a dramatic assist from cinematographer Lloyd Vance) and the crew seeks help from a wise figure in a tattered gown (Mollena Williams). A little like a frenetic, stagy version of Andrey Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), the story gets credit for dramatizing some confounding facts about time and space at the particle level but might have benefited from less dialogue and more mystery — just as the audio-visual experience works best when the house lights are low. (Avila)

The Temperamentals New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/9-Fri/11, 8pm. Opens Sat/12, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 18. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jon Marans’ drama about gay rights during the McCarthy era.

Totem Grand Chapiteau, AT&T Park, Parking Lot A, 74 Mission Rock, SF; cirquedusoleil.com/totem. $58-248.50. Tues-Sun, schedule varies. Extended through Dec 18. Cirque Du Soleil returns with its latest big-top production.

Two Dead Clowns Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 7pm. Through Nov 26. Ronnie Larsen’s new play explores the lives of Divine and John Wayne Gacy.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 26. Brian Copeland (Not a Genuine Black Man) presents a workshop production of his new solo show.

*Working for the Mouse Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $22. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no performances Nov 24-26). Through Dec 17. It might not come as a surprise to hear that even “the happiest place on earth” has a dark side, but hearing Trevor Allen describe it during this reprise of 2002’s Working for the Mouse will put a smile on your face as big as Mickey’s. With a burst of youthful energy, Allen bounds onto the tiny stage of Impact Theatre to confess his one-time aspiration to never grow up — a desire which made auditioning for the role of Peter Pan at Disneyland a sensible career move. But in order to break into the big time of “charactering,” one must pay some heavy, plush-covered dues. As Allen creeps up the costumed hierarchy one iconic cartoon figure at a time, he finds himself unwittingly enmeshed in a world full of backroom politics, union-busting, drug addled surfer dudes with peaches-and-cream complexions, sexual tension, showboating, job suspension, Make-A-Wish Foundation heartbreak, hash brownies, rabbit vomit, and accidental decapitation. Smoothly paced and astutely crafted, Mouse will either shatter your blissful ignorance or confirm your worst suspicions about the corporate Disney machine, but either way, it will probably make you treat any “Casual Seasonal Pageant Helpers” you see running around in their sweaty character suits with a whole lot more empathy. (Note: review from the show’s recent run at La Val’s Subterranean in Berkeley.) (Gluckstern)

BAY AREA

Annie Berkeley Playhouse, Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; (510) 845-8542, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Thurs-Sat, 7pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through Dec 4. Berkeley Playhouse performs the classic musical.

Doubt: A Parable Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun/13, 2pm. Through Nov 19. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer-winning drama.

How to Write a New Book for the Bible Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm; no show Nov 18); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through Nov 20. An aspiring writer who later becomes a priest, Bill (Tyler Pierce) is the caregiver for his aging mother (Linda Gehringer) during her long bout with cancer. His father (Leo Marks), though already dead, still inhabits his mother’s flickering concept of reality, made all the more dreamlike by her necessary dependence on pain medication. His brother (Aaron Blakely), meanwhile, has returned from Vietnam with survivor guilt but lands a meaningful career as a schoolteacher in the South. The latest from playwright Bill Cain (Equivocation, 9 Circles) is a humor-filled but sentimental and long-winded autobiographical reflection on family from the vantage of his mother’s long illness. It gets a strong production from Berkeley Rep, with a slick cast under agile direction by Kent Nicholson, but it plays as if narrator Bill mistakenly believes he’s stepped out of an Arthur Miller play, when in fact there’s little here of dramatic interest and far too much jerking of tears. (Avila)

Rambo: The Missing Years Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 7pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Dec 10. Howard “Hanoi Howie” Petrick presents his solo show about being an anti-war demonstrator — while also serving in the Army.

*Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Wed/9, 7pm; Thurs/10 and Sat/12-Sun/13, 2pm; Fri/11, 8pm. The life of stage and screen legend Rita Moreno is a subject that has no trouble filling two swift and varied acts, especially as related in anecdote, song, comedy, and dance by the serene multiple–award-winning performer and Berkeley resident herself. Indeed, that so much material gets covered so succinctly but rarely abruptly is a real achievement of this attractively adorned autobiographical solo show crafted with playwright and Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone. (Avila)

Sam’s Enchanted Evening TheaterStage at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 26. The Residents wrote the script and did the musical arrangements for this musical, featuring singer Randy Rose and pianist Joshua Raoul Brody.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Through Nov 20. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam

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November 8, 2011

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Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 9

Food For Thought Dine-Out Various locations, SF. www.missiongraduates.org. 9 a.m. – 11 p.m., prices vary (check website for participating restaurants). Mission Graduates, a nonprofit working to boost the numbers of college-bound Mission youngsters, receives a sizeable chunk of participating diners’ bills tonight at eateries across town. Depending on your budget, today’s the day to either go all-out at Foreign Cinema or reignite your love affair with the humble Papalote burrito.

“Trading Ideas: Emerging Discourses on Asian Contemporary Art” Galley One, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. www.ybca.org. 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., $7, free for members. YBCA and the Asian Art Museum team up to explore Asia’s role within the contemporary art picture.

“Unwrapped and Regifted: Stories about the Holidays” 111 Minna gallery, SF. (415) 974-1719, www.111minnagallery.com, free. The story-sharers at LitUp Writers know that it’s not even Thanksgiving, and on shopping center time that means the hour is nigh for Christmas and Chanukah tales. If you think you can take the heat, don your worst holiday sweater to compete for a cash prize.

THURSDAY 10

One and Only: the Untold Story of On the Road book reading Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. www.booksmith.com. 7:30 p.m., free. LuAnne Henderson rambled with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady for the entire length of that well-known Road. Her daughter, Anne Marie Santos, joins Kerouac expert Gerald Nicosia to discuss the journey’s underside.

Love Cake Reading Modern Times, 2919 24th St., SF. www.mtbs.com. 7 p.m., free. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha may not be the easiest name to type into Google, but it merits a cramped finger or two. The activist and spoken-word poet reads from recent work addressing how queer people of color combat violence with compassion and sexuality.

Footloose Forays Talk Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF. www.randallmuseum.org. 7:30 – 9 p.m., free. Michael Ellis’s bio photo shows the man in a backwards pink baseball cap, matching shirt, and dangling binoculars. This may aptly sum him up. Join the freewheeling botanist, Burner, world traveler, and radio host for a recounting of his best adventures.

FRIDAY 11

Legends of Hip-Hop book signing Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. www.booksmith.com. 6:30 p.m., free. With a lovingly-penned forward by Chuck D of Public Enemy, Justin Bua’s compilation of art honoring hip-hop’s greats breathes new life into the traditional coffee table book.

Celebration of Craftswomen Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason, SF. Also Sat/12 and Sun/13. www.celebrationofcraftswomen.org. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., $9. The 33rd annual fair and celebration brings SF’s craftiest females and their wares out on display, accompanied by live music and dance. Proceeds benefit the Mission’s eye-poppingly beautiful Women’s Building.

SATURDAY 12

Green Festival Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 8th St., SF. Also Sun/13. www.greenfestivals.org. 10 a.m. – 7 p.m., free (see conditions below). Maybe the 12 pounds of organic garbanzo beans you just bought do have an immediate use, after all. Bring a Rainbow Grocery receipt (for a purchase of more than ten dollars), four cans of food, your bike, your Sierra Club card or a union card and get free admission to the green equivalent of a state fair. Food court, beer garden, yoga classes, business seminars, speakers, and exhibits await.

Paul Madonna book signing Museum Store, SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF. www.sfmoma.org. 2 p.m., free. If this well-known SF cartoonist has luminously sketched your cupola, gable, or neighborhood pothole you know you have bragging rights. Everything Is Its Own Reward, Madonna’s latest compilation of SF streetscapes, roams from mundane telephone wires to noble turrets, all in pen and ink.

Writers with Drinks The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com. 7:30 – 9:30 p.m., $5 sliding scale. Authors swig and shoot the breeze with their audience at this recurrent event, which benefits the Center for Sex and Culture this month. Befitting of the cause of the evening, tonight’s lineup includes writers responsible for an erotic novella, a transsexual showbiz memoir, and a treatise on dating as a feminist.

SUNDAY 13

“Man as Object” Peep Show Drawing Circle SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF. www.somarts.org. Noon – 3 p.m., $8 suggested donation. All our welcome to take up their artistic tools and depict a live male model as part of SOMArts’ ongoing exhibit turning traditional gender roles upside down — although we tend to question the innovation of having a man treated like a piece of meat in this town.

MONDAY 14

Mere Future Reading and Signing Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck, Berk. www.pegasusbookstore.com. 7:30 p.m., free. To an audience familiar with paying astronomical rents, Sarah Schulman’s dystopian satire of a future New York will strike a chord. Schulman slyly invents a world where apartments go for forty bucks a month and the only possible jobs are in marketing.

TUESDAY 15

Ether Reading and Signing City Lights, 261 Columbus, SF. www.citylights.com. 7 p.m., free. Ben Ehrenreich once reimagined The Odyssey to critical acclaim, and his latest undertaking – the chronicle of an unnamed protagonist wandering through a city’s violent apocalypse – is no less involved of a literary feat.

The Guardian–and the historic elections of 1966 and 2011

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November 8, 2011

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(Written on election day before the polls closed. Scroll down for our editorial positions of 1966 and 2011)

In the second edition of the Guardian, dated Nov. 7, 1966, we published our first set of editorial endorsements that were to become a trademark of our form of alternative journalism. (Our 1966 editorial in pdf form.)

We strongly endorsed then Gov. Pat Brown, going for his third term as a progressive governor, over Ronald Reagan, making his first run at elective office as the voice of the new Republican conservatism, in what we called “our historic election.” In reading the editorial over on the eve of our current “historic election,” it was remarkably prescient.

“For the repudiation of Brown and the election of Reagan,” we noted gloomily, “would mean that a generation of progressive legislation—in medicare, in education, in welfare, in conservation, in water resources, in bringing to account the dreadful problems of growth, population, and sprawl—would be in grave jeopardy.

“It isn’t difficult to imagine, for example, what will happen to the conservation movement at the hands of a man who talks loudly about selling off ‘unused park land.’ It is this sort of statement that shows Reagan’s naivete, his total lack of qualification for any responsible government job and his complete misunderstanding of what is happening in our state.”

We pointed out that Brown had continued the progressive policies of Govs.Warren and Knight but that this forward movement would end abruptly with Reagan as governor. Well, alas, we were right. Reaganomics was born and the Guardian and everybody else have ever since been fighting the doctrine of tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, and the economics of greed is good and greed is legal.

The result can be seen in today’s election in San Francisco and other California cities and counties.

The mayoral regimes of Brown, Newsom and Ed Lee have carried on the key elements of Reaganomics: endless budget cuts and a bushelbasket of higher fees, no new revenue initiatives, no moves to tax the Warren Hellmans and the Gordon Gettys on the same basis as the middle class, no moves to tax the big realtors and banks and big downtown companies on the same basis as small businesses, maintaining and facilitating the galloping inequalities of income, keeping the corrupting PG&E/Raker scandal intact at City Hall and thus allowing PG&E to operate as an illegal private utility in San Francisco. On and on.

The sad thing is that if Lee wins and the tide of sleaze keeps rising in his office, and the progressives lose even more power, things are likely to get much worse and fast. If Avalos or Herrera win, things are likely to get better but slowly if at all. If Mirkarimi wins, he will make an excellent sheriff in the Mike Hennessey tradition and will immediately be a candidate in waiting to run for mayor as a progressive sheriff and keep PG&E and the Chamber of Commerce gang on edge. (Our position as outlined by Executive Editor Tim Redmond in “The bad old days” in our 45th anniversary issue of Oct. 19, 2011.)

In any event, the Guardian will be here to “print the news and raise hell for good causes,” to update our masthead motto of 45 years. B3

The Black Bloc is always with us

Zelda Bronstein

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November 7, 2011

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I learned about how a handful of people could screw up a major demonstration back in 1984, when the Democratic National Convention was in San Francisco and a fairly large number of peace activists had arranged a protest called the “War Chest Tour.” The idea was to draw attention to the fact that Democrats as well as Republicans got big campaign donations from defense contractors whose business was making war. Back then, a bunch of the biggest war profiteers had offices in San Francisco, and the demonstration — which attracted hundreds of people — wound through the financial district with signs and banners. It was, generally, a great success — except in the national press.

The thing is, the protest (like occupy Oakland) was prety anarchic, which a small “a” — peaceful, but leaderless. There was no organization with an office and a phone that the press could call for comment, no easy way to identify the coalition that had put it together.

Oh, but there was one very organized group present: The Revolutionary Communist Party had maybe a dozen members marching (which may have been the entire local membership of that particular group, which has been on the margins of the American left for many years). The RCP members had T-Shirts, newspapers, people designated to speak to the media, handouts with an office phone number — all the stuff that made lazy reporters’ lives easier. So when the story broke, both locally and nationally, the first paragraph read:

“Revolutionary Communists protestested yesterday in San Francisco ….” And the whole point of the War Chest Tour, which my friends had worked on for months, was lost.

Those of us who have been around awhile knew, and know, that the RCP is always with us. There may only be a handful of them still around, but they show up for everything — and don’t seem to care if they undermine the message that event organizers are trying to put out.

The Black Bloc — the “big A” Anarchists who broke windows in Oakland — are becoming part of the same tradition. It’s a relatively small group, but it’s always around. The marches against the War in Iraq were huge, with tens of thousands of people, and entirely peaceful — except for a few Black Bloc-ers who broke windows and set fires.

Now: I’m not here to blast the Anarchists, or even the RCP. The Maoist/Bob Avakian types have become almost a parody of themselves in recent years, but if that’s what you’re into, go for it. I’m not even going to get into the argument over whether property damage counts as violence; been there, done that, got the circle-A T-shirt. Destroying stuff and causing mayhem can be a powerful political statement, and there have certainly been times when it was appropriate, effective and considered more than acceptable.

But it’s not always the right strategy, and in Oakland in 2011, I think it wasn’t. I recognize that this is an emergency situation, that the class warfare has already begun, and that extreme tactics are necessary to fight back. And hell, I don’t think smashing a bank window is so awful; smash enough of them and you put a lot of unemployed glaziers back to work. But in downtown Oakland, that tactic can too quickly backfire and lead to stuff like this. (Here’s an idea — how about a Shop Local day at Occupy Oakland, where everyone agrees to patronize small local businesses downtown? It fits right into the plan to withdraw your money from the big banks and put it in local credit unions.)

The problem with the Black Bloc (which isn’t really a bloc at all, it’s just a loose group of people who (a) think their tactics are appropriate and (b) love this shit) is that it’s acting in direct conflict with the many, many people who worked really, really hard to organize what was supposed to be a peaceful event. Like the RCP, they’re too quick to piss in the well.

You want to get violent? You want to break stuff? Show up for the general assembly, make your case, and see if you can convince the rest of the group that this is a good idea, right now, one that sends the right message and promotes the cause. Maybe you can do that; maybe everyone agrees. But if the majority of the group says no — that respect for property (much as we may hate private property, particularly bank property, and all that) is a better way to go right now, today, in this situation — then back off, dudes, and get with the program.

Author Christopher Ryan and the socio-evolutionary reasons for non-monogamy

Andrew Lam

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November 4, 2011

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Author Christopher Ryan and the socio-evolutionary reasons for non-monogamy

Love your partner and love to fool around with other people? Author Christopher Ryan says that’s perfectly natural. A psychologist and historian who insists that human beings are not cut out for sexual monogamy, Ryan’s hitting SF next week (Wed/9-Thu/10) to talk about the evolutionary reasons for why that’s so.

Sure the freaks will be out in force for his events, but Ryan says that his book’s message is not just for people who already embrace alternative sexuality identities.

“Sex At Dawn shows that they’re not freaks because they find so-called traditional, strict monogamy to be stilted and unnatural for them. There’s a good reason for that, it is unnatural for them, and for the rest of us.” Ryan told the Guardian in a recent interview.

But Sex at Dawn is not about modern non-monogamous types. It’s an ancient history that traces human evolution and focuses on pre-agricultural societies. Ryan explains, “Our ancestors evolved for 95 percent or more of our existence as a species of nomadic hunter-gatherers. In nomadic hunter-gatherer society, the central organizing principle is sharing. Sharing of childcare, sharing of food, defense, shelter, access to the sprit world, medical shamanic principles.”

His book argues that sexual pleasure was a no less communal practice for these early humans.

“You look at our bodies, you look at anthropology, you look at all these different sources of information and you see, no, they weren’t possessive about sexuality in a way that they weren’t about anything else.”

But he has little idea on how to apply these historical tendencies to a modern society hooked on the one-plus-one-equals-two arrangement.

That’s partly why Andrew Sullivan, the organizer of next weeks’ events, wanted to present Ryan’s theories with the work of San Francisco’s esteemed sex activists. The expert panel backing up the author at Club Exotica will include relationship coach Marcia Baczynski, the founder of Kinky Salon Polly Pandemonium, and sex-positive icon and founder of the Center for Sex and Culture Carol Queen.

Says Sullivan: “Ryan talks about this pre-agricultural state, but he doesn’t really talk about — well, what do you do. He doesn’t deal with that. And that’s why I wanted to have him do this presentation, provide the science, provide the motivation for the work.”

He thinks these events will attract Bay Area residents from all walks of life.

“The cross-sections of life that are intersecting around this book are extremely diverse. You’ve got Republicans on the other side of the tunnel who are coming to an event like this because it hits them. They’re like, that’s part of my life, but its something they hide from out there, and they’re afraid of. All of a sudden they’re at the same event with somebody whose got a whip and rope and somebody else who is in a completely different socio-political mindset than they are, but they’re all going ‘we share something in common here.’”

The party that follows the Nov. 9 panel is sure to bring people together on whole other level. Sullivan says the event will “transition into an actual environment, this essential erotic environment that actually facilitates these kinds of connections. That’s why I call it the full spectrum event. It’s all right here. It’s like Woodstock for alternative relationships.”

On Nov. 10, economists and alternative currency advocates will gather to discuss sex and scarcity. Ryan says the talk will compare pre-agricultural society to our current system. “Our ancestors’ societies were based on sharing resources, which means they’re based on a notion of plenty — there will always be enough. Whereas post-agricultural societies, like our own, shifted 130 degrees to an orientation of scarcity. There’s never enough.”

Ryan applies this scarcity theory to modern-day relationships.

“You say well, I have to have my sex partner, I have to have my lover because she’s the one who gives me sexual pleasure, the stuff that I need, companionship, intimacy, security. If I lose her, I’m screwed, I’m alone. Because we live in that sort of fractured world. But our ancestors didn’t live in that sort of world, they lived in a world where hey, it doesn’t matter. I’m with her, I’m with her, she’s with her, she’s with him. You know we’ve all got multiple lovers, so if one relationship isn’t working, it’s not the end of the world. It allows the social groups to function much more smoothly without all this conflict.”

He’s even found a way to connect this scarcity-plenty conundrum with the zeitgeist of our times.

Says Ryan, “I think that the message from the Occupy Wall Street movement, and Occupy different cities all around the country, is that no society can last if we lose sight of the fact that we’re in this together. That we are a species that evolved sharing resources and taking care of one another. And the more we lose sight of that, the more miserable we become. I don’t care how rich you are. I’ve known a lot of very wealthy people in my life, and they are not the happiest people I’ve known. The happiest people I’ve known are the ones who are living in communities where they’re taking care of each other and there’s a sense of unity and fairness that people respect. So I think that’s their message. That we have to get back to this understanding of what sort of animal we are and what sort of social system works best for us.”

Club Exotica presents Sex at Dawn

Wed/9 8 p.m.-2 a.m., $10-$35

Supperclub

657 Harrison, SF

www.clubexoticapresents.com

“Sex at Dawn: Modeling a New Culture of Sharing”

Thurs/10 free for members, guests $20

Mission Control

www.missioncontrolsf.org

Dick Meister: Searching for Joe

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November 4, 2011

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister,com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

San Francisco’s unions have been looking for another Joe Alioto ever since he left the mayor’s office in 1976 after eight years of being one of the best political friends organized labor ever had – anywhere.

Unions certainly have no chance of finding such a staunch supporter among the candidates for mayor in Tuesday’s election – not even in former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, Alioto’s granddaughter. She reflects the conservative views of her former supervisorial district, which encompasses the upscale Pacific Heights and Marina neighborhoods.

Some of the other candidates claim to be labor-friendly, and some actually are. But none have gained anything approaching the all-out, almost unprecedented support that unions gave Alioto. Not surprisingly, unions have in turn been promised only relatively little post-election support by Tuesday’s candidates.

Alioto’s rewards to labor were based in part on the fact that, as he declared, “the controlling and decisive factor in my election was the support of organized labor.”

His administrations, he said, were “first of all sympathetic to labor.”

Alioto appointed union representatives to all of the city’s boards and commissions, some of which previously had little or no union representation, and helped unions in major strikes against recalcitrant employers, often stepping in to convince the employers to settle.

Probably the greatest benefits to union members came from the downtown building boom that Alioto launched, creating thousands of construction jobs.

So, with no Alioto-like union supporter in this year’s mayoral race, who are unions supporting? And how is labor likely to influence the outcome as well as the votes for ballot propositions, particularly Props C and D that involve the pensions and health care of public employees that have come to preoccupy municipal and state governments everywhere?

It seems clear that labor’s influence on the election outcome will turn out to be relatively slight, certainly considerably less than in Alioto’s time – less, in fact than in just about any other city election since the 1930s, when San Francisco was celebrated as one of the country’s premier “union towns.”

But no more. It’s sometimes hard to believe that San Francisco was ever a union town in the same league as New York, Chicago and Detroit.

The general public hardly hears from the city’s once vibrant and highly influential Labor Council and its leaders these days. Individual unions such as the Service Employees, Longshore and Warehouse Union, Nurses Association and Unite-Here, the hotel workers union, still have considerable clout, as do a few others. But that’s about it.

It’s partly the fault of the news media, but their scant coverage of organized labor reflects the failure of unions to take the leading position in politics as in economics that they once had, and must have if they are to prosper.

Unions are staging something of a comeback with the growth of public employee unions, which now dominate organized labor in numbers and influence – though locally unions probably do not yet have enough influence to play the role that once put them in a position to help elect politicians who considered them indispensable.

Public Defender and mayoral candidate Jeff Adachi and his conservative backers are trying hard to seriously weaken the growing strength of San Francisco’s public employee unions and their members, mainly through Proposition D. The apparent frontrunner in the mayor’s race, acting Mayor Ed Lee, is no particular friend of labor, either. Neither was Lee’s predecessor, Gavin Newsom.

Labor wasn’t helped by last year’s elections that gave the Board of Supervisors a strong minority of members on the political right who are at best indifferent to unions. Only five of the 11 supervisors can be legitimately considered pro-labor progressives.

It would help labor greatly to have a strong pro-union mayor, but none of the major candidates would play that role. The Labor Council endorsed Dennis Herrera and Leland Yee. The Building and Construction Trades Council went with Alioto-Pier and Yee.

But what about me? Glad you asked. I say it should be Herrera, who’s an excellent city attorney, has a broad base of supporters and, as a Hispanic, would give that underrepresented minority an important voice in City Hall. All the major candidates for sheriff and district attorney have solid credentials, and I’m sure any of them would do a good job.

Can’t see any reason not to vote for Prop A, a much needed school bond measure, and Prop B that would authorize bonds to pay for needed road and street repair. A big no on the foolish Prop E that would allow the Board of Supervisors to undo measures previously approved by voters.

No on F, another foolish and unnecessary measure. But Prop. G’s a good one. It raises the sales tax by half a percent to finance public safety programs and services to children and seniors.

Prop H is bad news. It would take away parental choice of schools and force students to attend only their neighborhood schools. Since many neighborhoods are still segregated by race or along socio-economic lines, it also would re-segregate schools citywide.

The main event includes, of course, Props C and D, and we should reject both measures. Don’t be confused by those who say, “I can’t vote no on C, because if D gets more votes, Adachi will win.” That ain’t necessarily so, for if neither measure gets at least 50 percent+one of the votes, then both would be defeated.

Make no mistake: Both propositions would be extremely harmful, because both would needlessly increase the financial burden of city employees by limiting the pensions of many new employees, while at the same time requiring them to make higher contributions to city pension funds. Both measures would also require some current employees to contribute more, although Prop D’s rates are somewhat higher, especially for higher income employees. Both C and D would also limit cost-of-living raises for current retirees.

Ever since voters in 2004 approved a badly needed reform of the City Health Service System that oversees the health care of employees and retirees, their elected representatives have had a genuine voice, with four members on the service’s seven-member governing board. The other three have been City Hall appointees.

Prop C would reverse the numbers, substituting another City Hall appointee for one of the elected members and otherwise limiting the voice of the elected members. Sponsors of Prop C would have you believe that the proposition is a “consensus” measure agreed to by all parties. But don’t you believe it.

Retirees, who make up a large part of those in the Health Service System, were not allowed to be part of the consensus negotiations, presided over by acting Mayor Lee.

It’s certain Joe Alioto would never have allowed that to happen.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister,com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.