Event Archives — Page 94 of 149 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Alerts

David Talbot

August 3, 2010

alert@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, AUG. 5

Power on

Gather with the public power supporters and advocates who brought us the No on 16 campaign, which blocked PG&E’s attempt to solidify its monopoly. Attend a workshop that will analyze the campaign and election victory, discuss current challenges to public power, and find common ground for the future push for true power to the people. The workshop is followed by a festive buffet, awards ceremony, music, and more.

1 p.m. workshop, 5:30 p.m. party; free

The Merchants Exchange Building

465 California, SF

www.celebrateno16.org

Zero waste lunches

Learn about the impact that your daily lunches have on the environment and become more informed about the amount of waste created by takeout food and prepackaged lunches. Find out how you can change your habits, including what to buy at farmers markets and how to pack your food to create zero- waste lunches.

Noon, free

Green Zebra Environmental Action Center

Suite 9, 50 Post, SF

www.thegreenzebra.org

FRIDAY, AUG. 6

Worker Cooperative Conference

The public is invited to attend this national conference on the increasingly celebrated concept of worker cooperatives (think Cheeseboard and Arizmendi). Workshops and speakers will look at worker cooperatives as a remedy for larger social and economic problems such as job loss and environmental damage and will present innovative approaches to common challenges cooperative businesses face in accountability and management, financing, governance, vision, and growth.

Fri. 9 a.m.–midnight, Sat. 9 a.m.–11 p.m.;

Sun. 9 a.m.–5 p.m.; $90–$300

Clark Kerr Conference Center

UC Berkeley

2601 Warring, Berk.

www.usworker.coop

SATURDAY, AUG. 7

"Choking on Oil"

Get together with others who are frustrated by the BP oil spill catastrophe and learn about the surrounding issues at this networking performance featuring poets, artists, special guest speakers, and a silent auction to help raise funds for charities. Hosted by Out of Our poetry magazine.

7 p.m., free

Viracocha

998 Valencia, SF

www.outofour.com

Lantern ceremony

Commemorate the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at this Japanese-style peace event. Participants are invited to decorate candlelight peace lanterns that will be floated at sunset during a ceremony that includes reading a message sent by the mayor of Hiroshima and Japanese bamboo flute music. Materials provided.

6:30 p.m., free

Berkeley Aquatic Park

Addison at Bolivar, Berk.

(510) 595-4626

TUESDAY, AUG. 10

Chew on this

Examine the journey our food takes before it reaches our plates, in what ways the supply chains are broken, and what we can do to fix it. Hear about food justice best practices from local professionals, experts, and activists using a labor perspective. Presented by Pursue: Action for a Just World.

6:30 p.m., $10

Local Mission Eatery

3111 24th St., SF

www.fruitsofourlabor.eventbrite.com

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Celebrate popped 16

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

August 2, 2010

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. invested some $45 million into a June ballot initiative known as Proposition 16, a change to the state constitution that would have impeded the creation of green municipal electricity programs by requiring a two-thirds majority vote at the ballot. Widely viewed as a bid to secure its lucrative monopoly by snuffing out competitors before they could get on their feet, the utility’s bubble went pop when voters — especially those from PG&E service territory — rejected it.

Despite the utility’s deep pockets, a small cadre of public-power advocates and consumer watchdogs across the state worked tirelessly to defeat Prop. 16, employing creativity and volunteer efforts to counter PG&E’s slick, well-funded marketing campaign.

On Thursday, Aug. 5, the No on 16 Campaign Committee and a host of other individuals and organizations who helped defeat PG&E’s ballot initiative will hold a victory workshop and celebration at The Merchants Exchange Building in San Francisco.

The event is two-fold: From 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., a workshop will be held to examine California’s grassroots response to Prop. 16, and to discuss strategies for building a renewable, clean-energy infrastructure throughout the state. At 5:30 p.m., a celebration will get under way with food, music, and a campaign awards ceremony. For more information and to RSVP, attendees should visit www.celebrateno16.org

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, Marin County Sup. Charles McGlashan, former California Energy Commissioner John Geesman, and others will lead a panel discussion during the workshop. In San Francisco, Mirkarimi was a key opponent of Prop. 16, bringing the Board of Supervisors on board in opposing the initiative, and traveling to Sacramento to speak out against it. He chairs a local commission working to implement CleanPower SF, an ambitious citywide clean-energy program.

No on 16 Victory Workshop and Celebration (free)
Thursday, August 5, 2010; Workshop 1:00-5:00 p.m., Celebration 5:30 p.m.
The Merchants Exchange Building, Julia Morgan Ballroom, 465 California St, San Francisco

My buddy and meme: Winnebago Man’s unlikely star turn

Andrew Lam

July 30, 2010

An irascible ex-TV news anchor shoots a promo video for Winnebago in Iowa in the summer of 1988. It’s hot out, the crew isn’t giving him what he needs, and he swears. A lot. Fast forward 20 years, and the video that damn crew complied of his least flattering outtakes has garnered over 20 million hits on YouTube. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer hired a detective to find out what happened to the star of his favorite viral video, and the ensuing film, Winnebago Man (which starts Fri/30), turns up some surprising conclusions about the notion of, as Steinbauer put it to me in our recent interview at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, “accidental notoriety.” Some people are calling the film an exploitation of the alternately crude and eloquent Jack Rebney, a new media naïf – but my half hour with the pair raised questions in my eyes of who was using who to tell what story.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: So Jack, tell me about the last time you were in San Francisco. That’s the climax of the film.

Jack Rebney: Well of course, just when we were finishing the movie we had the opportunity to be up in the Haight playing [at the 2008 Found Footage Festival at Red Vic Movie House] and that was the first opportunity for Ben and I to do our dog and pony show. We had just an incredible time.

Ben Steinbauer: You’l l never guess who the pony is.

JR: The people were just, it was electric. It was just quite unusual. I was enormously taken with it. You could feel the vibes between the people and Ben and I.

SFBG: That’s Haight-Ashbury for you. Ben, I have a question for you. Did your intent and motivation for this film change throughout filming it?

BS: No question. I started out making the movie because I was a big fan of the clip. I got the VHS tape in 2001, my friends and I would all quote it. Cut to four years later when YouTube was popping up and there was this idea of accidental celebrity, or unwanted notoriety. I thought, I wonder how the star of my favorite clip is dealing with this same thing? It just started from there with me as a fan wanting to meet Jack and understand this new technological and cultural phenomenon.

SFBG: Jack, do you remember the original Winnebago shoot?

JR: Like a boil. It was horrible, it was a violent, violent moment in my life. I was used to operating with camera crews, and audio people, and grips, ecetera who were at the highest levels of media. I never had to do a damn thing. All I had to do was babble, do my patented babble. As it was the middle of the summer in Iowa it was 100 degrees or more. The humidity was 98%. There were billions upon billions of flies. There’s a quote that always amuses me, apparently a lot of other people too: God in his infinite wisdom created the fly and they’re all in Iowa. But you have to keep in mind that there was never any of what today we categorize as anger. Its been said I’m the angriest man on earth — that’s actually not true at all. The Winnebago corporation had hired me to do the very best possible marketing film I could do, they percieved that I would be able to do a good film for them. So when it didn’t work right, I swear. Because I think it’s marvelously expressive. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, you don’t say golly wompers.

BS: Jack worked in media at a time when the news was shot on 16mm film. The concept that you could leave the cameras rolling to capture outtakes was foreign, let alone the idea that you could rapidly share video like this and 20 plus years later people in Japan could be laughing – it’s literally science fiction.

SFBG: Jack, did you know the cameras were rolling?

JR: No! Because I would say “cap it!” which in the vernacular means shut it down, stop rolling.

SFBG: Do you guys think after going through this process that it’s important for people these days to be aware of what’s going on with the Internet?

BS: My interest in this was the realization that we all have digital reputations. That’s a new concept.

JR: Harry Truman made the comment, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. It is for me a total absence of interest. I get a lot of film shot at me, I’ve shot a lot of film at people, stuck a lot of microphones in the face of a lot of people who are actually of some consequence. This was an irrelevancy. But now it’s taken on something else, a life unto itself.

SFBG: When did you become vested in this film, Jack?

JR: After the first time Ben came up to my little cabin. As is explained in the film, I was on my best behavior, Mary Poppin-esque.

BS: He basically fooled me.

JR: There are two things that are terribly important here. One, this kid knows what he’s doing: he teaches media at the University of Texas. Could this be an adjunct at the beginning of what is possibly his film career? Could this help him? Could this be something? I have people that when I was a youngster make it possible for me to get positions that normally I could never have attained. On the other hand, for years and years I’ve been a socio-political commentator and I’ve attacked very nearly everything, and I love it because it strikes that the vast majority of people are not thinking, they’re not given anything in media. They’re given milk and honey. Well there’s no more milk and honey! It’s over. It’s time to either fall into a very deep abyss or we’re going to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and I thought wait a minute, I can enunciate this. I thought well, okay, this kid wants to shoot me? He wants to turn the camera on? I’ll give him something to think about.

SFBG: Are you having a good time traveling together? You’re spending a lot of time together.

BS: Well we just had the best lunch I think I’ve ever eaten –

JR: Years ago when I had the opportunity to come to SF, I would eat lunch or dinner at Scoma’s [random note: this year’s Best of the Bay seafood restaurant!]. It is absolutely nonpareil.

BS: We tried to order that on the menu.

JR: Shut up Ben. In any event, it was absolutely magnificent. San Francisco is a city that has – there is nothing lacking here. There’s an enormous number of absolute nutcases running around, but that what gives it it’s vitality.

Winnebago Man

Starts Fri/30 2:25, 4:45, 7:15, and 9:45 p.m.

With introduction by the Dead Kennedys East Bay Ray and post show Q&A with Jack Rebney and Ben Steinbauer at Fri/30 and Sat/31’s 7:15 and 9:45 shows

Landmark Lumiere Theatre

1572 California, SF

(415) 267-4893

www.landmarktheatres.com

also playing at Shattuck Cinemas (2230 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 464-5980, www.landmarktheatres.com)

Legal Brahmins organize against Nava

Zelda Bronstein

July 30, 2010

Some of the most prominent lawyers in San Francisco, including two high-ranking judges, have launched a full-scale political campaign to protect Judge Richard Ulmer, a straight white former Republican and Schwarzenegger appointee, against a challenge by a gay Latino Democrat.

Among the Ulmer supporters, who have vowed to raise a substantial amount of money for the fall judicial election, are J. Anthony Kline, presiding justice of the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco and James McBride, presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. They’re joined by a surprising number of leading liberal lawyers, including James Brosnahan, senior partner at Morrison and Foerster, Joe Cotchett, the widely known trial lawyer, and Sid Wolinsky, a founder of Disability Rights Advocates and a lifelong public interest attorney.

And John Burton, the chair of the California Democratic Party, is contacting members of the San Francisco County Central Committee to try to get that panel to rescind its endorsement of Ulmer’s opponent, Michael Nava.

It is, by any standard, an astonishing amount of political firepower for a local judicial race – and it’s all being done in the name of avoiding politicizing the judiciary.

Nava, a former prosecutor who now works as a staff attorney for state Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, finished first among three candidates in the June primary election, and will face Ulmer in a November runoff. Nava finished with 45 percent of the vote, Ulmer with 42. Dan Deal, also a gay man, won 11 percent of the vote, and most observers agree that if he hadn’t been in the race, Nava would have exceeded 50 percent of the vote and won the seat outright.

So Ulmer heads into the fall with a significant disadvantage — Nava needs only another five percent to put him over the top, and has the endorsement of the local Democratic Party, a major factor in a race that typically doesn’t attract much public attention.

That, by all accounts, has given the local judiciary a bit of a scare. Judges by law serve six-year terms, and can face a challenge when they come up for election, but it doesn’t happen often. And there aren’t many elections for open seats. That’s because the vast majority of Superior Court judges retire or step down in mid-term, giving the governor the opportunity to appoint somenone to the post.

And judges typically don’t like running for re-election; it forces them to raise money from people who might appear in their courtroom and makes them get out and about and glad hand in the community — something that isn’t a normal part of a judge’s life.

Ulmer’s only been on the bench a little more than a year, and hasn’t done anything unprofessional or inappropriate; most attorneys who’ve appeared before him consider him an honest, competent judge. But he was appointed by a Republican governor to a bench that critics say is not reflective of the diversity of San Francisco, and if a local Democrat can unseat him, a lot of other judges could be vulnerable.

That’s what drove McBride, who told me he normally avoids politics, into the fray. Early in July, McBride sent an email to every past president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, inviting (some would say summoning) them to a July 7th meeting at the law office of Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro. The tagline talked about the “independence of the judiciary,” but the event turned out to be something of a pep talk and rally for Ulmer.

According to several accounts, Kline made the main pitch: He called this a “game-changing judicial election,” and made the arguments he would publish two days later in an opinion piece in the Recorder, a legal newspaper.

“The unseating of Judge Ulmer, widely considered an outstanding judge, would have a far greater politicizing effect than many realize,” his piece stated.

He added:

“If challenges to sitting judges without regard to their competence and character become acceptable in California, the consequences for our judiciary will be transformative. Exceptionally able but politically inexperienced lawyers will be less likely to seek judicial appointment. Lawyers who do seek appointment might feel it necessary to seek and obtain the political support of well-financed or influential groups, which may want to know where they stand on issues courts decide. Governors will favor judicial candidates possessing the political skills and financial resources necessary to defend themselves. Some judges may think twice about ruling against politically influential parties, lawyers, or interest groups. Judges may establish campaign funds to discourage potential challengers, and lawyers who appear before such judges may feel compelled to contribute.”

And in a move that disturbed some of those present, Kline argued, in essence, that the local court already has considerable diversity, and that the fact that Ulmer is a straight white male shouldn’t be an overriding factor in the race.

“With the election of Linda Colfax,” his Recorder article states, “25 of the court’s 51 members will be women, 10 gay men or lesbians, 9 Asian-Americans; 3 Latinos; and 3 African-Americans. The court must already be the most diverse in the United States.”

McBride told the group that Ulmer would need money — substantial sums of money — to compete against Nava, and made it clear that he needed help raising it. According to some accounts, there was discussion of seeking a war chest of $350,000. The presiding judge also asked the former bar presidents to sign a letter asserting that the election of Nava would be an attack on the judiciary.

Peter Keane, dean emeritus of the Golden Gate University Law School, was among those invited, and the meeting left him deeply disturbed. “It was something disgraceful, the tone of opposition from people like Kline,” he told me. “It felt like a Dick Cheney weapons of mass destruction speech, this fear about the independence of the judiciary. I raised my hand and said I disagree.”

Keane said that “to frame this as an independence of the judicary question cheapens that argument.” Nava, he said, has every legal right to run and make the case that he’d be a better judge than Ulmer. “Ulmer’s been endorsed by the Republicans,” Keane said. “So what’s wrong if Nava is endorsed by the Democrats?”

Keane said he’d voted for Ulmer in June, but was switching to supporting Nava this fall, in part because he sees a powerful attack coming down against the challenger. “A lot of Brahmins in the legal society have gotten stampeded into the lynch mob against Michael,” he said.

In the end, the bar presidents agreed to what Keane called a mild statement saying that party affiliation shouldn’t be the sole basis for making judicial election decisions.

Kline, a former judicial appointments secretary for Gov. Jerry Brown who is widely considered one of the most liberal judges in the state, told me that he barely knows Ulmer, but knows of his pro bono work cleaning up the California Youth Authority. But he said he will continue to speak out for the incumbent because he fears the election of Nava would open the floodgates to challenges against judges on purely political grounds.

McBride confirmed that he called the July 7th meeting and was happy to discuss what happened and his perspective. He told me that it’s difficult and often inappropriate for judges to raise money for campaigns, since the people most likely to be interested in those races — lawyers — often have business before the courts. And he argued that the fear of a challenge could make judges hesitant to rule against powerful interest groups.

“One of the things that came up at the meeting,” he said, “is that judges are the only public officials who are required by the Constitution and their oath of office to act against their constituents.”

But Nava points out that state law provides for judges to face the voters — and potential opponents — once every six years. “This is simply the judges trying to establish standards for the voters to decide when and under what circumstances a judge can be challenged,” he told me. “They want to decide what qualifies someone to be a judge and what doesn’t.”

He said that the argument that the court is already diverse is “offensive.” The court’s own statistics, he noted, show that 70 percent of the judges are white and “most have been appointed by governors of a particular partisan and ideological bent.”

That, of course, is one reason Nava is running against an incumbent: He thinks (probably correctly) that Gov. Schwarzenegger would never appoint him to the bench, and unless Jerry Brown wins this fall, he’ll be essentially unable to become a local judge for years. Of course, if more judges retired at the end of their terms, and create more openings, there’d be less of a problem; lawyers who want to ascend to the bench would have a fair shot at running without taking on any incumbents.

Nava agreed that it was unpleasant and unseemly for judges, or judicial candidates, to go around raising money — but he thinks there’s another solution. “Why don’t they work to make all judicial campaigns fully publicly financed?” he asked. “If Justice Kline wants to do that, I’ll be happy to join him.”

Although McBride said he hopes the Ulmer campaign will be able to raise enough money to reach the voters directly this fall, the focus right now is on the DCCC. “Since the Democratic Party is so dominant in this town, having the endorsement of the party shifts the balance way towards Nava,” McBride told me. Everybody knows the party won’t endorse Ulmer, who was a Republican until he was appointed to the bench, at which point he switched his registration to decline to state. But McBride hopes enough DCCC members will agree to reverse the Nava endorsement to leave the local party neutral in the race.

That’s going to be difficult – it takes a two-thirds vote to change an endorsement. But Ulmer supporters are pulling out all the stops – Burton has written a letter, prominent local lawyers who support Ulmer are calling DCCC members, and in some cases, cornering them in person.

“I was at an event the other day, and Joe Cotchett comes up and tells me he needs to talk to me,” DCCC member Alix Rosenthal told me. “He corners me and starts talking about how I need to reverse the endorsement of Nava.”

And the power of the Brahmins seems to be having at least some impact – a few of the members who supported Nava in the spring appear to be wavering, and some newly elected progressives are still undecided.

Reversing an endorsement would be highly unusual. “I’ve never seen anything like this done in my eight years on the committee,” member Gabriel Haaland told me.

But no matter what happens at the DCCC in August, when the issue will come up, the relatively low-profile race for Superior Court judge is going to get heated this fall – and Nava will be in the crosshairs.

Our Weekly Picks: July 28-August 3, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

July 27, 2010

WEDNESDAY 28

VISUAL ART

“(Por)trait Revealed: A Juried Exhibition of Portrait Photography”

The latest RayKo offering runs the gamut of portraiture in American photography: Elvis impersonators, Arbus-esque twins (potentially Kubrick-esque too), among others. Combining You Are What You Eat by Mark Menjivar and Fritz Liedtke’s Skeleton in the Closet, this exhibit looks up and down the non-proverbial food chain and an obsession with keeping up appearances: the ectomorphic, the body-dysmorphic, and finally, the contents of the American fridge. This raw size-up of eating disorders and trends might leave you hungry, so I found several nearby restaurants (Supperclub, La Briciola, Chaat Café) with decent reviews on Yelp to make you feel better –– or possibly worse –– about yourself. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Through Sept. 10

Reception 6 p.m., free

RayKo Photo Center

428 Third St., SF

(415) 495-3773

www.raykophoto.com

THURSDAY 29

COMEDY

Tracy Morgan

Getting his first major mainstream exposure on the TV show Martin in the mid-1990s, Tracy Morgan quickly went on to join the cast of Saturday Night Live based on the strengths of his hilarious comedic talents. On SNL he created classic characters such as the moonshine-swilling “Uncle Jemima” and performed a host of side-splitting celebrity impersonations. Now turning the tables, in a manner of speaking, he pokes fun at his own celebrity on the hit NBC show 30 Rock in the guise of “Tracy Jordan” — Morgan has proven on the air that anything is possible, so expect nothing less when he hits the stage in front of a live audience. (Sean McCourt)

Thurs/29–Sat/31, 8 p.m. (also Fri/30–Sat/31, 10:15 p.m.);

Sun/1, 7:30 p.m., $40.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.livenation.com

DANCE

Napoles Ballet Theater

Napoles Ballet Theater might be considered a newbie in terms of other dance companies in the Bay Area, but this ballet-based modern dance company has a Cuban flair that says: NBT is here to stay. Under the artistic direction of Cuban choreographer Luis Napoles, NBT’s “First Home Season” features six different ballets by Napoles and includes the world premiere of his newest work, Lecuona. Reinventing classical ballet with elements of Afro-Cuban dance, contemporary movement, theater, and jazz, it wouldn’t be surprising if NBT’s first full-length performance in SF marks the first of many seasons to come. (Katie Gaydos)

Thurs/29-Sat/31, 8 p.m.; Sun/1, 4 p.m., $20

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 273-4633

www.napolesballet.org

FRIDAY 30

DANCE

“ODC’s Summer Sampler”

If you’re in the mood for modern dance but not sure if you can commit to sitting through a full-length performance, contemporary dance company ODC has what you want. With wine sampling, hors d’oeuvres, and a one-hour showing of some of ODC’s best works, its fourth annual “Summer Sampler” will satisfy your appetite without overloading your senses. The dance portion of the evening includes choreography by ODC artistic directors Brenda Way and KT Nelson, with audience favorites such as Nelson’s Stomp a Waltz (2006), Way’s John Somebody (1993), and ODC’s most recent premiere: Way’s sassy satire on feminine manners, Waving Not Drowning (A Guide to Elegance). (Gaydos)

Through Sat/31

6:30 p.m. (also Sat/31, 4:30 p.m.), $20

ODC Dance Commons

351 Shotwell, SF

www.odcdance.org

MUSIC

Zola Jesus

Opera is hardly the musical language of the young, but 21-year-old Nika Roza Danilova is as suited to the form as any goth kid from Madison, Wis/, can be. Danilova’s opera is no Carmen after all; she uses the techniques but favors atmospheric noise and murky echo, letting those sounds take the foreground over her powerful voice. As a sometime member of the band Former Ghosts and one-half of the synth-pop duo Nika + Rory (where she makes a significant case for the benefits of Auto-Tune), Danilova seems primed to find herself the catalyst for a new generation of opera singers — and fans. (Peter Galvin)

With Wolf Parade and Moools

8 p.m., $27.50

Fox Theatre

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

1-800-745-3000

www.thefoxoakland.com

DANCE

Man Dance

His experiences running Central Dancer Theater in Nebraska had taught Man Dance Company founder Bryon Heinrich that audiences like theme-based programs. So for the company’s (sold-out) opening season last year, he let himself be inspired by ballet. This time he looked to romance in ballroom dancing. Joining his own company of seven men — women appear as guest artists — are ballroom professionals Roby Tristan, Chelsea Wielstein, and Eric Koptke. The first half of the evening offers mixed choreography, including young Alec Guthrie’s award-winning trio which he will perform in pointe shoes. The second half, “It Takes Two to Tango,” is a love story for ballroom and ballet dancers. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/31

8 p.m., $25–$45

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

50 Oak, SF

1-800-838-3000

www.mandance.org

VISUAL ART

“Between Currencies”

Texas-raised artist Erik Parra’s collage works prominently feature photographic images with an abiding retro aesthetic (probably because they appear to be actual old photographs), dappled with blobs or confetti-like clouds of color. The appealing result is vibrant and surprising, humorous but also a bit eerie, as colors creep into a black-and-white plane like so many stills from a forgotten, more austere version of Pleasantville (1998). Though perhaps it’s irrelevant to the ideas behind Parra’s art, this critically skewed lens on images of the not-so-distant past seems curiously complementary to the recent premier of Mad Men‘s fourth season. The gallery show opens today, but the official reception happens a week later. (Sam Stander)

Through Sept. 11

Reception Aug. 6, 5–8 p.m., free

Johansson Projects

2300 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 444-9140

www.johanssonprojects.com

SATURDAY 31

EVENT

Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory wake for 1519 Mission

Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, having a few years ago taken over the space formerly occupied by the Jon Sims Center for the Arts, has carried forward nearly three decades of work by queer artists at 1519 Mission St. MCVF (and its new but unaffiliated off-shoot, THEOFFCENTER) promises to continue the mission of incubating queer performance, but the traditional Mission Street incubator must close its doors at the end of the month. A search for a new permanent home is underway, but in the meantime, MCVF will hold a “final performance and wake” on Saturday night to mourn, remember, and celebrate. (Robert Avila)

8 p.m., free

Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory

1519 Mission, SF

www.mcvf.org

www.theoffcenter.org

MUSIC

Swingin’ Utters

San Francisco’s street-punk stalwarts the Swingin’ Utters have steadily built a loyal following since they formed back in the late ’80s in Santa Cruz, and the band is back in action with a new seven-inch titled “Brand New Lungs.” Teeming with all the working-class attitude and piss and vinegar that fueled their early releases, the three-track single features Johnny Bonnel’s wonderfully ragged vocals once again mixing with Darius Koski’s searing guitars and the jackhammer rhythms of the rest of the group. A new full-length album, Here, Under Protest, is due in October, so catch them now before they hit the road for extended U.S. and European tours. (McCourt)

With Cute Lepers and Stagger and Fall

9 p.m., $16

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimstickets.com

EVENT

25th Annual Berkeley Kite Festival

Only in Berkeley do the world’s largest octopi fly through the sky in a giant octopile. No, the East Bay is not home to a freak show aquarium (as far as I know) — but it does host the annual Berkeley Kite Festival. So bust out your most impressive kites — bigger is not always better (especially when you’re trying to avoid kite-on-kite collisions) — and head over to Berkeley Marina. This might be your only chance to watch 30,000 square feet of creature kites take flight, eat corn on the cob at the kite ballet, and cheer on the Berkeley Kite Wranglers in the West Coast Kite Championships. (Gaydos)

Through Sun/1

10 a.m.–5 p.m., free

(free shuttle service to and from North Berkeley BART, 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m.)

Berkeley Marina, Cesar Chavez State Park

www.highlinekits.com

FILM

“Midnites for Maniacs: Macho Man-iacs Quadruple Feature”

In typical Castro Theatre tradition, Midnites For Maniacs unites Bay Area movie geeks with esoteric tastes and a palate for the weird and cult-y. Saturday is “Macho Man-iacs,” the quinto-mother of all manly movies with Stallone-starring Nighthawks (1981), Jean Claude Van Damme’s breakout film Bloodsport (1986), and two gems from the mine of John Carpenter B-movie bliss: They Live (1988) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986). Finally, this testosterone-charged program, with no X chromosomes in sight, concludes with a “Secrete Midnite Film.” All we know is it’s from 1989, not on DVD, and as the website insists, “You won’t believe there’s a 35mm print of this!” I’d bet money it’s a low-budget action flick starring a retrosexual with bad hair. (Lattanzio)

Films start at 2 p.m., $10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

MONDAY 2

MUSIC

Bomb the Music Industry!

If punk rock’s traditional values are DIY and egalitarianism, then Jeff Rosenstock of Bomb the Music Industry! is a stone cold reactionary. He’s known for blurring the line between fans and bandmates until it’s more or less invisible — bring a guitar or horn to a BTMI show, and there’s a good chance you’ll be invited onstage. Unswerving as the band’s commitment to aesthetic integrity might be, however, nobody could ever accuse BTMI of taking itself too seriously. Like their labelmates Andrew Jackson Jihad, Rosenstock and company leaven their scathing social commentary with lighthearted wit and eminently pogo-worthy arrangements. (Zach Ritter)

With Shinobu and Dan Potthast

9 p.m., $8

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

TUESDAY 3

THEATER

MacHomer: The Simpsons Do Macbeth

Two of the most influential cultural icons ever, Shakespeare and The Simpsons, and two of art’s saddest sacks, Homer and Macbeth, finally arrive together on one stage, and in the form of one actor, in MacHomer: The Simpsons Do Macbeth. This solo show puts the Bard in Bart as Canadian import Rick Miller performs a daunting feat of incantation –– aside from that bewitching incantation “Double, double, toil and trouble” –– with voice impressions of more than 50 characters from the animated series. Miller is damn’d spot on, in both his display of an uncanny vocal talent and a commitment to making Shakespeare more accessible for younger audiences. (Lattanzio)

Through Aug.. 7

8 p.m. (also Aug. 6–7, 10:30 p.m.), $30–$40

Bruns Amphitheater

100 California Shakespeare Way, Orinda

(510) 548-9666

www.calshakes.org

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Best of the Bay 2010 Editors Picks: City Living

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

July 27, 2010

Best of the Bay 2010 Editors Picks: City Living

BEST SMACKDOWN FROM THE MOUND

You can’t script ’em this good. Upstart A’s pitcher Dallas Braden gives New York Yankee peacock Alex Rodriguez an earful after A-Rod breaks an unspoken code of the baseball diamond by trotting across the pitching mound on his way back to first base. It’s not the first time A-Rod has disregarded one of these rules (see Toronto series, May 2007), and Braden doesn’t stand for it. A-Rod, and New York sports radio, quickly respond by belittling Braden as a smaller-timer. Lo, the Yankees eat their words a few weeks later when Braden pitches a perfect game — effectively putting himself in the company of baseball’s Hall of Fame immortals. But that’s not even the best part. Having lost his mother at a young age, Braden pitched his masterpiece on Mother’s Day … with the grandmother that raised him in attendance. It was a sports story for the ages. And after all that has and will be said about this feat, it was Braden’s grandma who summed it up best in a post game interview: “Stick it, A-Rod.”

www.oaklandathletics.com

BEST OPEN SOURCE PLAYPEN

Perhaps you are a geek. Or perhaps you just wish you were. Maybe you think all geeks are geniuses with mandatory Mensa memberships and haven’t tapped into your inner geek for fear of failure. Hie thee to Noisebridge, where dyed-in-the-wool geeks and their wannabe compatriots come together to explore technology and gaming in a nonscary, mostly noncompetitive environment. Want to learn how to circuit hack, program in Python, create apps for your overpriced cellular device — or speak a foreign language, play Go, pick locks, tie knots, and take over the world? Noisebridge is the place to test your skills, acquire new ones, and maybe pass along your own skills to the life hack community, which is growing by the week. The roomy warehouse space (formerly a clothing sweatshop) is large enough to fit a small herd of quasi-geniuses at one time, and the vibe is welcoming and smart.

2169 Mission, SF. (415) 425-3264, www.noisebridge.net

BEST BOTTLED BEAUTY

The haters didn’t think she’d make it out of the Bay. After all, she is made of trash. Well, not quite — Plastiki, the boat brainchild of David Rothschild and his Adventure Ecology team, was built from recycled plastics. A hull fashioned from 12,500 discarded plastic bottles was one of her more notable attributes, as were the vertical kitchen garden that twines about her mast and a bicycle-powered energy generator. The craft was fashioned as an apt calling card for Rothschild and crew’s planned visit to the North Pacific Gyre, the neighborhood where the Pacific Trash Vortex (or if you like, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) dismayingly swirls. Plastiki’s launch three months ago from Sausalito began a journey of nearly 8,000 miles to the pole of pollution (at an average speed that barely rivals that of your mom’s morning jog). She made it to Sydney on July 19, slightly worse for wear but having raised many an eyebrow and consciousness regarding our disastrous penchant for plastics.

www.theplastiki.com

BEST FOUR-ON-FOUR BALLIN’

Still got a mad case of World Cup fever? There’s a lot of time between now and Brazil’s hosting gig in 2014, but there’s no reason to let your newfound love of football — er, soccer — dwindle. Why not try hitting the pitch yourself? All abilities and ages are welcome at SoccerFours, a four-on-four league that meets weekly at various SF and East Bay fields. The “games” are more like training workshops: there’s no scoreboard, ergo no hooligan-style competitiveness. Instead, players are encouraged to work on their moves in a supportive (and fun!) environment. SoccerFours’ website — which declares the program’s focus to be on “fitness, teamwork, and skills” — lists currently available sessions ($7 for a single game; multi-session passes are also available). How else are you gonna discover that you have an inner Lionel Messi waiting to break out?

www.soccerfours.com

BEST ON-RAMP TO OVERALLS

Photo by Caitlin Donohue

Pop quiz: which is better for an inner city neighborhood: a freeway or a farm? The answer’s a no-brainer for the volunteers at Hayes Valley Farm, which occupies the area on and around an unused on-ramp damaged in the Loma Prieta quake and abandoned since 1989. Those volunteers have already put thousands of hours into the new urban farming oasis. From the fava beans planted to purge the exhausted soil of the petrochemicals that once spewed from passing cars to the hundreds of fruit trees that now occupy the still-there on-ramp’s ascent to blue sky (“the biggest garden patio in the city,” as volunteers have dubbed its leafy lanes), the farm is providing an educational opportunity for all those who thought they forsook their farmer fantasies when they chose to live here. Now offering kids’ classes, permaculture boot camp for the uninitiated, and environmental movie nights for all comers, Hayes Valley has planted a seed in the ‘hood for food security.

450 Laguna, SF. (415) 763-7645, www.hayesvalleyfarm.com

BEST AIRBORNE ASHTANGA

A good yoga class often makes your body feel light as a feather — but Oakland’s new Flying Yoga Shala is all about making your practice feather-like in a more literal fashion. Jump, stretch, dance, cartwheel off your mat’s restrictive rectangle, and levitate your way to transcendent meditation. This airborne Temescal spot offers classes in acrobatic circuit training, aerial yoga, dance, and even some traditional basics — but nothing ordinary whatsoever, and definitely nothing even close to boring. Break the yoga mold and shape your body into a ridiculously sexy form with a range of thrill-seeking instructors, including the incredible Laura Camp, the studio’s owner and director who part-times as a circus aerialist and writer. While there are multiple classes with a not-so-beginner curriculum, the studio does offer options for every level. Just wear something airy and be prepared to soar.

4308 Telegraph, Oakl. www.flyingyogashala.com

BEST FEE FOR BIG QI

Perhaps in the battle over health care, we’d do well to consider the preventive approach of Eastern medicine: regularly maintain your health and therefore avoid the health care industry altogether. It’s a perspective that is keenly addressed at Bu Tong Acupuncture. Run by Julie Baumhoffer, a graduate of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Potrero Hill, this community wellness center offers an array of affordable holistic options for self-health as a priority rather than a burden. In addition to acupuncture, Bu Tong offers massage therapy, nutritional counseling, and creative arts psychotherapy in a sort of one-stop shopping for your physical well-being. And with beginning acupuncture rates starting as low as $10 per session, you can probably afford to stick it to Big Pharma.

2390 Mission, SF. (415) 282-7246, www.butongacupuncture.com

BEST STAND AGAINST SIT/LIE

Photo by Julian Davis

Andy Blue has been a stalwart political activist on a variety of progressive San Francisco campaigns for years, doing whatever needed to be done in big election races from Matt Gonzalez’s 2003 mayoral run to this year’s underdog effort to defeat the PG&E-funded Proposition 16. But it was when cops and NIMBYs started pushing for a sit/lie ordinance to criminalize the simple act of kicking it on a San Francisco sidewalk that Andy’s creativity, leadership abilities, and tireless advocacy really shone. He organized and promoted the Stand Against Sit/Lie campaign that encouraged dozens of small protests and events on sidewalks throughout the city, an effort that shifted the momentum of the debate and helped lead to the defeat of the ordinance. Although Mayor Gavin Newsom has placed the measure on the November ballot, Blue and his crew plan to keep fighting it — and anyone who tries to score cheap political points in pushing it.

www.standagainstsitlie.org

BEST LOCAL LOQUAT LOCATORS

Well, what do you know. San Francisco really is the land of fruits and nuts. Our hedgerows are bustling with bounty, our byways bursting with ripe Meyer lemons, Marina strawberries, olives, apples, loquats, almonds, and figs. Where? All around — if you know where to look. Juicy online guide Neighborhood Fruit will tell you exactly where to find fresh, seasonal goodies right in your own or your neighbor’s backyard. Led by founders Kaytea Petro and Oriana Sarac, the Neighborhood Fruit team has registered thousands of wild fruit trees ripe for the picking. Got more yummy yield than you can possibly can? Sign up to let other fruit fiends knock on your door and pick those extraneous plums with aplomb. It’s the most delicious kind of community bonding.

www.neighborhoodfruit.com

BEST SOARING PROSE

Sling a bookmark any direction in the city and you’ll hit a cache of literary history. Nowhere more so than on the fertile inking grounds of North Beach, where the ghosts of Kerouac, Ginsberg, et al. can easily be convinced to grab a beer or 12 with you at Vesuvio. After carousing with those ruminative spirits, you’d be forgiven for mistaking the sight of 23 glowing books floating above the intersection of Broadway and Columbus as mere Beat-stricken hallucination. But hark, mad one, to the call of those illuminated manuscripts: Brian Goggin and Dorka Keehn’s “Language of the Birds” art installation is solid as flesh. The tomes are part of the Department of Public Works’ 2008 Broadway streetscape improvement project, helping to make your pedestrian carousing a better-lit and therefore safer one. But enough about the earthly machinations. Dance like a dervish ‘neath the flashing pages and check under your toes for lines they’ve left behind.

Broadway and Columbus, SF

BEST PLACE TO PARK YOUR DINGY

The Guardian’s giving a Best of the Bay award … to a boat club? Blistering barnacles! You knew we’d sell out one of these days, right? Just. Kidding. See, the Bayview Boat Club isn’t your typical, exclusive “golden epaulet and waxed mustache” kind of operation, looking down at you from a platinum prow. (Wait a minute — waxed mustaches are actually kind of cool these days.) Since 1961, its China Basin doors have been open to membership applications from anyone with two member sponsors and at least a one-quarter interest in a seafaring vehicle — although its definition of “boat” is flexible. The BVBC also is well known for its giddy annual Beer Can Races and good time-bar times in the members-only clubhouse once the schooners ease into their slips. Live music, nautical-themed movies, art openings, and strong drinks are standard issue for its sailors. Shiver our timbers, you could be one of them.

489 Terry A Francois Blvd, SF. (415) 495-9500, www.bayviewboatclub.org

BEST SLOW GAME PINCH HITTERS

The pitcher adjusts his cap. The batter steps out of the box. The infielders huddle at the mound. Then six fastballs get fouled into the seats. Damn, baseball is exciting. At least in the AT&T Park bleachers you’ve got options (pretty girls, big cups of booze, Baywatch). But Giants fans at home must rely on the sportscasters for entertainment during the many lulls. So bully for you if you’re tuned in to the best in the business, Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper of KNBR 680/1050 AM and CSN Bay Area TV. Mirthfully striding the base line that separates fill-time prattle from full-on provocation, the two banter like old pals, cracking wise about their combined 24 seasons in the majors and drawing on those years for pithy insights about the game at hand. When “America’s game” starts to sag, Kruk and Kuip happily resort to their second favorite pastime: using the tele-scribbler to “eliminate” people wearing Dodgers gear.

BEST POLITICAL SHIT-SIFTERS

Political websites are full of crap. Cranks, crooks, straight up sensationalism … We love it all, of course. But when we want to know what’s really going on in the down and dirty, smoke-filled backrooms of California politics, we click our way to progressive open source news site Calitics.com. East Bay keyboard-clackers Brian Leubitz and Robert Cruikshank stay well abreast of Sacramento’s whiz-bang wool-pulling, and you can get a bead on the biggest stories all around the state from the site’s open threads and links. Yet Calitics offers a lot more than shit-sifting: these folks understand what the news really means. Their analyses and interpretations are far more acute than those of the state’s lumbering daily newspapers. And Cruikshank is one of the few writers of any political slant who actually understands economics. Now, can they please work on getting some visuals up there? Photos, people, photos!

www.calitics.com

BEST ROYAL SCRUBDOWN

For spa-lovers seeking a simple, clean, quiet place for relaxation (with a lovely red clay sauna that “removes toxic superannuation”), it’s time to take a royal journey — to Imperial Spa. Hidden in a strip mall, also near Japan Center, Imperial also offers a rough touch: intense, full-body scrubs sure to remove all of the dead skin from your carcass. The masseuses here don’t play — their Korean massage passes the threshold of mere exfoliation to revive circulation and concludes with a combination of cucumber, yogurt, and milk that leaves you feeling shiny and new. Imperial Spa has separate men’s and women’s facilities, which means that it’s open to two genders seven days a week.

1875 Geary, SF. (415) 771-1114, www.imperialdayspa.com

BEST CHECK (ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO) ON YOUTH POVERTY

We’ve all heard the stereotypes about East Oakland. The drugs, the gangs — the future media superstars? Fearmongers aside, this neighborhood has some serious bright spots. Launched in 1997 in a colorful building next to Castlemont High School at the behest of students sick of violence in their schools, Youth Uprising infuses the lives of young people with the skills they need to get to where they want to go. On-the-job training programs that hook kids onto college tracks? Check. Top-of-the-line media arts center that teaches video production, music recording, and web design? Check. Dance studio, art classes, holistic health care center, and a staff who has walked — successfully — the same streets as YU’s members? You bet. The mic is set, can you hear them now?

877 MacArthur, Oakl. (510) 777-9909, www.youthuprising.org

BEST MURALS FOR DREAMERS

The way artist-appropriated, color-covered walls keep popping up in SF, it can be hard to pull your out-of-town friends indoors, even for some shut-eye. But book them a room at Hotel Des Arts. and they can revel in our city’s Technicolor bubble letters and moody characters, even in their dreams. That’s because Des Arts has tapped street art luminaries Chor Boogie, Sam Flores, Brian Barneclo, Tricia Choi (see above), Shepard Fairey, and others to make regular hotel décor look as lame as, well, regular hotel décor. It’s a dream collection of underground art. All four walls in each of the hotel’s painted rooms — even the bathrooms are tagged up — feature art work by the greats themselves. It’s the perfect spot to stash a buddy from abroad who can’t get enough of these city streets.

447 Bush, SF. (800) 956-4322, www.sfhoteldesarts.com

BEST MINI MEDITATION

Labyrinth lover Janet Scheuer had a dream to “create a quiet, restful spot” for people in San Francisco. The realization of her dream, the 23-foot wide Scott Street Labyrinth at Duboce Park, is just right for some brief lunchtime meditation, without the tourist crowds at Grace Cathedral’s marble behemoth or the somewhat harrowing journey through the Marin Headlands to reach the one at Eagle’s Point. A little avocado sandwich from Courtney’s up the street, a little ambulatory journey through the metaphor of life … What could be more perfectly serene? The jury’s still out on the recent refurbishment of the park in general — too much asphalt, not enough foliage, enormous cost — but this added gem puts an ingratiatingly spiritual polish on the whole project. There’s even a raised scale model to finger-trace for the sight-impaired or for those who want some practice before embarking on their brief-but-invigorating spiral contemplation cycle.

Scott Street between Duboce and Waller, SF

BEST WAG ‘N’ WASH

Photo by Ben Hopfer

Take it from Jules Winnfield, Samuel Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction: “I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy, but they definitely dirty.” And when it’s bath time, pooches can turn any home into a wet, hairy, muddy nightmare. Avoid this by taking them to Pawtrero Bathhouse and Feed Company. The front of the Potrero Hill location looks like a typical pet store, but the back room is doggie-bath heaven. The floor is concrete, with a drain. Two large stainless steel baths cover one wall. You can walk your doggie up a ramp, close the door, throw on a complimentary rubber smock, and unleash a powerful warm-water hose on your sloppy Snoopy. Pawtrero offers a wide selection of organic, skin-sensitive soaps and shampoos to leave your mutt looking and smelling squeaky clean. Use the free towels to dry the beast off, put the smock back on the hook, and you’re out of there — for just $15.

199 Mississippi, SF. (415) 863-7279 and 199 Brannan, SF. (415) 882-7297, www.pawtrero.com

BEST SLIP ‘N’ SLIDES

For two years, Hamilton Recreation Center had been closed for renovations, depriving Western Addition residents of a public space to gather, get down, and, yes, exercise. But it reopened in March, tickling West Addys pink with a grade-A public place to play. We’re totally digging on the sparkling new b-ball courts, the vast acreage of tennis pitches and playground, the free-use cardio workout room, and the glorious pool. But alongside that pool is something that really churns our butterfly stroke: Hamilton Recreation Center’s water slides. That’s right — there are two of those slip ‘n’ slide babies, fit to dump squealing future Thorpedoes into the water with a great big splash. Pick your poison, spiral yellow or L-curve orange, and launch into the lanes below. Forget Six Flags, there are wet and wild times to be had closer to home. All ages welcome. (Alas, no coolers of ice-cold brewskis allowed.)

1900 Geary, SF. (415) 292-2008, www.sf-recpark.org

BEST ONLINE TIMESINKERS

Farmville. Fishville. Frontierville. Mafia Wars. Treasure Isle. Here you’ve gone through all the trouble of locating your old classmates and ex-coworkers on Facebook, and the only regular updates you receive from them are about the last virtual person they iced or how some orphan cow wandered onto their digital acreage. Moo! Blame the insidious explosion of social network gaming on SF’s own Zynga, the up-and-coming tech company founded by Mark Pincus and named after his bulldog, with a nod to an African warrior queen. Dedicated to “connecting people through games” (although in many cases disconnecting them as well) Zynga’s many addictive timesinks have claimed the afternoons of millions who should know better but just. Can’t. Stop. Collecting. Pixelated. Piranhas. Fine, we admit it, us too. That’s OK, feel free to hide our streams. But first, can you spare a bushel of virtual corn?

www.zynga.com

BEST DIRTY WORK IN THE WILD

As lovely as Golden Gate Park is to us city slickers, wilderness it’s not. That is, 96 percent of it isn’t. But the remaining 4 percent does qualify as “natural area,” which the San Francisco Natural Areas Program defines as spots where our little peninsula is preserved in all its original, biodiverse beauty. The organization should know — SFNAP is in charge of keeping these corners (which comprise some 500 acres in 35 parks including Bernal Hill, Corona Heights, and Glen Canyon Park) healthy and species-wealthy. The organization relies on the work of thousands of volunteers who get dirty in the name of preventing erosion, planting food for wildlife, pulling invasive species, and other saintly duties. The city is a jungle? Maybe not — but it is a salt marsh, desert, grassland, and woodland, and SFNAP means to keep it that way.

www.sfnap.org

BEST CITY HALL CROONER

A regular fixture at City Hall, Walter Paulson, a.k.a. “the singing guy,” stands out for his creative use of the two minutes allotted for public comment at board and commission sessions. He serenades supervisors with his own original a cappella ditties, taking full advantage of the mic and acoustics in the majestic board chambers without ever wandering off topic. His songs have been known to introduce comic relief to tense meetings, forcing even the most serious-minded supes to crack a smile and occasionally drawing a smattering of applause. Paulson proves that inspiration can be derived from even the driest, wonkiest policy discussions. And as he belts out melodies about planning documents or salary ordinances, he infuses something distinctly San Franciscan into the public record.

BEST KINKY ARROYO

An open secret: a freshwater creek flows freely through the Mission, albeit entombed beneath layers of concrete and asphalt. Water shortages and ground stabilization concerns have the city contemplating daylighting this ancient arroyo, but for now it remains hidden from view. Well, sort of. When the National Guard decided to build a new Armory at the intersection of Mission and 14th streets after the 1906 earthquake destroyed the old one, it kept a wee bit of creek exposed in the basement, just in case it might need an independent water source if the populace grew restless. (Good call on its part: the Armory served as a retreat when the guard shot strikers on Bloody Thursday in 1934.) The Armory has a new owner, of course, one that specializes in a more extreme form of militaristic fetishism and wet exposure. But you can still get a glimpse of that mossy bit of Mission Creek in Kink.com’s basement if you snag a spot on one of the BDSM adult film company’s tours of its jaw-dropping headquarters — and ask (beg?) nicely.

1800 Mission, SF. www.sfarmory.com, www.kink.com

Tours: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/120429

BEST HARD-BOILED PEREGRINATION

There’s been more than one Sam Spade — Dashiell Hammett’s prototypical The Maltese Falcon character was adapted many times from that hard-boiled 1930 novel, most famously by Bogart himself. But there’s only one Don Herron, author and intrepid creator of the Dashiell Hammett Tour. Meet the snap-brimmed Herron in the Civic Center (possibly with your favorite femme fatale in tow) for a fog-shrouded journey through Hammett’s San Franciscan haunts. The guide has been stalking these means streets since 1977, and he’ll gladly enumerate and elucidate the back alleys and byways where Hammett set his much-beloved private eye paperbacks. With Herron, you’re in good hands. So cinch that trench coat a notch tighter, keep ’em peeled for clues, and, please, beware of heavily lipsticked knockouts with an ax to grind.

www.donherron.com

BEST EMERALD TRAILS

“Every time I get on the green, it’s like a sigh of relief.” No, we didn’t just impel Renée Rivera, executive director of SF Bike Coalition, to get real about Proposition 19. She’s talking about the new protected green bike lanes on Market Street, one of the most exciting steps taken in the last year toward making our streets safer for cruisers of the two-wheel variety. The green lanes, which extend from Eighth Street to Gough, are partitioned from cars by waist-high, safe-hit white posts. And a movement is afoot to stretch the lanes further afield: the Bike Coalition got a commitment from the mayor to extend the verdant zone as far as the Ferry Building and is in talks to put similar lanes on Oak, Fell, Townsend, San Jose, and the Embarcadero.

Market between Eighth and Gough, SF

BEST SAND DUNE SLEUTHS

It’s been a wild world out in the western neighborhoods of San Francisco. Before the sidewalks came, the Richmond, Sunset, and other oceanside districts were a wonderland of sand dunes and historical curiosities. What was it like? Lack of information about the area’s past proved primo ponder fodder for Woody LaBounty, and inspired him to launch the Western Neighborhoods Project. Today the curious need only to partake in one of the group’s history walks, or look to its spectacularly detailed Outside Lands blog to benefit from the project’s insightful research on the bygone days of the avenues. Western wonderings have turned up tales that will hold even those on the other side of Twin Peaks rapt. LaBounty’s recently released book Carville-by-the-Sea excavates the intriguing bohemian vacation town of retired streetcars that cropped up on Ocean Beach back at the turn of the 20th century.

www.outsidelands.org

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CANOODLING

Despite immediate proximity, rarely do the leaders of North Beach and Chinatown collaborate on an event, or do the residents of the two neighborhoods gather together in celebration of their shared heritage. What could break the ice more than a steaming heap of that Asian-Italian delicacy — noodles? This year the Chinatown Community Development Center and North Beach Merchants Association got together in the most delicious way possible: Noodlefest took Grant Avenue by storm, placing restaurant pasta powerfuls from both neighborhoods streetside in honor of the almighty macaroni and mein. The slurping multitudes — tasting tickets, which entitled purchasers to six hefty mini-meals, sold out in hours — dove into massive piles of (chow) fun and fettuccine. Besides the romantic appeal of reenacting that scene from Lady and the Tramp beneath decorative Chinese lanterns, this hopefully yearly event provided a warm, slippy bridge between these two intercontinental culinary titans.

www.chinatowncdc.org, www.northbeachmerchants.com

BEST OLD-FASHIONED SUMMER CAMP

Remember when summer camp was all about wandering around the woods, catching bugs, getting wet and muddy in the stream, roasting marshmallows, and doing stupid skits that involved cracking eggs on your head? Well, even in this city of fancy arts camps, computer camps, and other high-end sources of academic and personal growth for the urban child, there’s still a chance to be a kid. Right in town. And it’s cheap. More than 2,000 San Francisco kids make their way every summer to Glen Canyon Park, where Silver Tree Camp, run by SF Recreation and Park Department, eschews classroom lessons, electronic equipment, and intensive instruction of any kind. There are hikes, arts and crafts, and songs and skits in one of the few places in the big city that feels like wilderness. But a lot of the time, particularly in the before and after-care programs, is unstructured: the kids play outside. Like kids.

www.sfkids.org

BEST ‘DO FOR YOUR “I DO”

Weddings: they’re all fun and games and exorbitant expenses and heterosexual privilege — until the bride’s hair falls. Then? Disaster! Avoid any potential Bridezilla moments by calling upon the wizardly hair (and makeup) skills of one Armando Sarabia. His mobile beauty service, Get Your Do Up, brings the look to you, with on-location consultations and makeovers sure to guarantee love, honor, and obedience. He’ll take you through it all in style, from initial makeup color palette consultation to frisky honeymoon runway takeoff look. Sarabia’s talents aren’t just reserved for romantic matrimonials, either: girls’ nights out, media appearances, boudoir photography sessions, holiday gatherings, and just general cuts, colors, and styling all benefit from a good dose of Get Your Do Up glamour.

www.getyourdoup.com

BEST GOON SQUAD

SF native Mark Barbeau lives thousands of miles from the home stadium of his beloved Arsenal F.C. soccer team, a.k.a. the Gunners, in Islington, England. It could have been a lonely life had he not hit upon the idea to pull together some local Gunner goodwill. And thus was born the Bay Area Gooners, a ragtag bunch who gather in a North Beach Irish pub to pint their way through those early morning (time zone differences can’t stop this soccer spirit) footie matches between the “greatest team of all time” and whosoever dares to challenge them. Arsenal love runs strong in this group: during a recent power outage that affected the Gooners’ regular game-day perch at Maggie McGarry’s, Barbeau offered up his apartment’s living room to his Gunner-lovin’ brethren. Oh to be, oh to be, oh to be a Gooner!

www.bayareagooners.com

BEST PEOPLE POWER VS. CORPORATE POWER

When Pacific Gas and Electric Co. decided to put a measure on the California ballot that would effectively outlaw public power in the state, the situation looked bleak. PG&E set aside $30 million to spend pushing the measure, a total that later rose to more than $45 million. And yet, against some of the worst odds in American political history, a grassroots crew defeated one of the nation’s largest private utilities. The No on 16 campaign managed to line up almost every newspaper in the state against PG&E. It created and posted Web ads. It lobbied local government agencies to pass resolutions against the measure. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi led the effort in San Francisco, pushing other officials in the state to organize against it. Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and Sen. Mark Leno helped raise money and led the fight in Sacramento. Campaign consultant Gale Kaufman coordinated the effort. Matt Freedman, Mindy Spatt, and Mark Toney of the Utility Reform Network hosted meetings and handled campaign affairs that elected officials couldn’t. Volunteer public power activists including Eric Brooks, Bruce Wolfe, and Paul Fenn contributed time and effort, and Ben Zolno produced the campaign videos. And they saved public power in California.

Best of the Bay 2010: Local Heroes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

July 27, 2010

2010 LOCAL HERO

SHAREN HEWITT

“The thing I love most in life is being a grandmother for social change.”

“If you mess up, you fess up — and then you fix it up.” That’s one of the motivational philosophies Sharen Hewitt, founder and executive director of the Community Leadership Academy and Emergency Response Project (CLAER) passes on to the people she works with. Her organization provides peer-to-peer empowerment and civic engagement programs as well as immediate crisis stabilization for victims of violence, helping them get the support they need. CLAER is based in Bayview, “but we serve the whole city, which unfortunately needs us more than ever,” she says.

A community leader and organizer for decades, Hewitt has been a critical and unyielding voice on housing, voter registration, education, employment, and political access issues. Her current focus has been on easing recent tensions between the African American and Asian American communities, weeding through the crowded field of candidates running for District 10 supervisor, and “insuring continuing dialogue about the development of sound public policy in the face of diminishing resources.”

“We celebrate diversity, and we try to raise the bar every day,” she says of CLAER. “San Francisco is the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in the world. It should be unlimited in its capacity to serve.”

2010 LOCAL HERO

ISO RABINS

“My favorite thing about the Bay Area is the coast along Route 1. It consistently amazes me.”

Food revolutionary Iso Rabins has organized the most intriguing — and fun — food events of the last year, expanding his health code-defying Underground Market far beyond its original berth in a Mission District home. But his keystone contribution to the Bay Area is his ability to communicate his vision of feeding communities without the agro-industrial machine — by recognizing the soil-generated bounty available to all of us if we know where to look.

“The way our society is structured right now didn’t seem like it paid attention to our local community. I think food is a great way to break through that,” Rabins says. His brainchild is forageSF, an organization that promotes hunting and gathering through wild food walks, eight-course foraged meals, and retail opportunities for foragers who spend days picking through the woods, fields, and coastlines. In the locavore-freegan vein, Rabins calls attention to a world beyond shrink-wrap and leaden government regulations. And his message is being eaten up by change-hungry SF. “I really think you can do business and help people at the same time,” he says.

2010 LOCAL HERO

KATHERINE PRIORE

“Something I love about San Francisco is being able to take yoga classes with the best teachers from here to Timbuktu.”

Eleven years ago Katherine Priore was an English teacher in Cincinnati’s public school system. After a particularly stressful day in the classroom, she finally took a close friend’s advice by attending said friend’s yoga class. Priore was instantly hooked. “I had never experienced such profound internal stillness. My stress was alleviated and the stream of anxious, teaching-related thoughts vanished in those 90 minutes.” It was this eureka moment that set Priore on the path to creating Headstand, an organization providing youth in economically disadvantaged areas with access to yoga.

The organization’s ultimate goal is to create a shift in the education system whereby the physical, emotional, and psychological health of students has the same importance as the academic skills they’re building. Headstand aims to do its part by integrating yoga into the curriculum, not just as an elective but as a requirement. Over the past two years, the organization has offered 1,400 yoga classes to 660 youths in the East Bay and San Francisco, and this fall it plans to bring Headstand to San Jose and Houston. With a slew of evidence that Headstand is positively affecting the lives of its students, all signs point to the early success of the program and to the potential it may just be starting to fulfill.

2010 LOCAL HERO

ERICA MCMATH SHEPPARD

“I love the Youth Speaks office. It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing or what I look like there.”

Odds were against Erica McMath Sheppard to be onstage at the Warfield this past March receiving thunderous applause from a sold-out crowd. But as McMath Sheppard’s powerful championship Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam spoken word performance put it, “I been helping myself my whole damn life .” Two things were clear under those bright lights: this woman has a story to tell, and the world’s going to hear it — no matter a difficult childhood, a disastrous trek through the foster care system, and eventual emancipation from her guardians at age 16.

In addition to her poetry laurels and longtime involvement with the Youth Speaks arts program, the Class of ’10 Leadership High graduate was senior class president, involved in the Black Student Union, and active in a slew of other extracurriculars — a record that earned her admission to Dillard University in New Orleans this fall. Does she consider herself a role model? “I’m not trying to be the voice for foster girls around the world,” she says. “But this is my dream.”

2010 LOCAL HERO

DONNA SACHET

“It’s not always easy to live in San Francisco — but it sure is a hell of a lot of fun.”

A constant presence on the queer and charitable scenes for years, Donna Sachet will go to any lengths to call attention to worthy causes — including rappelling down 38 stories of the Grand Hyatt San Francisco to raise money for the Special Olympics.

As a performer and sparkling personality, Sachet MCs the popular Sunday’s a Drag weekly brunch spectacular at Harry Denton’s Starlight Room, hosts the live coverage of the Pride parade on television, writes a society column for The Bay Area Reporter, and attends pretty much every charitable event worth attending. (You can always spot her by her impeccably tailored red outfits — she is, after all, Scarlet Empress XXX of San Francisco’s Imperial Court.) Her annual holiday Songs of the Season event and Pride Brunch fundraiser, along with her involvement with the Bare Chest Calendar benefiting the AIDS Emergency Fund, have raised thousands of needed dollars.

“You just have to do it,” she tells us of her unflagging energy. “I love my community. But even if it’s not particularly about your own community, we’re all in this together.”

2010 LOCAL HERO

VERNON DAVIS

“When I paint, I focus completely on what I’m doing and everything else fades.”

Freshly minted Pro Bowl superstar Vernon Davis has shown immense prowess on the football field since being drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 2006. His career is on the upswing, and last season he tied the NFL all-time record for most touchdowns as a tight end. Davis’ success is the product of natural talent combined with drive and vision. He grew up in inner-city Washington, D.C., where a wise grandmother helped him dodge the environment’s potential pitfalls.

That same talent, drive, and vision extend beyond the goal posts into more esoteric realms. He’s an avid painter and seeks to be a role model for kids who might be afraid to explore their creativity. Earlier this year he launched the Vernon Davis Scholarship Fund, which will benefit a deserving Bay Area art student who would otherwise not be able to afford college. “I want to keep encouraging kids, especially in the inner city, to stay on track and pursue their dreams.”

2010 LOCAL HERO

JANE MARTIN

“I love being around a really vibrant queer and progressive community.”

On March 8, labor activist Jane Martin helped organize a flash mob in the crowded lobby of San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis Hotel. The purpose was to spread the word about a worker-called boycott of the hotel and urge tourists coming in for Pride to stay elsewhere. For five raucous and entertaining minutes, members of Pride at Work/HAVOQ, One Struggle One Fight, and the Brass Liberation Orchestra burst through the doors to sing, play, and dance to Lady Gaga’s hit “Bad Romance,” warning bewildered patrons not to “get caught in a bad hotel.”

The result: A collaborative effort of young and innovative labor leaders like Martin became a viral YouTube sensation, reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers. Martin has been joining with hotel workers in picket lines and organizing around queer economic justice issues in the Bay Area since 2001. She led picket lines at the Omni Hotel to decry the company’s move of locking out thousands of workers. “To ultimately win was really exciting,” she said. “When the hotels backed off, that was really inspiring.”

She recently joined 1,000 in staging a protest at the home of GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman as part of her organizing work with the California Nurses Association. And, as always with Martin, there’s more in the works.

2010 LOCAL HERO

DAVID CAMPOS

“The Bay Area embodies the American spirit more than anyplace else in the country. You can be who you are without any fear.”

San Francisco is a city of immigrants, a place where generations of people have come — from all over the country and all over the world — for a fresh start in a welcoming environment. But Mayor Gavin Newsom put that tradition at risk this year when he directed law enforcement agents to start referring juveniles charged with crimes to federal immigration authorities. It’s been a disaster — in one case, a 13-year-old charged with stealing 46 cents was turned over to the feds, and he and his mom, who is married to a U.S. citizen, both faced deportation, breaking up a family.

San Francisco Sup. David Campos has led the battle to protect the city’s sanctuary policy — and has taken on the larger issue of immigration reform. An immigrant who arrived in the United States from Guatemala at 14 (and who couldn’t get federal financial aid to go to college because of his status), Campos isn’t afraid to challenge the growing nativist movement: “What’s made this country great,” he told us, “is taking talent from all over the world and integrating it into society. Now the current climate precludes that.”

PHOTO OF VERNON DAVIS BY PETER BOHLER. ALL OTHER PHOTOS BY KEENEY + LAW.

Film listings

David Talbot

July 27, 2010

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Erik Morse, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide at www.sfbg.com. Due to early deadlines for this issue, theater information was incomplete at press time.

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

The 30th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs through Aug 9 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; CineArts@Palo Alto Square, 3000 El Camino Real Bldg Six, Palo Alto; and Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 118 Fourth St, San Rafael. Tickets (most shows $11) are available by calling (415) 256-TIXX or visiting www.sfjff.org. All times pm unless otherwise indicated.

WED/28

Castro Mrs. Moskowitz and the Cats 11:30am. Ingelore with "Surviving Hitler: A Love Story" 1:15. Budrus 4. Arab Labor: Season Two 6:30. Army of Crime 9.

THURS/29

Castro "Panel: Is Dialogue Possible? How Films Help Us Talk About Israel (…Or Not) 11:30am. Bugsy 1. Sayed Kashua: Forever Scared with Arab Labor: Season One, Episode 10 3:45. A Film Unfinished 8:45. The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground with "Seltzer Works" 8:45.

SAT/31

CineArts A Small Act noon. Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story 2. A Film Unfinished 4:15. Saviors in the Night 6:45. Father’s Footsteps 9.

Roda Bena noon. "Arab Labor: Season Two" 2. "Utopia in Four Movements" (live event) 4:30. The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground with "Seltzer Works" 7. Protektor 9:45.

SUN/1

CineArts My So Called Enemy noon. My Perestroika 2. The Worst Company in the World with "Baabaa the Sheep" 4. Anita 6:30. "Arab Labor: Season Two" 8:45.

Roda "Grace Paley: Collected Shorts" (shorts program) noon. Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story 2:15. A Film Unfinished 4:15. Budrus 6:45. Gruber’s Journey 9:15.

MON/2

CineArts Ahead of Time 2. Surrogate with "Guided Tour" 4. Te Extraño (I Miss You) with "Escape from Suburbia" 6:15. Bena 8:30.

Roda Long Distance with "You Can Dance" 2:15. Sayed Kashua: Forever Scared with "Arab Labor: Season One, Episode 10" 4. A Room and a Half 6. "Jews in Shorts: Focus on Israeli Narratives" (shorts program) 8:45.

TUES/3

CineArts Mrs. Moscowitz and the Cats 2. Long Distance with "You Can Dance" 4. The Wolberg Family with "Perfect Mother" 6. Jaffa with "The Orange" 8.

Roda 9 Years Later with "Perin’s Dual Identity" 2:30. Amos Oz: The Nature of Dreams 4:30. Anita 6:30. Illusiones Ópticas with "What About Me?" 8:45.

OPENING

*Alamar Pedro González-Rubio’s gorgeous Alamar ("to the sea") is set between landscapes (land and sea) and ways of telling (fiction and documentary). The bare frame of a plot places a young boy with his father and grandfather, Mayan fishermen working the Mexican Caribbean. The sweetness of this idyll is tempered by its provisional bounds: the boy will return to his mother in Rome at the end of his compressed experience of a father’s love. Every shot is earned: there are several in which the camera bucks with the boat, physically linked to the actors’ experience. The child is at an age of discovery, and González-Rubio channels this openness by fixing on the details of the fisher’s elegant way of life and the environmental contingencies of their home at sea. (1:13) Sundance Kabuki. (Goldberg)

Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore Secret agent pets return, in 3-D. (1:40)

Charlie St. Cloud Zac Efron goes boating. (1:40)

Countdown to Zero This documentary takes on the nuclear arms race. (1:30) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

Dark House On a dare, a little girl enters the house "where the weird kids live," and finds a slew of children slaughtered, their murdering foster mother in suicidal death throes. Fourteen years later, Claire (Meghan Ory) is plagued by nightmares. Her therapist has the bright idea that she should "face the past" and unlock her repressed memories by visiting the house in question. Yeah, that’ll work. The arrival of high-tech spookhouse impresario Walston (Jeffrey Combs) provides a convenient plan of action, as he wants to hire her entire college acting class as live performers in a press preview of his latest creepy creation, a house of holographic horrors tastelessly located in the still-vacant site of that child massacre. Natch, before you can say "avenging evil spirit," the illusory frights turn into cast-winnowing real perils. This allows director-scenarist Darin Scott (who previously wrote 1995 horror omnibus Tales from the Hood) to toss in a bevy of genre familiars, from zombies to an axe-wielding scary clown. But Dark House isn’t meta-horror so much as a fairly ordinary slasher that’s more silly than it is self-aware (let alone scary). Meh. (1:26) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Dinner for Schmucks When he attracts favorable notice and a possible promotion from his corporate boss, Tim (Paul Rudd) is invited to an annual affair in which executives compete to see who can dig up the freakiest loser dweeb for everyone to snicker at. He literally runs into the perfect candidate: Barry (Steve Carrell), an IRS employee whose hobby is making elaborate tableaux with stuffed dead nice in tiny human clothes. He’s also the sort of person who, in trying to be helpful, inevitably wreaks havoc on the unlucky person being helped. Which means the 24 hours or so before the "Biggest Idiot" contest provide plenty of time for well-intentioned Barry to nearly destroy Tim’s relationship with a girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak), reunite him with Crazy Stalker Chick (Lucy Punch), and imperil his wooing of a multimillion-dollar account. Director Jay Roach (of the Austin Powers and Meet the Fockers series) has a full load of comedy talent on board here. So why are the results so tepid? This remake softens the bite of Francis Veber’s 1998 original French The Dinner Game by making Tim not a yuppie scumbag but a nice guy who just happens to have a jerk’s job (his company seizes ailing firms and liquidates them), and who doesn’t really want to expose hapless Barry to humiliation. But even with that satirical angle removed and a wider streak of sentimentality, it should cough up more laughs than it does. (1:50) (Harvey)

Farewell In Joyeux Noel (2005) director Christian Carion’s new drama, a KGB agent slips top-secret documents to a French businessman, hoping to bring about the end of the Cold War. Fun fact: Fred Ward plays Reagan. (1:53) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

*Kisses Sweet as a lingering caress or a smooch swiftly snatched, Kisses is besotted with the feel, lights, and ambiance of Dublin and the sensation of being young, free, and all too ready to plunge into the mysteries of adulthood. Next-door neighbors living on the outskirts of the big city, Kylie (Kelly O’Neill) and Dylan (Shane Curry) have a few things in common: they’re both children forced to grow up far faster than they like. When Dylan strikes back at his abusive father, the two flee, vowing never to return. Their goal is to find Dylan’s older brother, who ran from their father’s beatings long ago. And through their street-wise but still innocent eyes — and Kisses‘ gradual, graceful transition from black and white to color — Dublin takes on a subtle magic, one that darkens as the night and its dangers progress. To his credit, director and writer Lance Daly avoids striving for epic statements with Kisses. Rather, he keeps his unashamedly romantic focus tight on the moment and his two riveting leads, coaxing a wonderful performance in particular from O’Neill, whose angelic contenance, giving-as-good-as-it-gets lip, and bulldog feistiness stays with you long after Kisses‘ tender touch has faded. (1:15) (Chun)

*Orlando The director Sally Potter recently revealed during a panel discussion in New York that she was once told, "There’s only one golden rule: nobody should ever try to adapt Virginia Woolf!" Eighteen years later Potter’s fantastic Orlando (1992) stands as proof to the contrary. As whip smart and thick with history and allusion as Woolf’s 1928 "biography" of its titular time-traveling, gender-bending hero, Orlando feels less like an adaptation of its source material than a collaboration with it. While the sumptuous costumes and lush production design certainly do their part, Woolf’s sharp humor and nuanced observations about art, nature, gender, and, well, nearly everything else, truly come alive thanks to Tilda Swinton’s performance in the title role. With her androgynous features, dry delivery, and winking, direct addresses to the camera, Swinton carries Orlando‘s journey from male consort to Queen Elizabeth (Quentin Crisp, in a brilliant bit of casting that would be his last onscreen appearance), to the most desired woman in 18th century London, to modern day published author and mother, with the practiced ease of a prima ballerina. Orlando elevated the flame-haired actor from Derek Jarman-muse to full-blown art house star. Come and see why. (1:33) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Sussman)

Winnebago Man This documentary tells the strange story of Jack Rebney, a YouTube sensation (thanks to a cussin’-tastic RV commercial outtake) who has no idea of his viral fame. (1:15) Shattuck.

ONGOING

Agora There’s a good movie somewhere in Agora, but finding it would require severe editing. It’s not that the film is too long, though it does drag in stretches. The problem is that there are too many stories being told: Hypatia of Alexandria, the central figure, only emerges as the focus well into the film. Meanwhile, there’s Davus (Max Minghella), the slave boy in love with her; Orestes (Oscar Isaac), the student who tries to win her affection; Synesius (Rupert Evans), the devout Christian. We jump from character to character and plot to plot — the conflict between the pagans and the Christians, the conflict between the Christians and the Jews, and Hypatia’s studies in astronomy. Agora is so scattered that by the time it reaches its tragic conclusion — only a spoiler if you haven’t already Googled Hypatia — there’s little room to breathe, let alone grieve. While Hypatia herself is a fascinating subject, Agora is weighed down by all the stories it’s intent on cramming in. (2:06) (Peitzman)

*Anton Chekhov’s The Duel Conformity vs. freedom, small-town whispers vs. the heavy hand of the law — Georgian director Dover Kosashvili successfully teases out some of the tensions in the Anton Chekhov novella, encapsulating the provincial pressures brought to bear on deviants and nonconformists during a steamy summer in a seaside resort town in the Caucasus. Dissolute civil servant and would-be intellectual Laevsky (Andrew Scott) is in the bind, as he gripes to the town doctor Samoylenko (Niall Buggy). Laevsky has everything he wants: he’s coaxed the creamy, married Nadya (Fiona Glascott) into living with him openly, yet now that her husband has died, he desires nothing more than to be free of her. In the meantime upstanding zoologist Von Koren (Tobias Menzies) simmers in the background, gaging Laevsky’s social mores and practically oozing contempt. Matters come to a head as Laevsky begs a loan from Samoylenko to escape his ripening paramour, who is also beginning to feel the gracious perimeters of the town closing in around her. From the buttons-and-bows millinery details to the oppressive dark wood furnishings, Kosashvili even-handedly builds a compelling Victorian-era mise en scene that seems to perfectly evoke the Chekhov’s milieu — it’s only when the title entanglement comes to pass that we finally see which side he’s on. (1:35) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Opening with the humid buzz of crickets and the probings of bug aficionados in the thick of a forest, first-time documentarian Jessica Oreck puts Japan’s fascination with insects under the microscope. Preferring to let the images and interview subjects speak for themselves, she turns a lens to young children who clamor to buy sleek, shiny, obsidian beetles, as well as the giant big city gatherings of insect collectors — events that likely are less than familiar to western audiences. Oreck’s intent is to get at the ineffable attraction behind such astonishing sales as that of a single beetle for $90,000 not so long ago, and to that end, she weaves in looks at insect literature and art, visits to Buddhist temples, and historical factoids about, for instance, the first cricket-selling business in the early 1800s. (1:30) (Chun)

Breathless (1:30)

*City Island The Rizzo family of City Island, N.Y. — a tiny atoll associated historically with fishing and jurisdictionally with the Bronx — have reached a state where their primary interactions consist of sniping, yelling, and storming out of rooms. These storm clouds operate as cover for the secrets they’re all busy keeping from one another. Correctional officer Vince (Andy Garcia) pretends he’s got frequent poker nights so he can skulk off to his true shameful indulgence: a Manhattan acting class. Perpetually fuming spouse Joyce (Julianna Margulies) assumes he’s having an affair. Daughter Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) has dropped out of school to work at a strip joint, while the world class-sarcasms of teenager Vinnie (Ezra Miller) deflect attention from his own hidden life as an aspiring chubby chaser. All this (plus everyone’s sneaky cigarette habit) is nothing, however, compared to Vince’s really big secret: he conceived and abandoned a "love child" before marrying, and said guilty issue has just turned up as a 24-year-old car thief on his cell block. Writer-director Raymond De Felitta made a couple other features in the last 15 years, none widely seen; if this latest is typical, we need more of him, more often. Perfectly cast, City Island is farcical without being cartoonish, howl-inducing without lowering your brain-cell count. It’s arguably a better, less self-conscious slice of dysfunctional family absurdism than Little Miss Sunshine (2006) — complete with an Alan Arkin more inspired in his one big scene here than in all of that film’s Oscar-winning performance. (1:40) (Harvey)

Cyrus It’s tempting to label Mark and Jay Duplass’ Cyrus as "mumblecore goes mainstream." Yes, the mumblecore elements are all there: plentiful moments of awkward humiliation, characters fumbling verbally and sometimes physically in desperate attempts to establish emotional connections, and a meandering, character-driven plot, in the sense that the characters themselves possess precious little drive. The addition of bona fide indie movie stars John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, and Marisa Tomei — not to mention Hollywood’s chubby-funny guy du jour, Jonah Hill — could lead some to believe that the DIY-loving Duplass brothers (2005’s The Puffy Chair, 2008’s Baghead) have gone from slacker disciples of John Cassavetes (informally known as "Slackavetes") to worshippers at the slickly profane (with a heart) altar of Judd Apatow. But despite the presence of Apatow protégé Hill (2007’s Superbad) in the title role, Cyrus steers clear of crowd-pleasing bombast, instead favoring small, relatively naturalistic moments. That is to say, not much actually happens. Mumblecore? More or less. Mainstream? Not exactly. Despite playing a character with some serious psychological issues, Hill comes off as likeable. Unfortunately the movie is neither as broadly comic nor as emotionally poignant as it needs to be — the two opposing forces seem to cancel each other out like acids and bases. (1:32) (Devereaux)

Despicable Me Judging from the adorable, booty-shaking, highly merchandisable charm of its sunny-yellow Percocet-like minions, Despicable Me‘s makers have more than a few fond memories of the California Raisins. That gives you an idea of the 30-second attention-span level at work here. Thanks to Pixar and company, our expectations for animated features are high, but despite the single lob at Lehman Brothers aimed toward the grown-ups, the humor here is pitched straight at the eight and younger crowd: from the mugging, child-like minions to the all-in-good-fun, slightly quease-inducing 3-D roller-coaster ride. Gru (Steve Carell) is Despicable‘s also-ran supervillain — a bit too old and too unoriginal for a game that’s been rigged in the favor of the youthful, annoyingly perky Vector (Jason Segel), who’s managed to swipe the Giza Pyramids and become the world’s number one bad dude. When Vector steals away the crucial shrink ray needed for Gru’s plot to thieve the moon, the latter pulls out the big guns: three adorable orphans who have managed to penetrate Vector’s defenses with their fund-raising cookie sales. It turns out kids have their own insidiously heart-warming way of wrecking havoc on one’s well-laid plans. Filmmakers Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud do their best to exploit the 3-D medium, but Avatar (2009) this is not. Nor will many adults be able to withstand the onslaught of cute undertaken by all those raisins, I mean, minions. (1:35) (Chun)

*Exit Through the Gift Shop Exit Through the Gift Shop is not a film about the elusive graffiti-cum-conceptual artist and merry prankster known as Banksy, even though he takes up a good chunk of this sly and by-no-means impartial documentary and is listed as its director. Rather, as he informs us — voice electronically altered, face hidden in shadow — in the film’s opening minutes, the film’s real subject is one Thierry Guetta, a French expat living in LA whose hangdog eyes, squat stature, and propensity for mutton chops and polyester could pass him off as Ron Jeremy’s long lost twin. Unlike Jeremy, Guetta is not blessed with any prodigious natural talent to propel him to stardom, save for a compulsion to videotape every waking minute of his life (roughly 80 percent of the footage in Exit is Guetta’s) and a knack for being in the right place at the right time. When Guetta is introduced by his tagger cousin to a pre-Obamatized Shepard Fairey in 2007, he realizes his true calling: to make a documentary about the street art scene that was then only starting to get mainstream attention. Enter Banksy, who, at first, is Guetta’s ultimate quarry. Eventually, the two become chummy, with Guetta acting as lookout and documenter for the artist just as the art market starts clambering for its piece of, "the Scarlet Pimpernel of street art," as one headline dubs him. When, at about three quarters of the way in, Guetta, following Banksy’s casual suggestion, drops his camcorder and tries his hand at making street art, Exit becomes a very different beast. Guetta’s flashy debut as Mr. Brainwash is as obscenely successful as his "art" is terribly unimaginative — much to the chagrin of his former documentary subjects. But Guetta is no Eve Harrington and Banksy, who has the last laugh here, gives him plenty of rope with which to truss himself. Is Mr. Brainwash really the ridiculous and inevitable terminus of street art’s runaway mainstream success (which, it must be said, Banksy has handsomely profited from)? That question begs another: with friends like Banksy, who needs enemies? (1:27) Roxie. (Sussman)

Get Him to the Greek At this point movie execs can throw producer Judd Apatow’s name on the marquee of a film and it’s a guaranteed blockbuster. It’s hard to say whether this Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) spin-off benefits from the Apatow sign of approval or if it would be better off standing on its own, but it definitely doesn’t benefit from comparisons to its predecessor. Russell Brand returns as the British rock star Aldous Snow, and Jonah Hill, playing a different character this time, is given the task of chaperoning the uncooperative Snow from London to LA in 48 hours. Despite a great cast, including a surprisingly animated P. Diddy, the story is pretty bland and can’t match the blend of drama and comedy that Marshall achieved. Of course, none of that matters because the movie execs are right: if you like Apatow’s brand of humor, you’re going to have a good time anyway. (1:49) (Peter Galvin)

*The Girl Who Played With Fire Lisbeth Salander is cooler than you are. The heroine of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling book series is fierce, mysterious, and utterly captivating: in the movie adaptations, she’s perfectly realized by Noomi Rapace, who has the power to transform Lisbeth from literary hero to film icon. Rapace first impressed audiences in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009), a faithful adaptation of Larsson’s premiere novel, and she returns as Lisbeth in The Girl Who Played With Fire. The sequel, as is often the case, isn’t quite on par with the original, but it’s still a page-to-screen success. And while the first film spent equal time on journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), The Girl Who Played With Fire is almost entirely Lisbeth’s story. Sure, there’s more to the movie than the hacker-turned-sleuth — and the actor who plays her — but she carries the film. Rapace is Lisbeth; Lisbeth is Rapace. I’d watch both in anything. (2:09) Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo By the time the first of Stieg Larsson’s so-called "Millennium" books had been published anywhere, the series already had an unhappy ending: he died (in 2004). The following year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became a Swedish, then eventually international sensation, its sequels following suit. The books are addicting, to say the least; despite their essential crime-mystery-thriller nature, they don’t require putting your ear for writing of some literary value on sleep mode. Now the first of three adaptive features shot back-to-back has reached U.S. screens. (Sorry to say, yes, a Hollywood remake is already in the works — but let’s hope that’s years away.) Even at two-and-a-half hours, this Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by necessity must do some major truncating to pack in the essentials of a very long, very plotty novel. Still, all but the nitpickingest fans will be fairly satisfied, while virgins will have the benefit of not knowing what’s going to happen and getting scared accordingly. Soon facing jail after losing a libel suit brought against him by a shady corporate tycoon, leftie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) gets a curious private offer to probe the disappearance 40 years earlier of a teenage girl. This entangles him with an eccentric wealthy family and their many closet skeletons (including Nazi sympathies) — as well as dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), androgynous loner, 24-year-old court ward, investigative researcher, and skillful hacker. Director Niels Arden Oplev and his scenarists do a workmanlike job — one more organizational than interpretive, a faithful transcription without much style or personality all its own. Nonetheless, Larsson’s narrative engine kicks in early and hauls you right along to the depot. (2:32) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Great Directors Sussing taste in movies isn’t always as easy as perusing a shelf — not everyone necessarily cares to watch repeatedly even the films they esteem most. (Of course 1941’s Citizen Kane is brilliant, but do I own that? Nix. But 2000’s Dude, Where’s My Car? Yup.) Thus Angela Ismailos’ new documentary Great Directors is as interesting for what it reveals about the curator as for insights from "great" filmmakers themselves. Ismailos has tony taste: good if idiosyncratic, the kind you can respect yet argue with. She’s a real cineaste. And a narcissist, falling into that realm of filmmakers who make movies about other people yet incessantly insert themselves into the frame. Still, there have been far worse offenders in the realm of Gratuitous Me: The Documentary, and Ismailos chooses her subjects — plus filmic excerpts — with beguiling intelligence. The interviewees are very articulate. Are all "great"? Well, it’s hard to argue against Bernardo Bertolucci and David Lynch. Richard Linklater and Todd Haynes are inspired next-generation American choices. With John Sayles we enter the land of good intentions. Likewise Ken Loach and Stephen Frears. The jury’s still out on Catherine Breillat, while one truly odd choice is Liliana Cavani (1974’s S–M Nazi romance The Night Porter); offering contrast is Agnès Varda, whose puckish cinema is hobbit-like in its denial of sex. Several participants share tales of production travails, like Lynch claiming "It’s beautiful to have a great failure" (i.e., 1984’s Dune) since it freed him to make smaller, more personal projects like next-stop Blue Velvet (1986). Preening and adoring her idols in camera view, Ismailos flashes her good taste around. This would be more annoying if her taste wasn’t, in fact, pretty choice. (1:26) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Grown Ups In order of star power, Grown Ups casts Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade as five fortysomething friends who reunite to attend the funeral of their high school basketball coach, and play catch-up over a long weekend together at a cabin by the lake. If you’re expecting five of America’s biggest comedy stars to form like Voltron and make the most hilarious movie of the year, you’ve got a sad day coming. Grown Ups is never the sum of its parts, it’s about on par with Sandler’s other producing/starring affairs, and probably features a lot of the same jokes. People fall in poop and little kids say cute things designed to make audiences awww, but history has shown that’s exactly what a popcorn viewer is looking for. By these standards, Grown Ups is a perfectly summer-y movie. (1:42) (Galvin)

*I Am Love I Am Love opens in a chilly, Christmastime Milan and deliberately warms in tandem with its characters. Members of the blue-blood Recchi family are content hosting lavish parties and gossiping about one another, none more than the matriarch Emma (Tilda Swinton). But when prodigal son Edoardo befriends a local chef, Emma finds herself taken by both the chef’s food and his everyman personality, and is reminded of her poor Soviet upbringing. The courtship that follows is familiar on paper, but director Luca Guadagnino lenses with a strong style and small scenes acquire a distinct energy through careful editing and John Adams’ unpredictable score. Swinton portrays Emma’s unraveling with the same gritty gusto she brought to Julia (2008), and her commitment to the role recognizes few boundaries. You’ve probably seen this story before, but it has rarely been this powerful. (2:00) (Galvin)

Inception As my movie going companion pointed out, "Christopher Nolan must’ve shit a brick when he saw Shutter Island." In Nolan’s Inception, as in Shutter Island, Leonardo DiCaprio is a troubled soul trapped in a world of mind-fuckery, with a tragic-vengeful wife (here, Marion Cotillard) and even some long-lost kids looming in his thoughts at all times. But Inception, about a team of corporate spies who infiltrate dreams to steal information and implant ideas, owes just as much to The Matrix (1999), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and probably a James Bond flick or two. Familiar though it may feel, at least Inception is based on a creative idea — how many movies, much less summer blockbusters, actually require viewer brain power? If its complex house-of-cards plot (dreams within dreams within dreams) can’t quite withstand nit-picking, its action sequences are confidently staged and expertly directed, including a standout sequence involving a zero-gravity fist fight and elevator ride. Though it’s hardly genius — and Leo-recycle aside — Inception is worth it, if you don’t mind your puzzle missing a few pieces. (2:30) (Eddy)

*Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Whether you’re a fan of its subject or not, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s documentary is an absorbing look at the business of entertainment, a demanding treadmill that fame doesn’t really make any easier. At 75, comedian Rivers has four decades in the spotlight behind her. Yet despite a high Q rating she finds it difficult to get the top-ranked gigs, no matter that as a workaholic who’ll take anything she could scarcely be more available. Funny onstage (and a lot ruder than on TV), she’s very, very focused off-, dismissive of being called a "trailblazer" when she’s still actively competing with those whose women comics trail she blazed for today’s hot TV guest spot or whatever. Anyone seeking a thorough career overview will have to look elsewhere; this vérité year-in-the-life portrait is, like the lady herself, entertainingly and quite fiercely focused on the here-and-now. (1:24) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

John Rabe John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) was the Oskar Schindler of Nanking: A man who, under discreetly opportunist pretenses, attempted to keep the Chinese in a safety zone from the Japanese in the late 30s. Steve Buscemi plays Robert Wilson, a surly American doctor. He’s to Tukur as Ben Kingsley was to Liam Neeson in 1993’s Schindler’s List, but without the nuance or iconic chemistry. Tukur is understated, bordering on uninteresting, and Buscemi is just over-the-top. Unlike Spielberg’s film, John Rabe grants us little access to the stories of civilians. The film is so preoccupied with people of power and those like Rabe, couched in a world of privilege, that the film lacks an emotional, human center. It’s impossible to feel much of anything because we’re never asked to feel, nor are we ever asked to endure any especially difficult scenes. Even the occasional rain of hellfire isn’t as wallop-packing as it ought to be. (2:14) (Ryan Lattanzio)

*The Kids Are All Right In many ways, The Kids Are All Right is a straightforward family dramedy: it’s about parents trying to do what’s best for their children and struggling to keep their relationship together. But it’s also a film in which Jules (Julianne Moore) goes down on Nic (Annette Bening) while they’re watching gay porn. Director Lisa Cholodenko (1998’s High Art) co-wrote the script (with Stuart Blumberg), and the film’s blend between mainstream and queer is part of what makes Kids such an important — not to mention enjoyable — film. Despite presenting issues that might be contentious to large portions of the country, the movie maintains an approachability that’s often lacking in queer cinema. Of course, being in the gay mecca of the Bay Area skews things significantly — most locals wouldn’t bat an eye at Kids, which has Nic and Jules’ children inviting their biological father ("the sperm donor," played by Mark Ruffalo) into their lives. But for those outside the liberal bubble, the idea of a nontraditional family might be more eye-opening. It’s not a message movie, but Kids may still change minds. And even if it doesn’t, the film is a success that works chiefly because it isn’t heavy-handed. It refuses to take itself too seriously. At its best, Kids is laugh-out-loud funny, handling the heaviest of issues with grace and humor. (1:47) (Peitzman)

*Knight and Day A Bourne-again Vanilla Sky (2001)? Considerably better than that embarrassingly silly stateside remake, though not quite as fulfilling as director James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007) rework, this action caper played for yuks still isn’t the most original article in the cineplex. But coasting on the dazzling Cheshire grins of its stars, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reunited for the first time since Sky, you can just make out the birth of a beautiful new franchise. Everygirl June Havens (Diaz) is on her way to her sister’s wedding when she collides-cute at the airport with Roy Miller (Cruise). After killing the passengers and pilots on their plane, he literally sweeps her off her feet — thanks to some potent drugs. Picture a would-be Bond girl dragged against a spy-vs.-spy thriller semi-against-her-will — grappling with the subtextual anxiety rushing beneath all brief romantic encounters as well as some very justifiable survival fears. Can June overcome her trust issues? Is Roy the man of her dreams — or nightmares? Mangold and company miss a few opportunities to have more fun with those barely teased out ideas, and the polished, adult-yet-far-from-knowing charisma of the leads doesn’t quite live up to sophisticated interplay of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or even the down-home fun of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, but it’s substantial enough for Knight and Day to coast on, for about 90 minutes tops. (2:10) (Chun)

The Last Airbender There must be some M. Night Shyamalan fans out there. How else does one explain the fact that he keeps making movies? And yet, most of his post-Sixth Sense (1999) work has ranged from forgettable to downright reviled. His latest disaster is sure to fall into the latter category: in The Last Airbender, he takes a much-loved Nickelodeon cartoon and transforms it into an awkwardly paced, poorly acted mess. Woefully miscast Noah Ringer stars as Aang, the avatar with the power to end the Fire Nation’s dominion. Along with his friends, siblings Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) and Katara (Nicola Peltz), Aang must — oh, just watch the damn show. For newcomers, the film is as confusing as Shyamalan’s equally self-indulgent Lady in the Water (2006). For fans of the TV show, The Last Airbender is nearly unbearable, condensing the entire first season into one film by removing the humor, the heart, and the complexity of the characters. There’s no twist here — we expect Shyamalan to disappoint, and he does. (1:34) (Peitzman)

*Let It Rain Well-known feminist author Agathe Villanova (writer-director Agnès Jaoui) is taking a rare break from her busy Paris life, visiting her hometown to see family, vacation with boyfriend Antoine (Frédéric Pierrot), and do a little stumping for her nascent political career. But despite the ever-picturesque French countryside as background, all is not harmonious. Antoine complains Agathe’s workaholism (among other things) is killing their relationship, particularly once she agrees to be time-consumingly interviewed for film about "successful women" by shambling documentarian Michel (coscenarist Jean-Pierre Bacri) and local Karim (Jamel Debbouze). Her married-with-children sister Florence (Pascale Arbillot) is having a secret affair with Michel, but seems more focused on old resentments springing from Agathe being their late mother’s favorite. Karim — son of the family’s longtime housekeeper (Mimouna Hadji) — bears his own grudge against the clan and brusque, officious Agathe in particular. Being happily wed, he’s further bothered at his hotel day job by his attraction to co-worker Aurélie (Florence Loiret-Caille). These various conflicts simmer, then boil over as the documentary shooting goes from bumbling to disastrous. In 2004, Jaoui delivered a pretty near perfect Gallic ensemble seriocomedy in Look at Me. This isn’t quite that good. Still, her seemingly effortless skill at managing complex character dynamics, eliciting expert performances (including her own), and weaving it all together with insouciant panache makes this a real pleasure. The problem with Agnès Jaoui: she’s so good it chafes that (acting-only gigs aside) she’s made just three films in ten years. Pick it up, girl! (1:39) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Lottery (1:21) Roxie.

Micmacs An urge to baby-talk at the screen underlines what is wrong with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film: it is like a precocious child all too aware how to work a room, reprising adorable past behaviors with pushy determination and no remaining spontaneity whatsoever. There will be cooing. There will be clucking. But there will also a few viewers rolling their eyes, thinking "This kid rides my last nerve." It’s easy to understand why Jeunet’s movies (including 2001’s Amélie) are so beloved, doubtless by many previously allergic to subtitles. (Of course, few filmmakers need dialogue less.) They are eye-candy, and brain-candy too: fantastical, hyper, exotic, appealing to the child within but with dark streaks, byzantine of plot yet requiring no close narrative attention at all. The artistry and craftsmanship are unmissable, no ingenious design or whimsical detail left unemphasized. In Micmacs, hero Bazil (Dany Boon) is a lovable misfit who lost his father to an Algerian landmine, then loses his own job and home when he’s brain-injured by a stray bullet. He falls in with a crazy coterie of lovable misfits who live underground, make wacky contraptions from junk, and each have their own special, not-quite-super "power." They help him wreak elaborate, fanciful revenge on the greedy arms manufacturers (André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié) behind his misfortunes, as well as various human rights-y global ones. So there’s a message here, couched in fun. But the effect is rather like a birthday clown begging funds for Darfur — or Robert Benigni’s dreaded Life is Beautiful (1997), good intentions coming off a bit hubristic, even distasteful. (1:44) (Harvey)

Predators Anyone who claims to be disappointed by Predators has clearly never seen parts one and two in the series; all three are straight B-movie affairs (though 1990’s Predator 2 takes everything oh-so-slightly over the top. Gary Busey’ll do that). And if you’ve seen either of the recent Predator-versus-Alien flicks, Predators should feel like a masterpiece. Nimród Antal directs under the banner of Robert Rodriguez’s production company, which explains the presence of Danny "Machete" Trejo in the cast. Adrien Brody stashes his Oscar in a safe place to star as Royce, a well-armed mercenary who awakes to find himself in free fall, plummeting into a strange jungle along with other elite-forces types (including Brazilian Alice Braga, playing an Israeli soldier). It doesn’t take long before Royce realizes that "this is a game preserve, and we’re the game." I wish Predators had allowed itself to have a little more fun with its uniquely skilled characters (the yakuza guy does have a nice, if culturally-stereotyped, swordplay scene); there’s also an underdeveloped "plot twist" involving the presence of the decidedly un-badass Topher Grace among the human prey. But all is forgiven when Laurence Fishburne turns up as Crazy Old Dude Who’s Been Hiding Out With Predators a Little Too Long. Fishburne’s presence also adds to the heart-of-darkness vibe the movie seems vaguely interested in conveying. (1:51) (Eddy)

Ramona and Beezus (1:44)

*Restrepo Starting mid-’07, journalists-filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger spent some 15 months off and on embedded with a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, a Taliban stronghold with steep, mountainous terrain that could hardly be more advantageous for snipers. Particularly once a second, even more isolated outpost is built, the soldiers’ days are fraught with tension, whether they’re ordered out into the open on a mission or staying put under frequent fire. Strictly vérité, with no political commentary overt or otherwise, the documentary could be (and has been) faulted for not having enough of a "narrative arc" — as if life often does, particularly under such extreme circumstances. But it’s harrowingly immediate (the filmmakers themselves often have to dive for cover) and revelatory as a glimpse not just of active warfare, but of the near-impossible challenges particular to foreign armed forces trying to make any kind of "progress" in Afghanistan. (1:33) (Harvey)

Salt Angelina Jolie channels the existential crisis of Jason Bourne and the DIY spirit of MacGyver in a film positing that America’s most pressing concern is extant Russian cold warriors, who are plotting to reestablish their country’s pre-glasnost glory via nuclear holocaust and a Dark Angel–style army of spy kids. Jolie plays CIA agent Evelyn Salt, a woman who can stymie the top-shelf surveillance system at work using her undergarments and fashion a shoulder-mounted rocket out of interrogation-room furniture and cleaning supplies. These talents surface after Salt is accused of being a Russian operative in league with the aforementioned disturbers of the new world order and takes flight, with her agency coworkers (Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor) in hot pursuit. What ensues is a vicious and confounding assault on the highest levels of the U.S. government, most known rules of logic, and the viewer’s patience and powers of suspending disbelief. Salt’s off-the-ranch maneuverings are moderately engaging, particularly in the first leg of the chase, but clunky expository flashbacks, B-movie-grade dialogue, and an absurd plotline slow the momentum considerably. (1:31) (Rapoport)

The Secret in Their Eyes (2:07)

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Socially awkward science nerd Dave (Jay Baruchel) toils away on his suspiciously elaborate NYU physics project, unaware that he’s about to have a Harry Potter-style moment of awakening. Enter Balthazar (Nicolas Cage), a centuries-old, steampunky sorcerer who believes Dave to be "the Prime Merlinian" — i.e., the greatest conjurer since Merlin himself. (Literally) rising from ashes to provide conflict are fellow sorcerers Horvath (Alfred Molina) and Morgana (Alice Krige); signing on for romantic-interest purposes are Monica Bellucci and newcomer Teresa Palmer. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice spins off Disney classic Fantasia (1940) in only the loosest sense, though there is a scene of dancing brooms. The bland Baruchel’s rise to fame continues to mystify, but at least Cage and Molina seem to be having a blast exchanging insults and zapping each other around. (1:43) (Eddy)

South of the Border After a prolific career of dramatic films steeped in political commentary, Oliver Stone drops the pretext. South of the Border is his Michael Moore moment, a chance for the filmmaker to make a direct and focused documentary in which his bias is readily apparent. Stone travels to South American nations and meets with their political leaders, men and women — including Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa — who have long been considered enemies of the United States. His goal is to show that they are not ruthless dictators but rather democratically elected representatives of their country, cast in a negative light by a mainstream media with ulterior motives. Stone’s rapport with these politicians is intimate: at one point, he plays soccer with Morales. Even if you’re skeptical of his assertions, you can at least appreciate the unique perspective South of the Border offers. As a film, it’s somewhat slipshod, not nearly as glossy as a Moore production. But provided you’re willing to fill in the blanks, it’s a captivating and well-intentioned endeavor. (1:18) (Peitzman)

*Stonewall Uprising On the night of June 28, 1969, police embarked on what they thought would be a routine raid on a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, the sleazy, Mafia-run Stonewall Inn. The ensuing three days of rioting — during which mostly young men and drag queens accustomed to being marginalized and hauled off to jail stood their ground and fought back — became what historian Lillian Faderman has called "the shot heard round the world" for LGBT activism: a spontaneous expression of street-level outrage that fueled the birth of a movement. Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s solid documentary Stonewall Uprising takes a "just the facts, ma’am" approach to this historic flashpoint that makes for an information-packed, if at times dry, 80 minutes. Working around the paucity of photographic documentation of the actual riots (itself a testament to the marginalization of homosexuality in the late 1960s), Davis and Heilbroner make extensive use of period news footage and photography, reenactments, and most important, the first-person testimonies of who those who witnessed and participated in what one interviewee terms "our Rosa Parks moment." The filmmakers’ contextual groundwork is as impressive for its archival research as it is repetitive in its message: pre-Stonewall life was hell. The documentary becomes more nuanced as it zeros in on reconstructing the first night of rioting via eyewitness accounts. (1:22) (Sussman)

*Toy Story 3 You’ve got a friend in Pixar. We all do. The animation studio just can’t seem to make a bad movie — even at its relative worst, a Pixar film is still worlds better than most of what Hollywood churns out. Luckily, Toy Story 3 is far from the worst: it’s actually one of Pixar’s most enjoyable and poignant films yet. Waiting 11 years after the release of Toy Story 2 was, in fact, a stroke of genius, in that it amplifies the nostalgia that runs through so many of the studio’s releases. The kids who were raised on Toy Story and its first sequel have now grown up, gone to college, and, presumably, abandoned their toys. For these twentysomethings, myself included, Toy Story 3 is a uniquely satisfying and heartbreaking experience. While the film itself may not be the instant classic that WALL-E (2008) was, it’s near flawless regardless of a viewer’s age. Warm, funny, and emotionally devastating—it’s Pixar as it should be. (1:49) (Peitzman)

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse The only person more bored by the Twilight franchise than I am is Kristen Stewart. In Eclipse, the third installment of the film series, she mopes her way through further adventures with creepily obsessive vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson). Look, you’re either sold on this star-crossed love story or you’re not, and it’s clear which camp I fall into. Besides, Eclipse is at least better than New Moon, the dreadful Twilight film that preceded it last year. But the story is still ponderous and predictable — Eclipse sets up a conflict and then quickly resolves it, just so it can spend more time on the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle. (As if we don’t know how that ends.) Then there’s the unfortunate anti-sex subtext: carnal relations are cast as dirty, wrong, and soul-destroying. I’m not saying we should be encouraging all teenagers to have sex, but that doesn’t mean we should make them feel ashamed of their desires. And what parent would approve of Eclipse‘s conclusion? Marrying your first boyfriend at 18 — not always the best move. (2:04) (Peitzman)

*Winter’s Bone Winter’s Bone has already won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, but it’s the kind of downbeat, low-key, quiet film that may elude larger audiences (and, as these things go, Oscar voters). Like Andrea Arnold’s recent Fish Tank, it tells the story of a teenage girl who draws on unlikely reserves of toughness to navigate an unstable family life amid less-than-ideal economic circumstances. And it’s also directed by a woman: Debra Granik, whose previous feature, 2004’s Down to the Bone, starred Vera Farmiga (2009’s Up in the Air) as a checkout clerk trying to balance two kids and a secret coke habit.

Drugs also figure into the plot of the harrowing Winter’s Bone, though its protagonist, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), is faced with a different set of circumstances: her meth head father has jumped bail, leaving the family’s humble mountain home as collateral; the two kids at stake are her younger siblings. With no resources other than her own tenacity, Ree strikes out into her rural Missouri community, seeking information from relatives who clearly know where her father is — but ain’t sayin’ a word. It’s a journey fraught with menace, shot with an eye for near-documentary realism and an appreciation for slow-burn suspense; Lawrence anchors a solid cast with her own powerful performance. Who says American independent film is dead? (1:40) (Eddy)

Alerts

David Talbot

July 27, 2010

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, JULY 28

Congestion pricing revealed

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority will present findings from its federally-funded "Mobility, Access, and Pricing Study" of how best to deal with traffic congestion and create a sustainable transportation infrastructure. The study includes details on using congestion pricing fees to deter driving downtown at peak times and fund alternative ways of getting around.

5:30 p.m., free

SFCTA Hearing Room, 26th Floor

100 Van Ness, SF

www.sfmobility.org

Vision California

Vision California representatives will discuss a new effort to explore the critical role of land use and transportation investments in meeting the environmental and fiscal challenges facing California in coming decades.

5:30 p.m., $21

AIA East Bay Chapter

1405 Clay, Oakl.

(510) 464-3600

FRIDAY, JULY 30

Hotel Voices

This theater project is written and performed by single room occupancy (SRO) hotel residents. POOR Magazine writers Tony Robles and Tiny collaborated with hotel residents on a 20-week writing, performance, and script-development workshop that led to Hotel Voices.

7 p.m., $10

The Redstone Building

2940 16th St., SF

(415) 863-6306

www.poormagazine.org

SATURDAY, JULY 31

Relay for Life

Celebrate the lives and struggles of former and current cancer patients, as well as their caretakers, those who have lost loved ones, and the families, businesses, and civic organizations affected by their illnesses.. Fight back by volunteering, joining a relay team, or donating to this 24-hour fundraiser and awareness building event. Featuring live music and food.

10 a.m.–10 a.m., July 31–Aug. 1, donations encouraged

Little Marina Green

Marina at Baker, SF

www.relayforlife.org/sanfranciscoembarcaderoca

Release the activists

Help raise awareness for Bay Area activists Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fatta, who are being unjustly detained in Iran after accidentally crossing the border from Iraq while hiking. Bring your instruments, bands, dancing shoes, and poetry for a rally and open mic in Dolores Park following a march from 16th and Mission streets.

Noon, free

Meet at 16th St. and Mission, SF

www.freethehikers.org

Sidewalks Are For People

Celebrate San Francisco’s public spaces by taking part in an all-day sidewalk dedicated to reclaiming SF’s unique culture and history of tolerance and compassion. Throw your own event or participate in one of the many sidewalk parties happening all over the city. All events culminate in an end-of-the-day party, location TBA.

All day, free

Everywhere in San Francisco

www.sidewalksareforpeople.org

TUESDAY, AUG. 3

Green Generations

Network at this fundraiser for SF Nature Education, Pie Ranch Youth Advocacy, and Exploring New Horizons Outdoor School, three nonprofits that provide environmental education to underserved children. The event features DJs, appetizers, drink tastings, and other surprises.

5:30 p.m., $15

111 Minna Gallery

111 Minna, SF

www.greendrinks.org 2

Why is Pelosi killing ENDA?

David Talbot

July 27, 2010

OPINION Why is the Congressmember from the gayest city in America blocking legislation that protects lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers from workplace discrimination? That’s the question LGBT workers across the country are asking, and why LGBT workers picketed her office in the Federal Building and delivered a letter demanding that she not kill the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

Most LGBT workers have no protections from workplace discrimination. ENDA would provide legal protection against discrimination nationally. In 29 states, it is still legal to fire someone solely because they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. And in 38 states it is legal to fire someone solely for being transgender. The current version of the bill would outlaw discrimination on both sexual orientation and gender identity.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi repeatedly promised that she would schedule a vote on the law, but repeatedly broke these promises.

A 2006 study by the Guardian and Transgender Law Center found that 60 percent of transgender people in San Francisco earn less than $15,300 per year, only 25 percent have a full-time job, and nearly 9 percent have no source of income.

Only 4 percent reported making more than $61,200, which is about the median income in the Bay Area. More than half of local transgender people live in poverty, and 96 percent earn less than the median income. Forty percent of those surveyed don’t even have a bank account.

What this study reveals is that even in a city that is considered a haven for the LGBT community, transgender workers face profound employment challenges and discrimination. If this is true in San Francisco, imagine the figures in less queer-friendly towns.

A 2007 meta-analysis from the Williams Institute of 50 studies of workplace discrimination against LGBT people found consistent evidence of bias in the workplace. The analysis found that up to 68 percent of LGBT people reported experiencing employment discrimination, and up to 17 percent said they had been fired or denied employment.

Public opinion polling shows that Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of making sure LGBT Americans get the same employment opportunities as everyone else. In fact, the latest surveys show that nearly 90 percent of Americans support workplace fairness for LGBT workers.

In a few weeks, Congress will finish its legislative business for the year so members can return to their districts to run for reelection. Last month at a LGBT Pride event, Rep. Jackie Spier (D-San Mateo) announced to a stunned crowd that not only would we not get ENDA before the end of the legislative session but she doesn’t think we would get it for five years because we won’t have enough votes in Congress again to ensure passage.

That’s right, at this moment, members of Congress are planning on leaving town and going home to campaign for their own jobs — while leaving thousands of LGBT workers without protections for the next five years. When 90 percent of Americans support workplace fairness, it’s challenging to believe that Pelosi fears a backlash from the voters.

That said, it’s fair to say that Pelosi may get a backlash from LGBT voters if she continues to block ENDA from a vote. The time to pass ENDA is now. The American people support it; the politicians promised it. No more broken promises. We demand that the House speaker stop blocking ENDA and schedule a vote.

Gabriel Haaland is a member of Pride at Work.

Artists attack capitalism in the streets of San Francisco

Sasha Cuttler

July 26, 2010

Artists attack capitalism in the streets of San Francisco

A group of local artists and bloggers on the site Capitalism is Over! will hit the streets of San Francisco this week for a series of performance art pieces designed to highlight the damage that powerful players in our economic system are doing to people and the environment, an action they dubbed “Capitalism is Over! If You Want It (The Summer of Tough Love).”

“The inspiration was our fear about the insanity that’s happening out there, with BP, with Goldman Sachs, with all the people who are out of work, with all the sadness about what’s going on,” Megan Wilson, one of five event organizers, told the Guardian. “Our hope to to get people talking about it and hopefully get some political action.”

Among the pieces are a big pink pig giving back after going to the market, a repurposing of newsracks called Daily Slots, a consumer strike at Union Square, and distribution of “No We Can’t” buttons in the Mission. Check here for a complete list, along with times and places.

Memorial for Rene Cazenave

Zelda Bronstein

July 26, 2010

Rene Cazenave, a stalwart in the affordable housing movement in San Francisco for 40 years, died June 27. Although he insisted that he didn’t want a big memorial, he touched so many people in this city and this community that we’ll be gathering to celebrate his life on Saturday, July 31, from 2-5 pm. The event’s at Fromm Hall at the University of San Francisco (right behind St. Ignatius Church). See you there.

The king is dead, love live SF Theater Pub

John Elberling

July 22, 2010

The king is dead, love live SF Theater Pub

SF Theater Pub’s one-night-only presentation of Alfred Jarry’s bawdy classic Ubu Roi this past Monday felt like nothing so much as a group of dedicated friends putting on a show because they thought it just might turn out awesome. The staged reading took place at SF lounge Café Royale, a pleasant venue with couches and balcony seats as well as standing room that rendered the production all the more intimate.

The play is a deliberately sick-and-twisted piss-take on Macbeth, eviscerated of all its pathos and stuffed full of crap, and the Theater Pub performers, as well as director Bennett Fisher’s new translation, seemed entirely tuned in to its irreverence. Greedy, grubby protagonist Pere Ubu was played with alternating witlessness and pomposity by Sam Leichter, but the most successful comic performer on display was Catherine Lardas, who delivered a positively Oliver Hardy-esque Mere Ubu. The herald Pile (Warden Lawlor) stood above the other actors on the balcony, reciting increasingly complicated titles for Pere Ubu as he continued to murder and annex the positions of several other noblemen.

Music and sound effects from DJ Wait What were evocative of old radio plays, and the minimal use of props such as a giant plastic sword generated a few laughs. The show certainly felt like a one-off event, with all the actors reading their lines from music stands, but this only added to the sense of comeraderie and fun.

Besides the fact that SF Theater Pub’s events are free (a donation at the door will get you a raffle ticket!), their most attractive feature is their apparent modernist sensibility when selecting plays. They’ve already put on Václav Havel’s Audience and an assortment of Greek tragedies. They’re following up Ubu with a collection of short local plays under the heading “The Pint Sized Plays.” Their blog then announces a series of Beckett shorts for September, though on Monday night they claimed September would hold some Oscar Wilde performances.

Most fascinatingly to this reporter, they’ll be celebrating Halloween with a series of radio play-style adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories. There’s nothing I love more than hearing people say “eldritch” and “gibbous” out loud, so those should be jolly good fun. This diverse roster of plays, as well as a genuine sense of joy, means SF Theater Pub are ones to watch in the coming months. Especially since watching them is totally free!

Our Weekly Picks: July 21-27, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

July 20, 2010

WEDNESDAY 21

MUSIC

Nobunny

There’s no telling where Justin Champlin, clad in tighty-whiteys and a bunny mask, got his rabbit obsession, though Bunnicula comes to mind. Known for his stage antics, the Nobunny leader — and sole member, really, if you exclude the backing musicians shuffling in and out — is something of a rock ‘n’ roll animal classified in the punk rock phylum (or garage rock class). Love Visions (2008), with homages like “Chuck Berry Holiday,” produced catchy tracks faster than a rabbit could procreate. Champlin’s histrionics, and even messier sound, recall the Ramones or more recently, Hunx and His Punx. (Ryan Lattanzio)

With Spits, Scumby, and Carolyn the DJ

9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

THURSDAY 22

FILM

Five Easy Pieces

A few years after creating wannabe-pop group the Monkees, Bob Rafelson wrote — along with Carole Eastman — and directed 1970’s Five Easy Pieces. Like Easy Rider (1969), it’s a man-is-a-lonely-island-unto-himself picture starring Jack Nicholson and the squalid splendor of the American landscape. Bobby leaves his affluent family for the life of an oil rigger, but what he finds are consequences both understated and overwhelming. Nominated for four Oscars, Pieces is not an easy film. Like the literature of Cormac McCarthy or Hemingway, it’s biblical, masculine stuff. Yet for all its ruggedness, it has a bittersweet side worth noting for Laszlo Kovacs’ muted cinematography, as well as the weepy country tunes of Tammy Wynette. (Lattanzio)

7 p.m., $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

VISUAL ART

“Wondrous Strange: A Twenty-First Century Cabinet of Curiosities”

The medieval notion of a cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkammern holds great fascination to this day, even though a room filled with animal bones, coins, and unmarked pottery shards would seem a fairly undisciplined display format for scientific artifacts at this point. But if the Wunderkammern is academically anachronistic, the folks at SFMOMA Artists Gallery still find it a useful vehicle for conveying art and culture. The opening of “Wondrous Strange” will feature a time traveler costume contest, burlesque performance by the Burley Sisters, and music from the Grannies. The opening ceremonies will also extend to the nearby Long Now Foundation (also in Fort Mason’s Building A), where interested parties can check out their prototypes for the 10,000 Year Clock. (Sam Stander)

Through Aug 28

5:30 p.m., free

SFMOMA Artists Gallery

Bldg. A, Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

(415) 441-4777

www.sfmoma.org

FILM

Behind the Burly Q

While relatively tame by today’s standards, burlesque was once perceived as a scandalous art form. Featuring comedians, strippers, and satire, burlesque threatened conservative views about sex and sought to undermine accepted social norms. Even though vaudeville-inspired acts have recently made a nostalgic comeback, their roots remain widely misunderstood. Director Leslie Zemeckis’ documentary Behind the Burly Q goes straight to the source to uncover more than just pasties. By interviewing many of the women and men who starred and worked in the industry, Zemeckis traces the often overlooked history of American burlesque and honors all those who managed to use a g-string as a political weapon. (Katie Gaydos)

Thurs/22-Sat/24, 7:30 p.m.;

Sun/25, 4 and 6 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

FRIDAY 23

MUSIC

Cynic

Along with most of the rest of his band, Cynic guitarist Paul Masvidal avoided an awkward ’90s-metal swan song by disappearing into the jazz scene. Suddenly, in 2006, Masvidal and his main collaborator, drummer Sean Reinert, resurfaced with a renewed sense of purpose, and the release of 2008’s Traced in Air ushered in an era of relentless touring that saw the prog-metallers quickly reestablish their towering reputation. This summer’s Decibel-sponsored headlining tour features the band playing its 1993 classic Focus in its entirety, so prepare for Mixolydian assault. (Ben Richardson)

With Intronaut, Dysrhythmia

8 p.m., $17

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

DANCE

Carmina Burana: Revisited

For a few years, choreographer Enrico Labayen disappeared from the local radar screen. He now has reemerged with an ambitious full-evening work based on two rituals from opposing sides of the planet. Turns out that Labayen, an early member of Alonzo King’s LINES Dance Company who also has 15 years’ experience as an independent choreographer, spent the intervening years in his native Philippines to study the matriarchal aspects of its culture that have long fascinated him. His new Carmina Burana: Revisited delves into Carl Orff’s raucous reimagining of Medieval European Christianity for a work that explores the choreographer’s own memory of Tadtarin, a Philippine ritual that celebrates femininity. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/23-Sat/24, 8 p.m.; Sun/25, 7 p.m., $30

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 273-4633

www.brownpapertickets.com

MUSIC

Grouper

Portland, Ore.’s Liz Harris, who records and performs ambient drone music as Grouper, has composed a new piece specifically for the Berkeley Art Museum, which incorporates video as well as tape music and live instrumentation. This continues the “L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA” series’ dedication to avant-garde performance. Previously, L@TE has brought in such luminaries as Terry Reilly and the Residents; later this summer the series features sometime Grouper collaborator Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu. Grouper’s premiere of “SLEEP” will be preceded by music from Eugene Petrushansky, who plays early music on a harpsichord of his own construction, an interesting juxtaposition and perhaps fitting complement to Harris’ intense soundscapes. (Stander)

7:30 p.m., $5

Berkeley Art Museum, Gallery B

2625 Bancroft, SF

(510) 642-0808

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

SATURDAY 24

EVENT

Tori Spelling

The Oxygen Network — the equivalent of an unclaimed baggage room for celebrities past their prime — still airs Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, where Tori Spelling can be seen redecorating her house or renewing her vows (eep!) But unlike most stars in the dreary constellation of reality TV, Spelling actually isn’t that dumb. With a resume longer than the New York Times best seller list she topped in 2008, she’s the ultimate media mogul. In her new book, uncharted terriTORI, she returns to the Narcissus pool of sTORI Telling with some fresh anecdotes like her bout with H1N1 and her life as a Twit. Err … I mean, a Tweeter. (Lattanzio)

7 p.m., free

Books, Inc.

2251 Chestnut, SF

(415) 931-3633

www.booksinc.net

DANCE/MUSIC

“Salsa on the Fillmore”

Why watch Dancing With the Stars when you can dance under the stars? All right, the summer fog might not stay away long enough for us to actually see any stars, but thanks to dance festival “Salsa on the Fillmore,” we can safely say, for once, a night in SF will be hot and sweaty. Forget bar hopping in the Mission. With open dance floors and live music at Yoshi’s, Rasselas Jazz Club, Sheba Piano Lounge, and 1300 on Fillmore, it’s time to go rumba hopping! Start off the night at Fillmore Center Plaza with free salsa lessons by Bay Area Latin dance instructors Juan Gil and Rebecca Miller, and live music by Los Bolores. (Gaydos)

7 p.m.–2 a.m., free–$25

Fillmore between Eddy and Geary, SF

(808) 352-4315

www.salsaonfillmore.com

MUSIC

Bay Area Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus

If you have any affinity at all for the American labor movement, these are depressing times. All that populist energy generated in the wake of 2008’s financial meltdown seems to have been wasted on fruitless antigovernment paranoia, while essential state services are being eliminated nationwide, taking thousands of union jobs with them. Those sympathetic to the cause of social justice can be forgiven for not feeling much like singing. On the other hand, nothing rabble-rouses like a good anthem, and no movement ever got far on despair. The Bay Area Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus realizes this, and is presenting, as part of the Bay’s yearly LaborFest, a program of union songs old and new, celebrating victories won and anticipating those still to come. (Zach Ritter)

7 p.m., $5

ILWU 34 Hall

801 Second St., SF

(415) 648-3457

www.laborfest.net

SUNDAY 25

MUSIC

Queensryche

Queensryche and burlesque. On the one hand, it’s a completely arbitrary juxtaposition, akin to, say, “submarines and kumquats.” On the other, it makes perfect sense. The veteran Seattle prog-metal act have always had a flair for the theatrical, the lushly orchestrated, the ever-so-slightly over the top. And during a break in the recording of its new album, the band decided to really go for broke, setting out on the road with the “world’s only adults-only rock show,” featuring contortionists, trapeze artists, jugglers, and other delights. If you’ve been waiting your entire life to combine scantily clad women and immaculately composed concept albums, wait no longer. (Richardson)

8 p.m., $40

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

MUSIC

Bomba Estéreo

While our government issues frantic safety advisories to Colombia-minded travelers, Locumbia ticks out a merry beat toward a perch atop South America’s creative culture heap. Medellín, Bogotá, Chico Trujillo, the via-L.A. party tunes of Very Be Careful — this a land where you festivate like you mean it, even if a decades-long battle between the guerrillas and army rages in the hinterlands. Lucky for media-boozled us: the international tour. Bomba Estéreo mixes hawt psychedelic cumbia beats with Caribbean folkloric sound and enough echo to qualify as a dance group. Speaking of dance group — start one under the Stern Grove green at the group’s free show. (Caitlin Donohue)

With Jovanotti

2 p.m., free

Sigmund Stern Grove

Sloat and 19th Ave., SF

(415) 252-6252

www.sterngrove.org

TUESDAY 27

MUSIC

Obits

The album cover for Obits’ I Blame You claims it is “Xtra Compressed for Maximum Listener Fatigue,” and, while 41 minutes doesn’t seem like such a short album these days, the music itself has a tight, claustrophobic intensity that really good garage rock delivers so well. Lead guitarist Rick Froberg, formerly of Hot Snakes and Drive Like Jehu, journeys through all manner of rock in those 41 minutes, skewing the familiar sounds of surfer twang and post-punk into a nonstop groove that leaves the listener just as breathless as the cover promises. Obits knows you don’t have to break any musical barriers to crack a few eardrums. (Peter Galvin)

With Night Marchers and Moonhearts

9 p.m., $14

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

EVENT

“Visions of the Gameocalypse”

In a world where gaming is “no longer just for kids!” or nerds, and where major members of the artistic establishment (cough-Ebert-cough) take up arms against the perceived aesthetic immaturity of videogames for no good reason, it would do us all a little good to get a firmer grasp on how computerized gaming has developed. Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games and author of The Art of Game Design: a book of lenses, will be presenting his thoughts on the “social, cognitive, and technological trends” in gaming. We can only hope the event’s gloomy title, “Visions of the Gamepocalypse,” is tongue-in-cheek, though it definitely implies a refreshingly futurist approach to games. (Stander)

7:30 p.m., $10

Novellus Theater

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

700 Howard, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Booze or mismanagement?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

July 20, 2010

news@sfbg.com

The centennial celebration of the Bay to Breakers race and party is once again being targeted for a crackdown on alcohol. But many participants say the problem is mismanagement more than booze or public urination.

Organizers this month announced that all racers and revelers in possession of alcohol will be cited and possibly detained by the San Francisco Police Department. Those pushing floats or, as event spokesperson Sam Singer put it, “alcohol delivery devices,” will be cited as well.

After hearing concerns from residents along the race route and losing corporate sponsor ING, executives from organizer AEG said its decision to curb excessive drinking is an attempt to save the venerable event.

“We received significant complaints from neighbors and residents about people peeing, puking, and passing out on their doorsteps who were not registered to race but were there to take advantage of the event and stage an open street party at expense of the community,” Singer told us. “Bay to Breakers will be 100 [years old] next year and, unless we take steps to ensure public safety, we are concerned for its future.”

Drawing more than 100,000 spectators and racers annually, Bay to Breakers is one of the largest races in the world. Even greater than its size is the reputation it has garnered as one of the city’s premier street parties, where revelers wear ridiculous costumes or sometimes nothing at all.

That reputation caused ING to pull out, announcing that it “evaluates its sponsorship programs and strategies to make sure they align with the goals of the business. The decision to not renew our sponsorship was based simply on ING’s shifting priorities.”

The company and others associated with the event last year tried unsuccessfully to ban kegs and glass bottles along with alcohol carried on floats. But opposition from participants and area Sup. Ross Mirkarimi saved the party.

Yet Singer said the outcome of the failed ban only strengthened organizers’ conviction to prohibit alcohol in subsequent years. “After the ban was put forward, a negotiation between people who are the party element took place and we ultimately allowed alcohol that year,” Singer said. “However, because alcohol was originally banned and the ban was later eased, the confusion contributed to having a safer experience. Most of the drinking element stayed away, which led us to realize we have to prohibit alcohol to keep a certain type of people away from the race.”

That “certain type of people” who seek to uphold the lenient alcohol precedent last year banded together to form Citizens for the Preservation of Bay to Breakers. CPBB cofounder Edward Sharpless said the group considers the ban a simplistic distraction from AEG’s gross mismanagement of an event whose biggest problems could be easily mitigated.

“They have no respect for the event and no interest in preserving the San Francisco tradition of Bay to Breakers,” Sharpless said. “They have failed to provide an adequate amount of Porta Potties or set up appropriate barriers. It has nothing to do with booze or floats. They are merely trying to mask their incompetence by pointing the finger yet again.”

According to the race website, AEG provided only 705 portable toilets last year. Although that number may be sufficient for the 30,000 racers, it proved too few for the more than 100,000-person event. Even Mayor Gavin Newsom last year ran in the event without registering, he told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“They just aren’t addressing issues,” Sharpless said. “Their mind-set has been to support only the 30,000 registered runners, and once those people have gone by it’s everyone else’s problem. It doesn’t work like that.”

Wayne Lanier, a resident at 256 Ashbury St., last year tried to stop a young man from urinating in his yard, informing him that he would take a photograph and notify the police. “He responded with, ‘I don’t care, I’m from L.A.,'<0x2009>” Lanier told us. “They had an attitude that expressed their right to party and who were we to question it. It was just unbelievable.”

Sharpless said he wants to heed residents’ complaints. “The management is supposed to be professional, so something like public urination and a little bit of public drunkenness should be dealt with,” Sharpless said. “The priority is the neighbors, their private property, and their well-being. Just sticking your head in sand and turning a blind eye to the problem is not a solution.”

Sharpless and others met with officials in the Mayor’s Office July 12, seeking a dialogue between community groups, residents, city officials. and AEG. Some press coverage framed the meeting as simply about drunkenness, but Sharpless said mismanagement of the event was a key topic.

“The meeting was scheduled two weeks ago, before AEG decided to announce the ban,” Sharpless said. “The reason Sam announced the ban subsequently is because he wanted to make it look like it was about a ban on alcohol when really it was a focus group on neighborhood damage.”

AEG is expected to present a plan for next year’s event toward the end of summer. “We will be working with the police department on having a larger and more strategically placed police force to help ensure safety,” Singer said. “We are also planning on doing extensive outreach and advertising to inform the public of this year’s new rules.”

Sharpless remains confident that the party will go on. “It looks like we have a good, constructive start,” he said. “Of course we don’t support the alcohol ban. This isn’t just a 12K race. This is Bay to Breakers. This is a civic institution that represents the uniqueness of San Francisco, and we will fight to save it.”

On the Cheap listings

David Talbot

July 20, 2010

P>On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THURSDAY 22

RitLab Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF; (415) 655-7800. 6pm, $5. Roll up your sleeves and create art with your friends at this weekly installment of the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s D.I.Y. craft workshop focusing on personalized amulets that celebrate womanhood. Featuring snacks, drinks, creative guidance, and free materials.

BAY AREA

“A Roof Full of Wild Flowers” Bone Room, 1573 Solano, Berk.; (510)526-5252. 7pm, free. As part of the Bone Room Presents natural history lecture series, California Academy of Sciences Senior Curator and Botanist Frank Alameda will talk about the living, growing, 2.5 acre roof on the new California Academy of Sciences building. Alameda will discuss the construction of the roof and the part that it plays in the sustainability of the museum as a whole.

FRIDAY 23

Black Rock Roller Disco SOMArts, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 863-1414. 8pm; $7 in disco or playa garb, $10 no costume, $5 skate rental. Skate to some old school funk and roller disco with the Black Rock Rollers and help raise funds to bring a roller disco rink to Burning Man 2010. Participants must be 21 and over and Black Rock Roller Disco is not responsible for alcohol related crashes.

BAY AREA

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakl.; (510) 465-6400. 8pm, $5. Enjoy a true vintage movie experience complete with period newsreels, cartoons, previews, live music from the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, and audience participation games at this screening of E.T. in the classic, art deco Paramount Theater.

Ransanble! Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakl.; www.raratoulimen.com. Fri. 6pm-9:30pm, Sat. 11am-9pm, Sun. Noon-6pm; free-$20. Gather with dancers, musicians, community leaders, scholars, activists, dance and music educators, linguists, cultural and food enthusiasts and supporters of Haiti for this Haitian arts and culture festival featuring film screenings, dance workshops, Haitian cuisine, art, lectures, performances, Kreyol language classes and more.

SATURDAY 24

“The Bard in Bollywood” Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.thirdi.org. 7pm, $8-$10 sliding scale. Shakespearean scholar, Gitanjali Shahani, will explore the many adaptations, manifestations, and appropriations of Shakespeare in popular Hindi cinema using clips from Shakespeare Wallah, Maqbool, and Omkara to illustrate how Bollywood has re-imagined Shakespeare through the ages.

“Fly Trap Theater” Paxton Gate’s Curiosities For Kids, 766 Valencia, SF; (415)252-9990. 2pm, free. This kid-friendly presentation by staffers from the Conservatory of Flowers offers an up close look at carnivorous plants and how they attack and eat bugs. There will even be a fly trap dissection, so onlookers can see the plants’ trapping mechanisms, followed by bug and plant puppet crafts.

Redstone Labor and Culture Walk Meet at Redstone Building, 16th St. and Capp, SF; RSVP at (415) 841-1254. 1pm, free. Learn about the history behind the murals in the lobby of the Redstone Building, a building that was the headquarters of the 1934 General Strike, followed by a guided walk through the vibrant surrounding neighborhood highlighting the Mission’s art, ethnic history, and class struggle.

Urban Youth Arts Festival Precita Park, Folsom at Precita, SF; (415) 285-2287. 1pm-6pm, free. Over 2,000 square feet of portable wall space will be open for artists of all ages to express themselves with free paint, brushes, and aerosol paint cans to get things started. There will also be mural performances, live music, breakdancing, spoken word performances, and free refreshments.

SUNDAY 25

Prepare for the Playa Café Cocomo, 650 Indiana, SF; www.preparefortheplaya.com. Noon-7pm, free. Over 60 burner businesses and designers will be showcasing their playa specific products and services, including lights, faux fur, goggles, dust masks, costumes, sexy playa outfits, and more. There will also be a fashion show, how-to demonstrations for playa survival, virgin burner makeovers, and more.

Laborfest Book Fair and Poetry Reading Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; www.laborfest.net. 9:30am-5pm, free. All day long, the Mission Cultural Center will feature multiple rooms where authors, activists, educators, and organizers will present labor themed panel discussions, book discussions, poetry readings, historical lectures, tabling, socializing, and more.

Symphony in the Park Dolores Park, Dolores at 18th St., SF; www.sfsymphony.org. 2pm, free.Pack a picnic basket and bring your friends and family for the San Francisco Symphony’s free concert in Dolores Park, including a special tribute to Mexico with conductor Alondra de la Parra to celebrate the bicentennial of the independence of Mexico.

Up Your Alley Dore Alley at Folsom, SF; www.folsomstreetfair.org/alley. 11am-6pm, $5 suggested donation. If you like bondage, animal role play, kink, leather straps, whips, paddles, latex outfits, suspension, and hardcore BDSM pastimes, than the Dore Alley street fair is for you! This smaller, more gay male-focused event features demonstrations, kinky vendors, and local DJs setting the mood.

BAY AREA

Last Sundays Fest Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight, Berk.; www.lastsundaysfest.com. Noon-7pm, free. Enjoy a whole day jam packed with East Bay culture at this street festival featuring live indie pop and rock music, craft, food, and contemporary merchandise vendors, children’s exhibits, and more.

For Lit, Talks, and Benefits listings, visit the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

Daly highlights a decade in his district

Sasha Cuttler

July 15, 2010

Daly highlights a decade in his district

Over the last decade, Sup. Chris Daly has been both a stalwart leader of the progressive movement in San Francisco and a political lightning rod – both for his aggressive advocacy of controversial policies and his combative personal style. But as he prepares to leave office, Daly is trying to highlight the role his District 6 constituents have played in pushing progressive reforms, starting with an event this Saturday morning at Herbst Theater.

Entitled “10 Years of District 6,” the event will feature significant players and movements from the last decade, including dot.com era land use fights over tenant eviction and the use of live-work lofts and other tactics to circumvent city housing policies, including formation of the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition; the struggle to save SRO units for the poor; the successful campaign to save rent-controlled units during the Trinity Plaza rebuild; efforts to squeeze funding for community improvements out of developers; campaigns for progressive budget priorities; and a look at what’s next by Daly himself.

“Over the last decade in San Francisco’s District 6, the more honest analysis is that our many victories– on the ballot, at City Hall and in the neighborhoods– have not been about Chris Daly,” he writes. “Rather, our success has grown from the strength of our grassroots community and a true partnership between those in the trenches and those of us they elevated into the halls of power.” The event runs from 10:30 am to noon. It should be an interesting discussion of the district’s past and future, led by a termed out supervisor who has yet to announce who he’s endorsing to succeed him among the crowded field of candidates running for that seat.

Will the Thrill says good-bye (kinda) to movies — and hello to “Mermaid”

Sue Vaughan

July 14, 2010

Will the Thrill says good-bye (kinda) to movies — and hello to “Mermaid”

I received an email the other day with the terribly alarming subject line “FINAL. THRILLVILLES. EVER. No fooling.” Could Will “The Thrill” Viharo, a veteran host of cult movie nights around the Bay Area, be hanging up his fez and smoking jacket for good?

Well, not exactly. Fans already know he’s been scaling back his “Thrillville” events since the Parkway Theater closed and the Cerrito Theater changed ownership in 2009 (both East Bay venues, operated by Speakeasy Theaters, had hosted Viharo’s regularly-scheduled B-movie extravaganzas). Over the past year, Viharo’s taken his show — which includes his wife and assistant, Monica Tiki Goddess, and usually a pre-movie band or performing group — on the road, sprinkling a bit of sleaze, gore, trash, and monster mayhem on an assortment of Bay Area theaters.

Now, he explains in his (sorta) sign-off email, “I am giving up the Thrillville road show concept and sticking exclusively to my new home base at Forbidden Island in Alameda, where I’ll be hosting my mellower movie series ‘Forbidden Thrills’ one Monday a month, for as long as people show up. It’s a stripped down version of Thrillville — (mostly) public domain cult classics, cocktail specials, prizes, no cover, [and] free popcorn.” In other words, you can take the Thrill off the B-movie road, but you can’t take him out of the tiki bar. Or something.

Fear not, Viharo devotees: you have some excellent upcoming chances to support all he’s done for fans of obscure cult cinema over the years. First, he’s got two more movie-theater gigs in the works: “Thrillville’s Tribute to Bob Wilkins,” paying homage to the Creature Features legend with another legend, John Stanley, in person — that’s tonight at San Jose’s Camera 3 Cinema. The event also features a screening of The Creature Walks Among Us, the 1956 second sequel to The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954).

Then next week, Viharo will show ’em how it’s done at the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, presenting a Luchadore-sploitation double feature of 2007’s Mil Mascaras vs. The Aztec Mummy (did ever a more Thrillville-esque title exist?) and 2008’s Academy of Doom, both at San Francisco’s Roxie. Viharo dares to suggest that this event will be the last-ever appearance of the prize-giving Magic Tiki, so unless you’re a total square, or you happen to be Vincent Price in the Brady Bunch Hawaii episode, you should probably be there.

So with this phasing-out of larger-scale movie events, what’s next for the Thrill? Seems all this time he was programming movies, Viharo was also an author in disguise. His latest novel is entitled A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge.

“When Speakeasy Theaters suddenly crashed and burned in mid-2009, my 12 year career as programmer-publicist suddenly ended as well, and my future, which I’d been taking for granted, was suddenly a big blank,” Viharo explains. “I kept my Thrillville show going as a road show, but I felt it too had run its course. For most of the general public, diehard fans aside, Thrillville in its ‘cult movie cabaret’ incarnation effectively died with Speakeasy, and I was determined to carve out a niche for myself unattached to that debacle. The show was no longer giving me any creative satisfaction and I never thought of myself as primarily a live entertainer, anyway.”

Being a writer was, it seems, a natural progression. “I’d seemingly shown every B movie ever made, except the one I really wanted to see: Mermaid is like the ultimate Thrillville movie as directed by David Lynch, but in literary form,” he says of his new book. “It is a sexy, stylized smorgasbord of hardcore exploitation elements — crime, horror, zombies, Elvis, and lots of gratuitous sex, which you don’t see enough of in cinema of any kind these days (though violence is not a taboo, which I find odd). Along with this you’ll find my characters musing on universal mysteries like loneliness, love, death and all that jazz as they’re swept away in this cross-dimensional whirlwind.”

As it turns out, Viharo began writing Mermaid soon after he started his Parkway gig (fun fact: Thrillville was originally called “The Midnight Lounge.”) He became so busy that he set Mermaid aside — but he always intended it to be a temporary break.

“Thrillville was a fun ride, but I’m happy to have returned to my original dream of being a novelist,” he says. “I feel like I was coasting on my lounge lizard laurels for too long, waiting for Christian Slater to finally make good on his perpetual optioning of my detective novel Love Stories Are Violent For Me, originally published by Wild Card Press back in 1996. It was time for me to get back to work.”

After giving it some thought, Viharo decided he’d release Mermaid himself. “As for why I decided to self-publish (via Lulu): I won’t mention names but I have several prominent author friends who privately expressed disgust and contempt for the current state of the publishing industry, which, in its desperation, is increasingly mid-listing or simply dropping established, professional novelists in search of that elusive mass-market commodity,” he explains. “I’ve always known my stuff would have “cult appeal” at best — more Harvey Pekar than Stephen King — so when I finished Mermaid, and suffered from the usual ‘post-novel depression,’ I thought to myself: why waste any more of my life and dreams awaiting mainstream acceptance and recognition, especially when I can’t relate to most popular media nowadays myself?”

Fortunately, as he points out, 21st century (if retro-leaning) hep cats have all the tools to get their work out to the public, the Man be damned.

“Unlike when I first began writing fiction over 30 years ago, I now have a platform and online resources that didn’t exist back then, enabling me to bypass corporate compromising or mainstream middlemen and take my stuff straight to the people,” he says. “Nobody but me really ‘gets’ my work, so who better than me to promote it, especially since PR has been my professional racket for the past dozen or so years? I am simply pooling my resources and re-channeling my promo skills into my literary ambitions. Mermaid is the first of many novels, past and future, I plan to roll out of ‘Thrillville Press’ in the months and years to come. I may not make a living at it, but the creative freedom and fulfillment it’s giving me already is priceless.”

Appropriately enough, Viharo’s having his book release party at Forbidden Island, in tandem with his Forbidden Thrills series. Even more appropriately, the double-feature deals in magical sea creatures: the Dennis Hopper-starring Night Tide (1961) and Mermaids of Tiburon (1962). Though the book itself may not be available by July 19, Viharo hopes to have copies of the book’s “soundtrack” (by Actual Rafiq) and, you know, just get people jazzed about his latest project. Mermaids? Zombies? Sex? Elvis? As Viharo himself likes to say, cheers!

“Thrillville’s Tribute to Bob Wilkins”
Wed/14, 8 p.m., $10
Camera 3 Cinema
288 S. Second St, San Jose
www.thrillville.net

A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge release party
With screenings of Night Tide and Mermaids of Tiburon
Mon/19, 7:30 p.m., free
Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge
1304 Lincoln, Alameda
www.forbiddenislandalameda.com

Mil Mascaras vs. The Aztec Mummy and Academy of Doom
Thurs/22, 9 p.m., $15
Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF
www.sfindie.com

Half-remembered kaleidescopes: the Jewish Film Festival’s youngest storytellers

Andrew Lam

July 13, 2010

Could the past be a kaleidescope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze… and if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?

-Alan Lightman

If heritage remains constant, what changes is the inheritors. In a project that will live in interactive kiosks at the Jewish Film Festival (Sat/24), as well as in our own Internet devices, young artists are using websites to tell tales that only last year would have taken the shape of a movie. Modernity, man. Their theme? “Half Remembered Stories,” subject matter that lends itself to the nebulous, fragmentary nature of our online lives.

Zoe Pollak’s multimedia project “Memory Paths,” (which makes use of the above quote from Einstein’s Dreams (2004), explores this fluctuating notion of memory. Pollak set 12 videos from her tow-headed childhood to three different sounds ‘o thought – quotes from Einstein and other Jewish thinkers, nocturnes by Chopin, heady intellectual musings all of it – on a site that centers around the image of a clock. Her inspiration came from the sense of pending mortality that strikes most recent high school grads.

“I’ve been getting nostalgic as it’s getting to be time for me to leave for college,” Pollak told me in a phone interview. “For my project, I wanted to look at individual memories I have, like the first day of preschool, and look at how my relationship to that memory has changed over time. Sometimes when I look back at that event, like when I have a lot of homework, I might be very nostalgic, but if I’m reading a very interesting article, I might notice how now I have the ability to process more complicated ideas.”

The project was organized through the New Jewish Filmmaking Project, which hosts documentary producers from Citizen Film helping 11 young digital bards to focus on gaps in recall. It segueways nicely with the panorama of stories invoked in the film festival as a whole, even if the divergent format seems to crown the young storytellers as the new generation.

Although the project did yield one bad ass reflection on the notion of zombie takedown, family history seems to have been a natural choice for many of the participants; a young uncle’s overseas death from Hepatitis C is explored, a grandfather’s gambling addiction, a great-grandmother that had refused to emigrate to the U.S. if it meant leaving her young lover.

The latter was the vision of a NJFP participant from year’s past, Klaira Markenzon, who in 2004 directed a movie about her family’s prolonged stay in their native Ukraine, Leap of Fate. “Half Remembered Stories” sees Markenzon develop that film into an online choose your own adventure book. “I wanted it to be about how every decision can change the rest of your life,” says Markenzon. Elect to have Grandma take that long steerage boat ride to America in Markezon’s “game,” and players can find themselves sick, rejected at the gate of Ellis Island and forced to return to the Ukraine, or perhaps Palestine. Immense historical research went into the making of the project.

“This format is outside of the tradition of beginning, middle, and end,” says Sophie Canstantinou, one of the project’s facilitators and co founder of Citizen Film. Her cohort, Sam Ball, told me that the new format of story not only gave young people the opportunity to create their own vision (in place of the collective product of years past), but that it also reflected the gyrations of information culture today. “What’s new this year is everything that’s going on in this online media, and that the population we’re working with spends so much on time engaging in stories – we wanted to see if we could harness that.”

But do the stories pack the same punch on our computer screens as they would have screened in a dark theater? Hard to say, really – but Ball is confident that they are indeed harbingers of a new kind of cultural experience. “Eighty years ago,” he told me “the only way you could see a movie was having a shared, communal experience in a theater. In this new medium you’re back to having a communal experience, but its a different one. It’s people sitting in environments of their own making, being able to communicate.” Perhaps the past is indeed a kaleidescope: one that calls up a different jewel tone image with each generation’s shake of it’s mirrors.

The New Jewish Filmmaking Project’s “Half Remembered Stories”

Launch party Sat/24 (through Aug 9) 12:30 p.m., $12 (includes 1:30 p.m. screening of Te Extraño)

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.njfp.org

Our Weekly Picks: July 14-20, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

July 13, 2010

WEDNESDAY 14

MUSIC

Sean Bonnette

Sean Bonnette is the guitar player for Andrew Jackson Jihad, the band that proved punk rock sounds better unplugged. He’s been with the group since its inception in 2004, and along with his comrade-in-arms Ben Gallaty, has spent the last six years writing hilariously irreverent lyrics, cutting a swath through the country’s basements, parks, and concert halls, and slowly pushing folk-punk into the mainstream consciousness. Bonnette’s solo show promises to be a showcase of the loveliest, messiest, raggedy-ist tunes this side of Neutral Milk Hotel and a reminder that, 924 Gilman’s financial woes notwithstanding, DIY’s not dead. (Zach Ritter)

With Kepi Ghoulie and Gnarboots

9 p.m., $8

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(414) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

MUSIC

Bardot A Go Go

In America, Bastille Day is the only day of the year where Francophiles, if they’re not storming a prison, can revel in their obsession en masse. With drink specials and a night of decadence that would make Louis XIV’s wife blush, the Rickshaw Stop offers its very own discotheque. If Austin Powers and Marie Antoinette put their wits together and threw a party, Bardot A Go Go would be it. With swinging ’60s pop — Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall, and the titular femme fatale, to name a few — and its very own go-go girls, this long-standing shindig stares hipsters in the face and dares to ask the unaskable: Parlez-vous francais? So put down your Balzac, put on a beret, and get the hell down to Fell. (Ryan Lattanzio)

8 p.m., $7

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

THURSDAY 15

VISUAL ART

Japanese Art Kite Show

What could be better than a Matt Furie painting? Well, maybe a Matt Furie painting on a kite. Furie is one of 21 artists contributing sky-ready works to “Japanese Art Kite Show,” a group exhibition co-curated by Shoko Toma and Yukako Ezoe that brings together kites by 21 artists from Japan and the Bay Area. Bay Area residents from the Hamamatsu City prefecture in Japan have taken part in the Berkeley Kite Festival for the past five years, while Hamamatsu kites — created with washi and rice glue — date back at least 450 years. The kites here vary in size and utilize hemp for string. On Naoki Onodera’s kite, stars evoke another historical marker: the Kanrun Maru’s journey across the Pacific from Japan to the U.S. 150 years ago. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Through July 29

5:30 p.m., free

Chandler Fine Art and Framing

170 Minna, SF

(415) 546-1113

www.chandlersf.com

COMEDY

Zane Lamprey

Do you like to go out drinking? Me too! Oh, and so does Zane Lamprey, host of Three Sheets, a TV show that’s survived the move to three different channels as Lamprey travels the world exploring fine libations, drinking games, and hangover cures. With the future of the show uncertain — again — Zane has taken to the streets with the “Drinking Made Easy Comedy Tour,” a celebration of all things alcoholic. No one can fault you for not knowing about Three Sheets, it’s had a hell of a time staying on air. But show me a San Franciscan who doesn’t look happier with a drink in their hand, and I’ll show you a liar. (Peter Galvin)

8 p.m., $29.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.livenation.com

MUSIC

Mary Gauthier

The story of Mary Gauthier’s rise in the ranks of musicians — a career she chose at the ripe age of 35 after stints as a teenage runaway, substance abuser, philosophy major, café manager, and restaurant owner — is full of lucky breaks and an almost charmed trajectory. Yet her first year of life, spent in the charity wards of St. Vincent De Paul, was far removed from the good fortunes of her eventual transformation to masterfully frank folk lyricist and guileless performer. In The Foundling, her sixth album, Gauthier chronicles her own history from birth date to birthright, searching for answers and finding only more questions. Her Café Du Nord appearance, however, answers our question: When’s Mary Gauthier going to come back around? (Nicole Gluckstern)

With Peter Bradley Adams

8:30 p.m., $20

Café Du Nord

2174 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

MUSIC

Sextreme Ball

It’s been 15 years since the Lords of Acid-My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult Sextacy Ball Tour stomped across the continent. But since sex, drugs, and mass murder have never really gone out of style, this summer’s reprise is far from feeling dated. Maybe it’s just the humidity, but there’s an almost palpable electric charge in the air — could it be the promise of a) tissue-throbbing, groin-grinding beats b) the cheerfully lewd lyrics of classics such as “Mr. Machoman” or creepier implications of “Sex on Wheels” or c) the prospect of catching latest Lords of Acid chanteuse Lacey Conner in a leather-clad catfight? I’m going with d) all of the above. (Gluckstern)

9 p.m., $23

DNA Lounge

375 11th St, SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

FRIDAY 16

DANCE

Run for Your Life! and Gadung Kasturi

Run for Your Life! … it’s a dance company! and Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance and Music are unlikely bedfellows, but trust Dudley Brooks — he knows how to make a match. After all, he is “sleeping” with both of them. Run for Your Life! is his long-running comedy-dance theater company; Gadung Kasturi is a classical Balinese dance company whose music Brooks has performed for more than 20 years. How he keeps the two identities apart is anybody’s guess. Stylization is what keeps him going. His comedy, often with puppets, is smart, hilarious, and musical. Included in this program are the LOL-worthy Les Sillyphides, Cirque du So Little, and Roaring ’20s, Mafioso-inspired The Soldier’s Tale. Gadung, with eight-year old Chandra Ayu Davies — who blew everyone away at this year’s Ethnic Dance Festival — offers the new Nyapuh Jagat. Watch for Brooks, he’ll be hammering away in the gamelan orchestra. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/17

8 p.m., $18

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 273-4633

www.brownpapertickets.com

MUSIC

Antibalas

Afrobeat keeps growing and mutating, revitalizing club music and giving indie rock a much-needed groove. Twelve years into since their summertime birth, Brooklyn’s Antibalas can be seen and heard as true veterans of the sound, with ties to two generations of the Kuti legacy. At the same time, afrobeat is the base from which the group — who worked with producer Tortoise’s John McEntire on 2007’s Security — reach deep into other genres. Antibalas plays out often enough to have seen the world and then some, and one of its most recent songs, “Rat Race,” suits the current socioeconomic moment. Prepare to dance. (Huston) With Sway Machinery

9 p.m., $23

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

1-888-233-0449

www.gamhtickets.com

DANCE

Post: Ballet

Choreographer and dancer Robert Dekkers is making himself known in the dance world for seamlessly merging contemporary and classical movement styles. The name of his new SF-based contemporary ballet company, Post: Ballet, says it all. Much like his stylistic sensibility, the words Post: Ballet imply an affiliation with and departure from the conventions of classical ballet. The company’s inaugural performance, Concert One, features classically-trained, versatile ballet dancers in a series of innovative and thought-provoking works. Dekkers’ fierce choreography — along with live music by SF composers Daniel Berkman and Jacob Wolkenhauer, as well as the engaging music of Grizzly Bear, Steve Reich, and Department of Eagles (to name a few) — will keep those who ordinarily fall asleep at the ballet wide awake. (Katie Gaydos)

Through Sat/17

8 p.m., $25

Cowell Theater

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

www.postballet.org

VISUAL ART

David Byrne and Dave Eggers

Former Talking Head David Byrne and McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers are no strangers to other disciplines of art. Both have dabbled in screenwriting and visual art outside their respective fields of popular music and prose fiction. Now SF’s Electric Works is hosting simultaneous galleries by the two Renaissance men. Byrne’s exhibition shares the name “Arboretum” with his 2006 book of branching diagrams. Eggers’ “It Is Right To Draw Their Fur” treats more animate subjects — animals, to be exact. As it happens, Eggers studied art before switching to writing novels, so these grease pencil drawings are hardly the work of a naïf. Judging from their past works and unconventional worldviews, Byrne and Eggers ought to complement each other well. (Sam Stander)

Through Aug. 21

6 p.m., free

Electric Works

130 Eighth St., SF

(415) 626-5496

www.sfelectricworks.com

SATURDAY 17

FILM

Little Shop of Horrors

Midnight movies are alive and well in San Francisco, and the Landmark Theatres are active participants in the historic cult tradition. For the next month, the Bridge plays host to a “Rocksploitation”-themed midnight program, featuring local cinephile band Citizen Midnight playing pre-show music for a variety of rock-inspired flicks. This week the series features Frank Oz’s incredibly campy 1986 musical remake of Little Shop of Horrors starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin. Check back in the coming weeks for Brian De Palma’s gothic rock opera Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and an uncut version of David Lynch’s 1990, Palme d’Or-winning, Elvis-fueled Wild at Heart. (Stander)

Midnight, $10

Bridge Theatre

3010 Geary, SF

(415) 668-6384

www.landmarkafterdark.com

FILM/MUSIC

Psycho with the San Francisco Symphony

The symphony’s probably the last thing you’d associate with a shower scene. (Although if we’re talking porn here, maybe you missed Wet ‘n Wagner or Rusty Tromboners 2: Spit Valves Under Spray Heads.) It’s definitely the last place you’d expect to hear the stabbing “EE! EE! EE! EE!” of the shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) to pop up — unless you’ve an ear for esoteric snatches of Webern. But Bernard Herrmann’s fiendishly clever orchestral score for this mother of all classic slashers is catnip for the adventurous San Francisco Symphony, which will be performing it in full as the 50-year-old flick unfurls above them in all its chocolate-syrup-spattered glory. Expect expert deployment of sinister ostinato and hair-curling counterpoint throughout. Don’t forget to invite Mom. (Marke B.)

8 p.m., $30–$70

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.sfsymphony.org

SUNDAY 18

MUSIC

New Pornographers

Have you been craving propulsive choruses? Hunting for hummable harmonies? Longing for a variety of vocalists? Seek no further — Canada’s foremost power pop supergroup, the New Pornographers, is now touring on behalf of its fifth album, Together. Their continued togetherness is a bit unexpected, since members Neko Case and Dan Bejar (of Destroyer) have full-blown careers of their own. But the New Porn engine keeps chugging along, a full-fledged entity rather than a side project. The latest record is perhaps their most bombastic yet, but they haven’t sacrificed the diversity of lyrical voices that makes them consistently worthwhile. They’re supported at Oakland’s Fox Theater by local concern the Dodos as well as sometime-Yeah Yeah Yeahs member Imaad Wasif. (Stander)

With Dodos and Imaad Wasif

7:30 p.m., $27.50

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.thefoxoakland.com

Rep Clock

David Talbot

July 13, 2010

Schedules are for Wed/14–Tues/20 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $5-10. “OpenScreening: Free NYC 2009,” Thurs, 8. “Short Movie Revolution,” Fri, 8. Why Isn’t Chris von Sneidern Famous? (McNamera, 2009), Sun, 8. All events co-presented by the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Cedar, Berk; (510) 841-4824, www.bfuu.org. Free. Defamation (Shamir, 2009), Thurs, 7:30.

BRIDGE 3010 Geary, SF; (415) 668-6384. $10. “Rocksploitation with Citizen Midnight:” Little Shop of Horrors (Oz, 1986), Sat, midnight.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-20. •Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945), Wed, 7, and Leave Her to Heaven (Stahl, 1945), Wed, 9:10. “San Francisco Silent Film Festival:” The Iron Horse (Ford, 1924), Thurs, 7; “Amazing Tales from the Archives: Lost and Found Films,” Fri, 11:30am (free admission); A Spray of Plum Blossoms (Bu, 1931), Fri, 2; Rotaie (Camerini, 1929), Fri, 6; Metropolis (Lang, 1927), Fri, 8:15; “The Big Business of Short, Funny Films,” with Pete Docter in person, Sat, 10am; “Variations on a Theme: Musicians on the Craft of Composing and Performing for Silent Film,” Sat, noon; The Flying Ace (Norman, 1926), Sat, 2; The Strong Man (Capra, 1926), Sat, 4; Diary of a Lost Girl (Pabst, 1929), Sat, 6:30; Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Christensen, 1922), Sat, 9:30; “Amazing Tales from the Archives: First the Bad News … then the Good!”, Sun, 10am (free admission); The Shakedown (Wyler, 1929), Sun, noon; Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929), Sun, 2:30; The Woman Disputed (King and Taylor, 1928), Sun, 4:30; L’heureuse mort (Nadejdine, 1924), Sun, 7:30. For more information, visit www.silentfilm.org.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. The Girl Who Played With Fire (Alfredson, 2009), call for dates and times. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Oplev, 2009), call for dates and times. OSS 117: Lost in Rio (Hazanavicius, 2009), call for dates and times. Touching Home (Miller and Miller, 2009), call for dates and times. “San Francisco Opera: Grand Opera Cinema Series:” Don Giovanni, Thurs, 7 and Sat, 10. Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929), Mon, 7:15. With a score performed by Alloy Orchestra (tickets for this event, $15).

DELANCEY STREET SCREENING ROOM 600 The Embarcadero, SF; http://action.eff.org/ninapaley. $30. Sita Sings the Blues (Paley, 2009), Tues, 7. With Nina Paley in person; benefit for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cartoon Art Museum.

FORBIDDEN ISLAND TIKI LOUNGE 1304 Lincoln, Alameda; www.forbiddenislandalameda.com. Free. “Forbidden Thrills: Mermaid Mania!”: •Night Tide (Harrington, 1961), Mon, 7:30, and Mermaids of Tiburon (Lamb, 1962), Mon, 9:15.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Stealing America, Vote By Vote (Fadiman, 2008), Wed, 7:30.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Akira Kurosawa Centennial:” •The Most Beautiful (1944), and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945), Wed, 7; Seven Samurai (1954), Sat, 7. “A Theater Near You:” Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969), Thurs, 7 and Sun, 7:10. “Modernist Master: The Cinema of Francesco Rosi:” Salvatore Giuliano (1961), Fri, 7; The Moment of Truth (1965), Fri, 9:05; Hands Over the City (1963), Sun, 5.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. The Secret in Their Eyes (Campanella, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:35 (also Wed, 2). Wild in the Streets (Shear, 1968), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sat, 2, 4). Lolita (Kubrick, 1962), Sun, 2, 5, 8, and Mon, 7:30. Freaks (Browning, 1932), July 20-21, 7:15, 9:15 (also July 31, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-11.50. “SF Indie Presents: Another Hole in the Head Film Festival,” through July 22. See www.sfindie.com for schedule.

“TEMESCAL STREET CINEMA” 49th St at Telegraph, Oakl; www.temescalstreetcinema.com. Free. The Beard Club (Lukitsch, sneak preview), Thurs, 8. With free popcorn and live music.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com/films. $8-10. “Samurai Saga Vol.1: From Classic Noir to New Colors:” Samurai Rebellion (Kobayashi, 1967), Wed, 4:30; Fri, 4:15; and Sat, 7; Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron (Gosha, 1976), Wed-Thurs, 7, and Sat, 3:15; Three Outlaw Samurai (Gosha, 1964), Thurs, 4:45; Fri, 7; and Sat, 1; Twilight Samurai (Yamada, 2002), Sun, 11:20, and July 22, 4:30, 7; The Hidden Blade (Yamada, 2004), Sun, 1:50; Tues, 7; and July 21, 4:15. Love and Honor (Yamada, 2006), Sun, 4:20; Mon, 7; and Tues, 4:30. Yamazakura: The Cherry Tree in the Hills (Shinohara, 2008), Sun and July 21, 7; Mon, 4:50.

VOGUE 3290 Sacramento, SF; www.lolsf.org. $10. “LOL-SF: A Celebration of Comedy On-Screen,” comedy films with celebrity presenters, through Thurs/15.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Something From Nothing: Films on Design and Architecture:” Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio (Douglas, 2010), Sun, 2.

Buyer beware of Candlestick-Shipyard project

Mary Magee

July 13, 2010

Board President David Chiu has introduced five amendments to the city’s Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment proposal. All five are a good start, but longtime observers question if they are too little, too late, in the face of intense lobbying by a city and a developer intent on getting project approvals before a new Board and possibly a new mayor occupy City Hall in January 2011.

Chiu’s amendments address key concerns with the city’s proposed redevelopment plan, and they come as the Board prepares for its July 13 hearing into three separate appeals of the project’s final EIR certification, as well as amendments to the Bayview Hunters Point and Shipyard redevelopment plans.

Two of Chiu’s amendments seek to address concerns about the clean-up of radiologically impacted waste at Parcel E-2 on the shipyard, and environmental impacts of a proposed bridge over Yosemite Slough.

Chiu’s other three amendments seek to finance the expansion of the Southeast Health Center, create a workforce development fund and analyze the feasibility of providing public power, including natural gas at the site.

But while all five amendments are welcome, some observers worry they do not fully address concerns about the project’s sustainability, financing and infrastructure. But before we get to those concerns, let’s review Chiu’s five amendments in greater detail:

1. The Parcel E-2 amendment.
This amendment declares that the Board’s adoption of CEQA findings for the project “shall not in any way imply support of a cap for Parcel E-2.”

As such, this amendment is a critical step towards insisting that the parcel get completely cleaned up, not just capped, as the Navy is currently proposing. On the other hand, it’s not a watertight demand to excavate and haul away all contamination from this parcel, which is the cleanup alternative that many in the community would prefer..

Instead, Chiu’s Parcel E-2 amendment declares that the U.S. EPA, California EPA and the Navy, “should pursue the highest practicable level of cleanup for Parcel E-2.”
And that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency “should not accept the property unless and until that cleanup is satisfied.”

It also establishes that the Board shall conduct a hearing regarding final cleanup strategies for Parcel E-2 before a final remedy is selected, urges the U.S. EPA, California EPA and the Navy to participate in such a hearing, and further establishes that the Board shall conduct a separate hearing prior to any transfer of Parcel E-2 to Redevelopment.”

(There was some question as to why the Board was saying “should” in some parts of this amendment, and “shall” in others. The reason I heard was, you can’t force the Navy to do anything, but you can urge them, and you certainly can refuse to accept the property, if it is not cleaned up a city’s requirements.But this needs to be clarified.)

2. The Yosemite Slough Bridge amendment
Chiu notes that the city’s EIR for the project analyzed a non-49ers-stadium alternative that “includes an approximately 41 ft. wide bridge spanning the Yosemite Slough which is limited to bike, pedestrian and transit use.”
“However, in the event the San Francisco 49ers elect to build a new stadium on the shipyard site, the project will include a bridge spanning Yosemite Slough that is wider than 41 ft. across to accommodate game-day traffic,” Chiu’s amendment states.
(So, Chiu’s amendment doesn’t throw the bridge entirely out with the 49ers’ stadium, and that leaves environmental groups uneasy, afraid that the anticipated 25,000 new residents in the proposed development will subsequently push for legislation to allow for a wider, car-accessible bridge.)

3. The Southeast Health Center amendment
Chiu’s Southeast Health Center amendment demands that the developer contribute $250,000 to the Redevelopment Agency for a needs assessment study regarding the need to expand the center and the ongoing health needs of local residents, and, to the extent such expansion is needed, to help pay for predevelopment expenses associated with this expansion.
The capital costs for expanding the center would be funded through a combination of tax increment dollars, a $2 million Wellness Contribution paid by the developer, and the City’s ability to finance savings that would accrue to the Department of Public Health by moving from leased space into owned space at the expanded center.

4. The Workforce Development Fund amendment
Chiu’s amendment would modify language in the current community benefits agreement to require the developer to contribute $8,925,000 to a workforce development fund to be used for programs “designed to create a gateway to career development, fiirst for residents of District 10 and secondly for “at-risk job applicants.”
(A member of the public suggested that veterans be specified as “at-risk job applicants,” an idea D. 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell seemed to support during yesterday’s July 12 Land Use Committee hearing, which was where Chiu introduced his five proposed amendments.)

5. The Public Power amendment
Chiu’s public power amendment notes that the SFPUC confirmed the feasibility of providing electric service to the shipyard sire, but requires the agency to update this study and include the Candlestick site and include “an analysis of the feasibility of providing natural gas to the project site.”

But will these steps be enough to ensure that the development actually delivers on its promises of thousands of jobs, and hundreds of affordable housing units,? And is a bridge really necessary across Yosemite Slough, if the 49ers go to Santa Clara as planned?

Long-term observers of the project point to the first phase of the project, which began on the shipyard’s Parcel A, as a warning of where things might end up.

“We approved the fast-tracking of Parcel A based on a bevy of assurances and enthusiastic endorsements from the best and brightest this administration has to offer,” said a source who wishes to remain anonymous. “But what has happened since then, and what are we to learn from this experimental test case?”

This source noted that recent maps of the shipyard show that Parcel A, which the Navy conveyed to the city in 2004, has since been carved up into several new pieces.

“How did Parcel A get divided into two areas that don’t even border one another?” my source asked.

The answer appears to be that sections of the shipyard, including Parcel A, have since been renamed as new and separate parcels, after it was discovered that shipyard sewers on those parcels contained radiologically contaminated material.

One of these sewer lines, as indicated on recent project maps, leads from a site now known as Parcel UC-3, into the Bayview. In other words, it appears to lead off the shipyard site and into the surrounding community. If so, this raises concerns that shipyard contamination is no longer limited to the shipyard in the Bayview, and could be impacting residents and businesses that are not covered by the Navy’s clean-up commitments.

Either way, it seems that the Board could use an update on what happened on Parcel A, since it was conveyed, what’s the deal with UC-3, and other recently renamed parcels, before they consider an early transfer of the rest of the shipyard.

“How can we start Phase 2 of the project, when we haven’t completed Phase 1?” my source asked.

And since the Navy is still tasked with cleaning up the rest of the shipyard parcels, it would be helpful if the Navy updated the Board on what the Navy is proposing in its Records of Decisions for each of these parcels, including UC-3, before the Board votes on Phase 2 of the project.

My source also noted that since the project plans to use 100 percent recycled water at the site, it would be helpful to have an update as to how issues with sewer contamination and groundwater concerns might impact the project’s sustainability plans.

“These issues touch on half of the documents that make up the EIR, but are now obsolete, because of the issue of radioactive contamination on UC-3,” my source claimed.

And then there’s the question of fproject financing and who the developer for the project actually is, these days.

“The city’s exclusive negotiating agreement (ENA) was with Lennar, so who is CP Development and why do we have an ENA with them?” my source asked.”What happened to Lennar? And why would we be obligated to negotiate solely with this CP Development group?”

Now, hopefully the Board has greatly reassuring answers to all these questions, so that the community can rest assured that the supervisors really do understand the ramifications of a project that they are being asked to approve in what appears to be an awful hurry.

Yes, there are plenty of project supporters who keep on urging “no delays.” I understand their concerns. They want jobs, housing, parks and other promised community benefits. And I don’t blame them.

But it’s up to the Board to ensure that it doesn’t get rushed into approving a project that perhaps doesn’t guarantee any or all of these things. So, let’s keep asking questions so the Board of Supervisors doesn’t end up with buyer’s remorse, but instead can truly claim to having secured a deal that really helps all the folks who currently live and work in the city’s southeast sector. Stay tuned.

Sunday Streets creates public benefits from private labors

Sasha Cuttler

July 9, 2010

By Kristen Peters

San Francisco locals will take to the streets this weekend as main roads in the Mission neighborhood are closed to automobiles for the sixth installment of Sunday Streets. On July 11, a three-mile route from 17^th and Valencia to Dolores Park to Potrero Avenue will be car-free from 10 am until 3pm.

Taken from Bogota’s weekly ciclovía, in which nearly 100 miles of city streets are reserved for pedestrians and other recreationalists, Sunday Streets began in San Francisco almost two years ago. Since then, the tradition has made its way to other California cities including Los Angeles and Oakland.

“In San Francisco we have our own unique style,” event coordinator Susan King, who works for the nonprofit group Livable City, said. “We have different routes and we hit different neighborhoods year after year. In each neighborhood, the featured events have their own flair.”

This Sunday, revelers can look forward to performances by Grupo Azteca as well as capoeira and salsa dancing lessons, not to mention the countless restaurants in the area opening their doors early to the public. While the event has some support from the city and its San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, mostly in the form of permit fee waivers, it is run by Livable City and funded from corporate donations.

“Our corporate sponsors provide everything from durable goods, in-kind donations and cold, hard cash,” King said.

City officials have even curtailed helping with hanging “no parking” signs, leaving that task to volunteers from the SF Bicycle Coalition. That job was usually designated to the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic, but they have now stopped providing that service to an event that Mayor Gavin Newsom trumpets as something he’s bringing to the people. But King still calls Sunday Streets a good example of a public-private partnership.

“Everybody brings something to the table,” King said. “It’s a real cooperative entity with everyone pulling together to produce something really special.”

According to King, the benefits are widespread. Not only is it refreshing for the public to ditch their cars for a few hours, but it also reinvigorates the local economy. “It’s a real boom for the city,” King said. “Lots of people on the street means lots of eating. It’s good for business and good for the community.”

Acting executive director for the SF Bicycle Coalition Renee Rivera said that the Mission in particular has benefited from the crowds at Sunday Streets. “Everyone is enjoying the outdoor activities the event has to offer but, at the same time, are going to get ice cream, stopping for tacos or getting to enjoy all the merchants on 24^th and Valencia,” Rivera said.

There are three more Sunday Street events following the Mission neighborhood closure. The Great Highway and areas of Golden Gate Park will be closed on August 22 followed by the Western Addition on September 19. The series will conclude on October 24 with the closure of the Civic Center and Tenderloin areas.

Taming finance in an age of austerity

David Talbot

July 8, 2010

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – It was not long ago that we could say, “We are all Keynesians now.” The financial sector and its free-market ideology had brought the world to the brink of ruin. Markets clearly were not self-correcting. Deregulation had proven to be a dismal failure.

The “innovations” unleashed by modern finance did not lead to higher long-term efficiency, faster growth, or more prosperity for all. Instead, they were designed to circumvent accounting standards and to evade and avoid taxes that are required to finance the public investments in infrastructure and technology – like the Internet – that underlie real growth, not the phantom growth promoted by the financial sector.

The financial sector pontificated not only about how to create a dynamic economy, but also about what to do in the event of a recession (which, according to their ideology, could be caused only by a failure of government, not of markets). Whenever an economy enters recession, revenues fall, and expenditures – say, for unemployment benefits – increase. So deficits grow.

Financial-sector deficit hawks said that governments should focus on eliminating deficits, preferably by cutting back on expenditures. The reduced deficits would restore confidence, which would restore investment – and thus growth. But, as plausible as this line of reasoning may sound, the historical evidence repeatedly refutes it.

When US President Herbert Hoover tried that recipe, it helped transform the 1929 stock-market crash into the Great Depression. When the International Monetary Fund tried the same formula in East Asia in 1997, downturns became recessions, and recessions became depressions.

The reasoning behind such episodes is based on a flawed analogy. A household that owes more money than it can easily repay needs to cut back on spending. But when a government does that, output and incomes decline, unemployment increases, and the ability to repay may actually decrease. What is true for a family is not true for a country.

More sophisticated advocates warn that government spending will drive up interest rates, thus “crowding out” private investment. When the economy is at full employment, this is a legitimate concern. But not now: given extraordinarily low long-term interest rates, no serious economist raises the “crowding out” issue nowadays.

In Europe, especially Germany, and in some quarters in the US, as government deficits and debt grow, so, too, do calls for increased austerity. If heeded, as appears to be the case in many countries, the results will be disastrous, especially given the fragility of the recovery. Growth will slow, with Europe and/or America possibly even slipping back into recession.

Stimulus spending, the deficit hawks’ favorite bogeyman, did not cause most of the increased deficits and debt, which are the result of “automatic stabilizers” – the tax cuts and spending increases that automatically accompany economic fluctuations. So, as austerity undermines growth, debt reduction will be marginal at best.

Keynesian economics worked: if not for stimulus measures and automatic stabilizers, the recession would have been far deeper and longer, and unemployment much higher. This does not mean that we should ignore the level of debt. But what matters is long-term debt.

There is a simple Keynesian recipe: First, shift spending away from unproductive uses – such as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or unconditional bank bailouts that do not revive lending – toward high-return investments. Second, encourage spending and promote equity and efficiency by raising taxes on corporations that don’t reinvest, for example, and lowering them on those that do, or by raising taxes on speculative capital gains (say, in real estate) and on carbon- and pollution-intensive energy, while cutting taxes for lower-income payers.

There are other measures that might help. For example, governments should help banks that lend to small- and medium-size enterprises, which are the main source of job creation – or establish new financial institutions that would do so – rather than supporting big banks that make their money from derivatives and abusive credit card practices.

Financial markets have worked hard to create a system that enforces their views: with free and open capital markets, a small country can be flooded with funds one moment, only to be charged high interest rates – or cut off completely – soon thereafter. In such circumstances, small countries seemingly have no choice: financial markets’ diktat on austerity, lest they be punished by withdrawal of financing.

But financial markets are a harsh and fickle taskmaster. The day after Spain announced its austerity package, its bonds were downgraded. The problem was not a lack of confidence that the Spanish government would fulfill its promises, but too much confidence that it would, and that this would reduce growth and increase unemployment from its already intolerable level of 20%. In short, having gotten the world into its current economic mess, financial markets are now saying to countries like Greece and Spain: damned if you don’t cut back on spending, but damned if you do as well.

Finance is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is supposed to serve the interests of the rest of society, not the other way around. Taming financial markets will not be easy, but it can and must be done, through a combination of taxation and regulation – and, if necessary, government stepping in to fill some of the breaches (as it already does in the case of lending to small- and medium-size enterprises.)

Unsurprisingly, financial markets do not want to be tamed. They like the way things have been working, and why shouldn’t they? In countries with corrupt and imperfect democracies, they have the wherewithal to resist change. Fortunately, citizens in Europe and America have lost patience. The process of tempering and taming has begun. But there is far more yet to do.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in Economics. His latest book, Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy, is now available in French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link:
http://media.blubrry.com/ps/media.libsyn.com/media/ps/stiglitz127.mp3

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