Fashion Archives — Page 53 of 63 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

No artist left behind

December 23, 2008

OPINION Thirty-three years ago, San Francisco in its inimitable fashion paved the way for a national movement to use federal jobs money to hire artists to work in schools, community centers and gardens, daycare and senior facilities, and jails. The CETA Arts Program was administered through the Neighborhood Arts Program of the San Francisco Art Commission. CETA stood for the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, passed into law under the Nixon administration and kicked into high gear under President Ford because of the high unemployment rate in 1974-75.

A splendidly bright fellow named John Kreidler figured out that artists were a highly unemployed and underemployed category in the workforce, and that these federal funds could be appropriately used to hire them to work in the community.

I was hired under this program as administrator for the fledgling Pickle Family Circus. Also employed were the acclaimed clown trio of Larry Pisoni, Bill Irwin, and Geoff Hoyle. I met a CETA poet and community gardener named Ann Kyle. We got married in 1977 (at the Pickle Family Circus on Potrero Hill) and had two CETA-era children. I also ran for the Board of Supervisors out of my Bernal Heights garage that year. The CETA Arts Program, it can be said, employed hungry artists, educated students, started circuses, encouraged family formation, and fostered civic engagement. All good for a vibrant democracy and healthy economy.

The public money also helped people move into the private sector. Take the case of Bill Irwin. "Willie the Clown" was a bicycle messenger when first hired by the Pickles. Two years ago, Irwin won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his performance in the Broadway production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Today, with the American economy in the proverbial toilet, President-elect Barack Obama and Congress are promoting a multibillion dollar jobs stimulus package. In the litany of likely applications, we read about employing people to repair bridges, roads, schools, and sewers.

In the tradition of the 1930s-era WPA and the 1970s-era CETA Arts, we hope to add working artists to the roster of those who strengthen the nation’s infrastructure. Spearheaded by San Franciscans with spirited and creative allies all across America, a National Campaign to Hire Artists to Work in Schools has been formed. The effort has caught on like wildfire among artists, arts advocates, and arts educators.

Art forms such as music, theater, dance, mural painting, and poetry have proven to inspire students to delight in learning, and bring children of diverse economic and racial backgrounds on collaborative common ground.

The campaign also embraces the concept of a National Green Arts Corps to provide neighborhoods and community-based artists with the resources, training, and skills to use the arts to build community life and create green jobs.

We are bringing our case to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Obama transition team, the labor and education secretaries-designate, the 50 governors and state legislatures, and city leaders. Come join the campaign and return a strong dose of imagination to America in 2009.

For more information, visit the Campaign Web site at nchaws.org, join our Facebook site, and vote for us in the contest for best Ideas to Change America at www.change.org/ideas/search?keyword=National+Campaign+to+Hire+Artists+to+Work+in+Schools&x=13&y=10.

Michael Nolan, a Bernal Heights resident since 1970, was a member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and co-founder of the Pickle Family Circus.

Mustaches (for Kids) abound in San Francisco

December 11, 2008

By Steven T. Jones

Does it seem there are more mustaches than usual in San Francisco? There are. It’s partly a fashion trend among the hipster set, but my ‘stache and many others are actually being grown for the Mustaches For Kids program that culminates this Wednesday in the Stache Bash at the Rickshaw Stop. This slightly strange benefit with the pervy name has raised more than $40,000 over the last month, all going to small-bore educational programs through the Donors Choose network.
There’s also a bit of civic pride involved: Mustaches For Kids is a nationwide program that pits city against city, and San Francisco now trails New York City and Charlotte, NC (and we’re just ahead of Chicago, Baltimore and Los Angeles). So step up, SF, and donate if you can. In addition, last month was deemed Movember by another mustache drive benefits prostate cancer. So now you know why the streets suddenly seem to be filled with so many off-duty cops and ’70s porn stars.

Dig it

December 10, 2008

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW Long before Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize–winning Topdog/Underdog (2002) was bedazzling them on Broadway, an earlier and related work called The America Play (1990-93) was wowing Bay Area audiences in a small but vital production staged by Thick Description. Like the later play, the company’s 1994 West Coast premiere churned themes of memory, identity, kinship, and race in the maw of American history, all of it focused provocatively on a wonderfully fertile conceit: the image of a black man dressed as Abraham Lincoln, sitting watching a play — a human target and one big, very specific arcade duck for the pleasure of patrons reenacting the role of presidential assassin.

The similarities begin to diverge after that. Where Topdog centered with seeming realism on two African American brothers named Lincoln and Booth, The America Play concerns a father and son, the son searching out the father by excavating a theme-park site specified as "an exact replica of the Great Hole of History." It also incorporates the wife and mother, and concentrates on the uncanny Lincoln-likeness of the father — known as the Foundling Father — as well as the life-altering inspiration he receives from the story of "the Great Man." Not least among its differences, the play operates on a more openly abstract, even abstruse plain, albeit one brimming with cultural significance and palpable irony.

The American Play may lack the edginess and also some of the tautness of the more concentrated 2002 two-hander, but revisiting the work in Thick Description’s exquisite revival, as part of its 20th anniversary season, shows it is still worthy and affecting in a sly, haunted fashion that gets its full due from artistic director Tony Kelly’s intelligent and lyrical staging, as well as a fine cast headed by 1994 veterans Rhonnie Washington and Brian Freeman, both brilliantly reprising their roles as, respectively, the gravedigger-turned–Abraham Lincoln impersonator and his son Brazil. Rounding out the enjoyable ensemble are Deirdre Renee Draginoff, Cathleen Riddley, and David Westley Skillman.

Setting us on the abstract expanse of history, "a great hole in the middle of nowhere," Rick Martin’s sublime set is a gorgeous cascade of plank-wood flooring falling in a graceful curve from the top rear of the stage out to the lip, where it meets a proscenium shaped as a large wooden picture frame. The Foundling Father addresses us from a wooden rocker center stage, a pasteboard cutout of Lincoln over his right shoulder, a small bust of "the Great Man" on a table downstage to his left. Sections of the wall/floor come out later to produce an excavation site and a mini stage for a play-within-the-play.

The action and the dialogue — rich, redolent, and blunt as freshly dug earth — resonate powerfully and strangely, taking gradual but firm hold. It’s all funny ha-ha and funny eerie, cuttingly ironic, and wonderfully suggestive — this play built up around the notion of an African American man as latter-day double and relation to the lanky senator from Illinois who became world-historic leader of the country. As for how it reads a decade-and-a-half after the first production, let’s just say the play’s excavations of history are as timely as ever.

THE AMERICA PLAY

Through Sun/14; Thurs.-Sun., 8 p.m.; $15–$30

Thick House

1695 18th St., SF
(415) 401-8081

www.thickhouse.org

Club hubbub

December 10, 2008

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER You don’t have to look back very far to find those purple waves of nostalgia lapping at your heels — just take a glance at Beyoncé’s drippy gloss on Etta James in Cadillac Records. Knowles’ star power may have got the Chess Records story made, sorta, but isn’t Oakland homegirl Keyshia Cole better suited to play Fillmore-tough girl-gangster James? Still, sometimes the new is an improvement over the old, such as my fave iPhone toy-app, Brian Eno’s and Peter Chilvers’ music-making "Bloom." So preferable to Eno’s recent studio collabo with David Byrne, the app allows me to generate my own piano-note ambient beauties, which blossom and fade like ephemeral flowers.

And nostalgia was what washed over me when I dropped in on the first of San Francisco’s brave new clubs on a hectic holiday-soiree-strewn weekend — and I mean brave because these nightlife believers have to be to launch a nightspot during this economically rocky era. Oh, the shows and the tales surrounding the old Paradise Lounge! A particularly poignant yarn about Kiss’ Ace Frehley drowning his sorrows solo at the bar in the early ’90s came to mind while I checked out the venue’s latest iteration at 1501 Folsom (www.paradisesf.com). Lo, few were waxing wistful on Friday night as the club’s holiday party went into overdrive in the ex-Above Paradise space. Raucous club-scene working stiffs scooped up Oola nibbles and $1 well drinks to what sounded like favela funk, and a solid lineup of DJs including Omar, Robot Hustle, and Safety Scissors was set to fill the decks serving the two dance floors. If these walls could talk, they’d ramble like the countercultured bastard offspring of Bucky Sinister and Penelope Houston.

The downstairs central bar, one of four throughout the club, has been done up with moodily futuristic LED lights. Outfitted with velvety booths, the mezzanine includes a crow’s-nest-style DJ booth that can move anywhere — all this after about eight months of permitting and remodeling, director of marketing Erik Lillquist told me. Since then the venue — subtly changed yet comfortingly the same with a certain scuffed, been-there-done-that quality — seems to be starting to establish its DJ-dominated identity: Honey Soundsystem holds down Sundays with special soirees planned a là the Dec. 20 date with Legowelt. "We’re taking the economy into consideration," said Lillquist, citing the club’s drink specials and discounted entries. "We’re just trying to create a good vibe and fit into the neighborhood, not be a velvet rope club."

That velvet rope, however, was in full effect — with nary a nostalgic wrinkle in the house — at ultra-lounge Infusion (www.infusionlounge.com), attached to Hotel Fusion at 140 Ellis and set for a grand opening New Year’s Eve. I got a sneak peek at the 6,000-square-foot, quasi-Chinese-themed crimson, ebony, amber, and ivory decor, dreamed up by Hong Kong designer Kinney Chan, with its tasteful but dramatic sectional lounge area beside a downlow DJ booth and elevated meditation pool. Columns dappled in scarlet light were swathed by electrical-volt-like geometric screens. A 2,000-square-foot lounge deeper within the club was lined with low couches and frosted glass columns — ready for a private party or fashion show. A fusion, true, of Pacific Rim exoticism and sleek contemporary design — and ultra with a capital "u": NYE VIP bottle service with a reserved couch, a bottle of Veuve bubbly and Ciroc vodka, and four tickets goes for, whoa, $950. Here’s hoping the life-sized animated interactive hologram is cooler than CNN’s election-day Will.i.am. Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.

On to Atmosphere (www.a3atmosphere.com) at 447 Broadway, where I’m feeling no throwback pangs for the Amusement Center that once filled the now weathered-wood-brick-faux-grass lofty space. The Salon, a lady-pulling party with makeup demos and complimentary champagne, is on, and though Atmosphere appears to be ironing out a few kinks — the masseuse who was supposed to give gratis rubdowns was absent — the relatively new nightspot was popping with a diverse Asian, white, black, and brown crowd while DJ Solomon mashed up techno and New Order. As I inhaled a bubble or two, a clutch of women attempted to shake it on the dance floor as a growing cadre of guys looked on, seemingly terrified to leave their spot beside the glowing bar decorated with waterfall sculpture-paintings. Nostalgia? I felt like I was at a high school dance — c’mon, people, dance together. Still, the crowd outside — looking for fun amid the onetime Barbary rollercoaster of North Beach — and the flood of new faces pouring into Atmosphere made me give the space a double-take. Just when you relinquished the neighborhood to the tourists …

STEEELLL-A!

How to describe the comedy magic these men called Stella — Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, and David Wain — make together? "It’s the nature of three friends who’ve been working together for 20 years now and our own slightly weird chemistry," Wain, 39, told me from Chicago, where the comedians, who met at NYU and found renown thanks to their online shorts, were readying to perform to a sold-out crowd. The sweet-tempered Wain recently gathered raves as the director-writer of Role Models, but now he was "kind of beyond belief," having driven late into the night in the freezing cold from Minneapolis. The payoff has been the shows, which include "silliness, laughing, some singing and dancing, a slide show, and audience participation," in addition to a new short about Showalter’s birthday. It seems like Stella is successfully persevering years after Comedy Central brought its series to a quick end. "On one hand I can’t blame them [for canceling the show] because it was really low-rated," said Wain. "But on the other hand I do blame them because it clearly had a vocal and obsessed following. Only after 10 episodes did we get a chance to figure out how it worked."

STELLA Fri/12, 8 p.m., $29.50. Wheeler Auditorium, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Berk.

www.apeconcerts.com

Beauty, reappraised

December 3, 2008

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

First look by Matt Sussman:

The deYoung Museum’s retrospective of the late, great Yves Saint Laurent’s 40-year career designing haute couture comes at an awkward moment for fashion and its fans. With the country facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, “recessionista” is the buzzword du jour and Vogue and its ilk are trading their trend watches for old bromides such as “investment pieces” and “necessary luxuries.”

This strange timing is certainly no fault of the de Young, which had the foresight to begin planning this massive retrospective (and to ensure that SF was its only US stop) in 2002, well before the designer’s untimely passing last June. Amid the profligate bailouts, “Yves Saint Laurent: 40 Years of Fashion” not only offers up a snappy lesson in fashion history, it provides a necessary helping of that luxury so often promised, but debatably afforded, by public art institutions: beauty, reappraised.

Saint Laurent collected beautiful things — his homes in Paris and Marrakech were exquisitely appointed with Louis XVI furniture and paintings by Picasso and Goya — and he made the creation of beautiful things his life’s work. One can walk through the exhibit and simply appreciate this — the jackets that flawlessly capture Van Gogh’s brushwork through sequins; the evening cape that’s a cataract of autumnal feathers. But Saint Laurent is a master because he consistently made all the paillettes and feathers and evening gowns and safari suits telegraph what Tim Gunn likes to call “a point of view.”

Saint Laurent’s point of view was that beauty is a form of power and nothing is sexier than confidence. “The body of a woman is not an abstract idea,” he once said, “[A dress] is not made to be contemplated but to be lived in, and the woman who lives in it must feel herself beautiful and right in it.” Even on unobtrusive mannequins, you can see how Saint Laurent’s silhouettes were always conscious of — and gracious toward — a woman’s body. Many garments would be as flattering on a 20-something gamine as on a woman in the fullness of middle age. Perhaps this is why Catherine Deneuve has continuously worn YSL since 1967.

This is immediately apparent in the two rows of garments, backlit in soft blue, that form the entryway to the rest of the exhibit. Here are all the Saint Laurent hallmarks: transparency, androgynous tailoring, the perfected detail — all executed with a sly playfulness and flair for drama. A 1968 evening gown of sheer black silk chiffon, with a ring of ostrich feathers discreetly placed just below the navel, shocks first with all that it leaves exposed, and then with its elegance. A more modest 1991 two-piece evening ensemble dedicated to ballerina Zizi Jeanmaire (to whom Joseph Cornell also paid homage), evokes the casual ease of a dancer’s cool-down outfit — save for the exquisite bugle bead embellished hems. Several examples of Saint Laurent’s signature Le Smoking ensembles — his feminine remake of the tuxedo — are also on display, each one a master class in fit and proportion.

The “Yves Saint Laurent revolution” was not merely a matter of taking cues from street style and changing social mores and gender roles. Like Coco Chanel before him, Saint Laurent’s prerogative was to make clothes for women who wanted to dress for themselves, and not for the Social Registry circuit that still dictated the shopping habits of couture clients when he took over Dior, at the tender age of 21, in 1957.

Granted, many of Saint Laurent’s repeat customers — those names printed on the bottom of the exhibit’s explanatory cards like cartouches in an Egyptian temple — still went to charity luncheons, galas, and season openings. But clad in YSL, they could cause tongues to wag, cluck disapprovingly, or flutter with lust. Saint Laurent’s 1971 ’40s-inspired collection initially struck a sour note with fashion critics, who turned up their noses at what they saw as tasteless “Vichy chic.” But looking at that collection’s signature piece now — a sumptuous, acid green fox fur jacket with shoulder padding befitting a linebacker, or Joan Crawford — one sees a kind of social armor. It says, “don’t fuck with me,” in the classiest way possible. No wonder Naomi Campbell wore the jacket (with just a pair of tights and heels) in Saint Laurent’s farewell retrospective.

“I’m the last couturier,” Saint Laurent intones in a voiceover near the beginning of David Teboul’s intimate 2002 documentary Yves Saint Laurent 5 avenue Marceau 75116 Paris. It’s hard to scan how serious the gently self-deprecating Saint Laurent is being — although his visible physical frailty belies the sharpness of his instincts and his eye as he designs his final spring/summer collection.

Since Saint Laurent’s death, fashion has become yet more rapaciously capitalistic and pragmatically democratic: houses have become branches in multi-brand luxury conglomerates, designers sell to both Target and Barney’s, and haute couture has largely become an accessory to advertising. Saint Laurent’s “last couturier” statement comes off as a declaration of purity in the face of such seismic shifts. A palliative for these sour times, “Yves Saint Laurent: 40 Years of Fashion” grants us unprecedented access to the beautiful world he crafted, whose dignity he sought to protect until the end.

YVES SAINT LAURENT: 40 YEARS OF FASHION

Through April 5, 2009

De Young Museum

Golden Gate Park

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, SF

www.famsf.org

———–

Second look by Kimberly Chun:

Menage A Trois: Looking And Longing And “Yves Saint Laurent”

TAKE ONE The flat, pop, almost banal brilliance of Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour (1967) hinges not on tragically trite dungeon-mistress corsets but on the critical tension between the silently exploding, sexually exploratory interior life of Severine (Catherine Denueve) and her frigid-to-frozen good-bourgeois exterior, impeccably framed by Yves Saint Laurent’s prim-chic uniform-esque daywear. These costumes continue to inspire imitators’ collections today — who can forget the jingle-all-the-way opening scene, where Severine rebuffs her handsome surgeon husband during a carriage ride? Her suave Prince Charming abruptly orders their coachman to roughly drag his resistant, now-struggling bride into the fairytale forest — the brass buttons on the men’s coats perfectly rhyme with those on Severine’s five-alarm scarlet wool suit — where they tie her up, tear off that perfectly tailored jacket, whip, and molest her. Bien sur, this is just Severine’s idle before-bed rape and violation fantasy, made all the more pungent by the perverse spoiling of Saint Laurent’s exquisite getups.

At this point in his career, the designer was fully occupied, dreaming up four full collections a year — two for ready-for-wear and two for haute couture — composed of as many as 100 ensembles. Yet he still loved to design for stage and screen. This job led to a lifelong friendship with Deneuve. One iconic frock from Belle de Jour — the sublimely austere, black wool barathea A-line with proper white satin collar and cuffs — is on display at “Yves Saint Laurent,” the exhaustive YSL retrospective at the de Young. An ever-so-slightly-hip-slung black patent belt nearly disappears beneath an invisible front placket closure: black on black. There may be more memorable outfits in the film — particularly the buttoned-up Severine’s protective-shell outerwear — but this piece, redolent of maids, nuns, schoolteachers, and other archetypal images of traditional female service — throws the distance between Severine’s desire for debasement and her icy, blue-eye-shadow-frosted hauteur into stark relief. It’s a study in contrasts: puritanical, yet in its girlish, unconstrained, almost innocent lines — also found in the gray trapeze dress Saint Laurent dreamed up for Christian Dior in 1958 — it eschews the predictable sexuality of the previous era’s “New Look,” with its nipped waists and full womanly skirts.

TAKE TWO Saint Laurent never shied from fantasy, and the Orientalist/colonialist dreams of the designer, who was born in Algiers and spent much of his later life in Morocco, are in full effect at the de Young — Jean Paul Gaultier dined out on the hyper-exaggerated cone breasts that Saint Laurent first conjured in his 1967 African collection. But equally fantastic, if pegged to more utilitarian, workday pursuits, are the examples of women’s wear influenced by salty Mediterranean seafarers, pin-striped swells, and animal-skin-clad hunters. Saint Laurent takes the functional and elevates it until it is almost painfully, acutely sensuous: witness 1968’s suede thigh-high boots accentuating an all-legs Amazon, accompanied by a figure-masking suede tunic and visor-ed hood. Nearby is his first safari jacket from 1968, laces descending from the neckline above a hip-riding ring belt, shorts, and tall boots. Tom Ford borrowed such insouciant lacing to revive moribund Gucci in the ’90s. Veruschka famously struck a pose in this outfit for the fashion press, but I can’t help but imagine longtime Saint Laurent muse and his femme counterpart Betty Catroux as its genuine inspiration.

Less lioness than angular blonde whippet, perpetually booted, putf8um blonde, and a permanent member of her and Yves’ imaginary band Les Saints (Catroux’s maiden name is Saint), the androgynous Catroux — who haunted the exhibition’s media preview at the de Young — was a mannequin for the house of Chanel when Saint Laurent spied her at a nightclub and insisted she work for him instead. A year after their meeting, Saint Laurent designed his first smoking jacket or tuxedo for women: “It was his first step in the exploration of masculine dress within a feminine framework,” writes Alicia Drake in The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genius, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris (Back Bay, 2006). “The idea of girls dressing like boys and the tensions and attraction that could evoke was a daring new concept in fashion after a decade characterized by graphic, doll-like dresses, white tights, and bouncing hair.” This huntress is the flip of Belle de Jour‘s anti-heroine — aggressive, sexually liberated, and ready to loosen those lacings.

TAKE THREE Bridal gowns inevitably close couture shows, and while some fabulist fashionistas might prefer Saint Laurent’s opulent 1980 tribute to The Merchant of Venice-style Shakespeare or his outrageous but borderline gimmicky 1999 bridal Eve in a pink silk rose bikini, flower ankle bracelet, and train, I prefer the laugh-aloud audaciousness of his “queen baby” infanta/infantile 1965 bridal sock. Call it a divine bride-in-a-sack. Wittily foregrounding the untouchable yet phallic purity of bride-as-fantasy-virgin, Saint Laurent wraps his imaginary maiden in an intricately hand-knit, fisherman-style, ivory wool swaddling. The knobby knit encapsulates her head. Her arms disappear behind poncho-like slits. The designer’s beloved ribbons and bows punctuate her face, waist, and ankles, and pilgrim-buckled shoes poke out beneath. This is bride as a baby bottle cozy, ready to pop — evoking some creamy, dreamy, organic future, as well as some alien yet recognizable, marriage-as-Iron Maiden past.

Cue the clowns

December 3, 2008

› steve@sfbg.com

The circus doesn’t come to San Francisco, but its performers do, sexy and talented dreamers who bring a creative energy that has transformed the city’s nightlife and counterculture. Spinning aerialists and dancing clowns now proliferate at clubs and parties, and their number has more than doubled in recent years.

They come from towns across the country — often via Burning Man, where they discover their inner performers, dying to burst out, and other kindred spirits — to a city with a rich circus tradition, which they tweak and twist into something new, a hybrid of the arts and punk sideshow weirdness. It’s the ever-evolving world of Indie Circus.

One of the biggest banners these performers now dance and play under is Bohemian Carnival, which draws together some of the city’s best indie circus acts, including Vau de Vire Society, the clown band Gooferman, and Fou Fou Ha, acts that fluidly mix with one another and the audience.

Last Saturday, as families across the country shopped and shared Thanksgiving leftovers, this extended family of performers rehearsed for that night’s Bohemian Carnival. Fou Fou Ha was in the Garage, a SoMa performance space, working on a new number celebrating beer with founder/choreographer Maya Culbertson, a.k.a. MamaFou, pushing for eight-count precision.

"Do it again," she tells her eight high-energy charges, who look alternatively sexy and zany even without the colorful and slightly grotesque clown costumes they don for shows. I watch from the wings as they drill through the number again and again, struck by how the improvised comedy at the song’s end changes every time, someone’s new shtick catching my eye and making me smile.

"That’s what we love the most, the improv element to it," Culbertson tells me. "We see how far you can take it and not break character."

As Fou Fou Ha wrapped up and headed home to get ready for the show, Gooferman and Vau de Vire were just starting to rehearse and set up over at the party venue, DNA Lounge. Reggie Ballard was up a tall ladder setting the rigging, the dancers stretched, Vau de Vire co-founder Mike Gaines attended to a multitude of details, and Gooferman frontmen Vegas and Boenobo the Klown played the fools.

"I feel like I’m on acid," Vegas said evenly, his long Mohawk standing tall.

"Are you?" Boenobo said, perhaps a little jealous.

"No, I wish," Vegas replied. "But that’s why it’s weird."

"Huh," Boenobo deadpanned. "Weird."

Fucking clowns. I decide to chat up a dancer, Rachel Strickland, the newest member of Vau de Vire, who stretched and unabashedly changed into her rehearsal clothes as she told me about why she moved here from North Carolina in July 2007.

"I waited a long time for this. I always knew I wanted to come to San Francisco and work on the stage, doing something in the line of Moulin Rouge, with the costumes and that kind of decadence and debauchery," Strickland said, oozing passion for her craft and the life she’s chosen, one she said has met her expectations. "I danced as much as I could my whole life and I have an overactive imagination, so it’s hard to shock me."

Not that Vau de Vire hasn’t tried. Shocking people out of their workaday selves is what the performers try to do, whether through vaudeville acts, dance routines, feats of skill, or just sheer sensual outlandishness. Vau de Vire choreographer Shannon Gaines (Mike’s wife of 19 years) also teaches at the local indie circus school Acrosports and, with beatboxer and performance artist Tim Barsky, directs its City Circus youth program, which combines hip hop and other urban art forms with circus.

Gaines has been a gymnast and dancer all her life, skills that she’s honed into circus performances she does through five different agencies, often doing corporate events "that involve wearing a few more clothes" and other more conventional performances.

"The other seems like work to me. But this," she said, a wry smile coming to her lips, "is like dessert. This is what excites me."

She’s not the only one. With their growing popularity, San Francisco’s indie circus freaks are juggling an increasingly busy schedule and developing even bigger plans for the new year, including a national tour and an extravaganza called Metropolus that would reinforce San Francisco’s reputation as the best Big Top in the country.

As Boenobo told me, "It’s a moment in time when there’s something big developing in San Francisco."

MIMES AND PICKLES

The circus arts are ancient, but San Francisco’s unique role in morphing and perpetuating them trace back to the 1970s when Make-a-Circus arrived here from Europe — where circus traditions are strong — and the local, organic Pickle Family Circus was born.

Wendy Parkman, now a board member at San Francisco Circus Center, the circus school she helped develop in conjunction with the Pickles and legendary performer Judy Finelli, worked for both circuses and described how they derived from San Francisco’s vibrant arts scene and its history of grassroots activism.

"It was just a wonderful, spontaneous bubble, a renaissance of circus activity," Parkman told the Guardian. "It was an outgrowth of the fabulous ’60s and the involvement of people with community and politics and art."

Parkman and many others trace the local lineage of a renaissance that came to be known as New Circus back to the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which in 1959 started doing political theater that incorporated comedy (or more specifically, Commedia dell’Arte), music, farce, melodrama, and other aspects of clowning.

"It really started with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and it flourishes here because of the rich arts culture that we’ve always had here," Jeff Raz, a longtime performer with both original SF troupes who started the San Francisco Clown Conservatory and recently had the title role in Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo, told the Guardian.

"San Francisco felt like a place where things could happen that were socially and politically relevant," Parkman said. "Circus has always been a people’s art form. It’s a great way of getting a lot of people involved because it takes a lot of people to put on a show."

Perhaps even more relevant to the current indie circus resurgence, both Make-a-Circus and the Pickle Family Circus reached out to working class neighborhoods in San Francisco, where they would do parades and other events to entertain the people and generate interest in the circus.

"It was happy, healthy, and accessible to people of all ages, classes, and backgrounds," said Parkman said, who noted that things began to change in the 1980s as funding for the arts dried up and Pickle hit hard times.

"The Pickle Family Circus was a grassroots circus that was part of a real renaissance. Unfortunately, it didn’t go very far," Dominique Jando, a noted circus historian who has written five books on the circus and whose wife teaches trapeze at the Circus Center, told the Guardian.

Still, the Pickle legacy lives on in the Circus Center and Acrosports, making San Francisco and Montreal (birthplace of Cirque du Soleil, whose influence has also propelled the indie circus movement) the two major hubs of circus in North America. Unlike Europe, Russia, and China, where circus training is deeply rooted and often a family affair passed from generation to generation, Jando said, Americans don’t have a strong circus tradition.

"We are really the poor children of the circus world. There is not the same tradition of circus here that there is in Europe," said Jando, a native to France who now lives in San Francisco. "Learning circus is like ballet, and it’s not really in the American psyche to work and train for seven years for a job that offers modest pay."

Homegrown spectacles like Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus commercialized the circus and transformed it into the three-ring form that sacrificed intimacy and the emphasis on artistry and narrative flow. Traditionally in Europe, the clowns and music structured a circus performance, with the punctuation and interludes provided by the acrobats and other performers of the circus arts.

"It’s the superhuman and the supremely human, who are the clowns," is how Raz defines circus. "Clowns are becoming more central to the circus, the supremely human part, and that has a lot to do with our times."

Raz, Jando, and Parkman all pointed to the sterile excesses of the televised, digitized, Twittering, 24/7 world we live in as feeding the resurgence of circus. "It points to a demand by the audience to see something more down to earth and real," Jando said. "There is a need to go back to basics."

"It’s a response to the overly technological world we’re living in. People want to go back to what the human body can do and be in the same place as the performers," Parkman said. "One of the concepts of the Pickles was that it was drawing on the European model. I’d say what’s going on now in San Francisco is an offshoot of what the Pickles did."

Raz said the rise of Indie Circus and its influence on the local arts scene is consistent with his own experiences as an actor and clown. He used to keep two resumes, but performers today are often expected to be steeped in both disciplines, letting one inform the other and opening up new forms of creative expression.

"That melding that you’re looking at, from the club scene to Burning Man, is seeping into a lot of the world," Raz said. "Circus is very much a living art form."

Somehow," Jando said, "it has become a sort of counterculture on the West Coast."

INDIE, THE NEW NEW CIRCUS

Boenobo and Vegas haven’t done any real training to become clowns. They’re performers who use the clown shtick to build a fun and fantastical world off their solid musical base.

"There has to be whimsy. People take themselves so seriously," Boenobo said, noting that it was in response to the serious-minded Winter Music Conference in 2001 where he had the idea of having the members of his new band, Gooferman, dress as clowns. It was a lark, but it was fun and it stuck, and they’ve been clowns ever since.

"The clown thing floats my boat. It is a persona I really dig. And the band kicks ass. We’re all just super tight. The Bohemian Carnival is just a bunch of friends, like a family ejected out of different wombs," he said.

The band does kick ass. Setting aside the clown thing, their tunes are original and fun, evoking Oingo Boingo at its early best, particularly since the summer, when Boenobo and Vegas brought in a strong new rhythm section. But it’s the collaboration with Vau de Vire and the other groups that round out Bohemian Carnival and really bring it to life.

"People say it just blew my mind, and that is the immortality of it," Boenobo said. "It’s super-fucking gratifying, really. It’s just stupid."

They performed last month at the Hillbilly Hoedown inside a giant maze made of hay bales in Half Moon Bay, with the clowns and circus performers creating a fantastical new world for the partygoers. As Gooferman played, Shannon broke the rules and danced atop a hay bale wall behind the band, conveying pure danger and backwoods sex appeal.

"The Gooferman character is called Bruiser or Shenanigans," Shannon said of her performer alter egos. "She does the things that you’d get kicked out of a party for, but I can get away with it."

She considers herself more of a "fluffer" than a dancer, and while Gooferman plays, she gets the band and crowd charged up by pushing the limits of silliness and composure herself and seeing if they’ll follow. "So they’re thinking, wow, if she can do that, I can do all kinds of things."

Their world not only includes practitioners of circus arts (contortionists, aerialists, trapeze artists, clowns, and the like), but also the fashion scene (including outlandish local designers such as Anastasia), painters, sculptors, dancers, actors, fire artists, and DJs like Smoove who bring a certain zany flair to the dance parties.

"It’s hybridized. So it’s not just circus arts with some musical backing," Boenobo said. Instead, it creates a fun and whimsical scene that makes attendees feel like they’re part of something unusual, fun, and liberating. "Immersion is very important."

That’s why the Bohemian Carnival and its many offshoots try to break down the wall between the performers and the audience, who often show up in circus or Burning Man styles, further blurring the borders.

"When you break down that big third wall, there’s no pretense," Mike Gaines said. "It’s really about the party and the community."

Clowns circulate in the crowd, interacting with the audience while aerialists suddenly start performing on ropes or rings suspended over the dance floor. It draws the audience in, opens them up, makes them feel like they’re part of something.

"All of the sudden, people get to realize the dream of running away with the circus, but they get to leave it at the end of the night," Boenobo said with a wink, "which they generally like."

"The line of where circus starts and ends has been blurred," said kSea Flux (a.k.a. Kasey Porter), an indie circus performer who earlier this year started Big Top Magazine (www.bigtopmagazine.com) to chronicle the growing culture. "I love the old-school circus, but as with everything, it needs to be able to evolve to continue to grow."

When he joined the indie circus movement five years ago, performing with the Dresden Dolls, Flux said it transformed his life. He quit his corporate job and started developing his art and trying to make a living in the circus arts, including promoting the culture through the magazine.

"I found the circus and was completely filled with a new life," Flux said, noting that it was through his long involvement with Burning Man that he was exposed to the circus scene. "I think Burning Man gives a platform for it. People get stuck in their jobs and there’s this great week when you can let go and be what you want to be."

That’s also how the talented aerialist and hooper who calls herself Shredder got into this world, which she’s now explored in both the traditional circus and the indie variety, preferring the latter.

"I didn’t even know it was possible, but I just love it," said Shredder, who worked as a firefighter, EMT, and environmental educator before getting into performing through Burning Man, where Boenobo set up the Red Nose District in 2006 for all the many offshoots of the indie circus world that attend the event.

Shredder developed hula hoop and aerial routines, training hard to improve her skills and eventually was hired by the Cole Brothers Circus in 2006 to do aerial acrobatics and hooping. Founded in 1882, Cole is a full-blown circus in the Ringling Bros. tradition, with a ringleader, animals, and trained acrobats. Shredder toured 92 cities in 10 months until she felt the creativity and joy being snuffed out by the rote repetition of the performances.

"We did the exact same show everyday. It was like Groundhog Day but worse; same show, different parking lot," said Shredder, who later that Saturday night did a performance with more than a dozen hula hoops at once. "Then I heard about Vau de Vire through some fellow performers and I just heard they were doing really well and I wanted to be with a group like that … I was just so happy that they were willing to help me design my vision as an artist."

COMING TOGETHER

The Bohemian Carnival name and concept was actually an import from Fort Collins, Colo., where Mike and Shannon Gaines created the Vau de Vire Society as part of the performance and party space they operated there in a 100-year-old church that they purchased.

Mike’s background was in film; Shannon was a dancer; and the world they created for themselves was decidedly counterculture. So was their space, the Rose Window Experimental Theater and Art House, which they operated from 1997 to 2001 and lived in with 20 of their bohemian friends.

"It allowed us to really get to know ourselves. We had all day to just rig up any kind of performance we could imagine," she said. "If you had a crazy idea, you could just come on over at 3 a.m. and do it."

Their signature events were themed parties that would open with performances of about 30 minutes, usually combining music, dance, and performance art, followed by a dance party that was essentially an all-night rave. Initially the performances just drew off of the creativity of their friends, including those Shannon danced with. The themes were often risqué and sometimes included nudity.

The performances evolved over time, bringing in talent such as Angelo Moore of the band Fishbone, who is still a regular part of their crew. They were all attracted to the freaky side of performance art, which drew them toward sideshow, vaudeville, and circus themes and expanding what was technically possible. "We ended up getting a rigger in and just flying around the theater," Mike said.

In 2000, they did their first Bohemian Carnival event. "That’s when we started dabbling in the circus," Mike said.

While the events gained regional acclaim in newspapers and were supported by notables figures, including the town’s mayor, there was a backlash among local conservatives, including some who objected to how a traditional church was being used for raves by these bohemian freaks.

In 2001 they decided to search for a new home. "We looked around for the place that would be most accepting of what we were doing," Mike said.

San Francisco was known to be accepting of their kind, and there were groups here that were edging toward similar kinds of parties, including Infinite Kaos and Xeno (and its predecessor, Awd), as well as the band Idiot Flesh, not to mention the more serious circus being done at the Circus Center and Teatro Zinzanni.

"San Francisco, in this country, is a real hotbed for circus. So we were like, ‘Now we can bring in legitimate circus performers," Mike said. Shannon got a job teaching at Acrosports, allowing her to be immersed full-time in her art and to help grow her community.

Serendipitously, in August 2001, indie rocker Boenobo of the band Chub — a funky ska outfit whose members would wear different costumes to each of their performances — formed Gooferman, which wasn’t originally the clown band it is today: "The idea was you had to be in a costume and you had to be stoned." They morphed into a full-blown clown band, and began collaborating with circus performers.

"But it never coalesced until recently," Boenobo says.

That process probably began around Halloween 2004 at the Vegoose Festival in Las Vegas, when Vau de Vire Society was asked to fill eight hours’ worth of programming and turned to their San Francisco brethren for help, Mike said. They drove or flew about 100 people to the event.

It was also the year Boenobo staged the GoofBall in San Francisco, drawing together a variety of entertainment that helped change the nature of the traditional dance party. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the year that reviled President George W. Bush won a second term and when longtime Burning Man artists staged their ill-fated revolt against the event (see "State of the art," 12/10/04).

"When people get too serious, they need this shit even more," Boenobo said of the increasingly irreverent, naughty, and participatory parties he was throwing.

Meanwhile Fou Fou Ha was developing its act. Culbertson and Raymond Meyer were waiting tables at Rose Pistola in 2000 and decided to put their big personalities to work for them, bringing in other performers such as Slim Avocado and setting up routines to perform at CellSpace and other venues.

"We’re sort of like the children of Cirque du Soleil in a way, but we wanted to give it an edge," Culbertson said. "It’s sort of like the second wave vaudeville … now with more of a rock edge."

Fou Fou Ha’s shows play off the dark and surreal kind of performance that is more European than American, a style Culbertson was exposed to while studying choreography during her Fulbright scholarship in Holland in the late 1990s. When she returned to the United States in 2000, "I wanted to form a [dance] company." But she wanted it to be fun. "People really like the idea of serious dance combined with comedy, where you can fall out of your pirouette," she said.

"We’re kind of like guerilla circus," Slim, a trained ballerina, said. "It’s a whole new movement. It’s like ’30s cabaret, but edgier."

Boenobo started the Red Nose District on the playa at Burning Man in 2006, drawing together his Bohemian Carnival friends, a local group of stilt- walkers known as Enhightned Beings of Leisure, installation artist Michael Christian’s crew from the East Bay, the Cirque Berserk folks from Los Angeles, and others from the growing circus world.

"It’s a safe environment to be and do what you want," Gaines said of Burning Man, noting how those breakthroughs on the playa then come back home to the city. And that ethos carries into Vau de Vire, which is truly a collective of like-minded friends, one that eschews hiring outside performers for their shows. "They’re all just part of it," he said.

What they’re all part of — Vau de Vire, Gooferman, Fou Fou Ha, and the rest of the Indie Circus folk — has begun to make a strong imprint on San Francisco nightlife and counterculture. From a performer’s perspective, Boenobo said, it feels good. "Our local family is super comfortable with one another," he said, something he’s never felt before after 25 years as a indie rocker. "It’s rare to not have a lot of ego to deal with, and it’s super rare with this kind of high-quality performance."

But they want more. As Flux said, "We want to take over the world."

WHAT’S NEXT

Slowly, the circus collective members are moving toward becoming full-time freaks. Already, Mike Gaines said most of the 12 to 15 regular Vau de Vire performers practice their art full-time, subsidizing their performances by being instructors in dance or the circus arts.

That’s not to say the parties, with their large number of performers, are lucrative. "With circus, you get a million more people on your guest list, so circus is complicated from a promoter’s perspective," Joegh Bullock of Anon Salon, which incorporates circus acts into its parties, including the upcoming Sea of Dream party New Year’s Eve. "But we love it and wouldn’t do a show without it."

To pay the bills, "we also do a lot of corporate gigs," Gaines says, not proudly. Fou Fou Ha does as well, including performing at the Westfield San Francisco Centre this holiday season. They’re all dying to take their show on the road, but that, too, takes money. "Sponsorship is the key if we’re going to tour with 60 people," said Mike, who’s been working hard on a deal and said he feels close.

Boenobo’s latest plan is Metropolus, a circus-style extravaganza he’s planning (along with Bullogh and Gaines) for next Halloween, hoping to ferry guests (using buses or perhaps even art cars from Burning Man) among several venues in town (such as Mighty, 1015, Temple, and DNA Lounge) and a huge circus tent he wants to erect in Golden Gate Park.

In addition to circus-style entertainment drawn from across the country, he wants to precede the Saturday night finale with three days and nights of workshops and smaller-scale performances. His goal is for Metropolus to because a signature event for San Francisco and the indie circus scene, the equivalent of the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas; the Winter Music Festival in Miami; or the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

The time seems right, with the current financial meltdown creating opportunities even as it makes funding their world domination plans difficult. "Each time you have a crisis like we’re having now, it’s a ripe time for circus," Jando said, noting that circus boomed during the Great Depression and after each of the two World Wars.

And after going through years of pure absurdity in Washington, DC, and on Wall Street, Raz said the clowns of the world — from Stephen Colbert’s conservative television character (who Raz says employs clown techniques in his comedy) to a singer named Boenobo — now have a special resonance with people. As he said, "One of the things clowns do is they live the folly large."

———–

CLOWN’S EYE VIEW

I’ve been following Indie Circus for years, intending to add it to the profiles of various Burning Man subcultures (see www.steventjones.com/burningman.html) that I’ve written for the Guardian, but my reporting on this story began in May. And at the suggestion of Gooferman frontman Boenobo the Klown, I decided to start from the inside and let him turn me into a clown.

As makeup artist Sharon Rose transformed me into a happy clown backstage at DNA Lounge, I asked Boenobo what I should do (besides interview people). We just needed to clown around, keep the drunks from crowding the performers, help clear the stage between acts — whatever needed doing. "We’re the scrubs," he told me, clown-to-clown.

As we spoke, the acrobats stretched, a corpse bride goofed off as she prepared for her aria, members of the Extra Action Marching Band started to slink in, clowns applied their makeup, and female performers occasionally came back from the stage and whipped off their tops.

When Gooferman went on, I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, so I stood next to the stage, watched, and awkwardly tried to be a little goofy in my dancing. A tall, beautiful blond woman stood next to me, catching my eye. She was apparently alone, so after a couple songs, during a lull, I asked her, "So, do you like clowns?"

"I am a clown," she said with a grin.

"Really?" I said. "You don’t look like a clown."

"But I am," she said. "I even do clown porn."

She turned out to be 27-year-old porn star Hollie Stevens, who told me she "grew up as a clown" in the Midwest before moving to California and getting into porn seven years ago. She even starred in the film Clown Porn and still sometimes dons the red nose and face paint for her public appearances, usually just for her own amusement. Stevens once appeared on the Jerry Springer Show as a clown, even getting into the requisite fight on stage with a friend.

"Clowns, you either love them or you hate them," she said, and she loves them.

I asked why she was there and she said that she’d come to see Boenobo. They had talked but never met, and shared a sort of mutual admiration. It was a clown thing. Clowns … they get all the hot chicks.

While we talked, an acrobat worked the pole on the stage, followed by an aerialist performing above the dance floor, one scene woven seamlessly into the other. The clowns of Gooferman puttered around the stage, removing equipment to get ready for the next act, flirting with the girls, trying to scam more drink tickets, or simply entertaining others and themselves.

The life of a clown is rarely dull.

————

UPCOMING INDIE CIRCUS EVENTS

DEC. 5–6

Acrosports Winter Cabaret

639 Frederick, SF

8 p.m., $5–$15

www.citycircus.org

DEC. 12

Auditions for Acrosports’ City Circus

Call (415) 665-2276, ext. 103 for appointment

DEC. 12-14

Frolic: CircusDragBurlesque Festival

Featuring Fou Fou Ha, Anna Conda, and more

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

8 p.m., $100

www.counterpulse.org

1-800-838-3006

DEC. 20

Open House and Holiday Carnival

San Francisco Circus Center

755 Frederick, SF

10 a.m.–4 p.m., free

Pratfalls and Rising Stars

7 p.m., $12 adults, $8 children

San Francisco Circus Center

Tickets and info at www.circuscenter.org

DEC. 20

Storytime Festival, featuring Vau de Vire Society

4–7 p.m., "Tales of Enchantment," (G-rated show) 8–11 p.m., "Storytime for the Inner Child," (R-rated show)

$30–$50

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

www.storytimefestival.org

————

>>More: Read Marke B.’s club review of Bohemian Carnival

Sleigh bells ring, are you drinking?

December 2, 2008

By Molly Freedenberg

Oh, it sure is party season. How do I know? The costumes and formalwear strewn across my floor, the open bottle of hangover-fighting Vitamin B on my nightstand, and the sense of anticipation I get just looking at the calendar. Now, I know San Francisco is a party town, and there’s really no season that isn’t chock full of events worth attending. So what makes this one special? Its my favorite party season. I love the rain and the cold. I love Christmas in all of the ways it’s taken seriously (Dickens Fair) and not so seriously (Santacon).

All Santa wants for Christmas is a mashup party! Bootie SF on Dec. 13 is the official post-Santacon event again this year.

Now, I have friends who would argue that party season officially started with Burning Man. But as far as I’m concerned, it started last Friday night with a fete at the Ambassador hosted by Hendrick’s gin (open bar! ouch.) and Nerve.com. Not only was this schizophrenically-themed 20s/30s/Edwardian/Victorian party was hosted in the perfect venue, and not only did almost every guest actually dress up (bonus points for the fact that I knew only a handful of the fedora-ed attendees), and not only were the cocktails so tasty that they pleased even this gin-skeptic, but the performances were fantastic.

Miss Kitten on the Keys, a regular at Hubba Hubba Revue, was the right combination of bubbly and bawdy. Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey took Acrobalancing and burlesque to a place that was both funny and sexy. The two stripping chanteuses dazzled with voices, costumes, and choreography. And I’m not sure what to say about the blonde bombshell who lost her clothes and gained a giant martini glass chair except that I’ve never seen such a professional burlesque dancer up close.

The lovely Trixxie Carr, pretty in purple (with some guy) at Bootie SF on Nov. 22, will make an apperance at the Lusty Lady Holidy Party on Dec.9. Photo by Tim Farris.

I barely sobered up in time to stop by the next night’s Bootie SF, an always fabulous party (which my dance troupe, the Cheese Puffs, happened to perform at) that featured an all-request set by live mashup band Smashup Derby. I’d be hard pressed to find a more generous, fun-loving crowd than Bootie, or more impressive and lovable hosts than Adrian, Mysterious D, and Trixxie Carr. Next up was the Black Rock Arts Foundation fundraiser at the Bentley Reserve, where we managed to miss all the entertainment but not the gorgeous setting and even more gorgeous crowd (plus, beds? how can you go wrong?). And Sunday saw the burner beourgeoisie headed to Supperclub (beds again! The weekend’s theme?) for the Five & Diamond anniversary party, a beautiful and celebratory affair featuring pretty clothes and even prettier people.

It took nearly ’til Thanksgiving to recover from all that beauty (OK, and booze), but I think I’m ready for what’s coming up in the next few weeks. If my health and hangover remedies cooperate, I’ll be attending a good portion of the following:

THURSDAY, DEC. 4

Visual Vaudeville & Built Burlesque
6pm, free
Brava Theater
2789 24th St., SF
pandorastrunk.com

Brava Theater and Pandora’s Trunk (the art/fashion collective on Lower Haight co-founded by designer Miranda Caroligne) take over the enormous and gorgeous vaudeville theater to fill it with music, burlesque, a narrative fashion presentation, and an indie craft and design show. Featured designers include Bad Unkl Sista, Miss Velvet Cream, Medium Reality, and Ghetto Goldilocks. Sure to be a good time, helped along by Patz & Hall wine and Lagunitas beer.

Pirate Cat Radio Benefit Debacle!
9pm, $7 donation to Pirate Cat Radio
Fat City
314 11th St., SF

I don’t know much about Pirate Cat Radio, but I do know about Hubba Hubba Revue – and if those crazy burlesqueteers are involved (which they are!), you know you’re in for a good time. The evening features live burlesque and performances by The Yes Go’s, Stigma 13, and October Allied.

Czech it out

November 25, 2008

REVIEW An attractive 30-something woman with a face hardened by rough times — most recently the 2002 Prague flood pretty much ruining her Prague home — Marcela (Anna Geislerova) is raising two children under precarious circumstances. Marriage to Jarda (Roman Luknar) is discordant, despite their volcanic sex, in large part because she objects to his paying the bills by running a chop shop. She’s already left the with the kids — albeit due to her son’s severe allergy to their digs’ post-flood moldiness — when Jarda steals the wrong guy’s car and gets his whole operation busted by police. With the breadwinner in jail, what’s Marcela to do? Move in with her crazy religious mother in-law (Emilia Vasaryova)? Nope. Stay with her own mother (Jana Brejchova) and the latter’s very creepy diabetic boyfriend (Jiri Schmitzer) in their cramped apartment? Yes, until something better comes along. Which, surprisingly, it does in the form of Czech-Italian vintner Benes (Josef Abrham), whose stolen car triggered Jarda’s arrest. He’s that staple of 1930s screwball comedies so seldom encountered since, in real or cinematic life: the suave older man who’s single, rich, lonely, and genuinely concerned over our underclass heroine’s welfare. This conceit might seem overly contrived in lesser hands than those of director Jan Hrebejk and scenarist Petr Jarchovsky (of prior foreign-language Oscar nominees 2000’s Divided We Fall and 2004’s Up and Down). But their excellently crafted and performed seriocomedy — with its frank yet funny sexual randiness — never feels less than credible. In a classically warm yet ironic, ambitious yet intimate, absurdist yet realistic Czech cinema fashion that Hrebejk and Jarchovsky will hopefully torch-carry well into the 21st century.

Beauty in Trouble opens Fri/28 in Bay Area theaters.

In every dream home …

November 25, 2008

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’ve been with my husband for 10 years, and we are still pretty young. He has become infatuated with a woman at work. It started as a ride-share and friendship, and recently developed (to their surprise) to an intense infatuation. He started staying out late nights drinking with the work crew so he could spend more time with her. They have not kissed or had sex, but the touchy-feeliness is there. After I discovered the relationship, he vowed to end it and to try to build stronger bonds with me. But ending it was a lot harder than he thought. It took me finding several communications between them for him to agree to go to therapy and finally tell her they could have no more contact outside of work. Now I’m having trouble trusting him. I break down a lot and he feels so guilty he thinks I’d be better off without him. We are starting couple’s therapy soon and he’s not in a position to leave his job. I can’t compete with this infatuation. We had a short infatuation, but things moved so fast that it dwindled more quickly than I think it should have. He told me that she makes him feel dizzy and that he’s never felt like that for anyone before. Am I going to lose him?

Love,

Tearfully Fearful

Dear Tears for Fears:

I’m a little worried, due to the finding of a few last (we hope) e-mails before he agreed to therapy, and frankly, due to your snooping (I assume you were snooping). Both are bad for both of you.

Given that he has apparently given up the stolen moments with Object of Affection (No more late nights drinking, right? And let’s assume his schedule doesn’t allow for Don Draper-style unexplained absences from the office, starting at lunch and ending when he damn well feels like ending them?), I can be cautiously optimistic, if a bit concerned about the you-not-trusting-him (understandable!) and him-feeling-like-skulking-off-because-it’s-all-ruined-now-anyway parts. Not only will he have to get over her for this to work, you will both have to get over yourselves. The latter may be harder.

Infatuations of the sort your husband had usually require some kind of fuel to keep burning, and if they have stopped seeing each other in any but the most unavoidable and quotidian "Hey, did you get that TPS report?" fashion, it has a good chance of dying down.

The truth is, 10 years in, something like this is to be expected. You could even consider patting yourselves on the back that it took 10 years, rather than the more expected seven (some researchers postulate that humans are programmed to move on after seven years, the time it takes to rear a man-cub to independence) or the alarming four, a figure that shows up in recent research on divorce in Western industrialized countries. Small consolation, I know, but 10 good years is worth a lot!

So what does he say now about the dizziness? Is he still dizzy when he thinks of her, or is it now mostly retroactive dizziness, dizzy with some distance? We’ve talked about those dizzy spells before in the column. They are a sure sign of "limerence," the crazy part of love, which I described here: "I make a distinction between loving a whole lot and limerence (which differs from infatuation in both duration and intensity), which is not so much a feeling as it is a form of madness, and like other forms of madness is turning out to have a biochemical basis. ‘When I think of you my serotonin plummets, my darling! O, how my dopamine soars! My heart pounds with norepinephrine …’"

Limerence produces sensations not only of lightheadedness but of physical pain or "heartache." It is tremendously exciting, and we tend to assume that anything so compelling must be both real and important. But if you remember that a really great book or a roller-coaster ride can create similar sensations, you realize that it needn’t be anything of the kind. The rush can be addictive, though, so let’s hope that your husband can give the rush its due and then steer clear. He will need some help, from both you and the therapist. Any sign that he is just nodding and saying whatever will get him out of there the fastest, and I’d start worrying again.

Interestingly, there are 12-step groups not just for the more obvious "sex addicts" but also for "love addicts." They are meant for those who use "love" as a drug to lend meaning to an empty life or excitement to a dull one, not to the ordinary person who, glimpsing something shiny, follows it through the faerie wood and then, realizing he’s been briefly enchanted, returns, chastened. Still, understanding that "love" (these are not quite scare quotes, but certainly sneer quotes; I don’t think what these seekers are finding deserves the name) can be so powerful a drug may help both of you to forgive him.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Fashion Hause: Couture for change

November 21, 2008

Style intern Chloe Schildhause talks trends and togs. Check out her latest installment here.

It’s been over a month since Obama-lovers and fashionistas gathered for “Fashioning Change: Barack Obama Fashion Show Fundraiser,” so it seems silly to talk about the event itself – especially since Obama won.

But it’s certainly not too late to highlight the diverse fashion designers who got involved with the cause. Here are some favorites, including some impeccably tailored, innovative, and classy looks.

Meet the lovely ladies of Carrots

November 18, 2008

SFBG’s Justin Juul continues his fashionable Meet Your Neighbors series with an somewhat-organic boutique makeover

Carrots is one of those fancy boutiques you pass on your way to work and think Jesus, who the hell can afford this stuff? At least, that’s what I was thinking as I peered into the store’s window and saw a mannequin wearing a wool sweater and a button-up shirt with a $280 price tag. Beyond that was a palace filled with bearskin rugs, rusted machinery, and high-end apparel. On a normal shopping day I would have scoffed and taken my business elsewhere. But today was not a normal day. I had been sent to Carrots by the editor of a culture-and-nightlife magazine to check out the boutique’s new promotion: styling appointments for men who love beer. That’s how I met the first heiresses I will probably ever know, the proud owners of Carrots, Catie and Melissa Grimm of Grimmway Farms. They bought me beer, dressed me up in some swanky stuff, and even consented to this no-holds-barred interview about what its like to run a fashion emporium and live on karat juice.

Ooh la la!

SFBG: How did you guys get into the fashion thing?
Melissa Grimm: We’re sisters and when we were growing up we always talked about owning a business together. When we moved here three years ago we just fell in love with the city, but after about six months we realized that something like this was missing; you know, a store that combines men’s and women’s fashion. We wanted to create an environment you could just walk into and not feel intimidated, just a really comfortable space with a nice selection of hard to find things. We have handmade belts from Geoffrey Young, for example. Almost no one else has those.

SFBG: Yeah, you have a lot of stuff I’ve never seen, that’s for sure. Cool stuff. Did you go to fashion or design school or anything?
Melissa: No, but we know a lot about fashion and we try to pride ourselves on things that are hard to find. It comes from living a life of travel, growing up with a mother who’s very elegant and stylish. She sort of instilled that in both of us.

The sisters, anything but Grimm

SFBG: Yeah, my dad was a Marine so…

Catie Grimm: Um, yeah. Also, we both love to travel. It’s our favorite thing to do. And we love fashion. So we try to incorporate those two passions in everything we do.

SFBG: So you carry designers from all over the world then?

Election Night Hits

November 5, 2008

Obama tees are our overalll favorite, but John Avalos tees are a hit, locally.

The number one fashion hit, nationwide, was the ubiquitously beautiful Obama T-shirt. Ask anyone who wore an Obama tee on his election night, they’ll recall how they were greeted with high-fives and whoops of joy as the news spread that Obama had done it, just like we always hoped and prayed he would.

Kamau Patton

November 5, 2008

At the cacophonous intersection of Sun Ra’s wheeling jazz cosmology, P-Funk’s psycho-disco logorrhea, Clarence 13X’s alpha-beta-culto Five-Percent Nation, the early ’90s vainglorious hip-hop of X-Clan, Isis, and Blackwatch, and The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly (1950-64), that sprawling, tinfoil-bedazzled outsider masterpiece by Washington, DC, handyman James Hampton, lies a crazy-ass aesthetic of African American visual and performance culture — the culture of flash. 36-year-old Kamau Amu Patton taps directly into this interstellar shine-on-shine look and feel, jettisoning — or maybe out-transcending — the quasi-theological messages in order to dazzle the mind’s eye blackwards.

Consider Patton’s Talk Show (2007). Two archetypal afrocentric public-access cable hosts, both played by Patton, decked out in on-point dashikis and shells before a pixel projection of Hampton’s Throne, dissemble circuitous phrases. "Knowledge is the foundation of all that is existence … You must respect the thing you observe as being real!" one declaims, while the other sighs loudly and eggs him on: "Ah, damn — that’s the truth." A little silver prayer bell is rung and a 1-800 number flashes across the screen. Telephone message: "Behold, the light has come! Speak on!"

Talk Show‘s blank parody should dead-end in hilarity for anyone familiar with these types of folks. But the dreamlike accumulation of gaudy signifiers, as well as the sense that this is a completely unexplored cultural trope, rockets the video into more thoughtful realms. "I wanted to point up the tautologies of that kind of discourse, to capture the exact aesthetic while highlighting the circular rhythms of delivery, the language of persuasion," Patton says. "But at the same time I felt a responsibility to perfectly perform these characters, the kind of people I grew up with in Brooklyn, who were on my street corner preaching like that. I really freaked out over getting the sunglasses exactly right."

That will to performance perfection, evidenced in several of his other live works, is grounded in Patton’s educational background. He holds a sociology degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed field coursework at the London School of Economics. "I grew disillusioned with sociology because it seemed the opposite of what I felt I was interested in," says Patton, who educates Bay Area kids on the artistic legacies of their particular communities. "I wanted to start with something tangible, or several things, and use them as a jumping-off point to continuous abstract revelations. It’s a generative aesthetic kind of thing. To keep going down a certain illuminated hallway in my work. At the same time, I’m a black man in America, so I have a certain perception or set of experiences that I can draw on as well. I’m definitely drawn to the shamanistic and the kingly — especially African American representations of the kingly. I can go off on what Eric B. and Rakim were wearing on their first album cover for hours."

Other Patton confluences of the statistical and the flashy: his performances as part of the hip-hop and fashion collective Official Tourist; this year’s gorgeous self-published book Edge Theory of Dematerialized Consciousness, a wiggy, chthonic numerical-poetic tract punctuated by eerie nature photographs; and an unnamed retro-digital-video assemblage, viewable at www.kamau.org, in which Patton, as a voodooistic priest, writhes around a hissing explosion, whose glitchy "digital dropouts" and color-balance freakouts are meant to be Cézanne-like portals into other dimensions. Currently, the Emeryville-based Patton is artist-in-residence at Southern Exposure. He’s represented there by a retina-searing collaboration with photographer Suzy Poling called "Glasshouse," which uses e-wasted CRT screens to bend light into hallucination. Behold the warp of truth, infinite.

www.kamau.org

Backroom brokers

October 28, 2008

› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s not the invisible hand of Adam Smith tossing hate mail on your doorstep this fall like ugly confetti. It isn’t a distinct and independent group of candidates and civic organizations that just happen to be saying the same things, either. There is a carefully orchestrated campaign going on to undermine the progressive agenda, block affordable housing and clean energy, and give Mayor Gavin Newsom a majority on the Board of Supervisors.

It’s well funded; it’s serious; it’s based on lies — and it’s a threat to rent control, sustainable environmental policies, universal health care, the city’s living wage law, and the rest of the accomplishments and goals of the progressive majority on the board.

If that sounds overblown, listen to what the organizers of this campaign are saying themselves.

On Aug. 15, after progressives took control of the Democratic County Central Committee and installed Sup. Aaron Peskin as chair, John Keogan, the head of a year-old organization called the San Francisco Coalition for Responsible Growth, a pro-downtown group founded to counter the progressive movement, announced his intentions in a letter to allies.

"CRG are [sic] preparing for an all-out attack with other like-minded groups and now is our time to stand-up [sic] and be counted," Keogan wrote. He asked members to support "taking SF on a sharp turn to the right."

Those "other like-minded groups," according to campaign finance reports, are a Who’s Who list of downtown-based organizations that have consistently fought to roll back tenant protections and slash government spending on social services: the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Committee on Jobs, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the Association of Realtors, the Chamber of Commerce, Plan C, and the Police Officers Association.

By law, political candidates can only raise and spend limited amounts of money. But organizations like BOMA, the Realtors, and Plan C can put as much cash as they want into supporting and opposing candidates — as long as the efforts are "independent."

But the orchestration of the attacks on supervisorial candidates Eric Mar, John Avalos, and David Chiu, and the support for their conservative rivals, Sue Lee, Ahsha Safai, and Joe Alioto, is so sophisticated it’s impossible to believe that these groups and candidates aren’t working together.

Between Sept. 9 and Oct. 20, public records show, the groups spent a combined $363,754 ($178,177 in District 1, $104,308 in D3, and $81,269 in D11) on independent expenditures attacking Avalos, Mar, and Chiu and supporting their opponents. They also spent $20,000 supporting Eva Royale in her long shot race for the solidly progressive District 9 seat.

The landlords and downtown aren’t the only ones organizing. All that spending, and the threat of even more to come considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars these downtown groups still have in the bank, has served to unite tenant and labor groups in ways unseen in previous San Francisco elections.

"There’s an unprecedented coalition between tenants and labor," labor activist Robert Haaland told us. "We’re working together to defeat the landlord candidates, who are also anti-labor."

"We have a tremendous fear that the spending and progress on health care and social services will be rolled back," Tim Paulson, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, told us. "Anything less than our candidates [being elected in each of the three swing districts] will pose a real danger to the movement."

NEWSOM’S SLATE

One of the central players in this attempt to take the city away from the progressives and hand it over to downtown is Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is actively supporting Alioto, Lee, and Safai.

Eric Jaye, the mayor’s chief political advisor, has no formal role in the three district campaigns, but Newsom rarely makes a move in local politics without consulting Jaye. In fact, when reporters call the mayor’s press office to ask for comments on local candidates and initiatives, they are typically referred to the private consultant.

Jaye told us he’s talked to all of Newsom’s candidates. "I told them to run on district issues," he said.

The mayor and the latest member of the Alioto clan to seek office (Joe’s sister, Michela, is already on the board) have walked precincts together. And Newsom is so involved with the downtown effort he’s skipping a major Democratic Party gala (where he was slated to get an award) to spend time instead with the Republican-led Coalition for Responsible Growth (CRG).

Jaye’s main job this fall is running the PG&E campaign against the Clean Energy Act, Proposition H. So far PG&E has spent more than $10 million on the effort, and that number will grow in the final week before the election. Part of that same campaign has been propping up Newsom ally Carmen Chu, who has benefited from thousands of dollars of PG&E spending on her race. Chu’s face is all over PG&E’s No on H fliers.

Another central operator is Alex Tourk, the former Newsom aide who resigned after learning that the mayor had been sexually involved with Tourk’s wife. Tourk is now running the CRG operation.

"They brought me on board to do a volunteer campaign that, yes, they funded, but which seeks to inform voters in a non-partisan fashion where the candidates in D1, 3, and 11 stand on key issues," he said.

That campaign’s goal was to get 10,000 people to mobilize — he called them, using a term popularized by Richard Nixon, the "silent majority."

Tourk maintains that door-hangers the group has been distributing don’t endorse any candidates or push any initiatives. But the messages fit exactly with the overall downtown strategy — they seek to discredit the progressives by linking them with controversial ballot measures such as Proposition V, which would urge the School Board to save the military recruitment program, JROTC.

The supervisors have nothing to do with JROTC, but downtown and the Republican Party are using it as a wedge issue.

CRG is facing some political heat of its own: SF Weekly reported in its Oct. 22 issue that CRG’s recently elected president, engineer Rodrigo Santos, accepted money for professional work from someone who had business before the Building Inspection Commission while he served as commission president. Santos is a Republican, like several key Newsom appointees.

Making matters worse are revelations that Mel Murphy, vice president of the inspection commission and a CRG member, distributed invites in City Hall to an Oct. 17 CRG fundraiser for Safai and Alioto. City officials aren’t supposed to do political work at City Hall.

Alioto’s filings show that on Oct. 17, he received $500 from the firm of Santos and Urrutia’s structural engineer Kelton Finney and $250 from S&U engineer Calvin Hom.

PG&E’S FAKE DEMOCRATIC CLUBS

Political consultants Tom Hsieh Jr. and Jim Ross are involved in the District 1 race (Hsieh also responded to the Guardian on Safai’s behalf) — and are using PG&E and downtown money to support Sue Lee.

Beyond Chron reported Oct. 27 that Hsieh has been sending robocalls in Cantonese to voters saying that Lee is endorsed by the "San Francisco Democratic Party Club." Actually, the Democratic Party endorsed Mar.

What is this new "party club" anyway? Well, the Web site reported, the club started raising money just two weeks ago, and already has collected $30,000 from PG&E, $2,000 from the Chamber of Commerce, $5,000 from GGRA (Golden Gate Restaurant Association), and $70,000 from the Committee on Jobs. Another new club, called the Richmond Reform Democratic Club, is opposing Mar — and has $18,000 from the Committee on Jobs, $5,000 from PG&E, and $2,000 from BOMA.

In television ads paid for by the Realtors, a voiceover tries to link Mar, Avalos, and Chiu to Sup. Chris Daly, whose popularity outside his district is low — although neither Mar nor Chiu has much of a discernable connection to Daly. Avalos was a Daly City Hall aide.

One of the Realtors ads was so utterly inaccurate and deceptive — it claimed Chiu and Avalos support decriminalizing prostitution, when both have publicly opposed the decriminalization ballot measure — that Comcast pulled the ad off the air when Chiu filed a complaint.

Fog City Journal uncovered what appears to be illegal collusion between the police union and Safai. Although candidates are barred from coordinating with groups making independent expenditures on their behalf, POA president Gary Delagnes told FCJ editor Luke Thomas that Safai had given the group a photo of him to use on a mailer, a copyrighted image that Thomas took. Safai denied wrongdoing, but refused to answer further inquiries about the matter.

It’s a pitched battle — labor, the tenants, and the Democratic Party against the landlords, PG&E, downtown interests, and the Republicans. It’s pretty clear which side you want to be on.

Steven T. Jones, Sarah Phelan, and Amanda Witherell contributed to this report.

Street Threads: What the heck are you wearing?

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October 19, 2008
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Guardian street photog Ariel Soto takes in San Francisco style.

Kisha, Crystal, and Gianna, Eddy and Divisadero

After my last few fashion seeking jaunts through the city, the styles seems to be moving towards fall, with boots galore and then a mix of almost all black and white, or totally color crazy. Luckily for us city dwellers, the sun is still shining here in San Francisco and we don’t have to completely cover up to fight the elements, or our toes for that matter, as many were still sporting cute open toed sandals. My favorite fashionista this round? Olive in her adorable purple pants. Whose style do you lust over?

Anee, Castro and 18th Street

Carol, Fillmore and Sacramento

Corey, Pierce and Post

Jamie, Sacramento and Fillmore

James, McAllister and Divisadero

Mayumi, Buchanan and Sutter

Fashionable Francophiles: Meet Please Dress Up!

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October 19, 2008
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By Justin Juul

Please Dress Up! is a clothing company run by Grant Doolittle and Judy Berbarian, two artists who live in near the Panhandle. If you’ve noticed all the girls rocking stripy shirts and pencil pants in the last few months, it’s because of them.

SFBG: So what’s your deal?
Judy Berbarian: My name’s Judy Berbarian and this is Grant Doolittle and we make up the label Please Dress Up! We’re custom clothiers/fashion designers.

SFBG: What’s the general idea behind Please Dress Up!?
Doolittle: Well, it’s just as the name states, really. We want people to dress up and we want to create unique pieces that are timeless in both style and in construction so they can do it. The name Please Dress Up! came to us after realizing what direction we wanted to take our clothing. It’s clear and direct and people get the message right away, I think.

SFBG: Do you fit in with any fashion trends, like a specific school of fashion or whatever?
Berbarian: Our work is rooted in the tradition of French couture: custom made-to-measure garments all available in different fine fabrics. We don’t pay much attention to trends, but we do admire other designers. Some of our favorites are Balenciaga, Viktor and Rolf, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, and John Galliano.

SFBG: What about local designers? Are you part of an indie fashion movement or something?

Berbarian: We’re pretty separate from any scene, but we do admire some local designers. Al from Al’s Attire in North Beach is our favorite. He’s a true craftsman and his work is just amazing. We’d love to have a shop just like his once we get a little more settled. As far as us fitting in to the design scene here, it’s been kinda hard. San Francisco used to be a Mecca for designer and high-quality clothing, but the industry has sort of disappeared and so have most of the resources for designers like us. All we have is each other to push our creativity further. On the flipside though, the indie designer scene here is special because it’s so raw. Also, people here really want to support locally made crafts. That’s why all the indie festivals have been doing so well lately.

SFBG: So how did you guys get into the fashion thing? Did you go to fashion or design school or anything?

Doolittle: Nope. No school for me.
Berbarian: Me neither. I’ve been sewing since I was 14 though. I always wanted to do this, but my Aunt discouraged me. It’s was kind of weird because she always made all my clothes, yet she wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or something. But I just wanted to be like her and make clothes. I was doing it on my own for a while and then Grant came along. We’ve been friends for seven years now, and we’ve been living together for like a year.

A touch of Grayson

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October 14, 2008
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SHOCKING PROFILE When I informed John Epperson, aka Lypsinka, that there was a biography of Grayson Hall, he said, "Of Grayson Hall?! God." Then I told him the title of the book, by R. J. Jamison: A Hard Act to Follow (iUniverse, 224 pages, $18.95). "A hard actress to follow," Epperson observed.

Epperson and I had reached the subject of Hall through a discussion of the thespian skills of Joan Bennett, whose plum-flavored line readings took on an extra coating of irony in Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria. The leap from Suspiria to a different sort of horror classic, the soap opera and movie series Dark Shadows, where Bennett and Hall were part of the cast, was natural — even if the actresses are two of the most artifice-laden in TV and film history.

Hall is entwined with her Dark Shadows character, Dr. Julia Hoffman. Yet she also garnered an Oscar nomination for her performance as Ava Gardner’s nemesis in John Huston’s 1964 The Night of the Iguana. (According to Jamison, though she wasn’t in the movie, Elizabeth Taylor was on set, sporting flowers made out of human hair.) Huston gave Hall the role because of a likeness to Katharine Hepburn, but there was also a bit of Kay Thompson to her onscreen presence, a characteristic photographer William Klein must have noted when he had her caricature his former boss Diana Vreeland in the fashion satire Who Are You, Polly Magoo? (1966).

Hall — real name: Shirley Grossman — is a camp and cult icon. "In death as in life," Jamison writes in A Hard Act to Follow, "she remains adored by a mixture of gay men, drag queens, and Dark Shadows enthusiasts." Hall’s arched brows and piercingly intelligent eyes were the standout features of a one-of-a-kind visage. Her mannerisms and cigarette-smoky voice telegraphed a complicated — dare I say neurotic — intelligence.

As Jamison’s book makes clear, Hall’s genius stroke in Dark Shadows was deciding to play her scientist character as if Hoffman was secretly in love with vampire Barnabas Collins, a facet that wasn’t explicated in the script. This week’s Shock It to Me! Film Festival spotlights Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis’ movie offshoots of the one-of-a-kind gothic soap opera, 1970’s House of Dark Shadows and 1971’s Night of Dark Shadows. In Night, Hall adds another Dark Shadows role to her turns as Hoffman and the gypsy fortune teller Magda Rakosi with housekeeper Carlotta Drake. Whatever the part, Grayson Hall made an impression.

"SHOCK IT TO ME!" DARK SHADOWS TRIBUTE

See Rep Clock.

www.shock-it-to-me.com

Free-flowin’: Independent Fashion Fest dazzles

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October 12, 2008
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Photos and text by Ariel Soto

Edgy, non-traditional and dramatic models made their way down the catwalk Saturday night at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts Bay Area Independent Craft & Couture Runway show. There was no lack of creative and unique designs, all of which seemed to stem from the free and colorful spirit of San Francisco. The fashion presented, which featured local designers who focus on creating sustainable clothing and stick by green business practices, featured designers from R.A.G. Co-op, Hellyn Teng Mersereau, Sarah Zins, Rehema Bah, and Erin Mahoney.

Electoral collide-o-scope: smooches and fury

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October 8, 2008
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Two snapshots of the right and left — such as! — at this increasingly hysterical election moment that I think say it all:

This month’s cover of The Progressive:

And an AP “shot” from one of Palin’s Florida rallies yesterday. (The one where someone yelled “kill him!” or the one where they screamed at an African American sound man to “sit down, boy!”? And weren’t these kids just at LoveFest last Saturday?)

Of course, it seems right now we’re winning — so say these wonderful things loud and proud, lest you lose your chance soon. And yet, we’re losing ground on Prop 8 — help out already! It’s an upside-down autumn, and I feel like wearing shoes on my feet and hamburgers eating people.

Shout outs: Fierce bloggers and others to help stay sane during all this kerfuffle: Megan at Jezebel (this should be taught at blogging school), Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic, of course the fab Kos who is freaking killing it this election with the wonky deets, and, as ever, Cathy Horyn‘s coverage of the global fashion weeks — because I’m far too busy frantically, panickedly checking the politisphere to measure this season’s hemlines. Plus, that third grade class in Alaska. Stay golden, kids!

Fashion Hause: Liberals like fashion too

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October 7, 2008
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Style intern Chloe Schildhause talks trends and togs. Check out her last installment here.

Politics and fashion may seem like polar opposites, but much like lox and bagels, they actually go together quite nicely. To prove this point, to convince US citizens to vote for Obama, and to dispel the myth that progressives have no style, Environmentalists for Obama are hosting the fundraiser “Fashioning Change: A Fashion Show for Obama” on October the 17th.

There is no doubt that Obama is a fashionable man, with many comparing him and his family to the stylish political stars of Camelot. Michelle Obama is set to be a style icon as fashionable as the beloved Jackie O. Robin Gihvan, fashion writer for the Washington Post, said about the couples’ style, “Barack and Michelle Obama dressed for history…in a blend of the patriotic, the regal, the authoritative and the fashionable,” and praised Michelle Obama for “wearing a violet sheath with a wide black belt and matching shoes.”

The fashionable fundraiser will feature clothing by local designers such as Erica Tanov and Cari Borja as well as a silent auction, music by DJ Heco, scrumptious hourdevoures and plenty of Sangria. Donations are highly encouraged.

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