Festivals

our Weekly Picks, July 13-19, 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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THURSDAY 14

EVENT

Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara

Here’s your spiritual riddle of the week, young grasshopper. Say you’re a Buddhist monk. Two thousand fires are sprinting across California’s tinderous golden landscape. The wind shifts. One blaze streams down a single unpaved road, the sole portal to your monastery. The conundrum expressed best by the Clash alights in your ever-mindful mind: should I stay or should I go now? In June 2008, five monks chose to stay when the Big Sur fires threatened Tassajara, the country’s oldest Zen monastery. Author Colleen Morton Busch shares their story in her new book Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara. Hear her read selections, plus stories from the monks and wild land firefighters, on how they successfully fought the fire with the fire within. (Kat Renz)

7:30 p.m., free

San Francisco Zen Center

300 Page, SF

(415) 863-3136

www.sfzc.org

 

EVENT

“Cabaret Bastille”

LitQuake revives the ghosts of Left Bank bohemia for its cabaret and fundraiser Cabaret Bastille. Everyone’s favorite modernists will be in the house — Anais Nin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Henry Miller, H.D. and of course, the salon dom herself Gertrude Stein — as local writers impersonate these legends and read selections from their work. Other merriments include songs by accordion-accompanied chanteuse Gabrielle Ekedal, a make-your-own-Matisse station, exquisite corpses, and much genius-inducing imbibing. (Matt Sussman)

8 p.m.–midnight, $15

Cellspace

2050 Bryant, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

EVENT

“Crimes Against Horticulture: When Bad Taste Meets Power Tools”

I earn most of my money on my knees, initiating a rampage of genocidal proportions upon the natural world. I pull weeds and I love the killing, though not without remorse, for who am I to judge? (As a nonbreeder, I’m biologically nil compared to the reproductive success of an invasive plant.) I wonder if funny-man gardener Billy Goodnick would diagnose this murderous spree a “crime against” or a “crime in the name of” horticulture? An award-winning landscape architect and host of the Santa Barbara television show Garden Wise Guys, Goodnick brings his humor-infused message of sustainability to horticultural criminals, crazies (any “compulsive rakers” out there?), and petal perfectionists alike. (Renz)

7 p.m., $15

Conservatory of Flowers

100 John F. Kennedy, Golden Gate Park, SF

(415) 831-2090

www.conservatoryofflowers.org

 

COMEDY

Jay Pharoah

Even though comedian Jay Pharoah is only 23, he is already a seasoned veteran of the stand-up circuit, hitting stages since his early teens and honing his hilarious impersonation skills. Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, and President Obama are among his stable of dead-on, side splitting impressions, some of which, along with his many other comedic talents, have been featured on national television since he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live last year. Pharoah’s star is only certain to rise with more national exposure, so do yourself a favor and catch him this weekend in the cozy confines of Cobb’s before it’s too late. (Sean McCourt)

Thurs/14–Sun/17, 8 p.m.

Also Fri/15–Sat/16, 10:15 p.m., $18.50–$20.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedy.com

 

FRIDAY 15

PERFORMANCE

Persepolis, Texas

Sometimes it takes a Texas-reared second-generation Iranian American cisgendered female in drag to point out what should be obvious: “That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows” (to quote an old Englishman who never set a pointy shoe in Texas). Is self-presentation of any kind just a drag act by another name? Isn’t the real question whose terms apply in the fashioning of one’s persona? Whose hijab is it anyway? San Francisco–based performance artist Maryam Farnaz Rostami explores the tenuous line between identity, persona, eroticism, and exoticism in her first evening-length solo show, embodying a handful of characters — including Rostami’s celebrated drag persona Mona G. Hawd — in movement, music, and an unexpected narrative encompassing contemporary Iran, Iranian Texas, and queer San Francisco. (Robert Avila)

Fri/15–Sun/17, 8 p.m., $20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

1-800-838-3006

www.counterpulse.org

 

FILM

Skatetown, U.S.A.

Billed as “The Rock and Roller Disco Movie of the Year!” — the people behind Roller Boogie (which came out the same year) must have taken great offense — 1979 crapsterpiece Skatetown, U.S.A. has been very hard to find for years. What a cast: top-billed rodent Scott Baio, a slutted-up Marcia Brady (a.k.a. Maureen McCormick, who claimed she became a coke addict on this shoot), and 1979 Playboy Playmate-turned-1980-murder-victim Dorothy Stratten, to name just a few. Plus tons of actual roller-disco troupes — you can tell they thought this was their ticket to Broadway — and two genuinely talented dancers showcased as good and bad guy. The very Warriors-style villain is Patrick Swayze, making his film debut (his belt-whip skate solo smokes). With its mix of stupid skit comedy and stupider ensemble dramatics, Skatetown, U.S.A. is a fungal time capsule that played less-than-fresh even at its moment of birth. Yet it’s kind of great anyway. This one-night only revival features free tube socks, presumably not-free beer, and a post-screening roller disco party at Cellspace. (Dennis Harvey)

7 and 9 p.m., $15 (includes roller disco)

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 431-3611

www.roxie.com

 

PERFORMANCE

Hello, My Name is Joe

Bringing a global perspective to the push and pull of power structures, Meridian Dance presents 8213 Physical Dance Theater’s world premiere Hello, My Name is Joe, a site-specific work inspired by the concurrent visual art exhibition “In Extremis: Prints Monumental, Intimate.” Based in Taipei, Taiwan, under the direction of Chuo-Tai Sun with collaborator Casey Avaunt (a Maine native), 8213 Physical Dance Theater reveals the ways humans emotionally and physically battle controls. Launching from the old children’s song “Hello, My Name is Joe,” in which the protagonist is asked by his boss to push, pull, and turn buttons, the work challenges the performers to negotiate their freedom within the walls of the Meridian Gallery. (Julie Potter)

Fri/15–Sat/16, 7:30 p.m., $10–$20

Meridian Gallery

535 Powell, SF

(415) 398-7229

www.meridiangallery.org

 

SATURDAY 16

 

FILM

When Harry Met Sally …

They’ve brought salsa and swing dancing, a circus festival, and classical music to Union Square. Now the Jewels in the Square Performance Series reopens age-old debates about the nature of friendships and sex, the rebound girlfriend, and orgasmic deli dishes. The latest event on the outdoor-entertainment calendar (in partnership with Film Night in the Park and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival) is a screening of 1989 classic rom-com When Harry Met Sally. Prime your funny bone for the upcoming 2011 SFJFF (opening night is July 21) with the ultimate “Can a straight man and a straight woman ever be just friends?” flick, starring Meg “On the Side” Ryan and Billy “Made a Woman Meow” Crystal. Bring a friend, significant other, or both. (David Getman)

8 p.m., free

Union Square

Geary at Powell, SF

www.sfjff.org

 

MUSIC

Black Dynamic Sound Orchestra

“Blaxsploitation” cinema is as much prized for its music as for its leather-wearing, Afro-having, ass-kicking heroes and the vengeance that they wreak. What would Shaft (1971) be without its theme song? How could justice be adequately dispensed, or love properly made, without exceptionally funky grooves? It was with questions such as these in mind that the producers of Black Dynamite (2009) must have chosen Adrian Younge to score their filmic love song to black belts and pointy collars. Younge, who also edited Black Dynamite, created a perfect backdrop to a ridiculous movie, and wrote some great songs doing it. With Younge at the helm, Black Dynamite Sound Orchestra takes his vision on the road, performing selections from the Black Dynamite original soundtrack as well as unreleased tracks from a forthcoming album. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

With Lord Loves a Working Man and the Struts

10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

EVENT

Phono Del Sol Music and Food Festival

Music festivals can totally suck. They cost an Xbox 360, take half a week of your life (that’s never coming back) to see four bands that were in town at small venues the month before, make you realize Kanye is better on YouTube, force you to fend off that bro who won’t stop asking for drugs, and camp in a in a parking lot next to Porta-Potties. It’s a little much. Thankfully the folks at the Bay Bridged blog and Tiny Telephone have you covered with this darling, commitment-free fest that combines two SF passions: music and food. They’ll bring musicians including Aesop Rock, Mirah, and Appetite, and you bring your appetite (plus cash for Off the Grid’s food trucks.) (Ryan Prendiville)

Noon-7 p.m., free

Potrero Del Sol Park

25th St. at San Bruno, SF

www.thebaybridged.com

 

SUNDAY 17

 

VISUAL ART/EVENT

“Google Family Day”

In its “Doodle 4 Google: What I’d Like To Do Someday … ” exhibit (through July 19), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art linked up with Google to showcase the works of 40 student artists. The works (selected from more than 100,000 submissions) were inspired by a prompt for kids to envision what they would like to do in the future — and channel that energy into redesigning a logo for the website’s continually changing home page. The moon-themed winner (which earned its seven-year-old creator, South San Francisco’s Matteo Lopez, $15,000 in college money plus a technology grant for his school) hit Google in May. The 39 other contestants have the pretty nifty consolation prize of having had their artwork hung in a museum before they’ve even hit 18. Today’s “Google Family Day” event offers free entry for families with kids under 12, with special hands-on activities, performances, and more aimed at young artists. (Getman)

11 a.m.–4 p.m., free for families with children under 12

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

 

TUESDAY 19

 

MUSIC

Parenthetical Girls

Pop music. To some these two words together bring to fore images of cloying sweetness, a toothy smile in high gloss shrink-wrap bearing down on contented mall shoppers. Parenthetical Girls is here to remind us that pop still has cards up its sleeve, if not revel in the antagonism. The willfully obscure recording project (usually) from the Pacific Northwest warps complex operatic composition à la Sparks and Eno, adds a dash of Morrissey’s infamous ego, and ends up with songs that are almost caustically intellectual. Experimental it is, but not so much that the essential framework is smothered. Instead, Parenthetical Girls emerges as something uncanny; it draws you in with familiar pop music tropes but leaves you pleasantly unsettled. (Berkmoyer)

With Extra Life and Sam Mickens

9 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com 

 

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

Upcoming summer festivals

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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July 14-24

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various Bay Area venues. (415) 627-9141, www.midsummermozart.org . Prices vary. You won’t be hearing any Beethoven or Schubert at this midsummer series — the name of the day is Mr. Mozart alone.

 

July 16-17

Connoisseur’s Marketplace Santa Cruz between Camino and Johnson, Menlo Park. (650) 325-2818, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Let the artisans do what they do best — you’ll polish off the fruits of their labor at this outdoor expo of artisan food, wine, and craft.

 

July 21-Aug 8

SF Jewish Film Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfjff.org. Times and prices vary. A three week smorgasbord of world premiere Jewish films at theaters in SF, Berkeley, the Peninsula, and Marin County.

 

July 22-Aug 13

Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso, Atherton. (650) 330-2030, www.musicatmenlo.org. Classical chamber music at its best: this year’s theme “Through Brahms,” will take you on a journey through Johannes’ most notable works.

 

July 23-Sept 25

 SF Shakespeare Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfshakes.org. Various times, free. Picnic with Princess Innogen and her crew with dropping a dime at this year’s production of Cymbeline. It’s by that playwriter guy… what’s his name again?

 

July 30

Oakland A’s Beer Festival Eastside Club at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl. www.oakland.athletics.mlb.com. 4:05-6:05pm, free with game ticket. Booze your way through the Oakland A’s vs. Minnesota Twins game while the coliseum is filled with brewskies from over 30 microbreweries, there for the chugging in your souvenir A’s beer mug.

 

July 30-31

 Berkeley Kite Festival Cesar Chavez Park, 11 Spinnaker, Berk. www.highlinekites.com. 10am-5pm, free. A joyous selection of Berkeley’s coolest kites, all in one easy location.

 

July 31

Up Your Alley Dore between Folsom and Howard, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm, $7-10 suggested donation. Whether you are into BDSM, leather, paddles, nipple clamps, hardcore — or don’t know what any of the above means, this Dore Alley stroll is surprisingly friendly and cute once you get past all the whips!

 

Aug 1-7

SF Chefs Various venues, SF. www.sfchefs2011.com. Times and prices vary. Those that love to taste test will rejoice during this foodie’s paradise of culinary stars sharing their latest bites. Best of all, the goal for 2011’s event is tons of taste with zero waste.

 

Aug 7

SF Theater Festival Fort Mason Center. Buchanan and Marina, SF. www.sftheaterfestival.org. 11am-5pm, free. Think you can face about 100 live theater acts in one day? Set a personal record at this indoor and outdoor celebration of thespians.

 

Aug 13

San Rafael Food and Wine Festival Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission, San Rafael. 1-800-310-6563, www.sresproductions.com. Noon-6pm, $25 food and wine tasting, $15 food tasting only. A sampler’s paradise, this festival features an array of tastes from the Bay’s best wineries and restaurants.

 

Aug 13-14

* Nihonmachi Street Fair Post and Webster, SF. www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Founded by Asian Pacific American youths, this Japantown tradition is a yearly tribute to the difficult history and prevailing spirit of Asian American culture in this SF neighborhood.

 

Aug 20-21

Oakland Art and Soul Festival Entrances at 14th St. and Broadway, 16th St. and San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 444-CITY, www.artandsouloakland.com. $15. A musical entertainment tribute to downtown Oakland’s art and soul, this festival features nationally-known R&B, jazz, gospel, and rock artists.

 

Aug 20-22

* SF Street Food Festival Folsom St from Twenty Sixth to Twenty Second, SF. www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. 11am-7pm, free. All of the city’s best food, available without having to go indoors — or sit down. 2011 brings a bigger and better Street Food Fest, perfect for SF’s burgeoning addiction to pavement meals.

 

Aug 29-Sept 5

Burning Man Black Rock City, Nev. (415) TO-FLAME, www.burningman.com. $320. This year’s theme, “Rites of Passage,” is set to explore transitional spaces and feelings. Gather with the best of the burned-out at one of the world’s weirdest, most renowned parties.

 

Sep 10-11

* Autumn Moon Festival Street Fair Grant between California and Broadway, SF. (415) 982-6306, www.moonfestival.org. 11am-6pm, free. A time to celebrate the summer harvest and the end of summer full-moon, rejoice in bounty with the moon goddess.

 

Sept 17-18

SF International Dragon Boat Festival California and Avenue D, Treasure Island. www.sfdragonboat.com. 10am-5pm, free. The country’s largest dragon boat festival sees beautiful man-powered boats take to the water in 300 and 500 meter competitive races.

 

Sept 23-25

SF Greek Food Festival Annunciation Cathedral. 245 Valencia, SF. www.sfgreekfoodfestival.org. Fri.-Sat., 11am-10pm; Sun., noon-9pm, free with advance ticket. Get your baba ghanoush on during this late summer festival, complete with traditional Greek dancing, music, and wine.

 

Sept 25

Folsom Street Fair Folsom between 7th and 12th St., SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org . 11am-6pm, free. The urban Burning Man equivalent for leather enthusiasts, going to this expansive SoMa celebration of kink and fetish culture is the surest way to see a penis in public (you dirty dog!).

 

Sept 30-Oct 2

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com. 11am-7pm, free. Pack some whiskey and shoulder your banjo: this free three day festival draws record-breaking crowds — and top names in a variety of twangy genres — each year.

 

Items with asterisks note family-fun activities.

The faces of High Sierra

Andrew Lam
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All photos by Erik Anderson

Consider the camping festival. A chance for music, art, and recreational drug use fans to slough off the shackles of outrageous office jobs in the summertime and head out for the hills, to engage in traditional Mardi Gras mode where playing is your job, three concurrent stages of live music is the norm, and everyone — everyone! — has the residue of somebody’s glitter in their facial hair (and they all have facial hair).

Such was the 2011 High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, Calif. — can you tell it was a good time?

High Sierra, I’ve always thought, is one of the most manageable festivals out there. It’s not too big — but not too small (typically, it hosts about 10,000 happy campers). It’s far enough from the city that you feel like you’ve achieved something when you round that last bend of the Feather River into the clear night of the Sierras, but you can still get out there if you leave mid-afternoon from the Bay.

Most importantly (unless like me you like to spend these weekends shooting the shit with friends you only get to see come festival-time), the music is supremely varied — Maceo Parker’s soul jazz rocked the main grandstand in the Saturday afternoon gleam and then the gleamy-eyed Sunday night late night party. Electronic beat maker Emancipator zoomed prettily through a Blackalicious remix that made the post-Dawes and Diego’s Umbrella-klezmer-power-surge crowd sink into a deep groove at the Vaudeville stage. Local boys Soft White Sixties brought the rock, Morning Jacket and Ween headlined, Sunset Productions‘ Silent Frisco silent disco — which will make an Outside Lands appearance this year — provided essential (lack of) background music for the dawn games of kickball in the shady grove, small impromptu sessions sprang up in every camping zone and bend in the dirt paths by the vendors and late night venues, and the kid’s stage — well hell, Dead-style environmental educators Banana Slug String Band killed it, per usual.

But hey, every music festival’s got music — and you can peep all these bands in the Youtube links I just shared with you. What you can’t catch on Youtube is the baby balancing on his dad’s outstretched palm (gonna be a surfer!), the impromptu high fives after the Samba Stilt Circus, parachute parties, and the innertube suspenders that some lucky man was still wearing after taking the customary HSMF break to dunk into the freezing cold mountain waters. 

So lucky us, photographer Erik Anderson’s sharing his flicks to those effects. You’re officially invited to clear your mind, click through the slideshow above, and pretend you spent your Fourth of July weekend with us. 

 

Biting the Big Apple

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Biting the Big Apple

arts@sfbg.com THEATER The world’s largest arts festival, the now-venerable Edinburgh Festival Fringe, got its start in 1946 as a scrappy party-crasher outside the official Edinburgh International Festival. Thanks to its inspired blend of difficult-to-categorize, anything-goes performances, the Edinburgh Fringe helped create a definitive theatrical format that has since flourished in Fringe Festivals around the world. Among other things, Fringe is a catalyst for new works, new companies, and new interpretations of how theater can be made, and experienced.

Of all the Fringe Festivals in the United States, the one that generates the most buzz is by far the New York International Fringe Festival (this year’s dates are Aug. 12-28). That the New York Fringe is curated is a sticking point among festival purists because it violates one of the founding precepts of Fringe: that anyone with a story to tell and a willing venue can take part. Despite that breach, there still manages to be a pretty broad spectrum of representation.

Works originating in the Bay Area display a staggering variety: the tale of an Iranian-American woman striking a compromise with her Islamic family over her live-in atheist boyfriend; a provocative series of multigenerational monologues on body image and acceptance; a musical homage to a 19th century black opera pioneer; and a transcontinental coming-of-age story.

When Bay Area comedian Zahra Noorbahksh began developing her solo show All Atheists Are Muslim at the Bay Area’s Solo Performance Workshop in 2008, she discovered something about the material that she had previously worried about being alienating or inaccessible.

“The Muslim and non-Muslim public is [hungry] for a three-dimensional view of a mainstream Islamic-Iranian American family that isn’t some heavy-handed political discourse,” she shares over e-mail. “I love seeing that moment when the audience that came in with their arms crossed, ready to challenge me and my ‘ludicrous’ title, realize that by my father’s very mathematical equation, all atheists are in fact Muslim.”

For Noorbahksh, the fest offers not only the opportunity of performing in New York but of expanding on the very definition of Fringe.

“It gives a ‘fringe’ culture and religion like Islam a platform and an opportunity to open up a dialogue with the non-Islamic world,” she says. “[And it] has given me an opportunity to be a part of the healing that needs to happen between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans and the general image of Islam in the public consciousness today.”

Oakland native ‘rie Shontel (a.k.a. Anita Woodley) raises consciousness every week as a producer for syndicated North Carolina Public Radio show The Story in Chapel Hill. But it wasn’t until 2009 that Shontel was moved to tell her own story, initially to friends and family, and Mama Juggs was born. Inspired by the memory of her 100-year-old great-grandmother, Suga Babe, and her repertoire of breast-feeding songs, Shontel performs four interwoven monologues wrestling with body image and breast awareness (her mother, one of the characters portrayed, died of breast cancer at 47), and the cultural myopia surrounding both. What sounds on the page like potentially heavy-handed material reveals itself on the stage as a thoroughly engaging, irreverent take on “titty juggs,” her great-grandmother’s term.

August may mark Mama Juggs‘ first foray into Fringe, but Shontel has already been drumming up national support via her “100 Living Rooms” tour, performing in private homes across the U.S.

“The intimate parlor performances have raised many interesting discussions and encouraged many to get breast exams,” she reports. “My mission for Mama Juggs is to make breast health a topic for conversation.”

“I was inspired by this very accomplished woman of color and wanted to give voice to her story that has been largely forgotten.” Opening up an entirely different conversation, Oakland-based opera singer Angela Dean-Baham’s solo show The Unsung Diva traces the history of 19th- century black opera sensation Sissieretta Jones. In a format reminiscent of Tayo Aluko’s tribute production Call Mr. Robeson, Dean-Baham’s one-woman work of musical theater combines American folk and spirituals with operatic arias and character vignettes drawn from the life of a woman once so influential that she was the first African American to perform at the then-unnamed Carnegie Hall. Like her hero, Dean-Baham is excited about what a successful run in New York could mean for her future.

“NY Fringe offers its artists a tremendous opportunity to put work before NY agents, producers, press, diverse audiences at a reasonable cost to self-producing artists,” she said. “As a juried theater festival, they offer the immediate gratification that other artists find the work engaging and that there is an audience for the work.”

San Francisco-born Aileen Clark knows firsthand the universality of a good story. Raised speaking three languages on four continents, Clark nevertheless refers to herself as the “whitest Latinita” on the planet, and her solo show How I learned to Stop Worrying and Lost My Virginity has touched a nerve among audiences of all colors and persuasions.

“I’ve always loved telling stories and acting out everything I see and do,” she says, describing the impetus behind the show’s creation. “I set out to make a play that would feel like we were just hanging out at a party and talking.” With John Caldon of Guerrilla Rep and Claire Rice of AMP, she crafted a comedic coming-of-age memoir packed with 21 characters, which debuted at the EXIT Theatre in November 2009. Newly transplanted to Brooklyn, Clark hopes Virginity will help introduce her to New York audiences.

“This show definitely gives me a wonderful connection with the people who come to see it,” she enthuses. “I’m hoping Fringe can be a door that opens other doors to great opportunities.”

www.fringenyc.org

Our Weekly Picks, July 6-12, 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 6

DANCE/THEATER

Project Bust

Malinda LaVelle’s Project Bust tackles tits and ass without A Chorus Line. Presented as part of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance’s second annual Summer Dance Series, Project Bust is the culmination of 18 months of research and creation with eight women in their 20s. A group of SF Conservatory of Dance-trained performers make up LaVelle’s company, Project Thrust, and for this evening-length dance theater work, they address some of the ups and downs of being young and female. This fresh crew marries athletic prowess with a fearless attitude, and their work is not complete without a competitive pillow fight. (Julie Potter)

Wed/6 and Aug. 3, 8 p.m., $15

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

(415) 626-0453

www.zspace.org

 

MUSIC

Rosebuds

Honestly, talking about this band at all makes me feel creepy. I blame their publicist. Since the release of The Rosebuds Make Out and over the course of four albums, Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp were not just a band, they were married. Ideally, they were in love. It’s the sort of biographical information that can’t be glossed, but also overwhelmingly frames the musical relationship. Now that the pair are divorced, is their new album, Loud Planes Fly Low, truly as plaintively sad as it sounds? Onstage is it just an act? Does Howard seem happier in GAYNGS? Maybe Crisp’s latest blog post has the answers. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Other Lives

8 p.m., $14

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

THURSDAY 7

FILM

San Francisco Frozen Film Festival

San Francisco has more film festivals than people I think. But — like the star of Last Fast Ride: The Life, Love, and Death of a Punk Goddess — the San Francisco Frozen Film Festival stands out from the pack. Last Fast Ride, which is screening at the fest, documents the late Marion Anderson: dominatrix, performance artist, and native San Franciscan whose stint as lead vocalist of the Insaints (and arrest at 924 Gilman; hint: it involves nudity and a banana) will forever secure her legacy as one of the wildest and most outspoken women ever to pick up a microphone. Also screening at the festival are several enormously varied collections of short films, as well as other full-length documentaries including Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements and Ocean Monk, which follows the surfing disciples of weightlifting spiritualist Sri Chinmoy. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

Thurs/7–Sat/9, $11

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.frozenfilmfestival.com

 

VISUAL ART

“Chroma: About Color”

The summer months call for color and spontaneity; the newest exhibit at Cain Schulte Contemporary Art offers both. Tonight’s opening reception rings in a monthlong show featuring bright hues rendered in all kinds of media by five different artists. The gallery consistently spotlights artists on the rise and those just hitting their stride. This show is no different. Jessica Snow displays pieces on canvas and paper; Carrie Seid uses aluminum and silk; David Buckingham constructs with metal; Joel Hoyer with panel; and Eileen Goldenberg encaustic works. Don’t be blue if you can’t make it tonight: the art is on display for most of the summer. (David Getman)

Through Aug. 20

5:30–7:30 p.m., free

Cain Schulte Contemporary Art

251 Post, SF

(415) 543-1550

www.cainschulte.com

 

THEATER

Act One, Scene Two

Here’s a unique idea from a theater company that takes its name to heart: Un-Scripted’s Act One, Scene Two, which every night hosts a different playwright wielding an unfinished script. After an onstage debriefing with the author, the company takes the stage to perform the first scene from the first act, reading through the lines for the first time. The flyin’-by-the-seats-of-our-pants theme continues as Un-Scripted shifts to full-on improv mode, finishing out the play using their own wits but guided by information shared by the writer in that on-stage interview about his or her writing process, influences, etc. Sophisticated spontaneity (and likely some decent doses of impulsive humor) awaits. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Aug. 20

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m., $10–$20

SF Playhouse, Stage Two

533 Sutter, SF

(415) 869-5384

www.un-scripted.com

 

FRIDAY 8

FILM

“Watching Big Brother: A Tribute to the Summer of 1984”

Ah, 1984: “Like a Virgin,” Boy George, Mary Lou Retton, Ronald Reagan — er, anyway. Politics aside, it was a magnificent year if you were an elementary-school kid obsessed with pausing the VCR to better analyze each second of every new Duran Duran video. The movies from 1984 weren’t too shabby, either, with a top 10 filled with now-classics: Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, Footloose … trust me, you’ve seen ’em all. Midnites for Maniacs salutes one of the greatest years for film (suck it, 1939) with a two-day cinematic throwdown. The event’s title, “Watching Big Brother,” nods to the Orwellian tone of the times, but the films are (mostly) pure fun, from big hits like Gremlins and The Karate Kid to more culty choices: The Pope of Greenwich Village, starring the original faces of Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke; immortal sci-fi new-wave nugget The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; and a Midnites for Maniacs favorite, Diane Lane punk-noir musical relic Streets of Fire. (Eddy)

Fri/8, 7:30 p.m.; Sat/9, 2:30 p.m., $12–$13

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

 

MUSIC

“Let Her Dance”

How high can your hair go? Like, 1962 high? Better get to back-combing, because “Let Her Dance” is a recreation of a prom circa the early ’60s, with a lineup of local musicians crooning tunes from the era (think Ike and Tina, the Bobby Fuller Four, Curtis Mayfield, and the like). The elegant Verdi Club, which could actually serve as a prom venue, has a big dance floor, so you can twist, mashed-potato, watusi, and frug to the sounds of DJ Primo Pitmo, plus Heidi Alexander and Grace Cooper (the Sandwitches), Shannon “And the Clams” Shaw, Quinn Deveaux, and others breathing new life into retro jams, with back-up help from the Goldstar Band. (Eddy)

8 p.m., $15

Verdi Club

2424 Mariposa, SF

www.letherdance.eventbrite.com

 

MUSIC

Limp Wrist

As punk rock begins yet another agonizing mutation into a marketable consumer good, a process that seems to ebb and flow with each passing lustrum, it’s easy to forget that bands can still be fierce. With a fearsome live show (I have seen the band rip a microphone cord in half, which, if you’ve ever tried — though I don’t know why you would — ou know is not easy) and songs like “I Love Hardcore Boys, I Love Boys Hardcore” and “Recruiting Time,” Limp Wrist strikes terror into the hearts of homophobes everywhere with wit, intelligence, and wicked-fast power chords. Vocalist Martin, also of the infamous Los Crudos, is a hairy-chested, short-shorts-wearing bomb who goes off when drum blasts start and queercore reaches its blitzkrieg zenith. (Berkmoyer)

With Drapetomania and Brilliant Colors

9 p.m., $7

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elriosf.com

 

MUSIC

“The Tipper Sound Experience!”

There is an arms race taking place right now in the electronic music scene. The DJ booth has become a launching pad for a complete sensory assault. Tipper is not new to the fight, having built up a reputation by stuffing cars with a dangerous quantity of speakers (Funktion Ones — only the best), and blowing up crowds. This latest project not only continues the weaponization of glitchy breakbeats and wobbly down- tempo, but escalates it through Tipper’s extensive research into holographic surround sound, for 360 degrees of musical bombardment. (Prendiville)

With VibesquaD, Dov, and Hypnotech; visuals by Johnathan Singer

9 p.m., $25–$40

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

1-800-745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

MUSIC

“A Benefit for Cheb I Sabbah”

Algerian-born DJ turned world musician Cheb I Sabbah been a part of San Francisco’s music scene since the 1980s; he’s the kind of innovative, constantly evolving musician who can’t help but influence other creative types he’s met along the way. That community, as well as his many fans, are uniting to help Cheb I, who is uninsured, cover medical bills after a devastating diagnosis of stage four stomach cancer. As you might suspect, the benefit boasts a massive lineup, with artists drawn from Anon Salon, Hookahdome, Opel Productions, Non Stop Bhangra, and Six Degrees Records, plus Fat Chance Bellydance dancers and DJs Syd Gris, Janaka Selecta, Turbo Tabla, DJ Sep, and many more. There will also be a raffle (win private belly dance lessons!) and if you can’t make the show, you can donate directly to the cause at Cheb I’s website. (Eddy)

9 p.m.–4 a.m., $15 and up

1015 Folsom, SF

www.chebisabbah.com


SATURDAY 9

EVENT

“Ugly Sweater Scavenger Hunt”

CLASH’s Ugly Sweater Scavenger Hunt finally gives you an excuse to bust out that Christmas gift from Grandma on a summer Saturday night. The hunt is stitched together by so-bad-it’s-good fashion, flowing alcohol, and scavenger accomplishments beamed in by social networking. Four to six people team up to complete funky challenges that might include coercing clues from characters planted in the city, thumb wrestling children, and sparking impromptu street dance parties. CLASH (which stands for California League of Adult Scavenger Hunters) pledges to “avoid the raunchy” but warns of a “light suggestive undertone at times” to shake things up. Luckily, anyone age 21 to 87 is welcome, so feel free to bring along the original gifter! (Getman)

8 p.m., $20

Blackthorn Tavern

834 Irving, SF

(415) 623-9629

www.clashsf.com 


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Sad day for San Francisco film fans

Sue Vaughan
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2
Sad day for San Francisco film fans

Two big bummers today, my fellow cinemaniacs.

The first bit of news is that it’s official, according to collective member Claudia Lehan: beloved Haight Street landmark the Red Vic Movie House will officially be closing its doors July 25, the theater’s 31st birthday (read my story about the Red Vic’s 30th birthday year here.) The last film to grace its screen will be perennial Red Vic favorite (and annual Red Vic birthday flick), Harold and Maude (1971). Stay tuned for more on this story.

And sad news from the San Francisco Film Society: charismatic executive director Graham Leggat will be stepping down from the post he’s held since 2005 due to health issues, according to a SFFS press release. (Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik has more on the story here.) Leggat wasn’t just a figurehead for the organization. He oversaw a huge expansion of SFFS’ programs — per the release: “Historic developments under Leggat’s direction include the launch of the country’s only daily independent regional online film magazine, SF360.org, in 2006; integration of the filmmaker services programs of Film Arts Foundation in 2008, which have since grown into a rich array of grants, residencies and project development services; the creation and expansion of SFFS’s annual Fall Season slate of festivals and events, which this year includes seven themed film series between September and November; and the recent announcement of the creation of the San Francisco Film Society New People Cinema, which provides a year-round theatrical home for the organization’s myriad activities for the first time in its 54-year history.” Best of luck to Leggat — a man whose charming, witty presence is familiar to all regular attendees of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Burner artists go bigger and wider

Sasha Cuttler
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66
Burner artists go bigger and wider

I’ve been covering Burning Man for many years, both for the Guardian and my book, so it’s easy to feel a little jaded about another year of preparing for that annual pilgrimage to the playa. But then I plug into the innovative projects that people are pursuing – as I did last week for the annual Desert Arts Preview – and I find myself as amazed and wide-eyed as a Burning Man virgin.
And when the weekend came, I watched my old camps go bigger than ever – with Opulent Temple throwing a rocking Rites of Massive six-stage dance party on Treasure Island, and the Flux Foundation lighting up the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas with its newest installation, BrollyFlock – demonstrating the ambitious scale at which veteran burners are now operating.
Increasingly, burners are putting their energies into real world projects not bound for Burning Man, often with the help of Black Rock Arts Foundation, the nonprofit spinoff of Black Rock City LLC that funds and facilitates public art projects. BRAF’s latest, a project that is also receiving a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, is The Bike Bridge, which pairs noted burner artist Michael Christian with 12 young women from Oakland to turn old bicycles and bike parts into sculptures that will be built at The Crucible and placed throughout Oakland.
“The Bike Bridge is the next evolution of our community-focused public art projects,” BRAF Executive Director Tomas McCabe said in a June 23 press release. “This educational and creative project is designed specifically to engage Oakland’s youth.”
Later that evening, McCabe and other burners gathered on the waterfront in Kelly’s Mission Cafe for the Desert Arts Preview, where he ticked off a long list of projects that BRAF was working on around the world, from the conversion of a bridge in Portland, Ore. into an elaborate artwork to a sculpture made of sails for next year’s Figment festival in New York City to a bus opera (written about bus culture and performed aboard buses) in Santa Fe to a cool interactive floating eyeball artwork that will tour Paris, London, Barcelona, and San Francisco to the BOOM Parade (combining bicycles and boom boxes) that will roll through Bayview Hunters Point in October.
But the most ambitious artworks are still being planned for that limitless canvas of the Black Rock Desert, where Burning Man will be staged in late August. This year’s temple, The Temple of Transition, is being built out of Reno by a huge international crew from 20 countries headed by a pair of artists known simply by their nationalities, Irish and Kiwi, who built Megatropolis at last year’s event.
“We built a city block of buildings and burned it to the ground,” Kiwi told the gathering, noting how impressed he’s been by a number of recent projects he’s watched. “When you start doing that, you feel challenged and wonder what you can do next.”
Irish said they were particularly inspired by watching the Temple of Flux go up last year, a project involving more than 200 volunteers that I worked on and chronicled for the Guardian, and said it made them want to bid to build this year’s temple. “That’s what inspired us,” Irish said.
The project includes a series of towers and altars, the tallest one in the center reaching about 120-feet into the air, a phenomenal height against the vast flatness of the playa. They said volunteers have been plentiful and the city of Reno has actively facilitated their work, “but our main concern is having enough finances,” Kiwi said.
The project got a grant from the company that stages Burning Man, Black Rock City LLC, which gave almost $500,000 to 44 different projects this year, but most didn’t come anywhere close to covering the full project costs. The Temple of Transition bridged its gap by raising almost $25,000 in a campaign on Kickstarter, which many projects are now using.  
“It’s a great way to cut out the middle man. You guys are funding art directly,” longtime artist Jon Sarriugarte, who got a BRC art grant this year to build the Serpent Twins (with his partner, Kyrsten Mate), said of Kickstarter, where he was about three-quarters of the way to meeting his goal of the $10,000 he needs to cover his remaining project costs.
Serpent Twins is a pair of Nordic serpents crafted from a train of 55-gallon containers and illuminated with fire and LED effects that will snake their way around the playa this year, one of many mobile artworks that have been getting ever more ambitious each year.
“I love the playa. It’s a beautiful canvas, but it’s also a beautiful road,” Sarriugarte told the group, conveying his excitement at driving his art into groups of desert wanderers: “I can’t wait to split the crowds and then contain them.”
Another cool project that is in the final days of a much-needed Kickstarter campaign is Otic Oasis, whose artists (including longtime Burning Man attorney Lightning Clearwater) brought a scale model to the event. It’s a slotted wood structure made up of comfy lounging pods stacked into a 35-foot pyramid design that will be placed in the quietest corner of the playa: deep in the walk-in camping area, inaccessible to art cars and other distractions.
That and other projects that are doing Kickstarter campaign are listed on the Burning Man website, where visitors can get a nice overview of what’s in store.  
One project that didn’t meet its ambitious Kickstarter goal was Truth & Beauty, artist Marco Cochrane’s follow-up to last year’s amazing Blissdance, a 40-sculpture of a dancing nude woman that has temporarily been placed on Treasure Island. But the crew has already made significant progress on the new project, a 55-foot sculpture of the same model in a different pose (stretching her arms skyward), and Cochrane told me they will be bringing a section of her from her knees to shoulders as a climbable artwork.

The Flux crew has been working for months on BrollyFrock, a renegade flock of flaming, illuminated, and shade-producing umbrellas that was commissioned by Imsomniac for its Nocturnal and Electric Daily Carnival music festivals, and it was placed at the latter festival near Wish, large dandelions that were built near the Temple of Flux at Burning Man last year, as well as new artworks by Michael Christian. Flux’s Jessica Hobbs said burners artists have become much sought-after by the large festivals that have begun to proliferate.

“I really think a lot of these music festivals are looking at how our pieces make an experience,” Hobbs said, citing both the spectacularity and interactivity that are the hallmarks of Burning Man artworks of the modern era. The Flux crew was pushed to meet a tight deadline for the project, preventing them from doing a big project for Burning Man this year, but that’s just part of the diversification being experienced by burner artists these days. “We challenged ourselves and we came away with another great project.”

 

Carrot coladas: Vegan happy hour, anyone?

Andrew Lam
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0
Carrot coladas: Vegan happy hour, anyone?

A short list of cocktails that are not vegan: Irish coffee, anything involving Drambuie or Martini and Rossi vermouth, cheese-garnished Bloody Marys. (Thanks Barnivore.)

This spring, I interviewed six SF vegans on the state of animal product-free lifestylin’ out here in the Bay. They agreed it was all pretty awesome, given the kitchen creativity and commitment to healthy eating that lives out here. But they identified one thing that our hills and valleys are lacking: a strong sense of vegan community. 

And what’s a better community builder than alcohol?A vegan — and thus more hardcore — version of worldwide sustainability boozery crew Green Drinks, Vegan Drinks SF has been gathering up meat-defeaters for the past two years, dumping them (with fair notice) on the city’s watering holes for a vegan cocktail special, scintillating mingling opportunities, and drunken event announcements to cap the whole thing off. This week, there’s a meet-up at Martuni’s on Thurs/30. We caught up with Elizabeth Castoria, the managing editor of Vegan Drinks progenitor VegNews, to find out more about the phenomenon. 

Ah, and if you’re really feeling the concept, you might try meat-free speed dating.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: How many meetings of Vegan Drinks SF have there been? 

Elizabeth Castoria: We started in February of 2009, and typically skip the months of November and December because since Vegan Drinks is always held on the last Thursday of the month, those two months tend to get swallowed by the holidays. If my math’s right, that’s 25 meetings so far. 

 

SFBG: Are the drinks specifically vegan? I know that animal products tend to lurk in alcoholic beverages when you least expect them.

EC: The nice thing is that the vast majority of hard liquor is vegan (it’s much more common to find beer and wine that’s been processed with animal byproducts). Our monthly drink special changes up, but it’s always a liquor-based martini. 

 

SFBG: Who are the Vegan Drinkers? How many people came to the last event? 

EC: We don’t take tickets at the door or anything, but about 50 were in attendance at the last event. The group usually ranges between around 50-ish people to 75-ish, and it’s a real mix. Most are probably between the ages of 25 and 55, and the personalities are diverse, as in any group. Most are professionals who come right from work. 

 

SFBG: Why Martuni’s for this one? Does the place have a special vegan allegiance? 

EC: When we were scouting out places, Martuni’s seemed like a really good fit because it has a fairly spacious back room that’s semi-private. Skip, the owner, has been really wonderful about coming up with creative drink specials every month. He also happens to have both a popcorn popper and a really adorable little hot dog cart, and he went out and got us a bunch of vegan hot dogs, buns, and condiments that sold for $1. It’s wonderful to partner with someone who’s so enthusiastic! 

 

SFBG: And knowing Martuni’s, there will be some amazing lounge act in the back room…

EC: Ha! Not intentionally. Though Martuni’s martinis are notoriously strong, so after a few, you never know! We do, however, have a brief announcement period at the end of every event so that anyone who has a project or opportunity to share has the chance to do so. 

 

SFBG: Drunk events announcements, love it. Why’d you start Vegan Drinks? 

EC: Vegan Drinks as an idea actually started in New York in 2008. When our staff started seeing photos from their events that looked like way too much fun, we got jealous. So we started our own chapter! The point is just to create a space for people to come together, spend time among like-minded folks, and hang out. It purposefully doesn’t have an agenda beyond “let’s have drinks and chat” because so often events are fundraisers, or outreach, or festivals, or readings, or something else that involves a level of obligation, and it’s really nice to just get together with people in the community and hang out without any pressure. 

 

SFBG: Have you seen any interesting animal product-free collaborations spring up out of these meetings? What are the hot vegan conversation topics that people are mingling over these days?

EC: Certainly some networking happens, and some projects have come from that. For example, even with Vegan Drinks itself, we started organizing the events, and then connected with the Vegansaurus bloggers, and now we co-sponsor the event with them. In terms of hot topics, food is a nearly ubiquitous theme at vegan gatherings. New restaurants, places people have eaten recently for the first time and had either good or bad experiences, new recipes people are experimenting with and those kinds of things definitely come up.

 

(Carrot colada photo by Wendall T. Webber via Food & Drink)

 

Vegan Drinks

Thurs/28 6-8 p.m., free with purchase of drink 

Martuni’s 

4 Valencia, SF

(415) 241-0205

www.sfvegandrinks.com

 

BYO Flair: A guide to this weekend’s festival explosion

Andrew Lam
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0
BYO Flair: A guide to this weekend’s festival explosion

If there is one thing I know about festivals it is this: the gear you pack can leave you hydrated, hip and happy — or break you down to a sunburned, schlubby hunk of bad vibes. (It’s true – shoddy preparation for Reggae on the River 2006 left me stranded in the psych tent with disoriented girlfriend during the Ziggy and Damian Marley concert. Clearly, a hipper fedora would have solved everything.) 

This weekend plays host to a freakishly large share of summer festivals, so consider this your guide to happy cavorting in the sun. Cups, caps, frocks, and foods: here, friends, are our picks for best festie flair.  

Sierra Nevada World Music Festival

The perfect weekend campout for those that can’t handle the crushing crowds of the more commercial festivals this summer. Even the little things (children) will appreciate the open-minded approach to beautiful noise here.

Bring: Consider SNWMF a three-day immersion program in getting loose. Translation: you need costumes. If you’re heading up from San Francisco, we’ve got the perfect sartorial layover for you. Sebastopol’s Funk & Flash vintage store is far enough removed from the big city that its stock hasn’t been picked to all hell by the club kid set, so festie-bound you can benefit from its racks of flowery skirts, and tons of sparkle. Go, do you! 

Fri/17-Sun/19, $60-150

Boonville Fairgrounds

CA-128, Boonville

www.snwmf.com

 

Juneteenth Festival and Parade

The website proclaims this celebration of African American heritage to be the largest gathering of blacks in Northern California, but it remains to be seen whether you’ll fixate on the cultural signifcance while attending the event itself: with an impressive classic car show and three-on-three basketball tournament, all the historical reflection might have to wait until after the festival. 

Bring: No brainer accessory: a hat from Hats of the Fillmore, an independent business that’s been holding it down on Fillmore’s main drag for years. High quality at surprisingly low prices, you can don one of these lids to fit in perfectly with the jazzy milieu of SF’s traditionally black neighborhood. 

Sat/18 11 a.m.-7 p.m., free

Fillmore and Geary, SF

www.sfjuneteenth.org

 

Alameda Sailing Festival

Hey Muffy, take a break from hating on the impending America’s Cup to catch a day of boating buoyancy. The Encinal Sailing Foundation will be providing turns on the high seas for a “nominal” fee, and there will be seminars on “pilates for sailors,” boating to Mexico, and how to get your captain’s license. Afterwards, we know some great places to get drunk in Alameda!

Bring: This really goes for every fest on the list, but possibly the most important piece of flair is a fun, functional backpack to hold your water (flask), sunscreen, cell phone, and snacks. We love the Brooklyn Circus’ BKc satchels – but for the moment you’ve gotta special order them from New York. That’s fine, this ain’t the last weekend of the summer! The store’s preppy style (without the snooty WASP-y supply chain behind it) would be divine if you’re looking to drop some dough on a nice sailing fest outfit. 

Sat/18 10 a.m.-8 p.m., free

Encinal Yacht Club

1251 Pacific Marina, Alameda

www.summersailstice.com


Bicycle Music Festival

You read our profile on Fossil Fool, so you know all about the current trend towards bike-fueled culture fun. According to all the volunteers that have been standing near Mona Caron’s bike mural behind the Church Street Safeway for the past few days, this fest will be the perfect spot to enjoy the zeitgeist. Saddle up for awesome tunes, and community-building bike rides between concert sites. 

Bring: Hedgehog mug from Gravel and Gold so you can (chicly, adorably) reap the benefits of the fest’s pedal-powered smoothie maker. It also comes in rabbit, fyi. The calories you consume in said smoothies work doubletime — once you’re done drinking, take your turn powering the generator for the drinks or one of the music stages yourself.

Sat/18 noon-11:25 p.m., free

Various locations, SF

www.bicyclemusicfestival.com


Berry Festival

You know this sun isn’t going to last past 4th of July, so now is the perfect time to up your antioxidant intake and arm the old immune system against “summer” colds. CUESA and the Ferry Building farmers market is holding this day of loving for berry season – sample the treats available in the market stalls and let chef Daniel Clayton of Nibblers Eatery and Wine Bar show you how to whip up some healthy, hearty grub with the juicy little devils. 

Bring: a nice navy sweatshirt from Mollusk for the Bay breezes and inevitable tayberry stains. 

Sat/18 11 a.m.-1 p.m., free

Ferry Building, SF

www.cuesa.org


California Big Time Indian Gathering

The Ohlones are hosting their first gathering of Native peoples in their ancestral lands in two centuries. Come to learn more about real SF locals through dance, rituals, and craft exhibitions.

Bring: Mocs that slip off easy – you’re not gonna want a layer of separations between the well-manicured lawns of Yerba Buena and your soles. 

Sat/18 noon-11 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Gardens

Howard between Second and Third St., SF

www.worldartswest.org


North Beach Festival

Sure, the neighborhood street fests all start to look the same after awhile. But there are good parts of that same: family-friendly musical acts, artery-busting festie food, and an excuse to run amok in the streets. The North Beach incarnation has been going for 56 years, and manages to sneak a couple unique facets into the standard cruise-shop-eat formula SF has perfected. 

Bring: your kitty cat companion for the yearly St. Francis of Assisi animal blessings. Also, a flirty, locally made frock from NooWorks is totally Maria from West Side Story – perfectly for the neo-Catholic-in-the-summertime vibe you’ll be channeling. 

Sat/18-Sun/19 10 a.m.-6 p.m., free

Washington Square Park

Union and Columbus, SF

www.northbeachchamber.com

 

Northern California Pirate Festival

Never underestimate the amount of people willing to drop serious time and dime on dressing up in period costumes. You’ve seen the Renaissance fairs and the Dickens Christmas Fair – now it’s time to peep the pirates. Two very full days of pirate entertainers and replica boats (not to mention squadrons of pirate clothing vendor booths) await you if you be brave enough to cross the seas to Vallejo. 

Bring: Your 826 Valencia designer spyglass, for scurvy-watching of course. 

Sat/18-Sun/19 10 a.m.-6 p.m., free

Vallejo Waterfront

Mare Island Way (near the ferry terminal), Vallejo

www.norcalpiratefestival.com

 

Picklewater Free Circus Festival

As we mentioned in last year’s profile of our favorite free circus troupe, Circus Bella, nothing quite highlights the magic (and eccentricity) of this city quite like catching a high-flying aerial act smack dab in the heart of downtown. Picklewater is taking over Union Square for the third year in a row this weekend, and we suggest you head down — if only to catch the amazed gaze of the throngs of tourists that’ll be on hand to remind you that yes, your city is freakin’ amazing. 

Bring: Your medical marijuana card, and attending accoutrements. 

Sun/19 2-4 p.m., free

Union Square

Post and Powell, SF

www.jewelssf.org

 

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at the Stern Grove Festival

The 74th season of this green glade’s free concert series kicks off with a killer show from the queen of throwback soul. 

Bring: The Stern Grove scene struts more with its picnic spread than by any accessory or fly outfit. A retro basket (check Goodwill, people are always ditching picnic baskets) will be a useful score, and in terms of snack to make (they must be homemade!), peep our favorite new vegan cooking blog, The Vegan Stoner. It’s perfect, even if you had to self-medicate your hangover before you started prepping for the journey out to the Sunset.  

Feat. Ben L’Oncle Soul

Sun/19 2 p.m., free

Stern Grove

19th Ave. and Sloat, SF

www.sterngrove.org

 

Mission Street mural unveiling

But why spend all your time at the big events? Artist Aaron Lawrence is holding an al fresco event of his own – pulling the dropcloth off the work he and muralist Rocky Villanueva did on a new apartment building on Mission. He’s making a party of it, so get there early if you want to get down on the free burritos provided. 

Bring: Tapatio, tall can Tecate. Bring two cans, share them. 

Sun/19 2-5:30 p.m., free

Mission between 18th and 19th St., SF

Facebook: Sunday Mural Reveal Party

 

The Performant: The fast and the furious

Andrew Lam
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1

FURY Factory turns four

Summertime is festival time in the city, and the streets will stay lively from now to Halloween, barring acts of god/s or unforeseen War on Fun skirmishes. But considering the typical bluster of an average summer day in San Francisco, it’s a relief that a few of our festivals can be enjoyed indoors. 

One example: FURY Factory, a three-week celebration of ensemble theatre hosted by San Francisco’s own foolsFURY Theater that provides the perfect excuse to avoid the elements, located in the comparable warmth of Project Artaud’s four theatre spaces. An eclectic lineup of 31 ensemble companies from around the country, FURY Factory includes talkbacks, workshops, and a forum for discussing excellence in theatre. 

But for most oddiences, the play’s the thing, and there is indeed a plethora of performances to choose from, some of which are even being streamed live on “New Play TV.”

On Saturday afternoon a cluster of kids and young-at-hearts gathered in The Jewish Theatre to watch a light-hearted collaborative effort between two San Francisco-based ensembles — Sweet Can Productions and Coventry and Kaluza – called “Chef Mulchini’s Kitchen”. A buoyant public service announcement regarding the four “R’s” (reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot) as presented by a quartet of capable clowns, “Kitchen” is a visually appealing romp which includes an appearance by a rapping green trash bin, puppet produce, and acrobatics. 

A nerd (Ross Travis, who also plays a brash pentathlete), a robot (Natasha Kaluza), a flirtatious neighbor (Kerri Kresinski), and that mustachioed punster, Chef Mulchini himself (Jamie Coventry), approach the topic of waste reduction with the wide-eyed earnestness of a Sesame Street sketch. You’re more likely to catch the next Mulchini performance at a public grade school than in a private theatre, but the performers themselves can be found in grown-up shows throughout the year, and are well worth watching on any stage.

One of the most buzzed-about events in the festival by far has been the West Coast premiere of Pig Iron’s Obie-winning “Chekov Lizardbrain,” which played for a single sold-out weekend at Z Space. An uncomfortably wry prologue narrated by an ostensibly imaginary occupant of protagonist Dmitri’s mind (both played by James Sugg) opens the show. 

The narrator “Chekov Lizardbrain” wears an ostentatious top hat and tailcoat, but his reptilian gestures and labored mumble undermine the graciousness such attire is meant to convey. His host body, Dmitri, is not much better off. An Aspergian botanist, he is socially awkward to the point of painful, and his interactions with three brothers whose house he is buying take a surreal turn as he recasts their conversations in the context of a Chekovian melodrama. 

The brothers, played by Dito van Reigersberg, Geoff Sobelle, and Quinn Bauriedel, first appear onstage in formal top hats, suit vests, and turn-of-the-century long underwear, underscoring their fantasy-based roles. Peeks behind the stylish red curtain provide glimpses of the murky swamp of Dmitri’s brain, where an initially light-hearted game of “lost and alone” leaves him stranded, inside and out. Though the “rules” of Chekov presented earlier in the show specify that tragedy should happen “offstage,” the melancholy finale in which Dmitri succumbs entirely to his “lizard brain” is not a particularly uplifting one. But the neocortex can sense the humanity in it.

 

FURY Factory 2011

Through June 26

Project Artuad

499 Alabama, SF

(415) 685-3665

www.foolsfury.org

 

 

Your summer guide to art escapes

Andrew Lam
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Living in San Francisco means having the richness of art in a major city, and the natural beauty of California all in one fell swoop. Here’s your guide to enjoying urban escapes and art and live performance – at the same time! – this summer. Also, check out our guides to the season’s falls and festivals, movies, music, and best adventures you can go on without a car.

 

WITHIN THE CITY 

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival

With three stages of free performances, this festival is perfect for a dose of culture and fresh air during your lunch hour with music, dance, theater, and readings. There’s weekend concerts too: the SF Mime Troupe performs Aug. 21, SF’s local songbird Meklit Hadero on Aug. 27, and SF’s pluckiest free ring wraiths, Circus Bella return to the lawn for the weekend of July 1-2.

May through September, free. www.ybgf.org

 

Stern Grove Festival

Stern Grove’s eucalyptus tree surroundings create a pretty magical summer stage for free performances. The experience gets even better when you pack a tasty picnic spread to enjoy — but leave your umbrellas and high-back chairs at home to keep the peace with those who didn’t snag the primo front row spots. In addition to the annual appearances of the San Francisco Ballet, Opera and Symphony, the concert lineup features Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, the Jazz Mafia Symphony, Neko Case, Afrocubism, The English Beat, Aaron Neville, and Javier Limon and Buika.

Sundays, June 19-August 21, free. www.sterngrove.org

 

San Francisco Mime Troupe at Dolores Park 

Enjoy palm trees and revolutionary spirit with your Tecate: with this historic troupe of not-mimes – forget the pantomime, this is socially relevant theater in the park.

July 2, 3, 4, free. www.sfmt.org

 

San Francisco Symphony in the Park

This year’s concert, which will be performed in Sharon Meadow, features conductor Michael Francis and pianist Valentina Lisitsa on a program of Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.  

July 10, 2 p.m., free. www.sfsymphony.org

 

Shakespeare in the Park, The Presidio

Bring the whole family for this year’s performance of  Cymbeline at the Presidio’s Main Post Parade Ground Lawn.

September 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, free. Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.sfshakes.org

 

Opera in the Park

This year’s annual concert, also in Sharon Meadow, features a special musical program commemorating the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.

September 11, 1:30 p.m., free. Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.sfopera.com

 

AND BEYOND…

Oliver Ranch

Seventy miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County, Oliver Ranch boasts scenic acres and 18 site-specific installations by artists such as Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra, as well as Ann Hamilton’s distinct tower where commissioned dance, poetry, theater, and music performances unfold. The tower structure – defined by two staircases built in a double helix form that accommodate the audience on one staircase and the performers on the other — suits a range of sensory projects and performances hosting artists like Meredith Monk and the Kronos Quartet. Limited capacity allows for only 100 visitors, making this ticket a splurge — but it’s all good, each concert in the tower benefits a non-profit organization. June appearances include Pauline Oliveros and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen. Should you be lucky enough to get tickets, be sure to bring some water and sunscreen and make a day of it visiting all the nearby wineries.

Various dates in June, prices vary. 22205 River, Geyserville. (510) 412-9090, www.oliverranchfoundation.org

 

Headlands Center for the Arts open house 

Just across the bridge in the rugged Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Headlands Center for the Arts synthesizes natural and urban environments in a cluster of historic, 1900s military buildings at Fort Barry among hills, cliffs, coves, and beaches. At the center’s summer open house, artists open their studios to the public to show their works-in-progress and talk with visitors about their creative process in a variety of disciplines. Catch one of the many performances and readings scheduled throughout the day and then head to the mess hall, which is transformed into a café serving delicious homemade snacks at down-home prices for the event. While you’re there, a hike through the windy Headland hills is a must-do.

July 24, 12-5 p.m., free. 944 Fort Barry, Sausalito. (415) 331-2787, www.headlands.org

 

Robert Mondavi Winery Summer Music Festival

One of the first wineries in the Napa Valley, the Robert Mondavi Winery offers much more than sipping, swilling, and spitting. A concert series scheduled for Saturday nights in July features music in an open-air setting and this summer’s lineup includes Gavin DeGraw, Colbie Caillat, David Foster, Chris Isaak, K.D. Lang, and the Siss Boom Bang. Mondavi’s grounds also include an art gallery open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with artifacts and paintings as well as a sculpture collection focused on the work of San Francisco artist, Beniamino Bufano, displayed in the main courtyard surrounded by rows of vines. Head here for a fancy summer night of outdoor music and wind down after an afternoon of tastings.

Saturdays in July, $75-$105. 7801 St. Helena Hwy., Oakville. (888) 766-6328, www.robertmondavi.com

 

Summer fairs and festivals

Maria Poblet
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Summer fairs and festivals

ONGOING

Young At Art Festival de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 695-2441, www.youngatartsf.com. Through May 22, free. The creative achievements of our city’s youth are celebrated in this eight day event curated and hosted by the de Young Museum.

* Oakland Asian Cultural Center Asian Pacific Heritage Festival Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St., Oakl. (510) 637-0462, www.oacc.cc. Through May 26. Times and prices vary. Music, lectures, performances, family-friendly events in honor of Asian and Pacific American culture and traditions.

DIVAfest Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF. (415) 931-2699, www.theexit.org. Through May 28. Times and prices vary. Bastion of the alternative, EXIT Theatre showcases its 10th annual buffet of fierce women writers, performers, and directors. This year features two plays, beat poetry, musical exploration, and more.

* Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission and Third St., SF. (415) 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. Through Oct. 31. Times vary, free. A series of cultural events, performances, activities, music, and children and family programs to highlight the green goodness of SoMa’s landscaped oasis.

 

May 18-June 5

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues. (415) 399-9554, www.sfiaf.org. Times and prices vary. Celebrate the arts through with this mish-mash of artistic collaborations dedicated to increasing human awareness. Artists included hail from around the world and right here in the Bay Area.

 

May 21

* A La Carte & Art Castro St. between Church and Evelyn, Mountain View. (650) 964-3395, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. With vendors selling handmade crafts, microbrewed beers, fresh foods, a farmers market, and even a fun zone for kids, there’s little you won’t find at this all-in-one fun fair.• Asian Heritage Street Celebration Larkin and McAllister, SF. www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. This year’s at the country’s largest gathering of APA’s promises a Muay Thai kickboxing ring, DJs, and the latest in Asian pop culture fanfare — as well as tasty bites to keep your strength up.

Freestone Fermentation Festival Salmon Creek School, 1935 Bohemian Hwy, Sonoma. (707) 479-3557, www.freestonefermentationfestival.com. Noon-5pm, $12. Learn about the magical wonders of fermentation with hands-on and mouth-on demonstrations, exhibits, and tasty live food nibbles.

Uncorked! San Francisco Wine Festival Ghirardelli Square, SF. (415) 775-5500, www.ghirardellisq.com. 1-6pm, $45-50 for tasting tickets, free for other activities. Uncorked! brings you the real California wine experience with tastings, cooking demonstrations, and even a wine 101 class for those who are feeling not quite wine-refined.

 

May 20-29

SF Sex Worker Film and Art Festival Various venues, SF. (415) 751-1659, www.sexworkerfest.com. Times and prices vary. Webcam workshops, empowering film screenings, shared dialogues on plant healing to sex work in the age of HIV: this fest has everything to offer sex workers and the people who love ’em.

 

May 22

Lagunitas Beer Circus Lagunitas Brewing Co., 1280 N McDowell, Petaluma. (303) 447-0816, www.craftbeer.com. Noon-6pm, $40. All the wonders of a live circus — snake charmers, plate spinners, and sword swallowers — doing their thing inside of a brewery!

 

May 21-22

* Maker Faire San Mateo County Event Center, 2495 South Delaware, San Mateo. www.makerfaire.com. Sat, 10am- 8pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, $5-25. Make Magazine’s annual showcase of all things DIY is a tribute to human craftiness. This is where the making minds meet.• Castroville Artichoke Festival Castroville, Calif. (831) 633-0485, www.artichokefestival.org. Sat., 10am- 6pm; Sun., 11 am- 4:30 p.m., free. Pay homage to the only vegetable with a heart: the artichoke. This fest does just that, with music, parades, and camping.

 

May 28-29 

San Francisco Carnaval Harrison between 16th and 22nd St., SF. 10am-6pm, free. The theme of this year’s showcase of Latin and Caribbean culture is “Live Your Fantasy” — bound to bring dreams alive on the streets of the Mission.

 

June 3-12

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Various venues, Healdsburg. (707) 433-463, www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org. Times and prices vary. Bask in the lounge-lit glow of all things jazz-related at this celebration in Sonoma’s wine county.

 

June 3-July 3 

SF Ethnic Dance Festival Zellerbach Hall, Berk. and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF. www.worldartswest.org. Times and prices vary. A powerful display of world dance and music taking to the stage over the course of five weekends.

 

June 4

* Berkeley World Music Festival Telegraph, Berk. www.berkeleyworldmusicfestival.org. Noon-9pm, free. Fourteen world music artists serenade the streets and stores of Telegraph Avenue and al fresco admirers in People’s Park.

Huicha Music Festival Gundlach Bundschu Winery, 2000 Denmark St., Sonoma. (707) 938-5277, www.gunbun.com/hmfevent. 2-11pm, $55. Indie music in the fields of a wine country: Fruit Bats, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, Sonny and the Sunsets, and more.

 

June 4-5

Union Street Eco-Urban Festival Union from Gough to Steiner and parts of Octavia, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. Festival goers will have traffic-free access to Cow Hollow merchants and restaurant booths. The eco-urban theme highlights progressive, green-minded advocates and products.

The Great San Francisco Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center, Building A., SF. (415) 383-7837, home.earthlink.net/~sfxtl/index.html. Sat., 10am-6pm; Sun., 10am-4pm, $6. Gems and all they have to offer: beauty, fashion, and mysterious healing powers.

 

June 5

* Israel in the Gardens Yerba Buena Gardens, SF. (415) 512-6420, www.sfjcf.org. 11am-5pm, free. One full day of food, music, film, family activities, and ceremonies celebrating the Bay Area’s Jewish community and Israel’s 63rd birthday.

 

June 10-12

Harmony Festival Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa. www.harmonyfestival.com. 10am-10pm, $45 one day, $120 for three day passes. This is where your love for tea, The Flaming Lips, goddess culture, techno, eco-living, spirituality, and getting drunk with your fellow hippies come together in one wild weekend.

Queer Women of Color Film Festival Brava Theater. 2789 24th St., SF. (415) 752-0868, www.qwocmap.org. Times vary, free. A panel discussion called “Thinkers and Trouble Makers,” bisects three days of screenings from up-and-coming filmmakers with stories all their own.

 

June 11-12

* Live Oak Park Fair 1301 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 227-7110, www.liveoakparkfair.com. 10am-6pm, free. This festival’s 41st year brings the latest handmade treasures from Berkeley’s vibrant arts and crafts community. With food, face-paint, and entertainment, this fair is perfect for a weekend activity with the family.

 

June 11-19 

San Mateo County Fair San Mateo County Fairgrounds. 2495 S. Delaware, San Mateo. www.sanmateocountyfair.com. June 11, 14, 18, and 19, 11am-10pm; all other days, noon-10pm, $10 for adults. It features competitive exhibits from farmers, foodies, and even technological developers — but let’s face it, we’re going to see the pig races.

 

June 12

* Haight Ashbury Street Fair Haight between Stanyan and Ashbury, SF. www.haightashburystreetfair.org. 11am-5:30pm, free. Make your way down to the grooviest corner in history and celebrate the long-standing diversity and color of the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, featuring the annual battle of the bands.

 

June 16-26

Frameline Film Festival Various venues, SF. www.frameline.org. Times and prices vary. This unique LGBT film festival comes back for its 35th year showcasing queer documentaries, shorts, and features.

 

June 17-19 Sierra Nevada World Music Festival Mendocino County Fairgrounds. 14400 CA-128, Boonville. (916) 777-5550, www.snwmf.com. Fri, 6pm-midnight; Sat, 11am-midnight; Sun, 11am-10pm, $60 for Friday and Sunday day pass; $70 for Saturday day pass, $150 three day pass. Featuring Rebulution, Toots and the Maytals, and Jah Love Sound System, this fest comes with a message of peace, unity, and love through music.

 

June 18 

Summer SAILstice Encinal Yacht Club, 1251 Pacific Marina, Alameda. (415) 412-6961, www.summersailstice.com. 8am-8pm, free. Boat building, sailboat rides, sailing seminars, informational booths, music, a kid zone, and of course, wind, sun, and water.

Pinot Days Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, SF. (415) 382-8663, www.pinotdays.com. 1-5pm, $50. Break out your corkscrews and head over to this unique event. With 220 artisan winemakers pouring up tastes of their one-of-a-kind vino, you better make sure you’ve got a DD for the ride home.

 

June 18-19

North Beach Festival Washington Square Park, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.northbeachchamber.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, free. Make your way down to the spaghetti capital of SF and enjoy food, music, arts and crafts booths, and the traditional blessing of the animals.

Marin Art Festival Marin Civic Center, San Rafael. (415) 388-0151, www.marinartfestival.com. 10am-6pm, $10. A city center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright plays host to this idyllic art festival. Strolling through pavilions, sampling wines, eating grilled oysters, and viewing the work of hundreds of creative types.

 

June 20-Aug 21

Stern Grove Music Festival Stern Grove. Sloat and 19th Ave., SF. (415) 252-6252, www.sterngrove.org. Sundays 2pm, free. This free outdoor concert series is a must-do for San Francisco summers. This year’s lineup includes Neko Case, the SF Symphony, Sharon Jones, and much more.

 

June 25-26

San Francisco Pride Celebration Civic Center Plaza, SF; Parade starts at Market and Beale. (415) 864-FREE, www.sfpride.org. Parade starts at 10:30am, free. Gays, trannies, queers, and the rest of the rainbow waits all year for this grand-scale celebration of diversity, love, and being fabulous.• San Francisco Free Folk Festival Presidio Middle School. 450 30th Ave., SF. (415) 661-2217, www.sffolkfest.org. Noon-10pm, free. Folk-y times for the whole family — not just music but crafts, dance workshops, crafts, and food vendors too.

 

June 29-July 3

International Queer Tango Festival La Pista. 768 Brannan, SF. www.queertango.freehosting.net. Times vary, $10-35. Spice up your Pride (and Frameline film fest) week with some queer positive tango lessons in culturally diverse, welcoming groups of same sex couples.

 

June 30-July 3

High Sierra Music Festival Plumas-Sierra Fairgrounds, Quincy. www.highsierramusic.com. Gates open at 8am Thursday. $205 weekend pass, $90 parking fee. Yonder Mountain String Band, My Morning Jacket, and most importantly, Ween. Bring out your sleeping bags for this four day mountaintop grassroots festival.

 

July 2

Vans Warped Tour Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. www.vanswarpedtour.com. 11am, $46-72. Skating, pop punk, hardcore, screamo, and a whole lot of emo fun.

 

July 2-3

Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, SF, 1-800-310-6563, www.fillmorejazzfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. Thousands of people get jazzed-up every year for this musical feast in a historically soulful neighborhood.

 

July 4

City of San Francisco Fourth of July waterfront celebration Pier 39, Embarcadero and Beach, SF. (415) 709-5500, www.pier39.com. Noon-9:30pm, free. Ring in the USA’s birthday on the water, with a day full of music and end up at in the city’s front row when the fireworks take to the sky.

 

July 9-10

Renegade Craft Fair Fort Mason Festival Pavilion. Buchanan and Marina, SF. (312) 496-3215, www.renegadecraft.com. 11am-7pm, free. Put a bird on it at this craft fair for the particularly indie at heart.

 

July 14-24

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various Bay Area venues. (415) 627-9141, www.midsummermozart.org. Prices vary. You won’t be hearing any Beethoven or Schubert at this midsummer series — the name of the day is Mr. Mozart alone.

 

July 16-17

Connoisseur’s Marketplace Santa Cruz between Camino and Johnson, Menlo Park. (650) 325-2818, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Let the artisans do what they do best — you’ll polish off the fruits of their labor at this outdoor expo of artisan food, wine, and craft.

 

July 21-Aug 8

SF Jewish Film Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfjff.org. Times and prices vary. A three week smorgasbord of world premiere Jewish films at theaters in SF, Berkeley, the Peninsula, and Marin County.

 

July 22-Aug 13

Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso, Atherton. (650) 330-2030, www.musicatmenlo.org. Classical chamber music at its best: this year’s theme “Through Brahms,” will take you on a journey through Johannes’ most notable works.

 

July 23-Sept 25

 SF Shakespeare Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfshakes.org. Various times, free. Picnic with Princess Innogen and her crew with dropping a dime at this year’s production of Cymbeline. It’s by that playwriter guy… what’s his name again?

 

July 30

Oakland A’s Beer Festival Eastside Club at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl. www.oakland.athletics.mlb.com. 4:05-6:05pm, free with game ticket. Booze your way through the Oakland A’s vs. Minnesota Twins game while the coliseum is filled with brewskies from over 30 microbreweries, there for the chugging in your souvenir A’s beer mug.

 

July 30-31

 Berkeley Kite Festival Cesar Chavez Park, 11 Spinnaker, Berk. www.highlinekites.com. 10am-5pm, free. A joyous selection of Berkeley’s coolest kites, all in one easy location.

 

July 31

Up Your Alley Dore between Folsom and Howard, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm, $7-10 suggested donation. Whether you are into BDSM, leather, paddles, nipple clamps, hardcore — or don’t know what any of the above means, this Dore Alley stroll is surprisingly friendly and cute once you get past all the whips!

 

Aug 1-7

SF Chefs Various venues, SF. www.sfchefs2011.com. Times and prices vary. Those that love to taste test will rejoice during this foodie’s paradise of culinary stars sharing their latest bites. Best of all, the goal for 2011’s event is tons of taste with zero waste.

 

Aug 7

SF Theater Festival Fort Mason Center. Buchanan and Marina, SF. www.sftheaterfestival.org. 11am-5pm, free. Think you can face about 100 live theater acts in one day? Set a personal record at this indoor and outdoor celebration of thespians.

 

Aug 13

San Rafael Food and Wine Festival Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission, San Rafael. 1-800-310-6563, www.sresproductions.com. Noon-6pm, $25 food and wine tasting, $15 food tasting only. A sampler’s paradise, this festival features an array of tastes from the Bay’s best wineries and restaurants.

 

Aug 13-14

* Nihonmachi Street Fair Post and Webster, SF. www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Founded by Asian Pacific American youths, this Japantown tradition is a yearly tribute to the difficult history and prevailing spirit of Asian American culture in this SF neighborhood.

 

Aug 20-21

Oakland Art and Soul Festival Entrances at 14th St. and Broadway, 16th St. and San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 444-CITY, www.artandsouloakland.com. $15. A musical entertainment tribute to downtown Oakland’s art and soul, this festival features nationally-known R&B, jazz, gospel, and rock artists.

 

Aug 20-22

* SF Street Food Festival Folsom St from Twenty Sixth to Twenty Second, SF. www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. 11am-7pm, free. All of the city’s best food, available without having to go indoors — or sit down. 2011 brings a bigger and better Street Food Fest, perfect for SF’s burgeoning addiction to pavement meals.

 

Aug 29-Sept 5

Burning Man Black Rock City, Nev. (415) TO-FLAME, www.burningman.com. $320. This year’s theme, “Rites of Passage,” is set to explore transitional spaces and feelings. Gather with the best of the burned-out at one of the world’s weirdest, most renowned parties.

 

Sep 10-11

* Autumn Moon Festival Street Fair Grant between California and Broadway, SF. (415) 982-6306, www.moonfestival.org. 11am-6pm, free. A time to celebrate the summer harvest and the end of summer full-moon, rejoice in bounty with the moon goddess.

 

Sept 17-18

SF International Dragon Boat Festival California and Avenue D, Treasure Island. www.sfdragonboat.com. 10am-5pm, free. The country’s largest dragon boat festival sees beautiful man-powered boats take to the water in 300 and 500 meter competitive races.

 

Sept 23-25

SF Greek Food Festival Annunciation Cathedral. 245 Valencia, SF. www.sfgreekfoodfestival.org. Fri.-Sat., 11am-10pm; Sun., noon-9pm, free with advance ticket. Get your baba ghanoush on during this late summer festival, complete with traditional Greek dancing, music, and wine.

 

Sept 25

Folsom Street Fair Folsom between 7th and 12th St., SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. The urban Burning Man equivalent for leather enthusiasts, going to this expansive SoMa celebration of kink and fetish culture is the surest way to see a penis in public (you dirty dog!).

 

Sept 30-Oct 2

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com. 11am-7pm, free. Pack some whiskey and shoulder your banjo: this free three day festival draws record-breaking crowds — and top names in a variety of twangy genres — each year.

 

Items with asterisks note family-fun activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

2,000 years in the waking

Maria Poblet
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2,000 years in the waking

arts@sfbg.com

One night in 2009 I found myself climbing a stairwell to the second floor of the Grotowski Institute’s historic roost at Rynek-Ratusz 27 in downtown Wroclaw, Poland, with maybe 30 or 40 other people hailing from a variety of countries. We entered a modestly large room, plain and hushed like a Quaker meetinghouse, with several ascending rows of benches against opposite walls — the same room where Jerzy Grotowki’s Laboratory Theatre had performed Akropolis in 1965, someone whispered. I was jet-lagged and might have been the one whispering, for all I could make of this somnambulant excursion. But when the performance began, all sleepiness dropped away and one of the most memorable encounters, in a trip filled with impressive theatrical events, began to unfold.

The encounter was with Teatr ZAR, a Wroclaw-based ensemble company founded in 2002 by Jaroslaw Fret (also since 2007 director of the Grotowski Institute) whose unique work arises from years-long investigations into primordial music from the Orthodox Christian world — some of the oldest examples of polyphonic music, culled from a series of research trips to Eurasia and North Africa, including early Christian sites in Armenia, Bulgaria, Corsica, Egypt, Georgia, Greece, and Iran.

“Zar” is the name of the 2000-year-old funeral songs still sung by the Svaneti tribe in the remote reaches of the Caucasus Mountains in northwestern Georgia, which Fret and company visited between 1999 and 2003. Fret and Teatr ZAR rigorously absorb such ancient and distinct religious music (via cultural exchange with practitioners and the adoption or invention of various techniques of notation and transmission that would likely merit an advanced degree in musicology) and then thoughtfully rework it amid movement and themes (some text-derived if not exactly text-based) over a significant gestation period. This concerted ensemble practice, in line with Grotowski’s own “laboratory theatre” approach, has produced three startling theatrical pieces, each lasting roughly one hour, grouped as a triptych under the title Gospels of Childhood.

Many of us in the room that night had come to Wroclaw by special invitation of Philip Arnoult’s Baltimore-based Center for International Theater Development in conjunction with the Grotowski Institute, which was hosting the Grotowski Year 2009, on the 10th anniversary of the death of the internationally renowned Polish prophet of “poor theatre.” (Under the auspices of UNESCO, the Grotowski Year coincided with two major theater festivals, including one built around the EU’s prestigious European Theatre Prize, that year bestowed on the great Polish director Krystian Lupa.) We had all, therefore, been treated to the same buzz about an unusual company working with ancient songs. But it would have been difficult to anticipate the effect on the audience of the intoning voices and thrilling harmonies that filled the room, or for that matter the moody intensity, bounding athleticism, brooding and ecstatic movement, and the quasi-liturgical atmosphere of these exceptionally deft and well-crafted performances.

In a remarkable Bay Area debut this week, the entire Gospels of Childhood Triptych is being performed six times as a must-see showcase of the eighth annual San Francisco International Arts Festival.

The first piece, Overture, which was the original inspiration for the group, is a gorgeously subdued, candle-lit, almost ceremonial work, arising from a shimmering chorus of voices and invoking the cycle of life and death in its fleet and lithesome choreography. It developed from Fret’s interest in Gnostic thought and intertwines the story of Lazarus from the perspective of his two sisters with the testimony of Mary Magdalene, who holds a particular place in Gnostic traditions.

The second piece, Caesarean Section: Essays on Suicide, is a physically and emotionally powerful work whose raw, wild energy animates prodigious feats of dance amid another intoxicating arrangement of music, now accompanied by live instrumentation. It amounts to an emotionally wide-ranging exploration of freedom and the human condition on the brink of self-annihilation.

Finally, the third piece, Anhelli: The Calling (which was still being developed when I saw it in 2009) is inspired in part by Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Slowacki and his journey from Naples to the Holy Land, in which the ensemble made use of a large white sheet in its evocation of an expanse as forbidding as it was liberating.

These pieces, which can be seen on separate nights or all in one go between two venues on Potrero Hill (the perfectly suited St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church hosting parts one and three, and the nearby Potrero Hill Neighborhood House hosting the more volatile and frenetic Caesarean Section), stir up a range of feeling with their arresting amalgam of liturgical song (with a smattering of modern airs from the likes of Erik Satie) and the power and precision of ZAR’s accomplished ensemble. Use of natural light, live instrumental accompaniment, and simple stage properties (simple but strikingly arranged, as in a glowing shaft of broken glass that cuts across the floor in Caesarian Section) meanwhile train a low-tech, premodern set of theatrical elements toward addressing the fundamental facts of life and death. The deep relationship between theater and religion rarely feels this palpable.

But it starts with the music, which as Fret told me in Poland in 2009, gives the path to all that follows, both as a direction and foundation. “Every single action [in Gospels of Childhood] was put on a solid footing because the music was very solid; music is so precise, a structure of breathing. “

That structure, says Fret, is a tool applied to life, just as theater is a tool. “In the extraordinary vibratory qualities of the zar, we saw a column of breathing. It is 2,000 years old. Even the Svaneti people don’t understand it — in that there is no [semantic] meaning — but they have not forgot the ritual function of it, related to the funeral ceremony, to saying farewell, to fulfilling that moment when the coffin is lowered into the earth, sending the soul somewhere. For a moment a society breathes together. This is the most important and central function of singing, to breathe together. The main message of life and of art is a pattern of breathing. We can use emotion to direct our breathing. We can also use some tools, like song, to harmonize, not only in terms of technique but also with what’s inside. The performance is a huge ‘partitura,’ or score, of breathing.” 

 

TEATR ZAR: THE GOSPELS OF CHILDHOOD TRIPTYCH

Part of the SF International Arts Festival

Thurs/19–Sat/21 and Mon/23–May 25;

7 p.m.(part one); 8:15 p.m. (part two); and 9:30 p.m. (part three)

$12–$25 ($48 for all three parts)

St. Gregory of Nyssa Church (parts one and three)

500 De Haro, SF

Potrero Hill Neighborhood House

953 De Haro, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.sfiaf.org

 

Summer movie madness!

Maria Poblet
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0
Summer movie madness!

cheryl@sfbg.com

‘Tis the season for big, loud, making-zillions-opening-weekend-then-dropping-off-into-oblivion fare. Summer 2010 was one of the shittiest in years (Iron Man 2, we hardly knew ye). Summer 2011 has the usual array of superhero sequels and remakes, but there are a few seemingly bright spots on the blockbuster schedule. And if giant robots aren’t your thing, there’s plenty more in store beyond the multiplex. All release dates are subject to change.

Superheroes! As always, there are plenty of superdudes (and ancillary dudettes) to choose from. Thor is already out, but anticipation is high for X-Men: First Class (June 3) — a prequel potentially poised to breathe new life into the series after 2006’s meh X-Men: The Last Stand; and The Green Lantern (June 17), which stars Ryan Reynolds and will probably confuse people who thought it came out in January (that was The Green Hornet). There’s also Transformers: Megan Fox Has Been Replaced — er, Dark of the Moon (July 1), and endgame Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (July 15). (Harry’s a superhero by now, even with the glasses.) Though the wizard king will prob make the most dough, look for Captain America: The First Avenger (July 22) to bring the most noise. Red Skull in the house!

Manmeat! Ah, but the boy’s club doesn’t end there! The Hangover Part II (May 26) reunites the stars of the 2009 comedy hit for a sure-to-be-memorable trip to Thailand (the cast list includes a “drug-dealing monkey”). J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 (June 10) looks like a more menacing version of producer Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (May 20) tests my theory that every movie should, in some way, feature Blackbeard as a character. But the most intriguing title in this pile is obviously Cowboys & Aliens (July 29): Han Solo and James Bond gunslinging amid interplanetary rabble-rousers in the Wild West? Could this be something resembling an original idea? Hooray for Hollywood?

Indie intrigue! So you’d rather eat a wadded-up copy of Us Weekly than go to the Metreon. Fear not — summer 2011 also means the release of dozens of movies with budgets smaller than what it cost to make one pant leg of the Green Lantern suit. Just a few: from fake trailer to real cinema is the cult-hit-in-the-making Hobo With a Shotgun (May 27); master filmmaker Terrence Malick releases his latest, the Brad Pitt-starring The Tree of Life (June 3); and quirky Norwegian import The Troll Hunter (June 17) and documentarian Errol Morris’ Tabloid (July 15) open after local debuts at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Keepin’ it repertory! Rep houses are also ideal summer hangouts for movie fans who don’t need everything that passes through their retinas to be in RealD. The Castro kicks off the season with an Elizabeth Taylor series (May 27-June 1). Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archives offers up tributes to director Arthur Penn (June 10-29) and local heroes George and Mike Kuchar (June 10-25), plus an extensive “Japanese Divas” program (June 17-Aug. 20). Closure rumors be damned (let’s hope!) — the Red Vic has an online calendar posted through early July, featuring everything from Wim Wenders to Woody Allen to the Muppets. The Roxie’s summer slate includes Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s newly restored 1973 World on a Wire (July 29), also a recent SFIFF selection.

Summer fests! Speaking of festivals — if you want ’em, the Bay Area’s got ’em. The big two are Frameline (June 16-26), now in its 35th year of showcasing LGBT films, and the 31st San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (July 21-Aug. 8), but stay tuned to the Guardian for updates on mini-fests, super-specialized niche fests, outdoor film series, and more. Example: the Four Star is currently traveling through 36 chambers of Asian Movie Madness, encompassing everything from Jet Li’s fists to magic swords, monsters, and erotica (series runs every Thursday through July 28). Happy movie-going, and yes, that is me carrying a boat-sized bucket of popcorn into Shark Night 3D (Sept. 2). 

 

Sounds of summer

Maria Poblet
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1
Sounds of summer

arts@sfbg.com 

 Live music in the Bay Area this summer is bracketed by festivals, from the lowercase indoor venue indie pop of the San Francisco Pop Fest on Memorial Day weekend to the outdoor mid-August convergence of Outside Lands. The guide below aims to name some highlights from a wide variety of genres, with an emphasis on rare and first-time appearances in the Bay Area. 

 

MAY 25-29 

San Francisco Pop Fest The lineup includes groups and songwriters from the post-punk (The Undertones) and C86 (14 Iced Bears, Phil Wilson) eras, the Sarah Records’ band Aberdeen, some indie pop faves of the present (Allo Darlin’, The Beets), and more than a few local groups (The Mantles, Brilliant Colors, Dominant Legs, Terry Malts, The Art Museums). Various venues, www.sfpopfest.com. 

 

MAY 29 

Mobb Deep The East Coast rap duo hits the stage in SF for the first time in years. Mezzanine, www.mezzaninesf.com . 

 

JUNE 2-3 

Architecture in Helsinki The band of five Australian multi-instrumentalists tours in support of its fourth album (and first on Modular). Great American Music Hall and Slim’s; www.gamh.com , www.slims-sf.com . 

 

JUNE 3-4 

Bluegrass for the Greenbelt Presented by Slim’s, an overnight concert — with more music on the second day — benefiting the Greenback Alliance, with camping for up to 200 people who bring tents. Dunsmuir-Helman Estate, Oakl.; www.slims-sf.com . 

 

JUNE 7 

Omar Souleyman After releases on Sublime Frequencies, the Dabke idol brings the sounds of Syria to SF, with a Björk collaboration set for release. Mezzanine, www.mezzaninesf.com . 

Orange Goblin The veteran UK stoner metal act headlines, with support from beefy Indiana doom band Gates of Slumber, who just released a crushing new eight-song album entitled The Wretch and a DJ set by Rob Metal. Bottom of the Hill, www.bottomofthehill.com . 

 

JUNE 8 

Matmos Now based in Baltimore, Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt come back to the Bay Area. Bottom of the Hill, www.bottomofthehill.com . 

 

JUNE 10 

Timber Timbre, Marissa Nadler The trio tour in support of a follow-up album, while Nadler moves past black metal back to solo ventures with a self-titled album. Swedish American Hall, www.cafedunord.com . 

 

JUNE 22 

Kid Congo Powers and The Pink Monkey Birds He’s been a major force within a handful of all-time great punk and post-punk bands, and Kid Congo Powers has a new album out on In the Red that taps into sounds ranging from glam to ’60s Chicano rock. Rickshaw Stop, www.rickshawstop.com . 

 

JUNE 23-25 

Jackie Greene In conjunction with the release of his sixth album, the singer-songwriter plays a trio of concerts. Swedish American Hall, www.cafedunord.com . 

Bill Orcutt The guitarist has just released a tour 7-inch single, and the bill includes fellow locals Date Palms. Hemlock Tavern, www.hemlocktavern.com . 

 

JUNE 24-25 

2011 US Air Guitar Championships San Francisco Regionals Two nights of air shredding, with special performances by past champions Hot Lixx Hulahan and C-Diddy and at least 20 local competitors. The Independent, www.independentsf.com . 

 

JUNE 25 

Blackalicious From Solesides to Epitaph, Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel have spanned decades and still throw down live. Mezzanine, www.mezzaninesf.com . 

 

JULY 5 

Quintron and Miss Pussycat Shannon and the Clams and the Younger Lovers open for the New Orleans’ husband-and-wife duo. Bottom of the Hill, www.bottomofthehill.com . 

 

JULY 6 

Darwin Deez New Yorker Darwin Smith’s pop songs have found a large audience in the UK, but for now, he’s still playing smaller venues here. Bottom of the Hill, www.bottomofthehill.com . 

Maus Haus The group moves past krautrock into other electronic territory on Lark Marvels, and co-headlines with Swahili Blonde on a California tour. Rickshaw Stop, www.rickshawstop.com . 

Seefeel The vanguard postrock group recently reunited and put out an album on Warp. Great American Music Hall, www.gamh.com . 

 

JULY 7-9 

The Reverend Horton Heat The Reverend goes back to country music’s past on Laughin’ and Cryin’, and is joined by locals the Swingin’ Utters. The Independent, www.independentsf.com . 

 

JULY 9 

Washed Out Since he first visited the Rickshaw Stop, Ernest Greene’s music has been used in Portlandia, and his first full album is coming out on Sub Pop. Great American Music Hall, www.gamh.com . 

 

JULY 14-15 

Three Day Stubble’s Nerd Fest The group is celebrating three decades of nerd rock, with four additional acts on each night. 

Tinariwen Live desert blues from the current touring version of the Tuareg band. Bimbo’s 365 Club, www.bimbos365club.com . 

 

JULY 26 

Thurston Moore, Kurt Vile An East Coast rock twofer. Great American Music Hall, www.gamh.com . 

 

JULY 30-31 

Woodsist Festival 2011 The festival returns to Big Sur, with Nodzzz, Thee Oh Sees, and Woods (also playing songs from the new Sun and Shade) joining the Fresh & Onlys to form a bigger band. Fernwood and Henry Miller Library, Big Sur; www.folkyeah.com . 

 

August 12-14 

Outside Lands This year’s lineup includes Erykah Badu, and Big Boi, with local contributions from Tamaryn, The Fresh & Onlys, Ty Segall, and Diego’s Umbrella. Golden Gate Park, www.sfoutsidelands.com .

 

The fun side of bikes

Maria Poblet
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3
The fun side of bikes

steve@sfbg.com

Paul Freedman, a.k.a. the Fossil Fool, is a singer-songwriter and builder of elaborate art bikes who lives in San Francisco’s Mission District. Since 2001, when he decided to apply his Harvard University education to building custom bikes, accessories, pedal-powered products, and mobile sound systems, Freedman created Fossil Fool and Rock the Bike to sell his creations and provide a platform for his performances and alternative transportation advocacy work.

But anyone who’s watched Freedman build and ride his creations — such as his latest, El Arbol, a 14-foot fiberglass tree built around a double-decker tall bike with elaborate generator, sound, and lighting systems and innovative landing gears — knows this is a serious labor of love by an individual at the forefront of Bay Area bike culture. We caught up with him recently to discuss his work and vision.

SFBG How did Rock the Bike start?

FOSSIL FUEL I was working at a shop in Berkeley and I decided to make my first bike music system, which I called Soul Cycles. So I had that other job at a bicycle nonprofit, which is cool, and that was the first impetus. I did two innovative things with my first bike music system: I put the controls on the handlebars, which I’d never seen anyone do, and I put speaker back-lighting to make the speakers look nice at night. I used a really nice CFL fluorescent lamp, and I started playing around with those and it looked great, so that was our first product for those first three or four years.

SFBG What was going on in the larger culture at the time that led you to believe your interest in bikes and technology was going to be fruitful or make an interesting statement?

FF I care deeply about biking and a lot of the people I was with did too, but I felt like the bicycle advocacy scene was not very effective when it came to actual outreach. I felt like the thing that had been really formative for me was this person-to-person interaction, in my case by hanging out with the guys who started Xtracycle, and going on quests to get ingredients for dinner and riding late at night with the music systems on the tour. I felt like those experiences were what made bicycling appealing, but the bike advocacy scene was using guilt trips and telling people you should ride a bike because you’re too fat and you should ride a bike because there’s too much traffic. And I felt like we needed to shift that mindset and really start focusing on the fun aspects of biking and the social aspects to grow the scene.

SFBG Do you feel like it has, and what effect do you think it had on those who weren’t already riding bikes?

FF I think it’s moving that direction. Even within traditional bike advocacy groups, those people are starting to really focus on their events and creating community, in a good way, and challenging themselves with doing so. And I think that’s really positive.

SFBG Your timing also dovetailed with heightened green awareness — with a push for renewable energy, concerns over peak oil, and things like that.

FF Yeah, I feel that transportation choices are the main thing people need to examine about their lives with respect to their impact on global warming. And that’s not just a feeling, that’s the consensus of the Union of Concerned Scientists. They say that if you want to have an impact on the planet, positive or negative, the first thing you should consider is your transportation habits. So that means flying, it means driving, and everything else. I don’t think it’s really beneficial to focus on what people need to do with a car, like they need to drop their kids off. It’s more important how people do the optional things with cars like the trips to Tahoe, and the flights to Mexico. It’s those optional things I want to focus on, which is why I’m so interested in Sunday Streets, which is like the antidote. It’s this thing you can do here, that you can walk and bike to, that’s as fun as driving to Tahoe.

SFBG Through your technology and design work, it also seems like you’re showing a broad range of what people can do on a bike, with lots of cargo or a whole performance stage setup. Do you think design is convincing people that bikes are more versatile that they thought they were?

FF Oh yeah, I think that would be a really beneficial outcome of this work. By riding through town with our music gear, of course people are going to look at that and think, oh yeah, I could probably go to Rainbow Grocery and buy a bunch of food for my household on a bike. So it would be a great outcome if people would make that connection.

SFBG Is there anything about San Francisco that makes people here more receptive to your message?

FF San Francisco is a very tight city geographically. It’s not like Phoenix. The blocks are pretty short here and the distances are pretty short here, and you can ride year-round here, which is not true in Boston where I grew up.

SFBG The focus on technology and design here also probably helps, right?

FF Oh, for sure. This is an awesome place to be prototyping and doing funky mechanical, electrical art. There’s a lot of support for it. There are places like Tap Plastics for learning about fiberglass. There are lots of electronics stores that serve the Silicon Valley tech developer communities. You can buy stuff there that’s helpful. You can learn about Arduino [an open source microprocessor] at Noisebridge. There are a lot of resources for doing interactive art here or for doing bicycle-related projects. There are a lot of welders here.

SFBG Where do you think we are on the arch with this stuff — the beginning, the middle? — in terms of gaining wider acceptance of biking as an imperative and an option for anyone?

FF I think there’s an important generational shift underway, and I don’t know whether it’s my focus on bikes that leads me to meet all these kinds of people, but it feels like I’m meeting more people these days that are going to pick their next city or their next neighborhood based on how it is to bike there. They’re bringing it up in conversation, it’s not me. So it seems like people are really considering what their daily life is going to be like and how the community feels, and biking is one of the symbols of a whole swath of other beneficial things. They know that if they see a bunch of bikes when they visit a place, then there’s probably a lot of other cool stuff like music, arts, farmers markets. Those kinds of things are sort of linked together, and the bike is the key indicator. So there’s been this generational change of thought. The idea that having a bigger, faster car is better, I just don’t think that’s popular with these people. They no longer believe it.

SFBG It’s having cooler bike.

FF It’s having cooler bike and being able to use it and not have to step into the stress of car culture if you can avoid it.

SFBG What’s your next step?

FF One of the really positive things for me has been the Rock the Bike community, with its roadies, performers, musicians — all types of people who are on our e-mail list. So I can just say, I need three roadies for a three-hour performance slot and there’s going to be a jam at the end, so bring your instruments. That’s an awesome thing and it’s just going to improve, so I think the community will grow as we continue do gigs where we have fun and the people have fun.

In terms of my own art, this tree [gesturing to his El Arbol bike] has been my focus for the last year or two, and it’s not done yet. It has to look undeniably like a tree. It looks like a tree, but with a light green bark that you really don’t see in nature, so that has to change. I want it to have brown bark, but I still want it to do beautiful things at night with translucency. And I want it to have a true canopy of leaves, so that when you’re far away from it at Sunday Streets and you’re wondering whether to go over there, you’ll see a tree. Not just a representation of a tree, but I want them to be like, how the hell did he ride a tree over here?

SFBG Why a tree?

FF I don’t know. You get these ideas, and you start drawing them and can’t shake them. There are all sorts of reasons why trees are interesting. They are gathering points.

SFBG And you’re doing some very innovative design work on this bike, such as the landing gear.  

FF The roots. Yeah, that’s never been done before. Through the course of doing the project, people would send me tips and interesting things, and one guy sent me a link to a photo of tall bikes being used in Chicago in the early 1900s as gas lamp lighting tools, and they were very tall. I’d say 10 to 12 feet tall, and they were tandems, so there was a guy on top and a stoker on the bottom providing extra power, and they didn’t have landing gears. So they would ride from one lamp to another and hold the lamp as they refilled it. And I just love that story because if you were growing up in Chicago, and you saw these gas lamp people coming by in the early evening to turn the lights on, and if you were a little kid trying to fall asleep or whatever, that would have an indelible mark on your childhood, and that whimsical quality is what I’m going for. That should be part of what it’s like to grow up in the Mission District in 2011.

SFBG How does that fit into the other cultural stuff that you’re also bringing to the bike movement, the music you’re writing, design work, the style, and the events that you’re creating?

FF Sometimes I wish it wasn’t so multipronged. I would clearly be a better performer and musician if it was the only thing I did, so I apologize to all my fans for not putting 100 percent into the music. But I put 100 percent into the whole thing, including creating bikes and running Rock the Bike, which is a business.

SFBG But are you doing all these things because you find a synergy among them?

FF It’s the fullest expression of who I am.

SFBG Where do you see this headed? What will Rock the Bike be like five years from now?

FF I would like to see the quality of our entertainment offerings steadily improve to the point where people genuinely look forward to it, and not just to the gee-whiz aspect of look what they’re doing, but just for the feeling of being there. So I’d like to challenge ourselves with the quality of the music, how it is to be engaged in the setup process — because I think the setup is cool, with biking to the event and engaging in the transition to a spectacle, where every step along the way is part of the show. I like that idea. I’d like to challenge ourselves to be a carbon-free Cirque du Soleil, a show that is slamming entertainment and they bike there and pedal-power everything: the lighting, the sound, the transportation. And I want the performers to be just as good.

SFBG Are there people in other cities doing similar things?

FF The Bicycle Music Festival is spreading to other cities, which is cool. I think there are going to be over a dozen bicycle music festivals this summer. In terms of people doing really inspiring work with bike culture or this kind of mobile art, you definitely see some amazing things at Burning Man. That’s probably one of the best venues for this type of art. But I can’t think of another city where people are doing all of this. I’m part of a group on Flickr called Bicycle and Skater Sound Systems, and there’s nothing on that whole group that I see as being on this level. I don’t know why.

SFBG When you ride a cool custom bike down the street, the reactions it elicits from passersby is just so strong and happy. What is that about?

FF It’s a reaction to an expression of personal freedom. People light up when they see you expressing yourself, and a part of them thinks, oh yeah, that would be fun, I’d like to express myself. And there are just so many ways to express yourself and be human — and that’s something that we need to remind ourselves because, in many ways, our personal freedoms are declining and there’s more surveillance.

SFBG And people might take that spark and do any number of things with it.

FF One of the very cool things about bicycle art is that it’s mobile. So you ride your bike and you might turn heads a couple dozen times a day. I ride this tree, and if it’s in the full mode where it’s 14-feet tall and there’s music on, and I’m going from here to Golden Gate Park, I’d estimate that 500 people see it. There’s probably no other art form you can do that with. I can’t think of any other that’s like that. So it’s a really cool art form. Those people aren’t paying you, but you shared art with them, and it’s a good way to get exposure. It’s a great way for a lot of people to see your art.

SFBG With your mobile, pedal-powered stages, you’re also demonstrating green ways of powering even stationary art.

FF It is an interesting time for pedal power. I feel like there’s a turning point that’s maybe beginning in the field of events with how they’re powered. I think there are going to be a lot more people who are going to festivals in the coming years who are looking at the diesel generators and saying, ‘My summertime festival experience is being powered by diesel.’ And I think there are going to be a lot of people seeing that and wanting to do something else.

SFBG Have the technologies for how much juice you’re able to get out of pedal power been advancing since you’ve been working on it?

FF Yes, it’s truly impressive right now, particularly if you’re putting that juice into music because we have very efficient generators where there’s no friction interface anymore, nothing rolling on the tire, it’s all just ball bearings rolling on the hub. Then we put that power into these new modified amps, and they have a DC power supply now, as opposed to an AC power supply, so we don’t have to put the power into an inverter. So the net sum of that is one person can pedal-power dance music for 200 people, which is pretty amazing and inspiring.

SFBG And the battery technology is also improving, right?

FF Yeah, the batteries are what you use for the mobile rides, and that’s getting better. If you’ve been to a bike party, it’s just incredible how many good, loud sound systems there are right now. It’s a very kinetic art form, although I wish people would focus more on the visual aspects of their system, because I feel like there’s a trend to get big and loud fast. But I wish there were more people doing the work that Jay Brummel is doing, where he doesn’t just want to ride on a bicycle, so he turned his bike into a deer and he steers by holding the antlers.

SFBG But there has been some push-back from the police. Have you gotten many tickets?

FF Well, I got tickets for riding up high on this quadracycle. There is a law against riding tall bikes in California. It says you shouldn’t ride a bicycle in such as manner as to not be able to stop safely and put your foot down. Obviously you can’t put your foot down on a tall bike.

SFBG The fact that you have landing gears on your bike didn’t make a difference?

FF Well the officer didn’t take it seriously, but the court sided in my favor. The judge was flipping through photos of the landing gear the entire trial — he couldn’t stop flipping through them. And he asked, ‘How do you get on? Where do you step?’ So I was like, ‘Well, you step here, you step there, and you swing.’ It was pretty fun. 

BICYCLE MUSIC FESTIVAL

Saturday, June 18

11 a.m.–10 p.m., free

Various locations, SF

www.rockthebike.com

www.fossilfool.com


 

Some shit-talking

Andrew Lam
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0
Some shit-talking

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Psychedelic Horseshit slinger Matt Horseshit has the gift of gab. He’s been credited with coining the genre label shitgaze, though he’s quick to dismiss it. “Genre names are pretty ridiculous at this point — a few kids in their room make up something and call it shoelace-gaze. A few people do something in their house and it’s now, ‘Which house?'”

Yet that talent, and flair for provocation, has also gotten the vocalist-guitarist-keyboardist into a world of pony dookie. Like when he spewed equine poo-poo all over Wavves, Vivian Girls, No Age, and TV on the Radio to the Washington Post in ’09, creating an indie-rock perfect shitstorm of heavily blogged proportions. Lo-fi, Horseshit opined in the article, has “exploded into this thing where Wavves is getting $30,000 to [expletive] crank out this [expletive] generic [expletive].” Call it the Horseshit side of the delightfully whacked, very wrong, and thoroughly shattered Psychedelic Horseshit equation talking.

Still, in a world of so much prepackaged pop/rock/hip-hop bowel movements and independents who’d rather play innocuous than call out crap as they hear it, you gotta love a guy who’s willing to say how he really feels, however impolitic, sensational, and naive it might be to do so. “There are too many positive vibes out there!” a friendly Horseshit (né Whitehurst), 27, protested last week by phone from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. “Sometimes you gotta cut the tree down to make it bigger.”

The problem was that people, like the Vivian Girls, whom Horseshit considers pals and “sweet people,” got hurt. “I was railing against stuff in a moment of confused passion,” he explains now. “Then I was getting e-mails from people that I partied with, ‘What the fuck, I thought we were friends … ?’ No one wants to listen to the guy from Psychedelic Horseshit talk about how they’re influenced by Pavement — we’re here to entertain people and sell records — some people got that out of that …”

The flurry also caused Horseshit to step back and think about what he was doing — and whether he wanted to continue doing it at all. After putting out a mini-avalanche of CD-Rs, EPs, and albums on Siltbreeze and Wavves’ label Woodsist, among others (and running through 17 bass players), Horseshit decided to jump the “lo-fi gutter,” as he puts it, and embrace clarity, texture, even lyrics that don’t harsh on rock’s absurdities (see “New Wave Hippies” on Magic Flowers Droned [Siltbreeze, 2007]), rendered all the more naggingly accusatory when delivered in his nasal, nyah-nyah-ish tones.

“I honestly wanted to make a leap to a bigger label,” he says. “But after all my shit-talking, nobody would touch us at all … I don’t want to be linked to shitgaze for the rest of my life and be a rock history footnote.”

So after “weeding out” some band members, Horseshit and percussionist-keyboardist Ryan Jewell decided to make an album, Laced, to please themselves. “This record was the first thing where we took all our influences and thought about the way it was being taped,” says Horseshit, who confesses that he’s now thoroughly sick of mixing his own band’s music. “It’s more textured and more about sonics than it is about being bratty punks, and the lyrics are more dreamlike. There’s not a lot of pointed ‘fuck this’ and ‘fuck that.’ I got sick of that stuff … I was a little too honest there for a while.”

FatCat has since signed them on and Laced — a hazy, hallucinatory miasma of beats and moods that evokes both the loudly buzzing atmospherics of Black Dice and the experimental art damage of a less poppy Ariel Pink — is set to come out May 10. Leading up to the blessed date: the “Shitty Sundays” series of larky yet intriguing free MP3s (some freshly recorded only a few days previous), which have been released weekly on the FatCat site. The MP3s hint at Laced‘s trippier, less aggro mood, clad in samples and sprinkled with sequencers and drum machines (“I started going to festivals and taking ecstasy and getting into blissed-out dance music,” explains Horseshit), although the fuck-it feeling that anything can happen remains, the same freewheeling, horse-caca churn of the first Psychedelic Horseshit show I ever saw, back in 2007. “It’s a stepping stone kind of record,” Horseshit offers. “It has one foot in our path and goes in a lot of different places and frees us up from what a lot of people think we are.”

A tempered, more mature Horseshit? Could be — he’s even willing to bide his time while Jewell is away on a meditation retreat. “He wouldn’t even tell me where it was!” he marvels, adding that keyboardist Nicole Bland is playing with the band in the U.K., “covering his ass when he’s figured this shit out.”

“I said, ‘The record’s coming out,’ and he said, ‘I can’t be in the band right now. I just need to be away and find out what’s going on.’ It’s bad timing, but I respect it. It’s like, you know, ‘Thanks.'”

 

Dark slice of life

Andrew Lam
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Dark slice of life

arts@sfbg.com

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Despite the incredible current spread of festivals and formats by which art films can be exposed internationally, it’s still possible for masterful directors with considerable resumes to remain largely ignored outside their own country. Certainly that’s been the case with Agustí Villaronga, a fascinating Spanish director whose new film, Black Bread, is the latest in a career of superbly crafted films almost-commercial enough to gain U.S. release. Yet seldom quite enough.

Villaronga’s cinema is gorgeously cinematic, often historical, high in strikingly managed melodramatic content, sexually (often homoerotically) charged, frequently tinged by the fantastical, very interested in children’s perceptions of adult corruption. He’s a middleman between Luis Buñuel and Guillermo del Toro — less abstract than Buñuel, but evidently less accessible than del Toro, even if the ambitious Black Bread possibly got green-lit because in many respects it resembles del Toro’s international success Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).

Black Bread isn’t its director’s best work, though as usual it sports his aesthetic assurance, flair for alarming set pieces, and potency in juggling disparate tonal-thematic elements. It’s another very dark story — he’s never made a frivolous one — addressing sex, politics, and violent suppression toward both that manages to be expansive rather than claustrophobic, or simply depressing. It is, like many of his films, a great movie … nearly.

He started out, however, with a feature that was absolutely great, and could hardly have been more upsetting: 1987’s In a Glass Cage, about Klaus (Günter Meisner), a Nazi doctor who conducted World War II “experiments” on children. Years later, he is discovered hiding out by one of his surviving victims. Angelo (David Sust) is now an Angel of Death himself, committed to punishing his erstwhile tormentor by perversely reenacting his worst crimes — with the sickly doc, now helpless prisoner of a primitive “iron lung,” as captive witness.

Angelo invades Klaus’ home with alacrity, appointing himself sole attendant “nurse,” dispatching anyone who gets between him and his goal. This goal is a sadistic tables-turning that the pale, handsome-yet-ghoulish teenager wreaks upon his host family, to the extreme peril of its members and any unwilling “guests.”

Hitchcockian in their perfect storyboarded discipline, yet without his gloating chortle, the unforgettable set piece highlights of In a Glass Cage are excruciatingly tense, prolonged death-knells for characters Angelo chooses to eliminate. Yet there’s a terrible poignancy to the cruel proceedings.

After horrifying San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival audiences 25 years ago — there is a certain thread of malevolently closeted homoeroticism — this cult object remained long absent from North American access until a 2003 DVD release. It remains an astonishing peak in sick but brilliantly accomplished cinema.

Villaronga should have shot to the fore of international auteurs with that extraordinary debut. But instead he’s enjoyed just sporadic exposure and (I’d assume) a lot of frustration, given just four features realized in the near quarter-century since. Most are barely known here, if at all — 1989’s atmospheric if slightly overcooked fantasy Moonchild, 1997’s quasi-horror 99.9, or 2000’s The Sea, a sometimes shattering drama about three children who share a traumatic secret, then meet again as young adult patients at a sanitarium. All of them were arresting, however, and none were seen in the U.S. beyond a handful of festivals and (at best) extremely limited VHS or DVD exposure. (In a Glass Cage is showing at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room in May.)

Black Bread is, incredibly, Villaronga’s first theatrical feature in a decade. (He’s made the rare short, documentary, and TV project in the meantime, and is currently planning a miniseries about Eva Peron’s visit to Spain.) Based on a novel by Emili Teixidor, Black Bread is a complex narrative and stylistic hybrid blending history, homophilia-phobia, humanism, and horror, even more accessibly than before. It’s a festival crowd-pleaser that pretty much swept Spain’s Goya Awards in February, albeit sadly still no shoo-in for theatrical release hereabouts.

Largely about how childish emotions betray adult hypocrisies — a la To Kill a Mockingbird — the 1944-set Black Bread operates on several levels, all thorny but vivid. Their core is the bewildered perspective of almond-eyed Andreu (Francesc Colomer), an 11-year-old peasant child who witnesses a gruesome crime at the beginning, only to find his father (Roger Casamajor) accused by a corrupt Fascist mayor eager to scapegoat a former Republican rebel. Dad must flee, and Andreu is sent by mom (Nora Navas) to live with his grandmother and aunts until the heat dies down.

Cramming an epic agenda into 108 minutes, Black Bread encompasses roiling coming-of-age emotions, folkloric streaks, a few shocking revelations (including pederasty), and hints of fabulism in a nearby asylum-slash-death camp whose inmates include an angelic young man without (or possibly with) wings. It’s a terrifically orchestrated film, even if it feels somewhat overstuffed with ripe elements, almost over-accomplished in terms of slick showcase sequences — including a grotesque fever-dream of fag-bashing sadism — whose variably florid, stirring parts are less effective as a whole.

Still, those parts are often very stirring indeed, with excellent performances by the juvenile and adult actors. It’s a movie most viewers will find unusually rich in complication and artistry. Why Villaronga hasn’t had a half-dozen more opportunities to impress us over his skinny quarter-century output is anyone’s guess. But it’s surely everyone’s loss.

 

BLACK BREAD

Fri/29, 3 p.m.; Mon/2, 6 p.m.;

May 4, 9:15 p.m., $13

Sundance Kabuki

1881 Post, SF

www.sffs.org

Our Weekly Picks: April 6-12, 2011

Maria Poblet
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THURSDAY 7

FILM

“An Evening with Les Blank”

The man who held Werner Herzog to a bet that involved the consumption of footwear (and filmed it, in 1980’s literally-titled Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe) comes to the Red Vic to present two of his best-loved films: 1969’s The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins and 1978’s Always for Pleasure. The Bay Area resident is famed for his ability to seek out and artfully capture American folkways, and this screening includes intimate looks at Texas blues and New Orleans street parties. The latter will be presented in “Smellaround!,” which I think is the Red Vic’s way of suggesting you’ll be unable to resist the rice and beans cooking up free for each attendee — using “Les’ own special recipe.” Let’s hope no boots are in the pot! (Cheryl Eddy)

7:30 p.m., $15

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com DANCE

 

DANCE

Lemi Ponifasio

You have never heard of Lemi Ponifasio, the Samoan chief with a full-body tattoo who now lives and works primarily in New Zealand? If you had been lucky enough to attend recent Edinburgh, Sidney, Lincoln Center, or Holland festivals, you might have encountered his Mau (“Vision”) company, which earned accolades in ceremonial dance theater that may be culturally-specific but is not culturally-limited. Ponifasio has said that his work always explores issues around “power and life.” Tempest: Without A Body draws on Shakespeare, Paul Klee, and political philosopher Giorgio Agamben. A Maori activist, Tami Iti, appears in the piece to make a case for his people and for social change. On opening night, director Peter Sellars engages Ponifasio in a pre-performance conversation. (Rita Felciano)

Thurs/7, 8:15 p.m. (pre-performance conversation, 7:15 p.m.);

Fri/8–Sat/9, 8 p.m., $30

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission St., SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org


EVENT

“Wicked Plants”

Inspired by Northern California writer Amy Stewart’s 2009 New York Times bestseller about deadly plants and their place in human history, the new exhibit “Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues and Assassins” features a bevy of beautiful (but dangerous and sometimes lethal) flora. Poison hemlock, white snakeroot, castor bean, and more are among the living examples of plants whose effects on people can range from skin irritation, severe pain, and even agonizing death. Explore more than 30 species of this mysterious greenery, all displayed in a spooky Victorian garden — a setting that would make Agatha Christie proud — if you dare. (Sean McCourt)

Through Oct. 30

Tues.–Sun., 10 a.m.–4 p.m., $1.50–$7

Conservatory of Flowers

100 John F. Kennedy Drive

Golden Gate Park, SF

(415) 831-2090

www.conservatoryofflowers.org


DANCE

San Francisco Ballet

The exquisite range of the San Francisco Ballet will be on display this week as it continues its spring season by opening two mixed programs. Program 6 features the company’s premiere of Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, set to compositions by Joby Talbot and arrangements by Jack White (best known for the recently-disbanded White Stripes, though his musical outlets are legion), along with works by Christopher Wheeldon (with a score by erstwhile Winger frontman-turned-composer Kip Winger), and artistic director Helgi Tomasson. Program 7 includes Michel Fokine’s Petrouchka, the tragic tale of a puppet who possesses a human soul. Choreographed to Stravinsky’s mysterious and haunting score, this century-old ballet was originally danced by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. (Julie Potter)

Through April 20

Performance times vary, $20–$135

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF

(415) 865-2000

www.sfballet.org PERFORMANCE

 

COMEDY

Brian Posehn

After getting his start doing stand-up in Northern California, comedian Brian Posehn has since gone on to lend his many talents to a wide variety of other media: TV shows such as The Sarah Silverman Program, films including Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2005), and albums like 2006’s Live In: Nerd Rage. The album featured the side-splitting parody song “Metal By Numbers,” where he skewered modern “false metal” with his searing lyrics and growled incantations of “Cookie Cookie Cookie!” Fans are sure to be in for a treat when Posehn returns to the live stage, free to riff on whichever hilarious subjects — music, pop culture, and more — he chooses. (McCourt)

Thurs/7–Sun/10, 8 p.m.

(also Fri/8–Sat/9, 10:15 p.m.), $17.50–$20.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

 

MUSIC

Big Freedia and Rusty Lazer

Words fail. One would be best served by simply looking live videos of “Azz Everywhere” up on YouTube, to be greeted by the sight of sweaty dancers in booty shorts shaking it for the MC, to the call of “Ass all over/ Like I told ya/ Bend over/ Like I told ya.” This indelible image comes courtesy of bounce (or “sissy bounce”), a New Orleans-regional, bass-heavy, call-and-response style of hip-hop. And Big Freedia is its “Queen Diva.” Too heavy for radio, too sexual for TV, but just right for a killer night on the floor. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Richie Panic, Hot Tub DJs, and more

9 p.m., $10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.publicsf.com

 

FRIDAY 8

DANCE

“Triptych: New work by Kelly Bowker, Gretchen Garnett, Ishika Seth”

If you look at the history of modern dance, you’ll encounter a group of (mostly) women passionate about their discoveries of the body’s expressive potential. They scraped by financially and danced for and with each other, getting paid if there was money — which was rarely the case. Guess what? Not that much has changed. The Bay Area is still a welcoming place for young artists who just have to do what they have to do. Kelly Bowker, Gretchen Garnett, and Ishika Seth are familiar to those who hunt out the less familiar performance venues. That’s probably how they met and found that they could share precious resources. Bowker calls her piece Parallel Uncertainties; Garnett’s is Six Years Dreaming; and Seth’s two works are Death and Other Things and Khwaish. (Felciano)

Fri/8–Sat/9, 8 p.m., $15–$20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

FILM

“Jane Russell 1921-2011”

Don’t let Elizabeth Taylor hog the dead non-blonde former sex symbol spotlight. Jane Russell was so hot she changed censorship in the United States. The promotional pictures for 1943’s The Outlaw got director Howard Hughes in trouble with the Hollywood Production Code and the film was delayed for years until cleavage cuts were made. (Not to mention giving new meaning to the term “double feature” — rim shot!) Sure, Marilyn gets the titular nod with 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but the alluring Russell proves that not all men are gentlemen. (Prendiville) The Outlaw, 1, 5, and 9 p.m.;

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 3:15 and 7:15 p.m., $7.50–$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

 

MUSIC

Akron/Family

True or false: band monikers that contain punctuation marks are penned just to screw with the minds of music and copy editors. Either way, the bicoastal trio Akron/Family is undoubtedly a genre-fuck. It’s avant-garde sans the pretentiousness, combining folk, Japanese noise, fuzzed-out rock, and psychedelic elements. To boot, it injects found-sounds like the creaking of a chair into its music à la The Books. While accusations of it being a cult have been refuted, its newest LP, S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT, was purportedly written in a cabin perched upon an active volcano on a Japanese island. The album’s origins are simultaneously weird and awesome, just like the band. (Jen Verzosa)

With Delicate Steve, Honeymoon, and DJ Britt Govea

9 p.m., $15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.theindependentsf.com

 

DANCE

Fact/SF

With a sense of humor and a solid group of daring, theatrical performers, Charles Slender’s Fact/SF burst onto San Francisco’s dance scene with a steady output of new work. Prior to founding his company in 2008, the U.C. Berkeley graduate danced abroad, spending time in Russia studying with choreographer Tatiana Baganova and performing in her Provincial Dances Theatre company. Slender creates with a dance-theater edge, resulting in compositions that range from the minimal to highly physical, some serious and others lighthearted. His company’s third home season, running for two consecutive weekends, features company repertory as well as a premiere. (Potter)

Fri/8–Sun/10, 8 p.m., $20

Garage

975 Howard, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.975howard.com

 

SATURDAY 9

MUSIC

Cold War Kids

With overwhelmingly positive cyberspace reviews of self-released EPs With Our Wallets Full and Up in Rags, Long Beach indie-rock foursome Cold War Kids has music bloggers to thank for its popularity — and notoriety. (Pitchfork famously described the band as “skinny-jeaned Christians” because three members attended a Los Angeles bible college). But Cold War Kids has withstood the so-called damnation of this label; newest release Mine Is Yours is more polished than past albums, and the band has joined the ranks of other indie-turned-mainstream greats like Kings of Leon. As they say, bigger is better. (Verzosa)

With Sean Hayes

8 p.m., $25

Fox Theatre

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.thefoxoakland.com

 

MUSIC

Papercuts

Frequently revered by critics but never quite matching the praise with comparable commercial success, Papercuts frontman Jason Robert Quever may finally break the pattern with Fading Parade, a beautiful new album that marks his first release on Sub Pop. The San Francisco songwriter creates lush, ethereal music full of 1980s dream-pop touchstones and traces of the shimmering lo-fi of artists such as Ariel Pink and Wild Nothing. A healthy dose of reverb surrounding Quever’s melancholic delivery, and the sustained organ and synth lines buried underneath, help evoke the feelings of nostalgic longing he’s no doubt shooting to convey. He may be more than a decade into his career, but one listen to Fading Parade makes it seem like Quever is just starting to get warmed up. (Landon Moblad)

With Banjo or Freakout

9:30 p.m., $14

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

MONDAY 11

EVENT

“The Spirit of Montmartre: Cafes, Cabarets, and Other Cacophony”

You don’t have to go to Paris to delve into the Moulin Rouge lifestyle and bohemian pleasures. Indeed, you can check out this multimedia presentation by professor William Eddelman, a costume designer and theater historian, exploring the rise of the Paris avant-garde. The evening reveals the world of Toulouse- Lautrec and his contemporaries, a hotbed of collaborative performance art, bold design, laughter, and high spirits in the early 20th century. Francophiles won’t want to miss this sensory event, which includes corset fashions by Dark Garden and an absinthe tasting. (Potter)

7 p.m., $15–$20

Museum of Performance and Design

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 255-4800

www.mpdsf.org 

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Motion pictures

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Motion pictures

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Dance and the camera have a long-lasting love/hate relationship. Films that honor the art, such as 1948’s The Red Shoes or 1951’s An American in Paris with its extraordinary dream sequence, are rare. Although dancers like that their performances acquire an afterlife, they also hate giving up three-dimensionality for two-dimensional space. Nor are they fond of editing practices that alter continuity, control a viewer’s focus, and favor smiles over feet. Nonetheless, a recently discovered snippet of film that showed Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in a blurry clip of Les Sylphides, apparently the only extant film of the legendary company, sent dance historians into a tizzy.

Now in its second annual incarnation, the San Francisco Dance Film Festival concerns itself with more contemporary dance films. The advent of inexpensive, lightweight cameras has made possible a new genre, “screendance,” which features choreography designed for the camera. Los Angeles and New York City have long had had festivals honoring these creations. Now the Bay Area, after previously unsuccessful attempts by presenters like Cynthia Pepper and Charlotte Shoemaker, is getting its own look at what’s floating out there. “We received 110 submissions from 25 countries,” producer Greta Schoenberg says of this year’s selection process.

Schoenberg has assembled a program in which shorts are bookended by longer films such as Victoria Marks’ ground-breaking 1993 Outside In and the San Francisco premiere of Finite and Infinite by RJ Muna, who is best known for his spectacularly airborne dance photography. Historian/critic Joanna Harris will also show rare films of Bay Area dance pioneers and work by avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren.

In the Bay Area, a small but growing group of dancers is intrigued by the specific requirements of dancing for the camera. Among them are Private Freeman, Nol Simonse, and Maria Kotchekova, who in 2009 won the solo gold medal on the TV show Superstars of Dance. Schoenberg cast her film noir Nightingale, which receives its world premiere at the sold-out opening night gala, with local dancers. Freeman is one of them.

“I like the idea that film can focus a viewer as long as it wants,” Freeman says. “I also like that you have a 360-degree sense of space. You are working with different concepts of continuity and detail. At the same time, when you have several takes, you need to remember how exactly you had positioned your leg.”

Brevity, with most works typically lasting between three and 10 minutes, characterizes most “screendances” Even the experienced Mitchell Rose, who recently moved to the Bay Area to teach Dance on Camera at Mills College, stuck to this YouTube-friendly time frame when making his wondrous Modern Daydreams: Part One (2001).

The 18 selections in this year’s San Francisco Dance Film Festival stick to the norms. Marta Renzi’s Texas Plate (2007), a romance to music by singer-songwriter Patti Scialfa, is two minutes. A journey onto a wooded mountain, Stronger (2010), by the U.K.’s Wilkie Branson, takes four minutes. Dutch director Carmen Rozestraten’s trip into a Catalan woman’s dream world in After the Water the Clouds (2009) requires nine.

Neither Schoenberg nor documentary and experimental filmmaker Ben Pierce — a former San Francisco Ballet principal dancer who showed work in last year’s festival — can explain the logic behind the short format. Perhaps, they suggest, it’s what audiences want to see, and what festivals like theirs prefer to program. The time frames of YouTube, where a lot of these works end up, is a definite reason. Lack of financing for bigger projects may be another. It’s also possible that the creators of these collaborative ventures haven’t developed the necessary technical chops to master longer works yet.

One festival juror intrigued by the buzz around dance on screen is ODC associate director and choreographer KT Nelson. She finds herself fascinated by the idea of honing in very closely to the body (“Let’s say to the crook of an elbow”) or to create a work in a completely different setting (“Water, for instance”). She hasn’t jumped in yet — but there’s always next year.

SAN FRANCISCO DANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Thurs/24 through Sun/27, $10–$25 ($75–$125 for workshops)

See website for venues

www.sfdancefilmfest.org

Our weekly Picks: March 23-29, 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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THURSDAY 24

MUSIC

Music For Animals

The catchy tunes of the self-proclaimed “cult” Music For Animals — San Francisco quartet Nick Bray (guitar), Jay Martinovich (vocals), Eli Meyskens (bass guitar), and Ryan Malley (drums) — evoke 1980s classic pop rock while simultaneously embodying the twee music of the here-and-now. While comparisons have been drawn to other electropop acts like the Killers and Kaiser Chiefs, Music for Animals’ neon-retro fans have embraced the band as its own indie rock entity. Its high-energy shows can include wacky antics, making for a perfect opportunity to bust a move. Join the cult! (Jen Verzosa)

With Foreign Resort and Matinees

9 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

FILM

Disposable Film Festival

Hollywood churns out a huge number of what you might call disposable films (Drive Angry 3D: use once and destroy). San Francisco’s Disposable Film Festival applies the adjective instead to the technology used to create each of its entries: readily available and often handheld devices like cell phones, point-and-shoot cameras, webcams, and so on. Celebrate the all-access-ness of 21st century filmmaking by checking out tonight’s always-popular competitive shorts program; weekend events include an industry panel entitled “How to Become A Disposable De Palma,” a spotlight on filmmaker Christopher McManus, a concert and workshop with YouTube music-video darlings Pomplamoose, and more. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/27

Competitive shorts night tonight, 8 p.m., $12

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.disposablefilmfest.com

 

EVENT

Neil Strauss

I’m not sure what I like most about Neil Strauss. A six-time New York Times best-selling author and contributing editor at Rolling Stone, he coauthored memoirs with Jenna Jameson and Mötley Crüe. He lived with Dave Navarro for a year and went undercover in the “seduction community” to write about pick-up artists. He was in Beck’s gloriously goofy “Sexx Laws” video. His new book of celebrity chatter, Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead: Journeys Into Fame and Madness, features pop culture personalities from Britney Spears to Stephen Colbert. But his 227 “moments of truth” aren’t in-depth, traditional Q&A pieces. Instead, Strauss wove together the most intriguing few minutes of each interview. Huh? How? Ask him yourself. (Kat Renz)

7:30 p.m., free

Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

www.booksmith.com

 

MUSIC

Phantom Kicks

Taking after the Grizzly Bear-meets-Radiohead, now-disbanded Raised By Robots, the San Francisco-based trio of Tanner Pikop (guitar-vocals-keyboard), Phil Pristia (guitar-vocals), and Mike Rieger (drums) — better known as Phantom Kicks — is experimental, ethereal post-punk born of white space à la the xx. Even without an album, Phantom Kicks’ eerie electro pop has garnered notoriety throughout the Bay Area after gigs at numerous local venues and festivals, sharing the bill with other local indie greats like My First Earthquake, the Dont’s, Skeletal System, and Sunbeam Rd. And its days as a live-only entity are soon to end: Phantom Kicks’ debut EP, Tectonics, is due in April. (Verzosa)

With Adventure and Exray’s

8 p.m., $6

Milk Bar

1840 Haight, SF

www.milksf.com

 

FILM

San Francisco Dance Film Festival

Now in its second year, the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, presented by Motion Pictures and the Ninth Street Independent Film Center, features three evenings of screenings as well as workshops on shooting and editing dance footage. In addition to selections of work by local and international dance filmmakers, Friday night’s lineup includes the San Francisco premiere of NY Export: Opus Jazz, a reimagining of Jerome Robbins’ 1958 “ballet in sneakers” danced by members of the New York City Ballet. This is the first return of Robbins’ choreography to the streets of New York City since the 1961 movie version of West Side Story. (Julie Potter)

Through Sat/26

6:30, 8, and 9:15 p.m., $10

Ninth Street Independent Film Center

145 Ninth St., SF

(415) 625-6100

www.sfdancefilmfest.org

 

FRIDAY 25

PERFORMANCE

Free: Voices from Beyond the Curbside

Destiny Arts Center in Oakland has been around so long — it was founded in 1988 — that you tend to take it for granted. Better stop doing that, especially in this climate of shrinking resources for socially-engaged arts programs. Destiny provides a safe place, activities, and role models during after school, weekend, and summer programs. Students ages three to 18 learn martial arts, dance (modern, hip-hop, and aerial), theater, self-defense, and conflict resolution. All these elements come into play one more time during this year’s Destiny Youth Company’s big-time production at Laney College. Created by the students with the guidance of adult artist-teachers, Free explores concepts of personal and social freedom (and the lack thereof). The program also features documentary filmmaker David Collier’s video of the process that made Free possible. (Rita Felciano)

Through April 3

Fri.–Sat., 7:30 p.m. (also April 2–3, 2 p.m.), $6–$25

Laney College

900 Fallon, Oakl.

1-800-838-3006

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

ROCK

Vastum

Vastum, from the Latin vastus: immense. Empty. Wasted. It’s easy to feel that way bumbling home from a dime-a-dozen metal show — depthless, bored, and boozed. But the three times I’ve seen Vastum, I almost pissed myself with joy: my fingers can form horns again, my head bangs rather than bobbles, my tired faith is revived. With members from two stalwart San Francisco bands, Saros and Acephalix, the five-piece delivers precision death metal with a little punk, classically fast and aggressive with none of the cheesiness often befalling the genre. The venue’s a gem, too: an all-ages Oakland warehouse run by an old-school artist and a gargantuan raptor. (Renz)

With Embers, Atriarch, and Headless Lizzy and Her Icebox Pussy

9 p.m., $6

First Church of the Buzzard

2601 Adeline, Oakland

Facebook: Vastum

 

MUSIC

Wye Oak

Rock duos tend to strive toward sounding greater than their parts. Wye Oak, composed of Baltimore-based musicians Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack, are no exception. Rather than pure bombast, the two play into the contradiction of expectations on almost every track. Wasner’s guitar and lyricism are the initial focus, typically heavily folk-influenced backed by true multi-instrumentalist Stack, who plays drums and keyboard at the same time. As the melodic verses build into the explosive choruses, so do the 1990s alternative rock influences, recalling Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine. It’s an attention-grabbing effect and in a smaller venue should be impossible to ignore. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Callers and Sands

10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

SATURDAY 26

DANCE

“Pilot 58: Fight or Flight”

It may not take a village to produce a dance concert, but a collective of choreographers sure makes the process more creative and exciting. Or at least that’s the lesson gleaned from the participants in Pilot, ODC’s self-producing incubator that selects six dance artists to work together on a shared bill. Known as a springboard for emerging choreographers, Pilot showcases new and under-the-radar dance from fresh choreographic voices: Raisa Punkki, Byb Chanel Bibene, Bianca Cabrera, Katharine Hawthorne, Ashley Johnson, and Erica Jeffrey. Arriving at choreography through notably different experiences, the evening brings a host of ideas to the table, from moving light sources to little dance cartoons. (Potter)

Sat/26–Sun/27, 8 p.m. (also Sun/27, 4 p.m.), $12

ODC Studio B

351 Shotwell, SF

(415) 863-6606

www.odcdance.org

 

SUNDAY 27

MUSIC

Rotting Christ

Though not as famed as other loci of Lucifer, Greece has a long and distinguished black metal history. Delightfully named Rotting Christ was founded in 1987 by brothers Sakis and Themis Tolis, who have been plying their blast-beaten trade ever since, much to the dismay of born-again Christian headbanger Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, who refused to play at a Greek music festival once he learned that Rotting Christ was on the bill. The hellbound Hellenic quartet is joined on its current tour by cult favorites Melechesh, a “Mesopotamian” metal band — composed of Israeli expatriates based in Amsterdam — whose distinctive sound combines razor-wire riffing with idiosyncratic Middle Eastern harmonies and rhythms. On a more somber note, this show will be the last promoted by Shawn “Whore for Satan” Phillips, whose retirement will be a deeply-felt loss for metal, both in San Francisco and elsewhere. (Ben Richardson)

With Melechesh, Hate, Abigail Williams, and Lecherous Nocturne

7:30 p.m., $25

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

 

MONDAY 28

MUSIC

Röyksopp

Fame can go in divergent ways. For Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp, the breakthrough was “Remind Me,” a catchy 2002 cut featuring vocals from Kings of Convenience’s Erlend Øye. In the U.K. it picked up Best Video at the Europe Music Awards that year. In the U.S., however, a version of the song is associated with a Geico commercial featuring a caveman. Look past that though, as the pair of musicians have otherwise proven themselves as standouts on the electronic scene, releasing ethereal downtempo compositions. Live, their performances are more amped up and free-ranging, involving unexpected covers like Queens of the Stone Age’s “Go With The Flow.” (Prendiville)

With Jon Hopkins

8 p.m., $30

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

1-800-745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com


TUESDAY 29

DANCE

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Under the directorship of Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater became the country’s most popular dance troupe, with an impressive infrastructure and a $3 million budget. Now it will be up to Robert Battle, its new artistic director, to build a repertoire that matches the troupe’s organizational achievements. His appointment was something of a surprise; he never danced with Ailey and, at 37. he is young to assume that kind of responsibility. (Jamison was 43). Programs A and C on this year’s Zellerbach schedule each feature one of his choreographies. Whatever he does in terms of programming, he is not likely to offer fewer glimpses of Revelations, the company’s bread and butter. But how about presenting it with live music? The Bay Area has some excellent gospel choirs. (Felciano)

March 29–April 2, 8 p.m. (also April 2, 2 p.m.);

April 3, 3 p.m., $34–$62

8 p.m., $34–$62

Zellerbach Hall

Bancroft at Telegraph, Berk.

(510) 642-9988

www.calperformances.org 

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

SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY! Monster trucks, y’all!

Sue Vaughan
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0

For many of us that grew up in the 1970s and 80s, the recent slew of TV commercials for this weekend’s “Monster Jam” monster truck event in Oakland has been bringing back a flood of fond memories, with the overly-exaggerated and amped up announcer wildly informing us about the stampede of horsepower that is about to come thundering into town — though it’s Sat/26, not SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY as it seemed most of the ads back then proclaimed.

Generations of kids have undoubtedly imagined being in the driver’s seat of Bigfoot, Grave Digger, or one of the other many colorful and burly monstrous machines over the years, going to live shows, watching them on TV, or playing with their Hot Wheels toys in the backyard.

One Bay Area native who has gone on to actually become a professional monster truck driver is Kelvin Ramer, who was born and raised in Corralitos, down in Santa Cruz County. Ramer’s retro cool custom creation is Time Flys, a monster truck based on the body of a 1934 Ford pick up, which he drives for his own family-run team, the appropriately named Living The Dream Racing.

Ramer can trace his racing and automotive roots back to high school, where he spent a lot of time in the auto shop, and got his first 4×4. He then attended UTI, worked as a mechanic for several years, opened his own shop, Auto Care Towing, and gradually became involved with the local auto racing and monster truck scene.

Finally, about 14 years ago, he bought the first part to start building his own monster truck — but it would be another 7 years before it was completed.

“I started buying parts and saving money and building, saving and building until it was done,” says Ramer, who now takes part in about 30 monster truck events each year, some part of the famous ‘Monster Jam’ series, others at smaller, independent events, fairs, and festivals.

Considering the humble beginnings of his truck and team, Ramer has come a long way, having travelled all throughout the western United States with Time Flys — and now he even has his own official Hot Wheels car — Mattel approached him last year about making a replica toy of Time Flys, and he excitedly approved.

“From where we started to where we are now is sort of surreal. They’ve actually made a Hot Wheels of Time Flys! It’s sort of unbelievable that something I designed is a Hot Wheel. It’s like, ‘I’ve really made it big — I’ve got a Hot Wheel!’”

This weekend’s show will be somewhat like a hometown event for Ramer, who with his family and team, does all the work on the 10,500 pound, 1500 horsepower truck at his shop in Watsonville. On Saturday he’s expecting that he’ll probably see many of the same fans that have come to meet him before, which thrills him — and he always enjoys meeting new ones as well, and likes to use the opportunity to help inspire people, in several different ways.

“I had a whole bunch of Boy Scouts come up at the last show I was at — they were about the right age for algebra and calculus — so I started talking about how my shocks work, and how the pressures change in the shocks from the accumulator from the nitrogen side to the liquid side. I started giving them the numbers, and they realized that there’s a lot of mathematics involved in monster trucks and understanding how to adjust these things and tune them — you can actually lay it all out on paper mathematically.”

He also makes side trips to meet with some of his fans, such as a young boy in Turlock, who has had to have multiple heart surgeries, and he sees him every time he’s in town. He’s gotten to know the family over the past couple of years, and recently the boy’s mom told Ramer that her son won’t wear a nice shirt to the first day of school, he’ll only wear his Time Flys shirt.

Ramer says that it’s things like this that are really what he appreciates about being in the position that he is, whether it’s helping out charities, visiting one on one with fans, or simply getting out there and smashing some cars and blowing off some steam in front of thousands of spectators.

“To me, it’s really cool that I have the ability to let people forget their troubles for a few hours, and bring a smile to their face.”

“Monster Jam 2011”
Sat/26, 3 p.m. pit party; 7 p.m. main event, $7.50–$30
Oakland Coliseum
7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl.
1-800-745-3000
www.monsterjam.com

Renew yourself

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Renew yourself

culture@sfbg.com

So 2011 is a couple months in, and already your new year’s resolution list reads like so many dreams deferred? Chuck it in the flames — not all rebirths neatly coincide with the Gregorian calendar. This spring, rejuvenate your inner and outer workings with some of these excellent opportunities to renew everything from your chi, to your core strength, to the sweetness of your swagger.

 

HEAR THE CRY OF THE MIDNIGHT DOWN-DOG

Tripped the light cataclysmic a time too many? The toxic Fernet fumes ooze from your pores, and you’ve left not only your debit, but your credit, library, and frequent bagel-buyer card in various watering holes about time? Time to purge. Take a night off from tippling and toddle to Laughing Lotus, where Friday night’s midnight yoga class (each week from 10 p.m.-midnight) soothes abused chakras — and livers, need be. Each week even features a different live musician: Fri/25’s class will be home to the didgeridoo and sound-healing savasana of Amber Field.

Laughing Lotus, 3271 16th St., SF. (415) 355-1600, www.laughinglotus.com

 

PARTICIPATE IN A GROUP POKING

What’s community acupuncture, you ask? Small groups of patients are treated in recliners in a quiet, calm room. During the hour-long sessions, those waiting for their pokes receive staggered personalized care (needles are inserted into one’s limbs, face, and head: no disrobing necessary) from a licensed acupuncturist. Learned how to share in kindergarten? Perfect, because the cooperative method means that a single session will only run you $25–$45, including the initial visit’s paperwork fee. Circle Community Acupuncture, 1351 Harrison, SF. (415) 864-1070, www.circleca.com

 

ALKALINIZE!

Fasting, ugh. It has its place, but not eating anything is a bitter pill in the land of street tacos and gourmet coffee grounds. If you’re asking our opinion, a day of cleanse is best accessorized with Lydia’s raw green soup, a tangy elixir of kale, cucumber, dulse seaweed, avocado, ginger, and other green delicious majicks. Lydia’s sells neatly packaged soup servings, resplendent kale chips, and other yummy raw treats are favorites at the city’s crunchiest festivals, and you can pick them up at health food stores too.

Available at various SF grocery stores, www.lydiaslovinfoods.com

 

SWEAT IT OUT

Hidden behind hippie-wear emporium P-Kok is a small green garden and a sauna where tired city souls retreat for the store’s patchouli-heavy full moon ceremonies, complete with vibrational sauna singing. Starting in March, the hidden space will go holistic and become Tall Tree Tambo Wholeness Center. Monthly memberships (to encourage the use of the space as a healthy community hub) will be available for $100–$125 including coed and single-sex sauna access, healing events facilitated by other members, and the center’s four on-site healing arts practitioners, small-group classes in spiritual alignment, yoga, and the ever-popular full moon rites.

776 Haight, SF. (415) 430-8285, www.talltreetambo.org

 

TAKE INSPIRATION FROM A FEMALE FIGHTER

Forget Rocky. For true Bay Area boxing spirit, you couldn’t do better than checking out the super bantamweight championship boxing match of Ana “the Hurricane” Julaton vs. Franchesca “the Chosen One” Alcanter on Fri/25. Julaton, a Daly City and Bayview raised Filipina American, is looking to regain her standing in the pro world after a disappointing loss last year. Regardless of who walks with the belt, the ring’s high-powered punching — and rock hard musculature — is worth checking out if you’re in need of some gym motivation.

Fri/25 6 p.m., $35–$360. Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbour, Richmond. www.brownpapertickets.com

 

SWEAT TO BOLLYWOOD BREAKS

Of course, you could saddle up your most comfortable heels and get your werqout in the club. Should you try this tactic, you could hardly do better than the rum-tum-tum stylings of Non-Stop Bhangra, a night that’s been teaching San Franciscans how to circle wrists and move hips in pure Punjabi mode since 2004. Nights begin with a hour-long class on Bollywood-style dance, continues with ample time to practice to beats by resident DJs and guest scratchers, and now attract a diverse following of races, ages, and ahem, physical aptitudes. Calorie burn and culture learn at the same time, perfect.

Next show: March 19 9 p.m., $10–$20. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.nonstopbhangra.com

 

READ ABOUT OTHER, HEALTHIER PEOPLE

Maria Arellano was gunning for a healthier lifestyle, so she decided to blog about it. “Accountability,” the chipper office manager e-mailed us when we asked her about Oh Healthy Day‘s providence. “Posting your workouts and healthy eating habits with others is a great way to stay motivated.” Her short, addicting posts and sunny photos of her ongoing journey to fitness are also great ways to hold us accountable — how are you going to down that family-sized bag of corn chips after reading Arellano’s upbeat prose about her delicious protein and veggie dinners or inspiring Crossfit workout? Answer: you’re not.

www.ohhealthyday.com

 

REACH FOR THE SKY

While the spectacularly cool House of Air has added a valuable component to San Francisco’s kid’s-activity-starved landscape (little ones can’t help but explode with glee at the very sight of the humongous “Bounce House”), there’s trampin’ for adults as well. Specifically, the Air Conditioning workout is a 50-minute fly-through that promises to “leave your cheeks just as sore as your quads from smiling so much.” At $16 for a 50-minute session, it’s not a huge leap to “yes.”

926 Mason, SF. (415) 345-9675, www.houseofairsf.com

 

BUFF YOUR BRAINPOWER

Feel the burn all you want in your thighs, but no fitness program would be complete without a stretching your mind. At vibrantBrains, you’ll exercise that flabby cerebellum in what amounts to a workout for your brain. Improve your memory, tackle abstractions, and fast-track your alertness, literacy, and comprehension skills with programs like “Neurobics,” “Mind Evolve,” “NeoCORTA,” and “Posit Science Cortex with InSight.” Each program concentrates on a different area of mental agility using a combination of cutting edge techniques and personal attention. Even reading about the various vibrantBrains offerings makes us feel smarter.

3235 Sacramento, SF. (415) 775-1138, www.vibrantbrains.com

 

IMMERSE YOURSELF IN EGGHEAD

Holy smarty-pants, Batman, there’s a ton of intellectually stimulating stuff going down at the Mechanics’ Institute. Any given day you might enjoy a screwball comedy from the 1940s, a talk by a famous fantasist-cartographer, a book club discussion centering on the Harlem Renaissance, a class in beginner Excel, or intensive chess instruction at any level. It’s also a library! The 1854 Mechanics’ Institute building is a mind-blow in itself — but with a wide-ranging and welcoming program of creatively exhilarating (and very inexpensive) events, you may not even notice your intriguing surroundings.

57 Post. # 415, SF. (415) 393-0110, www.milibrary.org

 

STROKE SOME FUR

Next time you’re about to calculate your checkbook in your head or cry because your (ex-)drummer stole your boyfriend, head over to the Little Farm petting zoo in Berkeley’s Tilden Regional Park. This fully-loaded snuggle gang of cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, and pigs will have you back to your cute self — because petting zoos are restorative for small, whiny children, but they also work for midsized, whiny adults.

Little Farm petting zoo, Tilden Regional Park, Central Park Drive, Berk. (510) 525-2233, www.ebparks.org

 

MEDITATE STUPA-SIDE

If you want to change your outlook, pay a visit to the Peace Pagoda in Japan Center, an underrated San Francisco landmark. Designed by artist and architect Yoshiro Taniguchi, the pagoda and its subtly Op Art-tinged interpretation of a Buddhist stupa made their debut in the year of the Summer of Love. Walk around and even step inside Taniguchi’s 100-foot-high, five-tiered, many-passaged structure to meditate from an infinite variety of angles. Or better yet, play a quick game of hide and seek with someone you love. 24-7.

1704 Post, SF. (415) 775-1817, www.sfjapantown.org

 

LET YOUR SPIRIT WANDER

Sometimes the best way to refresh yourself is to get a little lost. When things begin to spiral out of control, let the ancient spiritual meditative paths of the three Bay Area labyrinths lead you to a calmer place. Take a natural journey to the mysterious Eagle Point Labyrinth (Lands End, Sutro Heights Park, SF.). Experience transcendence — and a spectacular quiet zone — with the Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral (1100 California, SF. www.gracecathedral.org). Or amble with playful tots along the colorful circle of the Scott Street Labyrinth near Duboce Park (Scott between Duboce and Waller, SF).

 

MULTITASK YOUR RETRO BEAUTY FIX

If you want to feel new, sometimes there’s only one thing to do: get a fresh hairdo at Down at Lulu’s. The bass is thumpin’, the clothes are cheap and sexy, and the pop culture treasures and creative energy are abundant at this self-described “hair salon-vintage clothing-record store-junk shop” co-owned by Tina Lucchesi and Seth Bogart, where you can get hot highlights, cuckoo color jobs, and perms with panache.

6603 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 601-0964, www.downatlulus.com.

 

PUT CUTE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

You’ll break your lease in the land of not-so-fresh after an introduction to wonders of kawaii nail art. Let Trang Bui, the manager of Crystal Nail, facilitate your escape from the days of dull French manicures with her signature collage talons of glitter, jewels, and — so popular you should book and specify you want them well in advance — Hello Kitty 3-D art. Don’t be shocked at the price tag — a full acrylic set with designs and tip will run around $65. Worth it for such blingy digits, no? Next challenge: learning to type with horizontal fingers.

2347 Clement, SF. (415) 752-4425

 

STICK A FEATHER IN YOUR COIF

Still rocking the all-natural look? Shame that — freshen up your do with some feather hair extensions, slim bursts of hue that’ll set you apart from the other land-locked long hairs, but don’t involve the same commitment as a jar of Manic Panic (though they can last for months). You can get a natural or neon-colored bundle of up to four feathers for $30 or single plumes for $10 each at the Mission’s Pretty Parlor. Move fast — once these hit Dolores Park, the trend’s gonna blow up.

Pretty Parlor. 3150 18th St., SF. (415) 556-2883, www.prettyparlorsf.com

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