Google Archives — Page 5 of 22 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Matthew Dear presents Audion, in a shipping container of LED triangles

Steven T. Jones

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February 28, 2014

Matthew Dear presents Audion, in a shipping container of LED triangles

At this point I have no idea when this show is going to start, but it’s 9:22 and there’s another loner type rubbing the wood grain pillar in the middle of Mighty. He’s got his hood up as if keeping a low-profile, but
blowing it otherwise. It looks like he took the wrong drugs, slowing down when he might want to speed up. Because at this point in the evening, with some crew members apparently still wiring up the massive amount of lights on stage, he might be in for a wait.

Matthew Dear, the headliner for the night under his Audion moniker, is wandering around the club. Seems typically calm and collected, but I wonder if there’s panic behind the scenes. The show — complete with a custom visual installation — was originally scheduled to be at the Regency Ballroom but was moved to this much smaller venue due to poor ticket sales. (You could see the marketing urgency increasing with each email, first listing the show discreetly as “Audion,” and then “Audion Live: Subvertical,” before finally throwing all the names out in a final push with “Matthew Dear Presents Audion Live: Subvertical.”) After changing venues and dropping the ticket price, Noise Pop also announced all previously issued tickets would now come with a +1. Maybe it’s the rainy weather, but there’s hardly anyone on the dancefloor yet.

Except for squeaky-shoes, which is a good sign. A ubiquitous figure around SF clubs, in my experience if squeaky-shoes is at a show, you’ve made a good decision about your evening entertainment. (We call him squeaky-shoes because his shoes are really squeaky, especially when he’s dancing, in an individual style that involves leaping sideways/backwards a solid five feet at a time, pausing just before colliding with someone, and then walking away as if nothing happened.) He also always wears a comparatively silent ballcap. Look for him. He may be your spirit guide.

As far as I’m concerned, Matrixxman can not go on soon enough, as the same track has been playing over the P.A. for nearly 45 minutes. Aside from the dull bass, the music is drowned out, as if coming from the Chinese restaurant next door. Enduring this together, the woman besides me strikes up a conversation. She doesn’t know Matrixxman, Audion, or even Matthew Dear: she’s here for the lights, knowing that the visual setup was designed by the same team who did the mind-bending work on Amon Tobin’s ISAM.

WhenI last saw Matrixxman, it was at the same venue, and he was doing a closing set for Le1f. One track he played — “C.U.N.T.” by Tronco Traxx — is permanently lodged in my brain. Google it. Your expectations will be met. Tonight he’s keeping things a bit more in pocket, setting up the headliner with a less potentially alienating mix dominated by jacked up house, chopped diva vocals, and something that sounded like Prince (and may well have been Prince).

When the main event starts, all I can think of is packaging. Maybe it’s the corrugated plastic material that Matthew Dear is encased in, a neat sphere made up of interlocking LED-lit triangles; if Amon Tobin had a spaceship, Dear has a shipping container. It’s even branded in a way: the press release pointed out the resemblance between the triangles and the A in Audion. To me they look like a swirl of tracking buttons, with larger “reverse” and “play” arrows on each side of the stage. Like the comprehensive 10-year-spanning collection Audion X, this production seems designed to deliver Dear/Audion in an iconic form.

Tobin once impressed on me that not all electronic music is meant for dancing, so having a visual production like ISAM made sense. But while Tobin via ISAM warped around to places feet can’t easily follow, this isn’t really the case with Audion. Dear, particularly in this format, is clearly making dance music, heavily indebted to Detroit. (Not just the techno, but the car industry: his set drives along with little pause, frequently punctuated by a slow pulsing swell, revving and switching gears. See: “Mouth to Mouth” or “Motormouth.”)

A lot of the crowd dancing up front seems capable of following along unfazed, as if it’s just another night at Mighty. I’m more conflicted and end up with the ones in the back, stunned in place, not sure which
way to go. From back there, it could be a jaded rock show.

I look for the support beam molester from earlier, but don’t see him at all under the lights.

He’s probably fine.

Eyewitness account from Molotov’s conflicts with Google Glass Explorer’s story

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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February 26, 2014

168

Eyewitness account from Molotov’s conflicts with Google Glass Explorer’s story

A Google Glass “Explorer” and social media consultant from San Mateo made international headlines after visiting San Francisco for being “verbally and physically assaulted … because of some Google Glass haters,” she wrote on Facebook.

But her official account of the incident as reported to police conflicts with an eyewitness account from someone who saw the fight unfold.

On Feb. 22, Sarah Slocum went with some friends to Molotov’s, a punk bar in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood. It was sometime around last call. The patrons did not take kindly to the idea that she was donning Google Glass, and thus possibly recording them, inside the bar.

Google Glass is a hands-free device that connects users to the Internet via a tiny screen that floats in front of the wearer’s eye. It’s capable of streaming live video. Those testing it out are called “Explorers,” and Google specifically directs its Explorers to “ask permission before taking photos or videos of others.”

According to Albie Esparza, San Francisco Police Department spokesperson, Slocum reported that she was “engaged in a verbal altercation with three suspects,” because they “believed she was videotaping without their consent.”

During that confrontation, “one of the suspects grabbed the Google Glass off her face,” Esparza said, “and she ran out of the bar in pursuit. She retrieved the Google Glass,” Esparza said, but when she returned to the interior of the bar, she discovered that her purse and cell phone had gone missing.

Esparza said there is an open investigation, but no charges have been filed.

In a video Slocum released to KRON 4, a woman can be heard telling Slocum that she, as a techie, is “ruining the city.”

According to a source who did not want to be named, that woman was a bartender at Molotov’s who was not working that night, but has been fired in the days since this incident blew up in the news. When reached by phone, a staff member at Molotov’s said he was not authorized to comment on that.

According to a bar patron who was there that night, the situation didn’t really get out of hand until Slocum’s male companion threw a punch at one of the individuals who had been asking Slocum to stop recording.

Bryan Lester, who was outside the bar with a friend who was unlocking his bike when Slocum emerged from Molotov’s onto the sidewalk, said Slocum was still wearing her Google Glass when she exited the bar.

“I had seen her in the back when I had gotten a drink,” said Lester, who said he was hanging out near the pinball machines in the front of the bar that night.

“She was with a group of friends and … they seemed to be attracting a little bit of attention, but nothing serious, before last call.”

On the sidewalk outside Molotov’s, Lester said, “I believe that some words were exchanged … and then I saw the man protecting her throw a punch at the other gentleman and push him into a car and took a couple swings at him on the hood of the car.”

According to a different source who also saw things unfold from the street, “He did grab it from off her face but he told her to stop recording him and then he handed it back to her.” After that, “her boyfriend came, socked him in the face, then the fight broke out and the bouncer stopped it.”

Lester said the scuffle on the hood of the car lasted “about 30 seconds.” After that, “they were separated and the fight was over.”

Based on all accounts, it seems Slocum did have her purse and cell phone robbed. Which totally sucks.

We sought an interview with Slocum for this story, but were unable to make contact.

Mainstream media outlets have sensationalized this bar fight, because it plays so perfectly into the narrative that techies are somehow unsafe in San Francisco due to widespread anger over tech’s presence in gentrifying neighborhoods.

A tension certainly exists, because long-term residents are getting evicted and displaced at higher rates than ever before in the face of soaring rents. At the same time, it should be obvious to anyone that entering a punk bar at last call wearing Google Glass is going to ruffle some feathers. Combine this with alcohol, and the fact that a fight broke out isn’t terribly surprising.

There’s another issue here that few seem to be questioning. Isn’t there a privacy concern that arises when patrons go into bars wearing devices that can record live video and instantly stream it? I wondered about this the time I tried on Glass. (By the way, Glass can run facial recognition software.)

Instead of having an in-depth discussion about privacy, unfortunately, the controversy around this bar fight remains mired in some nonsense about whether the incident should be considered a “hate crime.”

“What makes this story special,” Slocum wrote on her Facebook page, “is that no one has experienced a hate crime or been targeted for a hate crime, which is what it was, for wearing Google Glass.”

But it’s not. The phrase “hate crime” has a very specific definition, as determined by Congress. Unless a victim has been targeted out of a bias against his or her race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation, it’s factually inaccurate to characterize any incident as a “hate crime.”

This could get even uglier. Already on Twitter, one of Slocum’s supporters has called for Glass wearers to congregate at Molotov’s in support of Slocum. And just wait and see what happens when people start wearing Lambda hats.

Logan Hesse contributed to this report.

UC Berkeley drops hyperlocal news website Mission Local

Erica Hanna

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February 25, 2014

30

UC Berkeley drops hyperlocal news website Mission Local

A memo released today revealed a striking split that could affect media coverage in the Mission district: hyperlocal news site Mission Local is being dropped by its main fiscal sponsor, the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

“It’s now time for Mission Local to take the next step and re-launch itself as an independent, stand-alone media operation,” J-School Dean Edward Wasserman wrote in a department-wide memo. “That means ending its role in the J-School’s curriculum.”

The website is one of a trio of hyperlocal news websites run by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, including Oakland North and Richmond Confidential. It is still unclear if the other websites will be affected as well, though the memo says they will be the center of future discussion among faculty.

Mission Local is a journalism lab for the UC Berkeley graduate students, covering everything in the Mission District from the Tamale Lady to the eye-rolling of Google public relations employees. They’re popular in the neighborhood, and even present the website in a Spanish-language format.

The UC Berkeley graduate students serve as the site’s reporters and a little bit of everything else, from advertising and sales to audience-building. That was a problem, Wasserman wrote.

“That’s not really what we do,” he wrote. “Those are specialized areas, and the J-School doesn’t have the instructional capacity to teach them to a Berkeley standard of excellence.”

But the main issue seems to be cost. “It’s an expensive undertaking,” he wrote. The sites were initially funded with grants from the Ford Foundation, but UC Berkeley started picking up the tab when they ran out, among other fundraising avenues. Wasserman was also concerned that working for a hyperlocal newspaper away from campus pulls students away from campus activities.

The PDF above is the memo sent to students and faculty of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism department concerning Mission Local.

Lydia Chavez, a professor at the J-School and the head of Mission Local told the Guardian she disagreed with Wasserman’s decision.

“To be clear, I would have preferred to have Mission Local and the other hyper locals at the core of the school’s curriculum,” she said.

But tales of Mission Local’s demise would be exaggerated.

Chavez, a reporter who’s written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, op-ed pieces in the San Francisco Examiner and more, isn’t willing to walk away from Mission Local despite the challenges.

The journalism bug, it seems, bit her hard.

“The Mission is now ground zero for so much that is happening in the city and the country that if I walked away from it now, it would be like walking away from a terrific story,” she wrote to the Guardian in an email.

“Mission Local will remain alive and innovative,” she wrote.

We’ll follow up with this story as it develops, and are planning a look into the state of hyperlocal journalism in San Francisco. Look for it in next week’s print edition of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

The memo in full:

J-School Community:

The Mission Local hyperlocal site has been a vibrant and valuable part of the School of Journalism since it was created five years years ago. It has developed well beyond its initial scope as an incubator for J200 students, and under Prof. Lydia Chavez’s imaginative, impeccably professional and tireless leadership has become the premier place for the community it serves to learn about itself and talk about its future.

It’s now time for Mission Local to take the next step and re-launch itself as an independent, stand-alone media operation. That means ending its role in the J-School’s curriculum. While Prof Chavez would have liked to see the school keep the site, she is ready to assume responsibility for the site, and we expect that it will continue under her ownership.

My reasons for spinning off ML are several.

First, it’s an expensive undertaking, which obliges us to operate a remote site on a year-round basis, even when the curricular value to our students is limited or even, at times, non-existent (as when we pay non-students to keep the site from going dark.)

Second, it draws students away far from North Gate at the very moment we’re bulking up and enriching the curricular and co-curricular offerings here—new required courses, more speakers, town hall meetings, reinvigorated career services, generally pumped-up intellectual life. From the perspective of Mission Local’s needs, renewed activity in North Gate is a distraction, and I think that unintentionally does our students a disservice.

Third, the natural evolution of the site itself is toward being an integrated media operation, and that requires sustained attention to marketing, audience-building, ad sales, miscellaneous revenue-generation, community outreach, special events, partnerships, and 1,001 other publishing activities that are essential to any site’s commercial success.

That’s not really what we do. Those are specialized areas, and the J-School doesn’t have the instructional capacity to teach them to a Berkeley standard of excellence. What’s more, our students wouldn’t have the curricular bandwidth to learn them—not unless we pared back other areas, and redefined our core mission as something other than journalism education.

(Let me add that as part of our larger curricular rethinking, I’m hopeful we will be introducing, and requiring, more business-side instruction than we currently offer, but ML’s needs are still of a different order of magnitude.)

Whether other changes are in the works for J200 is up in the air at the moment. The curriculum committee is in the process of considering alternative approaches to J200, and the roles of Oakland North and Richmond Confidential as teaching labs are among the matters the faculty will discuss.

Mission Local has produced dozens of loyal alums, many of them strong enthusiasts who recall their experience there with affection and gratitude. Let me assure them—and you—that as we weigh the future of J200 it’s with the intention of improving on what we’ve done in the past, and making sure the future offers opportunities here at least as rewarding and memorable as theirs have been.

Let me conclude with a word of profound thanks to Prof. Chavez. While I respect and admire her loyalty to the Mission, I very much look forward to her getting more deeply involved in the exciting work that’s going on in North Gate.

Regards,
Edward Wasserman, Dean

SFBG Wrap

Michael Redmond

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February 25, 2014

0

Google bus plan challenged

San Francisco activists and labor filed an appeal of the controversial commuter shuttle (aka, the Google buses) pilot program with the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 19, alleging it was pushed through without a proper environmental review.

The appeal was filed by a coalition of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, SEIU 1021, The League of Pissed Off Voters, and Sara Shortt of the Housing Rights Committee.

The shuttles, mostly to Silicon Valley tech firms, pick up passengers at Muni bus stops. The use of public bus stops would incur a $271 fine for private autos, and often do, but the shuttles have largely received a free pass from the city. Last month, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency approved a pilot plan hatched behind closed doors that allows use of 200 bus stops by the private shuttles, charging only $1 per stop, per day.

The appeal alleges that the program needed review under the California Environmental Quality Act, which asks for projects to be analyzed for, among other things, land use, housing, and public health impacts.

“CEQA actually identifies displacement as an environmental impact,” attorney Richard Drury, who filed the appeal on behalf of the coalition, told us. “Almost no one knows that. Honestly I didn’t know that, until I started researching all of this.”

If the Board of Supervisors doesn’t back the appeal, there may be a court battle on the environmental impact of the shuttle stops, which increase rents and home prices nearby.

Paul Rose, spokesperson for the SFMTA, responded to the complaint in an email to the Guardian.

“We developed this pilot proposal to help ensure the most efficient transportation network possible by reducing Muni delays and further reducing congestion on our roadways,” Rose wrote. “We are confident that the CEQA clearance is appropriate and will be upheld.” (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

Library cracks down on the homeless

The way homeless residents are treated in San Francisco has come under scrutiny lately, with recent reports of homeless individuals being sprayed with hoses by Department of Public Works staff who started doing early-morning sidewalk cleanings nearby Twitter’s mid-Market headquarters.

This week, much discussion has been focused on homeless individuals’ use of the city’s Main Library — and while library administrators say they are just trying to make the facility safe and enjoyable for everyone, advocates have voiced concern that the homeless are being unfairly targeted.

“We want people to use the library from all walks of life,” library spokesperson Michelle Jeffers told the Guardian, saying a new set of proposed policies is not meant to be directed at homeless people in particular.

But it’s difficult to imagine who else would be bathing in the restrooms, for instance, or bringing a shopping cart into the library.

There is even a line in the code of conduct policy that forbids emitting “strong or pervasive odors.” While the policy notes that this could mean perfume, it could also mean body odor.

At a recent meeting, the San Francisco Library Commission considered bulking up security staff and imposing stricter penalties for these violations and others, such as sleeping in the library, asking for money, or bringing carts or luggage into the building.

Under proposed revisions to the library’s “Code of Conduct,” patrons could face tougher penalties for such offenses. (Rebecca Bowe)

Kelly runs in D10

After being narrowly edged out in the race for the District 10 seat on the Board of Supervisors four years ago, Potrero Hill political activist Tony Kelly launch his campaign for the seat Feb. 19, challenging incumbent Malia Cohen.

In 2010, after former Sup. Sophie Maxwell was termed out, the D10 race was a wide open contest that had low voter turnout and the squirreliest ranked-choice voting ending that the city has seen. On election night, former BART director Lynette Sweet finished first, followed by Kelly, a third place tie between Cohen and Marlene Tran, and Potrero Hill View publisher Steve Moss in fourth.

But the strong negative campaigning between Sweet and Moss, the leading fundraisers in the race, allowed the likable but then relatively unknown Cohen to vault into the lead on the strength of second- and third-place votes, finishing a few hundred votes in front of Kelly, who came in second.

Cohen has had an unremarkable tenure on the board, spearheading few significant legislative pushes and being an ideological mixed bag on key votes. But she’ll likely retain the support of African American leaders and voters in Bayview and Hunters Point, and enjoy the always significant advantage of incumbency.

Kelly hopes to turn that advantage into a disadvantage, tying Cohen to City Hall economic development policies that have caused gentrification and displacement. “Too many San Franciscans face an uphill battle, especially here in District 10,” Kelly said in a statement announcing his candidacy. “Our district is part of one of the richest cities in the richest state in the richest country in the world, and yet our neighborhoods are home to the highest unemployment rates in the City, our homeowners are at risk of foreclosure, and our tenants at risk of evictions. This is unacceptable, and we must do better.” (Steven T. Jones)

Obamacare vs. HealthySF

Thousands of Healthy San Francisco enrollees will soon face a dilemma.

Federal health care reform will hold them to the “individual mandate,” a requirement to obtain health insurance — but Healthy San Francisco doesn’t count. Roughly 70 percent of uninsured San Franciscans currently rely upon the city-administered program, created by San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance, to access medical care.

Anyone who doesn’t satisfy the individual mandate will be made to fork over $95 as a penalty — but that noncompliance fee will skyrocket to $625 in 2015.

Meanwhile, people who are eligible for subsidized health insurance under the Affordable Care Act will automatically become ineligible for Healthy San Francisco under current rules, according to San Francisco Department of Public Health Deputy Director of Health Colleen Chawla.

The prospect of becoming suddenly ineligible for Healthy San Francisco will leave thousands of residents in the bind of being unable to rely on the system they now use to access care, while also being unable to afford the new insurance option — and so far, city officials have found no clear resolution to this dilemma.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who authored the legislation that created Healthy San Francisco as a member of the Board of Supervisors, admonished the Department of Public Health last week for turning away enrollees, conveying to program participants that only those who are undocumented would be eligible to remain in Healthy San Francisco. On Feb. 18, the San Francisco Health Commission approved a temporary solution, signing off on a resolution that creates a “transition period” allowing Healthy San Francisco enrollees to remain in the program until the end of the 2014. (Rebecca Bowe)

SF has fastest growing wealth gap

San Francisco has the second highest gap between the rich and the poor in the United States, according to a new study from the Brookings Institution. The study looked at US Census data across different income levels and ranked cities for not only the widening chasm between the rich and the poor, but also the speed at which that gap increased. Though San Francisco has the second widest income inequality gap (second to Atlanta, where the poor are poorer, but the rich far less rich than here), it’s tops in terms of the speed at which the wealthy are pulling away from the rest of us, the study found. “Not surprisingly, San Francisco experienced the largest increase in its ratio from 2007 to 2012,” the Brookings Institution reported. “Income for its typical 20th-percentile household dropped $4,000 during that period, while income for its typical 95th-percentile household soared by $28,000. No other city saw nearly as large an increase in its rich households’ incomes.” (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

Spooked

Michael Redmond

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February 25, 2014

0

rebecca@sfbg.com

The world’s largest computer security conference, RSA, got underway in the Moscone Convention Center on Feb. 24. It’s a huge deal: Speakers will include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and closing remarks will be given by comedian Stephen Colbert.

Started in 1991, the RSA Conference has grown exponentially. But this year, 13 digital security experts have canceled their scheduled talks in protest of recent revelations that RSA cooperated with the National Security Agency to use a flawed tool for safeguarding sensitive information.

Speakers who are boycotting include technology experts from Google and various security firms. They’re concerned about allegations that RSA, a pioneer in the security software industry, agreed to incorporate a flawed encryption formula into a widely used security product in accordance with a secret $10 million NSA contract.

“In my opinion, RSA has a serious trust issue,” said Jeffrey Carr, CEO of a security firm called Taia Global Inc. and one of the speakers who has decided to cancel his talk and boycott the conference. “I think they’ll just let it die down. There’s been little uproar, even among the security people,” he added.

Carr authored a blog post explaining his decision. He also organized a “town hall” debate, part of an event series called Suits and Spooks, to be held at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco on Feb. 27, featuring commentary from security industry representatives as well as insiders from the national intelligence community.

RSA used the encryption algorithm as a default for its security products, meaning users would have had to actively switch to a different formula to avoid exposure to the security threat.

According to a Reuters article published in December, the NSA arranged the contract as part of a campaign to embed breakable encryption software into security products that are widely used to safeguard personal devices.

Previous reporting by The New York Times, based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, showed that the NSA had generated the weak encryption formula to create a “backdoor.”

EMC, the parent company that owns RSA, issued a response in December that didn’t specifically address the allegations. The company stated that in 2004, when it agreed to use the algorithm, “the NSA had a trusted role in the community-wide effort to strengthen, not weaken, encryption.”

But Carr said researchers within the security industry had suggested the algorithm might be flawed as early as 2006, and RSA did not abandon its use until after the Snowden leaks were publicized.

Other speakers who are boycotting have issued statements publicly condemning RSA. “Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim. Eventually, NSA’s random number generator was found to be flawed on purpose, in effect creating a back door. You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it,” wrote chief researcher Mikko Hypponen of the Finnish company F-Secure.

“As my reaction to this, I’m canceling my talk at the RSA Conference USA 2014 in San Francisco in February 2014,” Hypponen went on. “Aptly enough, the talk I won’t be delivering at RSA 2014 was titled ‘Governments as Malware Authors.'”

Meanwhile, Colbert is also taking some heat for agreeing to speak at the RSA conference.

“We know you, Stephen, and we know you love a good ‘backdoor’ joke as much as we do — but this kind of backdoor is no laughing matter,” activists from Fight for the Future wrote in a petition urging him to join the other speakers who are boycotting the RSA conference. “Companies need to know that they can’t betray our trust without repercussions. We want to hear your speech, but give it somewhere else!”

Muni fare shakedown

Michael Redmond

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February 25, 2014

43

Update: Just a day after the release of this article, advocacy group POWER announced that Google pledged to pay for Free Muni For Youth for two years. “This validates both the success and necessity of the Free Muni for Youth program,”said Bob Allen, leader in the FreeMuni for Youth coalition, in a press release. “We need tech companies in San Francisco and throughout the region to work with the community to support more community-driven solutions to the displacement crisis.”

The funding though is promised only for two years, and when that timeframe is up the question will still remain — will Muni’s operating budget pay for something Mayor Ed Lee could find funding for elsewhere? Additionally, Google hasn’t announced funding for free Muni for seniors or the disabled, another program up for consideration in the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s new budget. That may change if and when it is approved by the SFMTA for the next budget year.

“I think it’s a positive step in the right direction,” Superivsor David Campos, the sponsor of Free Muni For Youth, told us. “But there are still questions about what it means in terms of the long term future of the program. It’s only a two year gift.”

“We have asked for a meeting with Google and the mayor’s office and the coalition to talk about long term plans, to find out more information about what this means.”

There’s a tie that binds all Muni riders. From the well-heeled Marina dwellers who ride the 45 Union to Bayview denizens who board the T-Third Sunnydale line, we’ve all heard the same words broadcast during sleepy morning commutes.

“Please pay your fare share.”

The play on words (also seen on Muni enforcement signage) would be cute if it didn’t perfectly represent how Muni riders may now be stiffed. A slew of new budget ideas hit the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors last week (Feb. 18), and who will pay for it all is an open question.

The first blow to riders is a proposed single-ride fare hike from the current $2 to $2.25.

Other proposals include expanding the Free Muni for Youth program, rolling out a new program offering free Muni for seniors and the disabled, and a fare hike to $6 for the historic F streetcar.

The odorous price jumps (and costly but promising giveaways) are moving forward against a backdrop of a Muni surplus of $22 million, which the board has until April to decide how to use, and a controversial decision by Mayor Ed Lee to make a U-turn on charging for parking on Sundays.

The meter decision would deprive Muni of millions of dollars.

“We’re not proposing anything here, just presenting what we can do,” SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin told the SFMTA board at City Hall last week.

There’s still time to change the SFMTA board’s mind on the proposals between now and final approval of the budget in April. But who will end up paying for a better Muni?

FARE HIKES NOT FOUGHT

In 2010, the SFMTA instituted a policy to raise Muni fares along with inflation and a number of other economic factors, essentially putting them on autopilot. The SFMTA board still has to approve the fee hikes, which may rise across the board.

One-time fares may jump to $2.25. Muni’s monthly passes would see an increase by $2 next year and more the following year. The “M” monthly pass will be $70 and the “A” pass (which allows Muni riders to ride BART inside San Francisco) will be $81.

Muni needs the money, Reiskin said.

“To not have (fares) escalate as fuel and health care costs increase, you can’t just leave one chunk of your revenues flat,” he told the Guardian. Muni’s operating budget will expand from $864 million this year to $958 million in 2016. “Salary and benefit growth is the biggest driver of that,” Reiskin said.

Mario Tanev, spokesperson for the San Francisco Transit Riders Union, said the hike was expected.

“We’re not necessarily against the inflation increase,” he said. “But though the parking fines SFMTA levies are inflation adjusted, other rates (against drivers) are not. There are many things in our society that disincentivize transit and incentivize driving.”

Drivers enjoy heavy subsidies to their lifestyle on the federal, state, and local levels, from parking lot construction, the cost of gasoline, and now it seems, renewed free Sunday parking meters. The new fare increases are hitting transit riders just as the mayor is poised to yank funding from Muni to put in the pockets of drivers.

PLAYING POLITICS

When the paid Sunday meter pilot began in early 2013, it was a rare flip in a city that often treats Muni like a piggy bank: money was floated from drivers and dropped onto the laps of transit.

A report from SFMTA issued December 2013 hailed it as a success for drivers as well: Finding parking spaces in commercial areas on Sundays became 15 percent easier, the study found, and the time an average driver spent circling for a space decreased by minutes.

Even some in the business community call it a success, since a higher parking turnover translates to more customers shopping.

Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of public policy at the Chamber of Commerce, is a supporter of the paid Sunday meters. “You can drive into merchant areas now where you couldn’t before,” he told us.

Eliminating Sunday meter fees would punch a $9.6 million hole in Muni’s budget next year, by SFMTA’s account.

The timing couldn’t be worse. On the flip side the Free Muni for Youth program, which targets low-income youth in San Francisco, may expand next year at an estimated cost of about $3.6 million, and a program to offer free Muni for the elderly and disabled would cost between $4 and $6 million — close to the same the same amount that would be lost by the meter giveback.

BOOSTING SAN FRANCISCO FAMILIES

“As an 18-year-old in high school it was a struggle to get to school, it was a struggle to find 75 cents or two dollars to get home,” Tina Sataraka, 19, told the SFMTA board last week. As a Balboa High School student, Sataraka had a 30-minute commute from the Bayview. She’s not alone.

A study by the San Francisco Budget & Legislative Analyst’s office found that 31,000 youth who faced similar financial hurdles had signed up for the Free Muni for Youth pilot program, a resounding success in a city where the youth population is dwindling. Authored by Sup. David Campos, the program may redefine “youth” to include 18-year-olds, who are often still in high school.

But initial grant funding for the program has dried up, so now Muni will foot the bill.

Not one to say “I told you so,” Sup. Scott Wiener said there were reasons for objecting to the program a year ago.

“My biggest, fundamental objection to the program was less that they were giving free fares to kids, and more that they were taking it out of Muni’s operating budget,” Wiener told us. “They need to find a way to pay for it, perhaps from the General Fund, and not just taking the easy and lazy way out.”

The Budget & Legislative Analyst recommended several options for alternative funding: special taxes on private shuttle buses (Google buses), or an increased vehicle license fee specially earmarked for the youth bus program. So far, Mayor Ed Lee hasn’t shown an interest.

“There haven’t been discussions of having the Board of Supervisors fund free Muni for youth,” Reiskin told us. The same goes for the mayor. And though Reiskin was cautious and political about the possibility of Sunday meters becoming free again, he didn’t sound happy about it.

“As for what’s behind [the mayor’s] call for free Sunday parking, that didn’t come from us,” Reiskin told us. “That came from him.”

NOVEMBER RISKS

Mayor Lee’s office didn’t answer our emails, but politicos, including Wiener and Chronicle bromance Matier and Ross, indicated the mayor may be reversing on Sunday parking meters to appease the driving voter electorate.

There are two measures up on the November ballot, and one is aimed right at drivers’ wallets.

The two measures, a $1 billion vehicle license fee hike, and a $500 million transportation bond, are both aimed at shoring up the SFMTA’s capital budget. An October poll paid for by the mayor showed 44 percent of San Franciscans in favor of a vehicle fee hike, and 50 percent against, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Reiskin said the loss of those two ballot measures would be crippling to Muni’s future.

“The improvements we’re trying to make to make Muni more reliable, more attractive, those won’t happen. This is our funding source for that,” he said.

The mayor is busy smoothing the potholes towards the bonds’ success in the November election, but it seems he’s willing to pile costs onto Muni and its riders to do it.

Correction 2/26: An editing error led to the erroneous calculation of Free Muni For Youth at near $9 million. Free Muni For Youth is only estimated to cost the SFMTA $3.6 million. It is the combination of Free Muni For Youth and free Muni for the disabled and elderly that equal about $9 million.

Tech must support Ellis reforms

Michael Redmond

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February 25, 2014

26

EDITORIAL

San Francisco is facing an eviction crisis, a reality that politicians of all ideological stripes have finally begun to address. It was good to see our two best representatives to the California Legislature introduce bills to reform the Ellis Act in the last week, but these will be empty gestures unless the political class and its allies in the technology industry and the larger business community step up and offer strong support for the effort.

This is a small but difficult first step in addressing the displacement that is hurting the city’s diversity and driving out its working class. San Francisco is one of the few cities in the California that has rent control, which the Ellis Act was designed by landlords and the real estate industry to subvert.

So the political dynamics of reforming the Ellis Act are difficult in Sacramento, and it will take business community support to get this done. Twitter and other SF-based tech companies have gotten big local tax breaks to stay here, while Google and other Silicon Valley companies use San Francisco to house their high-paid employees, both feeding the frenzy of real estate speculation behind the current eviction epidemic.

This is their chance to show that they want to be a part of San Francisco’s community, rather than just seeing this city as a resource to exploit for their own ends.

In introducing his Senate Bill 1439 outside a Chinatown apartment building on Feb. 24, Sen. Mark Leno cited city figures showing that more than 300 apartments were cleared of residents using the Ellis Act in 2013, more than half of those involving landlords who owned the building for less than a year, half of those for less than six months.

“These are not the landlords the Ellis Act was designed to help,” Mayor Ed Lee said in support of SB 1439.

Leno’s bill would require landlords to own a building for at least five years before using the Ellis Act to evict tenants. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano also introduced a bill on Feb. 21, Assembly Bill 2405, which would allow San Francisco voters or the Board of Supervisors to declare a moratorium on Ellis Act evictions if city affordable housing goals aren’t met.

Both are small, sensible reforms that would easily pass in a society less consumed by greed than ours is now. Tech leaders should welcome the opportunity to show they understand what’s happening in this city and have compassion for those being displaced, rather than tacitly supporting the real estate speculators.

But it’s also just a first step. The Ellis Act needs to be repealed, not just reformed. More than 1,000 rent control units have been lost in San Francisco in the last two years, affordable housing converted into speculators’ profits. This must end, or the righteous populist anger that is consuming the city will only get worse.

Beautiful path to now

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February 25, 2014

2

culture@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART/YOGA I attended my first yoga class in 2000, at the Mindful Body on California Street. I’d arrived by way of much prodding from a journalism colleague who thought yoga might help with an increasingly debilitating chronic pain condition I’d mysteriously developed. A Brooklyn-raised fiery gym rat in my early 20s, I had just moved to San Francisco and simply couldn’t fathom doing this New-Agey exercise routine. I’d also recently been to India (to see the country — not to learn yoga), and I’d resented the hippie Westerners who seemed to be eagerly consuming yoga study, but staying clear of the places where starvation and disease had riddled the practice’s homeland.

With all of this emotional baggage — and an additional few suitcases that I’ll leave unpacked for the moment — I put on a pair of old blue leggings and an oversized T-shirt, and dragged myself to yoga class. And then I went back again.

It was a good workout. But, more significantly, by the time each class was midway through, my pain would temporarily disappear. Plus, the practice made me feel a way no native New Yorker ever expects to feel: peaceful. I committed myself to yoga harder and faster than I had to anything in years. It was doing something to me, changing me in some way.

Now it’s 2014; I’ve become a yoga teacher. And tonight I’m at the opening party for the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco’s “Yoga: The Art of Transformation,” the first ever comprehensive art exhibit on yoga’s history. Upstairs, yoga teacher-rapper-celebrity-activist MC Yogi is performing his signature ditty “Ganesh is Fresh” to a crowd of fans, some dressed in colorful spandex yoga clothes, others in traditional Indian garb, and still others in contemporary SF duds. Downstairs, some people are engaged in high-level philosophical discussion about the winding path of yoga history, while others are learning AcroYoga maneuvers, drinking “all-natural, gluten-free” margaritas, or striking yoga poses for Instagram-able photos in the museum entranceway.

From an anthropological perspective, it’s quite the scene. And though I’m intimate with my own personal trajectory, there’s a bigger question at hand. How did we all get here?

UNEARTHING ROOTS

Though many of us have been taught (or have simply assumed) that ancient Indian sages were waking up at dawn to do sun salutations, we now know that this was likely not the case. Recent scholarly research tell us that the yoga we practice today in our heated, hard wood-floored, lavender-smelling classrooms is a new breed of practice, most of which was developed in the last century. So, what is the origin of this practice?

In town until May 25, this gorgeous 135-piece sprawling exhibit — which includes towering Tantric stone goddesses, colorful renderings of intricate yogic energy systems, and exciting film footage of 1930s yoga masters — offers some answers. Originally created by art historian Debra Diamond for the Sackler and Freer Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the exhibit’s just arrived to town amid great enthusiasm. “San Francisco has such a long rich history with yoga,” says Qamar Adamjee, in a recent phone conversation, who, along with Jeff Durham, curated the local presentation of the exhibit. “It was a no-brainer to bring the exhibit here.”

Though yoga’s origin is typically thought to go back at least 2,500 years, the exhibit’s scope is from 100 CE to the 1940s; the museum, along with a board of local yoga advisers, also created supplemental content, like a California yoga timeline, and supplemental programming, including talks with local luminaries. “It’s important to have a sense of where you came from,” says senior yoga teacher Judith Hanson Lasater, founder of both the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco and Yoga Journal magazine, and one of the exhibit’s advisers, told me over the phone. “That helps us define who we are.”

The art here is laid out by topic, less than it is chronologically, because yoga’s history did not develop in a straight line; different aspects of the practice appeared in different places at different times. “When talking about the exhibit, I like to use the word histories instead of history,” says Adamjee. “While we associate yoga as primarily a Hindu practice, its history is actually shared by three main religious systems of ancient India: Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism.” She adds that connections to Islam and Sufism are also seen in the exhibit. “This multiplicity is what makes it so fascinating and rich.” It’s important to remember, too, that this is yoga’s history as depicted primarily by visual art, not by texts — and that the story could change (and likely will) as new findings surface. Yoga research is currently one of the fastest growing fields in South Asian studies.

But for now, our journey begins not where some might expect — say, with a serene yogi practicing Tree Pose by a river bank — but with practices of extreme austerity in the name of enlightenment.

ANCIENT RELEASE

In modern yoga culture, we use the practice to help heal the body — I know I did. But some of the earliest yogis had a different point of view. Well-preserved stone sculptures from the first millennium depict worshippers starving themselves in the hopes of being released from the cycle of reincarnation. (Mortal life here was viewed as pure suffering and these devotees were hoping not to come back again.) An emaciated, pre-enlightenment Buddha is depicted here, too, in an intricate ivory carving from 700-800 CE.

A thousand years later, the art becomes more sophisticated and more focused on deity worship, but practices of austerity and self-mortification remain. For instance, detailed paintings with tiny strokes show devotees of Shiva uncomfortably hanging themselves upside down from trees, or standing or sitting in one position for years. In the mid-late 1800s, photographs begin to appear showing Indian ascetics doing extreme things: lying on a bed of nails, wearing an irremovable contraption around one’s neck, even piercing one’s penis with a heavy metal object.

The images themselves are hard for our soft Western eyes to endure, but even less palatable is the story behind them. With the British invasion, the rights of wandering ascetics were restricted, so they moved from forests into cities, where they were forced financially to parade their devotional practices to local audiences for a quick rupee. Many of the photographs on display were shot by professional British photographers, and were then turned into postcards that the photographers sold for great profit throughout Europe. Non-yogi locals took note that money could be made from Europeans by staging tricks, and it soon became hard to tell who was a true ascetic, and who was a random yoga hack laying on a bed of nails for cash.

YOGA MAGIC

Though yoga was initially seen as a practice of bodily transcendence, some practitioners decided that, so long as they were in their bodies, it might be useful to score some superhuman psychic and physical abilities. During the Tantric era, these yogis are believed to have used practices like mantra, visualization, and goddess worship (sometimes occurring at cremation grounds) to channel these powers.

One of the exhibit highlights is a room filled with striking stone goddesses from this time. The slate-gray statues of worship, which date from 900-975 CE, show large-breasted, small-waisted female yogis (yoginis) complete with fangs and pet snakes, holding cups meant for liquor or blood. Today the word “yogini” is used when simply referring to female practitioners, but these original figures were fierce and to be feared. (They were also sculpted with perfect bods, offering an interesting parallel to the depictions of female practitioners in modern day yoga magazines.)

Later on, in 1830, Indian watercolor and gold paintings show the mystical use of yogic superpowers: to win battles by creating a flood where enemies are charging forth, and to magically fly through the sky. Of course, a hundred years later, the West chimes in, and starts making a mockery of yogic powers in the cinema and in profitable magic shows like “Koringa, the Female Yogi.”

MINING THE FLOW

Throughout the early years, we see all manners of meditators, perhaps practicing classical yoga (as handed down by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras), often sitting with legs in a lotus-like position, gazing up or inward toward a third eye. But as the years pass, the physical body starts to take more prominence, in the Tantra and Hatha Yoga traditions, as a tool on the yogic path of self-realization. One treasure here is a 10-page excerpt from an early 1600s Muslim Sufi book called Bahr al-hayat (Ocean of Life), said to contain the earliest illustrated renderings of physical yoga poses. Most of the poses shown here are seats like lotus pose, but there is one drawing of a guy rocking a headstand.

Around the 1700-1800s, intricate Tantric renderings of the energetic yoga body, including the chakras (energy centers), appear. A total must-see: a watercolor scroll that contains detailed, gold-laced drawings of Ganesh and his two wives (at the root chakra), and Shiva and Shakti joined together (in the crown chakra).

In the final gallery, we come into the 20th century. Yoga made its big debut in the US when Swami Vivekananda, who practiced Raja Yoga, based on Hindu philosophy and meditation, made a speech about yoga at the first World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893. Seven years later, he set up the Vedanta Society in San Francisco to offer his teachings. (Many of his materials are displayed here.) The early 1900s is also where we begin to see evidence of the more athletic yoga practice most of us do today. This new form came about as prominent Indian yoga teachers began to blend ancient postures and energetic techniques with strength-training exercises that had been brought in by their British invaders.

A mesmerizing video shows T. Krishnamacharya (often considered the grandfather of modern day yoga) and his young disciple BKS Iyengar performing expertly executed postures in smooth, rhythmic flows — now things are really starting to look familiar. Displayed here are also numerous books promoting yoga as a way to improve one’s health, including a book by Indian bodybuilder Raja of Aundh called Surya Namaskars (The Ten-Point Way to Health). According to the exhibit, this text from the 1920s is where our beloved sun salutations were initially birthed.

While the new physical fitness-form of yoga may have looked different than its predecessors of seated meditation, goddess worship, and self-mortification, it required the same intense attention and dedication. It arrived to the US on the tails of Vivekananda’s yoga, so by the mid-1900s, West Coasters already had different practices from which to choose.

Yoga caught on quickly here in San Francisco. By 1955, Walt and Magana Baptiste (parents of famed modern-day yogi Baron Baptiste) had founded the Center for Physical Culture, one of SF’s first bona fide yoga studios. The 1970s saw the opening of Integral Yoga and the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, as well as the birth of Yoga Journal magazine. Yoga soon became not only a practice, but a business and a lifestyle. Over the years, Americans here and throughout the country started blending various yoga teachings, shaping the practice to address our cultural, health, fitness, community, commercial, and varied spiritual (or anti-spiritual) needs and interests. Today, San Francisco is one of the world’s most booming yoga communities. Every offering one can imagine exists here: from contemplative retreats to sweaty flow classes to corporate yoga, ecstatic chanting, naked yoga, scholarly study, and yoga therapeutics.

IN THE NOW

The exhibit helps us get a sense of where the practice came from — but it still begs the question of what yoga actually is. Is yoga a practice of transcending the body in an effort to attain enlightenment? Is it a way of gaining supernatural powers so you can beat your opponents at war? Is it a seated meditation practice focused on stilling the mind, or a physical fitness routine designed to rid the body of impurities? Is it something you do on the weekends in your Lululemon leggings to feel good before going for mimosas at a hipster brunch spot?

“The exhibit forces some interesting self-reflection about our beliefs,” says Kaitlin Quistgaard, the former longtime editor of Yoga Journal magazine, in a phone conversation. “What do we actually know to be true about yoga?” Quistgaard was part of the advisory board that helped to create the exhibit’s supplementary content. “For me, the thing that ties it all together is self-awareness. Through any yoga practice, even one that would seem completely physical, there’s a process of coming to know yourself.” She adds that it’s the development of this deeper awareness that can enable us to lead more connected and fulfilling lives.

In the same vein, Adamjee reflects that one of the key aspects uniting all of the yoga paths over the years is the “radical insight that human beings possess the ability to transcend our own suffering.” Looking back at my own path, it’s easy to see the truth in this. Whether a yogi is engaged in intense physical or energetic practices, deep meditation, scholarly pursuit, or singing the names of Indian gods, the goal has always been — through devotion and attentive awareness — to find peace. To experience, if only briefly, that delicious taste of freedom.

As a writer and practitioner, I love the study of yogic history. But there is also a part of me that knows that the history is not as important as our actual practice — what we do each day, how we show up to our lives. As any yoga devotee will tell you, the past and the future don’t really exist; all we can ever really know is this very moment.

“Yoga will live on,” says Adamjee, somewhat wistfully. “But it will become something different. We are just another moment in that long timeline.”

YOGA: THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION

Through May 25

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

200 Larkin, SF.

www.asianart.org

(See next page for more details)

HAS YOGA SOLD OUT?

Yoga started as a spiritual discipline. Now, it’s reportedly a $27 billion dollarindustry in the US with an estimated 15 million practitioners, not to mention high fashion clothing, expensive yoga vacations, and “yogalebrity” teachers. Some say that commercialization is just what the practice had to do to survive in a capitalist culture. Others, like Indian American graphic artist Chiraag Bhakta, find the face of modern day yoga disturbing. Bhakta’s art installation, #WhitePeopleDoingYoga, will be on view at the Asian Art Museum as a supplement to the larger yoga exhibit, March 26-May 25.

A 13-by-30-foot wall of Western yoga marketing materials (from the 1960s-80s), it includes book covers, advertisements, and album covers that depict white folks promoting yoga for all kinds of spiritual, dietary, and fitness purposes, wearing everything from canary yellow leotards to traditional Indian garb. The idea of putting all of this ephemera on one wall, he says, is to give the viewer a feeling of being suffocated — which is how the onslaught of these images have made him feel. “It’s fascinating to me that this ancient practice from my culture is being mined and then appropriated and commodified, while removing everyone that looks like me,” he adds. “The philosophy of yoga is the dissolution of one’s ego — and the irony is that there’s so much ego being attached to all of this.”

Bhakta’s exhibit is part of *Pardon My Hindi, a project he created to explore first generation Indian American identity using humor and serious social commentary. Bhakta admits that he himself practices yoga at studios in the Bay Area, and he’s not against the popularization of the practice. He simply questions the way in which it’s being done. “My goal is just to bring this discussion to the table,” he says.

GO DEEP

The museum is offering some amazing activities during the show’s run. Highlights include storytelling, dance, and yoga, as well as lectures by yoga luminaries. Among the scheduled speakers are Senior Iyengar teacher Manouso Manos, director of UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine Dr. Margaret Chesney, curators Debra Diamond and Qamar Adamjee, AcroYoga co-founder Jenny Sauer-Klein, mindfulness educator Meena Srinivasan, Google’s Gopi Kallayil, graphic designer Chiraag Bhakta, and yoga historian Eric Shaw. For the full list of events, go to www.asianart.org/exhibitions_index/yoga-related-events.

Karen Macklin is a writer and yoga teacher living in San Francisco. Find out more about her at www.karenmacklin.com .

Speakers boycotting security conference to protest collaboration with NSA

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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February 21, 2014

17

Speakers boycotting security conference to protest collaboration with NSA

On Feb. 24, the world’s largest computer security conference, RSA, will commence at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. It’s a huge deal: Speakers will include Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and closing remarks will be given by comedian Stephen Colbert.

Started in 1991, the RSA Conference has grown exponentially. But this year, 13 digital security experts have canceled their scheduled talks in protest of recent revelations that RSA cooperated with the National Security Agency to use a flawed tool for safeguarding sensitive information.

Speakers who are boycotting include technology experts from Google and various security firms. They’re concerned about allegations that RSA, a pioneer in the security software industry, agreed to incorporate a flawed encryption formula into a widely used security product in accordance with a secret $10 million NSA contract.

“In my opinion, RSA has a serious trust issue,” said Jeffrey Carr, CEO of a security firm called Taia Global Inc. and one of the speakers who has decided to cancel his talk and boycott the conference. “I think they’ll just let it die down. There’s been little uproar, even among the security people,” he added.

Carr authored a blog post explaining his decision. He also organized a “town hall” debate, part of an event series called Suits and Spooks, to be held at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco on Feb. 27 featuring commentary from security industry representatives as well as insiders from the national intelligence community.

RSA used the encryption algorithm as a default for its security products, meaning users would have had to actively switch to a different formula to avoid exposure to the security threat.

According to a Reuters article published in December, the NSA arranged the contract as part of a campaign to embed breakable encryption software into security products that are widely used to safeguard personal devices.

Previous reporting by the New York Times, based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, showed that the NSA had generated the weak encryption formula to create a “backdoor.”

EMC, the parent company that owns RSA, issued a response in December that didn’t specifically address the allegations. The company stated that in 2004, when it agreed to use the algorithm, “the NSA had a trusted role in the community-wide effort to strengthen, not weaken, encryption.”

But Carr said researchers within the security industry had suggested the algorithm might be flawed as early as 2006, and RSA did not abandon its use until after the Snowden leaks were publicized.

Other speakers who are boycotting have issued statements publicly condemning RSA.

“Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim. Eventually, NSA’s random number generator was found to be flawed on purpose, in effect creating a back door. You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it,” wrote chief researcher Mikko Hypponen of the Finnish company F-Secure.

“As my reaction to this, I’m cancelling my talk at the RSA Conference USA 2014 in San Francisco in February 2014,” Hypponen went on. “Aptly enough, the talk I won’t be delivering at RSA 2014 was titled ‘Governments as Malware Authors.'”

Meanwhile, Colbert is also taking some heat for agreeing to speak at the RSA conference.

“We know you, Stephen, and we know you love a good ‘backdoor’ joke as much as we do—but this kind of backdoor is no laughing matter,” activists from Fight for the Future wrote in a petition urging him to join the other speakers who are boycotting the RSA conference. “Companies need to know that they can’t betray our trust without repercussions. We want to hear your speech, but give it somewhere else!”

Activists, union challenge Google bus pilot program

Erica Hanna

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February 19, 2014

73

Activists, union challenge Google bus pilot program

San Francisco activists and labor filed an appeal of the controversial commuter shuttle (aka, the Google buses) pilot program to the Board of Supervisors today, alleging it was pushed through without a proper environmental review.

The appeal was filed by a coalition of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, SEIU 1021, The League of Pissed Off Voters, and Sara Shortt of the Housing Rights Committee.

The shuttles, mostly to Silicon Valley tech firms, pick up passengers in Muni bus stops. The use of public bus stops would incur a $271 fine for private autos, and often do, but the shuttles have largely received a free pass from the city. Last month, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency approved of a pilot plan hatched behind closed doors that allows use of 200 bus stops by the private shuttles, charging only $1 per stop, per day.

The appeal alleges that the program needed review under the California Environmental Quality Act, which asks for projects to be analyzed for, among other things, land use, housing, and public health impacts.

“CEQA actually identifies displacement as an environmental impact,” attorney Richard Drury, who filed the appeal on behalf of the coalition, told us. “Almost no one knows that. Honestly I didn’t know that, until I started researching all of this.”

If the Board of Supervisors doesn’t back the appeal, there may be a court battle on the environmental impact of the shuttle stops, which increase rents and home prices nearby.

Paul Rose, spokeserpson for the SFMTA, responded to the complaint in an email to the Guardian.

“We developed this pilot proposal to help ensure the most efficient transportation network possible by reducing Muni delays and further reducing congestion on our roadways,” Rose wrote. “We are confident that the CEQA clearance is appropriate and will be upheld.”

In the meantime, Drury told us, the coalition is performing environmental research of its own. It has experts from the US Environmental Protection Agency and other organizations analyzing diesel outputs from the shuttles, as well as the impact of shuttles on displacement.

“CEQA review needs to have a review before they start the pilot, not after,” Drury said. “They’re basically doing it backwards: let’s have 200 stops and 35,000 people in the service, and figure out what happens.”

Some studies conducted already show that affluence rises wherever the shuttle stops are placed. One by Chris Walker, a 29 year old in Mumbai, India, shows rising property values in and around the Google bus stops from 2011 to 2013.

This heatmap shows a rise in property values appreciated near shuttle stops.

“We see the Google Bus as a part of a larger effort to privatize public spaces and services, displacing both current residents and the public transportation system we rely on,” said Alysabeth Alexander, Vice President of SEIU Local 1021, in a statement. “San Francisco has a long history and tradition as a union town. With the tech takeover, San Francisco is becoming inhospitable to working class families. Our wages are stagnant, as the cost of everything is skyrocketing. This is a shame.”

Theater Listings: February 19 – 25, 2014

Michael Redmond

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February 18, 2014

0

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

THEATER

OPENING

The Altruists Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.shewolftheater.com. $19-34. Opens Thu/20, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through March 8. She Wolf Theater performs Nicky Silver’s “politically incorrect” play that exposes the real motivations behind altruistic behavior.

Hundred Days Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $10-100. Previews Thu/20-Sat/22 and Feb 27-28, 8pm; Feb 26, 7pm. Opens March 1, 8pm. Runs Wed and Sun, 7pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through April 6. Z Space presents the world premiere of a folk rock odyssey conceived and created by Abigail and Shaun Bengson.

Twelfth Night Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.calshakes.org. $20. Opens Thu/20, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sun, 8pm (also Sun/23 and March 2, 2pm). Through March 2. California Shakespeare Theater kicks off its 40th anniversary season with a touring performance of Shakespeare’s classic romance, featuring an all-female cast.

The World of Paradox Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.paradoxmagic.com. $12-15. Opens Mon/24, 8pm. Runs Mon, 8pm (no show March 10). Through April 7. Footloose presents David Facer in his solo show, a mix of magic and theater.

Yellow New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Opens Fri/21, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 23. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs the Bay Area premiere of Del Shores’ Mississippi-set family drama.

BAY AREA

Lasso of Truth Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $37-58. Previews Thu/20-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 7pm. Opens Tue/25, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also March 1 and 15, 2pm; March 6, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. Marin Theatre Company performs Carson Kreitzer’s new play about the history of Wonder Woman.

The Lion and the Fox Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Previews Thu/20-Fri/21, 8pm. Opens Sat/22, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 30. Central Works performs a prequel to its 2009 hit, Machiavelli’s The Prince, which depicts a face-off between Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia.

ONGOING

Children Are Forever (All Sales are Final!) Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 22. W. Kamau Bell directs Julia Jackson in her solo show about adoption.

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (March 2, performance at 2pm; March 9, performance will be a reading of Charlie Varon’s Fish Sisters). Through March 16. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Hir Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Third Flr, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Wed/19-Sat/22, 8pm (additional show Wed/19, 2:30pm); Sun/23, 2:30pm. Taylor Mac, creator of 2011’s five-hour six-director extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge, returns to the Magic Theatre with a much more straightforward, if not exactly straight, family comedy-drama in two acts. An Iraq vet named Isaac (Ben Euphrat) returns to his childhood home from the war, where his job was picking up body parts. His now touchy stomach is set off right away by the disturbing changes that have taken place while he was away. For one thing, the place is a dump. His father (a toddling, half-vacant, half-wily Mark Anderson Philips) has had a stroke that has left him an overgrown infant in thrall to his mother, Paige (a honeyed but brassy Nancy Opel), now come into her own as a liberated woman whose badge of honor is a derelict household out of all usual (patriarchal) order and discipline — and whose manner is just a little like that of an open-minded, half-savvy drag queen. Still more troubling to Isaac is his sister Maxine, now Max (an animated and winning Jax Jackson), in the midst of transitioning via regular Internet-purchased doses of testosterone. (Max insists on being addressed with gender-neutral, third-person pronouns ze, in place of she/he, and hir for him/her). Soon Isaac shores up his father’s position and mounts a counteroffensive to reclaim lost ground. An ideological turf war commences for control of the hearth and, by extension, the future of the family as an institution. Directed by Niegel Smith, the cast is competent but only intermittently effective at selling the high-octane comic premise. Jackson and Opel are the most consistent and persuasive. The play, meanwhile, has some good one-liners in addition to its intriguing premise, but gets mired in a broad and emotionally detached sitcom-like style, which can make the playwright’s more theme-oriented, expositional dialogue sound all the more jarring. Nevertheless, the play tackles a serious question: whether it is better to build on the flawed institutions one inherits and try to do better or scrap it all for something supposedly new. It has the good sense to refrain from an easy resolution of the socially and politically freighted dynamic it sets up, pointing a little vaguely to some third-way forward, outside the traditional family, in Max’s forestalled but anticipated flying of the coop. (Avila)

An Indian Summer Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.wehavemet.org. $20-40. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through March 1. Multi Ethnic Theater presents local playwright Charles Johnson’s parable of race relations in the Deep South of the 1980s. On a small stage split into two alternating scenes by a movable wall in director-designer Lewis Campbell’s set, two sets of working-class residents of rural Alabama, one white and one black, have their discrete worlds unexpectedly collide. Musician Charlie Ray (a less than convincing Kevin Wisney) is fresh from the pen and living with girlfriend Pearle (AJ Davenport). Plucking at his guitar, he dreams of getting some money to afford time in a recording studio. But his brother Bobby (Paul Rodriguez) has a way of talking him into sketchy schemes, which has Pearle worried, especially after a visit from the Sheriff (Richard Wenzel). For his part, Bobby is hoping to make some money to appease his pregnant wife, Sarah (Bree Swartwood), who wants Bobby to move her and their baby to Maine. Meanwhile, Junior (a forceful Bennie Lewis, alternating nights with Stuart Hall) is a feisty wheelchair bound African American man living in a small trailer. Junior’s friend Emmitt (Fabian Herd, alternating with Vernon Medearis) tries to convince him he should put his money in a bank rather than keeping it in his trailer — especially now that Junior is selling his land for a tidy sum — but Junior doesn’t trust banks. Next, Junior gets a letter from a lawyer claiming half the profit from the land sale on behalf of a long lost, half-white relative — the offspring of an illicit romance between Junior’s father and a white woman, related to Pearle. The situation, of course, spells trouble. But while we see it coming, there’s meant to be pathos in the tangled connections among these parallel stories. Unfortunately, the artificial nature of the plot makes it hard to credit, while the desultory pace and uneven acting make the going harder still. (Avila)

Jerusalem San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through March 8. SF Playhouse presents the West Coast premiere of English playwright Jez Butterworth’s West End and Broadway hit, a three-act revel led by a larger-than-life rebel, a stout boozed-up drug-dealer, habitual fabulist, and latter-day Digger of sorts named Johnny “Rooster” Byron (Brian Dykstra). The dominion of this Falstaffian giant is the English countryside outside his squalid trailer door, not far from Stonehenge, where he seems to incarnate a rather dissipated version of an ancient English independence, like one of the great mythical beings of rural lore. Aptly enough, it’s Saint George’s Day, the feast day of England’s national saint, but it’s not all a party this time around. Authorities have issued a final 24-hour eviction notice on Rooster’s tin door; there are luxury apartments in the works; and there’s concern in town about the underage teens who flock to Rooster like so many fledglings — one, in particular, has gone missing: Phaedra (Julia Belanoff), who we see at the very outset of the play donning a fairy costume and singing the title song, based on the Blake poem and England’s unofficial national anthem. The next 24 hours will be either the breaking point or the apotheosis for all Rooster has made himself out to be. In Butterworth’s big-eyed comedy, we are meant to feel a stake in this outcome whether we actually like Rooster or not — his independence, the scope of his life and vision, suggests the outer limit of possibility in an ever more disciplined and circumscribed world. Director Bill English (who also designed the impressive bucolic-trailer-park set) and his large cast (which includes a strong Ian Scott McGregor as longtime Rooster sidekick, Ginger) dive into the comedy with gusto. But somehow the drama, the larger stakes in the storyline, falls short. A certain requisite intensity and momentum are only fitfully achieved. Dykstra, as the expansive antihero, has the biggest burden here. And while he has an appealing swagger throughout, his wayward brogue and unconvincing bellicosity undercut the culmination of the play’s (admittedly somewhat overwrought) mythopoeic proportions. (Avila)

“The Love Edition: Love Bytes” Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; facebook.com/TheLoveEdition. $10-20. Thu/20-Sat/22, 8pm. Bindlestiff performs six different tales about online dating, loneliness in the cyber age, Google stalking, and other modern-day matters of the heart.

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 15. Theater artist and comedian Marga Gomez presents the world premiere of her 10th solo show, described as “a rollicking tale of incurable romantics.”

Napoli! ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $10-120. Opens Wed/19, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm; Tue, 7pm (March 4, show at 8pm). Through March 9. American Conservatory Theater performs a new translation of Eduardo de Filippo’s poignant Italian comedy.

The Oy of Sex Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Sat/22, 5pm. Comedian Alicia Dattner performs her solo show, based on her stories from her own life and love addiction.

The Paris Letter New Conservatory Theater Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed/19-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 2pm. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jon Robin Baitz’s tale of a Wall Street powerhouse desperately trying to keep his sexual identity a secret.

The Scion Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-60. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 1. Brian Copeland’s fourth solo show takes on “privilege, murder, and sausage.”

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Extended through March 1. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blonde innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: the energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $60-90 (add-ons: casino chips, $5; dance lessons, $10). Thu-Sat, 7:40, 7:50, and 8pm admittance times. Through March 15. Boxcar Theatre presents Nick A. Olivero’s re-creation of a Prohibition-era saloon, resulting in an “immersive theatrical experience involving more than 35 actors, singers, and musicians.”

Ubu Roi Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Cutting Ball Theater performs Alfred Jarry’s avant-garde parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, presented in a new translation by Cutting Ball artistic director Rob Melrose.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through March 9. The popular, kid-friendly show by Louis Pearl (aka “The Amazing Bubble Man”) returns to the Marsh.

BAY AREA

Can You Dig It? Back Down East 14th — the 60s and Beyond Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-35. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 1. Don Reed’s new show offers more stories from his colorful upbringing in East Oakland in the 1960s and ’70s. More hilarious and heartfelt depictions of his exceptional parents, independent siblings, and his mostly African American but ethnically mixed working-class community — punctuated with period pop, Motown, and funk classics, to which Reed shimmies and spins with effortless grace. And of course there’s more too of the expert physical comedy and charm that made long-running hits of Reed’s last two solo shows, East 14th and The Kipling Hotel (both launched, like this newest, at the Marsh). Can You Dig It? reaches, for the most part, into the “early” early years, Reed’s grammar-school days, before the events depicted in East 14th or Kipling Hotel came to pass. But in nearly two hours of material, not all of it of equal value or impact, there’s inevitably some overlap and indeed some recycling. Note: review from an earlier run of the show. (Avila)

Escanabe in da Moonlight Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 8. TheatreFIRST performs Jeff Daniels’ raucous comedy.

Geezer Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 1. Geoff Hoyle moves his hit comedy about aging to the East Bay.

Gideon’s Knot Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 9. Aurora and director Jon Tracy’s Bay Area premiere of Johnna Adams’ two-hander features strong acting, strong enough almost to make us believe in its premise. A harried mother named Corryn (a terrific Jamie J. Jones) arrives at the empty middle-school classroom overseen by a distracted teacher, Heather (a subdued yet agitated Stacy Ross). Corryn, proud but somehow desperate, admits to having not slept. Heather initially doesn’t know why she’s there — until it becomes clear she’s the mother of a recent suicide, who has come to keep her prior appointment for a parent-teacher conference. The two women await the arrival of the absent principal, but Corryn presses for answers now to the circumstances surrounding her child’s final days, which included his suspension from school and a beating received at the hands of fellow students. Heather, who seems to be hiding some separate anxiety or grief of her own (and is, though what we don’t learn until nearly the end of the play), does her best to deflect any such conversation until the principal arrives but is soon embroiled in an argument with the headstrong and canny mother in front of her, a literature professor at a major university. Their dance centers on Corryn’s son’s last assignment, a short story, one his teacher sees as nothing but “hate-filled poisonous attacks,” but his mother calls “poetry.” In addition to the clash between a teacher’s authority and a mother’s regard, there’s a class component to these differing perspectives, we presume. Yet there is a real issue here, somewhere, about art and education and authority — or would be if it did not end up buried along with the young writer we never meet. Playwright Adams advances the dramatic tension by tacking this way and that around her subject, but loses sight of the shore meanwhile, as her characters debate whether or not the short story contains a virtuous accusation against an instance of child abuse, only to drop this crux a moment later in a hard-to-credit squeamishness on Corryn’s part over the potentially homoerotic longings of her deceased son. The final note lands in an even hokier key of mutual sorrow and understanding. (Avila)

The House That Will Not Stand Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-59. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and March 13, 2pm); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. July 4, 1836: As a white New Orleans patriarch (Ray Reinhardt) passes from the scene, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, his longtime mistress, Beartrice (an imposing, memorable Lizan Mitchell), and their daughters (the charmingly varied trio of Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Flor De Liz Perez, and Tiffany Rachelle Stewart) — all free women of color — vie for dominance while trying to secure their respective futures in Berkeley Rep’s sumptuous and beautifully acted world premiere. Nationally acclaimed playwright and Oakland native Marcus Gardley (And Jesus Moonwalked the Mississippi; This World in a Woman’s Hands) brews up a historically rich and revealing, as well as witty and fiery tale here, based on the practice of plaçage (common-law marriages between white men and black Creole women), grounding it in the large personalities of his predominately female characters — who include a nosy and angling intruder (played with subtlety by Petronia Paley) — and lacing it all with a delirious dose of magical realism via the voodoo charms of Beartrice’s slave, Makeda (Harriett D. Foy, who with Keith Townsend Obadike also contributes lush, atmospheric compositions to the proceedings). Gardley delves productively into the history overall, although he sometimes indulges it too much in awkward and ultimately unnecessary expository dialogue. When he allows his characters full scope for expression of their personalities and relationships, however, the dialogue sails by with brio and punch —something the powerhouse cast, shrewdly directed by Patricia McGregor, makes the most of throughout. (Avila)

An Ideal Husband Douglas Morrison Theatre, 22311 N. Third St, Hayward; www.dmtonline.org. $10-29. Fri-Sat and Feb 27, 8pm (also Sat/22, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 2. Douglas Morrison Theatre performs Scott Munson’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic, reset in 1959 Washington, DC.

The Laramie Project Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond; www.masquers.org. $22. Fri/21-Sat/22, 8pm. Masquers Playhouse performs the theatrical collage about the real-life hate-crime murder of Matthew Shepard.

A Maze Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.justtheater.org. $20-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Following a well-received run last summer at Live Oak Theater, Just Theater’s West Coast premiere of Pittsburgh-based playwright Rob Handel’s 2011 jigsaw drama gets a second life, courtesy of presenter Shotgun Players, in this remounting at Ashby Stage. Half the pleasure of a play like this is the unfolding of its serpentine plot, which becomes much more linear in the second half but initially seems to hover around three very disparate situations: 17-year-old Jessica (Frannie Morrison), recently escaped from eight years of captivity in the home and cellar of her kidnapper, prepares for an interview with a Barbara Walters-like TV journalist (Lauren Spencer); Oksana (Sarah Moser) and Paul (Harold Pierce), who head up their own highly successful rock band (suggestively titled the Pathetic Fallacy), are in the midst of a tough transition as Oksana checks Paul into rehab; and a fairytale King (Lasse Christiensen) responds to the Queen’s (Janis DeLucia) news that they are about to have an “heir” by beginning construction on a gigantic, seemingly endless maze emanating outward from their cozy den to the furthest reaches of the kingdom. Meanwhile, the director of the rehab clinic (Carl Holvick-Thomas) introduces Paul to another artist-resident, a fussy, eccentric author named Beeson (Clive Worsley) at work on a multi-volume graphic novel of maddening intricacy. As the three storylines begin to coalesce, the play asks us to consider questions about artistic liberty, authorship, responsibility, human connection — big themes like that. It does so in a mostly playful, only slightly eerie way, despite the grim central situation revolving around the bright and surprisingly outgoing Jessica. Employing almost the identical cast as last time, again under director Molly Aaronson-Gelb, the proceedings unfold with generally solid acting, if not always persuasive dialogue, at least where things are meant to be more or less realistic (to an extent, the fairytale segment comes across more compellingly for being strictly bound by the artificial nature of its narrative). There’s a quirky quality to the play, and the production, that amuses, even as the coy plotline bemuses. And much like an amusement park adventure, the play makes sure no one really gets lost. This is a play that is happy to tell you the various ways the central “maze” might be read metaphorically, for instance, so that everything is tidy and clear — like a fairytale, or a graphic novel — not so mysterious in the end, just tinged with a kind of comfortable melancholy. (Avila)

The Music Man Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-60. Fri and March 20, 7pm; Sat, 1 and 6pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through March 23. There’s trouble in River City! See it unfold amid all those trombones at Berkeley Playhouse.

Quality of Life Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-35. Thu/20-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 2pm. Pear Avenue Theatre performs Jane Anderson’s play about two couples coming to grips with losses in their lives.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Attractive Camp” Lost Weekend Video, 1034 Valencia, SF; www.eventbrite.com. Sun/23, 8pm. $10. Stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, and short films with Kyle Mizono, Brendan Lynch, Amy Miller, George Chen, and more.

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now” This week: Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.bcfhereandnow.com, www.dancemission.com. Fri/21-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 7pm. $10-20. The festival, which runs through March 8, continues its 10th anniversary with “Next Wave Choreographers Showcase.”

“Bob Rubin IS the Winter Olympics” Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. Sat/22, 8 and 10pm. $17. The stand-up comedian performs.

“The Buddy Club Children’s Shows” Randall Museum Theater, 199 Museum Way, SF; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/23, 11am-noon. $8. With juggler, magician, and tongue-twister Bob Kann.

Camerata Vocale Sine Nomine St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 1111 O’Farrell, SF; www.sfbg.org. Tue/25, 8pm. $10. SF Boys Chorus and Ragazzi Boys Chorus present the Havana, Cuba-based men’s chamber chorus, here on its first visit to the US.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sat/22, March 1, 8, 16, 22, and 30, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Chita: A Legendary Celebration” Venetian Room, Fairmont San Francisco, 950 Mason, SF; www.bayareacabaret.org. Sun/23, 3 and 7:30pm. $43-48. Two-time Tony winner Chita Rivera stars in this solo concert event highlighting memorable moments from her career.

“Comedy Returns to El Rio” El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thu/20, 8pm. $7-20. Stand-up with Diane Amos, Zahra Noorbakhsh, Ian Williams, Nathan Habib, and Lisa Geduldig.

“Entertaining Mr. Sloane” Garage, 725 Bryant, SF; facebook.com/vintagewestproductions. Thu/20-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 2pm. $25. Vintage West Productions presents a 50th anniversary performance of Joe Orton’s black comedy.

“Ethel Merman Experience” Beaux, 2344 Market, SF; www.beauxsf.com. Tue/25, 10pm. Free. Ethel Merman (aka Mark Sargent) fronts this one-of-a-kind rock ‘n’ roll cover band.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: Paula West, Thu/20-Fri/21, 8pm; Sat/22-Sun/23, 7pm, $35-50.

“Die Fledermaus” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Fri/21-Sat/22, 8pm (also Sat/22, 2pm); Sun/23, 2pm. $15-59. Lamplighters Music Theatre (noted for its Gilbert and Sullivan productions) performs Johann Strauss’ “bubbly tale of revenge and temptation.”

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“Point Break Live!” DNA Lounge, 373 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. March 7 and April 4, 7:30 and 11pm. $25-50. Dude, Point Break Live! is like dropping into a monster wave, or holding up a bank, like, just a pure adrenaline rush, man. Ahem. Sorry, but I really can’t help but channel Keanu Reeves and his Johnny Utah character when thinking about the awesomely bad 1991 movie Point Break or its equally yummily cheesy stage adaptation. And if you do an even better Keanu impression than me — the trick is in the vacant stare and stoner drawl — then you can play his starring role amid a cast of solid actors, reading from cue cards from a hilarious production assistant in order to more closely approximate Keanu’s acting ability. This play is just so much fun, even better now at DNA Lounge than it was a couple years ago at CELLspace. But definitely buy the poncho pack and wear it, because the blood, spit, and surf spray really do make this a fully immersive experience. (Steven T. Jones)

“Purple Paoli Memorial Hoopla” Brava Theatre, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. Mon/24, 7:30pm. $20-50. San Francisco clowns gather to perform and remember Bay Area circus legend Paoli Lacy.

“The Queen of Hearts” Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.divafest.info. Wed/19, 8pm. $25-150. Alice in Wonderland-themed performance fundraiser for the 13th annual DIVAfest.

“Solo Sundays: The Past That Haunts Us” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun/23, 7pm. $12. With solo performances by Peter L. Stein, XiaoJuan Shu, and Candace Roberts.

“WritersCorps Live” Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF; sfartscommission.org/WC. Thu/20, 6-7pm. Free. Award-winning author NoViolet Bulawayo reads alongside WritersCorps youth poets and teaching artists.

BAY AREA

Café Flamenco Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding, Alameda; www.rhythmix.org. Sun/23, 7pm. $10-20. Flamenco music and dance with Caminos Flamencos and special guests.

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Zellerbach Hall, Bancroft at Telegraph, UC Berkeley, Berk; www.calperformances.org. Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 3pm. $30-68. The NYC-based company performs Indigo Rose (1998), Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue (2007), and Necessity, Again (2012).

“I Look Like an Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. Mon/24-Tue/25, 8pm. $20. Heather Gold brings her hit comedy back to the East Bay.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“Poetry Express” Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University, Berk; poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com. Mon, 7pm. Free. Ongoing. This week: fruits and vegetables theme night, plus open mic. *

Who influenced the Google-bus policy?

Michael Redmond

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February 18, 2014

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On SFBG.com last week, we published a list of the attendees (and corporate affiliations) who were recorded as having attended stakeholder meetings with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to discuss that private shuttle pilot program that caused such a dustup last month. The list is a matter of public record and was submitted to the Bay Guardian by a source who wished to remain anonymous.

Google was in the room, of course, but not all attendees were affiliated with corporate shuttle providers who bus employees to their workplaces. One company, called Leap Transit, has started a private luxury bus in San Francisco that is not affiliated with any particular employer.

“Our buses are clean and our staff is friendly,” according to Leap’s website. “Sip your morning coffee in peace.” (Leap did not respond to our request for an interview about its future plans.)

Another participant who seemed a bit far afield from the transportation sector was a representative from TMG Partners, a real-estate developer. Also included in the meeting was a representative from a law firm called Morrison Foerster which has represented major tech investors such as Kleiner Perkins, according to its website, which can be found at mofo.com.

How did these individuals manage to get invites? We emailed SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose to ask that question. He told us, “When we started the work, we received a set of shuttle sector contacts from the [San Francisco County Transportation Authority], who started looking at this issue. One of the first things we did was reach out to these companies and confirm the right contact people. We also reached out to companies who we’d heard had shuttles.”

He added, “Over time, additional shuttle service providers and companies that offer shuttles for their employees contacted the agency to let us know that they were either providing service or considering to provide shuttle service and wanted to know about our policy development process. This also grew our list. And, as we heard about new shuttle programs, we reached out the companies to make contact. Also, at meetings with shuttle providers, we also asked if there were other providers we should include. Some members of the shuttle sector brought their legal or PR reps with them to the meetings — they were not on our list.”

Backlash mars annual tech awards

Michael Redmond

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February 18, 2014

0

The Crunchies are a San Francisco-based dog and pony show for the tech industry, hosted by technology business news site Tech Crunch. But amid rising San Franciscan anger, this year’s Crunchies took on a decidedly different tone.

At the outset of the Feb. 10 awards ceremony, big-time investor and noted “Godfather of Silicon Valley,” Ron Conway, asked a question. “Raise your hand if your company is located in San Francisco,” he asked the tech employees gathered in Davies Symphony Hall.

Hundreds of hands rose across the audience. That’s San Francisco’s point of pride, and point of contention. Techies bring jobs and growth, supposedly, to the city, but also all the side effects thereof: a housing crisis, mass evictions, overpriced toast, rising unrest. Even the Crunchies’ master of ceremonies, comedian John Oliver (of Daily Show fame), took it to the techies of the city.

“You’re no longer the underdogs! It’s very important you realize that,” he said to the crowd, roasting the attendees who still laughed anyway. He even brought the Google buses into the mix. “Now you’re pissing off an entire city, not just what with what you do at work but how you get to work. It’s not easy to do that!”

Cue the Crappies, the awards ceremony for the rest of us. Hosted on the sidewalk just outside the Crunchies, the Crappies highlighted folks in tech most responsible for turning San Francisco into a playland for the rich, as opposed to a hometown for families, and put them on blast.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was named Best Tax Evader of the Year, in honor of the now estimated $55 million Twitter local tax break championed by Mayor Ed Lee. The man who confused attacks on the one percent with Nazi Germany, Tom Perkins, was honored for Diarrhea of the Mouth. Google was honored for driving a Bus in a Bubble. Ron Conway, the angel investor who invested early in companies like AskJeeves and Twitter, was named Angel of Death.

UPDATE: Rabblerousers drag Google down from astral plane

Erica Hanna

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February 18, 2014

62

UPDATE: Rabblerousers drag Google down from astral plane

At one point protesting tech buses was new and shiny, but now it barely registers a shrug from San Franciscans. The newest eviction protest took a different turn.

On Saturday, protesters jumped up on stage to interrupt Googlers meditating at the annual Wisdom 2.0 conference. The Google corporateers sat on the stage, ready to share their secret to mindfulness “the Google way.” No one said “meditate on all the money you’re making,” but maybe it was implied.

Meng Tan, who was identified on the Wisdom 2.0 website as “Google employee #107” (oh, inner circle!), is a corporate trainer who wrote the bestselling book Search Inside Yourself. He looked totally serene on stage, legs crossed. Next to him sat Bill Duane, a senior manager in charge of well-being, among other things. Hundreds were in the audience, watching. Duane began by trying to introduce Tan.

“I’ll start by introducing… not this person,” Duane said as the protesters unexpectedly strolled across the stage, carrying the now familiar banner championing an Eviction Free San Francisco, and the audience applauded.

“Wisdom means stop displacement, wisdom means stop surveillance, what do we want? Stop the evictions!” chanted Erin McElroy through a bullhorn, one of the lead organizers of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. She was at the forefront of the Google bus protests, as well as the TechCrunch protest, the Crappies.

The protesters were ushered off the stage, and security engaged in a tug of war with the protesters for their banner.

The protest group, Heart of the City, noted in their press release that video from the protest was not available on the conference’s website (though the protesters had their own camera on hand).

Was it intentional on Wisdom 2.0’s part to censor the protest?

“The only reason it’s not up is our AV guys cut the feed as soon as the protesters walked on stage,” Rita O’Connell, communications coordinator for Wisdom 2.0 told us. She said that other feeds were captured, and that it would be posted “as soon as humanly possible.”

“We are going to put it out,” she said. “We’re not intentionally trying to keep it from anyone’s view.”

We reached out to Google spokepeople, but our emails weren’t returned before press time.

Many reading this no doubt will wonder about the point of interrupting a Google presentation on meditation and spiritual well being to talk about evictions in San Francisco. What, if anything, do they have to do with one another?

The spiritual advocacy group The Bhuddist Peace Fellowship put it eloquently in its post “Why Google Protesters Were Right to Disrupt Wisdom 2.0”:

“All the talk about kindness, happiness, and well being (with twin values of creativity, productivity, and profitability) focused on the users and innovators of technology. There was never any mention of the people who manufacture the gadgets that techies then outfit with meditation bell apps. What about the mindfulness, happiness, and well being of the people mining coltan in the DRC, or the people assembling iPhones at the infamous Foxconn sweatshops?

I mean, if we exclude them from the picture, then yes, we can calmly check in with our bodies.

Things look very mindful and peaceful. Very reasonable, polite, and progressive.

But such deep exclusion invites deep delusion. Something important is missing. Entire groups of relevant people are cut out of the conversation altogether.

The fact is that waves of gentrification have pushed thousands of low-income, disproportionately (black and brown) residents out of San Francisco, and now the city is courting wealthy tech companies (like the ones at Wisdom 2.0) to move in.

Are we just going to ignore the people who are being displaced? Act like we don’t know about this history?

Are we going to pretend that there’s nothing we can do about it?

Hopefully, our friends with the banners won’t let us.”

After the protesters were ushered off the stage, the Google Senior Manager, Duane, then asked the audience to center themselves and consider their point of view.

“Check in with your body and see what happens, and what it’s like to be around heartfelt people with ideas that may be different than what we’re thinking. Take a second and see what it’s like,” he instructed the audience.

Meditating on other’s ills isn’t much, yet, but it’s a start.

Update 2/19: The Wisdom 2.0 folks reached out to us to provide a correction, saying that the employee who engaged in a tug of war with the protesters for their banner was part of the Mariott A/V crew, and not security personnel. They also included this post on their blog:

We very much understand the concern about rent prices and evictions in San Francisco — we’re sure many Wisdom 2.0 conference attendees share the sentiment. There are many issues facing our culture that we try to address at Wisdom 2.0, and we freely admit that we do not always successfully cover every important topic that is worthy of public discussion. We do invite feedback about the topics we cover, and we also provide many opportunities for conference participants to engage in conversations with each other about topics that matter to them.

In trying to communicate with the protesters after they left the stage, we were met with a great deal of aggression. The protesters chose to enter the conference using fabricated badges instead of reaching out to us to request that this conversation be included in conference programming. Rather than create more anger and division, we invite open dialogue in our community, and wish to support those who will engage with honesty and respect about the matters that are important to them.

That said: as part of Wisdom 2.0’s commitment to holding productive and inclusive conversations, we are currently designing a meetup that will focus on the creation and support of constructive dialogue around pressing social concerns like this one. If you are interested in participating, please email info@wisdom2conference.com to learn more.

Here’s who attended those SFMTA meetings about the private shuttle program

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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February 13, 2014

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Here’s who attended those SFMTA meetings about the private shuttle program

Here is a list of the attendees (and corporate affiliations) who were recorded as having attended stakeholder meetings with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to discuss that private shuttle pilot program that caused such a dustup last month. The list is a matter of public record and was submitted to the Bay Guardian by a source who wished to remain anonymous.

Google was in the room, of course, but not all attendees were affiliated with corporate shuttle providers who bus employees to their workplaces. One company, called Leap Transit, has started a private luxury bus in San Francisco that is not affiliated with any particular employer.

“Our buses are clean and our staff is friendly,” according to Leap’s website. “Sip your morning coffee in peace.” (Leap did not respond to our request for an interview about its future plans.)

Another participant who seemed a bit far afield from the transportation sector was a representative from TMG Partners, a real-estate developer. Also included in the meeting was a representative from a law firm called Morrison Foerster which has represented major tech investors such as Kleiner Perkins, according to its website, which can be found at mofo.com.

How did these individuals manage to get invites? We emailed SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose to ask that question, and here is what he said in response.

“When we started the work, we received a set of shuttle sector contacts from the [San Francisco County Transportation Authority], who started looking at this issue. One of the first things we did was reach out to these companies and confirm the right contact people. We also reached out to companies who we’d heard had shuttles.”

He added, “Over time, additional shuttle service providers and companies that offer shuttles for their employees contacted the agency to let us know that they were either providing service or considering to provide shuttle service and wanted to know about our policy development process. This also grew our list. And, as we heard about new shuttle programs, we reached out the companies to make contact. Also, at meetings with shuttle providers, we also asked if there were other providers we should include. Some members of the shuttle sector brought their legal or PR reps with them to the meetings – they were not on our list.”

Crappies awards rain on tech award show’s parade

Erica Hanna

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February 11, 2014

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Crappies awards rain on tech award show’s parade

The Crunchies are a San Francisco-based dog and pony show for the tech industry, hosted by technology business news site Tech Crunch. But amid rising San Franciscan anger, this year’s Crunchies took on a decidely different tone.

At the outset of last night’s [Mon/10] awards ceremony, big-time investor and noted “Godfather of Silicon Valley,” Ron Conway, asked a question. “Raise your hand if your company is located in San Francisco,” he asked the tech employees gathered in Davies Symphony Hall.

Hundreds of hands rose across the audience. That’s San Francisco’s point of pride, and point of contention. Techies bring jobs and growth, supposedly, to the city, but also all the side effects thereof: a housing crisis, mass evictions, overpriced toast, rising unrest. Even the Crunchies’ opener and host, comedian John Oliver (of Daily Show fame), took it to the techies of the city.

“You’re no longer the underdogs! It’s very important you realize that,” he said to the crowd, roasting the attendees who still laughed anyway. He even brought the Google buses into the mix. “Now you’re pissing off an entire city, not just what with what you do at work but how you get to work. It’s not easy to do that!”

Cue the Crappies, the awards ceremony for the rest of us. Hosted on the sidewalk just outside the Crunchies, the Crappies highlighted folks in tech most responsible for turning San Francisco into a playland for the rich, as opposed to a hometown for families, and put them on blast.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was named Best Tax Evader of the Year, in honor of the now estimated $55 million Twitter local tax break championed by Mayor Ed Lee. The man who confused attacks on the 1 percent with Nazi Germany, Tom Perkins, was honored for Diarrhea of the Mouth. Google was honored for driving a Bus in a Bubble. Ron Conway, the angel investor who invested early in companies like AskJeeves and Twitter, was named Angel of Death.

The #Crappies , parodying the nearby tech loving #Crunchies awards here in SF #tech https://t.co/XlmZIFwZAl

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) February 11, 2014

Understandably, none of the actual folks awarded came to pick up their colorfully painted plungers, the trophy Crappy award winners were handed. Local activist Tony Robles dressed in a cape, reminscent of a vampire. People posed as their favorite tech evil-doers.

Attendance was sparse at about 50 folks or so, but the political theater played just outside Davies Symphony Hall, well within view of tech employees lining up for their gleaming, red-carpet ceremony.

“I think they were confused and didn’t want anything to do with what we were doing,” Erin McElroy, a tenants rights activist and event organizer, told us.

An audio interview with protest co-organizer Erin McElroy.

Inside the event, techies dressed in bowties and lavish dresses posed for pictures. Camera in hand, this Guardian reporter was mistaken for an event photographer, and we started to ask attendees (after clarifying we were a reporter) what they thought of the protest outside.

The opinions were decidedly mixed. There were certainly sentiments shrugging off the protest as typical San Francisco antics, but tech workers from outside San Francisco tended to be more sympathetic.

All companies should be civically minded, said Shinta Dhanuwardoyo, CEO and founder of bubu, a tech oriented ad agency. “It doesn’t have to be just tech,” she said.

Tech isn’t responsible for all the city’s ails and ills, another attendee told us, but maybe there’s a middle ground. “Just paying attention, help and not just trying to make cool stuff, maybe they should,” said Aryo Ariotedjo, CEO and co-founder of footwear design website Project Shoe.

But still, some tech folks still aren’t getting the message. They reduce protests to simple ideas, like tech hatred, or think that tech is already doing more than enough to help. Silicon Valley news site Venture Beat said the anger against Conway, for example, was misplaced.

“Meanwhile, inside Davies Symphony Hall, Conway delivered a heartfelt speech about the need for tech companies and employees to give back to the community, and pledged $12,000 in matching funds for a fundraiser for nonprofits,” they wrote, calling out the Crappies for not recognizing his civic-mindedness.

Its thesis that $12,000 towards nonprofits could make up for the lost homes of hundreds of San Franciscans, or the painful cost of living increases for middle and low income families affected by the tech boom, is questionable, to say the least.

crappiesprotester

A protester holds a sign asking the tech industry to take responsibility for their impact to San Francisco. Photo by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez.

At the end of the day, demonizing tech was not the goal protest organizer Erin McElroy worked towards, she said. Put simply, she just wants tech workers to wake up, to pitch in, and become part of the community.

“We’re really not trying to pivot ourselves against tech workers, but it’s up to those workers to open their eyes to what’s going on,” McElroy told us after the event. Displacement and rising costs are tied to tech’s presence, and they should pitch in where they can, she said.

“They could protest with us, or come to a tenants’ rights meetings,” she said. “They could make conscious efforts not to move in where someone was evicted. There’s so many things they could do, and that’s one of the things we’re trying to convey.”

The conversation between tech and the community is evolving, and soon there may be hope of real solutions. The Mission District has played host to a series of dinners allowing dicussion between tech and long time residents, and an upcoming Tech Workers Against Displacement Happy Hour touts its goal to “create an open discussion on how improved communication and collaboration can affect reforms needed to stop involuntary displacements of longterm San Franciscans and ensure sustainable, cohesive and diverse communities.”

One can only hope tech workers get the message: join the cause. Unite with the communities of San Francisco, and work together to stop displacement.

Theater Listings: February 12 – 18, 2014

Michael Redmond

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February 11, 2014

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

THEATER

OPENING

Children Are Forever (All Sales are Final!) Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Previews Fri/14, 8pm. Opens Sat/15, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 22. W. Kamau Bell directs Julia Jackson in her solo show about adoption.

Napoli! ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $10-120. Previews Wed/12-Sat/15 and Tue/18, 8pm (also Sat/15, 2pm); Sun/16, 7pm. Opens Feb 19, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm; Tue, 7pm (March 4, show at 8pm). Through March 9. American Conservatory Theater performs a new translation of Eduardo de Filippo’s poignant Italian comedy.

BAY AREA

A Maze Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.justtheater.org. $20-25. Previews Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm. Opens Sun/16, 5pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Shotgun Players present Just Theater’s production of Rob Handel’s kaleidoscopic comedy.

The Music Man Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-60. Previews Thu/13, 7pm and Sat/15, 1pm. Opens Sat/15, 6pm. Runs Fri and March 20, 7pm; Sat, 1 and 6pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through March 23. There’s trouble in River City! See it unfold amid all those trombones at Berkeley Playhouse.

ONGOING

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (March 2, performance at 2pm; March 9, performance will be a reading of Charlie Varon’s Fish Sisters). Through March 16. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Hir Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Third Flr, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Wed-Sat, 8pm (additional show Feb 19, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 23. Taylor Mac, creator of 2011’s five-hour six-director extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge, returns to the Magic Theater with a much more straightforward, if not exactly straight, family comedy-drama in two acts. An Iraq vet named Isaac (Ben Euphrat) returns to his childhood home from the war, where his job was picking up body parts. His now touchy stomach is set off right away by the disturbing changes that have taken place while he was away. For one thing, the place is a dump. His father (a toddling, half-vacant, half-wily Mark Anderson Philips) has had a stroke that has left him an overgrown infant in thrall to his mother, Paige (a honeyed but brassy Nancy Opel), now come into her own as a liberated woman whose badge of honor is a derelict household out of all usual (patriarchal) order and discipline — and whose manner is just a little like that of an open-minded, half-savvy drag queen. Still more troubling to Isaac is his sister Maxine, now Max (an animated and winning Jax Jackson), in the midst of transitioning via regular internet-purchased doses of testosterone. (Max insists on being addressed with gender-neutral, third-person pronouns ze, in place of she/he, and hir for him/her). Soon Isaac shores up his father’s position and mounts a counteroffensive to reclaim lost ground. An ideological turf war commences for control of the hearth and, by extension, the future of the family as an institution. Directed by Niegel Smith, the cast is competent but only intermittently effective at selling the high-octane comic premise. Jackson and Opel are the most consistent and persuasive. The play, meanwhile, has some good one-liners in addition to its intriguing premise, but gets mired in a broad and emotionally detached sitcom-like style, which can make the playwright’s more theme-oriented, expositional dialogue sound all the more jarring. Nevertheless, the play tackles a serious question: whether it is better to build on the flawed institutions one inherits and try to do better or scrap it all for something supposedly new. It has the good sense to refrain from an easy resolution of the socially and politically freighted dynamic it sets up, pointing a little vaguely to some third-way forward, outside the traditional family, in Max’s forestalled but anticipated flying of the coop. (Avila)

An Indian Summer Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.wehavemet.org. $20-40. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through March 1. Multi Ethnic Theater presents local playwright Charles Johnson’s parable of race relations in the Deep South of the 1980s. On a small stage split into two alternating scenes by a moveable wall in director-designer Lewis Campbell’s set, two sets of working-class residents of rural Alabama, one white and one black, have their discrete worlds unexpectedly collide. Musician Charlie Ray (a less than convincing Kevin Wisney) is fresh from the pen and living with girlfriend Pearle (AJ Davenport). Plucking at his guitar, he dreams of getting some money to afford time in a recording studio. But his brother Bobby (Paul Rodriguez) has a way of talking him into sketchy schemes, which has Pearle worried, especially after a visit from the Sheriff (Richard Wenzel). For his part, Bobby is hoping to make some money to appease his pregnant wife, Sarah (Bree Swartwood), who wants Bobby to move her and their baby to Maine. Meanwhile, Junior (a forceful Bennie Lewis, alternating nights with Stuart Hall) is a feisty wheel-chair bound African American man living in a small trailer. Junior’s friend Emmitt (Fabian Herd, alternating with Vernon Medearis) tries to convince him he should put his money in a bank rather than keeping it in his trailer — especially now that Junior is selling his land for a tidy sum — but Junior doesn’t trust banks. Next, Junior gets a letter from a lawyer claiming half the profit from the land sale on behalf of a long lost, half-white relative — the offspring of an illicit romance between Junior’s father and a white woman, related to Pearle. The situation, of course, spells trouble. But while we see it coming, there’s meant to be pathos in the tangled connections among these parallel stories. Unfortunately, the artificial nature of the plot makes it hard to credit, while the desultory pace and uneven acting make the going harder still. (Avila)

Jerusalem San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun/16, 2pm. Through March 8. SF Playhouse presents the West Coast premiere of English playwright Jez Butterworth’s West End and Broadway hit, a three-act revel led by a larger-than-life rebel, a stout boozed-up drug-dealer, habitual fabulist, and latter-day Digger of sorts named Johnny “Rooster” Byron (Brian Dykstra). The dominion of this Falstaffian giant is the English countryside outside his squalid trailer door, not far from Stonehenge, where he seems to incarnate a rather dissipated version of an ancient English independence, like one of the great mythical beings of rural lore. Aptly enough, it’s Saint George’s Day, the feast day of England’s national saint, but it’s not all a party this time around. Authorities have issued a final 24-hour eviction notice on Rooster’s tin door; there are luxury apartments in the works; and there’s concern in town about the underage teens who flock to Rooster like so many fledglings — one, in particular, has gone missing: Phaedra (Julia Belanoff), who we see at the very outset of the play donning a fairy costume and singing the title song, based on the Blake poem and England’s unofficial national anthem. The next 24 hours will be either the breaking point or the apotheosis for all Rooster has made himself out to be. In Butterworth’s big-eyed comedy, we are meant to feel a stake in this outcome whether we actually like Rooster or not — his independence, the scope of his life and vision, suggests the outer limit of possibility in an ever more disciplined and circumscribed world. Director Bill English (who also designed the impressive bucolic-trailer-park set) and his large cast (which includes a strong Ian Scott McGregor as longtime Rooster sidekick, Ginger) dive into the comedy with gusto. But somehow the drama, the larger stakes in the storyline, falls short. A certain requisite intensity and momentum are only fitfully achieved. Dykstra, as the expansive antihero, has the biggest burden here. And while he has an appealing swagger throughout, his wayward brogue and unconvincing bellicosity undercut the culmination of the play’s (admittedly somewhat overwrought) mythopoeic proportions. (Avila)

“The Love Edition: Love Bytes” Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; facebook.com/TheLoveEdition. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 22. Bindlestiff performs six different tales about online dating, loneliness in the cyber age, Google stalking, and other modern-day matters of the heart.

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 15. Theater artist and comedian Marga Gomez presents the world premiere of her 10th solo show, described as “a rollicking tale of incurable romantics.”

The Oy of Sex Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Sat, 5pm. Extended through Feb 22. Comedian Alicia Dattner performs her solo show, based on her stories from her own life and love addiction.

The Paris Letter New Conservatory Theater Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 23. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jon Robin Baitz’s tale of a Wall Street powerhouse desperately trying to keep his sexual identity a secret.

The Pornographer’s Daughter Z Below, 470 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $32. Thu/13-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 10:30pm); Sun/16, 5pm. Liberty Bradford Mitchell was a good kid growing up, and a pretty innocent one — probably more than you would expect given her proximity to the family business, the veritable empire of porn founded and run by her father and uncle, San Francisco legends Artie and Jim Mitchell. Now in her 40s and a mother of her own, Mitchell proves a likeably earthy presence if a less-then-compelling actor-playwright in her new one-woman show, directed by Michael T. Weiss, a firsthand account of growing up in San Francisco’s first family of raunch. Inseparable brothers Artie and Jim were the 1970s porn pioneers who founded the O’Farrell Theatre and road high in the industry, weathering court battles and substance abuse and divorce, but succumbing ultimately to their own lethal fallout — Jim Mitchell shot and killed Liberty’s father Artie in 1991. The material here is rich to say the least, and together with generous and explicit excerpts from archival footage and classic porn (including the Mitchells’ own era-defining Behind the Green Door, from 1972), it makes a fascinating bed for Liberty Mitchell’s reminiscences. Musical accompaniment by three-person SF band the Fluffers, meanwhile, punctuates the chronology with blasts of period rock, though often just a few bars worth, and backs up Liberty on the a single, rather awkward musical number. Moreover, despite the keen interest the basic historical facts and family anecdotes can generate, Mitchell’s filial narrative lens is only intermittently effective, being finally too pat, poorly drawn, and predictably sentimentalized to fully reverberate with the larger, almost archetypical or classical themes hovering nearby. (Avila)

The Scion Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-60. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 1. Brian Copeland’s fourth solo show takes on “privilege, murder, and sausage.”

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Extended through March 1. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blonde innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: the energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $60-90 (add-ons: casino chips, $5; dance lessons, $10). Thu-Sat, 7:40, 7:50, and 8pm admittance times. Through March 15. Boxcar Theatre presents Nick A. Olivero’s re-creation of a Prohibition-era saloon, resulting in an “immersive theatrical experience involving more than 35 actors, singers, and musicians.”

Ubu Roi Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Cutting Ball Theater performs Alfred Jarry’s avant-garde parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, presented in a new translation by Cutting Ball artistic director Rob Melrose.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through March 9. The popular, kid-friendly show by Louis Pearl (aka “The Amazing Bubble Man”) returns to the Marsh.

BAY AREA

Escanabe in da Moonlight Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 8. TheatreFIRST performs Jeff Daniels’ raucous comedy.

Geezer Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 1. Geoff Hoyle moves his hit comedy about aging to the East Bay.

Gideon’s Knot Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 2. Aurora Theatre Company performs Johnna Adams’ drama set within the tense atmosphere of a parent-teacher conference.

The House That Will Not Stand Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-59. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, Thu/13, and March 13, 2pm; no matinee Sat/15); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. Berkeley Rep performs the world premiere of Marcus Gardley’s tale of free women of color in 1936 New Orleans.

An Ideal Husband Douglas Morrison Theatre, 22311 N. Third St, Hayward; www.dmtonline.org. $10-29. Fri-Sat and Feb 27, 8pm (also Feb 22, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 2. Douglas Morrison Theatre performs Scott Munson’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic, reset in 1959 Washington, DC.

The Laramie Project Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond; www.masquers.org. $22. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 22. Masquers Playhouse performs the theatrical collage about the real-life hate-crime murder of Matthew Shepard.

Man in a Case Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $45-125. Wed/12, 7pm; Thu/13-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 2pm. It’s a desultory country evening among friends — Belikov (Mikhail Baryshnikov), Barbara (Tymberly Canale), Ivan (Chris Giarmo), Burkin (Paul Lazar), and Kovalenko (Aaron Mattocks) — who chatter and quibble among themselves, just dying for a good story. Two tales eventually unfold, becoming the basis for an effervescent and emotive theatrical outing in this canny, elegant adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Man in a Case” and “About Love” by co-directors Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson of Big Dance Theater. In a style that revels in what it reveals, the action centers around a long table to the left of the stage, at the far end of which sound designer Tei Blow manages sound effects and Jeff Larson triggers video projections from his laptop. (Peter Ksander’s attractive, non-naturalist scenic design comes animated throughout by a discerning array of choice foley work and atmospheric video projections.) With each humorous and wistful story, the stage expands in unexpected ways, thanks to Parson’s vibrant choreography, the shape-shifting mise-en-scene, golden-throated musical director Giarmo’s exquisite score (much of it delivered live), and the superbly unaffected acting and supple movement of the cast. Acting the leads in both stories, Baryshnikov etches his respective characters with a masterful hand and a light step, making for a vivid presence at every turn. Opposite him each time, Canale’s luminous vitality proves a perfect match. But this is truly an ensemble effort, and the fine result produces a poignant, moody combination of the earthy and sublime. (Avila)

Quality of Life Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 23. Pear Avenue Theatre performs Jane Anderson’s play about two couples coming to grips with losses in their lives.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Aguas Dance Company ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 7pm. $27. The company performs Movendo com Capoeira, featuring Afro-Brazilian dance and live music.

“Best of the Bay Comedy Show” Pa’ina Lounge, 1865 Post, SF; www.painasf.com. Sun/16, 7pm. $10. Hella Gay Comedy presents its annual “best of” show featuring LBGT and LGBT-friendly comedians: Casey Ley, Justin Lucas, Kimberly Rose Wendt, and Rajeev Dhar. Charlie Ballard hosts.

“The Big Buttery Sketch Show” Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.pianofight.com. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm. $20-30. PianoFight Productions’ female-driven sketch comedy group Chardonnay (formerly ForePlays) performs.

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now” This week: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Thu/13-Sat/15, 8pm. $25-35. The festival continues its 10th anniversary with Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Fri/14 (see note below), Sun/16, Feb 22, March 1, 8, 16, 22, and 30, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians. Fri/14 Valentine’s Day show, 5:30pm, $59.95 (includes dinner).

Company C Contemporary Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Lam Research Theater, 701 Mission, SF; www.companycballet.org. Thu/13-Fri/14, 8pm; Sat/15, 6pm (benefit gala); Sun/16, 3pm. $25-48. The company’s winter program includes premieres by Susan Jaffe and Charles Anderson.

“Dream Queens Revue” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/12, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, and more.

“Get Your Heart On with the Klipptones” Palace Hotel’s Pied Piper, 2 New Montgomery, SF; (415) 512-1111. Fri/14, 8pm-midnight. Free ($10 food or beverage minimum). The six-piece ensemble plays swinging romantic songs for Valentine’s Day.

“Live Law: Love and the Law” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.lifeofthelaw.com. Thu/13, 7pm. $20. Live storytelling with Senator Mark Leno, attorneys, a private investigator, and other legal-minded folks.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: Paula West, Thu/13, 8pm; Fri/14, 7 and 9:30pm; Sat/15-Sun/16, 7pm, $35-50.

“Full Spectrum Improvisation” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.joyacory.com. Sun/16 and April 27, 3pm. $12-25. Also March 9, 3pm, Western Sky Studio, 2525 Eighth St, Berk. Improvisational theatre with Joya Cory, Craig Landry, Olivia Corson, Martin Robinson, and guests.

“How We First Met” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.howwefirstmet.com. Fri/14, 8pm. $40-55. Back for its 14th year, this show created and hosted by Jill Bourque shares real-life love stories (from couples in the audience!) via improvised sketches and songs.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“Mortified: Doomed Valentines” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Thu/13, 7:30pm. $15-21. Also Fri/14, 8pm, $15-20, Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. Fearless storytellers share their most adorably embarrassing childhood writings — and since the theme is love blunders, expect tales of unrequited crushes, school-dance disasters, and teen-angst drama galore.

“Naked Dudes Reading Lovecraft” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.hampantsproductions.com. Wed/12, 8pm. $20. “100 percent visible wing-wangs and hoo-hoos” are promised, plus maybe a tentacle or 12 too.

“Point Break Live!” DNA Lounge, 373 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. March 7 and April 4, 7:30 and 11pm. $25-50. Dude, Point Break Live! is like dropping into a monster wave, or holding up a bank, like, just a pure adrenaline rush, man. Ahem. Sorry, but I really can’t help but channel Keanu Reeves and his Johnny Utah character when thinking about the awesomely bad 1991 movie Point Break or its equally yummily cheesy stage adaptation. And if you do an even better Keanu impression than me — the trick is in the vacant stare and stoner drawl — then you can play his starring role amid a cast of solid actors, reading from cue cards from a hilarious production assistant in order to more closely approximate Keanu’s acting ability. This play is just so much fun, even better now at DNA Lounge than it was a couple years ago at CELLspace. But definitely buy the poncho pack and wear it, because the blood, spit, and surf spray really do make this a fully immersive experience. (Steven T. Jones)

“Romantic Comedy Farce” Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, SF; www.improv.org. Fri/14, 8pm. $20. BATS Improv takes on Valentine’s Day.

“The Vagina Monologues/Monólogos de la Vagina” Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 5pm); Sun/16, 2pm. $35-45. Eliana Lopez, Marisol Correa, and Alba Roversi star in this Spanish-language production of Eve Ensler’s feminist classic.

BAY AREA

“Die Fledermaus” Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.mvcpa.com. Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 2pm. $20-53. Lamplighters Music Theatre (noted for its Gilbert and Sullivan productions) performs Johann Strauss’ “bubbly tale of revenge and temptation.” Continues at Bay Area theaters through Feb 23; visit www.lamplighters.org for future dates.

“Last Word Reading Series” Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid, Berk; (510) 841-6374. Fri/14, 7pm. Free. With poets Tom Odegard and Paradise, plus an open reading.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“Something Sweet” Piedmont Center for the Arts, 801 Magnolia, Piedmont; www.westedgeopera.org. Fri/14, 7:30pm. $15-25. Romantic operatic repertoire sung by three real-life couples. *

Google ferry’s last ride is today

Erica Hanna

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February 7, 2014

13

The Google-hired ferries skimming Bay Area waves are coming to the end of their pilot period, with their last scheduled rides running today, according to the Contra Costa Times.

Amidst the ire of San Francisco protesters fuming over Google buses, the company opted to experiment with alternatives to the buses: ferries. Two ferries from San Francisco and one from Alameda scooped up Google employees day by day for the month of January.

A Google spokesperson confirmed with the Bay Guardian that the pilot was ending. A source close to Google confirmed that they would “evaluate the results and viability of ferries as a more permanent solution.”

No word from the protesters yet on if they’d block Google ferries via kayak, rowboat, or sloop.

For the full story, check out the Contra Costa Times piece, here.

This Week’s Picks: February 5 – 11, 2014

Michael Redmond

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February 4, 2014

0

WEDNESDAY/5

Action Bronson

Action Bronson lives life large. Imposing both physically and lyrically, the Queens native and former gourmet chef draws upon his joys in life — food, drugs, and women — to construct poetically intricate and technically impressive rhymes. His mix tapes are full of love songs, both highly eloquent and frequently offensive, written about the grit of urban life and the beauty of a great meal. Lines about “pissing through your fishnets” are sprinkled among odes to “bone marrow roasted/spread it on the rosemary bread/lightly toasted,” all delivered with Bronson’s sure, sharp-tongued talent. At his live shows, Bronson is extremely interactive with his (extremely devoted) fans, passing back and forth joints, liquor, and jokes from the stage to the audience. With the brand-new addition of Odd Future thrash punks Trash Talk to the lineup, this show is sure to be insane. (Haley Zaremba)

With Trash Talk

9pm, $25

Slim’s

333 11th Ave, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

Alejandro Murguia

In a city overflowing with Google bussers and tech transplants, San Francisco’s newest poet laureate, Alejandro Murguía, seeks to revive a marginalized community through the written word. He’ll be honored at City Lights Bookstore with a reading from his new book, Stray Poems. The bilingual poet is the first Latino laureate, paving the way for the city’s poesía en español revival — not only through his poems but also through his activism. Marguía is the voice of the city’s forgotten residents, the voice of “the waitresses the norteños trios the flowers sellers / the blind guitarist wailing boleros at a purple sky / the shirtless vagrant vagabond ranting at a parking meter / the spray paint visionary setting fire to the word” (from the laureate’s poem “16th and Valencia”). (Laura B. Childs)

7pm, free

City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus, SF

www.citylights.com

SF Bicycle Coalition’s Dating Game: Love On Wheels

This year’s Love on Wheels fundraiser is back with a ’90s twist. In a modern-day version of MTV’s dating show, Singled Out, bike-lovers looking for a mate will get paired up and sent off to a first date in time for the big V-day. Be sure to look the part — ’90s attire is encouraged. Find love in fellow midriff-bearing, flannel-sporting cyclists, or show off your best Tootsee Roll on the dance floor. Proceeds benefit the SF Bicycle Coalition’s work to make the city more bicycle-friendly. (Childs)

6:30pm, $10

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

www.dnalounge.com

THURSDAY/6

Academy of Sciences Lunar New Year Celebration

Saddle up and celebrate the Year of the Horse at the California Academy of Sciences Lunar New Year Nightlife. The contemporary museum will be decked out with traditional occidental activities and performances. Let your inner wildcat out on the dance floor or watch an authentic lion dance routine. For a little wisdom, participate in a traditional Chinese tea ceremony and if you believe in making your own luck, check out the customized fortune cookie booth. Workshops will teach the lion dance or martial arts moves, but leave most of it to the pros. Throughout the night, live shows will feature authentic lion dance, a martial art demonstration and an ancient Chinese mask performance. (Childs)

6pm, $12

Academy of Sciences

55 Music Concourse

www.calacademy.org

Throwing Shade Live

Throwing Shade is a weekly podcast by LA comedians Bryan Safi and Erin Gibson in which the pair address queer and feminist issues in the news. Though the topics are often heavy, Gibson and Safi’s goofy back-and-forths, impressions, and gimmicks strike the perfect balance. Both hilarious and extremely insightful, Throwing Shade is the ideal way to hear about important and often under-reported topics without getting too blue — although your sides may ache by the end of the segment. Putting their show on the road for SF Sketchfest, the duo will be recording the show at the Punchline for the podcast. Endorsed by both Maximum Fun and Funny or Die, Throwing Shade is a serious laughing matter. Don’t miss this rare live appearance. (Zaremba)

8pm, $20

Punch Line

444 Battery, SF

(415) 397-7573

punchlinecomedyclub.com

Oneohtrix Point Never

Picking up on the ’90s era abstract, contemplative side of Warp Records, recent signee Oneohtrix Point Never’s R Plus Seven is thoroughly brain busting. The elements are disparate: vocals that begin without reference and depart without finishing, gamelan reminiscent rhythms seemingly performed on the Cosmic Key, and an ever-present effect best described as the stuttering sound of audio on an overburdened CPU. Partly playful, with New Age and stereotypically “world” music samples ripped off of Pirate Bay (where, to be fair, R Plus Seven gets the “plunderphonics” genre tag), the album still manages to sound wholly reverent. To what? Let me get back to you on that. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Holly Herndon (Live A/V), Marco de la Vega, DJ Will, Chad Salty

10pm-3am, $17.50-20

1015 Folsom

1015 Folsom St., SF

www.1015.com

FRIDAY/7

ASKEW

Performance art, visual art, and experimental film collide with boundary-pushing results at ASKEW, a Festival of Film and Performance Art, presented by the similarly edgy, female-focused Femina Potens Art Gallery. Three nights of themed events spotlight a variety of unique, fearlessly curious talents; tonight’s “We All Live Here: Primal Expressionism” includes SF Fringe Festival hit Fish Girl, by Siouxsie Q with Sean Andries. Tomorrow, it’s “Breaking Stones: Defining New Roles of Masculinity,” with a performance and screening by fest curator Madison Young, among others. Saturday’s “The Sacred and the Profane” features an appearance by sex-positive icon Annie Sprinkle, plus I Am Lady Samar, a work that mixes dance with “flesh hooks” — an act not for the faint-hearted, or close-minded. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sat/8, 7pm, $8-$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

Liquid Hymn

Feast your eyes! First Amendment Gallery presents the opening of Liquid Hymn, a solo exhibition of kaleidoscopic multimedia ink paintings by Oakland-based artist J.S. Weis. With wild animals pouring out of splashes of color, Weis’ projects seem like a 1970s acid trip — see: purple elephant, two-headed tiger, and a sea of crab legs; the artist uses ink, pencil, and intricately stacked paper to create a detailed 3D effect on his multimedia creations. Multicolored plants and ethereal animals roam through the psychedelic ink paintings, creating a fantastical symphony where nature and art become one. (Childs)

6:30pm, free

1AM SF

1000 Howard, SF

www.1amsf.com

SATURDAY/8

Top Secret

Continuing in the same zany and hilarious vein of comedy as seen in their earlier films Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane!, writers and directors Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker decided to spoof both 1960s cold war/spy movies as well as rock n’ roll musicals with 1984’s Top Secret! Featuring Val Kilmer (in one of his very first starring roles) as fictional American rocker Nick Rivers battling the evil empire of East Germany, the flick parodies a host of genre clichés and plays on pun after side-splitting pun. Join Abrahams and the Zucker brothers for what promises to be an unpredictable 30th anniversary screening, audience discussion and Q&A. (Sean McCourt)

1pm, $20

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.sfsketchfest.com

Aszure Barton

When Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hells Kitchen Dance troupe performed at the Zellerbach Play House in 2006, he looked fabulous — at 58, a self-effacing, masterful dancer. He also brought works by two barely known choreographers. Benjamin Millepied, at the time a dancer with New York City Ballet, now runs the Paris Opera Ballet; the Canadian Aszure Barton’s two pieces immediately marked her as someone with chops to burn and a fascinating individual voice. She hasn’t stopped working — all over the world. Now SF Performances is bringing her back with Awáa, a piece inspired by an underwater dream, in which Barton, apparently, explores the masculine and feminine traits we all have. I’ll take her word for it — anytime. (Rita Felciano)

Feb. 7/8. 7:30pm. $35-50

Aszure Barton + Artists

Lam Research Center, YBCA

700 Howard St. SF

415-978-2787

www.sfperformances.org

Thu/6-Sat/8

SUNDAY/9

Shakes The Clown Live

Although it was critically panned and considered a financial flop when it was first released, the 1991 movie Shakes The Clown has gone on to achieve a loyal cult following over the years. Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait wrote, directed, and starred in the dark comedy that follows the life of an alcoholic and depressed clown that shows up for kids’ parties drunk, sees his career going down the toilet, and even eventually gets framed for murder. Join Goldthwait, along with original film cast members Julie Brown, Tom Kenny, and Florence Henderson as they bring the under-appreciated story back to life in all its debaucherous glory, live on stage! (Sean McCourt)

4pm, $25

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

www.sfsketchfest.com

TUESDAY/11

Kid Congo

Helping form the influential roots-rock/punk band The Gun Club when he was still a teenager, Kid Congo Powers was quickly persuaded by the Cramps to join as their second guitar player in 1980 before he eventually went on to play with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for a time. Continuing to harness the power of American roots music and twist it into a warped web of perverse sounds over the ensuing years with his latest band, The Pink Monkey Birds, Kid Congo ventures further down the deliciously demented path on his latest record, Haunted Head (In The Red).

With Wax Idols, Dancer. (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

Hospitality

This trio’s debut S/T album was essentially a collection of undeniable indie-pop hooks matched by songwriting that combined Belle and Sebastian’s wittiness with the urban social unease of a Shirley Jackson story. Still it didn’t quite capture the appeal as a live band, where I found them to be most endearing. On its freshly minted second album, Trouble, Hospitality has set out to prove their mettle as simply a rock (drop the indie, drop the twee) group as well. While Amber Papini’s voice is still endlessly charming — listen to the way her double esses fill in some hissing hi-hat on The Who-styled percussion on “I Miss Your Bones” — but the band seems in less of a hurry, giving the guitar and bass its due. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Air Waves, Matt Kivel

8pm, $10-12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.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, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or email (paste press releasea into email body — no 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 w cannot accept listings over the phone.

Theater Listings: February 5 – 11, 2014

Michael Redmond

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February 4, 2014

0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Opens Sat/8, 8pm. Runs Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (March 2, performance at 2pm; March 9, performance will be a reading of Charlie Varon’s Fish Sisters). Through March 16. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Indian Summer Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.wehavemet.org. $20-40. Opens Thu/6, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun/6, 2pm. Through March 1. Multi Ethnic Theater performs Charles Johnson’s new comedy drama set in the racially-divided South, circa the 1980s.

“The Love Edition: Love Bytes” Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; facebook.com/TheLoveEdition. $10-20. Opens Thu/6, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 22. Bindlestiff performs six different tales about online dating, loneliness in the cyber age, Google stalking, and other modern-day matters of the heart.

BAY AREA

Escanabe in da Moonlight Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Previews Thu/6, 8pm. Opens Fri/7, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 8. TheatreFIRST performs Jeff Daniels’ raucous comedy.

An Ideal Husband Douglas Morrison Theatre, 22311 N. Third St, Hayward; www.dmtonline.org. $10-29. Previews Thu/6, 8pm. Opens Fri/7, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat and Feb 27, 8pm (also Feb 22, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 2. Douglas Morrison Theatre performs Scott Munson’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic, reset in 1959 Washington, DC.

ONGOING

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Hemorrhage: An Ablution of Hope and Despair Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.dancemission.com. $20-25. Thu/6-Fri/7, 8pm; Sat/8, 4 and 7pm. Dance Brigade presents this “dance installation at the intersection of the new San Francisco and world politics.”

Hir Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Third Flr, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Wed-Sat, 8pm (no show Wed/5; additional show Feb 19, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm (also Sun/9, 7pm); Tue/11, 7pm. Through Feb 23. Magic Theatre presents the world premiere of Taylor Mac’s comedic drama about a woman determined to help her two wayward children succeed, while stretching the boundaries of her own gender identity

Jerusalem San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun/9 and Feb 16, 2pm. Through March 8. SF Playhouse presents the West Coast premiere of English playwright Jez Butterworth’s West End and Broadway hit, a three-act revel led by a larger-than-life rebel, a stout boozed-up drug-dealer, habitual fabulist, and latter-day Digger of sorts named Johnny “Rooster” Byron (Brian Dykstra). The dominion of this Falstaffian giant is the English countryside outside his squalid trailer door, not far from Stonehenge, where he seems to incarnate a rather dissipated version of an ancient English independence, like one of the great mythical beings of rural lore. Aptly enough, it’s Saint George’s Day, the feast day of England’s national saint, but it’s not all a party this time around. Authorities have issued a final 24-hour eviction notice on Rooster’s tin door; there are luxury apartments in the works; and there’s concern in town about the underage teens who flock to Rooster like so many fledglings — one, in particular, has gone missing: Phaedra (Julia Belanoff), who we see at the very outset of the play donning a fairy costume and singing the title song, based on the Blake poem and England’s unofficial national anthem. The next 24 hours will be either the breaking point or the apotheosis for all Rooster has made himself out to be. In Butterworth’s big-eyed comedy, we are meant to feel a stake in this outcome whether we actually like Rooster or not — his independence, the scope of his life and vision, suggests the outer limit of possibility in an ever more disciplined and circumscribed world. Director Bill English (who also designed the impressive bucolic-trailer-park set) and his large cast (which includes a strong Ian Scott McGregor as longtime Rooster sidekick, Ginger) dive into the comedy with gusto. But somehow the drama, the larger stakes in the storyline, falls short. A certain requisite intensity and momentum are only fitfully achieved. Dykstra, as the expansive antihero, has the biggest burden here. And while he has an appealing swagger throughout, his wayward brogue and unconvincing bellicosity undercut the culmination of the play’s (admittedly somewhat overwrought) mythopoeic proportions. (Avila)

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 15. Theater artist and comedian Marga Gomez presents the world premiere of her 10th solo show, described as “a rollicking tale of incurable romantics.”

Noises Off Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.org. $38. Thu/6-Sat/8, 8pm. Shelton Theater presents Michael Frayn’s outrageous backstage comedy.

The Oy of Sex Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Sat, 5pm. Extended through Feb 22. Comedian Alicia Dattner performs her solo show, based on her stories from her own life and love addiction.

Pardon My Invasion Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; pardonmyinvasion.brownpapertickets.com. $15-30. Thu/6-Sat/8, 8pm. A pulp fiction writer’s characters come to life in this dark comedy by Joy Cutler.

The Paris Letter New Conservatory Theater Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 23. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jon Robin Baitz’s tale of a Wall Street powerhouse desperately trying to keep his sexual identity a secret.

The Pornographer’s Daughter Z Below, 470 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $32. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 10:30pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Feb 16. Liberty Bradford Mitchell was a good kid growing up, and a pretty innocent one — probably more than you would expect given her proximity to the family business, the veritable empire of porn founded and run by her father and uncle, San Francisco legends Artie and Jim Mitchell. Now in her 40s and a mother of her own, Mitchell proves a likeably earthy presence if a less-then-compelling actor-playwright in her new one-woman show, directed by Michael T. Weiss, a firsthand account of growing up in San Francisco’s first family of raunch. Inseparable brothers Artie and Jim were the 1970s porn pioneers who founded the O’Farrell Theatre and road high in the industry, weathering court battles and substance abuse and divorce, but succumbing ultimately to their own lethal fallout — Jim Mitchell shot and killed Liberty’s father Artie in 1991. The material here is rich to say the least, and together with generous and explicit excerpts from archival footage and classic porn (including the Mitchells’ own era-defining Behind the Green Door, from 1972), it makes a fascinating bed for Liberty Mitchell’s reminiscences. Musical accompaniment by three-person SF band the Fluffers, meanwhile, punctuates the chronology with blasts of period rock, though often just a few bars worth, and backs up Liberty on the a single, rather awkward musical number. Moreover, despite the keen interest the basic historical facts and family anecdotes can generate, Mitchell’s filial narrative lens is only intermittently effective, being finally too pat, poorly drawn, and predictably sentimentalized to fully reverberate with the larger, almost archetypical or classical themes hovering nearby. (Avila)

The Scion Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-60. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 1. Brian Copeland’s fourth solo show takes on “privilege, murder, and sausage.”

“SF Sketchfest: The San Francisco Sketch Comedy Festival” Various venues, SF; www.sfsketchfest.com. Prices vary. Through Sun/9. This year’s 13th Sketchfest features over 200 shows in more than 20 venues.

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Extended through March 1. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blonde innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: the energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $60-90 (add-ons: casino chips, $5; dance lessons, $10). Thu-Sat, 7:40, 7:50, and 8pm admittance times. Through March 15. Boxcar Theatre presents Nick A. Olivero’s re-creation of a Prohibition-era saloon, resulting in an “immersive theatrical experience involving more than 35 actors, singers, and musicians.”

Ubu Roi Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Feb 23. Cutting Ball Theater performs Alfred Jarry’s avant-garde parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, presented in a new translation by Cutting Ball artistic director Rob Melrose.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through March 9. The popular, kid-friendly show by Louis Pearl (aka “The Amazing Bubble Man”) returns to the Marsh.

BAY AREA

Geezer Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 1. Geoff Hoyle moves his hit comedy about aging to the East Bay.

Gideon’s Knot Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Previews Wed/5, 8pm. Opens Thu/6, 8pm. Runs Tue, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 2. Aurora Theatre Company performs Johnna Adams’ drama set within the tense atmosphere of a parent-teacher conference.

The Grapes of Wrath Hillbarn Theatre, 1285 E. Hillsdale, Foster City; www.hillbartheatre.org. $23-38. Fri/7-Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 2pm. Hillbarn Theatre continues its 73rd season with Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic American novel.

The House That Will Not Stand Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-59. Opens Wed/5, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, Feb 13, and March 13, 2pm; no Sat matinee Feb 15); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. Berkeley Rep performs the world premiere of Marcus Gardley’s tale of free women of color in 1936 New Orleans.

The Laramie Project Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond; www.masquers.org. $22. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 22. Masquers Playhouse performs the theatrical collage about the real-life hate-crime murder of Matthew Shepard.

Man in a Case Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $45-125. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm; Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 16. It’s a desultory country evening among friends — Belikov (Mikhail Baryshnikov), Barbara (Tymberly Canale), Ivan (Chris Giarmo), Burkin (Paul Lazar), and Kovalenko (Aaron Mattocks) — who chatter and quibble among themselves, just dying for a good story. Two tales eventually unfold, becoming the basis for an effervescent and emotive theatrical outing in this canny, elegant adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Man in a Case” and “About Love” by co-directors Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson of Big Dance Theater. In a style that revels in what it reveals, the action centers around a long table to the left of the stage, at the far end of which sound designer Tei Blow manages sound effects and Jeff Larson triggers video projections from his laptop. (Peter Ksander’s attractive, non-naturalist scenic design comes animated throughout by a discerning array of choice foley work and atmospheric video projections.) With each humorous and wistful story, the stage expands in unexpected ways, thanks to Parson’s vibrant choreography, the shape-shifting mise-en-scene, golden-throated musical director Giarmo’s exquisite score (much of it delivered live), and the superbly unaffected acting and supple movement of the cast. Acting the leads in both stories, Baryshnikov etches his respective characters with a masterful hand and a light step, making for a vivid presence at every turn. Opposite him each time, Canale’s luminous vitality proves a perfect match. But this is truly an ensemble effort, and the fine result produces a poignant, moody combination of the earthy and sublime. (Avila)

Quality of Life Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 23. Pear Avenue Theatre performs Jane Anderson’s play about two couples coming to grips with losses in their lives.

Silent Sky TheatreWorks, Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $19-73. Wed/5, 7:30pm; Thu/6-Sat/8, 8pm (also Sat/8, 2pm); Sun/9, 2 and 7pm. Lauren Gunderson’s drama explores the life of groundbreaking early 20th century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“All Aunt Hagar’s Children” JCC of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF; www.zspace.org. Mon/10, 7pm. $15. Word for Word presents this “Off the Page” staged reading of a story by Pulitzer winner Edward P. Jones.

“ASKEW Film and Performance Festival” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Thu/6-Sat/8, 7pm. $8-10. Femina Potens Art Gallery presents this festival of performance and activism via film and performance.

Aszure Barton and Artists Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Lam Research Theater, 700 Howard, SF; www.sfperformances.org. Fri/7-Sat/8, 7:30pm. $35-50. The Bay Area debut of this Canadian choreographer includes the celebrated work Awáa.

“The Big Buttery Sketch Show” Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.pianofight.com. Fri/7-Sat/8 and Feb 14-15, 8pm. $20-30. PianoFight Productions’ female-driven sketch comedy group Chardonnay (formerly ForePlays) performs.

“Bill and Lenny” and “Swimming to Romulous” ACT’s Costume Shop, 1117 Market, SF; www.strangerx.com. Fri/7-Sat/8, 8pm. $10. Tim Green and Chris Plflueger star in Strange Prescription’s West Coast premiere of Bill and Lenny; companion play is a Star Trek-themed Spalding Grey homage by Richard Ciccarone.

Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now This week: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Sun/9, 11am-5pm. 50 cents. The festival kicks off its 10th anniversary with “50 Cent Tabernacle,” featuring Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Robert Moses, and Nora Chipaumire. Performances continue through March 8.

“The Buddy Club Chilren’s Shows” Randall Museum Theater, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/9, 11am-noon. $8. Cowgirl tricks with Karen Quest. Also Sun/9, 11am-noon, $8, JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut, Berk. The Brian Waite Band performs “Tour to the Center of the Earth!” Also Sun/9, 11:30am-12:30pm, $8, Kanbar Center for the Performing Arts, 200 N San Pedro, San Rafael. Family comedy improv with Kenn Adams’ Adventure Theater.

“Carbon Song Cycle” Joe Goode Performance Annex, 401 Alabama, SF; carbonsongcycle.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/7-Sat/8, 8pm. $12-25. Composer Pamela Z and artist Christina McPhee present the SF premiere of their work for chamber ensemble and expanded cinema.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sat/8, Feb 14, 16, 22, March 1, 8, 16, 22, and 30, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Chinese Whispers: Heritage of Hope” Aboard the Balclutha, Hyde St Pier, SF; nps.gov/safr. Sat/8, 2-4pm. Free with $5 boarding pass (free for accompanied children under 16). Storytelling, presentations, and interactive activites about Chinese immigrant heritage highlight this Lunar New Year celebration aboard the historic ship.

“Comedy Bottle” Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.purpleonionatkells.com. Fri/7-Sat/8, 7pm. $10. With headliner Lyall Behrens.

“Curves N Cupcakes Comedy Tour” Punch Line San Francisco, 444 Battery, SF; www.punchlinecomedyclub.com. Tue/11, 8pm. $15. All-female lineup of comedians with host Queenie TT.

“Factory Parts II” NOH Space, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.foolsfury.org. Fri/7-Sat/8, 8pm (also Sat/8, 5pm). $15. FoolsFURY presents the latest in its series of work-in-progress performances by cutting-edge companies, including Los Altos’ ACME Performance Project, SF’s Affinity Project, and Palo Alto’s Arc: hive.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: Lady Rizo in “Violet,” Thu/6-Fri/7, 8pm, $25-35; John Bucchino in “The Music of John Bucchino,” Sat/8, 7pm, $25-35.

“How I Lost My Virginity at 29 and Other Embarrassing Tales” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.stagewerx.org. Sun/9-Mon/10, 7pm. $15. Brian Schiller performs his coming-of-age comedy.

“Love Bites: Down the Hatch!” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF; lgcsf.org/whats-new. Sun/9, 4pm; Mon/10, 7:30pm. $10. The Lesbian Gay Chorus of San Francisco performs solo, duet, and small-group numbers.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $30. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“ODC/Dance Unplugged” ODC Dance Commons Studio B, 351 Shotwell, SF; www.odctheater.org. Fri/7, 7pm. $25. Work-in-progress performance of the Andy Goldsworthy-inspired boulders and bones, set to premiere this spring.

“Point Break Live!” DNA Lounge, 373 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. Fri/7, March 7, and April 4, 7:30 and 11pm. $25-50. Dude, Point Break Live! is like dropping into a monster wave, or holding up a bank, like, just a pure adrenaline rush, man. Ahem. Sorry, but I really can’t help but channel Keanu Reeves and his Johnny Utah character when thinking about the awesomely bad 1991 movie Point Break or its equally yummily cheesy stage adaptation. And if you do an even better Keanu impression than me — the trick is in the vacant stare and stoner drawl — then you can play his starring role amid a cast of solid actors, reading from cue cards from a hilarious production assistant in order to more closely approximate Keanu’s acting ability. This play is just so much fun, even better now at DNA Lounge than it was a couple years ago at CELLspace. But definitely buy the poncho pack and wear it, because the blood, spit, and surf spray really do make this a fully immersive experience. (Steven T. Jones)

“Pop! A Night of Pop Cabaret” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF; (415) 241-0205. Sun/9, 7pm. $7. Cabaret with Essie Hyun, Jesse Cortez, Alexander Concas, Gilbert Beltran, and pianist Katy Stephan.

“Shotz: Winter Games” Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.amiosnyc.com. Tue/11, 8pm. $10. Seven plays, five minutes each, created in less than a month, and united under the theme “Winter Games.” Also required: a plot twist in which “someone must fail at something” and the line “This is the absolute best!” must be used.

“Writers with Drinks” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.makeoutroom.com. Sat/8, 7:30pm. $5-10. With Jeff VanderMeer, Lucy Corin, Marian Szczepanski, and Lisa Evans.

BAY AREA

“Boomeraging: From LSD to OMG!” Angelica’s Bell 2 Dining Room, 863 Main, Redwood City; www.angelicasllc.com. Wed/5, 8pm. $10-15. Will Durst performs his Boomer-centric comedy show.

Company C Contemporary Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Lam Research Theater, 701 Mission, SF; www.companycballet.org. Feb 13-14, 8pm; Feb 15, 6pm (benefit gala); Feb 16, 3pm. $25-48. The company’s winter program includes premieres by Susan Jaffe and Charles Anderson.

“Cosmic Variety Show” Open Secret, 923 C St, San Rafael; bit.ly/CosmicVarietyShow. Sat/8, 8pm. $12-15. Magic, belly dance, storytelling, and more.

“Die Fledermaus” Bankhead Theater, 2400 First St, Livermore; www.bankheadtheater.org. Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 2pm. $22.50-47. Lamplighters Music Theatre (noted for its Gilbert and Sullivan productions) performs Johann Strauss’ “bubbly tale of revenge and temptation.” Continues at Bay Area theaters through Feb 23; visit www.lamplighters.org for future dates.

“Ebb + Flow 2014” Lisser Theater, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur, Oakl; www.mills.edu. Fri/7, 8pm. $10. The Mills College Dance Alumni Group presents its third annual showcase of choreographers who hail from the Mills community, including Jalila Bell, Rebekah Brown, Garth Grimball, and others.

“In Search of My Father … Walkin’ Talkin’ Bill Hawkins” Performing Arts Bldg Studio Theatre, College of Marin, Sir Francis Drake at Laurel, Kentfield; www.marin.edu. Thu/6-Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 2pm. $10-25. W. Allen Taylor performs his acclaimed solo show.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“Q.U.E.E.N. From Throne to Altar” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.mixdingrdnts.com. Fri/7-Sat/8, 8pm (also Sat/8, 2pm). $25. Mix’d Ingrdnts Dance Company performs its second full-length show, which takes a look at “how society views women and how we are creating or saying what a queen is to us.” *

Did Feinstein see a drone?

Michael Redmond

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February 4, 2014

6

For years now, Bay Area organizers with the antiwar group Code Pink have been staging protests outside the Pacific Heights residence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Code Pink director Medea Benjamin has led delegations to Pakistan and Yemen in the past to protest US drone strikes, and San Francisco activists have frequently appeared outside the senator’s home to sound off against the US military’s use of drones.

But more recently, Code Pink activists have paid visits to Feinstein to let her know what they think of her comments condemning the actions of whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“We at Code Pink think Edward Snowden did a great service to this country,” by leaking secret National Security Agency documents detailing the intelligence agency’s dragnet surveillance program, said organizer Nancy Mancias.

So on June 15, 2013, “We flew a couple toy helicopters outside her home” as part of an anti-surveillance protest. It was an “Austin Powers” themed protest, she added, “playing spy-type music.”

But a couple months ago, Feinstein mentioned during a hearing about drones that she’d actually seen a drone peeking outside her window at her San Francisco home. She said it crashed shortly after she detected it.

But that left activists and others wondering about Feinstein’s account, since Mancias says the remote controlled device they sent up to fly around Feinstein’s mansion was not a drone, but rather a pink helicopter, “like a toy you pick up at Toys-R-Us.”

The Code Pink activists captured video of the event, she added, and sent it to the television program 60 Minutes. “Hopefully, they’ll air it when they interview Dianne Feinstein.”

Another wrinkle in Feinstein’s story is that “she said she was home when this demonstration was happening,” Mancias said. “But we were knocking on the door, ringing the doorbell.”

Believe it or not, Feinstein has actually responded to this sort of activity in the past by coming to the door and engaging with the concerned, pink-clad citizens.

“She’s a very old school politician,” Mancias said by way of explanation. “She’s very approachable. On that day she didn’t come outside, and if she was home, we would have loved to have a discussion with her about Edward Snowden.”

So was Feinstein’s account of spotting a surveillance drone rooted in nothing more than noticing a pink kid’s toy zip past her window during a routine Code Pink protest?

Nobody knows for sure but nevertheless, Code Pink activists feel vindicated. “I can say that we actually achieved our goal,” Mancias said. That’s because more recently, Feinstein has softened her stance somewhat and admitted that “we need to look into” the domestic surveillance program.

But that perception of a small victory doesn’t mean they aren’t going back. On Tuesday, Feb. 11, Code Pink plans to return to Feinstein’s Pac Heights mansion for yet another protest, this time to coincide with a national day of action being planned in opposition to NSA spying.

Called “The Day We Fight Back,” the Feb. 11 action day will consist of website owners installing banners to encourage their visitors to challenge online spying, and employees of tech companies calling on their organizations to do the same.

“We’re asking people to bring surveillance equipment, drones, and magnifying glasses,” to Feinstein’s house, Mancias said, presumably talking about props and not real surveillance equipment (does Google Glass count?). “We’ll just play some music,” she added, “and have a fabulous time.”

City ignores public on bus plan

Michael Redmond

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January 28, 2014

46

EDITORIAL San Francisco’s tech bus saga has proven to be a source of fascination to national and international media outlets. Blockades of Google, Apple, and Facebook shuttles have fueled the narrative that the city is gripped by class warfare, with evictees and low-income renters raging against well-heeled private shuttle passengers and the taxpayer-subsidized tech industry.

There’s truth in that, to be sure — but another reason for this mounting tension has less to do with the passengers inside the shuttles and more to do with tone-deaf administrators and politicians inside City Hall.

At the Jan. 21 San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency meeting where the plan to regulate the Google buses was adopted, people filled a hearing room and an overflow room to capacity and sounded off for hours with their concerns. Some voiced support, but opponents felt the city wasn’t demanding enough from the shuttle-sponsoring corporations in exchange for this privilege, and for the headaches they’ve already caused.

Yet the board of that supposedly independent agency just unanimously rubber-stamped the plan that had been crafted behind closed doors, without even bothering to conduct a broad-based study about the impacts the shuttles are actually having on the city.

There’s a lot of anger in San Francisco right now. And no, it isn’t rooted in envy over tech workers’ generous salaries. Much of it is driven by a growing sense that city government routinely freezes out the public while doing the bidding of a small number of elite stakeholders with undue influence.

Despite dozens of protests, a media blitzkrieg, and passionate speeches urging the MTA board to come up with a better plan, the directors chose to endorse something that had been formulated without public input. That simply is not how government is supposed to work, particularly here in San Francisco.

Yet this episode is all too typical of how the people’s business is being conducted these days. Important decisions are getting made behind closed doors and presented to the public as done deals, including the decisions by Mayor Ed Lee and his appointees to repeal Sunday metering, block CleanPowerSF, speed up housing development, and build a Warriors arena on the waterfront.

How would this have gone differently if city administrators took their commitment to big ideas like “civic engagement” seriously, and actually solicited ideas from the public from the start instead of treating the broader community as an afterthought?

As long as City Hall continues to be perceived as out of touch with city residents, and beholden to corporate interests alone, expect the tales of San Francisco’s class war to continue dominating headlines.

SFMTA approves tech shuttle plan

Michael Redmond

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January 28, 2014

8

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors approved a pilot program Jan. 21 that allows operators of private commuter shuttles to use public bus stops, something they’ve been doing illegally for years on a very predictable basis.

The program will establish an “approved network” of 200 designated San Francisco stops where private shuttles may pick up and drop off passengers. It will issue permits and identifying placards to the private buses and require them to adhere to certain set of rules, like yielding to Muni buses if they approach the stop at the same time. (There’s already a Curb Priority Law stating that any vehicles not operated by Muni will be fined $271 for blocking a bus zone. But the city has chosen to ignore that law when it comes to private commuter shuttles.)

Finally, the program will charge shuttle operators $1 per stop per day, which seeks to cover the costs of the program implementation and no more. The meeting drew a very high turnout that included the protesters who have been blockading the buses, Google employees, private commuter shuttle drivers, and residents of various San Francisco neighborhoods.

Sup. Scott Wiener said at the meeting he was fully supportive of the pilot program, which was developed over the course of many months in collaboration with tech companies who operate the shuttles.

“These shuttles are providing a valuable service,” Wiener said. He said he was sensitive to widespread “frustration and anxiety” around the high cost of housing and rising evictions, but thought it was unfair to blame tech workers: “We need to stop demonizing these shuttles and these tech workers.”

Then Sup. David Campos addressed the board. “I think it’s really important for us to have a dialogue to find common ground,” Campos said, adding that pushing shuttle riders into private automobiles was not a good outcome. But he also urged the SFMTA board to send the proposal back to the drawing board: “It’s a proposal that simply does not go far enough.”

Campos was also critical of the SFMTA’s process of studying the growing private shuttle problem for years and drafting a proposal in collaboration with members of the tech community, with Campos pointing out, “Public input is being sought after the fact.”

Bus plan ignores real cost

Many community members have criticized the new $1 per stop tech shuttle fee as being too low, but city officials say their hands are tied by a state law prohibiting them from charging any more than that.

Yet under Proposition 218 — the state law that limits local governments’ ability to impose new fees — the city has more discretion about how to calculate “cost recovery” than officials have let on.

“Prop. 218 is part of a legal scheme that doesn’t so much limit how we calculate cost recovery,” San Francisco City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Gabriel Zitrin told us, “but limits the city to cost recovery.”

At the Jan. 21 SFMTA meeting, Project Manager Carli Paine explained how her team had arrived at the $1 per stop, per day fee amount.

“We identified everything it would take to implement this program,” Paine said. After identifying all the program components, the agency “took the number of stop events and came up with a ‘per stop event’ cost…The kinds of costs we included are upfront costs, ongoing program costs.”

Under Prop. 218, however, the SFMTA could determine whether there are other costs associated with allowing private commuter shuttles to use public transportation infrastructure, beyond just the cost of issuing and enforcing permits and placards.

Zitrin said the city can identify any costs not already being recovered elsewhere. If shuttles’ use of public bus stops cause transit delays, for instance, what are the costs associated with those delays? More overtime pay for bus drivers?

Low-income kids getting to school late and missing breakfast? What’s the cost of that?

If rents rise in neighborhoods located along the shuttle routes (and studies show they do), what are the associated costs of that phenomenon? What’s the cost of displacement resulting from those higher rents?

“Tale of two Davids” elevates Campos

Michael Redmond

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January 28, 2014

4

David Campos presented “a tale of two Davids” Jan. 23 in his first debate with David Chiu in their race to replace Assemblymember Tom Ammiano in AD17, contrasting his solid progressive record against Chiu’s more pragmatic approach. Chiu reinforced the narrative by repeatedly touting his “effectiveness” and record at City Hall.

So the question that may decide the race is whether the corporate-friendly “jobs agenda” that Chiu has pursued with Mayor Ed Lee — an approach that is now triggering a political backlash as evictions and gentrification rage — is popular with voters. It wasn’t with the San Francisco Young Democrats, which sponsored the debate in the Main Library tonight and then voted to endorse Campos.

Campos brought the fire from the beginning, chiding Chiu for his chummy relationship with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and offering English and Spanish translations of the saying, “Tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Chiu tried to focus on his record and political skills — “We need an Assembly person who is effective at getting things done,” Chiu said — but he seemed weary and thrown off balance by Campos’ well-delivered ideological jabs.

“I’m surprised as a tenant you would support the demolition of 1500 rent-controlled units at Parkmerced,” Campos said after Chiu identified with struggling renters. And when Chiu touted the condo conversion moratorium deal he cut, Campos said, “There doesn’t have to be a lobbying effort by tenant groups to get me to do the right thing.”

As Chiu listed his legislative accomplishments, Campos said, ” I have a different definition of effectiveness,” criticizing Chiu for supporting Twitter’s $22 million tax break and other pro-business policies.

Chiu finally got testy and defensive, accusing Campos of also taking money from developers and corporations and with practicing divisive politics. “I do think the people in San Francisco are stick of these attacks,” Chiu said, and then indignantly offering, “I’m in nobody’s pocket.”

But Campos maintained both his narrative and his composure, calling Chiu out for crafting a watered-down alternative to Campos’ legislation requiring restaurants to comply with the Health Care Security Ordinance in paying for their employees’ health coverage and ensuring all surcharges tacked onto customers’ bill go to employees.

“You co-sponsored [the Campos legislation] then changed your mind when the Chamber told you,” Campos said.

When moderator Marisa Lagos from the Chronicle asked the two candidates whether they supported the deal that Mayor Lee cut with tech companies to charge $1 per bus stop for the “Google buses,” which the SFMTA board rubber-stamped this week, Chiu said, “I don’t think $1 per stop is enough.”

Campos pounced, citing Chiu’s support for the deal and quotes in a press release that the Mayor’s Office put out and his absence from the SFMTA meeting where Campos publicly called for a better deal for the city. “It’s one thing to say it here and it’s another thing to say it at City Hall,” Campos said, continuing the offensive by returning to Chiu’s sponsorship of the Twitter tax break, which disappeared from Chiu’s campaign page as the issue has turned toxic recently. “I think you know that was a mistake,” Campos said.

Chiu didn’t respond, choosing instead to emphasize the contrast between his insider role at City Hall and Campos’ identification with the activists. “I’m trying to work behind the scenes and get things done, he’s grandstanding before the cameras,” Chiu said.

Campos extended his “tale of two Davids” narrative, charging that there are two David Chius: the candidate first elected with progressive support in 2008, and the calculating politician who works with the moderates and the business community to advance his interests.

“Which David Chiu is going to go to Sacramento?” Campos asked.

Chiu tried to bridge the gulf between his progressive and pragmatic selves: “In 2008 I said I believed it’s progressive for us to be creating jobs and building housing.” Campos used his closing to say, “This campaign is about taking our city back, it’s about protecting the heart of San Francisco.”