› a&eletters@sfbg.com
When pressed to define obscenity, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously opined, “I know it when I see it.” For me, a more honest answer would go something like “I know it when I masturbate to it.”
Rock music, like smut, offers an equally simple metric for discerning authenticity: if listening to a band inevitably leads to a stoned argument about the fighting prowess of Bruce Lee, then it is probably real rock. I’ve debated so many Bruce Lee combat hypotheticals while listening to Black Sabbath — Bruce Lee versus genius hammerhead shark, Bruce Lee versus Loma Prieta earthquake, one-armed Bruce Lee versus Willy Wonka — that I never question their place as the supreme suicide-inducing, vengeance-advocating rock band.
The biggest Bay Area radio station that claims to rock is 107.7 the Bone. The Bone consciously sells itself as “classic rock that rocks.” When I moved to San Francisco in 2001, it was the only station that reliably got the Led out. It played a ton of Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath — all the bands that scared me as a small boy because I knew in my heart they possessed evil powers and could, with their music, summon from the soil of the Amazon rainforest an army of cloned Adolf Hitlers. The Bone always comforted me, because it — along with Madalyn Murray O’Hare, pony kegs, bringing M-80s to school, and backward masking — inhabited the same demon-haunted rock-metal world I lived in as a frightened but fascinated child.
FLIRTING WITH DISASTER AND LADY REEBOK
So I’ll never forget where I was the first time I heard the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” on the Bone. It was 2 a.m. earlier this year, and I was driving west on Fell Street at 60 mph, my 1986 convertible LeBaron catching the timed lights one second after they turned green (Fell’s timed lights work at 30, 60, even 120 mph). I wanted rock and prayed for the Bone to twist me up a threefer of Ronnie James Dio. Instead, I found myself thrust into a Lady Reebok ad: vaguely self-infatuated and optimistic about everything but nothing in particular. I defensively smashed my car into a parked Cooper Mini, did a hundred push-ups and sit-ups next to the twisted wreckage, and ran off into the night. As with all time-bifurcating events — 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, being told my seventh-grade “sweats” were actually parachute pants — it’s often hard to remember what life was like before.
Joe Rock, the Bone’s most metal-friendly DJ and assistant program director, told me recently that the station tweaked its format following a 2004 listener-driven “Classic Rock A–Z Weekend” that saw requests for bands like Pearl Jam and Temple of the Dog supplant classic-rock lifers like Derek and the Dominoes and Bad Company. The switch from “metal-oriented classic rock,” the station’s previous Arbitron-monitored format, to “heritage rock,” a mix of old metal, new guitar-based grunge and post-grunge, and both old-school and contemporary Reebok rock, elicited a mild-to-moderate shitstorm from old-school Boneheads.
Why change the formula? I think the economics of commercial radio came into play. Few listeners in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic really care about Deep Purple deep tracks anymore, so the Bone started dropping in Staind and Godsmack amid Jimi Hendrix and Ozzy Osbourne. If you’re an old-school Bonehead, the change means that now you only hear KISS once in a while, unless you count all the time you and Strutter, your albino python, lock yourselves in your room and listen to every single KISS song on tape, vinyl, CD, CD box set, digitally remastered CD, and digitally remastered CD box set. If, however, you believe Stone Temple Pilots and Buckcherry are where Ted Nugent would have ended up if he didn’t OD on elk jerky and NRA propaganda, then you feel much like John Hinckley probably did after his psychologist let him watch Taxi Driver on DVD: deeply appreciative but still wondering what all the fuss is about.
THE SONG NOT THE SAME?
The mythology of classic rock holds that everything used to be one big fantasy sequence from The Song Remains the Same: coked-up druids, trashed Hilton suites, and roadies deep into black magic. The reality is that the vast majority of classic rock is nerdy or nonthreatening. You’re more likely to hear Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac, Yes, Journey, and Jethro Tull on an Aflac commercial than see them carved into the arm of a berserker teen. The Bone has always needed to appeal to men and women, hawks and doves, parolees and nonparolees. Until the change in format, ubiquitous classic rock loser ballads like the Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes” and Pink Floyd’s “Mother” represented the shadow self of the average Aleister Crowley–worshiping Bonehead. After the tweak the Bone forced its aging listeners to ask themselves a fundamental and humbling question: “Am I getting too old for this I-Roc?” Bone listeners older than 40 — who weren’t impressionable suckers when music, fashion, advertising, and public relations merged with movies, television, and politics in the late ’80s — had to swallow a bitter pill: it’s really all the same now, just younger.
The old Bone — despite its marketing and popularity with grown men who paint their faces silver and black and dress up as Norse war gods for their children’s Pop Warner football games — always played an embarrassing amount of lame music. For every “Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap)” or “Kashmir,” there were two pieces of shit like “Gimme Three Steps” and “China Grove.” The new Bone basically employs the same formula: Rainbow, Metallica, and Alice in Chains but now with acoustic Nickelback and blink-182 thrown in for the women and the younger sensitive guys.
This, objectively, is no wimpier than the old wimpy stuff, just more corporate and more easily marketable. The new Bone plays songs that strippers born after 1984 can lap dance to and still seem credible to their under-30 clientele. A lot of the new Bone stuff — by so-called active rock bands such as Audioslave and Velvet Revolver — easily out-rocks anything by Don Henley — and anything he ever touched.
Sometimes it’s better to just sound good than appear consistent. What rocks for me doesn’t necessarily rock for my next-door neighbor, unless Alice Cooper is now living in a pupuseria on 24th Street and Harrison. As for the ultimate judge, Bruce Lee’s legacy, I say the Bone still facilitates a Bay Area dialogue, even if it’s only seen Enter the Dragon and the first 10 minutes of Game of Death. SFBG
Green
Gimme back my Bone?
Outsourcer
› superego@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO The best thing about childhood obesity is I can fit in all the clothes now. Dora the Explorerwear, Juicy Couture for Kids, even Mary-Kate and Ashley Teen Look. No door, no path, no avenue is closed to my cheap and whimsical fashion tastes. No “Barfin’ BILF” tube top for toddlers can squeeze me out of my juvenile fancies. Thank you, overweight preteens of America! Viva los junk foods!
And so goes the mind. I was rifling through a rack of knockoff baby Baby Phat the other day when the fluorescents at Thrift Town grew one shade of puke green lighter, and I fell into a consumerist reverie — my thoughts rippling and stretching like the toxic, Korean-stitched Spandelux beneath my gas station press-on fingertips. Tell me, has Clubland become a tangle of infinite niches? Do the tight, glowing pockets of each individual scene form a Great Barrier Reef: part of a vibrant, neon nightlife tapestry, yet each a total entity unto itself? Do the hefty-boobed metal-chick wonders at Crash form a silicone wall, the sideways-haired Casanova scruffsters a moat of cold shoulders, the overexcitable twinks at Bar on Castro an army of flamboyant spastics, their tweezed brows raised like little red flags, two high-pitched shrieks of warning?
And while we’re at it, what’s up with Nancy Pelosi’s eyes? Girl looks spun as a dinner plate at a Chinese circus. Nancy, meet Tramadol. Tramadol, Nancy.
There, like, used to be this thing that happened. The “cool” kids would start a music and nightlife scene. They’d get a couple months to revel in cooler-than-thou, bonding with freaks of like mind. Eventually, the scene would get too big for its britches and start being overrun by “normals.” Everybody wanted in, diluting the scene’s insular charms and making the original fans bitter, smugly smoking their pastel Nat Shermans and sharpening their claws on the newcomers. But that hasn’t happened since house and techno were bastardized into horrid music for aerobics classes. It’s not the kind of music that matters anymore, it’s the attitude that defines. My dreamboat rock critic, Kalefa Sanneh, calls this phenomenon “mini-monoculture.” I call it kind of boring (although I’m lovin’ the lack of scene cattiness). Without overpopularity to push you on to the next scene, it’s all too easy to get stuck. That may be why we’re all still falling backward into the ’80s. Aa-aaahhh …
But sometimes something refreshing comes totally out of left field, something no one can claim to own or hole up in. I’m talking about clubs like the monthly NonStop Bhangra, one of my favorite places to watch people of all stripes let their J/A/S/O/N/-gelled hair down and get a little silly, which does an end run around the whole American underground malaise by packing a woven hemp record bag and flying us off to the world of Bollywood and Bangalore, fronting a cosmopolitan style that totally disarms.
Punjabi by way of London, bhangra music is the tabla-driven electroclash of now, mixing 15th-century Indian folk music with bass-heavy hip-hop (henna-tinted hyphy?) — without an inkling of disco drama. Other great joints such as Dhamaal at Club Six and Bollywood Nights in Santa Clara have pumped the bang-bang-bhangra for years, but NonStop, started a couple years ago by Vicki Virk and Suman Raj-Grewal of dholrhythms dance troupe and DJ Jimmy Love, delivers the whole Punjabi enchilada to the heart of mini-mono scensterdom, Rickshaw Stop. Professional dance performances, lessons for beginners, live painting and drumming, superduper psychedelic visuals, and the fabulous, mini-multicultural sight of people shaking their bangles in glee — what’s better? The upcoming NonStop, Nov. 18 with guest DJ Sep, is the last one of the year, and it’ll be a doozy of a Delhi, a much-needed tonic for anyone feeling trapped in their scene.
Whoa. Amazing the thoughts that pop into your head while you’re stuffing fat kids’ clothes into your Wonderbra, no?
THIS JUST IN: What do club goddesses Heklina, Lady Bunny, Lady Kier from Deee-Lite, and practically every cheap-ass, to’-up drag queen in this whole gloriously damned burg have in common? That’s right, tax problems. Oh, and they’ll also be at the fantasmic, sure-to-be-scandal-ridden Miss Trannyshack Pageant on Nov. 18. I’m not pumping this long-running institution just because Trannyshack head honchette Heklina has a nail gun to my ear hole. Really. I’m pumping it because it’s wild fun! SFBG
NONSTOP BHANGRA
Every third Saturday, 8 p.m.–2 a.m. (no event in December)
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
$10 advance, $15 door
(415) 861-2011
www.nonstopbhangra.com
MISS TRANNYSHACK PAGEANT
Sat/18, 9 p.m.–4 a.m.
Regency Center
1300 Van Ness, SF
$25 advance, $35 door
www.trannyshack.com
The clarifications
› paulr@sfbg.com
Doctrines of infallibility are for popes and neocons, and need I say more? The rest of us lowly humans must make do with the doctrine of fallibility, a splendid coat of many colors. If you screw up in the kitchen, you add some mustard or vinegar — pancake makeup for defaced or deformed dishes — and hope for the best. Or phone out for emergency pizza. If you screw up in print … well, there it is, as the tin-eared Emperor Joseph was wont to say in Amadeus. Errata have a way of accumuutf8g, like spatters on a chef’s apron, until finally a laundering is in order. Herewith a selection of my own recent spatters. [Editor’s note: Also missed by Paul’s hysterical-anorexic editor, Marke B.]
In my recent piece about Alamo Square Seafood Grill (“Sea Rations,” 11/1/06), I wrongly dismissed trout as a responsible choice of fish. True, it is a farmed carnivore, but according to the endlessly useful Seafood Watch program of the Monterey Bay Aquarium (www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp), trout is rated in the “best” category. It efficiently converts feed into protein and is farmed in an enviro-friendly way.
In my piece about the Michelin guide’s recent Northern California edition (Without Reservations, 10/11/06), I implied that the Michelin guide uses half stars. I do not know where I got this idea; perhaps there was confusion with other star-giving entities that do deal in half rations. Michelin gives full stars only — or not, as the case may be. Also, while there was considerable distress here as to the NorCal guide’s emphases and omissions, it is worth reminding ourselves that we are probably not Michelin’s principal audience; the green guides are largely for visiting French and other Europeans, so a skewing toward French restaurants with a certain formality of service shouldn’t surprise us.
Most puzzling is my persistent delusion that Belden Place is either “Lane” or “Alley.” In my recent piece on Café Claude (“Charm Latitudes,” 10/11/06 — again!), I stumbled into “Lane.” I also said that it is paved with bricks, because my memory insists that it is, but on a recent flyby I noticed only asphalt, though it is possible there are brick facades or perhaps bricks hugging the earth as foundations. I am relieved not to have described it as “cobblestoned,” which I might have done in the past, though I hope not. Cobblestones would be nice.
“This is a progressive town”
By Steven T. Jones
Pollster David Binder was about to begin his regular election post-mortem in the SPUR offices this afternoon when I ran into Mayor Gavin Newsom’s press secretary, Peter Ragone. “Not a very good night for the mayor, huh?” I noted.
But rather than admitting the obvious, Ragone began to spin and dissemble like crazy, shrugging off the defeats of supervisorial candidates Rob Black and Doug Chan – who Newson endorsed and campaigned heavily for – and the approval of a slate of progressive ballot measures that the centrist mayor opposed.
“We endorsed them, but didn’t put a lot into it,” Ragone said, despite the fact that Newsom spent the last two weekends campaigning for Black and Chan (who finished in fourth place) and obviously made a high priority of defeating his main political nemesis of recent years: Sup. Chris Daly.
“The real key for us was Hydra Mendoza, who won [a seat on the school board],” Ragone said. “From my perspective, we now have the mayor’s education advisor on the school board. It’s a good thing.” Perhaps, although I noted that even with support from the mayor and lots of mainstream groups, Mendoza still finished behind a green: Jane Kim. He shrugged again, sticking to his line.
But Ragone can’t spin away the fact that, as Binder said a few minutes later, “I don’t think Newsom had a very good night.”
It was a night for the progressives, with Daly and most of his ballot measures winning decisively and San Franciscans proving themselves to be way to the left of even the leftward national trend. One indicator among many was that nearly 60 percent San Franciscans approved Prop. J, urging Congress to pursue impeachment even though soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says she’s taken it off the table.
“It showed that we had a progressive turnout and this is a progressive town,” Binder said.
Nights of the round table
› paulr@sfbg.com
If, like me, you associate the letters K and L with wine — as in K and L Wines — you might have to do some expectation adjustment when you step through the doors of KL Restaurant, a Hong Kong–style seafood house in the westernmost Richmond. Despite the heavily maritime menu, the only alcoholic drink on offer is beer, and the only beer is Heineken. No Tsingtao? Not even Sapporo or Tiger? Unheard of. Not that there’s anything wrong with Heineken.
The restaurant’s winelessness did not come as a complete surprise. We’d been advised beforehand by an in-the-know member of our party that if we were going to want wine, we would have to pack it in ourselves. Who would not want wine with seafood? I thought while vaguely intending to take a well-chilled bottle of Navarro gewürztraminer, gewürz being one of those fragrant German grapes that stand up nicely to Chinese food. And: who would want beer with seafood? All of us, as it turned out. The gewürz did not get chilled or packed in, the beer turned out to be a good match with dish after dish (the wine would have too, it must be said), and the result was a tableful of slightly woozy satiation — the way one might feel at the end of, say, a wedding banquet.
KL’s banquetish aura isn’t of the lordly sort. The main dining room is huge, unfancy, and airy; its principal wall hangings are announcements of the day’s specials, hand lettered in Chinese on plain white paper. There is also a battery of aquariums in which various creatures of the deep await their rendezvous with the big mesh scooper. If it weren’t a restaurant, with a telltale sizzle coming from the kitchen, it could be a pet shop. But the tables give us our chief clue. A number of them are round and large, suitable for the seating of up to a dozen — and large parties do show up with some frequency to fill them. There is also an adjoining room that serves as a kind of overflow dining room but would also do (despite its coat-closet starkness) as the setting for a private party — a more intimate banquet, perhaps.
KL convincingly stands for the proposition that the best interior design element in any restaurant is the presence of human beings. If you attract scads of interesting people — families in generational layers, from grandparents to tykes; a crew of early-20s types and their rainbow of RAZRs clustered at a banquet table; the odd outworlder; groups meeting on the sidewalk outside or laughing at the host’s station — you do not need anything else to achieve the buzz, the low but steady roar of enjoyment, all restaurateurs are looking for.
Good food helps too, of course, and KL’s food, considered as a ratio of price to value and as an exercise in variety, is good. The kitchen is particularly skilled at sampan preparations, which involve a peppery batter-fry. I am not sure this is the best way to have Dungeness crab ($14), since most of what ends up covered in delicious, spicy-crisp batter is shell. Still, you do get some batter-on-flesh effect, mostly with the body chunks, and as for the legs — you can scrape the tasty crust off with your teeth before cracking them open. And if that is too much work, you can luxuriate in the surrounding fermented-black-bean sauce, which has the texture of a pilaf and a strong salty bite.
While deep-frying often brings an extra dash of delight to otherwise bland foods, such as the potato, I am obliged to report that the deep-frying of oysters ($8.95) has the opposite effect. The unmistakable flavor of brine disappears, as does the slippery-soft, slightly naughty texture; in its place we find an ordinary meatiness like that of chicken liver. A bright red, slightly sweet sauce served in a dipping plate on the side provided color more than anything else.
Salt-and-pepper squid ($6.95), on the other hand, turned out to be a success: tender with just a bit of chewiness and the pepper in the batter helping cut the grease. Even better was a platter of sea scallops ($8.95) stir-fried kung pao–style, with chunks of red and green bell pepper, chopped scallion, and a heavy showering of peanuts in a dark, thick, smoky-sweet sauce.
The sizzling-rice seafood soup ($5.95) didn’t amount to much beyond its rafts of sizzling rice: just some sliced shiitake caps, bits of chopped scallion, and a few lonely dried shrimp bobbing in an OK broth. And the steamed prawns ($21.90), a platter-filling spectacle of finger-size crustaceans split in half and sprinkled with a garlic-shallot sauce that looked like couscous cooked in bleach, were distinctly disappointing, rubbery in the mouth and tasting of feebleness.
One of the best dishes — oh irony! — has nothing to do with the sea. This would be the minced squab lettuce cup ($11.95), a mu shu pork–like construct (complete with a side of hoisin sauce) in which pristine iceberg lettuce leaves are substituted for the pancakes and the meat mixture is scooped into them. If you’ve ever struggled with squab in a restaurant that served the little fowl on the bone — for flavor or authenticity’s sake or due to the chef’s busy schedule — you will sniffle in appreciation at the ease and pleasure of munching through this dish.
For a restaurant whose clientele appears to be overwhelmingly Chinese, service is Anglophone-friendly and quite gregarious, though I felt the Heinekens were pushed a little too keenly. Service with brio, meanwhile, does not necessarily mean efficiency: we went out of our way to order an item and it never appeared, except on the bill. So: celebrate, but verify. SFBG
KL RESTAURANT
Daily, 10 a.m.–9:30 p.m.
4401 Balboa, SF
(415) 666-9928
Beer
MC/V
Very noisy
Wheelchair accessible
Keefer looks ahead; calls Pelosi out
Live report from Sarah Phelan
Krissy Keefer, the candidate for Congress, District 8, rose amid a flurry of Peruvian pan pipes at Café Boheme, dressed in bright green, to address the crowd of her supporters. Her platform had been: US out of Iraq, impeach Bush, stop global warming. With Democrat Nancy Pelosi leading at 77 percent — looks like she may be the next Speaker of the House – Keefer had this to say:
“The most important thing now is to see if measure J passes. Pelosi has to look at what her district wants — impeachment for Bush. Her district was against the Iraq war from the start.
It’s time for Nancy Pelosi to take the interests of San Francisco and put them at the center rather than the margins. People from SF will be watching.”
SATURDAY
Sat/4
Performance
“Campfire”
Oh, to be kids again, sitting around the fire and chomping toasted marshmallows while taking turns freaking each other out with tales of the spirit world! Well, here’s your chance: BATS Improv, with special guests Unexpected Productions, is offering an improvisational theater version of the campfire story. Before the show audience members are encouraged to share their experiences with ghosts; these accounts are then converted into improvised performances certain to quicken the pulse and thrill the most jaded of hearts. (Todd Lavoie)
8 p.m.
Bayfront Theater
Fort Mason Center, bldg. B
Marina at Buchanan, SF
$15
www.improv.org
Music
Mudhoney
Born from the ashes of the seminal Seattle band Green River, Mudhoney was one of the first groups to rise to moderate fame during the alternative rock explosion in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Though its profile and popularity were eventually far eclipsed by other acts labeled with the now-despised “grunge” tag, Mudhoney is one of the few original bands of that era still touring and putting out records. Tunes from this year’s Under a Billion Suns seethe and spit with the same attitude that made “Touch Me I’m Sick” and “Suck You Dry” anthems for a disaffected Generation X. (Sean McCourt)
9 p.m.
12 Galaxies
2565 Mission, SF
$20
(415) 970-9777
www.12galaxies.com
www.subpop.com
30 years and one minute: Film Arts Foundation
The Film Arts Foundation turns 30 this year, and to celebrate it’s throwing a party at the Castro Theatre. One-minute movies are a major element of the FAF’s birthday bash — 60-second efforts by some of the organization’s filmmaking members will be shown as part of an evening program MCed by Peter Coyote and Nancy Kelly. Considering FAF members include Les Blank, Debra Chasnoff, Nathaniel Dorsky, Rob Epstein, Sam Green, George Kuchar, Amanda Micheli, Jenni Olson, Jay Rosenblatt, Caveh Zahedi, and Terry Zwigoff, the result promises to be exciting.
Normally, in early November the Film Arts Festival rolls around, but this is an important transitional year for the organization, with recent changes such as the hiring of executive director Eric Hayashi. The Film Arts Fund for Independent Cinema continues to award money to filmmakers whose visions are individual and who aren’t — unlike the vast majority of directors today — following the dictates of TV markets. This year Green (currently working on a movie about utopian visions) and recent Guardian profile subjects James T. Hong and Michelle Silva (“Wild Eyes,” 5/18/05) are among the grant recipients. (Johnny Ray Huston)
FILM ARTS FOUNDATION’S 30TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
Wed/8, 6:30–8 p.m. reception; 8 p.m. screening; 10 p.m. after-party
Castro Theatre
429 Castro, SF
$15–$75
(415) 552-FILM
www.filmarts.org/30years
Explosives
› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
What am I grateful for?
Bacon. Fried chicken. Butter. Barbecued chicken. Butter. Bacon fat. Eggs … None of which you will find by the way at my new favorite restaurant, Café Gratitude. I went to the one in Berkeley with my old blackberry pickin’ pal and new favorite massage therapist NFC, and even though I couldn’t find no chicken-fried steak on the menu, I have to admit to having had one of the Times of my Life.
Has the chicken farmer lost her mind?
No! My old pal NFC has, because I would have taken her to Chez Panisse or even House of Chicken and Waffles … and she picked this.
“No, no, I’m serious, anywhere you want,” I said. “My treat.” I owed her big-time, see, for fixing me up backwise in an emergency the week before. “Chez Panisse,” I said. “Chicken and Waffles.”
“Café Gratitude,” she said again.
So, OK, I didn’t even know what it was, but namewise it seemed appropriate for the occasion. Conceptwise, you know: “live” organic foods, no meat, no pain and suffering, locally farmed, environmentally friendly, vegan, “prepared with love,” and all that hippie dippy dong dong dicky doo I’m so, so into these days, so long as I get to go home afterward and lop the head off of one of my chickens.
I like dead food too.
Everything on the menu is named an affirmative first-person statement, and the idea I think is to make you say it when you order. Like “I am wonderful,” “I am lovely,” “I am dazzling,” “I am magical,” and all kinds of other flat-out lies. Personally, I am honest, so I scoured the menu for something true to say to our waitressperson, such as “I am all of the above and none of the above and clumsy and stupid and pissed off and oh yeah, my feet stink.”
“I am explosive,” NFC said, but that wasn’t on the menu either. Although … never mind. Well, no, never mind.
Well, I think she was maybe making a prediction, based on all the ingredients in all the stuff we were looking at, like grains and greens and nuts and flax chips. Give you an example: the salad called “I am fulfilled” contains mixed greens, carrots, beets, cucumber, tomato, avocado, sprouts, microgreens (whatever that means), Brazil nut parmesan, and flax crackers ($10).
Actually, that sounds delicious, but I settled on being “elated,” which meant I was eating an enchilada with corn, cilantro, and something else inside and a spicy green salsa on top ($10). This came with a side salad and Bhutanese red rice. All good, right on.
NFC decided to be accepting, which meant she was eating red rice too, only all tossed together with raw free-range organic vegetables, pine nuts, some other kinds of nuts, and some shit-talking mushrooms. All good, right on.
To drink: free-range organic wind-dried water (with a wink to Posh Nosh fans — hi, Chrissy), and we also ordered a couple things from the smoothies and nut milks, but I don’t remember what. But it was all good, right on.
You think I’m kidding but I’m not. I love this stuff! Anyway, I could have been eating sand and sea shells, and so long as I get to eat it sitting cross-legged on a couch with my old friend NFC, talking about her girls and my chickens and, you know, life and shit, with our knees sometimes touching … I’m going to be happy.
I was satisfied. Technically, this was breakfast, since we started eating around 10, but I didn’t have any lunch and wasn’t hungry for dinner until later than usual. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t run right home anyway and knock over one of my chickens. It was a beautiful day that day.
It’s a beautiful day today. I am sad and scared and loving life because I can’t stop making poetry out of it. This one I call “Hopeful Chicken Farmer Poem”:
Suddenly bugs make sense to me and lavender smells like lavender — finally! Who knew that a dried-up leaf would sound that way under a feral cat’s paw? So I planted a blueberry bush next to the blackberry bushes. Next year, if the chickens don’t scratch it all out … SFBG
CAFÉ GRATITUDE
Daily, 10 a.m.–10 p.m.
1730 Shattuck, Berk.
(415) 824-4652
Takeout available
No alcohol
MC/V
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible
White Guilt on Your Green Lifestyle
By Sarah Phelan
With the Green Festival’s tips on green homes, green investment, eco-travel and organic beer set to hit San Francisco Nov. 10-12, African People’s Solidarity Day coordinator and physicist Aisha Fields told the Guardian her group is hitting the Bay Area a week earlier to tell folks that “the entire white lifestyle—alternative or not—is unsustainable.”
Because of its colonial legacy, much of mineral-rich Africa has no infrastructure—something APSD wants to change by raising awareness, funding and support for Africa, including demanding reparations for centuries of slavery, theft and genocide.
“Tremendous natural resources only serve a few corrupt politicians, who pump them out and send them to Europe and the U.S.,” says Fields, who hopes to fund projects for electricity, renewable energy and water purification in West Africa. “People need to deepen their understanding of the root causes. Many of the minerals mined to make cell phones come from Africa, and many of the wars Americans see on TV are being fought to frighten folks off their land, or because a ruling party wants access to those resources.”
APSD takes place in Oakland, Nov. 4, 10am – 5pm, at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th St and in San Francisco, Nov. 5, 10am – 5pm at the Women’s Building, 3543 18 St. Contact info@apscuhuru.org. 510.625.1106
Love child
› paulr@sfbg.com
At the Front Porch, you will find a front porch. It’s not the kind of porch you’d see at Grandma’s house, with the bug screens and the swinging lounger; it’s more a big-city version, a covered sidewalk garden casually set with small tables and Adirondack chairs — an alfresco waiting room for those waiting to score a table inside. This is a nice idea, since the Front Porch is one of those restaurants that seems to have been packed from the moment it opened its doors, toward the end of the summer.
If you imagine the love child of Range and Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, you will have a decent picture of the Front Porch. The crowd is hipsterish, though less visibly monied than Range’s; there are fewer black cashmere mock turtlenecks and Italian shoes, more thrift-store ensembles and scruffy beards. The Emmy’s connection isn’t trivial, either, and not just because Emmy’s is but a few blocks away. The chef, Sarah Kirnon, is an Emmy’s expat, as is one of the co-owners, Josephine White. (The other owner is Bix-seasoned Kevin Cline.) Kirnon’s menu is, as it was at Emmy’s, value conscious, though many of the dishes break the $10 ceiling (if not by much), and the food nods in a Caribbean direction (Kirnon grew up in Barbados) while keeping its feet pretty firmly on all-American soil.
Once you are summoned to your table, you will find, inside, a cheerfully honky-tonk look: sage green walls, a floor covered in red and cream linoleum, a long bar of burnished wood backed by an antique cash register, an old-style ceiling of tin squares impressed with artful curves, and a good deal of din. The wait, incidentally, need not be interminable; we waltzed in one evening and immediately bagged the last table for two, and on another resorted to Plan B — immediate seating at the bar — which for me carried happy associations of dinner at Stars’ mammoth installation. The restaurant accepts reservations for larger parties only, which raises the crapshoot factor for twosomes.
The Caribbean notes most resoundingly struck by Kirnon’s kitchen had to do, so far as I could tell, with okra. This semiexotic vegetable, the key ingredient of gumbo, turned up one evening as a deep-fried starter and again in the same evening’s edition of Sarah’s vegan surprise ($9.50). In the latter dish, halved lengths of it, looking like split jalapeño peppers, swam in a spicy tomato sauce along with cubes of butternut squash, while looming in the middle of the broad bowl was a craggy jumble: a stubby cylinder of corn on the cob and a clutch of plantains, battered and deep-fried and looking like giant McNuggets. The overall effect was one of sweet fire, though I think the plantains would have been just as nice and not as rich if they’d been sliced and oven-roasted into chips. And a word of reassurance to those who dislike okra for its horror flick sliminess: in Kirnon’s hands it seems to remain firm and ungross of texture.
Well-crisped plantain chips (for scooping) appeared with the tuna tartare ($8.63), the diced, deep-purple fish quite spicy and topped with scatters of minced scallion and flying-fish roe. Also surprisingly spicy was a stack of heirloom tomato slices ($7), mainly because of the slathering of creole mayonnaise; an acidic counterpoint was provided by a jaunty cap of pickled carrot and red-beet slices.
The main courses glide effortlessly between prole and petit bourgeois. On the nether end we have the Porch burger ($11), a big — but not too big — pat of broiled beef topped with melted cheddar cheese and two slices of crisp bacon. The bun, fresh and tender but … too big. The burger in the bun looked lost, like a little boy trying on one of his father’s dress shirts. At the far end of town we find the tony Dungeness crab porridge ($11.50), a Range-worthy dish whose porridge consists of white polenta (“grits” is the local-color term) bewitchingly scented with lemon. In the middle of the pond of porridge rests an islet of crab meat flecked with habanero peppers and scallion. Habaneros can be scorching, but here they behave.
The porridge’s well-dressed siblings from the starter menu might include a pistou look-alike: a broth of lime juice, rock salt, and puréed mint ($6.50) set with avocado quarters, green beans, and svelte coins of radish and cucumber — tasty and discreetly austere. Indiscreetly unaustere are the deep-fried chicken livers ($6) on a slice of brioche toast with a drizzling of caramelized onion sauce. We agreed that this dish tasted like a cheeseburger, but perhaps that was just the fat talking.
Desserts (all $6) pack a homey punch. We found a subtle sophistication in a slice of pumpkin Bundt cake laced with chocolate chunks and plated with a sensuous puff of what the restaurant calls “sweet cream” and what most of us know as whipped cream. The same cream turns up like a wisp of tulle fog beside a slice of yellow cake with double chocolate frosting — as good as anything Mom used to make. For that frisson of decadence, $2 extra buys you a scoop of vanilla on the side, and as we were especially decadent, we ended up — by accident or design? — with both the cream and the ice cream. The plate looked as if a blizzard had just roared through.
No blizzards in these parts, of course, just — sometimes — unnaturally early rain. We waited on the front porch until it had mostly abated, then made a dash for it. SFBG
FRONT PORCH
Dinner: Mon.–Sat., 5:30–10:30 p.m. Continuous service: Sun., noon–9 p.m.
65A 29th St., SF
(415) 695-7800
Beer and wine
MC/V
Noisy
Wheelchair accessible
SPECIAL: Scary monsters and supercreeps
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Halloween is the season for self-expression in all of its many glorious forms: costumes, music, dance, art, theater, and maybe even a few forms that can’t be classified. Whether you’re a trash-culture junkie or a splatter-movie freak, a pagan ritual follower or a brazen exhibitionist, you’ll definitely find something chilling, somewhere in the Bay Area. Here’s a sampling; for more Halloween and Día de los Muertos events, go to www.sfbg.com.
PARTIES AND BENEFITS
FRIDAY 27
The Enchanted Forest Cellar, 685 Sutter, SF; 441-5678. 10pm-2am. $5-10. Silly Cil presents the seventh annual Enchanted Forest costume ball; woodland nymphs and mythical creatures are welcome. DJs McD and Scotty Fox rock the forest with hip-hop and ’80s sounds.
Hyatt Regency/98.1 KISS FM Halloween Bash Hyatt Regency, 5 Embarcadero Center, SF; 788-1234. 8 pm. $28.50 advance ($30 door). KISS Radio’s Morris Knight MCs an evening of costumed revelry. DJ Michael Erickson brings the dance mix.
Rock ’n’ Roll Horror Show Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; 820-3907. 7:30pm. $5-10 donation. Rock out and scream loud for a good cause: proceeds go to the ninth SF Independent Film Festival. A screening of 1987 B-movie Street Trash is followed by the sounds of Sik Luv, Wire Graffiti, Charm School Drop Outs, and Madelia.
SambaDa: Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Exotic Halloween Extravaganza Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF; 552-7788. 10pm. $8-10. Don’t feel like ghosts and goblins and blood and guts? How about samba and bossa nova grooves to keep your feet busy?
BAY AREA
Halloween Madness Speisekammer, 2424 Lincoln, Alameda; (510) 522-1300. 9pm. Free. Skip Henderson and the Starboard Watch offer hard-drinking sailor songs. Come in costume and get a free rum drink, matey.
SATURDAY 28
Exotic Erotic Ball Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, SF; 567-2255, www.exoticeroticball.com. 8pm-2am. $69. P-Funker George Clinton, ’80s icon Thomas Dolby, and rapper Too Short are among the musical guests at this no-holds-barred celebration. Put on your sexiest, slinkiest number and admire the antics of trapeze artists, fetish performers, and burlesque show-stoppers, as well as those of the attendees.
SUNDAY 29
Fresh/Halloween T-Dance Ruby Skye, 420 Mason, SF; www.freshsf.com. 6pm-midnight. $20. Sassy, slinky, and sexy costumes abound at this Halloween dance party. DJ Manny Lehman spins.
MONDAY 30
Dead Rock Star Karaoke Cellar, 685 Sutter, SF; 441-5678. 8pm-2am. Free. Elvises, Jim Morrisons, and Kurt Cobains deliver heartrending renditions of favorite songs.
TUESDAY 31
A Nightmare on Fulton Street Poleng Lounge, 1751 Fulton, SF; www.polenglounge.com. 8pm-2am. $5-10. The third annual Holla-ween showcases a rich harvest of fat beats, thanks to the DJ skills of Boozou Bajou.
Scary Halloween Bash 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF; 970-9777. 8pm. $10. All dressed up but not feeling like heading to the Castro? Want to hear a marching band? No, wait, come back. It’s the Extra Action Marching Band, which specialize in baccanalian freak-shows. Sour Mash Jug Band and livehuman leave you grinning beneath that rubber mask.
FILM/MUSIC/THEATER/ART
WEDNESDAY 25
Art Hell ARTwork SF Gallery, 49 Geary, suite 215, SF; 673-3080. noon-5:30pm. Free. Bay Area artists render darkness, death, and all things devilishly creepy. Sale proceeds go to the San Francisco Artist Resource Center. Also open Thu/26-Sat/28, same hours.
THURSDAY 26
Babble on Halloween Dog Eared Books, 900 Valencia, SF; 282-1901. 8pm. Free. There’s nothing like shivers up the spine to go with cupcakes and wine! Bucky Sinister, Tony Vaguely, and Shawna Virago creep you out with spooky stories and bizarre performances.
A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco’s Lost Cemeteries California Historical Society Library, 678 Mission, SF; 357-1848. 6pm. Free. Trina Lopez’s documentary tells the story of how San Francisco relocated burial grounds in the wake of the 1906 earthquake and fire — ironically sending some of the city’s settlers on a last journey after death.
Shocktoberfest!! 2006: Laboratory of Hallucinations Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; 377-4202. 8pm. $20. The Thrillpeddlers are back with a gross-out lover’s delight: public execution, surgery, and taxidermy in three tales of unspeakable horror. Also Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm.
FRIDAY 27
BATS Improv/True Fiction Magazine’s Annual Halloween Show Bayfront Theater, 8350 Fort Mason Center, SF; www.improv.org. 8pm. $18 ($15 advance). Madcap improvisational comics of True Fiction Magazine transform audience suggestions into hilariously bizarre pulp fiction–inspired skits. In the spirit of the season, TFM is sure to throw ghoulish horror into the mix. Also Sat/28.
Hallowe’en at Tina’s Café Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; 581-1600. 9pm. Free. What’s Halloween in San Francisco without any drag? Before you consider the sad possibilities, let Tina’s Café banish those thoughts with a deliciously campy drag queen cabaret show. Mrs. Trauma Flintstone MCs.
Rural Rampage Double Feature Alliance Française de San Francisco, 1345 Bush, SF; www.ham-o-rama.com. 7:30pm. Free. Those midnight movie aficionados at Incredibly Strange Picture Show unreel a shriekingly tasty lineup from the “scary redneck” genre: Two Thousand Maniacs and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
SATURDAY 28
11th Annual Soapbox Pre-Race Party/Halloween Show El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; 282-3325. 9pm. $7. What better way is there to get revved up for the Oct. 29 Soapbox Derby in Bernal Heights? With a full evening of good ’n’ greasy garage rock and rockabilly, thanks to the All Time Highs, Teenage Harlets, and the Phenomenauts, this party gets you in touch with your inner speed demon.
Pirate Cat Radio Halloween Bash Li Po Cocktail Lounge, 916 Grant, SF; www.piratecatradio.com. 8pm. $5. The community radio station presents an evening of crazy rock mayhem with Desperation Squad, the band now famous for getting shot down on TV’s America’s Got Talent! Wealthy Whore Entertainment, the Skoalkans, and Pillows also perform.
Shadow Circus Vaudeville Theatre Kimo’s, 1351 Polk, SF; p2.hostingprod.com/@shadowcircus.com. 9pm. $5. Shadow Circus Creature Theatre hosts a variety show of ukulele riffs, comedy, burlesque, and filthy-mouthed puppets.
Spiral Dance Kezar Pavilion, Golden Gate Park, 755 Stanyan, SF; www.reclaiming.org. 6pm. Free. Reclaiming, an international group observing pagan traditions, celebrates its 27th annual Spiral Dance with a magical ritual incorporating installations, drama, and a choral performance.
BAY AREA
Flamenco Halloween La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 849-2568, ext. 20. 8:30pm. $15. Flametal brings the evil to flamenco with mastermind Benjamin Woods’s fusion of metal and the saddest music in the world.
Murder Ballads Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 841-0188. 9pm. $8. Murder, misfortune, and love gone really, really wrong — all sung by an impressive array of garage rockers, accordionists, and female folk-metal songstresses. There’s even a duo who specializes in suicide songs! Dress up so no one can recognize you weeping into your beer.
SUNDAY 29
The Elm Street Murders Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF; www.myspace.com/theelmstmurders. 7:30pm. $20. Loosely based on A Nightmare on Elm Street, this multimedia interactive stage show promises heaping helpings of splatter.
MONDAY 30
The Creature Magic Theatre, building D, Fort Mason Center, SF; 731-4922. 8pm. Free. Reservations required. Black Box Theatre Company gives a single performance before a studio audience of their new podcast adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankensten. This version tells the story from the monster’s point of view.
Independent Exposure 2006: Halloweird Edition 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF; 447-9750. 8pm. $6. Microcinema International assembles a festively creepy collection of short films from around the world, focusing on the spooky, unsettling, and just plain gross.
TUESDAY 31
Bat Boy: The Musical School of the Arts Theater, 555 Portola, SF; 651-4521. 7pm. $20. It’s back: a Halloween preview performance of the trials and tribulations of everyone’s favorite National Enquirer icon, Bat Boy. Camp doesn’t get any better than this.
Cramps Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF; 346-6000. 8pm. $30. Don’t get caught in the goo-goo muck. The Demolition Doll Rods and the Groovie Ghoulies also whip you up into a rock ’n’ roll frenzy.
One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil) San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut, SF; 771-7020. 7:30pm. Free. Before the Rolling Stones became some of the richest people on earth, Mick, Keith, and the boys dabbled on the dark side. At a rare screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One, you get a chance to see them at the height of their flirtation with evil, performing the still-mesmerizing “Sympathy for the Devil.”
EVENTS/FESTIVALS/KID STUFF
FRIDAY 27
Haunted Haight Walking Tour Begins at Coffee to the People, 1206 Masonic, SF; 863-1416. 7pm. $20. How else can you explain all of those supernatural presences drifting between the smoke shops and shoe stores? Here’s a chance to find out about the more lurid chapters in the neighborhood’s history. Also Sat/28-Tues/31, 7pm.
SATURDAY 28
Boo at the Zoo San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo, SF; 753-7071. 10am-3pm. Free with zoo admission. Costumed kiddies can check out the Haunted Nature Trail and the Creepy Crawly Critters exhibit. Live music, interactive booths, games, and prizes keep little ghosts and goblins delighted.
Children’s Halloween Hootenanny Stanyan and Waller, SF; www.haightstreetfair.org. 11:30am-5pm. Free. The Haight Ashbury Street Fair folks provide children ages 2 to 10 with games, activities, theater, and food. Costumes are encouraged.
Family Halloween Day Randall Museum, 199 Museum, SF; 554-9600. 10am-2pm. Free. Trick-or-treaters play games, carve pumpkins, create creepy crafts, and take part in the costume parade. Jackie Jones amazes with a musical saw and dancing cat; Brian Scott, a magic show.
Hallo-green Party Crissy Field Center, 603 Mason, SF; 561-7752. 10am-2pm. $8. It’s never too early to teach your children about environmentalism. The party includes a costume contest and a chance to bob for organic apples.
House of Toxic Horrors Crissy Field Center, 603 Mason, SF; 561-7752. 10am-2pm and 4-8pm, $8. Ages 9 and older. No, it’s not a Superfund site, but it should be equally educational: the center’s first haunted house addresses the scary world of environmental horror. Sludge and smog lurk behind every corner.
BAY AREA
Boo at the Zoo Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links, Oakl; (510) 632-9525. 10am-3pm. Free with zoo admission. Dress up the kids and bring them over to the zoo for scavenger hunts, crafts, rides on the Boo Choo Choo Train, puppet shows, and musical performances. Also Sun/29, 10am-3pm.
SUNDAY 29
Halloween’s True Meaning Shotwell Studios, 3252-A 19th St., SF; 289-2000. 1-3pm, $5-15 sliding scale. Kids are encouraged to come in costume for this afternoon of interactive theater led by Christina Lewis of the Clown School. Enjoy Halloween history, storytelling, role-playing, and face-painting.
Pet Pride Day Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; 554-9427. 11am-3pm. Free. Dress up your pet in something ridiculous and head down to Golden Gate Park to laugh at all of the other displeased pups! The pet costume contest is always a blast, as is the dog-trick competition.
BAY AREA
Haunted Harbor Festival and Parade Jack London Square, Oakl; 1-866-295-9853. 4-8pm. Free. Families can check out live entertainment, games, crafts, activities, and prizes. The extravagantly decked-out boats in the parade are not to be missed.
Rock Paper Scissors’ Annual Street Scare Block Party 23rd Ave. and Telegraph, Oakl; www.rpscollective.com. Noon-5pm. Free. Who doesn’t love block parties? The kid-friendly blowout has something for everyone: fortune-telling, craft-making, pumpkin-carving, and all sorts of wacky games and prizes. And barbecue — witches love a good barbecue.
MONDAY 30
Halloween Heroes Benefit Exploratorium, Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon, SF; (650) 321-4142, www.wenderweis.org. 6:30pm. $185 for a parent and child. A benefit for the Exploratorium Children’s Educational Outreach Program and the Junior Giants Baseball Program, this lavish costume party for kids promises to be equally fun for the parents. Many of the exhibits are turned into craft-making and trick-or-treat stations.
TUESDAY 31
Halloween in the Castro Market and Castro, www.halloweeninthecastro.com. 7pm-midnight. $5 suggested donation. You and 250,000 of your new best friends — reveling in the streets and getting down to thumping beats. Don’t even think of driving to get there, and don’t forget: no drinking in the streets.
Vampire Tour of San Francisco Begins at California and Taylor, SF; (650) 279-1840, www.sfvampiretour.com. 8pm. $20. This isn’t Transylvania, but San Francisco has had its share of vampires. Just ask Mina Harker, your fearless leader, if you dare take this tour.
DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS
ONGOING
BAY AREA
‘Laughing Bones/ Weeping Hearts’ Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, Oakl; (510) 238-2200. Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm. $8. Guest curator Carol Marie Garcia has assembled a vibrant collection of installations produced by local artists, schools, and community groups, all celebrating the dead while acknowledging the sorrow of those left behind. Through Dec. 3.
THURSDAY NOV. 2
Death and Rebirth Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center, 2981 24th St, SF; 334-4091. 7-10pm. Free. Precita Eyes Muralists will be celebrating the work of founder Luis Cervantes with a breathtaking mural exhibit and celebration.
Día De Los Muertos Procession and Outdoor Altar Exhibit 24th St and Bryant, SF; www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 7pm. Free. Thousands of families, artists, and activists form a procession to honor the dead and celebrate life, ending at the Festival of Altars in Garfield Park, at 26th Street and Harrison. Local artists have created large community altars at the park; the public is invited to bring candles, flowers, and offerings.
Fiesta De Los Huesos’ Gala Opening Reception Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; 643-5001. 6-11pm. $5. Curator Patricia Rodriguez has put together a family-oriented party, with musical performances, mask carving, sugar skull–making, videos, and other tempting creations among the exhibits, altars, and installations. The exhibition opens Oct. 27.
BAY AREA
Día De Los Muertos Benefit Concert 2232 MLK, 2232 Martin Luther King Jr., Oakl; www.2232mlk.com. 7pm. $8-20 sliding scale. Hosted by the Chiapas Support Committee, this benefit concert features Fuga, los Nadies, la Plebe, and DJ Rico. Early arrivals get free pan dulce and hot chocolate.
SUNDAY NOV. 5
Dia De Los Muertos Family Festival Randall Museum, 199 Museum, SF; 554-9681. 1-5pm. $100 and up for family of five. The family event benefits the museum’s Toddler Treehouse and other toddler programs. Arts and crafts, food, and entertainment make this a rewarding educational experience for kids. Attendees learn how to make masks and sugar skulls and to decorate an altar. Los Boleros provide festive entertainment.
BAY AREA
Día De Los Muertos Fruitvale Festival International Blvd., between Fruitvale Ave and 41st Ave, Oakl; (510) 535-6940. 10am-5pm. Free. With the theme “love, family, memories,” the Unity Council in Oakland has put together a full day of family celebration. Five stages showcase music and dance performances by local and world-renowned artists. More than 150 exhibitors and nonprofits highlight wares and services. Art and altars are on view, and the Children’s Pavilion promises to be a rewarding educational experience for kids of all ages.
THURSDAY NOV. 9
Mole to Die For Mission Cultural Center For Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; 643-5001. 7-10pm. $5. Try it all at this mole feeding-frenzy and vote for your favorite.
Reforming democracy
By Steven T. Jones
Wtih ranked choice voting up and working well in San Francisco, four other communities around the country are poised to approve it in the upcoming election. In addition to Prop. O in Oakland, ranked choice is on the ballot in Davis, Minneapolis, and Pierce County, Washington.
“I see these four elections as key. If we can sweep them, that’s a tipping point,” activist and former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said last night at a Prop. O fundraiser in the law office of Matt Gonzalez, who championed the San Francisco measure while serving on the Board of Supervisors.
Novoselic got involved in politics back in his Nirvana days, fighting to overturn a Seattle law that prevented people under 18 from attending concerts.
“Along the way, I got enthusiastic about democracy and participation,” he said. But even among those working on his campaigns, many felt their votes for candidates didn’t count. Reading SF-based democracy reform leader Steven Hill’s book, “Fixing Elections,” he learned about the concept of the “surplus voter” whose preference for a candidate other than the Democrat or Republican is essentially discarded. With ranked choice, voters can cast a ballot for their favorite candidate and also for the lesser of two evils, thus allowing minor parties to gain support. As such, Novoselic called democracy reform “the Holy Grail of the Green Party.”
Hill said he is cheered by the current situation. “It’s starting to happen, but these things take time. It’s a big country, but we’re making progress.”
NOISE: By gum, it’s Boris and the Village Green and…
Oh, Hump Day – what would we do without you, positioned perfectly between weekend bliss and workday toil? And who would expect so many intriguing shows to crop up in this humdrum time slot (to think we all wrote it off as Project Runway‘s)?
In short, check magnifico, metal-some Japanese guitar overlords Boris at Slim’s tonight, Oct. 18. Why? A humongoid gong, smoke machine, Tokyo-based loudness par excellence, and the most kick-ass lady distortion peddler around: Wata.
Elsewhere, if you’re not getting down with SF’s premier glitch mavens and noise-makers Matmos at Great American Music Hall, trot over to Bottom of the Hill tonight for London’s Archie Bronson Outfit – out and about with a new disc, Derdang Derdang on Domino. Some compare ’em to Pere Ubu, Son House, Monks, and Faust — all at the same time! Whoa, Nellie, watch them outta-hand allusions. Still, isn’t your curiosity stirred – and shaken?
And if there’s anything left of you by Friday, Oct. 20, and you’re not already planning to check out Yo La Tengo at Fillmore or have tickets to Beirut at Great American Music Hall in your hot lil’ ham fists, you might want to mosey down to the Rickshaw Stop for an early show with the Village Green from Portland, Ore. As you’d expect, these doods display much respect to Anglo rock forebears – and they add a dash of contempo jitteriness. Different drugs, you say? Get outta here.
Inklings
› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS The idea of love at first sight is a ridiculous thing to me. Most people I love long before I ever see them. In fact, if I’m not already in love with you, try taking your knife out of my back and calling an ambulance.
You don’t believe me. I don’t expect you to! I don’t believe me either or you or anything. All I do is see and say. And by see I mean see and feel and hear and taste shit and yeah, by way of a Purpose in Life, try and tell you about it.
For me and Orange Pop #2’s second date we went to my new favorite restaurant, Penny’s Caribbean Café. But I already reviewed it, so here’s a poem:
You can love the world
so so much yet know that
no matter how ultimately it embraces
you, it won’t, can’t return
your box of chocolates
So you hope to find
instead a person
maybe loves the world
as much as you do
or more even, and
you can play together
in a darkened room
while outside, without knocking
the earth sends flowers
That’s my poem. Remember Orange Pop #2? She got some gigs personal chefing around San Rafael and might sometimes need an assistant. So she said she was going to get me a chef’s shirt with Daniella on it.
I pointed out that technically my name is Danielle.
“I like Daniella,” she said.
Me too. She’s the boss. Sometimes, on her days off, we eat at places, talk about food and boys and whether to put the chicken in the soup before or after the water gets hot. And she showed me how to make a tart.
One day Orangey called and asked how I make chicken with rice and tomatoes, because that was what The Man wanted for dinner. I was ashamed to say how simple it was, so I made up some extra steps, like breading and browning the chicken first, and sautéing stuff and reserving this and clarifying that, and the next day she said her client loved it. “Really?” I said. I didn’t tell her (until now I guess) that normally I just throw everything in a pot, put the lid on, and wait for dinner to happen. Out of curiosity, I cooked it up the cockamamie way I’d told her to do, and it came out inedible. But I’m pretty sure that was because the expiration-date chicken I’d bought was bad.
Anyway, this time she had a cute little café in Larkspur to take me to. The Tabla Café, which I loved. Restaurants are just like people to me, except the menu is easier to read. Salads. Soups. Drinks. The Tabla’s specialty is dosas, and they’re great. They’re crepes made from rice flour and dal and wrapped around whatever you want, like scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, chicken, turkey, mushrooms…. I had to have the last one on the list because it was lamb meatballs and I liked the sound of that. It was 10 bucks, but it was big enough to feed two people if you get a salad or something else, which we did — a green one with candied walnuts and vinaigrette ($7.50).
OK, so we split all that and it was delicious. The meatballs were great, punctuated with pickled onions and cabbage and drizzled with tahini. The dosas come with a choice of dip-intos, including avocado orange salsa, apple ginger salsa, raita, and peach chutney. The chutney was good, but the dosa didn’t even need it, really.
Nice place. Like everything else in the North Bay, it’s in a plaza, but — small, bright, airy, arty, and in short, my new favorite restaurant!!!
Are you on to me? With the help of my good friend hyperbole (and maybe a dash of brute force), I mean to completely obliterate any inkling of an idea of a chance in the world for an objective and accurate restaurant review — or love. SFBG
TABLA CAFE
Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–7 p.m.;
Sat., 10:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
1167 Magnolia, Larkspur
(415) 461-6787
Takeout available
Beer and wine
MC/V
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible
Got capsicum?
› paulr@sfbg.com
With time, one finds oneself bidding fond farewells to one’s spicehound friends. Oh, nothing changes too dramatically, except that bit by bit (or bite by bite), onetime fire-eaters lose their taste for the thrill of capsicum. Certain alluring foods of yore — chili, pepperoni pizza, Mongolian beef — start to cause problems, especially if eaten too near bedtime. You still go out with them, your spicehound pack, but when they point at this or that on the menu, wondering which dishes are spicy, they are plotting routes of retreat now, not angles of approach. Everybody is silently hoping to sleep through the night, like babies with dry diapers, not awaken at 2 a.m. with a remorseful jolt and a growing blaze amidships. People sip their green tea, and they do so carefully.
For years I held out against this trend. X and Y might no longer fling themselves into the spiciest dishes they could find, like boys from a Mark Twain novel plunging with a whoop into a water hole of unknown depth, but I still had a taste for flame. Then, recently, I ate at So, a modish Chinese noodle house on that insanely busy stretch of Irving just west of 19th Avenue, and I heard the bell toll. There was no need to ask for whom it was tolling: it tolled for me. It tolled and tolled, in fact, and I ignored it. Later I was sorry, but at the time I was in a bliss of tingling lips and couldn’t be bothered to heed the alarm.
So is an atypical Chinese restaurant in a number of respects. For one thing, its menu consists largely of soup and noodle — and soupy noodle — dishes, as at a Vietnamese pho house. It also has a spare, modernist youthfulness devoid of tired linoleum floors and harsh overhead lighting; the walls are bright yellow and the ceiling a rich gray blue, while a noisy crowd young enough to match the youth of the staff sits at rosewood tables on rosewood chairs. Mainly, though, So is a temple of the incendiary. I cannot recall the last time I found so much chile firepower in one place. It is the gastronomic equivalent of a munitions cache.
So … you have been warned, or summoned. I must also add that portion sizes are simply immense. The noodle soups are served in bowls the size of cantaloupe halves and can easily satisfy two if not three, especially if you open with one of the splendid starters. If you notice that these take a little longer to reach the table than is usual in Chinese restaurants (many of which rush them out in just a few minutes), it’s because they’re made to order and with care. The pot stickers ($5.50) in particular are exceptional; they reach the table nested in a pinwheel pattern, are fragrant with fresh ginger when opened, and — what is most noticeable — are wrapped in homemade dough that has a definite fresh-bread springiness and smell to it. When you eat these pot stickers, you will likely realize that most of the other restaurant pot stickers you’ve ever eaten in your life were prepackaged and reheated items. Mass-market, mass-produced stuff. So’s are revelatory.
Nearly as good are fried shrimp dumplings ($6), also powerfully gingery, and dried sautéed string beans ($5) in a thick garlic sauce. The So chicken wings ($5.25) — really a hodgepodge of wings and drumsticks — are a clever and potent Chinese retort to the American cliché of buffalo wings; So dips its poultry parts into a batter that crisps up nicely, then drizzles them with a molasses-thick sauce of garlic, ginger, and slivered red chiles for some smolder. The sauce accompanying the curry coroque ($4) — three Japanese-style potato croquettes, about the size and shape of Brillo pads — looks similar but has a stronger acid presence: hoisin with some rice wine vinegar?
The starters are tasty but not, as a rule, hot, which makes the arrival of a dish like pork with hot peppers ($6.35) — a platter heaped with a stir-fry of shredded meat, chopped jalapeños, onions, and scallions, with a spicy garlic sauce — rather bracing. Only slightly less forceful is shredded pork with garlic ($6.35), which substitutes serene water chestnuts and willow tree fungus for the raucous hot peppers and adds a splash of vinegar for clearheadedness.
“My nose is running,” said the spicehound emeritus to my left. He found himself confronting the seafood soup noodle ($6.35), a sea of spicy broth clogged with shrimp, calamari, scallops, and napa cabbage — something like an East Asian answer to cioppino. His longing gaze drifted across the table to the seaweed noodle soup ($6.35), a kind of giant egg-drop soup fortified with seaweed and spinach, peas, mushrooms, and shrimp. The flavor of the broth was deep but beatifically mild, like the blue of a lovely sunset at the end of a windless and warm — but not hot — day.
The social experience of So is nearly as intense as the peppery food. We found the place packed early on a Sunday evening; tablefuls of young folk mounted a steady roar of conversation while others waited on the sidewalk, barking into cell phones of many colors until tables opened up. The service at dinnertime is friendly and efficient but forever teetering on the brink of being overwhelmed. During a noontime visit, on the other hand, I found a rather startling calm and was able to notice that a “help wanted” sign was posted on the front door — a clue that business is quite a bit better than so-so. SFBG
SO RESTAURANT
Tues.–Thurs., 5–9:30 p.m., Fri.–Sat., noon–10 p.m., Sun., noon–9:30 p.m.
2240 Irving, SF
(415) 731-3143
Beer and wine
MC/V
Very noisy if crowded
Wheelchair accessible
TUESDAY
Event
Ed Halter
What is war good for? Besides lining the pockets of Dick Cheney’s fun bunch, it’s sure done a lot for the video game industry. Village Voice critic Ed Halter makes two local stops with his new book, From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games. His multimedia lecture explores “war gaming in the new world order.” (Cheryl Eddy)
7:30 p.m.
PFA
2575 Bancroft, Berk.
$4–$8
(510) 642-5249
www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.
Also Sat/21, 8:30 p.m.
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia, SF
$5
www.othercinema.com
Music
Tarnation
There’s a painting from the ’30s by Thomas Hart Benton called The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, in which a farm town in the American West reveals its ugly underbelly in the form of a drunken man threatening a woman with a knife. The landscape swoops and swirls with a brooding menace. Local country weepers Tarnation write songs for such occasions. Possessing a voice that smokes and drifts, melancholic balladeer Paula Frazer will introduce you to loves gone wrong and lives gone sour while the band dumps you knee-deep in the most forlorn corner of the lonesome desert. (Todd Lavoie)
With Peggy Honeywell and Matt Bauer
9:30 p.m.
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
$6
(415) 923-0923
www.hemlocktavern.com
www.paulafrazer.com
SATURDAY
Music
Method Man
You’ve gotta be slightly touched, as we Irish say, to blow this off. Star of stage and screen Method Man touches down at Mezzanine, a club transformed into a curvy glass-and-wood venue where you can still get conveniently hammered. The stage looks worthy of Duke Ellington, and you might say Meth is Ellingtonian; if, as he says on “Say” — from his new Def-Jam joint, 4:21: The Day After — radio is squeezing him out in favor of vapid programming, it’s equally true that artistically, he’s above such mundane concerns. (Garrett Caples)
With Masta Killa and Inspectah Deck
9 p.m.
Mezzanine
444 Jessie, SF
$25
(415) 348-4656
www.mezzaninesf.com
Music/Benefit
“Raise Up”
It’s kind of become a fact of Bay life that the only time you’re gonna see an all-female DJ performance is at either an event specifically touted as such or a breast cancer benefit. So check out this breast cancer benefit, featuring wicked housemeisters Sharon Buck, Forest Green, Didje Kelli, DRC, and Ladyhouse. “Raise Up” is a stellar chance to hear a knockout lineup while doing your part during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Proceeds go to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund. (Marke B.)
9 p.m.–2 a.m.
Shine
1337 Mission, SF
$5–$10 donation
(415) 255-1337
www.shinesf.com
Rock Doc
Director Paul Rachman and writer Steven Blush collaborated on every aspect of American Hardcore — literally. “This is a two-person operation,” Blush explained as we settled into a booth at a downtown San Francisco restaurant, where the filmmakers (and passionate music fans) discussed their new documentary.
SFBG What drew you into the hardcore scene?
PAUL RACHMAN I was a college kid at Boston University in the early ’80s [when] I went to my first hardcore show at the Gallery East: Gang Green, the Freeze, and the FU’s. I’d never heard anything like it. It was dissonant, it was loud, and it was coming from 16-year-old angry kids. It just socked it to me, and I wanted more of this all the time. That’s what made me pick up a Super 8 camera and start shooting; it was the beginning for me in terms of both my introduction to hardcore and me becoming a filmmaker. Ever since those days I’ve never, ever done anything else.
STEVEN BLUSH Somewhere at the end of my freshman year [at George Washington University in Washington, DC], I saw Black Flag at Nightclub 9:30, right before Henry Rollins joined the band. It just wrecked my life. A decade later I realized how much the subculture affected me, as to who I am today — but I also realized that the history was totally lost. I just decided, DIY-style, to write a book. Around that time [when it came out], I ran into Paul again — we knew each other from the hardcore scene — and he broached the idea of making the film.
PR I instantly knew what the film should be. It needed to be this kind of visceral, first-person account — no narrator, no experts. Because hardcore didn’t have that. You didn’t listen to anybody. Nobody explained to you how to do anything. You didn’t want that around, and the film had to reflect that. So it was documentary in its rawest, purest form: let your subject tell its story. We shot 120 interviews and it was about culling the story out of that.
SFBG Were there any artists not in the film that you wish you could have included?
SB There’s two bands you will not see in American Hardcore: Dead Kennedys and the Misfits. With both bands there’s a real problem between the singer and the other band members. It was like, if you work with one, you couldn’t work with the other. We just had to bail out of that situation. Ultimately, this is the story of a culture. It’s the story of a scene and a community. There were no stars in hardcore. We wanted every single person — we did extend the offer to everybody. But at a certain point, if they don’t come through, you have to move on.
SFBG Do you hope that people who aren’t hardcore fans will see the movie, and what do you think they’ll take away from it?
SB American Hardcore is a rock film, but it’s really about youth culture. It’s a testament to the power of youth, about what you can achieve against all odds. Because these bands had nothing. They had no resources, no talent, no hot look. They had nothing to fall back on except their conviction. So it is kind of a clarion call to kids to say, you know, seize the moment. Take off the iPod. Log off MySpace and get with it. (Cheryl Eddy)
For an extended interview with Paul Rachman and Steven Blush, visit www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.