Green

Noodle Theory

-
0
Noodle Theory

paulr@sfbg.com

The migratory patterns of restaurants might not be as riveting or significant as those of birds, but they do offer their little quirks and joys. When an Oakland restaurant opens a second front across the bay, in the city — The City, our very own — one sits up and takes notice. I am talking about Noodle Theory, which is the first Oakland, or indeed East Bay, restaurant to hop across our little mare nostrum that I can think of in quite a while, or maybe ever. Since the 1989 earthquake and the realignment of regional dining habits (the city was largely cut off for a month by the Bay Bridge closure), most of the traffic has gone the other way — city restaurants opening in the suburbs, where increasing numbers of diners are. (Also Chronicle subscribers; do we detect a pattern here?) In this sense, Noodle Theory is a kind of reverse commuter.

With a name like Noodle Theory, you would expect … noodles, and lots of them, and Noodle Theory delivers. Executive chef (and owner) Louis Kao’s menu is a brief primer on the noodles of east Asia, including soba, udon, and ramen. (Noodles, as it happens, are an ancient presence in east Asian cuisine, although it’s apparently a myth that Marco Polo introduced them to Italy.) But the food extends beyond noodles, and many of the noodly dishes display a worldly sophistication that transcends memories of those packs of instant ramen so many of us subsisted on as undergraduates.

The look of the restaurant suggests the basic Asian, even Japanese, tendency of things. (The space’s previous occupant was, in a small irony, a Thai restaurant.) The long, deep dining room, which includes the bar, is screened from the street by a pair of slatted rosewood panels that look like upright futon frames. One wall is upholstered in squares of rust-red leather, while the other consists largely of a floated sheet of iridescent green fabric. The basic effect is one of uncluttered sleekness that also manages to be slightly warm. One glance tells you that you’re somewhere in the Marina, and you’d certainly be pardoned for supposing you had ended up in a sushi bar.

The tableware, too, exudes a minimalist high style: oversized plates and bowls of white porcelain, some hemispherical, others rectangular or square. Some of this must be purely for show, but there’s also a functionality angle, since many of the dishes are complex compilations of noodles, broth, and feature ingredients, like the Szechuan-style oxtails ($13), braised in red wine and served in a deep round bowl with ramen and bok choy. I associate Szechuan style with chili heat, but there was none here, just the deep, brown, Burgundian richness of the braising liquid and tender meat on its knuckles of bone. Despite an ostensible Chinese provenance, the dish was like a cross between osso buco, beef Burgundy, and pho. And that was fine.

Less soupy were a set of pan-seared duck-breast flaps ($16) nested in a tangle of chubby wheat noodles. The noodles glistened with a thick coating of the coconut red curry sauce that is a staple in Thai cooking. The most striking quality of the sauce was its heat; despite its shy, orange-pink, nursery-room tint, it packed a real chili charge that left us smacking our lips for relief.

Many of the smaller dishes, even if noodleless, bring their own pleasures. Each table gets a complimentary dish of soy-seasoned edamame to nibble on, and as much as I love bread and butter, there’s much to be said for healthful nibble food that’s also tasty. If the edamame isn’t enough, then perhaps a bowl of dry-sautéed green beans ($6), a wealth of plump torpedoes nicely blistered and generously seasoned with ginger, garlic, and scallions. And the dinner menu offers quite sophisticated starter courses, such as tabs of grilled Hawaiian butterfish ($10), set up like a lean-to over a salad of ramen noodles and wakame (the translucent green threads of seaweed familiar to sushi lovers), with a wading pool of wasabi cream to one side.

All noodles might be starch, but at Noodle Theory, not all starch is noodles. There’s a wonderful soft bun, for instance, that serves as the basis for the chicken katsu sandwich ($10), whose guts consist of a panko-crusted filet and a purplish smear of Asian slaw. The bun was fabulous and the filet juicy-crisp, while the slaw slightly disappointed despite its rich color. But the taro-root chips on the side gave some consolation.

As for sweet starch: how about the doughnut holes ($8), a stack of a half-dozen or so beignet-like disks, dusted with sugar and ready for dipping into either butterscotch or chocolate ganache sauce? In addition to being one of the few items on the menu without a discernible Asian influence, the doughnut holes are sublime and nicely proportioned. They’re just enough for two people to share without feeling that they will soon need CPR or being so bloated that they will have to lie down on a futon to sleep it off.

NOODLE THEORY

Lunch: Mon., Wed.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.;

Sat.–Sun., 11:30 a.m.–5 p.m.

Dinner: Mon., Wed.-Sat., 5–10 p.m.; Sun., 5–-9 p.m.

3242 Scott, SF

(415) 359-1238

www.noodletheory.com

Beer and wine

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

The 448’s war

-
0
The 448’s war

news@sfbg.com

The Green Room of the San Francisco Veterans Building has been taken over for the night by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a charity organization that mashes Catholic imagery and drag, perhaps San Francisco’s most iconic gay group. But among the drag queens and leather daddies are military veterans in garrison caps and vests decorated with medals.

This is the Sister’s bingo night, an event to raise money for the various nonprofit organizations the order supports. Above the stage hangs the banner of the Sisters’ partner in the event: American Legion Post 448, also known as the Alexander Hamilton post.

It may seem like a strange partnership — drag nuns joining forces with the American Legion, the country’s largest veterans’ organization with 14,000 posts worldwide. The goals of the Legion are traditionally conservative: uphold the constitution, make national security the top priority, demand loyalty to the union, and "foster and perpetuate a 100 percent Americanism," according to its preamble. It even maintains a pseudo-military rank structure among its members.

But the partnership isn’t so strange. The 448 is the only Legion post in the nation for gays and lesbians who once served in the military. Its relationship with the Sisters is a "good partnership," as Assistant Sergeant-at-Arms Morningstar Vancil puts it, and a "win-win situation." The post runs the outside bar since city bingo rules don’t allow liquor during the game and the Sisters get the room at the vets’ reduced rental rate.

The bingo proceeds go to the Sisters’ charities while the proceeds from the bar go to Post’s causes, particularly its ongoing push to repeal the military’s long-standing ban preventing homosexuals from serving openly. Today, that cause seems more hopeful than ever considering that the current presidential administration has promised to bring the ban to an end.

"We should not be punishing patriotic Americans who have stepped forward to serve this country. We should be celebrating their willingness to show such courage and selflessness on behalf of their fellow citizens, especially when we’re fighting two wars," President Barack Obama said in his speech to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission on Oct. 10.

However, some of the post members are only cautiously optimistic about Obama’s promise after the long, tough climb just to establish a gay post in San Francisco.

EARLY DAYS


Noted gay rights activist and veteran Dr. Paul D. Hardman formed the post in 1984, naming it after Alexander Hamilton, who wrote affectionate letters to Continental Army Capt. John Laurens. A quote from one letter appears on the post’s Web site: "I wish, my dear Laurens, that it might be in my power, by action, rather than words, to convince you that I love you." Hardman and some historians have speculated on a homosexual relationship between the two.

Hardman needed at least 15 gay veterans to form the post and he got 18, including the late Marcus Hernandez, former leather columnist for the LGBT newspaper Bay Area Reporter. But acceptance was hard to get in the early days.

According to Arch Wilson, World War II vet and the oldest living founding member at 85, the post had a difficult time getting approved. During the approval process, the Legion stalled, losing applications and paperwork, which Wilson attributes to old-guard homophobia.

"They absolutely had no tolerance for homosexuals in their midst," Wilson said

At first, the 448 wasn’t even allowed in the Veterans Building. But they had a powerful weapon: the city’s nondiscrimination ordinances. Since the building was city property, the American Legion had to abide by the ordinances. The threat of a lawsuit was leverage enough to allow the Alexander Hamilton Post an office and its charter, but not a seat on the War Memorial Commission that ran the building. The 448 got a seat on the commission after taking the Legion to court in 1987.

According to Commander John Forrett, one of his predecessors had once been asked at a national Legion convention, "Oh, you’re from San Francisco. You’ve got that queer post, don’t cha?" And when a gay slur was uttered at a delegate meeting, the post again took the Legion to court. "Following that they haven’t dared mouth off any kind of venom about queers," Wilson said.

And while acceptance is more readily found today, there is still some resentment. "It shows through sometimes," Wilson said. "If you were a black man, you’d know when you were getting a subtle brush-off by a white who didn’t like you and wouldn’t dare say so."

Forrett agrees. "The clash still exists but it’s the old guard — the older veterans as well as older active duty members."

When called for comment, the national American Legion office said it didn’t even know a gay post existed. However, the American Legion’s Department of California — the state headquarters, which is located in San Francisco — told us that the 448’s sexual orientation just isn’t even an issue nowadays.

DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL


When Congress approved 10 United States Code, Section 654, commonly known as "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" (DADT) — the Alexander Hamilton Post had a new fight. Signed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, DADT is the policy that allows homosexuals to serve as long as they stay in the closet. Since its inception, the 448 has fought aggressively to get it overturned.

The history of DADT is "kind of the history of the post," according to Forrett, who was a reserve Army officer living in the closet during the first Gulf War. Fortunately, his sexuality never came into question, but he eventually resigned his commission because of the unfortunate changes he saw in the military as a result of DADT.

"DADT, with the best of intentions, didn’t go far enough to protect and left a huge window of opportunity for predators and harassers," Forrett said.

Forrett has met two of the most prominent casualties of DADT: Lt. Dan Choi, who has since become a post member, and former sailor Joseph Rocha, who wrote an Oct. 11 Washington Post op-ed piece outlining the brutal harassment he received because of his sexuality. He wrote that his chief forced him to simulate oral sex with another sailor, and was once tied up in a dog kennel.

Since the mid-1990s, the 448 has sought to build support for repealing DADT. Hardman and others testified in Congress in 1996 on the damaging impact of the policy. He also pushed for the belated release of what he called the "long-suppressed" 1993 Rand Corporation study on gays in the military. The study’s conclusion was that sexual orientation wasn’t germane when deciding who can and cannot effectively serve in the military

The report spearheaded the post’s partnership with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), a nonprofit organization helping those harassed under DADT. "The Alexander Hamilton Legion has been a longtime committed partner," Aubrey Sarvis, SLDN Executive Director wrote in an e-mail to the Guardian.

Post members attend SLDN’s Lobby Day, where supporters gather on Capitol Hill asking politicians to take action. And they continue to work with SLDN on getting the Military Readiness Enhancement Act — a bill that would repeal DADT — pushed through Congress.

But other post members are getting impatient. "Get on with it," Service Officer Robert C. Potter told us. "As my mother would say, ‘Either shit or get off the pot.’"

"Before Obama gets out of office, I want this changed," Sergeant-at-Arms Jimmy McConnell said. "And it’s not just for me. I want it for every person who feels that they are gay, bi, transgender, whatever."

However, Forrett is confident the president will make good on his promise. He feels that the president is going about it the right way by waiting for the next Congress. "Come on, man, 2010 isn’t that far," he said. "We’ve been suffering this long."

A NEW MISSION


When DADT is repealed, the post will work toward building a LGBT veterans’ memorial honoring those brave gay soldiers who gave their lives protecting their country. "For those who were before us, for those who are with us, and those who will come," Forrett said. "That’s kind of the concept. We want it to be an ongoing tribute."

In the meantime, the post continues to fight for veterans’ rights as well as LGBT rights, even bringing care packages to the wounded soldiers at the Fort Miley V.A. Hospital. "When we go to the V.A. hospital we don’t focus on LGBT, we focus on veterans," Forrett said.

And they’ll continue working with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and marching in the Pride Parade because Forrett believes that everything the post does comes back to DADT. "It keeps us out in front of everybody and that’s what’s important."

Should taxpayers subsidize desalination?

-
0
Should taxpayers subsidize desalination?

rebeccab@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Should the state of California hand over a multimillion dollar tax break to a company that is poised to build the largest desalination facility on the continent, just north of San Diego? That question will be decided early next year when Poseidon Resources, a water-infrastructure developer, formally submits its request for more than $500 million in tax-exempt bonds to the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee (CDLAC).

The decision will demonstrate whether California is willing to roll out the red carpet for desalination, an energy-intensive technology that has many questioning whether it’s a wise path to take. Proposals for desalination projects are cropping up across the state, including one for a smaller facility in Marin County, and water bonds recently approved by the Legislature as part of the state’s historic water package include $1 billion earmarked for water recycling and desalination.

With the state well into a three-year drought that has left some agricultural operations high and dry, calls for new reliable water sources such as desalination plants are only growing louder. But critics worry that the private operations will suck in tax dollars the way their intake pipes suck in saltwater, and they’re urging decision-makers to focus on more cost-effective strategies like low-flow showerheads, waterless urinals, drought-proof landscaping, or other comparatively thrifty ways to address water shortages. Poseidon’s Carlsbad desalination plant is projected to be the largest project of its kind in California, but it’s also just the beginning of an emerging trend.

A coalition of organizations, including the Sierra Club, Service Employees International Union, and Food & Water Watch, has been sounding the alarm that San Diego’s Carlsbad Desalination Project is a bad deal that shouldn’t be encouraged with public subsidies in the form of tax-exempt bonds. "Our group, along with most of our partners and allies, are not anti-desalination," says Renee Maas, who works for Food & Water Watch in Los Angeles. "But we think it should be a last resort," after opportunities for conservation have been exhausted.

"Aside from doing nothing about conservation and continuing to require huge amounts of energy for transmission, these plants also have no real community benefit, minimal job creation, and, most importantly, a questionable success and effectiveness," members of Service Employees International Union Local 721 wrote in a letter to the Metropolitan Water District, Southern California’s water wholesaler. "We believe we can conserve more water by installing waterless urinals across L.A. County than we would obtain from the proposed desalination plant."

Yet the facility boasts a long list of powerful endorsements, including that of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a member of CDLAC. The governor was listed as a supporter on a preliminary application submitted to the three-member committee. The two other committee members are State Treasurer Bill Lockyer and State Controller John Chiang.

The facility already has its ducks in a row, with permits approved and a contract with MWD to provide as much as 10 percent of San Diego’s water supply (MWD also agreed to $350 million in subsidies for the plant over 25 years). Poseidon expects the plant to be up and running by 2012. According to company spokesperson Scott Maloni, the project will proceed even if the state rejects its request for tax-exemption.

The plant will use ocean water as a raw ingredient to produce fresh drinking water by pushing the saltwater through reverse-osmosis membranes. With a capacity for producing an estimated 50 million gallons of drinking water a day, the hulking facility will share a site with a 52-year-old beachfront power plant equipped with an antiquated system that draws in ocean water to cool its machinery. Heated seawater issuing out the tail end of the power plant will be pumped into the desalination system and converted to tap water.

Although the plant will provide a localized freshwater source in a dry region without impacting ecologically sensitive rivers or wetlands, it comes with a steep price tag and requires a tremendous amount of electricity. Proponents estimate that the energy consumption in a single day would be the equivalent to the energy used by 16,790 homes. But Maas says even this estimate is low, because if the power plant’s water-cooling system is phased out by 2017, as state law mandates, then the desalination facility would have to start with cold water instead, requiring a substantial power boost. Poseidon spokesperson Scott Malone disputed this claim, telling the Guardian, "The plant will require 28-30 MW to operate during warm water or cold water operations."

Cost and energy consumption aren’t the only concerns advocacy groups have raised. Mark Schlosberg, a program director at Food & Water Watch in San Francisco, considers Poseidon’s last foray into desalination, in Tampa Bay, Fla., to be a cautionary tale. According to an article in the St. Petersburg Times, the plant opened five years late, cost $40 million more than expected, and hasn’t ever hit its target of supplying an average of 25 million gallons a day as originally promised. After Poseidon’s business partner for that affair went bankrupt, a public utility had to take control of the facility.

"They have a bad track record on desalination," Schlosberg said. "It never performed close to its advertised capacity."

Asked about the challenges in Tampa Bay, Maloni said, "Before Poseidon was bought out, the project was 30 percent constructed, on time and on budget. After Tampa Bay Water took over, the plant wasn’t constructed as designed and later failed to pass performance testing."

Critics have also decried the high cost projections for water. San Diego County now uses water imported from northern territories via the State Water Project, at a cost of around $750 per acre-foot (an acre-foot is 325,851 gallons), according to San Diego County Water Authority figures. Poseidon estimates that the water from its plant will cost about $1,300 per acre-foot, but has promised not to charge customers more than the price of imported water. Two years ago, Poseidon told the California Coastal Commission that it intends to absorb its losses "for an unknown number of years" until the price of imported water rises enough to equal the cost of desalinated water.

"Poseidon has entered into 30-year contracts with nine different San Diego County public water agencies that guarantee the cost of the desalinated water will never cost more than the agencies would otherwise pay for imported water," Maloni told the Guardian. "This pricing structure is possible because imported water rates are projected to increase significantly in the years to come, while the cost of desalinating water will stay relatively flat."

Shlosberg’s organization requested public records from the Tampa Bay facility so they could calculate a price estimate that they say is more realistic. Food & Water Watch hired James Fryer, an environmental scientist, to crunch the numbers. Fryer concluded that if the Carlsbad project experienced the same pitfalls as Tampa Bay, the water would cost $3,507 per acre-foot — a sky-high projection. If it ran without those bugs, it would still cost $2,175 per acre-foot, he determined.

The overarching question, in Maas’ view, is whether the state is willing to take conservation seriously enough to put water-saving measures into practice before subsidizing costly, energy-guzzling technology. "By sitting a desalination plant, it really distracts people from solutions that are more environmentally sustainable," she said. "The average water use per person per day is 200 gallons, and 60 percent of it goes to landscaping. With this desalination plant, people think, ‘we don’t have to change our habits.’"

Film listings

-
0
Film listings

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, Matt Sussman, and Laura Swanbeck. The film intern is Fernando F. Croce. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

OPENING

Christmas with Walt Disney Specially made for the Presidio’s recently opened Walt Disney Family Museum, this nearly hour-long compilation of vintage Yuletide-themed moments from throughout the studio’s history (up to Walt’s 1966 death) is more interesting than you might expect. The engine is eldest daughter Diane Disney Miller’s narrating reminiscences, often accompanied by excerpts from an apparently voluminous library of high-quality home movies. Otherwise, the clips are drawn from a mix of short and full-length animations, live-action features (like 1960’s Swiss Family Robinson), TV shows Wonderful World of Disney and Mickey Mouse Club, plus public events like Disneyland’s annual Christmas Parade and Disney’s orchestration of the 1960 Winter Olympics’ pageantry. If anything, this documentary is a little too rushed –- it certainly could have idled a little longer with some of the less familiar cartoon material. But especially for those who who grew up with Disney product only in its post-founder era, it will be striking to realize what a large figure Walt himself once cut in American culture, not just as a brand but as an on-screen personality. The film screens Nov 27-Jan 2; for additional information, visit http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/index.html. (:59) Walt Disney Family Museum. (Harvey)

*Fantastic Mr. Fox "See 21st Century Fox." (1:27) Four Star, Marina.

Ninja Assassin Let’s face it: it’d be nigh impossible to live up to a title as awesome as Ninja Assassin –- and this second flick from V for Vendetta (2005) director James McTeigue doesn’t quite do it. Anyone who’s seen a martial arts movie will find the tale of hero Raizo overly familiar: a student (played by the single-named Rain) breaks violently with his teacher; revenge on both sides ensues. That the art form in question is contemporary ninja-ing adds a certain amount of interest, though after a killer ninja vs. yakuza opening scene (by far the film’s best), and a flashback or two of ninja vs. political targets, the rest of the flick is concerned mostly with either ninja vs. ninja or ninja vs. military guys. (As ninjas come "from the shadows," most of these battles are presented in action-masking darkness.) There’s also an American forensic researcher (Noemie Harris) who starts poking around the ninja underground, a subplot that further saps the fun out of a movie that already takes itself way too seriously. (1:33) (Eddy)

Oh My God? See "Pray Tell." (1:38) Lumiere.

Old Dogs John Travolta and Robin Williams play lifelong friends, business partners, and happily child-free bachelors whose lives change when the latter is forced to care for the 7-year-old twins (Conner Rayburn, Ella Bleu Travolta) he didn’t know he’d sired. You know what this will be like going in, and that’s what you get: a predictable mix of the broadly comedic and maudlin, with a screenplay that feels half-baked by committee, and direction (by Walt Becker, who’s also responsible for 2007’s Wild Hogs) that tries to compensate via frantic over-editing of setpieces that end before they’ve gotten started. The coasting stars seem to be enjoying themselves, but the momentary cheering effect made by each subsidiary familiar face –- including Seth Green, Bernie Mac, Matt Dillon, Ann-Margret, Amy Sedaris, Dax Shepard, Justin Long, and Luis Guzman, some in unbilled cameos –- sours as you realize almost none of them will get anything worthwhile to do. (1:28) Oaks. (Harvey)

Red Cliff All Chinese directors must try their hands at a historical epic of the swords and (arrow) shafts variety, and who can blame them: the spectacle, the combat, the sheer scale of carnage. With Red Cliff, John Woo appears to top the more operatic Chen Kaige and a more camp Zhang Yimou in the especially latter department. The body count in this lavishly CGI-appointed (by the Bay Area’s Orphanage), good-looking war film is on the high end of the Commando/Rambo scale. The endless, intricately choreographed battle scenes are the primary allure of this slash-’em-up, whittled-down version of the Chinese blockbuster, which was released in Asia as a four-hour two-parter. Yet despite some notably handsome cinematography that rivals that of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in its painterliness, seething performances by players like Tony Leung and Fengyi Zhang, and recognizable Woo leitmotifs (a male bonding-attraction that’s particularly pronounced during Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro’s zither shred-fests, fluttering doves, a climactic Mexican standoff, the added jeopardy of a baby amid the battle), the labyrinthian complexity of the story and its multitude of characters threaten to lose the Western viewer –- or anyone less than familiar with Chinese history –- before strenuous pleasures of Woo’s action machine kick in. The completely OTT finale will either have you rolling your eyes its absurdity or laughing aloud at its contrived showmanship. Despite Woo’s lip service to the virtues of peace and harmony, is there really any other way, apart from the warrior’s, in his world? (2:28) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Road After an apocalypse of unspecified origin, the U.S. –- and presumably the world –- is depleted of wildlife and agriculture. Social structures have collapsed. All that’s left is a grim survivalism in which father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (whimpery Kodi Smit-McPhee) try to find food sources and avoid fellow humans, since most of the latter are now cannibals. Flashbacks reveal their past with the wife and mother (Charlize Theron) who couldn’t bear soldiering on in this ruined future. Scenarist Joe Penhall (a playwright) and director John Hillcoat (2005’s The Proposition) have adapted Cormac McCarthy’s novel with painstaking fidelity. Their Road is slow, bleak, grungy and occasionally brutal. All qualities in synch with the source material –- but something is lacking. One can appreciate Hillcoat and company’s efforts without feeling the deep empathy, let alone terror, that should charge this story of extreme faith and sacrifice. The film just sits there –- chastening yet flat, impact unamplified by familiar faces (Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker) road-grimed past recognition. (1:53) Embarcadero, California, Piedmont. (Harvey)

Sophie’s Revenge Zhang Ziyi stars as the titular woman who seeks you-know-what after her boyfriend dumps her. (1:47) Four Star.

ONGOING

Art and Copy Doc maker Doug Pray (1996’s Hype!, 2001’s Scratch, 2007’s Surfwise) uses the mid-twentieth century’s revolution in advertising to background an absorbing portrait of the industry’s leading edge, with historical commentary, philosophical observations, and pop-psych self-scrutiny by some of the rebel forces and their descendants (including locals Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein). We see the ads that made a permanent dent in our consciousness over the past five decades. We hear conference-room tales of famous campaigns, like "Got Milk?" and "I Want My MTV." And during quieter interludes, stats on advertising’s global cultural presence drift on-screen to astonish and unnerve. Lofty self-comparisons to cave painters and midwives may raise eyebrows, but Pray has gathered some of the industry’s brighter, more engaging lights, and his subjects discuss their métier thoughtfully, wittily, and quite earnestly. There are elisions in the moral line some of them draw in the process, and it would have been interesting to hear, amid the exalted talk of advertising that rises to the level of art, some philosophizing on where all this packaging and selling gets us, in a branding-congested age when it’s hard to deny that breakneck consumption is having a deleterious effect on the planet. Instead the film occasionally veers in the direction of becoming an advertisement for advertising. Still, Art and Copy complicates our impressions of a vilified profession, and what it reveals about these creatives’ perceptions of their vocation (one asserts that "you can manufacture any feeling that you want to manufacture") makes it worth watching, even if you usually fast-forward through the ads. (1:30) Roxie. (Rapoport)

*Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Consider that ridiculous title. Though its poster and imdb entry eliminate the initial article, it appears onscreen as The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. That’s the bad lieutenant, not to be confused with Abel Ferrara’s 1992 Bad Lieutenant. The bad lieutenant has a name: Terence McDonagh, and he’s a police officer of similarly wobbly moral fiber. McDonagh’s tale — inspired by Ferrara and scripted by William Finkelstein, but perhaps more important, filmed by Werner Herzog and interpreted by Nicolas Cage — opens with a snake slithering through a post-Hurricane Katrina flood. A prisoner has been forgotten in a basement jail. McDonagh and fellow cop Stevie Pruit (Val Kilmer) taunt the man, taking bets on how long it’ll take him to drown in the rising waters. An act of cruelty seems all but certain until McDonagh, who’s quickly been established as a righteous asshole, suddenly dives in for the rescue. Unpredictability, and quite a bit of instability, reigns thereafter. Every scene holds the possibility of careening to heights both campy and terrifying, and Cage proves an inspired casting choice. At this point in his career, he has nothing to lose, and his take on Lt. McDonagh is as haywire as it gets. McDonagh snorts coke before reporting to a crime scene; he threatens the elderly; he hauls his star teenage witness along when he confronts a john who’s mistreated his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes); he cackles like a maniac; he lurches around like a hunchback on crack. Not knowing what McDonagh will do next is as entertaining as knowing it’ll likely be completely insane. (2:01) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article "The Ballad of Big Mike" — which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game —nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher — a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a Sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) Cerrito, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Daniel Alvarez)

*Capitalism: A Love Story Gun control. The Bush administration. Healthcare. Over the past decade, Michael Moore has tackled some of the most contentious issues with his trademark blend of humor and liberal rage. In Capitalism: A Love Story, he sets his sights on an even grander subject. Where to begin when you’re talking about an economic system that has defined this nation? Predictably, Moore’s focus is on all those times capitalism has failed. By this point, his tactics are familiar, but he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. As with Sicko (2007), Moore proves he can restrain himself — he gets plenty of screen time, but he spends more time than ever behind the camera. This isn’t about Moore; it’s about the United States. When he steps out of the limelight, he’s ultimately more effective, crafting a film that’s bipartisan in nature, not just in name. No, he’s not likely to please all, but for every Glenn Beck, there’s a sane moderate wondering where all the money has gone. (2:07) Red Vic, Roxie. (Peitzman)

Coco Before Chanel Like her designs, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was elegant, très chic, and utterly original. Director Anne Fontaine’s French biopic traces Coco (Audrey Tautou) from her childhood as a struggling orphan to one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. You’ll be disappointed if you expect a fashionista’s up close and personal look at the House of Chanel, as Fontaine keeps her story firmly rooted in Coco’s past, including her destructive relationship with French playboy Etienne Balsar (Benoît Poelvoorde) and her ill-fated love affair with dashing Englishman Arthur "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola). The film functions best in scenes that display Coco’s imagination and aesthetic magnetism, like when she dances with Capel in her now famous "little black dress" amidst a sea of stiff, white meringues. Tautou imparts a quiet courage and quick wit as the trailblazing designer, and Nivola is unmistakably charming and compassionate as Boy. Nevertheless, Fontaine rushes the ending and never truly seizes the opportunity to explore how Coco’s personal life seeped into her timeless designs that were, in the end, an extension of herself. (1:50) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Swanbeck)

Defamation When you begin to perceive all criticism as persecutorial, you might forget it’s possible to be wrong. That’s the worry driving Yoav Shamir’s Defamation, opening theatrically following a stormy reception at July’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. The documentarian (2003’s Checkpoint) says that as an Israeli Jew he’s never actually experienced anti-Semitism. So he sets out to explore that prejudice’s status quo — or so he claims, somewhat disingenuously. Because Defamation‘s real agenda is positing anti-Semitism as a distorted, exploited, propagandic bludgeon used to taint any critique of Israeli government policies or the foreign lobbies supporting them. This is a theory bound to inflame angry emotions, not least the "self-hating Jew" accusation. It must be said that Shamir lays himself at risk — à la Michael Moore — of selectively gathering only evidence that supports his agenda. Anti-Semitism certainly does exist today, in many different forms, around the world. And if Defamation‘s deliberate omissions and occasional snarky tone hamper its case, Shamir nonetheless makes legitimately troubling points. His most controversial interviewee is Norman Finklestein, whose book The Holocaust Industry got him pilloried as a Holocaust denier (untrue) and quite likely cost him his teaching position. The son of Shoah survivors, he thinks "the Nazi Holocaust is now the main ideological weapon for launching wars of aggression" and that "pathological narcissism" desensitizes many American Jews to other people’s sufferings. The author can be persuasively reasonable. To Defamation‘s credit, however, it doesn’t yell "Cut!" when Finklestein whips himself into a crank-case frenzy that masochistically self-destructs his credibility. Absolute righteousness ain’t pretty, anywhere on the political spectrum. (1:33) Roxie. (Harvey)

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (1:36) 1000 Van Ness.

*An Education The pursuit of knowledge — both carnal and cultural — are at the tender core of this end-of-innocence valentine by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig (who first made her well-tempered voice heard with her 2000 Dogme entry, Italian for Beginners), based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Hornby breaks further with his Peter Pan protagonists with this adaptation: no man-boy mopers or misfits here. Rather, 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a good girl and ace student. It’s 1961, and England is only starting to stir from its somber, all-too-sober post-war slumber. The carefully cloistered Jenny is on track for Oxford, though swinging London and its high-style freedoms beckon just around the corner. Ushering in those freedoms — a new, more class-free world disorder — is the charming David (Peter Sarsgaard), stopping to give Jenny and her cello a ride in the rain and soon proffering concerts and late-night suppers in the city. He’s a sweet-faced, feline outsider: cultured, Jewish, and given to playing fast and loose in the margins of society. David can see Jenny for the gem she is and appreciate her innocence with the knowing pleasure of a decadent playing all the angles. The stakes are believably high, thanks to An Education‘s careful attention to time and place and its gently glamored performances. Scherfig revels in the smart, easy-on-eye curb appeal of David and his friends while giving a nod to the college-educated empowerment Jenny risks by skipping class to jet to Paris. And Mulligan lends it all credence by letting all those seduced, abandoned, conflicted, rebellious feelings flicker unbridled across her face. (1:35) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Chun)

*Good Hair Spurred by his little daughter’s plaintive query ("Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?"), Chris Rock gets his Michael Moore freak on and sets out to uncover the racial and cultural implications of African-American hairstyling. Visiting beauty salons, talking to specialists, and interviewing celebrities ranging from Maya Angelou to Ice-T, the comic wisecracks his way into some pretty trenchant insights about how black women’s coiffures can often reflect Caucasian-set definitions of beauty. (Leave it to Rev. Al Sharpton to voice it ingeniously: "You comb your oppression every morning!") Rock makes an affable guide in Jeff Stilson’s breezy documentary, which posits the hair industry as a global affair where relaxers work as "nap-antidotes" and locks sacrificially shorn in India end up as pricey weaves in Beverly Hills. Maybe startled by his more disquieting discoveries, Rock shifts the focus to flamboyant, crowd-pleasing shenanigans at the Bronner Bros. International Hair Show. Despite such softball detours, it’s a genial and revealing tour. (1:35) Opera Plaza. (Croce)

*The House of the Devil Ti West’s The House of the Devil is a retro thrillfest quite happy to sacrifice the babysitter to the Dark Lord. "Based on true unexplained events" (uh-huh), the buzzed-about indie horror has fanboy casting both old school (Dee Wallace, Mary Woronov, Tom Noonan — all performing seriously rather than campily) and new (AJ Bowen of 2007’s The Signal and mumblecore regular Greta Gerwig). Its heroine (Jocelin Donahue), a 1980 East Coast collegiate sophomore desperate for rent cash so she can escape her dorm roomie’s loud nightly promiscuity, signs on for a baby- (actually, grandma-) sitting gig advertised on telephone poles. For tonight. During a lunar eclipse. Bad move. Devil takes its time, springing nothing lethal until nearly halfway through. Its period setting allows for ultratight jeans, feathered hair, rotary dialing, a synth-New Wavey score, and other potentially campy elements the film manages to render respectfully appreciative rather than silly. Ultimately, it isn’t significantly better than various fine indie horrors of recent vintage and various nationality that went direct to DVD. (Quality, let alone originality, aren’t necessarily a commercial pluses in this genre.) But it is dang good, and that cuts it above most current theatrical horror releases. (1:33) Lumiere. (Harvey)

The Maid In an upper-middle class subdivision of Santiago, 40-year-old maid Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), perpetually stony and indignant, operates a rigorous dawn-to-dusk routine for the Valdez family. Although Raquel rarely behaves as an intimate of her longtime hosts, she remains convinced that love, not labor, bonds them. (Whether the family shares Raquel’s feelings of devotion is highly dubious.) When a rotating cast of interlopers is hired to assist her, she stoops to machinations most vile to scare them away — until the arrival of Lucy (Mariana Loyola), whose unpredictable influence over Raquel sets the narrative of The Maid on a very different psychological trajectory, from moody chamber piece to eccentric slice-of-life. If writer-director Sebastián Silva’s film taunts the viewer with the possibility of a horrific climax, either as a result of its titular counterpart — Jean Genet’s 1946 stage drama The Maids, about two servants’ homicidal revenge — or from the unnerving "mugshot" of Saavedra on the movie poster, it is neither self-destructive nor Grand Guignol. Rather, it it is much more prosaic in execution. Sergio Armstrong’s fidgety hand-held camera captures Raquel’s claustrophobic routine as it accentuates her Sisyphean conundrum: although she completely rules the inner workings of the house, she remains forever a guest. But her character’s motivations often evoke as much confusion as wonder. In the absence of some much needed exposition, The Maid’s heavy-handed silences, plaintive gazes, and inexplicable eruptions of laughter feel oddly sterile, and a contrived preciousness begins to creep over the film like an effluvial whitewash. Its abundance makes you aware there is a shabbiness hiding beneath the dramatic facade — the various stains and holes of an unrealized third act. (1:35) Clay, Shattuck. (Erik Morse)

The Men Who Stare at Goats No! The Men Who Stare at Goats was such an awesome book (by British journalist Jon Ronson) and the movie boasts such a terrific cast (George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor). How in the hell did it turn out to be such a lame, unfunny movie? Clooney gives it his all as Lyn Cassady, a retired "supersolider" who peers through his third eye and realizes the naïve reporter (McGregor) he meets in Kuwait is destined to accompany him on a cross-Iraq journey of self-discovery; said journey is filled with flashbacks to the reporter’s failed marriage (irrelevant) and Cassady’s training with a hippie military leader (Bridges) hellbent on integrating New Age thinking into combat situations. Had I the psychic powers of a supersoldier, I’d use some kind of mind-control technique to convince everyone within my brain-wave radius to skip this movie at all costs. Since I’m merely human, I’ll just say this: seriously, read the book instead. (1:28) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Messenger Ben Foster cut his teeth playing unhinged villains in Alpha Dog (2006) and 3:10 to Yuma (2007), but he cements his reputation as a promising young actor with a moving, sympathetic performance in director Oren Moverman’s The Messenger. Moverman (who also co-authored the script) is a four-year veteran of the Israeli army, and he draws on his military experience to create an intermittently harrowing portrayal of two soldiers assigned to the U.S. Army’s Casualty Notification Service. Will Montgomery (Foster) is still recovering from the physical and psychological trauma of combat when he is paired with Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a by-the-book Captain whose gruff demeanor and good-old-boy gallows humor belie the complicated soul inside. Gut-wrenching encounters with the families of dead soldiers combine with stark, honest scenes that capture two men trying to come to grips with the mundane horrors of their world, and Samantha Morton completes a trio of fine acting turns as a serene Army widow. (1:45) Albany, Smith Rafael. (Richardson)

*Michael Jackson’s This Is It Time –- and a tragic early death –- has a way of coloring perception, so little surprise that these thought pops into one’s head throughout This Is It: when did Michael Jackson transform himself into such an elegant, haute-pop sylph? Such a pixie-nosed, lacy-haired petit four of music-making delicacy? And where can I get his to-die-for, pointy-shouldered, rhinestone-lapeled Alexander McQueen-ish jacket? Something a bit bewitching this way comes as Michael Jackson –- now that he’s gone, seemingly less freakish than an outright phenomenon –- gracefully flits across the screen in this final (really?) document of his last hurrah, the rehearsals for his sold-out shows at O2 Arena in London. This Is It is far from perfect: this grainy video scratchpad of a film obviously wasn’t designed by the perfectionist MJ to be his final testament to pop. Director Kenny Ortega does his best to cobble together what looks like several rehearsal performances with teary testimonials from dancers (instilled with the intriguing idea that they are extensions of the surgery-friendly Jackson’s body onstage), interviews with musicians, minimal archival footage, and glimpses of Jacko protesting about being encouraged to "sing through" certain songs when he’s trying to preserve his voice, urging the band to play it "like the record," and still moving, dancing, and gesticuutf8g with such grace that you’re left with more than a tinge of regret that "This Is It," the tour, never came to pass. It’s a pure, albeit adulterated, pleasure to watch the man do the do, even with the gaps in the flow, even with the footage filtered by a family intent on propping up the franchise. Amid the artistry and kitsch, critics, pop academics, and superfans will find plenty to chew over –- from Jackson’s curiously timed physical complaints as the Jackson 5 segment kicks in, to the surreally CGI-ed, golden-age-of-Hollywood mash-up sequence. (1:52) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck. (Chun)

New York, I Love You A dreamy mash note to the city that never sleeps, New York, I Love You is the latest installment in a series of omnibus odes to world metropolises and the denizens that live and love within the city limits. Less successful than the Paris, je t’aime (2006) anthology — which roped in such disparate international directors as Gus Van Sant and Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuaron and Olivier Assayas — New York welcomes a more minor-key host of directors to the project with enjoyable if light-weight results. Surely any bite of the Big Apple would be considerably sexier. Bradley Cooper and Drea de Matteo tease out a one-night stand with legs, and Ethan Hawke and Maggie Q generate a wee bit of verbal fire over street-side cigs, yet there’s surprisingly little heat in this take on a few of the 8 million stories in the archetypal naked city. Most memorable are the strangest couplings, such as that of Natalie Portman, a Hasidic bride who flirtatiously haggles with Irrfan Khan, a Jain diamond merchant, in a tale directed by Mira Nair. Despite the pleasure of witnessing Julie Christie, Eli Wallach, and Cloris Leachman in action, many of these pieces — written by the late Anthony Minghella, Israel Horovitz, and Portman, among others — feel a mite too slight to nail down the attention of all but the most desperate romantics. (1:43) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Paranormal Activity In this ostensible found-footage exercise, Katie (Katie Featherson) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a young San Diego couple whose first home together has a problem: someone, or something, is making things go bump in the night. In fact, Katie has sporadically suffered these disturbances since childhood, when an amorphous, not-at-reassuring entity would appear at the foot of her bed. Skeptical technophile Micah’s solution is to record everything on his primo new video camera, including a setup to shoot their bedroom while they sleep — surveillance footage sequences that grow steadily more terrifying as incidents grow more and more invasive. Like 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, Oren Peli’s no-budget first feature may underwhelm mainstream genre fans who only like their horror slick and slasher-gory. But everybody else should appreciate how convincingly the film’s very ordinary, at times annoying protagonists (you’ll eventually want to throttle Micah, whose efforts are clearly making things worse) fall prey to a hostile presence that manifests itself in increments no less alarming for being (at first) very small. When this hits DVD, you’ll get to see the original, more low-key ending (the film has also been tightened up since its festival debut two years ago). But don’t wait — Paranormal‘s subtler effects will be lost on the small screen. Not to mention that it’s a great collective screaming-audience experience. (1:39) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

*Paris Cédric Klapisch’s latest offers a series of interconnected stories with Paris as the backdrop, designed — if you’ll pardon the cliché — as a love letter to the city. On the surface, the plot of Paris sounds an awful lot like Paris, je t’aime (2006). But while the latter was composed entirely of vignettes, Paris has an actual, overarching plot. Perhaps that’s why it’s so much more effective. Juliette Binoche stars as Élise, whose brother Pierre (Romain Duris) is in dire need of a heart transplant. A dancer by trade, Pierre is also a world-class people watcher, and it’s his fascination with those around him that serves as Paris‘ wraparound device. He sees snippets of these people’s lives, but we get the full picture — or at least, something close to it. The strength of Paris is in the depth of its characters: every one we meet is more complex than you’d guess at first glance. The more they play off one another, the more we understand. Of course, the siblings remain at the film’s heart: sympathetic but not pitiable, moving but not maudlin. Both Binoche and Duris turn in strong performances, aided by a supporting cast of French actors who impress in even the smallest of roles. (2:04) Opera Plaza. (Peitzman)

Pirate Radio I wanted to like Pirate Radio, a.k.a., The Boat That Rocked –- really, I did. The raging, stormy sounds of the British Invasion –- sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and all that rot. Pirate radio outlaw sexiness, writ large, influential, and mind-blowingly popular. This shaggy-dog of a comedy about the boat-bound, rollicking Radio Rock is based loosely on the history of Radio Caroline, which blasted transgressive rock ‘n’ roll (back when it was still subversive) and got around stuffy BBC dominance by broadcasting from a ship off British waters. Alas, despite the music and the attempts by filmmaker Richard Curtis to inject life, laughs, and girls into the mix (by way of increasingly absurd scenes of imagined listeners creaming themselves over Radio Rock’s programming), Pirate Radio will be a major disappointment for smart music fans in search of period accuracy (are we in the mid- or late ’60s or early or mid-’70s –- tough to tell judging from the time-traveling getups on the DJs, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Darby, among others?) and lame writing that fails to rise above the paint-by-the-numbers narrative buttressing, irksome literalness (yes, a betrayal by a lass named Marianne is followed by "So Long, Marianne"), and easy sexist jabs at all those slutty birds. Still, there’s a reason why so many artists –- from Leonard Cohen to the Stones –- have lent their songs to this shaky project, and though it never quite gets its sea legs, Pirate Radio has its heart in the right place –- it just lost its brains somewhere along the way down to its crotch. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Planet 51 (1:31) Oaks, 1000 Van Ness.

*Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire This gut-wrenching, little-engine-that-could of a film shows the struggles of Precious, an overweight, illiterate 16-year-old girl from Harlem. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe is so believably vigilant (she was only 15 at the time of filming) that her performance alone could bring together the art-house viewers as well as take the Oscars by storm. But people need to actually go and experience this film. While Precious did win Sundance’s Grand Jury and Audience Award awards this year, there is a sad possibility that filmgoers will follow the current trend of "discussing" films that they’ve actually never seen. The daring casting choices of comedian Mo’Nique (as Precious’ all-too-realistically abusive mother) and Mariah Carey (brilliantly understated as an undaunted and dedicated social counselor) are attempts to attract a wider audience, but cynics can hurdle just about anything these days. What’s most significant about this Dancer in the Dark-esque chronicle is how Damien Paul’s screenplay and director Lee Daniels have taken their time to confront the most difficult moments in Precious’ story –- and if that sounds heavy-handed, so be it. Stop blahging for a moment and let this movie move you. (1:49) SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Jesse Hawthorne Ficks)

*The September Issue The Lioness D’Wintour, the Devil Who Wears Prada, or the High Priestess of Condé Nasty — it doesn’t matter what you choose to call Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. If you’re in the fashion industry, you will call her — or at least be amused by the power she wields as the overseer of style’s luxury bible, then 700-plus pages strong for its legendary September fall fashion issue back in the heady days of ’07, pre-Great Recession. But you don’t have to be a publishing insider to be fascinated by director R.J. Cutler’s frisky, sharp-eyed look at the making of fashion’s fave editorial doorstop. Wintour’s laser-gazed facade is humanized, as Cutler opens with footage of a sparkling-eyed editor breaking down fashion’s fluffy reputation. He then follows her as she assumes the warrior pose in, say, the studio of Yves St. Laurent, where she has designer Stefano Pilati fluttering over his morose color choices, and in the offices of the magazine, where she slices, dices, and kills photo shoots like a sartorial samurai. Many of the other characters at Vogue (like OTT columnist André Leon Talley) are given mere cameos, but Wintour finds a worthy adversary-compatriot in creative director Grace Coddington, another Englishwoman and ex-model — the red-tressed, pale-as-a-wraith Pre-Raphaelite dreamer to Wintour’s well-armored knight. The two keep each other honest and craftily ingenious, and both the magazine and this doc benefit. (1:28) Presidio. (Chun)

*A Serious Man You don’t have to be Jewish to like A Serious Man — or to identify with beleaguered physics professor Larry Gopnik (the grandly aggrieved Michael Stuhlbarg), the well-meaning nebbishly center unable to hold onto a world quickly falling apart and looking for spiritual answers. It’s a coming of age for father and son, spurred by the small loss of a radio and a 20-dollar bill. Larry’s about-to-be-bar-mitzvahed son is listening to Jefferson Airplane instead of his Hebrew school teachers and beginning to chafe against authority. His daughter has commandeered the family bathroom for epic hair-washing sessions. His wife is leaving him for a silkily presumptuous family friend and has exiled Larry to the Jolly Roger Motel. His failure-to-launch brother is a closeted mathematical genius and has set up housekeeping on his couch. Larry’s chances of tenure could be spoiled by either an anonymous poison-pen writer or a disgruntled student intent on bribing him into a passing grade. One gun-toting neighbor vaguely menaces the borders of his property; the other sultry nude sunbather tempts with "new freedoms" and high times. What’s a mild-mannered prof to do, except envy Schrodinger’s Cat and approach three rungs of rabbis in his quest for answers to life’s most befuddling proofs? Reaching for a heightened, touched-by-advertising style that recalls Mad Men in look and Barton Fink (1991) in narrative — and stooping for the subtle jokes as well as the ones branded "wide load" — the Coen Brothers seem to be turning over, examining, and flirting with personally meaningful, serious narrative, though their Looney Tunes sense of humor can’t help but throw a surrealistic wrench into the works. (1:45) California, Embarcadero, Empire, Piedmont. (Chun)

2012 I don’t need to give you reasons to see this movie. You don’t care about the clumsy, hastily dished-out pseudo scientific hoo-ha that explains this whole mess. You don’t care about John Cusack or Woody Harrelson or whoever else signed on for this embarrassing notch in their IMDB entry. You don’t care about Mayan mysteries, how hard it is for single dads, and that Danny Glover and Chiwetel Ejiofor jointly stand in for Obama (always so on the zeitgeist, that Roland Emmerich). You already know what you’re in store for: the most jaw-dropping depictions of humankind’s near-complete destruction that director Emmerich –- who has a flair for such things –- has ever come up with. All the time, creative energy, and money James Cameron has spent perfecting the CGI pores of his characters in Avatar is so much hokum compared to what Emmerich and his Spartan army of computer animators dish out: the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy emerging through a cloud of toxic dust like some Mary Celeste of the military-industrial complex, born aloft on a massive tidal wave that pulverizes the White House; the dome of St. Paul’s flattening the opium-doped masses like a steamroller; Hawaii returned to its original volcanic state; and oodles more scenes in which we are allowed to register terror, but not horror, at the gorgeous destruction that is unfurled before us as the world ends (again) but no one really dies. Get this man a bigger budget. (2:40) California, Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness. (Sussman)

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Oh my God, you guys, it’s that time of the year: another Twilight chapter hits theaters. New Moon reunites useless cipher Bella (Kristen Steward) and Edward (Robert Pattinson), everyone’s favorite sparkly creature of darkness. Because this is a teen wangstfest, the course of true love is kind of bumpy. This time around, there’s a heavy Romeo and Juliet subplot and some interference from perpetually shirtless werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Chances are you know this already, as you’ve either devoured Stephenie Meyer’s book series or you were one of the record-breaking numbers in attendance for the film’s opening weekend. And for those non-Twilight fanatics — is there any reason to see New Moon? Yes and no. Like the 2008’s Twilight, New Moon is reasonably entertaining, with plenty of underage sexual tension, supernatural slugfests, and laughable line readings. But there’s something off this time around: New Moon is fun but flat. For diehard fans, it’s another excuse to shriek at the screen. For anyone else, it’s a soulless diversion. (2:10) Cerrito, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Peitzman)

(Untitled) The sometimes absurd pretensions of the modern art world have –- for many decades –- been so easily, condescendingly ridiculed that its intelligently knowing satire is hard to come by. (How much harder still would it be for a fictive film to convey the genius of, say Anselm Kiefer? Even Ed Harris’ 2000 Pollock less vividly captured the art or its creation –- better done by Francis Ford Coppola and Nick Nolte in their 1989 New York Stories segment –- than the usual tortured-artist histrionics.) Bay Arean Jonathan Parker attempts to correct that with this perhaps overly low-key witticism. Erstwhile Hebrew Hammer Adam Goldberg plays a composer of painfully retro, plink-plunk 1950s avant-gardism. (His favorite instrument is the tin bucket.) His lack of success is inevitable yet chafes nonetheless, because he’s a) humorlessly self-important, and b) sibling to a painter (Eion Bailey) whose pleasant, unchallenging abstracts are hot properties amongst corporate-art buyers. But not hot enough for his gorgeous agent (Marley Shelton), who puts off showing him at her Chelsea gallery in favor of cartoonishly "edgy" artists –- like soccer hooligan Vinnie Jones as a proponent of lurid taxidermy sculpture –- and takes a contrary (if unlikely) fancy to Goldberg. (How could her educated like not know his music is even less cutting-edge than the brother’s canvases?) (Untitled) holds interest, but it’s at once too glib and modest –- exaggerative sans panache. This is equivalently if differently problematic from Parker’s 2005 Henry James-goes-Marin County The Californians. It can’t compare to his 2001 feature debut, the excellent Crispin Glover-starring translation of Melville’s Bartleby to Rhinoceros-like modern office culture. (1:30) Bridge, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Where the Wild Things Are From the richly delineated illustrations and sparse text of Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s book, director Spike Jonze and cowriter (with Jones) Dave Eggers have constructed a full-length film about the passions, travails, and interior/exterior wanderings of Sendak’s energetic young antihero, Max. Equally prone to feats of world-building and fits of overpowering, destructive rage, Max (Max Records) stampedes off into the night during one of the latter and journeys to the island where the Wild Things (voiced by James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper, Lauren Ambrose, Paul Dano, and Michael Berry Jr.) live — and bicker and tantrum and give in to existential despair and no longer all sleep together in a big pile. The place has possibilities, though, and Max, once crowned king, tries his best to realize them. What its inhabitants need, however, is not so much a visionary king as a good family therapist — these are some gripey, defensive, passive-aggressive Wild Things, and Max, aged somewhere around 10, can’t fix their interpersonal problems. Jonze and Eggers do well at depicting Max’s temporary kingdom, its forests and deserts, its creatures and their half-finished creations from a past golden era, as well as subtly reminding us now and again that all of this — the island, the arguments, the sadness — is streaming from the mind of a fierce, wildly imaginative young child with familial troubles of his own, equally beyond his power to resolve. They’ve also invested the film with a slow, grim depressive mood that can make for unsettling viewing, particularly when pondering the Maxes in the audience, digesting an oft-disheartening tale about family conflict and relationship repair. (1:48) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

*William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe A middle-class suburban lawyer radicalized by the Civil Rights era, Kunstler became a hero of the left for his fiery defenses of the draft-card-burning Catonsville Nine, the Black Panthers, the Chicago Twelve, and the Attica prisoners rioting for improved conditions, and Native American protestors at Wounded Knee in 1973. But after these "glory days," Kunstler’s judgment seemed to cloud while his thirst for "judicial theatre" and the media spotlight. Later clients included terrorists, organized-crime figures, a cop-killing drug dealer, and a suspect in the notorious Central Park "wilding" gang rape of a female jogger –- unpopular causes, to say the least. "Dad’s clients gave us nightmares. He told us that everyone deserves a lawyer, but sometimes we didn’t understand why that lawyer had to be our father" says Emily Kunstler, who along with sister Sarah directed this engrossing documentary about their late father. Growing up under the shadow of this larger-than-life "self-hating Jew" and "hypocrite" –- as he was called by those frequently picketing their house –- wasn’t easy. Confronting this sometimes bewildering behemoth in the family, Disturbing the Universe considers his legacy to be a brave crusader’s one overall –- even if the superhero in question occasionally made all Gotham City and beyond cringe at his latest antics. (1:30) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Sweet on sour Filipino popcorn in Honolulu

-
0

shimizu popcorn 112109 sm 1 .jpg
Garlicky goodness. All photos by Kimberly Chun.

By Kimberly Chun

Biggest food find in Honolulu this Thanksgiving: “Filipino Loco” popcorn.

My bro clued me into the phenom at the very popular shaved ice stand Shimazu Store. The shop is located on a somewhat scruffy, paved-over, truck-heavy stretch of School Street near downtown Honolulu.

But lo, Shimazu manages to survive and thrive by carrying some of the most unusual flavors on the isle: creme brulee, chocolate peanut butter cup, green tea, lilikoi, root beer float, red velvet cake (!), and zillions more. You can get them with all the add-ons: ice cream, azuki beans, and mochi balls buried within; the mountain of multi-colored shaved ice drizzled with evaporated milk without.

But the weirdest, most wonderful item at Shimazu Store has to be their selection of fresh popcorn: furakake popcorn (embellished with Japanese crackers), red dirt popcorn (don’t ask), and the fabulous “Filipino Loco” variety. The corn itself is flavored with an inspired blend of vinegar, garlic, and salt and then topped with a layer of pork rinds. Sour, salty, greasy good fun. OK, I confess, I did say, “I feel like killing myself” after a few handfuls. But what a way to go.

SHIMAZU STORE
Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
330 N. School St., Honolulu

shimizu popcorn 112109 sm 3.jpg

Seasons eatings

-
0
Seasons eatings

culture@sfbg.com

A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry. — Ecclesiastes 8:15

Writing about Christmas treats and festive beverages is dangerous territory. Locals are adamant about their favorite spot to score an authentic stollen, the most buttery sugar cookie, or the strongest hot toddy. So while I won’t claim to offer the most exhaustive list, the following spots are sure to whisk you through the madness of the holiday season with some semblance of sanity and satiation.

Eat…

While there’s something about this time of year that inspires me to break out my whisk and apron, I also love what our local bakers and pastry chefs produce. Whether you’re looking for a treat to go with your coffee or want to contribute to the holiday table this year, these folks have got you covered in the seasonal sweets department. Let’s face it — they do it better than most of us can anyway.

MISSION PIE


There’s something to be said about a simple piece of pie, and nobody does seasonal slices better than Mission Pie. For Thanksgiving, it will feature pumpkin, apple, pear/cranberry, walnut (much like pecan but made with a sister nut), and a vegan apple with brandied raisins ($3.50/piece). Mission Pie is adamant about getting its fruits and flowers from local farms, so it only uses what’s in season. Later in the winter, the Mission District destination will feature desserts made with winter fruits, like my favorite: the bright, sharp, citrusy Meyer lemon — perfect with a cup of hot tea.

2901 Mission, SF. (415) 282-1500, www.missionpie.com

CITIZEN CAKE


If traditional pie isn’t your bag, pastry chef Elizabeth Faulkner is your gal. Leave it to her to take a seasonal dessert like pie or a simple holiday cookie and turn it upside down. This year, Faulkner is planning her usual butter and lard crust for Thanksgiving pies (mmm, lard) filled with innovative flavors like apple and cheddar or a bourbon chocolate pecan ($25–$28) as well as her infamous pumpkin sage cheesecake ($30). And of course, a holiday at Citizen Cake wouldn’t feel right without the gingerbread Joes and Janes ($4) in festive bikini attire.

399 Grove, SF. (415) 861-2228, www.citizencake.com

ARIZMENDHI BAKERY AND NOE VALLEY BAKERY


The leftovers — and the in-laws — have come and gone. Hallelujah. Now look forward to a wintry season hunkering down with a fruitcake. I know, I know, fruitcake’s got a bad rap. Are you scared of those plastic tubs of pseudo-fruit with sticky green cherries? Me too. But bakers who do traditional fruitcakes don’t touch those. Instead you’ll find a variety of boozy fruits, citrus, warm spices, and nuts. What’s not to like about that? Arizmendhi does one of the most popular fruitcakes in town ($12). It’s smaller than your average loaf and made with dried apricot, papaya, pineapple, currants, and cherries, along with healthy doses of brandy, spices, and citrus. Noe Valley Bakery also makes a much-loved fruitcake, specifically an iced German Christmas stollen ($21). Owner Michael Gasson has updated an old family recipe that includes housemade candied orange peel, toasted almonds, fresh ground nutmeg, and lots of brandy. Much like a fine wine, fruitcakes get better with time (which is one reason they were so popular in pre-refrigeration days), so Gasson starts making these treats early to allow the flavors to ripen and mellow. For all you fruitcake skeptics out there, this is the year — and these are the places.

Arizmendhi Bakery, 1331 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 566-3117, www.arizmendibakery.com; Noe Valley Bakery: 4073 24th St., SF. (415) 550-1405, www.noevalleybakery.com

MASSE’S PASTRIES


After I’ve won you over with the fruitcake, you must believe me when I sing the praises of Masse’s Pastries for the best bouche in the Bay. The bouche de noel (or yule log), a dessert traditionally served in France during the holidays, consists of a rolled cake in the shape of a log filled with buttercream and topped with ganache. Not only does Masse’s make the loveliest bouche around, it does three of them. The most popular is the traditional mocha with almond roulade and coffee buttercream. Next up is the black forest with Bavarian cream and kirsch (cherry liqueur). The third option is a simple lemon topped with Italian meringue and seasonal fruits. The owners decorate the festive cakes with New Zealand red currants, imported brandied cherries, and the highest quality shaved chocolate. Prices range from $38–$55 depending on flavor and size. Now comes the difficult part: how to decide between the three options. The good news? It offers mini bouches ($4.50), so you can taste before you invest.

1469 Shattuck Ave., Berk. (510) 649-1004, www.massespastries.com

Drink …

There’s no time like the holiday season to splurge a little on cocktails. Push the PBRs to the back of the fridge and treat yourself to a warm, wintry drink or festive liquor concoction. The following spots will ease you into the yuletide spirit in the most delicious way. Who wouldn’t drink to that?

TRAD’R SAM


After lugging around shopping bags, groceries, bikes — you name it — kick back a few hot-spiced buttered rums ($5.50) at Trad’r Sams. The historic tiki bar opened in 1941, and while the drinks aren’t top shelf, they’re strong and consistent, like most things from that era. For this classic cold-weather drink, Sam’s bartenders use a special batter with top-secret ingredients and mix it with a healthy serving of rum and hot water. The bar itself is a little odd, a little kitschy, and more dive than date spot, but proven mastery of this delightfully warming beverage outweighs all that.

6150 Geary, SF. (415) 221-0773

TOSCA CAFE


Another warm holiday beverage that’ll help chase away worries and strife: the house cappuccino ($6) at Tosca. In reality, this drink is nothing like a cappuccino. It’s a brandy and hot chocolate concoction layered into sweet little glasses, which seems to pair perfectly with the dimly-lighted bar, its cozy red vinyl booths, and the jukebox playing Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. The stiff drinks and unpretentious bartenders add to the charm. And lucky you! Tosca serves this signature cocktail year-round.

242 Columbus, SF. (415) 986-9651

ABSINTHE RESTAURANT AND BAR


Bartender Ismael Robles doesn’t just make great drinks — he invents them. Recently he’s been making the Velvet Hive ($10), a variation on the hot toddy that’s served cold. Robles’ version is made with honey vodka, clove and citrus liqueurs, fresh lemon juice, and allspice dram. Even though this drink isn’t heated, there’s nothing like notes of honey, clove, and allspice to warm you right up.

398 Hayes, SF. (415) 551-1590, www.absinthe.com

Luna Park

During the winter months, you can’t walk past Luna Park without noticing the enticing aroma of the warm mulled wine ($7) that’s always simmering in a crockpot this time of year. Made with red wine, sugar, cinnamon, cloves and orange peel, this aromatic delight is available Thanksgiving through New Year’s.

694 Valencia, SF. (415) 553-8584, www.lunaparksf.com

Be Merry

After you’ve had your fair share of hot buttered rum and gingerbread people, we’re betting that being merry won’t be far out of reach. But in case you need a little guidance, here’s our tip: grab a friend or loved one — or 10 — and introduce them to the delights mentioned above. The best way to guarantee good cheer is to spread it.

Adieu, Amuse Bouche guy

-
0

By Rachel Sadon
amusebouche.jpg
Street-food vendor Murat Celebi-Ariner, owner of the Amuse Bouche cart and a beloved local figure in the Mission, was deported last week back to his native France, but you still have one last chance this Saturday to sample his wares and support his family.

The mini-muffin whiz was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Oct. 28 for overstaying the 90 day Visa Waiver Program. Though recently married to an American citizen, Murat failed to file for Adjustment of Status. After his detention, the couple filed for deferred action and belatedly applied for a green card, while locals united in support. However, their requests were denied and Celebi-Ariner flew back to France on Nov. 12.

His wife, Pelin, will be joining him and recently sent out an e-mail announcing a moving-out sale. She writes:

Dear Friends, Home is where the heart is. Thus, this home must change hands, along with everything in it. This Saturday from 10am to 2pm, stop in to browse our moving out sale and have some complimentary muffins and chai. We will even have Amuse Bouche memorabilia for sale 😉

3269 22nd St. #1
between Mission and Valencia

see you then,
Pelin

The popular proprietor was an early participant in the growing food cart scene and could be found around the neighborhood selling a variety of tarts, quiches, and pita pockets. For one dollar Murat would provide you with “the ultimate recession buster breakfast” – chai and a mini-muffin – alongside a sign with the sage advice to “make your mouth happy.”

Au revoir Murat… good luck charming the French with your tasty treats.

Bonus recipe: 10x cannabutter

-
5

Want to make one of the psychedelic concotions we mention in this week’s dine column? You’ll need Sandy Moriarty’s recipe for 10x cannabutter below.

What you’ll need:

1 lb. Grade AA butter
4 oz. green leaf cannabis trimmings
water
1 large stockpot

Instructions:

Place all the ingredients into the pot and fill with water. Place on the stove and bring to a boil; the boiling temperature should be 212-degrees.

Boil the mixture for 3 to 4 hours. At this point, the trichomes will melt off the leaf material and cling to the lipids in the butter. Cook this mixture until the liquid is evaporated. The cooked down cannabis leaves should resemble spinach, while the butter is a beautiful amber color with a nutty-taste. There should be no excess liquid.

Now, separate the mixture by pouring it through a strainer over another pot. The “spinach” mixture should collect in the strainer while the amber liquid drains into the pot. Press the green leaves until all the moisture has been drained. Next, put the leaf mixture into cheesecloth and wring it out over the pot of liquid.

Refrigerate the amber liquid overnight. The butter will rise to the top and become firm again. Scoop the butter from the top, and voila! – your cannabutter is ready to use in any of your favorite recipes as a butter or oil substitute. Keep the remaining amber liquid to cook with, as it will contain residual THC. Use it in sauces or to boil noodles – the sky’s the limit.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

-
0

SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Renee, Stockton and Green

Renee1109.jpg

Tell us about your look: “My style is very individual. It’s Paris/Boho.”

Events Listings

-
0
Events Listings

Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Weekly Picks.

WEDNESDAY 18

"Ancient Book of Hip" Space Gallery, 1141 Polk, SF; (415) 377-3325. 7pm, $10 includes book. A release party for D.W. Lichtenberg’s new book of poetry, a case study about girls, sex, cigarettes, thick-framed glasses, and everything that is the world of hip.

Dining by Design Galleria at the San Francisco Design Center, 101 Henry Adams, SF; (415) 597-4650. 6pm, $100. View three-dimensional dining installations and meet the designers at this preview party to Thursday night’s fine dining gala featuring cocktails, wine, and hors d’oeuvres from the city’s top restaurants.

"Meet the Future" California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF; (415) 379-8000. 7pm, $15. Attend this Scientific American roundtable debate with people working on world-changing ideas to address pressing issues, such as global health, robotics and artificial intelligence, energy, and environment. Moderated by Scientific American magazine editor Michael Moyer.

Mole to Die For Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; (415) 643-2775. 7pm, $7. Attend this mole tasting and contest where chef’s judge the mole of professional cooks and the people judge homemade moles of from the community. Cash prizes for all winners. Mole for everyone.

THURSDAY 19

Denialism Commonwealth Club, 2nd floor, 595 Market, SF; (415) 597-6705. 5:30pm, $15. Hear staff writer for the New Yorker Michael Specter talk about his new book Denialism, about how irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives.

InsideStorytime Iran Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 505-0869. 6:30pm, $3-10 sliding scale. Hear readings from Iranian-American authors Shahrnush Parsipur, Anita Amirrezvani, Mahbod Seraji, Persis Karim, and others with MC Dorinda Vassigh.

Open Source Embroidery Museum of Craft and Folk Art, 51 Yerba Buena, SF; (415) 227-4888. 7pm, free. Michele Pred discusses her mobile phone interactive art piece. Pred’s piece is a part of the Open Source Embroidery exhibition, which presents artworks that use embroidery and code as a tool for participatory production and distribution.

Isabella Rossellini Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 392-4400. 8pm, $20-25. See the legendary actress, model, and director Isabella Rossellini in conversation with Roy Eisenhardt featuring film clips and a reading from her recent book, Green Porno.

SlideSlam Gallery 291, 5th floor, 291 Geary, SF; (415) 291-9001. 7pm, free. Attend this monthly event that provides aspiring and professional photographers the chance present their work to Fotovision members, a professional from a photo agency, and the general public.

BAY AREA

Sustainability Summit and Green Gathering David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berk; www.ecologycenter.org. 4pm, $35. Start your evening by attending the Sustainability Summit, a series of brief presentations on a range of Berkeley-centric sustainability projects, followed by the Green Gathering dinner and mingling, featuring keynote speaker Robert Reich.

FRIDAY 20

Art in Storefronts Triple Base, 3041 24th St., SF; www.sfartscommission.org/storefronts . 7pm, free. Attend the opening reception for the Mission District addition to the Art in Storefronts program, where local artists create original installations in vacant storefronts throughout the city. Mission installations will appear along 24th St. between Mission and Potrero.

Bead and Design Show Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF; (530) 274-1123. Fri. Noon-8pm, Sat. 10am-6pm, Sun. 10am-5pm; $10 for all three days. Join artists, artisans, and merchants who specialize in handmade beads, ethnographic art, artisan supplies, and more at this design show featuring over 40 workshops where you can make your own jewelry.

MESS Oddball Film and Video, 275 Capp, SF; (415) 558-8117 to RSVP. 8:30pm, $10. As a part of the Media Ecology Soul Salon (MESS), where modern thinkers address the metaphysics of their callings and the nitty-gritty of their crafts, Gerry Fialka interviews writer, teacher, and performer Erik Davis.

Up from Underground D-Structure, 520 Haight, SF; (415) 252-8601. 8pm, $5 suggested donation. Attend this fundraiser to support Roots and Branches, a youth-led community-building collective in Oakland featuring performances by Baybe Champ, Bumpitythump, DJ Basta, and more.

SATURDAY 21

5 Treasures The Family, 545 Powell, SF; (415) 565-0545 x16. 6pm cocktail party, 7pm event; $125 cocktail party, $30 event. Celebrate the innovation of five San Franciscans who have contributed to the fields of printing, bookbinding, book design, creative writing, and publishing at this event . Honorees are Bob Aufuldish, Eleanore Edwards Ramsey, Brenda Hillman, Mary Risala Laird, and Dave Eggers.

SF Bike Expo Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, SF; www.sfbikeexpo.com. 10am, $10. Calling all bike lovers, check out this all-things-bike expo featuring a bike style fashion show, indoor cross race, dirt jump competition, BMX stunt show, swap, and more.

THREAD Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason, SF; threadshow.com. Sat.-Sun. 11am-6pm, $10. Get some holiday shopping done early at this indie fashion, art, and music event featuring cocktails, a clothing swap, clothing donations, eco designers, and more.

TUESDAY 24

Le Chill du Nord Café du Nord, 2174 Market, SF; (415) 861-5016. 7pm, $15. Hang out in the historic Victorian venue at this fundraiser for SF WAR, RAINN, and Free the Slaves featuring downtempo live music performances, art, and fashion.

Pot in the kettle

-
0
Pot in the kettle

culture@sfbg.com

Save for the teeny-weeny skirts and gunfights, Sandy Moriarty is like Nancy Botwin, the main character of Showtime’s Weeds. To casual observers, these women may look like regular God-fearing folk, but in their circle of marijuana smokers and edibles-eaters, both are local celebrities. Unlike the activities of her television counterpart, everything Moriarty does is legal.

Known now for best-selling lemon bars — sold exclusively through Oakland’s Blue Sky dispensary and made with her psychedelic 10X cannabutter — and as a cooking professor at Oakland’s Oaksterdam University, Moriarty’s culinary escapades with cannabis began as a personal endeavor to test the plant’s potency.

"I’ve always been interested in cooking and I was intrigued by the process of cooking with cannabis," said the Fairfield resident. "I wanted to push the plant to its limits and see what it could render me."

In the process, Moriarty discovered she could help a larger range of cannabis patients who needed stronger medication in their food. These "extreme case" patients, Moriarty said, include those with spinal injuries, cancer, and multiple sclerosis.

"The need for something stronger [than what was available] intrigued me," said the mother of two. "I wanted to help those people."

So for several years Moriarty sporadically experimented with different cooking techniques. Her aha! moment came in the fall of 2004, when she discovered that slowly simmering a mixture of butter, leaf shake, and water for a few hours would evaporate the water and render all the THC-rich trichomes off the leaves. Unlike the cannabutters she had produced before, she could smell a sweet, rich, and buttery aroma that had a nutty taste.

"I let other people try it, and when they started dropping like flies, I knew that was it," Moriarty said. "It was like — wow!"

The discovery helped the 58-year-old catapult her life in a new direction. Though still a property manager by day, Moriarty now tends simmering stockpots of cannabutter in the kitchen of her ranch-style home at least four times a week (usually in the late evening or near dawn). And since January 2008, she’s been sharing how to make her cannabutter, as well as other ways to cook with pot through oils and alcohol-based tinctures at Oaksterdam cannabis college.

Indeed, her cooking class — which is incorporated into a Oaksterdam weekend and semester curriculum that includes lessons on horticulture and politics/legal issues — is one of the most popular courses at the school. "A lot of students come just for the cooking," says Oaksterdam facilitator Trish Demesmin. "And once she gets to talking about her 10x butter, they’re all ears."

But Moriarty hasn’t stopped there. Feeling that she has conquered the realm of baked edibles — her creations, which are known for packing a potent THC punch without the ganja taste or smell, have gained something of a cult following — Moriarty is now focused on creating savory dishes such as pastas, salad dressings, and sandwiches. And thanks to the super-concentrated butter, Moriarty has been able to incorporate the green herb into dishes like fillet of sole Florentine, Thanksgiving turkey — even fried chicken. She plans to feature these dishes, along with recipes for baked goods, drinks, and vegan- and diabetes-friendly food items, in her upcoming cookbook, tentatively titled Cooking with Cannabis.

Moriarty’s brother Al Wilcox says his big sister has come a long way from her days of baking brownies filled with stems and seeds. Wilcox, who medicates every day to help his arthritis, said the greatest advantage of his sister’s food is that its strong potency means patients can eat less while watching their weight. The proud sibling predicts Moriarty could become the next Brownie Mary. "She’s done this all on her own, and she’s been real gung-ho about it," Wilcox said. "She wanted to help people, and now she is."

To attend Moriarty’s cooking class, enroll at Oaksterdam University, 1776 Broadway, Oakl. (510) 251-1544, www.oaksterdamuniversity.com. Weekend seminars and semester-long courses are available. All students must be 18+. Nonmedical cardholders are welcome.

A CANNABIZED THANKSGIVING

Want to take your Thanksgiving dinner to new heights? Try Moriarty’s recipes below.

CANNABUTTER STUFFING


1 cup cannabutter (plus an extra 1/2 cup or less to rub inside and outside of the turkey)

2 cup chopped onions

1 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup chopped parsley

1 Tbs. fresh sage or 1 tsp. dried sage

1 Tbs. fresh thyme or 1 tsp. dried thyme

3/4 tsp. salt

1/2tsp. pepper

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. clove

1 cup chicken stock

2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all the ingredients together, except for the chicken stock and eggs. Blend the mix with the chicken stock and eggs. Rub extra cannabutter on the outside and inside the cavity of the turkey. Stuff the turkey with stuffing mix and bake for 20 minutes per pound. Bake until outside of the turkey is golden brown and stuffing reached 165-degrees.

BLUEBERRY MUFFIN BARS



2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tbs. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup cannater melted

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 cup fresh or thawed frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9×12 baking pan. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. Blend the eggs, milk, sugar, and cannabutter together. Mix the flour and cannabutter mixtures together, including the blueberries. Bake for 30 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean.

Seizing space

-
0
Seizing space

steve@sfbg.com; molly@sfbg.com

San Francisco’s streets and public spaces are undergoing a drastic transformation — and it’s happening subtly, often below the radar of traditional planning processes. Much of it was triggered by the renegade actions of a few outlaw urbanists, designers, and artists.

But increasingly, their tactics and spirit are being adopted inside City Hall, and the result is starting to look like a real urban design revolution — one that harks back to a movement that was interrupted back in the 1970s.

One of the earliest signs of the new approach emerged in 2005 on the first Park(ing) Day, the brainchild of the hip, young founders of the urban design group Rebar. The idea was simple: turn selected street parking spots around San Francisco into little one-day parks. Just plug some coins in the meter to rent the space, then set up chairs or lay down some sod, and kick it.

It was a simple yet powerful statement about how San Franciscans choose to use public space — and the folks at Rebar expected to get in trouble.

“When we did the first Park(ing) Day in 2005, JB [a.k.a. John Bela] and I were just prepared to be arrested and hauled into court,” Rebar’s Matthew Passmore told us at a recent interview in the group’s new Mission District warehouse space. “But nothing like that happened.”

Instead, City Hall called. 079_realcover.jpg Rebar’s Blaine Merker, Teresa Aguilera, Matthew Passmore, and John Bela at their carfreee space at Showplace Triangle

“We got a call from the director of city greening, who said this is great, I want to meet with you guys and talk about how the city can support this kind of activity,” Passmore said. “Much to our surprise, the city was totally responsive as opposed to shutting us down and imprisoning us.”

Bela said the group discovered that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration was looking for just the sort of innovative, cool, environmental ideas that were Rebar’s focus. And that connection merged with other people’s efforts — like sidewalk-to-garden conversions being pioneered by Jane Martin, the urban gardening and bicycling movements, and the unique public art that was making its way back from Burning Man. That created a catalyst for a wide array of city initiatives, from the Sunday Streets road closures to temporary art installations that began popping up around the city to the Pavement to Parks program that creates short-term parks in underutilized roadways.

“It was a single interaction five years ago, and now we have things like Sunday Streets,” Bela told us on Sept. 18’s Park(ing) Day, in which various individuals and groups took over more than 50 parking spots around town. “It’s about reclaiming the streets for people.”

Park(ing) Day itself blew up, becoming a worldwide phenomenon that is now in 151 cities on six continents, and one that the Mayor’s Office is planning to turn into a more permanent plan, with the regular conversion of some parking spots on commercial corridors into outdoor seating areas.

“You had a few guys and a girl who had an idea and now it’s an international event,” Mike Farrah, a longtime Newsom lieutenant who now heads the Office of Neighborhood Services and has been the main contact in City Hall for Rebar and similar groups, told the Guardian.

Locally, the success of events like Park(ing) Day have changed San Francisco’s approach to urban spaces, particularly on land left dormant by the economic downturn. Rebar, the permaculture collective Upcycle, and former MyFarm manager Chris Burley plan to turn the old Hayes Valley freeway property near Octavia, between Oak and Fell streets, into a massive community garden and gathering space. Plans are being hatched for temporary uses on Rincon Hill properties approved for residential towers. “Green pod” seating areas are sprouting along Market Street and there are plans to extend the Sunday Streets road closures next year. And, perhaps most amazingly, most projects are being accomplished with very little funding.

How has San Francisco suddenly shifted into high gear when it comes to creating innovative new public spaces? The key is their common denominator: they’re all temporary. As such, they don’t require detailed studies, cumbersome approval processes, or the extensive outreach and input that can dampen the creative spark.

But San Francisco is starting to prove that dozens of short-term fixes can add up to a true transformation of the urban environment and the citizenry’s sense of possibility.

 

EVOLUTION OF THE PRANK

Rebar began as a group of friends and artists who came together to enter a design contest in 2004. Passmore was a practicing lawyer and Bela was a landscape architecture student at UC Berkeley. They chose the name Rebar for future collaborations, the first of which was Park(ing) Day.

Passmore, who had a background in conceptual art before going to law school, discovered a legal loophole that might allow for anything from a burlesque performance to a temporary swimming pool to be installed in metered parking spaces. Bela recruited Blaine Merker, a fellow landscape architecture student with whom he’d won a design competition, to join the effort.

Park(ing) Day was a hit, getting great press and igniting people’s imaginations. “We realized after we did it, like, oh, people are really getting this,” Merker said. And Rebar was off. In the following years they added a fourth principal, graphic designer Teresa Aguilera, and took on a number of acclaimed projects: planting the Victory Garden in Civic Center Plaza, building the Panhandle Bandshell from old car hoods and other recycled parts, creating COMMONspace events (from “Counterveillance” to the “Nappening”) in privately-owned public spaces, and designing the Bushwaffle (commissioned for the Experimenta-Design biennale in Amsterdam) to help soften paved urban spaces and create a sense of play.

Through it all, the group maintained its prankster spirit. When they were invited to present the Bandshell project at the prestigious Venice Biennale festival, Rebar members showed up costumed as Italian table-tennis players (a joke that mostly baffled other attendees, they said).

They told us every project needed to have a “quotient of ridiculum.” Or as Bela put it, “That’s how we know project has evolved to the right point — when we’re on the floor laughing.”

As Rebar found success, it was still mostly a side project for members who had other full-time jobs. “We were all playing hooky all the time,” said Merker, who, like Bela, joined a landscape architecture firm after he finished school. “It just got worse and worse.”

So now, they’re trying to turn their passion into a profession, recently moving into a cool warehouse office and workspace in the Mission. “We’re shifting our practice a little to have the same sort of spirit but trying to figure out how we can make that an occupation,” Merker said.

It’s also about moving from those short-lived installations to something a little more lasting, even while working within the realm of temporary projects. As Aguilera said, “A lot of the projects we started with were creating moments to maybe think about. But we’re shifting into more permanent ways to interact with the city.”

They may not be sure where they’re headed as an organization, but they have a clear conception of their canvas, as well as the traditions they draw from (including movements like the Situationists and artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark, who worked in urban niche spaces) and the fact that they are part of an emerging international movement to reclaim and redesign urban spaces.

“We’re not the originators of any of this stuff,” Bela said. “It’s like emerging phenomena happening in cities all over the world. We just happened to have plugged into it early on and we continue to push it.”

 

EXPANDING THE POSSIBLE

Rebar is strongly pushing a reclamation of spaces that have been rather thoughtlessly ceded to the automobile over the last few decades. “Street right-of-way is 25 percent of the city’s land area. A quarter of the city is streets,” Bela said. “And those streets were designed at the time when we wanted to privilege the automobile.

“So basically, there’s all this underutilized roadway,” he continued. “It’s asphalt and it’s pavement, and the city wants to reclaim some of those spaces for people. That’s a thread we’ve been exploring in our work for a long time, and now it’s elevated up to a citywide planning objective.”

The short-term nature of the projects comes in part from political necessity: temporary projects are usually exempt from costly, time-consuming environmental impact reports. Demonstration projects also don’t need the extensive public input that permanent changes do in San Francisco. But there’s more to the philosophy.

“It stands on this proposition that temporary or interim use does actually improve the character of the city,” Passmore said. “People used to think that if something is temporary or ephemeral, what good is it? It’s just here today, gone tomorrow. But I think now people are realizing that the city can be improved like this.”

And it goes even deeper than that. When people see parking spaces turned into parks, vacant lots blossoming with art and conversation nooks, or old freeway ramps turned into community gardens, their sense of what’s possible in San Francisco expands.

“What we’re remodeling is people’s mental hardware. It’s like stretching. You have to bend something a little more than it wants to go, and the next time you do that, it’s that much easier,” Merker said.

“There’s also a psychological aspect to that. When people see a crack in the Matrix open up, if you will, it can open up a whole lot more than just that one moment,” he said.

For those who have been working on urbanism issues in San Francisco for a long time, like Livable City director Tom Radulovich, this new energy and the tactic of conditioning people with temporary projects is a welcome development. “There is a huge resistance to change in San Francisco, no matter what the change is, and a lot of that stems from fear,” Radulovich said. But with temporary projects, he said, “you can establish what success looks like from the outset.”

 

BUILDING ALLIANCES

The Rebar folks have been fairly savvy in their approach, making key friends inside City Hall, people who have helped them bridge the gap between their idealism and what’s possible in San Francisco.

“We are a process-driven city, and temporary allows you to create change without fear,” Farrah told us. He said the partnership between the Mayor’s Office and community groups that want to do cool, temporary public art really began in the summer of 2005 with the Temple at Hayes Green by longtime Burning Man temple builder, David Best.

Farrah had connections to the Burning Man community, so he facilitated the placement of the temple along Octavia Boulevard, then one of the city’s newest and least developed public spaces. Next came the placement of another Burning Man sculpture, Flock by Michael Christian, in Civic Center Plaza that fall. Both projects got funding and support from the Black Rock Arts Foundation, a public art outgrowth of Burning Man.

“I saw, after some of the temporary art and special events, how it’s changed people’s ideas about what’s possible,” Farrah said. “There has been a change in the way people view the streets.”

That got Farrah thinking about what else could be done, so he approached BRAF’s then-director Leslie Pritchett and Rebar’s Bela, telling them, “I need you to look at San Francisco like a canvas. Tell me the things you want to do, and I’ll tell you if it’s possible or not. And that’s led to a lot of cool stuff.”

Livable city advocates like Radulovich — progressives who are generally not allied with Newsom and who have battled with him on issues from limiting parking to the Healthy Saturdays effort to create more carfree space in Golden Gate Park — give the Mayor’s Office credit for its greening initiatives.

He credits Greening Director Astrid Haryati and DPW chief Ed Reiskin with facilitating this return to urbanism. “He’s really responsive and he gets it,” Radulovich said of Reiskin. “This is really where a lot of energy is going in the mayor’s office. It seems to have captured their imaginations.”

Another catalyst was last year’s visit by New York City transportation commissioner and public space visionary Janette Sadik-Khan, who met with Reiskin and Newsom on a trip sponsored by Livable City and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Radulovich said her message, which SF has embraced, is that, “There are low-cost, reversible ways you can reclaim urban space in the near term.”

The Mayor’s Office, SFBC, and Livable City partnered last year to create Sunday Streets, which involved closing streets to cars for part of the day. The events have proven hugely successful after overcoming initial opposition from merchants who now embrace it.

Then there’s the Pavement to Parks program — which involves converting streets into temporary parks for weeks or months at a time — that grew directly from the Sadik-Khan visit. Andres Power, who directs the program for the Planning Department, told us the visit was a catalyst for Pavement to Parks: “She came to the city a year ago and inspired my director, Ed Reiskin.”

“We’re rethinking what the streets are and what they can be,” Power said. “It’s rewarding to see this stuff happen and to be at the forefront of a national effort to imagine what our streets could be.”

 

DE-PAVE THE CONCRETE

Pavement to Parks launched last year, a multiagency effort with virtually no budget, but the mandate to use existing materials the city has on hand to turn underutilized streets into active parks. “It looks at areas where we can reclaim space that’s been given over to cars over the decades,” Power told the Guardian.

At the first site, where 17th Street meets Market and Castro, the city and volunteer groups used planters and chairs to convert a one-block stretch of street that was little-used by cars because of the Muni line at the site.

“We bent over backward to make the space look temporary,” Power said, noting the concern over community backlash that never really materialized, leading to two time extensions for the project. “But we’re now ready to revamp that whole space.”

Another Pavement to Parks site at Guerrero and San Jose streets was created by Jane Martin, whom Newsom appointed to the city’s Commission on the Environment in part because of the innovative work she has done in creating and facilitating sidewalk gardens since 2003.

As a professional architect, Martin was used to dealing with city permits. But her experience in obtaining a “minor sidewalk encroachment permit” to convert part of the wide sidewalk near a building she owned on Shotwell Street into a garden convinced her there was room for improvement.

“At that point, I was really jazzed with the result and response [to her garden] and I wanted to make it so we could see more of it,” she said. So she started a nonprofit group called PlantSF, which stands for Permeable Lands As Neighborhood Treasure. Martin worked with city agencies to create a simpler and cheaper process for citizens to obtain permits and help ripping up sidewalks and planting gardens.

“We want to de-pave as much excess concrete as possible and do it to maximize the capture of rainwater,” she said.

Martin said the models she’s creating allow people to do the projects themselves or in small groups, encouraging the city’s DIY tradition and empowering people to make their neighborhoods more livable. More than 500 people have responded, creating gardens on former sidewalks around the city.

“We’ll get farther faster with that model,” she said. “It’s really about engaging people in their neighborhoods and helping them personalize public spaces.”

San Francisco has always been a process-driven city. “We in San Francisco tend to plan and design things to death, so as a result, everything takes a very long time,” Power said.

But with temporary projects under Pavement to Parks, the city can finally be more nimble and flexible. Three projects have been completed so far, and the goal is to have up to a dozen done by summer.

“We’re working feverishly to get the rest of the projects going,” Power said.

One of those projects involves an impending announcement of what Power called “flexible use of the parking lane” in commercial corridors like Columbus Avenue in North Beach. “We’re taking Park(ing) Day to the next level.”

The idea is to place platforms over one or two parking spots for restaurants to use as curbside seating, miniparks, or bicycle parking. “The Mayor’s Office will be announcing in the next few weeks a list of locations,” Power said. “There have been locations that have come to us asking for this.”

“The idea is to do a few of these as a pilot to determine what works and what doesn’t. The goal is to use their trial implementation to develop a permanent process,” Power said. “We want to think of our street space as more than a place for cars to drive through or park.”

Rebar was responsible for the last of the completed Pavement to Parks projects. Known as Showplace Triangle, it’s located at the corner of 16th and Eighth streets in the Showplace Square neighborhood near Potrero Hill. For Rebar, it was like coming full circle.

“We started doing this stuff about five years ago, finding these niches and loopholes and exploring interim use as a strategy for activating urban space,” Bela said. “And to our surprise, what we perceived as a tactical action is now being embodied by strategic players like the Planning Department.”

 

REUSE, RECYCLE, REINVENT

The Rebar crew was like kids in a candy store picking through the DPW yard.

“These projects are all built with material the city owns already, so we had the opportunity to go down to the DPW yard and inventory all of these materials they had, and figure out ways to configure them to make a successful street plaza,” Bela said.

So they turned old ceramic sewer pipes into tall street barriers topped by planter boxes, and built lower gardens bordered by old granite curbs.

“We are trying to be as creative as possible with the use of materials the city already has on hand,” Power said. In addition to the DPW yard that Rebar tapped for Showplace Triangle, Power said the Public Utilities Commission, Port of SF, and the Recreation and Parks Department all have yards around the city that are filled with materials.

“They each have stockpiles of unused stuff that has accumulated over the years,” he said.

For her Pavement to Parks project on Guerrero, Martin used fallen trees that originally had been planted in Golden Gate Park — pines, cypress, eucalyptus — but were headed for the mulcher. Not only were they great for creating a sense of place, they offered a nod to the city’s natural history.

But perhaps the coolest material that had been sitting around for decades was the massive black granite blocks that Rebar incorporated into Showplace Triangle. “One of the most interesting materials that we used in Showplace Triangle was the big granite blocks from Market Street that were taken off because merchants didn’t like people encamping there. They were too successful as spaces, so they got torn out,” Merker said.

Bela said they couldn’t believe their eyes: “We saw these stacks of five-by-five by one-foot deep black granite. Just extraordinary. If we were to do a public project today, we could never afford that stuff. There’s no way. But the taxpayers bought that stuff back in the ’70s and now it’s just sitting there in the DPW yard. It’s a crime that it’s not being used, so it was great to get it back out on the street.”

Radulovich said the return of the black granite boxes to the streets represents the city coming full circle. He remembers talking to DPW manager Mohammad Nuru as he was removing the last of them from Market Street in the 1970s, citing concerns about people loitering on them.

“To see them put up again in JB’s project was symbolic of where the city went and where it’s coming back from,” Radulovich said. “It’s almost like the livability revolution got interrupted and we lost two decades and now it’s picking up again.”

Back in the 1970s, Radulovich said the city was actively creating new public spaces such as Duboce Triangle. It was also creating seating along Market Street and generally valuing the creation of gathering places. But in the antitax era that followed, public sector maintenance of the spaces lagged and they were discovered by the ever-growing ranks of the homeless that were turned loose from institutions.

“The fear factor took over,” Radulovich said. “We did a lot to destroy public spaces in the ’80s and ’90s.”

But by creating temporary public spaces, people are starting to realize what’s been lost and to value it again. “These baby steps are helping us relearn what makes a good public space,” Radulovich said.

For much of the younger generation, building public squares is a new thing. As Aguilera noted, “We don’t have a lot of public plazas anymore or places for people to gather. When Obama was elected, where did everyone go in the city? Into the streets. So we’re trying to give that back to the city.”

 

CARS TO GARDENS

Perhaps the most high-profile laboratory for these ideas is the Hayes Valley Farm, a temporary project planned for the 2.5 acres of freeway left behind after the Loma Prieta earthquake. The publicly-owned land between Oak and Fell streets is slated for housing projects that have been stalled by the slow economy.

“The site’s been vacant for 10 years. They came up with a beautiful master plan. And the moment they’re ready to move on the master plan, there’s an economic collapse, so nothing is happening,” Bela said.

In the meantime, the Mayor’s Office and Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association pushed for temporary use of the neglected site. They approached the urban farming collectives MyFarm and Upcycle. Later, Rebar was brought in to design and coordinate the project.

Now the group known as the Hayes Valley Farm Team has an ambitious plan for the area: part urban garden, part social gathering spot, and part educational space. There will be an orchard of fruit trees, a portable greenhouse, demonstrations on urban farming, and a regular farmers market.

“The different topography of ramps allows for different growing conditions. These ramps are prime exposure to the south,” Merker said. “They create these areas that can produce some really great growing conditions, so it’s kind of funny that this freeway is responsible for that. The ramps actually create different microclimates.”

Most remarkably, the whole project is temporary, designed to be moved in three years. “We’re interested in developing infrastructure and tools and machinery and implements that are sort of coded for the scale of the city: a lot of pedal-powered things, a lot of mobile infrastructure, and smaller things that are designed to be useful in a plot that is only 2.5 acres,” Bela said. “Then when we need to move on, we’ll be able to do that. It’s about being strategic with some of the investments so we can take some of the tools we develop here and move it to the next vacant lot down the street.”

The project has lofty goals, ranging from creating a social plaza in Hayes Valley to educating the public about productive landscaping. “We’re getting away from ideas of turning parks into food production — it can be both,” said David Cody of Upcycle. “We want to just crack the awareness that cities can be multi-use and agriculture doesn’t mean farm.”

This is perhaps the most ambitious temporary project the Mayor’s Office has taken on. “Rebar pushed the envelope on what is possible. I told them it would be a tough one,” Farrah said of the project. But he loves the concept: “You can argue that putting gardens in temporary spaces changes attitudes.”

Symbolically, this land seems the perfect place for such an experiment. “This really is a special spot. If you look at a map of the city, Hayes Valley is in the very center, and this is right in the heart of Hayes Valley,” Aguilera said. “And right now, in the heart of a neighborhood in the heart of the city, there’s this vacant, fallow reminder of what used to be there. We’re looking to turn it into a new beating heart that brings together lots of different parts of the community.”

 

ACTIVATING DORMANT SPACES

Activating dormant spaces in the city isn’t easy, particularly for properties with pending projects. In Hayes Valley, for example, the Rebar crew was required to develop a detailed takedown plan.

“A lot of development is hesitant to get involved with these interim uses because at the end, they’re worried that it’s going to be framed as the evil, money-hungry developer coming in to kick out artists or farmers,” Passmore said. “But the reality is, they are very generously opening up their space is the first place.”

With last year’s crash of the rental estate and credit markets, development in San Francisco stalled, leaving potentially productive land all over the city. “As the city has gone through an economic downturn, like now, the city has a lot of vacant lots with developer entitlements on them, but nothing is being built right now. Those are spaces the public has an interest in,” Merker said, citing Rincon Hill as a key example.

Michael Yarne, who facilitates development projects for the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, has been working on how developers might be encouraged to adopt temporary uses of their vacant lots.

“How can we credit them to do a greening project on a vacant lot?” Yarne asks, a problem that is exacerbated by the complication that neither the developers nor local government have money to fund the interim improvements.

He looked at the possibility of using developer impact fees on short-term projects, but there are legal problems with that approach. The courts have placed strict limits on how impact fees are charged and used, requiring detailed studies proving that the fees offset a project’s real cost and damage.

“But there is other value we can give as a city without spending a dollar — and that is certainty,” said Yarne, a former developer. He said developers value certainty more than anything else.

Right now, developers have to return to the Planning Commission every year or so to renew project entitlements, something that costs time and money and potentially places the project at risk. But he said the city might be able to enter into developer agreements with a project proponent, waiving the renewal requirement for a certain number of years in exchange for facilitating short-term projects.

“Everyone wins. We get a short-term use, and the developer gets certainty that they won’t lose their rights,” Yarne said, noting that he’s now developing a pilot project on Rincon Hill. “If that works, that could be a template we could use over and over.”

Radulovich is happy to see the new energy Rebar and other groups are infusing into a quest to remake city streets and lots, and with the use of temporary projects to expand the realm of the possible in people’s minds: “Let’s get people reimagining what the streets could be.”

www.rebargroup.org

Street Threads: Look of the Day

-
0

SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Megan, Stockton and Green

Megan1109.jpg

Tell us about your look: “It’s all Louis Vuitton and I’m loving leggings right now!”

Venue Guide

-
0

AMNESIA


853 Valencia

(415) 970-0012

ASIASF


201 Ninth St

(415) 255-2742

ATLAS CAFE


3049 20th St

(415) 648-1047

BAOBAB


3388 19th St

(415) 643-3558

BAZAAR CAFÉ


5927 California

(415) 831-5620

BEAUTY BAR


2299 Mission

(415) 285-0323

BIMBO’S
365 CLUB


1025 Columbus

(415) 474-0365

BISCUITS
AND BLUES


401 Mason

(415) 292-2583

BOHEMIA LOUNGE


1624 California

(415) 474-6968

BOOM BOOM ROOM


1601 Fillmore

(415) 673-8000

BOTTOM
OF THE HILL


1233 17th St

(415) 621-4455

BROADWAY
STUDIOS


435 Broadway

(415) 291-0333

BRUNO’S


2389 Mission

(415) 643-5200

BUBBLE LOUNGE


714 Montgomery

(415) 434-4204

BUTTER


354 11th St

(415) 863-5964

CAFÉ CLAUDE


7 Claude

(415) 392-3515

CAFE COCOMO


650 Indiana

(415) 824-6910

CAFE DU NORD


2170 Market

(415) 861-5016

CAFE INTERNATIONAL


508 Haight

(415) 665-9915

CASANOVA LOUNGE


527 Valencia

(415) 863-9328

CAT CLUB


1190 Folsom

(415) 431-3332

CITY NIGHTS


715 Harrison

(415) 546-7938

CLUB CALIENTE


298 11th St

(415) 255-2232

CLUB DELUXE


1509 Haight

(415) 552-6949

CLUB NV


525 Howard

(415) 339-8686

CLUB SIX


60 Sixth St

(415) 863-1221

CONNECTICUT
YANKEE


100 Connecticut

(415) 552-4440

CRASH


34 Mason

1-877-342-7274

DALVA


3121 16th St

(415) 252-7740

DANNY COYLE’S


668 Haight

(415) 431-4724

DELIRIUM


3139 16th St

(415) 552-5525

DNA LOUNGE


375 11th St

(415) 626-1409

DOLCE


440 Broadway

(415) 989-3434

DOLORES PARK CAFE


501 Dolores

(414) 621-2936

DOUBLE DUTCH


3192 16th St

(415) 503-1670

DUPLEX


1525 Mission

(415) 355-1525

EDINBURGH CASTLE PUB


950 Geary

(415) 885-4074

EIGHT


1151 Folsom

(415) 431-1151

ELBO ROOM


647 Valencia

(415) 552-7788.

ELEMENT LOUNGE


1028 Geary

(415) 571-1362

ELIXIR


3200 16th St

(415) 552-1633

ENDUP


401 Sixth St

(415) 357-0827

FILLMORE


1805 Geary

(415) 346-6000

540 CLUB


540 Clement

(415) 752-7276

FLUID ULTRA LOUNGE


662 Mission

(415) 615-6888

FUSE


493 Broadway

(415) 788-2706

GLAS KAT


520 Fourth St

(415) 495-6626

GRAND


1300 Van Ness

(415) 673-5716

GRANT AND GREEN


1371 Grant

(415) 693-9565

GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC HALL


859 O’Farrell

(415) 885-0750

HARRY DENTON’S STARLIGHT ROOM


Sir Francis Drake Hotel

450 Powell

(415) 395-8595

HEMLOCK TAVERN


1131 Polk

(415) 923-0923

HIFI


2125 Lombard

(415) 345-TONE

HOMESTEAD


2301 Folsom

(415) 282-4663

HOTEL UTAH SALOON


500 Fourth St

(415) 546-6300

HOUSE OF SHIELDS


39 New Montgomery

(415) 495-5436

ICON ULTRA LOUNGE


1192 Folsom

(415) 626-4800

INDEPENDENT


628 Divisadero

(415) 771-1421

IRELAND’S 32


3920 Geary

(415) 386-6173

JACK’S CLUB


2545 24th St

(415) 641-5371

JAZZ AT PEARL’S


256 Columbus

(415) 291-8255

JELLY’S


295 Terry Francois

(415) 495-3099

JOHNNY FOLEY’S


243 O’Farrell

(415) 954-0777

KATE O’BRIENS


579 Howard

(415) 882-7240

KELLY’S MISSION ROCK


817 Terry Francois

(415) 626-5355

KNOCKOUT


3223 Mission

(415) 550-6994

LASZLO


2534 Mission

(415) 401-0810

LEVENDE LOUNGE


1710 Mission

(415) 864-5585

LEXINGTON CLUB


3464 19th St

(415) 863-2052

LI PO LOUNGE


916 Grant

(415) 982-0072

LOFT 11


316 11th St

(415) 701-8111

LOU’S PIER 47


300 Jefferson

(415) 771-5687

LUCID BAR


580 Sutter

(415) 398-0195

MAD DOG IN THE FOG


530 Haight

(415) 626-7279

MADRONE LOUNGE


500 Divisadero

(415) 241-0202

MAKE-OUT ROOM


3225 22nd St

(415) 647-2888

METRONOME DANCE CENTER


1830 17th St

(415) 252-9000

MEZZANINE


444 Jessie

(415) 625-8880

MIGHTY


119 Utah

(415) 626-7001

MILK


1840 Haight

(415) 387-6455

MOJITO


1337 Grant

(415) 398-1120

MOOSE’S


1652 Stockton

(415) 989-7800

NICKIE’S


466 Haight

(415) 255-0300

OLD FIRST CHURCH


1751 Sacramento

(415) 474-1608

111 MINNA GALLERY


111 Minna

(415) 974-1719

PARK


747 Third St

(415) 974-1925

PARKSIDE


1600 17th St

(415) 252-1330

PIER 23


Pier 23

(415) 362-5125

PINK


2925 16th St

(415) 431-8889

PLOUGH AND STARS


116 Clement

(415) 751-1122

PLUSH ROOM


York Hotel

940 Sutter

(415) 885-2800

PUBLIC


1489 Folsom

(415) 552-3065


RAMP


855 China Basin

(415) 621-2378

RASSELAS JAZZ


1534 Fillmore

(415) 346-8696

RED DEVIL LOUNGE


1695 Polk

(415) 921-1695

RED POPPY ART HOUSE


2698 Folsom

(415) 826-2402

REDWOOD ROOM


Clift Hotel

495 Geary

(415) 775-4700

RETOX LOUNGE


628 20th St

(415) 626-7386

RICKSHAW STOP


155 Fell

(415) 861-2011

EL RIO


3158 Mission

(415) 282-3325

RIPTIDE BAR


3639 Taraval

(415) 240-8360

RITE SPOT


2099 Folsom

(415) 552-6066

ROCCAPULCO
SUPPER CLUB


3140 Mission

(415) 648-6611

NECK OF THE WOODS


406 Clement

(415) 387-6343

ROYALE


1326 Grant

(415) 433-4247

RUBY SKYE


420 Mason

(415) 693-0777

SAVANNA JAZZ


2937 Mission

(415) 285-3369

SHINE DANCE LOUNGE


1337 Mission

(415) 421-1916

SKYLARK


3089 16th St

(415) 621-9294

SLIDE


430 Mason

(415) 421-1916

SLIM’S


333 11th St

(415) 255-0333

SOLUNA CAFE AND LOUNGE


272 McAllister

(415) 621-2200

SPACE 550


550 Barneveld

(415) 550-8286

STUD


399 Ninth St

(415) 252-7883

SUEDE


383 Bay

(415) 399-9555

SUGAR LOUNGE


377 Hayes

(415) 255-7144

SUITE ONE8ONE


181 Eddy

(415) 345-9900

SUPPERCLUB


657 Harrison

(415) 348-0900

1015 FOLSOM


1015 Folsom

(415) 431-1200

330 RITCH


330 Ritch

(415) 541-9574

TOP OF THE MARK


Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel

1 Nob Hill

(415) 616-6916

TRANSFER


198 Church

(415) 861-7499

TUNNEL TOP


601 Bush

(415) 986-8900

26 MIX


3024 Mission

(415) 826-7378

222 CLUB


222 Hyde

(415) 864-2288

UNDERGROUND SF


424 Haight

(415) 864-7386

VELVET LOUNGE


443 Broadway

(415) 788-0228

VODA


56 Belden

(415) 677-9242

WARFIELD


982 Market

(415) 775-7722

WISH


1539 Folsom

(415) 431-1661

BAY AREA

ALBATROSS PUB


1822 San Pablo, Berk

(510) 843-2473

ANNA’S JAZZ ISLAND


2120 Allston Way, Berk

(510) 841-JAZZ

ASHKENAZ


1317 San Pablo, Berk

(510) 525-5054

BECKETT’S


2271 Shattuck, Berk

(510) 647-1790

BLAKES


2367 Telegraph, Berk

(510) 848-0886

CAFE VAN KLEEF


1621 Telegraph, Oakl

(510) 763-7711

DOWNTOWN


2102 Shattuck, Berk

(510) 649-3810

FOURTH STREET TAVERN


711 Fourth St, San Rafael

(415) 454-4044

FREIGHT AND SALVAGE COFFEE HOUSE


1111 Addison, Berk

(510) 548-1761

JAZZSCHOOL


2087 Addison, Berk

(510) 845-5373

JUPITER


2181 Shattuck, Berk

(510) THE-ROCK

KINGMAN’S LUCKY LOUNGE


3332 Grand, Oakl

(510) 465-KING

MAMA BUZZ CAFE


2318 Telegraph, Oakl

(510) 465-4073

19 BROADWAY


19 Broadway, Fairfax

(415) 459-1091

924 GILMAN STREET PROJECT


924 Gilman, Berk

(510) 525-9926

NOMAD CAFÉ


6500 Shattuck, Oakl

(510) 595-5344.

PARAMOUNT THEATRE


2025 Broadway, Oakl

(510) 465-6400

RUBY ROOM


132 14th St, Oakl

(510) 444-7224

SHATTUCK DOWN LOW


2284 Shattuck, Berk

(510) 548-1159

STARRY PLOUGH


3101 Shattuck, Berk

(510) 841-2082

STORK CLUB


2330 Telegraph, Oakl

(510) 444-6174

SWEETWATER


153 Throckmorton, Mill Valley

(415) 388-2820

TIME OUT BAR AND PATIO


1822 Grant, Concord

(925) 798-1811

21 GRAND


416 25th St, Oakl

(510) 444-7263

UPTOWN


1928 Telegraph, Oakl

(510) 451-8100

WHITE HORSE


6551 Telegraph, Oakl

(510) 652-3820

YOSHI’S


510 Embarcadero West

Jack London Square, Oakl

(510) 238-9200

Those hilarious banned condom ads …

-
0

By Rachel Sadon

conddomads1109.jpg
Banned in the USA, despite our love of bang … and burnt rubber

Oh TreeHugger. You’ve made my day.

Not only did the ever-relevant green blog send up the 10 Best Condom Ads Banned in the US, but they pointed out the very real societal value in effectively publicizing contraception. Intellect, wit, and raunch — what more could you possibly ask for in a blog entry (or a Friday night)?

Author Brian Merchant points out that green living is about more than just composting and hybrid cars; overpopulation is straining the planet’s resources to an unsustainable level. Not only are Americans the world’s leading polluters, we also have an unusually high rate of unplanned pregnancies. And there are a lot of people that really loathe talking about contraception, much less see it advertised effectively.

condomad21109.jpg

It is unclear whether the ads were restricted by a regulatory agency or self-censored by marketers in the US (the article just says they were rejected for being “too sexually explicit”). Regardless, it’s pretty clear that our notoriously prudish compatriots would get more than a bit uppity at these exercises in tongue-in-cheek advertising.

Fortunately much of the rest of the world isn’t quite so unreasonable.

Gorbachev: More walls to fall

-
0

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. Today, as the Founding President of Green Cross International, he is heading an international Climate Change Task Force. This column is part of the Project Syndicate news series.

To echo the demand made of me by my friend President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Obama, “tear down this wall.”

By Mikhail Gorbachev

MOSCOW – The German people, and the whole world alongside them, are celebrating a landmark date in history, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not many events remain in the collective memory as a watershed that divides two distinct periods. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall – that stark, concrete symbol of a world divided into hostile camps – is such a defining moment.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought hope and opportunity to people everywhere, and provided the 1980’s with a truly jubilant finale. That is something to think about as this decade draws to a close – and as the chance for humanity to take another momentous leap forward appears to be slipping away.

Komeback Kink

-
0
Komeback Kink

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC MLK’s and Bobby Kennedy’s assassinations, shaken confidence in Vietnam after a bloody and vengeful Tet Offensive, Haight-Ashbury’s rapid dissolving into a breeding ground for lost and burned-out hippies pathetically clinging to the idyllic notion of a "Summer of Love," and a free Charles Manson settling in Laurel Canyon to plot the perverse and gruesome murders his "family" would soon commit. Yes, 1968 was the year the darkness had arrived. Certainly flower power had gone wrong, wilting its way toward a strong sense of paranoia that not only seeped its way into society’s psyche and politics, but into popular music as well.

Stripped in tone and oftentimes more raw-sounding than the overly-produced psychedelia that dominated the previous two years, the Kinks’ masterfully produced November 1968 classic The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society is a prime example of Ray Davies’ maturing writing skill. It especially shines as an artist’s profound expression of his own insecurities. Village Green is loaded with accounts of Davies’ vain obsessions and his fears. It’s a document of the human condition — in particular, people’s longings to leave a lasting legacy and be remembered.

Thematically, Davies works himself into a frenzy, unable to live for the moment, facing the pressures of fading British tradition (on the title track) and changes in technology ("Last of the Steam-Powered Trains"), both of which symbolize a changing of the guard and uncertainty about how the album’s protagonist fits into the world. Don’t underestimate Davies’ fears of growing old. The bitterness on "Do You Remember Walter?" is almost too much to bear. It fits well, though, making Village Green a cohesive unit. Here he criticizes an old friend who he assumes has grown old, boring, and out of shape. But his disdain stems from Ray’s fear of being Walter (i.e., washed up), and is connected to the fact that Walter has moved on in life and perhaps wouldn’t even recognize or remember his dear old friend.

With its simple and bucolic flair, "Sitting by the Riverside" seems familiar enough. The ditty should be relaxing, with its nice, easy-going melody, but Ray even corrupts something seemingly innocent with a manic "la-da-da" that chimes in on occasion before bursting to a near crescendo during the song’s outro, sounding like a bad drug experience.

Listening to Village Green‘s "All of My Friends Were There," I’ve always imagined it playing at someone’s birthday party, with — of course — all their friends present. But it seems to be more of a performance with all eyes on Davies, because he’s built it in his head to be the biggest day in his life. Once again we see his sick longing to feel love, attention, and validation, this time through the power of numbers. Unfortunately, his gathering backfires to disastrous results. It’s just as well. Somehow I have a feeling that no matter how many people were present, he still feels alone and empty.

Two Village Green songs, "Picture Book" and the album-closing "People Take Pictures of Each Other," focus on how photographs are supposed to fill some sort of void, making us seem more important than we really are — as if a photograph is necessary to validate our feelings of love for one another and emotions from our past. Davies argues that we take pictures of one another to prove our existence. At the same time, he’s caught up in paranoid visions of what his own photograph will look like when he’s an old man: "Picture yourself, when you’re getting old." Finally a bit of optimism peeks through, but in an unsure way, when he sings, "People often change, but memories of people can remain." That is to say, I can remember you however I choose.

RAY DAVIES

Thurs/12, 8 p.m., $40–$57

The Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

Information

-
0
Information

superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Apparently there’s some sort of "recession" happening, which explains all the cat-hair wigs, duct-taped platforms, sideways boob-jobs, and flask-filled socks on the dance floor. And yet, peculiarly, new SF clubs continue to open at the rate of one a week. Among the recent delectations: SOM (2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com), club impresario Peter Glickstern’s Brazilian-tinged redo of the Liquid-Pink space in the Mission; Siberia (314 11th St., SF.), an intriguing if somewhat directionless ramp-up of the old Fat City, and a relaunch of the cozy 222 Hyde (222 Hyde, SF. www.222hydesf.com), which is starting to attract some mighty piquant talent. Are there enough crisp bucks to fold and tuck into these newbies’ spangled thongs? Don’t sneeze at my wig!

DEVOTION

Good ol’ seamless sets of throwdown soulful house became a rarity in this fractional decade, and the rest seems to have done a world of good. That full-throated sound of yore is back on the rise, and former Bay Area fave DJ Ruben Mancias is bringing his joyful party back once more, hands up.

Thurs/12, 9:30 p.m., $10. Harlot, 46 Minna, SF. www.harlotsf.com

BEATS IN SPACE

I practically grew up on Beats in Space radio (www.beatsinspace.net), DJ and DFA member Tim Sweeney’s tastily eclectic show on New York’s WNYU. From Carl Craig to Faze Action, Diplo to Shit Robot, BIS’s guestlist has been a crystalline signal through the Web static. Now the 10-year-old show’s on the move, kicking off a monthly here with DJ Brennan Green and Sweeney himself.

Fri/13, 9 p.m., $5. Triple Crown, 1760 Market, SF. www.triplecrownsf.com

CLAUDE VONSTROKE

Mr. Dirty Bird Records should be credited with injecting a sense of humor into minimal techno and producing a signature Bay Area sound. Although he sticks with his usual tricks on his new album, Bird Brain — guttural grunts, jungle calls, tympani rolls, locker room jokes, and ornithological obsession — he’s still hitting a dance floor sweet spot and occasionally breaking through into beauty.

Fri/13, 10 p.m., $10 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

THE FUTURE 003

Yes, future bass is still happening, and starting to enter its baroque phase. (Luckily, wacky maestro headliner Daedelus was baroque to begin with). The first two gut-rumbling installments of this party focused on more aggressive, dubstep-related variations of the future sound. This one looks a tad jazzier, with electro-boogie aficionado James Pants and progressive warper Free the Robots looking ahead.

Fri/13, 9 p.m., $12 advance. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

MERCURY LOUNGE

It’s all about Mason Bates, the local composer whose attempts to fuse classical orchestration with laptop electronics are never less than wowza. His Mercury Soul project is mixing up a fizzy Friday happy hour, interspersing live classical performances with house, trip-hop, and jazzy downtempo loveliness.

Fri/13, 5 p.m.-9 p.m., free. 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com

BIG IDEA NIGHT

Another lollapalooza of art and nightlife who’s-who at Yerba Buena, this time taking on "The State of the Queer Nation." Yes, that’s far too much to swallow in one tipsy evening, but performances by HOTTUB, Tim Miller, Diamond Daggers, DJ Black, and more will certainly whet your appetite for funky homo-intellectualization.

Sat/14, 9 p.m., free. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. www.ybca.org

L-VIS 1990 AND BOK BOK

L-vis 1990’s videos, directed by James Connolly, are little slices of postmodern genius, positing a Soul II Soul meets Jane Fonda Workout era that never existed but kind of should have. His UK Funky sound, however, is definitely of the now, mixing tribal house beats with champagne-rave breakdowns. With fellow funker Bok Bok, he’ll bring the bangin’ Night Slugs party from the UK.

Sat/14, 10 p.m., $10. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

MALL MADNESS

I once jokingly lamented that among all the ’90s grunge revival in the clubs, there wasn’t a complimentary boy-band tribute night. STFU, Marke B.! Here it is in all its glory, a galleria-drag bonanza with a healthy and shockingly unironic dose of Tiffany, Stacey Q., and uncloseted Backstreet Boys. Accessories by Claire’s, Glamour Shots provided.

Sat/14, 10 p.m., $5. UndergroundSF, 424 Haight, SF. *

Housing cars or people?

-
0
Housing cars or people?

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has introduced legislation that would curtail the ability of residential property owners in Telegraph Hill, North Beach, and Chinatown to evict tenants and replace them with garages.

The ordinance, which is currently being reviewed by staff before it is considered by the Planning Commission, seeks to prohibit the construction of garages in rental properties that have been the site of a no-fault eviction in the past decade. Even if no evictions have occurred, owners would have to apply for a conditional use permit from the Planning Department to build the garage.

"We have seen a pattern of applications for garage installations following no-fault evictions," Chiu aide David Noyola explained.

The Ellis Act, a state law passed in 1986, gives owners the right to evict tenants if they decide to "withdraw from the rental market." The law specifies that all units in the building must be evicted. In 2005, the Board of Supervisors also began requiring landlords to pay $4,500 to each evicted tenant for relocation costs, with an additional $3,000 for seniors and the disabled.

Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenant Union, said the Ellis Act was intended to allow property owners to get out of the business of being a landlord, but "in practice it is utilized far more often by developers who are looking to rent the properties at considerable profit."

Although there are restrictions on re-renting property that has been cleared of tenants under the Ellis Act, a primary concern of tenant activists is the use of evictions to convert the building into a tenancy-in-common. A TIC is a form of joint ownership whereby multiple owners can buy the building and live in separate units.

"Often the real estate developer will try to make improvements following a TIC conversion to make it more sellable, and one of those is garages," Gullicksen said.

Malcolm Yeung, the public policy manager of the Chinatown Community Development Center, told us that "a garage generally increases the market value of a property by $30,000 to $50,000."

Yeung worked with Chiu’s office to develop the legislation after arguing in a discretionary review hearing before the Planning Commission that a particular Ellis Act eviction in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood was in violation of Sec. 101.1(b) of the San Francisco Planning Code, which states "that existing housing and neighborhood character be conserved and protected in order to preserve the cultural and economic diversity of our neighborhoods."

Following the distribution of Ellis Act notices to four low-income families, the property owner also filed for a garage add-on. Yeung successfully made the case that the eviction contradicted the Planning Code’s commitment to the preservation of economic diversity. He told us that the addition of garages "incentivizes owners to take on the financial costs of an Ellis Act eviction" and can "transform communities from long-term low-income residents to TICs, which go on the market at high value."

Gullicksen also said landlords often threaten an Ellis Act eviction and offer a buyout. "One of the benefits of the legislation is that it put tenants more in the driver’s seat when negotiating a buyout," he said. He also noted that homeowners are twice as likely to own cars as renters, which means that the conversions to TICs increase the number of vehicles in neighborhoods already congested with automobiles.

But like with all housing activity, there have been a greatly reduced number of both Ellis Act evictions and buyouts since the crash of the housing and credit markets a year ago, slowing to zero from March through May before slowly picking up in July.

Critics have decried the legislation as creating the burden of obtaining a conditional use permit and exacerbating the lack of street parking in the neighborhoods. But Noyola told us, "This problem has been around for a long time and will continue to be an issue when the market picks up again."

The legislation would also decrease the number of parking spaces that may be built with each new housing unit, part of a citywide trend. Noyola said the legislation is "progressive planning policy that prioritizes housing over parking, especially in the densest part of the city."

Music listings

-
0
Music listings

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Shareef Ali, Tenderloins, Middle Initials, Scotch and Bones Rock-It Room. 8:30pm.

All Time Low, We The Kings, Hey Monday, Friday Night Boys Regency Ballroom. 7pm, $22.

Chris Barron Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 8pm, $15.

Burning the Masses, Enfold Darkness, Dismal Lapse, Fallujah, Witness the Horror Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Tia Carroll and the Hard Work Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Jesse DeNatale, Scott Nolan Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Jad Fair, Grass Widow Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $12.

Forget About Boston, Pills and Jackets, Frontwomyn Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Javelin, Lucky Dragons Knockout. 9pm, $8.

Lawrence Arms, Teenage Bottlerocket, Cobra Skulls, Druglords of the Avenues Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $14.

Magik*Magik Orchestra, Birds and Batteries, Eric Jakabson Quartet San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak, SF; www.sfcm.edu. 7pm, $40-100. Benefit for scholarship students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; line-up also features 49 Special, Edmund Welles: The Bass Clarinet Quartet, Pacific Guitar Ensemble, Venus Loops, and Bay Area DJs.

Pete and J, Blackstone Heist Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Supersuckers, Last Vegas, Cockpit Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

Used, Almost, Drive A Warfield. 7:30pm, $29.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"B3 Wednesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Patrick Greene Organ Combo.

Blas River Trio Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $22.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Marcus Shelby Jazz Jam Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

"Meridian Music: Composers in Performance" Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell, SF; www.meridiangallery.org. 7:30pm, $10.

Leon Russell Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Cook County Corrections, Sara Judge, Hyde West El Rio. 8pm, $5.

Gaucho, Michael Abraham Jazz Session Amneisa. 8pm, free.

Halau O Keikiali’l, Kumu Hula Kawika Alfiche Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7:30pm; $10.

Julian Marley feat. Stephen Marley, Javaughn, Gully Bank Sound System Independent. 9pm, $25.

Orquesta Borinquen Jelly’s, Terry Francois Boulevard, SF; (415) 399-9554. 7pm, $15-150. A fundraiser for the San Francisco International Arts Festival featuring special guests John Calloway, John Santos, Wayne Wallace, and more.

Somerville and Keehan Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Open Mic Night 330 Ritch. 9pm, $7.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Anvil Chorus, Warning SF, Ghost Next Door Slim’s. 8pm, $14.

Ray Davies Warfield. 8pm, $42.50-59.50.

Distance from Shelter, Gnarboots, Tribe of Shadows, Noise Clinic Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $7.

Dorado, Resin 7 Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $7.

Electric Six, Gay Blades, Millions of Brazilians Independent. 8pm, $16.

Fine Frenzy, Landon Pigg, Among the Oak and Ash Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $18.

Headlights, Anni Rossi, Pomegranates Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Inflight Nymphs, Blair Hansen El Rio. 9pm, $8.

Lawrence Arms, Teenage Bottlerocket, Cobra Skulls, For.The.Win Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $14.

Loch Lomond, Dame Satan, Tether Horse Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Michael Musika, Quinn DeVeaux and the Blue Beat Review, Loyd Family Players, Indianna Hale Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $12.

New Maps of the West, Stella Royale, Catherine Anne Davis Bollyhood Café. 7pm, $5.

Off With Their Heads, Smalltown, Young Offenders, Detournement, Complaints Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Sex Type Thing Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Unauthorized Rolling Stones Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Worker Bee, Jet Age, Crazies Will Destroy You Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

BAY AREA

Widespread Panic Fox Theater. 8pm, $45.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Joe Bagale Amnesia. 9pm, $5. A tribute to Ray Charles.

Celia Malheiros Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $20.

Michael Coleman Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Graham Connah Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Laurent Fourgo Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7:30pm, free.

Lloyd Gregory Shanghai 1930. 7pm, free.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

Wally Schnalle Coda. 9pm, $7.

"SF Jazz Presents Hotplate: Joe Bagale Plays Ray Charles" Amnesia. 8pm, $5.

Shayne Steele Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $14.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Banish the Dogs Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Jueves Flamencos Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8:15pm, 9:30pm; $10-12.

Shut-Ins Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Theresa Perez and guests Duboce Park Café, 2 Sanchez, SF; (415) 621-1108. 7:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, B Lee, and special guest DJ Tomas spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

CakeMIX SF Wish, 1539 Folsom, SF. 10pm, free. DJ Carey Kopp spinning funk, soul, and hip hop.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Data Beez DNA Lounge. 8pm, $12. Chip music with Minusbaby, Trash80, Starpause, Crashfaster, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Gymnasium Matador, 10 6th St., SF; (415) 863-4629. 9pm, free. With DJ Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, hip hop, and disco.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Kissing Booth Make Out Room. 9pm, free. DJs Jory, Commodore 69, and more spinning indie dance, disco, 80’s, and electro.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mercury Lounge 111 Minna. 5pm, $4. With DJ Masonic and MarsBassMan on the upright bass bringing you groovy downtempo mixed with classical.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Motion Sickness Vertigo, 1160 Polk; (415) 674-1278. 10pm, free. Genre-bending dance party with DJs Sneaky P, Public Frenemy, and D_Ro Cyclist.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest.

Solid Club Six. 9pm, $5. With resident DJ Daddy Rolo and rotating DJs Mpenzi, Shortkut, Polo Mo’qz and Fuze spinning roots, reggae, and dancehall.

FRIDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Cartel, This Providence, Summer Set, Dares Slim’s. 7:30pm, $18.

Chemystry Set, Love, Isabel, Luke Thomas Trio Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Cy Curnin, Love Seat Trio Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $12.

Dead To Me, Grant Hart, Started-Its Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Distant Relatives El Rincon. 9pm, $5.

Foma, Like Trains and Taxis, Blood and Sunshine Rock-It Room. 8pm, $8.

Fuck Buttons, Growing Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Glassjaw Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $25.

Mark Growden Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. 8pm, $25-55.

Insane Clown Posse, (hed) p.e., Dayton Family, Mars Warfield. 7pm, $30.

DJ Lebowitz Madrone Art Bar. 6-9pm, free.

Lover!, Splinters, Bass Drum of Death Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

My First Earthquake, Generationals, Attachments Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $14.

Orange Peels, Hollyhocks Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $7.

Persephone’s Bees, Sonny and the Sunsets, Stilts, Thorny Brocky Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Pinback, Joe Jack Talcum Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $22.

Pomplamoose, Danielle Ate the Sandwich, Greet National Road Brainwash, 1122 Folsom, SF; (415) 861-3663. 8pm, free.

Psychology of Genocide, Farticus, Nerv Annie’s Social Club. 6-9pm, $5.

Raekwon Independent. 9pm, $30.

They Might Be Giants Fillmore. 9pm, $26.50.

BAY AREA

Buddy Guy, Elvin Bishop Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael; www.marincenter.org. 8pm, $25-75.

Widespread Panic Fox Theater. 8pm, $45.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Steve Gadd and friends Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25.

Lucid Lovers Rex Hotel, 562 Sutter, SF; (415) 433-4434. 6-8pm.

Mr. Lonesome and the Blue Bells Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Proteges of Hyler Jones Shanghai 1930. 7pm.

Hannah Rifkin Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm.

Lavay Smith and Her Red-Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Acoustic Grateful Dead Music Plough and Stars. 9pm. With David Gans and Dave Stein.

Boca Do Rio Coda. 10pm, $10.

Café Flamenco Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; (415) 861-9199. 8pm, $22.

Cuban Nights Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8:30pm; $19.95 with tapas.

Rapid Transit Acapella Duboce Park Café, 2 Sanchez, SF; (415) 621-1108. 7:30pm, free.

Rob Reich, Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Dawn Richardson and guests Dolores Park Café. 7:30pm, free.

Quijeremá Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-15. Latin American fusion jazz.

Sol’Jibe Mojito, 1337 Grant, SF; (415) 596-3986. 10pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $15. With DJs Jeffrey Paradise and Richie Panic spinning dance music.

Deviant Nation DNA Lounge. 10pm, $18. Rock and industrial with Kaura, Everything Goes Cold, Deconbrio, and more.

DJ T Mighty. 9pm, $8.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Fo’ Sho! Fridays Madrone. 10pm, $5. DJs Kung Fu Chris, Makossa, and Quickie Mart spin rare grooves, soul, funk, and hip-hop classics.

Future 003 103 Harriet, 103 Harriet, SF; (415) 431-3609. 10pm, $13. With DJs Daedelus, James Pants, and Free the Robots.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm. Gymnasium Stud. 10pm, $5. With DJs Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, disco, rap, and 90s dance and featuring performers, gymnastics, jump rope, drink specials, and more.

I can’t feel my face Amnesia. 10pm, $3. With DJs EUG and J Montag.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Lovebuzz Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $5. DJs Jawa and Melody Nelson spin 90s, punk, and classic rock.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

6 to 9 800 Larkin, 800 Larkin, SF; (415) 567-9326. 6pm, free. DJs David Justin and Dean Manning spinning downtempo, electro breaks, techno, and tech house. Free food by 800 Larkin.

Soulclap and Dance-off 111 Minna. 9pm, $5. With DJs ian Svenonius, Jonathan Toubin, Paul Paul, Jello Biafra, and Primo spinning some 45 rpm soul action.

Treat Em Right Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop and funk with DJs Vinnie Esparza, Josh B, and Doctor Delay.

Claude VonStroke Mezzanine. 10pm, $20. With DJ Solar.

SATURDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

AC/DShe, High Voltage, Powerage Slim’s. 9pm, $14.

*Cash’d Out, Bone Cootes, Hobo Nephews of Uncle Frank Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Crimson Ivy, Cynical Mass, Crash Faster Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $8.

Josh Damigo, Tan Sister Radio, Jordan Epcar Brainwash Café, 1122 Folsom, SF; (415) 861-3663. 8pm, free.

Dear and the Headlights, Kinch, Distraction Fit Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Destruments, Raw Deluxe Coda. 9pm, $7.

Zakiya Hooker Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Jackopierce, Creede Williams Red Devil Lounge. 9pm, $25.

Victor Jones and Culture-Versy Boom Boom Room. 9:45pm, $12.

Mission of Burma, Erase Errata Independent. 9pm, $20.

Mountain Goats, Final Fantasy Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

Or, The Whale, Hello Kavita, Brothers Comatose Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Ty Segall, Baths, Culture Kids Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Thunderheist, Winter Gloves 330 Ritch. 8pm.

Turks, Rats Eyes, La Guardia Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

White Flag Down, Aires and Graces Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, free.

BAY AREA

Widespread Panic Fox Theater. 8pm, $45.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Steve Gadd and friends Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25.

Janis Mercer San Francisco Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; http://sfcmc.org. 8pm, free.

Rob Modica and friends Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Jack Pollard Shanghai 1930. 7pm, free.

Regina Pontillo Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

Valerie Troutt and Classical Revolution Red Poppy Art House. 8 and 9pm, $12-15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Black Crown Stringband, Water Tower Bucket Boys Swedish American Hall, 2170 Market, SF; (415) 861-5016. 7:30pm, $15. A benefit for a rare form of leukemia.

Buraka Som Sistema Mezzanine. 9:30pm, $16. With DJ Shane King.

Hamsa Lila with Airto Moriera Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $28.

Johnson Girls Ship Balclutha, Hyde Street Pier, Fisherman’s Wharf, SF; (415) 561-6662 x33. 8pm, $14.

Klezmer en Buenos Aires JCCSF, 3200 California, SF; (415) 292-1233. 8pm, $35. With the Lerner Moguilevsky Dúo.

Roy McNamara Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Mystical Arts of Tibet Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 392-4400. 8pm, $25-45. Featuring the multiphonic singers of Drepung Loseling monastery.

SF Hootenenny Night Café International, 508 Haight, SF; (415) 665-9915. 7pm, free. With Quake City Jug Band, Jugtown Pirates, and Blvd Park.

Yellow Dress, Maggie Morris Amnesia. 7pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

BADNB Club Six. 9pm, $10. With DJs 2Cents, Method One, Mikebee, Push, and more spinning drum and bass.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $12. Mash-ups with DJ Tripp, Adrian and Mysterious D, and Dada.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Reggae Gold SF Endup. 10pm, $5. With DJs Daddy Rolo, Polo Mo’Quuz, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, and remixes all night.

Same Sex Salsa and Swing Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF; (415) 305-8242. 7pm, free.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

Strength in Flavor DNA Lounge. 3-8pm, $15. Hip-hop with DJ Kool Herc, two on two dance battles, and more.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Electro cumbia DJs L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok, plus Disco Shawn and Oro 11.

SUNDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Black Heart Procession, Bellini Independent. 8pm, $15.

Blacklist Knockout. 8pm, $10.

*Christ on Parade, Lewd, Eskapo, Kim Phuc Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Dr. Mojo Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, free.

Lloyd Gregory Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Grant Hart, Blank Stares, Off Campus Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $7.

David Lindley, John Hammond Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $25.

*Russian Circles, Young Widows, Helms Alee Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $13.

Sippy Cups, Frances England Bimbo’s 365 Club. 1 and 4pm, $17.

20 Minute Loop, True Margrit, Griddle Bottom of the Hill. 1pm, $8.

White Tie Affair: The Traveling Talent Show, Every Avenue, Stereo Skyline, Runner Runner Slim’s. 7pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Steve Gadd and friends Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $25.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

David Choi Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Festa de São Martinho Horatius, 350 Kansas, SF; (415) 252-3500. 6pm, $35. With a performance by Ramana Vieira and featuring traditional Portuguese food.

Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three, Sour Mash Hug Band, Shovelman Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

Los Boleros Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7:30pm, 11:45pm; $10-12.

Makru Coda. 9pm, $7.

Playing for Change Band Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 8pm, $45.

Reduced to Ruin, Hang Jones Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Seisiún Plough and Stars. 4pm.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludichris, and guest Roommate.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Green Festival After Party 1015 Folsom. 8pm, $15. Featuring performances by Dead Prez, Speech of Arrested Development, and Hard Knock Radio’s Davey D and DJs Sake One, Wisdom with DJ Skwint and Seasunz, JBoogie, and more.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Play DNA Lounge. 5pm-midnight, $30. House with DJ Ted Eiel.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Big, Round, Rad Cloud, Pine Away El Rio. 8pm, $5.

DJ Spooky Independent. 9pm, $17.

Crystal Monee Hall Coda. 9pm, $7.

Lovvers, An Albatross, Fresh and Onlys, Religious Girls Elbo Room. 8:30pm, $10.

Terry Riley’s In C, Lickets, Julianna Barwich, DJ Stereo Steve and the World of Living Sound Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Clarinet Thing Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14.

"Jazz at the Rrazz" Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; 1-866-468-3399. 8pm, $25. With the Mike Greensill Trio and Noel Jewkes.

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Homespun Rowdy, Bluegrass Jam Amnesia. 6:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blue Rabbit, Valerie Orth Band, Deborah Crooks, Tiffany Petrossi, Monica Pasqual Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Body or Brain, Finish Ticket Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

BrokeNCYDE, Breathe Electric, Watchout! There’s Ghosts, Blood on the Dance Floor DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $14.

Julian Casablancas Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $33.

Flobots Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Flood, City of Ships, Kowloon Walled City Knockout. 10pm, free.

Foxtail Somersault, Threadspinner, Tomihira Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Little Claw, Talk Normal, Short Hair Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Ron Thompson Union Room at Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $10.

Whigs, Features Independent. 8pm, $14.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"Booglaloo Tuesday" Madrone Art Bar. 9:30pm, $3. With Oscar Myers.

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

Euliptian Quartet Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm.

"Jazz Mafia Tuesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Shotgun Wedding Quintet.

MO Jazz Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Lea Grant, Andy Pratt El Rio. 8pm, free.

Slow Session Plough and Stars. 9pm. With Vince Keehan and friends.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJs What’s His Fuck, Classic Bar Music, and Denim Yeti.

Drunken Monkey Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, free. Rock ‘n’ roll for inebriated primates like you.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Shout at the Devil Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, free. Karaoke with a smoke machine and heavy metal tunes.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.


Events listings

-
0
Events listings

Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 11

Food for Thought Participating restaurants in the Mission District, SF; www.missiongraduates.org/foodforthought. All day, free. Enjoy some of what the Mission has to offer while helping to invest in it’s future at this annual dine-out fundraiser for Mission Graduates, a nonprofit that prepares Mission youth for college careers. Participating restaurants will donate 25-100% of your total bill.

THURSDAY 12

From the Hood to the House San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, SF; (415) 674-6117. 7pm, $75-500. A benefit to honor Reverend Cecil Williams’ 45th anniversary at Glide featuring Maya Angelou, Rita Moreno, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows, San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and more.

Sugar Rush 111 Minna, 111 Minna, SF; (415) 626-5470. 7pm, $60. Attend a sweet fundraiser benefiting Spark, a local youth empowerment organization that organizes one-on-one apprenticeships, featuring unlimited dessert-tastings from high end restaurants like Boulevard, Chez Panisse, Range, Humphry Slocombe, and more.

FRIDAY 13

A Country Called Amreeka Arab Cultural and Community Center, 2 Plaza, SF; (415) 664-2200. 7pm, $5-10 suggested donation. Hear Syrian- American civil rights lawyer and author Alia Malek discuss her new book A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories.

Drinking and Dancing The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF; (415) 407-0225. 8pm, free. A sport under recognized, dancing with a drink-in-hand requires coordination with your beverage, your partner, the music, and your liver. Join in the open floor competition followed by a knockout tournament. Stronger drinks awarded more points.

Farming and Food Golden Gate University School of Law, 536 Mission, SF; (415) 442-6636. 9am, $30. Attend this Environmental Law and Policy Conference that takes a look at the role law and policy plays in shaping aspects of food.

Green Festival Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 8th St., SF; 1-800-58-GREEN. Fri. Noon-7pm, Sat. 10am-7pm, Sun. 11am-6pm; $15. Discover the latest in renewable energy and green technology, savor Fair Trade, organic, and natural foods and beverages, and learn how to incorporate sustainability at home at this annual festival that integrates all aspects of environmentalism into one fun and educational event.

Masked Soirée DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF; (415) 626-1409. 9pm, $18. Enjoy a sexy soirée with live music, performances by Burlesque Deviant Nation models, suspension acts, an art auction, and a costume contest with free subscriptions to Deviant Nation magazine.

Young Workers United Station 40, 3030B 16th St., SF; (415) 621-4155. 7pm, free. Buy art, dance, and donate money to benefit Young Workers United, a nonprofit dedicated to improving working conditions of young people and immigrants in low wage, service sector jobs.

SATURDAY 14

Coats for Cubs Buffalo Exchange, 1210 Valencia, SF; 1555 Haight Street, SF; 1-866-235-8255. Starting Nov. 14 through Earth Day on April 22, 2010. Bring your real fur apparel, including trims and accessories, to any Buffalo Exchange store and help provide bedding and comfort to orphans and injured wildlife. Condition of fur is unimportant.

Golden Gala Castro Theater, 429 Castro, SF; (415) 863-0611. 8:15pm, $35. Attend this tribute to Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, appearing live in-person, featuring performances by SF Golden Girls and a "Golden Girls Gone Wild" contest with cash prizes.

Mural Walks Café Venice, 3325 24th St., SF; (415) 285-2287. 11am, $12. Tour over 60 murals in this 10-block walk organized by Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors Center. Other walking tours available, go to www.precitaeyes.org for details.

BAY AREA

A Day at Pixar Pixar Animation Studios, 1200 Park Ave., Emeryville; (415) 227-8666. 11am for VIP and 1pm for Family ; $35-149, advanced tickets required. Experience the world of Pixar films behind the scenes at this fundraiser for San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum. See art, sculptures, and other items from the Pixar archives, get a crash course on how to draw Pixar characters, and watch a selection of Pixar short films. VIP ticket holders can also enjoy special full length movie screenings, discussions with crew and staff, and discounts at the Pixar store.

SUNDAY 15

Outdoor Bootcamp Kezar Stadium Track, Frederick at Stanyan, SF; www.02athletics.com. 7am, free. Get motivated and start moving your ass at this free weekly workout session.

BAY AREA

Fur Ball Fundraiser Hopalong Animal Rescue, 5749 Doyle, Emeryville; (510) 267-1915×103. 1pm, $40. Help support Hopalong Animal Rescue at this fundraiser featuring live music, hors d’oeuvres, wine tasting, a silent auction, and special guest KTVU anchorman Frank Somerville. Hopalong offers rescue, placement, prevention and outreach programs to the community and strives to eliminate the euthanasia of adoptable animals.

MONDAY 16

Amy Goodman First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing, Berk.; 1-800-838-3006. 7pm, $15. Hear investigative journalist, Democracy Now! host, and New York Times best-selling author Amy Goodman discuss her new book, Breaking the Sound Barrier. Event to benefit KPFA radio.

TUESDAY 17

Gardening in Small, Urban Spaces San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin, SF; (415) 557-4500. 6pm, free. Permaculturist Fred Bove takes us beyond the herb garden with a discussion about the possibilities, and produce, that can be coaxed out of tiny spaces for little effort or money.


Greener ‘gasms: 5 eco-friendly sex toys

-
5

By Juliette Tang

The market for eco-friendly sex toys is growing, and in the past several years we’ve seen remarkable advances in the engineering of toys with ecology in mind. But while it’s relatively easy to create eco-friendlier dildos, cock rings, condoms, or lubes, designing and manufacturing eco-friendlier vibrating toys is much more difficult — as anything that vibrates is necessarily powered by some form of energy. The challenge is to create a toy that uses either the least amount of energy or the most sustainable type of energy possible, while still functioning just as well or better than a traditional battery-operated or plug-in alternative. Proudly, San Francisco is home to some of the hippest and youngest pioneers in the mechanics and design of innovative new sex toys.

Earlier this year, Bay Area engineering student Ani Niow created a steam-powered vibrator which, though perhaps not exactly eco-friendly, explored the mechanical possibilities of a different source of energy. Just this past week, we saw news of The Mean Green Fucking Machine, a water-powered toy designed by SFSU grad student Martin Cooper, who saw the design and market potential in creating a functional and aesthetically pleasing ‘fucking machine’ powered by alternative means.

Though Niow’s Steampunk Vibe and Cooper’s Mean Green Fucking Machine are both still in the most beta of beta stages, hopefully there will be many new developments in the alternative-energy-sex-toy sphere in the near future. And, kinky earthy types who want green vibes do have present options to choose from — all of which your humble blogger has, at the very least, seen firsthand.


Battery-free Earth Angel Wind-Up Vibrator

The Earth Angel is made of 100% recycled materials and is actually hand-cranked to power. There is a tiny dial that pops out of the bottom of the vibrator, which the user cranks for 4 minutes to store 30 minutes of vibrating potential. The vibe is not at all versatile in terms of speeds and settings, and it looks chunky, plastic, and kind of ugly, but of all the alternatives on this list, Earth Angel is hands down the most eco-friendly. The main drawback is the $95 price which, to be honest, would deter purchase by all except the most dedicated eco-warriors.


Sola Vibe, a solar-powered g-spot vibrator

This cute vibrator has 3 speeds and at full power lasts up to 2.5 hours (if you’re fine with having your vibrator sit on your windowsill to charge for 10 hours in direct sunlight). The design team had the foresight to create a g-spot vibrator, which adds to its versatility (can be used internally or externally). It’s $70, which makes it one of the least expensive eco-friendlier vibrators on the market. For emergencies when solar-charging is not an option, the vibrator also comes with a secondary wall-charger.

The pension fund evictions

-
0
The pension fund evictions

news@sfbg.com

In the wake of some big money-losing real estate deals, the California Public Employee’s Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the nation, is reviewing its investment policies. But it’s too late to help working-class people displaced by two major CalPERS investments.

In 2006, at the height of the real estate bubble, CalPERS put $600 million into real estate deals in New York City and East Palo Alto that, critics say, have led to rent hikes, displacements, and harassment of moderate-income tenants.

The pension fund invested $100 million in Page Mill Properties II, which used the money, along with a sizable bank loan from Wachovia, in a 2006 building-purchase frenzy. The outfit wound up with more than 100 buildings in East Palo Alto — some 1,800 housing units. Another $500 million went to Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty, cash that was used in the $5.4 billion deal to snag the Manhattan apartment complexes Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.

Those investments are currently teetering on financial ruin. The San Jose Mercury News reported Sept. 9 that Page Mill Properties missed a $50 million dollar balloon payment on its $243 million loan. Now the properties owned by Page Mill are in receivership, placing the landlord’s future and CalPERS’ investment in peril. (Our calls to Page Mill haven’t been returned.)

A Sept. 9 New York Times article quoted real estate analysts predicting that Tishman Speyer and BlackRock would exhaust their funds by December and face loan defaults. A recent New York state court ruling may hold the companies responsible for an estimated $200 million in improper rent overcharges.

Rent overcharges — in violation of rent-control laws — is one piece of what some have labeled "predatory equity" schemes. A May 9, 2008 Times article described the idea: buy rental housing with a lot of middle-income tenants, remove those tenants from rent-controlled units, and re-rent the places to richer people at higher rent. The outcome was supposed to be a quick, profitable return on high-risk investments.

TROUBLE IN EAST PALO ALTO


The Page Mill properties in East Palo Alto border the more affluent neighborhoods of Palo Alto and Menlo Park on the west side of Highway 101. The neighborhood is home to service workers and public employees, many of them people of color. "It’s choice real estate, no question about it. I don’t think Page Mill’s plan was to serve the low-income tenants," Andy Blue of the advocacy group Tenants Together told us.

But local officials haven’t been thrilled with the results. "We are under siege by Page Mill Properties," East Palo Alto Mayor Ruben Abrica told the Mercury News last month. The city is locked in several court battles with the real estate outfit, including two over the city’s rent stabilization ordinance.

A resolution passed by the City Council last year stated that Page Mill had imposed rent increases beyond the 3 percent allowed by the ordinance, and urged CalPERS to intervene.

In an document e-mailed to CalPERS and obtained by Tenants Together, Page Mill claims its rent increases averaged 9 percent. But a class-action suit filed by several Page Mill tenants reported increases of more than 30 percent. A 2008 injunction filed by the city against Page Mill cited increases ranging from 5 percent to 40 percent.

According to the Fair Rent Coalition’s Web site, nearly half the people affected were cost-burdened as defined by government standards — meaning that more than 30 percent of their income already went to rent. The result of the rent increases, according to the city’s resolution, was the displacement of low-income tenants from their homes.

In fact, vacancy rates in East Palo Alto spiked after Page Mill came on the scene. According to numbers crunched by the Fair Rent Coalition and based on 2007 census data, the vacancy rate reached 24 percent in 2008. Before Page Mill started buying up property, vacancy rates were as low as 2 percent. Further, there were 182 evictions between 2007 and 2009 according to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.

RAW DEAL IN MANHATTAN


The Tishman Speyer deal has gotten a lot of press on the East Coast — much of it highly critical. The two massive housing complexes were built for middle-income renters and were one of the few moderate-income communities remaining in Manhattan.

David Jones, president of the Community Service Society of New York, wrote in a Sept. 17 Huffington Post piece that it was the intention of Tishman Speyer to shove aside moderate income to make room for more affluent renters who can afford the higher rents. He called it a "classic example of ‘predator equity.’"

Dina Levy, who works with the New York advocacy group Urban Homesteading, agrees with that assessment. She told us in a phone interview that it was obvious what plans the real estate firms had in mind for the properties.

She said that CalPERS, as a public agency, should have been more careful about getting involved in this sort of investment. She told us that other bankers she talked to thought the deal was toxic and stayed away. "Why would CalPERS put money into a deal that’s predicated on displacing families?" Levy asked.

The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 23 that CalPERS is extensively reviewing its relationship with Apollo Global Management, which handled a majority of its real estate equity. The fund also issued a new policy on its dealings with placement agents.

But so far, there has been no public investigation of the East Palo Alto and New York investments. Tenancy advocacy groups and East Palo Alto have asked CalPERS to take an active role in the management of Page Mill’s property.

"It doesn’t appear that the human impact of their investments were considered at all as part of this," Tenants Together executive director Dean Preston told us.

Preston’s group is trying to get CalPERS to adopt predator-free investment guidelines — a policy that already has been instituted by New York’s pension fund.

CALPERS DUCKS


In a February letter to Tenants Together, CalPERS called itself a "limited partner in the partnership" and expressed concern over the situation in East Palo Alto, stating that it is reviewing the allegations.

But tenant advocates say the giant fund has been missing in action. "There hasn’t been anything that they’ve told us they’ve been doing or that we’ve seen them do," Preston said.

That hands-off approach appears to violate CalPERS’ stated policies. Two months before allocating funds to Page Mill, CalPERS coauthored and signed the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI). No. 2 of the six principals states: "We will be active owners and incorporate ESG [environmental, social, and corporate governance] issues into our ownership policies and practices."

CalPERS has been eyeing real estate windfalls since 2002. According to memos and letters given to us by the Fair Rent Coalition, agency staffers that year were discussing an "opportunistic real estate fund." The result of those discussions: discretionary authority given to the senior investment officer for investments up to $100 million, with anything beyond that requiring approval from the chief investment officer.

Paradoxically, the compensation package that rates the senior investment officer’s performance has no provision for the social responsibilities. This coming year’s compensation package now includes a "Best Practices" measure on ethics and risk management. But there’s still no provision for social responsibility.

The California Assembly Committee on Public Employees, Retirement, and Social Security monitors the pension fund, but CalPERS has autonomous authority over its investments. Chief consultant Karon Green told us that the committee is "going to watch to see what the board does and gauge our response based on that."

CalPERS has yet to respond to our inquiries, and hasn’t responded to our public records request for documents pertaining to what Page Mill and its CEO David Taran proposed for the East Palo Alto properties.

Similar requests were made by Tenants Together and the Fair Rent Coalition. CalPERS responded that those documents were confidential, although some e-mails were handed over to the advocacy groups the day before they were to meet with the CalPERS board in December 2008.

Although it calls itself a "limited partner," the e-mails illustrate a closer relationship between CalPERS and Page Mill. In an e-mail to CalPERS, Taran asked for a copy of the public records request made by a San Jose journalist so "we can review them and get back to you regarding what should not be produced and is confidential."

Preston points to the larger policy issue. "If there were a few bad real estate managers who were investing in this, then they should lose their jobs," he said. "But the idea that they just sweep under the rug their $100 million loss in East Palo Alto and their $500 million loss in New York, and whatever other schemes they’re involved in, is just unacceptable."

Christopher Lund, a Page Mill tenant and communications director for the Fair Rent Coalition, agrees. "They’ve gotten burned on some of these high-risk investments over the past year or two. But institutional memory is short and in 10 years when the real estate market is booming, if there’s no transparency and no oversight, this is going to happen somewhere else."

1...757677...120Page 76 of 120

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org