OPINION Much has been said about Mayor Gavin Newsom’s stunning defeat at the ballot Nov. 7. Newsom’s slate of endorsements went down in flames — from supervisorial candidates Rob Black and Doug Chan to the contenders he hoped would take control of the school board to a host of progressive ballot propositions, including worker sick leave and relocation assistance for evicted tenants. Every incumbent supervisor was also reelected, indicating an overall approval level of the Board of Supervisor’s performance. And the voters took a further unprecedented step with the passage of Proposition I, which asked the mayor to appear before the board in person once a month to discuss city policy. The voters sent a clear message that they want the mayor to work with the supervisors rather than against them.
Will Newsom respect the mandate and comply with Prop. I? It’s anyone’s guess right now. The measure is not legally binding, and he vehemently opposed it. Here are five reasons why Newsom should comply with Prop. I:
1. The voters asked him to. Newsom claims to care about the will of the voters. He cited the “will of the voters” as his basis for vetoing a six-month trial of car-free space in Golden Gate Park — even though a trial has never been voted on. Will he respect the voters this time?
2. The status quo is not working. The homicide rate, traffic deaths, and Muni service have gotten worse every year under the Newsom administration. Commissioners aren’t being appointed on time, police reform is off track, promised low-income housing is delayed, all bicycle improvements are on hold, and our roads are falling apart. Popular public events such as the North Beach Jazz Fest are under attack by a city government that can’t keep Halloween revelers safe. Meanwhile, the mayor focuses on political damage control related to his apparent loss of the 49ers in 2012 and the Olympics in 2016.
3. Newsom consistently opposes ideas coming from the Board of Supervisors but doesn’t seem to have any of his own. The homicide rate is at an all-time high and keeps getting worse. But Newsom has opposed every significant measure proposed by the supervisors, including funding for homicide prevention and assistance for victims’ families via Proposition A, as well as police foot patrols. Fare hikes and service cuts haven’t solved Muni’s problems, but Newsom sided with the local Republican Party in opposing Proposition E, which would have provided much-needed funding for Muni through an incremental increase in the car parking tax.
4. Newsom has been missing in action too long. The mayor spent almost the full first three years of his four-year term fundraising around the country to pay off his 2003 campaign debts. This busy fundraising schedule, combined with the demands of his relentless PR machine, has sent the mayor chasing photo ops in China; Italy; Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Chicago; New York; and a host of other places. The majority of the voters are now siding with progressives, the Guardian, and even the San Francisco Chronicle in asking “Where is the mayor?”
5. The voters asked him to. Really, that should be enough. No? SFBG
Ted Strawser
Ted Strawser is the founder of the SF Party Party.
Halloween
Newsom should comply with Prop. I
THE BOURNE IDENTITY
Well, Tim Burton it isn’t. Since Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands is inspired by Burton’s delightful but dark 1990 film, a comparison seems fair enough. Right off the top, Bourne’s dance musical has neither the gentleness nor the creepy underbelly of the filmed adaptation of Caroline Thompson’s gothic story. It’s coarser, more cartoonish, and fits too smoothly into the conventions of the Broadway musical.
And yet there is a lot to be said for what Bourne has done. Most important, he has made the parable his own. He tells his version of the old story clearly and with a light touch. It’s the one about the outcast who is destroyed by the civilization into which he is thrust. But it’s also a story of growth from naïveté to wisdom, a tale with a twist in the happy ending. These threads are woven into an at-times entertaining, mostly well-paced, and always splendidly performed piece of musical theater.
Edward Scissorhands (Sam Archer) is a leather-clad creature created by an inventor (Adam Galbraith) who is literally scared to death by Halloween pranksters — leaving the unfinished boy an orphan. How Edward makes his way in the world, becoming more vulnerable as he becomes more human, takes up the bulk of the story. Archer brilliantly realizes the trajectory, from stumbling through life to learning about love and pain to ultimate self-acceptance.
Lez Brotherston’s fabulous sets and costumes create a Hope Springs in which perfect tract houses and perfect families are perfectly color coded. Bourne creates amusing portraits of these homes in which the men go to work and play sports while the more or less desperate housewives keep the family machinery humming. It’s a world of sibling rivalries, raging hormones, secret lives, and unrealized aspirations. Within the stock character tradition in which he chooses to work, Bourne creates reasonable facsimiles of the kindly Peg Boggs (Etta Murfitt), the poodle-walking Charity Upton (Mikah Smillie), and the ever-pregnant Gloria Grubb (Mami Tomotani). But the scene-stealer is the local vamp, the man-eating Joyce Monroe (a splendid Michaela Meazza), who regularly cuckolds her husband (Steve Kirkham), an adoring father.
Bourne specializes in a genuinely new form of musical theater. At his best — Swan Lake, Cinderella, and Play Without Words — he creates characters and situations that resonate with theatrical truth. That’s exactly where I felt many parts of Scissorhands came up short. The big production numbers, in particular “The Boggs’s Barbecue” and “Christmas in Hope Springs,” fell flat. One sensed that Bourne, who clearly loves the energy of social dancing, has watched a lot of movie musicals. But he doesn’t give a fresh perspective on the genre. During “Christmas” I couldn’t help but think of the sparkling invention seen in the holiday party scene in Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut.
Yet there are moments when the choreography works excellently. “The Suburban Ballet,” depicting the town’s awakening and daily activities, was smartly layered and fast paced, with many clever touches. It was great fun to watch. “A Portrait of Kim,” which takes place in the bedroom of the Boggses’ teenage daughter (Kerry Biggins as the ingenue), has an intriguing premise. Deposited into this pink boudoir, a bewildered Edward admires three life-size pictures of Kim. They come alive through his yearning glances. Unfortunately, what could have been an enchanting dream ballet was shortchanged by bland und undistinguished choreography.
“Topiary Garden” was Scissorhands’ more successful dream ballet. Bourne had Edward and Kim waltzing through and with whimsically trimmed, tutu-wearing bushes. Though using fairly standard steps and patterns — I saw echoes of both Fred Astaire and George Balanchine — he deftly combined them for a first act closer resplendent with wit, charm, and emotion.
The “Farewell” pas de deux, at the end of the piece, showed just how good Bourne can be. Here the two lovers unite for the first and last time. Back-to-back, in and out of each other’s arms, they swirled and swooned and held each other. When Kim finally came to rest inside Edward’s enfolding embrace, the scissors against her chest looked like silver flowers. (Rita Felciano)
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
Through Dec. 10
Orpheum Theater
1192 Market, SF
$35–$90
www.shnsf.com
The SFPD will not reform itself
EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has vetoed legislation requiring a few police officers to actually walk beats in high-crime neighborhoods, says he was proud of the San Francisco Police Department’s action in the Castro on Halloween night. Proud? Some 800 cops were on hand, and yet someone managed to bring in a gun, shoot nine people — and get away. As we report on page 11, a lot of cops weren’t really doing much for most of the night except standing around; foot patrols (that is, cops actually mingling with the revelers, keeping an eye on things) might have prevented the shootings.
The SFPD is a mess — and the department isn’t going to reform itself. The mayor ought to be in the forefront on this, but he’s ducking — so the supervisors need to step up.
The foot patrol legislation, sponsored by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, is hardly radical and isn’t a threat to the department’s independence. The bill simply directs the department to put a few cops on the beat, out of their cars, in a few high-crime areas. It passed 7–3, with only Sups. Aaron Peskin, Sean Elsbernd, and Michela Alioto-Pier dissenting, and Sup. Jake McGoldrick absent. If that vote holds and McGoldrick sticks with the majority, the supervisors can override the veto.
But there’s immense pressure coming down on individual supervisors to change their votes, and even one member slipping away would allow Newsom’s position to hold. That’s unacceptable: every supervisor who approved foot patrols needs to vote to override the veto — and just to be sure, Peskin, who is generally good on these issues, needs to come over to the progressive side. This one modest mandate could be not only a lifesaver in areas with high homicide rates but also the beginning of some real change at the SFPD.
The Police Commission is struggling with a disciplinary issue that’s also potentially a turning point: three commissioners — David Campos, Petra de Jesus, and Theresa Sparks — want to refuse to settle any disciplinary cases unless the cops agree to make the settlement public (see Opinion, page 7). Commissioner Joe Veronese initially agreed with that proposal but has shifted his position and is offering a really weak alternative instead. That’s a bad sign for the politically ambitious commissioner; he needs to show some spine, defy the Police Officers Association, and sign on with the Campos plan.
This just in: Bill Lee, who works for Mayor Newsom and (sort of) for the airport, is up for reappointment as a planning commissioner at the Rules Committee on Nov. 9. It’s a clear conflict of interest: a city employee working directly for the mayor shouldn’t be on the Planning Commission. Besides, he’s been a pretty bad vote. The supervisors should send him packing. SFBG
Fox sucks…and so does getting arrested
By Laura Beth McCaul and Steven T. Jones
Justin Barker saw an opportunity on Halloween to denounce Fox News, but ended up in jail overnight for his effort. He was in the Castro just after 10:30 p.m. when he saw local Fox affiliate KTVU-Channel 2 reporter Amber Lee doing a live shot. He stepped behind her and yelled “Fox News is bullshit, Fox News sucks” on live television before the broadcast cut away to some B-roll footage. Suddenly, Barker found himself in trouble. “I go to walk away and three policeman come up and knock me to my knees and I get handcuffed,” said Barker, who’s been charged with battery and resisting arrest. As KTVU news director Ed Chapuis told us, “At 10:30 during a live shot, he jumped in front of our camera and practically pushed our reporter to the ground.” But Barker said he didn’t touch the Lee, is non-violent, and was simply trying to exercise his free speech rights. In fact, he says he heard the police ask Lee if he touched her and she answered “I don’t know.” The footage that aired was inconclusive, but Lee appeared composed and unmolested when the shot returned to her about 30 seconds later. Chapuis said the station will push for prosecution, telling us, “How do you know the intent of someone who step up to disrupt your live shot?” In this case, the intent seemed clear: to denounce Fox News, a network that does, indeed, in all its Orwellian “fair and balanced” glory, suck.
Cancelling Halloween is like killing Gay Christmas
By Sarah Phelan
Is San Francisco going to let a handful of gang bangers shut down Halloween?
Er, wouldn’t that be like “letting the terrorists win,” to quote our not so favorite president.
And how can San Francisco seriously expect to win the Olympic bid if the city spends the next week blabbing on about how we don’t know how to control a large crowd or successfully manage a parade?
Because a parade could have turned Halloween 2006 into a peaceful success, instead of a violent disaster.
Instead, Sup. Bevan Dufty’s last-minute effort to reap political mileage out of the ‘law and order” theme seriously backfired when things turned nasty the MINUTE THE POLICE ANNOUNCED THE PARTY WAS ENDING EARLY.
Wiith meaningful planning, beginning NOW, the community can figure out cool ways to keep Halloween alive.
As District 8 supervisorial challenger Alix Rosenthal told the press, the city’s security and safety preparation “was badly conceived, badly executed–and preventable. We should spend at least 6 months planning this. Instead Dufty waited until the end of July to start doing anything and the city says, ‘We did our best.’ It’s time for new leadership.”
A shameful Halloween
By Steven T. Jones
First of all, let me state my biases: my sweetie is Alix Rosenthal, who is running against Sup. Bevan Dufty, the architect of the city’s approach to Halloween in the Castro last night. But given what I saw and experienced last night, I feel an obligation to share a few observations with Guardian readers.
As you may have heard, there were several shootings that occurred just after the police tried to shut down the event at 10:30, an earlier than usual finish time pushed by Dufty, but a point at which the crowd seemed to be peaking in numbers. Contrary to city claims and some media reports, the police were not searching most people for weapons or alcohol as they entered the event, at least not anyone in our large group during the three times we entered the event from outside. There were certainly a ton of cops out there this year, but most of them were just standing around in groups of a dozen or more, not doing anything. I saw very few officers circulating in the crowd. Two cops on motorcycles who were doing something around 10 were rudely telling people to clear the streets and go onto the sidewalks, where other cops working sidewalk exits told us to go back into the street. That was emblematic of the obvious mismanagement that caused frustrations all night long, including streets that dead-ended and had people walking in circles in frustration.
But the point in the evening that left me feeling profoundly ashamed of this city was at 11 when a team of water trucks and street sweepers rolled in to clear the streets, accomplishing by force what the repeated announcements that “the party is over” failed to do. Why exactly were we hosing down hundreds of thousands of visitors to San Francisco? Do we really want to show an intolerant, authoritarian face to the world just as people are trying to join us in celebrating a holiday that most of us love? Judging from the reactions I saw around me among the basically well-behaved crowd, we have sullied and lowered ourselves as a city by treating people badly and with intolerance. And we spent a ton of money do it, money that could have been put toward managing the event like New Orleans manages Mardi Gras or New York manages New Year’s Eve. I love this city, but today, I’m not proud of it.
Fast times in Rock Rapids, Iowa, what really happened on Halloween Eve in l951
By Bruce B. Brugmann
As I was getting ready to do my daily blog, anxiously awaiting the political endorsements in the Savage Love column in the Village Voice (see my previous blogs), a dispatch from the San Francisco Sentinel caught my eye on my email display.
“City Plans For Safe Castro Halloween,” the headline read.
A safe Halloween? Who wants to read about a safe Halloween? I can speak for a generation or two back in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, where Halloween was the one night of the year
when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.
Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.
It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs.
After an evening of such lusty adventures, we would go home about ll p.m. and tell our parents what we had been up to and how we evaded Shinny the whole evening and they would (generally) be relieved. Shinny would just drive around in his patrol car and shine his lights here and there and do some honking. But somehow He never caught anybody or made any serious followup investigation. And the targets of our pranks never seemed to make police complaints. I once asked Paul Smith, the editor of the Lyon County Reporter, why he never wrote up this bit of zesty small town lore. “Bruce,” he said, “I don’t want things to get out of hand.” During my era, they never did.
Nonetheless, the city elders decided to keep Halloween devastation to a minimum and scheduled a dance in the Community Building, with the misbegotten idea the pranksters would give up their errant ways and come to the dance. The Casjens Gang would have none of this. In fact it was the year of the dance diversion that we made our most culturally significant contribution to Halloween lore in Rock Rapids. We happened upon a boxcar, loaded with coal, parked on a siding a block or so from Main Street, which also served as a busy main arterial highway for cars coming across northwest Iowa.
It is not clear to this day who came up with the idea of rolling the boxcar across Main Street and blocking all traffic coming from both directions. We massed behind the car and pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Then Bob Babl came up with a brilliant stroke: to use a special lever his dad used to move boxcars full of lumber for his nearby lumberyard. Bob slipped through a fence behind the yard and somehow managed to find the lever in the dark. We massed again, now some 20 or so strong, behind the car and waited for the signal to push. Willie Ver Meer climbed to the top of the car and wrenched the wheel that set the brakes. We heaved in unison and the car moved slowly on the tracks until it reached the middle of Main Street. Willie gave a mighty heave and ground the car to a dead stop, bang, square in the middle of the street. Almost immediately, the cars started lining up on both sides of the car, honking away. Grace under pressure. An historic event. Man, were we proud.
We slipped away and from a safe distance watched the fruits of our labor unfold. Shinny, the ever resourceful police chief, soon came upon the scene. He strode into the dance in the nearby Community Building and commandeered enough of the dancers to come out and help him move the car back onto its siding. We bided our time and then went back and pushed the car once again into the middle of the street. Jerry Prahl added a nice touch by rolling out a batch of Firestone tires onto the street from his Dad’s nearby store. Suddenly, Main Street was a boxcar- blocked, tire-ridden mess. Again, the cars started lining up, honking away. Then we fled, figuring we were now wanted pranksters and needed to be on the lam.
The Casjens gang and groupies have retold the story through the years at our regular get togethers at the Sportsmen Club bar at Heritage Days in Rock Rapids and at our all-Rock Rapids Cocktail Party and Beer Kegger held in the back lawn of the Mary Rose Babl Hindt house in Cupertino. We would jokingly say that the statute of limitations never runs out in Rock Rapids and so we needed to be careful what we said and ought not to disclose fully the involvement of Dave Dietz, Hermie Casjens, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Jerry Prahl, Bob Babl, Romain Hahn, Willie Ver Meer, and lots of others, some who were there working in peril, others who declared they were there safely after the fact.
Last year, just before Halloween, I was invited back to Rock Rapids to speak to a fund-raising event for the local high school. It was a a crisp clear night just like the night of Halloween in l95l and a perfect setting to tell the story publicly in town for the first time. The event was at the new community building, on Main Street, just a block or so from the old Community Building, and a block or so from the siding where we found the boxcar. I told the audience that Shinny had assured me the statute of limitations had run out in Rock Rapids and that I could now, 54 years later, tell the boxcar- across -Main -Street caper with no fear of prosecution. And so I did, with relish.
Chuck Telford was in the audience and I recalled that he had driven up to us that night, as part of a civilian patrol, and inquired as to what we were doing. When he could see what we were doing, he just quietly drove off. “Very civilized behavior,” I said. Afterward, I told Chuck I would back him for mayor, on the basis of that incident alone. Craig Vinson, then the highway patrolman for the area, came up to me and said he remembered the incident vividly because he was on duty that night and came upon the boxcar blocking the highway with long lines of honking cars. “I got ahold of Shinny that night and told him it was his job to move the boxcar and get it off the highway,” he said. Others said they had gotten a whiff of the story but were never able to pin it down. The high school principal and superintendent didn’t say much and, I suspect, were worried my tale might lead to the Rock Rapids version of the movie “Ferris Buhler Takes A Day Off.”
For years, I said in my talk, I didn’t think that Shinny ever knew exactly what happened or who was involved in the caper or how we pulled it off, twice, almost before his very eyes. Shinny retired in Rock Rapids and I saw him twice a year when I came back to visit my parents. But I never said anything and he never said anything but finally a couple of years ago I found the right moment and cautiously filled him in. He chuckled and said, “Let’s drink to it.” We did. And we have been drinking to it ever since. He calls me now and then in my office in San Francisco and he always tells the receptionist, “Tell Bruce, it’s Shinny. I’m his parole officer in Rock Rapids.” B3
Those were the days, my friends. The days of “safe” Halloweens.
P.S. I love smalltown lore and will from time to time lay out the life and fast times and wild adventures of my hometown, the best little town in the territory. I invite you to contribute your smalltown stories and lore. B3
The unholiest of holy days
Miniature candy bars before breakfast, random spashes of fake blood on my Converse, death threats, Misfits on the iPod, Freddy Krueger watch on my wrist … could be any other Tuesday in my life, really. But hot damn, y’all, it’s Halloween!! BOO-ya!
So, I was up late last night chattin’ with Captain Howdy about some of the reasons for the season. The good Cap’n suggested I post some Oct 31-friendly links for your enjoyment. In the interest of keeping my soul out of Pazuzu’s clutches, for the time being anyway, I thought I’d better comply.
Who will Dan Savage endorse in his column in the Village Voice/New Times papers? Will the Voice and other New Times papers be allowed to endorse in this crucial election?
Who will Dan Savage be endorsing in his pre-election sex column in the Village Voice/New Times chain of l7 papers?
Since his is the only endorsement that may see the light of day in any VV/NT paper (they don’t allow endorsements),
I emailed him on Friday in hopes I could get a scooplet. Dan was uncharacteristically shy. He didn’t respond by blogtime.
Savage, the editor of The Stranger alternative paper in Seattle who writes “Savage Love,” two years ago managed to slip in a Kerry for President endorsement in the last line of his last pre-election column two years ago. The crucial questions: What will he do this time? Will he be allowed to do it again?
Savage has already in his current column done more on the endorsement front than his New York paper, the VV/NT. In a note to his New York readers, he plugged a political fundraiser by writing, “I hauled my ass all the way to Philadelphia to help raise money to defeat Rick Santorum. The least you can do is haul your ass to the party at Drop Off Service…Admission is free, but it is a fundraiser. So, like, bring some funds.”
He ended his column with an even more subtle pitch to his Phiadelphia readers: “I had a blast at the Trocadero–and hey, a a shout-out to hometown hero Atrios, whom I neglected to mention when I rattled off a list of inspiring lefty bloggers. The whole country is counting on you guys to get out and vote against Rick Santorum on Nov. 2. To raise money and help get out the vote, Philadelphians Against Santorum is hosting a Halloween party at Ortlieb’s Brewery Cabaret…Free if you’re wearing a costume, $l0 otherwise. If you don’t live in Philly but would like to help defeat Santorum, go to www.phillyagainstsantorum.com and make a donation.”
I’m emailing NT Chairman and CEO Jim Larkin and Editor in Chief Mike Lacey, at New Times headquarters in Phoenix, and Voice David Blum to see if they will allow Savage to keep endorsing and to see if they will allow the Village Voice to endorse this time around (a Voice tradition)–and if they will allow the other five Voice papers now under NT aegis to endorse (Minneapolis City Pages, Seattle Weekly, Nashville Scene, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, all papers in areas with critical races). Also: to see Larkin and Lacey will maintain this ban on endorsements on their other ll papers.
I’m not hopeful in reaching Larkin and Lacey. The New York Times, in its Oct. 28th story headlined “Village Voice Stalwart Resigns In Latest Postmerger Shake-up,” ran into the Larkin/Lacey stonewall in reporting that longtime Voice CEO David Schneiderman resigned last Thursday. Schneiderman, who came to the Voice in l978 from the New York Times, told the Times that it was his decision to resign. “I knew once we’d completed the merger and everything went smoothly, that would be the proper moment,” he said, adding he had no regrets about the merger. “I felt then and I feel now that it was a very smart business decision.”
And then the Times reported as many of us have for years: Neither Larkin nor Lacey “responded to messages left yesterday.”
Smart business decision? Well, maybe, but Schneiderman couldn’t say “smart editorial decision” after Larkin and Lacey quickly gutted the Voice, cut out much of its cultural staff, and neutered its political coverage. Would the Voice be voiceless on Bush, Iraq, and other major political endorsements for the first time in memory? Thank the Lord for Dan Savage! l B3
Village Voice Stalwart Resigns in Latest Post-Merger Shake-up
VOICE BOSS GAGGED: SCHNEIDERMAN IS OUSTED BY NEW OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS
TUESDAY
Oct. 31
Music
Gomorran Social Aid
and Pleasure Club
Baptism by moonshine must be a wonderful thing, if the music of the Gomorran Social Aid and Pleasure Club is any indication. Dunk me in the river, with one hand on my head and the other on the Good Book, I say, because this, friends, is glorious release. Preaching a sweaty, red-faced gospel of saturnalian abandon, cleansing the soul through Mardi Gras immoderation, these N’Awlins-infatuated ragtime pranksters deliver sinfully divine horn-and-banjo celebrations of the good life, circa 1920. With songs such as “Whiskey Paycheck” in their repertoire, the Gomorran Social Aid and Pleasure Club will leave you with no choice but to bear witness to their holy spirit. (Todd Lavoie)
With Rupa and the April Fishes
9 p.m.
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St., SF
$8
(415) 647-2888
www.makeoutroom.com
Music
Cramps
For the best fiendishly out-of-control hell of a good time, the Cramps’ annual Halloween show is a spectacle to be revered and feared in equal measure. For sure, concert attendees will include Creatures from the Black Leather Lagoon, Bikini Girls with Machine Guns, and Teenage Goo Goo Mucks, all being incited to near-riot conditions by the nigh invulnerable Lux Interior and the divinely diabolical Poison Ivy Rorschach. Like fellow monster mashers Screaming Lord Sutch and screaming Glenn Danzig, the Cramps have a love of B-movie horror themes and adolescent fantasy, and their best songs conjure up the creepy-crawly midnight movies at the backcountry drive-in: light on the subtext, heavy on the petting. (Nicole Gluckstern)
8 p.m.
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
$30
(415) 346-6000
www.livenation.com
www.thecramps.com
SUNDAY
Oct. 29
Dance Party
Fresh/Halloween T-Dance
Sassy, slinky, and sexy costumes abound at this Halloween dance party. DJ Manny Lehman spins. (Todd Lavoie)
6 p.m.-midnight
Ruby Skye
420 Mason, SF
$20
www.freshsf.com
Event
Dia De Los Muertos Fruitvale Festival
With the theme “love, family, memories,” the Unity Council in Oakland has put together a full day of family celebration. Five stages showcase music and dance performances by local and world-renowned artists. More than 150 exhibitors and nonprofits highlight wares and services. Art and altars are on view, and the Children’s Pavilion promises to be a rewarding educational experience for kids of all ages. (Todd Lavoie)
10 a.m.-5 p.m.
International Blvd., between Fruitvale Ave and 41st Ave, Oakl
Free
(510) 535-6940
Tricks and treats with Down at Lulus
HALLOWEEN BEAUTY The Oakland salon and boutique Down at Lulus is copowered by members of Gravy Train!!! and the Bobbyteens. Seth Bogart of the former and Tina Lucchesi of the latter got together with me recently to first discuss the greatness of Davines hair care products from Italy (“If you have dry hair, they will blow your mind,” Lucchesi says), then get down to ghost boobs, hot sweet and sticky treats, and other things Halloween-y.
SFBG What are your best or worst Halloween experiences?
TINA LUCCHESI None are very memorable because I’m always pretty wasted. A funny one was seeing the Phantom Surfers open for the Cramps at the Warfield after Bill Graham died. One of my friends dressed as Dead Bill Graham and got us kicked out. Everyone was so pissed off about him stepping out of a coffin and slagging off Bill Graham and Ticketmaster. But I did get to hang out with Lux Interior and Ivy Rorschach.
SETH BOGART It’s funny to go trick-or-treating when you’re old. One time my friend was dressed up like Michael Jackson, and this lady answered the door with a baby and was disgusted that we were still trick-or-treating. He made comments about her baby, and she slammed the door in our face.
SFBG What to you is a sexy Halloween costume or look?
TL I hate all the typical ones like French maid, naughty nurse, or Catholic schoolgirl. Why can’t there be a look like sexy crack whore?
SB I think the only appropriate sexy costume is when a guy is wearing it. When a girl does, it’s so played out. A hot straight guy you never get to see naked, wearing a bikini — that’s my fave.
SFBG What’s your idea of a fun Halloween night?
TL Probably playing tricks on little kids and scaring them. I’ve always wanted to set up a crazy graveyard in front of my house.
SB No one comes to my house because it’s kind of dangerous, and I think I’m over trick-or-treating, finally. My ideal Halloween would be to experience something haunted, like a séance.
SFBG Do you have a favorite scary movie?
TL So many. I love The Wizard of Gore. I love Herschell Gordon Lewis movies and Mario Bava movies like Black Sunday and Castle of Blood. Texas Chainsaw Massacre — classic. The Last House on the Left — classic.
SB I love horror movies, but I also love haunted houses. Every year I go to, like, five. The best one is in Hollister in a cornfield — it’s so scary. When the chainsaw man comes, we all run, and a lot of people get hurt just from falling.
SFBG What are you going to dress up as this year?
TL Either Dolly Parton with extreme boobs and hair, Cyndi Lauper, or a vampire bloody majorette.
SB I think I’m going to be Teen Wolf. But I’m not sure yet. One year I was Nancy Reagan, but the mask was hotter than hell and it was making me sick. I had to take it off. (Johnny Ray Huston)
DOWN AT LULUS
6603 Telegraph, Oakl.
Call for appointments
(510) 601-0964
www.downatlulus.com
Feeling spooky, yeah yeah
› johnny@sfbg.com
This Halloween’s colors aren’t orange and black — they’re emerald, sapphire, and gold, because ESG is coming to town for the first time. One night after what people in the English village of Hinton St. George call Punkie Night, San Francisco will celebrate Funky Night, as sisters Renee, Marie, and Valerie Scroggins (and Renee’s daughter, Nicole Nicholas, and Valerie’s daughter, Christelle Polite) get everyone feeling moody, amped to tell off no-good lovers, and ready to keep it moving.
Rip it up and start again? That old Orange Juice lyric and new Simon Reynolds book title would have to be twisted to apply to ESG. It’s more like start again after being ripped off in the case of the Scroggins sisters. Sample credits don’t pay their bills, but they’re doing quite fine, thank you, due in part to Soul Jazz, the awesome crate-digging UK label. While Soul Jazz is best known for its archival work, in ESG’s case it’s proven to be just as interested in the group’s current music as in their influential early recordings, such as the oft-sampled instrumental “UFO.” On the eve of ESG’s local visit, I got on the digital horn with Renee, who lives in Georgia these days but still carries her Bronx accent and pride with her wherever she goes.
SFBG: This is our Halloween issue, so I have to ask you about ESG’s cameo appearance in the movie Vampire’s Kiss. What was that whole experience like?
RENEE SCROGGINS: Oh my god, it was fun. I was always a big fan of Nicolas Cage. He had lunch with me. He treated us so well.
SFBG: Is your family into Halloween?
RS: My daughter enjoys going out to costume parties. The best thing about Halloween is putting on a crazy costume and letting loose some inhibitions.
SFBG: Speaking of crazy costumes: ESG played the Paradise Garage. What was that like?
RS: We played there several times, but people always note that we played the closing party. That was a very sad time in ESG’s life, because the Paradise Garage was always very supportive.
SFBG: Did you have many interactions with [Paradise Garage DJ and legend] Larry Levan?
RS: He loved our music, and we loved the fact that he loved our music! When we brought in something new, he would check it out, and if he liked it, he’d give it a spin.
SFBG: Back then, there may have been women in bands, but there weren’t a lot of all-female groups. I’m wondering if it felt like you were confronting barriers or whether it just felt natural because you’re a family band.
RS: We never really thought of ourselves as a female band — we just thought of ourselves as a group of sisters. If I had younger brothers, it would have been a band with them. My mom always taught us, y’know, that we could do anything we want to do. When we wanted instruments, my mom didn’t say, “No, that’s not for girls.” She said, “You want a drum set? Here you go.”
SFBG: Did you ever encounter Klymaxx and Bernadette Cooper or like their records? It seems like they were trying to do a similar thing to ESG in a way, but on the West Coast.
RS: You mean “The Men All Pause”? Two days ago my daughter and I were playing on the radio and we talked about them. I always thought they were trying to say some important things, especially about women and dating.
SFBG: When did you first start to play music?
RS: Oh boy — at eight or nine years old. That was many moons ago [laughs].
SFBG: Do you remember what music you most loved as a kid?
RS: Sure, James Brown! The principle style that ESG writes in is the James Brown school of funk. James Brown would take it to the bridge. When he took it to the bridge, you’d lose your mind — you just wanted to dance, and you never wanted it to end.
I was a big Queen fan, still am, and so are my kids. The B-52’s, Etta James …
SFBG: She’s got family playing with her too — her sons are in her band.
RS: I know. That’s so cool. It’s good to bring the family into something you love so much. I know my daughters and nieces enjoy it.
SFBG: It makes sense that you mention James Brown as an all-time fave, because ESG is sampled almost as much as James Brown in hip-hop.
RS: I read that in a book; it said the most sampled artists were James Brown, George Clinton, and ESG. I was laughing. It wasn’t funny — for real — but it was interesting.
SFBG: Yeah, we have to discuss sampling. A track like Junior Mafia’s “Realms of Junior Mafia” on their Conspiracy album practically samples all of “UFO.” Did Puffy and Biggie pay you for that?
RS: We were paid. Junior Mafia did come to us correct. If you come correct and we’re able to negotiate, I’m happy. But if you take [ESG’s music] and I have to chase you down, and then you argue, I have issues with you.
I’m having this problem less and less, because we have a company and we went after all the people who weren’t paying us.
SFBG: Ultimately, though, you’re not really into sampling as a practice.
RS: I’m not into it all. We write original music — what comes from my heart, what comes from the inside. That’s a good feeling at the end of the day. One of the reasons why I’d stopped writing is that if people weren’t sampling one song by ESG, they were sampling another. I was scared to even put out an instrumental — I’d think, “I don’t want to leave too much loop space because they could snatch it.”
SFBG: I have to ask about “Moody,” because it’s one of my all-time favorite dance tracks. What was it like recording with [producer] Martin Hannett?
RS: I had a lot respect for him. He may have added a little reverb, but he really kept our natural sound. When we go and perform the song, we sound like the record. He didn’t molest or twist the songs or make them sound crazy.
SFBG: Having had so much experience playing live over the years, did you want to go back to that direct approach when recording [2004’s] Step Off and [this year’s] Keep on Moving?
RS: Absolutely. Every time we’re recording we want to be able present the same thing live.
SFBG: You’ve been writing songs at a fast pace these last few years.
RS: I have a lot going on in my life. When my sister Valerie [Scroggins] and I write, we write about things going around us, and I see so much since I’ve moved down to Atlanta. Atlanta reminds me of living in New York. That big-city thing has got me busy again.
I guess I like busyness, being a native New Yorker. Places like Pennsylvania and Virginia were just too quiet for me.
SFBG: What are you liking musically these days?
RS: Right now I’m working on production with some new artists. I listen to hip-hop. I listen to Mary J. Blige — Mary’s another woman who is always getting down and talking about real issues. About five minutes ago I was listening to Ice Cube. I listen to the Killers and Fall Out Boy. My heart is always going to be with whatever’s funky. SFBG
ESG
With CSS/Cansei de Ser Sexy and Future Pigeon
Fri/27, 9 p.m.
Mezzanine
444 Jessie, SF
$20
(415) 625-8880
www.souljazzrecords.co.uk
The sound of evil
› duncan@sfbg.com
Metal people scare me.
Not in an “ooh, I’m scared” kind of way, but in an “oh, that’s sad,” arrested development kind of way.
This is especially true of the black metal cabal. Black metal is supposedly the be-all and end-all of evil, and it’s just so camp that it’s silly. Everyone’s got a fake metal name (Necronomicon or Umlaut), panda bear Kiss tribute makeup (I mean, corpsepaint), and homemade nail-spike armbands. Don’t forget the unreadable band logo that looks like cleverly arranged twigs. Clearly, these are people who spend as much time rehearsing their look in front of a mirror as they do rehearsing their music in the studio, if not more.
Which is why Ludicra is one of the few bands generally classified as black metal that I’ll bother with. For one thing, the group includes vocalist Laurie Sue Shanaman and guitarist–backing vocalist Christy Cather — they’re not in the same old heavy metal boys club.
More importantly, when I want to hear heavy music, I want it to intersect with my life. I haven’t been burning churches or worshipping Thor lately. If I want to hear some fairy-tale shit, I’ll cut out the middleman and listen to Ride of the Valkyries. Alienation, loneliness, the death of relationships, and the sense of anonymity in being yet another face in a big city — this is stuff I can relate to. “Something big and bright/ Looms outside my window/ Choked with promise/ Smothered in hope/ Days plod on like machines of ceaseless ruin/ Lost in a forest of haunted buildings.” These are the opening lines of “Dead City” from Ludicra’s new album, Fex Urbis Lex Orbis (Alternative Tentacles), which quotes Saint Jerome, via Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, meaning “dregs of the city, law of the earth.” Jerome was referring to Christ’s apostles and how they were the lowliest scumbags teaching the highest truth. This is echoed in the album’s verminous cover art: restrained line drawings of roaches, ants, rats, flies, and a club-footed pigeon. The meek shall inherit the earth — or at least the urban parts — but they probably won’t be walking on two legs.
Although it’s not necessarily meant to be a concept album, Fex Urbis feels like one to me: five epic tracks, the longest almost a dozen minutes, about the entropy of modern city living. From that hopeful light outside the window, just out of reach, to “the sign that modern times is finally crashing down” in the final track, “Collapse,” the full-length reminds me of the Red Sparowes’ At the Soundless Dawn (Neurot, 2005), which, in turn, reminds me of Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi. For all its double-bass drum bombast, dark screams, and perfectly timed twin-guitar riffing, Fex Urbis Lex Orbis has more in common with Philip Glass’s score to that film than with anything released by Mayhem.
Putting in the CD for the first time, I was kind of spooked out by Shanaman’s voice. It’s an otherworldly death rattle. But when juxtaposed with both the lyrics and the relatively clean backing vocals, also sung by Shanaman, the result isn’t evil — a tone that has held so much sway over the metal community for so many years after the first, eponymous Black Sabbath album — but heavy. The music is epic without being cheesy fantasy, which makes it resonate.
I think it’d be fair to say at this point that I don’t believe in evil. I believe ignorance and delusion exist at the base of willful choices. Evil is supernatural. Ignorance is human and therefore that much scarier. Even on Halloween, nothing is going to reach out from the land beyond and get you.
Sure, Shanaman’s voice sounds evil, but when I talked to her in person, the first word that came to mind was sweet. She laughs easily, sometimes because she thinks something is funny but mostly out of nervousness, it seems. She’s a self-admitted “total choir geek.”
Drummer Aesop Hantman knew he wanted to be in a band with her since the mid-’90s, when he was in Hickey and she was in the local noise-grind act Tallow. “Here was this totally demure, nice girl that would fucking explode,” he says in a phone interview. “It was really unnerving.”
Ludicra, which includes guitarist John Cobbett and bassist Ross Sewage, are likewise unnerving. They remind you that just because there’s no bogeyman under your bed and Satan is real only to country bumpkins like the Louvin Brothers and unrepentant metal geeks, it doesn’t mean you won’t be swallowed up by forces greater than yourself: “Gone are the days of reckless vanity,” Shanaman howls as the album winds down. “Gone are the old songs from the shore…. Here’s the end of what we have dreamt of. Here’s the face of the collapse.” SFBG
LUDICRA
Tues/31, 9 p.m.
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
$7
(415) 552-7788
SPECIAL: Scary monsters and supercreeps
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Halloween is the season for self-expression in all of its many glorious forms: costumes, music, dance, art, theater, and maybe even a few forms that can’t be classified. Whether you’re a trash-culture junkie or a splatter-movie freak, a pagan ritual follower or a brazen exhibitionist, you’ll definitely find something chilling, somewhere in the Bay Area. Here’s a sampling; for more Halloween and Día de los Muertos events, go to www.sfbg.com.
PARTIES AND BENEFITS
FRIDAY 27
The Enchanted Forest Cellar, 685 Sutter, SF; 441-5678. 10pm-2am. $5-10. Silly Cil presents the seventh annual Enchanted Forest costume ball; woodland nymphs and mythical creatures are welcome. DJs McD and Scotty Fox rock the forest with hip-hop and ’80s sounds.
Hyatt Regency/98.1 KISS FM Halloween Bash Hyatt Regency, 5 Embarcadero Center, SF; 788-1234. 8 pm. $28.50 advance ($30 door). KISS Radio’s Morris Knight MCs an evening of costumed revelry. DJ Michael Erickson brings the dance mix.
Rock ’n’ Roll Horror Show Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; 820-3907. 7:30pm. $5-10 donation. Rock out and scream loud for a good cause: proceeds go to the ninth SF Independent Film Festival. A screening of 1987 B-movie Street Trash is followed by the sounds of Sik Luv, Wire Graffiti, Charm School Drop Outs, and Madelia.
SambaDa: Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Exotic Halloween Extravaganza Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF; 552-7788. 10pm. $8-10. Don’t feel like ghosts and goblins and blood and guts? How about samba and bossa nova grooves to keep your feet busy?
BAY AREA
Halloween Madness Speisekammer, 2424 Lincoln, Alameda; (510) 522-1300. 9pm. Free. Skip Henderson and the Starboard Watch offer hard-drinking sailor songs. Come in costume and get a free rum drink, matey.
SATURDAY 28
Exotic Erotic Ball Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, SF; 567-2255, www.exoticeroticball.com. 8pm-2am. $69. P-Funker George Clinton, ’80s icon Thomas Dolby, and rapper Too Short are among the musical guests at this no-holds-barred celebration. Put on your sexiest, slinkiest number and admire the antics of trapeze artists, fetish performers, and burlesque show-stoppers, as well as those of the attendees.
SUNDAY 29
Fresh/Halloween T-Dance Ruby Skye, 420 Mason, SF; www.freshsf.com. 6pm-midnight. $20. Sassy, slinky, and sexy costumes abound at this Halloween dance party. DJ Manny Lehman spins.
MONDAY 30
Dead Rock Star Karaoke Cellar, 685 Sutter, SF; 441-5678. 8pm-2am. Free. Elvises, Jim Morrisons, and Kurt Cobains deliver heartrending renditions of favorite songs.
TUESDAY 31
A Nightmare on Fulton Street Poleng Lounge, 1751 Fulton, SF; www.polenglounge.com. 8pm-2am. $5-10. The third annual Holla-ween showcases a rich harvest of fat beats, thanks to the DJ skills of Boozou Bajou.
Scary Halloween Bash 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF; 970-9777. 8pm. $10. All dressed up but not feeling like heading to the Castro? Want to hear a marching band? No, wait, come back. It’s the Extra Action Marching Band, which specialize in baccanalian freak-shows. Sour Mash Jug Band and livehuman leave you grinning beneath that rubber mask.
FILM/MUSIC/THEATER/ART
WEDNESDAY 25
Art Hell ARTwork SF Gallery, 49 Geary, suite 215, SF; 673-3080. noon-5:30pm. Free. Bay Area artists render darkness, death, and all things devilishly creepy. Sale proceeds go to the San Francisco Artist Resource Center. Also open Thu/26-Sat/28, same hours.
THURSDAY 26
Babble on Halloween Dog Eared Books, 900 Valencia, SF; 282-1901. 8pm. Free. There’s nothing like shivers up the spine to go with cupcakes and wine! Bucky Sinister, Tony Vaguely, and Shawna Virago creep you out with spooky stories and bizarre performances.
A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco’s Lost Cemeteries California Historical Society Library, 678 Mission, SF; 357-1848. 6pm. Free. Trina Lopez’s documentary tells the story of how San Francisco relocated burial grounds in the wake of the 1906 earthquake and fire — ironically sending some of the city’s settlers on a last journey after death.
Shocktoberfest!! 2006: Laboratory of Hallucinations Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; 377-4202. 8pm. $20. The Thrillpeddlers are back with a gross-out lover’s delight: public execution, surgery, and taxidermy in three tales of unspeakable horror. Also Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm.
FRIDAY 27
BATS Improv/True Fiction Magazine’s Annual Halloween Show Bayfront Theater, 8350 Fort Mason Center, SF; www.improv.org. 8pm. $18 ($15 advance). Madcap improvisational comics of True Fiction Magazine transform audience suggestions into hilariously bizarre pulp fiction–inspired skits. In the spirit of the season, TFM is sure to throw ghoulish horror into the mix. Also Sat/28.
Hallowe’en at Tina’s Café Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; 581-1600. 9pm. Free. What’s Halloween in San Francisco without any drag? Before you consider the sad possibilities, let Tina’s Café banish those thoughts with a deliciously campy drag queen cabaret show. Mrs. Trauma Flintstone MCs.
Rural Rampage Double Feature Alliance Française de San Francisco, 1345 Bush, SF; www.ham-o-rama.com. 7:30pm. Free. Those midnight movie aficionados at Incredibly Strange Picture Show unreel a shriekingly tasty lineup from the “scary redneck” genre: Two Thousand Maniacs and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
SATURDAY 28
11th Annual Soapbox Pre-Race Party/Halloween Show El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; 282-3325. 9pm. $7. What better way is there to get revved up for the Oct. 29 Soapbox Derby in Bernal Heights? With a full evening of good ’n’ greasy garage rock and rockabilly, thanks to the All Time Highs, Teenage Harlets, and the Phenomenauts, this party gets you in touch with your inner speed demon.
Pirate Cat Radio Halloween Bash Li Po Cocktail Lounge, 916 Grant, SF; www.piratecatradio.com. 8pm. $5. The community radio station presents an evening of crazy rock mayhem with Desperation Squad, the band now famous for getting shot down on TV’s America’s Got Talent! Wealthy Whore Entertainment, the Skoalkans, and Pillows also perform.
Shadow Circus Vaudeville Theatre Kimo’s, 1351 Polk, SF; p2.hostingprod.com/@shadowcircus.com. 9pm. $5. Shadow Circus Creature Theatre hosts a variety show of ukulele riffs, comedy, burlesque, and filthy-mouthed puppets.
Spiral Dance Kezar Pavilion, Golden Gate Park, 755 Stanyan, SF; www.reclaiming.org. 6pm. Free. Reclaiming, an international group observing pagan traditions, celebrates its 27th annual Spiral Dance with a magical ritual incorporating installations, drama, and a choral performance.
BAY AREA
Flamenco Halloween La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 849-2568, ext. 20. 8:30pm. $15. Flametal brings the evil to flamenco with mastermind Benjamin Woods’s fusion of metal and the saddest music in the world.
Murder Ballads Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 841-0188. 9pm. $8. Murder, misfortune, and love gone really, really wrong — all sung by an impressive array of garage rockers, accordionists, and female folk-metal songstresses. There’s even a duo who specializes in suicide songs! Dress up so no one can recognize you weeping into your beer.
SUNDAY 29
The Elm Street Murders Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF; www.myspace.com/theelmstmurders. 7:30pm. $20. Loosely based on A Nightmare on Elm Street, this multimedia interactive stage show promises heaping helpings of splatter.
MONDAY 30
The Creature Magic Theatre, building D, Fort Mason Center, SF; 731-4922. 8pm. Free. Reservations required. Black Box Theatre Company gives a single performance before a studio audience of their new podcast adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankensten. This version tells the story from the monster’s point of view.
Independent Exposure 2006: Halloweird Edition 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF; 447-9750. 8pm. $6. Microcinema International assembles a festively creepy collection of short films from around the world, focusing on the spooky, unsettling, and just plain gross.
TUESDAY 31
Bat Boy: The Musical School of the Arts Theater, 555 Portola, SF; 651-4521. 7pm. $20. It’s back: a Halloween preview performance of the trials and tribulations of everyone’s favorite National Enquirer icon, Bat Boy. Camp doesn’t get any better than this.
Cramps Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF; 346-6000. 8pm. $30. Don’t get caught in the goo-goo muck. The Demolition Doll Rods and the Groovie Ghoulies also whip you up into a rock ’n’ roll frenzy.
One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil) San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut, SF; 771-7020. 7:30pm. Free. Before the Rolling Stones became some of the richest people on earth, Mick, Keith, and the boys dabbled on the dark side. At a rare screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One, you get a chance to see them at the height of their flirtation with evil, performing the still-mesmerizing “Sympathy for the Devil.”
EVENTS/FESTIVALS/KID STUFF
FRIDAY 27
Haunted Haight Walking Tour Begins at Coffee to the People, 1206 Masonic, SF; 863-1416. 7pm. $20. How else can you explain all of those supernatural presences drifting between the smoke shops and shoe stores? Here’s a chance to find out about the more lurid chapters in the neighborhood’s history. Also Sat/28-Tues/31, 7pm.
SATURDAY 28
Boo at the Zoo San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo, SF; 753-7071. 10am-3pm. Free with zoo admission. Costumed kiddies can check out the Haunted Nature Trail and the Creepy Crawly Critters exhibit. Live music, interactive booths, games, and prizes keep little ghosts and goblins delighted.
Children’s Halloween Hootenanny Stanyan and Waller, SF; www.haightstreetfair.org. 11:30am-5pm. Free. The Haight Ashbury Street Fair folks provide children ages 2 to 10 with games, activities, theater, and food. Costumes are encouraged.
Family Halloween Day Randall Museum, 199 Museum, SF; 554-9600. 10am-2pm. Free. Trick-or-treaters play games, carve pumpkins, create creepy crafts, and take part in the costume parade. Jackie Jones amazes with a musical saw and dancing cat; Brian Scott, a magic show.
Hallo-green Party Crissy Field Center, 603 Mason, SF; 561-7752. 10am-2pm. $8. It’s never too early to teach your children about environmentalism. The party includes a costume contest and a chance to bob for organic apples.
House of Toxic Horrors Crissy Field Center, 603 Mason, SF; 561-7752. 10am-2pm and 4-8pm, $8. Ages 9 and older. No, it’s not a Superfund site, but it should be equally educational: the center’s first haunted house addresses the scary world of environmental horror. Sludge and smog lurk behind every corner.
BAY AREA
Boo at the Zoo Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links, Oakl; (510) 632-9525. 10am-3pm. Free with zoo admission. Dress up the kids and bring them over to the zoo for scavenger hunts, crafts, rides on the Boo Choo Choo Train, puppet shows, and musical performances. Also Sun/29, 10am-3pm.
SUNDAY 29
Halloween’s True Meaning Shotwell Studios, 3252-A 19th St., SF; 289-2000. 1-3pm, $5-15 sliding scale. Kids are encouraged to come in costume for this afternoon of interactive theater led by Christina Lewis of the Clown School. Enjoy Halloween history, storytelling, role-playing, and face-painting.
Pet Pride Day Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; 554-9427. 11am-3pm. Free. Dress up your pet in something ridiculous and head down to Golden Gate Park to laugh at all of the other displeased pups! The pet costume contest is always a blast, as is the dog-trick competition.
BAY AREA
Haunted Harbor Festival and Parade Jack London Square, Oakl; 1-866-295-9853. 4-8pm. Free. Families can check out live entertainment, games, crafts, activities, and prizes. The extravagantly decked-out boats in the parade are not to be missed.
Rock Paper Scissors’ Annual Street Scare Block Party 23rd Ave. and Telegraph, Oakl; www.rpscollective.com. Noon-5pm. Free. Who doesn’t love block parties? The kid-friendly blowout has something for everyone: fortune-telling, craft-making, pumpkin-carving, and all sorts of wacky games and prizes. And barbecue — witches love a good barbecue.
MONDAY 30
Halloween Heroes Benefit Exploratorium, Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon, SF; (650) 321-4142, www.wenderweis.org. 6:30pm. $185 for a parent and child. A benefit for the Exploratorium Children’s Educational Outreach Program and the Junior Giants Baseball Program, this lavish costume party for kids promises to be equally fun for the parents. Many of the exhibits are turned into craft-making and trick-or-treat stations.
TUESDAY 31
Halloween in the Castro Market and Castro, www.halloweeninthecastro.com. 7pm-midnight. $5 suggested donation. You and 250,000 of your new best friends — reveling in the streets and getting down to thumping beats. Don’t even think of driving to get there, and don’t forget: no drinking in the streets.
Vampire Tour of San Francisco Begins at California and Taylor, SF; (650) 279-1840, www.sfvampiretour.com. 8pm. $20. This isn’t Transylvania, but San Francisco has had its share of vampires. Just ask Mina Harker, your fearless leader, if you dare take this tour.
DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS
ONGOING
BAY AREA
‘Laughing Bones/ Weeping Hearts’ Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, Oakl; (510) 238-2200. Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm. $8. Guest curator Carol Marie Garcia has assembled a vibrant collection of installations produced by local artists, schools, and community groups, all celebrating the dead while acknowledging the sorrow of those left behind. Through Dec. 3.
THURSDAY NOV. 2
Death and Rebirth Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center, 2981 24th St, SF; 334-4091. 7-10pm. Free. Precita Eyes Muralists will be celebrating the work of founder Luis Cervantes with a breathtaking mural exhibit and celebration.
Día De Los Muertos Procession and Outdoor Altar Exhibit 24th St and Bryant, SF; www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 7pm. Free. Thousands of families, artists, and activists form a procession to honor the dead and celebrate life, ending at the Festival of Altars in Garfield Park, at 26th Street and Harrison. Local artists have created large community altars at the park; the public is invited to bring candles, flowers, and offerings.
Fiesta De Los Huesos’ Gala Opening Reception Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; 643-5001. 6-11pm. $5. Curator Patricia Rodriguez has put together a family-oriented party, with musical performances, mask carving, sugar skull–making, videos, and other tempting creations among the exhibits, altars, and installations. The exhibition opens Oct. 27.
BAY AREA
Día De Los Muertos Benefit Concert 2232 MLK, 2232 Martin Luther King Jr., Oakl; www.2232mlk.com. 7pm. $8-20 sliding scale. Hosted by the Chiapas Support Committee, this benefit concert features Fuga, los Nadies, la Plebe, and DJ Rico. Early arrivals get free pan dulce and hot chocolate.
SUNDAY NOV. 5
Dia De Los Muertos Family Festival Randall Museum, 199 Museum, SF; 554-9681. 1-5pm. $100 and up for family of five. The family event benefits the museum’s Toddler Treehouse and other toddler programs. Arts and crafts, food, and entertainment make this a rewarding educational experience for kids. Attendees learn how to make masks and sugar skulls and to decorate an altar. Los Boleros provide festive entertainment.
BAY AREA
Día De Los Muertos Fruitvale Festival International Blvd., between Fruitvale Ave and 41st Ave, Oakl; (510) 535-6940. 10am-5pm. Free. With the theme “love, family, memories,” the Unity Council in Oakland has put together a full day of family celebration. Five stages showcase music and dance performances by local and world-renowned artists. More than 150 exhibitors and nonprofits highlight wares and services. Art and altars are on view, and the Children’s Pavilion promises to be a rewarding educational experience for kids of all ages.
THURSDAY NOV. 9
Mole to Die For Mission Cultural Center For Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; 643-5001. 7-10pm. $5. Try it all at this mole feeding-frenzy and vote for your favorite.
SPECIAL: Great bad ideas for Halloween costumes
Strapped for a costume on the most unhallowed of unholy days? Envious of those oh-so-topical and on-point costumes of yesteryear — remember that post-9/11 walking bag of anthrax and those Royal Tenenbaums? — but eager to put the Governator drag to bed? Here are some quick, easy, bad-taste costumes that will make you the hit of the Halloween street parade — or have ghosts and goblins racing away from you in utter fear. (Cheryl Eddy and Kimberly Chun)
#1
Crikey! It doesn’t get much tackier than this Steve Irwin ’n’ stingray combo. Kids and grown-ups alike will stare you down with white-hot horror when you strut around in your khaki ensemble with a pissed-off sea creature piercing your chest. Too soon? Hell, no. If Irwin’s eight-year-old can get her own Discovery Kids television show, you can certainly make sport of her nature-loving pop’s freaky demise. Group costume idea: bring along Roy Horn and Montecore, and Timothy Treadwell and the Big Red Machine, and you’ve got your very own When Animals Attack all-star team!
#2
Frankly, we think those Vanity Fair photos were as faked as the moon landing. With Americans still unsure about whether Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are an actual couple (despite Us Weekly’s breathless anticipation of the most E-metered wedding ceremony since John Travolta and Kelly Preston got hitched), the whole baby Suri thing just feels a bit suspect. Kick the formerly untouchable box office champ while he’s down by donning Cruise garb (maybe you have a leather jacket and Wayfarers left over from last year’s couch-vaulting costume?) and bringing li’l Suri out for her first trick-or-treating experience. It’s clear that it’ll be out of this world!
#3
Nothing says “I want candy!” like a Kim Jong Il costume, especially if you’re packing a nuke for added encouragement. So little is known about North Korea’s boss that you can insert your own cult of personality into Kim’s mystique (suggested background research: Team America: World Police). Pass the Hennessy and make sure you insist everyone refer to you as “Dear Leader,” and by all means get that pompadour as high as gravity will allow. Nobody knows how to party like the Axis of Evil, after all.
Bloody pages of horror!
Probably the number one question I get asked in life (besides “Yo, Eddy, what the hell is on that sandwich?”) is “What’s your favorite horror film?” My knee-jerk response is, of course, Halloween — I’m obsessed with John Carpenter, Donald Pleasence is nothing but fun to watch, and though I have the entire movie memorized, I never, ever get bored of it.
“The evil is gone from here!”
But every once in awhile — even at this time of year, when all’s I wanna do is mainline candy corn and park my ass at every dang midnite-movie spook show in town, and god bless San Francisco, there’s a living-dead army of ’em — I get the urge to raid my bookshelf for some supplementary reading. Bios of horror filmmakers have always been a favorite. Read one with a gruesome enough cover and you just might discourage that fellow Muni rider from leering at you from across the aisle (no promises, though).
Ku Klux Kuties
Ok, this may have nothing especially to do with San Francisco particularly — but what a Halloween treat, courtesy of Martha Stewart herself. My new email buddy DJ Bus Station John has dived into Martha Stewart Living magazine and come up with some fabulously entertaining entertaining tips from the Big Blonde Jailbait. These, I suspect, are meant to be ghosts.
But come on!
EDITOR’S NOTES
› tredmond@sfbg.com
None of the candidates for public office this year can beat the performance of a 2004 supervisorial hopeful who showed up at the Guardian office for an endorsement interview with a completely spaced-out homeless friend in tow. The candidate was talking rapid-fire for an hour, shifting effortlessly back and forth from his history as a welfare recipient turned bartender turned subject of a drug bust turned successful businessperson to his suggestions for public policy and proposals for improving the neighborhood. His pal was muttering the entire time, off in his own world, his random comments a kind of atonal counterpoint to the candidate’s high-speed pronouncements and reminiscences — until the would-be politician began to talk about the time years ago when the cops caught him with a bunch of LSD that wasn’t really his. Quite a bit of LSD. At the description of the inventory, the sidekick snapped out of his reverie for a moment and proclaimed, “That’s a lot of dose.” Then he was back to his own world.
The 2006 contenders are a much more predictable lot, generally speaking. But there have been some moments.
At the top of the list, I think, were Starchild, the Libertarian candidate for District 8 supervisor, and Philip Berg, the Libertarian for Congress, who came in together and told us that the city would be a much safer place if the entire populace were armed — not just with handguns but with AK-47s — and that the trouble-plagued Halloween Night in the Castro would be much more peaceful if everyone who attended had a weapon.
I’ve always wanted the rest of the world to be able to share these moments with us — Guardian endorsement interviews are great moments in policy formation and political debate, as well as high theater of the finest kind. Soon we’ll have them online, unedited — questions, answers, speeches (ours and theirs), fights, laughs … every moment, for your listening pleasure. Check www.sfbg.com for details.
We generally don’t record interviews with people who just come down to the office to chat and give us advice about the election, which is fair — but I want to share a really sad moment with you. Sarah Lipson stopped by at my request to talk about the SF school board race; she’s one of the best members of that often-dysfunctional panel, the kind of person who gives you hope for the schools and for local politics … and she’s not seeking reelection. She misses teaching, she told us, and that’s understandable — but she also said that it’s basically impossible for someone with kids who isn’t rich to devote perhaps 30 or 40 hours a week to the school board and still have a job on the side.
Thing is, the San Francisco Board of Education, which oversees a half-billion-a-year budget, is essentially a volunteer ($500 a month) gig. That’s a model from a very different era, and it doesn’t work anymore.
San Francisco is a hideously expensive place, a city where almost nobody can support a family on one income. Full-time volunteerism is an impossible burden, and it means people like Lipson — who is exactly the sort of person we want setting policy for the schools — can’t serve on the board. Either you punish your family or you don’t do the job you want to do.
Being on the school board is a full-time job. We need to pay these folks a full-time salary. SFBG
Fringe on top
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
There’s a crisp fall edge to the heady pee-asma of the Tenderloin as huddled, roaming packs of theater scavengers move hourly among the tolerant local traffic — two unmistakable signs of the SF Fringe Festival. How like Halloween it all seems too, the greedy devouring of tricks and treats at the Fringe, that 12-day carnival of the theater world gleefully unimpeded by judges’ panels, censors’ boards, or the general plague of good taste.
The open-door policy of the Fringe makes for a thoroughly unhinged program of nearly 40 local, national, and international acts, all under an hour and all under 10 bucks. In this situation, word of mouth and capricious fortune serve as the principal guideposts for sporting patrons ricocheting from one show to the next among 10 different venues, including such nontraditional environs as Original Joe’s restaurant-bar and the mobile fiesta known as the Mexican Bus.
Amid opening night’s offerings Sept. 6 came the latest from Fringe superstars Banana Bag and Bodice. Something of a superstar satire itself, The Fall and Rise of the Rising Fallen explores, exclaims, and explodes the mass-cultural phenomenon (“mass retardo reactions”) surrounding a legendary band, the Rising Fallen, six years defunct since playing just one glorious gig.
Part one of a longer piece, Rising Fallen unfolds as a pretentious and outlandish presentation by a grad student expert (Christopher W. White) writing his thesis on the “post-wave neo-nick nick scene.” His quickly wayward lecture includes testimonials and reenactments featuring former lead guitarist Taylor Taylor (Dave Malloy), number one groupie Janey Jane (Rebecca Noon), and some other dude (a roving protean presence played by Joseph Estlack). Amid a couple of microphones and practice amps, an electric guitar, a handheld light source, a video monitor, and a suitably quirky musical score by Malloy come various ego-refracted takes on the myth and mystique surrounding the band’s long-estranged lover-founders, Jacko and Grandma Mo. They are played remotely if indelibly via some recorded images and a pair of cell phones by BB and B’s New York founders, Jason Craig (who cowrote the piece with Malloy) and Jessica Jelliffe.
Word-struck, wryly antisoulful, but only fitfully inspired (especially by comparison with their previous shows), Rising Fallen never quite finds its legs. Ironically, Craig’s and Jelliffe’s charismatic but elusive personae might have held the piece together more had the actors actually been live onstage.
The following night saw two premieres with strangely similar themes by SF companies. Get It? Got It. Good., an absurdist three-act play by SF playwright-director Dan Wilson (Vagina Dentata), begins as a desperate hunt by two losers (Catz Forsman and Sam Shaw) for an elusive “it” sought by their clients (a frustrated couple played by Kevin Karrick and Stefanie Goldstein) and ends with an inquiry into the nature of good and bad that devolves into a Luigi Pirandello–like unraveling of the play itself. Although the play tends to substitute volume and verbosity for more penetrating writing at points, Wilson and his capable eight-person cast reach several high notes (not least actor Hal Savage’s Catholic sermon).
The ghost of Pirandello haunted the stage once more that evening. This time it was in the back room at Original Joe’s on Taylor, where RIPE Theater unveiled its latest, @six, an amusing set of interconnected scenes written by the company that eventually turns its purported premise — a series of coincidental encounters between two antagonistic couples (Sarah McKereghan and John Andrew Stillions; Mark Rachel and Deborah Wade) and a silent bystander (Noah Kelly) — inside out. Some uneven writing and thematic unraveling aside, great ensemble acting and consistently sharp humor held this one together.
Other promising fare in the SF Fringe Fest couldn’t be sampled in time for this column, including local legend-in-his-own-right Dan Carbone’s new show, Bay Area playwright Ian Walker’s Stone Trilogy, and the anticipated sequel The Thrilling Adventures of Elvis in Space II. For the whole enchilada, including audience reviews, visit the fest’s Web site. SFBG
SF FRINGE FESTIVAL
Through Sun/17
Call or see Web site for showtimes, locations, and prices
www.sffringe.org
A sister fears Halloween in the Castro
OPINION Any attempt to organize an official Halloween in the Castro is a terrible idea, maybe even a deadly one. But before I rant, let me give a little history. In the wake of the Oct. 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake, a BBC story reported that “a massive rescue effort is now underway in what experts believe is the second biggest earthquake ever to hit the United States.”
More than 3,500 people were injured and 100,000 buildings damaged. For this reason, a few members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence made a spontaneous decision to stand in the Castro among the drag queens and costumed folk that Halloween to put on street theater and collect donations for the mayor’s relief fund for the victims of the earthquake. A brilliant move. We collected thousands.
This put a bee in our bonnets … er … wimples to use Halloween as a fun fundraiser the next year. A tremendous success. Each year the caliber of entertainment drew more people and brought in more donations, enabling us to entertain the otherwise unruly crowds while collecting donations for AIDS charities. The events were a hit, until we saw attendees getting hit — with bottles, bats, and other deadly weapons — by drunken gay-bashers out to get their kicks. The next year we saw that police checking for weapons had collected garbage cans full of baseball bats, hammers, knives, axes (none of these were the rubber kind), and many blunt instruments that could harm people. I saw someone with a mask running a gas-powered chain saw. But when police told us that among other weapons they had confiscated an AK-47 assault rifle, that was the year the Sisters were through with Halloween in the Castro, frightened that an event we had sponsored might bring about death.
So we tried something different. Luring people away from the Castro and into a private club, we turned the Pleasuredome in SoMa into a Halloween-themed party space with ornate All Hallows Eve–oriented backdrops and props. We had stellar entertainment, and the door charge went to AIDS and cancer charities. There was only one rule: you had to be in costume. The event was called HallowQueen, with the slogan “Evolve with the Sisters as Halloween moves to the next level.” It was successful in getting people out of the Castro and into a safe space, but we couldn’t afford to do it again on our meager budget.
The attempt to move the party to the Civic Center did not work because of poor planning and insufficient advance public relations. And since the Castro was still gated off, the queer-bashers thought that was the better locale in which to be violent. There were several stabbings that year.
There should be no official gathering in the Castro. No gates set up to make it look like an event. Police should infiltrate the area to keep peace but not harass the costumed folk. And something must be scheduled by the city outside the Castro and managed well to draw the crowd away to safety. Then perhaps the Sisters will get involved again. Then maybe the Sisters will MC and run a stage. But as it is now, the cordoned-off section of the “official” Halloween will end at Market and Castro. That is potentially deadly — inviting bashers and spoilers to assemble right at the very entrance of the Castro. Boo! SFBG
Sister Dana Van Iquity
Sister Dana Van Iquity is a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.