History

Editorial: Downtown’s missing history

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Reject the new condo tower project next to the Transamerica Building. It’s too big, the city would have to give up a block long section of Merchant Street, an alley filled with small businesses, and it passes over a key bit of Manhattanization history.

EDITORIAL To hear the proponents of a new downtown condo complex talk, you’d think they were giving the city a wonderful deal. In exchange for an exemption from height limits that would allow a tower twice the allowable size just a few yards from the Transamerica Building, the developer would give the city a little patch of parkland that’s now privately owned. Even the city planning director, John Rahaim, seems to think the special treatment is acceptable, since none of the other buildings in the area are nearly as tall as the Pyramid, and, he told the Chronicle, “usually you cluster tall buildings together.”

Of course, the usual crew of downtown boosters love the architecture (a sort of spiral design), love that it would create housing in an area that’s generally empty at night, and figure that something only about half as tall as the high-rise it’s next to can’t be all that bad.

But there’s a stunning lack of historical perspective in all this discussion.

Bicycle Art: Bike dance with the Derailleurs

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In honor of Bike to Work week, we’re featuring one aspect of bicycle art per day. Check back regularly for homages to Cyclecide, Bicycle Porn, the Bicycle Film Festival, and more. By Molly Freedenberg

de rail leur [di-rey-ler]. noun:

1. a gear shifting mechanism on a bicycle that shifts the drive chain from one sprocket wheel to another

2. a Bay Area-based group of badass girls who dance on, with, and about bikes

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The Derailleurs. Clockwise from left: Agents Contrary, Flux, Chaos (Eliza Strack), Joke Star, Agitator, Verve (Hollis Hawthorne), Take the Lane, DoubleOO, and Edge. Photo by Alicia Sangiuliano.

Perhaps my favorite development in the world of bicycle art is bike dance, the strange and beautiful hybrid between high school drill team and BMX bike crew.

It all started – in its current form, at least – with the Sprockettes, who formed almost six years ago in Portland. A group of bold, fun-loving ladies donned pink and black outfits and performed synchronized dance and bike tricks at the Multnomah Bike Fair, a one-time show that was so popular, it not only grew into a regularly-performing dance troupe, but spawned a bona fide movement.

Inspired by the Sprockettes, bike enthusiasts in other cities began to form their own troupes, each choosing their own “power colors” and establishing unique identities with their own combination of synchronized moves, bike tricks, acrobatics, and fire. (Check out a full description of the history of bike dance here.)

John Ross takes no prisoners

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By Tim Redmond

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Ross tell the supes how it is. Photo by Luke Thomas

It wouldn’t have been John Ross Day in San Francisco if they didn’t have to call the cops.

And, indeed, a few minutes after Ross – the poet, journalist, activist, author and Bay Guardian correspondent – was honored at the Board of Supervisors, with a proclamation sponsored by Sup. John Avalos, his companeros and campaneras recessed to a conference room down the hall to await refreshments, and since it was 4:20, and the windows of the room were open, well …. The smell of fresh herbal medicine wafted out the door and down the hall, and pretty soon you could smell it in front of the supervisors chamber, and before long a couple of sheriff’s deputies came by and – politely, respectfully – informed us all that smoking – “of any kind” – was forbidden in City Hall.

And for a moment, I shuddered, because whenever the cops are around and John is around, there always seems to be trouble.

But remarkably enough, everyone on all sides kept cool, and the deputies walked away, and John made it through an entire afternoon and evening at City Hall without getting arrested.

That’s a far cry from the old days.

Typically, when people are honored by the supervisors, they thank the board, praise the wonders of this city and politely and meekly receive their award. Not John Ross.

The half-blind, half deaf rabble rouser made a short statement in which he managed to insult city government, denounce the entire process of giving out awards and demand that the board reject the Muni fare hike. Then he read a poem denouncing the “motherfuckers” who are driving poor people out of the Mission.

It was a great moment in San Francisco history. Supervisors Chris Daly, David Campos, Avalos and Ross Mirkarimi seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely; some of their colleagues, as Daly later told me, were squirming.

But that’s why we love John Ross, an uncontrollable shit disturber who is utterly and sometimes insanely fearless, who is pure of heart and devoted so deeply to the cause of social justice that he can’t put it aside, even for a minute.

Here’s his statement, in entirety.

The world stage

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Recently I was lucky enough to land at an international theater festival in Wroclaw, Poland, jostling elbows with a transnational mix of theater folk on the occasion of the 13th annual European Theatre Prize, this year awarded to the great Polish director Krystian Lupa. It was an eye-opening glimpse at some awesome theatrical muscle rarely if ever seen in the Bay Area, or even the United States. Globally-renowned powerhouses like Italy’s Pippo Delbono and Belgium’s Guy Cassiers were there with some extraordinary work, not to mention that of Lupa, whose utterly brilliant and plotless eight-hour fantasia on Andy Warhol’s Factory, Factory 2, proved an absolute highlight of my theatergoing career thus far.

While dreaming of the day Factory 2 takes its local bow, I can only appreciate all the more what places like UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall or San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts do in bringing us news of the theatrical world — or news of the world, theatrically. Another local presenter of exceptional international work has been the San Francisco International Arts Festival, whose sixth season begins this week. SFIAF and executive director Andrew Wood have increasingly made world theater a vital part of the fest’s eclectic performance mix. This year is no exception, with three must-sees in the lineup.

First, South Korea’s Cho-In Theatre makes its U.S. debut with The Angel and the Woodcutter, an original physical theater piece reutf8g the Korean folk tale in a wordless, poetical drama as uncompromising as it is unexpected. Then, Russia’s famed, immensely creative performance ensemble, the Akhe Group — proponents of what they call "Russian Engineering Theatre" and favorites at SFIAF in 2005, where they presented White Cabin — return with the U.S. premiere of Gobo.Digital Glossary, a wild and captivating conglomeration of video projections, animation, ambient music, lasers, clowning, and trompe l’oeil.

Also receiving its Bay Area premiere is Beyond the Mirror, an unprecedented collaboration between New York’s Bond Street Theatre and Afghanistan’s Exile Theatre. The description of this first American-Afghani theatrical outing might ring a bell: Mirror had been slated to open Brava’s theatrical season in fall 2008, when the U.S. government’s inexplicable delays in processing visas for the Afghan performers forced its last-minute cancellation. That disappointment will happily be rectified by SFIAF when Mirror opens at Cowell Theater. (A second San Francisco appearance follows as part of foolsFURY’s Fury Factory festival in June.)

The two companies began crafting the play after meeting by chance in 2002 among the refugee camps outside Peshawar in northern Pakistan, where the activist, physical-theater–based Bond Street went after 9/11 to develop links to the Afghan people and work with a German NGO building schools in the devastated country. Exile, meanwhile, had formed as a group of refugee playwrights, actors, and other performance professionals committed to keeping Afghan arts alive and reflecting the concerns of the Afghani population living as second-class citizens in Pakistan.

Never more timely, the play ranges over the last three decades of Afghanistan’s history, using an expressive mélange of theatrical forms and techniques — including oral history, mythology, live music, traditional dance, drama, acrobatics, puppetry, and film — to tell a story of war and hope at the cusp of yet another turbulent chapter in the country’s unfolding story. Notably, the eight-member half-American, half-Afghani cast includes Afghanistan’s most famous actress, Anisa Wahab, who grew up in happier times on camera as a child star and has continued to act despite its still dangerous implications for women.

Communicating partly with some mutual English, and largely in terms of both distinct and shared physical vocabularies, the artists developed what became Mirror in a nonlinear, highly abstract way, according to Bond Street artistic director Joanna Sherman, who codirected it with Exile’s Mahmoud Shah Salimi. That in no way diminishes its rootedness or poignancy.

"We went around the countryside and interviewed different people, and videotaped them as they would allow," Sherman explained by phone from New York. "Our challenge was to portray these terrible stories in a way that was not gruesome or impossible to watch. We used our physical techniques in a way that it would be watchable and compelling but not exactly ‘realistic.’"

Since Mirror‘s premiere at the second Kabul Theatre Festival in 2005, much has happened in the U.S. and Afghanistan, prompting a small but significant revision, a new final scene, according to Sherman. "We do leave on a thought of hope," she stressed. "But [we’re] doing some interviewing again and getting some additional video. We’ll see what happens."

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

May 20-31, various venues

www.sfiaf.org

Aerosol melodies

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marke@sfbg.com

Ah, Le Poisson Rouge — how I yearn for you. The edgy New York City club and performance space has become a golden nexus for the current rich collision of the indie, electronic, and contemporary classical worlds. Zing go the avant-garde, filter-bent strings in the Bay often enough, of course, especially through the out-there provenance of sfSound (www.sfsound.org), the biannual Soundwave Series (www.projectsoundwave.com), and Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (cnmat.berkeley.edu). But it took last August’s sold out Herbst Theater one-off by Wordless Music, the Poisson-based org that brings big indie names to the new music stage, to finally hold SF’s flannel-clad fixie pixie population enraptured by the freakier side of symphonica, with the white-noise-drenched West Coast premiere of “Popcorn Superhet Receiver” by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and soul-loosening pieces by Bay boys Fred Frith (“Save As”) and Mason Bates (“Icarian Rhapsody”).

It’s been a massive year for 32-year-old Virginia native Bates, who told me over the phone that he moved from NYC to North Oakland four years ago because he “wanted a house and a short commute to a great city.” In March the Julliard grad debuted a six-movement work, Sirens, commissioned by local vocal greats Chanticleer, right after he wrapped up a three-season young-composer-in-residence program with the California Symphony. Perhaps his biggest break came last month, when the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, assembled via audition vids and led by San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, made its debut at Carnegie Hall, playing a portion of Bates’ latest orchestral suite, The B-Sides. Like many other professional cynics, I had my nails sharpened and painted Jungle Red for this dreadful-seeming Internet marketing buzz-blast, but the inclusion of Bates’ forward-thinking work helped rescue the affair from maudlin crowd-pleasing.

Speaking of gimmicks, here’s what many perceive as Bates’: he plays a laptop onstage with the orchestra. Good heavens! Mere gimmickry’s a sad assumption — sure enough, his YouTube gig has reignited that tired technology vs. “true” classical debate that has periodically raged ever since the theremin took the Paris Opera stage in 1927. But Bates, who has toured clubs in his DJ Masonic guise for years, rises above all that with a deep knowledge of dance music history, which itself claims a long and fruitful entanglement with contemporary classical, and a mission of sonic integration.

“The laptop is a piece of the enterprise, a means of augmenting the texture of an orchestral arrangement and adding a richness that evokes new sonic landscapes,” says Bates, who considers his keyboard a “specialized extension of the percussion family.” As for snap judgments about technology, “it actually goes both ways,” he says. “Of course, some traditional symphony-goers can’t really go there. But it’s important for people from the club world to know that I’m not just orchestrating techno” — like the Balanescu Quartet’s version of Kraftwerk or the Williams Fairey Brass Band’s take on acid house. “I’m not Richie Hawtin for woodwinds and booming tubas. I’m coming from a more ambient, electronica place — I’m always aware that I’m playing off something while delving into unique textures and expanded sonari.”

The B-Sides, which will have its full debut for three nights with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall, consists of five movements inspired by archetypal ambient moods — from the buzzing insects and tropical evocations of “Aerosol Melody Hanalei” to astronautical voice transmissions and blankets of static in “Gemini and the Solar Winds.” “Wharehouse Medicine,” which the YouTube Symphony debuted, is like a nifty bit of Leonard Bernstein pumped up with chattering clicks and back-ear bass that energetically summons up the chillout rooms of yore. If it seems odd that Bates references vinyl in his title, while combining laptop rumination and live orchestration, don’t sweat it. “I was thinking back to the experimental freedom that B-sides once afforded to groups like Pink Floyd — surgical strikes into trippy terrain.”

Bates will also be bringing his outstanding Mercury Soul project (www.mercurysoul.org), conceived with conductor Benjamin Shwartz and visual artist Anne Patterson, to Davies after the May 22 symphony performance and to Mezzanine (www.mezzaninesf.com) on May 28. Mercury Soul “is almost a negative image of what I do with an orchestra,” Bates says, “where I DJ and we create a club atmosphere interspersed with live performances of contemporary works by the likes of Steve Reich and John Luther Adams.”

“Look, I know a laptop is never going to be as expressive as a fiddle,” Bates says, a twang of his Virginian upbringing coming through. “And a CD installation pack may never rival the power of a written score. But if I can expand and screw around with orchestral space that way, then it definitely meets my intent.”

THE B-SIDES

With the San Francisco Symphony

Wed/20, Fri/22, and Sat/23

8 p.m., $35–$130

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness

(415) 552-8000

www.sfsymphony.org

The quest to save the Bluepeter Building

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By Rebecca Bowe

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Photo courtesy Janet Carpinelli

The Bluepeter Building, a unique industrial warehouse constructed in 1940 along San Francisco’s central waterfront, has become the focus of a neighborhood campaign for historic preservation. Under the Mission Bay redevelopment plan, it’s slated for demolition — but some community members are hoping an alternative vision can be implemented.

Janet Carpinelli of the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association has a vision for rehabbing the Bluepeter Building and converting it to a fish market, casual food vending business, and community gathering space which she says could also be integrated into a maritime history tour along the city’s Central Waterfront. Owned by the Port of San Francisco, it’s been shuttered for more than a decade and hasn’t been very well maintained. Under the Mission Bay redevelopment plan, the building would be torn down and a park would be constructed on the lot instead.

“Just putting the park there is not as interesting,” Carpinelli says. “We shouldn’t just be knocking down the building.”

Shades of time: Q&A with Matt Keegan

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Barack Obama boarding an Air Force One plane for the first time. Gay calendars from the 1960s. A New York Times article on the death of a major urban newspaper. Sundays at the Alemany Flea Market. These are some of the temporal markers at play in Matt Keegan‘s exhibition “Postcards & Calendars.” The show (reviewed in the current Guardian) could be Keegan’s postcard to New York about time spent in San Francisco. It’s also an exploration of the ways in which calendars and other time keepers can be used subversively to convey forms of experience or forge communities. Keegan is no stranger to the such endeavors: his 2008 book AMERICAMERICA (Printed Matter, 140 pages, $35) gathers interviews, old People magazines, memorabilia connected to the “Hands Across America” project, artifacts from his small-scale update of that endeavor, and unorthodox archival material into a journal that doubles as a portrait of the Reagan era. The artist and I recently sat at a petite lemon yellow table with pretty lemon yellow flowers in Altman Siegel Gallery to discuss his current exhibition.

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View of Matt Keegan’s “Postcards & Calendars.” All images from “Postcards & Calendars” courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery

SFBG Many shows repeat the same execution of a single theme, over and over. In contrast, “Postcards & Calendars” has many forms and facets.
Matt Keegan The thematic of this show is definitely influenced by my time in in San Francisco, but not relegated to being here. Lots of things at play are continuations of my preexisting engagement with photography.
In terms of local influences, the calendars from the GLBT Historical Society had a tremendous impact on this show. Before I met with Rebekah Kim, the Historical Society’s archivist, I was trying to figure out how to map the ways time is not only recorded but visually structured — to think about such rudimentary things as a planner, or a calendar, or a newspaper, in terms of how days and months can be iterated.
When I saw their collection of calendars, part of the power of those objects comes from the way they integrate a social history into an innocuous form. Also, some of the calendars that have a clear porn element, also have a social element. For example, Fizeek from the mid-‘60s — the back of that calendar has notations about who shot which photo and where the photographers are based, which provides it with this added level of social exchange.

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Matt Keegan

SFBG In the past year I’ve amassed a stack of the 1970s SF gay magazine Vector, so it was serendipity to come across a calendar from Vector on the wall in your show. More than with microfiche of local newspapers, I get a sense of what was going on in San Francisco at the time from a publication such as that magazine, simply through the addresses in advertisements.
MK Material that might be considered insubstantial or peripheral in terms of formal archiving and recording has a historical implication. Close to the time when I met with Rebekah, I met with Gerard Koskovich, one of the founding members of the GLBT Historical Society. He told this amazing anecdote about Bois Burke placing an ad in The Hobby Directory that is significant in helping to understand a 1940s and ’50s queer history of correspondence. Within this guide, people would reach out about hobbies such as nude sunbathing and physique photography. I am very interested in the various ways that such print-based and distributed publications were activated to serve unintended purposes. And, I love the way that the calendars, specifically, embed such a social history so that it becomes part of daily and monthly activities.

Barack Obama, 31 shades of white, newspapers as endangered species, the archivist’s life, the art of interviewing, and more, after the jump

LISTEN/VISION 06 speaks

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By Johnny Ray Huston

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In addition to making music, Christopher Willits is a guiding force behind the art and experimental music site Overlap (www.overlap.org). In conjunction with Overlap’s next event, I caught up with him by e-mail.

SFBG What was it like to collaborate with Ryuichi Sakamoto on Ocean Fire (12k, 2008)?

Christopher Willits It was surreal. We fell into an oceanic trance, and a bunch of music suddenly emerged. Then a Godzilla-like sea monster morphed out of his piano and he vaporized it with his max patch.

SFBG You’ve also worked with Brad Laner of Medicine. Are you an admirer of that (ahead-of-its-time) band?

CW Medicine [had] a mind-splittingly original sound — it was a soundtrack to many high school adventures. Now it’s an absolute joy to be friends with Mr. Laner. Together we are the varsity band members (guitar I and II) of the North Valley Subconscious Orchestra. We’re aiming for nationals next year.

SFBG What do you like about the Bay Area’s close proximity to the ocean?

CW The smell of fresh wind, and dreams of flying great white sharks.

SFBG I saw a fave list of yours once that had Magma, the Carpenters’ "Close to You" and Sun Ra’s Lanquidity on it. Who is inspiring or obsessing you at present?

CW That is a timeless list — can I say them again? Let’s add Morton Subotnick, Wild Bull (www.merlindarts.com), all Eliane Radigue, all Elvin Jones, John Coltrane, and that band that plays at El Rio on Sunday night.

SFBG You recently toured in China, including a performance with images on ice. What did you discover?

CW I discovered a resilient community of artists and experimental musicians pushing against the grain (and firewall) of this mammoth country or force. They understand my history and what I’m doing — another win for Chinese bootlegs? I also found some of the best food ever: huajiao (flower pepper) with asparagus! But hold the boiled big brains. Those I’m definitely not into.

LISTEN/VISION 06 With Christopher Willits, Taylor Deupree, and Classical Revolution. Sun/10, 8 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016. www.overlap.org.

Hot sex events this week: May 6-12

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

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Femina Potens curator, international award winning Bondage Model and Feminist Porn Star Madison Young hosts this month’s “Sizzle.”

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>> Sizzle
Femina Potens celebrates Masturbation Month with an auto-erotica reading and open mic extravaganza, featuring writer and sexologist Carol Queen, porn performer and BDSM professionalDusty Horn, queer porn producer and bondage model Madison Young, and Xicana burlesque mistress Chica Boom. (Also check out the benefit for Femina Potens at The Lex on Saturday.)

Fri/8, 8pm. $10-15.
Femina Potens
2199 Market, SF
www.feminapotens.org

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>> School of Shimmy
Learn to shake it on the stage or in the bedroom with Dottie Lux and guest teachers in this two-hour workshop. Includes history of burlesque, how to create a character, and basic choreography. All ages, genders, and experience levels welcome.

Thurs/7, 7:30pm. $30.
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.sexandculture.org

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>> Sex Work on Wheels Tour
The Bike Coalition combines two of our favorite things – bikes and sex – with this two-wheeled tour of San Francisco’s sexy side, including stops by streets named for Gold Rush-era madams, sites of 19th century parlor houses, and discussion of labor struggles in the sex industry..

Sat/9, 11am-2pm, free.
Main Library at Fulton Street steps, SF
www.sfbike.org

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>> Girl Girl Tricks for Men, Part 2
Ever suspect lesbians have secrets about sex with women that would make you a better lover? Dig deeper into the world of lesbian sex with this sexy and intellectual romp through lesbian bedsheets with bisexual dyke and sex educator Kristy Lin Billuni. Men only.

Tues/12, 8pm. $25-30.
Good Vibrations
1620 Polk, SF
www.goodvibes.com

Electric gypsies

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Tommy Weber (né Thomas Ejnar Arkner, 1938 — 2006) was a trickster, so I cannot help but love him.

Comin’ from where I’m from — three tribal peoples: Pamunkey, Scottish, mystery African — I have always adored the Afro-Kelt über alles, and been at least inchoately hip to the centrality of the trickster, whether Eshú Elegbara, the Diné Coyote, or the Danes’ own Loki and his spawn Fenrir the apocalyptic Wolf. Such figures surf the spaces between the rational world we animals feel duty-bound to shore up for civilization’s sake, and the great vast unconscious world beyond the reach of imposed order.

The disenfranchised, rejected Dane and deracinated Anglo-African Tommy Weber — the fatally charming and irrepressible antihero of Robert Greenfield’s new A Day In the Life — One Family, the Beautiful People, & the End of the ’60s (Da Capo) — seems a trickster by default. He was left to his own devices by his estranged parents to play among the excreta of Empire well before any 11th-hour attempts by his roguish grandfather, R. E. Weber, to finish him off as a proper, upper-crust, English gentleman. The man famously dubbed "Tommy the Tumbling Dice" by his pop doppelgängers Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg had an ingrained loathing for authority, yet the right accent to charm anyone in his relentlessly class-obsessed society.

I spent the 1980s back and forth between Africa, Europa (especially not-so fair Albion), and Ray-Gun Amerikkka, chased by those primordial Saharan tricksters Wepwawet and his altar-ego the Pale Fox Yurugu. One film my late Mamanne, sister, and I loved during that period was 1984’s Another Country, starring Rupert Everett as aristo U.K. spy-turned-Russian defector Guy Bennett (i.e., Guy Burgess). The character’s final line has stuck with me. Queried about whether or not he missed the Motherland, his response is, "I miss the cricket." This immortal bit of immortal dialogue is key for Tommy Weber, me, and anyone else brought up along the black Atlantic continuum. It sums up Tommy’s unconscious longing as a patchwork Englishman to rove to the British Empire’s far-flung, dusty, darker outposts. It applies to the cricket pitch desires of émigré "Indians" (from East and West). And I connect it to my early-1980s Anglophilia, stoked by Top of the Pops, Melody Maker, Smash Hits, and NME.

Having (perhaps foolishly) strived to find myself in those sonic fictions, I feel connected to a description of late-period Tommy by Spacemen 3’s Pete Bain: "He’d come staggering in, talk shit at you for an hour with garbled words like a radio that had to be tuned to a certain frequency, and then stagger out again like a drunk" We are all animals of the machine age, hoping to belong, struggling amid turbulent cultural waves. We navigate denatured empire (which yields ordered beauties like cricket, classical music, and the world-famous English gardens tended by such experts as Jake Weber’s aunt, Mary Keen) and the dirty, excreta-slathered murk of primordial tribal tradition (which yields transcendence).

Accompanied by a soul mate nicknamed Puss, Tommy the Tumbling Dice gambled on a folkway that would provide that transcendence — a Swinging London milieu of sex-drugs-rock ‘n’ roll wherein religious and social apostasy was de rigueur. When he crapped out, as a Trickster always does, what came next was relentless nihilism at the prick of a needle. Yet here’s the thing about tricksters: death often means rebirth for them — And Shine swam on, you dig?

Once upon a time, circa America’s bicentennial year, I chanced to view a strange, twisted, little film called Performance (1970) that was far too advanced for my innocence. Every summer in Virginia, my favorite pastime — even above slopping hogs and barn dancing — was handling the snakes. But lil’ ol’ me was yet unprepared for being ensnared in Anita Pallenberg’s chamber of smoke-and-mirrors.

My old soul arose like the fabled Kemetic Bennu bird of prehistory from that befuddling, dazzling screening, leaving me a lifelong devotee of the occultist, pirate triumvirate that is my beloved doom fox Pallenberg, interiors aesthete Christopher Gibbs, and the film’s auteur par excellence — the late, great Scot Donald Cammell. (Yes, Nicholas Roeg was essentially the technical director, but the film’s peculiar psychosexual tangle and audacious vision could come from no other brilliant cerebellum than Cammell’s.)

And so I was transfixed by the cover of Day In The Life. There stared a witch even more lovely and remote than my muse Anita. Looking inside, I discovered that she was Puss Weber, and that the young Fata Morgana boy from a Stones memorabilia photo that I’d long obsessed over was her eldest son, Jake. Alongside his bruh’ Charley, he had an inadvertent ringside seat to Mick and Keith’s maiden voyage into the rough black Atlantic. You can read all about it in this book, a great gift from the cosmos.

"Fantasy" by Earth, Wind, & Fire was the private, tacit anthem of my family’s feminine trio in the 1970s — which paralleled that of the Weber boys. Strange and beautiful it is that Jake, son of Tommy the Tumbling Dice, should find himself co-starring on a show called Medium, wherein his character, Joe DuBois, has a witchy-empowered wife he must support and nurture much as he once did his beloved mother Puss. As Marshall McLuhan proclaimed during the year of Jake’s birth (in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man): "The medium is the message." Although W.E.B. DuBois (no relation) famously said the problem of the 20th century of is that of the color line, it can now also be argued that the past century-plus has been marked more than almost anything else by the problems stemming from the interface of man and machine — spirituality vs. technology.

In this light, it seems no accident that Tommy Weber has become an antihero fit to rival his fellow Archer, Duane "Skyman" Allman, in my internal spiritual pantheon. I would hazard a guess that both of his sons are currently fulfilling what Tommy wrote to Jake in 1982: "There is a very important secret. Work is much more interesting than play and if you are lucky enough to be able to make your work your play and your play pay, well then you’re in clover."

One cannot claim "Tommy the Tumbling Dice" and his beautiful, free spirit wife Susan Ann Caroline "Puss" Coriat should not have had children, for their now grown sons are vital contributors to our black Atlantic culture and are fine human beings. Still, these rather tortured Swinging Londoners’ families rival the pathology often on display around the corners of my ‘hood in high Harlem.

I am far less enchanted by A Day in the Life‘s testimonials on Puss and Tommy’s pre-Stones circle in London than I am arrested by their families’ collective African history. Greenfield’s book aims to shoot an arrow straight into the heart of Boomerville, yet it also unwittingly works as a strong resource for the far opposite realm of postcolonial studies. In fact, with some tweaking, it could serve as one of that discipline’s core works — a testament to its riches.

One of my most cherished passages in Greenfield’s book deals with Tommy’s haphazard management of the pioneering Afro-rock band Osibisa. A crazy trip through northern Africa is bookended by him, Jake, and Charley enduring a harrowing stay in jail in Lagos. To a degree, Puss and Tommy were confined by being products of their class and times. Yet they cannot be judged now via the uptight lenses of today. On the strength of their private soul-gnosis and Herculean striving to escape the lot dealt them by the hands of cosmic fate, these extraordinary Webers are folk out of — no, beyond — time. We’ll still learn from them on the far side of 2012.

Listen/Vision 06

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PREVIEW In addition to making music, Christopher Willits is a guiding force behind the art and experimental music site Overlap (www.overlap.org). In conjunction with Overlap’s next event, I caught up with him by e-mail.

SFBG What was it like to collaborate with Ryuichi Sakamoto on Ocean Fire (12k, 2008)?

Christopher Willits It was surreal. We fell into an oceanic trance, and a bunch of music suddenly emerged. Then a Godzilla-like sea monster morphed out of his piano and he vaporized it with his max patch.

SFBG You’ve also worked with Brad Laner of Medicine. Are you an admirer of that (ahead-of-its-time) band?

CW Medicine [had] a mind-splittingly original sound — it was a soundtrack to many high school adventures. Now it’s an absolute joy to be friends with Mr. Laner. Together we are the varsity band members (guitar I and II) of the North Valley Subconscious Orchestra. We’re aiming for nationals next year.

SFBG What do you like about the Bay Area’s close proximity to the ocean?

CW The smell of fresh wind, and dreams of flying great white sharks.

SFBG I saw a fave list of yours once that had Magma, the Carpenters’ "Close to You" and Sun Ra’s Lanquidity on it. Who is inspiring or obsessing you at present?

CW That is a timeless list — can I say them again? Let’s add Morton Subotnick, Wild Bull (www.merlindarts.com), all Eliane Radigue, all Elvin Jones, John Coltrane, and that band that plays at El Rio on Sunday night.

SFBG You recently toured in China, including a performance with images on ice. What did you discover?

CW I discovered a resilient community of artists and experimental musicians pushing against the grain (and firewall) of this mammoth country or force. They understand my history and what I’m doing — another win for Chinese bootlegs? I also found some of the best food ever: huajiao (flower pepper) with asparagus! But hold the boiled big brains. Those I’m definitely not into.

LISTEN/VISION 06 With Christopher Willits, Taylor Deupree, and Classical Revolution. Sun/10, 8 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016. www.overlap.org.

Beyond Beat: The late artist Michael Bowen

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Michael Bowen, who died March 7 in Sweden at the age of 71, was a seminal Beat figure who inspired the famous “Turn On, Tune in and Drop Out” dictum of the “Human Be-In” in San Francisco in 1967. Click here for a photo essay of his life and art.


By Marlena Donohue

(Marlena Donohue is Associate Professor of Art History and Critical Theory at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and Managing Editor of ArtScene in Los Angeles.)

Michael Bowen recently passed away in Sweden after five decades of exhibiting art in major international art museums and private collections. He passes away before his career or work could be adequately evaluated in the context of history, particularly those epoch-altering years marked by the 1960s-1970s he is most closely associated with.

Born in Beverly Hills to a famous dentist into a legacy of great wealth, Bowen was the quintessential drop out from consumer culture long before the term was made popular in SF cafes. On the road, so to speak, from his teens, Bowen traveled the globe, engaging life and making art alongside some of the art world’s major luminaries.

Primarily self taught, Bowen coined an art style and remained committed to it for over forty years of changing art world styles and alternatively hip and conservative social mores. He is associated with a distinct visionary surreal art whose nearly hallucinatory intensity came to be identified with the Beats and with the drug and underground culture.

How Weird to pay SFPD’s protection money

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By Steven T. Jones

Faced with San Francisco Police Department threats to block their permits to sell beer and to have amplified music, organizers of the How Weird Street Faire have decided to pay the nearly $10,000 that the cops were demanding up front rather than go to court to fight fees that appear to violate caps written into city codes.

How Weird organizer Brad Olsen said vendor fees and other financial support should allow them to come up with the money. That’s good news for those planning to attend the May 10 event, although other outdoor event advocates — such as John Wood, with the Entertainment Commission and Love Fest — had urged How Weird to make a stand against rapidly escalating SFPD fees. As the Guardian reported, city codes cap fees for events this size at $5,494.

Police have said they’re required to recover all costs associated with the event, although it is the SFPD that decides have many cops on overtime are required to staff the event, which has had no major police incidents in its 10-year history. Love Fest is a far larger event covering more territory, and therefore gets a bigger SFPD bill, so this fight is likely to pick up again once its organizers begin the permit process this summer.

Meanwhile, the SFPD has begun an aggressive campaign to crackdown on underground parties, one that has caused the dozens of local Burning Man camps now staging fundraisers to get creative in throwing parties. Many have moved the parties to the East Bay, while others are renting out existing clubs in San Francisco to get around the crackdown (which many suspect is tied to an SFPD power vacuum and struggle as Chief Heather Fong prepares to retire).

Stay tuned to the Guardian for more coverage of the Death of Fun.

The name game

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johnny@sfbg.com

LABELS Look for the label: that shopper’s instruction has carried a wealth of meanings over the years in the music industry. Stax and Motown have soul. Jazz has Verve. Kudu has that bluesy voodoo. If you want a symbol of vindictive business dealings, look up Savoy. If you’re obsessed with the history of post-punk and indie rock, see Factory, Rough Trade, and Creation. Yet what does a label mean in 2009? Do labels still matter in an ever more ephemeral music industry? In fact, does matter itself matter anymore in a world where the C in CD might as well stand for coffin-bound? God save EMI?

I put the first question to a number of label owners and representatives recently, hoping their answers might provide an entry into a discussion of the role of labels and the potential of music today. Their answers did not disappoint. "Anyone saying [labels] are dead and gone is not factoring in the talented, but brainless, American Idol contestant," quipped Ken Shipley, founder of the vaunted reissue and archival label Numero Group. "They’re backed by liquor companies and weapons manufacturers, and as long as the Army needs music for commercials at movie theaters, they’ll be in business. The labels that are about to be useless are the large indies — crippled by an infrastructure and overhead built for the ’90s CD bonanza — and the micro-indies, [that are] doing what any band’s manager can already do."

Such a perspective suggests that reissue labels have the truest vital stake in the future of commercially produced music, and this passionate music lover has to admit that it sometimes feels this way: over the last few years, archival entities such as Numero Group, Omni Recording, Trunk, Light in the Attic, and the local Water label have played as major a role in my listening experience as any indie dedicated to new groups and artists.

Yet even as iTunes demands that everyone stand under its umbrella, the meaning and importance of a small label can persist in very simple and profound ways. "I pay attention to records coming out on good labels that I know I can trust," says Filippo Salvadori of Runt Distribution, the Oakland home to reissue labels including Water and 4 Men with Beards. "A record label is an important hub for art and idea exchanges between music lovers and musicians," Bettina Richards of Thrill Jockey likewise declares, her directness and use of the word record born of past and recent experience.

"I think labels are as important as ever," maintains Mike Schulman of the Bay Area indie pop shrine Slumberland, which is currently experiencing a new burst of recognition thanks to bands such as Crystal Stilts and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. "With the increasing fragmentation and atomization of genres and scenes and markets, customers rely on labels as a curatorial enterprise, a shorthand signifier for what they’re into, and a useful tool to help sort through the mountain of new music."

The curatorial corollary, or an editorial variant, comes up more than once among small label owners. "In an sense, we serve as editors, but to do more than edit," says Andres Santo Domingo of Kemado Records. "We actively promote the artists on our roster and help make their life easier so they can dedicate themselves to being musicians [at a time when making] music is less financially viable than it was in the past."

Joakim Hoagland of the Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound has a more idealistic view of the label owner’s enterprise. "In my opinion, running a label is an artform," he writes, still passionate in the wake of a recent public debate with Peter Sunde of the Pirate Bay, a staunch opponent of music labels and other aspects of copyright culture. "I am in general a label fan and have read most books available on labels like Elektra, Impulse, Creation, Rough Trade, Factory, and so on. I love labels, and sometimes am more interested in a label than an artist."

While Hoagland makes a case for the label identity that is forged as a labor of love for new music, Shipley of Numero Group feels that reissue labels have a "brand identity" that most labels devoted to contemporary music currently lack. Indeed, this might be the case, thanks to the manner in which iTunes seems to have swallowed the experience of listening to recorded music. "Although millions of labels sell their music through iTunes, the only brand name that is really involved and talked about through the process is iTunes, which isn’t even a label," notes Jonny Trunk of the U.K. reissue treasure trove Trunk. "You cannot search on iTunes by label. Which is rubbish, really."

Matt Sullivan of the Seattle-based label Light in the Attic fuses Hoagland’s appreciation of past labels with Shipley’s and Trunk’s devotion to discovering old "lost" music. "There was something so beautiful about labels like Stax, early Sub Pop, Creation, or even Reprise/Elektra/Warner when Stan Cornyn was at the helm in that golden age of the late 1960s and early 1970s," he observes. "No one’s done it better since."

For Sullivan and Light in the Attic, a label functions as a way to right past industry wrongs, and find or create new audiences for abused and neglected artists. "Most managers, labels, publicists, booking agents, etc. are crooks and cheats, better suited for a position at Enron or Madoff Investment Securities," he notes. "After all, though, this is the entertainment business and it feeds on low-lifes." He contrasts this bleakly funny outlook with the dedication required in reissuing a choice recording from long ago: "Folks have no idea the amount of time that goes into a reissue. On the other hand, I have no idea the time that’s invested in making a tube of toothpaste." This dedication results in a recorded object with artwork in the case of Light in the Attic, or Trunk, whose namesake is an expert on music library treasures, and the author of a deluxe book of artwork (with a CD) related to the subject, The Music Library (Fuel Publishing).

As CDs pile up in landfills, vinyl is returning from the dead with ever-increasing commercial vitality, even if on a smaller scale. "From a personal level, I wish the CD would die," says Chris Manak, a.k.a. Peanut Butter Wolf of Stones Throw Records. "I don’t have an effective way of storing mine without losing them all the time. I wish everybody who liked music would buy a damn turntable or two, like me." Richards of Thrill Jockey sees growing vinyl activity, if not that level of popularity. "A great example of the trickle-up effect is the surge in LP sales," she says. "It is a great adventure to be a part of, and be on the hunt for new sounds without limitation to form."

But what does it all mean for the musician? "There may be some brave new world wherein the artists can do all the work themselves, but I think that notion, at least from the current perspective, is a pipe dream," says Joel Leoshke of Kranky, home of groups such as Deerhunter. "Can you name three artists that work without a label at the moment? I think not."

"Labels needs bands, not vice-versa," counters the acerbic Shipley. "The sooner every band in the world realizes that, the better off they’re going to be. Labels are for the lazy, the incompetent, and the cash-poor. Sadly, this represents 99 percent of all musicians. Good luck." Asked about the future role of labels within the industry, he makes a comparison. "The label’s role is a business version of child support: Wednesdays and every other weekend until your artists hit their teens and hate you."

Other label owners imagine even more dystopian scenarios. "As J.G. Ballard predicted, you will soon see musicians taking cruise ships and airliners hostage to hold private and compulsory listening parties," half-jokes David Thrussell of Omni Recording, which has uncovered vanguard audio explorers such as Bruce Haack. "Naturally, record labels will support artists to the maximum of their ability in these brave new marketing ventures." Slightly more seriously — only slightly — he lists his and Omni’s future goals as at attempt to "pry as many strange or under appreciated records out of musty vaults and attics as we can until the Earth explodes in a cloud of tepid dust (not that far off)."

Some label reps see labels taking on an even more encompassing role in relation to musicians. "I think some of the larger labels will be demanding much more from their artists — these 360-type deals where the labels want to own the artist, their recordings, their publishing, their gig rights, the merchandise, the outfits, all online activity, everything, everywhere," says Trunk. Hoagland of Smalltown Suerosund envisions a similar scenario in kinder, gentler, smaller terms. "My opinion is that labels should do more booking and publishing as well as releasing music. I think it is better for artists if you have one team or label work for you rather than three or four working against each other. I am not sure if 360-type deals work well with the majors, but the indie could make them into something cool."

"I know I’m a bit of a music geek about labels," admits Schulman, who once was more cynical about the industry machinations he’s moved through. "But I think that as the group of people who actually buy music continues to shrink down to a core of those who really care about it, they’ll continue to coalesce around the labels whose taste they trust."

Great expectations?

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Equality has been achieved: this recession is kicking everyone’s arse. But I couldn’t help but squirm at a few recent music-biz disjunctions. How does one reconcile the scene at a South by Southwest "Great Expectations" label panel last month, listening to Tony Kiewel describe 2008 as one of the Sub Pop’s best years, with the bad news from Touch and Go’s Chicago HQ a week later? After shuttering its distribution — which once supported imprints ranging from Drag City to Estrus — in February, the 25-year-plus label laid off its entire staff. Owner and ex-Necros bassist Corey Rusk was going to run the enterprise solo.

A second major blow, especially when one considers Touch and Go’s history releasing important discs by Big Black, Scratch Acid, Die Kreuzen, Slint, Jesus Lizard, and of course, the Butthole Surfers (though the label’s 1999 loss in a legal battle with that band likely hasn’t helped). "Touch and Go basically allowed Merge to exist as something other than a singles label," Mac McCaughan of Merge Records stated in February. "If a company that did everything the right way can’t survive in this environment, then who can?"

Are these simply the latest surges and sucks of free-market capitalism’s death throes and toilet-bowl flows? And what’s the state of independence for local labels eking it out in this still-roiling stew of sorry economic news?

"The black and white fact is that [Sub Pop] is not Touch and Go," opines Cory Brown, owner of Bay Area independent Absolutely Kosher and general manager of Misra Records. He notes that Sub Pop is partially owned by Warner Bros. and that Touch and Go had the tough luck of losing some of its biggest artists, including TV on the Radio, Blonde Redhead, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Those departures "all went down not very well," says Brown, who believes Touch and Go’s contraction was "as much an emotional decision as a business one," considering the company had big releases by Pinback and Three Mile Pilot planned.

Rusk declined to comment, although one wonders what will become of his label’s newer bands, among them the Bay Area’s Mi Ami and Sholi. Still, should he strike up a new alliance, all systems could be go at Touch and Go once again. As Brown puts it, "Geoff Travis has closed Rough Trade multiple times now and come back with it."

What of the local label landscape? Lookout! and Jackpine Social Club have ceased new releases, whereas Tigerbeat6 and Anticon have left town. Slumberland is surfing a twee rock revival, and hip-hop’s SMC has taken on bigger fish like Killer Mike. As newbie Bright Antenna appears on the horizon, veterans such as Alternative Tentacles, Fat Wreck Chords, Runt/Water, Quannum Projects, Birdman, Daly City, Dirtybird, and Hook or Crook are staying alive. AT celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. "As music and media become increasingly accessible instantly from anywhere, the role of curator is more important than ever – if I can access 10 millions songs instantly from my phone, how do I choose?," Isaac Bess, director of business development at SF’s IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) writes via e-mail.

Business is bright, thanks to smart planning, for SF distributor Revolver USA and Midheaven Mailorder, which supports labels such as Gnomonsong and DiCristina Stair Builders. "We’re doing well, and I think that has a lot to do with what our expectations are, and not looking for a big record to be carried by Walmart and Target," says general manager Mike Toppe, who thinks it’s more important to "keep connecting with people who are passionate about music."

Fat Mike, who started Fat Wreck Chords to put out music by his bands NOFX and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, has a more hardcore perspective. "In the ’90s, every fucking band we signed sold a shitload of records and got popular all over the world. It was ridiculous," he e-mails from NOFX’s current European tour. "Now only the really good bands can sell a decent amount. That’s okay, though. This industry collapse is mostly killing mediocre bands." As for the decline in CD and recorded music sales, the SF road warrior believes that’s not going to stop: "The record industry party is over, but great live bands will always do okay."

But what about the groups that can’t pick up blogosphere buzz? Both Jacobs and Brown acknowledge the difficulty in developing emerging or even mid-level bands via traditional avenues. Add in the complicating factor of so-called 360 deals, in which a label takes a percentage of all artist revenue in exchange for promotion, and you have what Brown calls a "destructive" outlook. "The bottom line is musicians should get paid," he said. "Forget about how labels are doing — how are musicians doing in this climate?

"I think new ideas really have to come into play, and those have to be based on the quality of life for the musician, not the company that comes up with an application," he continued, touching on the lack of public funds for musicians and lack of official recourse for bands if, for instance, they don’t get paid by a club. "It’s basic stuff, but it’s harder to look past those things. It has to go back to the content provider."

Historic proportions

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news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY "110 The Embarcadero" is the stately address of a building that doesn’t exist yet. But the battle that continues to be waged over this proposed development, along with skirmishes that are brewing over other proposed buildings nearby, speaks volumes about a complicated tug-of-war that is emerging over a prominent slice of the city’s northern waterfront.

Preservationists are concerned about saving a union hall on Steuart Street that housed the International Longshoremen’s Association during the strike of 1934, which would be razed to build 110 The Embarcadero. That’s one of a number of historic properties critics say could face the wrecking ball as new building plans are drafted. Other proposals, among them 8 Washington and 555 Washington, have neighborhood activists anxious about long skyscraper shadows that could be cast on public parks, the development pressure that would result from allowing skyscrapers to exceed height limits, and views of the bay that would be enhanced from inside luxury high rises but blocked to others.

On the other side of the coin, building-trades union members increasingly desperate for work are fervently advocating for new construction projects that would open the spigot on jobs. And the Port of San Francisco hopes development money will help cover its huge infrastructure backlog.

Meanwhile a report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission noted that the waterfront stretch from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge is one of the most vulnerable to sea-level rise. As plans for this part of the Embarcadero are hashed out in public hearings and architects’ sketches, a new reality must be factored into the mix: some of that land could soon be underwater.

MISSING HISTORY


110 The Embarcadero initially won praise for its goal of attaining the highest certification level for nationwide green-building standards. Sponsored by Hines Interests, it was a shining example of ecodesign that even featured living vines climbing the sides. Even though it would shoot 40 percent above the allowable height limit of 84 feet, the San Francisco Planning Commission gave it a green light.

Enthusiasm waned, however, when historic preservationists pointed out that the building slated for demolition — 113 Steuart St. — was an ILA labor hall during the famous maritime strike of 1934, which erupted into violence after two union members were gunned down by police and led to a four-day general strike that paralyzed the city. "Harry Bridges rose to fame in this building," says architectural historian Bradley Weidmeier, referring to the famous labor leader. "Labor historians from around the country are going to be blocking this."

Hines hired a leading historic architecture firm, Page & Turnbull, to conduct a historic assessment of that building as part of the planning process. Yet the initial report neglected to mention anything about the building being at the center of a profound moment in San Francisco’s labor history.

Former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, an opponent of the project, says the gaps in information weren’t hard to miss. "The fact that it was ground zero for bloody Thursday, that it was ground zero for the general strike … that people were shot in front of there, that their bodies lay inside. You want to know how we found that out? We got it online," Peskin said.

Page & Turnbull later submitted an addendum, including historic photos depicting people crowding into the two-story building to pay respects to the slain union members. The firm acknowledged its historic significance this time, but asserted that the now-empty building had undergone too many retrofits to comply with historic landmark requirements.

This, too, was challenged by project opponents. "You can look at pictures of dead people laying there on the sidewalk with that building in the background, and look at it today, and godammit, it’s pretty much the same building," Peskin says.

The Board of Supervisors in mid-March approved an appeal of the project and instructed city planners to prepare an environmental impact report. Ralph Schoenman, a preservation advocate who says he met with board members about the project, told us that "members of the board were plainly shocked by finding out that the historic report was so flawed and untrue."

That feeling may have lingered for some at the April 21 bard meeting when Supervisors voted 7-4 to reject Mayor Gavin Newsom’s nomination of Ruth Todd, a Page & Turnbull principal, to the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.

WHOSE WATERFRONT?


Though the project has been stalled, the issues it stirred are gaining momentum. The picture of what this stretch of the Embarcadero could look like is shaping up to be quite different from developers’ gauzy artistic renderings. Sue Hestor, a land-use lawyer, is a driving force behind a community-led meeting scheduled for June 24 at the headquarters of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 34 (the successor to ILA) to initiate a new approach to development along the western edge of the Embarcadero.

"Threatened demolition of the 1934 Waterfront Strike headquarters at 113 Steuart has pulled us together," Hestor wrote in a widely disseminated e-mail. "The community will proactively start defining changes we want. No more waiting for a developer proposal, then meekly responding. The community gets to define how the city should look … along the northeast waterfront. When you start at the Embarcadero it is possible to weave in so many areas, so many neighborhoods, so much of our political and immigrant and labor history."

ILWU members are joining with preservationists in the effort to preserve 113 Steuart. "We are at a historic moment when working people are under unprecedented attack," a team of six Local 34 leaders wrote in a recent statement opposing the demolition. "That living history is a prologue to our struggles of the future."

Not all labor unions agree. At a picket staged by San Francisco’s Building and Construction Trades Council outside a Democratic Party luncheon April 21, protesters carried a few flew signs reading "How can we feed our kids with history?" The signs referenced the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, but the same question might be asked of 110 The Embarcadero, which was favored by building-trade workers.

Neighborhood groups are also worried because the construction of the two proposed 84-foot condominium towers at 8 Washington could cause the adjacent Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club to lose half its facility. "Six hundred to 700 kids come every summer to learn to swim and to play tennis," Club director Lee Radner says. "To us, it’s just a matter of the developer not considering the moral issues of the neighborhood club that has given so much to the community." Friends of Golden Gateway (FOGG), which formed to preserve the club in the face of development, has hired Hestor as its attorney.

Because the development would be partially built on a surface parking lot controlled by the Port Commission, a parcel held to be in the public trust under state law, developers proposed a land-swap to get around provisions prohibiting residential uses in those parcels. Renee Dunn, a spokesperson for the Port Commission, noted that the Port’s annual revenues total $65 million, while the amount that would be needed for repairs and maintenance of its century-old infrastructure is almost $2 billion. In general, "Public-private developments provide the dollars needed to make improvements," she told us.

In the wake of concerns about 8 Washington, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu sent a letter to the Port Commission requesting an update to the waterfront plan for that area. "Concerns are currently being raised regarding the proposed development … and the future development of seawall lots along the northern waterfront, and I share many of these concerns," Chiu wrote. In response, the Port agreed to conduct a six-to-eight month focus study for those seawall lots.

Meanwhile, a quietly growing problem may mean that plans for this stretch of the Embarcadero will get more complicated. A report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission predicts a 16-inch rise in the level of the San Francisco Bay by 2050, and a 55-inch rise by 2100, based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Along San Francisco’s waterfront, the most vulnerable area will be from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge, the report found. "Sea-level rise has been linear, and it’s continuing, and we expect that based on what we know about climate change, it will accelerate," notes Joe LaClair of BCDC. In the event of storm surges, he adds, "we will have to find a way to protect the financial district from inundation."

As local governments begin to get up to speed on mitigating the effects of climate change, new questions — beyond developers’ plans vs. neighborhood input — will have to come into play. One that BCDC plans to tackle in coming months, LaClair notes, is: "What does resilient shoreline development look like?" It’s a good one to start asking now.

A weekend under the influence: SFIFF 52

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By Lynn Rapoport

gena.jpg
Mabel (Gena Rowlands, in an Oscar-winning Oscar-nominated performance) has a rare calm moment in A Woman Under the Influence.

The first weekend of the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival produced a cheerful, if windblown, bottleneck along Post between Fillmore and Webster. The one outside the Castro on Sunday night had a slightly more shell-shocked emotional tenor. The crowd seemed in good enough spirits (though this reviewer admits to getting a bit misty-eyed) while giving Gena Rowlands a standing ovation when the 78-year-old actor came onstage before John Cassavetes’s A Woman under the Influence (1974). But the film’s two and a half hours of abrasive familial dysfunction and poorly attended-to mental illness are rough going, and no one could be blamed for wandering home in a torn-up, overwrought fugue. (Think happy thoughts: like the 2008 restoration of the film by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, underwritten by Gucci.)

Less emotionally brutalizing was Friday evening’s screening of Art & Copy (screening again Tues/28, 4 p.m., Sundance Kabuki), where doc maker Doug Pray (Hype!, Scratch, Surfwise) expressed satisfaction at finally getting a film into SFIFF and noted that this one was centered on “the idea that if you hate advertising, make better advertising.”

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Radio, radio: a scene from Art & Copy.

DVRs, defaced billboards, and legislation to calm the traffic of branding on virtually every visible surface of public space also spring to mind. However, these and other options are left unexplored in favor of a brief history of the revolution that occurred in advertising midcentury; commentary by some of the rebel forces and their descendants, including locals Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein (Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners); entertaining behind-the-scenes tales of famous ad campaigns (Got Milk?, I Want My MTV); and stats sprinkled throughout on advertising’s cultural presence, nationally and globally.

Self-comparisons to cave painters and a sequence near the close that feels like an advertisement for advertising (emotionally evocative images of children’s faces upturned in wonder to the sky: check) are somewhat uncomfortable to witness. But Pray has gathered together some of the industry’s brighter, more engaging lights, and his subjects discuss their vocation intelligently, thoughtfully, wittily, and often thoroughly earnestly. It would have been interesting to hear, amid the earnestness, and the exalted talk of advertising that rises to the level of art, some philosophizing on where all this branding and selling gets us, in an age when it’s hard to deny that breakneck consumption is having a somewhat deleterious effect on the planet. Or to learn from these creatives whether there were any ad campaigns they wouldn’t touch, such as one centered on nuclear energy, or the reelection of George W. Bush. After all, many of the interviewees come across as shaggy ex-hippies and liberals. (Last fall, trade paper the Denver Egotist referred to “the entire creative world uniting against John McCain in support of Barack Obama” in a piece on Goodby, Silverstein-made anti-McCain spots that the agency cofounders reportedly underwrote personally.) Still, the film is successful in humanizing and developing a richer picture of a vilified profession. And what it reveals about the visions of its subjects (one compares a good brand to someone you’d like to have over for dinner; another asserts that “great advertising makes food taste better”; another that “you can manufacture any feeling that you want to manufacture”) makes it worth watching, even if you make a habit of fast-forwarding past the ads.

Dick Meister: The Big Strike

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Harry Bridges said of The Big Strike, “We showed the world that united working people could stand against guns and tear gas, against the press and the courts, against whatever they threw at us”

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, formerly labor editor for the Chronicle and labor reporter for KQED’s “Newsroom,” has covered labor issues for half a century.)

It’s the 75th anniversary of what’s known in labor lore as “The Big Strike” — the remarkable event that brought open warfare to San Francisco’s waterfront, led to one of the very few general strikes in U.S. history and played a key role in spreading unionization nationwide.

It began in May of the dark Depression year of 1934 when longshoremen finally rebelled against their wretched working conditions in San Francisco, then one of the world’s busiest ports, and in the West Coast’s other port cities.

Longshoremen were not even guaranteed jobs, no matter how skilled or experienced they might be. They had to report to the docks every morning and hope a hiring boss would pick them from among the thousands of desperate job-seekers who jammed the waterfront for the daily “shapeup.” Hiring bosses rarely chose those who raised serious complaints about pay and working conditions or otherwise challenged them, but were quite partial to those who slipped them bribes or bought them drinks at nearby bars.

Big Easy in the Bay

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culture@sfbg.com

New Orleans is one of those near-mythical cities: aching, beautiful, unique, rich with history. And New Orleans folk love their drink. They should. They’ve contributed much to the history of the cocktail, with some of the best drinks in existence — like the Sazerac, official cocktail of NoLA — created and served there.

Lucky for us, San Francisco is one of the world’s best cocktail cities, in creativity and craft, with artisan cocktail bars continuing to crop up everywhere, just as they did in our wild, Barbary Coast past. And with a little searching, you can find a number of places to get an authentic New Orleans’ concoction. Here’s a journey through Big Easy cocktails that actually keep up with versions I’ve imbibed in New Orleans. Now if I could just find a Bourbon Milk Punch…

SAZERAC

ABSINTHE


Created by Antoine Peychaud in 1830’s New Orleans, the mighty Sazerac is a drink to be reckoned with. Many versions have evolved, usually some combination of Rye whiskey or bourbon, sometimes cognac, Peychaud’s bitters, sugar, and a rinse of absinthe. Bracing with a touch of sweet, it’s a robust, beautiful drink. Absinthe has been doing cocktails right since well before the ‘cocktail renaissance’. Their Sazerac is no exception.

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

BROKEN RECORD


More in line with NoLa’s Tujague’s experience, Excelsior’s king of dive bars stirs intense, balanced sazeracs for an unheard-of $5. Best of all? They don’t skimp on ingredients, using quality rye and St. George Absinthe. Paired with house BBQ, Crawfish Etouffee, or an Oyster Po’ Boy, you’ll be ready to form a second line brass band.

1166 Geneva, SF. (415) 963-1713

JARDINIERE


Pull up to the gorgeous, 1930s supper club bar and have Brian MacGregor mix you a perfect sazerac, made with their own barrel of Sazerac brand rye and brilliant Vieux Pontarlier Absinthe. You’ll want to take to the floor like Fred and Ginger…

300 Grove, SF. (415) 861-5555, www.jardiniere.com

MINT JULEP

ALEMBIC


There’s a lot of debate about the origins of the great Mint Julep… a sure way to rile a Southerner up is to raise the question. Though likely not created in New Orleans, the traditional beverage of the Kentucky Derby is made in top form there, particularly by the amazing Chris McMillian at the Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel. A shock of strong bourbon, lightly sweetened, with refreshing mint on a snow cone of ice, a Julep isn’t right unless served in a proper julep cup. Possibly my favorite of all cocktails, I’m proud to say we have a 100 percent authentic version at our own Alembic.

1725 Haight, SF. (415) 666-0822, www.alembicbar.com

PIM’S CUP

15 ROMOLO


Though Pimm’s was created in 1840s England, a revitalizing, long Pimm’s Cup (Pimm’s, ginger ale or club soda, cucumber, sometimes mint, lemon) was popularized in the US at New Orleans’ Napoleon House, where I’ve savored it mid-afternoon in their unparallelled 1700s courtyard. In SF’s newly-redone 15 Romolo, taste goes even further. Besides meticulously prepared cocktails from a top-notch bartender line-up, plus creative bar food like their addictive Jambalini, I was thrilled to find the Pimm’s Cup served in Romolo’s dim wood bar the best I’ve ever tasted. Made with Rye, it’s genius.
15 Romolo, SF. (415) 398-1359

RAMOS GIN FIZZ

PRESIDIO SOCIAL CLUB


A blissful daytime drink, the Ramos Gin Fizz is one of New Orleans’ greats, invented by Henry C. Ramos in 1888. Dry gin, lemon and lime juice, sugar, cream, nuanced orange flower water and club soda, made frothy by egg white, it’s light and luscious. It’s an ideal morning imbibement that goes down all too easy. Presidio Social Club offers a soothing brunch in a clubhouse setting with 1940s vibe, lots of sunlight, and a classy bar staff who know their cocktails… including the Gin Fizz.
563 Ruger, SF. (415) 885-1888, www.presidiosocialclub.com

HURRICANE

FORBIDDEN ISLAND


The Hurricane isn’t my preferred NoLa drink, but is one of its most popular, served by the tons at, and credited to, Pat O’Brien’s, where, in the ’40s, he’d pour the mix into hurricane-lamp-shaped glasses for NoLa sailors. Usually too sweet for me, it’s a daiquiri-style, rum-based drink of passion fruit and lemon (or sometimes lime). But if there’s one place that does it right, it’s Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge, with balanced, not-too-sweet, tropical drinks.

1304 Lincoln, Alameda. (510) 749-0332, www.forbiddenislandalameda.com

CAFÉ BRULOT

PICAN


I did a little jump for joy at the Southern menu and drinks at downtown Oakland’s brand new, Southern-chic, Pican. Even crazier was seeing Cafe Brulot on the menu, a spiked coffee drink prepared and flambéed tableside at historic, New Orleans’ jazz brunch spots like Arnaud’s. This is the first I’ve seen it at all in the Bay Area, so kudos, Pican. It works as dessert, with coffee, brandy, Benedictine, candied brown sugar, homemade whipped cream, and aromatic orange zest.

2295 Broadway, Oakl. (510) 834-1000, www.picanrestaurant.com

Do the right thing, Dianne

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OPINION At the end of World War II, approximately 36 percent of American workers belonged to a union. Today that number has shrunk to about 12 percent, lagging behind the world’s other industrial democracies. But now, with a Democratic president in office, we have a realistic chance of enacting the most significant piece of labor legislation in decades, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect the right of workers to organize into a union.

The opposition, of course, is well organized and well funded. Opponents will spend more than $200 million to defeat the bill in the Senate. They will argue that EFCA is just a special interest bill that helps big labor. But the truth is that the legislation should be part of the long-term economic recovery plan and is key to rebuilding the middle class.

In 1980, average CEO pay was 42 times that of the average blue-collar worker. By 2006, CEO pay had grown to 364 times the average blue collar worker’s pay. A survey of median weekly earnings in 2007 revealed that union workers make 30 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, and are 59 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage than other workers.

The key EFCA reform, and the one that has generated the most controversy, is called “card-check.” Under EFCA, if the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finds that a majority of employees have signed written authorization forms designating the union as their collective bargaining representative, the union is certified.

Opponents of card-check often argue, erroneously, that EFCA will deprive workers of their right to a so-called secret ballot. In fact, EFCA preserves both options, but it places the choice in the hands of workers, not employers. Moreover, the history of these “secret ballot” elections shows that they are often anything but democratic. Too often employers use their power over unorganized employees to intimidate them into voting against the union. Such documented employer tactics have included mandatory attendance at antiunion meetings, one-on-one meetings, threats to close the business if the union wins the vote, and harassing or even firing workers engaged in organizing activity.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has an 87 percent lifetime voting record from the AFL-CIO and has co-sponsored EFCA in the past. But now, with EFCA finally within reach, she has announced that she is looking for a “less divisive” option.

Say it isn’t so, Senator.

For many years progressive activists have had concerns about Feinstein, even going as far as to seek her censure at a state Democratic convention two years ago. In 2007, the party leadership reminded the activists that although she may stray occasionally, Feinstein is really a good Democrat who shares our basic values and commitments. There was no censure.

But workers’ rights is no side-issue in our Democratic Party. Economic justice is the issue. This is a moment of truth for Feinstein — and all of us who are her constituents have an obligation to help her get to the right answer.

On April 28 at 7 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center, the SF Labor Council, Pride at Work, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club are sponsoring a community briefing on our campaign to urge Feinstein to support working people. Join us. *

Robert Haaland is the co-chair, SF Pride at Work. Rafael Mandelman is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

 

SFIFF: Shots in the dark

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THURS/23


La Mission (Peter Bratt, USA, 2009) A veteran S.F. vato turned responsible — if still muy macho — widower, father, and Muni driver, 46-year-old Che (Benjamin Bratt) isn’t the type for mushy displays of sentiment. But it’s clear his pride and joy is son Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez), a straight-A high school grad bound for UCLA. That filial bond, however, sustains some serious damage when Che discovers Jes has a secret life — with a boyfriend, in the Castro, just a few blocks away from their Mission walkup but might as well be light-years away as far as old-school dad is concerned. This Bratt family project (Benjamin’s brother Peter writes-directs, his wife Talisa Soto Bratt has a supporting role) has a bit of a predictable TV-movie feel, but its warm heart is very much in the right place, and the affectionate location shooting makes this an ideal SFIFF opening-nighter. (Dennis Harvey) 7 p.m., Castro.

FRI/24


It’s Not Me, I Swear! (Philippe Falardeau, Canada, 2008) Ten-year-old Leon Dore (Antoine L’Écuyer) is a Harold without a Maude, forever staging near-fatal "deadly accidents" that by now no one blinks twice at — whether they’re expressions of warped humor, cries for attention, or actual (yet invariably failed) suicide attempts). Mom and dad are forever at each others’ throats, while their older son pines for a domestic normalcy that ain’t happening anytime soon. One day mom simply announces she’s splitting for Greece to "start a new life," pointedly without husband and children. This event rachets Leon’s misbehaviors — which also encompass theft and vandalism — up a few notches. Set in kitschily-realized late 1960s Quebec suburbia, director Philippe Falardeau’s adaptation of two linked novels by Bruno Hebert is a very deft mix of family dysfunction, preadolescent maladjustment (or maybe budding sociopathy), and anarchic comedy. (Harvey) 5:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also Sat/25, 2:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; Tues/28, 1 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

SAT/25


Adoration (Atom Egoyan, Canada/France, 2008) When orphaned teenager Simon (Devon Bostick) writes a paper for French class in which he imagines himself as the son of real-life terrorists, his teacher (Arsinée Khanjian) tacitly encourages its being taken for fact. The resulting firestorm (largely taking place on the Web) raises questions about the boy’s actual parents, free speech, religio-political martyrdom, and so forth. This is the first Atom Egoyan feature based on his own original story — as opposed to literary sources or historical incidents — in 15 interim years. While his fame has certainly risen in the interim, some of us haven’t liked anything so well since that last one, 1994’s Exotica. Adoration recalls such early efforts in the cool intellectual gamesmanship with which characters and technologies are manipulated toward a hidden truth. Yet provocative as it is, there’s something overly elaborate and ultimately dissatisfying about his gambits that makes Adoration less than the sum of its parts. (Harvey) 6:15 p.m, Sundance Kabuki. Also Mon/27, 6:30 p.m., PFA.

Tulpan (Sergey Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan/Switzerland/Germany/Russia/Poland, 2008) Possible new genre alert: the docu-comedy. Documenatarian Dvortsevoy turns his camera on his native Kazakhstan, and nothing depicted suggests anything Borat might’ve broadcast. The country’s stark, southern steppes form the backdrop for a family of nomads, including married-with-children Samal and Ondas, and Samal’s brother Asa, who returns from his Russian naval service longing for his own flock of sheep. Alas, he can’t get a flock until he lands a wife — and the only local prospect, Tulpan, rejects him on the basis of his "big ears" (and the small fact that she would like to move out of the sticks, into the city, and maybe even attend college). Traditional ways bump up against more ambitious ones (as when Asa dreams of a satellite dish), just as comedic moments trade screen time with grittier scenarios (including actual footage of a sheep giving birth). The end result is an intimate and somehow totally relatable look at a fascinatingly foreign world. (Cheryl Eddy) 6:15 p.m., PFA. Also Mon/27, 9:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; April 30, 4:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

TUES/28


In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, England, 2009) A typically fumbling remark by U.K. Minister of International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) ignites a media firestorm, as it seems to suggest war is imminent even as both Brit and U.S. governments are downplaying the likelihood of the Iraq invasion they’re simultaneously preparing for. Suddenly cast as an important arbiter of global affairs — a role he’s perhaps less suited for than playing the Easter Bunny — Simon becomes one chess-piece in a cutthroat game whose participants on both sides of the Atlantic include his own subordinates, the prime minister’s rageaholic communications chief, major Pentagon and State Department honchos, crazy constituents, and more. This frenetic comedy of behind-the-scenes backstabbing and its direct influence on the highest-level diplomatic and military policies is scabrously funny in the best tradition of English television, which is (naturally) just where its creators hei from. (Harvey) 9:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 2, 9:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

APRIL 30


California Company Town (Lee Anne Schmitt, USA, 2008) This land isn’t your land, or my land, and it wasn’t made for you and me — such is the insightful and incite-full impression one gets from California Company Town. Schmitt’s beautifully photographed, concisely narrated, and ominously structured look at the Golden State and the state of capitalism is labor of love, shot between 2003 and 2008; it’s a provocative piece of American history. On a semi-buried level, it’s also an extraordinary act of personal filmmaking that subverts various stereotypes of first-person storytelling by women while simultaneously learning from and breaking away from some esteemed directors of the essay film. (Johnny Ray Huston) 8:35 p.m., PFA. Also May 2, 6:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; May 4, 3:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Rudo y Cursi (Carlos Cuarón, Mexico, 2008) A who’s-who of Mexican cinema giants have their cleats in soccer yarn Rudo y Cursi: stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and producers Alfonso Cuarón (whose brother, Carlos, wrote and directed), Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro. But while Rudo is entertaining, it’s surprisingly lightweight considering the talent involved. Bernal and Luna play Tato and Beto, rural half-brothers discovered by a jovially crooked soccer scout (Guillermo Francella) who gets them gigs playing on Mexico City teams. But athletic achievement seems barely a concern. Of far more importance are Tato’s crooning dreams and high-profile romance with a vapid TV star, and Beto’s left-behind wife and kids — not to mention his raging gambling addiction. Though the drama boils down to one final game (of course), Rudo is really about the bonds and brawls between brothers, not sports teams. Goal? (Eddy) 6:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 1, 4 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 1


D Tour (Jim Granato, USA, 2008) There’s been many a band-on-the-brink doc about groups torn apart by substance abuse, or creative differences, or just plain nuttiness (see: 2004’s DiG! and Some Kind of Monster, and any number of Behind the Music eps). In D Tour, local indie popsters Rogue Wave face, and are drawn together by, an entirely different brand of crisis: drummer Pat Spurgeon’s urgent need for a kidney transplant. Director Granato is given full access to subjects who are very open about their feelings (and, in Spurgeon’s case, unpleasant medical procedures). The result is a music- and emotion-filled journey that’ll no doubt inspire many to check off the "organ donor" box on their driver’s licenses. A sadly ironic, late-act twist involving a different band member will come as no surprise to Rogue Wave followers, but D Tour incorporates the tragedy into its storyline without ever exploiting it. (Eddy) 9 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 4, 3:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; May 7, 5:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 2


The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (David Russo, USA, 2009) Animator Russo’s first feature is a (mostly) live-action whimsy about rudderless Dory (Marshall Allman from Prison Break) who gets fired from his white-collar job and lands in the much scruffier employ of Spiffy Jiffy Janitorial Services. Its punky artist-type staff clean a high-rise’s offices, including one for a test-marketing trying out "self-warming cookies." When our protagonists develop an addictive liking for these treats, strange things begin to occur — like hallucinations and, eventually, male pregnancies of mystery critters. Depending on mood, this arch quirkfest with an ’80s feel (think of all the similar, mildly surreal indie comedies that rode 1984 release Repo Man‘s coattails) may strike you as delightful or just plain irritating. (Harvey) 11 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 6, 3:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Tyson (James Toback, USA, 2008) Director Toback is picking up this year’s Kanbar Award for "excellence in screenwriting," but his latest film is a doc scripted largely in the mind of its subject. To call Mike Tyson a polarizing figure is an understatement (and raises the question: Does anyone really like him except Toback, whom he’s known for two decades?). This film — narrated by Tyson, the sole interviewee — won’t endear him to a public that’s seen him besmirch his glorious boxing-ring talents with an array of bad behavior, from a rape charge (here, Tyson calls his accuser a "wretched swine of a woman") to the chomping of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Though he chokes up on occasion and admits at one point that he starting taking fights just for the money, he’s still about as unsympathetic as humanly possible. Fun fact: a friend convinced him to go tribal with the face tattoo. Tyson himself wanted hearts. (Eddy) 4 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 3


Moon (Duncan Jones, England, 2008) The Bay Area’s own Sam Rockwell has quietly racked up a slew of memorable performances in variable films — including 2002’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and 2008’s Choke — so the fact that he’s pretty much the whole show in this British sci-fi tale is reason enough to see it. A one-man space saga à la Silent Running (1972), it has him as Sam Bell, the lone non-mechanical worker (Kevin Spacey voices his principal robot assistant) on a lunar mining station in the not-too-distant future. He’s just about to finish his long, lonely contracted three-year stint and return home to a desperately missed family when strange things begin to occur. First there are hallucinations, then physical disabilities, then finally the impossible — there’s company aboard the station. Debuting feature director Duncan Jones orchestrates atmosphere and intrigue, though despite one major game-changing twist his original story seems a little thin in the long run. Nevertheless, Rockwell commands attention throughout as a character whose exhaustion, disorientation, and eventual panic feel alarmingly vivid. (Harvey) 9 p.m., Castro.

The Reckoning (Pamela Yates, USA/Uganda/Congo/Colombia/Netherlands, 2008) Yates’ latest documentary chronicles the long-delayed launch and bumpy first years of the International Criminal Court, a Hague-based body founded to prosecute (primarily) war crimes that member nations were unwilling or unable to do so themselves. Its authority is not yet recognized by several nations — including the Big Three of U.S.A., Russia, and China — while prosecutions of various military or political leaders who ordered crimes against civilians are often hampered by political minefields. Nonetheless, the still-struggling court is a beacon of hope for peace and justice around the globe. Yates lays out its work so far as an engrossing series of detective stories investigating instances of mass murder, rape, plunder, etc. in Uganda, the Congo, Darfur, and Colombia. (Harvey) 5:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 5, 6 p.m., PFA; May 6, 6:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2008) It’s no joy for Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) to bring his wife and stepson up from Tokyo on an annual visit to his elderly parents. The occasion is to commemorate the passing of an older brother who’s been dead for decades but is still held up as the yardstick by which Ryo will always fall short. Mom (Kiki Kirin) is well intentioned enough, if often insensitively blunt-spoken. But retired dad (Yoshio Harada) is an imperious grump who resents Ryo’s not following him into medical practice, disapproves of his marrying a widow, spurns her son from that prior union as less than a "real" grandchild, and is generally kind of a dick. This latest from Hirokazu Kore-eda (2004’s Nobody Knows, 1998’s After Life) is a quiet seriocomedy with lots of discomfiting moments. Yet it’s suffused with enough humor, warmth and surprising joy to easily qualify as one of SFIFF’s best 2009 picks. (Harvey)

8:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 5, 6:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

At the desert shore

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

At some point between the group’s termination in 1981 and re-formation in 2004, Throbbing Gristle entered the canon. The more Throbbing Gristle music you’ve heard, and the more you’ve read about it, the less likely that conversion will seem. Matmos’ Drew Daniels acknowledged as much in his contribution to Continuum’s 33 1/3 series on classic albums, an exegesis of the band’s most accessible statement, the puzzling 20 Jazz Funk Greats (Industrial Records, 1979). The group’s relationship with music-as-such was perverse enough to make contemporaries like the Sex Pistols look like Chuck Berry revivalists. Back in the saddle after nearly a quarter-century, Throbbing Gristle mark two has less in common with the noise pranksters of old than the divergent, innovative projects the group has splintered into: spokes(wo)man and singer Genesis P-Orridge’s Burroughsian reengineering of rock’s DNA with Psychic TV; synth whiz Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson’s protean electronic voyages with Coil; and the rain-slick, dark disco of Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter’s Carter Tutti project all figure in the group’s latest recording, the appropriately bizarre Part Two: The Endless Not (Mute, 2007).

P-Orridge, the most visible and outspoken member, is seductively articulate about the band’s intentions: they have little to do with making music that plays into the pleasure of listening, and much to do with music’s mainline connection to culture. For all of Throbbing Gristle’s touted firsts, its music often verges on indecipherable. None of the group’s gritty, lo-fi recordings evoke emotions beyond a vague, lingering unease. But, the achievements: Throbbing Gristle literally invented modern industrial music with the founding of its so-named label, members Carter and Sleazy are credited with developing an early keyboard-triggered sampler, Tutti’s "Hot on the Heels of Love" was a prime inspiration for first-wave Detroit techno, and "(We Hate You) Little Girls" predates Whitehouse’s power electronics and the whole harsh-noise underground long since percoutf8g in the U.S. and Japan. And so on.

The weird thing about such innovations is that those committed to establishing Throbbing Gristle’s major authorship risk freezing and trapping these self-appointed culture-creeps within one historical moment or another. Despite all the collateral riding on Throbbing Gristle’s "seminal" place in the last half-decade of musical and cultural history, the band’s deliberate failure to be just that — a band — in any conventional sense needs to be acknowledged, partly as a tactical gambit. If Throbbing Gristle is a band more talked about than listened to, it seems inconsequential. Individually and collectively, they were prescient enough to choose culture as their medium, and music as a tool for scrambling it. It’s a foresight that has been borne out by MTV and then the Internet, but the tricky thing is that Throbbing Gristle’s actual accomplishment — the meaning behind what it does — isn’t in music itself, but in culture. That’s a zone where significance tends to be more protean; we can’t simply rely on albums as self-contained, coherent statements that we can either identify with or reject. There’s something trickier going on here, as if Throbbing Gristle’s music is meant to be heard at the second or third degree, when everything’s been attenuated.

The Throbbing Gristle project grew out of COUM Transmissions, a sort of umbrella term for performances and art projects that had strong affinities with the extreme performance artists known as the Vienna Aktionists, William Burroughs, and occultist Aleister Crowley. Their best-known installation, "Pornography," in a gallery within spitting distance of Buckingham Palace, most notably exhibited images of Cosey from various British porn magazines. It was a publicly-funded blight whose purpose was, in part, to convert sensationalist press into a feedback loop worth contemputf8g: the group framed and mounted outraged press clippings, and when newspapers published articles about this détournement, framed those as well. This press-driven mise-en-abyme probably offers the best example of how to listen to TG. The band plumbed new depths with feedback and delay, but their raison d’être was, beyond electronic trickery, setting up circular cultural patterns that explode hypocrisy. In doing so, the creative forces within Throbbing Gristle afford themselves the freedom to play any villainous or anti-heroic role handed to them.

THROBBING GRISTLE

Thurs/23, 8 p.m., sold out

Grand Ballroom, Regency Center

1290 Sutter, SF

www.throbbing-gristle.com

HOW TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSE — PART 6

Thurs/23–Sun/26, various venues

www.mobilization.com

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