History

An American blindness

Andrew Lam
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8
An American blindness

After the first jetliner crashed into the Twin Towers on that September 11 morning, a friend of mine and his 11-year old daughter climbed up to the roof of their Manhattan home to look around. Just then the second plane struck, the young girl fell backward, and went blind from shock.

It took more than a year of examinations and therapies before this girl came out of her blindness to look around.

That’s what happened to America itself ten years ago this Sunday on 9/11, though it might be claimed many of us were blinded by privilege and hubris long before. But 9/11 produced a spasm of blind rage, arising from a pre-existing blindness as to the way much of the world sees us. That in turn led to the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and, in all, a dozen “shadow wars” according to The New York Times.

Bob Woodward’s crucial book, Obama’s Wars, points out that there were already secret and lethal counterterrorism operations active in more than 60 countries as of 2009. From Pentagon think tanks came a new military doctrine of the “Long War,” a counter-insurgency vision arising from the failed Phoenix program of the Vietnam era, projecting U.S. open combat and secret wars over a span of 50 to 80 years, or 20 future presidential terms. The taxpayer costs of this Long War, also shadowy, would be in the many trillions of dollars — and paid for not from current budgets, but by generations born after the 2000 election of George W. Bush. The deficit spending on the Long War would invisibly force the budgetary crisis now squeezing our states, cities and most Americans.

Besides the future being mortgaged, civil liberties were thought to require a shrinking proper to a state of permanent and secretive war, so the Patriot Act was promulgated. All this happened after 9/11 through Democratic default and denial. Who knows what future might have followed if Al Gore, with a half-million popular vote margin over George Bush, had prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court instead of losing by the vote of a single justice? In any event, only a single member of Congress, Barbara Lee of Berkeley-Oakland, voted against the war authorization, and only a single senator, Russ Feingold, voted against the Patriot Act.

Were we not blinded by what happened on 9/11? Are we still? Let’s look at the numbers we almost never see.

 

CASUALTIES OF WAR

As to American casualties, the figure now is beyond twice those who died in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. on 9/11. The casualties are rarely totaled, but are broken down into three categories by the Pentagon and Congressional Research Service. There is Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes Afghanistan and Pakistan but, in keeping with the Long War definition, also covers Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Second, there is Operation Iraqi Freedom and its successor Operation New Dawn, the name adopted after September 2010 for the 47,000 US advisers, trainers and counterterrorism units still in Iraq. The scope of these latter operations includes Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. These territories include not only Muslim majorities but, according to former Centcom commander Tommy Franks, 68 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and the passageway for 43 percent of petroleum exports, another American geo-interest which was heavily denied in official explanations.

A combined 6,197 Americans were killed in these wars as of August 16, 2011, in the name of avenging 9/11, a day when 2, 996 Americans died. The total number of American wounded has been 45,338, and rising at a rapid rate. The total number rushed by military Medivac out of these violent zones was 56, 432. That’s a total of 107,996 Americans. And the active-duty military suicide rate for the decade is at a record high of 2, 276, not counting veterans or those who have tried unsuccessfully to take their own lives. In fact, the suicide rate for last year was greater than the American death toll in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has long played a numbers game with these body counts. In addition to being painfully difficult and extremely complicated to access, there was a time when the Pentagon refused to count as Iraq war casualties any soldier who died from their wounds outside of Iraq’s airspace. Similar controversies have surrounded examples such as soldiers killed in non-combat accidents.

The fog around Iraq or Afghanistan civilian casualties will be seen in the future as one of the great scandals of the era. Briefly, the United States and its allies in Baghdad and Kabul have relied on eyewitness, media or hospital numbers instead of the more common cluster-sampling interview techniques used in conflict zones like the first Gulf War, Kosovo or the Congo. The United Nations has a conflict of interest as a party to the military conflict, and acknowledged in a July 2009 U.N. human rights report footnote that “there is a significant possibility that UNAMA is underreporting civilian casualties.”

In August, even the mainstream media derided a claim by the White House counter-terrorism adviser that there hasn’t been a single “collateral,” or innocent, death during an entire year of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, a period in which 600 people were killed, all of them alleged “militants.” As an a specific explanation for the blindness, the Los Angeles Times reported April 9 that “Special Forces account for a disproportionate share of civilian casualties caused by western troops, military officials and human rights groups say, though there are no precise figures because many of their missions are deemed secret.”

 

STICKER SHOCK OF WAR

Among the most bizarre symptoms of the blindness is the tendency of most deficit hawks to become big spenders on Iraq and Afghanistan, at least until lately. The direct costs of the war, which is to say those unfunded costs in each year’s budget, now come to $1.23 trillion, or $444.6 billion for Afghanistan and $791.4 billion for Iraq, according to the National Priorities Project.

But that’s another sleight-of-hand, when one considers the so-called indirect costs like long-term veteran care. Leading economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes recently testified to Congress that their previous estimate of $4 to $6 trillion in ultimate costs was conservative. Nancy Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers in D.C. — in my opinion, the best war reporter of the decade — wrote recently that “it’s almost impossible to pin down just what the United States spends on war.” The president himself expressed “sticker shock,” according to Woodward’s book, when presented cost projections during his internal review of 2009.

The Long War casts a shadow not only over our economy and future budgets but our innocent and unborn children’s future as well. This is no accident, but the result of deliberate lies, obfuscations and scandalous accounting techniques. We are victims of an information warfare strategy waged deliberately by the Pentagon. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal said much too candidly in a February 2010, “This is not a physical war of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants.” David Kilcullen, once the top counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, defines “international information operations as part of counterinsurgency.” Quoted in Counterinsurgency in 2010, Kilcullen said this military officer’s goal is to achieve a “unity of perception management measures targeting the increasingly influential spectators’ gallery of the international community.”

This new war of perceptions, relying on naked media manipulation such as the treatment of media commentators as “message amplifiers” but also high-technology information warfare, only highlights the vast importance of the ongoing WikiLeaks whistle-blowing campaign against the global secrecy establishment. Consider just what we have learned about Iraq and Afghanistan because of WikiLeaks: Tens of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq, never before disclosed; instructions to U.S. troops to not investigate torture when conducted by U.S. allies; the existence of Task Force 373, carrying out night raids in Afghanistan; the CIA’s secret army of 3,000 mercenaries; private parties by DynCorp featuring trafficked boys as entertainment, and an Afghan vice president carrying $52 million in a suitcase.

The efforts of the White House to prosecute Julian Assange and persecute Pfc. Bradley Manning in military prison should be of deep concern to anyone believing in the public’s right to know.

The news that this is not a physical war but mainly one of perceptions will not be received well among American military families or Afghan children, which is why a responsible citizen must rebel first and foremost against The Official Story. That simple act of resistance necessarily leads to study as part of critical practice, which is as essential to the recovery of a democratic self and democratic society. Read, for example, this early martial line of Rudyard Kipling, the poet of the white man’s burden: “When you’re left wounded on Afghanistan’s plains/ And the women come out to cut up what remains/ Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/And go to your God like a soldier.” Years later, after Kipling’s beloved son was killed in World War I and his remains never recovered, the poet wrote: “If any question why we died / Tell them because our fathers lied.”

 

A HOPE FOR PEACE

An important part of the story of the peace movement, and the hope for peace itself, is the process by which hawks come to see their own mistakes. A brilliant history/autobiography in this regard is Dan Ellsberg’s Secrets, about his evolution from defense hawk to historic whistleblower during the Vietnam War. Ellsberg writes movingly about how he was influenced on his journey by meeting contact with young men on their way to prison for draft resistance.

The military occupation of our minds will continue until many more Americans become familiar with the strategies and doctrines in play during the Long War. Not enough Americans in the peace movement are literate about counterinsurgency, counterterrorism and the debates about the “clash of civilizations”, the West versus the Muslim world.

The more we know about the Long War doctrine, the more we understand the need for a long peace movement. The pillars of the peace movement, in my experience and reading, are the networks of local progressives in hundreds of communities across the United States. Most of them are voluntary, citizen volunteers, always and immersed in the crises of the moment, nowadays the economic recession and unemployment.

This peace bloc deserves more. It won’t happen overnight, but gradually we are wearing down the pillars of the war. It’s painfully slow, because the president is threatened by Pentagon officials, private military contractors and an entire Republican Party (except the Ron Paul contingent) who benefit from the politics and economics of the Long War.

But consider the progress, however slow. In February of this year, Rep. Barbara Lee passed a unanimous resolution at the Democratic National Committee calling for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan and transfer of funds to job creation. The White House approved of the resolution. Then 205 House members, including a majority of Democrats, voted for a resolution that almost passed, calling for the same rapid withdrawal. Even the AFL-CIO executive board, despite a long history of militarism, adopted a policy opposing Afghanistan. The president himself is quoted in Obama’s Wars as opposing his military advisors, demanding an exit strategy and musing that he “can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.” At every step of the way, it must be emphasized, public opinion in Congressional districts was a key factor in changing establishment behavior.

As for Al Qaeda, there is always the threat of another attack, like those attempted by militants aiming at Detroit during Christmas 2009 or Times Square in May 2010. In the event of another such terrorist assault originating from Pakistan, all bets are off: According to Woodward, the U.S. has a “retribution” plan to bomb 150 separate sites in that country alone there, and no apparent plan for The Day After. Assuming that nightmare doesn’t happen, today’s al Qaeda is not the al Qaeda of a decade ago. Osama bin Laden is dead, its organization is damaged, and its strategy of conspiratorial terrorism has been displaced significantly by the people-power democratic uprisings across the Arab world.

It is clear that shadow wars lie ahead, but not expanding ground wars involving greater numbers of American troops. The emerging argument will be over the question of whether special operations and drone attacks are effective, moral and consistent with the standards of a constitutional democracy. And it is clear that the economic crisis finally is enabling more politicians to question the trillion dollar war spending.

Meanwhile, the 2012 national elections present an historic opportunity to awaken from the blindness inflicted by 9/11.

After more than 50 years of activism, politics and writing, Tom Hayden is a leading voice for ending the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan and reforming politics through a more participatory democracy.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

OPENING

The Apparition Genre-movie vets Ashley Greene and Tom Felton star in this supernatural thriller set on a college campus. (runtime not available)

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star Comedian Nick Swardson stars as a wannabe porn star in this comedy from the director of The Hot Chick (2002). (runtime not available)

Chasing Madoff Doc about the investigators who brought down the notorious Ponzi scammer. (1:31)

Circumstance Thirteen (2003) goes to Tehran? The world of sex, drugs, and underground nightclubs in Iran provides the backdrop for writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s lusty, dreamy take on the passionate teenagers behind the hijabs. Risking jail and worse are the sassy, privileged Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and the beautiful, orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), who, much like young women anywhere, just want to be free — to swim, sing, dance, test boundaries, lose, and then find themselves. The difference here is that they’re under constant, unnerving surveillance, in a country where more than 70 percent of the population is less than 30 years old. Nevertheless, within their mansion walls and without, beneath graffitied walls and undulating at intoxicating house parties, the two girls begin to fall in love with each other, as Atafeh’s handsome, albeit creepy older brother Mehran (Palo Alto-bred Reza Sixo Safai) gazes on. The onetime musical talent’s back from rehab, has returned to the mosque with all the zeal of the prodigal, and has hooked up with the Morality Police that enforces the nation’s cultural laws. Filmed underground in Beirut, with layers that permit both pleasure and protest (wait for the hilarious moment when 2008’s Milk is dubbed in Farsi), Circumstance viscerally transmits the realities and fantasies of Iranian young women on the verge. (1:45) (Chun)

Contagion Steven Soderbergh directs every movie star on the planet (Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, and about 67 others) in this thriller about a worldwide disease epidemic. (1:42)

Creature From Wikipedia: “The group decides to stop at a roadside convenience store owned by Chopper (Sid Haig), who tells them the tale of Lockjaw, a fabled god-like creature who is half-man, half-alligator.” Ergo, this is either gonna be terrible or the greatest movie ever made. (1:33)

Little Rock When the rental car driven by Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka) and Rintaro Sakamato (Rintaro Sawamoto) breaks down in nowheresville, California (actually, a small town called Little Rock), an air of disillusion hangs between the siblings, on vacation to “see America.” Holed up in a motel room, their disappointment is palpable, until a chance encounter with some locals sucks the pair into exurban American life. By the time their car is again roadworthy, Atsuko can’t bear to leave and decides to stay behind as her brother, the only one of the two who speaks a word of English, continues ahead without her. Communication is the driving force behind Little Rock and the language barrier somehow never gets stale; it certainly allows Okatsuka the opportunity for some superb acting. Despite some directorial flourishes (by Mike Ott), however, the story doesn’t really hold many surprises, and its inevitable conclusion is glimpsed long before it’s reached. (1:25) Roxie. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*Love Crime See “Original Sin.” (1:46)

*The Man Who Fell To Earth See “Roeg, Warrior.” (2:19)

Puzzle A middle-aged housewife finds herself through jigsaw competitions in this Argentina-France co-production. (1:29) SFFS New People Cinema.

Shaolin Jackie Chan and Andy Lau star in Benny Chan’s historical kung fu extravaganza. (2:11) Four Star.

*Warrior Those wondering why the mixed martial arts scene has captured the imagination of so many can finally understand what the fuss is all about, now that it comes filtered through a melodramatic narrative akin to The Fighter (2010). Warrior‘s mis-en-scene is immediately recognizable: a prodigal returns, in the form of Tom Conlon (Tom Hardy). Once a talented teenage wrestler, the now-battered man is the damaged youngest son of alcoholic ex-boxer Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte). Tom wants his father to train him for a major mixed martial arts tournament with a multimillion-dollar purse, though the two obviously still have a deadly hold on each other — the repentant Paddy is on the wagon and the emotionally bruised Tom harbors secrets he won’t reveal — and battle with cutting comments rather than fists. Tom isn’t the only prodigal in the house: Paddy has lost the trust of Tom’s bro, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former fighter and present-day physics high school teacher who’s struggling to make ends meet with an underwater mortgage. Though Warrior is no Raging Bull (1980), it almost outdukes The Fighter in terms of its brutal bouts, conveying the swift, no-holds-barred action of MMA in the ring, while giving actors plenty of drama to wrap their jowls ’round — particularly in Nolte’s case. His tore-up turn as an all-excuses patriarch is as heartbreaking as a solid kick to the jaw. (2:19) (Chun)

ONGOING

Apollo 18 (1:26)

*Beginners There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Mélanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. (1:44) (Peitzman)

*Bellflower Picture Two Lane Blacktop (1971) drifters armed with “dude”-centric vocabulary and an obsession with The Road Warrior (1981) and its apocalypse-wow survivalist chic. There are so many pleasures in this janky, so-very-DIY, heavy-on-the-sunblasted-atmosphere indie that you’re almost willing to overlook the clichés, the dead zones, and the annoying characters. Seeming every-dudes Woodrow (director-writer-producer Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are far too obsessed with tricking out their cars and building a flamethrower for their own good — the misfits must force themselves out of the metal shop of the mind to meet women. So when Woodrow goes up against Milly (Jessie Wiseman) in a cricket-eating contest at a bar, it’s love at first bite. Their meet-gross morphs into a road trip and eventually a relationship, while the flamethrower nags, unexplained, in the background, like an unfired gun — or an unconsummated, not-funny bromance. These manifestations of male fantasy — muscle cars, weapons, and tough chicks — are cast in a dreamy, saturated, and burnt-at-the-edges light, as Glodell and company weave together barely articulated reveries and bad-new-west imagery with a kind of fuck-all intelligence, culminating in a finale that will either haunt you with its scattershot machismo-romanticism or leave you scratching your noggin wondering what just happened. (1:46) (Chun)

Brighton Rock Writer Rowan Joffe (2010’s The American) moves into the director’s chair for this Graham Greene adaptation, previously filmed in 1947 with an early-career star turn by Richard Attenborough. Joffe’s version updates Greene’s 1938 story to 1964, allowing the brutal actions of small-time hood Pinkie Brown to unfold as Britain’s mods vs. rockers youth riots boil in the background. Don’t get too excited, though — despite a cool premise and even cooler setting, and the presence of veterans Helen Mirren and John Hurt in supporting roles, Brighton Rock rages without a rudder. Pinkie is played by Sam Riley (so good as Ian Curtis in 2007’s Control), who snarls like a sociopathic James Dean and is so transparently hateful it’s hard to root for anything other than his hastened demise. Brighton Rock‘s most memorable element is probably Andrea Riseborough, an on-the-verge young Brit who’s being touted as the next Carey Mulligan. She has the thankless (yet showy) role of Rose, a naïve waitress who becomes entangled in Pinkie’s web after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A far-from-storybook ending awaits, and you’ll experience little enjoyment watching the characters claw their way there. (1:51) (Eddy)

Buck This documentary paints a portrait of horse trainer Buck Brannaman as a sort of modern-day sage, a sentimental cowboy who helps “horses with people problems.” Brannaman has transcended a background of hardship and abuse to become a happy family man who makes a difference for horses and their owners all over the country with his unconventional, humane colt-starting clinics. Though he doesn’t actually whisper to horses, he served as an advisor and inspiration for Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998). Director Cindy Meehl focuses generously on her saintly subject’s bits of wisdom in and out of a horse-training setting — e.g. “Everything you do with a horse is a dance” — as well as heartfelt commentary from friends and colleagues. In the harrowing final act of the film, Brannaman deals with a particularly unruly horse and his troubled owner, highlighting the dire and disturbing consequences of improper horse rearing. (1:28) (Sam Stander)

Captain America: The First Avenger OK, Marvel. I could get behind 2008’s Iron Man (last year’s Iron Man 2, not so much), but after Thor and now Captain America, I’m starting to get cynical about this multi-year build-up to the full-on Avengers movie, due in May 2012. Can even a superhero-stuffed movie directed by Joss Whedon live up to all this hype? There’s plenty of time to ponder, and maybe worry a little, with Captain America’s backstory-explaining picture now in theaters. Chris Evans stars as the 90-pound weakling who morphs into a supersoldier, thanks to the World War II-era tinkerings of a scientist (Stanley Tucci) and an inventor (Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man’s dad). The original plan for the musclebound shield-bearer (fighting Nazis, natch) gets waylaid a bit when the newly famous Captain America becomes a PR prop for the U.S. government; it’s abandoned entirely when a worse-than-Hitler foe, in the guise of power-obsessed Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), threatens the world. Directed by Spielberg cohort Joe Johnston, Captain America is gee-whiz enjoyable enough, but it’s very nearly the same movie as Thor, which no amount of Tommy Lee Jones (as a sarcastic army colonel) wisecracks can conceal. And here’s an anti-spoiler: there’s no post-credits surprise in this one, so you can bolt as soon as they start to roll. (2:09) (Eddy)

Colombiana (1:47)

Conan the Barbarian Neither 3D (unnecessary) nor Game of Thrones‘ Jason Momoa (beefcake-y) are enough to make this Conan the Barbarian competition for the 1982 Schwarzenegger classic. This new take is a barely adequate adventure movie helped along by Rose McGowan’s leering turn as an evil witch with Freddy Krueger claws. Would that everyone involved (including frequent remake director Marcus Nispel) had McGowan’s razor-sharp grasp of tone; as a whole, the film is never quite sure if it’s a camp-tastic voyage (the prologue, containing Conan’s birth and much Ron Perlman nostril-flaring, suggests what might have been) or a semi-straightforward fantasy actioner. A totally forgettable female lead (Rachel Nichols), a he-was-scarier-in-Avatar villain (Stephen Lang), a blah mixture of two tired plots (revenge + “chosen one”) — there’s just not a lot here, aside from a few hilarious lines of dialogue and Momoa’s muscles. He was so great in Game of Thrones, though, I suspect this dud won’t keep his career from skyrocketing. (1:42) (Eddy)

Cowboys and Aliens Here ’tis in a nutshell: the movie’s called Cowboys and Aliens — and that’s exactly, entirely what you’ll get. Director Jon Favreau may never best 2008’s Iron Man (actor Jon Favreau will prob never top 1996’s Swingers, but that’s a debate for another time), but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a good time trying. Cowboys is a genre mash-up in the most literal sense; as the title suggests, it pits Wild West gunslingers (Harrison Ford as a crabby cattleman, Daniel Craig as an amnesiac outlaw) against gold-seeking space invaders who also delight in kidnapping and torturing humans. As stupidly entertaining as it is, this is a textbook example of a pretty OK movie that could have been so much better … if only. If only the alien characters had a little bit more District 9-style personality. If only the story had a shred of suspense — look ye not here for “spooky” and “mysterious;” this shit is 100 percent full-on explosions. If only Craig’s comically fine-tooled physique didn’t outshine his wooden acting. And so forth. (1:58) (Eddy)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) (Chun)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) (Peitzman)

The Devil’s Double Say hello to my little friend, again— and rest assured, it’s not a dream and you’re seeing double. New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori gets back to his potboiler roots with this campy, claustrophobic look back at the House of Saddam Hussein, based on a true story and designed to win over fans of Scarface (1983) with its portrait of mad excess and deca-dancey ’80s-ish soundtrack. The craziest poseur of all is Hussein’s son Uday (Dominic Cooper), a petty dictator-in-the-making — and, according to this film, a full-fledged murderous pedophile — who chomps cigars and wraps his jaws around schoolgirls while Cooper happily chews scenery. Uday needs a double to sidestep all those troublesome assassination attempts, so he enlists look-alike childhood friend Latif (also Cooper) to get the surgery, pop in the overbite, bray like a madman, make appearances in his stead, and function as a kind of pet human. Never mind Ludivine Sagnier, glassy-eyed and absurd in the role of Uday’s favorite sex kitten Sarrab — Double is completely Cooper’s, who seizes the moment, investing the morally upstanding Latif with a serious sincerity with just his eyes and body language and infusing evil odd job Uday with a dangerous, comic-book unpredictability. To his credit, Cooper imbues such cult-ready, blow-the-doors-off lines as “I love cunt! I love cunt more than god!” with, erm, believability, even as the denouement rings somewhat false. (1:48) (Chun)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark If you’re expecting a traditional haunted house story, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark might be a disappointment. The film, which was co-written by Guillermo del Toro, has a lot in common with his Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) — both movies are more dark fairy tale than horror. They follow a young girl who discovers a mystical world around her, much to the disbelief of the adults around her. It’s worth noting that Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is lighter fare: despite all the peril involved, it’s actually pretty fun. Young Bailee Madison, who made such an impression in 2009’s Brothers, is a charming lead, precocious but believable. And Katie Holmes is surprisingly sympathetic in her role as the caring stepmother, a nice switch from the standard fairy tale trope. As with Fright Night, the ad campaign for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is misleading, so here’s hoping audience members looking for a gory slasher will appreciate a whimsical fable instead. (1:40) (Peitzman)

Fright Night Don’t let the spooky trailer fool you: the Fright Night remake is almost as silly as the original. In fact, it follows the 1985 film closely, as young Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) comes to realize that his neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire. The biggest change is a smart one — this Fright Night transforms late-night TV host Peter Vincent into Criss Angel-type illusionist Peter Vincent (David Tennant). The casting is spot on all-around, and frankly, Farrell is a lot more believable than Chris Sarandon as the seductive bad boy. The only real problem with the new Fright Night — other than the unnecessary 3D — is that it never fully commits to camp the way the original did. There’s a bit too much back-and-forth between serious scares and goofy blood splatters. Luckily, it’s still an entertaining remake that doesn’t crap all over a classic. It’s also a great reminder that vampires don’t have to be moody — remember, they used to be fun. (2:00) (Peitzman)

*The Future Dreams and drawings, cats and fantasies, ambition and aimlessness, and the mild-mannered yet mortifying games people play, all wind their way into Miranda July’s The Future. The future’s a scary place, as many of us fully realize, even if you hide from it well into your 30s, losing yourself in the everyday. But you can’t duck July’s collection of moments, objects, and small gestures transformed into something strangely slanted and enchanted, both weird and terrifying, when viewed through July’s looking glass. Care and commitment — to oneself and others — are two vivid threads running through The Future. Cute couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) — unsettling look-alikes with their curly crops — appear at first to be sailing contently, aimlessly toward an undemanding unknown: Jason works from home as a customer-service operator, and Sophie attempts to herd kiddies as a children’s dance instructor. But enormous, frightening demands beckon — namely the oncoming adoption of a special-needs feline named Paw-Paw (voiced by July as if it’s a traumatized, innocent child). Lickety-splitsville, they must be all they can be before Paw-Paw’s arrival. The weirdness of the familiar, and the kindness of strangers, become ways into fantasy and escape when the couple bumps up against the limits of their imagination. This ultra-low-key horror movie of the banal is obviously remote territory for July (2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know). The Future is her best film to date and finds her tumbling into a kind of magical realism or plastic fantastic, embodied by a talking cat that becomes the conscience of the movie. (1:31) (Chun)

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (1:35)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) (Eddy)

Gun Hill Road Though the visibility of gays and lesbians in cinema remains (largely) confined to independent film, Rashaad Ernesto Green, in his debut feature Gun Hill Road, uses the creative freedom afforded by that closeting to explore issues of race and confused sexuality amid the Latino population of the Bronx. Esai Morales is Enrique, a former drug dealer returning from prison to his wife Angela (Judy Reyes) and teenage son Michael (Harmony Santana). But everyone seems to have moved on with their lives. Angela is having an affair, and Michael has created a new persona, Vanessa. Green’s film focuses on the relationship between the damaged Enrique and Michael, whose cross-dressing and budding transsexuality puts the family members at odds. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and an entry in this year’s Frameline Film Festival, Gun Hill Road is one in a recent spate of films that deals with coming out in an urban setting. Like Green’s film, Peter Bratt’s La Mission (2009) offered a picture of homophobia in the Latino community. But Gun Hill Road, despite its bulging dramatic heft, shirks the after-school-special formula of La Mission by imagining complex characters rather than hewing them from instantly recognizable, sympathetic archetypes. (1:28) (Ryan Lattanzio)

*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Chances are you aren’t going to jump into the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. So while the movie is probably the best Harry Potter film yet, it’s more a fitting conclusion than a standalone film. For fans of the books, there are no real surprises — this is a close adaptation. And for those Harry Potter movie fans who haven’t read the books, shame on you, and kudos if you managed to not get spoiled. It’s hard for me to offer a serious critical analysis of Part 2, because it represents the end of a long and very emotional journey. (Everyone in that audience was crying. Everyone.) I will say that, as was the case in the book, there are a few overdone, schmaltzy moments that aren’t really necessary. But in the context of the series, they’re forgivable — this may not be the great cinematic event of our generation, but Harry Potter as a whole is sure to be one of our most enduring cultural icons. (2:10) (Peitzman)

*The Hedgehog You needn’t possess the rough, everyday refinement of the characters of The Hedgehog to appreciate this debut feature by director-screenwriter Mona Achache — just an appreciation for a delicate touch and a tender heart. Eleven-year-old Paloma (the wonderful Garance Le Guillermic) is too smart for her own good, bored, neglected by her parents, and left to fend for herself with only her considerable imagination and a camcorder. She drifts around her fishbowl of privilege, a deluxe art nouveau-style apartment building in Paris, leveling her all-too-wise gaze on its denizens and plotting certain suicide on her 12th birthday — that is until a new resident appears in her viewfinder: a kindly Japanese gentleman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He has as much of a connoisseur’s eye as Paloma — the proof is in his unlikely focus of attention, the building’s concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko, resembling a burly Gertrude Stein), who hides her cultured and bookish inclinations behind a gruff, drab exterior. They recognize in each other a reverence for an almost monkish life of the mind, the austere elegance of wabi-sabi, and the transient beauty of rough-hewn imperfection, even in the sleek, well-heeled heart of the City of Light. To the credit of Achache, working with Muriel Barbery’s novel, these unlikely fragile friendships between outsiders take hold in a way that sidesteps preciousness and stays with you long after its pages have turned. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) (Chun)

*Higher Ground Higher Ground does not bite off more than it can chew. I guess that should go without saying, but it’s striking how comfortably Vera Farmiga (in her directorial debut) tackles this story of devotion and doubt. Based on the memoirs of Carolyn S. Briggs, who co-wrote the screenplay, this deeply personal film follows Corrine Walker (Vera Farmiga) from her adolescence through the trials of youth and middle age, her marriage to high school sweetheart Ethan (Joshua Leonard), and their lives as members of a small hippie Christian community. Although religion serves as a backdrop for Higher Ground, it doesn’t suffocate the human element of the story; it’s less a film about Christianity than it is about the challenges one woman faces as she tries to find room for herself amidst faith. Farmiga treats her subjects with empathy and humor and crafts a thoughtful, tender slice of sixties Midwest Americana. (1:49) (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*The Interrupters With concern from society and government as a whole at low ebb, communities at greater risk of violence from within than ever have had to come up with their own peace-making solutions. The Interrupters, the latest documentary by Steve James (1994’s Hoop Dreams), shows dedicated efforts to help one of the nation’s worst centers of such bloodshed: Chicago. “Violence is like the great infectious diseases of all history,” says epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, in that it can be stopped from spreading to epidemic proportions by numerous “initial interruption(s) of transmission” at its source. He translated that perspective into the founding of CeaseFire, an organization that doesn’t aim to summarily end the existence of gangs and drug trade. Instead, its plain but hardly simple mission is to stop the shootings, stabbings, etc. which are exacerbated by unemployment, broken families, and other sources of stress whose cumulative effect can rapidly escalate a casual dis to a mortal confrontation. Under CeaseFire’s auspices, Tio Hardiman created the Violence Interrupters program, which drafts people from the community — many former gangbangers themselves — as mediators wading into conflicts to defuse them before things get out of hand. It takes considerable will and nerves of steel; “interrupters” have been shot at, and during the course of this documentary’s year-long span one volunteer lands in the hospital for his trouble. But The Interrupters makes a powerful case against the inevitability of hopelessness turning into violence. (2:05) (Harvey)

*Love Exposure Sion Sono’s Love Exposure opens with the claim that it’s “based on a true event,” which is no doubt its first joke. After the death of his saintly mother, youthful protagonist Yu (Takahiro Nishijima) adapts to the adoption of the priesthood by his father (Atsuro Watabe), though it’s harder to accept the eventual intrusion of an insanely needy new parishioner (a memorable Makiko Watanabe), a crackhead-acting real-life succubus who swiftly destroys dad’s faith and vocation. As a result Yu falls in with a bad crowd, becoming its Jesus in a weird pseudo spiritual observance of taking “peek-a-boo panty photos” while remaining otherwise chaste in anticipation of meeting his own personal Madonna — Holy Virgin and Ciccone personae inclusive. High school heartache, martial arts, Ravel’s Boléro, female impersonation, and the insidious manipulations of an agent (Sakura Ando) from the mysterious, Scientology-like Zero Church all factor prominently in a careening story whose takes on religion, sin, and redemption are nothing if not antic. Just what Sono is saying, however, tends to get lost in the blur. Exposure‘s sheer onslaught, not to mention its scale, have made bowled-over converts out of many viewers. Whether its crazy quilt requires 237 minutes, or 90, or 900 for that matter, is an open question — is the writer-director really going somewhere here, or just going and going and going? (3:57) Roxie. (Harvey)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) (Harvey)

Motherland When Raffi Tang (Francoise Yip) learns of her estranged mother’s death, the prodigal-daughter returns to her hometown, San Francisco, only to discover that nothing is as first supposed. Forced to contend with the protracted legal battle between her late mother and re-married father (Kenneth Tsang) as well as an incompetent (and poorly acted) police detective (Jason Payne), Tang drifts, looking distracted, lost, and maybe vaguely concerned throughout the first two thirds of the film. Yip does little to enliven a flat script rife with stock phrases and worn cinematic conventions, and while her emotional distance seems genuine, it’s boring nonetheless. Motherland is, to its credit, an angry movie — director Doris Yeung drew on her own experience with the murder of her mother — but the rage fizzles when it finally does erupt, smothered by uninspired acting and a directionless screenplay. (1:33) (Berkmoyer)

*My Perestroika Robin Hessman’s very engaging documentary takes one very relatable look at how changes since glasnost have affected some average Russians. The subjects here are five thirtysomethings who, growing up in Moscow in the 70s and 80s, were the last generation to experience full-on Communist Party indoctrination. But just as they reached adulthood, the whole system dissolved, confusing long-held beliefs and variably impacting their futures. Andrei has ridden the capitalist choo-choo to considerable enrichment as the proprietor of luxury Western menswear shops. But single mother Olga, unlucky in love, just scrapes by, while married schoolteachers Lyuba and Boris are lucky to have inherited an apartment (cramped as it is) they could otherwise ill afford. Meanwhile Ruslan, once member of a famous punk band (which he abandoned on principal because it was getting “too commercial”), both disdains and resents the new order just as he did the old one. Home movies and old footage of pageantry celebrating Soviet socialist glory make a whole ‘nother era come to life in this intimate, unexpectedly charming portrait of its long-term aftermath. (1:27) Balboa. (Harvey)

*The Names of Love Arthur (Jacques Gamblin) is a 40-ish scientist being interviewed about the threat of a bird flu epidemic when his radio broadcast is interrupted by 20-something Baya (Sara Forestier), who denounces him on-air as a “fascist” for frightening the public. But then, Baya tends to use that label rather indiscriminately, applying it to anyone who might conceivably have views to the right of the dial — and Arthur is in fact a solid liberal, which means she can bed him for love. As opposed to the many, many other men she beds as a self-described “political whore,” seeking out conservative types in order to seduce them and hopefully induce an idealogical shift by whispering sweet nothings (“Not all Arabs are thieves,” etc.) as they orgasm. Raised by parents whose emotions are so tightly wound his mother won’t acknowledge her parents were Jews killed at Auschwitz, Arthur has a hard time adjusting to a relationship with a lover who is faithful emotionally but sees promiscuity as her propagandic gift to the world. Meanwhile Baya’s largely Algerian family treats garrulous political argument as the very air they breathe. This odd-couple story written by Baya Kasmi and director Michel Leclerc deals with serious issues in both humorous and respectful fashion, making for one of the more novel, delightful and depthed French romantic comedies in a long time. Added plus: lots of antic gratuitous nudity. (1:42) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*One Day Why do romantic comedies get such a bad rap? Blame it on the lame set-up, the contrived hurdles artificially buttressed by the obligatory chorus of BFFs, the superficial something-for-every-demographic-with-ADD multinarrative, and the implausible resolutions topped by something as simple as a kiss or as conventional as marriage, but often no deeper, more crafted, or heartfelt than an application of lip gloss. Yet the lite-as-froyo pleasures of the genre don’t daunt Danish director Lone Scherfig, best known for her deft touch with a woman’s story that cuts closer to the bone, with 2009’s An Education. Her new film, One Day, based on the best-selling novel by David Nicholls, flirts with the rom-com form — from the kitsch associations with Same Time, Next Year (1978) to the trailer that hangs its love story on a crush — but musters emotional heft through its accumulation of period details, a latticework of flashbacks, and collection of encounters between its charming protagonists: upper-crusty TV presenter Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working-class aspiring writer Emma (Anne Hathaway). Their quickie university friendship slowly unfolds, as they meet every St. Swithin’s Day, July 15, over a span of years, into the most important relationship of their lives. Despite the blue-collar female lead and UK backdrop that it shares with An Education, One Day feels like a departure for Scherfig, who first found international attention for her award-winning Dogme 95-affiliated Italian for Beginners (2000). (1:48) (Chun)

*Our Idiot Brother If you thought 1998’s The Big Lebowski had eked all the humor that it could from the Dude, well, screenwriter (and Vanity Fair contributor) Evgenia Peretz, her not-so-idiotic brother (director Jesse Peretz), and star Paul Rudd would differ. They correctly guessed that there are still laughs to be wrung from a shaggy stoner in floral jams, only this time with less fuuuck-s and more benevolent, idiot-savant good vibrations. Dazed and confused broheim 2.0 (Rudd) is glimpsed through the jaded, harried prism of his three dysfunctional, supposedly normal sisters: frumpadelic mom Liz (Emily Mortimer), queen-bitch Vanity Fair writer Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), and slatternly would-be comedian Natalie (Zooey Deschanel). A good-hearted naïf who’s easily entrapped by a uniformed police officer claiming to need some pity doobage, Ned has just emerged from the joint and is now couch-surfing among his sibs, exposing the hypocrisies of bourgie-hipster Brooklyn, as well as the infidelities and vanities of family, friends, and partners (Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, and Hugh Dancy) as he goes, in his own good-natured, aw-shucks way. As innocuous (and desexualized) as Andy Griffith beneath the hippie trappings, this dude-with-a-little-d knows where his real family is — with his dog, Willie Nelson, who loves him just as unconditionally. Beastie besties have never seemed so innocent as they are in this proudly feel-good comedy, and despite a cringe-y, saccharine soundtrack and lackadaisical pacing, Rudd’s charismatic sunny slacker and some pointed jabs at the follies of the cooler-than-thou save this indie-that-could. (1:36) (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42)

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Smith Rafael. (Berkmoyer)

Seven Days in Utopia (1:38)

Shark Night 3D (1:31)

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness This documentary cuts to the chase right at the beginning: yeah, Sholem Aleichem was the guy who wrote the Tevye stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. But filmmaker Joseph Dorman isn’t trying to make Fiddler: Behind the Musical. Instead, he takes an in-depth look at the life, writing career, and cultural significance of “one of the great modern Jewish writers — and our greatest Yiddish writer,” per the film’s press notes. Fans of Jewish lit will be particularly engaged by Sholem Aleichem’s tale; raised in a shtetl in what’s now the Ukraine, he moved around Europe and to the United States pursuing various careers, but always writing the popular stories that addressed not just Jewish life, but broader issues facing turn-of-the-last-century Jews, including the cross-generational conflicts that make up much of Fiddler‘s plot and humor. That said, this film does rely an awful lot on PBS-style slow pans over black-and-white photos and intellectual talking heads; one suspects the subject himself (so devoted was he to entertaining the regular folk who gobbled up his tales) would’ve preferred his life story to unfold in a livelier fashion. (1:33) (Eddy)

*Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure Once upon a time (1987 to be exact), two young men moved to San Francisco from the Midwest. Eddie Lee “Sausage” and Mitchell “Mitch D” Deprey wound up living in a somewhat derelict apartment in the Lower Haight. The paint was peeling and the walls were thin, but the rent was cheap. What Eddie and Mitch didn’t count on was having Peter J. Haskett and Raymond Huffman as their neighbors. “You blind cocksucker. You wanna fuck with me? You try to touch me and I will kill you in a fucking minute.” “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up little man!” The insults, tantrum throwing, and threats of violence coming from next door were constant. Eddie and Mitch started to lose sleep; after one failed attempt at complaining to Raymond’s face (he threatened death), they started tape-recording the endless geyser of vitriol — first, as possible future evidence, but also out of a growing voyeuristic fascination with these two seniors who had to be the world’s oddest and angriest odd couple. The rest is history. Mitch and Eddie started including snippets of Peter and Ray’s bickering on mix tapes for friends. Somehow, the editor of the now-defunct SF noise music zine Bananafish heard a snippet and approached Mitch and Eddie about distributing compilations of the recordings to a large network of found sound fans. Gradually “Peter and Raymond” became known and much-beloved characters. Their warped repartee inspired several theatrical adaptations, short animated films, pages of comic book panels by artists such as Dan Clowes, and even a one-off single from Devo side project the Wipeouters. Matthew Bate’s documentary Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure is much an attempt to comprehensively recount the above long, strange trip from start to finish; it is also the newest chapter in the now 20-year saga of Peter, Raymond, Mitch, and Eddie. (1:30) Roxie. (Sussman)

30 Minutes or Less In some ways, 30 Minutes or Less is reminiscent of 2008’s Pineapple Express: both are stoner action comedies about normal people shoved into high-stakes criminal activity. But while Pineapple Express was an exciting addition to the genre, 30 Minutes or Less is a flimsy 80-minute diversion that still feels like a waste of time. Jesse Eisenberg plays Nick, a pizza delivery boy who is forced to rob a bank after two would-be criminals strap a bomb to his chest. Strangely, Eisenberg was more charming as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) — and his buddy Chet (Aziz Ansari) doesn’t exactly up the likability factor. There’s actually the potential for an interesting story here: something darker seems appropriate, given that 30 Minutes or Less was inspired by a true story with a very unhappy ending. But the film completely fumbles, delivering an action comedy that’s neither tense nor funny. That means the pizza’s free, right? (1:29) (Peitzman)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) (Harvey)

*The Trip Eclectic British director Michael Winterbottom rebounds from sexually humiliating Jessica Alba in last year’s flop The Killer Inside Me to humiliating Steve Coogan in all number of ways (this time to positive effect) in this largely improvised comic romp through England’s Lake District. Well, romp might be the wrong descriptive — dubbed a “foodie Sideways” but more plaintive and less formulaic than that sun-dappled California affair, this TV-to-film adaptation displays a characteristic English glumness to surprisingly keen emotional effect. Playing himself, Coogan displays all the carefree joie de vivre of a colonoscopy patient with hemorrhoids as he sloshes through the gray northern landscape trying to get cell reception when not dining on haute cuisine or being wracked with self-doubt over his stalled movie career and love life. Throw in a happily married, happy-go-lucky frenemy (comic actor Rob Brydon) and Coogan (TV’s I’m Alan Partridge), can’t help but seem like a pathetic middle-aged prick in a puffy coat. Somehow, though, his confused narcissism is a perverse panacea. Come for the dueling Michael Caine impressions and snot martinis, stay for the scallops and Brydon’s “small man in a box” routine. (1:52) (Devereaux)

The Whistleblower (1:58) Smith Rafael.

*!Women Art Revolution Bay Area artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s vibrant look back at the first waves of feminist art in the ’60s and ’70s is an extremely necessary and impassioned recounting of a history that perpetually seems to be on the edge of erasure. Mixing old and new interviews with artists, critics, and scholars — many of which are from Hershman Leeson’s own personal archive — !W.A.R. lets those who stood at the frontlines of one the most significant movements in contemporary art tell their own stories. Seeing and hearing the testimonies of the likes of Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, B. Ruby Rich, Judy Chicago, Carolee Scheeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and Ingrid Sischy, one after another, is dazzling — like being in the presence of an Olympian summit — even as their overlapping tales of pushback, casual misogyny and outright ridicule from critics, the art establishment, and in some cases, their colleagues, paint a damning picture of just how endemic sexism was, and as the need for a film such as !WAR attests to, in many ways still is. (1:23) (Sussman)

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. Due to the Labor Day holiday, theater information was incomplete at presstime.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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THEATER

OPENING

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Phoenix Theatere, 414 Mason, Sixth flr, SF; (415) 509-8656. $10-20. Previews Wed/7, 8pm. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/10, 2pm; Sept 17, 3pm). Through Sept 17. Ninjaz of Drama and Divinity Productions Presents Rey Carolino’s contemporary staging of the Bard’s classic.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Previews Thurs/8-Fri/9, 8pm; Sat/10, 8:30pm; Sun/11, 3pm. Opens Thurs/15, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 23. Marga Gomez performs her comedy about “lies, vanity, and the good old days.”

Patience Worth Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; (415) 456-8892, www.symmetrytheatre.com. $20-30. Opens Sat/10, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 2. Symmetry Theatre Company performs Michelle Carter’s world premiere about a spirit who appears via Ouija board in 1913. Erika Chong Shuch directs.

“San Francisco Fringe Festival” Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.sffringe.org. $7-10 (passes, $40-75). Sept 7-18. The 20th annual fest contains over 40 shows highlighting unique indie theater.

Show Ho New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $20-32. Previews Thurs/8, 8pm. Opens Fri/9, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Oct 9, 2pm. Through Oct 9. Sara Moore performs her multi-character story about a clown in a low-rent circus.

“3 Guys in Drag Selling Their Stuff” Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Fri/9, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Edward Crosby Wells’ bawdy comedy is about a trio of friends who host an unusual yard sale.

Turandot War Memorial Opera House, 201 Van Ness, SF; (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. $21-389. Opens Fri/9, 8pm. Runs Sept 14, 22, and Oct 4, 7:30pm; Sept 17 and Oct 1, 8pm; Sept 25, 2pm. The San Francisco Opera performs Puccini’s classic in conjunction with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Unveiled Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Previews Wed/7-Thurs/8, 7pm. Opens Fri/9, 7pm. Runs Sat/10, 3pm; Sun/11-Mon/12 and Sept 15-17, 3pm (also Sun/11, 3pm). Brava Theater presents Rohina Malik’s solo show about five Muslim women in the post-9/11 world.

ONGOING

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Oct 20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

All Atheists Are Muslim Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 517-3581, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. Zahra Noorbakhsh performs her solo comedy.

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through Sept 17. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

Cymbeline Parade Ground Lawn, Main Post, Presidio (between Graham and Keyes), SF; www.sfshakes.org. Free. Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Sept 25. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival presents its annual “Free Shakespeare in the Park” performance.

Exit, Pursued By a Bear Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Crowded Fire performs Lauren Gunderson’s new play, a feminist revenge comedy.

Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055. $25-100. Thurs, 8pm; Sat-Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 18. Geoff Hoyle returns to the Marsh with his acclaimed solo show.

King Henry the Sixth Boxcar Studios, 125a Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $12-15. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Do It Live Productions debuts with a contemporary Shakespeare adaptation.

Tigers Be Still SF Playhouse, 522 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Wed/7, 7pm; Thurs/8-Sat/10, 8pm (also Sat/10, 3pm). SF Playhouse performs Kim Rosenstock’s quirky comedy.

True West NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.truewestsf.com. $10-28. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Expression Productions presents Sam Shepard’s tale of two brothers.

Waiting for Giovanni Decker Theater, New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 18. This world-premiere play by Jewelle Gomez in collaboration with Harry Waters Jr. imagines a split-second of indecision in the mind of author James Baldwin.

BAY AREA

The Complete History of America (abridged) Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Adam Lon, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor’s three-person romp through American history.

A Delicate Balance Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-48. Previews Wed/7, 8pm. Opens Thurs/8, 8pm. Runs Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 9. Aurora Theatre performs Edward Albee’s comedy of manners.

The Merry Wives of Windsor Old Mill Park, 375 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; www.curtaintheatre.org. Free. Sat-Sun and Sept 5, 2pm. Through Sept 18. Curtain Theatre performs Shakespeare’s Falstaff-centric comedy.

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 5pm (also Sept 8 and 22, 7:30pm). Through Sept 24. This is it: the final extension of Brian Copeland’s solo show about growing up in (nearly) all-white San Leandro.

Of Dice and Men La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. Impact Theatre performs Cameron McNary’s comedy about a group of adult Dungeons and Dragons players.

Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Opens Wed/7, 8pm. Runs Tues-Sun, showtimes vary. Through Oct 30. Rita Moreno stars in a show created specifically for her by Berkeley Rep’s Tony Taccone and David Galligan.

The Road to Hades John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds). Sat/10-Sun/11, 3pm. Shotgun Players presents a new comedy written by and starring veteran comedian and clown Jeff Raz.

Sense and Sensibility Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 18. TheatreWorks performs Roger Parsley and Andy Graham’s adaptation of the Jane Austen novel.

The Tempest Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company presents Shakespeare’s romance with a steampunk twist.

Toke Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Thurs/8-Sat/10, 8pm; Sun/11, 5pm. Swirl Media presents Deedee Kirkwood’s pot-fueled comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Comedy Returns to El Rio” El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon, 8pm, $7-20. Stand-up performers include Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, Josh Healey, Nathan Habib, Conrad Roth, and Lisa Geduldig.

FACT/SF and Lenora Lee Dance CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; (415) 626-2060, www.counterpulse.org. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. $15-20. The companies present Pretonically Oriented v.3 and Reflections.

“Hand to Mouth Comedy” Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; handtomouthcomedy.tumblr.com. Thurs, 8pm. Pay what you can. This month, comedians Kurt Weitzmann, Cory Loykasek, and Bryan Yang take on conspiracy theories.

“Mortified SF” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Fri, 8pm, $17. The embarassing-tales smorgasbord rolls on in a back-to-school edition.

“Opera in the Park” Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.sfopera.com. Sun, 2pm. Free. SF Opera pays tribute to the victims of 9/11 with a free program of Mozart, Leonard Bernstein, and others.

“Porchlight Season 10 Kickoff: Shipwrecked! Stories from the Sea” Maritime Museum, foot of Polk (at Beach), SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thurs, 8pm, $15. The storytelling series beings its tenth year with a special seafaring edition.

“Process as Adventure” ODC Commons, 351 Shotwell, SF; www.odcdance.org. Thurs, 8pm. Free. Dance company Project Bandaloop presents this multi-media event and discussion.

“Second Sandwiches” Purple Onion, 140 Columbus, SF; www.willfranken.com. Sat, 8pm. $20. Comedian Will Franken performs his new solo show.

“True Stories Lounge” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.makeoutroom.com. 7:30pm, $10. Narrative journalism and other nonfiction readings from Joyce Maynard, the Guardian’s Steven T. Jones, and others.

“WestWave Dance: A Monday a Month” ODC Theater, 351 Shotwell, SF; www.westwavedancefestival.org. Mon, 8pm, $18-25. Thus month’s program, “Duets,” features Ethan and Nikki White, Pearl Marill Dance Theater, Dana Lawton, Jean Isaacs, and more.

 

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 7

Grant application seminar Independent Film Center, 145 Ninth St., SF. (415) 402-2794, www.creativeworkfund.org. 6-7:30pm, free. The Creative Work Fund is giving out up to $810,000 to local artists — and it’s hosting a series of workshops that will guide potential applicants through the process of submitting their proposal. The program is focusing on media (computer, audio, digital, and film) and performing artists this time around — if you fit the bill, you might want to look at letting this organization fit out your bills.

THURSDAY 8

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex reading Modern Times Bookstore, 2919 24th St., SF. 7-9pm, free. A ground-breaking new book examines the relationship of queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people and the prison industrial complex. Contributors to the book — a group that includes past and present prisoners, academics, and activists — will speak at this reading. The event could be a call to action on an under-reported conflict.

Back to school dog and kid party Wag Hotel, 25 14th St., SF. (415) 876-0700, www.waghotels.com. 5-7pm, $5 suggested donation. The SF SPCA is bringing adoptable woofs to this meet-and-greet (don’t bring Junior if you’re not trying to walk away with a new best friend?). Kids will also be able to participate in the shelter’s Puppy Dog Tales Reading Room program.

FRIDAY 9

Rally in the Alley 100-199 Ames, SF. www.alleyproject.ning.com. 5:30-8pm, free. Ames Alley (between 22nd and 23rd streets and Dolores and Guerrero) has recently been renovated — the new alleyway features solar lighting, vertical gardens… whoa, water-permeable pavement!? This calls for a celebration, and a celebration is what you’ve got coming to you. Today, join food vendors, an art exhibit, live music, and more to welcome the newly spruced-up walkway to the neighborhood.

SATURDAY 10

Babylon Salon Cantina, 580 Sutter, SF. www.babylonsalon.com. 7pm, free. ZYZZYVA’s longtime editor Howard Junker is a free agent now, so he’s got the time to focus on his own projects — share in their glory at this event, where Junker will be reading from his “proto-memoir-ish blog novel of ideas” tentatively titled An Old Junker. Other readers for the night include authors Nick Krieger, Laura Goode, and magician Robert Strong.

Haight Street Hop Milk, 1840 Haight, SF. www.milksf.com. 9pm, $5 before 10pm, $10 afterwards. Bingo, boobies, DJs, dancing: such is the multi-faceted entertainment that awaits you at this something-for-everyone ho-down. Burlesque bingo? Free hairdos from professional stylists? What is going on here really, this is just getting too crazy.

Ghirardelli Square Chocolate Festival Ghirardelli Square, SF. www.ghirardellisq.com. Noon-5pm, free. Sure, you’ve got shell out some dough to sample the goods at this fest in the heart of tourist town, but monkeys come free! Paul Frank — the company of that iconic Julian monkey face, and all your adolescent nieces favorite cartoon-cute T-shirts — is coming to town. Representatives from the brand will be holding a contest for “king and queen of puppy prom,” and while we hesitate to qualify what the hell that means, it seems safe to say you should bring your dog.

SUNDAY 11

Drum for Peace gathering Numi Tea Garden, 2230 Livingston, Oakl. (877) 686-4832, www.numiteagarden.com. 3-6pm, free. A fundraiser for Altitudinal Healing Connection’s ArtEsteem youth arts education program, this gathering is sure to be very “Kumbaya” — which given this day’s recent history, probably isn’t the worst thing ever. Love your neighbor and all that, people. 

 

Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

The Fillmore’s facelift: Independent Artists Week fills the street

Andrew Lam
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Bayview native Meaghan Mitchell first started working in the neighborhood as a hostess at 1300 on Fillmore. Not anymore – now she co-owns a pop-up neighborhood art gallery across the street from the restaurant and is organizing an entire week of events geared towards filling the historic neighborhood’s streets again (Independent Artists Week, now through Sun/11).

The Fillmore’s the kind of neighborhood that inspires creative growth, famous for its days as a cultural hub where African Americans celebrated the arts, succeeded in the business arena, and solidified community. This week’s lineup of IAW events hopes to highlight that legacy, with speed networking for creative types, free art walks, and more. 

Because right now, the area definitely needs some shine.

“We’re struggling with the identity of the Fillmore right now,” says Mitchell, who sits in her small gallery space surrounded by paintings and sculptures done by local artists during her interview with the Guardian. Sisters Melorra and Melonie Green co-own the space, and Mitchell gives us a tour of the neighborhood art the three have filled their gallery with, from elaborate metal wall sculptures to small drawings by local grade-schoolers. The Greens are the other two lead organizers of Independent Artists Week. 

Mitchell gestures to the towering condo and apartment buildings visible through the gallery’s front windows. “Look at all those apartment buildings. Where do those people go?”

Despite its history of locally-owned businesses, Fillmore is far from bustling during the daytime, when the street’s renowned jazz clubs are closed. There’s a handful of black-owned businesses (including New Chicago Barbershop, which we profiled earlier this summer) that are still standing, but you see a lot of empty storefronts when you walk down the sidewalk. 

Mitchell and her partners would like to reverse that trend. “There’s so much potential for African American people to take back our neighborhood,” she says. “Facilitating our own events is a part of that.”

She should know – she learned from an event-planner extraordinaire. Mitchell says she owes her organizing skills to Ave Montague, the woman who was in charge of public relations at 1300 when Mitchell was first hired on. 

“She made this neighborhood poppin’,” remembers Mitchell. Montague organized the Black Film Festival, and took Mitchell under her wing, training her to help coordinate a slew of other events that were important to the Fillmore community – and the country. Montague passed away shortly after she threw the official West Coast inauguration party for Barack Obama in 2008. 

“When she died, this neighborhood was in a different place,” says Mitchell. “It was grey.”

There was some question about who would take up Montague’s crusade to make Fillmore Street a vibrant center of black Bay Area culture once again. But not for long – soon Mitchell and the other neighborhood business-owners and advocates from the Fillmore Community Benefit District were back in talks with the Mayor’s Office, which is now once again subsidizing their event-planning efforts. 

Of course, Mitchell says, there are challenges to this kind of city government-funded community organizing in a neighborhood that was gutted by “redevelopment” campaigns in the past. Long-time residents are less than thrilled to put the future of the neighborhood in the hands of organizations responsible for driving out black families in the first place. She’s attended CBD meetings that ended in shouting and finger-pointing over who did and didn’t deserve a piece of the $800,000 the Mayor’s Office had contributed to their work. 

“You’ve got to check in with folks.” Mitchell says that even though she is a San Francisco native, she’s still a newcomer to the Fillmore scene – and that a big part of her work is involving the long-time movers and shakers in the area. She now holds monthly merchant meetings that started out with three and now generally attract 11 participants. 

But it’s worth it to become a part of a neighborhood this unique. “[Working in] the Fillmore, it was the first time I worked in a place where I really felt appreciated,” she says. “I met all these prestigious African American people who helped me and who I could look up to.” 

Hopefully this week’s events will provide similar opportunities for other up-and-comers – check out the schedule below to see what’s on offer for artists, art lovers, wannabe yogis, and anyone who is into the idea of a new, brighter Fillmore. 

Photo above right: Mitchell has joined Fillmore’s entrepreneurs with a gallery space of her own on the strip. Photo by Caitlin Donohue

 

“Opportunity Knocks” speed-networking event

Local music scenesters, public relations experts, and other sources of knowledge on making a living off of art in the Bay Area will be available to chat with artists on those topics and more. 

Tues/6 7-9 p.m., $15. Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore, SF. 


Sustainable fashion fair-clothing swap

Trade in your clothes for other people’s hand-me-downs – style on a budget (and with a low carbon profile, hell yeah). 

Wed/7 7-10 p.m. African American Cultural Arts Center, 762 Fulton, SF. 


Thank You Awards

Honorees will include filmmaker Kevin Epps, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, and other supporters of the local arts community. 

Thu/8 7-9 p.m., $15. African American Cultural Arts Center. 


Fillmore Art Walk

Art in the streets! Tour the neighborhood’s galleries and businesses (including Mitchell’s space at 

Fri/9 6 p.m.-midnight, free. Fillmore between Post and McAllister, SF. 


Healing arts demonstration

The perfect, low-commitment intro to tai chi, yoga, acupuncture, meditation, and more. Swing through to ask about body and soul woes with experienced practitioners in the sunshine. 

Sat/10 9 a.m.-1 p.m., free. Fillmore Center Plaza, Fillmore and O’Farrell, SF. 


Western Addition Sunday Streets

A huge swath of Fillmore, Divisadero, and the Panhandle will be blessed with a free roller disco, break dancing lessons, free bike repair and rental, and of course lots of car-free asphalt for walking, biking, boarding, and blading community members. 

Sun/11 11 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Various streets in Western Addition, SF. www.sundaystreetssf.com

 

 

The America’s cup confusion

Zelda Bronstein
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The America’s cup confusion

If the sponsors (and city officials) are right, the America’s Cup is going to be a huge event, attracting hundreds of thousands of spectators, many of whom will want to be on the San Francisco waterfront to watch. But it’s never been clear to me exactly how that’s going to work — how are all those (rich) people who are used to getting around in limos going to travel from their downtown hotels to the viewing areas? If the city wanted to do this right, we should close down the Embarcadero and some of the feeder streets to all vehicles (except ambulances — always needed when rich old people get excited) and force everyone to travel by pedicab. Buy up a fleet of several hundred of the human-powered vehicles and let all the unemployed teenagers get a shot at driving them. Job creation for youth; environmentally sound transportation; potentially fun bumper-car action with well-heeled patrons screaming in fear.


Remember: The f-line, even with improvements, can’t possibly handle the necessary traffic. And the AC types aren’t going to ride the train anyway. No way private cars can all fit without massive gridlock.


So: Pedicabs. My suggestion.


In the meantime, there’s this little problem of 8 Washington.


See, the developer of what would be the city’s most expensive condos ever is planning on excavating 110,000 cubic yards of soil for a massive underground parking garage — right along the Embarcadero, and right during the America’s Cup events. The Draft Environmental Impact Report for 8 Washington indicates that the dump trucks (about 20 big trucks per day, and possibly a lot more) would be using that roadway to get to 101 or 280.


Actually, if activist Brad Paul is correct, there’s no way the developer can excavate that much dirt in the time frame that it’s supposed to happen unless the number of trucks is closer to 300 a day. Imagine all of that happening while 100,000 people are trying to get to the waterfront to watch the show. Oh, and according to the DEIR for the America’s Cup, the Embarcadero will be CLOSED during that period.


The fact is, the 8 Washington project is not only a terrible idea (just what the city needs — more condos for mega-millionaires) but would directly screw up the whole America’s Cup effort. And the amazing thing is that the AC people and the Mayor’s Office don’t seem to be paying attention.


Paul has put together a lengthy critique of the whole mess that makes great reading if you’re into this sort of thing. So I thought I’d just post it all here. Warning: It’s long. Enjoy.


August 15, 2011                                                                                                         


Bill Wycko
Environmental Review Officer
San Francisco Planning Department
1650 Mission Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA  94103


Re: COMMENTS ON DRAFT EIR FOR 8 WASHINGTON STREET/
SEAWALL LOT 351 PROJECT    
Case No. 2007.0030E


Dear Mr. Wycko:


I am writing to my provide my comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (“DEIR”) for this project, a document that is incomplete, inadequate and in places quite misleading. I’ve organized my comments in sections beginning with a detailed discussion of how the project’s construction schedule has been greatly underestimated. This is followed by discussions of the DEIR’s failure to address key Housing and Population issues, misstatements regarding historic obligations related to Golden Gateway, comments on recreation issues, and more.  In general, I believe the DEIR fails to present objective information and analysis, it omits a number of relevant issues that are critical to the ability of public officials to make objective and informed decisions about the project and it is filled with judgments and assertions that are not supported by facts.


The DEIR is incomplete and inadequate in the following areas:


I. THE DEIR CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE FOR 8 WASHINGTON IS BOTH INACCURATE AND MISLEADING.


The DEIR construction schedule is based on overly optimistic assumptions that are totally unrealistic; the ramifications of these erroneous assumptions need to be carefully considered as they will cascade throughout the project requiring major revisions to the DEIR before it can be considered accurate and complete.


At the bottom of page II.19 it states:
 
      Project construction, including demolitions, site and foundation work,
      construction of the parking garage, and construction of the buildings,
      would take 27-29 months. Assuming that construction would begin in 2012,   
      the buildings would be ready for occupancy in 2014. The first phase of the
      construction would take about 16 months and would include demolition       
     (2 months), excavation and shoring (7 months), and foundation and below
      grade construction work (7 months).


While the DEIR unequivocally states the project will take 27-29 months to construct, from 2012 to 2014, facts provided elsewhere in the DEIR together with current city policies,  the City’s America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement and basic math indicate that this schedule is not tenable. The remainder of this section provides the data and analysis that lead to the conclusion that construction of 8 Washington will take much longer than 27-29 months, almost TWICE AS LONG, with excavation taking 2.5 to 3 TIMES longer.  


 


Table 1: Requested Changes to the overall DEIR construction schedule


          ACTIVITY             MINIMUM           MAXIMUM


    DEIR’s construction schedule: 27 months    to    29 months  


    Actual excavation schedule:  18 months           22 months
    — DEIR estimate for excavation – 7 months            – 7 months
    + Increased excavation time  11 months      to       15 months 
    + Archeology delays                .5 months      to         2 months
    +  America’s Cup delays                  2.5 months       to         5 months
    +  Weather delays                        .25 months      to         1 months


   ACTUAL CONSTRUCTION TIME 41 months       to      52 months



 
To refute the numbers in Table 1, project sponsors must present additional, verifiable data supporting their unrealistic assumptions, beginning with the claim that the first phase of construction takes 16 months with a mere seven months allocated for excavation/shoring.


A. The DEIR fails to accurately ascertain and analyze the excavation/shoring schedule.


The DEIR states on page II.20 that “approximately 110,000 cubic yards of soil” will be excavated from the site for an underground garage (approximately 90,000 cubic yards) and other foundation work during the seven (7) month “excavation” portion of the projected timeline. It later states excavation will take place 6.5 hours per day with an average of 20 truck trips per day (pg.IV.D.31). Assuming the average dump truck holds 12 cubic yards of dirt (typical payload for a dump truck), that would mean:


      · 110,000 cu. yards/12 cubic yards per truck = 9,166 truck trips


      · 20 trucks/day X 12 cubic yards/trip = an average of 240 cu. yards/day


      · 110,000 cu. yards/240 cu. yards per day = 458 working days for this task


Could this task be completed in seven (7) months as claimed in the DEIR?  NO.


     ·5 working days per week X 52 weeks = 260 working days per year
             – 11 holidays per year
                   249  total working days/year
   


     ·458 days to finish task/249 working days per year = 22 months  (not 7)
     
For this to take 7 months as the DEIR asserts, the following would have to be true:


   · 20 trucks/day X 7 months (145 working days ) = 2,900 total truck trips


   · 110,000 cu. yards/2,900 trucks = each truck must average 38 cubic yards/trip
Empirical evidence exists, however, proving the DEIR’s claim that the excavation portion of the schedule will take seven months is inaccurate and misleading:



             
        CASE STUDY #1: San Francisco General Hospital Rebuild Project


A recent SF General Hospital (SFGH) Newsletter reports the hospital’s contractor just finished hauling 120,000 cu. yards of dirt from the 45’ deep hole that was dug to build two basement levels and the foundation for a new hospital building. This is as close as anyone is likely to get to replicating what 8 Washington proposes, a three level 40’ deep underground garage accounting for most of the 110,000 cubic yards of dirt that must be removed from the site. 


A call to the SFGH Rebuild office revealed their excavation process took seven (7) months with an average truck load of 13 cu. yards per trip. How was that possible?


“The average truck load was 13 cubic yards. Some days we had
over 300 truck loads hauled in one day. This volume was possible
through use of a paved drive that allowed trucks to enter the side, be
loaded up then tires washed to prevent dirt on road causing storm-            
water pollution and dust.”


The SF General site is just a few blocks from U.S. 101 with direct access via Potrero Ave., thus minimizing potential traffic conflicts. The 8 Washington site will require driving long distances on city streets including “The Embarcadero, Harrison Street, and King Street… likely the primary haul and access routes to and from I-80, U.S. 101, and I-280 (pg. IV.D.31).” Imagine 300 trips a day on one of these streets.


 


        
               CASE STUDY #2: SF PUC’s New Hetch Hetchy Reservoir Tunnel


A recent Oakland Tribune story (4/8/11) describes construction of a new 3.5-mile tunnel designed to protect the water supply from SF’s Hetch Hetchy reservoir from major earthquakes by boring a 2nd, state-of-the-art tunnel from Sunol to Fremont alongside the existing 81-year-old Irvington Tunnel. The article states:


      “By the time the New Irvington Tunnel is completed in 2014, crews will have
        excavated about 734,000 cubic yards of material—the equivalent of 61,000
        dump-truck trips, said officials with the SF Public Utilities Commission.”


Dividing 734,000 cubic yards of soil by the 61,000 dump truck trips that the PUC says are necessary equals 12 cubic yards per truck trip. Given this job’s overall size and $227 million budget, it would seem to confirm the fact that the most efficient excavation equipment for the 8 Washington site will be 12 cubic yard dump trucks.



In light of these facts and the analysis provided above, the only way 8 Washington could meet its proposed seven (7) month excavation schedule would be to:


a) schedule up to 300 TRUCK TRIPS A DAY, over 10 TIMES the average number of trips per day (20) stated in the DEIR and 3 TIMES the absolute maximum of 100 truck trips per day (pg. IV.D.31)  along the Northeast Embarcadero during a period of time that directly overlaps with the major America’s Cup events and activities, something specifically prohibited by the City’s America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement ,        


         OR


b) average 38 cubic yards of dirt per truck trip, 3 TIMES the average truck payload of both the PUC’s Irvington Tunnel project and SF General Hospital’s 120,000 cubic yard excavation project—assuming that 38 cubic yard trucks:  a) exist in sufficient quantity in   the Bay Area, b) would be available during that period of time described and c) would be allowed on The Embarcadero, Harrison St., King St., Washington St. and Drumm St. by     the City. [see photo comparison of 12 cubic yard vs. 30 cubic yard trucks below]


Unless the project sponsor can demonstrate that one of these two highly unlikely scenarios is possible, then the EIR must reanalyze a number of impacts (e.g. Land Use, Air Quality, Greenhouse Gases) based on a revised excavation schedule, one that takes 2.5 to 3 TIMES as long as the one described in DEIR to complete excavation work, and this 22 month timeline assumes NO archeological remains are found on site and the City imposes NO stop work orders related to America’s Cup (see below).


This 15-month difference between the excavation period analyzed in the DEIR and the ACTUAL time it will take to complete the excavation (22 months vs. 7 months) is a major deficiency in the DEIR with profound impacts.  For instance, some of the most significant unavoidable negative impacts described in the DEIR involve degraded air quality both during and after construction. Adjusting the environmental analysis to reflect how long excavation will actually take means significant air quality impacts related to excavation (with the greatest detrimental effect on seniors, children and people exercising) will persist for 2.5 to 3 TIMES LONGER than described in the DEIR.  This flaw also requires significant revisions to other sections of the DEIR.


In light of this new information, the next draft of the EIR must contain an analysis of    this longer overall construction period—two months for demolition; a range of 18 to 22 months for excavation (not seven months); a built-in range of time for the shutting down of the site when archeological artifacts are uncovered, documented and extracted (something the DEIR’s archeology consultant states is “likely” ); and the building construction period. Finally, given these overly aggressive excavation schedule estimates, all other estimates for later construction phases must now to be cross checked for accuracy by independent contractors (e.g. not working for 8 Washington developer    or the source of the prior DEIR excavation estimate).


B. The actual construction timeline for 8 Washington will be 41-52 MONTHS. 
If the project sponsors disagree with this assessment, they must provide the Planning Department with much more detailed information on how they expect to achieve a shorter construction period given the restrictions described in the DEIR itself as well as mathematical analysis described above. For instance,


– Did the developers err when they reported that the average number of truck
   trips per day would be 20 as analyzed in the DEIR?  If so, what number do they 
   choose to use now and how does that impact various aspects of the DEIR analysis
   such as air quality, conflicts with pedestrians, MUNI and America’s Cup, etc.. 


– Does the developer plan to raise the limit of truck trips per day from 100 (as
   per the DEIR) to 300 truck trips per day? If so, how often will this happen and 
   how will these changes impact various aspects of the previous EIR analysis (e.g. air
   quality, traffic/transit/pedestrian conflicts, America’s Cup)?


– Does the developer plan to lengthen the average workday or work six days a
   week? If so, how often and how would this impact the previous DEIR analysis?
   NOTE: The DEIR construction schedule (27-29 months) was not predicated on the
   trucks operating 6 days a week EVERY WEEK. But even if the developer ran dump  
   trucks 6 days a week for the ENTIRE excavation period it would still take TWICE AS
   LONG as the DEIR states to remove 110,000 cubic yards of dirt .


– Where is the project sponsor planning to route 100 to 300 trucks a day as they
   leave the site, particularly during the various America’s Cup trials (2012) and
   finals (2013) when vehicular traffic will be severely limited or prohibited?
   Washington Street? The Embarcadero? Drumm Street? Clay Street?, where exactly?


– Have the developers located a source of 30+ cubic yard trucks and secured
   city permission to use them on the specific streets described in the DEIR?
   It seems fair to assume the SF General Hospital’s excavation contractor would have
   done this if it were possible (and the SF PUC’s Irvington Tunnel contractor). See the  
   three photos below to get a sense of the size difference between a typical 12 cubic yard
   dump truck and the type of tractor-trailer rig required to carry 30 cubic yards or more.



As the questions and examples (SF General Hospital) above demonstrate, the DEIR’s claim that 110,000 cubic yards can be excavated in seven months defies the laws of physics and math, not to mention the America’s Cup Host & Venue Agreement between the City and Larry Ellison’s Oracle BMW Racing Team 


 A thorough reading of the DEIR’s Archeology section and the America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement indicate that additional time must be built into the construction schedule for predictable work stoppages related to both issues.


KNOWN ARCHEOLOGICAL RESOURCES IDENTIFIED ON THIS SITE IN THE DEIR


On page IV.C.12, the DEIR’s archeology consultant, Archeo-Tec, identifies the Gold Rush ship Bethel as located under a portion of the site and states that “If discovered, the Bethel would be the oldest known (and perhaps most intact) archeological example of an early Canadian built ship (Pg. IV.C.3)”. On page IV.C.11, the archeology consultant states “Significant archeological resources are likely to exist at this site”.  The DEIR, goes on to state the proposed project will destroy a portion of city’s original Seawall causing “the largest disturbance of the Old Seawall to date”.


As a result of these DEIR findings, the archeology consultant should now be asked for an estimate of the time required to mitigate the discovery of the Bethel and other likely finds (e.g. original Seawall, other Gold Rush ships, original Chinatown). This “likely” work delay should be built into the construction schedule and stated as a range. For purposes of the matrix below (Table 1) we chose a time of two weeks to two months based on anecdotal information from other similar sites. Archeo-Tec, the archeology consultant, should be able to come up with a more precise estimate.


KNOWN AMERICA’S CUP SCHEDULING CONFLICTS


Based on recent MTA staff presentations on protocols for the America’s Cup, it seems clear that traffic, particularly construction dump trucks, will be banned from Washington Street, Drumm Street and The Embarcadero during major America’s Cup events that include, at a minimum, the America’s Cup World Series warm-up races (July/Sept. 2012), the penultimate Louis Vuitton Cup Series (July/August 2013) and the America’s Cup finals (Sept. 2013).  


This represents a minimum of 2.5 months that must be added to the construction schedule, something the DEIR authors should have included if they had read the America’s Cup DEIR which states there are 9+ weeks of races associated with this event in 2012/2013. The extra few weeks added to the low end range in Table 1 (below) are there to accommodate last minute weather delays and various large non-racing events held along the waterfront that will require closure of The Embarcadero, Washington Street, Drumm Street, etc.


Table 1 below lays out a more credible and realistic construction schedule based on the factors described at length above, taken directly from the DEIR or readily available from the city (e.g. America’s Cup DEIR) and the America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement.


 
Table 1: Requested Changes to the overall DEIR construction schedule


          ACTIVITY             MINIMUM           MAXIMUM 


    DEIR’s construction schedule: 27 months    to    29 months  


    Actual excavation schedule:  18 months           22 months
    — DEIR estimate for excavation – 7 months            – 7 months
    + Increased excavation time  11 months      to       15 months 
    + Archeology delays                .5 months      to         2 months
    + America’s Cup delays                   2.5 months        to         5 months
    + Weather delays                        .25 months      to         1 months


   ACTUAL CONSTRUCTION TIME 41 months       to      52 months


To refute these numbers, the project sponsors must not only present a verifiable and detailed plan to remove 110,000 cubic yards (9,167 truck trips) in seven months that the City has signed off on but also produce a letter from the City and Oracle BMW Racing granting a waiver from Section 10.4 of the America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement that would allow 20 to 300 trucks a day to drive along The Embarcadero, Washington Street   or Drumm Street during major America’s Cup events in 2012 and 2013.


D. Significant Transportation and Energy issues that were not addressed in DEIR.


More specific information related to the construction process needs to be provided and analyzed in the EIR, particularly regarding the far reaching impacts of those 9,166 dump truck trips, impacts that go beyond the immediate Northeast Waterfront.


The DEIR states “While the exact routes that construction trucks would use would depend on the location of the available disposal sites, The Embarcadero, Harrison Street, and King Street would likely be the primary haul and access routes to and from I-80, U.S. 101, and I-280”. At a minimum, The EIR needs to include information on where the two or three most likely disposal sites are located, based on recent experience (SF General Hospital excavation) so that one can analyze the extent of potential conflicts on the Bay Bridge or 101 South where other trucks will be transporting dirt to and/or from the Transbay Terminal project, Hunters Point Shipyard, Mission Bay, Treasure Island, etc. Without this information, the City could find itself creating significant traffic conflicts on the Bay Bridge or highway 101 that greatly increase air quality, traffic and transit problems without having analyzed these potential impacts in a flawed EIR.


Simply saying “While the exact routes that construction trucks would use would depend on the location of the available disposal sites” isn’t adequate or acceptable. Assumptions must be made regarding most likely disposal sites and routes to those sites and what additional cumulative impacts these routes (and 9,166 trucks) will create. The EIR must provide a MAP of the route to be used for hauling soil, all the way from the departure point at 8 Washington to the final destination(s) with an explanation of where trucks will drive and what restrictions there are on hours, size of payload, safety, etc. for the various streets, highways and bridges they will travel on. If the options include trucking the soil to San Francisco’s southern waterfront to transfer it to barges, then this needs to be disclosed and analyzed, including the potential routes and destinations of those barges.
In addition, to accurately compare the environmental impacts of the project sponsor’s ‘Preferred Project’ to the “No Project” alternative (energy consumption, traffic impacts, air quality degradation, etc.), one needs to know not only the destination of the approximately 9,166 dump truck trips but also the average miles per gallon of a typical dump truck. For instance, if the final destination for the soil was 100 miles away and a typical dump truck averages 8 miles per gallon of diesel fuel, then:



      9,166 truck trips X 200 miles per round trip = 1,833,200 miles for all dump trucks;


      1,833,200 gallons/8 MPG = 229,150 gallons of diesel fuel that would be burned. 


    
In other words, the city’s choices would be:



     229,150 gallons of diesel fuel used to transfer 110,000 cubic yards 1,833,200 miles


VS.


    ZERO (O) gallons of diesel fuel used if the NO PROJECT alternative were approved.


 


E. Importance of accurate, detailed information re: the construction process.


Given the above discussion, it is clear that the construction schedule set forth in the DEIR is inaccurate at best and has led, in many cases, to the significant understating of major negative impacts associated with this project. The lack of a detailed discussion of some of the key aspects of the construction process, e.g. the route and destination of 9,166 dump trucks, is also highly problematic.


Without a complete and thorough analysis of the impacts of a of an overall construction schedule that is TWICE AS LONG as the one analyzed in this DEIR, city officials will be missing much of the critical information they need to determine whether or not the developer’s ‘Preferred Project’ is necessary, desirable or feasible. A complete and factual analysis of this issue must be included in the next draft of the EIR which, given this and  other major inaccuracies and omissions (see below), should be recirculated in draft form.


 



II. THE DEIR FAILS TO DISCUSS OR ANALYZE ANY CRITICAL HOUSING ISSUES RELEVANT TO 8 WASHINGTON OR UNIQUE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY IMPACTS THOSE HOUSING ISSUES CREATE. 


A. Impacts of the project on the City’s Housing Needs were Not Analyzed in DEIR.  The DEIR states that potentially significant impacts to Population and Housing will not be discussed because the 2007 NOP/Initial Study found that the proposed project would not adversely affect them. Unfortunately the DEIR lacks the basic information needed to reach such a conclusion and, as we will demonstrate, an objective review of relevant 2008-2011 housing data contradicts this conclusion.


The world, particularly regarding housing, has changed radically since 2007. Relying   on housing and population information from 2007 ignores the financial and housing meltdown of 2008 and is simply indefensible. In addition, back in 2007, the EIR consultants were relying on stale, seven-year-old census data while today they have access to a multitude of fresh 2010 census data. No one can dispute that the housing environment today could not be more unlike the housing environment in 2007.
By relying solely on pre-2008 housing data from the 2007 NOP/Initial Study, this DEIR    lacks any of the basic information needed to conclude that this project would not have adverse effects on Population and Housing and must now revisit and thoroughly analyze these issues.


B. The DEIR fails to analyze how the type and price of housing proposed for
8 Washington determines whether or not it meets the city’s housing needs.


One of the project objectives (Pg II.14) is to “help meet projected City housing
needs.” How is that possible, given the fact that the developer has publicly stated
that these will be “the most expensive condominiums in the history of SF” ? With a
$345,000,000 project cost , 8 Washington’s 165 units will cost $2.0 million a unit
just to build . To secure financing and a ‘reasonable’ profit, each unit will have to
sell for $2.5-$5 million with penthouses selling for $8-$10 million.


Nowhere in the DEIR is ANY of this discussed. There is no analysis of how these
very high sales prices will determine who lives at 8 Washington (e.g. how many San
Francisco families could afford these prices?) and how the incomes of these new
residents ($250,000 to over $1 million/year) will dramatically change a number of
the environmental impacts of the project, with major implications for sustainability
and energy use, among other things.


The final EIR must state the average cost to build each unit and the range of
sales prices expected so that public officials can assess for themselves whether
the proposed condos will or will not  “help meet projected City housing needs.” 


The 2009 Housing Element, signed into law by Mayor Ed Lee on June 29, 2011, states that 61% of the housing need in San Francisco is for below-market-rate housing—serving families making 30-120% of Area Median Income (AMI), and only 39% of the city’s housing need is for market rate housing (120% to 500+% AMI).


As Planning staff and Commissioners know from their Housing Element discussions, the luxury condos proposed for this project are so expensive they will not help the city meet its current unmet housing needs. If this project objective (Pg II.14) is left in the final EIR, it should include a note explaining that the project, as proposed, is unlikely to meet this objective for the following reasons:


Condominiums selling for $2.5 million and more fall into the one segment of the city’s housing market that is currently overbuilt and has historically been over represented in relation to the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) goals that underpin the updated 2009 Housing Element of the city’s General Plan. An ABAG report on housing needs vs. housing production in SF (1999-2006) that came out in 2007—a report that should have informed the 2007 NOP/Initial Study for 8 Washington—states RHNA Allocations (Goal), Permits Issued (Permitted) and % of Allocation Permitted (% of RHNA Goal) by income category as follows:



Table 2: SF Housing Production (1999-2006)*


Housing Type  Very Low    Low              Moderate       Market Rate 
by Income    Income Income  Income           Housing
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
  % of AMI:    21-50%  51-80%  81-120%         120-500+%
  Annual income: [21-50K] [57-81K] [85-123K]   [123K-$1million+]
———————————————————————————————————-
·RHNA Goal (units)   5,244       2,126   5,639                7,363


·Permitted    4,203       1,101      661                        11,474


·% of RHNA Goal     80%      52%       12%             156%


        * from a 2007 ABAG report entitled: A Place to Call Home



A chart like this, showing housing goals by income group (based on RHNA numbers from the State Office of Housing and Community Development), must be included in the DEIR so public officials can analyze what portion of the city’s unmet affordable and middle income housing needs, if any, the proposed project would meet. It illustrates something local housing experts have long known, that the city consistently comes in well above its RHNA goals for market rate condos, and has historically fallen short of its goals in all other categories for affordable housing, the housing that serves the 61% of San Franciscans that cannot afford ‘market rate’ housing.
C. Dramatic changes to the San Francisco housing market since the 2007 NOP/ Initial Study were not acknowledged and analyzed in the DEIR. All the traditional (pre-2007) sources of funding for the city’s affordable housing programs have dried up since the 2008 housing crash. Redevelopment tax increment funds will either be significantly reduced to pay the state to avoid closure of the SF Redevelopment Agency, or they will be eliminated altogether. Proceeds from the state’s $2.8 billion Affordable Housing Bond (Prop. 1C) are all spent. The federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, a major source of funding for affordable housing, is under attack by House and Senate Republicans and may not survive.


This indicates that San Francisco won’t come close to meeting its pre-2007 affordable housing production levels  until we find a new permanent local source of funding for affordable housing. How long will that take? The DEIR must address this issue.


Another chart that must be included in the DEIR shows the city’s RHNA goals by income category combined with a summary of a recent SF Business Times (6/24/2011) chart showing all San Francisco residential projects under construction, permitted or  in the planning pipeline . Such a chart would look something like Table 3 below:


Table 3: Where does the city need help in meeting its RHNA goals?


          Extremely Low       Very Low            Low             Moderate          Market Rate   
                 Income          Income           Income            Income               Housing
         Below 30% AMI          31-50%            51-80%           81-120%              120-500+% 
      [21K-30K]         [35K-50]        [57K-81K]      [85K-120K]        [120K-$1M+]
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________


RHNA      439/yr.                   439/yr.           738/yr.            901/yr.                    1,632/yr.
Goals:      10.5%        +          10.5%      +      18%        +     22%  =  61%           39%
# of units                    of total        of total
% of goal
                             All Affordable Categories Combined            Market Rate_


Underway:          470 units                 1,557 units


Approved:                  8,751 units             30,878 units


In Pipeline:                   780 units                     4,184 units 
________________________________________________________________________
                          10,000 units             36,619 units 
            or                     or
          21.5% of all units                 78.5% of all units


                        56% of RHNA goals                                300% of RHNA goal
                in all affordable categories                        in market rate category
Some version of Table 3 must be included in the revised DEIR to help public officials determine whether the significant negative environmental impacts this project creates are outweighed by the ‘need’ for the type of housing that 8 Washington provides given the priorities set forth in the Housing Element of the General Plan and what the above-mentioned SF Business Times chart tells us about likely housing production for each segment of the city’s housing needs (from 2011-2014). 


Table 3 demonstrates that in a few years, if nothing changes, the city will have approved and built out 300% of its RHNA goal for Market Rate projects (such as 8 Washington) but only 56% of its RHNA goals for all other housing that serves San Franciscans making 30% AMI to 120% AMI. But given what we now know about the current lack of funding for affordable housing, the exact opposite of what was true in 2007 (when the city had significant amounts of Redevelopment tax increment and other affordable housing funds), many of the affordable housing projects listed by the Business Times are now on hold and unlikely to come on line by 2014. This means the mismatch between market rate (39% of need but 300% of production) and all categories of affordable will be even greater than Table 3 indicates.


To be fair, one could argue that some of the market rate housing on the Business Times chart may not be built soon either given that banks have been reluctant to lend money lately. However, a recent article in the SF Chronicle (8/11/11) entitled “Rents Go Through Roof” indicates that the city’s housing market is roaring back; Dennis Robal, property manager with Chandler Properties, reports “Noe Valley apartments that were $2,000 a month a year ago are now going for $2,400”. These kinds of increases, driven by new renters from the tech sector, are prompting major increases in investments by financial institutions in new rental housing.


Regarding the condo market, the one group of potential condominium buyers that
have not suffered financially from the economic meltdown are the very people who
caused it, the Wall Street investors, derivatives specialists, hedge fund managers,
etc. who are now making record salaries and bonuses. These are some of the people
8 Washington will be marketing to because they have the cash to spend $2.5-$10
million on a second, third or fourth home in San Francisco.


NONE of this housing analysis appears in the DEIR yet including it in the DEIR is
critical to the ability of public officials to make informed, rational decisions on this
project, particularly claims by the developer that this project will “help meet
projected City housing needs”. The information and analysis described above is
necessary to allow city officials and all readers to determine accurately and
objectively what portion of San Francisco’s unmet affordable and middle income
housing needs, if any, 8 Washington would meet.


Each year, as the City assesses how well it is meeting its RHNA (state) housing goals, the one area that has consistently over produced is high-end market rate housing affordable to people making $250,000 to $1 million+ a year.
How does building second, third and fourth homes for this demographic “help the city meet its housing needs?”


The unmet housing needs in San Francisco are for people making from 30%-50% of median income all the way up to 100-120%, not people making $250,000 to $1,000,000+ a year (200-500% or more of area median income). The DEIR needs to discuss the following questions to be considered complete, adequate and accurate, questions such as:


How does this project relate to the objectives, policies and goals of San Francisco’s recently enacted 2009 Housing Element of the General Plan?


What portion of San Francisco’s affordable and middle-income housing needs will this proposed project actually meet?


How many other projects under construction, approved or in the pipeline (see June 24,
2011 SF Business Times chart) will meet the needs of San Franciscans who can afford market rate housing vs. those that meet the needs of  the 61% of SF residents needing below market housing?


What percentage of “residents” of these condos will be using this housing as their primary residence vs. as second, third and fourth vacation homes?


Given that numerous studies show transit use goes down as income goes up,
how likely is it that these new owners will use public transit?


Again, the answer to each of these questions provides critical information that public
officials need to assess for themselves whether the proposed condos will or will
not “help meet the projected City housing needs.” 


Everything that’s happened since the 2008 economic/housing meltdown has made our housing problems worse, something the DEIR doesn’t attempt to analyze, arguing instead that a 2007 NOP/Initial Study—competed a year before the housing bubble burst—absolves it of all such responsibility, an argument that is factually absurd.


D. The DEIR fails to acknowledge, measure or analyze the unique environmental impacts generated by owners who can pay $2.5 to $10 million for luxury condos.


Building housing for this demographic has measurable impacts on transit and energy use that were not included in the DEIR. We know from national studies that low-and middle- income residents are far greater consumers of public transit than people with higher incomes. Imagine how much different public transit use will be when this inverse relationship includes people who can afford $2.5-10 million condos that come with             1-for-1 parking (costing almost $100,000 a space to build).


But a far greater environmental impact than driving private cars was not addressed in this DEIR, an impact resulting from lifestyle differences one can anticipate with some members of this highest of high-end demographics: owning and/or using private jets.


It’s reasonable to assume that five of the 165 condo buyers at 8 Washington (just 3% of   all buyers) are Wall Street hedge fund managers, derivatives traders or venture capitalists using these condos as second, third or fourth homes. It’s also reasonable to assume that these five buyers will use their condos 1.5 times a month on average and commute to and from SF aboard private business jets, a perfectly rational assumption for Wall Street executives making tens of millions in salary and bonuses each year. Why would they fly private jets rather than take Southwest…because they can. The fact that a handful of  people that are this wealthy will buy units at 8 Washington must be factored into any environmental analysis of a project that will explicitly market to this high-end demographic. That analysis must include, among others, the following:


 
                           Table 4: The Jet Fuel Burn Rate for Luxury Condominiums
___________________________________________________________________________
Mid to large size business jets used to fly cross country (e.g. Hawker 800XP, Gulfstream G2/G3, Bombardier Global Express) average 400 gallons of jet fuel per hour and take six hours to fly New York to SF and five hours to fly back for an 11 hour round trip  :


     · 11 hours X 400 gallons per hour = 4,400 gallons of jet fuel per trip
          a typical family car burns 1,200 gallons of gas per year so one flight from
          NYC to SF equals almost four years of driving a typical family car.
               ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
       
        ·  1.5 trips/mo. = 6,600 gallons/mo. X 12 mo. = 79,200 gallons of jet fuel/year


        ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Using our example of 5 residents, the numbers over one year and 20 years are:


        ·  5 X 79,200 gallons/per year = 396,000 GALLONS OF JET FUEL A YEAR or
         equivalent to driving a family car 330 years, A THIRD OF A MILENNIUM, per year.


        ·  396,000 gallons/year X 20 years = 7,920,000 GALLONS of jet fuel in 20 years
         equivalent to driving family car 6,600 years, OVER 6 MILLENIUM, in 20 years.



Given these condos cost $2+ million to build and will sell for $2.5 to $8 million or more,    it seems quite reasonable to assume a mere 3% of these buyers—just five (5) buyers out of 165 —will be part-time residents wealthy enough to commute to San Francisco by business jet. If this is a reasonable assumption , then the DEIR must include the mathematical calculations above to show the true energy costs of this project. In fact, it would also be reasonable to assume a few other buyers will use private business jets to commute from LA, San Diego, Denver, etc. The only way to prevent this, forbidding buyers to own or use corporate jets, is of course impossible.
This is just one example of how housing prices—and who lives in that housing—greatly changes environmental impacts and why this analysis must be included in the DEIR for    8 Washington. As condo prices reach $2.5-10 million, it’s reasonable to assume a number of buyers will use them as a second, third or fourth homes and that some of those buyers will travel here by jet, not car or public transit. On the other hand, if units at 8 Washington were affordable or market rate rental or affordable-by-design condos (80%-150% AMI), it’s very unlikely any of its residents would own or use business jets. Price does matter with regard to energy consumption and transit use.


Given these facts, the 8 Washington DEIR must analyze such questions as:


How many solar panels do you need to make up for 396,000 gallons of jet fuel per year?


How many low flow toilets make up for 396,000 gallons of jet fuel per year?


How many double pane windows make up for 396,000 gallons of jet fuel per year?


How many on-demand hot water heaters make up for 396,000 gallons of jet fuel per year?


Looking at the longer term impacts of this excessive consumption of energy resources:


How many solar panels compensate for 7,920,000  gallons of jet fuel over 20 years?


How many low flow toilets make up for 7,920,000 gallons of jet fuel over 20 years?


How many double pane windows make up for 7,920,000 gallons of jet fuel over 20 years?


How many on demand water heaters make up for 7,920,000 gallons of jet fuel over 20 years?


Having this information in the DEIR is necessary for the Planning Commissioners or Board of Supervisors to make informed decisions about 8 Washington, especially when the project sponsor keeps touting it as state-of-the-art, sustainable, LEED certified (at Gold or Platinum level), etc. When added to the project sponsor’s insistence on building a 420-car underground (below sea level) garage, one has to question how one can call this a model of sustainable development or let the DEIR include sustainability as a project objective.


Unless the DEIR seriously and objectively addresses questions of how the price of housing and who lives in that housing impacts environmental sustainability, we risk creating a backlash against things like LEED certification and terms like “sustainability”. They could easily become just another example of slick marketing and “greenwashing”. Everyone agrees that building 10,000 s.f. McMansions in the Sierra Foothills on 2-acre lots—even if they’re LEED certified at the highest level—is NOT sustainable development. Why is it any less absurd to use “green” and “sustainable” to describe $2.5-$10 million condos built as second and third homes for extremely wealthy part-time residents, some of whom commute from their primary residence by private jet?


The DEIR must provide public officials with the data and information they need to analyze all the significant impacts that units this expensive have on the environment. With this information, decision makers might choose to require a much smaller garage or no garage at all (insisting on more efficient use of nearby existing garages). They might also choose to support a much smaller project or no project at all, based on the lack of demonstrable need for this housing type and all the other negative impacts described above. But they cannot make any of these decisions in a rational and objective manner without all the facts, many of which are missing from this DEIR.


E. The DEIR confuses project “objectives” with city mandated requirements with regard to Inclusionary Housing, then fails to discuss any of the relevant issues around this city policy.


The project objective (Pg II.14) that talks about the project’s ability “to help meet
projected City housing needs” reads in full:


 “To develop a high-quality, sustainable and economically feasible
   high-density, primarily residential, project within the existing
   density designation for the site, in order to help meet projected
   City housing needs and satisfy the City’s inclusionary affordable
         housing requirement;” 


Satisfying the city’s inclusionary affordable housing requirement, for this or any market  rate housing development, IS NOT an Objective, and stating it as such is misleading. It is,  in fact, legally mandated by city ordinance. The developer doesn’t have a choice in the matter and it should be stricken from this Objective. However, this reference to inclusionary housing leads one to ask several questions that are never addressed in the DEIR but should be. An Inclusionary Housing section must be added that answers questions such as:


What are the specific requirements for including permanent below market rate (BMR) units in all market rate projects and how many would be required on-site for this one?


Did the developer ever consider building on-site BMR units and if not, why not?


If the developer did consider and reject on-site BMR units, why?


If the developer has decided to pay the in-lieu affordable housing fee, what would it be and how and where (e.g. within a 1-mile radius of the project) would it be spent?


Given that the in-lieu fee charged developers to buy out of providing BMR units on-site is based on construction costs and sales prices for “average” condos, how will the extraordinarily high construction costs and sales prices for these condos impact the in-lieu fee? If it doesn’t impact the fee, would an appropriate mitigation measure be amending the Inclusionary Housing policy so that it does?


Mentioning the inclusionary requirement as part of an objective stating that the project seeks to “help meet projected City housing needs” is misleading and inaccurate. It tries to infer that the funding for 30 affordable units provided by the developer’s inclusionary requirement is helping to meet this objective when, in fact, relying on inclusionary payments to advance the city’s affordable housing goals will only drive the city further   out of compliance with its state mandated RHNA goals. The following example clearly demonstrates the validity of this claim:


TNDC’s proposed affordable family apartment project at Eddy and Taylor Streets is typical of the projects now stalled in the city’s affordable housing pipeline due to the lack of affordable housing funding from traditional sources. But the Eddy and Taylor project is a 150 unit development, not 30 units. For it to go forward, you would need the inclusionary housing funds from FIVE market rate projects like 8 Washington. What would that do to San Francisco’s RHNA goals:


         If:  165 market rate units are needed to fund 30 affordable units,
  Then:   825 market units (5X) are needed to fund 150 affordable units (975 total units).
      
         If:  out of a every 975 new housing units, 825 are market rate & 150 are affordable,
   Then:  for each new 975 units built in SF: 85% are market rate, 15% affordable.


But the 2009 Housing Element of San Francisco’s General Plan (based on the state RHNA goals) calls for 39% OF NEW HOUSING TO BE MARKET RATE (NOT 85%). Relying on Inclusionary Housing off-site payments to fund affordable housing clearly runs counter to the housing production goals set forth in the 2009 Housing Element in the General Plan as well as the RHNA goals for San Francisco established by the state of California. Furthermore, as SB375 Sustainable Development funding criteria begins influencing state funding decisions, by driving our RHNA numbers toward 85% market rate, projects like 8 Washington could jeopardize San Francisco’s ability to apply for and receive state and federal infrastructure and transit funding.


The only way to bring San Francisco’s housing production numbers back into line with the goals in the Housing Element (and RHNA numbers) is to create a new local permanent and dedicated source of funding for affordable housing. These relevant facts regarding the impacts of inclusionary housing must be included in the DEIR.



III. THE DEIR IGNORES THE GENTRIFICATION/DISPLACEMENT IMPACTS OF THIS PROJECT THAT WILL RESULT IN THE LOSS OF HUNDREDS OF RENT CONTROLLED UNITS IN THE GOLDEN GATEWAY BY ENCOURAGING THE FURTHER HOTELIZATION OF ITS 1,200 RENTAL APARTMENTS


The other ‘partner’ in this project is Timothy Foo, who bought Golden Gateway from Perini Corp. about 20 years ago. Only 20% of the 8 Washington site is on Port land, while 80% of the site is on land owned by Mr. Foo and currently occupied by Golden Gateway’s community recreation center. However, Mr. Foo’s only mention in the DEIR is in a footnote to the first sentence of the Introduction which states: “On January 3, 2007, an environmental evaluation application (EE application) was filed by San Francisco Waterfront Partners II (the “project sponsor”) on behalf of the Golden Gateway Center*”. That footnote says “*Golden Gateway Center, Authorization Letter from Timothy Foo, December 27, 2006”).


In addition to violating the original Golden Gateway development agreement that required Perini (and future owners) to preserve the recreation center in exchange for deep discounts in land prices charged by Redevelopment, for some time now Mr. Foo has also been converting rent controlled apartments in the Golden Gateway to short term rental use (e.g. on one floor of a high-rise tower, a third of the units are rented this way). These conversions have been documented by the Golden Gateway Tenants Association, the Affordable Housing Alliance and the San Francisco Tenants Union. While such conversions are not unique to the Golden Gateway Center (see attached Bay Citizen article), they are illegal and violate city zoning, rent control and apartment conversion ordinances.


The DEIR must address this issue by posing the following questions to Mr. Foo and incorporating his answers into the DEIR. He must provide this information because as the owner of 80% of the underlying land that comprises the 8 Washington site, he has had and continues to have a direct financial stake in this project. He must be asked the following questions:


How many of Golden Gateway’s 1,200 rental apartments are currently being used as hotel rooms and/or short-term rentals and/or rented to persons other than those using them as primary residences or directly related to the person residing there (e.g. corporations, business organizations, apartment brokers).


Has Mr. Foo consulted with either the Rent Board or the Planning Department as to the legality of his use of apartments in Golden Gateway as hotel rooms or short-term rentals under applicable city zoning codes, the San Francisco Rent Control ordinance or the city’s Apartment Conversion Ordinance?


Upon receiving and analyzing this information from Mr. Foo, the DEIR must then answer the following questions:


Is the ‘hotelization’ of Golden Gateway and other large apartment complexes likely to increase with the approval of 8 Washington, a development that:


a) builds 165 high-end luxury condos ($2.5 – $10 million each)
 on Mr. Foo’s property—creating a much more upscale
environment adjacent to his Golden Gateway apartments;


b) provides Mr. Foo with $10-15 million (what he’s likely to
be paid for his 80% of the site) that can be used to upgrade
his rent controlled apartments at Golden Gateway in order                             to attract even more higher paying hotel users; and


c) if no mention of these conversions is made in the DEIR, after                     these written comments have been submitted, will send a clear
message to Mr. Foo and others that the City has no intention of
enforcing its own zoning, rent control and apartment conversion
ordinances, thereby encouraging even more conversions.


If conversions like those at Golden Gateway are not stopped soon, the city is at risk of losing thousands of residential apartments in its downtown neighborhoods.


What kind of mitigations would prevent the further hotelization of the Golden Gateway’s 1,200 rent controlled apartments?


With larger apartment complexes such as Golden Gateway, Parkmerced and Fox Plaza, owners get around the current prohibition on renting residential apartments for less than 30 days as hotel rooms (an action that is legally prohibited by the San Francisco Apartment Conversion Ordinance) by leasing them for more than 30 days to third parties (e.g. corporations, apartment brokers). These intermediaries then rent the apartments for anywhere from a day or two to a few weeks to a month or two.


A simple amendment to the Apartment Conversion Ordinance that changes “you cannot rent an apartment for less than 30 days” to “you cannot rent or occupy an apartment for less than 30 days” would prevent Golden Gateway and others from renting apartments for anywhere from a few days to up to four weeks. Preventing 30-60 day rentals would be a more complicated matter.


The DEIR must address how constructing 8 Washington could encourage, help fund and accelerate Mr. Foo’s conversion of the 1,200 units at Golden Gateway from rent controlled apartments to hotel use as well as the impacts this would have on the city’s housing goals as set forth in the San Francisco’s 2009 Housing Element and its RHNA goals. For instance, if we’re converting housing to non-housing (hotel) uses as fast or faster than we are creating new housing units, we will never dig ourselves out of our current housing crisis and that outcome would have catastrophic impacts on the environmental and economic sustainability of San Francisco as a city.


The DEIR must also describe, in detail, the kind of mitigations (see above) that, if enacted, could mitigate the potential impact of losing more that 165 rent controlled apartments at the Golden Gateway, erasing the gain, on paper, of 165 luxury condos.



IV. FREQUENT USE OF THE WORD “PRIVATE” AS A MODIFIER OF THE GOLDEN GATEWAY RECREATION FACILITIES THROUGHOUT THE DEIR  IS BOTH MISLEADING AND INNACCURATE IN LIGHT OF THE RECENT PRIVITIZATION AND FEE STRUCTURES IMPOSED ON THE CITY’S “PUBLIC’ RECREATION FACILITIES AND SWIMMING POOLS.


The current fee structure for public recreation facilities in San Francisco results in situations where the cost of attending ‘public’ pools can often exceed fees charged by    the “private” Golden Gate Tennis & Swim Center (GGTSC).


The use of the term “private” in this context throughout the DEIR appears to be an attempt to justify the loss of GGTSC facilities for the 3-4 years that it would be shut down if the “preferred project” were approved (see section I.A for actual construction schedule) as well as the permanent loss of five of nine tennis courts, the basketball court and the current, family-friendly ground level swimming pools, Jacuzzi and open space.


In the past, the city’s public recreation facilities, including its swimming pools, were  “public” in every sense of the word—open long-hours, open 6-7 days a week and “free” to residents. In recent years, however, the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department has increased resident user fees, reduced hours and increased the privatization of its facilities in response to ongoing budget deficits. Today, both the ‘private’ Golden Gateway facility and ‘public’ pools are open to anyone, anyone who is willing to pay   the fees that they charge. Neither is free.


A. The DEIR fails to discuss the privatization of the City’s  recreation centers: According to a 7/9/11 SF Chronicle article, the city is now leasing 23 of its 47 recreation centers to outside interests (e.g. nursery schools, private classes) with the city staffing only a dozen (12) of the 47 former “public” recreation centers. Seven (7) of the remaining recreation centers are under renovation and five (5) are vacant, unavailable for any kind of use “because no one has leased them and there is no money for city workers to run them”. Out of a total of 47 city recreation centers, only 12 are staffed by city workers who run programs for residents, many of them for a fee, during reduced days and hours.


The City also runs nine “public” swimming pools in neighborhoods such as North Beach, the Mission, Bayview, Visitacion Valley, etc. These pools used to be open five or six days a week and were free for residents. Today, residents pay $5 for each swim and $7 for adult swim lessons/water exercise. Children under 17 pay $1 per swim and $2 for swim lessons/water exercise ($3 for a swim & a class together).


Active Recreation Facilities: Public vs. Private… is there a difference anymore?


Each time a family of two adults goes to a city pool it costs $10 per visit to swim and up to $14 per visit if they participate in swim lessons or water exercise. If that family went three times a week, it would cost them $120-$168 per month depending upon how many times they took a swim vs. participated in swim lessons/water exercise. That comes to at least $1,440 dollars per year. Additional swim lessons/water exercise classes drive costs of using a “public” pool even higher.


Now imagine a family of two adults living at the Golden Gateway who currently       swim every day at the Golden Gate Tennis and Swim Center. At the city’s North Beach (public) pool, it would cost them $200 a month ($10/swim X 20 days) to swim Tuesday through Saturday (the pool is closed Sunday/Monday) and their schedules would have to match specific windows each day when the pool is available for adult lap swimming. Compare that to the two pools at the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Center—one just for swimming laps; one for kids, families and seniors that are open seven days a week for longer hours.


B. Comparative Costs. Because our hypothetical couple live at the Golden Gateway Apartments they automatically receive a discounted membership of about $170  per month ($85 each) to use the two pools, full gym across the street and have the ability to reserve tennis courts at $20 per use. Since the Golden Gateway was built (1960’s), residents have always received discounted membership at this facility, one of two community benefits Redevelopment required, along with Sidney Walton Square, in exchange for entitlements to build both the Golden Gateway (1,150 rental units) and the adjacent Gateway Commons (condominiums). Redevelopment felt both amenities were needed to meet the open space and active recreation needs of what was to become one of the densest residential communities in San Francisco and discounted the land for the GGTSC and Gateway Commons in exchange for the owner maintaining an active recreation facility at the GGTSC in perpetuity.


Even for those who don’t get the Golden Gateway resident discount, memberships to the Tennis and Swim Center that don’t include automatic access to the tennis courts cost about $220 a month to swim 30 days a month, the same price two adults would pay to swim only 20 days a month at the North Beach pool, a facility with no gym and only   one pool and therefore greater restrictions on when they could swim laps. It should also be noted that over 300 “guests” are admitted free to the Golden Gateway recreation facility each month, a total of 3,000 to 4,000 guests each year. We are not familiar with   a similar policy for free guests at the North Beach pool (or any other city pools).


Clearly, the recent privatization and escalating fee structures at the city’s “public” recreation centers/swimming pools have erased any real distinctions between public facilities and private facilities as viewed by local families and residents. But one of          8 Washington’s main justifications for closing the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Center for 3-4 years during construction—and downsizing the replacement facility—
is that it is a “private” club maintained for the selfish interests of the few.


Putting aside the fact that 8 Washington’s condos will cost $2 million each to build  and will sell for $2.5 to $5 million each and up (for upper floors), making them unaffordable to 97% of all San Franciscans (talk about catering to “the few”), the issue of who uses the current recreation facilities on this site is an important one that the DEIR must address. The similarities outlined above between today’s Golden Gateway recreation facilities and the City’s current “public” recreation centers/swimming pools contradicts the impression created by the DEIR in its current form with so many derogatory references to GGTSC as a ‘private’ club.


It is imperative that public officials have the information outlined above regarding the current costs of “public” recreation in front of them so they can decide for themselves what distinctions, if any, exist in today’s world between this ‘private’ club and so called “public” alternatives. This information is precisely what an EIR is suppose to provide to officials charged with making these kinds of decisions.


For these reasons, we must insist that you provide—in the Comments and Responses document—a clear, complete explanation of this issue, with a chart (see attached for potential template) that compares the facilities, hours, programs and costs to San Francisco residents of the city’s nine (9) “public” swimming pools with the current Golden Gateway recreation facility fee structure. Without such an analysis critical information will be lacking, information that Planning Commissioners, Park and Recreation Commissioners, Port Commissioners and the Board of Supervisors will clearly need as they assess the validity of the developer’s claims about who is served by the current facilities (and what environmental impacts they have) versus those who’ll be served by the proposed project (and its environmental impacts).


Without this information, it will be difficult for these public bodies to make informed decisions as to whether to grant or not grant the conditional use authorizations, upzonings and dozens of separate approvals and permits needed for this complicated and controversial project to proceed.


V. THE DEIR FAILS TO ADDRESS OR ANALYZE ANY OF THE MAJOR ECONOMIC ISSUES RELATED TO THIS PROJECT, ISSUES THAT HAVE SIGNIFICANT ENVIRONMENTAL AND FINANCIAL IMPACTS ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD AND THE CITY.


Several of the project sponsor’s and the Port’s objectives for this project speak to the “economic” benefits of the project for the developers, the Port and the City. The DEIR and other Port documents talk about the need to develop SWL 351 in order to generate revenue for badly needed Port infrastructure work. But the Port’s financial term sheet for this project is unrealistic, misleading and relies on depriving the city of $32 million in general fund dollars as part of a proposed Infrastructure Financing District.


This section addresses the DEIR’s lack of analysis or scrutiny regarding the ‘alleged’ financial benefits of the project as described in the Port’s Term Sheet for Seawall Lot 351 with San Francisco Waterfront Partners (“Term Sheet”) and how that Term Sheet, if executed, would have very real environmental impacts with regard to transit, open space, recreation, housing and population.  An examination of the Term Sheet demonstrates that the stream of income on which the term sheet’s finances rely cannot be achieved.  An objective analysis of “payments” described in this Term Sheet leads one to a much more pessimistic set of income projections than those presented in the September 23, 2010 Director’s Recommendation to the Port Commission. That report describes three payment sources as follows:


(1)  a land lease with annual payments of $120,000 per year;
(2)  future payments triggered by resale of condos created by the Project;
(3)  a to-be-established Infrastructure Financing District (IFD) that allows
              a portion of growth in property taxes to be reinvested in public facilities;  
 
That third source of funding is particularly troubling since it requires a sizeable appropriation of City General Fund revenues ($32 million) by the Port for its own purposes. We will now examine each of these proposed “payment” schemes to determine how realistic they are as well as the potential environmental and economic consequences they create for San Francisco’s residents and taxpayers:
1.  Lease Payments. It is easy to refute the likelihood of the $120,000/year lease payment for parcels to be used as open space with related facilities.  The second paragraph of Director’s Recommendation (page 5) states: “If engineering and cost analyses deem additional funding is needed to finance agreed upon public improve- ments, the Port agrees to designate some or all of the $120,000 per year park rent to augment financing of these public improvements.”  If the developer produces “engineering and cost analyses” showing “additional funding is needed to finance agreed upon public improvements,” the Port will “designate some or all of the $120,000/year in park rent to finance public improvements,” improvements that the developer is responsible for.  Suddenly this $120,000 of alleged “rent” could become no rent. Is that likely to happen? You be the judge:



A Little Recent History


The developer of 8 Washington is San Francisco Waterfront Partners, a partnership between Pacific Waterfront Partners and CALSTRS, the same partnership that  developed Piers 1½, 3 and 5 across the street. According to the Port’s rent rolls, San Francisco Waterfront Partners makes rent payments for Piers 1½, 3  and 5 of  $41,666.67 per month or $500,000 annually. But 90% of this is wiped out by a rent credit of a $450,000 annual rent credit ($37,500.00 per month). This means that the actual rent for Piers 1½, 3 and 5 paid by San Francisco Waterfront Partners isn’t $500,000/year, but $50,000/year or 1/10 of the original rent. Knowing this, it seems highly likely that the Port will grant a similar rent credit to 8 Washington, a credit that it has already offered in the Term Sheet approved last year.



The DEIR needs to discuss this and ask the following questions to help establish for public officials whether or not 8 Washington has the possibility of generating resources to fix up the Port’s historic infrastructure.


Was the $450,000 rent rebate given Piers 1½, 3 and 5 given for “public improvements” in the same way the 8 Washington Term Sheet proposes to give      8 Washington an up-to-$120,000/year (100%) rebate for “public improvements?


How much of this $120,000/year lease payment to the Port is guaranteed?


Based on recent history with this developer (see above box), it would appear that claiming a $120,000 per year lease payment is, at best, a gross overestimate.


2.  Future payments triggered by resale of condos (aka increased transfer tax). The second source of payments (around $25 MILLION over life of the lease) involves the developer recording covenants “committing all owners to transfer payments to the Port of ½ percent of sale value for all sales of the residential condominiums and all re-sales of commercial condominiums” (from Director’s Report, Page 4), in other words, a ‘voluntary’ increase in the transfer tax.  


This idea of obligating future owners to a special transfer “fee” was already tried, unsuccessfully, several years ago by then Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office as a way to provide ‘stimulus’ for large condo developers with approved projects who were trying to get financing. In exchange for agreeing to binding future condo owners to ‘voluntarily’ pay a 1% increase in the real estate transfer tax (but not calling it a “tax”), the Mayor’s Office proposed relieving the developers of 1/3 of their affordable housing requirement. That idea failed to get off the ground for both legal and political reasons. Regarding this proposal:


How does the Port plan to argue this increase in the real estate transfer TAX is not really a tax and do so in a way that convinces the Pacific Legal Foundation, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and SF Board of Realtors not to sue?
Mayor Newsom’s failed proposal did trigger an multi-stakeholder discussion of a broader, legally defensible strategy, going to the voters for a permanent, across the board increase in the transfer tax on ALL real estate transactions (above the median home price) generating tens of millions of dollars a year for affordable housing. A portion of this new money would fund traditional affordable housing built by non- profit housing development corporations, but a portion would also be available to for-profit housing developers to buy down their affordable housing obligations. All sides agreed to this compromise and to place it on the November 2010 ballot, because it HAD to go to the voters, just as the ½% transfer tax increase proposed     in this Term Sheet would need voter approval.


NOTE: The reason that this proposal was not on the ballot that November, as reported in the New York Times, was because Mayor Newsom refused to support it or ANY tax increase, no matter how much support it had, for fear of giving his Republican opponent in the Lt. Governor’s race an issue to use against him in the 2010 election.


If the best legal and political minds in the city couldn’t figure out a way to “voluntarily” increase the real estate transfer tax without going to the voters then, how does the Port propose to do the same thing for 8 Washington now?


3.  New IFD Funding Mechanism. The third weak link in this financing plan is the as yet “to-be-established Infrastructure Financing District (IFD) that will allow a portion of growth in property taxes to be reinvested in public facilities.”  Port Director’s Recommendation, page 2.   While the concept is an interesting one, it is in its infancy in San Francisco. The Board of Supervisors is in the process of setting up a pilot IFD with seven or eight property owners on Rincon Hill to test this model.


To date, citywide discussions about the use of tax increment financing tools, such as the IFD, have linked their use to funding a larger set of neighborhood infrastructure needs and public benefits previously identified through adopted Area Plans such as Eastern Neighborhoods, Market Octavia and Rincon Hill and not for the specific needs of individual projects or developers (e.g. 8 Washington).


Looking ahead, it isn’t hard to imagine the kind of criteria the Board of Supervisors might adopt to determine what developments could avail themselves of IFDs. Those with significant legal, political and financial challenges, such as 8 Washington, would not score well.  Nor would projects that dramatically reduce and eliminate active recreation facilities serving middle-income families and seniors for over 45 years.  Finally, projects that undo decades old community benefits agreements, provided as part of a Redevelopment plan (e.g. Golden Gateway’s permanent active recreation center), probably wouldn’t pass muster .


Assuming the city eventually creates IFDs in certain circumstances, how does the Port make the case for THIS project, given the growing political and legal opposition to it, the long standing community resource that it destroys and the fact that the Board of Supervisors won’t give up $32 million for it (see below).


 4. Diversion of property taxes from the General Fund to the Port. The majority of the 8 Washington/SWL 351 site is NOT Port property, but under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. Exhibit A of the Term Sheet shows the boundary of the 0.64 acre under Port control (SWL 351) and the 2.51 acres portion currently privately owned by Golden Gateway on AB168, 171, 291 (80% of the site). SWL 351 (the Port land) is only 20% of the total development site.


While these blocks were under the jurisdiction of the Redevelopment Agency, the property tax increment was diverted from the City’s General Fund to that Agency.  Following termination of the Redevelopment project area several years ago, however, ALL property tax revenue from this land flows to the General Fund.  The Port now proposes to divert the property tax increment from the portion of this site NOT UNDER PORT JURISDICTION away from the General Fund and to the Port.


The Port Director’s Term Sheet Recommendation on page 6 proposes “a new Port IFD” covering both SWL 351 and the Golden Gate Tennis and Swim Club (WHICH IS NOW ENTIRELY UNDER THE CITY’S JURISDICTION AND TAXING AUTHORITY).  Under the “new Port IFD” all the property tax increment from development on non-Port property would be diverted FROM the General Fund TO the Port.  Toward the end of the Term Sheet recommendation the Port Director does state that the Board of Supervisors would have to agree to this arrangement, which prompts several questions that should have been asked and answered in the DEIR:


Who from the city, not the Port, agreed to including these IFD financial terms in the Term Sheet?


Which members of the Board of Supervisors were consulted regarding this planned appropriation of property tax revenue from the city’s general fund?


What would lead the Port to think ANY current or future Board of Supervisors would  ‘voluntarily’ turn over $32 million in General Fund dollars to the Port, providing a $32 MILLION CITY SUBSIDY FOR LUXURY CONDOS when the Board is struggling with massive budget deficits, layoffs and cuts to vital city programs?


The DEIR must address whether or not this project is financially viable because if it is not, then the public facilities and infrastructure the project has promised to provide cannot be built. The DEIR must also assess the likelihood of the Board of Supervisors turning over $32 million in General Fund monies as a subsidy to the Port for this and other Port projects and analyze what environmental impacts this loss of $32 million to the city would create over time: what parks wouldn’t be maintained, which parks and recreation centers closed, what transit lines discontinued or run less frequently, etc.; actions that would not have been necessary had the city kept that $32 million. Specifically, the DEIR must answer the following questions:


Can 8 Washington’s public facilities (e. g. Jackson Commons, other open space) ever  be built with IFD funding, given that:


a) the IFD is predicated on the Port capturing 100% of the tax increment generated by 8 Washington even though the Port only owns 20% of the site, and


b) according to recent testimony before the Planning Commission by Michael Yarne (OEWD), under state law IFD’s are prohibited on land that “is currently,  or was previously part of a redevelopment area”?
 
Under what circumstances does the Port anticipate that the current (or a future) 
Board of Supervisors would voluntarily give up its 80% of this tax increment
($32 million out of $40 projected by the Port) to fund public improvements for   
LUXURY CONDOS at 8 Washington or other Port projects?


Has the Port had any discussions with the Board of Supervisors regarding this?


If so, what was the Board’s reaction?
    
Has the Port or project sponsor had state legislation passed (or introduced) that
provides the necessary waivers from the current state prohibition against
setting up IFD’s in former redevelopment areas?


Again, this is information that public officials must have to make informed, objective
decisions about the impacts of this project.


 


 


 


VI. THE DEIR FAILS TO DISCLOSE THAT 8 WASHINGTON IS THE FOURTH ATTEMPT TO CONVERT THE GOLDEN GATEWAY TENNIS & SWIM CLUB FROM CITY MANDATED ACTIVE RECREATION USE TO CONDOMINIUMS. IT PRESENTS VERY BRIEF AND MISLEADING INFORMATION REGARDING THE HISTORIC RECORD SUPPORTING THE REQUIREMENT TO PRESERVE THE CURRENT ACTIVE RECREATION FACILITIES ON SITE IN PERPETUITY.


The DEIR addresses this issue very briefly in a footnote on page II.3 that states:


2 The original development agreement governing the Golden Gateway Center Lots required the developer to provide non-profit community facilities as part of the overall development with the Golden Gateway Center. In Section 4 (a) of the Agreement for Disposition of Land for Private Development (“Agreement”) between Perini-San Francisco Associates (the “Developer’) and the Redevelopment Agency, dated August 27, 1962, the Developer agreed to maintain “community facilities of  a permanent nature… designed primarily for use on a nonprofit basis” (page 25 of the Agreement). Subsequent to the Agreement, the Agency and Golden Gateway Center (the successor to the Developer) entered into a Second Supplement and Amendment to the Agreement (“Second Supplement”) on March 14, 1976. Section 1(d) of the Second Supplement deleted Section 4(a) of the agreement (page 12 of Second Supplement) and thereby removed the requirement to maintain community facilities on the property in exchange for the dedication of Sydney Walton Park for perpetual use as a public park.


This interpretation of those documents contradicts evidence previously by individuals with intimate, first hand knowledge of those Golden Gateway redevelopment agreements. Those comments are attached as:


Exhibit A: A May 9, 1984 letter from then Mayor Dianne Feinstein that begins:“As a supervisor and as mayor, I have a long history with the redevelopment plan and agree with those who maintain that this site has always been considered set aside for recreation and open space.”


Exhibit B: An August 8, 1990 letter from Robert Rumsey to then redevelopment director Ed Helfeld that states:


  “I happened to be Deputy Director of Redevelopment in the late 1950’s and early  
    1960’s when the Golden Gateway redevelopment plan was adopted by the city and
    when Perini Corp. was subsequently selected as the developer of the Golden Gateway
    over eight other competitors… I feel it is important to place on the record the view of  
    the staff and commissioners of the agency at the time of selection: The provision of that
    open space and recreational space was a significant factor in the selection of the
    Perini proposal. And clearly, the space was presumed to be kept that way in
    perpetuity” (underlining Mr. Rumsey’s).


 


Exhibit C: A January 24, 2003 letter from Senator Dianne Feinstein reiterating that: 
  
   “I have a long history with the redevelopment area at Washington and Drumm Streets     
    and concur with those who believe this space was intended for recreation and open
    space. Please oppose further development of the Golden Gateway Tennis & Swim Club.”


These letters came in reaction to THREE previous unsuccessful attempts to develop the Golden Gateway Recreation Center as condominiums. Those attempts included:


1. Perini Corp. (early 80’s). The original developer of the Golden Gateway project proposed replacing the Golden Gate Tennis & Swim Club (GGT&SC) with a 9-story condominium project, in violation of its original approvals for the larger project that called for the GGTSC to serve as one of two major community benefits (along with Sidney Walton Sq.) in perpetuity. NOTE: This took place after the Second Supplement and Amendment to the Agreement referenced in Footnote 2 (above) was executed. Clearly, then Mayor Feinstein, had a very different interpretation of the Second Supplement than that of the author of Footnote 2 when she says in her letter that  “I agree with those who maintain that this site has always been considered set aside for recreation and open space.”


2. Perini Corp. (early 90’s). Again the owners of the Golden Gateway proposed replacing the project’s active recreation center with a condo project. This time, a letter from former Redevelopment Director Robert Rumsey date 8/8/90 provides extensive evidence that the interpretation of events contained in Footnote 2 is neither complete nor accurate. His detailed first hand description of that transaction which took place in the 1970’s is quite instructive. In addition to his comment that:


     “I feel it is important to place on the record the view of the staff and commissioners  
      of the agency at the time of selection: The provision of that open space and
      recreational space was a significant factor in the selection of the Perini proposal.
      And clearly, the space was presumed to be kept that way in perpetuity”


his letter states that “if it is now proposed that there is a loophole permitting that space to be invaded by condominiums, I would consider that to be most unfortunate for the city” and describes the land use negotiations that allowed Perini to substitute 155 low-rise condos for the four remaining high-rise rental towers that were suppose to be built as Phase III of the redevelopment plan. According to Rumsey, the agency finally, “albeit reluctantly” agreed to let Perini make this change “because some seven years had elapsed since completion of Phase II and there was otherwise no prospect for building on those long-barren blocks”.


Rumsey then states that the Agency’s October 28, 1975 minutes show the debate over what the Agency should charge Perini for the land that made up Phase III (now Gateway Commons condominiums) focused on “whether it should be $8.45 a square foot, the price established 15 years earlier, or a more realistic 1975 price of $15-$20 a square foot”. He then states:


      “My new successor, Arthur F. Evans, said he might agree with the higher number if
      the land was offered without restrictions, such as requirements of open space. And
      he added: Amenities such as Sidney Walton Square and the Golden Gateway tennis
      courts were on land that was not income producing, and since no one could build
      highrise buildings on this area, its value could be considered zero.”


As a result of this discussion, according to Rumsey, “Evans and the commission agreed to hold the land sales price to the original $8.45 a square foot, as the agency continued to view the open and recreation space to be in perpetuity.”


Based on Rumsey’s letter and substantial community opposition, this second attempt to replace the GGT&SC was defeated.


3. John Hamilton, developer (2003-04). In the mid-90’s Perini sold Golden Gateway to Timothy Foo and a group of investors. In 2003, developer John Hamilton proposed another condo tower on the site. Senator Feinstein’s January 24, 2003 letter was responding to that proposal. After reiterating her conclusion that “this space was intended for recreation and open space”,  she goes on to say, “increasing the height of the Club would drastically change the picturesque panorama of the Bay and would create shadow effects on the newly constructed Embarcadero. Further, development of more residential units would increase traffic noise and pollution, and disregard the original understanding between City officials and area residents that open space and recreational amenities should be preserved.”


4. Current 8 Washington Street/SWL 351 proposal is the 4th Attempt (2006-present) to develop condos on this site and demolish the Golden Gateway’s active recreation center, a facility that’s successfully fulfilled its intended purpose for almost 50 years.


In his written comments on 8 Washington’s DEIR dated August 11, 2010, Mr. Edward Helfeld, Director of the Redevelopment during the second attempt to demolish the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club speaks to the original purpose of the facility, how it has successfully served San Francisco’s recreation needs for over four decades and how relatively inexpensive it is compared to other tennis facilities in the city. He also writes that “As Executive Director (1987-1994) I was in total support of retaining Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club”.


Any public official or member of the general public reading the current DEIR would have no knowledge of these three previous attempts to build on this site, their outcome and the role former city officials have played in confirming that the Golden Gateway active recreation center was meant to be preserved as an active recreation center in perpetuity. The Comments and Responses to the 8 Washington Street/SWL 351 DEIR must include this historic information in order to be considered accurate, complete and objective.


 


 



VII. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ON THE 8 WASHINGTON DEIR


A.  The DEIR’s Introduction presents confusing and conflicting information regarding how, when and by whom environmental review for this project was initiated. The first two paragraphs of the DEIR’s Introduction (pg. Intro.1) raise some troubling questions about how environmental review for 8 Washington was carried out that need to be addressed more completely and forthrightly. The timeline for environmental review is described as follows (quoting from the DEIR):


1. “On January 3, 2007, an environmental evaluation application (EE application) was filed by San Francisco Waterfront Partners II (the “project sponsor”) on behalf of the Golden Gateway Center for a project at 8 Washington Street and the adjacent Seawall Lot 351, which is owned by the Port….(the Port is not a co-sponsor of the proposed project, but has authorized San Francisco Waterfront Partners II to submit an EE application that includes Seawall Lot 351).”


2. “On August 15, 2008, the Port issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the development of Seawall Lot 351. Two parties submitted timely proposals: SF Waterfront Partners II and a development group led by Dhaval Panchal (which later withdrew its proposal).”


3. “On November 10, 2008, the Port reissued the RFP for this project.”


4. “On February 24, 2009, the Port Commission authorized Port staff to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with SF Waterfront Partners II, finding that the proposal submitted by SF Waterfront Partners II meets the requirements of the RFP and meets the Port’s objectives for Seawall Lot 351.”


It appears from this timeline that the ‘project sponsor’, SF Waterfront Partners, was selected to carry out the 8 Washington project on January 3, 2007 when they were “authorized” (by the Port) to submit an Environmental Evaluation (EE) application officially beginning environmental review. However, there’s no explanation in the DEIR as to why, 18 months later (August 2008), the Port decided to issue an official RFP to select a developer for Seawall Lot 351.


This makes no sense given that Seawall Lot 351 was included in the January 3rd EE application submitted by SF Waterfront Partners (if not as designated developer, then in what capacity?). Then three months later (November 2008), we’re told the Port reissued the RFP with no explanation as to why. Finally, on Feb. 24, 2009, twenty five months after SF Waterfront Partners filed the EE application and began the environmental review process, the Port Commission authorizes staff to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with SF Waterfront Partners (SFWP) to develop  SWL 351. This raises troubling questions that need to be addressed in the DEIR to give public officials (and the general public) a clearer sense of the appropriateness, completeness and legality of the current environmental review process.


The DEIR must explain:


1. Is this how environmental review is normally sequenced? Is it routine for a developer that has not yet been selected by the Port to undertake a specific project, let alone negotiated an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) with the Port for said project, to submit an EE application to Planning for this project that they haven’t yet been selected to develop and then for the Port, eighteen months later, to issue the first RFP to select a developer for the project and have a developer other than the one who submitted the EE respond to the RFP—then drop out (with     no explanation why in the DEIR), then have the RFP reissued six months later and then finally,
25 months after the current developer of 8 Washington submitted the EE, the Port finally selects said developer (SFWP) as the official developer of 8 Washington and begins negotiating an ENA? Is this NORMAL procedure?


2. How could the Port authorize SFWP’s EE application without a written agreement designating SFWP as the approved developer of SWL351? Is this standard procedure in these matters?


3. If this EE process was, in fact, legal prior to August 2008, why did the Port reverse course on August 15, 2008 and issue an RFP for SWL 351 (a site already included in the EE application filed 18 months earlier)? Doesn’t the initial applicant in the EE process have to be either the property owner or his designated developer and be able to demonstrate site control? How would that have been possible back in January 3, 2007 for SWL 351?


4. What role did SFWP play in drafting the RFP (and Port’s objectives for SWL351)?



5. What reasons did the second respondent to RFP give for “withdrawing his proposal?”



6. Why was the RFP reissued on November 10, 2008?



7. When on January 3, 2007, the Planning Department accepted an environmental evaluation application (EE) “filed by San Francisco Waterfront Partners II (the “project sponsor”) on behalf of Golden Gateway Center for a project at 8 Washington Street and the adjacent Seawall Lot 351”, was Planning aware that San Francisco Waterfront Partners had not been and could not be legally designated as “project sponsor” for SWL 351 at that time?


8. Why didn’t the fact that SFWP had no legal basis to claim that it was the “project sponsor” for SWL 351 invalidate the EE application? The DEIR states that the Port “authorized San Francisco Waterfront Partners II to submit an EE application that includes Seawall Lot 351” but wouldn’t that imply SFWP would eventually be selected as the developer and discourage other developers from submitting responses to the Port’s August 15, 2008 RFP given that SFWP had been working with Planning staff on the environmental evaluation for 18 months already?


9. Is what happened in January 2007 legal? If not, when did the Planning Department become aware of this problem and what did it do about it?


10. Having now publicly described this chronology in the DEIR, what legal impact does this have today on the environmental and project review process?


11. Would any other developer be allowed to begin the environmental review process on a project for which they had neither been designated developer nor had site control?



These questions MUST be answered in the DEIR given the bizarre and confusing chronology that now appears in it regarding how environmental review was initiated for this project.


 


B. In other Port documents related to 8 Washington, San Francisco Waterfront Partners II is described as a partnership between Pacific Waterfront Partners (PWP) and California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). However, the involvement of CalSTRS in this project appears nowhere in the DEIR. Given that CalSTRS has already spent over $23 million dollars in predevelopment funds for 8 Washington, the DEIR must contain some mention of CalSTRS as a member of this partnership and the fact that the same partnership (PWP and CalSTRS) developed Piers 1½, 3 and 5 across The Embarcadero from this site.


Finally, the first sentence of the Introduction to the DEIR refers to the fact that “on January 3, 2007 an environmental evaluation application (EE) was filed by SF Waterfront Partners on behalf of the Golden Gateway Center   for a project at 8 Washington”. That footnote references “Golden Gateway Center, Authorization Letter from Timothy Foo dated Dec. 27, 2006.”


For this DEIR to be complete and accurate it must address several key questions including:


1. Who is developing this project? Pacific Waterfront Partners?  CalSTRS? Golden Gateway Center (Timothy Foo)? What are their relationships to each other and the proposed project?


2. What precisely is the relationship between these three entities and the Port?


3. What was the understanding between SFWP, Timothy Foo and the Port when SFWP submitted its EE application on behalf of Golden Gateway Center? All three are mentioned in the relevant discussion in the DEIR.


C. The DEIR is inadequate and incomplete due to its failure to include A Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront. The DEIR is inadequate and biased in discussing the Planning Department’s Northeast Embarcadero Study (NES), while failing to include an equally detailed discussion of the background and recommendations of the study prepared by Asian Neighborhood Design entitled A Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront, dated February 2011, which was presented to the Planning Commission on July 7, 2011. 


The second sentence in the third paragraph of the Introduction states that the purpose of the Northeast Embarcadero Study (NES) was “to foster consensus on the future of Seawall Lot 351 and at other seawall lot properties on the northern waterfront” and leaves the reader with the impression that it succeeded in this goal by stating how many public workshops were held (five) and “on July 8, 2010, the San Francisco Planning Commission adopted a resolution that it ‘recognizes the design principles and recommendations of the Study’ and urges the Port of San Francisco to consider the recommendations of the NES when considering proposals for new development in this area”.


To be accurate and truthful, the DEIR should mention the level of anger and frustration expressed by the majority of the public that attended these five workshops who felt the Port, who was paying for the NES, was dictating its conclusions in order to facilitate the approval of the
8 Washington. For example, when 30-40 people at a workshop opposed the notion advanced by Planning staff that The Embarcadero needed a “hard edge” and that “higher heights” were appropriate for the 8 Washington site and only 6-8 people expressed support for these ideas, the notes from that meeting would later say that opinion was divided on these matters. To its credit, the Planning Department states clearly in the final draft of the NES that they failed in their goal   of achieving consensus on the future of SWL 351.


The DEIR needs to include this information to provide a more accurate representation of the outcome of the NES process.


People were so upset by what they perceived as a transparent attempt to ‘justify’ 8 Washington, that they began their own community-based planning process to address the larger issues of reconnecting Chinatown, North Beach, Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill to the Waterfront; healing the wounds left by the ramps to the Embarcadero Freeway by making Broadway, Washington and Clay Streets more pedestrian, bicycle and transit friendly; and fostering consensus on the future of Seawall Lot 351 and at other seawall lot properties on the northern waterfront.


Four major community organizations representing thousands of local residents, small businesses        and property owners became the primary sponsors/organizers of this “Community Vision for the Northeast Waterfront” and hired Asian Neighborhood Design to assist them in developing it.    These organizations included: Friends of Golden Gateway; Golden Gateway Tenants Association; Telegraph Hill Dwellers and Barbary Coast Neighborhood Association. Stakeholders from Chinatown, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Fisherman’s Wharf and other neighborhoods also participated.


On July 7, 2010, when the Planning Department staff presented the NES to the Planning Commission, AND and the four sponsors of the “Community Vision for the Northeast Waterfront” were invited to present a summary of their planning work to date.


The DEIR fails to make any mention of the alternative plan created by these four community groups with AND’s help. It needs to describe this study, how it differs from Planning’s NES and include it in the final EIR so public officials can evaluate the merits of both studies for themselves.
 
The DEIR must describe the reasons why this alternative community planning process was undertaken and include a detailed discussion how the proposed project would or would not conform to each of the recommendations contained in A Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront?


I am attaching a copy of the AND Study: A Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront to these comments and ask that it be included in the EIR so that readers and public officials can gauge for themselves if it was more successful in “fostering consensus on the future of Seawall Lot 351 and at other seawall lot properties on the northern waterfront” than the Planning Department’s Northeast Embarcadero Study (NES).


D. The DEIR tries, unsuccessfully, to minimize the loss of iconic views of Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill from in front of the Ferry Building with its argument about ‘episodic’ views and a new claim that “trees” already obscure the views of Coit Tower from in front of the Ferry Building, views enjoyed by millions of tourists, residents and office workers each year.  As demonstrated in Figure IV.B-3: View B (page IV.B.7), the height and mass of the proposed project would completely obstruct views of Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill currently seen from the Embarcadero Promenade at the northern end of the Ferry Building. This significant adverse effect on the visual quality and scenic vistas enjoyed by the public puts the project in direct conflict with a number of city and Port planning policies. The DEIR’s conclusion that this would not create a substantial adverse effect on a scenic vista because “Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill would continue to be visible from numerous vantage pointes in the vicinity of the Project site and the City” is a biased and subjective judgment that is not based on fact. This ‘episodic’ argument could be used to claim that NO building ever blocks an important view because if you walk far enough past the offending structure, you might get the view back.
The comment about trees blocking the view of Coit Tower from in front of the Ferry Building must be stricken from the document. I just came from standing at the main entrance of the Ferry Building and I could clearly see Coit Tower and most of Telegraph Hill. While several trees in front of the F-line stop across the street did impede the view around the edges, these trees could easily be pruned to eliminate the problem.



E. The DEIR’s Traffic and Transit Data is Seriously Out of Date.


The traffic data relied upon by the DEIR in reaching its conclusions is incredibly stale, having been based on surveys done in 2006-2007 and with 2000 census data (page IV.D.5 of the DEIR).  These studies must be updated.  For example, the assumptions made in the DEIR that the existing conditions at the Embarcadero/Broadway and Embarcadero/Washington intersections are “satisfactory” (at LOS D) defy logic.  Anyone familiar with the real time conditions at these intersections knows that this assessment could not be based on a factual analysis of current conditions at peak periods which, by the way, often occur on weekends (not studied in DEIR).


Also out of date is the transit information relied upon by the DEIR in reaching its conclusion that the project would not result in significant transportation impacts to transit systems (Impact TR-2), having been based upon data on capacity and utilization of individual MUNI lines from 2007 (page IV.D.9 of the DEIR).  This data should also be updated. For example, whoever was responsible for the assumption in the DEIR that the F-Line is not at capacity during peak periods has never ridden the F-line at peak periods. The America’s Cup will only make this worse.



F. The DIER belittles Pedestrian Safety Issues. The DEIR states that: “Conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles could occur at the project garage driveway, which could cause the potential inbound vehicles to queue onto Washington Street. Outbound vehicles would queue inside the garage and would not affect street traffic. Conflicts between outbound vehicles and pedestrians could still occur, but their effect on pedestrians would be reduced because pedestrians on the sidewalk have the right-of-way.” (page IV.D.25). I’m sure the fact that pedestrians have the right-of-way is of great comfort to families of children and seniors who’ve been struck and killed by cars. This statement is insulting and MUST be stricken from the DEIR. It’s also not true.


In the very next paragraph the DEIR makes the following statement about these potential vehicular and pedestrian conflicts at the garage driveway:


“The number of vehicles and pedestrians per minute are relatively small (about one vehicle and three pedestrians every 30 seconds on average) and it is therefore not anticipated that the proposed project would cause any major conflict or interfere with pedestrian movements in the area.” (page IV.D.25)


These numbers translate to 2 cars and 6 pedestrians every minute or 120 cars and 360 pedestrians an hour (or approximately 1,440 cars and 4,320 pedestrians coming into potential conflict in any given 7 am to 7 pm period).  The DEIR’s conclusion that such conflict between vehicles and pedestrian movement would be “less than significant” makes no logical sense and is simply not supported by the facts presented in the DEIR. 


G. The DEIR must include a new fence around the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club in its NO PROJECT Alternative. Finally, the comments often heard about the “ugly green fence” around the GGTSC reminds us that the DEIR must let the reader know that it is the owner of the property, Mr. Timothy Foo, who is responsible for the ugly “green fence”. First, he has put the GGTSC operator on a month-to-month lease making it difficult for them to make a substantial investment in a nicer fence. Second, Mr. Foo himself stands to gain financially if 8 Washington is approved, so he has no incentive to fix the fence since its unsightliness is being used as an argument for demolishing the current facility. This simplest way to correct this bias would be to:


Include a rendering of the site with a new, attractive fence in the NO PROJECT alternative .


For the reasons stated in this letter, I believe this DEIR is seriously incomplete and inadequate to address the potentially significant impacts of this project.  I urge you to revise the document and re-circulate it in draft form.


Sincerely,


 


Brad Paul


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Rep Clock

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Schedules are for Wed/31-Tues/6 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise noted.

BALBOA 3620 Balboa, SF; www.balboamovies.com. $17.50-20. Nabucco, from Teatro Antico, Taormina, Wed, 7:30.

“BERNAL HEIGHTS OUTDOOR CINEMA” Old Clam House, 299 Bayshore, SF; (415) 641-0324, www.bhoutdoorcine.org. Suggested donation $15 (includes two drink tickets; benefits Bernal History Project). “Opening Night Party and Preview,” films and live music by Stoo Odom and the Odom Poles, Wed, 6:30. Tiffany and 29th St, SF; same contact. Free. Block party with films and live music by the Patsy Chords, Thurs, 6:30. Red Hill Books, 401 Cortland, SF; same contact. Free. “Film Crawl on Cortland Ave,” Sat, 6:30. Precita Park, Folsom at Precita, SF; same contact. Free. “Outdoor Cinema Under the Stars,” Sat, 6:30. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; same contact. Suggested donation $10. “Closing Night and Season Finale,” Sun, 7:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-13. “Cary Grant: Definitive Star” •The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940), Wed, 2:50, 7, and Holiday (Cukor, 1938), Wed, 5, 9:05; •Arsenic and Old Lace (Capra, 1944), Thurs, 3, 7, and The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937), Thurs, 5:10, 9:15; •North By Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959), Fri, 2:20, 7, and Charade (Donen, 1963), Fri, 4:45, 9:25; •Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938), Sat, 3, 7, and Monkey Business (Hawks, 1952), Sat, 4:55, 8:55; •Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938), Sun, 7, and I Was a Male War Bride (Hawks, 1949), Sun, 8:55; •His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940), Mon, 2:50, 7, and Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939), Mon, 4:35, 8:45; •Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946), Tues, 3, 7, and Suspicion (Hitchcock, 1941), Tues, 4:55, 8:55.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $10.25. The Hedgehog (Achache, 2010), call for dates and times. The Names of Love (Leclerc, 2010), call for dates and times. Senna (Kapadia, 2011), call for dates and times. The Whistleblower (Kondracki, 2010), call for dates and times. Third Star (Dalton, 2010), Thurs and Sun, 7.

“CONVERGENCE MMXI FILM SERIES” Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.convergencefest.com. $7. Naco es Chido (Arau, 2010), Wed, 7. SF Film Society-New People Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; same contact. $12. The Holy Mountain (Jodorowsky, 1973), Thurs, 8. Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; same contact. $8-10. Everybody’s Dying Here (Gardoki, 2002), Fri, 7:30.

“FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK” This week: Creek Park, 451 Sir Francis Drake, San Anselmo; (415) 272-2756, www.filmnight.org. Donations accepted. Young Frankenstein (Brooks, 1974), Fri, 8; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One (Yates, 2010), Sat, 8; North By Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959), Sun, 8.

JACK LONDON SQUARE 66 Franklin, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. Free. “Waterfront Flicks:” Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (Kotcheff, 1978), Thurs, sunset.

MANDELA VILLAGE ARTS CENTER 1357 Fifth St, Oakl; www.brainwashm.com. $10. “17th Annual Brainwash Drive-In/Bike-In/Walk-In Movie Festival,” unique independent movies from around the world, Sat/3, 8pm; Sept 9-10, 9pm.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “The Timeless Cinema of Marcel Pagnol:” The Well-Digger’s Daughter (1940), Wed, 7. “UCLA Festival of Preservation:” The Crusades (DeMille, 1935), Thurs, 7. “The Outsiders: New Hollywood Cinema in the Seventies:” The Heartbreak Kid (May, 1972), Fri, 7; Wanda (Loden, 1970), Sat, 8:50. The Landlord (Ashby, 1970), Fri, 9:10; “Sounding Off: Portraits of Unusual Music:” The Reach of Resonance (Elkins, 2010), Sat, 6. ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (Bate, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9. Love Exposure (Sono, 2008), Sept 2-8, 7:30 (also Sat-Sun, 2:30)

Psychic Dream Astrology

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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AUG 31-SEPT 6

ARIES

March 21-April 19

Your greatest enemy this week is likely to be your mind, that trick-playing little rascal! Don’t allow fear-mongering to masquerade as practical thinking, and don’t convince yourself that your only option is to rush through things. This week, create your own choices and pursue them with care.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

This is the week to look for possibilities for expansion in everything you do. If you approach your life with interest in what is possible you are likely to see more options than if you anticipate history repeating itself. Learn from the past but don’t be hemmed in by it, pal.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Sometimes it’s hard to gauge where intuition breaks off to become anxiety (and vice-a versa). You are in no state to read your instincts when you’re running ragged and insecure. Get grounded and energized before evaluating options or making decisions this week for best results.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

The most important thing to focus on is your responsibility to yourself. Your entanglements are trying to mirror to you the ways that you are in or out of step with yourself. Be the change you want to see in your life, instead of waiting for other people or situations to turn into what you want them to be.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

Don’t allow vanity or pride get in the way of creating the conditions in your life that will make you happy, Leo. With transiting Saturn in Libra you are in the right position for setting your life up for success. This requires that you have a clear and accurate vision of what that means for you.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

You are ready to deal with your fears of failure, Virgo. Write a list of all the worst-case scenarios that are tripping up your mind, and then for each one write up preventative measures you can take. Let go of trying to predict things and instead take practical steps to support yourself with.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

If you’ve got to have problems, you might as well make them work for you, Libra. Don’t waste your struggles by avoiding them! Look head on at what’s troubling you so that you can better understand, and ultimately change it. Make your blocks your bitch this week.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

Be patient, Scorpio, and while you’re at it, you’ve gotta adjust your attitude. There is no merit to infusing your wait time with hand wringing when you could be calming your nerves. If you’re not working on solutions, then you are likely to be adding to the problems.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

They say that the higher you fly, the further you fall and this week you need to watch out for a crash. Don’t let the first sign of barriers to your progress to stymie you, pal. Concentrate on developing the kind of balance that does not require everything to be ideal for you to maintain it.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

This week remember that it’s not your problems that define you, but how you rise to the occasion of them. Don’t rush forwards until your sure of where you’re going and don’t add anything to your plate until you’ve finished what you’ve started. Cope strategically for best results.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

Your friendships are mad important this week. Make sure you are treating your chosen family with as much care as they deserve. You are in an excellent place for laying foundations that allow you to share the highs and lows of life with your people for a long time to come, so make it count.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

It’s time for you to let go and make a major change, Pisces. Use your ego as the fire under your ass that helps you mobilize, but not as your primary motivation. Whether you feel like the worst or the best, its still self-centered. Account for others’ perspectives as you forge ahead. *

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 17 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com

 

Our weekly picks: Aug. 31-Sept. 6

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 31

FILM

“Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema”

Don’t let all those school supplies in Walgreens fool you — summer in San Francisco is still going strong. Hope for one (or more!) of those rare fog-free nights during Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema, a showcase of over 70 shorts made by residents of the ‘hood and points beyond. Tonight’s way-out-east opening party previews the whole shebang with live music by Stoo Odom and the Odom Poles; other events include a block party on Tiffany Avenue (runs parallel to Mission; access it from 29th St.), a “film crawl” down Cortland Avenue (get drunk on HD videos!), a screening in Precita Park, and a finale party at El Rio. The kick-off has a suggested donation to benefit Bernal History Project, but the rest of the fest is free. (Cheryl Eddy)

6:30 p.m., suggested donation $15

Old Clam House

299 Bayshore, SF

(415) 641-0324

www.bhoutdoorcine.org

 

FILM

“Cary Grant: Definitive Star”

Cary Grant was the prototypical total-package leading man: suave and dapper, gruff yet dreamy, totally manly (could kick ass atop Mount Rushmore) yet sensitive (could sweep a starlet off her feet without rumpling his hairdo). George Clooney wishes he could measure up. Show your appreciation for one of cinema’s all-time greats — and hey, the films themselves are pretty special, too — during this weeklong appreciation of the Divine Mr. Grant. Selections hew toward his 1930s-40s output of rapid-fire Howard Hawks comedies (1938’s Bringing Up Baby, which screens in a brand-new 35mm print; 1940’s His Girl Friday), but his Hitchcock turns (including 1959’s North By Northwest and, drool, 1946’s Notorious) and 1940’s classic The Philadelphia Story are also represented. (Eddy)

Through Tues/6, $7.50–$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

 

THURSDAY 1

MUSIC

Uzi Rash

If your friendly neighborhood punk house grew arms and legs, developed vocal chords, and started a band, said band would probably sound a lot like Uzi Rash. A mad jangle, barely held together by grit and charm, Uzi Rash flourishes on the edge of collapse. No two songs sound the same, and band membership constantly mutates, but the appeal remains. Uzi Rash is Oakland’s answer to the Urinals, bolstered by the avant-garde weirdness of bands like Chrome or Pere Ubu, a combination that has earned a dedicated following in the bay and beyond. Lest you be surprised, an Uzi Rash show is hardly predictable; the energy is organic and the ride is free. Or six bucks. Or something like that. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

With King Lollipop, Buffalo Tooth, and Cool Ghouls

9 p.m., $6

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

 

MUSIC

Peaches

What can you learn from the teaches of Peaches? That sex is good, all types of body hair should be adored not shorn, and if you don’t like her style, you can get the fuck out of the club. Berlin-based artist Peaches (not be confused with our own priestess, Peaches Christ) rose from the ranks during electroclash’s heyday in the early 2000s with a far more distinctive style than others that claimed the genre. She was fierce with taboo lyrics, confusing sexuality, and throbbing beats — and is still nails-tough with followup albums such as 2009’s I Feel Cream. And of that now-rubble of electrocrash, she proudly still remains, standing atop it with arms akimbo, gleaming in shiny gold spandex hotpants, the gender-bending mistress of futuristic trash pop. (Emily Savage)

With Maluca

9 p.m., $20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

 

FRIDAY 2

FILM

“Love Exposure”

Sion Sono, the groundbreaking, prolific, and perhaps mad writer/director/poet who notably brought the world Suicide Circle (2001) — a movie that after having watched twice I still can’t really tell you what it’s about — has once again dropped jaws across the globe with his most ambitious feature to date. Love Exposure is a nearly four-hour-long epic about a love smitten devoutly Catholic teenager named Yu Honda as he masters the art of upskirt photography, chases the object of his obsessive desire, and eludes a violent cultist. Released in Japan over three years ago to widespread acclaim, it has only recently made its way to our shores; Sept. 2 will be your first chance to catch this beast of a film in San Francisco but hopefully not your last. (Berkmoyer)

Fri/2 — 9/8

$10

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

 

MUSIC

Chelsea Wolfe

It’s been one full year since the beginning of based goth club night 120 minutes. As the club puts it: “a year of darkness and based goth… lasers and fog… thizzed out thugz in black throwin’ up occult signs and goth kids sippin’ sizzurp and screamin’ along to waka flocka flame.” To celebrate the anniversary of such mayhem, Los Angeles-based musician Chelsea Wolfe is coming in for a live set, arriving on the heels of her exquisitely haunting new release, Ἀποκάλυψις (pronounced “apokalypsis”). It touches both darkness and light, pain and ecstasy. From the opening beastly howl to the more subdued ethereal end, the album plays out like a black veil-laced journey on-foot through punishing natural elements. Which should fit nicely with the 120 Minutes crowd. (Savage)

120 Minutes anniversary

With DJ Todd Pendu, DJs Nako, and Whitch

10 p.m., $10

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788.

www.elbo.com

 

SATURDAY 3

MUSIC

Dreamdate

What’s your dream date? Perhaps the night would start off with beers, then move on to pizza . . . then more beers? You and your date could take a stroll and talk about life. “You know what I hate?” . . . “Me too!” Maybe you would broach the subject of early-to-mid 90s indie pop. What d’ya know, you both like Cub and Go Sailor! The Popguns too! A match made in heaven. “Hey, have you heard of Dreamdate?” “Who?” “It’s new. It’s a three piece from the bay. It’s sweet and catchy without making you feel like you’re choking on a cube of sugar that’s boring its way into your brain.” “I hate that.” “Me too. But I love Dreamdate.” (Berkmoyer)

With Lilac, the Ian Fays and Wild Assumptions

6 p.m., $6

423 40th St., Oak.

(510) 985-0325

www.1234gorecords.com

 

DANCE

RawDance Concept Series 9 Why overpay for a 3D movie when you can get live action art with free popcorn to boot? Dance artists Wendy Rein and Ryan Smith of RawDance host Concept Series 9, an intimate salon featuring works-in-progress and dance repertory by Bay Area dance artists. In addition to pieces by RawDance, this installment includes a new solo by former Martha Graham Dance Company performer David Martinez who has crowdsourced content to fold into his choreography, the darkly humorous 13th Floor Dance Theater directed by Jenny McAllister, Tanya Bello’s project.b, Gretchen Garnett and Dancers and punkkiCo, led by Finnish import Raisa Punkki. (Julie Potter)

Sat/3, 8 p.m. and Sun/4, 3 and 8 p.m.9 p.m., $8

66 Sanchez, SF

(415) 686-0728

www.rawdance.org

 

MUSIC

RTX

With the demise of ’90s indie rock heavyweights Royal Trux in 2001, longtime creative partners Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema parted ways with Hagerty founding Howling Hex and Herrema adopting the name RTX for her own project. Since then, RTX has released scores of records, solidifying Herrema’s reputation as a songwriter and badass of renown while reaching out to a legion of fans, young and old(er) alike, with a lurching amalgam of everything that rocks, from skate punk to old school psychedelia and everything in between; it’s a mystical trip in the desert with nothing but torn jeans, cowboy boots, and a stick-n-poke Camero on your bicep. It makes you want to drink whiskey and say “fuck.” I miss my long hair. (Berkmoyer)

With White Fence, Heavy Cream and Burnt Ones

9 p.m., $8

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

 

SUNDAY 4

EVENT

Star Wars Day

Having won their first World Series title since moving to San Francisco last season, the Giants seemed, as Master Yoda would say, “at one with the Force.” In a fitting tribute to their victory, the team is hosting “Star Wars Day” at the ballpark, complete with a pre-game costume contest and party, a post-game screening of The Empire Strikes Back, and a special “Brian Wilson in Carbonite” giveaway. With his awesome, Jedi-like command of the ball when pitching, Wilson is a most appropriate pick — not to mention the fact that with his epic beard, he’s starting to look a little bit like Obi-Wan Kenobi! (Sean McCourt)

11 a.m.; Pricing varies; see website for current availability

AT&T Park

24 Willie Mays Plaza, SF

(415) 972-2000

www.sfgiants.com/specialevents

 

MUSIC

Twin Sister Twin Sister makes funky pink frosted cake-making, pinata-swinging, casual party music. Just check out the Brooklyn-via-Long Island band’s video for “Bad Street” off its forthcoming album In Heaven. Shot on location at breathy, sweet-voiced singer Andrea Estella’s family home, the video captures a pretty epic celebratory affair, replete with balloons and metallic streamers. Estrella’s family is made up of Salvadorians and Puerto Ricans, and she says the the video and the lyrics of the song are about Latin American life in New York. While other Twin Sister tunes expose a dreamy ’80s pop bent, this particular track sounds like a funked out ’70s block party. Just pray you get the invite.(Savage)

With Devon Williams, Library Voices

8 p.m., $12 Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(510) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

TUESDAY 6

MUSIC

The Mummies

There will only be 40 tickets sold at the door to this notably awesome, already pre-sold out show at the Knockout — I mean, these are the godparents of San Francisco surf punk we’re talking about here. Beginning in 1988, the gauzy white-cloth-wrapped band mixed 1960s-style surf rock riffs with the more modern sounds of clattering garage punk. All the Mummies have since joined other acts, but the band still occasionally regroups for live SF shows. Of course, Russell Quan is most often seen these days behind the DJ booth at twist-crazy club night Teenage Dance Craze at the Knockout, so what better place to host the show? And it should be a good one. The flier teases “Wear white shoes for a special surprise treat. Things will get out of hand.” (Savage)

With the Hondettes, DJ Russell Quan

10 p.m., $15 Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

(415) 550-6994

www.theknockoutsf.com 

 

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Film Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Apollo 18 Faux-found-footage horror flick about a top-secret moon landing gone terribly awry. (1:26)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) (Peitzman)

Film Socialisme For the record, Jean-Luc Godard is alive and well and still making thought-provoking films. (1:41) SFFS New People Cinema.

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy Thirtysomethings in the Hamptons do the darndest things. (1:35)

*Higher Ground Higher Ground does not bite off more than it can chew. I guess that should go without saying, but it’s striking how comfortably Vera Farmiga (in her directorial debut) tackles this story of devotion and doubt. Based on the memoirs of Carolyn S. Briggs, who co-wrote the screenplay, this deeply personal film follows Corrine Walker (Vera Farmiga) from her adolescence through the trials of youth and middle age, her marriage to high school sweetheart Ethan (Joshua Leonard), and their lives as members of a small hippie Christian community. Although religion serves as a backdrop for Higher Ground, it doesn’t suffocate the human element of the story; it’s less a film about Christianity than it is about the challenges one woman faces as she tries to find room for herself amidst faith. Farmiga treats her subjects with empathy and humor and crafts a thoughtful, tender slice of sixties Midwest Americana. (1:49) (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*The Interrupters See “Chicago Hope.” (2:05)

*Love Exposure See Trash. (3:57) Roxie.

Seven Days in Utopia If the sports sub-sub-genre “existential golf drama” is your idea of a good time, you’re in luck this week. (1:38)

Shark Night 3D Just realized this movie is rated PG-13. DISLIKE. (1:31)

ONGOING

*Beginners There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Mélanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. (1:44) (Peitzman)

*Bellflower Picture Two Lane Blacktop (1971) drifters armed with “dude”-centric vocabulary and an obsession with The Road Warrior (1981) and its apocalypse-wow survivalist chic. There are so many pleasures in this janky, so-very-DIY, heavy-on-the-sunblasted-atmosphere indie that you’re almost willing to overlook the clichés, the dead zones, and the annoying characters. Seeming every-dudes Woodrow (director-writer-producer Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are far too obsessed with tricking out their cars and building a flamethrower for their own good — the misfits must force themselves out of the metal shop of the mind to meet women. So when Woodrow goes up against Milly (Jessie Wiseman) in a cricket-eating contest at a bar, it’s love at first bite. Their meet-gross morphs into a road trip and eventually a relationship, while the flamethrower nags, unexplained, in the background, like an unfired gun — or an unconsummated, not-funny bromance. These manifestations of male fantasy — muscle cars, weapons, and tough chicks — are cast in a dreamy, saturated, and burnt-at-the-edges light, as Glodell and company weave together barely articulated reveries and bad-new-west imagery with a kind of fuck-all intelligence, culminating in a finale that will either haunt you with its scattershot machismo-romanticism or leave you scratching your noggin wondering what just happened. (1:46) (Chun)

Brighton Rock Writer Rowan Joffe (2010’s The American) moves into the director’s chair for this Graham Greene adaptation, previously filmed in 1947 with an early-career star turn by Richard Attenborough. Joffe’s version updates Greene’s 1938 story to 1964, allowing the brutal actions of small-time hood Pinkie Brown to unfold as Britain’s mods vs. rockers youth riots boil in the background. Don’t get too excited, though — despite a cool premise and even cooler setting, and the presence of veterans Helen Mirren and John Hurt in supporting roles, Brighton Rock rages without a rudder. Pinkie is played by Sam Riley (so good as Ian Curtis in 2007’s Control), who snarls like a sociopathic James Dean and is so transparently hateful it’s hard to root for anything other than his hastened demise. Brighton Rock‘s most memorable element is probably Andrea Riseborough, an on-the-verge young Brit who’s being touted as the next Carey Mulligan. She has the thankless (yet showy) role of Rose, a naïve waitress who becomes entangled in Pinkie’s web after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A far-from-storybook ending awaits, and you’ll experience little enjoyment watching the characters claw their way there. (1:51) (Eddy)

Buck This documentary paints a portrait of horse trainer Buck Brannaman as a sort of modern-day sage, a sentimental cowboy who helps “horses with people problems.” Brannaman has transcended a background of hardship and abuse to become a happy family man who makes a difference for horses and their owners all over the country with his unconventional, humane colt-starting clinics. Though he doesn’t actually whisper to horses, he served as an advisor and inspiration for Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998). Director Cindy Meehl focuses generously on her saintly subject’s bits of wisdom in and out of a horse-training setting — e.g. “Everything you do with a horse is a dance” — as well as heartfelt commentary from friends and colleagues. In the harrowing final act of the film, Brannaman deals with a particularly unruly horse and his troubled owner, highlighting the dire and disturbing consequences of improper horse rearing. (1:28) (Sam Stander)

Captain America: The First Avenger OK, Marvel. I could get behind 2008’s Iron Man (last year’s Iron Man 2, not so much), but after Thor and now Captain America, I’m starting to get cynical about this multi-year build-up to the full-on Avengers movie, due in May 2012. Can even a superhero-stuffed movie directed by Joss Whedon live up to all this hype? There’s plenty of time to ponder, and maybe worry a little, with Captain America’s backstory-explaining picture now in theaters. Chris Evans stars as the 90-pound weakling who morphs into a supersoldier, thanks to the World War II-era tinkerings of a scientist (Stanley Tucci) and an inventor (Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man’s dad). The original plan for the musclebound shield-bearer (fighting Nazis, natch) gets waylaid a bit when the newly famous Captain America becomes a PR prop for the U.S. government; it’s abandoned entirely when a worse-than-Hitler foe, in the guise of power-obsessed Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), threatens the world. Directed by Spielberg cohort Joe Johnston, Captain America is gee-whiz enjoyable enough, but it’s very nearly the same movie as Thor, which no amount of Tommy Lee Jones (as a sarcastic army colonel) wisecracks can conceal. And here’s an anti-spoiler: there’s no post-credits surprise in this one, so you can bolt as soon as they start to roll. (2:09) (Eddy)

Colombiana (1:47)

Conan the Barbarian Neither 3D (unnecessary) nor Game of Thrones‘ Jason Momoa (beefcake-y) are enough to make this Conan the Barbarian competition for the 1982 Schwarzenegger classic. This new take is a barely adequate adventure movie helped along by Rose McGowan’s leering turn as an evil witch with Freddy Krueger claws. Would that everyone involved (including frequent remake director Marcus Nispel) had McGowan’s razor-sharp grasp of tone; as a whole, the film is never quite sure if it’s a camp-tastic voyage (the prologue, containing Conan’s birth and much Ron Perlman nostril-flaring, suggests what might have been) or a semi-straightforward fantasy actioner. A totally forgettable female lead (Rachel Nichols), a he-was-scarier-in-Avatar villain (Stephen Lang), a blah mixture of two tired plots (revenge + “chosen one”) — there’s just not a lot here, aside from a few hilarious lines of dialogue and Momoa’s muscles. He was so great in Game of Thrones, though, I suspect this dud won’t keep his career from skyrocketing. (1:42) (Eddy)

Cowboys and Aliens Here ’tis in a nutshell: the movie’s called Cowboys and Aliens — and that’s exactly, entirely what you’ll get. Director Jon Favreau may never best 2008’s Iron Man (actor Jon Favreau will prob never top 1996’s Swingers, but that’s a debate for another time), but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a good time trying. Cowboys is a genre mash-up in the most literal sense; as the title suggests, it pits Wild West gunslingers (Harrison Ford as a crabby cattleman, Daniel Craig as an amnesiac outlaw) against gold-seeking space invaders who also delight in kidnapping and torturing humans. As stupidly entertaining as it is, this is a textbook example of a pretty OK movie that could have been so much better … if only. If only the alien characters had a little bit more District 9-style personality. If only the story had a shred of suspense — look ye not here for “spooky” and “mysterious;” this shit is 100 percent full-on explosions. If only Craig’s comically fine-tooled physique didn’t outshine his wooden acting. And so forth. (1:58) (Eddy)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) (Chun)

The Devil’s Double Say hello to my little friend, again— and rest assured, it’s not a dream and you’re seeing double. New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori gets back to his potboiler roots with this campy, claustrophobic look back at the House of Saddam Hussein, based on a true story and designed to win over fans of Scarface (1983) with its portrait of mad excess and deca-dancey ’80s-ish soundtrack. The craziest poseur of all is Hussein’s son Uday (Dominic Cooper), a petty dictator-in-the-making — and, according to this film, a full-fledged murderous pedophile — who chomps cigars and wraps his jaws around schoolgirls while Cooper happily chews scenery. Uday needs a double to sidestep all those troublesome assassination attempts, so he enlists look-alike childhood friend Latif (also Cooper) to get the surgery, pop in the overbite, bray like a madman, make appearances in his stead, and function as a kind of pet human. Never mind Ludivine Sagnier, glassy-eyed and absurd in the role of Uday’s favorite sex kitten Sarrab — Double is completely Cooper’s, who seizes the moment, investing the morally upstanding Latif with a serious sincerity with just his eyes and body language and infusing evil odd job Uday with a dangerous, comic-book unpredictability. To his credit, Cooper imbues such cult-ready, blow-the-doors-off lines as “I love cunt! I love cunt more than god!” with, erm, believability, even as the denouement rings somewhat false. (1:48) (Chun)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark If you’re expecting a traditional haunted house story, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark might be a disappointment. The film, which was co-written by Guillermo del Toro, has a lot in common with his Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) — both movies are more dark fairy tale than horror. They follow a young girl who discovers a mystical world around her, much to the disbelief of the adults around her. It’s worth noting that Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is lighter fare: despite all the peril involved, it’s actually pretty fun. Young Bailee Madison, who made such an impression in 2009’s Brothers, is a charming lead, precocious but believable. And Katie Holmes is surprisingly sympathetic in her role as the caring stepmother, a nice switch from the standard fairy tale trope. As with Fright Night, the ad campaign for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is misleading, so here’s hoping audience members looking for a gory slasher will appreciate a whimsical fable instead. (1:40) (Peitzman)

Fright Night Don’t let the spooky trailer fool you: the Fright Night remake is almost as silly as the original. In fact, it follows the 1985 film closely, as young Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) comes to realize that his neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire. The biggest change is a smart one — this Fright Night transforms late-night TV host Peter Vincent into Criss Angel-type illusionist Peter Vincent (David Tennant). The casting is spot on all-around, and frankly, Farrell is a lot more believable than Chris Sarandon as the seductive bad boy. The only real problem with the new Fright Night — other than the unnecessary 3D — is that it never fully commits to camp the way the original did. There’s a bit too much back-and-forth between serious scares and goofy blood splatters. Luckily, it’s still an entertaining remake that doesn’t crap all over a classic. It’s also a great reminder that vampires don’t have to be moody — remember, they used to be fun. (2:00) (Peitzman)

*The Future Dreams and drawings, cats and fantasies, ambition and aimlessness, and the mild-mannered yet mortifying games people play, all wind their way into Miranda July’s The Future. The future’s a scary place, as many of us fully realize, even if you hide from it well into your 30s, losing yourself in the everyday. But you can’t duck July’s collection of moments, objects, and small gestures transformed into something strangely slanted and enchanted, both weird and terrifying, when viewed through July’s looking glass. Care and commitment — to oneself and others — are two vivid threads running through The Future. Cute couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) — unsettling look-alikes with their curly crops — appear at first to be sailing contently, aimlessly toward an undemanding unknown: Jason works from home as a customer-service operator, and Sophie attempts to herd kiddies as a children’s dance instructor. But enormous, frightening demands beckon — namely the oncoming adoption of a special-needs feline named Paw-Paw (voiced by July as if it’s a traumatized, innocent child). Lickety-splitsville, they must be all they can be before Paw-Paw’s arrival. The weirdness of the familiar, and the kindness of strangers, become ways into fantasy and escape when the couple bumps up against the limits of their imagination. This ultra-low-key horror movie of the banal is obviously remote territory for July (2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know). The Future is her best film to date and finds her tumbling into a kind of magical realism or plastic fantastic, embodied by a talking cat that becomes the conscience of the movie. (1:31) (Chun)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) (Eddy)

Gun Hill Road Though the visibility of gays and lesbians in cinema remains (largely) confined to independent film, Rashaad Ernesto Green, in his debut feature Gun Hill Road, uses the creative freedom afforded by that closeting to explore issues of race and confused sexuality amid the Latino population of the Bronx. Esai Morales is Enrique, a former drug dealer returning from prison to his wife Angela (Judy Reyes) and teenage son Michael (Harmony Santana). But everyone seems to have moved on with their lives. Angela is having an affair, and Michael has created a new persona, Vanessa. Green’s film focuses on the relationship between the damaged Enrique and Michael, whose cross-dressing and budding transsexuality puts the family members at odds. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and an entry in this year’s Frameline Film Festival, Gun Hill Road is one in a recent spate of films that deals with coming out in an urban setting. Like Green’s film, Peter Bratt’s La Mission (2009) offered a picture of homophobia in the Latino community. But Gun Hill Road, despite its bulging dramatic heft, shirks the after-school-special formula of La Mission by imagining complex characters rather than hewing them from instantly recognizable, sympathetic archetypes. (1:28) (Ryan Lattanzio)

*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Chances are you aren’t going to jump into the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. So while the movie is probably the best Harry Potter film yet, it’s more a fitting conclusion than a standalone film. For fans of the books, there are no real surprises — this is a close adaptation. And for those Harry Potter movie fans who haven’t read the books, shame on you, and kudos if you managed to not get spoiled. It’s hard for me to offer a serious critical analysis of Part 2, because it represents the end of a long and very emotional journey. (Everyone in that audience was crying. Everyone.) I will say that, as was the case in the book, there are a few overdone, schmaltzy moments that aren’t really necessary. But in the context of the series, they’re forgivable — this may not be the great cinematic event of our generation, but Harry Potter as a whole is sure to be one of our most enduring cultural icons. (2:10) (Peitzman)

*The Hedgehog You needn’t possess the rough, everyday refinement of the characters of The Hedgehog to appreciate this debut feature by director-screenwriter Mona Achache — just an appreciation for a delicate touch and a tender heart. Eleven-year-old Paloma (the wonderful Garance Le Guillermic) is too smart for her own good, bored, neglected by her parents, and left to fend for herself with only her considerable imagination and a camcorder. She drifts around her fishbowl of privilege, a deluxe art nouveau-style apartment building in Paris, leveling her all-too-wise gaze on its denizens and plotting certain suicide on her 12th birthday — that is until a new resident appears in her viewfinder: a kindly Japanese gentleman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He has as much of a connoisseur’s eye as Paloma — the proof is in his unlikely focus of attention, the building’s concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko, resembling a burly Gertrude Stein), who hides her cultured and bookish inclinations behind a gruff, drab exterior. They recognize in each other a reverence for an almost monkish life of the mind, the austere elegance of wabi-sabi, and the transient beauty of rough-hewn imperfection, even in the sleek, well-heeled heart of the City of Light. To the credit of Achache, working with Muriel Barbery’s novel, these unlikely fragile friendships between outsiders take hold in a way that sidesteps preciousness and stays with you long after its pages have turned. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) (Chun)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) (Harvey)

Motherland When Raffi Tang (Francoise Yip) learns of her estranged mother’s death, the prodigal-daughter returns to her hometown, San Francisco, only to discover that nothing is as first supposed. Forced to contend with the protracted legal battle between her late mother and re-married father (Kenneth Tsang) as well as an incompetent (and poorly acted) police detective (Jason Payne), Tang drifts, looking distracted, lost, and maybe vaguely concerned throughout the first two thirds of the film. Yip does little to enliven a flat script rife with stock phrases and worn cinematic conventions, and while her emotional distance seems genuine, it’s boring nonetheless. Motherland is, to its credit, an angry movie — director Doris Yeung drew on her own experience with the murder of her mother — but the rage fizzles when it finally does erupt, smothered by uninspired acting and a directionless screenplay. (1:33) (Berkmoyer)

*My Perestroika Robin Hessman’s very engaging documentary takes one very relatable look at how changes since glasnost have affected some average Russians. The subjects here are five thirtysomethings who, growing up in Moscow in the 70s and 80s, were the last generation to experience full-on Communist Party indoctrination. But just as they reached adulthood, the whole system dissolved, confusing long-held beliefs and variably impacting their futures. Andrei has ridden the capitalist choo-choo to considerable enrichment as the proprietor of luxury Western menswear shops. But single mother Olga, unlucky in love, just scrapes by, while married schoolteachers Lyuba and Boris are lucky to have inherited an apartment (cramped as it is) they could otherwise ill afford. Meanwhile Ruslan, once member of a famous punk band (which he abandoned on principal because it was getting “too commercial”), both disdains and resents the new order just as he did the old one. Home movies and old footage of pageantry celebrating Soviet socialist glory make a whole ‘nother era come to life in this intimate, unexpectedly charming portrait of its long-term aftermath. (1:27) Balboa. (Harvey)

*The Names of Love Arthur (Jacques Gamblin) is a 40-ish scientist being interviewed about the threat of a bird flu epidemic when his radio broadcast is interrupted by 20-something Baya (Sara Forestier), who denounces him on-air as a “fascist” for frightening the public. But then, Baya tends to use that label rather indiscriminately, applying it to anyone who might conceivably have views to the right of the dial — and Arthur is in fact a solid liberal, which means she can bed him for love. As opposed to the many, many other men she beds as a self-described “political whore,” seeking out conservative types in order to seduce them and hopefully induce an idealogical shift by whispering sweet nothings (“Not all Arabs are thieves,” etc.) as they orgasm. Raised by parents whose emotions are so tightly wound his mother won’t acknowledge her parents were Jews killed at Auschwitz, Arthur has a hard time adjusting to a relationship with a lover who is faithful emotionally but sees promiscuity as her propagandic gift to the world. Meanwhile Baya’s largely Algerian family treats garrulous political argument as the very air they breathe. This odd-couple story written by Baya Kasmi and director Michel Leclerc deals with serious issues in both humorous and respectful fashion, making for one of the more novel, delightful and depthed French romantic comedies in a long time. Added plus: lots of antic gratuitous nudity. (1:42) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*One Day Why do romantic comedies get such a bad rap? Blame it on the lame set-up, the contrived hurdles artificially buttressed by the obligatory chorus of BFFs, the superficial something-for-every-demographic-with-ADD multinarrative, and the implausible resolutions topped by something as simple as a kiss or as conventional as marriage, but often no deeper, more crafted, or heartfelt than an application of lip gloss. Yet the lite-as-froyo pleasures of the genre don’t daunt Danish director Lone Scherfig, best known for her deft touch with a woman’s story that cuts closer to the bone, with 2009’s An Education. Her new film, One Day, based on the best-selling novel by David Nicholls, flirts with the rom-com form — from the kitsch associations with Same Time, Next Year (1978) to the trailer that hangs its love story on a crush — but musters emotional heft through its accumulation of period details, a latticework of flashbacks, and collection of encounters between its charming protagonists: upper-crusty TV presenter Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working-class aspiring writer Emma (Anne Hathaway). Their quickie university friendship slowly unfolds, as they meet every St. Swithin’s Day, July 15, over a span of years, into the most important relationship of their lives. Despite the blue-collar female lead and UK backdrop that it shares with An Education, One Day feels like a departure for Scherfig, who first found international attention for her award-winning Dogme 95-affiliated Italian for Beginners (2000). (1:48) (Chun)

*Our Idiot Brother If you thought 1998’s The Big Lebowski had eked all the humor that it could from the Dude, well, screenwriter (and Vanity Fair contributor) Evgenia Peretz, her not-so-idiotic brother (director Jesse Peretz), and star Paul Rudd would differ. They correctly guessed that there are still laughs to be wrung from a shaggy stoner in floral jams, only this time with less fuuuck-s and more benevolent, idiot-savant good vibrations. Dazed and confused broheim 2.0 (Rudd) is glimpsed through the jaded, harried prism of his three dysfunctional, supposedly normal sisters: frumpadelic mom Liz (Emily Mortimer), queen-bitch Vanity Fair writer Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), and slatternly would-be comedian Natalie (Zooey Deschanel). A good-hearted naïf who’s easily entrapped by a uniformed police officer claiming to need some pity doobage, Ned has just emerged from the joint and is now couch-surfing among his sibs, exposing the hypocrisies of bourgie-hipster Brooklyn, as well as the infidelities and vanities of family, friends, and partners (Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, and Hugh Dancy) as he goes, in his own good-natured, aw-shucks way. As innocuous (and desexualized) as Andy Griffith beneath the hippie trappings, this dude-with-a-little-d knows where his real family is — with his dog, Willie Nelson, who loves him just as unconditionally. Beastie besties have never seemed so innocent as they are in this proudly feel-good comedy, and despite a cringe-y, saccharine soundtrack and lackadaisical pacing, Rudd’s charismatic sunny slacker and some pointed jabs at the follies of the cooler-than-thou save this indie-that-could. (1:36) (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42)

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Smith Rafael. (Berkmoyer)

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness This documentary cuts to the chase right at the beginning: yeah, Sholem Aleichem was the guy who wrote the Tevye stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. But filmmaker Joseph Dorman isn’t trying to make Fiddler: Behind the Musical. Instead, he takes an in-depth look at the life, writing career, and cultural significance of “one of the great modern Jewish writers — and our greatest Yiddish writer,” per the film’s press notes. Fans of Jewish lit will be particularly engaged by Sholem Aleichem’s tale; raised in a shtetl in what’s now the Ukraine, he moved around Europe and to the United States pursuing various careers, but always writing the popular stories that addressed not just Jewish life, but broader issues facing turn-of-the-last-century Jews, including the cross-generational conflicts that make up much of Fiddler‘s plot and humor. That said, this film does rely an awful lot on PBS-style slow pans over black-and-white photos and intellectual talking heads; one suspects the subject himself (so devoted was he to entertaining the regular folk who gobbled up his tales) would’ve preferred his life story to unfold in a livelier fashion. (1:33) (Eddy)

*Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure Once upon a time (1987 to be exact), two young men moved to San Francisco from the Midwest. Eddie Lee “Sausage” and Mitchell “Mitch D” Deprey wound up living in a somewhat derelict apartment in the Lower Haight. The paint was peeling and the walls were thin, but the rent was cheap. What Eddie and Mitch didn’t count on was having Peter J. Haskett and Raymond Huffman as their neighbors. “You blind cocksucker. You wanna fuck with me? You try to touch me and I will kill you in a fucking minute.” “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up little man!” The insults, tantrum throwing, and threats of violence coming from next door were constant. Eddie and Mitch started to lose sleep; after one failed attempt at complaining to Raymond’s face (he threatened death), they started tape-recording the endless geyser of vitriol — first, as possible future evidence, but also out of a growing voyeuristic fascination with these two seniors who had to be the world’s oddest and angriest odd couple. The rest is history. Mitch and Eddie started including snippets of Peter and Ray’s bickering on mix tapes for friends. Somehow, the editor of the now-defunct SF noise music zine Bananafish heard a snippet and approached Mitch and Eddie about distributing compilations of the recordings to a large network of found sound fans. Gradually “Peter and Raymond” became known and much-beloved characters. Their warped repartee inspired several theatrical adaptations, short animated films, pages of comic book panels by artists such as Dan Clowes, and even a one-off single from Devo side project the Wipeouters. Matthew Bate’s documentary Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure is much an attempt to comprehensively recount the above long, strange trip from start to finish; it is also the newest chapter in the now 20-year saga of Peter, Raymond, Mitch, and Eddie. (1:30) Roxie. (Sussman)

30 Minutes or Less In some ways, 30 Minutes or Less is reminiscent of 2008’s Pineapple Express: both are stoner action comedies about normal people shoved into high-stakes criminal activity. But while Pineapple Express was an exciting addition to the genre, 30 Minutes or Less is a flimsy 80-minute diversion that still feels like a waste of time. Jesse Eisenberg plays Nick, a pizza delivery boy who is forced to rob a bank after two would-be criminals strap a bomb to his chest. Strangely, Eisenberg was more charming as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) — and his buddy Chet (Aziz Ansari) doesn’t exactly up the likability factor. There’s actually the potential for an interesting story here: something darker seems appropriate, given that 30 Minutes or Less was inspired by a true story with a very unhappy ending. But the film completely fumbles, delivering an action comedy that’s neither tense nor funny. That means the pizza’s free, right? (1:29) (Peitzman)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) (Harvey)

*The Trip Eclectic British director Michael Winterbottom rebounds from sexually humiliating Jessica Alba in last year’s flop The Killer Inside Me to humiliating Steve Coogan in all number of ways (this time to positive effect) in this largely improvised comic romp through England’s Lake District. Well, romp might be the wrong descriptive — dubbed a “foodie Sideways” but more plaintive and less formulaic than that sun-dappled California affair, this TV-to-film adaptation displays a characteristic English glumness to surprisingly keen emotional effect. Playing himself, Coogan displays all the carefree joie de vivre of a colonoscopy patient with hemorrhoids as he sloshes through the gray northern landscape trying to get cell reception when not dining on haute cuisine or being wracked with self-doubt over his stalled movie career and love life. Throw in a happily married, happy-go-lucky frenemy (comic actor Rob Brydon) and Coogan (TV’s I’m Alan Partridge), can’t help but seem like a pathetic middle-aged prick in a puffy coat. Somehow, though, his confused narcissism is a perverse panacea. Come for the dueling Michael Caine impressions and snot martinis, stay for the scallops and Brydon’s “small man in a box” routine. (1:52) (Devereaux)

The Whistleblower (1:58) Smith Rafael.

*!Women Art Revolution Bay Area artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s vibrant look back at the first waves of feminist art in the ’60s and ’70s is an extremely necessary and impassioned recounting of a history that perpetually seems to be on the edge of erasure. Mixing old and new interviews with artists, critics, and scholars — many of which are from Hershman Leeson’s own personal archive — !W.A.R. lets those who stood at the frontlines of one the most significant movements in contemporary art tell their own stories. Seeing and hearing the testimonies of the likes of Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, B. Ruby Rich, Judy Chicago, Carolee Scheeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and Ingrid Sischy, one after another, is dazzling — like being in the presence of an Olympian summit — even as their overlapping tales of pushback, casual misogyny and outright ridicule from critics, the art establishment, and in some cases, their colleagues, paint a damning picture of just how endemic sexism was, and as the need for a film such as !WAR attests to, in many ways still is. (1:23) (Sussman)

 

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

All Atheists Are Muslim Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 517-3581, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Thurs/1, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. Zahra Noorbakhsh performs her solo romantic comedy.

Cymbeline Parade Ground Lawn, Main Post, Presidio (between Graham and Keyes), SF; www.sfshakes.org. Free. Opens Sat/3, 7:30pm. Runs Sun/4-Mon/5, 2:30pm; Sept 10, 17, and 24, 7:30pm; Sept 11, 18, and 25, 2:30pm. Through Sept 25. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival presents its annual “Free Shakespeare in the Park” performance.

King Henry the Sixth Boxcar Studios, 125a Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $12-15. Opens Fri/2, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Do It Live Productions debuts with a contemporary Shakespeare adaptation.

BAY AREA

A Delicate Balance Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-48. Previews Fri/2-Sat/3 and Sept 7, 8pm; Sun/4, 2pm; Tues/6, 7pm. Opens Sept 8, 8pm. Runs Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 9. Aurora Theatre performs Edward Albee’s comedy of manners.

Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Previews Fri/2-Sat/3 and Tues/6, 8pm; Sun/4, 7pm. Opens Sept 7, 8pm. Runs Tues-Sun, showtimes vary. Through Oct 30. Rita Moreno stars in a show created specifically for her by Berkeley Rep’s Tony Taccone and David Galligan.

ONGOING

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Oct 20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through Sept 17. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

Exit, Pursued By a Bear Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Wed-Sat (no shows this week; shows resume Sept 7), 8pm. Through Sept 17. Crowded Fire performs Lauren Gunderson’s new play, a feminist revenge comedy.

Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055. $25-100. Thurs, 8pm; Sat-Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 18. Geoff Hoyle returns to the Marsh with his acclaimed solo show.

Tigers Be Still SF Playhouse, 522 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 10. SF Playhouse performs Kim Rosenstock’s quirky comedy.

True West NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.truewestsf.com. $10-28. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Expression Productions presents Sam Shepard’s tale of two brothers.

2012: The Musical! This week: Mill Valley Community Center (back lawn), 180 Camino Alto, Mill Valley; www.sfmt.org. Free. Wed/31, 7pm. Also Thurs/1, 7pm, Mitchell Park, South Field, 600 East Meadow, Palo Alto; Sat/3-Mon/5, 2pm, Dolores Park, 18th St at Dolores, SF. Continues through Sept 25 at various Bay Area venues. San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts their annual summer musical; this year’s show is about a political theater company torn between selling out and staying true to its anti-corporate roots.

Waiting for Giovanni Decker Theater, New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 18. This world-premiere play by Jewelle Gomez in collaboration with Harry Waters Jr. imagines a split-second of indecision in the mind of author James Baldwin.

BAY AREA

Candida Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theatre Way, Orinda; www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Wed/31-Thurs/1, 7:30pm; Fri/2-Sat/3, 8pm (also Sat/3, 2pm); Sun/4, 4pm. Cal Shakes artistic director helms this taken on George Bernard Shaw’s classic about a housewife torn between her husband and a new suitor.

The Complete History of America (abridged) Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Adam Lon, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor’s three-person romp through American history.

The Merry Wives of Windsor Old Mill Park, 375 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; www.curtaintheatre.org. Free. Sat-Sun and Sept 5, 2pm. Through Sept 18. Curtain Theatre performs Shakespeare’s Falstaff-centric comedy.

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 5pm (also Sept 8 and 22, 7:30pm). Through Sept 24. This is it: the final extension of Brian Copeland’s solo show about growing up in (nearly) all-white San Leandro.

Of Dice and Men La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. Impact Theatre performs Cameron McNary’s comedy about a group of adult Dungeons and Dragons players.

The Road to Hades John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds). Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 11. Shotgun Players presents a new comedy written by and starring veteran comedian and clown Jeff Raz.

Sense and Sensibility Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 18. TheatreWorks performs Roger Parsley and Andy Graham’s adaptation of the Jane Austen novel.

Seven Guitars Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Wed/31, 7:30pm; Thurs/1-Sat/3, 8pm (Sat/3, 2pm); Sun/4, 2 and 7pm. Marin Theatre Company performs August Wilson’s 1940s-set entry into his series of plays about the African-American experience.

The Tempest Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company presents Shakespeare’s romance with a steampunk twist.

Toke Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 11. Swirl Media presents Deedee Kirkwood’s pot-fueled comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“The Kurt Weill Project” Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. Wed, 8pm. Free. Cabaret opera.

“The Romane Event Comedy Show” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.romaneeventcomedyshow.com. Wed, 7:30pm. $10. Paco Romane hosts, and Nato Green headlines, this comedy variety show.

BAY AREA

“Finian’s Rainbow” Woodminster Amphitheater, Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller, Oakl; (510) 531-9597, www.woodminster.com. $26-42. Opens Fri/2, 8pm. Runs Thurs and Sun, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 11. Outdoor performance of the Irish-tinged Broadway classic.

Chicago hope

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Chicago hope

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Hard times and an African American man in the White House have unleashed racial hostilities on a level unseen for decades, even if most of it is (thinly) veiled. Millions of low-paid or unemployed whites who should know better from their own experiences with economic struggles view blacks as a homogenous group of “welfare cheats” (believing all welfare is cheating, unless of course you need it yourself) and violent thugs. The online rhetoric, where everyone’s ugliest prejudices can be aired from a safe place of anonymity, reveals a nation of way too many people who spend way too much time hating each other. The venom is so enthusiastic you know most of them wouldn’t want rapprochement if it came with a $50 Wal-Mart gift certificate.

With concern from society and government as a whole at low ebb, communities at greater risk of violence from within than ever have had to come up with their own peace-making solutions. The Interrupters, the latest documentary by Steve James (1994’s Hoop Dreams), shows dedicated efforts to help one of the nation’s worst centers of such bloodshed. In Chicago, the overwhelming majority of both victims and perps of gang-related, domestic, and armed robbery fatalities are African American; shooting incidents in a few neighborhoods have continued to skyrocket even as similar statistics have declined elsewhere around the country.

“Violence is like the great infectious diseases of all history,” says epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, in that it can be stopped from spreading to epidemic proportions by numerous “initial interruption(s) of transmission” at its source. He translated that perspective into the founding of CeaseFire, a Chicago-based organization that doesn’t aim to summarily end the existence of gangs and drug trade. Instead, its plain but hardly simple mission is to stop the shootings, stabbings, etc. which are exacerbated by unemployment, broken families, and other sources of stress whose cumulative effect can rapidly escalate a casual dis to a mortal confrontation. As one interviewee in James’ film says, “sticks and stones” logic doesn’t apply here because “words can get you killed.”

Under CeaseFire’s auspices, Tio Hardiman created the Violence Interrupters program, which drafts people from the community — many former gangbangers themselves — as mediators wading into conflicts to defuse them before things get out of hand. It takes considerable will and nerves of steel; “interrupters” have been shot at, and during the course of this documentary’s year-long span one volunteer lands in the hospital for his trouble.

The Interrupters‘ most charismatic figure is Ameena Matthews, daughter of legendary local crime boss Jeff Fort (now in prison for life) and a onetime enforcer herself. Now a mother and devout Muslim, she is seen fearlessly, tirelessly diving into fraught situations where few would be able to command sufficient respect to “interrupt,” let alone arrest, the path that leads from disagreement to threat to assault. She even takes the podium at (yet another) funeral to harangue the attendees about stopping the cycle of brutal retaliation slayings. It’s hardly just active gang members or even their families who are at risk — random, mistaken-identity, and bystander shootings claim an outrageous number of lives every year. (In the New York Times Magazine article that led to this documentary, producer Alex Kotlowitz noted one summer Chicago weekend in which 36 people were shot, seven fatally.)

Like much of inner Detroit — as other recent docs have observed — these Chicago neighborhoods have practically been abandoned by the larger society, considered incurable zones in terms of crime, blight, brutality, abuse, despair. If residents already rank low in a pinched job market, prospects for those who’ve returned from prison stints are subterranean.

Such frustration and anger will be channeled one way or another; constructive alternatives are damn few. But The Interrupters makes a powerful case against the inevitability of hopelessness turning into violence. The program has even seen former perps transformed to the point of returning to the scene of a crime in order to apologize. Rage is blinding; CeaseFire and its mediators prove there’s nothing like taking a step back and a clear-eyed look at oneself to achieve peace in near-impossible circumstances. “Community, heal thyself” may well have to become the American mantra of the near future, because you know the Tea Party wouldn’t mind in the least letting certain groups self-destruct. 

THE INTERRUPTERS opens Fri/2 in Bay Area theaters.

The real Leland Yee

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The real Leland Yee

tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s early January 2011, and the Four Seas restaurant at Grant and Clay is packed. Everyone who is anyone in Chinatown is there — and for good reason. In a few days, the Board of Supervisors is expected to appoint the city’s first Asian mayor.

The rally is billed as a statement of support for Ed Lee, the mild-mannered bureaucrat and reluctant mayoral hopeful. But that’s not the entire — or even, perhaps, the central — agenda.

Rose Pak, who describes herself as a consultant to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce but who is more widely known as a Chinatown powerbroker, is the host of the event. She stands in front of the room, takes the microphone, and, in Cantonese, delivers a remarkable political speech.

According to people in the audience, she says, in essence, that the community has come out to celebrate and support Ed Lee — but that’s just the start. She also urges them not just to promote their candidate — but to do everything possible to prevent Leland Yee from becoming mayor.

She continues on for several minutes, lambasting Yee, the state Senator who lived in Chinatown as a child, accusing him of about every possible political sin — and turning the Lee rally into an anti-Yee crusade. And nobody in the crowd seems terribly surprised.

Across Chinatown, from the liberal nonprofits to the conservative Chamber of Commerce, there’s a palpable fear and distrust of the man who for years has been among San Francisco’s most prominent Asian politicians — and who, had Lee not changed his mind and decided to run for a full term this fall, was the odds-on favorite to become the city’s first elected Chinese mayor.

The reasons for that fear are complex and say a lot about the changing politics of Asian San Francisco, the power structure of a city where an old political machine is making a bold bid to recover its lucrative clout — and about the career of Yee himself.

Senator Leland Yee is a political puzzle. He’s a Chinese immigrant who has built a political base almost entirely outside of the traditional Chinatown community. He’s a politician who once represented a deeply conservative district, opposed tenant protections, voted against transgender health benefits and sided with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. on key environmental issues — and now has the support of some of the most progressive organizations in the city. He’s taken large sums of campaign money from some of the worst polluters in California, but gets high marks from the Sierra Club.

His roots are as a fiscal conservative — yet he’s been the only Democrat in Sacramento to reject budget compromises on the grounds that they required too many spending cuts.

He’s grown, changed, and developed his positions over time. Or he’s become an expert at political pandering, telling every group exactly what it wants to hear. He’s the best chance progressives have of keeping the corrupt old political machine out of City Hall — or he’s a chameleon who will be a nightmare for progressive San Francisco.

Or maybe he’s a little bit of all of that.

 

Leland Yin Yee was born in Taishan, a city in China’s Guangdong province on the South China Sea. The year was 1948; Mao Zedong’s Communist Party of China had taken control of much of the countryside and was moving rapidly to take the major cities. The nationalist army of General Chiang Kai-Shek was falling apart, and Yee’s father, who owned a store, decided it was time for the family to leave.

The Yees made it to Hong Kong, and since Mee G. Yee had previously lived in the United States and served in the U.S. Army during World War II, he was ultimately able to move the family to San Francisco. In 1951, the three-year-old Leland Yee arrived in Chinatown.

For four years, Yee lived with his sister and mother in a one-room apartment with a shared bathroom while his father worked as a sailor in the merchant marine. It was, Yee recalled in a recent interview, a tight, closed, and largely self-sufficient community.

“The movie theater, the shoe store, the barber shop, food — everything you needed you could get in Chinatown,” Yee said. “You never had to leave.”

Of course, after a while, Yee and his mom started to venture out, down Stockton Street to Market, where they’d shop at the Emporium, the venerable department store. “It was like walking into a different country,” he said. “If you didn’t know English, they didn’t have time for you.”

Yee, like a lot of young Chinese immigrants of his era, put much of his time into his studies — in the San Francisco public schools and in a local Chinese school. “My mom spoke a village dialect, and we had to learn Cantonese,” he said. “Every little kid had to go to Chinese school. We hated it.”

When Yee was eight, his parents managed to buy a four-unit building on Dolores Street, and the family moved to the Mission, where he would spend not only the rest of his childhood but much of his early adult life. He graduated from Mission High School, enrolled in City College, studied psychology and after two years won admission to UC Berkeley.

Berkeley in 1968 was a very different world from Chinatown and even the relatively controlled environment he’d experienced at home in the Mission. “You didn’t protest in school. You’d have been sent home, and your mother would kill you,” he said.

At Berekely, all hell was breaking loose, with the antiwar protests, the People’s Park demonstrations, the campaign to create a Third World College (which led to the first Ethnic Studies Department), and a general attitude of mistrust for authority. “I developed a sense of activism,” Yee said. “I realized I could speak out.”

That spirit quickly vanished when Yee lost faith in some of his fellow activists. “People would work with us, then get into positions of power and use that against you,” he recalled. “A lot of my friends said ‘forget it.’ I left the scene.”

Yee once again devoted his energy to school, earning a masters at San Francisco State University and a Ph.D in child psychology from the University of Hawaii. Along the way, he met his wife, Maxine.

With his new degree, the Yees moved back to San Francisco — and back in with his parents at the Dolores property, where he, Maxine and a family that would grow to four kids would live for more than a decade.

 

Yee worked as a child psychologist for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, starting the city’s first high school mental-health clinic. He went on to become a child psychologist at the Oakland Unified School District, then joined a nonprofit mental health program in San Jose.

In 1986, Yee decided to get active in politics for the first time since college, and ran for the San Francisco School Board. He lost — and that would be the only election he would ever lose. In 1988, he won a seat, and established himself as an advocate for students of color, fighting school closures in minority neighborhoods. He also tried to get the district to modify its harsh disciplinary rules, arguing against mandatory expulsions.

On fiscal issues, though, Yee was a conservative. For his first term, despite the brutal cutbacks of the recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he insisted that the district make do with the money it had. His solution to the red ink: Cut waste. Only in 1992, when he was up for re-election, did he acknowledge that the district needed more cash; at that point, he supported a statewide initiative to tax the rich to bring money to the schools.

The sense of fiscal conservatism — of holding the line on taxes, but mandating open and fair contracting procedures and tight financial controls — was a hallmark of much of his political career. When the Guardian endorsed him for re-election to the board in 1992, we wrote that “there’s real value in his continuing vigilance against administrative fat and favoritism in contracts.”

Over the next four years, Yee worked with then-Superintendent Waldemar “Bill” Rojas, a deeply polarizing figure who pushed his own personal theory of “reconstitution” — firing all the staff at low-performing schools — and later was enmeshed in a scandal that led to prison time for a contractor he’d hired. Yee told me he was the only board member to vote against hiring Rojas, but people who were watching the board closely back then say he didn’t always stand up to the superintendent.

He also became what some say was a bit too close with Tim Tronson, a consultant hired by the district as a $1,000-a-day facilities consultant. Tronson wound up getting indicted on 22 counts of grand theft, embezzlement, and conspiracy in a scheme to steal $850,000 from the schools, and was sentenced to four years in state prison.

In 1998, when some school board members wanted to build housing for teachers on property that the district owned in the Sunset, Yee led the opposition — with Tronson’s help. At one meeting at Sunset Elementary School, Yee went so far as to say, according to people present, that “Tim Tronson is my man, and I rely on him for advice.”

Yee acknowledged that he worked closely with Tronson to defeat that housing project. “He was the facilities manager,” Yee explained, “and I said that I trusted his judgment.”

 

Yee has either a great sense of political timing or exceptional luck. He ran for the Board of Supervisors in 1996, facing one of the weakest fields in modern San Francisco history. He was the only Chinese candidate and one of just two Asians (the other, appointed incumbent Michael Yaki, barely squeaked to re-election). In an at at-large election with the top five winning seats, Yee came in third, with 103,000 votes.

He was never a progressive supervisor. In 2000, the Guardian ranked the good votes of what we referred to as Willie Brown’s Board, and Yee scored only 43 percent. He was against campaign finance reform. He supported the brutal gentrification and community displacement represented by the Bryant Square development. He voted to kill a public-power feasibility study and opposed the Municipal Utility District initiative. He opposed a moratorium on uncontrolled live-work development.

In 2002, Yee was one of only three supervisors to oppose Proposition D, a crucial public-power measure that would have broken up PG&E’s monopoly in the city. He stood with PG&E (and then-Sups. Tony Hall and Gavin Newsom) in opposition to the measure, then signed a pro-PG&E ballot argument packed with PG&E lies.

When I asked him about that stand, Yee at first didn’t recall opposing Prop. D, but then said he “stood with labor” on the issue. In fact, the progressive unions didn’t oppose Prop. D at all; the opposition was led by PG&E’s house union, IBEW Local 1245.

Yee was particularly bad on tenant issues. He not only voted to deny city funding for the Eviction Defense Collaborative, which helped low-income tenants fight evictions; he actually tried to get the city to put up money for a free legal fund to help landlords evict their tenants. He opposed a ballot measure limiting condo conversions. He opposed a measure to limit the ability of landlords to pass improvement costs on to their tenants.

In 2001, Yee voted to uphold a Willie Brown veto of legislation to limit tenancies in common, a backdoor way to get around the city’s condo conversion ordinance. Only Hall and Newsom, then the most conservative supervisors on the board, joined Yee. At one point, he started asking whether the city should consider repealing rent control.

He opposed an affordable housing bond in 2002, joining the big landlord groups in arguing that it would raise property taxes. Every tenant group in town supported the measure, Proposition B; every landlord group opposed it.

I asked Yee about his tenant record, and he told me that he now supports rent control. But he said that he was always on the side of homeowners and small landlords, and that property ownership was central to Chinese culture. “I was responding to the Chinese community and the West Side,” he said.

He wasn’t much of an environmentalist, either — at least not in today’s terms. He was one of the only city officials to support a “Critical Car” rally in 1999, aimed at promoting the rights of vehicle drivers (and by implication, criticizing Critical Mass and the bicycle movement).

His record on LGBT issues was mixed. While he supported a counseling program for queer youth when he was on the school board, he also supported JROTC, angering queer leaders who didn’t want a program in the public schools run by, and used as a recruiting tool for, the military, which at that point open discriminated against gay and lesbian people.

 

 

Yee was also one of only two supervisors who voted in 2001 against extending city health benefits to transgender employees.

That was a dramatic moment in local politics. Nine votes were needed to pass the measure, and while eight of the supervisors were in favor, Yee and Hall balked. At one point, Board President Tom Ammiano had to direct the Sheriff’s Office to go roust Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, who was ducking the issue in his office, to provide the crucial ninth vote.

Yee didn’t just vote against the bill. According to one reliable source who was there at the time, Yee spoke to a community meeting out on Ulloa Street in the Sunset and berated his colleagues, quipping that the city should have better things to do than “spend taxpayer money on sex-change operations.”

It was a bit shocking to trans people — Yee had, over the years, befriended some of the most marginalized members of what was already a marginalized community. “There was one person at the rail crying, saying ‘Leland, how could you do this to us,'” Ammiano recalled.

The LGBT community was furious with Yee. “I didn’t speak to him for at least a year,” Gabriel Haaland, one of the city’s most prominent transgender activists, told me.

Yee now says the vote was a mistake — but at the time, he told me, he was under immense pressure. When he voted for the queer youth program, he said, “the elders of the Chinese community ripped me apart. They called my mother’s friends back in the village [where he was born] and said her son was embarrassing the Chinese community.”

That must have been difficult — and he said that “if I had known the pain I had caused, I wouldn’t have voted that way.” But it was hard to miss that pain his vote caused.

On the other hand, people learn from their experiences, attitudes evolve, we all grow up and get smarter, and the way Yee describes it, that’s what happened to him.

In 2006, when he was running for state Senate, Yee met with a group of trans leaders and formally — many now say sincerely — apologized. It was an important gesture that made a lot of his critics feel better about him.

“He didn’t have to do that,” Haaland said. “People change, and he paid for his crime, and that’s genuine enough for me.”

As a former school board member, Yee kept an interest in the schools — but not always a healthy one. At one point, he actually proposed splitting SFUSD into two districts, one on the (poorer) east side of town and one on the (richer) west. “We strongly opposed that,” recalled Margaret Brodkin, who at the time ran Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. “Eventually he dropped the idea.”

For all the problems, in his time on the Board of Supervisors, Yee developed a reputation for independence from the Brown Machine, which utterly dominated much of city politics in the late 1990s. His weak 43 percent rating on the Guardian scorecard was actually third-best among the supervisors, after Ammiano and the late Sue Bierman.

In 1998, he was one of the leaders in a battle to prevent the owners of Sutro Tower from defying the city’s zoning administrator and placing hundreds of new antennas on Sutro Tower. He, Bierman, and Ammiano were the only supervisors opposing Brown’s crackdown on homeless people in Union Square.

When he ran in the first district elections, in 2000, against two opponents who had Brown’s support and big downtown money, the Guardian endorsed him, noting that while he “can’t be counted on to support worthy legislation … He’s one of only two board members who regularly buck the mayor on the big issues.”

(He never liked district elections, and used to take any opportunity to denounce the system, at times forcing Ammiano to use his position as president to tell Yee to quit dissing the electoral process and get to the point of his speech.)

 

In 2002, the westside state Assembly district seat opened up, and both Yee and his former school board colleague Dan Kelly ran in the Democratic primary. Yee won, and went on to win the general election with only token opposition.

His legislative record in the Assembly wasn’t terribly distinguished. Yee never chaired a policy committee — although he did win a leadership post as speaker pro tem. And he cast some surprisingly bad votes.

In 2003, for example, then-Assemblymember Mark Leno introduced a bill that would have exempted single-room occupancy hotels from the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict tenants for no reason. Yee refused to vote for the bill. Leno was furious — he was one vote short of a majority and Yee’s position would have doomed the bill. At the last minute, a conservative Republican who had grown up in an SRO hotel voted in favor.

When he ran for re-election in 2004, we noted: “What’s Leland Yee doing up in Sacramento? We can’t figure it out — and neither, as far as we can tell, can his colleagues or constituents. He’s introduced almost no significant bills — compared, for example, to Assemblymember Mark Leno’s record, Yee’s is an embarrassment. The only high-profile thing he’s done in the past several years is introduce a bill to urge state and local governments to allow feng shui principles in building codes.”

In 2006, Yee decided to move up to the state Senate, and he won handily, beating a weak opponent (San Mateo County Supervisor and former San Francisco cop Mike Nevin) by almost 2-1. His productivity increased significantly in the upper chamber — and in some ways, he moved to the left. He’s begun to support taxes — particularly, an oil severance tax — and when I’ve questioned him, he somewhat grudgingly admits that Prop. 13 deserves review.

He’s done some awful stuff, like trying to sell off the Cow Palace land to private developers. But he has consistently been one of the best voices in the Legislature on open government, and that’s brought him some national attention.

Yee has been a harsh critic of spending practices and secrecy at the University of California, and when UC Stanislaus refused in 2010 to release the documents that would show how much the school was paying Sarah Palin to speak at a fundraiser, Leland flew into action. He not only blasted the university and introduced legislation to force university foundations to abide by sunshine laws; he worked with two Stanislaus students who had found the contract in a dumpster and made headlines all over the country.

He’s fought for student free speech rights and this year pushed a bill mandating that corporations that get tax breaks for job creation prove that they’ve actually created jobs — or pay the tax money back. He’s also won immense plaudits from youth advocates and criminal justice reformers for his bill that would end life-without-parole sentences for offenders under 18.

Along the way, he compiled a 100 percent voting record from the major labor unions, including the California Nurses Association and SEIU, and with the Sierra Club. All three organizations have endorsed him for mayor.

Yee told me that he thinks he’s become more progressive over the years. “My philosophy has shifted,” he said.

Yet when you talk to his colleagues in Sacramento, including Democrats, they aren’t always happy with him. Yee has a tendency to be a bit of a loner — he’s never chaired a policy committee and in some of the most bitter budget fights, he’s refused to go along with the Democratic majority. Yee insists that he’s taken principled stands, declining to vote for budget bills that include deep service cuts. But the reality in Sacramento is that budget bills have until this year required a two-thirds vote, meaning two or three Republicans have had to accept the deal — and losing a Democratic vote has its cost.

“You have to give up all sorts of things, make terrible compromises, to get even two Republicans,” one legislative insider told me. “When a Democrat goes south, you have to find another Republican, and give up even more.”

In other words: It’s easy to take a principled stand, and make a lot of liberal constituencies happy, when you aren’t really trying to make the state budget work.

 

I met Rose Pak on a July afternoon at the Chinatown Hilton. She brought along her own loose tea, in a paper package; the waitress, who clearly knew the drill, took it back to the kitchen to brew. Pak and I have not been on the greatest of terms; she’s called the Guardian all kinds of names, and I’ve had my share of critical things to say about her. But on this day, she was polite and even at times charming.

After we got the niceties out of the way (she told me I was unfair to her, and I told her I didn’t like the way she and Willie Brown played politics), we started talking about Yee. And Pak (unlike some people I interviewed for this story) was happy to speak on the record.

She told me Yee had “no moral character.” She told me she couldn’t trust him. She told me a lot of stories and made a lot of allegations that we both knew neither she nor I could ever prove.

Then we got to talking about the politics of Chinatown and Asians in San Francisco, and a lot of the animosity toward Yee became more clear.

For decades, Chinatown and the institutions and people who live and work there have been the political center of the Chinese community. Nonprofits like the Chinatown Community Development Center have trained several generations of community organizers and leaders. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Six Companies, and other business groups have represented the interests of Chinese merchants. And while the various players don’t always get along, there’s a sense of shared political culture.

“In Chinatown,” Gordon Chin, CCDC’s director, likes to say, “it’s all about personal connections.”

There’s a lively infrastructure of community-service programs, some of which get city money. There’s also a sense that any mayor or supervisor who wants to work with the Chinese community needs to at least touch base with the Chinatown establishment.

Yee doesn’t do that. “He doesn’t give a shit about them,” David Looman, a political consultant who has worked with many Chinese candidates over the years, told me.

Yee’s Asian political base is outside of Chinatown; he told me he sees himself representing more of the Chinese population of the Sunset and Richmond and the growing Asian community in Visitacion Valley and Bayview.

Pak is connected closely to Brown, who Yee often clashed with. For Pak, Brown, and their allies, strong connections to City Hall mean lucrative lobbying deals and public attention to the needs of Chinatown businesses. Then there’s the nonprofit sector.

CCDC and other nonprofits do important, sometimes crucial work, building and maintaining affordable housing, taking care of seniors, fighting for workers rights, and protecting the community safety net. Yee, Pak said, “has never shown any interest in our local nonprofits. We all work together here, and he doesn’t seem to care what we do.” Yee told me he has no desire to see funding cut for any critical social services in any part of town. But he has also made no secret of the fact that he questions the current model of delivering city services through a large network of nonprofits, some of which get millions of taxpayer dollars. And the way Pak sees it, all of that — the nonprofits, the business benefits, the contracts — are all at risk. “If Leland Yee is elected mayor,” she told me, “we are all dead.”

I ran into an old San Francisco political figure the other day, a man who has been around since the 1970s, inside and outside of City Hall, who remains an astute observer of the players and the power relationships in the local scene. At the time we talked, he wasn’t supporting any of the mayoral candidates, but he had a thought for me. “This town,” he said, “is being taken over by a syndicate. Willie Brown is the CEO, and Rose Pak is the COO, and it’s all about money and influence.”

That’s not a pleasant thought — I’ve lived through the era of political machine dominance in this town, and it was awful. In the days when Brown ran San Francisco, politics was a tightly controlled operation; only a small number of people managed to get elected to office without the support of the machine. Developers made land-use policy; gentrification and displacement were rampant; corruption at City Hall turned a lot of San Franciscans off, not only to the political process but to the whole notion that government could be a positive force in society.

A few years ago, I thought those days were over — and to a certain extent, district elections will always make machine politics more difficult. But when I see signs of the syndicate popping up — and I see a candidate like Ed Lee, who’s close friends with Brown, leading the Mayor’s Race — it makes me nervous. And for all his obvious flaws, at least Leland Yee isn’t part of that particular operation. If there’s a better reason to vote for him, I don’t know what it is.

YEE HOME PURCHASE RAISES SUSPICIONS

Rose Pak has a question about Leland Yee. “How,” she asked me, “did the guy manage to buy a million-dollar house on a $30,000 City Hall salary?”

Pak isn’t the only one asking — numerous media reports over the years have examined how Yee raised a family of four and bought a house in the Sunset on very little visible income. And while I’m not usually that interested in the personal finances of political candidates, I decided that it was worth a look.

Here’s what I found: Public records show that in July 1999, Yee and his wife, Maxine, purchased a house on 24th Avenue for $875,000 (it’s now assessed at slightly more than $1 million). At the time, Yee was a San Francisco supervisor, earning a little more than $30,000 a year. (The salary of the supervisors was raised dramatically shortly after Yee left the board and went to the state Assembly.) His wife wasn’t working. And his economic interest statements for that period show no other outside earnings. So the disposable, after-tax income of the entire Yee family couldn’t have been much more than $25,000.

That, by any normal standard, shouldn’t have been enough to float a mortgage that, records show, totaled $516,000. In fact, the interest payments alone on that mortgage alone would total $3,600 a month — more than Yee’s gross income.

Documents in the Assessor’s Office show another paper trail, too. In 1989, Jung H. Lee, Yee’s mother, transferred the deed on a four-unit Dolores St. building where the family had been living to Maxine and Leland Yee — for no money. And a few months before the Yees bought the Sunset house, they took out a $320,000 home-equity loan on that property. That was the down payment on the Sunset property.

Still: At that point, the Yees would have been paying off two mortgages, with a total nut of about $5,000 a month — and supporting four kids, in San Francisco. In 2002, Yee’s economic interest statement’s show some modest income from teaching at Lincoln University — but nowhere near enough to pay that level of expenses.

What happened? Yee explains it this way: “For more than 10 years, we were living rent-free in my parents’ property,” he told me I an interview. “We were a close Chinese family, and my parents provided the food and helped pay for the children’s clothing. So we had almost no expenses and we lived very frugally.”

During that period, Yee was working for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Oakland Unified School District, and a San Jose nonprofit, earning, he said, between $50,000 and $90,000 a year. If he saved almost all of that money, he would have had more than a half-million dollars in the bank when he bought the Sunset house.

There’s nothing on any of his economic disclosure forms showing any ownership of stocks or other reportable financial interests during that period, so he wasn’t investing the money. In fact, he says, it was, and is, all in simple savings accounts. A bit unusual for that large a sum of money.

How did he get a mortgage? “Back then,” he said, “banks were willing to lend a lot more freely than they do today.”

Starting in 2003, Yee was in the state Assembly, making a higher salary — but still not much in excess of $100,000 a year. After taxes, he was probably taking home about $75,000 — and $60,000 was going to the two mortgages.

How did he do it? “We have been supplementing our income with our savings,” he said. “We don’t take vacations, we are very careful with our money.” And they clearly aren’t desperate for cash — Yee’s daughter occupies two of the four units in the Dolores St. building they own, but the other two units are vacant.

It’s possible. It’s plausible. But I don’t blame people for wondering how he managed to pull it off. (Tim Redmond, with research assistance by Oona Robertson) 

 

 

 

BIG CORPORATIONS HAVE BACKED YEE

Yee became a prodigious fundraiser in Sacramento — and a lot of the money came from big corporations that had business in the Legislature. And while he has perfect scores from the Sierra Club and the big labor unions, he’s taken tens of thousands of dollars from some of the biggest corporations, agribusiness interests, and polluters in the state. And at times, he’s voted their way.

Since 1993, for example, campaign finance records show Yee has taken more than $20,000 from Chevron, ExxonMobil, Valero, Conoco Phillips, and BP. He’s received another $22,450 from the chemical industry (and industry employees). Most of it came from Clorox, Dow Chemical, and Dupont.

And while the Sierra Club may not have considered it a priority, Sen. Mark Leno has worked hard to pass a bill limiting chemical fire retardants in furniture. In 2008, Yee voted against Leno’s AB 706.

That year he also refused to support a bill that would prohibit the use of the chemical diacetyl in workplaces. The industries that opposed AB 514 (including Bayer, Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson) have given Yee a total of more than $60,000.

In 2003, Yee voted against a crucial tenant bill, one that would have prevented the owners of single room occupancy hotels from using the Ellis Act to evict tenants. He received a campaign check for $2,500 from the San Francisco Apartment Association the next day. Landlords in general have given Yee close to $40,000.

Then there’s agribusiness. Yee gets a lot of money from the farming industry, despite the fact that there obviously aren’t many farms in his district. Why, for example, would the California Poultry Association, the California Cattlemen’s Association, and the California Farm Bureau give him money? The Poultry Association’s Bill Mattos told us that Yee “has taken a keen interest in California’s poultry industry.”

Yee also took immense flak from the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers over a 2003 vote against a bill to limit emissions from farm vehicles. In an editorial, the paper wrote that he was “doing dirty work for the lobbyists.” In the end, under immense public pressure, he switched positions and voted for the bill. I asked Yee about all that money from all those bad operators, and he told me — as most politicians will — that campaign cash has never influenced any of his votes.

So why do all these groups give him money? “It’s about whether you will sit down and listen,” Yee said. “I will talk to all sides and at least consider the arguments as a thoughtful human being. Then I vote my conscience.” (Tim Redmond, with research by Oona Robertson) 

Getting to the bottom of Anal Sex Month

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Getting to the bottom of Anal Sex Month

Open wide, sweet cheeks: August is for anal. Swap out this weekend’s BBQ plans and invite over a couple extra hands to give your rump the stimulating attention it deserves. Whether you’ve already succumbed to a heavy load of action in the previous weeks or you’re still feeling a bit shy about unlocking the back door, San Francisco’s adult-only retailers have some toys that will have you bending over with joy. 

While it has yet to reach Halmark holiday status, Anal Month does have a long-standing history (as “proved” by these mock-up ads). This celebration of bottom pleasure comes with the slogan, “Give in to haste and remain chaste” and encourages men and women to think outside the box when tempted by prenuptial, promiscuous desires. Today anal is cherished not as an alternative, but as an addition. The best thing about butts? Everybody has one and the all-inclusive play works well with fingers, lips, tounges, and of course, a variety of store-bought options. 

With only one week left, it’s time to get some gear for your rear. Check out these locally-foraged suggestions:

 

good_vibes_anal

“Romeo Silicone Anal Toy” from Good Vibrations

Good Vibrations has full shelves lined with props promising deep rectal pleasure, but if you’re uncertain where to start, take a peek at their online shopping guide before heading into the store or be brave and ask an employee for suggestions. These pretty magenta beads are slim at the top and grow wider down the string, making this toy ideal for testing the waters. When things get good, pull out one bead at a time to intesify your climax. 


amber_swirl

The “Amber Swirl” from Glass Kandi

Web shop Glass Dildo Me, has a wide web selection but head into their physical shop Glass Kandi, to see the gleaming glass beauties for yourself. Not only are they stunning visually, but glass dildos are hypoallergenic, odor free, and non-deteriorating. With a proper cleaning, even the dirtiest of play washes right off. If you like it hard, this toy offers absolute firmness and minimal friction with some super glossy lube. Get it hot, get it cold, this amber-colored gem will hold just what you like. 

mr_s_leather

“World’s Most Comfortable Butt Plug” from Mr. S Leather

Size large either looks intimidating or incredibly inviting– lucky for all, Mr. S Leather carries seven sizes in their signature plug, from mini to XXXL. They’re made of solid aluminum and can be worn for hours on end, fitting snug and hugging close to your prostate (if you have one, of course). Contrary to the way in-and-out of a dildo, butt plugs are meant to stay in place, filling up the anal cavity and adding intensity to an orgasm or an exciting walk around town. 

SF sued for approving AT&T’s sidewalk boxes without an EIR

Sasha Cuttler
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19
SF sued for approving AT&T’s sidewalk boxes without an EIR

A coalition of San Francisco citizens groups today sued the city over the 5-6 vote last month by the Board of Supervisors to allow AT&T to install 726 utility boxes on sidewalks throughout the city without studying the impact and alternatives with an environmental impact report.

The groups include San Francisco Beautiful (filing its first lawsuit against the city in its 64-year history), San Francisco Tomorrow, Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, Potrero Boosters, and the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association. Their appeal of AT&T’s permit was rejected by Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, Malia Cohen, Carmen Chu, David Campos, and Scott Wiener, allowing the project to move forward.

“The city has refused to do what should be a routine environmental review,” Milo Hanke, a past president of San Francisco Beautiful, told us. He said the public should have been allowed to consider alternatives to the “unwanted and unwarranted degradation of the public sidewalks by a greedy corporation.”

While the project will allow AT&T to upgrade its Internet service and other capabilities, many in the technology community told us back in May that there are better options for improving the high-tech infrastructure in the city without the unsightly boxes that will block sidewalks and be magnets for graffiti.

But those groups, and the groups that filed this lawsuit, say they felt ignored by City Hall and AT&T. “We were shut out of the process,” Hanke said. Now, the plaintiffs will go to court to seek an injunction to stop the project as they wait for a ruling on the merits of the case.

Sequel smackdown

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Sequel smackdown

GAMER Though video game sequels abound every season, fall 2011 plays host to an unusual profusion. Three is indisputably the magic number, though five and a pair of un-numbered twos make a strong case. Decide for yourself which game deserves your dollars by delving into the details below.

Shooter wars In terms of sheer seismic impact, it’s hard to match Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which hits store shelves Nov. 8. Successor to Call of Duty: Black Ops — literally the best-selling video game in the history of world — Modern Warfare 3 is the 2011 iteration in a once-yearly parade of market-dominating games released by publishers Activision. Defined, for better or worse, by its frenetic gameplay and rabid fans, Call of Duty‘s vast popularity has resulted in uncanny levels of cultural saturation. It’s the video game of choice for people who only own one video game.

This appeal to the lowest common denominator has been tacitly criticized by the team behind Battlefield 3, another hyper-realistic military shooter from rival publishers Electronic Arts. Released exactly a fortnight earlier than its megalithic competitor (Oct. 24), Battlefield 3 will point to a less puberty-addled player base and the excitement of pilotable vehicles (tanks, helicopters, etc.) as its main selling points.

Though the chivalric code of video game public relations prevents these two giant franchises from really laying into each other, the gaming intelligentsia expects a consumerist cage match come late October. By the time the first-week sales numbers are compared, they’ll be baying for blood.

Open worlds Evaluated superficially, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim seems like a parody of itself. Every gaming stereotype is represented, starting with the portentous title. Screenshots reveal barbarians swathed in fur, casting wary glances at the dragons wheeling overhead.

But despite its conventional high fantasy trappings, Skyrim (Nov. 11) represents the sophisticated, forward-thinking apex of modern RPG design. Its new Creation Engine allows surprising flexibility — the A.I. modifies quests on the fly to test a player’s strengths and weaknesses, and to showcase the content that player might be missing. The aforementioned dragons are given license to roam, appearing randomly to ruin your day at the expense of choreographed, scripted sequences.

Speaking of ruined days, no game will kill you quite as dead as Dark Souls. The follow-up to the cult Japanese import Demon’s Souls will expand on its predecessor’s distinctively punishing gameplay, turning players loose in an ominous open world filled with booby traps and seemingly invincible monsters. It will take unwavering concentration and an iron will to succeed when the game releases Oct. 4.

Gamers who prefer a more modern open world are gearing up for Batman: Arkham City (Oct. 18.), sequel to 2009’s surprise smash Arkham Asylum. Escaping the confines of the comics world’s most recognizable prison, Arkham City will allow the Caped Crusader freedom to explore a wide swath of dystopian Gotham, putting paid to recognizable Batman adversaries like the Penguin, Bane, Two-Face, Catwoman, the Riddler, and the Joker.

Arkham Asylum won players over with its fluid, timing-based combat system, which will return improved, able to pit Batman against 27 heavily-muscled henchmen at once without breaking a technological sweat. Fisticuffs aside, Arkham City will also allow you to swoop down off buildings with only an inky-black cape to break your fall — who wouldn’t want to try that?

Trilogies completed Like Batman, Uncharted protagonist Nathan Drake is no stranger to precipitous heights. The wisecracking Indiana Jones homage returns Nov. 1 in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, rounding out a trilogy of cinematic, visually stunning adventure titles.

Clambering up priceless ancient architecture while dispatching baddies with bullets and bon mots, Drake will take advantage of huge investments in motion capture and hardware optimization that will make Uncharted 3 one of the most realistic looking games ever. You can also expect it to set new benchmarks for video game writing and voice acting — traditional strengths of the series.

Gears of War 3 might not boast the same level of insouciant wit, but its graphical and gameplay bona fides are second to none. Due out Sept. 20, the new game from influential studio Epic Games (famed for their extensively licensed Unreal 3 engine) aims to wrap up the story of hydrant-shaped marine Marcus Fenix, who first growled his way onto consoles in 2006. The plot is conventional stuff — find your missing father; save the world — but Epic’s satisfying cover-based shooting mechanics and popular multiplayer modes will attract customers in droves.

Of wings and thumbs

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Hedgehog has a favorite restaurant in San Francisco. No, it’s not John’s Snack & Deli, but only because you can’t sit down in there, and so it’s hard sometimes to think of it as a restaurant. Hedgehog’s favorite restaurant restaurant is San Tung, the incredible chicken wing place.

We tried to go there during our Avenue Days. We did, we walked through the Golden Gate Park, past the De Young Museum, around that other thing, and then across the Big Rec baseball diamonds diagonally.

We did not step in dog shit. In this way, we were having the time of our lives. In other ways… not so much.

For example: There was an argument, at one point, over which way to turn. I said right. She said left. I said, no, right. She said left. I said it was my city, not hers, and if she wanted to go left she could but I was hungry so I was going right. She said I had no sense of direction, definitely left, blah blah blah, and I just looked at her. “Do you like being wrong?” I said. She laughed.

Meanwhile, it was Wednesday.

The importance of which will be obvious to all fans of San Tung chicken wings and even probably San Tung other things. We were arguing for no reason! For — sadly, maddeningly, ununderstandably, and entirely unreasonably — San Tung is closed on Wednesdays.

Why???!!! Wednesday is a day. Lovers of chicken wings will need chicken wings on Wednesdays too, don’t they know this?! What do they think, that weeks should have an island of winglessness in the middle of them? I don’t think so, and neither does Hedgehog; and yet, if I had a memory, I would have remembered that San Tung was closed on Wednesdays and steered us toward Memphis Minnie’s or some other good-wing-having open-on-Wednesday place.

My sense of direction, unlike my memory, is almost impeccable. I know where the sun rises and sets. I know how to find the North Star. I know where that smell is coming from. And I think I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking, I thought you were in France, Ms. Sense-of-Direction.

Well, yeah, but we’re time traveling. I know how to do that, too. For example, if it’s Wednesday when you read this, never mind San Tung. If you set your mind or heart on dry-fried chicken wings, or even wet ones, you are going to wind up at Perilla Vietnamese restaurant, drowning your sorrow in a big good bowl of rare beef pho. Not that that’s what we got.

We got five-spice chicken (great), garlic noodles (great), and the raw beef appetizer that is normally called I think Bó Tai Chanh, but Perilla calls it beef carpaccio — which just doesn’t do it justice. It doesn’t pack the same lemony, peppery, peanuty, fish saucy punch as Bó Tai Chanh. Nor was Perilla’s as punchy or tender as the dish usually is.

Still, on the strength of the other stuff, I liked Perilla. No, it wasn’t what we had crossed the park for. But. You know. The best-laid plans of chicken farmers and sound editors … and so forth.

Or I should say writers and writers, technically, because as you know time has passed and Things have happened. I thought I was going to come back from France with a new lease on life, if not chicken farming, and the truth is that I did not.

I came back from France with a bum trigger finger and a healthy bum.

It’s not what you think. I simply spent so much time there pushing butter knives through butter that I actually deeply bruised the bone at the tip of my right index finger. It’s the first ever excessive buttering repetitive stress injury in the history of eating, that I know of.

So now almost everything I do kinda hurts, but especiall tpig — if o kw wat I ea.

I’m just kidding, of course. I mean, it hurts to use a knife, but not type. And I am otherwise as healthy as a hearse and happy to be reunited with my favorite language ever.

And my new favorite restaurant:

PERILLA

Daily: 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

836 Irving St., S.F.

(415) 564-9907

No alcohol

AE/D/MC/V

 

Caught in a RAT trap

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Caught in a RAT trap

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Things are not always as they seem. That’s a lesson Matthew Martinez and Thad Conley learned the hard way — each of them after becoming unwitting targets of San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) sting operations that landed them in San Francisco County Jail, bewildered.

It was early October of 2010, and Martinez had just finished his shift as a chef at a San Francisco restaurant and was headed home when he encountered a man who seemed very intoxicated, near Eighth and Mission streets. The man asked him for a cigarette, so Martinez handed him one.

But then the man gestured to his chest, a move Martinez later explained he interpreted as an invitation to take one of the crumpled dollar bills that was spilling out of the disheveled drunk’s pocket, as payment for the cigarette. Martinez testified in court that he took one dollar, but tucked the other bills safely back into the hapless individual’s pocket.

As soon as Martinez had the bill in his hand, he was surrounded. Not only was the man who’d wanted a cigarette not drunk, he was a police officer. One of eight police officers. The undercover officer gave an arrest signal, and seven cops who had quietly been standing ready closed in, placing the 28-year-old chef under arrest.

 

TAKING THE BAIT

The cops had been staked out on the street for a sting operation as part of SFPD’s Robbery Abatement Team (RAT), a controversial unit that has drawn criticism from the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office for targeting some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods for busts, using cash as bait and sometimes snagging people with no prior criminal records.

Some of the same officers engaged in RAT stings have come under investigation for alleged misconduct in connection with a string of incidents at single room occupancy (SRO) hotels, publicized in a series of surveillance videos aired at press conferences earlier this year by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi.

“RAT … is used citywide as an effective tool to prevent robberies of innocent victims,” SFPD spokesperson Albie Esparza told the Guardian. “The Police Department uses this operation to catch people that are preying on the vulnerable. The theory is, you catch these people and get them off the street to prevent more robberies or more serious crimes from occurring, thus providing a safer neighborhood. Over 50 percent of the suspects arrested in RAT operations have a history of robbery or theft and a majority are on parole or probation.”

Esparza confirmed that some of the officers have been pulled from RAT duties. “Some of the officers that participated in the RAT operations are not actively working in that capacity due to the SRO/Henry Hotel investigations,” he said, referring to the alleged misconduct cases.

A couple months before Martinez’s ill-fated encounter with the man who he thought wanted to buy a cigarette, Conley was visiting San Francisco from Cincinnati to see friends and attend the Outside Lands music festival when he noticed something strange. Some women had made a show of leaving a car parked, with the doors open and engine still running, in the bus zone near the McDonald’s at Haight and Stanyan streets.

As they climbed into a cab, they spoke as if they were pulling a stunt to get back at a guy. According to Corey Farris, a public defender who represented Conley, he took it upon himself to move the car to a safe place. He first pulled it into the McDonald’s lot, but after someone informed him it would only get towed if he left it there, Farris says, Conley drove the car to a nearby police station.

The car had been placed there by SFPD and KKI Productions, which produces a television show called Bait Car. The whole thing was taped, and in footage obtained by the Guardian that was shot inside a stakeout vehicle where a cop and television producer were monitoring the scene, they can be heard laughing about sexually explicit comments one of them makes about a woman who walks in front of the camera.

At one point, the unidentified undercover officer wonders out loud who would take the bait, saying, “I was kinda hoping the Latin guy would do it.” Later in the video, when Conley comes into view after being apprehended by uniformed officers outside the police station where he’d parked the car, he’s heard explaining to officers that he moved the car because he didn’t want to see it towed.

“I read the police report,” Farris said. “And the police report doesn’t reference any of my client’s statements whatsoever. He says, ‘I’m taking it to the police station.’ That just seems like a big fact to leave out when you’re charging them for stealing the car.”

 

TELLING IT TO THE JUDGE

That dollar Martinez said he thought was meant as payment for a smoke snowballed into an expensive and time-consuming legal problem. He was held in jail for several days, according to his attorney, Prithika Balakrishnan, a public defender.

When Martinez, who is epileptic, asked to retrieve from his backpack the medication he takes to prevent seizures, his request was denied, Balakrishnan said. Unable to access his meds, he asked if he could sleep on a lower bunk in his jail cell in case he had a seizure, and Balakrishnan says that request was denied, too. The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department had not responded to a request for comment by press time.

Martinez’s trial was held in December 2010 and lasted several days. The officer who had been in plainclothes posing as a drunk denied ever motioning to his chest. At the end of the whole fiasco, it took a jury less than 20 minutes to find Martinez not guilty of grand theft. Disgusted, he left San Francisco soon after.

Conley, meanwhile, flew in from Cincinnati almost a year later for his trial date — only to be told upon arrival that his case had been dismissed.

Their cases were particularly bizarre, but Martinez and Conley aren’t the only ones to be targeted by undercover robbery abatement operations. A similar formula is employed in many cases, according to Deputy Public Defender Bob Dunlap, who heads up the office’s Felony Unit. An average of nine officers are staked out along the street, with a decoy officer posing as an easy target.

“He’ll have money crumpled up into balls in his shirt pocket,” Dunlap explains. “He’ll adopt the persona of someone who’s extremely intoxicated.” When someone tries to swipe the loose bills, the offender is immediately arrested. It’s easy to prove that the suspects are guilty. The offenders will have “marked city funds” in their possession — bills that have been photocopied in advance so serial numbers can be matched for evidence.

According to a tally of cases from the Public Defender’s Office, the average amount of money stolen in a RAT sting is $28, and there have been 118 cases filed with the Public Defender’s Office in connection with these undercover operations since 2007. Around 46 percent of all RAT stings take place in the Tenderloin, and 68 percent of the arrestees are black, according to Public Defender statistics. Officers are sometimes paid overtime while conducting RAT operations, and they earn extra pay for court appearances as well.

Just 35 percent of the cases were charged as misdemeanors, and the rest as felonies, according to the tally. “If it’s charged as a robbery, it counts as a strike offense,” points out Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney of the Public Defender’s Office. He’d like to know whether the program will continue under the direction of newly installed Police Chief Greg Suhr, particularly since some of the officers have been pulled from RAT operations in the wake of the SRO scandal, but SFPD has not made any indications that it will reevaluate the practice.

While the busts may be catching criminals who would be taking advantage of vulnerable residents, Gonzalez and Dunlap question the tactic of manufacturing crime, saying it’s an expensive operation that isn’t the best use of public resources. Dunlap likens it to a fishing expedition with an incredibly shallow reach. “They’re creating a different situation than they’re trying to abate,” he says. “There’s something distasteful about going into the poorest neighborhoods and fishing with money.”

Our Weekly Picks: August 24-30

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 24

MUSIC

Tim Cohen’s Magic Trick

Tim Cohen may just be the hardest working man in rock ‘n’ roll. He pours time and energy into singer-songwriting the Fresh & Onlys, guest musicianing friends’ bands, and masterminding his own side project, Magic Trick. He released a Magic Trick album in February and he recently released another, just half a year later. The LP, The Glad Birth of Love, is a piece of musical achievement: four lengthy rock ballads and guest spots from members of Thee Oh Sees, the Sandwitches, and Citay. It saw a limited release on July 19 (Cohen’s birthday) but was wide-released yesterday, Aug. 23. Tonight, Cohen will be feted with an album release show at the Rickshaw Stop that includes the last show ever for fellow SF rockers Magic Bullets. (Emily Savage)

With Magic Bullets, PreTeen, and Tambo Rays

8 p.m., $8

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(510) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

MUSIC

Vaz

It’s been described as “scum-pop,” “cock rock,” and “creep-rock,” but all you really need to know is this: Vaz is loud as fuck. The hard-hitting Brooklyn trio rose from the ashes of ’90s band Hammerhead in the early aughts and somehow managed to make an even noisier sound in the years that followed. Vaz has also label-jumped in said years, putting out albums, tapes, and splits on Gold Standard Laboratories, Damage Rituals, Narnack, and Load Records, among others. Wherever the band’s outputs land, vocalist-guitarist Paul Erickson continues to wail on post-metal, rapid-paced cuts and drummer Jeff Moordian looks and sounds as though he’s having a convulsive, orgasmic meltdown behind the set (a good thing). (Savage)

With Pygmy Shrews, Unstoppable Death Machine, and Dead

9 p.m., $8.

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

THURSDAY 25

EVENT

“Dinosaur Nightlife”

Though they died out 65 million years ago, Dinosaurs continue to fascinate us, stoking our imaginations, piquing our curiosities, and sometimes even stalking through our nightmares. If you’re yearning to unleash your inner 8-year-old pretend paleontologist and celebrate your love of these “terrible lizards,” then head over to the California Academy of Sciences for tonight’s Dinosaurs! Nightlife event, part of a weekly series of after-hours science-themed parties for the 21 and over portion of visitors. Tonight’s prehistoric party will feature a fossil show and tell, a special planetarium show, live music, drinks, and even a “Dino Burlesque” show. (Sean McCourt)

6-10 p.m., $10–$12

California Academy of Sciences

55 Music Concourse, SF

(415) 379-8000

www.calacademy.org

 

MUSIC

The Soft Moon

The Soft Moon is back! After touring America in support of its debut album, San Francisco’s most promising new band has finally returned. The band plays the coldest cold wave to come out of the bay in . . . forever? Seriously, it’s like 70 degrees outside and I feel like I have to put on a sweater every time I listen to a song. It’s unsettling. Frenchmen with angular haircuts and vows of silence make this kind of music, not Californians. The Soft Moon isn’t just playing at being the most ice cool band in the bay, though. The music is terse and cinematic; sparse vocals and guitar hover delicately above driving rhythm as lights and images dance across the stage completing the performance. Brrr. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

With Craft Spells

9 p.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

MUSIC

Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside

It’s easy to see how Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside has so quickly risen the ranks of the Portland music scene. The band’s breezy blend of rockabilly, jumpy jazz, and 1950s rock ‘n’ roll is contagiously effective, punctuated with walking stand-up bass lines, lively percussion, and just the right amount of rebellious energy. But it’s Ford herself that steals the show and lends the group its most compelling element. Channeling the yelping spirit of 1920s and 1930s-era blues singers such as Bessie Smith and Ida Cox, the wildly unhinged and raw passion in her voice has quickly won the band scores of fans, including the Avett Brothers, which the band accompanied for several shows throughout the West Coast and Colorado in 2009. (Landon Moblad)

With il gato

9 p.m., $12 Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

MUSIC

White Mystery

Goddamn can Alex White sing. On guitar and vocals, Alex is half of Chicago, Ill. brother-sister duo White Mystery. Her brother Francis White, on drums, is the other half of this stripped down rock ‘n’ roll combo. The Bikini Kill comparisons are perhaps inescapable thanks to her powerful pipes and punchy riffs, but White Mystery is a different beast, one with two full heads of red hair that fly back and forth with each drum strike. The songs are simple and energetic: even as a two-piece, White Mystery sounds full with attitude that demands your attention. “I have an idea,” says Alex at the beginning of its song “Party:” “let’s have a party!” Yes, let’s. (Berkmoyer)

With Burnt Ones

9 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

FRIDAY 26

FILM

Edgar Wright

Gaining American mainstream exposure with 2004’s zombie smash hit Shaun Of The Dead, continuing with the 2007 action farce Hot Fuzz, and most recently with last year’s comic adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, writer and director Edgar Wright has brought us some of the most darkly hilarious and entertaining movies in recent memory. The British filmmaker visits the Castro Theatre tonight for a special “Midnights For Maniacs” event that will feature screenings of all three previously mentioned films, an assortment of shorts including the Grindhouse faux trailer Don’t, plus a live onstage interview in conversation with host Jesse Hawthorne Ficks. (McCourt)

7 p.m., $15

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF.

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

 

MUSIC

Traditional Fools

Snotty, sloppy and drunken, the Traditional Fools is everything garage rock should be. Notes crash into each other and vocals are kind of slurred over the consequent blur of fuzz, but something holds it all together for a few minutes until one song ends and another starts. “1-2-3-4!” It’s a party in three pieces: Andrew, David, and Ty (of eponymous Ty Segall fame) are heir to the Mummies’ budget rock sound with a twist of their own. If John Waters ever made a skate video (don’t ask me, I don’t know why he would, but if he did) the Traditional Fools would play in every scene. Does that make any sense? I’m not sure it does. (Berkmoyer)

With Outdoorsmen, Uzi Rash, and Shrouds

9 p.m., $10

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com


SATURDAY 27

MUSIC

J-Pop Summit Festival

Any day of the year you can stop by New People — that glowing white box/contemporary mall in the heart of Japantown — for a brief, colorful dose of j-pop. But if you really want to do it right, and get maximum exposure to the current pop culture trends of Japan, the yearly J-Pop Summit Festival is your best bet. The festival, which is hosted by New People this year, takes place on Post Street from Webster to Laguna, encompassing both the mall and the Peace Plaza of Japantown. There will be live music by Danceroid, Layla Lane, K-ON!, SpacEKrafT, the Patsychords, and teen duo the Bayonettes (which formed at the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp) along with DJs spinning modern j-pop. The fest also includes film screenings and avant-garde Elegant Gothic Lolita-style fashion by h. Naoto, so you can dress the part as well. (Savage)

Through Sun/28

11 a.m.-6 p.m., free

New People

1746 Post, SF

(415) 525-8630

www.newpeopleworld.com

 

FILM

“Showgirls: The Peaches Christ Experience”

It’s hard to believe anyone (ahem, director Paul Verhoeven and writer Joe Eszterhas) thought for two seconds that 1995’s Showgirls would be received as anything other than extreme high camp to the zillionth power. Faster than you can say “I like your nails,” however, Showgirls’ true destiny — as audience participation classic — was embraced, and one of its fiercest champions has been our very own Peaches Christ. Surely San Francisco’s hunger for the on-screen antics of Nomi Malone and Peaches’ accompanying hijinks (including a “Volcanic Goddess” pre-show and an army of 100 lap dancers) can barely be contained by any four walls, but among all possible venues, the Castro Theatre seems equipped for the challenge. Thrust it! (Cheryl Eddy)

8 p.m., $25–$45

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.peacheschrist.com

 

SUNDAY 28

MUSIC

Sway Machinery

For those not of the Jewish faith, cantorial music is basically synagogue tunage. If Brooklyn-based, edged-out cantorial-meets-blues music isn’t your thing, try it tangled up with West African drumming and Malian vocals. At some point, Sway Machinery will get your attention. The band went to Mali, recorded two full albums with musicians there including local superstar Khaira Arby, then tread a bumpy road back to the States. Dynamic singer-songwriter-guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood often leads the Sway Machinery in Hebrew, though on the group’s most recent, inextricably Mali-influenced records, he takes two steps away from the traditional, and experiments with different vocal stylings. It’s true that the bloggers have made it clear they’re sick of indie-afro-pop, but this is an exception to that rule, it’s an old-world away from appropriation. (Savage)

8 p.m., $12

Beatbox

314 11th St., SF

www.beatboxsf.com

 

TUESDAY 30

MUSIC

Butthole Surfers

Boasting one of the most infamous monikers in music history and a harried reputation for wild antics that more than matched, the Butthole Surfers have been attacking stages and ear drums for the past 30 years. Still led by the core trio of Gibby Haynes, Paul Leary, and King Koffey, the band may have flirted with some mainstream success back in the 90s with tunes such as “Who Was In My Room Last Night?” and “Pepper,” but they still continue to mix a crazy concoction of underground punk, psychedelic rock, and noise that may confound the casual listener, while the hardcore fans go rabid at its shows. (McCourt)

With 400 Blows.

8 p.m., $30

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com 

 

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Hetch Hetchy: Two visions

Andrew Lam
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Editors note: We received two interesting commentaries on our Hetch Hetchy cover story (“Damn the Dam,” 8/10/2011). They appear below, offering very different perspectives on the issue.


OPINION Thank you for writing about our campaign to restore Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley and return it to the American public. We do not, however, propose “to remove SF’s main water and power source.” Most of San Francisco’s water comes from the Tuolumne River and will continue to do so; SF will simply store it elsewhere. As for power, removal of the O’Shaughnessy Dam will not reduce the power delivered to the city, but will mean less power sold to agribusiness in the Central Valley.

You erred in your conclusion about the impact of the restoration on the city’s Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program; large hydropower is not considered “renewable” by state standards, so Hetch Hetchy power cannot be included in CCA’s stated goal of 51% renewable energy by 2017.

And please don’t buy in to the notion that America can no longer afford big ideas. The restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley will be the most significant environmental restoration project in human history. It will strengthen not only the fragile Yosemite ecosystem but also the field of restoration science. It will inspire restoration efforts worldwide.

Mike Marshall is the executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy

 

Rebecca Bowe’s recent article regarding efforts by the Restore Hetch Hetchy organization to tear down Hetch Hetchy Reservoir provides a fairly balanced telling of the two sides of the story. However, some key facts were omitted.

First, the case for tearing down Hetch Hetchy is largely based upon a paper written by a masters student at UC Davis in 2003 (see “Re-assembling Hetch Hetchy: Water Supply Implications of Removing O’Shaughnessy Dam”, by Sarah E. Null, December 2003). In her paper, Null bases the feasibility of tearing down Hetch Hetchy on the availability of replacement storage in New Don Pedro Reservoir, which is owned and operated by the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts. Null’s premise is that if San Francisco were to lose Hetch Hetchy it could use storage space in the New Don Pedro reservoir.

This is not possible, as San Francisco has no ownership interest in NDP. Rather, it has the right to pre-deposit water it owes to the districts due to the districts’ senior water rights. Then when the city needs water, it withholds the water upstream at Hetch Hetchy and the districts debit the city’s account in NDP.

The districts have made it clear they do not intend to let the city take over part of their reservoir.

A second key fact is that if the city does not use Hetch Hetchy — and since it can’t use NDP — its water rights will be of little use. While state water rights laws are complex and esoteric, seniority is the general rule. The city’s water rights are junior to those of the districts. If San Francisco can’t exercise its water rights through the Hetch Hetchy system, it would have to take its water from the Delta. The result would be a substantial loss of water and water quality to San Francisco.

As to the loss of hydropower, the article correctly records the permanent loss of 400 megawatts of clean hydropower. The result would be a major new customer for Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

Tom Berliner is a former deputy city attorney who helped negotiate the city’s water and power contracts with the Turlock and Modesto Irrigation Districts.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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THEATER

OPENING

Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055. $25-100. Opens Thurs/25, 8pm. Runs Thurs, 8pm; Sat-Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 18. Geoff Hoyle returns to the Marsh with his acclaimed solo show.

BAY AREA

The Merry Wives of Windsor Old Mill Park, 375 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; www.curtaintheatre.org. Free. Opens Sat/27, 2pm. Runs Sat-Sun and Sept 5, 2pm. Through Sept 18. Curtain Theatre performs Shakespeare’s Falstaff-centric comedy.

Of Dice and Men La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Previews Thurs/25-Fri/26, 8pm. Opens Sat/27, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. Impact Theatre performs Cameron McNary’s comedy about a group of adult Dungeons and Dragons players.

Sense and Sensibility Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Previews Wed/24-Fri/26, 8pm. Opens Sat/27, 8pm. Runs Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 18. TheatreWorks performs Roger Parsley and Andy Graham’s adaptation of the Jane Austen novel.

The Tempest Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company presents Shakespeare’s romance with a steampunk twist.

ONGOING

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Oct 20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through Sept 17. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

The Book of Liz Custom Made Theatre, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thurs/25-Sat/27, 8pm; Sun/28, 7pm. Custom Made Theatre performs David and Amy Sedaris’ comedy about an unconventional nun.

Exit, Pursued By a Bear Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Wed-Sat (Wed/24-Sat/27 and Sept 7-17), 8pm. Through Sept 17. Crowded Fire performs Lauren Gunderson’s new play, a feminist revenge comedy.

Gilligan’s Island: Live On Stage! 2011 Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-20. Sat/27-Sun/28, 8pm. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts presents this updated, ribald take on TV’s classic castaways.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream This week: Dolores Park, 19th St at Dolores, SF; www.womanswill.org. Free (donations requested). Sat/27-Sun/28, 2pm. Woman’s Will performs the Shakespeare favorite.

The Nature Line Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, SF; www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. $17-20. Thurs/25-Sat/27, 8pm. With The Nature Line, Sleepwalkers Theatre concludes playwright J.C. Lee’s ambitious apocalypse trilogy, “This World and After.” Now well into the post-apocalyptic age, Aya (Charisse Loriaux) buries her miscarriages in the hardscrabble earth, tended by a blind one-breasted s/he named T (Amy Prosser) who plants a would-be garden and collects tattered love letters from a past when people could still physically — and emotionally — touch one another. All that’s been banished now, Aya’s friend Arty (Ariane Owens) tells us, along with the onetime plague of “sadness.” The few humans remaining huddle in the antiseptic arms of a corporate entity represented by a bossy nurse (Janna Kefalas) and her spacey assistant (Lissa Keigwin), who manage an artificial insemination clinic fueled by a stable of four comic-book–reared studs, or “dudes” in the argot of the future (a sensitive crooner smitten with Aya, played by Joshua Schell, and a boisterously adolescent fantastic three played by the roundly hilarious Roy Landaverde, Jeff Moran, and Jomar Tagatac). If Lee’s title suggests “line” as both lineage and division, the play recovers a timeless order by challenging the artificial lines between persons; people and “nature”; past, present, and future; or dream and reality. Director Mina Morita’s staging is fleet and at times poetic, while she gets generally solid performances from her cast (the more comical parts working best). Imaginative, just a little risqué, and reminiscent in its heightened vernacular, low humor, and romantic optimism of word-struck apocalypto-dramas like Liz Duffy Adams’ Dog Act, Nature is a well-constructed narrative with a theme and dialogue that can feel alternately eloquent and heavy-handed. (Avila)

Peaches en Regalia Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. $12-24. Thurs/25-Sat/27, 8pm. The new comedy by Bay Area playwright Steve Lyons borrows its title from a Frank Zappa instrumental and stamps it on the menu of a local diner (tangibly evoked in Wes Cayabyab and Quinn J. Whitaker’s spiffy set design), where new employee and recent college graduate Peaches (an endearingly offbeat Sarah Moser) revels in her impulse decision to leave a job at an investment bank to work at a place with such an auspicious side dish. We meet Peaches, as well as best friend Joanne (Nicole Hammersla), nebbish customer Norman (Philip Goleman), and confident guy’s guy Syd (Cooper Carlson), through a set of discrete monologues, each illustrated with mute help from the other characters. Philosophies of life and hidden desires are all on display but the plot is a prix fixe menu of romance, marriage, and parenthood as deliberate encounters lead to unexpected matches. Sharp performances crisply directed by Sara Staley add zest to otherwise average comic fare, but the writing has several inspired flights of zaniness too. Questionable whether the second act’s course is warranted, however, since it’s plot to pull into parenthood a reluctant Norman — for whom the pace of events collapses nine months and more into a dizzying time warp — is a bit too I Love Lucy to concentrate on without itching to change the channel. (Avila)

Tigers Be Still SF Playhouse, 522 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 10. SF Playhouse performs Kim Rosenstock’s quirky comedy.

True West NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.truewestsf.com. $10-28. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Expression Productions presents Sam Shepard’s tale of two brothers.

Waiting for Giovanni Decker Theater, New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-36. Previews Wed/24-Fri/26, 8pm. Opens Sat/27, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 18. This world-premiere play by Jewelle Gomez in collaboration with Harry Waters Jr. imagines a split-second of indecision in the mind of author James Baldwin.

BAY AREA

Candida Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theatre Way, Orinda; www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sept 3, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through Sept 4. Cal Shakes artistic director helms this taken on George Bernard Shaw’s classic about a housewife torn between her husband and a new suitor.

The Complete History of America (abridged) Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Adam Lon, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor’s three-person romp through American history.

Madhouse Rhythm Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs/25, 7:30pm. Joshua Walters performs his hip-hop-infused autobiographical show about his experiences with bipolar disorder.

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 5pm (also Sept 8 and 22, 7:30pm). Through Sept 24. This is it: the final extension of Brian Copeland’s solo show about growing up in (nearly) all-white San Leandro.

Reduction in Force Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Thurs/25-Sat/27, 8pm (also Sat/27, 5pm); Sun/28, 5pm. Central Works performs “an economic comedy about back-stabbing, ass-kissing, and survival of the sneakiest.”

The Road to Hades John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds). Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 11. Shotgun Players presents a new comedy written by and starring veteran comedian and clown Jeff Raz.

Seven Guitars Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs/25, 1pm; Sept 3, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 4. Marin Theatre Company performs August Wilson’s 1940s-set entry into his series of plays about the African-American experience.

Strange Travel Suggestions Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri/26, 8pm; Sat/27, 5pm. Jeff Greenwald returns with a new version of his hit show of improvised monologues about travel.

Toke Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sept 11. Swirl Media presents Deedee Kirkwood’s pot-fueled comedy.

2012: The Musical! This week: Veterans’ Memorial Park, Main at Third St, Napa; www.sfmt.org. Free. Wed/24, 7pm. Also Thurs/25, 7pm, Montclair Ball Field, 6300 Moraga, Montclair; Sat/27-Sun/28, 3pm, San Lorenzo Park, Dakota at Ocean, Santa Cruz. Continues through Sept 25 at various Bay Area venues. San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts their annual summer musical; this year’s show is about a political theater company torn between selling out and staying true to its anti-corporate roots.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Crazy Ain’t Nothing But Love Misspelled” Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun, 7pm. $12. Presented by Solo Sundays, this evening includes performances by Maria Affinito, David Caggiano, and Vanessa Alabarces.

Gray Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thurs, 8pm. $10. The Oakland-based solo performer presents excerpts from Burst and the work-in-progress Self-ish.

“Hubba Hubba Revue Summer Camp” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.hubbahubbarevue.com. Fri, 10:15pm. $15. The burlesque and variety revue returns with a summer camp there.

“Rustling Silk” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri-Sat, 8pm. $15-20. This Avy K Productions project is inspired by the world of ancient nomadic horsemen, with music, dance, video, and live painting. 

 

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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OPENING

Brighton Rock Writer Rowan Joffe (2010’s The American) moves into the director’s chair for this Graham Greene adaptation, previously filmed in 1947 with an early-career star turn by Richard Attenborough. Joffe’s version updates Greene’s 1938 story to 1964, allowing the brutal actions of small-time hood Pinkie Brown to unfold as Britain’s mods vs. rockers youth riots boil in the background. Don’t get too excited, though — despite a cool premise and even cooler setting, and the presence of veterans Helen Mirren and John Hurt in supporting roles, Brighton Rock rages without a rudder. Pinkie is played by Sam Riley (so good as Ian Curtis in 2007’s Control), who snarls like a sociopathic James Dean and is so transparently hateful it’s hard to root for anything other than his hastened demise. Brighton Rock‘s most memorable element is probably Andrea Riseborough, an on-the-verge young Brit who’s being touted as the next Carey Mulligan. She has the thankless yet showy role of Rose, a naïve waitress who becomes entangled in Pinkie’s web after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A far-from-storybook ending awaits, and you’ll experience little enjoyment watching the characters claw their way there. (1:51) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark If you’re expecting a traditional haunted house story, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark might be a disappointment. The film, which was co-written by Guillermo del Toro, has a lot in common with his Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) — both movies are more dark fairy tale than horror. They follow a young girl who discovers a mystical world around her, much to the disbelief of the adults around her. It’s worth noting that Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is lighter fare: despite all the peril involved, it’s actually pretty fun. Young Bailee Madison, who made such an impression in 2009’s Brothers, is a charming lead, precocious but believable. And Katie Holmes is surprisingly sympathetic in her role as the caring stepmother, a nice switch from the standard fairy tale trope. As with Fright Night, the ad campaign for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is misleading, so here’s hoping audience members looking for a gory slasher will appreciate a whimsical fable instead. (1:40) California. (Peitzman)

*The Hedgehog You needn’t possess the rough, everyday refinement of the characters of The Hedgehog to appreciate this debut feature by director-screenwriter Mona Achache — just an appreciation for a delicate touch and a tender heart. Eleven-year-old Paloma (the wonderful Garance Le Guillermic) is too smart for her own good, bored, neglected by her parents, and left to fend for herself with only her considerable imagination and a camcorder. She drifts around her fishbowl of privilege, a deluxe art nouveau-style apartment building in Paris, leveling her all-too-wise gaze on its denizens and plotting certain suicide on her 12th birthday — that is until a new resident appears in her viewfinder: a kindly Japanese gentleman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He has as much of a connoisseur’s eye as Paloma — the proof is in his unlikely focus of attention, the building’s concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko, resembling a burly Gertrude Stein), who hides her cultured and bookish inclinations behind a gruff, drab exterior. They recognize in each other a reverence for an almost monkish life of the mind, the austere elegance of wabi-sabi, and the transient beauty of rough-hewn imperfection, even in the sleek, well-heeled heart of the City of Light. To the credit of Achache, working with Muriel Barbery’s novel, these unlikely fragile friendships between outsiders take hold in a way that sidesteps preciousness and stays with you long after its pages have turned. (1:40) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Motherland When Raffi Tang (Francoise Yip) learns of her estranged mother’s death, the prodigal-daughter returns to her hometown, San Francisco, only to discover that nothing is as first supposed. Forced to contend with the protracted legal battle between her late mother and re-married father (Kenneth Tsang) as well as an incompetent (and poorly acted) police detective (Jason Payne), Tang drifts, looking distracted, lost, and maybe vaguely concerned throughout the first two thirds of the film. Yip does little to enliven a flat script rife with stock phrases and worn cinematic conventions, and while her emotional distance seems genuine, it’s boring nonetheless. Motherland is, to its credit, an angry movie — director Doris Yeung drew on her own experience with the murder of her mother — but the rage fizzles when it finally does erupt, smothered by uninspired acting and a directionless screenplay. (1:33) Four Star. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

Our Idiot Brother Paul Rudd is the ne’er-do-well sibling to Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks, and Zooey Deschanel. (1:36) Presidio.

*Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure Once upon a time (1987 to be exact), two young men moved to San Francisco from the Midwest. Eddie Lee “Sausage” and Mitchell “Mitch D” Deprey wound up living in a somewhat derelict apartment in the Lower Haight. The paint was peeling and the walls were thin, but the rent was cheap. What Eddie and Mitch didn’t count on was having Peter J. Haskett and Raymond Huffman as their neighbors. “You blind cocksucker. You wanna fuck with me? You try to touch me and I will kill you in a fucking minute.” “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up little man!” The insults, tantrum throwing, and threats of violence coming from next door were constant. Eddie and Mitch started to lose sleep; after one failed attempt at complaining to Raymond’s face (he threatened death), they started tape-recording the endless geyser of vitriol — first, as possible future evidence, but also out of a growing voyeuristic fascination with these two seniors who had to be the world’s oddest and angriest odd couple. The rest is history. Mitch and Eddie started including snippets of Peter and Ray’s bickering on mix tapes for friends. Somehow, the editor of the now-defunct SF noise music zine Bananafish heard a snippet and approached Mitch and Eddie about distributing compilations of the recordings to a large network of found sound fans. Gradually “Peter and Raymond” became known and much-beloved characters. Their warped repartee inspired several theatrical adaptations, short animated films, pages of comic book panels by artists such as Dan Clowes, and even a one-off single from Devo side project the Wipeouters. Matthew Bate’s documentary Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure is much an attempt to comprehensively recount the above long, strange trip from start to finish; it is also the newest chapter in the now 20-year saga of Peter, Raymond, Mitch, and Eddie. (1:30) Roxie. (Sussman)

*!Women Art Revolution Bay Area artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s vibrant look back at the first waves of feminist art in the ’60s and ’70s is an extremely necessary and impassioned recounting of a history that perpetually seems to be on the edge of erasure. Mixing old and new interviews with artists, critics, and scholars — many of which are from Hershman Leeson’s own personal archive — !W.A.R. lets those who stood at the frontlines of one the most significant movements in contemporary art tell their own stories. Seeing and hearing the testimonies of the likes of Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, B. Ruby Rich, Judy Chicago, Carolee Scheeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and Ingrid Sischy, one after another, is dazzling — like being in the presence of an Olympian summit — even as their overlapping tales of pushback, casual misogyny and outright ridicule from critics, the art establishment, and in some cases, their colleagues, paint a damning picture of just how endemic sexism was, and as the need for a film such as !WAR attests to, in many ways still is. (1:23) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Sussman)

ONGOING

*The Arbor An audaciously conceived and genuinely haunting chronicle of a family, The Arbor reinvents two of the most debased forms of nonfiction film: the venerating portrait of an artist who died young and the voyeuristic confession of abuse. The locus here is the short, bottle-strewn life of Andrea Dunbar, a brilliant playwright whose work distilled the manners and speech of the West Yorkshire housing projects. The Arbor effectively stages some of this work in a park near the same apartments, but the project’s focus is Dunbar’s shambling private life and its devastating effect on friends, lovers, and daughters. Our emotions are strained by their collective fury and grief, but never cheated. Curiously, Clio Barnard accomplishes this by being up front in her manipulations. After collecting interviews with the key players, she cast actors to lip sync the answers — that is, the voices are documentary while the images are staged, an uncanny effect that becomes even more so when Barnard stitches together responses to narrate a single event. The technique is eerie and literally disembodying. In the same way that one affected by trauma may experience a separation from his or her self, so the image of the actor speaking comes unglued from the “real” voice — and so too is there a crucial hesitation in our assigning authenticity to a single, undivided subject. There are shades of Greek tragedy in The Arbor‘s patient, distanced unfolding of its characters’ fates. The speakers are imagined as a chorus, and though the drama is offscreen, long since buried, the pain still lives. (1:34) Roxie. (Goldberg)

*Beginners There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Mélanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. (1:44) Four Star, Lumiere. (Peitzman)

*Bellflower Picture Two Lane Blacktop (1971) drifters armed with “dude”-centric vocabulary and an obsession with The Road Warrior (1981) and its apocalypse-wow survivalist chic. There are so many pleasures in this janky, so-very-DIY, heavy-on-the-sunblasted-atmosphere indie that you’re almost willing to overlook the clichés, the dead zones, and the annoying characters. Seeming every-dudes Woodrow (director-writer-producer Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are far too obsessed with tricking out their cars and building a flamethrower for their own good — the misfits must force themselves out of the metal shop of the mind to meet women. So when Woodrow goes up against Milly (Jessie Wiseman) in a cricket-eating contest at a bar, it’s love at first bite. Their meet-gross morphs into a road trip and eventually a relationship, while the flamethrower nags, unexplained, in the background, like an unfired gun — or an unconsummated, not-funny bromance. These manifestations of male fantasy — muscle cars, weapons, and tough chicks — are cast in a dreamy, saturated, and burnt-at-the-edges light, as Glodell and company weave together barely articulated reveries and bad-new-west imagery with a kind of fuck-all intelligence, culminating in a finale that will either haunt you with its scattershot machismo-romanticism or leave you scratching your noggin wondering what just happened. (1:46) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Buck This documentary paints a portrait of horse trainer Buck Brannaman as a sort of modern-day sage, a sentimental cowboy who helps “horses with people problems.” Brannaman has transcended a background of hardship and abuse to become a happy family man who makes a difference for horses and their owners all over the country with his unconventional, humane colt-starting clinics. Though he doesn’t actually whisper to horses, he served as an advisor and inspiration for Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998). Director Cindy Meehl focuses generously on her saintly subject’s bits of wisdom in and out of a horse-training setting — e.g. “Everything you do with a horse is a dance” — as well as heartfelt commentary from friends and colleagues. In the harrowing final act of the film, Brannaman deals with a particularly unruly horse and his troubled owner, highlighting the dire and disturbing consequences of improper horse rearing. (1:28) Opera Plaza. (Sam Stander)

Captain America: The First Avenger OK, Marvel. I could get behind 2008’s Iron Man (last year’s Iron Man 2, not so much), but after Thor and now Captain America, I’m starting to get cynical about this multi-year build-up to the full-on Avengers movie, due in May 2012. Can even a superhero-stuffed movie directed by Joss Whedon live up to all this hype? There’s plenty of time to ponder, and maybe worry a little, with Captain America’s backstory-explaining picture now in theaters. Chris Evans stars as the 90-pound weakling who morphs into a supersoldier, thanks to the World War II-era tinkerings of a scientist (Stanley Tucci) and an inventor (Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man’s dad). The original plan for the musclebound shield-bearer (fighting Nazis, natch) gets waylaid a bit when the newly famous Captain America becomes a PR prop for the U.S. government; it’s abandoned entirely when a worse-than-Hitler foe, in the guise of power-obsessed Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), threatens the world. Directed by Spielberg cohort Joe Johnston, Captain America is gee-whiz enjoyable enough, but it’s very nearly the same movie as Thor, which no amount of Tommy Lee Jones (as a sarcastic army colonel) wisecracks can conceal. And here’s an anti-spoiler: there’s no post-credits surprise in this one, so you can bolt as soon as they start to roll. (2:09) SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Conan the Barbarian Neither 3D (unnecessary) nor Jason Momoa (beefcake-y) are enough to make this Conan the Barbarian competition for the 1982 Schwarzenegger classic. This new take is a barely adequate adventure movie helped along by Rose McGowan’s leering turn as an evil witch with Freddy Krueger claws. Would that everyone involved (including frequent remake director Marcus Nispel) had McGowan’s razor-sharp grasp of tone; as a whole, the film is never quite sure if it’s a camp-tastic voyage (the prologue, containing Conan’s birth and much Ron Perlman nostril-flaring, suggests what might have been) or a semi-straightforward fantasy actioner. A totally forgettable female lead (Rachel Nichols), a he-was-scarier-in-Avatar villain (Stephen Lang), a blah mixture of two tired plots (revenge + “chosen one”) — there’s just not a lot here, aside from a few hilarious lines of dialogue and Momoa’s muscles. He was so great in Game of Thrones, though, I suspect this dud won’t keep his career from skyrocketing. (1:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Cowboys and Aliens Here ’tis in a nutshell: the movie’s called Cowboys and Aliens — and that’s exactly, entirely what you’ll get. Director Jon Favreau may never best 2008’s Iron Man (actor Jon Favreau will prob never top 1996’s Swingers, but that’s a debate for another time), but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a good time trying. Cowboys is a genre mash-up in the most literal sense; as the title suggests, it pits Wild West gunslingers (Harrison Ford as a crabby cattleman, Daniel Craig as an amnesiac outlaw) against gold-seeking space invaders who also delight in kidnapping and torturing humans. As stupidly entertaining as it is, this is a textbook example of a pretty OK movie that could have been so much better … if only. If only the alien characters had a little bit more District 9-style personality. If only the story had a shred of suspense — look ye not here for “spooky” and “mysterious;” this shit is 100 percent full-on explosions. If only Craig’s comically fine-tooled physique didn’t outshine his wooden acting. And so forth. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Devil’s Double Say hello to my little friend, again— and rest assured, it’s not a dream and you’re seeing double. New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori gets back to his potboiler roots with this campy, claustrophobic look back at the House of Saddam Hussein, based on a true story and designed to win over fans of Scarface (1983) with its portrait of mad excess and deca-dancey ’80s-ish soundtrack. The craziest poseur of all is Hussein’s son Uday (Dominic Cooper), a petty dictator-in-the-making — and, according to this film, a full-fledged murderous pedophile — who chomps cigars and wraps his jaws around schoolgirls while Cooper happily chews scenery. Uday needs a double to sidestep all those troublesome assassination attempts, so he enlists look-alike childhood friend Latif (also Cooper) to get the surgery, pop in the overbite, bray like a madman, make appearances in his stead, and function as a kind of pet human. Never mind Ludivine Sagnier, glassy-eyed and absurd in the role of Uday’s favorite sex kitten Sarrab — Double is completely Cooper’s, who seizes the moment, investing the morally upstanding Latif with a serious sincerity with just his eyes and body language and infusing evil odd job Uday with a dangerous, comic-book unpredictability. To his credit, Cooper imbues such cult-ready, blow-the-doors-off lines as “I love cunt! I love cunt more than god!” with, erm, believability, even as the denouement rings somewhat false. (1:48) Empire. (Chun)

*Final Destination 5 The thing about my undying love for the Final Destination series is that it’s completely legitimate and 100 percent sincere. You know exactly what you’re getting with each new movie, and these films never try to tell you otherwise. Yes, everyone will die. Yes, the deaths will be creative and disgusting. Yes, the quality of acting will be sacrificed for some of the more expensive splatter effects. For those of us who understand what the series is all about, Final Destination 5 is a triumph. It’s gory, wickedly funny, and a notable improvement on previous sequels. Not to mention the fact that Tony “Candyman” Todd gets a beefed-up role. For once, the 3D is actually a big help, with some of the best in-your-face effects I’ve seen. As for non-fans, I can’t say Final Destination 5 has much to offer. You have to embrace the absurdity and the mission statement before you can fully appreciate death by laser eye surgery. (1:32) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

Fright Night Don’t let the spooky trailer fool you: the Fright Night remake is almost as silly as the original. In fact, it follows the 1985 film closely, as young Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) comes to realize that his neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire. The biggest change is a smart one — this Fright Night transforms late-night TV host Peter Vincent into Criss Angel-type illusionist Peter Vincent (David Tennant). The casting is spot on all-around, and frankly, Farrell is a lot more believable than Chris Sarandon as the seductive bad boy. The only real problem with the new Fright Night — other than the unnecessary 3D — is that it never fully commits to camp the way the original did. There’s a bit too much back-and-forth between serious scares and goofy blood splatters. Luckily, it’s still an entertaining remake that doesn’t crap all over a classic. It’s also a great reminder that vampires don’t have to be moody — remember, they used to be fun. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Peitzman)

*The Future Dreams and drawings, cats and fantasies, ambition and aimlessness, and the mild-mannered yet mortifying games people play, all wind their way into Miranda July’s The Future. The future’s a scary place, as many of us fully realize, even if you hide from it well into your 30s, losing yourself in the everyday. But you can’t duck July’s collection of moments, objects, and small gestures transformed into something strangely slanted and enchanted, both weird and terrifying, when viewed through July’s looking glass. Care and commitment — to oneself and others — are two vivid threads running through The Future. Cute couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) — unsettling look-alikes with their curly crops — appear at first to be sailing contently, aimlessly toward an undemanding unknown: Jason works from home as a customer-service operator, and Sophie attempts to herd kiddies as a children’s dance instructor. But enormous, frightening demands beckon — namely the oncoming adoption of a special-needs feline named Paw-Paw (voiced by July as if it’s a traumatized, innocent child). Lickety-splitsville, they must be all they can be before Paw-Paw’s arrival. The weirdness of the familiar, and the kindness of strangers, become ways into fantasy and escape when the couple bumps up against the limits of their imagination. This ultra-low-key horror movie of the banal is obviously remote territory for July (2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know). The Future is her best film to date and finds her tumbling into a kind of magical realism or plastic fantastic, embodied by a talking cat that becomes the conscience of the movie. (1:31) California, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Glee: The 3D Concert Movie (1:30) 1000 Van Ness.

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Gun Hill Road Though the visibility of gays and lesbians in cinema remains (largely) confined to independent film, Rashaad Ernesto Green, in his debut feature Gun Hill Road, uses the creative freedom afforded by that closeting to explore issues of race and confused sexuality amid the Latino population of the Bronx. Esai Morales is Enrique, a former drug dealer returning from prison to his wife Angela (Judy Reyes) and teenage son Michael (Harmony Santana). But everyone seems to have moved on with their lives. Angela is having an affair, and Michael has created a new persona, Vanessa. Green’s film focuses on the relationship between the damaged Enrique and Michael, whose cross-dressing and budding transsexuality puts the family members at odds. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and an entry in this year’s Frameline Film Festival, Gun Hill Road is one in a recent spate of films that deals with coming out in an urban setting. Like Green’s film, Peter Bratt’s La Mission (2009) offered a picture of homophobia in the Latino community. But Gun Hill Road, despite its bulging dramatic heft, shirks the after-school-special formula of La Mission by imagining complex characters rather than hewing them from instantly recognizable, sympathetic archetypes. (1:28) Sundance Kabuki. (Ryan Lattanzio)

*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Chances are you aren’t going to jump into the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. So while the movie is probably the best Harry Potter film yet, it’s more a fitting conclusion than a standalone film. For fans of the books, there are no real surprises — this is a close adaptation. And for those Harry Potter movie fans who haven’t read the books, shame on you, and kudos if you managed to not get spoiled. It’s hard for me to offer a serious critical analysis of Part 2, because it represents the end of a long and very emotional journey. (Everyone in that audience was crying. Everyone.) I will say that, as was the case in the book, there are a few overdone, schmaltzy moments that aren’t really necessary. But in the context of the series, they’re forgivable — this may not be the great cinematic event of our generation, but Harry Potter as a whole is sure to be one of our most enduring cultural icons. (2:10) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) Balboa, California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Four Star, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*My Perestroika Robin Hessman’s very engaging documentary takes one very relatable look at how changes since glasnost have affected some average Russians. The subjects here are five thirtysomethings who, growing up in Moscow in the 70s and 80s, were the last generation to experience full-on Communist Party indoctrination. But just as they reached adulthood, the whole system dissolved, confusing long-held beliefs and variably impacting their futures. Andrei has ridden the capitalist choo-choo to considerable enrichment as the proprietor of luxury Western menswear shops. But single mother Olga, unlucky in love, just scrapes by, while married schoolteachers Lyuba and Boris are lucky to have inherited an apartment (cramped as it is) they could otherwise ill afford. Meanwhile Ruslan, once member of a famous punk band (which he abandoned on principal because it was getting “too commercial”), both disdains and resents the new order just as he did the old one. Home movies and old footage of pageantry celebrating Soviet socialist glory make a whole ‘nother era come to life in this intimate, unexpectedly charming portrait of its long-term aftermath. (1:27) Balboa. (Harvey)

*The Names of Love Arthur (Jacques Gamblin) is a 40-ish scientist being interviewed about the threat of a bird flu epidemic when his radio broadcast is interrupted by 20-something Baya (Sara Forestier), who denounces him on-air as a “fascist” for frightening the public. But then, Baya tends to use that label rather indiscriminately, applying it to anyone who might conceivably have views to the right of the dial — and Arthur is in fact a solid liberal, which means she can bed him for love. As opposed to the many, many other men she beds as a self-described “political whore,” seeking out conservative types in order to seduce them and hopefully induce an idealogical shift by whispering sweet nothings (“Not all Arabs are thieves,” etc.) as they orgasm. Raised by parents whose emotions are so tightly wound his mother won’t acknowledge her parents were Jews killed at Auschwitz, Arthur has a hard time adjusting to a relationship with a lover who is faithful emotionally but sees promiscuity as her propagandic gift to the world. Meanwhile Baya’s largely Algerian family treats garrulous political argument as the very air they breathe. This odd-couple story written by Baya Kasmi and director Michel Leclerc deals with serious issues in both humorous and respectful fashion, making for one of the more novel, delightful and depthed French romantic comedies in a long time. Added plus: lots of antic gratuitous nudity. (1:42) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*One Day Why do romantic comedies get such a bad rap? Blame it on the lame set-up, the contrived hurdles artificially buttressed by the obligatory chorus of BFFs, the superficial something-for-every-demographic-with-ADD multinarrative, and the implausible resolutions topped by something as simple as a kiss or as conventional as marriage, but often no deeper, more crafted, or heartfelt than an application of lip gloss. Yet the lite-as-froyo pleasures of the genre don’t daunt Danish director Lone Scherfig, best known for her deft touch with a woman’s story that cuts closer to the bone, with 2009’s An Education. Her new film, One Day, based on the best-selling novel by David Nicholls, flirts with the rom-com form — from the kitsch associations with Same Time, Next Year (1978) to the trailer that hangs its love story on a crush — but musters emotional heft through its accumulation of period details, a latticework of flashbacks, and collection of encounters between its charming protagonists: upper-crusty TV presenter Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working-class aspiring writer Emma (Anne Hathaway). Their quickie university friendship slowly unfolds, as they meet every St. Swithin’s Day, July 15, over a span of years, into the most important relationship of their lives. Despite the blue-collar female lead and UK backdrop that it shares with An Education, One Day feels like a departure for Scherfig, who first found international attention for her award-winning Dogme 95-affiliated Italian for Beginners (2000). (1:48) Balboa, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42) Albany, Bridge, Piedmont.

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Berkmoyer)

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness This documentary cuts to the chase right at the beginning: yeah, Sholem Aleichem was the guy who wrote the Tevye stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. But filmmaker Joseph Dorman isn’t trying to make Fiddler: Behind the Musical. Instead, he takes an in-depth look at the life, writing career, and cultural significance of “one of the great modern Jewish writers — and our greatest Yiddish writer,” per the film’s press notes. Fans of Jewish lit will be particularly engaged by Sholem Aleichem’s tale; raised in a shtetl in what’s now the Ukraine, he moved around Europe and to the United States pursuing various careers, but always writing the popular stories that addressed not just Jewish life, but broader issues facing turn-of-the-last-century Jews, including the cross-generational conflicts that make up much of Fiddler‘s plot and humor. That said, this film does rely an awful lot on PBS-style slow pans over black-and-white photos and intellectual talking heads; one suspects the subject himself (so devoted was he to entertaining the regular folk who gobbled up his tales) would’ve preferred his life story to unfold in a livelier fashion. (1:33) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (1:29) 1000 Van Ness.

30 Minutes or Less In some ways, 30 Minutes or Less is reminiscent of 2008’s Pineapple Express: both are stoner action comedies about normal people shoved into high-stakes criminal activity. But while Pineapple Express was an exciting addition to the genre, 30 Minutes or Less is a flimsy 80-minute diversion that still feels like a waste of time. Jesse Eisenberg plays Nick, a pizza delivery boy who is forced to rob a bank after two would-be criminals strap a bomb to his chest. Strangely, Eisenberg was more charming as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) — and his buddy Chet (Aziz Ansari) doesn’t exactly up the likability factor. There’s actually the potential for an interesting story here: something darker seems appropriate, given that 30 Minutes or Less was inspired by a true story with a very unhappy ending. But the film completely fumbles, delivering an action comedy that’s neither tense nor funny. That means the pizza’s free, right? (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) Four Star, Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Trip Eclectic British director Michael Winterbottom rebounds from sexually humiliating Jessica Alba in last year’s flop The Killer Inside Me to humiliating Steve Coogan in all number of ways (this time to positive effect) in this largely improvised comic romp through England’s Lake District. Well, romp might be the wrong descriptive — dubbed a “foodie Sideways” but more plaintive and less formulaic than that sun-dappled California affair, this TV-to-film adaptation displays a characteristic English glumness to surprisingly keen emotional effect. Playing himself, Coogan displays all the carefree joie de vivre of a colonoscopy patient with hemorrhoids as he sloshes through the gray northern landscape trying to get cell reception when not dining on haute cuisine or being wracked with self-doubt over his stalled movie career and love life. Throw in a happily married, happy-go-lucky frenemy (comic actor Rob Brydon) and Coogan (TV’s I’m Alan Partridge), can’t help but seem like a pathetic middle-aged prick in a puffy coat. Somehow, though, his confused narcissism is a perverse panacea. Come for the dueling Michael Caine impressions and snot martinis, stay for the scallops and Brydon’s “small man in a box” routine. (1:52) Opera Plaza. (Devereaux)

*Vigilante Vigilante Eschewing any pretense of objectivity and adopting a civic-journalism approach, Bay Area director Max Good and producer Nathan Wollman exhaustively explore the issues at stake in the current graffiti and street art scene by focusing on some unexpected, once-hidden antagonists: the so-called buffers, graffiti abatement advocates, and self-styled vigilantes who obsessively paint over graffiti in cities like Los Angeles (Joe Connolly) and New Orleans (Fred Radtke). Good wraps his interviews with well-known street artists like Shepard Fairey, cultural critics such as Stefano Bloch, and graf advocates a la SF author Steve Rotman around his central pursuit: he’s trying to uncover the identity of the Silver Buff, the mysterious figure who has splashed silver over artwork and tags in Berkeley for more than a decade. After capturing the Buff on camera in the wee hours of the morn, the documentarian get his story — it’s Jim Sharp, a stubborn preservationist intent on “beautifying” the blight, tearing down street posters, picking up trash, and covering over what he sees as vandalism, even if he has to damage the property he claims to be cleaning up. In a witty twist on if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em, Good and Wollman ratchet their tale up a notch when they follow Sharp with colorful paint of their own, brilliantly driving home an appeal for freedom of expression and a reclamation of public space. (1:26) Roxie. (Chun)

The Whistleblower (1:58) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.


Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. 

Chiu and Kim are making a quick trip to Burning Man

Sasha Cuttler
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Chiu and Kim are making a quick trip to Burning Man

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu will take a day off from his busy mayoral campaign next week to attend Burning Man, which he’ll fly into on a small private airplane along with Sup. Jane Kim and spend less than 24 hours on the ground.

“For several years, I’ve wanted to visit the Black Rock Desert to learn about how Burning Man is building 21st Century community, creating art, and fostering sustainability,” Chiu told the Guardian after we learned about the trip from several sources.

Black Rock City LLC, the company that stages Burning Man – an arts and cultural extravaganza that began in 1986 on San Francisco’s Baker Beach and now takes place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert – has long sought to woo influential city officials to the event, offering free tickets to elected officials and some board aides. With this year’s move into a new Mid-Market headquarters space and creation of the new Burning Man Project nonprofit, both the LLC and City Hall have more reason than ever to seek stronger ties.

Sup. Eric Mar, who attended his first Burning Man last year, will be returning this year on his own to spent most of the week on the playa. By contrast, Chiu and Kim will fly into an airport set up at the event on the morning of Sept. 1 – accompanied by activists Sunny Angulo and Dan Nguyen-Tan, who will essentially staff them during their visit – stay in accommodations set up by supporters and the LLC, and fly out the next morning.

“It’ll be a super quick trip,” Chiu said, but he says that he’s excited to experience the event because, “Burning Man is an extension of our San Francisco community.”

Neither Kim nor Angulo returned calls for comment. Sources who helped set up the trip say they are trying to keep the value of the contributions to each supervisor under California’s $420 limit on gifts to public officials, and that if the value of the tickets, flight, and accommodations exceed that, Kim and Chiu will pay for the difference.

Organizers of the trip were also trying to woo another mayoral candidate, Sup. John Avalos, who considered it but ultimately decided against it. “Can’t pull away, what with being from a working family and with the kids and campaign and all,” he told us.

Tickets to Burning Man, which runs from Aug. 29-Sept. 5, sold out for the first time in its history this year, setting off a mad scramble for tickets that belied the event’s focus on a decommodified gift economy. To deal with that escalating demand, the event is expected to grow from a population of around 52,000 this year up to 70,000 within five years.

To learn more about the event and the culture is has spawned, check out our recent guide; read my book, The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture; or listen to the podcast of KQED’s Forum that I was on last week with event founder Larry Harvey and celebrated artist Karen Cusolito.

Vigilante Vigilante: The anti-anti-tagging movie

Andrew Lam
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Vigilante Vigilante: The anti-anti-tagging movie

Fred Radke buffs Banksy and can’t stand public mural walls, even when they’re meant to inspire  hope in his post-Katrina NoLa. 

Joe Connolly deals with the death of his 11-year old son by zealously trucking around cans of paint and paint-removing chemicals, occasionally throwing up his own tag as a caution sign to the other, bad, graffiti artists.

Jim “Silver Buff” Sharp will even take down signs for lost dogs in his mission to purge Berkeley’s streets of DIY expression.

Meet your anti-graffiti activists, courtesy of a new film by Berkeley producers, Vigilante Vigilante.

The movie, shot over the course of 500-some days by Max Good and Nathan Wollman, gives a breathless history of people writing on walls (including a dubious reference to graff buffers back in the Paleolithic days), right up to modern day Bay Area strife – anybody remember the Warm Water Cove “clean-up”? The timeline focuses on the conflict between taggers and law-and-order types. If, in this age of JR and other highly-publicized and lauded street art, you don’t think is for real anymore, watch this video. 

Good capturing Sharp’s technique

The movie then moves onto Good and Wollman’s mission to expose the unaffiliated lone wolfs who spend their days erasing other people’s works of self-expression. They travel across the country, gaining surprising amounts of access to the three men’s routines.

But as it turns out, Vigilante isn’t down to use the middle-aged to elderly white guys they profile (add to this list a one “Silver Circle” from Portland, who is now retired) as the faces of evil. Instead, the movie couches its critique in the wack broken windows sociological theory – itself a tool used by elite populations to justify wiping clean the visible signs of any disenfranchised citizens. 

By the end of the movie, Good and Wollman are arranging meet-ups between the anti-taggers so that they can swap paint-matching and poster removal techniques. The scene is almost heartwarming: the anti-graffiti vigilantes, with their relentless schedules and dedication to their craft almost win the audience over. Even if we’re a little creeped out by them.

Coca Cola vs. Twist’s tag wall: Which is the visual pollution?

So who is the villan in all this? Vigilante Vigilante finds a plausible symbol of nefariousness: James Q. Wilson, the sociologist behind the broken window theory (the inspiration, by the way, for Rudy Giuliani’s 1990s purging of downtown Manhattan).

The producers were right to do so. For the community member upset that their neighborhood is poor, that their area’s youth are unemployed, that circumstances seem beyond their control, Wilson’s theory successfully obfuscates cause and effect, a standard conservative trick of defeating class consciousness. Graffiti doesn’t cause race riots, poorly-dealt-with natural disasters, or high unemployment rates. Writing on a wall is often the response to a society that belittles minority youth, the middle class and poorer, and anyone who is having trouble with the capitalistic treadmill. Jeff Chang‘s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is a great place to start if you’re interested in this anti-colonialist view of street art.

The obsessive cover-ups of the vigilantes (that in more than one case have morphed into tags themselves, a fact the filmmakers highlight when they begin covering up Sharp’s silver buffs with neon pink and gold buffs, to his dismay), are ultimately their attempt at regaining control in a world that can seem really mean at times. Which doesn’t change the fact that what they’re doing is lame — can hardly blame this guy… 

Vigilante Vigilante is at the Roxie through Sat/20

 

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