Independent

Steve Moss: the big duck

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Steve Moss: the big duck

WORKING DOGGEDLY TO PIN DOWN THE EDITOR OF THE POTRERO VIEW WHO IS ALSO A CANDIDATE FOR SUPERVISOR FROM DISTRICT 10

We’ve been trying to pin Steve Moss down on some key questions.  Over the weekend, I sent him some questions by email.  He responded, but ducked or ignored the real points and never gave us any straight answers.

Here’s our exchange, my questions and his answers — unedited,  followed by some comments from me as we doggedly try to make sense of where Steve Moss really stands on key issues in the district.

 

Dear Steve,

In your October, pre-election issue of the Potrero View, your signed column
compares the Guardian with Fox News and states that we are both  “advocacy groups disguised as news purveyors” who “whip mostly anonymous commentators on their websites to call political candidates ‘weasle, lying, doucebags’ and worse.” You also state that “these same outlets barely take the time to edit–much less fact check–their stories.”

As you know, our reporter Sarah Phelan has done factual reporting on you and your campaign (http://www.sfbg.com/2010/09/14/five-things-you-should-know-about-steve-moss) and she and I have both checked with you to respond to our points before publication.  We will continue our policy by submitting these email questions to you in advance of publication. Our deadline is 5 p.m. on Monday

l. What specific facts do you find inaccurate in our previous reporting on you and your campaign? (You mixed up a comment on a blog with Phelan’s actual story and reporting. Was this intentional?)

2. How much money have you and your various profit and nonprofit enterprises accepted from PG&E during this past year?

How much money have you accepted in total from PG&E during your many years of operating  your profit and nonprofit enterprises? Why did you change the pro-public power View of Ruth Passen to a PG&E-friendly View under your ownership?  (For example, Passen always supported public power but you as the new owner  refused to support the last public power initiative and said it was “too contentious.”)

3. Campaign finance records show that Thomas Coates, a Republican who spent $l million trying to overturn rent control in California in 2008, has just dumped
$45,000 into the so-called Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth in support of your candidacy.  Public records also show that you served a cure or quit notice
to a tenant in your rent-controlled building in District 8. Would you comment on this? And would you state whether you support or oppose rent control?

4.  On the front page of the October View, your lead story reported on the troubles of the Neighborhood House under the headline, “NABE Reeling Under City Budget Cuts.” Your story noted that the Nabe had lost “nearly $400,000 in funding from the Department of Human Services (DHS) and the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families” and that individual donations had dropped by 75 per cent. The result, your story noted, was that the NABE “has been forced to eliminate teen-focused programming, reduce elementary school offerings by 25 per cent, lay-off staff and impose pay cuts.”

Each year, the NABE sponsors the Potrero Hill festival as a benefit to raise much-needed funds. This year the benefit was more critical than ever to reduce its  crippling deficit. Just as the View was going to press earlier this month,  I got a call at the Guardian from a representative of the festival with a startling bit of information. I was told that you, as the owner and editor-publisher of the View, and a candidate for supervisor from our district, were  refusing to run a full page ad for the festival, a key piece of the NABE’s promotion on the hill,if the ad contained the logo of the Guardian as a festival sponsor. 

The representative was concerned that, if you wouldn’t run the NABE ad, that the Guardian as a media sponsor wouldn’t run a NABE ad in the Guardian.
(I told him not to worry, do what he had to do to get the ad in the View, and that the Guardian would run the ad and double up on its promotion for the festival. The Guardian logo did not appear on the Nabe ad in the View but did appear on all other NABE promotions.)

Why did you make this threat to the NABE and its festival benefit? Were you serious?

5. You said in your endorsement interview at the Guardian that, if you were elected supervisor, you would give up the View. Do you still plan to do that, if elected? If so, how would you do that?

 
 Steve Moss responds:

1.  The entire way you’ve covered the District 10 election has been slanted towards the candidate you prefer, and against the candidates you dislike.  From this perspective the Guardian is not serving the role of a newspaper, but rather is acting as an independent expenditure committee on behalf of its chosen candidates and causes.  I’d be happy to select a panel of five independent journalists — you pick two, I’ll pick two, and the four can pick one — to render an opinion about how you’ve run the Guardian during this election cycle, and how I’ve run the View.

2.  In 2010 I believe SF Power has received less than $25,000 in payments related to the small business demand-response program it operates, as sanctioned by the California Public Utility Commission.  I’ve already provided you and your reporter with multiple responses to your requests about SF Power’s successfull advocacy related to CPUC orders requiring PG&E to fund programs focusing on working families and small businesses, all of which, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, are a matter of public record.

The View has published several articles about community-based energy systems, and effective ways to achieve local control over the power grid, during my tenure as publisher. They are available on our website.

3.  I read about Coats’ contribution in Bay Citizen.  As you know, this donation was made to an independent expenditure committee over which I have no control and almost no knowledge.  I have stated throughout the campaign, and directly to the Tenants Union, that I believe current rent control policy should remain unmolested.

4.  I made no threat to the NABE.  In fact, the festival was featured on the front page of the November issue, with a story inside, and a full page ad.

5.  Yes.  A new editor will be found to run the View if I’m elected to office.

 

Okay, You aren’t responsive.   Let me try again, point by point:

l. I am not running for office. You are.  Please tell me where we are factually wrong in any of our reporting on you and your campaign.

As you know, we have contacted you in advance of publication for comment. And you have written us twice with generalities but no specifics on inaccurate reporting.

2. You defend your PG&E payments on the basis that it’s actually money from the California Public Utilities Commission that PG&E is required by law to put up for energy efficiency projects. However, Loretta Lynch, former president of the CPUC, told me that PG&E decides who gets the money and that fund recipients that “cross PG&E” are in danger of getting their funds cut off.

In other words, if  you  want to continue to fund your organization with upwards of more than $l million over three years, you must avoid angering the utility.  This may explain why the Potrero View under your ownership has switched from its historic position supporting public power under former owner Ruth Passen to going easy on PG&E and ducking a position on the most recent public power initiative (Proposition H).

The background: Your  non profit collected  $1,290,000 from the CPUC for energy efficiency projects over the past three years, according to SF Power’s annual revenues and estimated budgets from 2008 to 2010 as provided on its website.

The breakdown: $500,000 in 2008, $440,000 in 2009, $350,000 in 2010.

You  also got $150,000 from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in 2008 and $125,000 in 2009.  Your  non profit also got $50,000 chunks each year from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman fund, where his wife Debbie Findling works.   The Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund kicked in $5,000 in 2008 and 2009.  The  Potrero View contributed $5,000 in 2008, $4,500 in 2009, and $5,000 in 2010.  A footnote stated that SF Power “is also informally negotiating with the California Air Resources Board, San Francisco’s Office of the Mayor, Mirant Corporation, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company, among others, for project funding support.”  Did you get any additional money from Mirant, PG&E,  the Mayor, or anybody else? Are you still negotiating? If not, when did you stop?

Lynch explained that “all energy efficiency programs in California are funded by ratepayer dollars that are collected by the utilities as part of each ratepayer’s utility bill.  Thus, California ratepayers, big and small, pay for all energy efficiency programs and each and every program is funded by ratepayers, not utilities.”

She said that the CPUC “sets broad parameters for each utility concerning the amount of overall energy efficiency savings to be achieved and in what customer classes (residential, small business, large business,etc.). But the utilities choose the program providers. The CPUC simply reviews the overall package provided by the utilities to check to see whether the energy efficiency savings targets are met.”

Thus, PG&E each year decides  the amount of money going to SF Community Power. Lynch noted that  some non profit people told her, when she was a commissioner, that “if you crossed PG&E, they would stop the funding.”
 
Lynch mentioned a meeting with you  that showed  PG&E’s influence on you, your non profit and the View. .
She said that, shortly after she was termed out as a CPUC  commissioner in 2009, you  asked her to meet with  him at Farleys coffee shop and asked her to serve on the board of his nonprofit. “I thanked him and said that he should consider my relationship with PG&E before making that offer if he was funded through PG&E, as PG&E and I have a very contentious relationship,  and that they would not be happy if I were on the board. He thanked me for telling him and agreed that I should not serve on the board.”  Lynch lives on Potrero Hill.

3. I followed up my rent control question:  “If state law were amended to allow it, would you support extending rent control to vacant apartments?”  No answer.

4. I got a call from Keith Goldstein, president of the Potrero Hill Association of Merchants and Businesses and co-chair of the festival. He had gotten an email from you  that read: “Please have the festival’s pr agent remove the Guardian’s logo from any complimentary ad the View is providing the festival in this month’s paper.” Why did you make  such an unprofessional move?   Would you have backed out of sponsoring this event if the Guardian logo had remained? Is that how you would behave as a supervisor?

5. If elected, do you plan to sell the View?  Will you continue to operate your non profit and take chunks of money from PG&E? If elected, would your income from PG&E disquality you from voting on PG&E and energy issues? At what point would you sever your relations, if at all,  with your non profit and PG&E?

6. If  you lose, will you (as your wife suggested in an email to friends) move back to your house on Liberty St in Distict 8?

We anxiously  await your response. B3

Republican who wants to overturn rent control pumps $200,000 into district elections

Mary Magee
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Republican who wants to overturn rent control pumps $200,000 into district elections

Thomas J, Coates, a big time investor in apartments and mobile homes, has dropped a total of $225,000 into five independent expenditure committees that are trying to push conservative-friendly candidates and measures over the victory line this fall.

Coates, a 56-year-old Republican (he donated $2,000 to George Bush in the 2004 presidential election) and yacht racing enthusiast, was the biggest single spender in the November 2008 election, when he contributed nearly $1 million to Prop. 98, a statewide measure that sought to repeal rent control in California and limit government’s right to seize private property by eminent domain.

And with only 11 days until the election, Coates has given local Republican war chests an enormous last-minute boost: He plunked $100,000 into Common Sense Voters, a committee in support of Mark Farrell in D2. He plunked $10,000 into the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth’s committee in support of Scott Wiener in D8. He plunked $45,000 into the Alliance’s committee in support of Theresa Sparks in D6. He dropped $45,000 into the Alliance’s committee in support of Steve Moss in D10. And he dropped another $25,000 into San Franciscans for a Better Muni, a committee in support of Measure G, which attempts to reform Muni by focusing on transit operator wages.

As the Guardian previously reported, this Alliance has received thousands from the SF Police Officer’s Association, the Building Operators and Managers Association, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and SEIU-United Healthcare Workers, which supports a mega-hospital on Cathedral Hill.

But Coates’ donation raises questions about his choices’ commitment to rent control. As Coates told the Chronicle in an interview in 2008, “There is a reason why 35 of 50 states expressly prohibit rent control by law – and the reason is it doesn’t work.”

Coates, who is a principal in Jackson Square Properties, which specializes in apartments and mobile homes, is also the founding partner of Arroya & Coates, a commercial real estate brokerage and investment firm whose clients include Walgreens, Circuit City, and J.P. Morgan Investment Management. And as campaign disclosures show, he’s dumped a large part of his money into the same conservative alliance that has already collectively spent almost $170,000 on Moss, Sparks and Wiener.

So far, labor has countered the Republican money by spending $70,000 in support of Debra Walker in D6 and $90,000 on Mandelman in D8, and the SF Tenants Union has spent a total of $20,000 on mailers opposing Moss, Sparks and Wiener. But collectively the downtown money, which is also being funnelled into several other independent expenditure committees, continues to massively outweigh the progressive bucks.

Coates’ phone line continues to register a “busy” signal, making it impossible to leave him a message, but I’d be happy to include his comments here, if and when I talk to him.

But Gullicksen said he was disturbed by Coates’ heavy spending on the supervisors’ races.

“Coates is the main funder of Prop. 98, his property is in Southern California, he’s pumping a lot of money into supervisors and he clearly has an agenda that we fear Moss, Sparks and Wiener share, which is to make the existence of rent control an issue the Board will take up, if those supervisors are elected.”

It will be interesting to see if Moss, Sparks and Wiener are prepared to pledge that they have no intention to attack rent control….so, stay tuned.

Meanwhile, labor is organizing a protest outside Coates office at 500 Washington Street at 5 p.m on Tuesday, Oct. 26.

“Be there or be evicted!” labor warned.

 

Uptown Joe’s

Andrew Lam
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Uptown Joe’s

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Use of the word “downtown” in the American vernacular has always faintly troubled me. It’s a term that should be used only with respect to Manhattan, which really does have a downtown, along with a midtown and an uptown. The better phrase for the rest of us is “city center,” which is what you tend to see in European cities — signs reading “centrum” or (in German-speaking lands) “zentrum,” with a big arrow pointing you in the right direction.

Of course, in a city as hilly as San Francisco, “up” and “down” have meanings independent of any two-dimensional map. Uptown Joe’s, the successor to Café Majestic, might not be in any actual uptown anyone here would actually refer to, but the restaurant is pretty far up the southern face of Pacific Heights. So it can claim some real elevation, if not a view. It’s the “Joe” part of the name, interestingly, that’s been the occasion for some legal tussling in the past year between Uptown Joe’s and Original Joe’s, which burned down three years ago.

What’s most striking to me about the restaurant’s name is how inapposite it is. It sounds a diner-ish, Seinfeldian note — you can almost see Uncle Leo carping and gesturing in a booth over a bowl of chicken noodle soup — but the restaurant is in fact an elegant, high-ceilinged, cream-colored vault, almost fin de siècle Viennese in its quiet dignity. If you thought that the quiet restaurant was a thing of the past here, where the dominant trend in restaurant design is a noisy urban minimalism with concrete accents and patrons texting away because they can’t hear one another, you’ll find Uptown Joe’s to be a welcome surprise. It’s the sort of place that encourages that most retro of human practices, conversation.

In keeping with the vast dining room’s old world graciousness, the kitchen turns out a menu that might have been described as “continental” a generation ago. Many dishes have Italian roots — there are a number of pastas and several veal possibilities, including piccata and parmagiana — but many others seem generically occidental, such as charbroiled filet mignon or pork chops.

A nice touch on the antipasto platter ($14.95 for two) was the red-wine vinaigrette drizzled over everything. It lent a glamorous and inviting sheen. “Everything” meant ham, salami, and pepperoni, slices of white cheese, tomato quarters, black olives (pitted — thank you!), and red-onion rings atop chopped spears of romaine lettuce.

Minestrone ($5) was served in a tureen whose shape probably helped hold in heat but made access tricky. The soup itself had a sickly, gray-green color, perhaps because of a bounty of cabbage, and was dotted with kidney beans and macaroni tubes. Its flavor was dominated by the earthy bite of the stock (roasted vegetable?) and the heap of grated Parmesan our server spooned over the top, to give it a cap almost like that of French onion soup.

Fried chicken ($18.95 for a half-bird) had a crisp, brownish-bronze crust that was lovely to look at but, being gravely underseasoned, not much to taste. Some CPR administered via salt shaker did restore a faint heartbeat, and the meat itself was juicy. The real redeemer of the plate was the slew of vegetables — broccoli and cauliflower florets, zucchini, sheets of Swiss chard, chunks of baby carrot — apparently braised in stock, to judge by their flavorfulness. Steamed mixed vegetables so often taste like hospital food, but not these.

Calamari steak ($18.95) is sometimes said to be the poor man’s abalone, but it can be splendid in its own right if not overcooked to toughness. Uptown Joe’s batter-fried version was tender with just a hint of chewiness (can we say al dente in this context?) and doused with lemon butter for a fillip of decadence. On the side: a mound of rigatoni tossed with marinara sauce.

Uptown Joe’s prices strike me on the whole as not bargain-basement despite the restaurant’s folksy name. Neither are they through the roof, especially considering the ambiance, although the desserts did leaving me wondering. The chocolate mousse cake ($7.75) was light as whipped cream and not much else, while the apple pie ($7.50, with a pat of vanilla ice cream) was almost too hot to eat in spots despite a creditable crust. In a word: middling. 

UPTOWN JOE’S

Dinner: Tues.–Sun., 5–10:30 p.m.

Brunch: 9 a.m.–2 p.m.

1500 Sutter, SF

(415) 441-1280

Full bar

AE/DS/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Music listings

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

WEDNESDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Aerosols, Montra, Skystone Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Pryor Baird and the Deacons Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Blood and Sunshine, Callow, Shauna Regan Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

Deer Tick, J. Roddy Walston and the Business Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $17.

Ennen Enne, Winebirds, Zoo Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Four Year Strong, Wonder Years, American Fangs Slim’s. 8pm, $17.

Hedley, Gold Motel, Chairman Wow Café Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Hesta Prynn, Kenan Bell, 40Love Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Scout Niblett, Esben and the Witch, Excuses for Skipping Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Suicidal Tendences, (hed)p.e. Fillmore. 8pm, $26.50.

UK Subs, Total Chaos, Sore Thumbs, Final Summation Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10-12.

Vaselines, Dum Dum Girls Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $23.

Hawksley Workman, Joe Firstman, Aimee Francis, Trey Lockerbie Hotel Utah. 7:30pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Breezin Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Amy A and Brynnie Mac spinning yacht rock od smooth 70s.

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

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

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

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

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

THURSDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ancestors, Pins of Light, Fucking Wrath Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Atreyu, Bless the Fall, Chiodos, Architects, Endless Hallway Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $23.

Bell X1 Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $18.

Company Car, Pebble Theory, Farewell Typewriter El Rio. 9pm, $6.

Stan Erhart with Garth Webber Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Harry and the Hitmen, Hypnotist Collectors, Jugtown Pirates Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Dave Mason Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $36.

Joey McIntyre, Emanuel Kiriakou Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $34.

Mischka, White Buffalo, Chris Velan Independent. 8pm, $15.

Old Man Markley, Whisky Richards, West Nile Ramblers Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Recoil: A Strange Hour, Alan Wilder and Paul Kendall, Architect, Conjure One Mezzanine. 8pm, $25.

*Saviours, Kowloon Walled City Thee Parkside. 9pm, free.

Scrams, Airfix Kits, Dirty Cupcakes, Bad Backs Knockout. 9:30pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz and guest Choco Mann spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

John Digweed Ruby Skye. 9pm, $30.

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

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

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

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

FRIDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Born Ruffians, Meligrove Band Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Fleeting Trance, Wish Inflicted, Jeremy Serwer Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Jon B. Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $25.

Lyrics Born, Chali 2na, Rakaa Independent. 9pm, $25.

Never Shout Never, Maine, I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody’s Business, Carter Hulsey Warfield. 6:30pm, $20.

Jack O and the Tearjerkers, Roy Loney, East Bay Grease, Wrong Words, Scrams Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $10. Part of Budget Rock 9.

Mississippi Man, Silent Comedy, Michael Beach Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Pierced Arrows, Bare Wires, Burnt Ones Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

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

Starfucker, Octopus Project, Strength Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14.

Stone Foxes, Soft White Sixties, Real Nasty Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

*Yusef Lateef Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-50.

Gretchen Parlato Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $30.

Marlena Teich Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Boca do Rio Coda. 10pm, $10.

Marina Lavalle Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. 8pm, $22.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrobeat Lab Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Featuring a live performance by ALBINO! with DJs Señor Oz and guests.

Alcoholocaust Presents Riptide Tavern. 9pm, free. DJ What’s His Fuck spins old-school punk rock and other gems.

Club Dragon Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. A gay Asian paradise. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Duniya Dancehall Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; (415) 920-0577. 10pm, $10. With live performances by Duniya Drum and Dance Co. and DJs dub Snakr and Juan Data spinning bhangra, bollywood, dancehall, African, and more.

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

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

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

House of Voodoo Medici Lounge, 299 9th St., SF; (415) 501-9162. 9pm, $5. With DJ Purgatory and Stiletto spinning goth, industrial, deathrock, glam, darkwave, and eighties.

Psychedelic Radio Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Kial, Tom No Thing, Megalodon, and Zapruderpedro spinning dubstep, reggae, and electro.

Queens are Wild Mezzanine. 8pm, $25-$500. A benefit casino night costume party with host Juanita More and DJs Gemini Disco.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Scientist with Roots Radics Rock-it Room. 9pm, $17.

Some Thing The Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Soul in the Machine DNA Lounge. 8pm, $20. Techno and industrial with Dyloot, Taj, and more.

$3 Dance Party Knockout. 10pm, $3. Eclectic tunes with DJs Paul Paul, dX the Funky Gran Paw, and Deadbeat.

SATURDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Laurie Anderson Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $55.

Bilal Ameoba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 2pm, free. 2pm, free.

Chuck Alvarez Band Biscuits and Blues. 8:30pm, $15.

Crosstops, Sassy Bender’s, 800 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 10pm, $5.

Electric Six, Constellations, Ghost Robot Independent. 9pm, $16.

Frail, Savage Resurrection El Rio. 9pm, donations to Rocket Dog Rescue accepted.

Giovenco Project Coda. 10pm, $10.

JP, Chrissie and the Fairground Boys, Amy Correia Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $33.

Oblivians, Icky Boyfriends, Wounded Lion, Wild Thing Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $20.

Rubinoos Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $18. Part of Budget Rock 9.

*Skipper, Shannon and the Clams, C’Mon Everybody, Tropical Sleep, Larry and the Angriest Generation, Midnite Snaxx Thee Parkside. 2pm, $7. Part of Budget Rock 9.

Trashcan Sinatras Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $20.

Triptykon, 1349, Yakuza Slim’s. 9pm, $23.

Women, French Miami, Manchild Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bill Frisell and the 858 Quartet Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 7:30 and 9:30pm, $25.

JFJO, Con Brio, Evarusnik Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Will Sellenraad Coda. 7pm, $7.

Suzanna Smith Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Ashwin Batish and friends of Sitar Power Red Poppy Art House. 7pm, $25. With dance artist Rasa Vitalia.

Greensky Bluegrass Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $15.

Ten Sorrowful Songs and a Crane San Francisco Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; (415) 647-6015. 8pm, free.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Barracuda 111 Minna. 9pm, $10. Eclectic 80s music with DJs Damon and Phillie Ocean plus 80s cult video projections, a laser light show, prom balloons, and 80s inspired fashion.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups with guest VJ Faroff and more.

Derrick Carter Ruby Skye. 9pm, $15.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm. Queer dance party with DJ Nuxx and friends.

David J. Cat Club. 9:30pm, $10-12. Music from the dark side.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop hits of the 90s with DJs Jamie Jams, EmDee, and Stab Master Arson.

4OneFunktion Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10.

Go Bang! Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; (415) 346 – 2025. 9pm, $5. Recreating the diversity and freedom of the 70’s/ 80’s disco nightlife with DJs Steve Fabus, Tres Lingerie, Sergio, and more.

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

Icee Hot 222 Hyde, SF; www.iceehotmartyn.eventbrite.com. 10pm. With Dutch drum and bass veteran and producer Martyn.

Reggae Gold Club Six. 9pm, $15. With DJs Daddy Rolo, Polo Mo’qz, Tesfa, Serg, and Fuze spinning dancehall and reggae.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

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

SUNDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Laurie Anderson Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $55.

Azure Ray, Whispertown, Tim Fite Independent. 8pm, $15.

"Battle of the Bands" DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With House of Clouds, Twisted Blues, and more.

Happy Body Slow Brain, Please Do Not Fight, Bird by Bird, Girlfriend Season Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $10.

Making Dinner Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Muskrats, Tee’n’Dee Explosion, Outdoorsmen, Spencey Dude and the Doodles, Angora Debs, Skkkumby Thee Parkside. 1pm, $7. Part of Budget Rock 9.

Lucky Peterson Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Reigning Sound, Flakes, Ty Segall, Touch-Me-Nots Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $15. Part of Budget Rock 9.

Safes, Cellar Doors, Dead Westerns Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Anthony Brown and friends Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; www.theintersection.org. 2pm, free.

Bill Frisell Ameoba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 2pm, free.

Bill Frisell and the 858 Quartet Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 7:30pm, $25.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kenny Barron Trio with David Sanchez Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-65.

Big Tings Gravity, 3251 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 5pm, free.

Jon Jang SF Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 3pm, $30-50.

Barrington Levy Slim’s. 9pm, $30.

Orquesta America El Rio. 4pm, $8.

Josh Workman, Bryan Bowman, Ravi Abcarian Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, dubstep, roots, and dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludachris, and DJ Tomas.

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

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

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

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

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

Pachanga Coda. 5pm, $10. Salsa with DJs Fab Fred, DJ Antonio, and Montuno Swing.

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

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

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

MONDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Lights, Jeremy Fisher Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Lucky Peterson Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Russian Circles, Keelhaul, Call Me Lightning Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $13.

Seabear, Grandchildren Independent. 8pm, $15.

Amanda Shires, Jesse Brewster, Heather Combs Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

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

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

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

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Best Coast, Sonny and the Sunsets Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $15.

Billy Nayer Show, Lee Vilensky Trio Café Du Nord. 8:30pm, $12.

Breathe Owl Breathe, Little Wings, Kacey Johansing Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Ego Likeness, Chant, Slave Unit Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Mariah Larkin El Rio. 7pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. "Stump the Wizard" with DJs What’s His Fuck and DJ Wizard.

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

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

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

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

Willie Brown and accusations of machine politics in D6

Sasha Cuttler
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70
Willie Brown and accusations of machine politics in D6

A political mailer promoting progressive supervisorial candidate Jane Kim was funded primarily by former Mayor Willie Brown through a campaign committee that Kim consultant Enrique Pearce helped start and which was located in his office, the latest strange development in a race that is dividing the progressive movement at a crucial moment and prompting a nasty public debate over political “machines.”

It’s illegal for campaigns to coordinate activities with independent expenditure committees such as New Day for SF, which put out the glossy mailer proclaiming “Another renter supports Jane Kim for District 6 Supervisor” and calling her “The people’s candidate.” The most recent campaign finance statements, filed Oct. 4, listed the group’s treasurer as USF student Brent Robinson and the contact number being that of Pearce’s Left Coast Communications, where Robinson worked.

Pearce told the Guardian that he was involved in starting New Day for SF, but that he severed ties with the group and Robinson “about a month ago” when it seemed they might support Kim. “When it started to go down that path, we said that we can’t do that,” Pearce said, adding that he didn’t know why the forms still listed his phone number or why the receptionist in his office took a message for Robinson from the Guardian, although Pearce said they share a receptionist with other organizations. On Oct. 5, a day after the intial filing, the group filed a form to amend Robinson’s phone number.

The campaign finance form shows the group raised $9,200, including $5,000 from Brown on Sept. 30 and $2,500 from Twenty-Two Holdings LLC, which last year applied for a liquor license for the Wunder Brewing Co. Robinson did not return our calls for comment.

The Bay Guardian and other progressive voices used to decry the corrosive influence on San Francisco politics of the Democratic Party political machine established by Brown and former California Senate President (and current state party chair) John Burton. Although that machine is dormant now, the concept of machine politics has been revived in this election cycle by Kim and her allies, adding an ironic note to her support by Brown.

“I’m not a part of anyone’s machine and I’m certainly not a part of anyone’s master plan,” Kim declared during her June 24 campaign kickoff party, where Brown and former Mayor Art Agnos made an appearance. When I highlighted the remark in my coverage of the event, and its inference that Kim’s progressive rival Debra Walker was supported by a budding progressive political machine, it triggered a raging political debate about the concept that continues this day.

The nastiest salvos in that debate have recently been fired at the Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Democratic Party Central Committee – accusing us of being part of a political machine supporting Walker and excluding Kim (who got the Guardian’s #2 endorsement) – by Randy Shaw on his Beyond Chron blog. Shaw is one of two staff writers on the blog, along with Paul Hogarth, a Democratic Party activist and Kim campaign volunteer.

Shaw founded and runs the nonprofit Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which has millions of dollars in city contracts to administer SRO leases through Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Care Not Cash and other programs. He started BeyondChron a few years ago with seed money from Joe O’Donoghue, who was then president of the Residential Builders Association, a developer group that has sometimes clashed with Walker in her capacity as a member of the city’s Building Inspection Commission.

On Oct. 5 and then again on Oct. 12, Shaw wrote and prominently posted long stories promoting Kim’s candidacy and attacking us and the DCCC for not supporting her more strongly. In the first one, “In District 6, Jane Kim takes on the machine,” Shaw defended Burton but shared the Guardian’s criticism of how Brown behaved as mayor.

“Brown’s power was strictly personal, as became clear when his chosen Supervisor candidates were defeated in the 2000 elections,” Shaw wrote, criticizing political machines and writing that the progressive political movement is not “served when those seeking to run for office feel they must choose between ‘playing ball’ with political insiders and giving up their dreams.”

But is it possible that Shaw’s strident campaigning against Walker – indeed, his protege Hogarth planned to challenge Walker before Kim decided to get into the race – was prompted by Walker’s unwillingness to “play ball” with Shaw and his RBA backers? Should we be concerned that it’s actually Shaw who’s trying to build his own little political machine?

I’ve tried to discuss these issues with Shaw and Hogarth, including sending them a detailed list of questions (as has Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond), but they’ve been unwilling to respond, just as they were unwilling to contact us before writing two divisive hit pieces that were riddled with inaccuracies that they’ve refused to correct.

I’ve also left messages with Kim and others in her campaign to discuss machine politics and its implications – as well as Sup. Chris Daly, asking about the sometimes close relations that some progressive supervisors have had with Shaw and RBA developers over the years [UPDATE BELOW] – and we’re waiting to hear back.

But Pearce said voters shouldn’t read too much into a relatively small political contribution from Willie Brown, or from the “colorful writing” of Randy Shaw, emphasizing Kim’s independence and saying that was always what she intended to stress when she raised the specter of machine politics tainting the race.

“Randy Shaw is not a part of this campaign, and Willie Brown is certainly not a part of this campaign,” Pearce told us. In fact, Pearce even noted that his office is not a part of the Kim campaign, that they’re merely consultants to it. And he offered his hopes and belief that in 19 days when this campaign is over, progressives would overcome their differences and find a common agenda again. Let’s hope so.

UPDATE: Daly and I just connected and he had an interesting take on all this. He noted that when Brown was mayor, the base that he brought together included the RBA, Rose Pak and the Chinatown power brokers (who also seem to be backing Kim, who used to work as an activist/organizer in that community), and, improbably, both Labor and Downtown.

“But that’s not Gavin’s alignment, his alignment is just downtown. The RBA guys hate Gavin, mostly just because of who is is, a silver spoon guy who never worked a day in his life,” Daly said. So Matt Gonzalez, the board president who ran against Newsom in 2003, formed an alliance with the RBA and O’Donoghue, who already had a long relationship with Shaw, both personal and financial.

Daly also said that he thinks it’s a personality clash more than anything else that is driving Shaw’s opposition to Walker: “He just doesn’t like Debra.” In turn, that sort of personality-based politics — more than any differences in ideology, vision, or qualifications — is souring people in the two political camps on one another as this close election enters the home stretch. But will those resentments linger after this election? Probably, Daly said, although he plans to actively try to mediate the divide once the dust clears on this race.

“Luckily, we have a lot of young people entering the progressive movement,” Daly said. “There’s always a rejuvenation going on and one day the new leaders will be like, ‘Why do that guy and that guy hate each other?’ ‘I don’t know, I think it had something to do with the 2010 election.”

From here, cinema

Andrew Lam
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0
From here, cinema

I saw my first movie when I was four or five: it was a revival of 101 Dalmations (1961), and I liked it enough to ask my mother if we could sit through it a second time (we did). I saw my second first movie when I was 19: it was a nine-minute short by Bruce Baillie titled Valentin de las Sierras (1967), and after seeing it I knew film history must be full of secrets. It was only after moving to Berkeley a few years later that I began to contextualize Baillie’s tactile daydream of a Mexican village — a singular vision, to be sure, but one emblematic of a regional avant-garde as difficult to survey as San Francisco itself.

Here’s to trying: “Radical Light”‘s ambitious ecology of alternative film and video in the Bay Area encompasses an invaluable anthology of firsthand accounts, secondhand appreciations, and historical overviews; a film series with many artists-in-attendance and restored prints (through the winter at the Pacific Film Archive and various SF Cinematheque affiliates); and a gallery show of ephemera at the Berkeley Art Museum.

To first address the question underlying the whole series: why here? Some of the book’s contributors offer fanciful conjectures: it must be the ghost of Muybridge, an island ecology, a city that won’t hold a straight line, the quality of light, or, more realistically, the influence of the Beats’ vow of poverty. While I’m attracted to environmental speculations like these, it seems important not to let them overshadow the essential evidence of hard work without promise of financial compensation or art world status. This is clearest in the Bay Area’s rich tradition of artist-run, self-reliant screenings: museum takeovers, backyard hoedowns, and basement salons.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Frank Stauffacher’s post-World War II “Art in Cinema” series at the San Francisco Museum of Art (before it became “modern”) in establishing this climate of creative investment. Handsome as hell and himself a fine filmmaker, Stauffacher audaciously placed cinema in an art context, colliding European avant-gardes, Hollywood outliers, and homegrown talent in a museum setting a few decades ahead of schedule. In essence, he prepared the audience for what became known as independent filmmaking (before that term was commoditized). Which is more remarkable: that Stauffacher showed Christopher Maclaine’s still incendiary The End (1953), precipitating a chair-clearing uproar, or that he fronted Maclaine (a bagpipe-playing speed freak known as North Beach’s Antonin Artaud when there was plenty of competition) the funds to make this unsellable thing? Most of “Art in Cinema”‘s audience wasn’t ready for The End, but one young spectator found it a revelation: his name was Stan Brakhage.

Less than 10 years later, after Stauffacher’s tragic death in 1955, Baillie and his Canyon Cinema collaborators (notably, Chick Strand and Ernest Callenbach) came down from the hills over Oakland and expanded their bohemian screenings to include public production equipment, a journal, and the distribution co-op that is today run by filmmaker Dominic Angerame. The early Canyon group’s ambitions were local, but nonetheless represented an alternative cinema practice as profoundly liberating as that of their Nouvelle Vague contemporaries — one taken up by the dozen or so major series (e.g. No Nothing Cinema, Total Mobile Home, Other Cinema) and college film departments (especially San Francisco Art Institute and San Francisco State University) detailed in “Radical Light.”

Though wildly eclectic in form and content, the “Radical Light” films cohere around a widespread distrust of moral authority, whether political or aesthetic, as well as an abiding interest in the bending truths of portraiture, documentary, ethnography, and found footage. The anarchic and mystical are preferred modes, though not mutually exclusive ones. There is a long tradition of collaboration between filmmakers and, perhaps more strikingly, with poets, painters, and musicians. To cite but a few examples: Larry Jordan’s Visions of a City (1979, begun 1957) is drawn from material shot to accompany readings by Michael McClure and Philip Lamantia; Bruce Conner did lightshows at the old Avalon Ballroom before making music videos for Devo and documenting the Mabuhay Gardens punk scene; and Brakhage made In Between (1955) while living with Robert Duncan and Jess (and set the film to a John Cage composition). Early “Art in Cinema” habitués like Jordan Belson, Harry Smith, and James Broughton all approached film from different mediums, and later artists like Nathaniel Dorsky, Warren Sonbert, and Konrad Steiner explored the poetic or musical resonances of moving images. It runs the other way too — unsurprisingly, it takes someone like poet Bill Berkson to get Dorsky’s films in a (parenthetical) nutshell: “(Without being stupid about it, Dorsky really seems to put every conscious instant up against the growth chart of Eternity.)”

Indeed, all these films burn brightly as you watch. Witness all the different ways in which the makers seek to alter the cinematic experience, turning it into a Zen monastery (Dorsky), paranoid classroom (Craig Baldwin), troubled innerspace (Gunvor Nelson), innocent grindhouse (George and Mike Kuchar), confessional (Lynn Hershman Leeson), firing squad (Maclaine), astral plain (Belson), cross-examination (Trinh T. Minh-ha), beat street (Dion Vigne), all-night roadhouse (Conner), “unguided playground” (how Ernie Gehr described the images in his 1991 film, Side/Walk/Shuttle, two weeks ago), and on and on. If “Radical Light”‘s chronologically-based film programs serve an informative purpose similar to the well-labeled sectioning of a botanical garden, the thematic programs come off more as a noisy farmers market where the full variety of produce jams a narrow aisle. As always, the fruit tastes best when you know where it came from.

RADICAL LIGHT: ALTERNATIVE FILM AND VIDEO IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

Through April 30, 2011, $5.50–$10

(Book launch Fri/15, 7:30 p.m.)

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

Berkeley Art Museum

2626 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-0808

bampfa.berkeley.edu/visit

SFBG Radio: The Whitman-Brown debate

Zelda Bronstein
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2
SFBG Radio: The Whitman-Brown debate

Today we look at last night’s debate, at Meg v. Jerry, at Gavin v. Abel, at why such a sorry crew are running for Lt. Gov — and why it’s so hard for independent candidates to run for statewide office. Listen after the jump.

sfbgradio10/13/2010 by endorsements2010

Don Perata — lazy, corrupt and armed

Zelda Bronstein
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0
Don Perata — lazy, corrupt and armed

The East Bay Express, now in independent hands, is endorsing candidates — which is a very good thing in a community where the daily paper is marginal, at best — and the paper’s editors pretty much agreed with us in the Oakland mayor’s race. They endorsed both Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan (along with Joe Tuman), and made about the same arguments we did — Kaplan’s a visionary, Quan’s experienced, either would be fine — and Don Perata would be a disaster. In fact, my favorite part was their “anti-endorsement” — 25 reasons not to vote for Perata — which included some stuff I did know (“he’s lazy” and “he’s corrupt”) and some stuff I didn’t:


Perata has purposely fostered the image of a mobster. Friends and foes have called him “The Don,” he conspicuously carried a gun around with him, and he kept a life-size cutout of Tony Soprano in his senate office. He also posted a plaque in his office that read, “The Peratas,” written like the logo from The Sopranos with a handgun in the place of the “r.”


Don Perata, armed. That’s scary.

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

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

WEDNESDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Dead Sea, Grayceon, DJ Crackwhore Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Femka Project, Sleeping Desires Knockout. 9:30pm, $6. With DJs Omar, Josh, and Justin.

Floater, Trophy Fire, Apopka Darkroom Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Macy Gray Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $25.

*Immolation, Vader, Abigail Williams, Lecherous Nocturne, Pathology DNA Lounge. 6:30pm, $22.

Jason King Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Jolly Good Fellows, Astral Force, Zej El Rio. 8pm, $5.

K-OS, Shad, Astronautilus Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Jane Lui, Goh Nakamura, Melissa Polinar Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Script Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Shadow Shadow Shade, AM Magic, Upstairs Downstairs Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $8.

Shuteye Union, Carcrashlander, Silian Rail Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Skarhead, Alcatraz, Dro City Holocaust, Plead the Fifth, Adlib and Panic Thee Parkside. 8pm, $13-15.

Th Mrcy Hot Springs, Pure Country Gold, Mystery Lights Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Hawksley Workman, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, Paul M. Davis Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

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

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

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

Switch Triple Crown. 9pm, free. With DJ Cheb i Sabbah.

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

THURSDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acorn, Leif Vollebekk, Angel Island Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Atomic Love Bombs, Blisses B, Stove, Friends of the River Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Dan Black, Butterfly Bones, DJ Morale Independent. 9pm, $15.

Chikita Violenta, Leopold and His Fiction, Echo Twin Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Crayon Fields, Magic Bullets, Mystery Claws Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

*Fishbone, Everything Must Go, Loyd Family Players DNA Lounge. 8pm, $14. SF DocFest opening night party.

Larry Garner Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Hoodoo Gurus, Wrong Words Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $26.

Jail Weddings, Lotus Moons, We Are Country Mice Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Erica Sunshine Lee, Camaron Ochs, Kelly McFarling Slim’s. 8pm, $13.

Mental 99 El Rio. 7pm, free.

*Silver Griffin, Manzanita, Orchestra of Antlers Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Brian Andres and the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel Coda. 8:30pm, $10.

Kasey Knudsen, Liza Mezzacappa, Permanent Wave Ensamble Amnesia. 9pm, $5. Part of SFJazz Hotplate Series.

Manhattan Transfer Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $30-75.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Savannah Blue Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

“Songwriters Unplugged Showcase III” Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14. With Bonnie Hayes, Heather Combs, Anita Lofton, Valerie Orth, and Ziva.

Tu Gusto Musical Coda. 8:30pm, $10. With Brian Andres and the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel, Avotcja and Modupue, Alejandro Chavez and Friends, Patricio Angulo and the Sonado Project, and more.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

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

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

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

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

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

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Libra Dance Party Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; (415) 346-2025. 8:30pm, free. With DJs L’Elephant, Tres Lingerie, Steve Fabus, Sergio, Ken Vulsion, André Lucero, and more spinning dance, housem funk, jazz, boogie, and more.

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

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

Paul Oakenfold, Chuckie, Kenneth Thomas Fillmore. 8pm, $35. Spinning electronic.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

Queer Porn TV El Rio. 8pm, $5. A super sexy variety show with Venus in Furs, DJs PRDCT, and Primo, Boylesque by James Darling, a kinky kissing booth, a porno-preview peepshow, and more.

FRIDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Birds and Batteries, Geographer, Holy Rolling Empire Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Blood Red Shoes, Sky Larkin, My First Earthquake Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

Matt Costa, Threes and Nines Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

“Delta Wire’s 40th Year Celebration” Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Jason Derulo, Auburn Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

*Die Antwoord Ameoba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 6pm, free.

Girls, Holy Shit, She’s Fillmore. 9pm, $22.50.

Hollyhocks, Billy and Dolly Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $7.

Indian Jewelry, Clipd Beaks, Late Young Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $10.

Rubblebucket, Kiss and Tell Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Scream, Dusted Angel, Dead Meat Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10-12.

7 Orange ABC, King Baldwin, Maiden Lane, Ladies on a Train Hotel Utah. 8:30pm, $8.

*Kelley Stoltz, Fresh and Onlys, Carletta Sue Kay Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Soundearth, Bpos, Agentstriknine, Mantis One El Rio. 9pm, $10.

Tainted Love Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $23.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Garaj Mahal Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Meredith Axelrod and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Gaelic Storm Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Latin Kings All-Stars Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25.

Native Elements Coda. 10pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Club Dragon Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. A gay Asian paradise. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

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

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

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hella Tight Amnesia. 10pm, $3.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Hubba Hubba Revue: Mad Science DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Burlesque gone mad with the Fuxedos.

Jah Yzer’s Nickel Bag of Funk Birthday Celebration Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop and reggae with DJs Ant-One, Sean G, and Jah Yzer.

Mercury Soul 111 Minna Gallery. 5pm, free. A happy hour filled with DJ sets and string quartets.

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. Doo-wop and one-hit wonders with DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat.

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Synth sounds of the cold war era.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing The Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

*Z-Trip Mighty. 9pm, $25.

SATURDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Big Lion, Mental 99, Clair, True Margrit, Battlin’ Bluebirds Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $10.

Burmese, Kowloon Walled City, Nero Order Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Meklit Hadero Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $25.

Jackie Payne Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

McTuff Coda. 10pm, $10.

Morning Benders, Twin Sister, Cults Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

No Alternative, Everything Must Go, Hightower El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Rogue Wave, Mumlers Independent. 9pm, $15.

Rubblebucket, Katdelic Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Sic Alps, Howlin Rain, Wooden Shjips, Greg Ashley, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound Thee Parkside. 1:30pm, $15. With Carlton Melton, White Manna, Young Prisms, and more.

Scott Alan Simmons, JJ Schultz Band, Glittersnatch Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Street Dogs, Devil’s Brigade, Flatfoot 56, Continental Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

Tainted Love Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $23.

Wiz Khalifa, Yelawolf 8pm, $22.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Ladies of Jazz” Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 8:15pm, $25. With Cathi Walkup, Jennifer Lee, Leanne Weatherly, and Melissa Dinwiddie.

Stella Royale Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Robert Gastalum, Esben and the Witch Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Bootie: Hubba Hubba Revue Pirate Show DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups, burlesque, and more.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. Gay locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm, MyKill, and Dcnstrct.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Blondie K and subOctave spinning indie music videos.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

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

Ok Hole Amnesia. 9pm, $5. With DJs Nay Nay, Muscledrum, and C.L.A.W.S. spinning dance music.

Prince vs. Michael Madrone Art Bar. 8pm, $5. With DJs Dave Paul and Jeff Harris battling it out on the turntables with album cuts, remixes, rare tracks, and classics.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm-2am, $10. DJs Lucky, Paul Paul, and Phengren Oswald spin butt-shakin’ ’60s soul on 45.

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

SUNDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Arrington De Dionysos Malaikat dan Singa, Edmund Welles, Lickets Hotel Utah. 9pm, $7.

*Batusis, Re-Volts Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12-15.

Craig Chaquico Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7 and 9pm, $25.

Lloyd Gregory Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Hot Chip, Sleigh Bells Warfield. 9pm, $38.

Johnny Hi-Fi, Lion Riding Horses, Festizio Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Living Colour, Against the Girl Independent. 8pm, $25.

Amy Obenski Rock-It Room. 7pm, free.

Say Anything, Motion City Soundtrack, Saves the Day, Valencia Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $27.

Toys That Kill, Fleshies, Rank/Xerox Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Laurie Antonioli, Matt Clar, and John Shifflett Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

Clarinet Thing Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; www.theintersection.org. 2pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Candela El Rio. 4pm, $8.

Gayle Lynn and Her Hired Hands Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, dubstep, roots, and dancehall with Vinnie Esparza and J Boogie.

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

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

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

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

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

Pachanga Coda. 7pm, $10. Salsa dance party with DJs Fab Fred and DJ Antonio, with Louie Romero y Mazacote.

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

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

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

MONDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

David Bazan, Wye Oak Independent. 8pm, $15.

Califone, Greg Ashley Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Tia Carroll Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Envy, La Dispute, Touche Amore, And So I Watch You From Afar Café Du Nord. 8pm, $14.

Flyleaf, Story of the Year Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $25.

Jugtown Pirates, Rob and Cindy, Chris Jeffries and the Plastic Fantastic Lovestains Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

*Lydia and the Projects, Dina Maccabee Band, Matthew Edwards and the Unfortunates Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Elissa P., Dot Punto, Moonlight Orchestra El Rio. 7pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Household Triple Crown. 9pm, free. With DJs Mr. White, Kimmy Le Funk, Gabriel Testadorra, and Daren Grant spinning house, disco, techno, hip hop, funk, and soul.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

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

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

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

Punk Rock Sideshow Hemlock Tavern. 10pm, free. With DJ Tragic and Duchess of Hazard.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Cory Chisel, Sahara Smith Café Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Dahga Bloom, Moccreto, Superstitions Five Points Arthouse, 72 Tehama, SF; www.fivepointsarthouse.com. 9pm.

Electric Shepherd, Outlets, Swaybone Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Film School, LoveLikeFire, Fake Your Own Death Independent. 8pm, $15.

Half Handed Cloud, Roar, Carol Cleveland Sings Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Minus the Bear, Tim Kasher, AM Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $24.

Nick Moss and the Flip Tops Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Ash Reiter, Petracovich, Jamie Drake, Carly Escoto Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

Sentinel Beast, Hatchet, Vindicator, Possessor Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Villagers, Dave Smallen, Attachments, Yourstru.ly Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck.

Brazilian Wax Elbo Room. 9pm, $7. With Forro Brazuca and DJs Carioca and P-Shot.

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

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

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

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

 

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13

Commune and resist

Dubbed the Community and Resistance Tour, this two-hour event seeks to connect the BP oil spill, expressions of racism in Jena, La., and organizing women in prison. Come hear Jordan Flaherty and other speakers discuss these and other struggles for justice and liberation. The event is sponsored by Left Turn Magazine and other radical and independent media projects.

7 p.m.–9 p.m., free

Station 40

3030-B 16th St., SF

www.communityandresistance.wordpress.com

 

THURSDAY, OCT. 14

Get radical for our schools

Sisters Organized for Public Education hosts a community meeting to develop strategies for opposing further cuts to the public school system. Come beforehand and get to know people at the buffet with vegetarian options.

7 p.m. lecture, free;

6:15 buffet, $7.50 donation New Valencia Hall

625 Larkin, Suite 202, SF

415-864-1278

 

Food sovereignty for Haiti

Discussion focused on how food justice and sovereignty are working on the ground in Haiti, here in the Bay Area, and elsewhere. The lively event is hosted by Weyland Southon of KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio and features keynote speaker Pierre Labossiere, a Haitian activist with HaitiAction Committee, and performances by Tacuma King and Bay Area youth Arts.

7 p.m., $10

Humanist Hall

390 27th St., Oakl.

510-548-2220, ext 233

 

FRIDAY, OCT. 15

Turn a New Leaf

Gay Shame San Francisco holds this community meeting to discuss the closing of the New Leaf LGBTQ Counseling Center and what it calls the medicalization of life, criminalization of illness, and growth of the prison-military-medical-nonprofit-industrial complex.

11:30 a.m., free

Market and Ninth streets, SF

www.gayshamesf.org

 

SATURDAY, OCT. 16

Our planet, ourselves

“Earth at Risk: Building a Resistance Movement To Save the Planet” is a daylong event designed to highlight the dire threat that reckless industrialization poses to the planet and build a resistance movement around possible solutions. Host Derrick Jensen interviews 10 people who each hold an impassioned critique of overindustrialized civilization and who offer solutions.

9 a.m.–5 p.m., free

Seven Hills Conference Center

San Francisco State University

1600 Holloway, SF

www.derrickjensen.org

 

Foraged Health

Take a class on medicinal plants available in California. The class is taught by Tellur Fenner of Blue Wind Botanical Medicine Clinic. Come learn what Mother Earth has to offer underfoot and overhead.

1 p.m. – 4 p.m., $20 members; $30 public

18 Reasons

593 Guerrero, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/130794

 

Radical Mental Health

This grassroots media project was created by and for people struggling with that catch-all term, “mental disorders.” Filmmaker Ken Paul Rosenthal presents his poetic documentary Crooked Beauty, which documents Jack McNamara’s journey from psychiatric patient to mental health advocate. Benefits San Francisco’s Icarus Project.

6 p.m.–9 p.m., $5–$10 suggested donation

California Institute for Integral Studies

1453 Mission, SF

www.crookedbeauty.com 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alerts@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Scott Wiener’s TIC letter

Zelda Bronstein
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15
Scott Wiener’s TIC letter

EDITORS NOTE: Includes corrections, noted at the bottom of the post.


Scott Wiener, candidate for district 8 supervisor, is sending out a letter to people who own tenancy-in-common buildings, telling them he supports the rights of TIC owners to convert their properties to condos and seeking their support.


And he’s very nervous about discussing it.


Wiener’s support for TICs — which amount to a backdoor way to avoid the conversion lottery — is no secret. But raising money by promising to encourage condo conversions defines him pretty clearly as a candidate of the landlords and property owners and against tenant rights.


A bit of background: TICs are a way for several people to buy a multi-unit building, share ownership and each occupy one of the apartments. The strategy allows people who can’t afford single-family houses to become homeowners — and in theory, isn’t all bad (except that every TIC removes a rental housing unit from the city and indirectly drives up rents).


In practice, TICs have become eviction machines.


That because landlords have found that they can make a fortune by evicting all of their tenants under the state Ellis Act and then selling the place as TICs. And if the TIC owners can convert to condos, they can make money, too.


The big losers — and there are thousands of them — are tenants who can’t afford to buy a TIC, so wind up losing their homes to someone a little better off.


But again: It’s no secret where Wiener stands on the issue. What’s odd is that when I first called him about the letter, which I heard rumors about last week, he told me flat out that there was no such thing. “I hear there’s some i.e. [independent expenditure group] doing something like that, but it’s not us,” Wiener said.


A few days later, I got a (low-quality) copy of the letter, which is on Scott Wiener for Supervisor letterhead and signed by Wiener. So I called him again, and asked about it, and he again said his campaign had mailed no such letter. When I pressed, and said I had what looked like a letter from him that started of “Dear TIC owner,” he said that there might be something coming in the future, but he couldn’t talk about it.


Then he called me back half an hour later to tell me that yes, his campaign was indeed sending a letter to TIC owners seeking support.


Wiener’s always been straightforward with me; we don’t always agree on issues, but he always tells me where he is. So this one’s a little baffling — unless, of course, Wiener is hoping that the tenants who live in D8, and there are a lot of them, don’t know what Scott Wiener is saying to landlords and speculators. Maybe he doesn’t want them to think he’s being funded by TIC money.


But in the end, these things always come out anyway.


UPDATE: My original report called this a fundraising letter. But I admit my copy was hard to read, and Wiener just called me to say that the letter isn’t a fundraising letter, it’s only a letter seeking votes, and went out only to D8. He told me the reason he said he had no such letter when I first called is that it wasn’t finalized and hadn’t been sent out (although there was apparently an i.e. letter to TIC owners, which neither of us has seen). He told me he couldn’t discuss the letter until after it was sent out because “no candidate should discuss his future mail strategy with the press.” Fair enough.


Still: I’ve spoken to Wiener many times, and he’s never been this nervous about talking about what he or his campaign is doing. I think the TIC stuff is sensitive in D8.

Endorsements 2010: State ballot measures

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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25
Endorsements 2010: State ballot measures

PROP. 19

LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

YES, YES, YES

The most surprising thing about Prop. 19 is how it has divided those who say they support the legalization of marijuana. Critics within the cannabis community say decriminalization should occur at the federal level or with uniform statewide standards rather that letting cities and counties set their own regulations, as the measure does. Sure, fully legalizing marijuana on a large scale and regulating its use like tobacco and alcohol would be better — but that’s just not going to happen anytime soon. As we learned with the legalization of marijuana for medical uses through Prop. 215 in 1996, there are still regional differences in the acceptance of marijuana, so cities and counties should be allowed to treat its use differently based on local values. Maybe San Francisco wants full-blown Amsterdam-style hash bars while Fresno would prefer far more limited distribution options — and that’s fine.

Other opponents from within marijuana movement are simply worried about losing market share or triggering federal scrutiny of a system that seems to be working well for many. But those are selfish reasons to oppose the long-overdue next step in legalizing adult use of cannabis, a step we need to take even if there is some uncertainty about what comes next. By continuing with prohibition Californians and their demand for pot are empowering the Mexican drug cartels and their violence and political corruption; perpetuating a drug war mentality that is ruining lives, wasting resources, and corrupting police agencies that share in the take from drug-related property seizures; and depriving state and local governments of tax revenue from the California’s number one cash crop.

Bottom line: if there are small problems with this measure, they can be corrected with state legislation that Assemblymember Tom Ammiano has already pledged to carry and that Prop. 19 explicitly allows. But this is the moment and the measure we need to seize to continue making progress in our approach to marijuana in California. Vote yes on Prop. 19.

 

PROP. 20

CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT REAPPORTIONMENT

NO

Prop. 20 seeks to transfer the power to draw congressional districts from elected officials to the 14-member California Citizens Redistricting Commission, the state agency created in 2008 to draw boundary lines for California state legislative districts and Board of Equalization districts.

Supporters argue that Prop. 20, (which is backed by Charles Munger Jr., the heir to an investment fortune) would create more competitive elections and holds politicians accountable. And indeed, there’s been some funky gerrymandering going on the the state for decades.

But the commission is hardly a fair body — it has the same number of Republicans as Democrats in a state where there are far more Democrats than Republicans. And most states still draw lines the old-fashioned way, so Prop. 20 could give the GOP an advantage in a Democratic state. States like Texas and Florida, notorious for pro-Republican gerrymandering, aren’t planning to change how they do their districts.

That’s why former state Assemblymember John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), who lost his recent bid for the State Senate thanks to gerrymandering and an August special election, calls Prop. 20 “the unilateral disarmament of California.”

It could also create a political mess in San Francisco, Laird said. “An independent commission could end up dividing the city north/south, not east/west. Or it could throw Sen. Mark Leno and Leland Yee into the same district.” Vote no.

 

PROP. 21

VEHICLE LICENSE FEE FOR PARKS

YES

Part of the reason California is in the fiscal crisis it is now facing — underfunding schools, slashing services, and considering selling off state parks — is because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for office on a pandering pledge to deeply cut the vehicle license fee, costing the state tens of billions of dollars since then. It was the opposite of what this state should have been doing if it was serious about addressing global warming and other environmental imperatives, not to mention encouraging car drivers to come closer to paying for their full societal impacts, which study after study shows they don’t now do. This measure doesn’t fully correct that mistake, but it’s a start.

Prop. 21 would charge an $18 annual fee on vehicle license registrations and reserve at least half of the $500 million it would generate for state park maintenance and wildlife conservation programs. As an added incentive, the measure would also give cars free entrance to the state parks, a $50 million perk. Of the remaining $450 million, $200 million could be used to back-fill state general fund revenue now going to these functions, which means most of this money would go to parks and wildlife.

We’d rather see funds derived from private car use go to mass transit and other alternatives to the automobile, but we’re not going to quibble with the details on this one. California desperately needs the money, and it’s time for drivers to start giving back some of the money they shouldn’t have been given in the first place.

 

PROP. 22

LOCAL REDEVELOPMENT FUNDS

NO

This one sounds good, on the surface: Prop. 22 would prevent the state from taking money from city redevelopment agencies to balance the budget in Sacramento. But it’s not so simple: Sometimes it actually makes sense to use redevelopment money to fund, say, education — and only the state can do that. Besides, this particular bill only protects cities, not counties — so San Francisco will take even more of a hit in tough times. Vote no.

 

PROP. 23

SUSPENDING AIR POLLUTION CONTROL LAWS

NO, NO, NO

Think of Prop. 23 as a band of right-wing extremists orchestrating a sneak attack on the one hope this country has for removing its head from the tarball-sticky sand and actually doing something, for real this time, about global warming. Assembly Bill 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, imposes enforceable limits on greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 — and now, Big Oil is drilling deep into its pockets in an effort to blow up those limits.

Funded by Texas oil companies Tesoro Corporation and Valero Energy Corporation in conjunction with the Koch brothers, billionaires who have been called the financial backbone of the Tea Party, Prop. 23 would reverse a hard-fought victory by suspending AB32 until unemployment drops to 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters — not likely to happen anytime soon. In truly sleazy fashion, proponents have dubbed Prop. 23 the “California jobs initiative.”

The environmental arguments for rejecting Prop. 23 are obvious, but this time there’s a twist — even the business community doesn’t like it. Take it from Rob Black of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, which is actively opposing Prop. 23. “There is a fear that clean energy policy is a communist plot,” Black explained. “We actually think it’s a good capitalist strategy.” To most business leaders, AB32 is like the goose that laid the golden egg — it encourages investment in green technology, which is probably California’s best future economic hope. Vote no on 23.

 

PROP. 24

BUSINESS TAXES

YES

Prop. 24 repeals some special-interest tax breaks that the Legislature had to accept as part of the latest budget deal. In essence, it restores about $1.7 billion worth of taxes on corporations, particularly larger ones that hide income among various affiliates. Vote yes.

 

PROP. 25

SIMPLE MAJORITY BUDGET PASSAGE

YES, YES, YES

Prop. 25 would be a step toward ending the budget madness that defines California politics every year. It would allow the state Legislature to pass a budget and budget-related legislation can be passed with a simple majority vote.

It’s not a full solution — a two-thirds vote would still be required to pass taxes. But at least it would allow the majority party to approve a blueprint for state spending and help end the gridlock caused by a small number of Republicans. Vote yes.

 

PROP. 26

TWO-THIRDS VOTE FOR FEES

NO, NO, NO.

Prop. 26 would require a two-thirds supermajority vote in the Legislature and at the ballot box in local communities to pass fees, levies, charges and tax revenue allocations that under existing rules can be enacted by a simple majority vote

It’s supported by the Chamber of Commerce, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, the Wine Institute, and Aera Energy.

Opponents argue that Prop. 26 should be called the “Polluter Protection Act” because it would make it harder to impose fees on corporations that cause environmental or public health problems. For example, it would be harder to impose so-called “pollution fees” on corporations that discharge toxics into the air or water. It would also make it nearly impossible for San Francisco to impose revenue measures like the Alcohol Fee sponsored by Sup. John Avalos. It’s another in a long line of attempts at the state level to block local government from raising money. Vote no.

 

PROP. 27

ELIMINATING REDISTRICTING COMMISSION

YES

We opposed the 2008 ballot measure creating the redistricting commission, arguing that, while allowing the state Legislature to draw its own seats is a problem, the solution would make things worse. The panel isn’t at all representative of the state (it has an equal number of Republicans and Democrats) and could be insensitive to the political demographics of California cities (it makes sense, for example, to have Senate and Assembly lines in San Francisco divide the city into east and west sides because that’s how the politics of the city tend to break).

This measure abolishes that panel and would allow the Legislature to draw new lines for both state and federal offices after the 2010 census. We don’t love having the Legislature handle that task — but we like the existing, unaccountable, unrepresentative agency even less. Vote yes.

 

>>BACK TO ENDORSEMENTS 2010

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

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

WEDNESDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Aces Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Caribou, Emeralds Regency Ballroom. 9:30pm, $22.

Child Abuse, Burmese, Death Sentence: Panda Elbo Room. 10pm, $7.

Continues, Felt Drawings, Bloody Snowman, Ssleeping DesiresS DNA Lounge. 9pm, $11.

Fences, Head and the Heart, Winter’s Fall Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Fortune 500, Gem Tops, Barrel Riders Rock-It Room. 9pm, $8.

Lissie, Dylan LeBlanc Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $15.

Plastic Fantastic Lover, Jugtown Pirates, 21st Century Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Raw Power, Irritones, Neon Maniacs, Corruptors Knockout. 9:30pm, $8.

Angus and Julia Stone, Bhi Bhiman Independent. 8pm, $16.

Hawksley Workman, Connie Lim, Sonia Rao Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Moh Alileche Yoshi’s San Francisco. 9pm, $7. With dance artist Rasa Vitalia.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

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

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

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

VG Plus Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, free. With DJ Skips N Pops and DJ Jessica B.

THURSDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Devotionals, Honeycombs Amnesia. 9pm, $3.

Ferocious Few, Oona Café Du Nord. 10pm, $10.

Flood, Cuzo, Glitter Wizard Eagle Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Glass Candy, Chromatics, DJ Mike Simonetti, Soft Metals, DJ Omar Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $15.

Klaxons, Baby Monster Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $18.

Land of Talk, Besnard Lakes, Suuns Independent. 8pm, $15.

Aimee Mann Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

Night Horse, Hot Lunch, Lecherous Gaze Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Curtis Salgado Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $18.

Tera Melos, Skinwalker, Glaciers Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Heather Combs, Ryan Auffenberg, Mike Gibbons, Walty Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Dark Hollow Band Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

*Devotionals, David and Joanna Amnesia. 9pm, $8.

Grupo Fantasma Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $20.

Leni Stern Coda. 10pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

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

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Holy Thursday Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Bay Area electronic hip hop producers showcase their cutting edge styles monthly.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro.

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

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

Solid Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, free. With DJs Daddy Rolo and Tesfa spinning roots, reggae, dancehall, soca, and mashups.

Studio SF Triple Crown. 9pm, $5. Keeping the Disco vibe alive with authentic 70’s, 80’s, and current disco with DJs White Girl Lust, Ken Vulsion, and Sergio.

FRIDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Abney Park, Vernian Process, Unextraordinary Gentlemen DNA Lounge. 9pm, $23.

Birdmonster, Nervous Wreckords, Kid Mud Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Blank Tapes, Rad Cloud, Tall Tales and the Silver Lining, Ryan Parks Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children McNuggits, Angel and Robot Show, Emily’s Army, Secretions Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $8.

Dainty, Le Verita, Jon Bennett Brainwash Café, 1122 Folsom, SF; www.brainwash.com. 8pm, free.

Greg Dale, Stefan Grant, These Are Not My Ancestors Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

East Bay Grease, Switchbacks Hemlock Tavern. 10pm, $5.

*Fool’s Gold, Bitter Honeys, Soft White Sixties Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

Matt Hires, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, Cloud Nothings Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Aimee Mann Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Bye Bye Blackbirds Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $7.

Nighthawks Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Sea Wolf, Sera Cahoone, Patrick Park Independent. 9pm, $15.

Tom Tom Club, Paul Ryder, Motion Potion Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $26.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Amick Byram CEBC, 801 Silver, SF; www.eventbee.com/view/amickbyramsf. 8pm, free.

Marcus Shelby Orchestra’s MLK Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $20-30.

Mike Dillon’s Go-Go Jungle, Earl and Mike Duo Coda. 10pm, $12.

Paula West with George Mesterhazy Quartet Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness; www.sfperformances.org. 8pm, $30-50.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Heather Ambler and Jim Goodkind Mercury Café, 201 Octavia, SF; (415) 252-7855. 7:30pm, free.

“Americana Jukebox” Slim’s. 8:30pm, $14. With Misisipi Rider, Whisky Richards, Belle Monroe and Her Brewglass Boys, and Bluegrass Revolution.

Meredith Axelrod and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Grupo Fantasma Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $20.

World Percussion Arts Festival Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF; (415) 826-4441. 8pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Club Dragon Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. A gay Asian paradise. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

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

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

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

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Garden Triple Crown. 9pm, $8. With DJs Inland Knights, M3, and Deron Delgado.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Heartical Roots Bollywood Café. 9pm, $5. Recession friendly reggae.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Singapore 60’s The Knockout. 5:30pm, free. DJ Sid Presley spinning rare pop, garage, and freakbeat from Singapore and SE Asia.

Some Thing The Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Strictly Video 111 Minna. 9pm, $10. With VDJs Shortkut, Swift Rock, GoldenChyld, and Satva spinning rap, 80s, R&B, and Dancehall.

Treat Em Right Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop, funk, reggae, and more with DJs B. Cause, Vinnie Esparza, and guest Goldmyne.

SATURDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Awesome Party, Serpent Crown, Evil Survives, Spellcaster Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Cowboy Junkies, Watson Twins Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $35.

Ruth Gerson Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Griffin House, Tyler James Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $15.

Hard Girls, Ivy and Erick Amnesia. 7pm. Part of LitQuake, with readings by Blag Dahlia, Eric Lyle, and more.

Bruce Katz Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

LoCura, Manicato, DJ Funk-C Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Moon Duo, Lilac Amnesia. 10pm, $8.

Particle Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Proj, Psychology of Genocide, Beet, MC Lynn Breedlove Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

Scene of Action, Felsen, Bird By Bird, Kindness and Lies Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $12.

Bob Schneider, Bascom Hill, Smile Smile Independent. 9pm, $20.

Toro Ramire, Ideomeneo, Flash Bastards Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Wires in the Walls, Tenderloins Hotel Utah. 9:30pm, $8.

Zoo Station Blackthorn Tavern, 834 Irving, SF; www.blackthornsf.com. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Amick Byram CEBC, 801 Silver, SF; www.eventbee.com/view/amickbyramsf. 8pm, free.

Anat Cohen and Avishai Cohen Congregation Sherith Israel, 2266 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-50.

Dead Kenny Gs, Black Frames, Earl and Mike Duo Coda. 10pm, $12.

“On the Edge of Dark” Simm Series, Musicians Union Hall, 116 Ninth St, Sf; www.outsound.org. 8pm, $8-10. With Vinny Golia, Rent Romus, and the Lords of Outland.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Café Du Nord. 9pm, $15. Performing the music of Duke Ellington.

Nikki Yanofsky Florence Gould Theatre, Legion of Honor, 100 Legion of Honor Dr, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 2pm, $25.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

World Percussion Arts Festival Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF; (415) 826-4441. 8pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Nuxx. Bootie vs. Booty Call DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups with VJ Brewski, Smash-Up Derby, Adrian and Mysterious D, and Dada.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $5-7. Queer dance party with DJ Nuxx and friends.

Frolic Stud. 9pm, $3-7. DJs Dragn’Fly, NeonBunny, and Ikkuma spin at this celebration of anthropomorphic costume and dance. Animal outfits encouraged.

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

Industry Mighty. 10pm, $25. With DJ Dave Aude and Jamie J Sanchez celebrating Fleet Week.

Lacquer! Milk Bar. 10pm, $5. With DJ Mario Muse vs. DJs Blondie K and subOctave spinning indie dance, electro, new wave, and disco.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

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

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

Spotlight Siberia, 314 11th St, SF; (415) 552-2100. 10pm. With DJs Slowpoke, Double Impact, and Moe1.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $15. Electro-cumbia with DJs El Guincho, El Hijo de la Cumbia, and DJs Disco Shawn and Oro 11.

SUNDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Anberlin, Crash Kings, Civil Twilight Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $20.

Frightened Rabbit, Plants and Animals, Bad Veins Fillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

Terry Hanck Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Liz Phair Independent. 8pm, $25.

Rangers, Universal Studios Florida, Radiant Husk Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $6.

“SF Bike Coalition Presents: Kestral Sound Review, Volume 2: Battle of the One-Man Bands” Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10. With A Magic Whistle, Mallard, Ricky Lee Robinson, Hanalei.

Slow Motion Cowboys, Virgil Shaw and the New Mid-City Band, Domestic Electrics Make-Out Room. 8pm, $7.

*Mark Sultan, Hunx and His Punx, Shannon and the Clams Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Wannabe Texans, Mae McCoy and the Neon Stars Bottom of the Hill. 3pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Frank Jackson, Larry Vuckovich Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

“3rd Annual San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival” Yoshi’s San Francisco. 6pm, $45.

“On the Edge of Dark” Simm Series, Musicians Union Hall, 116 Ninth St, Sf; www.outsound.org. 7:30pm, $8-10. With Vinny Golia, Rent Romus, and the Lords of Outland.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Meredith Axelrod and Craig Ventresco Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

Garett Brennan Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 6pm.

Calliope Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Quinn Deveaux Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10.

Silver Threads, Merle Jagger Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

World Percussion Arts Festival Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF; (415) 826-4441. 6pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Autobahn Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9pm, free. With DJs Shawn Ryan and Pat Les Stache and host Tristes Tropiques.

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. International dub summit with Subatomic Sound System vs. Dubblestandart, featuring Emch and Paul Zasky, plus Devon D and DJ Sep.

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

Fresh Ruby Skye. 6pm, $25. A Columbus Day weekend T-dance with DJ Paul Goodyear.

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

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

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

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

Mini Non Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. Noon-3pm, $5-10. Kid-friendly world music dance party.

Out Loud Festival Wrap Party Thee Parkside. 12:30pm, $6. With DJs Brown Amy and Carnita.

Pachanga Coda. 5pm, $10. Salsa dance party with DJs Fab Fred and Antonio and Orquestra La Moderna Tradición.

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

Remember the White Party Disco Glas Kat, 520 4th St., SF; (415) 495-6620. 6pm, $25. With DJ Jerry Bonham spinning Trocadero Transfer classics.

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

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

MONDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Capsula, Blammos Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Corin Tucker Band Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $17.

Eels Fillmore. 8pm, $27.50.

James, Ed Harcourt Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

Remy Zero, Sanders Bohlke Café Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

*Valient Thorr, Red Fang, FlexXBronco Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Brad Wilson and Rhythm Drivers Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Amnesia. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

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

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

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

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

All That Remains, Asking Alexandria, Unearth, And She Whispered Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $24.

Bettie Serveert, Foxtail Somersault Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

El Ten Eleven, Baths, Sister Crayon Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Audrey Howard, Kate Kilbane, Meredith Axelrod Club Waziema, 543 Divisadero, SF; (415) 346-6641. 8pm.

Passenger and Pilot, Drew Victor, Pirate Radio Viracocha, 998 Valencia, SF; (415) 374-7048. 8pm.

Platinum Live SF Coda. 9pm, $10.

PS I Love You, Gold Medalists, Downer Party Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Teenage Fanclub, Radar Brothers Fillmore. 8pm, $26.50.

Devin Townsend, Project Tesseract Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

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

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

 

Downtown money hits district races

Zelda Bronstein
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42
Downtown money hits district races

Downtown cash is pouring into the district supervisorial races.

Ethics Department filings show that an alliance backed by the Chamber of Commerce, the SF Police Officers Association and United Health Care Workers West is dropping major money on Steve Moss in D10, Scott Wiener in D8 and Theresa Sparks in D6. 

Called the “Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth,” the coalition supports the building of a mega-hospital on Cathedral Hill.

The independent expenditure alliance puts UHW, part of the Service Employees International Union, in the odd position of using membership money to attack progressive politics in San Francisco – potentially undermining years of work by another SEIU affiliate, Local 1021.

Campaign disclosure forms show that the Chamber-Police-UHW alliance has spent $20,000 on bilingual (English/Chinese) door hangers for Moss that feature photos of Chamber of Commerce President Steve Falk and United Healthcare Workers political director Leon Chow.

These same interests also spent $20,000 on robo-calls for Moss, with a heavy focus on Visitacion Valley in an effort to secure the Asian vote in the crowded D10, where there is a strong likelihood that the race will be decided by second and third place votes

Word on the street in the Bayview is that former Mayor Willie Brown is pissed off that the Chamber is backing Moss, instead of African American candidate Lynette Sweet, and that termed out D10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell is angry that big corporations are trying to buy an election in the poorest and most ethnically diverse district in town.

But unlike the rumor mill, the money trail doesn’t lie. And from that perspective this is looking like a replay of the June 2008 election, when big businesses bought support for Lennar’s Candlestick Point/shipyard development by claiming it would create thousands of jobs building condos that most workers can’t afford—jobs that have yet to materialize.

This time the battle cry is for jobs building a massive hospital, even though few workers will likely get service from this hospital, which is designed to serve as a regional center for high-end health care.

So far, the same alliance of police and corporate money has plunked down $17,000 for bilingual (English and Chinese) door hangers in support of Theresa Sparks in D6 and another $17,000 for bilingual robo-calls in support of Sparks.

And so far, Scott Wiener has gotten the relatively short end of the corporate money stick: the Alliance has only spent $15,000 on a door hanger in support of Wiener.

This means that the alliance spent $90,000 in a two-week period in September. The numbers lend credence to DCCC Chair Aaron Peskin’s belief that the alliance has a war chest of $800,000, which it intends to use to put pro-downtown candidates into power.

Asked about the support of this alliance, Sparks, Wiener and Moss gave markedly different replies that reveal as much about each candidate as the money behind them.

D6 candidate Theresa Sparks suggested that the Alliance was spending more on her and Moss’ D10 campaign, because it felt Wiener was further ahead in the D8 race than she is in D6 or Moss is in D10.

And Sparks was openly supportive of the Cathedral Hill hospital project. “I’ve been very supportive of that project,” Sparks told us.

Sparks also observed that it was logical that the Chamber would support her.

“D6 has one of the largest numbers of small businesses and one of my biggest platforms has been economic growth, and I think the Chamber has been very supportive of job creation,” Sparks said.

By comparison, Scott Wiener told the Guardian that he has not taken a position on CPMC’s proposed mega hospital on Cathedral Hill.

“Those kind of issues could come before the Board, in terms of CEQA issues, and so I could be conflicted out,” Wiener said.

When the Guardian noted that the Alliance has so far not spent any money on phone banking for Wiener in D8, Wiener said, “I have volunteers doing phone banking.”

As for Moss, he told the Guardian that said he doesn’t have a position on the mega-hospital.

“I haven’t seen the plan,” Moss said. “But I understand that there seems to be an agreement that would maintain St. Luke’s with about 300 beds, but that there is a deep suspicion among the nurses that it’s not economically viable. And there seems to be a much greater need for a hospital in the southeast.”

Moss, however, is with downtown on other key issues: He supports the sit-lie legislation on the November ballot. He also reiterated that he likes the rabidly anti-tenant Small Property Owners Association, whose endorsement he called a “mistake” during a previous interview with the Guardian.

“Landlords feel that they are responsible for maintaining costly older buildings and that they are not provided with ways to upgrade their units in ways that share costs with tenants,” Moss, who sold a condo on Potrero Hill in 2007 for the same price that he paid for the entire building in 2001, and owns a 4-floor rent-controlled apartment building in D8, near Dolores Park, that he bought for $1.6 million in 2007, and where he lived from December 2007 to February 2010.

Moss refused to provide a copy of the lease on his current rental at Vermont and 18th St—something that the Guardian requested in light of an email from his wife that indicated that the family intended to move back to Dolores Park of Moss loses the race.
‘That’s private information,” Moss said, claiming that he does not plan to move back into his apartment building in D8, if he loses in November.

Moss claimed that UHW endorsed him because his position on politicians and unions.
“I agreed that politicians should get not involved in union politics,” Moss said. “The United Healthcare Workers seem to be a worthy group,” he added. “All they said was that they wanted to make sure that they had access.”

All this campaign money drama is playing out against the backdrop of a punishing battle between United Healthcare Workers West and the rest of SEIU. And as these recent filings show, UHW is spending a huge amount of its membership dues to undermine the city’s progressive infrastructure by trying to elect candidates who are not progressive, even though its progressive sister union has endorsed Rafael Mandelman in D8.

SEIU 1021 member Ed Kinchley, who works in the Emergency Room at SF General Hospital, is furious that UHW is pouring all its money into downtown candidates like Moss, Sparks and Wiener and trying to undermine everything that its progressive sister union is trying to do.

“UHW basically isn’t participating in the Labor Council, it’s just doing its own thing,” Kinchley said.

Kinchley noted that UHW is currently in trusteeship, and is being controlled by its International, and not its local membership, thus explaining why it’s doing this dance with forces like the Chamber and the Building Owners and Managers Association, which have long been the enemy of labor.

“Sutter wants a monopoly on private healthcare, and people like Rafael Mandelman in and Debra Walker have been strong supporters of public healthcare,” Kinchley said, Kinchley also noted that he wants supervisors who are willing to state their support for public health care, rather than dodging the issue and hedging their bets, right now.

“I want someone who can straight-up say, here’s what’s important for families in San Francisco, especially something as important as healthcare,” Kinchley said. “but it sounds like UHW is teaming up with the Chamber and supporting people who are not progressive.”

“And it’s not OK for somebody in D10 to say they haven’t seen CPMC’s plans, when people from D10 use St. Luke’s all the time for healthcare, because it sounds like Sutter wants to change St. Luke’s into an out-patient clinic for paying customers,” he continued.

SEIU 1021 activist Gabriel Haaland accused the Chamber, the Building Owners and Managers Association, UHW and the Police Officers Association of putting together a massive political action committee, “to try and steal the election through corporate spending.”

All this leaves the Guardian wondering how Leon Chow, the political director of UHW, who has done good work in the past on health care issues, is feeling about seeing his photograph spreads all over town alongside that of Chamber of Commerce President Steve Falk on door hangers in support of Sparks, Wiener and Moss.
 
As of press time, Chow had not returned our calls, but if he does, we’ll update this post.

Our queer children are killing themselves: You can help UPDATED

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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35
Our queer children are killing themselves: You can help UPDATED

Update: According to LGBTpov.com, Gov. Schwarzenegger yesterday “signed the Mental Health Services for At-Risk Youth Act (SB 543), which will expand access to essential mental health services for youth ages 12-17. The bill, authored by openly gay State Sen. Mark Leno and sponsored by Equality California, allows teens to obtain counseling without parental consent.” Unfortunately,  “Friday morning, Charles Robbins, Executive Director of The Trevor Project reported a fifth suicide — Raymond Chase, 19, a sophomore at Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island took his own life on Wednesday.” Hopefully kids in California will at least have expanded access to mental health counseling services. Original post is below.

For the fourth time this month, a kid who was harassed by anti-gay bullies has taken his own life. Seth Walsh, an out gay 13-year-old in Tehachapi, in central California, had been transferred from middle school to an independent study program, reportedly because he had been teased relentlessly about his orientation. Ten days ago he was found unconscious at the base of a tree in his backyard, apparently after he had attempted to hang himself. His parents took him off life support yesterday in Bakersfield.   

Even though other kids admitted to harassing Seth — police reported that some of them “broke down in tears” because “they had never seen this outcome,” and wished they hadn’t participated in the bullying — no charges will be pressed against them: their actions do not constitute a crime. 

Horribly, this was no isolated incident.  

According to lgbtqnation.com:

 “On September 9, 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Greensburg, IN, hanged himself at his grandmother’s home. Friends of Lucas said that he had been tormented for years based on his perceived sexual orientation.

On September 23, 13-year old Asher Brown, a gay teen in Houston, TX, came home from school while his parents were at work. He shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment and bullying.“

(Also, teen freshman Tyler Clementi at Rutgers University leaped off the George Washington bridge last Wednesday, after his roommate used a web cam to secretly and maliciously stream him “sharing a gay embrace.”) 

This month, as well, saw the acclaimed launch of queer advice columnist and activist Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign (in direct response to Billy Lucas’ death, as a commenter below points out). It invites LGBTQ people to record videos addressed to queer young ‘uns that tell their stories of surviving school bullies and leading full lives after they graduated. I’m not sure I agree that people need to just wait to get out of school in order to survive — many don’t exactly find gay adult life a catered picnic, either, and why can’t we elders make an effort to help change the world for children in school now? — but I definitely agree that reaching out to isolated young people and letting them know there’s an entire community on their side is absolutely essential. 

It’s infuriatingly sad that these instances seem to be on the rise, right when the country is making progress on most gay activists’ bigtime agendas: repealing DADT and legalizing same-sex marriage. Who cares about those things when our young people are in so much pain that they’re taking their own lives? Yes, ending all discrimination will help people envision a brighter future — let’s just not put all our eggs in one or two baskets, and forget entire segments of our community. 

And while making an “It Gets Better” video is great, there are many fantastic community organizations in San Francisco serving the immediate counseling and housing needs of queer kids, many of whom have run away to avoid anti-gay bullying. Ignoring them only perpetuates the suffering. In a time of reduced aid, these organizations could really use your donations or time. Here are a few standouts:

Larkin Street Youth Services

Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center (LYRIC)

San Francisco LGBT Community Center 

Tenderloin Health

And if you know a queer or questioning young person who is dealing with depression, or seeks counseling, direct them (and donate!) to the great Trevor Project suicide prevention hotline: 1-866-488-7386

California is one of a handful of states that specifically protects kids against anti-gay harassment, but cases are still hard to prove — if you see someone being harassed or know of someone who is being bullied, encourage them to report it to their parents, school counselor, or other professional so that it will be documented. 

*ANOTHER DEATH: Commenter Aaron Baldwin below points to the recent suicide of 15-year-old Justin Aaberg in Minnesota, who was apparently a victim of anti-gay bullying, although I haven’t been able to find out much more than what’s in this Queerty story.

**ANOTHER RESOURCE: Commenter Liz below reminds me about SMAAC, serving queer and questioning youth in Oakland and the East Bay. Her comment raises several great points as well about helping youth now. 

SKI-thal weapon

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4
SKI-thal weapon

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC E-A-SKI has been in the game nearly 20 years, producing tracks with then-partner CMT for Spice 1’s eponymous 1992 debut on Jive Records and subsequently working with the likes of Master P, Ice Cube, and even Dr. Dre. He’s also maintained a career as a rapper. Yet despite several local radio hits and four major-label deals — Priority, Relativity, Dreamworks, Columbia — he’s never released an album. The deals have always soured, yet the astute businessman has always made money on them, as his professional-grade studio in the middle of a huge house hidden beyond the Oakland Hills attests.

I’ve come by for a private screening of SKI’s new video, "No Problems," the first single from The Fifth of Skithoven, an album he plans to release next year through his own label, IMGMI. If "private screening" sounds highfalutin’, "No Problems" is no ordinary clip. It’s a six-minute film, directed by Wayans Brothers associate Michael Tiddes, that recently won an award for best music video at the 13th Okanagan International Film Festival in Kelowna, British Columbia.

"I didn’t just want to keep putting videos out there," SKI explains. "I wanted to do something more cinematic to express the music."

A John Woo-like allegory of rap integrity, "No Problems" finds SKI battling to reclaim his soul from the Devil, wagering the contents of a mysterious Pulp Fictionesque briefcase that he can do it. The "x-factor," as SKI puts it, is the actor playing the gravel-voiced, gangsta Devil: Danny Glover. After meeting years ago in activist circles — SKI frequently mentors inner-city youth — the two recently reconnected when they found themselves members of the same gym. Despite the demands of Glover’s schedule (seven films currently in post-production, according to imdb.com), the Lethal Weapon star made time for the shoot.

"I did it ’cause SKI kept bugging me," Glover laughs during a quick phone call. "No, seriously. I respect what he does with Oakland and the community, and I thought it’d be fun." Judging by his over-the-top supervillain meltdown as SKI emerges triumphant, Glover had plenty of fun with the role.

"It was an honor for him to even want to be in a hip-hop project," SKI says. "I did my first line with him and just froze, like, ‘This is Danny Glover!’ I ain’t gonna lie, I got star-struck! And I’ve done a lot of stuff."

It’s hard to imagine a tongue-tied E-A-SKI, but then again, even Frank Sinatra looks intimidated alongside Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls (1955). Getting Glover in his video is exactly the type of rabbit SKI consistently pulls out of his hat to keep himself relevant in a genre in which artists usually have short self-lives. Even on his own independent label, SKI routinely places videos on MTV, most recently 2009’s "Rare Form" by IMGMI-signee and Frontline-member Locksmith. Although there’s a trailer for "No Problems" on MTV’s movie blog, and SKI plans more film festival screenings, the video remains unreleased.

"I want to make its debut a big thing," SKI says. "Like MTV showing the trailer, having a build up, then boom! — a Jam of the Week. We have a relationship, so they’re open to it. But it’s still in the works because I’m trying to see what’s best for my album."

Like a rap Paul Masson, SKI will serve no wine before its time, and Skithoven is no exception, though he’s already lined up tracks with the likes of Tech 9ine, Freeway, and Ice Cube (whose upcoming I Am the West [Lench Mob] includes a bonus track produced by SKI). "It’s like a puzzle," he says. "I like to get the pieces and now I’m structuring it." But will we finally see an album from the man known as "The Bay’s Dre," or will there be more of the Detox-like delays that have led him to shelve previous discs like Earthquake and Apply Pressure? SKI’s patience is unwavering.

"I never let people dictate to me," he says. "I’m gonna do what I wanna do. I’ve always been a firm believer in, if I can’t do what I want to do at that time and then too much time goes by, it’s time to reinvent."

www.myspace.com/mreaski

Do it Clean

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Do it Clean

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC For over 30 years now, the Clean have been at the forefront of the New Zealand rock scene. Despite some early lineup changes and temporary breakups, the core of the band — Robert Scott and brothers Hamish and David Kilgour — continue to tour together, work on solo or side projects, and occasionally release a new album. For special insight into Kiwi rock and all things Clean, I decided to get in touch with San Francisco expat Barbara Manning, who will be opening for the group at the Independent with her new band, the Rocket 69.

Welcoming me into her house in Chico, Manning pointed to a stack of vinyl and a couple dozen CDs she’d pulled out in a living room stocked full of records. She fancies herself as having one of the most thorough personal collections of New Zealand music around, and after just a quick glance it was easy to see why.

“We probably don’t have time for New Zealand Rock Music 101,” Manning said. “So I’ll just put some Clean stuff on.”

In Manning’s opinion, despite a well-developed and underrated rock music scene that has thrived since the late ’70s, New Zealand rock and roll can really be narrowed down to three essential contributors — the Bats, the Chills, and the Clean. While all three groups have enjoyed various degrees of success, the Clean’s appeal has extended far beyond the borders of their native home to impact everything from ’80s power pop to ’90s indie rock to contemporary garage sounds.

“People incorrectly think that the Clean started rock music in New Zealand,” Manning said. “But they were the first ones to make America notice.”

From the bouncy keyboard melody and chugging bass line of the 1981 hit “Tally Ho” to the more exploratory and expansive feel of some of their later work, the Clean have always excelled at combining a good pop song with a rough-around-the-edges “hypnotic groove,” as Manning put it. Pavement and Yo La Tengo have gone on record singing the group’s praises, and more recently, artists such as Kurt Vile and the late Jay Reatard have made Clean-like recordings.

“The Clean have an edge to them that was especially fresh in the ’80s, when there was a ton of crap out there,” said Manning. “It was great hearing good, urgent, jangly pop songs that cut away the fat.”

Despite loving their music for decades and recording songs for one of David Kilgour’s solo albums, Manning — who lived in San Francisco from 1986 to 1998 — has never seen the Clean perform live. When bassist Robert Scott called to make sure she was coming to the group’s Bay Area show, she jumped at the opportunity to get involved.

“I said, ‘I’ll be there,'<0x2009>” Manning remembered, “<0x2009>’and how ’bout I open for you?'<0x2009>”

Manning’s new project includes Maurice Spencer on guitar, Jonathan Stoyanoff on bass, and Marcel Deguerre on drums. She said that those in attendance can expect a “power pop-heavy” set made up of material from her songbook and a handful of covers. Both her band and the Clean inject a sinister irreverence into the sometimes cookie-cutter world of guitar-driven pop. As Manning put it, “It’s always nice to hear jangly pop music that’s not all paisley and flowery.”

THE CLEAN

With the Rocket 69

Mon/4, 8 p.m., $18–$20

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

It’s raining yuks

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
It’s raining yuks

caitlin@sfbg.com

STAGE Ho there! You with the sad-face! Check out these whoop-whooping upcoming comedy events and turn that ;( onto a 🙂 right quick.

 

THE ENDGAMES

It’s no laughing matter. Twelve San Francisco improv teams will enter Kitchen Stadium — sorry, the Ninth Street Independent Film Center — but only one will rise to the top like clownin’ Mario Batalis. Not only does the winner score the honor of beating less funny peers in front of a crowd (and G-list celebrity judges — the author of this article included), but he or she also gets a four-week run at the venue. We hear the art of improv involves never saying “no” — how you gonna turn down the cutthroat crazy of The Endgames?

Thursdays through Nov. 11, 9 p.m., $10

Ninth Street Independent Film Center

145 Ninth St., SF

www.endgamesimprov.blogspot.com

 

KUNG PAO KOSHER PRESENTS: FUNNY GIRLZ

It ain’t easy being a woman in the stand-up biz. But you’ll never know it watching the four women who will be onstage for this long-running (11 years!) annual lineup from Kung Pao Kosher Comedy. Kung Pao began as a haven for Jews on Christmas and has expanded into a year-round lineup of multicultural, multi-hilarious events. This year’s Funny Girlz include Pakistani native Brit Shazia Mirza (“at least, that’s what it says on my pilot’s license,” she quips); San Franciscan Clara Clayy; Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, one of India’s rare female comedians; and Kung Pao founder Lisa Geduldig. Breaking boundaries, busting glass ceilings? Try being an intelligent, funny female stand-up. Unfortunately, that can be radical enough at times.

Weds/29, 8 p.m., $25

Brava Theater

2781 27th St., SF

(415) 522-3737

www.koshercomedy.com

 

WILL FRANKEN

So your stash ran out, or you’re detoxing, or you’re done with the hallucinogenics, or whatever. Page back through your neatly stacked Guardian Best of the Bay issues and there it is: “Best Alternative to Psychedelic Drugs”: comedian Will Franken. Shall we listen in on one of his absurdist rants? “Every 60 seconds in America, 60 seconds go by. For every one minute, there are 59 others just waiting to form an hour. By the time this sentence is over, I will have finished saying it.” Franken is one of SF’s glorious bizarros, spackling his acts with TV commercials that fold into dual-voiced skits that segue to celebrations of diversity … for profit! Just don’t freak when does his Antichrist voice.

Fri/1 and Sat/2 8 p.m., $20

The Purple Onion

140 Columbus, SF

(415) 956-1653

www.caffeemacaroni.com

 

IMPROVISED SHAKESPEARE

Improv is a strange beast. Improv comedians find more thrill from throwing body and soul into the dark abyss of audience suggestion and happenstance genius than they do from conventional stand-up’s hours in front of the mirror perfecting that ever-so-crucial eyebrow raise or purposefully awkward arm movement. But from the abyss, great rewards they reap. No company in San Francisco has learned this lesson more effectively than BATS Improv, which has been entertaining Bay Area audiences since 1986. This week’s offering? “Warp Speed” is an all-improvised take on Star Trek – no Kirk, no Spock but a flurry of new characters made up on the spot, as well as, we’re sure, some seriously kooky props and alien situations.

Fri/1 8 p.m., $17–$20

BATS Improv

B350 Fort Mason Center, SF

(415) 474-6776

www.improv.org

 

KRISTEN SCHAAL

It’s a tricky line, but one Kristen Schaal walks well: that fissure between cute and psycho. She’s gone and perfected the odd balance on TV’s “Flight of the Conchords” as Mel, the persistent stalker of the eponymous New Zealand folk-humor duo. But standup comedy is where she got her start and laid the groundwork for her nerdy suave. Her sets vary between dark and light — she wants to tell you about her dream! Her sex dream. Featuring Winston Churchill. (The sex wasn’t great.)

Thurs/7–Sun/10 8 p.m., $17.50–$20.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

 

OUT LOUD COMEDY & ARTS FESTIVAL

It may not be the first comedy mélange devoted to our hilarious homos — Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s Valencia Rose Cabaret flounced off with that title in the 1980s — but the four-day Out Loud fest may be the brightest and most focused yet. Shall we lead with the high-wattage names? Castro Theatre will be packed for “An Evening with Sandra Bernhard,” whose Nancy Bartlett on Roseanne was the first recurring lesbian character on American TV. Film snark Frank Decaro from The Daily Show will also be out and about, sassing up a corner of The Lookout interviewing his fellow festivators and performing with a swath of TV feys at the Swedish-American Music Hall for an evening called “Rooftops and Bottoms.” But you don’t gotta be on TV to kick it. Local drag cutup Sasha Soprano has rousted six of the finest becoiffed and becoming spotlight stars for Saturday’s “The Drag Queens of Comedy” at the Castro Theater. How exactly will their shtick be different from the rest of the shows on our fall highlights list? We asked one of the night’s main acts, Miss Coco Peru, a classy redhead who has kept New York City audiences enthralled since the early 1990s with monologues that switch between the weighty and the witty. “Well, it takes us all a lot longer to get ready,” she said. Oh, and you don’t heckle a drag queen — unless you think a stiletto to the sacrum will straighten out your kinks down there.

Oct. 7–10

See website for times, locations, and prices

www.outloudcomedy.com

Dollars or sense?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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28
Dollars or sense?

rebeccab@sfbg.com

It’s no secret that San Francisco is a particularly costly place to live. It consistently ranks in the top 10 most expensive cities nationwide, and it isn’t uncommon to see people renting out their walk-in closets as makeshift bedrooms to make ends meet.

There’s ample evidence that the city’s market-rate housing is out of reach for many families, middle-class workers, and low-income populations, particularly during the recession. Yet the shortage of affordable housing is a problem that is going largely unaddressed at City Hall.

The city’s General Plan estimates that a full 61 percent of new housing would have to be affordable to satisfy the housing needs of city residents, but even the most demanding development standards fall far short, producing only about half that amount. And while most new affordable housing is built for low-income people, a sizable portion is intended for first-time homebuyers with salaries at the highest threshold of affordability. In recent years, about one-third of new “affordable housing” was built to sell to people with “moderate” incomes.

So as big plans are mapped out for new residential developments composed of mostly market-rate units, what’s the strategy for addressing the underlying affordability gap? And will it ever be enough to keep from further turning San Francisco into a city of rich people while its workers are forced to live elsewhere?

This map, which appears in San Francisco’s Five-Year Consolidated Plan, charts concentrations of low- and moderate-income households in the city using HUD 2000 income data. Under federal guidelines, people with low and moderate income could be eligible for affordable housing.

A San Francisco Unified School District proposal to create new housing for San Francisco teachers underscores just how mismatched housing prices are to income. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) estimates that San Francisco renters paying market rate in 2010 would have to earn $56,240 to afford rent a one-bedroom apartment, $70,400 for a two-bedroom unit, and $94,000 for a three-bedroom unit, assuming they spend no more than about one-third of their income on housing.

A starting teacher’s salary in San Francisco is $50,000, so early-career educators may feel the squeeze. A survey of teachers conducted for the proposal found that 81 percent of respondents were renters, most living with unrelated roommates. More than half had plans to relocate in five years to a city where they could afford to be homeowners.

Housing was a hot-button issue at the Sept. 16 Planning Commission hearing on the environmental impact review for a hospital and housing complex that California Pacific Medical Center wants to build near Van Ness Avenue.

“The CPMC EIR fails miserably to analyze the income of the CPMC work force, and where it’s supposed to be housed,” affordable housing advocate Calvin Welch told the Guardian. “It’s a profoundly important question. If they are [providing] jobs that produce incomes that are insufficient to pay for average market-rate housing in San Francisco, who’s responsibility is it going to be to build housing for that workforce?”

 

WHO CAN AFFORD IT?

San Francisco has a reputation as a diverse, politically engaged hub that supports emerging artists, independent thinkers, and advocates for youth, workers’ rights, healthy ecosystems, protections for the most vulnerable segments of society, and hundreds of other causes. Without economic diversity — which is only possible when housing is available to people with a range of incomes — it might be a different place.

NLIHC estimates that 65 percent of San Francisco households are renters, and a significant number are what the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) calls “cost-burdened,” shelling out more than a third of their incomes on rent. To get by, tenants have been known to cram roommates in like sardines, or cling tenaciously to a rent-controlled unit.

In a thick report outlining affordable housing goals for 2010–14, MOH and two other city agencies clearly articulate the housing challenges facing low-income renters. For one thing, the report says rents are going up despite the economic recession and declining home prices. And most people’s salaries don’t stretch far enough to cover those high prices. Even though there are 16 billionaires and some fabulously wealthy CEOs residing in San Francisco, the majority of people work in more mundane occupations like waiting tables, retail, office work, nonprofit jobs, teaching, health care, or public service.

The MOH report notes that despite the city’s relatively high median income, there’s a widening gap between top earners and people on the lower end of the spectrum, so few households actually wind up in that middle zone. “In fact, over a quarter of San Francisco’s population earns under 50 percent of [area median income],” the report states. For individuals in 2010, this translates to one in four people earning $34,800 or less. Compounding that problem are recent unemployment figures indicating that nearly one in 10 is jobless.

About one half of San Francisco’s population is considered low- or moderate-income, the housing report notes, using the standards used to formulate affordable housing prices. MOH uses a tiered income matrix, calculated using federal guidelines, to determine who could qualify for housing below the market rate. If you make $20,900 or less, you’re counted as “extremely low income.” You’re “very low income” if you make between $21,000 and $34,800, “low income” if you earn between $35,496 and $55,700, and if you make between $56,376 and $83,500, you count as “moderate income.” Even these figures are skewed higher because they include data from wealthy Marin County. As a point of comparison, U.S. Census data estimates that the median income for American workers was $29,530 over the last several years.

Most of the new affordable housing constructed in San Francisco is aimed toward people in the lowest ranges, but in recent years one-third was built for those with moderate incomes, which could gentrify some parts of the city. “Supervisorial Districts 3, 6 and 10 had rates of more than 40 percent extremely low and low-income,” the MOH report notes. “These three districts make up the entire eastern part of the city.”

A Guardian analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational and wage estimates for 2009 suggests that about 71 percent of people who work in San Francisco (many commute from less expensive places) earned less than that highest “moderate” salary limit of $83,500. It suggests that the vast majority of the workforce could not afford market-rate housing unless they sought it in pairs or groups.

“A big issue is the inability of San Francisco’s employment market to produce jobs that pay people enough to afford housing,” Welch says. “There’s a mismatch between market-rate income and market-rate housing costs. We’re housing somebody else’s workforce.”

Another stab at assessing the affordable housing need gazes into the future. The Housing Element of the San Francisco General Plan includes an estimate for the city’s future housing needs for the better part of the decade. The city should build 31,200 new housing units to meet its need, the General Plan says, and “at least 39 percent of these new units must be affordable to very low and low-income households. Another 22 percent should be affordable to households with moderate incomes.”

What this adds up to is a full 61 percent of new residential development in San Francisco ought to be dedicated to some form of affordable housing. The calculation reveals a lot about the condition San Francisco is in, but it might as well be chalked up as a hollow academic exercise. Indeed, the report deems this goal “unrealistic.” The reality of the market and chronic government deficits ensures that there will not even be an attempt to meet it.

 

IF YOU BUILD IT

The trouble with affordable housing is that developers won’t build it unless there is a financial incentive. “The only way it works is not in the marketplace,” Welch said. “There’s no such thing as affordable land, affordable sheetrock, affordable architects, or affordable engineers. The profound condition … is that the market cannot produce affordable housing.” As long as developers can make higher profits building market-rate, they will.

That’s why government steps in to subsidize or mandate new affordable housing construction or preserve existing stock. Under the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, if developers decide not to build the required 15 percent of affordable units, they must pay an in-lieu fee that gets funneled into an affordable housing fund.

In a good year, MOH Executive Director Douglas Shoemaker told the Guardian, the city receives $10 to $15 million from these fees, which is used in partnership with developers to build affordable projects. That system hasn’t worked so well lately. Last year funds for affordable housing were depleted instead of bolstered. Developers who paid their fees in anticipation of building new projects requested refunds after their projects were stalled, Shoemaker told the Guardian, so MOH gave back up to $12 million to developers instead of using that money to build new affordable housing.

This year, Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced what he called an “economic stimulus” program that allowed developers to defer payment of in-lieu fees. This guarantees that it will be a long, long time before new affordable housing can be built using those funds. So as it stands, the inclusionary housing law isn’t so effective at producing new affordable housing.

Projects done in conjunction with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, meanwhile, do include higher portions of affordable housing. With all of the planned Redevelopment projects combined — Treasure Island, the Hunter’s Point shipyard, and others — the city can expect to see perhaps 7,000 new affordable housing units in coming years, a portion of which will be condos meant for people in the “moderate” income range. It may well be better than other cities have offered, but it doesn’t begin to address the true need for more than 19,000 units outlined in the General Plan.

Shoemaker noted that San Francisco is a cut above the rest when it comes to affordable-housing requirements. “I just don’t think you could find a city that has more aggressive goals,” he said, noting that in major redevelopment areas, “We’re getting like 30 percent of homes to be affordable on some level.” Yet Shoemaker acknowledged, “the need is intense,” and “there’s more people we would like to serve.”

Olson Lee, deputy executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, also described San Francisco as taking a very aggressive stance on affordable housing. Redevelopment devotes 50 percent of its tax-increment financing to affordable housing, where the state requires just 20 percent, Lee said. And some Redevelopment project areas include twice as much affordable housing as is required by state law, he added. “The city has done a tremendous amount of affordable housing,” he said. However, “the fact of the matter is, there’s a greater demand for affordable housing than the number of units.”

From 2005 to 2009, there were 3,607 new affordable housing units constructed, mostly for people at the lowest end of the pay scale, MOH reports. But in that same time frame, 3,465 rental units were converted to condominiums. One could argue that the city essentially broke even with its affordable housing stock in a decade where housing prices almost doubled. As San Francisco housing prices skyrocketed, the city’s 170,000 rent-controlled units served as the saving grace for the majority who couldn’t afford market-rate, and condo conversions continue to threaten the erosion of that very significant housing stock.

Debra Walker, a candidate for District 6 and a tenant representative on the Building Inspection Commission, told the Guardian that she believes a new financing system is needed for affordable housing. “The argument for development is that we get affordable housing money out of it,” she said, but “the inclusionary doesn’t get us enough housing. We cannot include affordable in those high-rises, because they’re so expensive to build.”

She has talked up the idea of a real estate transfer tax that would create a dedicated fund that could then be used in partnerships with affordable-housing developers. Shoemaker, for his part, noted that having a dedicated revenue stream for affordable housing would be very helpful. A committee comprised of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, Welch, developer Oz Erickson, and Shoemaker was formed earlier this year and actually arrived at a deal, but Newsom ultimately rejected it. Other creative solutions, Walker says, might include reusing shuttered commercial properties or building cheaper by design using different building materials. “It’s about looking at what it is we need,” she said, “and realizing people are in a pinch.”

The greatest complicating factor of the current system, in which the city relies on market-rate development to get new affordable housing, is that even though there a some 40,000 new residential units in the pipeline, developers can’t secure financing to start building them. For now, in the down economy, they only exist on paper.

“They’ll never get built,” Welch predicts, and as long as Newsom continues to extend entitlements for those planned projects in hopes that the market will get a jump, “it’s freezing September 2008 conditions, evidently forever,” limiting opportunities to build something more reasonable.

“They’re zombies,” Welch added. “Who the fuck is going to pay $2 million for a new condo when they can buy a $4 million building for $1 million in foreclosure?” But if the need for affordable housing began to be addressed, he said, something might start to happen. “If you converted half the pipeline units to rental,” he theorized, “they might get built.”

Music listings

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

WEDNESDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Biffy Cylro, Picture Atlantic Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Erin Brazil and the Hitchcock Blondes, Fancy Dan Band, Passenger and Pilot, Middle Maki Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Nick Curran, Siddhartha, Tokyo Raid, DJ Ron Elder Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

*High on Fire, Torche, Kylesa Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

*Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Thee Oh Sees Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $18.

*Judgement Day, Tornado Rider, Definite Articles Independent. 8pm, $12.

Jesse Malin and the St. Marks Social, Moneybrother, Dave Smallen Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Party Owl, Mallard, Burrows Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale, Ari Herstand, Sarah Dashew Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Indulgence Wednesdays Harry Denton’s Starlight Room, Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell, SF; (415) 395-8595. 9:30pm. With DJs Cams, Daniella D, and Bruce.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Kids in America Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9pm, free. With DJs Fuzzprobe and Bryna spinning eighties.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

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

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

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

THURSDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Françoiz Breut, Marianne Dissard, Joanna Barbera Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

*Despised Icon, Misery Index, Revocation, Arise DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $16.

*Easy Star All-Stars, Cas Haley Slim’s. 9pm, $20.

Hans Grusel No Kabinet, Andrea Williams’ Anais Din, Spider Compass, Good Crime All Vulture Band, Organ of Qwerty, pl0c Munster, Mr. Cluck Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Jimmy Eat World, We Were Promised Jetpacks Warfield. 8pm, $40.

Mark Matos and Os Beaches, Ghost Town Refugees, Alright Class Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Matt and Kim, Limousines Fillmore. 8pm, $18.50.

Musashi Trio Coda. 9pm, $7.

Rank/Xerox, Ed Mudshi, Ornithology Eagle Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Mighty Regis, Jesse Morris and the Man Cougars Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

School of Seven Bells, Active Child, Foster the People Independent. 8pm, $15.

Vandella, todayokay Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

MS Collective Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Aiden James Dolores Park Café. 7:30pm, $10 suggested donation.

Misisipi Rider, Toshio Hirano Amnesia. 9pm, $3.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

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

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

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

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

LoDubs Pacific Tour Triple Crown. 9pm, $10. With DJs Clubroot, Jon AD, DJG, and Djunya spinning dubstep and bass.

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

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

Solid Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, free. With DJs Daddy Rolo and Tesfa spinning roots, reggae, dancehall, soca, and mashups.

Wax Candy Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Sergio, André Lucero, Worker, and Travis Dalton spinning disco, funk, house, techno, and more.

FRIDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Costello Sings Lowe/Nick Sings Elvis" Great American Music Hall. 8 and 11pm, $125-200. Benefit for the Richard de Lone Special Housing Project. Austin and Caroline de Lone open the first show only.

Aram Danesh and the Superhuman Crew Coda. 10pm, $10.

Dolorata, Love Darling, Jo Boyer Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8-12.

Drums, Young Friends Independent. 9pm, $15.

44s, Kid Ramos Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Jokes for Feelings, Rockfight Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Jon Langford and Skull Orchard, Walter Salas-Humara, Mini-Mekons Café Du Nord. 9pm, $19.

Jamie Lidell, Zeus, Twin Shadow Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $25.

Mantles, Super Wild Horses, Royal Baths Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm. $8.

Railroad Earth, Toubab Krewe Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

"Rock N’ Roll Sideshow" DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20. With Vau de Vire Society, Eric McFadden Trio, and more.

White Hills, Lumerians, White Cloud Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Roy Ayers Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $15-25.

"Wrack + Rova: On Procedural Grounds" Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; www.kylebruckmann.com. 8pm, $8-12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

*Brass Tax Amnesia. 10pm, $5.

Emil Brynge, Emaline Dalapaix Amnesia. 9pm, free.

Carolina Chocolate Drops, Stairwell Sisters Slim’s. 9pm, $17.

Cornmeal, Devil’s Own, Michael Dean Damron Hotel Utah. 9pm, $12.

*Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.strictlybluegrass.com. 2pm-7pm, free. Featuring the Subdudes, Sarah Lee & Johnny, The Ebony Hillbillies, Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, Jenny and Johnny, George Porter Jr., Papa Mali and Matt Hubbard, MC Hammer, and more.

DANCE CLUBS

Braza! Som.10pm, $10. With special guest DJ Smash spinning an all Brazilian set.

Club Dragon Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. A gay Asian paradise. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Deeper 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With rotating DJs spinning dubstep and techno.

Dirty Bird Mezzanine. 9pm, $20. With DJs Justin Martin, Claude Vonstroke, Christian Martin, and Worthy.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

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

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

Felabration 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With DJs David Harness and Said spinning Afro beat, house, and more in a celebration of Fela Kuti’s legacy.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing The Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Strangelove Cat Club. 9:30pm, $6. An undead wedding with DJs Tomas Diablo, Melting Girl, Xander, and Mz Samantha spinning goth and industrial.

That’s the Blap Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. With Low Limit, Dnae Beats, Benito, Salva, Kozee, Dials, and Bogl, plus host Z-Man.

Vitalic, Teenage Bad Girl 103 Harriet, 103 Harriet, SF; (415) 431-1200. 9pm, $22.50.

SATURDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Melissa Auf der Maur Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

EPMD Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $22.

Futureheads, So So Glos Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $17.

Jukebox the Ghost, AB and the Sea, Hooray for Earth Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Infected Mushroom, Shpongle, Hallucinogen, Dissolve, Liam Shy Warfield. 8pm, $60.

Mammatus, Swanifant, Shari La Las Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

*La Plebe, Meat Sluts, Started-Its, Bloody Hells, Ol’ Cheeky Bastards, Girls with Guns Thee Parkside. 7pm, $10.

John Nemeth Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Railroad Earth, Toubab Krewe Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

Adam Haworth Stephens, Mini Mansions, Sea of Bees Independent. 9pm, $15.

*Sword, Karma to Burn, Mount Carmel Regency Ballroom. 8:30pm, $20.

Peter Wolf Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $27.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Brian Pardo Coda. 7pm, $5.

Stefanie Powers Rrazz Room. 8pm, $45.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

*Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.strictlybluegrass.com. 11am-7pm, free. Featuring Kelly Willis, Carolyn Wonderland, Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys, Joan Baez, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang, Dry Branch Fire Squad, Buddy Miller, Gillian Welch, Hot Tuna Electric, The Wronglers, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, Conor Oberst, and more.

Very Be Careful Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Debaser Knockout. 11pm, $5. Wear your flannel and get in free before 11pm to this party, where DJ Jamie Jams and Emdee play alternative hits from the 1990s.

Everlasting Bass 330 Ritch. 10pm, $5-10. Bay Area Sistah Sound presents this party, with DJs Zita and Pam the Funkstress spinning hip-hop, soul, funk, reggae, dancehall, and club classics.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests. Foundation Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm.

Gemini Disco Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Disco with DJ Derrick Love and Nicky B. spinning deep disco.

Get Loose Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJ White Mike spinning hip hop, rock, indie dance, funk, soul, and more.

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

Kontrol Endup. 10pm, $20. With resident DJs Alland Byallo, Craig Kuna, Sammy D, and Nikola Baytala spinning minimal techno and avant house.

Leisure Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $7. DJs Omar, Aaron, and Jet Set James spinning classic britpop, mod, 60s soul, and 90s indie.

New Wave City DNA Lounge. 9pm, $7-12. The 80s dance party celebrates its 18th anniversary with Skip and Shindog, Lowlife, and Melting Girl.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Sixties soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Souf Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Jeanine Da Feen, Motive, and Bozak spinning southern crunk, bounce, hip hop, and reggaeton.

Soundscape Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. With DJs C3PLOS, Brighton Russ, and Nick Waterhouse spinning Soul jazz, boogaloo, hammond grooves, and more.

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

Spirit Games Vol. 4 Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12-15. With Lagos Roots, DJs Papa Chango and Kush Arora, and bellydancer Jill Parker.

SUNDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

First Aid Kit, Ferraby Lionheart, Sea of Cortez Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Gotan Project, General Electriks Warfield. 8pm, $39-47.50.

Jon Langford, Justin Townes Earle Ameoba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 2pm, free.

Red Hot Blues Sisters Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Vamps Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $41.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Africa Rising featuring DJ Jerimiah Coda. 10pm, $10.

Ely Guerra, Kavarzee, Pastilla, DJ Juan Data Independent. 8pm, $22.

*Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.strictlybluegrass.com. 11am-7pm, free. Martin Sexton, Randy Newman, Earl Scruggs, Emmylou Harris, Kate Gaffney, Indigo Girls, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, MarchFourth Marching Band, Lucero, Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes, Patti Smith, Rosanne Cash, Doc Watson & David Holt, The Avett Brothers, Nick Lowe and his Band, Nathaniel Rateliff, and more.

Kally Price, Old Blues, Emperor Norton’s Jazz Band Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Afterglow Nickies, 466 Haight, SF; (415) 255-0300. An evening of mellow electronics with resident DJs Matt Wilder, Mike Perry, Greg Bird, and guests.

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and guest Robert Rankin’ spin dub, roots, and classic dancehall.

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

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

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

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

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

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

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

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

MONDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alvon Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Australian Pink Floyd Fillmore. 8pm, $41.50.

Clean, Barbara Manning Independent. 8pm, $20.

*Guitar Wolf, Hans Condor, Midnite Snaxxx, DJ Classic Bar Music Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $15.

Pigeon John, DJ Abilities, Dark Time Sunshine Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Talvin Singh presents Tablatronica Live, Janaka Selekta Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $25.

So Cow, Wrong Words, Neighbors Hemlock Tavern. 6:30pm, $7.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Pedro Moraes Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Savannah Blue Amnesia. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

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

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

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

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Aural Logic Sound System, Back Beat Coda. 9pm, $7.

Clare Burson Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Casiokids, Elissa P., Pixel Memory Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

CocoRosie Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $25.

Dead Meadow, 1776 Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $15.

Dead Westerns, Graves Brothers Deluxe, Mermaid Bones, THC: The Human Condition Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Guided By Voices, Times New Viking Warfield. 8pm, $34.

High Castle, Zulus, Scumby Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

"Steve Edmonson Get Well Benefit" Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Touch Me Nots, Hans Condor, Guitar Magazine Knockout. 9:30pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ Johnny Repo and DJ Taypoleon.

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

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

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

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

Matt Reeves on vampires, remakes, and “Let Me In”

Sue Vaughan
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Matt Reeves on vampires, remakes, and “Let Me In”

When Let Me In — the film which dares an Americanized do-over of 2008 Swedish import Let the Right One In — was first announced, fans of the original film let rip synchronized screeches of “Whyyyyy?”, shortly followed by angry, ten-point arguments as to why Hollywood is really sucking balls lately. Consensus was that Let the Right One In, which picked up armloads of festival and critical awards (including the San Francisco Film Critics’ Circle’s Best Foreign Language Film honors), was not a film that deserved to be put through the remake machine. Sure, it only made a couple of million bucks stateside, but maybe it wasn’t the kind of film (unlike 2008’s similarly vampire-themed Twilight) that the masses were supposed to gobble up. After all, it had subtitles. Such a drag.

Matt Reeves, he of Cloverfield (2008) and Felicity fame, is aware of the fanboy-hater contingent that awaits his latest release. His Let Me In is a largely faithful retread, with some recognizable kid actors — Kodi Smit-McPhee (stronger here than he was in last year’s The Road) and tween It Girl Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick Ass) — and the lure of legendary British horror house Hammer (back in the producing biz after decades) helping him attract audiences. I suspect many people who’ll go see Let Me In may not have seen Let the Right One In — either because the original’s release wasn’t wide or lengthy enough, or because of that whole foreign-film bias. (Also, diehard fans of the first film may boycott the new version, just on principle. Hey, I did it with the recent A Nightmare on Elm Street, which in my mind NEVER HAPPENED).

Gotta say, though, Let Me In could have been worse than “faithful,” which is way better than “redundant” or “totally offensive.” Reeves, who penned the script from John Ajvide Lingqvist’s novel (Lindqvist himself wrote the script for the 2008 film) stays true to the material, shifting the action to the snowy New Mexico mountains and injecting some Cold War and new wave flair into the 80s setting. I spoke with him recently, just after the film’s screening at Austin, TX’s Fantastic Fest — coincidentally the very festival where Let the Right One In won the Jury Prize for Best Horror Feature in 2008. He kindly put up with my many remake-themed queries.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: How was Fantastic Fest?

Matt Reeves: It was great. It’s been fantastic (laughs). It’s really cool that they chose Let Me In to open the festival, because this is one of the places that Let the Right One In was incredibly well-received. I knew that there’d be a passionate audience for Lindqvist’s story here, and that also we’d have to past the test of being watched by people who really have a passionate love for Tomas Alfredson’s [2008] film. I thought, if we’re embraced here, and if we pass that test, then that will be a really big hurdle, and the screening went really, really well. It was very exciting.

SFBG: I didn’t realize until I was watching the movie that it was a Hammer Films production. How’d you get hooked up with them?

MR: Well, they got the rights to the film. I think that the Swedish producers met with lots of different places, and I think maybe they were drawn to the idea of being the first Hammer vampire film in over 30 years. But they were the ones who got the rights, is the answer. It’s interesting because I think a lot of people, in terms of their concern about this movie being a remake — there’s a lot of question about it being, “Oh, well, Hollywood comes in with a lot of money and ups the effects, and does all this stuff,” but Hammer is an independent company. And we didn’t have a lot of resources. It was a pretty small film, actually. It was definitely a labor of love, and one that we made in this kind of passionate way.

I think it’s pretty cool to be part of the relaunching of Hammer, especially since as a kid these are the kind of movies that terrified me (laughs). All of the Christopher Lee vampire films, I watched. But I was so afraid of them that my biggest memory of Hammer is actually watching them from behind a chair, late at night on local television. They’d show these Hammer films, and I’d come across them, and there’d be some kind of garish blood or lurid scene. I found them very disturbing! And there’s something ironic about the idea that, after they invaded my nightmares, now I’m somehow part of the relaunching. It’s cool but also kind of ironic.

SFBG: Why do you think vampires are such a consistently popular film subject, especially today?

MR: In the best genre films, you’re able to smuggle in something under the surface that you exploit through the metaphor. In this case, I think Lindqvist was really telling a story about the pain of adolescence and coming of age. But I think it really says something about the vampire myth that all of these vampire stories are so different: True Blood is different from Twilight, which is different from Let Me In. And it really does say something about what an incredibly durable myth that is, that you can translate it into so many different contexts. It can be about so many different things, even though on the surface they seem like they’re about the same subject. I don’t think those three versions of the story could be any more different, and that is very interesting, I think.

It’s always about what you use that metaphor for, and I think what attracted me to this one was that it was such a different way of presenting actually a very realistic story. It seems kind of contradictory to say, but it isn’t. He’s using this horror story, this vampire story, to describe how growing up, being bullied and having that difficulty, essentially feels like a horror story. It’s talking specifically about that kind of trauma, of growing up in that way and it feeling like a nightmare.

SFBG: You mentioned that the audience in Austin embraced the movie, but I feel like there’s been a lot of people, especially on the internet, who’ve been horrified by the idea of remaking Let the Right One In. What’s your response to that reaction?

MR: When I first got involved, it was almost a year before the movie was even released, and nobody had ever heard of it. When they showed it to me — I was trying to get a passion project of mine made, and they felt that it didn’t have an overt genre to it. It was more of kind of an independent character piece. And they said, “You know, right now it’s a challenging time to make this. We really love the writing, but we’re not going to make this. But we’d love to work with you, and we want to remake this film. We’re trying to get the rights to it.” After I watched it, I literally called them up the next day and said, “I don’t know if you should remake this movie. It’s great.” And they said, “Yeah, but we think there’s a way to bring it to an audience that won’t necessarily see a subtitled film, and we love this story. Think about it.”

The thing about it is, I so connected to that coming-of-age story, and then I found out it was based on a book. So I read Lindqvist’s book, and he had actually written the screenplay for Alfredson’s film. He did a very faithful adaptation of his book. And I kind of fell in love with the story even more. I ended up writing to Lindqvist, because I kind of saw this opportunity to take that story and translate it into an American context. He grew up in the 80s, I’m about his age, and he’s talking about this coming-of-age in Sweden. And I started thinking about that kind of story in the 80s America that I remember, the Reagan era. I thought that might be very interesting, and would be a film that essentially would be another interpretation of this story, as opposed to being anything that is trying to step on the toes of this beautiful film.

I entered it with that in mind: I wanted to find a way to do something that was personal and yet still faithful to this story. The level at which I was daunted at that point was just that I felt a responsibility that it had to be done in this way that was very personal, because I didn’t want in any way to seem to be, I don’t know, dissing that movie. I thought it was remarkable. And then when the movie came out, it earned such acclaim. I wasn’t surprised, because I thought, “Well, the movie’s a masterpiece. So of course it’s gonna get that kind of reaction.” But then I was sort of like, “Uh-oh. What did I do?” Because by that point I’d already written the screenplay and I was deeply committed to it. I thought, “Wow, I wonder if people will even give this film a chance.”

On the outside, I totally get it, because most remakes are horrendous, and they’re usually one of two approaches: there’s the soulless retread, where somebody goes through the motions but none of the passions or emotions come through, or the kind of run-roughshod bastardization version of the story, where you kind of use some piece of the story, but you kill all original intentions. I think those are both very dispiriting approaches, and they’re what people are used to from a lot of Hollywood remakes. When people were having that response, I couldn’t even say that I was like, “What’s the matter with them?” I put myself in their shoes and thought, “You know, I would think the same thing.” But I knew I was making it really as a labor of love, and it was a story I cared about. And I thought, well, we’ll see what happens. I know that I’m a fan. So if I’m a fan I feel, not the responsibility to the fans, I feel the responsibility as a fan. And so I was just trying to do as personal and committed version of the film as I could, and I knew the rest would have to take care of itself.

SFBG: Why do you think horror is the genre that’s been remade the most?

MR: That’s a good point. I think because the stories are incredibly visual, and people see a chance to take that kind of story —

SFBG: And make it 3D.

MR: I don’t know about making it 3D. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s more of that. Although now, I see that there is this feeling that adding 3D to something as a magic formula does not necessarily work either. I think [remakes happen] because horror movies are very cinematic, visual storytelling that works at a universal level, but there’s still this sense that, to reach a wider, English-speaking audience, that they could be [remade] in English. [Like the Japanese Ring movies, for example.] I think that people who see those movies, producers and studios, they see how that translation might work, because they see a visual medium, and they see those stories being told, and they think, “Oh, well we know that story works, and it’s not just about language.” I’m gonna guess that’s why, but to be honest with you, I have no idea.

SFBG: Do you think all of the horror ideas are used up? Why can’t people come up with original scripts?

MR: Oh, people can come up with original scripts. We should throw in the towel now if somebody can’t come up with an original script that isn’t a remake.

SFBG: Are there more remakes than there used to be?

MR: There have been remakes always in the history of Hollywood. But I will say, at the same time that there are probably just as many remakes, there are also fewer movies that were ever made than there were in the past. I think, percentage-wise, the amount of remakes is much higher. And it is dispiriting because you do want to see original ideas coming through. Part of me thinks and hopes that it’s cyclical. I know there will always be remakes, but I think that there are some great ones: I love John Carpenter’s The Thing. There are lots of remakes that I think are tremendous.

It comes down to, you understand why a studio or a producer is interested in remaking. You hope that they fall in love with the story first, but they certainly see an opportunity to sell a story to another audience. But it comes down to the intention of the filmmakers and their personal commitment, and if they are connected in a way that you can see their passion, and that there’s something expressed there that’s worthwhile, then that’s totally valid. I think that movies like that are great. And obviously that’s what I tried to do. But I’m totally with you: it’d be horrible if the only thing that happened was that we only saw things that were being remade. The thing is, though, if you’re not seeing a remake, you’re still oftentimes seeing movies are the same movie [as one that came before], with a different title, but the same story, the same plot. It is dispiriting. You want to see some vitality and risk-taking.

As ironic as it sounds, that was what I loved about this story: yes, it’s a remake, but it’s a very risky story. It’s a story on the shoulders of two 12-year olds. It’s an adult story with mixtures of tones. It’s got tremendously dark, adult things with really, really tender childlike stuff. That juxtaposition is quite powerful, and it’s certainly not an easy sell by any means. Who knows how we’ll even do. But I loved Lindqvist’s story, and I connected to it on a personal level. My druthers in life is not to go out and [do remakes]. In fact, I resisted even this one when it was first presented to me. But it was an opportunity to do something, ironically, that felt personal to me.

Let Me In opens Fri/1 in Bay Area theaters.

Redevelopment throws Arc Ecology under the bus

Mary Magee
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3

No one was really surprised when the Redevelopment Commission voted 4-0 not to renew Arc Ecology’s contract to provide environmental information services regarding remediation plans at Hunters Point Shipyard and award it to Circle Point.

Sad and disgusted, yes. But surprised, no. That’s because everyone expected that Commissioners Leroy King, Darshan Singh, Rick Swig and Francee Covington, who are all appointees of Mayor Gavin Newsom, would throw Arc under the bus as payback for Arc’s decision to comment on the EIR for Lennar’s Candlestick Point/shipyard redevelopment plan and oppose the giving away of state parklands so Lennar could build luxury condos.

“The message was that we shouldn’t have commented ” Arc’s executive director Saul Bloom told the Guardian after the Commission vote went down. “But this you’re-either-on-our-side-or-out-of-a- contract attitude is completely bogus. It’s tactics that Republicans use against Democrats.”

And with the exception of Al Norman (who had the bad manners to burst out laughing when Arc got voted out) and Circle Point staffers, who obviously wanted the contract, those who attended the Commission’s September 21 meeting agreed that the outcome symbolized everything that’s wrong with Redevelopment’s current model of governance, in which political appointees, not elected officials, make decisions that majorly impact the city’s land use.

Thor Kaslofsky, Redevelopment’s shipyard project manager, kicked off the Commission’s contract discussions by explaining why Redevelopment Agency staff were recommending that the Commission award the contract to Arc Ecology.
As Kaslofsky explained, Circle Point received 0.2 points more than Arc from the Agency’s scoring panel, “making it difficult for the panel to determine who is the most qualified.”

Kaslofsky noted that there had been “concerns about Arc Ecology’s multiple roles in the community.”
This was a reference to the fact that, besides, providing independent assessments on the Navy’s clean-up plans, Arc produced “Alternatives For Study,” a report that studied alternatives to a plan that Lennar and the city refused to change–a public-private stubbornness that most recently resulted in a lawsuit from the Sierra Club and the Golden Gate Audubon Society.

“But the panel voted for Arc as the most qualified firm,” Kaslofsky concluded, noting that there were “concerns about Circle Point’s ability to ramp up”—a reference to the fact that though Circle Point has offices in Sacramento and downtown San Francisco, it doesn’t have a presence in the Bayview and little-to-no experience of the military base clean-up process.

Bloom then talked about how Arc has been active in the Bayview for decades.

“We’ve been in the Bayview for 25 years,” Bloom told the Commission. “We’ve read every environmental document that’s been produced. And our office is on Third Street,”
Bloom noted that after Arc scored the highest for Redevelopment’s environmental services contract in 2009, the Agency withdrew its request for proposals (RFP) leaving the community without Arc’s services—and without the services of the Navy’s community-based Restoration Advisory Board—at a time when the Navy was pushing clean-up plans that favor capping the shipyard’s heavily polluted Parcel E-2, rather than digging and hauling out the contamination.

As Bloom noted, the Agency’s contract RFP switcheroo, “caused significant costs to the community because we were unable to provide services at the same time the Navy’s RAB was closed down.”

After Bloom spoke, a stream of Bayview advocates testified in support of Arc.

“Arc is more knowledgeable about clean-up issues than most government regulators,” said Scott Madison, a member of the shipyard’s citizen advisory committee.
“The community asked for—and you granted—an independent contractor, a watch dog, not a lap dog,” Madison continued. “Circle Point may be technically qualified, but they are strangers to the Bayview. The Commission should have the courage to hire a watchdog, even at the risk of a nip at the heels.”

Michael Lynes, conservation director with the Golden Gate Audubon Society, which recently joined the Sierra Club in suing to block the city’s EIR on Lennar’s Candlestick/ shipyard plans, told the Commission that he found “the value provided by Arc to be absolutely essential.”

D10 candidate Eric Smith, a member of the Navy’s now defunct RAB, praised Arc for, “being fantastic in sharing the information.”
“There is no other organization that has their history, has done the work they’ve done, and has the relationship with the community,” Smith said, “With the loss of the RAB, Arc was the only place to go.”

Jackie Phillips of ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment) noted that how a lot of organizations come to the Bayview, but unlike Arc, few stay the course.
“I’ve gone to their workshops,” Phillips said. “They sat us down, they’ve taken us on tours, they’ve taken us to the toxic sites, they have shown us what these changes will mean.”

Phillips also expounded on the difficulty of winning the trust of the Bayview community.
“In the Bayview, we don’t know who to trust, because there have been a lot of broken promises,” Phillips said. “Arc did not try to hide things from us. They have a relationship with the community.”

Next up was Claude Eberhart, who said ordinarily he’d be happy to see Circle Point get the contract, because he likes their staff.
“But by rights, I can’t recommend that,” Eberhart said. “The issue is trust.”
Noting that he has worked with Arc since 1987 when he and Bloom fought plans to homeport the USS Missouri at the shipyard, Eberhart said that in terms of getting “clear, concise and correct information,” Arc is “one environmental organization we can rely on.”

Eberhart also noted that last year, when there was pressure to take a large chunk out of the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area so that the city/Lennar could build luxury condos on state parklands, “Arc stepped forward and provided the information we needed to achieve a community consensus and have the Sierra Club come up with the final deal that allowed for an exchange [of state parklands].”

John Eller, an organizer with ACCE, which co-signed the community benefits agreement that the Labor Council negotiated with Lennar to secure living wages and higher levels of affordable housing, noted that Commission President Rick Swig had spoken earlier in the meeting about how Cohen, Newsom’s former economic advisor, was a consensus builder.

“And that’s exactly what Arc has done over the years,” Eller said.

Kate Kelley, director of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter, praised Arc’s integrity.
“The information it provided was balanced, responsive and certainly technically competent,” she said.

“This is not a baseball game,” Kelley continued, referring to Circle Point’s understandable claim that it rightfully won the contract based on the Agency’s scoring process. “This is about relationships and trust—and I trust Arc Ecology to do the right thing.”

Al Norman, who heads the Bayview Merchants Association, was the sole dissenter among Bayview residents who spoke at the meeting.
Norman claimed that Arc’s critique of the city’s EIR was somehow “a conflict of interest.”

But instead of providing evidence to support his claims, Norman launched into a personal attack.
“[Bloom] went against this agency and the community, concerning his alternative plan, when we already had a plan in place,” Norman said. “I think Circle Point deserves a chance.”

The son of the late Jesse Mason, who worked for Arc until he died this summer, spoke in support of Arc and Bloom.
“My father believed in Arc, he trusted Arc,” Mason said.

And Christine Johnson, secretary of the shipyard’s Citizen Advisory Committee, spoke of the pressing need in the Bayview for independent review of technical environmental documents.
“We feel it’s imperative to get immediate advice and expert opinion and to properly assimilate information,” Johnson said, referring to the Navy’s shipyard clean-up plans.
‘We’ve been without that advice for nearly a year.”

Terry Ander, whose organization is a member of the Southeast Jobs Coalition, which includes Brightline, Inner City Youth, Visitacion Valley Community Development Coalition and Young Community Developers, spoke highly of Arc.
“Arc Ecology deserves this contract,” Anders said, noting that the Bayview community has been part of “enough neglect and B.S. to last for ten life times.”

And D10 candidate Kristine Enea, a former member of the Navy’s RaB, urged the Commission to “support Arc and focus on the community’s need for information.”

Bayview community advocate Espanola Jackson stressed the need for accurate information from a trusted source, as opposed to politically comfortable lip service.
“We need the correct information and not the lies and the politics that have been played upon my community,” Jackson said.

After 17 folks spoke in favor of Arc, many of them registering surprise that there was talk of taking the contract away from a small Bayview-based non-profit, Bloom sought to correct any misinformation that had been spread about his organization.
Noting that Arc’s Alternative for Studies “was an attempt to do some problem solving,” Bloom observed how, “Instead, we got painted as an opponent to a bridge. We are a strong supporter of the development and we have put 300 people to work in the Bayview.”

But all this support and clarification was not enough to save Arc from being thrown under the bus.

Commissioners Leroy King, Francee Covington and Darshan Singh joined Commission President Rick Swig in calling for Arc’s ouster. And along the way, they variously accused Bloom of disloyalty, dishonesty and expectations of winning the contract. (The latter accusation was a tad ironic given that there are currently no term limits for Redevelopment commissioners, as evidenced by King who has sat on the commission for decades and has just been renominated by Mayor Gavin Newsom to serve yet another term.)

“I’m opposed to giving the contract to Arc,” Commissioner King said. “Each time, [Bloom] spoke opposed to Redevelopment,” King continued, without proffering any details to support his claims, but giving a disturbing insight into how he thinks organizations that contract with Redevelopment for $282,000 a year (the amount Circle Point will be paid for four years for the environmental services contract) should position themselves on all Agency-related issues.

“[Lennar’s] Kofi Bonner called me and said. ‘Will you chance your vote? We need him’” King said, acknowledging that he didn’t want to award the contract to Arc, when it first applied, four years ago.  “But every time [Bloom] was opposed to basic things to fill that shipyard. He talks against Lennar.”

Commissioner Covington confused the audience by pulling out a copy of the city’s response to comments on its EIR for Lennar’s redevelopment plans, even though the Redevelopment contract in question concerns assessing the environmental issues related to the Navy’s shipyard clean-up plans.

Covington then pointed to, but did not identify, letters that she claimed were from individuals who alleged their names were falsely included in a letter supporting Arc’s EIR comments.

Covington then told the audience that the Agency’s 50 percent small business enterprise standard in contract awards “ is a goal but does not apply to non-profits”.

And Commission President Swig, a hotel and tourism industry consultant, sought to frame Arc, which is respected as an independent non-profit, as an ungrateful consultant.
“As a consultant myself, I don’t agree with all my customers, but I don’t bite the hand that feeds me,” Swig said.

And then the Commission voted 4-0 to reject Arc—and award the contract to Circle Point.

Outside the meeting, a black mood reigned.
“It was political payback,” Scott Madison said. “I think the Commission made a bad choice.”

Mike McGowan. Arc’s senior scientist, noted that public support was 17-3 in favor of Arc.
“But I guess only four votes counted,” he observed. “It seemed that Redevelopment’s staff was in favor of Arc, as was the community except for a few voices, but the Commission kept harping on incidental issues. The truth is that there are no holes in our qualifications.”

McGowan noted that the environmental services contract relates primarily to Navy clean-up.
“Arc never got in the way of the development,” McGowan said. “What it did was participate more fully in the EIR process, and, as I understand, Lennar incorporated some of Arc’s suggestions into their design. But by Arc not having its contract for the last 18 months, a lot of misinformation floated to the top.”

McGowan noted that the spirit of the Agency’s policy on small business enterprises is to foster the development of small firms that are disadvantaged and local.
“And Arc definitely is smaller, less advantaged and based in the Bayview, but it seemed like a lot of personal animosity came up,” he said.

Bloom acknowledged that the loss of this contract is a serious economic blow for Arc.
“They screwed a local small non-profit in the face of a multi-million dollar organization that swathed itself in a couple of small Bayview businesses,” Bloom continued, referring to Circle Point’s inclusion of three local SBEs as sub-contractors in its contract proposal.

Others, speaking off the record for fear of political reprisal, told the Guardian that the Commission’s treatment of Arc—and its refusal to listen to community members and community-based organizations that represent many thousands of local residents—calls into question the need for Redevelopment to exist in its present configuration, if the Commission believes its priority is to fire contractors that disagree with its plans in other arenas.

“The Board can eliminate the Redevelopment Agency and/or change its governance,” a Bayview resident said. “The Bayview is the last frontier of the eastern side of San Francisco. It’s a historically neglected neighborhood that many folks in City Hall now see as the next potential gold mine.”

Fleur De Lis SF shares her spanks

Andrew Lam
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8

Sex blogger Fleur De Lis SF is the friend whose gossip makes you weak in the knees. We published excerpts of an interview with her in this week’s Hot Sluts! Sex Issue, but the full text frontal was so juicy, we giving it to you (hard), as well as some salacious shots from her first domantrix session with the magnetic Lady Ripplee Severin. Fleur is your girl who recounts (to your squeals) stories of meeting men at the grocery store salad bar, only to be ravished by them that night after a day of dirty emails exchanged at the office. The one who is up for any sexual frisson, pleasure, situation, from Craig’s List Casual Encounters to BDSM clubs. What – you don’t have one of those? Well lucky you, Fleur Di Lis SF likes to share. The mysterious online personality — who professes to be a white collar wage slave during the day — is posting her illustrated voyages throughout the city’s sexual underground on the regular.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: How long have you been writing the blog and what inspired you to start it?

Fleur De Lis SF: I posted my first blog on August 6, 2010, a Friday.  The inspiration came from this glorious sexy city.  I went to a sex club and realized that SF has a huge sexual subculture.  So, I just started to explore every aspect of it.  It evolved into a collection of true stories.  It is all non-fiction and yes it all really happened.  In essence SF inspired me and so Fleur De Lis SF was created.  

SFBG: Can you give me a brief description of yourself and how you got involved in sex writing?

FDLSF: I did not ever intend to write about sex.  I sort of stumbled upon it in a way. I am an educated, funny, smart and sexual woman  I have always had an active sex life and I used to entertain my friends with my sexcapade stories.  I am a story teller and so I started to write them down just the way I would tell them aloud.  I realized that my stories would probably entertain more people than just my friends.  Mainly, I want to educate people to embrace sex and sexuality.  I want people to accept who they are and who are we are sexually is a huge part of who we are as people.

SFBG: Do you think there are a lot of misconceptions about women and sex?  

FDLSF: Yes, because I think the misconception is that women don’t want to have sex as much as men.  Women are just as sexual as men and they should own it. 

SFBG: Do you feel that, by talking about sex so openly, you’re making a statement?

FDLSF: I talk about sex openly because it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Our society does not give people a platform to talk about sex.  Sex stories are always a secret, a taboo, something you hide.  Women should be proud about being sexual that is my statement  there is nothing wrong with being an independent, smart, sexual woman.  

SFBG: What are some of your favorite sexy things in the Bay Area right now?

FDLSF: That would encompass a lot of things.  To me SF is sexy in general.  The people, the vibration, the art and the sexual current that burns brightly throughout it.  SF welcomes every walk of life to be sexual and it provides you with a variety of venues to choose from. 

SFBG: As an observer of the local sex scene, what do you think overall? Is this a really sexy place to be right now? 

FDLSF: I think San Francisco is by far one of the sexiest cities in the world.  SF makes it ok for people to be different and doesn’t judge them along the way.  I think it is my great privilege to live in this beautiful city.  I have just scratched the sexual surface of San Francisco and I can’t wait to see more. 

After dubstep

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
After dubstep

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Dom Maker and Kai Campos met a few years ago at university in South London, where they bonded over the emerging wobble of what would become the biggest underground music of the decade: dubstep. Campos introduced Maker to some tracks he was producing on his computer, and in a year’s time they both started making music together. These were the early years, before the duo became Mount Kimbie and would advance dubstep beyond its typically rigid hopscotch game between ferocious bass and synth rattle. Mount Kimbie got down on simple software, played around with some loops, sang a bit, and ventured out of their bedrooms to suck the life of countryside and alleyway sounds into hungry recording devices.

“I started using the computer because it was the only way I could record my music on my own,” Maker tells me during an e-mail correspondence. “I tried numerous times to start a band, but nothing came about. I thought I would try it myself, and I was surprised that some of the material came out sounding so electronic.”

That desire for a band’s musicality transferred over to Mount Kimbie’s unique approach to make songs that reside on the fence — surely now a sad, rotting wooden fence — separating dance hits and pastoral folk. The duo passed a demo of original beats around and caught the attention of Paul Rose, a.k.a. Scuba, head of the independent British label Hotflush Recordings, who signed them even though they don’t produce the sort of face-melting dubstep that incites one-hand-in-the-air frenzies. You can absorb Maker and Campos’ sounds while swinging in a deserted beachside playground. I’d say that it’s music for trains and spaceships, grottos or mountaintops. But hey, that’s just me.

Last year Mount Kimbie dropped the EPs Maybes and Sketch on Glass, both on Hotflush, two stunning odysseys into the future of digital sound. Maker’ and Campos’ efforts have culminated with this summer’s excellent full-length debut, Crooks and Lovers (also on Hotflush), an electronic soundscape prone to the sort of expansive emotional wandering that you typically hear only in dusty blues records.

“As we have progressed as Mount Kimbie, both of us have become more interested in looking at [different] ways of recording and creating sound than just through the use of software synths,” Maker says. “The album is very sample-based, along with a lot of our own field recordings and recorded guitar and vocals.” This amalgamation of live and digital sound taps into electricity of a listener’s nerve endings. Finally, some of the nebulous forms of technological feeling whirling with me — cultivated by years of video game playing and Internet surfing and everyday 21st century living — are affirmed, even vindicated. I’m one step closer to naming them.

There’s something urgent about Crooks and Lovers: It navigates a nebulous emotional tension so present in this age as we use gadgetry to bridge our loneliness and exuberance. “Tunnelvision” opens the record with a foreboding ambient noise. As if to spirit us away to the other side of that warp hole, the humming bass empties into a floral guitar riff marked by layers of scrambled vocals and softly burping electronics.

“[“Tunnelvison” is] made up almost entirely of material that we field recorded in a wind tunnel in the small village that I live in by the sea in Brighton,” Maker says. “It is interesting to work with sounds that have more feeling of place.” This sort of topography of emotion carries over throughout Crooks and Lovers. In “Before I Move Off,” a collage of bleeping keys washes over heavy percussion and a dreamy string melody. The songs continually build in a repetitive momentum toward release. Tension expands, contracts, and lets go, rotating in a feverish order.

Some songs linger within introspection. Round synthesized cords and off-kilter drum patterns enclose “Ruby” and “Carbonated” into an abyss that feels more like a great open sky than a frighteningly deep hole in Guatemalan soil. These cuts are matched by outward expressions of joy: “Mayor,” maybe the only banger on the record, lets the sub-bass erupt in helicopter jolts of energy over whirling keys that burst in gasps of smoke. But dubstep’s integral wobble is toned down here, a softer and less obnoxious gyration of energy that fits into the song’s methodical momentum. And always the fissured vocal cuts emerge from the shadows, coded and manipulated and barely recognizable, but striking — a reflection of our own inchoate inner gurgles of sound-patterns unable to organize themselves into the right words or shapes to let us express what we feel.

None of Mount Kimbie’s singles on Crooks and Lovers stand out with the same level of warmth and power as say “William” or “Serged” on their previous EPs. But the record is cohesive, meant to rise and fall in a full listening experience. It’s the sort of record that connects with common personal experiences, and then stretches them outward. After listening to it a few times — and it is a record that has immense replay value — I understand a bit more where Mount Kimbie is coming from and how they fit into today’s electronic music landscape.

If Burial is the fettered graveyard of the dubstep alter-verse, then Mount Kimbie is the haunted hillside where spectral ghosts, fleshed robots, and strange wisps of ephemeral life make their retreat during an indigo dusk that could just as easily be dawn. There’s something utterly enchanting there. Field recordings of everyday noise and mechanical grind weave slinky shapes around digital drum patterns that limp and leap and do windmills around sampled chirps and spherical bleeps. It’s a soundtrack for dissolution: the rigid lines between human and computer, sentience and thingness, city and nature, all melt away into the gushing blood that pumps through the sewer arteries beneath Mount Kimbie.

If my rampant speculations offend, then let me add that the loose framework of their resonant topography is very open to interpretation. “Mount Kimbie is a fictional creation that is just made up from two different names, both are part of the track name of a song by another band,” says Maker and Campos. “It is quite nice to be under a name that has no meaning and suggests nothing. We are not fans of being blatant with meanings.” And so the sun sets over the old town of dubstep. What’s next?

MOUNT KIMBIE

With Dntel, Asura, Mary Ann Hobbes and DJG

Sat/25, 9 p.m., $10

Mount Kimbie with Dntel, Asura, Mary Ann Hobbes, and DJG

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.inticketing.com

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