International Archives — Page 65 of 100 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Beneficence

January 27, 2010

SUPER EGO The Bay Area nightlife community is pulling out all the stops (and the big guns) to aid the victims of that horrifying earthquake in Haiti this week. There already have been some stellar benefits at Afrolicious, Element, Levende East, and others — and even our local stars of comedy came together at Deco last week to lend support. Below are some more huge efforts, as our club kids continue to spread the love and funds.

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SAN FRANCISCO HEARTS HAITI

It’s a live global funk extravaganza, blending Afrobeat, Latin roll, street strut, and bhangra bang at the Independent, with 100 percent of proceeds going to the Haiti Relief Fund (www.haitirelieffund.org). Featured: Sila, Haiti’s Kalbass Kreyol, Bayonics, Native Elements, DJ J-Boogie, Joe Bagale, Meklit Hadero, Aima the Dreamer, Thank You Julius, DJ Jeremiah & the Afrobeat Nation, NonStop Bhangra, DJ Felina, DJ Amar & Electric Vardo, Gibson Pearl, live belly dancers.

Wed/27, 7:30 p.m., $10. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

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INDULGENCE HAITI CHARITY EVENT

Hey, even the fancy-pants crowd is activated (yes, bottle service and dress code is in effect). Harry Denton’s Starlight Room, high atop the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, is hosting a shindig with Sebastien Presents featuring ambitiously facial-haired stripper-rock DJ Meikee Magnetic and live drummer Mateo G of Heroes, plus funk-rap DJs Nile and Big Bad Bruce. Did I mention this is for charity? All proceeds from Ketel One sales (and a portion of the door) go to the American Red Cross, so drink up.

Wed/27 8 p.m., $20. Harry Denton’s Starlight Room, 450 Powell, SF. www.harrydenton.com

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UNITE FOR HAITI

Surefire Sound, Big Up magazine, and YBR promotions offer up two big rooms and the Venus Tour Bus outside, bumping dubstep (DJs Joe Nice, Ultraviolet, Sam Supa, Blackheart, NTRLD, Dubsworth, Maneesh the Twister, Lud Dub), reggae (Green B and Daneekah, Stepwise, Nowtime Sound, I&I Vibration) and blunted breaks (Coop D’ville, Ripple, Bogl, Jon Holiday, DJ Cruz, General Nao). With classic MCs Emcee Child and Chronic G. All proceeds go to Yele.org.

Thu/28, 10 p.m., $5–$15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

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HAITI AID

Woah. Woah, woah, woah. The city’s best electro, indie, and globaltronics clubs are joining forces to bring the relief, and it’s gonna be a madhouse. All door proceeds will be donated to the Red Cross. Tearing it up live: inimitable rap trio HOTTUB and live electro-bangers Tenderlions. Smashing DJ sets by Bad Neighbors, Eric Sharp, Disco Shawn, Jeffrey Paradise, Nisus, Omar, Richie Panic, Shane King, Sleazemore, Sticky K., and White Girl Lust.

Sat/30, 9 p.m., $10–<\d>$15 suggested donation. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

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HAITI SWING DANCE BENEFIT

C’mon, you know you want to do the Shorty George with Big Bea for Haiti. Join the Queer Jitterbugs (straight people, beginners, and straight beginners gladly welcomed!) for a night of whirling and twirling for the cause. No need to bring a partner, even — there’ll be plenty to go around.

Sun/31, 7 p.m. beginners lesson ($10 suggested donation), 7:30 p.m.–9:30 p.m. dance ($5–$10 suggested donation). Live Art Gallery, 151 Potrero, SF. www.queerjitterbugs.com

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HOPE FOR HAITI

Did someone say classic San Francisco house bonanza? I did. Mark Farina, Miguel Migs, Fred Everything, Garth, Jeno, Julius Papp, David Harness, J-Boogie, M3, Galen, Solar, MFR, Frankie Boissy, Chris Smith, Chris Lum, and Consuelo are taking us back in style. Part of the international House4Haiti.com movement, which is coordinating parties worldwide, this lovely event is giving 100 percent of its proceeds to Doctors Without Borders. It’s also going to wear out my new pumps.

Monday, Feb. 1, 7 p.m.–1 a.m., $10 suggested donation, Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

Miami plays itself

January 27, 2010

ESSAY On opening night of Art Basel, N. Miami Avenue was a sort of Potemkin museum, every storefront packed with art, free wine and cheese, and the usually sleepy street clogged with taxis and limos. Ordinarily no one walks in muggy Miami, but tonight the cracked and littered sidewalks were deep with art patrons dressed in their Midtown Manhattan finery, looking out of place, as if passengers on a private jet that had made an emergency landing on a tropical Caribbean island. Wynwood is an area hard-hit by foreclosures. Up and down N. Miami Avenue, printed signs reading “Cash For Your Warhol” were nailed to the burned-out and boarded-up storefronts that remained untouched by Art Basel, a witty parody of the “Cash For Your Home” signs now popping up all over America’s inner cities.

Off the main drag on the dim side-streets, locals hustled cars into parking places in empty lots. With cheerful yet menacing Dade Country bravado, they ran the classic Miami scam of offering to “watch your car so that nothing happens to it” for $10. Just before Art Basel, newly released FBI crime statistics showed Miami had leapt to the fourth most violent city in the U.S., up from last year’s number 13. As I watched women in expensive heels stepping around a pair of scruffy, tan stray dogs, I reflected on some comments Craig Robins had made to me. When I asked the art mogul about the importance of Miami Vice to the redevelopment of Miami, he told me the 1980s TV show had “transformed the horror of the cocaine cowboy era, which was very real, into the fantasy of the cocaine cowboys, which was about sex appeal and fashion.” Miami’s brand name has always meant third world squalor skillfully repackaged as gritty charm.

“STREET,” “ART,” AND FAIREY TALES

Fittingly, much of the big-name art that served as the backdrop for Art Basel’s week-long street party in Wynwood was ephemeral street art that developer Tony Goldman and Deitch Projects commissioned for the outdoor exhibit, “Wynwood Walls.” Goldman, the famed developer of SoHo, was an early partner with a young and untested Robins in the ’80s and ’90s on South Beach. In 2005, Goldman bought 19 properties in Wynwood. Now, for Art Basel, in collaboration with Deitch, he was turning his warehouse exteriors into “a group of outdoor murals by the best artists in the field that will become an international street art museum.” Participating artists included the Brazilian twins Os Gemeos, SWOON, and most notably, Shepard Fairey of Andre the Giant/Obama Hope poster fame, who contributed an enormous piece on a wall in an empty lot on NW Second Avenue. SF artist Barry McGee also came to Miami to paint a tripped-out, fluorescent pattern of diamonds on an abandoned building farther down the block. Perhaps self-conscious of changing the neighborhood’s look too much, McGee added a wrecked, overturned car in the parking lot as part of the installation.

More “Wynwood Walls” murals by Kenny Scharf, AIKO, Clare Rojas, Jim Drain, and others could be found inside of a sort-of mural park made by opening a metal gate between two of Goldman’s warehouses. I spotted Goldman and Jeffrey Deitch standing together and grinning through the bars at the crowd inside, so I went up to talk to them. The two were something of an odd couple — Goldman relaxed and rumpled, Miami-in-December casual in shirtsleeves and ball cap; Deitch, his usual immaculate suit-and-tie self. Yet they seemed giddy and finished each other’s sentences like a couple in young love. I asked if there were plans to bring the graffiti museum indoors. “Who knows? “Right now — ” Deitch began, and Goldman waved his arm with a flourish and said, ” — we’re just happy to sit back and enjoy tonight.”

The murals on the streets and in the courtyard looked great. Yet, as visually arresting as many of these murals were, there was something about their appearance here in Miami that echoed the hollowness of the “pop-up” bar, Max Fish, that had come down from New York for the week. The Lower East Side bar had recreated an exact replica of itself in a previously abandoned storefront in Overtown just for the week of Art Basel. Similarly, “Wynwood Walls” was a “pop up” event that obscured the fact that the neighborhood had already long been famed for its illegal graffiti walls. Local graff heroes like CROME and CROOK had faced serious prison time for their art. Earlier in the year, a member of the notorious Miami graffiti crew the MSG Cartel died when he fell off a sign onto Highway I-95 while throwing up a tag. In this context, the new murals were corporate street art.

The cynical bait-and-switch in Miami’s stated goal to improve the city’s fortunes through hosting international art fairs was embodied neatly in Fairey’s work in Miami during Art Basel. His wall on NW 2nd Avenue was protected by an armed guard, 24 hours a day. I caught up with Fairey while he worked on another mural on N. Miami Avenue. He stood on a bucket and applied wheat paste while he held forth on the moral purity of street art. “People from Miami who have never seen my work before will be able to check this out,” he told me. “People aren’t intimidated by street art. They don’t need to go to a museum or have the right credentials for interpreting art to view it. If they don’t like it, they can just go up and tag it!”

“So why does your new mural have its own armed guard?”

Fairey stopped what he was doing, got down off the bucket, and looked me in the eye. “Look,” he said. “That wasn’t my idea. That’s Deitch’s [Deich Projects’] thing. If it was up to me, you’d just leave it up. If people tag it, you clean it off. But the mural is on panels, and Deitch wants to keep it clean because they’re going to move it later on.”

In other words, Fairey’s public street art for “Wynwood Walls” wasn’t really public at all. It only appeared to be public. But after the fair was over and the art world public had gone home, it would be moved indoors, possibly to a new graffiti museum, where it would be kept permanently or perhaps even sold.

SUSHI AND SHANTYTOWNS

Art Basel’s quest to absorb Miami’s street authenticity into its vortex continued a couple of blocks away in the middle of Midtown Miami Center, where New York/Miami/Tokyo Brazilian-Japanese fusion restaurant SushiSamba had spent $130,000 to install its own graffiti art show, Graffiti Gone Global.

Midtown Miami Center is a classic failed Miami real estate venture, at two years old an already fading outdoor mall. Its newly-built condos remain nearly half-empty, and many of the storefronts have never been occupied. (For Art Basel, Photo Miami hosted its photography exhibit in the storefront left vacant by the departure of Circuit City). “Graffiti Gone Global” reimagined an enormous, empty retail space by adding a shambling 25-foot-tall replica of a favela, a Brazilian shantytown – what the catalog called, “the infamous self-constructed housing units of the mountainsides in Brazil.” The towering model favela, covered in graffiti pieces, was surrounded by a two-dimensional cityscape of panels with photos of old Brooklyn storefronts, upon which the graffiti artists had also painted. Oddly, this fusion of fake New York and Latin American slums most evoked the feel of the temporary art fair outside on the real Miami streets. The program explained happily that “the favela installation will not only be used as a backdrop for works of art to be installed, but will also be sold as separate units — some even bearing a signature graffiti piece … allowing the viewer to see graffiti in its more natural setting.”

It was quite possible for the viewer to see actual favelas in their natural setting during Art Basel, too. Everyday during the art fair, thousands of art patrons taking the most direct route from the Miami Beach Convention Center to the art fairs of Miami via the Julia Tuttle Causeway drove past a sprawling tent city on the shores of Biscayne Bay just as you enter Miami. After leaving the SushiSamba show, I decided to pull over on the side of the road and check it out.

I counted 12 tents, seven cars, and a sturdy, and a handful of homemade wooden shacks arranged under palm trees along the shore. A long extension cord ran out of a tent toward a generator that sat in a clearing. At the end of the path, there was a café table with chairs around it, set up in the shade about six feet from shore, where I met Luis and Antonio. They told me there were about 100 men in the camp — almost all registered sex offenders who were unable to live anywhere else in Miami because of a strict new law prohibiting sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school. In its fourth or fifth year, the camp has quasi-official government sanction — men are paroled out of prison directly to the camp and some even list “123 Julia Tuttle Causeway” as their address on their driver’s licenses. There was no water source or toilets, though the city came by once a month to pick up the collected garbage residents neatly stacked in bags by the causeway.

I did some mental calculation: the camp was certainly within 2,500 feet of SushiSamba’s fake shantytown. As I drove off, I say the camp in the rearview mirror, dwarfed by the silhouettes of new and half-empty condos in the distance, and I thought about another thing Robins had said about Miami: “It’s America’s city of the future.”

By Saturday, Dec. 5, the last gala night of Art Basel, it was clear that sales had rebounded from the previous year and that the art world was surviving the global economic collapse. Perhaps fittingly, the blue chip sale of the fair was Andy Warhol’s iconic screen print of that old cultural revolutionary, Mao, for $2.2 million by Van De Weghe Gallery. The message of the fair was clear: the market can absorb anything. It will prevail.

This same aura of indestructibility makes Art Basel seem impervious to cultural critique as well, though every year some artists still try. This year’s most notable attempt was “Littlest Sister,” an exhibit at Spinello Gallery. Modeled after the layout of the convention center floor, it turned the tiny Wynwood gallery into a series of booths, using Art Basel Miami Beach’s official gray-and-pink color scheme. Pieces in this “sister” fair, like Pachi Giustinian’s amusing Valve, poked fun at Art Basel or the art world itself. Valve was simply a compressor air-hose nozzle sticking out of the gallery wall — perfect for blowing up balloons of art fair hype. The enervating Art Forum Accident 2005 by Kristofer Paetau demonstrated the difficulty, though, of taking on the hot air of the large art fairs. The video depicted Paetau making himself projectile vomit on the floor of the 2005 Art Forum Fair in Berlin, among the world’s foremost galleries. The movement of the art dealers around Paetau freezes — but just for seconds. By the time one of them has led him to a chair and covered the puke with a couple sheets of paper, his action has been completely forgotten. The film ends with Paetau dry heaving, completely ignored by eager art buyers.

But the most provocative element in the exhibit was “Window Shopping Series,” a group of eight color photo portraits of Miami prostitutes taken on the streets. Artist Zach Balber told me that he intended the photos as a commentary on how artists are exploited by galleries. Balber paid each of them women $10 to pose, with the condition that if their portrait sold in the show, Balber would split the money with the woman and her pimp. “I wanted to flip the script on the collectors because I feel prostituted as an artist.”

Seen in this context, the photos were something of a cheap, sexist, juvenile prank. It would be impossible for any viewer to equate the 26-year-old white artist’s privileged suffering at the hands of art galleries to the degradation of life on the streets faced by the gaunt, toothless, and likely drug-addicted women Balber photographed. But the photos had a life of their own beyond the artist’s limited conception. They were perhaps the most haunting artwork I saw during the entire art fair. Balber had inadvertently invited the real world of Miami’s streets — the real favela — into the city of art. Despite their haggard appearance, the women had composed themselves with a certain quiet dignity for the camera, and the effect was to transfer the sense of voyeuristic shame that Balber should have felt onto the viewer, presumably a collector, who is roaming Miami’s shantytown streets only for the weekend. As they stared into the camera and, in turn, into Balber’s eyes, I saw the city of Miami itself looking back at the art world and asking, “Who really benefits from all this?”

In the end, artists that attempt to subvert Art Basel often simply add to its spectacle. On the last night of the fair, Brooklyn-based artist Molly Crabapple staged a hit-and-run event that promised “a guerilla live-drawing insurrection in South Beach”. Her Twitter communiqué announced a bold takeover of the Art Basel streets. “At exactly 8 p.m., a limo will disgorge a cavalcade of depraved performers — burlesque queens, dominatrixes, midgets — on the streets for you to draw.”

Crabapple is the accomplished illustrator and performer behind the highly successful Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, a series of live events/drawing classes usually held in bars or clubs, where burlesque dancers perform and are drawn by the audience. When I met up with her that night around 6 p.m. at the Art Whino fair, though, Crabapple was distraught and texting. Several of the performers had already canceled, and she was looking for a new location in Wynwood, having decided against taking on the upscale art world on South Beach. Finally, Crabapple rounded up four burlesque performers in colorful, spangle-y underwear, big wigs, and six-inch heels. They were joined by a dreadlocked fire dancer and the promised midget, who — with his cut-off sleeves, black hair hanging over his eyes, and excessive eye makeup — looked like a tiny Alice Cooper. The unlikely team looked like something out of an ’80s hair metal or wrestling video. Sadly, at the last minute, they were unable to rent a limo and had to settle for a rented SUV to take them to the event.

The SUV pulled over and blocked traffic around 8:15 on a side street in front of the Miami Aqua art fair. Crabapple paced around the car, calling out to the crowd that this street takeover was a performance of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. The chauffer took pictures with his cell phone from the driver’s seat, while the four dancers and the midget assumed their first pose in the street in front of the car. With an audible “whoosh!” the fire dancer whipped his flaming torches on chains through the air, inches from the audience members’ faces. A crowd started to gather in a circle around the flames and the posing performers. The girls and the midget would stand absolutely still until Crabapple commanded, “Change!” and then would assume a new pose. When the notebooks were distributed through the crowd, the event at last made a bit of sense. It was actually pretty fun. My deformed stick figure drawing of the midget’s rugged pout, as seen through a veil of flames, serves now to remind me of the night when the fair drew to a close. When I see it, it is as if the camera is pulling back and the credits are starting to roll.

VANISHING POINT

Later that same night, I found myself at Max Fish. The fake bar had been hosting packed shows with live bands all week, and their Web site had posted notice of a Saturday-only “top-secret show tonight!” As the bar grew crowded, there was spirited debate about whether the top-secret guest would be Miami local Iggy Pop, last year’s Art Basel hit No Age, or someone else. I reflected that Max Fish the art installation had reached the height of its masterful success. This crowd was drinking in a bar that wasn’t even real, that wouldn’t be around the very next day, waiting to see a fantasy band that existed only in their mind.

Sometime after midnight the whole scene turned back into a pumpkin for me, though, when it became clear there was not going to be a show at all. As I walked back to Wynwood, the Overtown locals were still frantically hustling the last couple of trickle-down dollars out of the art fair tourists. I thought of the staring eyes of the women in Balber’s photos and wondered where they were tonight. I passed a construction site where a condo stood half-built or perhaps half-destroyed. It looked like art. Someone had nailed a “Cash For Your Warhol” sign to it.

On 22nd Street, as a stray dog trotted amiably past SWOON’s still-unfinished mural, I flashed back to Crabapple’s event and to the image that seemed to sum up the entire Art Basel week: four glamorous models and a rocker midget posing as if time had stopped, in front of a group of maybe 10 people trying with great concentration to draw them while they, too, were orbited by a much larger ring of perhaps 50 people taking photos of the people drawing the performers.

Half the mortgages in the state were underwater. Perhaps in a generation or two, due to rising sea levels, Miami would be too. From sandbar to paradise and back to sandbar in a century-long hallucination, a perfect work of art. What were the last words of the historians of Atlantis? I thought of Molly Crabapple’s parting words to the crowd that had gathered. As the girls and the midget got back into the SUV, promptly at 8:30, she waved her arm dramatically to the crowd and said, “Now we will vanish like a puff of smoke!”

Wednesday: MTC’s $70 million question, plus the return of the Bay Bridge west span bike path

January 26, 2010

By Rebecca Bowe

Sustainable transit advocates are rallying the troops for two back-to-back meetings tomorrow in Oakland: The Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). While they’re technically separate bodies, BATA and the MTC are comprised of the very same people, wearing different hats at each meeting.

Bike advocates packing the BATA meeting will voice support for a bike path on the west span of the Bay Bridge, a possibility that has been studied but not yet funded. (Plans for the new east span include a bike and pedestrian pathway, but it would end at Treasure Island.) Since the toll authority will be discussing raising bridge tolls at tomorrow’s meeting (up to $6 during rush hour on the Bay Bridge), bike advocates want some of the possible new revenue to go toward a bike path. But there’s a catch: BATA has said it might be prohibited from allocating funding for this type of project.

Andy Thornley, program director at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, says this detail is crucial because until it’s clear whether BATA could use those possible funds, “everything is a little bit paralyzed.” The message bike activists plan to deliver tomorrow, he said, is this: “Don’t forget — you must finish this bridge for everybody, not just people in cars.”

Those turning out for the MTC, meanwhile, plan on urging commissioners to reallocate $70 million in federal stimulus dollars to cash-strapped Bay Area transit agencies, instead of taking the chance of losing it.

The $70 million had been earmarked for the Oakland Airport Connector, a proposed link between the BART system and Oakland International Airport. But the project, which has gone forward with no shortage of controversy due to the $500 million price tag, was dealt a blow in mid-January that threw the $70 million into question.

The mighty uke

January 20, 2010

MUSIC The ukulele has gone viral, again, via YouTube phenomena like the adorable Uke Kid and virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, who both perform interpretations of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” — originally by George Harrison, himself a professed uke-aholic.

The history of the ukulele is choppy. It has passed through waves of cultural significance and kitsch popularity. Its origins are commonly misremembered — it first appeared in Portugal as a small Madeiran guitar. Brought by Portuguese cane workers to Hawaii in the 19th century, it was given its new name of “ukulele,” which translates to “jumping flea.” King Kalakaua, a major proponent of the Hawaiian cultural renaissance, fell for the instrument and incorporated it into performances at royal gatherings.

The ukulele floated from Honolulu to the Bay for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, where “the Hawaiian Pavilion” launched the first continental fad for Hawaiian songs and the uke. The Bay Area soon became an international gateway for the ukulele.

Today’s vibrant ukulele scene continues this legacy. The current crop of Bay-based ukulele players have little connection to the instrument’s Hawaiian history and utilize the uke for a wide spectrum of musical genres: the Corner Laughers play bouncy indie power pop; Tippy Canoe incorporates early country music, ’30s jazz and ’60s pop; Ash Reiter accents her jazz-infused indie folk with the ukulele; Uni and Her Ukelele takes ideas from burlesque dancers, comedians, light rock and soul; and in a haphazard YouTube video made by Sandy Kim, ubiquitous garage rocker Ty Segall plays a ditty on the uke.

“As soon as I picked up the uke, I started writing a song,” explains vocalist-ukester Emily Ritz of HoneyComb. “Its size was perfect, and I liked the challenge of making a uke sound dirty, dark, and dangerous.” Influenced by everyone from Billie Holiday to Joanna Newsom, Ritz turns the ukulele into something mysterious and haunting.

Some Bay Area ukesters emerge from the kitsch appeal that the goofy-ginger TV personality Arthur Godfrey left in his wake. Godfrey learned to play the ukulele from a Hawaiian shipmate while he was in the Navy, and when he went on television to promote the new plastic ukuleles, more than 9 million ukuleles were sold, in the second great-wave of ukulele popularity.

Camp taste has an allure, and Uni and Her Ukelele — deliberately spelled the British way, according to Uni, because “I just like how the ‘e’ and ‘l’ loop together in cursive” — mine that appeal by including mermaids, rainbows, and unicorns as subject matter. “While I was learning the basic chords on the ukulele, I found it easier to write more quirky songs,” Uni explains via e-mail from New Zealand. “Fun is a good place to start.”

Post Godfrey, the ukulele’s second wave ended with the annoying falsetto voice of Tiny Tim. Baby boomers threw their plastic strummers into their closets, associating the instrument with all things cheesy. Many guitar distributors ceased making ukuleles during the 1990s, but a third resurgence began in the early aughts, due in part to two significant events: Paul McCartney played the instrument at a tribute concert after George Harrison’s passing, and Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwoole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World” medley became familiar through countless radio-plays, movies, commercials, and weddings. Now even the iPhone has an application that mimics and teaches ukulele chords.

Introductions to the ukulele are often random rather than contrived, much like the ebb-and-flow history of the instrument. Ash Reiter, who fronts a band of the same name, got a uke as a gift from a friend in high school. She later acquired her own, only to have it stolen at a performance with fellow ukesters. She stopped playing, but eventually inherited another one from her grandfather. “It’s one that he got while he was stationed in Hawaii for a while,” Reiter says. “It’s just one of the few things that we shared, and I remember he used to sing a lot of dirty songs that he learned in the war on it, like ‘One-Eyed Dick.’ Then when he was in the nursing home, I would play the ukulele for him.”

Like all good things, the ukulele comes in different shapes and sizes: there are traditional pear-shaped ukes; pineapple-shaped ukuleles that produce a mellower sound; DIY ukuleles made from cigar boxes and plastic lollipop knobs. Godfrey designed the first baritone ukulele, and then there is the “banjulele” popularized by Englishmen George Formby during the ’30s and ’40s. Formby is also an inspiration for Karla Kane, vocalist and ukulele-player of the Corner Laughers, who describes its sound as “twangy” and explains that she found her 1930s banjulele at an antiques fair in San Rafael.

Berkeley-based ukulele artisan Peter Hurney specially designed Tippy Canoe, a.k.a. Michele Kappel-Stone, a ukulele. “At the time I was playing a ukulele that was all black, and he came up to me and said, ‘You need an ukulele that matches your personality,'<0x2009>” explains Kappel-Stone. The two collaborated and chose imagery from a 1913 Bauhaus poster, which circles the ukulele’s sound hole.

Musically, each of these Bay Area musicians advance the uke in different ways. “We put the ukulele on almost every track on the new album,” explains Kane of the Corner Laughers. “But a lot of people don’t even recognize it because we put a lot of cool effects on it. I have an electric ukulele, so I put it through an amplifier, and a space-echo box, and distortion.”

Uni and her Ukelele write songs on the uke, whereas Ash Reiter uses the ukulele only occasionally, often as an accent or a layer within the song. Outside the Bay Area, the instrument has been used by everyone from Kate Bush to Elvis Costello to tUnE-yArDs in recent years. As Tippy Canoe says, “I love that it is such a universal instrument. Anyone can pick it up and play it.” In the Bay Area, and beyond, an increasing number of bands are doing exactly that.

HONEYCOMB

With Annie Bacon and her Oshen, the Spindles

Wed/20, 9 p.m., $7

Elbo Room

647 Valencia St., SF

www.elbo.com

THE CORNER LAUGHERS

With Photons

Sat/23, 7:30, $7

The Make-Out Room

3225 22nd Street

www.makeoutroom.com

ASH REITER

Feb. 17, 8 p.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell St., SF

www.rickshawstop.com

TIPPY CANOE, MIKIE LEE PRASAD

With Anna Ash

March 4, 9:30 p.m. $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk St., SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

Year of the yahoo

January 20, 2010

CULT FILM The year of cinematic enlightenment was 1967, with movies as disparate as Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, I Am Curious (Yellow), The President’s Analyst, and Week End all proclaiming the dawn of a truly adult era. Of course, not everybody was on that page. Some quite possibly couldn’t make out the text if they tried.

Clinging to its own personal celluloid Dark Ages was Shanty Tramp, which flew under reviewers’ radar while making a tidy profit from drive-in and grindhouse patrons with zero use for Godard. One of those movies that, once seen, can never be forgotten (though some might wish they could), it’s steadily accrued a cult following, with a legit Sinister Cinema DVD release last year and one-off screenings like Thrillville’s at the Four Star this week.

Advertised “for mature adults only!” with tellingly ungrammatical lure “Crowds! Talk! Bold! Visual! Naughty! Action!” Shanty Tramp is lurid in the most immature ways possible. Like much pre-hardcore smut, it remains all the smuttier for coarsely suggesting while seldom showing more than an occasionally topless woman in a spotlessly white, low-cut cocktail dress.

This incongruous apparel is form-fitted to titular tramp Emily (Lee Holland), whose meanderings around her small Florida bayou burg one long hot night wreak no end of havoc. The tawdry melodramatics encompass motorcycle-gang rumblage, attempted rape, miscegenation, phony rape accusations, racist lynch mobs, public inebriation, incest, belt-whuppin’, car theft, murder, mobsters, parricide, and a bogus evangelical salvation that triggers one of the greatest closing lines in film history.

Actually, this movie is wall-to-wall quotable, whether it’s Emily telling her soused paw “Find yourself a nice warm place in the gutter and sleep it off” or a bit-part biker opining “Crazy like, man! Like me and my chick wanna find a dark corner someplace, daddy-o.” Yet for all its absurdity, the feature is scarcely less sophisticated in its chiding attitude toward Southern race relations than Oscar’s overrated 1967 Best Picture pick, In the

Heat of the Night.

Presented by exploitation king K. Gordon Murray’s loftily named Trans-International Films (distributor mostly of dubbed Mexican horror and European fairy-tale cheapies), Shanty Tramp isn’t just so-bad-it’s-good. It’s so bad it’s great. One senses at least some participants knew how trashy their Tramp was. It’s anyone’s guess whether the variably amateurish (but vivid) actors

were in on the joke, or its butt.

Despite its rising infamy, little is known about Shanty Tramp‘s creation. Whatever became of Holland or fellow cast members? Director Joseph P. Mawra made just three more movies, with titles like Savages from Hell (1968). Even the enterprising Murray was out of the biz by 1974, dying of a heart attack just five years later after the IRS seized all his film prints for tax evasion.

One Shanty Tramp resident did make it to the proverbial big time. Mawra’s assistant Bob Clark graduated to directing ’70s horror cult classics (including 1974’s Black Christmas), hit a gusher called Porky’s (1982), then spent two decades shinnying up the pay-pole and sliding down the integrity one. His career ended with double-whammies The Karate Dog and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (both 2004). The comfortable retirement such labors had earned was cut short in 2007 by a drunk driver. Now that’s a trajectory even beyond K. Gordon Murray’s sordid imagination.

SHANTY TRAMP

Thurs/21, 8 p.m., $10

Four Star, 2200 Clement, SF

www.thrillville.net

Clouds and mirrors

January 20, 2010

Carl Fisher turned a mosquito-plagued, malarial sandbar into Miami Beach, “The Sun and Fun Capital of The World,” in less than a decade — dredging up sea bottom to build the island paradise, an all-American Las Vegas-by-the- Sea, where Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason partied and Richard Nixon received two Republican nominations for president. Art Deco hotels lined the beach, bold as Cadillacs, defiant in the path of hurricanes, their confident Modern lines projecting postwar American power. Morris Lapidus, the architect of the Fontainebleau Hotel, understood that the skin-deep city Fisher conjured out of neon and sunshine was a stage for the leisure fantasies of the ruling class. When his iconic Collins Avenue hotel opened in 1954, Lapidus said he wanted to design a place “where when (people) walk in, they do feel ‘This is what I’ve dreamed of, this is what we saw in the movies.'”

For many years in Miami, that movie was Scarface, as Colombian drug lords shot it out in mall parking lots. A shiny new downtown skyline of banks and condos emerged during a recession economy from the laundered proceeds of drug smuggling. Today the cocaine cowboys have all died, or done their time and moved on. Their descendents are selling art.

Art Basel came to Miami Beach in 2002, and the rise of Miami as an international art world capital neatly coincided with the glory days of the housing bubble. According to Peter Zalewski of Condovulture.com, around 23,000 new condo units were built in and around downtown Miami during the Art Basel era — twice the amount built in the 40 previous years. The success of the international art exhibition has inspired a fever dream among city leaders, in which Miami’s skyline and neighborhoods are radically transformed by art world-related real estate development.

Cesar Pelli’s $461 million, 570,000-square-foot Carnival Center for the Performing Arts opened in 2006 in a moribund section of downtown known for its proximity to the faded 1970s-era mall, the Omni. That same year, the Miami Art Museum (MAM) hired as its new director Terence Riley, the former curator for architecture and design at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Heralded in his new city as “the Robert Moses of the new Miami millennium,” Riley initiated the development of Museum Park. This 29-acre complex would be home to new buildings for the Miami Art Museum and the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium. It was to be built on the site of Miami’s last public waterfront park, Bicentennial Park, long a sort-of autonomous zone for Miami’s homeless residents. While the new MAM is not scheduled for completion until 2013, by 2007, a 50-floor, 200-unit luxury condo development, 10 Museum Park, had already been finished across the street.

Art Basel Miami Beach brings an estimated 40,000 people to Miami each year to look at art, party, and more important, look at celebrities as they look at art and party. The art fair, once dubbed “the planet’s highest concentration of wealth and talent,” generates an estimated $500 million in art sales each year. Yet while Miami leaders seek to present to the world Basel’s image of wealth and glamour, the iconic image of South Florida today has abruptly become the newly built and entirely empty condo development. Zalewski estimates that 40% of the condo units built since 2003 remain unsold. Florida’s foreclosure rate is the second-highest in the nation, and for the first time since World War II, people are leaving Florida faster than they are arriving. Just months before this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, a New York Times cover story told of the lone occupant in a towering Broward County condo that had gone entirely into foreclosure. As the fair approached, I wondered: can art really save a city like Miami? Or is its reliance on art world money part of the city’s collapse?

ATLANTIS CITY

At this year’s Art Basel, the glitz was, of course, played down, what with the global economic collapse and Art Basel’s main corporate sponsor, top Swiss bank UBS, now the subject of an FBI probe on charges of helping billionaire clients evade taxes. In the weeks before the opening of the fair, it was announced that the legendary UBS free caviar tent would not be open this year. One could not help but notice that the ice sculptures on the beach itself, hallmarks of the recent boom, were gone, already as fabled as the lost city of Atlantis.

Still, the epic “Arts and Power” issue of Miami magazine hit the stands on time, luxurious full-color spreads on oversize glossy pages. Press from all over the world wrote a month’s worth of previews leading up to the event, and on the day of the VIP vernissage, TV news reporters from all continents were there to dutifully record the arrivals of billionaires, celebrities, and fashion models at the Miami Beach Convention Center. As Art Basel Miami Beach 2009 opened, the floor of the convention center was eerily quiet, with hardly a sound except a hushed, determined whisper a bit like paper money being rubbed together. It seemed to me like everyone was doing her or his part, as if the whole art fair was a sort of performance art piece demonstrating the vigor of the free market in dark times.

This murmur ceased completely, and the air filled with the muted clicking of camera shutters, as Sylvester Stallone passed me on the convention floor. Stallone, too, was stoic, his expression hidden by dark sunglasses at mid-day. He stopped next to me and began to talk to TV news cameras about his own paintings on display, presented by the gallery Gmurzynska. Close-up and in person, clumps of the actor’s face, now just inches from mine, seemed to lay inert and dead like the unfortunate globs of oil paint he had arranged on his own canvasses. Pieces of puffy cheek hung limp and jowly under taut eyebrow skin, Botox and facelifts fighting age for control. For a paparazzi flashbulb moment, I thought I saw in Rambo’s sagging face a metaphor for the doomed efforts to prop up a whole failing way of life.

The Miami Beach Convention Center’s 500,000 square feet had been blocked out into booths and concourses that comprised a pseudo-city of art. As a city, it most resembled some parts of the new Manhattan — crowded yet curiously hollowed out and lifeless, under relentless surveillance, full of nostalgia for its former, more vital self. Groundbreaking art that once had the power to shock, move, or startle — Rauschenberg’s collages, Richard Prince’s Marlboro men, Barbara Krueger’s text block barrages — were presented here as high-priced real estate. In the city of art, time stood still; Matisse, de Kooning, and Duchamp had all retired to the same street. A sailor portrayed in a 2009 life-size portrait by David Hockney seemed to gaze wistfully across the hall toward a 1981 silk-screened print of a dollar sign by Andy Warhol. The life-size portraits by Kehinde Wiley felt just like the city in summer, how the radio of every passing car seems to be blasting the same song. A print of a photo of Warhol and Basquiat together in SoHo stood catty-corner to a 1985 Warhol paining of the text, “Someone Wants To Buy Your Apartment Building.”

I wondered if this city of art offered clues as to the kind of city that developers imagined Miami might become.

ART MAUL

Across Biscayne Bay, away from Miami Beach in the city of Miami, the fever dream of art was turning a down-and-out neighborhood in the poorest city in America into an outdoor art mall. Fifteen satellite art fairs and 60 galleries staged simultaneous exhibitions in Miami during the week of Art Basel Miami Beach. Virtually all this art was crammed into about 80 square blocks north of downtown Miami, bisected by North Miami Avenue. The area included Miami’s African American ghetto, Overtown, the warehouse district of the low rent Puerto Rican neighborhood, Wynwood, and the resurgent Miami Design District up to its shifting borders with Little Haiti.

Walking up North Miami Avenue and Northwest Second Avenue the night before the exhibitions began, I could see the usually moribund main drags transforming before my eyes. Warehouses vacant the other 50 weeks of the year were hastily being turned into galleries or party spaces. Solely for Art Basel week, the Lower East Side hipster bar Max Fish had built an exact replica of its Ludlow Street digs in an Overtown storefront. In Wynwood, the paint still appeared wet on a fresh layer of murals and graffiti running up and down the streets.

The modern-day Carl Fisher most perhaps most responsible for dredging this new art world Miami up from the bottom of the sea is Craig Robins. “I transformed the image of my city from Scarface into Art Deco,” is how Robins put it when I talked to him in the Design District offices of his development firm, Dacra. Widely considered to be the person who brought Art Basel to Miami Beach, Robins is, at a youthful 46, the man who perhaps more than anyone embodies the values and tastes of a new Miami where art and real estate have become as inseparable as fun and sun. Robins takes art seriously — he is a major collector of artists like John Baldessari, Elizabeth Peyton, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Richard Tuttle — and he made his name and fortune by restoring the derelict Art Deco motels on his native Miami Beach during the early 1990s into the international high-end tourist destination now known as South Beach. Today Robins is one of the principal owners of the warehouses in the Miami Design District and Wynwood.

With his casual dress, shaved head, and stylish Euro glasses, Robins could easily fit in as one of the German tourists who flock to the discos on the South Beach that he developed. His offices offer a rotating display of the works of art in his collection. Around the time of Art Basel, his staff had installed many works by the SoCal conceptual artist John Baldessari, in honor of Baldessari’s upcoming career retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London. Robins was friendly and projected a relaxed cool; when I’d met him on the convention center floor and asked for an interview, he gave me an affectionate shoulder squeeze and said, “Call my assistant and we’ll hang, OK?” A few days later, he grinned somewhat impishly when I sat down said, “I notice you sat in the Martin Bas chair,” as if it was a Rorschach test. Honestly, it was the only piece of furniture in the design collector’s office that looked dependably functional.

Not surprisingly, Robins was adept at explaining the art theory behind his development projects, and the ways Dacra is bringing art, design, and real estate together “to make Miami a brand name.” He said he learned from the successful preservation of historic buildings in his South Beach projects that consumers were starting to reject the cookie-cutter commodities of the mall and “starting to value unique experiences” made from “a combination of permanent and temporary things.” On the streets of the Design District and Wynwood, Robins sought to bring together restaurants, fashion showrooms, and high-end retail stores, surrounded by parties, international art shows, and public art. “This gives a richness to the experience of Miami,” Robins said. “That is the content that Miami is evolving toward right now.” I thought of Lapidus, the Godfather of Art Deco, and his quote about the Fontainebleau: In Wynwood, Robins wanted to turn not just a hotel lobby but an entire neighborhood into a place where visitors feel they have entered a movie.

Robins grew more excited as he discussed his vision. “With my work at Dacra, I build communities,” he told me. “When we brought Art Basel here, Miami immediately became recognized as a world-class city.”

Others are skeptical. “Miami will always be an attractive place for people to visit in December, but you can’t graft culture onto a city,” says Alan Farago of the widely read blog Eye On Miami. “It’s a mistaken belief that art can be a totem or a symbol of a great city without there being any substance. Miami will continue to be a pretender because there is no investment in local culture beyond building massive edifices like the Performing Arts Center.”

Indeed, the center — now renamed the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center, in honor of a wealthy benefactor — has become perhaps another in a long line of tragicomic failed improvements for the area. Bunker-like, it has been likened by some architecture critics to an upside-down Jacuzzi. Though 20 years in the making and long heralded by boosters as a building that would instantly make Miami a “world-class city,” the center has operated at a deficit and suffered from poor attendance since its opening. The future of Museum Park suddenly turned cloudy a month before the opening of this year’s Art Basel, when Miami Art Museum director Terrence Riley unexpectedly resigned days after unveiling the architects Herzog and de Meuron’s final model for the new buildings. Riley sited a desire to return to private practice as an architect, but online speculation had it that he already knew cash-strapped Miami would ultimately be unable to raise the money to build the museum.

Farago wonders what would change if the city did have the money. “In Miami on one hand, we have public school teachers using their own salaries to buy art supplies for their students,” he says. “Then we have these one-off art events and a performing arts center that brings us road shows of Rent, Annie, and 101 Dalmatians.”

When I asked Robins what lasting benefits Art Basel provided to the community, he cited a roster of new restaurants opened by star chefs and fashion showrooms. “It encourages people to come down here year-round,” he said. It was clear that Robins was discussing amenities designed for tourists, or for a speculative community of future residents who might be enticed to come to Miami.

I suggested that there were actually two different communities in Wynwood with potentially opposing interests. I told Robins I’d attended a community meeting held by the activist groups Power University and the Miami Workers Center. There, Wynwood residents discussed how their rents had doubled, how the city continued to neglect the facilities at Roberto Clemente Park, and how the increased presence of police escorting the art patrons to the new galleries had made them feel like they didn’t belong in their own neighborhood.

Robins, who had been very loose and calm during the first 45 minutes of our talk, became visibly upset. He launched into a sustained rant. “Well, look, active communities are a good thing,” he said, shaking his head. “But just because a community is active doesn’t mean it is rational. You go and sit in these meetings and half the people are nuts. Half are just there because they are miserable people and they have some soapbox to go and rant about all these things that they think they have some entitlement to attack government about when they never do anything themselves for anyone. I find that 20 percent of these people are totally irrational, mean-spirited people who would never agree with anyone about anything good.”

“What kind of people do you mean?” I asked.

“People who feel disenfranchised! They’re very angry. They have psychological problems and they want a forum to vent. I’m not implying we should stifle democracy — I’m a big believer in it! I’m saying these people should not be taken seriously by enlightened people!”

Robins rose to look at a clock on his desk. Not surprisingly, our time was up. I politely excused myself to the restroom. When I returned it was like no tantrum had ever happened. Robins’ impish grin even returned as I asked him to pose for a photo in front of one of his Baldessari prints. I had him stand in front of Cigar Smoke to Match Clouds That are Different (By Sight/ First Version), a 1972-3 triptych of photos. As the artist looks into a mirror at clouds over his shoulder in the sky, he blows out a mouthful of twisting cigar smoke, trying to match their elusive shape in the air.

GIMME DANGER

Out on the streets of Wynwood, it was still mostly quiet, expectant, but the scene at David Lynch’s art opening gave one a sense of what the coming weekend would be like. Lynch was presenting photos from a book of staged stills he is releasing with a CD of music by Danger Mouse. Hundreds of hipsters, mostly locals, guzzled free booze and gawked when new Miami resident Iggy Pop showed up, shirtless as usual, in a Miami Vice-style blue blazer. As I watched the Godfather of Punk pose for pictures with his arm around Danger Mouse, I thought of the city of art, the Jackson Pollacks and Donald Judds together at last, on the convention center floor. I had the eerie feeling that the Internet had come to life.

I left the opening and walked at random through the streets of Wynwood at 2:00 a.m. While looking at murals and thinking about the changes Art Basel had wrought, I unexpectedly came upon a small street party of people I knew. The side street intersection was lit up like a stage with an enormous floodlight. Street artist SWOON stood high on a scissor lift, painting a mural on a warehouse wall, while below a couple of kids dressed like old tramps wrestled with a big, brown stuffed bear.

The bear split open, and thousands of tiny white particles of stuffing poured out into a warm Miami breeze, swirling high into the air and reflecting the glow from the floodlight. I ran to join the kids, who were now playing and laughing in the sudden snowstorm. A guy I recognized from Brooklyn rode by on a tall bike. Bay Area artist Monica Canilao went careening by on a scooter with no helmet. A cop drove by and smiled and waved. Guys from Overtown with cornrows and gold teeth were laying out a spread of huge chicken legs on a flaming grill. Some punk kids from Brooklyn sat on the curb, drinking beer. A girl in the group laid her head on a boy’s shoulder as they all watched SWOON work.

For a second, I flashed back to the Stallone scene earlier in the day, back on the convention floor. Here, in this intersection, I had found something living and breathing. This could be the real city of art. But I also knew the SWOON mural was commissioned by Jeffrey Deitch. I stood and watched the painting and the dancing and laughing and eating in the fake December snowstorm and contemplated what the city would be like if we all had the free time, resources, and permission to take to the streets and transform the city any way we pleased. Was this a window to a different world where anything might be possible?

Or was it just art?

The second half of this essay will run in the Jan. 27 Guardian. *

Some Muni layoffs postponed for a month

January 19, 2010

By Rebecca Bowe

Two dozen Muni parking control officers (PCOs) can hold onto their jobs for another month, the Municipal Transportation Agency Board decided Tuesday. The PCOs are those ever-popular uniformed workers who go around issuing parking citations (maybe you’ve seen the bumper-sticker slogan — “Good people, Tough jobs” — just after getting slammed with an outrageous parking ticket). A round of 24 PCO layoffs was previously scheduled to go into effect at the end of this week, as part of midyear cuts made to balance the city budget. But the MTA Board agreed to push the layoff date back to Feb. 26, according to Steve Stallone, a spokesperson for Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents the workers. MTA spokesperson Judson True confirmed that the layoffs were postponed.

The PCO layoffs represented a hot topic at last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, when a long line of city employees formed during public comment to raise objections. Abraham Davis, a PCO, told supervisors that each officer issues an average of 30 citations a day, which he said brings in roughly $2,000 for the city. Accounting for all 24 workers, “that’s $960,000 a month,” he said, “and that’s a low average.” He described one of his own bad days: “That’s the day I got spit on, almost run over, and came back to the hall with 60 citations,” he said. “Do the math.”

Stallone says today’s MTA Board decision was made because SEIU Local 1021 presented new figures outlining why cutting city workers who generate revenue for the city is a bad business decision. “We crunched the numbers differently,” he told the Guardian. “[MTA] staff just plain had it wrong.” We haven’t heard back yet on how SEIU’s numbers differ from MTA’s numbers — but it’s clear that the MTA Board is willing to look at what the union brought to the table.

At Sup. Chris Daly’s request, a hearing will be held at Wednesday’s Budget & Finance Committee meeting to discuss Muni layoffs and “the impacts on public health and safety concerns,” according to the meeting agenda. Some of those concerns revolve around the fact that PCOs direct traffic in emergency situations or special events when they aren’t issuing parking tickets, Stallone explained. And since another group of affected Muni workers includes the people who clean the buses, maybe the case will be made that riding around in grimy buses won’t exactly help San Franciscans combat swine flu and other contagious maladies. That’s just a guess. “It’s a good guess,” Stallone said. But he took a broader view, saying, “You’re going to lose ridership if the buses suck.”

Dick Meister: Know your class

January 5, 2010

‘Know your class’
By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)

When Jack Hall died, flags were flown at half-staff throughout Hawaii, longshoremen closed the ports of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego for 24 hours, and thousands of other workers in Hawaii and all along the west coasts of the United States and Canada also stopped work to show their respect.

That was 40 years ago. Yet Jack Hall, one of America’s greatest labor leaders, is still remembered fondly by many working people. In Hawaii, where he was regional director of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, many ILWU members had a paid holiday on Jan. 2, the date of his death. Others will have a holiday on the Feb. 28th anniversary of Hall’s birth.

City Living

January 5, 2010

BEST LOCAL BLOG

N Judah Chronicles

Crazies, crashes, coins! Public transportation is way more exciting than the freeway. Share your tales of Muni woe (and whoa!) with blogger Greg Dewar.

www.njudahchronicles.com

BEST LOCAL WEB SITE

BeyondChron.org

Politics, current events, and culture coverage for people smart enough to distrust “the Voice of the West.” BeyondChron.org is the FUBU of local news sources.

www.beyondchron.com

BEST TATTOO ARTIST

Freddy Corbin, Temple Tattoo

Corbin’s work can be found on the arms and necks of hipsters from here to China. Intricate, original, and flawless. In a word: gangsta.

384 17th St., Oakl. (510) 451-6423, www.templeoakland.com

BEST TATTOO SHOP

Black and Blue

The renowned female artists at B&B may not be able to pee while standing (we think), but they’ll man up to the needles any day. The best tattoos in town.

381 Guerrero, SF. (415) 626-0770, www.blackandbluetattoo.com

BEST POLITICIAN YOU LOVE TO HATE

Gavin Newsom

Is it his creepy smile, his perfect hair, or his questionable policies and personal life that irritates everyone so much? Whatever it is, the dude fucking sucks.

BEST POLITICIAN

Gavin Newsom

Er, time out. Newsom’s not that bad. He’s kind of sexy in a Zoolander sort of way, and he did stand up for gay marriage. Plus, he’s related to Joanna. Thumbs up, dude. You win.

BEST LOCAL NONPROFIT

Homeless Prenatal Program

Being homeless sucks, but homeless and pregnant? Come on! Luckily, HPP has been assisting homeless mothers-to-be with their situation since 1998.

2500 18th St., SF. (415) 546-6756, www.homelessprenatal.org

BEST EMERGING ARTIST

Nanci Price Scoular

Scoular’s abstract painting style is like an onion, revealing layer after layer of the artist’s struggle to belong.

www.pricescoular.com

BEST ART COLLECTIVE

Liberation Ink

Liberation Ink designs T-shirts and accessories for liberal arts majors, cute activists, and hippies with fashion sense. All profits support local grassroots organizations.

(415) 294-3196, www.liberationink.org

BEST TOURIST SPOT LOCALS SHOULD VISIT

Alcatraz

Wading through hordes of blissfully ignorant, clam-chowder-chomping tourists is never much fun, but sometimes the destination is worth it. Alcatraz is such a place — the best, in fact.

www.nps.gov/alcatraz

BEST LOCAL AUTHOR

Broke-Ass Stuart

Stuart’s city guidebooks may fly off the shelves these days, but the dude’s still broke as shit. It doesn’t stop him from having fun, though, and it shouldn’t stop you either.

www.brokeassstuart.com

BEST LOCAL ZINE (PRINT)

The Loin’s Mouth

Read about the ups and tragic downs (plus anonymous sexcapades!) of Tenderloin dwellers every month in The Loin’s Mouth.

www.theloinsmouth.com

BEST LOCAL ZINE (WEB)

Big Top Magazine

Circus freaks, sideshow performers, exhibitionists, and straight-up weirdos. Big Top Magazine gives a voice to them all. Finally!

www.bigtopmagazine.com

BEST LOCAL RECORD LABEL

Six Degrees

Dedicated to the sweet and sexy sounds of international genre-bending, Six Degrees offers the best in contemporary music from across the globe.

www.sixdegreesrecords.com

BEST LOCAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

McSweeney’s

Like books? Pirates? Clever writing with a socially conscious twist? Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s wants you!

www.mcsweeneys.net

BEST TV NEWSCASTER

Dennis Richmond

In a perfect world, all news anchors would be like newly retired Richmond: cool, composed, and confident enough to rock the same mustache through decades of facial hair trends.

www.ktvu.com

BEST LOCALLY PRODUCED TV SHOW

Check, Please! Bay Area

Regular Bay Area residents review San Francisco’s finest restaurants. No pretense, no expertise, no bullshit. Genius!

www.blogs.kqed.org/food

BEST RADIO STATION

Energy 92.7 FM

Indie rock’s cool and all, but sometimes you just wanna bump Rihanna, Britney Spears, or Gunther. Cut a rug at Energy 92.7, the ass-movingest radio station in the Bay.

www.energy927fm.com

BEST STREET FAIR

Folsom Street Fair

More cock than a chicken fight! More ass than a donkey show! Break out those chaps and grab some lube when the sprawling granddaddy of leather events hits in September.

www.folsomstreetfair.org

BEST DOG-WALKING SERVICE

Mighty Dog

Most dog walkers stop after a stroll, but Mighty will take Fido to the beach, give him a trim, and maybe even introduce him to some hot tail.

1536 Alabama, SF. (415) 235-5151, www.mightydogwalking.com

BEST PET GROOMER

Little Ark
Grooming Shop: Best Pet Groomer
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Little Ark Grooming Shop

Dogs make nice child substitutes, but they can get dirty as hell. Clean ’em up at Little Ark, the best groom shop in town.

748 14th St., SF. (415) 626-7574

BEST VETERINARIAN

Pets Unlimited

Sick pets suck. They whine all day, smell nasty, and repel potential lovers. Get them fixed up at Pets Unlimited.

2343 Fillmore, SF. (415) 563-6700, www.petsunlimited.org

BEST CAMP FOR KIDS

Camp Galileo

Art, science, and outdoor activities for students from prekindergarten to entering fifth grade. Summer camp for creative types.

(415) 595-7293, www.campgalileo.com

BEST DENTIST

Dr. Natasha Lee, Better Living Through Dentistry

Drugs and alcohol will do the trick temporarily, but if you really want a better life, fix your grill at Dr. Lee’s.

1317 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 731-9311

BEST DOCTOR

Dr. Scott Swanson, Parkside Chiropractic

Need a backiotomy? Head to Parkside Chiropractic, where Dr. Swanson will snap your spine back into action.

2394 31st Ave., SF. (415) 566-7134, www.parksidechiro.com

BEST MASSAGE THERAPIST

Joshua Alexander, CMT

He will listen to your body and honor what he hears with a plethora of techniques, including energy work modalities ranging from Swedish and deep tissue to shiatsu and polarity.

Castro and Market, SF. (415) 225-3460, www.joshuaalexandercmt.com

BEST MECHANIC

Pat’s Garage

Cars may never be as environmentally friendly as bicycles, but they get substantially closer at Pat’s, San Francisco’s premier green auto shop. Plus, organic coffee!

1090 26th St., SF. (415) 647-4500, www.patsgarage.com

BEST PLACE FOR A HAIRCUT

Dekko Salon

If you’re looking for a truly individualized experience, get your hair styled at swanky Dekko, San Francisco’s most luxurious hair and art gallery.

1325 Indiana, SF. (415) 285-8848, www.dekkosalon.com

BEST DAY SPA

Blue Turtle Spa

Cruelty-free skin products and beauty services for your worldly vessel. Animals shouldn’t have to suffer just so you can look pretty.

57 West Portal, SF. (415) 699-8494, www.blueturtlespa.com

BEST SHOE REPAIR

Anthony’s Shoe Repair

There’s nothing worse than showing up to a party in a scuffed-up pair of kicks. Anthony will restitch, resole, and stretch your shoes back to freshness.

30 Geary, SF. (415) 781-1338

BEST TAILOR

Cable Car Tailors

Throw your thrift store finds in a bag with some oversize slacks and wait for CC Tailors to work their magic.

200 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 781-4636

BEST ROOMMATE REFERRAL SERVICE

Craigslist

Where else can you find someone actively seeking a “sex-positive, 420-friendly, artsy-fartsy new housemate who likes cats and cooks vegan”?

www.craigslist.com

BEST LOCAL ANIMAL RESCUE

San Francisco SPCA

Rescuing distressed pooches and wayward felines since 1868, this SPCA outpost offers a stunning array of humane services.

2500 16th St., SF. (415) 554-3000, www.sfspca.org

BEST LAUNDROMAT

Brainwash

Drink beer, eat food, and wash duds with stand-up comedians, SoMa punks, live bands, and swingers from nearby One Taste Urban Retreat Center.

1122 Folsom, SF. (415) 861-3663, www.brainwash.com

BEST BICYCLE MECHANIC

Bike Kitchen

Give a man a bike; he’ll ride until it breaks. Give him the tools to fix a bike (the Bike Kitchen’s raison d’être); he’ll ride for life.

1256 Mission, SF. (415) 255-2453, www.bikekitchen.org

City Living

BEST PIRATES ON THE DIAL

We love the independents, and it doesn’t get much more independent than pirate radio. West Add Radio, on 93.7 FM, features some of the most adventurous musical programming in the city — from minimal techno crew Kontrol and Green Gorilla Lounge’s M3 to Cobain in a Coma, a show about music, celebrity gossip, and homo drug culture with a cult following, and Pancake Radio, with prolific DJ Ryan Poulsen. The advantage to flying under FCC radar? Anything goes — the seven dirty words, explicit lyrics, inappropriate banter, obscure kraut rock — if you’re lucky enough to pick up the signal. Otherwise, you can access the live stream and podcast archive online. (Hurray for the Internet.) In addition to its radio programming, West Add has become known for its parties, most significantly the monthly Italo-disco Ferrari at Deco Lounge, but also quirky nights such as “Merry Crass-mas,” a tribute to CRASS. West Add has also started releasing the free zine WAR in collaboration with Aquarius Records. Radio’s not dead!

www.westaddradio.com

BEST DRIVEWAY OF DESTINY

Driving in these eco-conscious times may be unfortunate, but since 2002, when artists Harrell Fletcher and Jon Rubin stenciled fortunes into each of its parking spaces, the North Beach Parking Garage has offered a curious kind of hope. Some fortunes are cookie classics (“Opportunity is fleeting”). Others are enticingly bawdy (“There is a party inside you” abutting “Your lovers [plural] will never wish to leave you”). Some contain road rage management tips (“It is often better to not see insult than to avenge it”) or reality checks (“Your trouble is that you think you have time”). The best of ’em trigger intriguing dilemmas for the superstitious — do you cast a shadow over your day by parking in “A whisper separates friends”? Do you wait for “You are not a has-been” to become free? If you need to come up for air, hit the garage’s roof: its lovely view of Saints Peter and Paul Church and the Transamerica Pyramid (along with nearby Chinatown clotheslines) will wipe your mind clear of ontological philosophizing.

735 Vallejo, SF. (415) 399-9564

BEST AMAZING JOURNEY INWARD

The Melvin M. Sweig Interfaith
Memorial Labyrinth: Best Amazing Journey Inward
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

The ancient mystical tradition of the labyrinth lives on in front of Grace Cathedral with the ostentatiously named Melvin M. Swig Interfaith Memorial Labyrinth. Laid out in terrazzo in the meditation garden to the left of the cathedral entrance is a replica of the medieval 11-circuit labyrinth on the floor of Chartres Cathedral. A labyrinth is not a maze; there is but one path, and it leads to the center. Yet as with so many other things in life (childhood, religion, partying), the point is the journey. The walk through the labyrinth is surprisingly long and circuitous, one well suited to embodying your preferred metaphor. It’s difficult not to be contemplative as you slowly wend your way through the three stages of the labyrinth: purgation (the walk in), illumination (standing at the center), and finally, union (walking out). You may not have achieved perfect spiritual balance by the time you exit, but you can’t help feeling slightly more enlightened.

1100 California, SF. (415) 749-6300, www.gracecathedral.com

BEST MICROWAVE TOSS

Most people just throw their broken electronics in the trash. If your conscience won’t let you contribute to the 220 tons of e-waste dumped annually in the United States alone, consider hauling the dot matrix printer you’ve been guiltily hiding in the basement for the past 15 years to an electronics recycling service. Green Citizen boasts of its ability to recycle “anything with a plug.” CEO James Kao acknowledges that the actual output of reusable material is often small — consider alkaline batteries, which must be carefully broken down to get at a mere 3 mg of zinc. But the larger advantage is the safe disposal of the toxic substances within your cast-off gadgets, which can leach into the soil if left in landfills. Green Citizen even assigns a unique serial number to every item it recycles, so its various parts can be traced all the way to their final destinations. There’s a small fee for certain items, usually well under $10, but you’ll be a bit more free of guilt. Now about all that consumption …

591 Howard, SF. (415) 287-0000, www.greencitizen.com

BEST NO-NONSENSE KNOT REMOVAL

Forget the soothing new age music, bubbling indoor waterfalls, and arcane aromatherapy. Sometimes you’re broke, your back is full of knots, and all you want at the end of a rough week is a no-nonsense deep-tissue massage. At Jin Healing for Women a 60-minute full body will set you back $39 — or $30 if you buy a six-hour package. For that price, who cares if they don’t serve cucumber water or slather you in organic clay? The massage style falls somewhere between shiatsu and Swedish: the masseurs use oil, acupressure, and plenty of strength. The best part of the massage is arguably the hot towel treatment at the end. Some may complain that the place is too noisy — it’s not uncommon to hear the receptionist answering the phone or people talking outside — but it’s nothing that earplugs or an iPod can’t block out. While Jin Healing for Women is advertised as serving women only, some have found that men are not turned away if accompanied by a female friend or family member.

999 Powell, SF; 3557 Geary, SF. (415) 986-1111

BEST BUDGET SHRINKS

It’s not easy being blue — especially if you’re short on green and your health insurance doesn’t cover mental health services. Or if you don’t have health insurance at all. Luckily, the California Institute for Integral Studies offers “mind-body-spirit” counseling and psychotherapy on a sliding scale based on your income. The friendly CIIS therapists are graduate students and postgraduate interns working under the supervision of an instructor. With five counseling centers across the city, each with its own specialty, CIIS has expertise in a wide range of “therapeutic orientations,” including somatic, transpersonal, psychodynamic, and gestalt, as well as more conventional modes of psychotherapy. The holistic approach and alternative fee system make CIIS an ideal counseling center for a city like San Francisco.

www.ciis.edu/counseling

BEST BEATS KEEP BOPPIN’

North Beach has come a long way since the days when Lawrence Ferlinghetti et al. drank gallons of cheap red wine at Caffe Trieste. Though it’s now more frat boy than the best minds of a generation starving, hysterical, and naked, North Beach does sometimes remember its poetic beat heritage. For a weekend each May, Kerouac Alley — recently repaved with cobblestones and stone tablets engraved with quotes by Western and Chinese poets — is home to dozens of emerging and established artists showcasing their recent work in the open air for Art in the Alley. Live music, painting, poetry, and sculpture bring back the creative bohemian buzz that enveloped North Beach before the blonde beer haze did, and the art is always on display at fab sponsor Vesuvio bar for a couple of weeks before the festival. Perhaps best of all, at the end of the alley is surreal karaoke bar Bow Bow’s, where bartender Mama Candy serves a mean Tokyo Tea. After some heady art and a couple of those, you’ll be shouting lines from Howl yourself.

Kerouac Alley, between Columbus and Broadway, SF. www.vesuvio.com

BEST [EUPHEMISM] WAX

Women’s products and services are all about euphemism. Douche becomes a feminine cleansing product; a period becomes “celebrating one’s femininity.” And of course, the bikini wax, or Brazilian, is really a way to get hair off your cha-cha. Lonni of Lonni’s Punani dispenses with all niceties with the candid name of her Potrero Hill waxing service. Her motto? “Keeping San Francisco smooth one pussy at a time.” The name and motto may be blunt, even crass, but the end results will indeed leave a woman’s naughty bits smooth and ingrown-free. Lonni, a certified aesthetician and a pastry chef with a degree in sociology, forgoes mood lighting and new age music for bright environs, a rocking soundtrack, and fingers quick enough to make you forget she’s ripping hair off your most sensitive regions. (House calls are also offered.) And she doesn’t just stick to the punani: “manzilians” are happily performed as well.

1756 18th St., SF. (415) 215-7678, www.lonnispunani.com

BEST PUPIL PAINTER

Master artists don’t always work on canvas or paper. Steven R. Young, BCO, uses little plastic orbs as his canvases. And his work never appears in museums: you see it on people’s faces, and most of the time, he’s so good you never know it’s there. Young paints eyes — false eyes, replacements for people who have lost a real eye to accidents, disease, or surgery. The ocularist gets referrals from the top surgeons in the Bay Area, but his studio hardly looks like a doctor’s office: he has the TV blaring much of the time, and he jokes around with his customers, particularly kids. In the end, though, he’s all business as he replicates, by hand, with tiny, fine brushes, the exact look of a customer’s companion eye, restoring much comfort and confidence. His shop also handles the fabrication and custom fitting. The results can be uncanny — we’ve known people who went to Young for a prosthesis, and even from very close you couldn’t tell the fake eye from the real one.

411 30th St., Oakl. (520) 836-2123, www.stevenryoungocularist.com

BEST DRUG-FREE ALTERED STATE

Kelly Vogel at Float: Best Drug-Free Altered Stat
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Sometimes other people are just too much to bear. And it’s always their fault, isn’t it? The guy at the liquor store forgets to stock your brand of cigarettes. Some yuppie in a fancy car nearly runs you off the road. Your manager fires you, your landlord evicts you, your friends diss you. Don’t you wish you could just make them all disappear for a while? Well, if you’ve ever seen the movie Altered States, you know all about sensory deprivation chambers, those weird water tanks psychology students use to study brain chemistry and sleep cycles. In a deprivation chamber you are utterly alone. Your body is suspended in warm water, your ears are submerged so you can’t hear a thing, and it’s totally dark, odorless, and soundproof. The entire world melts away, and you’re left with raw brain waves. Outside of a ketamine trip, it’s the most detached experience humanly possible. Lose yourself at Float, then, an art gallery with a room full of deprivation tanks.

1091 Calcot Place, Unit 116, Oakl. (510) 535-1702, www.thefloatcenter.com

BEST LOOK TIGHT, HAIR DID

Everybody’s meetin’ Down at Lulu’s — for new clothes and a new hairdo. Co-owners Seth Bogart (of raunchy electro-rap band Gravy Train!!!) and Tina Lucchesi set up shop two years ago and describe the Down at Lulu’s ambience as “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls takes a field trip to the candy factory.” Which is another way of saying that this is a place for hot-blooded people who aren’t afraid of color or taking a dare. They’ll cut you — and you’ll like it! They’ll bleach you and they’ll blow you — dry — and you’ll come back for more! If you’re a girl, you can find the purse you love while you’re waiting for your dye job to set. If you’re a pouty-lipped boy with shaggy hair, ask them to style you like Matt Dillon circa 1979 and you’ll be sure to send a rebel army of crushes over the edge. Down at Lulu’s, that’s where it’s at.

6603 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 601-0964, www.downatlulus.com

BEST REVOLUTION ON WHEELS

Clancy Fear of Pedal Revolution:
Best Revolution on Wheels
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

You know, the hippies weren’t just dirty, fatuous potheads with annoying slogans and bad taste in clothes. They were also big into causes. You say you want a revolution? Well, c’mon — we all wanna change the world. There’s got to be an easier way than adopting a baby from Mali, you know? I mean, you’re gonna have to feed and water that kid for, like, 18 years — without the benefit of Brangelina’s army of nannies. How about this for a solution? Not only is Pedal Revolution a full-service bike shop, with both new and used rides, but it’s also a nonprofit that helps at-risk youth gain valuable skills to keep them off the streets. It accepts tax-deductible donations of bicycles, and for $30 a year you can become a member and work on your bike at the Community Membership Workbench, which will give you some skills and save you a bundle on repair costs. Also, the shop’s got really cool logo T-shirts, which means you can show you care without, you know, growing dreadlocks and playing hacky sack in Golden Gate Park.

3085 21st St., SF. (415) 641-1264, www.pedalrevolution.org

BEST STROBOSCOPIC ZOETROPER

Burning Man has inspired and elevated some amazing Bay Area artists over the years, but Peter Hudson, a.k.a. Hudzo, has become a star both on and off the playa using a unique medium: stroboscopic zoetropes. Hudzo is a San Francisco carpenter and stagehand who has designed sets for the San Francisco Opera, Kink.com porn flicks, and the upcoming Milk movie. His first piece for Burning Man, Playa Swimmers, used strobe lights and precise molds of the human form to give the appearance of figures swimming in the desert sands. He’s returned every year with steadily more ambitious projects, which culminated last year in Homouroboros: a bicycle- and drum-powered carousel that conjured up the vision of a monkey swinging from limb to limb, then taking a bite from an apple delivered by a snake slithering down a vine. Installations in San Jose, Minneapolis, and other cities followed. Now Hudzo is busy putting together his next piece, Tantalus, working with a huge group of committed volunteers out of his SoMa home.

www.hudzo.com

BEST PURIFICATION SCRUB-DOWN

Imperial Spa: Best Purification Scrub-down
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Housed in a fortresslike former bank building with a forbiddingly windowless exterior, Imperial Spa is easy to mistake for a more, ahem, sensual retreat than it is. This traditional Korean spa, however, turns out to be a model citizen, complete with hot and cold pools; an array of sauna rooms, including an ultratoasty “yellow clay fomentation” space; and its own unforgettable twist: a “purification” body scrub that essentially takes off the top layer of epidermis. Women lie on plastic-lined tables with little to hide behind apart from a teensy towel draped over the booty, while industrious ladies in black bras and panties soak them down, then proceed to zealously scrub every single part of the body with what feels like a scouring pad. And that means every part — parts that you never imagined being attacked with such vigor. Don’t be afraid; don’t be very afraid — you’ll never feel silkier than when you emerge, after an application of milky essential oils, cleaner than you’ve ever felt. Men are also welcome, although their purification scrub is administered by a man, minus the bra and panties.

1875 Geary, SF. (415) 771-1114, www.imperialspa.biz

BEST TIBETAN FREEDOM FIGHTER

It’d be far too easy and predictable for the Guardian to give Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius a sarcastic Best of the Bay award for spending the last year beating up the homeless and their advocates in a succession of articles. But Nevius reached a new level of hilarity April 10. When the controversial Olympic torch made its way to San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom was so worried pro-Tibetan demonstrators would clash with supporters of Beijing and the Olympic Games that he clandestinely diverted the torch’s route at the last minute. The result, according to Nevius, is that the swelling crowds of people who were defending China near the ballpark, where the torch was originally expected to pass, didn’t threaten the critics of China’s human rights record. In other words, Nevius seemed to imply that Newsom saved free speech. Uh, yeah. All the red flags in the world are no match for the colossal figures who appeared in San Francisco to support Tibet and condemn Beijing — including actor Richard Gere and motherfucking Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu, you might recall, sleeps with a Nobel Peace Prize around his neck. The pro-Tibet movement doesn’t need Gavin Newsom. Nice try, though, Nevius.

BEST MOVING ONWARD AND UPWARD

Ever-lurking danger in the streets means that many city kids barely leave their own block, let alone experience the pleasure of long bike rides. But thanks to Cycles of Change, East Bay youth are learning how to venture through the urban jungle and beyond safely on two wheels. The 10-year-old collective, headed by Maya Carson and Grey Goykolevzon, draws inspiration from the famed Bikes Not Bombs project and other like-minded organizations. Run in the basements of approximately 13 Alameda County schools, COC takes kids on training rides and shows them how to obey the rules of the road and navigate safe routes from home to school. Serious bike club members pedal up into the hills on longer rides and also learn marketable skills like bicycle repair and how to run their own after-school programs. The organization, soon to be a nonprofit, would love you to donate any unwanted nonrusty, functional bikes to its bike shop in Alameda.

(510) 595-4625, www.cyclesofchange.org

BEST GIRL-TO-GIRL SUPPORT

It takes a girl to understand the issues other girls face today regarding relationships, body image, pregnancy, and parents who don’t understand, or can’t help, or worse, abuse them. It also takes a girl who’s worn those shoes to know how to help another girl get where she wants to go. For the past 10 years, the young women who run GirlSource have been training local low-income teens for their future, by teaching them how to build a Web site, digitally edit photos, take leadership roles, and express themselves through writing. The results are impressive. After receiving SAT prep and counseling on all the teen issues that can thwart potential co-eds, most of the girls participating in the program go on to attend college, where GirlSource continues to support them. Some of them come back to offer peer counseling to new girls coming up, thus completing an important cycle in creating better community.

1550 Bryant, Ste. 675, SF. (415) 252-8880, www.girlsource.org

BEST BLING RECYCLING

Before you run down to Best Buy for a new laptop or television set, check out Midtown Loan, San Francisco’s most respected and experienced (50 years in the biz!) pawnshop and cash-advance boutique, for better deals. Conveniently located on beautiful Sixth Street, right where the Civic Center and Tenderloin neighborhoods join up with SoMa at Market Street, Midtown Loan stocks only the finest used jewelry, timepieces, diamonds, tools, and electronics. But that’s not all. Midtown Loan is a working person’s dream come true: a place where you can actually trade your unwanted luxury items for cold hard cash and even get a cash advance on your next paycheck while you’re at it. Got an extra MacBook Pro lying around? A Rolex you never wear? Throw the whole bundle into a dirty backpack and run down to Midtown Loan before your snooty neighbors catch on.

39 Sixth St., SF. (415) 362-5585, www.midtownloan.net

BEST TORCHBEARER FOR THE ’60S

The Unity Foundation, a lively nonprofit, was founded in 1976 to keep the flames of the l960s alive and “promote world peace, cooperation, and unity.” Its founder and president, Bill McCarthy, is a classic ’60s entrepreneur, renowned for producing the stunningly successful 20th- and 30th-anniversary Summer of Love celebrations in Golden Gate Park. Unity accomplishes its ambitious mission through cultural and educational events, media campaigns, and a monthly television program on SF Access, channel 29, called Positive Spin, which is produced by McCarthy himself. Unity hosts annual Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for children in the Mission District, organizes a weekly street-cleaning program, and has thrown three Unity Fairs in the Mission. The foundation also puts together special public service announcements for the United Nations and presents UN-specific segments on its TV program. McCarthy recently set up his own camera crew to get exclusive coverage of a speech by UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon at San Francisco’s World Affairs Council. The United Nations Association, a grassroots UN support group, has recognized Unity with its top national citizenship award.

744 Treat, SF. (415) 550-1092, www.unityfoundation.org

BEST WAY TO SUSTAIN YOURSELF

Isn’t it time you stopped just eating healthy and started eating with a conscience? Eat with the Seasons can help you do just that. The community-supported agriculture program, developed a few years ago by farm-family descendant Becky Herbert, delivers locally grown, sustainably produced, high quality organic foods to a drop-off point near you. In conjunction with farms located in San Benito and Santa Cruz counties, Eat with the Seasons assembles personalized produce boxes stamped and sealed with your name on them. Every week you choose what seasonal fresh produce you feel inclined to graze on, how many cage-free eggs you want to fry up, the amount of fair trade coffee you can slurp down, and how much grass-fed beef you fancy barbecuing. Then the Seasons folks collect it all, wrap it up, and deliver it to various drop-off locations in the Bay Area. That means next Sunday you can sleep in without worrying about being late to the farmers market snatch-and-grab.

(831) 245-8125, www.eatwiththeseasons.com

BEST KIDS IN THE ALLEY

Owing to an unfortunate blip in city zoning laws, alleyways less than 32 feet wide don’t count as — or get spruced up as — streets, and for years Chinatown’s alleys were dark, dirty, and dangerous. Enter Adopt-an-Alleyway, whose youthful volunteers, all from local high schools and colleges, beautify and monitor the neighborhood’s walkways, issuing regular “alleyway report cards” to the local press. AAA also runs the Chinatown Alleyway Walking Tour, which squires you along the back streets under the guidance of locals aged 16 through 23. You’ll get a dose of sightseeing and some interesting nuggets of history — such as the fact that Waverly Place was once known as Fifteen-Cent Lane because of its multiplicity of cheap, queue-braiding barbers, and that Spofford Alley was home to Sun Yat-sen’s secret revolutionary headquarters. You’ll also get honest opinions about an aging neighborhood from young people interested in civil rights and housing issues, and who provide an emotional connection and a real sense of place to tourists, of all people. You may, however, also get a good-natured lecture on litter (meddling kids).

(415) 984-1478, www.chinatownalleywaytours.org

BEST SERENITY FOR YOUR BUCK

When you walk into the lovely surroundings of the Mindful Body holistic health, fitness, and well-being studio in Pacific Heights, the first thing you notice is the silence. The receptionists speak like calm kindergarten teachers, and you find yourself moving more carefully and opening doors as if they might break. The place oozes relaxation — even the bathrooms, equipped with shower stalls and clean robes, smell ultra-aromatherapeutic. “Through a consistent practice of ‘mindful’ or focused activities, we learn how to tap into our inner intelligence and make choices leading to a life of integrity, fulfillment, peace and harmony,” says founder Roy Bergmann. OK, then! As long as it comes with a back rub. Yoga classes for $15 (with price breaks for memberships and packages) and $70-per-hour massages are definitely a draw here, and the services offered, including the not-as-scary-as-it-sounds Chinese organ massage, or chi nei tsang, are top-notch and myriad. But it’s the highly qualified and serenity-minded staff that really make the Mindful Body a bargain. The friendly teachers, facilitators, and masseurs are worth their weight in Zen.

2876 California, SF. (415) 931-2639, www.themindfulbody.com

BEST SYMPHONY OF INSTRUCTION

In an ideal world, every public school in America would have a music program, complete with appreciation classes, live performances, instruction in playing instruments, and a full curriculum of classical, contemporary, and multicultural styles. Until this utopian vision is realized, though, at least we have Adventures in Music, the San Francisco Symphony’s fantastic community education program. Operating in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District, the program has been working with students in first-through-fifth grades for five years, training teachers to integrate music into their classrooms, providing kids with instruments and educational supplies, presenting participatory in-school performances four times a year, and bringing classes on a field trip to Davies Symphony Hall for a special concert. AIM encourages students to learn musical concepts and terminology, to become familiar with the sight and sound of different musical instruments, and to understand critical listening as well as music as a medium of artistic expression. And yes, AIM’s education bridges musical genres, ranging from Western classical to traditional Chinese.

(415) 552-8000, www.sfsymphony.org

BEST QI TO HIGHER LEARNING

Western medicine is great for acute problems — like, say, restarting your ticker after a heart attack. But for chronic, systemic, or difficult-to-diagnose ailments, the Eastern approach still seems to have the market cornered on treatments that actually work. (This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.) Acupuncture, acupressure, herbal remedies, medical qigong, and a variety of movement and body work techniques ease the pain of sleep disorders, headaches, chronic fatigue, and joint injuries for many. Which is why we love Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College, a Berkeley institution that not only trains future practitioners but also provides consistent, affordable clinic services to the community. Student workers are skilled and well supervised — but if you’re still not comfortable with them, you can work with a pro for a slightly higher price. The relief you may find from your migraines or your tennis elbow, though, will be priceless.

2250 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 666-8234, www.aimc.edu

BEST DIY DEMYSTIFICATION

They say that once you learn how to ride a bike, you’re pretty much set for life — until the tire pops, your bar tape frays, and the shifting gets a little funky. A bicycle repair class can be a daunting thing, but Dan Thomases’s “Bike Maintenance in Three Parts,” offered every three months or so, clears an essential path toward demystifying your rock hopper or 10-speed. The three-part series is run out of Box Dog Bikes, a Mission shop co-owned by Thomases, and takes you from repairing flats to replacing cables and trueing wheels. The Sunday-evening classes are cheap, and more important, small — making for lots of individualized instruction and talk therapy between you, Thomases, and your bike. Thomases says he was inspired by his dentist dad, who schools his patients on preventative maintenance. “I’m hoping the classes will give people an idea of what it takes to be responsible for your bike.”

494 14th St., SF. (415) 431-9627, www.boxdogbikes.com

Classics

January 5, 2010

BEST RESTAURANT

Zuni

This mid-Market foodie haven proves that industrial-chic decor, organic ingredients, and a kick-ass oyster bar are a timeless combo.

1658 Market, SF. (415) 552-2522, www.zunicafe.com

BEST BAR

Gold Dust Lounge

World-class jazz, absurdly low happy hour prices, and a storied history have kept the Gold Dust a Union Square mainstay since 1933.

247 Powell, SF. (415) 397-1695

BEST MUSIC ORGANIZATION

Community Music Center

With campuses in the Richmond and Mission districts, the Community Music Center has been making music education accessible to all since 1921.

544 Capp, SF. (415) 647-6015, www.sfcmc.org

BEST ARTS ORGANIZATION

Intersection for the Arts

The Bay Area’s original alternative arts venue, Intersection for the Arts, has been going against the grain since 1965.

446 Valencia, SF. (415) 626-2787, www.theintersection.org

BEST RETAIL SHOP

City Lights Bookstore: Best Classic Retail Shop
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY ARLENE ROMANA

City Lights Bookstore

Responsible for legitimizing the paperback and making San Francisco the center of the literary universe, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s North Beach shop remains fiercely independent.

261 Columbus, SF. (415) 362-8193, www.citylights.com

BEST LANDMARK

Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco’s postcard perfect landmark, only northern exit, and beacon for destination suicides, this iconic suspension bridge has been rockin’ that orange vermillion hue since 1937.

Hwys. 101 and 1, SF. www.goldengate.org

BEST HISTORICAL BUILDING

Coit Tower

Coit Tower, the art deco phallic symbol on Telegraph Hill, has been proudly crowning San Francisco since 1933.

1 Telegraph Hill, SF. (415) 362-0808

BEST RESOURCE FOR BAY AREA HISTORY

San Francisco City Guides

This all-volunteer army of local history buffs doles out free walking tours that delve deep into the heart of San Francisco’s past.

100 Larkin, SF. (415) 557-4266, www.sfcityguides.org

BEST CLASSIC AUTHOR

Armistead Maupin

Armistead “Teddy Bear” Maupin’s iconic Tales of the City newspaper series has been published in novel form, turned into a television series, and translated into 10 languages.

www.armisteadmaupin.com

BEST CLASSIC ARTIST

Richard Diebenkorn

The driving force behind the West Coast’s flirtation with figurative painting by way of abstract impressionism, Diebenkorn found inspiration in his Berkeley surroundings.

www.diebenkorn.org

BEST CLASSIC MUSICIAN

Carlos Santana

Revered by guitar buffs, fusion enthusiasts, and stoners everywhere, Santana began his career during the peak of the ’60s rock era and produced the last No. 1 single of the 20th century (“Smooth”).

www.santana.com

BEST CLASSIC ACTIVIST

Wavy Gravy

With his tie-dyed armor, clown nose, and perpetual force field of bubbles, Wavy Gravy — living ice cream flavor, Woodstock MC, and ’60s impresario — now flies his activist freak flag over Camp Winnarainbow.

www.wavygravy.net

BEST CLASSIC POLITICIAN

Harvey Milk

As the first openly gay man elected to public office, Milk helped usher in a new politics — smashing glass ceilings for minority candidates everywhere, igniting the local LGBT rights movement, and establishing San Francisco as a town without closet doors.

BEST SONG ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO

“I Left My Heart in San Francisco”

Whether it’s Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra crooning about the fog that chills the air and the little cable cars climbing halfway to the stars, there’s nary a dry eye when this tune climaxes.

BEST FILM MADE OR SET IN SAN FRANCISCO

Vertigo

In this 1958 gumshoe thriller, Hitchcock introduced the world to San Francisco the character, complete with impossibly steep hills, panoramic views, and gorgeous architecture.

Classics — Editors Picks

BEST LAST OF THE RED-HOT DADAS

Alternative theater is a precarious vocation at best, even in an alternative kind of town. Venues come and go, companies founder and fold, everyone wants to move to New York, and hardly anyone breaks even. Despite the tough climate, one stalwart survivor of the downtown downturn continues to expand — and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The EXIT Theatre has been a haven for experimental small productions since its 1983 inaugural performance in the lobby of a nearby residential hotel, and has supported the advancing artistic endeavors of a host of Bay Area faves including mugwumpin, RIPE, Cutting Ball, Art Street Theatre, Crowded Fire, Banana Bag and Bodice, foolsFURY, stealth DIVA Sean Owens, and master illusionist Christian Cagigal. Founder and host of the annual San Francisco Fringe Festival, the EXIT attracts performers and audiences from around the world. Additional festivals such as the DIVAfest, Labor Fest, and the fondly remembered Absurdity Theatre Festival keep them coming back for more.

EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF. (415) 673-3847, www.theexit.org

BEST BAND-AIDS FOR BRUISED FANS

In a mega-festival concert world where a bottle of water can cost more than $5, we’re lucky to have Rock Medicine, a nonprofit emergency response service celebrating its 35th anniversary that hands out earplugs, patches up cuts and scrapes, and gets over-excited and dehydrated kids back to the show — all for free. Made up of volunteer paramedics, doctors, and other helpful, rockin’ citizens, the Rock Medicine program is run by the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, part of the free love legacy of the 1960s. As the concerts of the famous era got bigger and more and more kids flocked to the Bay Area, concert mogul Bill Graham contacted clinic head Skip Gaye, and Rock Medicine was born. Now the organization tries to be present at every humongous musical shindig that takes place, with representatives usually located at a table bearing a giant jug of Gatorade. Rest assured, you’ll never surf the mosh pit without some helpful medical back-up.

www.rockmed.org

BEST PLACE TO SCORE CRANK

Laughing Sal at Musée Mécanique:
Best Place to Score Crank
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY ARLENE ROMANA

In the style of London’s Madame Tussauds or the Musée de la Magie of Paris, San Francisco’s own Musée Mécanique is dedicated to exhibiting the beauty of childhood esoterica. Dan Zelinsky’s private collection of hand-cranked musical instruments, antique arcade machines, and automated guignols — many that date from the turn of the century — give visitors a wondrous pre-digital toy experience. Among the many objets d’art, highlights include the automated Drinking Man, who imbibes spirits at the drop of a quarter only to have the liquid recirculate to the cup through his arm; Naughty Marietta, who is seen through the hand-cranked Cail-O-Scope in various states of undress; Laffing Sal, one of the most famous and frightening exhibits purely because of her laugh, and the Orchestrion, a mechanical orchestra that plays a hideously enchanting racket. While some may find these strange machines and life-like dolls less entertaining than disturbing, the Tim Burton weirdo in us adores them.

Pier 45, shed A, Fisherman’s Wharf, SF. (415) 346-2000, www.museemechanique.org

BEST REHAB TRACK RECORD

Most rehab centers are cushy, designed for spoiled brats whose parents, managers, or partners are so sick of desperate phone calls and missing jewelry they’ll pay any price for a month of addict-free peace. But what addicts really need is a place that takes no shit and offers real results, providing a path to self-sustenance and a community dedicated to change. That’s what the Delancey Street Foundation, a privately-funded rehab center, has been supplying to San Francisco’s hard life crowd for more than three decades. Unlike many other such facilities where the failure rate is as hopeless as Britney Spears’ attempt to raise children, Delancey Street boasts a 98 percent success rate. And it’s free. All you have to do is show up and prove your dedication to self-improvement. If you pass the test, you’re given a room and an apprenticeship at one of the organization’s 12 former-addict-run enterprises. Selling Christmas trees, frothing lattes, and moving furniture may not be a catered month by the ocean, but it works.

600 Embarcadero, SF. (415) 957-9800, www.delanceystreetfoundation.org

BEST PANGLOBAL WHIRL

Where can you see a hip-hop dance troupe, a moving human sculpture in Indian classical style, and a Scottish highland romp dedicated to the Celtic god of fire, all in the same short weekend? The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival was founded in 1978, the first city-funded multicultural dance event in the country. Since then it’s played host to some 14,000 artists performing in more than 100 genres at various locales. This year the festival celebrated its 30th anniversary with flair, expanding its season to four weekends and adding new programming, like film screenings and dance classes. A $100,000 grant enabled festival directors to fly artists in from overseas for the first time. Sadly, Ethnic Dance Fest comes but once a year, but the auditions held in January at the Palace of Fine Arts are open to the public — audience members can expect a standing-room-only, casual atmosphere, and a different act every 10 minutes.

(415) 474-3914, www.ethnicdancefestival.org

BEST MONUMENTAL URINAL

There is much to celebrate about the ever-static interior of the beloved House of Shields as it begins its second century of operation. The yellowing Charles McCabe clipping on the wall tells no lies when it proclaims, “Time Stands Still at the House of Shields.” But our favorite relic is not the ruggedly handsome Victorian back bar, the ornate wood paneling, or even the long closed tunnel connecting the old basement speakeasy to the Palace Hotel across the street. And although we enjoy the quirky music programming at this downtown live venue (everything from live blues standards to “twee pop punk”), there’s something more. Discreetly tucked away in the men’s room is the largest single-user urinal we’ve ever seen. No chance of missing the mark with this one. Laid on its back, the mammoth porcelain plumbing fixture could double as a short bathtub. They just don’t make ’em like they used to.

39 New Montgomery, SF. (415) 392-7732, www.houseofshields.com

BEST CRYSTAL COVER-UP

Jeff Fairclough of Mark Harrington Glass:
Best Crystal Cover-up
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY ARLENE ROMANA

So you’re house-sitting at a friend’s swank Noe Valley Victorian, and you decide it couldn’t do any harm to have a few people over and crack a few beers. Before you know it, a misfired attempt to crowd-surf off the billiard table knocks a priceless Wedgwood bowl on the floor, dashing it to pieces. You may not be as screwed as you think. Mark Harrington Glass in the Mission has been repairing glass, crystal, and china by hand since 1932. Co-owner Linda Gotelli says they stay afloat because they’ve cultivated a “niche” in glasswork: they do everything by hand. This is safer for the glass and allows them to take on odd-sized objects, like a five-foot tall antique Italian olive oil jar. Gotelli says she expects her customers to be honest, but admits that the company offers “invisible repairs” capable of fooling all but the most knowledgeable antiquers.

286 Sanchez, SF. (415) 931-6809, www.markharrington.com

BEST STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

The Swedes get to take credit for Ikea and H&M; Legos and modern furniture go to the Danish; the Norwegian cruise around glorious fjords. Finns export Finlandia, while the Icelandic claim Björk and ram scrota soup as their own. If these many accomplishments don’t make Bay-transplanted natives of those consonant-heavy countries lucky enough, they also get a shared cabin in Tahoe (replete with ski boats), a cabin in Clear Lake, and a loft in the city that hosts fabulous parties. All this comes with membership in the Young Scandinavians Club, a 58-year-old organization that encourages pride in Nordic heritage and tons of drinking and wakeboarding with tall, tan, white-toothed, blonde people. So dig into your family genealogy and find old Swedish grandpa Gustaf, or marry Henrik, that green-card-seeking Norwegian, to join. People who have lived in a Scandinavian country for more than six months are also invited into the club. Just say ja.

(415) 346-7450, www.ysc.org

BEST DETOUR TO UTAH

The Hotel Utah Saloon looks like it was hastily assembled out of whatever was lying around — a giant stuffed deer thrusts its head and shoulders through the wall near the door, while the second floor gallery seems to float on the stern of a small wooden boat. You get the feeling that if you came back the next day you might find it completely rearranged, or vanished altogether. This isn’t surprising in a place as old as the Utah, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year. In the early evening, the bar fills with regulars trading anecdotes with tattooed, comely, competence-oozing barmaidens. Around 9 p.m., the music starts and a younger set drifts in. Over the years, the unpretentious Utah has hosted Robin Williams, musical outfit Cake, and countless local bands — yet the door will rarely set you back more than $8. The food runs a tad pricey, but the fried cheese sandwich (“fried cheese” sandwich or “fried” cheese sandwich? Our lips are sealed) is worth it and ample enough for two.

500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300, www.hotelutah.com

BEST LITTLE WAREHOUSE IN PORT COSTA

A daytrip to Port Costa is not usually on anyone’s must-do list, unless you ride a Harley, in which case you’re probably already there. This Best of the Bay pick aims to change that. Tucked along the lazy meander of the Carquinez Strait, Port Costa (pop. 250) is exactly the sort of place time forgets. What isn’t forgotten in Port Costa is the art of having a good time — most evident when bellied up to the bar at the Warehouse Café. Filled to bursting with the fanciful detritus of saloon decor such as leather booths, elegantly fringed lampshades, a campy tribute altar to Marilyn Monroe, 1980s-era video games, and a 9-foot tall polar bear in a glass case, the 100+ year-old former grain warehouse also features live music and barbeque on summer Sundays and an everyday list of more than 400 international beers, which you get to pick out of an enormous walk-in cooler on your own — if you ask nicely first.

Warehouse Café, 5 Canyon Lake, Port Costa. (510) 787-1827

BEST SHROOMIN’

Forget that shady dude in the Haight: the best people to score shrooms with are the members of the Mycological Society of San Francisco, a nonprofit formed in 1950 to promote an exchange of information about gathering and eating mushrooms. (Sorry, but we’re not talking about the mushrooms that go with psychedelic felt posters.) The society welcomes any newcomers interested in moving past the white button salad staple to learn about where to gather mushrooms and how to detect poisonous specimens. Lectures and meetings held by professional mycologists are held monthly, and group gathering expeditions provide a chance to bond in the outdoors with your fellow enoki enthusiasts. An adjunct culinary society hosts potluck dinners every month, with every dish, from the chanterelle salad to the candy cap mushroom cookies (trust us, they’re delish) featuring the fungi among us. And don’t forget the biannual fungus fairs, which help the public learn more-l (groan) about mushrooming and mycology.

www.mssf.org

BEST SUBCULTURAL CIRCULATION

Skateboarding may have been born on the streets of Los Angeles, but the sport and/or lifestyle would’ve been destined to a future of irrelevance — remember Rollerbladers? — had it not been hijacked more than 25 years ago by the San Franciscan gangstas who run Thrasher Magazine. The founders of the lo-fi zine — now a globally distributed glossy — dedicated themselves to defining what it meant to be a skateboarder as opposed to a surfer bro who occasionally rode around on a piece of wood. The current editorial team, headed by local legend Jake Phelps, carries on that tradition today, infusing a distinct SF feel into modern global skate culture. Thanks to Thrasher‘s coverage of underground music, fashion, and events, skateboarding has grown into a full-fledged subculture with its own set of rules, a truly bizarre crew of nonconformist leaders, and an indisputable spot at the top of the pop culture food chain.

www.thrashermagazine.com

BEST SLICES OF HISTORY

For 30 years the Inner Sunset’s Milano Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant has been helping folks get their piece of the pie. It’s a real-deal mom-and-pop pizza joint where an old TV flickers above the clinking of plates and glasses and the rumbling of the streetcar. The staff buzzes about while friends sit at tables eating heartily, drinking $5 pitchers of IPA, and conversing amiably. Photos line the walls — and this is what really makes Milano special: three decades’ worth of San Francisco memories. Old-time regulars hold up Milano T-shirts, athletes show off regional title trophies, and would-be actors and actresses stare with dramatic intent. There are sepia-toned shots of the owners’ family and a loving memorial to Jack and Dolores, namesakes of the Jack and Dolores Special (Canadian bacon, garlic, onions, feta, and pesto). Many autographed pics of local music acts whose members have worked at Milano are also displayed, including one of DJ Shadow, taken at Milano by Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone. But even if you never become quite that famous, at least there’s a hot slice waiting for you.

1390 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 665-3773

BEST DREAM FACTORY

No other Bay Area film production house possesses the charm, history, and long-term awesomeness of Francis Ford Coppola’s 39-year-old art collective turned premier cinematic dream factory, American Zoetrope. The legendary company has put out some of the world’s most acclaimed titles (the Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, Lost in Translation), nurtures local up-and-coming directors and screenwriters, and represents the apex of the classy side of San Francisco’s movie industry. Coppola’s reach doesn’t stop with film, of course. His empire has grown to include an award-winning literary magazine, a distinguished winery, and a restaurant and bar called Café Zoetrope in the fabulously triangular and historic Sentinel Building, American Zoetrope’s operational home base (and also where the Kingston Trio recorded many of their hits, the Caesar salad was reportedly invented, and the Coppola family has its pied-à-terre). Coppola’s team congregates at the bar after work to drink with other esteemed locals like Lawrence Ferlinghetti or chat with legendary tale-spinning bartender Peter.

www.zoetrope.com

BEST VIVACIOUS UNDERGROUND VENUE

Café Du Nord turned 100 this year, but the roster of live performers that enlivens this well-appointed, intimate, literally underground music venue remains anything but musty. Forward-thinking (if history-respecting) music makers Rykarda Parasol, Nada Surf, and Raised by Robots joined spunky old-schoolers like Rickie Lee Jones, Was (Not Was), and the Lady Tigra on the schedule this year, and the sometimes raucous Porch Light storytelling series, organized by writers Beth Lisick and Arline Klatte, keeps San Francisco’s literary scene on its toes. Located beneath the Swedish American Hall, Du Nord features several holdovers from its speakeasy days, including trapdoors and an elaborate system of tunnels, and the ghosts of illicit-grog-swilling artists, working girls, and con men are said to sometimes join in the modern-day revelry. Yet updates abound: owner Guy Carson is building a daytime café and gallery adjacent to the music hall; featuring musicians’ art in exhibits that tie in with shows, it’s slated to open in mid-September.

2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

BEST PAPER CLIPS WITH A PAST

Need staples? Forget Staples — or any of those other impersonal office supply Borgs from Planet Big Box. For every kind, shape, size, and width of pencil, pen, notebook, or eraser you need, we have Patrick and Company, a 135-year-old purveyor of business necessities that’s been providing all manner of indispensable items since San Francisco was a set of tin shacks in the sand dunes (well, at least the outer reaches of it). Long before the Great Quake hit, the Patrick family was keeping lowly company clerks up to their visors in ticker tape and hand-cranked calculators. But the five Bay Area Patrick’s locations don’t limit themselves to stocking the manila-tinged totems of daily drudgery — they also feature a wide variety of colorful and collectible stickers and other yummy must-wants that add a splash of color to your beige cubicle. Plus: office furnishings! OK, we know, office supplies may not be the most exciting things in the world (to some), but at Patrick and Company they at least come with a history.

Various locations. www.patco.net

Nightlife and Entertainment

January 5, 2010

BEST REP FILM HOUSE

Red Vic

From rock docs to cult classics, this Upper Haight co-op’s schedule has kept its cozy couches filled with popcorn-munching film buffs since 1980.

1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Runners up: Castro, Roxie

BEST MOVIE THEATER

Balboa Theater

Packing the house with film festivals, second-run faves, indie darlings, and carefully chosen new releases, this Richmond gem offers old-school charm with a cozy neighborhood vibe.

3630 Balboa, SF. (415) 221-8184, www.balboamovies.com

Runners up: Castro, Kabuki Sundance

BEST THEATER COMPANY

Un-Scripted Theater Company

The Un-Scripted improv troupe elevates comedy from one-liners and shtick to full-fledged theatrical productions with a talented cast and eccentric sensibilities.

533 Sutter, SF. (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com

Runners up: ACT, Shotgun Players

BEST DANCE COMPANY

Hot Pink Feathers

Blurring the line between cabaret and Carnaval, this burlesque troupe drips with samba flavor (and feathers, of course).

www.hotpinkfeathers.com

Runners up: DholRhythms, Fou Fou Ha!

BEST ART GALLERY

Creativity Explored

The cherished nonprofit provides a safe haven for artists of all ages, abilities, and skill levels while making sure that great works remain accessible to art lovers without trust funds.

3245 16th St., SF. (415) 863-2108, www.creativityexplored.org

Runners up: 111 Minna, Hang

BEST MUSEUM

De Young

Golden Gate Park’s copper jewel boasts stunning architecture, one hell of a permanent collection, and an impressive schedule of rotating exhibitions.

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF. (415) 750-3600, www.famsf.org/deyoung

Runners up: Asian Art Museum, SF MOMA

BEST MIXED-USE ARTS SPACE

CellSPACE

From aerial circus arts to metalsmithing, fire dancing to roller-skating parties, CellSPACE has had its fingers all over San Francisco’s alternative art scene.

2050 Bryant, SF. (415) 648-7562, www.cellspace.org

Runners up: SomArts, 111 Minna

BEST DANCE CLUB

DNA Lounge

DNA scratches just about every strange dance floor itch imaginable — from ’80s new wave and glam-goth to transvestite mashups and humongous lesbian dance parties.

375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.dnalounge.com

Runners up: Temple, 1015 Folsom

BEST ROCK CLUB

Bottom of the Hill

San Francisco’s quintessential “I saw ’em here first” dive, Bottom of the Hill consistently delivers stellar booking, cheap drinks, and great sound.

1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

Runners up: Slim’s, The Independent

BEST HIP-HOP CLUB

Club Six

Six blurs the line between high and low, offering an upstairs lounge in which to see and be seen and a basement dance floor for those who want to show off their b-boy prowess.

60 Sixth St., SF. (415) 531-6593, www.clubsix1.com

Runners up: Poleng, Milk

BEST JAZZ CLUB

Yoshi’s

Nothing says “Bay Area” quite like Yoshi’s masterful combo of classic cocktails, inventive maki rolls, and world-class jazz acts.

510 Embarcadero West, Jack London Square, Oakl. (510) 238-9200; 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600; www.yoshis.com

Runners up: Jazz at Pearl’s, Biscuits and Blues

BEST SALSA CLUB

Cafe Cocomo

Smartly dressed regulars, smoking-hot entertainment, and plenty of classes keep the Cocomo’s floor packed with sweaty salsa enthusiasts year-round.

650 Indiana, SF. (415) 824-6910, www.cafecocomo.com

Runners up: El Rio, Roccapulco

BEST PUNK CLUB

Annie’s Social Club

The club maintains its cred by presciently booking on-the-rise punk and hardcore bands and adding a sprinkle of punk rock karaoke, photo-booth antics, and ’80s dance parties.

917 Folsom, SF. (415) 974-1585, www.anniessocialclub.com

Runners up: Thee Parkside, 924 Gilman

BEST AFTER-HOURS CLUB

Endup

Where the drunken masses head after last call, the aptly named Endup is probably the only club left where you can rub up against a fishnetted transvestite until the sun comes up. And after.

401 Sixth St., SF. (415) 646-0999, www.theendup.com

Runners up: Mighty, DNA Lounge

BEST HAPPY HOUR

El Rio

“Cash is queen” at this Mission haunt, but you won’t need much of it. El Rio’s infamous happy hour — which lasts five hours and begins at 4 p.m. — consists of dirt cheap drinks and yummy freebies.

3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com

Runners up: Midnight Sun, Olive

BEST DIVE BAR

500 Club

A mean manhattan might not be the hallmark of a typical dive, but just add in ridiculously low prices, well-worn booths, and legions of scruffy hipsters.

500 Guerrero, SF. (415) 861-2500

Runners up: Broken Record, Phone Booth

BEST SWANKY BAR

Bourbon and Branch

Mirrored tables, exclusive entry, fancy specialty cocktails, and a well-appointed library root this speakeasy firmly in “upscale” territory.

501 Jones, SF. (415) 346-1735, www.bourbonandbranch.com

Runners up: Red Room, Bubble Lounge

BEST TRIVIA NIGHT

Brain Farts at the Lookout

“Are you smarter than a drag queen?” Brain Fart hostesses BeBe Sweetbriar and Pollo del Mar ask every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at this gay hot spot. Maybe.

3600 16th St., SF. (415) 431-0306

Runners up: Castle Quiz (Edinburgh Castle), Trivia Night (Board Room)

BEST JUKEBOX

Lucky 13

Bargain drinks, a popcorn machine, and Thin Lizzy, Hank 3, Motörhead, and Iggy on heavy rotation: Lucky 13 never disappoints.

2140 Market, SF. (415) 487-1313

Runners up: Phone Booth, Lexington Club

BEST KARAOKE BAR

The Mint

It may be nigh impossible to get mic time at this mid-Market mainstay, but once you do, there are hordes of adoring (read: delightfully catty) patrons to applaud you.

942 Market, SF. (415) 626-4726, www.themint.net

Runners up: Encore, Annie’s Social Club

BEST CLUB FOR QUEER MEN

Bearracuda at Deco

Bears at the free buffet, bears on the massage table — bears, bears everywhere, but mostly on the dance floor at this big gay biweekly hair affair in the Tenderloin.

510 Larkin, SF. (415) 346-2025, www.bearracuda.com

Runners up: The Cinch, The Stud

BEST CLUB FOR QUEER WOMEN

Lexington Club

With a pool table, a rotating gallery of kick-ass art, and regular rock DJ nights, this beer-and-shot Mission dive has been proving that dykes drink harder for more than a decade.

3464 19th St., SF. (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com

Runners up: Cockblock, Wild Side West

BEST CLUB FOR TRANNIES

Trannyshack

Say hello, wave good-bye: Heklina’s legendary trash drag mecca hangs up its bloody boa in August, but it’s still the best bang for your tranny buck right now.

Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. (415) 252-7883, www.trannyshack.com

Runners up: AsiaSF, Diva’s

BEST SINGER-SONGWRITER

Curt Yagi

Multi-instrumentalist Curt Yagi has been making the rounds at local venues, strumming with the swagger of Lenny Kravitz and the lyrical prowess of Jack Johnson.

www.curtyagi.com

Runners up: Jill Tracy, Kitten on the Keys

BEST METAL BAND

A Band Called Pain

If you didn’t get the hint from their name, the Oakland-based A Band Called Pain bring it hard and heavy and have lent their distinct brooding metal sound to the Saw II soundtrack and Austin’s SXSW.

www.abandcalledpain.com

Runners up: Thumper, Death Angel

BEST ELECTRONIC MUSIC ACT

Lazer Sword

Rooted in hip-hop but pulling influences from every genre under the sun, the laptop composers seamlessly meld grime and glitch sensibilities with ever-pervasive bass.

www.myspace.com/lazersword

Runners up: Kush Arora, Gooferman

BEST HIP-HOP ACT

Beeda Weeda

Murder Dubs producer and rapper Beeda Weeda may make stuntin’ look easy, but he makes it sound even better: case in point, his upcoming album Da Thizzness.

www.myspace.com/beedaweeda

Runners up: Deep Dickollective, Zion I

BEST INDIE BAND

Ex-Boyfriends

San Francisco outfit and Absolutely Kosher artists the Ex-Boyfriends dole out catchy power pop with a shiny Brit veneer and a dab of emo for good measure.

www.myspace.com/exboyfriends

Runners up: Gooferman, Making Dinner

BEST COVER BAND

ZooStation

A mainstay at festivals, parties, and Slim’s cover-band nights, ZooStation storm through the U2 catalog (they take on more than 140 of the band’s tunes).

www.zoostation-online.com

Runners up: AC/DShe, Interchords

BEST BAND NAME

The Fucking Ocean

Fuck Buttons, Holy Fuck, Fucked Up, Fuck, indeed: the time is ripe for band names that can’t be uttered on the airwaves, and the Fucking Ocean leads the pack. George Carlin would be so proud.

www.myspace.com/thefuckingocean

Runners up: Stung, Gooferman

BEST DJ

Smoove

Ian Chang, aka DJ Smoove, keeps late hours at the Endup, DNA Lounge, 111 Minna, Mighty, and underground parties all over, pumping out power-funk breaks.

www.myspace.com/smoovethedirtypunk

Runners up: Jimmy Love, Maneesh the Twister

BEST PARTY PRODUCERS

Adrian and the Mysterious D, Bootie

Five years in, the Bay’s groundbreaking original mashup party, Bootie, has expanded coast-to-coast and to three continents. This duo displays the power of tight promotion and superb party skills.

DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.bootiesf.com

Runners up: NonStop Bhangra crew, Mike Gaines (Bohemian Carnival)

BEST BURLESQUE ACT

Twilight Vixen Revue

Finally, someone thinks to combine pirates, wenches, classic burlesque, and foxy lesbians. This all-queer burlesque troupe has been waving its fans (and fannies) since 2003.

www.twilightvixen.com

Runners up: Sparkly Devil, Hot Pink Feathers

BEST DRAG ACT

Katya Ludmilla Smirnoff-Skyy

Gorgeous costumes, a glamorous backstory, and a jam-packed social calendar are reasons enough to catch this opera diva, but it’s her flawless mezzo that keeps fans hurling roses.

www.russianoperadiva.com

Runners up: Charlie Horse, Cookie Dough

BEST COMEDIAN

Marga Gomez

One of America’s first openly gay comics, San Francisco’s Marga Gomez is a Latina firebrand who’s equally at home performing at Yankee Stadium or Theatre Rhinoceros.

www.margagomez.com

Runners up: Robert Strong, Paco Romane

BEST CIRCUS TROUPE

Vau de Vire Society

Offering a full-on circus assault, the wildly talented and freakishly flexible troupe’s live show delivers plenty of fire performances, aerial stunts, and contortionism.

www.vaudeviresociety.com

Runners up: Teatro Zinzani, Pickle Family Circus

BEST OPEN MIC NIGHT

Hotel Utah

One of the city’s strongest breeding grounds for new musical talent, Hotel Utah’s open mic series opens the floor for all genres (and abilities).

500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300, www.hotelutah.com

Runners up: Queer Open Mic (3 Dollar Bill), Brain Wash

BEST CABARET/VARIETY SHOW

Hubba Hubba Review: Best Cabaret/Variety Show
PHOTO BY PATRICK MCCARTHY

Hubba Hubba Revue

Vaudeville comedy, tassled titties, and over-the-top burlesque teasing make the Hubba Hubba Revue the scene’s bawdiest purveyor of impropriety.

www.hubbahubbarevue.com

Runners up: Bohemian Carnival, Bijou (Martuni’s)

BEST LITERARY NIGHT

Writers with Drinks

This roving monthly literary night takes it on faith that writers like to drink. Sex workers, children’s book authors, and bar-stool prophets all mingle seamlessly, with social lubrication.

www.writerswithdrinks.com

Runners up: Porchlight Reading Series, Litquake

BEST CRUSHWORTHY BARTENDER

Laura at Hotel Utah

Whether you just bombed onstage at open mic night or are bellied up to the Hotel Utah bar to drink your sorrows away, the ever-so-crushworthy Laura is there with a heavy-handed pour and a smile. She’s even nice to tourists — imagine!

500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300, www.hotelutah.com

Runners up: Chupa at DNA Lounge, Vegas at Cha Cha Cha

Nightlife and Entertainment — Editors Picks

BEST CREEP-SHOW CHANTEUSE

There’s just something about the inimitable Jill Tracy that makes us swoon like a passel of naive gothic horror heroines in too-tight corsets. Is it her husky midnight lover’s croon, her deceptively delicate visage, her vintage sensibilities? Who else could have written the definitive elegy on the “fine art of poisoning,” composed a hauntingly lush live score for F.W. Murnau’s classic silent film Nosferatu, joined forces with that merry band of bloodthirsty malcontents, Thrillpeddlers, and still somehow remain a shining beacon of almost beatific grace? Part tough-as-nails film fatale, part funeral parlor pianist, Tracy manages to adopt many facades yet remain ever and only herself — a precarious and delicious balancing act. Her newest CD, The Bittersweet Constrain, glides the gamut from gloom to glamour, encapsulating her haunted highness at her beguiling best.

www.jilltracy.com

BEST CINEMATIC REFUGE FOR GERMANIACS

Can’t wait for the annual Berlin and Beyond film fest to get your Teuton on? The San Francisco Goethe-Institut screens a select handful of German-language films throughout the year at its Bush Street language-school location. For a $5 suggested donation, you can treat yourself to a klassische F.W. Murnau movie or something slightly more contemporary from Margarethe von Trotta. Flicks are subtitled, so there’s no need to brush up on verb conjugations ahead of time. And the Bush Street location is within respectable stumbling distance of many Tendernob bars, not to mention the Euro-chic Café de la Presse, should your cinematic adventure turn into an unexpected Liebesabenteuer. Unlike SF filmic events offering free popcorn, free-for-all heckling, or staged reenactments of the action, Goethe-Institut screenings need no gimmickry to attract their audiences — a respectable singularity perhaps alone worth the price of admission.

530 Bush, SF. (415) 263-8760, www.goethe.de

BEST UNFORCED BAY AREA BALKANIZATION

Despite all the countless reasons to give in to despair — the weight of the world, the headline news, those endless measured teaspoons — sometimes you just have to say fuck it and get your freak on. No party in town exemplifies this reckless surrender to the muse of moving on better than the frenetic, freewheeling proslava that is Kafana Balkan. No hideaway this for the too-cool-for-school, hands-slung-deep-in-pockets, head-bobber crowd. The brass-and-beer-fueled mayhem that generally ensues at Kafana Balkan, often held at 12 Galaxies, is a much more primitive and fundamental form of bacchanal. Clowns! Accordions! Brass bands! Romany rarities! Unfurled hankies! The unlikely combination of high-stepping grannies and high-spirited hipsters is joined together by the thread that truly binds: a raucous good time. Plus, all proceeds support the Bread and Cheese Circus’s attempts to bring succor and good cheer to orphans in Kosovo. Your attendance will help alleviate angst in more ways than one.

www.myspace.com/kafanabalkan

BEST GOREY BALL

There’s no doubt about it — we San Franciscans love to play dress-up. From the towering Beach Blanket Babylon–esque bonnets at the annual Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Easter Sunday to the costumed free-for-all of All Hallows Eve, the more elaborate the excuse to throw on some gay apparel, the more elaborate the apparel. This makes the annual Edwardian Ball tailor-made for San Francisco’s tailored maids and madcap chaps. An eager homage to the off-kilter imaginings of Edward Gorey, whose oft-pseudonymous picture books delved into the exotic, the erotic, and the diabolic within prim and proper, vaguely British settings, the Edwardian Ball is a midwinter ode to woe. From the haunting disharmonies of Rosin Coven to the voluptuous vigor of the Vau de Vire Society’s reenactment of Gorey tales, the ball — which now encompasses an entire three-day weekend — is a veritable bastion of dark-hued revelry and unfettered fetish.

www.myspace.com/edwardianball

BEST PROGRESSIVE LOUD ‘N’ PROUD

We love Stephen Elliott. The fearless writer, merciless poker opponent, and unrepentant romantic’s well-documented fall from political innocence — recounted in Looking Forward to It (Picador, 2004) and Politically Inspired (MacAdam/Cage, 2003) — has kept him plunged into the fray ever since. Like most other ongoing literary salons, Elliott’s monthly Progressive Reading Series offers a thrilling showcase of local and luminary talent, highlighting up-and-comers along with seasoned pros — shaken, stirred, and poured over ice by the unflappable bar staff at host venue the Make-Out Room. All of the proceeds from the door benefit selected progressive causes — such as, most recently, fighting the good fight against California state proposition 98. Books, booze, and ballot boxing — a good deed never went down more smoothly or with such earnest verbiage and charm.

www.progressivereadingseries.org

BEST UNDERAGE SANDWICH

When it comes to opportunities to see live independent music, most Bay Area venues hang kids under 21 out to dry. Outside of 924 Gilman in Berkeley and the occasional all-ages show at Bottom of the Hill, the opportunities are painfully sparse. But thanks to members of Bay Area show promotion collective Club Sandwich, the underground music scene is becoming more accessible. Committed to hosting exclusively all-ages shows featuring under-the-radar local and national touring bands, Club Sandwich has booked more than a hundred of them since 2006, ranging from better-known groups like No Age, Marnie Stern, and Lightning Bolt to more obscure acts like South Seas Queen and Sexy Prison. Club Sandwich shows tend to cross traditional genre boundary lines (noise, punk, folk, etc.), bringing together different subcultures within the Bay Area’s underground music scene that don’t usually overlap. And the collective organizes shows at wildly diverse venues: from legitimate art spaces like ATA in San Francisco and Lobot in Oakland to warehouse spaces and swimming pools.

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

BEST BEER PONG PALACE

Pabst Blue Ribbon, American Spirits, track bikes, tattoos, stretchy jeans, slip-ons, facial hair, Wayfarers. Blah, blah, blah. If you live in the Mission — and happen to be between 22 and 33 years old — you see it all, every night, at every bar in the hood. Boooring. If you’re sick of all the hipster shit, but not quite ready to abandon the scene entirely, take a baby step over to the Broken Record, a roomy dive bar in the Excelsior that serves gourmet game sausage, gives away free beer every Friday(!), rents out Scrabble boards, and isn’t afraid to drop the attitude and get down with a goofy night of beer pong or a bar-wide foosball match. The cheap swill, loud music, and street art will make you feel right at home, but the Broken Record’s decidedly Outer Mission vibe will give you a much-needed respite from the glam rockers, bike messengers, “artists,” and cokeheads you have to hang out with back in cool country.

1166 Geneva, SF. (415) 255-3100

BEST VOLUPTUOUS VISIBILITY

Every June, the Brava Theater quietly morphs into the center of the known universe for queer women of color. And what a delectable center it is. Over the course of three days, the Queer Women of Color Film Festival, produced by the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, screens more than 30 works by emerging filmmakers for a raucously supportive audience — an audience that happens to be cute as all hell. In fact, some would call the festival the cruising event of the year for queer women of color. Of course, the films are worth scoping too. Students of QWOCMAP’s no-cost Filmmaker Training Program create most of the festival’s incredible array of humorous and sensitive films, which explore topics such as romance and family ties. For festivalgoers, this heady mixture of authentic representation, massive visibility, and community pride (all screenings are copresented with social justice groups) is breathtakingly potent. It’s no wonder a few love connections are made each fest. Want just a little more icing on that cake? All screenings are free.

(415) 752-0868, www.qwocmap.org

BEST DANCE-FLOOR FLICKS FIX

The San Francisco Film Society is best known for putting on America’s oldest film fest, the San Francisco Film Festival. But the organization also hosts a TV show, publishes an amazingly vibrant online magazine, and throws a slew of events throughout the year under its SF360 umbrella, a collection of organizations dedicated to covering film in San Francisco from all angles. There’s SF360 movie nights held in homes across the city, Live at the Apple Store film discussions, and special screenings of hard-to-see films held at theaters throughout the Bay Area. But our favorite SF360 shindig is its monthly SF360 Film+Club Night at Mezzanine, which screens underground films to a room of intoxicated cinephiles who are encouraged to hoot, holler, and at times — like during the annual R. Kelly Trapped in tha Closet Singalong — flex their vocal cords. Past Film+Club screenings have included a B-movie skate-film retrospective, prescreenings of Dave Eggers’s Wholphin compilations, and an Icelandic music documentary night, at which, we’ll admit, we dressed up like Björk.

www.sf360.org

BEST HORIZONTAL MAMBO ON HIGH

Project Bandaloop: Best Horizontal Mambo on High
PHOTO BY TODD LABY

Normally when one mentions doing the horizontal mambo, nudges and winks ensue. But when Project Bandaloop gets together to actually do it, the group isn’t getting freaky, it’s getting wildly artistic — hundreds of feet up in the air. The aerial dance company creates an exhilarating blend of kinetics, sport, and environmental awareness, hanging from bungee cords perpendicular to tall building walls. The troupe is composed of climbers and dancers, who rappel, jump, pas de deux, and generally do incredibly graceful things while hoisted hundreds of feet up in the air. Founded in 1991 and currently under the artistic direction of Amelia Rudolph, Project Bandaloop’s company of dancer-athletes explores the cultural possibilities of simulated weightlessness, drawing on a complete circumferential vocabulary of movement to craft site-specific dances, including pieces for Seattle’s Space Needle and Yosemite’s El Capitan. (Once it even performed for the sheikh of Oman.) Now, if there were only a way to watch the rapturous results without getting a stiff neck.

(415) 421-5667, www.projectbandaloop.org

BEST YODELALCOHOL

From the sidewalk, Bacchus Kirk looks like so many other dimly lit San Francisco bars. Yet to walk inside is to step into a little bit of Lake Tahoe or the Haute-Savoie on the unlikely slopes of lower Nob Hill. With its raftered A-frame ceiling, warm wood-paneled walls, and inviting fireplace, the alpine Bacchus Kirk only needs a pack of bellowing snowboarders to pass as a ski lodge — albeit one that provides chocolate martinis, raspberry drops, and mellow mango cocktails rather than hot cocoa, vertiginous funicular rides, and views of alpenhorn-wielding shepherds. This San Francisco simulation of the après-ski scene is populated by a friendly, low-key crowd of art students, Euro hostelers, and diverse locals — no frosty snow bunnies here — drawn by the congenial atmosphere, the pool table, and that current nightlife rarity, a smoking room. Tasty drinks and lofty conversation flow freely: if you leave feeling light-headed, you won’t be able to blame it on the altitude.

925 Bush, SF. (415) 474-4056, www.bacchuskirk.org

BEST COCKTAILS WITH CANINES

Plenty of bars around town call themselves pooch-friendly — as if a pampered shih tzu housed in a Paris Hilton wannabe’s purse, its exquisitely painted paw-nails barely deigning to rest atop the bar, represents the be-all and end-all of canine cocktail companionship. The Homestead, however, goes the extra mile to make four-legged patrons of all shapes and sizes at home with its “open dog” policy. Permanently stationed below the piano is a water dish, and the bar is stocked with an ample supply of doggie treats. At slack times, the bartenders will even come out from behind the bar to dispense said treats directly to their panting customers. Talk about service! As for the bipeds, they will undoubtedly appreciate the Homestead’s well-worn 19th-century working-class-bar decor (complete with a potbellied stove!) and relaxed modern-day atmosphere. It’s the perfect spot to catch up with old friends — either furry or slightly slurry — and make a few new ones.

2301 Folsom, SF. (415) 282-4663

BEST VISA TO MARTINI VICTORY

Bartender Visa Victor: Best Visa to Martini Victory
PHOTO BY NEIL MOTTERAM

When überfancy personalized cocktails started popping up all over town, it was only a matter of time before we of the plebeian class started demanding our fair share. Looking to be poured something special, but can’t afford a drink at Absinthe? Want to sample a few stupendously constructed tipples in the Bourbon and Branch vein with limited ducats? Score: Visa Victor the bartender has what you want. Once a journeyman slinger, Visa has started filling regular shifts — typically Wednesdays and Sundays — at Argus Lounge on Mission Street. What he offers: his own DJ, a well-populated e-mail list of fans, and an array of unique ingredients including rare berries, savory herbs, and meat. Yes, meat — his recent bacon martini turned out to be not just an attempt to tap into the city’s growing “meat consciousness” but damn good to boot. And hey, we didn’t have to take out a phony second mortgage to down it.

BEST JAZZ JUKE

Pesky Internet jukeboxes are everywhere: any decent night out can be ruined by some freshly 21-year-old princess bumping her “birthday jam” incessantly. The old-school jukebox, on the other hand, has the oft-undervalued ability to maintain a mood, or at least ensure that you won’t be “bringing sexy back” 27 times in one evening. Aub Zam Zam in the Upper Haight maintains an exceptional jukebox chock-full of timeless blues, jazz, and R&B slices. Selections include Robert Johnson, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Taj Mahal … the list of smooth crooners and delicate instrumentalists goes on and on. This is in perfect keeping with Aub Zam Zam’s rep as a mighty fine cocktail lounge, established in the 1940s. New owner Bob Clarke has made the place a lot more welcoming than it was in the days of notoriously tyrannical founder Bruno, who proudly boasted of 86ing 80 percent of the Zam Zam’s would-be customers. But Clarke’s kept at least one thing from Bruno’s days besides mouthwatering drinks: his favorite juke jams.

1633 Haight, SF. (415) 861-2545

BEST FUNNY UH-OH

It’s hard to tell if the entity known as Something with Genitals is a comedy act or a cultural experiment designed to monitor human behavior under unusual circumstances. Take, for example, the night one member of this duo, sometimes trio, of dudes made his way through the crowded Hemlock Tavern on cross-country skis. When he finally maneuvered himself onto the stage, the lights went out and the show was over. Sometimes no one gets onstage at all. Instead the audience gets treated to one of the group’s ingeniously simple short films, which are way better at summing up every one-night stand you’ve had than a regular joke with a punch line. Check out their video on MySpace of a guy who strikes up a conversation with a shrub on some Mission District street, invites it to a party, offers it a beer, asks it to dance, shares some personal secrets and heartfelt dreams, then proceeds to drunkenly fuck it, and you’ll wonder if they’ve been reading your diary. Funny uh-oh, not funny ha-ha.

www.myspace.com/somethingwithgenitals

BEST WEIRD EYE FOR WEIRD TIMES

Even if you’re not in the market for stock footage — the chief focus of Oddball Film + Video, which maintains an archive crammed with everything from World War II clips to glamour shots of TV dinners circa 1960 to images of vintage San Francisco street scenes — you can still take advantage of this incredible resource. Director and founder Stephen Parr loves film, and he loves the unusual; lucky for us, he also loves sharing his collection with the public. RSVPs are essential to attend screenings at the small space, which in recent months has hosted such programs as “Shock! Cinema,” a collection of hygiene and safety films (Narcotics: Pit of Despair) from bygone but no less hysterical eras, and “Strange Sinema,” featuring yet-to-be-cataloged finds from Oddball’s ever-growing library (a 1950s dude ranch promo, an extended trailer for 1972 porn classic Behind the Green Door). Other past highlights have included programs on sex, monkeys, India, and avant-gardists and nights with guest curators like Los Angeles “media ecologist” Gerry Fialka.

275 Capp, SF. (415) 558-8117, www.oddballfilm.com

BEST SWEET ISLE OF ROCK

It doesn’t get much sweeter, in terms of massive multistage music gatherings soaked with mucho cerveza and plenty of sunshine: looking out over the bay at our sparkling city from the top of a Ferris wheel as Spoon gets out the jittery indie rock on the main stage below. That was the scene at last year’s inaugural two-day Treasure Island Music Festival, a smooth-sailing dream of a musical event presented by the Noise Pop crew and Another Planet Entertainment. The locale was special — how often do music fans who don’t live or work on the isle ever get out to that human-made spot, a relic from the utopian era of “We can do it!” engineering and World’s Fairs. The shuttles were plentiful and zero emission. The food was reasonably priced, varied, and at times vegetarian. About 72 percent of the waste generated by the fest was diverted to recycling and composting. Most important, the music was stellar: primo critical picks all the way. This year’s gathering, featuring Justice, Hot Chip, and the Raconteurs, looks to do even better.

www.treasureislandfestival.com

BEST WHITE-HOT WALLS

Pristine walls couldn’t get much more white-hot than at Ratio 3 gallery. Chris Perez has a nose for talent — and an eye for cool — when it comes to programming the new space on Stevenson near SoMa. The curator has been on a particular roll of late with exhibitions by such varied artists as psychedelia-drenched video installationist Takeshi Murata, resurgent abstractionist Ruth Laskey, and utopian beautiful-people photog Ryan McGinley, while drawing attendees such as Mayor Gavin Newsom and sundry celebs to openings. Perez also has a worthy stable of gallery artists on hand, including local legend Barry McGee (whose works slip surprisingly well among recent abstract shows at the space), rough-and-ready sculptor Mitzi Pederson, op-art woodworker Ara Peterson, and hallucinatory dreamscape creator Jose Alvarez. Catch ’em while the ratio is in your favor.

1447 Stevenson, SF. (415) 821-3371, www.ratio3.org

BEST ON-SCREEN MIND WARP

When edgy director of programming Bruce Fletcher left the San Francisco Independent Film Festival (IndieFest), fans who’d relied on his horror and sci-fi picks were understandably a little worried. Fortunately, Fletcher’s Dead Channels: The San Francisco Festival of Fantastic Film proved there’s room enough in this town for multiple fests with an eye for sleazy, gory, gruesome, unsettling, and offbeat films, indie and otherwise. There’s more: this summer Dead Channels teamed up with Thrillpeddlers to host weekly screenings at the Grand Guignol theater company’s space, the Hypnodrome. “White Hot ‘N’ Warped Wednesdays” are exactly that — showcasing all manner of psychotronica, from Pakistani gore flick Hell’s Ground to culty grind house classics like She-Freak (1967). Come this October, will the Dead Channels fest be able to top its utterly warped Hump Day series? Fear not for the programming, dark-dwelling weirdos — fear only what’s on the screen.

www.deadchannels.com

BEST BACKROOM SHENANIGANS

Everyone knows when Adobe Books’ backroom art openings are in full swing: the bookstore is brightly lit and buzzing at an hour when most other literature peddlers are safely tucked in bed, the crowd is spilling onto the 16th Street sidewalk, and music might be wafting into the night. Deep within, in the microscopic backroom gallery, you might discover future art stars like Colter Jacobsen, Barbra Garber, and Matt Furie, as well as their works. Call the space and its soirees the last living relic of Mission District bohemia or dub it a San Francisco institution — just don’t try to clean it up or bring order to its stacks. Wanderers, seekers, artists, and musicians have found a home of sorts here, checking out art, bickering over the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the time line of Mission hipster connections that runs along the upper walls, sinking into the old chairs to hang, and maybe even picking up a book and paging through.

3166 16th St., SF. (415) 864-3936, adobebooksbackroomgallery.blogspot.com

BEST HELLO MUMBAI

DJ Cheb i Sabbah at Bollyhood Café: Best Hello Mumbai
PHOTO BY NEIL MOTTERAM

India produces more movies than any other place on the planet, although you’d scarcely know it from the few that make it stateside. But the American Bollywood cult is growing, and Indian pop culture is dancing its eye-popping way into San Francisco’s heart with invigorating bhangra club nights and piquant variations on traditional cuisine. Bollywood-themed Bollyhood Café, a colorful dance lounge, restaurant, and bar on 19th Street, serves beloved Indian street food–style favorites, with tweaked names like Something to Chaat About, Bhel “Hood” Puri, and Daal-Icious. The joint also delights fans of the subcontinent with nonstop Bollywood screenings and parties featuring DJs Cheb i Sabbah and Jimmy Love of NonStop Bhangra. The crowd’s cute, too: knock back a few mango changos or a lychee martini and prepare to kick up your heels with some of the warmest daals and smoothest lassis (har, har) this side of Mumbai.

3372 19th St., SF. (415) 970-0362, www.bollyhoodcafe.com

BEST POP ‘N’ CHILL

Sheila Marie Ang at Bubble Lounge: Best Pop ‘N’ Chill
PHOTO BY NEIL MOTTERAM

When people get older and perhaps wiser, they begin to feel out of place in hipstery dive bars and tend to lose the desire to rage all night in sweaty dance clubs. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to party; it just means they’d rather do it in a more sophisticated setting. Thank goddess, then, for Bubble Lounge, the Financial District’s premier purveyor of sparkling social lubricant. For a decade, this superswanky champagne parlor has dazzled with its 10 candlelit salons, each decked out with satin couches, overstuffed chairs, and mahogany tables. BL specializes in tasters, flights, and full-size flutes of light and full-bodied sparkling wines and champagnes. But if poppin’ bub ain’t your style, you can always go the martini route and order a specialty cocktail like the Rasmatini or the French tickler — whatever it takes to make you forget about the office and just chill.

714 Montgomery, SF. (415) 434-4204, www.bubblelounge.com

BEST REGGAE ON BOTH SIDES

Reggae may not be the hippest or newest music in town, but there are few other genres that can inspire revolutionary political thought, erase color lines, and make you shake your ass all at the same time. Grind away your daily worries and appreciate the unity of humanity all night long on both sides of the bay — second Saturdays of the month at the Endup and fourth Saturdays at Oakland’s Karibbean City — at Reggae Gold, the Bay Area’s smoothest-packed party for irie folk and dance machines. Resident DJs Polo Moquuz, Daddy Rolo, and Mendoja spin riddim, dancehall, soca, and hip-hop mashup faves as a unified nation of dub heads rocks steady on the dance floor. Special dress-up nights include Flag Party, Army Fatigue Night, and the Black Ball, but otherwise Reggae Gold keeps things on the classy side with a strict dress policy: no sneakers, no baseball caps, no sports attire, and for Jah’s sake, no white T-shirts. This isn’t the Dirty South, you know.

www.reggaegoldsf.com

BEST MEGACLUB REINCARNATION

Its a wonder no one thought of it before. Why not combine green business practices with a keen sense of after-hours dance floor mayhem, inject the whole enchilada with shots of mystical spirituality (giant antique Buddha statues, a holistic healing center) and social justice activism (political speaker engagements, issue awareness campaigns), attach a yummy Thai restaurant, serve some fancy drinks, and call it a groundbreaking megaclub? That’s a serviceably bare-bones description of Temple in SoMa, but this multilevel, generously laid out mecca for dance music lovers is so much more. Cynical clubgoers like ourselves, burnt out on the steroidal ultralounge excesses of the Internet boom, cast a wary eye when it was announced that Temple would set up shop in defunct-but-still-beloved club DV8’s old space, and feared a mainstream supastar DJ onslaught to cover the costs. Temple brings in the big names, all right, but it also shows much love for the local scene, giving faves like DJ David Harness and the Compression crew room to do their thing. The sound is impeccable, the staff exceedingly friendly, and even if we have to wade politely but firmly through some bridge and tunnel crowd to get to the dance floor, we can use the extra karma points.

540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

BEST BANGERS AND FLASH

Blow Up: Best Bangers and Flash
PHOTO BY MELEKSAH DAVID

Disco, house, techno, rave, hip-hop, electroclash … all well and good for us old-timers who like to stash our pimped-out aluminum walkers in the coat check and “get wild” on the dance floor. But what about the youth? With what new genre are they to leave their neon mark upon nightlife? Which party style will mark their generation for endless send-ups and retro nights 30 years hence? The banger scene, of course, fronting a hardcore electro sound tinged with sweet silvery linings and stuttery vocals that’s captured the earbuds and bass bins of a new crop of clubbers. Nowhere are the bangers hotter (or younger) than at the sort-of weekly 18-and-over party Blow Up at the Rickshaw Stop, now entering its third year of booming rapaciousness. Blow Up, with resident DJs Jeffrey Paradise and Richie Panic and a mindblowing slew of globe-trotting guests, doesn’t just stop with killer tunes — almost all of its fabulously sweat-drenched, half-dressed attendees seem to come equipped with a digital camera and a camera-ready look, as befits the ever-online youth of today. Yet Blow Up somehow leaves hipper-than-thou attitude behind. Hangovers, however, often lie ahead.

www.myspace.com/blow_up_415

BEST SCRIBBLER SMACKDOWN

It may not be the Saudi tradition of dueling poets, in which two men swap lines until one can’t think of any more couplets (and is severely punished), but the Literary Death Match series, put on by Opium magazine, is San Francisco’s excellent equivalent, though perhaps less civilized. Try to remember the last poetry reading you attended. Tweedy professors and be-sweatered Mary Oliver acolytes, right? Literary Death Match is not this mind-numbing affair. It’s competitive. It’s freaking edge-of-your-seat. And everyone’s drunk. Readers from four featured publications, either online or in print, do their thing for less than 10 minutes, and guest “celebrity” judges rip participants apart based on three categories: literary merit, performance, and “intangibles” (everything in between). Two finalists duke it out to the literary death until one hero is left standing, unless she or he’s been hitting up the bar between sets. Who needs reality television when we’ve got San Francisco’s version — one in which literary aspirations breed public humiliation, with the possibility of geeky bragging rights afterward?

Various locations. www.literarydeathmatch.com

BEST MISTRESS OF MOTOWN

Drag queens — is there nothing they can’t make a little brighter with their glittering presence? Squeeze a piece of coal hard enough between a perma-smiley tranny’s clenched cheeks and out pops cubic zirconium, dripping with sparkling bon mots. Yet not all gender illusionists go straight for ditzy comic gold or its silver-tongued twin, cattiness. Some “perform.” Others perform. And here we must pause to tip our feathery fedora to she who reps the platinum standard of awe-inspiring cross-dressing performance: Miss Juanita More. No mere Streisand-syncher, class-act Juanita dusts off overlooked musical nuggets of the past and gives them their shiny due. Despite punk-rock tribute trends and goth night explosions, Juanita’s focus stays primarily, perfectly, on that sublime subcultural slice of sonic history known formerly as “race music” and currently as R&B. Her dazzling production numbers utilize large casts of extras, several acts, and impeccable costumery that pays tribute to everything from Scott Joplin’s ragtime to Motown’s spangled sizzle, dirty underground ’70s funk to Patti LaBelle’s roof-raising histrionics. When she’s on spliff-passing point, as she so often is, her numbers open up a pulse-pounding window into other, more bootyful, worlds.

www.juanitamore.com

BEST AMBASSADORS OF DREAD BASS

That cracked and funky dubstep sound surged through Clubland’s speakers last year, an irresistible combination of breakbeats energy, dub wooziness, sly grime, intel glitch, and ragga relaxation. Many parties took the sound into uncharted waters, infusing it with hip-hop hooks, Bollywood extravaganza, roots rock swing, or “world music” folksiness. But only one included all those variations simultaneously, while pumping local and international live acts, fierce visuals, multimedia blowouts, and an ever-smiling crowd of rainbow-flavored fans: Surya Dub, a monthly lowdown hoedown at Club Six. The Surya crew, including perennial Bay favorites DJ Maneesh the Twister and Jimmy Love, and wondrous up-and-comers like Kush Arora, Kid Kameleon, DJ Amar, Ripley, and MC Daddy Frank on the mic, describes its ass-thumping sound as “dread bass,” which moves beyond wordy genre description into a cosmic territory the rumble in your eardrums can surely attest to. Surya Dub keeps it in the community, too, helping to promote a growing network of citywide dubstep events and spreading their dread bass gospel with parties in India.

www.suryadub.com

BEST HELLA GAY BEST OF THE BAY

Very few things in this world are gay enough to warrant the Nor Cal Barney modifier “hella,” but for tattooed karaoke-master Porkchop’s sort-of-monthly series at Thee Parkside, Porkchop Presents, the term seems an understatement. At least three times a season, the mysterious Porkchop gathers her posse of scruffy boozehounds and butt-rockin’ hipsters to the best little dive bar in Potrero for a daylong celebration of the gayest shit on earth. Past events have included Hella Gay Karaoke, Hella Gay Jell-O Wrestling, a Hella Gay Beer Bust, and the all-encompassing nod to gaydom, Something Hella Gay, an ongoing event during which gay folks go drink-for-drink to see who’s the gayest of them all. Join Porkchop and her crew of lowbrow beer snobs at Thee Parkside for arm wrestling competitions, tattoo-offs, and hella gay sing-along battles. You probably won’t win anything because the competition is so stiff and the rules are so lax, but you can rest assured that the smell of stale cigarettes, cheap beer, and sweaty ass will stay in your clothes for at least a week after the show. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

Know Your Class

January 4, 2010

(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)

It would be hard to exaggerate Jack Hall’s importance. He was director of organization for the ILWU and one of its two vice presidents when a stroke killed him in 1971 at age 55 in San Francisco. But it was not what he had done during the previous 18 months in the drafty, run-down headquarters presided over by the legendary Harry Bridges that made Hall extraordinary.

Rather, it was what Hall had done before then in Hawaii, where he served for more than a quarter-century as the ILWU’s regional director. He was the key leader in bringing industrial democracy to Hawaii, transforming Hawaii from virtually a feudalistic territory controlled by a few huge financial interests into a modern pluralistic state in which workers and their unions have a major voice.

As former Gov. John Burns of Hawaii said, Hall Brought about “the full flowering of democracy in our islands.”

Hall’s first job was as a sailor in 1932. He sailed to the Far East, where he saw grinding poverty that sickened and angered him and, he later recalled, “determined which side of the fence I was on.” Hall landed in Hawaii four years later, a tall, skinny 26-year-old sent by the Sailors Union to help striking longshoremen win union recognition. Hall soon emerged as a leader of the longshoremen and later as a principal leader in organizing sugar and pineapple plantations.

Virtually all phases of life in the islands were controlled by five extremely powerful holding companies, popularly known as “the Big Five,” that owned the plantations. The workers, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Puerto Rican and others, were purposely segregated by race and ethnicity to keep them from acting jointly. They lived in company housing on the plantations where they worked, bought their food and clothing in company stores there, and had little choice but to do exactly what the bosses told them to do, at pay of less than 50 cents an hour.
The battles waged by Hall and his fellow organizers to overcome the employers’ absolute domination of their workers’ lives often got brutal. There were beatings, an attempt on Hall’s life, and a great furor over Hall’s admitted political radicalism.

The strike was the only weapon available to the workers. But when workers of a particular nationality struck to demand union rights, they’d be replaced immediately with workers of another nationality.

Hall, a tough, plainspoken, hard-drinking man, talked with the workers endlessly about the obvious need to bring them together in a single union. He spoke to them individually and often in meetings that were held in secret, outside the closely guarded plantations. He told the workers over and over that they could not achieve the unified strength necessary to overcome exploitation if they continued to remain apart because of racial and ethnic differences.

“Know your class,” Hall told them, “and be loyal to it.”

Finally, by the mid-1940s, the ILWU managed to organize workers on the plantations, as well as on Hawaii’s waterfronts. That gave the ILWU a powerful role in Hawaii’s economy that led the union quickly to a major role in Hawaii’s political life as well.

Hall helped put together a political league that became one of the most important political forces in Hawaii and the most racially and ethnically mixed such group anywhere. The union league helped break 50 consecutive years of Republican control of the State Legislature, which in turn led to passage of the most progressive laws of any state and helped make the ILWU as dominant in Hawaiian life as were the Big Five plantation owners before the coming of the union.

Plantation and longshore workers still are the backbone of the ILWU in Hawaii, but Hall long ago led the union into just about every other industry in the islands. Bakers, factory workers, automobile salesmen, supermarket clerks and a wide variety of other workers, especially including hotel workers and others in Hawaii’s ever-expanding tourist industry – all carry union cards.

Union membership is their guarantee of economic and political rights and rewards, of dignity and self-respect and the chance to determine their own destinies, of an effective voice on the job and in their communities, of fair and equal treatment their forebears could only dream of.

Jack Hall left a truly remarkable legacy.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

Best of the Bay 2009: Sex and Romance

January 4, 2010

Best of the Bay 2009: Shopping

January 4, 2010

Shopping

BEST NEW NECESSITIES

Sure, you can buy anything you want on the Internet, but there’s still a certain charm in entering a store whose items have been carefully chosen to delight the eye in three dimensions. That’s the idea behind Perch, Zoel Fages’s homage to all things charming and cheeky, from gifts to home décor. Do you need a set of bird feet salt-and-pepper shakers? A rhinoceros-head shot glass? A ceramic skull-shaped candleholder that grows “hair” as the wax drips? Of course not. But do you want them? The minute you enter the sunny, sweet Glen Park shop, the obvious answer will be yes. And for those gifty items you do need — scented candles and soaps, letterpress greeting cards, handprinted wrapping paper — Perch is perfect too. We’d recommend you stop by just to window-shop, but who are we kidding? You can’t visit here without taking something home.

654 Chenery, SF. (415) 586-9000, www.perchsf.com

BEST PENNYSAVERS FOR EARTHSAVERS

How many environmentalists does it take to change a light bulb? None: LED light bulbs last longer than environmentalists. If you think that joke’s funny — or at least get why it’s supposed to be — you might just be the target market for Green Zebra. Based on the idea that environmentally aware consumers like to save money as much as their Costco-loving neighbors, this book melds the concept of a coupon book with the creed of environmental responsibility. It’s a virtual directory of deals at local businesses trying to work outside the world of pesticidal veggies and gas-guzzling SUVs. Anne Vollen and Sheryl Cohen’s vision now comes in two volumes — one for San Francisco, and one for the Peninsula and Silicon Valley — featuring more than 275 exclusive offers from indie bookstores, art museums, coffee houses, organic restaurants, pet food stores, and just about anywhere else you probably already spend your money (and wouldn’t mind spending less).

(415) 346-2361, www.thegreenzebra.org

BEST ONE-STOP SHOP

So you need a salad spinner, some kitty litter, a birthday card for your sister, and a skein of yarn, but you don’t feel like going to four different stores to check everything off the list? Face it, you’re lazy. But, you’re also in luck. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Standard 5 and 10, a one-stop wonderland in Laurel Village that caters to just about every imaginable whim, need, and desire of serious shoppers and procrastinators alike. Don’t be fooled by the large red Ace sign on the storefront — this is not merely a hardware store (although it can fulfill your hardware needs, of course). It’s an everything store. Walking the aisles here is a journey through consumerism at its most diverse. Greeting cards and tabletop tchotchkes fade into rice cookers then shower curtains, iron-on patches, Webkinz, motor oil…. It’s a dizzying array of stuff you need and stuff you simply want.

3545 California, SF. (415) 751-5767, www.standard5n10.com

BEST PLACE TO SINK A BATTLESHIP

Maybe we don’t have flying cars yet, but with video chatting, iPhones, and automated vacuum cleaners, we’re pretty close to living in the imaginary future The Jetsons made magical. Is it any wonder that, while loving our new technologies (hello, Kindle), we’ve also developed a culturewide nostalgia for simpler times? A perfect example is the emergence of steampunk — perhaps familiar to the mainstream as jewelry made of watch parts and cars crafted to look like locomotives. There also seems to be a less expensive, less industrial trend for the pastimes of yore: Croquet. Talk radio. And board games. The last of which is the basis of Just Awesome, the Diamond Heights shop opened by Portland escapee Erik Macsh as a temple to old-fashioned charms. Here you can pick up a myriad of boxes full of dice, cards, and plastic pieces. Head home with Clue, one of the Monopoly iterations (was Chocolate-opoly really necessary?), or a new game that came out while you were distracted by Nintendo Wii. You can even open the box and try a round or two in the shop. How’s that for old-world service?

816 Diamond, SF. (415) 970-1484, www.justawesomegames.com

BEST BORROWED CLOTHES

The nice thing about having a sister, a roommate, or a tolerable neighbor who’s exactly your size is that there’s always someone else’s closet to raid when your own is looking dismal. But what to do when you live alone, your neighbor’s not answering your calls, and you desperately need an attention-getting outfit right now? Make a new best friend: Shaye McKenney of La Library. The friendly fashionista will let you borrow a pair of leather hot pants for a Beauty Bar boogie or a German knit couture gown for that gold-digging date to the opera, all for a small pay-by-the-day price. You can even bring your makeup and get ready for the evening in front of the antique mirrors in her socialist street shop. It’s all the fun of sharing, without having to lend out any of your stuff.

380 Guerrero, SF. (415) 558-9481, www.la-library.com

BEST ROCKSTAR STYLES

Need clothes a rockstar would wear but a starving musician can afford? Look no further than Shotwell, whose blend of designer duds and vintage finds are worthy of the limelight and (relatively) easy on your budget. Think jeans with pockets the size of guitar picks, sculptural black dresses, handpicked grandpa sweaters, and reconstructed ’80s rompers that can be paired with lizard skin belts or dollar sign boots, all for less than the cutting-edge designer labels would suggest they should cost. And it’s not just for the ladies. Michael and Holly Weaver stock their adorable boutique with clothing and accessories for all chromosomal combinations. The concept’s become such a success that Shotwell’s moving from its old locale to a bigger, better space. All we can say is, rock on.

320 Grant, SF. (415) 399-9898, www.shotwellsf.com

BEST LOOKIN’

The best stores are like mini-museums, displaying interesting wares in such a way that they’re almost as fun to peruse as they are to take home. Park Life takes this concept one step further by being a store (wares in the front are for sale) and a gallery (featuring a rotating selection of local contemporary artists’ work). No need to feel guilty for window-shopping: you’re simply checking out the Rubik’s Cube alarm clock, USB flash drive shaped like a fist, and set of “heroin” and “cocaine” salt-and-pepper shakers on your way to appreciating the paintings in the back, right? And if you happen to leave with an arty coffee-table book, an ironic silk-screen T-shirt, or a Gangsta Rap Coloring Book, that’s just a bonus.

220 Clement, SF. (415) 386-7275, www.parklifestore.com

BEST LITTLE COOKING STORE THAT COULD

In a world replete with crates, barrels, Williams, and Sonomas, it’s easy to forget there’s such a thing as an independent cooking store. But Cooks Boulevard is just that: an adorable, one-stop shop for reasonably priced cooking paraphernalia, from a pastry scale or Le Creuset to a candy mold or stash of wooden spoons. And if the shop doesn’t have what you need, the friendly staff will order it for you. In fact, this Noe Valley gem has everything the big stores have, including online ordering, nationwide shipping, and a well-kept blog of missives about the foodie universe. It even offers cooking classes, on-site knife sharpening, community events such as food drives and book clubs, and CSA boxes of local organic produce delivered to neighborhood clientele. With knowledgeable service and well-stocked shelves, the Boulevard makes it easy for home cooks and professional chefs to shop local.

1309 Castro, SF. (415) 647-2665, www.cooksboulevard.com

BEST BROOKLYN ALTERNATIVE

No sleep ’til Brooklyn? Fine. But no style ’til you reach the Big Apple? We just can’t give you license for that kind of ill, especially since the Brooklyn Circus came to town last July. With its East Coast–style awning, living room vibe, and indie hip-hop style, this boutique might just be the thing to keep those homesick for NYC from buying that JetBlue ticket for one … more … week. Want to save your cash just in case? You’re welcome to chill out on the leather sofas and listen to Mos Def mixtapes. At the store you can soak in the charm of the Fillmore’s colorful energy and history, while checking out the trends that blend Frank Sinatra and Kanye West almost seamlessly. Sure, you could visit the Chicago outpost before going to the original in the store’s namesake city, but why bother? Next year’s selection will include an expanded line of locally produced goodies — all available without having to brave a sweltering Big City summer.

1525 Fillmore, SF. (415) 359-1999, www.thebkcircus.com

BEST YEAR-ROUND HOLIDAY GIFT BASKET

I know. It’s July. The last thing you want to do is think about that stupid holiday shopping season that’ll dominate the entire universe in about three months. But the gift baskets at La Cocina are worth talking about year-round, not only because purchasing one supports a fantastic organization (dedicated to helping low-income entrepreneurs develop, grow, and establish their businesses) but because the delightful packages really are great gifts for any occasion. Whether it’s your boss’s birthday, your friend’s dinner party, or simply time to remind your grandmother in the nursing home that you’re thinking of her, these baskets full of San Francisco goodness are a thoughtful alternative to flower bouquets and fruit collections ordered through corporations. Orders might include dark chocolate-<\d>covered graham crackers from Kika’s Treats, spicy yucca sticks, toffee cookies from Sinful Sweets, roasted pumpkin seeds, or shortbread from Clairesquare, starting at $23. Everything will come with a handwritten note and a whole lot of love.

www.lacocinasf.org

BEST UNDERWATERSCAPING

Aqua Forest Aquarium has reinvented the concept of fish in a bowl. The only store in the nation dedicated to a style of decorating aquariums like natural environments, Aqua Forest boasts an amazing display of live aquatic landscapes that seem directly transplanted from more idyllic waters. With good prices, knowledgeable staff, a focus on freshwater life, and a unique selection of tropical fish, the shop is not only proof that aquarium stores need not be weird and dingy, but that your home fish tank can be a thriving ecosystem rather than a plastic environment with a bubbling castle (OK, a thriving ecosystem with a bubbling castle). Part pet store, part live art gallery, Aqua Forest is worth a visit even if you’re not in the market for a sailfin leopard pleco.

1718 Fillmore, SF. (415) 929-8883, www.adana-usa.com

BEST FRIDGE FILLERS ON A BUDGET

Remember when we all joked that Whole Foods should be called Whole Paycheck? Little did we realize the joke would be on us when the only paper in our purses would be a Whole Pink Slip. In the new economy, some of us can’t afford the luxury of deciding between organic bananas or regular ones — we’re trying to figure out which flavor of ramen keeps us full the longest. Luckily, Duc Loi Supermarket opened in the Mission just in time. This neighborhood shop is big, bright, clean, well stocked, cheap, and diverse, with a focus on Asian and Latino foods. Here you can get your pork chops and pig snouts, salmon and daikon, tofu and tortilla chips — and still have bus fare for the ride home. In fact, young coconut milk is only 99 cents a can, a whole dollar less than at Whole Foods.

2200 Mission, SF. (415) 551-1772

BEST PLACE TO DISS THE TUBE

Some people go their entire lives buying replacement 20-packs of tube socks from Costco, socks whose suspicious blend of elastic, petroleum products, and God-knows-what signals to wearers and viewers alike: Warm, shwarm! Fit, shmit! Style, shmyle! Other people, even if they keep their socks encased in boots or shoes, want to know that their foot coverings are just one more indicator of their fashion — and common — sense. Those people go to Rabat in Noe Valley, where the sock racks look like a conjuring of the chorus of “Hair”: “curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty, oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen, knotted, polka-dotted, twisted, beaded, braided, powdered, flowered, and confettied; bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied.” Furthermore, the socks are mostly made from recognizable materials like wool, cotton, or fleece. As for you sensible-shoe and wingtip types, not to worry. Rabat also stocks black and white anklets and nude-colored peds.

4001 24th St., SF (415) 282-7861. www.rabatshoes.com

BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS YOU DON’T KNOW

Don’t let the small storefront at Alexander Book Company deter you — this three-story, independent bookstore is packed with stuff that you won’t find at Wal-Mart or the book malls. We’re particularly impressed with the children’s collection — and with the friendly, knowledgeable staff. If you’re looking for a birthday present for your kid’s classmate, or one for an out-of-town niece or nephew — or you just generally want to know what 10-year-old boys who like science fiction are reading these days — ask for Bonnie. She’s the children’s books buyer, and not only does she have an uncanny knack for figuring out what makes an appropriate gift, chances are whatever the book is, she’s already read it.

50 Second St., SF. (415) 495-2992, www.alexanderbook.com

BEST PLACE TO SELL THE CLOTHES OFF YOUR BACK

If you think Buffalo Exchange and Crossroads are the only places to trade your Diors for dollars, you’re missing out. Urbanity, Angela Cadogan’s North Berkeley boutique, is hands down the best place to consign in the Bay. The spot is classy but not uppity, your commission is 30 percent of what your item pulls in, and, best of all, you’d actually want to shop there. Cadogan has a careful eye for fashion, choosing pieces that deserve a spot in your closet for prices that won’t burn a hole in your wallet. Want an even better deal on those Miu Miu pumps or that YSL dress? Return every 30 days, when items that haven’t sold yet are reduced by 40 percent. But good luck playing the waiting game against Urbanity’s savvy regulars — they’ve been eyeing those Pradas longer than you have.

1887 Solano, Berk. (510) 524-7467, www.shopurbanity.com

BEST TIME MACHINE

Ever wish you could be a character in a period piece, writing love letters on a typewriter to your distant paramour while perched upon a baroque upholstered chair? We can’t get you a role in a movie, but we can send you to the Perish Trust, where you’ll find everything you need to create a funky antique film set of your very own. Proprietor-curator team Rod Hipskind and Kelly Ishikawa have dedicated themselves to making their wares as fun to browse through as to buy, carefully selecting original artwork, vintage folding rulers, taxidermied fowl, out-of-print books, and myriad other antique odds-and-ends from across the nation. As if that weren’t enough, this Divisadero shop also carries Hooker’s Sweet Treats old world-<\d>style gourmet chocolate caramels — and that’s definitely something to write home about.

728 Divisadero, SF. www.theperishtrust.com

BEST MISSION MAKEOVER

If Hayes Valley’s indie-retailer RAG (Residents Apparel Gallery) bedded the Lower Haight’s design co-op Trunk, their love child might look (and act) a lot like Mission Statement. With a focus on local designers and a philosophy of getting artists involved with the store, the 18th Street shop has all the eclectic style of RAG and all the collaborative spirit of Trunk — all with a distinctly Mission District vibe. Much like its namesake neighborhood, this shop has a little of everything: mineral makeup, fedoras adorned with spray-painted designs, multiwrap dresses, graphic tees, and more. Between the wares of the eight designers who work and play at the co-op, you might find everything you need for a head-to-toe makeover — including accessorizing advice, custom designing, and tailoring by co-owner Estrella Tadeo. You may never need to leave the Valencia corridor again.

3458-A 18th St., SF. (415) 255-7457, www.missionstatementsf.com

BEST WALL OF BEER

Beer-shopping at Healthy Spirits might ruin you. Never again will you be able to stroll into a regular suds shop, eye the refrigerated walk-in, and feign glee: “Oh, wow, they have Wolaver’s and Fat Tire.” The selection at Healthy Spirits makes the inventory at almost all other beer shops in San Francisco — nay, the fermented universe — look pedestrian. First-time customers sometimes experience sticker shock, but most quickly understand that while hops and yeast and grain are cheap, hops and yeast and grain and genius are not. Should you require assistance in navigating the intriguing and eclectic wall of beer, owner Rami Barqawi and his staff will guide you and your palate to the perfect brew. Once you’ve got the right tipple, you can choose from the standard corner-store sundries, including coffee, wine, ice cream, and snacks. Chief among them is the housemade hummus (strong on the lemon juice, just the way we like it). Being ruined never tasted so good.

2299 15th St., SF. (415) 255-0610, healthy-spirits.blogspot.com

BEST PLACE TO CHANNEL YOUR INNER BOB VILLA

When is a junkyard not just a junkyard? When you wander through its labyrinth of plywood, bicycle tires, and window panes only to stumble upon an intricately carved and perfectly preserved fireplace mantle which, according to a handwritten note taped to it, is “circa 1900.” This is the kind of thing that happens at Building Resources, an open air, DIY-er’s dream on the outskirts of Dogpatch, which just happens to be the city’s only source for recycled building and landscape materials. Maybe you’ll come here looking for something simple: a light fixture, a doorknob, a few pieces of tile. You’ll find all that. You’ll also find things you never knew you coveted, like a beautiful (and dirt cheap) claw-foot bathtub that makes you long to redo your own bathroom, even though you don’t own tools and know nothing about plumbing. No worries. That’s what HGTV is for.

701 Amador, SF. (415) 285-7814, www.buildingresources.org

BEST WAY TO SHOP LOCAL

It’s impossible not to be impressed with the selection at Collage, the tiny jewel-box of a shop perched atop Potrero Hill. The home décor store and gallery specializes in typography and signage, refurbished clocks and cameras, clothing, unique furniture, and all kinds of objects reinvented and repurposed to fit in a hip, happy home. But what we like best is owner Delisa Sage’s commitment to supporting the local community and economy. Not only does she host workshops on the art of fine-art collage, she carries a gorgeous selection of jewelry made exclusively by local woman artists. Whether you’re looking for knit necklaces, Scrabble pieces, typewriter keys, or an antiqued kitchen island, you’ll find ’em here. And every dollar you spend supports San Francisco, going toward a sandwich at Hazel’s, or a cup of joe at Farley’s, or an artist’s SoMa warehouse rent. Maybe capitalism can work.

1345 18th St., SF. (415) 282-4401, www.collage-gallery.com

BEST BRAND-NEW VINTAGE STYLE

There’s something grandmothers seem to understand that the Forever 21, H&M, Gap generation (not to mention the hippies in between) often miss: the value of elegant, tailored, designer classics that last a lifetime. Plus, thanks to living through the Great Depression, they know a good bargain. Luckily, White Rose got grandma’s memo. This tiny, jam-packed West Portal shop is dedicated to classy, timeless, well-made style, from boiled wool-<\d>embroidered black coats to Dolce handbags. Though the shelves (stacked with sweaters) and racks (overhung with black pants) may resemble those in a consignment or thrift store, White Rose is stocked full of new fashions collected from international travels, catalog sales, or American fabricators. In fact, it’s all part of the plan of the owner — who is reputed to have been a fashion model in the ’50s — to bring elegant chemises, tailored blouses, and dresses for all sizes and ages to the masses. The real price? You must have the patience to sort through the remarkable inventory.

242 W. Portal, SF. (415) 681-5411

BEST BOUTIQUE FOR BUNHEADS

It seems you can get yoga pants or Lycra leotards just about anywhere these days (hello, American Apparel). But elastic waists and spaghetti straps alone do not make for good sportswear. SF Dancewear knows that having clothes and footwear designed specifically for your craft — whether ballroom dance, gymnastics, theater, contact improv, or one of the good old standards like tap, jazz, or ballet — makes all the difference. This is why they’ve been selling everything from Capezio tap shoes to performance bras since 1975. The shop is lovely. There are clear boxes of pointe shoes nestled together like clean, shiny baby pigs; glittering displays of ballroom dance pumps; racks of colorful tulle, ruched nylon, patterned Lycra; and a rope draped with the cutest, tiniest tutus you ever did see. The store is staffed by professional dancers who’re not only trained to find the perfect fit but have tested most products on a major stage. And though your salesclerk may dance with Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet or have a regular gig at the S.F. Opera, they won’t scoff at middle-aged novice salsa dancers or plus-size burlesqueteers looking for fishnets and character shoes. Unlike the competitive world of dance studios, this retail shop is friendly and open to anyone who likes to move.

659 Mission, SF. (415) 882-7087; 5900 College, Oakl. (510) 655-3608,

www.sfdancewear.com

BEST GIFTS FOR YESTERYEAR’S KIDS

We weren’t sure it could get any better — or weirder — than Paxton Gate, that Mission District palace of science, nature, and dead things. But then the owner, whose first trade was landscape architecture, opened up Paxton Gate Curiosities for Kids down the street, and lo and behold, ever more awesomeness was achieved. Keeping the original store’s naturalist vibe but leaving behind some of its adults-only potential creepiness, this shop focuses on educational toys, vintage games, art supplies, and an eclectic selection of books sure to delight the twisted child in all of us. From handblown marbles to wooden puzzles, agate keychains to stop-motion booklets, and Lucite insects to Charlie Chaplin paper doll kits, everything here seems to be made for shorties from another time — an arguably better one, when kids rooted around in the dirt and made up rules for imaginary games and didn’t wear G-string underwear.

766 Valencia, SF. (415) 252-9990, www.paxtongate.com

BEST DAILY TRUNK SHOW

San Francisco sure does love its trunk shows: all those funky people hawking their one-of-a-kind wares at one-of-a-kind prices. The only problem? Shows happen intermittently (though with increasing frequency in the pre-<\d>Burning Man frenzy). Lucky for us, Miranda Caroligne — the goddess who makes magic with fabric scraps and a surger — co-founded Trunk, an eclectic indie designer showcase with a permanent address. The Lower Haight shop not only features creative dresses, hoodies, jewelry, and menswear by a number of artists, but also functions as an official California Cooperative Corporation, managed and run by all its 23 members. That means when you purchase your Kayo Anime one-piece, Ghetto Goldilocks vest, or Lucid Dawn corset, you’re supporting an independent business and the independent local artists who call it home.

544 Haight, SF. (415) 861-5310, www.trunksf.com

BEST PLACE TO GET IRIE WITH YOUR OLLIE

Skate culture has come a long way since its early surfer punk days. Now what used to be its own subculture encompasses a whole spectrum of subs, including dreadheaded, jah-lovin’, reggae pumpin’ riders. And Culture Skate is just the store for those who lean more toward Bob Marley than Jello Biafra. The Rasta-colored Mission shop features bamboo skate boards, hemp clothing, glass pipes, a whole slew of products by companies such as Creation and Satori, and vinyl records spanning genres like ska, reggaeton, dub, and, of course, good old reggae. Stop by to catch a glimpse of local pros — such as Ron Allen, Matt Pailes, and Karl Watson. But don’t think you have to be a skater to shop here: plenty of people stop by simply for the environmentally-friendly duds made with irie style.

214 Valencia, SF. (415) 437-4758, www.cultureskate.com

Best of the Bay 2009: Classics

January 4, 2010

Meister: Union rights for airport screeners

December 29, 2009

Airport screeners and other vital employees of the
Transportation Safety Agency should finally have the basic rights and protections they have so long needed and deserved

(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)

The underpaid, overworked and otherwise poorly treated airport screeners who are essential to air passenger safety may finally be winning their long struggle for the badly needed union rights guaranteed other federal employees.

There are more than 40,000 screeners –- a first line of defense against terrorism — posted at X-ray machines, checkpoints and elsewhere in air terminals throughout the country. They work for the Transportation Safety Agency (TSA) that was set up in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 1, 2001.

Such related workers as federal border guards and immigration and Custom Service employees are unionized. But in 2003, President Bush denied union rights to screeners and other TSA employees on grounds that their unionization would somehow “threaten national security.”

A majority in the House and Senate voted in 2007 to restore the screeners’ union rights. But the congressional majority wasn’t large enough to overturn a veto threatened by the president, and the attempt was abandoned.

Denying the fundamental right of unionization to the screeners, as the United Nations’ International Labor Organization ruled, violates “core labor standards.”

The screeners’ need for unionization should be as obvious as the nation’s need for their invaluable service. Their complaints are widespread and numerous. They cite, for instance, inadequate pay, low morale, a high rate of workplace injuries, unfair promotion and scheduling policies, arbitrary work rules and high turnover rates.

The screeners’ hope for wining union rights rests primarily with President Obama, who voted as a senator to grant screeners union rights and promised during his presidential campaign to make granting them the rights “a priority for my administration.”

Winning congressional approval won’t be easy, but is also expected, despite stiff opposition expected to be led by a notably anti-labor Republican senator, John DeMint of South Carolina. He argues, much as George Bush had argued, that unionizing TSA employees would amount to putting air security and safety in the hands of those old right-wing bugaboos, “union bosses.”

Senator DeMint and his reactionary colleagues probably will lose their attempt to deprive some of our most deserving workers their basic rights. But they undoubtedly will cause some damage along the way to their ultimate defeat.

DeMint already has managed to stall Senate confirmation of Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Safety Agency and carry out the reforms sought by Obama and TSA‘s employees. He’s invoked Senate rules to postpone the vote on whether to confirm the president’s appointment of a well-regarded former FBI agent and assistant chief of the Los Angeles Airport Police, Erroll Southers, to run the agency.

In the meantime, two government employee unions are competing for the right to represent TSA employees once they are granted union rights. The competition undoubtedly will result in more and stronger employee demands for improved conditions as the two unions vie vigorously to represent them.

One of the unions is the largest of federal employee unions, the 600,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, the other the 150,000-member National Treasury Union. But despite its much smaller size, the Treasury Union won three years ago in competing with the Federation of Government Employees to represent airport Customs and border protection officers.

The unions have been waging a vigorous campaign , signing up members, establishing union locals at airports nationwide, helping workers appeal unfair disciplinary actions, filing grievances against employer mistreatment and other actions. Both unions have promised to press hard for pay raises, better promotion policies and work rules and other matters important to TSA employees.

No matter which union wins, it’s certain that the airport screeners and other vital employees of the Transportation Safety Agency should finally have the important basic rights and protections they have so long needed and so long deserved.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister,com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

We are family

December 29, 2009

Dear Andrea:

Is it OK to ask out my ex sister-in-law? I always thought she was hot. Now we are both divorced and I keep thinking, why not? Is there some reason I’m not thinking of why I shouldn’t?

Love,

Free and 50

Dear Free:

What is an ex sister-in-law, exactly? An ex wife of your ex wife’s brother? Entirely doable, assuming that none of these people are still in close touch with any of your people, and I’d imagine they’re not. If, rather, you mean your ex-wife’s sister, proceed only if childless or post-emigration (both of you) to someplace suitably distant, like New Zealand or the International Space Station. In other words, you are adults and can do what you like, but nobody else is going to like you for it.

While I am a big believer in living an authentic life (come out if you’re gay, don’t promise monogamy if you’re poly, etc.) I’m equally dedicated to what Michael Jackson’s rabbi Shmuley Boteach flogs, catchily, as “shalom in the home.” (Boteach calls himself “America’s rabbi” but having been MJ’s best grown-up little buddy all over the media for years makes him no rabbi of mine, yuck.) Peace to you! Peace to your ex-in-laws! (“Peace to you and all your mailmen,” sings our own rabbi, who is a bit of a goof.) Do not go sowing discord and discomfort. Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Don’t date your ex wife’s sister.

Exes who were never blood relatives of former spouses are a big whatev, go for it. We must keep in mind, though, that there is no reason to believe that the ex wife of an ex wife’s sibling or whatever she has been thinking you were hot all the years you were thinking she was. She may never have noticed you because you are not the sort of person she notices. She may find you repulsive. It’s no different from any other “should I ask her out?” situation — nothing ventured nothing gained and all that. But in the case of an ex’s ex-ex, if she rejects you, word may get back to the people you are still in touch with, and they may laugh at you. But if you ask her out, she may have sex with you. Decisions, decisions.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

Can you marry your cousin? Is it legal, and is it a good idea?

I am just wondering because we used to flirt a lot when we were teenagers and I still find her attractive (and will see her on the holidays) but of course I would never do anything about it.

Love.

No Harm in Asking

Dear No:

You could have just looked it up! This is not obscure information, although it does manage to be continually surprising information. The answer to your first question, as to so many others, is “it depends.” Fifteen or so states (and not just weird little forgotten out-of-the way states, either, count California and New York) allow first cousins to marry without any restriction. A handful more have various hoops to jump through. The rest still have anti-cousin laws on the books but you know, it is not unheard-of to go to another state to marry if your own is still too bigoted to allow it. It’s also legal in Mexico and Canada.

What do you mean, “bigoted,” you ask? Isn’t marrying your cousin a good way to get a kid with flippers and three eyes? No, actually, it’s not. There’s a slightly — very slightly — higher incidence of birth defects, like 1 percent or 2 percent. If your (mutual) family suffers from a heritable genetic condition, you’re both going to want to get tested for that before having kids. But for most people, it’s just not going to be an issue.

What is an issue is: your families would hate you. Or hate one of you and consider the other a victim. Or not hate but be so horribly uncomfortable in your presence that it would come down to the same thing, as far as happy holidays and shalom in the home go.

I am not horrified or even bothered by cousins marrying. It seems kind of lazy to me — what, you couldn’t be bothered to meet someone else? — but it isn’t bad or wrong or gross or even dangerous. It is, however, Not Done. It used to be done (every article you read on this is illustrated with a picture of the Darwins, I think), but it is currently Not Done. And you are not the Jukes and the Kallikakses (look it up) and you are not pharoahs or European royalty. You do not, presumably, possess dynastic wealth that requires cautious and xenophobic husbanding. So you probably want to not do it.

And now I can’t get Dorothy Parker’s poemlet out of my head, so here, Merry Christmas:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

And I am Marie of Romania.

Love,

Andrea

Woodyland

December 29, 2009

YEAR IN FILM The defining adjective for Woody Harrelson is hard to pin, but I’d nominate … limber. Not just because he’s a deft physical comedian — in The Late Henry Moss, a star-encrusted but not very good Sam Shepard play that premiered in San Francisco in 2000, he stole the show from the likes of Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, and Cheech Marin with a 20-minute bit as a cabbie stuck in a front door. But also because he undergoes gymnastic changes from one screen role to another without ever seeming to break a sweat, or lose

his essential congeniality.

He appears to be a laid-back guy, and he’s a certainly a laid-back actor — one never sees the heavy Actor Man gears rotating (unlike with Sean Penn). It all seems to be pure pleasure and/or instinct. Maybe because he makes it look so easy — and because he’s so good a goofball — Harrelson has seemed kinda taken for granted, a guy who lucked out in TV (Cheers), then movies. He’s had a haphazard career by the usual upwardly-mobile standards, mixing leads, support parts, cameos, mainstream and indie projects, network guest spots, heavy drama and low comedy. One suspects he takes work because he likes the people involved or it sounds like fun. No wonder he’s not the possessor of a screen image as carefully calibrated (and, at least until recently, lucrative) as Tom Cruise.

I’m sure there was no intentionality involved — dig the randomness of his 2008 output — but 2009 turns out a year that insisted attention be paid. Closet Harrelson fans (why would you hide that love?) emerged. How could they not? His conspiracy theorist was the sole spontaneous note in humungous idiot’s-delight 2012. He gave the sublime Steve Zahn a run for his scene-owning money in undervalued indie flop Management, as principal rival for Jennifer Aniston’s affections.

More significantly, he ruled as brokenhearted macho blowhards in two wildly different films. In Zombieland, his joyriding undead hunter has gorgeous comic rapport with Jesse Eisenberg’s shambling teen coward, improving their material considerably. That surprise box-office triumph was followed by underachiever The Messenger, in which Harrelson plays the officer who trains-partners Ben Foster in the terrible task — considered by many the military’s worst job — of informing home-front families their loved ones

have been killed.

Harrelson’s role in that was sarcastic, hostile, loutish, hilarious, tender, tragic — a tribute to director-coscenarist Oren Moverman, for sure, but especially to the actor he rightly figured as best possible choice. It’s a beautiful performance. But in a toss-up between that and Zombieland, I’d be hard-pressed to choose a favorite.

Yet even those movies don’t let Harrelson dominate as in Defendor, a 2009 Toronto International Film Festival premiere not due theatrically until next year. In that, he plays a near-homeless schizophrenic who imagines himself a superhero. That tricky role brings out nearly all his colors, especially the loopy, athletic, and pathos-driven ones.

It’s another small film in a career whose highlights are often under-the-radar, like his gay Southerner escort to Manhattan socialites in 2007’s The Walker; the quiet hired gun in 2007’s No Country For Old Men; guess-who in 1996’s The People vs. Larry Flynt; the grenade recipient in 1998’s The Thin Red Line; and so forth. Not to mention such funny-farm swerves as Natural Born Killers (1994), Kingpin (1996), Wag the Dog (1997), and (in drag) Anger Management (2003).

To his credit, Harrelson has also been a high-profile spokesman for hemp, veganism, and overall greening. At his Mill Valley Festival tribute in October, he was charmingly abashed by his own success and serious about attributing achievement to others. All this overcoming a most unfortunate familial background fictionalized in fellow-Texan-turned-local-playwright Octavio Solis’ brilliant Santos & Santos.

Will he age out? Unlikely — already straddling Steve Buscemi and Matthew McConaughey terrain, he can be our next Jeff Bridges for another 30 years.

IPI: Three Killed in Pakistan Press Club Bombing

December 21, 2009

The International Press Institute is a global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists. They are dedicated to the furtherance and safeguarding of press freedom, the protection of freedom of opinion and expression, the promotion of the free flow of news and information, and the improvement of the practices of journalism.

Three Killed in Pakistan Press Club Bombing

Pakistan IPI Member Warns: Media Now a ‘Central Target’

VIENNA, 22 Dec. 2009 – At least three people were killed on Tuesday in Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan when a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the city’s Press Club, according to media reports.

Two policemen and a passer-by were killed, Reuters reported. At least 17 people were wounded.

Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, has been wracked by violence since the Pakistani armed forces began an offensive against Pakistani Taliban militants in October.

“It was a suicide attack. The bomber wanted to get into the Press Club and, when our police guard stopped him, he blew himself up,” city police chief Liaqat Ali Khan told Reuters – which noted that Peshawar reporters had said militants had threatened journalists since the beginning of the offensive against the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. According to IPI’s Death Watch, seven journalists have already been murdered there this year.

Owais Ali, an IPI member, and Secretary-General of the Pakistan Press Foundation, told the IPI Secretariat: “Things are getting from bad to worse. There was a time when the press was collateral damage in covering the war on terror. Now it seems the press has become a central target for terrorists.”

He added: “This is another blow for press freedom in Pakistan. It’s high time the government moved beyond issuing routine condemnations for attacks on journalists and moved to providing security for journalists.”

Ali said that many newspapers didn’t have the money to provide proper security at their entrances, and warned that in the absence of concrete measures to bolster media security after Tuesday’s attack some journalists might choose self-censorship rather than remain exposed to the wrath of the militants.

IPI Director David Dadge said: “Pakistan is already one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists out in the field. The fact that journalists are now being attacked in the traditional haven of a press club is another tragic blow for freedom of the media in Pakistan. Journalists must never be targeted because they will not
follow a political or ideological line and I call on the authorities to do everything to ensure that the perpetrators are brought swiftly to justice.”

Choosing fear over kids

December 21, 2009

As a global treaty designed to protect children around the world celebrated its 20th anniversary last month, the United States found itself in the sole company of Somalia as one of just two countries that still has not implemented the most widely ratified human rights treaty in recorded history.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), available for adoption since 1989, has now been ratified by 193 nations around the world and is seen as a universal guide to helping governments ensure that the basic needs of children are met. Although the Reagan administration played a major role in drafting the convention, experts say it has now been “intentionally misinterpreted” by conservative groups, which claim implementation would threaten American sovereignty and diminish family values.

The convention is set out in 54 Articles and two Optional Protocols and covers four main objectives: nondiscrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child. During last year’s presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to review the treaty, saying: “It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land. It is important that the U.S. return to its position as a respected global leader and promoter of human rights.”

Yet since Obama has been in office, there has been little movement toward ratifying the convention, which sets international standards in the provision of children’s health care, education, and legal, civil, and social services. For children’s rights advocates, this failure of the U.S. to legitimize the rights of the child has resulted in the country’s loss of credibility in the international community.

“It just undermines us internationally as a leader of children’s issues,” said Jo Becker, Advocacy Director for the Children’s Rights division at Human Rights Watch, one of more than 200 organizations partnered to the volunteer-run Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the CRC. “The U.S. is a country that claims to care a lot about children, both nationally and internationally, but it hasn’t ratified a treaty endorsed by virtually every government in the world. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

But while Meg Gardiner, current chair of the Campaign for U.S. Ratification, acknowledged that the U.S. customarily takes a long time to consider and ratify a treaty of any sort, she noted that implementing the convention is also being delayed by frequently misdirected and misguided concerns from various individuals and organizations.

The CRC is a legally binding treaty, and once the U.S. ratifies the agreement — by getting two-thirds of the Senate to approve it — it is committed to undertake actions and policies to reach the standards it advises. The government must submit a detailed report to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is made up of 18 members from different countries and legal systems, within two years of ratification and every five years thereafter.

The committee reviews the progress of each country’s government, then sends recommendations back to the country in question. Although U.N. officials claim that this is a collaborative process, not one that is antagonistic in form, opposition groups view this as a risk to U.S. self-governance.

“A forum for dialogue is fine, but we absolutely do not support the notion of world government,” John Schlafly, a lawyer at Eagle Forum, a conservative interest group that is campaigning against U.S ratification of the CRC, told the Guardian. “We think America is a self-governing country and that we should make our own laws. Our courts and officials should not be subject to decisions and viewpoints of those in other countries, but remember that our Constitution is our supreme law.”

Quoting Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution — which says that all treaties made under the authority of the United States shall be “the supreme law of the land” — Schlafly said if the CRC is ratified then the U.S will sign away any authority it has over children’s rights, with federal laws being changed to meet the criteria in the CRC.

But Jonathan Todres, an associate professor of law at Georgia State University and coeditor of a book on the CRC and the possible implications of its ratification, told us that’s a “misunderstanding” of the process involved. He said the CRC would almost certainly be ratified as a “non-self-executing treaty.” That means that although the U.S will have to comply with international law, it would not take effect domestically until the U.S. adopts legislation to fulfill treaty obligations.

He added that the United States also has the right to add reservations to the treaty if there are any articles that might conflict with U.S. law. For example, Article 37 of the CRC indicates that no “life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offenses committed by persons below 18 years of age,” something that certain states in the U.S still impose.

Despite supporters’ desire for a “magic bullet” that will improve the lives of children in the U.S., they said the treaty will operate as a template for the government to assess how well U.S. law protects children. While Article 24 decrees that “states parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to … health care services,” ratification will not mean an immediate implementation of universal health care for the 8 million to 9 million children who do not have access to it, campaigners say.

“It in itself can’t change law. It is a road map that informs a dialogue around the way we treat children,” said Vienna Colucci, managing director and senior advisor for policy for Amnesty International. “It is a set of principles for the well-being of children, to help inform national discussions about what they really need to thrive. But any implementation of laws go through the same process any bill would.”

The U.S already has ratified the two Optional Protocols of the Children’s Convention, including the protocol on the sexual exploitation of children and enlisting children as soldiers, strengthening the exploitation protocol by adopting the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Todres said this should be used as an example of what ratifying the entire CRC could do.

Many who oppose the CRC fear it will diminish the rights of the parent, such as when it comes to disciplining children. Article 9, which says children can be separated from their parents against their will when “competent authorities subject to judicial review” determine it is in their best interest, is often cited as a loss of parental freedom.

In March of this year Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) put forward a brief Parental Rights Amendment to the CRC, asserting that “the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right,” and deauthorizing the ratification of a treaty that would infringe on such rights.

According to Michael Ramey, spokesman at Parentalrights.org — an organization that claims to “protect children by empowering parents” and an affiliate of the Home School Legal Defense Association — the amendment currently only has six cosponsors in the Senate, a far cry from the two-thirds majority it would need to pass.

“This really is not a question of whether the CRC is all that bad or kind of bad. It is whether it is an improvement for us on what we have now,” he told us. “We already have laws in place against child abuse and neglect in all 50 states and we don’t gain anything by ratifying. None of the good parts of the convention are missing from U.S law.”

However, Todres said the U.S still has child laborers, citing a current bill in Congress that is seeking to strengthen child labor provision related to the agriculture sector. He also reminded opponents that the U.S has a relatively large high school dropout rate, with some U.S children going hungry and hundreds of thousands at risk of sexual exploitation each year.

“Ultimately if one is concerned about the loss of parental authority, then one should look at the text of the CRC itself,” he said, highlighting 19 provisions in the text that stress the role of the parent in the child’s life. “Drafters understood, when ensuring the rights of children, they would be most successful when ensuring the rights of the family too.”

Although there are other articles in the convention that conflict with American law — it prohibits corporal punishment, for example — Linda Elrod, a law professor at Washburn University and supporter of the Campaign for Ratification, said she had not experienced countries receiving “report cards” from the U.N. Committee in the 20 years it had been operating.

“My reason for supporting it is that it is basically a bill of rights for children that says they are people,” she said, stressing how Article 12 in particular gives the child a voice and a way to express it. “We helped draft the U.N. convention and got the rest of the world to adopt that standard. Yes, it gives children rights, but I don’t think this takes away from anyone else’s rights. It just adds a balance.”

Swans, symmetry, and sensations

December 21, 2009

DANCE Looking back over a year’s dance performances feels like reading a horoscope backward. Were there surprises, disappointments, new loves, emerging trends, familiar encounters, and reasons for hope and despair? Of course. Perhaps the best part of this yearly exercise is that it allows works to bubble up that for one reason or another — quality, daring, perspective, innovation — stuck in the mind. You want to see them again. Some, you actually will. As for the not-that-again, forget-it, or please-don’t pieces, they already have sunk into the grand pool of oblivion. The following is a baker’s dozen of top picks, chosen roughly in the order in which they were seen.

Sean Dorsey’s dance-theater piece Lou, based on the writings of transgender pioneer Lou Sullivan and danced by Dorsey, Brian Fisher, Juan de la Rosa, and Nol Simonse, was a penetrating portrait of one man’s courage and lust for life. It also highlighted Dorsey’s increasingly fluid skill in fusing language and dance.

San Francisco Ballet’s most recent Swan Lake (to be reprised in January 2010) is an odd mix of traditional (the choreography) and edgy (the production). By using the bold design of a ballet neophyte, Broadway-credited Jonathan Fensom, Helgi Tomasson took a huge risk in offending traditionalists who like their swans pure. Danced fabulously well, this is a Swan Lake for our own time.

Pichet Klunchun and Myself was just a one-night stand, but what a night it was. To watch French super-theorist Jérôme Bel and classical Thai dancer Klunchun play their intellectual ping pong game about life, dance, culture, and everything in between was to watch two master performers at work.

The big deal about Jess Curtis/Gravity’s brainy and sensuous The Symmetry Project was not that Curtis and Maria Francesca Scaroni performed nude, but that they embodied the idea of relationships — physical, intellectual, emotional, erotic — as being constantly in play.

Presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with their exhibit on William Kentridge, The Return of Ulysses was Kentridge’s translation of Monteverdi’s jewel into puppet theater. The multiple perspectives on time and place and the exquisite cooperation between puppets and singers were awe-inspiring.

ODC/Dance — just because of who they are. Sometimes we tend to take established hometown companies for granted. Yet these dancers have never looked better. Additionally, both Brenda Way’s In the Memory of the Forest and KT Nelson’s Grassland overflowed with commanding and beautifully shaped ideas.

We know Heidi Schweiker best as an interpreter of other people’s choreography. That’s why it was so gratifying to see her first full evening of work. Dreams of Speaking showed a choreographer of intelligence, imagination, and a fine sense of craft.

Ramón Ramos Alayo’s fifth annual Cuba Caribe Festival packed them in. It’s SoMa’s own ethnic dance festival sporting a highly partisan and knowledgeable audience and performers who compete — in a friendly way. High points were the sassy female Las Que Son Son and Alayo dancing up a storm with Silfredo La O Vigo.

Seen in a drizzly rain on a preview performance, Spirit of Place (to be reprised this spring), Anna Halprin’s tribute to husband Lawrence Halprin’s reimagined Stern Grove Theater, was a gorgeous response to a space where nature and art collaborate. The dancers looked like spirits emanating from this magisterial grass and granite environment.

Togetherness suits artistic and life partners Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton. For their second collaboration, The Illustrated Book of Invisible Stories (which returns in January 2010), they worked with two groups of completely different dancers. The result was mysterious, mesmerizing, and surprisingly fresh.

The big surprise at the San Francisco International Arts Festival was the extraordinarily skilled and theatrically vibrant The Angel and the Woodcutter, South Korea’s Cho-In Theatre’s eloquent retelling in movement of a popular Korean fairy tale. It deserved a larger audience.

Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s lecture-demonstration, The Balanchine Couple, served as a vivid reminder that Balanchine never ran out of ideas for pas de deux. The nine on this program could not have been more different — all of them first-rate. The program also brought home the painful truth that such finely detailed and musically phrased Balanchine interpretations are a rarity.

Sometimes it helps to look beyond the hook. The big deal about South African dancer Gregory Maqoma’s Beautiful Me was that he used material from three other (cooperating) artists for his own choreography. Fair enough, but what left this audience member speechless was the grace, virility, and technical and emotional virtuosity with which Maqoma realized this portrayal of self.

Finally, the Performing Diaspora Festival was an ambitious project “featuring traditional forms as a basis for experimentation and innovation.” It boasted an elaborate support structure of studio time, blogs, workshops, and symposia. In the two programs I saw, the work ranged from first rate to mediocre. Fortunately, this is a two-year project — so let’s toast to 2010.

Retail for the people: Black Panther Clothing

December 17, 2009

By Caitlin Donohue

It’s possible that on December 3rd, 1969, when he was arrested for alleged death threats against President Richard Nixon, Black Panther Chief of Staff David Hilliard could not have predicted he’d have a lasting fashion legacy. It was near the height of the Panthers’ international freedom fighting activities. The group was involved in providing food, medical care and legal aid to underserved African-American communities- but in a time of serious governmental persecution, Hilliard was arrested on numerous occasions for everything from possession of a weapon in a public place to his participation in the Oakland police shoot out that killed his comrade Bobby Hutton.

“Hey Panther, where’d ya get that jacket?” A fashion show Friday’s got the answer

They were rebels, social leaders, badasses- and man, could they dress. The “Panther look”- berets, traditional African textiles and sharp leather jackets- were a hipper, sleeker activist chic than the haphazard “hippie” look prevalent at the time. Although they didn’t set out to be style icons, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States” (as J. Edgar Hoover memorably dubbed them) definitely made their mark on the fashion scene.

SF fashion designer Andrea Lamadora with her artistic inspiration, Black Panther David Hilliard

It’s a tricky business, commodifying a social movement, but in preparation for creating a clothing line based on the Panthers’ innate vogue, fashion designer Andrea Lamadora had the unique chance to learn from a key player in the movement- Hilliard himself. Her friendship with the activist gave her “the privilege of seeing the Black Panther Party archives, including never seen by the public images and photos of actual Panther clothing from the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Lamadora says. “I was immediately inspired to lend my creative style to this very important historical, political and cultural organization.” After the jump, what she came up with.

Hot sex events this week: Dec 9-15

December 16, 2009

Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

The Twilight Vixen Revue, shown here at last year’s Hubba Hubba Revue Christmas special, will make an appearance at Friday’s Chrismanukkah show.

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>> International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
Annie Sprinkle and Kimberly Kline host a rememberance ritual at Femina Potens before leading a solidarity stroll down Market to the St. James Infirmary.

Thurs/17, 6pm
Femina Potens
2199 Market, SF
www.feminapotens.org

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>> Holiday treats and personal shoppers
Pamper your way into the holidays with complimentary chocolates and wine on select evenings, when personal shoppers will help you pick out items for everyone on your erotic gift list.

Thurs/17-Sat/19, 6-9pm
Free
All Good Vibrations locations
www.goodvibes.com

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>> Ecstasies and Elegies
Sex workers, advocates, friends, families, and allies observe the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers with an evening of works by current and former sex worker performance artists, writers, and visionaries.

Fri/18, 7:30pm
$10-$20
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
sexandculture.org

Climate Change protests

December 16, 2009

Text by Sarah Phelan

“Human chain” protestors protect grassroots groups from all over the world from hundreds of riot police who turned out to keep climate justice activists from entering the Bella Center where the 15th Conference of Parties was being held.

Alicia Garza, co-executive director of the San Francisco-based People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) sent these photos from protests in Copenhagen. Media outlets are reporting that Danish police arrested about 250 protesters and used pepper spray and dogs to contain crowds in Copenhagen today, as a demonstration against the U.N. climate talks converged on the Bella Center ahead of crucial negotiations at the COP15 summit.

As thousands of activists held a People’s Assembly outside the Bella Center where indigenous activists and G77 representatives walked out of climate talks, activists hung a banner from the trees which said COP15: Business as U$ual. Many activists said that the wealthier nations, such as the EU, France and the United States were prioritizing business interests over the fate of millions of people around the world who are severely impacted by current and impending climate crises.

“Via campesina at COP 15” is an international grassroots organization of farmers and workers from around the world who led activists and civil society who were locked out of the COP. COP officials limited the amount of participation from civil society to 1000 people today, and intend to further limit participation to 90 people tomorrow.
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