Internet Archives — Page 6 of 54 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Goldies 2014 Visual Art: Michelle Ramin

Michael Redmond

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February 18, 2014

marke@sfbg.com

GOLDIES The San Francisco Art Institute’s landmark 2012 MFA exhibition sprawled through the kitschy Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin, partnering artists with often radically different styles in each room. Seen from one angle, it hilariously replicated one particular nostalgia-inducing area of the Internet: bright and noisy chatrooms, overflowing with random strangers, streaming with argument, affinity, and information overload.

Standout exhibitor Michelle Ramin used the opportunity to kick that proto-social media vibe up a notch: “I took one look at the closet and thought, ‘This could be a photobooth,'” she told me over drinks at the Dogpatch Saloon. “That was when every party had to have a photobooth and Instagram was getting popular. There were also a lot of issues of surveillance in the news. I wired the photobooth to the TV permanently installed in the room and displayed the resulting photographs in real time to onlookers.”

But there was one more essential element. Working with programmer Jesse MacDonald, Ramin developed a “Mask Booth” Android app that superimposed her trademark motif — a ski mask — over everyone’s face. That balaclava (menacing, deracinating, liberating, everywhere in pop culture right now, from Pussy Riot to Spring Breakers) shows up often in Ramin’s gorgeous figurative colored pencil drawings and oil paintings, which popped off the Phoenix’s walls.

The masks are donned by “privileged hip young people at leisure” and come in stark contrast to their surroundings. In Three Aliases (2011), a bemasked trio of American Apparel-ready loungers puppy-piles onto a dazzling floral sofa; a scruffy male in a pixilated shirt pushes another masked figure forward on a tricycle with almost violent glee in Joel and Jewel.

“I’m fascinated by how we mask ourselves to form our online profiles, how we develop, or overdevelop, another identity that’s really only just a part of ourselves, but that we find acceptable to share with the world. But there’s another part of ourselves that we call ‘private’ that we also hide behind a mask.” Ramin told me. “We create these dual identities, and there’s a danger of one or the other going off balance.”

“But the mask is also liberating” — Oscar Wilde’s old saw “Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth” — “and it has its own history of transformation. It started out as something to protect against the cold, but now its come to mean many other things, from terrorism to fashion statement.”

Guardian photo by Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover

Ramin was born in 1982 and knew from a young age that she wanted to be an artist. After earning a Fine Arts B.A. at Penn State, she and her now-husband, who appears in many of her works, followed their art dreams to New York City. But they found the experience isolating and expensive, so they impulsively loaded up their car and moved to Portland. “We suddenly found a community, and a close circle of friends. We could work part-time and survive, have a life.” Ramin’s art from that period, of bridges and colorful landscapes, reflected that new-found connectivity and sense of home.

Her move to Portland coincided with the rise of Etsy and the explosion of the online handmade craft marketplace, and her artworks were perfect for the medium. “I could be my own dealer, I was successful, and I suddenly had a platform that reached the whole world,” she said. But she wanted to continue developing, and started looking toward a master’s degree at SFAI, drawn to work with associate professor Brett Reichman, who would become her mentor. She funded her move to SF through an ingenious art auction that linked Etsy to eBay, and anticipated the crowdfunding craze.

Yet her Portland community still inspired. “I had been thinking about masks for awhile, inspired by [San Francisco artist] Desiree Holman’s work. While I was back home in Portland in 2010, my husband and I organized a weekend trip with a bunch of our friends to the coast. On our way out of town I had an inspiration. We drove past an outdoor store, and I stopped and picked up 12 ski masks.

“At the beach house, I asked my friends if they were OK with putting the masks on and having me photograph them — acting normally, holding hands, walking on the beach, all with ski masks on. I took a bunch of photos of them in hopes that they’d turn into a new body of work. It must’ve looked really bad to the neighbors, hipster 20-somethings riding around on tricycles with ski masks on. Because we were told not to return to the house again!”

Since drawing that series from those photographs, and another luminescent series of female nudes (often in balaclavas) in office and classroom settings that raise questions about women’s bodies in arts institutions, Ramin has begun to move on from the masks. “My most recent work has to do with escapism and complacency. I’m still taking photos of my friends, but without showing a literal mask. I want to find another way to talk about the public vs. private ‘branding’ that we all have to invent for ourselves. It’s extremely exhausting to keep up with the latest social media fads, but the reality is that it’s really difficult to remove ourselves completely, especially for artists.

“I’d be happy to ‘go off the grid,’ but a huge part of an artist’s job is to be a social networker. So I suppose sites like Facebook can be a necessary evil for us. The new direction in my art involves discussing the place at which these opposing ideas cross.”

www.michelleramin.com

Introducing BayLeaks

Michael Redmond

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February 18, 2014

3

rebecca@sfbg.com

From time to time, sources have told us at the Bay Guardian that they would love to share sensitive information for news articles, but fear they would be retaliated against or even terminated from employment if they were to do so.

We have found a way around that.

Sources who wish to retain their anonymity while sharing information they believe the public has a right to know now have the option of using an encrypted submission system to anonymously send documents to our news team.

Created by Bay Area technologists in partnership with the San Francisco Bay Guardian, BayLeaks uses the latest cryptography software to protect the identities of our sources. This is a secure, anonymous way for concerned citizens to communicate with journalists to release information.

“Politically, economically, and socially, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Bay Area is at a crossroads. We see BayLeaks as a critical first step in securing radical transparency in public discourse as the region charts its future,” said T.R. Hwang, a BayLeaks partner and deputy director of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, a citizens’ alliance dedicated to enhancing the public sphere through technology.

Our system uses SecureDrop, a whistleblowing platform managed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Tor, an online anonymity network that has gained the trust of Internet users around the world.

The SecureDrop program originated with the late Aaron Swartz, who developed it in collaboration with Wired Editor Kevin Poulson. Swartz was an Internet activist and programmer known for hashing out inventive ways to fight corruption and promote transparency. He’s remembered, among other things, for cofounding Reddit, the online news site; and for founding Demand Progress, an online activism group known for its 2012 campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act.

To access BayLeaks once you have logged onto Tor, type this URL into the browser: l7rt5kabupal7eo7.onion.

Now SecureDrop is managed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 2012 that is “dedicated to helping support and defend public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government.”

To provide maximum security, BayLeaks is only accessible over the Tor anonymity network.

When connecting to Tor in order to submit documents through SecureDrop, the Freedom of the Press Foundation recommends first going to a public location, such as a library or a café, rather than using one’s home or work station where it would be easier for a third party to detect you as a Tor user.

The Tor Browser is as easy to use as other browsers. But once you have downloaded it, it masks the IP address of the computer you are working on by sending your requests through a set of computer relays to keep anyone from tracing communications back to you.

Using the Tor Browser allows you to access Tor Hidden Services like BayLeaks, which are only available over Tor and can be much more secure than ordinary websites. These hidden services have .onion Web addresses (the .com of the digital anonymity world). After you’ve submitted something to BayLeaks, journalists can use the SecureDrop system to communicate securely and anonymously with you. Once you’ve sent all documents to BayLeaks, the Freedom of the Press Foundation recommends deleting the Tor Browser Bundle, destroying any recorded copies of your codename (see “A Low Tech How-To”), and erasing or destroying any media (CD-ROMs, USB sticks) used to copy the leaked documents.

“As the old adage goes, ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant,'” said J.D. Shutt, a BayLeaks partner and Special Initiatives director of the SF Committee of Vigilance. “We’re excited to provide a technologically robust means of bringing this basic rule of civics into the 21st century.”

Theater Listings: February 12 – 18, 2014

Michael Redmond

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February 11, 2014

0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Children Are Forever (All Sales are Final!) Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Previews Fri/14, 8pm. Opens Sat/15, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 22. W. Kamau Bell directs Julia Jackson in her solo show about adoption.

Napoli! ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $10-120. Previews Wed/12-Sat/15 and Tue/18, 8pm (also Sat/15, 2pm); Sun/16, 7pm. Opens Feb 19, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm; Tue, 7pm (March 4, show at 8pm). Through March 9. American Conservatory Theater performs a new translation of Eduardo de Filippo’s poignant Italian comedy.

BAY AREA

A Maze Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.justtheater.org. $20-25. Previews Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm. Opens Sun/16, 5pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Shotgun Players present Just Theater’s production of Rob Handel’s kaleidoscopic comedy.

The Music Man Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-60. Previews Thu/13, 7pm and Sat/15, 1pm. Opens Sat/15, 6pm. Runs Fri and March 20, 7pm; Sat, 1 and 6pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through March 23. There’s trouble in River City! See it unfold amid all those trombones at Berkeley Playhouse.

ONGOING

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (March 2, performance at 2pm; March 9, performance will be a reading of Charlie Varon’s Fish Sisters). Through March 16. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Hir Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Third Flr, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Wed-Sat, 8pm (additional show Feb 19, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 23. Taylor Mac, creator of 2011’s five-hour six-director extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge, returns to the Magic Theater with a much more straightforward, if not exactly straight, family comedy-drama in two acts. An Iraq vet named Isaac (Ben Euphrat) returns to his childhood home from the war, where his job was picking up body parts. His now touchy stomach is set off right away by the disturbing changes that have taken place while he was away. For one thing, the place is a dump. His father (a toddling, half-vacant, half-wily Mark Anderson Philips) has had a stroke that has left him an overgrown infant in thrall to his mother, Paige (a honeyed but brassy Nancy Opel), now come into her own as a liberated woman whose badge of honor is a derelict household out of all usual (patriarchal) order and discipline — and whose manner is just a little like that of an open-minded, half-savvy drag queen. Still more troubling to Isaac is his sister Maxine, now Max (an animated and winning Jax Jackson), in the midst of transitioning via regular internet-purchased doses of testosterone. (Max insists on being addressed with gender-neutral, third-person pronouns ze, in place of she/he, and hir for him/her). Soon Isaac shores up his father’s position and mounts a counteroffensive to reclaim lost ground. An ideological turf war commences for control of the hearth and, by extension, the future of the family as an institution. Directed by Niegel Smith, the cast is competent but only intermittently effective at selling the high-octane comic premise. Jackson and Opel are the most consistent and persuasive. The play, meanwhile, has some good one-liners in addition to its intriguing premise, but gets mired in a broad and emotionally detached sitcom-like style, which can make the playwright’s more theme-oriented, expositional dialogue sound all the more jarring. Nevertheless, the play tackles a serious question: whether it is better to build on the flawed institutions one inherits and try to do better or scrap it all for something supposedly new. It has the good sense to refrain from an easy resolution of the socially and politically freighted dynamic it sets up, pointing a little vaguely to some third-way forward, outside the traditional family, in Max’s forestalled but anticipated flying of the coop. (Avila)

An Indian Summer Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.wehavemet.org. $20-40. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through March 1. Multi Ethnic Theater presents local playwright Charles Johnson’s parable of race relations in the Deep South of the 1980s. On a small stage split into two alternating scenes by a moveable wall in director-designer Lewis Campbell’s set, two sets of working-class residents of rural Alabama, one white and one black, have their discrete worlds unexpectedly collide. Musician Charlie Ray (a less than convincing Kevin Wisney) is fresh from the pen and living with girlfriend Pearle (AJ Davenport). Plucking at his guitar, he dreams of getting some money to afford time in a recording studio. But his brother Bobby (Paul Rodriguez) has a way of talking him into sketchy schemes, which has Pearle worried, especially after a visit from the Sheriff (Richard Wenzel). For his part, Bobby is hoping to make some money to appease his pregnant wife, Sarah (Bree Swartwood), who wants Bobby to move her and their baby to Maine. Meanwhile, Junior (a forceful Bennie Lewis, alternating nights with Stuart Hall) is a feisty wheel-chair bound African American man living in a small trailer. Junior’s friend Emmitt (Fabian Herd, alternating with Vernon Medearis) tries to convince him he should put his money in a bank rather than keeping it in his trailer — especially now that Junior is selling his land for a tidy sum — but Junior doesn’t trust banks. Next, Junior gets a letter from a lawyer claiming half the profit from the land sale on behalf of a long lost, half-white relative — the offspring of an illicit romance between Junior’s father and a white woman, related to Pearle. The situation, of course, spells trouble. But while we see it coming, there’s meant to be pathos in the tangled connections among these parallel stories. Unfortunately, the artificial nature of the plot makes it hard to credit, while the desultory pace and uneven acting make the going harder still. (Avila)

Jerusalem San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun/16, 2pm. Through March 8. SF Playhouse presents the West Coast premiere of English playwright Jez Butterworth’s West End and Broadway hit, a three-act revel led by a larger-than-life rebel, a stout boozed-up drug-dealer, habitual fabulist, and latter-day Digger of sorts named Johnny “Rooster” Byron (Brian Dykstra). The dominion of this Falstaffian giant is the English countryside outside his squalid trailer door, not far from Stonehenge, where he seems to incarnate a rather dissipated version of an ancient English independence, like one of the great mythical beings of rural lore. Aptly enough, it’s Saint George’s Day, the feast day of England’s national saint, but it’s not all a party this time around. Authorities have issued a final 24-hour eviction notice on Rooster’s tin door; there are luxury apartments in the works; and there’s concern in town about the underage teens who flock to Rooster like so many fledglings — one, in particular, has gone missing: Phaedra (Julia Belanoff), who we see at the very outset of the play donning a fairy costume and singing the title song, based on the Blake poem and England’s unofficial national anthem. The next 24 hours will be either the breaking point or the apotheosis for all Rooster has made himself out to be. In Butterworth’s big-eyed comedy, we are meant to feel a stake in this outcome whether we actually like Rooster or not — his independence, the scope of his life and vision, suggests the outer limit of possibility in an ever more disciplined and circumscribed world. Director Bill English (who also designed the impressive bucolic-trailer-park set) and his large cast (which includes a strong Ian Scott McGregor as longtime Rooster sidekick, Ginger) dive into the comedy with gusto. But somehow the drama, the larger stakes in the storyline, falls short. A certain requisite intensity and momentum are only fitfully achieved. Dykstra, as the expansive antihero, has the biggest burden here. And while he has an appealing swagger throughout, his wayward brogue and unconvincing bellicosity undercut the culmination of the play’s (admittedly somewhat overwrought) mythopoeic proportions. (Avila)

“The Love Edition: Love Bytes” Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; facebook.com/TheLoveEdition. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 22. Bindlestiff performs six different tales about online dating, loneliness in the cyber age, Google stalking, and other modern-day matters of the heart.

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 15. Theater artist and comedian Marga Gomez presents the world premiere of her 10th solo show, described as “a rollicking tale of incurable romantics.”

The Oy of Sex Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Sat, 5pm. Extended through Feb 22. Comedian Alicia Dattner performs her solo show, based on her stories from her own life and love addiction.

The Paris Letter New Conservatory Theater Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 23. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jon Robin Baitz’s tale of a Wall Street powerhouse desperately trying to keep his sexual identity a secret.

The Pornographer’s Daughter Z Below, 470 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $32. Thu/13-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 10:30pm); Sun/16, 5pm. Liberty Bradford Mitchell was a good kid growing up, and a pretty innocent one — probably more than you would expect given her proximity to the family business, the veritable empire of porn founded and run by her father and uncle, San Francisco legends Artie and Jim Mitchell. Now in her 40s and a mother of her own, Mitchell proves a likeably earthy presence if a less-then-compelling actor-playwright in her new one-woman show, directed by Michael T. Weiss, a firsthand account of growing up in San Francisco’s first family of raunch. Inseparable brothers Artie and Jim were the 1970s porn pioneers who founded the O’Farrell Theatre and road high in the industry, weathering court battles and substance abuse and divorce, but succumbing ultimately to their own lethal fallout — Jim Mitchell shot and killed Liberty’s father Artie in 1991. The material here is rich to say the least, and together with generous and explicit excerpts from archival footage and classic porn (including the Mitchells’ own era-defining Behind the Green Door, from 1972), it makes a fascinating bed for Liberty Mitchell’s reminiscences. Musical accompaniment by three-person SF band the Fluffers, meanwhile, punctuates the chronology with blasts of period rock, though often just a few bars worth, and backs up Liberty on the a single, rather awkward musical number. Moreover, despite the keen interest the basic historical facts and family anecdotes can generate, Mitchell’s filial narrative lens is only intermittently effective, being finally too pat, poorly drawn, and predictably sentimentalized to fully reverberate with the larger, almost archetypical or classical themes hovering nearby. (Avila)

The Scion Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-60. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 1. Brian Copeland’s fourth solo show takes on “privilege, murder, and sausage.”

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Extended through March 1. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blonde innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: the energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $60-90 (add-ons: casino chips, $5; dance lessons, $10). Thu-Sat, 7:40, 7:50, and 8pm admittance times. Through March 15. Boxcar Theatre presents Nick A. Olivero’s re-creation of a Prohibition-era saloon, resulting in an “immersive theatrical experience involving more than 35 actors, singers, and musicians.”

Ubu Roi Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Cutting Ball Theater performs Alfred Jarry’s avant-garde parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, presented in a new translation by Cutting Ball artistic director Rob Melrose.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through March 9. The popular, kid-friendly show by Louis Pearl (aka “The Amazing Bubble Man”) returns to the Marsh.

BAY AREA

Escanabe in da Moonlight Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 8. TheatreFIRST performs Jeff Daniels’ raucous comedy.

Geezer Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 1. Geoff Hoyle moves his hit comedy about aging to the East Bay.

Gideon’s Knot Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 2. Aurora Theatre Company performs Johnna Adams’ drama set within the tense atmosphere of a parent-teacher conference.

The House That Will Not Stand Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-59. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, Thu/13, and March 13, 2pm; no matinee Sat/15); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. Berkeley Rep performs the world premiere of Marcus Gardley’s tale of free women of color in 1936 New Orleans.

An Ideal Husband Douglas Morrison Theatre, 22311 N. Third St, Hayward; www.dmtonline.org. $10-29. Fri-Sat and Feb 27, 8pm (also Feb 22, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 2. Douglas Morrison Theatre performs Scott Munson’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic, reset in 1959 Washington, DC.

The Laramie Project Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond; www.masquers.org. $22. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 22. Masquers Playhouse performs the theatrical collage about the real-life hate-crime murder of Matthew Shepard.

Man in a Case Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $45-125. Wed/12, 7pm; Thu/13-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 2pm. It’s a desultory country evening among friends — Belikov (Mikhail Baryshnikov), Barbara (Tymberly Canale), Ivan (Chris Giarmo), Burkin (Paul Lazar), and Kovalenko (Aaron Mattocks) — who chatter and quibble among themselves, just dying for a good story. Two tales eventually unfold, becoming the basis for an effervescent and emotive theatrical outing in this canny, elegant adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Man in a Case” and “About Love” by co-directors Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson of Big Dance Theater. In a style that revels in what it reveals, the action centers around a long table to the left of the stage, at the far end of which sound designer Tei Blow manages sound effects and Jeff Larson triggers video projections from his laptop. (Peter Ksander’s attractive, non-naturalist scenic design comes animated throughout by a discerning array of choice foley work and atmospheric video projections.) With each humorous and wistful story, the stage expands in unexpected ways, thanks to Parson’s vibrant choreography, the shape-shifting mise-en-scene, golden-throated musical director Giarmo’s exquisite score (much of it delivered live), and the superbly unaffected acting and supple movement of the cast. Acting the leads in both stories, Baryshnikov etches his respective characters with a masterful hand and a light step, making for a vivid presence at every turn. Opposite him each time, Canale’s luminous vitality proves a perfect match. But this is truly an ensemble effort, and the fine result produces a poignant, moody combination of the earthy and sublime. (Avila)

Quality of Life Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 23. Pear Avenue Theatre performs Jane Anderson’s play about two couples coming to grips with losses in their lives.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Aguas Dance Company ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 7pm. $27. The company performs Movendo com Capoeira, featuring Afro-Brazilian dance and live music.

“Best of the Bay Comedy Show” Pa’ina Lounge, 1865 Post, SF; www.painasf.com. Sun/16, 7pm. $10. Hella Gay Comedy presents its annual “best of” show featuring LBGT and LGBT-friendly comedians: Casey Ley, Justin Lucas, Kimberly Rose Wendt, and Rajeev Dhar. Charlie Ballard hosts.

“The Big Buttery Sketch Show” Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.pianofight.com. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm. $20-30. PianoFight Productions’ female-driven sketch comedy group Chardonnay (formerly ForePlays) performs.

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now” This week: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Thu/13-Sat/15, 8pm. $25-35. The festival continues its 10th anniversary with Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Fri/14 (see note below), Sun/16, Feb 22, March 1, 8, 16, 22, and 30, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians. Fri/14 Valentine’s Day show, 5:30pm, $59.95 (includes dinner).

Company C Contemporary Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Lam Research Theater, 701 Mission, SF; www.companycballet.org. Thu/13-Fri/14, 8pm; Sat/15, 6pm (benefit gala); Sun/16, 3pm. $25-48. The company’s winter program includes premieres by Susan Jaffe and Charles Anderson.

“Dream Queens Revue” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/12, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, and more.

“Get Your Heart On with the Klipptones” Palace Hotel’s Pied Piper, 2 New Montgomery, SF; (415) 512-1111. Fri/14, 8pm-midnight. Free ($10 food or beverage minimum). The six-piece ensemble plays swinging romantic songs for Valentine’s Day.

“Live Law: Love and the Law” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.lifeofthelaw.com. Thu/13, 7pm. $20. Live storytelling with Senator Mark Leno, attorneys, a private investigator, and other legal-minded folks.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: Paula West, Thu/13, 8pm; Fri/14, 7 and 9:30pm; Sat/15-Sun/16, 7pm, $35-50.

“Full Spectrum Improvisation” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.joyacory.com. Sun/16 and April 27, 3pm. $12-25. Also March 9, 3pm, Western Sky Studio, 2525 Eighth St, Berk. Improvisational theatre with Joya Cory, Craig Landry, Olivia Corson, Martin Robinson, and guests.

“How We First Met” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.howwefirstmet.com. Fri/14, 8pm. $40-55. Back for its 14th year, this show created and hosted by Jill Bourque shares real-life love stories (from couples in the audience!) via improvised sketches and songs.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“Mortified: Doomed Valentines” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Thu/13, 7:30pm. $15-21. Also Fri/14, 8pm, $15-20, Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. Fearless storytellers share their most adorably embarrassing childhood writings — and since the theme is love blunders, expect tales of unrequited crushes, school-dance disasters, and teen-angst drama galore.

“Naked Dudes Reading Lovecraft” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.hampantsproductions.com. Wed/12, 8pm. $20. “100 percent visible wing-wangs and hoo-hoos” are promised, plus maybe a tentacle or 12 too.

“Point Break Live!” DNA Lounge, 373 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. March 7 and April 4, 7:30 and 11pm. $25-50. Dude, Point Break Live! is like dropping into a monster wave, or holding up a bank, like, just a pure adrenaline rush, man. Ahem. Sorry, but I really can’t help but channel Keanu Reeves and his Johnny Utah character when thinking about the awesomely bad 1991 movie Point Break or its equally yummily cheesy stage adaptation. And if you do an even better Keanu impression than me — the trick is in the vacant stare and stoner drawl — then you can play his starring role amid a cast of solid actors, reading from cue cards from a hilarious production assistant in order to more closely approximate Keanu’s acting ability. This play is just so much fun, even better now at DNA Lounge than it was a couple years ago at CELLspace. But definitely buy the poncho pack and wear it, because the blood, spit, and surf spray really do make this a fully immersive experience. (Steven T. Jones)

“Romantic Comedy Farce” Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, SF; www.improv.org. Fri/14, 8pm. $20. BATS Improv takes on Valentine’s Day.

“The Vagina Monologues/Monólogos de la Vagina” Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 5pm); Sun/16, 2pm. $35-45. Eliana Lopez, Marisol Correa, and Alba Roversi star in this Spanish-language production of Eve Ensler’s feminist classic.

BAY AREA

“Die Fledermaus” Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.mvcpa.com. Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 2pm. $20-53. Lamplighters Music Theatre (noted for its Gilbert and Sullivan productions) performs Johann Strauss’ “bubbly tale of revenge and temptation.” Continues at Bay Area theaters through Feb 23; visit www.lamplighters.org for future dates.

“Last Word Reading Series” Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid, Berk; (510) 841-6374. Fri/14, 7pm. Free. With poets Tom Odegard and Paradise, plus an open reading.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“Something Sweet” Piedmont Center for the Arts, 801 Magnolia, Piedmont; www.westedgeopera.org. Fri/14, 7:30pm. $15-25. Romantic operatic repertoire sung by three real-life couples. *

Q up

Michael Redmond

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February 4, 2014

10

MUSIC “I always wanted to know how music sounded in outer space. And with certain types of crystals you can supposedly tune into different frequencies, receive other transmissions. Often I meditate with crystals, go to sleep, and dream about music from outer space. Then I wake up, make stuff like that on the turntables, and take it from there.”

That’s a lot of there to take it from, but DJ Qbert is no stranger to mixing the cosmic with the underground. A legendary emissary of scratch who became the international representative of turntable culture in the 1990s along with his “band” Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Q has always mixed a heavy dose of Bay Area flavor into his masterly sets — which aren’t typical DJ sets by any means, but untethered, jazz-like flights during which a set of turntables and a crossfader, manipulated lightning-fast, become their own kind of spaceship. His polyrhythmic scratch concertos summon white noise, radio interference, oceanic undertow, Looney Tunes quick cuts, vintage advertising jingles, embryonic hip-hop, Big Brother menace, and fiendish, childlike glee. Great beauty, too, especially when you think of them as pure sonic expression, floating free of time and space. Not that you can’t dance your ass off to most of it, mind you.

We were talking about his new album Extraterrestria, dropping in March on the Thud Rumble label and backed by a huge Kickstarter campaign that aims not just to fund the disc, a marketing campaign and a tour, but also typical Qbert innovations like amazing touch-sensitive digital album packaging that simulates DJ controller equipment. (More details at www.djqbert.com)

“The album is actually two albums in one, two different discs,” Qbert, looking tight in a buttondown shirt and track pants, told me. “Extraterrestria is music from another galaxy, hip-hop beats from other planets, collected by the Galactic Scratch Federation. It’s as bizarre and unique as I could make it, a collection of weird noises and different time signatures with as much scratching as possible. The second disc is called Galaxxxian, which is hip-hop from earth beamed into space: raw, primitive. It features a bunch of MCs — Kool Keith, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Mr. Lif, Soul Khan, Bambu — doing their thing, which a lot of time, you know, means going for the sex, drugs, and hip-hop and roll. We’re not quite on the extraterrestrial level, yet.”

Other biggies like Dan the Automator, Chad Hugo of the Neptunes, cellist-trombonist Dana Leong, and rapper El-P (here a producer) also contributed. “What with the recession and everything, a lot of us have been trading with each other, so we can continue collaborating. Like I’ll do a beat for your album if you do a verse on mine. Something where the money’s phased out, a barter thing. It’s put us back in touch with what’s real,” Qbert said.

TWIST THE FORCE

As we talked on the second floor of the California Academy of Sciences, the first floor was rapidly filling up for the Academy’s weekly Nightlife party, this week a launch celebration and fundraiser for Extraterrestria — and a reunion of sorts for turntablism heads, albeit one bursting with fresh young faces. As b-boys and fly girls made their way through exotic landscapes, whale skeletons, stuffed giraffes, a butterfly-flooded rainforest dome, and aquarium displays including live stingrays, giant octopi, frisky penguins, Claude the albino alligator, and phosphorescent jellyfish, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the deliciously loopy, phantasmagorical animated movie version of Qbert’s era-defining previous album Wave Twisters, released 16 years ago.

That’s a long time between official releases, but it wasn’t like Qbert had been kidnapped by aliens. Although his live performance schedule was less-than-usual bonkers, he still made regular appearances, by himself or as part of his extended Bay Area scratch crew family. He popularized turntable techniques in a series of instructional videos and launched online educational community Qbert Skratch University, in 2009. He also went all in on the equipment tip, putting out his own brand of turntable cartridges and needles, an Invisibl Skratch Piklz-branded mixer, “and of course our own vinyl to scratch with — which is really vinyl on one side and a digital interface on the other, for use with DJ software like Traktor.”

Fifteen years has also seen the rise of social media and a more user-friendly Internet. Has that changed the way he produces beats or performs at all? “Of course it’s been great for finding new sounds to use,” Qbert said. “If I want to hear, say, a tarantula farting, I can look it up instantly and hear that. On the other hand, most of my old sets are up there now, with all their mistakes, and a lot of times I’m cringing and say in a small voice, ‘Please, please let them delete that.’ It keeps me on my toes now, knowing everything can be recorded in all its glory. But because I’ve actually been working on this album for seven years, all that’s been incorporated — it’s not like a shock. I use what I can use.

“But I try not to be trapped in the present. I often think back to the past, to cats like Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong. That timeless, improvisational jazz feeling where you practice and practice, but when the time comes you’re just an instrument connecting with the god-force, channeling the sound through you, swinging through that ocean of feeling. When you’re in that zone, that’s the most wonderful thing. It’s a meditation, a spiritual thing. We’re all spirits, so we have to connect to other spirits and the most high, whatever you want to call it — God, Allah — connect to that creator source and use it because it’s yours to use. Like how some writers just flow and do that automatic writing, they’re just instruments. We’re just instruments you know, it all flows through us.”

SKRATCHING ROOTS

When Qbert, raised in SF’s Excelsior neighborhood, astonished the DJ world by winning its spun-out version of the Olympics, the DMC World Championships, not once (solo, 1991) but three more times in a row after that (as part of Rocksteady DJs with Mixmaster Mike and Apollo) it was an unparalleled triumph not just for local scratch and hip-hop community, but for Bay Area Filipino American culture as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ZFsQjaOTI

As music critic and Guardian contributor Oliver Wang details meticulously in his forthcoming book Legions of Boom: Mobility, Identity and Filipino American Disc Jockeys in the San Francisco Bay Area (Duke University Press), a vibrant scene of Filipino mobile DJ crews — independent groups of teenage sound and lighting specialists hired to provide entertainment for weddings, graduations, and parties — thrived here since the 1970s. When hip-hop eclipsed disco on the request lists in the 1980s, the mobile crews defined streetwise Bay Area Filipino youth culture and provided a fertile training ground (and sometimes needed cash) for young DJ up-and-comers.

Qbert’s domination of the DJ world could be read as the apex of that scene, which faded in the 1990s with the rise of digital technology. And of course Qbert went on to create his own crew of fellow Filipino DJs: The Invisibl Skratch Piklz, with Shortkut, Apollo, Mix Master Mike, and several others. The Piklz went on to become insanely popular, establishing scratching and other turntable manipulations as a form of art and a highly marketable genre — turntablism — that changed the sound of hip-hop and dance music. Mix Master Mike went on to become, in essence, the fourth Beastie Boy; one early ISP member was A-Trak, current turntable-wielding heartthrob of the superstar EDM crowd.

In fact, the current popularity of turntable-rooted DJs like A-Trak and the burgeoning trip-hop and late ’90s revival makes the timing of Qbert’s return auspicious. “A-Trak runs a dance music scene and I think it’s great that he brings the scratching into it, he’s really unique in that field — so more power to him for turning on a different crowd to the sound. But for me it’s never really gone away, pure scratching. There’s a zillion underground cats who are genius at what they do — Quest, Deeandroid and Ceslkii, Disk, tons more. And maybe the widespread recognition isn’t there, maybe it isn’t in your face like it once was, but they’re all around. It’s like the guys who still do yo-yo tricks. They don’t know things have moved on. They keep practicing and practicing and doing incredible things, regardless of how many people are following. They’re always battling, always progressing. Never put down your yo-yo, man,” he laughs.

As for connecting to a new generation, working with (gasp!) turntables and (double gasp!) vinyl at this stage of DJ history is a deliberate artistic choice. Even with a resurgence of interest in analog techniques — a specific reaction to digital overload — does Qbert fear that scratching will be seen as merely a retro novelty?

“I think no one can deny that, whether you’re old or young, using a turntable to make a scratch sound — well, you can’t deny that it sounds really bugged out. How else are you going to make that sound unless you’re actually moving the sound with your own hand? Just to hold the sound and grab it, move it back and forth — that’s unique and fascinating to people. It’s like a sci-fi movie in real life, a sound that people have heard since maybe they were little kids, but one that also points to a future where man meets machine. It’s a real manipulation, a sound design in itself. What other instrument can do that?”

Strings of life

Michael Redmond

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February 4, 2014

0

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Every year or so the plucky Kronos Quartet — our audacious yet user-friendly 40-year-old vanguard of the musical avant-garde — pops back on the scene to wow us. Last time I saw them, they opened for electronic pioneer Amon Tobin’s spectacular 3-D projection ISAM tour at the Greek Theatre, and if you don’t think a string quartet can garner deafening cheers at a giant rave, you need to hear Kronos. Before that, the foursome was at YBCA, bowing electrified fences and simulating multiple water wheels. This week the string quartet will be launching the fifth installment of its composers-under-30 showcase with an intense work by Bay Area native Mary Kouyoumdjian called Bombs of Beirut (Feb 6-9, 8pm, $20–$25. Z Space, 450 Florida, SF. www.zspace.org).

“I want to create a feeling of chaos and nostalgia,” Armenian American wiz Kouyoumdjian says of her piece, which attempts to reflect the day-to-day situation of life during the 1980s Lebanese Civil War, and which includes haunting ambient recordings taken from a balcony during the conflict. (Kouyoumdjian’s family lived through it.) She also wants to put a complex human face on ongoing Middle East conflicts — and hey, possibly remind us of that whole endless war thing still perpetuating. Maybe we want to try to stop that soon?

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Stop everything; look up this ambitious, electro-drone-based Brooklynite’s video for “Boring Angel.” Then watch cerebral local opener Holly Herndon’s astounding vid for her new “Chorus” track. Yeah, that kind of incredible “life on a parallel Internet planet” stuff.

Thu/6, 10pm-3am, $17.50–$20. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com

SCUBA + DJ HELL

Brilliant producer Scuba swings from drowned-flute downtempo to punishing dub techno (although his often-confusing sexual politics turn some people off). The real news for me, though, at this Lights Down Low party is DJ Hell, who’s been slaying dance floors for three decades with his edgy, driving beats — and always has interesting hair.

Thu/6, 9pm, $18. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

HOUSE SHOES

Detroit’s phenomenal Michael Buchanan, a.k.a. House Shoes, heads up a big tribute to J. Dilla — the quintessential hypnotic-soulful beats producer whose influence can be heard in pretty much every dope hip-hop track to drop in the past decade. (Dilla died in 2006 at 32.) Also on tap: Shortkut, Mr. E and Haylow, Fran Boogie.

Fri/7, 9pm, free before midnight with RSVP at www.mighty119.com. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF.

REBOLLEDO

I love the off-kilter sense of humor this Pachanga Boy from Mexico gives off — he’ll take us on a trip to the outer reaches with a wink and smile. With catchy NYC duo Blondes and cute “screw house” dude Axel Borman at the As You Like It party.

Fri/7, 9pm-4am, $15 advance. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

NONSTOP BHANGRA

The incredible chnagra club celebrates 100 colorful salutes to banging underground Indian dance music with a special appearance by London’s revered Punjabi MC — oh, and the dholrhythms dance troupe, live drumming and painting, the Curry Up Now truck, and DJ Jimmy Love on decks.

Sat/8, 9pm, $15 advance. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

SKIN

An amazing-sounding new monthly from Oakland heroes Candi and DJ Cecil featuring music and rhythms of the Latin and African diasporas, kicking off with live drumming from the awesome Sistahs of the Drum, Cuban salsa lessons, and one of my absolute favorite deep house DJs Carlos Mena.

Sat/8, 8pm, $5–$10. Venue Oakland, 420 14th St, Oakl. skintones.eventbrite.com

ANGELS OF BASS

Hometown lowdown hero Ana Sia returns to shake the walls, in her initimable minimal-meets-hardcore style, with the Angels of Bass crew Jess, Tamo, Viajay, and LMCG.

Sat/8, 9pm, $15–$20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com

KELE OKEREKE

The indie god Bloc Party frontman has been heavily invested in electronic sounds for ages. Now you can hear his selections on deck at the Isis party, one of the true success stories of the past year in terms of wicked good times and a too-cute crowd.

Sat/8, 9:30pm-3:30am, $12–$15 advance. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

POOLSIDE

So happy for this SF-LA duo’s continued success bringing gorgeous, sun-drenched house tunes to the masses. Jeffrey Paradise and Filip Nikolic hit town again in big style, all night at Mezzanine. Bring your inflatables.

Sat/8, 9pm, $18.50. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezaninesf.com

Guns, gods, and government

Michael Redmond

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February 4, 2014

20

EDITORIAL Humans tend to believe that we’re smarter than we really are. It’s a problem that can be exacerbated by concentrations of wealth and technological expertise, which can cause some people to believe they have an almost God-like power to manifest solutions to any challenge they confront, particularly when they have lots of money to throw at the problem.

But that’s really just hubris. It’s the story of Icarus striving for the sun and falling back to Earth when his technology failed him. Knowing our limits and feeling a sense of humility and social responsibility are the first steps toward dealing honestly with problems we face. And last week, we were reminded again of this reality by venture capitalist Ron Conway, the libertarian-leaning power broker who has taken a paternalistic hold on the city (see “The Plutocrat,” 11/27/12).

Being a newspaper that has always believed in gun control, we share Conway’s newfound desire to reduce gun violence, a cause he suddenly adopted after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school in December 2012. Conway and his Smart Tech Foundation last week unveiled some early designs for high-tech guns that only work in the hands of their owners, and which will notify those owners when someone has moved them.

“Let’s use innovation to bring about gun safety. Let’s not rely on Washington,” Conway told the San Francisco Examiner, which put the story on its Jan. 29 cover.

There are many levels of ridiculousness to Conway’s belief that his gizmos can do more to reduce gun violence than even modest federal regulation of the more than 300 million guns in this country. After all, guns are designed to inflict violence, and just 3 percent of gun deaths are accidental shootings (62 percent are suicides and 35 percent are homicides). Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza used guns from his home that he’d been taught to use by his mother, who ended up being his first victim, so it seems unlikely Conway’s guns would have changed that outcome.

When reporter Jonah Owen Lamb asked Conway how his technology differed from widely available trigger locks, he compared them to the iPhone, which invented a new market for its product. So the answer to gun violence is creating a new market for a new generation of guns that only their wealthy owners can fire?

While we’re not huge fans of the Second Amendment — the one that conservatives like Conway consider sacrosanct — we do understand that it was written to give the masses tools to resist wealthy and powerful oppressors. That includes people like Conway, fellow venture capitalist Thomas Perkins (whose comparison of progressive activists to Nazis has been lighting the Internet), and the Establishment politicians whom they sponsor.

Guys, society doesn’t need your gizmos, libertarian ideals, or hubris to address the most vexing challenges we face, from gun violence to global warming to creating a modern transportation infrastructure. We just need some of the obscene wealth you’ve been hoarding.

RIP Colonel Meow

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January 30, 2014

0

Alas, minions! Our fearless, fuzzy leader Colonel Meow has passed away. We will always remember him for championing the Cat Pack and sharing his wise words with us. The culling of beloved Internet kitties has begun too soon.

This Week’s Picks: January 29 – February 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

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January 28, 2014

0

WEDNESDAY 29

Yuck

The year 2013 was a tumultuous one for this London indie outfit. It recorded and released its sophomore album within a matter of months, simultaneously announcing the record and frontman Daniel Blumberg’s departure from the band. This was a surprising turn of events for a band that should have been basking in the afterglow of the critical success of its 2011 debut, not to mention universal adoration by both music journalists and the blogosphere. Instead of disbanding or recruiting a new vocalist, guitarist Max Bloom has stepped up to the mic and taken a turn from its shoegaze-tinged debut to embrace other forms of alternative rock, but don’t worry — it still sounds like it emerged from a time capsule buried in 1997. (Haley Zaremba)

With GRMLN, The She’s

8pm, $15

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

THURSDAY 30

Performance Research Experiment #2

It sounds deceptively dry, but “Performance Research Experiment #2” is a fairly accurate description of what Jess Curtis and his partners will show this weekend: It’s simultaneously a show and a scientific inquiry of what a performance does to a viewer — like it or not. Some of it will be sheer fun, some of it puzzling, and some of it difficult to watch. Curtis admits that the experience can be “intense.” The work — about a dozen two-minute episodes performed by Curtis and his partner on stage Joerg Mueller with media artist Yoann Trellu — raises fascinating questions about our bodies’ involuntary responses to what comes at them. This performance shows that science and art, contrary to common assumptions, can in fact inhabit the same universe. (Rita Felciano)

Jan. 30-Feb.1, 8pm, $15-20

Joe Goode Annex

499, Alabamba St. SF

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/537659

“Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese”

Oakland food writer and chef Stephanie Stiavetti has gone and done something we were all waiting for: made our near-constant urge to eat only macaroni and cheese for dinner seem like a reasonable, adult thing to do. Her new cookbook marries the sophistication of handcrafted artisan cheeses from around the world with the simple joy produced only by the smell of perfectly browned, parmesan-covered pasta filling your kitchen. There are classic recipes, to be sure; there’s also an entire roasted pumpkin stuffed with Italian sausage, pasta and Fontina. She’ll talk all things mac-and-cheesy at this reading, and of course — don’t forget your Lactaid — she’ll be bringing samples. (Emma Silvers)

6:30pm, free

Omnivore Books on Food

3885a Cezar Chavez, SF

(415) 282-4712

www.omnivorebooksonfood.com

FRIDAY 31

Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema

We know him best for his 1959 black-and-white debut Breathless, a genre-changing film that came to epitomize the French New Wave with its philosophical angst, tender tragedies, and haphazard American-Western heroism — all set in Paris of the ’60s, with recklessness, heavy eyeliner, and a rejection of the traditional love story. Yet Jean-Luc Godard produced a number of works, and when viewed together they form an inventive collection, to say the least. Beginning Jan. 31, BAM/PFA will screen Godard’s shorts and features in the film series “Expect Everything From Cinema,” allowing Godard die-hards and New Wave newbies the chance to see his films on the big screen, and begin to recognize characteristics of his work on a continuum, from subversive political messages to his ambiguous-realism style. (Kaylen Baker)

Times vary per week, visit BAMPFA website for details, $9.50

Pacific Film Archive Theater

2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

(510) 642-1124

bampfa.berkeley.edu

Dirty Harry

Of all of Clint Eastwood’s many iconic film roles, that of rogue San Francisco Police Detective Harry Callahan in 1971’s Dirty Harry is perhaps the most indelible. Shot on location throughout the city and Marin County, the film mixed the traditional cop drama with a harsh and gritty approach, incorporating then-recent events such as the Zodiac into the script about a serial killer terrorizing the populace. Here’s your chance to cheer on one of the most famous — but misquoted — lines in film history: “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?!” Feature preceded by cartoons, newsreels, games, and more. (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $5

Paramount Theatre

2025 Broadway, Oakland

(510) 465-6400

www.paramounttheatre.com

SATURDAY 1

Reggie and the Full Effect

For a guy who played with classic emo outfits like the Get Up Kids and My Chemical Romance, Kansas City’s James Dewees sure seems like a happy guy. His solo act, Reggie and the Full Effect, is the polar opposite of Dewees’ other musical endeavors. This bizarre and completely hilarious side project bounces back and forth between genres as varied as hardcore, emo pop, and bluegrass, sporting song titles like “Happy Chickens” and “Revenge is a Dish Best Served at Park Chan-Wook’s.” Though Dewees hit the road for a farewell tour in 2008, he’s back this year with a new album (thanks, Kickstarter) and his first solo tour in half a decade. The only thing to expect from this show is the unexpected. And trust us, the unexpected is very, very entertaining. (Zaremba)

With Dads, Pentimento

8:30pm, $16

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Millennium Film Journal: 35th Anniversary Celebration

Sprung from the still-vital Millennium Film Workshop, which had its edgy beginnings in New York City’s fertile 1960s Lower East Side scene, the bi-annual Millennium Film Journal has been studying and celebrating avant-garde film since 1978 (and has since expanded to include video and works in other mediums, too). This San Francisco Cinematheque presentation welcomes current editor Grahame Weinbren to celebrate the publication’s 58th issue with a program of film and video by Stella Brennan, Catherine Elwes, and others, as well as a slideshow that looks back through its long and varied history on the printed page. (Cheryl Eddy)

7:30pm, $6-$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.sfcinematheque.org

SUNDAY 2

The Fourth Annual Super Bowl: Men In Tights

If you’d rather do your taxes than watch three hours of football this weekend, join SF Indiefest at the Roxie for the Fourth Annual Super Bowl: Men in Tights comedy show — “Come for the comedy, stay for the commercials.” Indiefest’s SportsSweater comedians will provide hysterical (and most likely incorrect) play-by-play commentary, raunchy sketches, and general debauchery while the game plays on Roxie’s big screen. Ad junkies rejoice, as the only untouched part of the Superbowl comes every 15 minutes. Watch America’s top-notch commercials uninterrupted by the horde of jokesters. And what Sunday football viewing is complete without beer, wine, bloodies, and snacks? Tickets benefit the Roxie Theater and IndieFest. (Laura Childs)

3pm, $10

The Roxie

3117 16th, SF

www.roxie.com

The Toasters

Everything has changed since 1981. The Soviet Union has fallen, the Internet has taken over the world, smartphones have taken over our brains, and no one listens to Kim Carnes. One thing, however, has stayed completely, unflaggingly consistent: New York’s checker-caped crusaders of third-wave ska. Thirty-three years, nine albums, and 40 lineup changes later, the Toasters are still skanking. Though they haven’t released a new record since 2007, these ska kings have been touring nearly constantly for three decades. If you’re looking for up-and-coming, hip, or new and different, this is not the show for you. But if you’re looking for an absolute blast with some well-practiced dudes who know how to put on a show better than just about anyone, you definitely want to be at the Gilman tonight. (Haley Zaremba)

With Monkey, Jokes for Feelings, The Skunkadelics, Skank Bank

5pm, $10

924 Gilman, Berkeley

(510) 524-8180

www.924gilman.org

Groundhog Day

If you’re among the grouchy, local Niners fans looking for something else to do this Sunday, why not enjoy the uniquely brilliant 1993 comedy Groundhog Day screening on the holiday itself? The cult classic stars Bill Murray as a cantankerous TV reporter who is grudgingly sent to cover the annual proceedings in Punxsutawney, Pa., only to be trapped in a mysterious time loop where he is forced to repeat the same day, over and over again. Following his journey, going from annoyed and suicidal to finally embracing life and love, this funny and touching film was added to the National Film Registry in 2006. (Sean McCourt)

2pm, $8-$8.50

CineArts @ Empire Theater

85 West Portal, SF

(415) 661-2539

www.cinemark.com

MONDAY 3

Burroughs at 100: The Films of William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs is best known for his powers with the written word. Specifically, his tendency to do terrible, wonderful, innovative, influential, shocking and heroin-laced things with it over the course of 18 novels, six collections of short stories, and four collections of essays. His work in films, however — the result of collaboration with artist Brion Gysin and filmmaker Anthony Balch at the Beat Hotel in Paris — showcases an entirely new side to the writer, who was interested in the ways visual art could adapt his “cut-up” method and other themes in his writing. Part of City Lights’ celebration of Burrough’s 100th birthday, the films Towers Open Fire, The Cut-Ups, and Bill and Tony will be screened with commentary by Burrough’s friend, filmmaker, and film historian Mindaugis Bagdon. (Emma Silvers)

8pm, free

City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus, SF

www.citylights.com

TUESDAY 4

From Russia Without Love: The 2014 Winter Olympics and Human Rights in Russia

Two good things, at least, that have come from the worldwide outrage at the horrifying persecution of homosexuals going on right now in Russia: a wake-up call that, despite many encouraging gains, us LGBTs are far from out of the woods yet. (The other good thing? Tons of hilarious memes of Putin in drag. Oh, and also we discovered which vodkas were actually Russian, so we could boycott them.) This discussion with educators and advocates will discuss the treatment of Russian homosexuals and queer athletes and spectators in the shadow of the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. The panel includes Dr. Krista Hanson, SFSU professor of Russian culture, and Helen Carroll, sports project director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. (Marke B.)

5:30pm, $8-$20

Commonwealth Club

595 Market, SF

www.commonwealthclub.org

H. Brown: Goodbye to all that, we hope

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January 23, 2014

451

In an SF Weekly piece published yesterday, it was announced that progressive political blogger and gadabout H. Brown – an “irascible” man who has attained a specific sort of fame in equal measure for his political connections, his egregious sexism, and his unfortunate alcoholism — was leaving San Francisco. Where’s he going? The article didn’t see fit to mention. It’s whatever. One can assume Brown’s destination is that netherworld set aside for those whose behavior was enabled by the old school boy’s club blinders of the San Francisco progressive movement, still worn at the dawn of the 21st century.

“Last Call For Know-It-Alls: Classic Specimen of Old-San Francisco Bon Vivantery,” the article was called. It was written by a man; if a woman had written it, the title might have been closer to: “I Just Bought an Evil Eye Necklace, Don’t Look at Me You Cursed Troll.”

Do I sound angry? In 2008 at a DCCC, Brown inquired at top volume and in front of an ex-President of the Board of Supervisors if I was the politician’s escort. When said political leader bailed on the situation, Brown interrogated me on camera about my knowledge of local politics. I wrote about it, most names omitted, for the Guardian. In the article’s wake, I received thankful and supportive emails from men and women across the San Francisco political scene. On his part, Brown sent out multiple emails about me to his prodigious correspondence rolls, one in which he shared an communique from his niece calling me an “ignorant cunt,” another in which he addressed an un-cc’ed me about the election night in question: “You tried to make up for your ignorance by wearing revealing clothing. I was mocking you. And rightly so.”

Nearly every woman in San Francisco politics has one of these stories. When a male politician was accused of any wrong against a woman, Brown could be depended on to dig through the Internet to find evidence that the victim had been asking for it. Those unwilling to suffer him had to opt out of the hobnobbing happy hours and salons in the homes of city leaders, at which Brown was a constant presence.

Ah, old San Francisco bon vivantery. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you don’t have to care about Brown. You do have to care that this man was your Supervisor’s drinking buddy, that he took Speedo-clad swims in the Bay with progressive leaders. You do have to wonder about what that did to the strength of our political movement. And you might want to wonder about the dynamics behind ubiquitous bigots who are tolerated by people who should know better.

“If comedy is indeed tragedy plus time, however, Brown will leave ’em laughing for posterity,” wrote Weekly reporter Joe Eskenazi. “Friend after friend recalled anecdotes of offensive, bourbon-fueled behavior invariably culminating with Brown being instructed to “Get the fuck out, H.!” But, always, these were happy memories, if not happy occasions.”

None of these friends — “former supervisors, consultants, academics, political Svengalis, and other city luminaries” – in Eskenazi’s article were women. (The writer, whose work on city issues I do appreciate, told me he did interview women, but apparently none of them said anything printworthy.)

Let’s remedy that now with a few female voices. Not coincidentally, most of these bourbon-fueled memories took place in ex-Supervisor Chris Daly’s since-closed Market Street progressive gathering spot, the Buck Tavern. None are happy.

“This was the first time I was introduced to H. At a benefit at the Buck Tavern I walked in and there were all these progressive journalists sitting around a table with him. He said ‘you’re the one with the great ass!’ He started asking me if I had family members he could date. I was standing there horrified, I just didn’t know what to say. I’m a mouthy lady, and even I couldn’t think of anything to come back with – not just to him, but to every other progressive journalist who was sitting there listening to him who laughed! I said hi to a few people, and then I left the event.”
– Laura Hahn, president of the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee

“Really, I don’t give much of a shit about one sad dude calling me a slut and a spy (for Newsom or Pinkerton Guards, depending on the year), but seeing some (not all) progressive men continue to put up with him was pretty demoralizing.”
– Anonymous volunteer on several progressive political campaigns

“The confrontation started because I came in to wish [ex-Supervisor and then-owner of the Buck Tavern] Chris Daly a happy birthday and have a drink, and H. asked Chris ‘Who the hell is she?’ To which Chris said, ‘She’s the President of the Harvey Milk Club.’ To which H began, ‘You’re not even gay, are you?’ I replied, ‘I’m queer.’ ‘Queer?!’ he said, ‘What the fuck is that? Some Shona Gochenauer shit? You’re not gay. I can tell you’re not gay by looking at you. She doesn’t know anything about politics. Look at her — she’s clearly just a vanity president.’ He said something about enjoying things because, “that ass isn’t gonna last forever, sweetheart. They [the other patrons in the bar] are only standing up for you because they want to fuck you.’”
– Stephany Joy Ashley, ex-president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club

“As a purveyor of alcohol, I found that the man was a lawbreaking mooch and a pain to deal with. As a woman, I found him pathetic, insulting, gross, or all three, depending on his mood. The first time I met him he cussed me out for an imagined slight in a way that was actually shocking — and it takes a lot for cuss words to flummox me. For a time, I simply refused to serve him.”
– Siobhann Bellinger, Buck Tavern bartender

“H. is a bully and a sexist. If you want to look at why the progressive movement is failing it’s because it alienates youth, women, and people of color. Deifying somebody like him is shutting women out, the message is they aren’t welcome. It’s not separated from the fact that progressives are really faltering right now with no leadership and very little inspiration.”
– Debra Walker, artist and longtime activist

“His behavior symbolized the running joke amongst some progressive men that women were there for their own entertainment to be mocked and harassed with no one blinking an eye. FUCK. THAT.”
– Anonymous ex-City Hall aide

These women – and the progressive men who were their allies – were not laughing at the hijinx of a mouthy old man. But people were, and they will be at the party that will be held in honor of Brown’s departure and attended by member’s of our city’s progressive elite.

Supporters say the guy’s behavior was a premeditated mockery of San Francisco’s political correctness, that he was an actor in the grand tradition of political theater. But if he is remembered by generations to come, it will be as the embodiment of an age-old archetype: the dude that other dudes keep around because he says the shit they can’t say to people who aren’t them. After all, who can control their own id?

Eskenazi compares Brown to F. Scott Fitzgerald and notwithstanding that both are writers, I’d like to posit an alternative historical precedent for Brown’s passionate trolling. Remember Bobby Riggs, the proud chauvinist who taunted tennis legend Billie Jean King until she wiped the floor with him in the widely broadcast Battle of the Sexes match? Man, that guy should have been in politics.

Brown was allowed to establish through constant bullying both online and off that only men have the right to feel comfortable in our city’s high-powered progressive circles. As San Francisco continues to cozy up with its new moderate identity, I hope he is remembered less for being a bon vivant and more as a sign that our once-vaunted avatars of progressivism were spending too much time pounding double shots at the Buck Tavern — while the world changed around them.

The good witches of music tech

Steven T. Jones

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January 21, 2014

3

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL When MTV debuted “Video Killed the Radio Star” at 12:01am on Aug. 1, 1981 — the first music video to air on the brand-new, much-buzzed-about network — producers knew exactly what they were doing. Amid all the excitement about the possibilities video technology presented to the music industry, there was an ambivalence, tinged with apprehension from musicians, about what the sea change would mean for artists. The song perfectly captured the current climate, a combination of brave-new-world optimism and flat-out fear of the future.

Two decades later, a scrappy little Redwood City-based file-sharing startup called Napster would be ordered shut down in federal court. ”It’s time for Napster to stand down and build their business the old-fashioned way — they must get permission first,” said Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, told the New York Times, speaking on behalf of five major record labels that sued the company. And, as everyone knows, that sealed it: Music was never obtained for free on the Internet ever again, all artists were paid fairly for their work, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Funny thing about technological advancement — it only goes one way. The collapse of the record industry over the past decade has given way to a sort of Wild West atmosphere when it comes to the ways musicians, fans, producers, etc. can interact, make art, and do commerce. It has been something of an economic equalizer: Anyone with a Wi-fi connection can throw his latest dubstep/witchhouse cover of “Under the Sea” up on Soundcloud one night, and wake up to a bevy of fans. But most musicians I know would agree that the availability of free or very cheap streaming and downloading services has made it difficult, if not impossible, to make a living from their work the way they might have 30 years ago.

And yet: There are those who would argue that the tech world has more to offer musicians than it might initially seem. In the spirit of our “good tech” issue, I reached out to some local techies who aren’t using their powers for evil.

On the vast playing field of websites and apps that promise to help musicians get their work out into the world — without, ideally, anyone going bankrupt — Bandcamp may have built the most trust among artists, using a straightforward revenue-share model: The company takes 15 percent of sales on digital purchases; 10 percent on merch. Of course, it didn’t hurt when Amanda Palmer decided to forego the traditional album-release route in 2010, releasing her ukulele Radiohead covers album solely on Bandcamp, bringing in $15,000 inside three minutes.

When founder Ethan Diamond launched the site in 2007 — after trying to buy a favorite band’s digital album directly from its website and having “every single technical problem that could go wrong, go wrong” — people were saying “music sales are dead,” recalls the SF resident, a programmer who previously co-founded the webmail service that would become Yahoo! mail. “Within a year or two of the business, you could see that wasn’t true: Even in the digital era, fans actually want to support the artists they love. Right now fans are giving artists $2.8 million every month [through Bandcamp]. We have 50,000 unique artists communicating and marketing directly to their fans…our entire goal is to help artists be successful. That’s really it.”

And no, he doesn’t want to name the band whose technical difficulties inspired the company a few years back — the band members don’t know who they are. And they’re not on Bandcamp yet.

At Zoo Labs, a less-than-year-old nonprofit based out of a recording studio in West Oakland, a handful of heavy hitters from the tech and design worlds asked the question: What happens when you apply a business incubator model — like the well-founded training grounds that typically nurture Silicon Valley startups — to a band? The Zoo Labs Residency, a two-week, all-expenses-paid program for musicians, offers practical skill-building workshops, marketing training, mentorship, and studio time to bands who have a vision but haven’t yet achieved a widespread reach.

“We started talking to musicians about their experiences and how they were managing their careers and accomplishing their projects, and it was really interesting to find that a lot of musicians and producers working in music are having very similar experiences to entrepreneurs in the startup world,” says Anna Acquistapace, a designer who founded the program with Vinitha Watson, an ex-Googler (she opened Google’s first satellite office in India) after the two met in California College of the Arts’ Design Strategy MBA program. Music producer Dan Lawrence (whom — full disclosure — I’ve known since elementary school, at which time he wanted to be a music producer) brought his working knowledge of the local music industry to the team.

“With all of these changes in the [music] industry over the last 10 years, musicians have been forced to take way more control over their marketing channels,” says Acquistapace. “They need to get their own fans, they need to bootstrap their own products in a similar to way to what startups do, whether that means funding albums or demos to pitch to a record label, reaching out to the media…they have to become entrepreneurs, out of necessity. From that, the idea of this artists’ residency-meets-business-incubator or accelerator was born.”

Thus far only one band, an Americana/roots four-piece called the Boston Boys, has completed the residency, participating in a series of workshops and recording sessions tailored specifically to their needs: They took a “sonic branding” class from Oakland producer Jumbo (whose credits include work with Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, and others), learned about music law, met with design professionals and leadership coaches. Meanwhile, recording engineer/producer Damien Lewis recorded the band live in the studio most days in sessions that ran from 2 in the afternoon until 2 in the morning; the two-week period culminates in a live show at the studio.

In total, the program costs about $20,000 per session to run, with much of it underwritten by private investors from Silicon Valley who are simply interested in developing new models for the music industry. “If there’s one thing that people are passionate across the board, it’s music,” says Acquistapace.'”I haven’t really seen any other art form that crosses groups the same way.”

(The application period for its March residency just closed, but look for new programming to launch in February; the Beat Lab, which will open next month, aims to be a combination recording studio/coworking space for musicians of all kinds: www.zoolabs.org)

And in, er, music/tech news of a much lower-tech variety: Tom Temprano, co-owner of Virgil’s Sea Room in the Mission, announced this week that the bar, which occupies the space Nap’s III left behind (both physically and in our hearts), will be bringing back the grand Nap’s tradition of sloppy, gleeful karaoke around the glow of a two-tone screen. Starting Jan. 23, every Thursday night at 9pm will find Nap himself back at home base, MCing the action, with songbooks and harmonicas in tow. Because technology will march forward — video may have killed the radio star — but drunken renditions of Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s “Shoop”? Karaoke, my friends, is forever.

By the people

Michael Redmond

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January 21, 2014

3

rebecca@sfbg.com

A growing number of people seem to be convinced that “civic innovation” is sexy.

Tech-oriented events at San Francisco City Hall, like hackathons for improving government services, have become increasingly common. App developers are gaga over the idea of revolutionizing government through software, and the concept is gaining momentum.

To borrow an analogy referenced in an essay by tech publisher Tim O’Reilly, some software purveyors are moving away from the idea of government as a vending machine: “When we don’t get what we expect, our ‘participation’ is limited to protest—essentially, shaking the vending machine.”

Instead, they’re latching onto the idea of government as an open platform that citizens can tinker with.

That’s exciting. Can it lead to a government that is more responsive to the people, as enthusiasts predict? Can we really hack away the ineffective and irresponsive parts of the public sector?

Or is some of this just hype and libertarian idealism from a cash-drenched tech sector seeking business opportunities and greater political influence?

HACK THE LAW

Sup. Mark Farrell recently proposed doing away with an outmoded and widely disregarded law disallowing bicycle storage in garages. The legislative tweak matters because it was spurred by feedback submitted through a new website, SanFranciscoCode.org.

Operated by a private nonprofit organization called the OpenGov Foundation, the website presents an interactive, online version of the city’s municipal code with an open platform where anyone can easily comb through the thicket of city laws and leave comments on specific sections, using the software as a magnifying glass.

Farrell touted the website — launched in partnership with Mayor Ed Lee’s Office of Civic Innovation last September — as a tool that could spur “a more transparent and accountable city government.”

“I see this leading to better engagement,” said Jess Montejano, Farrell’s legislative aide. Seamus Kraft, executive director of the OpenGov Foundation, has been compiling all the comments submitted via SanFranciscoCode.org, and recently sent a memo with all user feedback to each member of the Board of Supervisors.

“Our mission is to put as much public information into the public’s hands as possible,” Kraft said, “so that people can access their laws the way they deserve in 2013.”

The idea that a law would be changed instantly based on public comments is a new take on an old concept, with shades of being enamored by that shiny new thing. After all, many supervisors have a habit of turning their backs, or very obviously zoning out, during public comment sessions at weekly board meetings.

Yet anyone with an Internet connection can run with this new portal for citizen engagement. How about a reinvigorated response to San Francisco’s Sit/Lie Ordinance? A torrent of online commentary about the public nudity ban? Not everyone has the same idea about what it means to fix a broken law.

In some respects, City Hall appears to be lending itself out as a laboratory in which to test the wide-ranging theories of civic innovators. Mayor Lee has greeted the technology sector with arms wide open, and empowered the Office of Civic Innovation to foster tech-fueled government fine-tuning.

With the rise of amply funded organizations such as Code for America, droves of programmers stand at the ready, eager to chip in and do their part to help transport the public sector out of the analog ages.

A recent brigade of Code for America fellows partnered with the city’s Department Health and Human Services to create an app that automatically notifies food stamp recipients via text when they are about to be automatically dis-enrolled. The idea is to give recipients advance notice so they can take steps to renew their enrollment.

Other initiatives, such as the Department of Public Health’s release of an open data set to reveal housing inspection records, can arm citizens with useful knowledge — like empowering apartment hunters to spot a slumlord from a mile away.

The use of tech for transparency holds potential: What if each and every public record — down to every last email, calendar appointment, or police report — were instantly uploaded to a publicly accessible database, easy to locate, and fully searchable? Would that be a check against corruption?

Ron Bouganim, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist and mentor to the very Code for America teams industriously improving city government through technology, recently filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to create GovTech. It’s a new kind of venture capital fund, specifically devoted to fostering companies looking to find their way in the “civic innovation” sector.

Bouganim laid out the dynamics driving the civic innovation trend: First, “2008-2009 was like a nuclear bomb,” he explained. “The financial crisis was a cataclysmic event. The money is not coming back, ever.”

THE NEW NORMAL?

This new normal, characterized by dramatically depleted public-sector finances, has helped make government more open to working with startups instead of trusted brands like IBM, Bouganim said, since startups can help government “do more with less.”

Bouganim also said adoption of cloud computing has changed the game. Whereas governments were initially hesitant to move their data to the cloud, the recent migration has made it possible for companies seeking government contracts to price below the “procurement threshold,” a price point that triggers a long public approval process before a purchase can go through. Now that technology has helped software developers slice through red tape, startups are flooding in, eager to land public sector contracts.

The city’s Entrepreneurship in Residence webpage (entrepreneur.sfgov.org), which markets a program rolled out by the Office of Civic Innovation, says it all. Sporting a gleaming picture of San Francisco City Hall, it bears the caption: “Develop products & services for the $142 billion public sector market.”

Bouganim wasn’t willing to say much in the way of GovTech’s plans, but he mentioned that his accelerator provides mentorship for startups that are paired with government agencies, and hinted that his initial investments would lead to “a dramatic impact on government savings.”

An underlying goal of the whole civic innovation movement, Bouganim added, “is to fundamentally change this concept that government is over there, and I am over here. We the people are the government, we’ve just lost touch with it.”

Bouganim responded to the Guardian’s call within 15 minutes, mentioning he was in London. “I wanted to get back to you so you didn’t think I was ignoring you,” he said, “because that would be awful.”

But the well-compensated public servants at the Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation evidently had no such compunction. The Bay Guardian placed multiple calls to that office for this story, only to be met with radio silence.

And that’s a quandary. One cannot trumpet lofty goals of citizen engagement while habitually walling off government critics, and still expect to be taken seriously. And therein lies the rub with civic innovation: Even if technology is neutral, politics will never be so.

Hey whistleblowers

Michael Redmond

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January 21, 2014

6

rebecca@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Bay Guardian newsroom is tapping some high-tech tools to continue its journalistic mission.

Working in partnership with a group of technologists who dislike government corruption just as much as we do, we’re launching a new web-based system to enable sources to anonymously submit documents directly to our news staff.

The system offers better safeguards for protecting sources’ identities than conventional email can offer.

Powered by a software system called SecureDrop, the system is designed to protect the identities of whistleblowers if they wish to share information without fear of retaliation.

If the documents we receive contain newsworthy information that can be independently verified, we’ll use it as the basis for our reporting.

Since this is an experiment, we have no idea what will land in our SecureDrop folder — but it creates the potential for us to partner with sources in breaking significant news items.

The SecureDrop program originated with the late Aaron Swartz, who developed it in collaboration with Wired Editor Kevin Poulson. Swartz was an Internet activist and programmer known for hashing out inventive ways to fight corruption and promote transparency. He’s remembered, among other things, for cofounding Reddit, the online news site; and for founding Demand Progress, an online activism group known for its 2012 campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Now, SecureDrop is managed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 2012 that is “dedicated to helping support and defend public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government.”

Files submitted to the Guardian through the SecureDrop system will remain encrypted until they are securely downloaded. This means there’s no way for a third party to view their contents and trace them back to the sender.

Sources’ actual identities will never be revealed, and they’ll be identified to our news staff only through randomly generated code names.

Of course, whistleblowers desiring to keep their identities unknown always have the option of putting some documents into an unmarked envelope and dropping it in the mail.

But by submitting documents through SecureDrop, sources will have the ability to send high volumes of information that would be logistically difficult to print out or send. The program also enables sources to communicate with journalists in real time without revealing their actual identities.

Stay tuned. In coming weeks, the Guardian will publish a clip-out guide with instructions on how to submit documents to our news staff using SecureDrop. Sending encrypted files to journalists begins with downloading the Tor Browser Bundle, a system that makes online activity invisible to third parties.

Of course Beyoncé is a feminist: On gender equality and women in entertainment

Steven T. Jones

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January 16, 2014

6

Of course Beyoncé is a feminist: On gender equality and women in entertainment

A specific corner of the Internet was abuzz this week with the news that Beyoncé, fresh off inciting think-piece warfare about whether or not her new visual album amounted to a feminist manifesto of sorts (“The record both drips with sexuality and samples the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk about women’s rights — are you allowed to do that?!”) had penned an essay for Maria Shriver’s nonprofit media initiative, the Shriver Report, titled “Gender Equality Is a Myth!” See here:

We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn’t a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters earn more—commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.

Among the generally positive reactions to the essay, there was an unmistakable ripple of surprise — a silent agreement that this was somehow starkly out of character — that caught my attention. What are we surprised about, exactly? That a mainstream star who plays so squarely into our notions of traditional femininity would align herself with the hairy-legged caricatures of politicized feminists we see in pop culture? That a woman who named her most recent international tour after her husband would speak out against gender inequality? Or that one of the richest artists in the world would give two shits about the Equal Pay Act?

For what it’s worth, I’ve been a Beyoncé fan since the halcyon days of the late ’90s, when she was posing on furniture with three (then two) other ladies who made a point of color-coordinating their outfits with their interior design while singing about how dudes who borrowed their cars needed to man up and pay some automobills. It has at times been a guilty and/or critical fandom — has anyone written their Master’s thesis yet on themes of independence vs. marriage as property ownership in “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)“? I would like to read, please — but it’s been consistent nonetheless. I will venture that said loyalty is beside the point, however. No, I wasn’t surprised about Beyonce’s awareness of gender inequality — but not because I’ve been following her career closely. I wasn’t surprised because she’s a woman working in an industry that’s historically steeped in gender inequality.

I’m behind the times on this one, but I just started reading Out of the Vinyl Deeps, a collection of excellent rock music criticism by the late, great Ellen Willis. In particular, I keep coming back to Willis’ essay on Janis Joplin in the ’60s, with passages like:

[Janis] once crowed, “They’re paying me $50,000 a year to be like me.” But the truth was that they were paying her to be a personality, and the relation of public personality to private self — something every popular artist has to work out — is especially problematic for a woman. Men are used to playing roles and projecting images in order to compete and succeed. Male celebrities tend to identify with their mask making, to see it as creative and — more or less — to control it. In contrast, women need images simply to survive. A woman is usually aware, on some level, that men do not allow her to be her “real self,” and worse, that the acceptable masks represent men’s fantasies, not her own. She can choose the most interesting image available, present it dramatically, individualize it with small elaborations, undercut it with irony. But ultimately she must serve some male fantasy to be loved — and then it will be only the fantasy that is loved anyway.

Willis wrote that in 1980, about the 1960s. But it could have been written last week, about, um, any female pop star who did anything last week. Pick your packaging! Miley, Rihanna, Katy, Ke$ha, Taylor. Did you want good girl gone bad? Edgy and “exotic” gone S&M-lite? This has nothing to do with talented or not talented. A staggering majority of high-ranking music executives are men. Do we think any of these pop stars doesn’t know she’s a product, doesn’t understand exactly what game she’s a part of? None of them would be where they are right now if they hadn’t been playing it correctly, painstakingly, in some cases, from the day they were born. Whether or not they’re writing essays for Maria Shriver about it, I have a feeling most women in entertainment understand something about living in a patriarchal society.

As for Bey: Her new album, which I unabashedly love, is nothing if not a study in “acceptable masks.” In one video she’s the hot, pissed-off wife; another, the hot older girl at the roller rink; by the record’s end she’s found redemption as a (hot) mother, deriving her most genuine-sounding joy from an ode to her cooing baby daughter. Of course, she also pulls the classic, socially responsible, conventionally-beautiful-sex-symbol-decrying-sexist-beauty-standards thing. She does it all. She is every single thing a woman is supposed to be and more, and she looks fucking fabulous while doing it. She’s on top of the world right now for a reason, and — delightful feminist speech samples aside — I don’t think it’s as a reward for being her “real self.”

So yeah, go ahead and celebrate the pop star who suddenly cares about equal pay in the workplace. But give her a little credit. And maybe try to tamp down your surprise that a lady who’s been competing in pageants of some kind since she was old enough to walk might know a thing or two about sexism, inequality, where women have power, and where it stops.

FCC chair gets an earful in Oakland

Michael Redmond

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January 14, 2014

0

On Jan. 9, the newly appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, visited Oakland’s Preservation Park for a town hall meeting.

It was the first time in more than five years that the head of the FCC engaged in this kind of face-to-face community dialogue in Oakland, Chancellar Williams of Free Press said at the start of the meeting. The event was hosted by the Free Press, the Center for Media Justice, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and the Voices for Internet Freedom Coalition.

Social justice advocates from Oakland and San Francisco greeted Wheeler with a wide variety of concerns, asking him to help close the digital divide and improve access to basic phone and Internet service for low-income people.

Some spoke out about media consolidation, which Williams said has given rise to cost barriers resulting in abysmally low representation of broadcast station ownership by people of color. Others asked Wheeler to address the high cost of telephone calls in immigration detention.

Before people started lining up to share their thoughts with Wheeler, Malkia Cyril, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, captured everyone’s attention by delivering an impassioned speech on issues of media ownership, democracy, and racial inequality.

“Just as our physical bodies serve to preserve our nervous systems,” she began, “the people right here stand beautifully strong in defense of an affordable, accountable, and accessible media.”

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Michael Redmond

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January 14, 2014

0

When is a public opinion poll a valid representation of how people feel? That turns out to be a tricky and ever-evolving question, particularly in San Francisco — thanks to its prevalence of tenants and technology — and even more particularly when it concerns the approval rating of Mayor Ed Lee.

Traditionally, the central requirements for public opinion polls to be considered valid is that respondents need to be representative of the larger population and they need to be selected at random. Polls are often skewed when people need to opt-in, as is the case in most online polls.

So the Guardian took issue with claims that 73 percent of voters approve of the job that Mayor Lee is doing, a figure derived from an opt-in online poll focused on “Affordability and Tech” that was conducted by University of San Francisco Professors Corey Cook and David Latterman and released to the San Francisco Chronicle on Dec. 9. That figure quickly wallpapered the comment section of the Guardian’s website as the answer to any criticism of Mayor Lee, his policies, or the city’s eviction and gentrification crises.

“Any survey that relies on the ability and/or availability of respondents to access the Web and choose whether to participate is not representative and therefore not reliable,” is how The New York Times Style Guide explains that newspaper’s refusal to run such polls, a quote we used in our Jan. 10 Politics blog post on the subject, and we quoted an academic making a similar point.

We also interviewed and quoted Latterman discussing the challenges of doing accurate and economical polling in a city with so many renters (64 percent of city residents) and so few telephone landlines. “San Francisco is a more difficult model,” Latterman told us. “So Internet polling has to get better, because phone polling has gotten really expensive.”

So we ran our story dubbing the poll “bogus” — and the next day got angry messages from Cook and Latterman defending the poll and educating us on efforts within academia to craft opt-in online polls that are as credible as traditional telephone polls.

“The author is so quick to dismiss the findings of the study, which is based upon accepted methodology, and which had nothing to do with mayoral approval scores, that he actually misses the entire thrust of the study — that voters in San Francisco are deeply ambivalent about the current environment, concerned about the affordability crisis, and not trusting of local government to come up with a solution,” Cook wrote in a rebuttal we published Jan. 13 on the Politics blog.

Cook told us the survey’s methods are endorsed by the National Science Foundation and peer-reviewed academic papers, including a Harvard University study called “Does Survey Mode Still Matter?” that concludes “a carefully executed opt-in Internet panel produces estimates that are as accurate as a telephone survey.”

That study went to great lengths to create a sample group that was representative of the larger population, while Cook and Latterman both admit that their survey’s respondents had a disproportionate number of homeowners. But they say the results were then weighted to compensate for that and they stand by the accuracy of their work.

Yet Cook also notes that the mayoral approval rating number wasn’t even part of the package they developed from this survey, it was just a finding that they decided to give the Chronicle. “I don’t think the 73 percent means anything,” Cook told us, noting that snapshot in time doesn’t reflect Lee’s actual popularity going forward, despite how Lee supporters focused on it. “The number they use politically is not a meaningful number.”

What Cook found more significant is the “tepid support” for Lee indicated by the poll, including the 86 percent that expressed concern about affordability in the city, a concern that cuts across all demographic groups. Most respondents had little faith in City Hall to address the problem and many felt the tech industry should be doing more to help, particularly companies that have received tax breaks.

What “Google bus” really means

Michael Redmond

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January 14, 2014

79

EDITORIAL In recent years, “Google bus” has become a term that encompasses more than just the shuttles that one corporation uses to transport its workers from San Francisco down to the Silicon Valley. It has taken on a symbolic meaning representing the technology sector’s desire to shield itself from the infrastructure, values, and responsibilities that most citizens choose to share.

These are the very things that motivate many of us to live here, finding that community spirit in such a beautiful, world-class city. More than just the great restaurants and bars, its vistas and artistic offerings, San Francisco represents an experiment in modern urbanism and cultural development.

It is this collision and collusion of disparate yet public-spirited cultures that gave birth to the region’s great economic and social movements, from gay rights and environmentalism to groundbreaking academic research and the creation of the Internet economy.

The antithesis of this idea of creative collaboration is to consider San Francisco just 49 square miles of valuable real estate, to be used and developed as the highest bidder sees fit, as some tech titans seem to believe. It’s ironic that an industry based on creating online communities would place so little value on engaging with its physical community.

The proposed $1 per bus stop use, and $50 per docking that new exclusive Google ferry is paying, is a privatization of public space that barely covers the city’s costs. The tech industry should be doing much more just to counteract its negative impacts on the city’s economy, let alone actually being good corporate citizens of this region.

A new report called for by the Mayor’s Office says Muni needs a $10 billion investment over the next 15 years just to maintain current service levels. A big chunk of that should come from the wealthy corporations in our community through a downtown transit assessment district and higher fees on Silicon Valley companies that are using us as a bedroom community.

San Francisco writer Rebecca Solnit has been developing a critique of the Google bus since her initial shot last February in the London Review of Books, answering a subsequent techie/enviro criticism published in Grist with a Jan. 7 article in Guernica called “Resisting Monoculture.”

“And thus come the well-paid engineers to San Francisco, and thus go the longtime activists, idealists, artists, teachers, plumbers, all the less-well-paid people,” she writes, citing surveys that the buses allow Silicon Valley workers to live in San Francisco when they otherwise wouldn’t.

That’s the issue. The only thing green about Google buses are the piles of money their riders and their bosses are keeping from the city we all share. Segregated buses have never been a good idea, but if these companies insist on them, that should come with a higher price tag.

Article overlooks key findings and new academic research

Sasha Cuttler

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January 13, 2014

43

Article overlooks key findings and new academic research

By Corey Cook

I am writing in regard to Reed Nelson’s story “’Poll’ showing 73 percent approval for Mayor Lee was flawed.” As one of the two authors of the survey, I am deeply disappointed in the many insinuations in the article and the author’s cavalier abandonment of evidence or reason in order to make his politically expedient, but otherwise inane, point.

In fact, the author is so quick to dismiss the findings of the study, which is based upon accepted methodology, and which had nothing to do with mayoral approval scores, that he actually misses the entire thrust of the study – that voters in San Francisco are deeply ambivalent about the current environment, concerned about the affordability crisis, and not trusting of local government to come up with a solution.

You’d think the Bay Guardian might find that an interesting subject. Under a previous editor I have little doubt it would have. Instead, the author mind numbingly asserts that the mayor’s approval rate – a largely irrelevant number – is clearly overinflated and the survey must then be “bogus” (meaning fake or phony). While other scholars might find the popular characterization of their work as “fake” somewhat amusing. I do not.

The author relies on two main sources to claim that an on-line panel survey is “bogus”, the New York Times “style guide” and the “website publication” of Southeast Missouri State University Political Scientist Russell D. Renka, who is neither a survey researcher nor a political methodologist, and who does not seem to have published anything in this field (or even in political science based on his on-line vita), but who does seem to have a fairly robust home page that includes cute photos of his grandkids.

It’s not the kind of “source” that I would utilize to deride another academic’s work as “bogus”, and I could suggest some other (actual) publications to consider, including Harvard political scientist Stephen Ansolabehere’s peer reviewed article in Political Analysis titled “Does Survey Mode Still Matter?” from 2011 that compares national surveys fielded at the same time over the Internet (using an opt-in Internet panel), by telephone with live interviews (using a national RDD sample of landlines and cell phones), and by mail (using a national sample of residential addresses).

The authors of that study conclude that “comparing the findings from the modes to each other and the validated benchmarks, we demonstrate that a carefully executed opt-in Internet panel produces estimates that are as accurate as a telephone survey and that the two modes differ little in their estimates of other political indicators and their correlates.” But unfortunately that peer reviewed publication by a Harvard political scientist seems to contradict the simple assertion that a survey result the author doesn’t like must be phony.

Let me say that I don’t considered this issue “settled” in the scholarly community, but it is far from the case that serious on-line panel surveys ought to be derided as “bogus.” My preference would be to do a 1,200 person phone survey. If the Bay Guardian would like to commission such a survey, I would enjoy working with you on that project. But given the various cost limitations that preclude such a robust research design, this is not an altogether bad alternative.

That said, feel free to poke at the methodology and suggest that the numbers for Lee might not reflect that of the overall population because of the timing of the survey or because it was only conducted in English (though I’d disagree with you there – that likely holds down his numbers), or frankly just that surveys do often get it wrong. Even the best random sample is outside the margin of error one time out of 20 according to basic probability theory.

But the other thing I’d like to draw your attention to is that you’ve missed the entire point of the survey. Why do you focus on mayoral approval when it’s a survey about attitudes towards affordability and tech? In fact the article notes that “(i)nterestingly, the USF “poll” also found that 86 percent of respondants (sic) said that lack of affordability was a major issue in the city, while 49.6 percent of that same group considered housing developers to be most at fault for the astronomical real estate prices.” So apparently that part of the survey wasn’t bogus.

Here were our four findings:

* San Franciscans are of two minds: a clear majority of respondents say the city is going in the right direction, yet affordability is seen as a significant, and newly exacerbated problem.

* Most respondents see the tech boom as most strongly helping tech executives and workers. Though there is little sense that respondents and their families benefit from the tech boom, a clear majority say that tech is also good for other white collar workers and the city overall.

* The public strongly supports the idea that the city government ought to enact policies to preserve affordability but were skeptical of public officials’ ability to deal with these issues.

* Despite these concerns, there was little interest in making it harder for tech companies to come to San Francisco. For now, keeping the economy strong appears to be the priority, and we expect that feelings about the economy will likely stave off a substantial political “backlash” at least at the present time.

While Ed Lee has high approval scores, they are tepid – much more “good” than “excellent”. And those numbers erode on affordability, what the voters regard as the city’s most important issue. And we found that people don’t articulate a high degree of trust in mayor in dealing with affordability. Yes, they trust him more than they do others (like developers, or the Board of Supervisors), but not much. This survey help me understand what happened on the 8 Washington vote. Voters like the mayor, as they do Newsom incidentally, but don’t buy their argument that the development would address housing affordability. His popularity didn’t have coattails on this issue.

It strikes me as a real missed opportunity for your journalists to trash the poll, based on really flimsy grounds, rather than address it’s important, and yes, ambivalent findings.

Sincerely,

Corey Cook, Ph.D.

“Poll” showing 73 percent approval for Mayor Lee was flawed

Sasha Cuttler

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January 10, 2014

78

“Poll” showing 73 percent approval for Mayor Lee was flawed

There was a poll conducted in late November by the University of San Francisco, the results of which were released in conjunction with the San Francisco Chronicle, claiming that 73 percent of San Franciscans approve of Mayor Ed Lee’s performance.

It didn’t take long for Lee’s supporters to begin touting the figure as fact; soon after the poll appeared on SFGate.com on Dec. 9, the results wallpapered the comment section of the Guardian’s website as the answer to any criticism of Mayor Lee, his policies, or the city’s eviction and gentrification crises.

After all, it was a big number that seems to suggest widespread support. But closer analysis shows this “online poll” wasn’t really a credible poll, and that number is almost certainly way over-inflated. [Editor’s update 1/13: The authors of this survey contest the conclusions of this article, and we have changed the word “bogus” in the original headline to “flawed.” The issue of the reliability of opt-in online surveys is an evolving one, so while we stand by our conclusions in this article that the 73 percent approval figure is misleading and difficult to support, we urge you to read Professor Corey Cook’s response here and our discussion of this issue in this week’s Guardian.]

The problems with the USF “poll” are numerous, but the most glaring of those issues has to do with its lack of random selection. According to the New York Times Style Guide, a poll holds value in what’s called a “probability sample,” or the notion that it represents the beliefs of the larger citizenry.

The USF poll registered responses from 553 San Franciscans. That number itself isn’t the issue, or it wouldn’t be if those 553 individuals were procured through a random process. But they weren’t, and it wasn’t even close.

The survey participants were obtained via an “opt-in” list that, according to David Latterman — a USF professor, co-conductor of the poll, and downtown-friendly political consultant — meaning that anyone who participated in this particular poll had previously stated they were willing to participate in a poll. This phenomenon is known as self-selecting.

“We work with a rather large national firm and they have a whole series of opt-in panels,” Latterman told the Guardian. “So they’ve got lists of thousands of people who have basically said, ‘Yes, we’ll take a poll.’ And the blasts go out to these groups of people.”

That means that even prior to conducting the poll, results had already been tailored toward a certain set of citizens and away from anything that could be classified as “random.” And even the Chronicle acknowledged in the small type that “Poll respondents were more likely to be homeowners,” further narrowing the field down to one-third of city residents, and generally its most affuent third.

Even if pollsters could match the demographics of the polled with the “true demographics” as Latterman called them, it still wouldn’t address the issue of self-selection. But that’s not all: The list of “opt-in” participants, which was acquired through a third party vendor, according to Latterman, only contained English-speaking registered voters. And anyone contacted was contacted via email, another red flag in the world of accurate of polling data.

Interestingly, the USF “poll” also found that 86 percent of respondants said that lack of affordability was a major issue in the city, while 49.6 percent of that same group considered housing developers to be most at fault for the astronomical real estate prices. So, to recap: This poll, touted by many people as gospel in the comment section of this site, found that while the City is totally unaffordable, the man in charge of the City is barely culpable for that situation, and he remains incredibly popular.

According to the NYT Style Guide, “Any survey that relies on the ability and/or availability of respondents to access the Web and choose whether to participate is not representative and therefore not reliable.”

Uh oh.

Russell D. Renka, professor of Political Science at Southeast Missouri State, conveyed far stronger feelings on the matter in his paper “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Public Opinion Polling,” saying that a self-selected sample “trashes the principle of random selection… A proper medical experiment never permits someone to choose whether to receive a medication rather than the placebo.”

Strike two.

He then writes, “Any self-selected sample is basically worthless as a source of information about the population beyond itself.”

Strike three.

So then why were such frowned-upon methods used in this poll?

Latterman attributes the tactics to many things, but mostly to the rapidly changing technological landscape of San Francisco, coupled with the high costs of alternative methods and a large renters market.

“San Francisco is a more difficult model,” Latterman said. “So Internet polling has to get better, because phone polling has gotten really expensive.”

But even if Internet polling needs to improve, it is still important to prominently note that in original source material, lest you give folks the wrong ideas. Or even just misinformed ones. Unless what you’re trying to present is less about polling that trying to sell San Franciscans on the idea that Mayor Lee enjoys widespread support.

Here’s what the new FCC chairman heard when he came to Oakland

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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January 10, 2014

2

Here’s what the new FCC chairman heard when he came to Oakland

Last night (Thu/9), the newly appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, visited Oakland’s Preservation Park for a town hall meeting.

It was the first time in more than five years that the head of the FCC engaged in this kind of face-to-face community dialogue in Oakland, Chancellar Williams of Free Press said at the start of the meeting. The event was hosted by the Free Press, the Center for Media Justice, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the Voices for Internet Freedom Coalition.

Social justice advocates from Oakland and San Francisco greeted Wheeler with a wide variety of concerns, asking him to help close the digital divide and improve access to basic phone and Internet service for low income people.

Some spoke out about media consolidation, which Williams said has given rise to cost barriers resulting in abysmally low representation of broadcast station ownership by people of color. Others asked Wheeler to address the high cost of telephone calls in immigration detention.

Before people started lining up to share their thoughts with Wheeler, Malkia Cyril, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, captured everyone’s attention by delivering an impassioned speech on issues of media ownership, democracy, and racial inequality. Here’s a sample of what she said:

Google’s androids

Michael Redmond

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January 7, 2014

0

rebecca@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED Robotics, a field that largely exists in the realm of research and development, is poised to grow leaps and bounds right here in the Bay Area now that Google has decided to dump mountains of cash into it.

So far, the search giant with the “don’t be evil” slogan has acquired eight robotics firms, and is pursuing a robotics initiative that nobody seems willing to describe in detail when speaking on record to the press.

Its December acquisition of Boston Dynamics, a leading robotics firm famous for developing robots like Cheetah — which can move at 29 miles per hour on a treadmill — has generated rampant speculation about the Silicon Valley giant’s ultimate intentions.

Since Boston Robotics receives funding from military sources, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the high-profile purchase has raised a few eyebrows to be sure — like, they keep all of our email data forever and they just went out and bought some military-funded robots?

“None of these companies have products — they have prototypes,” points out Berkeley robotics professor Dr. Homayoon Kazerooni, who founded Ekso Bionics, a company that aids paraplegics in overcoming mobility limitations with robotic aids.

“Not all scientists or engineers are fully considering commercial applications yet. I don’t know why Google’s buying that stuff, except to push those applications.” From there, the question becomes “what can you do with that, to create jobs that are helpful to people?”

Kazerooni says the research being generated by robot scientists and engineers could yield many possibilities, whether in the form of new robots or something else. While he specializes in robotic machines for paraplegics, he says robots can sometimes be helpful replacements for humans in dangerous situations, like when a repair is needed at a nuclear power plant.

Several of the other firms purchased by Google are based in San Francisco. A recent, um, Google search revealed that while the companies’ website URLs remained intact, their pages had mostly been scrubbed of any information, save a single line of text announcing the acquisitions and that they were joining “the robotics revolution.”

So much for transparency from a company that knows all your secrets.

But thanks to a handy tool created by the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, called the Wayback Machine, we at the Bay Guardian were able to unearth a few nuggets to shed some light on what the hell Google just bought.

Meka Robotics, founded in 2007 by roboticists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is one of the Google robotics acquisitions that lists a San Francisco address. A Wayback search revealed that it has developed something called “the Meka S2 Humanoid Head,” which is a “robotic active vision head” featuring high resolution cameras in each eye. “Designed for a wide range of expressive postures, it is the ideal platform for researchers interested in human-robot interaction and social robotics,” according to a description that no longer exists on Meka’s current website.

Another local firm Google gobbled up is Industrial Perception, a Palo Alto company that the Wayback search revealed is “a leader in 3D vision-guided robot technology” that “enables industrial robots to assume challenging logistical tasks,” mainly related to shipping.

Julia Gottlieb is the executive producer at Bot & Dolly, a San Francisco outfit that operates dinosaur-sized robotic arms equipped with high-end cameras that capture footage while the machines glide through space. “You may have heard the news that we were recently acquired by Google,” she wrote in response to a Bay Guardian inquiry. “Unfortunately, this means I am not able to speak to or make any decisions about press or PR related matters.”

New FCC boss coming to Oakland

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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January 7, 2014

0

On Thu/9, Voices for Internet Freedom, Free Press and the Center for Media Justice are hosting Tom Wheeler, the recently installed Federal Communications Commission chairman, for a town hall-style meeting about the state of communication policy, both in the Bay Area and nationally.

The event, which will be held in Nile Hall of Preservation Park, runs from 7-9pm and will feature a panel discussion, commentary from influential community members and remarks from Wheeler. There also will be a lengthy time slot reserved for public comments and questions. While the event has sold out, viewers can catch a live webstream here during the event.

“It’s going to be a fairly short event, but power packed,” said Malkia Cyril, founder and Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice. “We want to bring the frame of consciousness about the role of media and culture to the dialogue with the FCC, [because] that generally isn’t there.

“Generally, when it’s those kind of conversations they have, we are not the kind of people they’re talking to. And we want to make sure that the voices of folks that are usually in the margins of debate really get heard.”

Preceding the main event will be a smaller, more focused meeting between Wheeler and “a few leaders of social justice in the Bay Area,” according to Cyril. The purpose is to give local leaders a chance to share the types of conditions affecting their communities in a small group setting, she added.

But it will be during the main town hall meeting that Wheeler, who was officially named FCC Chairman on Nov. 4 of 2013, will face a litany of questions from Oakland-area community members.

The topics expected to be broached during the meeting range from broad — net-neutrality, ownership of broadband, corporate ownership of broadcast mediums — to specific — like the fact that, according to Cyril, “there are zero African-Americans who own a full power television station in this country.”

And they’ll also want to discuss the abject employment bridge between the FCC and big-money corporations. “Given the fact that previous FCC Chair, [Julius] Genachowski just got a huge Wall Street job, I think they’ll also raise questions about this revolving door at the FCC between companies and policy makers,” said Cyril, who was referring to Genachowski’s transition from FCC Chair to the Carlyle Group, which is (naturally) a global asset management firm.

“I think we see that as a critical issue right now, so that will probably come up.”

For more information about the event, or to be added to the waitlist, visit tinyurl.com/OaklandFCCMeet.

Breaking points

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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January 2, 2014

34

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM Happy New Year, cinema fans: a pair of new films from highly acclaimed Chinese directors open this week, Chen Kaige’s Caught in the Web and Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin. Both films are set in contemporary, conspicuously capitalist China, and concern ordinary people who are suddenly caught up in circumstances that are, for the most part, beyond their control. Their reactions are as extreme (violent, vindictive, irreversible) as they are revealing about the environments in which they take place, as limits are pushed, lives are ruined, and anger and despair erupt into brutal actions.

Though Chen — a Palme d’Or winner for 1993’s Farewell My Concubine — is a member of China’s aging “Fifth Generation” of filmmakers (Jia is, of course, one of the Sixth Generation’s top talents), his film addresses a youthful topic: the destructive power of the Internet. Executive secretary Ye Lanqiu (Gao Yuanyuan, star of 2009’s City of Life and Death) is a workaholic, with a posh yet empty life to show for it. An unexpectedly grim medical diagnosis shocks her into a kind of “fuck all y’all” fugue state, and when an old man boards her crowded bus, she flatly refuses to give up her seat. A heated argument follows.

Normally, an encounter like that — a familiar scenario to anyone who’s ever ridden public transit, particularly the 22 Fillmore — would pass unnoticed. But a cell phone camera clutched in the hands of nerdy-glasses-wearing wannabe journalist Yang Jiaqi (Wang Luodan) captures the whole thing; once ruthlessly ambitious producer Chen Ruoxi (Yao Chen) gets ahold of it, Ye Lanqiu’s rudeness goes viral, and a Reddit-esque smear campaign ensues. (This is in-joke casting, since actress Yao Chen is known as a social-media sensation in real life, with 52 million followers on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.)

As the “Sunglasses Girl” video becomes a sensation, it affects all who are in its orbit, including Ye’s sleazy boss (Wang Xueqi) and his materialistic Real Housewife of a spouse (Chen Hong); Ruoxi’s boyfriend, photographer Yang Shoucheng (Mark Chao), who happens to be Jiaqi’s cousin; and, obviously, Ye, who goes into hiding before embarking on a Last Holiday-meets-The Bucket List spree. (Why do dying people in movies always want to skydive or bungee jump?) After two solid hours, every relationship in the film has been tested, if not ripped to shreds, and Caught in the Web has proven engaging enough to make the film’s biggest plot hole — why doesn’t Ye seize the power of the Internet to school all the haters on what motivated her behavior? — excusable. And despite the unavoidable fate of its main character, Caught in the Web ends on a note of hope, suggesting that there’s a reset button for almost everyone, even a Real Housewife.

A Touch of Sin, which is set in bleak factory towns and along dusty highways, in stark contrast to Caught in the Web‘s glossy cityscapes, offers no such redemption. Last year, it won Best Screenplay at Cannes and played multiple festivals; lately, it’s popped up on several prestigious “Best of 2013” lists (Sight & Sound ranked it number six; Cahiers du Cinéma ranked it fifth). If I’d gotten to see it before my deadline, it might have shaken up my own list. Jia (2004’s The World) is said to have based his screenplay on actual incidents, and also drew inspiration — as the title suggests — from King Hu’s martial arts epic A Touch of Zen (1971).

And despite some scattered Buddhist references, sin — delivered in heavy doses, hardly just “a touch” — reigns over Zen in the film’s four barely connected stories. Before the credits finish rolling, we’ve witnessed a stone-faced man in a Chicago Bulls beanie (Wang Baoqiang) respond to a trio of roadside muggers with a hail of bullets. Is he a vigilante, or did the robbers just mess with the wrong motorcyclist?

The film’s unpredictable tone well established, we continue to nearby “Black Gold Mountain,” site of a coal mine whose profits have been funneled into the pockets of its obscenely rich owner and the corrupt local village chief, who’s prone to put-downs like “You’ll be a loser all your life.” On the receiving end of that insult is worker Dahai (Jiang Wu of 2010’s Let the Bullets Fly), a human pressure cooker of rage and resentment. Mostly rage, though — and if the film begins to take shape as a rich vs. poor narrative, it all feels very realistic, despite the horrific violence that ensues. “My dear, wait and see. I can be evil,” Dahai assures the one person he shows any tenderness toward, a woman from his past who seems none too happy this disheveled, desperate man has paid her a visit.

More unwelcoming women appear in A Touch of Sin‘s next portion, which picks up the thread of the man in the Bulls hat. He’s a migrant worker, traveling home (an infrequent occurrence) for his mother’s birthday. She doesn’t say a word to him. His wife announces, “I don’t want your money,” but later softens, even as he plans his next journey in search of work. Fractured families are a recurring motif in A Touch of Sin — as are designer purses. The wife of Dahai’s boss passes by workers who’ve been bribed with bags of flour to come greet her, carrying her own status symbol: Chanel, natch. Later, the migrant worker takes his pistol out for a spin, ambushing a couple whose disposable wealth is telegraphed by the woman’s Louis Vuitton tote.

On his way out of town, he shares a bus with a man heading to meet his mistress (Zhao Tao, Jia’s wife and muse). It’s ultimatum time: get divorced or break up forever. As the man’s train rumbles away (A Touch of Sin‘s characters are constantly in transit, constantly in motion: trains, buses, motorcycles, riding in the backs of trucks, etc.), she travels to her job, working the front desk at “Nightcomer Sauna,” as unglamorous a joint as the name suggests. When a pair of wealthy customers decides she’s on the menu (“I’m a receptionist, not a masseuse!” she protests; “I’ll smother you with money, bitch!” is the response), she’s forced to defend herself — but not before taking a beating that echoes the whipping we saw a horse endure earlier in Dahai’s village. It’s made even crueler by its length, and the steadiness of its blows.

Animals — that horse, a tiger-patterned scarf, the bull on the migrant’s hat, a fortuneteller’s snakes — filter through each segment, though the most prominent creatures in A Touch of Sin don’t appear on the Chinese zodiac chart. That’d be the bag of goldfish released in a “do good deeds and be rewarded in the next life” ploy by a pretty girl (Vivien Li) befriended by Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan) in the film’s final chapter. He’s a waiter with money woes, and she’s a prostitute. They click, but “There’s no true love in sex work,” she declares, with the sad conviction of one who knows. Later, when the lad shifts to factory work, it’s clear no amount of freed fish can make this life any less poor. That his company housing is dubbed the “Oasis of Prosperity” would be funny, if it wasn’t so depressing.

In A Touch of Sin‘s final scene, the film’s one potentially salvageable character passes by an opera being performed in the street. “Do you understand your sin?” the singer warbles. The character pauses, remembering what happened — and why it had to happen. So do we. And yes, we understand. *

CAUGHT IN THE WEB and A TOUCH OF SIN open Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters.

The Rise of Candidate X

Erica Hanna

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January 1, 2014

52

EDITOR’S NOTE:

As we move through tumultuous times in San Francisco and start a year with infinite political potential, we decided to stretch our imaginations a bit. While this is clearly a work of satire that appropriates some local media voices and perspectives, we hope that even its most fantastical moments will give this parable some resonance with our readers. Happy new year!

EDITORIAL The most exciting and promising political development we’ve seen in a long time in San Francisco is the sudden emergence of so-called Candidate X, who has quickly parlayed groundbreaking populist efforts to reform Muni and housing development into a full-blown campaign for mayor.

While the election is still 22 months away — an eternity in electoral politics — we’re going to go out on a limb here and offer the Candidate X campaign our early endorsement. Political movements like this one are once in a generation opportunities, and it will only be successful with strong, early support.

There’s just too much at stake for politics as usual, or to trust Mayor Ed Lee’s sudden recognition that his economic development policies and deference to market-rate housing developers were hurting San Francisco’s vitality and diversity and igniting a popular uprising, which Candidate X suddenly emerged to help lead.

In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last month, 2014 began with an explosion of progressive activism that finally began to bridge the gap between longtime San Francisco communities and a group of fairly apolitical but Internet-savvy new arrivals, many of whom work in the technology industry, which had been increasingly vilified as elitist and out-of-touch with the city’s values and history.

A mysterious, masked figure calling himself or herself (nobody is quite sure) Candidate X used social media on New Year’s Day to announce bold plans to “disrupt the streets of San Francisco,” calling for vaguely defined meet-ups at a dozen key spots around the city on the morning of Jan. 3.

The multi-pronged response was overwhelming and surprisingly coordinated, perhaps an indicator of offline organizing that exceeded the viral online phenomenon. Google and other corporate buses were commandeered into free public service (with the collusion of many drivers and regular riders) while Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other online funding drives raised at least $10 million for Muni to expand its service, a potent mix of fiscal and people power. And that epic day ended with an unpermitted rally of at least 10,000 people in Civic Center Plaza.

A week later, Candidate X followed up with a similar effort to jumpstart affordable housing construction in the city, using a combination of carrot and stick (humanist appeals to project backers and direct action at construction sites) to persuade a half-dozen market rate developments to substantially increase their affordable housing mix. And the candidate helped organize a mass mobilization that brought thousands of tenants to City Hall — and generated 10 times as many emails and calls — to force the supervisors to support a measure raising the relocation fees on Ellis Act evictions so high that the speculators were almost instantly driven out of the city.

Candidate X is now talking about raising even more money for Muni by quadrupling the mitigation fees developers pay to construct new offices.

Those campaigns were coupled with hundreds of activists using hoes, picks, and shovels on public land that was part of the 8 Washington luxury condo proposal, removing the parking lots and grading the land by hand for a communal housing project they intend to build on the site.

The next week, with the Candidate X movement gaining momentum at astonishing speed, Candidate X announced his/her intention to run for mayor in the November 2015 election, starting now. The campaign has already announced a series of radical but smart positions, from banning cars on Market and other key streets to reclaiming Treasure Island and Hunters Point Shipyard from Lennar’s control, and promising many more to come.

In some ways, it seems like a marriage between the surging housing rights movement — which has been challenging evictions and gentrification and fighting for the soul of San Francisco — and the social media-driven Batkid outpouring back in November. But rather than an apolitical one-off, this feels like a broad movement focused on shaping San Francisco in the public interest over the long term.

The whirlwind of exciting political energy has left many speechless, and we can only say: Candidate X for mayor!

While the Candidate X phenomenon has certainly captivated San Franciscans and attracted national media attention, giving the city’s far-left progressives a glimmer of hope in capturing the Mayor’s Office next year, those close to Mayor Ed Lee say they aren’t worried.

“Everybody’s having fun with this now, but at the end of the day, voters are going to prefer a proven leader like Mayor Lee and his successful jobs agenda to some kind of strange masked comic book character,” a source in the Mayor’s Office told us. “Whatever this thing is, it’ll be a footnote in the mayor’s race.”

The source cited internal polling indicating the Mayor Lee’s approval rating holding steady at more than 70 percent and unaffected by the last three months’ worth of headline-grabbing antics by Candidate X and his or her campaign. The polls also found the public is turned off by the candidate’s mask and secret identity.

Candidate X has certainly proven adept at using social media and other technological tools to generate support, but Angel investor Ron Conway and his sf.citi collaboration of technology industry leaders have pledged to help make tech-driven outreach and voter identification a centerpiece of Lee’s reelection campaign.

“Entrepreneurs have made this city what it is, and we’re not going to let this Candidate X creature undermine our agenda for San Francisco,” Conway said. “Let them have their fun for now, we’re not worried.”

Sometimes, revealing the fakers in politics can be easy.

And so it goes with the so-called “Candidate X.” The self-stylized Progressive Hero is a multi-racial, gender ambiguous second coming of Christ for the city’s super-lefties. The narrative began with a PR move that undoubtedly had Willie Brown weeping into his Wilkes Bashford handkerchief.

Brown promised to fix Muni in 100 days, and Candidate X fixed it with one glorifyingly stupid stunt.

Masked and spandex clad, Candidate X straddled two Muni buses while doing the splits, Van Damme style, between them. X rode the buses spread eagle, laughing like a demented Santa Claus, as streams of San Franciscans ran behind them down Geary Boulevard. Using the ploy to call for Kickstarter of America’s Worst Transit System, millions of streaming video gawkers nationwide flocked to and knocked out the crowd funder’s website.

The silliness ended before you could say “back door!”

It was seemingly successful. Defying the history of failed fixes from every ex-San Francisco mayor since forever, X single-handedly raised enough money to “expand Muni for the next three decades,” progressives claimed.

Some played it as a progressive spurning of Mayor Ed Lee’s proven political tactic — ignore Muni’s issues and glorify the Google buses. Some portrayed it as a socialist takeover of an already red or dead leaning City by the Bay. Your humble narrator knew better.

X is a ludicrous candidate no sane citizen would back, and that stunt was clearly that — a stunt. But still the quixotic charade marched on.

Last week, X sat Mark Zuckerberg and a team of star studded tech oligarchy down with progressive activists. The previously evicted Lee family was there, arm-in-arm with former Mayor Art Agnos and a cadre of lefty power in San Francisco, or what’s left of them anyway. With Candidate X in the center of the two contentious camps, the tableau was vaguely reminiscent of the Last Supper, save for the presence of Mission District burritos.

San Francisco’s problems were tastily tackled one by one.

Housing problems? Hacked and solved. The homeless? Software solutions streamlined shelters in a day. Even hunger among the city’s poor was licked, as the techies and lefties together crafted solutions mind-melding the best ideals of both. All throughout, a time bomb ticked away like a demented clock ready to strike “I told you so!” at midnight.

It’s difficult to watch impending doom stare well-meaning people in the face. Literally staring, as the problem came the person posing for all the cameras: Candidate X.

Last week the candidate’s violent history was revealed, and although the SF Weekly doesn’t have a stock of X-ray glasses, your humble narrator still saw this coming a long way back. X is a fraud. A charlatan. A wannabe in progressive clothing. And now we all know why.

In police records obtained by the City Attorney’s Office, Candidate X was revealed to be one of the Occupy San Francisco and Oakland protesters, maybe even from the pernicious Black Bloc. Way back when, the Bay Area was captivated by martyred rallier Scott Olsen and others who were wronged by the not-so-mighty Oakland Police Department. OPD tear gassed and grenaded the Occupy pests. At the same time, a more intimate, frightening drama played out across the bay in San Francisco’s Embarcadero.

The SFPD was mostly kind to their own Occupy camp, but one boy in blue was not: Officer Alex Murphy. He paid dearly for it. One night, sleeping in his tent at the Occupy camp, Candidate X was roused by Murphy and ushered to leave. Does that translate into the officer deserving a beating within an inch of his life? It seems Candidate X thought so, although he also seems to have got as good as he gave, and ended up in the hospital.

The Black Bloc folks aggressive ways led the public to link Occupy with violence, from hippies to rage rousers. Black Bloc and Candidate X were kindred souls. Even his heart was black.

X yanked Murphy behind the fountain at Justin Herman Plaza, and punched him repeatedly, savagely, in the face, Murphy said in police reports, eventually pinning the officer to the ground before he got his.

Candidate X put up the usual defenses. “Murphy was near murderous with protesters all night, he’d gone vigilante,” Candidate X told scads of TV crews in Aaron Sorkin-esque walk and talks, last week. Protesters said he saved their lives, hailing his heroism. San Francisco shouldn’t buy the story. It’s malarkey, plain and simple.

But good reasons or no, is a violent wacko the kind of candidate you want leading the new progressive movement? Not surprisingly, it seems the new progressive era is like the old one. Big dreams, empty promises, and a lot of rhetoric that will soar nowhere.

And no one, especially not your humble narrator, was surprised.

The electoral landscape today is much different than it was only last week, when the revelation of Candidate X’s brawl with police had pulled the mayoral hopeful’s poll numbers into the ground.

Now a new viral video released by members of the San Francisco Occupy camp from 2011 confirms X’s side of the story: Officer Alex Murphy broke ranks with the generally peaceful SFPD. Police Chief Greg Suhr had a mostly “hands off” policy, allowing the Occupiers their right to free speech.

Murphy did not follow those directives, however, and the video shows the officer swinging his baton wildly, throwing punches, and injuring several protesters in the night, only to be fought off by Candidate X.

The story of X’s fight with an SFPD officer during the Occupy encampments had many saying the candidate’s campaign was over.

“That’s not someone I’d trust to be the leader of San Francisco,” said Mayor Ed Lee Press Secretary Christine Falvey.

The release of the video casted doubt on Murphy’s side of the story, and changed the electoral climate in the city going into next month’s election, when five seats on the Board of Supervisors are on the ballot.

Progressives in San Francisco scored big victories in last night’s election, winning seats on the Board of the Supervisors that a year ago seemed secure for the incumbents, thanks largely to a populist surge triggered by the mysterious Candidate X mayoral campaign.

Although neither Mayor Ed Lee nor Candidate X will appear on the ballot until next year, this year’s legislative races clearly got caught up in the enthusiasm of that race, with David Campos defeating David Chiu in their Assembly race and three members of the Board of Supervisors replaced by progressives.

Attorney David Waggoner took Sup. Scott Wiener’s District 8 seat and previous political unknowns Jennifer Wong and Betty Jones scored improbable victories in the Districts 2 and 10, defeating Mark Farrell and Malia Cohen.

District 6 incumbent Jane Kim appears to have narrowly won reelection after being strongly challenged by three candidates to her left, who criticized her ties to Mayor Lee and her sponsorship of the big tax break for Twitter and other mid-Market businesses almost four years ago. But Kim appeared to blunt that criticism by leading this year’s repeal on that and other business tax breaks and firmly aligning herself with Candidate X.

Kim’s vote in favor of raising fees on Ellis Act evictions and more than tripling the fees charged to office developers for Muni and affordable housing almost certainly saved her seat — and the refusal of Farrell and Cohn to support the tenant and economic fairness agenda were major factors in the campaigns that unseated them.

Candidate X defies easy categorization, and confusion surrounding this political dynamo’s gender identity is just the tip of the iceberg.

Since announcing her candidacy, she’s been the subject of rampant speculation among the city’s political insiders. Is she a native Spanish speaker, or did she grow up speaking Cantonese? Was she born and raised in San Francisco, or is she a transplant from the Midwest, or a foreign-born resident? Which supervisorial district does she live in? What is her annual income? Does Candidate X have any tattoos?

For all the questions this rollercoaster-like campaign has raised, Candidate X has left little doubt about his stance on certain issues. He frequently spouts a philosophy of “radical inclusion,” which he says could be put into practice in San Francisco city government by creating an online platform where all residents could log in and vote directly on discretionary funding allocation. He’s proposed eliminating the system of mayoral commission appointments altogether, instead allowing residents to digitally cast votes for commissioners. And he’s floated the idea of making every single public document tagged, searchable, and readily available, to anyone, the moment it’s created.

Candidate X’s unique method of campaign fundraising has spurred several economic studies. She’s created partnerships with a wide network of independently owned, San Francisco small businesses to allow customers to chip in a bit extra when they make a purchase, then used her considerable social media reach to encourage supporters to shop at those businesses. The approach has helped her tap a broad pool of donors, while sending new clientele through the doors of struggling proprietors in every corner of the city, many of whom have been losing ground in the face of rising rents and competition from national chain stores.

Candidate X has also organized campaign fundraising events with sliding scale admission fees. They are rumored to draw large, diverse crowds and occasionally last until sunrise, with attendees lingering for impassioned political discussion long after the performers have left. The events tend to start early in the evening with talks by local artists and authors, followed by aerial circus arts performances and live sets by Bay Area bands spanning a wide range of musical genres.

Candidate X has met with experts on climate change and used their input to produce a comprehensive plan for developing city-owned renewable energy infrastructure, which she says could be staffed with graduates of a job-training program created for at-risk youth. She’s also undertaken a project of identifying every abandoned property in the city that could be converted to residential use, as part of a plan to open up new transitional housing for homeless residents, to be staffed with a veritable army of substance abuse counselors and mental health professionals.

Earlier this month, when baristas organized a citywide protest against gentrification — by withholding coffee and shutting down Wi-Fi networks — Candidate X rode his bike from café to café to stand with the aproned employees while bleary-eyed patrons lined up outside the doors in confusion, clutching their laptops.

“Today, you are going to have to make your own coffee and work from home,” Candidate X told the bewildered patrons, after baristas shared personal stories of facing eviction or anxiety over losing rental housing.

“These baristas have taken a courageous stand for economic justice, to defend San Francisco against real estate speculators and developers who hold no regard for this city’s long tradition of inclusion and equality. They will not make your Ethiopian pour-over coffee with complex flavors of lilac and lavender while you connect to their free Wi-Fi — until you join in the fight against real-estate speculators whose actions have threatened this city as a haven for people of all incomes and identities.”

Since then, rumors have surfaced that someone in the tech community who heard the baristas’ stories that day has since started collaborating with the San Francisco Tenants Union, to create an app to help apartment-hunting tech workers boycott landlords who are known to carry out evictions and harassment — and to track evictions and alert house-hunters to join in refusing to bid on properties emptied by eviction.

So it seems that Candidate X has done the unthinkable, and gotten the younger voters of San Francisco to actually give a damn.

In his (her? their?) latest headline-grabbing move, Candidate X registered nearly 100 percent of voters age 18-30 in San Francisco just in time for the next election.

How’d X do it? The SF Examiner explains:

“In what could become a regular afternoon ritual, Candidate X stopped by college campuses, hip coffee shops, and Dolores Park this week with representatives of the tech industry and every San Francisco constituent group in tow.

The elderly, the homeless, new immigrants and others volunteered their time to convince every young voter, one by one, why it was worth their time to register to vote.

“I’ve never felt like I had a reason to give a damn, really,” said Martin Collins, 22. “Maybe it was X’s energy, which felt like (President) Obama’s campaign… or maybe it was because Macklemore was there. Either way, I’m voting next election.”

There you have it folks. X is so revolutionary. All you have to do is bring famous people to your voting drive, or you know, tout “hope and change.”

That always works. Last time Ed Lee ran for mayor, only around 30 percent of San Franciscans turned out to vote. Now Lee really has something to worry about.

Candidate X has been an enigma from the beginning, a vessel of progressive hopes for finally winning the Mayor’s Office. And at tonight’s triumphant election night party, we learned that we’re all Candidate X.

As exciting as the political victory was the hope that the masked Candidate X would reveal her or his identity after winning the race, which the current 15-point margin all but assures. That made for a big moment when Candidate X came onstage in Bill Graham Civic Auditorium to address the large crowd.

“This election was a fight for the soul of San Francisco and beyond. It was a referendum on the belief that we should leave this great city and others like it to the mercies of market forces, and the people have now said they want to be in control. Politicians often claim their victories are really victories for the people, but tonight, that’s finally true,” Candidate X said.

At that moment, dozens of nearly identical Candidate Xs — with the ubiquitous mask, cape, and costume, that image that has so captivated the country over these last 22 months — streamed out from backstage and filled the stage.

“1, 2, 3,” they all said in unison, all of them pulling off their masks at the same moment, revealing themselves to be a broad cross-section of city residents: young and old, men and women, attractive and plain, black and white and every shade in between.

“You see,” said the Candidate X who had originally come to the microphone, who appeared to be an Asian woman around 40 years old. “From the very beginning of this campaign, there’s never been a single Candidate X. We’ve all worn the mask at different times, we’ve all stood on the stump to proclaim the progressive values that this election was about, and we’ve all run this race.”

“Some of us have been doing this for a long time,” said a costume-clad Tom Ammiano, the longtime local legislator who last ran for mayor in 1999, “and we knew this moment needed to be about more than just one leader. So we created a vehicle that we could all ride into Room 200.”

Ammiano told the Guardian that he had been part of the large team that conceived of Candidate X during a series of secret meetings in late 2013. He said the campaign hopes and believes that its entire X Factor Leadership Team will be allowed to legally govern the city, but that just in case the Lee team challenges the unconventional arrangement in court, Ammiano last year legally changed his name to Candidate X and that he will serve as the figurehead for that governing structure if necessary.

“To turn this city around and restore it as an example for the world is a job for all of us, not any one person or faction,” said another Candidate X, who appeared to be African American woman in her early 20s. “We face challenges ranging from unaffordable rents here to global warming and loss of biodiversity everywhere. And it’s going to take all of us, working and standing together, to solve these problems and create a just and inclusive society, today and for future generations.”

“Todos somos Candidate X,” declared an elderly Latino Candidate X. “We are all Candidate X.”

*All new items written by Steven T. Jones, Rebecca Bowe, and Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

Hairy dilemma

Erica Hanna

-

December 24, 2013

3

news@sfbg.com

It used to be rare to see dogs in restaurants — which many people see as gross and the health codes don’t allow — but not anymore. It’s an increasingly common sight to see dogs in Bay Area restaurants, grocery stores, bars, and others businesses that traditionally haven’t allowed them.

Call it part of our love affair with canines, a loophole in medical privacy laws that stymies inquiries into whether Fido is a service dog needed for some ailment, or a manifestation of some people’s entitlement issues, but more and more pet owners see no problem with bringing their dogs to the dinner or lunch table.

Some have even angrily defended their supposed right to do so when confronted.

The city estimates there are about 120,000 dogs living in San Francisco, which equates to almost one dog per seven people. Sometimes it seems like even more than that given how omnipresent dogs seem to be, popping in places that used to be off-limits to them, such as restaurants.

Some people now see restaurants as dog-friendly zones, but they’re not, and for good reason. Due to public health concerns, dogs are banned by federal law from any establishment that serves or handles food.

The lone caveat to that rule is provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and it allows those who need service dogs to have them at all times, overriding the aforementioned policy established by the US Food and Drug Administration. The existence of the caveat isn’t really a problem — service dogs are necessary, helpful, and are highly trained animals — but the loophole it provides is.

That loophole allows regular, untrained folks to take regular, untrained dogs into restaurants under the guise of service.

“Under those provisions, restaurants are somewhat limited in that they can’t be too forceful in their line of questioning,” said Angelica Pappas, communications manager at the California Restaurants Association (CRA). “So I think that some people who want to bring their dogs know that and might think that they can get around the law that way.”

And in San Francisco, the trend is particularly pronounced, creating a problem for those who work in restaurants.

“The most obvious issue you see [when a dog is in a restaurant] is cross contamination,” said Terrence Hong, senior environmental inspector with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “A food handler might pet a cute dog, for instance, where service dog handlers go through training themselves and are more prepared for that situation.”

Food can be contaminated with fecal bacteria — something many dogs just love to roll around in — in addition to just the unsightly hairs ending up in people’s meals. The US Centers for Disease Control estimates that one in six people (about 48 million) are sickened by food-borne illness each year. Of those, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die, according to the CDC’s last comprehensive study of the issue in 2011.

“Safety, too, is an issue,” Pappas said. “There’s no guarantee that all these dogs are well-trained and even having them on a patio is really no different than having them inside when it comes to that.”

Florida became the first state to allow non-service dogs in outdoors seating areas in restaurants in 2006, and California had followed the lead of the Sunshine State by 2012.

“But the application of those laws is far more difficult than the black and white on a piece of paper,” Hong says.

The ADA — the same law that allows service dogs to enter restaurants— is proving to be one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to identifying the fakes. The language in the ADA states that anyone entering a business with a dog claiming to be a service animal can be asked only two questions: Is the dog a service dog? What task is it trained to do for you?

Business owners can’t ask a person in question for identification, because no federally or municipally approved uniform identifier exists, according to Hong. They can’t ask what a customer’s ailment is, because that question violates a privacy clause in the ADA.

DOGS EVERYWHERE

While the restaurants are being unlawfully infiltrated, other areas around the city are experiencing atypical levels of canine traffic as well.

Buses? Sure, why not. As long as your dog has a muzzle, it can legally take part in the herkiest, jerkiest, most claustrophobic ride available in the Muni playground, at least according to the unbothered gentleman with his dog on the 47-Van Ness bus on a recent Saturday.

Cabs? Hop on in, Rover. The mall? Every dog could use an afternoon at Michael Kors. Grocery stores? Screw the food handling laws, dogs gotta eat too.

And if someone gets in the way of you and your pet canine’s umbilical relationship? Just claim it’s a service dog. Sure, it’s considered a federal offense to misrepresent your pet as a service animal, but you can order a super-official looking vest off the Internet easier than you can order a book off of Amazon. The malfeasance is also nearly impossible to report.

Thus, the misrepresentation of service dogs is a rapidly growing problem, and one that seems to be trivialized by a large number of people.

Unfortunately for those who need legitimate service dogs, Hong said the general public has offered little opposition to the fakes. He said that there is no exact figure for dog-related complaints, because they don’t consolidate them, but he also noted that many people are reluctant to speak out against the malfeasant service dog owners.

Whether it’s because they think the business owners will handle the complaint (they won’t, according to the CRA) or if they are just privately, rather than publicly, opposed to the trend (which Hong had said he thinks people are), it still leaves the owners of real service dogs in a tough place.

“We’ve been affected many times by fake service dogs,” said Wallis Brozman, service dog owner from Corporate Advancement Assistant for Canine Companions for Independence, a service dog training academy located in Santa Rosa. “It’s happened to us everywhere, we’ve been attacked right outside of restaurants. We’ve been denied service at restaurants, denied service at hotels.”

Brozman says that she has been denied service at those institutions expressly because of the bad name that poorly trained service dogs have given to the whole industry.

But Brozman needs her dog. She uses a manual wheelchair full-time due to a condition called dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that causes extremely painful and involuntary muscle contractions. Even with her condition, she says that she has been made to pay pet deposits in hotels, even though her dog isn’t even classified as a “pet” by the ADA.

And Caspin, Brozman’s dog, is definitely not a pet. He understands both Sign Language and English, making him a bilingual dog (and more linguistically savvy than this writer). He’s been trained to stay calm in loud, obnoxious public settings. He can pick up anything Brozman might drop. He’s a talented dog, but he’s no pet.

NOT JUST PETS

According to the California Penal Code Section 365.5, a “service dog means any dog individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including, but not limited to, minimal protection work, rescue work, pulling a wheelchair, or fetching dropped items.”

Service dogs not only provide assistance when necessary, but they provide their handlers with a sense of autonomy that they can’t achieve through other means. That’s why service dogs were included in ADA of 1990.

It was a huge victory for the people that really need service dogs, like Brozman, for instance, or war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. One of the prescribed treatments for PTSD victims happens to be the presence of a service dog.

“It can cost us $5,000 to train these dogs for veterans,” said Robert Misseri, president of a service dog training organization called Guardians of Rescue. “Poorly behaved dogs make things more difficult for the vets who need our dogs.”

But the benefits of owning a service dog can be voided in a hurry if the dog encounters another dog without the same composure, training, and restraint.

“Our graduates have been bitten by dogs in public, provoked, and mistreated by other dogs,” said Angie Schact, an instructor at Canine Companions for Independence, a program that requires a minimum six-month program for their graduates. “They have gone through so much more training than the average dog. We’ve raised the issue with the Department of Justice. We’re serious.”

But when the ADA was originally drafted, according to Paul Bowskill, general manager of ServiceDogsAmerica.com, it “provided for very few mental disabilities. Most of the qualifying disabilities at the time were physical and [visible].”

After the ADA was passed, guidelines were expanded to include mental illness and seizure risk, in addition to physical ailment, so visual cues became far less notable.

“You can’t tell if someone needs a service dog now,” said Bowskill. “The law was written so you can train your own service dog, and by law, you don’t need an ID.” And as we, as a culture, become even more accustomed to steady streams of “Sure you can!” responses and discomfort demolishing inventions, our reluctance to leave pets behind is only trending upwards.

But for service dog owners just trying to lead an autonomous existence and those patrons simply tired of seeing dogs in places previously forbidden, it’s a scary thought. “Sometimes, [people] just assume that my service dog is a fake,” said Brozman. “I explain to people again and again, and I show them that my dog is perfectly trained and there to help me, yet people still stigmatize us.”