Traveling SFBG photog Ariel Soto recently hit the streets of Taiwan to find out what the kids were wearing overseas. Due to the language barrier, she and her subjects weren’t able to talk style philosophy — but hey, looks like these speak for themselves.
Today’s look: Shao Le, Taipei, Taiwan
Events listings are compiled by Caitlin Donohue. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Weekly Picks.
WEDNESDAY 10
Holiday Ice Rink in Union Square Union Square, SF. Sun-Thu 10am-10pm. Fri and Sat 10am-11:30pm. Runs through January 17. $4.50 for kids and $9 for adults before 6pm; $5 for kids, $9.50 for adults after. It’s time to glide into the holidays (or bruise your bottom) as this annual tradition opens for all comers on two blades. E may not have snow, but we’ll sure as heck have Celine Dion belting through the speakers at young couples.
How to Do Physics Experiments at Home Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF. (415) 831-5620, www.julianagallin.com/howto. 7pm, free. Learn how to melt glass in your microwave, make your own speaker, speed up time (or at least your watch) – Maker Faire favorite Zeke Crossover of Physics Circus teaches you some snazzy physics tricks at the invaluable monthly How To series at Bazaar cafe.
THURSDAY 11
SF Etsy Team Show Shawna Stoney, 390 Kansas, SF. (415) 863-9700, www.shawnastoney.com. Noon-6pm, free. Kickstart your holiday shopping (or just pick up some ideas for the future) as Esty.com’s San Franciscan craftspeople band together to present an “Everything Handmade Show.” Cute and ingenious goodies galore – all locally made and often one-of-a-kind.
BAY AREA
Censored 2011 Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way, Berk. (510) 848-1196, www.revolutionbooks.org. 7pm, free. From “Capitalist Forces Reaking Havoc in Africa” and “Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk” to “Global Plans to Replace the Dollar” and “US Funds and Supports the Taliban,” Project Censored has exposed the major stories reported about least in the mainstream media – in one handy annual compendium. Censored 2011 coauthors Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips discuss 20 of the big stories you might have missed, and how they affect us all.
FRIDAY 12
Big Things Grand Opening Kitsch gallery, 3265 17th St., SF; www.bigbigbigthings.com. 6pm, free. Big Things, a new local website dedicated to art, fashion, design, travel, people, “and other inspirational things” is launching, officially, with this giant shindig. Featuring drawings, paintings, video, sculpture and installations by a bevy of artists, music by kids from the the SF Rock Project and DJs April Knows Best and Ben Bracken. Plus, colorful objects to take home!
SATURDAY 13
“A Community Writing Itself” Book Launch Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell, SF. (415) 398-7229, www.acommunitywritingitself.com. 7:30pm, $10 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Local author and poet Sarah Rosenthal has compiled a book of her many fruitful and titillating conversations with Bay Area vanguard writers and experimentalists. This launch party will include poetry readings and Q&As with Truong Tranm Juliana Spahr, Stephen Ratcliffe, and Elizabeth Robinson.
“The Nutrition Perscription” Institute on Aging, 3600 Geary, SF; (415) 273-5481, www.sfvs.org. 8pm, free. The San Francisco Vegetarian Society invites Dr. Donald Forrester to speak about diet and its relationship to the major degenerative diseases plaguing Americans today. (Hint: drop that French fry!) Dr. Forrester has a background in both family practice medicine and chemical engineering, and has more than 30 years experience in the field.
Writers with Drinks Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com; www.writerswithdrinks.com. 7:30pm-9:30pm, $5-$10 sliding scale. This monthly literary hoot continues to augment the heady with the fizzy. This time around, Richard Kadrey, Debbie Stoller, Deb Campo, Larry-Bob Roberts, and Indigo Moor take the stage and freshen your wordy cocktail.
MONDAY 15
Long Now: Rachel Sussman presents “The World’s Oldest Living Organisms” Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Pier 2, SF; www.longnow.org; www.fortmason.org. 7 p.m., $10. long Now, the organizazion dedicated to slower living, presents a lecture and showing of Rachel Sussman’s photographs of some of the world’s longest-living beings, including 400,000-year-old Siberian bacteria.
TUESDAY 16
Mommy’s Playdate Good Vibrations Polk Gallery, 1620 Polk, SF; (415) 345-0400, www.goodvibessexymama.com. 7pm-9pm, free. Attend this afterhours mixer with like-minded moms who want to learn how to put some spice back into their sex lives. Enjoy a “Mommi-tini,” learn tips from Good Vibes sexologist Dr. Carol Queen, meet mommy writer Billee Sharp, quick-witted author of Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It: The D.I.Y. Guide to the Good Life.
As soon as it became clear on election night that Prop. L had passed, I wondered if opponents would organize some sort of mass sit-down or sleep-in as a response. Today, it appears that some San Franciscans are orchestrating just that. I’ve been alerted via Facebook to two different sidewalk sits in response to the passage of Prop. L.
Sidewalk sitters plan to stage the first one outside the Westfield Shopping Center on Sunday, Nov. 7. Here’s an excerpt from the event description, written in such colorful language that it almost comes off as a parody: “We are going assert our right (and the right of the homeless and homeless veterans) to sit anywhere we damn well fucking please by having lunch on the aforementioned fucking sidewalk in front of Westfield shopping center… this Sunday @ 1:00. The purpose is to hang out, have lunch, be visible, embody TRUE San Francisco values, network with folks about the next steps in the anti-prop L fight and to have fun. Of course getting cited for sitting on the sidewalk is a totally glamorous possibility that we will opportunistically use to the most dramatic effect possible. This is lunch, but it’s also a protest.” It urges participants to bring food to share. The post also encourages people to bring their kids along.
The second event is planned for Monday, Nov. 8, outside San Francicsco City Hall, and its organizers are more succint:
“calling all san franciscans and all humanity to a solidarity sit-in against the passage of proposition L–the so-called Sit/Lie law. bring your ASSets to city hall on monday, nov. 8 at 12 noon. if you can’t make it to city hall, sit on the closest sidewalk.”
Not sure if “all humanity” will mobilize for the cause, but it should be interesting.
Meanwhile, the drivers behind the official No on L campaign seem to be focusing their efforts on a more, um, lawful plan of attack. “We’re taking L to court,” declares a message posted today on the No on L campaign page on Facebook. “But we’re still ironing out the fundamentals of strategy. Keep an eye out for an announcement in the coming week.”
San Francisco voters approved Prop. L, the ordinance that bans sitting and lying down on city sidewalks, with 53 percent of the vote.
Look at the key critically acclaimed and popular indie (or subsidiary) releases of the past few years, and certain label names recur: Captured Tracks, Mexican Summer, Sincerely Yours, True Panther, Slumberland. Most of these names belong to new kids on the block, but Mike Schulman has been at the helm of Slumberland for more than 20 years. If anything, his label, a home for perfect guitar pop, is stronger than ever, with bands such as Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Crystal Stilts on the roster. Slumberland has outlived many of the legendary indie labels — from Postcard to Creation to Rough Trade — that inspired it. Sometimes dedication reaps rewards.
In 1989, when Slumberland began in Washington, D.C., indie rock was a postal affair. The foundation of an international pop underground was being forged through letters and records and zines sent among fans and small record stores. From the beginning, Schulman was uniquely out of step, focusing on melodicism when the D.C. scene was known for punk abrasion. When Slumberland relocated to the Bay Area a few years later, releases by Stereolab, Henry’s Dress, Aisler’s Set, and the unjustly obscure Rocketship had nothing to do with grunge mania. “I felt painted into a corner,” Schulman, who was working at the Berkeley record store Mod Lang, remembers. “It seemed like there weren’t a lot of opportunities to get stuff heard, unless you took bigger deals. It was a craven time.”
Slumberland endured, and Schulman’s deep and abiding love of music is a major reason. One can argue that the label is more refined or restrictive in terms of sound than most — simply put, it offers the true wild heart of what has been more calculatedly and generically marketed as noise pop. But Schulman’s musical taste runs deep and wide. In the mid-1990s he started an electronic label, Drop Beat, and today he DJs at Oakland’s Actual Cafe, spinning rock steady, ’60s hard bop, Blue Note classics, and ’70s soul, funk, and reggae.
Schulman draws from a deep library — he has 30,000 records in his basement. “It’s out of control,” he admits with a smile. “I don’t sell anything. I buy new records every week: dubstep, soul and jazz reissues, and more indie than I have in the recent past. But currently it’s hard for me to listen to new stuff because I’m spending so much time listening to [Slumberland] test pressings.”
For Schulman, the process of assembling an album is one of the greatest pleasures of running a label. “I was really happy when they started sending me mixes,” he says when asked about the newest Slumberland release, Sports by the Bay Area trio Weekend, an album that promises future greatness and mass appeal. “The only reason I do this is to help bands get their music out there. I’ve been doing it long enough that I can give advice to a young band doing their first record. It’s gratifying talking to a band, listening to demos, and hearing an album come to fruition.”
Another gratifying moment for Schulman was Slumberland’s 20th anniversary mini-tour, when new bands and older bands — including his own, Black Tambourine — united for shows on both coasts. “The SF show was crazy,” he says. “There were so many people I hadn’t seen since the Aisler’s Set broke up [in the late ’90s]. So many people came to see Henry’s Dress.” Contrary to what one might assume from Slumberland’s music, Schulman is the opposite of a sentimentalist, but in this instance, he’s unabashedly romantic: “It was magical. It was kind of heartwarming. When I started doing a label I was so into music and supporting labels and I wanted to contribute. There was something about those shows that made me feel like, oh, maybe I did.”
He did — and he’s still contributing, with support and inspiration from his wife Nomi and son Theo. Through well-timed and still-strong acts of fidelity, Slumberland has forged its own community of friends who now have a shared history. The label’s present — 2010 brought powerful debut albums by Weekend and Frankie Rose and the Outs — is vital. Its future looks even livelier. Schulman is excited about upcoming releases by Brown Recluse and Emitt Rhodes-like baroque pop troubadour Devon Williams, and he drops some big name hints regarding the next Pains of Being Young at Heart album. For Slumberland, the pains of being young at heart have matured into the rewards of being true.
“What a swimmer is Dracula’s daughter!,” exclaims John “the Cool Ghoul” Zacherle, as “Dinner With Drac” blares from the speakers in Marc Huestis’ Redstone Labor Temple office. ‘Tis the season for Huestis’ tribute to Poltergeist‘s Jobeth Williams, and the activist, filmmaker, and camp impresario is in the final stretches of preparing for the big night.
What hasn’t Marc Huestis done? As a youngster, he arrived in San Francisco from Long Island, New York, unafraid to recite poetry while sporting a pompadour that would make any Elvis impersonator feel size envy. Soon you could see him singing in drag or writhing around on stage in a dirty diaper in Angels of Light productions. But from the very beginning, film was at the heart of Huestis’s life. His father was an editor who worked on the ’60s teen music TV show Hullabaloo, while his mother was a showgirl. “I have a little bit of both in me,” he jokes, and it’s the truth — a Marc Huestis extravaganza involves informed editing and explosive creative freedom.
One of Huestis’ first notable celebrations was the San Francisco Gay Film Festival, now known as the Frameline fest, which he and his non-biological twin-of-sorts Daniel Nicoletta (born just three days apart from him) began with other like minds in 1976. “It was fun, a bunch of kooky hippie kids who wanted to get their movies shown,” he remembers. “There was no pretense, and the group of us were able to get together to do it. It’s great to see what it has evolved into, and feel a bit like a patron saint. Some people will always hate you, but at this age” — Huestis is 55 — “you get to the point where some people respect you. And you respect yourself.”
In 1982, after making some short films, Huestis wrote and directed Whatever Happened to Susan Jane?, his distinctly San Francisco answer to the kinds of antic comedies John Waters was making on the East Coast. In recent years, the movie has found a new audience amongst music lovers devoted to San Francisco’s new wave heyday — one of its strongest aspects is its documentation of wild performances from Tuxedo Moon and other groups of the day. “It was a great combination of gay culture and punk culture,” Huestis says of the era. “There’s a kindness to it, and it was very smart.”
Huestis’s next feature-length movie, 1993’s Sex Is… is very much a film of its time. A direct look at and discussion of the experience of gay sex and intimacy amid the AIDS crisis, it was also a do-it-yourself, many-year labor of love, with DIY aesthetics one common thread throughout Huestis’s creative life. “It’s very heartfelt,” he says of the film. “It was an important film when it came out because no one was talking about sex, and if they were, it was really hypocritically. The high point of my life was to be at the Berlin Film Festival for the world premiere, and then several days later, be at the awards presentation with Billy Wilder sitting nearby. For me, having HIV, and not thinking I was going to live, that moment was a gift.”
One year later, Huestis moved into his office in the Labor Temple, a treasure trove of film memorabilia where the walls are lined with autographed photos, and VHS tapes, DVDs, VCRs and DVD players are stacked on top of each other — in a well-organized fashion. The site is his base for the celebrity events that he puts on at the Castro Theatre, theatrical and cinematic programs that have blazed a trail for another generation of movie mayhem purveyors such as Jesse Hawthorne Ficks and this year’s Goldie winner Joshua Grannell, a.k.a. Peaches Christ.
Old media surrounds us as we talk, but there is little doubt that Huestis, experienced at putting together political and community fundraisers, is always focused on the present and future as well. “I love new media,” he says. “I could not do what I do if I didn’t have knowledge. I design the posters, I do the clip reels, I get the music together, I do the PR. I would sell the popcorn if I could. I love it. I never get tired of movies.”
It’s fitting, then, that Huestis gets to call one of this country’s oldest and most beautiful movie palaces, the Castro Theatre, home. “One of the first shows I put on there was when the Republicans took control of Congress, so everything comes around,” he says. “The best thing is seeing someone go there for the first time. To me it’s like the town barn, but it’s an amazing, beautiful place.”
If star power can me measured in size, some of the players that Huestis has brought to the Castro over the years — Debbie Reynolds, Jane Russell, Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, Patty Duke — rival the size of the fabled venue. He’s also given eccentric talents such as Sylvia Miles and Karen Black the type of spotlight they deserve. In the end, it’s about gratitude, on his part, on behalf of the audience, and hopefully, from the subjects of his tributes. Huestis’ night for Tony Curtis resulted in him being hired by the actor to create a clip retrospective that ultimately wound up being shown at Curtis’s funeral. “I had a great fondness for and connection with him,” he says. “I love it when they’re thankful, because no one shows gratitude, the world is so entitled. After the [Castro] show, he [Curtis] held my hand really hard, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, ‘Thank you.'”
Thank you, Marc Huestis.
www.myspace.com/marchuestispro www.youtube.com/user/hostesshue
Traveling SFBG photog Ariel Soto recently hit the streets of Taiwan to find out what the kids were wearing overseas. Due to the language barrier, she and her subjects weren’t able to talk style philosophy — but hey, looks like these speak for themselves.
Today’s look: Ivy, Taipei, Taiwan
Alas, this year some of the small business groups and leaders in San Francisco, such as the Small Business Advocates and Scott Hauge at Small Business California, once again came out with endorsements that were virtually identical with those of the downtown/Chamber of Commerce/PG&E/landlord/real estate gang. (See Guardian blogs.) Their candidates were, and the big downtown money went to, Steve Moss in District l0, Theresa Sparks in District 6, and Scott Wiener in District 8 and they all backed the Sit-Lie Ordinance and took identical positions on all the other local props.
There are many small business people who do not subscribe to the downtown line and vote more independently. I decided this year to do a special blog and email blast on the endorsements of the Guardian, which are done from the perspective of an independent, locally owned and operated alternative newspaper. I think it’s also good for people to know that there are a lot of independents and progressives out there in the small business community who support such things as public power, a city health plan for workers, more progressive taxation, and foot patrols by police for the neighborhoods and not just kicking kids off the sidewalks. b3
To the small business community in San Francisco:
Here are our 2010 endorsements of state and San Francisco candidates and propositions from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a locally owned and operated, independent alternative weekly newspaper in San Francisco. The Guardian is a newspaper that is of, by, and for small business. We always question candidates carefully on their small businesses record and policies and consider small business to be a crucial criterion for candidates and propositions in our endorsement process. In a major story on the Guardian in its pre-election Sunday edition (Oct. 31), the Chronicle reported that Guardian endorsements “are widely considered the most influential in this left-leaning town.” We have done endorsements in every election since our founding in 1966.
For us, this is a serious, intensive process of many months: we interview all the major local candidates, put up podcasts of interviews on our website at sfbg.com, do extensive independent checking on the candidates and issues and their background and record and do independent reporting on the campaign and issues. You may agree with us; you may not. But you can have faith in our one and only campaign promise: Our Clean Slate represents what we think is best for San Francisco and San Francisco small business.
b3
Traveling SFBG photog Ariel Soto recently hit the streets of Taiwan to find out what the kids were wearing overseas. Due to the language barrier, she and her subjects weren’t able to talk style philosophy — but hey, looks like these speak for themselves.
Today’s look: Luo Chu Ye, Taipei, Taiwan
Schedules are for Wed/27-Tues/2 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.
ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Deep Leap Microcinema:” “Zaum/Beyonsense” and work by Jesse Malmed, Fri, 8. “Other Cinema:” War of the Gargantuas (Honda, 1966), Ishiro Honda tribute with Japanese monster movie clips, Sat, 8.
CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. “15th Berlin and Beyond Film Festival,” Wed-Thurs. Visitwww.berlinbeyond.com for complete schedule and tickets ($10-11.50). •Fahrenheit 451 (Truffaut, 1966), Fri, 3:10, 7, and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (Lourie, 1953), Fri, 5:20, 9:10. “Mark Huestis Presents:” Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982), noon, 7:30, 9. With star JoBeth Williams in person at first two shows; 7:30pm show also features a pre-show performance. “Matinees for Maniacs: Monsters Are Coming to Town!:” •Something Wicked This Way Comes (Clayton, 1983), Sun, 2:30, and Escape to Witch Mountain (Hough, 1975), Sun, 4:30.
CELLSPACE 2050 Bryant, SF; www.sfindie.com. Free (donations to benefit CellSpace appreciated). “Eli Roth’s Midnight Movie Marathon:” The Thing(Carpenter, 1982), Sat, noon; Zombie (Fulci, 1979), Sat, 2; The Vanishing (Sluizer, 1988), Sat, 3:45; Pieces (Simon, 1982), Sat, 6; The Wicker Man(Hardy, 1973), Sat, 7:45; Who Can Kill a Child? (Serrador, 1976), Sat, 9:30; Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977), Sat, 11:45; Suspiria (Argento, 1977), Sun, 1:30am; Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980), Sun, 3:15am; Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981), Sun, 5:15am; Audition (Miike, 1999), Sun, 7am; Torso (Martino, 1973), Sun, 9am.
CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Alfredson, 2009), Oct 29-Nov 2, call for times. “Global Lens 2010:” Becloud (Bicecci, 2010), Wed, 6:45; The Night of Truth(Nacro, 2004), Wed, 9; Masquerades (Salem, 2008), Thurs, 6:45; The Shaft (Zhang, 2008), Thurs, 8:45. Inside Job (Ferguson, 2010), call for dates and times. Leaving (Corsini, 2009), Oct 29-Nov 3, call for times. My Dog Tulip (Fierlinger and Fierlinger, 2009), Wed-Thurs, call for times. Straight to Hell Returns (Cox, 2010), Mon, 7:15. With Alex Cox in person.
EMBARCADERO One Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level, SF; www.sffs.org. $12.50. “French Cinema Now:” Copacabana (Fitoussi, 2010), Thurs, 6:45 and Fri, 9:30; Rapt (Belvaux, 2009), Thurs, 9:30 and Mon, 9:15; Irène (Cavalier, 2009), Fri, 5 and Sat, 1:45; Love Like Poison (Quillévéré, 2010), Fri, 7 and Sun, 9:15; Sisters (Faucher, 2009), Sat, 3:45 and Sun, 6:45; The Princess of Montpensier (Tavernier, 2010), Sat, 6:30 and Sun, 3:45; A Real Life (Leonor, 2009), Sat, 9:30 and Tues, 6:30; Two in the Wave (Laurent, 2009), Sun, 1:30; Hidden Diary (Lopes-Curval, 2009), Mon, 6:30 and Tues, 9:15; Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), Nov 3, 7, 9:15.
HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. The Cove (Psihoyos, 2009), Wed, 7:30.
JACK LONDON SQUARE East lawn, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. Free. “Waterfront Flicks:” Twilight (Hardwicke, 2008), Thurs, 7:30.
MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100 (reservations required). $10. “CinemaLit: Apocalypse Noir:” Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1958), Fri, 6.
PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” “Photographic Memory: Bay Area Student Experimental Film Festival 2010,” Wed, 7:30. “Readings on Cinema:” Safety Last (Newmeyer and Taylor, 1923), Thurs, 7. “Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism:” Chronicle of Poor Lovers (Lizzani, 1954), Fri, 7; La Terra Trema (Visconti, 1948), Sat, 7; Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 1951), Sun, 4. “Shakespeare on Screen:” Macbeth (Welles, 1948), Fri, 9:05. “Left in the Dark: Portraits of San Francisco Movie Theatres,” slide show presentation with photographer R.A. McBride and readings with contributors to Left in the Dark, Sat, 5. “Drawn From Life: Comic Books and Graphic Novels Adapted:” Swamp Thing (Craven, 1982), Sun, 7:30.
RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Wright, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:20 (also Wed, 2). Winnebago Man(Steinbauer, 2010), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat, 2, 4). The Room (Wiseau, 2003), Sat, midnight. Planet Terror (Rodriguez, 2007), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sun, 2, 4). The Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko, 2010), Nov 2-3, 7:15, 9:30 (also Nov 3, 2).
“ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW” Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF and Albany, 1115 Solano, Albany; www.landmarktheatres.com. $9.50-10. The 1975 Jim Sharman musical plays at both theaters Fri, midnight (also Sat, midnight at the Clay).
ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “SF DocFest,” Wed-Thurs. Program information at www.sfindie.com.Larry Wessel’s Iconoclast: Boyd Rice (Wessel, 2010), Mon, 7. “Halloween Spooktacular:” •The Man From Planet X (Ulmer, 1951), Fri, 6:35, 9:30, and The Creature With the Atom Brain (Cahn, 1955), Fri, 8; •Corruption (Hartford-Davis, 1968), Sat, 2:30, 6:15, 9:45, and The Brood (Cronenberg, 1979), Sat, 4:15, 8; •Straight to Hell Returns (Cox, 2010), Sun, 3:15, 7, 9, and Searchers 2.0 (Cox, 2004), Sun, 5. Alex Cox in person at Sunday shows.
SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 151 Third St, SF; www.sfmoma.org. $5. “Witches!”: •Season of the Witch (Romero, 1973) andSuspiria (Argento, 1977), Thurs, 7.
VARIETY SCREENING ROOM 582 Market, SF; (650) 724-5544, www.unaff.org. Free. “United Nations Association Film Festival:” Strange Birds in Paradise: A West Papuan Story (Hill-Smith), Wed, 4; Kites (Dzianowicz), Wed, 5:25; “Panel Discussion: Images That Provoke,” Wed, 6:45; Secrets of the Tribes (Padilha), Wed, 8; The Rage of Images (Scharf and Duregger), Wed, 9:40.
VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.vizcinema.com. $10. “Mizoguchi and His Muse: Kinuyo Tanaka,” Wed-Tues, check website for schedule.
VORTEX ROOM 2961 16th Sf, SF; www.sfcinema.org. $10. “Remembering Dennis Hopper:” Night Tide (Harrington, 1961) with “The Wormwood Star” (Harrington, 1955), Wed, 7:30. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Muppet History 201: Rarities from the Henson Vault,” Thurs, 7:30 and Sat, 2.
As continued reports of unprecedented, record-breaking amounts of cash from corporate real estate developers and big landlords flood the Board of Supervisor races, the damaging impact of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is becoming more and more clear. But even worse, Thomas J. Coates, a far-right extremist Republican real estate developer and landlord, is trying to buy the Board of Supervisors so that he can end rent control. Last week, Coates made the largest donation to supervisors races in the 150-year history of San Francisco.
Who is Coates? He spent more than $1 million on Proposition 98 in 2008 trying to repeal rent control statewide. He was the largest single contributor to that campaign, which was so extreme that even Gov. Schwarzenegger and former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson opposed it. Coates gave the maximum contribution allowed by law to George Bush and Dick Cheney’s campaign and funded GOP candidates across the country. Now he’s spending more than $200,000 to elect anti rent control San Francisco supervisors: Mark Ferrell in District 2, Theresa Sparks in District 6, Scott Wiener in District 8, and Steve Moss in District 10.
With this one donation, the stakes in this election for every San Franciscan — especially renters and progressives — became even higher. By spending his fortune here, Thomas Coates hopes to erode San Francisco’s strong rent control laws by electing supervisors who are less sympathetic to renters. Through influencing the election of the supervisors, he also influences the selection of the interim mayor (since the supervisors will choose the next mayor by a majority vote if Gavin Newsom is elected lieutenant governor), which would result in an anti rent control mayor.
To make matters worse, workers and their families are already on the defense fighting Jeff Adachi’s anti-labor ballot initiative proposal (Proposition B), which would make city workers pay huge increases in their health care coverage. Adachi is mischaracterizing his initiative as pension reform even though the bulk of the cuts will come from forcing low-wage workers to pay for their children’s health care.
Wall Street speculators crashed the stock market, causing workers’ pension funds to lose billions and wiping out retirement savings. The losses require local and state governments to spend more to keep the funds solvent. So who do Gov. Schwarzenegger, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, and Adachi blame? The victims: the workers.
Renters and city workers aren’t the only ones under attack. Newsom’s cynical sit/lie initiative (Proposition L) demonizes young homeless kids. Many of these youth are queers who ran away to San Francisco because it is a queer haven, and others are abused kids who left home because it wasn’t safe. If Prop. L passes, for 12 hours a day these kids will be criminalized if they sit or lie on the sidewalk.
All this in one of the most progressive cities in America? If we are under attack from conservatives in San Francisco on some of the most fundamental issues of our city, it’s no wonder the Tea Party is raging in the rest of the country.
Now more than ever we need labor, progressives, and renters to come together to fight back by voting Tuesday, Nov. 2. Harvey Milk once said, “Give ’em hope.” Show us that hope on Election Day by voting for progressive supervisors, rejecting Adachi’s so-called pension reform, and opposing the so-called sit/lie ordinance. Remember to vote and vote for Debra Walker in District 6, Rafael Mandelman in District 8, No on B, No on K, No on L, and Yes on J and N.
Gabriel Haaland is a local queer labor activist.
Events listings are complied by Caitlin Donohue. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for listings, see Picks.
WEDNESDAY 21
Pecha Kucha 330 Ritch, SF; www.pecha-kucha.org/night/san-francisco. 8:20pm, $5 suggested donation. A potluck of art from divergent disciplines — industrial design, motion graphics, fashion, animation, and architecture, to name a few — that examines this month’s theme, “A la mode: how do we do/go/say/express the things we do?”
THURSDAY 28
Peace Pedalers welcome home benefit Park Chalet, 1000 Great Highway, SF; (415) 386-8439, www.parkchalet.com. 6pm, $5 suggested donation. After pedaling two-seater tandems through eight years and 81 countries, the cultural biking ambassadors are home — come check the sneak preview of the documentary made on their wanderings.
San Francisco Arts Market UN Plaza, Market and 8th St., SF; www.artsmarketsf.org. Noon-8pm, free. Handmade jewelry, locally printed books and posters, Tenderloin t-shirts, and other crafty holiday gifts await you at this weekly outdoor bazaar.
FRIDAY 29
City Hall Ghost Walk South Light Court (Polk Street entrance), City Hall, 401 Van Ness, SF; 6:30pm, free. www.sfcityguides.org. After hearing the spooky tales from watchmen and maintenance workers at City Hall, tour guide Rob Spoor started the annual walk of heebie-jeebies in the building.
Halloween Beer Hootenanny Speakeasy Brewery, 1195 Evans, SF; (415) 642-3371. 4-9pm, free. Live bluegrass tunes, a chance to sample Speakeasy’s Punkin’ Pie Payback Porter, Vanilla Bean Payback Porter, and more — even costumes contesting! — at Bayview’s favorite brewery.
Halloween in the Tenderloin Children’s Playground, 570 Ellis, SF; (650) 508-3770, www.facebook.com/NDNUBelmont. 4-7pm, free. Notre Dame de Namur University’s Streetwise Sociology class is creating this safe space for kids to trick-or-treat. Face-painting, pie-eating, pumpkin-carving, oh my!
Not-Too-Spooky Halloween Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge, Berk.; www.habitot.org. 9:30am-4:30pm, museum admission $9. Got a scaredy cat hanging with you this All Hallow’s Eve? Bring them to this boo-tiful family event for kids under 6. Mini golf and slime experiments await you!
Paris is Burning screening and discussion El/La Para TransLatinas, 2940 16th St., SF; (415) 305-9480. Watch and discuss this exploration of homophobia, gender, and racism in 1980s New York City — and absorb what’s its lessons means in terms of San Francisco’s fight for social change.
BAY AREA
BAY-Peace office warming party BAY-Peace, 610 16th St. #403, Oakl.; (510) 763-1737, www.baypeace.org. 5-8:30pm, free. Check out the film made about this group’s humanitarian mission to Cuba and learn about their work introducing alternatives to militarism to Oakland youth.
SATURDAY 30
Journey to the End of the Night Justin Herman Plaza, SF; www.totheendofthenight.com. 7:30pm, free. The city-hacker leisure game zeitgeist re-emerges for its Halloween spectacular — come one come all to this interactive SF-wide game of tag, just but be sure you bring your thinking hat to crack the clues that await.
Rally to Restore Sanity Civic Center Plaza, SF; www.sfsanityrally.com. 9am, free. Too broke to make it to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s dueling marches in DC this weekend? All good — head down to SF’s satellite event and screw your ironic sense of civic engagement on tight.
Randall Museum’s Family Halloween Day Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF; (415) 554-9600, www.randallmuseum.org. 10am-2pm, free. If Jackie Jones with her musical saw and dancing cat aren’t enough impetus to truck the clan down to this day of ghoulish games and creepy crafts, you need a serious dose of Halloween heckling.
SUNDAY 31
Alley Cat Halloween Bike Race and Scavenger Hunt Golden Gate Park Polo Fields, SF; trickstertreat.blogspot.com. 2pm, $10. This fundraiser for Up on Top, an after school program in the Tenderloin, takes bikers on an informal bike race through the mean city streets. Finish line’s at Bender’s in the Mission — let’s say, loser buys the winner a beer? For the kids, of course.
TUESDAY 2
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts Dia de los Muertos 2868 Mission, SF; (415) 821-1155, www.missionculturalcenter.org. 6-10pm, $5. “Death Becomes You/La Muerte Eres Tu” is the theme for the 43rd annual MCCLA Day of the Dead altar installations. Snack on some pan de muertos while you take part in mask-making, face-painting, and more.
Katherine Ellison BookShop West Portal, 80 West Portal, SF; (415) 564-8080. 7pm, free. An author reading from a foreign news correspondent cum mother of a boy with ADHD and their journey through medical and psychological treatments.
BAY AREA
Gourmet Ghetto’s Dia de los Muertos Celebration Shattuck and Cedar, Berk.; www.anotherbullwinkleshow.com. 6-9pm, free. A much needed altar to the bicyclists who’ve passed away this year from faulty road safety measures — a mobile diorama, in fact. Also, a sidewalk candle processional to mark the day the dead walk among us.
Predictably, I have no idea what I will be wearing for Halloween. The predicament of an anti-brand costume shopper is a dire one in today’s Halloweenie world — we are forced down one of two routes when celebrating everyone’s favorite not-for-kids-anymore holiday. You can (a) do the decent thing and spend hours rummaging through every Goodwill in the city for high five kudos at the house party this weekend or you can (b) drop a cool fifty on a prepackaged ‘stume everyone’s going to “get” immediately. All this is to say I flirted with Spirit, that perennial pop-up store. Enclosed, please find my safari shots.
Sarah@sfbg.com
Franklin is a 20-something computer programmer who shares an apartment with 10 other people around his age, an arrangement that helps him and his housemates come up with $3,500 each month for rent in the Mission, a rapidly gentrifying part of town.
“Everyone is pretty much working, but they are in and out at different times so the house isn’t ever really empty. But there’s usually only three or four of us at a time, ” Franklin told the Guardian, speaking on his cell phone as he rode his bike to work.
But how does an apartment that officially has only one bedroom sleep 10 people? Franklin said there are other rooms in the house — including a dining room and a double parlor that splits into two with sliding doors — and that each of these spaces has a couple sleeping in it. “And there is one person sleeping in a closet and another sleeping in a space atop the bathroom.”
While overcrowding has been a problem in immigrant communities in San Francisco, it’s reaching a new area: young people who have for generations flocked to the city to escape uncomfortable home lives, find a supportive community, and make a new start in life.
Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, said at least 1,250 housing units annually were lost to condominium and tenancy-in-common conversions in the dot.com and housing bubble years, a loss rate that has slowed only slightly since then.
“Right now, it’s about 1,000 units a year,” he said.
It’s become more common for young people to struggle to pay rent in a town where well-paying jobs are scarce and educational programs have been cut — a triple whammy that means youth with additional challenges are at risk of becoming homeless and getting trapped in vicious cycle of abuse and incarceration.
Sherilyn Adams, executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services, which provides housing, medical, social, and educational services to at-risk homeless and runaway youth, says all young people in San Francisco face the same basic challenges.
“And if, in addition, these youth are part of a group like LGBTQ youth, or are youth of color, or immigrant youth, documented or not, then the circumstances and barriers are much more exacerbated,” she said.
Adams said San Francisco has done a lot to add resources for transitional age youth, a group that traditionally has been defined as ages 12 to 24. “But there is still a significant gap in resources, especially for the more disenfranchised groups, because the longer you’ve been on the street, the more complex your issues in terms of substance abuse and mental health.”
Civic leaders, including California Assembly member Tom Ammiano, recently held a rally and candlelight march to raise awareness of the tragic rise in homelessness and suicides among LGBTQ youth. Shortly after, Adams told us, “Youth who came here escaping homophobia in their family or city then face the harsh reality of San Francisco.”
Adams understands that some people see Proposition L, legislation on the November ballot to criminalize sitting or lying on city sidewalks, as a way to address disruptive and aggressive behavior on the streets. “But it becomes part of the larger divide, because youth who come here and are on the street are mostly there because they have no other place. So penalizing them in the absence of services, housing, and education is ineffective at best and really harmful at worst,” Adams said.
Many young people on the brink of homelessness are “somewhat invisible,” and therefore at high risk, she said. “Youth will double, triple up. They will couch surf as a way to be off the streets. And we hear the stories where youth are faced with a Sophie’s choice: Do you sleep on the street, or do you barter with what you have available so as to get shelter? And LGBTQ youth are at particular risk because the more disenfranchised and disconnected you are, the more you have to make impossible choices to survive.”
Jodi Schwartz, executive director at Lyric, an SF nonprofit that focuses on building community and inspiring change in LGBTQ youth, said the group serves 500 youth and reaches out to 800 to 1,000 more each year. “We go into classrooms and talk about hate speech, putting it in the context of racism and other forms of oppression,” she said.
“There’s a misconception that because we live in San Francisco and have a lot more dialogue and interaction with the LGBTQ community, that young people’s experience here is so much better. It may be different, but I wouldn’t say it’s better,” Schwartz said, noting that harassment levels, especially for transgendered youth in local schools, are very high.
Young women are another at-risk group, especially if they are pregnant, have kids, or are in the foster or juvenile justice system.
As executive director of the Center for Young Women’s Development in San Francisco’s gritty SoMa district, Marlene Sanchez tries to stabilize at-risk young women, then engage them in policy work so they can advocate for other young people they know.
“We work with young women who are involved in the underground street economies, doing prostitution, drug sales, and selling stolen goods like clothes,” Sanchez said. “We try to reach them on the streets and inside Juvenile Hall, so we take an inside-outside approach.”
Leajay Harper, who coordinates CYWD’s Young Mothers United program, works with young pregnant women inside Juvenile Hall.
“We have all experienced poverty, parents on drugs, and having to take care of younger siblings,” Harper said. “When young moms get incarcerated, they are at risk of having their children taken away at much higher rates. So we started parenting classes that are age and culturally relevant.”
City records show that while only about 12 percent of Juvenile Hall detainees are female, they are twice as likely as their male counterparts to land back in custody for probation violations.
“There are lots of young women with felonies struggling to pay their bills and feed their kids who look out the window and see they can sell drugs. And that often seems like the only option,” Sanchez explained.
City statistics also show that of the overwhelmingly male population at Juvenile Hall, almost half is African American, and that many are inside for what appear to be gang-related offenses.
Easop Winston, a 35-year-old local musician, church pastor, and member of the Visitacion Valley Peacekeepers, regularly visits young men inside Juvenile Hall, where gangs are a topic of discussion every week.
“The same guys that they have been fighting with, they are now incarcerated with,” Winston observed. “So one of the approaches I try to take is rehabilitating how they think about their neighbor. You are killing/fighting with someone who lives one block over. It’s plain genocide”
He credits the juvenile justice system for doing its best, but worries that it fails to rehabilitate youthful offenders with jobs skills, education, and counseling before sending them back into society.
He blames the churches for not doing a better job of making youth feel welcome. “Churches are part of the fabric of our community,” he said. “They need to do more outreach and not have so many rules. They need to accept youth as they are, with their tattoos, piercings, and styles of clothing.”
Winston believes politicians need to do a better job of making sure community-based organizations deliver on their promises to help working class communities of color. At the same time, as he acknowledges, “We can’t cure the world in one day.”
“Over the last five to 10 years, the African American population in SF has shrunk,” he observed. “Everybody is moving to Antioch and Fairfield because people can’t afford to live here. People are losing their jobs. And San Francisco has almost become impossible to live in unless you have a college degree. A lot of what I hear from youth is about economics. They want jobs. They want to be trained.”
Political disputes over the city’s sanctuary city policies on undocumented immigrants — which have left in limbo the question of whether arrested immigrants will get their days in court before being turned over to the federal government for possible deportation — have also been a source of instability for immigrant teens, many of whom are homeless and/or LGBTQ.
Police Commissioner Angela Chan, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, decried Mayor Gavin Newsom for refusing to implement Sup. David Campos’ due process legislation, which the board approved in November 2009.
“It’s been a little bit upsetting for the many groups that took the democratic process seriously. But these groups are still very committed to these kids,” Chan said. “We are hoping to work with the new U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag to clarify this issue and explain that the top priority of the Obama administration is not to deport undocumented youth.”
Other so-called tough-on-crime initiatives also threaten local at-risk young people. In September, City Attorney Dennis Herrera secured an injunction against 41 alleged gang members in Visitacion Valley, a strategy that progressives fear will accelerate the ongoing displacement of the African American community.
Court documents show that 66 percent of the men named in the injunction are 18 to 25 years old and that many have children in public housing, where lease holders are predominantly women of color.
San Francisco City College Trustee Chris Jackson, 27, is running for the District 10 seat on the Board of Supervisors. Noting that the southeast SF district has some of the highest numbers of poor people and children citywide, Jackson said that youth issues are similar to challenges that other voters face.
“But the context is different,” said Jackson, who previously served on the San Francisco Youth Commission. “Young people care about safe streets because it’s us or our friends who are on them. We care about schools because we are in them and want to go to college. And we are concerned about the future of employment because how do you tell folks to go to school if there are no jobs?”
Jackson notes that in the Bayview-Hunters Point, home to the city’s largest remaining African American community, kids don’t come back if they leave for college. “We see a brain drain. It’s really difficult to retain young people, so it’s important to first make sure that youth’s housing needs are met. And they also need access to careers so that when they graduate, they know there is a job in the city. But right now, youth can’t even find a summer job because of the recession.”
He called for city policies that are based on the needs of current city residents rather than developers’ profits or the desires of well-off outsiders to move here.
“San Francisco is more of an opportunity for Silicon Valley residents than for youth who were born and raised here. And part of the problem is city policies, ineffective programs, and a failure to provide job opportunities for youth,” he said. “Everything for youth has been gutted.”
And those evaporating opportunities are compounded by punitive policies like Prop. L, Jackson said, further alienating young people. “It comes down to how much money you have,” Jackson observes. “If you are rich, you can enjoy the parks, the clubs, the transit. But if you are low-income, especially low-income youth of color, it’s very hard to take advantage of everything the city has to offer.”
Noting that both City College and the San Francisco Unified School District canceled their summer school program, Jackson said, “it doesn’t look like youth are prioritized.”
Jackson was recently at Double Rock (a.k.a. the Alice Griffith Public Housing Project) and he saw four kids under 10 who were at home while their parents were at work. “Why aren’t they in school or in child care? And don’t give me the line that these are hard to serve communities. We have to serve them.”
N’tanya Lee, executive director of Coleman Advocates, agrees that while all young people are struggling in the city, African American children and youth are having one of the worst times.
“We don’t need 5,000 different strategies and initiatives when 90 percent of these kids live in extreme poverty, mostly concentrated in public housing, and you could fit the city’s entire black high school student population into one auditorium,” Lee said.
She wants the city to create a database of these youth and develop specific strategies to help this population before it’s too late.
“No one in city government feels accountable for the outcomes for black children and youth,” she said. “Instead you have one group who are about young people and another who are about economic development — and they have nothing to do with each other. Meanwhile, we’ve lost half of all black families with children in this city in the past 20 years.”
Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Rebecca Bowe on ageing out of the foster care system, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Tim Redmond’s editorial on the issues facing our rising generation
tredmond@sfbg.com
44th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL We all arrived in San Francisco broke: Paulo and me in the ’73 Capri, crawling over Donner Pass with a blown valve and three cylinders firing; Tracy and Craig in the back of a VW van, behind in the payments and on the run from the repo men; Tom and Sharon hitching across the Southwest after Tom, who could bullshit with the best, talked himself out a jail cell in New Orleans. Moak showed up in a rusty Datsun with the wheels falling off. Jane and Danny came on the old hippie bus, the Green Tortoise, $69 across the country.
But we all had a friend who knew a friend where you could crash for a little while. And in the early 1980s you got food stamps the first day and it only took a couple of weeks to get a job waiting tables or canvassing or selling trinkets on the Wharf. And once you’d scraped together a couple hundred dollars — maybe two weeks’ work — you could get a place to live. My first room in a flat in the Western Addition was $120 a month.
We did art and politics and writing and music. After a while, some of us went to law school, some of us became journalists, some of us went into government and education. A few of us fled, and Paulo died in the plague (dammit). But in the end, a lot of us were — and are — San Franciscans, part of a city that welcomed us and gave us a chance.
It was a very different time to be young in San Francisco.
I’m not here to get all nostalgic, really I’m not. There were serious problems in 1982 — raging gentrification was creating clashes in the Mission and the Haight and south of Market that were more violent than anything going on today. And frankly, broke as we were, most of my friends were from middle class homes and were college educated and had a leg up. We weren’t going to starve; we didn’t have to make really ugly choices to eat.
Most of the stories in this special anniversary issue are about marginalized youth — young people trying to survive and make their way against all odds in an increasingly hostile city and a bitter, harsh economy.
But there’s an important difference about San Francisco today, something earlier generations of immigrants didn’t face. The cost of housing, always high, has so outstripped the entry-level and nonprofit wage scale that it’s almost impossible for young people to survive in this town — much less have the time to add to its artistic and creative culture.
I met the 21-year-old daughter of a college friend the other day. She’s as idealistic as we all were. She wants to move to San Francisco for the same reasons we did and you did — except maybe she won’t. Because she felt as if she had to come visit first, to use her dad’s network, see if she could line up a job and figure out if her likely earnings would cover the cost of living. When I mentioned that I’d just up and left the East Coast and headed west, planning to figure it out when I got here, she gave me a look that was part amazement and part sadness. You just can’t do that anymore.
The odds are pretty good that San Francisco won’t get her — her talent and energy will go somewhere else, somewhere that’s not so harsh on young people. I wondered, as I do every once in a while when I’m feeling halfway between an angry political writer and an old curmudgeon: would I come to San Francisco today?
Would Harvey Milk? Would Jello Biafra? Would Dave Eggers? Would you?
If you were born here, would you stay?
Are we squandering this city’s greatest resource — its ability to attract and retain creative people?
The two people who started the Bay Guardian 44 years ago were young arrivals from the Midwest. Bruce Brugmann looked around the city room at the Milwaukee Journal, where he worked as a reporter, and realized there wasn’t any job he wanted there in 10 years. With two young kids and a dream of starting a weekly newspaper in one of the world’s most exciting cities, Bruce and his wife, Jean Dibble, settled in a $130-a-month flat. The Guardian’s first office was a desk in the printers shop. When they paper could finally afford its own space, Bruce and Jean moved the staff into a $60-a-month four-room place on Ninth and Bryant streets.
From the start, the paper was a “preservationist” publication — both in terms of environmental issues like saving the bay and in the larger political sense. The San Francisco Bay Guardian was out to save San Francisco.
The city was under assault — by the developers who were making fast money tossing high-rises into downtown; the speculators making fast money flipping property, ducking taxes, and driving up rents; the unscrupulous landlords who were letting their buildings fall apart while they charged ever higher rent. For the Guardian, fighting this urbicide meant protecting San Francisco values, preserving the best of the city from what Bruce liked to call “the radicals at the Chamber of Commerce.”
For the Guardian, progress wasn’t measured in the number of new buildings constructed, but in the ability of the city to remain a place where artists and writers and community organizers and hell-raisers — and the young people who were always bringing new life to the city — could survive. We supported rent control, and growth limits, and affordable housing policies, and limits on condo conversions, and minimum-wage and sanctuary city laws — and a long list of other things that together amounted to a progressive agenda.
And in 2010, the assault on the young, the poor, the nonconformists, the immigrants, is still on, at full force. The mayor and his allies are pushing a ballot measure that would make it illegal just to sit on the sidewalk. He’s also turning the local juvenile authorities into immigration cops, breaking up families in the process. He’s cut funding for youth services, and wants to make it easier for speculators to evict tenants, take affordable rental housing (especially the flats that young people share to save money) off the market, and create high-priced condos. Virtually all of the new housing he’s pushing is for rich people. He’s shutting down parties and arresting DJs and, in effect, declaring a War on Fun.
What he’s doing — and what the downtown forces want — is the transformation of San Francisco from a welcoming city where the weird is the normal, where the young and the crazy and the brilliant and the broke can be part of (or even drivers of) the culture, to one where profit and property values are all that matter. And that’s a recipe for urban doom.
Richard Florida’s 2004 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class shook up political thinking by pointing out that cities thrive with iconoclasts, not organization people. Everyone likes to talk about that now, even Mayor Gavin Newsom. But the missing piece, from a policy perspective, is that the creative class — particularly the young people who are going to be the next generation of the creative class — needs space to grow. And that means the most important thing a creative city can do is nurture the very people Newsom and his allies want to drive away.
If Prop. L, the “sit-lie” law, passes, if the rental flats in the Mission that have been home to several generations of young artists, writers, musicians and future civic leaders vanish in the name of condo conversions, if 85 percent of all the new housing in San Francisco is affordable only to millionaires, if the money that helps foster kids and runaways and at-risk youth dries up because this rich city won’t raise taxes, if nightlife becomes an annoyance to be stifled…then we’re in danger of losing San Francisco.
Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Sarah Phelan on SF’s disadvantaged youth, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Rebecca Bowe’s look at ageing out of the foster care system
caitlin@sfbg.com
I’ve been hanging out with the Haight Street kids. Over the course of a week or so, I smoked weed, drank malt liquor, witnessed nasty run-ins with police officers — all events that anyone who has walked down the sidewalks of that legendary street would expect. But I also met people who’d give away their last dollar to a friend, people who know a thing or two about community, and people who don’t see sidewalks only as thoroughfares to commerce.
Ironically, though the homeless kids on Haight are the explicit inspiration for Proposition L, the sit-lie measure on the Nov. 2 ballot, their voices have been significantly absent from the vitriolic debate on its merits and faults. Ironic because of all people, it’s these young men and women — and the citizens of San Francisco who interact humanely with them — who could teach us the most about what public space in San Francisco could be.
I didn’t just stand with a notebook, fire questions, and walk away. I took a seat and spent time with the kids, to see for myself whether its true that they’re harassing people, letting their dogs run amok, and generally ruining everyone’s lives as much as sit-lie supporters say they are. That it turned out to be uplifting was an added bonus. I got to see what many don’t on their way to shop for souvenir bongs, retro dresses, and designer skateboards — the reason young people from around the country come to the neighborhood.
It doesn’t have anything to do with fancy Victorians and boutiques, which may explain the disconnect between the street kids and their detractors. They come for the legacy of individuals brave enough to slough off social mores that Haight-Ashbury residents are so ostensibly proud of — not to mention the companionship of others who are comfortable with their rejection of and by society. They come to share stories and pipes and encouragement, and it was cool to watch a streetscape in San Francisco that wasn’t geared solely to commerce.
And while the young people I talked to told me how much they liked to travel, to live free of convention and without ties to the workday world, after a while most acknowledged that they had left behind families who couldn’t or didn’t care for them, home situations that were uncomfortable enough to make life on the streets seem like a better alternative.
Although violent incidents, uncivil behavior, and threatening dogs are well-documented by other news sources, I didn’t see any of that when I was hanging out on Haight. That doesn’t mean that these things don’t exist — but it might suggest that some of the strident supporters of Prop. L are seeing what they want to see.
Steven, who asked us not to use his full name, is 20 and homeless. He grew up in Stockton, became a welder after high school, then decided he “didn’t want the hassle” of staying put for a wage job. His fingernails play host to an ungodly amount of dirt, but his tight blonde curls, pretty golden eyes (“they look like a lion’s!” says one friend in amazement) and mellow, generous demeanor make him a popular hub among his homeless peers.
It doesn’t hurt that he sells weed, small amounts at a time to passing tourists and acquaintances. He silently passes a pipe around to his companions with the slightest provocation. Steven approached me on the street before he knew I was a journalist, a fact that seemed to make little difference to him.
He says he came to the Haight “for the people,” for the area’s reputation of open souls and unconventional artists that originated in the glory days of Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. Like most of the kids I talked to, he eschewed the often dangerous shelter scene to sleep in Golden Gate Park or nearby Buena Vista Park despite the police surveillance that could result in spendy fines for park camping.
Although Steven’s worldly possessions fit into the large camping backpack he carries with him 24 hours a day, and even though he’s been living on Haight less than nine months — broken by a jaunt to Eugene, Ore., where he found it “too rainy” to join the town’s expansive street kid community — he doesn’t plan on being homeless forever. It’s just that nothing about this economic climate inspires him to sell his freedom for a paycheck. He plans to go to a four-year college eventually. He sees an education as the only way to get a “real” job. “But until then, why not do this?” he asks. I’m not sure if he’s waiting for my answer.
“This” is sit on Haight Street and “spange,” the term used for “flying a sign” and asking shoppers and neighbors walking by for money, often in a creative way. Of the many crimes street kids are guilty of in the eyes of supporters, spanging is the only one Prop. L would effect.
If Francisco voters approve it, anyone who sits or reclines on the sidewalk (with exceptions for the handicapped and those with permits — but not for the tired, workers on breaks, or people waiting for buses) will be subject to a fine of $50 to $100 for the first offense and $300 to $500, or a maximum of 10 days in jail, for someone found guilty twice within 24 hours of unduly supporting his or her body on the sidewalk between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Similar laws can be found up and down the West Coast — although Portland’s was pulled from the books last year after being found unconstitutional because it targeted the homeless.
I ask street kid after street kid why they’ve chosen this lifestyle. Many wouldn’t have it any other way. “Why do people want us off the street?” says Oz, a 21 year old from upstate New York who deals alongside Steven. “Probably because they can’t do this themselves.”
Though I’m skeptical at first, after a while I see why the unconventional group of “travelers” on Haight choose to spend their time spanging. Conversations get struck up with the most unusual people — the old hippie who bought a new Mad Hatter cap for the weekend, the suburban woman who might or might not like to buy some weed (she can’t decide). When a few businesses ask us to move so they can sweep the sidewalk or clear a doorway, the street kids I’m watching relocate with little protest. Many who walk past Steven seemed to find humor in his sign, which that day reads “Are you one paycheck away from having this be your job too?” He says he likes to switch his message daily. “Keep it fresh.”
By hanging out with the spangers, I get to see a Haight Street with human interaction at its core. People walk by, often dropping off surprisingly generous gifts: a ex-Grateful Dead roadie with a massive beard who lives in Fairfax and stopped by the neighborhood for a quick lunch with his daughter parks in front of Steven’s group and approaches them. “You kids hungry? You look like you could use a pizza.”
He emerges a half-hour later with a large cheese pie and drives away after chatting for a few minutes about the old days, to the glee of the group (many of the street kids are Dead Heads). The kids eat their fill, then start handing out the remaining pizza to people walking by, a comic role reversal. “I like to support the community — they get back all the money they get sucked out of them,” Steven tells me.
The campaign to put a sit-lie ordinance into effect in San Francisco kicked into gear with a Saturday morning stroll. As San Francisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius — who regularly publicizes complaints against the Haight street kid culture — reported Feb. 27, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently relocated to the neighborhood and saw evidence of drug use on the main stretch of Haight where he was walking with his infant daughter. “As God as my witness, there’s a guy on the sidewalk smoking crack,” Newsom reportedly said.
The mayor threw his support behind a sentiment already being voiced by the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, a resident-merchant alliance in the area. HAIA sees the street kids as disruptive outsiders. “These are not the flower children of the 1960s. It’s narcotic fueled, antisocial thugs who act like a quasi-gang,” Ted Loewenberg, president of the association, was quoted as saying in Business Week.
Adds the Prop L website: ” … the Haight-Ashbury district — once synonymous with peace and love — this corridor is now a hot spot for street bullies, pit bulls, and drug abuse.” It’s a deft cultural lobotomy that dissociates drugs from the Summer of Love, and a devious one that implies that street kids weren’t major players in that social revolution.
As for the bullies, I didn’t see any violence from the street kids in the days and nights I spent out on Haight Street.
I couldn’t get cops to talk to me about it, either. There were two police officers on foot traversing Haight’s main strip and I introduced myself when they stood chatting with a coffee shop owner in the afternoon sunshine and asked them about the sort of neighborhood complaints they regularly received about the street kids.
“No comment,” Cop No. 1 told me. Okay, Cop No. 2, your thoughts? “I don’t speak English.”
To my requests that they share their view of crime on Haight, I could get one response: “It’s complicated.” Later, when I returned to write down their badge numbers, they were standing silently, staring at a lone young man sitting against a wall next to his skateboard. The kid was looking at the ground. Eventually they handcuffed him and put him in a police car while he pleaded meekly about it “only being a little bit of weed — and I was only skateboarding on the sidewalk.”
The most aggression I witnessed from any party took place while I was tapping my feet to a group of traveling bluegrass musicians performing around 10 p.m. on a Thursday. Their cover of Del Shannon’s “Runaway” had inspired an older homeless man to strike up a curiously graceful stomp dance on the sidewalk. He was so drunk and fully immersed in the music that the bottle of Jim Beam in his flailing hand didn’t even register when the police officer approached him and asked, “What do you think you’re doing?”
The musicians began to pack up. “I could have told you this would happen 20 minutes ago,” one tells me, nodding toward the old man. “Don’t say a word or I’ll fucking take you in,” said the cop, who poured out the half-full bottle and wrote a ticket for the older man, who had made a few feeble protests that ended abruptly with the cop’s obscenity.
The officer said he’d received a complaint about the music, a line I heard from each cop I came into contact with on Haight — including one officer who cautioned a family with a toddler to pack up the bracelets they were selling to pay the towing charges on their van. “People don’t like to see people with kids out here, you better move it along,” the cop said.
“I’ve seen aggression because people start shit,” Steven tells me when I ask him about his experience with street violence. A man has just walked by chanting “dirty, dirty” in Steven’s and his friends’ faces. “They don’t like to see people sit on the ground.”
“There are people who come down here just to make themselves look better,” chimes in Oz. “Like ‘ha ha ha, I have air conditioning.’ All kinds of people start shit”
I asked if they knew they were the focus of a massive political debate in San Francisco. “No, what debate?” asked Steven.
“You mean sit-lie?” Oz asks. “It probably has to do with tourism. I don’t see why else they would do that.”
Even the most well-known recent case of Haight Street violence — which was reported June 11 by New York Times reporter Scott James as having “inspired a grass roots movement” that propelled Prop. L, seems to be a question of mutual aggression on the two sides of the street kids issue.
The story goes that a man named Thomas was hosing down the sidewalk in front of his house — a practice that is growing more common in the Haight to make property inhospitable to the homeless. He found himself “surrounded and engaged in a heated confrontation,” as James reports. Thomas reportedly shouted “Do you want a piece of me?” and a scuffle erupted between him and Chad Potter, a 26-year old homeless man, culminating with Potter being arrested and set free the next day. Thomas says Potter and friends continued to harass him after the incident.
James Orr, 24, is busking with his flute when I meet him sitting by a store that sells flowing hippie skirts and bumper stickers that command future tailgaters to “Coexist.” He’s looking to trade his wind instrument for a banjo, which he plays in addition to guitar. A rolling stone, Orr is in town for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival that weekend — he travels the country going to festivals, and even scored a job recently at upstate New York’s Mountain Jam for the event’s blog site, taking photos with a borrowed camera of performances by (ex-member of The Band) Levon Helm and Michael Franti.
Orr’s quite erudite and eager to “say something articulate” about the situation of the street kids and travelers on Haight. He tells me that yeah, he’s seen aggression go down here on occasion. But he resents those situations leading to laws against sitting on the street.
“It’s another example of the few that do mess up casting a bad light on everyone else. Most of us just want to make some money, put a smile on someone’s face.” As a busker, he finds it baffling that people who are against the presence of the homeless would want him to stop plying his trade by making sitting illegal. “You should point out also that it’s how we make money!” he exclaims.
Snarling ruffians on frayed rope leashes stalking the city streets! As evidenced by the Civil Sidewalks campaign, dogs — specifically pit bulls — are another source of controversy on the pavement. Last December, SFist identified a C.W. Nevius tirade against the breed as example of its ongoing feature “Pit Bull Hate Watch.” The paper has pointed out that the demonized dogs can make great members of society and are often the subject of a media smear campaign.
But for many homeless youth, their dogs aren’t the means of imposing chaos on the gentry. They keep them for the same reasons we do: friendship, protection, love — and during the days I spent on Haight, it was a pleasure to pat the doggies while interviewing their owners. Most were as gentle and laid back as the kids they sprawled next to, a reasonably expected result from the 24 hours a day of socialization with humans that the homeless lifestyle affords.
Smiley is an inveterate street kid unlikely to go indoors anytime soon. “I don’t know how to do anything else,” she tells me. Now in her early 20s with a shock of magenta, purple, and dirty blonde hair and fanciful purple ear plugs that pierce her lobes before spiraling nearly to her shoulders, she’s been traveling since she was 12 — “a Bohemian by blood,” as she puts it. Not only did her parents move their household regularly throughout her childhood, but their heritage is Romani, from the traveling tribes of Eastern Europe.
For Smiley, travel outside the bounds of business trips and weekend vacations is her life’s norm, and Haight Street’s legacy resounds in her nomadic soul. “Most of the people that travelers idolize were here,” she tells me.
Smiley has a year-old behemoth black mutt with droopy eyes. He obliges her as she leans into him holding her spanging sign, which tells the world the pup needs Benadryl for an upcoming van ride to Southern California. “He’s carsick,” she tells me sheepishly. She admits that the dog can limit her mobility on public transportation, but his benefits outweigh his cost. He keeps her warm at night — and, more important for a young woman who is often on her own, he protects her. For a moment breaking out of tough girl mode, she tell me, “oh yeah, I don’t have to worry about anything when he’s around.”
We talk about the perceived threat of dogs on Haight Street. “They want us to leash them, which I guess I understand — but look at that!” A well-dressed woman in her 40s has her Chihuahua off its leash and it has run into the busy street, with her in hot pursuit. “That dog’s out of control,” Smiley smiles.
Sitting against a mural on a wall where Haight meets Clayton, I watch Piss, an outgoing, gangly guy in his early 20s with a curly blonde mohawk in a growing-out stage. I ask him where he got his unusual moniker. “I like to get drunk and piss on things,” he says.
Well. Originally from Billings, Mont., Piss has been traveling since his mid-teens. “Let’s just say me and my family don’t get along,” he tells me.
His answers to my questions about why he’s on the streets follow a path I see with many of the younger homeless youth: they insist that the lure of the open road was too hard to ignore, but eventually reveal that their parents kicked them out or were unable to care for them at a young age. Many, like Juju, another small-time weed dealer I met, bounced from family member to family member until frictions with them and their significant others left no recourse but the street.
Piss says he’s been to every state in the country, plus Canada and Mexico. With so many years on the road, he is, as they say, letting his freak flag fly. Piss has a blue, vaguely tribal tattoo that curls around his right eye. He’s wearing white tube socks on the dirty pavement. At first glance, he could be crazy — and maybe he is. Whatever his motivation for travel, it’s not to blend in with the locals.
Piss is also actively spanging passersby in a manner that oscillates between off-putting and charming. “You got some money for some crack and ice cream?” he inquires of a passing trio of young women. They shake their head, but before they’re gone completely he continues “I’m just kidding! I don’t like ice cream! Hey miss, you have a nice ass … day!”
Over the course of the hour that I watch him a stand up routine emerges. Beneath the grime, he’s a charismatic kid with an enviable sense of comedic timing.
As he ranges up and down a 20-foot stretch of sidewalk, belly laughs are elicited from a few targets, dollars surfacing here and there. One man carrying an accordion and wearing an expensive-looking pair of leather Chaco sandals donates a handful of strawberries to Piss and to those of us acting as his entourage.
But Piss’ play is a little rough — like a big puppy — and he’s alienating the people who don’t crack up over crack. A couple of people walk away quickly from his petitions shaking their heads over one of the zingers, their suspicions confirmed about those rowdy Haight Street kids.
He’s not doing anything more than what young travelers do all over the world. Thousands of families bid see you later to young adults en route to Prague, Peru, and Perth each year, where they lug their dirty backpacks through the world’s most wondrous towns.
Of course, these kids aren’t sleeping in the public parks of Cuzco — but in countries with plenty of cheap travelers’ hostels, you don’t have to. And though international flights cost more than the van rides and freight train hops that brought in most of the Haight Street kids, backpackers abroad do the same things: take fewer showers and flaunt social norms — not because they want to cause a problem for the natives of the lands they pass through, but because they are young, and discovering themselves for the first time, and can’t see much past that. Piss isn’t being violent, but he has lost the language to deal with “normies” and he’s seen as unpredictable to the not-traveling, not-disenfranchised around him. Which to those who see public space as a place that should be predictable, mean he’s a threat.
The clash between the settled and transient in the Haight is not new. Indeed, it’s what made the neighborhood famous. As far back as the mid-1960s, officials have been simultaneously fighting and publicizing the Haight’s worldwide reputation as a traveler’s meeting place, a place with a culture of loosened societal moorings and enlightenment through free love, drugs, and art.
Businesses claim that the omnipresent homeless drive away paying customers from Haight Street. It a curious claim in an area where the vagrant hippie culture made the place the tourist attraction it is today, and one that is belied by the entry of Whole Foods, which plans to open a branch this year at a lot at Haight and Stanyan vacant since 2006. When contrasted with the Tenderloin — another neighborhood with a visible street community — and its chronic problems attracting a grocery store, the Haight street kids’ effect on local commerce doesn’t seem to be all that grave.
They certainly aren’t making the place any less desirable of a neighborhood to live in for the wealthy. Real estate website Trulia.com puts the median listing price for homes in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood at $962,264.
The Haight Street kids I spoke could all too easily see what sit-lie would mean for San Francisco. When you control public space, you control who is in public space — and they have no illusions about whether or not they’re included in the perfect world of those who push the measure. If it’s enacted, the subculture that made Haight famous — part of which still survives today in a different form — would be gone, leaving it sterile and safe for the head shops and clothing boutiques, an even less authentic version of the ’60s love fest their patrons come to the street for. One wonders if a scrubbed-clean Haight is even what the residents and business owners who have thrown their lot behind sit-lie truly want, or if they’ve been duped into sit-lie’s efficacy by the same forces that on a national level have convinced us that curtailing civil liberties will lead to freedom for the real Americans. It comes down to this: What do we want Haight Street to be? Do we want to capitalize and benefit from the accepting, messy, wildly creative legacy the 20th century endowed our streets, or do we want a clean, friendly, outdoor mall? The powers of homogenization and gentrification can demonize the little heathens on Haight Street all they want, but they’ve miscalculated if they think that they don’t belong in San Francisco — after all, Haight created them, not the other way around.
Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Sarah Phelan on SF’s disadvantaged youth, Rebecca Bowe’s look at ageing out of the foster care system, and Tim Redmond’s editorial on the issues facing our rising generation
rebeccab@sfbg.com
It’s a strange and daunting time for anyone just starting out, but youth who age out of foster care are up against particularly harsh challenges.
In July, the national unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds reached a staggering 51 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A recent article in The New York Times Magazine described how, in the face of a bleak job market, 20-somethings today are far more likely than those in past generations to go back to school, travel, volunteer, or complete unpaid internships — extending a phase of impermanence and financial dependency for years beyond what used to be considered the norm. Studies show that nearly half of youth between ages 18 and 25 move back home with their parents at least once.
But young people aging out of the foster care system typically have to face this world of churning uncertainty without the benefit of a safety net. Many post-foster care youth don’t have the luxury of “failing to launch,” embarking on an early career path without pay, or landing back home if nothing else pans out. Foster youth lose their support base at 18, when the state ceases to be their legal guardian. For these young people, who are often the least equipped to achieve financial self-sufficiency, becoming emancipated as a legal adult is no cause for celebration; rather, it’s a source of anxiety.
Most foster youth lack the skills, connections, and resources they would need to transition to independence at age 18 — a prospect that would be difficult even for youth with greater access to resources and no major family history problems. Studies measuring the outcomes for this population paint a grim picture: many wind up homeless, incarcerated, or at risk of losing children of their own by the time they reach their early 20s.
There’s a growing awareness that many of the approximately 5,000 youth who age out of foster care in California every year are slipping through the cracks. Local and state programs have been initiated to improve their chances of achieving independence, but efforts on both fronts have run up against obstacles.
In Sacramento, Assembly Bill 12 — which extends key services for foster youth to age 21 — was signed into law several weeks ago, but the intentions behind it were undermined when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a line-item veto of $80 million in funding for child welfare programs. In San Francisco, a housing facility designed for youth at risk of homelessness seems to hold promise as an effective model, yet it has encountered resistance from local neighborhood organizations.
The plight of these young people is both a measure of our compassion and potentially a harbinger of larger societal problems to come.
Kirsten Johnson-Bell is an emancipated youth who turned 18 in January. She has six siblings still in foster care in the East Bay, and she says she has been in more than 20 foster care placements since 2007.
Johnson-Bell told the Guardian that she has housing assistance that will last for 18 months — but she’s already beginning to wonder what will happen after that. “Where am I supposed to go?” Johnson-Bell wondered. If the experience of her peers who’ve exited the system is any indication, her concern is well founded.
Nationwide, nearly 40 percent of post-foster-care youth have been homeless at some point by the time they turn 24, according to survey results released by the University of Chicago and Partners for Our Children at the University of Washington. Just 6 percent had completed college degrees by that age, and only 48 percent were working — mostly in low-wage jobs. More than half of the young men had been convicted of crimes, and roughly three-quarters of the young women had received government benefits to meet basic needs. Teen pregnancy is statistically higher among young women exiting foster care.
Most youth in foster care aren’t housed continuously with a single caregiver, but bounce from place to place, making it tough to form long-lasting relationships. “It’s a fairly rare experience that youth stay in one home, and that means moving schools and moving friends,” notes Rachel Antrobus, executive director of Transitional Age Youth San Francisco (TAY SF), a city-funded nonprofit. Many foster kids take medication for behavioral problems, and it’s common for them to experience emotional upheaval.
“It’s practically inevitable that they’re going to have long-term emotional impacts,” Antrobus said, noting many bear the long-term scars of abuse, neglect, or forced separation from their families for some other reason. “It’s a much longer road, and they have to do it with deeper wounds. Even the kids that are the most together … will likely experience some really dark places in their 20s.”
In San Francisco, there are 1,400 young people in the foster care system, and all but about 500 are in placements outside the city. Lynette Davis, who turned 18 this year, moved from San Francisco to Oakland when she first entered foster care in the eighth grade. Davis acknowledges that she was one of the lucky ones. Rather than move in with a stranger, she went to live with her godmother and remained there until her 18th birthday.
Davis is now living with her boyfriend and his family in Oakland — and the household was in the process of moving when the Guardian spoke with her. Her godmother offered to continue housing her after she turned 18, Davis noted. “But she’s got her own kids. I felt like I should be able to go off and do my own thing.” The requirement in either housing situation is that she must work, go to school, or both, Davis said. She’s attending classes at Oakland’s Merritt College. In the meantime, she’s mired in the frustrating exercise of applying for job after job.
“It’s been pretty ridiculous,” Davis said of her fruitless job hunt. “Sometimes it makes me want to stop and give up. But as long as you’ve got people around you who care about you, it’s okay.”
Many foster kids who didn’t have the support network that Davis did are up against alarmingly high stakes as they age out. “Some people are mothers and they have to pay rent and are looking for more than two jobs,” she said. Asked what she thought were the greatest challenges facing foster youth in San Francisco, she mentioned poverty, gangs, and a lack of job opportunities.
“To be successful, you have to be financially stable,” she said. “With some youth, that’s hard. They don’t have jobs, or they can’t get jobs. They want to find an easy way out.” That’s when they become more susceptible to gangs or drugs, she said. Davis says she was a “rebellious youth” at a younger age, but now she’s focused on her goal of obtaining a degree in psychology so that one day she can go into counseling. When she became a member of California Youth Connections, which aids youth with transitional support, she met other foster youth and realized she could really have an impact.
The difference between ages 18 and 21 can be critical, so foster youth advocates throughout the state cheered Sept. 30 when AB12, California’s Fostering Connections to Success Act, was signed into law. It allows California to make use of federal matching funds to provide transitional support for qualifying foster youth until age 21. It also authorizes the state to take advantage of a federal subsidy for an existing guardianship program for relatives of foster youth who want to become caregivers. Many foster youth advocates have thrown support behind the kin caregiver model — it can be less traumatic for youth to move in with a grandparent than being suddenly dropped into a strange place.
A major sponsor of A 12 was the John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes, and policy director Amy Lemley hailed its passage as “the biggest child-welfare improvement in 20 years.” Studies show that youth who receive support beyond 18 are 200 percent more likely to be working toward completion of a high school diploma, 65 percent less likely to have been arrested, and 54 percent less likely to have been incarcerated than those who exit with no support. The benefits could also generate savings by reducing the number of people in prison, on welfare, or in need of publicly funded health and human services. The law will be implemented in 2012.
The law also will provide new housing options. The federal government will chip in to cover more placements in the Transitional Housing Program Plus — nearly axed during the last budget cycle — which offers supervised transitional housing for emancipated youth. Youth may also receive a rent subsidy that could apply in a dorm, a shared-living situation, or another arrangement that fits the youth’s needs. This flexibility is a positive change, Lemley noted. “We’re not telling young people ‘it’s our way or the highway,'<0x2009>” she said.
“If a state like California can do this in the context of its current fiscal deficit, it sends a strong signal to other states,” Lemley said. However, an unexpected line-item veto put a damper on the landmark achievement. Schwarzenegger dealt a blow to the child-welfare system by cutting $80 million in funding for programs the California Legislature had restored, which actually amounts to more like $133 million due to the loss of federal matching funds.
“It’s really just a schizophrenic policy on the governor’s part,” Lemley said. “We were hoping he would have a legacy of the foster care governor, but now it doesn’t seem as if he will have that legacy at all.”
While the deep budget cut isn’t aimed at AB12 directly, Lemley said, it erodes funding for child-welfare workers and forces counties to make painful funding cuts. The overarching effect is that abuse and neglect may go undetected more often, and youth in the system will have fewer available resources once they’re placed.
Of all the challenges facing foster youth who age out of the system, housing is among the most critical, particularly in San Francisco. A partnership between the city, Larkin Street Youth Services, and nonprofit developer Community Housing Partnership (CHP) aims to address this by providing a space for transitional-age youth who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford housing in the city. Located at the King Edward II Inn near Cow Hollow and the Marina district, the facility would house 24 young people, ages 18 to 24, who are at risk of homelessness.
“By definition, that includes youth aging out of foster care,” explains David Schnur of CHP. The nonprofits are working in tandem with the city’s Human Services Agency and Mayor’s Office of Housing.
Youth housed at Edward II would have access to physical and mental health care, substance abuse and HIV-related services, education and job training, coaching in basic life skills such as budgeting and personal hygiene, and case management, Schnur said. They would be required to contribute a portion of their income, whatever the amount, toward rent.
However, an organized force of opposition has already surfaced from the surrounding community, which comprises one of San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhoods. “I think people are just nervous about what it means to have a building of this type in the neighborhood,” Schnur noted. To assuage neighborhood concerns, the nonprofits have set up a project advisory committee in hopes of talking it out and bringing everyone on board.
Patricia Vaughey, with the Marina-Cow Hollow Neighbors, is actively opposed to the project but insists that it isn’t out of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) concerns. “We are not NIMBYs,” she told the Guardian. “We want to find a location that’s suitable. We want to make sure those kids are safe.” She said that criminal activity in the neighborhood made the inn a poor choice. Yet advocates insist that for the youth, the program could mean the difference between a lifetime of hardship and a chance to get their lives on track at a crucial age. “The safety net for these young people is so thin,” Lemley noted. “You might have one person, you might have another. But then the winds of change blow and suddenly the bloom falls off the rose.”
Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Sarah Phelan on SF’s disadvantaged youth, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Tim Redmond’s editorial on the issues facing our rising generation
Schedules are for Wed/20–Tues/26 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.
ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. “Fifth ATA Film and Video Festival: Human Nature,” Thurs, 8; “Lo-Fi Future,” Fri, 8. “PXL This 19,” toy camera film festival, Sat, 8:30. For related events visit www.laughtears.com/PXL-THIS-19.html. “ATA and Alternative Tentactles Present:” •The Widower (1999) and Terminal City Richochet (1990), DVD and CD release double feature, Sun, 7.
CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. I Am Love (Guadagnino, 2009), Wed, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:20. The Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko, 2010), Thurs, 2:30, 4:45, 7, 9:10. “15th Berlin and Beyond Film Festival,” Oct 22-28. Visit www.berlinbeyond.com for complete schedule and tickets ($10-11.50).
CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. 36 (Marchal, 2005), Wed-Thurs, 6:30, 9. Inside Job (Ferguson, 2010), Oct 22-28, call for times. My Dog Tulip (Fierlinger and Fierlinger, 2009), Oct 22-28, call for times.
HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. The Whale Warrior: Pirate for the Sea (Colby, 2009), Wed, 7:30.
MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100 (reservations required). $10. “CinemaLit: Apocalypse Noir:” Dead of Night (Cavalcanti, Crichton, Dearden, and Hamer, 1945), Fri, 6.
PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area:” “1969-79,” Wed, 7:30. “Elegant Perversions: The Cinema of João César Monteiro:” Come and Go (2003), Thurs, 7; The Hips of J.W. (1997), Sun, 7. “Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism:” The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, 1948), Fri, 7 and Sat, 6:30; Bitter Rice (De Santis, 1949), Fri, 9. “Shakespeare on Screen:” King Lear (Kozintsev, 1970), Sat, 8:30; Antony and Cleopatra (Heston, 1972), Sun, 4.
RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Stingray Sam (McAbee, 2009), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:15. Winter’s Bone (Granik, 2010), Thurs-Sat, 7:15, 9:25 (also Sat, 2). The Girl Who Played With Fire (Alfredson, 2010), Sun, 2, 5, 8 and Mon-Tues, 7:30.
ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “SF DocFest,” through Oct 28. Program information at www.sfindie.com.
SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 151 Third St, SF; www.sfmoma.org. $5. “San Francisco Cinematheque Presents:” “Private Lives: Beth Custer Ensemble and the Films of Alexander Hammid,” Thurs, 7; My Grandmother (Mikaberidze, 1929), with the Beth Custer Ensemble, Thurs, 9.
VICTORIA THEATER 2961 16th St, SF; www.peacheschrist.com. $20. “The Peaches Christ Experience in 4D:” All About Evil (Grannell, 2010), Thurs-Sun, 8. With the Midnight Mass Players.
VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.vizcinema.com. $10. “Ozu and His Muse: Setsuko Hara,” Late Spring (1949), Wed, 4:30; Early Summer (1954), Wed, 7:15 and Thurs, 4:30; Tokyo Twilight (1947), Thurs, 7:15. “Taiwan Film Days:” Monga (Doze, 2010), Fri, 6:15 and 9:40; Let’s Fall In Love (Wu, 2009), Sat, 1:30 and Sun, 4:10; Seven Days in Heaven (Liu and Wang, 2009), Sat, 4 and Sun, 9:10; Hear Me (Cheng, 2009), Sat, 6:40; Tears (Chen, 2009), Sat, 9:30 ansd Sun, 6:40; No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (Dai, 2009), Sun, 2.
YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Sing! The Music of Sesame Street,” Thurs, 7:30; Sun, 2. “San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Presents: Tough Guys: Images of Jewish Gangsters in Film:” Straight is the Way (Sloane, 1934), Sun, 2.
Events listings are compiled by Caitlin Donohue. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.
WEDNESDAY 20
hell strung and crooked Release Party The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, SF; www.thebeatmuseum.com. 6pm, free. The Beat Museum helps to present a night of intensely creative bards from the world over in anticipation of the release of their new poetry tome.
Smack Dab Open Mic Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF; wwwmagnetsf.org. 8pm, free. All ages and genders are welcome to this open mic, which sets a medley of musicians and poets onstage to the tune of five minutes a piece. No open mic traumas here, people.
THURSDAY 21
Art Attack One Year Anniversary supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF; www.visualsby3.com. 9:30 pm, $8. The flopsy, floozy art performance group celebrates its first 365 days on this earth with a burlesque-off featuring Alotta Boutté, Scotty the Blue Bunny, and more local A-listers from the world of tassels and tease.
"Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women" Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF; (415) CAR-TOON, www.cartoonart.org. 7pm, $5. Beyond the kvetch and kibitz, female Jewish cartoonists have proven themselves adept at a stark, honest rendering of life in the 21st century. Hear them discuss their art at this panel discussion.
Jo Scott-Coe Books Inc., 2275 Market, SF; (415) 864-6777, www.booksinc.net. 7:30 pm, free. An ex-public school teacher exposes the subtle and overt forms of violence in the education system in her latest book, which she’ll discuss at this bookstore klatch.
BAY AREA
Homeless Connect Health Fair Multi Service Center, 2362 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 809-8516, www.sites.google.com/site/bfhphealth. Noon, free. Vision screenings, STD tests, flu shots, therapist and addiction referrals, haircuts, and more at this gathering of service providers for the homeless.
FRIDAY 22
UN-65 Muir Woods Walking Tour Cathedral UN Grove, Muir Woods, Sausalito; (415) 267-1866; www.una-sf.org. 11am, free. Advance registration requested. Mark 65 years of the United Nations’ brand of global collaboration with this trek through the redwoods, a cup of tea, and some Qi Gong — a path braved by UN founders in 1945.
Fog City Necropolis 354 5th St., SF; (415) 606-2503. 7pm, 10pm. Take a tour through SF’s interactive haunted house, whose theme this year is a truly scary trope: eviction! Evade the undead grasp of Jack Kerouac, Frida Kahlo, the crazy cat man of the Presidio, and more so that you can live to pay rent again.
BAY AREA
"Analysis of the Tea Party Movement" UC Berkeley Alumni House, Bancroft and Telegraph, Berk; www.ccsrwm.berkeley.edu/conferences. 8:30am-5:30am, free. Political scientists and sociologists take a look at America’s most grating political movement: are the Tea Partiers part of a grass roots campaign, a media-driven construction, or something in between?
SATURDAY 23
Actors Theatre Season Kick-Off Actors Theatre, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287; www.actorstheatresf.org. 7 pm, $10. A cabaret to celebrate the new stage season, featuring the psychedelic tropes of comedian Wil Franken, and the world premiere of William Blake Sings the Blues, penned by the theater’s own company member.
Bernal Yoga Literacy Series Bernal Yoga, 461 Cortland, SF; (4125) 643-9007, www.bernalyoga.com. 8pm, $5 suggested donation. Tsering Wangmo Dhopma and Stephen O’Connor, writers both, will fill the chakras of this neighborhood ayurvedic space with readings from their recent publications.
Bring Your Own Queer Festival Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.byoq.org. Noon-6pm, free. Pack a gay in your rucksack for this community collaboration of art, performance, and music, featuring DJ collectives Honey Soundsystem and Hard French, the Bay Area Derby Girls, and a rescue dog fashion show.
Drag Racing Day Velma’s, 2246 Jerrold, SF; (415) 824-4606. Noon, by donation. A Bayview family needs help raising funds for their drag racing team. They make their own motors and transmissions! Grab a bite at this neighborhood restaurant while you watch racing footage and dad Mike Henery’s presentation to interested young people.
Potrero Hill History Night International Studies Academy, 655 De Haro, SF; (415) 863-0784. 5:30 pm barbeque, $6; 7 pm historical program, free. A movie on Potrero Hill public housing, urban gardening in the neighborhood, and hood tales from 50-year residents like "Goat Hill Phil."
Seismic Safety Fair San Francisco General Hospital, 1001 Potrero, SF; www.sfdph.org/dph/rebuildsfgh. 9am, free. Feeling a little shaky? SF General’s setting aside a day to explain the base-isolated design of its new earthquake retrofitting. It’s meant to be the most seismically-resistant plan available today, so go on and get grounded.
BAY AREA
Cal Science and Engineering Festival Haas Pavilion, Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-0352, www.scienceatcal.berkeley.edu/festival. 10am, free. Kids been clamoring to touch a real human brain? Bring ’em to this hands-on extravaganza of natural science — for free.
Fantastic Fountain Thistle Recovery Work Party Highway 92-W and I-280-N, San Mateo. 9am, free with RSVP. Remove invasive pampas grass and Australian tea tree so that our small bristly friend the fountain thistle can continue to live long and prosper in the Bay Area.
SUNDAY 24
Sunday Streets: Civic Center and Tenderloin Civic Center Plaza, SF; www.sundaystreetssf.com. 10 am- 3pm, free. The last Sunday Streets car-free community event takes the action to the heart of downtown, with clear biking and walking from a roller disco outside the Asian Art Museum to the Tenderloin National Forest.
Tricycle Music Fest West Various libraries and times, SF; www.sfpl.org/tricycle. Free. Three wheel from library to library or plunk the kiddies in front of a show of their choosing for this day of kids’ music, that effervescent establisher of early literary skills.
It’s the little festival with a big view. Potrero Hill, the home of the Guardian, is hosting the 20th annual festival with of a “New Orleans” Style Brunch created by the California Culinary Academy and an exciting street fair on 20th Street between Missouri & Wisconson Streets. Enjoy music, food, crafts and activities for the young and old alike.
Potrero Hill Festival
Date: October 16, 2010, 11am-4pm
Location: 20th Street Between Missouri & Wisconson Streets
New Orleans Jazz Brunch
Location: Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, 953 De Haro Street
Date: October 16, 2010, 9:00am-1:00pm
Before the Festival, join the Festival Committee and the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House for an annual tradition – a lavish and delicious brunch catered by the California Culinary Academy featuring Dixieland music and superb bay views.
Festival Performances & Activities
Marketing
Attendance
Benefits the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House
The Potrero Hill Festival will support the programs of the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House (NABE). The NABE is an invaluable community resource that provides important programs for the community, including youth and senior nutrition, employment and supplemental education programs and programs for developmentally disabled adults.
The city has its fair share of microclimates, microbreweries, microlocal eateries, and even microtrannies. Also: micronightlife. The wobbly stilettos of North Beach on Fridays, the indie electro tang of Mondays in the Castro (served especially kinky at DJ Richie Panic and Key&Kite’s packed “nutter-butter” Wanted weekly — Mondays, 9 pm, free, QBar, 456 Castro, www.sfwanted.com), the late night surf-rock bar crawls out near Ocean Beach … It’s easy to stereotype some of our heirloom hotspots — or get locked into them — but, um, you’re the one who brings the party, so spread it around a tad.
Here are some off-the-blackout-path watering holes I’ve recently had the pleasure of stumbling out of, none too pricey: The Republic (3213 Scott, SF. www.republicsf.com) in the Marina is, yes, a fancy sports bar, but it’s a chill place to meet friends and mingle with a shockingly snob-free and diverse crowd. Glittery lodge Swank (488 Presidio, SF. 415-346-7431) in Laurel Heights didn’t destroy my credit rating, and its cozy fireplace is perfect for the rainy nights ahead. Cole Valley’s EOS (901 Cole, SF. www.eossf.com) is perf for sipping a spot of primo vino and N Judah people-watching. Bloom’s Saloon (1318 18th St., SF. 415- 552-6707) in Potrero Hill still has the best beer-guzzling view of the city, even if it recently had to rope off the patio due to complaints, boo. And tony new SoMa resto Heaven’s Dog (1148 Mission, SF., www.heavensdog.com) has a gangbusters bar, with nom-nom pre-Prohibition concoctions like the gingered Monk Buck and kicky Daisy de Santiago, surely some Chilean child’s drag handle.
If you missed the bonkers opening weeks of the civic-minded Public Works (161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com), you’ll soon be hooked by the late-night club and gallery’s crazy-canny programming, like the one-off return of gloriously debaucherous shindig Fag Fridays (Fri/15, 9 p.m.-4 a.m., $10), with DJs David Harness, Rolo, and Juanita More and the future dub power of Surefire Sound (Sat/16, 9 p.m.-4 a.m., $15), with Bristol steppers Pinch and Gemmy. Public Works was launched by a who’s who of local nightlife talent, including longtime invisible hand of the SF club scene Pete Glikshtern, who’s also behind the neato new Jones (620 Jones, SF. www.620-jones.com), which rightly focuses on its enormous outdoor terrace and downtown-glamour feel.
One of the zazzliest transformations on the scene, however, has to be that of 11th Street Corridor mainstay Holy Cow (1535 Folsom, SF. www.theholycow.com) which just got a knockout steampunky makeover by artist Dara Young. Fear not, “woo!” girls and bro-bros, your chartered party limos will still drop you off to top-40 bliss Thursday through Saturday. But owner Bill Herrmann is expanding the Cow’s party palate, by giving the homo-futurist Honey Soundsystem’s weekly Honey Sundays (Sundays, 9 p.m., $3) a new home, now that Paradise Lounge has bit the dust. (Holy Cow was the original site of the Stud in the 1960s, so edgy queer nightlife comes full circle.) And there are more pleasant shocks on the way. Herrmann’s a guy I can’t help but adore — a slick Burner with a head-turning look, he genuinely enjoys hosting parties, whether the clientele is gelled-up meatmarketeers or post-techno fairies. Expanding definitions!
Techno meets classical when composer Mason Bates and conductor Benjamin Schwartz thread live orchestral performances through thumping DJ sets at this roving party (www.mercurysoul.org). It’ll give you auditory shivers on the dance floor.
Thu/14, 9 p.m., $8–$10. The New Parrish, 579 18th St., Oakl. www.thenewparrish.com and Fri/15, 5 p.m.–9 p.m., $5, 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com
Electronic soul outfit from New Zealand that manages the neat trick of combining D’Angelo steaminess, Avalanches effects, and DJ Shadow atmospherics. With smoothie singer Jesse Boykins III.
Fri/15, 10 p.m., $10. SOM, 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com
L.A. future bass slammer always gets heads banging with his special brand of experimental fuzz. I’m living for the stoner cosmic-laptop kids this year. With Daedelus, 12th Planet, and Teebs.
Fri/15, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $15. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com
