A good photograph captures an instant of life within a fraction of city space. The oft-awesome paintings of Yoon Lee — on display earlier this year in a solo show at the Luggage Store — condense seconds, days, and weeks of urban life into images of striking movement and color. Blurs from passing cars; a person glimpsed from the corner of one’s eye; the liquid shifts of Vampire Princess Miyu anime dreamscapes on a TV screen — these are a few of the everyday materials within Lee’s alchemy. Glimpsed as scaled-down versions on a computer screen, her pieces seem purely digital or neo-geo, but in person there is no doubt that her paintings are the result of a lengthy, meditative, and labor-intensive process.
“I know some artists who take a whole year to produce one piece, and I’m not up to that point,” Lee says over hot drinks at Farley’s on Potrero Hill. Her comic strip T-shirt and black leather motorcycle jacket reflect the mix of commercial color and rougher, real-life currents within her paintings. “My 8-feet-by-20-feet scale works usually take about six months. I start gathering images in my head and take photos. I make little sketches. I take things from comic books, newspapers, anything — I’m just an image scavenger.”
From there, Lee uses Illustrator or Photoshop to play with images and forms. “I use it as a mixing board to bring everything together and then edit, real fast,” she says, adding with a laugh, “in the old days you had to use canary paper and transparencies, then mess up and start all over again.” Actually, Lee’s “real fast” edits can last a month or two, but they are indeed quick in comparison to her painting process, a complex, kinetic, and at times astonishingly layered use of Golden acrylics. It’s there that she transmutes her gadget-fiend tendencies and love of shiny plastics into work that swirls with fierce ambivalence about those aspects of modern life and more.
For Lee, the frustration that comes from trying to translate computer compositions into flesh-and-blood paintings isn’t just worthwhile — it’s exactly what she’s seeking. “Sometimes I have to really invent a new process,” she says. “Every time I do a piece there’s something completely different I have to introduce or change so I can produce an effect that’s similar to the original sketch.” That kind of challenge has led Lee through many areas of study (philosophy and computer science, to name two) and fields of employment (she’s sold cars), though all the while she’s never lost focus on painting.
Someday a writer might explore and explain why op art has played such a major role in San Francisco art at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. Though Lee is part of an upcoming exhibition of San Francisco artists in Leipzig, Germany, curated by “Pierogi” Joe Amrhein, it’s debatable whether she is even influenced by the legacy of Sol LeWitt — or has a kinship with the LeWitt-loving Mission School artists who favor certain rainbow gradations. If her work shares some of their color schemes, its scale and sense of movement explode into a realm apart from the smaller cubic formations and prisms associated with recent Bay Area art. A casual viewer might note as much action as in a Jackson Pollock painting, a kid on the street might recognize an accidental kinship with graffiti. The artist herself names Julie Mehretu and Benjamin Edwards as partial guides.
Lee’s art is slick — but only in a literal sense. To put it another, more paradoxical way, her paintings are deceptively slick on the surface. Beneath the attractive gloss, that shininess that she enjoys and wants to share, are layers that you can get lost in — that is, when you aren’t arrested by the intensity of her observation. (Johnny Ray Huston)
Labor
Goldies Visual Art winner Yoon Lee
EDITOR’S NOTES
› tredmond@sfbg.com
I tell this story to politicians a lot, and I’m telling it again because there’s an awful lot of angst at City Hall over the demands of a few (admittedly madly aggressive) sunshine advocates who are coming close to paralyzing some departments.
The tale goes back, way back, to about 1986, when a reporter named Jim Balderston and I got onto a story about the horrible, potentially deadly problem of asbestos contamination in the public schools. We called Ray Cortines, who had just taken over as school superintendent, and asked to see a long, long list of district records — the sort of broad, sweeping request that makes city attorneys work hundreds of hours trying to decide how to comply.
But Cortines didn’t call the city attorney. He invited us over to district headquarters, took us into a room filled with file cabinets, and said: here you go. He told a staffer to help us make copies of what we needed. Then he left us alone.
No district lawyer sat in the room checking to be sure that there was nothing confidential in the files. Nobody prescreened the stuff for possible secrets.
We spent a week there and came out with some amazing stories that embarrassed a lot of district officials — and may have saved the lives of a lot of kids.
I’m sure there were reams of documents in those files that contained what are technically confidential bits of information. But here’s the amazing thing: nothing bad happened.
The district didn’t lose any lawsuits because of what ran in the paper. No labor contracts were jeopardized. No personnel records were wrongly exposed. Not a goddamn thing.
This is what drives me nuts about “metadata” and all the other stuff that gadflies like Kimo Crossman are asking for, tying the City Attorney’s Office in knots and costing the taxpayers all this money.
Please: just give it to them. The republic will survive. SFBG
At your cervix
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
As long as I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with gyno play and playing doctor. I had never acted upon it until meeting my current boyfriend. We’ve begun experimenting with speculums, various insertable objects, vibrators, etc. We are always very careful to be sterile and safe.
I’ve grown more and more interested in the idea of cervical dilation and cervical insertions but have been unable to find any literature on the subject. Apparently, I am the only human alive with such a fascination. I have looked online and found several varieties of uterine sounds but always in context of urethral play, not cervical stretching.
I understand that any cervical penetration has the possibility of causing cramps or other pain, but I am anxious and willing to experiment with this aspect of such play. My concern is safety. Any information?
Love,
Stretch me
Dear Stretch:
Questions like this always remind me of a kids’ science show I used to watch, starring the performance artist Paul Zaloom and some guy in a ratty old rat costume. Seriously, this existed. I’m not making it up. In one episode Paul was explaining how to grow a particularly odoriferous bacteria colony in an old tennis shoe when he broke off midsentence, looked directly into the camera, and said, “Don’t even do this.” That’s how I feel when people ask me about certain extreme and possibly harmless but just a little bit potentially fatal practices. Do something else. Don’t even do this.
Cervical stretching and sounding are, of course, accomplished every day in thousands of gynecologists’ offices and with no lasting harm to the patient. That’s how you get IUDs in and unwanted tissues out, provided, of course, that “you” are a trained medical professional. It isn’t the pain that worries me. I understand that you’re up for that, and, you know, go crazy, although having been the recipient of several antepartum “internals,” I can assure you that the sensation is … let’s call it “challenging” and leave it at that. You know that’s how they determine how close you are to going into labor, right? A doctor or midwife rummages around in there, eventually emerging to announce that you’re only “a fingertip” dilated. Guess what high-tech, finely calibrated device is used to determine that? No, really. Guess.
So, yes, cervical stretching hurts like 12 kinds of mofo, but that’s not our concern here. I’m afraid of you perforating something, introducing outside-world bacteria to your insides, or both. I don’t need to tell you how badly that could go for you, and only you can decide if it’s worth the risk.
It isn’t true that there’s absolutely no information on this out there — there’s just very, very little of it. There’s probably something in BME, the Body Modification Ezine, although you may have to join to get to some of their more esoteric content. I imagine the extreme practitioner C.M. Hurt knows something about cervical play if anyone does, but the closest thing I could find among her writings was an article (on dungeonmagic.com) about female catheterization play that you might enjoy. A place called Eros Boutique carries every conceivable type of sound and catheter, and medical books and sites with instructions for inserting an IUD could walk you through the steps necessary to prepare for messing with your cervix. That’s all I’ve got. I could tell you that in order to introduce something, say, a little catheter full of sperm for intrauterine insemination, into the uterus, they sometimes have to grab the cervix with a clawlike thing called a “tenaculum” (Could that word be more vivid? Half tentacle, half speculum?), but I’m afraid that given your proclivities, it would only encourage you.
This is very strange for me — up till now, whenever someone has asked me about inserting things into the female urethra, I’ve said, in a word, “don’t,” and for good reason. Unlike the longer and hardier male version, the female urethra is only a few inches long and kind of fragile. It’s a very short trip to the bladder, which really doesn’t want you dragging in dirt all over its nice clean floor. So while I generally counsel people, especially beginners, to leave the urethra alone and go play someplace safe, like the vagina, I’m going to take a flyer and suggest the urethra as a slightly safer alternative to the cervix if you absolutely must go poking in places where you’re not invited. At least you can sort of resanitize it by peeing afterwards. You may also feel free to be cranked open with a speculum, even a cold speculum for that frisson of gynecological authenticity, and prodded about the cervix with a gloved finger. It is possible — oh, so very possible — to create some quite intensely painful sensations in that region without ever attempting entry. I can’t, in good conscience, support your friend playing doctor in the sanctum sanctorum there. I just can’t.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.
Fast times in Rock Rapids, Iowa, what really happened on Halloween Eve in l951
By Bruce B. Brugmann
As I was getting ready to do my daily blog, anxiously awaiting the political endorsements in the Savage Love column in the Village Voice (see my previous blogs), a dispatch from the San Francisco Sentinel caught my eye on my email display.
“City Plans For Safe Castro Halloween,” the headline read.
A safe Halloween? Who wants to read about a safe Halloween? I can speak for a generation or two back in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, where Halloween was the one night of the year
when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.
Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.
It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs.
After an evening of such lusty adventures, we would go home about ll p.m. and tell our parents what we had been up to and how we evaded Shinny the whole evening and they would (generally) be relieved. Shinny would just drive around in his patrol car and shine his lights here and there and do some honking. But somehow He never caught anybody or made any serious followup investigation. And the targets of our pranks never seemed to make police complaints. I once asked Paul Smith, the editor of the Lyon County Reporter, why he never wrote up this bit of zesty small town lore. “Bruce,” he said, “I don’t want things to get out of hand.” During my era, they never did.
Nonetheless, the city elders decided to keep Halloween devastation to a minimum and scheduled a dance in the Community Building, with the misbegotten idea the pranksters would give up their errant ways and come to the dance. The Casjens Gang would have none of this. In fact it was the year of the dance diversion that we made our most culturally significant contribution to Halloween lore in Rock Rapids. We happened upon a boxcar, loaded with coal, parked on a siding a block or so from Main Street, which also served as a busy main arterial highway for cars coming across northwest Iowa.
It is not clear to this day who came up with the idea of rolling the boxcar across Main Street and blocking all traffic coming from both directions. We massed behind the car and pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Then Bob Babl came up with a brilliant stroke: to use a special lever his dad used to move boxcars full of lumber for his nearby lumberyard. Bob slipped through a fence behind the yard and somehow managed to find the lever in the dark. We massed again, now some 20 or so strong, behind the car and waited for the signal to push. Willie Ver Meer climbed to the top of the car and wrenched the wheel that set the brakes. We heaved in unison and the car moved slowly on the tracks until it reached the middle of Main Street. Willie gave a mighty heave and ground the car to a dead stop, bang, square in the middle of the street. Almost immediately, the cars started lining up on both sides of the car, honking away. Grace under pressure. An historic event. Man, were we proud.
We slipped away and from a safe distance watched the fruits of our labor unfold. Shinny, the ever resourceful police chief, soon came upon the scene. He strode into the dance in the nearby Community Building and commandeered enough of the dancers to come out and help him move the car back onto its siding. We bided our time and then went back and pushed the car once again into the middle of the street. Jerry Prahl added a nice touch by rolling out a batch of Firestone tires onto the street from his Dad’s nearby store. Suddenly, Main Street was a boxcar- blocked, tire-ridden mess. Again, the cars started lining up, honking away. Then we fled, figuring we were now wanted pranksters and needed to be on the lam.
The Casjens gang and groupies have retold the story through the years at our regular get togethers at the Sportsmen Club bar at Heritage Days in Rock Rapids and at our all-Rock Rapids Cocktail Party and Beer Kegger held in the back lawn of the Mary Rose Babl Hindt house in Cupertino. We would jokingly say that the statute of limitations never runs out in Rock Rapids and so we needed to be careful what we said and ought not to disclose fully the involvement of Dave Dietz, Hermie Casjens, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Jerry Prahl, Bob Babl, Romain Hahn, Willie Ver Meer, and lots of others, some who were there working in peril, others who declared they were there safely after the fact.
Last year, just before Halloween, I was invited back to Rock Rapids to speak to a fund-raising event for the local high school. It was a a crisp clear night just like the night of Halloween in l95l and a perfect setting to tell the story publicly in town for the first time. The event was at the new community building, on Main Street, just a block or so from the old Community Building, and a block or so from the siding where we found the boxcar. I told the audience that Shinny had assured me the statute of limitations had run out in Rock Rapids and that I could now, 54 years later, tell the boxcar- across -Main -Street caper with no fear of prosecution. And so I did, with relish.
Chuck Telford was in the audience and I recalled that he had driven up to us that night, as part of a civilian patrol, and inquired as to what we were doing. When he could see what we were doing, he just quietly drove off. “Very civilized behavior,” I said. Afterward, I told Chuck I would back him for mayor, on the basis of that incident alone. Craig Vinson, then the highway patrolman for the area, came up to me and said he remembered the incident vividly because he was on duty that night and came upon the boxcar blocking the highway with long lines of honking cars. “I got ahold of Shinny that night and told him it was his job to move the boxcar and get it off the highway,” he said. Others said they had gotten a whiff of the story but were never able to pin it down. The high school principal and superintendent didn’t say much and, I suspect, were worried my tale might lead to the Rock Rapids version of the movie “Ferris Buhler Takes A Day Off.”
For years, I said in my talk, I didn’t think that Shinny ever knew exactly what happened or who was involved in the caper or how we pulled it off, twice, almost before his very eyes. Shinny retired in Rock Rapids and I saw him twice a year when I came back to visit my parents. But I never said anything and he never said anything but finally a couple of years ago I found the right moment and cautiously filled him in. He chuckled and said, “Let’s drink to it.” We did. And we have been drinking to it ever since. He calls me now and then in my office in San Francisco and he always tells the receptionist, “Tell Bruce, it’s Shinny. I’m his parole officer in Rock Rapids.” B3
Those were the days, my friends. The days of “safe” Halloweens.
P.S. I love smalltown lore and will from time to time lay out the life and fast times and wild adventures of my hometown, the best little town in the territory. I invite you to contribute your smalltown stories and lore. B3
Defeating Pombo
EDITORIAL One of the half-dozen worst members of the United States Congress represents a district less than 50 miles from San Francisco. Republican Richard Pombo of Tracy chairs the House Resources Committee and has used that post to attempt to eliminate the Endangered Species Act and gut a long list of environmental regulations. He’s been an ally of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff. He’s rabidly antichoice. And if the Republicans keep control of the House, he will become even more powerful.
A few months ago, his seat seemed fairly safe: Pete McCloskey, a liberal Republican, challenged him in the primary but didn’t even come close to defeating Pombo. His Democratic challenger, energy consultant Jerry McNerney, was way behind in fundraising and the national Democratic Party wasn’t exactly targeting this as a competitive seat.
But times change quickly, and right now some polls (although admittedly ones taken by McNerney and his allies) show the race close enough that an upset is entirely possible. The GOP is clearly worried and has poured half a million dollars into Pombo’s campaign. McNerney’s now on the national radar; retired general Wesley Clark came out to endorse him, and there’s Democratic Party money flowing in too. But he’s still behind Pombo, and resources may turn out to be a key factor in the final weeks.
McNerney isn’t a San Francisco liberal by any stretch (he’s even been a consultant to Pacific Gas and Electric Co., albeit on alternative energy). But he’s radically better than Pombo: he’s pro-choice and pro-labor, and as someone whose career is in the wind power business, he’s got a real understanding of energy and environmental issues.
We support McNerney, and we’re more than happy to endorse him, even though he’s outside the area for which we usually issue recommendations. But for San Francisco and central East Bay residents, whose Democratic congressional representatives face no real opposition, this may be a place to put some money and political energy: McNerney is holding an SF fundraiser, and his campaign is looking for volunteer help. Defeating Pombo would be a huge coup and might be one of the most effective ways for local folks to help Democrats take back the House. SFBG
McNerney’s fundraiser is Oct. 11 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Delancey Street, 600 Embarcadero, SF. Info: (925) 556-7077.
You Can’t Trust Arnold
By Sarah Phelan
I saw the “Angelides for Governor” bus long before I saw the man who would be the next Democratic Governor of California. The bus was peacefully barreling up San Francisco’s Franklin Street on its way to the Central Labor Council where Phil Angelides was set to speak to a crowd of blue and yellow-sign waving supporters. But not before a horn-honking tow truck, cut in on the scene, its driver shouting “No to the Angelides Tax Tune-Up!” (And was that Arnold, dressed in a Super Man suit, driving a big rig, laughing manically as he pressed on a ear-drum shattering horn just as Angelides alighted from bus? Probably not, but it’s hard to tell, given the tendency of Arnie’s supporters to hide their true identities behind Super Hero masks and costumes.)
Either way, nurses, teachers, firefighters and working folks in general haven’t forgotten what Arnold has done, or tried to do, to them in the past 3 years.
Like wasting over $70 million on a special election that nobody wanted instead of trying to fix the state’s educational system.
Like stomping for Bush in Ohio in 2004, instead of demanding that California get its share of federal funds.
Like bragging about kicking nurses’ butts instead of ensuring that all Californians have access to health insurance.
Speaking of which, “Someone got their butt kicked and it wasn’t a nurse,” laughed Assemblymember Mark Leno as he addressed the crowd prior to Angelides’ appearance. “Phil Angelides slam dunked that debate.”
And as Angelides supporters pointed out, after spending over $35 million and beating up on Angelides for the past 3 months, Arnold is frozen at 44 percent in the polls. And his record sucks.
Maybe Phil Angelides hasn’t made any movies but he sure seems more trustworthy than Arnold. As Angelides told the crowd,
“I’m running with you at my side to stop the greedy obscene corporate-interest give aways.”
Working in the East Bay
By G.W. Schulz
Both the issues of fair compensation for hotel workers and immigration rights merged this week in the East Bay with an emergency picket and a call to the police. Hotel housekeepers announced that a demonstration against Woodfin Suites Hotel in Emeryville would take place on Wednesday after claiming that the establishment threatened mass firings of immigrant workers who were demanding recognition of Measure C, a living wage and workload protection ordinance passed by East Bay voters in 2005.
According to a statement sent out by the non-profit East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, managers at Woodfin Suites gave workers 24 hours to re-submit work authorization forms or be fired. Ouch. The following day, workers delivered a petition protesting the re-verification demand and a hotel manager called the cops on them and kicked them out of the building. Since then, the 24-hour deadline has been extended to 14 days, but the hotel is still demanding a valid social security number, or workers who can’t provide one will be fired.
If that’s not enough, Woodfin Suites is suing the city of Emeryville over the ordinance, but according to an e-mail from EBASE organizer Brooke Anderson, their motion for a preliminary injunction has been denied.
“Workers see the hotel’s re-verification and termination plan as clear retaliation, which is illegal under both federal labor law and the living-wage ordinance,” the statement read.
More information can be found at EBASE’s Web site, www.workingeastbay.org.
Divorcing Columbus
OPINION This year may go down in history as the one new immigrants reignited a civil rights mobilization in the United States. Their efforts, like those of the black liberation movement of the ’60s, will certainly become a catalyst for progressive action from many communities. As southern Italian Americans, this Columbus Day we have to ask our community the age-old question — which side are we on? Unfortunately, many of us have chosen exactly which side we are on: supporting racist immigrant bashers, whether they are legislators in the halls of Congress or vigilante Minutemen. As progressive Italian Americans, we support new immigrants because of the simple fact that our folks were once in the same situation that newcomers find themselves in: overworked, exploited, and demonized for quick political gain. It’s time for the Italian American community to finally reclaim our social justice tradition, divorcing the dazed and confused explorer who discovered a country that was already inhabited. Instead of Columbus, we honor the Italians, Cubans, and Spaniards of Ybor City, Fla., who worked in the cigar industry and were able to create a Latin culture based on values such as working-class solidarity and internationalism (see “Lost and Found: The Italian American Radical Experience,” Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 8). We also remember the Italian American radicals who were a part of labor actions in the early 1900s, including the Lawrence textile, Paterson silk, Mesabi Iron Range, and New York City Harbor strikes. This year, instead of conquest, we acknowledge those who stood up for justice. Everyone knows about Al Capone, but what about Mario Savio, a founder of the free speech movement in Berkeley in the ’60s? Most people can recite the names of Italian American singers such as Madonna and Frank Sinatra, but they don’t know Cammella Teoli, the 13-year-old southern Italian girl who appeared before Congress in 1912 to testify in her broken English about the horrible working conditions in America’s sweatshops. It’s not surprising that Italian Americans forgot those things. We faced a lot of discrimination when we arrived: two unionists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were falsely accused of murder and executed. Italian Americans in the south were lynched by white supremacists. During World War II, thousands were relocated or jailed on suspicion of being enemy aliens. After the war, the anticommunist witch hunts began with the arrest and deportation of Italian American radical Carl Marzani. Today, Italian Americans don’t have to face these threats, yet those who immigrate from Central and South America, Asia, and the Middle East do. It is unlikely that Congress will pass any form of legislation reform this year, and many cities have instituted local statutes designed to run immigrants out of town. Minutemen and similar groups are harassing day laborers in the Bay Area and beyond. As Italian Americans, we call upon our paesani and paesane to remember our roots. Emboldened racists can be stopped — when those of us they claim to represent support the work of grassroots organizations of color bravely confronting these throwbacks. By divorcing Columbus, we start to break down the logic of conquest, which invariably leads to wars abroad and repression at home. SFBG Tommi Avicolli Mecca and James Tracy Tommi Avicolli Mecca and James Tracy are Italian American radicals who organize the annual “Dumping Columbus” reading. This year it’s Oct. 9, 7 p.m., City Lights, 261 Columbus, SF, featuring the legendary Diane DiPrima.
MONDAY
Sept. 18
Event
“True Lust Confidential”
Let’s be honest, spoken word and open mic nights are not typically linked to eroticism and sexual candor. This is not the case at the Porchlight’s “True Lust Confidential,” a steamy literary event dedicated to all things sexy that promises to be anything but typical. The night’s lineup boasts an idiosyncratic mix, including comedian Michael Capozzola, hat-obsessed movie critic Jan Wahl, burlesque dancer and erotic poet Lady Monster, and self-proclaimed “smutsmith” Allison Landa. (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)
8 p.m.
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
$12
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
www.porchlightsf.com
Discussion
Labor and war
Join trade unionists and workers at a discussion on wars in the Middle East with union leaders Monadel Herzallah, Alan Fisher, Professor Mary Ann Ring, and Jack Heyman and members of Transport Workers Solidarity Committee Chair. The event is sponsored by Break the Siege Coalition, Labor Video Project, Labor for Palestine, and Labor Action Coalition. (Deborah Giattina)
7 p.m.
522 Valencia, third floor, SF
$3 donation requested
(415) 282-1908
Turf’s up
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
First nicknamed the Rolling 20s in the ’70s, then the Twomps in the ’80s, the group of East Oakland avenues below MacArthur and between 19th and Fruitvale avenues received its present designation, the Murder Dubs, in the early ’90s, when a neighborhood hustler named P-Dub began a lethal reign of terror in an effort to control the local drug trade. Naturally, this didn’t endear him to the community, which locked its collective doors to him the night his number came up, leaving him to be gunned down in the street by pursuers circa 1994.
Yet despite this violent legacy, the vibe in the Dubs seems remarkably friendly, at least in the company of its most famous son, 23-year-old MC and producer Beeda Weeda. Head of the sprawling Pushin’ the Beat (PTB) camp — whose roster includes a half-dozen talented producers, as well as rappers like Lil Al the Gamer and veteran crew Under Survalance — Beeda is on familiar terms with most of the neighborhood, though this doesn’t prevent a nearby group of kids from treating him like a star.
“Are you really Beeda Weeda?” one boy asks. “My name’s Beeda Weeda too!” A girl asks for his autograph. “Go get some paper,” the rapper answers, and the kids race home for supplies, allowing us to finish our photo shoot before Beeda poses with his fans and surrenders his signature.
Far from letting it go to his head, Beeda Weeda seems merely amused at his newfound celebrity.
“People see you on TV and they think you rich and famous,” he says with a laugh, referring to his video for “Turf’s Up,” which has been in heavy rotation on VJ-TV (Oakland cable channel 78) for several months, in addition to receiving more than 70,000 plays on YouTube. There’s a vast gulf separating local access from MTV. Still, Beeda has already made inroads into MTV terrain, not the least of which is his contribution to E-40 and Keak Da Sneak’s “Tell Me When to Go” video.
Beeda explains, “40 heard about me and knew I was still in the mix in the town. He didn’t even know I did music when we first hooked up. They wanted to get the elements of the street, the whole sideshow thing, so I helped him do the casting in terms of the cars, the locations, things like that.”
Drawing on their extensive neighborhood network, Beeda Weeda and PTB’s in-house video guru, J-Mo, would end up exerting a considerable influence on the image of hyphy in the national consciousness, due to the video’s success on MTV. The experience also netted PTB some of the unused footage, not to mention high-profile cameos by E-40 and Lil Jon, for its “Turf’s Up” video. More recently, Beeda and West Oakland partner J-Stalin were filmed together in the studio working on their upcoming album, for a segment of an as-yet-untitled MTV reality show following cub reporters for Rolling Stone. (MTV exec Ryan Cunningham confirmed nothing save that the segment was likely to air. Presumably, some sort of Rolling Stone article will run.) At the time of our photo shoot, Beeda’s solo debut, Turfology 101, was about a week away from its Aug. 29 street date and had already been reviewed in the latest issue of Scratch. Released on Souls of Mischief–Hieroglyphics member Tajai’s Clear Label Records and distributed through Hiero/Fontana/Universal, Turfology has just enough major-label clout behind it to get itself noticed even on a NY magazine’s New York–centric radar.
He may not quite be famous yet, but as Beeda Weeda is forced to acknowledge, “My name’s starting to ring bells.”
WHAT’S THAT SOUND?
Some rap names are chosen; others, given. In this case, Beeda Weeda is the rapper’s childhood nickname, derived from his association with Peeda Weeda. “He was like my OG when I was a little kid,” Beeda says. In 1992, at age 15, Peeda was shot by the Oakland Police Department and left paraplegic, one of many victims of the neighborhood’s most violent period.
As the ’90s wore on and Beeda entered his teens, he began making tracks, inspired by neighborhood musicians who would eventually form the core of the PTB production squad. “Most of them are older than me,” he says. “They were into music before me, so I was looking up to them. We got Big Vito, GB, LG, Tre, Miggz, and G-Lite.”
“My partner from the neighborhood, J-Boog, was rapping, and I started making beats,” Beeda continues. “But I didn’t start getting serious until I did a track called ‘Hard Hitters’ for a little group I put together called Dying 2 Live. It came out on an actual CD.”
While “Hard Hitters” didn’t cause much of a ripple in Bay Area hip-hop’s late-’90s commercial doldrums, it was sufficient to establish Beeda Weeda as a neighborhood beatmaker, attracting the attention of up-and-coming rapper Lil Al.
“We hooked up, and I started slanging beats to him,” Beeda says. “He was, like, ‘Man, let’s be a group,’ so that’s when I started really writing. We put out a whole album, all original music, and pushed it in the streets. We pressed it up ourselves. Did all the artwork. I damn near engineered, produced, and mixed the whole thang. It was called Just an Introduction by Lil Al and Beeda Weeda.” Released on their own Young Black Entrepreneurs label in 2002, Just an Introduction would quickly sell out its 500-copy run and make the pair’s reputation in the streets as young rappers.
“At the same time,” Beeda confesses, “we wasn’t really eating off the music, so we had to do other things to make money. Bro got caught up in some bullshit, had to do a little time.” With Lil Al in prison, plans to press a more professionally packaged Introduction were abruptly shelved as Beeda was forced to evolve into a solo act.
“ROLLING MURDER”
“I did a few songs, and I was just pushing it through the Dubs,” Beeda continues. “My music has a lot to do with my environment, certain situations that happen to me or my people. I was basically just making music for me and my niggas.”
Such a local focus, crucial to the Turfology concept, is what gives the album its distinctive flavor. Granted, it mightn’t be to everyone’s taste: Scratch’s generally positive review faults PTB’s use of “the synthesizer,” which makes me wonder how the writer imagines hip-hop is made in the hood. If there’s sense to this remark, it’s in the fact that Beeda and company don’t hide the instrument’s “synthness.” They push big chords composed of the most unearthly sounds right in your face.
As for the suggestion that Turfology at times “sounds like one overlong track,” I can only guess the reviewer is accustomed to the 16-tracks-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other formula of most rap discs. Turfology has a sonic coherence sorely lacking in contemporary hip-hop, the stuff that makes for classic albums. The PTB producers are clearly riffing off each other rather than chasing the hyphy train, yet they don’t sound like they’re in a vacuum. The in-house tracks on Turfology blend seamlessly with beats by young North Oakland producer Jamon Dru of Ticket Face, Charlie O of the Hard Labor camp, and East Oakland’s Mekanix.
“Their music is real current and authentic,” says Clear Label Records head Tajai during a session for the upcoming Souls of Mischief album.
Tajai heard some of Beeda’s demos by chance in a friend’s car and immediately got in touch with PTB. Having dropped several of his own solo albums and collaborations, Tajai was looking to expand his roster with other artists. Along with Baby Jaymes and R&B singer Chris Marisol — both of whom are scheduled to release albums next year — Beeda Weeda and PTB made Clear Label suddenly one of the hottest imprints in the Bay. Tajai dismisses the notion that a hood rapper like Beeda is incongruous with Hiero’s “backpacker image.” “Hiero is from East Oakland. Beeda’s a real serious artist and student of rap in general, and I want Clear Label to be a forum for that kind of artist.”
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
In the months since signing with Clear Label and preparing for Turfology to drop, Beeda has busily maintained his buzz on the mixtape circuit. “Tajai gives us the avenues, but as far as promoting, we do that on our own. Since I’m a new artist, we did The Orientation, had DJ Backside mixing it. That had about 12 songs on there and two originals. The game out here is so saturated. I was, like, ‘Let’s give them away.’ So we started passing ’em out in different cities; next thing you know, my name started ringing.”
At the end of May, Beeda dropped a second mixtape, Homework, mixed by the Demolition Men and consisting of PTB originals. A classic in its own right, Homework, with its organ-driven title track by Jamon Dru, is still banging all over Oakland, unlikely to be silenced even by Turfology’s release.
As we wrap our discussion, the PTB house in the Dubs is virtually empty, prior to being sold. The organization is getting too big to stay in the hood, and the camp is shopping for an industrial space.
“I love this place,” Beeda says. “When our studio was outside the hood for a while, I used to find myself driving out for no reason. I just missed it.” Clearly, the MC is connected to his community, and even if PTB has to relocate, it’s clear that he and his crew have no intention of leaving it behind. SFBG
www.myspace.com/beedaweeda
Melons and melancholia
› paulr@sfbg.com
There are those who spend the year passionately awaiting Christmas, and then there are those who spend the year passionately awaiting the arrival of charentais melons.
Although I like Christmas, I belong, in my heart, to the latter group, and I must recuse myself on the question of which is the more bathetic passion. Christmas, at least, is a sure thing; charentais melons are iffy — and this year, very iffy.
We are talking, then, about cantaloupe: not the familiar musk melons with the netted, khaki-colored rinds marketed as cantaloupe in this country but the real deal, the melons grown from European cultivars, with the same orange-yellow flesh as musk melons but with smooth, cream and green rinds etched with green longitudinal arcs. These melons are typically known by and sold under French names, charentais and cavaillon, though their European origin is thought to be not in France but Italy, in the environs of a town called Cantaluppi (“song of the wolves”) near Rome. It was here that the melons were first introduced into Europe from Armenia.
I love the romance of history, but the endless wet winter and slow spring were hard on local melons, the charentais in particular. I had been hunting for them in markets since the Fourth of July or so, but the first examples only turned up toward the end of August — along with Gravenstein apples and the season’s first peppers, those harbingers of autumn. Still, better late than never, unless late means bad. I was so glad to see the melons, and there were so few of them, that I snapped up a pair without sniffing them, only to find, when I sliced one open a day later, that fermentation had set in. The kitchen filled with the scent of Midori. Midori is lovely, of course — but not for breakfast, generally speaking. The melons went straight to the compost bin, where they joined the Tower Market flyer advertising charentais melons that could not be found, despite industrious scouting by the produce staff. The shipment didn’t come in, I was told when I asked, because the melons weren’t good enough?
A week later, hard upon Labor Day, I found another box of them. Chose one by sniffing, paid my $3 with the hopeful resignation of the Lotto player, got it home, sliced it open, success. Shot of Midori to celebrate. (Not really.)
Eureka! Censored! Eureka! Will the Conglomerati publish the Censored stories?
Memo the readers of the Conglomerati (Singleton/Hearst/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens papers):
Keep a sharp eye out to see if any of the papers of these big chains publish the Project Censored story. Or if they comment on it or on any of this year’s censored picks. Or if they run any real coverage of the coming of the regional newspaper monopoly, the Guardian’s pick as the biggest local censored story.
(So far, at blog presstime, my agents and I have not spotted any.)
If they don’t run the story, it would be further confirmation of the reason the Guardian is happy to run the story every year as a front page special, which is then run on the website of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) and in alternative papers throughout the country. It is confirmation of the fact that not only does the mainstream media censor or trivialize lots of major stories in favor of “junk food news,” but it even censors a major local story out of Sonoma State University that has become the longest running media censorship project in the country (30 years). Delicious: censoring the censored story.
Let the Guardian and the Bruce blog know if you spot anything.
Eurekaism is now more rampant than ever. Where it will all end knows only God and Dean Singleton.
P.S. All of this censorship only illustrates a key problem with the mainstream press. The bloggers have been blogging away on these stories throughout the year and they will continue to blog away on major stories the mainstream press (and its wire service, the Associated Press) censor or trivialize. B3, blogging away at sfbg.com
The business of censoring labor
Most people, of course, work for a living. They spend at least half their lives working and, in fact, define themselves by their jobs. They obviously would be interested in and obviously need expert information on a regular basis about that most important aspect of their lives.
But the news media in effect censor that vital information. Their primary attention is not focused on those who do society¹s work. With the rare exception of such issues as the attempts to raise the minimum wage, or on special occasions like Labor Day, the media generally are not concerned with workers’ daily efforts to make a living. The media concentrate instead on the corporate interests and other employers like themselves who finance, direct and profit from the work.
Workers’ attempts to get a greater share of the profits and better working conditions by using the only effective tool available to them – collective action – are given only slight and frequently biased media attention. Strikes are an exception, but that coverage is usually concerned mainly with the strikes’ adverse effect on the general public.
Given their complexity and importance, collective bargaining and union activity generally should be among the most thoroughly and fairly covered of all subjects. Once, most newspapers had labor reporters to provide extensive if not always fair coverage. But almost no papers have such specialists today. With a very few exceptions, radio and television stations have never had them.
At most papers, in the Bay Area and elsewhere, labor coverage has been turned over to the business section. Since the material there is meant for readers who have a particular interest in business and a generally negative view of unions, the stories naturally are slanted that way by business reporters, who have little apparent understanding of labor.
The business pages typically downgrade, distort or simply ignore union views. They show little concern for general readers, including those who support unions or might want to if they had the opportunity to read thorough, balanced and expert accounts of their activities.
How about describing the country¹s major labor federation, the AFL-CIO, as a “trade association?” Or referring to democratically elected union leaders as “bosses?” The San Francisco Chronicle business page has made those petty but illustrative gaffes and, like the rest of the Bay Area¹s mainstream media, far more serious gaffes.
The list of important labor issues that have been ignored censored is seemingly endless. To cite just a few examples, the media:
— Frequently note that union membership is declining while failing to report that a principal cause is failure of the federal government to adequately enforce the laws that supposedly guarantee workers the right to unionize without employer interference.
— Fail to report numerous other anti-union actions of the Bush
administration, including its virtual non-enforcement of most other laws designed to protect workers.
— Rarely take notice of the on-the-job hazards that cause 6,000 deaths and more than 2 million serious injuries a year, and the need to strengthen and adequately enforce the job safety laws.
— Ignore labor¹s role as an advocate for the working people, union and non-union alike, who make up the vast bulk of the population, by characterizing labor as a “special interest.”
— Almost never report the views of union members and leaders on the major issues of the day. The views often are voiced at meetings of local labor councils and other union bodies that reporters ignore, while routinely seeking out the views of corporate and business executives.
— Pay little, if any, attention to many major union campaigns. Most recently, that’s notably included a nationwide drive to get McDonald’s to guarantee decent pay and working conditions to the impoverished tomato pickers whose work is essential to the hugely profitable fast-food industry.
So, despite the great importance of labor, despite most people¹s vested interest in it, despite the need to inform them fully about it, the media provide little that’s of real value to them in their working lives, and much that¹s prejudicial to their collective action.
Copyright © 2006 Dick Meister, former labor editor of the Chronicle and of KQED-TV’s Newsroom. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.
EDITOR’S NOTES
› tredmond@sfbg.com
There are people at the daily newspapers around here who bristle when I accuse them of ignoring important local stories, particularly ones involving powerful political, business, or social figures (and most particularly, involving the newspapers themselves). No representative of the Hearst Corp. stands in the newsroom door announcing that stories about management will be sent to New York for prior censorship. Nobody tells the Chronicle’s reporters that they can’t cover a pressing story.
And I believe all that. I really do. I know it doesn’t work that way.
Carl Jensen knows that too. When he started Project Censored back in 1976, he knew he’d get a lot of criticism. “Censored” is a pretty strong word; it evokes a mirthless military guy with a pair of scissors and a big black pen, preventing real news from emerging out of a pressroom bunker somewhere.
But what Jensen has been trying to say for years is that the stories cited by Project Censored represent choices made by editors and publishers about what’s important in today’s world. That’s what the front page of a newspaper is — a set of choices. Is the confession of the purported killer of JonBenet Ramsey more important than the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping of millions of Americans? Is the latest news about Brad and Angelina more important than the latest news from Iraq? Is one man’s quest to take control of every daily newspaper in the Bay Area worth more than a first-day story and a few tiny news briefs?
Editors are paid to make those decisions — and the ones who want to keep their jobs know what the rules are. That’s why some stories get more coverage, more play, and more attention and some get deeply buried or published in one place and never picked up by anyone else.
Anyone who reads political blogs knows about stories like the ones on this year’s Project Censored list (see page 15). Nobody blacked out the news with a big rubber stamp; it just never got reported in the first place.
For a Sunday afternoon on a Labor Day weekend, it was truly impressive: I counted at least 300 people at the Delancey Street events room for the Sue Bierman memorial. Just about everyone on the local left seemed to be there, along with a few luminaries like John Burton, Gavin Newsom, and Willie Brown, who were Bierman’s friends even when they were wrong and she was right.
Newsom, who was often at odds with Bierman, looked out over the crowd and made the point succinctly: “This is what happens,” he said, “when you’re nice to people.”
There were many funny and moving stories. Burton, who showed up in his usual sartorial splendor (striped sweatpants and an untucked shirt, which makes me respect the guy as much as anything he’s ever done in politics) talked about how Bierman always, always enjoyed herself, even in the most boring political drudgery. It was wonderful to see her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren there (and wonderful for them to see how many people were part of Bierman’s San Francisco community).
Calvin Welch, her Haight Asbury neighbor, friend, and longtime comrade in arms, reminded us all that Bierman “created the neighborhood movement in San Francisco” — and that she did it in her own style, always believing that “fun is important.”
A lot of people go to political funerals because they have to; most of us went to this one because we wanted to. Thanks, Sue. SFBG
Saving women from themselves
OPINION In the name of protecting sex workers, a few San Francisco activists have adopted the rhetoric of antiprostitution advocates and taken their case to the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women (COSW). The commission, following this lead, has adopted a controversial strategy — opposed by the vast majority of dancers, activists, and sex educators — to close down VIP rooms, private booths, and private areas in adult clubs and repeal “encounter studio” permits, claiming that privacy in commercial sexual contexts must be stopped because it causes prostitution, sexual assault, and AIDS.
For starters, the AIDS claim is wrongheaded: starting 30 years ago, activists around the world have explained that the way to address sexual health is not to drive people further underground through this exact sort of repression.
Beyond that, the legislation put forward by the COSW echoes contemporary moral panic. This law uses terms that have historically been used to curtail our freedom under the guise of protecting women. For example, the proposed bill claims that prostitution is “coerced” — but that depends on how you define coercion.
Forced labor and coercion are serious crimes in the legal framework. But economic coercion is the motivation for many types of work, and the fact that women are coerced or forced into this work is being used to justify prohibitions that affect all sex workers. The term “sexual exploitation,” which also comes up in the legislation, has been used to describe (and curtail) the voluntary commercial activity of sex workers.
The commission claims it based the proposal on testimony from dancers but omits the fact that the vast majority of dancers rejected the approach, showing up in droves at hearings. Of course, dancer and sex worker rights activists support some strategy to address complaints about unfair labor practices, exorbitant commissions, safety concerns, and harassment — but no effort was made by the COSW to find a consensus.
The campaign developed by the COSW places dancers in closer alliance with management as both dancer options and management options are being threatened. This phenomenon is part of Sex Worker History 101. The current dancers are further alienated and discouraged by this dynamic from organizing to improve working conditions. Unraveling this dynamic is necessary to further labor advocacy in this industry. The issue of private booths distracts from the problems of illegal stage fees, contractor versus employee labor issues, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations.
Other parts of the plan include allowing COSW representatives to inspect the workplace and to “notify the Commission on the Status of Women when they make any change to the compensation schedule.” Now there’s a great idea: put the classy female elders of San Francisco in charge of working-class women in the sex industry.
This legislation sets some very troubling precedents. Solutions to problematic working conditions in clubs should be developed by the workers, with assistance from labor experts. Given the level of polarization this proposal has created, that could take some time. SFBG
Carol Leigh
Carol Leigh, author of Unrepentant Whore: The Collected Works of Scarlot Harlot (Last Gasp), is dean of academic studies at Whore College.
To read the legislation, go to www.whorecollege.org/badlegislation.
$20 million to spy on the press
By Tim Redmond
This lovely little gem dropped Friday afternoon, just before the Labor Day weekend, when much of hte nation was’t paying attention: The Pentagon is looking for bidders on a $20 million contract to monitor news media coverage of Iraq I could save the generals and admirials some money:
Get a clue, folks. The once-fawning news media is turning strong against the war.
You can make the check out to me.