Leather

Pressure, two ways: Academy of Art and Project Runway at NY Fashion Week

Andrew Lam
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While hyperbolic coverage of what many news pundits called the ‘storm of the year’ raged across the Tri-State area, Manhattan’s would-be-mammoth blizzard arrived in the Big Apple as a pint-sized flurry that the Weather Channel dubbed Nemo. Nemo did little to deter the stilettoed, snow-shoeing pack of fashion-forward who started the morning of Feb. 8 filing into the tents at Lincoln Center for New York Fashion Week hullabaloo around 6 am.

This is the world of fashion, where a steel backbone is required. Plus, “this is New York, we have noreasters,” said a publicist with whom I scored post-show beers. “This is not a some kind of apocalypse blizzard. This is a snow storm. Put on your big girl boots and get over it.”

The action outside the white-tent runway shows of NYFW has become something of a spectacle recently thanks to the hyper-documentation of show attendees by bloggers, fashion journos, and Instagrammers. The evolution of the street scene has become almost as hyped as the collections themselves — outside-the-tent has converted into a place where writers, buyers, and industry professionals rub shoulders with blogosphere self-starters and editorial wanna-bes. Once you’ve crossed the threshold, however — moved past security and secured your seat — the herd thins out. Inside the shows, attention shifts from the amateur peacocking out front onto the belabored fashion lines themselves.

I attended two shows on February 8 — Project Runway‘s, and that of my Bay Area peers from the Academy of Art University. 

Project Runway: Lacking any true designer start that has emerged from this TV series, the jury is still out on whether reality show competition breeds success or mediocrity. Regardless of who will sink or swim in Project Runway’s 11th season, fierce competition certainly yielded entertainment at NYFW.

Usually by Fashion Week, the Project Runway panel — composed of designers Michael Kors and Zac Posen, fashion editor Nina Garcia, and supermodel host Heidi Klum — has winnowed competitors down to the final three. This season, NYFW crowds were treated to the work of seven. The normal Project protocol was thrown to the wind, each designer remaining anonymous, a move that forced them to compete solely on the strength of their garments, without the crowd bias based on on-air personality.

Fashion is an exhibitionist’s sport, but flashiness is not always effective when it comes to style. Some collections at the show came out swinging, trying too hard to define a point of view. Others showed up more quietly, using complicated shapes and silhouettes without appearing self-indulgent. Most resisted the urge to disguise imperfect results with fluff. Michelle Lesniak Franklin’s collection hit the highest note, with several structured pieces rendered in soft quilted fabric, giving way to an ethereal easiness. It appeared elfin or even Zelda-esque, but retained it’s modernity in the silhouette and layering. She took the road less traveled, mixing 1980s-inspired jacket shapes with earth tones, rendering their severe structures soft in wools and knits.

In short, the show was a mixed bag, and no one went home a true winner.

Academy of Art University:  Pressure is an odd catalyst. Some respond to it favorably, combining time and tension to yield extraordinary results. For others, pressure works against success, internal combustion evident in the resulting design.

Where Project Runway’s contestants are forced into a pressure cooker for 12 weeks to design, shop for, sew, and style their collections, San Francisco Academy of Art University students are incubated in a better-paced program. Here, years of planning and months of preparation produce the impressive work that the school has come to be known for. These student-designers are not working for cheap airtime or a bump in ratings for their network television handlers, but instead are putting in the hours of work for genuine academic recognition, fashion futures the old-fashioned way.

As an Academy fashion journalism student myself, I have witnessed the rigorous, extremely exhausting, but equally rewarding process firsthand. In last weeks leading up to the end of the semester, there is a pronounced hush in campus design studios, the only audible noises come in deep hums of the sewing machines, the incessant clicking of mechanical needles, and the hissing of industrial-grade irons. Each student, earbuds in, rips, measures, presses, tapes, pins, and repeats. One feels guilty even walking past such determination on the way to the bathrooms, so intense is the creative process.

This year, the collections from AAU’s multi-national student body were marked by a range of culture fusions. The show’s focal point was the visual negotiation between student, fabric, form, and heritage.

The runway sequence ebbed and flowed between moments of sparse minimalism, as in Yuming Weng ‘s simple monochromatics and plays on texture and structure, in Chenxi Li’s over-sized crushed velvet coats, rendered unique by combining elements of ‘50s Americana with traditional Chinese armor. Knitwear student Heather Scholl’s sexually charged, gender-explorative neon psychedelics stalked the lane.

Stand-out collections included show openers Janine M. Villa and Amanda Nervig’s marriage of tailored suiting and free-falling knitwear, which gave the rigid geometric patterns that adorned both fabrics fluidity, and embued the suiting with an astonishing sense of movement. Inspired by traditional Welsh blankets, Villa and Nervig’s work felt eclectic and free-spirited on the runway, the print-on-print combinations of chunky knits and embellished tailoring gave the collection an exciting and unexpected visual depth.

Heather McDonald took taut silhouettes to new heights with soaring shapes that defied gravity. These exaggerated forms were rendered in deeply-saturated angoras and wools, which brought the avant-garde down to earth. The final act was perhaps the most impressive. Qian Xie’s crystal-encrusted coat dresses and lattice-woven leather overcoats followed her apt theme “50 Shades of Grey”, and the results were lust-worthy.

 

The Performant: Love bites

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Celebrating romance with power ballads, Spandex leggings, fancy panties

Although there are about 364 days of the year when I can do without it—one day of the year seems custom-made to celebrate the ignoble rise of hair metal and its greatest contribution to the musical landscape — the power ballad. From “Love Bites” to “Is This Love,” “(I Can’t Live Without) Your Love and Affection,” to “The Power of Love” — all the saccharine sentiment of brooding, pouty millionaires in ripped jeans, tight leather, and all those glorious manes — power ballads can and probably should form the soundtrack to Saint Valentine’s Day now and forever. They so perfectly tap into both the cynicism of the single person facing “the dread VD” alone, as well as offering a soaring guitar-solo boost to the cuddly nostalgia of the happily coupled.

While innamorati for hundreds of years have used February 14 as a date to shower their beloved in flowers and cards, Jeff Ross and the SF IndieFest team have used it as another excuse to party, with an annual Power Ballad Sing-along at the Roxie Theatre. Just three years after its San Francisco debut (a similar party tears it up each year in Brooklyn), PBS pours its sugar and motors through the packed house, screening subtitled MTV videos turned up to 11 of all the best bands you’d love to forget to a theatre full of eager inebriates, cutting loose in a veritable bacchanalia of communal song.

If you’re lucky enough to squeeze into the perpetually sold-out event, you’ll be handed a lighter at the door, the essential prop of the power ballad lover and although no extra credit points are handed out for costumes, this being San Francisco, plenty of people do show up in them. Spandex leggings, ripped stonewash denim, studded wristbands, and plenty of Aquanet. One enterprising soul even comes dressed as Slash — right down to the guitar — a handy prop during the obligatory screening of Guns ‘N Roses’ nine-minute orchestral dirge “November Rain”.

Unlike a karaoke night full of awkward people who have to be cajoled into singing at all, let alone bellowing REO Speedwagon songs at full volume, a sing-along allows everyone to a) hide in the dark and b) therefore sing with the full confidence that almost everyone around them sounds even worse than they do, especially after the effects of cheap whiskey and rampant silliness settles in. It’s about as egalitarian as it gets, and even though this year’s blowout was marred by technical difficulties, my sorrow at missing out on the ultimate elation of singing “You Give Love a Bad Name” en masse couldn’t spoil the gleeful satisfaction of mangling an otherwise extensive playbook of all the worst bands with the best hair: Def Leppard, Cinderella, Whitesnake, Journey.

Meantime, just up the block at the Little Roxie, Liz Worthy’s window display aka “Heist Boutique” offers a poignant love letter to the ever-changing landscape of the Mission district via a few carefully-curated *objets d’art* used to represent a psychogeographical survey of “old-school” Mission businesses taken over by others in recent years. There’s the Self Edge VHS tape (asking price $714, in honor of the address), commemorating previous tenant and nostalgic favorite Leather Tongue video store (represented cheekily by a pair of red jeans), a pair of Modern Times sunglasses ($888) named for the bookstore that until recently inhabited the space where Fine Arts Optical now resides, a Wang Fat Fish Market bikini in turquoise and red ($2199) honoring the fish store of yore, (now Zoe Bikini). The display will be up until at least the middle of March, so swing by soon to relive your own fond memories of a Mission gone by. It may be too late to hang out at the Café Macondo or Jivano’s Cutlery, but, like the power ballads of the past, it’s still not too late to reminisce about them awhile.

Buy me love

Andrew Lam
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Buy me love

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN You are welcome to spend Valentine’s Day as I will this year: corralled onto a dark dancefloor with 200 similar atheists in the face of the love goddess. But as many of you will be happily celebrating with partners (hiss!), I’ve assembled this four-pack of completely locally-made Valentine’s Day gifts. You’re welcome (pfft.)

TOURANCE FAKE FUR RABBIT ROBE, $178

You can’t get more luxe than this without killing something, and unless it’s vintage, I find artifacts of animal death incredibly unsexy. Tourance makes all its faux fur right here in the city, so if your Valentine isn’t much for Hef wear, check out the line’s vests in faux fox and mink, and its throw blankets modeled on chinchilla fuzz or inspired by mane of lion. Highly recommended for those of us too embarrassed by the word “snuggle” to ever ask to be embraced — nuzzling comes naturally when you just unwrapped the softest garment known to personkind.

www.tourance.com

 

RECCHIUTI’S CREATIVITY EXPLORED DOG ART CHOCOLATES, $21

 

Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

I am not a fan of gifting chocolates on V-Day to anyone but the most perfunctory recipient (the sweet woman who lives above you, the office manager, one’s priest.) That being said, it is possible to make a case for the originality of this four-pack of burnt caramel bites. The foursome is only available at Recchiuti’s Dogpatch shop, which is tucked into the flank of the factory where the chocolates are made (next to the company’s super-fly Chocolate Lab café, which is doing two dinner seatings for a special Feb. 14 menu.) The doggie designs were born as art made by developmentally-disabled adults at community gallery Creativity Explored, an echo of the for-sale exhibition you’ll find behind Recchiuti’s cash register. And in addition to all these things: doggies. People love those guys.

807 22nd St., SF. (415) 826-2868, www.recchiuti.com

VARIANCE OBJECTS HARNESS, PRICES START AT $240/SET

Why does BDSM fashion have to be so damn obvious? Everybody knows you’re there to be roughed up, do we really need to drop hundreds of dollars on the same industrially-accessorized black patent leather that everyone’s wearing? I love Variance Object’s founder Nicole Rimedio for making beaded bondage gear for your kinky-yet-discreet angel. “I love the idea that I may be wearing a rope to bind my lover’s body, but that most everyone else thinks is just an onyx necklace,” Rimedio told me in an email. The line includes pieces strung with super-strong cord that can be worn around the calves, looped underneath the crotch, or tied around wrists. Most everything is modular, for versatility/variety’s sake.

www.varianceobjects.com

SF BEER WEEK, PRICES VARY

 

Photo via Yelp

Although you will get side-eyed by many Valentines if you suggest that a bottle of Miller High Life is an adequate way to celebrate Cupid’s aim, warm fuzzies while boozing are still totally possible. Per usual, V-Day falls in the thick of the Bay Area’s marquee week for gourmet brew events, SF Beer Week. So take your low-key, suds-loving babe to Thirsty Bear’s $20-25 “Chocolate, Beer, and Cupid” night to sip coco-vanilla cask ale while making your own chocolates (feel free to bring your boo’s favorite aphrodisiac throw-in for xxxtra points.) Also happening on Feb. 14: sweet and sour beer pairings at The Monk’s Kettle, four limited release brews on tap, with sweet bites from Socola Chocolatier at Speakeasy Brewery’s newly-opened, Kelly Malone-designed tap room. Elixir, Noc Noc, the Sycamore, Rosamunde’s Mission location, La Trappe, and Blackbird are all doing V-Day Beer Week specials as well.

Various Bay Area locations, www.sfbeerweek.org

 

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 6

Urban dance at the library Merced Branch Library, 155 Winston, SF. www.sfpl.org. 4:30, free. For ages seven to 18. In celebration of Black History Month, Sergio Suarez of the All the Way Live Foundation will share his knowledge of street dance history — covering everything from the Memphis jook to Oakland TURF to LA crump. Children and teens will also have a chance to watch acclaimed Bay Area dancers Beatz n Pieces, Agatron, Fluidgirl, and Too Wet.

THURSDAY 7

“Bacon, Babes and Bingo” El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. www.baconbabesandbingo.com. 7-11pm, $10. With endless ways to win prizes — from donning superlative pig-related accessories to spinning the “squeal wheel” — tonight is a shining night for bacon. To keep up with the theme, vendor BaconBacon will be serving up a variety of pork-related goodies. If all this isn’t compelling enough, there will also be burlesque, music, and free snacks courtesy of Rock Candy Snack Shop.

FRIDAY 8

Gray Loft Gallery’s second annual Love Show Gray Loft Gallery, 2889 Ford, third floor, Oakl. Through February 23. www.greyloftgallery.com. Opening reception: 6-9pm, free. Photographs, paintings, collages, sculptures, jewelry, textiles, and handmade cards, all exploring themes of love will be on display tonight in this unconventional work-live warehouse and gallery in Oakland’s Jingletown district.

“On The Edge” erotic photography exhibition Gallery 4N5, 683 Mission, SF. www.eroticartevents.com. 4-10pm. $5. Also open Sat/9, 1-10pm and Sun/10, noon-5pm. Free on Sunday. If the thought of a teddy-bear-and-Hallmark-card kind of Valentines Day puts you straight to sleep, this exhibit might be what you’ve been looking for. Featuring 400 pieces of fine nude art and extreme erotica photographs by 20 photographers, this event is sure spice up your holiday. Mingle with some of the photographers and stay for the leather fashion show at 7:30pm.

“Mortified’s Doomed Valentine’s Show” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.dnalounge.com. Doors open at 6:30pm. Show starts at 7:30pm, $14-21. Sat/8, 7:30pm at the Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. “Mortified” is a nationally-loved, comic excavation of the artifacts of teenage angst (i.e. journals, home movies, letters, poems, etc.) shared by the original authors. Complete with a house band, these stories cover topics such as worst hand job, first puff, and Bible camp. Some of these stories may make you cringe with sheer awkwardness but they might make your high school experience seem slightly less tragic.

SF Beer Week Various Bay Area locations. www.sfbeerweek.org. Through Feb. 17. Every year this celebration of the Bay’s burgeoning microbrew macroculture exceeds our expectations and in 2013 we’ll be raising our steins yet again. Check the website for info on tastings, food-beer pairing dinners, educational offerings, and what special brew your favorite bar will be pouring on what night.

SATURDAY 9

“My Perverted Sucky Valentine Puts Out!” Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF. 8pm, $10-25 donation suggested. If you’ve fallen victim to a romantic rejection or two, you should know you’re not alone. In fact, tonight is a spoken word extravaganza focusing on topics such as: hot heartbreak, lust gone wrong, and ill-advised hookups. And let’s hear it for sponsoring sex-positive culture: your donations go to help the Center for Sex and Culture and St. James Infirmary continue those institutions’ rad, empowering programming.

Rare Device Valentine’s Trunk Show Rare Device, 600 Divisadero, SF. www.raredevice.net. Noon-6pm, free. Treat your Valentine (or yourself) with some awesome, locally-crafted goodies this afternoon. Between Zelma Rose’s cross stitched accessories, Jen Hewett’s lively prints, Emily McDowell’s inspirational illustrations, and Karrie Bakes’ gluten-free treats you are sure to walk away with something sweet.

Cupid’s Undie Run The Republic, 3213 Scott, SF. www.cupidsundierun.com. Pre-festivities start at noon, run begins at 2:30pm, $30. Register online. Strip down and sweat up for this mile long run around the Marina and Lombard Street. While your best lingerie gets all sweaty, you’ll also be helping to raise funds to benefit the Children’s Tumor Foundation. Warm up at the Republic before and afterwards with pre and post-run festivities.

SUNDAY 10

SPCA’s Be MineValentine’s Adopt-a-thon 201 Alabama, SF. www.sfspca.org. 10am-6pm, free. Nothing says “I love you” more than a puppy. Join the SF SPCA this weekend for its annual adoption extravaganza. Head over Friday night for a cocktail party, Saturday afternoon for dog and cat behavior seminars, or today for a puppy kissing booth, foster care bake sale, and prize wheel. All adoption fees are waived this weekend for animals from SF SPCA, SF Animal Care and Control, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue, and Family Dog Rescued.

MONDAY 11

“Edible Valentine Workshop” Autumn Express, 2071 Mission, SF. www.autumnexpress.com. 5-6pm. $10 if you register before Feb. 8, $15 at the door. Whether you’re still in school or not, passing out Valentine’s Day cards is fun. Head over to sustainability-oriented print shop Autumn Express to decorate some cookies and chocolate bars with icing and candies and whip up some cards for your big-kid class.

THURSDAY 14

One Billion Rising performance ritual First Presbyterian Church, 2619 Broadway, Oakl. www.bayarearising.org. 7-8:30pm, $10-100 donation suggested. Free for youth under 17. Purchase tickets online. Put your Valentines Day towards a good cause this year at a fundraiser for International Development Exchange (IDEX), an organization working to empower impoverished women across the globe. The evening will be a mix of spirituality, politics, and performances from local groups such as Youth Speaks and Mission Dance Brigade.

Dogpatch Wine Works date night Dogpatch Wine Works, 2455 Third St., SF. www.dogpatchwineworks.com. 6-8pm, $40. Few things spell out romance quite like wine and chocolate. Stroll around Dogpatch Wine Works’ tasting room sipping on some vino and snacking on locally-crafted Recchiuti chocolate. After your palette is satisfied you can tour the 15,000 square foot working winery.

“Returning Cupid’s Fire” Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF. www.cartoonart.org. 7-9pm, $10. If you are Valentine-less and planning on having a night in with Ben and Jerry, it’s time to change your plans. San Francisco comedians Ivan Hernandez, Colleen Watson, and Mike Capozzola feel your pain and will be performing anti-Valentine’s Day themed stand-up routines tonight. Refreshments will be served.

Tout Sweet Pâtisserie tasting Tout Sweet Pâtisserie in Macy’s Union Square, 170 O’Farrell, third floor, SF. (415) 385-1679, www.toutsweetsf.com. 7-8:30pm, $55 per person. Reservations recommended. Yigit Pura, chef and owner of this sweet shop, is now offering tastings at Tout Sweet, which for our purposes means a three-course dessert menu featuring a rotating selection of seasonal offerings, each paired with local artisanal wine and beer. If you already have some sweet Valentine’s Day plans don’t fret, Pura has more tastings scheduled for March 14 and April 11.

Hella Vegan Eats V-Day pop up dinner Dear Mom, 2700 16th St., SF. www.dearmomsf.com. 5pm-midnight, free. The Oakland–based traveling food vendor will be in the city to once again take over Mission bar Dear Mom. We are hoping their doughnut burger with secret sauce will be on tonight’s menu.

Valentine’s Day at the Armory Club The Armory, 1800 Mission, SF. tickets.armorystudios.com. 7:30 and 9:30, $55. Start the evening off on the upper floor of the historic Armory then head to a workshop led by porn starlet Rain DeGrey that focuses on teaching couples how to make fantasies reality. Afterward, enjoy specialty cocktails and aphrodisiac-themed appetizers at the luxe Armory Club across the street.

 

Something old, something new

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Something old, something new

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Once a year, long-time colleagues Todd Eckert and Nol Simonse share an evening showcasing their choreography. Unfortunately, the “Shared Space Six” program, presented last weekend at Dance Mission Theater, was not as promising as one would have hoped. Most dispiriting was that the evening’s best piece, Eckert’s Disparate Affinity, dates back to 2006.

Performed by Eckert and his former colleague at Robert Moses’ Kin, Katherine Wells, Disparate is a sensitively developed exploration of how two different people can inhabit similar universes. Here, they become aware of each other, finally get together only to separate again.

With her long-limbed physique, Wells looks as fragile as a reed, but she has a fierce and versatile technique, making her one of the finest dancers in the Bay Area. She and Eckert — strong, muscular, and sturdy — complemented each other excellently. At first occupying opposite spaces on stage, they engaged in a long-distance conversation. When they finally met, touch became an essential part of their connecting. As Eckert floated away, she was left holding in her hand the space he had occupied.

Unfortunately, Simonse badly misstepped in the premiere of his disappointing Kafka Sex Party, set primarily on himself and four male dancers, with Tanya Bello and Kaitlyn Ebert acting as, perhaps, guides to a netherworld. Referencing the fate of Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Simonse wiggled in with a giant shell on his back. He repeatedly asserted that this was who he was, and if you wanted to touch him, that’s what you’d get. Bello and Ebert, in black accessorized with aviator sunglasses, cheerfully liberated him, and the scene shifted to a dungeon.

Bathed in murky red light, the men — in black leather dance belts — pumped, stretched, and slid onto each other’s bodies, coupling and retreating. At one point, three of them squeezed themselves into a sandwich. These anonymous encounters occurred as if on cue, as did the periodic group hops and risings from the back like the spokes of a wheel. In the work’s third section, white streamers were lowered from a fan into a maypole for the men to dance around. Was it a dream or a nightmare, or both?

One of Kafka‘s difficulties may be that Simonse took a highly evocative literary reference but didn’t work with it enough (or, at least, not clearly enough). Also, the anonymous erotic encounters he tried to suggest are difficult to translate to the stage. They were both too stilted and too bland. The uncredited musical collage of rumbling drums threatening melodic strains had the kind of complexity that the choreography sadly lacked.

Last year, Simonse danced in a black ruffled skirt with Theatre Flamenco. He looked fabulous. So perhaps, it’s not surprising that for the premiere of I Could Never Make You Stay he donned a white facsimile. His and Eckert’s first try at co-creation yielded an unwieldy but harmless affair with some fine and a lot of meandering dancing. Each choreographer contributed a perspective on impermanence.

Eckert’s duet with handsomely trained newcomer David Schleiffers had the two men locked in a frozen head-to-head collision. It’s an image that would re-occur. They looked like boxers waiting for the referee to step in. But then some mysterious force started to turn and unglue them into luscious encounters with sensuously interlocking arms and a sense of spacious, though temporary, connection between them.

Taking a break from hanging laundry, Simonse’s well-paced solo sent him scurrying along the ground, loping across the stage, curling and shooting his limbs in all directions. Dancing on to his toes with his arms into ballet’s high fifth position, he projected his longing upward. I Could Never‘s most charming sequence, however, came with an unlikely duet for tall, sturdy and visibly pregnant Peta Barrett and a weasel-like Chad Dawson.

The white T-shirts on Simonse’s laundry line may have stood for past loves — but perhaps they were just ordinary white shirts. A quartet of women, in a feminist metaphor, wiped the floor with them, or donned them as accoutrements. The grand finale’s 16 whirling dancers cheerfully asserted as couples the work’s title, and indeed, they couldn’t make each other stay. Dressed in voluminous white wedding gowns, they looked as if they’d been plopped into creampuffs. Rigorously shaking their colorfully clad legs, they metamorphosed into circus artists.

Libertine dream

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Libertine dream

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO One of my supreme happy places, apparently, turned out to be the packed dancefloor of an underground fundraiser for Radical Faerie Burning Man camp Comfort and Joy, right around 3am a couple Fridays ago, when the drag queen DJ dropped “Rock the Casbah” and some behooded elfin rogue’s giant LED rainbow wings lit up and blinded me. Joe Strummer smiles from heaven, surely.

Alas, that drag queen, mi amiga grande Ambrosia Salad, will soon join the current nightlife exodus to Los Angeles, to follow her twinkling star (and cheaper rent) along the path to immortality — or at least an all-night churro cart. Can we get one here please thanks. But just when I despair of the city emptying of its precious idiosyncracies and after-dark characters, someone amazing pops up to charm the hotpants off of me and remind me of both San Francisco’s resilient weirdness and its cyclical subcultural nature.

“Oh, I moved out of the Castro when the drones moved in. Everyone started wanting to look the same, dress the same. It really took the fun out of the gay scene, these marching costumes coming in and stamping out the magic.” That’s twinkle-toned Todd Trexler, poster artist, AIDS nurse, and legendary bon vivant, speaking over the phone — not about about the samey-samey Wienerville the Castro has become, but the Castro clones of the mid-1970s. For all the renewed interest in the workboots, cut-offs, and mustaches of pre-AIDS SF gay culture (see local director Travis Mathews’ exciting, upcoming, James Franco-starring Interior. Leather Bar, which imagines the lost orgy footage from classic homoerotic/gay panic slasher flick Cruising and wowed ’em at Sundance last week), it’s good to remember there were also some fabulous butterfly dissenters to that macho wannabe world.

Trexler was a player in one of the seminal moments of alternative gay culture — after snagging an art degree from SF State, he designed the posters for the queer-raucous, acid-kaleidoscopic performance troupe The Cockettes’ first official shows, as well as the Midnight Movie series, later the Nocturnal Dream Shows at the Palace Theater in North Beach in the early ’70s, back when North Beach was a magnet for free-lovin’ freaks and nightlife oddities. (See, anything can happen). Now, he’s reprinted many of those iconic and visually stunning “Art Deco revival meets Aubrey Beardsley louche meets underground comics perversion” ink-and-photo masterpieces for surprisingly affordable purchase at www.toddtrexlerposters.com.

Divine in her iconic, kooky crinoline (“Basically she just threw on a bunch of stuff from the trunk of our car and voila, Divine!”) outside the Palace of Fine Arts for the “Vice Palace” play and, later, starring in Multiple Maniacs and “The Heartbreak of Psoriasis”; Sylvester looking his sultry best for a New Year’s Eve concert, and featured on a controversially explicit piece for decidedly hetero rock outfit the Finchley Boys; Tower of Power, Zazie dans le Metro, Mink Stole as Nancy Drew, the Waterfront gay bar — Trexler’s platinum stash of memorabilia will reinvigorate anyone zoinked out by our increasingly conformist, consumerist moment. (Trexler was prodded into reprinting by my favorite classic SF eccentric, Strange de Jim.)

And hey, there’s some hope for a freakish future, even: lauded local theater troupe Thrillpeddlers, which includes a couple gorgeous surviving Cockettes itself, will put on the Cockettes’ 1971, Trexler-postered “Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma” starting March 28, www.thrillpeddlers.com.

Trexler’s importance to gay culture doesn’t end with his glamourous posterization, however. After his ’70s time “crafting assemblage sculptures from gems found at Cliff’s Variety Store, hand-drawing the posters in the flat at 584B Castro Street, smoking weed with Sebastian [Bill Graham’s accountant, who instigated the whole Nocturnal Dream Emissions insanity], and hanging out at the Palace and the Upper Market Street Gallery,” he moved down to Monterey and became a registered nurse, cared for the first GRID, aka AIDS, patient in the area, and pitched in on the groundbreaking early work on the epidemic with UCSF and the National Institutes of Health.

“What troubles me most now,” he says, reflecting on his experience, “is the rising prevalence of HIV infections among young gay men.” Some cycles don’t need repeating, k?

 

BROWN SUGAR

Heck yes — the classic hip-hop soul joint is back, scooping you up for free after the Oakland Art Murmur’s First Fridays blast, which is amazing. Brown Sugar crew Jam the Man, The C.M.E, and Sake 1 spin with the Local 1200 crew on the street and then take it inside to the spanking new Shadow Lounge (formerly Maxwell’s). Welcome back, fellas.

Fri/1 and first Fridays, 9:30pm, free. Shadow Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakl.

 

MATTHEW DEAR

Moody-poppy Detroit techno pretty boy is a favorite around these parts. He may have started the recent (sometimes regrettable) trend of DJs singing, but he’s one of the best at it — and his compositions aren’t afraid to get deep and edgy.

Fri/1, 9pm, free. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com

 

VINTAGE

Icon Ultra Lounge is dead — please welcome new, neater venue F8 in its place. Also, after a horrific hit-and-run accident last year, beloved and crazy DJ Toph One is alive! He’s returned with his crew to reboot this eclectic-tuned early evening fave every Friday to fly you into the weekend.

Fridays, 5:30-9:30, free. F8, 1192 Folsom, SF. www.feightsf.com

 

KAFANA BALKAN SIXTH ANNIVERSARY

Holy Balkans, Batman! Six years of wild, whirling, stomping, shouting Romani-inspired music goodness from one of the best and most unique parties anywhere, with DJ Zeljko, the Inspector Gadje brass band, and a Balkan bellydance blowout with the inimitable Jill Parker and the Foxglove Sweethearts. Get there early.

Sat/2, 9pm, $15. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

 

GAVIN AND ROBBIE HARDKISS

OK, the headliner for this event is actually the excellent old-school California techno wizard John Tejada (along with fellow mage Pezzner playing live) downstairs in the big room of Public Works — but the big news is a reunion of two of SF’s wiggy, wowza Hardkiss Brothers all night long upstairs in the loft. Bigness!

Sat/2, $12 advance, $15 door. Public Works, 131 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

Noir Faze

Andrew Lam
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Noir Faze

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN While larger clothing companies are free to define their brand through glossy print campaigns and billboards staring out impassively over downtown shoppers, the little guys look elsewhere to establish identity.

Last week I went to visit a silver grill, affixed to the grin of a one Edwin Haynes, the unapologetically pierced founder of graphically subversive clothing line Sav Noir. Think T-shirts covered in upside-down crosses, hot nuns making out, and a priest hoisting a Bible, gun, and shotglass — that would be the brand’s first collection, now available. Think a tough black-and-white color palette setting off designs by local artist Henry Lewis. Also think about a back room of an unmarked studio space, which is where I was last week checking out his works of the devil, artfully arranged on an L-section sofa.

Haynes talks mess about Catholic school while members of his team — event promoter Traci P of female hip-hop crew Sisterz of the Underground and Bogl, bass-and-beat DJ and event producer — look on.

“These figures and these idols who you were forced to worship were the people doing the most dirty shit,” the ex-chef, promotor, and “fashion guy” explains as we look at his sartorial takedowns of religion splayed out before us on the couch cushions. It’s all there: slutty sisters, gangster priest, schoolgirl swilling beer. Sav Noir is adamantly for the alternative nightclub set — the people, Haynes tells me, who don’t have to wait for the end of office hours to become who really are.

That makes sense, it’s hard to picture a real estate agent rocking the white tee with the photo print of the sexily open mouth cradling pills on its tongue. (If you are a real estate agent who wears things like that, get in touch with me.)

You can cop Sav Noir’s hats and tees at Infinite (www.infinitesf.com), True (www.trueclothing.net), and Santa Cruz’s So Fresh (www.sofreshclothing.com). But you may as well make a night of it. The brand also hosts The Gift, a first Sunday dub-trap party at Vessel starring DJs Ruby Red Eye and Atlanta’s DJ Holiday. Bogl spins Tuesday nights at Monarch. The events look like they crack — the Jan. 26 launch at 1AM Gallery for the new line attracted a crowd that spilled out into the SoMa streets.

“At the end of the day, we’re all we have,” says FAZE Apparel (3236 21st St., SF. www.fazeapparel.com) co-owner Johnny Travis as he tours me around his sunny Mission space, past the racks of his own line’s SF-made button-downs with printed cuffs, peculiar pockets — just intricate enough to catch the eye, but not so crazy that they can’t be basics.

FAZE also hawks ace $21 beanies, made in LA with leather tags affixed here in the city. The line’s hoodies are lined with nursery school zoo prints, part of the “Animal City” collection that also includes a tee with snarling pumas and the words “Easy Pussy” in heavy metal slant letters. It’s streetwear, but with details that make it pop.

The shop also has one of the mores interesting arrays of hyper-local brands I’ve seen: there’s All Out Foul, a San Mateo line that supplies tees to the quickly-growing legions of Niners fans. Those tees sit alongside nautical-inspired ones designed by Charlie Noble, an Alameda Coast Guard vet. The different brands are great for the store, Travis tells me. The days of single-brand customers, he says, are over.

And FAZE (an acronym for “Fearless and Zealous Everyday”) is nothing is not group-oriented. “We don’t want to be an intruder to the community,” the SF native Travis tells me, wary of the fact that he just moved a business into a part of the Mission where rents are skyrocketing and many residents feel displaced. “We want to be a part of it.”

To that end, the regular art parties. At January’s FAZE event, the paintings created by the line’s artists on-site, made in front of the eyes of party attendees right there in the shop, were sold to benefit the Boys and Girls Club down the street. At the next event (at the shop Feb. 8, 6-10pm, free), proceeds will round another corner to another neighbor of FAZE, going to low income student support service Scholar Match. Of course, you’re welcome to buy clothes at the party.

“I know a lot of people try to get their stuff in the hands of celebrities,” says Travis. “But that’s not what we’re about. It’s people like you and I who carry brands.”

Nero worship

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Nero worship

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Though it’s much more a Southern than a Western — closer to Mandingo (1975) than Red River (1948), that’s for sure — Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained nonetheless pays specific homage to spaghetti westerns in its title and some stylistic fillips.

The subgenre of Euro-westerns that briefly revived the flagging American genre in the mid-to-late 1960s, spaghettis remain defined by their most famous creator, Sergio Leone. He kickstarted the vogue with 1964’s sleeper hit A Fistful of Dollars — a stark, nihilistic tale of greed and revenge that borrowed heavily from Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 Yojimbo and turned Clint Eastwood into an international idol. It wasn’t strictly the first of its type, but the unexpected splash it made, plus its director’s singular cinematic voice, would continue to define spaghettis long after their heyday had passed. The huge close-ups, austere widescreen vistas, sparse dialogue, and cynical and violent content were Leone signatures that would be widely imitated — not just because these films were highly commercial for a time, but because their essences were ones that could be mimicked effectively enough by the lowliest fly-by-night production company.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA0EUIKKgec

Before it breathed its last, the genre had coughed up about 600 such knockoffs, the vast majority between 1965 and 1972 or so. Most of them were made in haste, interchangeable in flavor and story, and tedious to all but the diehard fan. As with many Italian-born film export waves, this one ensured its quick demise by cranking out so much crap.

Of course, there were exceptions beyond Leone’s, probably the most beloved and certainly the most influential of them being the original Django. Playing a rare theatrical revival, Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 bloodbath took the morbidity and weirdness of spaghettis — at least compared to their generally wholesome American forebears — and ran amuck, pushing gallows humor to the edge of black comedy. While not nearly as well remembered in the US as the Eastwood films, it was huge at the time, so much so that at least 30 features with “Django” in the title followed, even when no character with that name appeared on-screen.

The reason for all this is that Django, and his movie, remain dead cool. At least you couldn’t get any cooler than that most alarmingly handsome of Italian actors Franco Nero in black floor-length duster and leather hat, dragging a coffin around the desert, striking a stylishly sinister balance between Eastwood’s Man With No Name and José Mojica Marins’ Coffin Joe. His Django was a sardonic figure of mystery seeking revenge on bandits led by a corrupt military officer. Umpteen unpleasant altercations later, there’s a great climactic shootout in a graveyard, cementing Django’s vaguely evangelical air with some outright blasphemy.

Just what was in that box? Death, natch, but not in the way you might think — Django used his coffin as a plus-sized version of the way a movie gangster uses a violin case. The film was so violent for its era, what with ears sliced off and a body count of nearly 150, that it was banned for many years in various countries. The multilingual, far-left-leaning Nero preferred to pursue artistic adventure rather than genre success, making few other westerns. He does, however, duly make a cameo appearance in Django Unchained, sans coffin but still looking mighty fine for 71.

DJANGO

Fri/18, 11pm, $8.50-$11

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

 

Capo’s

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Capo’s

virginia@bayguardian.com

APPETITE Tony’s Pizza Napoletana reigns for my favorite all-around pizza experience, because of its range of impeccable pies, from New York to Neapolitan. I’m no stranger to these categories, especially after years of living in what’s become a damn great pizza town. As an 11-time world pizza champion, Tony Gemignani has done the impossible: win 2007’s World Champion Pizza Maker prize at Italy’s World Pizza Cup, the only American and non-Neapolitan to do so. What makes Tony’s special is painstaking detail to which each style is prepared, right down to flour and ovens used, whether authentic versions of Detroit pizza cooked in a 550 degree gas oven, or a Jersey tomato pie that could make one weep with its garlic and tomato purity.

Enter Capo’s (“boss” in Italian), Gemignani’s new Chicago pizza endeavor. Consulting four scions of Chicago’s legendary pizza families (Marc Malnati of Lou Malnati’s, Leo Spitziri of Giordano’s, Jeff Stolfe from Connie’s, Tony Troiano of JB Alberto’s), he chose three ovens — one wood-fired and two brick, heated to different degrees depending on recipe — and is the only West Coast restaurant using Ceresota flour from one of Illinois’ oldest mills, a staple of Chicago’s most revered pizzerias.

Capo’s Prohibition-era setting (pressed tin ceiling included) is entirely my scene. From the doorman to a stylish host, it evokes a decades-old North Beach haunt, not a newcomer. Red leather booths named after Chicago mobsters, a functioning 1930’s telephone booth, a restored, 1960’s panoramic painting (found in the floor boards) of Adolf Restaurant once housed in the space… Capo’s is an ode to Chicago and San Francisco’s rich Italian-American immigrant history.

Sweet-spicy house Calabrese sausage ($18) in roasted peppers, caramelized onions, and light tomato cream sauce is dreamy. An antipasti platter ($12) feels sparse compared to antipasti “salads” of my New Jersey youth, dense with meat and cheese, but meats here are hand-sliced daily on an antique slicer in Capo’s front window. I rarely seeing Chicago specialties mostaccioli or conchiglie ($12 in pesto or tomato sauce, $13.50 in meat sauce) on West Coast menus; Tony’s mostaccioli is a beaut. Appropriately cheesy, baked in a wood-fired oven, red meat sauce seals the deal. Capo’s signature dish, quattro forni ($13), is limited to 20 a day due to the preparation required and well worth ordering. Like a glorified garlic bread, or as a waitress described it, doughnut, puffed bread is cooked four times in different ovens, doused in tomato sauce, mozzarella, garlic. If you have room and a warm whiskey crisp is available for dessert, get it.

Then there’s the pizza. While I’ve savored excellent thin crust in Chicago, even after multiple tries at original locations of legendary chains or solo favorites, I’ve yet to find deep dish remotely comparable to Capo’s or Bay Area deep dish havens, Zachary’s and Little Star. I won’t give up the hunt, but thus far for me eating deep dish here is better than going to Chicago (though I’d happily eat my way through Chicago any day).

Appropriate for a Chicago-influenced spot, there are four types of pies: deep dish, cast iron pan, stuffed, and cracker-thin ($17-35). You can’t go wrong. Meat blissfully dominates most pies (unless you build your own), whether folds of Italian beef, thinly shaved in authentic Chi-town fashion, or house Calabrese, fennel, or Italian sausages, shown off in the likes of the Sam Giancana or Old Chicago pies. Italian Stallion pizza, which I prefer in cracker-thin form, showcases Italian beef, heightened by a drizzle of horseradish cream and insanely good sweet-hot peppers you’ll find on a number of Capo’s pies. Flour-based crust gets texture and complexity from a dusting of cornmeal, while Tony reveals a key to its perfection: European butter and a bit of lard. Fresh cheese oozes, unlike chewy wads of low-quality mozzarella I’m faced with in some of Chicago’s venerable deep dish houses.

Elmer Mejicanos heads up a whiskey-centric bar program, housing over 100 American-dominant whiskies, while Tony mentions finding a few antique whiskey bottles dating back to the 1920s in the basement (when are we pouring?) Building your own Old Fashioned is a key menu focus, alongside a short-but-sweet cocktail list ($12). After trying every one on the menu, I’ve re-ordered only The Silencer. Carpano Antica takes the form of ice cubes melting in Campari, Seltzer Sister Soda and crystals of brandy — an ideally bitter, bright aperitif. A glass of Chianti or Montepulciano is well-suited to all that red sauce: Tony’s longtime business partner Marni McKirahan runs the wine program, also highlighting rare Midwest wineries.

If I seem to be gushing, perhaps I am. Visiting three times in the first month alone, I’ve sampled almost every listed pizza and cocktail. Some new openings are exciting, fresh, visionary. A spare few respect the past, even perfect it.

641 Vallejo, SF. (415) 986-8998, www.sfcapos.com

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com

 

YEAR IN MUSIC 2012: Blowing like the wind

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YEAR IN MUSIC 2012: Blowing like the wind

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Look, if I was doing my job properly, there’s no way in Hello Kitty I’d remember what happened on the club scene the past year. It’s all fuzzy shapes and drunk colors, like Barbara Bush in a bathhouse. Last February, it took me two whole pages of tiny type just to list my favorite weekly clubs, so I’m not gonna go into all that here. (I will say that parties like Housepitality, Honey Soundsystem, Lights Down Low, Icee Hot, Dub Mission, Non-Stop Bhangra, No Way Back, As You Like It, Forward, Deep, Base, and Sunset continued to introduce us to incredible DJs. And wasn’t there someone from Detroit here, like, every week?) Here are some things, however, I do recall

Loudest: Body and Soul at Mighty — my ears rang for a week, my feet for three.

Wowest: Amon Tobin’s giant tetris of digital video projections for his ISAM Live 2.0 tour at the Greek Theater.

Scary-Hottest: International leather techno entity Luther at Folsom Street Fair.

Coolest: Marco De La Vega, cross-genre promoter of the year, watching from the DJ booth as a kick-ass $3000 light falls on a table’s-worth of Balam Acab and Andy Stott’s live electronic equipment at Public Works. Then finishing his cocktail before handling the ensuing panic.

Wowest, part 2: The SF Symphony’s American Mavericks concert series (including a Kate Bush-referencing piece by DJ Masonic), SF Opera’s “Nixon in China,” the amazing Soundwave Festival, the hella robust Electronic Music festival.

Trippiest: Those immersive projections at Public Works, which turned Laurent Garnier’s live show into a cartoon-heart-filled rave aquarium and Jeff Mills’ into a star-map vortex.

Cutest: The tiny flashing lights on the ceiling of the remodeled, excellent 222 Hyde.

Latest: We got a trap club (Trap City), a new wave of cyber-horror drag performance artists (at Some Thing, Dark Room, High Fantasy), a packed gay sports bar (Hi Tops), a great-sounding new club (Monarch), a lunchtime dance party (Beats for Lunch, also at Monarch), an outbreak of vogueing (everywhere), a queer nu-hip-hop club (Swagger Like Us), a queer funk classics party (Love Will Fix It), and a weird “sparkling alcohol water” (Air). But we lost Club Six, which I loved. Also I think dubstep died.

Loveliest: Dancing in a church with 30 other people to hip-house legend Tyree Cooper, singing along to “Turn Up the Bass.” Watching real house parties like The People blow up in the East Bay. Sipping homemade sljivovica behind the decks with DJ Zeljko of Kafana Balkan. Doing the jerk ’til I melted at Hard French. DJing (eek!) Club Isis classics on vinyl at Go Bang. I think I almost made out with Kenny Dope at Red Bull Music Academy? Oh, and running into you.

>>Check the rest of our YEAR IN MUSIC 2012 issue.

 

MARKE B.’S 2012 JAMS

1. Todd Terje, “Inspector Norse” This was a dance music year that sometimes seemed to vacillate among three primary moods — prim sophistication, moneyed “indulgence,” and too-broad jokes. But Norwegian Terje dared proffer the sweetest humor in this instant earworm’s worth of re-engineered nostalgia, embracing the cheery electronic toodles of early ’80s British and Scandinavian TV show themes (cf. especially “Grange Hill” and “Swap Shop,” though not “Inspector Morse”) and bringing smiles back to the dance floor.

2. John Talabot, FACT Mix 315 A spectacular year for the Spaniard, whose expansive take on the decades-old Balearic sound already had him pegged for a 2012 favorite, even before he dropped excellent album Fin, which toyed with melancholic UK bass sounds and yielded my second favorite tune of the year, hopelessly romantic “So Will Be Now” with Pional. But this mix for FACT showed that the dark underpinnings of witchy house and the sunstroked uplift of Ibiza could be reconciled via a tingly rush of subtle, brilliant psychedelia. Trippy, lovely, and the right little bit of creepy.

3. Plan B, “Ill Manors” I detested The Prodigy the first time around — they were goofy twats who had nothing to be angry about. No surprise “Firestarter” was played for the Queen at this year’s Olympics opening ceremony. So much for anarchy in the UK, although Azaelia Banks mashing it up with “212” at Coachella was fun. UK rapper-singer Plan B managed to weld the Prodigy (and nascent drum and bass) revival to the real world anarchic energy of last year’s UK riots, his Tchaikovsky-sampling tune shivering with council flat rage, ambivalent violence, Olympic protest, and youthful nihilism. Watch his self-directed, horrifically poignant shoestring video, then laugh at the Grammys as accolades rain down on Romain Gavras’ extravagant ripoff for “No Church in the Wild.”

4. Rrose, Smoke Machine Podcast 069 Electronic Body Music for our time, rippling with muscular textures and ethereal trap doors.

5. Justin Martin, Crackcast 019 For all the diversity of the local scene, the Dirtybird crew is still our major player on the global dance music stage. (Of our three big breakout acts this year, Safeword is rad, Poolside is cute, Pillow Talk leaves me cold so far.) Fine, I adore them. Nobody else sounds like they’re having more fun while slyly executing tricky, emotionally satisfying bass maneuvers like Claude VonStroke and his stable. This year was stellar for the fiendishly clever Justin in terms of addictive mixes (his album “Ghettos and Gardens” was good, too, but I took issue with the insensitive tone of some of the promotional materials). This podcast, along with his Fabric and Clash ones, never left my iRotation.

OTHERS: MK, Old School Classics Mix; Le1f, “Wut”; Azaelia Banks, “Fierce”; Fantastic Mr. Fox, “San’en”; Andy Stott, “Luxury Problems EP”; Dutch Uncles, “Fester”; Ripperton, “Let’s Hope”; Sailor & I, “Tough Love (Aril Brikha remix)”; Jessie Ware and Julio Bashmore, “110%,”; Disclosure, “Latch”; Prince Club and Steve Huerta, “Can’t Let Go”; Bwana, “Baby Let Me Finish (Black Orange Juice Remix)”; Stereogamous, “Feel Love Anew”; Little People, “Aldgate Patterns.”

10 winter essentials

Andrew Lam
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culture@sfbg.com

MARINE LAYER HI-LO CROPPED SWEATER, $88

American Apparel’s appeal fades when we discovered this line of comfy basics made right here in the city. Marine Layer (2209 Chestnut, SF; 498 Hayes, SF. www.marinelayer.com) specializes in men’s and women’s tees, but we love its warm-yet-trendy cropped sweater, whose hemline dips low in the back.

OTTER WAX BAR, $13

Ditch the wet look and feel: wax your sneakers, jeans, and canvas or denim clothing. Seal in that fresh feeling — also available in heat-activated dressing form — at Voyager (365 Valencia, SF. www.thevoyagershop.com). Just rub it on and you’ll be fly and dry.

VAUTE COUTURE EMILY COAT, $356.25

We swoon for this online brand’s (www.vautecouture.com) animal product-free — no itchy woolens or dead cow here! — fashion. Thanks to the Emily’s tie-front belt, winter-time no longer means you have to look like a shapeless sack of spuds.

PAUL MADONNA CANVAS SHOULDER BAG, $23

Local cartoonist Madonna’s “All Over Coffee” comic and books are essential — his illustration of the Golden Gate Bridge one Crissy Field on this kicky bag is a sparkling example of his art, available at one of our favorite bookstores ever, Green Arcade (1680 Market, SF. www.thegreenarcade.com)

JENNIFER BAIR JACKET, $124

These one-of-a-kind faux suede coats with vintage-inspired print lining make great cover-ups on milder winter days. Residents Apparel Gallery‘s (541 Octavia, SF. www.ragsf.com) selection of made-in-the-city pieces is a great one-stop shop for Bay Area gear.

SAN FRANPSYCHO BEANIE, $20

We found you an everyday hat straight from the surfer-bros of San Franpsycho, whose shop (505 Divisadero, SF. www.sanfranpsycho.com) sells the makings of insta-cred among sporty, hip types in town.

BENEDUCI HANK BOOTS, INQUIRE FOR PRICE

These brass tack soles will power you down winter-wet sidewalks but honestly, you could rock Beneduci‘s (www.beneduci.com) Italian leather kicks year-round in style. Local cred: the brand makes everything right here in SF. The boots will be available at Firehouse 8 (1648 Pacific, SF) on Sat/15 and Sun/16 and on Dec. 21-22.

KURABO BLACK 13 OUNCE MENS DENIM PANTS, $128

The perfect pair of pants, proudly produced in SF by Taylor Stitch (383 Valencia, SF. www.taylorstitch.com) for stylish gents? Possibly. Dig the local provenance — Taylor Stitch is bursting with hometown-made style. And the deep black will hide unsightly rain splashes.

RAINSHIELD O2 UNISEX CYCLING JACKET, $25

Ultralightweight, breathable, packable, and insanely cute, these zip-ups, available at Market Street Cyclery (1592 Market, SF. www.marketstreetcyclescom) will keep the drops off your pop-a-wheelie while helping up your mist-shrouded visibility factor.

CAT WALKING STICK UMBRELLA, $30

Yes, yes, we get the raining cats and dogs joke, but this is the purrfect shield against the storm: a sky-blue kitty cavorting on a midnight blue canvas, protecting you on this seriously sturdy yet lightweight piece from the San Francisco Umbrella Company (www.sfumbrella .com). Cats!

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 5

“Hidden in Plain Bite: Overlooked Opportunities for Food System Reform” 371 10th St., SF. (323) 828-7040, www.ffacoalition.org. 6:30-9pm, $8-12. Come for this informative and eye-opening discussion that tackles new and innovative measures to reform our dastardly food system. Organic food offerings and a silent auction will follow the talk.

Lemony Snicket The Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. (415) 863-8688, www.booksmith.com. 5-8pm, free. Beleaguered children’s book hero Lemony Snicket will be on hand at the Booksmith this evening for a meet and greet promoting his latest effort, entitled Who Could That Be at This Hour?

FRIDAY 7

“Terra e Asfalfo: Around the World on a Vespa” The Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF. (415) 500-2323, www.terraeasfalto.it. Through Dec. 16. Opening reception: 6-10pm, free. How anyone can travel all around the world on those speedy little cosmopolitan numbers is beyond us. But Italian couple Giorgio Serafino and Giuliana Foresi did it — and the duo will be presenting their travels via this photo exhibit, where pictures of destinations such as Thailand, South Africa, and Italy will be on display.

Mission Holiday Block Party Various businesses on Valencia from 23rd to 14th Sts. and surrounding blocks, SF. www.valenciastreetsf.com. 5-10pm, free. Get half price on sangria at Locanda, 20 percent off clothes and accessories at Five and Diamond (while Shovel Man plays!), check out a George Chen-hosted comedy program at Lost Weekend Video’s CineCave and more at this holiday celebration in Valencia’s neighborly businesses.

“Snapshot” Southern Exposure, 3030 20th St., SF. (415) 863-2141, www.soex.org. Through Dec/20. Opening reception: 7-9pm, free. The Youth Advisory Board of Southern Exposure’s new exhibit explores the relationship between the medium of photography and the notion of memory. An experimental work, “Snapshot” features young artists’ take on fact and fiction through digital manipulation.

“Aloha on Ice” Embarcadero ice rink, Justin Herman Plaza, SF. (415) 392-2235, tinyurl.com/alohaonice. 4-7pm, free. Come bask in the warm aloha spirit at this pop-up luau. You’ll have a number of ways to get tropical at this event, like sampling Hawaiian food, making fresh flower leis, and mugging in a Hawaii-kitsch photo booth. Drink umbrellas and hellacious sunglasses tan not included.

DIY Library Party Mission Bay Branch Library, 960 Fourth St., SF. (415) 626-7512, www.friendssfpl.org. 7-10pm, free for members and friends of members, $35 for membership. The DIY aesthetic has permeated nearly all facets of our contemporary culture, so it’s past time for our local library to get in on the low budget fun. Get engrossed by an impromptu arts and crafts project, and mingle with cocktail-sipping fellow literary fans at this free event.

Hurricane Sandy Benefit Show Modern Eden Gallery, 403 Francisco, SF. www.hope-beyond.com. 6-9pm, free. We on the West Coast are lucky to not have to deal with terrors of hurricanes, which is why we urge to attend this art show benefiting our fellow Americans on the other side of the nation.

SATURDAY 8

East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest Berkeley City College, 2050 Center, Berk. eastbayalternativepressbookfair.blogspot.com. 10am-5pm, free. The good folks behind this event decided to go bigger with the third installment of the East Bay Alternative Book and Zine fest. There’ll be workshops on zines, screen-printing, letterpress, and comic illustration in addition to speeches from dozens of local writers.

Vagabond Indie Craft Fair Urban Bazaar, 1371 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 664-4422, www.urbanbazaarsf.com. Also Dec/9. Noon-6:30pm, free. Etsy addicts take note! Urban Bazaar in conjunction with Etsy and the SF Etsy team will be putting the third annual holiday-themed Vagabond Indie Craft Fair. Come peruse with your keen shopper’s eye the emporium of hip, fun, and crafty items. Also probably a good idea to do some holiday shopping while you’re at it.

Holiday Indie Mart Speakeasy Brewery, 1195 Evans, SF. www.indie-mart.com. Noon-6pm, free. If you’ve never made it out to Speakeasy’s Bayview brew factory, now’s the perfect time. Indie Mart is assembling over 45 vendors, who will come equipped with DIY giftables you’ll be stocked on for your family and friends. Bonus round: today the brewery will unveil its new taproom, designed by Indie Mart creator Kelly Malone and friends.

KPFA Crafts Fair Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St., SF. (510) 848-6767 ext. 646, www.kpfa.org/craftsfair. Also Dec/9. 10am-6pm, free–$10. Go to the Vagabond Crafts Fair on Saturday and the KPFA Crafts Fair on Sunday, or vice versa or do a crafts fair crawl by attending both on the same day! Sponsored by the progressive-minded folk at the KPFA 94.1 radio station in Berkeley, this festivity is going all out by bringing craftwork from over 200 local artisans featuring glass, leather, and stone items.

MONDAY 10

Pladra Holiday Launch 5-8pm, free. 111 Minna, SF. www.pladra.com SF flannel company Pladra shows off its latest line of shirts for men and women at this holiday party and trunk show. Everything’s sourced and made in the Bay Area, for a hyperlocal, winter-ready shopping experience.

TUESDAY 11

A Long Day’s Evening Translation City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF. (415) 362-1901, www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. Turkish experimental modernists rejoice! Aron Aji has finally translated A Long Day’s Evening by Bilge Karasu for our literary loving. Attend this talk today by Aji to hear how the process took shape.

 

Likes the name

Andrew Lam
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Likes the name

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN “People were like, we wanna wear some clothing from you guys,” San Franpsycho owner Christian Routzen tells me from the behind the counter of his DIY brand’s newish (it’s seven months old) location on newly-trendy Divisadero Street. “But we didn’t make clothing.”

I guess sometimes the brand just comes first, and then the product. Or rather, the movie comes first. Routzen made a 2001 Ocean Beach surf film with cohort Andy Olive called, yes, San Franpsycho. Apparently the flick, along with its 2005 follow-up San Franpsycho: Wet and Wreckless, captured the imagination of certain sector of San Francisco. They wanted T-shirts, so Routzen and Olive located some silkscreening gear and a mail truck and became a presence at Indie Marts, bars, and street fairs, silkscreening clothing with their bon mot. I’ve seen them do it, they get slammed.

“We had people taking off their shirts. Men, women, and children,” concludes Routzen. People resonated with the name, he says.

A couple of bangin’ blonde girls interrupt our conversation to buy wristbands for the surf fashion show the brand is hosting at Public Works that night. Later, I see a shot on Instagram involving a runway, a lot of thigh-high American Apparel tube socks, and bikinis. That same weekend, San Franpsycho was hosting a surf tournament and a poker competition.

The girls recede into the distance, banded. And then a guy interrupts us asking about customizing an aqua sweatshirt, as if to complete the San Franpsycho milieu I’ve found myself in the middle of.

But I kind of want Routzen to spell it out. “Can I ask you a less tangible question? Why’d they want to wear clothes from a bunch of guys that don’t make clothes? It’s all the name, really?”

Routzen shrugs, and hands me a DVD copy of Wet and Wreckless ($20, buy a copy at the store.) I watch it with my roommate the next night. It is a Jackass-paced piece of San Francisco bro-moblia, featuring gentlemen named Simo, Doobie, and Brownie, guys bouncing their penises while frying hot dogs in the kitchen, claymation sex, girls making out, an Ocean Beach parking lot shooting, a broken surfboard montage, and an incoherent interview with Andy Dick. Also: barrel rolls.

Most of the SFP dudes are pretty hot, they surf gnarly OB waves, and they straight-boy don’t give a fuck. Ding ding ding! Well yeah, obvs everybody wants San Franpsycho to rub off on them.

Which is a totally unfair analysis, because Olive and Routzen have (in addition to being attractive) created a real cute, real-real, repurposed wood retail galaxy. The Golden Gate Bridge-San Franpsycho logo can now be found on man-tanks, lady tanks, dog sweatshirts, boy shorts, hoodies, aprons, duffel bags, water bottles. The machines they’re printed on are clearly visible in the shop’s workspace.

The boys also sell a host of products made by buddies who live in the immediate neighborhood. The ginger-Afroed Olive holds up an expanse of black Cordura nylon, excitedly gesturing at a bank on the wall of the classic roll-top, leather-strapped Motley Goods backpacks (also available on Etsy) that it will be made into. That brand’s based out of their friend’s apartment, Olive says. “Literally, two blocks away.” The shop also stocks Sea Pony Couture (sea-pony-couture.myshopify.com), a line of delicate gold-chained, be-charmed jewelry by San Franciscan Fatima Fleming.

505 Divisadero, SF. (415) 829-7874, www.sanfranpsycho.com

Far, far away from the San Franpsycho clubhouse sits a Noe Valley clothing store that has absolutely zero hot men in it, but managed to pull me in on the strength of its color palette alone (I am, at my heart, a primary shades kind of person. This is Atlantis and I’m like, nautical.)

Said shop was Mill, and it’s MILF territory — at least, such were the women audibly rhapsodizing over the shop’s stock while I was there, and who were subsequently drawn in by the incredibly informative employees for a conversation about respective kids’ ages, the pleasures of teaching one’s youngster how to give mommy a foot massage, etc.

I was back in the dressing room trying on my Japanese striped/solid BlueBlue boatneck dress, silk drawstring pants with daisy motif by Janezic (a line designed by Michele Janezic, Mill’s store manager whose drapey tank tops are a touch more club-ready and sexy than the rest of Mill’s offerings), and high-waisted, below-the-knee, A-line Levi’s denim skirt.

“I just can’t believe this! It’s amazing,” went the raptures. I should mention that Mill is the brand-new female wear offshoot of beloved Castro store Unionmade. Unionmade was recently dinged by Gawker because its clothes are not, sadly, union-made. Nonetheless, its collection has garnered an enthusiastic following among those who swoon for spendy, high quality denim and other rugged forms of fashion. These followers included females, leading to the birth of Mill, which carries some unisex items in addition to female items from the same brands as Unionmade.

“The philosophy of Mill is to offer classic, quality, and timeless products,” Janezic told me in an email after my visit (I didn’t cop any of the items I tried on, but that was more a question of insufficient funds than personal proclivity because I wanted them all very badly. Even the Barbour “Morris” waxed utility jacket that seemed like a must-have for the drippy SF winter was $379, so I guess I must not-have it sob.)

But I’ll tell you this: if Mill ever needs someone to watch the store at night, say curl up on a pile of goldenrod Levi’s wool trenches lined with poncho material next to its stacks of design mags, wake up in the morning and go out brand representing in some Imogene + Willie jeans (this is cute — manufactured in Tennessee by a twangy couple who started in a gas station basement and still get their fabric from one the country’s last and oldest denim factories) and Gitman Bros. gingham button-ups…

… well, at least now they know my name.

3751 24th St., SF. (415) 401-8920, www.millmercantile.com

Run over by a reindeer

Andrew Lam
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Run over by a reindeer

culture@sfbg.com

EVENTS

Union Square ice-skating rink Union Square, SF. www.unionsquareicerink.com. Through Jan. 16, 10 a.m.-11:30 p.m. except for when closed for private parties, $10 for 90-minute session. Sweetheart, the rink is open, grab my hand and try not to twist an ankle as we glide in circles around downtown’s living room.

Westin St. Francis sugar castle Westin St. Francis, Landmark Lobby, 335 Powell, SF. www.westinstfrancis.com. Through Jan. 24, on view 24 hours/day. Don’t lick it. For although this ever-growing sweet behemoth which each holiday season occupies the lobby of downtown’s classic luxury digs with its 1,300 pounds, 20 towers, 30 rooms, and sugar replicas of 2012’s movers and shakers has a hold on our heart, its original dimensions were sugar-spun back in 2005. Incredibly made, undeniably festive, but altogether inappropriate for dietary purposes.

Jack London Square holiday tree lighting Jack London Square, Oakl. www.jacklondonsquare.com. Nov. 30, 4:30-7pm, free. Performances by Disney-approved pop stars! Reindeer petting zoo! Miss California 2012 and a kids dress-up station with costumes from the Oakland Ballet! You’ll be hard-pressed not to find some holiday cheer at this annual lighting of Jack London’s fir tree for the masses.

Oakland-Alameda Estuary Lighted Yacht Parade Visible from Jack London Square, Oakl. www.lightedyachtparade.com. Dec. 1, 5:30pm, free. Let those cheeks get rosy, it’s boat-watching time. This yearly tradition sees the yacht owners of the East Bay putting their aquatic rides on display, stringing bulbs galore across decks and sails.

Festival of lights Union between Van Ness and Steiner, Fillmore between Union and Lombard, SF. www.sresproductions.com. Dec. 1, 3-7pm, free. Wiggle your nose at Santa at this explosion of twinkly tinsel and Cow Hollow reindeer — today Union Street puts on the holiday glitz and lays out the welcome mat. Cudworth Mansion (2040 Union) will be hosting a cupcake-decorating session from 3:30-5:30pm, at which Old St. Nick himself will make an appearance out front.

Golden Gate Park holiday tree lighting McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan, SF. www.sfrecpark.org. Dec. 6, 5pm, free. A tradition started by Golden Gate Park grandfather and San Francisco’s first park superintendent John McLaren in 1929, the lighting of the tree returns to Fell Street for the 83rd year in a row. Accompanying fanfare includes live performances, carnival rides, and a visit from Saint Nick.

Great Dickens Christmas Fair Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, SF. www.dickensfair.com. Fri/23 and Sat.-Sun. Sat/24-Dec. 23, 10am-7pm, $21-25. For an ace weekend drunk this holiday season, toodle over to the Cow Palace. Once ensconced in the warm period embrace of the Dickens Fair, you will have the run of five bars (absinthe!), a multitude of meat pie shoppes, hilarious accents, near-constant stage shows, and the company of “famous Victorians,” including Charles Dickens and Her Majesty, the queen herself.

Family holiday crafts day Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF. (415) 554-9600, www.randallmuseum.org. Dec. 1, 10am-3pm, free admission, activities fees vary. Bring the kiddos to the always-free-admission Randall Museum so they can spend the morning making holiday decorations and gifts. Cap off the morning with a performance by Asian American performance troupe Eth-Noh-Tec and its fusion of ancient and contemporary movement.

Community Hanukkah candle lighting Jewish Community Center, 3200 California, SF. (415) 292-1200, www.jccsf.org. Dec. 8-14, 4:30pm, free. Join up with your neighbors for the Jewish Community Center’s daily lighting of the menorah in the building’s atrium. Attend the Shabbat celebration on Dec. 14 for a family storytelling session, grape juice, hallah, and Hanukkah gelt.

Bill Graham Menorah Day Union Square, SF. www.chabadsf.org. Dec. 9, festivities start at 3pm, menorah lighting at 5pm, free. Each day from December 8-15, a candle will be ceremoniously lit on the Bill Graham mahogany menorah, a gift from the famous San Francisco promoter to his city. But on the 9th, Bill Graham Menorah Day festivities will occupy Union Square, a beautiful beginning to the Festival of Lights in the city.

Public library winter celebration Bernal Heights Library, 500 Cortland, SF. www.sfpl.org. Dec. 12, 6:30-8:30pm, free. The library’s got all kinds of free holiday programming this year, from cupcake-decorating and card-making to a magic show with a winter wonderland theme. Today’s no exception: join the Bernal Heights community for a kid-friendly celebration featuring the Bernal Jazz Quintet, refreshments, and children’s movies.

Frosting the Conservatory Conservatory of Flowers, 100 John F. Kennedy, SF. (415) 831-2090, www.conservatoryofflowers.org. Dec. 15, 11am-3pm, $10. Make your own ginger-greenhouse at this event amid the hothouse blooms of the Conservatory of Flowers. This events gets our thumbs-up for guaranteed toastiness, because being warm and cozy is a pre-req for Christmas cheer.

Jewish Christmas with Broke Ass Stuart The Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com. Dec. 25, 5-11pm, $10. Strip dreidel set to the tune of streaming Woody Allen, Larry David, and Sascha Baron Cohen footage sounds like our kind of Christmas. Such was the vision of DJ Matt Haze and host Broke Ass Stuart, who designed this kitschy extravaganza for all of you (Chosen and Left Behind alike) who can’t stomach staying in on a perfectly good day off. Did we mention there will be a Chinese food buffet?

Kwanzaa celebration Bay Area Discovery Museum, 557 McReynolds, Sausalito. www.baykidsmuseum.org. Dec. 26, 9am-5pm, free. A traditional Kwanzaa altar will greet you upon arriving at the kids museum’s celebration of African-American culture, featuring two performance (at 11am and 1pm) by African Roots of Jazz.

PERFORMANCE

The Christmas Ballet Various times and Bay Area locations. www.smuinballet.org. Nov. 23 — Dec. 23, $25-65. Back by popular demand, the Smuin Ballet Company returns with this annual production, split this year into two acts: “Classical Christmas” and “Cool Christmas.” Both promise eye-opening, energetic entertainment set to eclectic tunes from Elvis to klezmer.

A Christmas Carol American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary, SF. (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. Nov. 30-Dec. 24, various times, $20–$160. Stressful election year and rumors of apocalypse tightened those purse strings? Exorcise your inner Scrooge at this classic stage production of Charles Dickens’ terrifying ode to generosity and kindness towards diminutive children.

The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF. www.victoriatheatre.org. Dec. 6-30, Thu.-Sat. 8pm, Sun. 7pm, $30. Our cover girl Cookie Dough co-stars as Sophia Petrillo in this now-traditional SF holiday stage production of the classic sitcom that employs more shoulder pads, even, than the original TV show. You’ll never know a catty elderly network television star until you’ve seen her re-enacted by a drag queen. Buy tickets pronto, the shows usually sell out.

California Revels Oakland Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside, Oakl. (510) 452-8800, www.californiarevels.org. Dec. 7-9, 13-15. Fridays 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays 1 and 5pm, $20-55. Feast and family are cornerstones of this annual interactive period piece performance celebrating the winter solstice. Hoist your mead and turkey leg and sway to the music, friends, good times will be upon ye here.

The Nutcracker Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF. www.cityballetschool.org. Dec. 8, 2pm & 7pm; Dec. 9, 2pm, $20. Yes, everyone does The Nutcracker. At this point, it’s like the Rocky Horror Picture Show of ballet. (Would that ballet patrons donned Rat King costumes to attend!) Embrace the tradition, and check out the City Ballet School’s production of a classic.

Charles Phoenix Retro Holiday Show Empress of China Ballroom, 838 Grant, SF. www.charlesphoenix.com. Dec. 12, 8pm, $25. The creator of the Cherpumple, a pie-stuffed cake concoction that rises to the dizzying heights of kitsch, humorist Charles Phoenix celebrates the retro in every occasion. Tonight, he regales the crowd with tales of his favorite SF landmarks, road trips, and yes, feats of food fantasy.

Holiday youth mariachi concert Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. www.missionculturalcenter.org. Dec. 14, 7:30-9pm, $15. Three mariachi troupes made of young people join forces for this exciting holiday program. The hat-dropping, guitar plucking action will be highlighted by Zenon Barron’s Mexican youth folk dance class.

The Snowman Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF. (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. Dec. 22, 11am, $13.50-57. Even the smallest budding season ticket holder will find this film-symphony presentation of Joe Nesbø’s classic children’s book a welcome boost to their holiday cheer. The animated version of this story of a youg’n’ whose bud is a Frosty-like chap will soar when paired with the world-class musicians of the SF Symphony.

Kung Pao Kosher Comedy New Asia Restaurant, 772 Pacific, SF. www.koshercomedy.com. Dec. 22-25, various times, $44-64. There’s nothing like having dinner on Christmas to up your alterna (or simply, not pan-Christian) cred. Add stand up comedy and you have a winning formula, which is obvious from the longevity of Lisa Gedulig’s annual show. This year features yucks from Judy Gold, Mike Capozzola, and Adrianne Tolsch.

Clairdee’s Christmas Yoshi’s San Francisco, 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600, www.yoshis.com. Dec. 24, 8pm, $20. Everything could use a little soul in lives and the holidays are no exception. Come hear the sounds of soul-jazz vocalist Clairdee, and soak in her ensemble’s rhythmic takes on Christmas standards.

“Holiday Memories” double feature A rare 16mm showing of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales will be accompanied by a screening of The Sweater, a tale of a young hockey player’s passion for the sport, and the dangers that come of wearing the wrong jumper. Dec. 22, 2pm, Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF. (415) 563-7337, www.exploratorium.edu

PEACE ON EARTH

Darkness and Light: A Hanukkah Meditation Retreat Jewish Community Center, 3200 California, SF. (415) 292-1200, www.jccsf.org. Dec. 9, 10am-5pm, $50-60. No prior experience is needed for this day-long workshop on finding the light within during the Hanukkah season. Sitting and walking meditation will be covered — the perfect primer for a month that can try the patience of even the most festive reveler.

Winter solstice ceremony San Francisco Zen Center, 300 Page, SF. (415) 863-3136, www.sfzc.org. Dec. 21, 6:15pm, free. Recharge on the longest night of the year in the peaceful confines of the SF Zen Center. The crowd here promises to be made of meditation newbies, Zen Center students, and all those in-between. It will also be your best bet to avoid jingles and tinsel, if that’s what your body is craving at this point.

Reclaiming’s Sing Up The Sun ritual Inspiration Point parking lot, Tilden Park, Berk. www.reclaiming.org. Dec. 21, 6:30am, free. Wake up before the sun does to greet it on this, the day of the year when it spends the least time out of its bed. A pagan celebration, you’re welcome to bring musical instruments and a warm Thermos of liquid to the community gathering.

GIFTS

Celebration of Craftswomen Herbst Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, SF. (650) 615-6838, www.celebrationofcraftswomen.org. Nov. 24-25, Dec. 1-2, 10am-5pm, $9 or $12 two-day pass. The first edition of this alternative holiday fair took place 34 years ago at the now-defunct Old Wives’ Tales Bookstore on Valencia Street with 22 female makers-of-things. Today, the event fills the Herbst Pavilion, features 150 juried artists and a mini-film festival. It’s still the best place for feminist shopping, some things don’t change.

Holiday Design Bazaar Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, No. 109, SF. www.artsedmatters.org. Nov. 30, 5-8pm; Dec. 1, noon-6pm, free. An arts fair with 25 local creators, plus live music and refreshments that may well make a difference in our kids’ art education. The event is a benefit for Arts Ed Matters, a group that is looking to build community support for art in schools.

Creativity Explored holiday art sale Creativity Explored, 3245 16th St., SF. www.creativityexplored.org. Dec. 1-2, noon-5pm, free. Shop at this studio for developmentally-disabled artists and half of your bill will go straight into their pocket — standard practice for Creativity Explored, which has been the real-deal spot for outsider art in San Francisco since 1983.

Paxton Gate holiday party Dec. 1, 3-6pm at Paxton Gate’s Curiosities for Kids, 766 Valencia; 8-10pm at Paxton Gate, 824 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-1872, www.paxtongate.com. One of the city’s most beloved families of taxidermy/kid’s toys/nursery shops, Paxton Gate is turning two decades of age this weekend. What better time to shop there? And what better to get your face painted “Victorian-style” (?!), check out stilt walkers and an accordionist-ballerina duo, and eat snacks during the day at its kids location — then walk two doors down later that night for more circus freakery, door prizes and a Hendrick’s gin open bar at 826 Valencia’s pirate shop?

Palestinian Craft Fair Middle East Children’s Alliance office, 1101 Eighth St., Berk. www.mecaforpeace.org. Dec. 1-2, 10am-5pm, free. Sip Arabic coffee while you paw through painted ceramics from Gaza, children’s book, scarves, West Bank olive oil, and more at this chance to support a nonprofit benefiting craftspeople living in Palestine — a particularly salient cause in this year of war and turmoil.

Bazaar Bizarre Concourse Exhibition Center, East Hall, 620 Seventh St., SF. www.bazaarbizarre.org. Dec. 1-2, 11am-6pm, free. This traveling indie craft fair stocks all the twee and yippee you need to get your gift recipients in your pocket. New in 2012: a mini-version of Forage SF’s Underground market, for all your small biz-sourced holiday edible needs.

Muir Beach Quilters Holiday Arts Fair Muir Beach Community Center, 19 Seascape, Muir Beach. www.muirbeach.com/quiltersfair. Dec. 1, 10am-5pm, Dec. 2 10am-4pm, free. Make a blustery beach journey that has time to spare for handicraft browsing. This annual gift fair stocks locally-made knickknacks by local groups (Muir Beach Garden Club included), and has more than retail opportunities. Hands-on crafts bars will stoke the creative fire of kids and big person shoppers alike.

La Cocina Gift Bazaar Crocker Galleria, 50 Post, SF. www.giftbazaarsf.com. Dec. 7, 1-7pm, free. You’re not going to have problems finding foodie-friendly presents at this fair — but getting them safely to their intended destination sans bite marks might be a problem. La Cocina business incubator program graduates Clairesquares, Onigilly, Love & Hummus Co., Chiefo’s Kitchen, and more will all have their wares for sale.

East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest Berkeley City College, 2050 Center, Berk. Dec. 8, 10am-5pm, donations suggested. www.eastbayalternativebookandzinefest.com. For the indie comic nerds on your list, you’ll want to check out this expo of all things zine. Talks by New Yorker illustrator Erik Drooker and Go the Fuck to Sleep author Adam Mansbach spice up the fair’s schedule and there’s rumor of a dance party to take place at day’s end.

KPFA Crafts Fair Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St., SF. www.kpfa.org/craftsfair. Dec. 8-9, 10am-6pm, $10. Our public radio station hosts 220 artists and their wares for this no-brainer shopping weekend. Pick up unique wrapables from leather fashion to gourmet snacks to lotions and creams to pamper your loved ones.

Mercado de Cambio/The Po’ Sto’ market and knowledge exchange 2940 16th St., SF. www.poormagazine.org. Dec. 15, 3-7pm, donations suggested. We can pretty much guarantee you that there is no other gift fair that will have better hip-hop music. The Mercado de Cambio organized by POOR Magazine aims to counterbalance the corporatization of our holiday season. Go here for aforementioned live beats, indigenous crafts, Occupy gear, and POOR-published literature.

Renegade Craft Fair holiday market Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St., SF. www.renegadecraft.com. Dec. 15-16, 11am-6pm, free. A DIY gift wrap station is one of the attractions at this one stop for cute gift shopping, which makes one of its two yearly appearances in the Bay Area for the holiday season. The Oakland Museum of California will truck out its mobile “we/customize” exhibit, and of course, there will be crafters: over 250 will have booths hawking clothes, accessories, home stuff, kid stuff — most handmade, and most awesome.

 

GOLDIES 2012: Anna Ishida

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2012: Anna Ishida

GOLDIES One of the very first things you’ll notice about Anna Ishida, onstage and off, is an aura of self-possession that simultaneously grounds her and yet sets her ever-so-subtly apart in a crowd. But she also has a chameleon-like quality, a way of blending seamlessly into her surroundings, whether it’s a 49-seat black box theater on Natoma Street, or the hip buzz of Farley’s East in Oakland, where we meet over coffee and sandwiches.

It’s this very quality that helps make her such a compelling actor to watch onstage. No matter what the role, Ishida appears born to it, whether appearing as an allegorical peasant in an imaginary land (in The Forest War at Shotgun Players), a horny Russian aristocrat with a mic (in Beardo, also at Shotgun), or a frustrated former drag queen forced to languish in the glitter-dusted shadow of her employer-lover (in Boxcar Theatre’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch).

Professionally, Ishida appeared first in The Color of Justice at Oakland’s TheatreFIRST in 2002, following up with roles with a miscellany of companies such as Woman’s Will and the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, plus a long association with Shotgun Players. But this year, after a powerful performance as Tamora, Queen of the Goths, in Impact Theatre’s Titus Andronicus, Ishida’s been working to make herself even better-known as a triple threat: vocalist, actor, and independent film star. Her turn as Yitzhak in Boxcar’s summer production of Hedwig framed her trademark spiky hairdo in black leather and heartbreak, and matched her versatile vocals and formidable stage presence to the dozen glam-rock divas cast in the title role.

Her current show, Christopher Chen’s The Hundred Flowers Project with Crowded Fire Theater, casts her as an actor exploring the sprawling epic of China’s Cultural Revolution via the creative process. Earlier this year, she spent a week basically locked up in a room for 16 hours a day for her cinematic debut in HP Mendoza’s unsettling art house ode to the horror film genre, I Am a Ghost. The film — about a literal lost soul trapped in an unending routine — premiered at the 2012 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and has been getting raves elsewhere on the festival circuit.

Ishida was born in Tokyo; her family moved to the East Bay when she was four, where she first attended a mostly all-black kindergarten followed by an almost all-white Catholic school, which naturally meant she fit into neither. Gravitating towards music at a young age, she narrowly escaped becoming a business major in college and instead attended the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Southern California, where she connected on a deeper level to acting, and has mostly stuck with it ever since.

“The grass is always greener,” she confesses with a smile. “If I’m acting, I want to be singing; if I sing, I want to do Shakespeare; if I do Shakespeare, I want to dance. I’m fortunate I can do all three.”

Onstage, no matter what the role, Ishida never lets her focus flag, and her signature watchfulness gives her characters a feral, almost predatory depth. Perhaps most interestingly, in a climate of casting controversies particularly affecting Asian actors (such as a recent production of The Nightingale at La Jolla Playhouse, where a Caucasian actor played the Emperor of China), Ishida has successfully avoided being categorized by her racial makeup. With the exceptions of The Forest War and The Hundred Flowers Project, she’s been seen in roles she has successfully rendered colorblind.

“I’ve demanded that people see me as an actor, rather than as ‘Asian’ — and if I didn’t work, then so be it, but I was not going to be pigeonholed,” she emphasizes.

Then she laughs, considering some of her recent roles: a Russian tsaritsa, Poseidon (in Shotgun’s The Salt Plays, Part Two: Of the Earth), and Tamora. “I may have escaped being typecast as Asian,” she allows, “but now I’m typecast as the angry queen. The angry god-queen!”

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