Live Music

Meet-cute 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
1
Meet-cute 2011

V-DAY Maybe your hands brushed while browsing the vinyl jazz bins at Amoeba. Maybe she caught up with you on the new Valencia Street bike lanes to compliment your ride. Or perhaps your kite strings got entangled on Marina Green one windy afternoon …

For this year’s Valentine’s Issue, we asked our readers in relationships to submit their “meet-cute” stories — the improbable, mystifying, funny, weird, or, yes, mushy ways they met their snuggle bunny. We received dozens of responses, from the heartwarming to the bizarre. It was incredibly hard to choose, but below are our 10 favorites.

We also chose one lucky entrant at random to win a date (dinner for two and a live show) at Yoshi’s San Francisco. Congratulations, Sam Dahan!

 

MISTAKEN MAKE-OUT

Friday the 13th. Full Moon. Make-Out Room in the Mission. I was supposed to meet my roommate’s cute single friends in the front booth, but they were long gone. So I accidentally introduced myself to this pretty lady, thinking she was one of them. Bought drinks. Flirted. “So how long have you worked with Dana?” “Who the heck is Dana?” “Ummm … wanna go out sometime?” Now we’ve been married for seven years.

 

CELL IT, SWEETIE

My cell phone just wouldn’t charge anymore, and I needed a replacement. I walked into my cell phone carrier’s local storefront and spotted a hot “must have” at the end of the counter, who just happened to be matched with me for support on the floor. Due to the nature of the transaction, he didn’t get a commission. But after giving me his card, he soon got a call. Thank goodness my battery was charged! Two years and at least four phones later, he’s still in my cell phone “top five” and he’s No. 1 in my heart.

 

CARNAVAL OF LOVE

There was a big Carnaval party in the Mission, and a friend promised to fix me up with a cute Brazilian musician. They arrived well past midnight, when the party was winding down. The musician was starving after playing a gig. His English was minimal, but so cute with the accent. “There is no food in this house,” he said. “I’ll cook you breakfast,” I said. “To have breakfast, I must sleep in your home,” he said — to which I replied, “I don’t think you’re gonna get much sleep.” Our 20th anniversary is June 21. And yes, I cooked him breakfast … eventually!

 

MORE THAN A-PEELING

He was a San Francisco native, and so was she. They went separately to see live music at the Edinburgh Castle. Sitting next to one another at the bar, they began to chat. In the first 10 minutes, they discovered they had the same favorite movie, Wings of Desire. Before leaving, she gave him her number written on the only thing she had handy — a banana. This March, 10 years later, they will celebrate their tenth “Banana Day”: the anniversary of the day they met.

 

TWO SNAPS UP

I was a nightlife photographer. He was a nightlife promoter and manager. One day, we found ourselves venting to each other about all the drunk people we had to baby-sit all the time. Just as our eyes met, someone threw up at the bar across from us. The rest is history!

 

BOOKED FOR LOVE

It was a normal Saturday afternoon as I took my post at the front desk of a library at Cal. A few hours into my shift, a guy passed me by on his way to the exit, tossing a small folded note onto my desk before quickly boarding the elevator. I looked up and said, “Thanks!” not really thinking. I opened the note to find, “Hey, you’re cute.” Blushing, I folded it up and, four days later, finally decided to go for it. Three years later, I couldn’t be any happier or more thankful that I did.

 

CORNY?

On the first Saturday of March Madness, my buddy hosts an annual Corn Dog Day party in Oakland. Although it’s an unlikely place for vegetarians to get together, I first met Kerry at CDD 2004. While other partygoers tried to score a triple-double of 10 dogs, 10 servings of tots, and 10 beers, I tried to score a glance from the adorable redhead. We chatted briefly while waiting for veggie dogs during halftime of the Stanford-Alabama game. I was smitten; she was mostly just hungry. But seven years later, we’re preparing to celebrate our first CDD as husband and wife!

 

SHACKED UP

I can say without much exaggeration that I met the man of my dreams in a dirty shack. My first October in San Francisco, a friend invited me over for Sukkoth, the Jewish harvest celebration involving a temporary structure made of branches and flora — a sukkah. On arrival, his roommate Carlton greeted me. We talked all night in that sukkah. I’ve been smitten since! In our four years, Carlton’s inspired me to song many times. As I wrote in a song for my band, My First Earthquake: “Starry night in a twig hut/ Man, did I have the pot’s luck!”

 

PORN AGAIN

My then-boyfriend and I filmed an artistic amateur porn as a birthday gift for a friend of mine. We wound up hooking up together with the director, an insanely cute and talented nightclub videographer. After my BF and I broke up and I moved overseas for a couple years, I came back and reconnected with the videographer over a camping trip. We’ve been cuddle bunnies ever since.

 

NEVER GIVE UP

“Cute Fat Girl Seeks Cute Fat Boy for Romance and Companionship” was the headline. I was ready to give up searching, but a friend talked me into placing a personal ad (probably my umpteenth at that point) on Craigslist. I met Dub on a Thursday night and I was smitten from the start. Two weeks later, he presented me with a beautiful handmade garnet necklace as a token of his affection. Seven years later, we are happily married, still cute and fat, and I’m just as smitten — if not more.

A public apology for recommending the recent Madlib live DJ set

John Elberling
-
5
A public apology for recommending the recent Madlib live DJ set

When you recommend an event, you’re basically telegraphing expectations on an artist’s body of work. However, there is risk involved with live appearances.

For instance, there was no way of knowing that Madlib would spend the majority of the first half of his Fri/4 show at 103 Harriet pausing to ask, “Who knows Quasimoto?,” “Y’all know J Dilla?,” and “Who’s from the West Coast?” in order to drum up applause, and presumably, interest. This is a classic stage trick, and a musician will usually try to drum up support two or three times, in order to work the crowd into a frenzy. Last night, however, no matter how many different questions he asked or how loud the response went, there seemed to be no pleasing Madlib, he just went on and on, frustrating those that had mistakenly come to listen to him play music.

It only got worse once the booing started. While people steadily trickled out of the room for the next half hour or so, the DJ became locked in a battle with one persistent heckler; every beat he attempted to play had a new chorus, as Madlib shouted “You’s a fool!” “Foooooooooool!” and numerous other taunts. Madlib angrily insisted that he was just playing with the heckler (and everyone else, apparently), but there was no high road in sight, the music never took the main stage again as the DJ held the mic hostage.

No, even as the next few jockeys crouched in the wings, waiting to try to resuscitate the room, Madlib would not relent. It was an extremely slow death, going on to the point that the shrunken audience remained through a morbid fascination, as if stopping to watch a suicide jumper. Management tried to talk him down, with whispers in his ear, only to have him respond on the mic that five minutes (“Five minutes?”) was not enough. If there was ever an argument for reinstating another classic stage trick, the shepherd’s crook, it was last night.

And for this, I apologize.

Music Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

WEDNESDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Corruptors, Heroine, Vanishing Breed Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Generalissimo, Blind Shake, Guitar vs. Gravity Hotel Utah. 9pm, $7.

Bobby Long Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

*Motorhead, Clutch, Valient Thorr Warfield. 8pm, $38.

Professor Burns and the Lilac Field, Eric Maskol, Maya Dorn Milk. 8:30pm, $5.

Das Racist, Hottub, DJ Vin Soi Independent. 8pm, $15.

Sweet Chariot, Victory and Associates, Calls Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Tristen, Billy and Dolly, Corner Laughers Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Tunnel, Foolproof Four, Word Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Wood Brothers Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $17.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Michael Parsons Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Paula West and George Mesterhazy Quartet Rrazz Room. 8pm, $35.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes. Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ólafur Arnalds Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $17.

Shawn Colvin Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $34.

Leather Feather, Heart Touch, Dr. Madd Vibe, Sistas in the Pit, Punk Funk Mob Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.sfindie.com. 9pm, $10. Part of SF Winter Music Festival.

Limousines, Aaron Axelsen, Miles the DJ Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $12. Presented by Popscene.

Little Creatures, Casy and Brian El Rio. 10pm, free.

Mangled Bohemians, Lickets, Shores Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Mercury Falls Kaleidoscope, 3109 24th St, SF; www.kaleidoscopefreespeechzone.com. 9pm, $8.

Midnight Snackers, Badugi, Late Night Drive Kimo’s. 9pm, $6.

Mofo Party Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Nels Cline Singers with Yuka C. Honda, Paul Riola Independent. 8pm, $16.

Social Distortion, Aggrolites, Chuck Ragan Warfield. 9pm, $35.

Tennis, Lord Huron, Air Waves Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

That Ghost, Hymn for Her Amnesia. 9pm.

Toasters, Inciters Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dastardly Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Paula West and George Mesterhazy Quartet Rrazz Room. 8pm, $40.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Country Casanovas Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Electric Feel Lookout, 2600 16th St, SF; www.fringesf.com. 9pm, $2. Indie music video dance party with subOctave, Blondie K, and guest DJ Lifeline.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, Prince Aries, Boogie Brown, Ammbush, plus food carts and community creativity.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Holy Thursday Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Bay Area electronic hip hop producers showcase their cutting edge styles monthly.

JFK of MSTRKRFT, Nisus, Shane King Mighty. 9pm, $15.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

FRIDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Seth Augustus Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Les Aus, Huan Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

“Battle of the Bands: Finals” DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With Handshake, Thy Winter Shadow, Boondock Squad, and more.

Blisses B, Acadia Collective, Ben Keeler Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Ethan Bortnick and His Musical Time Machine Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $29-50-39.50.

Cat Power Fillmore. 9pm, $35.

Church Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $35.

Shawn Colvin Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $34.

Definite Articles, She Beards, Gems, Bryan McPherson Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $10.

Exrays, Tim Cohen’s Magick Trick, Fiveng, DJ Cyclist Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

“14th Annual One Night Stand” Slim’s. 8pm, $13. Local bands perform cover songs.

Frail, Rykarda Parasol, Slpwlkrs Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-15.

Hi-Rhythm Hustlers, Slim Jenkins Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.oldtimey.net. 9pm, $10.

Claudette King Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Los Shimmy Shakers, Foolproof Four, Taxes, Yoma Band, Shit Outta Luck, Thief, Nervous Energy Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.sfindie.com. 8pm, $10. Part of SF Winter Music Festival.

Social Distortion, Lucero, Chuck Ragan Warfield. 9pm, $35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Forro Brazuca, DJ Alfie1Bateria Elbo Room. 10pm, $10.

Valerie Orth and friends Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Paula West and George Mesterhazy Quartet Rrazz Room. 8pm, $45.

DANCE CLUBS

Braza! Som.10pm, $10. With DJs Vanka, Elan, and Caasi.

Deeper 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With rotating DJs spinning dubstep and techno.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Strangelove Cat Club. 10pm, $6. Six-year anniversary featuring goth and industrial with DJs Tomas Diablo, Joe Radio, Xander, and Orko.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Communist Kayte, Icekats and the Mengz Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Devil’s Brigade, Roger Miret and the Disasters Thee Parkside. 9pm, $12.

*400 Blows, Skinwalker, Longmont Potion Castle El Rio. 10pm, $8.

Tommy Guerrero Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Hurry Up Shotgun, X-Ray Press, Third Victim of Abigail Rutledge Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Lakeside Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25-35.

Led Zeppelin 2 Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Rod Piazza and the MIghty Flyers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Pollux, Pine and Battery, Lite Brite, Gentlemen Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

Roy G. Biv and the Mnemonic Devices, Semi Feral, Aaron Lee and the Love Vigilantes, Sorry Mom and Dad Kimo’s 9pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Paula West and George Mesterhazy Quartet Rrazz Room. 8pm, $45.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brothers Comatose, Green String Farm Band Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Rodney Crowell Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $26.

I.R.B. Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

“Khaliji Night” Arab Cultural and Community Center, Two Plaza St., SF; www.arabculturalcenter.org. 7pm, $15. With singer-oud player Naser Musa and percussionist Faisal Zedan.

Mighty Mississippi Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Nuxx.

Everlasting Bass 330 Ritch. 10pm, $5-10. Bay Area Sistah Sound presents this party, with DJs Zita and Pam the Funkstress spinning hip-hop, soul, funk, reggae, dancehall, and club classics. Foundation Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm.

Gemini Disco Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Disco with DJ Derrick Love and Nicky B. spinning deep disco.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip-hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Kontrol Endup. 10pm, $20. With resident DJs Alland Byallo, Craig Kuna, Sammy D, and Nikola Baytala spinning minimal techno and avant house.

Leisure Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $7. DJs Omar, Aaron, and Jet Set James spinning classic britpop, mod, 60s soul, and 90s indie.

New Wave City: New Romantic Night DNA Lounge. 9pm, $7-12. DJs Skip and Shindog spin dreamy 80s.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Sixties soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Sensualite 111 Minna. 8pm, $20. Sexy party with burlesque, cookies, and the authors of Cockfidence: The Extraordinary Lover’s Guide to Being the Man You Want to Be and Driving Women Wild.

Souf Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Jeanine Da Feen, Motive, and Bozak spinning southern crunk, bounce, hip hop, and reggaeton.

Soundscape Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. With DJs C3PLOS, Brighton Russ, and Nick Waterhouse spinning Soul jazz, boogaloo, hammond grooves, and more.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

Three Kinds of Stupid Dance Party Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $12. With Sugar and Gold, Yip Deceiver, and DJs BAS, Chris Baty, and Brother Grimm.

Twelves, White Mike, Nisus Mezzanine. 9pm, $16.

SUNDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Fracas, Kicker!, Bite, FUKM, Sad Boy Sinister Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.sfindie.com. 6pm, $10. Part of SF Winter Music Festival.

Hymn for Her Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Plain White Ts, Parachute, Miggs Fillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Jennifer Bryce and Josh Workman Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Joe Warner Trio Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8pm, free.

Paula West and George Mesterhazy Quartet Rrazz Room. 7pm, $40.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

John Meeks Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afterglow Nickies, 466 Haight, SF; (415) 255-0300. An evening of mellow electronics with resident DJs Matt Wilder, Mike Perry, Greg Bird, and guests.

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJs Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and J Boogie.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

MONDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Asada Messiah, Dimesland, Catacomb Creeps Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Atomic Tom, Maniac Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Guitar Shorty Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lavay Smith Swinget with Jules Broussard Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; (415) 982-6223. 7pm, free.

Randy Weston Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $30.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Assateague, Wooly Moon Amnesia. 9pm.

Tina Dico Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $16.

Lazarus, Michael Beach, Colossal Yes Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Dominique Leone, Sit Kitty Sit, Tzigane Society Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Tony Lucca, Lauren Shera Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Sebadoh, Quasi Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

Guitar Shorty Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20. Lolita Sweet Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $20. JAZZ/NEW MUSIC Nick Culp Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free. Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5. DANCE CLUBS Bombshell Betty and Her Burlesqueteers Elbo Room. 9pm, $10. Burlesque and live music with Fromagique. Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro. Extra Classic DJ Night Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 10pm. Dub, roots, rockers, and reggae from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house. Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

 

Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

Burn the Bay

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Burn the Bay

Self-medicate and simmer? Hardly. A nice big toke deserves (another and) a trip out and about to see some of the Bay Area’s finest sites to be stoned in. Just don’t flash that bong around — we hear that shit’s still illegal (?). Here are the Guardian staff picks for places around town that your buzz will love.

 

GOOD MANG KOK BAKERY

Post-Mary munchies are no joking matter. Yeah, you laugh when your buddy eats sausages dipped in maple syrup, but when it’s your turn the joke’s on you. Fortunately, Good Mang Kok Bakery in Chinatown is there to get you through those funky hunger spells. It’s got it all: pork buns, shrimp dumplings, egg tarts, mochi, sesame balls, chow mein — more grease and sugar than you can shake a spliff at. The joint (ha!) smells like stoner heaven, but the best part about Good Mang Kok is that it won’t leave a dent in your wallet — three steamed pork buns cost only $1.50 and all the food a stoner can eat won’t ever cost more than a 10 spot. Peep the window sign that says “Dim Sum Nice Food” and you’ll know you’re at the right place.

1039 Stockton, SF. (415) 397-2688

 

KADAMPA BUDDHIST TEMPLE’S “MEDITATIONS ON WORLD PEACE”

It’s Sunday morning, you’re stoned, and your heart is full of love. Kumbaya friend, mosey down to the Mission’s Kadampa Buddhist Temple for its weekly group meditation on world peace — because we all know that war, violence, and suffering are huge mellow-harshers. Inside the small building you’ll find a meeting room lined with chairs, Buddhist art, and sculpture — take a seat and be on time. Class includes a guided prayer, a spiritual teaching (try not to space, because if you pay attention here you can learn a lot), and refreshments. Every level of experience is welcome and no stoner will be turned away for lack of funds.

Sundays, 10:30 a.m.–noon, $10 donation suggested. 3324 17th St., SF. (415) 503-1187, www.meditationinnortherncalifornia.org

 

REVOLUTION CAFE

We regard the Revolution Cafe as its own mythic country, one in which bearded men and dashing women from various cosmopolitan European, Latin-American, and African cities epically lounge, smoke from their spliffs still lingering in their leather jackets and hand-woven mountain sweaters. In this convivial company, there is no better vantage point to regard the Mission’s ragtag parade from behind the fog of (medicinal, surely) Humboldt fog, particularly with a glass of house red or cappuccino in hand. Languid inter-table conversation is a mandate on the Revolution porch — retreat inside to giggle at The Awl’s witticisms on your laptop or take in the piano-guitar duo occupying Rev’s tiny corner that is allotted to its live music offerings.

3248 22nd St., SF. (415) 642-0474

 

ZEUM

Who says you have to be a kid to get a kick out of this museum’s interactive art and technology exhibits? Twist one up and try your hand at photo manipulation, animation, and video-mixing geared toward the mini-mind. And while we’re feeding our heads here, why not go truly techno-psychedelic with the kids’ museum’s Z Dance — dance in front of a green screen and a computer will transfer your image to a trippy backdrop (see Jefferson Airplane’s Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour performance of “White Rabbit” for inspiration). For gizmo gear-heads to blasé Betties, some advice for truly groking the beauty of Zeum: nothing will awaken your childlike wonder like a little William’s Wonder.

221 Fourth St., SF. (415) 820-3320, www.zeum.org

 

SEWARD STREET SLIDES

In 1966, Seward Street minipark was the site of a neighborhood sit-in that saved the last remaining open space between Seward and Corwin streets from encroaching development. Honor the community protesters’ struggle in true ’60s spirit by lighting up, grabbing a cardboard box, and flying down the polished concrete flumes for freedom (you can also slide at the chutes in Children’s Playground and Bernal Heights). Getting blazed is a good way to mitigate small bruises and the burn of climbing to the top of the remarkably long chute. But if intoxication and high velocity isn’t your favorite mix, there are plenty of places to perch peacefully and watch the action.

Acme between Seward and Corwin, SF

 

BERKELEY BOWL

This locally-owned grocery chain is a stoner’s dream, whether you alight on the 40,000 square foot megastore or the sleek new western location complete with parking lot: an added convenience for pre-browse hot-boxing. From asparagus to zatar (a Lebanese spice related to mint), the Technicolor aisles tantalize tokers’ taste buds, and are the ideal playscape for customer antics — shopping cart drag races are not unheard of. Feeling peckish? Avoid being “that hippy” shoving patchouli-scented paws in the bulk bins. Try baking among the baked goods at the store café, where you’ll find plenty of fresh soups, sandwiches, and company to ponder universal truths with.

2020 Oregon, Berk. (510) 843-6929; 920 Heinz, Berk. (510) 898-9555, www.berkeleybowl.com

 

WESTFIELD MALL ESCALATORS

Try to accomplish anything at the Westfield Mall while sober and you will surely end up crying outside of Jamba Juice, then struggling for hours more just to find the first floor exit. A better way of approaching the shiny downtown consumerist behemoth is to get faded and ride the escalators for, like, a really long time. The inter-floor specimens at the Westfield are a sight to behold. Unlike boring linear escalators, these zigzag upward and downward in Escher-esque profundity, caged in the mall’s dome-like interior. Those seeking ascent or descent must navigate a loop of shiny retail spaces just to find their way to the next moving staircase. Keep your wits about you — if you know which way is up, you may just reach Century Theatres!

865 Market, SF. (415) 512-6776, www.westfield.com/sanfrancisco

 

AUDIUM

Seeing the sights while stoned is all well and good, but you can give your optic nerves the night off and still totally trip off of SF. The wonder that makes it all possible is the Audium, where synapse-stimulating sound sculptures are unleashed on listeners seated in a round auditorium that is darkened to blackness to further heighten the experience. This place was constructed to get you high off auditory fumes. Sayeth Stan Shaff, the composer who co-masterminded the Audium concept back in the 1950s: “As people walk into a work, they become part of its realization. From entrance to exit, Audium is a sound-space continuum.” Somehow we’ve made it through this entire paragraph without using the term “mind-blowing.” Shoulder pat.

Performances Fridays and Saturdays, 8:30 p.m. 1616 Bush, SF. (415) 771-1616, www.audium.org

 

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA COAST GALLERY AT THE STEINHART AQUARIUM

Look, for those riding the green hornet, buzziness doesn’t get much better done than at the California Academy of Sciences. The Morrison Planetarium sends not just cosmic gas and glistening stars whirling around your dome, but protozoan tendrils and glimmering ambient sounds as well, as part of the current “Life” show. Iridescent butterflies flit unfettered about the Buckyball-like “Rainforests of the World” structure. And of course there’s Claude the preening albino alligator and a clownish troupe of cavorting penguins. But for sheer shivery loveliness, we like to slip into the basement for the Steinhart Aquarium’s gorgeously curated exhibits of regional undersea habitats. The Philippine Coral Reef wastes our retinas with its neon delights and the generalist Water Planet Galleries include infinite otherworldly species. But it’s the Northern California Coast Gallery that keeps us rooted in a meditative pose with its hypnotically undulating anemones and sensuously intertwined towers of opalescent kelp. Think about it. That’s, like, right off Ocean Beach, dude. Your pipe is your snorkel.

55 Music Concourse Dr., Golden Gate Park, www.calacademy.org

List assembled by Emily Appelbaum, Marke B., Caitlin Donohue, and Hannah Tepper.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
-
0

Schedules are for Wed/26–Tues/1 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. Broken Windows, Open Doors (Karewicz), Thurs, 8. “ATA Art and Action FUNraiser,” with live music by Grass Widow, an art auction, and more, Sat, 5.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-20. “Noir City 9:” •The Woman on the Beach (Renoir, 1947), Wed, 7:30, and Beware My Lovely (Horner, 1952), Wed, 9; •The Two Mrs. Carrolls (Godfrey, 1947), Thurs, 7:30, and My Name is Julia Ross (Lewis, 1945), Thurs, 9:30; •Crashout (Foster, 1955), Fri, 7:30, and Loophole (Schuster, 1954), Fri, 9:30; •Blind Alley (Vidor, 1939), Sat, 1, 4:30, and Secret Beyond the Door (Lang, 1948), Sat, 2:30; •The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (Siodmak, 1945), Sat, 7:30, and So Evil My Love (Allen, 1948), Sat, 9:15; •Angel Face (Preminger, 1952), Sun, 1, 5, 9, and The Hunted (Bernhard, 1948), Sun, 3, 7. For complete program information, visit www.noircity.com. “SF Sketchfest Great Collaborators Series: Airplane! Tribute to Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker,” Mon, 7; “SF Sketchfest Comedy Writing Award:” Broadcast News (Brooks, 1987), with James L. Brooks in person, Tues, 7. For more info on these events (tickets, $25), visit www.sfsketchfest.com.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. The Illusionist (Chomet, 2010), Wed-Thurs, call for times. August to June (Valens and Valens, 2010), Thurs, 7. Filmmakers Amy and Tom Valens in person. Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (Schulberg, 1948/2010), Jan 28-Feb 3, call for times.

EXPLORATORIUM McBean Theater, 3601 Lyon, SF; www.asifa-sf.org. Free. “Open Screening for Animators,” Fri, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: New Year’s Revolutions:” Sade (Jacquot, 2000), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Film 50: History of Cinema: Fantasy Films and Realms of Enchantment:” The Thief of Baghdad (Powell, Berger, and Whelan, 1940), Wed, 3:10. Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film (Chodorov, 2010), Wed, 7:30. “African Film Festival 2011:” One Small Step (Vaughan-Richards, 2010) with “Me Broni Ba” (Owusu, 2008), Thurs, 7; Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (Ocelot and Galup, 2005), Sat, 4:30. “Suspicion: The Films of Claude Chabrol and Alfred Hitchcock:” Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951), Fri, 7; Les Cousins (Chabrol, 1959), Fri, 9; Le Boucher (Chabrol, 1970), Sat, 8:20. “World Cinema Foundation:” Touki Bouki (Djop-Mambéty, 1973), Sat, 6:30. “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area:” “Punk, Attitudinal: Film and Video, 1977-1987,” Sun, 5:30.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. Tiny Furniture (Dunham, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7:15, 9:25 (also Wed, 2). “The Good Old Naughty Days,” vintage porn from the early 1900s, Fri-Sun, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat-Sun, 2, 4). The Room (Wiseau, 2003), Sat, midnight. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (Pennebaker, 1973), Feb 1-3, 7:15, 9:15 (also Feb 2, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Two in the Wave (Laurent, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9. “Bringing Up Léaud: The Antoine Doinel Cycle:” Love on the Run (Truffaut, 1979), Wed, 6:45, 8:45. “By, For, and About George Kuchar,” film series, Fri, 7; Sat, 6:45; Sun, 4. Bad Blood: A Cautionary Tale (Ness), Mon, call for time. “SF Film Society Education presents: Herzog in Focus,” Mon, 7. Educational program; visit www.sffs.org for additional info. Lemmy (Olliver and Orshoski, 2010), Feb 1-2, call for times.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. A Sea Change: Imagine a World Without Fish (Ettinger, 2009), Wed, 6; Sat, 2.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.vizcinema.com. $10-12. Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (Anno, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 5, 7:15.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Volume 14: Middle East,” nine videos focusing on the Middle East compiled by ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art, Jan 13-March 27 (gallery hours Thurs-Sat, noon-8; Sun, noon-6). “British Television Advertising Awards 2010,” Thurs-Sun, 2, 4, 6 (also Thurs-Sat, 8).

Music Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

PHOTO BY KATHRIN MILLER

Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Adam Hodani Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Harvey Mandel Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $18.

Persephone’s Bees, Marc and the Casuals, Virgil Shaw with Peacock Gap and the Wagoneers Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, sliding scale or bring canned food for the SF Food Bank.

Professor Gall, Thrillouette, Slow Poisoner Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

Tubes Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $26.

Victims Family, Schlong, Crosstops Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10.

*X, Ray Manzarek Slim’s. 8pm, $31.

Yellow Dress, Alright Class, Wolf Larsen Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm.

Kim Nalley Rrazz Room. 8pm, $35.

Michael Parsons Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Sam Reider Coda. 7pm, $7.

Tom Shaw Trio Martuni’s, Four Valencia, SF; www.dragatmartunis.com. 7pm. With guest Jennifer Ekman.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Future Night Knockout. 9pm, $6. Chillwave, dubstep, electro bangers, and more with DJs Danny Glover, Mike Stasis, J. Kick, and the Pope.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

Red Wine Social Triple Crown. 5:30-9:30pm, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

La Corde, Face the Rail, Cat Party Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Dizzy Balloon, AB and the Sea Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $14.

*Economen, Hormones, Myles Cooper Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Rick Estrin and the Nightcats Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Further Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 7:30pm, $45.

Home Alones Knockout. 9:30pm. Live music plus a screening of Home Alone (1990).

Kacey Johansing, Rad Cloud, Sparrowsgate Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Little Hurricane, Midnight Sun, Scott Gagner Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

Opt Out, Death First, Homeowners, Neighborhood Brats, Cutter Sub-Mission, 2183 Mission, SF; www.sf-submission.com. 9pm, $6.

Slip, Nathan Moore Café Du Nord. 9pm, $30.

Troublemakers Union Velma’s Jazz and Blues Club, 2246 Jerrold, SF; (415) 824-4606. 7pm.

Zongo Junction, Turkuaz Slim’s. 9pm, $13.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Stephen Lugerner Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Kim Nalley Rrazz Room. 8pm, $35.

Dianne Reeves Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $45.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz with guests See-I spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Erica Jayne Crib, 715 Harrison, SF; wwwthecribsf.com. 9pm.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

FRIDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Dresden Dolls, Pomplamoose Warfield. 9pm, $38-50.

Further Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 7:30pm, $65.

John Lee Hooker, Jr. Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $60.

George Lacson Project, DJ Malcolm Marshall Union Room (upstairs from Biscuits and Blues). 9pm, $15.

Growlers, Gantez Warrior Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $15.

Chris Isaak Fillmore. 9pm, $85.50.

Mo’Fessionals, Limbomaniacs, Adam Lesher Band Slim’s. 9pm, $45.

Nerf Herder, Hooks, Sassy!!! Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $25.

Rebirth Brass Band, New Orleans Klezmer Allstars Independent. 9pm, $85.

Slackers, Boss 501 Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $35.

Sonny and the Sunsets, Fresh and Onlys Amnesia. 9pm, $20.

Surprise Me Mr. Davis, Big Light Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Kim Nalley Rrazz Room. 7 and 10:30pm, $60-135.

Rayband, 8 Legged Monster Coda. 6 and 9pm, $25.

Dianne Reeves Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $50-100.

*Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, Casino Royale, Mr. Lucky and the Cocktail Party featuring Ralph Carney Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $60.

White Cloud, Andrew Benson, LAG Ensemble Lab, 2948 16th St, SF; www.thelab.org. 9pm, $15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

“Hillbilly New Year’s Eve” Plough and Stars, 116 Clement, SF; (415) 751-1122. 9:30pm, $10. With the Earl Brothers.

Mucho Axe, Big Tings 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, $15.

“New Year’s Eve Carnaval” Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.pachamamacenter.org. 7 and 8:30pm, $99-125. With Fogo Na Roupa, Fito Reinoso, and more.

DANCE CLUBS

Blow Up New Year’s Eve Kelly’s Mission Rock, 817 Terry Francois, SF; www.blowupsf.com. 10pm, $18. Electro party with DJs Jeffrey Paradise, Eli Glad, and more.

Cockblock NYE 2011 Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $20. With Natalie Nuxx, DJ China G, and host the Gaysha.

Countdown San Francisco 2011 Impala, 501 Broadway, SF; www.impalasf.com. 8pm, $59. Two levels of music, including hip-hop, top 40, old school, and club hits.

11: SF’s Longest New Year’s Eve Celebration Factory, 525 Harrison, SF; (415) 339-8686. 8pm. Massive electronic music party with Mark Farina, Marques Wyatt, Dale Martin, Julius Papp, and more.

Icee Hot Elbo Room. 9pm, $15-25. Electro with Bok Bok, Ramadanman, Disco Shawn, Ghosts on Tape, and Rollie Fingers.

Lights, Champagne, Action! Bubble Lounge, 714 Montgomery, SF; www.bubblelounge.com. 10pm, $115. With the Corporate Scandals and lots of bubbly.

Mango New Year’s Eve Party El Rio. 7pm, $30-50. Hip-hop and salsa with DJs Marcella and Edaj.

Mega New Year’s Eve in the City Suite 181, 181 Eddy, SF; www.suite181.com. 8pm, $25. Multi-themed giant party with three different dance floors and DJs Escobar, Ski, Mauricio, and more.

New Year’s Eve 2011 Club Six. 8pm, $10. Hip-hop, reggae, dancehall, and more with Jah Warrior Shelter, Cooyah Ladeez, Mr. E., and others.

NYE @ Eve 2011 Eve Lounge, 575 Howard, SF; www.eveloungesf.com. 9pm, $40-50. Soulful house, Latin-Afro, soul, and more with Whooligan, DJ Mel, and DJ Inkfat.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, free. New Year’s Eve party with Dangerous Dan, Skip, and others spinning nonstop 80s music.

Palace on Wheels: Electric Vardo New Year’s Eve New Delhi Restaurant, 160 Ellis, SF; www.newdelhirestaurant.com. 9pm, $29-80. Dance, music, and cuisine following the Romani trail from Rajasthan to the world.

Sea of Dreams “GalaxSea” NYE Concourse Center, 635 Eighth SF; www.seaofdreamsnye.com. 9pm, $89-100. With Thievery Corporation, Balkan Beat Box, Modeselektor, Beats Antique, and more.

Streets of SF NYE 2011 Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.streetsofsfnye.com. 9pm, $200. Steve Aoki headlines, with Aaron Axelsen, Designer Deejays, and DJ Zaq.

Sunset + Honey New Year’s Eve Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 9:30pm, $20. With DJs Tim Sweeney and Kim Ann Foxman.

Teenage Dancecraze New Year’s Eve Party Knockout. 9pm. Twist, surf, and garage with DJs Russel Quann and dX the Funky Gran Paw.

Trannyshack New Year’s Eve DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20. With host Heklina.

21+ Indie and Hip-Hop Milk. 8pm, $20. With White Menace and Miles the DJ, plus a live performance by K. Flay.

Vivid NYE Wish, 1539 Folsom, SF; www.wishsf.com. 8pm. With DJs Seven and Sol, plus DJ Mancub.

SATURDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Avon Ladies, Dry Rot, Elders, Ecoli Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

John Nemeth Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Pinback, JP Inc. Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dianne Reeves Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $45.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Africa Rising Coda. 10pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Breakfast in Bed NYE 2011 After Party Supperclub. 5-11am, $15. With DJs David Harness, Galen, Alain Octavio, and more.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm. Nineties alternative with DJ Jamie Jams and Emdee.

Dirty Talk Deco Lounge, 510 Turk, SF; (415) 346-2425. 10pm, $3-5.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

New Wave City DNA Lounge. 9pm, $7-12. Eighties dance party.

Reggae Gold Club Six. 9pm, $15. With DJs Daddy Rolo, Polo Mo’qz, Tesfa, Serg, and Fuze spinning dancehall and reggae.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Edgar Winter Band Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $38.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Kally Price Old Blues and Jazz Band, Emperor Norton’s Jazz Band Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJs Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and guest Lady Ra.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

MONDAY 3

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Punk Rock Sideshow Hemlock Tavern. 10pm, free.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bitter End, Psychology of Genocide, Wolves and Thieves, Maker Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Boneless Children Foundation, Il Gato, My Second Surprise Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Aaron Glass and friends, Sufis, Humboldt Squid Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

Plan 9, Blasfemme Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Coda Jazz Jam Session Coda. 8pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

news@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 22

Floyd Westerman Retrospective

You may remember him for his role in “Dances with Wolves” as Chief Ten Bears and as a country western singer/songwriter. But Floyd Westerman, a.k.a. Red Crow, was also an outspoken activist for Native Americans and the environment. A new documentary by Steve Jacobson explores his later life and activism. Along with the film, there will also be a social hour at 6:30 and a discussion following the film.

7:30–9:30 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Humanist Hall

390 27th St., Oakl.

510-681-8699

Real Mercantile Holiday Bazaar

If you still have some holiday shopping to do and just can’t summon the will to hit the stores or feed the machine, you can get some great stuff while supporting the local arts community and underground economy at the Real Mercantile Holiday Bazaar. held at arts impresario Chicken John spacious home and performance space. Homemade gifts and food are all available in a festive and very San Francisco atmosphere.

5–9 p.m., free

Chez Poulet

3359 Cesar Chavez, SF

www.therealmerchantile.com

THURSDAY, DEC. 23

Festivus 2010

San Francisco’s legendary Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and pot activist Ed Rosenthal’s Green Aid unite to present a night of fundraising for the Medical Marijuana Legal Defense and Education Fund. The bash features an airing of grievances, feats of strength, the annual meeting of Dessert First Club, and live music and entertainment including The Phat Fly Girls and burlesque. Creative dress and cross-dressing encouraged.

7:30–11:30 p.m., $50 presale, $60 at door

SomArts

925 Brannan, SF

415-515-7483

SUNDAY, DEC 26

Get Your Spawn On

Join Brent Plater on a stroll through Muir Woods National Monument to learn more about coho and steelhead salmon and how to help them survive. The walk also features a search for endangered salmon in Redwood Creek. Make sure to wear something warm and bring your hiking boots.

10–12 p.m., free with RSVP

Meet at the Dipsea Trail trailhead

Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley

www.wildequity.org/events/3166

TUESDAY, DEC 28

Castro Queer-in

Join concerned local resident ins protesting the recently passed sit/lie ordinance more formally known as Proposition L. Bring out any and all musical instruments, games, food to share, face-painting kits, and any items to barter. Everyone will gather outside of Harvey Milk’s former camera store.

Noon–2 p.m., Free

575 Castro

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Our weekly Picks: December 15-21, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

WEDNESDAY 15

MUSIC

Buzzov*en

Legendary sludge metal band Buzzov?en has been wandering the wilderness since the early ’90s, its members ping-ponging between different down-tuned, drugged-out projects. Sludge, an ugly-sounding offshoot of stoner metal, can be traced back to the Melvins, and it was relatively big business in 1994 when Buzzov?en’s second album, Sore, was picked up by Roadrunner Records. That honeymoon was over quickly, and the band’s career has been peripatetic since. Famous for the violence of its live shows and squalling, pummeling riffs, the band is likely to incite a frenzy wherever its brand-new tour may take them. (Ben Richardson)

With Brainoil, Neurotoxicity, No Statik, K. Lloyd

8:30 p.m., $16

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

 

MUSIC

John Grant

After the decade he spent fronting dreamy indie-pop group the Czars, John Grant has since gone on record saying he never really felt all that satisfied with the band’s albums. As crazy as that might sound to Czars fans, Queen of Denmark, his new solo album backed by Texas folk-rockers Midlake, is indeed a markedly personal album — and perhaps the type he wanted to make all along. Grant’s 1970s soft rock-inspired arrangements and rich baritone vocals are excellent; but it’s the emotional vulnerability and snarky humor of his lyrics that really define him as a songwriter who is very much deserving of some more attention. (Landon Moblad)

With Jessica Pratt

8 p.m., $15

Swedish American Hall

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

MUSIC

Del the Funky Homosapien

The Bay Area’s ambassador of hip-hop, not to the planet but the galaxy and beyond, Del the Funky Homosapien came out of Oakland’s Hieroglyphics crew before lending his unmistakable voice to projects of a stranger variety. A fetish for ginormous words and out-of-this-world concepts culminated in the future blap of 2000’s space jamming album Deltron 3030. A follow-up is supposedly in the can, reportedly ready for release in 2010. At this intimate event, fans will have the opportunity to remind Del that it is mid-December. (Ryan Prendiville)

 With Simple Citizens

Wed/15–Thurs/16, 8 p.m., $30

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

 

THURSDAY 16

DANCE

“DANCEfirst! Modernity/Humanity: The Nzoto Installation“

Often the very act of preserving an artifact distances it from its daily meanings. The “Art/Object: Recontextualizing African Art” exhibit now gracing the halls of the Museum of the African Diaspora seeks to right this wrong, inserting ancient costumes, tools, and accessories back into the flourishes of life they once accentuated. The integration of ritual and modernity is also the theme of an upcoming MoAD dance performance, The Nzoto Installation, presented by dance-community bridge-building organization see.think.dance, and featuring international performance artist Byb Chanel Bibene using the nzoto (“the body” in Bantu) of dancer groups to meld abstract thought and tradition with motion and emotion you can feel, now. (Caitlin Donohue)

6–9 p.m., free with admission ($5–>$15)

Museum of the African Diaspora

685 Mission, SF

(415) 358-7200

www.moadsf.org MUSIC

 

MUSIC

Om

The demise of Sleep marked a sad day for metal fans, but from the resin-soaked ashes of that vaunted South Bay trio emerged two bands that have done much to cheer them up. The success of Matt Pike and High on Fire is a topic to be considered elsewhere; Om is the order of the day. Founded by Sleep’s bassist and drummer, Al Cisneros and Chris Haikus, the meditative metal outfit has taken advantage of the former’s mellifluous playing to craft songs that are at once crushingly heavy and fuzzily embracing. Cisneros is now paired with new drummer Emil Amos, and they’re prepared to rock you into reverie. (Richardson)

With Lichens, Barn Owl, DJ Britt Govea

8 p.m., $16

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1422

www.independentsf.com.

 

FRIDAY 17

THEATER

Mr. Yoowho’s Holiday

In conjunction with Noh Space, Moshe Cohen presents Mr. Yoowho’s Holiday, a story fusing the spirit of adventure with the warmth of the season. Mr. Yoowho embarks on an international journey across geographical borders as well as the borders of the imagination. He meets Taro-kaja, the prototypical spirited trickster hero of Japanese Kyogen Theater, as well as encountering elements of the European circus and Yiddish absurdism. Drawing on aspects of traditional Japanese Noh Theater and Kyogen Theater, Cohen returns to SF after touring extensively through Europe to meld humor, poetry, and absurdity in this heartwarming tale. (Emmaly Wiederholt)

Through Jan. 2, 2011

Preview tonight, 8 p.m., $10

Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 3 p.m., $10–$18

Theatre of Yugen

2840 Mariposa, SF

1-800-838-3006

www.theatreofyugen.org

 

EVENT

“Hubba Hubba Revue’s Christmas Hanukkah Spectacular”

Who will be the next mayor? What will the new year bring? Which corporate Death Star will the WikiLeaks cabal take down next? The Guardian doesn’t have all the answers to these quandaries of the abyss yet — but we sure as sugar have the inside skinny on who will be taking off their clothes at Hubba Hubba Revue’s holiday burlesque spectacular (you’re welcome). To wit: the winner of “best variety act” at Las Vegas’ Burlesque Hall of Fame, Chicago’s Amazing Bendable Poseable Dolls of Doom, and boylesque troupe the Stage-Door Johnnies. Also, don’t miss (yes!) Hubba’s annual visit from the hang-10 Hasids themselves, Jewish surf band Meshugga Beach Party. (Donohue)

9 p.m., $10–$15

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

 

THEATER

Sweet Can Productions

Combining aerial silks, acrobatics, juggling, contortion, hula hoops, traditional circus, physical theater, dance, and live music, Sweet Can Production’s newest show Candid takes its audience into a charming topsy-turvy world where anything can happen. The limits of human imagination are stretched as mundane objects and everyday life transform into a breathtaking circus. Directed by Joanna Haigood and Wendy Parkman with new music by Eric Oberthaler, lighting designed by Tad Shannon, and performances by Beth Clarke, Natasha Kaluza, Kerri Kresinski, and Matt White, Candid aims to reveal the magic inherent in the ordinary. (Wiederholt)

Through Jan. 9, 2011

Schedule varies (opens tonight, 7 and 9 p.m.)

$15–$60

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

www.sweetcanproductions.com

 

MUSIC

Sub Swara

Bay Area dubstep freaks sometimes forget that the gateway to their bass addiction was a curious mutation of global funk — one that came to prominence in the mid-late ’00’s and mixed Jamaican dread, glitchy electronics, and bhangra flourishes into a heady, invigorating stew. Ground zero for this sound was the excellent Surya Dub party, much missed since its players went off to conquer the world. With a happy rumble, the Surya Dub crew is reuniting at Public Works, teaming up with Bay woofer-killers Slayers Club to bring in New York City duo Sub Swara, keepers of the international bass flame (with a cosmic-funky twist on their latest CD, Triggers). It’ll be a global-eared rumble that reunites seminal Bay influences while leaving you quaking in your Timberlands. (Marke B.)

10 p.m., $10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

MUSIC

“Monsters of Accordion 2010”

The accordion: for many, it’s the runner-up for most annoying musical instrument (after bagpipes). When used outside of polka, zydeco, cumbia, and other “traditional genres” (read: mainstream pop), it has an attention-drawing, anachronistic quality. To rock it, a player must possess a superhuman degree of cool, like They Might Be Giants and, of course, Weird Al Yankovic. To that list add Jason Webley, the howling one-man band and mind behind Monsters of Accordion, known above all for his ability to convert nonbelievers to the squeezebox. (Prendiville)

With Corn Mo, Renee de la Prade, Petrojvic Blasting Co., and Duckmandu

9 p.m., $14

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

 

SATURDAY 18

MUSIC

Cyndi Lauper

With her string of recent successes, one could say that new wave chanteuse Cyndi Lauper is back. But that really wouldn’t be accurate — the independent firebrand never really went away. Starting with her smash breakthrough 1983 album She’s So Unusual and the string of hit singles that followed, including “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” “She Bop,” and “Time After Time,” Lauper has continued to release a variety of music, along with appearing in films and being involved with human rights causes. She comes to the city tonight for an intimate club gig — here’s to hoping she can be persuaded to play “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough”! (Sean McCourt)

9 p.m., $65

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1422

www.independentsf.com

 

DANCE

Labayen Dance

It’s fun to watch artists who consistently surprise. Enrico Labayen is one of them. For a while, he dropped off the radar — turns out he went home to the Philippines to study native mythologies. When he returned, his first major endeavor became an ambitious Carmina Burana. Now he is taking on the Greeks. Icarus at the Edge of Recession promises to offer a fresh perspective on Daedalus as a CEO and Icarus as a young trader. He is showing this parable of a father sacrificing his son for his own ambition as a work in progress during what he calls a “holiday fun(d)raising event.” (Rita Felciano)

8 p.m., $20 (with pre-show party, 7 p.m., $25)

Garage

975 Howard, SF

(415) 509-3129

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

TUESDAY 21

MUSIC

Danny B. Harvey

Guitar slinger extraordinaire Danny B. Harvey has played with everyone from the Rockats, Nancy Sinatra, and Wanda Jackson to Bow Wow Wow and the Head Cat. This current tour stop finds him teaming up with his friend and “Rockabilly Filly” Rosie Flores. Harvey’s frantic finger-picking and tasty solos are truly a sight to behold live — especially when you look up from watching his fingers dancing on the fret board and see his expression — he often looks as if he’s enjoying a Jack and Coke at the bar, a big grin on his face and giving almost no indication of the difficulty of making the incredible sounds coming out of his guitar. (McCourt)

With Rosie Flores

9 p.m., $12–$15

Hotel Utah

500 Fourth St., SF

(415) 546-6300

www.thehotelutahsaloon.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Going to a club — or boarding an airplane?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
12
Going to a club — or boarding an airplane?

news@sfbg.com

The War on Fun — a term coined by the Guardian in 2006 to describe the crackdowns on nightclubs, special events, and urban culture by police, NIMBY neighbors, and moderate politicians — continues to grind on in San Francisco.

The latest attack was launched by Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Police Department, which has proposed a series of measures to monitor and regulate individuals who visit bars or entertainment venues, proposals that the embattled Entertainment Commission will consider at its Dec. 14 meeting.

Perhaps most controversial among the dozens of new conditions that the SFPD would require of nightclubs is an Orwellian proposal to require all clubs with an occupancy of 100 persons or more to electronically scan every patron’s identification card and retain that information for 15 days. Civil libertarians and many club owners call this a blatantly unconstitutional invasion of privacy.

Driving the latest calls for a crackdown is a stated concern over isolated incidents of violence outside a few nightclubs in recent years, something Newsom and police blame on the clubs and that they say warrants greater scrutiny by police and city regulators.

But the proposals also come in the wake of overzealous policing of nightclubs and parties — including improper personal property destruction and seizures, wrongful arrests and violence by police, harassment of disfavored club operators, and even dumping booze down the drain — mostly led by SFPD Officer Larry Bertrand and his former partner, Michelle Ott, an agent with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Those actions were documented in back-to-back cover stories by the Guardian (“The New War on Fun,” March 24) and SF Weekly (“Turning the Tables,” March 17), and they are the subject of multiple ongoing lawsuits by nightclub owners, patrons, and employees, including a racketeering lawsuit alleging that officials are criminally conspiring against lawful activities.

Yet rather than atoning for that enforcement overreach, Newsom and SFPD officials seem to be doubling down on their bets that San Franciscans will tolerate a more heavily policed nightlife scene in the hopes of eliminating the possibility of random violence.

A series of nighttime shootings this year has grabbed headlines and prompted calls to action by the Mayor’s Office and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, whose District 3 includes North Beach. In February, there were shootings at Blue Macaw in the Mission and Club Suede at Fisherman’s Wharf, followed by a shooting at the Pink Saturday fair in June, one outside Jelly’s in SoMa in July, and the high-profile murder of a German tourist near Union Square in August.

Chiu responded with legislation to give the Entertainment Commission greater authority to close down problem nightclubs and, more recently, with legislation to require party promoters to register with the city so that officials can take actions against those who act irresponsibly.

In September, Newsom asked the SFPD for its recommendations and he received a laundry list of proposals now before the Entertainment Commission. That body held a closed session hearing Nov. 30 to discuss a confidential legal opinion by the City Attorney’s Office on whether the identification scan would pass constitutional muster, an opinion that has so far been denied to the Guardian and the public, although officials say it may be discussed in open session during the Dec. 14 hearing.

“Everything is being considered,” Jocelyn Kane, acting executive director of the Entertainment Commission, told the Guardian. Her office already has looked at the different types of scanners that clubs could use and has discussed the idea with several technology companies.

SFPD Inspector Dave Falzon, the department’s liaison to the nightclubs and ABC, told the Guardian that he believes the data gathered from nightclub patrons would allow police to more easily find witnesses and suspects to solve any crimes committed at or near the nightclubs.

“It’s not intended to be exploited,” Falzon said, stressing that the recommendations are a work in progress and part of an ongoing dialogue with the Entertainment Commission — an agency Newsom, SFPD officials, and some media voices have been highly critical of over the last two years.

Along with the proposal for the ID scanners, SFPD proposed many other measures such as increased security personnel (including requiring clubs to hire more so-called 10-B officers, or SFPD officials on overtime wages), metal detectors at club entrances, surveillance cameras at the entrances and exits, and extra lighting on the exterior of the night clubs.

Though this may sound to many like heading down the dystopian rabbit hole with Big Brother potentially watching your every move, Falzon thinks it’s the opposite. “It isn’t that police department is acting as a militant state,” Falzon said. “All we’re trying to do is to make these clubs safer so they can be more fun.”

Yet critics of the proposals don’t think they sound like much fun at all, and fear that employing such overzealous policing tools will hurt one of San Francisco’s most vital economic sectors while doing little to make anyone safer.

Jamie Zawinski is the owner of the DNA Lounge, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. He has been a leading voice in pushing back against the War of Fun, including running a blog that chronicles SFPD excesses. He said the proposed regulations go way too far.

“It’s gang violence happening on the street. The nightclubs are being scapegoated. You don’t solve the problem by increased security in the clubs,” Zawinski told us, adding that the lack of proper policing on the streets should be addressed before putting the financial strain on the entertainment industry.

“It’s ridiculously insulting. I will not do that to my customers. It’s not a way to solve any problems,” Zawinski said. “It sets the tone for the evening when you start demanding papers.”

It’s also a gross violation of people’s rights, says Nicole Ozer, the director of Technology and Civil Liberties Policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. She said that recording people’s personal information when they enter a public venue raises troubling legal issues.

“There are some real implications of tracking and monitoring personal data. The details of what you visit reveal things about your sexuality and political views,” Ozer said, adding that the ACLU would also have issues with how that information is used and safeguarded.

In response to police crackdowns on nightlife, club owners and advocates earlier this year formed the California Music and Culture Association (CMAC) to advocate for nightlife and offer advice and legal assistance to members. CMAC officials say they are concerned about the latest proposals.

“The rise in violence has to be looked at from a societal point of view,” said Sean Manchester, president of CMAC and owner of the nightclub Mighty. He noted that most of the violence that has been associated with nightclubs took place in alleys and parking lots away from the bars and involved underage perpetrators. “In many instances [the increased security measures] wouldn’t have done anything to stop it,” he said.

While there are plenty of ideas to combat crime at nightclubs, nightlife advocates say the city is going to have to look beyond club venues to address what can be done to combat crime without infringing on any civil liberties or damaging the vibrant nightlife. Or officials can just listens to the cops, act on their fears, and make the experience of seeing live music in San Francisco more like boarding an airplane.

The Entertainment Commission meets Dec. 14 at 6:30 p.m., Room 400, City Hall.

Broadway cabaret with Pascal and Rapp!

Sue Vaughan
-
0
Broadway cabaret with Pascal and Rapp!

The Fairmont Hotel’s storied Venetian Room, a.k.a. the San Francisco club where Tony Bennett first left his heart, has recently re-opened its doors to live music, courtesy of Marilyn Levinson’s Bay Area Cabaret series. Chita Rivera wowed them earlier this month, and this weekend Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp do their thing, some of which you may have caught last year when they appeared in the touring revival of Rent at the Curran, in the roles they originated of Mark and Roger.

Expect some songs from that Broadway show, as well as Spring Awakening, Aida, Cabaret, and Chess, among other musical offerings in “The Rent Guys – Live.”

“The Rent Guys – Live”

Sun/21, 7 p.m., $20-$75

Venetian Room of the Fairmont San Francisco

950 Mason St, SF

www.bayareacabaret.org

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Caligari Studio 385, 385A Eighth St; www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-30. Opens Thurs/18, 8pm. Runs Fri/19-Sat/20 and Dec 2-3 and 9-10, 8pm. Through Dec 10. HurLyBurLy performs an original adaptation of the 1920 silent film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The Tender King Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, Sixth Flr; www.secondwindtheatre.com. $20-25. Opens Fri/19, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 11. Second Wind Productions presents Ian Walker’s noir-tinged World War II drama.

ONGOING

Cavalia: A Magical Encounter Between Horse and Man White Big Top, adjacent to AT&T Park; www.cavalia.net. $39.50-239.50. Check website for shows and times. Through Dec 12. Over 100 performers, including 50 horses, take the stage in this circus-like show from Montreal.

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

Comedy Ballet Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapetickets.com. $10-20. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm. Dark Porch Theatre’s latest (a reworked version of the piece it premiered at the Garage in July) is a fractured meta-theatrical tale about death. Not to put too fine a point on it, writer-director Martin Schwartz approaches the subject with what you might call deliberate absurdity, basking in whimsical inspiration with serious intent. Roxelana (a compellingly earnest Molly Benson) pursues an affair with the confident but completely in-over-his-head KC (Brandon Wiley), the handsome young employee of her husband (Scott Ragle), who goes tellingly by the moniker Baby Death God. Her three vaguely psychotic neighbors, meanwhile, known as The Intrepid Gentlemen (the amusingly anarchic trio of Natalie Koski-Karell, Bernard Norris, Matthew Von MeeZee), invite her to the wake for their dead dog, over whom they are unnaturally bereft. Between scenes an interviewer (Rachel Maize) queries members of the cast on a variety of subjects, including attitudes toward human sacrifice. (The actors feign indignation at the idea.) It all gradually comes to make some kind of sense, but letting go the effort to make any sense of it helps in the appreciation. Smoothing the way are likeable performances, not least Nathan Tucker’s wonderfully controlled hyperbole in the part of consummate thespian Foreplay. Integral and pleasingly unexpected passages of movement (choreographed by producer Margery Fairchild), as well as a permeating spirit of morbid fancy, further contribute to an intentionally jagged work that may be difficult to define but not hard to enjoy. (Avila)

*Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Wed/17-Sat/20, 8pm. In the last year, it seems like there’s been more full-frontal nudity in Bay Area theatre than in the preceding ten years combined. One certainly hopes it’s not due to the economy. Of course, nudity isn’t the only reason you should go and see Boxcar Theatre’s Equus—but its presence is indicative of the overall bravery of the production. Minutely updated and Americanized by director Erin

Gilley, the tale of a troubled teen who mutilates a stable of horses without apparent provocation seems disconcertingly as plausible as when it first debuted in 1973. The uncomfortable parental dynamics as enacted by Laura Jane Bailey and Jeff Garret, the dogged pedantry of Michael Shipley’s Dysart, a man measuring out his desperation not with teaspoons but with tomes of Doric architecture. Most especially, rivaling the single-minded intensity of child crusaders, teenage suicide bombers, and accidental martyrs, 18-year-old Bobby Conte Thornton’s unflinching portrayal of Alan Stang ably taps into the extremist

impulses of adolescence. “Extremity,” Shipley reminds us, “is the point”, and it’s exactly what Thornton delivers, from his nervous misdirections, to the ferocious abandon of his midnight rituals. Artistic Director Nick a. Olivero’s skills as a set designer are suitably showcased by a convincingly stable-like thrust of rough planks and second story “loft” seating, while Krista Smith’s lighting subtly adds texture and depth. (Gluckstern)

*Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat/20-Sun/21, times vary. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along

stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour

production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the

appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

It’s All the Rage The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 5. The Marsh presents a new solo show by Marilyn Pittman.

Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $22-82. Call for dates and times. Through Sun/21. American Conservatory Theater presents its contribution to the three-theater Bay Area debut of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Brother/Sister Plays , completing the young African American playwright’s much-touted but generally underwhelming trilogy with a coming-of-age story about a gay 16-year-old (a sharp and likeable Richard Prioleau) in a small black community of the Louisiana bayou. A recurring dream haunts the still-closeted Marcus, while the man in it, the long-gone Oshoosi Size (a vital Tobie L. Windham), stalks the stage with an ominous-sounding message for his older brother, Ogun (played with listless, gathering despair by Gregory Wallace). But the action unfolding against Alexander V. Nichols’ gorgeously moody, shape-shifting backdrop (a video-based evocation of land, sky and built environment) has only a perfunctory urgency to it. The play, smoothly directed for maximum laughs by Mark Rucker, is more inclined toward amiable scenes of tentative concern by all (including three key female characters played brilliantly by Margo Hall), Marcus’s sexual initiation by a visitor from the Bronx (Windham), or the fraught but whimsical camaraderie between Marcus and childhood friends Osha (Shinelle Azoroh) and Shaunta (Omozé Idehenre). Last-minute intimations of Katrina, meanwhile, come as arbitrary and less than powerful. “Sweet” is the sexually knowing, ambiguous term attaching to Marcus—whom all seem to already know and more or less accept as gay—but it’s also a too apt description for this well-acted but overblown and forgettable play. (Avila)

Match Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; 1-866-811-4111, www.matchonstage.com. $12-28. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Expression Productions presents Stephen Belber’s new suspense drama.

Ménage-À-Plot: A Surf-N-Turf Adventure Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; www.pianofight.com. $20. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm. PianoFight presents three separate one-act comedies.

Murder for Two: A Killer Musical Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Wed/17, 7pm; Thurs/18-Fri/19, 8pm, Sat/20, 6pm, Sun/21, 3pm. 42nd Street Moon presents a mix of Agatha Christie and musical comedy, by Kellen Blair and Joe Kinosian.

Or, Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Dec 5. Magic Theatre performs Liz Duffy Adams’ latest, inspired by pioneering playwright Aphra Behn.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 19. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

A Perfect Ganesh New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 19. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the Terrence McNally play, directed by Arturo Catricala.

Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs/18-Fri/19, 8pm. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sat/20, 8:30pm. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

A Tale of Two Genres SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm; no shows Sat/20, Thurs/25; additional shows Dec 20-23). Through Dec 23. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs an improvised musical in the style of Charles Dickens.

The Tempest Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (no show Nov 25). Through Nov 28. In Cutting Ball’s latest foray into Shakespearean realms, three entangled subplots and eleven characters are enacted by just three actors, in order to explore the relationships between the principle characters by representing their internal characteristics through the actions of the more minor roles. Set on an enchanted island (or, in Cutting Ball’s interpretation, at the bottom of a swimming pool) The Tempest begins with stormy weather, but quickly grows into a full-blown hurricane of shipwrecked nobles, nymphs, and drunks, plus the turbulent awakenings of a teenage daughter’s libido, and the rumblings of her over-protective papa. The most effective dual-character is Caitlyn Louchard’s Miranda-Ariel, as both characters are quite under the stern control of Prospero (David Sinaiko) and equally deserving of release. Less affecting yet somehow equally congruous is Sinaiko’s comic turn as the buffoonish Stephano, who stumbles through the forest in his boxer shorts, yet somehow maintains an air of mock dignity that does parallel Prospero’s. Donell Hill’s Caliban-Ferdinand endures his lust-love for Miranda and servitude to Prospero alternating between raw physicality and social ineptness. But since “The Tempest” is littered with characters even more minor, the game cast is stretched too thinly to fully inhabit each, and the entire subplot involving King Alonzo, Gonzalo, and Antonio in particular suffers from this ambitious over-extension. (Gluckstern)

*West Side Story Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market; www.orpheum-theater.com. $88-378. Check website for dates and times. Through Nov 28. Opening night of the touring Broadway revival coincided with game two of the World Series, and giddy Giants fans were loath to put away their smart phones until the final plea from the house managers. But then the curtain rose on perhaps the finest and most moving display of athleticism, professionalism, and grace to be found outside of AT&T Park. The 1957 musical, which updated Romeo and Juliet with a cross-cultural romance between Tony (Kyle Harris) and Maria (Ali Ewoldt) amid immigrant gangland New York, came instantly alive with all its storied potency—revved up for new millennium audiences with less reserved violence and the addition of a smattering of real Spanish throughout. David Saint’s excellent cast—including standout Michelle Aravena as Anita—and a nicely dynamic orchestra under conductor John O’Neill do satisfying justice to the jagged, jazzy modernism of Leonard Bernstein’s score, Stephen Sondheim’s soaring lyrics, Arthur Laurents’ smart book, and Jerome Robbins’ mesmerizing choreography (here re-created by Joey McKneely). At intermission, the house manager graciously announced the final winning score from the ballpark, and everyone cheered. It was a win-win situation. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Cinderella, Enchanted Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; (510) 665-5565, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $15-33. Call for run times. Through Dec 5. Frenchie Davis is plays the Fairy Godmother in this production of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical.

CTRL-ALT-DELETE Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mountain View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm; Sun/21, 2pm. Pear Avenue Theatre presents the comedy by Anthony Clarvoe.

Deviations Durham Studio Theater, Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley, Berk; (510) 642-8827, www.ticketturtle.com. $10. Fri/19-Sat/20, 8pm; Sun/21, 2pm. Choreographer Joe Goode collaborates with UC Berkeley’s Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies students on this new theatrical work.

Dracula Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $36-42. Wed/17, 7:30pm; Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm. Eugene Brancoveanu stars as the Count in a production directed by Michael Butler.

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Sun/21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

Happy Now? Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $32-53. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 5. Marin Theatre Company performs Lucinda Coxon’s stinging comedy about contemporary marriage.

Palomino Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Dec 5. David Cale brings his new solo play about a gigolo to Aurora Theatre for its Bay Area premiere.

Pirates of Penzance Novato Theatre Company Playhouse, 484 Ignacio, Novato; 883-4498, www.novatotheatercompany.org. $12-22. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm; Sun/21, 3pm. Novato Theatre Company revives the popular Gilbert and Sullivan swashbuckling tale.

*The Play About the Naked Guy La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 25). Through Dec 11. Impact Theatre presents an off-Broadway hit, written by David Bell and directed by Evren Odcikin.

Winter’s Tale Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm. Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley presents the rarely-performed Shakespeare play.

Music Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Birthday Massacre, Black Veil Brides, Dommin, Aural Vampire Slim’s. 7:30pm, $16.

Fabulous Diamonds, Pigeons, Donovan Quinn and the 13th Month Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Hey Monday, Cartel, Ready Set, This Century Great American Music Hall. 7:30pm, $16.

Hobo Nephews of Uncle Frank, Sour Mash Hug Band, Crux Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

Intimate Stranger, Evan Bailey, Guverment Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

Jason King Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Kyle Eastwood Band Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $15.

One F, Giant Value, Cash Pony Café Du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Or the Whale, Chris Pureka Independent. 8pm, $15.

A Perfect Circle Fillmore. 8pm, $40.

Sleepwalkers Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $5.

*Watain, Goatwhore, Black Anvil, Necrite, Pale Chalice DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $20.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Breezin Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Amy A and Brynnie Mac spinning yacht rock od smooth 70s.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes. Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

Red Wine Social Triple Crown. 5:30-9:30pm, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bear Hands, LoveLikeFire, Safe Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $16.

Eisley, Christie Dupree Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $15.

Eux Autres, Writer, Sporting Life El Rio. 8pm, $7.

Idlewild, Happy Hollows Independent. 8pm, $15.

Tift Merrit, Elizabeth and the Catapult Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $18.

A Perfect Circle Fillmore. 8pm, $40.

Razor Skyline, Conspiracy of Venus, Fuzzpod Café Du Nord. 8:30pm, $10.

3OH!3, Hellogoodbye, Down With Webster, K. Flay Slim’s. 7:30pm, $21.

Stiletto Ghetto Grant and Green. 9:30pm, free.

*Toxic Holocaust, Black Cobra, Dopecharge, Earslaughter Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $10.

Why Because, Midday Veil, Moonbell Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

FRIDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Agnostic Electric Gospel Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; www.sochacafe.com. 8:30pm, free.

Bad Religion, Off With Their Heads, Bouncing Souls Regency Ballroom. 8:30pm, $27.

Battlehooch, Corpus Callosum, Sun Hop Fat, DJ Mashi Mashi Bottom of the Hill. 9:40pm, $12.

Blonde Redhead, Olof Arnalds Warfield. 9pm, $28.

Clinic, Fresh and Onlys, Loons Independent. 9pm, $17.

Freelance Whales, Miniature Tigers Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $15.

Lauren Jordan Vin Club, 515 Broadway, SF; www.thevinclub.com. 8pm, free.

Kings Go Forth, Myron and E with Hot Pocket, Selector DJ Kirk Elbo Room. 10pm, $13.

Legendary Pink Dots, Big City Orchestra Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $20.

Love Dimension, Parties, Trevor Childs and the Beholders Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

*Marduk, Withered, Bosse De Nage, Deafheaven Thee Parkside. 9pm, $20.

Mike and Ruthy, Miller Carr and the Shalants Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $8.

Bob Mould Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $22.

Rykarda Parasol, Tamaryn, Hot Toddies, Sioux City Kid and the Revolutionary Ramblers Slim’s. 8:30pm, $13.

Sadies, Possum and Lester Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Shaimus, Ayurveda, Brooks Was Here, Our Vinyl Vows Kimo’s. 9pm.

Eddie Turner Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Basia Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $32.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Mercury Café, 201 Octavia, SF; www.mercurycafe.com. 7:30pm, free.

“San Francisco First Annual Pancake Festival” Coda. 10pm, $10. Doctors Without Borders benefit.

“San Francisco World Music Festival: The Ritual Project: Offering” Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF; (415) 292-1233, www.sfworldmusicfestival.org. 8pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Riptide Tavern. 9pm, free. DJ What’s His Fuck spins old-school punk rock and other gems.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics. Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs B-Cause, Vinnie Esparza, Mr. Robinson, Toph One, and Slopoke.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Hubba Hubba Revue: Secret Agents DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Burlesque and comedy plus live music by Thee Swank Bastards.

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Synth sounds of the cold war era.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Simian Mobile Disco, Worthy, Solar Mezzanine. 9pm, $18.

Some Thing The Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bad Religion, Off With Their Heads Regency Ballroom. 8:30pm, $27.

Bar Feeders, Complaints, Kicker El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Barrel Riders, Space Vacation, Cobretti Li Po Lounge. 8pm, $5. Benefit for San Francisco Bay shark research and conservation.

Black Label Society, Clutch, Children of Bodom, 2 Cents Warfield. 7:30pm, $42.

Dawes, Moondoggies, Romany Rye Independent. 9pm, $15.

DSM-5 Knockout. 3pm.

Slim Jenkins, B Stars, Hi-Rhythm Hustlers Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.slimjenkins.com. 9pm, $10.

Legendary Pink Dots, Big City Orchestra Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $20.

Point of View Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

“SFX Music Festival” Mission Rock Café, 817 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 626-5355. 4pm, $15. With Music for Animals, Hundred Days, Ferocious Few, Mister Loveless, and more.

Sonny Rhodes Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $20.

Snailface, Atomic Bomb Audition, Cartographer Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Tunng, White Cloud, Carta Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Turbonegra, Ancient Mariner, Five Magics, Rock School Band Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Keller Williams Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $23.

Zion I, Locksmith, Hold Up, Bayliens, DJ Kevvy Kev Slim’s. 8:30pm, $23.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Sheilani Alix Coda. 7pm, $5.

“San Francisco World Music Festival: The Ritual Project: Entering the Fire” Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF; (415) 292-1233, www.sfworldmusicfestival.org. 8pm, $15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Mary Black, Roisin O Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $37.50.

Jimmy Crowley and Marla Fibish Aboard Balclutha, Hyde Street Pier, SF; www.maritime.org. 8pm, $14.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie: The Monster Show DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups and drag with Cookie Dough.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. Gay locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm, MyKill, and Dcnstrct.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. Indie music video dance party with DJs Blondie K and subOctave.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Non Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $15. Desi-driven beats of Bhangra with the Dholrhythms Dance Troupe.

Prince vs. Michael Madrone Art Bar. 8pm, $5. With DJs Dave Paul and Jeff Harris battling it out on the turntables with album cuts, remixes, rare tracks, and classics.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Soul on 45s with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“Battle of the Bands” DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With Swindlefish, Exit 27, City Psychology, and more.

*Gwar, Casualties, Infernaeon, Mobile Death Camp Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $25.

Hallflowers, Kackala Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $5.

Dave Mason Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $36.

April Smith and the Great Picture Show, Yukon Blonde, Le Switch Hotel Utah. 8pm, $6.

Sonos, Ira Marlowe Café Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Pat Travers Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Zion I, Eligh, Scarub, Bang Date, Hold Up, Oakland Faders Slim’s. 8pm, $23.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Calafia Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

“San Francisco World Music Festival: The Ritual Project: Feasting” Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF; (415) 292-1233, www.sfworldmusicfestival.org. 8pm, $15.

Andre Thierry and Zydeco Magic Knockout. 2pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, dubstep, roots, and dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludichris, and guests Stronghold Sound featuring Dub Snakkr, Bongo, and Iggy Mon.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Pachanga Coda. 7pm, $10. Salsa dance party with DJs Fab Fred and Antonio with Louie Romero y Mazacote.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

MONDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Midnight Juggernauts Independent. 8pm, $15.

Red Light Go, Trouble Horse, Pie Crust Promises El Rio. 7pm, $5.

RRIICCEE featuring Vincent Gallo Café Du Nord. 9pm, $20.

Summer Set, Stereo Skyline, Mod Sun, Downtown Fiction Bottom of the Hill. 7pm, $12.

Wild Flag Hemlock Tavern. 6:30pm, $12.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Attack Attack!, Emmure, Pierce the Veil, Of Mice and Men, In Fear and Faith Regency Ballroom. 7pm, $20.

Karmen Buttler, Caitlin Canty, Lauren O’Connell Hotel Utah. 8pm, $6.

Moore Brothers, Them Hills, Twinks Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Mr. Gnome, Weapons of the Future, Whirl Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Robyn, Maluca, Natalia Kills Warfield. 7:30pm, $27-35.

Silver Threads, Ladyfinger El Rio. 7pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJs Avi and What’s His Fuck.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Pin Up Clinic strike a pose for the Pap

Andrew Lam
-
2

A while ago, I wrote about Briggite Berman’s Hugh Hefner documentary, about how it highlighted a debate between Hef’s lecherous man-fans and his well-cinched feminist critics. I suggested that there was a third view Berman missed: that of women who understood the pin-up mentality and how it could work to female power and strength. 

Well hang on to your hats, because here comes Pin Up Clinic, whose pin-up calendar release party is at Homespun Bikes Sat/13.

The group has put together a calendar with 12 months worth of alternative lovelies from around the Bay Area, with all proceeds going straight to Women’s Community Clinic. Amanda Kennedy, the mastermind behind the project, had inspiration strike her when she was asked if she’s like to examine a part of a woman’s body that not even Miss August shows off in the calendar.

“The doctor asked me if I wanted to see what my cervix looked like… handed me a mirror and a flash light and had me sit up and take a look at my self. It is a pretty profound experience to see inside your own body like that.  The female body is amazing and we don’t get to appreciate ourselves enough,” Kennedy told us of an appointment at Women’s Choice Clinic in Oakland in an email to SFBG. 

Miss August gets back to school you on what feminism can look like. Photo by Tiffany Black of Blackbird Photo

Later, Kennedy and friends decided that they wanted to give back to the professionals that had done so much to take away the mystery and shame women can feel about their bodies. And what better way to do that then by showing off, in all it’s glory, the female form? “The pin up calendar was a way for us each to appreciate ourselves and share it with others,” Kennedy recalls.

So there you have it. Only problem was that the Women’s Choice Clinic had closed in the interim, but that didn’t stop Kennedy and gang. They elected Women’s Community as their back up beneficee because it shared the same empowering philosophy as the first clinic — as Kennedy puts it “women treating women, which helps to create a safe space for so many people who have had negative experiences with heath care.”

What to say to those that find the concept of pin-up posters demeaning, anti-women productions? “Redefining beauty is important. By controlling our images we get to share our ideas of beauty,” Kennedy tells us. Included in her project are luscious images of kink educator Tina Horn and Lubricated Zine “jack of all trades” Vanessa Jean. 

In teaser shots assembled on Pin Up Clinic’s website, Vanessa Jean sits and lies in a pile of her self-published creations wearing a torn Ramones tee. The images show her as an actively imagining individual, but there’s no denying those flannel-printed boy shorts hug some curves that’d make Hef proud. 

“There are so many schools of feminism, some think we should never be sexualized and I understand that,” Kennedy says. “It’s so frustratingly common for people to criticize how a woman looks before they comment on what she is doing. I’m glad that both groups are around, because an important part of feminism is that women should be free to do whatever they want, express themselves to the fullest and stand up for what they believe in.

And who doesn’t believe in unembarrassed, convivial reproductive health care? Pin Up Clinic has printed up 1,000 calendars to be snapped up at $15 a pop on their website or at Saturday’s party, which will feature live music, a photo booth, and fortune telling.

I predict you’ll want to buy one of these for someone on your holiday shopping list, but maybe that’s just me hinting that I want one. 

 

Pin Up Clinic’s 2011 Calendar Release Party

Sat/13 7 p.m., free with purchase of $15 calendar

Homespun Bikes

494 Wesley, Oakl.

pinupclinic.blogspot.com

 

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

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

THEATER

ONGOING

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

Comedy Ballet Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapetickets.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Dark Porch Theatre’s latest (a reworked version of the piece it premiered at the Garage in July) is a fractured meta-theatrical tale about death. Not to put too fine a point on it, writer-director Martin Schwartz approaches the subject with what you might call deliberate absurdity, basking in whimsical inspiration with serious intent. Roxelana (a compellingly earnest Molly Benson) pursues an affair with the confident but completely in-over-his-head KC (Brandon Wiley), the handsome young employee of her husband (Scott Ragle), who goes tellingly by the moniker Baby Death God. Her three vaguely psychotic neighbors, meanwhile, known as The Intrepid Gentlemen (the amusingly anarchic trio of Natalie Koski-Karell, Bernard Norris, Matthew Von MeeZee), invite her to the wake for their dead dog, over whom they are unnaturally bereft. Between scenes an interviewer (Rachel Maize) queries members of the cast on a variety of subjects, including attitudes toward human sacrifice. (The actors feign indignation at the idea.) It all gradually comes to make some kind of sense, but letting go the effort to make any sense of it helps in the appreciation. Smoothing the way are likeable performances, not least Nathan Tucker’s wonderfully controlled hyperbole in the part of consummate thespian Foreplay. Integral and pleasingly unexpected passages of movement (choreographed by producer Margery Fairchild), as well as a permeating spirit of morbid fancy, further contribute to an intentionally jagged work that may be difficult to define but not hard to enjoy. (Avila)

Dracula’s School for Vampires Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Sun/14. Young Performers Theatre presents a Dracula comedy by Dr. Leonard Wolf.

*Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. In the last year, it seems like there’s been more full-frontal nudity in Bay Area theatre than in the preceding ten years combined. One certainly hopes it’s not due to the economy. Of course, nudity isn’t the only reason you should go and see Boxcar Theatre’s Equus—but its presence is indicative of the overall bravery of the production. Minutely updated and Americanized by director Erin

Gilley, the tale of a troubled teen who mutilates a stable of horses without apparent provocation seems disconcertingly as plausible as when it first debuted in 1973. The uncomfortable parental dynamics as enacted by Laura Jane Bailey and Jeff Garret, the dogged pedantry of Michael Shipley’s Dysart, a man measuring out his desperation not with teaspoons but with tomes of Doric architecture. Most especially, rivaling the single-minded intensity of child crusaders, teenage suicide bombers, and accidental martyrs, 18-year-old Bobby Conte Thornton’s unflinching portrayal of Alan Stang ably taps into the extremist

impulses of adolescence. “Extremity,” Shipley reminds us, “is the point”, and it’s exactly what Thornton delivers, from his nervous misdirections, to the ferocious abandon of his midnight rituals. Artistic Director Nick a. Olivero’s skills as a set designer are suitably showcased by a convincingly stable-like thrust of rough planks and second story “loft” seating, while Krista Smith’s lighting subtly adds texture and depth. (Gluckstern)

Failure to Communicate The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Call for prices. Fri-Sat 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/14. One part Torey Hayden, and one part Dr. Pangloss, Veronica Gray (Jaimielee Roberts) is an artist in need of a job, and so takes the position of teaching assistant in a classroom for severely troubled children. At first it seems like a good fit for her — she’s unfazed by the student’s scare tactics and drawn to their talents, in particular the artistic streak displayed by the autistic Loomis (Geoff Bangs). But eventually the extreme stress of her responsibilities starts to effect her equilibrium, and the rest of the play becomes a sort of elegiac apology for her eventual request to be transferred, and the havoc it plays on the emotions of her students. A first foray into playwriting for Performers Under Stress company member Valerie Fachman, Failure to Communicate feels very much like a work in progress. Its strengths – compelling material, quirky characters, and an insider’s perspective on an overloaded educational system – are soon overwhelmed by its weak points: too many veiled references to various abuses without follow-up, too much random violence without consequences, too many lengthy transitions and choppy scenes which neither drive the skeletal plot nor flesh out the occasionally hilarious yet often frustratingly two-dimensional characters. As a concept, Failure is intriguing but I’m hoping there will be a version 2.0 in the future, with a tighter focus and more comprehensive character development. (Gluckstern)

*Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along

stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour

production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the

appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

Hedda Gabler Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason; (800) 838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/13. The action unfolds in the parlor of the newly married Tesmans, young mediocre academic George (Adam Simpson) and town beauty Hedda, née Gabler (a crisp, tightly wound and nicely understated Cecilia Palmtag), a woman of exceptional intelligence, ambition and pride—to call her fiery wouldn’t be bad either, especially since she’s so fond of shooting off her late father’s pistols. Frustrated by her paltry new life, Hedda seeks news of an old flame, Eilert Lovborg (Paul Baird), via the admiring and vaguely lecherous Judge Brack (Peter Abraham) and a timid acquaintance from school days, Thea (Joceyln Stringer). The semi-wild but brilliant Lovborg has published a new book that imperils George’s chances for a professorship. Less interested in securing George’s career than controlling Lovborg’s destiny, Hedda soon manipulates events around her with bold determination and tragic consequences. Passionate, violent and psychologically complex, Henrik Ibsen’s titular heroine is at turns sympathetic and disturbing, an independent soul trapped in and warped by a society that allows her too little scope—a modern predicament that has inspired many modern and postmodern adaptations. Off Broadway West’s straight-ahead production of the late-19th-century drama, helmed by artistic director Richard Harder, remains faithful to the period setting. This includes Bert van Aalsburg’s respectable scenic design and Sylvia Kratins impressive costumes, as well as the old if fine translation by William Archer, who first introduced Ibsen to the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, the quaint diction is not handled with equal grace across an uneven cast. Palmtag’s solid, at times admirable performance in the lead, however, goes a good way toward grounding an otherwise patchy production. (Avila)

It’s All the Rage The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 5. The Marsh presents a new solo show by Marilyn Pittman.

Law and Order: San Francisco Unit: The Musical! EXIT Theater, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Mon, 8pm. Through Mon/15. Funny But Mean comedy troupe extends its newest show at a new venue.

Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $22-82. Call for dates and times. Through Nov. 21. American Conservatory Theater presents its contribution to the three-theater Bay Area debut of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Brother/Sister Plays , completing the young African American playwright’s much-touted but generally underwhelming trilogy with a coming-of-age story about a gay 16-year-old (a sharp and likeable Richard Prioleau) in a small black community of the Louisiana bayou. A recurring dream haunts the still-closeted Marcus, while the man in it, the long-gone Oshoosi Size (a vital Tobie L. Windham), stalks the stage with an ominous-sounding message for his older brother, Ogun (played with listless, gathering despair by Gregory Wallace). But the action unfolding against Alexander V. Nichols’ gorgeously moody, shape-shifting backdrop (a video-based evocation of land, sky and built environment) has only a perfunctory urgency to it. The play, smoothly directed for maximum laughs by Mark Rucker, is more inclined toward amiable scenes of tentative concern by all (including three key female characters played brilliantly by Margo Hall), Marcus’s sexual initiation by a visitor from the Bronx (Windham), or the fraught but whimsical camaraderie between Marcus and childhood friends Osha (Shinelle Azoroh) and Shaunta (Omozé Idehenre). Last-minute intimations of Katrina, meanwhile, come as arbitrary and less than powerful. “Sweet” is the sexually knowing, ambiguous term attaching to Marcus—whom all seem to already know and more or less accept as gay—but it’s also a too apt description for this well-acted but overblown and forgettable play. (Avila)

Murder for Two: A Killer Musical Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 252-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm, Sat, 6pm, Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 21. 42nd Street Moon presents a mix of Agatah Christie and musical comedy, by Kellen Blair and Joe Kinosian.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 19. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

A Perfect Ganesh New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 19. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the Terrence McNally play, directed by Arturo Catricala.

*Reluctant Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St; 641-7657, www.brava.org. $10-25. Thurs, 8pm; Fri-Sat, 10pm. Through Sat/13. Joel Israel joins the likes of Eric Bogosian, Joe Frank, and Jack Nicholson (in The King of Marvin Gardens) in making the radio booth one of the more intimate yet far-reaching of metaphors—a hermetic recess of lonely, fervid minds that ranges over the collective unconscious by air, with the power to infiltrate the most vulnerable, unguarded corners of an unsuspecting populace. Shrewdly directed by Meiyin Wang, the New York playwright-performer’s cool, slyly seductive piece of theatrical psychopathology, Reluctant, makes an impressive West Coast debut in Brava’s appropriately intimate upstairs studio. There, on Sophia Alberts-Willis’s choice radio-studio set, and under Simone Hamilton’s moody lighting, the audience slips effortlessly into the hushed, anxious trance of Israel’s intoxicating noir storyteller. Nattily dressed in jacket and tie, and cooing deftly crafted prose over eerie nocturnal underscoring by sound designer Mark Valadez, the storyteller unfurls a performative “audio” spectacle at the borderline between imagination and deed—and maybe personality too. This guy is not to be trusted, especially opposite the woman he interviews (Brava’s artistic director Raelle Myrick-Hodges on opening night but played, in serial fashion, by a different actress each time). No, like any devil in your ear, you don’t want to trust him, but you don’t want to tune him out either. (Avila)

Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

The Tempest Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor; (800) 838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (no show Nov 25). Cutting Ball Theater opens its 11th season with a three-person chamber version of the Shakespeare classic.

The Unexpected Man EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $18-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Sun/14. Spare Stage revives Yasmina Reza’s ironic comedy, starring Ken Ruta.

*West Side Story Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market; www.orpheum-theater.com. $88-378. Check for dates and times. Through Nov 28. Opening night of the touring Broadway revival coincided with game two of the World Series, and giddy Giants fans were loath to put away their smart phones until the final plea from the house managers. But then the curtain rose on perhaps the finest and most moving display of athleticism, professionalism, and grace to be found outside of AT&T Park. The 1957 musical, which updated Romeo and Juliet with a cross-cultural romance between Tony (Kyle Harris) and Maria (Ali Ewoldt) amid immigrant gangland New York, came instantly alive with all its storied potency—revved up for new millennium audiences with less reserved violence and the addition of a smattering of real Spanish throughout. David Saint’s excellent cast—including standout Michelle Aravena as Anita—and a nicely dynamic orchestra under conductor John O’Neill do satisfying justice to the jagged, jazzy modernism of Leonard Bernstein’s score, Stephen Sondheim’s soaring lyrics, Arthur Laurents’ smart book, and Jerome Robbins’ mesmerizing choreography (here re-created by Joey McKneely). At intermission, the house manager graciously announced the final winning score from the ballpark, and everyone cheered. It was a win-win situation. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Becoming Britney Center REPertory Company, Knight Stage 3 Theatre, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerREP.org. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8:15pm; Sun, 2:15pm. Through Sat/14. Center REPertory Company presents an original musical about a naïve pop star, written by Molly Bell and Daya Curley.

Burning Libraries: Stories From the New Ellis Island Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm, Sun, 3pm (also Sun/7, 7pm). Through Nov 14. Alice presents an evening-length theatrical performance spectacle, directed and co-written by Helen Stoltzfus.

Cinderella, Enchanted Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; (510) 665-5565, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $15-33. Call for run times. Through Dec 5. Frenchie Davis is plays the Fairy Godmother in this production of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical.

CTRL-ALT-DELETE Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mountain View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 21. Pear Avenute Theatre presents the comedy by Anthony Clarvoe.

Dracula Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $36-42. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm (also Nov 20, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Eugene Brancoveanu stars as the Count in a production directed by Michael Butler.

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Sat/13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Palomino Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Dec 5. David Cale brings his new solo play about a gigolo to Aurora Theatre for its Bay Area premiere.

Pirates of Penzance Novato Theatre Company Playhouse, 484 Ignacio, Novato; 883-4498, www.novatotheatercompany.org. $12-22. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 21. Novato Theatre Company revives the popular Gilbert and Sullivan swashbuckling tale.

*The Play About the Naked Guy La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 25). Through Dec 11. Impact Theatre presents an off-Broadway hit, written by David Bell and directed by Evren Odcikin.

Winter’s Tale Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/14, 2pm; Nov 18, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley presents the rarely-performed Shakespeare play.

Bless the beasts and children

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Bless the beasts and children

HAIRY EYEBALL It’s hard not to look at Ryan McGinley’s road-trip photographs — in which his young, often nude, subjects, having ventured far from civilization, run through the woods, climb trees, dance amid a Vulcanic cascade of sparklers, and leap into the void — and not sigh a little. What now separates them from the images he shot for Levi’s current “Go Forth” campaign, seemingly plastered on every other Muni shelter, is frequently a conspicuously displayed pair of jeans.

McGinley has built his reputation on capturing Edenic visions of youth running wild. His pictures are gauzy and nostalgic, shot through with the sexy frisson of their in-the-moment documentation of a way of living that rebukes authority and throws caution to the wind. No one is at work in a McGinley photograph (an irony, perhaps, given the faux-literati, “we are all workers” sloganeering that Levi’s uses elsewhere in the campaign). Rather, people, such as the New York area taggers he started off photographing early in his career, create. Or, as in the road trip pictures, they drop out, escape.

No wonder Levi’s came calling. McGinley’s photographs deliver the promise of youth and all its freedoms in a sexy visual package. When McGinley is at his strongest, though, his pictures also offer up flashes of mystery and unaffected joy. Sometimes, when his subject’s eyes lock with his camera they seem to transmit the promise of a secret to be shared.

The road-trip photographs make up roughly half the images in “Life Adjustment Center,” McGinley’s current exhibit at Ratio 3. However much they dazzle — Tom (Blue, Pink and Orange), a male nude study, gives George Platt Lynes a glowing Technicolor kiss — they are not the true draw. The animals are.

The other half of the show consists of black and white studio portraits of models (again, nude) posing with all sorts of fauna: deer, a domesticated mutt, a peacock, a butterfly, and a coyote. They are the inverse of the road-trip scenes: nature has been brought inside. Both creatures and humans address us with unblinking stillness that, at first glance, gives the impression that the former are stuffed. However, the press notes inform us that the animals are real, which makes a photo like India (Coyote) all the more riveting.

The coyote is draped around India’s shoulders, her hands balancing it in place, in a pose that echoes classic depictions of Christ as shepherd holding aloft his allegorical lamb. The coyote — its tongue hanging out — appears at ease, as does India. Their proximity to each other is nonetheless unsettling (we are left to guess whether or not the scars that criss-cross India’s torso and legs were acquired while posing or before the shoot).

The photograph also makes me think of Josef Beuys’ famous 1974 performance in which he stayed in the René Block Gallery with a wild coyote for eight hours over three days. By the end of the piece, the coyote had become tolerant enough of Beuys to allow the artist to give it a farewell embrace.

In McGinley’s remarkable photographs animals and humans pose together, but there is no hierarchy of prop and subject. In these double portraits McGinley has captured a momentary, and intensely tactile, experience of trust and vulnerability shared between unlike creatures.

 

OF COWBOYS AND CARNIES

I have one thing to say to fans of 2005’s Brokeback Mountain and Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys (1968) who haven’t yet seen local animation wunderkind and 2008 Goldie winner Samara Halperin’s epic, stop-motion same-sex cowboy romance Tumbleweed Town (1999). Get thee to YouTube.

A brief plot synopsis is in order. As Todd the Tonka cowboy hitchhikes his way across the Texas desert he navigates a rugged world of plastic masculinity only to find true love in the arms of a two-stepper at a raunchy roadhouse.

Currently in residence this week at Southern Exposure, Halperin has been converting the space’s sizeable gallery into a set for West of the Wonder Wheel, her much-awaited sequel to Tumbleweed Town, which trades wide, open spaces for the enclosed, topsy-turvy world of the carnival.

Halperin’s miniature amusement park, complete with rides and games of skill, was greatly inspired by Coney Island’s recently demolished Astroland Park, one of the subjects of a Halperin-curated series of short films about amusement parks that is shown alongside the film set/sculpture.

The last tiny detail is set to be glued in place this Friday, and to celebrate Halperin is hosting a pre-filming carnival-themed party with live music, games, and, of course, cotton candy.

RYAN MCGINLEY: LIFE ADJUSTMENT CENTER

Through Dec. 11

Ratio 3

1447 Stevenson, SF

(415) 821-3371

www.ratio3.org

SAMARA HALPERIN: WEST OF THE WONDERWHEEL

Through Nov. 15 (carnival reception Fri/12, 7 p.m.–9 p.m.

Southern Exposure

3030 20th St., SF

(415) 863-2141 www.soex.org

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Comedy Ballet Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapetickets.com. $10-20. Previews Thurs/4, 8pm. Opens Fri/5, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Dark Porch Theatre presents a genre-bending production written and directed by Martin Schwartz.

It’s All the Rage The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Opens Sat/6, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 5. The Marsh presents a new solo show by Marilyn Pittman.

Murder for Two: A Killer Musical Eureka Theatre, 215 jackson; 252-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Previews Wed/3, 7pm; Thurs/4-Fri/5, 8pm. Opens Sat/6, 6pm. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm, Sat, 6pm, Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 21. 42nd Street Moon presents a mix of Agatah Christie and musical comedy, by kellen Blair and Joe Kinosian.

A Perfect Ganesh New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-40. Previews Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm; Nov 10-Nov 12, 8pm. Opens Nov 13, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 19. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the Terrence McNally play, directed by Arturo Catricala.

The Tempest Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor; (800) 838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-20. Previews Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 5pm. Opens Nov 11, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (no show Nov 25). Cutting Ball Theater opens its 11th season with a three-person chamber version of the Shakespeare classic.

BAY AREA

Burning Libraries: Stories From the New Ellis Island Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Previews Thurs/4-Fri/5. Opens Sat/6, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm, Sun, 3pm (also Sun/7, 7pm). Through Nov 14. Alice presents an evening-length theatrical performance spectacle, directed and co-written by Helen Stoltzfus.

Cinderella, Enchanted Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk;; (510) 665-5565, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $15-33. Previews Sat/6, 2pm. Opens Sat/6, 7pm. Call for run times. Through Dec 5. Frenchie Davis is plays the Fairy Godmother in this production of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical.

CTRL-ALT-DELETE Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mountain View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Previews Thurs/4, 8pm. Opens Fri/5, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 21. Pear Avenute Theatre presents the comedy by Anthony Clarvoe.

The Play About the Naked Guy La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-20. Previews Thurs/4-Fri/5, 8pm. Opens Sat/6, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 25). Through Dec 11. Impact Theatre presents an off-Broadway hit, written by David Bell and directed by Evren Odcikin.

 

ONGOING

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

Dracula’s School for Vampires Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Nov 14. Young Performers Theatre presents a Dracula comedy by Dr. Leonard Wolf.

Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Boxcar Theatre kicks off its fifth season with Peter Shaffer’s drama, directed by Erin Gilley.

Failure to Communicate The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Call for prices. Fri-Sat 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 14. One part Torey Hayden, and one part Dr. Pangloss, Veronica Gray (Jaimielee Roberts) is an artist in need of a job, and so takes the position of teaching assistant in a classroom for severely troubled children. At first it seems like a good fit for her — she’s unfazed by the student’s scare tactics and drawn to their talents, in particular the artistic streak displayed by the autistic Loomis (Geoff Bangs). But eventually the extreme stress of her responsibilities starts to effect her equilibrium, and the rest of the play becomes a sort of elegiac apology for her eventual request to be transferred, and the havoc it plays on the emotions of her students. A first foray into playwriting for Performers Under Stress company member Valerie Fachman, Failure to Communicate feels very much like a work in progress. Its strengths – compelling material, quirky characters, and an insider’s perspective on an overloaded educational system – are soon overwhelmed by its weak points: too many veiled references to various abuses without follow-up, too much random violence without consequences, too many lengthy transitions and choppy scenes which neither drive the skeletal plot nor flesh out the occasionally hilarious yet often frustratingly two-dimensional characters. As a concept, Failure is intriguing but I’m hoping there will be a version 2.0 in the future, with a tighter focus and more comprehensive character development. (Gluckstern)

Glory Days Boxcar Studios, 125 Hyde; www.jericaproductions.com. $30. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 7. Jerica Prodcutions and the Royal Underground Theatre company present Nick Blaemire’s and James Gardiner’s one-act musical.

Habibi Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Sun/7. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present the world premiere of a play by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh.

*Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along

stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour

production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the

appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

Hedda Gabler Phoenix Theatre, suite 601, 414 Mason; (800) 838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 13. The action unfolds in the parlor of the newly married Tesmans, young mediocre academic George (Adam Simpson) and town beauty Hedda, née Gabler (a crisp, tightly wound and nicely understated Cecilia Palmtag), a woman of exceptional intelligence, ambition and pride—to call her fiery wouldn’t be bad either, especially since she’s so fond of shooting off her late father’s pistols. Frustrated by her paltry new life, Hedda seeks news of an old flame, Eilert Lovborg (Paul Baird), via the admiring and vaguely lecherous Judge Brack (Peter Abraham) and a timid acquaintance from school days, Thea (Joceyln Stringer). The semi-wild but brilliant Lovborg has published a new book that imperils George’s chances for a professorship. Less interested in securing George’s career than controlling Lovborg’s destiny, Hedda soon manipulates events around her with bold determination and tragic consequences. Passionate, violent and psychologically complex, Henrik Ibsen’s titular heroine is at turns sympathetic and disturbing, an independent soul trapped in and warped by a society that allows her too little scope—a modern predicament that has inspired many modern and postmodern adaptations. Off Broadway West’s straight-ahead production of the late-19th-century drama, helmed by artistic director Richard Harder, remains faithful to the period setting. This includes Bert van Aalsburg’s respectable scenic design and Sylvia Kratins impressive costumes, as well as the old if fine translation by William Archer, who first introduced Ibsen to the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, the quaint diction is not handled with equal grace across an uneven cast. Palmtag’s solid, at times admirable performance in the lead, however, goes a good way toward grounding an otherwise patchy production. (Avila)

Law and Order: San Francisco Unit: The Musical! EXIT Theater, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Mon, 8pm. Through Nov 15. Funny But Mean comedy troupe extends its newest show at a new venue.

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Wed/3; 7pm). Through Sun/7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 19. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Reluctant Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St; 641-7657, www.brava.org. $10-25. Thurs, 8pm; Fri-Sat, 10pm. Through Nov 13. Joel Israel joins the likes of Eric Bogosian, Joe Frank, and Jack Nicholson (in The King of Marvin Gardens) in making the radio booth one of the more intimate yet far-reaching of metaphors—a hermetic recess of lonely, fervid minds that ranges over the collective unconscious by air, with the power to infiltrate the most vulnerable, unguarded corners of an unsuspecting populace. Shrewdly directed by Meiyin Wang, the New York playwright-performer’s cool, slyly seductive piece of theatrical psychopathology, Reluctant, makes an impressive West Coast debut in Brava’s appropriately intimate upstairs studio. There, on Sophia Alberts-Willis’s choice radio-studio set, and under Simone Hamilton’s moody lighting, the audience slips effortlessly into the hushed, anxious trance of Israel’s intoxicating noir storyteller. Nattily dressed in jacket and tie, and cooing deftly crafted prose over eerie nocturnal underscoring by sound designer Mark Valadez, the storyteller unfurls a performative “audio” spectacle at the borderline between imagination and deed—and maybe personality too. This guy is not to be trusted, especially opposite the woman he interviews (Brava’s artistic director Raelle Myrick-Hodges on opening night but played, in serial fashion, by a different actress each time). No, like any devil in your ear, you don’t want to trust him, but you don’t want to tune him out either. (Avila)

Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Sunset Limited SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Nov 6. This 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy exhibits some of the best and worst of the celebrated author, but significantly more of the latter. It sets an aging white academic and failed suicide (Charles Dean) in a room with his rescuer and would-be savior, a poor black social worker (Carl Lumbly), who has just snatched him from a railway platform ahead of a tête-à-tête with a train called the Sunset Limited. Both characters remain nameless, emphasizing the abstract pseudo-Socratic dimensions attendant on the dialogue-driven realism here (staged with a knowing wink in director Bill English’s scenic design, a partially walled wood-framed shack with see-through slits between the thin horizontal planking). The black man is a born-again Christian and ex-con convinced Jesus has just given him a major assignment. His dogmatic certainty is matched by the white man’s nihilism and despair. “I believe in the primacy of the intellect,” the miserable prof tells his host, who’s locked the door on his self-destructive guest in an effort to buy time to change his mind. Leaving aside the historically clichéd, problematic and baggage-heavy dynamic of a poor black American devoted to the welfare of a rich white one, neither man moves from his respective position one inch (at least until perhaps and partially at the very end), which constrains the dramatic development. Moreover, both sides argue feebly, mainly by gainsaying whatever it is the other one says, making this not a great intellectual debate either. SF Playhouse’s production sets two fine actors at this heavy-handed twofer, but little can be done to redeem so static and arid an exercise. (Avila)

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

The Unexpected Man EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $18-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 14. Spare Stage revives Yasmina Reza’s ironic comedy, starring Ken Ruta.

*West Side Story Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market; www.orpheum-theater.com. $88-378. Check for dates and times. Through Nov 28. Opening night of the touring Broadway revival coincided with game two of the World Series, and giddy Giants fans were loath to put away their smart phones until the final plea from the house managers. But then the curtain rose on perhaps the finest and most moving display of athleticism, professionalism, and grace to be found outside of AT&T Park. The 1957 musical, which updated Romeo and Juliet with a cross-cultural romance between Tony (Kyle Harris) and Maria (Ali Ewoldt) amid immigrant gangland New York, came instantly alive with all its storied potency—revved up for new millennium audiences with less reserved violence and the addition of a smattering of real Spanish throughout. David Saint’s excellent cast—including standout Michelle Aravena as Anita—and a nicely dynamic orchestra under conductor John O’Neill do satisfying justice to the jagged, jazzy modernism of Leonard Bernstein’s score, Stephen Sondheim’s soaring lyrics, Arthur Laurents’ smart book, and Jerome Robbins’ mesmerizing choreography (here re-created by Joey McKneely). At intermission, the house manager graciously announced the final winning score from the ballpark, and everyone cheered. It was a win-win situation. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Becoming Britney Center REPertory Company, Knight Stage 3 Theatre, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerREP.org. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8:15pm; Sun, 2:15pm. Through Nov 14. Center REPertory Company presents an original musical about a naïve pop star, written by Molly Bell and Daya Curley.

Dracula Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $36-42. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm (also Nov 20, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Eugene Brancoveanu stars as the Count in a production directed by Michael Butler.

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*The Great Game: Afghanistan Roda Theatre, 201 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $17-73. Call for times. Through Nov 7. Berkeley Rep presents the West Coast premiere of a three-part show about Afghanistan.

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Palomino Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Dec 5. David Cale brings his new solo play about a gigolo to Aurora Theatre for its Bay Area premiere.

Pirates of Penzance Novato Theatre Company Playhouse, 484 Ignacio, Novato; 883-4498, www.novatotheatercompany.org. $12-22. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 21. Novato Theatre Company revives the popular Gilbert and Sullivan swashbuckling tale.

Winter’s Tale Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/7, and Nov 14, 2pm; Nov 18, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley presents the rarely-performed Shakespeare play.

Stage

Andrew Lam
-
0

 

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.


OPENING

Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Opens Wed/27, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Boxcar Theatre kicks off its fifth season with Peter Shaffer’s drama, directed by Erin Gilley.

Failure to Communicate The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Call for prices. Opens Fri/29, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 14. Perfomers Under Stress opens its sixth season with the world premiere of a physical theater piece by Valerie Fachman.

The Unexpected Man EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $18-25. Opens Fri/29. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 14. Spare Stage revives Yasmina Reza’s ironic comedy, starring Ken Ruta.

BAY AREA

Becoming Britney Center REPortory Company, Knight Stage 3 Theatre, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerREP.org. $25. Previews Thurs/28-Fri/29, 8:15pm. Opens Sat/30, 8:15pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8:15pm; Sun, 2:15pm. Through Nov 14.Center REPortory Company presents an original musical about a naïve pop star, written by Molly Bell and Daya Curley.

Palomino Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Previews Fri/29-Sat/30 and Nov 3, 8pm; Sun/31, 2pm; Tues/2, 7pm. Opens Nov 4, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Dec 5. David Cale brings his new solo play about a gigolo to Aurora Theatre for its Bay Area premiere.

Pirates of Penzance Novato Theatre Company Playhouse, 484 Ignacio, Novato; 883-4498, www.novatotheatercompany.org. $12-22. Opens Thurs/28, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 21. Novato Theatre Company revives the popular Gilbert and Sullivan swashbuckling tale.

ONGOING

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

Dracula’s School for Vampires Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Nov 14. Young Performers Theatre presents a Dracula comedy by Dr. Leonard Wolf.

Equus Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $10-25. Opens Wed/27, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 20. Boxcar Theatre kicks off its fifth season with Peter Shaffer’s drama, directed by Erin Gilley.

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Wed/27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Glory Days Boxcar Studios, 125 Hyde; www.jericaproductions.com. $30. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm (no performance Sun/31). Through Nov 7. Jerica Prodcutions and the Royal Underground Theatre company present Nick Blaemire’s and James Gardiner’s one-act musical.

Habibi Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Nov 7. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present the world premiere of a play by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh.

*Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along

stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour

production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the

appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

Hedda Gabler Phoenix Theatre, suite 601, 414 Mason; (800) 838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35.

The action unfolds in the parlor of the newly married Tesmans, young mediocre academic George (Adam Simpson) and town beauty Hedda, née Gabler (a crisp, tightly wound and nicely understated Cecilia Palmtag), a woman of exceptional intelligence, ambition and pride—to call her fiery wouldn’t be bad either, especially since she’s so fond of shooting off her late father’s pistols. Frustrated by her paltry new life, Hedda seeks news of an old flame, Eilert Lovborg (Paul Baird), via the admiring and vaguely lecherous Judge Brack (Peter Abraham) and a timid acquaintance from school days, Thea (Joceyln Stringer). The semi-wild but brilliant Lovborg has published a new book that imperils George’s chances for a professorship. Less interested in securing George’s career than controlling Lovborg’s destiny, Hedda soon manipulates events around her with bold determination and tragic consequences. Passionate, violent and psychologically complex, Henrik Ibsen’s titular heroine is at turns sympathetic and disturbing, an independent soul trapped in and warped by a society that allows her too little scope—a modern predicament that has inspired many modern and postmodern adaptations. Off Broadway West’s straight-ahead production of the late-19th-century drama, helmed by artistic director Richard Harder, remains faithful to the period setting. This includes Bert van Aalsburg’s respectable scenic design and Sylvia Kratins impressive costumes, as well as the old if fine translation by William Archer, who first introduced Ibsen to the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, the quaint diction is not handled with equal grace across an uneven cast. Palmtag’s solid, at times admirable performance in the lead, however, goes a good way toward grounding an otherwise patchy production. (Avila)

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. Custom Made Theatre Company presents the 2005 play by New York’s Stephen Adly Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the A Train), which places purgatorial Judas (Kristoffer Alberto Barrera) on trial to determine his deserved fate for dropping a dime on Jesus and all that jazz. Flamboyant, sycophantic and horny prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Ben Ortega) and defense attorney Loretta (Amelia Avila) call between them a series of brow-raising witnesses—including Mother Teresa (Brandy Leggett), Sigmund Freud (Catz Forsman), and Satan (Richard Wenzel)—as Judas (seated on the upper tier of Sarah Phykitt’s suitably imposing split-level set) stares stoically in relative silence or appears in a series of childhood flashbacks. Characteristically funny and streetwise, as well as versed in the Catholic rigmarole as filtered through a NYC-boroughs sensibility, Guirgis’s play is also unusually tedious in its jokey, poky unfolding since—offering not much more than a cipher in the largely mute Iscariot—the proceedings lack a strong sense of dramatic stakes. It feels more like a revue than a play, or like an unnecessarily long-winded excuse for the final, well-turned concluding monologue by a heretofore marginal character (a speech delivered with admirable understatement by director Brian Katz). (Avila)

Law and Order: San Francisco Unit: The Musical! EXIT Theater, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Mon, 8pm. Through Nov 15. Funny But Mean comedy troupe extends its newest show at a new venue.

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Wed/27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 19. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Proof Exit Stage Left Theatre, 156 Eddy; www.belljartheatre.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. Bell Jar Theatre presents David Auburn’s award-winning play.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*SHIToberfest Off-Market Theaters, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/30. This special October run of PianoFight’s bowel-loosening comedy series, the S.H.I.T. Show (for acronym fans, that’s the Stop Hating Imagination Time Show), revolves dizzyingly around the subject of beer, Germans and, perhaps less explicably, flatulent dolphins, among much else in the wide open seas of poor taste. Is it hilarious? It is. And you don’t even need to smuggle in a forty to make it so, though it certainly doesn’t hurt. Fine comic acting throughout a charismatic cast (including writer-director-producers Alex Boyd, Zach Cahn, Jed Goldstein, Ray Hobbs, Devin McNulty, Evan Winchester and Duncan Wold, with help from Nicole Hammersla, Gabrielle Patacsil, Rob Ready, Derricka Smith, Andy Strong, Jacque Vavroch and Dan Williams) combines here with generally solid to exceptional sketch work, video and song. Add in a permeating spirit of revelry, debauchery and irreverence and the evening becomes a diversion of the first order, culminating in an utterly sacrilicious sketch about a bunch of toasted beer-brewing monks treated to a papal visit—one of the best venial sins for your buck. When it comes to Octoberfesting this year, “Bavaria” is just S.H.I.T.–faced for Bay Area. (Avila)

Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm (Thurs/28-Sun/31 include performances of The Forsaken Laboratory by the Brazilian Grand Guignol group Vigor Mortis). Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Sunset Limited SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Nov 6. This 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy exhibits some of the best and worst of the celebrated author, but significantly more of the latter. It sets an aging white academic and failed suicide (Charles Dean) in a room with his rescuer and would-be savior, a poor black social worker (Carl Lumbly), who has just snatched him from a railway platform ahead of a tête-à-tête with a train called the Sunset Limited. Both characters remain nameless, emphasizing the abstract pseudo-Socratic dimensions attendant on the dialogue-driven realism here (staged with a knowing wink in director Bill English’s scenic design, a partially walled wood-framed shack with see-through slits between the thin horizontal planking). The black man is a born-again Christian and ex-con convinced Jesus has just given him a major assignment. His dogmatic certainty is matched by the white man’s nihilism and despair. “I believe in the primacy of the intellect,” the miserable prof tells his host, who’s locked the door on his self-destructive guest in an effort to buy time to change his mind. Leaving aside the historically clichéd, problematic and baggage-heavy dynamic of a poor black American devoted to the welfare of a rich white one, neither man moves from his respective position one inch (at least until perhaps and partially at the very end), which constrains the dramatic development. Moreover, both sides argue feebly, mainly by gainsaying whatever it is the other one says, making this not a great intellectual debate either. SF Playhouse’s production sets two fine actors at this heavy-handed twofer, but little can be done to redeem so static and arid an exercise. (Avila)

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/31, 5pm). Through Sun/31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

BAY AREA

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Sun/31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

Dracula Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $36-42. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm (also Nov 20, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Eugene Brancoveanu stars as the Count in a production directed by Michael Butler.

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*The Great Game: Afghanistan Roda Theatre, 201 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $17-73. Call for times. Through Nov 7. Berkeley Rep presents the West Coast premiere of a three-part show about Afghanistan.

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sun/31. This latest from Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Killer Joe) starts out as a delicious treat but a hollowness in the center of it all leaves one less than fully unsatisfied. Director Leslie Martinson’s cast shines, however, as the action unfolds in crisp, engaging scenes set in the titular run-down donut shop in Chicago’s slowly gentrifying Uptown neighborhood. Owner-operator Arthur Przybyszewski (Howard Swain) is an aging baby boomer and second-generation Polish immigrant who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft and returned years later to take over his parents shop, alienated and hesitant, though well liked by his regulars. At least most: As the play opens his shop has been vandalized. Two beat cops are on the scene, James (Michael J. Asberry) and Randy (Julia Brothers), the latter eventually displaying a visible crush on an oblivious, then discombobulated Arthur. When an impressive young African American man named Franco (Lance Gardner) comes in and charms his way into a job, Arthur gradually finds himself drawn out of his shell and faced with the challenge of valuing another human being more than his own hide—a challenge underscored by Arthur’s several monologues, in which his personal history comes to the fore. The play feels pat and a little lazy-sentimental in the end, but there’s no denying the entertainment afforded here, especially by the magnetic pairing of leads Swain and Gardner. (Avila)

Winter’s Tale Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/31, Nov 7, and Nov 14, 2pm; Nov 18, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley presents the rarely-performed Shakespeare play.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead” CELLspace, 2050 Bryant; (510) 207-6101. $10-20. Fri/29, 8pm. Mangos With Chili presents a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration.

“The ChatRoulette Halloween Show” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; www.chatrouletteshow.com. $12-15. Sat/30, 7:30pm. The Illuminated Theater presents a special Halloween edition of its show.

Alicia Dattner Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; (917) 363-9646, www.aliciadattner.com. $20. Fri/29, 8pm.

“Fright Nights at the Wharf” Castagnola’s, 286 Jefferson; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Fri/29-Sat/30, 8pm. An evening of stand-up comedy by the water.

“Ghost Stories and other Horrors!” Jellyfish Gallery, 1286 Folsom; www.firesidestorytelling.com. $5. Wed/27, 8pm. Fireside Storytelling presents an evening of ghoulish tales.

“Kaleidoscope Cabaret” Brava Theater, 2781 24th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-25. Sat/30, 8pm. An evening of drag, burlesque, song, and aerial art by performers of color.

“Karaghiozis Saves the Economy” Hallidie Plaza, Market and 5th; 648-446, www.shadowlight.org. Free. Sun/31, 7pm. A Greek shadow theatre performance by Leonidas Kassapides.

“Make Drag, Not War!” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St; www.dancemission.com. $15-20. Sun/31, 8pm. A drag show and dance party hosted by Artist Malcolm Drake.

“MUNI Diaries Live!” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; 647-2888, www.munidiaries.com. $5. Fri/29, 7:30pm. An evening of MUNI stories.

“Road trip to Pluto” 4 Star Theatre, 2200 Clement; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $9.99-12. Thurs/28, 8:30pm. Bitter Show reprises its contribution to the SF Fringe Fest.

“Romane Event Comedy Show: Super Special Election and Halloween Edition” Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St; 647-2888, www.pacoromane.com. Wed/27, 7:30pm. Paco Romane’s guests include Will Durst, Casey Ley, Grant Lyon, and Pamela Ames.

Devendra Sharma CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; www.counterpulse.org. $14-24. Thurs/28-Sat/30, 8pm; Sun/31, 2pm. CounterPULSe’s “Performing Diaspora” program presents a contemporary take on Nautanki theater by Sharma.

“Stories From a Haunted Forest” Presidio’s Log Cabin, 1299 Story; www.bindlestiffstudio.org. Free. Sat/30, 7pm. Bindlestiff Studio presents a one-night-only phantasmic experience.

“Teatro Zinzombie!” Pier 29 at Battery; 438-2668, www.love.zinzanni.org. 117-167. Sun/31, 5:15pm. TeatroZinzanni is haunted for one night.

Trailer Park Boys Palace Fine Arts Theatre, 3601 Lyon; 567-6642, www.ticketmaster.com. $45-58. Thurs/28, 7:30pm. The fabled boys appear live in concert.

“Twilight Vixen Revue” SOMArts, 934 Brannan; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $12. A special Halloween edition.

“Upper Cut” The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; www.darkroomsf.com. $10. Thurs/28, 8pm. A weekly improve and sketch comedy open mic.

BAY AREA

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley campus, Berk; (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. $31-68. Fri/29-Sat/30, 8pm. The acclaimed dance company performs some West Coast premieres.

“Persephone’s Boots” Codornices Park, Berk; www.raggedwing.org. Free. Wed/27-Sun/31, 5:30pm. Ragged Wing Ensemble presents the world premiere of a performance created by Anna Schneiderman and the ensemble.

 

 

Alerts

Andrew Lam
-
0

news@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, OCT. 29

Bert for BART

BART board candidate Bert Hill, who is endorsed by a broad array of progressive organizations in his bid to unseat Republican incumbent James Fang, will be campaigning and meeting commuters along with several of his campaign’s supporters.

4:30–7 p.m., free

Balboa Park BART Station

401 Geneva Ave., SF

www.bert4bart.org

FRIDAY, OCT. 29

Halloween Critical Mass

Find a costume, hop on your bicycle, and join the monthly Critical Mass bike ride, Halloween edition. This rolling street party is always a fun way to flip the normal transportation paradigm, but it’s even more festive when composed of zombies, naughty nurses, and sexy cops.

6 p.m., free

Justin Herman Plaza

Market and Embarcadero

www.sfcriticalmass.org

Zombie Flash Mob

Guardian sources have warned that a mob of zombies, possibly dressed in prom attire, will rampage through the streets of the Mission. They are said to be protesting being marginalized and are showing their solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Eventually, our sources say, they will converge at El Rio, 3158 Mission St., for a zombie prom featuring live music by Elle Niño and others, with a cover charge of $3 for the undead and $7 for the living.

8 p.m., free

Corner of 16th and Mission, SF

elleninosf@gmail.com

SUNDAY, OCT. 31

(SF) Rally to Restore Sanity

If you can’t make it to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the Rally to Restore Sanity and the March to Keep Fear Alive, the send-up of political events by Comedy Central satirists Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, you can still take part in SF’s local version. The event include guest speakers, comedy, poetry, and dancing.

9 a.m.–3 p.m., free

Civic Center Plaza

Larkin and Grove, SF

www.sfsanityrally.com

MONDAY, NOV. 1

Urban Water Rates

Panelists from the industry will seek to answer whether water pricing at the urban water agency level can work as a water conservation tool, whether rate increases jeopardize revenue, and how to serve low-income and low-use customers. RSVP at info@whollyh2o.org.

1 p.m.–3 p.m., free

Jellyfish Gallery

1286 Folsom, SF

www.whollyh20.org

TUESDAY, NOV. 2

Election Day

This election features pivotal races for the governor of California, U.S. Senate, and San Francisco Board of Supervisors, as well as important local and state propositions, so don’t forget to vote. Use this week’s cover as a cheat sheet or view our complete endorsements. Also visit the Guardian’s Politics blog on Election Day for a rundown on the evening parties and follow our live election coverage there that night.

7 a.m. to 8 p.m., free

SF City Hall basement

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF

www.sfgov.org/elections

 

 

Stage listings

David Talbot
-
0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Dracula’s School for Vampires Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Opens Sat/23, 1pm. Runs Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Nov 14. Young Performers Theatre presents a Dracula comedy by Dr. Leonard Wolf.

BAY AREA

Dracula Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $36-42. Previews Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 2:30pm. Opens Tues/26, 7:30 pm. Runs Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm (also Nov 20, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Eugene Brancoveanu stars as the Count in a production directed by Michael Butler.

The Great Game: Afghanistan Roda Theatre, 201 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $17-73. Call for times. Through Nov 7. Berkeley Rep presents the West Coast premiere of a three-part show about Afghanistan.

Winter’s Tale Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Opens Fri/22, 8pm. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 31, Nov, 7, and Nov 14, 2pm; Nov 18, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley presents the rarely-performed Shakespeare play.

 

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Phoenix Theatre, Stage 2, 414 Mason; 433-1235, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/23. A one-woman musical starring Karen Hirst, with book and music by Anne Doherty.

Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/24. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a show by Brian Christopher Williams.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Fri/22. Actors Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ sultry, sweltering tale of a Mississippi family, directed by Keith Phillips.

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm (also Sat/16, 1pm). Through Sat/ 24. Although a little slow and awkward at the start, not long into 42nd Street Moon’s staging of Stephen Sondheim classic and classical (being inspired by the farces of Plautus) musical comedy (with book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart) you feel it’s making up in enthusiasm and grit what it lacks in Broadway-sized budgets. It helps that artistic director Greg MacKellan has assembled an able cast, especially in the principal roles. It can’t be easy to follow in the cavorting footsteps of Zero Mostel and Nathan Lane, but Megan Cavanagh has absolutely no trouble wooing the audience in the central role of Pseudolus, the clever slave bargaining and scheming for his freedom. Strong performances come too from Michael Rhone as fellow slave Hysterium (a name that speaks for itself), Bob Greene as horny paterfamilias Senex, and Rob Hatzenbeller as the self-loving captain Miles Gloriosus. Nice costuming (by Louise Jarmilowicz), a hint of Roman architecture (courtesy of set designer Jon Wai-keung Lowe), generally spiffy choreography (by Tom Segal) and jaunty musical accompaniment from musical director Dave Dobrusky and horn player Nick Di Scala all add lift to a gradual charmer of a show. (Avila)

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Oct 27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Habibi Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Nov 7. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present the world premiere of a play by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh.

*Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 30. Custom Made Theatre Company presents the 2005 play by New York’s Stephen Adly Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the A Train), which places purgatorial Judas (Kristoffer Alberto Barrera) on trial to determine his deserved fate for dropping a dime on Jesus and all that jazz. Flamboyant, sycophantic and horny prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Ben Ortega) and defense attorney Loretta (Amelia Avila) call between them a series of brow-raising witnesses—including Mother Teresa (Brandy Leggett), Sigmund Freud (Catz Forsman), and Satan (Richard Wenzel)—as Judas (seated on the upper tier of Sarah Phykitt’s suitably imposing split-level set) stares stoically in relative silence or appears in a series of childhood flashbacks. Characteristically funny and streetwise, as well as versed in the Catholic rigmarole as filtered through a NYC-boroughs sensibility, Guirgis’s play is also unusually tedious in its jokey, poky unfolding since—offering not much more than a cipher in the largely mute Iscariot—the proceedings lack a strong sense of dramatic stakes. It feels more like a revue than a play, or like an unnecessarily long-winded excuse for the final, well-turned concluding monologue by a heretofore marginal character (a speech delivered with admirable understatement by director Brian Katz). (Avila)

Love Song Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Sat/23. An offbeat comedy by John Kolvenbach, directed by Loretta Janca.

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Wed/20, Oct 27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

Nina and the Monsters Shotwell Studios, 3252A 19th; 509-8656, 509-8656. $10-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/24, 2pm). Ninjaz of Drama with Footloose present a modern-day fairy tale.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 19. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Proof Exit Stage Left Theatre, 156 Eddy; www.belljartheatre.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 30. Bell Jar Theatre presents David Auburn’s award-winning play.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Scapin American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-90. Tues-Sun, times vary. Through Sat/23. Bill Irwin, the innovative former Pickle Family clown and neo-vaudevillian turned Broadway star, makes a San Francisco return at the helm—and in the title role—of American Conservatory Theater’s production of Moliere’s classic farce. It’s an excuse for some arch meta-theatrical high jinx as well as expert clowning, a love fest really, with many fine moments amid a general font of fun whose heady purity seems like it should fall under some FDA regulation or other—clearly, somebody has paid someone to look the other way, and for once the corruption is unreservedly welcome. Joining the fun is Irwin’s old comrade-in-arms and, here, sacks, Geoff Hoyle, as miserly and dyspeptic daddy Geronte. Other ACT regulars and veterans flesh out a winning cast, among them the ever versatile and inimitable Gregory Wallace as Octave, a flouncing Steven Anthony Jones as put-out patriarch Argante, René Augesen as boisterously unlikely “virgin” Zerbinette, and a wonderfully adept and scene-stealing Judd Williford in the role of Scapin sidekick Sylvestre. As for Irwin, his comedic sensibility shows itself scrupulously apt and timeless at once, and his sure, lithesome performance intoxicating and age-defying. As a director, moreover, he gives as generously to each of his fellow performers as he does to his adoring, lovingly tousled audience. (Avila)

The Shining: Live The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-7891, www.darkroomsf.com. $7-10. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/23. The Dark Room becomes the Overlook Hotel in this stage production of the horror classic.

*SHIToberfest Off-Market Theaters, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 30. This special October run of PianoFight’s bowel-loosening comedy series, the S.H.I.T. Show (for acronym fans, that’s the Stop Hating Imagination Time Show), revolves dizzyingly around the subject of beer, Germans and, perhaps less explicably, flatulent dolphins, among much else in the wide open seas of poor taste. Is it hilarious? It is. And you don’t even need to smuggle in a forty to make it so, though it certainly doesn’t hurt. Fine comic acting throughout a charismatic cast (including writer-director-producers Alex Boyd, Zach Cahn, Jed Goldstein, Ray Hobbs, Devin McNulty, Evan Winchester and Duncan Wold, with help from Nicole Hammersla, Gabrielle Patacsil, Rob Ready, Derricka Smith, Andy Strong, Jacque Vavroch and Dan Williams) combines here with generally solid to exceptional sketch work, video and song. Add in a permeating spirit of revelry, debauchery and irreverence and the evening becomes a diversion of the first order, culminating in an utterly sacrilicious sketch about a bunch of toasted beer-brewing monks treated to a papal visit—one of the best venial sins for your buck. When it comes to Octoberfesting this year, “Bavaria” is just S.H.I.T.–faced for Bay Area. (Avila)

Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm (Thurs/21, Fri/22, Oct 28, Oct 29, Oct 30, and Oct 31 include performances of The Forsaken Laboratory by the Brazilian Grand Guignol group Vigor Mortis). Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Sunset Limited SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Nov 6. This 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy exhibits some of the best and worst of the celebrated author, but significantly more of the latter. It sets an aging white academic and failed suicide (Charles Dean) in a room with his rescuer and would-be savior, a poor black social worker (Carl Lumbly), who has just snatched him from a railway platform ahead of a tête-à-tête with a train called the Sunset Limited. Both characters remain nameless, emphasizing the abstract pseudo-Socratic dimensions attendant on the dialogue-driven realism here (staged with a knowing wink in director Bill English’s scenic design, a partially walled wood-framed shack with see-through slits between the thin horizontal planking). The black man is a born-again Christian and ex-con convinced Jesus has just given him a major assignment. His dogmatic certainty is matched by the white man’s nihilism and despair. “I believe in the primacy of the intellect,” the miserable prof tells his host, who’s locked the door on his self-destructive guest in an effort to buy time to change his mind. Leaving aside the historically clichéd, problematic and baggage-heavy dynamic of a poor black American devoted to the welfare of a rich white one, neither man moves from his respective position one inch (at least until perhaps and partially at the very end), which constrains the dramatic development. Moreover, both sides argue feebly, mainly by gainsaying whatever it is the other one says, making this not a great intellectual debate either. SF Playhouse’s production sets two fine actors at this heavy-handed twofer, but little can be done to redeem so static and arid an exercise. (Avila)

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 31, 5pm). Through Oct 31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

BAY AREA

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 31. This latest from Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Killer Joe) starts out as a delicious treat but a hollowness in the center of it all leaves one less than fully satisfied. Director Leslie Martinson’s cast shines, however, as the action unfolds in crisp, engaging scenes set in the titular run-down donut shop in Chicago’s slowly gentrifying Uptown neighborhood. Owner-operator Arthur Przybyszewski (Howard Swain) is an aging baby boomer and second-generation Polish immigrant who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft and returned years later to take over his parents shop, alienated and hesitant, though well liked by his regulars. At least most: As the play opens his shop has been vandalized. Two beat cops are on the scene, James (Michael J. Asberry) and Randy (Julia Brothers), the latter eventually displaying a visible crush on an oblivious, then discombobulated Arthur. When an impressive young African American man named Franco (Lance Gardner) comes in and charms his way into a job, Arthur gradually finds himself drawn out of his shell and faced with the challenge of valuing another human being more than his own hide—a challenge underscored by Arthur’s several monologues, in which his personal history comes to the fore. The play feels pat and a little lazy-sentimental in the end, but there’s no denying the entertainment afforded here, especially by the magnetic pairing of leads Swain and Gardner. (Avila)

Alerts

David Talbot
-
0

news@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 20

 

Oakland candidates forum

The Alameda County Democratic Lawyers Club hosts at forum featuring the candidates for Oakland mayor and Alameda County Superior Court judge. With the Oakland mayor’s race between well-funded favorite Don Perata and progressive challengers Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan heating up as it comes into the home stretch, this could be a fun one.

5–7 p.m., $25 for members, $30 for nonmembers

Everett & Jones BBQ Restaurant

126 Broadway, Oakl.

510-836-7563

demlawyers.org/events

THURSDAY, OCT. 21

 

Save the Dolphins

Earth Island Institute presents “From Flipper to The Cove to Blood Dolphin$: A Conversation with Ric O’Barry,” a plea to save dolphins for being slaughtered in Taiji, Japan. O’Barry, star of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove and the Animal Planet TV miniseries Blood Dolphin$, will update his campaign with information and video footage from his recent trip to Japan.

7 p.m., $5–$20 sliding scale

The David Brower Center

2150 Allston Way, Berk.

510-859-9100

www.eii.org/events/dolphin

FRIDAY, OCT. 23

 

Ports blocked for Oscar Grant

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 has called for a shutdown of Bay Area ports to call for justice in the case of Oscar Grant, who was fatally shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle on an Oakland train platform on New Year’s Day 2009. “Bay Area ports will shut down that day to stand with the black community and others against the scourge of police brutality,” said Jack Heyman, an executive board member for the union. Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in July and is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 5.

All day, free

Ports through the Bay Area

www.ilwu10.org

jackheyman@comcast.net

SUNDAY, OCT. 24

 

Sunday Streets

The final Sunday Streets car-free event of the season will for the first time travel through the streets of the Tenderloin and Civic Center area. Bicyclists, pedestrians, and skaters travel a route that passes City Hall, Boedekker Park, Tenderloin Recreation Center, and the Tenderloin National Forest in Cohen Alley, off Ellis near Leavenworth, featuring live performances, the Funkytown Roller Disco, and free bike rental and repair stations. This event also coincides with the second annual Tricycle Music Festival, with live music from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the steps of the Main Library.

10 a.m.–3 p.m., free

Civic Center/Tenderloin

sundaystreets@gmail.com

415-344-0489. ext. 2

www.sundaystreetssf.com

MONDAY, OCT. 25

 

Earth-a-llujah Revival

Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping Choir returns to San Francisco as part of their Earth-a-llujah, Earth-a-llujah Revival Tour, bringing the environmentalist and anti-consumerist gospel to the Mission District. Fresh off of a run for the mayor of New York City and successful campaign to get Chase Manhattan Bank to disinvest in mountaintop removal coal mining, Rev. Billy (a.k.a. performance artist Billy Talen, who got his start here in SF) and his flock will fill you with the Holy Spirit and exorcise you of your credit cards. Hallelujah!

7 p.m., $12

Victoria Theater

2961 16th St., SF

(415) 863-7576

www.revbilly.com/events/cali-tour

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/133698

1...212223...32Page 22 of 32

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org