Live Archives — Page 132 of 254 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Hare-raising

Andrew Lam

April 5, 2011

MUSIC This I know, having heard the name discussed in hushed yet excited tones among ecstatic ex-hardcore kids, having taken in all of two Lightning Bolt shows by Brians Chippendale and Gibson since Ride the Skies (Load, 2001). Having felt the gale-force winds of their live fury while swapping sweat with pinballing strangers. Having tasted the salad and found it delightful. Having waited with anticipation for their next show in the Bay Area—this time the night before they play Coachella.

Lightning Bolt’s most recent album, Earthly Delights (Load, 2009), is just as majestically noisy — and chock-full of wonder — as their seeming-career-best Hypermagic Mountain (Load, 2005). The time is right to share some truths about the dynamic duo.

DRUMMER-VOCALIST BRIAN CHIPPENDALE LIKES HIS FRIENDS FURRY.

“Mustard ran off, Weird appeared out of nowhere. Omni died,” says Chippendale of his Fort Thunder felines, driving the van and deep into the weeds of Peter Glantz and Nick Noe’s 2002s documentary, Lightning Bolt: The Power of Salad [and writ small like an afterthought] & Milkshakes. “Calico is too stupid to leave. Warlord ran off …” The talented cartoonist then goes on to recount the sad end of a pet rabbit, which broke its neck playing around metal. Seeing it bare its teeth, arch its back, and let lose a hair-(or hare-)raising “death scream,” Chippendale was forced to put it out of its misery with a sledgehammer. “Aw, I can’t believe I did that,” he says. “I love animals! Better than people, animals.”

Unless Lightning Bolt is playing, freakishly, on a stage, you must make the effort to get up close — or find a rafter or pole to dangle from.

I first saw ’em around ’03 when they played the Verdi Club, the old-folks rec hall near that sketchy patch of Bryant Street where working gals like to service their johns curbside. I wasn’t one of the lucky dozen or so standing right next to the twosome on the floor, so I wasn’t able to see much, even when I climbed up on a rickety metal folding chair to get a glimpse of sock-monkey-ish-masked Chippendale, looking like a mad drummer from the island of lost toys.

I fared better at Lobot Gallery in 2007, when I used all my best pit skills to wiggle up to the front for the first couple songs, risking a broken nose to get my fill of Lightning Bolt’s unforgettable way with Sabbath-style volume and Phillip Glass-style repetition, primal rambunctiousness and raw poetry. Certainly they’re the fiercest bass-and-drum duo ever to step into the formidable footwear of Ruins and godheadSilo, but has there ever been another hardcore or noise combo that has fully tapped the melodic and textural possibilities buried within a full-force blast beat?

BASSIST BRIAN GIBSON WORKS FOR VIDEO GAME COMPANY HARMONIX AS THE LEAD ARTIST ON GAMES SUCH AS ROCK BAND.

“I wish more of my projects were pure recreation,” the Rhode Island School of Design-schooled painter told Motherboard.tv. “I just get caught up in this sort of addiction to doing art and music stuff, but it would nice to be just fishing or exercising or drag racing.

So much of what I do is about me being deeply obsessed with projects and being alienated from communities and wanting to do something different.”

Don’t worry about missing the companion cassette that once went with Lightning Bolt’s “yellow album” debut — the CD includes the enthralling 30-minute noise epic “Zone.”

You also get the funny intro to “Caught Deep in the Zone,” in which a Euro-accented fellow warns, “Next time you go and buy a record and you think you’re all alternative and groovy — and everyone is into the alternative charts — remember it’s just like the other side, just a bit stranger.” Cue an onslaught of feedback-wracked, crunching skree: the death scream of Godzilla as lizard flesh is wrenched from bone.

ONE OF THE BEST LIGHTNING BOLT VIDEOS: PAPER RAD’S “13 MONSTERS.”

This ode to terrifyingly cute cartoon imagery, à la headless, bass-playing hot-pink tigers, opens with Gumby comforting a distraught Goo, who sobs, “There were 13 of them …”

LIGHTNING BOLT

With T.I.T.S. and High Castle

Wed./13, 8 p.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Threads of change

Andrew Lam

April 5, 2011

rebeccab@sfbg.com ; caitlin@sfbg.com

GREEN ISSUE Planting indigo seedlings in a leaky greenhouse in the mist of a cold Marin County afternoon, Rebecca Burgess thinks about what she’s going to wear. She’s not a fashion model, or a clotheshorse, but she is on a yearlong quest to attire herself only in garments that were sourced and produced bio-regionally — or within a 150-mile radius of home — an area she calls her local fibershed.

Why take on such a challenge? “If we don’t want BP oil spills, it’s about more than just not fueling our cars with it,” Burgess says. While many activists seeking to unplug from oil dependency have worked to encourage bicycles, local agriculture, and reusable shopping bags, her approach takes on the materials we use to clothe our bodies.

Half of all jeans sold annually in the United States — around 200 million pairs — are produced in the Xintang township in China’s Pearl River Delta, where a Greenpeace study found hazardous organic chemicals and acidic runoff in the watershed, both of which may contribute to profound health risks for factory workers and their communities.

Of course, oil is consumed in the transport of factory-made garments halfway across the globe. But as Burgess notes, that’s only part of the reason for her project, which so far has yielded a book on the making of natural dyes and a plan for a community cotton mill in Point Reyes.

She’s also concerned about the synthetic fibers mass-manufactured clothes are made of. “We’re wearing a lot of plastic,” she notes. Not just plastic: petrochemicals, formaldehyde, and carcinogenic polycrylonitriles can all be used to produce your outfit— materials that seep into your pores when you’re active and can hardly be considered ideal to wear against your skin.

To limit support of the oil-reliant garment industry, Burgess envisions a collaboratively created source of clothing made from materials and processes that are — unlike the heavy-metal laden industrial effluent from denim dyes flowing into China’s Pearl River — completely nontoxic. To that end, she’s linking natural fiber artisans and raw material providers throughout the region with the fibershed project, which aims to bolster local clothing production.

Today, she’s the poster child for her effort. Burgess sports striped alpaca kneesocks, an organic cotton skirt sewn by a friend, and a wool sweater her mom knitted with handmade yarn, sourced from a sheep farmer they know. The clothes look well-loved, which makes sense: relying on one’s fibershed for a wardrobe is not easy. When Burgess first embarked on her yearlong bioregional clothing challenge, there wasn’t much in her dresser. “I lived out of three garments for weeks,” she laughs. “People were like, ‘You’re wearing the same thing over and over and over again.'<0x2009>”

But she found that she wasn’t the only one who believed that a change was possible in our closets. Friends, family, and a wider community of shepherds, cotton growers, knitters, seamstresses, and artisans all pitched in to help her along with the project. Burgess says this growing network underlies what it will take for communities to transition to a more sustainable lifestyle. “All this is about encouraging more relationships.”

There’s Sally Fox, whose non-genetically modified colored cotton operation in the Capay Valley is the culmination of years of seed-selecting for natural color tones. There’s the 96-year old sheep farmer in Ukiah. Not to mention the hip fiber artisans based in Oakland and the young fashion students in San Francisco who were inspired by her project.

“It’s not just of value to an old spinster community, it’s of value to a young, hip generation of people who want to live in a carbon-free economy,” Burgess notes. “A bunch of urban young people are really into fibers.” Most, she adds, are women.

Burgess makes her own clothing, too, and to research her book (Harvesting Color, Artisan, 180 p., $22.95) traversed the country learning from female “wisdom-keepers,” women whose craft practices were based on passed-down traditions encouraging the health of their ecosystems.

Today is part of her latest endeavor: growing her own indigo dye so that locally made garments can be dyed blue sustainably. Her day’s work entails planting 400 indigo seeds in flats filled with soil from a ranch down the road. This spring and summer, she plans to raise 1,000 indigo plants in three garden plots just outside the greenhouse. The day the Guardian came to visit, sheep lounged in the pasture beyond her garden plots, as if to illustrate the point that this process won’t require any long-distance transport.

She realizes that few people have a greenhouse to plant indigo in, much less the time necessary to produce their own clothing — or the money needed to dress in handcrafted pieces. But by proving that it’s possible to wear clothes that were created by your own community, she hopes that people will at least “settle for second best, which in this case is wearing organic, American-made materials.”

Even that would be something — right now clothes just aren’t on most of our sustainability compasses. As an example, Burgess recalls a panel discussion she attended at which sustainable food champions Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin were speakers. Someone (“And it wasn’t even me!” she insists) asked them what role garments played in a sustainable lifestyle. “And they were speechless. They didn’t have a thing to say.”

It was a PR challenge Burgess was happy to assume — she has since struck up an e-mail correspondence with Pollan, which she hopes will spread her message further. “Clearly we need some education.”

Join Burgess and other yarn producers for a locally made fashion show and to see plans for their community mill May 1 at Toby’s Feed Barn in Point Reyes. For more information call (415) 259-5849 or visit www.rebeccarburgess.com

Tilt-A-Whirling

Andrew Lam

April 5, 2011

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Coach worries. She wakes up thinking about her social calendar instead of Libya.

Personally, I don’t sleep with my cell phone under my head. By the time I wake up, Coach’s texts have accumulated like little pieces of folded white construction paper cut into snowflakes. We live in sunny California, but the drifts are downright Northeastern. School is cancelled.

Before I know that though, before I even find my phone, let alone look at it, let alone listen to the weather on my transistor radio, I need to use the bathroom.

As soon as I sit on the toilet, my cat Stoplight jumps in my lap. It’s the only time he loves me, or the only time I have time for him. Or both. To this point in my morning, I have not thought about Libya either, and I pee without thinking, as usual, anything.

Stoplight jumps from my legs to the bathtub as soon as I reach for the toilet paper and, as is our custom, while I look in the mirror at the way I look, he looks at me. The sense of judgment is intense, almost palpable, but I’m used to this.

My hair is mussy, so I muss it more. Then I bug my eyes, lean down over the tub into my poor cat’s face, and go, “Mwa-ha-ha-ha.”

“Meow,” says he.

Now I am ready to brush my teeth. Tragically, I drop the toothpaste cap and it bounces off the tile and under the tub. While I am brushing my teeth, I wonder where that little plastic cap might have gotten to, how I’m going to find it, and how — if I don’t find it — I am going to store this brand new, full tube of toothpaste without fear of it oozing out all day while I’m away, and taking over my apartment, speaking of snow days. Speaking of drifts.

I spit. I rinse. I get down on my hands and knees and look and feel under the tub, not thinking at all about Libya. I can’t find the toothpaste cap, so I stand the tube up in the glass where I keep my toothbrush, and I go about my business, which for the morning consists of not thinking about Libya, going to Java Supreme for coffee, and reading my many text messages from Coach. Maybe answering one or two.

1) You are not shallow or dumb, don’t worry; and

2) You have chosen your friends wisely.

Last night we went to this thing called Girl Talk and were inspired and informed. Tonight there is a poetry reading. Me! And Moonpie! Inspired, informed, and entertained. Tomorrow there’s a dance party, and the next day a game.

A week after that, I’ll be back in New Orleans with Li’l Edible and my other baby, eating fried things and just generally going to the zoo. Maybe when I come back I will make a date with my friend Coach, set aside a little time for thinking about Libya, for worrying about world affairs instead of worrying about not being worried.

Once the caffeine kicks in, I feel lucky to be alive, and impervious to personal injury and cardiac arrest. I should write a poem, but all I can think about is the hamburger I ate last night, before Girl Talk, with Coach, Papa and Papi, at that new circus-y place, Straw.

It was a bacon cheeseburger served on a glazed donut. And I am still amazed, alive and well.

But I’m only staying in New Orleans for two weeks this time. Here’s why: that donut burger, chicken and waffles, sweet potato tots with blackberry barbecue sauce, cinnamon sriracha buffalo wings, truffle-oil popcorn, and cotton candy. All the entrees around $10, the service is super-friendly, and if you feel like sitting close to like, your date, you can sit in the date seat, which is taken from a carnival ride, probably the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Great place. New favorite restaurant.

STRAW

Mon.–Fri. 5–10 p.m.;

Sat. 10 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sun. 10 a.m.–9 p.m.

203 Octavia, S.F.

(415) 431-3663

MC/V

No alcohol yet

Drawing a line in the toxic triangle

Andrew Lam

April 5, 2011

rebeccab@sfbg.com

GREEN ISSUE California is often viewed as being among the brightest shades of green. The Golden State’s landmark climate-change legislation has proven magnetic for green-tech startups, while Northern California is defined in part by its longstanding love affair with natural foods and solar power. San Francisco boasts a well-used network of bike routes, a ban on plastic bags, mandated composting of kitchen scraps, and a host of urban agriculture projects.

While much of the Bay Area’s environmental reputation is well-deserved, things look different from poor neighborhoods where homes are clustered beside hulking industrial facilities and public health suffers. For years, grassroots organizations working in Richmond, Oakland, and Bayview-Hunters Point have sought to improve air quality and promote environmental justice in neighborhoods plagued by higher-than-average rates of respiratory disease, cancer, and other preventable illnesses.

The Rev. Daniel Buford of Oakland’s Allen Temple Baptist Church told the Guardian that he began talking about the polluted areas of Richmond, Oakland, and San Francisco as a “toxic triangle” two decades ago. It was an analogy, he explained, that plays off the mysterious deaths that the Bermuda Triangle is famous for. Yet the label also served a purpose — to unite three communities of color that were fighting separate yet similar battles against health hazards associated with their surroundings.

“There were a lot of things that weren’t in place with public consciousness that are in place now,” Buford said.

Today, he isn’t the only one uttering the catch phrase. A host of community organizations banded together as the Toxic Triangle Coalition last year to organize three forums on environmental justice in the three cities. Advocates cast the neighborhood-specific problems as three parts of a regionwide phenomenon, highlighting how pollution from shipping, crude oil processing, freeway transportation, abandoned manufacturing sites, hazardous waste handlers, and other industrial facilities disproportionately affect communities of color, where poverty and unemployment rates are already high.

Buford views the Toxic Triangle Coalition as a strategy to mount pressure for stronger enforcement of environmental laws in disproportionately affected areas. “We live in the whole Bay Area — we don’t live in one little part of the Bay Area,” he noted. “Our coalition strongly urges our state representatives in each of the counties to call for a hearing at the state level.”

OIL WARS

In Richmond, California’s top greenhouse-gas emitter looms as an expansive backdrop of the city, a tangled network of smokestacks and machinery near a hillside cluster of large, cylindrical oil storage containers. Chevron Corporation’s Richmond Refinery was built more than a century ago. A few years ago, the oil company began making noise about how it was in need of an upgrade.

Weaving through a blue-collar residential area of Richmond in her sedan, Jessica Guadalupe Tovar recounted how Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), the nonprofit she works for, revealed that Chevron hadn’t told the whole story when it was petitioning for a permit to expand the refinery. The oil company’s long-term goals, CBE learned from a financial report, included gaining capability to process thicker crude that tends to be sourced from places like Canada’s Alberta tar sands.

“We call it dirty crude,” she said. “But it’s really dirtier crude.”

Converting thicker crude to fuel requires higher temperatures and pressures — and that translates to higher greenhouse-gas emissions and a heightened risk of flaring and fires.

The refinery expansion could have meant an air-quality situation going from bad to worse. Public health problems such as asthma and cancer have spurred campaigns led by the West County Toxics Coalition, CBE, and other environmental justice groups. Tovar explained how CBE orchestrated an air-monitoring program in 2006, collecting samples from 40 homes in Richmond and 10 in Bolinas as a point of comparison.

While trace amounts of chemicals from household cleaners were present in both, samples from the Richmond residences also contained the same toxic compounds that spew from Chevron’s refinery. “We found pollution known to come from the oil refinery settling inside people’s homes,” Tovar explained. “Once it’s trapped in your home, it starts to accumulate.”

Chevron won its expansion permit by a slim margin in 2008 with a city council dominated by officials who had reputations for being friendly to the oil giant. Yet environmental organizations filed suit, saying the environmental impact report (EIR) approval was based on was illegal because it failed to analyze the company’s likely plans for heavier crude processing. A Contra Costa County judge ruled in favor of the environmentalists, halting the expansion project in 2009. Chevron appealed, but the decision was upheld in 2010.

Stopping the expansion was a substantial victory, but environmental justice advocates remain wary of Chevron — particularly after the company attempted to blame job losses on the green coalition that filed suit. “Chevron pit workers against us,” Tovar noted. “And also started saying, ‘This is why environmental laws are bad for the economy.'”

GLOBAL TRADE, LOCAL FUMES

Each day, the Port of Oakland fills with trucks waiting to load up on goods shipped in from around the globe on massive cargo vessels. It’s a local symbol of a globalized economy. But for the West Oakland neighborhoods surrounding the port, the daily gathering of diesel rigs means an unhealthy infusion of particulate matter into the air.

A report issued by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), the Pacific Institute, and the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports found that West Oakland residents are exposed to particulate matter concentrations nearly three times higher than the regional average. Health studies have shown that asthma rates in West Oakland are five times higher than that of people living in the Oakland hills, and cancer risks are threefold compared to other Bay Area cities. For the truck drivers, the risk of cancer is significantly higher than average.

A state air-quality law that went into effect in early 2010 banned pre-1994, heavily polluting diesel trucks from the port, thanks in part to years of environmental campaigning that has publicized public-health impacts associated with the diesel pollution. Yet the new regulation brought an unintended consequence: for truck drivers who must purchase their own gas and pay for their own upgrades, the new rule was ruinous. A survey by the Public Welfare Foundation found that since the new environmental regulation went into effect, 25 percent of Oakland truck drivers had declared bankruptcy, been evicted, or faced foreclosure.

Retrofitting the trucks with new air filters is a five-figure prospect, while the cost of a new truck can clear $100,000. “At the end of the day … a lot of them will only take home about $25,000 a year,” explained EBASE spokesperson Nikki Bas. “It’s an immigrant workforce who are living in poverty.”

So the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, which pushed for tougher air-quality regulations, is now pressuring for a reform of the trucking industry to place the cost of clean upgrades onto powerful trucking companies instead of low-wage drivers. The coalition’s campaign has sought to link the needs of the drivers and the surrounding community, organizing rallies with blue-green signs bearing the motto “Good Jobs & Clean Air” to call for a change to the truckers’ employment classification from independent contractors to employees, which would shift the cost of compliance onto employers instead of drivers.

West Oakland isn’t the only East Bay area inflicted by excessive levels of diesel particulate matter from trucks entering the Port of Oakland. The fumes also affect East Oakland neighborhoods bisected by the big rigs’ primary thoroughfares. In addition to truck traffic and freeways, East Oakland is also the site of numerous hazardous-waste handlers and abandoned industrial sites.

Nehanda Imara, an organizer with CBE who also helped put together the Toxic Triangle Coalition forums, described how her organization recruited volunteers to count the number of trucks passing through a heavily traveled East Oakland strip as a way to quantify the source of particulate matter pollution. They reached a tally of around 11,700 over the course of 10 days.

Some progress has been made to limit the exposure of diesel pollution for East Oakland residents. The city is working on a comprehensive plan to assess trucking routes, and a campaign to limit truck idling is helping to limit unnecessary tailpipe emissions.

Yet youth hospitalizations for asthma in East Oakland are 150 percent to 200 percent higher than Alameda County taken as a whole, and an air-monitoring project in that area revealed high levels of particulate matter exceeding state and federal standards.

“That’s also an environmental injustice,” Imara said. “When the laws are there, but not being enforced.”

TOXIC SOUP

In San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, environmental justice groups have spotlighted the toxic stew associated with the naval shipyard and other pollution sources for years. A 2004 report produced jointly by Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, the Bayview-Hunters Point Mothers Environmental Justice Committee, and the Huntersview Tenants Association outlined a “toxic inventory” of the area. The inventory depicts a more complicated web of toxic sources than the asbestos dust and naval shipyard cleanup that have been focal points of news coverage surrounding Lennar Corp.’s massive redevelopment plans for that neighborhood.

“Over half of the land in San Francisco that is zoned for industrial use is in Bayview-Hunters Point,” this report noted. “The neighborhood is home to one federal Superfund site, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard … a sewage treatment plant that handles 80 percent of the city’s solid wastes, 100 brownfield sites [a brownfield is an abandoned, idled, or underused commercial facility where expansion or redevelopment is limited because of environmental contamination], 187 leaking underground fuel tanks, and more than 124 hazardous waste handlers regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

The shipyard, meanwhile, has been the central focus of controversy surrounding plans to clean up and redevelop the area. People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) and Greenaction are currently challenging the EIR for Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan for the neighborhood, charging that the study is inadequate because a cleanup effort on the part of the U.S. Navy has yet to determine the level of toxicity that will need to be addressed, so the assessment is based on incomplete information. Asthma is commonplace in the Bayview, and health surveys have shown that the rates of cervical and breast cancer are twice as high as other places in the Bay Area.

“Our environmental issues are massive still, and it’s not just Bayview- Hunters Point,” notes Marie Harrison, a long-time organizer for Greenaction and a Bayview resident.

Harrison recalled the many times she’d gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to drive a friend’s or neighbor’s asthmatic child to the hospital. “That story has repeated itself tenfold in Richmond and in Oakland,” she added. Nor is the problem simply limited to those Bay Area cities, she said, noting that communities of color throughout the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 9 face similar issues.

As awareness about the scope of the problem has increased over the years, she said, “We start to say, my God, this triangle has to become a circle.”

Green days

Andrew Lam

April 5, 2011

news@sfbg.com

1892: The Sierra Club is established by John Muir and a group of professors from UC Berkeley and Stanford in San Francisco. In its first conservation campaign, the club leads efforts to defeat a proposed reduction in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park.

1902: After two years of intense lobbying and fundraising, the Sempervirens Club, the first land conservation organization on the west coast, is successful in establishing Big Basin Redwoods State Park — the first park established in California under the new state park system.

1910: The first municipally owned and operated street car service commences in San Francisco.

1918: Save the Redwoods League is established in San Francisco. A leader in proactive land conservation, SRL would go on to assist in the purchase of nearly 190,000 acres to protect redwoods and help develop more than 60 redwood parks and reserves that old these ancient trees in California.

1934: The East Bay Regional Park is established as the first regional park district in the nation. This radical Depression-era idea would much set the tone as the Bay Area land conservation vision expanded.

1934: The Marin Conservation League is founded by wealthy Republican women. Three years later, at the league’s behest, the Marin County Board of Supervisors adopts the first county zoning ordinance in the state in 1937. Over the next 10 years, the league helps create State Parks at Stinson Beach, Tomales Bay, Samuel P. Taylor, Angel Island, and expand Mt Tamalpais State Park.

1956: San Francisco activists, led in party by Sue Bierman, launch a campaign to stop a freeway that would have run through Golden Gate Park. It marks the first time city residents successfully block a freeway project and launches the urban environmental movement in America.

1958: Citizens for Regional Recreation and Parks is founded. It becomes People for Open Space in 1969 and morphs in 1987 into the Greenbelt Alliance. Their efforts lead to the creation of the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District in 1972 and Suisun Marsh in 1974.

1960: Sierra Club Executive Director David Brower launches a brand new organizing and educational concept, the exhibit format “coffee table” book series, with This Is the American Earth, featuring photos by Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhalland. These elegant coffee-table books introduced the Sierra Club to a wide audience. Fifty thousand copies are sold in the first four years, and by 1960 sales exceed $10 million. The environmental coffee table book emerged as part of a campaign to persuade Congress to enact the Wilderness Bill, legislation that would guarantee the permanence of the nation’s wild places.

1961: Save San Francisco Bay Association is founded by Sylvia McLaughlin, Kay Kerr and Ester Gulick to end unregulated filling of San Francisco Bay and to open up the Bay shoreline to public access.

1961: Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announces plans to build a nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay. Rancher Rose Gaffney, UC Berkeley professor Joe Neilands and others mount what will become the first citizen movement in the country to stop a nuclear plant. The Bodega Bay campaign marks the birth of the antinuclear movement.

1965: Responding to Bay Area citizens’ demands for protection of the bay’s natural environment, the California state legislature passes the McAteer-Petris Act, which establishes the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and charges it with preparing a plan for the long-term use and protection of the Bay and with regulating development in and around it.

1965: Fred Rohe opens New Age Natural Foods on Stanyan Street in San Francisco. He goes on to open the first natural foods restaurant in 1967, Good Karma Cafe on Valencia Street. Rohe would go on to open the first natural foods distribution company in Northern California, New Age Distributing in San Jose in 1970 and found Organic Merchants (OM), the first natural foods retailer trade group.

1967: The Human Be-in is held Jan. 14 in Golden Gate Park (as a prelude to the Summer of Love) with as a major theme higher consciousness, ecological awareness, personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization.

1967: Alan Chadwick comes to UC Santa Cruz and establishes the Student Garden Project and training program, which would train hundreds of today’s organic farmers.

1968: The Whole Earth Catalogue, published by the Point Foundation and edited by Stewart Brand out of Gate 5 Road in Sausalito is introduced, providing tools, philosophy, and reviews to the growing back-to-the-land movement, helping promote ecological living and culture alternative sustainable culture decades before those words became mainstream.

1969: Brower, after losing his job at the Sierra Club in part because of his opposition to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, founds Friends of the Earth, the cutting edge activist group that would eventually have affiliates in 77 nations around the globe and become the world’s largest grassroots environmental network.

1970: Peninsula resident Neil Young writes and sings the lyrics “Look at Mother Nature on the Run in the 1970s.”

1970: Berkeley Ecology Center opens.

1971: Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund is established, marking the beginning of an explosion in environmental law.

1971: Alice Waters opens Chez Panisse, serving up California Cuisine and altering the Bay Area diet helping to create a market for local fresh organic fruits and vegetables. 1971: Berkeley resident Francis Moore Lappé publishes her best-selling book Diet for a Small Planet. Two million copies are sold and as the first book to expose the enormous waste built into U.S. grain-fed meat production, for her a symbol of a global food system creating hunger out of plenty; her effort alters millions of diets.

1971: San Francisco dressmaker Alvin Duskin launches a campaign to limit high-rise office development in San Francisco, creating new allies and a new coalition for urban environmentalism.

1972: The Trust for Public Land, a national, nonprofit land conservation organization that conserves land for people to enjoy as parks, gardens, historic sites, and rural lands, is founded by Huey Johnson, Doug Ferguson and Marty Rosen in San Francisco. TPL would go on to protect 2.8 million acres of land and is key in getting land trusts started in Napa, Sonoma, Marin, Big Sur, and around the state.

1972: The Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, first urban wildlife refuge in the United States, is established, encompassing 30,000 acres of open bay, salt pond, salt marsh, mudflat, upland and vernal pool habitats located in South Bay.

1972: The Save Our Shores campaign, developed in part by Bay Area residents, results in a state initiative, the Coastal Act of 1972, which is passed by the voters and establishes the first comprehensive coastal watershed policy in the nation.

1974: Berkeley Ecology Center starts the first curbside recycling approach in California, one of first such programs in the nation.

1974: The Farallones Institute in Berkeley begins building the first urban demonstration of an ecological living center with the Integral Urban House, a converted Victorian using solar and wind technologies, a composting toilet, extensive gardens, and energy and resource conservation features. It serves as an early model for the emerging Appropriate Technology Movement.

1975: Berkeley resident Ernest Callenbach self publishes Ecotopia after a round of rejections from New York publishers; it ultimately sells more than a million copies and becomes an environmental classic.

1975: San Francisco’s first community gardens are established at Fort Mason and elsewhere.

1975: The Marine Mammal Center, a nonprofit veterinary research hospital and educational center dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of ill and injured marine mammals, primarily elephant seals, harbor seals, and California sea lions, is established in the Marin Headlands.

1978: Raymond Dasmann and Peter Berg coin the term Bioregionalism in the publication of Reinhabiting a Separate Country, published by Berg’s Planet Drum Foundation in San Francisco. It represents a fresh, comprehensive way of defining and understanding the places where we live, and of living there sustainably and respectfully through ecological design.

1979 Greens Restaurant opens at Fort Mason in San Francisco and quickly establishes itself as a pioneer in promoting vegetarian cuisine in the United States.

1980: The Marin Agricultural Land Trust is established by Wetland Biologist Phyllis Faber and diary farmer Ellen Straus.

1980: Berkeley resident Richard Register coins the term “depave” — to undo the act of paving, to remove pavement so as to restore land to a more natural state. Depaving begins to spread to create many inner city urban gardening projects.

1981-82: Register and other activists, bring about the first urban day lighting of a creek in Berkeley’s Strawberry Creek Park where a 200-foot section of the creek is removed from a culvert beneath an empty lot and transformed into the centerpiece of a park.

1982: Earth First, a radical environmental group founded by Dave Foreman and Mike Roselle, sponsors the first demonstration against Burger King in San Francisco for using beef grown on land hacked out of rain forests. The demonstrations spread, turn in to a boycott, and after sales drop 12 percent, Burger King cancels $35 million worth of beef contracts in Central America and announces it will stop importing rainforest beef.

1983: Local residents Randy Hayes and Toby Mcleod release the documentary film The Four Corners, A National Sacrifice Area? , which conveys the cultural and ecological impacts of coal strip-mining, uranium mining, and oil shale development in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona — homeland of the Hopi and Navajo. The film wins an Academy Award and illustrates serious environmental justice issues 10 years before that term is coined.

1985: The Rainforest Action Network, established in San Francisco, emerges from the Burger King action.

1986: Fifteen years after Duskin’s first anti-high-rise initiative efforts, San Francisco finally passes Prop. M, the nation’s most important sustainable growth law.

1988: Register invents a stencil to be used next to street storm drains that says “don’t dump — drains to bay.” The wastewater pollution mitigation education concept spreads around the region and nation and then becomes an international volunteer effort to lessen pollution in urban runoff, which generally flows untreated into creeks and saltwater.

1989: Carl Anthony, Karl Linn, and Brower establish the Urban Habitat Program in San Francisco, one of the first environmental justice organizations in the country.

1989: Laurie Mott of the National Resource Defense Council’s SF office rattles the apple industry by engineering a suspension of the use of the pesticide Alar by the Environmental Protection Agency. A national debate ensues.

1992: Berkeley writer Theodore Roszak coins both the term and field of ecopsychology in his book The Voice of the Earth. The movement he helps found asks if the planetary and the personal are pointing the way forward to some new basis for a sustainable economic and emotional life.

1992: The first Critical Mass bike ride (initially called a “Commute Clot”) is held in San Francisco. Similar rides, typically held on the last Friday of every month, began to take place in more than in over 300 cities around the world.

1993: The U.S. Green Building Council is founded by David Gottfriend in Oakland. The council becomes the most important environmental trade organization in the world. In 1998, the council develops the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System, which provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction and design.

1995: The Edible Schoolyard is established by Chez Panisse Foundation at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. It serves as a model for similar programs in New Orleans and Brooklyn, and inspires garden programs at other schools across the country.

1999: The Green Resource Center starts as a joint project of the City of Berkeley, the Northern California Chapter of Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), and the Sustainable Business Alliance.

2000: Wendy Kallins, working with the Marin Bicycle Coalition, begins a Safe Route to Schools program in Marin to encourage students to walk or bicycle to school. The program is so successful that Congress allocates more than $600 million for similar efforts across the country.

2001: The first Green Festival is held in San Francisco.

2001: Berkeley becomes first city in nation with curbside recycling trucks powered by recycled vegetable oil, thanks to a campaign by the Berkeley Ecology Center.

2002: San Francisco adopts a greenhouse gas reduction initiative that aims to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

2003: Bay Area Build It Green is formed by a number of local and regionally focused public agencies, building industry professionals, manufactures, and suppliers. Its activities are focused on increasing the supply of green homes, raising consumer awareness about the benefits of building green, and providing Bay Area consumers and residential building industry professionals a trusted source of information.

2005: San Francisco passes the Precautionary Principle Purchasing Ordinance, which requires the city to weigh the environmental and health costs of its $600 million in annual purchases — for everything from cleaning

supplies to computers.

2006: Bay Localize is launched in the East Bay with the aim to work to build a cooperative, inclusive movement toward regional self-reliance and increase community livability and local resilience for all while decreasing fossil fuel use.

2007: In an effort to meet the challenges of global warming, carbon pollution and job creation, East Bay activist Van Jones declares that the nation is going to have to weatherize millions of homes and install millions of solar panels. His best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy, stimulates a national movement and a new organization, Green For All.

2007: San Francisco begins collecting fats, oils and grease from residential and commercial kitchens, for free, to recycle into biofuel for the city’s municipal vehicles, the largest biofuel-powered municipal fleet in the United States.

2008: San Francisco becomes the first U.S. city to establish green building standards.

2010: The Green Building Opportunity Index names San Francisco and Oakland the top two cities in the nation for green buildings.

2010: San Francisco becomes home to the Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, the largest solar-powered municipal installation in California.

Our Weekly Picks: April 6-12, 2011

Maria Poblet

April 5, 2011

THURSDAY 7

FILM

“An Evening with Les Blank”

The man who held Werner Herzog to a bet that involved the consumption of footwear (and filmed it, in 1980’s literally-titled Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe) comes to the Red Vic to present two of his best-loved films: 1969’s The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins and 1978’s Always for Pleasure. The Bay Area resident is famed for his ability to seek out and artfully capture American folkways, and this screening includes intimate looks at Texas blues and New Orleans street parties. The latter will be presented in “Smellaround!,” which I think is the Red Vic’s way of suggesting you’ll be unable to resist the rice and beans cooking up free for each attendee — using “Les’ own special recipe.” Let’s hope no boots are in the pot! (Cheryl Eddy)

7:30 p.m., $15

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com DANCE

DANCE

Lemi Ponifasio

You have never heard of Lemi Ponifasio, the Samoan chief with a full-body tattoo who now lives and works primarily in New Zealand? If you had been lucky enough to attend recent Edinburgh, Sidney, Lincoln Center, or Holland festivals, you might have encountered his Mau (“Vision”) company, which earned accolades in ceremonial dance theater that may be culturally-specific but is not culturally-limited. Ponifasio has said that his work always explores issues around “power and life.” Tempest: Without A Body draws on Shakespeare, Paul Klee, and political philosopher Giorgio Agamben. A Maori activist, Tami Iti, appears in the piece to make a case for his people and for social change. On opening night, director Peter Sellars engages Ponifasio in a pre-performance conversation. (Rita Felciano)

Thurs/7, 8:15 p.m. (pre-performance conversation, 7:15 p.m.);

Fri/8–Sat/9, 8 p.m., $30

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission St., SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

EVENT

“Wicked Plants”

Inspired by Northern California writer Amy Stewart’s 2009 New York Times bestseller about deadly plants and their place in human history, the new exhibit “Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues and Assassins” features a bevy of beautiful (but dangerous and sometimes lethal) flora. Poison hemlock, white snakeroot, castor bean, and more are among the living examples of plants whose effects on people can range from skin irritation, severe pain, and even agonizing death. Explore more than 30 species of this mysterious greenery, all displayed in a spooky Victorian garden — a setting that would make Agatha Christie proud — if you dare. (Sean McCourt)

Through Oct. 30

Tues.–Sun., 10 a.m.–4 p.m., $1.50–$7

Conservatory of Flowers

100 John F. Kennedy Drive

Golden Gate Park, SF

(415) 831-2090

www.conservatoryofflowers.org

DANCE

San Francisco Ballet

The exquisite range of the San Francisco Ballet will be on display this week as it continues its spring season by opening two mixed programs. Program 6 features the company’s premiere of Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, set to compositions by Joby Talbot and arrangements by Jack White (best known for the recently-disbanded White Stripes, though his musical outlets are legion), along with works by Christopher Wheeldon (with a score by erstwhile Winger frontman-turned-composer Kip Winger), and artistic director Helgi Tomasson. Program 7 includes Michel Fokine’s Petrouchka, the tragic tale of a puppet who possesses a human soul. Choreographed to Stravinsky’s mysterious and haunting score, this century-old ballet was originally danced by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. (Julie Potter)

Through April 20

Performance times vary, $20–$135

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF

(415) 865-2000

www.sfballet.org PERFORMANCE

COMEDY

Brian Posehn

After getting his start doing stand-up in Northern California, comedian Brian Posehn has since gone on to lend his many talents to a wide variety of other media: TV shows such as The Sarah Silverman Program, films including Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2005), and albums like 2006’s Live In: Nerd Rage. The album featured the side-splitting parody song “Metal By Numbers,” where he skewered modern “false metal” with his searing lyrics and growled incantations of “Cookie Cookie Cookie!” Fans are sure to be in for a treat when Posehn returns to the live stage, free to riff on whichever hilarious subjects — music, pop culture, and more — he chooses. (McCourt)

Thurs/7–Sun/10, 8 p.m.

(also Fri/8–Sat/9, 10:15 p.m.), $17.50–$20.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

MUSIC

Big Freedia and Rusty Lazer

Words fail. One would be best served by simply looking live videos of “Azz Everywhere” up on YouTube, to be greeted by the sight of sweaty dancers in booty shorts shaking it for the MC, to the call of “Ass all over/ Like I told ya/ Bend over/ Like I told ya.” This indelible image comes courtesy of bounce (or “sissy bounce”), a New Orleans-regional, bass-heavy, call-and-response style of hip-hop. And Big Freedia is its “Queen Diva.” Too heavy for radio, too sexual for TV, but just right for a killer night on the floor. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Richie Panic, Hot Tub DJs, and more

9 p.m., $10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.publicsf.com

FRIDAY 8

DANCE

“Triptych: New work by Kelly Bowker, Gretchen Garnett, Ishika Seth”

If you look at the history of modern dance, you’ll encounter a group of (mostly) women passionate about their discoveries of the body’s expressive potential. They scraped by financially and danced for and with each other, getting paid if there was money — which was rarely the case. Guess what? Not that much has changed. The Bay Area is still a welcoming place for young artists who just have to do what they have to do. Kelly Bowker, Gretchen Garnett, and Ishika Seth are familiar to those who hunt out the less familiar performance venues. That’s probably how they met and found that they could share precious resources. Bowker calls her piece Parallel Uncertainties; Garnett’s is Six Years Dreaming; and Seth’s two works are Death and Other Things and Khwaish. (Felciano)

Fri/8–Sat/9, 8 p.m., $15–$20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com

FILM

“Jane Russell 1921-2011”

Don’t let Elizabeth Taylor hog the dead non-blonde former sex symbol spotlight. Jane Russell was so hot she changed censorship in the United States. The promotional pictures for 1943’s The Outlaw got director Howard Hughes in trouble with the Hollywood Production Code and the film was delayed for years until cleavage cuts were made. (Not to mention giving new meaning to the term “double feature” — rim shot!) Sure, Marilyn gets the titular nod with 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but the alluring Russell proves that not all men are gentlemen. (Prendiville) The Outlaw, 1, 5, and 9 p.m.;

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 3:15 and 7:15 p.m., $7.50–$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

MUSIC

Akron/Family

True or false: band monikers that contain punctuation marks are penned just to screw with the minds of music and copy editors. Either way, the bicoastal trio Akron/Family is undoubtedly a genre-fuck. It’s avant-garde sans the pretentiousness, combining folk, Japanese noise, fuzzed-out rock, and psychedelic elements. To boot, it injects found-sounds like the creaking of a chair into its music à la The Books. While accusations of it being a cult have been refuted, its newest LP, S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT, was purportedly written in a cabin perched upon an active volcano on a Japanese island. The album’s origins are simultaneously weird and awesome, just like the band. (Jen Verzosa)

With Delicate Steve, Honeymoon, and DJ Britt Govea

9 p.m., $15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.theindependentsf.com

DANCE

Fact/SF

With a sense of humor and a solid group of daring, theatrical performers, Charles Slender’s Fact/SF burst onto San Francisco’s dance scene with a steady output of new work. Prior to founding his company in 2008, the U.C. Berkeley graduate danced abroad, spending time in Russia studying with choreographer Tatiana Baganova and performing in her Provincial Dances Theatre company. Slender creates with a dance-theater edge, resulting in compositions that range from the minimal to highly physical, some serious and others lighthearted. His company’s third home season, running for two consecutive weekends, features company repertory as well as a premiere. (Potter)

Fri/8–Sun/10, 8 p.m., $20

Garage

975 Howard, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.975howard.com

SATURDAY 9

MUSIC

Cold War Kids

With overwhelmingly positive cyberspace reviews of self-released EPs With Our Wallets Full and Up in Rags, Long Beach indie-rock foursome Cold War Kids has music bloggers to thank for its popularity — and notoriety. (Pitchfork famously described the band as “skinny-jeaned Christians” because three members attended a Los Angeles bible college). But Cold War Kids has withstood the so-called damnation of this label; newest release Mine Is Yours is more polished than past albums, and the band has joined the ranks of other indie-turned-mainstream greats like Kings of Leon. As they say, bigger is better. (Verzosa)

With Sean Hayes

8 p.m., $25

Fox Theatre

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.thefoxoakland.com

MUSIC

Papercuts

Frequently revered by critics but never quite matching the praise with comparable commercial success, Papercuts frontman Jason Robert Quever may finally break the pattern with Fading Parade, a beautiful new album that marks his first release on Sub Pop. The San Francisco songwriter creates lush, ethereal music full of 1980s dream-pop touchstones and traces of the shimmering lo-fi of artists such as Ariel Pink and Wild Nothing. A healthy dose of reverb surrounding Quever’s melancholic delivery, and the sustained organ and synth lines buried underneath, help evoke the feelings of nostalgic longing he’s no doubt shooting to convey. He may be more than a decade into his career, but one listen to Fading Parade makes it seem like Quever is just starting to get warmed up. (Landon Moblad)

With Banjo or Freakout

9:30 p.m., $14

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

MONDAY 11

EVENT

“The Spirit of Montmartre: Cafes, Cabarets, and Other Cacophony”

You don’t have to go to Paris to delve into the Moulin Rouge lifestyle and bohemian pleasures. Indeed, you can check out this multimedia presentation by professor William Eddelman, a costume designer and theater historian, exploring the rise of the Paris avant-garde. The evening reveals the world of Toulouse- Lautrec and his contemporaries, a hotbed of collaborative performance art, bold design, laughter, and high spirits in the early 20th century. Francophiles won’t want to miss this sensory event, which includes corset fashions by Dark Garden and an absinthe tasting. (Potter)

7 p.m., $15–$20

Museum of Performance and Design

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 255-4800

www.mpdsf.org

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.

Music Listings

Maria Poblet

April 5, 2011

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 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ani DiFranco Fillmore. 8pm, $33.50.

Fences, Rin Tin Tiger, Passenger and Pilot Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Emma Jean Foster and Glide Gospel 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Aaron Glass and friends, Mowgli’s, Sufis Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

A Rocket to the Moon, Valencia, Anarbor, Runner Runner Bottom of the Hill. 7pm, $15.

Spider Heart Submission, 2183 Mission, SF; www.sf-submission.com. 10pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

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.

Denise Perrier Rrazz Room. 8pm, $30.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St., SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. Soul, funk, swing, and rare grooves with residents Dr. Musco and DJB.

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

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.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

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 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Dark Star Orchestra Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $35.

Dodos, Reading Rainbow Fillmore. 8pm, $18.50.

Futur Skullz, Blown to Bits, Trouble Kidz, Born Uglies Eagle Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Heavy Metal Kings, Danny Diablo Slim’s. 8:30pm, $18.

Hydrophonic, Burn River Burn, Electric Shepherd Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Loto Ball, Moira Scar, Tunnel Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Peelander-Z, Anamanaguchi, Glowing Stars DNA Lounge. 8pm, $16.

Ron Sexsmith, Caitlin Rose Café Du Nord. 9pm, $16.

“Shock and Roll Therapy” Stud. 8pm, free. With Havarti Party, Poor Sons, Narooma, and Cool Ghouls.

Society 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Sounds, K.Flay, DJ Aaron Axelsen, Miles the DJ Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $14.

Tycho, Inu, Soma FM DJs Independent. 8pm, $20. SOMA FM 11th anniversary party.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Activating the Medium XIV: Radio: Chapter One” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St, SF; www.sfmoma.org. 7pm, $10. With Richard Garet and Jim Haynes and Allison Holt.

Raul Midion Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $28.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and “Tender” Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bill Monroe Tribute Band Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

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

Rafael and Ingrid Red Poppy Art House. 7pm, $12.

“Twang! Honky Tonk” Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. 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.

Culture Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 10pm, free. Roots reggae, dub, rocksteady, and classic dancehall with DJ Tomas’ Bunny Wailer and Big Youth Birthday Celebration.

Diapers, Binkies, and Friends Knockout. 9:30pm, free. Dad-to-be Jamie Jams spins baby-themed jams with DJs Stab Master Arson and DJ Eli Glad.

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 and Blondie K, plus guest DJ Candy.

80s Night Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests.

Wolfgang Gartner Ruby Skye. 9pm, $25.

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.

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

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.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party has a new venue, featuring video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

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

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

FRIDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bryan Adams Warfield. 9pm, $25-85.

Akron/Family, Delicate Steve, Honeymoon, DJ Britt Govea Independent. 9pm, $15.

Buxter Hoot’n, Devotionals, Nick Jaina Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Danielson, Battlehooch, Half-handed Cloud Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $13.

Dark Star Orchestra Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $35.

Fiver Brown and the Good Sinners 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Larry Graham and Graham Central Station Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $30-38.

Hillside Fire, Narwhal Brigade, Ayurveda, Sandy Greenfield Band Kimo’s. 9pm.

Hot Lunch, Blank Stares, Pre-Legendary and the Dreamers Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Mantles, Wrong Words, Lenz, Wet Illustrated Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Or the Whale, Chamberlin, Steve Taylor Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

Protest the Hero, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, TesseracT Slim’s. 8:30pm, $17.

Volbeat, Damned Things Fillmore. 7pm, $22.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

Madeleine Peyroux Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-75.

Redshift, Rootstock Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; www.sfcmc.org. 8pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

“Cowpokes, Gunslingers, and Outlaw Country” Red Devil Lounge. 9pm, $12. With Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, Whisky Richards, Tiny Television, and Preservation.

Tito y Su Son De Cuba Quinteto Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-15.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bass Time Continuum Session 4 Club Six. 9pm, $5. With Lotus Drops, Energy Alchemist, Bitch Plz, Benito, and Mr. Rise.

Blow Up DNA Lounge. 10pm, $10-15. “Miss Blow Up USA Pageant” with Jeffrey Paradise.

Cartagena! CD release party Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Cumbia with DJs Beto, Vinnie Esparza, and B. Cause.

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.

Fo’ Sho! Fridays Madrone Art Bar. 10pm, $5. DJs Kung Fu Chris and Makossa spin rare grooves, soul, funk, and hip-hop classics.

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.

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

SATURDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Jeff Beck, Imelda May Fillmore. 8pm, $75.

Danger Babes 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Dark Star Orchestra Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $35.

Deskonocidos, Criaturas, Needles, Ruleta Rusa Knockout. 10pm, $7.

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

Larry Graham and Graham Central Station Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $38.

Jesse Morris and the Man Cougars Riptide Bar. 9pm, free.

Papercuts, Banjo or Freakout Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $14.

Pollux, Bonnie Dune, Lite Brite Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Rise Against, Bad Religion, Four Year Strong Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 7:30pm, $32.50.

Shearing Pinx, Continues, Victory and Associates Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Submarines, Nik Freitas Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Hypnotist Collectors, Shareef Ali and the Radical Folksonomy, Fancy Dan Band, Slow Motion Cowboys Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Mamacoatl Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $15.

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

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bootie SF: Halloween in April DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Who says Halloween only comes once a year? Mash it up with DJs Adrian and Mysterious D, guest Faroff, and more.

Club Gossip Cat Club. 9pm, $5-8. Pay tribute to Janet Jackson and other 80s ladies at this party guest-hosted by the Bay Area Flash Mob.

New Wave City New Order Tribute Mezzanine. 9pm, $7-12. Celebrate “Blue Monday” on a Saturday with DJ Shindog, guest Andy T, and more.

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

Same Sex Salsa and Swing Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; (415) 305-8242. 7pm, free.

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

Spotlight Siberia, 314 11th St, SF; (415) 552-2100. 10pm. With DJs Slowpoke, Double Impact, and Moe1.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm. Electro cumbia with Chancha Via Circuito, El G, and DJs Shawn Reynaldo and Oro 11.

SUNDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Band of Heathens Slim’s. 7:30pm, $15.

Let the Night Roar, Pigs Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

G. Love and Special Sauce, Belle Brigade Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Mark Growden and His Tucson String Band, Conspiracy of Venus Amnesia. 9pm, $10.

John Mellencamp Warfield. 7pm, $49.50-130.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Now You, Listo Independent. 8pm, $18.

Whiskerman, 7 Orange ABC, Magic Leaves Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

David Wilcox Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $25.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Assad Brothers Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-60.

John Santos Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St., SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

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

Jenny Lynn and Her Gone Daddies Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

“San Francisco Festival of the Mandolins” Croatian American Cultural Center, 60 Onondaga, SF; www.croatianamericanweb.org. 10am-5pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death. Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and guest Adam Twelve.

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?

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

MONDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Elephant and Castle, Pixel Memory, Butterfly Bones Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Moon Duo, Royal Baths, Lilac Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Scala and Kolacny Brothers Independent. 8pm, $25.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Broun Fellinis Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $25.

Lavay Smith Orbit Room, 1900 Market, SF; (415) 252-9525. 7-10pm, free.

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.

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 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Olof Arnalds Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Amee Chapman, Jenny Kerr, Sugarplums Club Waziema, 543 Divisadero, SF; (415) 356-6641. 8pm, free.

Ms. Lauryn Hill Warfield. 8pm, $59.50-90.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez Group, Zachs Marquise Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Haroula Rose, TD Lind Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Rural Alberta Advantage, Lord Huron, Vandella Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Scala and Kolacny Brothers Independent. 8pm, $25.

Sydney Ducks, Something Fierce Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

DANCE CLUBS

Boomtown Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 9pm, free. DJ Mundi spins roots, ragga, dancehall, and more.

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.

Rep Clock

Maria Poblet

April 5, 2011

Schedules are for Wed/6–Tues/12 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. Amreeka (Dabis, 2009), Thurs, 7:30. Woven (Vargas), Fri, 8. With live music by Ever Isles and Honeycomb. “Other Cinema:” “All-16mm, All Retro Music-on-Film Party,” Sat, 8:30.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.bfuu.org. $5-15. “A Quarter Century of Chernobyl:” Chernobyl4Ever, Sun, 4. With panel discussion featuring anti-nuclear activists.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. The Fighter (Russell, 2010), Wed, 3, 5:30, 8. “Orson Welles Double Feature:” •The Lady From Shanghai (1947), Thurs, 3, 7, and Touch of Evil (1958/1998), Thurs, 4:45, 8:45. “Jane Russell Double Feature:” •The Outlaw (Hughes, 1943), Fri, 1, 5, 9, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Hawks, 1953), Fri, 3:15, 7:15. “Justin Vivian Bond in Concert,” Sat, 8. This performance, $27-75; call (415) 863-0611 or visit www.ticketfly.com. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954), Sun, 2:30, 7.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-15. Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), call for dates and times. Trophy Wife (Ozon, 2010), call for dates and times. Winter in Wartime (Koolhoven, 2009), call for dates and times. Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead (Cross, 2010), Wed, 7. Filmmaker Joe Cross in person. Poetry (Yun, 2010), April 8-14, call for times.

CITY COLLEGE OF SAN FRANCISCO Cloud Hall, Room 246, 50 Phelan, SF; (415) 23903580. Free. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (Irving, 2003), Wed, 7. With filmmaker Judy Irving in person.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Crude: The Real Price of Oil (Berlinger, 2009) Wed, 7.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: French Twist:” Irma Vep (Assayas, 1996), 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:” Dreamchild (Millar, 1985), Wed, 3:10. “Alternative Visions:” “The Chicago Survey Trilogy” (Cornerford, 2002-2010), Wed, 7:30. “Patricio Guzmán:” The Southern Cross (1992), Thurs, 7; The Battle of Chile (1975-1978), Sun, 1 (part one), 3 (part two), 5:30 (part three). “Under the Skin: The Films of Claire Denis:” The Intruder (2004), Fri, 6:30 and Sat, 8:30; •U.S. Go Home (Denis and Kahn, 1994) with Claire Denis: The Wanderer (Lifshitz, 1996), Fri, 9. “First Person Rural: The New Nonfiction:” Alamar (González-Rubio, 2009), Sat, 6:30.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. The Housemaid (Im, 2010), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:20. “An Evening with Les Blank,” Thurs, 7:30. Enter the Void (Noé, 2009), Fri-Sun, 8:30 (also Sat-Sun, 2, 5:15). Blue Valentine (Cianfrance, 2010), Mon-Tues, 7, 9:20.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Orgasm, Inc. (Canner, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 6:45, 8:30, 10. “San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival,” Wed-Sun. Visit www.sfwfi.com for program info. “It’s the Paul Meinberg! Show:” All-American Co-Ed (Prinz, 1941), Tues, 7 and 9:45; Big Town Girl (Werker, 1937), Tues, 8.

SEBASTANI THEATER 476 First St East, Sonoma; www.sonomafilmfest.org. $15. “14th Annual Sonoma International Film Festival,” documentaries, world cinema, and more, including a Susan Sarandon tribute, Wed-Sun. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Fearless: Chinese Independent Documentaries:” Tape (Li, 2010), Thurs, 7; Ghost Town (Zhao, 2008), Sun, 2.

Live Shots: Nrityagram Dance Ensemble at the Palace of Fine Arts, 3/31/11

Andrew Lam

April 4, 2011

You could hear the dancers before you could actually see them. The stage was dark, but there was a jingling of a hundred bells that encased the dancer’s ankles and jangled with each of their movements. When the lights went up, the audience came face to face with an array of brilliant colors as the dancers moved across the stage in dazzling Indian saris.

These performers have traveled all around the world to share dances that go back to dates that end in B.C. We’re talking ancient movements, ones that have been passed down for tens of generations. But what makes Nrityagram Dance Ensemble so unique is not the dances they perform, but the way in which they learn them.

The dancers live communally in India, in the Nrityagram dance village located on a rural farm. The dancers not only practice their performance pieces, but also yoga, meditation, and martial arts — to name just a few of their ongoing areas of study. The goal is not only to become great dancers but to become well-balanced human beings. Dance as a form of life. Ingenious, right?

The whole performance was strikingly beautiful, especially with the help of four live musicians, whose beats and rhythms could put anyone into a hypnotic trance. There were many movements that I’d seen in yoga class, from elegant hand mudras to precarious one-legged balancing acts. It was ancient and yet so modern — back in the B.C.’s, these kind of dance moves never would have made their mark on soil of San Francisco.

The Guardian endorses: Jello Biafra for Mayor!

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

April 1, 2011

On every level, the San Francisco mayor’s race is critical. San Franciscans will decide whether a fiscally conservative candidate backed by downtown interests will continue Gavin Newsom’s legacy of gutting critical services while refusing to raise taxes, or if a progressive will lead the city into a new era.

San Francisco needs a mayor who is motivated not by campaign donations from corporate fat cats, but by true San Francisco values. The city needs some one who is ready to fight the war on fun, by boldly having more fun than the warmongers can possibly stand.

What San Francisco needs is Jello Biafra. In a rare early endorsement, the Guardian has thrown its support behind Biafra for mayor. Formerly the lead singer of legendary punk rock group the Dead Kennedys, he is now the front man of Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. In 1979, Biafra ran for mayor against former Mayor Dianne Feinstein and former state Sen. Quentin Kopp. His campaign motto was There’s Always Room for Jello.

“I am honored,” Biafra said when he was notified that he had received the Guardian’s endorsement for mayor. “After all, how could I be any worse than the last elected mayor, who turned out to be a horrible Frankenstein of Dianne Feinstein, Gray Davis and Tom Cruise?”

Biafra went on to talk about his campaign platform. “I would immediately reverse all [Newsom’s] mean-spirited, bigoted, anti-homeless laws, and instead hire all the panhandlers to work for the city on a 50 percent commission to help balance the budget,” he said.

Biafra said San Francisco could take a cue from Austin, Texas for another revenue-generating measure. “I would … declare the outlying strip on 11th and Folsom to be a music district, like they did on Sixth Street in Austin Texas, instead of having the police harass them and shut them down. This has brought in a huge amount of tax revenue for Austin, by the way.”

As part of this plan, the city could “use the revenue to buy back KUSF for the people of the city,” he added.

Biafra has a refreshing approach to ending police misconduct and promoting reform within the San Francisco Police Department. “Police officers should be an elected position,” he told the Guardian. “Every four years, you run for election, voted on by the district you patrol. You couldn’t just run off and hide in Novato after beating and shooting people anymore.”

An honest mayoral candidate, Biafra doesn’t pull any punches – not even when it comes to criticizing the Guardian, which has been the only publication to endorse his campaign so far. “I think the Guardian blew it when they came out against the initiative to rename our sewage plant after George W. Bush,” he said. “I think that would be a great idea. I’ll bring that one back, too.”
Rather than minimum wage, Biafra would like to implement a maximum wage, which has been proposed by the California Green Party.

“What should the wage be? Let’s be generous: Two hundred grand, and then you’re done,” Biafra decided. “You can live really well on that kind of money. Everything else goes back to the public purse, and you’ve got schools, you’ve got health care for everybody, transportation for everybody, people can even go to law school on the public’s dime – and why not? I mean, what about just giving some of that money back to people who didn’t make the $200,000 and guarantee people income, instead of talking about welfare cheats?”

When he ran for mayor in 1979, Biafra generated a great deal of attention with his proposal to require businessmen to wear clown suits between the hours of nine and five. But he said this required some explanation: “This is only in downtown,” he noted, “because this is a response to Feinstein’s campaign to clean up Market Street. She meant the Tenderloin, I meant downtown where Chevron and Bechtel and Bank of America and the other looters hold court.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPhfUOsT71c&feature=related

Biafra said he also planned to bring back another proposal from his first mayoral bid: “Create a board of bribery, to set fair standards and public rates for liquor licenses, building code exemptions, police protection, and most importantly, protection from the police,” he explained.

As for the re-naming of Candlestick Park, Biafra had a flash of inspiration during his endorsement interview. “Isn’t there those little bags of junk food under the brand Emperor Norton for, you know, dried bread chips and stuff? How about, if they’re going to sell off the name Candlestick Park — or for that matter, finally name our baseball stadium after something other than a phone company — how about Emperor Norton Park?” Biafra suggested.

Vote for Jello Biafra for Mayor of San Francisco. After all, as he told us, “I would definitely be better than the last elected mayor. Then again, so would a cockroach.”

Vote early, vote often, and vote like your city depended on it!

P.S.: If Jello Biafra doesn’t win, we’ll kill ourselves.

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine will launch their latest album, Enhanced Methods of Questioning, at Slim’s on June 4.

April Fool’s. Kinda.

The Parkmerced investors

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

March 29, 2011

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Parkmerced is one of the largest rental properties west of the Mississippi, and with more than 1,500 rent-controlled units, it’s an important piece of the city’s affordable-housing stock. Among the residents who live in the neighborhood-scale apartment complex are seniors, young families, and working-class San Franciscans, some of whom have called it home for decades.

A plan for an extraordinary overhaul of the property envisions tearing down the existing low-rise apartments and nearly tripling the number of units with a construction project that could take up to 30 years. On March 29, after Guardian press time, the Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on whether to uphold the plan’s environmental impact report (EIR), a key milestone of the approval process.

The Planning Commission voted 4-3 to certify the EIR, and if the board followed suit by rejecting four different appeals filed against it, Parkmerced would be on track to clear final approval sometime in May.

San Francisco Tomorrow was among the groups that filed appeals against the Parkmerced plan. “They want to destroy a neighborhood without sufficient justification or mitigation,” said Jennifer Clary, the group’s president, citing concerns about traffic congestion, loss of an historic landscape, and the destruction of rent-controlled housing.

Julian Lagos, a resident of 18 years, filed an appeal on behalf of the Coalition to Save Parkmerced. “It’s a very blue-collar community, and they want to replace it with wall-to-wall luxury high-rise condos,” said Lagos, who lives in a unit that would be targeted for demolition under the development plan. “I call it ground zero,” he said. “And I tell my neighbors, ‘You’re living at ground zero.’ “

Mayoral development advisor Michael Yarne noted that most points highlighted in the EIR appeals had already been addressed, except one charging that there hadn’t been adequate consideration over whether a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. gas pipeline running underground near Parkmerced could be jeopardized by construction activity. “The answer to that is, that’s a really good question for PG&E,” Yarne said. But he asserted that it wasn’t a project EIR issue.

Elected officials’ reactions to the overall plan were mixed. Lagos noted that campaign filings showed that Sups. Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd had accepted donations from people related to the project, and he predicted that Board of Supervisors President David Chiu would be a swing vote on the issue. Chiu spent several hours touring Parkmerced the Friday before the vote. He did not return Guardian calls seeking comment.

A development agreement between the city and the developer, Parkmerced Investors LLC, promises that existing tenants will keep their rent control at the same monthly rates — even after the apartments they now reside in are razed to make way for new residential towers.

Such a plan typically wouldn’t fly under state law because the Costa-Hawkins Act prohibits a city from imposing rent control on newly constructed housing. Yet city officials, with input from the City Attorney’s Office, say they’ve constructed this deal so that it falls within one of the exceptions written into the state law, offering a legal defense in the event of a court challenge and a guarantee against affordable housing loss.

“The development agreement is like a constitution for land use,” said Yarne. “You can’t get rid of it.” If the project changed hands or the developer went bankrupt, the new owner would be bound by the same terms, Yarne said.

However, Mitchell Omerberg of the Affordable Housing Alliance cautioned that he didn’t believe there was any guarantee that rent-control housing qualified as an exception under Costa-Hawkins. “Like parking a semitruck in a motorcycle space, it’s a poor fit and a risky bet — even before you consider the antipathy to rent control of the California courts,” Omerberg wrote in an argument against the plan.

Tenants advocacy groups have pointed to recent court decisions negating affordable-housing agreements in development projects, saying the legal precedent makes the Parkmerced pact vulnerable to a court challenge. In response, Yarne said those cases had strengthened the city’s legal strategy for formulating the agreement to guard against such a challenge. “This agreement is actually greatly improved because of those cases,” he said.

Nevertheless, there’s a clear financial incentive for the developer to strip away the rent-control unit replacement and other valuable community benefits it is required to deliver under the terms of its agreement with the city. An independent analysis of the project’s financial plan found that if Parkmerced Investors LLC adheres to all the terms of the agreement as planned, its financial rate of return would be less than ideal.

Drafted by consultant CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) to provide an objective financial picture for the city, the report found that the developer’s estimated 17.8 percent rate of return was “slightly below the threshold required to attract the necessary private investment” because investors aim for at least 20 percent in this market. “This means that, based on current and reasonably foreseeable short-term market conditions, the project may not be economically feasible,” the report noted. It added a disclaimer saying that cash flow from rent payments could offset that risk.

That lower rate of return isn’t a cause for concern, Yarne said, but rather a sign of the city’s negotiating prowess, since “we’ve gotten as much as we can in terms of public benefits. That 17.8 percent rate of return shows that we’re probably at the max.”

At the same time, the financial analysis showed that the developer’s prospects improved under hypothetical “tested scenarios” where the expensive community benefits promised in the development agreement weren’t a factor. As part of the analysis, CBRE looked at how the numbers would change if the developer decided to build new market-rate units instead of replacing all the existing rent-controlled units, and found it would fetch a 19 percent rate of return. In a scenario where it stripped out additional costs such as a community garden and new transit line, the rate of return would jump to an eye-catching 23 percent.

But those scenarios are just a hypothetical way to arrive at conclusions about a project’s value, said consultant Mary Smitheran, who drafted the report. “The development agreement specifies that those items need to be provided,” she said.

City officials have given the impression that they’re nailing down a set of requirements that the developer, or any future property owner, cannot get out of. But the people behind this project are some savvy Wall Street investors who are no strangers to controversy.

Fortress Investment Group, a New York City-based hedge fund and private equity firm with directors hailing from Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, gained a controlling interest in Parkmerced last year after Stellar Management couldn’t make the payment on its $550 million debt.

Stellar jointly purchased the property in 2005 with financial partner Rockpoint Group, setting up Parkmerced Investors LLC as the official ownership company. Stellar still manages the property, but Fortress has seized financial control. A recent report on the Commercial Real Estate Direct website noted that its $550 million debt had been modified recently with a five-year extension to 2016.

Fortress made headlines in 2009 after it stopped providing funds to Millennium Development Corp. for the Olympic Village project in Vancouver, British Columbia leaving the city on the hook for hundreds of millions to finish the job in time for the winter games. Meanwhile, Fortress CEO Daniel Mudd recently got formal notification from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) that he could potentially face civil action relating to his former job as CEO of Fannie Mae, the government-backed mortgage giant, for allegedly providing misleading information about subprime loans.

Stellar, a New York City company run by real-estate tycoon Larry Gluck, was profiled in a 2009 Mother Jones article about Riverton Homes, a 1,230-unit Manhattan rental housing project built in a similar style to Parkmerced, which Stellar purchased in 2005. Although Stellar assured residents that their affordable rental payments would remain unaffected, hidden from view was its business plan estimating that half the tenants would be paying almost triple the rental rates by 2011. Since rents couldn’t ultimately be raised high enough to cover the debt payments, the complex went into foreclosure — but Stellar was shielded against loss because, on paper, Riverton was owned by a separate LLC.

Linh Le, a 36-year resident of Parkmerced and former Chevron employee, wrote to the Board of Supervisors in advance of the March 29 hearing to warn of the financial troubles the investors had experienced before.

“This project reflects a pipe dream that was hatched during an era of reckless spending, fake prosperity, and seemingly limitless money that has since crashed and nearly destroyed America,” he wrote. “The business model that Parkmerced based this plan on has failed and nearly ruined their enterprise. That era is over and the world has changed.”

The world Maclaine made

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

March 29, 2011

arts@sfbg.com

FILM For a biographical abstract of Christopher Maclaine, try the famous first lines of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. For greater precision, observe poet David Meltzer’s letter to film historian P. Adams Sitney (reproduced in Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000): “Poet, filmmaker, stand-up comic, bagpiper, chaser of mysteries.” Meltzer’s letter continues, “In the mid-’60s sacrificed his nervous system to methedrine.” Stan Brakhage wrote of Maclaine, “He courted madness and he finally got it.” Before he did, he completed four films, the first of which — his preemptive magnum opus, The End (1953) — flattened a very young Brakhage at its infamous Art in Cinema premiere. Sixty-seven years after the museum crowd balked at Maclaine’s celluloid testament, the film is back at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

We still haven’t found the categories that will contain Maclaine’s non-sync film of revelations: a found-footage narrative composed of original materials; a lettrist pulp fiction; a proto-punk murder ballad radioed to the void; a hipster “duck and cover” drill with time enough for Beethoven and Bartok. Like Sunset Blvd. (1950), The End is narrated from beyond the grave — only this voice (Maclaine’s) speaks behind nuclear holocaust rather than mere murder. First thing, we see the mushroom cloud (annihilation was in the air: America had recently tested the hydrogen bomb in the Pacific). Maclaine insinuates us over extended black leader: “Soon we shall meet the cast. Observe them well. See if they are not yourselves. And if you find none of them to be so, then insert yourself into this revue.” The cast, he explains, were his friends: “They all have stories. We shall be able to learn a little about each of them before our time runs out.”

The following 30 minutes snakes through six sections and four clearly identified characters. Though the cast is unwitting of the coming apocalypse, they are not innocent of its destructive energies. Before the blast, two die by their own hand and one on the wrong side of a stranger’s gun. The fourth, an innocent poet in a cruel world (played by Wilder Bentley II, who will be in attendance for the Thurs., March 31 screening), seeks redemption as a leper. They are all on the run from America — each “couldn’t face the 20th century.” Maclaine’s montage scatters images from the different mini-narratives and pulls together a mash of insert motifs that function as another layer of poetic commentary — a lyrical compliment to the voice-over’s epic address.

The cubist construction of these episodes is such that you would know a bomb had gone off even if you hadn’t seen the mushroom cloud. Scholar J.J. Murphy helpfully suggests Charlie Parker’s phrasing as a possible influence on Maclaine’s frenzied cutting, though the North Beach Scotsman also seems to anticipate the rhythms of Blank Generations to come. There are many jolting connections throughout The End, some delightfully unforeseen (the Powell Street trolley turnaround next to a gun barrel’s spin) and others simply damning (dramatization of a suicide’s collapse intertwined with documentary footage of a homeless man flat on the street). The montage reaches its zenith in the film’s closing moments, when a tumble of images registering sexual release and last-gasp poignancy are set to “Ode to Joy” as final shards of the known world.

It’s hard to fathom The End‘s originality now that so many of its techniques have become familiar avant-garde strategies. At the time, most experimental films strove for self-conscious lyricism, drawing on abstraction, silence, and psychosexual expressionism to articulate a space outside society. Maclaine dramatizes the break, never more explicitly than when he directly addresses the audience (“The person next to you is a leper!”) With its strong conviction that death itself has changed, The End is often discussed as an expression of atomic-age nihilism. Even more radical is the way Maclaine channels what was then still a new mode of address: the live television feed, which Sen. Joe McCarthy was just then exploiting in his Voice of America hearings. A decade before Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, Maclaine intuits the connections between medium and message — the mushroom cloud and television being two sides of the same terrifying totality.

Maclaine made only three short films after The End, all of which will be shown Thursday night: The Man Who Invented Gold (1957), Beat (1958), and Scotch Hop (1959). None of these match The End‘s x-ray vision, although The Man Who Invented Gold and Beat both unfold the same vivid imagination of the San Francisco terrain. Scotch Hop is something different and, on first viewing, my favorite of the later works: the Scotsman’s equivalent of Olympia (1938), with low angles and slow motion placing bagpipers, log-throwers, and fiercely proud dancers on a heroic plain. Brakhage claims it a masterpiece in his poignant remembrance of Maclaine in his book Film at Wit’s End, but there’s little doubt that The End had the more profound impact on his own filmmaking — specifically in the way it demonstrated the liberating effects of a film grammar built of “mistakes.”

Meanwhile, the search for Maclaine continues in a serial analysis of The End on SFMOMA’s Open Space blog by filmmaker and projectionist Brecht Andersch in collaboration with Hell on Frisco Bay blogger Brian Darr. As of this writing, “The The End Tour” has reached its 15th installment. All together, it constitutes a supremely dedicated work of media archaeology, and one of the liveliest works of film criticism I’ve encountered in some time. Andersch and Darr’s spirited dissection of the film’s psychogeographic dynamics has illuminated the film’s subliminal operations as well as its creative mapping of the local landscape. Most remarkable is their discovery that a prominent patch of graffiti (“PRAY”) that appears in the film is still tattooed on a China Beach wall — as if Maclaine’s imagined nuclear blast fixed it there for all time.

IN SEARCH OF CHRISTOPHER MACLAINE: MAN, ARTIST, LEGEND

Thurs/31, 7 p.m., $10

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

Our Weekly Picks: March 30-April 5, 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

March 29, 2011

WEDNESDAY 30

DANCE

Paul Taylor Dance Company

Forget retirement. Choreographer Paul Taylor is going strong, continuing to make new work at 80, and his illustrious company brings to the West Coast eight dances between three different repertory programs, presented by San Francisco Performances. A cornerstone of American dance, the company showcases newer works like the heralded Promethean Fire alongside Taylor’s classic dances such as the iconic Cloven Kingdom and the radiant Brandenburgs. The April 2 performance features a “Dance With the Dancers” soiree immediately following the concert, an opportunity to meet the artists who make the work of this dance master come to life (event ticket required). (Julie Potter)

Wed/30–Sat/2, 8 p.m.; Sun/3, 2 p.m., $35–$60

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Novellus Theater

701 Mission, SF

(415) 392-2545

www.sfperformances.org

THURSDAY 31

DANCE

Nrityagram Dance Ensemble

Hailing from a true dance village built on 10 acres of converted farmland in Bangalore, the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble considers dance a way of life and practices the art of transferring knowledge from guru to disciple. In addition to training skilled performers, the intentional community, founded by Odissi dancer Protima Gauri, requires each dancer to closely study mythology and the epics, Sanskrit, yoga, meditation, and the martial arts. This haven for the study, practice, and teaching of classical dance leads to a brilliant ensemble. Watch the layers of tradition and driving rhythms of hands, feet, and ankle bells unfold onstage in the their latest work, Pratima: Reflection. (Potter)

8 p.m., $25––$75

Palace of Fine Arts Theater

3301 Lyon, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.palaceoffinearts.org

EVENT

“The State of Sex and Dating in SF”

Although it’s touted as one of the most romantic cities in the U.S., San Francisco is overrun with single folk. Sure, our fair city is sex-positive and open-minded — but a seemingly endless number of possibilities can mean that hook-ups and relationships can be more complicated here than in other places. Examining the state of the union(s) — and the happily unattached — is a panel of dating gurus and sexperts, including San Francisco Writer’s Grotto cofounder Ethan Watters, Sasha “Quirkyalone” Cagen, OneTaste founder Nicole Daedone, author N.W. Smith, and sex blogger Violet Blue. (Jen Verzosa)

6:30 p.m., $7–$20

Commonwealth Club

595 Market, SF

(After party 7:30 p.m., Eve, 575 Howard, SF)

www.tickets.commonwealthclub.org

FRIDAY 1

EVENT

WonderCon

The world of superheroes, monsters, fantasy, science fiction, and other realms of the imagination come to life in San Francisco as the 25th annual WonderCon gets underway, attracting thousands of fans to one of the largest such gatherings in the country. A variety of special events, including panel discussions, meet and greets, screenings, and workshops accompany the hundreds of vendors, comic book artists, and writers who turn the Moscone Center into a geek paradise. Highlights this year include a sneak peak at the new Green Lantern film, a talk with The Walking Dead writer Robert Kirkman , and local filmmaker Tom Wyrsch’s new documentary Back To Space-Con, about the roots of Bay Area sci-fi conventions. (Sean McCourt)

Fri/1, noon–-7 p.m.; Sat/2, 10 a.m.–7 p.m.;

Sun/3, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., $5–$40

Moscone Center South

747 Howard, SF

www.comic-con.org/wc

PERFORMANCE

“Roccopura: The Misadventures of Pancho Sanza”

Mash together circus zaniness, a rock opera, and gratuitous audience immersion and you get Roccopura: The Misadventures of Pancho Sanza. Boenobo the Klown, frontman of the band Gooferman, has been writing this show for two years and intensively developing the production for the last five months, working with his cohorts in Gooferman, Sisters of Honk, Vau de Vire Society, Circus Metropolus, and the Burley Sisters. The resulting two-act extravaganza promises to take SF’s burgeoning indie circus scene (see “Cue the clowns,” 12/3/08) higher heights and more decadent depths at the same time. It appropriately premieres on April Fool’s Day, but these fools also hope for a longer run, so catch it now and give them the bounce they need. (Steven T. Jones)

8 p.m., $25–$45

DNA Lounge

375 11th St, SF

www.roccopura.com

MUSIC

Lozen

With arms outstretched and praying, the Apache warrior, Lozen, could ascertain the movements of her enemies, be they U.S. or Mexican cavalries — a useful prophetic power as she fought alongside the likes of Geronimo. It’s doubtful the band Lozen has any foes, for the Tacoma, Wash., twosome synergistically embodies more raw force than most bands twice its size. Sometimes recalling a weirder side of the Breeders, or a sludgy-drudgy Luscious Jackson, or the Melvins (but with roaming female harmonies), the power of Lozen is in being experimental and fun while still super-heavy. As for their namesake fighter, she died of tuberculosis as a P.O.W. in an Alabama jail. (Kat Renz)

With Walken, Dog Shredder, Pins of Light

9 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

SATURDAY 2

MUSIC

Baseball Project

Just in time for the start of the 2011 baseball season and the Giants’ home opener comes the Baseball Project, an all-star band that sings about — you guessed it — America’s favorite pastime. Featuring Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Steve Wynn (Gutterball), Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows), and Linda Pitmon (The Miracle 3), these heavy hitters of rock just released their second album, Vol. 2: High and Inside, featuring loving odes to players of the past, as well as an infectious tribute track to San Francisco’s own World Series Champions, “Panda and The Freak.” (McCourt)

With Minus 5 and Steve Wynn

9 p.m., $17

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

MUSIC

Sonny Smith

A massive undertaking that reads like something Stephin Merritt would have dreamed up, Sonny Smith’s 100 Records project is a clever exercise in songwriting and a reminder of just how cool music packaging can be. Writing 100 in whatever style he felt like at the time, Smith created fictional bands with fully fleshed-out bios to accompany them. He’s slowly since been releasing them in beautiful 45 box-sets with sleeves and artwork assigned to each group. Psych-rock, surf, reggae, garage … all are touched on, and this will be your chance to see Smith embody some of these personas (Loud Fast Fools, Fuckaroos, Earth Girl Helen) live. If that wasn’t enough, he’ll be throwing in a set with his main project, Sonny and the Sunsets. (Landon Moblad)

With Sandwitches

9 p.m., $15

Amnesia

853 Valencia, SF

(415) 970-0012

www.amnesiathebar.com

SUNDAY 3

MUSIC

Crowbar

Few bands are as instantly recognizable as Crowbar. Hear a couple depressing, chromatic bars of guitarist Kirk Windstein’s impossibly low, grinding tone, and you’ll know immediately who you’re dealing with. After staggering out of the swamp of New Orleans’ fertile early-’90s sludge metal scene, the band has clung to survival for two decades, churning out an inexhaustible repertoire of ugly, Sabbath-derived riffs, muddying them liberally with hardcore’s urgency and anger. Crowbar’s dirge-like compositions are a musical representation of its members’ often harrowing lives, and the band’s lyrics speak unflinching truth on many subjects, including Windstein’s struggle with addiction. Unadorned, unvarnished, and unapologetic, the band also leaves no head un-banged. (Ben Richardson)

With Helmet, Saint Vitus, Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl, and Atlas Moth

8 p.m., $25

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

FILM

“Fearless: Chinese Independent Documentaries”

There is a long history of radical documentaries that contest official histories and sanctioned depictions of everyday life, but rare is the concentrated activism we see in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series “Fearless: Chinese Independent Documentaries.” These risk-taking records of injustice bear no resemblance to the easy history lessons and celebrity profiles that pass for documentary in the HBO/Sundance sphere. With extended running times and steadfast dedication to witnessing people, places, and histories the Chinese government would just as soon erase, the films are monumental in the deepest sense. “Fearless” opens with Karamay, Xu Win’s six-hour examination of a tragic fire that killed 323 people while leaving several officials unharmed. As with several of the films that follow, the exhaustiveness of the treatment is itself a rebuke to the government’s suppression of the facts. (Max Goldberg)

April 3–21

Karamay today, 1 p.m., $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2700

www.ybca.org

MONDAY 4

PERFORMANCE

Los Muñequitos de Matanzas

Cuba’s biggest export used to be sugar. These days what the country sends abroad — or at least tries to — is much sweeter and much healthier: dance and music. Whether ballet or folklórico, the product is consistently astounding. Yet our benighted government does everything it can to “protect” us — from what? Professionalism made possible by a government that believes arts education is integral to the GNP? What’s wrong about getting to know expressions of a country’s soul? Last time Los Muñequitos de Matanzas performed here, to huge acclaim, was in 1992. Now, as a kind of preview, the San Francisco International Arts Festival (coming up May 18-June 5) brings these master percussionists back. Of course, they’ll bring dancers — six of them. Have you ever heard of rumbas and sambas without dancers? (Rita Felciano)

7 p.m., $15–$50

Mission High School

3750 18th St. SF

1-800-838-3006

www.sfiaf.org

TUESDAY 5

MUSIC

Ben Kweller

Hate to break it to you, but the heyday of emo music is long gone. But before you rip your heart out of your chest, cheer up, emo kid: singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Ben Kweller is back in town to rock your striped socks off. In 2002, Kweller released his first full length album, Sha Sha (with the hit “Wasted and Ready”), showcasing the versatility of his pop-to-folk-to-punk sound. Although he has the astonishing aptitude for challenging the limitations of these genres, Kweller comes full circle in 2009’s Changing Horses as he returns to his small-town roots. Isn’t country kind of the original emo, anyway? (Verzosa)

With Pete Yorn and Wellspring

8 p.m., $25

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

1-800-745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com

Animal instinct

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

March 29, 2011

PETS A pet-free existence — who needs it? Creature comfort can’t be underestimated, whether you’re ready for a one-time volunteer session, a casual relationship, or some long-term lovin’.

ADOPT AWAY

In this country of serious pet overpopulation, there’s no need to buy your next animal companion from a pet store. Whatever you’re looking for — cats, dogs, parakeets, rabbits, mice, rats, chickens, snakes, lizards, even chinchillas — the odds are good that some local shelter or rescue group will have one waiting to be adopted.

Animal advocates (and even some pet stores) urge seekers of furry, scaly, or feathered companions to think adoption first. “That’s been our message for years,” said Jennifer Scarlett, co-president of the San Francisco SPCA.

In most cases adopted pets work out better for the animal and the human, notes Deb Campbell, spokesperson for the city’s Animal Control Commission. “People who impulsively buy pets tend to have more problems,” she said.

In this city alone, there are too many unwanted dogs and cats — many the result of backyard breeders and owners who fail to get their animals spayed or neutered. And with the recession, more people have been forced to give up their pets. So adoptable creatures abound.

If dogs are your thing, the SPCA (www.sfspca.org) and the city shelter (www.animalshelter.sfgov.org) have dozens waiting for the right home. So do several local rescue groups. Wonder Dog Rescue (www.wonderdogrescue.org), Rocket Dog Rescue (www.rocketdogrescue.org), Family Dog Rescue (www.norcalfamilydogrescue.org), and Grateful Dogs Rescue (www.gratefuldogsrescue.org) all offer large and small pups of all ages and breeds for adoption— you can even snag a ex-racer from Golden State Greyhound Rescue (www.goldengreyhounds.com).

Many adoption programs are able to give you the lowdown on your prospective pet’s personality. “Our dogs all live in foster homes, so we have a real sense of what they’re like and how they interact,” says Wonder Dog’s Linda Beenau.

Muttville (www.muttville.org) specializes in placing older dogs. “With a senior dog, you know exactly what you’re going to get,” said Sherri Franklin, the group’s founder. “We evaluate the people who are looking to adopt, evaluate the dogs, and try to fill everyone’s need. We’re matchmakers.”

Shelters and rescue groups spend a lot of money making sure the animals they adopt out are in good medical condition (and won’t reproduce).

Cats are the most popular pets in the city, and the SPCA and the city shelter both offer cat adoptions. “We adopt out about 4,000 animals a year, and two-thirds are cats,” said Scarlett. There’s even a working-cat program for feral cats that may not be cuddly but can offer businesses an organic solution to rodent problems.

But the list doesn’t stop there. The city shelter “adopts out small exotic animals, fish, birds, poultry — you name it,” Campbell said. “It’s illegal to buy a rabbit in San Francisco, but you can adopt one from us.”

“Chickens are very popular pets these days,” she added. “They can give you breakfast.” (Tim Redmond)

FOSTER BLISS

We don’t know about you, but seeing precious pets cooped up in cramped shelter cages — well, it makes us knock over garbage cans, spray urine on an expensive sofa, and caterwaul at the moon. And this is a country that euthanizes between 50 percent and 70 percent of its shelter animals. Sorry to be a bummer. But you can help, even if you’re not ready for a 10-year commitment. Really — you can!

Fostering a pet serves a lot of purposes. First, for us flighty city creatures, it provides a low-commitment avenue to pet ownership. Second, to foster is to play a vital role in the shelter system. Many of the city’s smaller animal rescue organizations and humane societies couldn’t exist without a network of caring foster homes to nurture pets while their shelter facilities are full. And for some, saving animals from shelter euthanasia wouldn’t be possible without temporary homes.

“We’re a grassroots organization that doesn’t have a brick and mortar location besides our three adoption sites,” says Lana Bajsel of Give Me Shelter cat rescue, a group that typically cares for 54 cats at a time. “The fosters serve as our safety net. Their role is crucial.”

Cats and dogs aren’t the only cuddly creatures that can join your family for a short period of time. Wonder Cat (wondercatrescue.petfinder.com), Pets in Need (www.petsinneed.org), Furry Friends Rescue (www.furryfriendsrescue.org), and Rocket Dog Rescue do concentrate on dogs and cats, but you can also foster a rabbit through Save A Bunny (www.saveabunny.org) or birds through Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue (www.mickaboo.org).

Foster systems provide a way for many shelters to save furry friends that are long-shot adoptees or would fare poorly in cages. The SPCA’s “fospice” program can match you with a chronically ill (but not contagious) pet that needs your love. As in most foster programs, the SPCA will pay for any medical care fospice animals need (although as a foster parent, you’re usually responsible for food and other daily needs).

Organizational requirements vary from group to group, but Bajsel says that most of the time all it takes to be a foster parent is a safe home (for example, no windows without screens that open onto busy streets), your landlord’s permission, and preferably, a little animal savvy. “But we’ve placed cats with fosters who have never had one before. In those cases, we can provide a little more hand holding” she says.

With such demonstrable need, most organizations will accept any help you can give — even if it means a little something before you leave on your summer vacation. It’s really contingent on you, the foster parent. “The time commitment can be as little as two weeks,” Bajsel says. (Caitlin Donohue)

VICARIOUS

Say your flea trap apartment or Scrooge-like landlord prohibits adopting or fostering — you can always volunteer at one of the many Bay Area organizations dedicated to animal welfare. Once you catch the scent of the needy pooches, cats, rats, and people dedicated to saving them, it’ll be tough not to volunteer.

Cat lovers will feel right at home at Give Me Shelter cat rescue, which can use your help with anything from petting a purr-er to cleaning cages to lending a hand at adoption events. If you’re more of a man’s best friend kind of gal or boy, lend a hand at one of the city’s incredible dog shelters. Muttville can hook you up with a variety of ways to get involved, including matching elderly dogs with lonely older folks as part of its heart-melting “seniors for seniors” program.

Rocket Dog Rescue is another all-breed dog rescue organization with a mission to save animals “at the speed of light.” Learn more at one of its volunteer orientations on second Sundays of the month.

Bad Rap (www.badrap.org) stands for Bay Area Dog Lovers Responsible About Pit Bulls, a group that’s serious about reeducating the public about pits, as well as getting perfectly adoptable pits placed with loving owners. Volunteers with the group will discover the secret world of big, barrel-headed sweethearts — and their ardent admirers. Bad Rap needs volunteers who can show up on Saturdays to train pits on leash skills at Berkeley Animal Care Service.

It doesn’t take an overly sappy soul to see the appeal in puppies and kitties, but can all our rodent people please stand up? Rattie Ratz (www.rattieratz.com) is a sweet-hearted organization in Woodside that rescues rats and treats these surprisingly amenable pets with respect. The group is all about rat rescue, resources, and referrals, and needs volunteers to help with animal therapy programs, adoption, fostering, and education.

Finally, we know that some of the sweetest creatures can’t be happily held — but they can still use your help! You can lend a hand at the Marine Mammal Center (www.marinemammalcenter.org) by getting trained to find and transport stranded animals and bring them to medical centers. Wild Care also (www.wildcarebayarea.org) has plenty of volunteer opportunities to help save Bay Area wildlife — it needs folks to work the hotline call center, do outreach education, and work directly with pet hospital staff. (Hannah Tepper)

Beyond Fido

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

March 29, 2011

culture@sfbg.com

PETS You can’t keep a hedgehog, ferret, or sugar glider as a pet — legally — in California. But don’t worry, there are still plenty of options when it comes to unusual creatures to keep your pad rad. Read on for exotic animals you can enjoy right here in the city.

A BLUNT RUMP ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE

In addition to what he claims is the largest exotic bug store in the country, Ken the Bug Guy (www.kenthebugguy.com) is the proud parent of tail-less whip scorpions that he’s raised from babies. At two and a half years old, they’re only half-grown, but Ken is eagerly monitoring their progression from weanling to adult.

“We don’t usually get to see the whole process,” he says, explaining that most of his scorpions — which hail from the order amblypygi, meaning “blunt rump” — are imported from breeders abroad. A mama amblypygid lays a sac of eggs and carries it under her belly until the eggs hatch. In the wild, she would then pile the babies on her back, protecting and feeding them. In captivity (where food is plentiful and predators scarce), the babies are separated from their mother to sell to a distributor like Ken.

The benefits of a blunt rump to call your own? They’re “crazy-looking, like an alien,” according to Ken. They also live seven to 10 years, don’t sting or bite, and have interesting, complex social structures like wolves.

“They’re completely harmless,” Ken emphasizes. “Little kids can hold them and play with them, and they only need to be fed once a week and have their cage misted a bit.”

PYTHON PERFORMANCE: WHY SHOULD BRITNEY HAVE ALL THE FUN?

Get it straight: dancer Jim Berenholtz’s red tail boas, African ball pythons, and Central American boas aren’t his pets — they’re flatmates.

“They’re other beings that share my living space, but I don’t own them, and they don’t own me. We’re all equal partners,” he tells us. They’re also costars.

Berenholtz has been performing with his snakes since 1989, when he debuted his act on his birthday, the eve of the Chinese Year of the Snake. A “powerful dream” prompted him to try snake dancing and in 2003, he started Serpentium, a troupe that dances for corporate events and for celebrities in the Bay Area and beyond. Over the years, Berenholtz has performed with some 16 to 20 different animals, sometimes with as many as seven at a time.

“I respond to their movements, and they respond to mine,” he says. “You may have seen belly dancers performing with snakes as props. But for me they’re not props. They’re living beings that I interact with as if they were a human partner.”

At home, his menagerie has grown organically — some of his animals have bred and produced offspring, others he adopted when previous owners could no longer care for them.

Though nearly all reptiles need to stay under heat lamps in this chilly city — East Bay Vivarium (www.eastbayvivarium.com) has space heaters for your scaly ones — Berenholtz will occasionally take his snake friends out of their aquariums and allow them to wrap their bodies around his while he’s lounging to “give them time outside of their tanks and to enjoy their presence.”

ALL SWEET, NO SNEEZE

Love the kitties, but not their dander? You may have heard that hairless cats can provide your feline fix sans sneezes. But if the alarmingly naked critters give you the cold willies over the warm fuzzies, there’s another way.

Patty Royall owns Sugar, a Cornish Rex with extremely fine, soft, curly hair. The breed, along with the related Devon Rex, is defined by a lack of all fur except a thin undercoat of down, which is said to be hypoallergenic. The breed’s characteristics are the result of a genetic mutation preserved from a litter born in 1950s Cornwall in the United Kingdom.

Like most Rexes, Sugar is often cold. The cats are known to hang out around light bulbs and computer monitors, but Sugar takes a more straightforward approach: she’ll simply jump under the bed covers and stay curled up all day, Royall says. Luckily, if you’re considering a Rex of your own, Royall has found a convenient solution for the chills. She uses a microwaveable heating pad that stays hot for about nine hours. Try a SnuggleSafe heat pad (www.snugglesafe.co.uk/), available at Pawtrero pet supply store (www.pawtrero.com).

What about baking in the summer sun? Royall has heard that some people use sunscreen on their Cornish Rexes, but — given how cats groom themselves by licking — she doesn’t think that’s the best idea.

CUTE COOING

Elizabeth Young is the founding director of Mickacoo Pigeon and Dove Rescue (www.mickacoo.org, a division of SF-based Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue), but if you’re thinking about the greasy green-and-gray birds you plow through every day on the sidewalk, think again. The birds Young rescues are primarily king pigeons, a pure white domestic breed that — unlike San Fran’s feral flocks — can’t survive outdoors on their own.

“They’re good-natured, easygoing, adaptable pets,” Young says. “They’re experts at the leisure arts — lounging, flirting, snacking, napping.” She adds that because of their mellow nature, they’re not demanding companions and do very well indoors or in an outdoor aviary.

Young says her seven pigeons have distinct personalities and form monogamous pairs — a characteristic that leads her to personify her birds’ love lives as though they were soap-opera biddies, describing, for example, how once-shy Frances eventually won the heart of widowed Country.

The birds are affectionate toward people, too. The aforementioned Frances comes hurtling down the hall when Young calls him, screeching by and then turning on a dime to locate Young. Because the birds are quiet, don’t chew, and don’t bite, they are ideal for homes where dogs are not an option.

The only problem with pigeons is that, unlike dogs, they can’t be housebroken. Luckily, the fine people at BirdWearOnline.com (www.birdwearonline.com) have invented pigeon pants — stylish suits that Young heartily endorses.

Spring nightlife preview

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

March 29, 2011

superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Dear Miss Rotissary Ethnicity Jackson-Houston Ross,

By the time you read this, I will be gone. Europe and North Africa are calling Hunky Beau and me, and after almost seven years of covering San Francisco nightlife for the Guardian, and 14 years in general, she needs a little break (as does her skin!) Don’t fret, I’ll be back soon enough, in some form, possibly this one, quidnuncking up in your after-dark business. And we’ll be polishing the nightlife part of our weekly Guardian music listings, so you can keep an eye on what all the other queens are up to while I’m gone. Or just know where to go for fun dancing, duh.

Miss Ross, I leave the San Francisco scene in the creatively manicured yet still slightly crackly hands of yourself and all the other gorgeous new club terrors who’ve recently sprouted like neon alfalfa along the gilt gutters of our dance floors. (Although I haven’t seen your name around in a hot minute and sincerely hope you’re not dead.) Our local, organic, small-batch, sustainable, house-manufactured alternative party scene is the sexiest and deepest and most creative in the world right now. Don’t fuck it up, loves. If I come back and it’s all loathsome Britney tribute night$ and DJs/models from Vegas with two “Z”s and a hash tag in their name, I will pull out my hardcore OG Detroit techno wig — the one that’s really three wigs at once, powered by an ECS RS485M-M motherboard and topped with an abandoned 1930s skyscraper on fire that rotates — and level y’all. To the ground.

But of course before I leave, I have just a few things to say. I hope I’ve helped break down any severely tired genre and crowd divisions in the clubs, and I’ve tried my best to elevate nightlife commentary to a higher level than mere celebrity rubbernecking and overuse of the word “fabulous.” Nightlife is an art form, Miss Ross, and it has actually saved my life on several occasions. It has a history, and deserves respect and study. But not so much that it ceases being cuckoo bonkers coco puffs Loleatta Holloway amazing.

Finally, unlike some other outlets in this town, the Guardian’s party coverage has never been for sale. I may over-gush on occasion, and I’ll never actively deflect a dishy bartender’s kind attentions after I’ve written about a party, but you’ll always find “advertorial” between “shit” and “syphilis” and “circuit party” in my dictionary app. I may not look like an objective journalist when sprawled spread-eagle at Lombard and Broadway at 5 a.m. with a paper sack of emptied-out Cuervo pints in one hand and a fierce knock-off Gabrielecorto Moltedo bag of emptied-out dignity in the other, but welcome to the new media. No matter how much I adore the people involved, I’d never steer you toward a Mongolian stinkbomb for the free drinks and pocket change, K?

And now, at last, here’s a gaggle of awesome upcoming special-event spring parties. Farewell, Miss Ross, for now, and goddess bless you and the children and the children’s children and the host with the guest list scrawled on a crumpled-up cocktail napkin in his other pants so everyone gets in free.

Where’s my lime wedge,

Marke B.

WED., MARCH 30

Salem Oh, hi, witch house? You’ve caused a lot of trouble among the no-labels crowd. But few can deny the gothic-gangsta spookiness of your haunted electronic sound. Michigan’s Salem brings the crunky rap and fractured neo-Orff production, openers Soft Moon and Water Borders will hold the crowd spellbound.

8 p.m.-11 p.m., $12.50 advance. 103 Harriet, SF. www.blasthaus.com

Stay Gold Five-Year Anniversary Five years already? Well, the crowd at this mad monthly queer-jam-centric dance-a-thon doesn’t look a day over three — and has grown so huge that they’re moving from the Make-Out Room to Public Works. With resident DJs Rapid Fire and Pink Lightning and guests Dr. Sleep, Pee Play, and Durt.

10 p.m., $3 before 11 p.m., $5 after. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

THURS., MARCH 31

Ladies of the House NextAid Benefit All women on decks for a dubby-bubbly event in honor of National Women’s History Month, benefiting NextAid, which helps out African women and youth. Icon, Dulce Vita, tamo, shOOey, and more.

7:30 p.m., $10–$20. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

FRI., APRIL 1

Kool Keith and DJ Godfather Raunchy-outrageous alien rapper meets Detroit king of booty tech? Plus two rooms full of glitchy bass and Chicago footwork? Pack me another bowl, because it’s all coming true.

9 p.m.-3 a.m., $18 adv, $20. Club Six, 66 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

SAT., APRIL 2

Blessed Second Anniversary Deep and lovely house with that fantastically rich Oakland vibe — free monthly Blessed celebrates with Australian native DJ Vincent Kwok, who brings a sunny global soul perspective to the tables.

9 p.m., free. SomaR Bar, 1727 Telegraph, Oakl. Facebook: Blessed 2 Year

Emo Spring Break Hahaha, no sunshine for emos, ever, but plenty of fun and sing-a-long emo jams courtesy of awesome ’90s retro night Debaser. Emo, screamo, and pop-punk gems await your mopey hairdo.

The Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.facebook.com/debaser90s

Mount Kimbie Dominic Maker and Kai Campo, a.k.a. Mount Kimbie, are kings of thoughtful post-dubstep (and brought down Public Works last year). They’ll float heavy at Mezzanine with sultry beat-collagist Shigeto, LA’s Matthew David, DJ Dials, and more.

10 p.m., $15 adv. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

SUN., APRIL 3

Beats For Japan A massive all-day dance community effort to raise funds for those affected by the recent disaster. DJs Mark Farina, Claude Von Stroke, Miguel Migs, Fred Everything, David Harness, Oliver Desmet, Julius Papp, and New Mondo turn it up and out. Be there.

2 p.m–midnight, 10 suggested donation. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

THURS., APRIL 7

Big Freedia The omnipotent transgender queen of genius New Orleans genre sissy bounce is going to show you all how to get Azz Everywhere with gin in your system. She played Oakland last year and was seriously on fire. With her smart musical compatriot Rusty Lazer.

9 p.m.–late., check website for price, public Works, 161 erie, Sf. www.publicsf.com

7 Dirty Girls This one looks a clever corker. Curvicious Cabaret is putting on this naughty tribute to comedian George Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” skit. One hot lass performing a routine for each word equals “filthy, depraved, perverted, disgusting, and completely uncensored burlesque.”

9 p.m., $10. Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF. www.curvisiouscabaret.com

FRI., APRIL 8

Jokers of the Scene The hardcore Torontonian goofballs are so nutty they used to be controversial. Now, they’re just good electro fun, and will pack the shiny-shiny Lights Down Low party even more. With Brenmar and Christian Martin (also damn good).

10 p.m.-late, $10. SOM 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com

Miss Blow Up USA The exuberant 18+ monthly glitz-electro night is still going strong — and now they need a queen (apparently I’ve been retired). Anyone can enter — and everyone wins with DJs Jeffrey Paradise, Lloydski, Dirty Dave, and more.

10 p.m., $10 21+/$15 18+, DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.blowupsf.com

SAT., APRIL 9

Aprilween Yes, yes, every day is Halloween for us freaks — but not every night is a massive costume party at the monthly mashup Bootie party. So here you have it, Aprilween, with DJs Adrian and Mysterious D with guests Faroff and Squrrrl and live mashup band Smashup Derby. Plus crazy costume contest.

9 p.m., $8 before 10, $10 after. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.bootiesf.com

BiBi The off-the-hook hot and charitable queer Middle Eastern party returns with a “sail the seven seas” theme. DJs Cairo brings the ululating beats, bellydancers, yummy drink specials, and, as always, friendly hipshakes and sultry winks.

9 p.m., $10. Club 8, 1151 Folsom, SF. www.bibisf.org

Justin Vivian Bond San Francisco’s drag cabaret pride and joy, now slaying them (and scoring Tony noms) in New York City is releasing a new CD, Dendrophile, and bringing a truckload of talent to the Castro Theatre for a scenester’s dream of a performance.

8 p.m.–11 p.m., $25–$65. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. www.castrotheatre.com

WED., APRIL 13

DJ Kentaro + Japan benefit I am so delighted that actual vinyl turntables are making a comeback — but one glimpse of this Ninja Tune dude’s mad scratch-collage skillness might send a generation running back to Serrato. Proceeds go to Global Givings Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund

9:30 p.m.–late, $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

FRI., APRIL 15

Mary Ann Hobbs BBC Radio’s undisputed queen of fractured beats and intel electronic dance comes back to the Bay — with a fanperson’s wet-dream roster: Joy Orbison, Kode9, Roska, Gonjasufi (yes!), Lorn, Ghosts on Tape, and loads more. Sooo good.

10 p.m.–late, $15 adv. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

Tensnake After a few false visa-issue starts, the German recombinant house prince brings his funky, fantastic, steamy, sing-a-long creations to Public Works. Coma Cat here we come!

9 p.m.–4 a.m., $10 with Facebook RSVP. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. Facebook: Tensnake Live!

SAT., APRIL 16

Legowelt Absolutely smoking house with a classic mid-’80s feel from this Dutch “slam jack” artiste at a special installment of the rad Donuts! party. Also check out fellow headliners Miracles Club from Portland for more introspective early house-ish sounds and local spectacle-kinksters Tres Lingerie.

9:30 p.m.–3 a.m., $5 before 10, $10 after. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

TUES., APRIL 19

Bomba Estereo Brash and sexy Colombian electro-cumbia (and rap) band have burned up dance floors and the YouTubes with hit “Fuego.” New EP Ponte Bomb samples Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam” to viral effect.

7:30 p.m., $18. The Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Magical Properties Tour 3 Wicked, knob-twisted abstract bass and visual blasts from L.A. dandy Daedelus, local mensch Shlohmo, and fab Brainfeeder Tokimonsta. The last two installments we’re seriously banging, smoke up.

10 p.m., $12. SOM, 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com

THURS., APRIL 21

Lil B Who’s ready to get based? You know you are or wish you were. Super-canny Based God Oakland rapper Lil B is probably reaching out to you right now through his 500 Twitter feeds, but I’m telling you about this gig anyway.

9 p.m., $20 adv. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

The Tubesteak Connection Seventh Anniversary What started as a humble tribute to the gay bathhouse discos of the past has, er, blossomed into a phenomenon over the past lucky seven — as well as expanding its excellent musical scope, via DJ Bus Station John’s sensitive yet probing ear, to become a “petri dish of the era’s many styles.” You’ll still get hella laid by a mustachioed hottie and dance your keister off.

10 p.m., $5. Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF.

FRI., APRIL 22

Fag Friday Another installment of this wildly successful reunion of one of SF’s best gay house parties. The beats get cunty and the family, young and younger, comes out for this one. Special guest Tedd Patterson brings some NYC shine, and residents David Harness and Juanita More turn the packed floor out.

10 p.m.–4 a.m., $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

PantyRaid and Lowriderz Burning Man sleaze-step superstars return with a mighty rumble and bang to meld crunk and dubstep to an apocalyptic sensibility.

10 p.m.–4 a.m., $15 adv. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

SAT., APRIL 23

Wicked 20 Years of Disco Glory The actually legendary soundsystem has raved through two decades, deepening the original sound into the purely sublime. Celebrating with a full-moon howl will be the original crew: Garth, Jeno, Markie, and Thomas. And you!

10 p.m.–7 a.m., $20 adv. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

SAT., APRIL 30

Bender’s Second Annual Toga Party The first time this top bar among top bars held a toga party, it burned down (a week later, but still). That won’t happen this time — the bar is back and double the size — despite the hot-sheets in the crowd. With the Corruptors and the Grannies live.

10 p.m., $7. Bender’s, 806 S. Van Ness, SF. www.bendersbar.com

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Public Works, SF. www.publicsf.com

Mighty Real: Jellybean Benitez The Mighty Real classic house series at Mighty kicked off last month with Frankie Knuckles, and it was breathing room only (and fun!). This time another giant, Jellybean Benitez, joins resident DJ David Harness. Here’s hoping he drops some wild freestyle.

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

Surefire Sound Tour Wonderful neo-grime, post-dubstep antics from this crew, bringing young phenom Ramadanman (very, very good), Zed Bias, and our very own Salva to the fore.

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Public Works, SF. www.publicsf.com

SUN., MAY 1

How Weird Street Fair Yay! It’s the first of our major street fairs, which means I can finally run wild and free in my bunny suit, legally. Get stoopid in a good way with tons of DJs, one of the best local vibes of the season, and totally WEIRD entertainment. Theme: “Mythical Realms.” After-parties: galore.

Noon-8 p.m., donation requested. Howard and Second Streets, SF. www.howweird.org

Sunset Boat Party Always a tipsy-tyrvy winner on the high seas annually with those Pacific Sound boys, Solar, Galen, and J. Bird.. Check www.pacificsound.net for details and guests.

THURS., MAY 5

Devotion 10-Year Anniversary Good lord, has it really been that long for this former weekly Sunday night affair? It still sounds as fresh as ever, energetically house-y with a dash of Latin love, and even though founder DJ Ruben Mancias has relocated to NYC, there’s always a heavy local vibe when he plays in town. With special guest David Morales, plus David Harness and Teejay Walton.

9 p.m.–late, $10 adv. Mighty, 119 utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

SAT., MAY 7

Tim Xavier How much do I love monthly international live-set techno bonanza Kontrol at the EndUp? Thiiiiiis much, but a little bigger. May sees the Kontrol kids bringing in this intense Berlin musicmaker on the Clink label, who’ll definitely keep the adrenaline level up.

10 p.m.-6 a.m., $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.rtheendup.com *

Music Listings

Maria Poblet

March 29, 2011

WEDNESDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

B Foundation, Katastro, Jahlectrik Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Careerers, Le Mutant, Marmalade Mountain Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

DOM, Heavy Hawaii, Melted Toys, EpicSauce.com DJs Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Ari Hest, Rosi Golan Café Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Katchafire, Tomorrows Bad Seeds Independent. 9pm, $20.

Weapons of the Future, Tokyo Raid, Knives Knockout. 10pm, $6.

Mary Wilson Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

Mitch Woods Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Zodiac Death Valley, Preteen, Mata Leon Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cat’s Corner Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

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

Guerrilla Cabaret with Tom Shaw Trio Martuni’s, Four Valencia, SF; www.dragatmartunis.com. 7pm.

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

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Stevie Coyle Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 7pm.

Rose’s Pawn Shop, All My Pretty Ones Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

Matthew Santos, Chi McClean, Chris Gelbuda Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

David Wagner Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.caferoyale-sf.com. 8pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St., SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. Soul, funk, swing, and rare grooves with residents Dr. Musco and DJB.

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

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 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.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

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.

Salem, Water Borders, Whitch, Disco Shawn 103 Harriet, 1015 Folsom, SF; www.1015.com. 8pm, $10.

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 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alabama Mike Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

B-Stars Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Dreamdate, Touch-Me-Nots, Elvis Christ Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Frail Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 6pm, free.

Doug E. Fresh Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20-26.

Brendan James and Matt White, Lauren Pritchard Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $12.

Kem, Timothy Bloom Warfield. 8pm, $49.50-69.50.

Koalacaust, Steel Tigers of Death, King City Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Travie McCoy, Donnis, Black Cards, XV, Bad Rabbits Slim’s. 7:30pm, $18.

Route 66 Players Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Southeast Engine, Pancho-san, Tommy Carns Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dominique Leone, Meotar, Headshear Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 9pm.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and “Tender” Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

Pascal Bokar Band and Alan Benzie’s Berklee College of Music Band Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $10.

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

“Tingel Tangel Club: Three Year Anniversary Party” Café Du Nord. 9pm, $16-20. Cabaret with Ann Magnuson and Kristian Hoffman, Uni and Her Ukelele, Scotty the Blue Bunny, and more.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass and old-time jam Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

Prince Royce Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $38.

“Twang! Honky Tonk” Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Bag Raiders, DJs Aaron Axelsen, Omar, and KidHack Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm.

Base Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $10. With Roger Sanchez.