Live Archives — Page 32 of 254 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Why won’t you let me go?

Sasha Cuttler

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October 29, 2013

By Brian Smith

Dad was confused.

He was taking a combination of drugs that were keeping him alive and reducing his pain. His morphine dose was quite high.

The fact that he had even made it to 78 years old was amazing considering he survived California’s polio crisis of the 1940s. But now it was coming back. Post-Polio Syndrome weakens muscles that were previously affected by the polio infection. This brilliant man was atrophying both mentally and physically before our eyes. Eventually, he would not be able to breathe. And there was no cure.

“When do we go?” he asked us. “Where are the other attorneys? This is an important deposition.”

He was on a kind of mental auto-pilot, reliving 45 years of familiar work stress — not the way anyone wants to experience his final days.

“There are no more depositions,” my wife explained in soothing tones. “Your job is done. You were one of California’s finest lawyers and you helped build a respected firm in the Central Valley. You should be very proud of your legacy.”

“Why won’t you let me go?” he said with tears welling up in his eyes.

That cut straight to the issue at hand.

For months, father had been telling everyone who would listen that he was “done.” He wanted to die. His quality of life had become so bad (a collection of pills, oxygen machines, and bad cable TV he could no longer understand) that he had nothing left to live for and wanted to die peacefully in his own home, surrounded by loved ones.

But choosing when one dies is not an option in California. The law is quite clear. California Penal Code §401 says: “Every person who deliberately aids, or advises, or encourages another to commit suicide, is guilty of a felony.”

The circle of family taking care of Dad felt overwhelmed.

The visits by Medicare-supported home hospice nurses were welcome. They were heroic in their one clear mission: to reduce suffering. But hospice nurses are not in the business of ethically assisting someone to die. That remains controversial and illegal in California.

The local “death with dignity” group recommended the only method legally allowed in the state: The dying patient simply quits eating or drinking. In a few days, they slip into a coma and never wake up. But isn’t dehydration and starvation really a form of torture? For this to work quickly, not even slivers of ice to cool the mouth are allowed.

There must be a better way.

In Oregon, where a Death with Dignity Act passed in 1994, Dad would have gotten his wish. After confirming his desire to end his life with two witnesses, consults with two doctors, and after a short waiting period and verification that the patient is not depressed, a prescription for a lethal cocktail of drugs becomes legal in Oregon. The dying person can gather family and friends for a dignified ritual that ends with the self-deliverance from this mortal coil.

Sadly, for my dad in California, there would be no easy way out.

His mood turned angry as the weeks passed. He began lashing out at the assembled loved ones for the sin of keeping him alive. We had neither the skills nor the backbone to withstand the kind of misdirected vehemence this skilled litigator could deliver upon his loved ones in those final days.

Eventually, the family broke down and took the angry patriarch to a hospice facility with a staff fully trained in the arts of comforting the afflicted.

We know leaving the farm broke his heart. He had lived there his entire life. His family’s roots on the land go back to the Gold Rush. At the hospice, he died in less than four days.

It didn’t have to be like this. There must be a better way to die.

Why are there no better options for dying Californians?

Where aren’t the Baby Boomers (who are beginning to face this exact issue) demanding a Death with Dignity law?

Why must our elders endure so much suffering at the end of life?

Why won’t we let them go?

Brian Smith lives in Oakland. His family’s farm is in Stockton.

Reclaiming death

Sasha Cuttler

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October 29, 2013

7

news@sfbg.com

DEATH ISSUE Death is the Grim Reaper come to collect his dues, a silent, bewildered specter bound in black, this undeniable truth that we avoid at all costs. But it doesn’t have to be.

Beginning in Northern California, a growing movement has mounted an attack against death as we know it. They call themselves “death midwives.” Part ferry operator for the dying, part guardian of those left behind, these home funeral guides are committed to transforming our experience of death.

“Most people in this country have no exposure to death,” Jerrigrace Lyons, a prominent death midwife based in Sebastopol, tells us. “The references they do have are negative; it’s frightening, it’s ghoulish, it’s a failure. We need something realistic that shows death to be beautiful and graceful, with a lot of compassion and love and honoring involved.”

The most expensive party you never wanted to have, funerals in America have become a multibillion-dollar industry. Between the fees for completing the necessary paperwork, transporting the body, embalming, flowers, headstone, and casket, funerals cost an average of $7,000. (This is excluding the price of a cemetery plot, an 8 by 4-foot piece of real estate that can cost $5,000.) The services only take a few hours.

“Everything happens so fast,” Lyons says. “People need more time.”

Nearly two decades and 350 corpses have taught her that there is nothing more important for a family than having time with the body to grieve. This is just one part of the death process that we have lost touch with.

“Death is such a sacred and holy thing, and we have commercialized it,” Heidi Boucher, a veteran death midwife in Sacramento, tells us. “The funeral industry has made it really mysterious and creepy, so people are afraid of death.”

Americans once took care of their dead in the privacy of their own homes. During the Civil War, embalming became popular as a way to preserve dead bodies. Meanwhile, more people were dying in hospitals, distancing the living from death.

When funeral directors established a monopoly on the legal right to embalm, we were separated even further from death. Today, most people have no idea what to do with a dead body. Even if they did, there are enough laws and restrictions around death to daunt almost anyone grieving over the loss of a loved one.

Paying someone thousands of dollars to deal with it no longer seems unreasonable. But handing our dead over to funeral homes might come at an even greater cost than we realize.

“When a body’s taken away, it’s taken out of the hands of the family,” Lyons explains. “There’s no direct care of the deceased, no personal involvement. There’s no way for the family to feel empowered by knowing that they’ve done everything they could to give their loved one a great send-off.”

TIME TO GRIEVE

Working as an ER and ICU nurse, Robin Russell saw a lot of death, but she was struck by how people feared death. No one wanted to talk about it, as if the word would summon the Angel of Death if said out loud.

Inspired by the open recognition of it with humor and color that she witnessed in Mexico during Dia de los Muertos, Russell began searching for a way to change how people understand death in this country. What she found was Lyons.

“I realized that one of the reasons we are so afraid of death is because it has been removed from us, by the body being taken away, filled with embalming fluids, made-up and dressed-up by strangers, and placed in a casket for a memorial conducted in an unfamiliar place, for an allotted period of time,” Russell says.

So she enrolled in Lyons’ death midwife certification program. As midwives offer care and support during and after births, death midwives give the same attention and guidance during and after deaths — from making sure that the dying are comfortable to counseling them about what is coming and helping them make arrangements.

When death comes, midwives turn their attention to the living, assisting the families and friends in caring for their loved ones at home. This can include helping them bathe and dress the deceased, preserving the bodies in dry ice, and completing all of the necessary paperwork to have a legal home funeral. With the aid of a death midwife, families can keep their dead at home with them for up to three days.

When Boucher first started working with the dying 30 years ago, she was one of few death midwives. But Americans have grown more environmentally and economically conscious in recent years, making home funerals increasingly appealing.

Death midwives offer funeral directors’ expertise at a fraction of the cost, sometimes for free. They advocate forgoing caskets in favor of cheaper, greener options like cardboard boxes or even just a shroud.

Expensive frills like elaborate flower arrangements and guest books are done away with, along with toxic ones like embalming. The movement is still very small — Boucher estimates that there are 100 death midwives in the US — but practitioners are optimistic about its future.

“Many people don’t know about this, but 99 percent of the ones I talk to who do are totally into it,” Boucher claims. “We just need to educate people. That’s the only way that anything’s going to change in this country in regards to how we perceive death.”

Lyons has taught 400 people and had 150 graduates from around the world since she started her death midwife certification program in 2000. In coming years, she foresees the home funeral movement growing as much as the birth midwife movement did in the ’60s.

“When the person’s kept at home for several days, it normalizes death a lot,” Lyons states. “The family is there, making everything beautiful and natural. There’s the comfort of the home, the privacy. And it isn’t just for the family. It’s also for the person in transition.”

PROCESSING DEATH

When Carol Singler had a home funeral for her father in 2012, she swore she could feel his spirit there with them. Lyons had made things easier for Singler in every way that she could, guiding her through the process and even driving her downtown to drop off the necessary paperwork. Lyons recommended a cardboard box that people could decorate instead of a casket.

“When somebody dies, it feels like if you could give them something of your heart, then you would know everything was at peace. This gave us the opportunity to do that,” Singler remembers. “Decorating the box with paint and collages, putting all of our love into it for my dad, we had tremendous emotional processing. We talked a lot about death and dying. By the time we finished, my nephew, who had taken the death really hard, was saying to me, ‘I never knew it could be like this. I don’t feel afraid of death anymore. I want to die like this.’ If my father had just been whisked away, that would have been the end of it. Nothing would have happened to really heal our hearts.”

Singler’s husband is dying of lung cancer. The doctors predict that he has a month and a half to live. She wants him have a home funeral assisted by Lyons too, so that their grandchildren can have the same opportunity to process their grandfather’s death.

Kim Gamboa’s teenage son Kyle committed suicide five months ago by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Another mother put her in contact with Boucher, and, within hours of Kyle’s death, she was at the Gamboas’ house, explaining and arranging things.

Boucher was prepared to answer the usual concerns about legality and decaying. Gamboa attended a home funeral a decade ago. At the time, she wondered how the family could stand having a dead body in the house. Once it was her own son’s funeral, however, she had no apprehensions. “When it is actually your loved one, you have such great comfort in having them home with you,” Gamboa explains. “I had wanted to do everything for him, for his soul, and then it turned out to be everything for us, and the community, to help us say goodbye.”

For three days, Gamboa and her husband kept their house open to everyone who wanted to visit Kyle. They placed his body in an open casket in their living room, surrounded by flowers and candles. Kyle’s many team jerseys hung on the walls and the pictures and letters his visitors brought crowded the fireplace mantel.

“I do not know how I could have dealt with this or the world without having all of that time to talk to him, to kiss him, to touch him,” Gamboa reflects. “Bringing everyone over provided incredible support and strength, and a sense of closure. We could all grieve and share the happy times that we had with Kyle. It gave us three more days with our son to say goodbye. I can’t even describe how much that helped.”

Let’s talk about death

Sasha Cuttler

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October 29, 2013

40

steve@sfbg.com

DEATH ISSUE Death comes for all of us, sometimes with advanced warning, other times suddenly.

Loved ones get a chance to say goodbye in fewer than half of all deaths, so I was fortunate to see my 92-year-old Grandma Elinor Bonin in the week between her massive heart attack and her passing on Oct. 7. And I was doubly lucky to catch her while she was still fairly stable and lucid, before she went downhill, wracked by pain, fighting for each breath, and wishing for the relief of death.

Her health had been deteriorating for years and she was ready to die, as she told me in her room at Sierra Vista Hospital in San Luis Obispo, the same hospital where my daughter Breanna and I were each born.

Grandma was already suffering from pneumonia and congestive heart failure when she had a massive heart attack in the early morning hours of Oct. 1. The prognosis wasn’t good, so she worked with my mom and others to craft an exit plan: creating an advanced care directive with do-not-resuscitate order, setting up home hospice care paid for by Medicare, and going home to die.

“I’m ready,” she told me — sweetly if wearily, with a resolute resignation in her voice — as we waited for the ambulance that would take her home from the hospital. “I just don’t want to live in agony anymore.”

We all want to believe that we’ll show that kind of grace, clarity, and courage as we greet death. Society is beginning to wake up to the realization that extraordinary efforts to prolong life as long as possible can be as inhumane as they are costly, finally opening up a long-overdue conversation about death.

As we explore in this issue, the Bay Area is the epicenter for evolving attitudes towards the end of life, from the death midwives movement and home funerals to the complex discussions and confrontations of taboos now being triggered by the Baby Boomers facing death, both their parents’ and their own.

“The reality now is we’re kickstarting the conversation about death. We’re at the very beginning of this,” says San Franciscan Suzette Sherman, who just launched www.sevenponds.com, an information clearinghouse designed to elevate the end of life experience. “Death is a wonderful part of life, it’s a profound moment.”

———-

We honor and celebrate death in San Francisco more than they do in most American cities. The AIDS crisis forced San Franciscans to grapple with death in once unimaginable ways. We continue to pioneer comforting passages with programs such as Hospice by the Bay and the Zen Hospice Project.

Our iconic Golden Gate Bridge has the dubious distinction of being the site of more suicides than any bridge in the world, with more than 1,200 people choosing to end their lives there, including 10 in August alone — a sad statistic considered local officials approved a suicide barrier in 2008, but they still have yet to find funding to build it.

Death Café salons that started in Europe have begun to catch on here, and from Latin America we borrowed and popularized Day of the Dead, which on Nov. 2 will fill the streets of the Mission District with thousands of people and Garfield Park with creative shrines to the dead.

“The way that we used to talk about death in the United States was as a sudden event. Now, it’s an anticipated event,” Death Café facilitator Shelly Adler told a small crowd that had assembled on Oct. 23 in the Great Room of the Zen Hospice Center. “The dying process is now thought of, not as something you can prevent, but as something you have a little control over.”

That’s what my grandmother had: a little control over her death, but not a lot. She was able to choose the place of her death, but not its time or manner, like she might have been able to do in Oregon or other places that allow the terminally ill to gather loved ones together and self-administer a lethal final cocktail.

I was able to get some final quality time with this amazing woman before she passed, watching her light up at the memory of teaching me to ride a bike, laughing at the distant thought of running alongside her wobbly five-year-old grandson. And then she laughed again when I said that I still ride my bike everywhere I go, and that I even brought it down with me in the car I borrowed from my girlfriend because I don’t own an automobile anymore.

It was the last laugh she had, my mom told me later. The next day, propped up in a rental hospital bed in her living room, was when she really began the slow, arduous descent into death. The pain and morphine sapped her spirit and fluid steadily filled her lungs, slowly drowning out the last of her life.

But longevity runs in my family, and Grandma could have hung on for days or weeks like that. Her husband, my 97-year-old Grandpa Bonin, had suffered a similarly massive heart seven years earlier, also looking for awhile like his time had come, but he fought his way back and was healthy and strong as he sat by her bedside. You just never know.

So, with pressing deadlines at work and lots of other extended family members flying in to say their goodbyes to Grandma, I said mine on Thursday evening, Sept. 26.

Four days later, I got the call from my mom, a voicemail waiting for me as I returned from yoga class. I was struck by the fact that Grandma died almost at the precise moment that I was finishing my shavasana, coming out of my corpse pose as my grandmother was permanently going into hers. It’s left to the living to ponder confluences like that and to search for meaning within the mysterious expanse of death.

That’s been the central preoccupation of religions for centuries, offering assurances to the flock that we needn’t fear death, that it’s a natural part of life, a view that has been reinforced by modern secular society as well, from atheists to ecologists.

So let’s confront death, bring it out of the hospitals and mortuaries and into the open. Let’s have the long-overdue societal conversations about it that we need to have. Let’s talk about death.

Janina Glasov contributed to this report.

Embedded with the Dolores Park sleep-in protest of park closures

Sasha Cuttler

-

October 29, 2013

154

It’s 1am on Monday (10/28) night in Dolores Park, and I’m wrapped in a sleeping bag scientifically engineered for warmth. Surrounded by 50 or so people, I’m staring at the stars while a Franciscan friar clad in brown robes shows me a Jimmy Fallon skit about Twitter on his iPhone.

“Hashtag shut the fuck up!” Questlove says to laughter of a live audience. This isn’t exactly how the homeless spend their nights, I think to myself.

But that’s why we’re here. Sup. Scott Wiener wants to close these parks from midnight to 5am, and that’s right when the homeless need them the most. The people here are sleeping in the park to show empathy, to show the homeless they’re not alone, and to protest’s Wiener’s legislation on the eve of its consideration by the Board of Supervisors.

Wiener says closing the parks will help police combat graffiti and vandals, and it will keep the parks safe.

That’s a red herring, a loaded statement that the people here feel in their bones is untrue. To my right, Tom Temprano, the bearded president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, is crouching, surveying the scene. He brought the activists to sleep in Dolores Park tonight because he feels the real targets in Wiener’s proposal are the homeless.

Hey #SF! I’m at the Dolores Park sleepover protest of @Scott_Wiener ‘s park closure law. Around 50 folks here, now. pic.twitter.com/tbtU4i8BsN

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) October 29, 2013

“This would be a vote that would criminalize poverty in San Francisco,” he said to the 50 or so activists earlier, around 9pm. At that point, they were all standing. Now they’re horizontal, trying to live the night as if we were homeless ourselves in solidarity with human beings — those who eschew feather beds for the grass.

But not always by choice, like we have tonight.

The wind is blowing just enough to remind us we’re in San Francisco, but not enough to make the night like hell frozen over. Brother Juniper, a friar enamored with Jimmy Fallon and immigrant rights, gets up to ferry some people across Dolores Park to a bathroom in a house occupied by a brotherhood of Franciscan friars.

“We preach by doing,” another of the friars, Brother Paul Joseph, said earlier. The friars are in solidarity with the activists in their own way, by providing relief and warmth.

Q: “how are the Dolores Park sleep-in protesters going to pee?” A: generous friars who live across the street. pic.twitter.com/DG8qCHufS9

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) October 29, 2013

The homeless don’t have that option, and the protesters here acknowledge that. Ryan is a 20 year old from Sacramento, and he says he is privileged. This assuaged any eye rolling on my part, because isn’t it always the young ones who protest? But his earnestness was tempered with compassion. He told me he got angry, deeply angry, when he heard the park closure could lead to the homeless losing the parks as a place to lay their head.

“I’m not normally pissed,” he said.

I turned over in my sleeping bag as I thought about what he told me, and tried to think about why those here were so young. The folks I recognized as near or over 40 were the friars, who were deeply connected to the homeless. But then, there was also Gabriel Medina, an organizer with Our Mission: No Eviction, and a Mission resident.

Medina was the first person I met that night, and he and I connected as locals before we connected as reporter to interviewee. He’s a San Franciscan born and bred, like me, and went to Lowell High School. To him, caring for the homeless is a deeply San Franciscan tradition. As he noted, St. Francis was compassionate.

“We have people who are homeless outside (my work),” he told me. “From Guillermo to Alberto to Junebug. We call services to help them. Some want the help, others don’t. Some would rather sleep in our doorway. They feel hassled in the SROs. It can be dangerous there.”

He was frustrated that there were no easy answers. But what he was certain of, he said, was that criminalizing sleeping in a park was not an answer.

Suddenly the sprinklers by the playground spark to life, and half of us are up like a shot. I regrettably leave my friar friend behind as I snatch up my laptop, phone, and the sleeping bag my gracious boss lent me. We’re near the tennis courts, and the sprinklers turn on one by one and are coming towards us, like some sort of movie villain wanted to taunt us before soaking his victims.

Maybe more sprinklers would be more of a threat to the homeless than Wiener’s legislation, I think sleepily.

One of those I see running is Michael Celaya, a 26 year old who told me he’s here because so many of his LGBT community are among the homeless. A cynic would say it’s a talking point of the activists with an axe to grind, but Celaya is not one of the usual suspects. He believes the gentrification by tech is inevitable, but that means our responsibility as a city is even greater.

To him, Wiener’s proposal to close the parks signals the supervisor’s departure from representing San Franciscans.

“The city is ours, the radical fairies and the rest,” he says. Wiener isn’t radical anymore. Celaya grips the brim of his straw hat and says “we want to see ourselves represented.”

At the Dolores Park sleep-in, Michael, 26, wants @Scott_Wiener to come out here and smoke a doobie, and chill out pic.twitter.com/1dStsBaljO

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) October 29, 2013

The sprinklers scared a few of the protesters off, who went home to hopefully warmer environs. As the 22 of us left lay back down, couples curl up together, and a woman tells a story to a friend in sign language by electric lamplight. Her dog’s eyes follow her hands as they dance.

I fall asleep staring at the fog.

“Wake up, you’re on TV!” says one of the activists. Don’t hold me to knowing who it was. It was three hours later, and I’m arching my back as I wake up. A TV news van is blaring a light in our eyes, and Tom Temprano is rousing everyone. Soon it will be five, the hour that would allow the homeless back into the parks, so it’s time for us to go as well.

I walk over to Temprano and ask him to tell me something that sums up the night.

“Spending the night in Dolores only strengthened my commitment that we remain committed to prioritizing space for the homeless,” he said. “Did that sound alright? I didn’t get a wink of sleep.”

It sounded right, I said. As the crowd of activists scatter into the morning, some sleepily, others energetically, I notice that some stay behind. They’re on the tarps, eating the leftover food, huddled alone.

It was only an hour later as my first cup of coffee rouses my senses that I realize they may not have been activists. Maybe they have more to lose from Wiener’s legislation. Maybe they were taking advantage of a place to be safe.

I’m home now, heading back to bed. Do they even have a bed? I’ll never know.

You can’t tell from this iPhone photo, but the sky is gorgeous tonight. #sleepin #DoloresPark pic.twitter.com/SFcgMoIQls

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) October 29, 2013

Kevin Williams, a recent SFSU grad and the organizer of the march, said their grievance wasn’t about whether or not to punish bad behavior, but how that punishment should be carried out.

“We’re not saying there shouldn’t be repercussions for their actions,” he said. “But [students] shouldn’t miss a day of education for it.”

SFUSD has been listening, said Sandra Lee Fewer, the board of education’s vice president. As the marching students filed into the meeting, Fewer told the Guardian that SFUSD instituted its Restorative Practices program last year to put a halt to suspensions over willful defiance.

Restorative practices substitute punishments with understanding, and suspensions with group discussion.

“We’re making progress, but we need to do better,” she said, noting that suspensions for students of color are still alarmingly high. Kevin Truitt, associate superintendent of SFUSD, said that the practices would take time to implement, and part of the impasse may be a cultural one.

“People have to implement it because they want to and understand it will work, not just because they’re told to,” he said, and although he’s confident that will happen, it will also take time.

Truitt also said that the burden can’t be on the schools alone, and the students will have to modify their behavior. That challenge may also be cultural.

Many students of 100% College Prep Institute have been touched by violence in their communities, said co-founder Jackie Cohen. A school bus driver, she started the institute after she noticed a student stopped riding her bus. When she asked around, she found he fell into what she calls “that life.” So she went looking for him to help change his mind and get him back into school.

“Three days later, I found he was shot and killed,” Cohen said. And her students to this day live in that environment. Truitt said that was one of SFUSD’s biggest challenges. Many of these students are known to have post-traumatic stress disorder, he said, and a normal confrontation can easily escalate into a violent one. The links between neighborhood trauma and childhood PTSD were identified by a Bayview health center.

Truitt told the Guardian that children who have lived in fear, trauma and poverty have a harder time calming down. “It can’t just all be on the schools, we need support,” he said.

Cohen agreed that it was difficult for everyone involved. “I think they have the right intentions, I’m not going to down them for trying,” she said. But when you have such a high proportion of students of color suspended, she said, something is clearly not working.

In a document titled “Vision: College and Career Ready with 21st Century Skills,” SFUSD laid out a plan to have suspensions of African American students down to 40 percent of all suspensions by 2015, down from 46 percent.

Lofty goals indeed.

To give credit where credit is due, there are a lot of considerations when implementing restorative justice, and resistance. A state bill that would bar suspensions over willful defiance stalled last month before reaching Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. AB420, was authored by Assemblymember Roger Dickinson (D- Sacramento), and one of his aides told the Guardian that Dickinson needed more time to reach out to the education community about alternatives to suspension.

Local education activist group Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth pushed hard for the measure, and though they had a representative present and provided statistics to 100% College Prep, their group’s small presence at the march was peculiar.

Boys of color enter the Board of Education meeting carrying signs, asking for justice #sanfrancisco #vine https://t.co/fgyYgoPcGw

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) October 23, 2013

The college prep students marched into the Board of Education and made themselves heard, decrying the disproportionate number of suspensions of students of color as unjust.

Despite all the challenges facing him, Antone, the seventh grader, was optimistic.

“I’m a math kind of guy,” he said. But someday, he told the Guardian, he’ll be the new San Francisco District Attorney.

Why the DA? “I don’t know, it just seems like an interesting job,” he said, and smiled.

Boys and men of Bayview group stand against excessive suspensions at Board of Ed meeting #sanfrancisco pic.twitter.com/Cp4iU1vlJS

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) October 23, 2013

Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth has a community meeting on SFUSD suspensions planned for Oct. 29, from 5-7pm. For more information go to colemanadvocates.org.

Kids in America

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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October 23, 2013

2

emilysavage@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY “Us Kids,” the first single off French Cassettes‘ debut full-length Gold Youth (self-released), is a sunny, upbeat slice of San Francisco life. It’s unadulterated indie pop exuberance, the shiny glee of mischievous youth in a extraordinary city under a thick layer of fog.

That sheen might be due to the simple fact that the single — along with all songs on Gold Youth — includes backing tracks of actual kids (read: early 20-somethings) clapping, singing, shouting, rabble-rousing beneath the music.

The basic quartet makeup of French Cassettes is brothers Scott and Thomas Huerta on guitar-vox and bass, respectively; keyboardist-guitarist Mackenzie Bunch; and as of six months ago, drummer James Gallagher. But Gold Youth was a far broader group effort, with early roots spawned in the Central Valley.

The brothers Huerta and Bunch both grew up in sleepy Ripon, Calif., which wouldn’t seem the breeding ground for melodic indie pop compared to the likes of the Strokes and the Generationals. But when French Cassettes began in high school, they gained an early local following in a surprisingly lively Modesto music scene. Eventually, the whole group moved northwest to San Francisco. And as musicians from small towns are wont to do, many of their friends eventually joined them here as well.

It was while living mostly under the same roof — or across the street in a neighboring home — in a house joking dubbed “the Cat House” (thanks to a chunky tabby named Sprout) in the Sunset that French Cassettes spent a year writing and recording Gold Youth. (The record was also recorded partially at Tiny Telephone.)

And during that time, the musicians of French Cassettes would hole up for days perfecting songs, then invite friends over at night under false pretenses.

“We had a lot of musical friends that moved from the Central Valley. They would come and we’d trick them and be like ‘hey, come over and let’s party and drink beer,'” explains Scott, sitting in the back patio of Bottom of the Hill before a French Cassettes headlining show. “We’d get them drunk and be like, ‘you know what we should do?’ and then make our friends sing on the album. We would do it in the middle of us hanging out, so we had to put noise gates on some of the tracks because you can hear people just belligerently talking in the background.”

The record is full of these handclaps and multipart harmonies along with the punchy bass lines and tight rhythms. It’s summer year-round inside Gold Youth, and there’s no shame in the merriment.

It’s clear there’s an intimacy between the members of the band, hanging out on this back patio, giggling nervously and peppering our conversation with inside jokes and exclamations (“excited” is the word most frequently used).

“This is our first band. It’s really comfortable,” Scott says. “It always discourages me when I hear people have been in like, four bands. It just sounds sad to me, I don’t know why.” He laughs.

Scott and Thomas had an early advantage with that closeness — the brothers began playing together at ages 12 and 14, gifted a guitar and a set of drums by their guitar-playing, blues-loving dad. Their mom plays piano and their dad raised them on a diet of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, the Doors.

“I asked [our dad] why he started playing [guitar] one time and he said he wanted a hobby that he could do while watching TV,” Thomas says. Everyone laughs.

“He’s really good at that,” Scott adds. “He made a new score to Seinfeld episodes. He’d put the TV on mute and play along.”

Rather than rescore sitcoms, the brothers started playing where many aspiring rockers do: with Nirvana covers. Later, when they began French Cassettes in 2006, Scott says they tried going the experimental rock’n’roll path, “being as loud and crazy as we could” before “realizing we wanted to do something more approachable” and breaking into pop tunes.

Those pop songs first turned SF heads after the release of their first official EP, 2011’s Summer Darling. Around then the band starred in a Perez Brothers-directed video for the song “Radley,” off Summer Darling, which hit local blogs thanks to too-cute scenes of them hanging out and drinking beers on the beach with a mermaid. They followed that up a year later by participating in the first annual 48-hour Music Video Race, starring in a ’60s mod-referencing video for “Mouth Drum” by filmmaker Dalan. They also toured to SXSW, playing 12 shows in one week, and hit MusicFestNW in Portland. Last week, French Cassettes played Noise Pop’s California Academy of Sciences’ Treasure Island Nightlife event before Thao & the Get Down Stay Down.

But in August of this year, French Cassettes played their biggest headling show yet, a CD release party for Gold Youth at the Great American Music Hall. It was a big moment for them, and you can tell they’re proud, especially drummer Gallagher.

He joined the band earlier this year but has long been a fan. The trained jazz drummer had been to French Cassettes shows and fell hard for their sound; he jokingly says he pestered himself into the group when the original drummer left. At the time, Gallagher had a roommate who was also a drummer — Rob Mills from Black Cobra Vipers, another local group he’s into. In fact, the whole French Cassettes crew is enamored of Black Cobra Vipers.

“Black Cobra Vipers is my favorite band,” says Bunch. “We played a show with them probably three years ago and ever since then we’ve been like, in love with each other. We’ve had like, a band relationship.”

Starting next week, French Cassettes and Black Cobra Vipers will share the Amnesia monthly residency for the entirety of November. Every Tuesday, they’ll play tracks off Gold Youth, a few new songs, and there’ll “probably be a few tricks up their sleeves,” for they are young, and they are free (but the shows cost $7).

Tuesdays beginning Nov. 5. Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF. www.amnesiathebar.com.

OH LAND

Danish musician Nanna Øland Fabricius (otherwise known as Oh Land) is a Renaissance woman. She’s a producer, a singer-songwriter, a former student of the Royal Danish and Royal Swedish Ballet schools (before an injury nudged her toward music-making). And this is perhaps why “Renaissance Girls,” the first single from her newest full-length Wish Bone (Federal Prism/Tusk Or Tooth) works so well. Like much of Oh Land’s output, it’s musically all over the place, with beats and piano, quick-dropped lyrical phrases and twee girlish high notes. And the video both harkens back to her early dancerly ways and provides a hard/soft dichotomy with interpretative choreography performed by Fabricius herself in Hello Kitty-pink overalls set to the backdrop of a dusty, cement-filled construction site and urban alleyways. With Sun Rai.

Wed/23, 8pm, $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

Speaking of alleyways…Firstly, there are a few new things you should know about long-running “goofballs of the East Bay punk scene” Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits. The ’95-born act has two new books out through Microcosm Publishing, a comic listen-along book (Meal Deal with the Devil) and a complete discography songbook (The Bobby Joe Ebola Songbook). Both are oddball hilarity at its finest. The Bobby Joe Ebola Songbook contains song lyrics and guitar chords — play along at home! — witty how-to band/life advice, tour anecdotes, and “other bizarre detritus.” Secondly, the band is playing the annual Clarion Alley Block Party this weekend and that should be wall-to-muraled-wall fun. Support DIY punk and an important SF artist-community institution with a full day of live music. With Apogee Sound Club, CCR Headcleaner, Quite Polite, Devotionals, and more.

Sat/26, 11am-10pm, free. Clarion Alley at Mission Street, SF. Facebook: Clarion Alley Block Party.

Boo!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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October 23, 2013

0

Halloween listings below were compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings to listings@sfbg.com.

FRIDAY 25

Roller Disco Costume Party Women’s Building Auditorium, 3543 18th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. 8pm-midnight, $10. Costumes + roller skates (rentals available) + groovy tunes by Black Rock Roller Disco + a full bar, and SF IndieFest reaps the benefits? Winning!

Ruth Asawa Dia de los Muertos Altar Installation Ruth’s Table, 580 Capp, SF; www.ruthstable.org. 6:30-8:30pm, $7-15. Artist-in-residence Monica Lee hosts an altar-making workshop for both individual artists and those who’d like to contribute to the Ruth Asawa alter, to be displayed Nov. 2 at the Marigold Project’s Dia de los Muertos Festival of Altars in Garfield Park (more info: dayofthedeadsf.org/marigold-project.html).

Some Thing Spooky The Stud, 399 Ninth St, SF; www.thestudsf.com. 10pm-4am, $8. Everybody’s favorite artsy-weirdo Friday night drag party ladles a little fright into your pants with performances by a dozen gender clowns and a special so-corny-it’s-terrifying DJ set by Hoku Mama Swamp.

Trannyshack Halloween: A Party DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.trannyshack.com. 9:30pm-2am, $20. Trannyshack’s wild and kooky drag queens (led by the most unholy Heklina) join the cinematic mistress of camp gore, Peaches Christ, for this night of terror and hilarity. Performances by Raya Light, Exhibit Q, Fou Fou Ha, Elijah Minelli, many more.

SATURDAY 26

“Boo at the Zoo” Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Rd, Oakl; www.oaklandzoo.org. 10am-3pm, $11.75-15.75. Through Sun/27. Halloween, science, and zoo animals create the theme for this annual event, highlighted by a costume parade (11am and 1pm), a Wildlife Theater presentation focusing on creepy-crawly animals, face painting, a craft station to make Halloween creations for zoo-dwellers, and more.

The Devil Made Me Do It El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.devilmademe.com. 10pm-late, $5 with costume, $10 without. A devilishly sexy holiday’s in store when burlesque favorites Red Hots Burlesque with old-time soul DJs Brown Amy and Jackie Sugarlumps (and drag hostess Lil Miss Hot Mess) for a horn-sporting good time.

“Halloween International Ball” Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason, SF; halloweenpartysanfrancisco-full.eventbrite.com. 9pm, $65-75. Three separate dance floors and seven DJs spin a variety of music styles, plus a live salsa band and more.

Juanita More! Halloween Runway Massacre Jones, 620 Jones, SF; www.juanitamore.com. 9pm-2am, $25. Fierce drag mother of the nightlife scene Juanita More injects some glamour and fashion into the usual Halloween party proceedings. Get your looks together for a $3000 cash prize costume contest, a red carpet rollout, disco tunes from Robert Jeffrey and the Go Bang! DJs, a fabulous crowd, and special scary-lovely surprises.

“Monster Movie Salon presents Creature Comforts and Sublime Mysteries” Community Miracles Center, 2269 Market, SF; www.monstermoviesalon.com. 1-7pm, $75. Screenwriter and psychotherapist Doug Ronning leads this multi-dimensional workshop, featuring lectures illustrated by classic horror film clips, dynamic writing exercises, and more.

“Scary Halloween Storytelling” Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; www.bazaarcafe.com. 7pm, free. Peter Finch hosts this spooky night of tales; bring a 5-10 minute story, song, or performance piece to share.

“Spiral Dance Ritual” Kezar Pavilion, 755 Stanyan, SF; www.reclaimingspiraldance.org. 7:30pm, $29-150. Pagans and witches unite to welcome the new year at this 34th annual “ritual to honor our beloved dead and dance the spiral of rebirth.”

Michael Jackson “Thriller” Dance-Off and Costume Contest Studio One Art Center, 365 45th St, Oakl; www.thrilltheworldbayarea.com. 1-2:20pm (workshop to learn the dance, 11am), free but $5 donation requested (registration required). Prepare thyself for the funk of 40,000 years, because a “Thriller” flash mob is the best kind of flash mob, full stop.

SUNDAY 27

“Days of the Dead Community Celebration” Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, Oakl; www.museumca.org. Noon-4pm, $6-15. This 19th annual event features craft activities, food, live dance and music, and a chance to view “The Tree of Life and Death: Dias de los Muertos 2013,” guest curated by muralist Eduardo Pineda and on view in the Gallery of California Natural Sciences.

“Let’s Talk: Satan, Serial Killers, and the Murder of a Child Star” Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; Facebook: The Vortex Room. 9pm, $6.66. “Murderabilia expert,” artist, and cultural anthropologist Shane Bugbee holds forth on serial killers and other macabre subjects, including Satanism and the death of Dana Plato.

Spooktacular Halloween Party, Parade, and Trick or Treat in Japantown Japantown Peace Plaza, Post at Buchanan, SF; www.sfjapantown.org. Noon-4pm, free. Japantown beckons Halloween revelers with spooky crafts, haunted games, trick-or-treating at local businesses, a costume contest (2:30pm), and more.

TUESDAY 29

Dia de los Muertos in the Gourmet Ghetto Shattuck between Rose and Vine, Berk; www.anotherbullwinkelshow.com. 5-9pm, free. Foodies and friends are welcomed to this street fair, with a community altar, a wine and beer garden, free skeleton face painting, and more.

“Macabre Curios” ASI and CCSC Art Gallery, Cesar Chavez Student Center, SF State University, 1650 Holloway, SF; sfsustudentcenter.com/artgallery. Reception tonight, 5-8pm, free. Exhibit runs through Nov 8. Eleven SFSU artists, alum, and curio collectors participate in this All Hallows’ Eve-themed, found-object installation project. Opening night features live music, a scary-stories open mic, and creepy paper-doll projects; throughout the exhibit’s run, visit for daily horror-movie projections, “sacrifices” of candy, and “oddly-behaving” gallery staff.

WEDNESDAY 30

Eerie SF Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 7pm-1am, $5-15. Here’s a concept: a tour through a haunted graveyard of tech start-ups. Ghougle! YouTomb! Mummington post! OKLucifer! Mark Zombieberg! Artists, performers, dancers, porn actors, musicians and more come together with organizers Maxine Holloway and Val Killmore to bring to life all the horrors of the tech boom.

Housepitality Halloween F8, 1192 Folsom, SF. www.housepitalitysf.com. 9pm-2am, $10. One of the city’s best weekly dance parties (“Best Midweek Throwdown” 2013 Best of the Bay Winner) brings in Detroit-Windsor, Canada techno legend Daniel Bell for a deep, dark night of sounds that go boom in the night.

THURSDAY 31

Afrolicious Super Fly Halloween Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF; www.elbo.com. 9:30pm-2am, $10-15. Get retro-spooky with the Latin funk and super-groovy sounds of the Afrolicious party crew. Style out in ’70s-inspired costumes and get down: the live Afrolicious house band will be covering legendary Blaxploitation masterwork soundtrack Super Fly by Curtis Mayfield in its entirety. Far out!

All Hallows’ Eve DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. 9pm, $13 advance. The annual party at the DNA Lounge is a showcase of its party talent, with DJs from club nights Bootie, Meat, Death Guild, New Wave City, Fringe, 120 Minutes, and more spinning goth and New Wave dance favorites and mashups. Plus an airborne performance by the high-flying Vau de Vire Society.

Back2Back Halloween Project One, 251 Rhode Island, SF; www.p1sf.com. 8pm-2am, $10. Beloved Wicked crew DJs Jeno and Garth celebrate nine years of their Back2Back party with some psychedelic house gems.

Black Mammoth Mighty. 119 Utah, SF; www.mighty119.com. 9pm-3am, $13-15. Buoyant Burning Man juggernaut Pink Mammoth gets dark for another one of its enormous blowouts, with DJs Galen, Kramer, Miguel Solari, Tyrel Williams, Gravity, and more.

“Creatures of the NightLife” California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.calacademy.org. 6-10pm, $12. NightLife teams up with the Bay Area Science Festival for this spooky night hosted by Peaches Christ. Highlights include tips on how to survive a zombie attack, the latest on bioengineering (for any aspiring Dr. Frankensteins out there), monster make-up application, and more.

“Hacienda Halloween” Peralta House Museum of History and Community, 2465 34th Ave, Oakl; www.peraltahacienda.org. 5-7pm, free. Visit the Peralta Hacienda Historical House for a unique Halloween party, with stories of California’s early years, autumn vegetables, and maybe even an East Bay spirit or two.

Halloween at the Chapel The Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm-2am, $15. Bobb Saggeth, the female-fronted Black Sabbath tribute band, headlines this black mass with Haight Breeders (covering Misfits songs, natch).

Honey Soundsystem + No Way Back Halloween F8, 1192 Folsom, SF; www.eventbrite.com. 9pm-4am, $15. Two of SF’s sharpest DJ collectives combine forces to bring in the dark-edged house of NYC DJ Willie Burns and Split Secs. Should draw a great mixed crowd ready to dance.

House of Babes Halloween Holy Cow, 1535 Folsom, SF; www.thehouseofbabes.com. 9pm-2am, $10-$13. A young, fun shindig featuring a queer rainbow of hip-hop flavors from DJs Rapidfire, Pink Lightning, Dav-O, Boyfriend, and Jenna Riot, plus drag performances Amo A Nia, Rheal’Tea, and Vain Hein. Proceeds go to St. James Infirmary.

Lights Down Low Halloween Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF; www.mezzaninesf.com. 9pm-late, $30. Two amazing house headliners: The Magician, from France, who truly has a magic touch, and Germany’s Tensnake, genius of disco-tinged tunes. Should be bonkers stuff from the ever-reliable Lights Down Low party crew.

Minus Monster Mash Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 9pm-3am, $18. A spooky showcase of classic techno label M-nus, now based in Berlin, with gaiser and matador performing live and DJ Hobo warming up.

Monarch Monster Mash Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF; www.monarchsf.com. 9pm-3am, $20. The Green Gorilla party DJs celebrate 18 years of Gorillaness with awesome house DJ Heidi from the UK.

The Monster Show The Edge, 4149 18th St, SF; qbarsf.com/EDGE. 9pm-2am, $5. Loveable drag queen Cookie Dough’s weekly drag show takes a killer turn, with blood-soaked performances by Mutha Chicka, Sugah Betes, Sue Casa, and more. Music by MC2. Will Cookie do her infamous Carrie number?

Nerd-O-Ween Churchill, 198 Church, SF; www.eventbrite.com. 8pm-2am, $20. It’s a nerd party, duh! Dress up as your favorite Poindexter and join the Motown on Mondays and San Franpsycho crews for some soulful hits and coke-bottle glasses.

SFJazz Halloween SFJazz, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $35-55. Join jazz wiz Maceo Parker and his band for an upbeat concert, followed by a dance party with DJ Dancy Pants and a costume contest presented by drag dears Lil Miss Hot Mess and VivvyAnne ForeverMore.

Total Trash Halloween Bash Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl; www.totaltrashfest.com. 9pm, $5-10. NoBunny as Bo Diddley! Shannon and the Clams as The Saicos! Monster Women as the Go-Gos! Yogurt Brain as Weezer! The fantastic annual four-day garage-rock Total Trash Fest kicks off this year with a great concept: rockers as other rockers.

Tubesteak Connection Halloween Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.auntcharlieslounge.com. 10pm-2am, $7. DJ Bus Station John’s great gay weekly party pays tribute to the bathhouse disco parties of the past. And the naughty spirits of those days will rise again on Halloween, with a $100 midnight costume contest hosted by the gorgeous Miss Donna Persona and a full dance floor of horribly cute boys.

FRIDAY 1

“Resurrect Sex Workers Fundraiser Day of the Dead Celebration” Fireside, 1453 Webster, Alameda; www.esplerp.org. 9pm, $15 single, $25 couple. All proceeds from this burlesque show benefit the Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project’s legal battles.

Halloween events

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

-

October 23, 2013

0

Halloween listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings to listings@sfbg.com.

FRIDAY 25

Halloween Bash Professional Wrestling-Lucha Libre Fundraiser Buchser Middle School, 1111 Bellomy, Santa Clara; halloweenwrestlingbash.eventbrite.com. 7:30pm, $10-20. Support the Santa Clara Schools Foundation and enjoy some rockin’ wrestling with Wrestling for Charity’s array of characters, including “Vampire Warrior” Gangrel, Joey Ryan, Drake Younger, the Mexican Werewolf, and more. This is a family-friendly event and includes a Halloween costume contest.