Live

Kiwis score points as Oracle regroups

Michael Redmond
-
0
Kiwis score points as Oracle regroups

After a week of one-boat “races,” an argument over rules, and an angry sponsor making waves in international media, it would be easy to write off the America’s Cup as the lamest party in town (so lame, in fact, that the organizers have ceased broadcasting the one-boat shows on YouTube).

But, it was a week of wins for Emirates Team New Zealand, most obviously the solid drubbing they delivered to Luna Rossa on Saturday (7/13) during the first race at which two boats actually showed. A smart “hook” by ETNZ blocked Luna Rossa from the start line and gave the Kiwis a five second advantage that stretched to over five minutes during the seven legs of the race. Unfortunately, that was the peak of the action as the gap between the boats grew so great and Luna Rossa officially earned a “did not finish” result for exceeding the five minutes allowed to cross the finish line after ETNZ. Overall, the match was almost as boring to watch as the single-boat snoozefests of earlier in the week, however it did show off the capabilities of the Kiwi crew, who are clearly mastering foiling while jibing, a key move for maintaining high speeds downwind. Which brings us to the other big win for the New Zealanders this week. On Thursday, the international jury ruled in favor of ETNZ and Luna Rossa, who protested a new rule requiring larger, symmetrical rudder elevators as a matter of safety. The jury decided that allowing the larger rudder elevators — which Oracle have been using on their boat since they relaunched in April after a pitch-pole in October destroyed their wing sail — would violate the AC72 Class Rule that governs the design specifications of the boats.

They said regatta director Iain Murray couldn’t change this rule without buy-in from all the competitors and that voluntary compliance of the other safety rules would appease the Coast Guard, which permitted the event based on the additional safety measures made after Andrew Simpson died. The rudder elevators help stabilize the lightweight boats while foiling, or lifting off the surface of the water to hit speeds of over 40 knots — ETNZ saw 42.3 on the speedometer on Saturday while Luna Rossa maxed out at 39.9 knots. The crew that masters this move and can maintain it over the course of a race will likely come out ahead. ETNZ is doing it now and will likely get better and better at it over the coming weeks as they continue to race the course through the multiple round robins of the Louis Vuitton Cup.

Meanwhile, Oracle will have to return to the drawing board and Ellison’s crew will need to get out on the water and re-learn how to handle their boat with a new rudder that complies with the Class Rule. Oracle has been tight-lipped on the subject, with just a brief statement from general manager Grant Simmer on the jury’s decision. “We continue to support the Regatta Director and we believe all teams have benefited from his review. We don’t have an issue complying with the Class Rule, and we will be ready to race under the rules affirmed by the Jury.” However, they may have an issue playing catch-up to the Kiwis, who have a lot on the line. If they aren’t able to wrest the Auld Mug from Larry Ellison’s hands, it’s likely the New Zealand government won’t chip in for a future campaign — especially if high-tech, billion-dollar boats remain the name of the game. The Kiwis have already chalked up four points and will need to win just one more of the next three bouts with Italy to advance to the Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals, during which the Swedish team, Artemis, should be back on the water. Spectators won’t see Oracle on the course until September 7, when the America’s Cup final matches commence, however there should be plenty of opportunities to observe their practice sessions with a newly rule-compliant boat. To that end, it’s worth noting that situating the race close to land for the first time in the Cup’s history, and with a short course completed in multiple laps, was supposed to draw crowds to the shoreline and the television screen. Now that I’ve seen the boats live and on television, I have to admit that so far it’s still a pretty boring sport to watch. Standing near the start line at Marina Green or the finish line at Piers 27/29 may get you flashes of action and watching it on television is like watching a video game.

The best of both worlds is to park as near as possible to the water and get your hands on a portable marine VHF radio tuned to channel 20, which transmits the official America’s Cup broadcast. Then you can hear details on speed and tactics while actually seeing the most unforgettable part of this race — the boats jibing downwind, hitting freeway speeds while foiling with spray flying and crewmembers bouncing from one hull to the other.

That’s still drawing gasps and cheers from the crowd.

Burning Bacon

Michael Redmond
-
7
Burning Bacon

news@sfbg.com

Bacon has its own buzz these days, infused with an almost cult-like enthusiasm that’s hard to explain. But the uptick in business that my employer, the Bacon Bacon Food Truck, has recently experienced can hardly be explained by the pork product’s faddish popularity.

Bacon Bacon is in demand more than ever, and it’s all because a small group of neighbors who raised a stink inadvertently set off a national media craze, thereby inspiring bacon-loving supporters to come out in droves and place their orders.

When Jim Angelus opened a neighborhood breakfast sandwich shop five blocks from where he lives with his wife and daughters in the Haight, he never imagined he’d set off a media feeding frenzy about bacon. But that’s what happened.

Jim is my boss. I am a news intern at the Bay Guardian and a recent hire at the Bacon Bacon Food Truck as a line cook. Our menu is crammed full of items like bacon-wrapped fried chicken, a bacon-filled parody of the It’s-It ice cream sandwich called the “That’s-That,” and in quintessential San Francisco fashion, a BLT with goat cheese called “THE L.G.B.T.”

We’re open at Brick and Mortar, on Mission and Duboce streets in San Francisco, for lunch service. We recently reclaimed our original Frederick Street location, pending installation of a costly ventilation system replacement to be OK’d by the Planning Commission as a result of a dustup stemming from neighborhood complaints.

Just a typical San Francisco small business, right?

But ever since a group of neighbors in proximity to our location in the Haight filed complaints with the San Francisco Planning Department about the smell of bacon, sparking a media firestorm, things have gotten a bit surreal.

A Wall Street Journal reporter recently interviewed us for what would become a front-page article. Bacon Bacon even made Saturday Night Live in May, with Amy Poehler informing the nation that a “San Francisco bacon restaurant” was closed for its bacon smell.

Bloggers blogged, tweeters tweeted, and Bacon Bacon was thrown into the spotlight when ABC’s Good Morning America aired a segment titled, “big bacon battle sizzling.”

That media spectacle started to smell like business. Random San Franciscans, many of whom had only heard of us through recent headlines, began to walk up to the truck, stop by the new location and espouse gestures of solidarity to a crew of cooks bewildered by their sudden celebrity status. Many of these supporters had never even eaten the food.

It all started with a series of short San Francisco Examiner articles by Andrea Koskey, with catchy headlines like “Bacon Bacon Aroma Set To End,” which went viral in May. “One of the things I’ve taken away from all of this,” says Angelus, “is how few people called me [as the story was going viral] and asked questions.”

Maybe because it was about bacon, the media attention was largely sensational. “The Haight-Ashbury district was all about peace and love until bacon entered the picture,” Vauhini Vara’s Wall St. Journal story began on July 11, the day Bacon Bacon’s Planning Commission hearing was scheduled. When I asked Vauhini why she was doing the piece, said she just wanted to do more “fun” articles.

“Plus,” she added, as if to explain everything, “it’s bacon!”

 

THE SIZZLE

Angelus started the Bacon Bacon food truck two years ago, moving away from the late nights and weekends of the restaurant business to do a lunch-only truck so he could have more time with his family.

But, as he said the day before the hearing as a recently hired personal assistant scrolled through journalists’ emails, “a lot of this has been a huge distraction in running a business.”

The Wong Family, which owns Ashbury Market, offered Jim a lease on the deli portion of their building to operate as a commissary for the Bacon Bacon Food Truck (which then had four employees, Angelus included), and they started making bacon. The Planning Department stipulated that Angelus needed a “limited use restaurant” permit to operate. That’s when the trouble started.

Shortly after Angelus opened his doors in January of 2012, a handful of neighbors complained about the smell of bacon and the influx of bacon lovers to the new restaurant in their residential neighborhood. Contrary to SNL-fueled legend, none of the neighbors “complained to the cops that [they] smelled bacon.” Instead, they filed a discretionary review application, a process in which anyone can urge the Planning Department to take action if it’s found that the case demonstrates an exceptional and extraordinary circumstance. The Health Department allowed the restaurant to operate in the interim, as long as issues with the Planning Department were ultimately resolved.

But when the issue still wasn’t resolved more than a year later, the Health Department imposed a 75-day deadline by which the planning permits must be secured. Once that deadline passed in May, Bacon Bacon was shut down. This prompted the media frenzy, which continued through July 11 — when the Planning Commission unanimously ruled that it could reopen as long as an air filtration system was installed.

Four major-network television crews filmed the three-hour hearing, periodically running out of the hearing room to grab more videotape. Phylis Johnson-Silk lives around the corner from Bacon Bacon, on Downey St. “If they put in a nail salon,” she said during the commission meeting, “[these neighbors] would complain about that. Put in a bakery, then it’d be the smell of yeast!”

“I know [the neighbors] call FedEx when the truck is double parked for deliveries on their block,” said Mike Shell, who showed up to defend Bacon Bacon independently of the company in a pork-pink tie.

In an email to members of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, HAIA president Ted Lowenberg urged opponents to attend the Planning Commission hearing. “We have to get as many voices as possible to attend to say the Commission must take discretionary review,” he wrote. “The owner has committed a number of cardinal sins vis-a-vis the normal process of getting a business started, and to simply let this slide through creates havoc with the planning code and process. It would like legalizing Al Capone’s liquor sales because he’s been doing it for a while, whilst getting away with murder. Now is the time to scream, ‘STOP THIS!!!'”

Neighbor David Nevins described for the commission the physical “clouds” of bacon smell that wafted down the block, “almost toxic smelling.”

His wife, Inge, visibly teared up after her turn to speak. “This should not be a popularity contest,” she said. “This should be about proper placement of a restaurant … There are people on our sidewalks eating this stuff!”

In Bacon Bacon opponent David Nevins’ plea to the Planning Commission, he cited the Wall Street Journal’s interview with the head of Iowa State University’s Sensory Evaluation Unit as evidence that the bacon smell was a nuisance, while complaining the media overexposure had turned the proceedings into a “joke.”

“I have no problem with what the health department did,” Angelus said. “They waited a year and a half for us to sort all this out and it wasn’t working. The Planning Department was really banking on us resolving the issue with the neighbors.”

“This is a residential neighborhood, not a commercial neighborhood,” David Nevins said, “The commercial activity that’s existed is ‘limited commercial use,’ which means that it respects the integrity of the neighborhood that it’s in.”

If it weren’t for the Bacon Bacon buzzwords involved, it’s likely that none of us would have heard about any of this. The neighbors, who spent a lot of money obtaining top-level legal representation and footing the bill for all sorts of tests to check the credibility of Bacon Bacon’s operations, might have gained more traction if it weren’t for the public scrutiny.

But at the same time, it’s a prime example of the kind of story which gains national media attention simply because the topic is trendy.

Instead of reading about world affairs in the morning papers this week, many Americans will be reading about their breakfasts.

Our Weekly Picks: July 17 – 23, 2013

Michael Redmond
-
0

WEDNESDAY 7/17

 

Nerd Nite SF

Did you ever watch Bill Nye (the Science Guy) as a child and think “man, I want to get that guy drunk and watch him drop knowledge live from a stage”? Me neither, but reread that sentence and tell me with a straight face that’s not something for which you would pay $8. Friends, that’s the gist of Nerd Nite, an institution in Boston, New York, Austin, Washington DC, Munich, and as of 2010, San Francisco. The Bay Area, especially as of late, is known for two things: rampant drunkenness and scientific innovations. The synthesis of these two in one monthly event represents where SF is at right now as a community. Past Nerd Nite SF events have included themes like “Paper Airplanes, Zombies and Space Hacking!” where the 2012 Guinness Record holder for paper plane flight distance came to teach plane-making and discuss the previous record holder’s attempts at sabotage. This month’s theme is “Yeast, Science Beer Tasting, and Games User Research!” which promises to teach about fermentation’s 5,000 year influence on the world and why it’s not your fault that you’ve killed all the bad guys on Level 7 and there’s no clear direction where to head next. (Ilan Moskowitz)

7:30pm, $8

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell Street, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

THURSDAY 7/18

 

Bandaloop: Harboring

There is a lot more to Bandaloop than daredevilry on mountain cliffs and skyscrapers. Over the years, Amelia Rudolph has developed a vocabulary in which climbing and rappelling become tools for poetic purposes, creating a genre appropriately called “vertical dance.” Watching the company in that delicate moment when it transitions from the floor to where ever it is rising up to, often offers thrills almost equal to hanging 30 feet above where mortals tread. Harboring is both an exploration and a tribute to the physicality of Fort Mason’s Pavilion as well as its history and the memory it keeps generating. Master Designer Jack Carpenter will provide the art direction; the trio of Gideon Freudmann, Mark Orton and Jesse Olsen Bay the music. (Rita Felciano) Thu/18-Sun/21, 8:30pm (also Sat/20, 2pm), $20–$35

Fort Mason Center Pavilion

Two Marina, SF

(415) 421-5667

fortmason.org/boxoffice

FRIDAY 7/19

 

Bay Area Playwrights Festival

From over 400 submissions, six were chosen — so you know the getting’s gonna be good at the 2013 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. In its 36th year, the Playwrights Foundation presentation contains works by authors from both the Bay Area and New York. Frequent theatergoers may recognize the names of the locals: Erin Bregman, who contributes metaphysical drama Before & After; Prince Gomolvilas, whose The Brothers Paranormal is about a pair of Thai American siblings who launch a ghostbusting business; and longtime SF Mime Trouper Joan Holden, whose FSM takes on UC Berkeley’s student protests. Other programs include Laura Schellhardt’s The Comparables; Kimber Lee’s brownsville song (b-side for tray); and Jiehae Park’s Hannah and the Dread Gazebo. (Cheryl Eddy)

July 19-21 and 26-28, $15

Thick House Theater

1695 18th St, SF

www.playwrightsfoundation.org

FRIDAY 7/19

 

“Sights and Sounds of Mexico”

There’s likely nary a genre as energetic as Son Jarocha, a regional jazz and pop fusion that originated in Veracruz, Mexico. This Friday Nights at the de Young event includes a performance by Son Jarocha music-makers Ilan Bar-Lavi and Sonex. Together, Bar-Lavi — an accomplished Mexican-Israeli guitarist — and Mexican band Sonex blend jazz, pop, and funk with Middle Eastern influences and flamenco, a rather broad reach of cultural sounds. The event also includes a lecture on poet Rose Mandel, and painter’s studio activities in celebration of painter Richard Diebenkorn’s “passion for light, color, and shapes.” That means there’ll be a colorful pop-up show of local painters of Mexican descent, and tips on the Maugard method, named after Adolfo Best-Maugard’s idea to teach children to draw and paint focused on simple forms in nature. (Emily Savage)

5-8:45pm, free

deYoung

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, SF

Deyoung.famsf.org

FRIDAY 7/19

 

Blind Willies

Alexei Wajchman is one worldly fellow, and this translates in his live performances. His vocals are tame and collected at times, but his lyrics can range all over the map. As a whole, the group’s sound is more than straightforward rock’n’roll. The introduction of horns on some tracks gives a surprisingly fitting kick, and there’s also some stand-up bass, cello, and mandolin filling out the guitar-heavy sound. You might have trouble pinpointing the exact style you’re listening to, but Wajchman makes it extremely easy not to care. Live, the show should be an enjoyable experience if you value the unpredictability of the open road. (Hillary Smith)

With Supermule and James Nash and The Nomads

9pm, $13

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

FRIDAY 7/19

 

“A Celebration of Fela Kuti” featuring Tony Allen

If Afrobeat is a sound born out of the African Diaspora — Afropop highlife combined with funky jazz rhythms and James Brown soul — it’s fitting that the legend of its Godfather, Fela Kuti, is still spreading. More than 15 years since his death, Kuti’s figure and influence looms larger than ever with the recent success of the Fela! musical. Here, the legacy lives on with a live performance from Tony Allen with Najite and the Olukon Prophecy, a massive 16-piece ensemble featuring Kuti-collaborator Allen. The source of Afrobeat’s beat, and “perhaps the greatest drummer who ever lived” according to Brian Eno, Allen has recently worked with Damon Albarn, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Sébastien Tellier. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Rich Medina, Lagos Roots Society, Afrolicious, Damon Bell, King Most, Izzy Wize

10pm-3am, $10–$20

1015 Folsom, SF

www.1015.com

SATURDAY 7/20

 

Lia Rose

Lia Rose is one of those performers who you won’t fully appreciate until you see live. And when you do, you’ll most likely become transfixed upon the tiny singer with hauntingly rich vocals. Rose’s pure vocals lingering alongside acoustic guitar and steel pedal make for a dreamy setting. One that is very easy to get lost in. By far the most compelling aspect of her sound is how she translates the moods of her songs in every note — her tunes are often laden with themes of true love, loyalty, and nostalgia. Note her troop of band members on the steel pedal guitar, percussion, and acoustic guitar, whose craft carries the songs to new heights. Rose is a beautiful, delicate balance of acoustics and angelic vocals. And she is beyond engaging on stage. (Smith)

With We Became Owls, Annie Lynch, and Michaela Anne

9pm, $15

Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com

SUNDAY 7/21

 

David Byrne and St. Vincent

This is a match made in weird pop heaven (how great would it be if that actually existed?). When David Byrne, the experimental rock king with a four-decade reign, slipped into the audience at one of Annie Clark’s early shows as St. Vincent, he fell under her spell. In their subsequent meetings, the boundary-testing artists came up with the idea to write together for a brass band. Why not? What emerged in Love This Giant (2012) is a seamless collaboration that is sometimes dark, sometimes humorousness, and of course, always delightfully bizarre. Though weird pop heaven is only a fantasy, it will feel very real Sunday night at the Fox. (Laura Kerry)

8pm, $45–$55

Fox Theatre

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 302-2250

www.thefoxoakland.com

SUNDAY 7/21

 

Shady Maples

Self-described as Latin folk rock, the Bay Area group Shady Maples straddles the lines between rock, folk, and all the ground in between, in the cleanest possible way. The vocals are haunting, the slide guitar creates an almost human voice, and the songs themselves become a smooth concoction of harmonies, mandolin, electric guitars, and percussion. The balance of acoustic, lap steel, and electric guitars in the hands of Shady Maples band members makes for a great live show. Often transitioning from a soft, melodic Latin number to an explosive rock tune, frontperson Owen Roberts takes the audience for a scenic ride on stage. (Smith)

With Roadkill Ghost Choir, Anjus Pale Blue Eyes

9pm, $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

MONDAY 7/22

 

Colleen Green

Stoney LA rocker Colleen Green has the basics down: “sparse electric guitar, a tinny drum machine, and Green’s gorgeous voice,” as her official bio reads. The DIY rocker also has a clear reverence for lo-fi sounds and early punk music, and has recorded some great covers of Descendents songs, but slowed down to a California chill ride. Check paradoxically pleasant “Heavy Shit” off March’s Sock It To Me (Hardly Art), for a good starter course in the study of all things Green. Then go back and listen to 2011’s Cujo — it’s even got a crudely markered cartoon on the cover of Green, in the vein of the Descendents’ Milo (as does Green’s cassette Milo Goes to Compton) — to hear how her sound has evolved. (Savage)

With SISU, Burnt Palms

8pm, $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

TUESDAY 7/23

 

Black Flag

Legendary punk band Black Flag blazed the path for underground American music in the 1970s and ’80s with its rigorous work ethic, groundbreaking recordings, and relentless touring that built a network and foundation for independent artists that still exists today. Recently resurrected by Greg Ginn, the founder-guitarist-primary songwriter and sole continuous member, the new lineup also features Ron Reyes, who sang on the Jealous Again EP, and isn’t to be confused with that other group of former members out on the road these days calling themselves “Flag.” You’ve seen the iconic “bars” logo everywhere out there — now see and hear what it stands for live and in person. (Sean McCourt)

7pm, $25–$28

Oakland Metro

630 3rd St., Oakland

(510) 763-1146

www.oaklandmetro.org

 

Rep Clock: July 17 – 23, 2013

Michael Redmond
-
0

Schedules are for Wed/17-Tue/23 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-9. “Periwinkle Cinema: Reality Check,” short films, Wed, 8. The Space Invaders: In Search of Lost Time (Von Ward, 2012), Fri, 8. “An Evening with Sublime Frequencies and filmmaker Hisham Mayet,” Sat, 8.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •Mystery Train (Jarmusch, 1989), Wed, 7, and Night on Earth (Jarmusch, 1991), Wed, 9:05. San Francisco Silent Film Festival: Prix de Beauté (Genina, 1930), Thu, 7; “Amazing Tales from the Archives,” Fri, 11am (free screening); The First Born (Mander, 1928), Fri, 2; Tokyo Chorus (Ozu, 1931), Fri, 4:30; The Patsy (Vidor, 1928), Fri, 7; The Golden Clown (Sandberg, 1926), Fri, 9:30; “Winsor McCay: His Life and Art,” presentation by John Canemaker, Sat, 10am; The Half-Breed (Dwan, 1916), Sat, noon; Legong: Dance of the Virgins (de la Falaise, 1935), Sat, 2:15; Gribiche (Feyder, 1926), Sat, 4; The House on Trubnaya Square (Barnet, 1928), Sat, 6:30; The Joyless Street (Pabst, 1925), Sat, 8:30; “The Kings of (Silent) Comedy,” Sun, 10am; The Outlaw and His Wife (Sjöström, 1918), Sun, 1; The Last Edition (Johnson, 1925), Sun, 3:30; The Weavers (Zelnik, 1927), Sun, 6; Safety Last! (Taylor and Newmeyer, 1923), Sun, 8:30. Tickets (most shows $15) and more info, including accompanists for each program, at www.silentfilm.org. The Great Gatsby (Luhrmann, 2013), Mon-Tue, 6, 9 (also Tue, noon, 3).

CHILDREN’S CREATIVITY MUSEUM 221 Fourth St, SF; www.artsanddialogue.org. Free (space is limited, so RSVP to info@ybcbd.org). “Arts and Dialogue presents the Yerba Buena Mini-Film Festival,” Thu, 6.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. Augustine (Winocour, 2012), call for dates and times. Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012), call for dates and times. One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das (Frindel, 2012), call for dates and times. Rebels With a Cause (Kelly, 2012), call for dates and times. Storm Surfers 3D (McMillan and Nelius, 2012), call for dates and times. 20 Feet From Stardom (Neville, 2013), call for dates and times. The Hunt (Vinterberg, 2012), July 19-25, call for times. The Oyster Princess (Lubitsch, 1919) with “Cops” (Cline and Keaton, 1922), Mon, 7:15. With live musical accompaniment; this event, $12.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $10. “Midnight Movies:” V/H/S 2 (Various directors, 2013), Fri-Sat, midnight.

“FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK” This week: Creek Park, 400 Sir Francis Drake, San Anselmo; www.filmnight.org. Free (donations appreciated). The School of Rock (Linklater, 2003), Fri, 8; Brave (Andrews and Chapman, 2012), Sat, 8.

518 VALENCIA SF; www.laborfest.net. Donations accepted . International Working Class Film and Video Festival: •Strike (Eisenstein, 1925), and Even the Heavens Weep: The Mine Wars of West Virginia (McGuire, 1985), Thu, 7.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (Gaylor, 2008), Wed, 7:30.

NIMBY’S 8410 Amelia, Oakl; www.brainwashm.com. $10. Brainwash Drive-In/Bike-In/Walk-In Festival, Fri-Sat through July 27, 9 (music at 8). All shows broadcast in FM stereo.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Dark Nights: Simenon and Cinema:” The Man on the Eiffel Tower (Meredith, 1949), Wed, 7; La Marie du port (Carné, 1950), Fri, 7; The Brothers Rico (Karlson, 1957), Sat, 8:30. “A Call to Action: The Films of Raoul Walsh:” Objective Burma (1945), Thu, 7. “From the Archive: Treasures of Eastern European and Soviet Cinema:” And Give My Love to the Swallows (Jires, 1971), Fri, 8:45; The Maple and Juliana (Uher, 1972), Sat, 6:30. “Castles in the Sky: Masterful Anime from Studio Ghibli:” Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001), Sun, 4:30.

REDSTONE BUILDING 2940 16th St, SF; www.laborfest.net. Donations accepted. International Working Class Film and Video Festival: •Living As Brothers (Fraser, 2012), with “Newspeak” (Fero, 2011) and Mothers of Fukushima (Torii, 2013), Fri, 7.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. How to Make Money Selling Drugs (Cooke, 2013), Wed-Thu, 7, 9. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Nance, 2012), Fri-Sun, 9:15; July 22-25, 7. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (DiNicola and Mori, 2012), Fri-Sun, 6:45; July 22-25, 9. “Pictoclik Film Festival,” local film festival competition, Fri-Sat, 9. This event, $30-50.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. Band of Sisters (Fishman, 2012), Thu-Sun, 6, 8 (also Fri, 4; Sat-Sun, 2, 4). *

 

Psychic Dream

Michael Redmond
-
0

 July 17-23, 2013

Mercury goes direct on the 20th. Rejoice my friends!

ARIES

March 21-April 19

No matter how badly you want to rush things along, you’ve gotta let them develop at their own pace this week, Aries. Share your successes with others and leave space for them to do the same. This is the right time to collaborate, but it’s not clear yet how or with whom. Let things develop.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

The only way for your life to improve is for you to be willing to shift your participation in it. Be nice to yourself, Taurus! Instead of running worst case scenarios through your noggin, try dabbling in the fine art of positive affirmations. Strive to be happy, even if that requires you to change this week.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Your sign has a nasty habit of flying too close to the sun, Gemini. When a thing is awesome do you let it be great, or do you pick at it and push it? This is the week you should not let your self over think things. Trust in the flow of your life, and support it by reinforcing the good stuff whenever you can.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

In order for you to be healthy, your feelings cannot be controlled; they must be experienced and expressed. You may not be able to express or even identify what you’re feeling this week, but you can take care of yourself and the people around you until you do. Buy some time till you have greater clarity, Cancer.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

If being diplomatic requires you leave out important details you’re not telling the whole truth, and that can have unhappy consequences for you this week. It’s not the time to judge for others what they can or cannot handle. Be forthright so that everyone knows where you stand, and see what emerges from there.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Things change, buddy. Don’t take it personally when people or situations shift this week; it’s not personal, it’s just the way of the world. Look within to identify your limits and needs so that you can make use of new opportunities as they emerge and avoid unnecessary pitfalls this week.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

It’s virtually impossible to communicate your needs to others when you don’t know what you’re feeling. This week you should spend your time looking back at your past and what it has to teach you. There is no rush to figuring things out, but the more insight you have, the sooner you’ll be able to share it with others.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

Don’t torture yourself obsessing on things that are outside of your control. You can only do what you can do, Scorpio. This week you need to let things unveil themselves to you, even if they are moving at a maddeningly slow pace. In your efforts to have an awesome life you need to make some hard choices, pal.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Sometimes things need to break in order for them to heal. You may be feeling overwhelmed by risk, loss, or pain, but don’t despair, Sag. Don’t draw conclusions based on what you see now, as you’re unlikely to be seeing things clearly. Participate as best you can and let matters develop this week.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

When life knocks you down try to come out swinging. Be willing to work hard to get where you want to be, Capricorn, because the more you put out there, the more you’ll get back. Just make sure that you’re realistic about how much you can do in the long haul and don’t over commit yourself this week.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

Be true to yourself so you can live a life rich with meaning. This doesn’t mean that you won’t have problems; it’s just that your problems will point you towards being a healthier version of your self. Take risks that help you create successes and make mistakes that are unequivocally yours, Aquarius.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

There’s no way to avoid vulnerability, Pisces, not even if you check out completely. If you have to feel raw and open, what can you do to protect yourself? Don’t degenerate into panic for starters; make a clear plan of action that you execute to support yourself through whatever you’re experiencing.

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 18 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com to contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading.

 

Theater Listings: July 17 – 23, 2013

Michael Redmond
-
0

 

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

THEATER

OPENING

Sweet Bird of Youth Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.tidestheatre.org. $20-40. Previews Thu/18, 8pm. Opens Fri/19, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 24. Tides Theatre performs Tennessee Williams’ Gulf Coast-set drama about an improbable couple.

BAY AREA

A Comedy of Errors Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 890 Bella, Dominican University of California, San Rafael; www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-37.50. Previews Fri/19 and Sun/21, 8pm. Opens July 27, 8pm. Presented in repertory Fri-Sun through Sept 29; visit website for performance schedule. Marin Shakespeare Company presents a cowboy-themed spin on the Bard’s classic.

ONGOING

Betrayal Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, Sixth Flr, SF; www.offbroadwaywest.org. $40. Thu/18-Sat/20, 8pm. Off Broadway West Theatre Company performs Harold Pinter’s out-of-sequence drama about an unfaithful married couple.

Can You Dig It? Back Down East 14th — the 60s and Beyond Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 25. Solo performer Don Reed returns with a prequel to his autobiographical coming-of-age hits, East 14th and The Kipling Hotel.

Chance: A Musical Play About Love, Risk, and Getting it Right Alcove Theater, 415 Mason, Fifth Flr, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $40-60. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun, 5pm. Through July 28. New Musical Theater of San Francisco presents Richard Isen’s world premiere work inspired by the writings of Oscar Wilde.

Endgame Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; www.itetheater.org. $18-24. Thu/18-Sat/20, 8pm. International Theater Ensemble performs Samuel Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd classic.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

God of Carnage Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.com. $26-38. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 7. Shelton Theater performs Yasmina Reza’s award-winning play about class and parenting.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $27-43. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. John Cameron Mitchell’s cult musical comes to life with director Nick A. Olivero’s ever-rotating cast.

How to Make Your Bitterness Work for You Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.stagewerx.org. $15-25. Mon-Tue, 8pm. Through Aug 27. Kent Underwood is a motivational speaker and self-help expert with some obvious baggage of his own in this solo play from former comedy writer and stand-up comedian Fred Raker (It Could Have Been a Wonderful Life). The premise, similar to that of Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook: Better Than You (ongoing at the Marsh), has the audience overlapping with participants in an Underwood seminar. Underwood, however, two years on the seminar circuit and still unable to get his book published, deviates from the script to answer texts related to a possible career breakthrough. Meanwhile, with the aid of some bullet points and illustrative slides, he explains the premise of said manuscript, “How to Make Your Bitterness Work For You,” as the sad truth of his own underdog status emerges between the laugh lines. But where Bodden is careful to make his Seabrook a somewhat believable character despite the absurdity of it all (or rather, while firmly embracing the absurdity of the self-help industry itself), Raker and director Kimberly Richards put much more space between the playwright/performer and his character, which turns out to be a less effective strategy. Verisimilitude might not have mattered much if the comic material were stronger. Unfortunately, despite the occasional zinger, much of the humor is weak or corny and the narrative (interrupted at regular intervals by an artificial tone representing the arrival of a fresh text message) too contrived to sell us on the larger story. (Avila)

Keith Moon: The Real Me Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $40. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 28. Mick Berry performs the world premiere of his solo play about the Who drummer.

A Pinoy Midsummer Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.bindlestiffstudio.org. $10-25. Thu/18-Sat/20, 8pm. It’s the perfect time of year for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but unless you caught Bindlestiff Studio’s irreverent adaptation A Pinoy Midsummer last September, you’ve probably never seen a version quite like it. Conceptualized and directed by Lorna Velasco, A Pinoy Midsummer combines elements of Philippine culture—traditional music, dress, and language—with a rowdy modernist approach to the tale of tradition-bound lovers and the bawdy fairies who would make sport of them and each other. A live score directed by Ogie Gonzales, choreographed interludes by Gemma Calderon, and otherworldly shadow puppetry designed by Melissa Diaz Infante and Marcius Noceda help to flesh out the bare bones production and enhance the action, in particular the intrigues of the mischievous fairy folk. Of the Athenians, it’s star-crossed Hermia (Aureen Almario) and Helena (Julie Kuwabara) who stand out most particularly, and their cat fight over the  fickle love of the fairy-enchanted Lysander (Tonilyn A. Sideco) is wickedly funny. But the true highlight of the scrappy production is the band of the rudest mechanicals to ever grace a stage, from the scene-stealing Bottom (Joe Cascasan) to the angry butch Flute (Roczane Enriquez), the fact that they deliver their lines almost entirely in Tagalog not detracting one bit from their brilliant buffoonery, whether you speak the language or not. (Gluckstern)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. It seems a no-brainer. Not just the HBO series itself — that’s definitely missing some gray matter — but putting it onstage as a drag show. Mais naturellement! Why was Sex and the City not conceived of as a drag show in the first place? Making the sordid not exactly palatable but somehow, I don’t know, friendlier (and the canned a little cannier), Velvet Rage Productions mounts two verbatim episodes from the widely adored cable show, with Trannyshack’s Heklina in a smashing portrayal of SJP’s Carrie; D’Arcy Drollinger stealing much of the show as ever-randy Samantha (already more or less a gay man trapped in a woman’s body); Lady Bear as an endearingly out-to-lunch Miranda; and ever assured, quick-witted Trixxie Carr as pent-up Charlotte. There’s also a solid and enjoyable supporting cast courtesy of Cookie Dough, Jordan Wheeler, and Leigh Crow (as Mr. Big). That’s some heavyweight talent trodding the straining boards of bar Rebel’s tiny stage. The show’s still two-dimensional, even in 3D, but noticeably bigger than your 50″ plasma flat panel. Update: new episodes began May 15. (Avila)

So You Can Hear Me Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu/18-Fri/19, 8pm; Sat/20, 5pm. A 23-year-old with no experience, just high spirits and big ideals, gets a job in the South Bronx teaching special ed classes and quickly finds herself in over her head. Safiya Martinez, herself a bright young woman from the projects, delivers this inspired accounting of her time not long ago in perhaps the most neglected sector of the public school system — a 60-minute solo play that makes up for its relatively slim plot with a set of deft, powerful, lovingly crafted characterizations. These complex portraits, alternately hysterical and startling, offer their own moving ruminations on a violent but also vibrant stratum of American society, deeply fractured by pervasive poverty and injustice and yet full of restive young personalities too easily dismissed, ignored, or crudely caricatured elsewhere. An effervescent, big-hearted, and very talented performer, Martinez’s own bounding personality and contagious passion for her former students (as complicated as that relationship was), makes this deeply felt tribute all the more memorable. (Avila)

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through August 24. Self-awareness, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement — for these things we turn to the professionals: the self-empowerment coaches, the self-help authors and motivational speakers. What’s the good of having a “self” unless someone shows you how to use it? Writer-performer Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook wants to sell you on a better you, but his “Better Than You” weekend seminar (and tie-in book series, assorted CDs, and other paraphernalia) belies a certain divided loyalty in its own self-flattering title. The bitter fruit of the personal growth industry may sound overly ripe for the picking, but Bodden’s deftly executed “seminar” and its behind-the-scenes reveals, directed by Mark Kenward, explore the terrain with panache, cool wit, and shrewd characterization. As both writer and performer, Bodden keeps his Steve Seabrook just this side of overly sensational or maudlin, a believable figure, finally, whose all-too-ordinary life ends up something of a modest model of its own. (Avila)

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through July 27. Thrillpeddlers and director Russell Blackwood continue their Theatre of the Ridiculous series with this 1971 musical from San Francisco’s famed glitter-bearded acid queens, the Cockettes, revamped with a slew of new musical material by original member Scrumbly Koldewyn, and a freshly re-minted book co-written by Koldewyn and “Sweet Pam” Tent — both of whom join the large rotating cast of Thrillpeddler favorites alongside a third original Cockette, Rumi Missabu (playing diner waitress Brenda Breakfast like a deliciously unhinged scramble of Lucille Ball and Bette Davis). This is Thrillpeddlers’ third Cockettes revival, a winning streak that started with Pearls Over Shanghai. While not quite as frisky or imaginative as the production of Pearls, it easily charms with its fine songs, nifty routines, exquisite costumes, steady flashes of wit, less consistent flashes of flesh, and de rigueur irreverence. The plot may not be very easy to follow, but then, except perhaps for the bubbly accounting of the notorious New York flop of the same show 42 years ago by Tent (as poisoned-pen gossip columnist Vedda Viper), it hardly matters. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun/21, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns after a month-long hiatus with his popular, kid-friendly bubble show.

Wunderworld Creativity Theater, 221 Fourth St, SF; www.wunderworld.net. $10-15. Sat-Sun, 2pm (also Sat, 11am; Sun, 5pm). Through Aug 11. In an irresistible boost to the the Children’s Creativity Museum’s new Creativity Theater (formerly Zeum), beloved Bay Area comedian, playwright, and performer Sara Moore (Show Ho) teams up with gifted co-writer and performer Michael Phillis (The Bride of Death) and director Andrew Nance for a largely wordless, but gabble-packed, family-friendly comedy that asks what Alice might find down the rabbit hole were she to tumble down it again as an octogenarian? The 60-minute play showcases the elastic features and sharp comedic instincts of both Moore (as a hilarious and heartfelt Alice, whom no one recognizes these days unless she stretches her face smooth again) and Phillis (who kicks things off with a mimed pre-curtain speech deserving of its own encore, before coming back as the now droopy-eared White Rabbit). Equally endearing are performances by Dawn Meredith Smith (as Caterpillar, Red Queen, and a rest home nurse), choreographer Rory Davis (as the Cheshire Cat), and the inimitable Joan Mankin as Alice’s bored nursing-home roommate and the Mad Hatter. (Avila)

BAY AREA

The Loudest Man on Earth Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; www.theatreworks.org. $19-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Aug 4. TheatreWorks presents the world premiere of Catherine Rush’s unconventional romantic comedy starring acclaimed actor Adrian Blue, who is deaf.

Oil and Water This week: Arena Theater, 214 Main, Point Arena; www.sfmt.org. $10-15. Wed, 8pm. Also Thu, 7pm, free, Todd Grove Park, Live Oak at Clubhouse, Ukiah; Sat, 8pm, $20, Mateel Community Center, 59 Rusk, Redway. It’s a rough year for mimes, or at any rate for the San Francisco Mime Troupe who, after presenting 53 seasons of free theater in the parks of San Francisco (and elsewhere), faced a financial crisis in April that threatened to shut down this season before it even started. The resultant show, funded by an influx of last-minute donations, is one cut considerably closer to the bone than in previous years. With a cast of just four actors and two musicians, plus a stage considerably less ornate then usual, even the play has shrunk in scale, from one two-hour musical to two loosely-connected one-acts riffing on general environmentalist themes. In Deal With the Devil, a surprisingly sympathetic (not to mention downright hawt) Devil (Velina Brown) shows up to help an uncertain president (Rotimi Agbabiaka) regain his conscience and win back his soul, while in Crude Intentions adorable, progressive, same-sex couple Gracie (Velina Brown) and Tomasa (Lisa Hori-Garcia) wind up catering a “benefit” shindig for the Keystone XL Pipeline giving them the opportunity to perpetrate a little guerilla direct action on a bombastic David Koch (Hugo E Carbajal) with a “mole de petróleo” and a smartphone. Throughout, the performers remain upbeat if somewhat over-extended as they sing, dance, and slapstick their way to the sobering conclusion that the time to turn things around in the battles over global environmental protection is now — or never. (Gluckstern)

Sea of Reeds Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Aug 18. The stage comes unusually populated in this latest from well-known Bay Area monologist and red-diaper baby Josh Kornbluth: a four-piece musical ensemble (El Beh, Jonathan Kepke, Olive Mitra, and Eli Wirtschafter) sits stage right, a standing table with some reed-making equipment appears stage left. Front and center is Kornbluth and his oboe, before him a music stand and behind him three “reeds”—freestanding concave walls of a bamboo-hue (designed by Nina Ball). But there’s more: Kornbluth’s physical trainer (Amy Resnick, replaced by Beth Wilmurt beginning August 7), bounding up from her seat in the first row to lend Kornbluth support or, more productively, prod him in the right direction as he takes the long road home to setting up a promised recital of Bach’s Cantata No. 82. That set up hinges on his recent bar mitzvah, at 52, in Israel, and its unexpected connections between his life-long oboe playing, his Communist upbringing in New York, his mixed marriage, his conversations with a local rabbi, and the Book of Exodus (specifically, Moses’s trail-blazing for the Israelites across the Red Sea, a.k.a., the Sea of Reeds). Although the introduction of supporting characters, musicians, and a musical score (by Marco D’Ambrosio) breaks new ground for the longtime soloist, Sea of Reeds is classic — indeed classical (thanks to a final few tenuous bars from the promised Bach cantata) — Kornbluth. Directed by longtime creative partner David Dower, the show features the boyish comedic persona, the intricate storytelling, and the biographical referents that have given him a loyal following over the years. Diehard fans aside, the show’s cheesy, somewhat self-regarding conceit of staging “spontaneous” interactions between Kornbluth and his trainer may not work with everyone. Perhaps more challenging, though, is the persistence of a less than fully examined disjunction between the political values of his parents and his own political and ethical evolution — a disjunction highlighted here in the narrative’s fraught Middle Eastern setting and its vague navigation between the violence of religious zealotry and a plea for tolerance. (Avila)

The Spanish Tragedy Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 890 Bella, Dominican University of California, San Rafael; www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-37.50. Presented in repertory Fri-Sun through Aug 11; visit website for performance schedule. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Thomas Kyd’s Elizabethan revenge tragedy.

This Is How It Goes Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through July 28. An awkward love triangle between former high school classmates gets the caustic Neil LaBute treatment in Aurora Theatre Company’s production of This is How it Goes. Not content to merely skewer the familiar battles between the sexes, LaBute further prods his captive audience with the big stick of race relations, and the often unacknowledged prejudices that lurk in the hearts of men. And women. There are no innocents in this play, though each character certainly has moments where they play upon audience sympathies, only to betray them a few inflammatory lines later. As the marriage between the successful yet self-conscious African American alpha male Cody (Aldo Billingslea) and his neurotically placating Caucasian wife Belinda (Carrie Paff) erodes, the mostly affable (and former fat kid) “Man” (Gabriel Marin) insinuates himself in the middle of their troubled relationship, obviously still carrying the torch for Belinda he did 15 years ago — as well as the same wary animosity an unpopular kid carries for the star of the track team, in this case, Cody. All three actors do a very good job of shape-shifting between their middle-class Jekyll and Hyde selves, assisted in part by Marin’s amiable asides, which don’t so much lull the audience as tease them with the idea that things are about to get better, when they can only get worse. (Gluckstern)

The Wiz Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-60. Wed-Thu and Sat, 7pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, noon and 5pm. Through Aug 25. Berkeley Playhouse travels to Oz with the Tony-winning musical.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason, SF; www.improv.org. $20. BATS Improv performs spontaneous shows based on current events (Fri, 8pm, through July 26) and “Improvised Shakespeare” (Sat, 8pm, through July 27).

“Bay Area Playwrights Festival” Thick House Theater, 1695 18th St, SF; www.playwrightsfoundation.org. Fri/19-Sun/21 and July 26-28. $15. Three Bay Area playwrights and three New Yorkers contribute brand-new works to this 36th annual fest. The six plays were chosen from 425 submissions.

“Bitch and Tell: A Real Funny Variety Show” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.ftloose.org. Fri/19-Sat/20, 8pm. $10-20. Tracy Shapiro performs both nights, with guests David Gborie, Mary-Alice McNab, and others.

“Bubbles on Fire Burlesque presents: Mad Women!” Mojo Theatre, 2940 16th St, #217, SF; www.bubblesonfire.com. Fri/19, 8:15pm. $10-20. With MC Patina DeCopper, Alexa Von Kickinface, Candi Fornia, Dolly Dior, and others.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sun/21, July 27, Aug 4, 17, and 25, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“The Dirt on Dorian Gray” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/19-Sun/21, 8pm. $15-20. Samantha Giron Dance Project presents an examination of “Peter Pan syndrome” via contemporary dance and other elements.

“Dohee Lee: ARA Gut (Ritual of Ocean)” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Sat/20, 4-6pm. Free. The artist presents a site-specific performance installation reflecting on the relationship between humans and nature.

“Factory Parts” NOH Space, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.foolsfury.org. Wed/17-Sun/21 and July 25-28, 8pm. $15. FoolsFURY presents new works-in-progress by 10 cutting-edge theater ensembles, including San Francisco’s Affinity Group and Oakland’s Ragged Wing.

50 Shades! The Musical Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.50shadesmusical.com. July 23-25, 8pm; July 26-27, 6:30 and 9:30pm; July 28, 3pm. $20-65. Musical parody of Fifty Shades of Grey.

“Four Plays” Lam Research Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; www.postballet.org. Thu/18-Fri/19, 8pm. $30-50. Post:Ballet presents its fourth annual home season, featuring a world premiere collaboration between choreographer Robert Dekkers, architect Robert Gilson, and other artists.

“Harboring” Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion, Marina at Buchanan, SF; www.bandaloop.org. Thu/18, 8:30pm; Fri/19-Sun/21, 8:30pm (also Sat/20, 2pm). $25-100. Vertical dance company Bandaloop performs a site-specific, multi-dimensional work inspired by Fort Mason’s maritime past and present.

“Merola Opera’s Schwaber Summer Concert” Everett Auditorium, 450 Church, SF; www.merola.org. Thu/18, 7:30pm. $25-40. Also Sat/20, 2-4pm, free, Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission between 3rd and 4th Sts, SF; www.ybgfestival.com. The company performs scenes from Don Giovanni and other operas.

“Mission Position Live” Cinecave, 1034 Valencia, SF; www.missionpositionlive.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Stand-up comedy with rotating performers.

“Randy Roberts: Live!” Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. Tue/23, 9pm. $30. The famed female impersonator takes on Cher, Better Midler, and other stars.

Red Hots Burlesque El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.redhotsburlesque.com. Wed, 7:30-9pm. Ongoing. $5-10. Come for the burlesque show, stay for OMG! Karaoke starting at 8pm (no cover for karaoke).

“San Francisco Magic Parlor” Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

“Union Square Live” Union Square, between Post, Geary, Powell, and Stockton, SF; www.unionsquarelive.org. Through Oct 9. Free. Music, dance, circus arts, film, and more; dates and times vary, so check website for the latest. *

 

Events: July 17 – 23, 2013

Michael Redmond
-
0

 

On the Cheap listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.

WEDNESDAY 17

Kim Deitch Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The graphic novelist presents The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley, accompanied by a screening of the 1915 silent film The Hypocrites, plus a slide show highlighting Deitch’s underground cartoon work.

Stephanie Lehmann Books Inc, Laurel Village, 3515 California, SF; www.booksinc.net. 7pm, free. Also Thu/18, 6pm, free, Towne Center Books, 555 Main, Pleasanton; www.townecenterbooks.com. The author reads from Astor Place Vintage, a novel set in turn-of-the-20th-century New York City.

THURSDAY 18

“Shipwreck: Competitive Erotic Fanfiction for Literary Perverts” Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7pm, $10. Six writers “destroy one great book, one great character at a time,” with the end results read aloud in dramatic fashion (and the audience choosing a winning author). Target this go-round is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

FRIDAY 19

“Friday Nights at the de Young: Sights and Sounds of Mexico” de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, SF; deyoung.famsf.org. 5pm, free (access to permanent collections and special exhibits requires admission fee). Jazz and pop fusion with Ilan Bar-Lavi and Sonex, plus a lecture on photographer Rose Mandel. Plus, the de Young’s 144-foot observation tower stays open until 8pm.

“Friday Nights @ OMCA” Oakland Museum of Art, 1000 Oak, Oakl; www.museumca.org. 5-9pm, half-price admission for adults ($6); 18 and under free. This month’s theme is “Indie Rock,” so you can wager a guess as to what type of music will be filling this family-friendly night market. Also: art workshops for kids, food trucks, foodie talks, and more.

SATURDAY 20

“Exploratorium Market Days: Local Motion” Public plaza outside the Exploratorium, Pier 15, SF; www.exploratorium.edu. 11am-3pm, free. The science museum kicks off a monthly series of free outdoor events with “a celebration of the myriad ways people, machines, and animals get around.” On tap: a bionic suit, a personal submarine, a dragon boat, a pedal-powered Ferris wheel, and a chicken foot dissection.

“Pedalfest” Jack London Square, Broadway at Embarcadero, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. 11am-7pm, free. More than 20,000 bike fans are expected to cycle through this event, which features daredevil and stunt performances, a BMX competition, a children’s bicycle parade, a bike rodeo, live music, “pedal-powered food,” and more.

“San Francisco Waterfront Labor History Walk” Meet at 75 Folsom, SF; www.laborfest.net. 10am, free. Labor historians lead this walking tour that focuses on SF’s maritime industry from 1835-1934, with additional discussion of the 1901 transportation strike.

SUNDAY 21

“Off the Grid SF: Picnic at the Presidio” Main Post Lawn, Presidio, SF; offthegridsf.com/picnic. 11am-4pm, free. Food trucks converge to sell tasty treats (added bonus: gorgeous bay views) from local hotspots like Humphrey Slocomb, Hog and Rocks, Namu Gaji, and more. Pro-tips: bring blankets for seating, and get there early to line up for your favorites — the best stuff tends to sell out well before 4pm.

TUESDAY 23

Nyna Pais Caputi Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. 6:30-7:30pm, free. The director of Petals in the Dust: The Endangered Indian Girls screens a trailer for her film and discusses current efforts by activists to end violence against women in India.

C.W. Gortner BookShop West Portal, 80 West Portal, SF; (415) 564-8080. 7pm, free. The author reads from his second book in the “Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles,” The Tudor Conspiracy.

“Slave Labor, Free Labor, and Working People Today” 518 Valencia, SF; www.laborfest.net. 7pm, free. CUNY lecturer Carol Lang charts the links with the fight against slave labor (2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation) with the fight for workers’ rights around the world today.

“Strange Invaders: Ants, Termites, and Bedbugs” SoMa StrEat Food Park, 428 11th St, SF; www.askascientistsf.com. 7pm, free. Ask a Scientist and Wonderfest co-present this discussion of creepy-yet-common household invaders. Eeek! *

 

Lia Rose lets go on new album ‘Bricks and Bones’

Tony Robles
-
6

Bay Area country-folk artist Lia Rose is a ball of sunshine both on stage and off. But if you listened to her songs, you’d know it’s not because life’s been easy, it’s just that she’s chosen to face its struggles head on, chin up.

Rose played the Great American Music Hall with Blame Sally in early May and performed on NPR’s West Coast Live in April, where she met author Ruth Ozeki, with whom she’s currently collaborating on a song. Her second full-length solo album Bricks and Bones will be released this Sat/20, the night of her record-release party at the Chapel in San Francisco. In short, the bubbly, talented musician is doing quite well.

After listening to an early preview of Bricks and Bones, I noticed quite a few differences from her first two albums When You Need Me Most (self-released, 2011) and Conspire (self-released, 2012). Most obvious of these changes is an overall sunnier sound. Though there are darker toned tracks, like “Mary Edith Barnes” and “Jesse Got Trapped in a Coal Mine,” Rose has emerged more self-informed and in control than ever before, and paradoxically, it was when she let go and let others in to her process.

When the graceful singer walked into Haus Coffee, a café in the Mission on 24th Street, to meet me with a broad smile, I wanted to hear from her firsthand how these differences came about.

She’s certainly changed things around both with the new album and in her live performances.

“I don’t want every show to be the same,” Rose told me in between bites of a veggie galette and sips of green tea. “I tend to just keep my options open and play with quite a lot of folks. I like to adapt the show to the particular audience.”

This album has been a big opportunity for her to not only evolve as an artist, but also to collaborate – something that wasn’t so simple for her in the past.

On Bricks and Bones, though, Gawain Mathews assisted Rose with recording, and contributed acoustic guitar, piano, and bass lines, Charlie Wilson and John Kirchner with engineering, Michael Fecskes on cello, and Kelly McFarling with harmonies. And Rose couldn’t be happier with her decision to broaden her horizon.

“I started to do a lot of coproducing and co-writing, and that has been awesome because I think it becomes way better than anything I could have done on my own. And that’s the case for sure on this album because I got to work with Gawain Mathews.” 

For the artist whose first musical memory is of jumping on the bed at the age of 3, screaming Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time” at the top of her lungs, music has long been an integral part of life. This is why it took her a while to work up the courage to let others in on her creative process.

“It takes a lot of trust – a lot of letting go of what you think it’s supposed to be.”

Rose has tried being the only captain on the ship before, and it’s turned out alright, according to her. But that wasn’t what she was looking for this time around.

“If I stayed control freak on the whole project, which I’ve done in the past – which I can do – it’ll turn out fine. But it won’t be the magic. The magic comes, I think, when you can let go of that control and surround yourself with folks who you love the paint that they throw. And letting go and letting it be something that maybe doesn’t sound right to you right away.”

To me, Bricks and Bones sounded great upon first listen, but even better upon second. Filled with lively, acoustic-heavy twang and stomp, and spitting lyrics – that prove there may just be some fire in this graceful being after all.

“I’m like a loaded mousetrap or a hairpin trigger/I will bite, I will scratch/There’s no tellin’ what I’ll do/It’s a bad state I’m in,” sings Rose in “Trainwreck Tuesday,” letting us know there’s more to her than the soft, gentle side you’ll likely see if you meet her.

Rose seems to have come even more into her own on these tracks, singing of facing down her fears (“Snake in the Water”) and simple straightforward romance (“Secret Stories”).

It’s true, this album is a natural evolution for Rose, but there is one constant – the quality. Her vocals have never been so pure and the dreamy melodies are still present on Bricks and Bones.

Though her album’s title implies a solid, unmoving structure, Rose’s sound is anything but rigid.

“I feel like you’ve got to be able to bend, otherwise you’ll break,” she said.

This is the way the album plays out – it’s quite flexible.

It moves through the angry steam of “Trainwreck Tuesday,” to a cover of “Jesse Got Trapped in a Coal Mine,” a haunting folk tune written by Avi Vinocur of band Goodnight, Texas about a man who met death before his wedding.

You can hear the progression for yourself on Bricks and Bones and even celebrate with her at her live show at the Chapel on July 20. Listen to the angelic vocals of Lia Rose, get lost in her rich acoustic melodies. But don’t expect it to be all lollipops and rainbows. She will bite.

Lia Rose
With We Became Owls, Annie Lynch, Michaela Anne
Sat/20, 9pm, $15
777 Valencia, SF
(415) 551-5157
www.thechapelsf.com

Labors of love

Sue Vaughan
-
0

Los Angeles’s Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras makes common cause with Santa Rosa’s the Imaginists

(Note: what follows is an extended version of a story and interview that appears in this week’s Guardian.)

A white passenger van pulls to the curb in a largely residential Spanish-speaking neighborhood in Santa Rosa, discharging a group of Latino men and women at the door of a converted warehouse. The visitors vary by age, class, and education. All hail from Mexico or Central America, but more recently Los Angeles, where they’re among the cities thousands of jornaleros, or day laborers, making their way job by job, often without secure documentation, or much security of any kind.
Standing beside the warehouse on this quiet street, they could be mistaken for an ad hoc work crew. But the warehouse is a theater, and this sunny afternoon in June is the culmination of a precious week off. Not that these men and women aren’t here in Santa Rosa to work — just this time it’s on a play.

Brent Lindsay and Amy Pinto, founders and artistic directors of the Imaginists, greet the visitors warmly as they collect outside the theater and slowly saunter in, joining other members and friends of the Santa Rosa company inside its spacious single room, together with their small children. The two groups have known each other barely a week, but already seem more than colleagues — more like extended family.

It’s the final day of a weeklong artistic exchange between the Imaginists and Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras (Day Laborer Theater without Borders), a Los Angeles–based Spanish-language ensemble theater created by and for the immigrant day laborer population. The ten-member troupe, founded in 2008 under the umbrella of LA’s Cornerstone Theater and led by co-artistic directors Juan José Mangandi and Lorena Moran, has so far created 15 short plays that they perform mostly at day laborer centers across Los Angeles — although this last year saw TJSF tour both Northern California and El Salvador. The plays examine everything from the legal and human rights of immigrant workers to health issues to the transnational cultures migrant workers share and foster.

After some socializing over a light breakfast of coffee and pan dulce, the two companies gather in a circle for some warm up exercises led by both Lindsay and Moran. One particular challenging memory game provokes mild frustration and laughter. “This is why we do this exercise,” explains Moran to her actors, all amateurs and volunteers united by the unique opportunities their theater has offered them. “We need to connect to another person and remember details about them.”

Then they all get back to work on a playlet they’ve been developing from improvisations. It begins with two workers who alternately pay off and slip by a snoozing guard (played by Imaginists company member Eliot Fintushel) to dump toxic waste into a nearby stream. When this causes an environmental disaster, a government spokesperson (played by Pinto) assures people in the audience that their organic produce is safe. Meanwhile, a cleanup crew of migrant workers is slowly poisoned to death. A news team rushes to the scene of the eco-disaster, but seems to take no notice of the brown bodies sprawled over it. Left alone onstage, the workers rise as ghosts — beginning with one who sings, “They’re carrying me off to the cemetery. Don’t anyone cry for me. Just sing my favorite song…” — and one by one exit the stage.

Throughout, Lindsay directs from a chair audience-side, giving advice or suggestions at various points. All, however, are welcome to chime in with comments and do. An elderly woman named Adela Palacios, for instance, suggests that before departing the stage each ghost can simply state their name and what they did for a living, a suggestion readily embraced by all. Soon the form of the scene has a solid arc, and the action gains many subtleties, as well as a tone that makes a virtue of the mix of amateur and professional actors. Combining slapstick, winking asides, an eerie sense of tragedy, and a moving use of direct address, it’s a surprisingly affecting bit of work.

“We come to the theater as older people,” explains Moran. “But we feel we’ve found a company [in the Imaginists] like us. We share the same path.” A native of Guatemala who worked in business administration before fleeing domestic abuse and the country, Moran (translated by Gustavo Servin, a young member of the Imaginists) speaks eloquently about the company she joined five years ago amid a dangerous working life that was both foreign and alienating to her. She acknowledges frankly, “Theater saved my life.”

TJSF is currently developing its first full-length play, Caminos al Paraíso (Paths to Paradise), written by Mangandi and directed by Moran. This exchange in Santa Rosa, made possible by a grant from the Network of Ensemble Theaters, has offered TJSF the opportunity to learn important technical aspects of crafting a full evening’s production from their more experienced colleagues. At the same time, it’s offered the Imaginists, which has grown into a bilingual company since rooting itself in Santa Rosa, a chance to advance their own mission through contact with a deeply community-driven Latino theater. But neither motive really captures the personal ties and mutual respect that have been forming here, the subtle and profound reciprocity of influence, and the solidarity emerging from it all.

“TJSF is a brave, important theater company that is telling stories that we don’t usually hear,” reflected Amy Pinto recently by email. “They tell them with humor, with heartache, in a group, in Spanish. Coming together for a week, we were able to strengthen our own resolve to tell these stories, not to be afraid of being deemed ‘political.’ For the Latino members of the Imaginists, the exchange was a catalyst to take ownership and be empowered by their histories and stories. This exchange reinforced how necessary it is to have comrades, to share experiences and methods, to have a network of support throughout the country for this work.”

The Imaginists plan to travel to Los Angeles for another face-to-face meeting with TJSF over next steps. Together they hope to develop something that can tour to labor centers across the country.

In the meantime, inspired by the exchange, the Imaginists are concocting a new play, based on a famous children’s story, which will address the plight of undocumented people. Working title: REAL.

“For Teatro Jornalero there is no division,” notes Pinto. “They are telling the stories of their lives. They are humanizing a ‘political’ situation. We have to let that sit in us, that uncomfortability — can we turn our politics off and on? No. Everything in art is a choice.”

She adds that the encounter held surprises for them too. “To have an encounter where all your expectations are turned upside down,” she marvels, “theater can do that. We are changed. There was so much laughter the entire week. And a fare share of tears.”

Voices from Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras

The following excerpts are from conversations that took place on Saturday, June 22, at the warehouse theater of the Imaginists in Santa Rosa. Members of the Imaginists and Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras had just completed their rehearsal, ahead of a public performance that evening, and were seated in a semi-circle to answer a few questions about their collaboration. Translation was provided by Julie Kaiser.

SF Bay Guardian Can I ask a general question of the members of Teatro Jornalero? Anyone who would like to answer please do. What brought you to the company, and why did you join? What does being in the company offer you?

Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras My name is Alberto Scareño. I found out about this when some of my friends told me about it. It was really interesting, so I called them up to see if there was a spot for me. They said, sure, come that day. And I went in. I’ve never been an actor. We started with exercises. It was really interesting and relaxing. Sometimes I have a lot of stress, or I’m just mad, and to come to this place that relaxes me — it relieves my stress, and time flies. Now what I hope for is to work with even more verve and learn more about the theater.

SFBG What kind of work do you do to make a living?

TJSF Every morning I go out and look for work at a corner in central Los Angeles. I’m a day laborer.

SFBG And you still find energy after a long day’s work for theater?

TJSF The deal is, I don’t get work everyday. So if I don’t work one day, then I have energy to go. When I work, I’m tired, but I get there, and I get my friends, and we do the exercises and I relax. And it’s fascinating.

SFBG Anyone else?

TJSF My name is Xico [pronounced “Chico”] Salvador Paredes. I was on a workers’ corner in California — I’d joined a battle to have a [day laborer] center made — and the first person that [I met] was Juan José. He had participated in theater as an actor, and he was starting to work on his play about illegals. Then he invited me and Lorena [Paredes is married to artistic director Lorena Moran], and other guys, to work in theater. At first I didn’t like it, because I’m a worker: I just get work, get work, get work — I’m not interested in anything else. I send money [home]. That was my only vision, to have a day of work.

But after I came in, I realized, it’s a weapon for communication and understanding, a means of connecting with other people. We started to create pieces out of our own experience, and to recreate our experience. It serves to take out of us what’s inside of us, and to let us know that we’re not alone. The best part of being in this theater is that we’re getting together with people who don’t know what a day laborer is. A day laborer stands on a corner. In the morning he’s cold. He doesn’t have anything to eat. He doesn’t have the security he’s going to actually get work. People walk by and say, “Oh what a lazy guy,” or they pass by as if you’re just a tree, because you’re just standing there all the time. Nobody understands what you’re doing standing there. But a day laborer has huge hope. And he doesn’t know if he’s going to get work. And that’s us.

With the theater, we’ve told many people about what a day laborer is, and shared with those who don’t know anything about their rights. Now we can say, “This is what it is.” It’s really difficult. I just got into a situation where I’ve gotten into the deportation process. I’m in the struggle, but I also have to go to court. I have to do lots of things. And I might get deported. I came here not just to work; I came here to tell my story. And my story’s big. No bigger than anybody else’s. But it’s very positive for people to hear: Here we are.

TJSF I’m Mario Rivera, and I’m very happy to be here sharing with you all. I’m also, like my friends here, a day laborer and I work in central Los Angeles. I came into the theater because I was invited by Lorena. What I like is learning from my compañeros. I had nerves when people looked at me, and I lost that. I lost that fear, and I really like being here. I’d like to learn more from everybody. And I like the play that we’re doing here [with the Imaginists]. This all suits me. I like all of this.

TJSF I’m Adela Palacios. And I’m not very good for talking. The reason why I’m in the theater is because I don’t have work. I studied nursing. Two times I graduated in nursing. I am a nurse. But I had an accident. Now I can’t find work. In this country there’s a lot of discrimination about age. I looked for work for two years. The only opportunity I’ve found, that opened doors for me without discrimination, was this theater. We are volunteers. We don’t have work. They help us. Sometimes they give us food. I am very grateful to this great person, Lorena. And I’m very grateful to Cornerstone Theater. We have some understanding there. We are not heard as we should be [in society], but they do a little, what they can. They give us a little bit of a normal life. My stress is better than it was. And they’ve done everything possible. They do what they can. They can’t do more. I’m really grateful. You have to accept what there is and not ask for much.

TJSF I’m Heidi Guevara. My problem is I have a fear of being in front of people. But now it’s gone. I didn’t think I’d ever do something like this, because I’m really embarrassed easily. Now I have the courage to be in front of people. Lorena gives us exercises. And they help you to use your voice and express yourself, to overcome your shame. It’s a little complicated, but I’m learning more little by little. And here we go! I’ve been with them one year — you have to keep learning and learning. You know this. You have to keep going and learning. Little by little, but I’m going. Thank you, Lorena.

TJSF My name is Raul Salinas. I’m from northern Mexico. Chihuahua. I have six kids. I’ve been ten years here. Now I’m in the Centro Jornalero for work. I don’t have full-time work. I’ve been with the theater three months. How did I get here? I don’t know. It was just chance. One day Lorena came to the work center. She came to do casting for a play that they’re doing called Ways to Paradise. I wasn’t going to do it. No. But there was another person who wanted to go and I helped him with directions to the place where they were doing the casting. And then I got involved. Now I’m involved with Ways to Paradise, about the problems facing migrant workers, explaining who we are, what we’re doing: Yeah, we’re undocumented, we’re from Central America, Mexico … I started thinking about the work, and I really like it. So I stayed. That’s it. There’s not much more to tell.

SFBG I’d like to ask Lorena: How did you become involved in the theater, and how has your relationship with it evolved over the years?

Lorena Moran I would like to tell you the story of Teatro Jornalero, how the project got created. In 2006, Michael John Garcés, the director of Cornerstone Theater, wrote a play called The Illegals. He went and did castings at all the day laborer centers. [Co–artistic director] Juan José [Mangandi] came out of that. He participated in the work, along with other workers from day laborer centers at the national level. And they were invited to a national congress of day laborers. One day they were bored, just hanging out. And Juan José said, “You know what? I have the script of The Illegals. Why don’t we just do a little piece of it and present it to the congress?” It was a marvelous idea.

We have lots of ideas that are marvelous. We need a reason to do it and we also need people to help us. Nothing is possible without that. This was a great idea of Juan José. And we got a lot of help from Michael Garcés and Cornerstone Theater. Roberta Uno of the Ford Foundation gave us our first grant, a big grant of several thousand dollars for two years. And right now, we’re working on a small grant of $25,000 for two years. It’s not much — it’s a big deal to maintain 21 people on $25,000. But it would not have been possible at all if we didn’t have these workers — gardeners, housekeepers, bouncers, day laborers, nurses — they all have stories and voices. And they can educate others, and educate themselves about the rules of this country, the laws, their status as undocumented people.

In 2008, I was invited to participate in a casting for the first company of Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras. We were 12 members, two directors. Ethan Sawyer, an American graduate of Northwestern, helped train Juan José, who didn’t know anything about the technical part of theater but had a big spirit for it. They helped us, and the other 12 members of the company.

And that’s how my story starts. I’d had just a year here. I’m from Guatemala. I suffered domestic violence; that’s something I don’t want to remember. They even have my three kids; they’re still there now. But I’m here. And I’m growing a better life. And my dream is that when I’m a citizen I can bring my kids here. But nevertheless, I’ve had five years in this country, and the theater saved my life. And if I’m well, I want my friends to be well, in spite of the traumas, the economic problems. I was this close to getting deported once. I was this close to getting deported once. I was working on a corner with my husband, Xico. I was working gardening, in construction, cleaning houses. I spent five months making six houses. Twelve men, one woman. I was the only woman building houses.

All that showed me the world of day laborers from the roots up. We’d get up at 5:00 in the morning and be standing next to Home Depot. And somebody would drive up and say, “I need somebody,” and we’d run. It was like trying to play the raffle. In my country I’m actually a business administrator. I have a university degree. It’s a totally different life. And there I am, standing on the day laborer corner. I’ve had to clean bathrooms, deal with sexual harassment, I’ve had to clean, and change floors out, and paint — it was a completely different thing for my life. And I realized this is the moment to find a sense of what it’s like to be a migrant. Separated from our families, from our countries; we’re not raking in money, we just want to live with dignity.

So we did a casting. We had some administrative help from Michael John Garcés. And I was named the managing director. It was a whole process. It didn’t happen immediately. But from the beginning I was a part of this group. There’s a moment when you’re present, and there’s a moment when you leave. I don’t know when I’ll leave. But I want people to love this group. We have a voice, and we have a story. We ourselves are part of this story, and we’re writing it.

For today, I’m grateful for my life, and I share with Brent and Amy and their group. I haven’t stop writing, because each day I want to get down every word that drops out of their mouths. For me, it’s part of my learning. That’s what this exchange is all about. We’re training in technical ways with a group that has a lot of similarity with us. They’re helping our community of day laborers and house cleaners. We’re talking. Not in the same idiom, but the same language. And I’m very grateful.

SFGB Can you say a little more about what it’s been like to work with the Imaginists?

LM This is a dream. It’s a dream. To think it all started those years again with Juan José and Sergio in Washington, DC. Juan José Mangandi, the other artistic director, he dreams all the time. He thinks of all these big ideas. For four years we’ve been looking for funds to do this. And we found a grant. And here we are. And we’re dreaming of a second one. We don’t know when or how, but we have a dream, we’re going to keep going, we want to build a network of theaters nationally in the same line as [Teatro Jornalero]. But even so, we have to talk more. This coming together now is a first pass.

We’re just dreaming — some groups in a bus, in a van, connecting with each other from different cities. We’re empowering our voice as immigrants with respect to the larger population of whites, African American, and other groups. This is the story that we have. We’re trying to remove the barriers to our opportunities. It’s huge that we came together.

SFBG What about for the Imaginists?

Amy Pinto For us, the kind of work we’re doing — in bringing Spanish and English together, the issues of the day laborers, and bringing people who are day laborers and professionals together to perform — sometimes the community doesn’t understand, and we’re not always supported. So you [Teatro Jornalero] coming here gives us strength. You teach us how to be strong and to come together to make this kind of work. I think for [Imaginists company members] Zahira [Diaz], and Sergio [Zavala], and Marcela [Mejia], and Gustavo [Servin], who is young, meeting all of you — they see the road then; and it can empower them to take more leadership.

Brent Lindsay It reminds us of why we do theater.

LM I have one question for Amy and Brent. How did it come about that two white people decided to come so close to our community, and do such magic things and help empower us? There’s migrants and Latinos — how did two white people decide to tell our stories, to live our stories?

BL There was a gentleman in the video that you showed. Close to the end, he said, I want to be proud of what I do in life. Like you, Lorena, theater saved me. And it became my religion because it saved me. My investment in theater now is the investment of human beings, what theater can give to others. Because what it did for us, that gift — now we should become its messenger. We have to invite every person into this art form. For the reasons that you’re finding: It heals us. It’s too easy to let fear divide us. We have to worker harder, to overcome fear and come together. Because so much of that fear is based on nothing. It’s nonsense. And the best way we learn that is to do what we’re doing now.

A conversation with co–artistic director Juan José Magandi [translation by Marcela Mejia]

SFBG Can you tell me about Caminos al Paraíso and your part in the production?

Juan José Mangandi As the dramaturg, I try to put the stories together in a cohesive way, drawing from the experience of the actors and my own — as a day laborer, as a community organizer, as an undocumented person. There was a lot of pressure of impose specific themes or stories, but in the end I put in what I felt was the most appropriate for the story as a whole. I was tempted to tell my own personal story, but I tried to tell the story of our community. it’s the first full-length play of Teatro Jornalero since I’ve been working with them, seven years now.

SFBG What was the starting point for this new project?

JJM I’ve worked for many years on behalf of day laborers, and have heard many stories, experiences, tragedies, dreams, songs. So Caminos al Paraíso is the story of the breakdown of connection, of what it feels like for people to lose their home, their town, their country. For example, Chronic Stress Disorder is something that affects many immigrants. Every time you cross a border, and then another, the syndrome grows worse. You don’t get rid of it. It manifests in the way you behave — in anxiety, fear, even the change in the diet has an effect, in addition to the intrinsic dangers that a journey like that implies.

So we speak about these things, so people know what happens when one cross the border, including the abuses on the Mexican side of the border. Everybody talks about the US and the racism and the discrimination of an imperialistic government, but what happens when our own people are the ones that are doing the discriminating? So the governments from Mexico and Central American countries say they want to protect the rights of our emigrants and yet they are often the first ones to commit abuses. So it’s a critique of the economic, political, and social conditions. It’s an industry, an industry of immigrants, not only here but there as well, where for the ones that benefit — the government, the traffickers, the narcos, everybody — it’s a business, it creates a lot of employment for people.

So there are a lot of tragic events that immigrants experience before they arrive in the US. And then what happens when we arrive in “paradise”? That will be the second half, and that’s a totally different story. We start to mix with other races, and we start to change. I mentioned already the diet, but also the culture, the values, the sense of belonging to a community, not necessarily a country. And chronic health problems can ensue. Many become bipolar or diabetic, suffer from high cholesterol, high blood pressure. It’s like the body is not prepared for all of this processed food. It’s a big shock physically, in addition to all the other aspects impacting the humanity of the immigrant.

We are escaping because we are old, victims of the corruption, the lack of opportunities. But we come here and there are no jobs really, and we don’t have a social identity — just the paper itself makes such a difference. It’s like being invisible. Besides doing dangerous work, we are also breaking with our cultures, with our identities, who we were and where we came from. Some people get really uptight about clinging to their past identities. It can become a big obstacle to making bridges to connection with each other, to understand each other.

SFBG Do you see the theater you’re making as a means of helping forge a new culture, bridging those divides?

JJM I think that the theater is a weapon of social struggle and transformation—not only for the people that are out in the audience but also for the actors themselves. The government teaches us about political borders, and then the poverty and the ignorance help us create another border, another barrier. We want to be different, we want to be better than the other, we want to separate form each other—a Salvadoran has to be better than a Mexican, a Mexican has to be better than a Guatemalan, and so on. For me, in my experience, the great problem is, and my big question is: Why can’t we integrate? This is what Teatro Jornalero is searching and striving for, to break these separations. We’ve had people from Cuba, Mexico, Salvador, Guatemala… Sometimes it gets heavy between the actors. There’s an inner racism. All of these themes that hurt so much, that we don’t want to talk about, are in Caminos al Paraíso. But then there is also a message for the community. That we should get ready to integrate. That we like this country. That we have adopted it as our own. Now we want them to adopt us as well, as members, and let us taste the good of this country so we can practice compassion for the ones that come after us.

Live Shots: Phono del Sol 2013 with Thee Oh Sees, Marnie Stern, Surf Club

Tony Robles
-
2

John Dwyer stood holding his guitar, smiling and making small talk with the crowd, having been asked by a Phono del Sol staffer to hold off while, presumably, the band on the other stage finished up its set. “Alright, I think we’re just going to get started,” he said, seemingly without cue, and Thee Oh Sees began playing, giving the day a much needed jolt in energy.

Can you have too much control? Up until that point on Saturday, things were running smoothly. The musical acts were alternating without interruption on the two stages set up at the idyllic (and freeway adjacent) Potrero del Sol park, the weather was perfect, you could test drive an electric Fiat, and everyone seemed sated, even in the beer garden where the queue for Lagunitas and wine had started to resemble a Möbius strip, with patrons receiving a drink only to return to the back of the line to wait for another.

Everything was very under control, on the Potrero Street entrance where you could watch skateboarders try to confidently hustle their way past security, only to be directed to buy a ticket if they wanted to gain access to the park skating area during the festival. (“Just a tip,” Dwyer joked, “but if you show up at the skatepark tomorrow you can skate for free.”)

An hour earlier, during Marnie Stern’s set, I’d been wondering when things were going to pick up. The giddy guitar shredder and her band were speeding along at an energy level that seemed well above the stony, post-lunch crowd. Stern herself seemed rather high, hopping around bare-foot on the hot stage, delivering Woody Allen impressions and wondering whether her guitar overpowers her vagina (or vice versa) between finger-tapping blistering rhythms. But the response — polite applause from a largely reclining crowd — was typical for the day up to that point.

If anyone was gonna change that, it was San Francisco’s best live band, and a few songs in, the crowd was good and riled up. Not for lack of effort. I love watching this band play in part because of how animated they are, and half-way through a marathon version of “Contraption/Soul Desert” drummer Mike Shoun — his veins bulging out of his neck like a pissed off Ren and Stimpy character — was totally in control but with a look of effort somewhere between fighting off an epileptic fit and vomiting. Meanwhile, Dwyer was shifting around like he belonged on a Rat Fink t-shirt, changing gears but never slowing down. (The closest they came is during the middle dirge of “Strawberries 1+2” off Floating Coffin.)

With a sound that’s not punk, or garage, or surf, or psych, but rather a distillation of each’s best aspect, Thee Oh Sees have honed a distinctive sound over the last decade that’s totally affecting, so that when Dwyer invites everyone who wants to come up on stage, with the promise that Brigid Dawson has an extra tambourine for someone and the warning that they better not knock anything over, a lot of people take them up on the offer.

It’s not complete chaos, because Thee Oh Sees have enough control to make it work.

Notes on some bands:

Surf Club: I haven’t seen these guys in a while, but the tail end of their set sounded good, as they’ve loosened up on stage and gone a bit from the light surf rock influence that — coming out of Stockton — plagued them with an irony (there’s no beach there!) that writers (like myself) jumped on.

Cool Ghouls: Sorry Tim Cohen, I can’t save my Kinks references if a band is going to open their set with a song that sounds exactly like Muswell Hillbillies-era Ray Davies. But “Natural Life” was a swell opening and showcased the backup horn section right off the bat, and I subsequently enjoyed this band, and lolled at Pat McDonald’s Beefheart-like goofy rendition of “Eenie Meenie Sassaleenie” as stage banter. (Probably my biggest laugh of the day. The only real competition came from host Anna Seregina, who delivered commentary between bands in a Yakov Smirnoff-style Eastern European accent, probably in reaction to the uphill battle of being a host at a day-time music festival: “I like music like the Dixie Chicks, but they are not playing today.” “Thanks to Aaron Axelson of Live 105 and Popscene. I like Live 105 and I like Popscene. but they do not play the Gypsy Kings so I do not like them.”)

Social Studies: They sounded so much better than opening for Hot Chip the other week. Most likely because as a band it relies less on any sort of posture and attitude and more on a big multi-guitar sound that plays better out in the open. Ditto for singer Natalia Rogovin, whose vocals tend to hang in the air a bit. Shame she was having technical issues with her microphone just as it she was slowing down and coming to the front on “Developer”.

Radiation City: It reminded me off a bigger, less twee Hospitality, without a distinctive sound, but I may have just been hangry.

Painted Palms: These guys sound like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” meets “Star Guitar,” and hearing them take their time getting into “Falling Asleep” from their Canopy EP, it was clear they know how to structure a song. Occasionally I felt like they could lay off the la-la-la’s, and various oh-oh-oh choruses, if only to let the light, whimsical rhythms float on a bit more.

Bleached: Black bean burger from Doc’s of the Bay. Bad name/pun, great burger, amazing ketchup.

YACHT: Having caught the band recently at Noise Pop, and having just emerged from the pit of Thee Oh Sees, I didn’t make to the end of YACHT’s set. But the duo looked great, obviously.

Kiwis win first real America’s Cup race as Oracle adapts to rejected rule change

Sasha Cuttler
-
9

After a week of one-boat “races,” an argument over rules, and an angry sponsor making waves in international media, it would be easy to write off the America’s Cup as the lamest party in town (so lame, in fact, that the organizers have ceased broadcasting the one-boat shows on YouTube).

But, it was a week of wins for Emirates Team New Zealand, most obviously the solid drubbing they delivered to Luna Rossa on Saturday (7/13) during the first race at which two boats actually showed.

A smart “hook” by ETNZ blocked Luna Rossa from the start line and gave the Kiwis a five second advantage that stretched to over five minutes during the seven legs of the race. Unfortunately, that was the peak of the action as the gap between the boats grew so great and Luna Rossa officially earned a “did not finish” result for exceeding the five minutes allowed to cross the finish line after ETNZ. Overall, the match was almost as boring to watch as the single-boat snoozefests of earlier in the week, however it did show off the capabilities of the Kiwi crew, who are clearly mastering foiling while jibing, a key move for maintaining high speeds downwind.

Which brings us to the other big win for the New Zealanders this week. On Thursday, the international jury ruled in favor of ETNZ and Luna Rossa, who protested a new rule requiring larger, symmetrical rudder elevators as a matter of safety. The jury decided that allowing the larger rudder elevators – which Oracle have been using on their boat since they relaunched in April after a pitch-pole in October destroyed their wing sail – would violate the AC72 Class Rule that governs the design specifications of the boats.

They said regatta director Iain Murray couldn’t change this rule without buy-in from all the competitors and that voluntary compliance of the other safety rules would appease the Coast Guard, which permitted the event based on the additional safety measures made after Andrew Simpson died.

The rudder elevators help stabilize the lightweight boats while foiling, or lifting off the surface of the water to hit speeds of over 40 knots – ETNZ saw 42.3 on the speedometer on Saturday while Luna Rossa maxed out at 39.9 knots. The crew that masters this move and can maintain it over the course of a race will likely come out ahead. ETNZ is doing it now and will likely get better and better at it over the coming weeks as they continue to race the course through the multiple round robins of the Louis Vuitton Cup.

Meanwhile, Oracle will have to return to the drawing board and Ellison’s crew will need to get out on the water and re-learn how to handle their boat with a new rudder that complies with the Class Rule.

Oracle has been tight-lipped on the subject, with just a brief statement from general manager Grant Simmer on the jury’s decision. “We continue to support the Regatta Director and we believe all teams have benefited from his review. We don’t have an issue complying with the Class Rule, and we will be ready to race under the rules affirmed by the Jury.”
However, they may have an issue playing catch-up to the Kiwis, who have a lot on the line. If they aren’t able to wrest the Auld Mug from Larry Ellison’s hands, it’s likely the New Zealand government won’t chip in for a future campaign – especially if high-tech, billion-dollar boats remain the name of the game.

The Kiwis have already chalked up four points and will need to win just one more of the next three bouts with Italy to advance to the Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals, during which the Swedish team, Artemis, should be back on the water. Spectators won’t see Oracle on the course until September 7, when the America’s Cup final matches commence, however there should be plenty of opportunities to observe their practice sessions with a newly rule-compliant boat.

To that end, it’s worth noting that situating the race close to land for the first time in the Cup’s history, and with a short course completed in multiple laps, was supposed to draw crowds to the shoreline and the television screen. Now that I’ve seen the boats live and on television, I have to admit that so far it’s still a pretty boring sport to watch. Standing near the start line at Marina Green or the finish line at Piers 27/29 may get you flashes of action and watching it on television is like watching a video game.

The best of both worlds is to park as near as possible to the water and get your hands on a portable marine VHF radio tuned to channel 20, which transmits the official America’s Cup broadcast. Then you can hear details on speed and tactics while actually seeing the most unforgettable part of this race – the boats jibing downwind, hitting freeway speeds while foiling with spray flying and crewmembers bouncing from one hull to the other.

That’s still drawing gasps and cheers from the crowd.

Meet Top Chef Marisa Churchill

Maria Poblet
-
0
Meet Top Chef Marisa Churchill

Meet celebrity chef Marisa Churchill and get an autographed copy of her cookbook Sweet & Skinny. Enjoy light bites, gift baskets, and a live healthy cooking demonstration.

A San Francisco native and Season Two Top Chef contender, Marisa’s love for the culinary arts began at a very early age watching her Greek grandmother cooking in the kitchen and preparing delicious dishes for the family. As she grew up, Marisa decided to pursue a full-time career in the culinary arts and enrolled at the prestigious California Culinary Academy where she earned a baking degree.

Be sure to arrive early as giveaways are limited!

Saturday, July 13 from 11am-1pm @ Best Buy, 200 Colma Blvd, Colma

‘Fruitvale Station’ opens! Plus, giant monsters, giant robots, and more new movies!

Sue Vaughan
-
1
‘Fruitvale Station’ opens! Plus, giant monsters, giant robots, and more new movies!

This week marks the opening of Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, a moving look at Oscar Grant’s final hours; it’s an especially important film for Bay Area residents, but will likely have nationwide impact. Check out my interview with rookie writer-director Ryan Coogler here.

And, as always, there’s more. SO MUCH MORE. Emily Savage writes about Peaches Christ‘s campy, vampy, celeb-filled tribute (Sat/13 at the Castro!) to 1996 cult classic The Craft here.

PLUS! Pacific Rim‘s giant robot vs. giant monster smackdown, a 3D surfing doc, and all the rest, after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFRC3sF3Md4

Grown Ups 2 Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, and David Spade reunite for another round of dad comedy. (1:42)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THu4E99uvYw

How to Make Money Selling Drugs Want to see a deeply thought-provoking, well-made documentary (with commentary by The Wire‘s David Simon, among others) about America’s War on Drugs? Seek out last year’s The House I Live In, and give Matthew Cooke’s more superficial distillation of the same subject (does David Simon ever turn down a talking-head request?) a pass. That’s not to say How to Make Money Selling Drugs is a total fail, but its slick production values and gimmicky premise (complete with video game style “levels” tracing the rise through the drug trade) wear thin after awhile. However, Drugs does offer a lively viewing experience, with an array of colorful characters — former dealers and law enforcement officers, with some celebrities sprinkled in — holding forth on, and sometimes bragging about, how drug empires are built and dismantled. Speaking of celebrities, the film’s biggest coup is an eerie interview with Eminem, in which he candidly discusses the depths of his prescription-drug addiction. It’s a rare moment of killer honesty amid Drugs‘ short-attention-span flash. (1:34) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CJ570hqy0c

One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das Born Jeffrey Kagel, “average neurotic Long Island kid,” the man now known as Grammy nominee Krishna Das underwent a spiritual transformation after trying acid, dropping out of college, meeting Be Here Now author Ram Dass, and becoming a follower of Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, a.k.a. Maharaj-ji. A rock ‘n’ roller who declined the chance to join the band that became Blue Oyster Cult, KD’s talents became entwined with his religion years after Maharaj-ji’s death — an emotionally devastating event that led to a brief but raging coke habit. He began performing kirtan, or call-and-response chants, at yoga studios, and (unwittingly or not) became part of a suddenly trendy movement to “make enlightenment accessible,” per the New York Times. Now he’s recorded multiple albums with Rick Rubin and tours the country, playing to rapt audiences at venues as big as the Warfield. Whether or not you can stomach New Age music or philosophy (or share the opinion that Krishna Das once overheard about himself: that he’s “an American burger with Indian ketchup”), Jeremy Frindel’s One Track Heart keeps its running time brief (just over an hour) and avoids deifying its subject — someone who clearly digs the spotlight, but who has also enough done soul-searching to keep his ego mostly in check and a higher power in mind. (1:12) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guMumPFBag

Pacific Rim The fine print insists this film’s title is actually Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures Pacific Rim (no apostrophe, guys?), but that fussy studio demand flies in the face of Pacific Rim‘s pursuit of pure, dumb fun. One is tempted to picture director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro plotting out the battle scenes using action figures — Godzillas vs. Transformers is more or less what’s at play here, and play is the operative word. Sure, the end of the world seems certain, thanks to an invading race of giant “Kaiju” who’ve started to adapt to Earth’s decades-long countermeasures (giant robot suits, piloted by duos whose minds are psychically linked), but there’s far too much goofy glee here for any real panic to accumulate. Charlie Hunnam is agreeable as the wounded hunk who’s humankind’s best hope for salvation, partnered with a rookie (Rinko Kikuchi) who’s eager, for her own reasons, to kick monster butt. Unoriginal yet key supporting roles are filled by Idris Elba (solemn, ass-kicking commander); Charlie Day (goofy science type); and Ron Perlman (flashy-dressing, black-market-dealing Kaiju expert). Pacific Rim may not transcend action-movie clichés or break much new ground (drinking game idea: gulp every time there’s an obvious reference or homage, be it to Toho or Bruckheimer), but damn if it doesn’t pair perfectly with popcorn. (2:11) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0FFV5yGXd4

Storm Surfers 3D With 3D being slapped indiscriminately on too many interchangeable Hollywood flicks these days, it’s easy to forget that there are some subjects that practically beg for the format. Incredibly, it seems no one thought to make a 3D film about surfing, the sport and spectacle to which stereoscopic cinema is ideally suited. Christopher Nelius and Justin McMillan’s movie (actually the third Storm Surfers entry so far) follows best-friend Australian surfing legends Ross Clarke-Jones and Tom Carroll as, guided by surf forecaster Ben Matson, they race off on short notice to various locations where huge storm-fed waves can be expected. This is risky business, and there’s human interest in the two riders’ different ways of struggling with aging (they’re both nearing 50), possibly mortal danger, and family responsibilities. These way heavily on Carroll; nothing does on Clarke-Jones, who is your basic “fuck it, let’s go” thrill junkie. Their genial personalities help spark what’s otherwise a solid if unremarkable surfing doc — albeit one that does indeed look great in 3D. (1:35) (Dennis Harvey)

Nothing could be more super duper than ‘So Super Duper’

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
2
Nothing could be more super duper than ‘So Super Duper’

On Saturday evening in the Castro at 7pm, quite possibly one of the gayest things ever will occur, as queer comics artist Brian Andersen debuts his colorful new teen-friendly, straight-friendly, unabashedly queer So Super Duper volume, which stars “a little gay empathic hero (he can read emotions) named Psyche who doesn’t quite know he’s gay yet – even though it’s painfully obvious to everyone around him.”

It is so cute. And gloriously upping the pink quotient at the book launch, nationally televised diva Jason Brock will be hitting some high notes (he basically ruled the Bike Music Festival a few weeks back). Comics, superheroes, man-divas: It’s a gaysplosion.

I asked the infectiously smiley Brian to talk a little about the So Super Duper‘s inspiration, and he had some very interesting things to say about being a proud femme-y gay guy in a world of macho stereotypes. 

SF Bay Guardian Can you tell me a bit about what inspired you to create such a “super duper” gay hero?

Brian Andersen I’m inspired by my love of comic books, an everlasting and unwavering love for the medium since I was a skinny, gawky, goobery eight-year-old boy saving his recycling money to pick up the latest issue of the X-Men. I still live, breath, and love comic books 30 years and 100 pounds later. 

As for the hero, Psyche, himself, there does seem to be a backlash in the gay community on femme guys. So much attention is put on being “masculine” that often I get online trolls attacking me because my lead character is too “stereotypically gay.” Which is ironic because he’s based off myself! I’m a fruity gay. And so what? I don’t try to be; I’m not putting on some affectation or playing a role in an effort to be more “gay” (whatever that means).

I’m just me. If people can tell I’m gay from space I don’t care! I like being me and I don’t feel the need to try to put on a false masculine identity in order for me to “fit in” with what’s considered sexy and hot in my community. I’d rather be a sexy and hot slightly effeminate gay dude with a few extra pounds and a heart of gold! Just like Julia Roberts in ‘Pretty Woman.’ (She was a gay dude in that movie, right?)

SFBG Is this a “steamy” comic?

BA Although most local indie gay comics revolve around the erotic side of the spectrum (a side I fully and literally embrace) “So Super Duper” isn’t a gay comic based on gay sex (which I also fully and literally embrace. Often.). In fact, there is nary a sex scene at all in “So Super Duper.” There be smooches, oh yes, there be smooches, but overall the gayness of my character isn’t tied solely on whom he likes to sleep with.

SFBG Psyche is based on yourself — do you consider yourself a bit of a superhero?

BA Well, I’m actually a wanted felon from the Shi’ar interplanetary space system. OK, I grew up in small three-bedroom home in Northern California, I don’t presently have superpowers but as a boy I kept diving into toxic waste in the hopes it would eventually bear fruition, I went to Brigham Young University – so yes, I’m another one of those gay Mormons that keep popping up in SF. I didn’t come out as full-fledged homo until I was 26 (a lifetime in modern gay years), and I’ve been with the same man – my first boyfriend ever – for 12 years and we’re still not sick of each other. Yet.

SFBG That’s definitely something super duper!

SO SUPER DUPER LAUNCH PARTY

Sat/13, 7pm-8:30pm, free

Whatever Comics

548 Castro, SF.

www.sosuperduper.com

 

 

On the Cheap

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

On the Cheap listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.

WEDNESDAY 10

Free day for SF residents at the SF Zoo Sloat at Great Highway, SF; www.sfzoo.org. 10am-5pm, free. Prove you live in San Francisco with “a valid driver’s license, a valid identification card or a utility bill with your name and address, along with a valid photo ID” and get free admission. And since the SF Zoo just had a baby boom, this is the perfect chance to admire that Sumatran tiger cub that’s been all over the news, along with wee prairie dogs, a giraffe calf that’s already taller than you, a Chaocan peccary born in late May, and more.

THURSDAY 11

Judy Juanita San Francisco Public Library, Bayview Branch, 5075 Third St, SF; www.sfpl.org. 6:30pm, free. The author reads from Virgin Soul, a novel set in 1960s San Francisco.

“Etsy Meet and Make: Craft Lab Bath Scrubs” Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 Third St, SF; www.sfmcd.org. 7-9pm, $10. Artist Katy Atchison leads this workshop on creating both sugar and salt bath scrubs. Fee includes all materials and advance reservations (sfmcd.eventbrite.com) are recommended.

FRIDAY 12

“Word/Play: Parlor Games for Rusty English Majors” Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7pm, $10. Literary games with an all-star author panel that includes Malinda Lo, Saeed Jones, Nate Waggoner, Casey Childers, Joshua Mohr, and Alani Foxall. Plus, the ten dollar cover gets you access to two hours of open bar.

SATURDAY 13

“Meet the Animals” Randall Museum, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.randallmuseum.org. 11am, free. Tucked in the hills above the Castro is this kid-friendly museum, which among its array of activities features this every-Saturday meet-and-greet with its resident “animal ambassadors,” including birds and amphibians.

“Rolling Writers: Chris Bundy” Rolling-Out Café, 1722 Taravel, SF; www.rollingoutcafe.com. 7pm, free. Bundy reads from his novel Baby You’re a Rich Man.

Michelle Sakhai San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. 3-4pm, free. The artist, who is of both Iranian and Japanese heritage, discusses the Japanese art techniques she uses in her own paintings.

“Women and Human Rights: On the Defensive No Longer” Rockridge Library, 5366 College, Oakl; wilpfeastbay.org/blog. 2-4pm, free. East Bay Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom presents Dr. Rita Maran’s talk on promoting and protecting women’s human rights.

SUNDAY 14

McLaren Park 5K McLaren Park, Mansell and John F. Shelly, SF; www.dserunners.com. 9am, $3-5 (free for ages 10 and under). San Francisco’s oldest and largest running club, the Dolphin South End Runners, hosts frequent fun runs of various distances for members and guests alike. This week’s event is suitable for all ages, as it’s a 3.1-mile jaunt through the trails (paved and unpaved) of scenic McLaren park.

“Occupy U: Present-Day Strategies for Change and Their Effectiveness” Modern Times Bookstore, 2919 24th St, SF; www.moderntimesbookstore.com. 6-8pm, free. Concerned about government spy programs? (If not, uh, why not?) Occupy U leads this discussion of “surveillance self-defense” tactics, using materials from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and elsewhere.

TUESDAY 16

Ophira Eisenberg Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The comedian and writer reads from her first book, Screw Everyone.

Seth Holmes Modern Times Bookstore, 2919 24th St, SF; www.moderntimesbookstore.com. 7pm, free. The local author reads from Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States.

“Poetry Tuesday” Jessie Square, Yerba Buena Gardens, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. 12:30-1:30pm, free. Litquake’s Robin Ekiss guest-curates this reading with Rebecca Foust, James Cagney, Brynn Saito, CJ Evans, Barbara Jane Reyes, and musical guests Jonathan Hirsch and Lara Cushing of Passenger and Pilot

Our Weekly Picks: July 10-16, 2013

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

WEDNESDAY 10

 

Botany’s Breath

Even if you are a plant lover, the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park can intimate you. Taking but a few steps from the Highland to the Lowland Tropics, places that on the outside are hundreds of miles apart, is decidedly weird. But choreographer Kim Epifano loves it. Her Epiphany Productions Sonic Dance Theater’s Botany’s Breath is both a tribute to the natural world and a wake-up call to be mindful of our position within in. Joining Epifano’s eight dancers are excellent collaborators Norman Rutherford and Peter Whitehead (music) Allen Willner (lighting design), and Ellen Bromberg and Ben Estabrook (video design). Space is tight so only 40 people at a time can take in the show.(Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/13, 7:30pm and 9pm, $25–$30

Conservatory of Flowers

100 John F. Kennedy Drive, Golden Gate Park, SF.

conservatoryofflowers.org/special-events

 

The Melodic

The Melodic is like a flavorful snack that hits all the right spots. Pegged as experimental Afro-folk-pop, the London quartet’s delicious harmonies alone are enough to back this, but only one part of its allure — the group is inspired by sounds around the world. While the West African folk is brought by instruments like the Kora, and the Latin influence is evident in the acoustic guitar picking and charango, the songs are also chockfull of poppy melodies and whimsical lyrics. Just as readily though, the group cranks out a song like “Ode to Victor Jara,” with such a heavy tone and earnest lyrics, you’d swear you’re hearing some kind of beautiful eulogy. The point is, the band is mighty versatile, dipping between South American and African influences with a pop edge — and how can that not translate into a great live performance? (Hillary Smith)

With Song Preservation Society and Dyllan Hersey

8:30pm, $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

 

The Flamin’ Groovies

Influential 1960s rockers the Flamin’ Groovies — who delivered wailing cult classics like “Slow Death,” “You Tore Me Down,” and “Shake Some Action” (you know this last one from its resurrection in the film Clueless) — have gone through some serious band changes over the past four decades, with more than 15 members rotating through the legendary group and some legendary rifts in the mix as well. Roy Loney has moved on to Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers. This current lineup is a circle back to Cyril Jordan, Chris Wilson, and George Alexander, who all overlapped in the group from 1971 through ’80. That power-pop lineup played a hastily arranged show in SF earlier this year, its first time together since ’81, but now it’s given you more advance notice. The current crew is rounded out by drummer Victor Penalosa. Don’t miss it again. (Emily Savage)

With Deniz Tek (Radio Birdman), Chuckleberries, DJ Sid Presley

9pm, $25

Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

www.thechapelsf.com

 

THURSDAY 11

 

Molly Ringwald

While Molly Ringwald might be best known for her acting career, having starred in several 1980s hit movies, she has recently returned to her first love, singing. She started performing with her father, a jazz pianist, when she was just a few years old, and recorded and released several songs before turning her attention to acting. Her latest album, Except Sometimes was released earlier this year, and showcases her sultry vocals, along with her love for the classics and a desire to mesh those styles with more contemporary material — such as a jazz rendition of “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” from her film The Breakfast Club. (Sean McCourt)

Through Fri/12, 8pm (also 4pm, Sat/13), $50–$125

Starlite Room, Sir Francis Drake Hotel

450 Powell Street, SF

www.societycabaret.com

 

FRIDAY 12

 

“New Works by Emily Glaubinger // Sean Newport”

This in-store exhibit takes the one-dimensional and make it pop in 3-D. It brings together noted local graphic designer/jewelry-maker Emily Glaubinger’s colorful illustrations of bold patterns and textiles and Sean Newport’s carefully crafted sculptures, “turning her intricate illustrations into 3-D pieces of art.” The “New Works by Emily Glaubinger // Sean Newport” opening event at Mission apparel store Nooworks includes live musical performances by Wild Hum and Philip Manley Life Coach (Glaubinger created the eye-popping album cover for Life Coach’s newest record, Alphawaves). As Glaubinger mentions in the invite, this will be her last local event, for now — she’s moving to Philadelphia. So it will indeed be your final opportunity (in the foreseeable future) to witness the homespun talent of one of SF’s favorite illustrators. (Savage)

Through Sept. 15

Opening tonight, 6-10pm, free

Nooworks

395 Valencia, SF

www.nooworks.com

 

Suspiria and The Exorcist double feature

If there’s anything horror movies of the 1970s taught us, it’s that evil lurks in unexpected places — a comfortable brick manse in Georgetown, or a ballet school in Germany, for example. Tonight, immerse yourself in a double-feature that presents two of the decade’s spookiest standouts. First up is the 1973 film that launched Catholic nightmares galore (and probably just as many head-rotation jokes): William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, presented in director’s-cut form for maximum Captain Howdy thrills. It’s paired with Italian genre master Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria, which is still crazy after all these years — and is the perfect flick to get you pumped for soundtrack artist Goblin’s October tour stop in San Francisco. (Cheryl Eddy)

The Exorcist, 7pm; Suspiria, 9:30pm, $8.50–$11

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

 

“David King’s Odd Alcove”

Iconography and graphic design have long been integral to the ethos of punk. For a certain sect, there’s no stronger symbol than the iconic, anarcho-punk Crass logo (once explained by the designer David King as “a cross and a diagonal, negating serpent, formed into a circle.” This week, Needles and Pens will present “David King’s Odd Alcove,” a solo show and book release for The Secret Origins of the Crass Symbol, which will include Crass graphics, photographs, wood constructions, “hi-art, lo-art, and more.” King, who grew up in London, met Crass’ Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher in art school, lived with the band at Dial House, created illustrations for Crass and other acts, formed his own bands, and migrated to San Francisco during the early 1980s punk explosion. He’s remained here ever since, and now brings an assortment of personal treasures for this show. (Savage)

Through Aug. 12

Opening tonight, 7-9pm, free

Needles and Pens

3253 16th St., SF

(415) 255-1534

www.needlesandpens.com

 

Winfred E. Eye

Rough around the edges but smooth when he wants to be, Winfred E. Eye frontperson Aaron Calvert crafts compelling tunes no matter where he takes them. From blues to folk to rock, Calvert’s haggard, sing-talk style surprisingly doesn’t get old. “Moonlight touches on the snow, moonlight touches on my soul,” yelps Calvert in “Money in Bank,” a hybrid tune of country and rock’n’roll. The group’s songs work on low frequencies, never using volume as a crutch to get listeners pumped. Instead, it employs eloquent yet accessible lyrics, smooth vocals, and tight rhythms to draw a crowd. (Smith)

With Glacier and Beware of Safety

9:30pm, $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415)626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

Acid Pauli

Punk bands, Bjork productions, hip-hop projects, an ambient album on Nicolas Jaar’s label, mixes for Crosstown Rebels: Martin Gretschmann has many musical roles and aliases. In DJ mode as Acid Pauli, the guy sends me Googling every time, re-energizing my excitement for new sounds. Half the time it’s something I’ve never heard like the wonky jazz romp of Der Dritte Raum’s “Swing Bop,” or tectonically teutonic deep house of Gunther Lause’s “Mountain.” (Where the school children astral pop on Jan Turkenburg’s “In My Spaceship” came from I. Just. Don’t. Know.) Even when it’s as familiar as Nancy Sinatra or Johnny Cash, Gretschmann reworkings are something else entirely. At this debut three+ hour set, I expect to see at least few cell phones on the dance floor, Shazam-ing to keep up. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Eduardo Castillo (Crosstown Rebels/Voodoo),

9pm-3:30am, $12 presale

Public Works

161 Erie St., SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

SATURDAY 13

Creepy KOFY Movie Time: The Golem

Keeping the tradition of the old-school local late-night horror host TV show alive and well — or perhaps undead and twisted would be better terms — the ghouls, er, guys behind “Creepy KOFY Movie Time” are getting out of their cave/studio and hosting a special party at one of the oldest theaters in the city. Featuring a screening of the classic 1920 horror flick The Golem (with new music by Hob Goblin) co-hosts Balrok, Webberly, and Slob will be on hand for the festivities that will also include live music from their house band the Deadlies, a bevy of beautiful Cave Girls, beer, prizes, and more. (McCourt)

9pm, $7.50–$10

Balboa Theater

3630 Balboa, SF

cinemasf.com/balboa

 

MONDAY 15

Langhorne Slim and the Law

Langhorne Slim and the Law is jumpy, chipper, and a whole lot of fun on stage — which is par for the course because it doesn’t need any of that. The group’s raw energy and commitment to its songs is seen in the stand-up bassist’s wriggly plucking, in the way Sean Scolnick approaches the mic like he’s communicating an urgent truth, and in the obvious connection they all share on stage. The group’s acoustic sound jumps as easily into foot-stomping folk as it does to soul and dirty rock. And Scolnick’s dynamic vocals thread it all together. One thing you can be sure of is there will never be a lack of energy or zeal at a Langhorne show. And with Easy Leaves on the bill, this show might just have double. (Smith)

With Easy Leaves

8pm, $20

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415)771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

TUESDAY 16

The Jazz Coffin Emergency Ensemble

If the free jazz sets on Wednesdays at Amnesia have taught us anything, it’s that hipsters can A) swing dance surprisingly well and B) appreciate music un-ironically when it comes without a price tag. The Jazz Coffin Emergency Ensemble promises standards from the 1950s and ’60s, a period when jazz was really evolving its own sub-genres. The band describes its set as verging on funk and march/dirge-heavy. This is the group’s second concert at El Rio and the price is certainly right. Hell, if that’s not enticing enough, for just $4 at 6:30pm before the show, Science, Neat, a monthly science happy hour that pairs short talks with live demos, will be on the patio with this month’s theme “Brains! Brains! Brains?” It’s the perfect opportunity to get your mind blown during a bustling happy hour at a colorful bar before enjoying some old favorites and a cheap buzz. (Ilan Moskowitz)

With Science, Neat (6:30 p.m. on the patio, $4 donation)

8pm, free

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.elriosf.com

 

Summer ghouls

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Summer ghouls

emilysavage@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY In these past three years, Phono Del Sol has built itself up into a tastemaker midsummer’s indie music fest — and it’s one to watch. It makes sense: the one-day fest is curated by on-the-pulse local blog, the Bay Bridged.

And beyond the interesting (and mostly local) band choices — the first year featured Aesop Rock and Mirah, last year the Fresh and Onlys and Mwahaha, and this year Thee Oh Sees, YACHT, Bleached, and K. Flay will headline — there’s something about the approach and atmosphere that calms the nerves.

It’s in the Mission’s Potrero Del Sol park, a hilly, grassy area bordered by an active skate park. During the fest, skaters whizz by near the bands, and street food vendors offer salty snacks on the other side of the stage.

The event tends to inhabit a particular San Francisco garage scene vibe of yesteryear, apart from current complications brewing in the nearby neighborhood between the old and new, the tech workers and SF lifers.

One of the newest bands on this year’s bill fits this feeling as well, the young garage pop four-piece Cool Ghouls. The psych-inflected group is relaxed and gracious, perhaps not yet jaded by the outlying music community or industry. And they’ll be bringing a horn section to Phono Del Sol this year. (Sat/13, 11:30am-7pm, $20. Potrero Del Sol Park, 25th Street at Utah, SF. www.phonodelsol.com).

Cool Ghouls, named after a phrase George Clinton used in a Parliament Funkadelic concert film, are a bit giggly during our conversation from lead guitarist Ryan Wong’s Duboce Park area apartment. They seem new to this whole recognition thing, and thusly, speak candidly, and nearly in circles. Singer Pat McDonald, bassist Pat Thomas, and Wong all grew up in the Bay Area, attending high school in Benicia together, and met up again in San Francisco after college. Alex Fleshman met the others when he went to San Francisco State University.

They formed in early 2011 and began playing shows almost immediately — in early spring of that year, showing up at brick-and-mortar spots, house shows, even Serra Bowl before it closed, and at Noise Pop. That’s where they first crossed my path, as they began popping up at shows on a frequent basis. “Now, we’re being asked to play more local shows then we can play,” Thomas says. “Pat McDonald seems to know a lot of people somehow, maybe it’s his hair? Or he’s just like, really nice.”

Their self-titled debut full-length, recorded by Tim Cohen of Fresh and Onlys and Magic Trick, saw release this April on Empty Cellar Records. “We thought we could record a whole album by ourselves, so we recorded 90 percent of it on an eight-track recorder,” Wong says. “We showed Arvel [Hernandez], who runs Empty Cellar Records…he told us ‘the songs are really good but the recording is just shitty.'”

He enlisted Cohen to record it, and said he’d release it on Empty Cellar. They were ecstatic with the revelation, and excited to work with the talented Cohen. They spent a few days in his Western Addition home, rerecording the full album while crammed in Cohen’s bedroom at the top of a towering Victorian near Alamo Square.

Cohen’s since become a de facto advocate for the band, writing a glowing press release about Cool Ghouls and the album, in which he defiantly explains “First things first: Cool Ghouls are not a retro act… Truth be told, this being their first official release, they may even be a bit naïve in their dogged pursuit of the true-blue, home-spun, rock and roll lifestyle.”

Though he later concedes, “If one were to ascribe to them a ’60s-reverent description, as one often does in the case of San Francisco bands, one would most likely find an artistic kinship with some of the most inimitable, idiosyncratic, yet unmistakably influential bands of the retro-fitting oeuvre. The Troggs, The Monks, Sir Douglas Quintet come to mind immediately. (Save your Kinks and Rolling Stones references.) Like the aforementioned, the Ghouls are natural heirs to the folkloric lineage which precedes them, adding dashes of weirdness where needed.”

The group laughs when I bring up the Cohen praise, “it’s so funny things people take away from press releases…but he did a really good job of writing that, I didn’t even know he understood us that well,” Thomas says. “He doesn’t give you that much in person, he’s a pretty stoic guy, so it’s been really cool to see that through all of that, he was digging us.”

“We were all kind of intimidated, then that came out, and I didn’t have any idea he was even writing anything,” Wong adds.

The Ghouls are democratic, and all are multi-instrumentalists, with each group member writing songs and bringing the skeletons to the group to flesh out. And many of the tracks on the album do evoke that garage pop weirdness Cohen identified, and also a casual self-awareness.

Thomas wrote joyful first single “Natural Life” quickly and brought it to the band. The perfectly corresponding video by his film student brother Rob Thomas features the band frolicking in the Marin Headlands and Sutro Baths. “That whole organic approach, natural approach, putting your pieces in place and then just winging it, is something that we generally do — it keeps it collaborative,” Thomas says.

Another standout, is mid-tempo “Witches Game,” which singer McDonald wrote, starting with the fuzzy guitar riff that rides strong through the track.

Woozy, surfy “Grace” was one of the first songs they ever played together, and usually closes out their live sets. And they agree that jangly psych-pop “Queen Sophie” was one of the more collaborative songs. There’ll be a proper video for that one out soon too.

“The whole album was a group effort. I think of it as a specific piece of where we were at when we recorded it,” Wong says.

The album artwork is worth noting as well, a collage-painting made by Thomas with a big glittery sun, swirly watercolor images of clouds, snowy mountaintops, red-yellow fire, and a colorful rooster. The images weren’t meant necessarily to reflect the songs on the album, but ended up having some meaning after the fact.

“I was just trying to represent what I lean toward anyway, like if it’s a painting I make, it’ll probably evoke the music I make, just because I’m making both of them,” Thomas says. “But liked the rooster image because I was thinking about the way roosters strut, and this is our first album.”

Wong pipes up, “I feel the way the album is with these songs, [it’s about] the morning, and the ideas of the natural life. It’s appropriate because it’s our first album, but maybe I’m looking too much into it?”

Cool Ghouls will move on soon anyway — they’re currently prepping new songs and plan to record a second album this August.

 

DAVINCI

Fillmore District-raised emcee DaVinci plays this free show alongside fellow burgeoning local rap duo Main Attrakionz, Young Gully, Shady Blaze, Ammbush, and Sayknowledge. DaVinci has been releasing tracks for a few years, in late 2012 dropping full-length The MOEna Lisa with an ode to SF in track “In My City” with the telling lyric, “Trying to push us out of the city/but we ain’t leaving,” in a hoarse whisper, but also referencing favorite spots like the waffle house at Fillmore and Eddy (Gussies).

Wed/10, 9pm, free. Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF; www.brickandmortarmusic.com.

 

JAPONIZE ELEPHANTS

The elegant yet spooky old-world-carnival act Japonize Elephants — noted for drawing sounds from eclectic styles like gypsy jazz, bluegrass, and klezmer — will celebrate the vinyl release party for newest album Mélodie fantastique, this week at Amnesia. Go, and witness all the instrumentation you can handle (fiddle, banjo, glockenspiel, vibraphone, accordion, percussion, surf guitar), along with four-part vocal harmonies. A group of waltzing ghosts, like the ones you find on the Haunted Mansion ride, wouldn’t seem out of place here.

Thu/11, 9:30pm, $7–$10. Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF. www.amnesiathebar.com.

 

We are the weirdos, mister

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
We are the weirdos, mister

emilysavage@sfbg.com

FILM RuPaul’s Drag Race season four winner Sharon Needles and boyfriend/season five finalist Alaska Thunderfuck rarely do live shows together. But for Peaches Christ, and her stage-and-screen showing of witchtacular occult movie The Craft (1996), they made an exception.

The Pittsburgh-based couple will star alongside one another in Christ’s Craft-based pre-movie play, as pure evil “Nancy” (originally played to perfection by wild-eyed, real life Wiccan actress Fairuza Balk) and Neve Campbell’s scarred and shy “Bonnie.” The rest of the gothy teen coven will be filled out by Christ as good witch “Sarah” and San Francisco’s first RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Honey Mahogany as “Rochelle.”

“It’s such a foursome vehicle,” Christ says in a phone call. “I said to Sharon, ‘how do you feel about working with your boyfriend?’ Obviously it makes more sense for them to split themselves up and do more gigs. And especially since Sharon was such a phenomenon and Alaska is now coming fresh off the show, and she was such a hit. But I said, ‘see if you’ll make an exception for me?'”

Christ has been sending up cult classics in San Francisco since 1998, and says that it’s become increasingly clear that she needs to keep looking for newly cult titles. (This November look out for 9 to 5 with Pandora Boxx , and likely, a Clueless send-up.) “[The Craft] was brought to my attention by some of my fans these past few years, so I rewatched it and determined like, oh my god, why did I ever dismiss this? It’s witchy goth girls. It’s everything, it’s grunge, it’s goth, it’s witch.”

And Thunderfuck and Needles were both enamored of the film from an early age.

“It was like, one of those movies that everyone knew and saw when I was in high school and it made us feel like we were witches too, which we weren’t, we were just like, nerdy theater kids,” Thunderfuck nasally says from a Best Western hotel in Chicago. “But it made us feel really badass. And everyone was a weirdo in high school anyway.”

“And I’m from the ’90s so the witchcraft was always there,” Needles adds.

The film has grown cult thanks to now-iconic scenes of the witches looking fierce at Catholic school, walking in a line down the hallways with sexy ’90s music filling the montages. Favorites scenes by the performers include the ones of the witches down at the beach, intensely invoking “Manon” then passing out after an electric bolt hits Nancy, or the next morning, walking by beached whales and sharks, or giddily casting spells on another while driving through town, or vividly messing with teen-queen parties, and throwing sleazy jerks out of windows.

During our conversation, Needles perfectly intones the Nancy line, “then why are you still bleeding?!”

“I’ll tell you, this was one of the hardest and most challenging stage plays I’ve ever had to write, because the movie is so full of moments that people love, trying to cram them into a 50-minute stage show was almost impossible — I had to go back in and kind of kill babies here and there,” Christ says. “My memory of it was that it was a lot tamer, and a lot more PG-13 then it is. It’s actually rated R and it’s harsh, and in some ways really horrifying. The way the girls treat each other, even despite the violence or the snakes — I hate snakes — just the meanness of the witches.”

That meanness should play out in some deviously amusing ways during Christ’s The Craft: Of Drag show before the film. The queens play themselves emulating characters in the movie, with key scenes thrown in (someone will get thrown out of a window, and there will be a levitating “light as a feather, stiff as a board” moment) — but with a Drag Race twist. The reason the witches all turn on Christ’s “Sarah” this time, is because she’s never been on Drag Race.

This inevitably leads to the question of why not? “I don’t think I’d survive,” Christ says. “I’ve said this to Sharon, I admire them so much for being able to go on that show but Peaches is a very established character that I’ve been doing for a long, long, long time, so it’s very hard for me in a lot of ways to be flexible. You know, I always wear that Bozo the Clown paint, and I just know I’d be ripped to shreds,” she says. Though she has been sending out signals to producers World of Wonder and RuPaul that she should come on as a guest judge for a hypothetical Scream Queen challenge.

It was the show, however, that first introduced her to Needles — Elvira was the guest judge on the first episode of Needles’ season, and she fell in love with the queen (who spurts blood from her mouth during her runway walk). Elvira immediately told Christ, and that’s why she first reached out to Needles, last year.

Along with heaps of praise for Elvira, and the show in general, Needles and Thunderfuck both tell me the drama in their seasons was all real.

Says Needles, “When you take 13 adult males and dress them up like teenage girls, take away their cigarettes and booze, and force them in front of a camera for 16 hours a day for two months, you don’t need a producer or a storyboard, it writes itself.”

PEACHES CHRIST PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS THE CRAFT

Sat/13, 3pm and 8pm, $25

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

WEDNESDAY 10

Laborfest: CCSF’s accreditation crisis City College of San Francisco, Mission Campus, 1125 Valencia, SF. www.saveccsf.org. 6-8pm, free. City College serves about 85,000 students and faces threat of closure in July 2014 if its appeals to the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, which has threatened to revoke the school’s accreditation in a year, aren’t successful. At this forum, Marty Hittelman, former president of the California Federal of Teachers, will speak on accreditation and the ACCJC. Sponsored by Save CCSF Coalition and AFT 2121.

THURSDAY 11

Laborfest panel: The press and the powerful First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1187 Franklin, SF. www.laborfest.net. 7-9pm, free. Gray Brechin, author of Imperial San Francisco, will join Westside Observer publisher George Wooding, former Berkeley Daily Planet reporter Richard Brenneman, and former Bay Guardian reporter Savannah Blackwell for a panel talk on the erosion of investigative journalism in the face of commercialization and monopolization of the media.

SUNDAY 14

Panel: The continuing battle for free expression Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF. www.ginsbergfestival.com. 3-5pm, $12. Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem, Howl, represented a landmark in the history of freedom of speech, obscenity issues, and the censorship of literary works. This panel talk, led by Peter Maravelis of City Lights Booksellers with panelists Rebecca Farmer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Mark Rumold of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project, will focus on the continuing fight against censorship today. Presented in conjunction with The Allen Ginsberg Festival and the exhibition Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

TUESDAY 16

Green renters expo Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, Berk. Ecologycenter.org. 7-9pm, free. Who says you have to own a home to live a green and energy efficient lifestyle? The Bay Area offers a myriad of resources for renters who wish to green their living spaces with efficiency upgrades, which can also help save money. Representatives from Rising Sun Energy Center, Community Energy Services Corps, the City of Berkeley Recycling Program, Stopwaste.org, the Ecology Center and others will be on hand to offer presentations, tips and advice, and to answer questions.

 

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Endgame Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; www.itetheater.org. $18-24. Previews Thu/11, 8pm. Opens Fri/12, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through July 20. International Theater Ensemble performs Samuel Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd classic.

Keith Moon: The Real Me Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $40. Opens Wed/10, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 28. Mick Berry performs the world premiere of his solo play about the Who drummer.

Wunderworld Creativity Theater, 221 Fourth St, SF; www.wunderworld.net. $10-15. Opens Sat/13, 11am and 2pm. Runs Sat-Sun, 2pm (also Sat, 11am; Sun, 5pm). Through Aug 11. Sara Moore and Michael Phillis wrote and star in this “world-premiere human cartoon,” a pantomime about an elderly Alice going back down the rabbit hole.

BAY AREA

The Loudest Man on Earth Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; www.theatreworks.org. $19-73. Previews Wed/10-Fri/12, 8pm. Opens Sat/13, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Aug 4. TheatreWorks presents the world premiere of Catherine Rush’s unconventional romantic comedy starring acclaimed actor Adrian Blue, who is deaf.

The Spanish Tragedy Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 890 Bella, Dominican University of California, San Rafael; www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-37.50. Opens Fri/12, 8pm. Presented in repertory Fri-Sun through Aug 11; visit website for performance schedule. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Thomas Kyd’s Elizabethan revenge tragedy.

The Wiz Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-60. Previews Thu/11, 7pm; Sat/13, 2pm. Opens Sat/13, 7pm. Runs Wed-Thu and Sat, 7pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, noon and 5pm. Through Aug 25. Berkeley Playhouse travels to Oz with the Tony-winning musical.

ONGOING

Betrayal Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, Sixth Flr, SF; www.offbroadwaywest.org. $40. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through July 20. Off Broadway West Theatre Company performs Harold Pinter’s out-of-sequence drama about an unfaithful married couple.

Can You Dig It? Back Down East 14th — the 60s and Beyond Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 25. Solo performer Don Reed returns with a prequel to his autobiographical coming-of-age hits, East 14th and The Kipling Hotel.

Chance: A Musical Play About Love, Risk, and Getting it Right Alcove Theater, 415 Mason, Fifth Flr, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $40-60. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun, 5pm. Through July 28. New Musical Theater of San Francisco presents Richard Isen’s world premiere work inspired by the writings of Oscar Wilde.

Dark Play, or Stories for Boys Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.theexit.org. $5-20. Fri/12-Sat/13, 9pm. Do It Live! Productions offers a steadily engrossing production of this slippery play from Chicago playwright Carlos Murillo, wherein a less-then-trusty teenage narrator, Nick (a clever, tightly wound, darkly charming Will Hand), addicted to “making shit up,” recounts his fateful internet-baiting of a fellow teen upon whom he had become fixated. As the unwitting object of Nick’s desire, sweet guy Adam (Adam Magil) gets pulled into an online love affair with Rachel (Amy Nowak), his first love, and — as fate and Nick would have it — Nick’s sister. But Rachel exists only online. And her equally fantastical evil stepdad (Nathan Tucker) soon intercedes, throwing Nick and Adam closer together. All of this disembodied desire floating around the ether leads to a physical climax even Freud might find a bit much, but the way there proves increasingly tense and interesting — if also a little frustrating itself at times in some strained plot points and, especially, its overwrought psychopathologizing of homoerotic desire. (Erik LaDue’s awkward set design also takes a little getting over.) But despite various flaws, the story intrigues, thanks to the solid performances from director Logan Ellis’s sure cast. Tucker and Kelly Rauch are dependable throughout in a varied range of sharp and often hilarious supporting roles. Nowak’s take on the vital (albeit imaginary) teen heroine is refreshingly straightforward. And Hand, while slightly slower to catch fire, ends up a persuasively complex figure at the center of it all. (Avila)

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

God of Carnage Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.com. $26-38. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 7. Shelton Theater peforms Yasmina Reza’s award-winning play about class and parenting.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $27-43. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. John Cameron Mitchell’s cult musical comes to life with director Nick A. Olivero’s ever-rotating cast.

In A Daughter’s Eyes Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. $15. Thu/11-Sat/13, 8pm; Sun/14, 3pm. Brava! for Women in the Arts and Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience present the award-winning 2011 play by A. Zell Williams. It’s a tense, sophisticated exploration of the politics of class and race in the story of two daughters drawn together in uneasy alliance over a legal case that forever scarred each of their families. Based on the story of journalist-activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, placed on death row in 1982 for allegedly killing a Philadelphia police officer (he was removed form death row in 2012 but remains in prison), Williams’s well written and unpredictable two-hander takes place in the legal office of Rahema Abu-Salaam (a tough, tightly wound Britney Frazier), the young Stanford law graduate trying to get a new trial for her father, a well known Black Panther, author, and death row political prisoner. To this end, she’s convinced Katherine Tinney (a quietly forlorn, conflicted Lisa Anne Porter), daughter of the murdered white police officer with a checkered past, to craft a statement to the court requesting admittance of heretofore unexamined evidence. Director Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe and her excellent cast astutely draw out the subtleties and mounting tension in a timely and involving political play, convincingly re-set in West Oakland, that forgoes easy answers for a complicated portrait of competing filial claims to justice. (Avila)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. It seems a no-brainer. Not just the HBO series itself — that’s definitely missing some gray matter — but putting it onstage as a drag show. Mais naturellement! Why was Sex and the City not conceived of as a drag show in the first place? Making the sordid not exactly palatable but somehow, I don’t know, friendlier (and the canned a little cannier), Velvet Rage Productions mounts two verbatim episodes from the widely adored cable show, with Trannyshack’s Heklina in a smashing portrayal of SJP’s Carrie; D’Arcy Drollinger stealing much of the show as ever-randy Samantha (already more or less a gay man trapped in a woman’s body); Lady Bear as an endearingly out-to-lunch Miranda; and ever assured, quick-witted Trixxie Carr as pent-up Charlotte. There’s also a solid and enjoyable supporting cast courtesy of Cookie Dough, Jordan Wheeler, and Leigh Crow (as Mr. Big). That’s some heavyweight talent trodding the straining boards of bar Rebel’s tiny stage. The show’s still two-dimensional, even in 3D, but noticeably bigger than your 50″ plasma flat panel. Update: new episodes began May 15. (Avila)

So You Can Hear Me Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through July 20. A 23-year-old with no experience, just high spirits and big ideals, gets a job in the South Bronx teaching special ed classes and quickly finds herself in over her head. Safiya Martinez, herself a bright young woman from the projects, delivers this inspired accounting of her time not long ago in perhaps the most neglected sector of the public school system — a 60-minute solo play that makes up for its relatively slim plot with a set of deft, powerful, lovingly crafted characterizations. These complex portraits, alternately hysterical and startling, offer their own moving ruminations on a violent but also vibrant stratum of American society, deeply fractured by pervasive poverty and injustice and yet full of restive young personalities too easily dismissed, ignored, or crudely caricatured elsewhere. An effervescent, big-hearted, and very talented performer, Martinez’s own bounding personality and contagious passion for her former students (as complicated as that relationship was), makes this deeply felt tribute all the more memorable. (Avila)

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through August 24. Self-awareness, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement — for these things we turn to the professionals: the self-empowerment coaches, the self-help authors and motivational speakers. What’s the good of having a “self” unless someone shows you how to use it? Writer-performer Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook wants to sell you on a better you, but his “Better Than You” weekend seminar (and tie-in book series, assorted CDs, and other paraphernalia) belies a certain divided loyalty in its own self-flattering title. The bitter fruit of the personal growth industry may sound overly ripe for the picking, but Bodden’s deftly executed “seminar” and its behind-the-scenes reveals, directed by Mark Kenward, explore the terrain with panache, cool wit, and shrewd characterization. As both writer and performer, Bodden keeps his Steve Seabrook just this side of overly sensational or maudlin, a believable figure, finally, whose all-too-ordinary life ends up something of a modest model of its own. (Avila)

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through July 27. Thrillpeddlers and director Russell Blackwood continue their Theatre of the Ridiculous series with this 1971 musical from San Francisco’s famed glitter-bearded acid queens, the Cockettes, revamped with a slew of new musical material by original member Scrumbly Koldewyn, and a freshly re-minted book co-written by Koldewyn and “Sweet Pam” Tent — both of whom join the large rotating cast of Thrillpeddler favorites alongside a third original Cockette, Rumi Missabu (playing diner waitress Brenda Breakfast like a deliciously unhinged scramble of Lucille Ball and Bette Davis). This is Thrillpeddlers’ third Cockettes revival, a winning streak that started with Pearls Over Shanghai. While not quite as frisky or imaginative as the production of Pearls, it easily charms with its fine songs, nifty routines, exquisite costumes, steady flashes of wit, less consistent flashes of flesh, and de rigueur irreverence. The plot may not be very easy to follow, but then, except perhaps for the bubbly accounting of the notorious New York flop of the same show 42 years ago by Tent (as poisoned-pen gossip columnist Vedda Viper), it hardly matters. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Through July 21. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns after a month-long hiatus with his popular, kid-friendly bubble show.

BAY AREA

Oil and Water This week: Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding, Alameda; www.sfmt.org. $15-25. Also Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose, Berk; www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat/13-Sun/14, 2pm. At various NorCal venues through Sept. 2. It’s a rough year for mimes, or at any rate for the San Francisco Mime Troupe who, after presenting 53 seasons of free theater in the parks of San Francisco (and elsewhere), faced a financial crisis in April that threatened to shut down this season before it even started. The resultant show, funded by an influx of last-minute donations, is one cut considerably closer to the bone than in previous years. With a cast of just four actors and two musicians, plus a stage considerably less ornate then usual, even the play has shrunk in scale, from one two-hour musical to two loosely-connected one-acts riffing on general environmentalist themes. In Deal With the Devil, a surprisingly sympathetic (not to mention downright hawt) Devil (Velina Brown) shows up to help an uncertain president (Rotimi Agbabiaka) regain his conscience and win back his soul, while in Crude Intentions adorable, progressive, same-sex couple Gracie (Velina Brown) and Tomasa (Lisa Hori-Garcia) wind up catering a “benefit” shindig for the Keystone XL Pipeline giving them the opportunity to perpetrate a little guerilla direct action on a bombastic David Koch (Hugo E Carbajal) with a “mole de petróleo” and a smartphone. Throughout, the performers remain upbeat if somewhat over-extended as they sing, dance, and slapstick their way to the sobering conclusion that the time to turn things around in the battles over global environmental protection is now — or never. (Gluckstern)

Sea of Reeds Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Aug 18. Josh Kornbluth’s brand new comedy — it involves atheism, oboes, and the Book of Exodus — opens at Shotgun Players “before it goes on Torah.”

Superior Donuts Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-30. Thu/11-Sat/13, 8pm; Sun/14, 2pm. Pear Avenue Theatre performs Tracy Letts’ comedy about the redemptive power of friendship.

This Is How It Goes Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through July 28. An awkward love triangle between former high school classmates gets the caustic Neil LaBute treatment in Aurora Theatre Company’s production of This is How it Goes. Not content to merely skewer the familiar battles between the sexes, LaBute further prods his captive audience with the big stick of race relations, and the often unacknowledged prejudices that lurk in the hearts of men. And women. There are no innocents in this play, though each character certainly has moments where they play upon audience sympathies, only to betray them a few inflammatory lines later. As the marriage between the successful yet self-conscious African American alpha male Cody (Aldo Billingslea) and his neurotically placating Caucasian wife Belinda (Carrie Paff) erodes, the mostly affable (and former fat kid) “Man” (Gabriel Marin) insinuates himself in the middle of their troubled relationship, obviously still carrying the torch for Belinda he did 15 years ago — as well as the same wary animosity an unpopular kid carries for the star of the track team, in this case, Cody. All three actors do a very good job of shape-shifting between their middle-class Jekyll and Hyde selves, assisted in part by Marin’s amiable asides, which don’t so much lull the audience as tease them with the idea that things are about to get better, when they can only get worse. (Gluckstern)

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason, SF; www.improv.org. Fri, 8pm. Through July 26. $20. BATS Improv performs spontaneous shows based on current events.

“Botany’s Breath” Conservatory of Flowers, 100 JFK Dr, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.conservatoryofflowers.org. Wed/10-Sat/13, 7:30-8:30pm and 9-10pm (short, free outdoor video/dance performances take place each night from 8:30-9pm). $30. Epiphany Productions Sonic Dance Theater performs a site-specific contemporary dance work.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sat/13, July 21, and 27, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Courage” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/12-Sat/13, 8pm. $10-15. Rasika Kumar presents a solo Bharatanatyam performance.

“Mission Position Live” Cinecave, 1034 Valencia, SF; www.missionpositionlive.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Stand-up comedy with rotating performers.

“Randy Roberts: Live!” Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. Tue, 9pm. Through July 23. $30. The famed female impersonator takes on Cher, Better Midler, and other stars.

“The Rape of Lucretia” Everett Auditorium, 450 Church, SF; www.merola.org. Thu/11, 7:30pm; Sat/13, 2pm. $25-60. Merola Opera Program presents Britten’s chamber opera.

Red Hots Burlesque El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.redhotsburlesque.com. Wed, 7:30-9pm. Ongoing. $5-10. Come for the burlesque show, stay for OMG! Karaoke starting at 8pm (no cover for karaoke).

“San Francisco Magic Parlor” Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

“Union Square Live” Union Square, between Post, Geary, Powell, and Stockton, SF; www.unionsquarelive.org. Through Oct 9. Free. Music, dance, circus arts, film, and more; dates and times vary, so check website for the latest.

“Yerba Buena Gardens Festival” Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission between 3rd and 4th Sts, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. Through Oct 15. Free. This week: AXIS Dance Company, inMotion Dance Workshop (Sun/14, 1-2pm).

1...414243...254Page 42 of 254

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