Live Archives — Page 51 of 254 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Alerts

April 30, 2013

WEDNESDAY 1

May Day immigrant rights march 24th and Mission, SF. 3pm march, 5pm rally, free. The San Francisco Bay Coalition for Immigrant Justice invites all to join this year’s May Day immigrant rights march, convened to urge Congressional representatives to fight for improvements to the recently unveiled federal immigration reform proposal bill. The march will begin at 24th and Mission and proceed to Civic Center for a 5pm rally.

May Day celebration 518 Valencia, SF. www.518valencia.org. 3-8pm, free. After the May Day marches and rallies have come to an end, head over to the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics for a celebration of international worker solidarity, featuring a theater performance on the history of May Day by the Shaping SF Players on the history of Mayday, live screen printing, Cumbia beats, Aztec dance, protest art, sangria and beer.

SATURDAY 4

Movies that motivate change The New Parkway Theater, 474 24th St, Oakl. tinyurl.com/chngmovie. (510) 568-0702 6:30pm, $15–$100. In honor of the 20th anniversary of the Rose Foundation, attend this party and film festival and enjoy beer, wine, a silent auction, and four film screenings. Featuring Trash, a documentary exploration of global waste; 16 Seeds, a film highlighting the role of people of color in the Bay Area food justice movement; A Fierce Green Fire (Act 2), documenting the environmental battle over Love Canal, and a film about the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment.

SUNDAY 5

Justice for Tristan art opening La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berkl. Lapena.org. 7pm, free. This art opening will feature photos and art by Tristan Anderson, an activist who sustained a serious injury when he was struck with a teargas canister fired by the Israeli Defense Forces in 2009. Anderson’s art will be set to the sounds of 40 Thieves’ revolutionary hip hop, Nepantler@s’ queer Chicano punk, and more. Free Food Not Bombs dinner at the Long Haul, across the street, at 5:30pm before the program.

MONDAY 6

Debating “sustainable capitalism” Commonwealth Club, 595 Market, SF. www.climate-one.org. 5:30pm, $20. As a consumer, how do you know if a product billed as eco-friendly is the genuine article, or just greenwashing? Join Aron Cramer, CEO of Business for Social Responsibility, and Andrea Thomas of Walmart for an intriguing discussion on “the promise and perils of a move toward so-called sustainable capitalism.”

TUESDAY 7

Panel: Communities doing it for themselves RallyPad, 144 2nd St, SF. www.communitiesforthemselves.eventbrite.com. 6pm, free. Join the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Social Enterprise Alliance for “Communities Doing it for Themselves,” a look at how UK community activists are utilizing “creative finance” to invest in local communities. Hear from panelists Jim Brown, of Community Shares; John Avalos, SF District 11 Supervisor; Charlie Sciammas of PODER and others for an exploration of how these strategies could be used by US social activists and entrepreneurs.

You want scary? We’ve got an eviction map

Zelda Bronstein

April 30, 2013

205

You want scary? We’ve got an eviction map

You want to see something frightening on a lovely afternoon? Check out this amazing interactive map of Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco put together by Brian Whitty.

It’s stunning: Between 1997 and 2013, it seems as if most of the Mission, Noe Valley, North Beach, the Marina, and Potrero Hill was evicted. Hundreds and hundreds of apartments turned into TICs, which now want to convert to condos. Hundreds and hundreds of tenants, who once had rent-controlled apartments, losing their homes — and given the price of housing, losing their ability to live in San Francisco.

Each little red flag is a human tragedy. Each one represents a transforming city that no longer has room for the middle class, much less poor people. It makes we want to cry. Or throw up. Or something.

Bay to Breakers: Go naked, everyone!

Zelda Bronstein

April 30, 2013

I realize security is a serious issue after Boston. And I’m all for public safety. So if the city is going to ban backpacks at Bay to Breakers, (just for runners, or for spectators, too? How can that be enforced?), we might as well take the next logical step:

More naked runners.

Run naked and you can’t hide a bomb. Run naked and you are no security threat to anyone. In fact, public nudity is one of the best defenses against terrorism; have you ever heard of a naked terrorist?

Let’s go all the way. The runners. The spectators. The casual passers-by, the folks who happen to live along the route …. banning backpacks is just a start. Ban clothes. All day, all along the 7.5 miles. A naked city is a safe city.

Scott Wiener can stay home.

Live shots: Baby Dee and Little Annie at Amnesia

Sue Vaughan

April 29, 2013

Baby Dee and Little Annie are a match made in camp heaven. The women, nearing their 60s, may have only been playing for 25 people, but boy did they put on a
show Thu/25 at Amnesia.

The two looked like characters out of a B movie or a dirty New York speakeasy. Annie, a diminutive little creature, looked like a gypsy in a headwrap and heavy eyeliner. Dee towered over her in an ’80s-esque leopard print sweater and leggings with a pink tulle skirt. When Baby Dee finally appeared an hour after the show was advertised to begin, she sat down at the piano and called into the microphone, “If anyone sees Little Annie, tell her the show has started.”

Soon Annie was located, and the duo launched into their first song (with a little help from a man in the audience to lift her tiny frame onto the stage.) Little Annie’s low, gravelly voice — which sounded like two packs a day and 40 years, if not something a little harder — was deliciously ragged and worn over Dee’s cabaret-like piano. As Baby Dee headbanged and bashed the piano keys, Annie swayed and posed on stage, using her cane as percussion. Two songs into the set, however, Annie stopped the show because she had forgotten to pray. “I’m discombobulated,” she cried. “Our makeup is crap and I forgot to pray.” As Annie knelt by the stage, Dee said a little prayer of her own. “Please Jesus,” she requested sweetly, “make someone get me a Scotch on the rocks. J&B or Dewar’s.”

When she was informed that Amnesia is a beer and wine bar, Dee screamed, “Fuck you, Jesus! I didn’t want your fucking scotch anyway!” before launching into her next dirge.

After, she repented. “Jesus, I’m sorry. Can I have a beer?”

Calling each other exclusively “honey” and “darling” Dee and Annie played, jested, and improvised through an hour-long set that felt about an hour too short. In between songs each woman told fantastic anecdotes from their tremendously colorful lives. Annie spoke about her short time living in San Francisco, when she got held up for food stamps in the Haight. Dee told a story about curating a Christmas show at the Pyramid Club, in which she dressed a 400 lb woman as the baby Jesus and put an Entemann’s chocolate cake down “the world’s biggest diaper.”

Halfway through the set, I realized something amazing. There was absolutely no side conversation through the entire show. Here we were, in a bar in the Mission, and not a single person was idly chatting with their friends. It’s a testament to the amazing showmanship and magnetic personalities of Baby Dee and Little Annie that every eye was on them for the whole hour they played. The crowd was small, but every person was there for them.

“This has turned out to be a really nice show, hasn’t it?” remarked Baby Dee. “Now I’m happy. It took me a while, but now I’m happy.”

SFIFF + Hollywood = your weekend movie plans

Sue Vaughan

April 26, 2013

SFIFF + Hollywood = your weekend movie plans

The San Francisco International Film Festival kicked off its 56th year last night; it continues through May 9 at venues around San Francisco and Berkeley. Read my take on standout docs here; Dennis Harvey’s appreciation of Finnish cinema here; and short takes by both of us (plus Kimberly Chun) here.

Meanwhile, down in Hollywood, Michael Bay’s musclebound latest opens today, along with a wedding comedy starring Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, and always-the-bride Amanda Seyfried. Reviews of both below, along with François Ozon’s new film, a martial-arts slo-mo-stravaganza, and, yes, even more.

Arthur Newman Colin Firth and Emily Blunt star in this tale of lost souls who find happiness after meeting on a road trip. (1:41)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTGvnMQe9a4

The Big Wedding The wedding film has impacted our concepts of matrimony, fashion, and marital happiness more than all the textbooks in the world have affected our national testing average; but it’s with that margin of mediocrity I report from the theater trenches of The Big Wedding. With this, the wedding movie again peters to a crawl. Susan Sarandon (an actress I love with a loyalty beyond sense) is Bebe, the stepmother/caterer swept under the rug by the selfishness of her live in lover Don (De Niro), his ex-wife/baby momma Elle (Diane Keaton) and their racist wackjob future in-laws. When Don and Elle faced the end of their marriage, they tried to rekindle with a Columbian orphan. Cue Ben Barnes in brownface. Alejandro is set to wed Amanda Seyfried and when his mother ascends from Columbia for the wedding, he decides Don and Elle have to act like their marriage never ended … which makes Bebe a mistress. Surprise! A decade of caring selflessly for your lover’s kids has won you a super shitty wedding you still have to cater! To give you a sense of the conflict management on display, Bebe — the film’s graceful savior — drops a drink on Don before fleeing the scene in her Alfa Romeo; she’s the one character not determined to act out her more selfish urges in the style of an MTV reality show. Despite some less imaginative conflicts and degrading “solutions,” this blended family still speaks some truth about the endearing embarrassment of the happy family. (1:29) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)

In the House In François Ozon’s first feature since the whimsical 2010 Potiche, he returns somewhat to the playful suspense intrigue of 2003’s Swimming Pool, albeit with a very different tone and context. Fabrice Luchini plays a high school French literature teacher disillusioned by his students’ ever-shrinking articulacy. But he is intrigued by one boy’s surprisingly rich description of his stealth invasion into a classmate’s envied “perfect” family — with lusty interest directed at the “middle class curves” of the mother (Emmanuelle Seigner). As the boy Claude’s writings continue in their possibly fictive, possibly stalker-ish provocations, his teacher grows increasingly unsure whether he’s dealing with a precocious bourgeoise satirist or a literate budding sociopath — and ambivalent about his (and spouse Kristin Scott Thomas’ stressed gallery-curator’s) growing addiction to these artfully lurid possible exposé s of people he knows. And it escalates from there. Ozon is an expert filmmaker in nimble if not absolute peak form here, no doubt considerably helped by Juan Mayorga’s source play. It’s a smart mainstream entertainment that, had it been a Hollywood feature, would doubtless be proclaimed brilliant for its clever tricks and turns. (1:45) (Dennis Harvey)

Mud The latest from Jeff Nichols (2011’s Take Shelter) stars Matthew McConaughey as an escaped con who befriends two Arkansas boys while he’s on the run. (2:15)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeDYibIzS8E

Pain & Gain In mid-1995 members of what became known as the “Sun Gym Gang” — played here by Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie — were arrested for a series of crimes including kidnapping, extortion, and murder. Simply wanting to live large, they’d abducted one well-off man (Tony Shalhoub) months earlier, tortured him into signing over all his assets, and left him for dead — yet incredibly the Miami police thought the victim’s story was a tall tale, leaving the perps free until they’d burned through their moolah and sought other victims. Michael Bay’s cartoonish take on a pretty horrific saga repeatedly reminds us that it’s a true story, though the script plays fast and loose with many real-life details. (And strangely it downplays the role steroid abuse presumably played in a lot of very crazy behavior.) In a way, his bombastic style is well-suited to a grotesquely comic thriller about bungling bodybuilder criminals redundantly described here as “dumb stupid fucks.” There have been worse Bay movies, even if that’s like saying “This gas isn’t as toxic as the last one.” But despite the flirtations with satire of fitness culture, motivational gurus and so forth, his sense of humor stays on a loutish plane, complete with fag-bashing, a dwarf gag, and representation of Miami as basically one big siliconed titty bar. Nor can he pull off a turn toward black comedy that needs the superior intelligence of someone like the Coen Brothers or Soderbergh. As usual everything is overamped, the action sequences overblown, the whole thing overlong, and good actors made to overact. You’ve got to give cranky old Ed Harris credit: playing a private detective, he alone here refuses to be bullied into hamming it up. (2:00) (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXdIlx29W2s

Simon Killer Antonio Campos — producer of 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene and director of 2008’s Afterschool — helms this dread-filled, urban-noir tale of the ultimate ugly American abroad. Smarting from a recent breakup, Simon (Brady Corbet) roams Paris’ seedier streets, composing letters to his ex in his head while blasting ironically cheerful pop songs in his headphones. But this is no twee tale of redemption: Simon is a sociopath, probably also a psychopath, and we soon fear for the willowy prostitute (Mati Diop of 2008’s 35 Shots of Rum) who is taken in by his manipulative charm. Campos has said that Simon is inspired by convicted murderer and Natalee Holloway suspect Joran van der Sloot, and Corbet’s coolly unnerving performance bears that out. The story, alas, is not nearly as compelling — even without a gold-hearted hooker it’d still hit too many predictable beats. (1:45) (Cheryl Eddy)

Tai Chi Hero Six months ago, Tai Chi Zero — Stephen Fung’s nutty tale of a martial arts savant who journeys to an isolated town to learn a top-secret technique — barreled into local theaters. A stylish kung fu flick with a high degree of WTF-ness, Zero ended on a pretty significant cliffhanger, so here’s the cheeky sequel for those who’ve been wondering what happened to Yang Lu Chan (Yuan Xiaochao) — a sweet fool when he’s not in supernatural Hulk-smash mode — and company. A brief intro gets newbies up to speed before the action starts: Lu Chan and the bossy-yet-comely daughter (Angelababy) of the local grandmaster (Tony Leung Ka Fai) have entered into a marriage of convenience — and there’s something fishy about Lu Chan’s brother-in-law, newly returned from a long exile with his own secretive bride. Meanwhile, the family worries about the dreadful “bronze bell prophecy” while the first film’s Westernized villian plots tasty revenge. In addition to all the high-flying, slo-mo scenes of hand-to-hand combat, highlights include a soundtrack filled with unexpected choices (heavy metal, accordion), a cameo by cult actor Peter Stormare (hamming it up big-time), and an army tricked out with steampunky weapons. (1:40) (Cheryl Eddy)

Get out your action figures: ‘Robot Chicken’ is coming to town!

Sue Vaughan

April 25, 2013

For those of us who grew up in the 1980s, who doesn’t have fond memories of playing with action figures? Whether you were plotting elaborate battles and all-out dirt mound warfare with GI Joe and Star Wars characters, or continuing the adventures of She-Ra and Strawberry Shortcake, those toys were a big part of our childhood.

Today, some lucky — and very talented — people still get to play with those toys, and get paid for it. Breathing life into these inanimate objects, the hit Adult Swim TV show Robot Chicken resurrects classic action figures and projects them into wild scenarios, or the everyday mundane world of real life, making for some side-splittingly hilarious situations.

Marking the end of the special exhibit “Between Frames: The Magic Behind Stop Motion Animation at the Walt Disney Family Museum,” the creative team behind the show is coming to the city this weekend for several special events celebrating their craft. Seth Green, Matthew Senreich, John Harvatine IV, Eric Towner, and Alex Kamer will be on hand Fri/26 for an after-hours party featuring food, drinks, an audience Q&A and screenings of behind the scenes footage, and then on Saturday for a special animation workshop followed by a panel discussion.

“When the Walt Disney Family Museum reached out to us as they were starting to work on the stop motion exhibit, it was one of those surreal moments — they were talking about what they were looking to do for this exhibit, and mentioned how Gumby was going to be a part of it, and they were going to have pieces from movies like Nightmare Before Christmas, and wanted television shows like Robot Chicken — we had that moment where we were like, ‘Wait, why are you including us?’” laughs Senreich, co-creator, producer and writer for the show.

“So we had to slap ourselves, and go, ‘Well I guess this is going to happen!’ It was very surreal and amazing, and they’ve been so good to us.”

The creative group behind Robot Chicken all first met when most of them worked at Wizard Magazine, a now-defunct publication that covered comic books and toys. Green was a fan of the magazine, and after meeting Senreich they became friends. They came up with the idea for the show “after many years of just geeking out over things. For us, this is what we live for; we were the people going to Comic Con before it turned into the event that it is now, we’re the ones who are still going to the small or cult comic shows. I want to find the random bootleg thing, that’s the stuff I love,” says Senreich.

When the group first started working on Robot Chicken, which premiered in 2005, they had never really worked with stop motion animation themselves, and after a few mostly failing attempts, gathered a team of professionals to help out. The animation technique — where an object is photographed one frame at a time, and gradually moved each time to create the illusion of actual movement — has a long and influential history in filmmaking, but is an incredibly time-consuming and detail-oriented art form.

“You come to appreciate what these animators do every day and the patience that they have, and you realize that they are actors and their performance either makes or breaks the stuff that you write,” says Senreich.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPB4-EW2Fck

Although he can’t give an exact estimate of how much time is spent producing one particular episode of the show, as many multiple skits and shows are being made at once, Senreich says that they currently turn out about 20 episodes in 11 months. “We try to write as many episodes ahead of time as possible — what slows down stop motion is having to take a set off the stage, put a new set up, re-light it, re-configure it to get it ready for the next shot. If we can keep the lighting the same, and we can maintain a set that’s there, it simplifies the process.”

He adds, “If we have say 15 bathroom shots over the course of 20 episodes, we’ll keep the bathroom on the stage as long as we can and shoot all of those bathroom shots in order.”

In this day and age where so much of the work that goes into Hollywood productions is shipped overseas, or done in several places around the country, the Robot Chicken team keeps it all close to home in Southern California. “We have two buildings in Burbank where we’ll do everything from the storyboards to the building of the sets and puppets to the animation, and we have a voice booth. With the exception of our sound mixing, which is done literally down the block — everything is done in-house,” says Senreich.

Coming up with hilarious scenarios and which toys or characters to use in them is all part of the fun of working on the show. “What I like about our group of writers is that it’s a bunch of friends trying to make each other laugh; it’s really just whatever we find funny for the day, or what a topic of conversation has been about, that’s where things start. We like to take these very grandiose worlds and just find the very simple and mundane within them, I think that’s what makes it relatable — if you can have Thundercats and simplify Lion-O to just being a cat, and being treated as such, where a spray bottle will affect him, there’s something fun about that.”

One of the toy realms that has been featured prominently on Robot Chicken over the years has been Star Wars. The first bit they did revolved around Emperor Palpatine getting a phone call from Darth Vader after the Death Star had been destroyed — and it immediately got the attention of Lucasfilm.

“We did that ‘Emperor’s Phone Call’ sketch, and right after it aired, the phone rang and the caller ID said ‘Lucasfilm,’ I thought, ‘Oh God, we’re going to get sued!’ But it turned out that George Lucas and some other people at the company had seen the show and liked it; they were calling to invite them to come take a tour of Skywalker Ranch. While there, Senreich threw out the idea of doing an entire Robot Chicken special centered around Star Wars, and within three weeks they were up and running.

“Meeting George was an experience; I was tongue-tied, and probably made a fool of myself — but now I’m the guy who can talk to him and go, ‘I don’t like that idea, George.’ It’s really nice to have that kind of relationship — he’s the first person to say back to me, ‘Well I don’t like this idea either,’ and we can have those kinds of creative conversations and we respect each other in that way, and it’s really nice,” says Senreich.

After this weekend’s festivities in San Francisco, Senreich and crew will head back to Los Angeles to start working on season seven of Robot Chicken. They’ll also be announcing several other upcoming projects in the near future. While his plate is full of work at the moment, and his schedule can be hectic at times, Senreich takes a laid-back approach when thinking about it all.

“The thing that we always come back to is that we’re playing with toys! There’s the pressure of deadlines and all of that, but you can’t get away from the fact that if the biggest stress is looking at a Star Wars figure and trying to figure out a way to make it funny, that’s not that bad!”

Robot Chicken and Stoopid Buddy Stoodios events
Fri/26, 7pm; Sat/27, 10am and 2pm, $8-$60
Walt Disney Family Museum
104 Montgomery, SF
(415) 345-6800
www.waltdisney.org

Hot Chip off the old block

April 25, 2013

Bands have hierarchies. James Murphy was essentially LCD Soundsystem, Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard are Hot Chip. If anyone knows this, it’s Al Doyle; the multi-instrumentalist was the guitarist for LCD before it disbanded in 2011, and continues to be a crucial member in Hot Chip.

“Joe and Alexis are a songwriting duo that works extraordinarily well, and no one else has written a song that Hot Chip has played,” Doyle said over the phone, on a bus somewhere en route to Palm Springs, getting ready for the first week of Coachella, where the UK group was slotted to play. Other members Felix Martin and Owen Clarke have made musical contributions along with him, but never whole songs. “Recently, we’ve been collaborating a little more closely, and it might get to the stage where Alexis and Joe feel that they can do a song that I’ve started or Felix has started, but that hasn’t happened so far.”

This probably says less about controlling or opposing personalities, as it does the overabundance of ideas currently in Hot Chip. Goddard released a joyously cuddly dance album with Raf Daddy as the 2 Bears, Taylor is collaborating with German producer Justus Köhnhke as Fainting By Numbers, and Doyle has his own distinct musical outlet in New Build, a project with Martin. “We were working on a few tracks at the same time the LCD thing was going on. The roots were me and Felix, but working in the studio with our engineer Tom Hopkins just seemed to make sense as he got more involved with the project, so it became the three of us.”

New Build’s first album, Yesterday Was Lived and Lost, pulls back from the densely layered production of Hot Chip’s recent albums, for a slightly rawer garage sound that’s more characteristic of Doyle’s LCD background. But much of the somber and tender emotion that typifies Hot Chip is still there. On “Finding Reasons” Doyle morosely recalls Peter Gabriel over a mechanical drum beat, with recurring apocalyptic apprehension. (“And the news is coming in / Of another city’s sad demise.”)

“I was feeling a lot of apathy around at the time I was writing those lyrics,” Doyle said. “Syria was on my mind around that time, and even now there’s a weariness with that kind of information coming through.”

At times, Doyle feels a need to be purposefully obscure as the principal songwriter in New Build. “I probably write a little bit more obliquely, than some of the Hot Chip songs, which are quite intensely personal to Joe and Alexis. When I feel myself getting too personal there’s a sense of paralysis. I can’t really sort of work like that, and often write a couple of steps removed from the original feeling.”

Occasionally things are playful, silly even. Take “The Third One.” Built around a “bleepy” piece by producer Hopkins, it’s got a bouncy rhythm, and some pointedly Prince-like guitar work by Doyle, as the lyrics get into the logic of fighting Nintendo bosses, who as everyone know always come in threes. “I still enjoy videos games,” Doyle said, “It’s something me and Felix do and try not to talk about it too much.”

Still, Doyle is showing through. He describes “Medication” as a curveball, a “straight-up attempt to write as pop-y song as you kind of could.” Over a funky bassline and buoyant beat, the sardonic lyrics recommend simple, chemical solutions to your problems, coming off like a pharmaceutical jingle written by Aldous Huxley. “Retrospectively having looked at that song, there’s a lot of mental illness in my family and it’s something that I tend to find myself thinking about now and again.”

New Build is using gaps in Hot Chip’s schedule (and the relative proximity of its equipment) to stage a West Coast tour. Following the expansive models Doyle is used to, the three members will increase to seven on the road. More expensive, as well, it might mean barely breaking even or going broke, but Doyle prefers the spectacle. “Lots of new bands, you like the music on the record, but then go see them play live and it’s a couple of guys with electronics, maybe one of them is playing guitars but doesn’t really need to, or playing a bit of completely extraneous percussion. I didn’t want it to feel like a tacked on thing, I wanted to feel like an experience.”

“We’re very lucky to find some amazing musicians. Ben Ubly plays bass guitar, and he is childhood friends with Tom, who was like ‘this guy can really play.” And we were like ‘Well, how good could he really be?’ But then he turns out to the one of the best musicians we’ve ever played with. Never been in any bands, literally just a bedroom player. Just stepped up and seems like he’s built for it.”

With New Build, Doyle has also stepped up and into the front. We’ll see how well he’s built, having spent over a decade in two international touring bands, and likely picking up a thing or two from Taylor, Goddard, and Murphy. “James was just able to really relax an audience and make them feel appreciated that’s just something he has as a person. I’d obviously love to try and emulate that sort of presence. I’m still learning how to do that a little bit.”

NEW BUILD

With No Ceremony///

Sun/28, 8pm, $17

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

Solomon: It’s time to renounce the “war on terror”

April 24, 2013

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

As a perpetual emotion machine — producing and guzzling its own political fuel — the “war on terror” continues to normalize itself as a thoroughly American way of life and death. Ongoing warfare has become a matter of default routine, pushed along by mainline media and the leadership of both parties in Washington. Without a clear and effective upsurge of opposition from the grassroots, Americans can expect to remain citizens of a war-driven country for the rest of their lives.

Across the United States, many thousands of peeling bumper stickers on the road say: “End this Endless War.” They got mass distribution from MoveOn.org back in 2007, when a Republican was in the White House. Now, a thorough search of the MoveOn website might leave the impression that endless war ended with the end of the George W. Bush presidency.

MoveOn is very big as online groups go, but it is symptomatic of a widespread problem among an array of left-leaning organizations that have made their peace with the warfare state. Such silence assists the Obama administration as it makes the “war on terror” even more resolutely bipartisan and further embedded in the nation’s political structures — while doing immense damage to our economy, siphoning off resources that should go to meet human needs, further militarizing society and undermining civil liberties.

Now, on Capitol Hill, the most overt attempt to call a halt to the “war on terror” is coming from Rep. Barbara Lee, whose bill H.R. 198 would revoke the Authorization for Use of Military Force that Congress approved three days after 9/11. Several months since it was introduced, H.R. 198 only has a dozen co-sponsors. (To send your representative and senators a message of support for Lee’s bill, click here.)

Evidently, in Congress, there is sparse support for repealing the September 2001 blanket authorization for war. Instead, there are growing calls for a larger blanket. Bipartisan Washington is warming to the idea that a new congressional resolution may be needed to give War on Terror 2.0 an expansive framework. Even for the law benders and breakers who manage the executive branch’s war machinery, the language of the September 2001 resolution doesn’t seem stretchable enough to cover the U.S. warfare of impunity that’s underway across the globe . . . with more on the drawing boards.

On Tuesday afternoon, when a Senate Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on “targeted killing,” the proceedings underscored the great extent of bipartisan overlap for common killing ground. Republican super-hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham lauded President Obama for “targeting people in a very commander-in-chief-like way.” And what passed for senatorial criticism took as a given the need for continuing drone strikes. In the words of the subcommittee’s chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin, “More transparency is needed to maintain the support of the American people and the international community” for those attacks.

This is classic tinkering with war machinery. During the first several years of the Vietnam War, very few senators went beyond mild kibitzing about how the war could be better waged. In recent years, during President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan that tripled the U.S. troop levels in that country, senators like John Kerry (now secretary of state) kept offering their helpful hints for how to fine tune the war effort

The “war on terror” is now engaged in various forms of military intervention in an estimated two-dozen countries, killing and maiming uncounted civilians while creating new enemies. It infuses foreign policy with unhinged messages hidden in plain sight, like a purloined letter proclaiming “What goes around won’t come around” and telling the world “Do as we say, not as we do.”

Political ripple effects from the Boston Marathon bombings have only begun. While public opinion hasn’t gotten carried away with fear, much of the news media — television in particular — is stoking the fires of fear but scarcely raising a single question that might challenge the basic assumptions of a forever “war on terror.”

After a city has been traumatized and a country has empathized, a constructive takeaway would be that it’s terribly wrong to set off bombs that kill and maim. But that outlook is a nonstarter the moment it might be applied to victims of U.S. drones and cruise missiles in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. The message seems to be that Americans should never be bombed but must keep bombing.

The death of Richie Havens days ago is a loss and reminder. Each of us has only so many days ahead. We may as well live them with deeper meaning, for peace and social justice. To hear Havens performing the song “Lives in the Balance” written by another great musician, Jackson Browne, is to be awakened anew:

I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they’re never the ones to fight or to die

And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

The hype, reality, and accountability of collaborative consumption

Sasha Cuttler

April 24, 2013

The hype, reality, and accountability of collaborative consumption

Collaborative consumption, aka the shareable economy – the labels given to a new generation of Internet-based companies that facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges of goods and services – certainly has some positive attributes. But does it really live up to the overhyped claims of its biggest boosters, who evangelize it as a “revolution” that forever alters the economy in only positive ways? Have they really figured out a way to create something from nothing, or are there hidden costs, impacts, and complications?

I was hoping to hear that kind of balanced discussion today at a symposium hosted by the University of San Francisco’s Department of Hospitality Management, featuring What’s Mine is Yours author Rachel Botsman and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky giving the keynote luncheon address: “The Rising of the Sharing Economy: How is it expanding the Global Hospitality Industry.”

Moderated by the department’s administrative director, Dr. David Jones, I thought I’d hear a little academic skepticism, particularly given the hotel industry’s concerns about unfair competition from Airbnb. And I wanted to ask Chesky directly why his company isn’t paying the $1.8 million per year in Transient Occupancy Taxes that it owes to the city, as well as how his business model relies on hosts who are violating their leases and tenant protection laws here, in New York City, and other cities.

Instead, all I heard was uncritical boosterism, grandiose claims, creepy futurism, and the unfettered hubris of a 31-year-old CEO who claims to be altruistically saving the world while getting filthy rich in the process and refusing to even pay the local taxes that a fair public process concluded that Airbnb and its hosts owe. And after Dr. Jones failed to ask the questions I had submitted and cut off the Q&A early, Chesky turned and darted out a back door before I could ask him myself (his company’s spokespeople also still haven’t responded to my inquiries from last month).

Everyone just seems so enamored of what Botsman called “the wonderful world of collaborative consumption,” with its focus on economic “disruption,” that tech-lovers label she used over and over, without really stopping to think about the impacts of disrupting established economic and regulatory systems.

“This isn’t a threat to the hospitality industry, it’s a massive opportunity to innovate,” she enthused, claiming it would only make the economic pie bigger, with no downsides.

Chesky then told the story about how he and a buddy slapped together the Airbnb website in three days to advertise the flophouse they turned their San Francisco apartment into using air mattresses in advance of a design conference, an idea that has now blossomed into a multi-million-dollar business that places about 100,000 guests each night around the world.

“It’s like the United Nations at every kitchen table. It’s very powerful,” Chesky said of the social benefits of his company. “I think we’re in the midst of a revolution and not a lot of people are talking about it.”

Actually, it seems that everyone is talking about collaborative consumption these days, which is why Chesky was recently on the cover of Forbes and The Economist. But not a lot of people seem to be asking tough questions or challenging assertions that Chesky and his young bretheren are making, such as, “For us to win, no one has to lose.”

That would have been a good time for Dr. Jones to ask, “If that’s true, why are you refusing to pay the $2 million in TOT you owe the city, money that helps pay for Muni, street maintenance, the police, and other city services that visitors use?” Because the more Airbnb wins business from traditional hotels that do pay the TOT, the more the rest of us lose.

Similarly, in big, expensive cities that have developed complex systems regulating landlord-tenant relations – an essential system that determines who gets to live in these cities and how diverse and inclusive they remain – Airbnb offers a mechanism for circumventing those rules, a system it barely even acknowledges.

I’ve used Airbnb, and I understand that it can be a cool way to avoid expensive hotels and meet locals while traveling. That’s great. But it’s just not that simple, and it’s simplistic to focus simply on its benefits, divorced from the larger economic and environmental systems in which is operates.

“This is not a niche phenomenon. This could have enormous historic precedence,” Chesky said, later adding, “This is like a Golden Age we’re going to be entering.”

It is an age when anyone can become an entrepreneur and get rich, when the system of mass production itself will be replaced by the myriad ideas of people like Chesky in unforeseeable ways. “I think it will change dramatically the hotel and restaurant industry,” Chesky said. “Hotels themselves are going to be much more local and personal.”

He envisions the next generation of hotels creating rooms that cater to the individual tastes and preferences, from the music piped into the room to what’s in the mini-bar, all discerned from Facebook and other online mechanisms that create what Bostman called our “digital exhaust.”

“Consumers aren’t strangers, they all have profiles and you can know everything about a person,” Chesky said, sending the chill of dystopian futurism down my spine.

And we’re all going to travel freely around the world, owning little, sharing everything, and elevating Airbnb and its allies into the “trillion-dollar-industry” he’s pushing toward.

“We’re wired to be nomads,” Chesky said. “We’re going to be moving all over the world much more.”

So says the young, entitled CEO who doesn’t even have a home, flitting around the world to stay with various Airbnb hosts. But for most of us, air travel is still expensive and our vacation time is limited. And from the perspective of climate change, nothing could be worse for the environment than substantially increasing air travel to facilitate this expanded globe-trotting lifestyle that Chesky envisions.

The environmental claims of collaborative consumption companies have always struck me as the most overblown. That’s why I also cornered Adam Werbach – who went from heading Sierra Club to working for WalMart on its sustainability programs to launching Yertle, a stuff-sharing website – at an event promoting the new company on Monday, aka Earth Day.

“There’s nothing that’s green,” Werbach said when I asked whether Yertle was. “I’ve never used the term green.”

But he does make the argument that facilitating sharing allows less stuff to be produced overall, which is good for the planet.

“Is sharing a greener alternative than buying new?” he asked, citing examples such as pasta- or bread-makers as products that people may want to try without buying. “Can you find a way to sample or test those things without buying a new one?”

That’s true, but as I perused the pages and pages of stuff available on Yertle – which is sort of a high-tech version of a garage sale or thrift store, except that everything is free – I couldn’t help but be struck by its promotion of materialism and accumulation. Can we really tackle big environmental challenges and still keep all our toys?

Werbach, who graciously indulged my questions, admits that the shareable economy can’t adequately address big problems like climate change, which will require a major cultural and economic shift. It’s more like tinkering on the margins, and making some positive incremental changes, as he felt he was able to do at WalMart. “I do think we made them somewhat better. But, has it been adequate? No,” he said.

His Yertle co-founder Andy Reuben was someone Werbach met and worked with at WalMart. Reuben seemed even more hopefully that the younger generation will use collaborative consumption to create a lighter footprint on the planet.

“One thing we’re seeing is it will be an asset-light generation that can just get it and pass it on,” Reuben said, describing Yertle as “based on better utilizing the stuff what we have.”

That’s a goal that most of us probably share, and one that the shareable economy can certainly help us address. But its big boosters – from venture capitalist Ron Conway down to the random techie true believer – have to be willing to engage in an honest discussion with the rest of us, rather than just bulling their way forward, heedless of their impacts and dismissive of our concerns.

Maybe Lyft and Uber have a role to play in augmenting San Francisco’s taxi system, but we shouldn’t destroy that taxi system in the progress. Yes, City Care Share and Zipcar enable people to sell their cars, but how do they actually impact the number of cars on the roads? Airbnb is certainly a popular site with both hosts and guests, but that doesn’t mean it should be exempt from taxes and regulations.

After today’s event, I spoke with Dr. Jones – a longtime Bay Area tourism booster with a fairly libertarian outlook – about why he didn’t ask tough questions or express more skepticism. “I’m really not [skeptical]” he said, although he did note the dearth of academic research on collaborative consumption and the validity of some of my questions.

“There’s a massive value shift and there’s no way we’re going back,” Botsman said of the rapid rise of the shareable economy and its disruption of traditional economic models. That may be true, or that may be self-serving hype, but either way, it’s worth talking about in an open and collaborative way that involves more than just the insular tech world.

Last year, Mayor Ed Lee and Board President David Chiu announced the creation of a shareable economy task force, which was supposed to be reporting back some recommendations about now. I asked the Mayor’s Office of Communications for an update on its status three days ago, and I’m still waiting to hear back.

Meanwhile, Chiu’s office is still negotiating complicated legislation that would govern Airbnb’s operations in San Francisco, so there will likely be hearings on that company and the issues it raises this summer. That’s important for a city like San Francisco that is so diverse and engaged.

If San Francisco wants to help lead this collaborative consumption revolution that we keep hearing about from Lee and other boosters, hopefully we’ll also take a clear-eyed and precautionary view of what this brave new world looks like, how it’s regulated, what its byproducts may be, and whose interests it serves.

Selector: April 24-30, 2013

Andrew Lam

April 23, 2013

FRIDAY 26

Robot Chicken

Marking the end of the special exhibit Between Frames: The Magic Behind Stop Motion Animation, the comedic geniuses behind the hit Adult Swim TV show Robot Chicken — Stoopid Buddy Stoodios — are coming to the city this weekend for several special events celebrating their craft. Join Seth Green, Matthew Senreich, John Harvatine IV, Eric Towner, and Alex Kamer on Friday night for an after-hours museum party featuring food, drinks, an audience Q&A, and screenings of behind-the-scenes footage. Then on Saturday there’s a special animation workshop followed by a panel discussion taking a closer look at the hilarious TV show. (Sean McCourt)

Fri/26, 7pm; Sat/27, 10am and 2pm, $8–$60

Walt Disney Family Museum

104 Montgomery, SF

(415) 345-6800

www.waltdisney.org

San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival

A three-day celebration of films from Vietnam (as well as Cambodia, Canada, France, Japan, the Czech Republic, and the United States), the San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival offers up both narratives and documentaries, as well as experimental works. Highlights include screenings of Oscar nominee Tran Angh Hung’s dreamy 2010 adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood — as well as Duc Nguyen’s brand-new doc about Vietnamese refugees, Stateless, and a shorts program comprised of Yxine Film Festival standouts. (Cheryl Eddy)

Opening gala tonight, 7:30pm, $10

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

Festival screenings Sat/27-Sun/28, 2:30pm-midnight, $10

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

sfgvff.wordpress.com

“SF Choral Society and Volti present battle hymns”

Making Love may be a more common theme for dance than Making War. This did not stop Philadelphia-based choreographer Leah Stein, whose small company dances big and not just on stage, and collaborating composer David Lang. Stein has created a reputation for site-specific, improv-inspired choreography combined with an uncommonly sophisticated musicality. Lang based his choral work, Battle Hymn, on texts from the Civil War. Together they have created a meditation on a topic that, unfortunately, is as timely a ever. Stein’s dancers and 150 singers — including SF music group Volti, San Francisco Choral Society vocalists, and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir — will perform along with the percussion score conducted by Robert Geary. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/26, 8pm; Sat/27, 3 and 8pm; Sun/28, 3pm, $30–$50

Kezar Pavilion

755 Stanyon, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.cityboxoffice.com

SATURDAY 27

“Fortuna Paper Moon”

In art, process can be everything. In the case of Jovi Schnell, the colorful and lively works that seem to borrow from folk art, celestial imagery, and mechanical ideas speak for themselves, but the story of their creation embeds them with particular meaning — or rather, an intriguing lack of meaning. In paintings such as Honeycomb Hideaway, repeated rolling of dice determined the order of colors and the pattern that comprises the piece (which is no pattern at all). Schnell has invented a language in paint, collage, and sculpture that is whimsical, energetic, and overall, fascinating. The “Fortuna Paper Moon” exhibition is on view at Gregory Lind Gallery until June 1. (Laura Kerry)

Through June 1

4pm, free

Gregory Lind Gallery

49 Geary, SF

(415) 296-9661

www.gregorylindgallery.com

Queen’s Day

You love excessive drinking in the street and the color orange, right? (Don’t lie SF, I’ve seen many a fake tan Bay to Breakdown.) A celebration for the Queen of the Netherlands’ birthday in SF goes down in the park this year and will feature Dutch cheese and DJs, a beer garden, and family activities, sponsored by the Consulate General of the Netherlands. Head up the road to the de Young afterward for even more Dutch madness: more DJs and a 7pm lecture on the country’s royal family that you won’t remember the next day if you’re celebrating in the traditional manner. (Caitlin Donohue)

Noon-5pm, free

Murphy Windmill

Lincoln Way and Great Highway, Golden Gate Park, SF

www.sfdutch.com

“Night Light: Multimedia Garden Party”

Disco dancing about diasporas, an opera in shadow, moving crystals, nude hula hooping, a slowed down wave, and a technological cocoon: these are not club names mentioned by Stefon in Saturday Night Live, but some of the art pieces that will be on display at SOMArts’ Multimedia Garden Party. With more than 50 artists displaying their music, dance, video installations, sculptures, and art in various other mediums, the night promises to be overwhelmingly spectacular. While art is often confined to the quiet and clean spaces of museums and galleries, tonight it participates in a party. SOMArts offers a chance to participate with it. (Kerry)

8pm, $12

SOMArts

934 Brannan, SF

(415) 863-1414

www.somarts.org

Men in Suits

Long before computer graphics became all the rage in Hollywood, a special breed of actors and special effects magicians worked together to bring a vast array of wild monsters, creatures, beasts and more to life on the big screen, entertaining (and scaring) generations of movie-goers. Take a look back at that golden age of film making tonight at a screening of Men In Suits, a new documentary about the people who played monsters in the movies, ranging from the Creature From The Black Lagoon to Predator. Writer-director Frank Woodward will be on hand for a discussion, along with special displays, prizes, and a second flick, 1955’s Revenge of the Creature. (McCourt)

7pm, $12–$15

Historic Bal Theater

14808 East 14th St., San Leandro

www.bayareafilmevents.com

SUNDAY 28

How Weird

Do we love New Orleans so because it reflects a more diverse, wilder, woolier, earlier version of our fair city? Play out your Nola dreams with lunch at the gorgeous SF Jazz Center’s Big Easy-inspired restaurant South, and then head to the 14th year of the How Weird street fair in your best freak flag. Per usual, a sizable portion of SoMa will be blocked off and filled with wacky vendors, art, and 10 stages of music — mainly EDM, but with this year’s “Weirdi Gras” theme, five marching bands will be strutting the streets to syncopate your Sunday. (Donohue)

Noon-8pm, $10 suggested donation

Howard and Second St., SF

www.howweird.org

SUNDAY 28

Cave Singers

At first listen, the Cave Singers’ music inhabits a place directly related to rotting porches on the edges of mountainous forests. They play folk. Spend a little more time with them, though, and it starts to make sense that their favorite bands are the Replacements, the Pixies, and Fleetwood Mac. Pete Quirk’s singing, a bit raspy and raw, recalls other genres that typically involve more yelping and distortion (he was previously a part of a Seattle post-punk band); the compositions have a little too much edge to be played from a porch in the mountains. Yes, it’s folk that they’ll play at Great American Music Hall, but it’s the Cave Singers’ version of it. (Kerry)

With Bleeding Rainbow

8pm, $16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

Marnie Stern

On the cover of Marnie Stern’s new album, Chronicles of Marnia, the artist walks on the beach in a summer dress, silhouetted by a setting sun. This would suggest that inside, one would find some sweet, vulnerable melodies in a singer-songwriter style. And that is not completely wrong — her soul-bearing songwriting comes up in some very positive reviews of her four albums — but what Stern does particularly well, is shred on the electric guitar; her finger tapping post-punk experimental rock sound earned her a spot on many greatest guitarist lists. Stern is the real deal, and you can see her bear shred (and bear her soul) at the Rickshaw Stop tonight. (Kerry)

With SISU, E V Kain

8pm, $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

MONDAY 29

La Mar Cebicheria pisco dinner

Sure, when Peru’s Gaston Acurio opened up his first US restaurant here on our waterfront we knew we weren’t going to be regulars — that sustainable seafood doesn’t come cheap, babe. That being said, there’s something about shellfooding out on a special occasion. So we wanted to let you know about this: a four-course dinner, each course paired with a dram of pisco, or a cocktail based off that Peruvian liquor that’s been beloved in SF since the days of the Gold Rush. Before the heavy plates come in, check out the 6pm pisco seminar taught by Manuel Ainzuain, Alfonso Rouillon, and La Mar bar manager Joselino Solis. (Donohue)

Reservations required

Open 5:30-9:30pm, $75/person

La Mar Cebichería Peruana

Pier 1½, SF

(415) 397-8880

www.lamarsf.com

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Rep Clock

Andrew Lam

April 23, 2013

Schedules are for Wed/24-Tue/30 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. $6-10. “Free Form Film Festival presents Transcomic Geometry,” Thu, 8. “San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival Opening Night Gala,” Fri, 7:30. Other Cinema: “Animation in Action,” Sat, 8:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-13. •The Sting (Hill, 1973), Wed, 7, and Slap Shot (Hill, 1977), Wed, 9:25. San Francisco International Film Festival, Thu. See festival.sffs.org for schedule. •Deliverance (Boorman, 1972), Fri, 7, and Duel (Spielberg, 1971), Fri, 9:05. •A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971), Sat, 2:15, 8:30, and Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975), Sat, 5. •Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942), Sun, 2:30, 7, and The Year of Living Dangerously (Weir, 1982), Sun, 4:30, 9.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. Ginger and Rosa (Potter, 2012), call for dates and times. On the Road (Salles, 2012), call for dates and times. Quartet (Hoffman, 2012), call for dates and times. Renoir (Bourdos, 2012), call for dates and times. Blancanieves (Berger, 2012), April 26-May 2, call for times. Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong: A Journey Into Creature Features (Wyrsch, 2008), Sun, 4:15. With director Tom Wyrsch and special guests in person; this event, $12.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $9-10. “Midnight Movies:” The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman, 1975), Sat, midnight. With live performance by the Bawdy Caste.

ELLEN DRISCOLL PLAYHOUSE 325 Highland, Piedmont; www.diversityfilmseries.org. Free. Out in America (Goldberg, 2011), Wed, 6:30.

GOFORALOOP GALLERY AND STUDIOS 1458 San Bruno, SF; www.goforaloop.com. Donations welcome. “The Long and the Short of It:” The Sugarland Express (Spielberg, 1974), plus shorts by local filmmakers, Thu, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, milibrary.org/events. $10 (reservations required as seating is limited). “CinemaLit Film Series: April Blossoms: Japanese Screens:” House of Bamboo (Fuller, 1955), Fri, 6.

NEW PARKWAY 474 24th St, Oakl; www.thenewparkway.com. $6-10. “New Parkway Classics:” Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993), Thu, 9pm. “Thrillville:” The Tingler (Castle, 1959), Sun, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alfred Hitchcock: The Shape of Suspense:” Frenzy (1972), Wed, 7. San Francisco International Film Festival, Thu-Tue. See festival.sffs.org for schedule.

RED POPPY ART HOUSE 2698 Folsom, SF; www.redpoppyarthouse.org. $5-15. RIP!: A Remix Manifesto (Gaylor, 2008), with a live performance by remix DJ officerfishdumplings, Thu, 7.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11.Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013), Wed-Thu, 7:30, 10:30. Room 237 (Ascher, 2012), Wed-Thu, 6:30, 8:30. San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival, Sat-Sun. See sfgvff.wordpress.com for schedule.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; Facebook: The Vortex Room. $10. “Assault on Vortex 13:” •Seven (Sidaris, 1979), Thu, 9, and Search and Destroy (Fruet, 1979), Thu, 11.

Stage listings

Andrew Lam

April 23, 2013

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

Talk Radio Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Opens Fri/26, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 15. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs Eric Bogosian’s breakthrough 1987 drama.

BAY AREA

The Dead Girl Avant Garde, 1328 Fourth St, San Rafael; www.altertheater.org. $25. Previews Wed/24, 7:30pm, and Fri/26, 8pm. Opens Sat/27, 8pm. Runs Wed, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 19. AlterTheater performs 90-year-old playwright Ann Brebner’s new family drama.

ONGOING

Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm (May 11, show at 8pm). Through May 18. Playwright Lynne Kaufman invites you to take a trip with Richard Alpert, a.k.a. Ram Dass (Warren David Keith), as he recounts times high and low in this thoughtful, funny, and sometimes unexpected biographical rumination on the quest for truth and meaning in a seemingly random life by one of the big wigs of the psychedelic revolution and (with his classic book, Be Here Now) contemporary Eastern-looking spirituality. Directed by Joel Mullennix, the narrative begins with Ram Dass today, in his Hawaiian home and partly paralyzed from a stroke, but Keith (one of the Bay Area’s best stage actors, who is predictably sure and engagingly multilayered in the role) soon shakes off the stiff arm and strained speech and springs to his feet to continue the narrative as the ideal self perhaps only transcendental consciousness and theater allow. Nevertheless, Kaufman’s fun-loving and extroverted Alpert is no saint and no model of perfection, which is the refreshing truth explored in the play, but rather a seeker still, ever imperfect and ever trying for greater perfection or at least the wisdom of acceptance. As the privileged queer child of a wealthy Jewish lawyer and industrialist, Alpert was both insider and outsider from the get-go, and that tension and ambiguity makes for an interesting angle on his life as well as the complexities of his relationships with a homophobic Leary, for instance, and his conservative but ultimately loving father. Perfection aside, the beauty in the subject and the play is the subtle, shrewd cherishing of what remains unfinished. (Avila)

The Bereaved Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Wed/24-Sat/27, 8pm. Crowded Fire Theater launches its Mainstage season with Thomas Bradshaw’s wicked comedy about “sex, drugs, and the American dream.”

Boomeraging: From LSD to OMG Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Tue, 8pm. Through May 28. Comedian Will Durst performs his brand-new solo show.

The Bus New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $32-45. Wed/24-Sat/27, 8pm; Sun/28, 2pm. NCTC performs James Lantz’s tale of two young men whose meeting place for their secret relationship is a church bus.

The Expulsion of Malcolm X Southside Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.fortmason.org. $30-42.50. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 5. Colors of Vision Entertainment and GO Productions present Larry Americ Allen’s drama about the relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad.

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.

Ghostbusters: Live On Stage Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Thu/25-Sat/27, 8pm. Rhiannastan Productions brings the beloved 1984 comedy to the stage.

How To Make Your Bitterness Work For You Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.bitternesstobetterness.com. $15-25. Sun, 2pm. Through May 5. Fred Raker performs his comedy about the self-help industry.

I’m Not OK, Cupid 🙁 Shelton Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.leftcoasttheatreco.org. $15-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 4. Left Coast Theatre Co., a new company formed in 2012 from the gay men’s writing group GuyWriters Playwrights, offers this rocky but sometimes clever evening of seven short gay comedies about love, relationships, getting it on, getting it off, and so forth. The evening begins with Andrew Black’s A Small Fishing Village Wedged Between Estonia and Latvia, set in the Castro, where a gay couple (Chris Maltby and Dene Larson) try to foil a mixed couple of would-be robbers (Laura Espino and Richard Sargent) by injecting some homoerotic tension between their otherwise heterosexual vibe. Directed by ShawnJ West, it’s drolly if inconsistently acted, but never very funny, and followed by three more non-starters: James A. Martin’s Lollipops, Rodney “Rhoda” Taylor’s Goodbye, Cupid, and Black’s verse-bound Arlecchino’s Last Prank. The second half of the bill proves more satisfying overall — Rich Orloff’s Chekhov-inspired That Bitch, directed by Joseph Frank and featuring the able trio of Hayley Saccomano, Laura Espino, and Danielle O’Dea; Joseph Frank’s wacky The Parenthetical Trap, directed by Frank and Saccomano, wherein sibling rivalry (i.e., the amusingly puerile duo of Kyle Glasow and Dawson Montoya) meets dysfunctional family (rounded out by Gabrielle Motarjemi and Frank) reunited in musical harmony; and Alex Dremann’s randy and well-acted Four Dry Tongues, directed by ShawnJ West, in which friends Ginny (Angela Chandra) and Tristan (Michael Erickson) compete for the affection of guest Matt (Robert Rushin) by flirting with his gorgeously haughty lesbian friend Laura (Danielle O’Dea). (Avila)

The Lost Folio: Shakespeare’s Musicals Un-Scripted Theater, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 18. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs a fully-improvised, full-length musical inspired by Shakespeare.

The Lullaby Tree Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, SF; www.secondwind.8m.com. $15-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 4. In the face of the ever more extensive and controversial spread of GMO foods worldwide — not to mention last year’s state battle over Prop 37 — Second Wind premieres founding member and playwright Ian Walker’s half-whimsical, half-hardheaded drama about a boy searching for his mother in the underworld and a small band of lawyers and environmentalists going toe-to-toe with a multinational over the ownership of a mysterious crop of genetically engineered corn. It will eventually become plain that the two stories are linked, but first a ten-year-old boy (Samuel Berston) befriends a somewhat shrunken giant (Davern Wright) in an attempt to find his mother (Evangeline Crittenden) in an enchanted and hostile land of dragons. Elsewhere, Tim (Walker) and law partner Nod (Wright) prepare to do legal battle with a modern-day dragon, in the person of a corporate attorney (Cheryl Smith) for the ominous Mendes Corporation (read: Monsanto). They will argue over the ownership of the corn that has sprung up on the banks of a drowned town, and which may spell environmental disaster for the nature preserve surrounding it. In this fight Tim and Nod are in uneasy, ultimately disastrous alliance with activist Callie (Crittenden), whom Nod distrusts and with whom Tim is hopelessly smitten. The result is a convoluted plot and a fitful production (co-directed by Walker and Misha Hawk-Wyatt) in which a three-pronged story precariously balances the fairy tale, the romance, and the legal battle. It’s the last prong that offers the more interesting if formulaic scenes, in which the politics of GMOs mesh with the swashbuckling machinations of the attorneys. But the less compelling strands converge and take precedence, forcing things down a sentimental and forgettable road. (Avila)

reasons to be pretty San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through May 11. Completing a trilogy of plays about body awareness and self-image (along with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig), Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty begins with a misconstrued remark that quickly gathers enough weight and momentum to tear three sets of relationships apart in the span of a two-hour play. The SF Playhouse production begins with a bang, or rather an awesomely knock-down, blow-out breakup fight between a righteously pissed-off Steph (Lauren English) and her awkwardly passive boyfriend Greg (Craig Marker), who has inadvertently referred to her as “regular” in a conversation with his jerkish buddy Kent (Patrick Russell), which she takes to mean he finds her ugly. English’s Steph is at turns ferocious and fragile, and her comic timing as she eviscerates Greg’s looks in a mall food court zings, while the hyperkinetic Russell elevates the condition of noxiously irredeemable douchebag to an art form. But terrific acting and polished design can only make up so much for a script that feels not only flawed, barely scratching the surface of the whys and wherefores each character has internalized an unrealistic view of the importance of conventional beauty standards, but also already dated, with its circa-2008 pop culture references. Ultimately it gives the impression of being a rerun of a Lifetime television drama that wraps itself up into a too-neat package just in time for the final credits to roll to its admittedly kickass soundtrack (provided by Billie Cox). (Gluckstern)

Sam I Am: A Processional of Short Plays and Prose About Samuel Beckett Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.pustheatre.com. $10-20. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 11. Performers Under Stress remounts and revamps its series of short plays and pieces by Samuel Beckett, this time staging it throughout the basement quarters of Bindlestiff Studio, where audiences are led around an economical maze of performance spaces. Opening weekend consisted of too much text and too little in way of staging ideas, especially with several spoken selections of Beckett prose (which have reportedly since been dropped from the program). The best of what remains (in a program of six short plays total) includes Valerie Fachman’s respectable performance as the disembodied “mouth” of the brilliant Not I; and James Udom and Geo Epsilany’s duet in Rough for Theatre I, in which a wheelchair-bound food-hoarder (a softly eccentric Epsilany) strikes up a doomed friendship with a blind beggar (a solid Udom) amid a colorless and barren landscape. The bucket of Beckett dreary gets less satisfying from there, though director Scott Baker’s wordless performance as the titular Joe in Eh Joe proves poised and the doubled voices in his head (by Melissa Clason and Allison Hunter Blackwell) both haunting and intriguing. (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. (Avila)

Sheherezade 13 Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. $25. Thu/25-Sat/27, 8pm. Wily West Productions presents a short play showcase.

Show Me Yours: Songs of Innocence and Experience Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $27. Thu/25-Sat/27, 8pm. New Musical Theater of San Francisco performs a new musical revue written by Pen and Piano, the company’s resident group of writers and composers.

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through May 18. 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)

Stuck Elevator American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-85. Wed/24-Sat/27, 8pm (also Wed/24 and Sat/27, 2pm); Sun/28, 7pm. As federal immigration reform captures the national spotlight, ACT premieres a dynamic and entertaining new musical by Byron Au Yong (score) and Aaron Jafferis (libretto) that privileges the real-life experience of an undocumented Chinese deliveryman Ming Kuang Chen, trapped for 81 hours in a Bronx elevator in 2005. Slickly directed by Chay Yew, the memories, fears, and fantasies of Guang (a sympathetic and mellifluous Julius Ahn) become the stuff of chamber opera, wherein the chamber is a malfunctioning elevator car in a dilapidated high-rise housing complex. Initially too afraid to call for help (lest his immigration status be discovered), Guang suffers at the thought of the precious dollars he is losing with each hour spent away from work, and distracts himself with thoughts of his wife (Marie-France Arcilla) and son (Raymond J. Lee) back home in China, his mean employer (Joseph Anthony Foronda in comical drag), and his Mexican friend and coworker (Joel Perez). With the undocumented immigrant’s precarious situation become a literal cell, Daniel Ostling’s impressively kinetic, expansive scenic design pivots between grimy naturalism and a multimedia canvas for the protagonist’s unbounded thoughts and imagination. Fantastical routines ensue, sometimes wistful and romantic, sometimes comical and outlandish, throughout a story and score that prove consistently engaging but also somewhat lacking in real suspense. The impressive cast is also a highlight here, and the 80 minutes go by pleasantly enough, even if the larger complexity of the subject — the social, racial, and class dynamics that produce the protagonist’s surreal situation — is itself somewhat confined by the genre of the romantic immigrant narrative. (Avila)

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 1. 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

The Arsonists Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $35-60. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through May 12. There’s a lot of humor to be found in Alistair Beaton’s crackling translation of Max Frisch’s The Arsonists, playing now at the Aurora Theatre, but much of the laughter it elicits is of the nervous variety, as the play’s mostly protagonist, the effete, bourgeois Herr Biedermann (Dan Hiatt) inadvertently signs off on his own destruction when he invites an uncouth arsonist to come and stay in his attic (Michael Ray Wisely). “If we assume everyone is an arsonist, where does that get us?” becomes his standard deflection, as one arsonist becomes two (adding in the unctuous, nihilistic Tim Kniffin), and the empty attic a repository for giant drums of gasoline, a detonator, and fuse wire — arousing the suspicions of a chorus of firefighters (Kevin Clarke, Tristan Cunningham, Michael Uy Kelly), who act as the conscience and guardians of the township. Although on the surface the scenario is patently absurd, the message that passivity in the face of evil is like helping to measure out the fuse wire that will eventually claim your life, is relatively clear. “Not every fire is determined by fate,” point out the firefighters right in the first act. Hiatt, as Biedermann, strikes an admirable balance between loathsome and powerless, while Gwen Loeb shines as his socialite wife, Babette, as does Dina Percia as his agitated housemaid, Anna. (Gluckstern)

Being Earnest Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Wed/24, 7:30pm; Thu/25-Sat/27, 8pm (also Sat/27, 2pm); Sun/28, 2 and 7pm. TheatreWorks performs the world premiere of Paul Gordon’s musical take on Oscar Wilde’s comedy.

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage & Shipwreck Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Shipwreck runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through May 5. Voyage runs Sat/27 and May 4, 3pm. Last year in the Shotgun Players’ production of Voyage, the first part of Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia trilogy (also playing in repertory through May 4), we were introduced to a tight circle of Russian thinkers and dreamers, chafing against the oppressive regime of Nicholas I. In the second part, Shipwrecked, we find them older, perhaps wiser, struggling to keep their revolutionary ideals alive while also juggling familial concerns and personal passions. Focused mainly on Alexander Herzen (Patrick Kelley Jones) and family, Shipwrecked travels from Russia to Germany, France, Italy, and the English Channel, buffeted from all directions by the forces of the uprisings and burgeoning political consciousness of the European proletariat. It’s an unwieldy, sprawling world that Stoppard, and history, have built (made somewhat more so by the Shotgun production’s strangely languid pace during even the most dramatic sequences) but it’s worth making the effort to spend time absorbing the singular world views of Russian émigré Herzen, his impulsively passionate wife Natalie (Caitlyn Louchard), the cantankerous, influential critic Vissarion Belinsky (Nick Medina), professional rabble-rouser Michael Bakunin (Joseph Salazar) and up-and-coming writer Ivan Turgenev (Richard Reinholdt) as they desperately seek to carve out both their personal identities and a greater, cohesive Russian one from the imperfect turmoil of Western philosophy. (Gluckstern)

A Killer Story Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu-Sat, 8pm (pre-show cabaret at 7:15pm). Through May 18. Dan Harder’s film noir-inspired detective tale premieres at the Marsh Berkeley.

The Language Archive Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.symmetrytheatre.com. $20-28. Thu/25-Sat/27, 8pm; Sun/28, 2pm. A linguist named George (a nerdy but sincere Gabriel Grilli), obsessed with collecting languages on the cusp of extinction, reels when his unhappy wife Mary (a captivatingly distraught but spirited Elena Wright) decides to leave him in Julia Cho’s heart-tugging comedy exploring the language of love and other ineffable things. As Mary, discouraged by George’s inability to voice a reason why she should stay, heads out to who knows where, George and his secretly smitten lab assistant Emma (Danielle Levin) try to interview an older married couple who are among the last speakers of a dying language. But the couple (played winningly, in vaguely Eastern garb, by Stacy Ross and Howard Swain) spends all their time fighting with one another — in English (the language of aggression and the noncommittal, as they at various points explain). In one of the best scenes, Mary meets a despairing older gentleman (Swain again, in one of several excellent supporting turns) on a railroad platform who will change the course of her life as, meanwhile, George copes with grief and the reexamination of his faith in language, including the unabashedly utopian Esperanto, his favorite. Cho’s narrative broaches an intriguing exploration of language’s underlying dialectic of joy and suffering, and the fact that perfect understanding lies finally beyond it. The play has strained aspects in its humor and dialogue, and Symmetry Theatre’s production doesn’t navigate every turn in the story equally well. But director Chloe Bronzan ensures an overall enjoyable and well-acted production (set in the small, intimate playing area at the Berkeley City Club), while making the most of several key scenes that mine the genuine pathos and wonder in the subject matter.

Love Letters Various Marin County venues; www.porchlight.net. $15-30. Through Sun/28. Porch Light Theater performs A.R. Gurney’s romantic play at four different Marin venues; check website for addresses and showtimes.

“Pear Slices” Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-30. Thu/25-Sat/27, 8pm; Sun/28, 2pm. Nine original short plays by members of the Pear Playwrights Guild.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-77. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and Thu/25 and May 23, 2pm; no matinee Sat/27; no show May 24); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2). Through May 26. Mark Wing-Davey directs Berkeley Rep’s take on the Bard.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Alonzo King LINES Ballet LAM Research Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; www.linesballet.org. Wed/24-Thu/25, 7:30pm; Fri/26-Sat/27, 8pm; Sun/28, 5pm. $30-65. The company celebrates its 30th anniversary spring season with a collaboration between choreographer Alonzo King and composer Edgar Meyer.

“Dances from the Heart 2” Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.helpisontheway.org. Sun/28, 7:30pm. $40-60. Dancers from top Bay Area companies, including ODC Dance and Company C Contemporary Ballet, join forces to raise funds for the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation and other AIDS charities.

David Dorfman Dance Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Thu/25-Sat/27, 8pm. $25-30. Performing Prophets of Funk, a work inspired by Sly and the Family Stone.

FACT/SF ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.factsf.org. Thu/25-Sat/27, 8pm. $23-28. World premiere of Falling, an evening-length contemporary dance piece.

“Ghetto Klown” Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market, SF; www.shnsf.com. Fri/26-Sat/27, 8pm. $40-95. John Leguizamo performs his latest autobiographical show.

“Journey of the Shadow” Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfchamberorchestra.org. Fri/26, 8pm. Also Sat/27, First Palo Alto United Methodist Church, 625 Hamilton, Palo Alto; Sun/28, 3pm, First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing, Berk. All performances free. The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra presents the world premiere of musical stories, spoken and sung, with special guests composer-in-residence Dr. Gabriela Lena Franke, and Pulitzer-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

Kunst-Stoff Dance Company Old Mint, 88 Fifth St, SF; www.kunst-stoff.org. Tue/30 and May 1-2, 7pm, 7:40pm, and 8:20pm. Free. Yannis Adoniou and company celebrate 15 years of Kunst-Stoff with the world premiere of Rapport, presented at the historic Old Mint Building.

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

“The Naked Stage” Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Sat/27, 8pm. $20. BATS Improv performs an improvised stage play.

Opera Parallele Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.operaparallele.org. Fri/26-Sat/27, 8pm; Sun/28, 2pm. $40-75. Performing a double bill of Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and Samuel Barber’s A Hand of Bridge.

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).

“The Romane Event Comedy Show” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.pacoromane.com. Wed/24, 8pm. $10. With Sean Keane, Paco Romane, Kate Willett, Matt Lieb, and more.

“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.

“Tickled Pink!” Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.caferoyale-sf.com. Thu/25, 8pm. Free. Comedy night with Butch Escobar, Ryan Papazian, Dan “Gonzo” Mechanik, and more.

“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.

BAY AREA

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Berk; www.calperformances.org. Wed/24-Sat/27, 8pm (also Sat/27, 2pm); Sun/28, 3pm. $30-92. Four programs highlight the company’s annual Cal Performances residency, including two Bay Area premieres.

CubaCaribe Festival Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.cubacaribe.org. Fri/26-Sat/27, 8pm; Sun/28, 2 and 7pm. $25. Master artists performing music and dance from the Caribbean Diaspora.

“The Divine Game” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. Mon/29, 8pm. $20. A spur to thought, to reading, to listening, to sparring over the meaning and magnitude of art — they’re all there in the brilliantly expansive, acute, and sometimes barbed observations of professor Vladimir Nabokov (a delighting, animated John Mercer), as he expounds on the subject of Russian literature in this simply staged but witty, well-honed dramatic reading from First Person Singular and adapter-director Joe Christiano. Presented as part of Shotgun’s Monday night Cabaret series, The Divine Game, drawing verbatim on Nabokov’s Cornell lectures of the 1950s, is an invitation to a heady walk down several byways in the land of great literary art, and there are few more discerning or inspiring guides whether or not you share in every conclusion about the relative merits and demerits of Chekhov (Joshua Han) or Dostoyevsky (Brian Quackenbush) — both of whom appear onstage alongside their idiosyncratic peers Gogol (Colin Johnson) and Tolstoy (Jess Thomas). There’s a frisson of mental joy in a distillation like, “Chekhov’s books are sad books for humorous people,” or the sweet-talking yet penetrating pronouncement that, “Of all the great characters that a great artist creates, his readers are the best,” and their cumulative impact over the course of 90 minutes offers enough inspiration for several reckless bookstore sprees. (Avila)

Nina Haft and Company Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz, Berk; ninahaftandcompany.wordpress.com. Fri/26-Sat/27, 8pm; Sun/28, 7pm. $20. World premiere of a performance installation of dance, sound, words, and food: To begin with the ending already in sight. *

Music listings

Andrew Lam

April 23, 2013

Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead or check the venue’s website to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Visit www.sfbg.com/venue-guide for venue information. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bob vs Guido Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Edie Sedgewick, El Elle, All Your Sisters Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $7.

Flosstradamus, Lil’ Texas Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $22.

Fuzz, Wooden Burial Ground, Spyrals, Man Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Sergent Garcia Slim’s. 8pm, $25.

Gunshy Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Telekinesis, Mount Moriah, Paparazzi Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Big Bones Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Terry Disley’s Mini-Experience Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.

Lara Downes with Quartet San Francisco Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $24.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 6:30pm, $5.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Cafe Divine, 1600 Stockton, SF; www.cafedivinesf.com.7-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kitten on the Keys Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm.

Timba Dance Party Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF.; www.bissapbaobab.com 10pm, $5. With DJ Walt Diggz.

Toast Inspectors Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Bodyshock, Inhalt, DJ Crackwhore, DJ Unit 77 Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita MORE! and Joshua J host this dance party.

Cash IV Gold Double Dutch, 3192 16th St, SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 9pm, free.

Coo-Yah! Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, free.

Full-Step! Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, reggae, soul, and funk with DJs Kung Fu Chris and Bizzi Wonda.

Hardcore Humpday Happy Hour RKRL, 52 Sixth St, SF; (415) 658-5506. 6pm, $3.

Martini Lounge John Colins, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 7pm. With DJ Mark Divita.

Sonic Bodies #3 Center for New Music, 55 Taylor, SF; www.centerfornewmusic.com. 7:30pm, $7-$10. Electro-acoustic and noise musicians, dancers.

THURSDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Aloha Screwdriver, Rocketship Rocketship, Deadbeats Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5.

Baby Dee and Annie Amnesia. 7:30pm, $12.

Joe Bagale, Crystal Monee Hall, Subharmonic Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14-$16.

Ghost BC, Ides of Gemini Regency Ballroom. 8:30pm, $22.

Guido vs Bob Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Led Zepagain DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20.

Lydia, From Indian Lakes, Sweet Talker Slim’s. 7:30pm, $13-$15.

Dave Moreno Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Joan Osborne Acoustic Duo Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $40.

Ben Ottewell Independent. 8pm, $15.

Papa Bear and the Easy Love, Peachalope, WOOOOOO Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

Transit, Seahaven, All Get Out Bottom of the Hill. 8pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 7:30pm, $10.

Brad Mehldau SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $30-$70.

Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Sophisticated Ladies Rite Spot Cafe. 9pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Pa’lante! Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF.; www.bissapbaobab.com 10pm, $5. With DJs Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8. With Pleasuremaker and Senor Oz, plus Chauncey Yearwood.

All 80s Thursday Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). The best of ’80s mainstream and underground.

Goldroom, Viceroy (DJ set), popscene DJs Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $13-$17.

Ritual Temple. 10pm-3am, $5. Two rooms of dubstep, glitch, and trap music.

Sound Remedy Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, $10.

FRIDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Back Pages Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Bob, Guido, Jeff V. Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Dear Hunter, Naive Thieves Slim’s. 8:30pm, $16.

Dope Stars Inc., Rabid Whole DNA Lounge. 8pm, $13.

Eight Bells, Amber Asylum, Dead Man Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Kill the Noise, Brillz, Codes Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $30.

Kowloon Walled City, Tartufi, Queen Crescent Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9:30pm, $10.

Maps and Atlases, Young Man, Cannons and Clouds Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $15.

Shuggie Otis, Jesca Hoop Mezzanine. 9pm.

Phenomenauts, Emily’s Army, Warm Soda Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $12.

Proclaimers, JP Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $26.

Ruben Studdard Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $40; 10pm, $32.

Super Diamond, Purple Ones Bimbo’s. 9pm, $22.

Tumbleweed Wanderers, Guy Fox Independent. 9pm, $18.

TV Mike and the Scarecrowes, Christian Lee Hutson, Electric Sheep, Daring Ear Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"A Night at the Opera" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; sfwmpac.org. 8pm, free.

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Brad Mehldau Duo with Kevin Hayes SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $30-$70.

Hammond Organ Soul Jazz Blues Party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Allison Lovejoy Rite Spot Cafe. 9pm.

Loren Means, Jean Ramirez, Lee Bloom Caffe D’Melanio, 1314 Ocean, SF; (415) 333-3665. 7-9pm, free.

Paris Combo Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.palaceoffinearts.org. 8pm, $25-$50.

"Taglish" Red Poppy Art House. 7:30pm, $10-$15. With Karl Evangelista, Grex, and more.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Baxtalo Drom Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10. Live music, gypsy punk, and belly dance.

Kevin Burke and John Carty Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 7:30pm, $20.

Dave Hanley Band, Bloody Ol’ Mule Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Tina and Her Pony Modern Times Bookstore, 2919 24 St, SF; www.tinaandherpony.com. 8pm, free.

Trio Troubadour Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF.; www.bissapbaobab.com 7:30pm, free.

"Under the Influence" Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF; undertheinfluence.emtab.org. 7pm, $5. Lizzy Acker, MK Chavez, Mariama Lockington perform works by major influences.

DANCE CLUBS

araabMUZIK, Heroes x Villians, Branchez, G Jones 1015 Folsom, SF; www.1015.com. 10pm, $17.50.

Joe Lookout, 3600 16th St.,SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Eight rotating DJs, shirt-off drink specials.

MOM SF Anniversary Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $20. With Rojai and E. Live, Hot Pocket, DJs Gordo Cabeza, Timoteo Gigante, and more.

Old School JAMZ El Rio. 9pm. Fruit Stand DJs spinning old school funk, hip-hop, and R&B.

120 Minutes presents White Ring Elbo Room. 10pm. With resident DJs S4NtA_MU3rTE, Chauncey CC.

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

Trap and Bass DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20. With Dirty Audio.

SATURDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bay Area Heat Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Broken Water, Synthetic ID, Permanent Collection Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Built to Spill, Ugly Winner Slim’s. 9pm, $26-$28.

Chappo, Sunrunners, Coast Jumper, Nova Albion Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Chick Jagger 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm, free.

Clamhawk Manor, Prepare for War!? Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

DRMS, James Riotto, Bells Atlas Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $12.

Ensemble Mik Nawooj, Aima the Dreamer, CelloJoe Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Jeff V., Greg Zema, Bob Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Qui, Victory and Associates, Minot Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Rupa and the April Fishes, Las Cafeteras Independent. 9pm, $20.

Slippery Slope, Everyone is Dirty, Collapsible Empire El Rio. 9pm.

SOJA, Rootz Underground, Los Rakas Warfield. 8:30pm, $28.

Ruben Studdard Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $40; 10pm, $32.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Brad Mehldau Duo with Mark Guiliana SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $30-$70.

Hammond Organ Soul Jazz Blues Party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Mr. Lucky and the Cocktail Party Rite Spot Cafe. 9pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Fireflies Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Kafana Balkan, Inspector Gadje Brass Band, DJ Zeljko, Jill Parker Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF: Aprilween DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20. With Lobsterdust, Maya Jakobson, DJ K.Ash, Smash-Up Derby, and more.

Paris to Dakar Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs.

Re: Edit Underground SF, 424 Haight, SF; www.undergroundsf.com. 10pm. With DJs Michael Perry, Bob V, James Demon, Zenith.

Temptation Cat Club. 9:30pm. $5-$8. Indie, electro, new wave video dance party.

SUNDAY 28

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Absu, Pale Chalice, Cyanic DNA Lounge. 8pm, $17.

Built to Spill, Ugly Winner Slim’s. 8pm, $26-$28.

Cave Singers, Bleeding Rainbw Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

Commisure, Carta, Skyscraper Mori Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $7.

Har Mar Superstar, Easystreet, Rocky Business Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Paul Kelly, Lady Crooners Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

Dave Moreno and Friends Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

New Build, No Ceremony /// Independent. 8pm, $17.

Shadow Sessions performing Endtroducing Elbo Room. 5pm, $10.

Marnie Stern, SISU, E V Kain Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

We Will Be Lions, Quaaludes, Sweat Lodge, Paperhaus Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lavay Smith Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brazil and Beyond Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 6:30pm, free.

Maria Fibish Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Silver Threads Tupelo, 1337 Grant, SF; www.tupelosf.com 4-7pm, free.

Sweet Jo’s Chilli and Biscuits, Stu Allen and Mars Hotel, Echo Trails Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 2pm, free.

Tin Cup Serenade Red Poppy Art House. 7:30pm, $5.

VOENA: Voices of the River Yoshi’s SF. 6pm, $12-$22. Multi-cultural children’s choir.

DANCE CLUBS

Beats for Brunch Thee Parkside. 11am, free.

Dance to Cure Diabetes Project 1, 251 Rhode Island, SF; www.p1sf.com. Noon-11pm. With Mark Farina, Maurice Tamraz, Sen-sei and Brian Salazar, and more.

Deep Fried Soul Dance Party Boom Boom Room. 8pm, free.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. With DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, Dub Gabriel.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2.

MONDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Chad Valley, Ski Lodge, Soonest Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Damir Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Dunwells Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $10-$12.

Thee Oh Sees Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10.

Various Cruelties, B. Hamilton, Hindu Pirates Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-$12.

Whitehorse Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Mike Burns Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Crazy Mondays Beauty Bar, 2299 Mission, SF; www.thebeautybar.com. 10pm, free. Hip-hop and other stuff.

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

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

Soul Cafe John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. R&B, Hip-Hop, Neosoul, reggae, dancehall, and more with DJ Jerry Ross.

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blood Red Shoes, Mister Loveless Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $12.

IAMSU!, Problem Slim’s. 9pm, $19.

In Cahoots, Ghost Tribe Fires, Balto Hotel Utah. 8pm.

Jelly Bread Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5.

Lonely Forest, Now Now, Doe Eye Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-$12.

METZ, White Lung, Mrs. Magician Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Stan Erhart Band Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Synchronized Watches, See Minus Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

Titan Ups, Burnt, Giraffe Aftermath Amnesia. 9pm, $8-$10.

Wakey! Wakey! Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Terry Disley’s Mini-Experience Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.

Renaud Garcia-Fons Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $24. International Jazz Day.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm.

On the Cheap listings

Andrew Lam

April 23, 2013

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

WEDNESDAY 24

LGBT Career Fair SF LGBT Center, 1800 Market, SF. lgbtcareerfair2013.eventbrite.com. Noon, free. RSVP online. Head over to the LGBT Center today to check out some leading Bay Area employers dedicated to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The fair provides the LGBT community and allied job seekers the opportunity to network and discover new careers.

THURSDAY 25

Green fashion show and discussion SkunkFunk, 1475 Waight, SF www.efactor.com/greenclothessf. 7-9pm, free. Check out a fashion show with a focus on sustainable, eco-friendly clothing. After you’re wooed by all the green style Oceana Lott, a human resource manager, magazine editor, and teacher will speak about how to create a lifestyle that is both fulfilling and economically minded.

The Bone Room Presents The Bone Room, 1573 Solano, SF. www.boneroompresents.com. 7pm, free. Head to the Bone Room this evening to uncover the mysteries behind the human nose. Neuroscientist Leslie Vosshall will give an in-depth presentation on the biology and possibility of genetic basis for the human sense of smell.

“How to Move a Mountain” Southern Exposure, 3030 20th St., SF. www.soex.org. 7-9pm, free. At this eclectic three-pack of presentations on the power of collaborations you’ll be able to learn about the sexual life of slime mold, robots that can improvise music, and how to draw collectively.

FRIDAY 26

Body image workshop AHP Services Center, 1930 Market, SF. www.ucsf-ahp.org. 6:30-9:30pm, free. Call (415) 476-6448 x1 to register. Join tonight’s discussion about the way gay and bisexual men see their bodies. The evening will cover ways to improve body image and how it can affect your relationships and sex life.

Natural Poetry Month book party Pegasus Downtown, 2349 Shattuck, Berk. www.omnidawn.com. 7pm, free. Celebrate National Poetry Month with Omnidawn Publishing. Writers George Albon, Norma Cole, Alice Jones, and more will give brief readings from their own Omnidawn books. Hors d’oeuvres, desserts, wine, and fizzy water will be provided to sip and snack on.

SATURDAY 27

Public Square: Future soul edition YBCA Forum and Galleries, 701 Mission, SF. www.ybca.org. 11am-1am. Check website for specific event prices. Join the YBCA for a full day of classes, performances, and exhibits. Some events on the schedule include the 50 Cent Tabernacle, which — for a mere 50 cents — will give you access to up to six of the offered dance and movement classes. Hang out at an event put on by art group Field of Inquiry afterward, which answers the question “What will soul look like in the year 2038?” The group will respond with performances, food, design, murals, and technology. Check the site for a full schedule of events for the day.

Same-Sex Ballroom Competition Just Dance Ballroom, 2500 Embarcadero, Oakl. www.aprilfollies.com. 10am-11pm, $15 for daytime events only, $25 for evening events only, $35 for entire day. Now in its 11th year, the annual and longest running same-sex dance competition will include international Latin, American smooth, and American rhythm divisions. New to the competition this year are tango and country western dances. The day includes dance lessons for beginners, A-level finals, performances by top rated couples in the evening, and an open social dance for all.

9th Annual Golden Gate Sacred Harp Singing Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, 953 De Haro, SF. www.bayareasacredharp.org. 9am-3:30pm, free. Experience the raw power and moving poetry of the sacred harp in an authentic singing ritual — a centuries-old tradition of singing early American hymns in shape note style. A dinner will be held at noon on the grounds, so bring a dish to share.

SUNDAY 28

People’s Park Anniversary People’s Park, 2556 Haste, Berk. www.peoplepark.org. Noon-6pm, free. The politically driven, community-run park is celebrating its 44th anniversary today. The day will consist of live performances by The Fvah Squad Band, Junior Toots, and more. There will be tables for community organizations, workshops, free vegan meals from Food not Bombs, and a drum circle.

Pinhole Photograph Day RayKo, 428 Third St., SF. www.raykophoto.com. Noon-5pm, free. In honor of worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, RayKo is hosting a special exhibition of this throwback, analogue art. Pinhole artist Jo Babcok will be exhibiting his images and cameras made from everything from a suitcase to coffee pots to a bowling ball case. Babcock will also be teaching pinhole amateurs how to make their own camera from supplies provided by RayKo. Check the website to enroll in this quick-and-easy seminar.

How Weird Street Faire Howard and New Montgomery, SF. www.howweird.org. Noon-8pm, $10 donation requested. The 14th annual street faire is back with the theme “Weirdi Gras.” The fair will include marching bands, parades, art, performances, 10 stages of world-class electronic music, and vendors from around the world. Expect to see costumes, and dancing reminiscent of New Orlean’s Mardi Gras style. Even more exciting, five New Orleans marching bands will roam the fair grounds this year, in accordance with the theme.

Festival of Mandolins Croatian American Cultural Center, 60 Onondage, SF. www.croationamericanweb.org. 11am-5pm, $10 advance, $15 door, children free. The 13th annual San Francisco Festival of the Mandolins will include five diverse performances ranging from bluegrass to classical. Before the show mandolin workshops will be held. Ethnic Bulgarian food will also be available.

Short takes: SFIFF week one

April 23, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

April 25-May 9, most shows $10-15

Various venues

festival.sffs.org

The Artist and the Model (Fernando Trueba, Spain, 2012) The horror of the blank page, the raw sensuality of marble, and the fresh-meat attraction of a new model — just a few of the starting points for this thoughtful narrative about an elderly sculptor finding and shaping his possibly finest and final muse. Bedraggled and homeless beauty Mercè (Aida Folch) washes up in a small French town in the waning days of World War II and is taken in by a kindly woman (Claudia Cardinale), who seems intent on pleasantly pimping her out as a nude model to her artist husband (Jean Rochefort). As his former model, she knows Mercè has the type of body he likes — and that she’s capable of restoring his powers, in more ways than one, if you know what I mean. Yet this film by Fernando Trueba (1992’s Belle Époque) isn’t that kind of movie, with those kinds of models, especially when Mercè turns out to have more on her mind than mere pleasure. Done up in a lustrous, sunlit black and white that recalls 1957’s Wild Strawberries, The Artist and the Model instead offers a steady, respectful, and loving peek into a process, and unique relationship, with just a touch of poetry. Fri/26, 1pm, and Sun/28, 6:30pm, Kabuki. (Kimberly Chun)

The Daughter (Alexander Kasatkin and Natalia Nazarova, Russia, 2012) Imagine a serial-killer tale as directed by Tarkovsky and you’ll get an idea of this fascinating, ambiguous Russian drama by co-directors Aleksandr Kasatkin and Natalia Nazarova. Someone is murdering teenage girls in what otherwise seems a tranquil village backwater. That’s one reason the almost painfully naïve Inna (Maria Smolnikova) is kept on a fairly tight leash by her gruff, conservative widower father (Oleg Tkachev), who expects her to perform all housekeeper duties and mind a little brother. When brash, borderline-trashy new schoolmate Marta (Yana Osipova) surprisingly decides to make Inna her best friend, she’s both a liberating and dangerous influence. Less interested in narrative clarity than issues of morality, spirituality, and guilt (at one point the killer confesses to a priest whose daughter he murdered — tormenting the cleric who is bound to confidentiality), this often-gorgeous feature is a worthy addition to the long line of somber, meditative Russian art films. Fri/26, 6:15pm, and Sun/28, 1pm, Kabuki; May 6, 9pm, PFA. (Dennis Harvey)

The Kill Team (Dan Krauss, US, 2012) Dan Krauss’ documentary chronicles the shocking case of a US Army unit in Afghanistan whose squad leader, one Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, encouraged his men to kill unarmed, unaccused civilians for fun, then cover it up as alleged self-defense. (He also collected severed fingers for an eventual bone necklace.) When subordinate Adam Winfield was disturbed enough by this to tell his parents (his father a Marine vet), and ponder informing officials, he was threatened with his own lethal “accident.” Once the scandal finally broke, he found himself on military trial for murder along with Gibbs and others. While sometimes a little too slickly made in a narrative-feature kind of way, this is a potent look at the vagaries of military justice, not to mention a military culture that can foster dangerously frustrated adrenaline junkies. As one of Winfield’s fellow accused puts it, Afghanistan was “boring as fuck” because they expected to be “kickin’ ass” when “instead we’re forced to help ’em build a well, or a school, or whatever.” Another shrugs “It was nothing like everyone hyped it up to be … and that is probably partly why, uh, things happened.” Fri/26, 9pm, PFA; May 6, 3:15pm, and May 7, 6pm, Kabuki; May 9, 6pm, New People. (Harvey)

Rosie (Marcel Gisler, Switzerland, 2013) Moms: can’t live with ’em … and can’t live with ’em. Roughly, that’s the predicament of successful gay writer Lorenz (Fabian Kruger) when his hard-drinking independent mater Rosie (Sibylle Brunner) keels over with a heart attack. His heart is with his tough old bird of a mother — unlike his more conventional sister (Judith Hofmann) — though a young, adorable fanboy of a neighbor (Sebastian Ledesma) is intent on competing for his attentions. Director and co-writer Marcel Gisler spares no warmth or care when it comes to filling out the story fully, as when Lorenz discovers that he has more in common with his seemingly inaccessible late father than he ever imagined. While Rosie paints a rosier, slightly more sentimental picture, imagine a warmer and fuzzier yet still renegade Rainer Werner Fassbender nursing a wisecracking, headstrong Emmi post-1974’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. Fri/26, 9:30pm, Kabuki; Sun/28, 9pm, PFA; Tue/30, 6pm, Kabuki. (Chun)

You’re Next (Adam Wingard, US, 2011) The hit of the 2011 Toronto Film Festival’s midnight section — and one that’s taking its sweet time getting to theaters — indie horror specialist (2010’s A Horrible Way to Die, 2007’s Pop Skull, 2012’s V/H/S) Adam Wingard’s feature isn’t really much more than a gussied-up slasher. But it’s got vigor, and violence, to spare. An already uncomfortable anniversary reunion for the wealthy Davison clan plus their children’s spouses gets a lot more so when dinner is interrupted by an arrow that sails through a window, right into someone’s flesh. Immediately a full on siege commences, with family members reacting with various degrees of panic, selfishness, and ingenuity, while an unknown number of animal-masked assailants prowl outside (and sometimes inside). Clearly fun for its all-star cast and crew of mumblecore/indie horror staples, yet preferring gallows’ humor to wink-wink camp, it’s a (very) bloody good ride. Sat/27, 11:30am, Kabuki; May 1, 9:45pm, Kabuki. (Harvey)

Thérèse (Claude Miller, France, 2012) Both Emma Bovary and Simone de Beauvoir would undoubtedly relate to this increasingly bored and twisted French woman of privilege stuck in the sticks in the ’20s, as rendered by novelist Francois Mauriac and compellingly translated to the screen by the late director Claude Miller. Forbiddingly cerebral and bookish yet also strangely passive, Thérèse (Audrey Tautou) looks like she has it all from a distance — she’s married to her best friend’s coarse, hunting-obsessed brother (Gilles Lellouche) though envious of her chum’s affair with a handsome and free-thinking Jewish student. Turns out she’s as trapped and close to death as the birds her spouse snares in their forest, and the suffocatingly provincial ways of family she’s married into lead her to undertake a dire course of action. Lellouche adds nuance to his rich lunk, but you can’t tear your eyes from Tautou. Turning her pinched frown right side up and hardening those unblinking button eyes, she plays well against type as a well-heeled, sleepwalking, possibly sociopathic sour grape, effectively conveying the mute unhappiness of a too-well-bred woman born too early and too blinkered to understand that she’s desperate for a new century’s freedoms. Sat/27, 3pm, Kabuki; Mon/29, 6:30pm, New People. (Chun)

Ernest & Celestine (Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, and Benjamin Renner, France/Luxembourg/Belgium, 2012) Belgian animators Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier are best known for the stop-motion shorts series (and priceless 2009 subsequent feature) A Town Called Panic, an anarchic, absurdist, and hilarious creation suitable for all ages. Their latest (co-directed with Benjamin Renner) is … not like that at all. Instead, it’s a sweet, generally guileless children’s cartoon that takes its gentle, watercolor-type visual style from late writer-illustrator Gabrielle Vincent’s same-named books. Celestine (voiced by Pauline Brunner) is an orphaned girl mouse that befriends gruff bear Ernest (the excellent Lambert Wilson), though their improbable kinship invites social disapproval and scrapes with the law. There are some clever satirical touches, but mostly this is a softhearted charmer that will primarily appeal to younger kids. Adults will find it pleasant enough — but don’t expect any Panic-style craziness. Sun/28, 12:30pm, and May 1, 7pm, Kabuki. (Harvey)

Marketa Lazarová (Frantisek Vlácil, Czech Republic, 1966) An extraordinary evocation of medieval life, this 1966 black and white epic — considered by some the greatest Czech film ever made — is being reprised at SFIFF in honor of the festival’s late board chairman and generous benefactor George Gund, for whom it was a personal favorite. The violent struggle between pagan feudalist clans and rising Christian political forces in 13th century Eastern Europe is dramatized in brutal yet poetical form here. You will be very glad you didn’t live back then, or suffer the privations director Frantisek Vlácil and his crew did during an apparently very tough rural, mostly wintertime shoot. But you won’t forget this cinematically dazzling if sometimes opaquely told chronicle based on a classic Czech novel. Sun/28, 12:30pm, PFA; May 3, 8:45pm, New People. (Harvey)

Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, US, 2012) Feature documentaries Benjamin Smoke (2000) and Instrument (2003) are probably Jem Cohen’s best-known works, but this prolific filmmaker — an inspired choice for SFIFF’s Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award, honoring “a filmmaker whose main body of work is outside the realm of narrative feature filmmaking” — has a remarkably diverse resume of shorts, music videos, and at least one previous narrative film (albeit one with experimental elements), 2004’s Chain. Cohen appears in person to discuss his work and present his latest film, Museum Hours, about a guard at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum (“the big old one,” the man calls it) who befriends a Montreal woman visiting her comatose cousin. It’s a deceptively simple story that expands into a deeply felt, gorgeously shot rumination on friendship, loneliness, travel, art history and appreciation, and finding the beauty in the details of everyday life. Sun/28, 5:30pm, Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Patience Stone (Atiq Rahimi, France/Germany/England/Afghanistan, 2012) “You’re the one that’s wounded, yet I’m the one that’s suffering,” complains the good Afghan wife of Patience Stone in this theatrical yet charged adaptation of Atiq Rahimi’s best-selling novel, directed by the Kabul native himself. As The Patience Stone opens, a beautiful, nameless young woman (Golshifteh Farahani) is fighting to not only keep alive her comatose husband, a onetime Jihadist with a bullet lodged in his neck, but also simply survive on her own with little money and two small daughters and a war going off all around her. In a surprising turn, her once-heedless husband becomes her solace — her silent confidante and her so-called patience stone — as she talks about her fears, secrets, memories, and desires, the latter sparked by a meeting with a young soldier. Despite the mostly stagy treatment of the action, mainly isolated to a single room or house (although the guerilla-shot scenes on Kabul streets are rife with a feeling of real jeopardy), The Patience Stone achieves lift-off, thanks to the power of a once-silenced woman’s story and a heart-rending performance by Farahani, once a star and now banned in her native Iran. Mon/29, 6:30pm, and Tues/30, 8:45pm, Kabuki. (Chun)

Peaches Does Herself (Peaches, Germany, 2012) Canadian-born yet the quintessential modern Berlin act — transgressively sexed-up electroclash slash-performance artist — Peaches delivers an expectedly high-concept live show in this nimbly cinematic concert movie. The first 15 minutes or so are absolutely great: raunchy, hilarious, imaginatively staged (completely with an orgiastically inclined dance troupe). But after a while it really begins to bog down in prolonged appearances by elderly burlesque-type standup Dannii Daniels, stilted ones by Amazonian transsexual Sandy Kane, and an attempt at a quasi-romantic-triangle narrative that is meant to be funny and outrageous but just kinda lies there. Diehard fans will be thrilled, but most viewers will hit an exhaustion point long before the film reaches its (admittedly funny) fadeout. Mon/29, 9:45pm, and May 2, 9:15pm, Kabuki. (Harvey) *

The San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 25-May 9 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; New People Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, 1881 Post, SF. For tickets (most shows $10-15) and info, visit festival.sffs.org.

Laid bare

April 23, 2013

marke@sfbg.com

LIT “I met Johanna at a party in New York in 1998 — actually I was talking to her boyfriend first, barrettes in his dyed black hair and painted nails, I was trying to figure out if he was a fag or from Olympia.”

If you were “alternative” in the ’90s, that priceless sentence should ring strikingly true, as will this one: “Obviously we believed in attitude: if someone said something about not wanting to judge people, that was New Age garbage. New Age garbage was almost as bad as a trust fund, it was the same thing as stealing from your friends because you were stealing their rage.”

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — outspoken queer anti-assimilation activist, genderblending thriftstore style icon, archetypal Mission District character, huge-hearted den mother, insufferable gadfly — is the posterchild for all that was culturally alternative in San Francisco in that pierced-lip poser decade, while at the same time possessing one of the loudest voices cutting through the bullshit clamor back then and questioning it all.

She’s also a brilliant writer, with two novels and several anti-assimilationist essay anthologies, including last year’s Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?, under her sparkly little purple belt. Her new memoir The End of San Francisco from City Lights Books is written in such a hypnotically elliptical style (summoning City Lights’ Beat poet legacy) and contains so many spot-on observations and era-damning epigrams that anyone who lived through the period described will cling to its pages while wishing to hurl the book at a wall in embarrassed self-recognition.

Searing, funny, maudlin, elegiac, infuriating, and confessional, The End of San Francisco is a deliberately disordered collection of vignettes dealing mostly with Sycamore’s span living in the city and launching the highly influential Queeruption, Fed Up Queers, and Gay Shame activist movements.

“At some point I realized that the book centered around the myths and realities of San Francisco as a refuge for radical queer visions in community building,” Sycamore told me via email.

“I first moved to San Francisco in 1992, when I was 19, and it’s where I figured out how to challenge the violence of the world around me, how to embrace outsider visions of queer splendor, how to create love and lust and intimacy and accountability on my own terms. I left San Francisco in 2010, and in some ways this book is an attempt to figure out why or how this city has such a hold on me, in spite of the failure of so many of my dreams, over and over and over again.”

Along the way we get drug overdoses, AIDS, lesbian potlucks, heroin chic, crystal meth, ACT UP, the birth of the Internet, the dot-com boom, the dot-com bust, mental breakdowns, outdoor cruising, phony spirituality, Craigslist hookups, hipster gentrification, Polk Street hustling, fag-bashing, shoplifting, house music, the Matrix Program, crappy SoMa live/work lofts, “Care Not Cash,” gallons of bleach and hair dye, and processing, processing, and more processing.

It’s definitely not a nostalgia-fest: Juicy passages about SF club history, ’90s queer life in the Mission, and Gay Shame’s internal dynamics and gloriously kooky pranks (guerrilla Gay Shame Awards ceremonies blocking Castro traffic; a Pride adjacent, corporate-sponsor-tweaking “Budweiser Vomitorium” where you could “barf up your pride”) are accompanied by an Oprah-load of issues including chronic pain, incest, personal betrayals, anorexia, depression. The moving opening chapter describes Sycamore confronting her father in the upscale Washington, DC home she grew up in about her recovered memories of his sexual abuse, as he lay dying.

And Sycamore has surprising words for those who think queer punk, riot grrrl, the bathhouse disco and clone-look revival, or the scene at the SF Eagle were essential to the queer activist movement (Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill makes a memorable appearance — Sycamore befriended her without knowing who she was, and later attended the first Le Tigre show.) Her habit of questioning everything can often paint her into corners of abrasive self-absorption, but she continues to raise interesting points about the fetishization of machismo in the FTM, leather, and punk communities, the emptiness of hipster activism, and the capitalist-colluding hypocrisy of “alternative culture.”

As usual though, she saves her heaviest judgments for the mainstream gay morass, its Borg-like drive toward cultural hegemony via marriage, military, and consumerism — even as she acknowledges the necessary symbiosis that binds queer outcasts together. At 1993’s March on Washington, “where suddenly there were a million white gay people in white t-shirts applying for Community Spirit cards”: “Gays in the military was the big issue and what could be more horrifying but here’s the thing: freaks actually found one another — we were so alienated that we went right up and said hi, I like your hair…”

This, then, is the tenderness that drives Bernstein to keep speaking out, despite the personal costs. As we weather another dot-com boom of homogenizing gentrification, The End of San Francisco is a timely reminder of the community that can spring from resistance.

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE reads Tue/30, 7pm, free at City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF. www.citylights.com, and Thursday, May 9, 7:30pm, free at the GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th St., SF. www.glbthistory.org

River phoenix

April 23, 2013

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Many who have followed the remarkable career of Campo Santo, the longtime resident theater company at Intersection for the Arts, will recognize the real-life figure inspiring the character of “Luis Jaguar” in Campo Santo’s new production, The River, penned for the company by Richard Montoya of famed Chicano theater trio Culture Clash. Luis Saguar (who died too young in 2009) was a unique and mighty presence on Bay Area stages for years, not least in the many exceptional productions with the company he helped found (with Margo Hall, Sean San José, and Michael Torres) in 1996.

The River is finally about more than Saguar. Montoya’s play — the first to be produced under the umbrella of a four-play initiative of Intersection for the Arts and California Shakespeare Theatre’s Triangle Lab called Califas, exploring California stories — embraces the nameless, heterogeneous, polyglot lives that make up this roiling culture. (Next up in the Califas series, incidentally, is another Montoya play, the local premiere in late May of American Night: The Ballad of Juan José, out at Cal Shakes’ Orinda amphitheater.)

Nevertheless, Saguar is the spirit, “the heart,” animating The River‘s central story of memory and the concessions exacted on life’s course. It’s the tale of a Mexican laborer named Luis (a warm, stoic Brian Rivera) who has died on the American side of the desert border, leaving behind his adored wife, Esme (Anna Maria Luera). His burial site, and corpse, affects the lives of two trespassing E-addled Mission District hipsters — the arty, loquacious, and oh-so-arch queer couple of Javier (Lakin Valdez) and Lance (Christopher Ward White) — like an act of possession, causing them to question many things about themselves and their worldview. Meanwhile, a circle of disparate characters gradually gathers around the couple, further blurring lines of identity: a self-consciously ineffectual Indian named Crow (Michael Torres), a fastidious and grudgingly sympathetic park ranger (an amusingly nerdy Nora el Samahy), and two life-scarred bar flies at a nearby tavern (Donald E. Lacy Jr. and Randall Nakano).

Between them all, a cacophonous bout of patter, argot, revelry, ethnocentric posturing, and micro-political mapping ensues, interrupted by gently romantic, wistful moments between Luis and Esme — who meet on an epistolary and imaginary common ground that describes a river that is part metaphor, part myth, and part real-world physical divide.

Tanya Orellana’s appealing scenic design, with its alluvial pattern-work on the floor and vertical cascade of shale steps, adds a choice set of elements to the intimate performance space at the A.C.T. Costume Shop. Live accompaniment by guitarist Steve Boss (channeling Charlie Gurke’s score in Day of the Dead face paint) and subtle video projections by Joan Osato (cast on the floor and depicting running buffalo and other scenes) add further moody, ghostly dimension to the room.

Montoya’s rapid-fire cultural dog-pile has a flow of its own that, while erratic, contains some wonderful rapids and poignant coves. Still, the story’s mystery never quite manifests the wonder or suspense it should, and the tensions present in the text are imperfectly realized across uneven performances in the production directed by Campo Santo’s Sean San José. As fans of Culture Clash might expect, the play’s often-barbed humor comes well grounded in local culture, including its array of niche and broad stereotypes, and these provide much of the fuel for the show’s limited fire.

There’s a tendency to take the loopy humor in the play’s looping narrative a little too broadly at times, but there’s both laughs and a kind of half-bitter, half-defiant recognition in the satirical zigzags, as when Lance (played with spoiled but knowing charm by White) announces his desire to have a baby “and prenatal Bikram yoga classes,” — much to the horror of his partner, unemployed Salvadoran Cal Arts grad Javier (played with a cutting, randy intensity by Valdez) — only to be gripped a moment later by a bad trip that throws all his assumptions into turmoil: “Everything I learned is wrong!” he freaks incredulously. “I got my PhD in hip-hop culture?”

If the production proves inconsistent in its navigation of The River’s demanding dialogue and snaking emotional shifts, however, the top of the second act briefly turns it all around with the introduction of Donald Lacy’s character, Brother Ballard. Lacy, a veteran of some leading Campo Santo’s productions, beautifully delivers a monologue of days-gone-by with an inspired precision and verve that recall precisely the muscular theatrical vitality, the street-wise insouciant wit and effortless cool of so many Campo Santo shows past. The confluence of present and past are never more acutely felt, and the impact is bracing.

THE RIVER

Through May 4

Thu-Sun, 8pm, $30

A.C.T. Costume Shop

1117 Market, SF

theriver2013.eventbrite.com

You want to live in Manhattan? Move there.

Zelda Bronstein

April 19, 2013

192

You want to live in Manhattan? Move there.

I feel like I’ve been having this discussion for 30 years, and it still keeps coming back. The latest installment (thanks to sfist for the link) is a Slate article by Matthew Yglesias arguing that San Francisco could solve its housing crisis by becoming as dense as Manhattan. Lots of highrise condos and apartments in places like the Mission. A total of 3.2 million residents.

Obviously, a totally different city:

Obviously that would have a transformative effect on Oakland as well in various regards. It’s obviously not “politically realistic” to imagine San Francisco rezoning to allow that kind of density. But uniquely among American cities, I completely believe that 3.2 million people would want to live in a hypothetical much-more-crowded version of the city if they were allowed to. You’d need to build another heavy rail line or three and do some better dedicated bus lanes, but it’d be affordable with a much larger tax base.

Here’s the problem. Two problems, really.

1. That level of density hasn’t exactly made Manhattan affordable. (Although if you want to move there, it’s probably cheaper than SF at this point). There’s been a huge surge in housing construction in NYC, and housing prices are still way too high. The housing market in San Francisco is so unusual that demand is essentially infinite; you can’t build your way out of this.

2. There are already 800,000 people living here, and most of us don’t want to live in Manhattan.

One of the reasons San Francisco is so attractive is that it’s still a human-scale city. I’ve spent a lot of time in Manhattan, and the rush is pretty cool, and some urbanists say that’s how we’re all going to have to live in the future — packed into tall buildings in dense cities — but that’s not how I want to live. I know I sound old and I’m becoming a curmudgeon and one of those “you should have seen us in the old days” people, but I like the fact that there are no highrises in the Mission.

Yeah, San Francisco is going to have to grow in population. There are ways to do that — to make dense neighborhoods that are still very livable. See: North Beach. But San Franciscans have generally taken the position that we don’t want to be Manhattan. We want to be San Francisco.

Now: My vision is not in synch with how housing is allocated in a hyper-capitalist system. Me, I think housing should be treated as a human right and regulated like a public utility. Landlords should be allowed a “reasonable return on investment” but not the greatest profit the market will bear. Homeowners should see their property appreciate at a reasonable level, but not at a speculative level. Housing shouldn’t be bought and sold as a commodity. And it should be allocated by seniority — that is, the people who have been a part of a community for the longest get the better housing.

That’s how you avoid the demand-exceeds-supply issue (and again, in this city, there will always be more demand than supply.) I know that’s commie shit, but that’s the way it is.

Still, whatever the economic or policy arguments, you can’t force that level of density onto this city. Because before you make those kinds of plans, you have to check with the people who live here.

I wrote this mostly to give the trolls some red meat, since they don’t seem to be agitated enough lately. Go to it, Adam Smith.

Red all over

Andrew Lam

April 18, 2013

SUPER EGO “I’ve been listening a lot to Hulk Hogan’s new comedy album. I hear he has an acid jazz album coming out soon, too — can’t wait for that.” I’m being treated to some good ol’ deadpan Native American leg-pulling from DJ Bear Witness of A Tribe Called Red, performing at Thee Parkside on Fri/19.

Well, more accurately it’s First Nations leg-pulling, as the fascinating and super-fun ATCR DJs — Bear Witness, NDN, and Shub — are of indigenous Canadian descent, calling me from Ottawa, where their monthly party Electric Pow Wow has been slaying for almost five years now. The trio mixes electronic dance beats with contemporary aboriginal tribal drumming and singing, plus a healthy dose of aural and visual sampling both historical (early field recordings of powwow chants and 20th-century sound bites) and ironic (cringe-worthy Hollywood redskin whoops and awkward pop culture quotes ranging from John Wayne to Back to the Future III) to create a deliciously subversive club experience.

The result is what the three call “pow wow step” — a banging, trancey sound mostly rooted in the bass-heavy drops and meticulously constructed plateaus of dubstep, but transcending that too-trendy sound by virtue of the trio’s innumerable global dance music influences. And it’s finally giving a contemporary electronic voice to aboriginal groups from Ojibwe to Nippising.

Bear Witness points out that in Canada and much of the United States, indigenous people are now “urban aboriginals — we’re the people in the hoodies and baseball caps living downtown,” so a distinct, urban musical expression could only come naturally.

“We’re one of the fastest growing demographics, yet we’re still pretty invisible,” NDN added. “It’s a lot different from when our great-great grandparents came off the reservations looking for work. Our grandparents became integrated as much as they were allowed in 1950s and ’60s culture until some of them joined radical movements like Black Power. Then our parents grew up in this kind of unique urban environment full of little telltale signs that they were aborigines.

“And now we come along, raised on tribal identification, but also hip-hop and everything else you got growing up in the city. Including the fact that the whole world’s structured to be against you, from the moment you step out of the house in the morning to get a cup of coffee.

“So we’re representing, while also trying to move it all forward. We want to decolonize some of the references and stereotypes while having a lot of fun with it.”

For all the political subtext and critical theory red meat, ATCR’s emphasis is always on the party. “We’re three energetic DJs up there playing off each other in a totally spontaneous fashion, having a blast with the crowd,” says DJ Shub. Shub’s status as an insanely talented, vinyl-shredding winner of the Canadian DMC DJ championship makes him a star on his own.

When tripled with NDN and Bear, the quick-witted referents from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to Q-Tip fly — the group credits mashup culture, a breakdancing revival, and kooky Brit electro duo Radioclit among its inspirations. (And yes, when it comes to the sometimes awkward, culturally-appropriative legacy of tribal house, jungle, and New Age ambient, they love to flip it all back on itself, reclaiming it.)

A Tribe Called Red often draws hundreds to its touring powwow parties in the Great White North and the East Coast, sometimes featuring live drum circles and hoop dancers. Last year’s electrifying self-titled free-download album snagged them a pretigious Polaris prize nomination. The trio works with several organizations to promote aboriginal causes. New album Nation II Nation drops May 7, a cheeky collab with Das Racist, “Indian From All Directions,” just debuted on Pitchfork. And they’ve been buzzing for years. (I first became aware of them after a trip to Navajo Nation, when the morning radio pumped the spacey electro-tribal sounds of what my traveling companion instantly dubbed “tech-navajo.”) But this will be their first full-on West Coast tour.

No qualms about reception in unfamiliar territory, though: “There are aboriginal people everywhere, just like there are party people everywhere,” DJ Shub says. “Word gets out, and people will come for a good time.”

A Tribe Called Red Fri/19, 9pm, $10. Thee Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. www.theeparkside.com, www.electricpowwow.com

TUBESTEAK CONNECTION NINTH ANNIVERSARY

There’s some kind of size queen joke about this seminal bathhouse disco party finally reaching the big nine, but damned if I know what it is. Let bearded clan king DJ Bus Station John lay it all out for you, as his intimate weekly Tenderloin bacchanal keeps alive the down and dirty spirit of gay San Francisco. Free mustache rides!

Thu/18, 10pm, $5. Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF. www.auntcharlieslounge.com

SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO

Has it really been 10 years since club Mezzanine first mezzed up downtown? Celebrate in wild style with beloved big-room Brit electro duo SMD and a couple thousand others.

Thu/18, 9pm, $25. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

JOE CLAUSELL

One of the best deep and Latin house DJs of all time, fiddling knobs on one of the best sound systems in the country. That is all.

Fri/19, 10pm-late, $20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

TINARIWEN

Gorgeously trance-like, guitar driven tunes from the global nomad reps of Tuareg rock.

Fri/19, doors 8pm, show 9pm, $55. The Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF. www.thechapelsf.com

SILENT SERVANT

Great, dark and dubby techno from a contemporary master will lay waste to one of the city’s most colorful dance floors at Honey Soundsystem. Who will survive? Anyone willing to plumb the secret depths of sound. And do some high kicks.

Sun/21, 10pm, $10. Holy Cow, 1535 Folsom, SF. www.honeysoundsystem.com

California Roots

Maria Poblet

April 18, 2013

Grab your tickets to California Roots Music & Arts Festival, as it’s almost a sell out event. The leading reggae/rock music festival happens in Monterey, California with Slightly Stoopid, Rebelution, Matisyahu, The Expendables, Collie Buddz with New Kingston, The Dirty Heads, Tomorrows Bad Seeds, and many more.

Three days of exceptional live music, vendors, art, and a ton of fun; Purchase tickets here. If you miss securing your tickets, be sure to log on to the website and listen to three days of live music from some of your favorite artists.

Friday, May 24 thru Sunday, May 26 @ Monterey County Fairgrounds

The new Exploratorium opens — are the piers as good as the Palace?

Andrew Lam

April 18, 2013

As someone who was practically bottle-fed on the old Exploratorium space, I was hesitant approaching the science museum’s opening day at its new home on Pier 15 and 17. Like many other SF natives, I was attached to the old world charm and neo-classical elegance of the Palace of Fine Arts location, opened in 1969 by physics professor Frank Oppenheimer.

But consider me a convert. Where the Palace of Fine Arts’ physical layout seemed to dictate the content of the old museum, the new building, extensively rehabbed to house the famously hands-on exhibits, allows them to exist more organically. The new site now houses the largest pod of solar panels in the city, holds a magnificently vista-ed observatory, and harnesses as a heating source the Bay waters it sits above on 1800 wood and concrete pilings built around a century ago.

Paul Doherty the self-proclaimed “physicist, teacher, author, and rock climber,” has worked at the Exploratorium for 26 years, making the senior staff scientist the perfect person to lead me on a tour through the two-story space yesterday.

“We wanted it to be open, so a flood (of people) could come in, but then,” Doherty says pointing towards the Atrium, the first space visible to museum visitors. For long-time Exploratorium fans, the result is a comforting mix of the familiar and new, and as Doherty tells me for new visitors, it’s meant to be a good intro to what lies beyond. “This space here features classic Exploratorium exhibits that will show people who aren’t necessarily San Francisco natives the kinds of things that they will be experience while they’re here,” he tells me. “We wanted to showcase the best of the best.”

The atrium houses well-loved classic exhibits like “The Turn Table”, originally a physics Ph.D. thesis intended to show how a ball rolls across a spinning metal disc. When the ball crosses the “turntable”, it takes a chaotic, almost torturous path before it unexpectedly exits the table parallel to the point at which it entered.

Doherty said museum attendees, not staff, were the first to wheel coin across its surface. He picks up one of the plastic discs now part of “Turn Table” and wheels it across the moving table. “As you can see, the visitors taught us what this exhibit was really about. We watch our visitors, and we learn from them.”

Traversing the museum floor, we pick up new listeners gravitating towards Doherty’s excitement, almost as tactile at the Exploratorium’s most famous “Tactile Dome” (which will be up and running by Summer 2013). It’s enough to make you a little envious that your own workspace doesn’t inspire raptures like those of Doherty in his new digs.

For another atrium exhibit entitled “Moving Objects” (2012), by Exploratorium artist in residence Pe Lang, suspends rubber rings on vibrating rods, giving the illusion that the rings are passing through each other. “Drip Patterns” is a staff-made offering which illuminates the oozing drip of mineral oil. The effect is surprisingly artsy, and demonstrates the existence of caustics, which in differential geometry are “envelopes of rays either reflected or refracted by a manifold.” True to the spirit of the Exploratorium, no PhD is necessary to enjoy the installations — even to the uninformed onlooker, “Drip Patterns” looks cool, dispelling the idea of science-art dichotomy,

The new space’s innovations are enough to make me wish little Jessica could have seen the space. All the old favorites are present: the giant bubble-maker, live tornado capsule, artist in residence Ed Tannenbaum’s “Recollections” (1981), which freezes your image via a large scale projector in oh-so-’80s-music-video manner. These exhibits — all made in-house, as Doherty reminds me — trick you into learning, entice you into participating, and invite you to interact. I’m not eight anymore (dammit) but they made me feel like a kid again.

According to my guide, over the years, Exploratorium staff has made 2,000 exhibits. 600 are in the new space, 450 classics carried over from the Palace of Fine Arts, refurbished. 150 are brand new.

If you’re going to brave the crowds this weekend — or tonight’s continued opening ceremony celebrations — be sure to bring comfortable shoes and an open mind. If you can catch Doherty passionately explaining the mysterious behaviour of dry ice on water or the density of mineral oil suspended in light, all the better.

The Exploratorium Piers 15 and 17, SF. (415) 528-4360, www.exploratorium.edu

Music listings

Andrew Lam

April 18, 2013

Music listings are compiled by Emily Savage. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead or check the venue’s website to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Visit www.sfbg.com/venue-guide for venue information. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bad Religion, Bronx, Polar Bear Club Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $20.

Bullet for My Valentine, Halestorm, Young Guns, Stars in Stereo Warfield. 6:30pm, $32.

Debra Iyall Group, Corner Laughers, Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, Andrew Griffin 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 8pm, free.

He is We, Before the Brave, Dylan Jakobsen Swedish American Hall. 7:30pm, $15.

Lee Huff vs Jason Marion Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Joe Buck Yourself, Viva Le Vox, Blue Diamond Fillups Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Laura Mvula Cafe Du Nord. 8:30pm, $14.

Night Beats, Cool Ghouls, Primitive Hearts, Big Drag Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10.

Mike Reeb Brainwash Cafe, 112 Folsom, SF; www.brainwash.com. 7:30pm, free.

Savages Independent. 8pm, $15.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Sigur Ros Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.apeconcerts.com. 8pm, $49.50.

Telescopes, LSD and the Search for God, Flavor Crystals Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Three O’Clock Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $30.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Terry Disley’s Mini-Experience Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.

Freddie Hughes Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Mike Phillips Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $26.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 6:30pm, $5.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Cafe Divine, 1600 Stockton, SF; www.cafedivinesf.com.7-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Blood and Dust Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Quinn DeVeaux Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm, free.

Timba Dance Party Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF.; www.bissapbaobab.com 10pm, $5. With DJ Walt Diggz.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita MORE! and Joshua J host this dance party.

Cash IV Gold Double Dutch, 3192 16th St, SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 9pm, free.

Coo-Yah! Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, free. With Vinyl Ambassador, DJ Silverback, DJs Green B and Daneekah.

Hardcore Humpday Happy Hour RKRL, 52 Sixth St, SF; (415) 658-5506. 6pm, $3.

Martini Lounge John Colins, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 7pm. With DJ Mark Divita.

THURSDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Anadel, All My Pretty Ones, Passenger and Pilot Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $9.

Call Slim’s. 8pm, $30.

Get Dead, Shell Corporation, Uncommonmenfrommars Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $10.

Kaleidoscope feat. Peter Daltry Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $15-$20.

Lynx, Becky Knox Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $7-$10.

Jason Marion vs Lee Huff Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Nathan and Rachel Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Seatraffic, Silver Hands, Shortcircles DNA Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Shannon and the Clams, Memories, Emotional Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Vacationer, EXRAY’S, DJ Aaron Axelsen, Epicsauce DJs Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10-$12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Bill Frisell: Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish” SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7 and 9:30pm, $40-$80.

Guerrilla Composers Guild: Percussion Project Center for New Music, 55 Taylor, SF; www.centerfornewmusic.com. 7:30pm, $8-$15.

Zakiya Hooker feat. Chris James Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $26.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 7:30pm, $10.

Nick Rossi Rite Spot Cafe. 9pm, free.

Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Pa’lante! Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF.; www.bissapbaobab.com 10pm, $5. With DJs Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8. With Pleasuremaker and Senor Oz.

All 80s Thursday Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). The best of ’80s mainstream and underground.

Ritual Temple. 10pm-3am, $5. Two rooms of dubstep, glitch, and trap music.

Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, free. Salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and more with DJs Don Bustamante, Apocolypto, Sr. Saen, Santero, and Mr. E.

FRIDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

A Tribe Called Red, Brogan Bentley Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Buffalo Tooth, Organs, Funs, Sweat Lodge Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

California Honeydrops, Freddie Hughes Band Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Cypress Hill, Berner Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $42.

Filligar Cafe Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Gaslight Anthem, Matt Mays Warfield. 9pm, $32.

Keith Harken, Trace Bunday Swedish American Hall. 7:30pm, $18.

King Khan and BBQ Show Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Lee Vilensky Trio Rite Spot Cafe. 9pm, free.

Mother Mother, Birdmonster, Yassou Benedict Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $14.

Tambo Rays, Girls in Suede, Travis Hayes, DJ Emily Rose DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $8.

Nathan Temby, Lee Huff, Jason Marion Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Tinariwen Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $55.

Top Secret Band Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Wombats, Colourist Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

Young Prisms, Sisu, Chasms Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Raquel Bitton, Rebeca Mauleon Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $30.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

Kyle Bruckmann, Aran Shelton, Anton Hatwich and Mark Clifford Center for New Music, 55 Taylor, SF; www.centerfornewmusic.com. 8pm, $8-$12.

“Goodbye Taxes, Hello Mary Jane Music and Burlesque Party” Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10. With Jugtown Pirates, Three Times Bad, and more.

Hammond Organ Soul Jazz, Blues Party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Flamenco del Oro Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF; www.flamencodeloro.com. 8pm, $10. With Kina Mendez, Gopal Slavonic, and more.

Matt Jaffee and the Distractions Dolores Park Cafe, 501 Dolores, SF; www.doloresparkcafe.com. 7:30-10pm.

Bernie Jungle and Virgil Shaw Lost Church, 65 Capp, SF; www.thelostchurch.com. 8pm, $10.

Queer Cumbia Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF.; www.bissapbaobab.com 8pm, $3-$7. With DJs Adan Atl, Rosa La Rumorosa, Jiggles and Alumiux.

Renegade String Band, Samantha Harlow, Elli Perry Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Back to the USSR Retro Dance Party Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10-$15. With DJs Ze’ev, Luka, and more.

Joe Lookout, 3600 16th St.,SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Eight rotating DJs, shirt-off drink specials.

OK Hole Amnesia. 9pm. With Bronze, Dangerous Boys Club, DJs.

Old School JAMZ El Rio. 9pm. Fruit Stand DJs spinning old school funk, hip-hop, and R&B.

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

Thirsty Third Fridays Atmosphere, 447 Broadway, SF; www.a3atmosphere.com. 10pm, $10.

SATURDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Beach Day, Chains of Love, Bam!Bam! Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

Black Clothes Pointy Shoes, Whoosie What’s It’s, Imperils Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Freak Tank, Voco, Rad Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Fusion Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Lee Huff, Jason Marion, Nathan Temby Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Infected Mushroom, Randy Seidman, Liam Shy Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $35.

Phil Manley Life Coach, 3 Leafs, One and Future Band Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Michael McIntosh Rite Spot Cafe. 9pm, free.

Moonalice Slim’s. 7:20pm, $4.20.

Rad Cloud, Massenger, No///Se Amnesia. 7pm.

Chuck Ragan, Dave Hause, Tim McIlrath, Jenny O. Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Shinobu, Wild Moth, Exquisites, Great Apes Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $9.

Ronnie Size Independent. 9pm, $25.

Speed of Light, Burnt Reynolds Bender’s, 806 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 10pm, $5.

“Stepsister Fundraiser with Ty Segall (solo)” Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $15

White Mystery, Warm Soda, Burnt Ones, Glitz, Cumstain, Sir Lord Von Raven Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 4:20pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

“Bill Frisell: Hunter S. Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $40-$80.

Hammond Organ Soul Jazz, Blues Party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kiss the Sky Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF.; www.bissapbaobab.com 10pm, $5. With DJs Nina Sol and Emancipacion.

Teruhiko Saigo Yoshi’s SF. 7pm, $35; 9pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF: Bootchella DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-$15. With Smash-Up Derby, Monistat, Meikee Magnetic, and more.

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

Kinky Disko Underground SF, 424 Haight; www.kinkydisko.com. 10pm, $5. With DJs Rotten Robbie and Johnny Sonic.

Paris to Dakar Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs.

Radio Franco Bissap, 3372 19th St, SF; (415) 826 9287. 6 pm. Rock, Chanson Francaise, Blues. Senegalese food and live music.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-$10.

Secret Society of the Sonic Six Cafe Du Nord. 11:30pm, $7. With Lady Bear and Her Dark Dolls, DJ Le Perv, Omar Perez, Rachel Tension.

Smiths Party Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, $5. Sounds of the Smiths, Morrissey, the Cure, and New Order.

Wild Nights Kok BarSF, 1225 Folsom, SF; www.kokbarsf.com. 9pm, $3. With DJ Frank Wild.

SUNDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy” DNA Lounge. 8pm, $10. With Ghost Town Gospel, Jerk Church Tabernacle Choir.

Beggar’s Jamboree, Serene Lakes, Gene Pool and the Shallow End Bottom of the Hill. 3pm, $10.

Jason Chen, Tiffany Alvord Great American Music Hall. 7pm, $12-$14.

Chop Tops, RevTones, Mad Mama and the Bona Fide Few Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12.

Chronic Town, Japanese Baby, Gang of Forty Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $8.

Dead Western, Metacomet, Cookie Tongue Amnesia. 9pm.

Lee Fields and the Expressions, Lady, Bang Girl Group Revue Bimbo’s. 8pm, $25.

Legs, Chastity Belt, Cash for Gold Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $6.

Red Jacket Mine Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Junior Reid, Andrew Reid, and the Pure Roots Band, Wada Blood Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $25.

Queensryche, Voodoos Fillmore. 8pm, $40.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Leah Tysse Yoshi’s SF. 7pm, $25.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Bill Frisell: Hunter S. Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 4 and 7:30pm, $35-$75.

Lavay Smith Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brazil and Beyond Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF.; www.bissapbaobab.com 6:30pm, free. With Rebecca Kleinmann and friends.

Creak, Olde Belle Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Darcy Noonan, Richard Mandel, Jack Gilder Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Sweet Felony Tupelo, 1337 Grant, SF; www.tupelosf.com. 4-7pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Beats for Brunch Thee Parkside. 11am, free.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. With DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2.

MONDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Bass Drum of Death Fillmore. 8pm, $32.50.

Cannons and Clouds, Bad Powers, Owl Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Damir Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Men, CCR Headcleaner, White Cloud Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Medeski Martin and Wood (acoustic) Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $35.

Layla Musselwhite Rite Spot Cafe. 8:30pm, free.

Tennis System, Cruel Summer, Dead Leaf Echo, Slowness Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Earl Brothers, Pick Amnesia. 6pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Crazy Mondays Beauty Bar, 2299 Mission, SF; www.thebeautybar.com. 10pm, free. Hip-hop and other stuff.

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

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

Soul Cafe John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. R&B, Hip-Hop, Neosoul, reggae, dancehall, and more with DJ Jerry Ross.

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acid Blast, Golden Mean, Mulch, Bar Fight Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $7.

Arabs, Father President, Secret Secretaries Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Beach Fossils Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Medeski Martin and Wood (acoustic) Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $35.

Palma Violets Independent. 8pm, $15.

Sense Fail, Such Gold, Real Friends, Major League Bottom of the Hill. 6:30pm, $19.

Stan Erhart Band Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Titan Ups, Satisfactions, DJ Revival Sound Selector Amnesia. 9pm, $8-$10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Terry Disley’s Mini-Experience Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.

Rene Marie’s Experiment in Truth Quartet Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $20.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Roem Baur Bazaar Cafe, 5927 California, SF; www.bazaarcafe.com. 7pm, free.

Dave Cory and Friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Stylus John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. Hip-hop, dancehall, and Bay slaps with DJ Left Lane. Takin’ Back Tuesdays Double Dutch, 3192 16th St,SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 10pm. Hip-hop from the 1990s.

How to make it in rock’n’roll

Tony Robles

April 18, 2013

emilysavage@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY “I felt like, if I don’t put these songs out, they’re just going to fade away,” Phil Manley says from the enclosed playground in the Panhandle. He’s doing double-duty as an artist on an interview and a father watching his 15-month-old daughter in the park. And he’s prepping for a show at the Knockout later in the night.

It’s a juggling act the musician-producer knows well. He was a founding member of influential DC post-rock trio Trans Am, and has played with the Fucking Champs and Oneida. He’s produced albums for Wooden Shjips, Grass Widow, Date Palms, and Golden Void. And most recently, he released a textured, guitar-heavy drone rock album called Alphawaves (April 16, Thrill Jockey) with his new band, Life Coach. The release show for which is Sat/20 (9:30pm, $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com).

Given the prolific output, he’s been described as the Bay Area’s very own Steve Albini.

Manley moved to the Bay about a decade ago on the advice of Tim Green from the Fucking Champs. “DC is a much smaller artists community,” he says. “It’s been great for me as a recording engineer, to be here in San Francisco.”

He’s been working out of Lucky Cat Recording in Potrero Hill since 2006, after a fortuitous meeting with Lucky Cat engineer Kurt Schlegel at Manley’s previous workplace, Bottom of the Hill. At Lucky Cat, Manley’s more recent recording sessions have yielded albums by the Fresh and Onlys — “all I remember is this intense burst of creative energy” — and Barn Owl, whose new album, V, also dropped last Tuesday on Thrill Jockey.

Alphawaves is the first official Life Coach record, but confusingly, in ’11, Manley released a solo album, also called Life Coach. Got it? That was a collection of songs with vintage synths, Moogs, and drum machines, allowing a krautrock influence that remains a part of the Life Coach equation, even now with standard live drums. Manley pulled together a set for that solo project, ended up writing new songs for it anyway, and then turned those into Life Coach, the band.

He recorded with a drum machine as a place holder then sent the new tracks to “four or five drummer friends,” including Kid Millions from Oneida and Spiritualized, and LA’s Jon Theodore, who was in Mars Volta and is now drumming for Queens of the Stone Age. Theodore was the first to respond; he spent two weeks rapidly pounding out and recording tracks while living in Flea’s guest house in Malibu. “He banged it out so fast. He got the gig,” Manley chuckles.

The nexus point of inspiration for Theodore and Manley can be found in Tony Williams, a late jazz-rock fusion drummer who played with Miles Davis. “If you listen to his band, the Tony Williams Lifetime, you can hear the similarities,” Manley says. “But I should qualify that by saying that there’s no way we could ever touch that shit, because it’s so amazing. But we’re both fans.”

“Also, and I’m going to say this knowing that I probably shouldn’t say this. When we’re on tour, we basically only listen to the Grateful Dead,” Manley adds. “I think there’s a taboo [about that], especially among indie musicians, but who cares?”

Together, Theodore and Manley have toured with Psychic Paramount and Moon Duo, though Theodore’s schedule is a bit insane currently, given his involvement with QOTSA. But he’ll be there for the Life Coach album release show this weekend. Isaiah Mitchell of Earthless and Golden Void — who plays on some Alphawaves tracks — also might be in the live mix.

Mitchell played the backward guitar solo on opening track “Sunrise” and reprises that solo during title track, “Alphawaves.” He also guests on the awesomely noisy “Fireball.”

“[Mitchell] rips that crazy solo,” Manley says, excitedly recalling the recording of “Fireball,” — “[Mitchell] was like, oh my god, my hands are on fire!”

While Theodore did record most of his drums down in Malibu, some of the tracks were rerecorded live with Manley. “The tracks developed as we were playing live,” Manley explains. “But everything was a time crunch, so while we were on tour, we just snuck it in and finished it. I like working that way anyway — less time to fuss and you just bang it out. I feel like records sound better when you do them quickly, [they sound] less labored.”

IAN SVENONIUS

In the first section of his farcical (if dead-on) popular music/how-to/occult book on forming a buzz band, Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group, legendarily hip frontperson Ian Svenonius (of Nation of Ulysses, the Make-Up, Weird War, Chain and the Gang) holds seances with dead rock stars to glean important information for the reader. The book continues with more pragmatic chapters like “communicating with those outside of the group” and “manufacturing nostalgia,” along with the scathingly accurate chapter, “critics.”

Winks Svenonius in the intro, “with the information revealed in this book, you too will be empowered to create a rock’n’roll group, tour the world, and record (or otherwise construct) a body of work so as to create a myth which might define a generation, inspire a movement, or earn the other various earmarks of rock’n’roll success. You might even perform at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival if you play your cards right.”

Word to the wise, show up for the reading early; City Lights gets packed at these events, and you don’t want to miss an up-close look at Svenonius’ lippy pout and oh-so-tight pants.

Wed/17, 7pm, free. City Lights, 261 Columbus, SF. www.citylights.com.

ANNA HILLBURG

You may already know Anna Hillburg’s sonic touch, without knowing you know her. The Bay Area trumpet player has guested on Dodos and Fresh and Onlys records, and she’s one-third of power-pop girl group, Dreamdate. As she puts it, she’s hella local. Get to know her more intimately on her new self-titled solo album — released on vinyl, March 25 on California Clap.

Left to her own devices, the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist hops genre barriers and eras over the course of 13 tracks, mixing classic ’60s pop with girl group harmonies, cry-ing over you ballads and dreamy whispers to forlorn lovers, with hat tips to fuzzy ’70s folk, Joni Mitchell, and the like. The only constant is Hillburg’s pleasant and confident crooning. Also, can we talk about this album cover? Perfection. With Luke Sweeney, Garrett Pierce.

Thu/18, 9pm, $10. Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., SF. Facebook: SFEagle.

KING KHAN AND BBQ SHOW

And they said it wouldn’t happen. Remember all the way back in ’10, when sloppy doo-wop masters King Khan (Arish Khan) and BBQ Show (Mark Sultan) imploded over a series of on-stage arguments on an ill-fated tour? The Canadian garage punk duo has since mended — not before going on separate solo victory laps as King Khan and the Shrines and Mark Sultan, respectively — and has been patching things up with fresh songs and a few short tours. This is Khan and Sultan’s first time back in SF together since the break.

In the words of the dudes themselves, “Now listen baby, I don’t want to fight/Beautiful darlin’, maybe tomorrow night/You told me ‘You know I love you so’/But did you know ‘You know, I love you so’/Yeah yeah!” With Sir Lord Von Raven, Wild Eyes SF.

Fri/19, 9pm, $16. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slimspresents.com.

Bat for Lashes brings an occult celebration to the Regency Ballroom

Tony Robles

April 17, 2013

There’s an idea in literary theory that co-opts the philosophical notion of the concrete universal. The value of a poem, character, or story, it says, can be determined by the particular balance of how general and specific an entity it represents.

The remarkable thing about the music on the three albums of Bat For Lashes, the moniker of British musician Natasha Khan, is its melding of opposites. The songs simultaneously exist in the realm of the ancient and the new, the weird and the ordinary, and the grand and the intimate. And the even more remarkable thing is that seeing it embodied on the Regency Ballroom stage in front of an audience didn’t compromise these effects; it heightened them.

Entering a smoky stage set with lanterns in a costume of a shiny red dress and matching cape, Khan began to sing the album opener, “Lilies,” in a quiet but reverberating voice. Live as in the album, it was hard to determine how much of the otherworldly quality of her singing was due to added effects, but her magnetism, a consequence of both the force of her voice and her presence on stage, deemed that question beside the point.

As the songs built, with drums, a cello, pulsating bass, and synthesizers entering to create a layers of ethereal noise, Bat For Lashes’ captivating movements and controlled singing provided a strong focal point for the sweeping sound.

She never lost her audience during the journey along a spectrum of styles. In upbeat tunes such as, “Oh Yeah,” in which a surprisingly clubby backbeat motivated hip-heavy movement both onstage and in the crowd, you could picture that with a different singer and less eerie synth sounds, the music could be straight pop.

As is, though, it wouldn’t be the soundtrack to a dance club, but an occult celebration. The performance, then, resembled theater, and a fourth wall existed between the audience and the remote but captivating spectacle on stage (which did not deter the audience’s dancing).

On other songs like the gentle ballad, “Laura,” which Khan dedicated to her father, the wall came down. You could hear each intake of breath in a deeply personal song accompanied only by a piano.

Most songs, though, occupied a space that combined the poles of theatrics and intimacy. “Siren Song,” which began with the singer accompanying herself on the piano and built to an explosive chorus, exemplified the extremes. In the quiet opening, she sang, “Are you my family? / Can I stay with you a while? / Can I stop off in your bed tonight? / I could make you smile.” The prosaic verse spoke from the vulnerability of a single human narrator.

The chorus, though, which started, “Till the siren come calling, calling,” and included lofty words such as “evil,” “wickedness,” and “sin,” expanded the scope of the song to the sphere of mythology. Like many of the others, this one spanned the realms of ancient legend and the ordinary everyday.

In the melding together of such different scales, Bat For Lashes put on a show that was simultaneously entertaining and haunting. In the seven years that Bat For Lashes has been making music, she has developed a richness in her performance that reads like a well-rounded text. In each line of the show, the universality of myth and feeling crystallized into the concrete form of the enchanting performer. That balance is no small achievement.

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