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Gascón’s challenge to Mirkarimi belies his own official shortcomings

Sasha Cuttler
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Gascón’s challenge to Mirkarimi belies his own official shortcomings

The backlash against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s reinstatement by those who oppose him has often been biting and bitter – an indicator that coming together around real solutions to domestic violence, something most supervisors pledged, could still be difficult – but the most hypocritical reaction came yesterday from District Attorney George Gascón.

“Ross is now reinstated as our Sheriff and I accept that. What I will not accept is any compromise of public safety as a result of his reinstatement. Ross Mirkarimi is on probation in this county for a crime of domestic violence. He is, at a minimum, incapable of adequately performing the functions of his office that relate to crimes of domestic violence,” Gascón said in a public statement, calling for Mirkarimi to “wall himself off” from all domestic violence programs and inmates and hire an independent special administrator to oversee them.

Gascón didn’t explain why he believes Mirkarimi can’t oversee these functions, although that’s been a common refrain among Mirkarimi’s critics, almost an article of faith that to them needs no explanation. I understand the sentiment, but as a practical matter, it still doesn’t make sense to me (I’d welcome comments that could offer insights or explanation). I’ve also posed that and other questions to both Gascón and his spokesperson, Stephanie Ong Stillman, and I’ll include an update when I hear back.

Maybe the issue is a conflict of interest, the belief that Mirkarimi will either be too easy or too hard on domestic violence inmates or programs, which seems to be stretch. But if that’s the case, Gascón should get off his high horse. Gascón was the police chief when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed him as DA, and there were many voices in the community who questioned such an unconventional move, one that raised obvious questions about whether Gascón could be objective about cases of police abuse, evidence tampering, or assorted other cases in which he would be called upon to make tough judgments about the SFPD. There were calls for Gascón to wall himself off from such cases, which he refused to do, even though that was arguably a more serious and direct conflict of interest than Mirkarimi overseeing the jail.

Also, let’s not forget that it was Gascón who started this whole ordeal by deciding to charge Mirkarimi with domestic violence crimes, accept the plea bargain to misdemeanor false imprisonment, and recommend the punishment that the court accepted – which included the highly unusual requirement that Mirkarimi issue a public apology to his neighbor, Ivory Madison, who went to police against the wishes of Mirkarimi’s wife. At the time, Mirkarimi was serving as sheriff and overseeing all the department’s functions – and he wasn’t letting the batterers run free or battering them himself – and Gascón didn’t raise this issue of then or make it a condition of Mirkarimi’s plea, which he certainly could have.

Finally, there was this sanctimonious statement by Gascón: “As the chief law enforcement official in this City and County, I will stand unapologetically with the victims. I will work tirelessly to be sure both victims and witnesses know this city does not tolerate domestic violence.” Yet the record of his office indicates something that falls far short of tireless efforts to combat domestic violence.

As a San Francisco Public Press investigation revealed last month, San Francisco has by far the lowest rate of domestic violation prosecutions of any Bay Area jurisdiction, a terrible record that has gotten even worse since Gascón took over. Whether judged by the number of domestic violence cases filed per capita (29.5 per 10,000 residents, compared with 58.5 in the region) or the number cases it received that it declined to prosecute (it dropped 6,200 of the 8,600 cases that it received from police), Gascón has no business claiming to show zero tolerance for domestic violence. His prosecution of Mirkarimi was more aberration than rule.

We’ve been trying to get a comment out of the DA’s Office on this issue for weeks, and they still haven’t replied (Stillman told me today that “we’re still working on it”). Gascón was also asked about his office’s poor record on domestic violence recently on KQED’s Forum and gave only a deflective non-answer. Perhaps he’d be better off figuring out how his office could so consistently fail the victims of domestic violence rather than worrying so much about the too-few of them that he’s managed to send to jail.

We all understand what an emotional and important issue domestic violence is, and even how unsettling it may be to many to have Mirkarimi as sheriff. But the members of the Domestic Violence Consortium and La Casa de las Madres – those who have led the campaign to oust Mirkarimi – aren’t the only people who care about this issue.

During the public comment portion of Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, there were many domestic violence victims who expressed more outrage over the failure of these domestic violence groups or the DA’s office to support them than they were about Mirkarimi continuing to be the sheriff. The city just spent $1.3 million trying to remove Mirkarimi and another [[CORRECTED FIGURE: $140,000]] paying his interim replacement, Vicky Hennessy – money that could have been better spent directly responding to domestic violence than this fruitless symbolic stand.

But that’s over now, just like their efforts to remove Mirkarimi, and we all need to move on instead of trying to re-fight this difficult battle over and over again. People can still disagree with what happened and vent and be angry – and from what we’re hearing from City Hall, many of the messages have been quite savage, some even threatening violence. They can even work on a recall campaign or take other political actions.

Yet we all still share a city – a wonderfully diverse city with a wide range of perspectives and opinions – and we’re all forced to accept things about it that we don’t like. Gascón doesn’t get to decide who the sheriff is or how he plays that role any more than Mirkarimi got to tell Gascón how to do his job – despite suffering far more direct impacts.

We each have our roles to play, and we’ll all be better off if we do them well and accept that we live in a rainbow city, not a black-and-white world.

Das Racist’s Kool A.D. on hip-hop, baseball, and losing his virginity

Tony Robles
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Das Racist’s Kool A.D. on hip-hop, baseball, and losing his virginity

Self-proclaimed, “second best rapper with glasses after E-40” and Bay Area native by way of Brooklyn Victor Vazquez aka KOOL A.D. of rap group Das Racist has had quite the prolific past year in the hip-hop industrial complex. 

He and his group Das Racist — featuring rapper Heems and hypeman Dapwell (Dap for short) — released their debut LP and critic darling Relax. Soon after that he released not one but two positively received mixtapes in the span of three months, The Palm Wine Drinkard and the Bay Area homage 51. Das Racist plays DNA Lounge this Fri/12. 

KOOL A.D. took time off from his 10-city tour with Das Racist, Leif, Safe, and Lakutis to rhapsodize with the Guardian about playing for the A’s, his punk band, and getting free weed.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Are you for the Giants/ 49ers or A’s/Raiders?

KOOL A.D. I don’t really care. But A’s.

SFBG If you played for the A’s what would be your stepping up to the plate song?

KAD [Long laugh] “Le Freak” by Chic.

SFBG Where in the Bay Area did you live when you were growing up?

KAD Potrero Hill, Hunter’s Point, Alameda, West Oakland.

SFBG I heard a rumor that you lost your virginity in the back of a fruit truck in Alameda? Can you confirm or deny this?

KAD I lost my virginity in the cab of the produce truck at Paul’s Produce (now called Dan’s Produce I think) where I used to work.

SFBG What are your favorite spots in the Bay to kick it at? What places do you take Heems and Dap?

KAD As a youngster, I went to punk shows in warehouses and houses, kicked it at Donut Shops, burger spots, and Mexican restaurants, dollar ten Chinese, drank and smoked weed in parks. Not particularly good at “recommending cool shit” to people.

SFBG The Guardian had a recent cover story entitled “Is Oakland Cooler Than San Francisco” What’s your take on that? As a Brooklyn resident do you think Oakland could be SF’s Brooklyn?

KAD I lived in both and love both and it always bugged me that SF fools don’t want to come to the East Bay and East Bay fools don’t want to go to SF. I think a large part is because BART closes too early. Never understood why BART couldn’t get it together to be 24 hours.

SFBG Who are some Bay Area rappers you’ve been into lately?

KAD Favorite people making music in the Bay are Amaze 88, Trackademicks, 1-O.A.K., The Coup, Main Attrakionz, Davinci, Young L, Lil B, Kreayshawn, Beed Weeda, Too Short, E-40, Droop-E, Issue, YG, Cuzzo Fly, Stone Vengeance, Las Malas Pulgas, Under 15 Seconds, Fracas, Fucktard,  Reivers, @AAANTWON, Nacho Picasso, Mike Baker, Safe.

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

SFBG Finish this phrase: “Rap Game [blank].”

KAD Keith Morris.

SFBG Das Racist frequently asks fans to throw various objects on stage. What’s the most outlandish or weirdest thing any fan has ever thrown on stage?

KAD Hundreds of Soy Joy snack bars at a festival in Washington was pretty weird. Also hellof weed, cigarettes. One time in Oakland I asked for money and got like 30 bucks in small bills.

SFBG If presented with the opportunity to join the Illuminati, would you accept?

KAD Depends on what’s in it for me.

SFBG What are you currently working on?

KAD I got a lot of tracks recorded, want do a mixtape or two, maybe an album. I got a punk band called Party Animal putting out a record in December. Got rap mixtape called Peaceful Solutions with Seattle jazz man Kassa Overall. Co-writing for a project called Cult Days.

SFBG I see you’ve been tweeting a lot about Bud Light Platinum, are you fan? Would you and the crew let them use a DR song in a commercial?

KAD Never drank it. But yeah, it’s hard to turn down large sums of money.

SFBG What’s your take on the current state of the hyphy movement? Some say it’s peaked, do you agree or disagree?

KAD Hyphy is a feeling.

 

Das Racist With Le1f, Safe, and Lakutis

Fri/12, 10pm, $25

DNA Lounge

375 11 St., SF

www.dnalounge.com

 

 

 

World homeless day protest targets Castro landlord

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In a protest marking World Homeless Day, the squatter group Homes Not Jails briefly occupied a vacant building on Castro St. tonight. Twenty were arrested.

This is the third year that the group has staged a building occupation to draw attention to buildings that lie vacant while people live on the streets.This year’s demonstration began in Dolores Park, where a group of about 50 held a rally and concert. 

The group then marched up 18th street, chanting “house keys not handcuffs” and “housing is a human right.” 

When the protest arrived at the building, on the 500 block of Castro St., activists opened the building and entered it. From the roof, protesters dropped a banner reading “Gentrification equals assimilation.”

One man who entered the building had seen the march on 18th st. and joined along the way. “I don’t believe there should be this many abandoned houses,” said the man, who identified only as Scott. “I don’t mind being homeless, though,” he added. “I like sleeping under the stars.”

Police lined up across the street and closed Castro between 18th and 19th to traffic. After about 40 minutes, they charged the building. Those on the sidewalk were pushed aside, and those inside the building were arrested. According to SFPD spokesperson Michael Andraychak, there were 20 arrests.

After more than two hours, the police reopened the street.

During that time, Andraychak said, “Several people had run into an annex in the rear. Several had gone downstairs and broke into an adjoining restaurant.” Arrestees were also being searched and processed in the building.

The city’s most recent “Homeless Point-in-Time Count and Survey” finds that there were 6,455 homeless individuals and families living in San Francisco; Homes Not Jails estimates 11,000 homeless individuals. 

In either case, as members of the group often point out, the amount of vacant housing in the city is more than enough to shelter the whole homeless population. The 2011 census finds that San Francisco has 378,261 total housing units, and 9.4 percent, or about 35,000, are vacant.  

Homes Not Jails formed in 1992 to connect these homeless people to these vacant buildings. According to one organizer, the group is “made up of squatters who live in vacant places.”

He said that today’s largely symbolic housing occupation has a purpose. “It’s the experience people have when they come into a vacant, liberated space. There’s no other feeling like that. It’s transformative.”

Last year, the group targeted the Cathedral Hill Hotel , the site of a new hospital project still riled in controversy. They also less conspicuously occupied several other nearby buildings, include the Charlie Hotel. Some of these buildings are still active squats. 

Across the street, a large crowd gathered, watching the action. 

Some neighbors supported the protest. “I think it’s fantastic,” said Jesse Oliver Sanford, who lives two doors down from the building.

Sanford said the building’s long vacancy frustrated him, and the space should instead be used for something beneficial. “You could put a nonprofit soup kitchen there,” said Sanford. “I don’t understand why we’re not providing more services for queer youth. This building is twice the size of LYRIC and just a block away.”

“If the queer history here means anything, we need to have a place with a political base. That means low income and mixed income,” Sanford continued. Instead, he said, low income people are being squeezed out of the neighorhood.  “If you lose your lease, you lose all you have” he said, mentioning that a neighbor of his had recently had his rent increased by $1,000 per month.

The building that protesters occupied, comprised of a ground floor storefront and second floor apartments, has been vacant for more than five years.

The building’s owner, Les Natali, owns several other properties in the Castro. The neighboring Patio Café, the restaurant that protesters allegedly entered, has been vacant for more than ten years. Natali also owns Toad Hall as well as Badlands, where he has come under fire for racist business practices. Natali used to own the Pendulum, “the Castro’s only African American gay bar,” before he closed it, sparking community outrage.

The buiding protesters occupied “used to be the Bakery Café,” remembered a neighbor who didn’t wish to be identified. “It was a great place to hang out and a major employer of young people. It would be great if it was a functioning business or some community benefit, and rent controlled housing on top.”

“This is at least getting a lot close to those real issues,” he said of the protest.

UPDATE: All 20 arrested are being held on charges of burglary, conspiracy and vandalism. Most have bails set at $325,000.

Local censored 2012

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BEHIND THE MIRKARIMI CASE

In early January, details from the police investigation of then-Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi bruising his wife’s arm during an argument were leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle and other news outlets. The key piece of evidence was a 45-second video that Mirkarimi’s wife, Eliana Lopez, made with her neighbor, Ivory Madison, displaying the bruise and saying she wanted to document the incident in case of a child custody battle. That video convinced many of Mirkarimi’s guilt, and a majority of Ethics Commissioners say they found it to be the main evidence on which Mirkarimi should be removed from office on official misconduct charges (the Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on Mirkarimi’s removal on Oct. 9, after Guardian press time).

But that video was only a small part of the overwhelming and expensive case that Mayor Ed Lee brought against Mirkarimi, including the more serious charges of abuse of power, witness dissuasion, and impeding a police investigation, all of which go more directly to a sheriff’s official duties. All of those charges got lots of media coverage and they helped cement the view of many San Franciscans that Mirkarimi engaged in a pattern of inappropriate behavior, rather than making a big momentary mistake. Yet most of the media coverage during the six months of Ethics Commission proceedings ignored the fact that none of the evidence that was being gathered supported those charges. Indeed, all those charges were unanimously rejected by the commission on Aug. 16, a startling rebuke of Lee’s case but one that was not highlighted in many media reports, which focused on the one charge the commission did uphold: the initial arm grab.

 

 

THE NEXT DOT-BOMB

In the late 1990s, San Francisco was in a very similar place to where it is now. The first dot-com boom was full bloom, driving the local economy and creating countless young millionaires — but also rapidly gentrifying the city and driving commercial and residential rents through the roof (great for the landlords, bad for everyone else). And then, the bubble popped, instantly erasing billions of dollars in speculative paper wealth and leaving this a changed city. The city’s working and creative classes suffered, but the political backlash gave rise to a decade with a progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors.

The era ended in 2010 when Ed Lee was appointed mayor, and he began ambitious agenda of pumping up a new dot-com bubble using tax breaks, public subsidies, and relentless official boosterism to lure more tech companies to San Francisco. Lee has been successful in his approach, in the process driving up commercial rents and housing prices. By some estimates, about 30 percent of the city’s economy is now driven by technology companies.

Yet there have been few voices in the local media raising questions about this risky, costly, and self-serving economic development strategy. The Bay Citizen did a story about Conway’s self interested advice, the New York Times did a front page story raising these issues, and San Francisco Magazine just last month did a long cover story questioning how much tech is enough. But most local media voices have been silent on the issue, and much of the damage has already been done.

 

OLD POWERBROKERS RETURN TO CITY HALL

More than a decade ago, then-Mayor Willie Brown and Chinatown power broker Rose Pak worked together to empower big business, corrupt local politics, and clear the path for rampant development — an approach that progressives on the Board of Supervisors repudiated and slowed from 2000-2010. But Brown, Pak, and a new generation of their allies have returned in power in City Hall, and it’s as bad as it ever was.

Many San Franciscans know of their high-profile role appointing Lee to office in early 2011. But their influence and tentacles have extended far beyond what we read in the papers and watch on television, starting in 2010 when their main political operatives David Ho and Enrique Pearce ran Jane Kim’s supervisorial campaign, beating Debra Walker, a veteran of the fights against Brown’s remaking of the city.

Now, this crew has the run of City Hall, meeting regularly with Mayor Lee and twisting the arms of supervisors on key votes. Pearce and Ho persuaded longtime progressive Christina Olague to co-chair the scandal-plagued Run Ed Run campaign last year, she was rewarded this year with Lee appointing her to the Board of Supervisors. Pearce has been her close adviser, and most of her campaign cash has been raised by Brown and Pak. Even progressive Sup. Eric Mar admits that Pak in raising money for him, a troubling sign of things to come.

 

THE REAL OCCUPY STORY

The Occupy San Francisco camp that was cleared by police last week may have been mostly homeless people. And major news media outlets from the start reported that Occupy was dangerous, filthy, and a civic eyesore.

But last fall, the camps were comprised of a huge variety of people that chose to live part or full time on the streets. Students, people with 9-5 jobs, people with service jobs, and the unemployed were all represented. Wealthy people who lived in the financial districts where camps popped up mixed with working-class people who came from suburbs and small towns. Families came out, welcomed in the “child spaces” set up in many Occupy camps throughout the country. Most camps also boasted libraries, free classes, kitchens, food distribution, and medical tents.

As news media focused on gross-out stories of pee on the streets and graphic descriptions of drunk occupiers, they managed to ignore the complex systems that were built in the camps. Nor did anyone mention that homeless people have the right to protest, too.

Our Weekly Picks: October 10-16

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WEDNESDAY 10

Happy Hour at 251 Post

Stumbling on 251 Post Street feels a lot like clicking on a square in Minesweeper that opens up an awesome chunk of mine-free space. The entrance is nudged between a designer sunglass shop and high-end French clothing store, but it leads to six floors full of innovate artwork. Granted, the art might be in the same price range as the surrounding stores, but hey, admission is a lot cheaper than a museum. The happy hour will feature artist talks at four of the six galleries, including the Bay Area painter Brett Amory, whose simple but beautiful paintings are evocative of my lonelier dream visions. His work, focused on figures and buildings he encounters in Oakland and San Francisco, reduces everything down to the essence, creating empty spaces where buildings and figures seem to recede and appear before your eyes. (Molly Champlin)

5pm, free

251 Post Street Art Galleries, SF

(415) 291-8000

www.artgalleryweek.com

 

Dinosaur Jr.

We don’t need to tell you that Dinosaur Jr was one of the most influential alternative rock bands of the 1990s or that these dudes can really shred. We’ll just let their 28-year career attest to that. What we will tell you is that their new album is not to be overlooked or underestimated. These Dinosaurs have aged well. I Bet on Sky, their 10th full-length, is a loudmouthed snarl of a record. It features all the best quirks of Dinosaur Jr’s extensive catalogue: frightening amounts of fuzz, weirdly engaging hooks, and deep dark lyrics in J Mascis’ disengaged nasal yowls. Don’t forget to bring earplugs. (Haley Zaremba)

8pm, $32.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-3000

www.thefillmore.com

 

FRIDAY 12

Lenora Lee Dance

The history of Chinese Americans in the Bay Area is not exactly a closed book. Over the years many artists — including dancers — have opened a few of its pages, but I can’t think of any choreographer who has taken an approach as simultaneously intimate and large scale as Lenora Lee. In her work, the personal and the political intertwine inextricably. As part of her fifth anniversary celebration she, and some very fine visual, musical and text collaborators, are presenting a triptych that is still in the making. “Passages: For Lee Ping To” is the most personal — based on Lee’s grandmother’s story; “Reflections” looks at conflicting ideas of maleness; and “The Escape”, a work on immigrant women. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/12-Sat/13, 8pm, $15–$25

Sun/14, 3:30pm

Dance Mission Theater

3316, 24th St., SF

www.dancemission.com

 

 

The Raveonettes

The collaboration of Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo feels like 1950s and ’60s rock’n’roll overlaid with electric noise and coupled with darker, more introspective lyrics. Their sound recalls grunge and captures a shoegazy moodiness that’s both mysterious and lyrical. The Danish duo has been making music together as the Raveonettes since 2001, has developed a cult following along the way, and has been credited with spawning somewhat of an American indie rock renaissance. Wagner relates Observator, the group’s recently released sixth album, to “a heavenly dream that you slowly realize is actually taking place in hell.” (Mia Sullivan)

With Melody’s Echo Chamber

9pm, $25

Bimbo’s

1025 Columbus, SF?

(415) 474-0365

www.bimbos365club.com

 

 

Morbid Angel

Time was that Morbid Angel could do no wrong. Tampa was bursting with bands in the later Reagan years, but few combined brutality with complexity as well as guitarist Trey Azagthoth, drummer Pete Sandoval, and bassist-vocalist David Vincent. With the release of 2011’s Illud Divinum Insanus, however, that time officially ended. Industrial and electronic textures alienated fans, leaving them uncertain about the band’s new direction. Thankfully, having missed the Illud… sessions while recovering from back surgery, Sandoval is now back in the fold, which bodes well for a return to death metal roots on the band’s current tour. (Ben Richardson)

With Dark Funeral, Grave

9pm, $31

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415)-255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

SATURDAY 13

Life is Living Festival

Even in the season of street fair, Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Life is Living Festival stands out. The overarching theme for the fests — they take place in ‘hoods across the country, from Houston’s Emancipation Park to Chicago’s South Side to the Bronx — is bringing green to the black community, uniting the sustainability movement with a hip-hop sensibility. The fest overflows with hip-happenings: Oakland’s first youth poet laureate Stephanie Yun will take the stage, there’ll be a street art contest, a show by a local team of dunk artists, vegan Filipino food, free breakfast (a park tradition started by the Black Panthers), youth science exhibition, dancing, hip-hop cipher — oh, and Talib Kweli will DJ. The fest prides itself on being an uber-positive, multi-generational show of strength. You won’t go home frowning. (Caitlin Donohue)

10am-6pm, free Defremery Park 1651 Adeline, Oakl. www.lifeisliving.org

 

Alternative Press Expo

Besides, of course, the sweetly self-conscious parade of Optimus Prime, Misty from Pokemon, and Clockwork Android costumes, my favorite part of the dearly-departed Wonder Con was the sociology nerd comics panels. “Women in Comics,” “Social Justice in Comics,” the list goes on. Graphic novels present the perfect, neurosis-friendly media in which to delve into alternative culture, which is why the Alternative Press Expo will make you forget all those Hollywood blockbuster star panels. Go this year to delve into the best scribblers of alt culture, like the Hernandez brothers of Love and Rockets Latino punk fame, a queer cartoonist panel moderated by Glamazonia’s Justin Hall, and the chance to connect with a gajillion like-minded indie comic freaks. (Donohue)

11am-7pm; also Sun/14, 11am-6pm; $10 one day, $15 two day pass Concourse Exhibition Center 635 Eighth St., SF www.comic-con.org/ape

 

Yerba Buena Night

Art allies in the Yerba Buena district are rallying together for another installment of Yerba Buena Night. The neighborhood will be full of people getting their musing-spectator on during the gallery walk, rocking out at the three main performance stages, and chatting with class at the champagne reception hosted by Visual Aid. Be sure to stop by 111 Minna to see surreal graffiti and pen artist Lennie Mace, who operates in both America and Japan, as well as some of Mike Shine’s paintings and props from Outside Lands (minus the live carny folk, unfortunately). Or visit Wendi Norris Gallery for beautifully bright but often gruesome narrative paintings by artist Howie Tsui: think pop-surrealist Mark Ryden with a Chinese influence. (Champlin)

3pm, free

Yerba Buena District

701 Mission

(415) 541-0312

www.yerbabuena.org

 

MONDAY 15

David Byrne and St. Vincent

Old and young, man and woman, beauty and beast (albeit a hip beast with now slick, silver hair), David Byrne and St. Vincent make quite the unlikely pair. Despite, or maybe in light of these differences, their respective talents fit together like puzzle pieces in their joyously poppy and horn-laden collaboration, Love This Giant. The album, released in September, rings in like a call to action and touches on issues of wealth, prescribed and individual culture, love, and forgiveness. Aside from the fact that everyone loves a rock show backed with an eight-piece brass band, this is set to be a memorable night.(Champlin)

8pm, $63.50–$129

Orpheum Theater

1192 Market, SF

(888) 746-1799

www.shnsf.com

 

The Sheepdogs

If you’re itching for some classic rock nostalgia but aren’t in the mood for the full-on experience (i.e. Dark Star Orchestra), check out The Sheepdogs. This Canadian quartet looks like they were pulled straight out of the ’70s and has been sonically influenced by rock icons like The Grateful Dead, Credence Clearwater Revival, and Steely Dan. These guys released a self-titled, debut album with Atlantic Records last month. (They released their first three albums independently.) The Sheepdogs thrive on three-part harmonies, produce extremely catchy tracks, and have been rumored to put on fun, blissful shows. (Sullivan)

With Black Box Revelation

7:30pm, $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com


TUESDAY 16

Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin

Not quite nu-jazz, math-rock, or classical minimalism, Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin attacks Reichian time signatures with the borderline robotic technical skill of a group of Juilliard grads, the undeniable groove of an airtight funk band, and the Steely Dan-worthy production values inherent to ECM, the venerable European jazz label to which they’re signed. Bärtsch’s piano playing is remarkably dynamic, flowing between resonant, open tones and muffled, percussive hammering, while generously layered drums, agile bass-plucking, and exotic woodwinds (contrabass clarinet, anyone?) create a dark, steely backdrop. Considering the Swiss ensemble’s masterful ability to anchor soulful acoustic instrumentation with a relentlessly electronic pulse, Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin is as compelling, and unmissable, as any live ensemble currently working. (Taylor Kaplan)

8pm, $20

Yoshi’s Oakland

510 Embarcadero West, Oakl.

(510) 238-9200

www.yoshis.com/oakland

 

Vampyr with live score by Steven Severin

Get your Halloween on a little early this year with Steven Severin, founding member and bassist of Siouxie and the Banshees, who comes to haunt the city tonight with two special live performances of his new score to the classic 1932 horror film Vampyr. The third installment in Severin’s ongoing film accompaniment series “Music For Silents,” the darkly moody synthesizer score perfectly matches the surreal scenes on the silver screen, working in conjunction with the somewhat unorthodox style of filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer, who continued to use elements of the silent era, including dialogue title cards, even though the film was made at the advent of the talkies. (Sean McCourt)

7 and 9:30pm, $15

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

 

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Stage Listings

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

THEATER

OPENING

Love in the Time of Zombies Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; sftheaterpub.wordpress.com. Free ($5 donation suggested). Opens Mon/15, 8pm. Runs Mon-Tue, 8pm. Through Oct 30. San Francisco Theater Pub performs Kirk Shimano’s “rom-zom-com.”

The Scotland Company Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.thunderbirdtheatre.com. $15-25. Opens Thu/12, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 27. Thunderbird Theatre Company performs Jake Rosenberg’s new comedy.

“Strindberg Cycle: The Chamber Plays in Rep” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50 (festival pass, $75). Previews Fri/12-Sat/13, 8pm; Sun/14, 5pm (part one); Oct 25, 7:30pm and Oct 26, 8pm (part two); Nov 1, 7:30pm and Nov 2, 8pm (part three). Opens Oct 18, 7:30pm (part one); Oct 27, 8pm (part two); and Nov 3, 8pm (part three). Runs Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 18. Cutting Ball performs a festival of August Strindberg in three parts: The Ghost Sonata, The Pelican and The Black Glove, and Storm and Burned House.

BAY AREA

An Iliad Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-77. Previews Fri/12-Sat/13 and Tue/16, 8pm; Sun/14, 7pm. Opens Oct 17, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through Nov 11. Berkeley Rep performs Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s Homer-inspired tale.

Richard the First: Part One, Part Two, Part Three Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Previews Fri/12, 8pm (part one); Sat/13, 8pm (part two); and Sun/14, 5pm (part three). Opens Oct 18, 8pm (part one); Oct 19, 8pm (part two); and Oct 20, 8pm (part three). Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (three-part marathon Sundays, Nov 11 and 18, 2, 5, 8pm). Through Nov 18. This Central Works Method Trilogy presents a rotating schedule of three plays by Gary Graves about the king known as “the Lionheart.”

ONGOING

Elect to Laugh Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Through Nov 6. $15-50. Veteran political comedian Will Durst emphasizes he’s watching the news and keeping track of the presidential race “so you don’t have to.” No kidding, it sounds like brutal work for anyone other than a professional comedian — for whom alone it must be Willy Wonka’s edible Eden of delicious material. Durst deserves thanks for ingesting this material and converting it into funny, but between the ingesting and out-jesting there’s the risk of turning too palatable what amounts to a deeply offensive excuse for a democratic process, as we once again hurtle and are herded toward another election-year November, with its attendant massive anticlimax and hangover already so close you can touch them. Durst knows his politics and comedy backwards and forwards, and the evolving show, which pops up at the Marsh every Tuesday in the run-up to election night, offers consistent laughs born on his breezy, infectious delivery. One just wishes there were some alternative political universe that also made itself known alongside the deft two-party sportscasting. (Avila)

Family Programming: An Evening of Short Comedic Plays Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thu/11-Sat/13, 8pm. Left Coast Theatre Company performs short plays about gay and alternative families.

The Fifth Element: Live! Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 27. Comedic adaptation of the 1997 Luc Besson sci-fi epic.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 17). Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Geezer Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $30-100. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Nov 18. Geoff Hoyle’s popular solo show about aging returns.

Of Thee I Sing Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstmoon.org. $25-75. Wed, 7pm; Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm (also Sat/13, 1pm); Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 21. 42nd Street Moon performs George and Ira Gershwin’s classic political satire.

The Play About the Baby Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $30. Thu/11-Sat/13, 8pm; Sun/14, 7pm. Custom Made Theatre presents Edward Albee’s devilishly funny 1998 play, an intriguing and gleefully idiosyncratic work about the brutality to which innocence is invariably subjected in this world. In a formal and thematic reshuffling of the Albee deck (from which he drew earlier gems like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or The American Dream), the play offers two couples: Boy (Shane Rhoades) and Girl (Anya Kazimierski) — two innocents in the blush of first love who have just had a baby — and Man (Richard Aiello) and Woman (Linda Ayres-Frederick), a quippy, slightly sinister pair who intrude on the younger couple for initially undisclosed reasons. As much propositions as people (albeit lively ones), the characters move around a stage backed by a wall-full of assorted chairs (in Sarah Phykitt’s somewhat enigmatic scenic design) addressing each other and the audience by turns, the older ones prone to digressive monologues, the younger to ingenuous rapture, confusion, and finally (as their predicament becomes clear) anguish. The play’s oddball dialogue and intentional repetition demand a lot from a cast, however, and director Brian Katz gets uneven results from his. While Kazimierski offers a sure, buoyant performance as Girl, Rhodes wavers in his delivery, proving only occasionally convincing as Boy. Ayres-Frederickson exudes a nice, saucy, indomitable air as Woman, and Aiello is a pretty good match for her, despite a somewhat stilted start. But the effect overall is a little too erratic to avoid turning the play’s intentional repetitions into a slow-growing tedium. (Avila)

The Real Americans Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through Oct 27. Dan Hoyle’s hit show, inspired by the people and places he encountered during his 100-day road trip across America in 2009, continues.

Roseanne: Live! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm (no shows Oct 31). Through Nov 14. Lady Bear, Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger, and more star in this tribute to the long-running sitcom.

Shocktoberfest 13: The Bride of Death Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $25-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 17. Thrillpeddlers’ annual Halloween horror extravaganza features a classic Grand Guignol one-act and two world premiere one-acts, plus a blackout spook show finale.

The Strange Case of Citizen de la Cruz Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.bindlestiffstudio.org. Thu/11-Sat/13, 8pm. Bindlestiff Studio presents Luis Francia’s political thriller.

Twelfth Night San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, Hyde Street Pier, 2905 Hyde, SF; www.weplayers.org. $30-80. Sat/13, 5:30pm. After spending the summer on Angel Island with their epic-scale production of The Odyssey, the We Players have scaled back with a lo-key rendition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night on Hyde Street Pier. Of course when it comes to the We Players, “scaled-back” still means a two-and-a-half hour long participatory jaunt taking place mainly along the length of the pier and aboard the historic ferryboat, the Eureka, which serves primarily as the residence of the grieving Illyrian Countess, Olivia (Clara Kamunde) around whose favors much of the plot revolves. Highlights of the experience include the opportunity to visit historic Hyde Street Pier, a gypsy-jazzy score directed by Charlie Gurke (who also plays the lovelorn Duke Orsino), and the rascally quartet of the prankish Maria (Caroline Parsons), jocular drunk Toby Belch (Dhira Rauch), clueless doofus Andrew Augecheek (Benjamin Stowe), and wise fool Feste (John Hadden). But as We Players productions go, this one feels less inspired in its staging, and much of the action merely shuffles back and forth on the Eureka without incorporating many of the intriguing nooks and views the Hyde Street Pier offers, despite a promising opening scene involving a beach and a rowboat. Also, uncharacteristically for We, the comic timing seemed to be off the evening I saw it, although both Stowe and Hadden ably conveyed their wit without a flaw. Dress warmly, carry a big flask, and you’ll be fine. (Gluckstern)

The Waiting Period Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through Oct 27. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events` in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 24. Lynne Kaufman’s new play stars Warren David Keith as the noted spiritual figure.

Assassins Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 11. Shotgun Players performs the Sondheim musical about John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, and other famous Presidential killers (and would-be killers).

Hamlet Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; www.calshakes.org. $35-71. Wed/10-Thu/11, 7:30pm; Fri/12-Sat/13, 8pm; Sun/14, 4pm. Liesl Tommy directs this season closer for Cal Shakes, a decidedly uneven and overall surprisingly bland production of one of Shakespeare’s most fascinating, affecting, and endlessly rich works. The best part of Tommy’s less-than-inspired hodgepodge production (summed up by the dry and cluttered swimming-pool set, albeit very nicely designed by Clint Ramos) is lead Leroy McClain, whose Hamlet is a vibrantly intelligent and charismatic force most of the time. He gets some fine support from Dan Hiatt as a comically pedantic but still sympathetically paternal Polonius, but there is precious little chemistry with either Ophelia (a nonetheless striking Zainab Jah) or faithless queen mother Gertrude (Julie Eccles). The rest of the cast is rarely more than dutiful. Meanwhile, the staging comes laden with some awkward and/or tired conceits: a small fish tank-like landscape inset into the back wall for an unraveling Ophelia; a gore-covered zombie-esque ghost (a flat Adrian Roberts, who also plays Claudius); or guards sporting submachine guns, which always looks ridiculous. Moreover, the language comes awkwardly modernized in places —substituting “dagger” for “bodkin” in a rather famous soliloquy, for example, seems unnecessary and is definitely distracting. Why not “submachine gun”? (Avila)

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat/13, 8:30pm; Sun/14, 7pm. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Sex, Slugs and Accordion Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $10. Wed, 8pm. Through Nov 14. Jetty Swart, a.k.a. Jet Black Pearl, stars in this “wild and exotic evening of song.”

33 Variations TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 28. TheatreWorks performs Moisés Kaufman’s drama about a contemporary musicologist struggling to solve one of Beethoven’s greatest mysteries, and a connecting story about the composer himself.

Topdog/Underdog Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $36-57. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Thu/11, 1pm; Oct 20, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 21. Marin Theatre Company performs Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize winner about a contentious pair of brothers.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am; Nov 23-25, 11am. Through Nov 25. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl brings his lighter-than-air show back to the Marsh.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Bi Curious Comedy Night” Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; www.decosf.com. Sun/14, 8pm. $10. With Nick Leonard, Kate Willet, Nicole Calasich, and more.

“Comedy Bodega” Esta Noche Nightclub, 3079 16th St, SF; www.comedybodega.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. No cover (one drink minumum). This week: the San Francisco Comedy Burrito Festival.

“Gravity (and other large things)” NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.performancelab.org. Wed/10, Fri/12-Sat/13, and Oct 19-20, 8pm; Sun/14 and Oct 21, 4pm. $12-25. Right Brain Performancelab present this evening-length dance-theater piece.

“A New Anthropology of Asian-Black Relations” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed-Thu, 8pm. $10-20. Mash-up poetry installation, plus performance, by Kevin Simmonds.

Smuin Ballet Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.smuinballet.org. Thu/11-Sat/13, 8pm (also Sat/13, 2pm); Sun/14, 2pm. $25-65. The company performs its fall program, including West Coast premiere Cold Virtues.

“The Spooky Cabaret” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. Wed/10, 7:30pm. $10. ‘Tis the season for this fest of three full-length and five one-act plays with horror themes.

“Theatecture on UN Plaza” Civic Center, UN Plaza, Seventh St at Market, SF; www.ftloose.org. Tue/16, noon-2pm. Free. Outdoor performance of Mary Alice Fry’s Honeycomb Zone as part of the “24 Days of Central Market Arts Festival.”

Heads Up: 8 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
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With the xx – at Treasure Island Music Festival – and Nouvelle Vague both in town this week, there’s a whole lot of sexy, sex-making music coming. Also popping up in the Bay in the next few days: Dinosaur Jr., Grave Babies with 2:54, Saint Vitus, and Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby.

These shows, as of press time, still have tickets. Lucky you. There is another band in town, however, whose Bay Area stop is long-sold out: Grizzly Bear, the Brooklyn act that was featured in the much-discussed New York Magazine cover story last week, “Is Rock Stardom Any Way To Make A Living?”

The main crux of the story’s thesis is that more than ever, bands have to tour (and license songs) to make ends meet. So, go support your favorite musicians live, their livelihood depends on it. Also, actually buy the album. As Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste puts it in the article, a record costs about as much as “a fucking appetizer, a large popcorn at the movie theater, and you’ll have it forever, and they took two years to make it.”

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby
English rocker Wreckless Eric first found Amy Rigby when he happened upon the singer-songwriter covering his classic, whisper-to-shout post-punk love song, “(I’d Go the) Whole Wide World.” (She was playing in the wrong key, but he got up on stage and joined in.) They’re now married and play adorable acoustic sets together and are about to release another joint record, A Working Museum (Southern Domestic, Oct. 30). 
Tue/9, 8:30pm, $10 
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
(415) 923-0923
www.hemlocktavern.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s0UtowN9g4

Saint Vitus
The legendary LA doom metal band, Saint Vitus, comparatively molasses slow and full of despair, has played together in some form or another since 1978. This week, it plays the Independent, which is so out of wildly character for the venue, it’s got to be good. There will be headbanging.
With Weed Eater, Sourvein
Tue/9, 8pm, $25
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421
www.theindependentsf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhjP96dKYIU

Il Gato
This week, local baroque pop trio Il Gato released Tongues and Teeth (self-released), a folkier follow-up to last year’s All Those Slippery Things EP, and 2010’s All These Slippery Things LP. “The main themes are regarding the truth we hold inside us — from our bodies internal wisdom, to our intuition, to our patterns and rituals — and the beauty and struggle of being able to both think and feel,” says spiritual singer Daimian Holiday Scott.
With Immanu El, Wolf and Crow
Wed/10, 8pm, $10
Rickshaw Stop,
155 Fell, SF.
www.rickshawstop.com

Dinosaur Jr.
“We don’t need to tell you that Dinosaur Jr. was one of the most influential alternative rock bands of the 1990s or that these dudes can really shred. We’ll just let their 28-year career attest to that. What we will tell you is that their new album is not to be overlooked or underestimated. I Bet on Sky, their 10th full-length, is a loudmouthed snarl of a record. It features all the best quirks of Dinosaur Jr.’s extensive catalogue: frightening amounts of fuzz, weirdly engaging hooks, and deep dark lyrics in J Mascis’ disengaged nasal yowls. Don’t forget to bring earplugs.” –Haley Zaremba
Wed/10, 8pm, $32.50
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
(415) 346-3000
www.thefillmore.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpsGcnLEZbk

Grave Babies
Seattle’s “scuzziest goth rockers,” Grave Babies, recently got the remix treatment for their haunting new wave song “Fuck Off” by Total Control and Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s Mikey Young, which resulted in an even spookier, deeper-in-to-outer-space trip.
With 2:54
Thu/11, 9pm, $10-$13
Brick and Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission, SF
(415) 371-1631
www.brickandmortarmusic.com

Sic Alps
The best and biggest surprise from local garage rock band Sic Alps on its newest self-titled full-length (Drag City, Sept. 18) was the inclusion of a string section. It adds a sparkly additional layer to an already textured and loopy blanket, er, release.
With Thee Oh Sees, Sonny and the Sunsets, the Mallard.
Fri/12, 8:30pm, $15
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
www.slimspresents.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3P_7LsDHag

Treasure Island Music Festival
This year, I’m most curious about luminous Beth Ditto’s Gossip, to see how they work this glossy new dance-pop sound live, Grimes, to hear if her tiny voice can carry, and Public Enemy, because, it’s Public Enemy. There’s also M83, Joanna Newsom, and Divine Fits. Also, Sunday’s headliners the xx just released shimmering new LP, Coexist, which should create a sexy, foggy atmosphere. Though the best part about Treasure Island — besides the outstanding views — is the lack of set-time conflicts.
Sat/13-Sun/14, noon, single day $75; two-day, $129.50
Treasure Island, SF
www.treasureislandfestival.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nW5AF0m9Zw

Nouvelle Vague
Nouvelle Vague has the ability to turn anything – moody ’80s new wave (the band’s namesake), post-punk grinders, Dead Kennedy’s “Too Drunk to Fuck” – into a sexy French pop classic. Everything they rework and perform turns into Françoise Hardy over bossa nova arrangements. Past covers include “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve),” “Heart if Glass,” and “Master and Servant.” This makes it difficult not to purse your lips and sing along in a faux-Francophone tribute; but you’d look silly, please leave it to these experts.
Sun/14, 8pm, $25-$28
Bimbo’s
1025 Columbus, SF
(415) 474-0365
www.bimbos365club.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5j-ipGFcko

Open doors await on Affordable Housing Day

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Open doors await on Affordable Housing Day

Tomorrow, 10/6 from 1pm-4pm, you can tour several of the city’s affordable housing sites — there’s even a handy citywide bike tour! — and  get an indepth look inside many of the innovative buildings that have recently gone up (or been rehabbed) in San Francisco, helping to house the homeless and make the city an affordable place to live for seniors, families, and people with special needs.

There will be refreshments! And also access to detailed information about the design, finances, and management of the buildings. And if you’re interested in finding out how to apply to live at one of the sites, there’ll be info about that, too. 

For Nosey Parkers like me who just like to go inside buildings and have a good gander, this will be pretty neat. (Also, my husband works in non-profit housing, and I get the backstory on a lot of the great stuff going on at these buildings, but never get to see it all!) And many of the buildings are doing really cool things environmentally and designwise. Complete list of locations and official press release after the jump.

SITE LIST:

Armstrong Place, 3rd Street & Armstrong
Bayview Commons, 4445 3rd Street
Bishop Swing, 275 10th Street
Broadway Family Apartments, 810 Battery Street
CASA, 5199 Mission Street
I Hotel, 868 Kearny Street
Mendelsohn House, 737 Folsom
Mosaica, 2949 19th Street
Notre Dame Plaza, 347 Dolores Street
St. Peters Place, 29th Avenue & Geary Street
The Hayes, 55 Page Street
Westbrook Plaza, 255 7th Street
Zygmunt Arendt House, 850 Broderick

Affordable Housing Day San Francisco to be held on Saturday, October 6
The Council of Community Housing Organizations, the American Institute of Architects San Francisco, and SPUR invite the community to an open house highlighting the benefits of affordable housing in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO ─ As part of a citywide Affordable Housing Day, neighborhood affordable housing organizations throughout San Francisco will open up selected buildings for tours, info sessions and refreshments. Included in the tours will be examples of housing designed for seniors, families and people with special needs. The goal of the citywide day is to provide an opportunity for up close and personal experience with the people and places that make up San Francisco’s affordable housing. Each location will have detailed information about design, finance and management of these housing developments as a sample of the many affordable housing sites across the city. And for individuals interested in obtaining affordable housing, each participating organization will have information about qualifications, the application process, and vacancies.

Fernando Martí, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations which is sponsoring the event, said “These are great examples of housing for everyday San Franciscans, slowing SF’s family flight, so that our children and grandchildren can continue to live in the City they helped build. Affordable housing also preserves the diversity of our neighborhoods, stabilizing communities from gentrification, while improving living conditions.”

There will be building tours throughout the city including the South of Market, Richmond, Mission, Excelsior, Bayview and Western Addition neighborhoods. Participants are welcome to visit all the open house locations, or just stop by the building in their neighborhood. Participating organizations include: Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, Bridge Housing, Chinatown Community Development Center, Community Housing Partnership, Episcopal Community Services, Mercy Housing, San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, Tenants and Owners Development Corporation, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation , and The Hayes (55 Page).

“Creating affordable housing helps build our economy, creates jobs in San Francisco and supports families so they can stay, live and succeed in our City,” said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. “We must create a permanent source of revenue to fund the production of housing in San Francisco to ensure that seniors, people with disabilities and San Francisco families can continue to call San Francisco home.” Supervisor Christina Olague representing the city’s Western Addition and Hayes Valley neighborhoods where two sites will be open on Affordable Housing Day, said “We are fortunate to have such wonderful examples of affordable housing in my district, it’s a critical part of making diverse and stable neighborhoods.”

Please join us for San Francisco Affordable Housing Day, a free event to be held Saturday, October 6 from 1:00pm – 4:00pm. This is an open house format, so visitors can start at any of the 13 sites.

 

On the Om Front: The divine essence of play

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On the Om Front: The divine essence of play

Yoga can be so serious. Ever look around class while people are doing backbends or pressing their quads to their bones in a standing pose? Wrinkled brows. Flared nostrils. Gripping toes. You’d think we’re all training to go into battle. Not that I have an issue with intensity– in the right amounts and on the right occasions. But if we don’t balance passion, dedication, and hard work with lightness and ease, we may be doing warrior pose but we’re not doing yoga.

So, play. Play means different things to different people. When I was a child, play meant begging my older brother to let me cavort with him and his friends while they played fighting-soldier-shoot-out in the backyard. My brother let me play sometimes, but only if I would take on the secret code name of Mop Top.

That wasn’t the most delightful kind of play.


But as an adult, I love to play. Play keeps me connected to the lighter part of who I am. It reminds me not to take myself too seriously (and I often need that reminder). I like to play by doing handstands, Acro Yoga, laughing till the point of internal combustion with an old pal. You know who you are.

There is a word in Sanskrit for play: It’s lila. It relates to yoga and the spiritual path, though its interpretations vary. Lila can be thought of as the play of the universe, in the sense that the whole creation and dance of life is a wild game that was invented by the gods. This is often thought of as Divine Play. (If you’ve ever seen Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that’s a delicious commentary on Divine Play.) Lila can also be thought of as the crazy, marvelous, confusing dance between two lovers (or between the male and female energies that reside in all of us).

To live a life of ease, play is necessary. Not the kind of play that lands you in the ER at 5am with someone else’s clothes on after imbibing copious amounts of illicit substances in the backseat of your ex’s car. (That’s called escapism.)  But lighthearted, clean fun that helps you loosen the reins on rigid thinking, and lighten the load when your practice gets too heavy.

Acro Yoga’s Divine Play Festival (coming up next week — details below) is a sweet example of play’s importance in your yoga practice. Organizer Jenny Sauer-Klein told me that, “Play keeps you connected to innocence and wonder. It keeps you fresh. In Acro Yoga, we’re playing to create connection and see the highest and best in each other, to see the divine in each other through the vehicle of play.”

If the whole universe is just an unpredictable giant puppet laser light show dance party, we may as well get on the dance floor. Go forth and play.

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Around the Bend: Ways to Play

Painting Yantras and Mandalas
Play with spiritual painting. Learn how to create sacred yantras and mandalas with Master Sacred Artist Pieter Weltevrede.
10/5-10/7, $150, Yoga Tree Telegraph, Berk. www.yogatreesf.com

Divine Play Festival
In its third year, the annual Acro Yoga Festival is the pinnacle of ridiculous fun for both acro newbies and old school trees and elves. Flying required—no wings necessary. The Acro Yoga mantra, which I love: “Work honestly. Meditate every day. Meet people without fear. And play.” –Baba Hari Das
10/12-14, $325 for entire event (various prices for other passes), Fort Mason Center, SF. www.acroyoga.org/acroyogafestival

Yoga Rave
Not like a rave rave. Like a yoga rave. Insane dance party minus substances. No booze equals no age restrictions. So bring your baby, bring your grandma, or just bring yourself. Presented by the Art of Living and in conjunction with Divine Play.
10/12, $20-$30, Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason Center, SF. www.yogarave.org/us

Strong Yogini
Trouble rockin’ those chatturangas or inversions? Not sure how to access your physical (or emotional) core? In this playful, strength-building workshop for women (taught by your truly!), we’ll learn ways to build muscle and confidence through yoga. Come play for the day! 
10/27, $35 by Oct. 20, $40 after, Yoga Garden, SF. www.yogagardensf.com

Slackline Classes with the Yoga Slackers
You haven’t played till you’ve gotten on a rope. Learn to walk it, learn to do yoga on it, learn to fall off it with the fabulous local Yoga Slackers, helmed by Ariel Mihic and Liz Williams.
Various dates in Nov and Dec, free, Sports Basement, SF. freeslacklineclasses.eventbrite.com

Karen Macklin is a yoga teacher and multi-genre writer in San Francisco. She’s been up-dogging her way down the yogic path for over a decade, and is a lifelong lover of the word. To learn more about her teaching schedule and writing life, visit her site at www.karenmacklin.com.

Party Radar: Kafana Balkan, Maurice Fulton, Never Knows, Body and Soul, Glamamore and more

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Party Radar: Kafana Balkan, Maurice Fulton, Never Knows, Body and Soul, Glamamore and more

I finally made it to Tradition, the new bar from the Bourbon and Branch guys that mashes up classic bar types — English pub, dive bar, Mad Men cocktail hour, classic drawing room, tiki lounge, etc. — in a gorgeous Tenderloin (oh, sorry, er “Union Square”) space with awesome vintage liquor ads plastered on the walls and really cuuute staff.

Well, not quite mashes up: there are no great drunk Irish-whiskey brawlers breaking through the walls of a girl-drink-drunk gaggle of video-bar gays to form some kind of mutant queer neon St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Or, you know, the Catholic Church. (Laugh track.)

But there are some great-sounding “blends” — liquor aged in barrels cured with various wines and coffees. I’d like to go back and drink my way through them. last night, however, Hunky Beau opted for a winning sazerac, I tried a yummy “surfer on acid” (various rums ‘n things, including housemade coconut marmalade), and we both reveled in the attentions of the fine bartenders. The labor-intensive cocktails are somewhat deservedly priced around $10, so save Tradition for something special, but it’s totally worth it.

And now we dance. Click on the names of the fun events below to view the FB invites, if applicable.

 

>> GLAMAMORE’S BIRTHDAY

Mr. David, aka Glamamore, is, in my opinion, SF’s best drag performer (and couturier, too). Often with little by way of prop, his trademark cigarette angled toward his pouted, dark-painted lips, his regal forehead topped by a tangle of wig, silent movie eyes ablaze, he draws you hypnotically into the worlds of the classic showtunes and diva numbers he knows and loves so well. It’s truly a mystical transformation, no reality required. His weekly Friday club Some Thing is essential: three drag shows featuring more than a dozen queens will pay him tribute, plus late-night dancing with DJ Josh Cheon.

Fri/5, 10pm-late, $8. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.studsf.com

 

 

>> MAURICE FULTON

When it comes down to gorgeous and multi-faceted talent, it’s very hard to beat this Sheffield house (and occasional arty techno) producer. As a DJ, he’s most respected for glittering, balanced beat constructions that don’t stint on great soul classics and otherworldly vibes. (I absolutely adored what he did with British-Zanzibari singer Mim Suleiman in 2010 and the remix above is one of my favorites.) Oh, and did we mention he had a hand in Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman”? Oh yes he did.

Fri/5, 10pm, $10-$20. 222 Hyde, SF.

 

 

>> KAFANA BALKAN

One of the city’s absolute best parties — a Romany romp through the great styles of the Balkans, complete with whooping brass, big drums, and lots of stomping and twirling. It only comes around once every two months or so, so don’t miss it. especially since the Brass Menazeri ensemble, Jill Parker & The Foxglove Sweethearts, and Kafana mastermind DJ Zeljko (where does he find all this great music?) are gonna be there.

Sat/6, 9pm-2am, $13. Rickshaw Stop, 155 fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

 

 

>> NEVER KNOWS

Dark and delicious local lord of sensual technoise and Untitled & After label head (“wants to be the 4AD of techno), Never Knows will help is step into the future — live — at the wonderfully advenuturous monthly Haceteria party. Should be a neat trip into razor-edged, goth-tinged, liquid moods, plus propulsive rhythms. With DJs Nihar, Tristes Tropiques, Jason P., and SMAC.

Sat/6, 9pm-3am, free before 10:30, $5 after. Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF.

 

 

>> BODY AND SOUL

I’ve waxed rapturous about actually legendary NYC party Body and Soul several times before — for me, it’s what helped saved Clubland from some mighty phony times in the late 90s and early 2000s. Many people I know on the West Coast would save up to fly in just for the weekly bash, which boasted one of the most eclectic crowds I’ve seen outside of early rave-times (and sadly ended regular installments a few years back in favor of yearly reunions) . There were also incredible tunes, of course, from mind-blowing Carribean singalongs to 15-minute deep-house rave-ups, diva croons to electro gems. Afro-Latin jams were always on the menu and, considering one fo the DJs was incredibly influential producer Francois K (along with Danny Krivit and Joe Clausell), a ton of disco rareties as well. Come to Mighty and see what the fuss is about.

Sat/6, 10pm-5am, $20-$30. Mighty, 119 Utah, www.mighty119.com

 

>>CMAC SFDJ SHOWCASE

Underground star-studded fundraiser time! The California Music and Culture Association fights for our right to party in many ways — not it is actually throwing a party, at Mighty, with DJs Syd Gris, Sleazemore, Maneesh the Twister, Ryury, and many more. It’ll be a blast.

Mon/8, 8pm-1am, $5 CMAC members /$10 non members /Free entrance with $25 purchase of CMAC membership. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.cmacsf.org

 

See Capital Cities and A B & the Sea for free!

Maria Poblet
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You find a lot of things on Craigslist. Bikes, puppies, and maybe even true love. That was how Ryan Merchant and Sebu Simonian found each other, and became Capital Cities. This is one of those times we hear ourselves musing, “Thank God for the inter-webs.”

With Madison expats A B & the Sea and a Dj set from Live 105’s music director, Aaron Axelsen. Buy your tickets with the coolest, mot convenient ticket app around right here.

To win a pair of tickets, send an email to sfbgpromos@sfbg.com with your full name and write “Capital Cities” in the subject. Winners will be notified  on Friday, October 5 at noon.

Saturday, October 6 at 9pm @ The Regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness, SF | $14

Live Shots: Peter Gabriel at HP Pavilion

Tony Robles
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Peter Gabriel strolled onto the stage at HP Pavilion on Tuesday with the house lights still glaring and the upper tier of the arena empty save for a scant few concertgoers sprinkled throughout the vast space.

Standing at the center stage microphone, Gabriel matter-of-factly began to explain to the audience how the concert would be structured for the rest of the evening. For an ever artistically-minded musician known for the theatrical nature of his live performances, it was a strangely stilted beginning to the start of his concert, exuding all the excitement of a CPR certification course.

Gabriel came to San Jose touring on the 25th  anniversary of his much-celebrated 1980s-era gem, So, set to perform the album in its entirety, amongst other greatest hits material. It was a show that held unique promise as a concert experience, and was therefore all the more surprising that the results were merely, well, so-so.

Performing along with many of the highly talented original musicians from So, the 62-year-old Gabriel ultimately put on a mixed bag of a performance, at times stunningly brilliant, and at others, awkward under the weight of it’s own production. He started the show with three strong tracks – “Obut,” “Come Talk to Me,” and “Shock the Money” – only to have them languish under the fluorescent house lights of the hockey arena. Gabriel’s idea (as he carefully explained at the start of the concert) was to convey the atmosphere of an acoustic rehearsal session, or really, as it came across – soundcheck.

The show finally gained momentum as the lights came down and the instruments went electric. Gabriel delved into the depths of his catalogue with tracks like “Digging in the Dirt,” and “Solsbury Hill,” roaming back-and-forth from his keyboard to center stage amid pulsing lights, and embellishing the lyrics via his lumbering dance moves. The surprising inclusion of the obscurity “Humdrum” rounded out this middle set in subtle though engaging fashion.

The evening then transitioned into So, without a break, starting with Gabriel’s soaring vocals on “Red Rain,” and then delivering on all the heft and weight of “Sledgehammer,” much to the delight of his dancing fans. “Mercy Street” quickly proved to be a high point, beginning with a amazing harmony section before Gabriel fell to the floor and proceeded to sing the brooding lyrics flat on his back throughout the massive looming atmosphere of the song.

Yet for as solid as Gabriel and his band sounded, the show began to sag in spots. “Big Time” quickly obliterated the compelling mood generated by “Mercy Street” with its second-rate “Sledgehammer” pop, just as other tracks such as “That Voice Again” proved sub-par to the better material on the album.

As the performance proceeded to the latter part of the night, Gabriel’s choreographed dance moves grew redundant as they persisted from song to song, while the massive production of the light show – involving a small swarming army of lighting technicians, dressed ninja-like for discreetness – really only rendered mediocre (and distracting) results.

Of course, as Gabriel moved through a 10 minute-plus version of “In Your Eyes” and a spirited “Biko,” his adoring fans continued to embrace every second of the show. If there were flaws in the performance, or rather, better Peter Gabriel shows to be had in years past, they seemed to be met with a collective – “So?”

 

All photos by Charles Russo.

Feminist vigilante gangs to march on Oakland Friday

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Feminist vigilante gangs to march on Oakland Friday

Oakland’s last feminist vigilante gangs march was a demonstration promoting offensive feminism in response to rape, assault, and murder of “women, queers, gender rebels and allies.” It was also a birthday party.

“The first march basically came about because it was my 30th birthday,” said Lauren, one of the organizers of that march and a second feminist vigilante gangs march, which will take place in Oakland on Friday.

“I had been talking a big game about feminist vigilante gangs and calling attention to the need for people to form affinities for a long time. When I was asked what I wanted for my 30th birthday I said, I want a feminist vigilante gangs march, as a joke. But people were into it.”

Last time, a group, equipped with and radical queer and feminist literature, banners, and glitter, marched from the “fake neighborhood” of uptown Oakland to downtown Oakland, Lauren said, ending with a dance party in “Oscar Grant Plaza,” Occupy Oakland’s longtime home base outside City Hall.

Along the way, organizers “stopped at some places to talk about things have had happened there,” said Lauren. “For instance, the place where Brandy Martell was killed.”

Brandy Martell was transgender woman who was shot April 29. Her murder remains unsolved. Martell’s is a “a high-profile case of transgender bashing. She died, and so we know about. But these types of things happen everyday on the streets in Oakland,” said Lauren.

The next feminist vigilante gangs march begins Friday at 7pm from 19th and Telegraph. It will also stop at the spot where Martell was killed, as well as other spots where queer bashing, rape and assault have taken place.

Lauren says the march is a few things. It’s a call-out “encouraging women, queers, gender outlaws in the Bay Area to start thinking offensively about the abuse that we’re on the receiving end of.”

It’s also “a way for us to practice discipline in the streets. Because we live in a culture that’s so abusive towards women, queers, gender variant people, its really hard for us to form affinities.”

The group plans for a tightly organized march. A security team and a league of bike scouts to protect the march have already begun training, and before the march begins a generalized security training is planned. Anyone who arrived alone will be given the chance to hook up with a marching buddy. Street medics and “emotional medics” from the Occupy Oakland safer spaces working group– “people who have some training to interact with people who are experiencing PTSD or who are experiencing emotions that are making it difficult for them to participate”– will be on hand.

“We have a bloc that is set up for people with limited mobility, that’s wheelchair users, cane users, people using walkers,” Lauren said.

Community self-defense

Organizers of the march hope that its spirit and practice of community building and self-defense can extend to the everyday lives of participants.

One way is by connecting demonstrators “with the resources to begin things like self-defense training, especially in a feminist and collective environment,” Lauren said. Groups like the Offensive Feminist Project, the Suigetsukan Dojo, and Girl Army.

“Something that we should be creating in marginalized communities is community self-defense. That’s something that the Black Panthers worked on. It’s not a new concept, in Oakland we have a lot of history with that,” said Lauren.

Community self-defense, of course, is supposed to be unnecessary; crime prevention and retribution is supposed to be relegated to the police and the criminal justice system. But Lauren said that these institutions are not working.

“I don’t believe that the criminal justice system is just, or serving anyone. And I think that’s a perspective shared by the people who are organizing the march, and probably by most of the people who will attend it,” she said. “I say this as someone who’s watched the police interrogate a rape victim and– interrogate is the correct word. There’s no justice in the criminal justice system for victims of rape and assault. So we want to talk about extra-legal methods of dealing with these issues.”

Extra-legal means of dealing with violence, she says, is “what feminist vigilante gangs is all about.”

After the march, organizers plan to continue this conversation at “a series of plenaries and salons in the East Bay” where participants will discuss questions like “What does feminist vigilantism look like?” Lauren said.

“As these conversations continue we will be spending a lot of time focusing on issues like race, and things like the history in the United States of falsely accusing men of color of assaulting white women so that they can be imprisoned or abused or killed,” Lauren said.

The group also has an open call for entries for a feminist vigilante gangs zine, for those who want to continue the discussion on paper. “People have been writing about bashing back. The Bash Back book Queer Ultraviolence just came out this year,” she noted.

Still, many people have not been exposed to the ideas and practices behind the feminist vigilante gangs march. On Friday, a lot of people will be– the march will coincide with Art Murmur, and downtown Oakland’s streets will already be crowded. A contingent from GLITUR, aka the Grand Legion of Incendiary and Tenacious Unicorn Revolutionaries, is coming down from Seattle. This march might get big.

But never fear, Lauren assured: “We should have enough glitter bandanas for everyone who comes.”

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, and Lynn Rapoport. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL

The 35th Mill Valley Film Festival runs Oct. 4-14 at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; Cinéarts@Sequoia, 25 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; and 142 Throckmorton Theatre, Mill Valley. For additional venues, full schedule, and tickets (most shows $13.50), visit www.mvff.com. For commentary, see Film.

OPENING

Bitter Seeds Just what we all needed: more incontrovertible evidence of the bald-faced evil of Monsanto. This documentary on destitute Indian cotton farmers follows an 18-year-old girl named Manjusha, a budding journalist who investigates the vast numbers of farmer suicides since the introduction (and market stranglehold) of "BT" cotton — which uses the corporation’s proprietary GMO technology — in the region of Vidarbha. Before BT took over in 2004, these cotton farmers relied on cheap heritage seed fertilized only by cow dung, but the largely illiterate population fell prey to Monsanto’s marketing blitz and false claims, purchasing biotech seed that resulted in pesticide reliance, failing crops, and spiraling debt. It’s a truly heartbreaking and infuriating story, but much of the action feels stagy and false. Should Indian formality be blamed? Considering the same fate befell Micha X. Peled’s 2005 documentary China Blue, probably not. Still, eff Monsanto. (1:28) Roxie. (Michelle Devereaux)

Butter Jennifer Garner, Olivia Wilde, and Hugh Jackman star in this Iowa-set satirical comedy about competitive butter carving. (1:32)

Frankenweenie Wee Victor Frankenstein brings his dog back from the dead in Tim Burton’s black-and-white, 3D animated tale. (1:27) Presidio.

The Mystical Laws As The Master gathers Oscar buzz for its Scientology-inspired tale, another movie based on the teachings of a similarly-named religion, Japanese fringe sect Happy Science, opens this weekend. But that analogy is incorrect, for The Mystical Laws way more resembles 2000’s Battlefield Earth, demonstrating and preaching its source material’s tenants rather than questioning them. Visit Happy Science’s website and you’ll find a New Age mix of Christianity and Buddhism, with woo-woo about truth and love. Its founder, Ryuho Okawa, claims to the reincarnation of "El Cantare," sort of an über-god who controls all spiritual activity on Earth. Anyway, now there’s an anime flick based on one of Okawa’s hundreds of books; it’s about an evil overlord with planet-ruling aspirations who gets smacked down by the powerful combo of aliens, a guy who realizes he’s humanity’s "light of hope" (basically a Jesus-Buddha combo, with psychic powers to boot), and an eight-headed flying dragon. There is Nazi iconography; there are Star Wars-inspired plot points. At one point, the hero preaches directly to the camera. It’s all very heavy-handed. A far more amusing use of your time would be to go to Happy Science’s website and click the tab marked "Astonishing Facts" to learn the spiritual fates of historical figures: "Currently Beethoven lives in the lower area of the Bodhisattva Realm of the 7th dimension in the Spirit world, and aims to transcend the sadness evident in parts of his music and become an expert in the music of joy," while proponent o’ evolution Darwin "is now serving a penance in Abysmal Hell." Hey, wait a minute! Isn’t science supposed to be "happy?" (2:00) New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com. (Eddy)

The Oranges In director Julian Farino’s tale of two families, the Wallings and the Ostroffs are neighbors and close friends living in the affluent New Jersey township of West Orange. We meet David Walling (Hugh Laurie), his wife Paige (Catherine Keener), his best friend Terry Ostroff (Oliver Platt), and Terry’s wife, Carol (Allison Janney), during a period of domestic malaise for both couples — four unhappy people who enjoy spending time together — that is destined to be exponentially magnified over the Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities. We learn much of this in voice-over courtesy of stalled-out 24-year-old design school grad Vanessa (Alia Shawkat), a second-generation Walling whose narrative subjectivity the film makes plain. No one will fault Vanessa for editorializing, however, when her Ostroff counterpart, onetime BFF and present-day nemesis Nina (Leighton Meester), returns home after a five-year absence and, amid maternal pressure to date Vanessa’s visiting brother, Toby (Adam Brody), instead embarks on an affair with their father. The ick factor is large, particularly because it takes a while to keep straight all the spouses, offspring, and houses they belong in. But Farino works to convince us that the romantic spark between David and Nina should be judged on its merits rather than with a gut-level revulsion, a reaction we can leave to the film’s principals. To the extent that this is possible, it’s possible to enjoy The Oranges‘ intelligent writing and fine cast, whose sympathetic characters (perhaps excluding Nina, whose heedlessness regarding the feelings of others verges on sociopathic) we wish the best of luck in surviving the holidays. (1:30) Albany, Clay. (Rapoport)

The Paperboy Lee Daniels scored big with Precious (2009), but this follow-up is so off-kilter in tone and story it will likely polarize critics and confuse audiences, despite its A-list cast. I happened to enjoy the hell out of this tacky, sweat-drenched, gator-gutting, and generally overwrought adaptation of Peter Dexter’s novel (Dexter and Daniels co-wrote the screenplay); it’s kind of a Wild Things-The Help-A Time to Kill mash-up, with the ubiquitous Matthew McConaughey starring as Ward Jansen, a Florida newspaper reporter investigating what he thinks is the wrongful murder conviction of Hillary Van Wetter (a repulsively greasy John Cusack). But the movie’s not really about that. Set in 1969 and narrated by Macy Gray, who plays the veteran housekeeper for the Jansens — a clan that also includes college dropout Jack (Zac Efron) — The Paperboy is neither mystery nor thriller. It’s more of a swamp cocktail, with some odd directorial choices (random split-screen here, random zoom there) that maybe seem like exploitation movie homages. As a Southern floozy turned on by "prison cock" (but not, to his chagrin, by the oft-shirtless Jack), Nicole Kidman turns in her trashiest performance since 1995’s To Die For. (1:46) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

V/H/S See "Gruesome Discovery." (1:55) Bridge, Shattuck.

Taken 2 It’s kidnapping season again, and Liam Neeson is pissed. (1:31) Marina.

ONGOING

Arbitrage As Arbitrage opens, its slick protagonist, Robert Miller (Richard Gere), is trying to close the sale of his life, on his 60th birthday: the purchase of his company by a banking goliath. The trick is completing the deal before his fraud, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, is uncovered, though the whip-smart daughter who works for him (Brit Marling) might soon be onto him. Meanwhile, Miller’s gaming his personal affairs as well, juggling time between a model wife (Susan Sarandon) and a Gallic gallerist mistress (Laetitia Casta), when sudden-death circumstances threaten to destroy everything, and the power broker’s livelihood — and very existence — ends up in the hands of a young man (Nate Parker) with ambitions of his own. It’s a realm that filmmaker Nicholas Jarecki is all too familiar with. Though like brothers Andrew (2003’s Capturing the Friedmans) and Eugene (2005’s Why We Fight), Jarecki’s first love is documentaries (his first film, 2006’s The Outsider, covered auteur James Toback), his family is steeped in the business world. Both his parents were commodities traders, and Jarecki once owned his own web development firm and internet access provider, among other ventures. When he started writing Arbitrage‘s script in 2008, he drew some inspiration from Bernard Madoff — but ultimately, the film is about a good man who became corrupted along the way, to the point of believing in his own invincibility. (1:40) Metreon, Presidio, Smith Rafael, Shattuck. (Chun)

Backwards Athletic disappointment is not a new feeling for Abi (Sarah Megan Thomas, who also wrote the script), who has just learned she’s been named the alternate for the Olympic crew team — a bench warming role she was also relegated to in the last Olympics. But after she quits the team in a huff and moves home, it’s not long before she realizes that her life off the water is pretty depressing, too. Enter former boyfriend Geoff (James Van Der Beek), now the athletic director at the high school where Abi honed her rowing talents, who gives her a job coaching the talented but undisciplined girls who make up the current team. Will this new venture help Abi finally grow up and regain her self-confidence? Will she re-ignite her spark with Geoff? Will there be a last-act conflict involving yet another chance at the Olympics? Will there be multiple training montages? As directed by Ben Hickernell, Backwards hits all of the expected themes about following one’s heart and Doing the Right Thing. Thomas, a former rower herself, has an ordinary-girl appeal, but even Backwards’ attention to authenticity can’t elevate what’s essentially a very predictable sports drama. (1:29) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Beasts of the Southern Wild Six months after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (and a Cannes Camera d’Or), Beasts of the Southern Wild proves capable of enduring a second or third viewing with its originality and strangeness fully intact. Magical realism is a primarily literary device that isn’t attempted very often in U.S. cinema, and succeeds very rarely. But this intersection between Faulkner and fairy tale, a fable about — improbably — Hurricane Katrina, is mysterious and unruly and enchanting. Benh Zeitlin’s film is wildly cinematic from the outset, as voiceover narration from six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) offers simple commentary on her rather fantastical life. She abides in the Bathtub, an imaginary chunk of bayou country south of New Orleans whose residents live closer to nature, amid the detritus of civilization. Seemingly everything is some alchemical combination of scrap heap, flesh, and soil. But not all is well: when "the storm" floods the land, the holdouts are forced at federal gunpoint to evacuate. With its elements of magic, mythological exodus, and evolutionary biology, Beasts goes way out on a conceptual limb; you could argue it achieves many (if not more) of the same goals Terrence Malick’s 2011 The Tree of Life did at a fraction of that film’s cost and length. (1:31) Four Star, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Beauty is Embarrassing You may not recognize the name Wayne White offhand, but you will know his work: he designed and operated many of the puppets on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, including Randy (the blockheaded bully) and Dirty Dog (the canine jazzbo). Neil Berkeley’s Beauty Is Embarrassing — named for a mural White painted on the side of a Miami building for Art Basel 2009 — charts the life of an artist whose motto is both "I want to try everything I can!" and "Fuck you!" The Southern-born oddball, who came of age in the early-1980s East Village scene, is currently styling himself as a visual artist (his métier: painting non-sequitur phrases into landscapes bought from thrift stores), but Beauty offers a complex portrait of creativity balanced between the need to be subversive and the desire to entertain. (1:27) Roxie. (Eddy)

The Bourne Legacy Settle down, Matt Damon fans — the original Bourne appears in The Bourne Legacy only in dialogue ("Jason Bourne is in New York!") and photograph form. Stepping in as lead badass is Jeremy Renner, whose twin powers of strength and intelligence come courtesy of an experimental-drug program overseen by sinister government types (including Edward Norton in an utterly generic role) and administered by lab workers doing it "for the science!," according to Dr. Rachel Weisz. Legacy‘s timeline roughly matches up with the last Damon film, The Bourne Ultimatum, which came out five years ago and is referenced here like we’re supposed to be on a first-name basis with its long-forgotten plot twists. Anyway, thanks to ol’ Jason and a few other factors involving Albert Finney and YouTube, the drug program is shut down, and all guinea-pig agents and high-security-clearance doctors are offed. Except guess which two, who manage to flee across the globe to get more WMDs for Renner’s DNA. Essentially one long chase scene, The Bourne Legacy spends way too much of its time either in Norton’s "crisis suite," watching characters bark orders and stare at computer screens, or trying to explain the genetic tinkering that’s made Renner a super-duper-superspy. Remember when Damon killed that guy with a rolled-up magazine in 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy? Absolutely nothing so rad in this imagination-free enterprise. (2:15) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

The Campaign (1:25) 1000 Van Ness.

Celeste and Jesse Forever Married your best friend, realized you love but can’t be in love with each other, and don’t want to let all those great in-jokes wither away? Such is the premise of Celeste and Jesse Forever, the latest in what a recent wave of meaty, girl-centric comedies penned by actresses — here Rashida Jones working with real-life ex Will McCormack; there, Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks), Zoe Lister Jones (Lola Versus), and Lena Dunham (Girls) — who have gone the DIY route and whipped up their own juicy roles. There’s no mistaking theirs for your average big-screen rom-com: they dare to wallow harder, skew smarter, and in the case of Celeste, tackle the thorny, tough-to-resolve relationship dilemma that stubbornly refuses to conform to your copy-and-paste story arc. Nor do their female protagonists come off as uniformly likable: in this case, Celeste (Jones) is a bit of an aspiring LA powerbitch. Her Achilles heel is artist Jesse (Andy Samberg), the slacker high school sweetheart she wed and separated from because he doesn’t share her goals (e.g., he doesn’t have a car or a job). Yet the two continue to spend all their waking hours together and share an undeniable rapport, extending from Jesse’s encampment in her backyard apartment to their jokey simulated coitus featuring phallic-shaped lip balm. Throwing a wrench in the works: the fact that they’re still kind of in love with each other, which all their pals, like Jesse’s pot-dealer bud Skillz (McCormack), can clearly see. It’s an shaggy, everyday breakup yarn, writ glamorous by its appealing leads, that we too rarely witness, and barring the at-times nausea-inducing shaky-cam under the direction of Lee Toland Krieger, it’s rendered compelling and at times very funny — there’s no neat and tidy way to say good-bye, and Jones and McCormack do their best to capture but not encapsulate the severance and inevitable healing process. It also helps that the chemistry practically vibrates between the boyish if somewhat one-note Samberg and the soulful Jones, who fully, intelligently rises to the occasion, bringing on the heartbreak. (1:31) Shattuck. (Chun)

The Dark Knight Rises Early reviews that called out The Dark Knight Rises‘ flaws were greeted with the kind of vicious rage that only anonymous internet commentators can dish out. And maybe this is yet another critic-proof movie, albeit not one based on a best-selling YA book series. Of course, it is based on a comic book, though Christopher Nolan’s sophisticated filmmaking and Christian Bale’s tortured lead performance tend to make that easy to forget. In this third and "final" installment in Nolan’s trilogy, Bruce Wayne has gone into seclusion, skulking around his mansion and bemoaning his broken body and shattered reputation. He’s lured back into the Batcave after a series of unfortunate events, during which The Dark Knight Rises takes some jabs at contemporary class warfare (with problematic mixed results), introduces a villain with pecs of steel and an at-times distractingly muffled voice (Tom Hardy), and unveils a potentially dangerous device that produces sustainable energy (paging Tony Stark). Make no mistake: this is an exciting, appropriately moody conclusion to a superior superhero series, with some nice turns by supporting players Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in trying to cram in so many characters and plot threads and themes (so many prisons in this thing, literal and figural), The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately done in by its sprawl. Without a focal point — like Heath Ledger’s menacing, iconic Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight — the stakes aren’t as high, and the end result feels more like a superior summer blockbuster than one for the ages. (2:44) Metreon. (Eddy)

Detropia Those of us from Detroit, once-glamorous capital of American manufacturing and symbol of the triumph of capitalism, often feel like we were born with the history of the city in our bones. Another common feeling is that of dread upon hearing that yet another arty documentary (or brow-furrowing article, or glossy photo book) is coming down the pipe. The narrative arc of such things is usually this: remember Motown? Cars were amazing. Then there were scary riots, probably out of thin air. Then the jobs left. Isn’t Detroit sad now? Look how spooky this abandoned train station from the 1930s is! America is over. Wait! Some hipsters are starting a farm downtown! There may be hope after all. But who knows? Detropia, directed by Heidi Ewing, who grew up near Detroit, and Rachel Grady, doesn’t exactly deconstruct that crusty storyline (non-spoiler alert: the hipster-farmers become performance artists). But this important and beautiful film shows how much more of the Detroit tale takes on meaning and shape when told through the voices of people who actually live there, with a cinematic eye that doesn’t shy away from reality, even as it bends it to narrative ends. (1:30) Elmwood, Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Marke B.)

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel The life of legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland is colorfully recounted in Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a doc directed by her granddaughter-in-law, Lisa Immordino Vreeland. The family connection meant seemingly unlimited access to material featuring the unconventionally glamorous (and highly quotable) Vreeland herself, plus the striking images that remain from her work at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Narrated" from interview transcripts by an actor approximating the late Vreeland’s husky, posh tones, the film allows for some criticism (her employees often trembled at the sight of her; her sons felt neglected; her grasp of historical accuracy while working at the museum was sometimes lacking) among the praise, which is lavish and delivered by A-listers like Anjelica Huston, who remembers "She had a taste for the extraordinary and the extreme," and Manolo Blahnik, who squeals, "She had the vision!" (1:26) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Dredd 3D Cartoonishly, gleefully gruesome violence abounds in Dredd 3D, a pretty enjoyable comic-book adaptation thanks to star Karl Urban’s deadpan zingers. This is not a remake of the 1995 Sly Stallone flop Judge Dredd, by the way, though it might as well be a remake of 2011 Indonesian import The Raid: Redemption. The stories are identical. Like, lawsuit material-identical: supercop infiltrates (and then becomes trapped in, and must battle his way out of) a high-rise apartment tower run by a ruthless crime boss. Key difference is that Dredd has futuristic weapons, and The Raid had badass martial arts. Also Dredd‘s villain is played by Lena "Cersei Lannister" Headey, so there’s that. (1:38) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

End of Watch Buddy cop movies tend to go one of two ways: the action-comedy route (see: the Rush Hour series) or the action-drama route. End of Watch is firmly in the latter camp, despite some witty shit-talking between partners Taylor (a chrome-domed Jake Gyllenhaal) and Zavala (Michael Peña from 2004’s Crash) as they patrol the mean streets of Los Angeles. Writer-director David Ayer, who wrote 2001’s Training Day, aims for authenticity by piecing together much of (but, incongruously, not all of) the story through dashboard cameras, surveillance footage, and Officer Taylor’s own ever-present camera, which he claims to be carrying for a school project, though we never once see him attending classes or mentioning school otherwise. Gyllenhaal and Peña have an appealing rapport, but End of Watch‘s adrenaline-seeking plot stretches credulity at times, with the duo stumbling across the same group of gangsters multiple times in a city of three million people. Natalie Martinez and Anna Kendrick do what they can in underwritten cop-wife roles, but End of Watch is ultimately too familiar (but not lawsuit-material familiar) to leave any lasting impression. Case in point: in the year 2012, do we really need yet another love scene set to Mazzy Star’s "Fade Into You"? (1:49) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

Finding Nemo 3D (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

For a Good Time, Call&ldots; Suffering the modern-day dilemmas of elapsed rent control and boyfriend douchebaggery, sworn enemies Katie (Ari Graynor) and Lauren (Lauren Miller) find themselves shacking up in Katie’s highly covetable Manhattan apartment, brought together on a stale cloud of resentment by mutual bestie Jesse (Justin Long, gamely delivering a believable version of your standard-issue young hipster NYC gay boy). The domestic glacier begins to melt somewhere around the time that Lauren discovers Katie is working a phone-sex hotline from her bedroom; equipped with a good head for business, she offers to help her go freelance for a cut of the proceeds. Major profitability ensues, as does a friendship evoking the pair bonding at the center of your garden-variety romantic comedy, as Katie trains Lauren to be a phone-sex operator and the two share everything from pinkie swears and matching pink touch-tone phones to intimate secrets and the occasional hotline threesome. Directed by Jamie Travis and adapted from a screenplay by Miller and Katie Anne Naylon, the film is a welcome response to the bromance genre, and with any luck it may also introduce linguistic felicities like "phone-banging" and "let’s get this fuckshow started" into the larger culture. The raunchy telephonic interludes include cameos by Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen (Miller’s husband) as customers calling from such unfurtive locations as a public bathroom stall and the front seat of a taxicab. But the two roomies supply plenty of dirty as Katie, an abashed wearer of velour and denim pantsuits, helps the more restrained Lauren discover the joys of setting free her inner potty mouth. (1:25) SF Center. (Rapoport)

Hotel Transylvania (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

House At the End of the Street Tight T-shirts, a creepy cul-de-sac, couples in cars on lonely lanes, and the cute but weird loner kid — all the stuff of classic drive-in horror fare, revisited in this ambitious tribute of sorts. Don’t mistake House at the End of the Street for genre-reviving efforts by super fans like Eli Roth and Rob Zombie; Mark Tonderai’s mash up of Psycho (1960) and Last House on the Left (1972) lacks the rock ‘n’ roll brio and jet-black humor of, say, Cabin Fever (2002) or The Devil’s Rejects (2005). Instead House reads like an earnest effort to add a thin veneer of psychological realism and even girl power sincerity to a blood-spattered back catalog. Teenage musician Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) and her overwhelmed mom Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) have found themselves quite a deal of a new rental home — a bit too good, since their next door neighbors were both brutally killed by their brain-damaged offspring who was obviously afflicted with the same greasy hair issues as the ghoulish gal in The Ring. Ryan (Bay Area native Max Thieriot), the boy who continues to live in the house where his parents were murdered, is ostracized, attractive, and much like his home, a fixer — making him mighty attractive to Elissa. A hearty, artistic soul who likes to venture where others fear to tread, she’s drawn to him despite the fact that she feels like she’s being watched from the woods that separate their homes. Switching back and forth between various perspectives — like that of a sputtering, spasmodically edited psychopath-cam and the steady, thoughtful gaze of a rebellious yet empathetic girl — House manages to effectively throw a few curveballs your way, while toying with genre conventions and upsetting your expectations. Shoring up its efforts is a talented cast, headed up by Lawrence’s feisty heroine and Shue’s sad-eyed struggling mom. (1:43) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Lawless Lawless has got to be the most pretentiously humorless movie ever made about moonshiners — a criminal subset whose adventures onscreen have almost always been rambunctious and breezy, even when violent. Not here, bub. Adapting Matt Bondurant’s fact-inspired novel The Wettest County in the World about his family’s very colorful times a couple generations back, director John Hillcoat and scenarist (as well as, natch, composer) Nick Cave have made one of those films in which the characters are presented to you as if already immortalized on Mount Rushmore — monumental, legendary, a bit stony. They’ve got a crackling story about war between hillbilly booze suppliers and corrupt lawmen during Prohibition, and while the results aren’t dull (they’re too bloody for that, anyway), they’d be a whole lot better if the entire enterprise didn’t take itself so gosh darned seriously. The Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Va. are considered "legends" when we meet them in 1931, having defied all and sundry as well as survived a few bullets: mack-truck-built Forrest (Tom Hardy); eldest Howard (Jason Clarke), who tipples and smiles a lot; and "runt of the litter" Jack (Shia LeBeouf), who has a chip on his shoulder. The local law looks the other way so long as their palms are greased, but the Feds send sneering Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), it’s an eye for an eye for an eye, etc. The revenge-laden action in Lawless is engaging, but the filmmakers are trying so hard to make it all resonant and folkloric and meta-cinematic, any fun you have is in spite of their efforts. (1:55) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Harvey)

Liberal Arts Against his better judgment, 35-year-old Jesse (How I Met Your Mother‘s Josh Radnor, who also wrote and directed) falls for 19-year-old Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), a student at the leafy Ohio university he graduated from years before (never named, but filmed at Kenyon College, Radnor’s own alma matter). The two meet when Jesse, now a jaded Brooklynite, visits to celebrate the retirement of Professor Hoberg (Richard Jenkins). Letter-writing, classical-music appreciation, a supremely awkward follow-up visit, and much white-boy angst follows. Liberal Arts is at its best when delineating a specific type of collegiate experience — as safe, privileged bubble where, as Jesse explains, you can announce "I’m a poet!" without anyone punching you in the face. It can also be an oppressive space, as illustrated by a cranky prof who feels trapped by academia (a razor-sharp Lucinda Janney), and a morose classmate of Zibby’s who identifies a little too closely with David Foster Wallace. And it’s stuff like the Wallace references (again, never named — just identified via heavily dropped hints, for all the cool viewers to pick up on) that’re ultimately Liberal Arts‘ undoing. Radnor explores some interesting themes, but the film is full of indie-comedy tropes — the friendly stoner (Zac Efron) who randomly appears to dispense life lessons; an anti-Twilight rant that’s a bit too pleased with itself; the unusually attractive character who appears in the first act and is obviously destined for inclusion in the inevitable happy ending. (1:37) Shattuck. (Eddy)

Looper It’s 2044 and, thanks to a lengthy bout of exposition by our protagonist, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), here’s what we know: Time travel, an invention 30 years away, will be used by criminals to transport their soon-to-be homicide victims backward, where a class of gunmen called loopers, Joe among them, are employed to "do the necessaries." More deftly revealed in Brick writer-director Rian Johnson’s new film is the joylessness of the world in which Joe amorally makes his way, where gangsters from the future control the present (under the supervision of Jeff Daniels), their hit men live large but badly (Joe is addicted to some eyeball-administered narcotic), and the remainder of the urban populace suffers below-subsistence-level poverty. The latest downside for guys like Joe is that a new crime boss has begun sending back a steady stream of aging loopers for termination, or "closing the loop"; soon enough, Joe is staring down a gun barrel at himself plus 30 years. Being played by Bruce Willis, old Joe is not one to peaceably abide by a death warrant, and young Joe must set off in search of himself so that—with the help of a woman named Sara (Emily Blunt) and her creepy-cute son Cid (Pierce Gagnon)—he can blow his own (future) head off. Having seen the evocatively horrific fate of another escaped looper, we can’t totally blame him. Parsing the daft mechanics of time travel as envisioned here is rough going, but the film’s brisk pacing and talented cast distract, and as one Joe tersely explains to another, if they start talking about it, "we’re gonna be here all day making diagrams with straws" —in other words, some loops just weren’t meant to be closed. (1:58) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Master Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-hyped likely Best Picture contender lives up: it’s easily the best film of 2012 so far. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Lancaster Dodd, the L. Ron Hubbard-ish head of a Scientology-esque movement. "The Cause" attracts Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in a welcome return from the faux-deep end), less for its pseudo-religious psychobabble and bizarre personal-growth exercises, and more because it supplies the aimless, alcoholic veteran — a drifter in every sense of the word — with a sense of community he yearns for, yet resists submitting to. As with There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson focuses on the tension between the two main characters: an older, established figure and his upstart challenger. But there’s less cut-and-dried antagonism here; while their relationship is complex, and it does lead to dark, troubled places, there are also moments of levity and weird hilarity — which might have something to do with Freddie’s paint-thinner moonshine. (2:17) Albany, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) Shattuck. (Michelle Devereaux)

ParaNorman (1:32) Metreon.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Move over, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — there’s a new shrinking-violet social outcast in town. These days, life might not suck quite so hard for 90-pound weaklings in every age category, what with so many films and TV shows exposing, and sometimes even celebrating, the many miseries of childhood and adolescence for all to see. In this case, Perks author Stephen Chbosky takes on the directorial duties — both a good and bad thing, much like the teen years. Smart, shy Charlie is starting high school with a host of issues: he’s painfully awkward and very alone in the brutal throng, his only friend just committed suicide, and his only simpatico family member was killed in a car accident. Charlie’s English teacher Mr. Andersen (Paul Rudd) appears to be his only connection, until the freshman strikes up a conversation with feline, charismatic, shop-class jester Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his magnetic, music- and fun-loving stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Who needs the popular kids? The witty duo head up their gang of coolly uncool outcasts their own, the Wallflowers (not to be confused with the deeply uncool Jakob Dylan combo), and with them, Charlie appears to have found his tribe. Only a few small secrets put a damper on matters: Patrick happens to be gay and involved with football player Brad (Johnny Simmons), who’s saddled with a violently conservative father, and Charlie is in love with the already-hooked-up Sam and is frightened that his fragile equilibrium will be destroyed when his new besties graduate and slip out of his life. Displaying empathy and a devotion to emotional truth, Chbosky takes good care of his characters, preserving the complexity and ungainly quirks of their not-so-cartoonish suburbia, though his limitations as a director come to the fore in the murkiness and choppily handled climax that reveals how damaged Charlie truly is. (1:43) Albany, California, Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Pitch Perfect As an all-female college a cappella group known as the Barden Bellas launches into Ace of Base’s "The Sign" during the prologue of Pitch Perfect, you can hear the Glee-meets-Bring It On elevator pitch. Which is fine, since Bring It On-meets-anything is clearly worth a shot. In this attempt, Anna Kendrick stars as withdrawn and disaffected college freshman Beca, who dreams of producing music in L.A. but is begrudgingly getting a free ride at Barden University via her comp lit professor father. Clearly his goal is not making sure she receives a liberal arts education, as Barden’s academic jungle extends to the edges of the campus’s competitive a cappella scene, and the closest thing to an intellectual challenge occurs during a "riff-off" between a cappella gangs at the bottom of a mysteriously drained swimming pool. When Beca reluctantly joins the Bellas, she finds herself caring enough about the group’s fate to push for an Ace of Base moratorium and radical steps like performing mashups. Much as 2000’s Bring It On coined terms like "cheerocracy" and "having cheer-sex," Pitch Perfect gives us the infinitely applicable prefix "a ca-" and descriptives like "getting Treble-boned," a reference to forbidden sexual relations with the Bellas’ cocky rivals, the Treblemakers. The gags get funnier, dirtier, and weirder, arguably reaching their climax in projectile-vomit snow angels, with Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins as grin-panning competition commentators offering a string of loopily inappropriate observations. (1:52) Metreon. (Rapoport)

The Possession (1:31) Metreon.

Resident Evil: Retribution (1:35) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Samsara Samsara is the latest sumptuous, wordless offering from director Ron Fricke, who helped develop this style of dialogue- and context-free travelogue with Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and Baraka (1992). Spanning five years and shooting on 70mm film to capture glimmers of life in 25 countries on five continents, Samsara, which spins off the Sanskrit word for the "ever-turning wheel of life," is nothing if not good-looking, aspiring to be a kind of visual symphony boosted by music by the Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard and composers Michael Stearns and Marcello De Francisci. Images of natural beauty, baptisms, and an African woman and her babe give way to the madness of modern civilization — from jam-packed subways to the horrors of mechanized factory farming to a bizarre montage of go-go dancers, sex dolls, trash, toxic discarded technology, guns, and at least one gun-shaped coffin. After such dread, the opening and closing scenes of Buddhist spirituality seem almost like afterthoughts. The unmistakable overriding message is: humanity, you dazzle in all your glorious and inglorious dimensions — even at your most inhumane. Sullying this hand wringing, selective meditation is Fricke’s reliance on easy stereotypes: the predictable connections the filmmaker makes between Africa and an innocent, earthy naturalism, and Asia and a vaguely threatening, mechanistic efficiency, come off as facile and naive, while his sonic overlay of robot sounds over, for instance, an Asian woman blinking her eyes comes off as simply offensive. At such points, Fricke’s global leap-frogging begins to eclipse the beauty of his images and foregrounds his own biases. (1:39) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Searching for Sugar Man The tale of the lost, and increasingly found, artist known as Rodriguez seems to have it all: the mystery and drama of myth, beginning with the singer-songwriter’s stunning 1970 debut, Cold Fact, a neglected folk rock-psychedelic masterwork. (The record never sold in the states, but somehow became a beloved, canonical LP in South Africa.) The story goes on to parse the cold, hard facts of vanished hopes and unpaid royalties, all too familiar in pop tragedies. In Searching for Sugar Man, Swedish documentarian Malik Bendjelloul lays out the ballad of Rodriguez as a rock’n’roll detective story, with two South African music lovers in hot pursuit of the elusive musician — long-rumored to have died onstage by either self-immolation or gunshot, and whose music spoke to a generation of white activists struggling to overturn apartheid. By the time Rodriguez himself enters the narrative, the film has taken on a fairy-tale trajectory; the end result speaks volumes about the power and longevity of great songwriting. (1:25) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Sleepwalk with Me Every year lots of movies get made by actors and comedians who want to showcase themselves, usually writing and often directing in addition to starring. Most of these are pretty bad, and after a couple of festival appearances disappear, unremembered by anyone save the credit card companies that vastly benefited from its creation. Mike Birbiglia’s first feature is an exception — maybe not an entirely surprising one (since it’s based on his highly praised Off-Broadway solo show and best-seller), but still odds-bucking. Particularly as it’s an autobiographical feeling story about an aspiring stand-up comic (Mike as Matt) who unfortunately doesn’t seem to have much natural talent in that direction, but nonetheless obsessively perseveres. This pursuit of seemingly fore destined failure might be causing his sleep disorder, or it might be a means of avoiding taking the martial next step with long-term girlfriend (Lauren Ambrose, making something special out of a conventional reactive role) everyone else agrees is the best thing in his life. Yep, it’s another commitment-phobic man-boy/funny guy who regularly talks to the camera, trying to find himself while quirky friends and family stand around like trampoline spotters watching a determined clod. If all of these sounds derivative and indulgent, well, it ought to. But Sleepwalk turns a host of familiar, hardly foolproof ideas into astute, deftly performed, consistently amusing comedy with just enough seriousness for ballast. Additional points for "I zinged him" being the unlikely most gut-busting line here. (1:30) Opera Plaza, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Solomon Kane Conceived by Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard, this 16th-century hero is cut from the same sword-and-sorcery cloth, being a brawny brute of slippery but generally sorta-kinda upright morals. Solomon (James Purefoy) is slaughtering his way to a North African treasure trove when demons swallow up his likewise greedy, conscience-free cohorts and damn his soul for a lifetime of bad deeds. Suddenly committed to the greater good, he returns homeward to cold gray England, where Jason Flemyng’s evil sorcerer soon imperils both our protagonist and the Puritan family (complete with love interest) he’s befriended. This movie has been around a while — since 2009, to be exact, yet barely beating director Michael J. Bassett’s new Silent Hill: Revelation 3D to U.S. theaters — and is a good illustration of what can happen when you make a fairly expensive ($45 million) fantasy-action adventure without major stars nor any marketable novelty. Which is to say: not much. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the good-looking, watchable but generic-feeling Solomon Kane, save that nothing about it feels remotely original or inspired. It’s the perfectly okay, like-a-thousand-others mall flick you’ll forget you saw by Thanksgiving, despite being peopled with such normally interesting actors as Max Von Sydow, Alice Krige, and the late Pete Postlethwaite. (1:54) Metreon. (Harvey)

Somewhere Between Five years ago, when filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton adopted a baby girl from China, she was inspired to make Somewhere Between, a doc about the experiences of other Chinese adoptees. The film profiles four teenage girls, including Berkeley resident Fang "Jenni" Lee, whose American lives couldn’t be more different (one girl has two moms and attends a fancy prep school; another, raised by devout Christians, dreams of playing her violin at the Grand Ole Opry) but who share similar feelings about their respective adoptions. The film follows the girls on trips to London (as part of an organized meeting of fellow adoptees), Spain (to chat with people interested in adopting Chinese babies, and where the question "What does it feel like to be abandoned?" is handled with astonishing composure), and China (including one teen’s determined quest to track down her birth family). Highly emotional at times, Somewhere Between benefits from its remarkably mature and articulate subjects, all of whom have much to say about identity and personal history. (1:28) Shattuck. (Eddy)

"Stars In Shorts" Outside of the festival circuit, it’s an uncommon feat for shorts to make it to the big screen, so it can’t hurt to make name recognition a prerequisite for selection. In writer-director Rupert Friend’s Steve, Keira Knightley plays an embattled Londoner under siege by her lonely, pathologically odd neighbor (Colin Firth). Written by Neil LaBute, Jacob Chase’s After School Special sets up a semi-flirtation between two strangers (Sarah Paulson and Wes Bentley) at a playground, only to deliver the kind of gut-level punch you might expect from the writer-director of 1998’s Your Friends and Neighbors. LaBute’s own Sexting is an entertaining exercise in stream-of-consciousness monologuing by Julia Stiles. As with most shorts programs, "Stars" is a mixed bag. Robert Festinger’s The Procession, in which Lily Tomlin and Modern Family‘s Jesse Tyler Ferguson play reluctant participants in a funeral procession, sounds promising, but the conversation palls during the 10-plus minutes we’re stuck in the car with them. Benjamin Grayson’s sci-fi thriller Prodigal, starring Kenneth Branagh, reaches its predictable crisis points several minutes after the viewer has arrived. More successful are Jay Kamen’s musical comedy Not Your Time, starring Seinfeld‘s Jason Alexander as an old Hollywood hand whose writing career has stalled out, and Chris Foggin’s Friend Request Pending, which treats viewers to the sight of Dame Judi Dench gamely wading into the social network in search of a date. (1:53) Opera Plaza. (Rapoport)

Trouble with the Curve Baseball scout Gus (Clint Eastwood) relies on his senses to sign players to the Atlanta Braves, and his roster of greats is highly regarded by everyone — save a sniveling climber named Sanderson (Matthew Lillard), who insists his score-keeping software can replace any scout. Gus’ skill in his field are preternatural, but with his senses dwindling, his longtime-friend Pete (a brilliant John Goodman) begs Gus’ daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) to go with him — to see how bad the situation is and maybe drive him around. Ultimately, the film’s about the rift between career woman Mickey, and distant dad Gus, with some small intrusions from Justin Timberlake as Mickey’s romantic interest. Trouble with the Curve is a phrase used to describe batters who can’t hit a breaking ball and it’s a nuance — if an incontrovertible one — unobservable to the untrained eye. While Mickey and Gus stumble messily toward a better relationship (with a reasonable amount of compromise), Curve begins to look a bit like The Blind Side (2009), trading the church and charity for therapy and baggage. But what it offers is sweet and worthwhile, if you’re tolerant of the sanitized psychology and personality-free aesthetics. But it’s a movie about love and compromise — and if you love baseball you won’t have trouble forgiving some triteness, especially when Timberlake, the erstwhile Boo-Boo, gets to make a Yogi Berra joke. (1:51) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Sara Vizcarrondo)

Vulgaria (1:32) Metreon.

Won’t Back Down If talk of introducing charter schools into the public education mix tends to give you collective-bargaining-related hives, Daniel Barnz’s Won’t Back Down is unlikely to appeal, unless perhaps as the object of a boycott or a picket line. Two embattled mothers, Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Nona Alberts (Viola Davis), both with children at a failing Pittsburgh elementary school and the latter a teacher there, join forces to change the institutional culture by leading a parent-teacher takeover, with the goal of creating a charter school. As the bureaucratic process for doing so is described by a school district employee, it should take them three to five years to discover that they’ve been hurling themselves at a brick wall; Jamie, an efficient combination of fireball and pit bull, is determined to pulverize the wall in about two months. Watching her and Nona try to secure more than a third-rate, treading-water education for their kids, it’s hard not to root for the possibility of a transformation, and even an upper-level teachers’ union staffer played by Holly Hunter finds herself climbing the fence. The details of what lies on the other side (and inside Jamie and Nona’s 400-page proposal) stay fairly fuzzy, though. And while Barnz lets his warring factions—desperate mothers and educators, a union boss (Ned Eisenberg) watching the deterioration of the labor movement, a pro-union teacher (Oscar Isaac) ambivalently engaged in the chartering project—impassionedly debate their way through the film, a little more wonkiness might have clarified the arguments of those done waiting for Superman. (2:00) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Words We meet novelist Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) as he’s making his way from a posh building to a cab in the rain; it’s important the shot obscures his generally shiny exterior, because we’re meant to believe this guy’s a sincere and struggling novelist. Jeremy Irons, aged with flappy eye makeup, watches him vengefully. Seems Rory fell upon the unpublished novel Irons’ character wrote in sadness and loss — and feeling himself incapable of penning such prose, transcribed the whole thing. When his lady friend (Zoe Saldana) encourages him to sell it, he becomes the next great American writer. He’s living the dream on another man’s sweat. But that’s not the tragedy, exactly, because The Words isn’t so concerned with the work of being a writer — it’s concerned with the look and insecurity of it. Bradley and Irons aren’t "real," they’re characters in a story read by Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) while the opportunistic, suggestive Daniella (Olivia Wilde) comes onto him. She can tell you everything about Clay, yet she hasn’t read the book that’s made him the toast of the town — The Words, which is all about a young plagiarist and the elderly writer he steals from. "I don’t know how things happen!", the slimy, cowering writers each exclaim. So, how do you sell a book? Publish a book? Make a living from a book? How much wine does it take to bed Olivia Wilde? Sure, they don’t know how things happen; they only know what it looks like to finish reading Hemingway at a café or watch the sun rise over a typewriter. Rarely has a movie done such a trite job of depicting the process of what it’s like to be a writer — though if you found nothing suspect about, say, Owen Wilson casually re-editing his 400-page book in one afternoon in last year’s Midnight in Paris, perhaps you won’t be so offended by The Words, either. (1:36) SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Much ado about nudity

Zelda Bronstein
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Much ado about nudity

There was no public outcry when Pedro Villamore, a 44-year-old homeless gay man, was found dead in a doorway in the 500 block of Castro Street last December, a couple of weeks before Christmas and across the street from the holiday tree that the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro puts up every year to welcome big spenders into the neighborhood.

MUMC, which in years past opposed three homeless queer youth shelters and a free meals program at a local gay church, did not decry the fact that a member of our community died on the street — and where were the city’s homeless outreach teams? Nor did any of the residents of the neighborhood express any concern that others who have a problem with methamphetamine, the area’s drug of choice, might meet a similar fate — and shouldn’t the community be doing something about it?

Of course, if he had been one of the nudists who hang out naked in the Castro these days Villamore would’ve found himself on the front-page of Bay Area Reporter, the city’s gay weekly, while he was still alive. Not to mention the target of diatribes from the SF Chronicle’s chronically right-wing columnist C.W. Nevius.  

Sadly enough, a neighborhood that once stood for sexual and personal freedom has succumbed to anti-nudism hysteria, even to the point of echoing Anita Bryant’s old rallying cry, “Save the children!”

Hysteria it is, of epic proportions. Some Castro residents and MUMC merchants actually persuaded their elected official, Supervisor Scott Wiener, to introduce anti-nudism legislation because a few naked men prance around the hood au natural, even sometimes sporting (horrors!) cock rings on their dicks. In a neighborhood where there’s no dearth of cock rings or any other sex toy, not to mention every variety of gay porn imaginable, and where guys walk around bars in underwear, residents don’t want public nudity. Huh? The neighborhood’s historic live-and-let-live attitude has obviously gone the way of Halloween and being able to walk into Pink Saturday without being scanned by a metal detector.

Has gay marriage and the freedom to “be all that you can be” in the military afflicted residents of the Castro with assimilation fever? What’s next — fundraising parties for Mitt Romney or a Castro chapter of the Moral Majority?

In a community that, according to a recent Williams Institute study, is rampant with poverty and suffers a serious lack of full-time employment for transgender people (75%, according to a report from this paper and the Transgender Law Center), not to mention a major drug and alcohol problem that makes gay men easy targets for muggings as they leave the bars at night, you’d think that public nudity would the last thing on anyone’s mind.  

People with AIDS continue to be pushed out of apartments in the Castro so that landlords and realtors can make tons of dough and LGBT seniors are forced to live with little economic or social support, regular cuts to services and benefits, and discrimination and isolation in nursing care facilities.

Yet from the volume of letters in the BAR and the number of calls Wiener says he’s received, you’d think that public nudity is the biggest problem in the world.

Pedro Villamore might disagree with that.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca has been a queer activist for the past 42 years, and a Castro resident for 20. He is editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: the early years of gay liberation (City Lights).

Tetris of awesome

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Tetris of awesome

MUSIC “We’ve done the ISAM show in venues as big as the Sydney Opera House and as small as a local rock venue, but we’re basically holding our breaths every time. Someone could plug in their iPhone charger and blow the whole thing. In Coachella, the act on the field opposite had the idea of turning on floodlights for half their set, which washed us out for a good part with the ambient light.”

Brazilian electronic music legend Amon Tobin is on the phone, recounting some of the mundane worries that come with operating one of the most brilliant stage concepts in years, ISAM Live. The show is a marvel of cutting-edge technology that bathes a towering tetrominal assemblage of stacked cubes in digital projections, while — like the pilot of a Tetris spaceship, clad in his trademark baseball cap, hoodie, and jeans, ensconced in one of the glowing cubes — Tobin performs tracks from ISAM, his seventh studio album, and several other sonic treats. The tour is now in its second, completely revamped conceptual leg, ISAM Live 2.0, coming to Berkeley’s Greek Theatre on Fri/5. Tobin promises that ISAM 2.0 is “totally different … not connected to the album as much at all” from the first version, which played at the Warfield last year. Perhaps he’ll be wearing a spacesuit this time, too:

The visual illusions conjured up by Tobin and collaborators and mapped on the sculpture, made real with the help of a crack team of production designers headed up by Alex Lazarus of local art-tech collective Blasthaus, recall everything from early 20th century Constructivist art and colorform animation to tomorrow’s Xbox 360 game. Some of the effects are absolutely lovely, as when the structure “shatters” to crystalline pieces or a flood of winged creatures take flight across the stage. Some are vertigo-inducing, as when the whole thing acts as a flight simulator, or a slightly different version of the structure is projected onto the structure itself, and then begins revolving: meta! It’s all a sort of hyperreal 3-D, as shapeshifting as Tobin’s ever-elegant and booming compositions. (The music on ISAM itself is typical technopoetic Tobin — what makes the album standout is really how much the rest of the music world has caught up to his signature style, which contains elements of moody ambient, classic drum and bass, squonky electro, and crunchy dubstep without ever falling wholly into any of those genres.)

“What drove me to this idea was trying to find my way around the universal problem of presenting electronic music,” Tobin told me. “How do I make an engaging experience out of an album when I’m really just pushing buttons and twisting dials — it’s what we all do as electronic musicians. I don’t make dance music — I don’t think I even can — so the challenge becomes the concert presentation. And then the unusual situation becomes how to integrate myself into the proceedings. I didn’t just want to go out there and hang about.”

The waving hands and bobbing heads at the Warfield last year may prove that “I don’t make dance music” remark incorrect, but the show certainly succeeds at bridging the rapt audience vs. some arty dude’s knob-twisting divide. Tobin’s projects have lately been as much about technological expression as producing music — although one could argue, especially in his case, that these are one and the same at this point in history. Previous album Foley Room was a mosaic of found sounds recorded on the street (“from neighbours singing in the bath to ants eating grass”), that was accompanied by a gorgeous interactive website called “Field Recording” that featured morphological subaquatic creatures and a night-goggle feel.

This time around, Tobin’s technological adventurousness is helping to pique new interests. The crowd at the Warfield was not composed of the typical intelligent dance music, underground glitch, and scruffy turntablism fans I know from previous Amon Tobin shows. Rather, the “oohs,” “aahs,” and “this is fucking amazings” were coming from what looked to be a distinctly tech crowd. With Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar, and countless other digital animation studios located in the Bay Area, is ISAM Live introducing a new wave on enthusiasts to somewhat challenging electronic music through geek-candy visual technology?

“Well, electronic music is inherently tech-y to begin with,” Tobin says, “but even when I was just starting out, I was never interested in scenes. I’m too wrapped up in what I’m trying to do. I’m just hoping people will be into it, no matter who they are or how they got there.”

Tobin’s known for being laidback almost to the point of reclusivity, and his recent relocation to the Bay Area — “I live a little north of San Francisco, in the middle of the woods: I can walk around or go for a drive and do what I like” — has helped contribute to to both his secluded genius image and access to tech opportunity. Once he had the inspiration for ISAM Live, it wasn’t like he put an ad out on Craisglist to find designers, he told me. But a serendipitous encounter with Lazarus and the ease of putting together an adventurous, California-based design team got things going pretty easily. It’s also helped him firm up connections with local musicians he admires like SF’s Kronos Quartet, who were featured on Foley Room and will open for his concert at the Greek, and incredible live-sample collagist Eskmo, who opened for him early in the ISAM tour.

But the mind of Amon Tobin is ever-restless, and ISAM has been around for more than as year — despite the 2.0 relaunch, our conversation perks up when we begin to talk about his new release as Two Fingers called Stunt Rhythms, a beats and bass album that also belies his claim not to make dance music.

“Stunt Rhythms is a tribute to the amazing electro and breakdance music that actually saved me, growing up in a shitty town called Hastings in England. Things like Cybotron’s ‘Clear’ or Man Parrish, JVC Force’s ‘Strong Island.’ My relationship to that sound is so deep. It’s music that keeps me pushing for something further off, pushing me through drum and bass, and making my own persona.

“It’s working my way toward that thing just over the horizon that keeps me going.”

AMON TOBIN: ISAM LIVE 2.0

with Kronos Quartet and Holy Other

Fri/5, 8pm, $39.50

Greek Theatre

2001 Gayley Way, Berk.

www.ticketmaster.com

Reborn on the Bayou

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Reborn on the Bayou

Tofu and whiskey is music editor Emily Savage’s new weekly music column.

emilysavage@sfbg.com

Tofu and Whiskey There are loud grinding noises and those cinematic electric sparks shooting from a machine below a church pew-like balcony. It’s musky and filled with dark bordello wood. The arched main room, the one you see when you walk in the front door of 777 Valencia Street and turn a quick corner, is outlined in bright, bloody red, and there’s a stage.

Despite this transitional state a few weeks back, this stage at brand new Mission venue, Preservation Hall West at the Chapel — named after the jazzy New Orleans venue that inspired it — will hold star-powered spillover from Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com) this week, beginning Thu/4; the fest itself is Fri/5 through Sun/7. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans will perform each night of the long weekend with double-dipping special guests including Elvis Costello, Robert Earl Keen, Justin Townes Earl, and Steve Earle. Maybe this means we’ll see a bespectacled Costello riding a bicycle from Golden Gate Park to the Mission, with a guitar slung on his back? One can dream.

Back to reality: “There’s no shame in construction,” said Tracey Buck of Slim’s, who, along with Britt Govea of (((folkYEAH!))) and certainly others in the future, will be doing consulting and programming at the new all-ages venue. The building, now owned by Jack Knowles, was built in 1914, formerly housed the New College, and before that was a mortuary — which gives it a sort of macabre back story. The idea for the Chapel came from Knowles’ friend Ben Jaffe, creative director for the beloved New Orleans venue, Preservation Hall, and leader of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

In early 2013, the West Coast sister venue will have a full restaurant attached serving fare with elements of New Orleans cuisine. But for now, there will just be concerts, including the aforementioned HSB-linked shows and upcoming visits from the likes of Woods, White Fence, and Here We Go Magic — but not to worry, the Chapel does have its liquor license now, and the bar should be ready to serve.

I pushed for fears about the venuenot being ready in time for its rapidly approaching opening date, anxiety about the relatively short distance between that morning two weeks back and the first show this week, but got back little more than nervous laughter. “It’s crunch time, but everyone knows what needs to be done,” said Buck, diplomatically.

It’s no surprise. First of all, if you live in the neighborhood, or have been near it recently, you’ve undoubtedly poked your head in and have seen what I saw — constant work. Secondly, as rabid HGTVers know, programs like Love It Or List It and their ilk show designers and construction workers whipping out brand new pads in a matter of weeks. Buck even referenced the show Restaurant: Impossible, where they quickly turn around a doomed eatery. So, it can be done.

There was also some less literal rebuilding at the actual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in 2012. After the death late last year of the fest’s founder, head cheerleader, and billionaire backer, Warren Hellman, the crew had some personal reconstruction to work on.

Buck has been working the festival since it began 12 years back, and felt the loss personally. “It’s been tough, and I realize it more and more every day. But his spirit is there.”

Sheri Sternberg, technical director for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, also ruminated on Hellman’s passing, “There was something really great about having our first meeting with Warren each year…how excited he got about all the bands. If it was up to him, we would keep adding stages and days.”

The lineup this year is interesting, it’s a bit smaller — no more Thursday shows — but heavy on seriously disparate musicians such as Dwight Yoakam and Jenny Lewis and actor-bluegrass enthusiast John Reilly, and Cowboy Junkies, along with Giant Giant Sand (Howe Gelb’s hour-long opera) and a handful of younger acts such as Beachwood Sparks, the Civil Wars, and the Head and the Heart, along with the fest pillars like Emmylou Harris, Guy Clark, and Steve Earle. Sternberg says Gary West is gathering a “greatest hits” of the festival to pay tribute to Hellman, Earl Scruggs, and Doc Watson, all of whom died last year, in a set called “The Founding Fathers.” It’s kind of the theme of this year as well. That tribute will likely be kicked off with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band doing a second line.

I asked Buck if it was hard to nab artists from Hardly Strictly to play an unknown, nearly unfinished venue like the Chapel and she claims it was the opposite: “They were really eager. I think it’s just exciting to finally have a venue opening — rather than closing.”

 

LAURA MARLING

While bone-rattling noise has its very important place in my heart, there’s something to be said for warm cooing and surreal lyrics. For that, you can crawl up the grand staircase of the Swedish American and opera clap for English folk plucker Laura Marling. Her honest lilt and fluttering riffs have gained her comparisons to Joni Mitchell, but she has a distinctly British affect to these American ears. She played Grace Cathedral earlier this year and returns this week on her “Working Holiday Tour” to play from her most recent album A Creature I Don’t Know (Ribbon Music, 2011) at this far more intimate venue.

Wed/3, 8pm, $25. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market, SF; www.cafedunord.com.

 

NOM DE GUERRE

Best band name of the week goes to members of San Francisco’s Butt Problems: Fuck You Cop, You Fucking Cop opens for Street Justice at the Knockout.

Thu/4, 10pm, $7. 3223 Mission, SF. www.theknockoutsf.com.

 

TOYS THAT KILL

Here’s to Recess Records — the independent punk label formed in 1989 and thriving in the current web-and-micro record shop musical landscape — and its friendly kingpin, Todd Congelliere. The snot-nosed singer-guitarist-label owner, who also fronted F.Y.P. and Underground Railroad to Candyland, returned this year to his early Aughts punk outfit, Toys That Kill. Todd and the Toys That Kill gang released its first new album in six years — the energetic and well-received Fambly 42 (Recess Records, 2012) — earlier this summer and have sparingly journeyed up the coast from their mythic Sunken City homebase of San Pedro, Calif. to play it live. Fambly 42 might have taken so long to get here because Todd (jokingly?) told me that good bands only put out three albums then quit to form new ones. With Pins of Light, Elephant Rifle.

Fri/5, 9:30pm, $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF; www.hemlocktavern.com.

Endorsements 2012: San Francisco propositions

Andrew Lam
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Endorsements 2012: San Francisco propositions

PROPOSITION A

CITY COLLEGE PARCEL TAX

YES

The scathing accreditation report by the Western Association of Schools talks about governance problems at the San Francisco Community College District — a legitimate matter of concern. But most of what threatens the future of City College is a lack of money.

Check out the accreditation letter; it’s on the City College website. Much of what it says is that the school is trying to do too much with limited resources. There aren’t enough administrators; that’s because, facing 20 percent cuts to its operating budget, the college board decided to save front-line teaching jobs. Student support services are lacking; that’s because the district can barely afford to keep enough classes going to meet the needs of some 90,000 students. On the bigger picture, WASC and the state want City College to close campuses and concentrate on a core mission of offering two-year degrees and preparing students to transfer to four-year institutions. That’s because the state has refused to fund education at an adequate level, and there’s not enough money to both function as a traditional junior college and serve as the training center for San Francisco’s tech, hospitality and health-care industry, provide English as a second language classes to immigrants and offer new job skills and rehabilitation to the workforce of the future.

It’s fair to say that WASC would have found some problems at City College no matter what the financial situation (and we’ve found more — the nepotism and corruption under past boards has been atrocious). But the only way out of this mess is either to radically scale back the school’s mission — or to increase its resources. We support the latter alternative.

Prop. A is a modest parcel tax — $79 dollars a year on each property lot in the city. Parcel taxes are inherently unfair — a small house in Hunters Point pays as much as a mansion in Pacific Heights or a $500 million downtown office building. But that’s the result of Prop. 13, which leaves the city very few ways to raise taxes on real property. In the hierarchy of progressive tax options, parcel taxes are better than sales taxes. And the vast majority of San Francisco homeowners and commercial property owners get a huge benefit from Prop. 13; a $6 a month additional levy is hardly a killer.

The $16 million this tax would raise annually for the district isn’t enough to make up for the $25 million a year in state budget cuts. But at least the district would be able to make reasonable decisions about preserving most of its mission. This is one of the most important measures on the ballot; vote yes.

PROPOSITION B

PARKS BOND

YES

There are two questions facing the voters: Does the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department need money to fix up badly decrepit, sometimes unsafe facilities, and build out new park areas, particularly in underserved neighborhoods? Has the current administration of the department so badly mismanaged Rec-Park, so radically undermined the basic concept of public access to public space, so utterly alienated neighborhoods and communities all over the city, that it shouldn’t be trusted with another penny?

And if your answer to both is yes, how the hell do you vote on Prop. B?

It’s a tough one for us. The Guardian has never, in 46 years, opposed a general obligation bond for anything except jail or prisons. Investing in public infrastructure is a good thing; if anything, the cautious folks at City Hall, who refuse to put new bonds on the ballot until old ones are paid off, are too cautious about it. Spending public money (paid by increased property taxes in a city where at least 90 percent of real estate is way under taxed thanks to Prop. 13) creates jobs. It’s an economic stimulus. It adds to the value of the city’s resources. In this case, it fixes up parks. All of that is good; it’s hard to find a credible case against it.

Except that for the past few years, under the administrations of Mayors Gavin Newsom and Ed Lee and the trusteeship of Rec-Park Directors Jared Blumenfeld and Phil Ginsburg, the city has gone 100 percent the wrong way. Parks are supposed to be public resources, open to all; instead, the department has begun charging fees for what used to be free, has been turning public facilities over to private interests (at times kicking the public out), and has generally looked at the commons as a source of revenue. It’s a horrible precedent. It makes us sick.

Ginsburg told us that he’s had no choice — deep budget cuts have forced him to look for money wherever he can find it, even if that means privatizing the parks. But Ginsburg also admitted to us that, even as chief of staff under Newsom, he never once came forward to push for higher taxes on the wealthy, never once suggested that progressive revenue sources might be an option. Nor did any of the hacks on the Rec-Park Commission. Instead, they’ve been busy spending tens of thousands of dollars on an insane legal battle to evict the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council’s recycling center — entirely because rich people in the Haight don’t want poor people coming through their elite neighborhood to cash in bottles and cans for a little money.

So now we’re supposed to cough up another $195 million to enable more of this?

Well, yes. We’re not happy to be endorsing Prop. B, but the bottom line is simple: The bond money will go for things that need to be done. There are, quite literally, parks in the city where kids are playing in unsafe and toxic conditions. There are rec centers that are pretty close to falling apart. Those improvements will last 50 years, well beyond the tenure of this mayor of Rec-Park director. For the long-term future of the park system, Prop. B makes sense.

If the measure fails, it may send Lee and Ginsburg a message. The fact that so many neighborhood leaders are opposing it has already been a signal — one that so far Ginsburg has ignored. We’re going Yes on B, with all due reservations. But this commission has to go, and the sooner the supervisors can craft a charter amendment to give the board a majority of the appointments to the panel the better.+

PROPOSITION C

AFFORDABLE HOUSING TRUST FUND

YES

This measure is about who gets to live in San Francisco and what kind of city this will be in 20 years. If we leave it up to market forces and the desires of developers, about 85 percent of the housing built in San Francisco will be affordable only by the rich, meaning the working class will be forced to live outside the city, clogging regional roadways and transit systems and draining San Francisco of its cultural diversity and vibrancy. And that process has been accelerated in recent years by the latest tech bubble, which city leaders have decided to subsidize with tax breaks, causing rents and home prices to skyrocket.

Mayor Ed Lee deserves credit for proposing this Housing Trust Fund to help offset some of that impact, even if it falls way short of the need identified in the city’s Housing Element, which calls for 60 percent of new housing construction to be affordable to prevent gentrification. We’re also not thrilled that Prop. C actually reduces the percentage of housing that developers must offer below market rates and prevents that 12 percent level from later being increased, that it devotes too much money to home ownership assistance at the expense of the renters who comprise the vast majority of city residents, and that it depends on the passage of Prop.E and would take $15 million from the increased business taxes from that measure, rather than restoring years of cuts to General Fund programs.

But Prop. C was a hard-won compromise, with the affordable housing folks at the table, and they got most of what they wanted. (Even the 12 percent has a long list of exceptions and thus won’t apply to a lot of new market-rate housing.) And it has more chance of actually passing than previous efforts that were opposed by the business community and Mayor’s Office. This measure would commit the city to spending $1.5 billion on affordable housing projects over the next 30 years, with an initial $20 million annual contribution steadily growing to more than $50 million annually by 2024, authorizing and funding the construction of 30,000 new rental units throughout the city. With the loss of redevelopment funds that were devoted to affordable housing, San Francisco is a city at risk, and passage of Prop. C is vital to ensuring that we all have a chance of remaining here. Vote yes.

PROPOSITION D

CONSOLIDATING ODD-YEAR LOCAL ELECTIONS

YES

There’s a lot of odd stuff in the San Francisco City Charter, and one of the twists is that two offices — the city attorney and the treasurer — are elected in an off-year when there’s nothing else on the ballot. There’s a quaint kind of charm to that, and some limited value — the city attorney is one of the most powerful officials in local government, and that race could get lost in an election where the mayor, sheriff, and district attorney are all on the ballot.

But seriously: The off-year elections have lower turnout, and cost the city money, and it’s pretty ridiculous that San Francisco still does it this way. The entire Board of Supervisors supports Prop. D. So do we. Vote yes.

PROPOSITION E

GROSS RECEIPTS TAX

YES

Over the past five years, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu estimates, San Francisco has cut about $1.5 billion from General Fund programs. It’s been bloody, nasty, awful. The budget reductions have thrown severely ill psych patients out of General Hospital and onto the streets. They’ve forced the Recreation and Parks Department to charge money for the use of public space. They’ve undermined everything from community policing to Muni maintenance.

And now, as the economy starts to stabilize a bit, the mayor wants to change the way businesses are taxed — and bring an additional $28.5 million into city coffers.

That’s right — we’ve cut $1.5 billion, and we’re raising taxes by $28.5 million. That’s less than 2 percent. It’s insane, it’s inexcusable, it’s utterly the wrong way to run a city in 2012. It might as well be Mitt Romney making the decision — 98 percent cuts, 2 percent tax hikes.

Nevertheless, that’s where we are today — and it’s sad to say this is an improvement from where the tax discussion started. At first, Mayor Lee didn’t want any tax increase at all; progressive leaders had to struggle to convince him to allow even a pittance in additional revenue.

The basic issue on the table is how San Francisco taxes businesses. Until the late 1990s, the city had a relatively rational system — businesses paid about 1.5 percent of their payroll or gross receipts, whichever was higher. Then 52 big corporations, including PG&E, Chevron, Bechtel, and the Gap, sued, arguing that the gross receipts part of the program was unfair. The supervisors caved in to the legal threat and repeal that part of the tax system — costing the city about $30 million a year. Oh, but then tech companies — which have high payrolls but often, at least at first, low gross receipts — didn’t want the payroll tax. The same players who opposed the other tax now called for its return, arguing that taxing payroll hurts job growth (which is untrue and unfounded, but this kind of dogma doesn’t get challenged in the press). So, after much discussion and debate, and legitimate community input, the supervisors unanimously approved Prop. E — which raises a little more money, but not even as much as the corporate lawsuit in the 1990s set the city back. It’s not a bad tax, better than the one we have now — it brings thousands of companies the previously paid no tax at all into the mix (sadly, some of them small businesses). It’s somewhat progressive — companies with higher receipts pay a higher rate. We can’t argue against it — the city will be better off under Prop. E than it is today. But we have to look around our battered, broke-ass city, shake our poor bewildered heads and say: Is this really the best San Francisco can do? Sure, vote yes on E. And ask yourself why one of the most liberal cities in America still lets Republican economic theory drive its tax policy.

PROPOSITION F

WATER AND ENVIRONMENT PLAN

NO, NO, NO

Reasonable people can disagree about whether San Francisco should have ever dammed the Tuolumne River in 1923, flooding the Hetch Hetchy Valley and creating an engineering marvel that has provided the city with a reliable source of renewable electricity and some of the best urban drinking water in the world ever since. The project broke the heart of famed naturalist John Muir and has caused generations since then to pine for the restoration of a valley that Muir saw as a twin to his beloved nearby Yosemite Valley.

But at a time when this country can’t find the resources to seriously address global warming (which will likely dry up the Sierra Nevada watershed at some point in the future), our deteriorating infrastructure, and myriad other pressing problems, it seems insane to even consider spending billions of dollars to drain this reservoir, restore the valley, and find replacement sources of clean water and power.

You can’t argue with the basic facts: There is no way San Francisco could replace all the water that comes in from Hetch Hetchy without relying on the already-fragile Delta. The dam also provides 1.7 billion kilowatt hours a year of electric power, enough to meet the needs of more than 400,000 homes. That power now runs everything from the lights at City Hall to Muni, at a cost of near zero. The city would lose 42 percent of its energy generation if the dam went away.

Besides, the dam was, and is, the lynchpin of what’s supposed to be a municipal power system in the city. As San Francisco, with Clean Power SF, moves ever close to public power, it’s insane to take away this critical element of any future system.

On its face, the measure merely requires the city to do an $8 million study of the proposal and then hold a binding vote in 2016 that would commit the city to a project estimated by the Controller’s Office to cost somewhere between $3 billion and $10 billion. Yet to even entertain that possibility would be a huge waste of time and money.

Prop. F is being pushed by a combination of wishful (although largely well-meaning) sentimentalists and disingenuous conservatives like Dan Lungren who simply want to fuck with San Francisco, but it’s being opposed by just about every public official in the city. Vote this down and let’s focus our attention on dealing with real environmental and social problems.

PROPOSITION G

CORPORATE PERSONHOOD

YES

If San Francisco voters pass Prop. G, it won’t put any law into effect. It’s simply a policy statement that sends a message: Corporations are not people, and it’s time for the federal government to tackle the overwhelming and deeply troubling control that wealthy corporations have over American politics.

Prop. G declares that money is not speech and that limits on political spending improve democratic processes. It urges a reversal of the notorious Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission Supreme Court decision.

A constitutional amendment, and any legal messing with free speech, has serious potential problems. If corporations are limited from spending money on politics, could the same apply to unions or nonprofits? Could such an amendment be used to stop a community organization from spending money to print flyers with political opinions?

But it’s a discussion that the nation needs to have, and Prop. G is a modest start. Vote yes.

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