Live

Theater of the observed

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Theater of the observed

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Unmanned spy drones, electronic snooping, cyber warfare — why should the government have all the fun? In FWD: Life Gone Viral — the world premiere comedy by Jeri Lynn Cohen, David Ford, and Charlie Varon currently enjoying a sharply-performed, comfortably low-tech production at the Marsh — today’s social media and some of Big Brother’s latest gadgetry inspire two pairs of ex-spouses to high-falutin’ excess over the more banal of security issues. The outcome is a surprisingly thoughtful and consistently amusing collision between perennial complaints, whether mortal or marital, and the current runaway state of online exhibitionism.

The nexus of issues are staked out early and with droll precision, beginning in the direct address by an entrepreneurial Russian (Varon) with a heavy accent and a former career in the security state, who explains a little device he has on offer to the abjectly curious. It’s a mini-drone in the shape of a housefly, operable through your cell phone, ready to beam into the palm of your hand pictures and audio from, say, your upstairs neighbors — answering those nagging questions you’ve always had about them: “How do they live? With whom do they have the sexual?”

It’s not as far-fetched as the accent. This kind of technology is already around, more or less. So it’s all the easier to accept middle-aged, terminally ill Donald Saperstein (Varon) getting to be the proverbial fly on the wall of his ex-wife’s medical practice. It’s a cozy arrangement for the rather megalomaniacal Saperstein, who seems to prefer one-way communication. He’s recently caught fire on YouTube, intoning his thoughts on dying to other cancer sufferers spread over the infinite expanse of cyberspace, while his ex-wife, oncologist Dr. Lillian Steinberg (a considerate, somewhat prim Cohen), toils away in a bland office. And offices are where director David Ford sets most of the action, sandwiched between parallel planes of dull carpet and off-white ceiling panels.

But Saperstein ends up having to share the wall with another fly, and another customer, named Ellen Green (a suddenly brash Cohen sporting a New York accent), who’s purchased the same gizmo to spy on her ex-husband, patient Adam Roth (Varon, bowed and anxious but with a pent-up exuberance). (As spy-flies Ellen and Donald, Cohen and Varon tuck their elbows in, jut their arms out and shake their jazz hands to indicate their droning drones’ airborne path through physical space.) Ellen is there to get her schadenfreude firsthand. Their unexpected encounter in cyberspace plays like a scene out of William Gibson, if Gibson wrote for 30 Rock. Meanwhile, their targets confer with what remains of patient confidentiality. It seems Roth is not dying after all, a matter of a mix-up in the records department: it’s another Adam Roth who has cancer.

The new lease on life gives Roth the hots for his doctor, who responds with cautious enthusiasm to his advances. But she’s deeply chagrined to learn he finds so much value in a certain YouTube video purporting to offer insight and aid to her patients while casting a veiled accusation in her own direction. Even the Mayo Clinic has seen fit to recommend her ex’s “Cancer of Blame” video. Roth, an amateur filmmaker with a taste for the classics and the ancient Athenian marketplace of ideas reborn in the internet, gallantly rises to her defense with a modest proposal: “Have you thought about reposting his video with your own subtitles?”

From this point, things get ugly, amid a rich vein of comical discourse and defensiveness around issues of privacy, revenge and pathological degrees of attention-seeking. The Russian spymaster, from his vantage, sees it all: “Soon we will have diseases of overexposure, diseases for which we still have no name.” It may be strange to say, but there’s something refreshing and affirming about a group of characters who, even in the face of their own mortality, can prove petty, vindictive assholes to each other. Our cyborg-selves end up pretty human after all.

FWD: LIFE GONE VIRAL

Through June 10

Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm, $20-$50

Marsh San Francisco

1062 Valencia, SF

(415) 282-3055

www.themarsh.org

 

State of debate

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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11
State of debate

yael@sfbg.com

On May 24, a panel of three Jewish activists and authors from the Bay Area will discuss the historical figures and ancestors that inspire their work today. The event was originally scheduled to take place at the Jewish Community Library, operated by the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE), which is largely supported by the Jewish Community Federation (JCF, or “the Federation”).

Leaders at the BJE canceled the event in January after discussions about its content with organizers of the panel, who then found another venue: Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. That seemed like a harmless turn of events that has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least not directly.

But with the current state of discourse in the Bay Area’s Jewish community, just beneath the surface are complex dynamics that raise issues of censorship, bonds forged by religion, whether certain criticisms of Israel should be off-limits, and a battle for the hearts of minds of Jews in the diaspora.

Anti-war activist Rae Abileah has found herself at the middle of this battle. She is on the panel to discuss her great uncle Joseph Abileah, an Israeli pacifist who was charged and tried in 1949 after he refused to join the army as part of Israel’s mandatory military service.

Abileah is a member of Code Pink who is outspoken about her opposition to the Israeli occupation in Palestine. The panel is meant to discuss decades-old work, not the current state of affairs domestically or in Israel, but Abileah’s inclusion made it too political for some.

In March, the panelists — which also include Julie Gilgoff and Elaine Elinson — and event organizer Diana Scott wrote an open letter to the Jewish Community Library saying, “We find it particularly troubling that an act of censorship has occurred at the Library — an institution that it supposed to be a symbol of open thought in learning in the Jewish Community.”

David Waksberg, the director of the BJE who was instrumental in the decision-making process, said it was nothing of the sort. “We had very honest, productive, and respectful discussions about why the program wasn’t for us,” he told me.

The letter concludes: “We seek to make clear that Federation policies, designed to foster the appearance of Jewish solidarity by shutting down the vital exchange of ideas in the Jewish community, are divisive and intolerable. They are also ultimately ineffective in suppressing dissent, and, paradoxically, undermine the values and mission of some of our most cherished Jewish institutions.”

“The Jewish Community Federation didn’t tell us whether or not to do this program,” Waksberg insists. “They didn’t pressure us one way or another.”

The open letter also discusses funding guidelines, adopted in 2010 by the Federation. The guidelines restrict funding for events that “endorse the BDS (boycott-divestment-sanctions) movement or positions that undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”

 

DELEGITIMIZING ISRAEL?

The guidelines have meaning beyond these specific circumstances. They represent a conflict in what counts as diversity of opinion, what counts as dissent, and the incredibly loaded concept of “delegitimizing Israel.”

The guidelines were a response to a controversial 2009 screening of Rachel, a documentary on the life of Rachel Corrie, a 24-year-old who was killed when she stood in front of a bulldozer on its way to level a Palestinian home. The film was screened at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival followed by speaker Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother. The film-going crowd yelled and booed, and the Federation threatened to quit funding the festival.

The next year was declared by some Jewish leaders to be the Year of Civil Discourse. The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), the self-described “central public affairs arm of the organized Bay Area Jewish Community,” organized a year of programming and discussion, with an aim to “elevate the level of discourse in the Jewish community when discussing Israel.” The J Weekly, the magazine of the Jewish Bay Area, reported that “[organizers] agree that the Year of Civil Discourse was a success,” though these organizers acknowledged their work was far from over.

Indeed, the controversies rage on. Two months before the Year of Civil Discourse officially ended Dec. 13, the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland canceled an exhibit, “A Child’s View from Gaza”, that would have showcased drawings by Palestinian children, after pressure from Jewish organizations.

The director of the JCRC, Doug Kahn, became a spokesperson against the exhibit, butting up against groups like the Middle East Children’s Alliance and Bend the Arc (formerly Progressive Jewish Alliance). In March, an event that would have featured author and journalist Peter Beinart lost support after the JCC of the East Bay learned that one of the event’s moderators was on the board of Bend the Arc. Add this panel to the mix, and the six months since the Year of Civil Discourse ended have proven how taboo topics like BDS and Israeli violence in Palestine remain volatile.

BDS in particular has emerged as an untouchable issue. The campaign is a result of a 2005 Palestinian call for boycott and divestment from Israeli companies, and economic sanctions on Israel. BDSmovement.net, which provides news and background information regarding BDS efforts, lists three goals to the protest: “Ending [Israel’s] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”

The campaign has seen effects worldwide. Abileah has organized to promote BDS, in particular working to get Bay Area stores to stop carrying Ahava, skin-care products made in what she calls an illegal Israeli settlement in Palestine.

The BDS campaign is “a tried and true nonviolent tactic to get the Israeli government to uphold international law,” Abileah told me. “We decided to be in solidarity.”

But some Jewish leaders feel BDS goes too far.

“The term delegitimizing Israel refers to the intent to eliminate the Jewish and democratic State of Israel by portraying it as an illegitimate nation,” Kahn wrote in an email. “The boycott/divestment/sanctions movement’s leadership has made clear that this is their ultimate agenda and one of the movement’s explicit objectives would achieve that aim resulting in a dire threat to nearly half of the world’s Jewish population that lives in Israel.”

BDS is mentioned several times in the Federation funding guidelines, and stands out as the only specific example of what it means to “undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”

 

ISOLATE THE EXTREMISTS

But organizations like the Federation and the JCRC aren’t the only ones interested in the path that Israel-Palestine discourse among Bay Area Jews takes. The Reut Institute, a think tank based in Tel Aviv, “has been committed to responding to the assault on Israel’s legitimacy since 2008,” according to the introduction to its 2011 report: “San Francisco as a Delegitimization Hub.”

The report ranks San Francisco and London among the “few global hubs of delegitimization.” It also warns of the dangers of San Francisco in particular as top-delegitimizing city, noting “the role of the San Francisco Bay Area as a generator and driver of broader trends, or as a hub of social experiments…What won’t pass in San Francisco won’t pass anywhere else, and what happens in San Francisco doesn’t stay in San Francisco.'”

San Francisco gets this attention from Reut because of dissent within its Jewish community, which the institute calls globally unparalleled. “While in London delegitimization is being promoted primarily by groups that are not part of the Jewish community…an increasing number of Jews in the San Francisco Bay Area have become ‘agnostic’ towards Israel, and are fueling the delegitimization campaign.”

The report’s authors, Reut’s “national security team,” do not spend much time explaining what “delegitimizing Israel” means. When it does, BDS again stands out as one of the only concrete examples. According to the report, in the Bay Area “the number of individuals who are willing to stand up for Israel is declining while others have been fueling the delegitimization campaign, many times unintentionally, by engaging in acts of delegitimization — namely, actions or campaigns framed by their initiators as a reaction to a specific Israeli policy, which in practice aim to undermine Israel’s political and moral foundations. Examples include support for the BDS movement and the 2010 Gaza Flotilla,” a protest in which ships full of supporters and cargo tried to make it to Palestinian land in violation of an Israeli embargo.

The report labels those looking to delegitimize Israel “extremists.” It warns, however, that those questioning Israel’s policies, when rebuked by its “tradition defenders,” may be swayed into trusting the extremists. It therefore advocates a “broad tent approach,” advising that Jews in the Bay Area initiate a “community-wide deliberation” with an “aim to…drive a wedge between the extremists and those who principally support the legitimacy of Israel’s existence regardless of policy agreements.”

It’s important, according to the report, to make sure that supporters of BDS are seen as “extremists.” The “broad tent” is supposed to contain all Jews, with a diversity of opinions — except those supporting BDS and other acts of “delegitimization.” In light of this goal, the report praises the Federation’s funding guidelines and the Year of Civil Discourse.

“Through the funding guidelines drafted by a JCRC-JCF Working Group…the San Francisco Bay Area has set the standard nationally as the first American Jewish community to develop guidelines delineating red lines that go hand-in-hand with the broad tent approach,” Reut reports. “Additionally, we regard the Year of Civil Discourse…led by the JCRC, as important best practices that could be emulated in other places.”

 

ORTHODOXY

The Bay Area’s left-leaning Jewish organizations may be influential, but under such a hot spotlight, they tread carefully. Congregation Sha’ar Zahav is one such organization. Last year, the synagogue surveyed its members to test opinions on Israel.

“In general, the survey shows that we have a liberal left-leaning congregation,” said Terry Fletcher, a member of Sha’ar Zahav who now heads a committee created to follow up on the survey results. “People tend to blame, shall we say, both sides of the conflict, both Israelis and Palestinians, somewhat equally.”

Fletcher’s committee has organized events and discussions in the wake of the survey since January. “One idea was that we would start with something non-controversial,” Fletcher told me. “But we couldn’t think of anything that everyone on the committee considers non-controversial.”

The programming has featured discussions on evolving relationships with Israel and questioned their nuances. But Fletcher says they haven’t been able to venture into BDS territory.

“I would love it if we could get to a place where we could actually address that,” Fletcher reflected. “And we would want to do it from a balanced perspective. But it’s such an emotional issue.”

There are practical concerns as well. According to Fletcher, the Federation gives a small amount of funding for scholarships for Sha’ar Zahav’s religious school. The money that funded Fletcher’s committee’s programming came from Sha’ar Zahav’s general fund, when there was enough of it. She says that the committee is now operating without a budget due to tight finances. Even so, if the committee’s programming were to breech the Federation’s funding guidelines, it might put the program in jeopardy.

“To me, that’s what’s so problematic about these guidelines,” Fletcher said. “The guidelines are saying, if you want money from us, we have restrictions on what your organization can do. Even though our programming is not funded by the Federation, because it funds something completely unrelated, it could get cut.”

Fletcher also questions that paradigm of “delegitimizing Israel.”

“I think this is a term that people who defend Israel use to label people who criticize Israel in a certain way,” she said. “Many of us would answer that it’s Israel’s own policies that are delegitimizing Israel in the eyes of the world. I don’t find it a useful term.”

Sha’ar Zahav will be hosting the Reclaiming Jewish Activism panel. Davey Shlasko, a member of the congregation who helped facilitate the new arrangement, thinks the concern about Abileah’s associations were misplaced.

“I think it is unfortunate that the predicted objection to Rae’s other work was enough of a concern to cancel an event that is actually about drawing inspiration from our ancestors,” Shlasko told me via email.

But it’s in looking back at history that the panel acquires so much meaning. “It is safe to say that living in the United States, Jews have never been more empowered, safe, and connected to the community they live in,” mused one source, who wished to remain anonymous. “It is inevitable that with such success, the need to band together changed. The group identity changes. Sometimes it’s that fight, that need to rally together, that keeps the group intact.”

For Abileah, “the event will be Jewish activists talking about our ancestors.” She’s upset about the event’s cancellation, but not surprised.

“For a lot of Jewish people it can be challenging to speak out against this issue because you don’t know where your friends stand on this, or your synagogue or even your family,” she said. “There are a lot of people who we say are PEP: progressive except Palestine. My family and community have been supportive, but I’ve gotten hate mail and threats of violence.”

“It sounds like these Jewish institutions that are censoring have so much power, like they’re the mainstream Jewish voice. But I think the majority of Jewish Americans want a resolution to the conflict and are opposed to the occupation,” she said.

And how does she think Joseph Abileah would react to this situation? “I’d like to think that he would be shocked and hurt by it,” she said. “It’s sad to see so much fracture in the Jewish community over this issue.”

Dum Dum Girls drummer Sandra Vu doubles as SISU’s lead singer

Tony Robles
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2

If you’ve ever caught Dum Dum Girls live, you’ve likely asked yourself, “who is that babe with the flying black hair who’s slaying on drums?” That’s Sandra “Sandy Beaches” Vu, the quartet’s drummer, who also fronts her own music project, SISU (pronounced “see-soo”). Her band mixes minimal electro beats and synth with guitar, bass, and flute, all surrounded by Vu’s ethereal voice, a far cry from Dum Dum Girls’ chainsaw surf guitar and singer Dee Dee’s vibrato.

This tour, SISU joins Dum Dum Girls as the traveling opener for most nights including Mon/21 in San Jose (though not in San Francisco, Tues/22 – but hey, Sandy will still be there, pounding away with DDG). SISU’s totally DIY (hence, highly limited) hand-numbered CD-Rs will be available on the West Coast tour.

I spoke with the tireless Vu during a quick van ride during their joint tour, in her Los Angeles hometown, discussing doing double duty in the lineup, feeling naked on stage, and beats that sound like a giant’s stride.

SFBG Can you tell me about SISU’s formation, when did it start, and how did the idea come together?

Sandra Vu  I was in a band called Midnight Movies, we were signed to a small label and we were on track to “go big” but it never happened. I had put everything into it at that point, and had structured my life, day job, and so on to make playing music my life.

So when we split, I was pretty confused about what to do next. I had always written songs and generally messed around with recording multiple tracks of myself since I learned how to use a tape deck.

So I just decided to write songs for myself, and learn how to use the computer as a home studio. This was before Garageband so it was a little more esoteric back then to record on a laptop. My goal was always just to keep it going and play music with my friends if they would join me.

SFBG Who else is in the band now?

SV Ryan Wood also played in Midnight Movies. We had that special rhythm section bond and had become really good friends. He’s a talented songwriter and guitar player in his own right. He’s pretty much the other half of the SISU brain. More than playing guitar and keyboard, he’s the band engineer.

We have done a lot of self-releases, so I’ve made him responsible for the sort of technical aspects of the band, which I think plays a big hand in the sound of the band. He is a synth nerd and fine tunes a lot of sounds that we end up using. Then there is Nathanael Keefer on drums, Rebecca Calinsky on keyboards, and Chris Stevens who joined us on this tour on bass guitar. They are the best!

SFBG When did you start drumming? And when did you pick up other instruments?

SV I started playing drums when I was 13. I taught myself guitar around the same time as well, if not before. My first instrument was the piano, I think around age 7. In second grade, I joined the school band and learned the flute.

I wanted to play drums for a long time, but picked up guitar and flute along the way because it’s a bit inaccessible to get a drumkit. You know, it’s expensive, takes up a lot of room, and super loud – basically, every parents’ nightmare. I realize it sickens people to hear how easily it came to me, but it really didn’t. I worked hard at it and spent many many hours playing and obsessing.

SFBG Has SISU opened for Dum Dum Girls before this tour? What’s it like doing double-duty at shows so far?

SV No, this is the first time. We had talked about it before, but it hasn’t happened until now! Now that I’m a few shows in, I can tell you that it’s pretty stressful. I thought we had no time to hang out playing in one band, we absolutely have zero time to grab dinner after soundcheck with friends now because I have another soundcheck right after. Overall, it’s more mentally tiring than physically. I don’t think I could drum in two bands in one night though, that would just be too intense.

SFBG Do you see any similarities between the two bands?
SV They are very much separate. Dee Dee and I have overlapping taste in music, but the outcome of our bands are very different. For one, there are no synths in Dum Dum Girls, whereas SISU songs are often centered around synth sounds. In SISU, I play the guitar very sparingly and hardly ever use complete chords.

SFBG Any other musicians, songs, or albums influence SISU?

SV  Some unexpected influences are Serge Gainsbourg, DJ Shadow, and Vashti Bunyan. There is one DJ Shadow song that I was sure inspired our bass sound, but I went back and listened to it, and it was much different than I remembered. It was strange that I was inspired by an inaccurate memory, and even stranger that what we came to could have been drawn from much more obvious band, like the Cure.

SFBG Anything non-music related influence SISU?

SV The song “Infinity Net” on our new EP was inspired by artist Yayoi Kusama and a conversation I had with a friend. Sometimes I will let a visual idea dictate sounds and rhythm in a song. It’s easier for me to describe sounds as visual than in words, for instance, I always describe to Nat, our drummer, that the beat is like a giant slowly stepping, which would give the song a weighty downbeat. So, in a nutshell, yes, things like dots and giants will influence SISU.

SFBG Is there a huge visceral change switching between drummer and frontperson?  

SV Completely. I often don’t see audience faces from the drums. And if I do, I have this cage of drums and hardware before me. In front, it’s just me, my guitar, and the feeling of utter nakedness. Singing is the most vulnerable thing I can think of doing in front of a bunch of strangers, apart from literally going naked.

SFBG Who writes SISU songs, lyrics?

SV I’ve written and arranged almost everything that we’ve put out. I like to collaborate on lyrics with friends occasionally. The invitation is always open to my bandmates since it is usually the last thing we add. “Light Eyes” lyrics were written by my friend Deborah Uytiepo. I had originally written the song not for SISU, but for an unnamed project. I like to experiment that way, involve my friends and open up my world to people who aren’t musicians. I create everything else alone and typically between the hours of 2-8am, so it’s nice to engage that way.

SFBG Is ‘Demon Tapes Vol. 2’ available only in CD-R format?

SV For now, yes. My friend just brought up the idea of putting the first and second Demon Tapes EPs together in an actual cassette tape, which will probably happen a bit later. I wanted Vol. 2 to be a cassette tape, but in the end, CD-R is more suited to our DIY production process. It’s faster to burn CDs and easier to customize packaging. I would have ruined cassettes if I tried to spray paint them.

SFBG Is it meant to be a follow-up to the ‘Demon Tapes’ EP?

SV I like the idea of seriality, but the thing they have in common is that they are demos. They are first-takes of ideas as they first happened. We left in a lot of technical mistakes and things I knew I could have performed better. Half the time in SISU, we are deciding whether or not to “fix” stuff, but we often don’t, even if it’s not a demo. The other common thing between the two is that we produced and did everything ourselves. Ryan knows how to mix and record and we are both graphic designers. I played nearly every instrument on both. It is half out of necessity and half that I actually enjoy every step of the way. My fingerprints are literally on each and every CD that goes out.

SFBG Any plans to record a full-length?
SV Yes, we have one “in the can” as they say. It should be in the cannon, but instead it’s waiting in some can somewhere. It was supposed to come out last year, but we had some difficulty planning a release date around my schedule with Dum Dum Girls. I’m already thinking about the next record, but we are still figuring out a way to release that one.

Dum Dum Girls
With SISU, Young Prisms
Mon/21, 8pm, $14
Blank Club
44 S. Almaden, San Jose
(408) 292-5265
www.theblankclub.com

Dum Dum Girls
With Tamaryn, Young Prisms
Tue/22, 8pm, $17
Slim’s
333 11th St., SF
(415) 255-0333
www.slimspresents.com

 

SF-born legend Terry Bozzio on UK’s reunion, his dad’s accordion, and the importance of drum lessons

Tony Robles
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1

Bay Area-born and raised drummer extraordinaire Terry Bozzio (who plays the Regency Ballroom Fri/18 with reunited band UK) has performed with Frank Zappa, Missing Persons, Jeff Beck, Fantomas, and a host of other musicians over the years. Recognized as one of the best modern drummers, he has recorded a variety of instructional videos, been honored by Guitar Center’s RockWalk in Hollywood, and has created some of the most insane custom drum sets ever seen on stage.

Bozzio’s amazing talents will be on display live tonight as he performs with the reunited prog rock super group UK — with whom he originally played from 1978 through 1980 — which also features John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia) and Eddie Jobson (Frank Zappa, Roxy Music).

Born in San Francisco, Bozzio’s family moved to Marin County when he was in third grade. His father had been a child musical prodigy, playing the accordion on stage in San Francisco when he was only four years old, and continued to occasionally play when he was older and had a family.

“People would come over for a Sunday dinner, and they’d beg him to play the accordion — he would begrudgingly pull it out, but within a few chords he would silence the room, he could just hold them in the palm of his hand,” says Bozzio over the phone during a recent tour stop in Portland. “To witness that power was something I was very jealous of at an early age, and now having experienced being able to do that — so I’m told — I credit him with having inspired it.”

When Bozzio started playing a musical instrument himself a few years later — the drums — his father would often give advice to him and his band mates when practicing in one of his first groups, Blue Glass Radio, a combo comprised of friends from middle school. “I was pretty much a rock’n’roll, play by ear kind of guy until I took six months of drum lessons which were very, very key and important for me, when I was 15 or so,” says Bozzio.

“My last year at Drake High School I started to study music seriously, and continued to study jazz and classical at College of Marin; I graduated from there with a commercial music degree — just an A.A. degree — but that was enough to prepare me for what was going to happen within a very short time.”

Bozzio soon began playing a wide variety of musicians, in many different styles, and after some time found himself with a reputation as being one of the best drummers in the Bay Area, which eventually led him to being asked to join Frank Zappa’s band. From there, Bozzio has gone on to perform with an incredible amount of world-class musicians over a nearly four decade long career.

With this UK reunion, Bozzio says he is having fun looking back and re-examining that particular portion of his musical legacy.
“I’ve always been proud of that music, and I think both John and Eddie are tremendous musicians with a great history in rock’n’ roll, making great contributions. When you listen back to some of this stuff, it impresses you because you kind of listen with fresh ears.”

Performing at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco will have a special hometown meaning for Bozzio — he saw his first rock concert at the Avalon Ballroom, which was what the venue was called in its first incarnation back in the ’60s.

“My dad and my uncle took me down, I remember clearly, we saw It’s A Beautiful Day, Canned Heat, and Vanilla Fudge. I’ve never been back, so this will be the first the first time since 1965 that I’ll be there!”

With UK set to play in Europe and Japan after the U.S. leg of the tour is finished, Bozzio’s schedule shows no signs of slowing down, and the talented musician is grateful for the opportunities he’s been given.

“The power of music is a very spiritual and amazing thing—I’m 61, and for almost 40 years I’ve been making a living as a musician, without having to get a day job—I consider myself very lucky, the stars have been lined up for me.”

Terry Bozzio with UK
Fri/18, 8pm, $65-$99
Regency Ballroom
1290 Sutter, SF
www.theregencyballroom.com

Live Shots: Livening up Mendell Plaza

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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7

Every Saturday, as part of a 12-week free concert series, the Bayview Opera House transforms Mendell Plaza into a music-filled oasis. (I visited on May 12 and fell in love with the sounds and sights of this Bayview spot.)


While listening to soulful live tunes, you can join in on a game of dominoes, stroll through the organic community garden to check out some vivacious kale fronds, or head over to the 100% College Prep Club  table.

The Club is an inspiring organization that offers youth in the Bayview-Hunters Point after-school tutoring, with the ultimate goal of getting them into college. The Club also takes its students on college tours to help motivate them and explore learning opportunities outside of San Francisco. These kids are an amazing and multi-talented bunch! All the musicians who performed were either former graduates of the program or soon off to college. Pretty impressive.

Thanks to the beautiful weather, there was a large turnout from the Bayview-Hunters Point community. Even the pup guarding the bbq stand gave a howl of appreciation for such a fun and vibrant event.

Lindsey Buckingham’s live show comes down to one

Tony Robles
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0

With an arsenal of a dozen guitars and several amplifiers lined up behind him, Lindsey Buckingham wasted no time delving into his extensive catalog of songs Monday night at the Fillmore.

Striding up to a lone microphone stand wearing his signature blue jeans, v-neck t-shirt, and black leather jacket, the singer and guitarist launched into an hour and 15 minute set that spanned a broad spectrum of his career, covering a wide swath of solo material in addition to some of the mega hits he created as a member of Fleetwood Mac.

After running through the first couple of tunes and warming up his formidable finger picking skills, the 62-year old Buckingham took a short break to talk about his current tour across the country, contrasting the differences between performing with what he called the “big machine” — Fleetwood Mac — and “the small machine” — his solo outings.

Remarking that when he started out on his own, he would often take a sizable backing band with him, but over the years he has decreased the number of players, with his last major tour featuring a trio, and that this trek finds him venturing out by himself.

Aside from a few songs that he played along with to a pre-recorded backing track, such as “Go Your Own Way,” it was just Buckingham, his stellar guitar playing, and his still-powerful voice providing the sonic soundscape that filled the historic auditorium, proving beyond a doubt that he was capable of carrying the show all on his own, with a highly vocal and appreciative audience to encourage him.

At times, it felt strange to look at the stage and see only one person performing with the amount of energy and excitement being generated. During songs such as “Big Love” and “Go Insane,” Buckingham made a variety of impassioned facial expressions while playing, and yelled and clapped at the crowd when he finished.

When the Palo Alto native came back out for an encore, he walked along the front of the stage, high-fiving and shaking hands with his fans, before telling the audience that it “you guys really do make it feel like home here.”

Then adding, “There’s so much history in this place, and with all the music that has come out of this city, I’m just proud to be a small part of it.”

With Monday’s show in the books, Buckingham can be assured that he is still very much a vivacious and viable contributor to that ongoing legacy.

Our 2012 Small Business Awards

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Our 2012 Small Business Awards

WOMEN IN BUSINESS

KELLY MALONE, WORKSHOP AND INDIE MART

In a tech-obsessed society, our hands navigate today’s gleaming gadgets more often than those of yesteryear: a sewing machine, say, or a manual drill. DIY goddess Kelly Malone has spent years trying to change that — and in so doing has created a business that serves as a cultural touchstone for the budding Divisadero Street corridor.

Malone’s brick-and-mortar shop is named Workshop (1798 McAllister, SF. 415-874-9186. www.workshopsf.org), and it’s a place where aspiring crafters receive hours of instruction in oft-neglected skills like sewing, knitting, and terrarium-making — all while drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and meeting new friends. After receiving an enthusiastic response from her Indie Mart (www.indie-mart.com), a handmade craft fair she started six years ago in the backyard of her Mission digs, Malone saw a need for a hub for would-be crafters.

“I wanted to create a space that was super ‘hit it and quit it,'” she says. “Where you could come in and take a class, but you didn’t necessarily need to become some expert knitter. A place for people to sit down and get their hands dirty, learn to make something, and get inspired.”

Malone started Workshop on scant funding. Instead of relying on bank loans, she looked to her immediate community for investors. “I’ve started every business without money, which has forced me to really put myself out there and grow my businesses by meeting people and being super-passionate about what I do,” she says.

Malone says having a big budget to open her businesses would have been fun, but saving her pennies and having flea markets and garage sales to pay for sewing machines gives her more street cred, DIY all the way.

And like our favorite kind of businesspeople, Malone hardly sees her enterprises as a sterile way to make a quick buck. “I’m never going to get rich off these businesses, but if I get to the point where I can have a couple people on staff like I do now, and have enough to pay bills and go get some beers, hey, that’s good enough for me.” (Mia Sullivan)

CHAIN ALTERNATIVE

SPORTS BASEMENT

Although based locally, Sports Basement (www.sportsbasement.com) is technically a chain, as it now boasts four locations: an 80,000 square-foot building at the old commissary in the Presidio, SoMa’s brick-and-wood location, a store in Sunnyvale that once mimicked the inside of a computer (look for the remaining “ESC” keyboard sign), and another nearing Mount Diablo in Walnut Creek. But beyond the fact that it offers the only real alternative to national conglomerates when it comes to one-stop athletic and outdoor gear, the retail company is fiercely dedicated to its Bay Area community. Plus, its cozy, with hand-painted cardboard signs detailing specials, comfy couches, and super-friendly staff.

Founder Eric Prosnitz came up with the Sports Basement idea in an effort to create a more personalized experience in an off-price retail outlet, something tailored more closely to Northern California’s environment. Products change every week, discounts rule, and employees are encouraged to treat customers as individuals with a continuum of outdoor lifestyle needs. And the Basement recognizes that it’s an expansive company with the power to affect various neighborhoods. Last year, its locations hosted more than 2,000 community groups at 7,000 events, averaging around four events per store per day. Ten-15% of the retail space serves as free community space. Examples: Walnut Creek holds a fundraiser in the form of a kid apparel fashion show, Sunnyvale hosts ASHA for India, an organization dedicated to providing education for underprivileged children in India; Bryant St. houses the AIDS Lifecycle organization, and Presidio is the meeting spot for Golden Gate Mother’s Group — just to mention a few.

Aaron Schweifler, Director of Operations at Sports Basement, says the staff is encouraged to be creatively autonomous, and hopes each store will provide a shopping experience that can “wow” local residents. We are wowed! (Soojin Chang)

TENANT ADVOCATE

GREG MARKOULIS, AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL CENTER

In 1975, Greg Markoulis of American Industrial Center (2345 Third St., SF. www.aicproperties.com) was scouring San Francisco to find a new home for his family’s 25-year-old shoe manufacturing company. When American Can Company, one of the city’s oldest and busiest industrial complexes, offered an attractive deal on a vacant Third Street building, Markoulis gladly took them up. The new abode reinvigorated the company, transforming it from a street corner location to a community space housing more than 285 businesses — now including graphic designers, commercial photographers, architects, light industrial manufacturers, a winery, a yoga center, a martial arts studio, and a medley of Web-based companies and art collectives. That expansive spirit soon spread, helping to reinvigorate the entire Dogpatch area, which had suffered a lengthy period of industrial decline.

Thirty-seven years later, AIC still keeps the family ethos alive. When making executive decisions, Greg Makoulis says the company’s priorities align much more with how relatives interact with one another rather than those of a typical business. “The ideas of the oldest generation with the most experience are considered first,” says Markoulis.

As this side of town is rapidly undergoing gentrification, he could very well have sold the building to a corporation. But he sees his tenants as valuable community members, not just paychecks. Markoulis thrives on finding working solutions to accommodate his tenants, and respects the fact that people’s needs are ever-changing. Markoulis describes AIC’s priority to be “giving everyone a stable place to operate in.”

In Markoulis’ experience, one of the biggest challenges that AIC has faced over the years has to do with the cost and time for newly opening businesses to acquire permits. He hopes to see changes in San Francisco’s building and planning department, because he thinks a faster turnaround would help foster employment opportunities. (Soojin Chang)

CULTURE CHAMPION

DON ALAN, HEMLOCK TAVERN AND CASANOVA LOUNGE

“I think the challenge for San Francisco is to take care of the venues that its got,” says Don Alan of the ever-shrinking live music scene here. Alan has contributed enormously to the preservation of live rock in the City by the Bay with his raucous Hemlock Tavern space in Polk Gulch (1131 Polk, SF. 415-923-0923, www.hemlocktavernsf.com) on the site of former gay bar the Giraffe. He’s also a preservationist of dive bar ambiance, opening Mission District favorite Casanova Lounge, full to the brim of attractive indie young ‘uns on the make.

Alan got his rock start in the on community radio in Madison, WI, soon coming to SF and opening storied live bluegrass and jazz cafe Radio Valencia. “We opened the Casanova while we still had Radio Valencia and we realized that a bar format would work better for live entertainment than a cafe format,” Alan says. “We opened the Hemlock in 2001 after we closed Radio Valencia. I was really excited about having a space like this. I was very interested in having a kind of old Wisconsin tavern feel because that’s where I grew up. It was perfect for me, finding a space that had a small venue so we didn’t have to be concerned about getting 200 people in every night, so we could book the kind of music that we wanted and to have a big enough bar to support that.”

“But basically this is a subsidized entertainment operation. The money is made at the Hemlock’s bar and the culture happens in the back room with the shows. The culture wouldn’t happen without this up here.” So go buy a beer or eight, already, and then take in one of those rarer-and-rarer raging shows. (Mirissa Neff)

EMPLOYEE-OWNED BUSINESS AWARD

MANDELA FOODS COOPERATIVE

“In high school, all I wanted was there to be a place to find fruits and vegetables,” says Mandela Foods Cooperative (1430 Seventh St., Oakl. 510-452-1133, www.mandelafoods.com) worker-owner James Berk. “I never thought I’d be the one that could provide that. It’s an interesting place to be in.”

Before the store opened, Berk’s native West Oakland was a food dessert. A dependence on convenience stores for nutrition was leading to rampant bad health in his community, so when the opportunity arose to be a part of a for-profit, organic-heavy grocery store in Mandela Marketplace, he took it. Responding to the neighborhood’s request, the shop employs and is owned by community residents. These worker-owners make all the shop’s decisions in group meetings, aiming for consensus when it comes to many essential issues.

Now, nearly three years after opening its doors, Mandela Foods Cooperative is a neighborhood staple. The majority of customers live within a radius of a few blocks and come to snap up bestselling items like orange juice, coconut water, and kale (a vegetable Berk said he had never heard of before working at the store.)

Ready-made food is also popular, from full plate meals to sandwiches that neighbors drop in to buy, despite a Subway next door. Though the shop’s focus continues to be on organic, naturally-produced foods, worker-owners see a need for a greater diversity of products: cheap staples alternating with more spendy products geared towards sustainable foodies. Business is stronger than ever right now, too — Berk says the small shop is on pace to break even this year.

So how is it banding with your neighbors to bring the rest of the block ingredients for a healthy diet? About as positive as you’d imagine it to be. “There’s a unity here that I’m not accustomed to,” says Berk. (Caitlin Donohue)

ARTHUR JACKSON DIVERSITY IN SMALL BUSINESS AWARD

CHERYL BURR, PINKIE’S BAKERY AND CITIZEN’S BAND

Cheryl Burr has no idea why her first bakery boss left her 16-year old self in charge of the pastries. “I would never have let a teenager do that at my business!” she chuckles. But really, the guy was showing prescience — Burr and business partner Chris Beerman, who originally shared space in a bakery-bento retail window in Potrero Hill, opened the doors of their Pinkie’s Bakery (1196 Folsom, SF. 415-556-4900, www.pinkiesbakerysf.com) in SoMa nearly three years ago and have been tickling sweet teeth with their skills there ever since.

“I’ve always been a super-strong personality,” Burr tells us, sitting in the sunny table area of Pinkie’s. Though the Asian American breadsmith built a respectable career in high-class kitchens around the city, there came a moment when she wanted to be able to execute her own vision. “I’ve gotten to this point in my career where I didn’t want to answer to anybody.”

So she took control of her own trajectory, renting space in a commercial kitchen, starting her own hustle. Burr supplied pies to wholesale accounts, mainly friends of friends she’d met through her years in the restaurant business. Her commercial space is part of a culinary reinvigoration of the neighborhood around Seventh Street and Folsom. Pinkie’s is a stone’s throw from Bloodhound Bar, Sightglass Coffee, Radius restaurant, Terroir wine bar and more. “There is definitely a sense of community and partnership around here,” says Burr, who will sometimes refer to the strip as “Folsoma.”

Pinkie’s is also a room away from Citizen’s Band, Beerman and Burr’s freshly-sourced diner. The same customers that come for Burr’s famous levain bread and apple butter morning buns can now also order a dinner of poutine with wild mushroom gravy and crispy pork belly right next door.

“We want to continue to refine what we’re doing here,” Burr says when asked about her future business plans. Did that young woman on her first baking job envision the success of her own bread basket? She smiles. “I’m not entirely sure what I envisioned, but it’s different.” (Caitlin Donohue)

GOLDEN SURVIVOR AWARD

PHIL’S ELECTRIC

During World War II, Phil Sidari was commissioned to make artificial limbs for disabled US veterans returning home. The shortage of finished goods during wartime also prompted Sidari to begin constructing small appliances out of spare parts. Thus, 61 years ago, Phil’s Electric (2701 Lombard, SF. 415-921-3776, www.philselectric.com) was born.

Sidari passed away at the ripe old age of 103, but his friends Vicki and Bob Evans took the reins in the 1970s when Phil decided to retire. Vicki says the store has gone through quite a few changes over the years, including a relocation 28 years ago from Fillmore Street to a quiet corner near the gates of the Presidio.

The shop is intimate, homey, and entirely a family affair. Bob and Vicki’s sons Tom and Ken help their parents run the business and provide excellent customer service to their patrons. Phil’s Electric specializes in the repair of vacuums and lamps but also sells coffee makers, blenders, vacuums, razors, and a host of other small electronic items.

Yet the rise of cheap, disposable electronics has made it difficult a business that’s founded on, well, fixing things. “In the past, almost everything got repaired, but that’s changing,” says Vicki. “For example, you can buy a Cuisinart coffeemaker that, after its warranty, there are no parts for it. So you throw it out. Whereas, say 12 years ago, we would have had a part for that and fixed it for you.”

Phil’s Electric also faces stiff competition from the Internet and larger stores. But it does have some advantages. “Internet companies are working out of a warehouse somewhere, so they don’t really have any commitment to the neighborhood or the city or the community,” Vicki says. And the unique thing about San Franciscans, according to Vicki, is our interest in supporting neighborhood businesses. “If we moved this to a suburban area, I don’t know if we’d have that many loyal customers.”

Vicki’s favorite part about the business? The human aspect and her autonomy. “You can interact with your customers and really try to be flexible and meet people’s needs.” (Mia Sullivan)

SMALL BUSINESS ADVOCATE

CALIFORNIA MUSIC AND CULTURE ASSOCIATION

Two years ago, during the climax of the police and regulatory crackdown on San Francisco nightlife that we dubbed the “War of Fun,” the California Music and Culture Association (www.cmacsf.org) was formed to advocate for all the club owners, promoters, DJs, and other creatures of the night who create our urban soundtrack and culture.

Since then, CMAC has become powerful advocate on behalf of nightlife, demonstrating an influence on Mayor Ed Lee and other city leaders and promoting an understanding at City Hall of the important role played by nightlife, which a recent Controller’s Office report found accounts for $4.2 billion in annual economic activity.

“As the recent Controller’s report demonstrated, the small businesses that make up the nightlife economy have a huge impact on the overall economy, and we’re happy the city is starting to realize this,” Alix Rosenthal, co-chair of the CMAC board, told us.

Now, with the help of newly hired Executive Director Laura Hahn, CMAC hopes to move from playing defense against crackdowns and punitive legislation to playing offense by expanding its membership and developing a proactive agenda that will help nightlife and its purveyors flourish.

“Now that we don’t have our back against the wall, we’re trying to expand,” Hahn told us. “We want to bring it to even smaller business owners like individual DJs, promoters, and individual musicians — the backbone of nightlife in San Francisco.”

But not matter what new realms CMAC gets into, small business advocacy will always be at the core of its mission. As Hahn said, “We want to focus on standing up for the little guys who don’t have people fighting for them in City Hall.” CMAC will host the 2012 San Francisco Nightlife Awards, Thursday, May 31 at Mezzanine, doing even more to bring local nightlife to the fore. (Steve Jones)

GOOD NEIGHBOR

SHANNON AMITIN, FARM:TABLE

“People always ask me if I ever consider expanding,” Shannon Amitin, owner of farm:table (754 Post, SF. 415-292-7089, www.farmtablesf.com) says over the phone, although I swear I can hear his eyes twinkling. “I usually laugh and say, ‘Yes, but only if I can find a much smaller space.'”

The joke — or rather the good fortune — here is that Amitin’s bustling Tenderloin cafe and restaurant squeaks just shy of 265 square feet, with a large communal table for sharing some of the best gourmet dishes in the area. Those dishes are delectably evanescent: the three-year-old resto’s changing daily menu is Tweeted each morning for your rising and shining appetite. Featured as I write this: polenta cake + yukon potato hash + soft egg, asiago + rooftop herb frittata.

“Rooftop”? Yep, farm:table harvests most of its herbs and many greens from its roof, adding a bit of green to the neighborhood. Coming soon, another bit of green in the form of a farm:table parklet, whose funding was secured via, what else, Kickstarter. Farm:table itself has become a community hub for nightlife characters, nonprofit advocates, and office workers.

And yes, there is delicious coffee. Amitin cut his teeth dripping cups of Blue Bottle behind the original’s counter, but became disillusioned when Blue Bottle tipped from a friendly experiment into a chain-aspirational juggernaut. “I saw what I didn’t want to do,” he says. “That’s what led me to something small and personal. I have really good people working for me, in a vibrant area, with a crowd that’s open to new flavors. I want to keep that magic.” (Marke B.)

READERS’ CHOICE

PINK BUNNY

It’s been open less than a year, yet Marina luxury erotic goods boutique Pink Bunny (1772 Union, SF. 415-441-7399, www.pinkbunny.biz) has hopped into our readers’ hearts — and possibly other parts as well. Founder and CEO Serene Martinez showcases quality adult toys from the likes of Jimmyjane and gorgeous lingerie in a lovely, well-curated space. Union Street, get kinky!

 

Sonic attack on the poor

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Sonic attack on the poor

news@sfbg.com

It was 11pm on Thursday, May 3, and the ballet was just letting out. Affluently dressed dance enthusiasts streamed arm in arm down Grove street towards the Civic Center BART station chatting about the evening performance. That night’s show of Don Quixote at War Memorial and Performing Arts Center was likely excellent judging by the theatergoers’ exuberance.

As they passed by the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, a half-dozen homeless people seated along the route begged the procession for change. Across the street and a block down Grove, a few homeless individuals had bedded down for the night in front of the Main Library.

It is these encounters, normal to urban life, that are at the center of a controversial strategy by Another Planet Entertainment, which leases the auditorium from the city, to drive the homeless away. They hope that by blasting a late night sampling of industrial noise through the venue’s sound system between the hours of 11pm and 7am, making sleep nearly impossible, that the homeless will be discouraged from congregating there.

A women selling the Street Sheet newspaper on the corner sums up the social tension that invoked the strategy. “They’re doing it to keep the homeless from sleeping there. All these people don’t want to see the homeless when they come through here,” she said, gesturing to the now thin stream from the ballet.

She had heard the noise over the past few nights and described it as deafening. “The first time I heard it I thought the building was under construction, then I thought a motorcycle gang was coming through. It is so bad it makes the windows of the building shake.”

Another Planet had no comment on the racket and would not say if the strategy would continue. But in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, company founder Gregg Perloff said the venue has had “an enormous amount of complaints” from their patrons about the homeless.

Late at night, police are powerless to respond to such complaints. The city’s carefully crafted sit-lie ordinance, which bars people from assuming either of those postures on city sidewalks during the day, is lifted between the hours of 11pm and 7am to satisfy constitutional concerns that have overturned similar ordinances in other cities.

“This it the first time I’ve heard of a strategy like this used against the homeless,” Bob Offer-Westort, civil rights organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness, said of the noise. “It is really problematic for a business to say that people on public property not breaking the law are a public nuance. It is a intrusion of a private company on public space.”

Standing in front of the building late on a foggy night, it’s easy to see why the homeless would gravitate to here. The building’s huge awning, covering much of the broad sidewalk, must be the easiest place to stay dry outdoors for many blocks. And since the demolition of the city’s old central bus terminal last year, it is perhaps the largest dry public space in the city’s core.

But is this sonic attack even legal? That’s a question that the Mayor’s Office and the San Francisco Police Department, neither of which answered our repeated inquiries, don’t seem to want to address.

San Francisco’s noise ordinance is a weighty document. Most cities suffice with a paragraph or two to regulate noise, while San Francisco’s ordinance runs nine pages. Noise, or rather the relative lack of it, seems of great importance to the city. There is even a city committee on noise.

The reason for the seriousness the city gives the issue of controlling excess noise is expressed in the very first paragraph of the noise ordinance: “Persistent exposure to elevated levels of community noise is responsible for public health problems including, but not limited to: compromised speech, persistent annoyance, sleep disturbance, physiological and psychological stress, heart disease, high blood pressure, colitis, ulcers, depression, and feelings of helplessness.”

Many of the cities homeless already suffer acutely from conditions on this list. Asked how an already vulnerable population could be affected by random industrial noise known to (and in this case intended to) cause agitation, Offer-Westort said, “It’s crazy to try to create these conditions, they are quite literally trying to create a civil disturbance, and not on their own property, but in a public space.”

With the adverse effects of noise pollution well-outlined, the ordinance goes on to state, “In order to protect public health, it is hereby declared to be the policy of San Francisco to prohibit unwanted, excessive, and avoidable noise.”

The ordinance pays particularly attention to licensed entertainment venues like the Bill Graham auditorium: “No noise or music associated with a licensed Place of Entertainment shall exceed the low frequency ambient noise level defined in Section 2901(f) by more than 8 dBC.”

As a matter of comparison the difference between a whisper and a quiet conversation is roughly an eight decibel increase, a relatively narrow margin. It seems reasonable that if you’re standing outside a venue, and the music coming from inside sounds louder than the person talking next to you, the city’s noise ordinance has been exceeded.

So motorcycles, saws, and other industrial sounds that were described at the auditorium late at night would range around 100 decibels without being amplified. Amplify it enough to shake the window in the building, one can assume it’s louder than a power tool, louder by far than the noise ordinance permits.

Everyone who has ever held a loud late night event in the city know the consequences of breaking the noise ordinance. A knock on the door by the SFPD that comes with a ticket and the end of your gathering. Do it again in a year and the fines doubles.

The strategy at the auditorium seems to be having some effect, but where the homeless will be shuffled off to is anybody’s guess. The reality of the homelessness crisis is there is no place for the homeless to simply move off too. With their numbers in the thousands, only bold political action on behalf of the city’s leadership can solve the problem.

“The root of the problem is that people can’t afford rent. Everyone who rents in San Francisco knows that it is way too expensive to live in this city,” says Offer-Westort. “We stopped creating public housing. Housing has become a commodity, an investment rather then a home, and that has driven up prices.”

Passing back through the area later at night, the building was quiet for the moment. A tow truck was loading a car out front with a beeping alarm, a motorcycle roars by, a boombox is playing across Civic Center Plaza, a man is yelling around the corner only to be drown out by a broken wheeled shopping cart clanking by. If this is the normal late night quiet of the streets, it’s a wonder the homeless get a moments sleep at all. But the building itself remains quiet right now.

A lone homeless man has bedded down in front but has not yet fallen asleep. Young and dreadlocked, he tells me that he has been in town only two days and is unaware of the controversial blasts of noise.

“God I hope they don’t do that,” he said from his sleeping bag. “It’s supposed to rain tonight. Why would they do that? As long as you are up before sunrise and move on, who are you bothering?”

And here in front of the auditorium in the middle of the night, with the concert patrons at home getting a comfortable night’s sleep, the question seemed valid. “It’s mean spirited. I think that we as society agree noise should be maintained at a reasonable level to not bother your neighbors,” said Offer-Westort. “The fact that their neighbors are homeless doesn’t mean they are not part of society.”

Undercover Sabbath

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Undercover Sabbath

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC It’s pouring outside and the roads are slick with rain. In a warm red room bordered by the soundproof walls of Faultline Studios, a musician stands at a microphone, arching his back and throat singing for a background track to be incorporated in an exhaustive 16-minute cover of “Electric Funeral” off Black Sabbath’s magnum opus, Paranoid (1970).

This weekend at the Independent, that musician — bass clarinetist and composer Cornelius Boots — will perform the song live with his band Sabbaticus Rex & the Axe-Wielders of Chaos, just once, then the group will be shooed off the stage so another act can perform the next track on the album.

This is “Black Sabbath’s Paranoid,” co-produced by Faultline Studios and UnderCover Presents, and co-announced by KALX. There will be eight local bands containing a total of 50 musicians, correspondingly heavy visuals, heavy metal sandwiches, and one classic, influential heavy metal album that battled the Vietnam War and the status quo with doomy despair and Ozzy’s bottomless pit screams.

The covers are almost shockingly disparate, especially taken one after the other on the preview sampler — the complete album, recorded and mixed at Faultline, will be included in the $20 door price of the show. On it, brassy horns explode in the intro to Extra Action Marching Band’s “War Pigs,” buzzy synth and otherworldly bleeps and pings tangle in Uriah Duffy’s “Paranoid” tribute, Charming Hostess plunks out those memorable opening notes of “Iron Man” on airy wood blocks, and Surplus 1980 shreds through a noisy “Rat Salad.”

“We really wanted a lineup that reflected the Bay Area music community as a whole, and didn’t cater to just one dynamic” says organizer Lyz Luke, of UnderCover Presents.

Now in its fourth go around at the one album-one show concept, UnderCover has its system down. During its 2010 beginning — The Velvet Underground and Nico at Coda (now Brick and Mortar) — the live show was recorded on the spot then sold online after it was mixed. For two of the four album cover shows — the Pixies’ Doolittle and now Paranoid — the songs have been prerecorded at Faultline with engineer-producer Yosh!, who is now an official co-organizer of the events.

Yosh!, who also owns Faultline, has spent countless hours recording and mixing these tracks so they’d available in time for the show. He estimates 200 hours over 30 days dedicated to the patchwork remaking of Paranoid. Luke has been busily organizing every minor detail, down to pacing rapid set changes between songs (there’ll be a backline) and ushering bands to the studio the month before.

“Yosh! and I donate a lot of our time,” says Luke, sitting on a couch behind Yosh!’s mixing board. She’s quick to point out the sacrifices of the artists and the venues as well. “I think we’re all trying to break even on this project. It’s more about the spirit of it, and the doors it opens afterwords.” Along with UnderCover and managing local band DRMS, Luke just signed on as director of performance programming at the Red Poppy Arthouse.

In the recording room — having spent the day doing textured throat singing and playing the shakuhachi flute with a trio for more tracks on “Electric Funeral” — Boots says he was as surprised as anyone that he’s been an ongoing participant in this project.

“I don’t like wasting my time these days, playing gigs — if I’m only going to make $20 over four rehearsals and one show and pay for tolls and parking, that’s like, .20 cents an hour or something,” he says. “But after I did the first one, I was like wow, this really has a feeling of an intensive, unified, collaborative, artistic event.”

Paranoid will be his third UnderCover event, and this time he signed on as guest music director — hell, he’s even the one who chose the album, after spending a year mostly listening to only Black Sabbath. For his epic, 16-minute cover, he augmented one of his regular bands Sabbaticus Rex (the other being Edmund Welles), to include the aforementioned shakuhachi flute trio, and gongs. He slowed down the tempo, adding to the doom of the song about nuclear destruction and drug escapism, and had Gene Jun of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum predecessor Idiot Flesh sing in a higher range and build to a thrashing guitar solo. At Faultline, Jun sits behind Yosh!, forever tinkering with an electric, wailing guitar line.

As guest music director, Boots was also in the studio for most of the other recordings; he played clarinet on psychedelic “Planet Caravan” and did the arrangement for Extra Action Marching Band’s “War Pigs” on brass. That song, the rather monumental single that opens the album and hence, the show, has some added bells and whistles. In recording, it was one of the most difficult to capture. “Lots of player and lots of layers,” says Yosh!, “after the first full day of recording I wasn’t sure it was going to work. Then suddenly…it held together and sounded like the group I knew from their shows. It was sort of like the difference between two people clapping and a full room of applause.”

It includes drums, bells, trumpets, trombones, tuba, vocals, and bull horn, along with marching cymbals for “that iconic hi hat pattern.” The modified bull horn comes into play when Mateo uses it to read transcripts of the Collateral Murder Wikileaks video. Coincidentally, Bradley Manning got a hearing the week they finished the song. “For me, it really made the whole project hit home,” Yosh! says. “These songs were written 30 years ago and are still relevant today.” 

BLACK SABBATH’S PARANOID

Sat/19, 9pm, $20

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

Music Listings May 16-22, 2012

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

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

WEDNESDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Big Tree, Kapowski, Bells Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Blutengel, Miss Construction, DJ Unit 77 Elbo Room. 9pm, $25.

Charlie vs. Rome Balestrieri Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9:30pm, free.

Creed, Eve to Adam, Like a Storm Warfield. 8pm, $45-$72.

Great Lake Swimmers, Cold Specks Independent. 8pm, $15.

Illness, Street Score El Rio. 9pm, $5.

MoeTar, Cash Pony, Arms and Legs Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Pigeon John, Tanya Morgan, Playdough, Cookbook 330 Ritch. 9pm.

Pro Blues Jam with Keith Crossan Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Sad Bastard Book Club, Somnolence, Froadz Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Soul Train Revival feat. Ziek McCarter Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5-$10.

Thee Oh Sees, Mallard, Burnt Ones, Warm Soda Brick and Mortar. 9pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Peter Asher Rrazz Room. 8pm, $40-$45.

Cat’s Corner with Nathan Dias Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Cosmo AlleyCats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7-10pm.

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

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

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

DANCE CLUBS

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

Coo-Yah! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. DJs Daneekah and Green B spin reggae and dancehall with weekly guests.

DJ Audio1 Ruby Skye. 9pm, $15.

KUSF-in-Exile DJ Night Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF; www.savekusf.com. 5:30-9:30pm.

Mary Go Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 10pm, $5. Drag with Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro, and Ginger Snap.

Megatallica Fiddler’s Green, 1333 Columbus, SF; www.megatallica.com. 7pm, free. Heavy metal hangout.

Obey the Kitty: Justin Milla Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, free with guestlist before 11pm, $10.

THURSDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Rome Balestrieri vs. Charlie Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9:30pm, free.

Black Elk, Pins of Light, Hell Ship Thee Parkside. 9:03pm, $8.

Bodeans, Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers Independent. 8pm, $25.

Ane Brune, Gemma Ray Great American Music Hall. 8:30pm, $14-$16.

Destructo Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $13. With Realboy, DJ Aaron Axelsen.

Gunshy Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Dennis Jones Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Stefanie Keys, Reckless in Vegas, Highway Robbers Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $14.

Naytronix, Yalls, Mwahaha Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Pinker Tones Brick and Mortar. 9pm, $7-$10.

Suckers, Young Man, Vanaprasta Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Emily Wells, Portland Cello Project Swedish American Hall. 8pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Peter Asher Rrazz Room. 8pm, $40-$45.

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

Billy Manzik Revolution Cafe, 3248 22 St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm.

Ned Boynton Trio Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 7-10pm.

Tia Fuller Quartet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $15-$35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Back 40 Band Atlas Cafe, 3049 20th St, SF; www.atlascafe.net. 8-10pm, free.

Twang! Honky Tonk Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm. Live country music, dancing, and giveaways.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8-$10. Tropicália, electro, and funk with Wunmi and Slow Commotion, Nappy Riddem, and DJ/host Pleasuremaker.

Arcade Lookout. 9pm, free. Indie dance party.

Base: M.A.N.D.Y Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, free with guestlist before 11pm, $10. Philipp Jung DJ set.

Get Low Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. Jerry Nice and Ant-1 spin Hip-Hop, 80’s and Soul with weekly guests.

Thursdays at the Cat Club Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with DJ’s Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests.

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

FRIDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Avengers, Erase Errata, Carletta Sue Kay Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Body & Soul Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Break Science, Paul Basic, Supervision Yoshi’s Lounge. 10:30pm, $20.

Charlie, Rome Balestrieri, Jason Marion Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

Dead After School 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Dead Winter Carpenters, TV Mike & the Scarecrowes, Skinny String Band Slim’s. 9pm, $18-$16.

Lee Fields & the Expressions, Park Brick and Mortar. 9pm, $20-$25.

High Castle, CCR Headcleaner, White Suns Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Lisa Hilton Biscuits and Blues Union Room. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Holdup, Wooster, Young Science Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $15-$18.

Love Axe 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 10pm.

Karen Lovely Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Milo Greene, DRMS, Papa Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10-$12.

Petty Theft Red Devil Lounge. 9pm, $12.

Plants and Animals, Cannons and Clouds, Owl Paws Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Sleepy Sun, DJ Britt Govea Independent. 9pm, $15.

Social: The Re-Mixtape Live, Mars Today, Skins and Needles Elbo Room. 10pm, $10.

Tainted Love Bimbo’s. 9pm, $23.

Trevor Childs Band, Bye Bye Blackbirds Make Out Room. 7:30pm, $8.

UK World Tour 2012: Eddie Jacobson, John Wetton, Terry Bozzio Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $65-$99.

Weird Church, Karte Kinski, Waxy Tombs Brainwash Cafe. 8pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Peter Asher Rrazz Room. 9pm, $40-$45.

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

Brad Mehldau Trio Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $40-$65.

Terry Disely Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 5:30-8:30pm, free.

Emily Anne Revolution Cafe, 3248 22 St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Bonanza Plough and Stars. 9:30pm, $6-$10. With Snap Jackson, Knock on Wood Players, Front Country.

Taste Fridays 650 Indiana, SF; www.tastefridays.com. 8pm, $18. Salsa and bachata dance lessons, live music.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Public Works. 9pm, free before 10pm, $5 after.

A-Trak Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $20.

Chase Public Works Loft. 9pm, $5 with RSVP. Deep house, cosmic disco, balaeric vibez with Suzanne Kraft, SFV Acid, Ash Williamsn, and Avalon Emerson.

Hella Tight Amnesia. 10pm, $5.

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

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-$4. DJs Primo and Badass Daniel B spin nasty oldies.

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

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

Pledge: Fraternal Lookout. 9pm, $3-$13. Benefiting LGBT and nonprofit organizations. Bottomless kegger cups and paddling booth with DJ Christopher B and DJ Brian Maier.

SATURDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ambience, Case in Theory, Dangermaker Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Brothers Comatose, Sioux City Kid, Tiny Television Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Cool Ghouls, That Ghost, Poor Sons Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Giant Squid, Black Queen, Wild Hunt El Rio. 10pm, $8.

Go Van Gough Revolution Cafe, 3248 22 St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm.

Greg Lake Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $40-$60.

John Lee Hooker Jr. Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Melted Toys, Memories, Permanent Collection, Creepers Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5.

Ashley Mendez 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Rottoncore, Angstroms Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Seeking Empire, Beta State, New Diplomat, Bruises Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Slow Motion Cowboys Riptide, 3639 Taraval, SF; www.riptidesf.com. 10 and 11:15pm, free.

Soft White Sixties, Mahgeetah, Harriet Brick and Mortar. 9pm, $9-$12.

Tainted Love Bimbo’s. 9pm, $23.

Tall Shadows Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

“Third Annual Haight Street Fair Battle of the Bands Finals” Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; (415) 920-9577. 9:30pm, $7-$10.

This Charming Band, For the Masses, Spellbound Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Todd, Rome Balestrieri, Charlie Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

“Undercover Presents: Black Sabbath’s Paranoid” Independent. 9Pm, $20.

John West Yoshi’s SF. 10pm, $35.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Peter Asher Rrazz Room. 9pm, $40-$45.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brass Farthing Plough and Stars. 9pm, $7.

Kress Cole and Kate Kilbane Exit Cafe, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847. 8:30pm, free.

Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod Atlas Cafe, 3049 20th St, SF; www.atlascafe.net. 4-6pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF: Hubba Hubba Revue DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-$20. With Burlesque circus show, Tripp vs. Mykill, indie electro with Six & Candy.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 9pm, $2-$4. Booty shaking hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Deetron Public Works. 9pm, $10.

Dubstep Producer Showcase Club Six, 60 Sixth St, SF; www.clubsix1.com. 10pm, $5.

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

OK Hole Amnesia. 9pm.

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

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

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

Smiths Night SF Rock-It Room. 9pm, free. Revel in 80s music from the Smiths, Joy Division, New Order, and more.

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

SUNDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blind Shake, Pop Atak Knockout. 4pm, $7.

Debbie Boone: Reflections of Rosemary Yoshi’s SF. 7pm, $35; 9pm, $25.

Dimesland, Lord Dying, War Child Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $7.

Domestic Electric, Sick Kids, Le Panique Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Flight to Mars, Vendetta Red, Hydrophonic Independent. 8pm, $20.

HowellDevine Revolution Cafe, 3248 22 St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm.

Eric Hutchinson, Graffiti6 Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

David Jacobs-Strain, Brian Laidlow Brick and Mortar. 8pm, $9-$12.

Junior Boogie Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5.

Narrows, Retox, Early Graves Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Pansy Division, Swann Danger Cafe Du Nord. 8:30pm, $12.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

“West Coast Blues for a Cure” Yoshi’s SF. Noon-5pm, $40. With Irma Thomas, Rick Estrin & the Night Cats, and more.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Peter Asher Rrazz Room. 7pm, $40-$45.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

DaMaDa Red Poppy Arthouse. 8pm.

Twang Sunday Thee Parkside. 4pm, free. With Better Haves, Patsycords.

DANCE CLUBS

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludichris, and guest DJ Tomas.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2. Raise money for LGBT sports teams while enjoying DJs and drink specials.

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

Sweater Funk Knockout. 10pm, free.

MONDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Damir Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Valerie Orth Osteria, 3277 Sacramento, SF; www.osteriasf.com.7pm, free.

Riverboat Gamblers, Biters, Flexx Bronco Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Sparta, Ki:Theory Independent. 8pm, $20.

Stomacher, Soonest, Anadel Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

23 Shades, Dr. Luna Brick and Mortar. 8pm, $5-$7.

Joe Louis Walker Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bossa Nova Tunnel Top, 601 Bush, SF; (415) 722-6620. 8-11:30pm, free. Live acoustic Bossa Nova.

Mads Tolling Quartet: Tribute to Jean-Luc Ponty Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $14.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Amnesia. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

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

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop from 1960s-early ’90s with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blackburner, King Loses Crown, DJ Ryury Elbo Room. 9pm, free.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Darcys, Sporting Life Independent. 8pm, $22.

Dum Dum Girls, Tamaryn, Young Prisms Slim’s. 8pm, $17.

Fear Factory, Shadows Fall, Devastated, Browning, Legacy of Disorder Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $27.

Hey Marseilles, Lemolo, Big Tree Brick and Mortar. 9pm, $10-$12.

Highway Patrol, Major Deegan, Anaura Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8-$10.

John Lawton Trio Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Margot & the Nuclear So & So’s, Dinosaur Feathers, Whispertown Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

Moonchild, Luminaer 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Vanity Theft, Enemies, Jim Hanft Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

VanMarter Project Red Devil Lounge. 7pm, $2.

Joe Louis Walker Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Gaucho Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 7-10pm, free.

Moving Company Revolution Cafe, 3248 22 St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

F*ck Yeah Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5. Secret Slayers, Slayers Club, live electronica and fusion.

Post-Dubstep Tuesdays Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521.10pm, free. DJs Dnae Beats, Epcot, Footwerks spin UK Funky, Bass Music.

Study Hall John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. Hip-hop, dancehall, and Bay slaps with DJ Left Lane.

Film Listings May 16-22, 2012

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, and Lynn Rapoport. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock at www.sfbg.com. Complete film listings also posted at www.sfbg.com.

OPENING

Battleship During idle moments before the action revs up, the aliens start menacing, and the deadly razor balls-cum-air mines start rampaging, wrap your noggin around these random brainwaves: can Taylor Kitsch be any better named? Is it possible for Alexander Skarsgård’s glassy eyes to get any deader? Where are all the Hawaiians, Asians, and people of color in this white-bread vision of Hawaii? All matters to puzzle over in this toy franchise hopeful directed by ex-Chicago Hope regular Peter Berg. The 2007 Transformers is the best this gung-ho hybrid of up-with-the-military “Army of One” commercial and alien invasion flick — with plenty of blow-’em-up-real-good explosions and a dab of J-monster movies, but the writing never quite rises to the occasion. Here, an international group of navy folk and their ships are convening in Hawaii for playful wargames, though the exercises turn somewhat more serious when alien vessels splash down in the middle of the fun —and some mild, no-investment family drama: Alex (Kitsch) is the screw-up younger brother of stony-faced naval man Stone (Skarsgård) and courting the daughter (Brooklyn Decker) of the fleet commander (Liam Neesom), who seems to hate his guts. The ultimate battle with space invaders, however, promises to turn that all around, as Alex is forced to sailor up and lead crew mates like Rihanna and work with former opponents like Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano). Here, at least, in the shadow of Pearl Harbor, U.S. and Japanese naval dudes can heal the wounds of World War II and bond in battle against the last unimpeachable interstellar villains who couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you say “I sunk your battleship.” But Berg’s muddled direction doesn’t help when it comes to piecing out the chronology and balancing assorted perspectives in this latest effort to equate militarism with the games big and little kids play. (2:11) (Chun)

Bernie See “Small-Town Confidential.” (1:39) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

The Dictator As expected, The Dictator is, yet again, Sacha Baron Cohen doing his bumbling-foreigner shtick. Said character (here, a ruthless, spoiled North African dictator) travels to America and learns a heaping teaspoon of valuable lessons, which are then flung upon the audience — an audience which, by film’s end, has spent 80 minutes squealing at a no-holds-barred mix of disgusting gags, tasteless jokes, and schadenfreude. If you can’t forgive Cohen for carbon-copying his Borat (2006) formula, at least you can muster admiration for his ability to be an equal-opportunity offender (dinged: Arabs, Jews, African Americans, white Americans, women of all ethnicities, and green activists) — and for that last-act zinger of a speech. If The Dictator doesn’t quite reach Borat‘s hilarious heights, it’s still proudly repulsive, smart in spite of itself, and guaranteed to get a rise out of anyone who watches it. (1:23) Balboa, Presidio. (Eddy)

Elles Graphic sex scenes distinguish this otherwise fairly unremarkable tale of Anne (Juliette Binoche), a magazine writer whose blah life (sure, she has a luxurious apartment, but it’s populated by a distant husband, a sullen teenager, and a younger son who’d rather interface with technology than humans) becomes even more unbearable when she begins a new assignment: an article on college students who moonlight as call girls. The always-reliable Binoche brings depth to her role as a bored woman who finds herself unexpectedly titillated by her close brush with dirty thrills, but her eventual rebellion is anti-climactic after all that naughty build-up. Elles does plenty to earn its NC-17 rating, but filmmaker Malgoska Szumowska could’ve titled it Ennui instead. (1:36) Bridge, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Indie Game: The Movie Much like the film business, the video-game biz is mostly controlled by a few huge companies with thousands of employees, hell-bent on ensnaring as many of the billions of dollars spent on games annually as possible. And then, as James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot’s documentary explores,

there are the little guys, who are “not trying to be professional” or produce glossy content for the masses. Instead, these individuals (or pairs) take advantage of the miracle of digital distribution to follow their own visions and create their own games. The best-case scenarios — illustrated by San Francisco indie developer Jonathan Blow and his hugely successful Braid — can reap enormous creative and financial rewards, but getting there — as the struggles facing the creators of Super Meat Boy and Fez plainly attest — can be a mentally and physically draining process, filled with frustration and self-doubt, exacerbated by the taunts of haters online. A thoughtful, artfully-shot peek at one tiny corner of a behemoth industry, Indie Game also offers a surprisingly tense, raw look at some very bright minds struggling to triumph on their own terms. (1:36) Roxie. (Eddy)

Mansome This study of contemporary male grooming — from ironic mustaches to competitive “beardbuilding” to the fine art of the hairpiece — is yet another lighthearted entry from prolific doc-factory Morgan Spurlock (the subject matter being particularly appropriate, given his own trademark ‘stache). With interstitials by co-producers Will Arnett and Jason Bateman — getting pedicures and facials while exchanging barbs, like the TV brothers they are — and input from an array of famous faces (Zach Galifianakis, Paul Rudd, the Old Spice Guy, Judd Apatow, ZZ Top), Mansome is actually most interesting when it focuses on less boldfaced names — like the deadly-serious “beardsman” whose flowing red locks have won him international titles, and the old-school toupee expert who matter-of-factly erases baldness for grateful clients. One quibble: though John Waters appears to discuss his own trademark facial hair, and there’s a Freddy Mercury clip, Mansome remains stubbornly focused on straight dudes — though it does dig up the only man in the galaxy still using the term “metrosexual.” (1:24) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Payback Jumping off Margaret Atwood’s Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, her 2008 meditation on borrowing and lending and the way those acts reverberate through culture, documentarian Jennifer Baichwal finds a thought-provoking, graceful, seemingly free-form way into the writer’s ideas. The film dips into the dynamics between a handful of unlikely debtors and creditors scattered around the globe: two families in Northern Albania tied by a blood feud over disputed land and dishonor; organizing migrant workers and their employers in Florida; and the BP oil spill and an unsuspecting environment. Baichwal, like Atwood, uncovers few easy answers — especially when it comes to handling disasters on the scale of the BP spill — all the while treating her material with elegantly considered imagery and handling her subjects with a cool intelligence. That approach might leave some yearning for an uptick in emotional connection, or simply some connect-the-dots storytelling and, dare we say, drama. Meanwhile fans of the director’s Manufactured Landscapes (2006) will see Payback as its writerly relation, a tone poem about the crimes we’ve manufactured and muddled. (1:26) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Chun)

What to Expect When You’re Expecting The mommy guidebook hits the big screen, with an all-star cast including Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz. (1:50) Presidio, Shattuck.

Where Do We Go Now? With very real, deadly sectarian conflict on their doorstep, a group of Lebanese village women are making it up as they go along in this absurdist, ultimately inspiring dramedy with a dash of musical. Once sheltered by its isolation and the cheek-to-jowl intimacy of its denizens, the uneasy peace between Muslims and Christians in this small town threatens to shatter when the outside world begins to filter in, first through town-square TV broadcasts then tit-for-tat jabs that appear ready to escalate into violence. So the village’s women conspire to preserve harmony any way they can, even if that means importing a motley cadre of Ukrainian “exotic” dancers. What results is a post debauchery climax that almost one-ups 2009’s The Hangover — and a film that injects ground-level merriment and humanity into the headlines, thanks to director, co-writer, and star Nadine Labaki (2007’s Caramel), who has a gimlet eye and a generous spirit. (1:40) Embarcadero. (Chun)

ONGOING

The Artist With the charisma-oozing agility of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way past opponents and the supreme confidence of Rudolph Valentino leaning, mid-swoon, into a maiden, French director-writer Michel Hazanavicius hits a sweet spot, or beauty mark of sorts, with his radiant new film The Artist. In a feat worthy of Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Hazanavicius juggles a marvelously layered love story between a man and a woman, tensions between the silents and the talkies, and a movie buff’s appreciation of the power of film — embodied in particular by early Hollywood’s union of European artistry and American commerce. Dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who channels Fairbanks, Flynn, and William Powell — and won this year’s Cannes best actor prize) is at the height of his career, adorable Jack Russell by his side, until the talkies threaten to relegate him to yesterday’s news. The talent nurtured in the thick of the studio system yearns for real power, telling the newspapers, “I’m not a puppet anymore — I’m an artist,” and finances and directs his own melodrama, while his youthful protégé Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) becomes a yakky flapper age’s new It Girl. Both a crowd-pleasing entertainment and a loving précis on early film history, The Artist never checks its brains at the door, remaining self-aware of its own conceit and its forebears, yet unashamed to touch the audience, without an ounce of cynicism. (1:40) Metreon. (Chun)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (1:42) Albany, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

Bully Anyone who’s ever been a kid on the wrong side of a bully — or was sensitive and observant enough not to avert his or her eyes — will be puzzling over the MPAA’s R rating of this doc, for profanity. It’s absurd when the gory violence on network and basic cable TV stops just short of cutting characters’ faces off, as one blurred-out bus bully threatens to do to the sweet, hapless Alex, dubbed “Fish Face” by the kids who ostracize him and make his life hell on the bus. It’s a jungle out there, as we all know — but it’s that real, visceral footage of the verbal (and physical) abuse bullied children deal with daily that brings it all home. Filmmaker Lee Hirsch goes above and beyond in trying to capture all dimensions of his subject: the terrorized bullied, the ineffectual school administrators, the desperate parents. There’s Kelby, the gay girl who was forced off her beloved basketball team after she came out, and Ja’Maya, who took drastic measures to fend off her tormenters — as well as the specters of those who turned to suicide as a way out. Hirsch is clearly more of an activist than a fly on the wall: he steps in at one point to help and obviously makes an uplifting effort to focus on what we can do to battle bullying. Nevertheless, at the risk of coming off like the Iowa assistant principal who’s catching criticism for telling one victim that he was just as bad as the bully that he refused to shake hands with, one feels compelled to note one prominent component that’s missing here: the bullies themselves, their stories, and the reasons why they’re so cruel — admittedly a daunting, possibly libelous task. (1:35) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Cabin in the Woods If the name “Joss Whedon” doesn’t provide all the reason you need to bum-rush The Cabin in the Woods (Whedon produced and co-wrote, with director and frequent collaborator Drew Goddard), well, there’s not much more that can be revealed without ruining the entire movie. In a very, very small nutshell, it’s about a group of college kids (including Chris “Thor” Hemsworth) whose weekend jaunt to a rural cabin goes horribly awry, as such weekend jaunts tend to do in horror movies (the Texas Chainsaw and Evil Dead movies are heavily referenced). But this is no ordinary nightmare — its peculiarities are cleverly, carefully revealed, and the movie’s inside-out takedown of scary movies produces some very unexpected (and delightfully blood-gushing) twists and turns. Plus: the always-awesome Richard Jenkins, and in-jokes galore for genre fans. (1:35) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Chimpanzee (2:00) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Dark Shadows Conceptually, there’s nothing wrong with attempting to turn a now semi-obscure supernaturally themed soap opera with a five-year run in the late 1960s and early ’70s into a feature film. Particularly if the film brings together the sweetly creepy triumvirate of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Helena Bonham Carter and emerges during an ongoing moment for vampires, werewolves, and other things that go hump in the night. Depp plays long-enduring vampire Barnabas Collins, the undead scion of a once-powerful 18th-century New England family that by the 1970s — the groovy decade in which the bulk of the story is set — has suffered a shabby deterioration. Barnabas forms a pact with present-day Collins matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) to raise the household — currently comprising her disaffected daughter, Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz), her derelict brother, Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), his mournful young son, David (Gulliver McGrath), David’s live-in lush of a psychiatrist, Dr. Hoffman (Carter), and the family’s overtaxed manservant, Willie (Jackie Earle Haley) — to its former stature, while taking down a lunatic, love-struck, and rather vindictive witch named Angelique (Eva Green). The latter, a victim of unrequited love, is the cause of all Barnabas’s woes and, by extension, the entire clan’s, but Angelique can only be blamed for so much. Beyond her hocus-pocus jurisdiction is the film’s manic pileup of plot twists, tonal shifts, and campy scenery-chewing by Depp, a startling onslaught that no lava lamp joke, no pallid reaction shot, no room-demolishing act of paranormal carnality set to Barry White, and no cameo by Alice Cooper can temper. (2:00) California, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Darling Companion When the carelessness of self-absorbed surgeon Joseph (Kevin Kline) results in the stray dog adopted by Beth (Diane Keaton) going missing during a forest walk, that event somehow brings all the fissures in their long marriage to a crisis point. Big Chill (1983) director Lawrence Kasdan’s first feature in a decade hews back to the more intimate, character-based focus of his best films. But this dramedy is too often shrilly pitched and overly glossy (it seems to take place in a Utah vacation-themed L.L. Bean catalog), with numerous talented actors — including Richard Jenkins, Dianne Wiest, Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, and Sam Shepard — playing superficially etched characters that merely add to the clutter. Most cringe-inducing among them is Ayelet Zurer’s Carmen, a woman of Roma extraction who apparently has a crystal ball in her psychic head and actually speaks lines like “My people have a saying….” (1:43) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

First Position Bess Kargman’s documentary follows a handful of exceptional young ballet dancers, ranging in age from 10 to 17, over the course of a year as they prepare for the Youth America Grand Prix, the world’s largest ballet scholarship competition. Those who make it from the semifinals (in which some 5,000 dancers aged 9 to 19 perform in 15 cities around the world) to the finals (which bring some 300 contestants to New York City) compete for scholarships to prestigious ballet schools, dance-company contracts, and general notice by both the judges and the company directors in the audience. The film’s subjects come from varied backgrounds — 16-year-old Joan Sebastian lives and studies in NYC, far from his family in Colombia; 14-year-old Michaela was born in civil war-torn Sierra Leone and adopted from an orphanage by an American couple in Philadelphia; 11-year-old Aran, an American, lives in Italy with his mother while his father serves in Kuwait. The common threads in their stories are the daily sacrifices made by them as well as their families, whose energies and other resources are largely poured into these children’s single-minded pursuit. We get a vague sense of the difficult world they are driving themselves, in nearly every waking hour, to enter. But the film largely keeps its focus on the challenges of preparing for the competition, offering us many magnificent shots of the dancers pushing their bodies to mesmerizing physical extremes both on- and offstage. (1:34) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)

The Five-Year Engagement In 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, viewers were treated to the startling, tragicomic sight of Jason Segel’s naked front side as his character got brutally dumped by the titular perky, put-together heartbreaker. In The Five-Year Engagement, which he reunited with director Nicholas Stoller to co-write, Segel once again sacrifices dignity and the right to privacy, this time in exchange for fake orgasms (his own), ghastly hand-knit sweaters, egregious facial-hair arrangements, and various other exhaustively humiliating psychological lows — all part of an earnest, undying quest to make people giggle uncomfortably. Segel plays Tom, a talented chef with a promising career ahead of him in San Francisco’s culinary scene (naturally, food carts get a cameo in the film). On the one-year anniversary of meeting his girlfriend, Violet (Emily Blunt), a psychology postgrad, he asks her to marry him in a meticulously planned, gloriously botched proposal scene coengineered by Tom’s oafish friend Alex (Chris Pratt), little realizing that this romantic gesture will soon lead to successive frozen winters in the Midwest (Violet gets offered a job at the University of Michigan), loss of professional stature, cabin fever, mead making, bow-hunting accidents, the titular nuptial postponement, and other, more gruesome events. The humor at times descends to some banally low depths as Segel and Stoller explore the terrain of the awkward, the poorly socialized, and the playfully grotesque. But Segel and Blunt present a believable, likable relationship between two warm, funny, flawed people, and, however disgusted, no one should walk out before a scene in which Violet and her sister (Alison Brie) channel Elmo and Cookie Monster to elaborate on the themes of romantic idealism and marital discontent. (2:04) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Vogue. (Rapoport)

Footnote (1:45) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

Girl in Progress (1:30) SF Center.

God Bless America Middle-aged office drone Frank (Joel Murray) is not having a good day-week-month-year-life. His ex-wife is about to happily remarry; his only child is a world-class brat who finds father-daughter time “boring;” his neighbors are a young couple who only get more loudly obnoxious when politely asked to keep the noise down. When that and insistent migraines keep Frank awake night after night, the parade of pundit and reality stupidities on TV only turn his insomnia into wide awake fury. Then he’s fired from his job for unjust reasons — on the same day he gets a diagnosis of brain cancer. Mad as hell, not-gonna-take-it-anymore, he impulsively decides to make a “statement” by assassinating a viral-video poster child for “entitlement.” This attracts admiring attention from extremely pushy, snarky teen Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), who appoints herself Bonnie to his reluctant Clyde. They drive around the country bestowing “big dirt naps” on other exemplars of what’s wrong with America today, including religious hate mongers, rude moviegoers, and the purveyors of American Idol-type idiotainment. Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait’s latest feature as writer-director has its head in the right place, and so many good ideas, that it’s a pity this gonzo satire-rant runs out of steam so quickly. Aiming splattering paintball gun at the broadest possible targets, it covers them with disdainful goo but not as much wit as one would like. Plus, Barr’s hyper precocious smart mouth is yet another annoying Juno (2007) knockoff — never mind that she counts Diablo Cody among her (many) pet peeves. If God Bless winds up closer to Uwe Boll’s Postal (2007) than, say, Network (1976) in scattershot impact, it nonetheless almost makes it on sheer outré audacity and will alone. A movie that hates everything you hate should not be sneezed at; if only it hated them with more parodic snap, thematic depth and narrative structure. (1:44) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Headhunters Despite being the most sought-after corporate headhunter in Oslo, Roger (Aksel Hennie) still doesn’t make enough money to placate his gorgeous wife; his raging Napoleon complex certainly doesn’t help matters. Crime is, as always, the only solution, so Roger’s been supplementing his income by stealthily relieving his rich, status-conscious clients of their most expensive artworks (with help from his slightly unhinged partner, who works for a home-security company). When Roger meets the dashing Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones) — a Danish exec with a sinister, mysterious military past, now looking to take over a top job in Norway — he’s more interested in a near-priceless painting rumored to be stashed in Greve’s apartment. The heist is on, but faster than you can say “MacGuffin,” all hell breaks loose (in startlingly gory fashion), and the very charming Roger is using his considerable wits to stay alive. Based on a best-selling “Scandi-noir” novel, Headhunters is just as clever as it is suspenseful. See this version before Hollywood swoops in for the inevitable (rumored) remake. (1:40) Clay, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Here (2:00) SF Film Society Cinema.

The Hunger Games Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a teenager living in a totalitarian state whose 12 impoverished districts, as retribution for an earlier uprising, must pay tribute to the so-called Capitol every year, sacrificing one boy and one girl each to the Hunger Games. A battle royal set in a perilous arena and broadcast live to the Capitol as gripping diversion and to the districts as sadistic propaganda, the Hunger Games are, depending on your viewpoint, a “pageant of honor, courage, and sacrifice” or a brutal, pointless bloodbath involving children as young as 12. When her little sister’s name comes up in the annual lottery, Katniss volunteers to take her place and is joined by a boy named Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), with whom she shares an old, unspoken bond. Tasked with translating to the screen the first installment of Suzanne Collins’s rabidly admired trilogy, writer-director Gary Ross (2003’s Seabiscuit, 1998’s Pleasantville) telescopes the book’s drawn-out, dread-filled tale into a manageable two-plus-hour entertainment, making great (and horrifying) use of the original work’s action, but losing a good deal of the narrative detail and emotional force. Elizabeth Banks is comic and unrecognizable as Effie Trinket, the two tributes’ chaperone; Lenny Kravitz gives a blank, flattened reading as their stylist, Cinna; and Donald Sutherland is sufficiently creepy and bloodless as the country’s leader, President Snow. More exceptionally cast are Woody Harrelson as Katniss and Peeta’s surly, alcoholic mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, and Stanley Tucci as games emcee Caesar Flickerman, flashing a bank of gleaming teeth at each contestant as he probes their dire circumstances with the oily superficiality of a talk show host. (2:22) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Jiro Dreams of Sushi Celebrity-chef culture has surely reached some kind of zeitgeist, what with the omnipresence of Top Chef and other cooking-themed shows, and the headlines-making power of people like Paula Deen (diabetes) and Mario Batali (sued for ripping off his wait staff). Unconcerned with the trappings of fame — you’ll never see him driving a Guy Fieri-style garish sports car — is Jiro Ono, 85-year-old proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny, world-renowned sushi restaurant tucked into Tokyo’s Ginza station. Jiro, a highly-disciplined perfectionist who believes in simple, yet flavorful food, has devoted his entire life to the pursuit of “deliciousness” — to the point of sushi invading his dreams, as the title of David Gelb’s reverential documentary suggests. But Jiro Dreams of Sushi goes deeper than food-prep porn (though, indeed, there’s plenty of that); it also examines the existential conflicts faced by Jiro’s two middle-aged sons. Both were strongly encouraged to enter the family business — and in the intervening years, have had to accept the soul-crushing fact that no matter how good their sushi is, it’ll never be seen as exceeding the creations of their legendary father. (1:21) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Last Call at the Oasis If you like drinking water, or eating food, or using mass-produced physical objects, and you also enjoy not being poisoned by virulent chemicals such as hexavalent chromium and atrazine, you probably want to see — but most likely won’t much enjoy — Jessica Yu’s latest documentary, about the impending global water crisis. Or rather, the crisis, the film makes clear, that has already arrived in many parts of the world and — in the sense that it’s about a shortage of safe drinking water — in many parts of the United States. The Academy Award–winning Yu, whose previous films include the 2004 Henry Darger documentary In the Realms of the Unreal, invites various experts to lay out the alarming facts for us, as we sit in the theater clutching our bottles of Dasani. Last Call‘s talking heads include UC Irvine professor Jay Famiglietti, the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick (who, regardless of February’s firestorm over an ethical lapse, speaks eloquently here), journalist Alex Prud’homme, whose book The Ripple Effect the documentary is based on, and Erin Brockovich. An unexpected appearance by Jack Black in the role of potential future spokesperson for potable recycled water (one name under consideration: Porcelain Springs) adds levity to a film that is short on silver linings, as well as solutions. The title conveys the sort of gallows humor occasionally displayed by Yu’s subjects — one of whom ponders for a moment the situation he’s just described and then offers this succinct summary: “We’re screwed.” (1:45) Opera Plaza. (Rapoport)

The Lucky One Iraq War veteran Logan (Zac Efron) beats PTSD by walking with his German shepherd from Colorado to the Louisiana bayou, in search of a golden-haired angel in cutoff blue jean short shorts (Taylor Schilling). His stated (in soporific voice-over) aim is to meet and thank the angel, who he believes repeatedly saved his life in the combat zone after he plucked her photograph from the rubble of a bombed-out building. The snapshot offers little in the way of biographical information, but luckily, there are only 300 million people in the United States, and he manages to find her after walking around for a bit. The angel, or Beth, as her friends call her, runs a dog kennel with her grandmother (Blythe Danner) while raising her noxiously Hollywood-precocious eight-year-old son (Riley Thomas Stewart) and fending off the regressive advances of her semi-villainous ex-husband (Jay R. Ferguson). Logan’s task seems simple enough, and he’s certainly walked a fair distance to complete it, but rather than expressing his gratitude, he becomes tongue-tied in the face of Beth’s backlit blondness and instead fills out a job application and proceeds to soulfully but manfully burrow his way into her affections and short shorts. Being an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, The Lucky One requires some forceful yanking on the heartstrings, but director Scott Hicks (1999’s Snow Falling on Cedars, 1996’s Shine) is hobbled in this task by, among other things, Efron’s wooden, uninvolved delivery of queasy speeches about traveling through darkness to find the light and how many times a day a given woman should be kissed. (1:41) SF Center. (Rapoport)

Marley Oscar-winning documentarian Kevin Macdonald (1999’s One Day in September; he also directed Best Actor Forest Whitaker in 2006’s The Last King of Scotland) takes on the iconic Bob Marley, using extensive interviews — both contemporary (with Marley friends and family) and archival (with the musician himself) — and performance and off-the-cuff footage. The end result is a compelling (even if you’re not a fan) portrait of a man who became a global sensation despite being born into extreme poverty, and making music in a style that most people had never heard outside of Jamaica. The film dips into Marley’s Rastafari beliefs (no shocker this movie is being released on 4/20), his personal life (11 children from seven different mothers), his impact on Jamaica’s volatile politics, his struggles with racism, and, most importantly, his remarkable career — achieved via a combination of talent and boldness, and cut short by his untimely death at age 36. (2:25) California, Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Marvel’s The Avengers The conflict — a mystical blue cube containing earth-shattering (literally) powers is stolen, with evil intent — isn’t the reason to see this long-hyped culmination of numerous prequels spotlighting its heroic characters. Nay, the joy here is the whole “getting’ the band back together!” vibe; director and co-writer Joss Whedon knows you’re just dying to see Captain America (Chris Evans) bicker with Iron Man (a scene-stealing Robert Downey Jr.); Thor (Chris Hemsworth) clash with bad-boy brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston); and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) get angry as often as possible. (Also part of the crew, but kinda mostly just there to look good in their tight outfits: Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.) Then, of course, there’s Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) running the whole Marvel-ous show, with one good eye and almost as many wry quips as Downey’s Tony Stark. Basically, The Avengers gives you everything you want (characters delivering trademark lines and traits), everything you expect (shit blowing up, humanity being saved, etc.), and even makes room for a few surprises. It doesn’t transcend the comic-book genre (like 2008’s The Dark Knight did), but honestly, it ain’t trying to. The Avengers wants only to entertain, and entertain it does. (2:23) Balboa, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Michael Michael follows a few months in the lives of a pedophile (Michael Fulth) and his captive (David Rauchenberger). It is no surprise that Austrian director Markus Schleinzer previously worked for Michael Haneke: the film’s cold, inanimate aesthetic is the means for psychological torture, on the part of both Michael’s prisoner, and the audience. Michael, a sociopath who works in an office by day, keeps the boy, a pensive 10-year-old named Wolfgang, in a basement behind a bolted door. He visits him nightly, and allows the boy to dine with him. As master and slave go about their mundane routine their level of comfort with one another is just as unsettling as the off-screen sex. Equally disturbing is how Michael manages to maintain such a normal life on the surface. After he tries to bring a new victim home and fails, Wolfgang starts to find ways to push his captor’s buttons. In spite of the loud subject, rarely has such formal reticence registered as this horrifying. (1:36) SF Film Society Cinema. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Monsieur Lazhar When their beloved but troubled teacher hangs herself in the classroom — not a thoughtful choice of location, but then we never really discover her motives — traumatized Montreal sixth-graders get Bachir Lazhar (Fellag), a middle-aged Algerian émigré whose contrastingly rather strict, old-fashioned methods prove surprisingly useful at helping them past their trauma. He quickly becomes the crush object of studious Alice (Sophie Nelisse), whose single mother is a pilot too often away, while troublemaker Simon (Emilien Neron) acts out his own domestic and other issues at school. Lazhar has his own secrets as well — for one thing, we see that he’s still petitioning for permanent asylum in Canada, contradicting what he told the principal upon being hired — and while his emotions are more tightly wrapped, circumstances will eventually force all truths out. This very likable drama about adults and children from Quebec writer-director Philippe Falardeau doesn’t quite have the heft and resonance to rate among the truly great narrative films about education (like Laurent Cantet’s recent French The Class). But it comes close enough, gracefully touching on numerous other issues while effectively keeping focus on how a good teacher can shape young lives in ways as incalculable as they are important. (1:34) Opera Plaza, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Perfect Family Having survived years of hardship by dint of her faith, devout Catholic Eileen Cleary (Kathleen Turner) now lets nothing stand between her and the heavy-handed pursuit of grace — including her own family’s perceived imperfections. The past, in which long-sober husband Frank (Michael McGrady) was an abusive alcoholic, is not discussed. The present — in which ne’er-do-well son Frank Jr. (Jason Ritter) is not yet divorced yet already involved with a Protestant manicurist (Kristen Dalton), while otherwise exemplary daughter Shannon (Emily Deschanel) insists on marrying and child-raising with another woman (Angelique Cabral) — is ignored when it can’t be nagged into submission. These modern aberrations from the Pope-embraced allowable lifestyles must be addressed, however, when Eileen’s endless charitable toil gets her nominated as Catholic Woman of the Year. This would be her crowning achievement, but naturally something’s gotta give: either her family’s going to at least pretend it’s “normal,” or she’s got to grow more accepting at the potential loss of her big moment in the spotlight. Directed by Anne Renton, written by Paula Goldberg and Claire V. Riley, The Perfect Family is an ensemble dramedy (also encompassing Richard Chamberlain and Elizabeth Peña) that trundles as effortfully as its stressed-out protagonist from sitcomish humor to tearjerking, leaving no melodramatic contrivance unmilked along the way. Its intentions (primarily gay-positive ones, in line with the scenarists’ prior features) are good. But the execution is like a sermon whose every calculated chuckle and insight you anticipate five minutes before you hear it. To see Turner really excel as a controlling mother, rent 1994’s Serial Mom again. (1:24) Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Pirates! Band of Misfits Aardman Animations, home studio of the Wallace and Gromit series as well as 2000’s Chicken Run, are masters of tiny details and background jokes. In nearly every scene of this swashbuckling comedy, there’s a sight gag, double entendre, or tossed-off reference (the Elephant Man!?) that suggests The Pirates! creators are far more clever than the movie as a whole would suggest. Oh, it’s a cute, enjoyable story about a kind-hearted Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) who dreams of winning the coveted Pirate of the Year award (despite the fact that he gets more excited about ham than gold) — and the misadventures he gets into with his amiable crew, a young Charles Darwin, and a comically evil Queen Victoria. But despite its toy-like, 3D-and-CG-enhanced claymation, The Pirates! never matches the depth (or laugh-out-loud hilarity) of other Aardman productions. Yo ho-hum. (1:27) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

The Raven How did Edgar Allan Poe, dipsomaniac, lover of 13-year-old child brides, and teller of tales designed to make the flesh creep and crawl, wind up, at age 40, nearly dying in the gutter and spending his last days in a Baltimore hospital, muttering incoherent imprecations about a mysterious fellow named Reynolds? In The Raven, director James McTeigue (2006’s V for Vendetta) makes the case for a crafty, sociopathic serial killer having played a role in the famous yet impoverished writer’s sad, derelict demise. Recently returned to the dark, thickly fog-machined streets of Baltimore, Poe, vehemently embodied by John Cusack, is chagrined to learn from one Detective Fields (Luke Evans) that someone has begun using his macabre stories (“The Pit and the Pendulum” to particularly gory effect) to enact a series of murders. When the killer successfully gains Poe’s full attention by seizing his ladylove, Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve), the pileup of bodies inspires a few last outbursts of genius. The trail of literary clues feels a bit forced, and Cusack’s Poe possesses an admirable quantity of energy, passion, and general zest for life for one so roundly indicted — by everyone from his editor to his barkeep to his sweetheart’s roundly repellent father (Brendan Gleeson) — as a useless, used-up slave to opiates and alcohol. But the script is smart enough and the action absorbing enough to keep us engaged as Poe attempts to rescue Emily and the film attempts to rescue Poe’s reputation through imagined heroics of both the pen and the sword. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Rapoport)

Safe The poster would be slightly more on-point if its suave thug of a star, Jason Statham, were hiding behind the scrunched-faced Catherine Chan rather than the other way around — because at times it’s tough to see this alternately enjoyable and credibility-taxing action flick as more than some kind of naked play for the Chinese filmgoer. Jamming the screen with a frantic kineticism, director-writer Boaz Yakin seems to be smoothing over the problems in his vaguely stereotype-flaunting, patchy puzzle of a narrative with a high body count: the cadavers pile like those in an old martial arts flick — made in Asia, it’s implied, where life is cheap and spectacle is paramount. Picking up in the middle, with flashbacks stacked like firewood, Safe opens on young math prodigy Mei (Chan) on the run from the Russian mafia. A pawn and virtual slave of the Chinese mob, she holds a number in her head that all sorts of ruthless crime factions want. To her rescue is mystery man Luke Wright (Statham), who has had his own deadly tussle with the same Russian baddies and is now on the street and on the verge of suicide, believe it or not. It’s tough to wrap your head around the fact that any of Statham’s rock-hard tough guys could possibly crumble — or even have a sense of humor. You’ll need one to accept the ludicrous storyline as well as the notion that a jillion bullets could be fired and never hit his superhuman street-fighting man. (1:35) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen In Lasse Hallström’s latest film, a sheikh named Muhammed (Amr Waked) with a large castle in Scotland, an ardent love of fly-fishing, and unlimited funds envisions turning a dry riverbed in the Yemeni desert into an aquifer-fed salmon-run site and the surrounding lands into an agricultural cornucopia. Tasked with realizing this dream are London marketing consultant Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt) and government fisheries scientist Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor), a reluctant participant who refers to the project as “doolally” and signs on under professional duress. Despite numerous feasibility issues (habitat discrepancies, the necessity for a mass exodus of British salmon, two million irate British anglers), Muhammed’s vision is borne forward on a rising swell of cynicism generated within the office of the British prime minister’s press secretary (Kristin Scott Thomas), whose lackeys have been scouring the wires for a shred of U.K.-related good news out of the Middle East. Ecology-minded killjoys may question whether this qualifies. But putting aside, if one can, the possible inadvisability of relocating 10,000 nonnative salmon to a wadi in Yemen — which is to say, putting aside the basic premise — it’s easy and pleasant enough to go with the flow of the film, infected by Jones’s growing enthusiasm for both the project and Ms. Chetwode-Talbot. Adapted from Paul Torday’s novel by Simon Beaufoy (2009’s Slumdog Millionaire), Salmon Fishing is a sweet and funny movie, and while it suffers from the familiar flurried third-act knotting together of loose ends, its storytelling stratagems are entertaining and its characters compellingly textured, and the cast makes the most of the well-polished material. (1:52) Piedmont. (Rapoport)

Think Like a Man (2:02) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Titanic 3D (3:14) Metreon.

21 Jump Street One of the more pleasant surprises on the mainstream comedy landscape has to be this, ugh, “reboot” of the late-’80s TV franchise. I wasn’t a fan of the show — or its dark-eyed, bad-boy star, Johnny Depp — back in the day, but I am of this unexpectedly funny rework overseen by apparent enthusiast, star, co-writer, and co-executive producer Jonah Hill, with a screenplay by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) co-writer Michael Bacall. There’s more than a smidge of Bacall’s other high school fantasy, Project X, in the buddy comedy premise of nerd (Hill’s Schmidt) meets blowhard (Channing Tatum’s Jenko), but 21 Jump Street thankfully leapfrogs the former with its meta-savvy, irreverent script and har-dee-har cameo turns by actors like Ice Cube as Captain Dickson (as well as a few key uncredited players who shall remain under deep cover). High school continues to haunt former classmates Schmidt and Jenko, who have just graduated from the lowly police bike corps to a high school undercover operation — don’t get it twisted, though, Dickson hollers at them; they got this gig solely because they look young. Still, the whole drug-bust enchilada is put in jeopardy when the once-socially toxic Schmidt finds his brand of geekiness in favor with the cool kids and so-called dumb-jock Jenko discovers the pleasures of the mind with the chem lab set. Fortunately for everyone, this crew doesn’t take themselves, or the source material, too seriously. (1:49) Metreon. (Chun)

Wrath of the Titans Playing fast and loose with Greek myths but not agile enough to kick out a black metal jam during a flaming underworld power-grab, Wrath of Titans is, as expected, a bit of a CGI-crammed mess. Still, the sword-and-sandals franchise has attracted scads of international actorly talent — the cast is enriched this time by Édgar Ramírez (2010’s Carlos), Bill Nighy, and Rosamund Pike — and you do get at least one cool monster and paltry explication (Cerberus, which bolts from earth for no discernible reason except that maybe all hell is breaking loose). Just because action flicks like Cloverfield (2008) have long dispensed with narrative handlebars doesn’t mean that age-old stories like the Greek myths should get completely random with their titanic tale-spinning. Wrath opens on the twilight of the gods: Zeus (Liam Neeson) is practically groveling before Perseus (Sam Worthington) — now determined to go small, raise his son, and work on his fishing skills — and trying to persuade him to step up and help the Olympians hold onto power. Fellow Zeus spawn Ares (Ramírez) is along for the ride, so demigod up, Perseus. In some weird, last-ditch attempt to ream his bro Zeus, the oily, mulleted Hades (Ralph Fiennes) has struck a deal with their entrapped, chaotic, castrating fireball of a dad Cronus to let them keep their immortality, on the condition that Zeus is sapped of his power. Picking up Queen Andromeda (Pike) along the way, Perseus gets the scoop on how to get to Hell from Hephaestus (Nighy playing the demented Vulcan like a ’60s acid casualty, given to chatting with mechanical owl Bubo, a wink to 1981 precursor Clash of the Titans, which set the bar low for the remake). Though there are some distracting action scenes (full of speedy, choppy edits that confuse disorientation for excitement) and a few intriguing monsters (just how did the Minotaur make it to this labyrinth?), there’s no money line like “Release the Kraken!” this time around, and there’s way too much nattering on about fatherly responsibility and forgiveness —making these feel-good divinities sound oddly, mawkishly Christian and softheaded rather than mythically pagan and brattily otherworldly. Wasn’t the appeal of the gods linked to the fact that they always acted more like outta-hand adolescents than holier-than-thou deities? I guess that’s why no one’s praying to them anymore. (1:39) Metreon. (Chun)

 

Stage Listings May 16-22, 2012

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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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

My Tia Loca’s Life of Crime Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Thu/17, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 2. Guerrilla Rep performs a new play by Roy Conboy, chair of SF State’s Playwriting Department.

BAY AREA

The Great Divide Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Previews Wed/16-Thu/17 and May 23-24, 7pm; Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm; Sun/20, 5pm. Opens May 25, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 24. Shotgun Players performs Adamn Chanzit’s drama about the hot topic of fracking, inspired by Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

ONGOING

“Best of PlayGround 16: A Festival of New Writers and New Plays” Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.playground-sf.org. $10-40. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through May 27. Seven short plays and musicals by Bay Area authors, plus a staged-readings series.

“DIVAfest” Exit Theatreplex, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.theexit.org. $15-25. Through May 27. Entering its second decade, the estrogen-centric DIVAfest at the Exit is so jam-packed with activities — workshops, burlesque, symposiums, readings, singer-songwriter nights — you’d be forgiven for not realizing that plays are also on the menu. But in fact, they are the main course. This year’s smorgasbord features three very different solo shows, each encapsulating a wholly unique female voice. Genevieve Jessee’s Girl in, but not of, the ‘Hood, which won a “Best of the Fringe Festival” award in 2011, has since been reworked with a new director, Exit Theatre stalwart Michelle Talgarow, rendering it sharper and more comic without minimizing the inner turmoil experienced by the main character, Jessee herself. Catherine Debon’s Alma Colarada, which also won a “Best of the Fringe” in 2011, is an emotionally-charged, experimental roller-coaster ride that appropriately begins and ends on a train. Detailing a family history fraught with World War II resistance fighting, concentration camps, communist sympathies, and endless trains, Debon nimbly vacillates between the neuroses of the present day and the deep despair of the past, while still finding a way to end to piece on a triumphal note. Last but by no means least, the laugh-out-loud romantic farce Pussy, by Maura Halloran, details the tricky intricacies of a lesbian-feline-nosy neighbor ménage à “cat-re”. Yes, it’s about a cat … hmmm, or is it? You should really take the opportunity to find out. (Gluckstern)

Down to This Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. $12-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 26. Thirty-something Charlie (Derek Fischer) plays this little game with himself where he tosses a rotten egg at the kitchen trash as if he were making a free-throw in sudden-death overtime. This little moment, innocent and ordinary on the surface, puzzles one-night stand Donna (Tonya Narvaez) after she happens on the scene. That she would be baffled, even momentarily disturbed by so common a flight of sports-dude imagination is our first taste of the strained mechanics of Adam Chanzit’s slight pulp revenge tale: sure enough, this game of chance turns out to be a (pretty ridiculous) psychopathology ruling Charlie’s world. When a moment later his equally imbalanced and estranged wife (Kendra Lee Oberhauser), fresh from prison and packing heat, bursts in on the two lovebirds, Charlie’s fate-game will become the tortured trope in a table-turning showdown between all three — plus Charlie’s hapless roommate (Jomar Tagatac) and his crew-cut–sporting sidekick (Shane Rhoades). Chanzit offers some mild surprises and amusing banter along the way in Sleepwalkers’ world premiere — helmed by artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp — but the plot and characters are stretched thin, and the tension often grows slack despite the able and likable cast. By the time the story climaxes in a coin-toss of an ending (designed to work out one of two ways, depending), it’s too big a muddle to generate more than a momentary quiver of anticipation over anybody’s fate. (Avila)

Endgame and Play American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-95. Opens Wed/16, 8pm. Runs Tue-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm; no matinees Wed/16 or May 23; Tues/22 performance at 7pm). Through June 3. ACT presents two absurd dark comedies by Samuel Beckett.

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 10. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Thu/17-Sat/19, 8pm. Cheap thrills don’t come much cheaper or more thrilling than at a Thrillpeddlers musical extravaganza, and their newly remounted run of Hot Greeks affords all the glitter-dusted eye-candy and labyrinthian plot points we’ve come to expect from their gleefully exhibitionist ranks. Structured as loosely as possible on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Greeks appropriately enough follows the trials and tribulations of a college sorority tired of “losing” their boyfriends to the big football match every year (Athens U vs. Sparta Tech). Pledging to withhold sex from the men unless they call off the game results in frustration for all, only partially alleviated by the discovery that sexual needs can be satisfied by “playing the other team,” as it were. But like other Cockettes’ revivals presented by the Thrillpeddlers, the momentum of the show is carried forward not by the rather thinly-sketched narrative, but by the group song-and-dance numbers, extravagant costuming (and lack thereof), ribald wordplay, and overt gender-fuckery. In addition to many TP regulars, including a hot trio of Greek columns topped with “capital” headdresses who serve as the obligatory chorus (Steven Satyricon, Ste Fishell, Bobby Singer), exciting new additions to the Hypnodrome stage include a bewigged Rik Lopes as stalwart sister Lysistrata, angelically-voiced Maggie Tenenbaum as the not-so-angelic Sodoma, and multi-faceted cabaret talent Tom Orr as heartthrob hunk Pendulum Pulaski. (Gluckstern)

It’s All the Rage Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm, Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 27. Longtime comedian and radio host Marilyn Pittman’s solo play wrestles with the legacy of her parents’ violent deaths in a 1997 murder-suicide initiated by her father. It’s disturbing material that Pittman, a stout middle-aged woman with a gregarious and bounding personality, approaches indirectly via a good deal of humor — including recounting the first time she did her growing-up-lesbian bit before her mother in a DC comedy club. But the pain and confusion trailing her for 13 years is never far behind, whether in accounts of her own battle with anger (and the broken relationships it has left in its wake) or in ominous memories of her too complacent mother or her charming but domineering father, whose controlling behavior extended to casually announcing murderous dreams while policing the boundaries of his marriage against family interference. A fine mimic, Pittman deploys a Southern lilt in playing each parent, on a stage decorated with a hint of their Southwestern furnishings and a framed set of parental photographs. In not exactly knowing where to lay blame for, or find meaning in, such a horrifying act, the play itself mimics in subtler form the emotional tumult left behind. There’s a too brief but eerie scene in which her veteran father makes reference to a murder among fellow soldiers en route to war, but while PTSD is mentioned (including as an unwanted patrimony), the 60-minute narrative crafted by Pittman and director David Ford wisely eschews any pat explanation. If transitions are occasionally awkward and the pace a bit loose, the play leaves one with an uncomfortable sense of the darker aspects of love, mingled with vague concentric histories of trauma and dislocation in a weird, sad tale of destruction and staying power. Note: review from the show’s 2009 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

A Raisin in the Sun Buriel Clay Theater, African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; 1-800-838-2006, www.african-americanshakes.org. $10-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm (no show May 25); Sun, 3pm. Through May 27. African-American Shakespeare Company performs Lorraine Hansberry’s classic drama.

“San Francisco International Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.sfiaf.org. Free-$70. Through Sun/20. Performance festival featuring theater and dance from Cuba, Iran, Russia, the U.S., China, Japan, Estonia, and more.

Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through May 27. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Honoring Lorraine Hansberry In Her Own Words Gough Street Playhouse, Trinity Episcopal Church, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $22-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through May 27. Custom Made Theater and Multi Ethnic Theater collaborate on this tribute to the groundbreaking playwright.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. 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)

The Wrong Dick Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 26. Ham Pants Productions presents a noir-inspired comedy set in San Francisco.

Zorba Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Wed/16, 7pm; Thu/17-Fri/18, 8pm; Sat/19, 6pm; Sun/20, 3pm. 42nd Street Moon performs Kander and Ebb’s musical salute to Greece.

BAY AREA

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 9. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. That’s because slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next whose penchant for making lackluster life choices has sentenced them to an indefinite prison term of couch-surfing and Teen Mom marathons in their childhood home. Naturally, they desire change, but it’s not until their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man that things do. In an egregious breach of the TMI line, it appears that Mom’s orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz subsequently fall into. Thus removed from the entropy of their former reality they begin testing the parameters of their new one, quickly coming to the realization that sometimes the alternatives to what you already have are even worse. Getting home again is a convoluted, not fully mapped-out process, but in the interim, their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern) (Gluckstern)

A Hot Day in Ephesus Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; info@aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm. Actors Ensemble performs the world premiere of a musical based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through June 10. 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)

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun, May 25, and June 1, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: May 5-27 (Sat-Sun, 11am); June 3-July 15 (Sun, 11am). Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Fri, 8pm, through May 25: “Director’s Cut!,” $20. Sat, 8pm, through May 26: “Improvised Murder Mystery,” $20.

“A Celebration of Harold Pinter” Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/18-Sat/19, 7:30pm. $30. John Malkovich directs Julian Sands in this tribute to the famed author and playwright.

“Chanticleer and the Fox: Nun’s Priest’s Tale” Seventh Avenue Performances, 1329 Seventh Ave, SF; www.chaucertheater.org. Sat/19, 7:30pm. $20. Also Sun/20, 2pm, Christ Presbyterian Church, 620 del Ganado, San Rafael. Chaucer Theatre performs musical theater inspired by Canturbury Tales.

City Ballet School Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.fortmason.org. Sat/19-Sun/20, 2pm. $28. “Spring Showcase” featuring new choreography by Yuri Zhukov.

“Die Blonde Cabaret” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.stagewerx.org. Mon/21, 6:30pm. $5. Stand-up and burlesque performer Marié Lake presents her comedy cabaret.

“Drinking/Songs: A Night of Beer and the Music That Goes With It” 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/16, 8pm. $20. Singing, beer-drinking, a drinking-songs competition, and more.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“The Heart of Mexico” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Novellus Theater, 700 Howard, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Sun/20, 3pm. $20-39. Folkloric dance from Mexico performed by the acclaimed Compañia Mazatlán Bellas Artes.

“The Keys to Heaven” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. Sun/20, 1pm. Free. Cutting Ball Theater presents this August Strindberg reading as part of its “Hidden Classics” series.

“Low Down” Z Space, Theater Artaud, 450 Florida, SF; www.levydance.org. Thu/17-Fri/19, 8pm; Sat/20, 2pm. $18-25. LEVYdance and the Foundry present a world premiere collaboration exploring the body’s ability to tell a story.

“Man vs. Wild: Tales of the Great Outdoors!” Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.litupwriters.com. Wed/16, 7:30pm. $7. Humor reading with the LitUp Writers.

“Martini Cabaret Burlesque” Biscuits and Blues, 401 Mason, SF; www.eventbrite.com. Sun/20, 6pm. $20. Tasteful striptease with costumes and props.

“Porchlight Storytelling Series: I Surrender” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon/21, 8pm. $15. True tales with Harold Atkins, Dennis Collinson, Heather Gold, and more.

“Previously Secret Information” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.stagewerx.org. Sun/20, 7pm. $15. Storytelling with Paul Myers, Josh Healey, and Joe Klocek.

“Qcomedy Showcase” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.stagewerx.org. Mon/21, 8pm. $8-20. With Lisa Geduldig, Matina Bevis, and more.

“Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts 30th Year Anniversary Dance Concert” Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfsota.org. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm. $18-28. Student dancers, guests, and artists in residence perform to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this arts and educational institution.

“Smack Dab” Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; www.magnetsf.org. Wed/16, 8pm. Free. Open mic with featured reader Jai Arun Ravine.

“Tales of Pangu: Lifting Up the Sky” CounterPulse, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Sat/19, 8pm. $10-20. Eth-Noh-Tec storytelling theater and Gay Asian Pacific Alliance present this multimedia performance collaboration.

“The Vagina Monologues” Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120. Thu/17, 7:30pm. $30. A one-night-only performance in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

“Verbatim Verboten” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm. $15. The “invasion-of-privacy revue” created by Michael Martin and hosted by Wonder Dave Crady.

Our Weekly Picks: May 16-22, 2012

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 16

>> “Andy Cohen: Bravo’s Man of Moxie”

Without Andy Cohen, there’d be no Bethenny and no NeNe. The world would know nothing of Vicki’s “love tank” or pinot grigio-chugging Ramona. In addition to unleashing the Real Housewives series, Bravo’s Executive Vice President of Development and Talent (or “talent,” as the case may be) also exec-produces Top Chef and hosts his own talk show, the gleefully goofy Watch What Happens Live. Now, Cohen’s an author, with Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture, a breezy autobiography detailing his life in showbiz, from early run-ins with the Bakkers and the Buttafuocos to the many, many Housewives. The book’s stuffed with dish — expect even more when Cohen takes the Castro stage. (Cheryl Eddy)

7:30pm, $25–$80

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.commonwealthclub.org

 

>> The Dandy Warhols

On “Enjoy Yourself” off 2012’s This Machine, a posturing singer looks back enviously: “I used to be cool/used to be a fool/Too cool for rules man/too cool for school.” Call it a rockers lament. But once the rest of the band drowns the whiner out for a shout along chorus — “So look at yourself/Enjoy your health/Let everybody else be everybody else/and really enjoy yourself now” — it becomes something else: the pull-your-head-out-your-ass and feel good song of the summer. The eighth studio album in eighteen years for Portland, Oreg.’s the Dandy Warhols, This Machine finds the band learning from the past and aging gracefully. (Ryan Prendiville)

8pm, $25 Fillmore 1850 Geary, SF (415) 346-6000 www.thefillmore.com

 

THURSDAY 17

>> “Low Down”

Alex Ketley and Ben Levy: two choreographers, both ambitious, fiercely talented, and willing to go where ever ideas take them. So where are they going? Ketley, in addition to darting all over the country doing commissions, has a flair for the far-out. A few years ago he choreographed the California landscape; he has also created a work in which he danced the syntax of a Carol Snow essay. Levy, whose company celebrates its first decade this weekend, has created edgy dances from the disarmingly comedic to the lurking nightmares. Bringing together these so very different guys is a desire to challenge their own craft by subjecting it to a collaborative process neither of them has tried previously. That just may be enough for a piece they call “Low Down.” (Rita Felciano)

Thu/17-Sat/19, 8pm; Sun/20, 2pm, $18–$50

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.zspace.org

 

>> “Broke & Classy: Broke-Ass Stuart’s 10 Year Anniversary of Living in SF”

I doubt Stuart Schuffman is so broke-ass anymore. The man has written frugal culture guides for San Francisco and New York City, he’s got a popular blog chock full of fun things to do for penny-pinchers, and he has trotted around the country profiling artists and musicians on his own IFC show. Surely that qualifies as a media empire, right? But I can’t begrudge B-AS. He opened my eyes to the tasty treats of the Tamale Lady and created that pick-me-up mantra: “You are young, broke and beautiful.” Local musical acts usher in 10 years of Stuart’s low-money living in San Francisco. (Kevin Lee)

With Judgement Day, Birds & Batteries, Rach W and DJ Carnita 8pm, $3, Must RSVP Public Works 161 Erie (415) 932-0955 www.publicsf.com

 

>> Ane Brun

Norway’s Ane Brun is perhaps best known in the U.S. to Peter Gabriel fans, having opened for his recent New Blood Tour. But an award-winning songwriter in Europe with four studio and two live albums so far, Brun deserves attention here for all her work, including most recent release, It All Starts With One. Not only a showcase for her majestically touching voice set against gently pulsing rhythms and sparse orchestration, the album also features guests Jose Gonzalez on the entrancing “Worship” and First Aid Kit adding backup vocals to the rolling percussion “Do You Remember.” (Prendiville)

With Gemma Ray, Elin Ruth Sigvardssun

8:30pm, $14-16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

FRIDAY 18

>> Sleepy Sun

Sleepy Sun emerged in 2009 after creating an LP laden with distorted guitar lines, fuzzy vocals, and compositional head nods to Led Zeppelin best taken with psychedelics and ’70s nostalgia. While Spine Hits (2012) features some serious reverb, the album the group released three years later calls to mind ’90s alt rock and the open road; with tracks that feel like epic love ballads after odes to outdoorsy adventure. Lead vocalist Bret Constantino has called his band’s changing sound its “natural evolution.” And judging by the genuine, passionate voice and catchy, seamlessly constructed melodies Spine Hits purveys, I don’t doubt him. (Mia Sullivan)

With Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Some Ember, DJ Britt Govea

9pm, $15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

>> UK with Terry Bozzio

Bay Area-born and raised drummer extraordinaire Terry Bozzio has performed with Frank Zappa, Missing Persons, Jeff Beck, Fantomas, and a host of other musicians over the years. Recognized as one of the best drummers in modern times, he has recorded a variety of instructional videos, been honored by Guitar Center’s RockWalk in Hollywood, and has created some of the most insane custom drum sets ever seen on stage. Be sure to see Bozzio’s amazing talents on display live tonight as he performs with the reunited prog rock supergroup UK, which also features John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia) and Eddie Jobson (Frank Zappa, Roxy Music). (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $65–$99

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

>> The Sahara Tent Party ft. Switch and Sinden

Producer-DJ Switch is best known for his work alongside Diplo in Major Lazer and for producing the pulsating dynamic music behind Sri Lankan singer M.I.A. As Major Lazer, the British duo has brought a Jamaican dance flavor to Beyonce, Santigold, and Christina Aguilera and are apparently collaborating with No Doubt on a release slated for September. Producing in studios as far and wide as Jamaica and India, Switch has blended dancehall infused beats with slick rhymes from a wide net of vocalists. Co-headliner and fellow Brit Sinden brings a soulful, multi-genre vibe rooted in house music. (Lee)

With 5kinandBone5, Vin Sol, Them Jeans, and more 10pm, $10–$20 1015 Folsom (415) 431-1200 www.1015.com

 

>> Plants and Animals

If Plants and Animals were a person, writes the band, their albums would metaphorically mirror said person’s journey through life. Parc Avenue (2008) represents the Montreal-based indie rock trio as a child, La La Land (2010) as an angsty teenager, and The End of That, released this February, exudes “unmasked” early 20s confidence. Warren Spicer, Matthew Woodley, and Nicholas Basque began playing together and experimenting with instrumental music in 2002. Now, 10 years later, they’ve evolved into post-classic rockers and bearers of soft, ambient harmonization as well as fiery, nostalgic jams like recent hit single “Lightshow.” (Sullivan)

With Cannons and Clouds, Owl Paws

10pm, $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17 St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

SATURDAY 19

>> Saturday Night Soul Party

Always wanted to check out one of San Francisco’s longest running soul events but stayed away because of potential throngs in the Mission on the weekend? Well here’s your chance for an easy introduction to the Saturday Night Soul Party. Crowds are likely to be sparse in the neighborhood thanks to the lemmings planning to get up early the next morning to make their annual pilgrimage to the breakers, so dance the night away carefree to Disc Jockeys Lucky, Paul Paul, and Phengren Oswald, spinning ’60s soul all night, exclusively on good old vinyl ’45s. Show up wearing a suit and tie or skirt or dress and get half off the cover charge. (McCourt)

10pm, $5–$10

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

 

>> SUNDAY 20

Pansy Division

One of San Francisco’s favorite early ’90s queercore pop punk acts is back, and on tonight of all nights. The steaming pile of hot mess that will rise up post-B2B is enough to make any local puke, but keep it in (or clean it off) and go out anyways. It’ll make you feel much better and brighter catching melodic pop punk, than hiding from the masses on the couch with a cheap wine hangover and a blanket pulled up tight. And perhaps it’ll refresh your memories of the crustier old days in the city before so many bubbles burst and barely clothed, underage dubsteppers swarmed the post-race streets seeking Four Loko and warm blood. Don’t be a Bad Boyfriend, show the gent a good time. (Emily Savage)

With Swann Danger

8:30pm, $12

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

MONDAY 21

>> “Neuroscience of Zen”

What exactly happens to your mind when you undergo meditation? Turns out that meditating Buddhist monks tend to elongate the time they exhale, which calms the mind. Stanford University researcher Phillippe Goldin has studied the effects of mindfulness meditation and stress reduction on brain function. San Francisco Zen Center Abbot Ryushin Paul Haller has taught Buddhist practices for two decades in San Francisco and has led programs to assist with depression and recovery. Together, Goldin and Haller blend academic studies and their own worldly experiences to discuss the intersection of the mind and the spirit. (Lee)

8pm, $22–$26

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.cityboxoffice.com

 

**The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

2012 Summer Fairs and Festivals

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
2012 Summer Fairs and Festivals

 

Through May 20

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues. (415) 399-9554,www.sfiaf.org. Check website for prices and times. Celebrate the arts, both local and international, at this multimedia extravaganza.

 

May 19

Asian Heritage Street Celebration Larkin and McAllister, SF. www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. Featuring a Muay Thai kickboxing ring, DJs, and the latest in Asian pop culture, as well as great festival food.

Uncorked! San Francisco Wine Festival Ghirardelli Square, 900 North Point, SF. (415) 775-5500,www.ghirardellisq.com. 1-6pm, $50 for tastings; proceeds benefit Save the Bay. A bit of Napa in the city, with tastings, cooking demonstrations, and a wine 101 class for the philistines among us.

May 19-20

Maker Faire San Mateo Event Center, San Mateo, www.makerfaire.com. $8–$40. Make Magazine’s annual showcase of all things DIY is a tribute to human craftiness. This is where the making minds meet.

Castroville Artichoke Festival Castroville. (831) 633-2465 www.artichoke-festival.com. 10am-5pm, $10. Pay homage to the only vegetable with a heart. This fest does just that, with music, parades, and camping.

 

May 20

Bay to Breakers Begins at the Embarcadero, ends at Ocean Beach, SF, www.zazzlebaytobreakers.com 7am-noon, free to watch, $57 to participate. This wacky San Francisco tradition is officially the largest footrace in the world, with a costume contest that awards $1,000 for first place. Just remember, Port-A-Potties are your friends.

 

May 21

Freestone Fermentation Festival Salmon Creek School, 1935 Bohemian Hwy, Sonoma. (707) 479-3557, www.freestonefermentationfestival.com. Noon-5pm, $12. Answer all the questions you were afraid to ask about kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut, yogurt, and beer. This funky fest is awash in hands-on demonstrations, tastings, and exhibits.

 

May 26-27

San Francisco Carnaval Harrison and 23rd St., SF. www.sfcarnaval.org. 10am-6pm, free. Parade on May 27, 9:30am, starting from 24th St. and Bryant. The theme of this year’s showcase of Latin and Caribbean culture is “Spanning Borders: Bridging Cultures.” Fans of sequins, rejoice.

 

June 2-3

Union Street Eco-Urban Festival Union Street between Gough and Steiner, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. See arts and crafts created with recycled and sustainable materials and eco-friendly exhibits, along with two stages of live entertainment and bistro-style cafes.

 

June 9-17

San Mateo County Fair San Mateo County Fairgrounds, 2495 S. Delaware, San Mateo, www.sanmateocountyfair.com. 11am-10pm, $6–$30. Competitive exhibits from farmers, foodies, and even technological developers, deep-fried snacks, games — but most important, there will be pig races.

 

June 8-10

Queer Women of Color Film Festival Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 752-0868,www.qwocmap.org. Times vary, free. Three days of screenings from up-and-coming filmmakers with unique stories to tell.

 

June 10

Haight Ashbury Street Fair Haight between Stanyan and Ashbury, SF, www.haightashburystreetfair.org. 11am-5:30pm, free. Celebrating the cultural history and diversity of one of San Francisco’s most internationally celebrated neighborhoods, the annual street fair features arts and crafts, food booths, three musical stages, and a children’s zone.

June 10-12

Harmony Festival, Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa, www.harmonyfestival.com. One of the Bay Area’s best camping music festivals and a celebration of progressive lifestyle, with its usual strong and eclectic lineup of talent.

 

June 16-17

North Beach Festival, Washington Square Park, SF. (415) 989-2220, www.northbeachchamber.com. free. This year will feature more than 150 art, crafts, and gourmet food booths, three stages, Italian street painting, beverage gardens and the blessing of the animals.

Marin Art Festival, Marin Civic Center, 3501 Civic Center Drive, San Rafael. (415) 388-0151, www.marinartfestival.com. 10am-6pm, $10, kids under 14 free. Over 250 fine artists in the spectacular Marin Civic Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Enjoy the Great Marin Oyster Feast while you’re there.

 

June 22-24

Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, Mendocino County Fairgrounds Booneville. (916) 777-5550, www.snwmf.com. $160. A reggae music Mecca, with Jimmy Cliff, Luciano, and Israel Vibration (among others) spreading a message of peace, love, and understanding.

 

June 23-24

Gay Pride Weekend Civic Center Plaza, SF; Parade starts at Market and Beale. (415) 864-FREE, www.sfpride.org. Parade starts at 10:30am, free. Everyone in San Francisco waits all year for this fierce celebration of diversity, love, and being fabulous.

Summer SAILstice, Encinal Yacht Club, 1251 Pacific Marina, Alameda. 415-412-6961, www.summersailstice.com. 8am-8pm, free. A global holiday celebrating sailing on the weekend closest to the summer solstice, these are the longest sailing days of the year. Celebrate it in the Bay Area with boat building, sailboat rides, sailing seminars and music.

 

June 24-August 26

Stern Grove Festival, Stern Grove, 19th Ave. and Sloat, SF. (415) 252-6252,www.sterngrove.org, free. This will be the 75th season of this admission-free music, dance, and theater performance series.

July 4

4th of July on the Waterfront, Pier 39, Beach and Embarcadero, SF.www.pier39.com 12pm-9pm, free. Fireworks and festivities, live music — in other words fun for the whole, red-white-and-blue family.

July 5-8

High Sierra Music Festival, Plumas-Sierra Fairgrounds, Lee and Mill Creek, Quincy. www.highsierramusic.com. Gates open 8am on the 5th, $185 for a four-day pass. Set in the pristine mountain town of Quincy, this year’s fest features Ben Harper, Built To Spill, Papodosio, and more.

 

July 7

Oakland A’s Beer Festival and BBQ Championship, (510) 563-2336, oakland.athletics.mlb.com. 7pm, game tickets $12–$200. A baseball-themed celebration of all that makes a good tailgate party: grilled meat and fermented hops.

 

July 7-8

Fillmore Street Jazz Festival, Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.fillmorejazzfestival.com.10am-6pm, free. The largest free jazz festival on the Left Coast, this celebration tends to draw enormous crowds to listen to innovative Latin and fusion performers on multiple stages.

July 19-29

Midsummer Mozart Festival, Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF (also other venues in the Bay Area). (415) 627-9141,www.midsummermozart.org. $50. A Bay Area institution since 1974, this remains the only music festival in North America dedicated exclusively to Mozart.

 

July 21-22

Renegade Craft Fair, Fort Mason Center, Buchanan and Marina, SF. (415) 561-4323, www.renegadecraft.com. Free. Twee handmade dandies of all kinds will be for sale at this DIY and indie-crafting hullabaloo. Like Etsy in the flesh!

 

July 21-22

Connoisseur’s Marketplace, Santa Cruz and El Camino Real, Menlo Park. Free. This huge outdoor event expects to see 65,000 people, who will come for the art, live food demos, an antique car show, and booths of every kind.

July 23-August 28

The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Various locations, SF. (415) 558-0888, www.sfshakes.org. Free. Shakespeare takes over San Francisco’s public parks in this annual highbrow event. Grab your gang and pack a picnic for fine, cultured fun.

July 27-29

Gilroy Garlic Festival, Christmas Hill Park, Miller and Uvas, Gilroy. (408) 842-1625,www.gilroygarlicfestival.com. $17 per day, children under six free. Known as the “Ultimate Summer Food Fair,” this tasty celebration of the potent bulb lasts all weekend.

 

July 28-29

27th Annual Berkeley Kite Festival & West Coast Kite Championship, Cesar E. Chavez Park at the Berkeley Marina, Berk. (510) 235-5483, www.highlinekites.com. 10am-5pm, free. Fancy, elaborate kite-flying for grown-ups takes center stage at this celebration of aerial grace. Free kite-making and a candy drop for the kiddies, too.

July 29

Up Your Alley Fair, Dore between Howard and Folsom, SF. (415) 777-3247,www.folsomstreetfair.org., 11am-6pm, free with suggested donation of $7. A leather and fetish fair with vendors, dancing, and thousands of people decked out in their kinkiest regalia, this is the local’s version of the fall’s Folsom Street Fair mega-event.

 

July 30-August 5

SF Chefs Food and Wine Festival, Union Square, SF. (415) 781-5348, www.sfchefsfoodwine.com. Various times and prices. Taste buds have ADD too. Let them spiral deliciously out of control during this culinary fair representing over 200 restaurants, bars, distilleries, and breweries.

 

August 4-5

Aloha Festival, San Mateo Event Center, 1346 Saratoga, San Mateo. (415) 281-0221, www.pica-org.org. 10am-5pm, free. You may not be going to Hawaii this summer, but this two-day festival of crafts, island cuisine, Polynesian dance workshops, and music performances might just do the trick.

Art and Soul Oakland, Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway, Oakl. www.artandsouloakland.com. $10 adv.; $15 at door. Sample delectable treats, joyfully scream through a carnival ride, get a purple unicorn painted on your forehead — all while rocking out to live jazz, R&B, acoustic, and gospel performances.

Nihonmachi Street Fair, Post between Laguna and Fillmore, SF. www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 10am-6pm, free. Community outreach infuses every aspect of this Japantown tradition — meaning those perfect garlic fries, handmade earrings, and live performances you enjoy will also be benefitting a number of great nonprofit organizations.

 

August 5

Jerry Day 2012, Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, 40 John F. Shelley, SF. (415) 272-2012, www.jerryday.org. 11am, free; donate to reserve seats. Founded in 2002 when a dilapidated playground in the Excelsior was being transformed to what is now Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, Jerry Day continues as an art and music event brimming with local San Franciscan roots.

 

August 10-12

Outside Lands Music Festival Golden Gate Park, SF. www.sfoutsidelands.com. $225 regular 3-day ticket. Musical demi-gods like Stevie Wonder and Neil Young are headlining this year, and the rest of the jaw-dropping lineup makes us wish it were 2035 already so we can clone ourselves and be at opposite sides of the park at once.

 

August 11

Festa Coloniale Italiana, Stockton between Union and Filbert, SF. (415) 440-0800, www.sfiacfesta.com. 11am-6pm, free. When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s amore. When you dance down North Beach, visiting every food truck you encounter, you’re in love.

 

August 18

Russian River Beer Revival and BBQ Cookoff, Stumptown Brewery, 15045 River, Guerneville. (707) 869-0705, www.stumptown.com. Noon-6pm, $55. You can’t really go wrong attending a festival with a name like this one. Entry fee includes live music, beer, cider, BBQ tastings, and your resurrection.

San Francisco Street Food Festival, Folsom from 20th to 26th St.; 25th St. from Treat to Shotwell, SF. (415) 824-2729, www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. 11am-7pm, free. You may think there is nothing quite as good your own mother’s cooking, but the vendors at La Cocina’s food fair are up for the challenge.

 

August 25

The Farm Series: Late Summer Harvest, Oak Hill Farm, 15101 California 12, Glen Ellen. (415) 568-2710, www.18reasons.org. 9am-5pm, $50. Head to Sonoma with Bi-Rite’s head farmer and produce buyer to check out Family Farm and Oak Hill Farm. Lunch is included in the ticket price and carpool drivers will be reimbursed for gas.

 

August 25-26

Bodega Seafood Art and Wine Festival, 16855 Bodega, Bodega. (707) 824-8717, www.winecountryfestivals.com. $12 advance, $15 at gate. The seaweed is usually greener on somebody else’s lake — but not this weekend. Have your crab cake and eat it too during this crustaceous celebration of food, wine, beer, and art.

 

September 8-9

Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival, Ghiradelli Square, 900 North Point, SF. (800) 877-9338, www.ghiradelli.com. Noon-5pm, $20. It’s finally time to put your at-home ice cream noshing skills to the test. For two-days only, chocolate lovers unite to celebrate all that is good in life — and by that we mean eating contests, chef demonstrations, and local dessert samplings.

 

September 9

EcoFair Marin 2012, Marin County Fairgrounds and Lagoon Park, Civic Center, San Rafael. (415) 499-6800, www.ecofairmarin.org. 10am-6pm, $5. This sustainability event brings together speaker presentations, exhibitions by energy reducing and conserving business leaders, and tasty raw and vegan food vendors, as a community effort to help bring about a healthier planet.

 

September 14-16

Ceramics Annual of America: Exhibition and Art Fair, Festival Hall, Fort Mason, Buchanan at Marina, SF. (877) 459-9222, www.ceramicsannual.org. $10. Contemporary ceramics from Korea, China, Mexico, Australia, and Italy, as well as top American artists’ works, will be showcased in this one-of-a-kind art show. Tours and discussions regarding the clay medium will be provided as a way to foster knowledge regarding the clay medium.

 

September 16

Comedy Day, Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 820-1570, www.comedyday.com. Noon-5pm, free. There are two secret cures for depression: sunlight and laughter. Comedy Day brings the two antidotes together for a cheery day of priceless (literally, it’s free) entertainment.

 

September 21-23

Eat Real Festival, Jack London Square, Oakl. (510) 250-7811, www.eatrealfest.com. Free. Processed foods really do have a bunch of weird named ingredients that trigger horrific thoughts in one’s imagination. At Eat Real, suspicion is taken out of the eating experience, as everything is handmade, fresh, and local — so you can just eat.

 

September 22

Superhero Street Fair, Islais Creek Promenade, Caesar Chavez at Indiana, SF. www.superherosf.com. 2pm-midnight, $10-20 suggested donation. Fantasy and reality merge through live music performances, a climbing wall, sideshows, interactive games, and a cobblestone walkway of art. The festival hopes to set the World Record for the largest number of superheroes in one location — or at least put Nick Fury to shame.

 

September 23

Folsom Street Fair, Folsom between Seventh and 12th Streets, SF. (415) 777-3247, www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm, free. Time to get out that spiked collar and latex gloves once again. Don’t forget your nipple clamps or the vibrating magic wand, either! Might as well bring out the leather whip and chains too — not that you’ve been anticipating this huge fetish extravaganza all year or anything.

 

September 29-30

Polk Street Blues Festival, Polk between Jackson and California, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.polkstreetbluesfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. The blues festival will feature two stages, a marketplace of crafts and food booths, and enough saxophones and harmonicas to get you rollin’ and tumblin’.

 

September 30

Petaluma’s Fall Antique Faire, Fourth Street and Kentucky from B Street to Washington, Petaluma. (707) 762-9348, www.petalumadowntown.com. 8am-4pm, free. Watch as downtown Petaluma transforms in to an antique marketplace of estate jewelry, furniture, art, and collectables from over 180 dealers.

 

October 4-14

Mill Valley Film Festival, California Film Institute, 1001 Lootens, San Rafael. (415) 383-5256, www.mvff.com. $13.50 per screening. The 11-day festival presents international features, documentaries, shorts, and children’s films, as well as workshops and seminars dedicated to the art of film-making.

 

October 5-7

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Golden Gate Park, John F. Kennedy at Marx Meadow, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com. Free. Warren Hellman has left us in February, but the bluegrass music festival he gifted to San Francisco goes on in memory of its esteemed founder.

 

October 6

Steampunk Oktoberfest Ball, Masonic Lodge of San Mateo, 100 North Ellsworth, San Mateo. (650) 348-9725, www.peers.org/steampunk.html. 8pm, $15 adv.; $20 at door. Steampunk is a combination of modern technology and Victorian fashion tastes. Think steam-powered airships and breathable corsets. Nineteenth century waltzes, mazurkas, and polkas set the soundtrack to this year’s revelry of costumes, dancing, and anachronistic inventions.

 

October 7

Castro Street Fair, Castro at Market, SF. (415) 841-1824, www.castrostreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, donations collected at entry. Founded by Harvey Milk in 1974, this community street festival joins hundreds of craft vendors, various stages of live entertainment, and an impressive array of outfits and wigs as a celebration of the Castro’s ever-growing diversity.

 

October 13-14

Treasure Island Music Festival, Treasure Island, SF. www.treasureislandfestival.com. $69.50 for single day tickets; $125 for regular 2-day tickets. For those who are normally discouraged by large music festivals because of the usual mobs of people, this is the event for you. The festival always sports a great bill of performers, all of which you can enjoy while having a relaxing a picnic on the grass, watching the sunset fall over the Golden Gate Bridge. The lineup will be revealed later this summer.

 

October 15

Noe Valley Harvest Festival, 24th St. between Church and Sanchez, SF. (415) 519-0093, www.noevalleyharvestfestival.com. 10am-5pm, free. Fall into autumn’s welcoming leaves — there will be circus performers, dog costume contests, jack-o-lantern decorating booths, and a pumpkin patch to make you forget all about your fleeting summer crush.

 

October 26-28

International Vintage Poster Fair, Fort Mason Center, SF. (800) 856-8069, www.posterfair.com. $15. This is the only show in the world that offers over 15,000 original vintage posters. Throw out your duplicate copy, and run here now.

Teese and thank you

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Teese and thank you

STAGE With a seductive and sexy nod to the past, modern pin-up and burlesque queen Dita Von Teese has been at the forefront of reviving a once nearly lost art form for two decades.

Bringing back the sense of classic style and glamour of the golden days of Hollywood and meshing it with the tantalizing teasing of the old-time burlesque circuit, Von Teese comes to the city this week with her new “Strip Strip Hooray!” show, a 90-minute revue featuring not only her own titillating talents, but a host of other performers as well, including Dirty Martini, Catherine D’Lish, Selene Luna, Lada, Monsieur Romeo, and Perle Noire.

Von Teese — born Heather Sweet, a naturally blond Midwestern girl — first developed an interest in vintage clothing, pin-up art, and classic burlesque after moving to Southern California, where she started working at a lingerie store as a teenager.

“I fell in love with the imagery of women in the 1940s and ’50s, and that [style of] lingerie, and started looking at the history of women’s underpinnings, and that kind of interested me in pin-up art. By the time I was 17 or 18, I started developing and refining my look, and dressing in vintage clothes,” Von Teese says over the phone from Orange County, where she’s preparing for the tour.

After getting involved in the LA’s underground dance music scene in the early ’90s, Von Teese was taken to a local strip club by a friend, where she was exposed to a slightly different style of performing.

“It actually wasn’t a real strip club — it was like a bikini club — so I went there, and thought, wow these girls are doing kind of the same thing I do, but they get paid a lot more money,” Von Teese laughs.

“So as an experiment I started working there with a fake ID, and I became really interested in the history of strip clubs. I started learning more about the art of striptease, and that led me to burlesque. Most of the pin-up models from the 1930s and ’40s were burlesque dancers; if you opened up a men’s magazine from that time, there were a lot of the famous burlesque dancers in them. I kind of just started putting all of these parallels together, and thinking about what I could do to bring this idea back.”

When she first started out, she received some criticisms from people she met that worked in the industry, most notably for her dyed hair and retro look.

“I knew a lot of people that were shooting for Playboy and Penthouse at the time, and they were like, ‘You can’t have white skin and black hair and wear all these clothes. Playboy and all these people want to see a beautiful California blond!’ But I believed there was a niche waiting to be filled, so that’s how I got my start.”

Fast forward past 20 years of hard work and determination, and Von Teese is the top artist at what she does — which is an incredibly diverse array of work, including not only her live burlesque shows, but also a huge portfolio of pin-up and fashion photo spreads, several books on beauty and the art of striptease, and multiple lines of lingerie and make-up.

Although Von Teese has performed all over the world, and is extremely well known in Europe, “Strip Strip Hooray!” is her first headlining tour of the United States — and something she has been wanting to do for some time.

“Sometimes in America I can feel the whisperings of ‘What does she do, anyways?’ Some people think I just dress up in vintage clothes and drive around vintage cars and watch old movies. Or they’ll say ‘Oh, she’s just a stripper.’ With these shows that I make, I’m the producer, director, financer, choreographer — everything.”

Von Teese wanted to make these shows accessible to most any fan that wants to come see her live — promises nothing short of an amazing show.

“I’ve re-invented it for this tour, with a whole new costume, new music, and a new martini glass prop that’s covered entirely in Swarovksi crystals,” says Von Teese. “I’m just doing what I think is the very best.”

“BURLESQUE: STRIP STRIP HOORAY!”

Mon/21-Tue/22, 7pm, $35

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 371-5500

www.thefillmore.com

The heart in art

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
The heart in art

arts@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART As the old saying goes, a picture can be worth a thousand words. But a local gallery has united two separate artists stemming from Jewish and Islamic backgrounds to convey only one: peace.

In “Shalom/Salaam,” a joint exhibit running through May 26 at the Mishin Fine Arts gallery, self-proclaimed activist artist Tom Block and Afghan refugee Shokoor Khusrawy demonstrate that art can be more than a commodity, and rather a tool to dismantle cultural barriers and inspire change.

Although very distinct in their approaches, both artists hope their paintings will help foster a shared emotional experience among viewers that will ultimately lead to understanding across different peoples and beliefs.

Growing up in war-torn Afghanistan, Khusrawy’s childhood was marred by violence and destruction. Art supplies were costly and difficult to find, and a bad hip injury confined him to paint on the ground. Yet as bombs rained down outside his window, his desire to create beautiful images remained strong.

From a bustling street market scene to a shepherd herding his goats in the countryside, Khusrawy’s soft, impressionist-style paintings offer an insider’s view into everyday life of a country that usually evokes images of conflict and hardship.

“He shows the hope and beauty that can be found in the world — not the destruction,” says gallery owner Larisa Mishina. “He expresses a desire to live in peace.”

Block’s work, on the other hand, aims to ignite that desire in others. In modern portraits made of acrylic, ink, and collage on canvas, Block depicts some of the most influential mystics of medieval times — from both Jewish and Islamic traditions — that have inspired and borrowed from each other throughout the ages.

Among Block’s “Shalom/Salaam” pieces are an interpretation of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, a Sufi whose work was found quoted repeatedly in Jewish writings; it sits alongside a painting of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the founder of Hasidism, whose practice was heavily influenced by Sufi doctrine.

Through his portraits, and an accompanying book, Block aims to tell a positive story in a narrative that is almost entirely negative, and reveal that at the core, these ancient, warring religions are very similar. “I want people to see timeless ideas in a fresh way in the hopes that there will be a change in the heart of viewers,” Block explains.

Accordingly, much of Block’s work goes beyond the gallery. By using art projects to bring awareness of global and local issues, Block has been able to raise money for nonprofit organizations and led several events, such as the first ever Amnesty International Human Rights Art Festival, which brought together 400 artist from around the world and got the attention of several hundred more. A collection of his other work is also on display at the Mishin Gallery in “Working toward Beauty.”

The exhibits are Block’s first in a commercial gallery and Khusrawy’s first in the US. Both artists have only been able to present at universities, libraries, and nonprofit organizations. “Galleries have always told me to leave my ideas at the door,” Block says.

But the exhibits are also a first for Mishin Fine Arts, which boasts a collection of 30 contemporary artists from all over the world, including Italy, Spain, and Russia. Although the artists in the gallery’s existing collection all have “profound messages,” Mishina says Block and Khusrawy’s exhibits are her first real step toward creating a space for more meaningful art.

“They are both raw talents, they are very sincere in what they do, and people feel it,” Mishina notes. “This brings true value to the gallery, which we want to share with art collectors.”

Block hopes the exhibits will open the eyes of art collectors to new, profound ideas of art and what it can do. “There’s a whole movement just waiting to be galvanized,” he says. *

“SHALOM/SALAAM” AND “WORKING TOWARD BEAUTY”

Through May 26

Mishin Fine Arts

445A Sutter, SF

(415) 391-6100

www.mishingallery.com

 

Tour de F*ck You: Sons of Science speak!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Tour de F*ck You: Sons of Science speak!

In our recent Bike Issue, we profiled several of our favorite Bike People — freewheelin’ movers on the 2012 bike scene we particularly admired. Among them, for how could it be otherwise, were the Sons of Science, an augmented trio of musical bike-tivists whose side-splitting viral “Motherf*cking Bike” video hit lampooned and celebrated SF’s precious, in-your-face bike culture. 

John Benson and Ward Evans of Sausage Films teamed up with amazing bike horn soloist Hector Pérez for the one-off (perhaps?) project — and there are plenty of juicy local cameos in the video. Benson and Evans took some time from sippin’ lattes on their fixies (kind of!) to answer some questions.

SFBG So…. I heard Russell Crowe just tweeted about you ….

SONS OF SCIENCE  Yes apparently he’s an avid cyclist, and we think he approved of the language. The video got several thousand more hits as a result of his tweet, and to show our appreciation we’re going to rent every one of his movies — even Breaking Up.

SFBG Who’s all in the band and when did you get together? Is it an outgrowth of other media projects?

SOS Sons of Science are Hector (Pérez, who appears as Horn Solo in the MFB video), John (Benson, who appears as Fixie Hipster) and Ward (Evans, who plays Stoner Messenger). We’ve known each other for years and just recently decided to collaborate for fun, and it clicked. John and Ward also direct as a team, so it was a great excuse to do a video. For this track we were also very lucky to feature Tim Brooks (formerly of the Young Offenders, who plays the Angry Commuter), he brought a pantload of energy and genuine cyclist cred to the project. He also knows the MASH guys, which was how we got that great cameo.

SFBG Are you all on a motherfucking bike right now?

SOS Hells yeah, we are live-tweeting this interview from the center lane of Market at rush hour while sipping nonfat lattes.

SFBG Who are some of your bike heroes (besides Russell Crowe)?

SOS A guy named Joff Summerfield rode a penny farthing around the globe, he’d be right up there. Then there’s Elliot from ET, Dave from Breaking Away, Juliette Lewis (who also tweeted our video and has probably been on a bike), and pretty much everyone on two wheels who risks their lives in traffic every day — while employing common sense and basic courtesy, of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAJBXtVg8nQ

SFBG Will we see you performing live soon?

SOS You can see us anytime on YouTube, but a live show will require more songs and the perfect ratio of smoke to lasers. Right now we’re focused on MFB, but it’s definitely on the to-do list.

SFBG What’s your next big project? Because I want to see you rolling down Valencia on a motherfucking Ferris Wheel, living the dream of the 1890s.

SOS We’re considering some kind of performance art piece involving giant illuminated human hamster balls out on the Bay, but the wind and tides would have to be just right. It’s a work in progress.

SFBG If you could rename the Wiggle, what would you call it?

SOS We shot a good deal of Tim’s bits in and around the Wiggle, so in his honor we’d probably go with the “Tour de F*ck You.”

Live Shots: ‘Uncertain Weather’ at ODC

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The ODC Youth and Teen Program staged its first full performance in a fantastic collection of dances inspired by the seasons on Fri/11.  Dancers twirled through the “rain” with colorful umbrellas, an ice cream hawker tapped on a sunny beach, and sweaty passengers swayed in a sardine-packed Mission bus ride.

Each piece was unique and imaginative. A shoe-free tap dance number was done in miniature sand boxes, creating a pleasing and rhythmic sound under quick moving feet. Four adorable munchkins called “The Quartet” (they were the youngest dancers in the performance) added their own spunky moves and sunglass-clad cool looks to many of the routines.

But best of all was the eerie fan dance, in which three dancers, with long, luscious locks leaned over industrial fans and danced with the wind. It was beautiful and creepy, and one of the most sophisticated and mature dance pieces I’ve seen performed by such a young group of dancers. Kudos for pushing the envelope on that piece and for all the great young talents that danced their hearts out this weekend.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnw2id6_Zuo

In bed with the cuddle expert

Andrew Lam
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In bed with the cuddle expert

“I’ve been enveloped and swimming in love the last few years”

It’s early Saturday morning, and I’m quickly putting fresh sheets on my bed. The door bell rings before I can finish, and I run down the stairs to a incredibly punctual, smiling, and shirtless Travis Sigley, the cuddle therapy practitioner.

Sigley is a San Francisco-based, specializing in private appointments, group sessions, and workshops on non-sexual intimacy. I invited Sigley over to have a conversation about his line of work — and to find out why this beautiful man is always shirtless. He greets me at my door with a big hug. His handsome face and sun-kissed body make it easy to imagine spending an hour in my bed wrapped in his loving arms.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Before we get started about life as a cuddle therapy practitioner, can you tell us why you don’t wear a shirt? Don’t you get cold?

Travis Sigley: I haven’t worn a shirt in five years. There are some social situations where I have to wear a shirt, like going on a plane. I would say, I live about 98 percent of my time without a shirt.

It started on a beautiful sunny day in Santa Cruz. I was headed to the beach to hang out with some friends, and I really didn’t see why I was putting on a shirt to travel there. So I didn’t put one on. The next day I asked myself, “Why are you putting on a shirt on yet another beautiful sunny day?” And since then, I really can’t seem to have an answer to putting on a shirt anymore. I’ve been enveloped and swimming in love the last few years.

In regards to getting cold, I’ve changed my relationship to weather. My body really embraces the change of season. I find myself eating more in the winter because my body knows it’s going to have to produce more heat. All in all, I have a pleasant experience feeling the change in weather. 

Shots from Sigley’s snuggle scene

SFBG: How did you begin your journey as a cuddle therapy practitioner?

TS: My first professional cuddle client was in the back room of a strip club when I first moved to San Francisco. As a stripper, I found myself spending a lot of my time cuddling with my clients in that back room. It really dawned on me that people are really seeking love and touch more than a sexual experience. And I realized there was no place to really seek this form of non-sexual intimacy. So this inspired me to start an educational and practical forum. A space for people to have intimate experiences and touch. 

SFBG: Where does sex intersect with cuddle therapy — if it does at all?

TS: I started cuddle therapy because I saw a discord between how people understood non-sexual affection and sex. This is a service to help people understand that difference and articulate what their needs are. I facilitate a space for my clients to explore and differentiate between their sexual desires and intimate non-sexual desires. I believe understanding the difference really allows you to live your life more fully..

SFBG: Do you cuddle both men and women?

TS: Yes, I absolutely cuddle both men and women. Every single human deserves love and affection. As long as you are willing to accept my boundaries of hygiene and sexuality I will happily cuddle you.

SFBG: Can you articulate further what your boundaries are around hygiene and sexuality?

TS: I’m referring to general hygiene maintenance. I cuddle lots of people. And in regards to sexuality, I think it’s really important that my clients understand the space we are cultivating is a non-sexually expressed space. I also want my clients to be open to moving whatever sexual energy may arise through conversation, and other ways of expression. 

>>MUST-READ: KELLY LOVEMONSTER’S INTERVIEW WITH TRANSMAN PORN PIONEER JAMES DARLING

SFBG: How do you respond to clients who get aroused during one of your cuddle sessions?

TS: I understand that the body communicates things. It’s about acknowledging the sexual energy in the space, and realizing that you are in control of your sexual energy. Communication is always the best method to move sexual energy during my sessions. It is a great way to help my clients articulate how they can channel their sexual energy in a non-sexual context. 

Some of my clients love doing a meditation. And we meditate on moving the sexual energy up the body, and enlivening their entire body. So the sexual energy is not concentrated in one particular place. I find doing breath work with people also works. Feeling the sexual energy fill their bodies and moving the sexual energy through breath. Singing, humming, and toning are all other methods I’ve used to help move sexual energy.

I’ve even done dream work with one client. She requested we both doze off and move our work to the dream world and the world of the subconscious. That was actually one of the most powerful session of cuddle therapy I’ve ever done. It requires a lot of trust to leave your body and do work from the subconscious. It’s really powerful knowing that you are going on a healing path through the subconscious to change and facilitate positive growth in a person.

SFBG: How do you identify your gender today?

TS: I believe gender is really fluid, and I have a felt sense of both feminine and masculine energies. I am particularly feeling more in line with embodying a masculine energy. And let’s not forget gender is constructed. Being a male to me today means being respectful, mindful, conscious, attentive, and  explorative within the spectrum of masculinity. 

SFBG: What does being sex-positive mean for you?

TS: Well for me being sex-positive has more to do with one’s perspective on sexuality. One who is sex-positive has the expression of health and is open to the spectrum of sex and sexuality. A sex-positive being is mindful to their physical body interactions with others, and they are sensitive to the traumatic experiences of others. Being sex-positive means being educated about sex, being a good listener, and being comfortable with all facets of what sex can look like.

Catch Travis hosting group cuddle workshops at the OmShanTea tea temple, which will be setting up poles at these feel-good festivals across the region

Symbiosis 

May 17-21, $280-$320 three day camping pass; $40-$60 car pass; $35-$60 early entry

Pyramid Lake, Nevada

www.pyramideclipse.com

Lightning in a Bottle

May 24-28, one-day pass $85-$100; four-day pass $215-$240

Oak Canyon Ranch 

Silverado, CA

www.lightninginabottle.org

Movement Play

June 22-25, $260

Willits, CA

www.movementplay.com

Wanderlust 

July 26-29, $99 one-day; $155 two-day; $395 three-day; $475 four-day yoga-music passes; $20-$34.50 music-only day passes 

Squaw Valley, CA

squaw.wanderlustfestival.com

Live Shots: The Drums and Craft Spells at Great American Music Hall

Tony Robles
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“Let’s just have a good time tonight,” said Jonny Pierce, the singer of the Drums, one song into a sold-out show at the Great American Music Hall on Saturday. He paused briefly to let the applause fill an appropriate amount of space and added, “This next song is about a dead person.”

There may have been some intentional, practiced irony at play, but the space between those two statements is the key to everything that is great about the Drums. Sure, Pierce has one of the most perfect, near angelic voices in pop music – witness enraptured fans, hands out toward the stage, looking for a hold – but more importantly, he also has one of the best deadpans.

When he’s performing, his facial expressions vary more in intensity than emotion. If you catch him smiling, it’s inward. Happy? Sad? Blah. When the band is playing bright, uptempo, yet often melancholic music, and the lyrics send conflicting cues on how to feel, the singer seems careful to pivot just right, not tip his hand.

After singing “Book of Revelation” off of the recent album Portamento, which includes the lines “I’ve seen the world and there’s no Heaven and no Hell” and “I believe when we die we die, so let me love you tonight,” Pierce said, “That last song was really important to me, so to hear you guys singing that…thank you.”

On stage, The Drums* won’t tell you how to feel about typical pop topics like love and heartbreak anymore than less typical ones like, say, being an atheist and having an existential crisis, but Pierce is seemingly happy to show what you can do in the mean time, as he’s otherwise constantly moving about the stage, calmly dancing with his own confusion.

Openers: Part Time recalled a less drugged out (or just more doobied) version of Ariel Pink, but that may have just been the lead singer’s technicolor dream coat. Also on the style watch, the drummer looked like one of Biff’s lackeys in Back to the Future (but that may have just been the glasses.)

Craft Spells’ Justin Paul Vallesteros gave a shout out to Stockton, where he started the band before relocating to Seattle. Someone in the crowd said he’d “discovered the band last year, and it turned out to be the perfect summer soundtrack.” Based on the way that the intro to “After the Moment” – from last year’s “Idle Labor” – was recognized with cheers, he wasn’t the only one that feeling that way. And given how well new tracks “Warmth” and “Still Left With Me” were live, it could be the soundtrack for this summer as well.

*Truth is the whole band has deadpan solidarity, particularly co-founder Jacob Graham who, whether playing keys or conducting a bank of analog synth – as he did for the encore opener “Searching for Heaven” – has an ever-present, captivating stillness.

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