Local

Light after darkness

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Cracked walls, peeling plaster, empty light sockets, patterns of wallpaper, and scraps of old headlines — devoid of human activity, the shots within poet, novelist, critic, painter, and occasional filmmaker Weldon Kees’s only solo directorial effort, Hotel Apex (1952), convey what biographer James Reidel deemed a fascination with “the pathos of objects.” It’s little wonder Jenni Olson feels a certain kinship with Kees: Her recent ode to San Francisco loneliness, 2005’s The Joy of Life, also mines emotion from urban spaces some might consider empty or left behind. “He’s very quirky about the banal and the mundane, and kind of poetic and melancholy,” notes Olson, when asked about a bond. “He’s a role model.”

Because The Joy of Life‘s soundtrack features Kees’s “The Coastline Rag,” Olson’s exploration of landscape and longing might seem like a direct tribute to Kees’s film work — after all, Olson’s film deals partly with the Golden Gate Bridge and suicide, and Kees was fatally drawn to the landmark. That isn’t the case, though: It turns out Olson only recently learned of Hotel Apex‘s existence, in the process of putting together a film program devoted to Kees, with some help from Reidel.

Such a project couldn’t have been simple. A too-easy source like IMDb.com is definitely not the place to go to learn about Kees’s links with film, as the site only credits his contributions as a composer to The Joy of Life and James Broughton’s Adventures of Jimmy, an oft-hilarious short with ultra-fey narration by Broughton that resonates with the real-life sexual ambiguity of both its director and (perhaps a bit less) its music contributor.

In fact, Kees was involved in more than a handful of short films. Unsettling when one digs beneath its ordinary surface, the Gregory Bateson collaboration Hand-Mouth Coordination (1952) resembles a home movie of a mom and child that includes footage of the father figure — who actually turns out to be Kees — at work behind a Bolex. If the scenario seems a bit like the filmed experiments that distort the protagonist of Michael Powell’s 1960 Peeping Tom as a child, the comparison isn’t completely off base. “The film is meant to be a depiction of a schizopregenic — a cold mother who doesn’t properly bond with her kid,” Olson explains while describing one of a few projects partly derived from Kees’s links to the local Langley Porter Psychiatric Clinic. “Kees was very particular about the idea that the filmmaker should be visible, in a way that — 50 years ago — was new. He was influenced by Helen Levitt.”

An acknowledgement, however unconventional, of the filmmaker’s role — something troublesomely absent from Eric Steel’s controversial, not-yet-released Golden Gate Bridge suicide documentary The Bridge — is something that unites Kees’s and Olson’s movie projects. Kees’s physical presence within a 1955 film by William Heick, also called The Bridge, is the more subtle and historically engaged riddle about life, death, and the Golden Gate Bridge at the core of Olson’s program, which she’s put together in conjunction with San Francisco Cinematheque and the Poetry Center. In The Bridge, Heick and Kees draw upon Hart Crane’s poem of the same name: Although the structure itself is no longer the Brooklyn but rather the Golden Gate span, Crane’s words become an elegy not just for himself but for fellow poet Kees as well.

Beyond the films he was involved in, Kees’s ties to film history are rich ones. Briefly a movie critic at Time, he was close to James Agee, and as Reidel’s bio notes in passing, no less a talent than friend and fellow painter-critic Manny Farber praised Hotel Apex‘s unorthodox camera work for its “crawl” down a steam pipe “at the pace of a half-dead bug.” (Kees also rubbed shoulders and butted heads with Clement Greenberg, Mary McCarthy, Kenneth Rexroth, William Carlos Williams, and others.) Pauline Kael often cursed herself for not recognizing self-destructive signs in her friend, as she was one of the last people to see Kees with any regularity in the last year of his life. For those who know little about Kees’s ties with Kael, or the role moviegoing plays in one of his most effective and contemporary poems, Olson’s program might bring a surprise or two. SFBG

KEES KINO: THE FILM WORK OF WELDON KEES

Sun/11, 7:30 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.sfcinematheque.org

www.butch.org

Gnaw on this

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

There’s always room for another film festival in this town, especially when said fest is drowning in blood, guts, and supernatural shenanigans. The San Francisco Independent Film Festival’s festering youngest child, Another Hole in the Head, returns this week for its third year of ghouls gone wild.

Standouts include The Hamiltons (think Party of Five meets Martin), directed by a local duo whose enticing nom de screen is "the Butcher Brothers,” and, from Greece, Yorgos Noussias’s excellent To Kako (Evil), which cribs from Romero and 28 Days Later in its tale of a ragtag band of urban survivors scrambling to evade the marauding undead. And yes, it does incorporate the dreaded fast-moving breed of zombies, but even genre purists turned off by that factoid will forgive the film once things start going apeshit; I’m thinking in particular of a scene in a deserted restaurant that unleashes 2006’s most satisfying head-squashing to date. The film also has enough of a sense of humor to include the line "If you don’t trust me, trust this!" (cut to: a giant rifle) and a last shot of near-genius proportions.

Per usual, HoleHead brings in several Asian horror flicks, including Shinya Tsukamoto’s enduringly creepy Haze and Yudai Yamaguchi (Battlefield Baseball) and Junichi Yamamoto’s disappointing Meatball Machine. There are also a handful of classics, like Bruce Kessler’s 1971 psych-out Simon: King of the Witches and — in perhaps the festival’s most inspired move — John Boorman’s 1973 Zardoz. Sean Connery’s spectacular loincloth is but the first of many, many reasons to view this neglected masterpiece on the big screen.

Also well worth catching (either at the fest or during their June 29–July 2 run at CELLspace): splat-happy theater troupe the Primitive Screwheads (Evil Dead: Live!, Re-Animator of the Dead), who return with their latest, The Chainsaw Massacres, which boasts a rumored 60 gallons of stage blood poised to rain down on the audience. Plus: disco!

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD

June 8–15

See Film listings for venue and ticket information

www.sfindie.com

Mini mini CinemaScope!

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The term CinemaScope might conjure a 2.66-to-1 vision of an extra-bodacious Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire, or, if you’re a certain breed of movie maniac, it might inspire a recitation of Fritz Lang’s famous Contempt-uous remark that the format is fine for filming snakes and coffins, but not for capturing people. Bizarre, then, that Liu Jiayin has taken an outmoded approach known for gargantuan celluloid spectacle and revived it — brilliantly — for small-scale digital family portraiture. Winner of numerous festival prizes, including the competitive Dragons and Tigers award bestowed in Vancouver last fall, Liu’s BetaSP debut feature, Ox Hide, has more than once been deemed the most important first feature to emerge from China since Jia Zhangke’s 2000 Platform. That’s a fest obsessive’s way of saying that Liu is the real deal — in addition to possessing a charismatically baby-butch camera presence, she knows how to write, stage, and shoot a funny, unsettling, and pointed scene.

Twenty-three scenes, to be exact, a number reflecting Liu’s age when she made the movie. Ox Hide consists of just that many immobile but rarely "static" shots, each used to depict a moment from the cramped and quarrelsome domestic life she shares with her mother and her father, the latter a stubborn and slowly failing leather goods merchant. (Thus the title.) Making "reality" TV look about as stupid as it is, Liu shares a unique use of format and a sharp focus on the family with ’90s teen PixelVision pioneer — and former Le Tigre member — Sadie Benning, and like Benning, she’s got terrific timing both on-screen (bickering about noodles at the dinner table) and off (using a close-up of a printer to reveal her kin’s economic struggles). Local curator Joel Shepard deserves thanks for bringing this movie to the Bay Area, kicking off a "Beijing Underground" series that will span a few more Fridays this month. (Johnny Ray Huston)

OX HIDE

Thurs/8, 7 and 9 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

$5–$8

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

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City CarShare

131 Steuart, Ste. 205, SF

(415) 995-8588 or (510) 352-0323

www.citycarshare.org

City CarShare is on a roll. According to CEO Rick Hutchinson, membership reached record highs this month. And last week the local nonprofit celebrated its fifth birthday by retiring its final green Volkswagen Beetle and ushering in the new breed of hybrids and eco-friendly vehicles. With City CarShare’s new "pods" popping up around the East Bay and the city, you no longer have any excuses for that kiddie scooter you still ride to work. (Kevin Lee)

Little Otsu Publishing and Store

849 Valencia, SF

(415) 255-7900

www.littleotsu.com

Shifting focus along with location, vegan boutique Otsu has moved from 16th Street to 849 Valencia and into a new incarnation as independent publishing house–cum–retail space for artisan paper goods Little Otsu. Founders Yvonne Chen and Jeremy Crown have capitulated to their love of paper products, once a sideline, and put cards, journals, and planners designed by local and independent artists, all printed on recycled paper with vegetable-based inks, in their storefront window. Happily for vegan fashionistas, signature T-shirts and wallets are still part of the stock, though belts and shoes are not. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Endorsements for Nevin

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By G.W. Schulz
At Mike Nevin’s Election Party

At District 8 State Senate candidate Mike Nevin’s election party, the mood is subdued. At the front of the wood-paneled meeting hall of the Steam Fitters, Plumbers, and Refrigerator Fitters Local 467 in Burlingame, an eraser board shows opponent Leland Yee ahead by 11 percentage points, with 50 percent of precincts reporting.

Nevin supporters chant, “I like Mike,” but the outcome seems inevitable to everyone, including Nevin.

After a series of supporters and campaign volunteers make short speeches, Nevin appears before the crowd with his family and declares, “Only 50 percent of the votes are in, but I’ve always been a pretty good counter all of my life, and I’m pretty aware of what’s going on tonight.”

He goes on to thank his campaign staff; his wife jokes that her husband has been endorsed by God, the Pope, and even, somehow, Yee.

“One thing people have always said about me is that I have political purpose,” he says, adding that that’s why he pursued the now more than two-years-long campaign.

The winners are

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By Tim Redmond
At City Hall

OK, we can now fairly safely project most of the local races. Leland Yee is way ahead in SF, and trailing only slightly in San Mateo, so Yee will be our next state senator. Janet Reilly isn’t looking good at all, so we may be facing Assemblymember Fiona Ma (ick, I’m voting for the Green Party candidate, Barry Hermanson).

On the props:

Prop. A, the violence-prevention measure, is coming up fast, winning the election-day vote by 51 percent, and will almost certainly prevail.

Prop. B, the eviction-disclosure measure, is a winner.

Prop. C, the Transbay Terminal governance plan, is toast.

Prop. D, the Laguna Honda measure, is burnt toast.

We will be back shortly with the county central committee.

What happened to our Web site?

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By Tim Redmond

Well, the simple answer is that we’re still not sure — but there’s some indication that we were socked by a denial-of-service attack. Imagine that happening on 6/06/06, in the middle of election day.

Even the folks at DailyKos have been speculating about this, wondering if maybe the Republicans were involved somehow. I dunno; maybe someone local who didn’t want our endorsements available (they are now, below, scroll down). Maybe it’s just one of those things; maybe it’s ……. SATAN!

Either way, we’ve managed to get this blog up, which will take us through election night.

Party on

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› amanda@sfbg.com

"San Franciscans will still be able to enjoy their beer in the park at the event," an elated Robbie Kowal told the Guardian on the afternoon of June 2, fresh out of a meeting in which the Mayor’s Office brokered a deal to save the North Beach Jazz Fest.

The event had been jeopardized by the May 30 decision by the Recreation and Park Commission to uphold a move by its staff and Operations Committee to deny the sale of alcohol in Washington Square Park. The San Francisco Examiner even erroneously declared the event dead on its June 1 cover.

But the Mayor’s Office intervened and hosted a long day of negotiations among the event organizers — Kowal, Alistair Munroe, and John Miles — and representatives from the commission, the Rec and Park staff, and the San Francisco Police Department.

In keeping with the commission’s May 30 decision, alcohol will not be sold in the park but on the street adjacent to the park in a gated beer garden. A portion of the park will be designated for people wishing to enjoy a glass of beer or wine while remaining near the live music.

"We’ve worked something out that allows everyone to move forward and the commission to stand by its policy," Yomi Agunbiade, general manager of the Rec and Park Department, told us.

"It doesn’t change the nature of the event," said Kowal, who had been concerned that a change in practice from minibars in the park to beer gardens in the streets would deter festivalgoers and detract from the general enjoyment of the event.

The organizers were prepared to fight for their vision of the festival and had filed an appeal with the commission to review the issue. Without the sale of alcohol, the festival anticipated losing between $20,000 and $40,000, enough to potentially necessitate calling the whole show off.

But after nearly four hours of public testimony at the last meeting about the jazz fest and the North Beach Festival, commissioners weren’t too excited about another round and were pushing for a compromise. "Everybody was interested in making sure the jazz festival folks knew the event was supported and that we wanted it to stay," said Agunbiade. "The right people were in the room."

Yet those not in the room were the North Beach NIMBYs who forced the booze ban, and it’s unclear how they’ll react to the decision. Event organizers around the city have been closely following the North Beach situation, concerned that it was the start of a conservative trend in policy and a new wave of intolerance for alcohol consumption in public (see "The Death of Fun," May 24).

Commissioner Jim Lazarus cited the inherent dangers of a hard-line policy, telling the Guardian, "The precedent could be very bad. I don’t know how we’re going to deal with it at other parks."

The San Francisco Outdoor Events Coalition, a newly formed group of events organizers and promoters, has been calling for a hold on radical changes in policy until after the summer festival season, and it seems as though that call has finally been answered at City Hall.

"What we all have learned from this process was we should have communicated earlier," Agunbiade said after the meeting. "What we will do after events are over this year is sit down and discuss any changes more in depth and evaluate how it went."

Agunbiade said they will be looking at each festival on a case-by-case basis and will try to work with the individual needs of the venues and events. He added that they plan to "communicate a lot sooner and a lot more often to make sure these kinds of situations don’t occur."

The compromise for the jazz fest has been extended to the North Beach Festival as well, but promoter Marsha Garland faces other obstacles. After the commission denied her festival a permit for booze sales in the park, Garland received permission from the Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation for additional beer gardens on the street.

But that decision has been appealed by Anthony Gantner, a local lawyer and president of the North Beach Merchants Association (rival to Garland’s North Beach Chamber of Commerce, which hosts the North Beach Festival).

Garland says she won’t breathe a sigh of relief until after the ISCOTT hearing June 8, just a week before the festival. SFBG

Questioning their bosses

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gwschulz@sfbg.com

Telephone interviewers for the influential San Francisco–based Field Research Corp. are trying to unionize but are getting resistance from the company. They have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking that the federal agency oversee their election for membership in an AFL-CIO affiliate.

About 40 of the employees out of 50 have so far signed up to join Communication Workers of America Local 9415, hoping to secure increased hourly wages (they currently start at San Francisco’s minimum hourly wage of $8.62, earning 50¢ or so more if they’re bilingual), a health care package, and other improvements that will stem what they say is a chronically high turnover rate.

Field Research is one of the most respected political pollsters in the state. Major newspapers across California, including the San Francisco Chronicle, regularly rely on the company’s Field Poll to gauge public opinion on everything from electoral candidates and earthquakes to steroids and immigration. The company also performs taxpayer-subsidized surveys for some county health departments.

But Field Research’s employees say they’re not being paid nearly enough to cold-call strangers at supper time to ask them if they support queer marriage rights or whether they think Barry Bonds should be penalized for doping. The workers claim the company offers no holiday or sick pay and requires them to average 37.5-hour weeks for six months before becoming eligible for health care benefits. Their schedules never permit them to meet the average, they say, and predictably, just a handful of workers have the benefits. And raises, they contend, are mere pennies.

When a delegation of the interviewers arrived at Field Research’s Sutter Street corporate offices on May 30 to request recognition of the union, they say, CFO Nancy Rogers refused to speak with them and threatened to call the police. Their only legal option then was the NLRB, which will first direct Field Research and the workers to determine who is eligible to vote on union membership and then set an election date.

"We wanted to say, ‘Look, you’re a San Francisco institution,’” said Yonah Camacho Diamond, an organizer for Local 9415. “‘You pride yourself on integrity. Will you voluntarily recognize?’ They threw us out of the building."

Daniel Butler began working for Field Research in October 2003, he told the Guardian during a small press conference at City Hall June 2. He was soon promoted to a quality monitoring position. But, he says, after he expressed his concerns to management about the quality of survey information gathered by temp workers the company had hired, he was suspended for three days and his position was eliminated. He says he was told that his complaints were "unprofessional."

"The message they were sending was, rather than make an effort to improve quality or encourage better work through higher wages, let’s just get rid of the position that monitors quality altogether," said Butler, who eventually sought Local 9415’s help in March.

Rogers sent a memo to the staff May 31 stating that the workers had a right to a union election, while also issuing a warning that could portend rocky relations between management and workers at the company.

"Many of you think that by getting a union, your wages, hours and working conditions will automatically change," the letter reads. "That is simply not the case. If the union gets in, the company will bargain in good faith, but it will not enter into agreements that are either not in its best business interests or that could eliminate the jobs of many of our part-time employees."

Rogers, for the most part, declined to comment for the Guardian when we reached her by telephone, citing the NLRB’s ongoing procedures.

"All I can really say is this is now before the National Labor Relations Board," she said. "We want to make sure this is fair and equitable and follow due process."

Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, told the workers at the June 2 press conference that they were within their rights to pursue unionization.

"This is a union town," he said. "One of the goals we have is that people should have a voice at work." SFBG

The cable that bind s

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Oakland, San Francisco, and other California cities have in recent years tried to negotiate maximum public benefits under their franchise agreement with cable television provider Comcast, but all have backed down when the telecom giant threatened costly litigation.

The latest episode played out May 30 at the Oakland City Council meeting when the council voted to repeal an ordinance that would have required franchisees like Comcast to allow workers to decide whether they want to form a union.

Comcast — dubbed the “Wal-Mart of Telecom” by the American Right to Work Foundation — not only sued Oakland over the ordinance but also decided to void a tentative franchise agreement with the city that had taken three and a half years to work out.

Comcast officials claim the company walked away from the contract because two years had elapsed since major parts of the agreement had been hammered out and during that time the competitive field had shifted.

As for the lawsuit, company officials argue that Oakland’s union ordinance is preempted by federal law and that the city doesn’t have a “proprietary interest” in its franchise.

A proprietary interest occurs when a city has to manage critical public rights-of-way, such as streets, alleys, and utility easements, and must make sure it receives fair compensation for the ongoing use of those public properties by private entities, like Comcast.

In such situations, a city must ensure the efficient and cost-effective management of its public rights-of-way and must maximize benefit and minimize risk, including the risk of a labor-<\h>management conflict that could arise from a union organizing campaign.

That, at least, was the argument the city of Oakland made when it drew up its labor ordinance, and it was the argument that city council president Ignacio De La Fuente continued to make at the May 30 council meeting.

Councilmember Desley Brooks managed to sound like a Comcast apologist by claiming the city had been wrong to pass the ordinance in the first place.

“We knew that when this ordinance was passed, we had no basis to do it,” Brooks said. “We can try and justify why we did it, but federal law is settled in this matter.”

But De La Fuente was joined by Councilmember Jane Brunner and Vice Mayor Jean Quan in insisting that the city wasn’t backing down because it was wrong, but because it couldn’t afford to fight with a deep-<\h>pocketed monopoly in court.

That was the same argument that led the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to narrowly approve a four-year contract extension with Comcast last September, rather than negotiate better public access and other community benefits as part of the contract.

San Jose, Walnut Creek, and other cities have also been tied up in expensive litigation with Comcast, which has virtually unlimited resources and a willingness to spend big in court fights and the political arena. But a bill now moving through the California State Legislature has the potential to shake up the cable television playing field — some say, in ways that are hard to predict.

The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act, authored by Assembly speaker Fabian N??ñez, seeks to allow telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon to provide television services through fiber-<\h>optic lines and thereby compete with Comcast and other cable providers.

The landmark bill, AB 2987, cleared the Assembly on a 70–<\d>0 vote the day after the Oakland City Council repealed its ordinance. It is now awaiting consideration — and possible modification — by the Senate.

It is being watched carefully by Communications Workers of America, which represents 700,000 workers nationally, including 2,000 in the Bay Area, and is one of the few labor unions that is growing.

As CWA field coordinator Lisa Morowitz explained, for cities to take on Comcast individually, as Oakland, Walnut Creek, and San Jose have tried without success to do, is like David fighting Goliath.

“It’s one step forward, two steps back,” Morowitz told the Guardian. Nevertheless, she believes Oakland has substantial leverage in future negotiations with Comcast, precisely because of the N??ñez bill.

“CWA supports AB 2987,” Morowitz said, “because we believe it’s going to create conditions more favorable for cities, communities, and workers by bringing competition to video service.”

She acknowledged that the bill won’t directly address the issues raised during Oakland’s ordinance battle, but, she said, “theoretically, it will create more accountability.”

CWA argues that in addition to creating competition in the video services marketplace, the bill will replace city-by-city franchising deals that have led to steep rate increases, protect revenue streams for local governments, and expand local tax bases.

But Sydney Levy of San Francisco–<\d>based Media Alliance worries that it will simply help the titans of industry and not the communities they supposedly serve.

“I understand that labor thinks it has a better chance of being able to organize within companies if there’s more competition and AT&T is pitted against Verizon is pitted against Comcast,” Levy told us. “But I disagree with CWA on how to have that competition be fair. It’s like energy deregulation. It sounded cute, but it wasn’t. So, we can’t be stupid this time around. We need to do it in a way that’s good for cities, consumers, and communities.”

The goal of franchise agreements that cities enter into with cable companies is to ensure that providers cover the entire city, provide public affairs programming, and pay for their use of public rights-of-way.

“But with the new bill, there’s no enforcement, no contractual obligations, no timetable,” claimed Levy, who worries that under the proposed arrangement Comcast’s competitors could say, “We can’t put fiber everywhere; we’ll upgrade as we see fit.”

“But that’s not good enough,” said Levy, who also worries that the bill will screw up community media locally and that redlining — providing new services in higher-<\h>income neighborhoods while bypassing areas already underserved by broadband services — may well occur.

And then there’s the sticky matter of ceding control to Sacramento.

“If we don’t have the ability to complain at the city level, then we’ll have to take all our fights to Sacramento, where we don’t have equal access,” Levy said. “That would be disastrous for local decision making.”

To his mind, AB 2987 is about cable vs. phone companies, and not about what’s best for the public interest.

“Having competition is a good thing for cities, consumers, and communities, but having competition that is unfair to communities and dismantles protections is not. We need to fix what’s in the Senate version,” he argued.

Levy believes that Comcast is playing a wait-and-see game as the N??ñez bill makes its way through Sacramento and that Oakland should continue to negotiate with Comcast for the best franchise deal possible.

“Because it may be the last franchise deal Oakland gets,” he explained, warning that if AB 2987 passes unmodified in the Senate, “we’re going to go from an irresponsible monopoly system to one that’s a system of unfair competition.”

But N??ñez deputy chief of staff Steve Maviglio told the Guardian that without the N??ñez bill, “cities have as much choice as they did in the former Soviet Union…. This bill is a powerful incentive for other providers.” Maviglio said that the bill language could still be modified in the Senate, but that its basic goal is clear.

“We hope this bill will save consumers money, lead to more competition, and prevent redlining,” he said. “We want to make sure under<\h>served communities don’t get left out of the digital picture.”

Comcast is the 800-pound gorilla lurking behind the vote in Sacramento, the force that all cities are looking to find some leverage against.

San Francisco supervisor Ross Mirkarimi told us that the Board of Supervisors had tailored legislation that mimicked Oakland’s union-<\h>organizing ordinance but abandoned it on the advice of CWA and the SF Labor Council because of what was happening to Oakland at the hands of Comcast.

To Mirkarimi’s mind, the best solution is neither piecemeal ordinances nor statewide laws, but for cities to municipalize their telecom and Internet systems.

“We would not be facing these kind of legal challenges if San Francisco was able to municipalize,” he told us.

And that’s precisely what San Francisco is now pursuing. A proposal by Sup. Tom Ammiano to study the creation of a citywide municipal broadband system — to be installed as streets are opened up for sewer lines or other infrastructure needs — was recently put out to bid.

Ammiano told the Guardian he expects to get some preliminary indications as to whether the system would be viable as soon as this summer, and he’s confident San Francisco will ultimately be in the position to offer television and other broadband services to city residents.

Mirkarimi, who supports the proposal, said it’s the best hope to “redeem our utility democracy as it pertains to our cable industry.” SFBG

San Francisco Black Film Festival

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REVIEW Other local fests may grab more attention, but the ever-growing San Francisco Black Film Festival, now in its eighth year, is well worth seeking out for its consistently strong and diverse programming. The opening night film, Son of Man, sets the story of Jesus Christ in modern South Africa; other narratives (features and shorts) in the fest explore family ties, romance, and social issues. However, SFBFF’s most fascinating entries come in the form of its many documentaries, which take on everything from the origins of AIDS to maverick filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles — whose cinematic portrait bears the fest’s wittiest title, How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It). Micah Schaffer’s moving, insightful Death of Two Sons explores the eerily parallel lives of Amadou Diallo — the unarmed Guinean immigrant gunned down in 1999 by trigger-happy NYPD officers while innocently reaching for his wallet — and a white American Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Diallo’s home village. The aftermaths of both men’s deaths (Diallo’s killers were acquitted; the African cabdriver who caused the fatal crash served jail time) speak troubling volumes about race-relations-as-international-relations. Another well-made doc that spins an often infuriating tale is The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which mixes vintage footage with contemporary interviews in its detailed look at the 1955 murder that’s credited with launching the modern civil rights movement. (Cheryl Eddy)

SAN FRANCISCO BLACK FILM FESTIVAL June 6–11

See Film Listings (below) for additional information

Life’s a Giant Drag

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› a&e@sfbg.com

Has anyone ever chosen a more appropriate band name than Annie Hardy?

Speaking with the 24-year-old singer and guitarist of Los Angeles’s Giant Drag, I find it impossible to imagine a moniker that better captures the depressing nature of both her band’s narcotic grunge-pop songs and her own almost comically defeated outlook on life. She expresses so much bemused disappointment in conversation, in fact, that the name almost seems like an understatement.

"Sometimes real life ruins all your fun," says Hardy with a chuckle, calling from a tour stop in Minneapolis. She’s not kidding, though — at least not entirely. Throughout our chat, the Orange County native airs a laundry list of grievances about the record industry, from frustrating decisions made by her label to the constant comparisons of her band — which also includes 27-year-old drummer and synth player Micah Calabrese — to the Breeders and PJ Harvey.

Her biggest gripe, however, seems to be that music journalists tend to make a big deal about her rather, uh, creative song titles: among them, "My Dick Sux," "Kevin Is Gay," and "You Fuck like My Dad."

"I just couldn’t think of titles for most of the songs, so I thought I’d use funny stuff," Hardy insists. "But I did that without thinking about releasing it and having it be reviewed and having certain people, like the British press, just focus on that. They make it seem that titles like ‘You Fuck like My Dad’ are more important than the music. It’s stupid.”

“So I don’t know if I’ll keep doing that [with the titles] in the future," she continues. "That’s a pain, though, because it’s just who we are. It was us just having fun."

Of course, most people probably wouldn’t describe Giant Drag as fun. On its full-length debut, last fall’s excellent Hearts and Unicorns (Kickball/Interscope), the band split the difference between Mazzy Star and Nirvana, unleashing a din of droning, heavily distorted alt-rock that’s perfect for Hardy’s angst-ridden outbursts: "No number of pills will fix my life today," she sings at one point; at others, "I haven’t felt so well for so long now" and "From here on out it’s only pain." But whereas, say, Kurt Cobain was quite vocal in interviews about his pain, Hardy remains tight-lipped.

"A lot of those songs are about experiencing something down or sad and angry," she explains. "But I really don’t like to discuss what they’re about."

Not that she hasn’t spilled plenty of her guts, at least in her music, since 2004. That’s when Hardy, who’d been casually recording cover songs and writing her own material, decided to take a friend up on his offer to have her open for his band. Rather than make Giant Drag a solo project, however, she asked Calabrese if he’d like to join.

"I was like, ‘Look, Micah, either you can play with me or I can go it alone.’ Micah was like, ‘Nah, I won’t let you go out like that,’” she says. "We thought about getting a bass player, but one day Micah started playing drums and the synthesizer at the same time. We were like, ‘Oh shit, that’s funny — but it also works.’”

After a rocky start — Hardy claims the first shows "sucked" — Giant Drag began to garner local radio support and landed popular monthlong residencies at the Silverlake Lounge and Spaceland. Then early last year, the band became a sensation in England with the release of its Lemona EP (Wichita). "Over there we started to sell out shows, and it was gnarly," she says. "Then we’d go to Omaha, and everyone would be like, ‘Who the fuck are you?!’ — except for one 80-year-old guy standing in the front row who drove four hours from Kansas to see us."

Of course, Giant Drag’s American fan base has grown considerably since then. Hearts and Unicorns continues to receive plenty of blog buzz, national press has been largely positive, and the duo played a well-received set at Coachella this spring. In fact, the main thing holding the duo back from a mainstream breakthrough seems to be that it’s no longer 1993, when similar acts such as Mazzy Star and, yep, the Breeders ruled MTV’s buzz bin.

Giant Drag’s label hasn’t given up hope, though. This spring Kickball Records rereleased Hearts and Unicorns, tacking on the band’s woozy cover of Chris Isaak’s "Wicked Game" in an attempt to gain airplay. Not surprisingly, the decision rubbed Hardy the wrong way.

"Micah and I both think [the reissue] doesn’t make much sense. I guess the label wants to give it a big push and have some sort of Alien Ant Farm thing go on," she snorts, referring to the one-hit wonders who became famous for their cover of Michael Jackson’s "Smooth Criminal."

"But that hasn’t happened yet," Hardy adds, hinting that life may not always be a giant drag after all. "So I’m not upset — well, not really."  SFBG

Giant Drag with Pretty Girls Make Graves and Whale Bones

Sun/4, 8 p.m.

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

$13–$15

(415) 885-0750

www.musichallsf.com

Umlaut with that?

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› paulr@sfbg.com

A friend from LA said, upon stepping into Lettüs Café Organic, "I feel like I’m back in LA. On Rodeo Drive somewhere." Ah, Rodeo Drive, home of the Polo Store, haunt of Nancy Reagan. Lettüs isn’t quite the kind of place where you’d expect to see Mrs. R. — she seems more like the Spago Beverly Hills type — but the Rodeo vibe was palpable and even I caught it, though Lettüs’s Marina environs, its urban density of souls, have always seemed more Chicago than LA to me, more Lincoln Park. Of course, I once lived in Chicago; I have never lived in LA but have been to Rodeo Drive.

"Everything is good for you, and expensive," my LA friend continued, apropos the LA-ish menu at Lettüs. Ah, I thought, we could be talking about the Newsroom Café, that West Hollywood haunt (on Robertson, near Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, nowhere near Rodeo Drive but just across the street from the Ivy) of alfalfa sprouts, fat-free yogurt smoothies, and youthful pretenders to movie stardom, everybody wearing their fancy sunglasses inside — which of course is not necessary at Lettüs.

The good-for-you part I could accept, for Lettüs, as its full name suggests, deals almost exclusively in organic food and relies as much as possible on local produce. The pricey part, on the other hand, I balked at; Lettüs isn’t exactly cheap, but it isn’t expensive, either, for what you get, with only a handful of items costing more than $10. Plus, you are afforded an opportunity to ponder the umlaut, a flourish that puts one in mind of, perhaps, a Swedish delicacy like pancakes with lingonberry sauce, though the menu is devoid of Scandinavian influence (except for smoked salmon); most of the culinary cues are either Medi-Cal or East Asian, which leaves one with a general impression that an outpost of Chow has collided with one of the ZAO noodle bars.

The most Scandinavian element of Lettüs (other than the umlaut) is probably the interior design, walls and ceiling of slatted, pale wood, with interstitial bars of fluorescent lighting and sleek, spare furniture. There is a certain saunalike feel to the look, or perhaps it is vaguely Japanese. Either way, it manages to be both rustic and urban, cool and warm, an appealing casual-sophisticated setting for the casually sophisticated food of executive chef Sascha Weiss. (His partners in the endeavor are Matthew Guelke and Mark Lewis; the restaurant opened near the end of last year.)

If Weiss’s food has a theme, it might be "when worlds collide": chipotle-scented black bean soup ($4) with avocado salsa on the one hand and, on the other, mango chicken or tofu lettuce cups ($8) — shredded napa cabbage, a Thai-ish blend of ginger, cilantro, basil, and sweet-hot chili-tamarind sauce, and either baked tofu or grilled chicken bundled in swaddlings of Bibb lettuce for easy finger feeding. And if you have a third hand, how about some bruschetta ($5), points of grilled levain topped with white butter beans, roast garlic, cherry tomatoes, and basil?

Bigger dishes are available, of course, from various sorts of panini and open-faced sandwiches — including an entrant of grilled chicken breast ($9.50) with marinated peppers and pesto quite as potent as anything you’d get at Chow — to noodlier choices. Here we have a pasta ($8), fusilli sauced with arugula, sun-dried tomatoes, broccoli, and chickpeas, with a layer of olive slivers and gratings of parmesan cheese on top, a concoction surprisingly hearty despite the absence of animal flesh. There is also a plate of brightly acidic soba noodles ($7) — warm or cold, your call — tossed with julienne zucchini, carrot, and red bell pepper and a lime-sesame vinaigrette dotted with sesame seeds.

But in the main, the happiest course is probably to nosh. Most of the food lends itself to splitting and sharing, in particular the spring rolls ($6), rice-paper wraps stuffed with rice noodles, carrots, and lettuce, sliced into bite-size cylinders, and presented with dipping sauces of spicy peanut and sweet chili. Only slightly more cumbersome to divvy up is a salad of avocado and grapefruit ($7.50) nested in a carpet of peppery-nutty arugula and dressed with a grapefruit-juice vinaigrette; this is about as simple as it gets, and about as good, with butteriness, fruit, bite, and nose brought into a powerful harmony.

Given the confident eclecticism of the savory dishes, the desserts are surprisingly flat-footed. A pair of hazelnut shortbreads ($1) dipped in dark chocolate were not dipped in dark chocolate but presented to us naked. They were fine, crisp yet tender of crumb, but I felt obliged to ask after the missing chocolate. "We don’t have those today," our hapless server reported. Coffee cake ($4), meanwhile, was on the dry side despite an interspersion of blackberries and a streusel topping. Only the chocolate mousse cake ($5), served on a plate piped with raspberry sauce, was "dense" and "rich" as promised by the menu card — moist, too, they could honorably have added.

A word on the table service, which is of the semi variety: You order at the counter, are issued a placard with a number, seat yourself (displaying numbered placard), and wait for the food to start arriving. The system is fairly efficient, though cafeteria-esque, and the placards aren’t the usual cheap plastic numbers but cast steel, with numbers handsomely embossed in gold. Nancy Reagan might not buy them if she saw them in a window on Rodeo Drive, but she would at least look. SFBG

Lettüs Café Organic

Mon.–Fri., 7:30 a.m.–10:30 p.m.; Sat.–Sun., 8 a.m.–10:30 p.m.

3352 Steiner, SF

(415) 931-2777

www.lettusorganic.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Newsom loses control

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› steve@sfbg.com

In the early days, the mayor tried to sound like a practical, hands-on executive who was ready to run San Francisco.

Mayor Gavin Newsom used his inaugural address on Jan. 8, 2004, to emphasize that he was a uniter, not a divider — and that he wanted to get things done.

"I say it’s time to start working together to find common purpose and common ground," he proclaimed. "Because I want to make this administration about solutions."

It’s a mantra he’s returned to again and again in his rhetoric on a wide range of issues, claiming a "commonsense" approach while casting "ideology" as an evil to be overcome and as the main motive driving the left-leaning majority of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

"Because it’s easy to be against something," Newsom said on that sunny winter day. "It’s easy to blame. It’s easy to stop…. What’s hard is to hear that maybe to come together, we need to leave behind old ideas and long-held grudges. But that’s exactly what we need to do."

But if that’s the standard, Newsom has spent the past 17 months taking the easy way.

It’s been a marked change from his first-year lovefest, when he tried to legalize same-sex marriage, reach out to Bayview–Hunters Point residents, and force big hotels to end their lockout of workers.

A Guardian review of the most significant City Hall initiatives during 2005 and 2006 — as well as interviews with more than a dozen policy experts and public interest advocates — shows that Newsom has been an obstructionist who has proposed few "solutions" to the city’s problems, and followed through on even fewer.

The Board of Supervisors, in sharp contrast, has been taking the policy lead. The majority on the district-elected board in the past year has moved a generally progressive agenda designed to preserve rental units, prevent evictions, strengthen development standards, promote car-free spaces, increase affordable housing, maintain social services, and protect city workers.

Yet many of those efforts have been blocked or significantly weakened by Newsom and his closest allies on the board: Fiona Ma, Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Bevan Dufty. And on efforts to get tough with big business or prevent Muni service cuts and fare hikes, Newsom was able to peel off enough moderate supervisors to stop the progressives — led by Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano, and Ross Mirkarimi — at the board level.

But one thing that Newsom has proved himself unable to do in the past year is prevent progressive leaders — particularly Daly, against whom Newsom has a "long-held grudge" that has on a few recent occasions led to unsavory political tactics and alliances — from setting the public agenda for the city.

Balance of power

The Mayor’s Office and the Board of Supervisors are the two poles of power at City Hall — and generally the system gives a strong advantage to the mayor, who has far more resources at his disposal, a higher media profile, and the ability to act swiftly and decisively.

Yet over the past year, the three most progressive supervisors — along with their liberal-to-moderate colleagues Gerardo Sandoval, Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, and Sophie Maxwell — have initiated the most significant new city policies, dealing with housing, poverty, health care, alternative transportation, violence prevention, and campaign finance reform.

Most political observers and City Hall insiders mark the moment when the board majority took control of the city agenda as last summer, a point when Newsom’s honeymoon ended, progressives filled the leadership void on growth issues, problems like tenants evictions and the murder rate peaked, and Newsom was increasingly giving signs that he wasn’t focused on running the city.

"Gay marriage gave the mayor his edge and gave him cover for a long time," said Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a queer and tenants rights activist. "About a year ago that started to wear off, and his armor started to be shed."

Daly was the one supervisor who had been aggressively criticizing Newsom during that honeymoon period. To some, Daly seemed isolated and easy to dismiss — at least until August 2005, when Daly negotiated a high-profile deal with the developers of the Rincon Hill towers that extracted more low-income housing and community-benefits money than the city had ever seen from a commercial project.

The Newsom administration watched the negotiations from the sidelines. The mayor signed off on the deal, but within a couple months turned into a critic and said he regretted supporting it. Even downtown stalwarts like the public policy think tank San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association noted the shift in power.

"I think we saw a different cut on the issue than we’ve seen before," SPUR executive director Gabriel Metcalf told us. "Chris Daly is not a NIMBY. I see Chris Daly as one of the supervisors most able to deal with physical change, and he’s not afraid of urbanism…. And he’s been granted by the rest of the board a lot of leadership in the area of land use."

SPUR and Metcalf were critical of aspects of the Daly deal, such as where the money would go. But after the deal, Newsom and his minions, like press secretary Peter Ragone, had a harder time demonizing Daly and the board (although they never stopped trying).

Around that same time, hundreds of evictions were galvanizing the community of renters — which makes up around two-thirds of city residents. Newsom tried to find some compromise on the issue, joining Peskin to convene a task force composed of tenants activists, developers, and real estate professionals, hoping that the group could find a way to prevent evictions while expanding home ownership opportunities.

"The mayor views the striking of balance between competing interests as an important approach to governing," Ragone told the Guardian after we explained the array of policy disputes this story would cover.

The task force predictably fell apart after six meetings. "The mayor was trying to find a comfortable way to get out of the issue," said Mecca, a member of the task force. But with some issues, there simply is no comfortable solution; someone’s going to be unhappy with the outcome. "When that failed," Mecca said, "there was nowhere for him to go anymore."

The San Francisco Tenants Union and its allies decided it was time to push legislation that would protect tenants, organizing an effective campaign that finally forced Newsom into a reactionary mode. The mayor wound up siding overtly with downtown interests for the first time in his mayoral tenure — and in the process, he solidified the progressive board majority.

Housing quickly became the issue that defines differences between Newsom and the board.

Free-market policy

"The Newsom agenda has been one of gentrification," said San Francisco Tenants Union director Ted Gullicksen. The mayor and his board allies have actively opposed placing limitations on the high number of evictions (at least until the most recent condo conversion measure, which Dufty and Newsom supported, a victory tenants activists attribute to their organizing efforts), while at the same time encouraging development patterns that "bring in more high-end condominiums and saturate the market with that," Gullicksen explained.

He pointed out that those two approaches coalesce into a doubly damaging policy on the issue of converting apartments into condominiums, which usually displace low-income San Franciscans, turn an affordable rental unit into an expensive condominium, and fill the spot with a higher-income owner.

"So you really get a two-on-one transformation of the city," Gullicksen said.

Newsom’s allies don’t agree, noting that in a city where renters outnumber homeowners two to one, some loss of rental housing is acceptable. "Rather than achieve their stated goals of protecting tenants, the real result is a barrier to home ownership," Elsbernd told us, explaining his vote against all four recent tenant-protection measures.

On the development front, Gullicksen said Newsom has actively pushed policies to develop housing that’s unaffordable to most San Franciscans — as he did with his failed Workforce Housing Initiative and some of his area plans — while maintaining an overabundance of faith in free-market forces.

"He’s very much let the market have what the market wants, which is high-end luxury housing," Gullicksen said.

As a result, Mecca said, "I think we in the tenant movement have been effective at making TICs a class issue."

Affordable housing activists say there is a marked difference between Newsom and the board majority on housing.

"The Board of Supervisors is engaged in an active pursuit of land-use policy that attempts to preserve as much affordable housing, as much rental housing, as much neighborhood-serving businesses as possible," longtime housing activist Calvin Welch told us. "And the mayor is totally and completely lining up with downtown business interests."

Welch said Newsom has shown where he stands in the appointments he makes — such as that of Republican planning commissioner Michael Antonini, and his nomination of Ted Dienstfrey to run Treasure Island, which the Rules Committee recently rejected — and by the policies he supports.

Welch called Daly’s Rincon deal "precedent setting and significant." It was so significant that downtown noticed and started pushing back.

Backlash

Board power really coalesced last fall. In addition to the housing and tenant issues, Ammiano brought forward a plan that would force businesses to pay for health insurance plans for their employees. That galvanized downtown and forced Newsom to finally make good on his promise to offer his own plan to deal with the uninsured — but the mayor offered only broad policy goals, and the plan itself is still being developed.

It was in this climate that many of Newsom’s big-business supporters, including Don Fisher — the Republican founder of the Gap who regularly bankrolls conservative political causes in San Francisco — demanded and received a meeting with Newsom. The December sit-down was attended by a who’s who of downtown developers and power brokers.

"That was a result of them losing their ass on Rincon Hill," Welch said of the meeting.

The upshot — according to public records and Guardian interviews with attendees — was that Newsom agreed to oppose an ordinance designed to limit how much parking could be built along with the 10,000 housing units slated for downtown. The mayor instead would support a developer-written alternative carried by Alioto-Pier.

The measure downtown opposed was originally sponsored by Daly before being taken over by Peskin. It had the strong support of Newsom’s own planning director, Dean Macris, and was approved by the Planning Commission on a 6–1 vote (only Newsom’s Republican appointee, Antonini, was opposed).

The process that led to the board’s 7–4 approval of the measure was politically crass and embarrassing for the Mayor’s Office (see “Joining the Battle,” 2/8/06), but he kept his promise and vetoed the measure. The votes of his four allies were enough to sustain the veto.

Newsom tried to save face in the ugly saga by pledging to support a nearly identical version of the measure, but with just a couple more giveaways to developers: allowing them to build more parking garages and permitting more driveways with their projects.

Political observers say the incident weakened Newsom instead of strengthening him.

"They can’t orchestrate a move. They are only acting by vetoes, and you can’t run the city by vetoes," Welch said. "He never puts anything on the line, and that’s why the board has become so emboldened."

Rippling out

The Newsom administration doesn’t seem to grasp how housing issues — or symbolic issues like creating car-free spaces or being wary of land schemes like the Bayview–Hunters Point redevelopment plan — shape perceptions of other issues. As Welch said, "All politics in San Francisco center around land use."

N’Tanya Lee, executive director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, said the Newsom administration has done a very good job of maintaining budgetary support for programs dealing with children, youth, and their families. But advocates have relied on the leadership of progressive supervisors like Daly to push affordable housing initiatives like the $20 million budget supplemental the board initiated and approved in April.

"Our primary concern is that low- and moderate-income families are being pushed out of San Francisco," Lee told us. "We’re redefining what it means to be pro-kid and pro-family in San Francisco."

Indeed, that’s a very different approach from the so-called pro-family agenda being pushed by SFSOS and some of Newsom’s other conservative allies, who argue that keeping taxes low while keeping the streets and parks safe and clean is what families really want. But Lee worries more about ensuring that families have reasonably priced shelter.

So she and other affordable housing advocates will be watching closely this summer as the board and Newsom deal with Daly’s proposal to substantially increase the percentage of affordable housing developers must build under the city’s inclusionary-housing policy. Newsom’s downtown allies are expected to strongly oppose the plan.

Even on Newsom’s signature issue, the board has made inroads.

"In general, on the homeless issue, the supervisor who has shown the most strong and consistent leadership has been Chris Daly," said Coalition on Homelessness director Juan Prada.

Prada credits the mayor with focusing attention on the homeless issue, although he is critical of the ongoing harassment of the homeless by the Police Department and the so-called Homeward Bound program that gives homeless people one-way bus tickets out of town.

"This administration has a genuine interest in homeless issues, which the previous one didn’t have, but they’re banking too much on the Care Not Cash approach," Prada said.

Other Newsom initiatives to satisfy his downtown base of support have also fallen flat.

Robert Haaland of the city employee labor union SEIU Local 790 said Newsom has tried to reform the civil service system and privatize some city services, but has been stopped by labor and the board.

"They were trying to push a privatization agenda, and we pushed back," Haaland said, noting that Supervisor Ma’s alliance with Newsom on that issue was the reason SEIU 790 endorsed Janet Reilly over Ma in the District 12 Assembly race.

The turning point on the issue came last year, when the Newsom administration sought to privatize the security guards at the Asian Art Museum as a cost-saving measure. The effort was soundly defeated in the board’s Budget Committee.

"That was a key vote, and they lost, so I don’t think they’ll be coming back with that again," Haaland said, noting that labor has managed to win over Dufty, giving the board a veto-proof majority on privatization issues.

Who’s in charge?

Even many Newsom allies will privately grumble that Newsom isn’t engaged enough with the day-to-day politics of the city. Again and again, Newsom has seemed content to watch from the sidelines, as he did with Supervisor Mirkarimi’s proposal to create a public financing program for mayoral candidates.

"The board was out front on that, while the mayor stayed out of it until the very end," said Steven Hill, of the Center for Voting and Democracy, who was involved with the measure. And when the administration finally did weigh in, after the board had approved the plan on a veto-proof 9–2 vote, Newsom said the measure didn’t go far enough. He called for public financing for all citywide offices — but never followed up with an actual proposal.

The same has been true on police reform and violence prevention measures. Newsom promised to create a task force to look into police misconduct, to hold a blue-ribbon summit on violence prevention, and to implement a community policing system with grassroots input — and none of that has come to pass.

Then, when Daly took the lead in creating a community-based task force to develop violence prevention programs with an allocation of $10 million a year for three years — Measure A on the June ballot — Newsom and his board allies opposed the effort, arguing the money would be better spent on more cops (see “Ballot-Box Alliance,” page 19).

"He’s had bad counsel on this issue of violence all the way through," said Sharen Hewitt, who runs the Community Leadership Academy Emergency Response project. "He has not done damn near enough from his position, and neither has the board."

Hewitt worries that current city policies, particularly on housing, are leading to class polarization that could make the problems of violence worse. And while Newsom’s political allies tend to widen the class divide, she can’t bring herself to condemn the mayor: "I think he’s a nice guy and a lot smarter than people have given him credit for."

Tom Radulovich, who sits on the BART board and serves as executive director of Transportation for a Livable City (which is in the process of changing its name to Livable City), said Newsom generally hasn’t put much action behind his rhetorical support for the environment and transit-first policies.

"Everyone says they’re pro-environment," he said.

In particular, Radulovich was frustrated by Newsom’s vetoes of the downtown parking and Healthy Saturdays measures and two renter-protection measures. The four measures indicated very different agendas pursued by Newsom and the board majority.

In general, Radulovich often finds his smart-growth priorities opposed by Newsom’s allies. "The moneyed interests usually line up against livable city, good planning policies," he said. On the board, Radulovich said it’s no surprise that the three supervisors from the wealthiest parts of town — Ma, Elsbernd, and Alioto-Pier — generally vote against initiatives he supports.

"Dufty is the oddity because he represents a pretty progressive, urbane district," Radulovich said, "but he tends to vote like he’s from a more conservative district."

What’s next?

The recent lawsuit by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Committee of Jobs — urging more aggressive use of a voter-approved requirement that board legislation undergo a detailed economic analysis — shows that downtown is spoiling for a fight (see “Downtown’s ‘Hail Mary’ Lawsuit,” page 9). So politics in City Hall is likely to heat up.

"There is a real absence of vision and leadership in the city right now, particularly on the question of who will be able to afford to live in San Francisco 20 years from now," Mirkarimi said. "There is a disparity between Newsom hitting the right notes in what the press and public want to hear and between the policy considerations that will put those positions into effect."

But Newsom’s allies say they plan to stand firm against the ongoing effort by progressives to set the agenda.

"I think I am voting my constituency," Elsbernd said. "I’m voting District Seven and voicing a perspective of a large part of the city that the progressive majority doesn’t represent."

Newsom flack Ragone doesn’t accept most of the narratives that are laid out by activists, from last year’s flip in the balance of power to the influence of downtown and Newsom’s wealthy benefactors on his decision to veto four measures this year.

"Governing a city like San Francisco is complex. There are many areas of nuance in governing this city," Ragone said. "Everyone knows Gavin Newsom defies traditional labels. That’s not part of a broad political strategy, but just how he governs."

Yet the majority of the board seems unafraid to declare where they stand on the most divisive issues facing the city.

"The board has — really, since the 2000 election — has been pushing a progressive set of policies as it related to housing, just-taxation policies, and an array of social service provisions," Peskin said. "All come with some level of controversy, because none are free." SFBG

Blood brothers

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

It’s Easter weekend in the Mission District, and despite the rabbit snuffling around Rick Popko’s backyard, Cadbury eggs are the last thing on anyone’s mind. "I think we’ve killed everyone we know," Popko explains grimly, grabbing his cell phone to try and recruit one more zombie for the final day of filming on the horror comedy RetarDEAD. Moments later, Popko and RetarDEAD codirector Dan West survey the scene in Popko’s basement. To put it mildly, it’s a bloodbath: The ceiling, walls, and carpet are dripping with cherry red splatters. A smoke machine sits primed for action near a table loaded with gore-flecked prop firearms.

Waste not

Several weeks later (plus several coats of paint, though a faint pinkness lingers), what had been a gruesome morgue has now reverted to its natural domestic state, save an editing station assembled at one end. A framed poster commemorating Popko and West’s first feature, 2003’s Monsturd, hangs on a nearby wall.

Monsturd is a true B-movie. Thanks to some seriously weird science, a serial killer morphs into a giant hunk of raging poop. Drawn into this sordid small-town tale are an evil doctor, a down-and-out sheriff, and an intense FBI agent, plus Popko and West as a pair of screwball deputies. Toilet jokes abound. After a three-day premiere at San Francisco’s Victoria Theatre, Monsturd found some success on video, most triumphantly surfacing in Blockbuster after the chain purchased 4,000 DVD copies.

Popko and West hope Monsturd‘s cult notoriety will aid RetarDEAD, which happens to be its direct sequel. It starts exactly where Monsturd ended. "Dr. Stern [the mad scientist played by Popko-West pal Dan Burr] rises from the sewer," West explains. "He gets a job at an institute for special education and starts a test group on these special ed students. They become remarkably intelligent, and then the side effect is they become zombies."

"In a nutshell, we kind of liken it to Flowers for Algernon meets Night of the Living Dead," Popko interjects.

"It’s a background gag to get the whole premise of the joke title. People go, ‘Well, why is it RetarDEAD?’ It’s because we needed a gimmick," says West, adding that the title came before the film (and was settled upon after an early choice, Special Dead, was snatched up by another production).

Best friends since bonding over a shared love of Tom Savini, circa 1984, at Napa’s St. Helena High School, Popko and West are so well matched creatively that Burr describes them as "like the left hand and the right hand" on the same body. Both are keen on beguiling titles. Monsturd‘s original moniker (Number Two, Part One) was dropped after being deemed too esoteric; Monsturd, they figured, would solicit more interest in video stores.

"We knew it’s such a stupid title that you would have to rent it just to see if it was as dumb as you thought it was," West explains. And for self-financed filmmakers like West and Popko (who both have full-time jobs and estimate they spent $3,000 on Monsturd and $12,000 to $14,000 so far on RetarDEAD), clever marketing strategies are essential.

"We have to think, when we’re making these movies, what can we sell, what can we get out there, what can we make a name for ourselves with?" Popko says.

"On this level, you go to the exploitation rule, which is give ’em what Hollywood cannot or will not make," West adds. "And they’re not gonna make Monsturd."

Dirty deeds . . .

Monsturd took years to complete and taught the duo scores about the capriciousness of the DVD distribution biz. Though one review dubbed it "the greatest movie that Troma never made," Popko and West actually turned down a deal with the famed schlock house, unwilling to sign over the rights to their film for 25 years. After hooking up with another distributor, they didn’t see any money from their Blockbuster coup. Still, they remain proud of Monsturd and its success.

"We tried to make it the best movie we possibly could, but we had nothing," West explains. "We didn’t piss it out in a weekend. It took a year to shoot it, then it took a year to put the thing together."

"We didn’t just shit out a crappy movie, pardon the pun," Popko says.

Neither filmmaker seems concerned that their trash-tastic subject matter might prevent them from being taken seriously as artists. And it doesn’t bother them that Monsturd‘s joke tends to overshadow the film itself — not just for viewers, but for critics, who were by and large polarized by the killer shit-man tale.

Popko also recalls unsuccessfully submitting Monsturd to a half dozen film festivals intended to showcase DV and underground flicks. Quickly pointing out that the film got picked up anyway, he blames image-conscious programmers: "It’s like, how can you have a respectable film festival when you’ve got a shit monster movie playing in it?"

Though Popko and West live in San Francisco and filmed both Monsturd and RetarDEAD in Northern California, they say they don’t feel like part of the San Francisco filmmaking scene. Again, they suspect the whiff of poo might have something to do with it.

"We’ve kind of been ignored," West says. "We’re not bitter about it, but it would be nice to be acknowledged for what we’re doing — we’re making exploitation films, and we don’t really have any guilt about what we’re doing. It’d be nice for somebody to develop a sense of humor and acknowledge it once in a while."

. . . done dirt cheap

As with Monsturd, RetarDEAD is a nearly all-volunteer effort, pieced together when the responsibilities of real life permit. Despite the obstacles — say, a sudden insurance crisis involving a rented cop car — unpredictability is clearly part of the thrill.

"When you undertake this shit, it’s an adventure: ‘What did you do this weekend?’ ‘Well, I was chased by 42 zombies, and the weekend before that, a bunch of burlesque dancers ripped our villain apart and ripped his face off,’” West explains. "It’s like, how else would you spend your free time?"

This sentiment extends to the film’s cast, several of whom have known Popko and West for years and reprise their Monsturd roles in its sequel. Coming aboard for RetarDEAD were members of San Francisco’s Blue Blanket Improv group, as well as the Living Dead Girlz, a zombie-flavored local dance troupe.

Beth West, who jokingly calls herself a "fake actor," stars in both films as the X-Files-ish FBI agent (Dan West’s former wife, she was roped into the first production after the original lead dropped out). Despite both films’ bare-bones shoots — and other concerns, like trying (and failing) to keep continuity with her hairstyle over multiple years of filming — she remains upbeat about the experience: "I loved being part of such a big creative effort."

Though his character is torn to shreds in RetarDEAD, Burr agrees. "This film is going to be 100 times better than the last one, as far as direction, camera shots — everyone was more serious this time," he says. He hopes that RetarDEAD will help Popko and West expand their audience. "Someone’s gonna notice the talent there. Maybe not in the acting, but this is these guys’ lives. It’s never been my whole dream, but it’s always been their whole dream."

Splatter-day saints

For RetarDEAD, technical improvements over Monsturd, including the introduction of tracking shots, were important considerations. However, first things first: "We knew we wanted this to be gory as fuck," West says. An ardent fan of Herschell Gordon Lewis — notorious for stomach turners like 1963’s Blood Feast — West once hoped to lens a biopic of Lewis and his producing partner, David Friedman. Though it was never completed, he did get the Godfather of Gore’s permission to use a snippet of dialogue from the project in RetarDEAD.

"This whole thing begins with his intro — it’s like that Charlton Heston thing for Armageddon, where it’s like the voice of God — but it’s Herschell Gordon Lewis talking about gore," West says. "It was the one way I could go to my grave saying I finally figured out a way to work with Herschell Gordon Lewis."

Appropriately enough, RetarDEAD pays homage to Lewis’s signature style. "Monsturd had a couple of bloody scenes in it, but it was pretty tame," Popko says. "This here, we’re planning on passing out barf bags at the premiere because, I mean, it’s gross. We’ve got intestines and chain saws and blood all over the place."

Overseeing the splatter was director of special effects Ed Martinez, one of the few additional crew members (and one of few who were paid). A late addition to the production, he "made the movie what it is," according to West.

"A zombie film in this day and age, you can’t do amateur-quality makeup and get away with it — it’ll be a flop," says Martinez, who teaches special effects makeup at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University and is a veteran of films like The Dead Pit. "And [Popko and West] know that."

Though Martinez is used to working on bigger projects, he stuck with RetarDEAD — dreaming up such elaborate moments as a Day of the Dead–inspired man-ripped-in-half sequence — because, as he says, "In a way, I’m a coconspirator now." He also appreciates the directors’ sheer enthusiasm and appreciation. After a killer take, they were "literally high-fiving me. Most low-budget filmmakers are so egocentric they would rarely do anything like that. Good effects are important, but they’re not the only things that are important."

Dawn of RetarDEAD

Though a third movie in the Popko-West canon is already in the planning stages (Satanists!), it’s looking like several months before RetarDEAD — still being edited from 30-plus hours of raw footage — has its world premiere.

"We only get one to two nights a week to do this," Popko explains. Making movies for a living is the ultimate dream, but for now, both men view their films as being in the tradition of early John Waters: made outside the system and laden with as much bad taste as they please. Potential distributors have already advised the pair to adjust RetarDEAD‘s divisive title, a notion they considered "for about five minutes," according to West.

Popko and West’s films may be throwbacks to the drive-in era, but their outlook on the movie biz is actually quite forward-looking. Popko — "the carnival barker" to West’s "guy behind the curtain pulling levers and switching things," according to Burr — anticipates a day when tangling with queasy distributors won’t even be necessary, because many films will simply be released directly over the Internet. Both directors are also very interested in high-definition technology; they plan to upgrade from their old DV camera to a new HD model for their next effort, for reasons beyond a desire for better visual quality.

"What HD has done is bring grind house back," West says. "Now you can make stuff on a level that can compete, aesthetically, with what Hollywood’s doing — almost. As far as your talent, you’ll be able to compete realistically with other movies. Now people can make good horror movies on their own terms."

"If you really want to make a movie, you can," Popko notes, stressing the importance of production values. Though the cutthroat nature of the indie film world is always on their minds, they welcome the new wave of B-movies that HD may herald.

"Now, there aren’t movies like Shriek of the Mutilated that were done in the 1970s, which could compete [with Hollywood]. These movies can now come back into the fold as long as they’re shot on HD — and there will be a shit fest like none other," West predicts, adding that he’s looking forward to the deluge. "The world’s a better place with shitty movies in it." SFBG

The Guardian presents Monsturd

Mon/5, 9 p.m.

12 Galaxies

2565 Mission, SF

Free

(415) 970-9777

Doing the Cannes-Cannes, Part Two

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Gary Meyer of the Balboa is at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Here is the second of his reports.

What a day! They’ve moved things around. Problems with my accreditation badge mean I can’t get into the movies. Offices that used to be in the Palais are at the other end of the Croisette, a 20 minute walk. The lines are huge and don’t seem to move. Finally I get my problems cleared up but every screening is full. Even my friends connected with some movies can’t get me in. The day is almost over and I haven’t seen one film yet. BUZZZZ. “Good morning. This is your 7am wake up call. Have a nice day.” Anxiety dreams are the worst here. I am feeling guilty that I only saw four films yesterday, but that was all there was worth seeing.

The morning started promisingly. Ken Loach’s newest, The Wind that Shakes the Barley , is generally well-received. Cillian Murphy proves that his acting turns in Breakfast on Pluto and Red Eye were not flukes. He stars as a young doctor faced with an offer to practice medicine in London — or stay in his village and become increasingly involved in forming a guerilla army to fight the “Black and Tan” army from England, sent to squash Irish independence. Set in the 1920s, the film has contemporary relevance. The first half is exciting, playing like a grand adventure with a political conscience, just as we have come to expect from Loach. The second half slows a bit but still worked for me.

Continuing in the history vein, with sociology and myth thrown in, is Rolf de Heer’s Ten Canoes. This Dutch director has developed a small but faithful following with his diverse filmography of under-distributed movies including The Quiet Room, Dance Me to My Song, and Alexandra’s Project. Ten Canoes was developed with actor David Gulpilil (most known for starring in Walkabout) who was interested in the stories of his own tribe, the Ramingining people. Gulpilil narrates (in English) simultaneous stories related to forbidden love but separated in time by many generations. There is a certain irreverence in his storytelling that is surprising: What is a flatulence reference doing in a story set hundreds of years ago? But then one realizes people have passed wind as long as they have existed. The guilty warrior is moved to the back of the line as they go through the forest — and more bawdy humor reminds us that dirty jokes aren’t new.

Ten Canoes is an impressive accomplishment on many levels. Though its austerity may be off-putting for some audiences, the fascinating stories, stunning visual delights, and truly unique experiences make it worthy of distribution.

The next two films shouldn’t be watched on a full stomach … but a viewer might not want to eat afterwards either. Taxidermia is the second feature from Hungarian director György Pálfi, after his astonishing Hukkle. Like Ten Canoes — another film dealing with several generations in a family — Taxidermia opens with a story of an orderly masturbating while observing his master’s young daughters, and servicing the man’s rather large wife on a monthly basis. The accidental offspring grows up to become a champion eater, winning contests while becoming a national, very fat, hero. Just as the sexual escapades of his father were graphically portrayed, we are shown huge amounts of vomit following the son’s competitions. The absurdity of it generates nervous laughter from those who haven’t turned away from the screen. He grows older, and becomes so large he cannot move. When he explodes, his son, a taxidermist, does what you might expect — and then what you won’t expect.

In some ways Taxidermia is a brilliant piece, with incredible cinematography, black humor, and a couple of visual treats. A brief sequence in a pop-up storybook and one exploring the myriad of uses for a bathtub are moments I should like to see again. But this is a hard movie to recommend to most; the gross outs just keep coming, each topping the previous one. Obviously, it’s only for those who can stomach it.

If one hasn’t lost his or her appetite after Taxidermia, the fiction film adapted from Eric Schlosser’s non-fiction book Fast Food Nation could move anyone in that direction. The author developed the screenplay with director Richard Linklater (whose animated science fiction film, A Scanner Darkly, screens here next week). The story centers around an executive at a thinly disguised hamburger chain — “Mickey’s” — who is sent to Colorado to investigate reports concerning fecal matter in beef. Along the way he encounters a number of characters working at the slaughterhouse and at the chain’s local burger joint.

In trying to cover as many controversial bases as he can, Schlosser may have taken on too many issues (the treatment of illegal aliens, sexual harassment, America’s poor dietary habits, the lack of sanitary conditions in both the meat-processing plant and the retail outlets, corporate neglect for bigger profits, etc). But the over-ambitious narrative rarely makes the impact these issues deserve. Following Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle, Schlosser’s investigative book confirmed that things aren’t much better in the 21st century. Though trying to reach a wider audience with a narrative film is a noble idea, it doesn’t succeed as either entertainment or piece of muckraking. The French seemed to generally like Fast Food Nation, probably because it makes for an easy anti-American target. But they also eat fast-food burgers in huge numbers.

High concept

The Marche is a massive film market that happens simultaneously with the film festival. More junk that you ever imagined is produced all over the world, and thousands of films are being sold here. Some are finished and others are in development. Many will never be finished.

We can always expect ripoffs of Hollywood blockbusters. There is no description for Sacrament Code or Stealing the Mona Lisa in the ads because the makers are probably hoping for some down and dirty direct-to-international video and cable sales. I’ve seen ads for at least three pirate movies, each looking very much like the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean II, with supernatural elements floating through the art work and featuring casts of total unknowns who look a lot like Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley.

One of my favorite things at Cannes is seeking out the most ridiculous titles for movies selling in Marche. Are you ready for a horror film about “hair extensions that attack the women that wear them?” Japan’s Toei is selling it here. Exte will star Chiaki Kuriyama, the crazy chain-swinging schoolgirl in Kill Bill.

And how about Motor Home Massacre? No description offered and none is needed.

Whatshisnamesnewfilm

The masses gathered at Cannes rarely refer to upcoming Festival movies by their title. We are asked, “Are you going to see the new Almodovar?” or “Did you see the Turkish movie?”

We say: “I liked the first feature from the director of that short Wasp,” and “Don’t miss the Indonesian documentary about the tsunami aftermath.”

This puts the film in a context that is easier to explain than “Are you going to see Volver? Iklimler? Red Road? Serambi?”

What do those titles mean? Until enough people have seen or heard about them, they are merely strange words or odd phrases. Volver is the new film from Pedro Almodovar; it’s a bit more subdued than some of his over-the-top recent entertainments. Penelope Cruz, who returns to her roots in Spanish cinema, plays a mother dealing with a teenaged daughter, a lonely sister, and an aging aunt. When the aunt dies, her dead mother appears, first as what the women assume is a ghost — but, maybe she never died in the fire that took their father? Initially the filmmaker continues his homage to Hitchcock with a surprise murder (and Bernard Herrmann-like music) before moving more to melodrama. While not a great film, Volver is wonderfully entertaining, full of surprises, and features a performance by Cruz that made me an instant fan. The buzz is great.

Iklimler has an English title of Climates, an appropriate description of the hot and cold relationship between a man and a woman who break up during a beach vacation and meet again in the snow. Like director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s previous film Uzak (Distant), the Cannes Grand Prix winner in 2003, this film could be best described as contemplative. On the surface it is a simple story of a relationship, but the emotions and motivations dig much deeper. The characters are believable, the emotions real, and the performances powerful. With virtually no camera movement, the filmmaker beautifully composes each shot; so impressed with his work, the camera stays in that one position for long sequences. Some raved about this “work of art,” but gorgeously composed images don’t make a movie. For me, this slowed too much midway. I stayed with it and appreciated the ending, but as with so much at the festival, Iklimler is an acquired taste. No doubt I will be damned for my comments.

Red Road is another story. Scottish director Andrea Arnold’s first feature is a tense and original thriller. Working from a concept proposed by Lars Von Trier’s team, three different filmmakers set out to create original stories based on the same main characters. Each were given notes; the same two actors will star. Red Road is the first to be made. A woman works for a security company watching various video monitors for possible troublemakers in a rough neighborhood. She concentrates on a man recently released from prison for a crime obviously committed against someone close to her. This variation on Hitchcock’s Rear Window grows increasing more tense as details are carefully revealed. Despite a few missteps, the film works well and Arnold is a talent to watch (her Oscar-winning short, Wasp, was a knockout).

In a given day there will rarely be a logical pattern to the order of film-watching — and the segue from one to the next can be very strange. Following Red Road with Serambi was such a radical shift. This documentary explores the aftermath of the tsunami, following children, young adults, and adults who search for their friends and relatives while coming to the realization they must rebuild their lives and city.

Another documentary, Boffo! Tinsletown’s Bombs and Blockbusters proved a good way to end a day that also included a program of shorts and a long Korean film about young soldiers that left me cold (The Unforgiven). Boffo! is by onetime Bay Area director Bill Couturie. Packed with film clips and great interviews, it tries to help us figure out why a movie is a hit or flop — even if people from filmmakers to studio heads come back to writer William Goldman’s quote: “Nobody knows nothing.”

Counting tines

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› paulr@sfbg.com

Marion Nestle’s hefty new book, What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating (North Point, $30), is on one level the successor to The Supermarket Epicure, Joanna Pruess’s 1988 book about managing to eat well with foods bought at places like Safeway. This was tricky enough 20 years ago, and as Nestle demonstrates, it has become more so.

In the past two decades, food companies have become even bigger and their marketing tactics even more sophisticated, which means, more or less, that when you step into a supermarket today, you are like a lab rat entering a maze in some elaborate experiment. You must have your wits about you if you hope to negotiate the maze to your advantage, and while Nestle’s book isn’t exactly a pocket-size guide, it can profitably be examined beforehand, so when you finally do set off to do the food shopping, you will have a pretty good idea of what you can expect to find — in particular, how the marketing machine will attempt to manipulate you, and why.

In the largest sense, of course, the why isn’t difficult, for it is the job of food companies and supermarkets to sell you as much or as many of their most lucrative products as they can, and their most lucrative products are likely to be full of inexpensive, highly processed ingredients (i.e., corn syrup), bundled up in gaudy packaging, and not especially good for you — surprise!

There isn’t much revelation in How to Eat, but Nestle is an attractively peppery writer, and she brings a good deal of lore — about nutrition, marketing, agriculture, politics — to her scrutiny of a routine chore too many of us think too little about. She repeatedly makes a point, too, that’s worth repeating: The true value of organic agriculture isn’t that it might result, here and there, in slightly higher levels of certain nutrients or even that it definitely reduces the presence of pesticides and other chemical dangers in the food we eat. What really matters, she writes, is that organics represent "a political choice. When you choose organics, you are voting with your fork for a planet with fewer pesticides, richer soil, and cleaner water supplies … for conservation of fuel resources and the economic viability of local communities, along with freshness and better taste." By Jove, I think the forks have it!

Paul Reidinger

Tea rex

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› paulr@sfbg.com

Tea might be yang to coffee’s yin in the morning land of Caffeination Nation, but despite the presence, in yin as in yang, of humankind’s favorite stimulant, tea is surely one of the most soothing ingestables known to us. It is what you have a cup of when it’s raining, or you’re feeling blue or a little achy; as with chicken soup, its healing powers are legendary. The very picture of a cup of tea, wreathed by wisps of delicate steam, tends to set the mind at ease. And, of course, this isn’t just some gauzy, sentimental picture, since scientific investigation has found tea to be ample in the antioxidant compounds that help human beings resist disease.

It is beautifully appropriate, then, that we should find both chicken soup and a wealth of teas on the menu at Modern Tea, a gorgeous tea emporium and restaurant — rather in the mold of the Castro’s Samovar Tea Lounge — that opened recently in a gorgeous Hayes Valley space, of exposed brickwork, plate glass, and warm wood, that once housed Terra Brazilis. After that Brazili-Cal bistro closed, there was a brief and misplaced intermezzo of South Asian cooking under the name Tandoori Grill, but with the advent of Modern Tea, all is again as it should be: a distinctive and worthy endeavor in a strikingly stylish setting.

Not many changes have been made to that setting, except that the steam tables for the Indian buffet have been removed from the area in front of the elevated exhibition kitchen and the walls have been painted the color of green tea ice cream. The layout is the same, the taverna-style wood tables and chairs the same — or, if not the same, so similar to their predecessors as to seem the same in memory. What has changed is the mood, the tempo; what was, not too many years ago, a bustling station of the night now has the slightly calmer, sunlit affect of a café, though a café that serves tea instead of coffee and is much better looking than its fellow cafés.

The animating spirit of Modern Tea belongs to Alice Cravens, whose pedigree as a teamonger is lofty. She has run the tea service for places like Chez Panisse, Delfina, and Zuni, and it is not surprising that, in opening her own place, she would adopt the ethos of those distinguished spots as her own, with an emphasis on sustainability, seasonality, and a certain earthy simplicity that manages to be consistent both with elegance and with tea. "We buy our ingredients direct from local farmers and businesses whenever possible," the bill of fare announces, "with preference towards organic and earth friendly farming methods."

I am a little surprised that there are no sandwiches on offer, even at lunch — but perhaps this reflects a fierce determination to avoid any echo of English-high-tea, hotel-lobby cliché, such as cucumber sandwiches on white bread trimmed of its crusts. On the other hand, the soups are uniformly excellent, from the Tuscan-style chicken soup ($5.95 for a bowl at lunch, $6.50 at dinner) — really almost a kind of minestrone, rich in carrots, onions, and chard, with shreds of chicken meat added — to a gratifyingly thick "old style" French lentil soup ($5.95/$6.50), made with Puy lentils. (These are the terriers of the lentil family: They are small, gray green, and tough, though they turn a rich camel color when cooked and, if cooked long enough, become appealingly toothsome while producing an almost gravylike broth.) For sheer dietary virtue it would be hard to beat the quinoa chowder ($5.95/$6.50), which floats the pebbly Inca grain in vegetable broth with chunks of potato and, if you like, a sprinkling of feta cheese on top for a bit of salty sharpness.

Although the menu offers no sandwiches, bread is not completely absent. It turns up in an excellent strata ($8.25 at dinner), a savory pudding with goat cheese and roasted tomatoes, and in the lemon bread pudding ($4.50), a tiramisu-like layering (in an open-topped jar) of bread crumbs, whipped cream, and intense lemon custard. Other starches also appear, including rice noodles as the bed for a carrot and kale "coleslaw" ($8.25), leavened with hijiki seaweed and a sesame vinaigrette; this is one of the few Asian-influenced items on the mainly Euro-Cali menu. Potatoes turn up, in gratin form, as an accompaniment to chicken and sausage meatloaf ($11.75), three hefty slices of ground, herbed flesh, mixed with Italian chicken sausage and topped with streaks of a barbecuey sauce, that will do justice to the heartiest appetite.

A cautionary note on this last point: Modern Tea is probably not the place to go if you’re in the market for a heavy-duty, high-calorie dinner. Lightness and delicacy are central themes, and even the most substantial courses are meant to keep harmony with such fine teas as osmanthus silver needle ($5.25), a gently floral white leaf from China, or the barely richer sevan blend ($3.50), an Armenian herbal mix of chamomile, lemon balm, oregano, basil, bean core, hawthorne berry, linden fruit, and St.-John’s-wort. If you find you do need some last-minute ballast, an opportune choice is the chocolate sheet cake, a moist sponge cake sold in brownielike one-inch squares, dusted with powdered sugar, for $1 per. Goes well with yin or yang. SFBG

Modern Tea

Tues.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sat., 10:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m.; Sun., 10:30 a.m.–7 p.m.

602 Hayes, SF

(415) 626-5406

www.moderntea.com

Beer and wine pending

AE/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Endorsements: The Greens

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EDITORIAL We’ve long encouraged the California Green Party to focus its energy on local races, and in San Francisco, the Greens have had considerable success: Matt Gonzalez and then Ross Mirkarimi were elected supervisor as Greens (and Gonzalez made a hell of a run for mayor). Sarah Lipson and Mark Sanchez won school board seats. The idea of someone from the Green Party running citywide is no longer all that unusual, and if the party can continue to generate energy and enthusiasm over the next few years, it will become even more of a source of progressive leaders and provide competition to the Democrats who have controlled city politics for decades.

We focused in last week’s endorsements issue on a few contested Democratic primaries for state assembly and senate, but there are several Greens worthy of note who are challenging entrenched incumbents. Our Green primary endorsements:

For US Senate: Todd Chretien

Chretien is one of the most exciting Green Party candidates in the country. He’s trying to turn a nonrace into a referendum on war and abuse of power. This East Bay resident has spent years fighting for social justice, first as a socialist and then as a Green. He’s smart, passionate, eloquent, and right on the issues. He’s clearly not going to beat Dianne Feinstein, but if he gets any media attention, he’ll be able to raise some important issues.

For US Congress, District 8: Krissy Keefer

Keefer, a dancer and Guardian Goldie winner, has long been an active part of the city’s arts community. She’s always been political, and became an antigentrification activist during the dot-com boom. She has virtually no hope of beating incumbent Nancy Pelosi, and her platform is a little, well, abstract. But we’ve always liked Keefer and we appreciate her spirit in trying to hold Pelosi accountable.

For State Assembly, District 12: Barry Hermanson

Hermanson spent 25 years putting his ideals into action as the owner of a small employment agency, where he sought to raise pay rates for temporary workers. His strategy: reduce his own commission, and pay the temps more. He put a bunch of his own money into a successful citywide campaign to raise the minimum wage. If Janet Reilly wins the Democratic primary for this seat, most progressives in town will probably stick with her — but if Sup. Fiona Ma comes out on top June 6, Hermanson could emerge as the only alternative. SFBG

Next: Shut down Mirant

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EDITORIAL It’s taken years, even decades of fighting, but the noxious, deadly Hunters Point power plant finally shut down this month. After a string of lies and broken promises, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bowed to community pressure and pulled the switch May 15, stopping the flow of asthma-causing pollution from the ancient smokestacks and immediately offering cleaner air to a neighborhood that has been plagued by respiratory illness.

It was huge victory for groups like Greenaction, which has been pushing for a shutdown, and community leaders like Marie Harrison, who helped keep the plant on the political agenda. The deal they finally forced on PG&E: The company had to agree that as soon as state regulators agreed that San Francisco had adequate electricity sources without the plant, it would be closed.

And now it’s time to use the momentum to go after the other pollution-spewing power plant in the southeast — Mirant Corp.’s Bayside behemoth. The Mirant plant not only spews pollution into the air, but it also causes extensive environmental damage to the bay. According to Communities for a Better Environment, the Mirant plant uses 226 million gallons of bay water every day for cooling. The water is sucked in, circulated to cool the turbines, and then discharged. The process stirs up sediments at the bottom of the bay that are laced with toxic mercury, dioxin, copper, and PCBs — and then those sediments are drawn into the plant, whirled around, heated up, and sent back out into the bay, where they contaminate fish and generally wreak environmental havoc.

The old-fashioned cooling system doesn’t meet modern environmental standards, but Mirant wants to keep using it. There are alternatives — including so-called dry cooling, which uses little water — but the company doesn’t want to pay to retrofit the plant. Instead, Mirant has applied for an extension of its existing permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed an opposition brief, and a decision is pending. The water board should deny the permit and force Mirant to either abide by modern standards or close the place down.

In fact, that ought to be the endgame anyway: Mirant has never committed to shutting down the plant, even if it becomes unnecessary as a local power source. The Board of Supervisors should pass a resolution establishing as city policy the need to close the facility, and should demand that Mirant agree to a schedule to turn off its fossil-fuel power generation program as soon as the city can replace the energy with renewables.

This is exactly the sort of decision a public power agency could and would make — and Mirant’s intransigence is another sound reason for San Francisco to proceed at full speed with plans to implement a full-scale public power system, in which elected officials, not private corporations, control the city’s energy mix. SFBG

Attack of the NIMBYs!

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› marke@sfbg.com

A fairy tale: Once upon a time there was a stone-hearted ogre named Capt. Dennis Martel of the San Francisco Police Department’s Southern Station. The Ogre Martel — either through manic moodiness, misguided morality, or perpetual constipation owing to the enchanted stick up his ass — was determined not to let people party like it was 1999. Thus he began terrorizing the nearby Clubbers of SoMa, a benign race of ravers, burners, and freaks who desired nothing more than peace, unity, respect, and free bottled water near the dance floor.

The ogre was relentless. Soon, after-hours party permits were being pulled, club owners fined for "attracting loiterers," and gentle electronica fans in bunny suits hauled downtown for daring to reek of reefer. SF’s premillennial party scene was in grave danger of becoming extinct, until a brave group of party people banded together and formed the San Francisco Late Night Coalition. These fair Knights of the Twirl-Around Table dedicated themselves to political action, local petitioning, and raising community awareness about the harmlessness of all-night dancing. Slowly but surely, they won over the hearts and votes of the townspeople, making clubbing safe again for all and banishing the evil Ogre Martel to parking lot duty at the airport. The end.

Well, not quite. Once again, good-natured fun in the Bay seems to be under attack. Only this time the threat comes not from one rogue cop and his wonky "cleanup" attempts, but from several nervous Nellies among the citizenry. As Amanda Witherell details in this issue, many of the city’s most revered street fairs, festivals, and outdoor events are now threatened by, among other things, higher fees, lack of alcohol sales permits, and sudden, oddball "concerns." And the story doesn’t stop there. The Pac Heights ski jump, amplified music in public spaces, and car-free Saturdays in Golden Gate Park have all recently been nixed by our supposedly green-minded go-go-boy mayor and his minions, under pressure from crotchety party poopers. Well-established clubs like the DNA Lounge, the Eagle Tavern, and — irony of ironies — the Hush Hush Lounge have had to dance madly and expensively around sound complaints. A popular wet-jockstrap contest in the Tenderloin was raided last month by cops, not because of the (whoops) accidental nudity and simulated sex, but because it was … too loud. Huzzacuzzawha?

While money and politics are certainly involved, the one common denominator in all this anti-fun is the squeaky wheel, the neighborhood killjoy who screams "not in my backyard!" These irksome drudges, the NIMBYs, are strangling San Francisco’s native spirit of communal cheer and outrageousness. Big business and corrupt political interests hinge their arguments for more money and less mirth on the whining of one or two finger waggers, despite overwhelming community support for the events being targeted. As often occurs in life, a single complaint carries far more weight than a hundred commendations. A few whack cranks bust the bash.

At this point one wants to shriek, "Move back to Mountain View, spoilsports!" And that’s exactly the message of the San Francisco Party Party, the latest grassroots effort to combat what Party Party leader Ted Strawser calls "the rampant suburbanization of the most gloriously hedonistic city on earth." NIMBYs are hard to spot; they come in every class and color and don’t always sport the telltale Hummers and French manicures of the previous generation of wet blankets (although they do often smell like diapers). The changing demographics of the city suggest that many new residents, mostly condo owners, commute to out-of-town jobs — in San Jose, say — and may be trying to transform San Francisco into a bedroom community.

"I don’t know who these quasi prohibitionists think they are, but they don’t belong here, that’s for sure," Strawser says. "Street culture and community gatherings are the reason San Francisco exists. We live our happy lives on the sidewalks and in the bars. And it’s bad enough we have to quit drinking at 2 a.m. Now we have to be quiet, too?"

The San Francisco Bike Coalition, the newly formed Outdoor Events Coalition, and the still-active Late Night Coalition are out in fabulous force to combat the NIMBYs. But, realizing the diffuseness of the problem, the Party Party is taking a less directly political, more Web-savvy approach to fighting San Francisco’s gradual laming, using its site as a viral locus for disgruntled partyers, a portal linking directly to organizations combating NIMBYs, and a guide to local fun stuff happening each week. "We’re a bunch of partyers, what can I say?" Strawser says. "We’re doing our best to shed light on all this insane NIMBY stuff, but we also love to go out drinking. And that’s a commitment many folks can relate to."

Let’s hope we can win the fight again this time (tipsy or no). San Francisco is a progressive city, dedicated to the power of microgovernment and the ability to have your voice heard in your community. If you don’t like what’s happening next door, you should be able to do something about it. But it’s also a city of constant reinvention and liveliness, exploration and celebration. That’s the reason we all struggle so much to stay here. That’s what shapes our soul.

If some people can’t handle it — well, the less the merrier, maybe. SFBG

www.sfpartyparty.com

www.sflnc.org

www.sfbike.org

Whole paycheck

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0

› amanda@sfbg.com

On a Sunday afternoon, the Cala Foods at Stanyan and Haight is a dismal sight. Thrifty shoppers, beckoned by the 60–70 percent off price tags walk out into the drizzle, empty-handed. The doors close permanently May 24, and there isn’t much left.

The owner of the building, Mark Brennan, plans to demolish the place, and is negotiating with Whole Foods — the fast-growing organic food chain — to build a new store on the site. Some Haight neighbors are looking forward to the organic option, but many are scowling about the potential for increased traffic in the foot-friendly hood — and the fact that Whole Foods is known for high-end products with high-end prices. They refer to the store as "Whole Paycheck."

According to plans, the 28,000-square-foot store will be capped with 62 residential units, seven below market rate, and will sit on three levels of underground parking, tripling the current number of spaces. It will also be the westernmost Whole Foods location in the city, potentially drawing traffic eastward through the park.

"We talked briefly with Trader Joe’s and Rainbow Grocery, and sent a letter to Berkeley Bowl," Brennan told the Guardian. "Whole Foods is the only one willing to wait for development."

The construction is expected to take up to five years, so those in need of a local supermarket will be hard up for a while. "I’m very worried about the old ladies," said Spencer Cumbs, who’s worked at the Cala location for 11 years and often delivers groceries for the more infirm. "Where are they going to shop?" He tells them to visit him at the Cala on California and Hyde, where he’s been transferred, but that’s a long bus ride. There’s no other full-service supermarket in the area.

Like any chain store moving into a neighborhood, Whole Foods could hurt small local businesses, like Haight Street Market, an organic grocery started 25 years ago by Gus and Dmitri Vardakastanis and currently managed by the third generation of the family, Bobby Vardakastanis. "I don’t know if the neighborhood could support it," Bobby told us. "But we have a lot of loyal customers who don’t want to see us get hurt."

Fresh Organics, on the corner of Stanyan and Carl, is also optimally situated to take a hit. "This place rocks," said Erik Christoffersen, with his daughter strapped to his back and arms full of local produce. But he confesses he’d shop at Whole Foods too. "They don’t get meats and fish," he says of the local corner store. A recent Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council meeting on the future of the site drew some 80 residents. According to Calvin Welch, HANC’s housing and land use chair, the major concerns were that Whole Foods is too high-end and, he included, that "people would prefer a unionized grocery store like Cala."

The union issue is huge all over California, where unionized grocery stores are trying to compete against giant nonunion competitors like Wal-Mart. And the San Francisco supervisors are trying to give locals a degree of protection.

A new Grocery Worker’s Retention Ordinance, signed into law by Mayor Newsom on May 12, mandates a 90-day period of continued employment for grocery workers when retail stores larger than 15,000 square feet change hands. It would benefit workers at union stores, like Cala, that are replaced by nonunion retailers, like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.

Sup. Fiona Ma, who introduced the measure, was inspired by a meeting with employees facing potential job losses due to new ownership at three Albertson’s stores in the city, Bill Barnes, an aide to Ma, told us. An endorsement of her run for State Assembly from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 648, which advocated for the ordinance, was probably pretty inspiring as well.

Still, the bill comes too late to help the Cala workers. Employees at the Haight Ashbury store have been transferred to other locations, while ten workers trumped by their seniority have been laid off. SFBG

Turfing the Web

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

ONLINE Recording and computer engineer Damon Todd is perhaps best known as the producer of "Sick Wid It," a song from B-Legit’s Block Movement (Sick Wid It, 2005). Since January, however, with the launch of the social networking site Townturf.com, the young entrepreneur has been hard at work becoming Oakland’s own Tom Anderson. Todd wears many hats in the fledging company, as the site’s cofounder, CFO, chief programmer, administrator, and all-around tech guy, supported by a single silent partner and a staff of four high school interns. Yet membership in the site has already grown to 1,300 on the strength of a two-pronged marketing campaign: a few locally programmed ads on cable stations like BET, E!, and Spike! and a vigorous effort by the interns to get their friends signed up for the free service, which offers the array of features (homepage, e-mail, music and photo uploads, blog) familiar to users of MySpace and other such sites.

"I thought the Bay Area needed its own social network for individuals who fall within the urban demographic," Todd says. "Its social network needs to be a reflection of the actual community for which it exists. The plan is to help people spread awareness about what they’ve got going on here in the Bay Area. With the hyphy movement, there’s a lot of people taking an interest in what’s going on. They can come to Townturf and see what’s happening."

This cultivation of a virtual community rooted in a specific locality may seem at variance with the original "worldwide" associations of the Web. But the Web is worldwide only if you can get on it, and the needs of inner-city users with less-than-optimal access and equipment are seldom considered by site developers. Evoking Oakland hip-hop’s familiar green-street-sign aesthetic in its name and look — the "Town" being synonymous with Oakland — Townturf eschews the latest round of dial-up-crashing flash animation ads in favor of a lo-fi, user-friendly format.

Moreover, in contrast to the April 3 Newsweek cover story on "Web 2.0," which gushed that MySpace and other user content–driven sites represent "the great migration of everyday experience to the Internet," Townturf acknowledges the primacy of real-life motivations for online activity. Sometimes virtual friends aren’t enough: A collection of acquaintances from all over the world, no matter how many interests you share, doesn’t compare to the best bud who is still willing to go to the show with you because you’re best buds.

Similarly, for musicians using such sites to promote their work, there’s no substitute for a local fan base that’ll turn out to see them perform. In its emphasis on the local — and with plans to include event promotion, ticket sales, and a newsletter — Townturf seeks to combine the real-world practicality of Craigslist with the networking ease of MySpace. SFBG

www.townturf.com

Girls afraid

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

As far as Lindsay Lohan goes these days, the title of a recent New York Times essay on her vida loca offers a succinct, if not entirely flattering, summation: "Lindsay Lohan: Portrait of the Party Girl as a Young Artist." The freckled former Disneyite has lately been on the verge — though whether it’s the verge of a grown-up career breakout or a total Britney Spears–style image meltdown seems unclear.

Just My Luck, LiLo’s latest, doesn’t bode well for her aspirations to being a movie star in the Scarlett Johansson mode. Donald Petrie, director of Miss Congeniality and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, manages to meet both flicks halfway with Luck, which features a lead character as klutzy as Sandra Bullock’s FBI agent but as Big Apple fabulous as Kate Hudson’s scheming magazine writer. Lohan’s Ashley Albright is the luckiest girl in NYC, which is to say luckiest measured by Sex and the City standards: Cabs screech to the curb the instant they are hailed, elevators are stocked with cute single guys, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s totally chic cocktail dress is accidentally returned with the dry cleaning. Isn’t life frikkin’ delicious?

Naturally, Ashley’s luck — and her outlook on her superficial-yet-cutely-shod lifestyle — totally changes after she spontaneously kisses, yes, the unluckiest guy in NYC, a sweet schlub named Jake (Chris Pine) with rock ’n’ roll dreams. As you can see, the plot is as thin as one of Lohan’s upper arms; 13 Going on 30 is high art by comparison. By the end (and this is not a spoiler, because there’s no way you wouldn’t see it coming unless you recently arrived from a distant galaxy), the finally fortunate-again Ashley’s moment of truth hinges on whether or not she’ll pass the kiss of luck back to Jake, who needs it more than her, because he’s, like, nice to little kids and stuff.

Fortunately, there’s a movie like Somersault around to dig a little deeper into the confusion that arises when innocence takes a dive. Shot two years ago in Australia but just now being released here, Somersault raked in 13 Australian Film Institute awards (if the AFIs are down under’s Oscar equivalent, that would make Somersault more golden than Titanic). Pretty impressive for a film that seems so effortless; 24-year-old star Abbie Cornish (totally convincing as a 16-year-old, and just cast in Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce’s next project) is four years older than Lohan, but her character, Heidi, exudes a far more fresh-scrubbed naïveté.

As angelically fair and danger-prone as Goldilocks, Heidi flees her home in Canberra after she’s discovered making an advance (eagerly reciprocated) on her mother’s mullet-bearing boyfriend. Attracting men isn’t Heidi’s problem; even in a crowded, raucous bar, she practically glows, a quality which no doubt aids her in her fumbling quest to put down new roots. A kindly hotel owner allows her a cheap room, a job as a cashier gets her free meals, and a popular local boy named Joe (Sam Worthington) takes an interest in her.

Rest assured, this ain’t Where the Heart Is. (Recap: Preggers teen Natalie Portman blows into a tiny Oklahoma town and is wholly embraced with homespun heartlandiness.) Heidi is childlike enough to playact in anticipation of her next meeting with Joe, but she’s also sexually precocious to a fault; her judgment is impaired not just by her drinking habits but also by her young age and her desperate need to be loved by anyone who’ll have her. Unfortunately for her, she’s not living in a universe that pinpoints her well-being as its focus (unlike, say, Just My Luck‘s Ashley). Somersault‘s portrayal of real life is harsh, especially for a too-immature-to-be-so-mature girl scraping by completely on her own. Writer-director Cate Shortland deftly conveys the precariousness of Heidi’s situation with restrained symbolism, as when the girl plucks a pair of discarded ski goggles from a junk heap and tries them on — allowing her to glimpse an unyielding world, if only for an instant, through rose-colored glasses. SFBG

Just My Luck

Now playing at Bay Area theaters

For showtimes go to www.sfbg.com

www.justmyluckmovie.com

Somersault

Opens Fri/19

Lumiere Theatre

1572 California, SF

For showtimes go to www.sfbg.com

www.magpictures.com

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