Local

Shall we dance? Our review of Naked Sword’s SF sex party

Andrew Lam
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“At this San Francisco sex party, service comes with a smile”

I watched his engorged, throbbing penis emerge at the opening of the glory hole. Staring felt awkward, but I couldn’t peel my eyes away. Men were all over the room, some casually looking on, some men lounging naked on the couch. One guy was doing a nude figure drawing of his next conquest.  

I hit pause on the video stream to cool down. Oh! I should mention I was watching Naked Sword’s newest release Private Party — the local production company’s stab at recreating a SF sex party. And as a queer local who has actually attended a SF sex party or two, I have to say Private Party is more of a fantasy of what an SF sex party would be like than a true-to-life recreation. 

Don’t get me wrong, you’ll definitely get off. Private Party all but guarantees it in its tagline: “At this San Francisco sex party, service comes with a smile.”And true enough, the shoot is chock-full of muscle-clad gay male porn stars with well-developed members in twosomes and threesomes, all happily ending.

The series welcomes you  into a home where sexual escapades are happening around every corner. The title sequence of each episode sets the scene. You have just arrived at the sex party — cut to scenes of men on top of hot men. This is unfortunately were the sex party motif ends. 

Because at this point, the episodes breaks off into more intimate scenes — a twosome in Episode One, a threesome in Episode Two. 

In my opinion, a more realistic tale would have included men in all the various combinations having sex together in the same room. The camera would be panning across their naked, sweat-drenched bodies, and you wouldn’t be able to tell which limbs belong to who. I guess you would call that an orgy. Where’s the orgy scene, Naked Sword? 

Perhaps Private Party is holding out for future episodes to give us the big “O” scene. One more thing I have to call foul on: there was a dance party at the last sex party I went to. Where’s the dance party? 

If you’re looking for a porn with built and attractive gay male porn stars in pretty intimate — I would almost call them romantic — scenes with great lighting and artistic cinematography Private Party may be the porn series for you. Just don’t expect a dance party.

 

Creating activist scholars: extended interview with Andrej Grubacic

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Creating activist scholars: extended interview with Andrej Grubacic

For this week’s paper, we talked with with Andrej Grubacic, the new head of the anthropology department at the California Institute for Integral Studies. Here’s the extended interview with Grubacic, where he talks more about the new Anthropology and Social Change program, as well as the history of anarchist schools, how his grandmother influenced his politics growing up in Yugoslavia, and the state of the occupy movement.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What’s the structure of the new program going to look like?

Andrej Grubacic: It’s going to be called Anthropology and Social Change, and we have two levels. One is MA, the other is PhD. Philosophically speaking and politically speaking, in the age of occupy and all of these movements, the great question for me was how to organize a department that’s actually going to be useful for all of these social struggles and that activism that’s happening outside of education. I’ve been in academia as a scholar-activist for a long time. And what I’ve discovered is the most painful thing in my experience is the separation. The fact of actual separation between the grassroots knowledges, produced outside of the academia, and academic knowledge produced within the universities. So the best things, the way that I was thinking about this was that what we should do on both levels, MA and PhD, is to construct a space of translation of different knowledge. So to put these two knowledges, one produced outside of academia and the other produced in the university, in dialogue.

So we have Boots Riley for example, he’s going to be teaching community organizing, or organizing for social justice. Then we’re going to have Sasha Lilley teaching an eminently practical course on how to create and produce radical radio. So you’re going to get activist media skills. Then we’re going to have a few other people teaching also different skills, and knowledge that’s inspired by art, bringing artists in, and knowledge that’s inspired by people who are thinking about social theory and social emancipation. We’re going to create something really exciting. 

SFBG: Do you think the students who attend are going to be the same kind of mix of academics, artists, activists, and people who want to organize within their own communities here in San Francisco?

AG: I think so. That’s the idea. The idea is to make this department work for the students, but also for the people in San Francisco Bay Area. And we can do that by bringing students who are interested in local work, and I think that’s going to be a pretty amazing. If we are of course able to do things right, but I think that we will be. So Chris Carlsson for example, he’s going to be teaching labor and ecological history of San Francisco, so a very local topic. We’re going to be teaching courses on activist ethnography, and activist ethnography is the center for the whole program, which is how can we relate to community– and this is where we’re also using the term integral– in an integral way? Meaning how do we integrate community into every step of the research process? And the traditional anthropology, as you probably know, is all about participant observation. We would like to have instead observant participants. People who are involved with the communities. People who are trying to dissolve the distinction between the researcher, between who’s on the outside, and who’s on the inside. And they’re creating something together. 

SFBG: I saw when you spoke at the University of the Commons launch. You were talking about how there’s a wave of radical activity going on at schools throughout the world.

AG: Oh yeah.

SFBG: This is obviously very different, because this is an institution putting out something radical, but do you think it fits into that trend right now?

AG: I think it does. Because if you know my biography, I’ve been travelling through all of these experiences in schools for many many years now. I had to leave Yugoslavia where I’m from because of my oppositional political activity and, you know, I finally arrived here to work at New College of California which was also a private institution, and I was very inspired by the department of Activism and Social Change, and I completely fell in love with the history of radical schools in San Francisco. Now I don’t know how much you know about them, but they’re, like, great stuff. There was a liberation school, there were Black Panther schools, of course. There is a great history of alternative schools and experiments. So New College was a private institution, but still, many of my activist friends, who became friends later, have actually been through New College and they got their MA s in activism and social change or media studies. So CIIS actually took many of these people, many of the professors from these programs, and invited them here. So in a certain sense, I think what was done in terms of Activism and Social Change, and orientation to social justice and emancipation, was that at New College we are still keeping that spirit alive. But, in communication- and I think this is the crucial thing for our department- we are doing this in communication with radical educational experiments, movement-based experiments from all over the world. Manolo Callahan, who is going to be teaching here next semester, he is one of the people involved in University of the Earth- Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and in Chiapas, so we are creating relationships with them. Which you know are completely radical experiences outside of institutions, they call themselves deprofessionalized intellectuals. We have already relationships with the Activism and Social Change department in Leeds, in England, they have a great school there. With people in Brazil, the landless workers movements. We’re in touch with people from Ecuador and people form Bolivia. So it’s a whole network of educational, tendency of educational experiences that this department is now creating.

SFBG: Do you have economics courses here?

AG: Yeah.

SFBG: So are there classes that are non-capitalist economics?

AG: Yes, it’s called radical political economy. We are trying to understand political economy from a feminist perspective, from an anarchist perspective, from a post-colonialist- so in that sense we are engaging multiple emancipatory frameworks of understanding social reality. So I myself, I come from the anarchist experience in social science, in politics. We have people who are feminists- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz for example. She’s sort of a legend in San Francisco Bay Area and she’s teaching three courses. Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz is going to be teaching about Native American struggles. As it pains me to say, that kind of a focus is mostly missing not only in private but also in public universities now. 

SFBG: So could you tell me a little more about the anarchist background you come from?

AG: I became an anarchist fairly early on, I was 13 or something. Because I was living in Yugoslavia. At that time, Yugoslavia was a socialist state. And because it was a socialist state for me it was a very interesting place to grow up, because you see socialism, real existing socialism, and you see many things that are beautiful about socialism. But you also see many things that are not so beautiful. And I was thinking about the alternatives to it. And for me it was really, sounds cheesy, but a conversation with my grandmother that decided it. She was a communist; she was a Yugoslav revolutionary communist. And Yugoslavia was falling apart, Yugoslavia was in a series of really brutal ethnic wars back in the 90s, and my grandmother, this lifelong communist, told me– my question was, are you still a communist? Do you still believe in communism in the context of this country falling apart? And she said yes, I do, I think that we have chosen a path to communism that was wrong. But I think the responsibility of your generation is to find a different path. The ideal is OK, the ideal is good. It’s a different path that you’re generation needs to find, and you have a great responsibility to do so. And the alternative that I discovered that seemed to me, back when I was 13 years old, and it still does, rational– as an alternative to the Marxist-Leninst way of getting from here to there, right– is anarchism. So for me anarchism, or libertarian socialism is another name that people are using, is a way of organizing for social justice and creating an egalitarian system that takes democracy very seriously. It’s like democracy without a state. 

SFBG: What happened that made you leave Yugoslavia?

AG: I was raised a Yugoslav. So I was raised to be a citizen of a country that doesn’t exist anymore. And on one hand, you had people who were Serbian nationalists, and I couldn’t really get along with those. On the other hand you had people who were neoliberal capitalists, who thought that everything coming from Europe and the United States was great and I couldn’t really agree with those either. And being a young academic, I was a historian at the time and working within the university, there was a great deal of pressure to get me out of the university. So it became very unpleasant. So I already had a relationship with Noam Chomsky, and Chomsky was following everything that was happening to me in Yugoslavia. And he told me at some point OK, it’s time for you to go. So he got me out of Yugoslavia, moved me to the United States or helped me move to the United States, introduced me to a man whose name is Immanuel Wallerstein, a great, amazing sociologist, who helped me get to his program at the Center for the Study of Economics, Historical Systems, and Civilization at SUNY-Binghamton to finish my graduate studies. So that was a– it was a long journey. 

Let’s just say that it was an active disagreement with the political class active at that time in Yugoslav-Serbia. It was actually funnily enough still called Yugoslavia. We only had two countries of the former Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro. But the political cultures and political groups in power were either Serbian nationalists or these hyper-capitalists, right. And going after them, because I was publishing and I was doing a lot of things, was– let’s say, not smart career choice. But it made it possible for me to meet people like Chomsky and some other people. And they liked what I was doing and they were concerned that, for health reasons, United States might be a better environment.

SFBG: Even within these more welcoming academic environments, do you feel your activism or anarchism is stifled in some way?

AG: I had a bad experience here at one university, a local university here in San Francisco, and it wasn’t a good experience. That felt unpleasant and it felt very stifling. CIIS is very different. Actually this is the first place where I think that I was hired because I was an anarchist, or I am an anarchist. It’s kind of funny. But in other places, in Yugoslavia and there was another institution here, I had problems because of my politics. Here, that was exactly the reason I was hired. So it gives you an idea that the school is very different than most other universities. 

SFBG: Could there be such a thing as an anarchist school?

AG: I hope University of the Commons can become something like an anarchist school. Anarchist schools actually used to exist. And they still exist. But the really big one was Francisco Ferrer in Spain. It was called Modern School. It was created in 1904. It became so huge– especially after Francisco Ferrer was killed by the Spanish state in 1909- that there were 60 schools only in Spain and there were I don’t know how many schools in the United States but the last one closed only in 1958 in New Jersey. Modern Schools were amazing places. One could also argue that Yasnaya Polyana of Leo Tolstoy was also an anarchist school. It was in many ways. 

But anarchist schools were schools where you had a few elements. Integral education was number one. Education of the whole person. You don’t only educate somebody as an intellectual but you aim at education of the whole person. The other thing was something that anarchists called reality of the encounter. Which means that all the questions in pedagogical practice needs to come from real questions posed by life itself. So you need to do something that’s practical. Another thing was the complementary role of the teacher, which means the teacher needs to be a facilitator who listens and who offers something in return. But the first thing, the first kind of show of interest, comes from the student. So the role of the teacher is complementary. Another huge thing was something Proudhon called démoédie, or self-government of the school. So school becomes a place where you teach students arts of self-government and self-management. Schools are organized in the spirit of direct democracy. Another thing which was Paul Goodman, famous anarchist educator, his idea was to organize decentralized “teeny schools,” as he called them. So to have a small teaching environment. To have students go to the bank to be taught about mathematics, to go to a museum and then to teach them about geography, to do these things. And then the most important thing for anarchist schools on all levels is the idea of natural motivation and natural learning which was first formulated by Tolstoy. The idea is the students have this natural motivation to learn. And what you do is basically you create an environment where that kind of learning becomes possible. And another thing for anarchist schools was the idea of spontaneous order. So there is no imposed order by the teacher, but there is a spontaneous order that the students themselves discover. In other words, discipline is– I think this is Tolstoy’s, the word that he used– discipline is being discovered, not imposed. What would that mean for a university is a different question. I think the one obvious thing would be that everybody, students and professors, there needs to be a horizontal relationship between them. There needs to be an atmosphere of collective production of knowledge in the classroom. There cannot be a curriculum that’s linear. It needs to be dialogical, it needs to be participatory, you need to talk about this and co-create a syllabus. You need to be as horizontal and participatory as possible. You need to be as imaginative as possible in diminishing your own role as a teacher, which is a very tricky thing, without becoming a populist in the classroom, you know. Empowering students, and finding appropriate structure together with students. Again we are coming back to the idea of listening. We need to listen to the students and together with them, create an atmosphere in the classroom that’s going to be genuinely transformative. 

SFBG: I’d love to ask you more about how this will relate to anarchism and occupy.

AG: In terms of anarchism, we are gonna have- this is going to be one of the few places where anarchism is going to be studied. So anarchist social theory, anarchist education, anarchist ideas in general. We are going to study them, seriously, because they need to be recognized seriously. They’re part of- it’s a beautiful history, it’s a beautiful tradition. How important it is, I think, is revealed, by the recent rediscovery or reinvention of anarchism at occupy. So I think that it’s more relevant than ever to create a space where anarchism will be studied. 

In terms of occupy, occupy is going through the process of fragmentation right now, and they are looking for a new political space of conversation I think. So the way that we can relate to occupy, I think, is to have our students participate in whatever different movements occupy helped. Because you know that occupy now how occupy patriarchy, there is decolonize, there are many different groups. So I expect our students to be involved in occupy, and I expect us to be able to offer a space where many of the debates related to occupy can happen. So, and you know there is an actual affinity. When Silvio Federici comes, or John Holloway, or Michael Hardt, or any of these people, these are the people that occupy people read, and these are some of the bibles of the occupy movement. So what are we going to do is, we are going to make them available and accessible to these people who come here, and we are going to bring here,  and we are going to take them to the occupy movements and we are going to invite people from the occupy movements to come here. But we are also going to do more I think. What we can do, and this is now only a plan an idea, is to invite the movement itself, not only occupy but different movements, and say, OK, please come here and tell us what would you like us to do. And one person from our department had this idea and I think it is brilliant. So to have the movement, different movements– is it food, is it the environment, is it one of the occupy-related movements- come here. We provide the space. And they tell us- social theorist, social scientists, people in the academia, they tell us what do they need us to do. It comes back to this idea of listening. So give a movement or movements a real possibility and opportunity to speak. Because usually academics, we are people who speak. Well we would like to see academics become people who actually listen. 

SFBG: I agree that occupy is basically an anarchist movement and a lot of the tenants of anarchism are being used in it. And I think this is a time when, in the mainstream, people are talking about anarchism more. But for a lot of people it has the image of people who wear black and smash stuff. So I’m curious, how does black bloc, or property damage, relate to the anarchism that’s going to be studied in the department?

AG: It doesn’t relate at all. The anarchism that we are going to study is– in Katrina, the Common Ground collective. That for me is a great example. Common Ground collective is a relief group of activists who went there from all over the place, they went to New Orleans, they were all anarchists and they said OK, we don’t believe in charity, we believe in solidarity. And they built a common ground center and they did relief work with the community for a couple of years. And there is a new book about it by a person who actually came here and spoke, one of the New Orleans activists, Scott Crow. And this is the kind of anarchism I am myself inspired by, the constructive side, not the destructive side. So how to build alternatives in the present for people, what sometimes referred to as prefigurative politics. How to think about positive stuff, constructive stuff. Building alternatives that are going to be persuasive enough– not about breaking windows. I don’t see any particular point in breaking windows. And I think it’s an unfortunate thing that people would reduce anarchism to that. If you think about it, the most important public intellectuals in the United States, one of them recently died, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky thankfully is still alive, they’re both anarchists. So this is the kind of anarchism that I subscribe to, and both of them were my mentors. And I studied with Howard. I studied with Noam, he was the chair of my PhD committee. So these are the people whose anarchism I take very seriously, and this is the kind of anarchism that I like. 

SFBG: But it’s hard to ignore organizing tactics.

AG: But even orgnanizing tactics– black bloc as a tactic comes from the autonomen movement in Germany, which was not an anarchist movement. It comes from the 80s. People dressed in black in Germany, you know, doing property destruction thinking that property destruction is going to contribute to the tactical efficiency of a particular action. Then it went through the environmental movement in particular places, in the environmental movement here in the United States. And it’s being used not only by anarchists, it’s being used by people who would call themselves communists, left, anti-state communists, by different varieties, autonomous Marxists. So it’s not only a tactic that anarchists use. And, you know, it’s a tactic. Anarchism is far broader. 

SFBG: Than just tactics.

AG: Yes. If you would ask me what is the most distinguishing, for me, character of anarchism I would say prefigurative politics– creating the new within the shell of the old—the idea of direct democracy, and the idea of direct action. Direct action being producing alternatives within the present, and direct democracy, behaving in the way that general assemblies are being set up. So that is I think the greatest lesson that anarchism can teach, direct democracy and direct action. 

SFBG: Occupy Oakland, they only had their camp for less than two months, but so much happned.

AG: They did great things. I really feel bad when I read mainstream media completely dismissing that experience. I was there, and the amount of work that went into keeping the medical facilities there, to helping homeless, feeding homeless, helping people with medicine, with immediate healthcare, taking care of children, creating children-friendly spaces, I mean it was amazing. Sure there were problems, of course there are going to be problems. But the stuff that people did there was just incredible. And the general strike, and shutting the port, and all of that, these were great things.

SFBG: And part of the reason the city started cracking down on it was when police tried to enter the space, people wouldn’t let them in.

AG: And they shouldn’t let them in, because the way police behave in Oakland was just outrageous.

This interview has been edited for length.

Davis snags a trio of top progressive endorsements

Sasha Cuttler
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Davis snags a trio of top progressive endorsements

District 5 supervisorial candidate Julian Davis is emerging as the progressive standard-bearer in that competitive race after today receiving the endorsements of a trio of top progressive politicians: Sups. John Avalos and David Campos and attorney Matt Gonzalez, the former board president, mayoral candidate, and D5 supervisor.

Gonzalez had endorsed appointed incumbent Sup. Christina Olague – who he appointed to the Planning Commission in 2004 – but he withdrew that endorsement last month after being frustrated by a series of actions in which she sided with Mayor Ed Lee, moderates, and developers over her longtime progressive colleagues and constituents.

Avalos and Gonzalez are endorsing just Davis, at least for now, while Campos added to his early endorsement of Olague by today endorsing Davis and John Rizzo, who had earlier snagged the other prized progressive endorsement by winning the support of Assembly member Tom Ammiano.

Davis, who was already endorsed by former supervisor and local Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, said he’s thrilled with today’s triple endorsement. While some have questioned his anemic fundraising so far, raising less than $10,000 as of June 30, Davis notes that he had been in the race for less than a month before that deadline and that he expects to have more than $150,000 to get his message out.

“What these endorsements signal is a confidence from San Francisco’s progressive leaders, not only in the vision of this campaign, but in our capacity to win,” Davis told us.

Avalos said that he has confidence in Davis’ values, experience, and his ability to run a strong race that will help to reinvigorate the progressive movement.

“Julian is a solid candidate who has been around for years on a number of progressive causes. Running for mayor, I was impressed with his connection to neighborhood issues ranging from small business development to urban cycling and youth and worker rights. His campaign has a good buzz about it, one that I expect will resonate with District 5 residents,” Avalos told us.

In Richmond, is it safe to eat your garden fruits and veggies?

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Questions remain about the safety of eating homegrown fruits and vegetables from gardens in Richmond and other areas affected by a fire at the Chevron refinery August 6.

The official line from Contra Costa County–where residents were told to shelter-in-place during Monday evening’s fire–is to wash the produce in your gardens extra well.

“It’s safe to eat your fruit and vegetables,” said Randy Sawyer, the county’s chief environmenta and hazardous materials officer. “We do recommend that you wash them in a weak soap solution like a dish soap.” If there was harmful residue on the plants, it would be visible, he said. “It wouldn’t be a dust product, it would be sooty.”

But local gardeners and environmentalists beg to differ, and many are anxious about the fire’s potential long-term effect on the area’s urban agriculture. At a tense community meeting on Tuesday night, gardeners from Urban Tilth rolled in wheelbarrows of wilted produce they said was destroyed by the refinery fire, which was contained after a few hours but burned into the night. 

“We have extreme concerns,” Urban Tilth executive director Doria Robinson told the Guardian. “We’re trying to work with soil and air quality scientists to figure out what we need to test and how we can test it to determine what is safe. In the meantime, we can’t stand by the food we have.”

Until we know what chemicals were burning in the fire and what remains in the air, it’s dangerous to assume our garden products are not contamminated, said Robinson, a Richmond resident herself. “If it’s particulate matter or dust, in theory you can wash it off. At the same time, you’re not exactly sure how certain chemicals react. More importantly, if you can wash the plant, what happens to the soil? Heavy metals like mercury are used in some processing. If that stuff was in the plume and it deposited in the soil” there could be lasting detrimental effects on our gardens, she said. 

When a Richmond resident at Tuesday’s community meeting asked what chemicals might be in the air, and Jeff McKay, Deputy Air Pollution Control Officer at Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), listed hydrogen sulfide, benzene, sulfur dioxide, and styrene. All four compounds are either considered poisonous, or suspected to be carcinogens. 

The BAAQMD’ lab analysis report tested for 23 compounds, including Benzene, but not the other three chemicals. Most of the chemicals “have been identified by the state of California as Toxic Air Contaminants,” according to the BAAQMD. And although the same report insists that the air pollution levels were “significantly below federal health standards,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported that 1,700 people ended up in the emergency room with respitory problems during or after the fire. 

Robinson said it is extremely difficult to trace health problems to individual pollutants. 

“The way that companies like Chevron have been able to pollute the air without liability is it’s extremely hard to trace back, and they can point to things like the highways,” she said. “This particular instance was so extreme that if we get a list of what was burning, we might be able to trace it back for the first time.”

Robinson and her team hope to have a plan to test Urban Filth’s produce by Monday, though she said financial barriers will make a comprehensive analysis difficult or impossible. Until the products are deemed safe, the organization is planning on suspending its school programs and refraining from eating from its 11 Richmond gardens, and Robinson urged residents to do the same with their personal plants.

“Before we take someone else’s word for it, we owe it to ourselves and our community” to ensure our food is clean, she said.

Local porn stars in Pussy Riot benefit show

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Change the world one-handed!

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich of the band Pussy Riot have been jailed in Russia for months and face three years in prison for “hooliganism.”  They could be sentenced as soon as August 17, and their legal defense team is working their asses off.

That’s where Bianca Stone and Coral Aorta come in. On Monday, the local performers will do a cam show to benefit the defense team.

Stone said she was inspired by Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna and her fundraising support for Pussy Riot.

“It’s an act of raising awareness and solidarity and getting people involved,” said Stone.

“We need another riot grrrl movement. We need another mass art and cultural movement for young women and girls,” she said. “Imagine if every city had a pussy riot band?”

A hint of what’s to come: strip tease with a riot grrrl soundtrack and panties worn on faces as Pussy Riot-style balaclavas. And the first 30 minutes is free.

“Then, we’re gonna fuck the shit out of each other,” said Stone. You have to pay for that part.

www.skinvideo.com/model/17398/Bianca-Stone

Mon/13 2pm

Outer limits

Andrew Lam
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Outer limits

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Last year, we thought it couldn’t get better, and then it upped the ante. Outside Lands 2012 takes place this weekend, and the lineup is packed with legendary performers, reunited favorites, and flashy newcomers, pieced together (some overlapping) in a masterful Golden Gate frame, outlined by all that glorious flora and fog.

There’s little to debate; our inboxes have been unequivocally flooded with requests to cover the event from the moment the full list roared onto the web. Who’s to say what sparked the revved up offerings and subsequent queries?

The facts: 72 bands on stage, 15 DJs in the Dome, 25 comedy-variety acts in the Barbary, plus 10 night shows featuring 20 performers. Expected attendance is more than 65,000 people per day, according to the organizers.

It’s a lot to take in, even for the seasoned San Francisco festival-goer (keep hydrated, wear layers, duh). So we’ve whittled down the schedule to the must-sees — those with a certain unscientific combination of vitality and vigor, of historical significance and a very-modern presence.

Of course, if you’ve got a one or three-day pass, you’re likely planning on packing in as many acts as possible, with perfectly timed bathroom, wine, and gourmet food stand breaks. But if you’re of the looser sort, one to wander with feckless abandon among those throngs, keep the below in mind.

Here are your must-see Outside Lands performances:

THE BIG ONES

Headliners and icons

Watching an old friend dance with his bride to iconic folk ballad “Harvest Moon,” it dawned on us: despite his gruff persona, broadly influential singer-songwriter Neil Young & Crazy Horse (8:10-9:55pm Friday, Lands End) is for lovers. And his words — and strumming — are deeply personal for a handful of generations. They’ve left a yearning imprint on our collective pleasure center.

This is a grand return for ’90s indie rockers, Grandaddy (5:10-6:10pm Saturday, Sutro). The Modesto five-piece split in 2006, after a respected career that included touring with Elliott Smith (RIP) and a song, “AM 180,” used in a memorable zombie-less supermarket sweep scene in 28 Days Later.

Kill ‘Em All…And Justice For All…okay, and we guess St. Anger. The heavy metal — and then some other stuff — back catalogue of Metallica (7:55-9:55pm Saturday, Lands End) is forever drilled into our brains. In a press call leading up to the fest, drummer Lars Ulrich said, “we’re very proud of our…relation and our history with San Francisco,” (does that mean the band will do us a solid and play early tracks?), later adding, “it’s an amazing thing, 31 years into a career to be able to be as busy as we are and to [see] people give a shit and to be able to still tour.” We give a shit, Lars.

As one fan noted, Mr. Superstition, Steve Wonder (7:20-9:30pm Sunday, Lands End), is likely the most creative choice of a headliner in 2012. And it makes the night-map easy for some of us; in the scheduling contest between dub-monster Skrillex and Motown icon Stevie Wonder, there is no contest.

LOCALS ONLY

Best of the Bay represented

It’s been five years since Two Gallants (1:50-2:40pm Friday, Lands End) released an album, and this fest (along with the OL night show) are the first local shows for the folk-punk duo touring on the new record, The Bloom and the Blight. Seems they’ll have a lot of stowed away energy to release in the park.

Perhaps never has man and computer so beautifully collided than with San Francisco digi-rock act Geographer (2:10-2:55pm Saturday, Twin Peaks). Swelling vocal melodies blend so evenly with darting beeps and blurps and laser synths, sometimes deepened by floating violin. It’s hard-rocking orchestral pop, operatic robot love, and world travel in a machine. The band paid its dues playing Rock Make, Treasure Island, Live 105’s BFD, and now, Outside Lands.

These San Francisco pysch-surf-punks are notorious for their headspinningly prolific songwriting, unpredictable live shows, and spastic energy. Regardless of what happens during Thee Oh Sees (6:05-6:45pm Saturday, Panhandle) set, it’ll be an act people are talking about.

THE ANDY WARHOL FACTOR

Who everyone will be Tweeting about

Having just premiered barely pronounceable single “XP€N$IV $H1T” (“I rub my dick on XP€N$IV $H1T” being actual lyrics) it’s safe to assume that Southern African freak-rap trio Die Antwoord (5:25-6:15pm Friday, Twin Peaks) is going to continue down a path of what-the-fuck-did-I-just-witness trashy splendor. There will be rave wear and Ninja’s inexplicable junk-thrusting dance moves, DJ Hi-Tek records spinning, and Yo-Landi’s hyper-high chirp.

When Father John Misty (2:55-3:35pm Saturday, Panhandle), a.k.a. J. Tillman of Fleet Foxes, stopped by Bottom of the Hill earlier this year, folks didn’t know what hit them. FJM was a wild force on stage, engaging in an ongoing and increasingly odd conversation with the audience, with quips and asides a-plenty in between a hectic set of woozy pop and crunchy-hippie psychedelic jams.

Perhaps not since Janis Joplin, have we heard a lady blues vocalist with pipes this powerful. That wail is a show-stopper. And, four-piece Alabama Shakes (3:50-4:40pm Saturday, Sutro), led by Brittany Howard (she of the powerful pipes), is actually born and raised Alabama, as the band name would imply, meaning its a more authentic experience, it would seem.

After a prolonged break, Santigold (5:10-6pm Sunday, Twin Peaks) dropped long-awaited Master Of My Make-Believe this year, with reggae-flecked party jam single “Disparate Youth,” cut through with a machine-gun guitar riff. Clearly, Santigold is no less bold in her return. Both the sound and her avant-pop style will surely absorb those expansive outdoor stages.

WORLD TRAVEL

Globally relevant bands from far and wide

Sigur Ros is not the only Icelandic band at Outside Lands 2012. If ambient soundscapes aren’t your thing, check out the lesser-known folk sextet Of Monsters and Men (5:25-6:25pm Friday, Sutro), which balances catchy melodies with beautifully harmonized vocals. Amadou & Mariam (3:35-4:25pm Sunday, Twin Peaks) met at Mali’s Institute for the Young Blind. What the African duo lacks in 20/20 vision they make up for in mesmerizing sound — irresistible hip-hop-and blues-inspired world music. We dare you not to dance. Globally recognized Columbian culture-masher band Bomba Estéreo (6-6:40pm Sunday, Panhandle) mixes in the sounds of Latin America, the Caribbean, reggae, dub, and beyond, with bouncy hip-hop beats. Live, lead vocalist Li Saumet (who this year also released a side-project in which she imagines killing her boyfriend) pumps up the energy tenfold.

SONIC BREAK

Explore beyond the music

Imbibe in yeasty concoctions at this year’s first ever Beer Lands (oui, Wine Lands will be there too). And the beer lineup is made up of local craft breweries: 21st Amendment, Anchor Brewing, Magnolia, Pac Brewing Labs, Speakeasy (all San Francisco); Bear Republic (Russian River area), Drakes, (San Leandro) and Linden Street (West Oakland). Oh, and Sierra Nevada is debuting the Outside Lands Saison at the fest, said to be inspired by OL itself. Reggie Watts, Neil Patrick Harris, David Cross, Kristen Schaal, Nerdist Chris Hardwick, the list goes on for The Barbary. The comedy and variety tent keeps getting bigger, and weirder. There are the big names of course (see above) but also some awesome homegrown talent — Jesse Elias, for one. We caught him in the Cinecave last month, and were blown away by his timing. Our cheeks ached from laughing. And he never once looked up at the audience, only moving to push his glasses back up his nose.

OUTSIDE LANDS MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL

Fri/10-Sun/12, noon, $95

Golden Gate Park, SF

www.sfoutsidelands.com

Appetite: Under the stars in Guerneville

Andrew Lam
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Amid towering redwoods, summer heat, and parties along the Russian River is the small town of Guerneville, one of Sonoma’s most unique towns, with its vibrant gay community, laid back river culture, and haunting redwood state park. On a recent idyllic summer weekend, barbecues and live, twanging bands added color to the bustling main street.

Foodies have a destination cafe-restaurant in Guerneville’s Big Bottom Market, which was opened last summer by co-owners Michael Volpatt and Crista Luedtke (the latter owns neighboring boon hotel + spa and boon eat + drink restaurant). Big Bottom draws crowds for breakfasts, lunch, and for anytime cups of my favorite Sonoma County coffee, Flying Goat‘s special blend for the cafe. The cafe’s breakfast biscuits ($3-9) are stuffed with a changing array of goodies like bananas, peanut butter, strawberries and white chocolate, or ham, Swiss, and dill pickle (loved the mustard in the latter but lamentably had to hunt for the ham.) Offerings change daily, but the day’s special is easily ascertained — each biscuit is adorned with a bit of its filling.

Big Bottom Cafe’s superlatively-stuffed biscuits. Guardian photo by Virginia Miller

My recent weekend in Guerneville coincided with the launch of Big Bottom’s dinner service (Thursdays-Saturdays only, 5-9pm). Executive chef Tricia Brown cooked at one of my all-time favorite restaurants, Gramercy Tavern in NYC, moving from Brooklyn to Sonoma for a lifestyle change. With that pedigree, it’s no surprise that she’s cooking an elevated style of cafe food. In the rustic, touch-of-farmhouse shop lined with wood floors and wine and gourmet food items for purchase, dinner means comfort food, like a Moroccan chicken tagine ($18), or apricot-studded couscous laden with Castelvetrano olives and toasted almonds, or green-chile-cheddar turkey meatloaf ($17) over chipotle mashed sweet potatoes.

Unexpectedly, sandwiches ruled: pinot pulled pork covered in spicy BBQ sauce ($16) and garlic aioli smeared on a toasted brioche, both with sides of bourbon-bacon baked beans and cilantro-lime coleslaw ($4 individually or 3 for $11.) There was also a sandwich special of wild salmon that was softly pink, almost medium-rare, topped with slaw on buttery brioche. Both were made with care, blessedly robust in flavors and texture. Chilled cucumber soup spiked with mint and yogurt ($6) was a refreshing summer starter. Only a large pile of dry crostini felt out of place on a mezze platter ($9) of roasted red pepper hummus, lentil walnut pate, cucumber red onion yogurt salad, and olives.

Small, local winemakers are featured on the wine menu, including a few of my go-tos like Thomas George Estates and Unti. It also features different winemakers like Sonoma’s Paul Mathew Vineyards, whose vintages are made by winemaker Mat Gustafson. I sampled all three of Gustafon’s featured wines, like a mineral 2010 Weeks Vineyard Chardonnay that held slight citrus notes from its stainless steel aging, rounded out by a hint of oak. I found the 2011 Knight’s Valley Valdigue most interesting (and the most affordable at $7 glass/$33 bottle.) It’s a chilled wine more akin to a Lambrusco or other chilled red with dry, strawberry notes, earthy yet bright.

Certainly when in Guerneville, one can enjoy the retreat-like (though dated) Applewood Inn, but Big Bottom Market hits at a lower price point, though its obviously more casual. For a sleepy small town in the redwoods, nestled between vineyards and ocean, the Market’s casual-gourmet approach feels appropriate.

End the night at Rio Nido Roadhouse dancing under the stars out back to live music (blues, classic rock, etc.) Were it not for the redwoods and that clean, crisp Sonoma air, the crusty older cowboys, families, and dive bar setting would be enough to convince you you’re in a small Texas town, embracing the warm summer night.

Big Bottom Market

16228 Main St., Guerneville

(707) 604-7295

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com

 

Korean commotion

Andrew Lam
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Korean commotion

virginia@sfbg.com

APPETITE The nation’s on a kimchi kick. Truth be told, California has long been home to some of the country’s densest Asian populations, so here in the Bay Korean cuisine is at a crossroads — is it a staple? Exotic novelty? With the help of a few new openings, the answer may be shifting. Despite a smattering of Korean BBQ joints in SF and a concentrated Korean population in Oakland, it hasn’t been until the last few years that I’ve witnessed local Korean eateries offering much beyond barbecue.

But now, thanks to the forward-thinking fusion of Namu Gaji and home-cooked joys of To Hyang, Nan, Manna, and Aato, the Bay is getting a crack at more diverse Korean offerings. In Oakland, good times can be had at the “porno bar,” a.k.a. Dan Sung Sa (2775 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 663-5927), so-called due to the Korean film posters lining its walls, though there’s actually nothing explicit to be seen. Its fried chicken, Korean beers, and comfortably dive-y atmosphere evoke an under-the-radar speakeasy vibe, reminiscent of long-timer Toyose (3814 Noriega, SF. (415) 731-0232), tucked away in a similarly relaxed spot in an Outer Sunset garage.

Here’s two stand-outs in a wave of openings that exemplify the gourmet fun of casual Korean snacking, both an ideal locales for cheap beers with good friends.

ARIA KOREAN AMERICAN SNACK BAR

The Kim family has taken over what was once the Old Chelsea Fish and Chips space in the Tenderloin. Aria Korean American Snack Bar is a closet-sized eatery — still appropriately dingy for its bustling block, but the Kims have infused it with fresh life, greeting visitors with a smile and a record player stocked with Tom Jones and Sinatra LPs. Mom and Pop Kim run the place, though their son and his girlfriend have come up from LA to help them get going.

The family has a hit on its hands with the Korean fried chicken (nine pieces for $6.99-7.99, 16 pieces for $12.99-13.99). It feels like everyone is doing KFC these days, but these boneless, overgrown nuggets are special: crispy-tender and fried in cottonseed oil, with zero trans fat. Dip them into earthy-sweet spicy sauce and an addiction will be born. Mama’s acidic sweet-and-sour radishes are just the right accompaniment to clean the palate and perk up the taste buds.

There’s also an array of fried snacks from mixed veggies (carrots, sweet potato, zucchini, onion) to seaweed rolls packed with potato and glass noodles (eight pieces for $5.99). Hot and spicy rice cakes ($5.99) are another of mom’s recipes. They arrive blessedly chewy, sitting in — what else? — a spicy red sauce. The Kim family good cheer and authentic fried bites make this the kind of snack bar every neighborhood should be so lucky to have.

932 Larkin, SF. (415) 292-6914

FUSEBOX

Tucked away in a sunny courtyard off desolate West Oakland streets sits FuseBOX, a truly exciting haven for Asian fusion. Those looking to categorize its food could satisfy themselves by calling it Korean food served Japanese izakaya style, but the FuseBOX mashup goes above and beyond this simplification.

In the three months it’s been open, this cash-only respite created by Sunhui and Ellen Sebastian Chang offers daily robata specials ($1–$3). Granted, these are merely bites, but there’s real joy in sampling this range of grilled vegetables and meat.

From the spare, industrial interior sparsely dotted with tables to rice purified with binchotan, or Japanese white charcoal ($2), it’s clear this no typical Asian eatery. There is — of course! — KFC ($5), although here it is lightly fried, yielding spicy chicken more akin to buffalo wings than the aforementioned boneless chicken at Aria. Bento box-like “BAP sets” ($6-10) offer meat or veggies alongside rice and banchan or panchan (mini-dishes that often accompany Korean meals that could account for the name of these plates on the menu), which rotate daily. Spinach roots and French breakfast radish crowns are brined in mustard and nori, and sesame leaves are pickled in soy, white zucchini or green mango in vinegar. Kimchi comes in multiple forms, including versions made with bok choy and kale.

Robata specials are grilled on wood skewers. There’s okra and snap peas and tender chicken “oyster” cuts. The best bite of all? Bacon mochi ($2.50). The mochi is sticky, subtly savory, and gummy, satisfying on its own merit — until you reach the bacon and accompanying mustard seeds. I’d eat this fantastic bite for breakfast, dessert — basically any way at all. For bigger appetites, there’s sandwiches ($8) like a Tokyo po’ boy laden with fried chicken, red cabbage slaw, house mayo, and pickles.

To drink there’s a bracing, cool roasted corn tea ($1), chilled and nearly creamy with fresh corn flavor. Other drink options include Tang (yes, Tang!), house barrel-aged soju, and glasses from the neighbors, like Alameda’s Rock Wall Wines and beer on tap from Oakland’s Linden Street Brewery. FuseBOX is only open Wednesday through Friday, 11:30am—2:30pm, but promises that its dinner menu will soon be operational. As its hours expand, I’ve no doubt it will become even more crowded than its three-day-a-week lunches already are. There’s no place like it.

2311A Magnolia, Oakl. (510) 444-3100, www.fuseboxoakland.com

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com

 

Fangs, but no fangs

Andrew Lam
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Fangs, but no fangs

arts@sfbg.com

FILM The whole “lesbian vampire” thing may seem a very 20th-century, pop entertainment trope, as it blends sex and violence in one neatly exploitative package offering voyeuristic maximum appeal to straight men, long perceived as the primary audience for both horror and erotica. (In recent years, however, that assumption has begun to seem outdated.) But in fact Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Gothic novella Carmilla was published in 1872, a quarter-century before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, thus placing lesbian vampires well ahead of heterosexual ones in literary history. If that order was reversed in movie history, well — you can’t expect much girl-on-girl action to have surfaced before censorship standards began crumbling in the 1960s.

That decade began and ended with two major Carmilla adaptations: French horndog Roger Vadim’s 1960 Blood and Roses (originally titled And To Die of Pleasure) and the English Hammer studio’s 1970 heaving-bodice marathon The Vampire Lovers. Since then, lesbian vampires on screen have become ubiquitous.

They’ve usually been distinctly designed with the “male gaze” in mind, however, appealing to that guy-spot which (to quote the inimitable Axl Rose) would “rather see two women together than just about anything else.” Inevitably, though, someone was going to reclaim the concept for the younger female audience that has made the Twilight books and movies huge.

Ergo we now have The Moth Diaries, Rachel Klein’s 2002 novel turned into Mary Harron’s film. Why it’s an Irish-Canadian production that’s landed on our local SF Film Society Cinema screen for a week rather than a Hollywood extravaganza playing a bazillion multiplexes is a matter for further study. It’s certainly the director’s most mainstream-friendly effort, being less edgy and grown-up than American Psycho (2000), I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), or even The Notorious Bettie Page (2005).

It’s the start of a new academic year at an upscale girls’ boarding school. Despite the strictness of their overseers, the girls manage to be ordinary, fun-loving teens. Becca (Sarah Bolger from The Tudors) is particularly happy to be reunited with best friend and roommate Lucie (Sarah Gadon), as the former is still psychologically fragile in the wake of her well-known poet father’s suicide. But a wedge is driven between them by the arrival of Ernessa (Lily Cole), a tall, English-accented student with a face like a creepy porcelain doll. She “colonizes” Lucie, who at first guiltily hides her infatuation from Becca, then (along with everyone else) accuses her of simple jealousy.

But Becca notices things others don’t, or dismiss: how Ernessa never seems to eat, how she can’t abide water, the sickly sweet smell emanating from her room and her odd disappearances into the luxury-hotel-turned-school’s off limits basement. One ally gets expelled; another, after witnessing Ernessa doing something logically inexplicable, meets a more brutal fate. Meanwhile, Lucie (the same name as Dracula’s preliminary victim in Bram Stoker’s novel) grows seriously ill. Turning to a sympathetic (as well as hot) new literature teacher for help, Becca instead gets inappropriate overtures from Mr. Davies (Scott Speedman).

Klein’s book, which had our heroine looking back on this episode from middle age, insisted on ambiguity: we’re never sure whether Ernessa really is a supernatural predator, or if all this is just a hysterical fantasy Becca devises to process (or evade) her profound grief over losing a parent. Adapted by Harron as scenarist, the movie eliminates that frame and leaves little room for doubt that there be vampires here.

But the film’s weakness is that it still tries to play it both ways, as troubled coming-of-age portrait and Gothic horror, with the result that the two elements end up seeming equally half-realized. Despite an inevitably somewhat glamorized surface, a certain attention is paid to real-world adolescent detail, like the presence of casual recreational drug use or the disappointment voiced by one student whose eagerly awaited deflowering turns out neither good or bad, but just an indifferent experience. There’s also a knowing wink at the usual adult dismissal of teenage ideas when Mr. Davies condescendingly shrugs off Becca’s fears: “Cooped up here you girls can get so close, all that emotion can turn toxic.” The movie is handsome enough, with a color palette that aptly grows darker and more untrustworthy as things progress.

Cole is well-cast for her eeriness, while Bolger gives an intelligent performance even if the film ought to be channeling her character’s growing instability more vividly — as Harron managed very well for Valerie Solanis and Patrick Bateman.

There’s little suspense here, however, and the fantastical elements are seldom staged with any inspiration. You get the feeling that this highly talented director ultimately couldn’t find anything all that interesting in her young-adult-fiction material, but still hoped for a Twilight-style hit that might make more personal future projects easier to fund. (Even after Kathryn Bigelow’s 2010 Hurt Locker Oscar, it still seems like the road is always uphill for women directors.) Instead she wound up with a polished but forgettable genre piece that’s probably the mildest entry in the annals of lesbian (or at least Sapphically-tinged) vampire cinema yet.

 

THE MOTH DIARIES opens Fri/10 at SF Film Society Cinema.

Our Weekly Picks: August 8-14

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 8

Beats for Lunch

Tired of eating lunch at your cubicle, under harsh fluorescent lighting? Monarch feels your pain, and wants to do something about it. Launched last month as RECESS, Beats for Lunch is the second installment of the club’s rather experimental stab at an afternoon, workday dance party. Featuring several Motown DJs from MOM SF, the party crew that’s had our fair city shaking it on a weekly basis since 2009, this is exactly the kind of all-inclusive dance-a-thon we could use more of. With free cover (and free sandwiches!) to boot, checking out this month’s Beats for Lunch should be a no-brainer. It doesn’t matter what you wear, just as long as you are there. (Taylor Kaplan)

Noon-2pm, free

Monarch

101 Sixth St., SF

(415) 284-9774

www.monarchsf.com

 

Fox & Woman

A group of poets in the Mission District of San Francisco formed the band Fox & Woman over a year ago, with a goal to “stretch and tear at the shortcomings in pop music.” In turn, they offer a refreshing mix of the rambunctious and the beautiful. Along with riveting lyrical and vocal power, the band treats listeners to violin, mandolin, cello, and ukelele, creating lush orchestration. Check out “Break Into My Heart” off its six-song EP (streaming on the band’s website) and peep the rest of the album while you’re at it; nod your head to passionate anthems, stomp your feet to every tight rhythm. Let the slower ballads created by this five-piece woo you, and then be prepared to jump right back into the dance groove. (Shauna C. Keddy)

With the Thoughts, Split Screens

9pm, $10

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

 

Redd Kross

When brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald first formed the band that would become Redd Kross in the late 1970s, they were just 11 and 15 years old — and famously played their first gig opening for Black Flag. Returning with their first new album in 15 years, the excellent Researching The Blues, which dropped this week, the group continues to twist infectious melodies and pop sensibilities into short, stunning bursts of rock’n’roll. Some acts would struggle to regain that explosive chemistry after such a long break, but Redd Kross picked up right where it left off. (Sean McCourt)

With the Mantles, Warm Soda

8pm, $20

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com


THURSDAY 9

The Big Eat

Why Leo Beckerman and Evan Bloom would reveal the secrets to their divine pastrami is beyond me. The Wise Sons Delicatessen founders and local meat men-of-the-moment are among the mavens congregating at The Big Eat to discuss the nexus between cuisine and creativity. Each expert has a story to tell — distiller Arne Hillesland, a.k.a The Ginerator, created a kosher-for-Passover gin in 40 days. Artist Deborah Lozier fixed Norwegian wood to vintage silverware in a series of pieces that blend nature and civilization. SFMOMA pastry chef Leah Rosenberg uses ongoing exhibitions as inspirations for her stylized cakes, while Bryon Waibel harvests honey in the Mission, laying legitimate claim to being the world’s first urban beekeeper.

(Kevin Lee)

6:30-8:30pm; $10 general, free for museum members Contemporary Jewish Museum 736 Mission, SF (415) 655-7800 www.thecjm.org

 

Young Moon

Sure, Phil Spector and My Bloody Valentine are great, but we’ve officially reached a saturation point with this whole wall-of-sound thing. Too many imitators using viscous layers of reverb to conceal lazy songwriting, ill-conceived lyrics, and half-baked hooks. However, Young Moon stands out as an exception. Recalling Deerhunter’s balance between the robust and the ethereal, this project of local multitracker Trent Montgomery pays tribute to the goopy production of Pet Sounds, while churning out the bona-fide hooks to back it up. A release party for his debut album, Navigated Like the Swans, Montgomery’s set this Thursday might well be the beginning of something. (Kaplan)

With Danny Paul Grody, Vestals 9pm, $6 Hemlock 1131 Polk, SF (415) 923-0923 www.hemlocktavern.com

 

YG

Though his name stands for Young Gangsta, this Compton-based rapper abandoned his gang-affiliated lifestyle when he got signed to Def Jams at just 19 years old. Now 22, YG has produced some of the best guilty-pleasure tracks in recent hip-hop history, including 2010’s “Toot it and Boot it” and this year’s charmingly titled “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” both of which cracked Billboard’s Hot 100. 2012 has also seen YG’s acting debut alongside Snoop Dogg in the hip-hop teen flick We the Party. Though the rapper is yet to release his debut album, he’s been keeping himself busy with side projects and collaborations. YG’s hyper-sexual and hook-laden mix tapes have kept a hold on the industry’s attention. (Haley Zaremba)

8:30pm, $18

New Parish

579 18th, Oakl.

(510) 444-7474

www.thenewparish.com


FRIDAY 10

 

Christeene

After six video singles — starting with attention-grabber “Fix My Dick” (all directed and produced by PJ Raval) — insatiable, downright nasty, slyly loveable CHRISTEENE is unleashing a full album. The release party for the Austin-based sensation and self-described “drag terrorist” (alter ego of actor Paul Soileau) headlines the first installment of Church, a new nightlife event by co-presenters Peaches Christ, Bearracuda, and DJ Carnita. Sure, the back-alley beauty looks like a thorough mess with stringy black hair framing a wild-eyed pan whose rubbed out lipstick makes a skanky halo around her gold-flecked smile, but her rhymes (delivered over salacious hip-hip, R&B, and techno beats) and balls-out floor show got more business than Mitt. (Robert Avila)

With Peaches Christ, Bearracuda, DJ Carnita

9pm, $20

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

www.peacheschrist.com


SATURDAY 11

James and the Giant Peach

Though 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas gets more cult love (and 2009’s Neil Gaiman-inspired Coraline snagged an Oscar nom; we won’t speak of 2001’s Monkeybone), James and the Giant Peach, director Henry Selick’s 1996 take on the beloved Roald Dahl tale, is well worth revisiting. Especially this week, when the Tim Burton-produced film — rendered in an exquisite mix of stop-motion animation and live action — screens at the SF Film Society Cinema alongside a presentation by artists who contributed to the San Francisco-made project. Puppets and props from the film will be in attendance (Miss Spider FTW!), and superfans take note: these artists are also working with Selick on his next film, another spooky Gaiman adaptation. (Cheryl Eddy)

11am, $8

SF Film Society Cinema

1746 Post, SF

sffs.org/cinema

 

Tornado Wallace

Melbourne-based producer Lewie Day lives a double life. By day, he produces house music for electronic labels like Murmur and 8bit. By night, he’s one of the biggest DJs in Australia’s electronic scene. As a teenager, he threw himself into the DJ scene as a favor to a friend who needed a spot filled. Today, Tornado Wallace is extremely prolific, churning out original disco-tinged tracks and remixes at lightning speed. His quantity plus quality approach has garnered the attention of many of the house scene’s major players, and Resident Advisor recently featured him on their highly esteemed podcast — and named him as an artist to watch out for. This summer marks Tornado Wallace’s first-ever US tour. (Zaremba)

With Bells & Whistles, Habitat SF

9:30pm, $12

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com


SUNDAY 12

Al Jarreau, George Duke Trio

One of the most versatile, expressive vocalists of the last 50 years, Al Jarreau jumps restlessly between soul, jazz, pop, and samba traditions, refusing to let any genre tags define him. George Duke is an undisputed keyboard champion, whose ’70s jazz-fusion recordings have permeated modern hip-hop and neo-soul to an astonishing degree. These two legends will share the beautiful Stern Grove stage, collaborating on a range of jazz tunes, in an afternoon of (free!) music, not to be missed. Bring a beach towel and a six-pack, and cross your fingers for some Keytar action from Mr. Duke, himself. (Kaplan)

With Mara Hruby 2pm, free

Stern Grove

19th Ave. and Sloat, SF

(415) 252-6252

www.sterngrove.org


MONDAY 13

“Incredibly Strange Television!”

Sure, your nightly channel-surf turns up some intense weirdness: Extreme Couponing, Cajun Pawn Stars, Bikini Barbershop. But make no mistake — TVs were beaming uber-bizarreness into living rooms long before reality programming took over. The one and only Johnny Legend invades the Roxie for three nights of brain-blowing transmissions, presented under the banner “Incredibly Strange Television!” First up is tonight’s two-part ode to comedy (featuring premiere eps, forgotten pilots, and more, with glimpses of greats like Jackie Gleason, George Burns, Don Knotts, and a young Betty White). Tomorrow, it’s the world premiere of “Johnny Legend’s TV in Acidland,” a live-TV extravaganza spanning decades; Wednesday’s “Shock and Noir!” promises “strange and demented” prime-time snippets from the 1950s and 60s. (Eddy)

Aug. 13-15, 6:15, 8, and 9:45pm, $11

Roxie Cinema

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com


TUESDAY 14

Red Hot Chili Peppers

“Let me tell you about the Chili Peppers,” intoned comedian Chris Rock in April. “If Brian Wilson and George Clinton had a kid, he’d be as ugly as fuck, but he would sound like the Chili Peppers.” Rock helped induct the Chilis into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, three decades after four high school friends began jamming together in Los Angeles. Through the drugs and death of founding member Hillel Slovak, through eight Grammy Awards and 85 million records sold, the Chili Peppers have endured with their funk-punk sound. Even now, with lead singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea pushing 50, the Chili Peppers remain one of the most dynamic live shows in rock. Darling Swedish electronic group Little Dragon open. (Lee)

With Little Dragon

8pm, $39.50–$59.50

Oracle Arena

7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl.

(510) 569-2121

 www.coliseum.com

 

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Film Listings

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

OPENING

The Bourne Legacy Jeremy Renner steps into Matt Damon’s super-spy shoes to play a Jason Bourne-esque international man of ass-kicking mystery. (2:15) Balboa. Presidio.

The Campaign A smug incumbent (Will Ferrell) and a naïve newcomer (Zach Galifianakis) battle over a North Carolina congressional seat. (1:25) Presidio, California, Vogue.

Celeste and Jesse Forever Indie dramedy about a couple (Andy Samberg and co-writer Rashida Jones) who try to stay friends despite their impending divorce. (1:31) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki.

Easy Money A title like that is bound to disprove itself, and it doesn’t take long to figure out that the only payday the lead characters are going to get in this hit 2010 Swedish thriller (from Jens Lapidus’ novel) is the kind measured in bloody catastrophe. Chilean Jorge (Matias Padin Varela), just escaped from prison, returns to Stockholm seeking one last big drug deal before he splits for good; JW (Joel Kinnaman from AMC series The Killing) is a economics student-slash-cabbie desperate for the serious cash needed to support his double life as a pseudo-swell running with the city’s rich young turks. At first reluctantly thrown together, they become friends working for JW’s taxi boss — or to be more specific, for that boss’ cocaine smuggling side business. Their competitors are a Serbian gang whose veteran enforcer Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic) is put in the awkward position of caring for his eight-year-old daughter (by a drug addicted ex-wife) just as “war” heats up between the two factions. But then everyone here has loved ones they want to protect from an escalating cycle of attacks and reprisals from which none are immune. Duly presented here by Martin Scorsese, Daniel Espinosa’s film has the hurtling pace, engrossing characters and complicated (sometimes confusing) plot mechanics of some good movies by that guy, like Casino (1995) or The Departed (2006). Wildly original it’s not, but this crackling good genre entertainment that make you cautiously look forward to its sequel — which is just about to open in Sweden. (1:59) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Hope Springs A married couple (Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones) turn to a counselor (Steve Carell) to help salvage their relationship. (1:40) Four Star, Marina, Piedmont, Shattuck.

Moth Diaries See “Fangs, But No Fangs.” (1:22) SF Film Society Cinema.

Nitro Circus the Movie 3D The daredevil “action sports collective” hits the big screen with ridiculous stunts aimed at delighting Jackass and X Games fans. (1:28)

Nuit #1 Montreal director-writer Anne Émond bares more than her actor’s beautiful bodies: she’s eager to uncover their tenderized souls: hurt, unsavory, vulnerable, terrified, nihilistic, compulsive, and desperate. Nikolai (Dimitri Stroroge) and Clara (Catherine de Lean) are just two kids on the crowded dance floor, jumping up and down in slow motion to the tune of a torch song; before long, they’re in Nikolai’s shabby apartment, tearing off their clothes and making love as if their lives depended on it. But when Nikolai, laid out on his mattress on the floor like a grunge Jesus with a bad haircut, catches Clara sneaking out without saying good-bye, he sits her down for an earful of his reality. She returns the favor, revealing an unexpected double life, and the two embark on a psycho-tango that takes all night. It can seem like a long one to those impatient with the young, beautiful, and possibly damned’s doubts and self-flagellation, though Émond’s artful, coolly empathetic eye takes the proceedings to a higher level. She’s attempting to craft a simultaneously romantic and raw-boned song of self for a generation. (1:31) Elmwood, Lumiere. (Chun)

360 A massive ensemble sprinkled with big-name stars, a sprawling yet interconnected story, and locations as far-flung as Phoenix and Bratislava: 360 is not achieving anything new with its structure (see also: 2011’s Contagion, 2006’s Babel, and so on). And some pieces of its sectioned-off narrative are less successful than others, as with the exploits of a posh, unfaithful duo played by Rachel Weisz (re-teaming with her Constant Gardener director Fernando Meirelles) and Jude Law. Fortunately, screenwriter Peter Morgan (2006’s The Queen) finds some drama (and a lot of melancholy) in less-familiar relationship scenarios. An airport interlude that interweaves a grieving father (Anthony Hopkins), a newly single Brazilian (Maria Flor), and a maybe-rehabilitated sex offender (Ben Foster) is riveting, as are the unexpectedly sweet and sour endpoints of tales spiraling off a Russian couple (Dinara Drukarova, Vladimir Vdovichenkov) who’ve drifted apart. (1:51) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Unforgiveable See “When in Venice.” (1:52) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

ONGOING

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry Unstoppable force meets immovable object — and indeed gets stopped — in Alison Klayman’s documentary about China’s most famous contemporary artist. A larger than life figure, Ai Weiwei’s bohemian rebel persona was honed during a long (1981-93) stint in the U.S., where he fit right into Manhattan’s avant-garde and gallery scenes. Returning to China when his father’s health went south, he continued to push the envelope with projects in various media, including architecture — he’s best known today for the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ “Bird’s Nest” stadium design. But despite the official approval implicit in such high-profile gigs, his incessant, obdurate criticism of China’s political repressive politics and censorship — a massive installation exposing the government-suppressed names of children killed by collapsing, poorly-built schools during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake being one prominent example — has tread dangerous ground. This scattershot but nonetheless absorbing portrait stretches its view to encompass the point at which the subject’s luck ran out: when the film was already in post-production, he was arrested, then held for two months without official charge before he was accused of alleged tax evasion. (He is now free, albeit barred from leaving China, and “suspected” of additional crimes including pornography and bigamy.) (1:31) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Amazing Spider-Man A mere five years after Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 3 — forgettable on its own, sure, but 2002’s Spider-Man and especially 2004’s Spider-Man 2 still hold up — Marvel’s angsty web-slinger returns to the big screen, hoping to make its box-office mark before The Dark Knight Rises opens in a few weeks. Director Marc Webb (2009’s 500 Days of Summer) and likable stars Andrew Garfield (as the skateboard-toting hero) and Emma Stone (as his high-school squeeze) offer a competent reboot, but there’s no shaking the feeling that we’ve seen this movie before, with its familiar origin story and with-great-power themes. A little creativity, and I don’t mean in the special effects department, might’ve gone a long way to make moviegoers forget this Spidey do-over is, essentially, little more than a soulless cash grab. Not helping matters: the villain (Rhys Ifans as the Lizard) is a snooze. (2:18) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

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

Bernie Jack Black plays the titular new assistant funeral director liked by everybody in small-town Carthage, Tex. He works especially hard to ingratiate himself with shrewish local widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), but there are benefits — estranged from her own family, she not only accepts him as a friend (then companion, then servant, then as virtual “property”), but makes him her sole heir. Richard Linklater’s latest is based on a true-crime story, although in execution it’s as much a cheerful social satire as I Love You Philip Morris and The Informant! (both 2009), two other recent fact-based movies about likable felons. Black gets to sing (his character being a musical theater queen, among other things), while Linklater gets to affectionately mock a very different stratum of Lone Star State culture from the one he started out with in 1991’s Slacker. There’s a rich gallery of supporting characters, most played by little-known local actors or actual townspeople, with Matthew McConaughey’s vainglorious county prosecutor one delectable exception. Bernie is its director’s best in some time, not to mention a whole lot of fun. (1:39) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Bill W. Even longtime AA members are unlikely to know half the organizational history revealed in this straightforward, chronological, fast-moving portrait of its late founder. Bill Wilson was a bright, personable aspiring businessman whose career was nonetheless perpetually upset by addiction to the alcohol that eased his social awkwardness but brought its own worse troubles. During one mid-1930s sanitarium visit, attempting to dry out, he experienced a spiritual awakening. From that moment slowly grew the idea of Alcoholics Anonymous, which he shaped with the help of several other recovering drunks, and saw become a national movement after a 1941 Saturday Evening Post article introduced it to the general public. Wilson had always hoped the “leaderless” organization would soon find its own feet and leave him to build a separate, sober new career. But gaining that distance was difficult; attempts to find other “cures” for his recurrent depression (including LSD therapy) laid him open to internal AA criticism; and he was never comfortable on the pedestal that grateful members insisted he stay on as the organization’s founder. Admittedly, he appointed himself its primary public spokesman, which rendered his own hopes for privacy somewhat self-canceling — though fortunately it also provides this documentary with plenty of extant lecture and interview material. He was a complicated man whose complicated life often butted against the role of savior, despite his endless dedication and generosity toward others in need. That thread of conflict makes for a movie that’s compelling beyond the light it sheds on an institution as impactful on individual lives and society as any other to emerge from 20th-century America. (1:43) Roxie. (Harvey)

Brave Pixar’s latest is a surprisingly familiar fairy tale. Scottish princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) would rather ride her horse and shoot arrows than become engaged, but it’s Aladdin-style law that she must marry the eldest son of one of three local clans. (Each boy is so exaggeratedly unappealing that her reluctance seems less tomboy rebellion than common sense.) Her mother (Emma Thompson) is displeased; when they quarrel, Merida decides to change her fate (Little Mermaid-style) by visiting the local spell-caster (a gentle, absent-minded soul that Ursula the Sea Witch would eat for brunch). Naturally, the spell goes awry, but only the youngest of movie viewers will fear that Merida and her mother won’t be able to make things right by the end. Girl power is great, but so are suspense and originality. How, exactly, is Brave different than a zillion other Disney movies about spunky princesses? Well, Merida’s fiery explosion of red curls, so detailed it must have had its own full-time team of animators working on it, is pretty fantastic. (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Dark Horse You can look at filmmaker Todd Solondz’s work and find it brilliant, savage, and challenging; or show-offy, contrived, and fraudulent. The circles of interpersonal (especially familial) hell he describes are simultaneously brutal, banal, and baroque. But what probably distresses people most is that they’re also funny — raising the issue of whether he trivializes trauma for the sake of cheap shock-value yuks, or if black comedy is just another valid way of facing the unbearable. Dark Horse is disturbing because it’s such a slight, inconsequential, even soft movie by his standards; this time, the sharp edges seem glibly cynical, and the sum ordinary enough to no longer seem unmistakably his. Abe (Jordan Gelber) is an obnoxious jerk of about 35 who still lives with his parents (Mia Farrow, Christopher Walken) and works at dad’s office, likely because no one else would employ him. But Abe doesn’t exactly see himself as a loser. He resents and blames others for being winners, which is different — he sees the inequality as their fault. Dark Horse is less of an ensemble piece than most of Solondz’s films, and in hinging on Abe, it diminishes his usual ambivalence toward flawed humanity. Abe has no redemptive qualities — he’s just an annoyance, one whose mental health issues aren’t clarified enough to induce sympathy. (1:25) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Dark Knight Rises Early reviews that called out The Dark Knight Rises‘ flaws were greeted with the kind of vicious rage that only anonymous internet commentators can dish out. And maybe this is yet another critic-proof movie, albeit not one based on a best-selling YA book series. Of course, it is based on a comic book, though Christopher Nolan’s sophisticated filmmaking and Christian Bale’s tortured lead performance tend to make that easy to forget. In this third and “final” installment in Nolan’s trilogy, Bruce Wayne has gone into seclusion, skulking around his mansion and bemoaning his broken body and shattered reputation. He’s lured back into the Batcave after a series of unfortunate events, during which The Dark Knight Rises takes some jabs at contemporary class warfare (with problematic mixed results), introduces a villain with pecs of steel and an at-times distractingly muffled voice (Tom Hardy), and unveils a potentially dangerous device that produces sustainable energy (paging Tony Stark). Make no mistake: this is an exciting, appropriately moody conclusion to a superior superhero series, with some nice turns by supporting players Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in trying to cram in so many characters and plot threads and themes (so many prisons in this thing, literal and figural), The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately done in by its sprawl. Without a focal point — like Heath Ledger’s menacing, iconic Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight — the stakes aren’t as high, and the end result feels more like a superior summer blockbuster than one for the ages. (2:44) Balboa, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Devil, Probably This seldom-revived 1977 feature from late French master Robert Bresson was his penultimate as well as most explicitly political work. Newspaper clips at the start betray where these 95 minutes will be heading: they introduce Parisian Charles (Antoine Monnier) as a casualty, a suicide at age 20. The reasons for that act are probed in the succeeding flashback, as we observe his last days drifting between friends and lovers, quitting student activist groups, and generally expressing his disillusionment with everything from politics to religion to human interaction. Then 70, Bresson expresses his own disenchantment in solidarity with the youthful characters by including documentary shots of pollution, clubbed baby seals, A-bomb explosions, and other dire signs of “an Earth that is ever more populated and ever less habitable.” That essential message makes The Devil, Probably more relevant than ever, but unfortunately it’s also one of the filmmaker’s driest, most didactic exercises. There are a few odd, almost farcical moments (as when the constant pondering of man’s fate extends to a spontaneous philosophical debate between passengers on a public bus), but the characters are too obviously mouthpieces with no inner lives of their own. In particular, Charles remains an unengaging blank in Monnier’s performance, which is all too faithful to the director’s usual call for “automatic,” uninflected line readings from his nonprofessional cast. Nothing Bresson did is without interest, but here his detached technique drains nearly all emotional impact from a film ostensibly about profound despair. (1:35) SF Film Society Cinema. (Harvey)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio.

Farewell, My Queen (Benoît Jacquot, France, 2012) Opening early on the morning of July 14, 1789, Farewell, My Queen depicts four days at the Palace of Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution, as witnessed by a young woman named Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) who serves as reader to Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). Sidonie displays a singular and romantic devotion to the queen, while the latter’s loyalties are split between a heedless amour propre and her grand passion for the Duchess de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen). These domestic matters and other regal whims loom large in the tiny galaxy of the queen’s retinue, so that while elsewhere in the palace, in shadowy, candle-lit corridors, courtiers and their servants mingle to exchange news, rumor, panicky theories, and evacuation plans, in the queen’s quarters the task of embroidering a dahlia for a projected gown at times overshadows the storming of the Bastille and the much larger catastrophe on the horizon. (1:39) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Rapoport)

Girlfriend Boyfriend The onscreen title of this Taiwanese import is Gf*Bf, but don’t let the text-speak fool you: the bulk of the film is set in the 1980s and 90s, long before smart phones were around to complicate relationships. And the trio at the heart of Girlfriend Boyfriend is complicated enough as it is: sassy Mabel (Gwei Lun-Mei) openly pines for brooding Liam (Joseph Chang), who secretly pines for rebellious Aaron (Rhydian Vaughan), who chases Mabel until she gives in; as things often go in stories like this, nobody gets the happy ending they desire. Set against the backdrop of Taiwan’s student movement, this vibrant drama believably tracks its leads as they mature from impulsive youths to bitter adults who never let go of their deep bond — despite all the misery it causes, and a last-act turn into melodrama that’s hinted at by the film’s frame story featuring an older Liam and a pair of, um, sassy and rebellious twin girls he’s been raising as his own. (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

Ice Age: Continental Drift (1:27) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Imposter A family tragedy, an international thriller, a Southern-fried mystery, and a true story: The Imposter is all of these things. This unique documentary reveals the tale of Frédéric Bourdin, dubbed “the Chameleon” for his epic false-identity habit. His ballsiest accomplishment was also his most heinous con: in 1997, he claimed to be Nicholas Barclay, a San Antonio teen missing since 1994. Amazingly, the impersonation worked for a time, though Bourdin (early 20s, brown-eyed, speaks English with a French accent) hardly resembled Nicholas (who would have been 16, and had blue eyes). Using interviews — with Nicholas’ shell-shocked family, government types who unwittingly aided the charade, and Bourdin himself — and ingenious re-enactments that borrow more from crime dramas than America’s Most Wanted, director Bart Layton weaves a multi-layered chronicle of one man’s unbelievable deception. (1:39) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Eddy)

The Intouchables Cries of “racism” seem a bit out of hand when it comes to this likable albeit far-from-challenging French comedy loosely based on a real-life relationship between a wealthy white quadriplegic and his caretaker of color. The term “cliché” is more accurate. And where were these critics when 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy and 2011’s The Help — movies that seem designed to make nostalgic honkies feel good about those fraught relationships skewed to their advantage—were coming down the pike? (It also might be more interesting to look at how these films about race always hinge on economies in which whites must pay blacks to interact with/educate/enlighten them.) In any case, Omar Sy, portraying Senegalese immigrant Driss, threatens to upset all those pundits’ apple carts with his sheer life force, even when he’s shaking solo on the dance floor to sounds as effortlessly unprovocative, and old-school, as Earth, Wind, and Fire. In fact, everything about The Intouchables is as old school as 1982’s 48 Hrs., spinning off the still laugh-grabbing humor that comes with juxtaposing a hipper, more streetwise black guy with a hapless, moneyed chalky. The wheelchair-bound Philippe (Francois Cluzet) is more vulnerable than most, and he has a hard time getting along with any of his nurses, until he meets Driss, who only wants his signature for his social services papers. It’s not long before the cultured, classical music-loving Philippe’s defenses are broken down by Driss’ flip, somewhat honest take on the follies and pretensions of high culture — a bigger deal in France than in the new world, no doubt. Director-writer Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano aren’t trying to innovate —they seem more set on crafting an effervescent blockbuster that out-blockbusters Hollywood — and the biggest compliment might be that the stateside remake is already rumored to be in the works. (1:52) Clay. (Chun)

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

Killer Joe William Friedkin made two enormously popular movies that have defined his career (1971’s The French Connection and 1973’s The Exorcist), but his resumé also contains an array of lesser films that are both hit-and-miss in critical and popular appeal. Most have their defenders. After a couple biggish action movies, it seemed a step down for him to be doing Bug in 2006; though it had its limits as a psychological quasi-horror, you could feel the cracking recognition of like minds between cast, director, and playwright Tracy Letts. Letts and Friedkin are back in Killer Joe, which was a significant off-Broadway success in 1998. In the short, violent, and bracing film version, Friedkin gets the ghoulish jet-black-comedic tone just right, and his actors let themselves get pushed way out on a limb to their great benefit — including Matthew McConaughey, playing the title character, who’s hired by the Smith clan of Texas to bump off a troublesome family member. Needless to say, almost nothing goes as planned, escalating mayhem to new heights of trailer-trash Grand Guignol. Things get fugly to the point where Killer Joe becomes one of those movies whose various abuses are shocking enough to court charges of gratuitous violence and misogyny; unlike the 2010 Killer Inside Me, for instance, it can’t really be justified as a commentary upon those very entertainment staples. (Letts is highly skilled, but those looking for a message here will have to think one up for themselves.) Still, Friedkin and his cast do such good work that Killer Joe‘s grimly humorous satisfaction in its worst possible scenarios seems quite enough. (1:43) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Klown A spinoff from a long-running Danish TV show, with the same director (Mikkel Nørgaard) and co-writer/stars, this bad-taste comedy might duly prove hard to beat as “the funniest movie of the year” (a claim its advertising already boasts). Socially hapless Frank (Frank Hvam) discovers his live-in girlfriend Mia (Mia Lyhne) is pregnant, but she quite reasonably worries “you don’t have enough potential as a father.” To prove otherwise, he basically kidnaps 12-year-old nephew Bo (Marcuz Jess Petersen) and drags him along on a canoe trip with best friend Casper (Casper Christensen). Trouble is, Casper has already proclaimed this trip will be a “Tour de Pussy,” in which they — or at least he — will seize any and every opportunity to cheat on their unknowing spouses. Ergo, there’s an almost immediate clash between awkward attempts at quasi-parental bonding and activities most unsuited for juvenile eyes. Accusations of rape and pedophilia, some bad advice involving “pearl necklaces,” an upscale one-night-only bordello, reckless child endangerment, encouragement of teenage drinking, the consequences of tactical “man flirting,” and much more ensue. Make no mistake, Klown one-ups the Judd Apatow school of raunch (at least for the moment), but it’s good-natured enough to avoid any aura of crass Adam Sandler-type bottom-feeding. It’s also frequently, blissfully, very, very funny. (1:28) Roxie. (Harvey)

Magic Mike Director Steven Soderbergh pays homage to the 1970s with the opening shot of his male stripper opus: the boxy old Warner Bros. logo, which evokes the gritty, sexualized days of Burt Reynolds and Joe Namath posing in pantyhose. Was that really the last time women, en masse, were welcome to ogle to their heart’s content? That might be the case considering the outburst of applause when a nude Channing Tatum rises after a hard night in a threesome in Magic Mike‘s first five minutes. Ever the savvy film historian, Soderbergh toys with the conventions of the era, from the grimy quasi-redneck realism of vintage Reynolds movies to the hidebound framework of the period’s gay porn, almost for his own amusement, though the viewer might be initially confused about exactly what year they’re in. Veteran star stripper Mike (Tatum) is working construction, stripping to the approval of many raucous ladies and their stuffable dollar bills. He decides to take college-dropout blank-slate hottie Adam (Alex Pettyfer) under his wing and ropes him into the strip club, owned by Dallas (Matthew McConaughey, whose formidable abs look waxily preserved) and show him the ropes of stripping and having a good time, much to the disapproval of Adam’s more straight-laced sister Brooke (Cody Horn). Really, though, all Mike wants to do is become a furniture designer. Boasting Foreigner’s “Feels like the First Time” as its theme of sorts and spot-on, hot choreography by Alison Faulk (who’s worked with Madonna and Britney Spears), Magic Mike takes off and can’t help but please the crowd when it turns to the stage. Unfortunately the chemistry-free budding romance between Mike and Brooke sucks the air out of the proceedings every time it comes into view, which is way too often. (1:50) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) California, Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Michelle Devereaux)

Prometheus Ridley Scott’s return to outer space — after an extended stay in Russell Crowe-landia — is most welcome. Some may complain Prometheus too closely resembles Scott’s Alien (1979), for which it serves as a prequel of sorts. Prometheus also resembles, among others, The Thing (1982), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Event Horizon (1997). But I love those movies (yes, even Event Horizon), and I am totally fine with the guy who made Alien borrowing from all of them and making the classiest, most gorgeous sci-fi B-movie in years. Sure, some of the science is wonky, and the themes of faith and creation can get a bit woo-woo, but Prometheus is deep-space discombobulation at its finest, with only a miscast Logan Marshall-Green (apparently, cocky dude-bros are still in effect at the turn of the next millennium) marring an otherwise killer cast: Noomi Rapace as a dreamy (yet awesomely tough) scientist; Idris Elba as Prometheus‘ wisecracking captain; Charlize Theron as the Weyland Corportation’s icy overseer; and Michael Fassbender, giving his finest performance to date as the ship’s Lawrence of Arabia-obsessed android. (2:03) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Queen of Versailles Lauren Greenfield’s obscenely entertaining The Queen of Versailles takes a long, turbulent look at the lifestyles lived by David and Jackie Siegel. He is the 70-something undisputed king of timeshares; she is his 40-something (third) wife, a former beauty queen with the requisite blonde locks and major rack, both probably not entirely Mother Nature-made. He’s so compulsive that he’s never saved, instead plowing every buck back into the business. When the recession hits, that means this billionaire is — in ready-cash as opposed to paper terms — suddenly sorta kinda broke, just as an enormous Las Vegas project is opening and the family’s stupefyingly large new “home” (yep, modeled after Versailles) is mid-construction. Plugs must be pulled, corners cut. Never having had to, the Siegels discover (once most of the servants have been let go) they have no idea how to run a household. Worse, they discover that in adversity they have a very hard time pulling together — in particular, David is revealed as a remote, cold, obsessively all-business person who has no use for getting or giving “emotional support;” not even for being a husband or father, much. What ultimately makes Queen poignantly more than a reality-TV style peek at the garishly wealthy is that Jackie, despite her incredibly vulgar veneer (she’s like a Jennifer Coolidge character, forever squeezed into loud animal prints), is at heart just a nice girl from hicksville who really, really wants to make this family work. (1:40) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Red Lights Skeptics and budding myth busters, get ready. Maybe. Director-writer Rodrigo Cortés blends the stuff of thrillers and horror in this slippery take on psychics and their debunkers. Psychologist Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her weirdly loyal assistant Tom (Cillian Murphy) investigate paranormal phenomena — faith healers, trance mediums, ghost hunters, and psychics — in order to peer behind the curtain and expose all Ozs great and small. Spoon-bending blind ESP master Simon Silver (Robert De Niro) is their biggest prize: he’s come out of retirement after the death of his most dogged critic. Has Silver learned to kill with his mind? And can we expect a brain-blowing finale on the same level as The Fury (1978)? Despite all the high-powered acting talent in the room, Red Lights never quite convinces us of the urgency of its mission — it’s hard to swallow that the debunking of paranormal phenomenon rates as international news in an online-driven 24/7 multiniched news cycle — and feels like a curious ’70s throwback with its Three Days of the Condor-style investigative nail-biter arc, while supplying little of the visceral, camp showman panache of a De Palma. (1:53) (1:53) Metreon. (Chun)

Ruby Sparks Meta has rarely skewed as appealingly as with this indie rom-com spinning off a writerly version of the Pygmalion and Galatea tale, as penned by the object-of-desire herself: Zoe Kazan. Little Miss Sunshine (2006) directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris helm this heady fantasy about a crumpled, geeky novelist, Calvin (Paul Dano), who’s suffering from the sophomore slump — he can’t seem to break his rock-solid writers block and pen a follow-up to his hit debut. He’s a victim of his own success, especially when he finally begins to write, about a dream girl, a fun-loving, redheaded artist named Ruby (scriptwriter Kazan), who one day actually materializes. When he types that she speaks nothing but French, out comes a stream of the so-called language of diplomacy. Calvin soon discovers the limits and dangers of creation — say, the hazards of tweaking a manifestation when she doesn’t do what you desire, and the question of what to do when one’s baby Frankenstein grows bored and restless in the narrow circle of her creator’s imagination. Kazan — and Dayton and Faris — go to the absurd, even frightening, limits of the age-old Pygmalion conceit, giving it a feminist charge, while helped along by a cornucopia of colorful cameos by actors like Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas as Calvin’s boho mom and her furniture-building boyfriend. Dano is as adorably befuddled as ever and adds the crucial texture of every-guy reality, though ultimately this is Kazan’s show, whether she’s testing the boundaries of a genuinely codependent relationship or tugging at the puppeteer’s strings. (1:44) Metreon, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Safety Not Guaranteed San Francisco-born director Colin Trevorrow’s narrative debut feature Safety Not Guaranteed, written by Derek Connolly, has an improbable setup: not that rural loner Kenneth (Mark Duplass) would place a personal ad for a time travel partner (“Must bring own weapons”), but that a Seattle alt-weekly magazine would pay expenses for a vainglorious staff reporter (Jake Johnson, hilarious) and two interns (Aubrey Plaza, Karan Soni) to stalk him for a fluff feature over the course of several days. The publishing budget allowing that today is true science-fiction. But never mind. Inserting herself “undercover” when a direct approach fails, Plaza’s slightly goth college grad finds she actually likes obsessive, paranoid weirdo Kenneth, and is intrigued by his seemingly insane but dead serious mission. For most of its length Safety falls safely into the category of off-center indie comedics, delivering various loopy and crass behavior with a practiced deadpan, providing just enough character depth to achieve eventual poignancy. Then it takes a major leap — one it would be criminal to spoil, but which turns an admirable little movie into something conceptually surprising, reckless, and rather exhilarating. (1:34) SF Center. (Harvey)

Savages If it’s true, as some say, that Oliver Stone had lost his way after 9/11 — when seemingly many of his worst fears (and conspiracy theories) came to pass — then perhaps this toothy noir marks his return: it definitely reads as his most emotionally present exercise in years. Not quite as nihilistic as 1994’s Natural Born Killers, yet much juicier than 2010’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, this pulpy effort turns on a cultural clash between pleasure-seeking, honky Cali hedonists, who appear to believe in whatever feels good, and double-dealing Mexican mafia muscle, whose apparently ironclad moral code is also shifting like drifting SoCal sands. All are draped in the Stone’s favored vernacular of manly war games with a light veneer of Buddhistic higher-mindedness and, natch, at least one notable wig. Happy pot-growing nouveau-hippies Ben (Aaron Johnson), Chon (Taylor Kitsch), and O (Blake Lively) are living the good life beachside, cultivating plants coaxed from seeds hand-imported by seething Afghanistan war vet Chon and refined by botanist and business major Ben. Pretty, privileged sex toy O sleeps with both — she’s the key prize targeted by Baja drug mogul Elena (Salma Hayek) and her minions, the scary Lado (Benicio Del Toro) and the more well-heeled Alex (Demian Bichir), who want to get a piece of Ben and Chon’s high-THC product. The twists and turnarounds obviously tickle Stone, though don’t look much deeper than Savages‘ saturated, sun-swathed façade — the script based on Don Winslow’s novel shares the take-no-prisoners hardboiled bent of Jim Thompson while sidestepping the brainy, postmodernish light-hearted detachment of Quentin Tarantino’s “extreme” ’90s shenanigans. (1:57) SF Center. (Chun)

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

Step Up Revolution The Step Up franchise makes a play for the Occupy brand, setting up its fourth installment’s Miami street crew, the Mob, as the warrior dance champions of the 99 percent — here represented by a vibrant lower-income neighborhood slated for redevelopment. Embodying the one percent is a hotel-chain mogul named Bill Anderson (Peter Gallagher), armed with a wrecking ball and sowing the seeds of a soulless luxury monoculture. Our hero, Mob leader Sean (Ryan Guzman), and heroine, Anderson progeny and aspiring professional dancer Emily (Kathryn McCormick), meet beachside; engage in a sandy, awkward interlude of grinding possibly meant to showcase their dance skills; and proceed to spark a romance and a revolution that feel equally fake (brace yourself for the climactic corporate tie-in). The Mob’s periodic choreographed invasions of the city’s public and private spaces are the movie’s sole source of oxygen. The dialogue, variously mumbled and slurred and possibly read off cue cards, drifts aimlessly from tepid to trite as the protagonists attempt to demonstrate sexual chemistry by breathily trading off phrases like “What we do is dangerous!” and “Enough with performance art — it’s time to make protest art!” Occasionally you may remember that you have 3D glasses on your face and wonder why, but the larger philosophical question (if one may speak of philosophy in relation to the dance-movie genre) concerns the Step Up films’ embrace of postproduction sleights of hand that distance viewers from whatever astonishing feats of physicality are actually being achieved in front of the camera. (1:20) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Rapoport)

Ted Ah, boys and their toys — and the imaginary friends that mirror back a forever-after land of perpetual Peter Pans. That’s the crux of the surprisingly smart, hilarious Ted, aimed at an audience comprising a wide range of classes, races, and cultures with its mix of South Park go-there yuks and rom-commie coming-of-age sentiment. Look at Ted as a pop-culture-obsessed nerd tweak on dream critter-spirit animal buddy efforts from Harvey (1950) to Donnie Darko (2001) to TV’s Wilfred. Of course, we all know that the really untamable creature here wobbles around on two legs, laden with big-time baggage about growing up and moving on from childhood loves. Young John doesn’t have many friends but he is fortunate enough to have his Christmas wish come true: his beloved new teddy bear, Ted (voice by director-writer Seth MacFarlane), begins to talk back and comes to life. With that miracle, too, comes Ted’s marginal existence as a D-list celebrity curiosity — still, he’s the loyal “Thunder Buddy” that’s always there for the now-grown John (Mark Wahlberg), ready with a bong and a broheim-y breed of empathy that involves too much TV, an obsession with bad B-movies, and mock fisticuffs, just the thing when storms move in and mundane reality rolls through. With his tendency to spew whatever profanity-laced thought comes into his head and his talents are a ladies’ bear, Ted is the id of a best friend that enables all of John’s most memorable, un-PC, Hangover-style shenanigans. Alas, John’s cool girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) threatens that tidy fantasy setup with her perfectly reasonable relationship demands. Juggling scary emotions and material that seems so specific that it can’t help but charm — you’ve got to love a shot-by-shot re-creation of a key Flash Gordon scene — MacFarlane sails over any resistance you, Lori, or your superego might harbor about this scenario with the ease of a man fully in touch with his inner Ted. (1:46) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

To Rome with Love Woody Allen’s film legacy is not like anybody else’s. At present, however, he suffers from a sense that he’s been too prolific for too long. It’s been nearly two decades since a new Woody Allen was any kind of “event,” and the 19 features since Bullets Over Broadway (1994) have been hit and-miss. Still, there’s the hope that Allen is still capable of really surprising us — or that his audience might, as they did by somewhat inexplicably going nuts for 2011’s Midnight in Paris. It was Allen’s most popular film in eons, if not ever, probably helped by the fact that he wasn’t in it. Unfortunately, he’s up there again in the new To Rome With Love, familiar mannerisms not hiding the fact that Woody Allen the Nebbish has become just another Grumpy Old Man. There’s a doddering quality that isn’t intended, and is no longer within his control. But then To Rome With Love is a doddering picture — a postcard-pretty set of pictures with little more than “Have a nice day” scribbled on the back in script terms. Viewers expecting more of the travelogue pleasantness of Midnight in Paris may be forgiving, especially since it looks like a vacation, with Darius Khondji’s photography laying on the golden Italian light and making all the other colors confectionary as well. But if Paris at least had the kernel of a good idea, Rome has only several inexplicably bad ones; it’s a quartet of interwoven stories that have no substance, point, credibility, or even endearing wackiness. The shiny package can only distract so much from the fact that there’s absolutely nothing inside. (1:52) Albany, Opera Plaza, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Total Recall Already the source material for Paul Verhoeven’s campy, quotable 1990 film (starring the campy, quotable Arnold Schwarzenegger), Philip K. Dick’s short story gets a Hollywood do-over, with meh results. The story, anyway, is a fine nugget of sci-fi paranoia: to escape his unsatisfying life, Quaid (Colin Farrell) visits a company capable of implanting exciting memories into his brain. When he chooses the “secret agent” option, it’s soon revealed he actually does have secret agent-type memories, suppressed via brain-fuckery by sinister government forces (led by Bryan Cranston) keeping him in the dark about his true identity. Shit immediately gets crazy, with high-flying chases and secret codes and fight scenes all over the place. The woman Quaid thinks is his wife (Kate Beckinsale) is actually a slithery killer; the woman he’s been seeing in his dreams (Jessica Biel) turns out to be his comrade in a secret rebel movement. Len Wiseman (writer and sometimes director of the Underworld films) lenses futuristic urban grime with a certain sleek panache, and Farrell is appealing enough to make highly generic hero Quaid someone worth rooting for — until the movie ends, and the entire enterprise (save perhaps the tri-boobed hooker, a holdover from the original) becomes instantly forgettable, no amnesia trickery required. (1:58) California, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Eddy)

The Watch Directed by Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer (famed for Saturday Night Live‘s popular digital shorts, including “Dick in a Box”), The Watch is, appropriately enough, probably the most dick-focused alien-invasion movie of all time. When a security guard is mangled to death at Costco, store manager and uber-suburbanite Evan (Ben Stiller, doing a damn good Steve Carell impersonation) organizes a posse to keep an eye on the neighborhood — despite the fact that the other members (Vince Vaughn as the overprotective dad with the bitchin’ man cave; Jonah Hill as the creepy wannabe cop; and British comedian Richard Ayoade as the sweet pervert) would much rather drink beers and bro down. Much bumbling ensues, along with a thrown-together plot about unfriendly E.T.s. The Watch offers some laughs (yes, dick jokes are occasionally funny) but overall feels like a pretty minor effort considering its big-name cast. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

The Well-Diggers Daughter Daniel Auteuil owes a debt of gratitude to Marcel Pagnol, courtesy of his breakthrough roles in the 1980s remakes of the writer and filmmaker’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. He returns the favor with his debut directorial work, reworking the 1940s film and crafting a loving, old-school tribute to Pagnol. The world is poised on the edge of World War I; Auteuil plays salt-of-the-earth Pascal Amoretti. The poor widower does the town’s dirty work (oh, the dangerous symbolism of hole-digging) and cares for his six daughters — his favorite, the eldest and the most beautiful, Patricia (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), has caught the eye of his assistant, Felipe (Kad Merad). The happy home — and tidy arrangement — is shattered, however, when Patricia meets an inconveniently dashing pilot Jacques Mazel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), who sweeps her away, in the worst way possible for a girl of her day. “You’ve sinned, and I thought you were an angel,” says the stunned father when he hears his beloved offspring is pregnant. “Angels don’t live on earth,” she responds. “I’m like any other girl.” Faced with the inevitable, Auteuil and company shine a sweet but, importantly, not saccharine light — one that’s as golden warm as the celebrated sunshine of rural Provence — on the proceedings. And equipped with Pagnol’s eloquent prose, as channeled through his love of the working folk, he restores this tale’s gently throwback emotional power, making it moving once more for an audience worlds away. (1:45) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

 

When in Venice

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When in Venice

arts@sfbg.com

FILM The distinguishing characteristic of André Téchiné’s movies is the speed and force with which life changes people and their relationships with one another, even as the director’s presentation is so matter-of-fact that no single moment betrays the enormity of changes endured. He’s put out a film every year or two since the mid-1970s, and like a prolific, reliable literary novelist, his efforts are always admirably crafted even when they’re not particularly inspired. When they are inspired, as in Wild Reeds (1994) or My Favorite Season (1993), they’re superb — yet not all that different from the rest, just a bit better.

His latest, Unforgivable, is only quite good, but then one might as well be grateful he’s still this interested and deft at age 69. Francis (the estimable André Dussollier) is the French author of best-selling crime novels who’s decided to recharge his batteries by living in Venice for a year. He’s struck by the brisk attractiveness of Judith (Carole Bouquet), the estate agent he consults to find a rental; she finds his brazen come-on more annoying than amusing, let alone tempting.

Yet 18 months later they’re contentedly married, and hosting two daughters of his by a prior marriage. The eldest, Alice (Mélanie Thierry), clearly takes her mother’s side in a lingering grudge match she’s doing her best to keep alive; when she disappears, probably with a ne’er-do-well local aristocratic boyfriend, there is puzzlement but also a certain relief. That turns to real worry for Francis, however, as days go by and no one at all seems to know Alice’s whereabouts — not even the husband she’s possibly abandoned. Has she eloped with her lover? Or drowned, having last been seen swimming?

Advised on all sides to relax and wait for her to turn up, Francis instead hires a private detective in the form of Anna Maria (Adriana Asti), who was once ex-model Judith’s paramour and, like Francis, has a problem child in the recently prison-sprung, extremely prickly-tempered Jérémie (Mauro Conte). The paternal quest that’s become an obsession oddly fosters a bond between Francis and this mercurial delinquent, even as it erodes the happiness he’s won in autumnal life with Judith.

Unforgivable is based on a novel by Philippe Djian, but feels very much of a piece with films whose stories Téchiné originated with or without collaborators. It hurtles forward with a casual intensity that’s uniquely his own, sometimes surprising or even shocking us, but never inflating incidents to the point of melodrama. It offers a morally complex universe without judgment — Téchiné may be a gay filmmaker, but it’s typical of his unpredictability that the most horrific action here is taken by two minor characters as payback for a homophobic incident. Unforgivable isn’t among the director’s most memorable creations, but particularly in the midst of the usual summertime pap, it’s satisfying to spend two hours with someone who thinks like an adult, and treats the audience as one.

 

UNFORGIVABLE opens Fri/10 in Bay Area theaters.

Creating activist scholars

Andrew Lam
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Creating activist scholars

yael@sfbg.com

This semester, the California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS) will start a new Anthropology Department featuring teachers who are grassroots organizers with decades of experience, including Boots Riley, Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, Sasha Lilley, and Chris Carlsson.

The program’s goal is to create “activist scholars,” to get students into communities outside the institution, and to use their research and intellectual opportunities at the school to move social justice projects forward. And the man who organized it all is an unrepentant anarchist.

“The most distinguishing character of anarchism for me is prefigurative politics — creating the new within the shell of the old,” Adrej Grubacic, the new department head, told us.

His classes come at a time when anarchism is being more widely discussed in the US than it has been for generations. Non-hierarchical general assemblies and consensus-based “direct democracy,” long practiced in anarchist and other leftist circles, swept across the country along with the Occupy movement last year.

Anarchists have been associated in the public eye with everything from spirit-fingered affirmations to the masked, black-clad protesters smashing bank windows and scrawling anti-corporate messages on walls. But Grubacic says it’s more than that.

As anarchism exploded into practice in Occupy’s tent cities, it was also experiencing a renaissance in the ivory tower. The North American Anarchist Studies Network was founded in November 2009, and since has brought together a growing number of professors who want to explore and teach anarchism through annual conferences.

Big names such as Yale Anthropology Professor James Scott have declared themselves anarchists. In a country where the study of economics is usually code for the study of capitalism, professors longing to talk alternatives are coming forward in droves.

It’s more than a little ironic that, within an ideology focused on a lack of hierarchy, it can be hard for those on the street to connect with those in the lecture halls. So how can the academic-types truly support The People?

From Zapatista schools in Mexico to universities run by the Landless Worker’s Movement in Brazil to popular universities throughout Canada and Europe, people all over the world have developed institutions based on anarchist and Marxist principles.

Now, in San Francisco, Grubacic is hoping to do the same.

A historian who was an anarchist by age 13, Grubacic grew up in socialist Yugoslavia, a country engulfed in brutal civil war by the time he reached his 20s.

“I was raised a Yugoslav,” Grubacic says. “So I was raised to be a citizen of a country that doesn’t exist anymore.”

He was teaching history at the University of Belgrade, but his political beliefs became a problem.

“The political cultures and political groups in power were either Serbian nationalists or these hyper-capitalists,” Grubacic told me. “And going after them, because I was publishing and I was doing a lot of things, was—let’s say, not a smart career choice.”

It was with input from his mentor, famed leftist writer and academic Noam Chomsky, that Grubacic left the crumbling Balkan state for his own safety. After a frustrating stint at University of San Francisco, he found CIIS.

“This is the first place where I think that I was hired because I was an anarchist, or I am an anarchist. It’s kind of funny,” Grubacic says.

Founded in 1968, CIIS grew out of the California Institute of Asian Studies, and has quietly taught holistic approaches to psychology and integrative approaches to psychology, spirituality and the humanities since then . Today 60 percent of CIIS students are studying clinical or counseling psychology. The Anthropology and Social Change program is part of the School of Consciousness and Transformation.

“It’s the only department like it in the United States,” Grubacic says. “This is going to be one of the few places where anarchism is going to be studied.”

“So anarchist social theory, anarchist education, anarchist ideas in general. We are going to study them, seriously, because they need to be recognized seriously. It’s a beautiful history, it’s a beautiful tradition,” he says. “How important it is, I think, is revealed, by the recent rediscovery or reinvention of anarchism at Occupy. So I think that it’s more relevant than ever to create a space where anarchism will be studied.”

A CIIS education doesn’t come cheap. Two years in the masters program costs at least $35,000, and to earn a PhD will cost more than $60,000. Scholarships and financial aid are available, but Grubacic called the question of access to this program “a huge question.”

“It’s troubled me from the very beginning,” he says. “We are creating an experiment. It’s a social justice, community-based program in a private school.”

He hopes, however, that students will learn applicable skills in the program. Classes on radio, film, and writing, Grubacic says, will give students practical skills. “They will be able to continue, either as academics and go to get their PhDs, or to join the non-governmental sector, to work with NGOs, to work with community groups, to work with labor groups.”

Not the most lucrative professions, perhaps, but likely the chosen fields for many Anthropology and Social Change students.

Grubacic calls creating a program based on teaching grassroots and subversive knowledge in an elite institution “a paradox,” and one he’s not alone in. Grubacic got advice on the issue, he said, from Anibal Quihano, a Peruvian scholar known for his theories on colonial power who now teaches sociology at the Binghamton University in New York.

In fact, Grubacic practically convened a conference of post-colonial and anarchist scholars to help develop Anthropology and Social Change. Grubacic sent the program’s description around to everyone from his buddy Chomsky to Immanuel Wallerstein to World Social Forum organizer Boaventura de Sousa Santos. He got advice, too, from organizers at the Popular University of Quebec and the Popular University of Social Movements, a school in São Paulo, Brazil run by the landless workers’ movement there.

“The deciding thing about our own methodology was that we would like to listen, both to the voices coming from the past, so people who are doing similar things before us, and to people who are doing similar things right now,” Grubacic said. “We also went — and this is the third form, let’s say, of listening — to the people in the community.”

He reached out to contacts and friends of professors in the university, as well as hanging out in gathering places and striking up conversations with those who showed up. He told one story of doing this covert outreach in the Tenderloin National Forest, the botanical garden and neighborhood spot just 10 blocks from CIIS’s building on Mission and 11th streets.

“Some people were completely uninterested and thought, what’s the purpose? Who are you, with this weird accent? Go home,” Grubacic laughed. Some, though, were more receptive, including a woman who said the program could help with those fighting against San Francisco’s problem of environmental racism.

“This person told me that she thinks activists can come to a particular community, do an ethnography, do research, and then present that research to people in the city, and show the people who have power in the city to make decisions why such behavior is unjust,” Grubacic said.

In the end, that is essentially how the program will work. Students will partner with local organizations, neighborhood groups, or other affiliated people working on social justice goals, doing research to help further their goals.

“The document they’re going to produce after two years of activist research is going to be written for that community,” Grubacic said. “We are the second readers. We are less important in the process. What they do has to be useful to the community. They have to be passionate about working with that community group. And they have to produce something that’s going to be useful to what that community group does.”

In addition to classes and research projects, students will participate in “convivias,” one of the most unique aspects of the program. People from the public, scholars, and others with special knowledge will hammer out ideas with students in week-long “political laboratories.” Revolutionary art will be practiced in a convivia called “Atelier of Insurrectionary Imagination.” And Grubacic and his students will turn a certain vacant part of the CIIS building into an “Emergency Library,” a place for books as well as what the program description calls “scholars on call, responding to the emergent needs of the communities in struggle, who might be in need of legal advice, activist companionship, scholarly input, or a media suggestion.” The convivias have corresponding student work-study positions — yes, there will be a paid Emergency Librarian.

CIIS spokesperson James Martin said Grubacic brings a lot to the school: “The thing I’m really excited about is that we’re engaging the local community. We live in San Francisco for a reason. This is one of the places in the world where all these intellectuals come together who have the passion to try and change things.”

Despite the paradoxes and problems that come when the elite meets the grassroots, Grubacic has high hopes. “We need to redefine what it means to be an intellectual who works within academia,” he said. “And the only way to do this is to become a part of a larger social movement’s formation, that is aimed at changing society. We cannot offer much. But we can offer something.”

Saving City College

Andrew Lam
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43
Saving City College

news@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED City College of San Francisco (CCSF) is fighting for its life, and that struggle has turned old enemies into new allies. Suddenly, past differences seem less important than the need to work together, bringing a new sense of unity and purpose to the troubled community college.

In June the school was sanctioned and ordered to “show cause” from the Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges, putting it on the brink of losing its accreditation — certification necessary for the college’s degrees to be worth anything and for the school to secure federal aid (see “City College fights back,” July 17).

Twelve workgroups comprised of faculty, staff, administrators, students, and college board members are working feverishly to prove by October that the school is making major progress. Otherwise, it could face dire consequences.

While few people with any education or political background believe the school will actually close, there are serious consequences if its accreditation is revoked. A special trustee assigned by the state chancellor’s office could assume the powers of the college’s board or the school could be merged with another community college district.

The only college in California to ever suffer both of those fates was Compton Community College in 2006. Though the two colleges serve wildly different communities, many speak of their fates in the same breath. Its shadow hangs over City College like a ghost of what is to come.

WORKING TOGETHER

The newfound sense of common purpose was displayed on Aug. 1 in CCSF conference rooms, where once-battling special interest groups and employees gathered to tackle problems that have plagued the school for years.

The feuds aren’t just of interest to political geeks and college insiders. Infighting and a dysfunctional governance structure had stalled the school from tackling urgent issues, according to the accrediting commission.

“During interviews, criticism regarding the efficiency of the institutional governance process was revealed. The criticism centered on the length of time to reach a recommendation. It was also noted that there may be misunderstanding regarding the role of a recommending body versus a decision-making body,” according to the commission’s report.

That snippet of the 66-page critical report represents years of strife at the school, not only among the school’s elected trustees but also between the board and other college groups on issues ranging from placement testing to school site closures.

The 12 newly formed workgroups — constituted by the Chancellor’s Office and comprised mostly of faculty, administrators, and trustees — met to discuss issues and make recommendations to the system’s decision-making authorities: the Chancellor’s Office and Board of Trustees. One of the workgroups is in charge of evaluating that very decision-making system, with 14 people from different college constituencies hashing out a new style of democracy for the school.

At their first meeting, the members brought in stacks of papers to hand out — research on best practices and policies in college governments around the state and the nation. This particular workgroup discussed how an ideal student government should run, and how to enact those changes at City College.

The workgroups are brainstorming sessions, and each one has a different task ahead of it, including how to measure student learning, leveraging technology to streamline the school, facilities planning, and fiscal planning. Each workgroup acts independently, although some themes and members overlap.

The Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet and report on the progress of the workgroups on August 14 — the day before fall semester classes begin.

A final, preliminary report based on the findings of the dozen workgroups is expected to be completed before the accrediting commission’s October 15 deadline. With everything on the table, from staff layoffs to campus closures, CCSF is an anxious institution facing an uncertain future.

THE GHOST OF COMPTON’S PAST

In Compton, faculty and staff lived in constant fear of losing their jobs between 2002 and 2006, while the school was at risk of losing accreditation. Its path offers some lessons for CCSF.

“From three or four years prior to the accreditation being revoked, every March everybody got a pink slip and then you found out, you know, whether or not you actually had a job to come back to the next year,” Ann Garten, the community relations director of El Camino Community College District, told the Guardian in a phone interview.

El Camino swooped in to save Compton from total closure when its accreditation was revoked in 2006. The fate of employees at City College is a mystery for now, but based on Compton’s experience, part-time faculty are most at risk.

During spring semester, City College had nearly 1,700 instructors, approximately half of which were part-timers, according to college payroll documents. The school’s faculty are represented by the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121.

Classified workers — those who perform services such as administrative support, technology services, and grounds maintenance — could also be at risk. Their numbers exceeded 800 during the last fiscal year, according to the school’s assistant director of research, Steve Spurling.

They are represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 1021, a large and active union that also represents most city workers. In recent years, both unions have already taken pay cuts and freezes on raises and accepted furlough days to help plug the college’s fiscal holes.

If a special trustee were to take over, these workers would become even more vulnerable. But even without a special trustee, will there be layoffs?

Though there is no definitive answer yet, “everything needs to be on the table,” Trustee Steve Ngo told us. Yet most indications are that part-timers are at the most risk.

“I’m not convinced [full time faculty] pay cuts are what is called for. Our part time is the highest paid in the country,” CCSF Chancellor Pamila Fisher told the Associated Student Presidents, made up of elected leaders from CCSF’s eight main campuses. “We pay them health care. That’s unheard of” and could be re-evaluated, she said.

Yet it’s also possible that more creative and aggressive fundraising could save the part-timers and other college functions. Alisa Messer, president of AFT local 2121, said statewide categorical funds exist expressly to help fund part time faculty health care costs, she said, although not all colleges follow through.

“AFT 2121 has been a leader in this state, and in fact in the nation, on increasing parity for part-time/contingent faculty,” Messer said. “We will not allow this crisis to be an excuse to roll back significant progress that has been made on the rights of our most vulnerable faculty.”

The commission’s June report dinged the school for spending higher than average levels on salaries and benefits, 92 percent of their funds to be exact, while other community colleges in the Bay Area have figures in the low to mid 80s.

Yet many of CCSF’s defenders say that comparison isn’t fair or accurate, noting San Francisco’s higher cost of living and the fact that the district provides health coverage to part-time faculty, which most other community colleges in the state do not provide.

SERVING STUDENTS

As the college unites, many conflicts that remain boil down to the question of open access. CCSF currently operates with what it sees as a true community college ethos, where the varied needs of a diverse student population are balanced.

Recent high school graduates preparing for transfer mingle with adult students continuing their education, while English as Second Language (ESL) learners work towards proficiency and others seek new technical skills or transition to a new career.

Many students also take so-called “personal enrichment” courses — one time classes in the arts or languages, for example — that state government has de-prioritized as the budget hole has gotten deeper.

“I think we have to spend money better,” Ngo said, concerning “non-credit” courses, which are primarily classes for adult learners. He pointed to the fact that ESL classes are a full semester long, despite a unique “hop in, hop out” structure to the lessons, which gives students flexibility in their attendance over the course of the semester.

Reducing the number of weeks in a semester that those classes meet could be one possible strategy for saving money, he said. He emphasized that the college needs to work with hard data, and that calculations from what could be saved by such moves aren’t finished.

The number of campuses within the district is also being re-evaluated. “Yes, one of things we’re looking at is whether we should have nine sites. Centers may be combined. We don’t know if that will pay out yet,” Chancellor Fisher told the student presidents, referring to complex funding formulas that could actually prevent CCSF from saving money by closing campuses.

Fisher said officials are researching the possibility of combining campuses in close proximity, which drew a mixed reaction from the presidents. Bouchra Simmons, the Downtown Campus student president, said that combining the Civic Center and Downtown campuses would be disastrous.

“[Downtown Campus] is already pushed to capacity in terms of class size,” Simmons said. And the reverse, moving Downtown Campus students into Civic Center, would make it difficult for her to drop her daughter off at child care and still be able to make it to school on time.

Emanuel Andreas, Southeast Campus president, disagreed when it came to his constituents. “We understand what is happening, and everything needs to be on the table,” he said.

The threat of campus closures and a reduction in non-credit classes are all part of the attack on open access, as some students have said. To combat that, they’ve formed a new student group aimed at educating the city about what they stand to lose.

Project Unity is comprised of Occupy CCSF students, former student trustee Jeffrey Fang, student body President Shanell Williams, and other students, led by the newly elected student Trustee William Walker. They’ve rallied for their school at City Hall, where Supervisors Eric Mar and John Avalos have sponsored a resolution to support City College.

Project Unity met at the Mission Campus shortly after supporting the resolution, and started to plan a grassroots campaign to educate the city and its residents about open access.

Bob Gorringe, a member of Occupy San Francisco, was on hand to help the fledgling group strategize. “[Trustee] Anita Grier came out to the Occupy action council, and she was very open,” Gorringe told the group on July 31, referring to the longtime board member who is not exactly known for her radical tendencies.

Students taking such a vested interest in their college should come as no surprise, considering what happened to Compton before it folded into El Camino.

Although Compton never actually closed, it hemorrhaged students as public fears of the college closing grew larger, and the student body dropped to around 2,000 when El Camino took over, Garten told the Guardian.

Some students went elsewhere, but many appear to have just abandoned the education system.

“We looked at two or three colleges around Compton and none of us had a significant increase in students from the Compton district” enrolling, Garten said.

In other words, it looked like many disillusioned students had simply dropped out, something that nobody wants to see in San Francisco.

MOVING FORWARD

Just over two months remain for CCSF and its supporters to hash out a preliminary plan. Aiding them is a team of experts that will create a detailed report on everything related to the college’s financial woes — possibly the most critical problem area.

The Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, or FCMAT, explained their process to the college on August 3.

Without revealing any specific details, Michelle Plumbtree, the chief management analyst of FCMAT, warned an audience of a couple dozen interested people that its report would seem negative, but only because that’s exactly what the report is supposed to be: a critical review of problem areas.

“You guys are doing incredible things…But that’s not what we talk about [in our reports],” Plumbtree said.

Mike Hill, another FCMAT team member, succinctly layed out the biggest obstacles to City College’s fiscal future. “This is not a one year problem…We’re looking at three years. What makes that complicated is the governor’s tax, and the parcel tax,” Hill said, referring to Prop. 30 and the San Francisco ballot measure City College sponsored. “There are four scenarios… It’s not predictable.” Prop. 30, the tax measure placed on the ballot by Governor Jerry Brown, wouldn’t raise new revenue for community colleges. If it passes, they simply break even, staving off more drastic cuts. But the parcel tax offers more hope for CCSF, if city voters approve it. It would free up $14 million in revenue for this fiscal year, restoring some of what was lost and prevent the deep cuts and scaled back mission that the school’s support most fear.

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 8

Speak up: stop and frisk Southeast Community Complex, 1800 Oakdale, SF; Stop and frisk — the controversial, pretty much definitely Fourth Amendment-violating policy that police in New York cling to despite protest and that Mayor Ed Lee recently proposed implementing in San Francisco — just won’t go away, despite opposition from pretty much everyone. This panel discussion and opportunity to debate issues relating to the proposed stop and frisk policy. The event is presented by the Osiris Coalition and filmmaker Kevin Epps.

First District 5 debate of the season Park Branch Library, 1833 Page, SF; District 5 is in the center of San Francisco, and much of the excitement of November’s city elections will center on its race for supervisor. A wide range of candidates will vie for the coveted spot that Ross Mirkarimi left to become sheriff. All of the candidates have promised to show up to this first debate in the hotly contested race. The debate is presented by District 5 Democratic Club, the District 5 Neighborhood Action Committee, and the Wigg Party.

THURSDAY 9

Occupy the Bay Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall, 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.bfuu.org. 7pm, $5-10 suggested donation. Filmmakers Name Name and Namey Namey have been documenting Occupy in the Bay Area since the fall. Come reminisce, learn, and be inspired by their film at its premier. You made this history happen, celebrate it, baby!

SATURDAY 11

Black Riders Liberation Party La Peña Cultural Center, 10pm, $5-10. The Black Riders Liberation Party considers itself the new generation of the Black Panther Party, organizing similar programs to stop police violence and gang violence and feed communities. This Saturday, the Party parties. Come celebrate the Black Riders and meet organizers, bring a canned food donation for a discount.

Pistahan Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission and Third St., SF; www.pistahan.net. 11am, free. This giant annual Filipino celebration goes all weekend. Start off the weekend with a parade from Beale and Market streets to Yerba Buena Gardens, where the festival of music, food, performance and education begins.

Foreclosure victory block party 376 Bradford, SF; www.occupybernal.org. 10am, free. Shortly after we named Ross Rhodes a Local Hero (Best of the Bay 2012) for his work protecting his home and those of his Bernal Heights neighbors from unjust foreclosure, he received a loan modification agreement. Come celebrate with Ross and others from Occupy Bernal with a block party at his house. There will be educational presentations about banks’ predatory role in the foreclosure crisis and efforts to fight back in the morning, followed by general partying.

SUNDAY 12

Lessons from Vermont Eric Quezada Center, 518 Valenica, SF; www.collectiveliberation.org. 3-5pm, free. Yes, we have the Affordable Care Act, but it leaves much to be desired, unless you’re in Vermont. There, Governor Peter Shumlin signed universal healthcare into law in May 2011. But of course, Shumlin didn’t do this alone. Come hear a presentation from some of the organizers who won this victory, all the way from the Vermont Workers’ Center.

MONDAY 13

Undocumented and unafraid Asian Law Caucus, 55 Columbus, SF; www.asianlawcaucus.org. 12-1:30pm, free. The Asian Pacific Islander undocumented student group ASPIRE will lead this talk on the immigration rights struggle. The last talk in the Asian Law Caucus-led summer brown bag series is especially timely as undocumented youth work on figuring out if and how they might benefit from President Obama’s policy directive giving limited amnesty to undocumented college students, and what it means for family and friends, especially those already in ICE custody. This talk on the issues youth without legal status face and how to keep building towards the DREAM Act, which would offer broader protections that Obama’s policy.

TUESDAY 14

Milk Club District 5 debate Eric Quezada Center, 518 Valencia, SF; www.milkclub.org. 7-8:30 p.m., free. A District 5 supervisors race debate hosted by the Harvey Milk Democratic Club. Milk Club President Glendon Hyde, aka Anna Conda, says candidates will cover drug policy, public space, sex worker rights, the housing crisis, queer seniors’ issues, and much more. As an extra special bonus, the debate will be hosted by transgender performer Ben McCoy and the Guardian Managing Editor Marke Bieschke.

Molded in his image: James Deen sex toys released

Andrew Lam
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Perhaps you caught our cover story this week on crossover porn star James Deen. In it, I talk about how Deen has managed to bridge all kinds of genres in adult entertainment: BDSM furry porn to mainstream smut couplings to Brett Easton Ellis movies. Everything for everyone, non? Well not exactly — until mid-September, when Doc Johnson releases a new line of Deen-themed sex toys, including a nine-inch dildo molded directly from his member. We chatted with the company’s chief operating officer about what exactly that entailed. 

The full line-up of Deenware

It all seems pretty straightforward — realistic dick vibrator, an “anal trainer” kit featuring two sizes of butt plugs and lube, cock rings, and a suction-mountable dildo. But the James Deen Signature Pump? After seeing his movies, I doubt the actor has a signature penis pump. Just saying. We spoke to Doc Johnson’s COO to find out how they choose whose dicks get molded, and what the reach of a celebrity dildo is, anyway. Find the gear in your local adult store this fall.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Why James Deen’s penis? Who makes the decision about which celebrity gets immortalized? 

Chad Braverman: We strive to partner with the best and James Deen is just that. He is everything we look for in a partnership: extremely popular, loves what he does, loves what we do, and wants to create great product. We make that decision internally based on factors like fan base, and the performer’s reputation, as well as their interest.

SFBG: How does the fitting/molding process take place for the lifelike dildos? 

CB: James deen put his cock in a tube, we filled that tube with our proprietary casting formula. After it hardened, we pulled it out and then once it is confirmed a good molding, we use a harder casting material to fill the cavity left behind and that is our “cast master.” From there, it is a lot of hard work and a very detail oriented approach that makes the product as amazing and realistic as it is. 

Time for dick molding. 

We decided to manufacture and release James Deen’s nine-inch cock in two materials, each with their own unique benefits: our premium grade platinum silicone, which is the best silicone on the market and is completely hypoallergenic, nonporous, and body-safe — this silicone cock is firm and includes a three-speed powerful yet removable mega bullet that is waterproof and delivers intense vibrations throughout the cock. The other version is made of our fifth generation Realistic(R) which is the most lifelike material you can get, it truly captures every detail and feels truly like a real cock — this PVC material is also body-safe, as well as non-phthalate and features antibacterial Sil-A-Gel formula. 

SFBG: What has been your most successful celebrity model to date? How many copies did that sell? 

CB: This is hard to answer – we’ve had a beyond-successful partnership with Vivid for 25-plus years that basically created this market. No one was doing realistic casting before us. Jenna Jameson, Sasha Grey, and Belladonna have all been mind-blowing successes. It’s a great indicator of the success of these lines and the longevity of these stars that we still sell their products today — the demand is there and the products satisfy the customers. Exact numbers, I cannot say. However, we are very fortunate that we only want to work with the best, and it seems that the best only want to work with us.

Deen and Braverman: a job well done.

Survivor recounts life of rape and abuse by Your Black Muslim Bakery leader

Sasha Cuttler
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Editor’s Note: This story is part of the Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration of Bay Area media outlets (including the Guardian) to investigate Bailey’s murder by members of Your Black Muslim Bakery.

By Louise Rafkin, Center for Investigative Reporting

 In 2002, five years before journalist Chauncey Bailey was murdered by members of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a woman identified only as Jane Doe 1 stepped forward to report decades of sexual abuse, welfare fraud and violence by the bakery’s leader, Yusuf Bey Sr.

She was prepared to hand over to Oakland police DNA from three of her children evidence that Bey had impregnated her, the first time when she was 12 years old.

Given the history of violence by members of Your Black Muslim Bakery, this was a risky move. But the woman was fueled by a mother’s anger. Her daughter, then 18, alerted her that Bey was trying to abuse her – his own daughter.

Now a devout Christian, Jane Doe 1 has decided she no longer wants to be the nameless whistle-blower. Her name is Kowana Banks and, in her first public interview, she said she made the decision to come forward to help other children trapped in similar situations. She hopes to publish a book about her experiences.

“Abused people go one of two ways: Either they are going to self-destruct or they’re going to make a difference,” said Banks, 44. “I’m going to make a difference.”

The violent saga of Your Black Muslim Bakery is fading into Oakland history, but wounds remain among Bey’s victims and family members today marks the fifth anniversary of the murder of Bailey, the Oakland Post editor who had been investigating the bakery’s finances.

The facts behind Banks’ story have been outlined in court proceedings and depositions, but her decision to come forward allows her to detail her unique insider’s perspective as a victim and survivor.

Today, Banks is an optimistic, composed woman who has moved on as best she can. One of her three children by Bey, Yusuf V, 25, is in San Quentin State Prison for his part in the 2007 kidnapping of two Oakland women, one who was tortured, a crime related to the bakery’s demise. The other two are doing well.

Banks considers the three to be the “blessing out of what happened to me.”

Married for 18 years to a man she met after leaving the bakery, Banks says the bitterness and anger that grew from her childhood abuse dissolved when she fell in love. The couple have two children together.

“But it’s difficult to look back and know I was just a child then and that no one cared,” she said.

Throughout her childhood at the bakery, Banks said she felt abandoned by the social welfare system, invisible even to those at local hospitals where she – and many other underage girls at the bakery compound – gave birth to multiple children while still children themselves.

She delivered the first of three children by Bey at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley at 13. A social worker questioned Banks about the paternity of her son, she said, but under the watchful eye of one of Bey’s “wives,” Banks kept silent. Later, she said she told a child protection worker that she was working long hours and not going to school.

“She told me she would check into it, and I never saw her again,” Banks said.

Bey, a self-appointed minister who gave himself the title of “Dr.,” was formerly a hairdresser. He opened Your Black Muslim Bakery in the late 1970s, espousing black self-reliance and his own interpretation of Islam, which included racist attacks on whites. Nevertheless, in his more than 30 years in North Oakland, Bey gained the support of local business leaders, clergy and politicians eager to align with the underclass.

In 2003, Bey died before facing trial, setting off the struggle for power and control that escalated into mayhem and multiple murders. Banks said she saw the violence coming.

“You cut off the head,” Banks said, “and the body will go crazy.”

Molestations began at age 8

Banks, who was born in the East Bay, said her father was a drug addict who met Bey’s followers while doing jail time for drug-related crimes. Banks can’t remember her mother, who she said abandoned her as a toddler, along with a younger brother and older sister.

In 1976, Banks’ father brought the children to live at the bakery compound, where he’d gotten a job. A hive of single-family homes, retail storefronts and apartments clustered on the corner of San Pablo Avenue and 59th Street in North Oakland, the compound housed bakery workers and Bey’s sprawling family of children and women he called his wives.

One Sunday night in 1976, Bey invited Banks to spend the night in his apartment, telling her she could play with his baby daughter. Banks was nervous and thought it strange to spend time with Bey, then 41. But her older sister had spent the night there and returned toting candy and new clothes. She said that night marked the first time Bey molested her. She was 8.

Bey told her to tell no one, she said. If she did, she would be killed.

“But he didn’t stop with me,” she said. “He told me he’d murder my whole family, everyone.”

Banks believes her father did not know about the incident, but the family moved away soon after that first molestation. They lived in Hayward for a while, and later, Banks’ father left her and her siblings with a grandmother near Monterey.

In 1978, after another arrest, her father brought them back to the bakery and left them with Bey.

Not long after, Banks said, Bey came into her bedroom above the bakery while she was sleeping, and raped her. She was 10 and remembers wearing one-piece pink zip-up pajamas. After the assault, she sought help from Nora Bey, then 23, one of the minister’s many “wives.” Banks’ father had surrendered his paternal rights so Yusuf Bey could receive welfare for their care; the court appointed Nora Bey, later known as Esperanza Johnson, as their legal guardian.

“ ‘I need you to help me because he’s trying to do things to me,’ ” Banks recalls telling Nora Bey. “And her comment was, ‘Oh, girl, he’s not going to do anything to you that he hasn’t done to anyone else.’ ”

Living in various bakery-owned homes, Banks was kept out of public school. She was smart, though, and soon became an integral part of the bakery, which sold pies and sandwiches from its San Pablo Avenue storefront. She learned bookkeeping and taught basic math and reading at the bakery’s school. Her life was regimented; she baked from 4 to 8 a.m., taught in the bakery’s combined school and day care until 6 p.m., and then wrapped bakery products until 10 p.m.

It was not until several years later that Banks even received a wage, just $25 per week.

At the time, Banks remembers not understanding why those living in the compound all were so isolated from outsiders, why they were punished for sneaking out once to see a movie, “The Wiz.”

“But as an adult, I understand now,” she said, “because he had secrets, and he didn’t want those secrets to get out.”

Learning Bey’s doctrine

In the bakery’s school, Yusuf Bey’s doctrine was drilled into the children. Girls were taught to cover their heads; everyone was addressed as “brother” or “sister.” Bey preached the superiority of men over women and of blacks over whites. Whites, he said, were “the devil” and responsible for all the world’s problems.

“The men were the ceiling, and women were the floor,” Banks said, quoting Bey.

She, however, was hardly subservient, growing into a feisty and hardheaded young woman, often chastised for speaking out against unfair treatment.

“I was known for saying whatever was on my brain,” Banks said.

Once when Banks complained about the long hours of work, she said she was forced to get up even earlier. When one of the other women found Bey with Banks in his bedroom late at night, the woman’s questions were silenced with a beating. Banks was then given a beating herself.

Banks said Bey tried to turn others against her and, because her mother was white, called her “nobody but the devil.”

But he continued to rape her repeatedly. At 13, she gave birth to the first of the three children she would have with Bey.

All the while, Banks said, Bey received – and kept for himself – welfare payments and food stamps intended for Banks, her siblings, others and eventually the children born as a result of the rapes. Bey was said to have more than 40 children and called up to 100 women his wives.

The atmosphere of fear was total, Banks said. In 1986, a young man, Peter Kaufman, who’d spoken out about having seen Bey rape a boy in the bakery’s bathroom, turned up dead on a nearby side street, shot in the head. Beatings – for both women and men in the bakery community – were commonplace.

Bey, Banks said, was a persuasive man who used intimidation, violence and a flashy lifestyle to control his mostly down-and-out followers, many of whom were parolees. There were cameras in the bakery and microphones in every room to monitor conversations. Among the women, the abuse was ubiquitous and unspoken. It was some time before Banks realized that Bey was molesting her sister, too.

Banks said she was instructed by Nora Bey not to identify him as the father of her children on their birth certificates. And Banks wasn’t allowed to choose names for her kids. Particularly painful to Banks was that her second son was named Yusuf by Nora Bey.

Banks said she had nowhere to turn. She blames racism, fear and a hands-off attitude for the lack of oversight by welfare officials and police.

“They were fed Brother Bey’s line that he was doing a lot for the black community,” she said. “No one wanted to intervene.”

Escape from bakery life

For years, Banks dreamed of leaving. But under the constant threat of violence, she waited. She planned to leave at 18, but was again pregnant. In 1988, then 20, she became romantically interested in a man her own age she met at the bakery. Bey caught wind of this and held a meeting at which he directed his other women to teach Banks a lesson by beating her.

Warned of her impending punishment, Banks made her escape that night, Aug. 28, 1988. A cousin on her father’s side agreed to pick her up. As she was collecting her children, Bey confronted her and threw her belongings at her.

“I picked up as much as I could that he threw at me and packed it into the car,” said Banks, laughing at the memory. “I don’t think he realized he was helping me.”

At first, she “felt so free” in a world outside the bakery, but soon she began to live in fear that Bey would send someone to harm her.

“My fear was a stranger that I didn’t even know would walk up to me and do something, because of course they had pictures of me,” she said.

Moving forward with her life was difficult, and keeping hold of the children she had with Bey ultimately proved too much of a challenge. Banks found work at restaurants as a server, but money was always tight. Bey wouldn’t pay child support, and the welfare she received never seemed to be enough.

“I was just a child when my kids were born,” she said. “It would be different if today I was having children, or even 20 years ago.”

Soon, Bey, exerting his power, sent for the kids, and they returned to the bakery. The boys spent most of their childhood there. Banks said her daughter, despite spending some time at the bakery and with foster families, mainly grew up with her.

At the bakery, Bey tried to turn her kids against her, Banks said, telling them she wanted them only for their welfare checks. While still a child, her oldest asked why she didn’t live with them at the bakery, like the parents of the other kids. Banks explained to him that “it wasn’t a good place” for her.

“I felt it was a better environment for men than it was for women,” she said, noting that at the time, she assumed Bey would not molest his own children.

In 1989, she met her husband through an acquaintance. The couple had their two children in the ’90s.

More than a decade passed. Banks took community college classes, found work in restaurants, earned her GED diploma and occasionally visited her boys at the bakery. There was constant intimidation; she feared retribution for leaving and was always looking over her shoulder.

Concern for daughter prompts action

Banks never told her kids about her abuse. It was hard to watch her boys be lured in by Bey’s flashy lifestyle – a Mercedes or Cadillac was always parked curbside – but Banks held out hope that she had been right, that it really was a better place for boys than it was for girls.

In June 2002, her 18-year-old daughter, who was working at the bakery but living elsewhere, told Banks a story that suggested Bey had tried to molest her. Banks was devastated, unable to even ask her daughter for details.

“I prayed, asking God who was going to stop him,” said Banks, then 34. “And then, suddenly, I knew it was me.”

With DNA testing available, she could prove Bey’s paternity. It offered the proof she had always hoped to find. In an angry phone conversation with Bey, she told him her plan.

“You, sir, are a rapist and a child molester, and let me tell you what I’m going to do to you,” she recalls saying. “First, I’m going to go to the police, and I’m going to press charges against you, and then, when I’m done, I’m going to sue you and I’m going to take all your money. And then I won’t have to ask you to help your children, my children, with anything else, because I’m going to have all your money.”

Bey, she said, told her she’d soon be “floating in a river.”

To show Bey her determination, she called him again from a phone at the Oakland Police Department. “He knew from that day forth that it was over for him,” she said.

Three months later, Bey was taken into police custody. With DNA test results in hand, Banks pressed felony criminal charges of rape and assault. Bey posted bail, but died in the hospital a year later before facing the criminal trial.

Banks was disappointed that Bey never faced a trial but took pleasure in knowing that he had at least faced the charges.

“He lived a long life of getting away with it,” she said. “By the grace of Jesus, I know he’s boiling in hell.”

Another Jane Doe revealed

Along with two other women, Banks also filed a civil suit, alleging that Alameda County did nothing to protect them. The county eventually settled with Banks and the two other Jane Does, admitting no liability.

Another of the Jane Does in the suits, a former foster child who worked at the bakery between 1994 and 1996 and was raped by Bey, also has decided to publicly identify herself for the first time.

Malikha Hardy said she reported her abuse on three occasions to a county social worker, to a guidance counselor at juvenile hall and, in 1996, to the Oakland police. No one followed up until seven years later, she said, when an Oakland detective working on Banks’ case turned up at her door.

“The people feared Bey,” Hardy, now 32, said in a recent phone interview. “He had people who would do anything for him.”

To protect the two women, California Watch is not providing information about their current whereabouts or employment. During multiple interviews for this story, a family therapist was present to provide support.

Having wrestled with low self-worth, nightmares, and other aftereffects of childhood trauma, Banks is writing a book about her life with the therapist’s help. She credits her conversion to Christianity with making it possible for her to smile again.

“I’m resilient, and I’m positive,” Banks said. “I say, ‘If people are preying on you, God has chosen you.’ ”

Banks remains in contact with her son Yusuf V, who is imprisoned at San Quentin and serving a 10-year sentence as part of a plea agreement in the kidnapping incident.

“I’m trying to reform my son’s way of thinking,” Banks said. “Him sitting in one spot is the best time for me to do it, because his mind is open.”

During a recent visit to the former bakery compound, Banks said she thinks the reign of terror is now over. Many of the buildings have been sold or renovated; little is left to indicate what went on, outside or inside. The old bakery is a beauty supply store. The former school is a martial arts studio.

As Banks walked through memorable rooms and haunted hallways, she recounted stories both benign and horrific.

“I’ve seen stuff here,” she said, “that will scare me for the rest of my life.

This story was edited by Robert Salladay and Amy Pyle and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee.

 

This story was produced by the independent, nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting in collaboration with the Chauncey Bailey Project. For more, visit www.cironline.org and www.chaunceybaileyproject.org. Rafkin can be contacted at Louise.Rafkin@gmail.com.

 

Party Radar: House of Aviance, John Talabot, Scuba, Rewind, Mykki Blanco, more

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Party Radar: House of Aviance, John Talabot, Scuba, Rewind, Mykki Blanco, more

Tons of great dance music and fab haps on tap this weekend — so much, in fact that I’m giving weeeekend another couple of “e”s, OKeee? Your sountrack choices this week? Perfect summer edits party jams, wiggy contemporary ecstacy techno, clap-your-hands disco-funk loveliness, or hyper-poetic rejection bass. Wut? Do let’s begin — and for more crazy great thingies, including Squarepusher, Erol Alkan, Buraka Som Sistema, and The Pharcyde — hit up our This Week’s Picks section.

 

>>JOHN TALABOT

The Spaniard delivered pretty much the dance album of the year so far with Fin — further exploring the psychedelic-Balearic release epitomized in his previous work. He’ll be appearing, intimately, in t he public Works Odd Job Loft, bringing some sunshine to the Icee Hot party.Also, this is so far the cognescenti club hit of the summer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuJg4WcIO7Q

Thu/2, 9pm-3am, $5 before 11, $10. public Works, 161 erie, SF. www.publicsf.com


>>LEGENDARY

This ought to be insane  — NYC’s House of Aviance descends on San Francisco for some vogue ball realness (more like a showacse, really, as a commenter below points out). Mother Juan Aviance, Nita Aviance, Kevin Aviance, Gehno Aviance, plus DJs Juanita More, Jason Kendig, and capoeiraista Antonio Contreras. It’ll be a bonkers extravaganza for all, queens and admirers both. Get ready to drop! (And Lady Bunny says she’s coming? Ummmm)

Fri/3, 9pm-3am, $15-$25. Beatbox, 314 11th St., SF. www.beatboxsf.com

 

>>MYKKI BLANCO

Dark and fierce queer rapper from the future rides a fresh wave of hype to the spooky-neat 120 Minutes party, with Physical Therapy and a performance by the eye-popping Boy Child.

Fri/3, 10pm, $10. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

 

>>REWIND

The Holy Cow continues to shed its reputation as a somewhat, er, screechy meat market, welcoming in this new Friday underground-vibes techno monthly, kicking off with local faves Nikita, Adnan Sharif, Lt. D, Joseph Lee, and special guest from Vancouver Kota Shibata. 

Fri/3, 10pm, $10. Holy Cow, 1535 Folsom, SF. 

 

>>SCUBA

The super-hot (like, for me, panties-throwing hot — but also hot in the audial way) British Hotflush label honcho is perfectly schizophrenic, giving us atmospheric dubby-deep bass genius and cerebellum-tickling techno in the harder vein. We like it when both sides come out to play — and why wouldn’t they at this As You like It party, with an amazing sound system and support from the also fascinating Olivier Deutschmann, Epcot (he’s back!), and Mossmoss.

Fri/3, 9pm-4am, $10 before 11pm, $20 after. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

>>G.A.W.K.

And now for something completely different — it’s OG club kid (and supposed progenitor of queer hip-hop) Jon Sugar’s birthday, and he’s having the party at his raucous regular Gay Artists and Writers Kollective showcase, with bands 5 Pines and Happy Idiots, fantasy solo performances, and an ever-lively crowd of the open-minded. 

Sun/5, 7pm, free. Tikka Masala, 1668 Haight, SF. Email gawksf@yahoo.com for more details. Or just go! 

 

 

 

Seattle’s best record store is Starbucks?

Tony Robles
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“This is a joke right?” “BARFING FOREVER.” “You should be embarrassed that you even thought this was acceptable.” Just few choice responses to the news up north: Seattle Weekly posted its Best of Seattle issue this week, and the winner for Best CD/Record Store? That would be Starbucks.

Granted, the massive coffee chain (yes coffee, not music) did technically start in the city, so I suppose it’s sort of local there. Sort of. But regardless, those few recorded offerings by the register are meant as an after-thought to your supersweet morning scone. Starbucks will never offer deep cuts, rare vinyl, or non-signed local bands to the public. And calling it “Best CD/Record Store” does a disservice to the great people of that city.

As Seattle Weekly posts on the subject, “Hey, why the hell not! They stock all the records you love. They’ve got the Fleet Foxes, the Spoon, the Fiona Apple, and the Jack White.” Um, what about the bands that actually won in their poll, such as Best Hip-Hop Artist THEESatisfaction, or Best Pop Band Deep Sea Diver?

For reference, Seattle does of course have actual record shops, including Sonic Boom, Jive Time Records, Easy Street, and more.

(And in case you were wondering, Amoeba Music won Best Record Store here in the Guardian’s Best of the Bay issue)

Two of SF’s most venerable cannabis dispensaries get shut down

Sasha Cuttler
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Two of SF’s most venerable cannabis dispensaries get shut down

Sadness, anger, and confusion hung thick in the fragrant, smoky air of two of San Francisco’s oldest and most prominent medical marijuana dispensaries – HopeNet in SoMa and Vapor Room in Lower Haight – during their last day in business yesterday, the latest victims of an aggressive federal government crackdown on the industry.

Throughout the day, vendors, patients, neighbors, and well-wishers stopped in to say goodbye and commiserate over a trend that just doesn’t make sense to them, or to the local politicians and city officials that have spent years setting up a regulatory structure that had legitimized the cannabis industry, which thrived as the rest of the economy suffered through the recent recession.

“I’ve always treated this as if it were just a nice coffee house. I’m not an outlaw,” said Martin Olive, whose Vapor Room was a friendly community gathering place and active member of the local business community that gave away free bags of vaporized marijuana to low-income patients on a daily basis. “I almost forgot I was breaking federal law. It was so normal, so legitimate.”

Despite previous promises to respect state laws legalizing medical marijuana, President Barack Obama and federal agencies under his control did a sudden about-face last year, with the Drug Enforcement Agency threatening landlords with property seizure, the Justice Department threatening prison sentences, and the Internal Revenue Service doing audits and refusing to allow routine business expenses.

The result has been the forced closure of eight of San Francisco’s 24 licensed dispensaries in the last seven months, with more closures likely in the coming months. Almost all of the remaining clubs have been forced to deal only in cash after the feds threatened their bankers and credit card companies. The industry that grows and sells California’s biggest cash crop is essentially being driven back underground, hurting patients and the sometimes gritty neighborhoods that dispensaries had improved with security systems and a flow of customers that put more eyes on the streets and cash in the pockets of nearby stores and restaurants.

“The people that live here are afraid the neighborhood is going to come back in here. We took care of the entire block. Before us, it was all dealers, so there’s a safety issue,” HopeNet founder Cathy Smith told me as the once-welcoming club on 9th Street near Howard was reduced to bare walls, noting that the owner of the Starbucks on the corner told her he expects his business to drop by 15 percent.

Olive shared the concerns expressed at HopeNet, which he considers “a sister dispensary,” one that also had a generous compassion program for giving cannabis to low-income patients and offering other free services like yoga.

“I’m curious to see what this neighborhood looks like in six months. I know what it was like six months before we got here,” Olive said of his club’s opening in 2004.

But for now, it’s over. Vapor Room continued to do business for most of the day yesterday, but HopeNet was already stripped bare and essentially shut down, and by 3:30pm they removed the cash register and their pot stock. “The signs are down, we’re no longer a pot club, break out the beer,” announced Smith’s son, Bill, a member of the cooperative, referring to one of the many tight restrictions of what the city allowed in clubs. “I’m the only one making light of things today, as a coping mechanism. I laugh so we don’t cry.”

Like the patients, vendors, and local officials we spoke to – who you’ll hear from in an upcoming Guardian cover story looking the end of medical marijuana’s golden age – Olive and Smith are grappling with a federal crackdown they say has myriad downsides and no benefits to anyone but federal agencies that profit from drug-related seizures and the criminal syndicates that now have less competition.

Both Olive and Smith say they voted for Obama in 2008, they believed his statements that he wouldn’t go after businesses that complied with state and local law, and now they feel betrayed.

“I feel fucked by it, betrayed is too easy a word,” Howard said.

“It’s complicated emotions that I’m feeling – let down, confused – at the end of the day, I don’t understand why this is happening,” Olive said. “It’s a community tragedy, it really is.”

Like MediThrive and other recently shuttered clubs, both Vapor Room and HopeNet will still be operating as delivery-only services, but the future seems less certain now that their direct, brick-and-mortar connection to their community has been severed.

They urge those concerned about the crackdown to contact their political representatives, and to turn out today (Wed/1) at 4pm for a funeral march that starts at Haight and Steiner streets near the now-shuttered Vapor Room and goes to the Federal Building on Golden Gate Avenue, where there will be a rally and speeches starting at 5pm.

Localized Appreesh: Seatraffic

Tony Robles
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Localized Appreesh: Seatraffic

Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

On the new seven-inch, Crimes, the persistent flow of Seatraffic feels like it’s washing over you like warm bath water. The San Francisco electronic pop duo takes a page out of the 1980s synth playbook, and executes it with a shiny modern gleam, incorporating dreamy reverb, and heavy, shoe-gazing beats.

If you climb over some sandy rocks at Corona Del Mar State Beach down in Southern California, you can jet down to Little Corona, a more secluded plot of warm sand and water with craggy little caves surrounding it. And if you should ever visit, I suggest playing Seatraffic’s Crimes on your portable record player, and bringing along edibles.

This is because vocalist Mark Zannad and drummer Brandon Harrison created cavernous atmospheres pressed on small white vinyl, just the right speed for a languid dip. It’s Seatraffic’s first physical release, and limited to 300 copies.

The band will perform live from the new release at a DJ-studded Project One gathering this week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPOMr-u15q0

Year and location of origin: We formed in summer of 2010, in San Francisco. It was more or less an agreement that one day we’d start making music, we actually didn’t get serious until about six months later.  I (Mark) had been working out a few songs and when Brandon heard them he thought it would be really unique to bring live drums into synthy music.  We gave it a shot and the first time we made music together it just felt right.  Despite having very different musical backgrounds we meshed really well and most of the songs came a long with little stress.

Band name origin: The word Seatraffic, is suppose to be like Air Traffic, but we like boats better than planes. We had hundreds of names written down, most of them very bad. Seatraffic just sounded right to us, later our writer friend suggested we make it into one word.

Band motto: Never really thought of having a band motto, but if we had one it would be “Stay different, know your Identity”

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Dreamy blend of whirling synthesizers, organs, bass, and heavy drums.

Instrumentation: Mark Zannad: Vocals, Organs, Synthesizers; Brandon Harrison: Drums, Percussion

Most recent release: Crimes 7-inch (2012).

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: The best part of being a band in the Bay Area is how open minded and diverse music enthusiasts are here.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: The worst thing about being a band in the Bay Area is that it is a very saturated place for music, it can be difficult to be heard locally.

First album ever purchased:  Mark: Lion King soundtrack on Cassette; Brandon: Astro Lounge by Smashmouth

Most recent album purchased/downloaded:  Mark: Ariel Pink’s Mature Themes; Brandon: Ty Segall Band’s Slaughterhouse.

Favorite local eatery and dish: This may be the most difficult question we have ever been asked because the food in SF is just so good. Mark: a mini-burger (don’t let the name deceive you) from Super Duper Burger; Brandon: Carne Asada Burrito from Farolito.

Seatraffic
With DJs Boyfren, YR Skull, Shaky Premise, and Epicsauce DJs
Thu/2, 9pm, $3 (free beer before 11pm)
Project One
251 Rhode Island, SF
(415) 938-7173
p1sf.com

Appetite: Southern taste adventures in Louisville, KY

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Kentucky: land of bourbon, the Derby and Mint Juleps. I’m ever delighted to return to the South, although I’m connected to some areas more than others (ah, New Orleans, my love). I recently spent a week in Louisville, on the judging panel for ADI’s (American Distilling Institute) annual awards. It was an honor to judge with key spirits and cocktail industry folk, spending days tasting (blind, of course) through the latest in a broad range of small US craft spirits – winners here.

In my off time, I roamed Louisville, from downtown to Bardstown Road. Louisville is a small city, not exactly visually beautiful or dense like other US cities, but its distinctly Kentuckian treasures do unfold. The historic Brown Hotel was my home base, its player piano welcoming me with strains of Gershwin and old world elegance in the beautiful lobby.

I’m an American whiskey girl at heart (although I love all spirits), being in bourbon and rye’s epicenter is invigorating, even if I can find the region’s most rare, small batch spirits in my own city. A unique preview came in an early peek at Distilled Spirits Epicenter, shortly before it opened, essentially a distillery “for rent,” where would-be distillers have their visions crafted, try out test batches, or take classes to learn more about distilling. It was founded by David Defoe of Flavorman, a scientific flavor lab that creates sodas, juices and beverage products for numerous companies. My favorite feature is the upstairs apartment which they offer to guests using their facilities as they create a product: it’s an open, brick-walled apartment upstairs in the Flavorman building.

Here are highlights from my travels in food, cocktails, whiskey and unexpectedly the most incredible beer collection I’ve ever seen.

SERGIO’s WORLD OF BEERS
If you can find Sergio’s World of Beers (no, it’s not the dive bar next door), you will walk into an unmarked space and could wait 10 minutes for someone to even come out. I was immediately impressed by the selection of beers lining the dingy front room packed with boxes and glasses. Beer aficionados will freak out over the options available on tap. Numerous rotating beers range from Italian sours to a bourbon barrel rarity made by a guy down the street.

Sergio Ribenboim himself is an avid beer collector (read Imbibe magazine’s article about him last year). With one of the most exhaustive collections in the world, he leads tours of breweries around the globe. After the joys of the front room are uncovered, one realizes they haven’t seen anything. Stocking the halls and back rooms (not to mention Sergio’s home) are over 1000 beers for purchase from every region of the globe, including first editions of cult favorites and rarities, such as a Belgian beer, Smisje Calva Reserva, aged in Calvados barrels.

The humble shop is a beer lovers paradise, every unassuming foot of it. The Renaissance Man – the avid beer fan in my home – and I planned to stop in for 30 minutes but ended up staying over 3 hours. We chatted with Sergio and obsessed beer lovers who dropped in from all over the country, those who, like us, will make Sergio’s a must-stop whenever we’re in Kentucky.

HARVEST
To date, Harvest is my favorite Louisville restaurant. It’s the usual farm-to-table concept, long the standard where I live and more common in recent years around the country. The walls are covered with large black and white photos of Kentucky farmers who supply Harvest’s ingredients.

Here the concept invigorates local classics like the Hot Brown (see Brown Hotel’s English Grill below) in a Hot Brown pizza ($14), a brilliant twist on a local classic. Or burgoo ($16), a Southern stew laden with rabbit, pork and chicken, fresh with snow pea sprouts. Its one flaw was being far too salty so that the heartwarming bowl started to feel “one note” after a few bites.

After a starter of a pretzel bun dipped in addictive amber ale beer cheese sauce ($7) and solid cocktails utilizing house bitters, syrups and tinctures, not to mention engaging service and a manager walking the floor ensuring all of us were satisfied, I found Harvest a “whole package” kind of dining destination. No wonder they were nominated for a James Beard award this year for Best New Restaurant.

BROWN HOTEL’S ENGLISH GRILL
The Hot Brown ($22) is one of Kentucky’s signature dishes, created in 1926 at the Brown Hotel’s English Grill by chef Fred Schmidt. When bored with traditional ham and eggs, he opted for roasted turkey breast over toast points topped with bacon and tomatoes, then slathered it all in Mornay sauce (butter, milk, Parmesan, egg, cream). If that weren’t enough, it’s baked golden brown in Parmesan cheese. Brilliant. Eaten in its home base, the old world elegance of the English Grill, it’s every bit as decadent, gooey, rich, meaty and fabulous as it sounds.

MEAT
Hands-down, the best bar of my visit to Louisville was Meat – and Jared was the best bartender. We lingered for hours, till 3am, watching thunderstorms pass, filling paper bags with their revolving turntable of free snacks, a genius addition of unending servings, including Trader Joe’s favorites from mustard pretzels to peanut butter stuffed pretzels.

Jared joked and flirted with customers from the oval bar at the center of a brick-walled space tucked away upstairs in the back of a building that once housed a butchery in the trendy Butchertown neighborhood. Butcher tools and meats hang in the entrance, while the dim, glowing room is a romantic space filled with couches and comfy nooks.

The menu states, “We love the Prohibition-era cocktail movement. We love Louisville.” Instead of exactly copying big city bars, their mission is to “serve authentic and inventive beverages with a distinctly Louisvillian sense of place.” They list recipes from favorite bartenders around the world alongside house creations (all $10), while Jared whips up some off-menu beauties, including an effervescent mix of Del Maguey mezcal with Moet Imperial champagne.

One of the most delightfully unique menu offerings is a Viking 75. The Nordic twist on a French 75 uses Taffel aquavit, Cynar, house sour mix, demarara syrup and lingonberry jam with Bott Geyl Cremant d’Alsace. Upscale tacky plays well in The Queen’s Tea: Pimm’s, Hendrick’s gin, Campari, Dewar’s Scotch, Chartreuse, lemon, and, yes, 7-Up.

Puerto Rican Wingman was another favorite: Ron Zacapa Solera and Bacardi rums blend with orange curacao and lime into a bright whole where house falernum adds nutty texture, coffee bitters an earthy kick, Abita root beer a punchy finish. Another winner? Hit the smoky side with The Smoke Monster: Ardbeg 10yr Scotch, Vya sweet vermouth, Grand Marnier, orange juice, grenadine, celery seed bitters.

Whatever you order, don’t miss Meat.

HILLBILLY TEA
Hillbilly Tea is a funky, hipster version of Appalachia circa turn-of-the-century. In a gorgeous restored building, two levels of brick walls, rustic wood floors, ’70s rocking chairs, 1800s sewing machines, picnic tables and quilts set a comfortable tone for rounds of tea served on slices of a tree trunk. We sipped aromatic, herbal, mint-inflected Snap green tea ($3.75) and Sweet Smokey Mountain chai boiled with milk and sugar ($4.75) – a little sweet for me (we’re in the South, after all, where “sweet tea” means sweet). I found Twig ($3.75) most soothing: a nutty, toasted green tea.

Brunch is a fun affair, whether a skillet pancake ($8) lathered in Smokey Mountain chai butter and sorghum syrup, or white bean and sage fritters ($5). I particularly enjoyed pork and pone ($8), a mound of BBQ pulled pork on corn pone with garlic mayo, red cabbage chow chow, and choice of side – I opted for healthy braised greens. They serve a tasty biscuit ($3), even better with local honey and a dreamy house-cured bacon ($5). In the locally sourced foods vein with young, hip servers, Hillbilly Tea delivers substance alongside style.

DOC CROW’S
Spacious, extensive Doc Crow’s is a historic, 1880′s downtown Louisville space, particularly charming in the cozy, middle booth section or open back room with wood floors and fireplaces. The menu is a fun range of some of my Southern favorites, heavy on BBQ and oysters, also offering Po Boys, fried green tomatoes, mac n’ cheese, fried catfish and gumbo. Not all of it is the best version possible, but cornmeal fried catfish with hush puppies ($9), for example is generously portioned and satisfying, as are slow-smoked, baby back ribs ($12 1/2 rib, $22 full rib).

Key Lime Pie ($6) is not as tart as my favorite renditions (still remembering Uncle Bubba’s outside Charleston), while seasoned pork rinds ($4) taste great with a boozy lemonade but aren’t comparable to SF’s own cult classic – the best chicharrones I’ve ever had from the South to Mexico – 4505 Meats‘ chicharrones. Overall, Doc Crow’s is a fine downtown choice for value, with large portions, heartwarming food, and a welcoming, all-day space.

GARAGE ON MARKET
The building alone draws one into Garage on Market: a restored gas station with two cars melded together on the front drive, and a picnic table area with astro turf-covered seating under strung white lights. Serving brick oven-cooked pizzas, like the Monte Cristo ($14 – smoked chicken, gouda, egg, sorghum, preserves) or on the sweet side, Nutella Pie ($12 – nutella, banana, cinnamon sugar, butter, syrup), the Garage offers a playful, casual menu and regional country hams.

Brunch is the likes of beignets, poached eggs and ham, with drinks like a Red Hot Bitter ($7): local Red Hot Roasters espresso, chocolate milk, Kahlua, Bailey’s, and chocolate bitters. The cocktail menu in general appeals to cocktail fans while keeping that same approachable, unfussy tone.

PROOF ON MAIN
When it comes to Louisville, the restaurant and bar that almost always comes up is Proof on Main. Inside the 21c Hotel one is immediately impressed by its modern art museum. The dining room makes a statement with dramatic artwork and upholstered seats. But despite how long I’ve heard raves, disappointment set in immediately at the bar with a diffident, seemingly bored bartender who stood off to the side of the bar mixing drinks, only talking to servers vs. interacting with customers – and this was at the mellow hour of 5:30pm with a half empty bar.

The bartender acted as if he was doing us a favor serving an ok round of cocktails from a menu that in the end felt typical. For those of us who travel the world in search of the best food and drink, cocktails should stand on their own, yes, but service sets apart a menu that reads well from a destination-worthy bar. Ordering whiskey pours was the best way to go (we opted for Woodford Reserve’s rye duo), but in terms of the hundreds of top notch bars I’ve visited around the world, I wouldn’t return to Proof.

Once we moved to the dining room, service was friendly and gratifying, redeeming the experience. The food menu is a stimulating mix of modern creativity with Southern ingredients, but at high prices (starters are $8-21, entrees $18-34) I was disappointed in more than one dish, starting with a dry charred octopus ($15) with bagna cauda and lime.

Striped mullet ($27) sounded like a fishy/meaty melange of mussels, fennel, country ham, rutabaga, almonds, and smoked grapefruit but ultimately felt disjointed. The beloved Proof bison burger ($17), which more than half the restaurant seemed to order, piled high with Tillamook cheddar, smoked bacon, Jezebel sauce (a wonderful Southern mix of pineapple preserves, apple jelly, horseradish, mustard, black pepper), was cooked more medium than my medium rare request. I couldn’t help but recall the countless delectable gourmet burgers (whether bison or beef) I’ve had for under $15.

A standout dish was Bison marrow bones ($12), fatty and delectable, smartly paired with apple butter and frisee on toast. For cost to value/taste ratio, I’d recommend visiting the hotel’s museum, then heading on to Harvest or another locale for dinner and drinks.

CELLAR DOOR CHOCOLATES
A local chocolatier, Cellar Door Chocolates, produces crave-worthy sea salt peanut butter dark chocolate cups available at shops like The Wine Market http://www.thewinemarket.net/ on Bardstown Road. Buying a four-pack to sample, I promptly finished each one.

RYE BAR
Rye had just opened in February when I was in Louisville on a hip stretch of Market Street. Young bartenders in a sleek space were looking up recipes in Jim Meehan’s PDT Cocktail Book, slowly crafting drinks requested by guests or on menu. At the time, they seemed not quote yet ready for “prime time”, but served decent standards like a Mezcal Mule or Dark & Stormy (with Ron Zacapa 23 rum), or tongue-in-cheek drinks like The Shit ($9): Plymouth gin, chile-lime syrup, Prosecco.

One of my drinking companions, a well-known distiller, requested a Whiskey Sour with egg white and Whistlepig 10 year Rye (which they pour at $19 a glass) – it was easily the best drink I had here, bright and refreshing. Just mentioned in Food & Wine, this bar should get progressively better as the staff gain a more seamless knowledge of the menu and what they want to offer to customers.

SEELBACH BAR
The Seelbach is a piece of Louisville history dating back nearly 100 years. A dated respite of a bar inside a hotel, it offers an impressive range of bourbons and ryes, including a couple you won’t find outside of Kentucky, like a special Seelbach bottling from 1983 of Rathskeller Rye: a true treat, vibrant and boozy at cask strength. 

JOCKEY SILKS
With over 120 whiskies, Jockey Silks is a hotel bar offering a quiet, dated bar (think lots of wood and red, circa 1970’s) in which to sip a range of bourbons, from “deluxe” pours at $10, premium at $9, or most glasses at $8. It’s affordable and relaxing, a classic Louisville bourbon respite.

THE WINE MARKET OF LOUISVILLE AND OLD TOWN WINE AND SPIRITS
The Wine Market is a small but well-curated selection of wines from Alsace to Bordeaux with friendly staff in a funky, cool building with appealing wording (“weird, independent, proud”) covering the exterior wall. It seems to be Bardstown Road’s finest wine shop. Stronger on the spirits and beer front with a badass drive-through window is Old Town Wine and Spirits – they offer an affordable, wide-ranging selection.

QUILLS COFFEE
I felt right back at home with third wave coffee, excellently roasted beans and proper foam on my cappuccino at Quills Coffee (with two Louisville locations), which appears to be Louisville’s best artisan coffee.

As has long been commonplace on the West Coast and only gained traction in recent years in NY and places East, this hipster coffee haven is full of artists and students on laptops, with chemex and locally roasted beans hailing from Africa to South America.

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com

Maverick

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Maverick

virginia@sfbg.com

APPETITE Opened on July 13 way back in 2005, Maverick is a longtimer by modern day restaurant standards. I’d posit that it’s better than ever with new executive chef Emmanual Eng, brought on last year by owners Scott Youkilis and Michael Pierce (who is also the general manager and wine director). In contrast to its more casual, younger sister Hog and Rocks, Maverick’s food has grown more sophisticated and focused over the years.

The menu delights and has evolved slightly at each visit, with whispers of Southern influence (and beyond) married to forward-thinking culinary vision. Traditional Southern ingredients and dishes are a springboard for cutting-edge “New Southern” cuisine, the likes of which I’ve seen in cities such as Charleston and Atlanta in recent years or at San Francisco newcomers like Dixie and St. Vincent.

Maverick hasn’t slowed down with age and, especially with talented young Chef Eng on board, to continue challenging itself. An artist and Portland native, Eng boldly walked into SF’s Indigo in 2000, offering to work for free to learn the ropes. He eventually became line cook at Aqua, Quince, and Foreign Cinema, then sous chef at Boulevard and Sons and Daughters. His experience at some of our top restaurants shows in his bold-yet-refined cooking.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: the signature fried chicken ($24) is as fantastic as ever. Juicy inside, crispy outside, and not at all greasy, the batter is touched with cinnamon, cayenne, and white pepper. It was recently served with blackened patty-pan squash, succotash, pickled watermelon rind, and cornbread croutons — with ham hock and mustard gravy tying it all together, eliciting sighs of delight. It’s hard not to want to return to this one over and over again — and many diners do.

But you’d be remiss not to branch out. There’s nothing Southern about a squash blossom stuffed with brandade ($10), rosso bruno tomatoes, Calabrian chilis, and basil, but it’s delicious. Italian spirit is also present in burrata cheese, made nearby on 16th Street ($12), but rather than being leaving it as another burrata starter, Eng layers flavors with ashed rind from corn husks, baby leeks, arugula pisto, pickled fiddlehead ferns and zucchini. Just before the foie gras ban — which I am not happy about — a duck butcher plate ($16) impressed with foie, tasso-cured duck breast (there’s your Southern touch: fantastic tasso ham), strawberry mostarda, white peach, lime, and duck rillette croquette. Summery as it was rich, it’s the mostarda I craved more of.

Another inspired Southern reinterpretation is porcini mushroom and Anson Mills grits ($12.50). It’s not remotely a traditional grits dish, in fact, there’s only a smattering of creamy grits amid tender porcinis, pearl onion, snap peas and a smoked soft-poached egg running over ingredients when punctured. For a vegetarian dish, it’s almost meaty and soulful. Massachusetts Dayboat sea scallops ($13) are seared just right, but accents of compressed watermelon, pineapple mint, Padron peppers, dotted with lipstick pimento sauce and ancho chile-pumpkin seed pesto making it memorable. Lobster bread pudding draped in smoked cod ($26) is a brilliant twist on traditional New Brunswick stew — in this case, a creamy mussel chowder touched with jerky-like strips of linguica, clams, corn, and sea beans (seaweed). Dessert is no afterthought. In fact, a chocolate Samoa truffle ($9) feels like vacation, a chocolate mound spiked with chocolate bark in a pool of caramelized coconut accented by crumbled shortbread.

Pierce’s wine pairings and frank, engaging welcome are another key part of what makes Maverick special. (We share a New Jersey past, and you can still sense some of that state about him.) His love of wine has grown since his days at Sociale. The thoughful wine list is inclusive of some of California’s more interesting small labels like Wind Gap and Le P’Tit Paysan. A 2009 Cru Pinot from Monterey is perfection with the grits. The anise hyssop dotting tasso-cured duck “prosciutto” pops when paired with a floral, crisp 2011 Domaine de la Fouquette Grenache-Cinsault-Syrah-Rolle rose from Provence. Ask Pierce about his Junk Food Wine Pairing series — he’ll pair wines with the likes of Slim Jims and Doritos.

I appreciate that even sans hard liquor license, Maverick attempts creative cocktails ($9) using vermouth and sake in low alcohol aperitifs. Some work better than others, but the attentive use of local products like Sutton Cellars vermouth is something I wish more wine and beer only restaurants would do. The most consistent drink is a ginger lemon fizz, utilizing Sutton’s dry vermouth, bright with ginger, Meyer lemon, and dreamy honey foam.

At Maverick, attentive staff, intimate dining room, and unique explorations of a well-known regional cuisine exhibit what makes Southern cooking so beloved in the first place: heart.

MAVERICK

3316 17th St., SF

415-863-3061

www.sfmaverick.com

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