Media Archives — Page 19 of 121 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Protesters to be awarded $1 million settlement in mass arrest lawsuit

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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June 24, 2013

A federal judge has granted preliminary approval for a settlement of more than $1 million to a group of 150 activists who were mass arrested in Oakland three years ago. The National Lawyers Guild filed the federal class action civil-rights suit on behalf of the protesters, who in some cases were held for more than 24 hours despite never facing formal charges.

The mass arrest took place on Nov. 5, 2010, when activists marched in opposition to the light sentence handed down to Johannes Mehserle, the former BART officer who was tried for murder after he shot and killed unarmed BART passenger Oscar Grant.

After winding through the streets in downtown Oakland, protesters took a turn toward Fruitvale Station, where Grant was fatally shot. But instead, police in riot gear forced them into a residential neighborhood where they were kettled in and mass-arrested for unlawful assembly.

There’s a process for making mass arrests that is clearly laid out in OPD’s crowd control policy, “to comply with California law and the U.S. constitution. That would involve giving a warning, and then allowing people to disperse,” Rachel Lederman of the NLG points out. “This was a perfectly legal demonstration,” and with the exception of one or two individuals who vandalized bus windows during the march, the vast majority of protesters did not engage in illegal activity.

Instead of being cited and released, or simply allowed to disperse once police declared the march to be “unlawful,” the 150 demonstrators who were penned in by police were sent through a long and uncomfortable booking process, Lederman said. They were left sitting on the street, then loaded onto buses and vans where they were made to wait, still handcuffed, for up to 6 hours in some cases. (Note: This reporter was kettled in along with protesters initially but then allowed to leave when police created an exit for members of the media. From there, all reporters were sent to an area cordoned off by police tape, where it was difficult to observe the arrests. So reporters were essentially given the choice between being sent to jail, which would have made it difficult to file a timely story, or being roped off in an area far from where police activity could be observed. But that’s a different story.)

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department then sent demonstrators through a lengthy jail booking process, even though in similar circumstances, arrestees have typically been cited and released. They were placed in overcrowded, temporary holding cells with no beds and no chairs. “People needed medical attention that they didn’t get,” Lederman said. “No food was provided for more than twelve hours after our initial detention,” noted plaintiff Katie Loncke. “There was no room to lie down. I sat up against a wall for the entire night.”

Lederman said she expects protesters who were part of the class action suit to receive somewhere around $4,500 each in settlement payments. In addition to the monetary payment, the settlement agreement reaffirms and reincorporates OPD’s crowd control policy for up to seven years.

That policy dates back to 2004, when the NLG and the American Civil Liberties Union jointly drafted the regulations in the wake of an anti-war demonstration where police fired rubber bullets into the crowd, resulting in serious injuries and intense scrutiny on the police department’s practices.

While OPD complied with the crowd control policy in the first years after it was implemented, Lederman said, there were relatively few mass mobilizations in the streets of Oakland until those mounted in response to the Oscar Grant shooting. Those street demonstrations were followed by 2011 mass marches organized in conjunction with the Occupy movement.

“Our primary goal, and our clients’ primary goal, was to stop” unlawful police practices that violated OPD’s crowd control policy, Lederman said, “so that people can be freer to organize on the streets.”

Solomon: Uncle Sam and Corporate Tech: Domestic Partners Raising Digital Big Brother

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June 23, 2013

8

Solomon: Uncle Sam and Corporate Tech: Domestic Partners Raising Digital Big Brother

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

A terrible formula has taken hold: warfare state + corporate digital power = surveillance state.

“National security” agencies and major tech sectors have teamed up to make Big Brother a reality. “Of the estimated $80 billion the government will spend on intelligence this year, most is spent on private contractors,” the New York Times noted. The synergy is great for war-crazed snoops in Washington and profit-crazed moguls in Silicon Valley, but poisonous for civil liberties and democracy.

“Much of the coverage of the NSA spying scandal has underplayed crucial context: The capacity of the government to engage in constant surreptitious monitoring of all civilians has been greatly enhanced by the commercialization of the Internet,” media analyst Robert McChesney pointed out recently.

Overall, he said, “the commercialized Internet, far from producing competition, has generated the greatest wave of monopoly in the history of capitalism.” And the concentration of online digital power is, to put it mildly, user-friendly for the surveillance state.

It’s a truly odious and destructive mix — a government bent on perpetual war and a digital tech industry dominated by a few huge firms with an insatiable drive to maximize profits. Those companies have a lot to offer the government, and vice versa.

“The giant monopolistic firms that rule the Internet — Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Version, AT&T, Comcast, Microsoft — all have tremendous incentive to collect information on people,” McChesney said. “There is a great deal of profit for these firms and others to work closely with the national security apparatus, and almost no incentive to refuse to participate. In short, there is a military-digital complex deeply embedded into the political economy and outside any credible review process by elected representatives, not to mention the public.”

Central pieces of the puzzle — routinely left out of mainline media coverage — have to do with key forces at work. Why such resolve in Washington’s highest places for the vast surveillance that’s integral to the warfare state?

What has not changed is the profusion of corporations making a killing from the warfare state in tandem with Washington’s quest for geopolitical positioning, access to fossil fuels and other raw materials — and access to markets for U.S.-based industries ranging from financial services to fast food.

Let’s give credit to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for candor as he wrote approvingly in his book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree:” “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

I recently had a brief on-air exchange with Friedman, live on KQED Radio in San Francisco.

Solomon: “I think it’s unfortunate the sensibility that Thomas Friedman, who’s a very smart guy, has brought to bear in so many realms. For instance, we heard a few minutes ago, asked about Iraq and the lessons to be drawn — quote, ‘We overpaid for it.’ ‘We overpaid for it.’ Which is sort of what you might call jingo-narcissism, to coin a term. Just the dire shortage of remorse, particularly given Thomas Friedman’s very large role in cheering on, with his usual caveats, but cheering on the invasion of Iraq before it took place. Full disclosure, this is Norman Solomon, I chronicled his critique in my book War Made Easy, his critique of foreign policy, and he did cheerlead — in his sort of kind of erudite glib way, he did cheerlead the invasion of Iraq before it took place. Just as, as I chronicle in the book, he was gleeful in his columns about the bombing of Serbia, including Belgrade, civilian areas, just chortled and very very gleeful about that bombing. One other point I’d like to make. His recent column about NSA surveillance is absolutely a formula for throwing away the First Amendment gradually in stages. The idea that somehow we should relinquish the sacred Fourth Amendment, a little bit at a time, maybe not a little bit at a time, because if there’s terrorism that takes places in a big way again in this country then hold onto your hats — I mean, that is formulaic as an excuse, may I say a bit of a craven way, to accept this attack on our civil liberties.”

Host: “Norman, let me thank you for the call and get a response from Tom Friedman.”

Friedman: “Well first of all, I would invite, I wrote a book called “Longitudes and Attitudes” that has all my columns leading up to the Iraq War. And what you’ll find if you read those columns is someone agonizing over a very very difficult decision. To call it cheerleading is just stupid and obnoxious. Okay. Number one. And on the question of the Fourth Amendment, as has been pointed out, there actually has been no case of abuse that has been reported so far with this program. Believe me, if there were one, two, ten or twenty, then I think we’d be having a very different debate. And so to simply — he says I’m dismissing the Fourth Amendment, which is ludicrous, I’m terribly agonized over this whole business — but to simply blithely say, ‘Oh, you’re just trying to use the threat of another terrorist attack,’ as if that isn’t a live possibility, as if we haven’t had three or four real examples of people trying to do things that had they gotten through I think would have led to even worse restrictions on privacy and civil liberties.”

Well, that’s Thomas Friedman, in sync with the downward spiral of fear, threats, militarism and corporate consolidation. What a contrast with the clarity from Robert McChesney.

A week before the Guardian began breaking stories about NSA surveillance, McChesney appeared on FAIR’s “CounterSpin” radio program to talk about the findings in his new book “Digital Disconnect.” He warned that we “have an economy dominated by a handful of monopolistic giants working hand in hand with a national security state that’s completely off-limits to public review, to monitor the population.” And he said: “It’s not a tenable situation for a free society.”

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

Netroots Nation: How to make a comeback

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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June 21, 2013

24

At Netroots Nation the central focus on the how, and not so much the why. Everyone here knows why austerity is devastating, why women need ready access to birth control, and why blank-industrial complex is morally reprehensible. But not everyone necessarily knows how marriage equality made a comeback in 2012, or how one goes about convincing your Nebraska Republican farmer father to believe in climate change. At Netroots, your network is your net worth.

A noteworthy panel of the day was “Moving the Needle: How We Won the Gay Marriage Fight,” spotlighting an issue where the left has made considerable progress. Remember the days when Feinstein was trying to stop Newsom from issuing gay marriage licenses? That was less than a decade ago; today, even Republican senators from Alaska endorse gay marriage.

In 2009, the pro-gay marriage team lost at the ballot by 33,000 votes, three years later the good guys won by 38,000. Ian Grady, communications director for Equality Maine, explained “that their main message of ‘equal rights for all’” lacked the emotional resonance to persuade swing voters and “left the LGBT community vulnerable to the civil unions argument.” In 2012 when Equality Maine pivoted to showcasing a marine talking about his two moms and a grandfather’s emotional speech about wanting to see his granddaughter get married, their research overwhelmingly showed that the impact of emotional persuasion. PR pro tip for liberals and progressives: evaluate and reevaluate ideas that look like no-brainers to you and know that style (communication) is just about as important as substance (ideas).

Closing out the first day was the pep rally! Liberal stalwarts Howard Dean and Barney Frank, activist Sandra Fluke, Speaker of the California House John Perez, Senator Jeff Merkeley, and a video appearance from Obama all reiterated the message, and provided a much-needed respite from the dysfunctional state of our government by reminding us of the progress our issues have made and inspired us to keep on keeping on.

Netroots Nation Stats:

# of Google Glass Sightings: 2

# of White people flubbing “Si Se Puede!”: 3

# of Ignored interview requests sent from me to Congresswoman Pelosi’s office: 4

# of Times I heard “The president is not perfect” or some variation there of: 6

# of Times some crazy guy called the American people slaves to Congressman Mike Honda’s staff: I lost count after 6.

# of points Chris Bosh and Mike Miller scored in game 7 of the NBA Finals: 0

# of New media/tech-oriented panels on day one: 12

Michelle Shocked trying to erase her homophobic rant from YouTube

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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June 21, 2013

56

This past March, Texas singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked made hordes of enemies in San Francisco while performing at Yoshi’s, when she blurted out a string of bizarre, homophobic comments (those who are really interested can read the whole transcript here).

This is the age of the Internet, so it wasn’t long before the screwy remarks triggered a firestorm of controversy and went viral.

The Bay Area reporter has published a detailed account of the backstory leading up to a now-cancelled June 30 concert, orchestrated by San Francisco Examiner Publisher Todd Vogt, that would have featured Shocked during the city’s Pride celebration and was described by Vogt as a public apology. Vogt and Patrick Brown, chief financial officer of the San Francisco Newspaper Company, are working on gaining ownership of a 49 percent stake in the company that owns the Bay Area Reporter.

Meanwhile, it appears that Shocked is actively trying to erase recordings of her offensive rant from the Internet.

She’s already succeeded in getting them yanked from SoundCloud. Bay Guardian Music Editor Emily Savage wrote about Shocked’s homophobic comments just after the episode occurred, posting a recording submitted by a reader to her SoundCloud account.

But on April 6, Savage received a takedown notice informing her that the recording had been removed. Reached by email, SoundCloud spokesperson Kristina Weise explained, “The request came from the rights-holder via filing a DMCA report,” referring to a copyright violation complaint filed by Shocked under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Weise did not answer Bay Guardian questions about whether SoundCloud knew the file contained controversial statements. Nor did she answer questions about whether SoundCloud considered the comments, as well as the music, to be copyrighted content. But it does pose an interesting question about what happens when copyright law is invoked to remove controversial material.

So far, Shocked hasn’t gotten anywhere in her efforts to have a different set of recordings from Yoshi’s pulled from YouTube — the videos are still up. Google, which owns YouTube, has not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.

In an email exchange with Vogt – a primary shareholder of the San Francisco Print Media Company, which owns the San Francisco Examiner, the SF Weekly, and the SF Bay Guardian – Shocked asked for “help getting the illegal Yoshi’s bootlegs on YouTube pulled down,” as part of her “attempt to wheedle a few perqs on the side” in the concert deal.

Asked how he responded to that particular request, Vogt said in an email to the Bay Guardian, “I did respond, via a FaceTime exchange with Ms. Shocked, where I reminded her that SFBG was the first outlet to post an audio file of the Yoshi’s performance in question and that we would not, under any circumstances, remove the file/link.”

When the Bay Guardian emailed Shocked, she declined comment. But a little while later, her friend Roger Trilling, a journalist, phoned the Bay Guardian to say he had some thoughts to offer on Shocked’s behalf, though not as her official spokesperson.

Trilling challenged the idea that she was trying to sweep her offensive comments under the rug, pointing out that she had posted the transcript of her Yoshi’s comments to her own personal website. “She has always tried to keep her intellectual property off sites like YouTube,” he said. He added that he did not believe the offensive comments she made at Yoshi’s could be separated from the copyrighted musical content in the recording, because “they were part of the show.”

Shocked, meanwhile, has recently been championing the cause of whistleblower Bradley Manning, whose un-appointment as Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade has given fresh energy to the Bradley Manning parade contingent. When it became clear that Shocked was actively promoting the Bradley Manning contingent on Twitter, publicist Lisa Geduldig, who has been acting as a publicist for the community’s response to Pride rescinding Manning as Grand Marshal, sent Shocked an email to feel out whether she actually intended to show up and march.

Geduldig asked her, “was it your intention to march in the contingent?” Shocked responded that she and some friends were thinking of doing that. Soon after, Geduldig was cc’d on an email Shocked sent to a music journalist, “to keep my SF media sponsors ‘honest,’” which contained the entire email thread with Vogt and others who had been working with her on an ad and interview for the SF Weekly. From there, the thread was circulated through the community and wound up being forwarded to media outlets.

For her part, Geduldig remains concerned that Shocked’s shenanigans will be a distraction from the intentions behind the Bradley Manning contingent of the San Francisco Pride Parade. “This is about Bradley Manning,” she said. “This kid is on trial, potentially for his life. And it’s about him – it’s not about Michelle Shocked.”

Why I’m still with the Bay Guardian…for now

Sasha Cuttler

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June 20, 2013

166

During the tumultuous week since my longtime boss and mentor Tim Redmond suddenly left the Bay Guardian, I’ve been repeateadly reminded of the old journalism adage “Show don’t tell.” That’s what we tried to do in our widely circulated story this week about Tim and our new corporate overlords, and it’s the standard that I’ll apply to their public assurances that the Guardian will remain a progressive, independent voice.

I’m glad that owner Todd Vogt and new Publisher Stephen Buel said it, and now I will wait and see whether they show it through their actions. I think that Guardian readers should do the same thing, reserve judgment for now, and delay any plans to abandon or boycott the Guardian.

First, there are a few things I want to tell you all. As the senior progressive political journalist still working for a newspaper in San Francisco, I hope that you’ll trust me to test our independence and speak honestly to you about whether the Guardian’s integrity remains intact (either here or through other media if that becomes necessary).

As tempting as it has been for all of us to just follow Tim out the door and refuse to give the new Guardian management any cover or credibility, it’s not clear to me how that would help San Francisco or the Guardian’s readers and community. The city needs the Guardian more than ever, given the arbitrary and exploitive exercises of corporate power now plaguing this great city, but nobody needs a Guardian that has been coopted by those same forces.

At this point, I’m willing to risk my job for the sake of truth and transparency, as I did with the long story I wrote with my courageous colleague Rebecca Bowe this week (and the support of another trusted ally, Guardian Interim Editor Marke B), and which I’m probably doing with this post as well.

So let me continue what we started by offering a bit of backstory and updating you on the latest developments before closing with some thoughts on the possible endgame to all of this. As we talked over the weekend following Tim’s sudden departure, a bit traumatized by how it all went down, Rebecca and I both seriously considered not returning to work on Monday.

Ultimately, we decided to come in to write a story on what happened, as Buel had invited the Guardian to do late Friday afternoon, his first official act as our new publisher. Initially wary that writing a full and truthful account of what happened might get us fired, we decided that was the only thing that we could do.

Consistent with longstanding Guardian editorial policy that sources may not preview news stories, we planned to refuse any requests by Buel or Vogt to read our story before it went to the press, and to their credit, they didn’t ask. When I interviewed each of them that day, I thanked them for letting us do the story and told them how important I thought it was to our community and the Guardian’s credibility.

Our noon press deadline passed without incident and we thought we were in the clear until around 3pm when we were called into CFO Pat Brown’s office and we saw him, Vogt, and Buel each holding copies of our article, clearly displeased with what they were reading. Executive VP David Ceccarelli, who oversees the company’s printing press, had seen the article and sent them copies, delaying the Guardian’s press run until Vogt gave the okay.

It was a tense but fairly measured conversation, and we made our case that the article was fair, straightforward, and accurate, even though it went beyond the scope of what they expected and may have sometimes cast them in an unflattering light. In fact, we told them this article was the only way that the Guardian would have any credibility with its readers.

Buel said that he didn’t see any incorrect facts in the article, but he took issue with the article’s emphasis and context, casting it as an example of how the Guardian isn’t “realistic” in its approach. Vogt’s main concern was that the article was what he repeatedly called a “fuck you,” a parting shot by three employees who planned to resign.

As someone who has written many “fuck you” polemics over the years, I assured him that this wasn’t one, and that I considered it a fair article that I was proud of. Still, he wanted our assurances that we planned to stick around, telling us he wouldn’t print the article if this was to be our final act as Guardian employees.

Writing the article was a cathartic experience for us, giving us some hope that the Guardian might still be worth fighting for. So we each told Vogt that we still want to know what the plan is for the Guardian — something we’ve been seeking for months — but that we’re willing to stick around for now to assess that plan and our roles in it.

Vogt told us that if we were lying to him that he would hunt us down to “burn down your houses” — a threat that he seemed to mostly mean as a joke, we hope — and then he told Ceccarelli by phone that he could roll the presses with our article. Within the hour, we then posted a longer version of the article on the Guardian website, which generated 218 comments and 684 Facebook shares within 48 hours.

Frankly, we’re still concerned about the comments from Buel and Vogt that the Guardian’s editorial tone and focus need to change, which they’re only been able to describe in vague terms so far. And we were all disturbed the next day when Buel told Marke that he will begin proofing Guardian stories after they are laid out and before they go to press (he hasn’t yet asked to preview blog posts like this one), ostensibly to catch typos and examples of our flawed tone.

While that is probably his perogative as our new publisher (to preview content without directing what we cover and how), it could also portend an unacceptable incursion into the newspaper’s independence and integrity by someone who has been critical of the Guardian and its progressive voice, and who often doesn’t seem to share our values and worldview.

But we meant what we said about giving the new Guardian a chance, and we’ve all found Buel to be an honest, straight-shooting person and experienced journalist who wants the Guardian to succeed. And we believe Vogt’s explanations that it doesn’t make financial sense to shutter the Guardian, and that he’s committed to its long-term viability.

Time will tell whether Buel’s input seems constructive and designed to elevate the Guardian as a forum for progressive-minded Bay Area residents (hopefully improving our business model along the way), or whether he intends to strip away what we all love about the Guardian and turn it into just another bland, centrist publication.

We’re trying to keep an open mind, hoping for the best but prepared for the worst. No matter what happens, we will continue to communicate with our community, the people who rely on the Guardian almost as much as we do, strategizing ways to help San Francisco realize its potential.

These have been tough days for us at the Guardian, a sad reflection of the struggles that many of us face as we grapple with economic insecurity, erosion of civil liberties, and exploitation by wealthy corporations and individuals.

But we’ve been sensing and chronicling a renewed progressive spirit in San Francisco, from the small victories of tenants groups to the organizing against Plan Bay Area to the growing recognition that economic development needs to be tempered with protection of this city’s cultural and economic diversity.

So for now, in the absence of Tim’s leadership, I’m taking my tenure at the Guardian one day at a time. “All I’m saying is keep reading and see if we live up to what I’m saying,” Buel said of the Guardian’s independent, progressive approach, which he promised would continue.

I’ll monitor that from the inside, you all can monitor it from the outside, and we’ll see what happens. Deal?

On Guard

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June 19, 2013

6

Read the unabridged online version of this story here.

steve@sfbg.com, rebecca@sfbg.com

Longtime Bay Guardian Editor Tim Redmond left the newspaper last week in a dispute with its new owners over personnel changes and his autonomy within San Francisco Print Media Company, which also includes the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly.

Redmond led the Guardian newsroom for most of his 31 years with the newspaper and engineered last year’s sale to Todd Vogt and a Canadian ownership team. As part of that sale — which Redmond cast to staff as saving the Guardian from bankruptcy and closure — Bruce B. Brugmann and Jean Dibble, the couple who founded the Guardian in 1966, retired from the paper, its Potrero Hill office building was sold, and the Guardian moved into the Examiner’s downtown office in June 2012.

Redmond was the Guardian editor and publisher, the name at the top of the masthead and the person solely in charge of Guardian operations, and he told staff he had been guaranteed full autonomy by the new ownership, which was important to the Guardian staff. As such, he resisted Vogt’s periodic efforts to control the newspaper, including early threats to fire City Editor Steven T. Jones for unspecifed reasons.

Nonetheless, Vogt did make some successful incursions on the Guardian’s independence, initially by encouraging layoffs, later by interfering with Guardian endorsements in the November 2012 election.

Then, on Oct. 26, 2012, without consulting Redmond, Vogt named Examiner Editor Stephen Buel to be vice president for editorial overseeing both newspapers, announcing that Buel would “oversee the editorial direction, content, tone, and voice of our newspapers and web sites.”

Shortly after the purchase of the longtime Guardian rival SF Weekly two months later, Vogt similarly appointed Weekly writer Erin Sherbert to oversee online communications at all three papers.

Neither Buel nor Sherbert directed or reviewed any Guardian editorial content prior to publication, although some stories from the Guardian and the Weekly began to appear in the Examiner’s newspaper and website, often edited by Examiner editors but giving credit to their original source.

The Guardian’s weekly revenues continued to remain flat or decline, at least partially because of the departure of two of the Guardian’s commission-based advertising representatives, positions which remain unfilled. The Guardian’s sales staff remains significantly smaller than that of the other two publications.

Vogt, Buel, and Chief Financial Officer Pat Brown began a conversation with Redmond about the need to cut expenditures, focusing on the newsroom, which until June 14 had seven full-time Guardian staffers and a part-time art director, who also works for the Examiner.

Redmond expressed a willingness to make cuts while also emphasizing the need to hire more ad reps to boost revenue, Redmond and Buel both told us. “He made it very clear that we need more salespeople,” said Buel, who also told us that he supported Redmond’s stance with Vogt and Brown that he should be allowed to choose where the cuts would be made.

“Todd and I were in the middle of difficult and ongoing negotiations for how to cut costs. My position is that it is entirely appropriate for the owner to ask us to cut costs, and then I would come back with a plan,” Redmond told us.

Instead, on June 12, shortly before Redmond left the office to moderate a well-attended forum that he had organized on Plan Bay Area and San Francisco’s long-term growth policies (see related story), Vogt called Redmond and Buel into Brown’s office and demanded he lay off three specific people in the newsroom (ironically, not including Jones, whose work Vogt has come to publicly praise in recent months) as soon as the current issue is complete. That would have cut in half the number of writers and editors working under Redmond, making it difficult to put out a paper.

“To have me lay off three people by name is not acceptable,” Redmond told us, holding firm that he would cut expenses but that he wouldn’t let Vogt micromanage the Guardian in that fashion. Redmond informed Buel of his decision on June 13 and sought to meet with Vogt, who wasn’t in the office that day.

“Tim told me in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t do it,” Buel told us. “He was civil and cordial and adult about it, but he was very clear he was going to leave the Guardian” rather than be forced to implement that decision. Buel then conveyed to Vogt that Redmond had offered to resign rather than making the cuts.

The next night, Redmond and Vogt exchanged a series of emails in which Redmond repeatedly offered to leave and help create a smooth leadership transition and Vogt repeatedly insisted that Redmond make the cuts and/or clarify whether he was resigning.

It culminated shortly before midnight with Vogt telling Redmond that his resignation had been accepted — to which Redmond responded the next morning that he hadn’t offered his resignation — and that he was barred from returning to the office or speaking for the Guardian.

VOGT’S EXPLANATION

Guardian staffers arrived to the office earlier than usual for a 9:30am meeting Vogt had called shortly before midnight, but Vogt was absent. The meeting commenced around 10:15am, with Vogt phoning in from Canada for his first meeting exclusively with Guardian staff.

He described his email exchange with Redmond the night before. “I accepted his resignation as editor of the Guardian, effective immediately,” Vogt said. “I didn’t ask for his resignation, I didn’t want him to resign. But it was Tim’s decision.”

“For 12 months, we let — I let — Tim run the Guardian pretty much hands off,” he said, allowing that on a few seldom occasions, “I actually made demands, some of which Tim listened to, some of which Tim disregarded.” Vogt went on to say that he, Redmond, Buel, and Brown had been meeting to discuss “very serious and significant changes” at the paper, which would have included staffing cuts.

Vogt went on to say, “Last month, it became painfully apparent that we had to make some radical changes to the Guardian…What we’ve been doing … isn’t resonating with advertisers, and I honestly don’t believe it’s resonating with readers.”

He went on: “Whatever you heard yesterday with respect to layoffs, or freelancers no longer writing for the paper, all of those decisions…are off the table.”

Going forward, he said, “I’m going to look to Marke [Bieschke, appointed interim editor], and Dulc [Vice President of Advertising Dulcinea Gonzalez], and Steve [Buel] to quickly come up with a plan of what we need to do … to get the Guardian back on solid financial and, and sort of ideological footing, in the community…I’m not saying… that there won’t be layoffs. There may well indeed be.”

Jones asked about how Redmond’s departure would be presented to the community, and what he meant by the change in editorial tone. “No disrespect to Bruce [Brugmann], but I think the editorial changes that need to happen at the paper need to reflect sort of, progressive — the new progressive — movement, the new progressive values,” Vogt responded.

Vogt insists that Redmond helped develop the plan to lay off two of the three people they discussed. Buel also said that particular staffers had been discussed in meetings among the four of them, although Buel said only supported two of the three cuts that Vogt insisted upon.

“He fully supported two of the three cuts until Thursday,” Vogt said of Redmond. “Suddenly something happened on Thursday. I don’t know whether it was a conscience thing, or a change of heart or mind.”

Redmond denies that he supported any specific layoffs, telling us that he insisted on being the one to make decisions on who worked for the Guardian and that he wanted to broadly review the Guardian’s expenses, including what the company was charging it for rent and printing the paper.

SHRINKING THE GUARDIAN

Guardian Culture Editor Caitlin Donohue severed ties to the newspaper shortly after the meeting. “I was just shocked that I was being told by intercom to disbelieve my editor and mentor of four years,” Donohue said when asked for her response to the meeting.

In that meeting, Donohue accepted a voluntary layoff. With regard to Redmond’s ouster, Donohue said, “Getting rid of Tim, and the others they told him were next, is part and parcel of the company’s slice and dice attitude to their acquisitions. You can’t run that paper after cutting nearly 50 percent of its editorial staff — or a good one, at least.”

On Monday, Gonzalez also resigned from the Guardian, effective July 1, further reducing its advertising staff. She had no comment for this story, but Vogt called her departure “a huge blow.”

Redmond said that he was cut out of the loop on decisions that Vogt and other managers made to restructure the advertising sales team to have reps selling into all three products.

“They never asked me how the ad department should be set up,” Redmond said.

And while Redmond and Buel both say he strongly advocated for more employees to be dedicated to selling the Guardian, Redmond found himself playing the same role he had played as executive editor under the previous ownership: reacting to the paper’s financial fortunes by cutting costs.

The Guardian had seven full-time staff writers when Jones was hired in 2003, which Redmond whittled down to just one by the time the paper was sold, despite the Guardian winning a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the SF Weekly and the chain that owned it, Village Voice Media, for unfair competition and anti-competitive pricing.

“I recognized in May that Guardian sales were down and I was not opposed to the idea that we had to cut costs,” Redmond told us, later adding, “I came back with two plans. One, sell me the Guardian, or two, tell me how much I need to cut.”

Vogt didn’t accept either idea, insisting Redmond lay off the staffers that he had identified. Whether that final standoff is seen as a straight business decision, a personality conflict, or a question of the autonomy of Redmond and the Guardian, it’s certainly true that it was the last in a series of conflicts between the two men.

INTERNAL FRICTION

Friction between Vogt and the Guardian’s newsroom had been building for some time, centered around a couple of issues: payment of tens of thousands of dollars in debts to freelance writers that Vogt assumed when taking over the Guardian, and Redmond’s authority as editor/publisher of the Guardian.

While the terms of the Guardian’s sale to Vogt’s group haven’t been made public, sources say there were a couple areas of disagreement that delayed Vogt’s acceptance of his responsibility to pay the freelance debt, although that was settled earlier this year.

Guardian staffers who work directly with the freelancers consistently complained about the unpaid debt and the bulk of the past freelance debt remains unpaid.

“We didn’t have a ton of free money to pay the debt owed under Bruce’s leadership,” Vogt told us.

Vogt also began complaining to Redmond about specific writers in the paper that he didn’t like. “I had made demands about certain freelancers, ‘I don’t want so and so writing for the paper,’ and they were still in the paper.”

Redmond resisted the owner’s suggestions to fire certain writers, including L.E. Leone. “I think it was the coolest thing in the world that we had a transgender sports columnist who was one of the best writers in San Francisco. Todd strongly disagreed,” Redmond told us. Leone resigned from the Guardian on June 15.

During the fall election Vogt clashed with Redmond over the supervisorial endorsement in District 5. After the Guardian revoked its Julian Davis endorsement, it contemplated endorsing Christina Olague, but Vogt refused to allow it.

“He told me his newspapers would not be endorsing Christina Olague,” Redmond said, a point that Vogt confirmed.

Redmond said that Vogt then “threatened to fire me” for running a pro-Olague op-ed from longtime queer activist Cleve Jones.

Vogt and Buel insist they have allowed the Guardian to remain an independent, progressive voice and that will continue. Buel said, “All I’m saying is keep reading and see if we live up to what I’m saying.”

TIM’S SAN FRANCISCO

The day news of Redmond’s firing hit the Guardian newsroom, the ousted editor created a website titled “Tim’s San Francisco” on blogspot.com and posted a statement about what had happened.

“Hi, my friends, all the people I love and care about in this city. I’m sad to announce that after 30 years, I have left the Bay Guardian,” he wrote. “I am proud of all the work that we did over those years, but sadly, it has come to an end.”

After briefly explaining the details of his departure, he added, “The good news is that Blogger is free, and I will fancy up this blog in the next couple days, and I will continue to present perspectives and news about progressive San Francisco.”

In the days that followed, online comments on Facebook, sfbg.com, and Redmond’s new blog demonstrated an outpouring of support from community members.

Brugmann also offered this statement to the Guardian: “Tim…was largely responsible for making the Guardian the major progressive voice in San Francisco.”

Redmond said he’s been engaging in lots of discussions with the Guardian’s community.

“I do have to give Todd credit for buying the Guardian and keeping it alive this year,” Redmond said, adding that he was disappointed that Vogt chose to “basically destroy the newsroom” rather than taking him up on his offer to buy back the newspaper or explore other ideas for making the Guardian sustainable.

As Redmond told us, “I’m looking at my options for ensuring progressive, independent journalism is alive in San Francisco.”

One ringy-dingy

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marke@sfbg.com

STAGE “Oh, Ernestine has plenty to say about the current phone-surveillance thing,” the irrepressible Lily Tomlin told me, referencing her famous “one ringy-dingy” phone operator character and the recent NSA spying revelations. (Tomlin was driving down an LA freeway on her way to do some errands, popping in and out of coverage on her hands-free.)

In fact, another classic phrase from Ernestine, who’s been snooping on calls since Tomlin’s 1970s days on Martin and Rowan’s Laugh-In, rather appropriately sums up the civilian surveillance clusterbuck: “Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e3dTOJi0o

“Back during the whole Bush wiretapping time, Ernestine became an emblem for political cartoonists,” Tomlin continues. “But her association with government shenanigans goes back through Iran-Contra, all the way to Nixon and Watergate. In fact, during Iran-Contra in the ’80s, I was performing at the Emmys — I was up for one that year — and I called up G. Gordon Liddy to do a skit with Ernestine. He was going to play Oliver North! And I would be eavesdropping on him. He agreed, but then I backed off because I thought I was making too much light of the whole thing.”

The rogue’s gallery in the above paragraph gives some indication of Tomlin’s longevity in the biz, as well as her necessity. “I’ve been performing since I could basically walk,” she says. “When I was growing up in Detroit, I used to hang a blanket as a curtain on my back porch and put on shows for my family and neighbors. And then, because it started to get dangerous on the streets, I immersed myself in afterschool arts programs. I started incorporating film in to my performances, as well as comedy, drama, a little of this and a whole lot of that. I think I was the original performance artist!”

Along with Ernestine, Tomlin’s essential characters like Edith Ann, Mrs. Beaszley, Sister Boogie Woman — maybe even her characters from 9 to 5 and Big Business, please? — will be in tow for “An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin” worth trekking up to Napa to catch. The show, a version of which Tomlin performs 30-50 times a year, is a a kind of constantly evolving greatest hits extravaganza. “These characters never leave me; I’m constantly playing with them in my head, like some weird kind of checkerboard,” Tomlin said with a laugh. “But they have to say something, something relevant. Somehow, of course, it always seems like there’s something for them to say, especially lately.”

Now 73, Tomlin’s coming off a season on TV as the pot-happy hillbilly grandma from Reba McEntire’s sitcom Malibu Country and the Tina Fey movie Admission. She’s also a regular as Lisa Kudrow’s mother on web series Web Therapy, an avid social media user, and a crusader for several causes. “Darn good genes,” she says when I gasp at her energy, roughly 1000 times any other human’s. “I had an aunt just pass away at 91. Marke, she would have lived to 120 if the smoker’s emphysema hadn’t slowed her down.”

And her maverick feminist spirit still shines bright. “There’s more opportunity for women in this business now than when I started out. Working with Tina and Lisa was inspirational, and now with new media, the possibilities are really opening up. I mean, people used to think women did comedy only because they were too ugly to do anything else. When I first started getting better known, I can’t tell you how many people came up to me saying, ‘Oh, Lily, you’re so much prettier than you are on television!’ Ha. Can you believe that?”

“AN EVENING OF CLASSIC LILY TOMLIN”

Doors 7pm, show 8pm, $70-$85

The Uptown

1350 Third St., Napa

(707) 259-0123

More to grow on

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June 19, 2013

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Pit Stop (Yen Tan, US) One of the very best narrative features at Sundance this year, Yen Tan’s drama nonetheless completely flew under the radar of media attention. It’s a beautifully low-key tale of two 40-ish gay men in a Texas small town. Neither are closeted, but they aren’t exactly fulfilled, either, both being in awkward domestic situations. Gabe (Bill Heck) is still living with angry ex-wife Shannon (Amy Seimetz) for the sake of their six year-old daughter. Ernesto (Marcus DeAnda) still shares his apartment with younger, slackerish ex-BF Luis (Alfredo Maduro), who keeps dragging his feet about actually moving out. Everyone is dissatisfied, but not quite willing to risk making a leap into unfamiliar territory. We know Gabe and Ernesto are fated to meet, yet it’s Tan’s terrifically nuanced portrayal of the relationships they must exit first that dominates almost the entire feature. Pit Stop is the kind of slow burner that sneaks up on you, surprising with the force of well-earned climactic joy after so much concise observation of credibly ordinary, troubled lives. Fri/21, 4pm, Castro; June 27, 7pm, Elmwood. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rhaXvoGf0s

Free Fall (Stephan Lacant, Germany) A young German police cadet, Marc (Hanno Koffler), finds himself disturbingly drawn to a fellow cadet, Kay (Max Riemelt), during a weekend of training exercises — a regimen that proves to be not quite enough of an outlet to diffuse the erotic tension between them. Back home, though, are Marc’s very pregnant girlfriend, Bettina (Katharina Schüttler), and a circle of friends and family who expect him to continue along his current track of shacking up, forming a family, and demonstrating his loyalty to the macho brotherhood of his colleagues on the force. When Kay transfers into the department, his presence exerts a pressure on Marc that threatens to derail him. Director Stephan Lacant’s film, co-written with Karsten Dahlem, movingly depicts the painful breakdown of a man ruled by impulses he’s unable to face up to, and the consequences that come of remaining paralyzed in an impossible state. Fri/21, 6:30pm, Castro; Mon/24, 9:30pm, Elmwood. (Lynn Rapoport)

C.O.G. (Kyle Patrick Alvarez, US) The first feature adapted from David Sedaris’ writing, Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s film captures his acerbic autobiographical comedy while eventually revealing the misfit pain hidden behind that wit. Tightly wound David (Jonathan Groff), on the run from problematic family relations and his sexual identity, takes the bus from East Coast grad school to rural Oregon — his uninhibited fellow passengers providing the first of many mortifications here en route. Having decided that seasonal work as an apple picker will somehow be liberating, he’s viewed with suspicion by mostly Mexican co-workers and his crabby boss (Dean Stockwell). More fateful kinda-sorta friendships are forged with a sexy forklift operator (Corey Stoll) and a born-again war vet (Denis O’Hare). Under the latter’s volatile tutelage, David briefly becomes a C.O.G. — meaning “child of God.” Balancing the caustic, absurd, and bittersweet, gradually making us care about an amusingly dislikable, prickly protagonist, this is a refreshingly offbeat narrative that pulls off a lot of tricky, ambivalent mood shifts. Sat/22, 9:15pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Bwakaw (Jun Robles Lana, Philippines, 2012) Grumpy old man in the rural Philippines — OK, Jun Robles Lana’s seriocomedy isn’t going to top many lists as the sexiest movie at Frameline. But it’s one of the most deeply satisfying films at this year’s festival. Six-decade Filipino cinema veteran Eddie Garcia plays Rene, a crusty loner who lives alone and works without pay (he’s officially retired) at the local post office just to have something to do. He has cranky relationships — “friendships” would be a stretch — with the area priest, a widowed neighbor, and two over-the-top queens who run a hair salon. His closest bonds are to a rest-home denizen now too senile to remember who he is, and to the stray mutt who’s sort of his dog — though not so much that he’ll actually let it in the house. After decades in denial, Rene finally accepted his homosexuality at age 60, when “my time was [already] passed.” But he gets an unanticipated new surge of hope, possibly misdirected, upon befriending rough-hewn younger bicycle-taxi driver Sol (Rez Cortez). With its leisurely pace and seemingly stereotypical characters who turn out to be much more complex than they initially appear, Bwakaw is a disarmingly modest movie that gradually reveals a rather beautiful soul. Sun/23, 5:45pm, Victoria. (Harvey)

The Out List (Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, US) Documentarian Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, whose previous projects have focused on prominent African Americans and Latinos, supermodels, and porn stars, turns his lens on the LGBTs for a survey film set to air on HBO this month. While there’s no sign of the radical faeries or the poly queers with negative interest in the marriage equality battle, Greenfield-Sanders has gathered a decently varied collection of 16 LGBT individuals, mostly but not only celebrities, whose common thread is having gone public. Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and ex-NFLer Wade Davis describe their time in the closet and their coming-out episodes, while Hollywood stars Neil Patrick Harris and Cynthia Nixon comment on strategies for getting work and fighting the good fight (which for the latter includes closeting her bisexuality). Only an hour long, The Out List merely skims the surface of its subjects’ experiences, but we do get some sense of their scope, which includes finding family in NYC’s ballroom scene, getting elected as a lesbian Democratic sheriff in Dallas County, Texas, and learning to view one’s orientation as a gift from god. Tue/25, 4:30pm, Castro. (Rapoport)

Beyond the Walls (David Lambert, Belgium/Canada/France, 2012) Aptly compared in the Frameline catalog to such intelligent recent gay relationship studies as Weekend (2011) and Keep the Lights On (2012), David Lambert’s finely crafted debut feature charts its protagonists through an unpredictable, rocky romance. Paolo (Matila Malliarakis) is living with an older woman when he meets bartender-musician Ilir (Guillaume Gouix), who’s amused by the young blonde’s drunken antics while wary of the mutual attraction between them. When immature, puppyish Paolo gets thrown out by his exasperated girlfriend, he lands on Ilir’s doorstep as an uninvited instant-boyfriend, and despite some initial grumbling, that’s pretty much how it works out. Yet an unfortunate turn of events forces a long, involuntary separation between the two that their coupledom might not survive. While it requires a certain suspension of disbelief that focused, self-confident Ilir would fall for the flighty, needy Paolo, the eventual complexity of their relationship makes for a powerful cumulative impact. June 27, 9:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Reaching for the Moon (Bruno Barreto, Brazil) Brazilian director Bruno Barreto (1997’s Four Days in September) offers a moving account of the romantic relationship between the American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and the Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Glória Pires), which spanned the 1950s and the better part of the ’60s. The pair meet under inauspicious circumstances: traveling to Brazil, Elizabeth visits her old Vassar friend Mary (Tracy Middendorf) at the gorgeous rural estate where she lives with Lota, a wealthy woman from one of Brazil’s prominent political families. Unfortunately for Mary, Lota’s regard for the timid, restrained Elizabeth moves along a precipitous arc from irritation to infatuation, her subsequent impetuous pursuit of her lover’s friend revealing a heartless egoism — as well as an attitude toward householding that blends a poly sensibility with a ruling-class sense of entitlement. The film tracks Elizabeth and Lota’s enduring affair during a period marked by professional triumphs, personal lows, and political turmoil, all of which take their toll on the relationship. June 28, 6:45pm, Castro. (Rapoport)

Out Here: A Queer Farmer Film Project (Jonah Mossberg, US) Jonah Mossberg’s documentary crosses the country seeking out the perspectives of LGBT farmers, visiting some 30 farms before narrowing the focus to seven disparate subjects growing food in settings that range from a community garden in West Philadelphia to a farmstead in rural Alabama (or what one participant calls “the toenail of the Appalachians”). An allegiance to organics and other sustainable practices establishes some common ground. However, asked to encapsulate how queerness impacts her farming life, a woman raising crops and chickens in the Bronx’s Garden of Happiness observes, “I don’t think the land asks that question — if you’re gay or straight,” while others tease queerness out of acts like turning to permaculture and draw connections between heteronormativity and industrial agriculture. Look for fermentation guru Sandor Katz at Tennessee’s Little Short Mountain Farm, and stay seated for the longish closing credits interspersed with earnest (and otherwise) discussions of which veggie wins the title of queerest piece of produce. June 29, 1:30pm, Victoria. (Rapoport)

Young and Wild (Marialy Rivas, 2012) Structured around the anonymous and oft-graphic blog posts of a Chilean teenager, director-cowriter Marialy Rivas’s inventive, engaging film depicts a young woman’s navigation — both solitary and very, very public — of her sexual and romantic impulses as they clash with a rigid upbringing of spiritual indoctrination. Raised in an evangelical Christian household, Daniela (Alicia Rodríguez) bluntly documents, under the screen name Young and Wild, a period of upset and exploration during which she is outed as a fornicator and expelled from school, threatened by her hard-edged mother (Aline Küppenheim) with missionary exile, and faced with the sorrow of watching a beloved aunt (Ingrid Isensee) battle cancer. As Daniela begins a relationship with a young man (Felipe Pinto), begins a relationship with a young woman (María Gracia Omegna), and records the proceedings with a complicated mixture of comic insights, lyrical observations, and obscenities, her introspections play with the device of the straightforward voice-over—broadcast to untold numbers of unknown peers who avidly follow and comment on her adventures and misadventures. June 29, 8:30pm, Roxie. (Rapoport)

Frameline37 runs June 20-30 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. For tickets (most shows $12) and complete schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

The Selector

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June 19, 2013

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WEDNESDAY 19

Camera Obscura

“If you want me to leave, then I’ll go/If you want me to say, let it show/Do you want me to leave, let me know,” pleads Scottish indie pop group Camera Obscura on heartstruck ballad “Fifth in Line to the Throne” off the group’s newest full-length, Desire Lines. It’s the Glasgow five-piece’s first new record in four years (the most recent being My Maudlin Career). And yes, the new one maintains the band’s 17-year-strong streak of stunning, wistful ballads, laced gently through with heartfelt vocal musings. Much like that other lauded Glasgow-based gentle indie pop act, Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura has mastered the art of the melancholy pop song, seeped in lovely whispers and lilting moans, gentle strings, soft piano keys, drumming pitter-patters, the works. But we love them for it, like those weepy torch songs of yesteryear. The show gives you the chance to cry in public. Want you to leave? No, we’ll let it show. (Emily Savage)

With Photo Ops

8pm, $25

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.regencyballroom.com

Dogcatcher

If Dogcatcher was a brand of alcohol, it’d be Jameson — it’s that smooth. By crafting tight rhythms and jazzy guitar riffs, the San Jose-based trio provides an almost flawless fusion of jazz and rock. And its simple and soft vocals create an intimate experience on stage. Dogcatcher’s songs are well-constructed and the delivery creates a calmer version of traditional jazz. Song “Be Easy” off its most recent album It’s Easy reflects this: “Because tonight you know, it’s all about the sound/Just be easy,” sings Andrew Heine in a lazily seductive voice that makes you believe that for him, it really is just that simple (Hillary Smith)

With the Sam Chase, the Gallery

9pm, $8

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 861-1615

www.bottomofthehill.com

THURSDAY 20

Fresh Meat Festival

With “Trailblazers,” the 12th annual Fresh Meat Festival — a celebration of transgender and queer performance — is paying tribute to musicians, dancers, and theater people who hoe their own rows. This year they all do it in our own neighborhoods. The dancers, AXIS Dance Company, Barbary Coast Cloggers, Allan Frias’ Mind over Matter and Sean Dorsey Dance and Las Bomberas de la Bahia couldn’t be more different from each other. What they share, beyond working in the Bay Area, is a clear vision of what they want to do and the skill and perseverance to stick to it. Very simply, they have become tops in their field. To see them now in a sort of meta context of their sexual orientation, is a joyous opportunity to add another notch to their trailblazers spirit. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/22, 8pm, $15–$25

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com

The Ape Woman: A Rock Opera

Step right up and view Dark Porch Theatre’s presentation of The Ape Woman, May van Oskan’s rock opera exploring the life of one Julia Pastrana, an indigenous Mexican woman who achieved fame (infamy?) on the 19th century circus sideshow circuit. Sometimes also dubbed “the Bear Woman,” the diminutive Pastrana suffered from hypertrichosis — resulting in thick, dark hair all over her face and body, a trait that made her a valuable prize for unscrupulous promoters. With a set styled like a Victorian sideshow tent, van Oskan’s opera tells Pastrana’s fascinating live story via 14 original songs, backed up by a seven-piece ensemble. (Cheryl Eddy)

Opens tonight, 8pm

Runs Thu-Sat and June 26, 8pm; Sun/23, 4pm, through June 29, $15–$30

Exit Studio

156 Eddy, SF

www.theapewoman.com

The Bottle Kids

I once saw Bottle Kids frontperson Annie Ulukou at the Stork Club with nothing but a ukulele. This could have gone any which way, but instead of succumbing to the soft, lullaby tone inherent to the miniature instrument, Annie amplified and distorted its sound to backup the heartbreak and pure aggression of her voice. This is indicative of the Bottle Kids sound as a whole. Their shows can be as personal, subtle, soulful and as easy to access as a ukulele in a small room while still sucker-punching you square in the gut. Check this band out while it’s still free to see it live. (Ilan Moskowitz)

9:30pm, free

Grant and Green Saloon

1371 Grant, San Francisco

(415) 693-9565

www.grantandgreensaloon.com

FRIDAY 21

PANSY

Why does nightlife hold us in its timeless spell? And, perhaps more topical, will the nostalgia for the necessary craziness and joy of ’90s nightlife ever let us go? Evan Johnson, one of our most intriguing drag performers (beloved alter-ego Martha T. Lipton, the Failed Actress, is a hoot) goes deeper in solo stage show Pansy, conceived with Ben Randle. His character, Michael, discovers a time capsule full of VHS tapes, cassettes, and flyers documenting ’90s gay club kid Peter Pansy, and finds shivery parallels with his own life emerging. “I want to address the ‘shadows’ of AIDS and queer history and Pride… That time period, 1993-95, became the vehicle for me to address the vital nostalgia and escape of the San Francisco queer fantasy,” he says. Johnson’s been hosting lively Q&As with legendary nightlife biggies after each performance, including Pansy Division’s Jon Ginoli, Dan Nicoletta, Alvin Orloff, and Sister Roma. (Marke B.)

Through June 29th, $10-$15

New Conservatory Theatre

25 Van Ness, SF

(415) 861-8972

www.nctcsf.org

SATURDAY 22

San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival

First of all, can we just enjoy this awesome WTF moment? A music festival. Powered by bicycle pedaling. Even in its seventh year, SF’s annual Bicycle Music Festival is still a wonder to locals. It offers the chance to listen to great music by folk band Laurie Lewis and the Righthands, Bill McKibben, Justin Ancheta Band, Manicato, and more, in a beautiful setting for free. In fact, it’s in three beautiful settings, because the event is packed up and deployed throughout Golden Gate Park. The event is known to draw some crazies, the cool kind who perform synchronized dances or twirl around on cycles while playing the trumpet — so be warned. It is definitely worth checking out, particularly if you’re a bike enthusiast interested in meeting fellow cyclists, or just a live music fan. And if the bicycle-powered music bit doesn’t have the same amazeballs effect on you, there will also be hand-cranked ice cream and smoothies made from the same bike power. (Smith )

Noon-5pm, free

Golden Gate Park

Pioneer Log Cabin Meadow to Stow Lake Drive at JFK Drive, SF

bicyclemusicfestival.com

Grandpa Fest

You don’t know Grindcore Grandpa? Hmm, how to explain to this. Basically, he’s the stoic elder gent who shows up at tons of hardcore and underground punk shows, lives for grind, and has a Lack of Interest shirt with his own face on it (as such, he’s more known as Grandpa of Interest). He’s turning 86, and that’s a big deal, so the Gilman is hosting Grandpa Fest and bringing in some of his favorite acts, legends of the scene including experimental Man is the Bastard offshoot Bastard Noise, and sludge-master Noothgrush, along with Stapled Shut, To the Point, Connoisseur, and Happy Pill Trauma. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll honor the man with a dive in the pit at breakneck speed. (Savage)

7pm, $10–$12

924 Gilman, Berk.

www.924gilman.org

Fete de la Musique

“The music everywhere and the concert nowhere,” declared French composer Maurice Fleuret in 1981. And then e went on to launch “Fete de la Musique” on the summer solstice of 1982, slyly celebrating that pagan holiday by bringing the French population out into the streets to play all the music they could. Soon the festival spread, and became a French tradition. Now, San Francisco’s Alliance Francaise is reviving the tradition with a roisterous day full of bands (Rue 66, Horse Horse Tiger Tiger, Crash Landings, Kiwi Time, more), drum circles, guitarists, and more — plus a few bars stocked with great wine, natch, to keep us in the spirit — on three floors. “Enjoy some Canadian music and food as well,” the Alliance promises, “as we welcome our Quebec cousins to celebrate their national holiday, the Fête de la Saint-Jean Baptiste.” French sounds all round! (Marke B.)

2pm-8pm, free

Alliance Française de San Francisco

1345 Bush, SF

fetedelamusiquesanfrancisco.wordpress.com

SUNDAY 23

City Lights at 60

Bookstore, publishing house, Beat writers hub, San Francisco institution. City Lights, founded by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin in 1953 (and now co-owned by Ferlinghetti and Nancy Peters), has meant a great many things to several generations of San Franciscans and tourists that flock to its North Beach storefront. It’s published important tomes, hosted readings and acoustic concerts, political conversations and book release celebrations. Just this past year saw a Pussy Riot gathering, Richard Hell reading, and a Sister Spit anthology release party. In celebrating six decades of life (that’s right, City Lights is officially 60 years young), the bookstore will host “City Lights at 60” lectures and readings through the rest of the year (“Howl Legacy: The Continuing Battle for Free Expression,” July 14, “Women of the Beat Generation,” Nov. 19), and an ongoing “Sundays in Jack Kerouac Alley” series. It all kicks off with the official birthday party today at the shop. The fête includes flash readings, archival footage, store discounts, and a live performance by the Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble of San Francisco. (Savage)

2-5pm, free

City Lights

261 Columbus, SF

(415) 863-2020

www.citylights.com

TUESDAY 25

Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown

Listening to Tyler Bryant, I get the sense that music was his first love. And even though he sings, “take my hand/take my heart/now honey, my super lady,” in the song “Lipstick Wonder Woman,” (which, conceivably, is about a human woman) I still believe that his most sultry seductress is the raw power and electricity present in his songs. His Nashville-based group makes authentic rock’n’roll that’s not reliant on over-reverbed guitar tones or a few simple fuzz-laden chords. Bryant can play, and his songs overwhelming reflect this. Reminiscent of the Black Keys, Bryant’s vocals are filled with soul, and the energetic beats anchoring his songs beg you to dance. (Smith)

With Girls and Boys

9pm, $15

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 371-1631

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Film Listings and Reviews

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June 19, 2013

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

FRAMELINE

The 37th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival runs June 20-30 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. For tickets (most shows $12) and complete schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

OPENING

Berberian Sound Studio It’s the 1970s, and frumpy British sound designer Gilderoy (a flawless Toby Jones) has, somewhat inexplicably, been hired by a flamboyant Italian filmmaker to work on his latest lurid genre piece, The Equestrian Vortex — about a girl who realizes her riding academy is haunted by witches. Any resemblance to 1977’s Suspiria is entirely intentional, as writer-director Peter Strickland crafts a meta-horror film that’s both tribute to Argento and co. and a freaky number all its own, as Gilderoy begins to realize that the “vortex” he’s dealing with isn’t merely confined to the screen. Fans of vintage Euro horror will appreciate the behind-the-scenes peek at the era’s filmmaking process, as well as Strickland’s obvious affection for one of cinema’s most oddly addictive genres. Bonus points for the Goblin reference. (1:28) Roxie. (Eddy)

The Bling Ring When it was revealed that high schoolers were behind a series of robberies targeting the lavish homes of Hollywood’s famous-for-being-famous types — most notably Paris Hilton — the fallout became fodder for gossip websites like TMZ.com, plus a memorable Vanity Fair article. The latter (recently expanded into a book by author Nancy Jo Sales) is the basis for Sofia Coppola’s new film, a fictionalized take on the crimes. Bored by upper-middle-class lives that leave them with lots of free time and habitually absent parents, a posse of SoCal teens (newcomers Katie Chang and Israel Broussard, and Harry Potter‘s all-grown-up Emma Watson, lead the charge) begin creepy-crawling the homes of Hilton and others, dovetailing their celebrity obsessions with a raging hunger for expensive shit. (Was ever a crime so victimless, one wonders, than a heist perpetrated at the expense of a starlet’s handbag collection, so vast she won’t even notice a few missing Birkins?) Flashing their ill-gotten new clothes, jewelry, and wads of cash in Facebook selfies, the burglars miss the most valuable lesson of all: that the friendships they share are fleeting and meaningless — kind of like fame, kind of like blowing (stolen) money on designer clothes that will soon be out of style. Ironically, with The Bling Ring, Coppola has delivered her least-vapid film since 1999’s The Virgin Suicides; it’s both candy-colored and canny, a cautionary tale that lingers just long enough on its scenes of youthful excess to let you know it’s in on the joke. (1:27) Shattuck. (Eddy)

“From the Archive: Treasures of Eastern European and Soviet Cinema: A Tribute to George Gund III” One rich guy who really, really loved art — not just as an investment or public charity platform — recently deceased Bay Area resident George Gund III was a burly entrepreneur and athlete who grew fascinated with Soviet-bloc cinema early on. He spread that passion as a longtime board member for the San Francisco Film Society, and as a donor of prints to Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive. A selection from the latter collection is being showcased in a month-long PFA tribute that starts this week. Spanning from Hungary to Czechoslovakia to former USSR territories over a richly creative cinematic era (1960s to 1970s), it offers numerous seldom-revived gems including Juraj Herz’s macabre 1968 Czech black comedy The Cremator, Georgian master Otar Iosseliani’s 1975 Pastorale, and decorous kitsch-classic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) director Jaromil Jiles’ contrastingly stark 1972 follow-up And Give My Love to the Swallows, which depicts the fate of a young woman sentenced to death for supporting the resistance under Nazi occupation. Pacific Film Archive. (Harvey)

A Hijacking Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s thriller is not based on a specific incident, but its story feels ripped-from-the-headlines familiar, and it’s part of a larger trend of films — including the upcoming Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Tom Hanks — about Somali pirates. Coincidentally, A Hijacking is reminiscent of Greengrass’ style, shot almost like a documentary with great attention to realism. At sea, we follow good-natured cargo-ship cook Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) as he deals with the sudden invasion of machine-gun toting thugs (who speak neither Danish nor English, and aren’t given subtitles to translate their own language), and is drawn into drama with the one member of their team he can communicate with: capricious go-between Omar (Abdihakin Asgar), who’s armed with power instead of weapons. Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, reserved shipping-company CEO Peter (Søren Malling) steps into the delicate role of negotiator when the ransom demands start rolling in. A Hijacking is tense and tightly constructed, as when an exhausted, frustrated Peter removes his shirt and tie and reveals he’s wearing the same type of undershirt as the grimy, terrified Mikkel. And if the film tends to view the hijackers as an indistinguishable mob of trigger-happy villains, at least there’s the Omar character — and one briefly uplifting scene where the whole group fishes off the boat to replenish their dwindling food supply — to humanize them somewhat. (1:39) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Monsters University Seven-year-old Mike Wazowski is even more adorable than grown-up, Billy-Crystal-voiced Mike Wazowski. It’s a pity, then, that one of the big lessons Monsters University teaches is that the essence of monster-identity is how scary one is. What Mike loses in frightfulness he forcefully recovers in spunk, and after a trip to the scare floor that briskly reminds us the premise of 2001’s Monsters, Inc., mini-Mike becomes the first ever career-driven Pixar character. (For this, I love him.) We all know he eventually becomes a superstar in this scare-powered retro-verse, but first he has to overcome frat boy-inflicted embarrassment and flunk out of school. The most noteworthy thing about Pixar’s first prequel is how very massively its characters fail — it’s a lovely tilt that suggest the greatness of tomorrow begins when you overcome the failures of today. The administrators of Monsters University (in particular Helen Mirren’s dragon-lady Dean) require formal perfection in the scares they grade, but in the world of actual scarers, oddness and difference actually become advantages. It’s all theory but no rulebook. And doesn’t that sound like a good lesson from the studio that once proudly said “story is king,” yet now scrambles to meet Disney’s once-a-year feature demands? Such rigidity comes at a price. (1:50) Presidio. (Vizcarrondo)

Somm First-time filmmaker Jason Wise follows four wine-obsessed men (including three from the Bay Area) on their quest to become Master Sommeliers. Their genial rivalry — the stuffiest member of the quartet is nicknamed “Dad” — somewhat offsets the immense pressure they’re under, though every guy turns into Rain Man when he starts ID-ing each unmarked glass, detecting subtle yet highly specific aromas like “sage, truffle, wet forest floor, decaying dried red rose petals,” “a freshly opened can of tennis balls,” and (in the weirdest example) “grandma’s closet.” It’s an insular, elite world, but Wise’s camera gets right to the front lines as the candidates prep for the grueling, multi-day test, interviewing the long-suffering spouses of the candidates (one of whom ruminates on the grossness of “spit buckets” left behind after late-night tasting marathons). As the day of reckoning looms, the tension mounts along with the piles of flash cards — but the friendships and good humor remain, even after the results are revealed. (1:33) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

World War Z Max Brooks’ horror novel comes to the big screen, following an ensemble cast (Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Bryan Cranston) as they grapple with a worldwide zombie outbreak. (1:56) California, Four Star, Presidio, Shattuck.

ONGOING

After Earth In around a century, we’ll board penitentiary-style ships and evacuate Earth for a sexier planet. Let’s call it a middle-aged migration — we all saw this coming. It’ll be dour, and we’ll feel temporary guilt for all the trees we leveled, bombs we dropped, and oil refineries we taped for 1960s industrial films. Like any body post-divorce, our planet will develop defenses against its ex — us humans — so when Will Smith and son Jaden crash land on the crater it’s toxic to them, full of glorious beasts and free as the Amazon (because it was partly filmed there). Critically wounded General Raige (Will) has to direct physically incredible Kitai (Jaden) through the future’s most dangerous Ironman triathalon. It’s more than a Hollywood king guiding his prince through a life-or-death career obstacle course, it’s a too-aggressive metaphor for adolescence — something real-world Jaden may forfeit to work with dad. Call that the tragedy beneath After Earth: it makes you wonder why the family didn’t make a movie more like 1994’s The Lion King — they had to know that was an option. Director M. Night Shyamalan again courts the Last Airbender (2010) crowd with crazy CG fights and affecting father-son dynamics, but for once, Shyamalan is basically a hired gun here. The story comes straight from Papa Smith, and one gets the feeling the movie exists primarily to elevate Jaden’s rising star. (1:40) SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Becoming Traviata Philippe Béziat’s backstage doc offers an absorbing look at a particularly innovative production of Verdi’s La Traviata, directed by Jean-François Sivadier and starring the luminous Natalie Dessay (currently appearing in SF Opera’s production of Tales of Hoffman). Béziat eschews narration or interviews; instead, his camera simply tracks artists at work, moving from rehearsal room to stage as Sivadier and Dessay (along with her co-stars) block scenes, make suggestions, practice gestures, and engage in the hit-and-miss experimentation that defines the creative process. The film is edited so that La Traviata progresses chronologically, with the earliest scenes unfolding on a spartan set (Dessay’s practice attire: yoga clothes), and the tragic climax taking place onstage, with an orchestra in the pit and sparkly make-up in full effect. (1:53) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Before Midnight Proving (again) that not all sequels are autonomic responses to a marketplace that rewards the overfamiliar, director Richard Linklater and his cowriters Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke reconnect with the characters Céline and Jesse, whom we first encountered nearly 20 years ago on a train and trailed around Vienna for a night in Before Sunrise, then met again nine years later in Before Sunset. It’s been nine more years since we left them alone in a Paris apartment, Céline adorably dancing to Nina Simone and telling Jesse he’s going to miss his plane. And it looks like he did. The third film finds the two together, yes, and vacationing in Greece’s southern Peloponnese, where the expansive, meandering pace of their interactions — the only mode we’ve ever seen them in — is presented as an unaccustomed luxury amid a span of busy years filled with complications professional and personal. Over the course of a day and an evening, alone together and among friends, the two reveal both the quotidian intimacies of a shared life and the cracks and elisions in their love story. (1:48) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Dirty Wars Subtitled “the world is a battlefield,” this doc follows author and Nation magazine writer Jeremy Scahill as he probes the disturbing underbelly of America’s ongoing counterterrorism campaign. After he gets wind of a deadly nighttime raid on a home in rural Afghanistan, Scahill does his best to investigate what really happened, though what he hears from eyewitnesses doesn’t line up with the military explanation — and nobody from the official side of things cares to discuss it any further, thank you very much. With its talk of cover-ups and covert military units, and interviewees who appear in silhouette with their voices disguised, Dirty Wars plays like a thriller until Osama bin Laden’s death shifts certain (but not all) elements of the story Scahill’s chasing into the mainstream-news spotlight. The journalist makes valid points about how an utter lack of accountability or regard for consequences (that will reverberate for generations to come) means the “war on terror” will never end, but Dirty Wars suffers a bit from too much voice-over. Even the film’s gorgeous cinematography — director Rick Rowley won a prize for it at Sundance earlier this year — can’t alleviate the sensation that Dirty Wars is mostly an illustrated-lecture version of Scahill’s source-material book. Still, it’s a compelling lecture. (1:26) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

The East In Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling’s powerful second film collaboration (Batmanglij directs, and the pair co-wrote the screenplay, as in 2011’s Sound of My Voice), Marling plays Sarah, an intelligence agent working for a private firm whose client list consists mainly of havoc-wreaking multinationals. Sarah, presented as quietly ambitious and conservative, is tasked by the firm’s director (Patricia Clarkson) with infiltrating the East, an off-the-grid activist collective whose members, including Benji (Alexander Skarsgård), Izzy (Ellen Page), and Doc (Toby Kebbell), bring an eye-for-an-eye sensibility to their YouTube-publicized “jams.” Targeting an oil company responsible for a BP-style catastrophe, they engineer their own spill in the gated-community habitat of the company’s CEO, posting a video that juxtaposes grisly images of oil-coated shorebirds and the unsettling sight of gallons of crude seeping through the air-conditioning vents of a tidy McMansion. A newspaper headline offers a facile framework for understanding their activities, posing the alternatives as “Pranksters or Eco-Terrorists?” But as Sarah examines the gut-wrenching consequences of so-called white-collar crime and immerses herself in the day-to-day practices of the group, drawn in particular to the charismatic Benji, the film raises more complex questions. Much of its rhetorical force flows from Izzy, whom Page invests with a raw, anguished outrage, drawing our sympathies toward the group and its mission of laying bare what should be unbearable. (1:56) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Epic (1:42) Metreon.

Fast and Furious 6 Forget the fast (that’s understood by now, anyway) — part six in this popcorny series is heavy on the “furious,” with constant near-death stunts that zoom past irrational and slam into batshit crazy. Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) lures the gang out of sunny retirement to bust a fast driver with a knack for strategy and an eye on world domination. Sure, Ludacris jokes their London locale doesn’t mean they’re in a Bond movie, but give cold-blooded Luke Evans some time and he’ll work his way up to antagonizing 007. Shaw (Evans) is smaller than our hero Toretto (Vin Diesel), but he’s convincing, throwing his King’s English at a man whose murky dialect is always delivered with a devilish baritone. If Shaw’s code is all business, Toretto’s is all family: that’s what holds together this cast, cobbled from five Fast and Furious installments shot all over the world. Hottie Gal Gadot (playing Sung Kang’s love interest) reassures Han (Kang) mid-crisis: “This is what we are.” It’s not for nothing the gang’s main weapon is a harpoon gun that, once shot, leaves an umbilicus from the shooter to whatever’s in the crosshairs. That’s Torreto for you. Meanwhile, the villain’s weapon is a car with a spatula-like front end, that flips cars like pancakes. The climactic battle on a cargo plane has to give a face time to every member of the eight-person team, so naturally they shot it on the world’s longest runway. Of course the parade features less car porn than previous editions but it’s got a wider reach now — it’s officially international intrigue, not just fun for gearheads. For my money, it’s some of the best action in theaters today. Stick around for the inevitable sequel-suggesting coda during the credits. (2:10) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Vizcarrondo)

Fill the Void Respectfully rendered and beautifully shot in warm hues, Fill the Void admirably fills the absence on many screens of stories from what might be considered a closed world: the Orthodox Hasidic community in Israel, where a complex web of family ties, duty, and obligation entangles pretty, accordion-playing Shira (Hada Yaron). An obedient daughter, she’s about to agree to an arranged marriage to a young suitor when her much-loved sister (Renana Raz) dies in childbirth. When Shira’s mother (Irit Sheleg) learns the widower Yochay (Yiftach Klein) might marry a woman abroad and take her only grandchild far away, she starts to make noises about fixing Shira up with her son-in-law. The journey the two must take, in possibly going from in-laws to newlyweds, is one that’s simultaneously infuriating, understandable, and touching, made all the more intimate given director Rama Burshtein’s preference for searching close-ups. Her affinity for the Orthodox world is obvious with each loving shot, ultimately infusing her debut feature with a beating heart of humanity. (1:30) Albany, Clay, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Frances Ha Noah Baumbach isn’t exactly known for romance and bright-eyed optimism. Co-writing 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox with director Wes Anderson is maybe the closest to “whimsy” as he’s ever come; his own features (2010’s Greenberg, 2007’s Margot at the Wedding, 2005’s The Squid and the Whale, 1997’s Mr. Jealousy, and 1995’s Kicking and Screaming) tend to veer into grumpier, more intellectual realms. You might say his films are an acquired taste. But haters beware. Frances Ha — the black-and-white tale of a New York City hipster (Baumbach’s real-life squeeze, Greta Gerwig, who co-write the script with him) blundering her way into adulthood — is probably the least Baumbach-ian Baumbach movie ever. Owing stylistic debts to both vintage Woody Allen and the French New Wave, Frances Ha relies heavily on Gerwig’s adorable-disaster title character to propel its plot, which is little more than a timeline of Frances’ neverending micro-adventures: pursuing her nascent modern-dance career, bouncing from address to address, taking an impromptu trip to Paris, visiting her parents (portrayed by the Sacramento-raised Gerwig’s real-life parents), “breaking up” with her best friend. It’s so charming, poignant, and quotable (“Don’t treat me like a three-hour brunch friend!”) that even those who claim to be allergic to Baumbach just might find themselves succumbing to it. (1:26) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Great Gatsby Every bit as flashy and in-your-face as you’d expect the combo of “Baz Luhrmann,” “Jazz Age,” and “3D” to be, this misguided interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale is, at least, overstuffed with visual delights. For that reason only, all the fashion-mag fawning over leading lady Carey Mulligan’s gowns and diamonds, and the opulent production design that surrounds them, seems warranted. And in scenes where spectacle is appropriate — Gatsby’s legendary parties; Tom Buchanan’s wild New York romp with his mistress — Luhrmann delivers in spades. The trade-off is that the subtler aspects of Fitzgerald’s novel are either pushed to the side or shouted from the rooftops. Leonardo DiCaprio, last seen cutting loose in last year’s Django Unchained, makes for a stiff, fumbling Gatsby, laying on the “Old Sports” as thickly as his pancake make-up. There’s nothing here so startlingly memorable as the actor and director’s 1996 prior collaboration, Romeo + Juliet — a more successful (if still lavish and self-consciously audacious) take on an oft-adapted, much-beloved literary work. (2:22) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Hangover Part III Even the friendliest little blackout bacchanal can get tiresome the third time around. The poster depicting Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis — stern in suits and ties — says it all: it’s grim men’s business, the care and maintenance of this Hangover franchise, this orgy of good times gone bad. Once a bad-taste love letter to male-bonding, Hangover Part III is ready for a chance, primed to sever some of those misbegotten ties. This time around, the unlikely troika — with the always dispensable normal-dude figurehead Doug (Justin Bartha) in tow — are captured by random sketchy figure Marshall (John Goodman, whose every utterance of the offensive “Chinaman” should bring back Big Lebowski warm-and-fuzzies). He holds Doug hostage in exchange for the amoral, cockfighting, coke-wallowing, whore-hiring, leather-wearing Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong), who stole his gold, and it turns out Alan (Galifianakis) might be his only chum. Jeong, who continues to bring the hammy glee, is still the best thing here, even as the conscience-free instigator; he’s the dark counterpart to tweaked man-child Alan, who meets cute with mean-ass pawn-star soulmate Cassie (Melissa McCarthy). Meanwhile, Cooper and Helms look on, puzzled, no doubt pondering the prestige projects on their plates and wondering what they’re still doing here. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

The Internship The dirty little secret of the new economy continues to be the gerbil cycle of free/cheap labor labeled “internships” that propels so many companies — be they corporate or indie, digital or print media. But gee, who’s going to see an intern comedy titled The Exploitation, besides me and my local union rep? Instead, spinning off a Vince Vaughn story idea and a co-writing credit, The Internship looks at that now-mandatory time-suck for so many college students through the filter of two older, not-quite-wiser salesmen Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson) hoping to make that working guy’s quantum leap from watch sales to Google’s Mountain View campus, which director Shawn Levy casts as a bright and shiny workers wonderland with its free spring rolls and lattes, bikes, and napping pods. Departing from reality: the debugging/coding/game-playing/app-making competition that forces Billy and Nick to bond with their team of castoffs (Dylan O’Brien, Tiya Sircar, Tobit Raphael), led by noob manager Lyle (Josh Brener), in order to win a full-time job. Part of the key, naturally, turns out to be a Swingers-like visit to a strip club, to release those deeply repressed nerd sexualities — nothing like a little retrograde sexism to bring a group together. Still, the moment is offset by the generally genial, upbeat attitude brought to The Internship by its lead actors: Nick and Billy may be flubs at physics and clueless when it comes to geek culture, but most working stiffs who have suffered the slings and arrows of layoffs and dream of stable employment can probably get behind the all-American ideals of self-reinvention and optimism about the future peddled in The Internship, which easily slips in alongside The Great Gatsby among this year’s Great Recession narratives. Blink too fast and you might miss the microcameo by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. (1:59) Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Vogue. (Chun)

Iron Man 3 Neither a sinister terrorist dubbed “the Mandarin” (Ben Kingsley) nor a spray-tanned mad scientist (Guy Pearce) are as formidable an enemy to Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) as Tony Stark himself, the mega-rich playboy last seen in 2012’s Avengers donning his Iron Man suit and thwarting alien destruction. It’s been rough since his big New York minute; he’s been suffering panic attacks and burying himself in his workshop, shutting out his live-in love (Gwyneth Paltrow) in favor of tinkering on an ever-expanding array of manned and un-manned supersuits. But duty, and personal growth, beckon when the above-mentioned villains start behaving very badly. With some help (but not much) from Don Cheadle’s War Machine — now known as “Iron Patriot” thanks to a much-mocked PR campaign — Stark does his saving-the-world routine again. If the plot fails to hit many fresh beats (a few delicious twists aside), the 3D special effects are suitably dazzling, the direction (by series newcomer Shane Black) is appropriately snappy, and Downey, Jr. again makes Stark one of the most charismatic superheros to ever grace the big screen. For now, at least, the continuing Avengers spin-off extravaganza seems justified. (2:06) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Kings of Summer Ah, the easy-to-pluck, easy-to-love low-hanging fruit of summer — and a coming of age. Who can blame director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and writer Chris Galletta, both TV vets, for thinking that a juicy, molasses-thick application of hee-hee-larious TV comedy actors to a Stand by Me-like boyish bildungsroman could only make matters that much more fun? When it comes to this wannabe-feral Frankenteen love child of Terrence Malick and Parks and Recreation, you certainly don’t want to fault them for original thinking, though you can understand why they keep lurching back to familiar, reliably entertaining turf, especially when it comes in the form of Nick Offerman of the aforementioned P&R, who gets to twist his Victorian doll features into new frustrated shapes alongside real-life spouse Megan Mullally. Joe (Nick Robinson) is tired of his single dad (Offerman) stepping on his emerging game, so he runs off with neurotic wrestling pal Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and stereotypically “weirdo foreign” kid Biaggio (Moises Arias) to a patch of woods. There, from scrap, they build a cool-looking house that resembles a Carmel boho shack and attempt to live off the land, which means mostly buying chicken from a Boston Market across a freeway. Pipes are pummeled, swimming holes are swum, a pathetically wispy mustachio is cultivated — read: real burly stuff, until the rising tide of testosterone threatens to poison the woodland well. Vogt-Roberts certainly captures the humid sensuality and ripe potential of a Midwestern summer — though some of the details, like the supposedly wild rabbit that looks like it came straight from Petco, look a bit canned — and who can gripe when, say, Portlandia‘s Kumail Nanjiani materializes to deliver monster wontons? You just accept it, though the effect of bouncing back and forth between the somewhat serious world of young men and the surprisingly playful world of adults, both equally unreal, grows jarring. Kings of Summer isn’t quite the stuff of genius that marketing would have you believe, but it might give the “weirdo foreign” art house crowd and TV comedy addicts something they can both stand by. (1:33) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Kon-Tiki In 1947 Norwegian explorer and anthropologist Thor Heyderdahl arranged an expedition on a homemade raft across the Pacific, recreating what he believed was a route by which South Americans traveled to Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. (Although this theory is now disputed.) The six-man crew (plus parrot) survived numerous perils to complete their 101-day, 4300-mile journey intact — winning enormous global attention, particularly through Heyderdahl’s subsequent book and documentary feature. Co-directors Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg’s dramatization is a big, impressive physical adventure most arresting for its handsome use of numerous far-flung locations. Where it’s less successful is in stirring much emotional involvement, with the character dynamics underwhelming despite a decent cast led by Pal Sverr Hagen as Thor (who, incredibly, was pretty much a non-swimmer). Nonetheless, this new Kon-Tiki offers all the pleasures of armchair travel, letting you vicariously experience a high-risk voyage few could ever hope (or want) to make in real life. (1:58) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Man of Steel As beloved as he is, Superman is a tough superhero to crack — or otherwise bend into anything resembling a modern character. Director Zack Snyder and writer David S. Goyer, working with producer Christopher Nolan on the initial story, do their best to nuance this reboot, which focuses primarily on Supe’s alien origins and takes its zoom-happy space battles from Battlestar Galactica. The story begins with Kal-El’s birth on a Krypton that’s rapidly going into the shitter: the exploited planet is about to explode and wayward General Zod (Michael Shannon) is staging a coup, killing Kal-El’s father, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), the Kryptonians’ lead scientist, and being conveniently put on ice in order to battle yet another day. That day comes as Kal-El, now a 20-something earthling named Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) — resigned to his status as an outsider, a role dreamed up by his protective adoptive dad (Kevin Costner) — has turned into a bit of a (dharma) bum, looking like a buff Jack Kerouac, working Deadliest Catch-style rigs, and rescuing people along the way to finding himself. Spunky Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is the key to his, erm, coming-out party, necessitated by a certain special someone looking to reboot the Kryptonian race on earth. The greatest danger here lies in the fact that all the leached-of-color quasi-sepia tone action can turn into a bit of a Kryptonian-US Army demolition derby, making for a mess of rubble and tricky-to-parse fight sequences that, of course, will satisfy the fanboys and -girls, but will likely glaze the eyes of many others. Nevertheless, the effort Snyder and crew pack into this lengthy artifact — with its chronology-scrambling flashbacks and multiple platforms for Shannon, Diane Lane, Christopher Meloni, Laurence Fishburne, and the like — pays off on the level of sheer scale, adding up to what feels like the best Superman on film or TV to date — though that bar seems pretty easy to leap over in a single bound. (2:23) Balboa, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Much Ado About Nothing Joss Whedon (last year’s The Avengers) shifts focus for a minute to stage an adaptation of the Shakespeare comedy, drawing his players from 15 years’ worth of awesome fantasy/horror/sci-fi TV and film projects. When the Spanish prince Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) pays a post-battle visit to the home of Leonato (Clark Gregg) with his officers Claudio (Fran Kranz) and Benedick (Alexis Denisof), Claudio falls for Leonato’s daughter, Hero (Jillian Morgese), while Benedick falls to verbal blows with Hero’s cousin Beatrice (Amy Acker). Preserving the original language of the play while setting his production in the age of the iPhone and the random hookup, Whedon makes clever, inventive use of the juxtaposition, teasing out fresh sources of visual comedy as well as bringing forward the play’s oddities and darker elements. These shadows fall on Beatrice and Benedick, whose sparring — before they succumb to a playfully devious setup at the hands of their friends — has an ugly, resentful heat to it, as well as on Hero and Claudio, whose filmy romance is unsettlingly easy for their enemies, the malevolent Don John (Sean Maher) and his cohorts, to sabotage. Some of Acker and Denisof’s broader clowning doesn’t offer enough comic payoff for the hammy energy expenditure, but Nathan Fillion, heading up local law enforcement as the constable Dogberry, delivers a gleeful depiction of blundering idiocy, and the film as a whole has a warm, approachable humor while lightly exposing “all’s well that ends well”‘s wacky, dysfunctional side. (1:49) Albany, Piedmont, SF Center. (Rapoport)

Mud (2:18) Balboa, Opera Plaza.

Now You See Me Cheese can be a tough factor to quantify, but you get close to the levels Now You See Me strives for when you picture the hopelessly goofy, tragically coiffed Doug Henning lisping, “It’s magic!” somewhere between Bob “Happy Little Tree” Ross and a rainbow sprinkled with Care Bears. Now You See Me, however, is much less likely to be dusted off and adored by a Bronies-style cult. Four seemingly savvy street and stage magicians (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco) are brought together by tarot card invite by a mysterious host. What follows is a series of corny performances by the crew, now dubbed the Four Horseman, that are linked to a series of Robin Hood-like, or not, thefts. Nipping at their heels are a loudly flustered FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo, working an overcooked Columbo impression), a waifish Interpol detective (Mélanie Laurent, as if slouching through a Sorbonne semester), and a professional debunker (Morgan Freeman, maintaining amusement). In the course of the investigation, the Horsemen’s way-too-elaborate and far-from-apocalyptic illusions are taken apart and at least one vigorously theatrical fight scene takes place — all of which sounds more riveting than what actually transpires under the action-by-the-book watch of director Louis Leterrier, who never succeeds in making the smug, besuited puppets, I mean Horsemen, who strut around like they’re in Ocean’s Eighteen 4D, anything remotely resembling cool. Or even characters we might give a magical rabbit’s ass about. For all its seemingly knowing pokes at the truth behind the curtain, Now You See Me lacks much of the smarts and wit of loving deconstructionists like Penn and Teller —glimmers of which can only be made out in the smirk of Harrelson and the knowing twinkle of Freeman — or even the tacky machismo of Criss Angel, as well as a will to get to a truth behind the mystery. Or is the mystery behind the truth? (1:56) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Pandora’s Promise Filmmaker Robert Stone has traveled far from his first film, 1988’s Oscar-nominated anti-nuke Radio Bikini, to today, with the release of Pandora’s Promise, a detailed and guaranteed-to-be-controversial examination of nuclear power and the environmentalists who have transitioned from fervently anti- to pro-nuclear. Interviewing activists and authors like Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas, and Michael Shellenberger, among others, Stone eloquently visualizes all angles of their discussion with media, industrial, and newly shot footage, starting with a visit to the largest nuclear disaster of recent years, Fukushima, which he visits with the hazmat-suited environmental activist and journalist Lynas and continuing to Chernobyl and its current denizens. Couching the debate in cultural and political context going back to World War II, Stone builds a case for nuclear energy as a viable method to provide clean, safe power for planet in the throes of climate change that will nonetheless need double or triple the current amount of energy by 2050, as billions in the developing world emerge from poverty. In a practical sense, as The Death of Environmentalism author Shellenberger asserts, “The idea that we’re going to replace oil and coal with solar and wind and nothing else is a hallucinatory delusion.” Stone and his subjects put together an enticing argument to turn to nuclear as a way forward from coal, made compelling by the idea that designs for safer alternative reactors that produce less waste are out there. (1:27) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

The Purge Writer-director James DeMonaco founds his dystopian-near-future tale on the possibly suspect premise that the United States could achieve one percent unemployment, heavily reduced crime rates, and a virtually carb-free society if only it were to sanction an annual night of national mayhem unconstrained by statutory law — up to and including those discouraging the act of homicide. Set in 2022, The Purge visits the household of home security salesman James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), wife Mary (Lena Headey), and their children, Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane), as the annual festivities are about to begin, and the film keeps us trapped in the house with them for the next 12 hours of bloodletting sans emergency services. While they show zero interest in adding to the carnage, James and Mary seem to be largely on board with what a news commentator describes as “a lawful outlet for American rage,” not giving too much credence to detractors’ observations that the purge is a de facto culling of the underclass. Clearly, though, the whole family is about to learn a valuable lesson. It comes when Charlie, in an act of baseline humanity, draws the ire of a gang of purgers running around in bathrobes, prep school jackets, and creepy masks, led by a gleaming-eyed alpha-sociopath whom DeMonaco (whose other screenplay credits include 2005’s Assault on Precinct 13 remake) tasks with wielding the film’s blunt-object message alongside his semi-automatic weaponry. (1:25) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Rebels with a Cause The huge string of parklands that have made Marin County a jewel of preserved California coastline might easily have become wall-to-wall development — just like the Peninsula — if not for the stubborn conservationists whose efforts are profiled in Nancy Kelly’s documentary. From Congressman Clem Miller — who died in a plane crash just after his Point Reyes National Seashore bill became a reality — to housewife Amy Meyer, who began championing the Golden Gate National Recreation Area because she “needed a project” to keep busy once her kids entered school, they’re testaments to the ability of citizen activism to arrest the seemingly unstoppable forces of money, power and political influence. Theirs is a hidden history of the Bay Area, and of what didn’t come to pass — numerous marinas, subdivisions, and other developments that would have made San Francisco and its surrounds into another Los Angeles. (1:12) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Star Trek Into Darkness Do you remember 1982? There are more than a few echoes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in J. J. Abrams’ second film retooling the classic sci-fi property’s characters and adventures. Darkness retains the 2009 cast, including standouts Zachary Quinto as Spock and Simon Pegg as comic-relief Scotty, and brings in Benedict “Sherlock” Cumberbatch to play the villain (I think you can guess which one). The plot mostly pinballs between revenge and preventing/circumventing the destruction of the USS Enterprise, with added post-9/11, post-Dark Knight (2008) terrorism connotations that are de rigueur for all superhero or fantasy-type blockbusters these days. But Darkness isn’t totally, uh, dark: there’s quite a bit of fan service at work here (speak Klingon? You’re in luck). Abrams knows what audiences want, and he’s more than happy to give it to ’em, sometimes opening up massive plot holes in the process — but never veering from his own Prime Directive: providing an enjoyable ride. (2:07) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Stories We Tell Actor and director Sarah Polley (2011’s Take This Waltz) turns the camera on herself and her family for this poignant, moving, inventive, and expectation-upending blend of documentary and narrative. Her father, actor Michael Polley, provides the narration; our first hint that this film will take an unconventional form comes when we see Sarah directing Michael’s performance in a recording-studio booth, asking him to repeat certain phrases for emphasis. On one level, Stories We Tell is about Sarah’s own history, as she sets out to explore longstanding family rumors that Michael is not her biological father. The missing piece: her mother, actress Diane Polley (who died of cancer just days after Sarah’s 11th birthday), a vivacious character remembered by Sarah’s siblings and those who knew and loved her. Stories We Tell‘s deeper meaning emerges as the film becomes ever more meta, retooling the audience’s understanding of what they’re seeing via convincingly doc-like reenactments. To say more would lessen the power of Stories We Tell‘s multi-layered revelations. Just know that this is an impressively unique film — about family, memories, love, and (obviously) storytelling — and offers further proof of Polley’s tremendous talent. (1:48) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

This Is the End It’s a typical day in Los Angeles for Seth Rogen as This Is the End begins. Playing a version of himself, the comedian picks up pal and frequent co-star Jay Baruchel at the airport. Since Jay hates LA, Seth welcomes him with weed and candy, but all good vibes fizzle when Rogen suggests hitting up a party at James Franco’s new mansion. Wait, ugh, Franco? And Jonah Hill will be there? Nooo! Jay ain’t happy, but the revelry — chockablock with every Judd Apatow-blessed star in Hollywood, plus a few random inclusions (Rihanna?) — is great fun for the audience. And likewise for the actors: world, meet Michael Cera, naughty coke fiend. But stranger things are afoot in This Is the End. First, there’s a giant earthquake and a strange blue light that sucks passers-by into the sky. Then a fiery pit yawns in front of Casa Franco, gobbling up just about everyone in the cast who isn’t on the poster. Dudes! Is this the worst party ever — or the apocalypse? The film — co-written and directed by Rogen and longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg — relies heavily on Christian imagery to illustrate the endtimes; the fact that both men and much of their cast is Jewish, and therefore marked as doomed by Bible-thumpers, is part of the joke. But of course, This Is the End has a lot more to it than religious commentary; there’s also copious drug use, masturbation gags, urine-drinking, bromance, insult comedy, and all of the uber-meta in-jokes fans of its stars will appreciate. (1:46) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck. (Eddy)

What Maisie Knew In Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s adaptation of the 1897 Henry James novel, the story of a little girl caught between warring, self-involved parents is transported forward to modern-day New York City, with Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan as the ill-suited pair responsible, in theory, for the care and upbringing of the title character, played by Onata Aprile. Moore’s Susanna is a rock singer making a slow, halting descent from some apex of stardom, as we gather from the snide comments of her partner in dysfunctionality, Beale (Coogan). As their relationship implodes and they move on to custody battle tactics, each takes on a new, inappropriate companion — Beale marrying in haste Maisie’s pretty young nanny, Margo (Joanna Vanderham), and Susanna just as precipitously latching on to a handsome bartender named Lincoln (True Blood‘s Alexander Skarsgård). The film mostly tracks the chaotic action — Susanna’s strung-out tantrums, both parents’ impulsive entrances and exits, Margo and Lincoln’s ambivalent acceptance of responsibility — from Maisie’s silent vantage, as details large and small convey, at least to us, the deficits of her caretakers, who shield her from none of the emotional shrapnel flying through the air and rarely bother to present an appropriate, comprehensible explanation. Yet Maisie understands plenty — though longtime writing-and-directing team McGehee and Siegel (2001’s The Deep End, 2005’s Bee Season, 2008’s Uncertainty) have taken pains in their script and their casting to present Maisie as a lovely, watchful child, not the precocious creep often favored in the picture shows. So we watch too, with a grinding anxiety, as she’s passed from hand to hand, forced to draw her own unvoiced conclusions. (1:38) Opera Plaza. (Rapoport) *

The end of an era, but not of a legacy

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June 19, 2013

47

Tim Redmond has a big heart. He cares deeply about this city and he cared deeply about this newspaper. But last Thursday was Tim’s last day at the Bay Guardian, the place where he worked for the bulk of the past three decades. In typical fashion, he stuck to his principles to the end.

The Guardian is not as economically healthy as it once was, and 2013 has not been kind to the paper. Revenues are down and many issues lose money, a trend that threatens our mission if left unchecked. During the past month, Guardian management had been contemplating some painful but necessary changes that included layoffs. Tim participated in these discussions, but in the end he chose to resign rather than downsize a staff he loved like family.

I understand Tim’s decision, but believe it was shortsighted. During the past year and a half, the Guardian’s two sister papers — the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly — have undergone similar restructuring, which included layoffs. The goal was not to extract obscene profits — a mission I wouldn’t support even if it were still possible in 2013 — but rather to ensure both papers’ survival and recovery. It was an unpleasant process, and one that Tim could not abide.

But today, the Examiner and Weekly are both significantly healthier than they used to be. The Examiner is no longer the mouthpiece of right-wing buffoons, and in recent months has expanded its Peninsula coverage and enlarged its editorial staff. And the Weekly boasts significantly more new coverage, listings and advertising than it did just six months ago.

I want the Guardian’s future as a progressive voice to be similarly assured. So now, 32 years after selling my first freelance news article to the paper — a brief about BART’s effort to evict the Ashby Flea Market — I find myself replacing Tim as publisher. Longtime Managing Editor Marke Bieschke, aka Marke B., is filling his shoes as interim editor.

I know some Guardian readers assume that this means the end of progressive journalism in the paper. Please let me assure you that will not occur. I have spent the bulk of my career editing investigative newsweeklies and have no intention of going down in history as the guy who dumbed-down the Guardian.

The very night before Tim told me he was leaving, he presided over a packed forum on the topic of economic dislocation in San Francisco. At the height of a tech boom that has inflated rents and led to a wave of migration and evictions, it’s hard to imagine few other topics of greater importance. Tim and the Guardian have reported extensively on this issue in the year since the paper was acquired by the San Francisco Print Media Company. Of course, the Guardian was already writing about evictions long before Tim’s predecessor assigned me to write that 1981 article about the flea market.

Under Tim’s successor, that emphasis will not change.

All eyes on us

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June 18, 2013

5

rebecca@sfbg.com

About 500 people packed into Berkeley’s St. John’s Presbyterian Church on June 11, days after revelations of a massive National Security Agency electronic surveillance program had hit the news.

They were there for panel talk titled “Our Vanishing Civil Liberties,” and the discussion revolved around Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former employee of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who leaked top-secret documents to reveal the scope of the massive NSA spying infrastructure, triggering a firestorm of public debate internationally.

The panel featured Daniel Ellsberg, a Berkeley resident famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, an Icelandic member of parliament whose Twitter account records were sought by the U.S. Justice Department several years ago due to her connection to Wikileaks, the whistleblower organization that published secret U.S. government cables leaked by Pfc. Bradley Manning.

“I have no doubt at all that Snowden did the right thing in revealing it,” Ellsberg later told the Guardian in an interview, “at whatever cost he pay himself. He shouldn’t have to pay any, very simply. In his case, given what he’s revealing, he should not be prosecuted. But he will be, almost surely.”

Within days of the revelations, a number of public responses had already sprung up, many originating in the Bay Area. The ACLU filed suit challenging the surveillance program as illegal, arguing that it “violates the First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. Online communities mobilized too. As of June 17, more than 200,000 had signed onto an online petition launched by Stop Watching Us, a coalition of 86 civil liberties organizations who drafted an open letter to Congress and decried the surveillance operation as “a stunning abuse of our basic rights.”

Mozilla, which has an office in San Francisco, played a key role in launching Stop Watching Us and called for greater transparency. “In the US, these companies are required to respect a court order to share our information with the government, whether they like it or not,” the organization pointed out in a press statement. “Mozilla hasn’t received any such order to date, but it could happen to us as we build new server-based services in the future.” It also pointed out that “the Internet is making it much easier” for intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance, because “There’s a lot more data to be had,” “the laws are written broadly,” and “it’s all happening behind closed doors.”

Stop Watching Us coalition membership includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union of California, Boing Boing, the Center for Democracy and Technology, reddit, The Utility Reform Network, and other organizations with a presence in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, news of the NSA’s massive spying endeavor sent shockwaves throughout Silicon Valley, catching some tech company employees off guard. Google CEO Larry Page, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the heads of other tech companies issued statements vigorously denying voluntary participation in PRISM, the program that vacuums up massive communications content flowing between the U.S. and foreign nations via the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.

The question of whether leading tech companies were participating voluntarily, or were secretly compelled to do so, or if this data was being collected without their knowledge or cooperation altogether still seems far from settled. “I have my own suspicions — which I won’t go into here — about what PRISM was actually about,” Google+ Chief Architect Yonatan Zunger noted in a G+ thread the following day. “I’ll just say that there are ways to intercept people’s Google, Facebook, etc., traffic in bulk without sticking any moles into the org — or directly tapping their lines.”

Meanwhile, nearly 40,000 individuals had signed an online thank-you note to Snowden, “for his principled and courageous actions as a whistleblower, informing the public about vast surveillance by the National Security Agency that undermines our civil liberties.” That website, SupportEdwardSnowden.org, was set up by Roots Action, co-founded by Marin County resident Norman Solomon, author and president of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Solomon was also a panelist at the June 11 forum, where he sharply criticized Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and former mayor of San Francisco, for publicly characterizing Snowden’s leak as “an act of treason.” When Feinstein’s name came up during the panel talk on civil liberties, the crowd responded with boos and hisses.

“Where are the progressives of the Bay Area — beginning with San Francisco?” Solomon wondered later in a telephone call with the Guardian. “We should be insisting that she leave that job as chair of the Intelligence Committee. … In the court of public opinion, she should be condemned. Because really. It’s democracy at stake. To hear her talk and examine her behavior, you would think that the Fourth Amendment was … mere advisory.”

Meanwhile, activists who were already organizing in support of Manning had begun investigating what options might be available to Snowden, who, as of press time, was still believed to be in Hong Kong and hadn’t yet been formally charged. Birgitta Jónsdóttir told the Bay Guardian that her organization, International Modern Media Institute, was ready to respond to Snowden’s reported interest in seeking political asylum in Iceland.

“I’m quite concerned, because there are no direct flights to Iceland,” she explained. “I’m just worried about the extradition process in other countries — if he needs to do a layover, or if we’re not quick enough to grant him asylum. And, frankly speaking, one of the parties in the government in Iceland is never going to agree to support it. So, it’s tricky.”

Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, highlighted the similarities between himself, Manning, and Snowden. “The question that each of us faced was: Was it worth our lives, our freedom, and possibly our physical existence to reveal these secrets, which were wrongly held from the American public, in order to inform the public?” he said. “And each of us decided that it was worth, essentially, a life in prison and possibly death. And I think the decisions were right in each case.”

Metadata nightmare

Technologists explain how to protect your communications from government surveillance

The bad news: You cannot effectively counter the government’s ability to snoop on your communications unless you live out the rest of your existence under a rock (i.e., give up your cell phone altogether). The good news: There are some free software programs that can help you to shield the contents of your communications, should you feel the need to shield your privacy.

The domestic telecom surveillance program doesn’t grant intelligence agencies automatic access to what’s being said over the phone, but it requires major carriers, including Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T, to forward all “metadata” to the NSA. Metadata can be quite revealing. It can show that an elected official communicated with a powerful CEO just before casting a key vote, or whom a reporter spoke with just before breaking a significant national news story.

“The laws of physics do not let you lie about cell phone location,” explains Chris Soghoian, principal technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy and technology project.

Eleanor Saitta is a systems analyst with the Open Internet Tools Project and the International Modern Media Institute, working on an encrypted communications project called the Briar communications tool. “What’s not clear yet, is whether [the NSA] is extracting full-time location information,” Saitta notes, spotlighting a looming question about the domestic spying program with serious implications. This full-time information is automatically logged by telecoms anytime a mobile device is on.

PRISM is understood to be able to sweep in the contents of vast amounts of communication between the U.S. and foreign nations. However, Soghoian and Saitta note that some tools can provide a higher degree of privacy.

For web browsing, Tor (torproject.org) is free software that provides online anonymity by bouncing communications through a randomly distributed network. (Caution: Read up on it for some important do’s and don’ts, like why you shouldn’t log into your bank account while you’re running Tor.)

Tor doesn’t hide the content, only the location that a message is being sent from. But it can be run in conjunction with CryptoCat (crypto.cat), a web plug-in that supports encrypted instant messaging. There’s also the option of using Off The Record (OTR) messaging with either Jitsi (jitsi.org) or Adium (adium.im), both IM clients.

For mobile devices, Saitta suggests looking into TextSecure for SMS messaging, and RedPhone for voice calls. For other ideas, visit the resource guide compiled by the Tactical Technology Collective (alternatives.tacticaltech.org). It features detailed information on alternatives that afford a higher degree of privacy, such as Duck Duck Go, a search tool that won’t aggregate data about your queries; RiseUp, an alternative email provider run by a collective dedicated to security; Gibberbot, an open-source Android application that helps you manage IM accounts and uses OTR software; ChatSecure for iPhones and other iOs devices; Orbot and Orweb, to facilitate anonymous browsing on Android devices, and other programs.

It’s important to remember that with any of these software options, as Saitta says, “There are no guarantees. This comes as close as we know how to get.”

Nor do any of these options effectively shield mobile users from the collection of metadata. “The domestic program that is affecting most Americans is something that no one can effectively hide from,” Soghoian notes. “And that sucks.” (Bowe)

Timeline: NSA spying in Silicon Valley and SF

Summer 2002

Mark Klein, a technician at AT&T, learns of the existence of a secret room being built in cooperation with the National Security Agency at AT&T’s San Francisco facility on Folsom Street.

December 2005

The New York Times breaks the news that the NSA “has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications.”

January 31, 2006

Civil liberties organizations, including the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, file suit against AT&T for collaborating with the NSA, including technical documents provided by Klein as part of the complaint.

March 12, 2008

NSA collection of Yahoo data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide leaked by Edward Snowden to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (Yahoo is based in Sunnyvale.)

June 20, 2008

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act passes in the U.S. House of Representatives, retroactively granting AT&T and other telecoms immunity from being sued for cooperating with the NSA.

January 14, 2009

NSA collection of Google data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide Edward Snowden leaked to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (Google is based in Mountain View.)

June 3, 2009

NSA collection of Facebook data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide Snowden leaked to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (Facebook is based in Menlo Park.)

September 24, 2010

NSA collection of YouTube data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide Snowden leaked to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (YouTube is owned by Google, and based in Mountain View.)

October 2012

NSA collection of Apple data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide Snowden leaked to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (Apple is based in Cupertino.)

June 6, 2013

The Guardian UK breaks the news that the NSA has access to the contents of communications flowing through the servers of Silicon Valley tech giants, through PRISM.

June 7, 2013

Google CEO Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond release a statement saying Google has “not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. … We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.” The same day, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg releases a statement saying, “Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. … We hadn’t even heard of PRISM before yesterday.” Other tech companies issue similar denials over following days.

June 11, 2013

The Stop Watching Us campaign kicks off as more than 80 civil liberties organizations, many of them based in the Bay Area, set up an online petition and open letter to Congress.

June 14-17, 2013

In separate statements, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple reveal that they had received 4,000-10,000 requests each from US government and law enforcement agencies in 2012 for information regarding up to 30,000 devices and accounts.

(Information from eff.org, optin.stopwatching.us, and guardian.co.uk.)

On Guard: The story behind the Bay Guardian’s new ownership and the departure of Editor-Publisher Tim Redmond

Sasha Cuttler

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June 18, 2013

311

[An abridged version of this article appears in this week’s Guardian]

Longtime Bay Guardian Editor Tim Redmond left the newspaper last week in a dispute with its new owners over personnel changes and his autonomy within San Francisco Print Media Company, which also includes the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly.

Redmond led the Guardian newsroom for most of his 31 years with the newspaper and engineered last year’s sale to Todd Vogt and a Canadian ownership team. As part of that sale — which Redmond cast to staff as saving the Guardian from bankruptcy and closure — Bruce B. Brugmann and Jean Dibble, the couple who founded the Guardian in 1966, retired from the paper, its Potrero Hill office building was sold, and the Guardian moved into the Examiner’s downtown office in June 2012.

Redmond was the Guardian editor and publisher, the name at the top of our masthead and the person solely in charge of Guardian operations, and he told staff he had been guaranteed full autonomy by the new ownership, which was important to the Guardian staff. As such, he resisted Vogt’s periodic efforts to control the newspaper, including early threats to fire City Editor Steven T. Jones for unspecifed reasons, which Vogt had mentioned to Redmond, directly to Jones, and to Guardian writer Rebecca Bowe prior to her return to the Guardian at the beginning of this year.

Nonetheless, Vogt did make some successful incursions on the Guardian’s independence, initially by encouraging layoffs, later by interfering with Guardian endorsements in the November 2012 election.

On Oct. 26, 2012, without consulting Redmond, Vogt named Examiner Editor Stephen Buel to be vice president for editorial overseeing both newspapers, announcing that Buel would “oversee the editorial direction, content, tone and voice of our newspapers and web sites.”

Shortly after the purchase of the longtime Guardian rival SF Weekly two months later, Vogt similarly appointed Weekly writer Erin Sherbert to oversee online communications at all three papers.

Neither Buel nor Sherbert directed or reviewed any Guardian editorial content prior to publication, although some stories from the Guardian and the Weekly began to appear in the Examiner’s newspaper and website, often edited by Examiner editors but giving credit to their original source.

The Guardian’s weekly revenues continued to remain flat or decline, at least partially because of the departure of two of the Guardian’s commission-based advertising representatives, positions which remain unfilled. The San Francisco Print Media Company then instituted a new system in which ad reps would try to sell into all three papers, which particularly hurt the Guardian’s bottom line during the run-up to the SF Weekly’s large Best of San Francisco, published May 29. The Guardian’s sales staff remains significantly smaller than that of the other two publications.