Mission

Hot sexy events October 20-26

Andrew Lam
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You thought the real Halloween parties started next weekend? Ha! Wrong on two counts.

For one, you’re in San Francisco, so you know this is gonna be a ghoul gala that leaks out into the preceding and following weeks, if not months. Two, the portal to the other world opens the 22nd, not the 31st! (silly) Luckily, you have your deranged BDSM maniacs at the SF Citadel to remind you of the fact with Chamber of Horrors. For those together enough to have assembled their monster ‘fit early, a swell party to play out this journey into another realm where “the gods of old reach out from their dark place,” according to the press release. After all, what better place to witness the chaos that will ensue than a good old-fashioned dungeon? Whips at the ready, there’s gonna be evil spirits to subdue.

Air Sex Championships

Will this be sexy? Will you learn anything from a passel of performers humping the air, licking the air, squeezing the air’s titties? This grand tradition was started by a Japanese chap bereft of solid human beings to sex up. Now people across the world pretend, solo, on-stage, to being sexing – with clothes on. But will it… turn you on? For now, let’s file under maybe, but the event warrants exploration.

Wed/20 8 p.m., $15

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com


Anal Pleasure for Couples

Honey a little wary of rear entry? Best to leave some things to the experts. Reassure them that nothing but good will befall them at this class with Lolo Winters, sex educator, who’ll be teaching on toys, position, and pleasure. Open to all genders and orientations.

Wed/20 6-8 p.m., $20-$25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 354-0500

www.goodvibes.com


Chamber of Horrors

Hobgoblins and naughty, naughty night horrors reign at this dungeon play party. Get the Halloween heebie-jeebies started early and get in touch with your evil side. 

Fri/22 8 p.m., $25

SF Citadel 

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.sfcitadel.org


Steamworks Full Moon Party

Steamworks launches a new play party! How’s it going to be different from their standard showers ‘n’ sex-a-thon? DJs? A $5 off discount when you tell them about the ad on their website? Sexy full moon graphics on the flier? Does it really matter – you’re getting laid!

Fri/22-Sat/23 8 a.m., $17-55

Steamworks

2107 4th St., Berk.

(510) 845-8992

www.steamworksonline.com

 

Exotic Erotic Ball and Expo

Time for marabou, corsetry, and befeathered top hats! Exotic Erotic is back for its 31st year of SF-born and bred debauchery. This year the whole shebang is on the water at Craneway Pavilion and there will be porn star performers from across the globe (even a chance to make it with your favorite!), orgasmic bingo, the Family Stone on stage, and a slew of fine purveyors of lust capitalism at the accompanying EE Expo.

Expo: Fri/22 4 p.m.-midnight and Sat/23 noon-6 p.m., $20

Ball: Sat/23 8 p.m.-2 a.m., $79-169

Craneway Pavilion

1414 Harbour Way South, Richmond

www.exoticeroticball.com


Breast Workshop Fiesta

Because you know it’s breast cancer awareness month – why not make it breast awareness month? Talking of tricks with the titties, Femina Potens is holding a special night of boobies, starring busty starlets Maxine Holloway and Bella Rossi, whose proceeds go straight to Shanti’s Lifelines breast cancer program. Squeeze ’em, ladies. 

Mon/25 6 p.m., $7-$20 sliding scale

Femina Potens

2199 Market, SF

(415) 864-1558

www.feminapotens.org

 

Our Weekly Picks: October 20-26

Andrew Lam
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0

THURSDAY 21

THEATER

“The Laramie Residency”

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the closet, a chilling spike in suicide rates among gay teenagers who have been bullied or harassed has reemerged as national news. Which makes this rare double-header of The Laramie Project and its sequel, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, Epilogue uncannily apropos. Written in response to the notorious murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man in small-town Wyoming, both plays were created from hundreds of interviews with the inhabitants of Laramie. The results offer a detailed examination of how violence affects not only the perpetrators victims, but an entire community. “The Laramie Residency” also includes a special Thursday dialogue between director and coauthor Moisés Kaufman and Tony Taccone of the Berkeley Rep. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Thurs/21, 7 p.m.; Fri/22–Sat/23, 8 p.m., $10–$55

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

3200 California, SF

(415) 292-1233

www.jccsf.org

FILM/PERFORMANCE

“All About Evil: The Peaches Christ Experience in 4-D”

Horror fans are well familiar with the tag line for Wes Craven’s 1972 Last House on the Left: “To avoid fainting, keep repeating ‘It’s only a movie … It’s only a movie…'” Well, it wouldn’t be Halloween in San Francisco without Peaches Christ, whose alter ego, the less-flashy but no less fabulous filmmaker Joshua Grannell, brings his All About Evil to life at the very Mission District theater where it was shot. The film and its accompanying pre-show performance have been out roaming the U.S. and the U.K. for the past several months; expect the hometown gig to be extra-specially spooky, with musical and multimedia numbers by Peaches and Evil cast members. And since the Victoria plays an important supporting role in the film, expect interactive surprises galore. Only a movie? Don’t be so sure! (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/24

8 p.m., $20

Victoria Theater

2961 16th St, SF

www.peacheschrist.com

MUSIC

Joshua Bell with the San Francisco Symphony

An average street performer isn’t always average. In 2007, the acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell participated in an experiment in which he played for 45 minutes as an anonymous busker in the D.C. Metro. The few who bothered to pause in their morning bustle and pull out their headphones realized they were in the presence of greatness. Renowned worldwide, virtuoso Bell joins the San Francisco Symphony in Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Conducted by James Conlon, the evening also includes Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, as well as Dvorák’s In Nature’s Realm and the overtures to Carnival and Othello. (Emmaly Wiederholt)

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun, 2 p.m., $15–$150

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

www.sfsymphony.org

MUSIC

Steve Lawler

You can either love or hate seminal Ibiza club Space, and there’s been plenty of room to do both in its 20-year history. But just when you throw up your hands in a bad way at all the astringent trance, tipsy Brits, and noodling minimal, boom!, a DJ comes along who can drag you back to the dance floor. Rightly respected Brit Steve Lawler, known as the “King of Space,” scored that tiara by leapfrogging styles and keeping his sets limber. There’s some fluttering bass, chunky old-school breakdowns, and searing tech in his bag as well as, gasp, snippets of wistful melody. Lawler especially rocks the hard-driving, samba-esque Spanish-Berlin sound that’s become Ibiza’s best recent export. (Marke B.)

9:30 p.m., $10–>$20

Vessel

85 Campton Place, SF

(415) 433-8585

www.vesselsf.com

DANCE

Kunst-Stoff and LEVYdance

Dancers are famous for their kinesthetic memory. Without activating the brain, their muscles recall whole dances — or at least fragments. Show them a step or two and the rest follows. But dancers also seem to be able to dig even deeper, into something akin to an ancestral memory. It may take personal affinity but also a lot of hard research to unearth the kind of treasure trove that then can be used creatively. Two temperamentally different choreographers, Yannis Adoniou, of Greek descent, and Ben Levy, from a Jewish-Persian family, have done the excavations. Adoniou’s Rebetiko, commissioned by CounterPULSE’s Performing Diaspora Program, and Levy’s Our Body Remembers should make for an intriguing evening of might be called “kinetic history.” (Rita Felciano)

Through Oct. 30

Thurs.–Sat. and Sun/24, 8 p.m., $18

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

FRIDAY 22

MUSIC

Stone Foxes

Let’s talk foxes, shall we? The native gray one is uncommon in San Francisco. The exotic red species, however, is a regular interloper of the Presidio. The Stone Foxes, four young dudes who play mean blues, are more like the former: genuine, rare, and always a treat to see in the wild. Sometimes you don’t want indie or nu-gaze or psych-doom-metal — you simply need real rock ‘n’ roll. Their sophomore album Bears and Bulls was released this past July, and though not as raw as their killer debut, it exudes a new and natural confidence. This is their official vinyl release show, so bring extra cash. (Kat Renz)

With Soft White Sixties and Real Nasty

10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com DANCE

Paco Gomes and Dancers

In his choreography, Brazilian-born Paco Gomes speaks with a powerfully articulated and mature voice. His dances beautifully integrate modern and Afro-Brazilian influences; as a company director he gathers around him — and trains — multi-ethnic dancers who seem to thrive under his tutelage. Now, with guest choreographers Jorge Silva and J. Pazmino, Gomes is presenting Amor O, an evening of works old and new that circles around love: of self, of friends, and also as remembered and lived within families. In addition, the program includes an excerpt of a new work in progress planned for an upcoming international tour. It examines love within another “family,” the Orixas, from the Yoruba religion. Perhaps it’s a consolation that in the world of the gods, not everything went smoothly either. (Felciano)

Through Sat/23

8 p.m., $15

Garage

975 Howard, SF

(415) 518-1517

www.975howard.com

MUSIC

Karl Blau

Eclectic K Records artist Karl Blau throws a wrench into the indie/folk scene with a chameleon-like ability to work within multiple genres. Ignoring the usual expectations of singer-songwriter stereotypes, Blau is known to inject everything from hip-hop and electronic influences to world and reggae music into his solo albums. He’s also worked with some notable names in Phil Elvrum (The Microphones, Mount Eerie) and Laura Veirs. Blau can currently be found playing bass for droney doom-metal band, Earth. It’ll be interesting to see how he melds all these elements together in a live setting. (Landon Moblad)

With Dina Maccabee and Birds and Batteries

7 p.m., free ($5 donation suggested)

Viracocha

998 Valencia, SF

(415) 374-7048

www.viracochasf.com

MUSIC

Lyrics Born

If it was any other rapper describing his newest album as “more synth-oriented” and “dealing with a lot of issues that are more mature than the last few albums, from abandonment to betrayal to incredible joy,” I’d say watch out for a lawsuit from one Mr. West. But since half of Latryx (with Lateef the Truthspeaker) and cofounder of Quannum Records, Lyrics Born is known for bringing his own brand of substance to the scene while pushing the genre forward. His new material, which features emerging artists Trackademicks, Francis and the Lights, and Sam Sparro, will be on display at this release party. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Chali 2na and the House of Vibe and Rakaa

9 p.m., $25

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

SATURDAY 23

MUSIC

Triptykon

After almost 30 years in the arena, Tom G. Warrior has earned his status as heavy metal royalty. The Swiss singer and guitarist formed Hellhammer in 1982 and went on to found Celtic Frost two years later. Both bands contributed immeasurably to the development of extreme metal, and their influence reverberates throughout the genre today. Having parted ways with Celtic Frost in 2008, Warrior formed Triptykon, planning to pick up where Monotheist (Celtic Frost’s 2006 LP) left off. The new band’s music combines slabs of doomy guitar, razor-wire black metal, and Warrior’s paint-peeling vocals, breaking down genre boundaries in pursuit of heaviness. Come out and play. (Ben Richardson)

With 1349 and Yakuza

9 p.m., $23

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

EVENT

“SF DocFest Roller Disco Costume Party”

Have you ever stared longingly at the roller skaters in Golden Gate Park? Always wanted to join in but too embarrassed by your lack of boogie? Still hung up over the accident you had at a fifth grade skate party? Well, get over it. The Roller Disco Costume Party offers a simple solution: anonymity. As part of DocFest, admission is free with a ticket stub or just $5 if you strap on your best costume (which could potentially double as padding in case of collision.) (Prendiville)

8 p.m., free–$10

CELLSpace

2050 Bryant, SF

www.sfindie.com

MUSIC

Taj Mahal, Toumani Diabaté, Vieux Farka Touré

Tonight the Paramount plays host to a blues exploration featuring American bluesman Taj Mahal, Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté, and Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré. To trace the roots of the blues immediately leads to Africa, and in particular to Mali, and each of these three frontmen represents a different facet of that exploration. Mahal has spent decades reinterpreting the blues through far-flung musical traditions from the Caribbean and Hawaii to Europe and Latin America; Diabaté brings to the fore the centuries old West African tradition of the kora; and Touré, the torch-bearing son of the late Ali Farka Touré, represents a more recent cross-pollination of traditional Malian sounds with American blues and rock. While each of the three musicians is a monster in his own right, together they represent a veritable blues trifecta. (Mirissa Neff)

8 p.m., $25–$75

Paramount Theatre

2025 Broadway, Oakl.

(510) 465-6400

EVENT

“B.Y.O.Q.: Bring Your Own Queer”

Gurla-Q, you better bring it: a cavalcade of queer artists, musicians, and performers is avalanching Golden Gate Park for a full day of heady debauchery. Vinyl soul from the Hard French party DJs, homo-futurist sounds from Honey Soundsystem, Las Bomberas de la Bahia’s Afro-Puerto Rican percussion and dance, local indie faves Excuses for Skipping, fashion shows, a candygram booth, art displays, and so much more to turn you hot pink with multitasking. Plus, special guest John Cameron Mitchell giving you Hedwig fierceness. The annual B.Y.O.Q. has been a sweet, sweet success, conjuring up the activist days of yore while introducing some amazing new talent. Don’t wrap your internal pansy up in a plain brown bag, let her shine and shine. (Marke B.)

Noon–6 p.m., free

Golden Gate Park Music Concourse, SF

www.byoq.org

SUNDAY 24

MUSIC

Reigning Sound

Reigning Sound burst out of the gates in 2002 with the garage-punk classic, Time Bomb High School. Since then, the Tennessee-based group — performing as part of the ninth Budget Rock festival — has continued to refine its brand of country, soul, and classic R&B touches by way of organ-filled, distorted guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll, most recently on 2009s Love & Curses. The band also recently backed up original Shangri-la member Mary Weiss on her 2007 comeback album, further evidence of the range its capable of. As far as modern garage rock goes, Reigning Sound is as classy and fun a group that you’re likely to find. (Moblad)

With Flakes, Ty Segall, and Touch-Me-Nots

9 p.m., $15

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. 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.

On the margins

Andrew Lam
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On the margins

Sarah@sfbg.com

Franklin is a 20-something computer programmer who shares an apartment with 10 other people around his age, an arrangement that helps him and his housemates come up with $3,500 each month for rent in the Mission, a rapidly gentrifying part of town.

“Everyone is pretty much working, but they are in and out at different times so the house isn’t ever really empty. But there’s usually only three or four of us at a time, ” Franklin told the Guardian, speaking on his cell phone as he rode his bike to work.

But how does an apartment that officially has only one bedroom sleep 10 people? Franklin said there are other rooms in the house — including a dining room and a double parlor that splits into two with sliding doors — and that each of these spaces has a couple sleeping in it. “And there is one person sleeping in a closet and another sleeping in a space atop the bathroom.”

While overcrowding has been a problem in immigrant communities in San Francisco, it’s reaching a new area: young people who have for generations flocked to the city to escape uncomfortable home lives, find a supportive community, and make a new start in life.

Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, said at least 1,250 housing units annually were lost to condominium and tenancy-in-common conversions in the dot.com and housing bubble years, a loss rate that has slowed only slightly since then.

“Right now, it’s about 1,000 units a year,” he said.

It’s become more common for young people to struggle to pay rent in a town where well-paying jobs are scarce and educational programs have been cut — a triple whammy that means youth with additional challenges are at risk of becoming homeless and getting trapped in vicious cycle of abuse and incarceration.

COMPOUNDING THE PROBLEM

Sherilyn Adams, executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services, which provides housing, medical, social, and educational services to at-risk homeless and runaway youth, says all young people in San Francisco face the same basic challenges.

“And if, in addition, these youth are part of a group like LGBTQ youth, or are youth of color, or immigrant youth, documented or not, then the circumstances and barriers are much more exacerbated,” she said.

Adams said San Francisco has done a lot to add resources for transitional age youth, a group that traditionally has been defined as ages 12 to 24. “But there is still a significant gap in resources, especially for the more disenfranchised groups, because the longer you’ve been on the street, the more complex your issues in terms of substance abuse and mental health.”

Civic leaders, including California Assembly member Tom Ammiano, recently held a rally and candlelight march to raise awareness of the tragic rise in homelessness and suicides among LGBTQ youth. Shortly after, Adams told us, “Youth who came here escaping homophobia in their family or city then face the harsh reality of San Francisco.”

Adams understands that some people see Proposition L, legislation on the November ballot to criminalize sitting or lying on city sidewalks, as a way to address disruptive and aggressive behavior on the streets. “But it becomes part of the larger divide, because youth who come here and are on the street are mostly there because they have no other place. So penalizing them in the absence of services, housing, and education is ineffective at best and really harmful at worst,” Adams said.

Many young people on the brink of homelessness are “somewhat invisible,” and therefore at high risk, she said. “Youth will double, triple up. They will couch surf as a way to be off the streets. And we hear the stories where youth are faced with a Sophie’s choice: Do you sleep on the street, or do you barter with what you have available so as to get shelter? And LGBTQ youth are at particular risk because the more disenfranchised and disconnected you are, the more you have to make impossible choices to survive.”

Jodi Schwartz, executive director at Lyric, an SF nonprofit that focuses on building community and inspiring change in LGBTQ youth, said the group serves 500 youth and reaches out to 800 to 1,000 more each year. “We go into classrooms and talk about hate speech, putting it in the context of racism and other forms of oppression,” she said.

“There’s a misconception that because we live in San Francisco and have a lot more dialogue and interaction with the LGBTQ community, that young people’s experience here is so much better. It may be different, but I wouldn’t say it’s better,” Schwartz said, noting that harassment levels, especially for transgendered youth in local schools, are very high.

HELPING THOSE IN NEED

Young women are another at-risk group, especially if they are pregnant, have kids, or are in the foster or juvenile justice system.

As executive director of the Center for Young Women’s Development in San Francisco’s gritty SoMa district, Marlene Sanchez tries to stabilize at-risk young women, then engage them in policy work so they can advocate for other young people they know.

“We work with young women who are involved in the underground street economies, doing prostitution, drug sales, and selling stolen goods like clothes,” Sanchez said. “We try to reach them on the streets and inside Juvenile Hall, so we take an inside-outside approach.”

Leajay Harper, who coordinates CYWD’s Young Mothers United program, works with young pregnant women inside Juvenile Hall.

“We have all experienced poverty, parents on drugs, and having to take care of younger siblings,” Harper said. “When young moms get incarcerated, they are at risk of having their children taken away at much higher rates. So we started parenting classes that are age and culturally relevant.”

City records show that while only about 12 percent of Juvenile Hall detainees are female, they are twice as likely as their male counterparts to land back in custody for probation violations.

“There are lots of young women with felonies struggling to pay their bills and feed their kids who look out the window and see they can sell drugs. And that often seems like the only option,” Sanchez explained.

City statistics also show that of the overwhelmingly male population at Juvenile Hall, almost half is African American, and that many are inside for what appear to be gang-related offenses.

Easop Winston, a 35-year-old local musician, church pastor, and member of the Visitacion Valley Peacekeepers, regularly visits young men inside Juvenile Hall, where gangs are a topic of discussion every week.

“The same guys that they have been fighting with, they are now incarcerated with,” Winston observed. “So one of the approaches I try to take is rehabilitating how they think about their neighbor. You are killing/fighting with someone who lives one block over. It’s plain genocide”

He credits the juvenile justice system for doing its best, but worries that it fails to rehabilitate youthful offenders with jobs skills, education, and counseling before sending them back into society.

He blames the churches for not doing a better job of making youth feel welcome. “Churches are part of the fabric of our community,” he said. “They need to do more outreach and not have so many rules. They need to accept youth as they are, with their tattoos, piercings, and styles of clothing.”

Winston believes politicians need to do a better job of making sure community-based organizations deliver on their promises to help working class communities of color. At the same time, as he acknowledges, “We can’t cure the world in one day.”

“Over the last five to 10 years, the African American population in SF has shrunk,” he observed. “Everybody is moving to Antioch and Fairfield because people can’t afford to live here. People are losing their jobs. And San Francisco has almost become impossible to live in unless you have a college degree. A lot of what I hear from youth is about economics. They want jobs. They want to be trained.”

PUSHING THEM OUT

Political disputes over the city’s sanctuary city policies on undocumented immigrants — which have left in limbo the question of whether arrested immigrants will get their days in court before being turned over to the federal government for possible deportation — have also been a source of instability for immigrant teens, many of whom are homeless and/or LGBTQ.

Police Commissioner Angela Chan, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, decried Mayor Gavin Newsom for refusing to implement Sup. David Campos’ due process legislation, which the board approved in November 2009.

“It’s been a little bit upsetting for the many groups that took the democratic process seriously. But these groups are still very committed to these kids,” Chan said. “We are hoping to work with the new U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag to clarify this issue and explain that the top priority of the Obama administration is not to deport undocumented youth.”

Other so-called tough-on-crime initiatives also threaten local at-risk young people. In September, City Attorney Dennis Herrera secured an injunction against 41 alleged gang members in Visitacion Valley, a strategy that progressives fear will accelerate the ongoing displacement of the African American community.

Court documents show that 66 percent of the men named in the injunction are 18 to 25 years old and that many have children in public housing, where lease holders are predominantly women of color.

San Francisco City College Trustee Chris Jackson, 27, is running for the District 10 seat on the Board of Supervisors. Noting that the southeast SF district has some of the highest numbers of poor people and children citywide, Jackson said that youth issues are similar to challenges that other voters face.

“But the context is different,” said Jackson, who previously served on the San Francisco Youth Commission. “Young people care about safe streets because it’s us or our friends who are on them. We care about schools because we are in them and want to go to college. And we are concerned about the future of employment because how do you tell folks to go to school if there are no jobs?”

Jackson notes that in the Bayview-Hunters Point, home to the city’s largest remaining African American community, kids don’t come back if they leave for college. “We see a brain drain. It’s really difficult to retain young people, so it’s important to first make sure that youth’s housing needs are met. And they also need access to careers so that when they graduate, they know there is a job in the city. But right now, youth can’t even find a summer job because of the recession.”

He called for city policies that are based on the needs of current city residents rather than developers’ profits or the desires of well-off outsiders to move here.

“San Francisco is more of an opportunity for Silicon Valley residents than for youth who were born and raised here. And part of the problem is city policies, ineffective programs, and a failure to provide job opportunities for youth,” he said. “Everything for youth has been gutted.”

And those evaporating opportunities are compounded by punitive policies like Prop. L, Jackson said, further alienating young people. “It comes down to how much money you have,” Jackson observes. “If you are rich, you can enjoy the parks, the clubs, the transit. But if you are low-income, especially low-income youth of color, it’s very hard to take advantage of everything the city has to offer.”

Noting that both City College and the San Francisco Unified School District canceled their summer school program, Jackson said, “it doesn’t look like youth are prioritized.”

Jackson was recently at Double Rock (a.k.a. the Alice Griffith Public Housing Project) and he saw four kids under 10 who were at home while their parents were at work. “Why aren’t they in school or in child care? And don’t give me the line that these are hard to serve communities. We have to serve them.”

N’tanya Lee, executive director of Coleman Advocates, agrees that while all young people are struggling in the city, African American children and youth are having one of the worst times.

“We don’t need 5,000 different strategies and initiatives when 90 percent of these kids live in extreme poverty, mostly concentrated in public housing, and you could fit the city’s entire black high school student population into one auditorium,” Lee said.

She wants the city to create a database of these youth and develop specific strategies to help this population before it’s too late.

“No one in city government feels accountable for the outcomes for black children and youth,” she said. “Instead you have one group who are about young people and another who are about economic development — and they have nothing to do with each other. Meanwhile, we’ve lost half of all black families with children in this city in the past 20 years.”

Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Rebecca Bowe on ageing out of the foster care system, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Tim Redmond’s editorial on the issues facing our rising generation

The soul of the city

Andrew Lam
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23
The soul of the city

tredmond@sfbg.com

44th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL We all arrived in San Francisco broke: Paulo and me in the ’73 Capri, crawling over Donner Pass with a blown valve and three cylinders firing; Tracy and Craig in the back of a VW van, behind in the payments and on the run from the repo men; Tom and Sharon hitching across the Southwest after Tom, who could bullshit with the best, talked himself out a jail cell in New Orleans. Moak showed up in a rusty Datsun with the wheels falling off. Jane and Danny came on the old hippie bus, the Green Tortoise, $69 across the country.

But we all had a friend who knew a friend where you could crash for a little while. And in the early 1980s you got food stamps the first day and it only took a couple of weeks to get a job waiting tables or canvassing or selling trinkets on the Wharf. And once you’d scraped together a couple hundred dollars — maybe two weeks’ work — you could get a place to live. My first room in a flat in the Western Addition was $120 a month.

We did art and politics and writing and music. After a while, some of us went to law school, some of us became journalists, some of us went into government and education. A few of us fled, and Paulo died in the plague (dammit). But in the end, a lot of us were — and are — San Franciscans, part of a city that welcomed us and gave us a chance.

It was a very different time to be young in San Francisco.

I’m not here to get all nostalgic, really I’m not. There were serious problems in 1982 — raging gentrification was creating clashes in the Mission and the Haight and south of Market that were more violent than anything going on today. And frankly, broke as we were, most of my friends were from middle class homes and were college educated and had a leg up. We weren’t going to starve; we didn’t have to make really ugly choices to eat.

Most of the stories in this special anniversary issue are about marginalized youth — young people trying to survive and make their way against all odds in an increasingly hostile city and a bitter, harsh economy.

But there’s an important difference about San Francisco today, something earlier generations of immigrants didn’t face. The cost of housing, always high, has so outstripped the entry-level and nonprofit wage scale that it’s almost impossible for young people to survive in this town — much less have the time to add to its artistic and creative culture.

I met the 21-year-old daughter of a college friend the other day. She’s as idealistic as we all were. She wants to move to San Francisco for the same reasons we did and you did — except maybe she won’t. Because she felt as if she had to come visit first, to use her dad’s network, see if she could line up a job and figure out if her likely earnings would cover the cost of living. When I mentioned that I’d just up and left the East Coast and headed west, planning to figure it out when I got here, she gave me a look that was part amazement and part sadness. You just can’t do that anymore.

The odds are pretty good that San Francisco won’t get her — her talent and energy will go somewhere else, somewhere that’s not so harsh on young people. I wondered, as I do every once in a while when I’m feeling halfway between an angry political writer and an old curmudgeon: would I come to San Francisco today?

Would Harvey Milk? Would Jello Biafra? Would Dave Eggers? Would you?

If you were born here, would you stay?

Are we squandering this city’s greatest resource — its ability to attract and retain creative people?

The two people who started the Bay Guardian 44 years ago were young arrivals from the Midwest. Bruce Brugmann looked around the city room at the Milwaukee Journal, where he worked as a reporter, and realized there wasn’t any job he wanted there in 10 years. With two young kids and a dream of starting a weekly newspaper in one of the world’s most exciting cities, Bruce and his wife, Jean Dibble, settled in a $130-a-month flat. The Guardian’s first office was a desk in the printers shop. When they paper could finally afford its own space, Bruce and Jean moved the staff into a $60-a-month four-room place on Ninth and Bryant streets.

From the start, the paper was a “preservationist” publication — both in terms of environmental issues like saving the bay and in the larger political sense. The San Francisco Bay Guardian was out to save San Francisco.

The city was under assault — by the developers who were making fast money tossing high-rises into downtown; the speculators making fast money flipping property, ducking taxes, and driving up rents; the unscrupulous landlords who were letting their buildings fall apart while they charged ever higher rent. For the Guardian, fighting this urbicide meant protecting San Francisco values, preserving the best of the city from what Bruce liked to call “the radicals at the Chamber of Commerce.”

For the Guardian, progress wasn’t measured in the number of new buildings constructed, but in the ability of the city to remain a place where artists and writers and community organizers and hell-raisers — and the young people who were always bringing new life to the city — could survive. We supported rent control, and growth limits, and affordable housing policies, and limits on condo conversions, and minimum-wage and sanctuary city laws — and a long list of other things that together amounted to a progressive agenda.

And in 2010, the assault on the young, the poor, the nonconformists, the immigrants, is still on, at full force. The mayor and his allies are pushing a ballot measure that would make it illegal just to sit on the sidewalk. He’s also turning the local juvenile authorities into immigration cops, breaking up families in the process. He’s cut funding for youth services, and wants to make it easier for speculators to evict tenants, take affordable rental housing (especially the flats that young people share to save money) off the market, and create high-priced condos. Virtually all of the new housing he’s pushing is for rich people. He’s shutting down parties and arresting DJs and, in effect, declaring a War on Fun.

What he’s doing — and what the downtown forces want — is the transformation of San Francisco from a welcoming city where the weird is the normal, where the young and the crazy and the brilliant and the broke can be part of (or even drivers of) the culture, to one where profit and property values are all that matter. And that’s a recipe for urban doom.

Richard Florida’s 2004 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class shook up political thinking by pointing out that cities thrive with iconoclasts, not organization people. Everyone likes to talk about that now, even Mayor Gavin Newsom. But the missing piece, from a policy perspective, is that the creative class — particularly the young people who are going to be the next generation of the creative class — needs space to grow. And that means the most important thing a creative city can do is nurture the very people Newsom and his allies want to drive away.

If Prop. L, the “sit-lie” law, passes, if the rental flats in the Mission that have been home to several generations of young artists, writers, musicians and future civic leaders vanish in the name of condo conversions, if 85 percent of all the new housing in San Francisco is affordable only to millionaires, if the money that helps foster kids and runaways and at-risk youth dries up because this rich city won’t raise taxes, if nightlife becomes an annoyance to be stifled…then we’re in danger of losing San Francisco.

Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Sarah Phelan on SF’s disadvantaged youth, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Rebecca Bowe’s look at ageing out of the foster care system

Rep clock

David Talbot
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Schedules are for Wed/20–Tues/26 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. “Fifth ATA Film and Video Festival: Human Nature,” Thurs, 8; “Lo-Fi Future,” Fri, 8. “PXL This 19,” toy camera film festival, Sat, 8:30. For related events visit www.laughtears.com/PXL-THIS-19.html. “ATA and Alternative Tentactles Present:” •The Widower (1999) and Terminal City Richochet (1990), DVD and CD release double feature, Sun, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. I Am Love (Guadagnino, 2009), Wed, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:20. The Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko, 2010), Thurs, 2:30, 4:45, 7, 9:10. “15th Berlin and Beyond Film Festival,” Oct 22-28. Visit www.berlinbeyond.com for complete schedule and tickets ($10-11.50).

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. 36 (Marchal, 2005), Wed-Thurs, 6:30, 9. Inside Job (Ferguson, 2010), Oct 22-28, call for times. My Dog Tulip (Fierlinger and Fierlinger, 2009), Oct 22-28, call for times.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. The Whale Warrior: Pirate for the Sea (Colby, 2009), Wed, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100 (reservations required). $10. “CinemaLit: Apocalypse Noir:” Dead of Night (Cavalcanti, Crichton, Dearden, and Hamer, 1945), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area:” “1969-79,” Wed, 7:30. “Elegant Perversions: The Cinema of João César Monteiro:” Come and Go (2003), Thurs, 7; The Hips of J.W. (1997), Sun, 7. “Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism:” The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, 1948), Fri, 7 and Sat, 6:30; Bitter Rice (De Santis, 1949), Fri, 9. “Shakespeare on Screen:” King Lear (Kozintsev, 1970), Sat, 8:30; Antony and Cleopatra (Heston, 1972), Sun, 4.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Stingray Sam (McAbee, 2009), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:15. Winter’s Bone (Granik, 2010), Thurs-Sat, 7:15, 9:25 (also Sat, 2). The Girl Who Played With Fire (Alfredson, 2010), Sun, 2, 5, 8 and Mon-Tues, 7:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “SF DocFest,” through Oct 28. Program information at www.sfindie.com.

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 151 Third St, SF; www.sfmoma.org. $5. “San Francisco Cinematheque Presents:” “Private Lives: Beth Custer Ensemble and the Films of Alexander Hammid,” Thurs, 7; My Grandmother (Mikaberidze, 1929), with the Beth Custer Ensemble, Thurs, 9.

VICTORIA THEATER 2961 16th St, SF; www.peacheschrist.com. $20. “The Peaches Christ Experience in 4D:” All About Evil (Grannell, 2010), Thurs-Sun, 8. With the Midnight Mass Players.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.vizcinema.com. $10. “Ozu and His Muse: Setsuko Hara,” Late Spring (1949), Wed, 4:30; Early Summer (1954), Wed, 7:15 and Thurs, 4:30; Tokyo Twilight (1947), Thurs, 7:15. “Taiwan Film Days:” Monga (Doze, 2010), Fri, 6:15 and 9:40; Let’s Fall In Love (Wu, 2009), Sat, 1:30 and Sun, 4:10; Seven Days in Heaven (Liu and Wang, 2009), Sat, 4 and Sun, 9:10; Hear Me (Cheng, 2009), Sat, 6:40; Tears (Chen, 2009), Sat, 9:30 ansd Sun, 6:40; No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (Dai, 2009), Sun, 2.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Sing! The Music of Sesame Street,” Thurs, 7:30; Sun, 2. “San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Presents: Tough Guys: Images of Jewish Gangsters in Film:” Straight is the Way (Sloane, 1934), Sun, 2.

On the cheap listings

David Talbot
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Events listings are compiled by Caitlin Donohue. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 20

hell strung and crooked Release Party The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, SF; www.thebeatmuseum.com. 6pm, free. The Beat Museum helps to present a night of intensely creative bards from the world over in anticipation of the release of their new poetry tome.

Smack Dab Open Mic Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF; wwwmagnetsf.org. 8pm, free. All ages and genders are welcome to this open mic, which sets a medley of musicians and poets onstage to the tune of five minutes a piece. No open mic traumas here, people.

THURSDAY 21

Art Attack One Year Anniversary supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF; www.visualsby3.com. 9:30 pm, $8. The flopsy, floozy art performance group celebrates its first 365 days on this earth with a burlesque-off featuring Alotta Boutté, Scotty the Blue Bunny, and more local A-listers from the world of tassels and tease.

"Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women" Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF; (415) CAR-TOON, www.cartoonart.org. 7pm, $5. Beyond the kvetch and kibitz, female Jewish cartoonists have proven themselves adept at a stark, honest rendering of life in the 21st century. Hear them discuss their art at this panel discussion.

Jo Scott-Coe Books Inc., 2275 Market, SF; (415) 864-6777, www.booksinc.net. 7:30 pm, free. An ex-public school teacher exposes the subtle and overt forms of violence in the education system in her latest book, which she’ll discuss at this bookstore klatch.

BAY AREA

Homeless Connect Health Fair Multi Service Center, 2362 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 809-8516, www.sites.google.com/site/bfhphealth. Noon, free. Vision screenings, STD tests, flu shots, therapist and addiction referrals, haircuts, and more at this gathering of service providers for the homeless.

FRIDAY 22

UN-65 Muir Woods Walking Tour Cathedral UN Grove, Muir Woods, Sausalito; (415) 267-1866; www.una-sf.org. 11am, free. Advance registration requested. Mark 65 years of the United Nations’ brand of global collaboration with this trek through the redwoods, a cup of tea, and some Qi Gong — a path braved by UN founders in 1945.

Fog City Necropolis 354 5th St., SF; (415) 606-2503. 7pm, 10pm. Take a tour through SF’s interactive haunted house, whose theme this year is a truly scary trope: eviction! Evade the undead grasp of Jack Kerouac, Frida Kahlo, the crazy cat man of the Presidio, and more so that you can live to pay rent again.

BAY AREA

"Analysis of the Tea Party Movement" UC Berkeley Alumni House, Bancroft and Telegraph, Berk; www.ccsrwm.berkeley.edu/conferences. 8:30am-5:30am, free. Political scientists and sociologists take a look at America’s most grating political movement: are the Tea Partiers part of a grass roots campaign, a media-driven construction, or something in between?

SATURDAY 23

Actors Theatre Season Kick-Off Actors Theatre, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287; www.actorstheatresf.org. 7 pm, $10. A cabaret to celebrate the new stage season, featuring the psychedelic tropes of comedian Wil Franken, and the world premiere of William Blake Sings the Blues, penned by the theater’s own company member.

Bernal Yoga Literacy Series Bernal Yoga, 461 Cortland, SF; (4125) 643-9007, www.bernalyoga.com. 8pm, $5 suggested donation. Tsering Wangmo Dhopma and Stephen O’Connor, writers both, will fill the chakras of this neighborhood ayurvedic space with readings from their recent publications.

Bring Your Own Queer Festival Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.byoq.org. Noon-6pm, free. Pack a gay in your rucksack for this community collaboration of art, performance, and music, featuring DJ collectives Honey Soundsystem and Hard French, the Bay Area Derby Girls, and a rescue dog fashion show.

Drag Racing Day Velma’s, 2246 Jerrold, SF; (415) 824-4606. Noon, by donation. A Bayview family needs help raising funds for their drag racing team. They make their own motors and transmissions! Grab a bite at this neighborhood restaurant while you watch racing footage and dad Mike Henery’s presentation to interested young people.

Potrero Hill History Night International Studies Academy, 655 De Haro, SF; (415) 863-0784. 5:30 pm barbeque, $6; 7 pm historical program, free. A movie on Potrero Hill public housing, urban gardening in the neighborhood, and hood tales from 50-year residents like "Goat Hill Phil."

Seismic Safety Fair San Francisco General Hospital, 1001 Potrero, SF; www.sfdph.org/dph/rebuildsfgh. 9am, free. Feeling a little shaky? SF General’s setting aside a day to explain the base-isolated design of its new earthquake retrofitting. It’s meant to be the most seismically-resistant plan available today, so go on and get grounded.

BAY AREA

Cal Science and Engineering Festival Haas Pavilion, Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-0352, www.scienceatcal.berkeley.edu/festival. 10am, free. Kids been clamoring to touch a real human brain? Bring ’em to this hands-on extravaganza of natural science — for free.

Fantastic Fountain Thistle Recovery Work Party Highway 92-W and I-280-N, San Mateo. 9am, free with RSVP. Remove invasive pampas grass and Australian tea tree so that our small bristly friend the fountain thistle can continue to live long and prosper in the Bay Area.

SUNDAY 24

Sunday Streets: Civic Center and Tenderloin Civic Center Plaza, SF; www.sundaystreetssf.com. 10 am- 3pm, free. The last Sunday Streets car-free community event takes the action to the heart of downtown, with clear biking and walking from a roller disco outside the Asian Art Museum to the Tenderloin National Forest.

Tricycle Music Fest West Various libraries and times, SF; www.sfpl.org/tricycle. Free. Three wheel from library to library or plunk the kiddies in front of a show of their choosing for this day of kids’ music, that effervescent establisher of early literary skills.

Stage listings

David Talbot
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Dracula’s School for Vampires Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Opens Sat/23, 1pm. Runs Sat, 1 pm; Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Nov 14. Young Performers Theatre presents a Dracula comedy by Dr. Leonard Wolf.

BAY AREA

Dracula Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $36-42. Previews Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 2:30pm. Opens Tues/26, 7:30 pm. Runs Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm (also Nov 20, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Eugene Brancoveanu stars as the Count in a production directed by Michael Butler.

The Great Game: Afghanistan Roda Theatre, 201 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $17-73. Call for times. Through Nov 7. Berkeley Rep presents the West Coast premiere of a three-part show about Afghanistan.

Winter’s Tale Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Opens Fri/22, 8pm. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 31, Nov, 7, and Nov 14, 2pm; Nov 18, 8pm). Through Nov 20. Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley presents the rarely-performed Shakespeare play.

 

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Phoenix Theatre, Stage 2, 414 Mason; 433-1235, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/23. A one-woman musical starring Karen Hirst, with book and music by Anne Doherty.

Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/24. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a show by Brian Christopher Williams.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Fri/22. Actors Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ sultry, sweltering tale of a Mississippi family, directed by Keith Phillips.

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm (also Sat/16, 1pm). Through Sat/ 24. Although a little slow and awkward at the start, not long into 42nd Street Moon’s staging of Stephen Sondheim classic and classical (being inspired by the farces of Plautus) musical comedy (with book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart) you feel it’s making up in enthusiasm and grit what it lacks in Broadway-sized budgets. It helps that artistic director Greg MacKellan has assembled an able cast, especially in the principal roles. It can’t be easy to follow in the cavorting footsteps of Zero Mostel and Nathan Lane, but Megan Cavanagh has absolutely no trouble wooing the audience in the central role of Pseudolus, the clever slave bargaining and scheming for his freedom. Strong performances come too from Michael Rhone as fellow slave Hysterium (a name that speaks for itself), Bob Greene as horny paterfamilias Senex, and Rob Hatzenbeller as the self-loving captain Miles Gloriosus. Nice costuming (by Louise Jarmilowicz), a hint of Roman architecture (courtesy of set designer Jon Wai-keung Lowe), generally spiffy choreography (by Tom Segal) and jaunty musical accompaniment from musical director Dave Dobrusky and horn player Nick Di Scala all add lift to a gradual charmer of a show. (Avila)

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Oct 27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Habibi Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Nov 7. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present the world premiere of a play by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh.

*Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 30. Custom Made Theatre Company presents the 2005 play by New York’s Stephen Adly Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the A Train), which places purgatorial Judas (Kristoffer Alberto Barrera) on trial to determine his deserved fate for dropping a dime on Jesus and all that jazz. Flamboyant, sycophantic and horny prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Ben Ortega) and defense attorney Loretta (Amelia Avila) call between them a series of brow-raising witnesses—including Mother Teresa (Brandy Leggett), Sigmund Freud (Catz Forsman), and Satan (Richard Wenzel)—as Judas (seated on the upper tier of Sarah Phykitt’s suitably imposing split-level set) stares stoically in relative silence or appears in a series of childhood flashbacks. Characteristically funny and streetwise, as well as versed in the Catholic rigmarole as filtered through a NYC-boroughs sensibility, Guirgis’s play is also unusually tedious in its jokey, poky unfolding since—offering not much more than a cipher in the largely mute Iscariot—the proceedings lack a strong sense of dramatic stakes. It feels more like a revue than a play, or like an unnecessarily long-winded excuse for the final, well-turned concluding monologue by a heretofore marginal character (a speech delivered with admirable understatement by director Brian Katz). (Avila)

Love Song Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Sat/23. An offbeat comedy by John Kolvenbach, directed by Loretta Janca.

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Wed/20, Oct 27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

Nina and the Monsters Shotwell Studios, 3252A 19th; 509-8656, 509-8656. $10-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/24, 2pm). Ninjaz of Drama with Footloose present a modern-day fairy tale.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 19. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Proof Exit Stage Left Theatre, 156 Eddy; www.belljartheatre.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 30. Bell Jar Theatre presents David Auburn’s award-winning play.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Scapin American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-90. Tues-Sun, times vary. Through Sat/23. Bill Irwin, the innovative former Pickle Family clown and neo-vaudevillian turned Broadway star, makes a San Francisco return at the helm—and in the title role—of American Conservatory Theater’s production of Moliere’s classic farce. It’s an excuse for some arch meta-theatrical high jinx as well as expert clowning, a love fest really, with many fine moments amid a general font of fun whose heady purity seems like it should fall under some FDA regulation or other—clearly, somebody has paid someone to look the other way, and for once the corruption is unreservedly welcome. Joining the fun is Irwin’s old comrade-in-arms and, here, sacks, Geoff Hoyle, as miserly and dyspeptic daddy Geronte. Other ACT regulars and veterans flesh out a winning cast, among them the ever versatile and inimitable Gregory Wallace as Octave, a flouncing Steven Anthony Jones as put-out patriarch Argante, René Augesen as boisterously unlikely “virgin” Zerbinette, and a wonderfully adept and scene-stealing Judd Williford in the role of Scapin sidekick Sylvestre. As for Irwin, his comedic sensibility shows itself scrupulously apt and timeless at once, and his sure, lithesome performance intoxicating and age-defying. As a director, moreover, he gives as generously to each of his fellow performers as he does to his adoring, lovingly tousled audience. (Avila)

The Shining: Live The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-7891, www.darkroomsf.com. $7-10. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/23. The Dark Room becomes the Overlook Hotel in this stage production of the horror classic.

*SHIToberfest Off-Market Theaters, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 30. This special October run of PianoFight’s bowel-loosening comedy series, the S.H.I.T. Show (for acronym fans, that’s the Stop Hating Imagination Time Show), revolves dizzyingly around the subject of beer, Germans and, perhaps less explicably, flatulent dolphins, among much else in the wide open seas of poor taste. Is it hilarious? It is. And you don’t even need to smuggle in a forty to make it so, though it certainly doesn’t hurt. Fine comic acting throughout a charismatic cast (including writer-director-producers Alex Boyd, Zach Cahn, Jed Goldstein, Ray Hobbs, Devin McNulty, Evan Winchester and Duncan Wold, with help from Nicole Hammersla, Gabrielle Patacsil, Rob Ready, Derricka Smith, Andy Strong, Jacque Vavroch and Dan Williams) combines here with generally solid to exceptional sketch work, video and song. Add in a permeating spirit of revelry, debauchery and irreverence and the evening becomes a diversion of the first order, culminating in an utterly sacrilicious sketch about a bunch of toasted beer-brewing monks treated to a papal visit—one of the best venial sins for your buck. When it comes to Octoberfesting this year, “Bavaria” is just S.H.I.T.–faced for Bay Area. (Avila)

Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm (Thurs/21, Fri/22, Oct 28, Oct 29, Oct 30, and Oct 31 include performances of The Forsaken Laboratory by the Brazilian Grand Guignol group Vigor Mortis). Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Sunset Limited SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Nov 6. This 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy exhibits some of the best and worst of the celebrated author, but significantly more of the latter. It sets an aging white academic and failed suicide (Charles Dean) in a room with his rescuer and would-be savior, a poor black social worker (Carl Lumbly), who has just snatched him from a railway platform ahead of a tête-à-tête with a train called the Sunset Limited. Both characters remain nameless, emphasizing the abstract pseudo-Socratic dimensions attendant on the dialogue-driven realism here (staged with a knowing wink in director Bill English’s scenic design, a partially walled wood-framed shack with see-through slits between the thin horizontal planking). The black man is a born-again Christian and ex-con convinced Jesus has just given him a major assignment. His dogmatic certainty is matched by the white man’s nihilism and despair. “I believe in the primacy of the intellect,” the miserable prof tells his host, who’s locked the door on his self-destructive guest in an effort to buy time to change his mind. Leaving aside the historically clichéd, problematic and baggage-heavy dynamic of a poor black American devoted to the welfare of a rich white one, neither man moves from his respective position one inch (at least until perhaps and partially at the very end), which constrains the dramatic development. Moreover, both sides argue feebly, mainly by gainsaying whatever it is the other one says, making this not a great intellectual debate either. SF Playhouse’s production sets two fine actors at this heavy-handed twofer, but little can be done to redeem so static and arid an exercise. (Avila)

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 31, 5pm). Through Oct 31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

BAY AREA

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 31. This latest from Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Killer Joe) starts out as a delicious treat but a hollowness in the center of it all leaves one less than fully satisfied. Director Leslie Martinson’s cast shines, however, as the action unfolds in crisp, engaging scenes set in the titular run-down donut shop in Chicago’s slowly gentrifying Uptown neighborhood. Owner-operator Arthur Przybyszewski (Howard Swain) is an aging baby boomer and second-generation Polish immigrant who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft and returned years later to take over his parents shop, alienated and hesitant, though well liked by his regulars. At least most: As the play opens his shop has been vandalized. Two beat cops are on the scene, James (Michael J. Asberry) and Randy (Julia Brothers), the latter eventually displaying a visible crush on an oblivious, then discombobulated Arthur. When an impressive young African American man named Franco (Lance Gardner) comes in and charms his way into a job, Arthur gradually finds himself drawn out of his shell and faced with the challenge of valuing another human being more than his own hide—a challenge underscored by Arthur’s several monologues, in which his personal history comes to the fore. The play feels pat and a little lazy-sentimental in the end, but there’s no denying the entertainment afforded here, especially by the magnetic pairing of leads Swain and Gardner. (Avila)

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Aerosols, Montra, Skystone Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Pryor Baird and the Deacons Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Blood and Sunshine, Callow, Shauna Regan Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

Deer Tick, J. Roddy Walston and the Business Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $17.

Ennen Enne, Winebirds, Zoo Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Four Year Strong, Wonder Years, American Fangs Slim’s. 8pm, $17.

Hedley, Gold Motel, Chairman Wow Café Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Hesta Prynn, Kenan Bell, 40Love Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Scout Niblett, Esben and the Witch, Excuses for Skipping Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Suicidal Tendences, (hed)p.e. Fillmore. 8pm, $26.50.

UK Subs, Total Chaos, Sore Thumbs, Final Summation Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10-12.

Vaselines, Dum Dum Girls Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $23.

Hawksley Workman, Joe Firstman, Aimee Francis, Trey Lockerbie Hotel Utah. 7:30pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Breezin Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Amy A and Brynnie Mac spinning yacht rock od smooth 70s.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ancestors, Pins of Light, Fucking Wrath Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Atreyu, Bless the Fall, Chiodos, Architects, Endless Hallway Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $23.

Bell X1 Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $18.

Company Car, Pebble Theory, Farewell Typewriter El Rio. 9pm, $6.

Stan Erhart with Garth Webber Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Harry and the Hitmen, Hypnotist Collectors, Jugtown Pirates Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Dave Mason Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $36.

Joey McIntyre, Emanuel Kiriakou Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $34.

Mischka, White Buffalo, Chris Velan Independent. 8pm, $15.

Old Man Markley, Whisky Richards, West Nile Ramblers Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Recoil: A Strange Hour, Alan Wilder and Paul Kendall, Architect, Conjure One Mezzanine. 8pm, $25.

*Saviours, Kowloon Walled City Thee Parkside. 9pm, free.

Scrams, Airfix Kits, Dirty Cupcakes, Bad Backs Knockout. 9:30pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz and guest Choco Mann spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

John Digweed Ruby Skye. 9pm, $30.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

FRIDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Born Ruffians, Meligrove Band Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Fleeting Trance, Wish Inflicted, Jeremy Serwer Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Jon B. Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $25.

Lyrics Born, Chali 2na, Rakaa Independent. 9pm, $25.

Never Shout Never, Maine, I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody’s Business, Carter Hulsey Warfield. 6:30pm, $20.

Jack O and the Tearjerkers, Roy Loney, East Bay Grease, Wrong Words, Scrams Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $10. Part of Budget Rock 9.

Mississippi Man, Silent Comedy, Michael Beach Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Pierced Arrows, Bare Wires, Burnt Ones Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Starfucker, Octopus Project, Strength Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14.

Stone Foxes, Soft White Sixties, Real Nasty Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

*Yusef Lateef Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-50.

Gretchen Parlato Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $30.

Marlena Teich Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Boca do Rio Coda. 10pm, $10.

Marina Lavalle Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. 8pm, $22.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrobeat Lab Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Featuring a live performance by ALBINO! with DJs Señor Oz and guests.

Alcoholocaust Presents Riptide Tavern. 9pm, free. DJ What’s His Fuck spins old-school punk rock and other gems.

Club Dragon Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. A gay Asian paradise. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Duniya Dancehall Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; (415) 920-0577. 10pm, $10. With live performances by Duniya Drum and Dance Co. and DJs dub Snakr and Juan Data spinning bhangra, bollywood, dancehall, African, and more.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs B-Cause, Vinnie Esparza, Mr. Robinson, Toph One, and Slopoke.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

House of Voodoo Medici Lounge, 299 9th St., SF; (415) 501-9162. 9pm, $5. With DJ Purgatory and Stiletto spinning goth, industrial, deathrock, glam, darkwave, and eighties.

Psychedelic Radio Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Kial, Tom No Thing, Megalodon, and Zapruderpedro spinning dubstep, reggae, and electro.

Queens are Wild Mezzanine. 8pm, $25-$500. A benefit casino night costume party with host Juanita More and DJs Gemini Disco.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Scientist with Roots Radics Rock-it Room. 9pm, $17.

Some Thing The Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Soul in the Machine DNA Lounge. 8pm, $20. Techno and industrial with Dyloot, Taj, and more.

$3 Dance Party Knockout. 10pm, $3. Eclectic tunes with DJs Paul Paul, dX the Funky Gran Paw, and Deadbeat.

SATURDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Laurie Anderson Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $55.

Bilal Ameoba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 2pm, free. 2pm, free.

Chuck Alvarez Band Biscuits and Blues. 8:30pm, $15.

Crosstops, Sassy Bender’s, 800 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 10pm, $5.

Electric Six, Constellations, Ghost Robot Independent. 9pm, $16.

Frail, Savage Resurrection El Rio. 9pm, donations to Rocket Dog Rescue accepted.

Giovenco Project Coda. 10pm, $10.

JP, Chrissie and the Fairground Boys, Amy Correia Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $33.

Oblivians, Icky Boyfriends, Wounded Lion, Wild Thing Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $20.

Rubinoos Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $18. Part of Budget Rock 9.

*Skipper, Shannon and the Clams, C’Mon Everybody, Tropical Sleep, Larry and the Angriest Generation, Midnite Snaxx Thee Parkside. 2pm, $7. Part of Budget Rock 9.

Trashcan Sinatras Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $20.

Triptykon, 1349, Yakuza Slim’s. 9pm, $23.

Women, French Miami, Manchild Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bill Frisell and the 858 Quartet Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 7:30 and 9:30pm, $25.

JFJO, Con Brio, Evarusnik Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Will Sellenraad Coda. 7pm, $7.

Suzanna Smith Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Ashwin Batish and friends of Sitar Power Red Poppy Art House. 7pm, $25. With dance artist Rasa Vitalia.

Greensky Bluegrass Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $15.

Ten Sorrowful Songs and a Crane San Francisco Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; (415) 647-6015. 8pm, free.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Nuxx.

Barracuda 111 Minna. 9pm, $10. Eclectic 80s music with DJs Damon and Phillie Ocean plus 80s cult video projections, a laser light show, prom balloons, and 80s inspired fashion.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups with guest VJ Faroff and more.

Derrick Carter Ruby Skye. 9pm, $15.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm. Queer dance party with DJ Nuxx and friends.

David J. Cat Club. 9:30pm, $10-12. Music from the dark side.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop hits of the 90s with DJs Jamie Jams, EmDee, and Stab Master Arson.

4OneFunktion Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10.

Go Bang! Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; (415) 346 – 2025. 9pm, $5. Recreating the diversity and freedom of the 70’s/ 80’s disco nightlife with DJs Steve Fabus, Tres Lingerie, Sergio, and more.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Icee Hot 222 Hyde, SF; www.iceehotmartyn.eventbrite.com. 10pm. With Dutch drum and bass veteran and producer Martyn.

Reggae Gold Club Six. 9pm, $15. With DJs Daddy Rolo, Polo Mo’qz, Tesfa, Serg, and Fuze spinning dancehall and reggae.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Laurie Anderson Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $55.

Azure Ray, Whispertown, Tim Fite Independent. 8pm, $15.

"Battle of the Bands" DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With House of Clouds, Twisted Blues, and more.

Happy Body Slow Brain, Please Do Not Fight, Bird by Bird, Girlfriend Season Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $10.

Making Dinner Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Muskrats, Tee’n’Dee Explosion, Outdoorsmen, Spencey Dude and the Doodles, Angora Debs, Skkkumby Thee Parkside. 1pm, $7. Part of Budget Rock 9.

Lucky Peterson Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Reigning Sound, Flakes, Ty Segall, Touch-Me-Nots Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $15. Part of Budget Rock 9.

Safes, Cellar Doors, Dead Westerns Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Anthony Brown and friends Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; www.theintersection.org. 2pm, free.

Bill Frisell Ameoba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 2pm, free.

Bill Frisell and the 858 Quartet Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 7:30pm, $25.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kenny Barron Trio with David Sanchez Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-65.

Big Tings Gravity, 3251 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 5pm, free.

Jon Jang SF Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 3pm, $30-50.

Barrington Levy Slim’s. 9pm, $30.

Orquesta America El Rio. 4pm, $8.

Josh Workman, Bryan Bowman, Ravi Abcarian Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, dubstep, roots, and dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludachris, and DJ Tomas.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

Pachanga Coda. 5pm, $10. Salsa with DJs Fab Fred, DJ Antonio, and Montuno Swing.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

MONDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Lights, Jeremy Fisher Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Lucky Peterson Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Russian Circles, Keelhaul, Call Me Lightning Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $13.

Seabear, Grandchildren Independent. 8pm, $15.

Amanda Shires, Jesse Brewster, Heather Combs Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

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

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Best Coast, Sonny and the Sunsets Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $15.

Billy Nayer Show, Lee Vilensky Trio Café Du Nord. 8:30pm, $12.

Breathe Owl Breathe, Little Wings, Kacey Johansing Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Ego Likeness, Chant, Slave Unit Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Mariah Larkin El Rio. 7pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. "Stump the Wizard" with DJs What’s His Fuck and DJ Wizard.

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

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

news@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 20

 

Oakland candidates forum

The Alameda County Democratic Lawyers Club hosts at forum featuring the candidates for Oakland mayor and Alameda County Superior Court judge. With the Oakland mayor’s race between well-funded favorite Don Perata and progressive challengers Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan heating up as it comes into the home stretch, this could be a fun one.

5–7 p.m., $25 for members, $30 for nonmembers

Everett & Jones BBQ Restaurant

126 Broadway, Oakl.

510-836-7563

demlawyers.org/events

THURSDAY, OCT. 21

 

Save the Dolphins

Earth Island Institute presents “From Flipper to The Cove to Blood Dolphin$: A Conversation with Ric O’Barry,” a plea to save dolphins for being slaughtered in Taiji, Japan. O’Barry, star of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove and the Animal Planet TV miniseries Blood Dolphin$, will update his campaign with information and video footage from his recent trip to Japan.

7 p.m., $5–$20 sliding scale

The David Brower Center

2150 Allston Way, Berk.

510-859-9100

www.eii.org/events/dolphin

FRIDAY, OCT. 23

 

Ports blocked for Oscar Grant

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 has called for a shutdown of Bay Area ports to call for justice in the case of Oscar Grant, who was fatally shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle on an Oakland train platform on New Year’s Day 2009. “Bay Area ports will shut down that day to stand with the black community and others against the scourge of police brutality,” said Jack Heyman, an executive board member for the union. Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in July and is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 5.

All day, free

Ports through the Bay Area

www.ilwu10.org

jackheyman@comcast.net

SUNDAY, OCT. 24

 

Sunday Streets

The final Sunday Streets car-free event of the season will for the first time travel through the streets of the Tenderloin and Civic Center area. Bicyclists, pedestrians, and skaters travel a route that passes City Hall, Boedekker Park, Tenderloin Recreation Center, and the Tenderloin National Forest in Cohen Alley, off Ellis near Leavenworth, featuring live performances, the Funkytown Roller Disco, and free bike rental and repair stations. This event also coincides with the second annual Tricycle Music Festival, with live music from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the steps of the Main Library.

10 a.m.–3 p.m., free

Civic Center/Tenderloin

sundaystreets@gmail.com

415-344-0489. ext. 2

www.sundaystreetssf.com

MONDAY, OCT. 25

 

Earth-a-llujah Revival

Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping Choir returns to San Francisco as part of their Earth-a-llujah, Earth-a-llujah Revival Tour, bringing the environmentalist and anti-consumerist gospel to the Mission District. Fresh off of a run for the mayor of New York City and successful campaign to get Chase Manhattan Bank to disinvest in mountaintop removal coal mining, Rev. Billy (a.k.a. performance artist Billy Talen, who got his start here in SF) and his flock will fill you with the Holy Spirit and exorcise you of your credit cards. Hallelujah!

7 p.m., $12

Victoria Theater

2961 16th St., SF

(415) 863-7576

www.revbilly.com/events/cali-tour

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/133698

Spread ’em

Andrew Lam
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0
Spread ’em

The city has its fair share of microclimates, microbreweries, microlocal eateries, and even microtrannies. Also: micronightlife. The wobbly stilettos of North Beach on Fridays, the indie electro tang of Mondays in the Castro (served especially kinky at DJ Richie Panic and Key&Kite’s packed “nutter-butter” Wanted weekly — Mondays, 9 pm, free, QBar, 456 Castro, www.sfwanted.com), the late night surf-rock bar crawls out near Ocean Beach … It’s easy to stereotype some of our heirloom hotspots — or get locked into them — but, um, you’re the one who brings the party, so spread it around a tad.

Here are some off-the-blackout-path watering holes I’ve recently had the pleasure of stumbling out of, none too pricey: The Republic (3213 Scott, SF. www.republicsf.com) in the Marina is, yes, a fancy sports bar, but it’s a chill place to meet friends and mingle with a shockingly snob-free and diverse crowd. Glittery lodge Swank (488 Presidio, SF. 415-346-7431) in Laurel Heights didn’t destroy my credit rating, and its cozy fireplace is perfect for the rainy nights ahead. Cole Valley’s EOS (901 Cole, SF. www.eossf.com) is perf for sipping a spot of primo vino and N Judah people-watching. Bloom’s Saloon (1318 18th St., SF. 415- 552-6707) in Potrero Hill still has the best beer-guzzling view of the city, even if it recently had to rope off the patio due to complaints, boo. And tony new SoMa resto Heaven’s Dog (1148 Mission, SF., www.heavensdog.com) has a gangbusters bar, with nom-nom pre-Prohibition concoctions like the gingered Monk Buck and kicky Daisy de Santiago, surely some Chilean child’s drag handle.

If you missed the bonkers opening weeks of the civic-minded Public Works (161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com), you’ll soon be hooked by the late-night club and gallery’s crazy-canny programming, like the one-off return of gloriously debaucherous shindig Fag Fridays (Fri/15, 9 p.m.-4 a.m., $10), with DJs David Harness, Rolo, and Juanita More and the future dub power of Surefire Sound (Sat/16, 9 p.m.-4 a.m., $15), with Bristol steppers Pinch and Gemmy. Public Works was launched by a who’s who of local nightlife talent, including longtime invisible hand of the SF club scene Pete Glikshtern, who’s also behind the neato new Jones (620 Jones, SF. www.620-jones.com), which rightly focuses on its enormous outdoor terrace and downtown-glamour feel.

One of the zazzliest transformations on the scene, however, has to be that of 11th Street Corridor mainstay Holy Cow (1535 Folsom, SF. www.theholycow.com) which just got a knockout steampunky makeover by artist Dara Young. Fear not, “woo!” girls and bro-bros, your chartered party limos will still drop you off to top-40 bliss Thursday through Saturday. But owner Bill Herrmann is expanding the Cow’s party palate, by giving the homo-futurist Honey Soundsystem’s weekly Honey Sundays (Sundays, 9 p.m., $3) a new home, now that Paradise Lounge has bit the dust. (Holy Cow was the original site of the Stud in the 1960s, so edgy queer nightlife comes full circle.) And there are more pleasant shocks on the way. Herrmann’s a guy I can’t help but adore — a slick Burner with a head-turning look, he genuinely enjoys hosting parties, whether the clientele is gelled-up meatmarketeers or post-techno fairies. Expanding definitions!

 

MERCURY SOUL

Techno meets classical when composer Mason Bates and conductor Benjamin Schwartz thread live orchestral performances through thumping DJ sets at this roving party (www.mercurysoul.org). It’ll give you auditory shivers on the dance floor.

Thu/14, 9 p.m., $8–$10. The New Parrish, 579 18th St., Oakl. www.thenewparrish.com and Fri/15, 5 p.m.–9 p.m., $5, 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com

 

ELECTRIC WIRE HUSTLE

Electronic soul outfit from New Zealand that manages the neat trick of combining D’Angelo steaminess, Avalanches effects, and DJ Shadow atmospherics. With smoothie singer Jesse Boykins III.

Fri/15, 10 p.m., $10. SOM, 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com

 

GASLAMP KILLER

L.A. future bass slammer always gets heads banging with his special brand of experimental fuzz. I’m living for the stoner cosmic-laptop kids this year. With Daedelus, 12th Planet, and Teebs.

Fri/15, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $15. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com 

 

Hot sexy events October 13-19

Andrew Lam
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0

Support your local sex workers! We are lucky to live in a city where those salacious somebodies that will take their kits off in the name of our pleasure and payment don’t have to lay down and take it when the man gets all censorious and grabby – lucky to live in a city where St. James’ Infirmary exists, that is. The Lusty Ladies agree, and on Sat/16 they’re holding their annual Playday for St. J’s – 16 hours of girl-on-girl-on-call for justice.

For there was a time where if you got picked up providing sex to paying customers, you got stuck. We’re talking hypodermic needles – part of a policy that used to go down in SF that forced sex workers to give up blood samples in jail for mandatory STD testing. As you can imagine, this was not always done in the most respectful of manners. Enter St. James’, founded by sex worker advocacy group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). The center holds a health clinic, trainings and support groups, hormone therapy programming, peer counseling, and oh so much more. Why on earth not head down to the Lusty to make sure our ladies – and gentlemen – of the night continue to be treated as such?

Original Plumbing Bathhouse Reception

Celebrate the notion that a photo-heavy magazine of transmen is one of the most hot publication debuts to hit the racks in 2010 – Original Plumbing’s fourth issue is out! And it features a hunky lineup of working stiffs, all of whom will be at the wine and cheese reception, open to all genders and levels of ab definition.

Thu/14 7 p.m., free

Eros

2051 Market, SF

(415) 255-4921

www.originalplumbing.com


Spanking and Paddling

Don’t worry, consoles the description of this Edu Kink offering: “there will be plenty of spanking time.” That’s because even though this is technically a class on spanking – its possible childhood associations, how to deal with them should they arise, on technique, and enjoying the spank on the receiving end – Edu Kink’s Paideia workshop series has a focus on lecture leading to experience. So prepare you that booty, naughty kids.

Fri/15 7:30-10:30 p.m., $15-$25 sliding scales

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.edukink.org


Pink Blues Dance

What better way to amp up for Mission Control’s pansexual play party than this week’s warmup: a chance to swing those hips to the down ‘n’ out blues on the dance floor. Costumes not required, but membership to the club (and a smile) is. 

Fri/15 9 p.m.-2:30 a.m., $20-$30 members only

Mission Control 

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org 


Naked Girls Reading

What’s that chill that just ran down your spine? Are you frozen in fear by a classic ghost story, channeling the pre-Halloween vibe – or are you just naked? It could easily be both at this storytelling series that pairs the city’s sexologists and stage presences with a favorite book, a mic, and little else. Watch for the SF Ghost Society’s Elissa Fricano’s tales of personal encounters with the world beyond.

Sat/16 8 p.m., $15-$20

Center for Sex and Culture

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 225-1155

www.sexandculture.org

 

Peter Acworth’s Birthday Deviance

Everyone needs a little extra attention on their birthday. And on the founder of Kink.com’s 40th, you can only imagine what form that personal touch will take. Our town’s foremost world-class fetish porn palace opens its virtual doors to members who want to join in on the fun online. Visit www.theupperfloor.com on Saturday evening and watch live as hot doms and slaves create sexy mayhem during a celebratory dinner in Peter’s honor.

Sat/16 6:30-11 p.m., free for Kink.com members, $.25 cents per minute for nonmembers

www.theupperfloor.com


Lusty Lady Playday RXXX

That’s right, get your dirty, dirty prescription for a Saturday in the hospital – or rather, nurse’s office. The Lusties will be pulling on the rubber gloves for a day of sexual healing. Girl-on-girl action all day long, with a portion of the proceeds going to everyone’s favorite hustler health care provider, St. James’ Infirmary.

Sat/16 11 a.m.-3 a.m., $5 before 10 p.m., $10 after

The Lusty Lady

1033 Kearny, SF

(415) 391-3126

www.lustyladysf.com


How To Be a Top Presenter

Have you been there, done that when it comes to the sex education classes at Good Vibes and the host of other venues around our pervy city that like to teach on the tactics of titillation? Take your love of lovin’ to the next level with this little one-off. Dr. Charlie Glickman is sharing the secrets of his sexpert trade: how to plan and orchestrate sex ed for adults.

Tues/19 6-8 p.m., $20-$25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com

 

Moving portraits

Andrew Lam
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0
Moving portraits

cheryl@sfbg.com

WRITERS ISSUE The Metreon is handy if you require 10 different Inception showtimes. But watching a movie there is not same as seeing one — even the same one — at a circa-1922 palace like the Castro Theatre, a space lovingly dedicated to the specific pleasure of Going To The Movies. Edited by Julie Lindow (a former Castro employee), the brand-new Left in the Dark: Portraits of San Francisco Movie Theatres (Charta Art Books, $39.95) compiles essays from Bay Area film advocates, paying homage to San Francisco’s dwindling population of theaters. The book is illustrated by photographer R.A. McBride’s colorful, often haunting images of spaces robust (the Roxie) and ravaged (the New Mission).

Cinephiles will recognize most of the contributors, including San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival director Chi-hui Yang (topic: Chinatown cinemas); Landmark Theatre cofounder and current Balboa Theatre proprietor Gary Meyer (a personal timeline of his life as an exhibitor); and Guardian writer D. Scot Miller (a look at theaters in the onetime “Harlem of the West,” the Fillmore), among others. There’s also an interview with author Rebecca Solnit, who points out that the shared-experience aspect of movie-going is lost in a multiplex environment. Buying a ticket in a theater inside a mall, she writes, “you don’t have that funny sudden spiritual bond that this person next to you in line, who looks so different, also wants to see cowboys.”

Even before they met, Lindow and McBride had a mutual interest in local theaters. “I had been thinking about doing a book to help the movie theaters. At a party that Melinda Stone [another of Left in the Dark‘s essayists] had, I met Rebecca [McBride] and she had started her series of [theater] photographs. So we thought, that might make a great book if we combine these two things together. And then she handled the photos, and I handled the text.” The collaborative spirit continued to the selection of contributors. Lindow says making a connection with one author would lead to her to another; she describes the writing process as a true community effort.

By contrast, McBride found that accessing every venue she wanted to document wasn’t easy (she was flatly denied access to Cow Hollow’s Metro shortly before it closed). She also made some surprising discoveries (a toilet in the projection booth at the Clay, for example).

“There were over 100 theaters at one point in the San Francisco Bay Area — and I’ve only photographed 19 of them,” McBride says, with a certain amount of wistfulness. “One my favorites was the Coronet, which is now gone.”

LEFT IN THE DARK: PORTRAITS OF SAN FRANCISCO MOVIE THEATRES

Wed/13, 5:30 p.m. reception;

7 p.m., slideshow with R.A. McBride

SF Camerawork

657 Mission, second floor, SF

www.sfcamerawork.org

More events at www.leftinthedark.info

 

Our Weekly Picks: October 13-19

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 13

MUSIC

Vader

Vader’s history stretches back almost 30 years. Borrowing Darth’s moniker might not have been the world’s most original idea, but they were likely among the first to have done it. The Polish death metal stalwarts formed in 1983 in Olstzyn, deep behind the Iron Curtain. Successful demo recordings got them hooked with Earache Records, and the band has been pillaging the world’s stages ever since. Guitarist-singer Piotr Wiwczarek is the only original member left in the fold, but the band’s anthemic music is as potent as ever, mixing impossibly thick blast beats with heavy slabs of neoclassical melody. Their upcoming album Return to the Morbid Reich is a nod to the 1990 demo that made their name; this tour, they’re inviting you along for the ride. (Ben Richardson)

With Immolation, Abigail Williams, Lecherous Nocturne, and Pathology

6:30 p.m., $22

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

 

THURSDAY 14

DANCE

Lines Ballet

The story of Scheherazade and her 1,001 nights of tales to postpone her beheading by the Persian king has intrigued and captivated audiences for ages. Choreographer Alonzo King’s dance adaptation Scheherazade delves beyond the story to explore themes ranging from the symbolism of abused women to the transformative power imbued in the tales. The company of chiseled titans dance alongside tabla master Zakir Hussain’s score, which incorporates traditional Persian instrumentation into the original classical composition by Rimsky-Korsakov. The piece premiered in Monaco last December; San Franciscans can now experience King’s artistic rendering of Scheherazade’s classic tale for themselves. (Emmaly Wiederholt)

Through Oct. 24

Thurs/14, 7 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.;

Sun., 5 p.m.; Oct. 20–21, 7:30 p.m., $25–$75

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Novellus Theater

700 Howard, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.linesballet.org

 

FILM

“Jim Henson and Friends: Inside the Sesame Street Vault”

Consider the Muppet. Made of foam and googly eyes, set atop spindly legs under a mop of primary-color hair, these brave figures have become our children’s teachers on a level unparalleled in the world of infotainment. We’re talking street, of course — Sesame Street, which since its 1969 debut has won 97 Emmy awards, more than any other show. Yerba Buena Center for the Art is running a series of Sesame clip collections, and today’s viewing pays homage to the contributions of the show’s early creative team, with a special furry hug to creator Jim Henson, and little-seen guest appearances from the show’s early days. (Caitlin Donohue)

7:30 p.m. (also Sat/16, 2 p.m.), $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

DANCE

“CounterPULSE’s Performing Diaspora: Sri Susilowati”

Stripping world dance of its trappings is quite the rage these days. But few have done it so radically as Indonesian classical dancer did Sri Susilowati at last year’s Performing Diaspora festival. Yet this was the same artist who, only a few months before at the Ethnic Dance Festival, had performed an exquisite, contemporary Javanese mourning dance. Now she is back, having been invited to expand on her 2009 piece. Susilowati may look one of those ethereal dance creatures whose bodies are so stylized that it’s difficult to think of them having earthly passions. Yet they do. Hint on Susilowati: food. Another Indonesian dancer, Prumsodun Ok, opens the show for her. (Rita Felciano)

Thurs/14–Sat/16, 8 p.m.; Sun/17, 3 p.m., $24

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission St./SF

(415) 626-2060

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

MUSIC

Fresh and Onlys and Kelley Stoltz

San Francisco-based artists the Fresh and Onlys and Kelley Stoltz will both have new albums on hand at this double CD release blowout. The new Fresh and Onlys disc, Play It Strange, showcases the band’s garage-rocky spin on 1960s pop, and was recorded for the first time outside of a DIY studio setup with Comets on Fire producer Tim Green. Stoltz releases his newest batch of throwbacks to the Beatles’ and Beach Boys’ style of sunny pop with To Dreamers. This is a perfect night to come out and support local music. (Landon Moblad)

With Carletta Sue Kay

9:30 p.m., $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

FRIDAY 15

DANCE

Dandelion Dancetheater

Known for its loud, provocative works merging dance, drama, and music, Dandelion Dancetheater turns its attention to motherhood in MamaLOVE: Seeds of Winter. The seven-women cast explores mom-related themes by diffusing fairy tales, myths, and lullabies to discover the context and relevance of the cultural archetypes and stereotypes surrounding motherhood. Each evening brings a rotating roster of guest mama-choreographers: Mary Carbonara, Tammy Cheney, Laura Elaine Ellis, Suzanne Gallo, Dana Lawton, Laura Renaud-Wilson, and Chingchi Yu. Directed by Kimiko Guthrie, the show promises to be haunting, hilarious, and not to be missed as the mom-artists address the complexities of love, loss, connection, and independence. (Wiederholt)

Though Oct. 24

Fri-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 7 p.m. (also Oct. 24, 3 p.m.), $12-15

Shawl Anderson Dance Center

2704 Alcatraz, Berk.

(510) 654-5921

www.dandeliondancetheater.org

 

SATURDAY 16

MUSIC

“Longplayer San Francisco: 1,000 Years in Three Simultaneous Acts”

As a founding member of legendary rabble-rousers the Pogues, Jem Finer helped the band deconstruct traditional Irish music and create a new musical creature out of its varied influences. Taking this willingness to experiment with different sounds and ideas and bringing it to another level, Finer composed Longplayer, a piece designed to last 1,000 years and played on instruments such as Tibetan bowl gongs. Today’s special performance will be a 1,000-minute excerpt performed by 18 musicians on a custom-built, 60-foot-wide circular “instrument” — so slow down and take some time to absorb some art that goes against today’s faster-is-better mentality. (Sean McCourt)

7 a.m.–11:40 p.m., $25–$28

Yerba Buena Center For The Arts Forum

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

EVENT

“ODC Theater’s JumpstART”

Several years and millions of bucks in the making, ODC is at last ready to unveil its new state-of-the-art “cultural campus” in the Mission in a celebratory free day of “dance, theater, performance, and community.” With more than 20 performers and organizations participating, there will be something for everybody — yes, even clogging — at this one-of-a-kind public offering. A glance at the roster includes such names as Scott Wells and Dancers, Robert Moses’ Kin, Killing My Lobster, Youth Speaks, and of course ODC/Dance, all curated by ODC Theater director Rob Bailis in collaboration with the likes of choreographer Joe Goode, world music expert Lilly Kharrazi, and playwright-director Mark Jackson. (Robert Avila)

Noon–11 p.m., free (tickets available one hour prior to each performance)

ODC Theater

3153 17th St, SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odcdance.org

 

DANCE

Trolley Dances

I still wish they’d call them Street Car Dances instead of Trolley Dances, because that’s what they are, but the name is a registered trademark and has its origins in San Diego (where they actually have trolleys). However, there is nothing else I would change on these annual easy-rider events. They are pure fun, and curator Kim Epifano always comes up with an intriguing lineup of entertainers. This year you’ll see, among others, dancers from Joe Goode Performance Group, Sara Shelton Mann, Ensohza Minyoshu (traditional Japanese folk music and dance), and Sunset Chinese Folk Dance Group. And do look out for a special treat on Ninth Ave for our animal friends, courtesy of brilliant maskmaker Mike Stasiuk. Boarding takes place at Duboce Park. (Felciano)

Through Sun/17

11 a.m. (runs every 45 minutes until 2:45 p.m.), free with Muni fare ($2)

Duboce at Scott, SF

(415) 226-1139

www.epiphanydance.org

 

EVENT

ArtSpan Open Studios

Do you ever want to stroll into other people’s homes simply from sweet curiosity? Perhaps you covet thy neighbor’s art, or maybe just appreciate light and shadow and like talking with the peeps who represent it? Do all three at the largest and oldest open studios event in the country. The self-guided art tour is ongoing through October, but this weekend doors will open in the artsy northern and eastern neighborhoods. From the nude drawings of Derriere Guard (ahem, Beavis) to the ultraviolet photos of South African succulents, it’s the best opportunity to get to know your local artists. And maybe take home a derriere or two. (Kat Renz)

Through Oct. 31

Sat.–Sun., 11 a.m.–-6 p.m., free

Bayview, Excelsior, Financial District, North Beach, Potrero, Russian Hill, SoMa,Tenderloin

(415) 861-9838

www.artspan.org

 

SUNDAY 17

MUSIC

BATUSIS

Featuring two of the founding architects of punk rock — guitarists Sylvain Sylvain from the New York Dolls and Cheetah Chrome from the Dead Boys — Batusis already has its street cred and headliner status firmly in place. Taking its name from the groovy dance that Adam West performed in the campy 1960s Batman TV show, the band came together and released a new self-titled EP earlier this year that’s steeped in the sounds that earned these six string slingers their place in the punk pantheon in the first place. This dynamic duo may not be so young anymore, but they’re sure as hell just as loud and snotty. (McCourt)

With Re-Volts

8 p.m., $12–$15

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com


MONDAY 18

MUSIC

David Bazan

Previously known for fronting the popular indie-rock project Pedro the Lion, David Bazan has returned to working under his own name. His most recent solo album, Curse Your Branches, covers some religious-themed lyrical ground that fans should be familiar with by now, like the tales of sinners losing their way and Bazan grappling with his own faith. But it also presents itself in a much more upbeat, poppier setting than we’re used to, often at odds with the reflective and sometimes dark themes of the songs. Moody, country-tinged Baltimore duo Wye Oak opens. (Moblad)

8 p.m., $15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com 


The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. 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.

 

Lost city

Andrew Lam
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2
Lost city

arts@sfbg.com

WRITERS ISSUE With its vast divide between the rich and poor, its lusty appetite for sex, and its backroom real estate deals, it would seem that even the boutique and completely gentrified San Francisco of today offers to writers of crime fiction a rich vein of noir opportunity. Yet the lone novelist today determinedly probing the dark side of San Francisco’s endless battle to clean up the streets is Peter Plate. His latest novel, Elegy Written on a Crowded Street (Seven Stories Press, 176 pages, $13.95), is Plate’s ninth in a hardboiled writing career that spans the era of out of control gentrification in San Francisco. With little fanfare or support, against the real life backdrop of police sweeps of the homeless and the start of the dot com boom, Plate has produced a shelf of books that represent a lonely, yet noble and deeply radical literary effort to write noir crime fiction in which not the cops but the criminals are the protagonists.

Plate’s novels are full of delicious hooks. They reliably begin with some of the best premises in noir fiction today. Fogtown (Seven Stories Press, 2004) opens as a crowd of Market Street homeless and down and outers witness the crash of an armored Brinks truck at dawn that temporarily fills the desolate street with crisp, new hundred dollar bills. In Police and Thieves (Seven Stories Press, 1999), Doojie, a small-time Capp Street weed dealer, accidently witnesses the murder of a homeless man by a police officer and spends the rest of the book on the run from the murderous cop who seeks to silence him.

Like Doojie, Plate’s characters are always in the wrong place at the wrong time, unwilling spectators as the city changes around them. The free money in Fogtown offers the Market Street dwellers a tantalizing glimpse of the kind of new carefree life being lived all around them by the rich who have newly arrived to the city. Yet, like the upscale new eateries and clubs popping up everywhere, the money is off limits to them, and those who take the money instantly become, like Doojie, hunted by police. Plate’s strength is in conveying the hopelessness and despair of lone characters pitted in Doestoyevskian battle with societal forces far greater than they are. As they are slowly ground down by this struggle, we feel their terror, incomprehension and paranoia. As the drug dealer and SRO hotel manager, Jeeter, says in Fogtown, “Rights? You don’t have any rights. You have choices. That’s all you have. And you made the wrong one.”

In this context, noir fiction for Plate is protest fiction. A longtime street activist, Plate writes with the gut instincts of a protester, taking his novels right to the barricades where different visions of San Francisco violently clash. One Foot Off The Gutter (Incommunicado, 1995), is a mordant postcard from a Mission District just about to enter its gentrification era in which a homeless cop, a Latino gang member, and a yuppie doctor all covet the same Victorian houses at 21st Street and Folsom. Soon The Rest Will Fall (Seven Stories, 2006) is set in the Trinity Plaza Apartments on Market Street at the height of housing activists’ struggle to save the low income housing from demolition. Plate has so reliably found the pulse of change in the city that at times his work has blurred tragically with reality. Police and Thieves ends with a fire at the Crown Hotel on Valencia Street. Just months after the book’s publication, the real life Crown Hotel burned to the ground.

Since Plate finished his Mission Quartet at the close of the dot-com era, he has turned his attention to San Francisco’s Main Street, Market Street. Recently, in its inaugural issue, the incipient local newspaper San Francisco Public Press reported that one lone real estate speculator owns 62% of the vacant real estate between 5th and 6th on Market Street and that he is willfully leaving those properties vacant until he can make the money he thinks he deserves off of the property. Those uselessly abandoned and boarded up buildings at the very heart of the city are the recurring backdrop for much of Elegy Written On a Crowded Street, perhaps Plate’s darkest and most emotional work to date.

Elegy is not so much a traditional crime fiction thriller, but a lyrical roman noir in which police and thieves battle not each other but the stifling conditions of the city. Plate’s latest evokes Don Carpenter’s 1966 classic Hard Rain Falling (reissued this year by New York Review of Books), an unrelenting work that also took place largely on Market Street. Carpenter’s novel brings to life the old dive 24-hour pool halls and dirty hotel rooms of a 1950s San Francisco where the promise of the Gold Rush American West has faded. The novels’ restless young pool hustlers and small time thieves can only shuttle aimlessly back and forth in the new remote control city, like the 8 Ball, waiting to fall. Elegy’s characters are their descendents, still on Market Street and still waiting.

Down this mean street walks May Jones a tough, hard-drinking bail bondswoman, who is nearing forty with no prospects. Like everyone around her, Jones dreams of escape from the city. Even Jones’ clients are leaving for Portland. “It’s got trees. Good people. Cheap housing,” an erstwhile, young crusty-punk bank robber earnestly tells Jones as she prepares to skip bail. But Jones is condemned to remain, while all around her are the undead ghosts of those already disappeared and the soon to be departed. The cleaned up San Francisco is haunted. The living are exhausted. Jones says to herself, “I have pipelines to the lands of the dead.’

Jones echoes the food stamp caseworker, Charlene Hassler from Plate’s welfare reform novel, Snitch Factory (Incommunicado, 1996). Like Hassler, Jones is being worn down between the insatiable needs of her clients and the treacherous intrigues that surround her job. Jones’ client is Mary Anderson, a pregnant twenty-year-old African-American who has killed her boyfriend, the SFPD’s star snitch on Fillmore Street. By keeping her client out of jail, Jones finds herself on the cops’ shitlist and in fear for her life. As in other Plate novels, a police hunt for Jones ensues. As in other recent Plate novels, after the initial hook, the plot soon becomes murky and this hunt becomes elliptical and hard to follow, perhaps even a bit ridiculous. A plot sideline in which Jones has a brief fling with a dyke she meets at the End Up goes nowhere. The ghosts of Lenin and punk rock legend, Will Shatter make surprise cameos that stretch the reader’s credulity. Yet, Plate’s spot on descriptions of Market Street today and the universe of dread his characters inhabit there remains compelling throughout and one never doubts that the unraveling narrative is what life feels like for his characters. Plate writes with a tightly wound urgency throughout and Elegy makes a persuasive case that what is happening at 5th and Market today is happening to the city as a whole.

Fantastical plot aside, it is the weight of the dead that is the true subject of Elegy. The book opens with a dreamy scene, shrouded in fog, in which Jones watches the dead body of one of her former clients as it bobs up and down in the surf, unable to either reach the shore or go under for good. Some policemen have waded into the water to grapple with the dead man and bring him in, but the body proves too difficult to apprehend and the cops are pulled down with the it into the crashing waves. Throughout Elegy, Plate’s characters similarly bob along, paralyzed and unable to take decisive action, only pulling each other down, and as the novel ends, May Jones is more or less back where she started. Sadly, like many of Plate’s recent books, the novel fails to fully satisfy because there is no resolution to the plot. Plate’s characters do not seem changed by their ordeal; they only become more numb. Yet perhaps that is the point. Plate seems to be saying that as long as the city fails to grapple with its own dead, nothing can change, and the city is condemned to go around and around in a sort-of netherworld, reliving its past traumas in new conflicts. “It’s a moment in hell that should be taking place beneath the ground,” Plate writes of a brutal police assault on a drunken derelict in Elegy, and it sums up the whole book. The dead won’t stay buried.

While an elegy is a funeral song, a lamentation for the dead, it also suggests a last word. With Elegy has Plate said all he has to say about San Francisco? One hopes not. Perhaps no writer working today has left such a record of what it feels like to live in the American city in the era of gentrification. Yet, in life as in Plate’s fiction, knowing the truth can take its toll, as Doojie finds out when he is hunted by the police for the truth he alone knows. By the end of Elegy, May Jones has spent so much time wallowing in the murky depths where her clients dwell, that her identification with them is complete and her fate has become inseparable from theirs.

The exhausted tone of Elegy suggests that like Jones, Plate, the lifelong activist and engaged writer, has perhaps stared into the abyss too long. Nonetheless, his nine novels are a significant achievement, the life’s work of a doggedly engaged writer. In each book, I have found scenes that remain unforgettable in my own mind and that have permanently altered my own perceptions of San Francisco and its streets. While Plate’s novels are each flawed in their own way, I love them with the Algren-like compassion he clearly has for his memorable characters, like the homeless cop who lives in his squad car in Gutter, and the ex-con who robs a pot club while dressed like Santa Claus in Soon the Rest Will Fall. Taken as a whole, Plate’s novels offer a compelling and defiant portrait of the psychic toll the disappearance of loved people, places, and opportunity from the city has taken on those left behind.

 

 

 

Rep clock

David Talbot
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Schedules are for Wed/13–Tues/19 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-15. “Pow! Pow! Pow! Art Festival 2010,” live performance, video installations, and more, Thurs, 8. “Immigrant Film Festival,” Fri, 7 and Sat-Sun, 3. “Other Cinema:” Space, Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm (Federici and Harrison, 2010), Sat, 8:30. “Next! And Attention Deficit Gift: A 99 Hooker Screening,” Sun, 8. “Electroacoustic audio-visual improvisations” with Bill Hsu, Gino Robair, and John Shiurba, Tues, 8.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. Where the Boys Are (Levin, 1961), Wed, 2:30, 4:45, 7, 9:15. Connie Francis in person to introduce 7pm show. “14th Annual Arab Film Festival:” Masquerades (Salem, 2008), Thurs, 7:30. This event, $20; for more info, visit www.arabfilmfestival.org. “Midnites for Maniacs: Don’t Get Bit … By Big Mouths:” •Fright Night (Holland, 1985), Fri, 7:15; An American Werewolf in London (Landis, 1981), Fri, 9:30; and The Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981), Fri, 11:45. “Connie Francis: The Legend Continues,” live concert with full orchestra, Sat, 8. Presented by the Rrazz Room; visit www.cityboxoffice.com for tickets ($49-99). “Montgomery Clift Double Feature:” •From Here to Eternity (Zinnemann, 1953), Sat, 2:30, 7, and Wild River (Kazan, 1960), Sat, 4:50, 9:15.

CERRITO 10070 San Pablo, El Cerrito; www.rialtocinemas.com. $7. “Cerrito Classics:” Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968), Thurs, 7:45.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. “Mill Valley Film Festival,” Wed-Sun. Program information at www.mvff.com. 36 (Marchal, 2005), Oct 18-21, 6:30, 9.

DELANCEY STREET SCREENING ROOM 600 Embarcadero, SF; www.modjeskawomantriumphantmovie.com. Free ($5-10 suggested donation). Modjeska: A Woman Triumphant (Myszynski), Sun, 3.

FORBIDDEN ISLAND TIKI LOUNGE 1304 Lincoln, Alameda; www.forbiddenislandalameda.com. Free. “Forbidden Thrills: Half N’ Half Halloween Horrors:” •Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory (Heusch, 1961), and The Manster (Breakston and Crane, 1959), Mon, 7:30.

GRAND LAKE 3200 Grand, Oakl; (510) 452-3556. $10. Enemies of the People (Lemkin and Sambath, 2009), Wed, 4:30, 7:15, 9:30.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Sharkwater: The Truth Will Surface (Stewart, 2006), Wed, 7:30.

LUMIERE 1572 California, SF; www.landmarkafterdark.com. Free. “Monthly Anime:” “Sengoku Basara,” Thurs, 7.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100 (reservations required). $10. “CinemaLit: Apocalypse Noir:” Matinee (Dante, 1993), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area:” “1961-71,” Wed, 7:30; “Stories Untold,” Sat, 6; “The Exotic Erotic,” Sat, 8:30; “Procession of the Image Processors,” Sun, 6:30. “Shakespeare on Screen:” Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1966), Thurs, 7; Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann, 1996), Sun, 4. “Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism:” Bellissima (Visconti, 1953), Fri, 7; Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 1951), Fri, 9:10. “Home Movie Day:” “Film Check-In,” Sat, 11am; “Home Movie Day Screening,” Sat, 1. Metropolis (Lang, 1926), Tues, 7.

PIEDMONT 4186 Piedmont, Oakl; www.landmarktheatres.coom. $8. The Room (Wiseau, 2003), Sat, midnight.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964), Wed-Thurs, 7:15, 9:15 (also Wed, 2). Cropsey (Zeman and Brancaccio, 2009), Fri-Tues, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat-Sun, 2, 4).  

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 9:15. Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods (Meaney, 2010), Wed, 9:30 and Thurs, 7. Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) (Scheinfeld, 2010), Wed, 7, call for times. “SF DocFest,” Oct 14-28. Program information at www.sfindie.com.

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 151 Third St, SF; www.sfmoma.org. $5. “Jordan Belson: Films Sacred and Profane,” Thurs, 7.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. “Beyond Manny and Marcos: A Showcase of Far-Out Filipino American Films and Theater,” Sat, 3-5:30.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.vizcinema.com. $10. “Ozu and His Muse: Setsuko Hara,” Early Summer (1954), Fri, 4:30 and Sat, 3:15; Late Autumn (1960), Sat, 12:15, Sun, 6, and Mon, 4:30; Late Spring (1949), Sun, 12:15 and Tues, 715; Tokyo Twilight (1947), Sun, 2:30 and Mon, 7:15.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Jim Henson and Friends: Inside the Sesame Street Vault,” Thurs, 7:30 and Sat, 2. “San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Presents: Tough Guys: Images of Jewish Gangsters in Film:” Little Caesar (LeRoy, 1931), Sun, 2.

On the cheap listings

David Talbot
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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 13

“How to Cook Like a Scientist” Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 7pm, free. Meet Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks, who combines cooking with Mythbusters to create a food-as-science, cooking experience for those who like to know how things work.

THURSDAY 14

Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, SF; (415) 399-9626. 7pm, free. This ongoing multimedia poetry series returns to the Beat Museum with host Daniel Yaryan and featuring readings by David Meltzer, San Francisco Poet & Beat Icon, Ellyn Maybe & Her Band, Steve Arntson, Jerry Ferraz, Martin Hickle, Richard Loranger, Whitman McGowan, Ginger Murray, Julie Rogers, Margery Snyder, and Chris Vannoy.

FRIDAY 15

Mark I. Chester Benefit Mark I. Chester Studio, 1229 Folsom, SF; (415) 621-6294. 7pm; free, donations encouraged. Celebrate Mark I. Chester’s 60th birthday while helping to raise funds for a new book. View Chester’s current exhibit, “Doing Time on Folsom St: a 30 year retrospective of fine art gay radical sex photography” and enjoy readings and performances by Carol Queen, Tom Orr, Seth Eisen and Jesse Hewitt and more. Sponsored by the Center for Sex and Culture.

“Writing Our Word, Speaking Our Minds, Telling Out Stories” San Francisco Main Library, Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room, 100 Larkin, SF; (415) 557-4400. 6pm, free. Featuring readings by and about lesbians with disabilities with Elana Dykewomon, Barbara Ruth, Teya Schaffer, Dominika Bednarska, and the Mothertongue Feminist Theater Collective.

SATURDAY 16

“The Classics” 1:AM Gallery, 1000 Howard, SF; (415) 861-5089. 5:30pm, free. Attend the closing reception for this exhibit, curated by Nate1, that brings together original vintage work from the artists that put San Francisco on the graffiti map and defined Bay Area graffiti style. Guest speaker Spie will give an informative tour of the exhibit on Bay Area graffiti.

Halloween Bazaar Modern Eden Gallery, 403 Francisco, SF; (415) 420-2898. 7pm, free. End your day of touring open studios in North Beach, as part of SF Open Studios’ weekend two, at this spooky-themed trunk show featuring wares by local artists JuJu by Sarah, Marya Zoya Taxidermy Courture, Blackbird Bazaar, Squid Rose designs, and more plus pumpkin carving and painting, music, drinks, and treats. Costumes encouraged.

Potrero Hill Festival 20th street between Missouri and Wisconsin, SF; www.potrerofestival.com. 11am-4pm, free. Soak up the best of Potrero Hill at this street fair with a view featuring local merchants and residents selling their wares, arts, and crafts, two stages with live music, food from Potrero Hill restaurateurs, information booths, and kids activities including a bouncy house, petting zoo, pony rides, and performances.

Taste of Fillmore Fillmore between Post and Jackson, SF; www.tasteoffillmore.com. 1pm-6pm; free admission, $20 for wrist band. Buy a wrist band and enjoy food and wine tastings at boutiques and restaurants, or just walk around and check out some live jazz, walk through home décor scenes installed on the sidewalks, watch cooking demonstrations, fashion shows, and more.

Trolley Dances Meet at the Harvey Milk Center for Recreational Arts at Duboce Park, Scott at Duboce, SF; www.epiphanydance.org. 11am-2:45pm, tours leave every 45 min.; free with MUNI fare. Get out of the theater and into the streets with traveling performances by Epiphany Productions SDT, Joe Goode Performance Group, Sara Shelton Mann, and more as they take you from Duboce Park to the SF Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park for several unique performance locations.

“The Wild Kitchen” Omnivore Books on Food, 3885a Cesar Chavez, SF; (415) 282-4712. 3pm, free. Hear authors Connie Green and Sara P. Scott discuss their book, The Wild Kitchen: Seasonal Foraged Foods and Recipes, and the increasing popularity of wild delicacies. Green sells her gathered goods across the country to Napa Valley’s finest chefs, so before you buy that expensive meal, consider the free buffet that is California.

Writers with Drinks Make Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF; (415) 647-2888. 7:30pm, $5-$10 sliding scale. This installment of the monthly spoken word variety show features Marcia Clark, Ken Scholes, Jamie Freveletti, Stephen O’Connor, Kirya Traber and Daniel Allen Cox. Proceeds to benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.

Yerba Buena Fair Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission between 3rd and 4th St., SF; (415) 644-0728. 11am-3pm, free. Celebrate the Yerba Buena neighborhood at the fair featuring live music, dancing, acrobats, neighborhood food vendors, street food vendors, art and history walks, prizes and giveaways, kids activities, and more.

SUNDAY 17

Capsule Hayes Valley Park, Octavia at Hayes, SF; www.capsulesf.com. 11am-6pm, free. Enjoy this fashion design open air market and community party where you can browse locally made clothing, upcycled jewelry and accessories, steampunk-inspired wear, graphic tees, kids clothes, and designer housewares while listening to live music by members of the Jazz Mafia, Brent Bishop and the Part Poopers, and more.

Fiesta on the Hill Cortland between Bocana and Folsom, SF; (415) 206-2140. 10am-6pm, free. Join your friends and neighbors for the 22nd annual Fiesta to benefit the Bernal Heights Neighborhood center, an organization that works to maintain the ethnic, cultural, and economic diversity of Bernal Heights. This alcohol free family event to feature a petting zoo, pony rides, a pumpkin patch, non-profit booths, live music, food vendors and more.

 

Stage listings

David Talbot
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. 

THEATER

OPENING

Habibi Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Previews Thurs/14-Sun/17, 8pm. Opens Mon/18, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Nov 7. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present the world premiere of a play by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh.

Nina and the Monsters Shotwell Studios, 3252A 19th; 509-8656, 509-8656. $10-15. Opens Fri/15, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/17 and Oct 24, 2pm). Ninjaz of Drama with Footloose present a modern-day fairy tale.

Proof Exit Stage Left Theatre, 156 Eddy; www.belljartheatre.com. $20. Opens Fri/15, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 30. Bell Jar Theatre presents David Auburn’s award-winning play.

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Opens Sat/16, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

 

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Phoenix Theatre, Stage 2, 414 Mason; 433-1235, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. A one-woman musical starring Karen Hirst, with book and music by Anne Doherty.

Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a show by Brian Christopher Williams.

*The Brothers Size Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Dates and times vary. Through Sun/17. Magic Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play, directed by Octavio Solis.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 22. Actors Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ sultry, sweltering tale of a Mississippi family, directed by Keith Phillips.

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

Disoriented Off-Market Theater, 960 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 17. A trio of solo performances by Asian-American women.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm (also Sat/16, 1pm). Through Oct 24. 42nd Street Moon presents the Sondheim musical farce, starring Megan Cavanagh.

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Oct 27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

IPH… Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, 647-2822, www.brava.org. $15-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/16. Brava Theatre and African-American Shakespeare Company present the US premiere of an adaptation of Iphigenia at Aulis.

*Jerry Springer the Opera Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th; www.jerrysf.com. $20-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/16. Highbrow meets low in one big, boisterous mono-brow middle as one of the baser of daytime talk-show hosts meets his audience and maker—or anyway Jesus and Satan—in a TV show purgatory that really is purgatory. The form is operatic, the subject matter the stuff of soap, and the resulting tawdry spectacle all but irresistible in Ray of Light Theatre’s production of the 2003 British musical by Richard Thomas (music, book and lyrics) and Stewart Lee (book and lyrics). If the conceit feels a bit one-note, it’s a note taken very cleverly and ably for all its worth. A smart, smarmy and dyspeptic Patrick Michael Dukeman excels in the title role, as the chorus, meanwhile, comprised of Jerry’s rabid studio audience, puts the unbridled hooligan glee in glee club, lending Wagnerian weight to such key phrases as “step-dad” or “chick with a dick.” The grand and just slightly sleazy Victoria Theatre makes the perfect venue for this fine irreverence, filling it charmingly with rafter-shaking vulgarity and mayhem.

Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 30. Custom Made Theatre Company presents the 2005 play by New York’s Stephen Adly Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the A Train), which places purgatorial Judas (Kristoffer Alberto Barrera) on trial to determine his deserved fate for dropping a dime on Jesus and all that jazz. Flamboyant, sycophantic and horny prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Ben Ortega) and defense attorney Loretta (Amelia Avila) call between them a series of brow-raising witnesses—including Mother Teresa (Brandy Leggett), Sigmund Freud (Catz Forsman), and Satan (Richard Wenzel)—as Judas (seated on the upper tier of Sarah Phykitt’s suitably imposing split-level set) stares stoically in relative silence or appears in a series of childhood flashbacks. Characteristically funny and streetwise, as well as versed in the Catholic rigmarole as filtered through a NYC-boroughs sensibility, Guirgis’s play is also unusually tedious in its jokey, poky unfolding since—offering not much more than a cipher in the largely mute Iscariot—the proceedings lack a strong sense of dramatic stakes. It feels more like a revue than a play, or like an unnecessarily long-winded excuse for the final, well-turned concluding monologue by a heretofore marginal character (a speech delivered with admirable understatement by director Brian Katz). (Avila)

Love Song Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Oct 23. An offbeat comedy by John Kolvenbach, directed by Loretta Janca.

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Oct 20, Oct 27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Scapin American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-90. Tues-Sun, times vary. Through Oct 23. Bill Irwin, the innovative former Pickle Family clown and neo-vaudevillian turned Broadway star, makes a San Francisco return at the helm—and in the title role—of American Conservatory Theater’s production of Moliere’s classic farce. It’s an excuse for some arch meta-theatrical high jinx as well as expert clowning, a love fest really, with many fine moments amid a general font of fun whose heady purity seems like it should fall under some FDA regulation or other—clearly, somebody has paid someone to look the other way, and for once the corruption is unreservedly welcome. Joining the fun is Irwin’s old comrade-in-arms and, here, sacks, Geoff Hoyle, as miserly and dyspeptic daddy Geronte. Other ACT regulars and veterans flesh out a winning cast, among them the ever versatile and inimitable Gregory Wallace as Octave, a flouncing Steven Anthony Jones as put-out patriarch Argante, René Augesen as boisterously unlikely “virgin” Zerbinette, and a wonderfully adept and scene-stealing Judd Williford in the role of Scapin sidekick Sylvestre. As for Irwin, his comedic sensibility shows itself scrupulously apt and timeless at once, and his sure, lithesome performance intoxicating and age-defying. As a director, moreover, he gives as generously to each of his fellow performers as he does to his adoring, lovingly tousled audience. (Avila)

The Shining: Live The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-77891, www.darkroomsf.com. $7-10. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. The Dark Room becomes the Overlook Hotel in this stage production of the horror classic.

Sunset Limited SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Nov 6. This 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy exhibits some of the best and worst of the celebrated author, but significantly more of the latter. It sets an aging white academic and failed suicide (Charles Dean) in a room with his rescuer and would-be savior, a poor black social worker (Carl Lumbly), who has just snatched him from a railway platform ahead of a tête-à-tête with a train called the Sunset Limited. Both characters remain nameless, emphasizing the abstract pseudo-Socratic dimensions attendant on the dialogue-driven realism here (staged with a knowing wink in director Bill English’s scenic design, a partially walled wood-framed shack with see-through slits between the thin horizontal planking). The black man is a born-again Christian and ex-con convinced Jesus has just given him a major assignment. His dogmatic certainty is matched by the white man’s nihilism and despair. “I believe in the primacy of the intellect,” the miserable prof tells his host, who’s locked the door on his self-destructive guest in an effort to buy time to change his mind. Leaving aside the historically clichéd, problematic and baggage-heavy dynamic of a poor black American devoted to the welfare of a rich white one, neither man moves from his respective position one inch (at least until perhaps and partially at the very end), which constrains the dramatic development. Moreover, both sides argue feebly, mainly by gainsaying whatever it is the other one says, making this not a great intellectual debate either. SF Playhouse’s production sets two fine actors at this heavy-handed twofer, but little can be done to redeem so static and arid an exercise. (Avila)

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 31. TheatreWorks presents Tracy Letts’ tale of friendship and redemption in a Chicago donut dispensary.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 31, 5pm). Through Oct 31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

 

BAY AREA

Angels in America, Part One Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sat/16. Pear Avenue Theatre kicks off its fall “Americana” program with the Tony Kushner play.

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Music listings

David Talbot
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Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Dead Sea, Grayceon, DJ Crackwhore Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Femka Project, Sleeping Desires Knockout. 9:30pm, $6. With DJs Omar, Josh, and Justin.

Floater, Trophy Fire, Apopka Darkroom Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Macy Gray Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $25.

*Immolation, Vader, Abigail Williams, Lecherous Nocturne, Pathology DNA Lounge. 6:30pm, $22.

Jason King Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Jolly Good Fellows, Astral Force, Zej El Rio. 8pm, $5.

K-OS, Shad, Astronautilus Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Jane Lui, Goh Nakamura, Melissa Polinar Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Script Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Shadow Shadow Shade, AM Magic, Upstairs Downstairs Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $8.

Shuteye Union, Carcrashlander, Silian Rail Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Skarhead, Alcatraz, Dro City Holocaust, Plead the Fifth, Adlib and Panic Thee Parkside. 8pm, $13-15.

Th Mrcy Hot Springs, Pure Country Gold, Mystery Lights Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Hawksley Workman, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, Paul M. Davis Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

Open Mic Night 330 Ritch. 9pm, $7.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Switch Triple Crown. 9pm, free. With DJ Cheb i Sabbah.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acorn, Leif Vollebekk, Angel Island Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Atomic Love Bombs, Blisses B, Stove, Friends of the River Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Dan Black, Butterfly Bones, DJ Morale Independent. 9pm, $15.

Chikita Violenta, Leopold and His Fiction, Echo Twin Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Crayon Fields, Magic Bullets, Mystery Claws Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

*Fishbone, Everything Must Go, Loyd Family Players DNA Lounge. 8pm, $14. SF DocFest opening night party.

Larry Garner Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Hoodoo Gurus, Wrong Words Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $26.

Jail Weddings, Lotus Moons, We Are Country Mice Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Erica Sunshine Lee, Camaron Ochs, Kelly McFarling Slim’s. 8pm, $13.

Mental 99 El Rio. 7pm, free.

*Silver Griffin, Manzanita, Orchestra of Antlers Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Brian Andres and the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel Coda. 8:30pm, $10.

Kasey Knudsen, Liza Mezzacappa, Permanent Wave Ensamble Amnesia. 9pm, $5. Part of SFJazz Hotplate Series.

Manhattan Transfer Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $30-75.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Savannah Blue Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

“Songwriters Unplugged Showcase III” Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14. With Bonnie Hayes, Heather Combs, Anita Lofton, Valerie Orth, and Ziva.

Tu Gusto Musical Coda. 8:30pm, $10. With Brian Andres and the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel, Avotcja and Modupue, Alejandro Chavez and Friends, Patricio Angulo and the Sonado Project, and more.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

CakeMIX SF Wish, 1539 Folsom, SF; www.wishsf.com. 10pm, free. DJ Carey Kopp spinning funk, soul, and hip hop.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Kissing Booth Make-Out Room. 9pm, free. DJs Jory, Commodore 69, and more spinning indie dance, disco, 80’s, and electro.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Libra Dance Party Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; (415) 346-2025. 8:30pm, free. With DJs L’Elephant, Tres Lingerie, Steve Fabus, Sergio, Ken Vulsion, André Lucero, and more spinning dance, housem funk, jazz, boogie, and more.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Motion Sickness Vertigo, 1160 Polk, SF; (415) 674-1278. 10pm, free. Genre-bending dance party with DJs Sneaky P, Public Frenemy, and D_Ro Cyclist.

Paul Oakenfold, Chuckie, Kenneth Thomas Fillmore. 8pm, $35. Spinning electronic.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Queer Porn TV El Rio. 8pm, $5. A super sexy variety show with Venus in Furs, DJs PRDCT, and Primo, Boylesque by James Darling, a kinky kissing booth, a porno-preview peepshow, and more.

FRIDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Birds and Batteries, Geographer, Holy Rolling Empire Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Blood Red Shoes, Sky Larkin, My First Earthquake Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

Matt Costa, Threes and Nines Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

“Delta Wire’s 40th Year Celebration” Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Jason Derulo, Auburn Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

*Die Antwoord Ameoba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 6pm, free.

Girls, Holy Shit, She’s Fillmore. 9pm, $22.50.

Hollyhocks, Billy and Dolly Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $7.

Indian Jewelry, Clipd Beaks, Late Young Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $10.

Rubblebucket, Kiss and Tell Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Scream, Dusted Angel, Dead Meat Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10-12.

7 Orange ABC, King Baldwin, Maiden Lane, Ladies on a Train Hotel Utah. 8:30pm, $8.

*Kelley Stoltz, Fresh and Onlys, Carletta Sue Kay Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Soundearth, Bpos, Agentstriknine, Mantis One El Rio. 9pm, $10.

Tainted Love Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $23.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Garaj Mahal Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Meredith Axelrod and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Gaelic Storm Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Latin Kings All-Stars Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $25.

Native Elements Coda. 10pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Club Dragon Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. A gay Asian paradise. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs B-Cause, Vinnie Esparza, Mr. Robinson, Toph One, and Slopoke.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hella Tight Amnesia. 10pm, $3.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Hubba Hubba Revue: Mad Science DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Burlesque gone mad with the Fuxedos.

Jah Yzer’s Nickel Bag of Funk Birthday Celebration Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop and reggae with DJs Ant-One, Sean G, and Jah Yzer.

Mercury Soul 111 Minna Gallery. 5pm, free. A happy hour filled with DJ sets and string quartets.

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. Doo-wop and one-hit wonders with DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat.

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Synth sounds of the cold war era.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing The Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

*Z-Trip Mighty. 9pm, $25.

SATURDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Big Lion, Mental 99, Clair, True Margrit, Battlin’ Bluebirds Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $10.

Burmese, Kowloon Walled City, Nero Order Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Meklit Hadero Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $25.

Jackie Payne Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

McTuff Coda. 10pm, $10.

Morning Benders, Twin Sister, Cults Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

No Alternative, Everything Must Go, Hightower El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Rogue Wave, Mumlers Independent. 9pm, $15.

Rubblebucket, Katdelic Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Sic Alps, Howlin Rain, Wooden Shjips, Greg Ashley, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound Thee Parkside. 1:30pm, $15. With Carlton Melton, White Manna, Young Prisms, and more.

Scott Alan Simmons, JJ Schultz Band, Glittersnatch Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Street Dogs, Devil’s Brigade, Flatfoot 56, Continental Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

Tainted Love Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $23.

Wiz Khalifa, Yelawolf 8pm, $22.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Ladies of Jazz” Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 8:15pm, $25. With Cathi Walkup, Jennifer Lee, Leanne Weatherly, and Melissa Dinwiddie.

Stella Royale Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Robert Gastalum, Esben and the Witch Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Nuxx.

Bootie: Hubba Hubba Revue Pirate Show DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups, burlesque, and more.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. Gay locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm, MyKill, and Dcnstrct.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Blondie K and subOctave spinning indie music videos.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Ok Hole Amnesia. 9pm, $5. With DJs Nay Nay, Muscledrum, and C.L.A.W.S. spinning dance music.

Prince vs. Michael Madrone Art Bar. 8pm, $5. With DJs Dave Paul and Jeff Harris battling it out on the turntables with album cuts, remixes, rare tracks, and classics.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm-2am, $10. DJs Lucky, Paul Paul, and Phengren Oswald spin butt-shakin’ ’60s soul on 45.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Arrington De Dionysos Malaikat dan Singa, Edmund Welles, Lickets Hotel Utah. 9pm, $7.

*Batusis, Re-Volts Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12-15.

Craig Chaquico Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7 and 9pm, $25.

Lloyd Gregory Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Hot Chip, Sleigh Bells Warfield. 9pm, $38.

Johnny Hi-Fi, Lion Riding Horses, Festizio Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Living Colour, Against the Girl Independent. 8pm, $25.

Amy Obenski Rock-It Room. 7pm, free.

Say Anything, Motion City Soundtrack, Saves the Day, Valencia Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $27.

Toys That Kill, Fleshies, Rank/Xerox Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Laurie Antonioli, Matt Clar, and John Shifflett Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

Clarinet Thing Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; www.theintersection.org. 2pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Candela El Rio. 4pm, $8.

Gayle Lynn and Her Hired Hands Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, dubstep, roots, and dancehall with Vinnie Esparza and J Boogie.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

Pachanga Coda. 7pm, $10. Salsa dance party with DJs Fab Fred and DJ Antonio, with Louie Romero y Mazacote.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

Swing Out Sundays Rock-It Room. 7pm, free (dance lessons $15). DJ BeBop Burnie spins 20s through 50s swing, jive, and more.

MONDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

David Bazan, Wye Oak Independent. 8pm, $15.

Califone, Greg Ashley Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Tia Carroll Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Envy, La Dispute, Touche Amore, And So I Watch You From Afar Café Du Nord. 8pm, $14.

Flyleaf, Story of the Year Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $25.

Jugtown Pirates, Rob and Cindy, Chris Jeffries and the Plastic Fantastic Lovestains Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

*Lydia and the Projects, Dina Maccabee Band, Matthew Edwards and the Unfortunates Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Elissa P., Dot Punto, Moonlight Orchestra El Rio. 7pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

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

Household Triple Crown. 9pm, free. With DJs Mr. White, Kimmy Le Funk, Gabriel Testadorra, and Daren Grant spinning house, disco, techno, hip hop, funk, and soul.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Punk Rock Sideshow Hemlock Tavern. 10pm, free. With DJ Tragic and Duchess of Hazard.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Cory Chisel, Sahara Smith Café Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Dahga Bloom, Moccreto, Superstitions Five Points Arthouse, 72 Tehama, SF; www.fivepointsarthouse.com. 9pm.

Electric Shepherd, Outlets, Swaybone Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Film School, LoveLikeFire, Fake Your Own Death Independent. 8pm, $15.

Half Handed Cloud, Roar, Carol Cleveland Sings Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Minus the Bear, Tim Kasher, AM Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $24.

Nick Moss and the Flip Tops Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Ash Reiter, Petracovich, Jamie Drake, Carly Escoto Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

Sentinel Beast, Hatchet, Vindicator, Possessor Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Villagers, Dave Smallen, Attachments, Yourstru.ly Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck.

Brazilian Wax Elbo Room. 9pm, $7. With Forro Brazuca and DJs Carioca and P-Shot.

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

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

 

Trans action time

David Talbot
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Trans action time

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS And then there was Kiz’s wedding, and I was honored to be a part of her get-ready team. Although: I had nightmares about branding her face with a curling iron or, worse, catching her hair on fire.

She must have had the same nightmares, because when the big day finally came, she barely let me touch her hair. This was probably for the best. She looked awesome and entirely unmismanaged by her get-ready team, and anyway the ceremony was held outside, at the lighthouse in Santa Cruz, in a wind so strong that the four women holding the chuppah damn near missed the vows for parasailing to Reno. Kiz’s naturally fantastic hair was pretty much horizontal the whole time anyway. It stayed fantastic, but horizontally fantastic.

Wind notwithstanding, both she and her dude went ahead and said they did, and that was it, give or take a lot of other things.

For example: three times in the past 30 days I have heard straight newlyweds include, as a part of their ceremony, shout-outs to California gays. Meaning straight people with a conscience are feeling increasingly weird about their participation in a bigoted and discriminatory system that excludes many of their close friends.

Cool!

Cooler yet will be when straight couples start to stop getting married, in protest. Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that in fact antiquated marriage laws undermine marriage, whereas queerness might could rejuvenate it.

Coolest of all will be when I get married. Won’t that be a hoot? Won’t that change the cynical way everyone feels (or at least I feel) about the eroding, outmoded institution?

For the moment, of course, there is nothing preventing trans people in most states from being married — legally (as long as no nasty dispute ever arises inspiring someone to prove for the sake of financial gain or custody or some such that their marriage was never really valid — which, really, how often does anything like that happen in this neat, clean world we live in?)!

My more immediate concern is one no amount of legislation can ever redress, undress, or even approach: how to get on the menu. As it is, there are not a lot of guys willing to be seen in broad daylight with girls like me, let alone take us home to mother. Let alone stand on some windy precipice and say they do. I’m working on this. I have ideas. Big ‘uns.

But speaking of going behind a rock and yipping like a coyote, there’s Los Coyotes right there near the 16th Street BART station. I’ve walked by it a zillion times without it ever registering, until Earl Butter was kind enough to notice the picture in the window of meat and melted cheese all over a bed of french fries.

He did what you’re supposed to do: he told me, so at the next imaginable mealtime we were there, sharing a big plate of carne asada fries and a pretty small bowl of birria.

The birria was greasy and bare-bones. In this case, that means we found a lot of weird pieces of bone without any meat on them. But there was a lot of meat too. And nothing else. Oh well … that’s birria, as the saying goes. Just goat and goodness, and you gotta love that.

Well, I do. Points for serving it any old day of the week. And points for adding carne asada fries to the Mission District burrito scene. It wasn’t the best carne asada. Or the best cheese, or the best fries, for that matter. But somehow when you added them all up, it was a damn great thing to be eating.

And we each drank a lemonade and each ate some green chips with a variety of salsas, including a mango one. And one that was just strips of pickled nopales and onions, speaking (still) of coyotes.

The atmosphere is really good, too. A lot of cool, colorful tile work, and color and brightness in general, plus Mexican soap operas on TV.

New favorite taqueria? Next time I’ll get a burrito, and weigh back in.

Taqueria Los Coyotes

Mon.–Thu. 9:30 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 9 a.m.–3 a.m.

3036 16th St., SF

(415) 861-3708

MC,V

Beer and wine

Waiting to inhale

Andrew Lam
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0
Waiting to inhale

news@sfbg.com

Much of the controversy around Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in California for even nonmedical uses, involves speculation about what comes next. Hash bars on Market Street? Packs of joints next to the cigarettes in Mission District bodegas? Bags of green buds available with the bongs for sale on Haight Street? They are questions that have yet to get serious consideration in the city where the medical marijuana movement was launched.

The measure would give local governments almost complete control over how to regulate recreational-use cannabis sales in much the same way that cities set their own standards for medical marijuana dispensaries, a realm in which San Francisco has shown real leadership and created a well-functioning, successful, and legitimate industry (see “Marijuana goes mainstream,” Jan. 27).

But San Franciscans have been slow to prepare for the post-Prop. 19 world, with some other Bay Area cities leaving it in the dust on these issues. Oakland City Council Member Rebecca Kaplan, who is now running for mayor, not only spearheaded that city’s ballot measures on taxing recreational pot sales and permitting large scale growing operations, she’s actively talking using the Amsterdam model to revitalize the city’s downtown business district.

“[Hash bars] absolutely potentially would be part of the mix,” Kaplan told us when we asked about the issue during her mayoral endorsement interview, seeing it as part of a multipronged economic development strategy.

When asked if Oakland should have places where people could go to blaze legally, something Oakland doesn’t allow in its medical marijuana dispensaries, Kaplan said, “Yes. Oh yeah, we’re definitely gonna have those. The only question is gonna be whether the consumption facilities are separate from [those for] sales,” or if they’re under the same roof.

Kaplan thinks this will be part of the winning strategy that takes cannabis use off street corners while acknowledging its appeal to visitors and “synergy with the restaurants. When I talk about wanting to replicate the Amsterdam model in Oakland … it doesn’t just mean that you have … a regulated cannabis facility. You also have restaurants, shops, pedestrian safety, nice lighting, patio dining, musicians, artists.”

She points out that although an Oakland-regulated cannabis industry may use current alcohol regulation as a template, the two substances would not be sold alongside each other. “Frankly, ABC [California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control) will freak out.” That means, at least in Oakland, you won’t be able to purchase cannabis at bars, liquor, or grocery stores.

On this side of the bay, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi — who wrote the regulations on the city’s medical marijuana facilities — says it is “extremely premature” to contemplate Amsterdam-esque hash bars. “That would have to occur within a strong regulatory framework,” he said, one the Board of Supervisors has yet to envision. San Francisco attorney David Owen, who has helped advise some medical marijuana purveyors, said some dispensaries currently allow on-site medication, and San Francisco might legislate to extend the practice to bars.

Meanwhile other California cities such as Berkeley and Oakland are anticipating Prop. 19’s passage much more proactively. Berkeley’s Measure S would tax cannabis businesses, applying different rates to for profit med-use cannabis businesses, nonprofit med-use businesses, and rec-use businesses (which won’t exist unless Prop 19 passes). The measure would secure medical-use cannabis for low-income patients and tighten regulations on Berkeley’s current med-use dispensaries and cultivators regardless of how Prop. 19 fares. There’s also a Measure T on the ballot that would establish a new committee that, in the event that Prop. 19 passes, would advise city officials on how to implement it.

Berkeley City Council Member Kriss Worthington said planning for the post-Prop. 19 world is smart to “synchronize a forward movement on the state and local level” and to “hit the ground running,” a sentiment that Kaplan also voiced for Oakland and one shared by other cities.

Stockton’s Measure I would tax rec-use cannabis businesses at a higher rate than med-use businesses. Sacramento’s Measure C is similar, containing a provision for a rec-use tax range if Prop. 19 passes. Richmond’s Measure V would tax 5 percent of gross sales of cannabis, and could apply to rec-use businesses too. Oakland’s Measure V would add a 5 percent tax to other taxes already on med-use cannabis, and put a 10 percent sales tax on rec-use cannabis. Measure H, on Rancho Cordova’s ballot, would tax personal cultivation at a higher tax on any square footage beyond the 25 square feet that Prop 19 specifies. Long Beach’s Measure B would establish a business license tax on the city’s potential recreational cannabis businesses. Even Albany, which has no dispensaries, would tax for-profit and nonprofit dispensaries differently through its Measure Q.

But Mirkarimi said he would like to tax marijuana cultivation, and has even voiced support for med-use cannabis dispensaries working directly with SF General Hospital to provide to patients, “thereby segregating a special use” and keeping cannabis prices low or nonexistent based on patient needs.

So if Prop. 19 passes, where will San Franciscans be able to purchase rec-use cannabis? Current med-use dispensaries may be a logical choice. “We already have the infrastructure,” said SF dispensary Medithrive co-owner Daniel Bornstein.

Whereas alcohol purveyors are accustomed to providing one barrier to purchase (when they card the buyer), dispensaries such as Medithrive offer many. “We already card and only accept patronage from those with a valid doctor recommendation. We also require he/she become a member of the dispensary and limit to one visit per day.”

When he contemplates whether Medithrive might provide rec-use cannabis in the future, Bornstein says “If [the city adopts] a responsible statute that’s fair, we would welcome the opportunity to offer a broadened service to more people.”

That avenue troubles Mirkarimi. “I don’t know how that works,” he said. Rec-use cannabis purchase would require no doctor’s notes and could occur within a for-profit business model. How would dispensaries legally reconcile making money under their nonprofit status? “I don’t want to put that burden on them,” Mirkarimi said.

Prop. 19 offers other potential implementation conundrums. For example, the measure will only give local governments the option to legalize the limited cultivation/sale of cannabis. Legalization won’t be compulsory. Therefore, it is likely that a post-Prop. 19-approved California will become a patchwork of alternating “dry” and “wet” municipalities.

So let’s say you’re on a road trip and you pass through many cities that all treat cannabis differently. Bornstein and his Medithrive partner Misha Breyburg worry about such a “patchwork of legal complexity.” But Prop. 19 provides for the legal transport of cannabis through cities that prohibit its sale, and California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano has already proposed legislation to smooth out the rough spots in Prop. 19 and answer open questions.

So for now, everyone is just waiting to see what state voters do.

 

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13

Commune and resist

Dubbed the Community and Resistance Tour, this two-hour event seeks to connect the BP oil spill, expressions of racism in Jena, La., and organizing women in prison. Come hear Jordan Flaherty and other speakers discuss these and other struggles for justice and liberation. The event is sponsored by Left Turn Magazine and other radical and independent media projects.

7 p.m.–9 p.m., free

Station 40

3030-B 16th St., SF

www.communityandresistance.wordpress.com

 

THURSDAY, OCT. 14

Get radical for our schools

Sisters Organized for Public Education hosts a community meeting to develop strategies for opposing further cuts to the public school system. Come beforehand and get to know people at the buffet with vegetarian options.

7 p.m. lecture, free;

6:15 buffet, $7.50 donation New Valencia Hall

625 Larkin, Suite 202, SF

415-864-1278

 

Food sovereignty for Haiti

Discussion focused on how food justice and sovereignty are working on the ground in Haiti, here in the Bay Area, and elsewhere. The lively event is hosted by Weyland Southon of KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio and features keynote speaker Pierre Labossiere, a Haitian activist with HaitiAction Committee, and performances by Tacuma King and Bay Area youth Arts.

7 p.m., $10

Humanist Hall

390 27th St., Oakl.

510-548-2220, ext 233

 

FRIDAY, OCT. 15

Turn a New Leaf

Gay Shame San Francisco holds this community meeting to discuss the closing of the New Leaf LGBTQ Counseling Center and what it calls the medicalization of life, criminalization of illness, and growth of the prison-military-medical-nonprofit-industrial complex.

11:30 a.m., free

Market and Ninth streets, SF

www.gayshamesf.org

 

SATURDAY, OCT. 16

Our planet, ourselves

“Earth at Risk: Building a Resistance Movement To Save the Planet” is a daylong event designed to highlight the dire threat that reckless industrialization poses to the planet and build a resistance movement around possible solutions. Host Derrick Jensen interviews 10 people who each hold an impassioned critique of overindustrialized civilization and who offer solutions.

9 a.m.–5 p.m., free

Seven Hills Conference Center

San Francisco State University

1600 Holloway, SF

www.derrickjensen.org

 

Foraged Health

Take a class on medicinal plants available in California. The class is taught by Tellur Fenner of Blue Wind Botanical Medicine Clinic. Come learn what Mother Earth has to offer underfoot and overhead.

1 p.m. – 4 p.m., $20 members; $30 public

18 Reasons

593 Guerrero, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/130794

 

Radical Mental Health

This grassroots media project was created by and for people struggling with that catch-all term, “mental disorders.” Filmmaker Ken Paul Rosenthal presents his poetic documentary Crooked Beauty, which documents Jack McNamara’s journey from psychiatric patient to mental health advocate. Benefits San Francisco’s Icarus Project.

6 p.m.–9 p.m., $5–$10 suggested donation

California Institute for Integral Studies

1453 Mission, SF

www.crookedbeauty.com 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alerts@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Open Studios spotlight: Calixto Robles

Andrew Lam
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1

Because Open Studios is about more than just the free wine and occasional sushi board score. Really! The annual organized voyeurism of creative space in the city will showcase artists’ studios in different neighborhoods each weekend this month. In gleeful anticipation, we visited screen-printer and long time Mission visual artist Calixto Robles, who is helping to throw open the doors to his Life Art Studios (151 Potrero, SF) this weekend.

 

“Meeting new people, that’s the best thing.” Robles is sitting in his studio of six years, surrounded by shelf upon shelf of his lucid dream style paintings, screen printed posters, and a new project that will be on sale at this weekend’s Open Studios: T-shirts covered in iconic prints from the world’s religions, their overlapping designs forming a riotous invocation of peace.

Get inside Calixto’s mind… or at least his print shop

The T-shirts designs are echoes of similar schemas on canvasses that sit on the ground near Robles’ desk area. The Virgin of Guadalupe (herself a figure with one foot in Catholic lore and another in indigenous Mexican faith), Buddha, and Hindu gods, the word “peace” thrown in at intervals for good measure. The brightly colored collages are a favorite of Carlos Santana, who is a good friend of Robles. In fact, the canvasses by Robles’ feet represent different options for Santana to peruse for his family Christmas card this year. 

The beauty of Open Studios is the ability to sample divergent snippets of San Francisco artistic life. In addition to Life Art’s neighborhood in the corner of the Mission that abuts SoMa and Potrero Hill, this weekend’s event will feature open doors in Bernal Heights, Castro, Duboce, Eureka Valley, Glen Park, Mission, Noe Valley, and Portola. Art Span, the organization of artists that coordinates the event, does so to connect artists with budding art aficionados in the hopes of connection at the point of inspiration.

Robles, a longtime Mission resident from Oaxaca who was part of the art movement that erupted in opposition to the dot com evictions of the late ’90s, has participated in for “fix or six years” in Open Studios. He’s exhibited his art for visitors in both group studios and in his home on Guerrero Street, relishing the opportunity to let passers-by into his private creating space. 

Lotus hearts, community art at Open Studios 2010

He’s famous for his screen prints. Wife and fellow artist Alexandra Blum and he bought an ancient printing press from UC Berkeley years ago. It now sits in the center of his studio, an aluminum print  on top of it featuring a “Justicia” banner that a friend drew for Calixto to print. One wall of the lobby gallery of Life Art is still covered in handmade Mexican propaganda posters that Robles and friends displayed in a recent exhibition of political art. 

The beauty of Open Studios, Robles says, is not always the financial bottom line. Rather, it’s the chance to share art with those around us, people with whom you’d never otherwise find yourself discussing artistic vision. 

This weekend will be the first time that Life Art hosts a group show — exciting for that particular artist community, whose artist produce disparate works from Calixto’s peace prints to massive canvasses covered with a mixture of adhesive and table salt. The artists hope to benefit from the foot traffic of people strolling between SOMAarts Cultural Center and Art Explosion, the massive warren of studios that both sit a block from Life Art and will also be participating in this weekend’s Open Studios. 

Some people, Robles tells me, pass through quickly after scanning the works on the wall – but other art fans will go for the more interactive experience. Chill with the guy who makes Carlos Santana’s Christmas cards? It’s a good reason to hit the studio circuit. 


Open Studios: Bernal Heights, Castro, Duboce, Eureka Valley, Glen Park, Mission, Noe Valley, Portola

Sat/9 and Sun/10 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free

151 Potrero, SF

www.artspan.org

 

City bid to bring vendors into Dolores Parks causes an uproar

Sasha Cuttler
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12
City bid to bring vendors into Dolores Parks causes an uproar

Officials with the SF Recreation and Parks Department are attempting to quell the mounting frustrations of some Mission District merchants and residents who feel that the city shouldn’t allow private companies to operate in a public park, as the department is seeking to do. Even those who don’t necessarily have a problem with inviting more commerce into Dolores Park say the process should have been more open and transparent.

“I like pushcarts,” said Rachel Herbert, owner of Dolores Park Café. “I think they add flavor to San Francisco.” But Herbert is also allowing opponents of the department’s request for proposals (RFP) to set up shop in her store and gather signatures for a petition to “stop the commercialization of Dolores Park.” Herbert, who lives in the neighborhood, said she is helping the effort because “It’s about the process and Rec and Park not really thinking things through and doing whatever they want.”

Mike McConnell, the man behind the petition, holds a similar viewpoint. “I don’t feel that it was adequate outreach before this.” They’re not alone. McConnell currently has petitions in three stores – including his own store, Fayes Video – each with around 100 signatures, along with 700 online petition signatures.

While the controversy is recent, the RFP for the permits was issued in September last year. The proposal stated: “Before entering into permit agreement for the operation of a pushcart in any neighborhood park, the Department will conduct a community outreach process to determine the appropriateness of such a use in the park.”

It’s unclear how much outreach there was beyond a request for applicants posted in the July 31 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. However, according to Mission Local, department spokesman Elton Pon sent them an email stating that the department mailed out “an announcement of the opportunity to more than 1,000 potential applicants.”

Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the SF Office of Small Business, said much of the demand for the permits has come from small time vendors. “Part of this has been an organic growing up of the vendors themselves,” Dick-Endrizzi said. “The mobile food folks have been coming and working and urging us to open up more space.”

Dick-Endrizzi helped vet the applicants in the panel that included members of department and the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development. “I can attest as being part of the committee that they were very careful in making their decision,” she said.

However one recipient of the permits, Oakland-based Blue Bottle Coffee, has received criticisms that it isn’t local enough – city policies encourage contracting with San Francisco small businesses. Blue Bottle is also backed by venture capital firm Kohlberg Ventures.

Its founder recently issued a public letter explaining his position: “I had assumed that since there were published articles in The Chronicle, the Examiner, and the SF Weekly in November of 2009, and January 2010, that the community around Dolores Park was well informed. So it pained me to hear that many of our (hopefully) future neighbors were upset that more outreach had not been done.”

This isn’t the first time a vendor has been allowed to operate in city parks. Nor are they the first merchant with questionable local status. Last August RPD commission voted 6-1 to replace long-time Stow Lake vendor with an out of state suitor. The Chronicle reported “the corporation, which has owned and operated the 1940s-era boathouse for 67 years, couldn’t compete with New Mexico-based Ortega Family Enterprises, which pledged to complete $233,000 worth of improvements to the well-worn building and buy a brand-new fleet of boats.”

Dolores has become a haven for unlicensed vendors selling items such as beer, hot dogs, ice cream, and even pot-laced brownies and truffles. What will become of them? “You pay thousands and thousands for your trailer and for permits and this guy comes around with his little cart and is selling coffee for 50 cents less, what are you going to do? You’re going to call the fucking cops and say get this scumbag out of here,” said local impresario Chicken John.

Dolores Park has traditionally been regarded with a kind of laissez faire attitude by many San Francisco residents. On a warm day it’s not uncommon to see hundreds of chic to cheap layabouts basking on its hills, beer and bowl in hand, without worry in mind. And many-a-cop has seen them too, but rarely do they intervene – and all was well. Maybe that’s another reason why there has been such uproar over the proposed introduction of pushcarts into the park.

Since the uproar, both Blue Bottle Coffee and the other potential vendor nonprofit Cocina have been put in limbo. La Cocina’s executive director, Caleb Zigas, told Mission Local that “he had expected to roll into the park this week and is disappointed by the delay. In the past four months he’s poured $28,000 in grant money into La Cocina’s food trailer, which is now sitting in storage.”

But how long will the pushcarts (they’re actually trailers powered by generators) gather dust in a garage? “For most types of appeals there is a 15-day window after the permit was issued,” said Cynthia Goldstein, executive director of the SF Board of Appeals. However it isn’t a concrete rule. “On rare instances the board will extend the window when there is evidence that the city did something wrong.” In addition, according to Goldstein, there is usually a 15-20 day window between when an appeal is filled and when it is reviewed by the Board. In short, the dilemma may not be quashed by the meeting this evening that the department is holding on the controversy.

The extension would bode well for any NIMBYs since Cocina’s and Blue Bottle’s permits were granted on April 15, 2010 and Sept 2, 2010, respectively.

RecPark was expecting a 12 percent cut on the pushcart profits and hoped to net around $70,000 annually. The pushcarts are just one of the many revenue generating ideas that are currently floating around. RecPark – under its new department head, Phil Ginsburg, who was previously chief of staff to Mayor Gavin Newsom – recently created a partnerships and revenue generating division with the purpose of capitalizing on many of the cities assets.

At the Jan 21, 2010 Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, pushcarts were discussed as a way to ostensibly keep city employees from getting laid off. Other ideas that were tossed out included hosting a production of Peter Pan, renting out parking places for car shares, and an adopt-a-park program; an adopt-a-gardener program was even suggested. The city was broke and was searching for a way to close huge General Fund deficits.

The idea of pushcarts was discussed again at the Feb 18 meeting. Nick Kinsey from the property division of RecPark, told the commission, “We received 18 responses to the RFP and we actually brought six of them in for interviews. As part of the interviews we met with the respondents, we evaluated their qualifications, evaluated their operation plans – in terms of where they wanted to be in each of the parks, in each of the proposed parks, how that would interact with residents and other park users use of the park space and if there would be any conflict there.”

Kinsey continued, “We’re also accepting application on a rolling basis right now. So if anyone is watching and interested in submitting an application for pushcarts, we are accepting pushcarts. Some of our location are maxed out we wouldn’t accept anyone else. But we have plenty of other park spaces where we think this is an appropriate use.”

The meeting of the issue is today (Thurs/7) at 4 p.m. in City Hall Room 416

 

Hot sexy events Oct 6-12

Andrew Lam
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0
Hot sexy events Oct 6-12

It’s about that time, cats and kittens. Time to start fantasizing — Halloween is just around the corner. And though everyone and their mother is going to be Stephen Colbert’s Muslim vampire this year, many will seize the autumnal juncture as an opportunity to whore it up and out – in a good way! 

After all, who doesn’t love the sexy nurses, kitties, police officers, and Snookies that stalk the city bars each year on the 31st? Look, the point is that on this day of days society indulges those that follow their dreams. May as well make it a wet dream, no? Sexy Muslim vampire it is! Oh, and here are some sexy events that’ll wet your whistle this week, with an emphasis on finding that alluring inner equilibrium.

Bawdy Storytelling

Two events this week to get you hooked into what’s happening in Dixie De La Tour’s recurring sexcapade storytelling series: one, a best-of edition featuring writers and comedians from around town (Wed/6) and two, a back alley Lit Crawl edition of Bawdy that’ll have Clarion Alley echoing with the retelling of disastrous dates and tales of unconventional canoodling.  

Bawdy Storytelling: Graphic Confessions

Wed/6 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com


Bawdy in the Alley

Sat/9 8:30-9:30 p.m., free

Clarion Alley between 17th and 18th St., SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com


Declaring Our Erotic

Jen Cross knows that erotic writing isn’t just a pleasure to read – for some, the act of writing down passions can be a cathartic, even therapeutic event. That’s why she’s offering this eight-week class for survivors of LGBT sexual trauma. The syllabus promises a safe space to reconnect with your body’s desires and memories. And of course, a chance to write some hot, dirty smut. 

First class Thu/7 6:30-9 p.m., $225-250

email jennifer@writingourselveswhole.com for details


Urge

Put the Citadel’s 5,400 square feet of devious dungeon to use to use for the whipping, slapping, burning, and loving of young loins – hot young male whippersnappers will be the only ones invited to this get together of BDSM blowout. 

Fri/8 9 p.m.- 1:30 a.m., $25

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.sfcitadel.org


Steven Saylor

Love, sex, and intrigue in the palace! But this ain’t no corset-buster. No, Steven Saylor’s new book Empire is a males-only play space – the plotline follows Emperor Nero’s eunuch lover Sporus, who becomes the hottest piece of tranny ass on the Forum. Let Saylor woo you into a new love of history at this talk about his latest historical tome of carnal knowledge.

Mon/11 7:30 p.m., free

A Different Light Bookstore

489 Castro, SF

(415) 431 0891 

www.adl-books.blogspot.com


Grizzly’s Bullwhips by the Bay

Don’t worry baby, they got loaner whips. Put your lusted one’s mind at ease by polishing up your whipping skills at this bimonthly peer skill share class by the sea. It’s about safety, kids! After all, when the singletails start flying, you can’t always guarantee that Grizzly, the organizer of the get-togethers, will be there with spare protective goggles to guard those bedroom eyes.

Sun/10 11:30 a.m.- 1 p.m., free

Southeast of the Golden Gate Park Polo Fields, SF

www.laughingbear.org

 

Body Love for Better Sex

How would you spread your legs if you weren’t worried about chunky inner thighs? Body anxiety can be the nemesis of good sex –  but Virgie Tovar, fat positive sex educator, is here to help you titter about Miss Body Anxiety until she drops out of school due to social anxiety. Which is to say, help you feel as pretty as you are. Aww. No more naked nervousness, bam.

Mon/11 6-8 p.m., $20-25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com

 

 

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