Mission

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Sup. Chris Daly has kind of a cool idea: he wants to hold a progressive convention to pick a candidate and a platform for mayor. The date is June 2, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The place is the Tenderloin Community School. The idea is for hundreds of grassroots activists to gather, nominate someone to take on Gavin Newsom, and kick off a citywide campaign that will, at the very least, force the carefully protected mayor to come out from behind his handlers and answer some tough questions.

Not everyone thinks this is a good concept — and I’m the first to agree it’s a bit of a risk. It assumes, for example, that there’s a serious candidate for mayor whom we can all agree on and who actually wants to run for the job. And it assumes that we all really want to put the effort into a full-scale campaign against an incumbent who looks pretty close to unbeatable right now.

Neither of these is a trivial issue.

In theory, a nomination convention is a chance for constituents to choose among candidates who are competing for the right to seek office. Four years ago, when we had Tom Ammiano, Angela Alioto, and Matt Gonzalez in the race, a convention would have been fun, if not terribly useful; none of those people would have dropped out in favor of another based on one convention vote. But right now there’s not a lot of competition: nobody who has the profile to launch a credible race has stepped forward and volunteered for the mission. And it would look pretty lame to have the People speak and call for a candidate who then took the stage and declined.

If this is going to work, the situation has to change in the next few weeks. The folks who really don’t want to see Newsom get a bye are talking, and one of them is going to accept the responsibility. Me, I’d be happy with Daly, Matt Gonzalez, Aaron Peskin, or Ross Mirkarimi, but Gonzalez isn’t ready to announce anything at this point, Peskin has told me he’s not going to run, Mirkarimi is being awfully coy, and Daly seems pretty reluctant (although he hasn’t ruled it out, he says he’ll do it only if nobody else will).

Not everyone thinks it’s even worth the fight. Paul Hogarth, writing in BeyondChron.org, argued May 14 that it’s better to save our energy and let Newsom be a weak lame duck for another five years. After all, he hasn’t been able to do much harm — and now and then, he does something decent.

The problem is that the city has serious problems, and it’s not OK for a mayor to be missing in action this long. Think about the murder rate. Think about Muni. Think about the future of blue-collar jobs, affordable housing, and the eastern neighborhoods. Think about the fact that in the next four years, the last big piece of land where San Francisco can preserve blue-collar jobs and build affordable housing will be up for grabs. Think about the city’s soul. Because it really is on the line here — and I’m not ready to hand it over to Newsom again without a fight. *

Of blowjobs and SF Weekly’s spurious claims to great (arts) journalism

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The SF Weekly’s obsession (jealous much?) with our 5/2 cover story on Vincent Gallo and the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival is forcing me to put one of my credos – “Don’t make me cut you!” – into practice.

I read, or at least glance at, the Weekly. It’s one of the less rewarding requirements of my current job. So I couldn’t help but notice that its Sucka Free City column has launched two successive attacks on a recent profile I wrote about Gallo. Got that? That’s two different Weekly articles about one alleged “puff piece.” I guess there must be something to what we’re doing for them to be so strangely fixated.

I have better things to do, and better work to put in the paper, but I’ll use this blog to pick these Sucka Free City articles off one by one, talk a little about misogyny and lame Cro-Magnon straight journalist dude posturing – a relevant topic here – and then add some real observation about the state of arts journalism as executed, and I mean executed, by the SF Weekly and their overlords at the New Times, excuse me, Voice Media.

Of blowjobs and SF Weekly’s spurious claims to great (arts) journalism

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The SF Weekly’s obsession (jealous much?) with our 5/2 cover story on Vincent Gallo and the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival is forcing me to put one of my credos – “Don’t make me cut you!” – into practice.

I read, or at least glance at, the Weekly. It’s one of the less rewarding requirements of my current job. So I couldn’t help but notice that its Sucka Free City column has launched two successive attacks on a recent profile I wrote about Gallo. Got that? That’s two different Weekly articles about one alleged “puff piece.” I guess there must be something to what we’re doing for them to be so strangely fixated.

I have better things to do, and better work to put in the paper, but I’ll use this blog to pick these Sucka Free City articles off one by one, talk a little about misogyny and lame Cro-Magnon straight journalist dude posturing – a relevant topic here – and then add some real observation about the state of arts journalism as executed, and I mean executed, by the SF Weekly and their overlords at the New Times, excuse me, Voice Media.

Hiss Golden Messenger

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goldenmessengsml.bmp

Photo by Terri Loewenthal

The Golden Messenger String Band (an augmented Hiss
Golden Messenger lineup) will be performing at The
Rickshaw Stop on Thursday evening as part of this
year’s Mission Creek Music Festival. HGM plays about
9:00 or so (second on the bill). Also on the bill are
Caves, Michael Zapruder’s Rain Of Frogs, Harbours, and
Rykarda Parasol. That’s a lot of fantastic music for
$10. Expect some long tones.

Thursday, May 10th
$10 8 PM show start
@ The Rickshaw Stop – 155 Fell Street

Also, the fully electric version of Hiss Golden
Messenger will be playing some Northwest shows next
week. These are as follows:

Thursday, May 17th @ The Tractor Tavern, Seattle, WA
Friday, May 18th @ Doug Fir Loung, Portland, OR
Saturday, May 19th @ River City Saloon, Hood River, OR

All of these shows are in support of our good friends
The Mother Hips, who have a fantastic new record out.
Tell a friend.

I hope to see you there.

-M.C. Taylor

P.S. I will also be sitting in on a few songs with my
friend P.G. Six on Saturday, May 12th, at the Swedish
American Hall, in support of Gary Higgins. This is
also part of the Mission Creek Music Festival. P.G.
also has a fantastic new record out.

Magic stars

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"When we use magical in a positive sense," filmmaker Lawrence Jordan explains, parsing an adjective that is frequently brought up in discussions of his work, "it really means my eye is fresh at this moment and what I’m seeing is a discovery." Jordan’s films — in particular, the animated collages composed of Victorian magazine illustrations, Gustave Doré engravings, and flashing stars and orbs for which he is most famous — are the visual records of such moments of discovery.

The more than 40 experimental short (as well as three feature-length) films Jordan has made over his 40 years in the Bay Area are as much documents of the fanciful flight paths of his free associations — what he calls his "inner world" — as they are fleeting glimpses of a precinematic visual culture that has long since vanished. Thanks to an upcoming program put on by the San Francisco Cinematheque as part of its Bay Area Roots series, audiences will get the chance to discover — or perhaps rediscover with fresh eyes — the work of a filmmaker and advocate (Jordan helped found Canyon Cinema) who truly deserves to be called a Fog City maverick.

Like the cryptically beautiful boxes of Joseph Cornell, Jordan’s films exude a certain innocent surrealism. His poetic assemblages of fantastic fauna, romantic vistas, and hermetic symbols seem aimed at enchanting rather than disturbing the viewer through the kind of sexual shock tactics that were more the métier of Max Ernst. "That part of surrealism we don’t qualify for," Jordan says, referring to himself and Cornell, for whom he worked as an assistant in 1965, filming over the course of his stay at Utopia Parkway in Queens the only extant footage we have of the notoriously reclusive artist and his fabled workspace.

Jordan’s choice of the inclusive pronoun reveals both the slight reserve and matter-of-factness with which he speaks of his work and the strong sense of kinship he projects when talking about the artists — such as Cornell and collagist Jess Collins, who worked under his first name only — who became colleagues, served as inspiration, and, more often the case in a career filled with notable collaborators (Watts Tower sculptor Simon Rodia and Orson Welles), functioned in both capacities.

Following his high school friend and early collaborator Stan Brakhage to San Francisco from New York, Jordan moved into a basement flat below the poet Robert Duncan and his partner, Jess, whose baroque collages of finely crosshatched renderings of his source material shared affinities with Jordan’s then-still-developing aesthetic of assemblage. "[Jess] was the high priest of art magic in the time that I knew him," Jordan says.

Magic, as it turns out, keeps coming up in our conversation, whether in a passing reference to The Wizard of Oz (Jordan owns a complete set of the Oz books) or when Jordan cites that magician of silent cinema, Georges Méliès, as a major influence. Blue Skies beyond the Looking Glass, completed last year and one of the highlights of the cinematheque’s program, is very much an homage to the evocative power of early cinema.

A jubilant séance, Blue Skies resurrects silent-era stars such as Lon Chaney Sr., Lillian Gish, and Mary Pickford via some amazing screen test footage and invites them to tango with intercut animated segments. The film offers a nice summary of Jordan’s cinema of attractions, in which old signs are transmuted into wonders once more, restoring some of their mystery. "I don’t know about alchemy academically," Jordan reflects, "but I am a practicing alchemist in my own way." *

WORKS OF LAWRENCE JORDAN

Sun/13, 7:30 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.sfcinematheque.org

All that she wants

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DANCE Deborah Slater’s new The Desire Line is as quietly atmospheric as it is rambunctiously explosive. It is also a lot of fun as you catch glimpses — a hand holding a foot, a striped tie, a letter, teacups — of Alan Felton’s figurative paintings, reproduced in the Dance Mission Theater lobby, that inspired this fine hour-long piece. But Slater isn’t interested in imitating the portraits of these self-absorbed narcissists. She wants to dig below the canvas. This is her second go at Felton, whose silent figures look like they’d be full of stories if one just knew how to access them. Slater’s 2004 Trio (in the space between) was a trial run for the more ambitious and more thoroughly developed Desire.

The idea is as simple as it is ingenuous: break open shells of self-absorption, and watch as sparks fly as people start to rub against one another. In Desire privacy and isolation are held in balance with volcanic explosions of fury, jealousy, attraction, confusion, fear, you name it — the whole gamut of human emotions. For a while it looked like the piece turned around Kerry Mehling’s never-explained outbursts of hysteria, but then she became another member of a group, which bumped into each other and found brief connections before spinning away. The other performers, all strong, were Shannon Preto, Elizebeth Randall, Travis Rowland, Kenneth Scott, Breton Tyner-Bryan, and Shaunna Vella.

Slater forwent elaborate sets and empowered her septet of dancers to carry the piece with choreography that was as full-bodied and visceral as any of hers that I have seen. (Rita Felciano)

THE DESIRE LINE

Thurs/10–Sat/12, 8 p.m.; Sun/13, 7 p.m.; $18

Dance Mission Theater

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 273-4633

www.artofthematter.org

Prints charming

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

PREVIEW If only it were prix fixe. The lamb curry wrapped in crystallized mint leaves sounds delectable, but the butternut squash ravioli catch your eye first. Then you notice that one of the items on the menu is made entirely with ingredients from the chef’s garden. The choice is obvious. As you munch on homegrown multicolored heirloom tomatoes, conversation turns to how much is in our own backyards. Electric Works isn’t a restaurant, but if artists’ creative moods are seasons and we the adventurous diners, then this new incarnation of formerly Brisbane-based Trillium Press is the most seasonal print studio around.

Sitting in a brick-lined meeting room in the historic Buzzell Electric Works building on Eighth Street at Mission, Noah Lang recalls an article on the differences between cooking in New York and California. "In many ways, we’re closer to Chez Panisse than we are to Paulson or Crown Point Press," he says. "We’re more concerned with what we come up with at the end of the day than how we came up with it."

Noah’s father, the visionary printer Richard Lang, who serves as the president of Electric Works, invokes Adam Gopnik’s statement that the last artists in the world who really care about their patrons are the chefs. "I was trained in the art world, where the whole thing is ‘it’s my vision — you’re a loser if you don’t get it.’ That always struck me as dumb, because people have willing hearts if you’ll just step forward," Richard explains, imagining Electric Works as a chef saying, "Taste this! It’s a little funny at first, but it’s really good!"

In 1980, when Proposition 13 lost him his teaching job, Richard started doing lithographs with David Salgado, who had founded Trillium the year before. They eventually forged a 10-year formal partnership that dissolved in 2006. "We were in a boxer relationship, punching and counterpunching, and we really learned a lot about collaboration — that you really push hard and expect somebody to push back," Richard says of those early projects.

Deep collaboration became Trillium’s theme. After originally only doing contract work, the press started running a publishing program around 2000. "It’s a traditional system, headed by the artist, who comes in to collaborate. What we make, however, is totally untraditional," says Noah, who joined the studio in 1996 to spearhead the digital printmaking program. Electric Works’ high-tech scanning and printing devices allow the shop to scan anything, and it’s always eager to explore technology in order to realize and often expand an artist’s vision. Electric Works partner and art collector Anthony Luzi calls this an entrepreneurial practice because the creative process always trumps protocol.

Marcel Dzama’s The Cabin of Count Dracula and Stephanie Syjuco’s Future Shock Nesting Boxes (both 2005) show why the print shop has become known as the Land of Yes. Dzama started by imagining Count Dracula in the artist’s hometown, Winnipeg. His whimsical, bestial lithographs seemed to scream for appropriate housing, so Trillium, with considerable research, helped create a miniature log cabin complete with faux-beaver-fur rugs. The cabin simulates both hypersensitive isolation — remember Richard Barnes’s Unabomber photos? — and a playful sense of rapture. Syjuco’s boxes, slightly blurry folded replicas of stereo equipment, made of archival inks on laminated board, trigger similarly quirky states of mind: Is this touching me? How do you read it? Is it real? Yes.

Or nay? Working in the Land of Yes seems to tap into artists’ capacity for answering questions with questions, allowing them to ask "yes" in their own way. William T. Wiley’s illustrious postmodern hieroglyphics gain new life. Sandow Birk, in his Inferno projects, morphs Dante’s rich anxieties into our own, using urban überconsumer environments. Though those who don’t like these sorts of inquiries might freak out at the inaugural exhibition, which features new work from Tucker Nichols and Katherine Sherwood, their absence will just mean more room for those who want reality’s unreal underpinnings to open their wide eyes wider.

Electric Works weds the powers of curatorship and accessibility. As part of the print shop’s "venture philanthropy" program, artists develop unique editions to support nonprofits, and the new digs will include an alternative museum store with affordable art items, a natural art-for-the-people progression from a successful scholarship program offered through the California College of the Arts.

"The gatekeepers of the art world really want the world to be pyramidal," Richard says. "But the truth is that the world is spherical and everything is talking to everything else."

Is that true? Are you reading this as if it weren’t a dream? I’ll offer one hint: the answer isn’t no. *

TUCKER NICHOLS
AND KATHERINE SHERWOOD

May 11–June 23

Opens Fri/11, 5:30–7:30 p.m., free

Runs Tues.–Fri., 10 a.m.–6 p.m.;
Sat., 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Electric Works

130 Eighth St., SF

(415) 626-5496

www.sfelectricworks.com

Summertime … and the swimmin’ is easy

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By Sam Devine


› culture@sfbg.com

It just doesn’t feel like summer without a trip to the pool. Marco Polo, chips and soda, suntan lotion on your face, pushing your brother in the deep end — it’s all a part of your balanced, nutritious summertime experience. But don’t fret if you don’t happen to have a lap pool on the roof of your railroad apartment. If you’re looking to splash it up, get the kids some swim lessons, or just do a few laps, there are plenty of great, inexpensive opportunities at one of your municipal aquatic chill spots — made by the people, for the people. Here are some of our favorites.

San Francisco

The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department’s Aquatic/Swimming Programs (www.sfgov.org) have a life’s worth of swimming activities just waiting for you. The city’s nine pools offer pregnant and senior swim programs, lessons for infants, competitive workouts, and even synchronized swimming lessons with the SF Merionettes. And SF community pools are cheap: $1 for children 17 and under, $4 for adults, and $20 for a 10-swim scrip ticket for seniors and those in economic need.

BALBOA POOL


If you’re using public transit, Balboa Pool is the most easily accessible. It’s walking distance from Balboa BART, the J line, and the 26 Valencia, 9 San Bruno, and 43 bus lines.

51 Havelock, SF. (415) 337-4701

GARFIELD POOL


Families going for the first time may be tempted to stop by the hugely popular (and busiest) Rossi or Sava pools. But we like Garfield best — it’s not as crowded as those two, and parking is easy.

1271 Treat, SF. (415) 695-5001

MISSION POOL


Little known to most folks, Mission Pool is the last outdoor community pool in San Francisco. This is the place to get that stereotypical pool day: swim in the open air, grill BBQ in the park, and soak up the Mission District sun. The pool is only open during the summer, but last year Supervisor Bevan Dufty was able to get a grant that extended operations through October.

19th St. and Linda, SF. (415) 695-5002

NORTH BEACH POOL


North Beach Pool, near the Joe DiMaggio Playground, actually has two pools: one cold (for lap swim only) and one heated to 85 degrees for recreational swimming.

651 Lombard, SF. (415) 391-0407

Bay Area

KING POOL


Berkeley’s Aquatics Program (www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/recreation) runs four community swim centers, with rates similar to those of San Francisco’s pools (except kids cost $2). Of them, King Pool is recommended for public transit riders. It’s just a short AC Transit No. 7 or No. 9 ride from Downtown Berkeley BART. Wondering why a city slicker would want to cross the bay for a pool? King offers one thing SF pools don’t: a five-day junior lifeguard program, which teaches kids first aid, CPR, and life-saving rescue techniques for $68.

1700 Hopkins, Berk. (510) 644-8518

RINCONADA POOL


If you’ve got young tots, though, and can drive to Palo Alto, the misty water play area at Rinconada is what you want. There’s a waterslide, squirting toys, fountains, and several kiddie pools, plus a blissfully ho-hum adult pool for when you need to escape the color and excitement.

777 Embarcadero, Palo Alto. (650) 463-4914

More pools

BERKELEY

www.ci.Berkeley.ca.us
BHS Warm Pool 2246 Milvia, Berk; (510) 644-6843
King Swim Center 1700 Hopkins, Berk; (510) 644-8518
West Campus Swim Center 2100 Browning, Berk; (510) 644-8520. Closed until April 30. Outdoors.
Willard Swim Center 2701 Telegraph, Berk; (510) 644-8519. $3-5. Closed until April 30. Outdoors.

OAKLAND
www.oaklandnet.com/parks

Castlemont Pool 8601 MacArthur Blvd, Oakl; (510) 879-3642. Outdoors.
deFremery Pool 1269 18th St, Oakl; (510) 238-2205
Fremont Pool 4550 Foothill Blvd, Oakl; (510) 535-5614
Lions Pool 3860 Hanly Rd, Oakl; (510) 482-7852. Outdoors.
Live Oak Pool 1055 MacArthur Blvd, Oakl; (510) 238-2292
McClymonds Pool2607 Myrtle St, Oakl; (510) 879-8050. Outdoors.
Temescal Pool 371 45th St, Oakl; (510) 597-5013. $3-5.

OTHER BAY AREA POOLS

Brisbane Community Swimming Pool 2 Solano Street, Brisbane; (415) 657-4321, www.ci.brisbane.ca.us . $4-6. Outdoors.
Emeryville Community Pool 1100 47th St, Emeryville; (510) 596-4395, www.ci.emeryville.ca.us . $5 passes ($1/rec swim, $3/lap swim). Details may change – call for updates.
Mill Valley Communitty Center 180 Camino Alto, Mill Valley; (415) 383-1370, www.millvalleycenter.org . $3-8.
Terra Linda Community Pool 670 Del Ganado Rd, San Rafael; (415) 485-3346. $4-9.
Kennedy High School 4300 Cutting Blvd, Richmond; (510) 235-2291. Richmond’s natatorium, the Plunge, just received $2 million grant from the California Cultural and Historical Endowment and is therefore being refurbished.Swims and classes have been moved to Kennedy High School. For more info, call the Richmond Swim Center at 510-620-6654 or the Richmond Recreation Division office at 510-620-6793.

Summer 2007 fairs and festivals guide

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ONGOING

ArtSFest Various venues; www.artsfestsf.org. For its fourth year, ArtSFest presents a showcase of theater, dance, visual art, film, music, spoken word, and more. Through May 28.

Night Market Ferry Bldg Marketplace, along the Embarcadero at the foot of Market; 693-0996, www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com. Thurs, 4-8pm, through Oct 26. Marketplace merchants and farmers offer their freshest artisan foods and produce at this weekly sunset event.

United States of Asian America Arts Festival Various venues; 864-4120, www.apiculturalcenter.org. Through June 30. This festival, presented by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, showcases Asian Pacific Islander dance, music, visual art, theater, and multidisciplinary performance ensembles at many San Francisco venues.

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Yerba Buena Gardens, Third St at Mission; 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. Through Oct, free. Nearly 100 artistic and cultural events for all ages takes place at the gardens this summer including Moroccan percussionists, Hawaiian ukulele players, Yiddish klezmer violinists, Balinese dancers, Shakespearean actors, Cuban musicians, and Japanese shakuhachi players.

BAY AREA

Silicon Valley Open Studios www.svos.org. Sat-Sun, 11am-5pm, through May 20. Check out Silicon Valley artists’ works and the spaces they use to create them at this community art program.

MAY 8–20

The Hip-Hop Theater Festival: Bay Area 2007 Various venues; www.youthspeaks.org. Youth Speaks, La Peña Cultural Center, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, and San Francisco International Arts Festival present this showcase of new theater works that feature break dancing, MCing, graffiti, spoken word, and DJ sampling.

MAY 10-20

Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival Various venues; www.mcmf.org. The Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival features the best and brightest independent musicians and artists, including music by Vincent Gallo, Acid Mothers Temple, Edith Frost, and Gary Higgins. Literary and film events are also planned.

MAY 12

KFOG KaBoom! Piers 30-32; 817-KFOG, www.kfog.com. 4-10pm, free. Kick off the summer with this popular event featuring music, a spectacular fireworks show, food and drinks, and activities for kids. Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Guster, and Ozomatli perform.

BAY AREA

Arlen Ness Motorcycles Anniversary Party Arlen Ness, 6050 Dublin, Dublin; (925) 479-6300, www.arlenness.com. 10am-4:30pm, free. Celebrate the company’s fourth year in Dublin and 37th year in business with a display of the largest selection of Ness, Victory, American Iron Horse, and Big Dog Motorcycles in California, a walk through the museum, and a live music from Journey tribute band Evolution.

Beltane Pagan Festival Civic Center Park, 2151 MLK Jr. Way, Berk; www.thepaganalliance.org.10am-5:30pm, free. This year’s festival focuses on children and young adults and features a procession, performances, vendors, storytelling, an authors’ circle, and information booths.

Peralta in Bloom Spring Festival Carter Middle School, 4521 Webster, Oakl; (510) 655-1502, www.peraltaschool.org. Due to a fire, Peralta’s spring festival will be held at a temporary home this year. Expect the same great live entertainment, carnival games, old-fashioned high-steppin’ cakewalk, free arts and crafts, and delicious barbecue as always.

MAY 13

Hood Games VI "Tender Love" Turk between Mason and Taylor; 11am-4pm. This celebration of youth culture features live skating and music, art, a fashion show, contests, and a raffle. Bonus: every mom who shows up for this Mother’s Day event gets a free skateboard.

BAY AREA

Russian-American Fair Terman Middle School, 655 Arastradero, Palo Alto; (650) 852-3509, paloaltojcc.org. 10am-5pm, $3-5. The Palo Alto Jewish Community Center puts on this huge, colorful cultural extravaganza featuring ethnic food, entertainment, crafts and gift items, art exhibits, carnival games, and vodka tasting.

MAY 16–27

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues; (415) 439-2456, www.sfiaf.org. The theme for this year’s multidisciplinary festival is the Truth in Knowing/Now, a Conversation across the African Diaspora.

MAY 17–20

Carmel Art Festival Devendorf Park, Carmel; (831) 642-2503, www.carmelartfestival.org. Call for times, free. Enjoy viewing works by more than 60 visual artists at this four-day festival. In addition to the Plein Air and Sculpture-in-the-Park events, the CAF is host to the Carmel Youth Art Show, Quick Draw, and Kids Art Day.

MAY 18–20

Festival of Greece 4700 Lincoln, Oakl; (510) 531-3400, www.oaklandgreekfestival.com. Fri-Sat, 10am-11pm; Sun, 11am-9pm, $6. Free on Fri 10-4 and Sun 6-9. Let’s hear an "opa!" for Greek music, dance, food, and a stunning view at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension’s three-day festival.

MAY 19

A La Carte and Art Castro St, Mountain View; (650) 964-3395, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. A moveable feast of people and colorful tents offering two days of attractions, music, art, a farmers’ market, and a special appearance by TV star Delta Burke.

Asian Heritage Street Celebration Howard between Fifth and Seventh streets; 321-5865, www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. More than 200 organizations participate in this festival, which features Asian cooking demonstrations, beer and sake, arts and crafts, a variety of food, and live entertainment.

Family Fun Festival and Silent Auction 165 Grattan; 759-2815. 11am-5pm, free. Enjoy this second annual family event in Cole Valley, featuring a kids’ carnival with prizes, street theater, live music, refreshments, and a silent auction.

Oyster and Beer Fest Great Meadows, Fort Mason, Laguna at Bay; www.oreillysoysterfestival.com. 12-7pm, $15-19 ($50 reserved seating). O’Reilly’s Productions presents the 8th annual festival celebrating oysters and beer, featuring cooking demos, competitions, and live performance from Flogging Molly, Shantytown, The Hooks, and more.

Saints Kiril and Metody Bulgarian Cultural Festival Croatian American Cultural Center, 60 Onondaga; (510) 649-0941, www.slavonicweb.org. 3pm-midnight, $15. Enjoy live music, dance, and traditional food and wine in celebration of Bulgarian culture. A concert features Nestinari, Zaedno, Brass Punks, and many more.

Taiwanese American Cultural Festival Union Square; (408) 268-5637, www.tafnc.org. 10am-7pm, free. Explore Taiwan by tasting delicious Taiwanese delicacies, viewing a puppet show and other performances, and browsing arts and crafts exhibits.

Uncorked! Public Wine Festival Ghirardelli Square, 900 N Point; 775-5500, www.ghirardellisq.com. 1-6pm, event free, wine tasting $40-100. This second annual wine festival features wine tasting, five-star chef demonstrations, wine seminars, and a chocolate and wine pairing event.

BAY AREA

Cupertino Special Festival in the Park Cupertino Civic Center, 10300 Torre, Cupertino; (408) 996-0850, www.osfamilies.org. 10am-6pm, free. The Organization of Special Needs Families hosts its third annual festival for people of all walks or wheels of life. Featuring live music, food and beer, bouncy houses, arts and crafts, and other activities.

Pixie Park Spring Fair Marin Art and Garden Center, Sir Francis Drake Blvd at Lagunitas, Ross; www.pixiepark.org. 9am-4pm, free. This fair for preschoolers and kindergarteners features bathtub races, pony rides, a petting zoo, a puppet show, and much more.

MAY 19-20

Bay Area Storytelling Festival Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area, San Pablo Dam Road near Castro Ranch, El Sobrante; (510) 644-2593, www.bayareastorytelling.org.

Sat, 9:30am-8pm; Sun, 9:30am-5:15pm, $8-65. Gather around and listen to stories told by storytellers from around the world at this outdoor festival. Sheila Kay Adams, Charlotte Blake Alston, Bill Harley and others are featured.

Castroville Artichoke Festival 10100 Merritt, Castroville; (831) 633-2465, www.artichoke-festival.org. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm, $3-6. Have a heart — eat an artichoke. This festival cooks up the vegetable in every way imaginable and features tons of fun activities for kids, music, a parade, a farmers’ market, and much more.

Day of Decadence Women’s Expo Sedusa Studios, 1300 Dell, Campbell; (408) 826-9087, www.sedusastudios.com. 1-4pm, $5. Twenty-five women-owned businesses exhibit their products and pamper their customers at this decadent event. Includes free services, champagne, refreshments, and a chocolate fountain.

French Flea Market Chateau Sonoma, 153 West Napa, Sonoma; (707) 935-8553, www.chateausonoma.com. 10:30am-5:30pm, call for price. Attention, Francophiles: this flea market is for you! Shop for antiques, garden furniture, and accessories from French importers.

Himalayan Fair Live Oak Park, 1300 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 869-3995, www.himalayanfair.net. Sat, 10am-7pm; Sun, 10am-5:30pm, call for price. This benefit for humanitarian grassroots projects in the Himalayas features award-winning dancers and musicians representing Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Mongolia. Check out the art and taste the delicious food.

Maker Faire San Mateo Fairgrounds, San Mateo; (415) 318-9067, www.makerfaire.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm, $5-15. A two-day, family-friendly event established by the creators of Make and Create magazines that celebrates arts, crafts, engineering, science projects, and the do-it-yourself mindset.

Muscle Car, Hot Rods, and Art Fair Bollinger Canyon Rd and Camino Ramon, San Ramon; (925) 855-1950, www.hatsoffamerica.us. 10am-5pm, free. Hats Off America presents this family event featuring muscle cars, classics and hot rods, art exhibits, children’s activities, live entertainment, and beer and wine.

Passport to Sonoma Valley Various venues; (707) 935-0803, www.sonomavalleywine.com. 11am-4pm, $55 (weekend, $65). This first of its kind, valleywide event will provide visitors rare access to the many hidden gems of California’s oldest wine region. More than 40 Sonoma wineries are participating, and the cost includes unlimited tasting.

Sunset Celebration Weekend Sunset headquarters, 80 Willow Road, Menlo Park; 1-800-786-7375, www.sunset.com. 10am-5pm, $10-12, kids free. Sunset magazine presents a two-day outdoor festival featuring beer, wine, and food tasting; test-kitchen tours, celebrity chef demonstrations, live music, seminars, and more.

Spring Fling Open House Rosenblum Cellars, 2900 Main, Alameda; (510) 995-4100, www.rosenblumcellars.com. Noon-5pm, $30. Try new and current releases at Rosenblum’s Alameda winery while enjoying wine-friendly hors d’oeuvres and music from local musicians.

MAY 20

ING Bay to Breakers Begins at Howard and Spear, ends at the Great Highway along Ocean Beach, SF; www.baytobreakers.com. 8am, $33-40. See a gang of Elvis impersonators in running shorts and a gigantic balloon shaped like a tube of Crest floating above a crowd of scantily clad, and unclad, joggers at this annual race from the Embarcadero to the Pacific Ocean.

BAY AREA

Jazz on Fourth Street Festival Fourth St, between Hearst and Virginia, Berk; (510) 526-6294, www.4thstreetshop.com. 11am-5pm, free. Local merchants present this annual outdoor music festival featuring Marcus Shelby Quartet, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Group, two Berkeley High combos, and the award-winning Berkeley High Jazz ensemble.

Niles Wildflower Art and Garden Show Niles Blvd at Main, Fremont; www.niles.org. 10am-3pm, event free, garden tour $12-15. Take a self-guided tour of beautiful home gardens and enjoy the creative works of local artists.

MAY 24–27

Sonoma Jazz Plus Festival Field of Dreams, 179 First St W, Sonoma; 1-866-527-8499, www.sonomajazz.org. $45-95. Thurs-Sat, 6:30 and 9pm; Sun, 8:30pm, $45-110. Head on up to California’s wine country for Memorial Day weekend and soak in the sounds of LeAnn Rimes, Tony Bennett, Smokey Robinson, and Harry Connick Jr.

MAY 25–28

Memorial Day Folk Music Camp Out Waterman Creek Camp, Santa Cruz County; (510) 523-6533. www.sffmc.org. $7/night. Preregistration required. Camp and sing along with the San Francisco Folk Music Club. Everybody’s goin’!

MAY 26

Soul Jazz Festival Crown Canyon Park, 8000 Crow Canyon, Castro Valley; www.souljazzfestival.com. 12-8pm, $45-49. A one-day music event celebrating the worlds of jazz, funk, and soul. This year pays tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and features Johnny Holiday, Ladybug Mecca of Digable Planets, and Ella Fitzgerald’s son, Ray Brown Jr.

MAY 26–27

Carnaval San Francisco Harrison between 16th and 24th streets; (415) 920-0122, www.carnavalsf.com. 10am-6pm, free. The vibrant Mission District plays host to the best of Latin and Caribbean cultures and traditions with an array of food, music, dance, and art. The theme for this year’s carnaval is Love Happens, and it features speed dating at the Love Nest, a performance by Los Lonely Boys, and a parade on Sunday.

North American Cycle Courier Championship Speakeasy Brewery, 1195 Evans; 748-2941. Sat, 9am-2pm; Sun, 10am-1pm, free. This weekend-long celebration of bike culture features a race on a closed course that tests all areas of bike messenger skill.

BAY AREA

Santa Cruz Blues Festival 100 Aptos Creek, Aptos; (831) 479-9814, www.santacruzbluesfestival.com. 10am-7pm, $20-100. Rhythm and blues buffs beware. This annual festival, in its 15th year, showcases some of the most renowned acts of new and vintage R&B, soul, and blues rock, including Los Lonely Boys, Etta James and the Roots Band, and Little Feat. International food booths, juice bars, and beer make this event add to the appeal.

MAY 26–28

The San Francisco Cup International Youth Soccer Tournament and Festival Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field, SF; (415) 337-6630, www.sfcup.com. 8:30am. This 20th annual premier event brings together 128 national and international teams of both genders for great soccer excitement.

MAY 26–JUNE 30

Bay Area Summer Poetry Marathon Lab, 2948 16th St, SF; (415) 864-8855, www.thelab.org. 7-10pm,. $3-15 sliding scale. Various Bay Area and national poets read their work at this event held throughout the summer.

MAY 27

Antique Street Faire Main St, Pleasanton; (760) 724-9400, www.pleasantondowntown.net. 8am-4pm, free. This semiannual event sponsored by the Pleasanton Downtown Association provides more than a mile of antiques and collectibles displayed by about 300 professional dealers.

Art in the Vineyard Wente Vineyards Estate Winery, 5565 Tesla, Livermore; (925) 456-2305, www.livermoreartassociation.com. 11am-5pm, admission free, wine tasting $15. Mark your calendars for the 35th anniversary of this popular event, featuring 40 talented multimedia artists in addition to music by Vested Interest.

Asian Pacific Heritage Festival Bay Area Discovery Museum, 557 McReynolds, Sausalito; (415) 339-3900, www.baykidsmuseum.org.10am-5pm, free. Experience taiko drumming, the Marin Chinese Cultural Association’s Lion Dance Team, and other Polynesian and Pacific Islander arts groups, as well as traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino cuisine in honor of Asian Pacific Islander Month.

Caledonia Street Fair Caledonia St, Sausalito; (415) 289-4152, www.ci.sausalito.ca.us.10:30am-6pm, free. This fest boasts multicultural food, dance, music, and more than 120 arts and crafts vendors. Don’t miss out on the Taste of Sausalito luncheon and wine-tasting event featuring food and wine prepared by select Napa and Sonoma wineries and restaurants.

MAY 28

Stone Soul Picnic Cal State East Bay’s Pioneer Amphitheatre, 25800 Carlos Bee, Hayward; 1-800-225-2277, www.kblx.com. Doors at 10am, show at noon, $56-81.50 includes parking. KBLX Radio 102.9 FM presents its 10th annual R&B and soul music event, featuring performances by Isaac Hayes, the Whispers, the Dells, and Tower of Power.

MAY 29–30

BALLE Film Fest Wheeler Auditorium, UC Berkeley, Berk; (415) 255-1108, ext 112, livingeconomies.org. 6 and 8:30pm, $10 for screening, $15 for night. Business Alliance for Local Living Economies presents a two-night film festival reutf8g to BALLE principles, including Everything’s Cool, a film about global warming, and Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary about China’s industrial revolution.

MAY 31–JUNE 3

Contra Costa County Fair Contra Costa County Fairgrounds,10th and L streets, Antioch; (925) 757-4400, www.ccfair.org. Thurs-Fri, noon-11pm.; Sat-Sun, 11am-11pm, $4-7, parking $3. Now 70 years old, this county fair has a little of everything. Daily sea lion shows, a man dressed as a giant tree, and, of course, clown acts, are just some of the events presented to fairgoers this year.

JUNE 1–10

East Bay Open Studios Various venues; (510) 763-4361, www.proartsgallery.org. Open studios: June 2-3, 9-10, 11am-6pm; formal artists’ reception May 31, 6-10pm, free. For more than 25 years, the East Bay Open Studios have drawn more than 50,000 visitors to Pro Arts Gallery and various artist workspaces to support the work of local artists. The public can view exhibits, purchase artwork, attend workshops, and go on an art bus tour.

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Check Web site for ticket prices and venues in and around Healdsburg; (707) 433-4644, www.healdsburgjazzfestival.com. This ninth annual week-and-a-half-long jazz festival will feature a range of artists, from the George Cables Project and Roy Hargrove Quintet to the funky Louisiana-style Rebirth Brass Band and first-rate vocalist Rhiannon.

JUNE 2

Berkeley Farmers Market’s Strawberry Family Fun Festival Civic Center Park, Center at MLK Jr, Berk; (510) 548-3333, www.ecologycenter.org. 10am-3pm, free. Living up to its name, this festival is a guaranteed good time for the whole family. Highlights include environmental information booths, hands-on activities, delectable strawberry shortcake, and live performances by Nigerian Brothers, EarthCapades Environmental Vaudeville, Big Tadoo Puppet Crew, and Young Fiddlers.

Heartland Festival Riverdance Farms, Livingston; (831) 763-2111, www.eco-farm.org. 10am-7pm, $10 advance, $12 at gate. Celebrate a summer weekend by picking berries, taking farm and garden workshops, buying fresh produce from a farmers’ market, and enjoying live music at this family event.

Sonoma Valley Vintage Race Car Festival Sonoma Plaza, Sonoma; (707) 996-1090, www.sonomavalleyvisitors.com. 5pm, free entrance. Wine and food $30 in advance, $35 at the door. A gigantic taste explosion filled with more than 30 vintage dragsters, gourmet food, and wine samples.

Springfest 2007 Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, 200 North San Pedro, San Rafael; (415) 499-8891, www.mdt.org. 1 and 5pm, $14-22. Marin Dance Theatre presents this spring program featuring various performances directed by Margaret Swarthout.

JUNE 2–3

Art Deco and Modernism Sale Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St; (650) 599-DECO, www.artdecosale.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 11am-5pm, $7-9. An extravagant art sale featuring pottery, books, art, vintage clothing, glass, furniture, and other accessories dating from 1900 to 1980.

Art in the Avenues Hall of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, Ninth Ave and Lincoln; www.sunsetartists.com. 10am-5pm. This annual exhibition and sale presented by the Sunset Artists Society brings together artists and art lovers from all over the Bay Area.

Great San Francisco Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna; 383-7837, www.crystalfair.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-4pm, $5. This year’s fair is sure to please anyone interested in mystical and healing arts. Check out the more than 40 vendors catering to all of your crystal, mineral, bead, and jewelry needs.

Union Street Festival Union between Gough and Steiner; 1-800-310-6563, www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. This year marks the 31st anniversary of one of San Francisco’s largest free art festivals. In addition to more than 200 artists and 20 gourmet food booths, the event features activities that represent the history of the Union Street Festival, including a special photographic exhibit that shows Union Street as it was 100 years ago.

BAY AREA

Marin Home Show and Benefit Jazz Fest Marin Center Exhibit Hall and Fairgrounds, San Rafael; (415) 499-6900, www.marinhomeshow.com. Sat, 10am-7pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, $8 (Sat tix include free return on Sun). Not only will there be hundreds of experts in everything from renovation to landscaping on hand to answer all of your home and garden questions, but there will also be live jazz acts to entertain you throughout the weekend. Proceeds benefit Marin County public schools.

JUNE 3

Santa Cruz LGBT Pride March and Rally Starts at Pacific, ends at Lorenzo Park, Santa Cruz; (831) 427-4009, www.santacruzpride.org. 11am-5pm, free. Join the largest gathering of queers and allies in Santa Cruz County. Stage lineup includes Frootie Flavors, Nedra Johnson, Twilight Vixen Revue, Horizontes, and Assemblymember John Laird. Valet bike parking provided.

JUNE 6

Strollin’ on Main Street Party Main between St John and Old Bernal, Pleasanton; (925) 484-2199, ext 4, www.pleasantondowntown.net. 6-9pm, free. Stroll down Main Street and visit vendor booths, a beer and wine garden, and a stage where featured band Drive will play.

JUNE 6–AUG 29

Summer Sounds Oakland City Center, adjacent to 12th St/City Center BART Station, Oakl; www.oaklandcitycenter.com. Wed, noon-1pm, free. The Oakland City Center presents a weekly spotlight on an array of diverse musical artists.

JUNE 7–17

San Francisco Black Film Festival Various venues; (415) 771-9271, www.sfbff.org. The festival celebrates African American cinema and the African cultural diaspora by showcasing films by black filmmakers and emphasizing the power of film to foster cultural understanding and initiate progressive social change.

JUNE 8–10

Harmony Festival Sonoma County Fairgrounds,1350 Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa; www.harmonyfestival.com. Fri, 12pm-9pm; Sat, 10am-10pm; Sun, 10am-9pm, $20-149. This year’s theme is "promoting global cooling" boasts an ecovillage offering tips for living and consuming, a well-being pavilion featuring natural remedies, and a culinary showcase of dishes using natural ingredients. Festival-goers can camp onsite and musical highlights include Brian Wilson, Erykah Badu, the Roots, moe., and Rickie Lee Jones.

JUNE 9

Dia de Portugal Festival Kelley Park, San Jose; www.diadeportugal.com. 10am, free. The Portuguese Heritage Society of California presents this annual festival featuring a parade, live music, food and wine, a book and art sale, and more.

Temescal Street Fair Telegraph between 48th and 51st streets, Oakl; (510) 654-6346, ext 2, www.temescalmerchants.com. Noon-5pm, free. This fair will feature live music, crafts, martial arts demonstrations and food samplings from local restaurants, including an Italian beer and wine garden, a tribute to days when the district once flourished with beer gardens and canteens.

JUNE 9–10

Italian Street Painting Festival Fifth Ave at A St, San Rafael; (415) 457-4878, ext 15, www.youthinarts.org. 9am-7pm, free. Street painters paint beautiful and awe-inspiring chalk artwork on the streets of San Rafael.

Live Oak Park Fair Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 898-3282, www.liveoakparkfair.com.10am-6pm, free. Is there a better way to revel in the summertime than to enjoy original arts and crafts, delicious fresh food, and live jazz by Berkeley’s Jazzschool all weekend long in beautiful Live Oak Park? Didn’t think so.

San Jose Gay Pride Festival Discovery Meadow, Guadalupe River Park, San Jose; (408) 278-5563, www.sjgaypride.org. Sat, 10am-6pm, free; Sun, 10:30am, $15. This year’s San Jose pride celebration is two days’ worth of events, speakers, and music, including performances by the Cheeseballs, Average Dyke Band, and Smash-Up Derby. After the parade on Sunday, cruise vendor booths peddling their LGBT-friendly goods and services.

JUNE 9–24

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.worldartswest.org. Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm, $22-36. Performers from around the world converge at the Palace of Fine Arts to bring San Francisco a diverse selection of the world’s most talented dancers, including North Indian Kathak, Cantonese style Chinese lion dance, flamenco, and Middle Eastern belly dance.

JUNE 14–16

Transgender and Queer Performance Festival ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; (415) 863-9834, www.freshmeatproductions.org. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 7 and 10pm, $15. Fresh Meat Productions celebrates its sixth annual festival. This year’s artists perform traditional forms and path-blazing ones: hula, taiko, traditional Colombian dance, aerial dance, spoken word, rock ‘n’ roll, theater, hip-hop, and modern dance.

JUNE 14–17

CBA 32nd Annual Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival Nevada County Fairgrounds, McCourtney, Grass Valley; www.cbaontheweb.org. Ticket prices vary. Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, Cherryholmes, the Del McCoury Band, Dan Paisley and the Southern Grass, Country Current, the US Navy Band, the Dale Ann Bradley Band, and John Reischman and the Jay Birds perform at this California Bluegrass Association bluegrass jamboree.

JUNE 14–24

Frameline31: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival Various venues; (415) 703-8650. www.frameline.org. The 31st annual film festival by and about the LGBT community continues with a whole new program of innovative queer cinema.

JUNE 15–17

International Robogames Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, SF; www.RoboGames.net. Noon-10pm, $15-20. Engineers from around the world return for the fourth annual event listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest robot competition. Featuring 83 different competitions, including 18 just for walking humanoids.

JUNE 16–17

North Beach Festival Washington Square Park, 1200-1500 blocks of Grant and adjacent streets; 989-2220, www.sfnorthbeach.org. 10am-6pm, free. Touted as the country’s original outdoor arts and crafts festival, the North Beach Festival celebrates its 53rd anniversary with juried arts and crafts exhibitions and sales, a celebrity pizza toss, live entertainment stages, a cooking stage with celebrity chefs, Assisi animal blessings (Vallejo/Columbus), Arte di Gesso (Italian street chalk art competition, 1500 block Stockton), indoor classical concerts (4 pm, at National Shrine of St Francis), a poetry stage, and more.

San Francisco Free Folk Festival San Francisco City College, North Gym, 50 Phelan, SF; www.sffreefolkfest.org. Noon-10pm, free. Folkies unite for the 31st anniversary of this festival that features local and national artists, dances, open mics, family events, and workshops.

San Francisco Juneteenth Celebration Art of the Fillmore Jazz Presentation District, Fillmore from Geary Blvd to Fulton; 931-2729, www.sfjuneteenth.org. 10am-7pm, free. This Bay Area-wide celebration celebrates African American freedom while encouraging self-development and respect for all cultures. Promoted through a community festival that celebrates and shares African American history and culture through music, the performing arts, living history, and other cultural activities. Seven full blocks of food, arts and crafts, and community and corporate information booths. Three stages of entertainment, educational speakers, and health and job fairs. All neighborhoods welcomed.

BAY AREA

Marin Art Festival Lagoon Park, Marin Center, Ave of the Flags at Civic Center, San Rafael; (415) 388-0151, www.marinartfestival.com. 10am-6pm, $8. More than 250 fine artists join in at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Marin Center. Look out for the stilt walkers!

Russian River Blues Festival Johnson’s Beach, Guerneville; (952) 866-9599, www.russianriverbluesfest.com. 10am-6pm, $45-180. Head on down to the river for this annual affair featuring Buddy Guy, Little Richard, Koko Taylor, Roy Rogers and the Delta Kings, Lowrider Band, Elvin Bishop, and many others. Festival organizers also invite attendees to indulge in wine tasting for a nominal fee.

JUNE 17

Native Contemporary Arts Festival Esplanade at Yerba Buena Gardens, Fourth St and Mission, SF; (415) 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. 12pm-3pm, free. This fest features amazing performances, plus kids can make their own dream catchers, baskets, and bracelets.

JUNE 17–AUG 19

Stern Grove Music Festival Stern Grove, 19th Ave and Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. Sun 2pm, free. This beloved San Francisco festival celebrating community, nature, and the arts is in its 70th season.

JUNE 20–24

Sonoma-Marin Fair Petaluma Fairgrounds, Petaluma; www.sonoma-marinfair.org. $8-14. This fair promotes and showcases agriculture, while displaying the diverse talents, interests, and accomplishments of the citizens of California, especially the youth of Sonoma and Marin counties. Catch acts such as Cheap Trick, SHe DAISY, and Bowling for Soup on the main stage.

JUNE 22–24

Sierra Nevada World Music Festival Mendocino County Fairgrounds, 14480 Hwy 128, Boonville; www.snwmf.com. Three-day pass, $125; camping, $50-100. Camp for three days and listen to the international sounds of Bunny Wailer, Toots and the Maytals, Luciano, Ojos de Brujo, Les Nubian, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All-Stars, Junior Kelly, Sugar Minot, and many others.

JUNE 22–JULY 8

Alameda County Fair Alameda County Fairgrounds, 4501 Pleasanton, Pleasanton; (925) 426-7559, www.alamedacountyfair.com. $4-9. Enjoy opening night fireworks, carnival attractions, a wine competition, a karaoke contest, an interactive sports and fitness expo, concerts, and oh so much more.

JUNE 23

Dyke March Dolores Park between 18th and 20th streets, SF; (415) 241-8882, www.dykemarch.org. Rally at 3pm; march at 7pm, free. Head on out to march with the San Francisco chapter of this now internationally coordinated rally. A Dolores Park celebration and rally precedes the march.

JUNE 23–24

San Francisco Pride 2006 Civic Center, Larkin between Grove and McAllister; 864-FREE, www.sfpride.org. Celebration Sat-Sun, noon-6pm; parade Sun, 10:30am, free. A month of queer-empowering events culminates in this weekend celebration, a massive party with two days of music, food, dancing that continues to boost San Francisco’s rep as a gay mecca. Do not under any circumstances miss the parade!

BAY AREA

Danville Fine Arts Fair Hartz Ave, Danville; (831) 438-4751, www.danvillecachamber.com. 10am-6pm, free. The quintessential arts and crafts fair descends upon Danville each year, bringing with it fine food and drink, Italian-style street painting, and more.

JUNE 23–25

King of the Bay Third Ave, Foster City; www.kingofthebay.com. 1pm, free. See the world’s top kiteboarders and windsurfers compete at this event.

JUNE 23–30

Jazz Camp West 2006 (510) 287-8880, www.jazzcampwest.com. This eight-day jazz program for adults and older teens features more than 100 classes taught by more than 45 nationally and internationally known artists.

JUNE 23–AUG 4

Stanford Jazz Festival Various venues. (650) 736-0324, www.stanfordjazz.org. This acclaimed festival has been injecting Northern California with a healthy dose of both classic and modern jazz for more than three decades.

JUNE 23–SEPT 8

Concert in the Hills Series Cal State East Bay, Concord Campus, 4700 Ygnacio Valley Rd, Concord; (925) 602-8654, www.concord.csueastbay.edu/concertinthehills.htm. Free. This series celebrates its eighth season with performances by acts such as Dr. Loco and His Rockin’ Jalapeño Band, Aja Vu, Joni Morris, and Native Elements.

JUNE 29–JULY 1

Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville; (707) 829-7067, www.katewolf.com/festival. Fri, 1pm-midnight; Sat, 10am-11:30pm; Sun, 11am-10pm, $55-160. This annual tribute to Northern California singer-songwriter Kate Wolf, who is credited with repopularizing folk music in the 1970s, features performances by Utah Phillips, Joe Craven and Sam Bevan, the Bills, and many others. Don’t miss the "Hobo Jungle Campfire," a nightly campfire on the creek shore with story swappin’ and song jammin’ aplenty.

JUNE 30–JULY 1

23rd Annual Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, 1-800-310-6563, www.sresproductions.com. 10am-6pm, free. Three stages of nonstop entertainment featuring top and emerging artists. Ten blocks of art booths and gourmet food.

JUNE 30–JULY 4

Marin County Fair Marin Center, Ave of the Flags at Civic Center, San Rafael; (415) 499-6400, www.marinfair.org. 11am-11pm, $11-13. This county fair stands above the rest with its promise of nightly fireworks, There will be many fun, new competitions to enter this year, including the Dancing Stars Competition, in which contestants may perform any style of dance — from tap to ballroom, salsa to boogie. Also not to be missed is the 18th annual "Creatures and Models" exhibit and the 37th annual "National Short Film and Video Festival," plus food and rides and other fun fair stuff.

JULY 1

Vans Warped Tour 2006 Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View; (650) 967-3000. www.warpedtour.com. 11am, $29.99. As Cities Burn, Bad Religion, Boys Like Girls, Coheed and Cambria, Escape the Fate, Pennywise, the Used, Funeral for a Friend, Revolution Mother, the Matches, and others perform at this annual punk music and culture event.

JULY 3–4

WorldOne Festival Cerrito Vista Park, El Cerrito; www.worldoneradio.org. Mon 5pm, Tue 10:30am, free. Worldoneradio hosts a world music and culture stage in the park. The eighth annual event is produced as a public service and fundraiser for area nonprofits.

JULY 4

City of San Francisco Fourth of July Waterfront Celebration Pier 39, Embarcadero at Beach, SF; (415) 705-5500, www.pier39.com. 1-9:30pm, free. SF’s waterfront Independence Day celebration features live music, kids’ activities, and an exciting fireworks show.

JULY 5–8

International Working Class Film and Video Festival New College Roxie Media Center, 3117 16th St; www.laborfest.net. Held annually to commemorate the San Francisco general strike of 1934 brings together filmmakers and labor artists from around the United States and internationally.

BAY AREA

High Sierra Music Festival Plumas Fairgrounds, 204 Fairground Rd, Quincy; (510) 595-1115, www.highsierramusic.org. 11am-11pm, $35-156. Enjoy your favorite jam bands on five different stages and at five different late-night venues, a kid zone, arts and crafts, food and drinks, beer, yoga, dancing, camping, and more. The lineup features performances by Xavier Rudd, the Disco Biscuits, Yonder Mountain String Band, Martin Sexton, and Les Claypool.

JULY 6–SEPT 29

Marin Shakespeare Company Festival Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, Dominican University of California, Grand Ave, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. Fri-Sun, varying times, $7-30. The Marin Shakespeare Company presents its outdoor festival featuring performances of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2.

JULY 10–21

Mendocino Music Festival Various venues; (707) 937-2044, www.mendocinomusic.com. $15-45. David Lindley, Mollie O’Brien, the Chris Cain Quartet, and others celebrate the 21st anniversary of this classical and contemporary music festival.

JULY 12–15

World California Fest Nevada County Fairgrounds, Grass Valley; (530) 891-4098. www.worldfest.net. $30-140. The 11th annual festival features eight stages and four days of music, with performances by everyone from Ani DiFranco to the Venezuelan Music Project. Camping is encouraged.

JULY 13–15

San Francisco Silent Film Festival Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; (415) 777-4908, www.silentfilm.org. Call for times and prices. The Golden Age of the silver screen comes to life, complete with a swelling Wurlitzer.

JULY 14-15

San Francisco International Chocolate Salon Fort Mason Conference Center; www.SFChocolateSalon.com. Sat, 11am-6pm; Sun, 10am-4pm, $20. The first major chocolate show on the West Coast in two decades takes place this summer with the theme Chocolat, in honor of Bastille Day. Experience the finest in artisan, gourmet, and premium chocolate with tastings, demonstrations, chef and author talks, and wine pairings.

BAY AREA

Los Altos Arts and Wine Festival Main and State, Los Altos; (650) 917-9799. www.losaltos-downtown.org. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, free. Enjoy original art and free entertainment while indulging in gourmet food and fine wine.

San Anselmo Art and Design Festival San Anselmo between Tamalpais and Bolinas, San Anselmo; 1-800-310-6563, www.artanddesignfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. The San Anselmo Chamber of Commerce brings this buffet of cooking, home, and landscape design to the masses.

JULY 19–29

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various venues; (415) 627-9141, www.midsummermozart.org. $30-60. The Mozart-only music concert series features pianist Janina Fialkowska, the Haffner Serenades, and the Coronation Mass.

JULY 19–AUG 6

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Various venues; (415) 621-0556, www.sfjff.org. The world’s first and largest Jewish film festival has toured the Bay Area for 27 years.

JULY 21–22

Connoisseur’s Marketplace Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park; (650) 325-2818, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. This annual midsummer festival hosts live jazz, R&B, and rock ‘n’ roll as well as arts and crafts, chef demonstrations, international cuisine, and lots of fun for the kids.

JULY 27–29

Gilroy Garlic Festival Christmas Hill Park, Hwy 101, Gilroy; (408) 842-1625, www.gilroygarlicfestival.com. 10am-7pm, $6-12. If 17,000 pounds of garlic bread isn’t enough of a reason to go, then all the other manifestations of this flavorful food are. Gourmet food and cook-offs, as well as free music and children’s activities, entertain you as you munch.

JULY 29

San Francisco Marathon Begins and ends at the Ferry Bldg, Embarcadero, SF; www.runsfm.com. $110 to compete. Tighten your laces for 26.2 miles around the Bay. The less enthusiastic can run a half marathon, 5K, or "progressive marathon," instead.

Up Your Alley Dore Alley between Folsom and Howard, Folsom between Ninth and 10th streets, SF; www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm. Hundreds of naughty and nice leather lovers sport their stuff in SoMa at this precursor to the Folsom Street Fair.

AUG 3–5

Reggae on the River Dimmick Ranch, French’s Camp, Hwy 101, Piercy, Humboldt County; (707) 923-4583, www.reggaeontheriver.com. $165-225. Further details pending. This year’s riverside roots and reggae fest features the Roots, Shaggy, Angelique Kidjo, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Mad Professor, the Itals, Eek-A-Mouse, Sierre Leone’s Refugee Allstars, and many others.

Reggae Rising Dimmick Ranch, French’s Camp, Hwy 101, Piercy, Humboldt County; www.reggaerising.com. $175 for a 3 day pass. Further details pending. This new summer festival will benefit various nonprofit groups in this southern Humboldt community and features Damian Marley, Sly and Robbie, Tanya Stephens, Fantan Mojah, and more.

AUG 4–5

Aloha Festival San Francisco Presidio Parade Grounds, near Lincoln at Graham, SF; www.pica-org.org/AlohaFest/index.html. 10am-5pm, free. The Pacific Islanders’ Cultural Association presents its annual Polynesian cultural festival featuring music, dance, arts, crafts, island cuisine, exhibits, and more.

AUG 9–12

Redwood Empire Fair Redwood Empire Fairgrounds, 1055 N State, Ukiah; (707) 462-3884, www.redwoodempirefair.com. Noon-11pm, $3-6. Bring the family to this old-timey fair, complete with rides, food, and fun.

AUG 10–12

Comcast San Jose Jazz Festival Various venues; (408) 288-7557, www.sanjosejazz.org. $5. This three-day music festival hosts dozens of acclaimed musicians playing all flavors of jazz.

AUG 11

SEEN Festival 2006 People’s Park, Telegraph and Dwight, Berk; (510) 938-2463, www.maxpages.com/seen2000. 11:30am-5pm, $5 suggested donation. This year marks the 12th anniversary of this world music, reggae, and soul festival.

AUG 11–12

Nihonmachi Street Fair Japantown Center, Post and Webster, SF; (415) 771-9861, www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Japantown’s 34th annual celebration of the Bay Area’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities continues this year with educational booths and programs, local musicians and entertainers, exhibits, and artisans.

Pistahan Yerba Buena Gardens, 700 Howard, SF; www.ybgf.org. 11am-5pm, free. The Bay Area Filipino festival of culture and cuisine features arts and crafts, live entertainment, food, and more.

Vintage Paper Fair Hall of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, Ninth Ave at Lincoln, SF; (323) 883-1702, www.vintagepaperfair.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-4pm, free. Craft lovers will enjoy this fair, which presents works made from all kinds of paper — from photographs, postcards, and memorabilia to brochures and trade cards.

AUG 18–19

Solfest Solar Living Institute,13771 S Hwy 101, Hopland; (707)744-2017, www.solfest.org. "The greenest show on earth" is back for another year featuring exhibits about renewable energy, green building, ecodesign tools, organic agriculture, and much more.

SEPT 1–2

Millbrae Art and Wine Festival Broadway between Victoria and Meadow Glen, Millbrae; (650) 697-7324, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-5pm, free. More than 100,000 visitors will gather for this festive Mardi Gras-style celebration featuring R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, and soul music, as well as arts and crafts, food and beverages, live performance, and activities for kids.


SEPT 8–9

Mountain View Art and Wine Festival Castro between El Camino Real and Evelyn Ave, Mountain View; (650) 968-8378, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Known as one of America’s finest art festivals, this vibrant celebration featuring art, music, and a kids’ park draws more than 200,000 arts lovers to Silicon Valley’s epicenter.

SEPT 9

Solano Stroll Solano Ave, Berk and Albany; (510) 527-5358, www.SolanoStroll.org. 10am-6pm, free. The vibes are always mellow and the air filled with rhythm at the Solano Ave Stroll. In its 33rd year, the milelong block party will feature a pancake breakfast, booths, entertainers, a parade, and more, this year with the Going Green — It’s Easy! theme.

SEPT 15

Expo for the Artist and Musician SomArts, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 861-5302; artsandmedia.net. 11am-6pm. This eighth annual event, sponsored by Independent Arts and Media, is the Bay Area’s only grassroots connection fair for independent arts, music, and culture, featuring workshops, performances, and networking.

SEPT 22

California Poets Festival History Park San Jose, 1650 Center, San Jose; californiapoetsfestival.org. 10am-4:30pm, free. Celebrate California’s distinctive heritage of poets, poetry, and presses at this all-day outdoor festival. *

Compiled by Nathan Baker, Angela Bass, Sam Devine, Molly Freedenberg, and Chris Jasmin

Wild Tigers, Painted Bird

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COSTUME One gray Garfield sweatshirt; a blue wool sleeveless sweater with little birds and a white sheep stitched on it; clean Chuck Taylor high-tops; an orange Kawasaki motorcycle T-shirt; a little red hoodie; a beige suede vest with tassels. These are some of the clothes sported by Logan (Malcolm Stumpf), the gender-jumping cusp-of-teens boy at the center of Cam Archer’s debut feature, Wild Tigers I Have Known.

"At that age you aren’t concerned with what other people think. You choose what [clothing] appeals to you – you’re just going for it," says Stephanie Volkmar, the film’s costume designer, as cars whiz by on Guerrero Street. "Logan’s outfits are sometimes outrageous, or some might say a little risque. Cam has an obsession with short-shorts and tank tops. He’ll be mad if that makes it into print, but it does help express the character’s vulnerability. We wanted Logan to wear things that would make him seem awkward and different."

One reason I’m asking Volkmar about her no-budget costume work for Wild Tigers is that she works at the store we’re sitting next to, Painted Bird. Over the past two years, I’ve assembled a Painted Bird wardrobe about as expansive as Logan’s, though riddled with the occasional label (Dior, Gucci, Adidas – all cheap), thus proving Volkmar’s point that in comparison to adults, kids just don’t care.

It turns out that Painted Bird’s connection to Archer’s movie – which, after debuting last year at the Sundance Film Festival, plays as part of the Mission Creek festivities – is also familial. The director’s brother, Nate, who did the movie’s layered, impressionistic sound design, is (along with Sonny Walker) one of the shop’s co-owners. "Nate is good at finding [music] that blows me away," Volkmar says. He certainly succeeds in Wild Tigers, braiding everything from the hand claps and "oo-oowoh" ‘s of the Michael Zager Band’s disco classic "Let’s All Chant" to the drowsy, faraway loneliness of Laura Nyro’s "Desiree" and the Langley Schools Music Project around Logan’s daydreams.

According to Volkmar, both Wild Tigers and Painted Bird emerged from family or familylike bonds formed in Santa Clara, where she met Cam Archer and worked on about 10 other short projects with him. Judging by the many five-star reviews for Painted Bird on sites such as Yelp, I’m not the only one who wants to rave about Walker and Nate Archer’s shop while also being protective of it. Why? It avoids the kitsch pitfalls and the overdressed look favored by SF vintage and secondhand places, and most important, its low prices correspond with a friendly atmosphere. Keeping an eye out for quality moderate vintage labels as much as typical high-end names, the Painted Bird folks are in the clothing biz because they like clothes, and they have a definite, yet easygoing, sensibility.

In Wild Tigers, Logan has a unique sensibility too, but his run through lust is a mostly solitary one. Though its conflation of the titular animals with desire might be a nod to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady (as well as drawn from Santa Clara’s untamed suburban terrain), Archer’s movie emerges from the still too-small genre of US queer kids’ films that includes Todd Haynes’s Dottie Gets Spanked, Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation, Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, and SF director Justin Kelly’s new Cannes-bound short, Front. (Also, one of Wild Tigers‘ executive producers, Darren Stein, was behind the pre-Tarnation queer childhood doc Keep the Camera on Me.) Without a doubt, Volkmar’s costumes have a role in some of the movie’s best scenes, such as when Logan’s friend Joey (Max Paradise) – complete with a golden bowl cut and a striped shirt buttoned all the way up to its collar – tries to get him to contribute to a "ways to be cool" list.

A cynic might point out that there isn’t a huge gap between the outfits sported by the children of Wild Tigers and the clothes favored by San Francisco’s eternal youth of today. (I stand semiconvicted.) In fact, Volkmar drew extensively from the shop where she works while dressing the movie’s primarily preteen and teen characters. But the spirit of Painted Bird’s staff is a lot like Logan from Wild Tigers: not too cool for school, just – as Volkmar says – going for it. (Johnny Ray Huston)

WILD TIGERS I HAVE KNOWN

Wed/16, call or see Web site for time, $4-$8

Roxie Film Center

3117 and 3125 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

www.paintedbird.org

MCMAF: Renewable source

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Van Halen may have made it into the music record books for Most Ridiculous Tour Rider for their demand for M&Ms picked free of the turdlike brown numbers. But musician-director Vincent Gallo might make the rock hitmakers jump with his own Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival must-have. "I’m not going to show you his rider," festival founder Jeff Ray says wryly. "It’s a little crazy."

"Oh, c’mon," I say, perched on a couch in the red and yellow office in Ray’s Mission flat. Stringed instruments, an organ, books, artwork, and the other tools and artifacts of an active musician and artist compete with the stuff of the festival – a paper schedule that winds around one wall, MCMAF posters with artwork by Jo Jackson, Andrew Schoultz, and Cliff Hengst (Leslie Shows offered a collage for this year’s), and beer bottles and empties marking many busy, late nights – that has threatened to swallow Ray’s creative energies since it began 11 years ago. Ray’s cat Panther, which he describes as bipolar, dozes drooling on my jacket – if that feline can give it up, surely he can.

"You can say I’m trying to track down a coin-operated arcade horse," he admits.

Attempting to please and showcase the many, radically varied, wild, and woolly musicians and artists who participate in the festival is part of the MCMAF mission – along with presenting a lineup that’s made of 80 percent local emerging creators. And the creek runs uphill: this year’s event includes Nevada City artists such as Mariee Sioux and Cafe Beautierre, as well as a "folky-centric" slant focusing on solo artists such as Gary Higgins, who was initially discovered by Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and Comets on Fire and is coming to California for the first time. Energized by volunteer and guest curators such as the Plug Research label, Ray and John Fellman, the festival’s main programmers, continue to compel ex-San Francisco music scenesters such as, say, Devendra Banhart, who will judge the music video awards, and introduce new streams: a dance mavericks program and a brass band parade through the Mission that will end with a festival celebrating sustainable energy and installation art in Dolores Park.

The faces of the volunteers may change, the groups may wander off or move on, but a few things remain. "It’s the same every year," Ray says. "Chaos, spontaneity, intuition, inspiration, mixed with pragmatic people who have stronger organizing skills than I do." And after more than a decade, he knows how he might define a successful event at this most grassroots of local music gatherings – with bands as varied as Comets on Fire and Kid 606, Lemonade and Petracovich, Acid Mothers Temple and Bran Pos, David Copperfuck and Subtle: a solid show has to have "mostly good vibes. And no one gets killed. No club catches on fire. And if we don’t go too much in debt, that’s a good thing." (Kimberly Chun)

For a complete schedule of the 11th annual Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival (May 10-20), go to www.mcmf.org. Check www.sfbg.com/blogs/music for more Mission Creek festival coverage.

The Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival 2007

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MCMAF founder Jeff Ray surveys the dream and the damage

A jolly good Vincent Gallo taps into his musical wellspring


After years of homelessness and substance addiction, the Chamber Strings’ Kevin Junior returns

The Dilettantes take love to the streets

YACHT’s Jona Bechtolt believes in you, dancing

With Buy Hidden Persuaders, I Am Spoonbender continue to remove our veils

Gary Higgins: Redheaded stranger

Ich bin Kevin Blechdom

Gowns connect this world and the next

All that glitters just may be Sugar and Gold

Finding refuge in the Harbours

Our selected picks at the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival

MCMAF: Renaissance man

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> johnny@sfbg.com

If Vincent Gallo turned himself into pure music, what would it sound like? For now, I know how the Gallo I’m talking with sounds: enthusiastic, upbeat – occasionally letting loose an endearing rascally cackle – and extremely alive. Over the course of a great couple hours, he’s raved rather than ranted, giving himself over to rapture while rapping about everyone from Joe Spinell (star of 1980’s gory Maniac and bit-part actor extraordinaire) to Michael Jackson. Vibe, connection, beautiful, and phenomenal are key words in the current Gallo lexicon, and his passion reaches its peak when he discusses RRIICCEE, his new group with Corey Lee Granet and Eric Erlandson, which will be premiering at this year’s Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival.

"I’m in love," Gallo says. "I’m so proud when we’re playing together. Not proud because I think we’re better, but proud I was able to make myself open in this way."

Openness has been key to Gallo’s music to date, as the snaky, at times Moondog-like press-record-and-play charms of his 2002 collection, Recordings of Music for Film (Warp), prove. While Gallo refers to those songs as "documents of creation," he’s still in the discovery process with his new band. To prioritize recording is to "be part of the problem of music," he says, paraphrasing what Erlandson told him during an encounter at a health food store that led to the group’s formation.

"Someone said today, ‘It sounds like a jam band,’ and that was the most gross comment I’ve ever heard in my life," Gallo goes on to clarify, lest anyone mistake his current activities for hoary hippy shtick. "A jam is a disorganized version of the most ordinary cliche habits – that’s the furthest thing from what we’re doing." While he’s quick to distinguish his current project from what he calls the "cabaret" mentality of big-name acts, the man also known as a cinematic lightning rod is out to divine something, perhaps something kindred to the current free-jazz renaissance: "Improv is not a good word [for what we’re doing]. It’s more a gesture of composing and performing at the same time."

The main difference between the Gallo I’m talking with and the one I briefly met during his 2004 road tour for The Brown Bunny is that this guy isn’t as road weary and battle scarred. Understandably so – it’s hard to think of a little movie that sparked such a big furor, not to mention so many misunderstandings. "To hear people say, ‘Oh brilliant, you made a film just so you could get blown,’ in a world where it’s so hard not to get blown," he says, with some exasperation.

I mention that long before he made The Brown Bunny, Gallo once compared its portrait of an unredeemable man to the one within Michael Powell’s 1960 Peeping Tom. "I guess it had a similar effect on that filmmaker’s career," he agrees. "People have a hard time swallowing a person like me. I evoke, I irritate in general. I wish that people liked me. I’m just not willing to become anything different to get that [approval]."

A little later, while discussing the way the media can directly distort some talented people’s sense of their own gifts, he utters a telling aside. "Maybe secretly I’m smart enough to know that even in what appear to be self-destructive gestures I have to solve the problem again."

The name Vincent Gallo might not fly to mind when the term likable is invoked, but in fact he’s a charming interview subject, as quip-flaired as Morrissey was once upon a time and genuinely humane in an old-school manner that differs from today’s era of abbreviated cell phone chats. Most of all, he’s in love, and not just with his new group. Tuxedo Moon, the collage artist Jess, the "high" beauty of Taj Mahal guitarist Jesse Ed Davis III, the 1970 movie The Only Game in Town, and the encyclopedic movie knowledge of Sage Stallone (Sly’s son) receive verbal bouquets over the course of our conversation. At one point he plays Jackson’s "I Can’t Help It" (from 1978’s Off the Wall) for me over the phone and says that he often cries when he listens to it.

"My creativity is always motivated by what’s missing, the same way it comes from what’s broken, what needs to be cleaned, what needs to be prepared because I don’t have it," he says, falling into an incantation. "It always comes from loss or from the seed of something that needs to be protected and grown."

Though still lodged in California, the man who made a point of emphasizing his total solo control over The Brown Bunny has moved on in spirit from that East Coast-to-West Coast journey. "If what I do is 50 billion times better than me, then it’s pure crap, because I’m just a jerk," he says. "When you get together with people and transcend yourself, it’s really an exciting moment, and that happened right away with this band." *

RRIICCEE

May 19, call for time and price

Q&A WITH VINCENT GALLO

May 20, call for time and price

Swedish American Music Hall

2174 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

www.mcmf.com

Full of Zizek

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Despite Sigmund Freud’s strong distrust of cinema ("I do not consider it possible to represent our abstractions graphically in any respectable manner," he firmly wrote in a letter to an inquiring film producer), Freudian psychoanalytic theory – primarily as reread by the French analyst Jacques Lacan – has come to form the bedrock of much academic film criticism and theory since the 1960s. Anyone who has had a brush with a film class in college has probably gotten an earful of 50-cent concepts such as scopohilia, suture, fantasy, and everyone’s favorite chew toy of power, the phallus.

If you didn’t take notes the first time around, you might want to while watching Sophie Fiennes’s The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, a veritable crash course on what film can tell us about psychoanalysis and what psychoanalysis can (and sometimes can’t) tell us about film. Fiennes may be listed as the director and producer, but this monster of a clip reel is really the baby of its host and our tour guide, the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek.

Ursine in stature and always slightly disheveled, Zizek is no stranger to the camera. In Astra Taylor’s somewhat worshipful documentary, Zizek! (2005), he delivered his mile-a-minute thought trains, encompassing everything from ethnic jokes to Hegel, with a brusqueness befitting a football coach and the on-the-fly reflexes of a standup comic. Zizek is in similar form in Pervert’s Guide, which isn’t so much a guide as a meandering recapitulation of some of his major talking points, first laid down in books such as Looking Awry and Enjoy Your Sinthome!

Zizek’s central thesis is that film is our most perverted art form, since it doesn’t really tell us what to desire but rather how to desire. Using an array of snippets – from The Exorcist to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Charlie Chaplin films to vintage Disney cartoons – Zizek illustrates how cinema is the ultimate fantasy machine (which sometimes produces films about fantasy machines. See: Tarkovsky). We project our desires onto the events and characters we watch, Zizek explains, inasmuch as those desires are already psychically inscribed long before they are played out onscreen. Film often literalizes these psychic structures or, at the very least, sets them into relief.

As in his books, here Zizek will often take a basic question or proposition (such as "Why is the only good woman a dead woman?" – when discussing Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo), and turn it inside out, revealing the hidden issue that was actually being addressed or occluded all along ("Because men contain the threat of desire by mortifying their objects of desire: women").

Hitchcock and Lacan make many appearances, being that they are two of Zizek’s favorite bedfellows – the man wrote a book about both. (Zizek has a go at David Lynch now and then, but his readings of Lynch’s "primal scenes" and "terrorizing, clownish father figures" are a little pat.) It is not surprising, then, that some of his most brilliant insights and close readings are delivered on his many return trips to Bodega Bay, the decrepit Bates’s manse, and Judy Barton’s neon-illuminated room at the York Hotel in Vertigo.

Fiennes’s one trick (and granted, it’s an effective one) is to do this literally, casually placing Zizek within mock-ups of the scenes that he has discussed. We see Zizek in Melanie Daniels’s skiff puttering across Bodega Bay; next he’s alongside Regan’s bed from The Exorcist; later he’s speaking from the fruit cellar of Norman Bates’s house, or Dorothy Vallens’s apartment in Blue Velvet, or the dimensionless white field where Neo instantaneously summons weapons in The Matrix. This playful technique helps cut through some of the density of Zizek’s more arcane points, and occasionally, we catch the man off guard, cracking cheesy Freudian one-liners about the inherent obscenity of tulips (while watering a garden a la the opening scene of Blue Velvet).

It is not just that Zizek is as well-versed in Lacan as he is in Hitchcock – or that he casts his critical eye toward topics both high and low – that has made him such a popular figure, even with nonacademics. (Zizek is, as far as I know, the only intellectual to be interviewed for Abercrombie and Fitch’s now-defunct Quarterly). This intellectually challenging, often entertaining, and at times draining lecture-posing-as-a-documentary proves at least one thing: Zizek’s combination of disarming charisma and utter seriousness makes him as entrancing as his arguments are compelling.

THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA

Thurs/3-Fri/4, 7 p.m.; Sat/5, 2 and 7 p.m.; Sun/6, 2 p.m.; $6-$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

MCMAF: Runoff to run after

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MAY 10

SO SO MANY WHITE WHITE TIGERS


Guitarist Ned flies back from New York City for the return of the art-punk trio that roared. (Kimberly Chun)

With Triangle, Bookworms, and the Tufffetttes. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 970-9777

MAY 13

FREDDY MCGUIRE


I’m not sure about this here Freddy McGuire, other than that he might have some Wobbly accompaniment and he is related to a certain Anne McGuire who can sing a song that’ll pierce you straight through the heart – not to mention warble you into a zone of glorious discomfort, as evidenced by her performances in self-directed movies such as Joe DiMaggio 1,2,3 (in which she stalk-serenades the actual slugger as he takes a senior citizen stroll along the Marina piers) and the classic black-and-white Judy Garland reincarnation I Am Crazy and You’re Not Wrong. (Johnny Ray Huston)

With Connie Fucking Francis and Fierce Antler. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 970-9777

SONNY SMITH


Mr. Smith has gone to more than Washington – well, I’m not sure if he’s gone there, but he says he’s been everywhere from Europe to Colorado to Central America since he was born in San Francisco in 1972. His songs, well, they travel from Ireland to Idaho, to name just a couple of places. But lately, the handsome guy with "the heartache of the sea" (and a sense of humor about as big) draws inspiration from home – as well as the motel rooms with massage beds down the road. It’s all there in the title of his latest song collection, Fruitvale, issued by Belle Sound. Even a troubadour can stay fixed in one neighborhood for a while. I haven’t been to Fruitvale lately, but I know Smith’s "Mario" all too well. (Huston)

With Virgil Shaw and Kelley Stoltz. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. Call for time and price. (415) 647-2888

MAY 15

EDITH FROST


Maybe Leslie Feist is our new chanteuse, our true post-lounge swooner. But every chanteuse needs a secret twin, and at this year’s fest – while the warm, dusty, music-fests-picnic-mats-and-straw-hats winds of Northern California’s summer blow in from the future – I’d like to nominate Edith Frost to play that other-half role, and not only because her recent work with the Zincs for their killer new disc, Black Pompadour (Thrill Jockey), makes that project even better. Frost is a thoroughly original songmaker in her own right. The crooning Texan has become a core part of the hip and humbling Drag City scene, and her most recent effort, 2005’s It’s a Game, thrives with ripe twang and raw elegance. She has a talent for writing melodies that sound improvised until they get into your head and take up residence. (Ari Messer)

With Spider and Cafe Beautierre, and Willard Grant Conspiracy. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 861-5016

MAY 16

HALLFLOWERS


Cole Porter’s "You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To" has never sounded quite so alluringly sinister as when sung by the Halls – namely, sisters Jennifer and Laurie (the latter from the noisy SF duo Ovarian Trolley) and mom Phyllis. Along with guitarist Doug Hilsinger, they make up the Hallflowers, an SF treat that has just released a second full-length, Hide and Seek (self-issued), which includes a version of "Autumn Leaves" that’ll have you thinking it’s late August in early May. They’re a perfect match for Alela Diane. (Huston)

With King City, the Dodos, Alela Diane, and Two Sheds. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 552-7788

MAY 19

EBB AND FLOW


Many rock bands adopt hep lingo when attempting to describe themselves, as if clever nomenclature could replace substance. Not so with the Ebb and Flow, whose absurdist rhetoric is no jive pitch. A stroll through their Web site could cause one to believe this trio bunks down in Captain Beefheart’s in-law apartment, but when it comes to kicking out the jams, there is much more at stake. Their rock collage is at once poised and disheveled, like a Crazy Horse-Stereolab tea party or a Stevie Nicks-Augustus Pablo blind date. (Nathan Baker)

With Music for Animals, Elephone, Scrabbel, DW Holiday, Solar Powered People, Form and Fate, Tom Thumb, and the Parties. Rockit Room, 406 Clement, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 387-6343

KING KONG


Ex-Slint bassist Ethan Buck utters a comeback bellow. (Chun)

With Andy Tisdall. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 923-0923

LAVENDER DIAMOND


The epic quirk-pop combo slayed at ArthurFest a few years back – and its lovely EP is finally out on Matador. (Chun)

Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 771-1421

MAY 20

MIA DOI TODD


A persimmon tree isn’t such a strange thing. Thick, dry branches twisting like untold stories, orange fruit hanging off its tips like ornamental paper lanterns, it’s certainly eerie, changing form every day while other plants rest dormant in the dead of winter – but its eeriness is light-giving and never unordinary. Well, literary folk haunter Mia Doi Todd is as complicated, and her musical fruits are as alternately sweet and astringent. I’ve heard more than one misguided listener comment dishearteningly on the LA native’s faux-British accent, and listening to some of her early voice-and-guitar work requires an even better mood than cocking an ear to Marissa Nadler’s music. But, like Nadler, when she’s really on – with Manzanita and the latest reinvention of that album, La Ninja: Amor and Other Dreams of Manzanita (both Plug Research), for example – she pulses somewhere between Roald Dahl and PJ Harvey, and her lattice of lyrical branches and darkly lilting guitar patterns yields a sweet, rare fruit. (Messer)

With Daedelus, Roommate, Flying Lotus, and Ola Podrina. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. Call for time and price. (415) 625-8880

For more, go to www.sfbg.com/blogs/music.

MCMAF: Sweetness and light

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> a&eletters@sfbg.com

"The ghosts come quickly, and they leave quickly," remarks Philipp Minnig about his effective yet unorthodox approach to songwriting for San Francisco electro-disco group Sugar and Gold.

"I always call songwriting ‘ghostbusting,’ " he says over tapas at Picaro in the Mission District, in a German accent softened by years spent in Northern California. "There will be an idea floating around, and you zap it, throw out your trap, and there it goes. For us, our traps are chords, or a rhythm. Someone brings in the ghost, and we all work on it."

Sugar and Gold is the brainchild of the rosy-cheeked lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter and his longtime friend and collaborator, vocalist and keyboardist Nicolas Dobbratz. They met in middle school in Pacific Grove and decided after a particularly memorable acid trip to start a band. The duo – whose previous combos Dura Delinquent and Connexion were rooted in visceral proto-punk – were always set on making dance-oriented music that was inclusive, countering the snobbish in-crowd ethos of Bay Area hipster groups. It is this generosity of spirit and their infectious, unduutf8g rhythms that led to a friendship and working relationship with Oakland’s dance-punk foursome Gravy Train, who recently enlisted Minnig and Dobbratz to produce their next album.

The two bands met when Gravy Train sought advice from Sugar and Gold about a hard-to-achieve keyboard effect in one of their songs. Minnig was happy to help them out, explaining that he believes in an altruistic approach to making music: "If everyone keeps their musical techniques to themselves, the scene and the music will never expand to get bigger and better."

A beautiful relationship was born. "Sugar and Gold don’t have a too-cool-for-school vibe," Gravy Train’s brazen redheaded vocalist Chunx writes via e-mail. "At their live shows, they are all about letting go, getting wild, and just feeling the music. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are, or what you look like, which is the same philosophy as Gravy Train." On Sugar and Gold’s debut, Creme (Antenna Farm), the sextet – including Jerome Steegmans on bass, drummer Robin Macmillan, and backing vocalists Susana Cortes and Fatima Fleming – take inspiration from the voluptuous soul of Funkadelic and Sly Stone, the subversive rock ‘n’ roll of the Cramps, and the cerebral electronic mastery of Kraftwerk, creating the seemingly antithetical hybrid of thoughtful yet sexy dance music.

Ghostbusting aside, this musical intellectualism sets Sugar and Gold apart from dance music makers who view music not as a way of life or an extension of themselves but as part of a hedonistic event experienced by a superficial persona. Minnig believes in the music he makes, and he views the process as a fundamental and spiritual necessity. "When we recorded the album, the music was giving us a feeling that was real, authentic," he says. "Music is the only spirituality we have. It’s the only way to believe in something greater than ourselves."

He has a similarly insightful answer to the question of why dance music is important. Between sips of peppermint tea, he says, "Dancing is one of those few things that, when done right, you do without an end in mind. You are free from an objective, which is rare in our society."

SUGAR AND GOLD

With Her Grace the Duchess and the Society

May 19, 9 p.m., $12

Cafe du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

MCMAF: Finding refuge in the Harbours

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"Basically I’m just trying to get everything out so I can sleep at night," vocalist Miguel Zelaya said in explanation of the steady stream of bubbling and bursting indie pop springing forth from his rather busy cerebellum. As the songwriter and creative mastermind of local darlings the Harbours, Zelaya is diligence personified. Having released a deadly infectious debut, Second Story Maker (Stab City), a mere six months ago, he and his bandmates are already back in the studio, recording material for the follow-up intended for release later this year.

"I already have a whole new set of songs I’m excited about. I’m always writing, really," he said, beaming from our sidewalk table at a Mission cafe, and I didn’t doubt him for a second. Spotting him among the evening’s bustle was easy: Zelaya was the one scrawling away intently in his journal. Another song closer to a good night’s sleep, I reckoned.

Zelaya has been writing and performing in the Bay Area for ages, but the Harbours are a relatively new addition to a thrillingly revitalized local music scene: their genesis was only two years ago, when the organizers of the 2005 Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival requested that he play at the event. A band was assembled, and within a year they’d finished recording their debut. Numerous lineup changes have since occurred, as members moved away or found other commitments – including Elephone and the Mother Hips – but Zelaya has remained the constant, fervently crafting fetching melodies with one ear pointed to the Band and Neil Young records of his childhood and the other pricked in the direction of the indie rock artists he holds in equally high regard. Second Story Maker is a fitting testament to these twin passions. The pulse-spurring immediacy of "Girl" and "Sick of the Electric" – "my big production number," Zelaya joked about the latter, describing the irrepressible vibrations of the album’s highlight – certainly reflect the finest moments of ’60s and ’70s radio, but in no way could they ever be confined to mere homage territory. These are songs on par with the finest work by Sloan, the Pernice Brothers, and Teenage Fanclub, fellow kindred spirits in reappropriating the sounds of their parents’ record collections in thoughtful, energizing new fashions. And more are on the way. "I have so many ideas right now, it’s crazy," Zelaya said. "I have plenty of stories to tell." (Todd Lavoie)

HARBOURS

With Rykarda Parasol, Michael Zapruder and Rain of Frogs, and Golden Messenger String Band

May 10, 8 p.m., call for price

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Ellis Act crisis

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OPINION Between 2004 and 2005, Chetcuti and Associates, a Walnut Creek real estate development company, bought eight Mission District apartment buildings. Within the first few weeks of ownership, the company served all the tenants in four buildings with Ellis Act eviction notices. In the next two months, three of the other buildings were Ellised. The company held on to the eighth building for a year before it gave those tenants Ellis notices.

The same is true throughout the city: John Hickey Brokerage, another out-of-town real estate company, gave Lola McKay (who died in 2000 while fighting her Ellis eviction) a notice within weeks after buying the building and then did the same to tenants in a North Beach apartment building – evicting those tenants just five days after a purchase deal closed.

In fact, more than half of all Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco are done by real estate speculators who have owned their buildings for less than six months. Almost one quarter are done by speculators who have owned the building for less than a month (and many of those are done in the first hours or days of ownership).

The buildings are then often sold as tenancies in common – essentially, as condos for people much wealthier than the ones who were evicted.

Rampant real estate speculation is bad enough on its own. What makes it worse is that this pattern is also an abuse of everything the Ellis Act was intended to be: a way for long-term landlords to be able to get out of the rental business and retire. When the Ellis Act was passed in 1985, its proponents said its purpose was to allow a landlord "to go out of business when he or she is convinced that they are no longer willing to devote the time, accept the frustration, expose themselves to the liability and other factors of continuing to be a landlord."

Apparently, companies such as Chetcuti and Associates and John Hickey Brokerage decided within days and weeks that they just couldn’t devote the time to or accept the frustration of being a landlord anymore and were compelled to evict the tenants. And that’s the case for hundreds of other real estate investors, many of whom are getting tired of being landlords within days of buying rental property.

Senate Bill 464 – which the State Senate will vote on any day now – would rectify this abuse and return the Ellis Act to its original intent. This bill simply says that a landlord must own property for at least five years before using the Ellis Act to evict tenants. It’s simple and fair, and it hurts only real estate speculators.

The vote is expected to be close – and unbelievably, the bill may not pass because a senator from San Francisco, Leland Yee, has indicated he may oppose it. No other city in California has been hit harder by the Ellis Act than San Francisco – yet our very own senator may kill this bill.

Thousands of residents here have been evicted under the Ellis Act, most of them senior or disabled. Ellis evictions are a crisis in San Francisco and are destroying lives and neighborhoods and communities.

Please call (415-557-7857) or fax (415-557-7864) Sen. Yee to ask him to support SB 464. *

Ted Gullicksen

Ted Gullicksen is executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union.

The silver screen turns gold

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The oldest film festival in the United States and Canada, the San Francisco International Film Festival reaches its golden anniversary this year. Click below for our picks and previews.

Choice words about image culture as the SF International Film Festival hits 50

Take 50: Our picks for the fest

A brief history of star wars and star awards at the SFIFF

This year’s debut fiction features

Better than sex, worse than violence: new French extremism

Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth digs up life amid the ruins

HK hottie Daniel Wu spoofs boy bands (and himself) in The Heavenly Kings

Kelly Sears’s animated shorts crystallize pop-cult preoccupations

The four men in The Iron Mask

Otar, Otar, how does your Garden grow?

50 great movies that have yet to hit the Bay

The 50th annual San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 26-May 10 at Sundance Cinemas Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, SF; Landmark’s Aquarius Theatre, 430 Emerson, Palo Alto; Landmark’s Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore, SF; SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF; McBean Theater, Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF; and El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. For tickets (most regular programs $8-$12) and additional information, go to www.sffs.org.

Locals only?

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BOOK REVIEW Not for Tourists Guidebooks has just released the fourth edition of its Not for Tourists Guide to San Francisco. Besides having a mad grip of inaccuracies, the title is problematic: this tome is definitely not not for tourists.

The first thing I found wrong with the book was its only foldout map. It’s a highway map, which is weird, since most city dwellers tend to stay clear of the damn things. They’re for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd and, uh, the tourists. And the map isn’t even detailed enough for you to see where on- and off-ramps are or tell which is which. And with San Francisco’s grand total of four highways, it’s hard to imagine why the NFT folks didn’t devote their largest page to a Muni map – just one of many things this book doesn’t have.

In all fairness, Muni routes are included in the 120 minimaps that comprise most of the book. But the layout is incredibly daunting! To follow one bus route, you might have to flip back and forth 20 times to see where the line will take you – shit most locals just don’t have friggin’ time for. I became further discouraged by the decision to devote pages to Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Pier 39. (If not for tourists, for whom?) But despite this and despite noticing an ad for Segway Tours of the Marina Green (insert sound of me retching here), I still gave the rest of the guide a whirl, determined to get some practical use out of it.

I attempted to find a liquor store when I was trapped in SoMa without rolling papers – only to discover the intersection I was at, Fourth Street and Mission, was on the corner of three maps. The bar I was in (my favorite) was nowhere to be found. I was in minimap limbo. Next I tried to wax nostalgic with the maps of neighborhoods where I used to live – only to discover that some bars listed on the neighborhood directories weren’t dotted on the maps.

So I tried using the guide to call my neighborhood grocery store, Eight-Twenty-Eight Irving Market, to see if it carried printer paper. Apparently, it falls somewhere between liquor store and supermarket, because it’s not in the book. (BTW: it carries college rule but not printer paper.) Finally, I called the Hotel Utah – only to lose an eardrum when that killer "bee-doo-eet!" sound alerted me to the fact that the number listed in the guide was disconnected.

Maybe, maybe buy the Not for Tourists Guide for first-year college students or other new SF transplants. But if you’ve been here for longer than six months, just hang on to your Muni map and your BART schedule and save the $14.95 (suggested retail) for 411 charges.

www.notfortourists.com

Small Business Awards 2007: A salute to small business

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The Brugmann family has been continuously in small business for 105 years. My grandfather, the eighth child of German immigrants who homesteaded in the Midwest’s high prairie grass, came to Rock Rapids, Iowa, in 1902 to start a drugstore.

He and my father after him spent their entire working lives in that store, known throughout the territory as "Brugmann’s Drugs, where drugs and gold are fairly sold, since 1902." I started at 12 selling stamps and peanuts and worked my way up to trimming wallpaper and waiting on trade. I also moonlighted as a writer for the Lyon County Reporter, an excellent hometown weekly under third-generation publisher Paul Smith.

My father would call on every new merchant and pass along his philosophy of how to make it in business in a small town such as Rock Rapids (population: 2,800). His message: play golf, go to church, do all your trading in Rock Rapids, and above all support the town and its community activities.

This philosophy always worked well for the Brugmanns, and ours was the only store on Main Street to make it through the depression.

When Jean Dibble and I founded the Guardian in 1966, we tried to operate with the hometown values of the Brugmanns in Rock Rapids, adding some San Francisco flair and later some Potrero Hill flair. We were delighted to find that San Francisco was a city with lively neighborhoods rich in small, locally owned businesses backed by merchant and residential associations and feisty neighborhood newspapers. From the start, the Guardian was a stand-alone independent newspaper that was of, by, and for small business. We still are.

And so when the Guardian moved to its new offices at the bottom of Potrero Hill, we were happy to join the Potrero Hill Merchants Association, meeting every month at Phil de Andrade’s Goat Hill Pizza. We pitched in on projects, from supporting the Neighborhood House and Potrero Hill History Night to instituting a real planning process to save the neighborhood. We also joined the endless battles to protect the hill and the southeastern neighborhoods from the Pacific and Gas Electric Co. and Mirant power plants and the encroaching Mission Bay complex and invasion of high-priced commercial and residential condos.

We like to say that the big downtown and chain businesses look upon San Francisco as a place from which to extract as much money as quickly as possible, much the way the strip miners saw the Sierra, whereas small, locally owned businesses see the city as a place to invest in human capital to build real community.

Jean and I and our staff are happy to salute the quiet heroes of small business with our third annual Small Business Awards. We congratulate the winners and all the small-business people in San Francisco who struggle daily against high taxes and daunting odds to keep their businesses going, their neighborhoods vibrant, and San Francisco an incomparably great city. *

The 2007 Small Business Awards

Die-Hard Independent Award
Clif Bar Co.

Golden Survivor Award
Hoogasian Flowers

Community Institution Award
Modern Times Bookstore

Solar-Powered Business Award
Oceanworks

Community Activist Award
Pet Camp

Chain Store Alternative Award
Waldeck’s Office Supplies

Cooperative Award
Woodshanti Cooperative

Previous winners

Small Business Awards 2007: Community Institution Award

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It started in 1971, with a handful of people who worked for Socialist Revolution magazine and wanted to sell books that would give the Movement – and back then it had a capital M – some historical and theoretical perspective. The magazine’s editor, Jim Weinstein, provided the rag with a free 900-square-foot space in a building he owned. With $5,000 in raised funds, the idealistic collective opened Modern Times Bookstore in the Mission.

A lot of similar projects were launched in San Francisco during that era – co-operative businesses and ventures founded by activists with a radical social vision – and most of them folded. Modern Times grew. And while independent bookstores around the country are failing by the day, Modern Times is thriving.

"I think it’s because we’ve always had the support of the community," Michael Rosenthal, who started at Modern Times just weeks after it opened and retired this year, told us. "We were always a community bookstore."

And unlike a lot of ’60s-era institutions, Modern Times was open to adapting and changing – while preserving its core beliefs. There have always been books for sale on Marxism and socialist theory, but as Rosenthal points out, "at a certain point, we realized we were just speaking to a coterie."

Taking a broader approach, Modern Times became one of the first bookstores in the country to offer a lesbian-gay section and one on women’s issues. And these days the store has an incredible variety of books from major and small-press houses in all sorts of different genres, including Spanish-language and children’s books, and an extensive rack of zines and cultural periodicals. New College, right down the street, uses Modern Times as its school bookstore, a deal that helps both local institutions.

Modern Times has maintained its worker-ownership structure – and has always been a community resource. Its back room is abuzz with local author book signings and queer experimental poetry readings. Political and community groups use the store for everything from panel discussions on the city’s wi-fi plan to workshops on economics and how-to sessions on bike safety. The site has hosted events featuring the storied radical feminist ’80s performance art and culture-jamming group the Guerrilla Girls, and San Francisco’s innovative Cutting Ball Theater is currently in residence there. Check out the events page on the store’s Web site for a fabulous list of upcoming eclectic and wonderful writers, speakers, and interactive programs.

Modern Times has become more than just a neighborhood bookstore for the Mission. It’s also a crucial part of San Francisco’s progressive community. And it’s a sign that independent bookstores can withstand gentrification and the assault of the big chains – and make a difference. (Tim Redmond)

MODERN TIMES BOOKSTORE

888 Valencia, SF

(415) 282-9246

www.moderntimesbookstore.com

Small Business Awards 2007: Die-Hard Independent Award

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In 2000, when Gary Erickson, founder and owner of Clif Bar and Co., told reps from Quaker Oats – the fourth largest consumer goods company in the world – that he needed to go for a walk before signing over his company for $120 million, they thought he was bluffing to secure a larger payout.

"He literally had his pen this close to the contract," recalls Sheryl O’Loughlin, outgoing CEO of the company, as she poises the tip of an ink pen a couple inches above a notepad at her desk. "The way he described it was that his hand started to shake. Something just didn’t feel right."

Erickson chewed over the life-changing dilemma as he walked the block surrounding his Berkeley office building. Did he honestly want to exchange an eight-year enterprise to produce and successfully market an appetizing assortment of energy bars and drinks for the life of an instant multimillionaire and all the attendant comforts it yields – mansions, shopping sprees, and exotic trips?

And how could the company founder not sell when the consensus among consultants, Erickson’s now ex-partner, and even some of his employees was that Clif Bar’s competitors would eat them alive if he didn’t? Deserting the Clif Bar empire before its fated downfall seemed to be the only logical move.

"Nestle had just bought PowerBar, which was really big at the time, and then Kraft bought Balance Bar," O’Loughlin explains. "So naturally there was a ton of pressure to sell, because we [supposedly] couldn’t make it on our own."

In spite of the risk or perhaps because of it, Erickson returned to his office with a new resolve and announced to the investment banker, lawyers, and his stunned partner that the deal was off. He then literally told them all to go home.

"I went from the darkest of dark to the highest of highs the moment I realized I didn’t have to sign that contract," marvels Erickson during a phone interview. The company founder – with his wife and partner, Kit Crawford – is resuming leadership of their company with just under 200 employees.

"I was more excited at that moment than probably any other moment of my life, aside from having children."

A year after ditching Quaker Oats at the altar, Erickson could identify another important reason why he did it. Although he and his partner were promised postacquisition roles in the company, as signing day neared it became clear that this was merely a typical sweet nothing often whispered in the midst of a seductive corporate takeover.

But once Quaker Oats unveiled its plan to move the Clif Bar operations to its offices in Chicago and told Erickson that his people in Berkeley would basically be out of their jobs, he got a whiff of the company’s true oats.

The decision invigorated Erickson and motivated him to define Clif Bar’s bottom line beyond its profits. He came up with what the company now refers to as the Five Aspirations: business, brand, planet, community, and people. This new mission galvanized the creators of Luna, Nectar, Mojo, and Builder’s bars to make 70 percent of each product organic and use biodiesel trucks between their bakery and destination centers.

On the community tip, Clif Bar donates approximately 1 percent of its net sales in the form of food, money, and volunteer time. Each employee volunteers at least 20 community service hours per year during paid work time, which can entail anything from assisting Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans to planting community gardens in Hunters Point.

Though a commitment to green practices and community service has boosted company morale, masseuses, salons, in-office rock climbing walls, personal trainers, and laundry facilities, among other staff perks, also serve to sustain Clif Bar’s people. How’s that for ulterior motives? (Angela J. Bass)

CLIF BAR AND CO.

1610 Fifth St., Berk.

1-800-254-3227

www.clifbar.com

Peeling out with Trans Am’s Phil Manley

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Trans Am, dude. Powerful, proggy, electro, rockin’ – what don’t these guys do? Once based in DC, now living all over the place, all over your face, Trans Am rev up their tour tonight, April 21, at Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF; (415) 621-4455. Zombi and Black Taj open the all-ages Green Apple Music Festival-sponsored show; the music starts at 10:00 p.m. Lay $14 down.

transam3sml.jpg

No doubt the venue is all-too-familiar sight for Trans Am-er Phil Manley, who might be found behind the mixing board on occasion. Manley moved to San Francisco a few years ago, and he took a little time out while tooling round South Carolina to chat recently. The friendly 33-year-old musician and audio engineer inquired about my recent car break-in, which scuttled our first attempt at an interview, and revealed that he too lives in the city’s Western Addition district. “I used to live in the Mission but there’s too many fixed gear bikes,” he said jokingly. “It actually doesn’t bug me, but I did see a funny bumper the other day – ‘One less fixie.’ Kinda hilarious and kinda harsh.”

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