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Brooklyn, like Oakland and the Mission District, has swelled in the last decade with postadolescents: beards and black hoodies wandering streets on the verge of gentrification. This intermediary space is the setting and premise for indie filmmaker Andrew Bujalski’s latest, Mutual Appreciation. Bujalski first made a splash with Boston-based Funny Ha Ha (2002), an unassuming feature made in the tradition of talky indie forbearers John Cassavetes, Eric Rohmer, and Richard Linklater. Mutual Appreciation again collects a group of guarded postgraduates for its cast, but the film is no angsty trifle. Bujalski pulls off that impossible trick — always surprising no matter the influences — of affecting a naturalistic, improvisational flow while maintaining a clear authorial voice. It’s a dynamic that picks up steam with each exquisitely staged scene, making Mutual Appreciation as absorbing as anything you’re likely to see at the movies this year.
How then do we account for this guided freewheel? Cinematography is, as always, at least part of the answer. The grainy 16mm black-and-white film stock isn’t mere affectation but rather a functional stylistic element, underscoring the drab reality of the movie’s unsettled spaces: apartments with everything secondhand and mismatched, unmade beds on nicked hardwood floors, and rooms that are either too big (making one fret over the lack of proper furniture) or too small (making one crouch). Bujalski and cinematographer Matthias Grunsky court these challenging spaces, always coming up with a revealing composition that frames characters in depth — splayed against walls or hunched in makeshift chairs.
While Bujalski has clearly done his homework on no-budget cinematography, his narration style seems more instinctual and basic to the film’s shape. Like exemplar François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, Mutual Appreciation pivots on a youthful, untested ménage à trois: boyfriend-girlfriend Lawrence (Bujalski) and Ellie (Rachel Clift) have lived in Brooklyn for some time, while Lawrence’s old friend Alan (Justin Rice) is new in town, lost in an existential quandary over his life and music (“It’s like pop”). Like so many of his progenitors, Bujalski has an innate sense for particular rhythms of talk. This isn’t just a matter of dialogue (“If you kiss me now, my breath’s going to be all beery and burrito-y”) but also of editing — knowing, for example, how to exit a scene, convey a relationship with an unevenly paced phone conversation, and let the camera run on a given close-up to register a character’s unguarded reactions.
More impressive is the way Bujalski subtly orchestrates little one-acts to achieve genuine drama. The principle instance of such narrative structuring is in the many scenes between Lawrence and Ellie, and Alan and Ellie, but none between the old friends in question (until the closing minutes anyhow). If Mutual Appreciation’s narrative seems accidental, it’s a testament to Bujalski’s understated technique. There is certainly method here, from repetitions of dialogue (“That’s flattering”) and theme (gender confusion) to the patient unveiling of character, the apotheosis of which is a sequence of scenes tracing Alan from one Warholian party to another, no better for the omnipresent tallboys of beer.
What begins as nonchalant talk blooms into compelling drama by movie’s end. It seems no coincidence that one of Mutual Appreciation’s three main characters is an indie rocker. Bujalski, after all, registers the fear and trembling that twentysomethings expect from music (middlebrow Indiewood being as unlikely to produce something relatable as the French “cinema of quality” from which the New Wave broke away). But Mutual Appreciation is more than an outlet; in its illuminating narration, many will see a mirror, an ode to these transitional places in which one blusters toward adulthood, talking all the way. SFBG
MUTUAL APPRECIATION
Opens Fri/29
Red Vic Movie House
1727 Haight, SF
$4–$8
(415) 668-3994
www.redvicmoviehouse.com
www.mutualappreciation.com
For an interview with Mutual Appreciation director Andrew Bujalski, go to www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.
Mission
Broken social scene
Boys? What boys?
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I meet bandleader, videographer, and Mission District indie icon Leslie Satterfield at Ritual café on a summer evening as she walks up Valencia Street looking weather-beaten and weary from her recent travels. Is she just back from a cross-country tour, I wonder? No, she was precisely where you’d expect the guitarist from Boyskout to have been: camping. She survived days of deer watching and near–bear sightings in the Sierras, and despite her desire for a hot shower and warm bed, Satterfield settles in with a cappuccino and some good stories.
Satterfield may be best known for her post-punk quartet Boyskout, a band that’s risen the ranks since its inception in 2001 to tour around the United States and Germany and headline major local venues including Mezzanine and Bimbo’s 365 Club. But the sandy-blond, late-20s songwriter has been also turning heads of late with her filmmaking.
Her video for Film School’s song “11:11” — a minimalist travelogue set in San Francisco streets and tunnels — is the latest work for her own Sharkbone Productions, which has also produced Boyskout videos shown internationally at major gay and lesbian film festivals. Her latest projects include a video for Rough Trade UK–signed act Scissors for Lefty and a self-produced experimental film that she describes as “being about love and creating what you believe.”
“Most of my films have been about how we create our own realities with our mind and how powerful the mind itself is — how your thoughts create everything that happens to you,” Satterfield says.
With her Mission artist garb — black boots and worn dark denim — I figure Satterfield had a youth spent in mosh pits and zine-collective punk hangouts. On the contrary, she grew up listening to the Beatles, Olivia Newton-John, and Simon and Garfunkel, while spending a lot of time drawing. She earned a BA in photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and resided in Amsterdam for a year before moving west. Now in addition to classics from Elton John and Heart, her iPod holds songs by Coco Rosie, the Libertines, and Tapes ’n Tapes. It’s an eclectic collection of music, similar to the local bands she holds dear and performs with regularly. The list includes up-and-coming acts like the Fucking Ocean, Tartufi, Full Moon Partisans, Death of a Party, and the Mall, as well as Shande — the group fronted by her sometime–guest guitarist Jennifer Chochinov.
Admittedly a shy, coy romantic who’s just completed an all-acoustic album, Mixing Memory with Desire (Dial), as J-Mod, Satterfield was initially a reluctant lead vocalist. You wouldn’t know it from Boyskout’s recent rock-out performances: Satterfield’s steely, saucerwide blue eyes zap the audience playfully while she mixes it up with her bandmates onstage. Along with bassist Piper Lewine, keys and violin player Christina Stanley, and drummer Ping (and occasionally adding guest guitarists like Chochinov or Daniel Dietrick to the lineup), Satterfield slayed audiences at South By Southwest this year in Austin and returned immediately to begin recording Boyskout’s now completed second album, Another Life (Three Ring). At the time we speak, eight of the planned 11 songs are done but won’t be out, well, until they’re done. “I’m a huge perfectionist,” Satterfield confesses. “The biggest in the world. I really like to take my time and do things to a tee.”
The songs I’ve heard from the project, including the Nocturne-era-Siouxsie-sounding “Spotlight” and the jittery dance-rock slab of “Lobby Boys,” are as refreshing as local underground music can get (word to Live 105). Meanwhile, Satterfield’s singing on the J-Mod disc (fantastically recorded at Hyde Street Studios) resembles Nico or Hope Sandoval in their darkest, most mysterious moments. Each album serves as an introduction to Satterfield’s thoughtful and dissonant guitar playing, a style that compliments her alabaster-smooth voice. Based on her range of projects and contacts, I get the impression that Satterfield has some big opportunities on the horizon.
Other recent adventures include a trip to Portland to teach at the Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls. “I taught last year in New York, and it was really fun. I worked with a group of 8-year-olds who formed their own band called Pink Slip.” Which reminds me, I never did get to ask Satterfield what her day job is. For now I’ll just assume it’s the professional term for “brilliant multidisciplinary artist.” SFBG
BOYSKOUT
With the Mall and the Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower
Oct. 5, 9:30 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$10
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
www.boyskout.com
THURSDAY
Sept. 28
Event
Haute House Burlesque
Admit it – it’s been way too long since you’ve seen a good burlesque show. The best way to rectify this situation is to check out the Haute House Burlesque Review. Picture a mashup of ’50s style, extravagant song and dance productions, and strippers. Haute House stars Bombshell Betty, Lily le Rogue, Miss Banana Peel, Coconut Cream, Mynx d’Meanor, Sweet Cheeks, Ophelia Coeur de Noir, and Isis Stars. The house band for the evening is Lucifer’s Old-Timey Strip Club Band and complimentary champagne is served at intermission. Formal attire and fancy dress are encouraged. (Aaron Sankin)
8:30 p.m.
Jon Sims Center for the Arts
1519 Mission, SF
$10-$15, sliding scale
(415) 554-0402
www.jonsimsctr.org
www.bombshellbetty.net/hautehouse.html
Music
Mojave 3
When ’90s shoegazers Slowdive decided that three albums’ worth of layered guitars and distorted pop meant mission accomplished, they could have just broken up and gone their separate ways, leaving behind a brief but rewarding career of sonic bliss. Fortunately for the music world, this is not what happened; instead, the members simply rechristened themselves to reflect the clean slate in their hands. The name couldn’t have been more fitting for their new sound: Mojave 3. Over the past 11 years, Mojave 3 have built upon this sound, culminating in their latest release, Puzzles Like You (4AD, 2006), which bubbles and bursts with pop thrills. (Todd Lavoie)
With Brightblack Morning Light
8 p.m.
Slim’s
333 11th St., SF
$16
(415) 255-0333
www.slims-sf.com
www.mojave3online.com
WEDNESDAY
Sept. 27
Event
“Slam Arnold Poetry Competition”
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been shot at, beat up, and humiliated as Conan, Commando, the Terminator, and a kindergarten cop. Most Bay Area residents would agree the governor can handle a little bit of verbal abuse. The San Francisco League of Young Voters is hosting the “Slam Arnold Poetry Competition” at the Balazo Gallery to help boot the actor out of office, register voters, and educate young people about important issues. The event will open a forum for discussion regarding current political concerns. Work by local artists will be on the walls, and 12 popular regional poets will compete for prizes and laughs. Ill-Literacy will perform, along with female MCs Rhapsodistas. (Kellie Ell)
6-11 p.m.
Balazo 18 Art Gallery
2183 Mission, SF
$10-$25, sliding scale
(415) 255-7227
www.balazogallery.org
www.indyvoter.org
Film/Event
SF 360 Home Movie Night: American Blackout
It’s a little too late for you to host an American Blackout screening, but it isn’t too late to attend one at someone else’s house – even though some places have already reached sold-out capacity. This first installment of SF360 Home Movie Night showcases Ian Inaba’s documentary about schemes against black voters, which generated waves of praise at the latest SF International Film Festival. Guerilla News Network member Inaba focuses on the campaigns – including covert ones – waged against Democratic Rep. (and outspoken George W. Bush and 2000 presidential election critic) Cynthia McKinney. (Johnny Ray Huston)
10 p.m. (postscreening after-party)
Tosca
242 Columbus, SF
Free
1-866-456-WEED
www.partylaunch.com/ironweedfilms
Firing off at fixed-gears
RANT/FILM I’m all for the current bicycle renaissance in San Francisco. As the Indian summer heats up, you’ll notice the bike lanes will be nose to tail with bikers — like a line of baby elephants. This is a good thing. Maybe the notoriously free-form, Tijuana driving style of SF residents will ease up a notch and they’ll return to mowing down pedestrians exclusively. There’s safety in numbers.
Of course, every revolution has its drawbacks. There’s always going to be that crew that wants to convince the world they’re that much more revolutionary, devoted, and pure than everyone else. And as the rubber hits the roads in San Francisco, a clan of tight-trousered, mullet-headed, vintage-T-shirt-clad Robespierres has coalesced around the fixed-gear bicycle, or as it’s called in its proponents’ cutesy parlance, the “fixie.”
What’s a fixed-gear? Imagine yourself cruising down the street on your bike. You get tired and so you stop pedaling and coast. The freewheel mechanism in your hub disengages the drive train and lets the back wheel continue to spin while the cranks and pedals are still. On a fixed-gear the rear cog is bolted directly to the hub. There is no freewheel or cassette mechanism, so if the hub is moving, the cog is moving. Which means if the chain is moving, the pedals are moving, and if the bike is moving, you’re pedaling. There is no coasting.
Sounds like a pain in the ass. If you’re like me, the first question that comes to mind is “why?” Well, the modern SF two-wheeled steel, aluminum, and rubber hipster fashion accessory has its roots in racing, like other wheeled vehicles that don’t really translate to street usage. They were — and still are — used on banked, velodrome-style tracks during races that employ all manner of strategies, including slowing down to a stop or near stop and doing a “track stand” — balancing at a standstill without putting your feet down — so your opponent can pass you and you can ride in the draft.
Since you’re not likely to be drafting anyone on city streets, a track bike is a highly impractical choice of wheels. What’s more impractical is that fixed-gears often appear to lack brakes. The bike’s speed is controlled by the rider’s pedaling cadence — slow the pedaling, you slow the bike. Stop pedaling, stop the bike. This effect can be augmented by adding a front caliper brake, but that’s frowned upon by fixie fashionistas who do things like cut their handlebars down to a foot and don’t run bar tape or grips. The problem with using pedal cadence as a braking mechanism is that stopping is dependent on rider skill.
Now there’s the rub. Like trucker hats and PBR, what started as a bike messenger thing has become a fashion statement and status symbol. You’ve got kids in the Mission with the left leg of their jeans rolled up, a little biker hat on crooked, slip-on Vans, and a brand-new fixed-gear Bianchi; and they don’t know their ass from a light socket. Cadence? You may as well be talking astrophysics. They just know that it looks cool. It looks less cool, however, when one of these lemmings comes screaming down the Haight Street hill unable to keep up with the speed of the pedals and wrecks in the middle of Divisadero. A friend was riding down Stanyan with a box in his hand when some goon on a fixed-gear, unable to slow down, ran into his back wheel and crashed him in the middle of the street. He didn’t even stop to see if my friend was OK.
So what was the original draw that caused the person I’ll call “Biker Zero” — to crib epidemiological lingo — to ride a track bike on the street? The people I know who ride them talk about being at one with the bike, feeling part of it, in the bike instead of on the bike. I’ll go with that. But this human-bike-cyborg crap has reached the level of “I like the East Coast because I like to see the seasons change” tripe. Respect to the old-school heads who’ve been riding them since way back, but as someone who’s done way gnarlier things on wheels, it’s just not all that impressive. The Bicycle Film Festival had scheduled a screening of M.A.S.H., an unfinished fixed-gear documentary by Mike Martin and Gabe Morford, until it got pulled at the last minute. It was shot here in San Francisco and showcased the “skills and beauty of these riders.” Beauty, no doubt — as in perfect hair. So you can ride down a hill and lift up your back wheel and do little skids to slow down. So what?
Riding a fixed-gear is like handicapping yourself. The bikes are so awkward to ride that not looking like an idiot while riding one is an accomplishment. It’s like riding a three-legged horse in the Kentucky Derby. To do that well, you’d have to be an excellent jockey. At the same time, why not be in it to win it and ride a horse with four legs? To me, it takes the choices — and therefore some creativity — out of riding. I don’t ride a fixed-gear for the same reason I won’t drive an automatic: no car is telling me when to shift, and no bike is going to tell me when I can pedal. If you’ve got bike skills, why not take them to a higher level? Go home and search for “Steven Hamilton” or “World Cup Downhill” on YouTube and see what can really be done on a bike that has the capabilities to be pushed. (There is a whole European tradition of flatland tricks on fixed-gears that takes serious skills, but it doesn’t seem to be a part of the current SF scenester fixie explosion.)
Not everyone is riding a bike to push limits. Still, the fixie cabal sticks in my craw, and it’s not because I’m unimpressed with the virtuosity. It’s not the misuse of a track-racing bike on city streets that bugs me. BMX bikes came about through the misuse of Schwinn Stingrays in dirt lots, and mountain bikes were the result of chopped-up road bikes on dirt. Misuse can mean progress. What kills me is the sinking feeling I get when I ride down Valencia and think, “Does anyone in this town ever do anything original?”
Now there’s even fixed-gear graffiti, Krylon line art of single-speed bikes with bullhorn handlebars, and the dubious slogan of “gears are for queers.” The fact of the matter is, the popularity of these bikes has nothing to do with the bikes themselves or the few people who actually have the chops to ride them with style. The fixed-gear is to 2006 what the Razor scooter was to 1996: a wheeled freak show for wannabes. Test it: send the right guy with the right clothes and the right haircut out around town on one of those old-timey bikes with the enormous front wheel with the cranks mounted directly to it like a tricycle. You know, the ones you need a ladder to get on and off of. Just see how many giant-wheeled ladder bikes are locked up in front of Ritual Coffee Roasters next week.
Do what makes you happy, but also do some soul-searching, champ: does riding a fixed-gear make you happy or does fitting in make you happy? Ask yourself, what bike was I riding last year? Was I riding one at all?
BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL
Thurs/28–Sat/30
Victoria Theatre
2961 16th St., SF
www.bicyclefilmfestival.com
40-year-old teens
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American Conservatory Theater, the Magic Theatre, and Marin Theatre Company all turn 40 this year. Accordingly, these three regionally and nationally preeminent Bay Area companies are rolling out ambitious celebratory seasons. But despite all the satisfaction rightfully implied by this triple birthday, theater finds itself in a significant and uncertain period of transition.
Relevance and sustainability were prominent themes when artistic directors Carey Perloff (ACT), Lee Sankowich (MTC), and Chris Smith (Magic) sat down with the Guardian to share their thoughts on the trajectories of their respective organizations as well as theater’s past, present, and future in the culture at large.
CHRIS SMITH There is a lot of looking back and celebration of legacies and all that a significant landmark — turning 40 — suggests. But organic to the Magic’s mission is seeding the future, because we really are about new work. And to be committed to new work is really to have a perspective on the horizon.
We can talk about it from a number of different points of view, including the way most people want to talk about theater and art making these days, which is from the consumer model. We’re all completely obsessed with audiences and consumers. And that’s one of the critical differences [between] now and 40 years ago. In a weird way we’re a 40-year-old teenager. Suddenly we’re saying we have to be more concerned now than in the past about making sure people are having a good experience and getting them in.
But if you stop thinking for one split second about the financial success of the theater or the relevancy of the theater within a country that is arguably celebrating the dumbing down of the political spectrum, the health of the theater as an art form is very, very good. The best thing to cite on that front is the proliferation of high-quality MFA writing programs contributing to the number of committed, intelligent, craft-oriented, theatrically vibrant artists coming into our field.
So I actually have a great deal of optimism about the value that theater will have in the next decade in our society. That’s very distinct from numbers. The audiences that will be attending challenging, literate, smart work I expect are going to shrink. But I think it brings us back to a kind of churchlike sensibility.
The theater as a church for a thinking person is increasingly at value in our digital age, where we’re being separated from liveness, we’re being separated from the communal, separated from contact. We are in a moment between a fundamental impulse to look backwards and an impulse to look forwards. And the artists are the ones that live in that cusp.
CAREY PERLOFF Of course, this is exactly what [Tom Stoppard’s] Travesties is about. There’s a great moment where [Tristan] Tzara says, “As a Dadaist I’m a natural ally of the political left, but the paradox is the further left you go politically, the more bourgeois they like their art.” On the other hand, obviously what Stoppard believes — and what we all have to believe or we wouldn’t be doing this — is that in the long run, when everything else goes, the thing that lasts is art.
The real fight for us in the field right now is to have our own barometers of value. You have to try to take the long view. The only external measures of value [now] are box office sales and critical response. But there are many plays that had miserable box office returns and disastrous critical responses and have come to be the plays we treasure. As I get older, what I most admire in certain artists is their willingness to stay the course and keep their own exploration, their own voice, their own particular artistic journey going, whether or not it seems to be popular or viable.
We wrestle with it here all the time, because I wish people were writing bigger plays. We’re doing [Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War] at the Geary. Now this may be the most foolhardy choice I’ve ever made, but it’s such a big, meaty play that it deserves to be on the Geary stage. We do Lillian Hellman, we do August Wilson, we do Stoppard. Who’s the next generation of writers writing 10-character plays that can fit in the Geary? No wonder nobody’s doing it, because who’s producing it? Nobody! Of course everyone’s writing four-character plays. They’re not idiots.
You have to say to a writer, “Have the courage to think big. Learn the Chekhovian skill of writing for 10 actors,” which is extremely difficult. To sustain complex character over a canvas that size is a totally different challenge. We don’t ask our writers to do that anymore.
LEE SANKOWICH Well, it comes down to support. To be able to do what both of you are talking about, it comes down to corporate funding and grants.
CP But the grant ethos right now — the word that is used more than anything else — is outcomes, right? We’re all being asked to demonstrate measurable outcomes. To me this is so hilarious. It’s like saying, “I’m going to be raising my children, and the measurable outcomes are what?”
CS We need to — as artists and as leaders of artistic institutions — stand up and say, “No, we need cultural metrics. We need the enlightenment-o-meter for measurable outcomes.” Did I walk out of this performance of Orson’s Shadow knowing more about the peculiar nature of these tremendous stars and their relationships and how that impulse really created art? Did I leave there somehow changed? And can we measure that? Can we say, instead, there was a 20 percent increase in enlightenment — what a remarkable outcome! — although the attendance figures stayed flat?
LS It’s interesting, [when] you walk out of Orson’s Shadow, if nothing else, you realize that the big struggle, especially for Welles and Olivier, [is that] they’re known for what they did 30 years earlier. And their big thing is they’re trying to become modern.
CS The opening of our seasons is really emblematic. MTC is working with these great artists in a very literate, funny, interesting perspective. ACT is working on this very big social canvas in a really smart way with Stoppard. The Magic Theatre is getting to work with Sam Shepard and his most recent play [The God of Hell], likewise his most passionate play, written in a moment specifically with the intention to affect the outcome of an election! SFBG
www.act-sfbay.org
www.magictheatre.org
www.marintheatre.org
For the complete interview with Perloff, Sankowich, and Smith, see www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.
In the family way
› paulr@sfbg.com
When last I saw John Lombardo, proprietor of Lombardo’s Fine Foods, he was hurrying along the sidewalk outside the windows of his recently expanded Mission Terrace operation — a café now adjoins the catering kitchen — on his way home to … change the baby’s diapers? He had revealed to us his domestic mission, with apologies and having first checked to make sure we were satisfied with our food, and it is some measure of how satisfied we were that I forgot why he said he was rushing forth almost as soon as he’d said why. He vanished with a wave of his hand (the family place is just around the corner), and we waved back before reimmersing ourselves in an evening of home cooking, an orgy of manicotti, macaroni, orzo, and lasagna, all made according to what Lombardo told us were “family recipes.”
Cultural dry rot takes many forms — as we can see just by glancing around us these days — but one of the most insidious of those forms, for me, is the loss of ancient culinary knowledge passed down through generations, until some generation isn’t interested or can’t be bothered, and the chain breaks, the knowledge is lost, people end up ordering boxed pizza or microwaving canned soup in desperation. Some family recipes do get written down, and written recipes are better than nothing, but most of them don’t get written down. There is no better way to learn to cook, moreover, than by watching someone who knows what she or he is doing. Cooking is a sensual experience — it requires the engagement of the senses, all of them — and even the best written recipe can never be much more than a ghostly guide by comparison.
Who taught Lombardo how to cook? He graduated from the California Culinary Academy and has been a professional caterer for more than 20 years, so there we have at least two nonfamilial elements of the answer. But as my companion and I stood at the glass case, pointing at this and that with a question or two, Lombardo’s answers tended to include the phrase “family recipe” with some frequency. An orzo salad ($4), for instance, with julienne red bell pepper, shreds of mint, and crumblings of sheep-milk feta cheese folded into the ricelike pasta, was a family recipe. So was manicotti ($6.50), flaps of pasta like pig’s ears stuffed with herbed ricotta cheese and bathed in a garlicky marinara sauce decorated with basil chiffonade. We mopped up the last of the marinara sauce with chunks of grilled Italian bread.
The lineage of the lasagna ($10) did not come up, but any mother (or father, for that matter) would have been proud to bequeath to later generations the animating combination of beef and fennel-scented sausage at the heart of this classic dish. The addictive roasted red-pepper soup (thickened with potato and laced with sunflower seeds), which appeared as an opening act, wouldn’t be a bad legacy either.
Opinion at our little table (the café is tiny: just a handful of tables, though lots of windows) diverged rather startlingly on the matter of the macaroni and cheese ($8). We have never before disagreed about mac and cheese, have loved every one, fancy or plain, with Gruyère and Emmentaler or jack and American — yet the assessor across the table did not quite care for this version, with its faint, Asiatic breaths of nutmeg, turmeric, and mustard seeds and its vivid yellow color, while I found those effects (apart from the yellow) reminiscent of pastitsio, a traditional and beloved Greek dish. We did agree that the accompanying black-bean chili, with its pipings of crème fraîche, was lovely.
For Lombardo, pasta is very much the motif and casserole the method, but his flavor palettes, while heavily Italian, are not exclusively so. Besides the black-bean chili, there is also a fine turkey enchilada casserole ($9): almost a kind of Mexican lasagna, built on a floor of masa and including roasted poblano peppers, white cheese, a chili-scented tomato sauce, and plenty of turkey meat — stringy but tender, like Thanksgiving leftovers.
And there is life beyond pasta and casseroles: the café also offers a range of grilled panini — slices of grilled Italian country bread enclosing such treats as roast beef ($9). The roast beef sandwich includes caramelized onions, shavings of Gruyère, and smearings of horseradish sauce, with a crouton-rich (and under-anchovied but still quite tasty) Caesar salad on the side.
The front of the tiny house is intermittently overseen by Lombardo’s wife, Gwen, whose presence enhances the family-affair effect. She takes orders, runs the cash register, and serves the food while her husband the chef works behind her in the open kitchen, which occupies the long leg of the L-shaped space. It is possible that she also occasionally dashes home on some child-related errand, but when she is in situ, the Lombardos are not so much a power couple — the Bob and Liddy Dole of food — but joint laborers for love in a field that, while difficult, still makes room for little guys. For the restaurant business remains surprisingly, stubbornly local; yes, there are chains, but the chains tend to remind us of how many places are not chains: are instead unique, are expressions of a single sensibility, or are the product of a determined team that’s found a neighborhood niche. Will Lombardo’s Fine Foods turn out to be life’s pinnacle for John and Gwen Lombardo? The excellence of the orzo salad suggests to me that the answer is no — heights still to be scaled — but in the meantime, home is where the heart is. SFBG
LOMBARDO’S FINE FOODS
Continuous service: Tues.–Fri., 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sat., 9 a.m.–9 p.m.
1818 San Jose, SF
(415) 337-9741
www.lombardosfinefoods.com
Beer and wine pending
AE/MC/V
Moderately noisy
Wheelchair accessible
Save KQED! Vote No!
EDITORIAL KQED, San Francisco’s venerable public radio and television outlet, is trying to summarily abandon internal democracy. The station’s management is sending out letters this week asking its 190,000 members to vote on a bylaws change that would eliminate direct election of board members and shift complete control of the station’s operations to a self-appointed board. The proposal would also strip members of the right to vote on future changes to the bylaws.
This is a horrible idea and KQED members should reject it.
The bylaws change, KQED spokesperson Yoon Lee told us, comes in the wake of a May merger between KQED and San Jose’s public station, KTEH, and is aimed at simplifying operations at the stations. Besides, she said, elections are expensive: KQED spends roughly $250,000 each time it chooses new board members.
Of course, the United States could save huge sums of money by canceling congressional elections and letting the House and Senate choose their own members, but that idea wouldn’t get too far. Neither should the idea of the people — who pay for the programming, pay for the staff, pay for the salaries of the station executives, and pay for the elections — being cut out of the process.
For half a century, KQED has had a tradition of membership participation. It’s been awkward and stilted at times (the board appoints its own slate of candidates, and it’s tough for outside candidates to get on the ballot and get elected). But critics of station management have won seats on the board now and then, and their input has been tremendously healthy for the organization.
KQED has always needed independent watchdogs. For years, the station has poured money into bad projects and wasted cash on overpaid executives — at the expense of its primary mission, which is (and ought to be) to provide quality local programming. There’s no KQED TV news show (although there used to be). Other than Michael Krasny on the radio, there’s precious little in the way of local public affairs shows.
That’s the kind of thing rebel board members like Henry Kroll and Sasha Futran used to bring up and force onto the agenda. They also made the case for letting the members — and the public — have access to the details of KQED’s finances.
Lee says that none of the other big stations in the Public Broadcasting Service system have elected boards, but this is San Francisco, a city that takes its publicly supported institutions seriously and demands accountability. And locally, the direction of member-sponsored broadcasting is just the opposite: KPFA has gone to great lengths to elect a community-based board.
This is the last chance members will ever have to halt the corporatization of KQED. Most members just throw their ballots out; this time, it’s worth taking a minute to vote no on the new bylaws. SFBG
TUESDAY
Sept. 26
Music
Skygreen Leopards
For those who like their psych pop woodsy, local duo the Skygreen Leopards are here for you. Glen Donaldson and Donovan Quinn’s collaboration is the Jewelled Antler Music Collective’s marquee project – so much so that the Jagjaguwar label put out the group’s last LP, Life and Love in the Sparrow’s Meadow. The Jewelled Antler aesthetic – the collective’s many CD-Rs are all field recordings, with bands communing with nature’s music as they shape their own – finds ideal expression in the Leopard’s airy, Marin-inspired jams. (Max Goldberg)
With Or, the Whale and the Finches
9 p.m.
12 Galaxies
2565 Mission, SF
$8
(415) 970-9777
www.12galaxies.com
Music
Tall Birds
Those with a “who cares” attitude toward garage rock clearly require the antidote to all things bogus, because the Tall Birds, a Seattle group featuring ex-members of the Catheters, have successfully time-warped to the age of freakbeat sultans on their debut seven-inch, Internalize b/w the Sky Is Falling (Sub Pop). In the celebratory haze surrounding these winged wonders, you can hear the Troggs and the Stooges, but there’s a youthful todayness in the band’s melodic sensibility: after all, most of these guys were doing the indie rock thing before this. (Michael Harkin)
With the Bruises
9:30 p.m.
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
$5
(415) 923-0923
www.hemlocktavern.com
FRIDAY
Sept. 22
Music
San Francisco Symphony
How ’bout a little Antonín Dvorák with your donut? The SF Symphony, led by every girlie boy’s dreamboat conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, will be tuning up for lunchtime at Yerba Buena Gardens, with a free recap of some of the selections played at its recent hoity-toity gala opening – but this time it’s us poor schlubs who’ll be hooting and hollering for more. On the menu: Glinka’s rousing overture from Ruslan and Ludmila, Dvorák’s heartrending Symphony no. 8, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s wondrous Scheherazade, with concertmaster Alexander Barantschik generously ladling arpeggios from his magic violin. (Marke B.)
Noon
Yerba Buena Gardens
Mission and Third St., SF
Free
(415) 978-ARTS
www.sfsymphony.org
Visual Art
“Art at the Dump”: Noah Wilson and Kim Weller
Pop art on the melancholy and funny skids or curiosities that lead to even more questions: thanks to SF Recycling and Disposal’s two-headed manner of showing artist-in-residence work, anyone smart and hardy enough to trek out to the dump has both options today and tomorrow. In Perfectly Good, Noah Wilson has responded to the creative setting by exploring the overwhelming confusion and rare flashes of insight only a mass repository of garbage can conjure. In Friendly Fire, Kim Weller checks in on Disney icons, comic book characters, celebrities, and even pop art masterpieces someplace other than a gala opening. (Johnny Ray Huston)
5-9 p.m. (also Sat/23, 1-5 p.m.)
SF Recycling and Disposal
503 Tunnel, SF
Free
(415) 330-1415
www.norcalwaste.com
Police foot patrols get green light
In the face of raised levels of violent crime in San Francisco in recent months, the Board of Supes voted on September 19 to look into expanding a pilot police foot patrol program.
The program was first suggested by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and, as amended, would provide foot patrols in more neighborhoods.
In a 5-4 vote, the Supes decided to add the Tenderloin, Mission and Ingleside police stations to the program and to send the proposed legislation back to committee for another hearing.
All this went down in face of Police Chief Heather Fong’s warnings that the program would result in increased costs and slower responses to violent crimes, even as she expressed support for expanding the program.
City Budget Analyst Harvey Rose predicted that the SFPD could start up the program without additional resources.
The amended legislation goes before the Committee on Gun and Gang Violence on Oct. 2 and returns to the full Board on OCt. 3,
WEDNESDAY
Sept. 20
Music
Mission of Burma
Much like their post-punk and art rock contemporaries of the early ’80’s, MoB were around when nobody seemed to give a shit about the American indie rock scene. Sticking it out for one full-length and an EP, the Boston quartet called it quits due to guitarist Roger Miller’s tinnitus, but since their reformation in 2002, they’ve chalked up two captivating releases. Touring in support of this year’s The Obliterati (Matador), Mission of Burma have reemerged into the rock world at a time when we’re all hungry for tomorrow’s anthem. (Chris Sabbath)
With 50 Foot Wave
9 p.m.
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
$21
(415) 885-0750
www.musichallsf.com
Film
Queens
Five variably neurotic mothers – including Almodóvar regulars Carmen Maura, Verónica Forqué, and Marisa Paredes – descend upon Madrid when their sons are due to take part in the nation’s first legal gay nuptials, which will unite 20 same-sex couples. The men themselves have some last-minute issues to work out, but it’s the moms who bring on the bulk of this cluttered but amusing big-screen sitcom’s crises. These include a first-time heterosexual experience (with a future in-law), attempted suicide, nymphomania, and a particularly stupid gratuitous dance interlude. Queens is sheer contrivance, but no more so than the average mainstream US romantic comedy, and overall its good-natured silliness proves quite enjoyable. (Dennis Harvey)
In Bay Area theaters
The Shadow knows
› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Why do we want DJ Shadow, né Josh Davis, to suffer for his art? Why are we so enamored of the romantic image of Davis, pate and gaze humbly hidden by a hoodie, bowed like a monk before a crate of precious vinyl like a mendicant curled in prayer at the dusty cathedral of flat black plastic? It doesn’t help that Davis seems to resemble in part that now-iconic pop image when he meets me at Universal Records’ SoMa offices. Polite and erudite, rigorous and righteous, he obviously takes a subtle, scientific delight in the details and precision of language and in meeting commitments, making dates, finishing interviews, taking care of business. He’s not some goofed playa tripping on hyphy’s train.
But being a smart dude aware of all the angles, Davis, 34, is well aware of the disjunction between his image and his current sound — his past and present — too. “I feel like it was getting to the point where a lot of people were trying to tell me who I am and what I represent,” he explains in the, yes, shadows of a Bat Cave–ish conference room hung with midcentury horror-cheese movie posters. “This image where it’s just sort of like me in the dungeon of records, with the hood pulled over my head, and I only like old music, and y’know, hip-hop was so much better way back when.
“Yeah, that’s a little piece of who I am, but it seems like some people kind of fetishize that culture or that aspect of my personality, where it has sort of devoured everything else. And, um, I just feel like it was important for me to make this record and articulate who I am, rather than let people compartmentalize me in that little box of, ‘OK, this is DJ Shadow. He’s the sample guy. He’s the guy who made Endtroducing, and he’ll never make a better record, and that’s … DJ Shadow. Next artist.’”
Hence The Outsider (Island). It’s a bold, deep rejoinder to scoffers that somewhat ditches the dreamy grooves in Shadow’s past for ever-infectious hyphy-lickin’ good times (radio hit “3 Freaks” with Turf Talk and Keak da Sneak and “Turf Dancin’” with the Federation and Animaniaks), a little bow to crunk (“Seein’ Things” with David Banner, made in the interim between Davis’s 2002 album, Private Press [MCA], and the rise of Bay sounds), funk and funny jams (“Backstage Girl” with Phonte Coleman), and even a completely outta-left-field dissonant pastoral (“What Have I Done” with Christina Carter of Charlambrides). Even E-40 takes part (“Dats My Part”), in what might seem to some like Davis’s bow to the Bay and its players. However you read the title of his latest album, this outsider has probably made his most geographically specific, here-and-now recording to date. It’s rooted in a genuine — though scattershot and even schizo — sense of place rather than an imaginative pomo zone where old 45s can be recycled and reused ad infinitum and a talented and introverted head like Shadow can study beats, the art of sampling, and music making inside out in bedroom-community privacy. Perhaps that’s why the San Jose–born, Davis-raised Davis has been so often connected, mistakenly, to Hayward — therein lies the romance of burby anonymity, the decentered, very nonurban reality of so many hoodie-bedecked kids who fall for hip-hop and spring for decks.
So Davis leans forward intently and tells me about listening to hyphy for the first time on KMEL while driving over the Golden Gate to his Mission studio and getting an instant hit off its raw kick. How he tried to break down the “strange, almost Eastern chords and keys” underlying Rick Rock’s, Droop-E’s, Trax-a-Million’s, and Mac Dre’s tracks. These are tales he has told many times before, to Billboard and URB (which lapsed by sticking the currently capped, clean-cut Davis in a white suit, like a datedly slick star DJ). But you have to appreciate the sincere passion of his mission. The need for this father of identical twin toddler daughters to fly right, get the record straight, come correct, and make good art, even if it means happily stepping aside, letting the current Bay stars set up on two-thirds of his sonic dreamscape’s turf, and disappearing into the heat of, say, Summer Jam 2005.
“I just feel like my job is to make a good song,” he says mildly. “And if making a good song means that I play the back and not get real freaky with the programming and not load it up with 10 trillion samples or something, whatever the song requires is what I’m willing to do.”SFBG
DJ SHADOW
Thurs/21, 4 p.m.
Amoeba Music
2455 Telegraph, Berk.
Free
(510) 549-1125
Thurs/21, 8 p.m.
Amoeba Music
1855 Haight, SF
Free
(415) 831-1200
WITH MASSIVE ATTACK
Fri/22, 8 p.m.
Greek Theatre
UC Berkeley, Gayley Road, Berk.
$45.50
www.ticketmaster.com
Mural as magnet
› gwschulz@sfbg.com
Stretched across the west wall of the New Santa Clara Market in the Lower Haight is a full 15 by 45 feet of political controversy, in both its intended content and the fact that it has become a magnet for graffiti.
Located on the southeast corner of Haight and Scott streets, Positive Visibility, as the mural there is titled, shows women suffering from the symptoms of HIV-AIDS. It was completed in 1995 by an artist named Juana Alicia, who learned her craft in part from two former students of painter Diego Rivera.
Reflecting a somewhat surreal departure from Rivera’s own direct imagery, Alicia’s painting (finished with help from other HIV-AIDS activists) contains a multitude of pastel colors applied in vigorous brushstrokes. In one segment, a tattooed drug addict accepts a clean needle from a needle-exchange worker. Another woman nearby wears a shirt with the queer pink triangle and the phrase “silencio = muerte.” Three pig-faced corporate drug execs guard a prescription bottle, and a woman is kicking one of them directly in the face. Slivers of broken mirrors create a mosaic across the mural’s top center. Affable skeletons celebrate el Dia de los Muertos.
The message: women contract HIV too. It’s not unlike the hundreds of other politically charged murals most San Franciscans are proud to have coloring the city. But currently, Positive Visibility faces a cruelly ironic fate; it’s half covered in a red paint used by the building’s owner to rub out graffiti while awaiting a complex decision about how and when to restore it.
Alicia, who now lives in Mexico and has taught arts education and community organizing for 25 years, has also completed major pieces in the Mission District and at the San Francisco International Airport and the UCSF Medical Center. (She did not respond to an e-mailed list of questions.)
The problem is that Positive Visibility has been plagued by graffiti since it was completed — not spray-can lettering so much as haphazard markings. The entire bottom has been covered at times, sending neighbors into a furor and attracting citations to the owner of the building from the San Francisco Department of Public Works. Some of the graffiti has targeted the content of the mural in the form of angry expressions that the piece is antimale. One resident said she’d prefer that any existing mural at the spot reflect “the neighborhood’s vitality.”
“It’s been very controversial,” said Marc Shapiro, who lives nearby on Waller Street. “Some people want the mural. Some people don’t. I didn’t care what happened as long as somebody would maintain it…. The street has been so terrible for the last 10 years, you know. Nobody was maintaining the mural. So we had to live in a neighborhood with all of this horrible graffiti.”
The Neighborhood Beautification Fund under then-mayor Willie Brown put up $8,000 to restore the mural in 2000, an effort that included several layers of what was supposed to be a special graffiti-proof varnish. It wasn’t enough, and the graffiti continued.
“The final straw was when there were swear words — ‘Fuckin’ bitch,’ ‘asshole,’” said the building owner’s son, Suheil Alaraj. “The neighbors were, like, ‘We have children. We can’t keep walking across the street and bypassing this.’” Shapiro added that sometimes attackers would throw entire buckets of paint on the mural.
Alaraj called Alicia last year to see if she’d be interested in restoring it again. But the talks broke down and Alicia, he says, threatened to sue him if he painted over the mural completely. Exasperated, he called Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, whose district includes the Lower Haight, looking for suggestions on what to do. His office convinced Alicia to allow the Mission-based muralist collective Precita Eyes to restore the piece. Nonetheless, finding money for the project took several months. Some of the funds again came from the mayor’s beautification fund.
“Basically, they took such a long time,” Alaraj said. “They could have had it up six months ago, restored. They were waiting for this, waiting for that, waiting for this. [The graffiti] kept getting worse and worse. Once there’s tagging on it and you don’t do anything about it, people feel it’s a free-for-all. It just got out of control.”
Three months ago he decided to paint over the bottom, which was hardest hit with graffiti. Each morning he’d go back with a paintbrush until finally, about two months ago, the graffiti ceased.
Mirkarimi aide Regina Dick-Eudrizzi told the Guardian that due to a misunderstanding about covering the graffiti, Alaraj used the red paint instead of white, which would have made restoring the mural easier. The red paint doubled the costs, and only recently did Mirkarimi’s office and Precita Eyes manage to come up with the $10,000 necessary to complete the restoration. There’s a possibility that Precita Eyes could re-create the mural at a new spot, rather than restoring it at its current location. SFBG
TUESDAY
Sept. 19
Dvd/Music
Bad Brains, Live at CBGB 1982
There’s nothing fancy about the new Bad Brains DVD, Live at CBGB 1982 (Music Video Distributors), but then again, there doesn’t need to be. The recently issued concert film captures the band onstage at the peak of their early hardcore era – performing classics such as “Redbone in the City,” “How Low Can a Punk Get,” and “Attitude” – with no annoying camera tricks or other distractions. (Will York)
9 p.m.
12 Galaxies
2565 Mission, SF
Free
(415) 970-9777
www.12galaxies.com
Visual Art
“Mexico As Muse: Tina Modotti and Edward Weston”
Intended as an archive for the monumental partnership between two major artistic figures, Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s “Mexico as Muse” serves more as a teaser to Modotti’s life and work. While Weston’s images of earthen pots, ancient pyramids, and Mexican skies build a foundation for later works, his portraits of his artistic partner are by far his most interesting contributions to “Mexico as Muse.” Modotti chose her subjects carefully, opting for the limitless possibilities of telephone lines stretching over the rural Mexican landscape and flimsy, partially ajar doors instead of the immobile and established nature of Weston’s content. (K. Tighe)
Through Jan. 2
Fri.-Tues., 11 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 11 a.m.-8:45 p.m.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third St., SF
$12.50, $8 seniors, $7 students, free under 13 and members (free first Tuesday; half price Thurs., 6-8:45 p.m.)
(415) 357-4000
www.sfmoma.org
Trash hits Toronto
FEST REPORT I’m writing hours after the start of the Toronto International Film Festival’s 31st edition. Opening nights are a ritual for film festivals, and this one is no exception. The big show is always a Canadian feature: this year it’s Norman Cohn and Zacharias Kunuk’s The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, the follow-up to the same team’s hit from five years ago, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. I’ve seen the best and worst of Canadian cinema over the years at these opening nights, but I now choose to skip the red-carpet mob of Toronto’s moneyed finest in favor of an alternative: at the Elgin, one of Toronto’s best movie palaces, an international feature with high hopes unspools to an audience of cinephiles with equally grand expectations. To the collective joy of those assembled, The Lives of Others hits the giant screen with appropriate splendor. Already said to be Germany’s contender for the Oscars (a prospect that isn’t necessarily promising), this debut feature is much more than the usual polished Euro gem aiming at the global market. Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck studied political science and economics as well as filmmaking, and it shows. Here is a man who can think about his society and who, moreover, trusts the specificities of history (in this case, 1984 in the German Democratic Republic) to speak to the present. Like Good Night, and Good Luck, Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others begs us to pay attention to history. In Germany — the film suggests — the days of political thugs abusing power to control a population are over. “To think that people like you used to run a country!” its writer-protagonist explodes in a pivotal scene to an ex-politician in the lobby of a Berlin theater reviving the former’s old socialist realist play. Here in George W. Bush and Karl Rove’s America (where the wiretapping that dominates Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film is a reality), no such comforting escape into the present is remotely possible. But The Lives of Others could be a lesson to US filmmakers on how to create complex characters that lead an audience through complex issues — to think and feel at the same time, as the director’s compatriot Rainer Werner Fassbinder once put it. The Elgin Visa Screening Room (yes, that’s the name — festival sponsor Visa is inescapable) vibrated with passion at film’s end. Directors aren’t supposed to come back onstage at the opening-night screening, but the standing ovation demanded it. And the applause wasn’t only for Henckel von Donnersmarck’s very real achievement as the writer and director. Lead actor Ulrich Mühe — who gives an extraordinary performance as a conflicted Stasi agent — had been an East German theater actor under heavy Stasi surveillance. There he was, onstage too, a living storehouse of historical process. At a festival where politics are already emerging as a major focus, this jewel of a flashback may well be a flash-forward to the year ahead. (B. Ruby Rich) FEST REPORT I may be an American journalist scuttling around in Canada, but so far all of my top picks at the Toronto International Film Festival hail from Asia. South Korea’s The Host is a film you will be hearing a lot about in the near future — especially if you’re anywhere near my yapping mouth, which will be (loudly) singing the praises of Bong Joon-ho’s colossal monster jam for months to come. Kinda like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Host is inspired by a true incident. According to a 2000 Korea Times article, an American civilian employee of US Forces Korea was jailed for ordering the dumping of toxins into Seoul’s Han River. That he happened to oversee a US Army mortuary was a particularly juicy detail. As The Host imagines it, the freaky chemical combo births an underwater mutant. We don’t have to wait long to get a full reveal either: it’s a huge, mouthy sea monster, complete with dexterous tentacles and the ability to gallop across land, perform graceful backflips, and swallow whatever unlucky human being gets the hell in its way. Naturally, the local population freaks — especially a sad-sack father (Song Kang-ho, who also played a sad-sack father in Park Chanwook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) who watches helplessly when his young daughter gets lassoed by the critter. The Host follows his oft-ridiculous plans to rescue her with the help of his brother (an educated drunk) and sister (a competitive archer who tends to choke when it counts). The film also chronicles the Korean government’s strong-arm approach to handling the “river incident” — with the help of the US Army, which would just as soon incite even more panic by claiming the monster is the source of a terrible and mysterious new virus. Bonus: The Host boasts killer special effects by San Francisco’s the Orphanage (Sin City, Superman Returns) and New Zealand’s Weta Workshop (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong). With cutting political and social commentary gurgling just below the surface and black humor spurting from every orifice, The Host (due for a Magnolia Pictures release in 2007) is a must-see for monster movie fans — and jeez, everybody else too. If straight-ahead action’s more your thing, keep an eye out for Johnnie To’s Exiled (Bay Area release date unknown). Touted in some circles as the sequel to The Mission, this may be the prolific To’s best gangster movie to date. The smashingly hangdog Anthony Wong anchors a cast of familiar Hong Kong faces (Simon Yam, Francis Ng, Nick Cheung); the plot, about hired guns and gangsters who do the double cross like nobody’s business, matters less than the jaw-dropping gun battles it produces. When shoot-outs come this well choreographed, the word is gun-fu — and in Exiled, the bloody results are nothing short of stunning. Also topping my Toronto experience so far: Takashi Miike’s latest oddity, surreal prison drama Big Bang Love: Juvenile A (by the time you read this, he’ll probably already have his next film in the can); The Wayward Cloud director Tsai Ming-liang’s dreamy, gritty, and near-silent I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone; and Nobody Knows helmer Hirokazu Kore-eda’s samurai yarn, Hana. (Cheryl Eddy) For longer takes on these and other TIFF selections, read daily festival updates on the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com.
FRIDAY
Sept. 8
Visual Art
“Coprophagiology”
This is a colossal week for art openings – and the people behind “Coprophagiology” are out to grab your attention with a photo postcard that proves this tiny exhibition’s title refers to the act of eating your own shit. But the more interesting aspect of Anna Maltz and Haden Nicholl’s double-trouble show (at onetime Guardian critic Clark Bruckner’s gallery) might be its exploration of mental instability. (Johnny Ray Huston)
6-9 p.m. reception; through Oct. 7
Mission 17
2111 Mission, suite 401, SF
Free
(510) 467-1818
www.mission17.org
Film
“Friscophilia”
Artist’s Television Access welcomes four shorts of the extremely local variety for “Friscophilia: An Exploration of San Francisco Locations and History.” Included are deep cuts of bike messengers in action, SF’s tourist scene, gentrification, and, in the wonderfully titled Mischief at 16th and Florida, history as seen from one grimy street corner. Together, the films constitute a decidedly bottom-up look at the city. (Max Goldberg)
7:30 p.m.
Artist’s Television Access
992 Valencia, SF
$5-$10
(415) 824-3890
www.atasite.org
The viognier quandary
› paulr@sfbg.com
The evening’s menu was to include shrimp, marinated in paprika and lemon and grilled on skewers, and the issue was wine, as in: which one?
“I will bring a viognier,” said the imminent guest decisively, as if settling on the prescription to be given for some mysterious ailment.
“Great,” I said, “that should be fine.” Viognier! It would have my vote as the world’s most disappointing white varietal. A few years earlier, at Gary Danko, I’d had a glass of Condrieu — a reputable viognier wine produced in the south of France — and found myself thinking of some high-society type with a slightly shrill voice. The wine seemed thin and glassy, and if that was the best the French could do with viognier, I thought, then it was time to move along.
But I had overlooked the fact that Old World white grapes’ tendency to get big and fat in California might actually be an advantage for some of the emaciated cases. The great French wines made from sauvignon blanc and chardonnay grapes are robust enough despite the cooler weather and chalkier soils over there, and they suffer here, really, from too-plush conditions. But California viognier is a distinct improvement on its Gallic antecedent, if the 2005 Cline bottling brought by the imminent (then actual) guest is to be the basis of our judgment. The wine was rich and weighty, with some floral perfume reminiscent of an Alsatian Riesling’s, along with a slight residual sugariness that brought out the crustacean’s natural sweetness against the smoke of the grill and the bite of the paprika.
“This is really good!” pronounced the sweet tooth, one of whose favorite jokes is to suggest that dinner should begin with dessert. I too thought the wine was lovely, and I was also relieved that the bottle of Chablis I had chilled as a precaution (a première cru from Domaine le Renardière, 2000) would not have to be rushed in on a rescue mission but could appear with leisurely dignity as a kind of Chapter Two, telling its own distinctly different story.
The Chablis was steely, crisp, and dignified, in the high French tradition — a different story indeed — and purely as an enological matter I preferred it. But the viognier matched better with the food on the table, of that there was no doubt, though it was gone by the time dessert finally appeared.
A lover’s lane
› paulr@sfbg.com
Of the top 10 questions I am most often asked about restaurants in the city, the top two by far are “Which is the best?” and “Which is your favorite?” Since “best” is a snake pit of competing considerations and unacknowledged biases, I am happier with the second, which is all about acknowledging one’s biases — about being in touch with the inner bias. For me, it is also far easier to answer, since my favorite restaurant in the city, the one I have recommended to inquiring minds for more than a decade, is Hawthorne Lane. (And a brief digression here for the honorable mentions: Firefly, Delfina, Gary Danko, and Boulevard, each reliably sensational in its way.)
How do I love Hawthorne Lane? Let me count the ways. The food, of course, has always been exquisite, though the many Asian touches favored by the original chef, Annie Gingrass, are much less in evidence under the current regime of Bridget Batson; the only more-or-less intact survivor I recognized from the old days is the Chinese-style roasted duck.
Speaking of survivors: the restaurant itself qualifies as one, having surfed the treacherous dot-com wave and its rough aftermath with grace and without frantic reinvention. The restaurant still looks much as it did when it opened in 1995: there is handsome ironwork on a glorious old brick building, a casual front room whose ovoid bar stands amid a ring of booths, and a regal passageway to the main dining room, with its exhibition kitchen, banquettes upholstered in rich fabrics (some floral, others striped), and plenty of paintings (most of the colorful-squiggly school) on the walls. The look, with its meant-to-last fusion of traditional and modern elements, is timeless and has worn well.
Best of all, you can offer this observation and many others across your table without having to shout to be heard. You might even be able to whisper, or at least murmur. For Hawthorne Lane has artfully managed noise from the beginning, and on that basis alone it long ago won my heart. The place is busy and it is lively, but while the cauldron of sound simmers and bubbles, it never boils over. The result is a restaurant in which it is possible to converse while enjoying the food, and for some of us this basic and ancient mix of satisfactions remains one of the heights of civilization.
The food would be enjoyable in any event. While I mourn the passing of the $28 three-course prix fixe option — offered in the dark autumn of 2001, when air travel was stunted and tourism anemic — I am glad to find that most of the main courses on the ever-changing menu are now available in half sizes (at reduced if not quite halved prices), an innovation that encourages the trying of more dishes and the ingestion of fewer calories while helping with money management. (Hawthorne Lane is expensive, and you could easily drop $100 a head there, but you can also spend quite a bit less and not cheat yourself.)
One of the few big dishes not offered in smaller guise on the main menu is the Chinese duck — but it did turn up as a downsized item (for $15) on the bar menu, inclusive of split scallion buns with which to make little duck sandwiches. We agreed that the finger-food angle was fun, but the dish on the whole seemed to be a little out of tune, with too much vinegar in the sauce, like a light on an overcranked dimmer. Could this imbalance perhaps be because the duck is a signature dish from a regime that’s no longer there?
Otherwise, Batson’s cooking is both passionate and elegant. From the fire-breathing brick oven emerges a small but memorable procession of clever pizzas, among them a pie ($12) topped with prosciutto, Mission figs, and arugula leaves: an artful combination of salty, sweet, and nutty, with plenty of white cheese to serve as emulsifier. Squash blossoms ($14), icons of summer, are stuffed with goat cheese and basil, tempura-battered into flute shapes, deep-fried, and presented on mixed greens with a pool of soffrito and cherry tomatoes.
Even more deeply imbued with the essence of summer, if that’s possible, is an heirloom tomato risotto ($13 for a half portion), intense with tomatoey-ness despite its golden color and enriched with plenty of parmesan cheese. The dish is like a distant, aristocratic relation of mac and cheese, with the differences as apparent as the familial similarities. We caught no plebeian echo, on the other hand, in the crisped striped sea bass ($17 for a half portion). The small chunk of filet was indeed well crisped, the better to stand up to a cap of peperonata and a few coins of fennel root (nature’s little breath mint) braised with leek and pancetta.
The half-sizing joyride ends abruptly at the dessert border. But this poses no hardship, because people seem routinely to share desserts in a way they do not always share savory courses. It helps that Hawthorne Lane’s desserts are big and complex; we saw a trio of the seasonal sorbets — spooned cornucopia-style into crisp fruit cups — arriving at the next table and silently wished that couple luck for the long march. For us, the matter at hand was the fetchingly named peach buckle ($9.50), a kind of stone fruit coffee cake with slices of Frog Hollow peach atop an almond streusel and cinnamon meal baked over everything, like stucco. We buckled down and demolished it. SFBG
HAWTHORNE LANE
Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
Dinner: Sun.–Thurs., 5:30–9 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 5:30–10 p.m.
22 Hawthorne, SF
(415) 777-9779
www.hawthornelane.com
Full bar
AE/DC/DISC/MC/V
Pleasant noise level
Wheelchair accessible
The runners-up
11. DANGERS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD CONFIRMED
Sources: “Revealed: Health Fears over Secret Study into GM Food,” Geoffrey Lean, Independent (UK), May 22, 2005; “Monsanto’s GE Corn Experiments on Rats Continue to Generate Global Controversy,” GM Free Cymru, Organic Consumers Association Web site, June 2, 2005; “GM: New Study Shows Unborn Babies Could Be Harmed,” Geoffrey Lean, Independent (UK), Jan. 8, 2006; “New Suspicions About GMOs,” Herve Kempf, le Monde and Truthout, Feb. 9, 2006
12. PENTAGON PLANS TO BUILD NEW LAND MINES
Sources: “After 10-Year Hiatus, Pentagon Eyes New Landmine,” Isaac Baker, Inter Press Service, Aug. 3, 2005; “Development and Production of Landmines,” Human Rights Watch Web site, August 2005
13. NEW EVIDENCE ESTABLISHES DANGERS OF ROUNDUP
Source: “New Evidence of Dangers of Roundup Weedkiller,” Chee Yoke Heong, Third World Resurgence, no. 176, April 2005
14. HOMELAND SECURITY CONTRACTS KBR TO BUILD DETENTION CENTERS IN THE UNITED STATES
Sources: “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps,” Peter Dale Scott, New America Media, Jan. 31, 2006; “10-Year US Strategic Plan for Detention Camps Revives Proposals from Oliver North,” Peter Dale Scott, New America Media, Feb. 21, 2006; “Bush’s Mysterious ‘New Programs,’” Nat Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, Feb. 21, 2006; “Detention Camp Jitters,” Maureen Farrell, BuzzFlash
15. CHEMICAL INDUSTRY IS THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY’S PRIMARY RESEARCH PARTNER
Sources: “Chemical Industry Is Now EPA’s Main Research Partner,” Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Oct. 5, 2005; “EPA Becoming Arm of Corporate R&D,” Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Oct. 6, 2005
16. ECUADOR AND MEXICO DEFY UNITED STATES ON INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
Sources: “Ecuador Refuses to Sign ICC Immunity Deal for US Citizens,” Alexander Martinez, Agence France-Presse (School of the Americas Watch), June 22, 2005; “Mexico Defies Washington on the International Criminal Court,” Katherine Stapp, Inter Press Service, Nov. 2, 2005
17. IRAQ INVASION PROMOTES OPEC AGENDA
Sources: “OPEC and the Economic Conquest of Iraq,” Greg Palast, Harper’s in coordination with BBC Television Newsnight, Oct. 24, 2005; “Bush Didn’t Bungle Iraq, You Fools: The Mission Was Indeed Accomplished,” Greg Palast, Guardian (UK), March 20, 2006
18. PHYSICIST CHALLENGES OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY
Sources: “Y. Professor Thinks Bombs, Not Planes, Toppled WTC,” Elaine Jarvik, Deseret Morning News, Nov. 10, 2005; “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?,” Steven E. Jones, Brigham Young University Web site, Winter 2005; “BYU Professor’s Group Accuses US Officials of Lying about 9/11,” Elaine Jarvik, Deseret Morning News, Jan. 26, 2006
19. DESTRUCTION OF RAINFORESTS WORST EVER
Source: “Revealed: The True Devastation of the Rainforest,” Steve Connor, Independent (UK), Oct. 21, 2005
20. BOTTLED WATER: A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM
Source: “Bottled Water: Nectar of the Frauds?,” Abid Aslam, OneWorld.net, Feb. 5, 2006
21. GOLD MINING THREATENS ANCIENT ANDEAN GLACIERS
Sources: “Barrick Gold Strikes Opposition in South,” Glenn Walker, CorpWatch.com, June 20, 2005; “Chile: ‘Yes’ to Gold Mine, But Don’t Touch the Glaciers,” Daniela Estrada, Inter Press Service, Feb. 15, 2006
22. BILLIONS IN HOMELAND SECURITY SPENDING UNDISCLOSED
Source: “Billions in States’ Homeland Purchases Kept in the Dark,” Eileen Sullivan, Congressional Quarterly, June 22, 2005
23. US OIL TARGETS KYOTO IN EUROPE
Sources: “Oil Industry Targets EU Climate Policy,” David Adam, Guardian (UK), Dec. 8, 2005; “How America Plotted to Stop Kyoto Deal,” Andrew Buncombe, Independent (UK), Dec. 8, 2005
24. CHENEY’S HALLIBURTON STOCK ROSE MORE THAN 3,000 PERCENT LAST YEAR
Sources: “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Rose 3,281 Percent Last Year, Senator Finds,” John Byrne, Raw Story, Oct. 2005; “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Soar to $9.2 Million,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s Web site
25. US MILITARY IN PARAGUAY THREATENS REGION
Sources: “Fears Mount as US Opens New Military Installation in Paraguay,” Benjamin Dangl, Upside Down World, Oct. 5, 2005; “Dark Armies, Secret Bases, and Rummy, Oh My!,” Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus, Nov. 21, 2005; “US Military Moves in Paraguay Rattle Regional Relations,” Sam Logan and Matthew Flynn, International Relations Center, Dec. 14, 2005 SFBG
SUNDAY
Sept. 3
Music
Dub Mission
Sometimes finding a unique spin on a familiar concept only leads to bankruptcy (e.g., the thankfully short-lived Pets.com), and sometimes it can lead to a 10-year residency at the Elbo Room, which is what San Francisco’s only weekly dub, dancehall, and progressive roots club, Dub Mission, celebrates tonight. Founded in 1996 by former KUSF DJ Sep (who recently returned to the decks after a brief spot of maternity leave), Dub Mission has consistently attracted a thoroughly mixed, laid-back fan base whose primary focus is dancing, not dissing. This week’s festivities will feature a live performance from J-Boogie’s Dubtronic Science. Happy anniversary, Dub Mission, shall we dance? (Nicole Gluckstern)
9 p.m.
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
$15
(415) 552-7788
www.dubmissionsf.com
www.elbo.com
Film/dvd
A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005
Ah, Market Street. How many lonely nights I’ve stood on you, freezing my pachangas off while waiting for the stupid 9 to show up. How many times (two) I’ve gotten my tire stuck in the F car rails and flipped over my handlebars. Whether you’re a financier, panhandler, chess player, or German tourist, the street has undoubtedly worked its way diagonally into your heart. Even if your connection to Market is – like mine – cold and painful, you owe it to the relationship to check out the screening and DVD release party for A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005, two movies made a hundred years apart about its illustrious past and present. (Jason Shamai)
2 p.m.
Exploratorium
3601 Lyon, SF
Free with museum admission ($8-$13)
(415) 563-7337
www.exploratorium.edu
THURSDAY
Aug. 31
Music
Sampling Oakland Performances
Oakland’s immensely vital arts scene gets some much-deserved reverence in one of the Yerba Buena Center’s current visual art installations, Sampling Oakland. The work of artists like Erik Groff attempts, through various media, to navigate the space presented by the city of Oakland and the gallery space at YBCA in thoughtful, unconventional ways. In addition to regular viewing, this evening the exhibit plays host to a number of adventurous local guest musicians selected by curators from the 21 Grand, an interdisciplinary arts space in Oakland. (Michael Harkin)
6:30 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission, SF
Free with gallery admission ($4-$6)
(415) 978-2787
www.ybca.org
Film
Soylent Green
We’re still a sweet 16 years away from 2022, when strawberry jam costs an arm and a leg and everyone eats mysterious foodstuff made by the Soylent Corporation. What, you don’t believe a reanimated Chuck Heston will be around to try to get to the cannibalistic bottom of a dystopia-in-the-making? Recent news about body-part harvesting companies like Donor Referral Services and Biomedical Tissue Services might change your mind. Chew on them – and salute programmers who realize that there is no better site than a humanist hall to screen Soylent Green. (Johnny Ray Huston)
7:30 p.m.
Humanist Hall
390 27th St., Oakl.
$5 donation
(510) 393-5685
www.humanisthall.net