Mission

Garage troubadour

Andrew Lam
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Garage troubadour

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC “I did something really stupid,” was pretty much the first thing Ty Segall said to me as we walked to Philz Coffee in the Mission. Originally the plan was to sit at El Metate, but that got nixed as we agreed an afternoon jolt of caffeine was more important.

I asked what he had done that was so stupid, but it wasn’t specifically clear which act he was referring to. On the defensive, he went off on a tangent about how he perceives his guitars almost as talismans. “It’s like voodoo,” he said. That’s how he explains his behavior when he gives a guitar away to somebody. Other times he goes with the more cliched rock ritual of destroying one on stage. This also led to his purchase of a 1965 sea-foam green Mustang Fender. The excitement in his voice as he described his new toy was apparent. Music is what makes him tick.

I interviewed him in 2009 when Lemons (Goner Records) came out, but that was forever ago considering his well-documented abundance of releases. Now that Goner is putting out a double LP, Singles 2007-2010 (out this week), it seemed like an appropriate time to catch up and see how constant touring may be taking its toll on the 24-year-old garage rock answer to a troubadour.

We settled at a picnic table at a nearby soccer park where Segall, clad in Ray Bans and a brown cardigan, explained his fatigue from life on the road. He had just wrapped up a slew of local gigs, including a Halloween show where he and his band performed as the Spits. There, they struggled for the spotlight as an unruly woman from the audience — who was allegedly “humping everything” — stole a purse, and had to be bounced. Then it was off to Austin for a couple of dates where he performed alongside Thee Oh Sees, who he considers the best live band San Francisco has to offer, Black Lips and the Damned at the three-day Fun Fun Fun Fest.

“We never really stop touring. I wonder how we’re still here,” he said in bewilderment of both the physical and mental drain bands endure. “Everybody hits a wall.” He was referring to breaking points, but was also responding to my prodding about a previous interview he gave to Spinner.com where he commented on the fragility of one’s mind, and how you can “lose it at any moment”.

Just as he was admitting his own sensitivity, three pugs walked over to him, as if on cue. I watched him pet the triplets in a moment of adorably comforting symbiosis. It appears he’s learning his limits, coping with an over-analytical brain and growing a thicker skin.

But that’s not to say his creative well is running dry any time soon. While the singles compilation is a retrospective, along with some unreleased material, Segall said he’s still “psyched” to record something new. 2012 promises to be fruitful as his booking agent claimed the native So Cal. surfer has three records coming out next year.

While he doesn’t see himself as being in a “party band”, he’s been given the unique opportunity to partake in the second annual Bruise Cruise. It’s a three-day cruise to the Bahamas loaded with garage bands, their fans, and 75 percent regular ol’ tourists, according to Segall. The concept seems a bit ridiculous in the sense that trash rockers will converge with such decadence. This year he’s joining a super group of sorts called the Togas with Shannon Shaw of Shannon and the Clams, Phillip Sambol from Strange Boys, and Lance Willie (drummer from the Reigning Sound).

But for now Segall can hold off and breathe for a second before setting sail. He can enjoy what he considers the vacation of just being home, doing his laundry, and all the other domestic yearnings that come with wanting a house with a yard and a basement.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; (415) 992-8168, www.thealcovetheater.com. $32-50. Schedule varies, through Dec 29. Not Quite Opera Productions presents Anne Nygren Doherty’s musical about San Francisco, with five characters all portrayed by Mary Gibboney.

Annapurna Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Showtimes vary, through Dec 4. Magic Theatre artistic director Loretta Greco helms this new two-hander by playwright Sharr White about a dying man named Ulysses (Rod Gnapp) who gets an unexpected visit by his ex-wife, Emma (Denise Cormier), who took their young son and left him some 20 years earlier when he was still an alcoholic. Ulysses, a once respected poet living a reclusive life in his trailer home (a cluttered stick-figure set by Andrew Boyce) in a tiny Colorado town, is now dry of drink and published verse — and normally naked too (at the moment Emma shows up he happens to be frying some sausages, so he’s got a little apron on as well as an oxygen tube for his dire emphysema). But he has continued to write unanswered letters to his son and composed over years an epic work comparing love to the alluring but deadly mountaintop that gives the play its title. For her part, Emma has left her second husband in another middle-of-the-night flight, but her reasons are a little different this time. We sense she never got over Ulysses either, but there’s a nagging urgency to her arrival too related to their now grown-up son, which is gradually revealed in the course of their sometimes too glib or forced interactions. There’s more than a whiff of Sam Shepard about this lonely cowboy poet and his estrangement, but the story is not nearly as compelling or suspenseful as a Shepard play, in part because characters and plot are not very believable and the story is bluntly sentimental to boot. (Avila)

*Fela! Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $31-200. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm; no show Thurs/24); Sun, 2pm (also Sun/27, 7:30pm). Through Dec 11. The life and music of Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti is captured in this show with choreography by Bill T. Jones.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Dec 18. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Language Rooms Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Thurs/24); Sun, 7pm. Extended through Dec 11. Golden Thread Productions and Asian American Theater Company present the West Coast premiere of Yussef El Guindi’s dark comedy.

Making Porn Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-50. Fri/25-Sat/26, 9pm; Sun/27, 7pm. Ronnie Larsen brings back his crowd-pleasing comedy about the gay porn industry.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 3pm. Extended through Dec 17. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

*On the Air Pier 29 on the Embarcadero (at Battery), SF; (415) 438-2668, love.zinzanni.org. $117 and up (includes dinner). Showtimes vary, through Dec 31. Teatro ZinZanni’s final production at its longtime nest on Pier 29 is a nostalgia-infused banquet of bits structured around an old-time radio variety show, featuring headliners Geoff Hoyle (Geezer) and blues singer Duffy Bishop. If you haven’t seen juggling on the radio, for instance, it’s pretty awesome, especially with a performer like Bernard Hazens, whose footing atop a precarious tower of tubes and cubes is already cringingly extraordinary. But all the performers are dependably first-rate, including Andrea Conway’s comic chandelier lunacy, aerialist and enchanting space alien Elena Gatilova’s gorgeous “circeaux” act, graceful hand-balancer Christopher Phi, class-act tapper Wayne Doba, and radio MC Mat Plendl’s raucously tweeny hula-hooping. Add some sultry blues numbers by raunchy belter Bishop, Hoyle’s masterful characterizations (including some wonderful shtick-within-a-shtick as one-liner maestro “Red Bottoms”), a few classic commercials, and a healthy dose of audience participation and you start to feel nicely satiated and ready for a good cigar. Smoothly helmed by ZinZanni creative director Norm Langill, On the Air signals off-the-air for the popular dinner circus — until it can secure a new patch of local real estate for its antique spiegeltent — so tune in while you may. (Avila)

*Pellas and Melisande Cutting Ball Theater, Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Fri/25-Sat/26, 8pm (also Sat/26, 2pm); Sun/27, 5pm. The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, the Swan Maiden: shimmering strands of each timeless tale twist through the melancholy tapestry of the Maurice Maeterlinck play Pelleas and Melisande, which opens Cutting Ball Theater’s 12th season. Receiving a lushly atmospheric treatment by director and translator Rob Melrose, this ill-fated Symbolist drama stars Joshua Schell and Caitlyn Louchard as the doomed lovers. Trapped in the claustrophobic environs of an isolated castle at the edge of a forbidding forest and equally trapped in an inadvertent love triangle with the hale and hearty elder prince Golaud (Derek Fischer), Pelleas’ brother and Melisande’s husband, the desperate, unconsummated passion that builds between the two youngsters rivals that of Romeo and Juliet’s, and leads to an ending even more tragic — lacking the bittersweet reconciliation of rival families that subverts the pure melodrama of the Shakespearean classic. Presented on a spare, wooden traverse stage (designed by Michael Locher), and accompanied by a smoothly-flowing score by Cliff Caruthers, the action is enhanced by Laura Arrington’s haunting choreography, a silent contortionism which grips each character as they try desperately to convey the conflicting emotions which grip them without benefit of dialogue. Though described by Melrose as a “fairy tale world for adults,” the dreamy gauze of Pelleas and Melisande peels away quickly enough to reveal a flinty and unsentimental heart. (Gluckstern)

Savage in Limbo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm (no show Thurs/24). Through Dec 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs John Patrick Shanley’s edgy comedy.

SexRev: The José Sarria Experience CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; (415) 552-4100, www.therhino.org. $10-25. Fri/25-Sat/26, 8pm (also Sat/26, 10:30pm); Sun/27, 3pm. Theatre Rhinoceros performs John Fisher’s musical celebration of America’s first queer activist — a hit for the company in 2010.

Shoot O’Malley Twice StageWerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.viragotheatre.org. Fri/25-Sat/26, 8pm. Virago Theater Company performs Jon Brooks’ world-premiere existential comedy.

A Tale of Two Genres SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat and Dec 20-21, 8pm (no show Thurs/24; additional shows Sat, 3pm). Through Dec 21. Un-Scripted Theater Company presents an improvised musical inspired by Charles Dickens.

The Temperamentals New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 18. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jon Marans’ drama about gay rights during the McCarthy era.

Totem Grand Chapiteau, AT&T Park, Parking Lot A, 74 Mission Rock, SF; cirquedusoleil.com/totem. $58-248.50. Tues-Sun, schedule varies. Extended through Dec 18. Cirque Du Soleil returns with its latest big-top production.

Two Dead Clowns Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri/25-Sat/26, 7pm. Ronnie Larsen’s new play explores the lives of Divine and John Wayne Gacy.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Fri/25, 8pm; Sat/26, 5pm. Brian Copeland (Not a Genuine Black Man) presents a workshop production of his new solo show.

*Working for the Mouse Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $22. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no performances Thurs/24-Sat/26). Through Dec 17. It might not come as a surprise to hear that even “the happiest place on earth” has a dark side, but hearing Trevor Allen describe it during this reprise of 2002’s Working for the Mouse will put a smile on your face as big as Mickey’s. With a burst of youthful energy, Allen bounds onto the tiny stage of Impact Theatre to confess his one-time aspiration to never grow up — a desire which made auditioning for the role of Peter Pan at Disneyland a sensible career move. But in order to break into the big time of “charactering,” one must pay some heavy, plush-covered dues. As Allen creeps up the costumed hierarchy one iconic cartoon figure at a time, he finds himself unwittingly enmeshed in a world full of backroom politics, union-busting, drug addled surfer dudes with peaches-and-cream complexions, sexual tension, showboating, job suspension, Make-A-Wish Foundation heartbreak, hash brownies, rabbit vomit, and accidental decapitation. Smoothly paced and astutely crafted, Mouse will either shatter your blissful ignorance or confirm your worst suspicions about the corporate Disney machine, but either way, it will probably make you treat any “Casual Seasonal Pageant Helpers” you see running around in their sweaty character suits with a whole lot more empathy. (Note: review from the show’s recent run at La Val’s Subterranean in Berkeley.) (Gluckstern)

BAY AREA

Annie Berkeley Playhouse, Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; (510) 845-8542, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Thurs-Sat, 7pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through Dec 4. Berkeley Playhouse performs the classic musical.

Rambo: The Missing Years Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 7pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Dec 10. Howard “Hanoi Howie” Petrick presents his solo show about being an anti-war demonstrator — while also serving in the Army.

Sam’s Enchanted Evening TheaterStage at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri/25, 8pm; Sat/26, 8:30pm. The Residents wrote the script and did the musical arrangements for this musical, featuring singer Randy Rose and pianist Joshua Raoul Brody.

The Soldier’s Tale Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 18. Aurora Theatre presents a re-imagined version of Igor Stravinsky’s 1918 musical by Tom Ross and Muriel Maffre.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun and Fri/25-Sat/26 and Dec 26-30, 11am (no show Dec 25). Through Dec 31. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Russell Brand Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.slimstickets.com. Tues, 8pm. $50-125. The bawdy comedian performs to benefit the David Lynch Foundation.

Carolina Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun, 6:15pm. $15-19. Spain comes to North Beach with footwork, song, castanets, hand-clapping, and guitar.

Mark Foehringer Dance Project | SF Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Fourth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sat-Sun, 11am, 2pm, 4pm (no 4pm show Sun/27); Dec 20-23, 11am and 2pm. Through Dec 23. $20-35. The contemporary ballet company performs Mark Foehringer’s Nutcracker Sweets.

ODC/Dance Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.odcdance.org. Fri/25-Sun/27, Dec 4, and 11, 2pm; Dec 1-2 and 8-9, 11am; Dec 3 and 10, 1 and 4pm; $15-45. The company presents the 25th anniversary of KT Nelson’s The Velveteen Rabbit.

“San Francisco Theater Pub” Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. Mon, 7:30pm. Free. A new play by Brian Markey. 

 

Gifts with grace

Andrew Lam
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1
Gifts with grace

culture@sfbg.com

HOLIDAY GUIDE 2011 It’s the gift-giving season, and each foil-wrapped bauble tells a tale. There’s the love-you-this-much of a parent’s infamous peach cobbler pie, the damn-I-just-took-your-breath-away of a winter getaway to the Bahamas. There is the who-are-you-again? of Aunt Shirley’s yearly package of black dress socks. But then there are the let’s-change-the-world gifts, the ones that are not just about the recipient but that nonetheless land in the giftee’s hands with a heft that speaks of their worth to the community. Toasty as a chestnut roasting on an open fire, no? Giving that warmth can be as simple as copping a T-shirt, book, or card from one of the do-gooder nonprofits and shops listed below. And remember, even if you’re not the thin sock-loafer type, you can always improve your own karma by snail-mailing a heartfelt thank you note to Shirley. 

 

NIROGA CENTER

Everyone seems to make the same tired New Year’s resolution: lose weight, live healthier, blah blah blah. At the Niroga Center, however, you can spring for a yoga package for that uncreative loved one that will not just help brighten their inner light, but will go to stoke the spark of others who are struggling to make ends meet. The center offers affordable, high-quality yoga instruction, and puts particular focus on at-risk and underserved individuals, teaching yoga to incarcerated youth, high school children, and cancer survivors. For the holidays, you can donate any amount of money to the center, which will fund their donation-based classes and classes that teach yoga to the underprivileged. You can also purchase yoga classes to start someone’s year anew for as low as $10.

1808 University, Berk. (510) 704-1330, www.nirogacenter.org

 

CASA BONAMPAK

With a salesfloor awash in papel picado and other crafts from Chiapas, Casa Bonampak believes in preserving Mexican traditions, and that reconnecting with culture can transform and heal. All in all, it’s a feel-good (and community-building) place to do your holiday shopping. The shop’s all-woman staff works directly with Mexican and Latin American artists to sell unique jewelry, luchador masks, and handmade cards, with most items ranging from $4 to $13. The store has also been dedicated to promoting local Latin artists in the Bay Area for 15 years. With so many gorgeous handicrafts crammed into the Valencia Street storefront, Casa Bonampark is a great place to support culture on either sides of the border.

1051 Valencia, SF. (415) 642-4079, www.casabonampak.com

 

GUARDSMEN CHRISTMAS TREE LOT

The Guardsmen, a group of Bay Area men who work together to help at-risk children and organize educational and outdoor activities for inner-city youth have organized this forest of fir every year since 1947. Now as way back then, the proceeds from the lot support the organization’s doing-good year-round. Post-Thanksgiving, a corner of Fort Mason is transformed into a winter wonderland with trees as tall as 15 feet decorated with ornaments and wreaths. The all-volunteer guardsmen staff can assist you in picking the perfect holiday tree with which to surprise your apartmentmates — you can even arrange to have one delivered to your home. Coupled with events like crab feeds, wine tastings, and opportunities to take photos with Santa, picking up some beautiful boughs for the family never felt so good.

Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, 38 Fort Mason, SF. www.guardsmentreelot.com

 

LIBERATION INK

Do you have a friend who has been dying for a “Brown and Proud” T-shirt ($24)? Perhaps they’re jonesing for an organic tote with a picture of Assata Shakur ($16)? Liberation Ink, an all-volunteer, worker-owned apparel printing and design collective, believes in a sustainable movement for social justice that is funded from within. It prints revolutionary faces and sayings on shirts made organically and/or without the use of sweatshop labor. All profits go directly to support grassroots social justice organizations like the May 1st Alliance for Land, Work and Power, and the Deporten a la Migra Coalition. The brand’s comfy, stylin’ T-shirts will have your lucky giftee looking fly and spreading the word of social equality in one fell swoop.

www.liberationink.org

 

COMMUNITY THRIFT STORE

A nonprofit secondhand store, Community Thrift relies entirely upon donations of clothes, knick-knacks, kitchen supplies, and furniture to keep its doors open. And they stay open, too: the Mission District shop is open to browsing and donations from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Shopping here — and if your boyfriend’s been searching for that perfect yet affordable leather bomber jacket or snazzy armchair, this should be your first stop — supports local non-profits like the San Francisco LGBT Center and the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center, just two of almost 200 organizations that benefit from Community Thrift’s largess.

623 Valencia, SF. (415) 861-4910, www.communitythriftsf.org

 

SAN FRANCISCO ZOO

Has the kid you nanny been yapping about adopting a Magellanic penguin? Maybe your friend has always admired Chilean flamingos? You can sponsor their love of the wild by donating $50 in their name to the Adopt-an-Animal program at the San Francisco Zoo. The donation will help to provide veterinary care for the furred and feathered, not to mention support educational programs for tomorrow’s wildlife champions. Once you’ve dropped the dough your loved one will receive a certificate of adoption — very official! — as well as a fact sheet and photo of the critter they’re sponsoring. Feeling flush? Your other option is the zoo’s Guardian program, which for a minimum annual contribution of $1000 will help provide further support to the zoo. It supports high-quality animal care, and all kinds of incidentals that keep the family destination open to the public. Give the gift of Guardianship and your buddy will receive free admission, carousel rides, and free parking near their furry for an entire year.

San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo Road, SF. (415) 753-7080, www.sfzoo.org

 

THE BOOKMARK STORE

Sure, the money from your holiday purchase here will go to a good cause — but it’s also the perfect place to browse and spend your lunch hour while you shop down your holiday list. The Bookmark is a non-profit that’s run by the Friends of the Oakland Public Library. It houses everything from science fiction to cooking to non-fiction, an inexpensive place where you don’t have to scour shelves to find those hard-to-find, out-of-print books your favorite bibliophile will flip to receive. Plus, all proceeds from your sale will keep libraries in Oakland with their pages open to the public.

721 Washington, Oakl. (510) 444-0473, www.thebookmarkstore.org

 

Holiday gift guide

Andrew Lam
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0
Holiday gift guide

culture@sfbg.com

HOLIDAY GUIDE 2011 We know. Between the blasts of pepper gas you sustained at the last Cal protest and all those “support needed” texts you’ve been receiving from Occupy Everything, Everywhere, All the Time you’ve barely had a spare moment to think about your holiday shopping list. Easy now, no need to get your bandanna in a twist. We’ve been trekking around the city (and that hella occupied burg on the other end of the Bay Bridge) for the very best in affordable presents this holiday season — and we found them all at locally-owned businesses. So don’t break the bank — occupy its lobby instead, conquered shopping list in hand. 

 

DICK VIVIAN MIX CD, $10

ROOKY RICARDO’S

There is perhaps nothing more happy than a man with soul in his heart, as anyone who watches the YouTube video entitled “Dick Vivian cuttin’ the rug at Rooky’s!” can attest. Vivian is the owner and spiritual embodiment of the venerable Lower Haight record store, which he stocks with real-cheap 45s, vintage camera equipment, and a passel of witty lapel pins and magnets.

For real holiday majick, however, one must turn to Vivian’s lovingly-crafted mix CDs. There they sit, 10 bucks a pop with witty, retro-recreation packaging, a wonderland of ’60s soul, girl bands, and more. Many of the tracks, Vivian will attest, have never been captured in CD form before. Do you have a dad who still digs on the funky sounds of his youth? A buddy who is never more happy than when she’s doing the twist? You friend, have struck shopping list gold.

448 Haight, SF. (415) 864-7526, www.rookyricardos.com

 

WOMEN’S SHOES, $8

CLOTHES CONTACT

Half the battle of holiday shopping is remaining positive. You will find the perfect token of your affection for each and every coworker, friend, family member, and postal worker. The secret to undying enthusiasm this season is patronizing shops where retailing can make you happy — which is why a visit to Clothes Contact is essential. The Mission vintage shop is a carnival of colors and patterns, and sells most of its items by the pound ($10 per!)

Some of the shop’s most attractive items are the individually-priced accessories like its bowties and fedoras, which combine for a package that’ll make even the most sartorially uninspired chappie stoked for the office holiday party. The real steal, however, is in the shoe section, where you will find women’s kicks for a pittance. $8 gets you this pair of jewel-toned slippers, whose sexy-comfy flat heels have the power to traipse with you through much more than eight crazy nights.

473 Valencia, SF. (415) 621-3212

 

BLOOD ORANGE BITTERS, $5.50

BLACKWELL’S WINE AND SPIRITS

The average behind-the-bar adventurer knows bitters to be highly concentrated blends of herbs, spices, rinds, and roots sure to add zing to a standard cocktail. This non-alcoholic blood orange bottle lends a deep, pumpkin-y hue to your drinks — as well as a slightly sweet taste.

5620 Geary, SF. (415) 386-9463, www.blackwellswines.com

 

MY MISSION GUIDEBOOK, $7

MISSION LOC@L

Mission Loc@l’s guidebook lives up to the neighborhood news site’s name: their pocket-sized collection of various Missionites’ (from grade-schoolers to aging boho poets) favorite places in the ‘hood could open the eyes of the most seasoned South Van Ness dweller to hidden gems amidst the murals and taco shops.

Available in various SF locations. Order online at www.missionlocal.org (search term: guidebook)

 

VINTAGE BOWTIES, $10

PAUL’S HAT WORKS

Paul’s Hat Shop has been around since 1918 — and the same goes for many of its hat styles. Check out the silky old bowties that sit seductively on a countertop. They come in patterns that haven’t seen the light of day for decades, guaranteeing that vintage fans recipients will wear them with care.

6128 Geary, SF. (415) 221-5332, www.hatworksbypaul.com

 

CANDY NIPPLE TASSELS, $10

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Open the door to the best kind of trouble with these dangling pasties, made from the same chalky rainbow sweets as traditional candy necklaces. Swing by Good Vibe’s newest store at 899 Mission to check out the sex toy vanguard’s downtown flavor.

Various Bay Area locations. www.goodvibes.com

 

JAPANESE HOUSE SLIPPERS, $4.89

SAKURA DISCOUNT STORE

Unless your recipient’s feet fall outside the size four to thirteen range, they can rest easy in the soft silken threads of Sakura’s house slippers. A jam-packed and family-run Japanese discount store, this spot stocks hundreds of the kicks, which are perfect for padding around the house or slipping on for a last-minute car-moving operation since yes, street sweeping is this morning.

936 Irving Street, SF. (415) 665-5064, www.sakurasf.com

 

DIY HOLLOW BOOK, COST OF SUPPLIES

YOUR HOUSE (YOU’VE GOT OLD BOOKS, RIGHT?)

A sweet present for a secretive soul: choose a book from your shelves that you’re done with (hardcover tends to work best), glue the pages together with super glue or epoxy leaving one cover free, and use an Exacto knife to cut out a square in the middle of the pages, creating a nook worthy of a Sherlock Holmes novel. Stick in a note that declares your end-of-2011 love and give to the super sleuth you fancy the most.

For more DIY present ideas, check out www.instructables.com

 

ROSEWATER CANDIED CASHEWS, $8 FOR ¼ POUND BAG

LAURA’S NUTS

Slow Food adherent Laura Forst makes the perfect housewarming present for nutters: candied floral cashews that steer clear of holiday-heavy saccharine.

www.laurasnuts.com

 

1985 MR. POTATO HEAD WITH ACCESSORIES, $10

SF MISSION FINDS

An online Etsy toybox of vintage toys and kitschy coffee cups, SF Mission Finds clearly subscribes to that old Playskool truism: “Mr. Potato Head’s other parts might get mixed up, but his heart is always in the right place.” Cop the shop’s 1985 Mr. Potato Head for the beloved misfit toy on your list.

www.etsy.com/shop/SFMissionFinds

 

MYSTERIES OF THE UNKNOWN BOOK, $5

PAINTED BIRD

Could Time-Life Books have imagined that their series on the paranormal — which was published between 1987 and 1991 and broke sales records for the publishing house — would find new popularity on the shelves of a Mission District vintage clothing store? Surely not, but the occult fan in your life will certainly appreciate the resurrection of such titles as Cosmic Duality and Spirit Summonings.

1360 Valencia, SF. (415) 401-7027, www.paintedbird.org

 

FELTED CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENT, $8

KATE’S CLOSET

For the holidays, this cozy little shop in Potrero Hill is selling felted ornaments made by two women who live right in the neighborhood. No need to truck out to the Christmas superstore this year (sorry, Target)!

1331 18th St., Potrero Hill, SF. (415) 624-3736


 

VEGAN MAPLE PECAN PIE, COST OF SUPPLIES

YOUR KITCHEN

Of course, you can always give them something that will, without fail, ensure that sharp intake of breath that marks the happy receipt of a caloric holiday gift-bomb. This holiday sweet from Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero’s Vegan Pie in the Sky (DaCapo Press, 233pp, $17) should do just the trick — and will win the heart of gentle vegans and fierce omnivores alike.

Makes one nine-inch pie or one 11-inch pie

INGREDIENTS:

1 nine-inch pie crust

Filling:

½ cup sugar

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup pure maple sugar

¼ cup nonhydrogenated margarine

6 ounces extra-firm silken tofu

¼ cup cold unsweetened plain nondairy milk

2 tablespoons cornstarch

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 cups pecan halves

First, we’re going to make a caramel. In a two quart saucepan, mix together the sugars and the maple syrup. Heat over medium heat, stirring often with a whisk. Once small bubbles start rapidly forming, stir pretty constantly for about 10 minutes. The mixture should become thick and syrupy. It shouldn’t be boiling too fiercely; if big bubbles start climbing the walls of the pan then lower the heat a bit.

Add the margarine and stir to melt. Turn the heat off, transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl, and let it cool for a bit. In the meantime, prepare the rest of the filling.

Crumble the tofu into a blender or food processor, along with the milk, cornstarch, and salt. Puree until completely smooth, scraping down the sides of the blender to make sure you get everything.

Transfer the filling to the prepared pie crust and bake for 40 minutes. When done, the pie is going to be somewhat jiggly, but it should appear to be set. Let cool, slice, and serve! No cheating and pulling pecans off the pie.

Variation: Sprinkle ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt over the cooled pie.

For more vegan recipes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz, check out www.theppk.com

 

 

FRESH SPINACH FETTUCCINE, $3.98 PER POUND

LUCCA FOODS

There’s just something that works about Italian feasts over the holidays. Maybe it’s the decadence of the cuisine, or perhaps the vivid hues of marinara, eggplant, and basil — wherever the allure lies, you can get your buddy rolling on a meal to remember with this cheap but classy gift: a pound or two of Lucca Foods’ housemade spinach pasta.

1100 Valencia, SF. (415) 647-5581, www.luccaravioli.com

 

NEIGHBORHOOD BATH SALTS, $8

URBAN BAZAAR

Few might initially elect to smell like Union Square, but Roman Ruby’s handmade soaps ($10) and bath salts are redolent in the postcard-pleasure of San Francisco’s most beloved areas. Ocean Beach (coconut and sea salt), Golden Gate Park (grass and rose), Potrero Hill (goat milk and lemon verbena), and Bernal Heights (fig and brown sugar) are all represented.

1371 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 664-4422, www.urbanbazaarsf.com

 

ICE CREAM CONE EARRINGS, $1-4

BOOBADEEBOO JEWELRY

This sweet Etsy page is run by a self-proclaimed misanthrope right here in the city, and stocks a passel of darling, uber-affordable earrings. Made of polymer clay, ice cream cone earrings can be ordered in a variety of “flavors” — the mint is a lovely light green and bubblegum is a pretty pink dotted with green and blue sprinkles.

www.etsy.com/shop/boobadeeboo

 

ONE POUND OF INCENSE, $10

BUDDHISM FENG SHUI SUPPLY

We all know the adage about quantity and quality, but what about when you can get a lot of something that also happens to be really good? Buddhism Feng Shui Supply’s incense is high quality (meant for use in shrines) and comes in a wide variety of scents. Unless your giftee is a real burner, it’s pretty much bound to last a lifetime.

907 Clement, SF. (415) 831-1987

 

DATE NIGHT AT THE MOVIES, $5 DONATION

LOST WEEKEND

How very adorable will it be when you take your baby to this well-loved local video store for one of its cheap-as-heck movie nights? Like, very very. Grab two of the seats near the front of the store and bring their fave candy for maximum points. Film buffs rejoice: Lost Weekend’s projection screen productions tend to involve flicks not available on Netflix (in fact, in September it hosted a film festival called just that).

1034 Valencia, SF. (415) 643-3375, www.lostweekendvideo.com

 

LUBE SHOOTER, $8.95

FEELMORE 510

One touch and you’ll be touching: this handy little number from Oak-Town’s hottest new feminist-queer sex shop promises that it “puts the lube between your cheeks, not on the sheets.” That means the only unwanted friction between you and your lover over the holidays will be about whose family is more bizarre.

1703 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 891-0199, www.feelmore510.com

 

SECONDHAND T-SHIRT, $6

NEW JACK CITY

Along one wall of this super-fly supplier of 1990s and aught-era Starter jackets, ball caps, and occasional fanny packs is the $6 t-shirt rack. Browse its hangers for tees from your giftee’s alma mater, fave sports team, or artistic nemesis: a recent trip to the store uncovered a Takashi-Murakami-designed number from Kanye West’s “Glow in the Dark” tour.

299 Guerrero, SF. (415) 624-3751, newjackcity.blogspot.com

 

CHOCOLATE-COVERED MANGOS, $9.95

TCHO

Snag a treat from the city’s most educational chocolate factory for your holiday honey — if they’re really into the fine chocolate bathing these succulent pieces of fruit you can bring them back for one of TCHO’s Wonka-fied tours of its factory floor.

Pier 17, SF. (415) 981-0189, www.tcho.com

 

ORGANIC PLANT SIX PACK, $3.69

RAINBOW GROCERY

In our experience, all it takes to restore confidence in a would-be gardener with a track record of failed ferns is a salad green seedling. Rainbow’s got the goods in this department: stock up on a sixer of Asian mizuna greens, lemongrass, chives, and more for your budding grower.

1745 Folsom, SF. (415) 863-0620, www.rainbow.coop

 

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT PLAYING CARDS, $8.50

ROOM 4

What started out as an interior design studio has since evolved into a great resource for handpicked vintage goods, but hints of Room 4’s roots are visible in its selection of playing cards, which features a deck printed with the Prairie School architectural school progenitor’s greatest hits. Your giftee’s Solitaire game has never been this well-constructed.

904 Valencia, SF (415) 647-2764, www.room4.com

 

BEESWAX SHEETS, $4.59; WICK, 29 CENTS PER YARD

THE HOBBY COMPANY OF SAN FRANCISCO

Candlemaking is a craft pretty much anyone can conquer — and a fragrant one at that. Hobby Co.’s beeswax comes in a variety of colors, including the standard yellow. With wicks retailing for less than fifty cents a yard, expect your giftee’s electric bill to significantly drop.

5150 Geary, SF. (415) 386-2802, www.hobbycosf.com

 

TERRARIUM, $10

MISSION STATEMENT

One of the three owners of this well-turned-out Mission boutique crafts these “air plants” in bulbous aquarium bowls. Rocks, sand, moss, and greenery coexist peacefully within the bowels of the terrariums – the perfect window sill companion for your buddy who longs for more nature in their life.

3458 18th St., SF (415) 244-7457, www.missionstatementsf.com

 

Dickens and drag queens and dreidels (oh my!)

Andrew Lam
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0
Dickens and drag queens and dreidels (oh my!)

culture@sfbg.com

HOLIDAY GUIDE 2011 You know what would be a good present to yourself this holiday season? Some ankle weights. Imagine all the almond cake and vegan eggnog you’ll have shoved into your belly by this time next month, you soon-to-be-less-svelte snowy sexpot. Not into approximating a house arrest prisoner? How about pledging to run about to as many as the Bay’s holiday hotspots as possible this year — you’ll be a Kwanzaa cutie in no time a’tall. And with such jingling gems — from costume fairs to drag queens in Union Square and free chamber orchestra performances — you’ll come out on the other side (2012) cut and cultured. 

 

Union Square iceskating rink Good news for nervous wall-grabbers and double axel spinners alike: the holiday ice rink is back at Union Square. Cue icicle lights, grand romantic gestures, and seizing onto strangers for suddenly-needed support.

Through Jan. 16. 10 a.m.-11:30 p.m. except for when closed for private parties, $10 for 90-minute session. Union Square, SF. www.unionsquareicerink.com

 

Great Dickens Fair Before Harry Potter and Kate Middleton transformed young Americans into full-blown Anglophiles, a whole different conception of Britain flourished stateside: the Dickensian version, replete with scones and hot toddies. Walk off your burgeoning middle with a jaunt through the Cow Palace’s temporary lamp-lit alleys.

Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 18, 11 a.m.-7 p.m., $25. Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, SF. www.dickensfair.com

 

“The Best Time of Year” SF Symphony Christmas special concert The San Francisco Symphony and Chorus exhale classical Christmas picks and carols to a fully-bedecked Davies Symphony Hall.

Nov.30-Dec.1, 8 p.m., $25–$68. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF. (451) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org

 

Working Solutions holiday gift fair Showcasing San Francisco businesses assisted by Working Solutions’ micro loan programs, this fair lets shoppers pick up everything from Bernal Heights-wrought knives to chunks of Mission-crafted chocolate.

Dec. 1, 5-8 p.m., free. 101 Second St., SF. (415) 655-5433, www.tmcworkingsolutions.org

 

The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes Trannyshack takes on the blue-haired wonder that was The Golden Girls in a glitzy, raucous yearly San Francisco tradition.

Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays Dec. 1-23, 8 p.m., $25–$30. Victoria Theater, 2961 16th St., SF. www.trannyshack.com

 

A Christmas Carol There’s no better way to get in the mistletoe mood than to watch old Ebenezer slowly thaw out his icy, pinched heart in the Deco glory of the ACT Theatre.

Dec. 1-24, 7 p.m., $20–$75. American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary, SF. (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org

 

Holiday tree-lighting ceremony Jack London Square becomes a Bay-side holiday crèche two hours with live reindeer, snow, wintry tunes, and a tree-lighting to launch the flurry of the holidays.

Dec. 2, 5-7 p.m., free. Jack London Square, Oakl. www.jacklondonsquare.com


Oakland-Alameda Estuary lighted yacht parade How can yachts parade, you ask? With style, we answer — East Bay boat owners trick out their vessels with festive lights visible from the shore.

Dec. 3, 5:30 p.m., free. Visible from Jack London Square, Oakl. www.lightedyachtparade.com

 

Fantasy of Lights celebration ‘Tis the season for brilliant night-time lights, and Union Street will not be an exception. Stately Victorians provide the glowing background for a holiday gathering featuring everything from a monkey to Santa and his elves.

Dec. 3, 3-7 p.m., free. Union between Van Ness and Steiner, Fillmore between Union and Lombard, SF. www.sresproductions.com

 

San Francisco Forest Choir Imagine yourself in a snowy Narnia glen, the Forbidden Forest, or roaming through the woods with Hansel and Gretel to the music of the San Francisco Forest Choir, an all-female group who sing in Japanese and English at the Western Addition library.

Dec. 3, 3-4 p.m., free. Western Addition branch library, 1550 Scott, SF. (415) 355-5727, www.sfpl.org.

 

Sharon Art Studio winter pottery and craft sale Thousands of gleaming pieces are up for sale by this staple of the Bay Area craft scene; lug your loot home and get your bicep curls out of the way for a week.

Dec. 4, 11 a.m., free. Sharon Art Studio, Children’s Playground, Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 753-7005, www.sharonartstudio.org

 

SF Chamber Orchestra holiday family concert Circus Bella and the SF Chamber Orchestra team up for a strangely compelling holiday pairing: clownish acrobatics set to the strains of classical music.

Dec. 4, 3-4 p.m., free with RSVP. Bayview Opera House, 4705 Third St., SF. (415) 824-0386, www.bayviewoperahouse.org

 

Gourmet Ghetto’s snow day For those Bay citizens unfamiliar with the bliss of a true snow day, the Gourmet Ghetto’s version provides a superior version to the rest of the country’s admittedly frigid ones: real snow, yes, but also crafting, hot cocoa and cookies, a Snow Queen, and the warmth of community.

Dec. 5 10 a.m.-3 p.m., free. Andronico’s parking lot, 1550 Shattuck, Berk.; 1-4 p.m., free. M. Lowe and Co., 1519 Shattuck, Berk.; Noon-4 p.m., free. Twig and Fig, 2110 Vine, Berk. www.gourmetghetto.org

 

“Winter in the Wineries” Sixteen wineries will stamp your passport for a two-month period starting December 2, enabling you to enjoy unlimited tastings, tours, and meet-and-greets throughout Napa Valley.

Various locations and times, Calistoga. www.calistogavisitors.com. $50 for one passport ticket

 

Palestinian Craft Fair Straight from the hands of Palestinian artists and craftspeople: olive oil-based soap, embroidery, glassware, ceramics, books, honey, and Dead Sea products sold to benefit their makers an ocean away.

Dec. 4, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 548-0542, www.mecaforpeace.org

 

“Songs and Harps to Celebrate the Holiday Season” Harpists of the Bay, unite! The young pluckers of the Bay Area Youth Harp Ensemble join the Triskela Celtic Harp Trio to perform holiday pieces from around the world. Singing along is not only encouraged but expected.

Dec. 6, 6 p.m., free. Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF. (415) 557-4400, www.sfpl.org

 

“Drag Queens on Ice” Break out your very best glitz for a night spent skating next to legions of SF’s drag personalities. A 9:30 p.m. performance by the queens in question ends the evening.

Dec. 8, 8 p.m., $10 for 90-minute session. Union Square, SF. www.unionsquareicerink.com

 

“A Very Shut-Ins Xmas” The vanguard leaders of the “hulabilly” sound, the Shut-Ins return with a Christmas show to benefit San Francisco’s Legal Assistance to the Elderly.

Dec. 8, 5:30-8 p.m., $20. 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF. (415) 538-3333, www.laesf.org

 

Golden Gate Park tree lighting Golden Gate Park’s hundred-foot Monterey cypress (shouldn’t it have a name by now?) transforms into a light-bedecked behemoth for the 82 year.

Dec. 8, 5 p.m., free. McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan, SF.

 

La Cocina gift fair Its cryptic but tasty-sounding “tamale alley” should provide enough of a draw, but La Cocina’s gift fair also promises local vendors selling organic olive oils, handmade pasta, and mushrooms nourished by recycled coffee grounds. Pretty easy to stomach.

Dec. 9, 5-9 p.m., free. Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. www.lacocinasf.org

 

Winter Wunderkammer holiday art sale The most you can spend here on one item is 50 bucks, the least a dollar. Accompanied by spiced wine and tunes, small-format works from local artists are on sale. Proceeds from this walk-in curio cabinet benefit The Lab and participating artists.

Opening party Dec. 9, 6-11 p.m., free. Also Dec. 10, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., free. The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF. (415) 864-885, www.thelab.org

 

California Revels Ah, the revels. This year, the interactive period presentation will sit you smack down at the Round Table. Dance and sing, young knight — no one’s mocking you at this costume-heavy conclave.

Dec. 9-11, 16-18; Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. and Sun. 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., $19-52. Scottish Rite Theater, 2850 19th Ave., SF. (510) 452-8800, www.californiarevels.org

 

SF Ballet’s Nutcracker Even with its lampoonable name, the Nutcracker remains a incomparable date choice for its lush costumes, fantastical storyline, and ability to trigger childhood flashbacks.

Dec. 9-25, various times, $25–$285. War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, SF. (415) 865-2000, www.sfballet.org

 

Misfit Toy Factory For one evening, artists cobble together sculptures, toys, and gifts under one roof to the beat of DJ Yukon Cornelius. Items are sold at the end of the evening for a fixed price of forty dollars.

Dec. 10, 7-10 p.m., free. Root Division, 3175 17th St., SF. (415) 863-7668, www.rootdivision.org

 

The Revolutionary Nutcracker Sweetie A radical alternative to the holiday classic, Dance Brigade’s version features Clara, an undocumented worker, a homeless Sugar Plum Fairy, and an angel of resistance.

Dec. 10, 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.; Dec. 11, 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., $15–$17. Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., SF. www.dancemission.com

 

Hanukah festival of light Geared towards the younger set and their handlers, the JCC East Bay’s festival of light features storytelling, menorah making, dreidel games, and a concert by Isaac Zones, a mainstay in the Bay’s Jewish music scene.

Dec. 11, 10 a.m-2 p.m., $5. JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut, Berk. www.jcceastbay.org.

 

“Holidays: Christmas, Chanukah, and Other Festive Celebrations” lecture Library docents present an examination of paintings from around the world dealing with everyone’s favorite subject: the giving, feasting, and receiving endemic to the holiday season.

Dec. 14, 6:30-7:30 p.m., free. Glen Park branch library, 2825 Diamond, SF. (415) 355-2858, www.sfpl.org

 

Mechanics’ Institute holiday gift and poster sale The staggeringly lovely Mechanics’ Institute hosts a large sale of hard-cover and paperback books, gifts, and posters straight from its library.

Dec. 15, 4:30-6:30 p.m., free. Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post, SF. (415) 393-0100, www.milibrary.org

 

Holiday youth mariachi concert Three zestful youth mariachi bands perform traditional Mexican holiday music, providing an energizing segue into a sometimes exhausting season.

Dec. 16, 7:30 p.m., $10. Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. (415) 643-2785, www.missionculturalcenter.org

 

Holiday Memories double feature Head back to the times of toboggans and candle-lit windows with two short films recounting rural winters of yesteryear. A Child’s Christmas in Wales visualizes Dylan Thomas’ Welsh childhood; The Sweater animatedly recounts Roch Carrier’s Quebecois, hockey-centered upbringing.

Dec. 17, 2 p.m., free with $15 museum admission. The Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF. (415) 561-0360, www.exploratorium.edu

 

Renegade Craft Fair holiday market For the third year and showcasing more than 250 makers and craftspeople, the Renegade Craft Fair’s holiday happening can be a bit overwhelming. But it’s an undeniably great answer to gifting woes: pick up jewelry, body products, paper goods, clothing, and way, way more, all DIY enough to satisfy your most loca-ttired friend.

Dec. 17-18, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free. Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St., SF. www.renegadecraft.com

 

Reclaiming Yule ritual It may be chilly outside, but Sebastapol’s midwinter celebration (led by Starhawk, a leader in Bay Area earth-based spirituality) is indoors and full of warmth-inducing activities, namely dancing in honor of the Earth and Sun.

Dec. 18, 6:30 p.m., $7. Sebastopol Community Center, 390 Morris, Sebastapol. www.reclaiming.org

 

Solstice Eve celebration With a bonfire and roles doled out to participants (rocks, trees and mists), celebrating the longest night of the year on Ocean Beach is actually rather toasty. Bring items to release into the transformative fire — love letters are just the starting point.

Dec. 20, 3:30 p.m., free. Ocean Beach at Taraval, SF. www.reclaiming.org

 

Bill Graham menorah lighting The lighting itself takes place at 5 p.m., but the hours-long run-up is by no means lacking: traditional Jewish music, arts and crafts, and menorahs for every child fill Union Square starting at 3 p.m.

Dec. 20, 5 p.m., free. Union Square, SF. www.chabadsf.org

 

Kujichagulia celebration Kwanzaa’s day of personal definition and expression comes to City Hall, followed by a candle-lighting ceremony and dinner at Gussie’s, known for its fried tasties, red velvet cake, and Southern sweet tea.

Dec. 27, noon, City Hall, SF., 6 p.m., Gussies Chicken and Waffles, 1521 Eddy, SF. www.kwanzaasanfrancisco.com

 

Ujima celebration On Ujima, the third day of the week-long Kwanzaa holiday, community members gather to celebrate a collective spirit of responsibility and work.

Dec. 28, 3-6 p.m., free. Bayview Hunters Point YMCA, 1601 Lane, SF. www.sfpl.org

 

Keeping Score: Ives Holiday Symphony screening Unrecognized at the time of his death, experimentalist composer Charles Ives labored over his Holiday Symphony, which now gets fitting recognition by the San Francisco Symphony in a library concert that follows an hour-long documentary on the man.

Dec. 29, noon, free. Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF. (415) 557-4400, www.sfpl.org

 

Kuumba celebration Fittingly, the main San Francisco celebration of Kwanzaa’s Kuumba (day of creativity) occurs in the Jazz Heritage Center, a space shared by musical hotspot Yoshi’s. Celebrate the Fillmore’s manifold musical virtuosos on the last day of the year.

Dec. 31, 1-5 p.m., free. Jazz Heritage Center, 1330 Fillmore, SF. www.jazzheritagecenter.org

Rare and juicy

Andrew Lam
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1
Rare and juicy

FILM Longtime San Francisco resident George Kuchar’s death this September was a reminder of how many had been influenced by his loveably eccentric movies, from famous early fans like Andy Warhol and John Waters to the hundreds of students who passed through his San Francisco Art Institute courses over the decades. Among the latter, for a long time his most famous protégé — at least locally — was Curt McDowell, who started out as a teacher’s pet, moved on to heavy petting with teacher, and remained close to Kuchar as both friend and collaborator until his own AIDS-related demise in 1987.

George Kuchar’s half-century-plus output was always joyfully accessible “avant-garde” cinema, its mixture of the personal and the purple drawing on the conventions of those Hollywood melodramas he and brother Mike (who’s taking over George’s teaching responsibilities at SFAI) grew up watching in the 1950s Bronx. His films’ popularity was perhaps most hindered by the simple fact that he only felt moved to direct something in the more marketable feature length form once — 1973’s The Devil’s Cleavage.

McDowell’s films, often heavily influenced by George Kuchar’s (even when the latter wasn’t operating as scenarist and actor on them), also had a wide streak of camp parody, a Warholian mini-constellation of “stars,” a vivid aesthetic, and impulse toward autobiography. They were much more aggressively sexual, and ambitious — during his much-too-short career he made no less than four features, two of which were porn in the graphic-content if not commercial sense. The hour-long Peed in the Wind (1972), the same year’s Lunch, and 1985’s very-long-in-the-making Sparkle’s Tavern are basically forgotten now, the last not screened in the Bay Area for at least a decade, the others possibly unseen since the 1970s.

Thundercrack! (1975) — an even more daft shot at “adult” cinema than the experimental-minded Lunch — is better known, having had at least the beginnings of a midnight movie cult following. But with all its baroque, still-singular The Old Dark House (1932) meets Tennessee Williams charms (there is surely no other porn flick remotely like it), why isn’t it now as well known as, say, Pink Flamingos (1972) or Eraserhead (1977)? Part of that doubtless has to do with the disarray McDowell’s body of work has been in, access-wise, for nearly 25 years now. Some of his films are distributed by (but seldom rented from) Canyon Cinema. Others are in storage, or presumed lost. Nothing is available on DVD, and any videotapes have long gone out of print. Whether this is due to strife, disorganization, or financial limitations among the guardians of his trust remains as murky as it was in the 1990s, when the last, brief issue of Thundercrack! and some shorts on VHS occurred.

Thus, it’s sadly rare to get a McDowell program even here in SF, where his memory should flourish rather than be slowly slipping from public awareness. Just such an occasion arrives this week at the Roxie — co-founded by his longtime creative and domestic partner, Robert Evans — as two shows spread over three days reprise some (relatively) familiar as well as barely-seen material.

The main attraction, as well as the scarcest, is 1980’s 55-minute Taboo (The Single and the LP), which will be shown on projected VHS due to a typical bad-luck hurdle: its original materials, plus those for other films, were sent to New York’s Museum of Modern Art years ago, only to go missing in transit.

While McDowell often echoed George Kuchar’s use of narrative more as an erratic reference point than a rule to follow, Taboo has an unusually abstract relation to story even by his standards, at least those of his longer works. Purportedly crafted over four years — his output slowed considerably after Evans had replaced the incredibly prolific Kuchar as boyfriend — it has buxom, blonde-bewigged sis Melinda McDowell, recently departed Thundercrack! mad diva Marion Eaton, and a glowering Kuchar as three parts of a tempestuous two-couple marital equation variously simmering with unmet desire and boiling over with orgiastic excess.

But it’s the fourth player who dominates the filmmaker’s attention. One of his numerous onscreen Joe Dallesandros, but evidently a source of particular longtime obsession, Fahed (a.k.a. David) Martha hailed from a Palestinian family that owned the grocery store next to the Roxie; his petite yet muscle-bound Sal Mineo-like appeal piqued McDowell, who didn’t mind the frequent presence of an equally young girlfriend. (In fact, he freely admitted “really getting turned on by straight men.”) Throughout Taboo‘s mix of the poetical and camp, the black and white camera salivates over this nearly-naked Adonis’ body and cocky attitude; in turn, he displays an exhibitionist zeal he probably didn’t know he had in him. A producer here and close friend, former Castro Theatre programmer and current San Francisco Silent Film Festival artistic director Anita Monga says McDowell “just saw the deep sexual beauty in everyone,” turning them on with the sheer voracity of his admiring gaze.

In one of the shorts the Roxie is showing in a separate program, 1972’s Confessions, McDowell interviews friends and lovers, asking them to describe his best and worst qualities. Perhaps straddling both, one confides “You’ve always had this energy, it’s like an explosion. I think when people see your films they have to understand, like, sex. It seems like you need so much more sex than other people.” A satyr-like omnivorous seduction and insatiability still sweats off many of his films as if through pores, most notoriously 1985’s Loads (a Dionysian compilation of guys he’d lured up to masturbate and service in his Mission studio).

McDowell was a happily self-corrupted transplant from the Heartland (with typical alliterative flair, Kuchar called him “curt, cute, controversial, and not celibate … poet of the plebeian and perverse”); he enjoyed shocking the staid society left behind — 1970’s A Visit to Indiana is his amusingly sulky chronicle of a most reluctant trip home.

Also on the Roxie bill are such examples of pure, impish silliness as 1972’s Siamese Twin Pin Heads, a short perhaps dated by a “look ma, we’re naked!” glee that looked a lot more rebellious back then. But 1973’s Boggy Depot is a homemade musical anticipating Thundercrack!‘s puppet theater-Gothic look. Its variously scheming and schemed-against protagonists trill their ridiculous operetta-style lyrics to found orchestral tracks. This is one McDowell film in which people keep their pants on, but these 17 sublime minutes are orgasmically pleasurable nonetheless.

“LOADS OF CURT MCDOWELL”

Sat/26-Sun/17, 1 p.m.; Mon/28, 10 p.m., $5-9.75

Roxie

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

 

The faces and voices of Occupy

Andrew Lam
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33
The faces and voices of Occupy

Who are the 99 percent — and what are they saying? It’s not what you read in the daily papers

To read some of the accounts in the daily papers in San Francisco, and hear some of the national critics, you’d think the people in the local Occupy movement were mostly filthy, drunk, violent social outcasts just looking for a place to party. Or that they’re mad-eyed anarchists who can’t wait to break windows and throw bottles at the police. Or that they’re a confused and leaderless band that can’t figure out what it wants.

When you actually go and spend time at Occupy SF and Occupy Cal and Occupy Oakland, as our reporters have done, you get a very different picture.

The Occupy movement is diverse, complex and powerful. It’s full of people with different backgrounds and perspectives. And they all agree that economic injustice and inequality are at the root of the major problems facing the United States today.

Here are some of those people, the faces and the voices of Occupy — and a celebration of the lives they’re living and the work they’re doing.

 

The student

Jessica Martin reflects on the First Amendment

Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe

Jessica Martin stood and held her sign high on the steps of Sproul Hall, at the University of California at Berkeley, while a jubilant crowd of students jammed to classic dance party tunes and set up tents. They were invigorated by a general assembly that had attracted thousands following a Nov. 15 student strike and Day of Action called as part of the Occupy movement. (Their tents were cleared in a police raid two days later, yet students responded with flair, suspending tents high in the air with balloons.)

Martin’s sign proclaimed, “Remember the First Amendment,” and she’d written the text of the Constitutional right to free speech on the other side.

“My mother stood on the steps [of the Lincoln Memorial] in D.C. with Martin Luther King as part of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” said the graduating senior, who’s majoring in Japanese and Linguistics. “And now I stand on the steps of Sproul Hall,” — the birthplace of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement — “in front of the Martin Luther King Student Union, to defend my First Amendment rights.”

She expressed solidarity with students who were brutalized by police Nov. 9 following their first attempt to establish an occupation.

“Part of what [police] are here to serve and protect is the First Amendment,” Martin said. But on that day, “They met the First Amendment with violence.” (Rebecca Bowe)

 

The artist

Ernest Doty responds to police brutality

Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe

In Oakland, a young veteran named Scott Olsen suffered a fractured skull and brain injuries after being hit with a police projectile at an Oct. 25 Occupy Oakland protest. Ernest Doty was one of several who ran to Olsen’s aid and carried him to safety.

“Immediately after I saw Scott go down … I knew I had to get him, and get him out of there,” Doty recounted. “I whistled at another guy, and we both ran in. The cops were shooting at us with rubber bullets.” As they ran up, he said, a flash grenade blew up next to Olsen’s face, just inches from his head injury.

Doty, 32, recently moved to the Bay Area from Albuquerque, New Mexico. An artist who also does spoken word performances, he’s camped overnight at Occupy Oakland and has incorporated words and images from the Occupy movement into his artwork and poetry.

He’s also been personally impacted by tragedies arising from police interactions: Both his stepbrother and his cousin — a veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder — were shot and killed by police in New Mexico.

Occupy Oakland “has managed to create a community out of chaos,” Doty said. “I think that this movement is going to continue to grow. It’s the 1960s all over again, but it’s broader. It’s going to be a long road. I think encampments, marches, and protests are going to continue into the next year.”(Bowe)

Ernest Doty’s next art show is Dec. 2 from 7 to 11 p.m. at Sticks + Stones Gallery, 815 Broadway, in Oakland.

 

The peacekeeper

Nate Paluga deals with camp conflict

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Does this man look like he’s an occupier? Depends on your perception of the movement. He’s not homeless — he’s a bike mechanic who lives in Nob Hill and whose girlfriend only tentatively accepts that he’s camping in Justin Herman Plaza. He is young, blunt, and possesses the intense gaze of an activist, belied by a snug red-white-and-blue biker’s cap with “USA” emblazoned on the underbelly of its brim.

Paluga, a self-proclaimed philosopher, has grabbed upon the concepts of “fairness and equality” as the core values of Occupy. “This movement means something different to different people, but I haven’t found anyone that disagrees with those being some core values,” he said as he showed off the bike he uses to move as much as 100 pounds of food and equipment for the camp.

His core values are his guidelines in his other role at Occupy SF: peacekeeper. Paluga said he and others often intervene in the disagreements that can arise in a group-run housing situation populated by diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.

He said that with aggressive individuals it’s important to reinforce why they’re all there. “They’re coming from places where there wasn’t a lot of equality and justice and they’re bringing that with them. You gotta step in and tell them it’s gonna be okay.” (Caitlin Donohue)

 

The nester

Two Horses’ permanent protest

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Two Horses might have the most welcoming tent at Occupy SF. Brightly stocked flowerboxes and a welcome mat are outside; inside, the one-time property manager and current homeless man has arranged an air mattress, carpet, and princess accommodations for his 12-year-old blind white cat Luna. There’s even a four-foot tall kitty tower.

The agile feline moves toward the sound of his hand tapping on the floor. “I like the idea of a 24-hour protest,” said Two Horses. He came to the camp a few weeks ago and was impressed by the quality and availability of food available in the encampment’s kitchen, where he said donations come from all over (“it comes from the 99 percent”) at all hours of the day and night.

“I knew I had to do something, so I started volunteering.” He now works the late shift, a core kitchen staffer.

When Michael Moore came by the plaza, Two Horses was impressed. “It wasn’t so much what he said but how he came shuffling up with no entourage, no security, no assistant with a clipboard.” He would, however, like to see more communication between Occupy camps, maybe a livestream video screen to see other cities.

He seems quite at home in his surroundings. “My goal is to look as permanent as I can,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up crookedly, happily. (Donohue)

 

The healers

Med tent volunteers from the nurses’ union do it for the patients

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Melissa Thompson has a kid who’s looking at college options; she hopes her family can figure out a way to afford education in a state where public university tuition continues to rise.

But that’s not the only reason she’s at Occupy SF. On a cloudy Friday morning, Thompson sat outside the encampment’s med tent, where she tended to cuts, changed the dressing on wounds, and provided socks, blankets, and tools for basic hygiene. It’s her trade — she’s a nurse, one of the many California Nurses Association members sick of cuts to the country’s public and private health options who were eager to lend their services to the movement.

She’s also one of the determined crew that enlivens Occupy Walnut Creek. What’s it like out there? “It’s been good,” she assured us, brightly. “We’re on the corner, by the Bank of America? We’ve had great reactions at Walnut Creek.”

Thompson said she got involved because “I love being a nurse, number one.” Corporate greed, she said, has led to cuts in her patients’ insurance, leaving them to make tough decisions between feeding their family and filling the prescription for their post-dialysis medications.

She said he hopes the politicians are listening to Occupy. “I don’t understand what the problem is. They need to open up their eyes and see how they’ve damaged us.” (Donohue)


The fabulous

Li Morales and Molly Goldberg talk about Queer Occupy

Queers have long been resisting the ravages of the one percent on the 99 percent. Resistance has looked like coming together on our own, on our own terms, with our own names, genders, and chosen families. Like the (decolonize) occupations in San Francisco, Oakland, around the country and world, our resistance is made out of a stubborn imagination, and can be messy. We are a menagerie of magnificent beasts, with all of our struggles and limitations firmly at the center of the fabulous and fucked-up world we make for ourselves.

In HAVOQ/ SF Pride at Work, we imagine queerness not as a What, an identity whose boundaries we seek to police, a platform from which to put forth our One Demand. Rather, we imagine it as a How: a way of being with one another. We call it Fabulosity. And Fabulosity means drawing on queer histories of re-imagining family as a way of expanding circles of care and responsibility. Fabulosity is to affirm the self-determination of every queer to do queer just exactly how they do. It affirms that under the banner of the 99 percent, we are all uniquely impacted by the ravages of the 1 percent and we come with a diversity of strategies and tactics to resist and survive.

In the gray areas lives our emerging autonomy and interdependence — an autonomy not contingent on capitalism’s insistence on utility. We are not useful. We are not legible. And in that lack of utility and that illegibility, we are not controllable. Because we do not have one demand, but rather a cornucopia of desire. We’re making our fabulous fucked-up world for ourselves, with each other. We always have. (Morales and Goldberg)

Li Morales and Molly Goldberg are members of SF Pride at Work/HAVOQ, a San Francisco-based collective of queers organizing for social and economic justice.

 

The mechanic

reZz keeps Occupy’s tires filled

Photo by David Martinez

On a Sunday afternoon at Occupy SF, Bike Kitchen volunteer reZz exported the education-oriented bike shop’s mission — and its tools — to Justin Herman Plaza. There he stood, fixing alignment on the wheels of passers-by and occupiers — for free. “Occupy Bike Shop,” as he and other volunteers have come to call the service, has been tinkering out in the plaza two to three times a week.

“It’s been lovely,” he said later in a phone interview with the Guardian. “I’ve purposefully been in a place where it’s open to people in the encampment and people who are passing by. People who stop want to see the occupation in it’s most positive light.” reZz wouldn’t consider camping out at Occupy, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t truck with the movement’s message that public space can — and should — be repurposed.

An avid biker himself, he thinks public bike repair is a great re-envisioning tactic. And fixing poor people’s bikes sends its own message. “This year’s junk is an invented need,” he said. “We’re falling into debt because we think we need a new car every year. Part of the idea of fixing people’s bikes and showing them how to do it brings us away from the artificial scarcity whereby the robber barons and capitalists insist we have to struggle against each other instead of working with each other.” (Donohue)


The medic

Miran Istina has cancer — and helps others

Guardian photo by Yael Chanoff

It had grown dark, and the OccupySF camp was restless as many signs pointed to a raid that night at 101 Market Street. But 18-year-old Miran Istina sat calmly on the sidewalk, medical supplies spread over her lap. “As a medic for OccupySF,” said Istina, “It’s my job to have a well-supplied, well-organized medical kit.”

The tall, wide-eyed teenager, who spends some of the time in a wheelchair, is not just a medic at camp. She has done police liaison and media work as well. And she has a remarkable story.

When she was 14, Istina was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. Her family had purchased her health insurance only three months before, and the cancer was in stage two, indicating that she had been sick for at least one year. So the company denied her treatment, which would include a bone-marrow transplant, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, on the basis of a pre-existing condition.

Her family bought a van, left Sisters, Oregon, and started searching for somebody who would treat her. They traveled around the country three years, desperate for the life-saving treatment but unable to pay for it.

Just after her 17th birthday, Istina left her parents in New York and began hitchhiking back to Oregon. “That was my way of saying, I’m done looking for treatment. I’m going to do what makes my heart happy.”

After a little over a year of traveling and exploring her interests, Istina made her way to San Francisco. She was sleeping in Buena Vista Park when she “heard some protesters walking by, going ‘occupy San Francisco! Occupy San Francisco. I figured they were a bunch of radicals and that a street kid like me really wouldn’t be welcome.'”

A few nights later, she did go check it out, looking for a safe place to sleep. “They explained to me what it’s about, and why we’re here, and my story directly sat inside of that.”

She has been living and organizing with OccupySF ever since. She got involved with the medic team after spending a night in the hospital for kidney failure, then being treated for nine days, free, in the camp’s medical tent. “They realized I had a lot of skill as a medic, and gave me a kit.”

In the midst of recent media attacks on the OccupySF community, Istina is defensive: “Every community has its assholes. Every community has that pit that no one goes into because it’s just yucky. For some people in San Francisco it’s the Haight, for the the Haightians- you know, the Haight people- it’s the financial district. For other people it’ll be somewhere else. But I love the community here. “I’ve been hurt by a lot of people in my life,” said Istina. “But I think I can make that right by holding to this pure-hearted motto of universal and unconditional love, for everyone. No exceptions.” (Yael Chanoff)

Tradition!

Andrew Lam
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Tradition!

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Row after row of sentimental — sometimes kitschy, sometimes renowned — vinyl albums are lining pristine white walls in a small storefront, waiting for the opening of a record store that will exist for just one month.

Quite possibly the world’s first Jewish pop-up record shop, it’s in San Francisco on the edge of Mission and Bernal, in rotating art-music space, Queens Nails.

Like flashes of nostalgic dreams, each cardboard cover at the shop is its own piece of art: there’s the colorful impressionist style square enclosing Fred Katz’s trippy 1958 klezmer-meets-folk record Folk Songs for Far Out Folk, the shelf above holds Johnny Mathis’ breathtaking Kol Nidre, along with the campy Mickey Katz album, Mish Mosh — the cover of which depicts the artist as a (hopefully kosher) butcher posing with both meat-links and brass instruments.

There also are brand new copies of the recently released Songs for the Jewish American Jet Set, a compilation of wildly varying tracks (surf rock from the Sabras, deep soul Morrocan-born singer Jo Amar doing “Ani Ladodi”) culled from the archives of now-defunct Tikva Records, a Jewish label that was around from 1950 through 1973.

The Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation released Songs for the Jewish American Jet Set, and is hosting the pop-up store, also dubbed Tikva Records. The group, whose mission focuses on preserving the 20th century Jewish experience through recorded sound, also has put out a number of reissues and hosted live music events in the past — this store will encompass both.

“When we initially did the reissues, we went out and found a lot of the artists on these records and we realized we really wanted to tell the stories of the music,” explains David Katznelson, the music biz veteran behind Birdman Records, president of the San Francisco Appreciation Society, and one of four Idelsohn Society co-founders.

So, in addition to selling vintage records and reissues, the store also will play host to a series of Jewish and Hebraic-themed live acts. Beginning Dec. 1 with the official opening party, artists will drop by for free, by donation performances: on Dec. 2, founding Los Lobos member Steve Berlin will original score a silent film, Los Angeles band Fool’s Gold will celebrate the release of its second LP with an in-store performance Dec. 7, classic duo the Burton Sisters will perform live for only the second time in the past five decades on Dec. 8, members of Dengue Fever will play live Dec. 10. And plenty more follow.

The Chanukah candle lighting ceremonies will begin with a performance by Zach Rogue — the leader of Oakland’s Rogue Wave who recently released Come Back To Us under the name Release the Sunbird. While some of the others acts were a natural fit in the Tikva lineup, Rogue was one that surprised me — his music has always seemed rather secular to me, so I asked him about it. Turns out, it will be his first time playing a Chanukah event. So will he play Rogue Waves songs, Release the Sunbird jams, or traditional Chanukah melodies? “I’m trying to figure that out now. I wouldn’t say that Chanukah songs are necessarily the top my repertoire.”

He explained his reasoning for participating in the event, “When I think back in terms of what got me into wanting to play the guitar, my parents raised me on psychedelic, ’60s British invasion stuff, but in terms of the actual acoustic guitar, a lot of it was Jewish summer camp — Camp Swig in Saratoga,” adding, “I was fascinated with the song leaders and the cadence of Jewish folk songs and Eastern European sound.”

Weaving around the ’50s epoch furniture (solid hand carved shelves and credenzas that look like wet bars, record players) of the newly constructed pop-up shop with “Tikva Records” in red lettering on the window front, I got a sense of a cozy, hangout for record lovers, Jewish or not, which lead me to again question: what exactly makes music Jewish?

Vibrant, and clearly enamored with these albums, Katznelson was on hand with some helpful thoughts. “I think, like all music, it’s open to interpretation. What we do is use this music to look at Jewish history — it’s beyond Jewish music, it’s music that has affected the Jewish experience.”

Jewlia Eisenberg, leader of SF group Charming Hostess, was also previewing the store — it was her first time taking a peek around too, and she seemed ecstatic, slipping records out of the shelves and commenting, “oh my god, look at this one!” Along with the help of a few volunteers, Eisenberg will be running the shop during the month of December.

Katznelson and Eisenberg pulled out records to examine, including the classic Fiddler on the Roof, but more so albums that recently came back to light, like the Latin-tinged Bagels and Bongos — another album the Idelsohn Society reissued. Says Katznelson, “Hybrids happened, and it created new sounds — so what are those new sounds called?”

An example of the modern Jewish hybrid: Jeremiah Lockwood, New York-based bandleader of the Sway Machinery and grandson of legendary cantor Jacob Konigsberg, who will light the final two nights of Chanukah candles at the store, and perform live.

During his second appearance, Ethan Miller of Howling Rain and Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All Stars will join Lockwood in performance. He met Dickinson back in 1998 when they worked on a friend’s album together. Says Lockwood. “It was my first trip to the South after spending my adolescence obsessed with country blues and it made a big impression on me.”

The rest of his performances will be a mixed bag, reflecting decades of the Jewish — and American — music experience. “I’m most comfortable playing blues-oriented material when I play solo, but I definitely plan to hit some tunes from the new Sway Machinery album,” he says, “I will certainly dig out some of my family’s Chanukah standards…very beautiful bits of Jewish folklore I grew up on and that were a part of the family Chanukah lighting ceremony.”

And just like that, after a month of record-selling and live performances culminating with holiday revelry, the pop-up will end, and it’ll be on to the next great idea for the Idelsohn Society. Like it was all some nostalgic, far-out folk dream. 

TIKVA JEWISH POP-UP RECORD STORE

Dec. 1-Dec. 28, times vary, free (donations suggested)

3191 Mission, SF

www.idelsohnsociety.com/tikvastore

www.tikvarecords.eventbrite.com

 

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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0

alerts@sfbg.com

 

THURSDAY 24

“Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony”

Honor indigenous peoples for a sunrise ceremony on Alcatraz Island on Un-Thanksgiving Day. Held annually since 1975, the Alcatraz ceremony honors the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement’s occupation of the island in 1969. The ceremony will feature Aztec Dancers, Pomo Dancers, live performances, and speakers. Hosted by the International Indian Treaty Council and American Indian Contemporary Arts. Ferry tickets go on sale at 4:15 a.m. Boats leave Pier 33 from 4:45 a.m. until 6 a.m.

6 a.m., free (plus $14 ferry ticket)

Alcatraz Island, SF

www.treatycouncil.org

 

SATURDAY 26

“Guardianas de la Vida (Guardians of Life)”

Observe the United Nation’s annual International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women with music, poetry, and art. The event opens with an interactive sewing piece, followed by a show at 7:30 featuring poetry by Judy Grahn, Genny Lim and Nina Serrano; Latin music by Bay Area singer-songwriters Maria Loreto, MamaKoatl and Marta Sevilla; theater by Circulo Cultural; and dance by Maria Luna, Maica Folch and Paloma Parra.

6 p.m., $10 donation

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

dancemission.com


TUESDAY 29

“David Barsamian on Journalism, Academia, and Censorship”

David Barsamian is founder and director of Alternative Radio. He has co-authored books with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said, and other leading intellectuals. He was deported from India this past September, and his talk is titled Stories from Kashmir and California. Sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library and the San Jose Peace and Justice Center.

6 – 8 p.m., free

San Francisco Public Library

Koret Auditorium 100 Larkin St., SF

alternativeradio.org


 

WEDNESDAY 30

“The History of the Future”

Ponder utopias and dystopias, imagination and revolution, and the power of social movements and propaganda to shape the future with Starhawk, Megan Prelinger, and Chris Carlsson. Prelinger is the author of “Another Science Fiction,” offering a whimsical look at corporate representations of the Space Race. Starhawk’s “The Fifth Sacred Thing” and Chris Carlsson’s “After The Deluge” both present alternative utopian futures for San Francisco a century or more in the future. Join the conversation with these three authors.

7:30 p.m., free

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.shapingsf.org

 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

The dramatic video: UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi and her walk in shame

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The dramatic video: UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi and her walk in shame

 

My granddaughter Madeline, a senior at the University of California-Davis, has been camping out with the Occupy movement at Davis.  And so I have been watching the demonstrations with outrage and awe.  Outrage at the pepper-spraying campus cops and the cowering Davis president Linda P.B. Katehi in her bunker. And with awe and admiration for the inspired and inspiring reaction of the Davis students. Let me summarize.

On Friday afternoon, the campus police moved to take down the tents of peaceful occupation on the campus.  Several protestors sat down on the sidewalk, linked arms, and refused to stand as the cops ordered. As bystanders chanted, “Don’t shoot the students, don’t shoot the students,”  the New York Times reported on Monday that “an officer shakes a pepper spray canister and walks before a line of seated protesters, spraying them. The protesters’ faces and clothes are quickly covered in the orange-tinted spray.

“Some protesters are heard screaming and crying as they are arrested. One bystander is heard shouting; “These are children! These are children!” The Times reported that 11 protesters were treated at the scene after being sprayed, and two of them were sent to the hospital.  Ten proresters were arrested on misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly and failure to disperse and were later released, according to the Times.

Katehi at first came forth with the usual UC robotic response: support the cops, to hell with the students. She then scheduled a press conference without notifying the students or giving them a chance to respond. However, the word leaked out and the students began gathering outside the building where the press conference was held.

You can read the account here.

According to the person recording the video, Lee Fang, Katehi had scheduled a 4pm press conference that was set to last an hour. During the press conference, protesters gathered outside the building and demanded to be heard, at which point Katehi refused to leave for several hours. Students eventually created a large pathway through which Katehi could leave and chanted “We are peaceful” until the Chancellor agreed to walk out to her car.

As you can see, the protesters’ silence is absolutely deafening. Having been a part of a supposedly “silent” march at Occupy Wall Street earlier this year, I was amazed at how unified the Occupy Davis protesters were. Also, right before Katehi gets into her car (at about the 1:36 mark), you can hear someone ask, “Did you feel at all trapped inside, Chancellor?” which is a direct reference to the justification the UC Davis police claimed for using pepper-spray during the protests. Phenomenal job, UC Davis protesters.

Here’s the video:

 

I have walked around the Davis campus and found what is happening there is happening on many other UC campuses: there is a vigorous building program at odds with all the talk of limited budgets and increased fees. I can see the massive UCSF/Mission Bay program from my office window on Mississippi Street at the bottom of Potrero Hill.  The buildings keep going up, the workmen keep working, the jolly press releases keep emerging, and the funds seem to gush forth without interruption.  Yet  the students and their families are screwed with ever escalating tuition and ever escalating debt–and all with little prospect for jobs after graduation. And California’s once world famous educational system is floundering in ignominy?  Can anyone in the UC administration cite a case where a campus building program has been stopped or seriously scaled back during this student and economic crisis? Thank God for students who know how to demonstratre peaceably and creatively.  Thank God for students who know how to force their chancellor to walk in shame before the world.

 

 

Occupy your imagination: Tomorrow, hear the words of a Mission son

Andrew Lam
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0

It’s getting into the grind time for the Occupy movement. The first, brilliant tactic of camping out in our nation’s towns and cities is meeting with a nationally-coordinated crack-down, just like we all knew it would. It’s time for phase two.

Benjamin Bac Sierra knows a lot about reimagining. The author survived an adolescence among the Mission gangs to publish the first novel by a native son to come out of the neighborhood in decades. 

“Once upon a time,” he writes on his blog announcing a lecture tomorrow (Thu/17) at City College,  “the truth was that I was supposed to be a dishwashing convict criminal and to disagree with that truth was to fight the universe.”

With the raid on Zuccoti Park, the raids on Oscar Grant Plaza, the violence on the UC Berkeley campus (?!?), it’s clear that the warriors of Occupy are in need of some uplift – and they’re certainly in need of a plan. 

“To invent your destiny, you must appreciate your base knowledge and synthesize it with other knowledge or predictions, and create something new, unimagined by others,” Bac Sierra writes. Sure, it’s New Agey and maybe his presentation isn’t geared exactly towards camping activists – but this is a man from a section of society that gets a raw deal, who has subverted the “rules” and come out on the other side with a family, a teaching gig at City College, a luminous book, and self-worth.

It might be worth a trip to City College to hear him at this point, just sayin’. 

 

“Inventing Your Destiny” presentation by Benjamin Bac Sierra

Thu/16 1 p.m., free

Diego Rivera Theatre

City College of San Francisco

50 Phelan, SF

todobododown.wordpress.com 

 

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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0

Schedules are for Wed/16-Tues/22 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $5-10. “Periwinkle Queer Cinema: Food!,” adults-only shorts program, Wed, 8. “Beautiful Moving Images,” shorts program, Thurs, 8. SF Cinematheque presents: “Once It Started It Could Not End: Cut-Ups and Collage by Sears, Cox, Kennedy, and Rosentrater,” Fri, 7:30. “Other Cinema:” works about place and the sensibility it informs by Angela Reginato, Greg Berger, and others, Sat, 8:30.

BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $17.50-20. “Opera and Ballet at the Balboa Theatre:” Adriana Lecouvreur, performed by the Royal Opera House, London, Wed, 7:30; Esmeralda, performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, Sat-Sun, 10am; Tues, 7:30.

CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS Timken Lecture Hall, 1111 Eighth St, SF; www.cca.edu. Free. “Cinema Visionaries: An Evening with Barry Jenkins,” short film screening and discussion, Tues, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. “Woody Wednesdays:” •Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989), Wed, 3, 7, and Deconstructing Harry (Allen, 1997), Wed, 5, 9. “Greta Garbo Double Feature:” •Ninotchka (Lubitsch, 1939), Thurs, 2:45, 7, and Grand Hotel (Goulding, 1932), Thurs, 4:45, 9:05. Dark Country in 3D (Jane, 2009), Fri, 7:30. With director-star Thomas Jane in person. “Harry Potter Marathon:” Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Columbus, 2001), Sat, noon; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Columbus, 2002), Sat, 2:50; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Cuarón, 2004), Sat, 6; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Newell, 2005), Sat, 8:35; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Yates, 2007), Sun, noon; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Yates, 2009), Sun, 2:30; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1 (Yates, 2010), Sun, 5:30; Part 2 (2011), Sun, 8:10. Thirty-minute break between Secrets and Prisoner on Sat and Prince and Hallows — Part 1 on Sun; $12 each day for all four films.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. Le Havre (Kaurismäki, 2011), Wed-Thurs, call for times. The Help (Taylor, 2011), Thurs, 6:30. With filmmakers and stars Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in person; tickets, $20. Melancholia (von Trier, 2011), Nov 18-24, call for times. M*A*S*H* (Altman, 1970), Sun, 2. With Elliot Gould in conversation with Norman Solomon. “The Films of John Korty:” Funnyman (Korty, 1967), Sun, 7. “A Century Ago: The Films of 1911,” hosted by Randy Haberkamp with piano accompaniment by Michael Mortilla, Mon, 7.

EMBARCADERO CENTER CINEMA One Embarcadero Center, SF; www.sffs.org. $12-20. “New Italian Cinema:” The Jewel (Molaioli, 2011), Wed, 6:30 and Fri, 1; This World Is for You (Falaschi, 2011), Wed, 9:15 and Sun, 3:30; The Father and the Foreigner (Tognazzi, 2010), Thurs, 6:30 and Sun, 12:30; Some Say No (Avellino, 2011), Thurs, 9:15 and Sat, 9:30; A Quiet Life (Cupellini, 2010), Fri, 6:30; 20 Cigarettes (Amadei, 2010), Fri, 9:30; One Life, Maybe Two (Aronadio, 2010), Sat, 4; The First Assignment (Cecere, 2010), Sat, 6:30; Habemus Papam (Moretti, 2011), Sun, 6:30, 9:15.

FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; lntsf.com/chinese_american_film_festival_2011. $5. “Chinese American Film Festival,” new films from China and Hong Kong, Nov 16-22.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” “Space is the Place: Recent Avant-Garde Shorts,” Wed, 7:30. “Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema: Phil Tippett, Special Effects Master:” Starship Troopers (Verhoeven, 1997), Thurs, 7; The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (Jurad, 1958), Fri, 7. With Tippett in person. “Southern (Dis)Comfort: The American South in Film:” The Story of Temple Drake (Roberts, 1933), Fri, 9:10; Suddenly, Last Summer (Mankiewicz, 1960), Sat, 8:15. “Abbas Kiarostami: The Fragility of Life:” Through the Olive Trees (1994), Sat, 6; A Taste of Cherry (1997), Sun, 4:30. “Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov:” Three Songs of Lenin (1935/38), Sun, 2.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. N.A.S.A.: The Spirit of Apollo (Garon and Spiegel, 2011), Wed, 7:30, 9:30. X: The Unheard Music (Morgan, 1986), Thurs, 7, 9:30. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (Star, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 6:45. Gainsbourg: The Man Who Loved Women (Forneri, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 9:15. Dragonslayer (Patterson, 2011), Nov 18-24, call for times. The Woodmans (Willis, 2010), Nov 18-24, 7, 9 (also Sat-Sun, 3, 5).

SFFS | NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF. Pipe Dreams (Iwerks, 2011), Wed, 7. Benefit for the San Francisco Green Film Festival. Contact info for this event www.sfgreenfilmfest.org; tickets $15-25. California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown (Rice and Armstrong, 2011), Thurs, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30. Contact info for this event www.sffs.org; tickets $10-11.

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF. Yogawoman (Clere, 2011), Thurs, 7. Contact info for this event yogawoman.eventbrite.com; tickets $15. “Fall 2011 San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival:” “Act One,” Sat, 7:30; “Act Two: After Dark,” Sat, 10:30. Contact info for this event www.peacheschrist.com; tickets $15-20.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. Love Streams (Cassavetes, 1984), Thurs, 7:30; Sun, 2.

Our Weekly Picks: November 16-22

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 16

Kiran Ahluwalia

Tuareg rock band Tinariwen continues to hit it out of the park this year, releasing a hypnotically raw new album, collaborating with TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe — and now working with Indo-Canadian singer Kiran Awluwali on her engrossing new disc Aam Zameen: Common Ground. Not that Awluwali needed the help, exactly: her enticing voice holds its own in both her own Punjabi-inflected compositions and the throaty tribal blues of the Sahara. She has also seamlessly incorporated Celtic fiddling, Persian gazals, Portuguese fado, Sufi qawwali, and Afghan rhubab into her previous releases — her eclecticism comes without preciousness. Emblematic is her version, with Tinariwen, of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s “Mustt Mustt”: “a song from the South Asian Islamic tradition performed with Muslims from Mali, Tinariwen.” And a gorgeous Canadian! (Marke B.)

8 p.m., $20

Yoshi’s Oakland

510 Embarcadero West, Oakl.

www.yoshis.com


ChameleonsVox

Unlike some other bands that emerged out of Manchester, England in the 1980s (Joy Division, The Fall), The Chameleons have remained relatively obscure. Formed in 1981, the band’s exotic strain of post-punk was perfected on its breathtaking debut, Script of the Bridge (1983). Script was an atmospheric album that featured some of the most interesting guitar work of the post-punk era thanks to Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding. “Second Skin” and “View from a Hill” were two swirling, heavily delayed tracks that remain astonishing feats. Since the band separated in 2003, lead singer and bass player Mark Burgess has started ChamelonsVox, a run off band (and a blessing) that stays true to the original. (James H. Miller)

With Black Swan Lane, James Oakes

9 p.m., $20

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415)861 5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

“Block by Block”

Forget hushed indoor voices and audio tours. At the de Young Museum this weekend, Campo Santo and Sean San José will activate the space with the work of artists including hip-hop theater collective Felonious, and writer Junot Díaz. The roving performance adventure composed of dance, mixed-media, live music-mixing, beatboxing, spoken word movement, and projected visuals by Favianna Rodriguez and Evan Bissell brings a San Francisco block party inside the museum. Drawing from recent short stories and other original writings rooted in the New Jersey Dominican family life of Junot Díaz, Block by Block: The Pura Principle is the third Camp Santo work created with the writer. (Julie Potter)

Through Sat/19, 8 p.m., $15–$30

de Young Museum

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, SF

(415) 750-3600

www.deyoung.famsf.org

 

“Love Streams”

Yerba Buena screened John Cassavetes’s smoldering swan song four years ago, but it’s not likely you’ve seen it since. Love Streams remains unavailable on DVD, though it inspires strong allegiances: French impresario agnès b. named her production company after it, while Yerba Buena curator Joel Shepard simply calls it his favorite film. Cassavetes and his wife Gena Rowlands play brother and sister experiencing crises in different emotional registers. Their moment-by-moment performances earn every bit of wisdom and tenderness the hard way. (Max Goldberg)

7:30 p.m., $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org


FRIDAY 18

International Motorcycle Show

Have you a loved one who insists on riding their motorcycle in ill-advised conditions? Through light rain showers, perhaps, or after a solid Whiskey Wednesday at Bender’s? Make light of their foolhardy shenanigans with a trip to the International Motorcycle Show, where the two of you will drool over custom choppers — built-in gaping maws, anyone? — but also the tally-ho swaggadacio of “Around the World Doug” Wothke, who has ridden a 1948 Indian Chief around the world, and a Harley Sportster for completely unrecommended distances (the width of continents). Clutch post-ride Wothke quote: “I’m wore out like a two dollar whore on nickel night!”(Caitlin Donohue)

Fri/18, 4-9 p.m.; Sat/19, 9:30 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sun/20, 9:30 a.m.- 5 p.m., $10 one day/$24 three day pass San Mateo County Event Center 2495 South Delaware, San Mateo (650) 638-0745 www.motorcycleshows.com

 

Trey McIntyre Project

In the ballet world, Trey McIntyre is something of a phenomenon: a popularizer of an art that in some people’s eyes is weighted down by the cobwebs of history. But for this choreographer of over 80 works, ballet is just a language that can be augmented with anything from hip-hop to salsa, gymnastics to modern dance. Out of this twenty-first century lingo McIntyre very skillfully fashions dances that communicate with an easy physicality; quite simply, it’s lots of fun to watch, even when they tackle serious subjects. TMP is bringing three works: the ebulliently theatrical “Gravity Heroes,” “The Sweeter End,” which is dedicated to the people of New Orleans, and “Dreams” — set to the music of and as a tribute to Roy Orbison. (Rita Felciano)

8 p.m. $30-$68

Cal Performances

Zellerbach Hall, Berk.

510-642-9988

www.calperformances.org

 

DJ Harvey and Mike Simonetti

Have you heard DJ Harvey before? He’s been around for more than two decades now, and released the LP Locussolus earlier this year, but his sound does have special requirements: “You can’t understand the blues until you’ve had your heart broken by a woman or whatever, and you can’t understand my music until you’ve had group sex on Ecstasy.” At least that’s what he told his 19-year-old son (and later a CMJ interviewer.) Well, a quasi-Luddite (spinning vinyl and sometimes analog tape edits) with tastes at the crossroads of disco, house, and punk, Harvey’s music is almost as provocative (and unsubtly sexual) as his bold statements. He’ll be joined by Mike Simonetti, the tastemaker behind Italians Do It Better, home of Glass Candy and Chromatics. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Eug (Face)

9:30 p.m., $10-15

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com


SATURDAY 19

Lucinda Williams

Proving that some things only get better with time, Lucinda Williams’ intoxicating blend of introspective songwriting and impassioned performing skills makes her one of the best musical acts out there. The 50-something singer continues to weave her twangy, soulful voice with a background of country, rock, folk and blues on her latest album, this year’s Blessed (Lost Highway), featuring standout tracks “Copenhagen,” “Convince Me,” and “Seeing Black.” While her records are excellent, live on stage is really the place to hear Williams—her shows are pure musical marathons; somehow raucous, soothing, cathartic, and celebratory all at the same time. (Sean McCourt)

With Blake Mills (Sat.) and Buick 6 (Sun.)

Through Sun/20, 8 p.m., $40

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

“Fall 2011 San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival”

Sometimes, a killer title is your best weapon. Peaches Christ’s alter ego, Joshua Grannell, knows this (see: 2010’s All About Evil). Together with partner-in-crime and fellow local weird-movie champion Sam Sharkey (he’s pals with Tommy Wiseau!), Peaches returns to the scene of Evil (the Victoria) to roll out the Fall 2011 San Francisco Underground Film Festival. The fest features 33 films from every genre imaginable crammed into two programs, including the later “After Dark” segment featuring my personal favorite killer title of the group: Wizard Heist, from filmmaker Max Sylvester. And Peaches wouldn’t steer you wrong: the nine-minute film, about a quartet of sorcerers reuniting for one last score, is all that and a 12-sided die. “I need to know: are you going to get back on that unicorn with us, or are you going to let your beard fall off?” (Cheryl Eddy)

7:30 and 10:30 p.m., $15 ($20 for both programs)

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

store.peacheschrist.com

 

Kyuss

Back in its early 1990s heyday, Kyuss found success without the help of traditional venues. Instead, the band would rock the arid wilderness near its Palm Desert, Calif. home, turning on a gas-powered generator and playing its distinctive brand of swirling, down-tuned stoner rock until the juice ran out. Founding guitarist Josh Homme eventually departed to form Queens of the Stone Age, rubbishing talk of a reunion, but Kyuss has recently been resurrected without him. Rounded out by new guitarist Bruno Fevery, the four-piece embarked on a worldwide headlining tour, playing (mostly) indoor venues and delighting fans who thought their opportunity to see the influential band had gone for good. After languishing in stasis for more than a decade, Kyuss Lives! (Ben Richardson)

With the Sword, Black Cobra, Papa Wheelie

8 p.m., $30

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

Dirty Ghosts

Dirty Ghosts is a grimy quartet rising up from the gutters of San Francisco. Allyson Baker provides vocals, gnarly guitar riffs, and a bad attitude. Erin McDermott handles the bass, Jason Slota’s on drums and Nick Andre tackles the keyboard and sampler. Originally an in-apartment recording project, the band formerly included Carson Binks (who’s now in the Saviours) and Baker’s husband Aesop Rock, but when the Dirty Ghosts decided to get serious in 2010 and start playing live shows, Baker enlisted McDermott and Andre — Slota joined this year. A link to the band’s website recently popped up in my inbox with a direct warning — “They’re gonna be huge.” After listening to Dirty Ghosts’ single, “Shout It In,” I believe it. Heed the warning. Don’t sleep on this act. (Frances Capell)

With Dante Vs. Zombies and Phil Manley’s Life Coach

9 p.m., $8

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elriosf.com


SUNDAY 20

Kimya Dawson

Kimya Dawson is much too candid of a songwriter to even think of separating her life as a new mother from her music. In 2008, the ex-Moldy Peach released an album of children’s songs, called Alphabutt. On her latest album, Thunder Thighs (released on her label, Great Crap Factory), Dawson returns in anti-folk mode to sing about the humbling experience of having a baby daughter, and looks back on her muddled past. “I walked with the sweats/I walked with the chills,” she sings on the 10 minute epic about recovering from addiction, “Walk Like Thunder.” Thunder Thighs even has some children’s songs, too. (Miller)

With Your Heart Breaks, Dave End

8 p.m., $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com


TUESDAY 22

Laura Johnston Kohl

In her self-published book Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look, Laura Johnston Kohl documents how, in 1970, she became a follower of Jim Jones, leader of the religious cult the Peoples Temple split between San Francisco and the South American country of Guyana. Jones became infamous in ’78 when he ordered more than 900 of his Peoples Temple followers to commit suicide by ingesting cyanide-laced Kool Aid. Kohl was away from Jonestown when the suicide order came. She spent the next 20 years recovering from the deaths of her family and friends and her so-called survivors’ guilt. Now, Kohl is an avid public speaker willing to share her tragic, life-altering experience with the world. (Kevin Lee)

7 p.m., free

Books Inc.

601 Van Ness

(415)776-1111

www.jonestownsurvivor.com

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

A Tale of Two Genres SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Previews Thurs/17, 8pm. Opens Fri/18, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat and Dec 20-21, 8pm (no show Sat/19 or Nov 24; additional shows Sat, 3pm). Through Dec 21. Un-Scripted Theater Company presents an improvised musical inspired by Charles Dickens.

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; (415) 992-8168, www.thealcovetheater.com. $32-50. Schedule varies, through Dec 29. Not Quite Opera Productions presents Anne Nygren Doherty’s musical about San Francisco, with five characters all portrayed by Mary Gibboney.

Almost Nothing, Day of Absence Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Wed/16-Sat/19, 8pm (also Sat/19, 2pm); Sun/20, 2pm. The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre christens its grand new home near Union Square with two well-acted one-act plays under sharp direction by artistic director Steven Anthony Jones. Almost Nothing by Brazilian playwright Marcos Barbosa marks the North American premiere of an intriguing and shrewdly crafted Pinteresque drama, wherein a middle-class couple (Rhonnie Washington and Kathryn Tkel) returns home from an unexpected encounter at a stop light that leaves them jittery and distracted. As an eerie wind blows outside (in David Molina’s atmospheric sound design), their conversation circles around the event as if fearing to name it outright. When a poor woman (Wilma Bonet) arrives claiming to have seen everything, the couple abandons rationalization for a practical emergency and a moral morass dictated by poverty and class advantage — negotiated on their behalf by a black market professional (Rudy Guerrero). Next comes a spirited revival of Douglas Turner Ward’s Civil Rights–era Day of Absence (1965), a broad satire of Southern race relations that posits a day when all the “Neegras” mysteriously disappear, leaving white society helpless and desperate. The cast (in white face) excel at the high-energy comedy, and in staging the text director Jones makes a convincing parallel with today’s anti-immigrant laws and rhetoric. But if the play remains topical in one way, its too-blunt agitprop mode makes the message plain immediately and interest accordingly pales rapidly. (Avila)

Annapurna Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Showtimes vary, through Dec 4. Magic Theatre performs Sharr White’s world premiere drama about love’s longevity.

Fela! Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $31-200. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm; no show Nov 24); Sun, 2pm (also Nov 27, 7:30pm). Through Dec 11. The life and music of Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti is captured in this show with choreography by Bill T. Jones.

Forgetting the Details Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.nicolemaxali.com. $20. Thurs/17-Sat/19, 8pm. In one memorable scene of performer Nicole Maxali’s solo show Forgetting the Details, her artist father, Max Villanueva, takes her to see a Precita Eyes mural he’s been helping to paint. After pointing out the tree he painted, and describing the minute detail he imbued it with, he has her stand away from the mural to observe how quickly the details vanish, but not the integrity of the piece. It’s an instructive life lesson, and also the perfect approach to appreciating Maxali’s show. Ostensibly about her relationship with her grandmother, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Forgetting the Details winds up delving deeply into Maxali’s complicated relationship with her freewheeling, artistic dad, whose unexpected death in the summer of 2011 gives her show an unexpected trajectory as her grandmother’s slow decline gradually takes a backseat to the more immediate trauma of her father’s untimely passing. Maxali’s efforts to draw parallels between her grandmother’s in-the-moment mentality with her father’s artistic sensibilities and her own artistic journey are not always seamless, but the emotional content rings with a sincerity and depth often lacking from similarly-constructed solo performances. Just like a mural viewed from a distance, the play’s integrity lies not in the details, but rather in the vitality of the whole. (Gluckstern) How to Love Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.pustheatre.com. $15. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm; Sun/20, 2pm. Three demigod-like personalities at the center of the earth are charged with answering life’s mysteries, big and small, but find themselves stymied by their latest task, namely, explaining “how to love.” They have only a week to do it, for some reason, or humanity will be consigned to everlasting consternation, or something like that — coherence is not a priority here — anyway: stakes are high. Their boss, the Magistrate (Geo Epsilanty), has them present their findings each day, but each of them — the Very Sexy One (Jessica Schroeder in sassy lingerie), the Stern One (Gloria MacDonald in girl-school uniform), and the Young One (Brian Martin in caped crusader outfit) — comes up with bupkus. Finally, the Young One gets the inspiration to kidnap a surface-dwelling earthling (Valerie Fachman) to help them figure it all out. Local playwright Megan Cohen’s mumbling comedy, directed with robust attention to blocking and movement by Scott Baker for Performers Under Stress, is far too skit-like a conceit to merit its two plodding acts. More to the point, its humor is very silly but generally dim. Despite being set at the center of the earth, this is too shallow and glancing an investigation of love to intrigue or tickle the genuinely curious. (Avila)

The Importance of Being Earnest Notre Dame Senior Plaza, Community Room, 347 Dolores, SF; (650) 952-3021. Free. Fri/18, 7:30pm; Sat/19-Sun/20, 3pm. 16th Street Players perform the Oscar Wilde classic.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Dec 18. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Language Rooms Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 24); Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 4. Golden Thread Productions and Asian American Theater Company present the West Coast premiere of Yussef El Guindi’s dark comedy.

Making Porn Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-50. Thurs, 8pm; Thurs, 8pm; Fri-Sat, 9pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Nov 27. Ronnie Larsen brings back his crowd-pleasing comedy about the gay porn industry.

*”Master Harold” … and the Boys Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $18-40. Thurs/17-Sat/19, 8pm. Based loosely on personal history, Athol Fugard’s drama explores institutionalized racism in South Africa’s apartheid era ensconced in the seemingly innocuous world of a Port Elizabeth tea room. The play opens during a rainy afternoon with no customers, leaving the Black African help, Willie (Anthony Rollins-Mullens) and Sam (LaMont Ridgell), with little to do but rehearse ballroom dance steps for a big competition coming up in a couple of weeks. When Hally (Adam Simpson), the owner’s son, arrives from school, the atmosphere remains convivial at first then increasingly strained, as events happening outside the tea room conspire to tear apart their fragile camaraderie. The greatest burdens of the play are carried by Sam, who fills a range of roles for the increasingly pessimistic and emotionally-stunted Hally — teacher, student, surrogate father, confidante, and servant — all the while completely aware that their mutual love is almost certainly doomed to not survive past Hally’s adolescence, and possibly not past the afternoon. Ridgell rises greatly to the challenges of his character, ably flanked by Rollins-Mullens, and Simpson; he embodies the depth of Sam’s humanity, from his wisdom of experience, to his admiration for beauty, to his capacity to bear and finally to forgive Hally’s need to lash out at him. It is a moving and memorable rendering. (Gluckstern)

More Human Than Human Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; (415) 401-7987, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Thurs/17-Sat/19, 8pm. B. Duke’s dystopian drama is inspired by Philip K. Dick.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 3pm. Extended through Dec 17. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

*The Odyssey Aboard Alma, Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, SF; www.weplayers.org. $160. Fri/18, 12:30pm. Heralding their hugely ambitious Spring 2012 production of The Odyssey, which will take place all over Angel Island, the WE Players are tackling the work on a slightly smaller scale by staging it on the historic scow schooner Alma, which is part of the Maritime National Historical Park fleet docked at the end of Hyde Street Pier. Using both boat and Bay as setting, the essential chapters of the ten-year voyage — encounters with the Cyclops, Circe, the Underworld, the Sirens, Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, and Calypso — are enacted through an intriguing mash-up of narration, choreography, sea chanteys, salty dog stories (like shaggy dog stories, but more water-logged), breathtaking views, and a few death-defying stunts the likes of which you won’t see on many conventional stages. High points include the casual swapping of roles (every actor gets to play Odysseus, however briefly), Ross Travis’ masked and flatulent Prometheus and sure-footed Hermes, Ava Roy’s hot pants-clad Circe, Charlie Gurke’s steady musical direction and multi-instrumental abilities, and the sail itself, an experiential bonus. Landlubbers beware, so much time facing the back of the boat where much of the action takes place can result in mild quease, even on a calm day. Take advantage of the downtime between scenes to walk around and face forward now and again. You’ll want to anyway. (Gluckstern)

Oh, Kay! Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Wed/16, 7pm; Thurs/17-Fri/18, 8pm; Sat/19, 6pm; Sun/20, 3pm. 42nd Street Moon performs George and Ira Gershwin’s Prohibition-set comedy.

*On the Air Pier 29 on the Embarcadero (at Battery), SF; (415) 438-2668, love.zinzanni.org. $117 and up (includes dinner). Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Dec 31. Teatro ZinZanni’s final production at its longtime nest on Pier 29 is a nostalgia-infused banquet of bits structured around an old-time radio variety show, featuring headliners Geoff Hoyle (Geezer) and blues singer Duffy Bishop. If you haven’t seen juggling on the radio, for instance, it’s pretty awesome, especially with a performer like Bernard Hazens, whose footing atop a precarious tower of tubes and cubes is already cringingly extraordinary. But all the performers are dependably first-rate, including Andrea Conway’s comic chandelier lunacy, aerialist and enchanting space alien Elena Gatilova’s gorgeous “circeaux” act, graceful hand-balancer Christopher Phi, class-act tapper Wayne Doba, and radio MC Mat Plendl’s raucously tweeny hula-hooping. Add some sultry blues numbers by raunchy belter Bishop, Hoyle’s masterful characterizations (including some wonderful shtick-within-a-shtick as one-liner maestro “Red Bottoms”), a few classic commercials, and a healthy dose of audience participation and you start to feel nicely satiated and ready for a good cigar. Smoothly helmed by ZinZanni creative director Norm Langill, On the Air signals off-the-air for the popular dinner circus — until it can secure a new patch of local real estate for its antique spiegeltent — so tune in while you may. (Avila)

*Pellas and Melisande Cutting Ball Theater, Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thurs, 7:30; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 27. The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, the Swan Maiden: shimmering strands of each timeless tale twist through the melancholy tapestry of the Maurice Maeterlinck play Pelleas and Melisande, which opens Cutting Ball Theater’s 12th season. Receiving a lushly atmospheric treatment by director and translator Rob Melrose, this ill-fated Symbolist drama stars Joshua Schell and Caitlyn Louchard as the doomed lovers. Trapped in the claustrophobic environs of an isolated castle at the edge of a forbidding forest and equally trapped in an inadvertent love triangle with the hale and hearty elder prince Golaud (Derek Fischer), Pelleas’ brother and Melisande’s husband, the desperate, unconsummated passion that builds between the two youngsters rivals that of Romeo and Juliet’s, and leads to an ending even more tragic — lacking the bittersweet reconciliation of rival families that subverts the pure melodrama of the Shakespearean classic. Presented on a spare, wooden traverse stage (designed by Michael Locher), and accompanied by a smoothly-flowing score by Cliff Caruthers, the action is enhanced by Laura Arrington’s haunting choreography, a silent contortionism which grips each character as they try desperately to convey the conflicting emotions which grip them without benefit of dialogue. Though described by Melrose as a “fairy tale world for adults,” the dreamy gauze of Pelleas and Melisande peels away quickly enough to reveal a flinty and unsentimental heart. (Gluckstern)

Savage in Limbo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs John Patrick Shanley’s edgy comedy.

SexRev: The José Sarria Experience CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; (415) 552-4100, www.therhino.org. $10-25. Previews Thurs/17-Fri/18, 8pm. Opens Sat/19, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 10:30pm; no show Nov 24); Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 27. Theatre Rhinoceros performs John Fisher’s musical celebration of America’s first queer activist — a hit for the company in 2010.

“Shocktoberfest 12: Fear Over Frisco” Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $25-35. Thurs/17-Sat/19, 8pm. In its annual season-scented horror bid, Thrillpeddlers joins forces with SF’s Czar of Noir, writer-director Eddie Muller, for a sharply penned triplet of plays that resurrect lurid San Francisco lore as flesh-and-blood action. In the slightly sluggish but intriguing Grand Inquisitor, a solitary young woman modeling herself on Louise Brooks in Lulu (an alluringly Lulu-like Bonni Suval) believes she has located the Zodiac killer’s widow (a sweet but cagey Mary Gibboney) — a scenario that just can’t end well for somebody, yet manages to defy expectations. An Obvious Explanation turns on an amnesiac (Daniel Bakken) whose brother (Flynn de Marco) explains the female corpse in the rollaway (Zelda Koznofski) before asking bro where he hid a certain pile of money. Enter a brash doctor (Suval) with a new drug and ambitions of her own vis-à-vis the hapless head case. Russell Blackwood directs The Drug, which adapts a Grand Guignol classic to the hoity-toity milieu of the Van Nesses and seedy Chinatown opium dens, where a rough-playing attorney (an ever persuasive Eric Tyson Wertz) determines to turn a gruesome case involving the duplicitous Mrs. Van Ness (an equally sure, sultry Kära Emry) to his own advantage. The evening also offers a blackout spook show and some smoothly atmospheric musical numbers, including Muller’s rousing “Fear Over Frisco” (music composed by Scrumbly Koldewyn; accompaniment by Steve Bolinger and Birdie-Bob Watt) and an aptly low-down Irving Berlin number — both winningly performed by the entire company. (Avila)

Shoot O’Malley Twice StageWerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.viragotheatre.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 24). Through Nov 26. Virago Theater Company performs Jon Brooks’ world-premiere existential comedy.

Sticky Time Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; www.vanguardianproductions.com. $15-40. Wed/16-Fri/18, 8pm. Crowded Fire and Vanguardian Productions present playwright-director Marilee Talkington’s multimedia science fiction about a woman running out of time in the worst way. The prolix and histrionic story is the real sticking point, however, in this otherwise imaginatively staged piece, which places its audience on swivel chairs in the center of Brava’s upstairs studio theater, transformed by designer Andrew Lu’s raised stage and white video screens running the length of the walls into an enveloping aural (moody minimalistic score by Chao-Jan Chang) and visual landscape. Thea (Rami Margron) heads a three-person crew of celestial plumbers managing a sea of time “threads,” an undulating web of crisscrossing lines (in the impressive video animation by Rebecca Longworth). The structure is plagued by a mysterious wave of “time quakes” that Tim (Lawrence Radecker) thinks he may have figured out. Coworker Emit (Michele Leavy), meanwhile, goofing around like a hyperactive child, spots some sort of beast at work in the ether. When Thea gets stuck by a loose thread, she becomes something of a time junky, desperate to relive the color-suffused world of love and family lost somewhere in space-time as reality starts to unravel (with a dramatic assist from cinematographer Lloyd Vance) and the crew seeks help from a wise figure in a tattered gown (Mollena Williams). A little like a frenetic, stagy version of Andrey Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), the story gets credit for dramatizing some confounding facts about time and space at the particle level but might have benefited from less dialogue and more mystery — just as the audio-visual experience works best when the house lights are low. (Avila)

The Temperamentals New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 18. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jon Marans’ drama about gay rights during the McCarthy era.

Totem Grand Chapiteau, AT&T Park, Parking Lot A, 74 Mission Rock, SF; cirquedusoleil.com/totem. $58-248.50. Tues-Sun, schedule varies. Extended through Dec 18. Cirque Du Soleil returns with its latest big-top production.

Two Dead Clowns Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 7pm. Through Nov 26. Ronnie Larsen’s new play explores the lives of Divine and John Wayne Gacy.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 26. Brian Copeland (Not a Genuine Black Man) presents a workshop production of his new solo show.

*Working for the Mouse Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $22. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no performances Nov 24-26). Through Dec 17. It might not come as a surprise to hear that even “the happiest place on earth” has a dark side, but hearing Trevor Allen describe it during this reprise of 2002’s Working for the Mouse will put a smile on your face as big as Mickey’s. With a burst of youthful energy, Allen bounds onto the tiny stage of Impact Theatre to confess his one-time aspiration to never grow up — a desire which made auditioning for the role of Peter Pan at Disneyland a sensible career move. But in order to break into the big time of “charactering,” one must pay some heavy, plush-covered dues. As Allen creeps up the costumed hierarchy one iconic cartoon figure at a time, he finds himself unwittingly enmeshed in a world full of backroom politics, union-busting, drug addled surfer dudes with peaches-and-cream complexions, sexual tension, showboating, job suspension, Make-A-Wish Foundation heartbreak, hash brownies, rabbit vomit, and accidental decapitation. Smoothly paced and astutely crafted, Mouse will either shatter your blissful ignorance or confirm your worst suspicions about the corporate Disney machine, but either way, it will probably make you treat any “Casual Seasonal Pageant Helpers” you see running around in their sweaty character suits with a whole lot more empathy. (Note: review from the show’s recent run at La Val’s Subterranean in Berkeley.) (Gluckstern)

BAY AREA

Annie Berkeley Playhouse, Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; (510) 845-8542, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Thurs-Sat, 7pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through Dec 4. Berkeley Playhouse performs the classic musical.

Doubt: A Parable Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer-winning drama.

How to Write a New Book for the Bible Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Wed/16 and Sun/20, 7pm (also Sun/20, 2pm); Thurs/17 and Sat/19, 2 and 8pm. An aspiring writer who later becomes a priest, Bill (Tyler Pierce) is the caregiver for his aging mother (Linda Gehringer) during her long bout with cancer. His father (Leo Marks), though already dead, still inhabits his mother’s flickering concept of reality, made all the more dreamlike by her necessary dependence on pain medication. His brother (Aaron Blakely), meanwhile, has returned from Vietnam with survivor guilt but lands a meaningful career as a schoolteacher in the South. The latest from playwright Bill Cain (Equivocation, 9 Circles) is a humor-filled but sentimental and long-winded autobiographical reflection on family from the vantage of his mother’s long illness. It gets a strong production from Berkeley Rep, with a slick cast under agile direction by Kent Nicholson, but it plays as if narrator Bill mistakenly believes he’s stepped out of an Arthur Miller play, when in fact there’s little here of dramatic interest and far too much jerking of tears. (Avila)

*The Internationalist Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.justtheater.org. $15-30. Thurs/17-Sat/19, 8pm; Sun/20, 5pm. Lowell (Nick Sholley, as rumpled everyman) is the American fish out of water at the center of playwright Anne Wasburn’s smartly written and very funny comedy, now receiving a terrific West Coast premiere courtesy of Just Theater and director Jonathan Spector. Arriving for a business trip in some unnamed but vaguely Eastern European country with a funny-sounding language he hasn’t had time to study, Lowell is met at the airport by Sara (a persuasive Alexandra Creighton), a beautiful colleague who takes him to dinner, then takes him home. Next day in the office, the increasingly exhausted American meets his friendly counterparts, and discovers Sara is at the bottom of the office totem pole, where the filing happens. All the characters speak English with varying levels of proficiency when making with the usual small talk — “I’m always curious about what Americans know and what they don’t know,” says one po-faced innocent (Kalli Jonsson) with reference to the American Indian genocide — but revert to rapid-flowing gibberish whenever they tire of catering to the foreigner. Things get slowly weirder over the next couple of days, however, as the dynamics of this catty office (filled out wonderfully by Michael Barrett Austin, Lauren Bloom, and Harold Pierce) lead to a bewildering implosion that leaves Lowell sightseeing, and maybe seeing things, with a case of jet lag as big as the zeitgeist. (Avila)

Rambo: The Missing Years Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 7pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Dec 10. Howard “Hanoi Howie” Petrick presents his solo show about being an anti-war demonstrator — while also serving in the Army.

Sam’s Enchanted Evening TheaterStage at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 26. The Residents wrote the script and did the musical arrangements for this musical, featuring singer Randy Rose and pianist Joshua Raoul Brody.

The Soldier’s Tale Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Previews Wed/16, 8pm. Opens Thurs/17, 8pm. Runs Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 18. Aurora Theatre presents a re-imagined version of Igor Stravinsky’s 1918 musical by Tom Ross and Muriel Maffre.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun and Nov 25-26 and Dec 26-30, 11am (no show Dec 25). Through Dec 31. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Bare Bones Butoh Presents: Showcase #23!” Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez, SF; bobwebb20@hotmail.com. Fri-Sat, 8pm. $5-20. Butoh performance featuring new and in-progress works by local, national, and international artists.

“BrokeBACH Mountain” Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF; www.lgcsf.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm. $15-30. The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco opens its 32nd season with a mix of modern and classical hits, inspired in part by Brokeback Mountain.

“Club Chuckles” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri, 8pm. $20. Comedy with Neil Hamburger, Natasha Leggero, Tim Heidecker, Duncan Trussell, and “The Kenny ‘K-Strass’ Strasser Yo-Yo Extravaganza.”

“Fox and Jewel” Dance Mission, 3316 24th St, SF; www.genryuarts.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. $20-25. Gen Ryu arts presents Melody Takata’s interdisciplinary work that uses a Japanese myth to address current concerns about arts and culture in Japantown as the neighborhood redevelops.

“From Wallflower Order to Dance Brigade: A 35-Year Retrospective Celebration” Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; (415) 273-4633, www.dancebrigade.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Free. Krissy Keefer marks 35 years of Dance Brigade with The Great Liberation Upon Hearing and other works.

“I’d Eat Them Both” Purple Onion, 140 Columbus, SF; kellymccarron.eventbrite.com. Fri, 7 and 9pm. Comedian Kelly McCarron performs for a recording of her first comedy album.

LEVYdance Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; 1-800-838-3006; www.levydance.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. $18-23. The company presents its Fall 2011 Home Season, featuring the world premiere of ROMP.

Liss Fain Dance Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.lissfaindance.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 9:30pm); Sun, 5pm. $12.50-25. The company presents performance installation The False and True Are One.

San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Program A: Fri, 8pm; Sat, 9:30pm. Program B: Sat-Sun, 6pm. $40 (two shows, $75). The 13th annual festival, produced by Micaya, welcomes 19 companies from places as diverse as Oakland, San Francisco, Paris, Brooklyn, and London.

“10 Women Campaign: Who Is Tending the City?” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; (415) 863-9834, www.flyawayproductions.com. Thurs, 7:30pm. $25 ($50 to include reception at 6:30pm). Flyaway Productions honors ten community leaders with a performance and ceremony.

XX hardcore

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
XX hardcore

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC When Blatz, a political punk band connected to all-ages Berkeley music venue 924 Gilman Street Project (the Gilman), was looking for a girl singer to join the act in 1990, it wound up with two new additions.

Annie Lalania and Anna Joy Springer were separately asked to audition, but the band didn’t realize they were already friends. When the women arrived, they decided they didn’t want to leave, and so they both joined the band, which made for chaotic, memorable live shows with massive pits in crowd and sometimes double of every instrument on stage. It was like “a silly American version of Crass,” says Springer.

Now a published author and professor of creative writing at U.C. San Diego, Springer recounts this story and other anecdotes, laced with humor and debauchery, about maneuvering through the ’90s Bay Area punk scene as a feminist queer woman in the new documentary, From the Back of the Room.

Directed by D.C.-based filmmaker Amy Oden, the documentary — which screens at the Center for Sex and Culture this week — follows the trail of women in punk, hardcore, riot grrrl, and other DIY music scenes beginning in the 1980s. Its clusters of interviews span generations, scenes, and states, with vintage and contemporary footage of live shows sprinkled throughout.

Via phone, on an eight-hour road trip during a Southern tour with the film, Oden tells me she hopes the documentary will start a dialogue on the issues faced by women, adding “My other big hope is that if younger women see it, they feel they can be a part of this community, or whatever community they want to be a part of.”

Following initial introductions and clips, From the Back of the Room is segmented into sections discussing different aspects of sexual politics — categories such as violence in the scene, and later, motherhood, arise and are addressed by female musicians, roadies, bookers, graphic designers, and house show providers.

“I started coming up with people whose bands I’d always admired, or listened to a lot,” explains Oden, also a musician. “It was bands I’d listened to growing up. [The film] was half that, and half people being like, ‘oh you should talk to this person’ or ‘have you met this person?’

The end result is a film that includes Leora from NYC hardcore act Thulsa Doom, Slade Bellum from San Francisco’s Tribe 8, Laura Pleasants from current sludge act Kylesa, hard-rocking twin sisters Janine Enriquez and Nicole Enriquez from Witch Hunt, Jen Thorpe from experimental Canadian punk band Submission Hold, and Allison Wolfe from seminal riot grrrl act Bratmobile, among dozens of other interviewees.

Riot grrrl is likely the most consistently recognized form of female punkdom, thanks to the media frenzy in the early ’90s surrounding Wolfe’s band and acts like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney.

“It was overwhelming,” Wolfe says of the hype during a phone call from her home in Los Angeles. “At first you’re flattered…but what it ends up feeling like is that your community is being taken from you and served up in a really watered-down way. The message was heavily edited — declawed and defanged.”

Wolfe, who now plays in the band Cool Moms, says riot grrrl was very much a part of third-wave feminism, adding, “I don’t feel riot grrl is super current, I think it does exist in a certain time and place, but it’s part of a [feminist] continuum.”

And therein lies another issue Oden addresses in her documentary — while riot grrrl is no longer contemporary, or at least, no longer hounded by media, there are still plenty of females in the punk scene that deserve recognition — and many more that came before it.

“I definitely think riot grrrl did some amazing things,” says Oden, “But I think that often times the other side of that story gets left out, the women that were active contributors to the punk scene before riot grrrl, during riot grrrl, and since riot grrrl.”

Clearly, women in punk did not die off in the ’90s. This week, there’s a show in San Francisco at Public Works with T.I.T.S, Grass Widow, and experimental punk act Erase Errata — the continuing torch bearers of the DIY punk movement, the Bay Area band formed in 1999 that toured with electro post-Bikini Kill act, Le Tigre.

From the Back of the Room explores longevity, but also contradictions — punk is not a cohesive scene, and it’s not void of the usual trappings of mainstream society. It’s a many-layered, impassioned, conflicting, world. Lyrics screamed about equality do not always match actions.

Springer of Blatz and later, Gr’ups, knows well the disconnect. Just last year, on a reunion tour with Gr’ups, she played with anachro-punks Subhumans and the old power struggle with the audience was alive and well. She tells me, “We were on a stage and there were all these people shouting the words to old Subhumans songs, all these amazing lyrics about freedom and equanimity.” Then, some “no shirt-wearing pseudo skinhead looking guy” in the crowd yelled “shut up and show us your tits.”

Says Thorpe from Submission Hold in the trailer for From the Back of the Room,”A lot of people come into the punk scene thinking it’s an ideal world where they’re not going to come across sexism, racism, homophobia — all the isms — but that’s not true, it exists there as well, and it needs to be addressed there as well.”

“FROM THE BACK OF THE ROOM”

Sat/19, 8-11 p.m., $5–$7 sliding scale.

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

(415) 902-2071

www.sexandculture.org

 

Unaffiliated yet tangentially related show this week:

T.I.T.S, GRASS WIDOW, ERASE ERRATA

Thurs/17, 9pm, $8

Public Works

161 Eerie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicworks.com

Bling and the kingdom

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Bling and the kingdom

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL “Why curate an exhibition focused on a single country in an age of disappearing boundaries?” is one of the questions posed by the curatorial text at the start of “The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art from India,” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ survey of recent photography, sculpture, and video from the subcontinent.

One obvious answer is, “Why not?” The recent historic record gives plenty of reason enough. Despite all those “disappearing boundaries” and the wider circulation of art and ideas and artists around the globe, there is the fact that, perhaps with the exception of Chinese art, comprehensive displays of contemporary art from non-Western countries are proportionally much rarer in major Western institutions, especially those in the US.

There is also the issue of timeliness. Although India’s transformation into a leading global economic player is not news, the impact that growth has had on the arts and the art market still is. An Artinfo.com headline asked only last week, “Is India Becoming the World’s Hub for Internet Art Commerce?” (with the related article on the blue chip, Internet-based art fair, India Art Collective, making a persuasive case for “yes”).

But the most compelling reasons for The Matter Within are offered by the art itself. Alternately playful and reflective, packing visual pop and demanding of deeper consideration, the exhibit’s pieces are as densely-packed with ideas, portraits, and questions about what and who comprises as complex an entity as “India,” and also what India’s future might look like when reflected in its past and present, as YBCA’s galleries are chock-a-block with things to look at.

This breadth is both “The Matter Within”‘s greatest curatorial strength and the source of some of its practical weak spots, particular in regards to how it is installed. There is simply more art here than YBCA can comfortably accommodate, as well as intriguing omissions (why no paintings?). Different series by the same artist are spread across the space’s two main galleries, something not explicitly stated in the wall didactics, which often address both bodies of work but are positioned alongside only one of them.

This is all the more frustrating since not everything in the show necessarily deserves inclusion. Sunil Gupta’s photo-story Sun City, which recasts the heterosexual relationship at the center of Chris Marker’s 1962 science fiction film La Jetee as a trans-national homosexual one played out against the backdrop of AIDS rather than nuclear annihilation, is a moving engagement with both the film it references and the shifting valences of minoritarian sexuality and desirability across borders.

His large-scale, multi-portrait narratives focusing on gender-ambiguous couples in the next room over, however, is less compelling and lacks the directness with which Tejal Shah documents the female masculinity of her transsexual and transgender subjects in the photo series and digital slide show, “I Am.” Shah’s portraits would’ve made for a smart counterpoint to Pushpamala N.’s “Native Types” series — in which the photographer appears as various Indian female archetypes culled from art history, pop culture, and religion— that instead are hung across from Nikhil Chopra’s equally costume and prop-heavy, yet less conceptually tight, photos and video in the show’s entry gallery.

Similarly, Rina Banerjee’s Frankensteinian sculptures of colonial-era antiquities and costly animal remnants, although rich with historical allusion, simply look busy compared to Siddartha Karawall’s giant send-up of a horse and rider statue Hangover Man, made from wax-covered T-shirts that had originally been donated to poor communities in India by an American charity but got re-routed to the open market. The rider in question is the former Maharaja after whom Karwall’s art school was named, who now appears as a Don Quixote-like wraith representative of the gulf between Western goodwill and the Indian “ground truth” of need and impoverishment it is supposedly addressing.

A different sort of disconnect haunts the Asian Art Museum’s “Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts,” the other major exhibit in town currently devoted to India. Maharaja means “great king” or “high king” in Sanskrit, a status expressed in the breathtaking level of sumptuousness and luxury of the material items through which Indian rulers displayed their power.

Light on historical context and heavy on the baubles, Maharaja offers up a seemingly endless parade of such items: extravagantly embroidered textiles, magnificent ceremonial accouterments, and enough serious bling to outshine the borrowed sparkles of any contemporary red carpet. The effect is strangely flattening. Monarchy is the golden goose that produces marvelous things rather than a larger institution, the spoils of which only tell one part of a more complex and usually bloody story.

Thus, what Maharaja leaves largely unaddressed are questions of power and history, as well as the politics of display. For example, what was the cost in human labor (and perhaps lives) to spin and weave the silk necessary to make the stunning 18th Century bridal gown in the second gallery? Or to mine the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds that emblazon so many of the items displayed?

The fact that the majority of the artifacts come from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum –an official co-presenter of the exhibit— speaks more to the legacy of British colonial rule than the brief gloss the Raj and its aftermath receive in the show’s third gallery, which crams in most of Maharaja’s history lessons. And judging from the case of various Cartier commissions from the 1920s and ’30s, and the gorgeous modern furniture commissioned by Yeshwant Rao Holkar II (a jazz age jetsetter and friend of Man Ray’s who is the exhibit’s breakout star), India’s deposed royals did pretty well for themselves, even as the times changed around them.

But then again, that the already powerful would continue being high rollers is not really news. As Mel Brooks pointed out long ago, it’s good to be the king.

THE MATTER WITHIN: NEW CONTEMPORARY OF INDIA

Through January 15

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF.

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

MAHARAJA: THE SPLENDOR OF INDIA’S ROYAL COURTS

Through April 8

Asian Art Museum

200 Larkin, SF.

(415) 581-3500

www.asianart.org

 

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 16

Confront the UC Regents

Editor’s Note: The UC canceled this meeting as we were going to press, citing public safety concerns, and protest organizers were figuring out how to respond. Check our Politics blog or www.makebankspaycalifornia.com for the latest.

The UC Board of Regents will be meeting at the UCSF Mission Bay Campus at 10 am, and students have been organizing for months to make their voices heard. The message: stop tuition hikes, budget cuts, and privatization of public schools; tax the 1 percent.

ReFund California and the Northern California Convergence will join up with OccupySF and Occupy encampments being set up on various college campuses this week to “Shut down the UC Regents meeting and take control of our education and our future.” ReFund California is also threatening to march on the Financial District to shut down banks if the Regents don’t support their five-point pledge of action (see “The growing 99 percent,” 11/9).

OccupySF will be marching from their encampment at Justin Herman Plaza (Market and Embarcadero) to the Mission Bay Campus starting at 7 am. UC Berkeley students can board a ReFund California bus at 7 am at Bancroft and Telegraph in Berkeley.

10 a.m., free

UCSF Mission Bay Campus

1675 Owens, SF

(650) 238-4821

www.occupyed.org

makebankspaycalifornia.com

occupyoureducation@gmail.com

rose.goldman@gmail.com

 

THURSDAY 17

Changing Congress

San Francisco Progressive Democrats of America hosts a discussion with Norman Solomon, a prolific progressive political writer who is running for Congress to replace retiring Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Marin), a member and former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The event opens the floor for questions and concerns regarding future legislation.

7-9 p.m., free

Harry R. Bridges Memorial Building, ILWU, 4th Floor

1188 Franklin, SF

sig4re@comcast.net

www.pdamerica.org


SATURDAY 19

Addiction & Society

Our capitalist society may be to blame for our addictive tendencies and obsessive consumerism. Dr. Gabor Mate, an author and physician who focuses on mental illness, explains how our market economy drives us crazy and leads us down a path toward dependency. Speak Out Now’s colloquium event will help listeners connect the dots between two of our country’s most prevalent concerns.

5-7 p.m., $2 suggested donation

South Berkeley Senior Center 2939 Ellis, Berk.

contactspeakout@gmail.com

www.speakout-now.org


MONDAY 21

“Gay Politics in Africa”

Beyond our own shores, homophobia persists to infiltrate government and subjugate people with leaders who use religion and law as instruments to thwart the freedom of sexual expression. Dr. Sylvia Tamale, renowned African feminist, analyzes the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill and opines on the roots of homosexual suppression in Africa and Western societies.

6- 7:30 p.m., free

Berman Hall in the Fromm Building, USF Golden Gate and Parker, SF

510-663-2255

priorityafrica@priorityafrica.org

www.priorityafrica.org

Contemplating Appetite

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Contemplating Appetite

virginia@sfbg.com

APPETITE My adventures in food and drink have been the subject of my SFBG Appetite column for nearly three years online at SFBG.com. As of last month, you now also find me in print every week. Many have asked where I am going with this column — some expecting a formal weekly review, others a mix of subjects and directions. The latter is true. I cannot replace former Guardian food critic Paul Reidinger’s eloquence and decades-long experience as a food writer (and I’m glad to say we will continue to hear from him in various articles). I take this opportunity to explain where I’ve come from and my philosophy in covering the edible world.

First and foremost, I bring to the table passion. From mostly Italian and German stock, I’ve eaten heartily since early childhood in Oklahoma and Missouri, 16 total years of my youth in Southern California and New Jersey (just outside LA and NYC respectively), and travel over five continents. As an incessant reader and writer since girlhood, books first opened me up to the world, though I dreamed of having my own adventures to write about. Moving to San Francisco a decade ago, I was wowed not only by its unique, radiant beauty, but by the consistent quality of food, spending spare dollars eating out constantly. Though SF wasn’t the immediate love affair for me New York was, it is a love that has only increased each year, the home I would happily end up in. This city still takes my breath away.

Patricia Unterman’s original San Francisco Food Lover’s Guide was my food bible in those early days. I connected with her quest for the authentic, no matter the cuisine. I ate my way through neighborhoods, marking up her book (and all my dining guides) until I had been to every single restaurant, market, and bar in its pages. Eventually, requests asking me where to go and what to eat reached a fever pitch, so my husband (and partner in taste and travel) helped create my own humble website, The Perfect Spot, to share my reviews and finds. I’ve been sending out a bi-weekly newsletter for nearly four years based on my writings for the site. I also write for an ever-increasing number of magazines and websites.

“Diet,” “lowfat,” and “hold the cream” are words you’ll never hear me say. My hunger for food as adventure means I make it a goal to have no food prejudices. Many say, “I’ll try anything once,” but my philosophy is to keep trying anything I don’t like until I do. The food may not have been prepared properly; it was perhaps of poor quality; maybe the palate wasn’t quite ready for it — dishes still deserve to be known at their best. I spent years trying to overcome my aversion to uni (sea urchin), for example. Eating chef David Bazigran’s brilliant uni flan at Fifth Floor early this year was a revelation. I realized it was uni’s texture, not its of-the-sea flavor, turning me off. I’ve enjoyed uni ever since, though only when ultra-fresh. From personal experience, I know one can change one’s abhorrence of a food, and in so doing expand one’s horizons another inch, uncovering another of life’s simple delights.

Sometimes fear arises around unfamiliar foods — and the unfamiliar in general. Without variety and a vast range of expression, the world loses it color — and its joy. While sameness can be comforting (and there’s a time for that), it is entirely boring. To go through any part of life bored or complacent is simply lazy. As with music or books, one can discover unknown lands with a few new ingredients, enlivened by the hands of a gifted, caring chef. Whether food cart or fine dining, there’s no reason to settle for mediocrity, not with the unreal produce, vision, and talent surrounding us.

Internationally, I’ve fallen in love with black pudding in Ireland, extreme spice in Thailand, Tyrolean food in the Italian Alps. I’ve explored wine chateaus in Bordeaux, agave fields in Mexico, gin distilleries and cocktail labs in London, whisk(e)y houses in Scotland and Ireland. I’ve frequented restaurants, coffee havens, bars, chocolate shops, farmers markets everywhere. I sample obsessively and comparatively. Rather than one single review, I prefer to cover a mixture of highlights in any given week. I’m opinionated, yes, but don’t care much for snark, flippancy, or jadedness. Though honest assessment is crucial, rather than rip apart the few not doing it well, I’d rather focus on the many having fun with or perfecting their craft.

My “holy trinity” of US cities for food and culture, though, consists of New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Travel is one of life’s greatest gifts, yet when I cannot afford to go, I am able to travel in my own city. Authentic foods transport me back to the place in which that food was illuminated — anchovies on the coast of Italy, bastilla in Morocco, Creole cream cheese in New Orleans, or bahn mi in Vietnam. It helps to live in a place as international and cosmopolitan as SF. But even in nondescript towns, I uncover gems. The hunt is a key part of the thrill.

Besides travel, you’ll notice I also write about drink… a lot. Whether coffee, spirits, and cocktails (my first love), wine and beer (the ultimate food accompaniments), my knowledge of drink grows along with the culinary. Even at 21, I wanted a grown-up atmosphere in which to imbibe, detesting noisy, crowded “scenes.” Drink, for me, is similar to food: it’s about quality, artistry, and adventure, not buzz or quick consumption. A memorable meal isn’t complete without the right sip to begin, pair, or end with.

As with food, Northern California was instrumental in furthering my taste for fine drink, though global explorations have shaped my standards of comparison. It started with cocktails years ago as SF (and, of course, NYC) lead the way in reviving classics, and creating experimental, culinary drinks. The artistry and history behind these drinks intrigued me, connecting to my Old World, retro, jazz-loving self.

Delving into cocktails inevitably led to my great love of craft spirits, many of our country’s trailblazers and innovators being based right here. (Thank you, St. George, Charbay, Germain-Robin, Anchor Distilling, et. al.) Our local Wine Country and craft beer pioneers like Fritz Maytag likewise have shaped the world, while local personalities such as Kermit Lynch and Rajat Parr in the wine realm are experts on global glories in drink.

What makes a great meal? Service, setting, and, of course, food are crucial. Ultimately, I see eating as a communal ritual. A thoughtfully-prepared meal surprises and nourishes the body and spirit. We engage (or should — put those cell phones away!) over a meal, reflect on our day, truly taste, actually look at and listen to each other. Expect me to share with you the best tastes and backdrops from these moments.

While I don’t expect our tastes to be the same, I do look forward to embarking on delicious adventures together throughout the food realm. *

BEST NEW OPENINGS OF 2011

In the spirit of ushering in my print column, I recap the year with my list of 2011’s best new openings, realizing we still have a few weeks worth of openings left:

CASUAL

Wise Sons Deli www.wisesonsdeli.com. Although not getting a brick and mortar location until 2012, this pop-up deli (every Tuesday at the Ferry Plaza) was one of the year’s great new delights, filling a gaping vacancy of quality Jewish food with excellent babka, bialy, and corned beef.

Hot Sauce and Panko 1545 Clement, SF. (415) 387-1908, www.hotsauceandpanko.com. With an impressive array of hot sauces from around the world, addictive chicken wings in a crazy range of sauces (tequila-chipotle-raspberry jam!), this quirky take-out also has a hilarious blog.

Mission Cheese 736 Valencia, SF. www.missioncheese.net. Mission Cheese serves not only lush cheeses and wines, but some of the best grilled cheese sandwiches around in a chic cafe setting.

MID-RANGE

Bar Tartine 561 Valencia, SF. (415) 487-1600, www.bartartine.com. Though not a new opening, I refer to the complete revamp and Eastern European-influenced menu under chef Nick Balla that happened this year. Unusual dishes, Hungarian and beyond, and Balla’s impeccable technique make this menu unlike any other.

Boxing Room 399 Grove, SF. (415) 430-6590, www.boxingroomsf.com. It’s refreshing to get some New Orleans breezes in SF from a Louisiana chef making his own Creole cream cheese and frying up fresh alligator.

Nojo 231 Franklin, SF. (415) 896-4587, www.nojosf.com. We’ve had a glut of izakayas open over the past few years, but this one stands above in warm, hip atmosphere and consistently delightful food.

Park Tavern 1652 Stockton, SF. (415) 989-7300, www.parktavernsf.com. From the owners of Marlowe, this immediately feels like the buzzing destination restaurant of Washington Square Park for satisfying American food with gourmet edge.

Jasper’s Corner Tap 401 Taylor, SF. (415) 775-7979, www.jasperscornertap.com. All things to all people: comfortable meet-up spot with perfect cocktails, craft beers and wines aplenty, and the food is consistently heartwarming.

 

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