New York Times Archives — Page 15 of 31 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Azztronaughty

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 7, 2010

It’s impossible for me to think of Big Freedia without exploding into happy feathers. As the fierce national face of New Orleans’ bounce music movement (along with her drag daughter, Sissy Nobby), Freedia’s been shoehorned into several media narratives that don’t necessarily do her justice — popular performer who bridges a supposed gap between flamboyant gayness and macho rap, evidence that original regional roots music is still being generated in our monocultural-seeming musical world, post-Katrina beat-healer of ravished communities, anthropological curiosity. But she’s all that and more: a canny, hard-working force of nature who can really turn you out.

Bounce, with its quick-step, butt-thundering beats and hypersexual call-and-response template, has done a lot to push New Orleans back to the forefront of the American dance music scene. That a shoulder-shrugging attitude toward its superstar’s transgender appearance and cartoonish sexuality accompanies the sound should only surprise those who somehow missed Little Richard and Prince, not to mention Cameo and Cam’ron. Still, Freedia’s matter-of-fact, out-and-proud “Queen Diva” stance is all too rare in hip-hop. First-time listeners, after taking in Freedia’s feminine peacocking, still get floored when her gravelly voice orders straight crowds to “bend ovah like I told ya!” in her hit “Azz Everywhere.” (And then they do.)

Outsiders have called Freedia’s style “sissy bounce” — a niche label she rejects, and one that’s pretty inaccurate. Freedia’s first appearance in the Bay, last year at a San Francisco drag party, left the sissy audience completely befuddled. This time around, she’ll be in Oakland at a mixed affair put on by the fab Le Heat and Hella Gay parties. And now that she’s been featured everywhere from Diplo’s blog to The New York Times Magazine, Bay crowds may be ready to “jump back, shoot it up now, bitches get down” the Big Easy way.

Big Freedia Wed/9, 9 p.m., $10. The New Parrish, 579 18th St., Oakl. www.thenewparish.com

PEPE BRADOCK

The jazz-educated Frenchman could have been beamed up after he gifted the world with orchestral house classic “Deep Burnt” in 1999 and still been lionized. But he’s consistently delivered deep-streaming tracks that drop at just the right moments. He’ll be headlining the Staple boys’ ear-ticking Darkroom monthly with Fil Latorre and Javaight.

Thu/9, 9 p.m., $10. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

DRUMCODE: ADAM BEYER AND IDA ENGBERG

Attack of the Swedish techno giants! Drumcode label head Adam Beyer and “Disco Volante” hitmaker Ida Engberg bring news from the detail-oriented Stockholm scene to the perfectly curated weekly Base party at Vessel. My longtime local bass-maven crush Nikola Baytala warms up.

Thurs/9, 10 p.m., $15. Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF. www.vesselsf.com

ARTIFICIAL

The debut of this dark wave, minimal synth, and rare post-punk party last month was fashionably bananas — don’t miss the follow up with DJ Justin of Nachtmusik, Banshee, Dreamweapon, Julian DeStrukt, and Nary Guman of Warm Leatherette.

Fri/10, 9:30 p.m., $7. Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF. www.sfcatclub.com

BACK TO SCHOOL

Aw, already? Meet and greet the new freshman class of clubgoers, probably wearing even more fantastically mismatched ensembles than previously imagined, at this electro blowout put on by the Blow Up kids. Tenderloins, Udachi, Sticky K, Lucky Date, Jeffrey Paradise, and more stoke your higher learning.

Sat/11, 9 p..m.–3 a.m., $15 for 18+, $10 for 21+. Kelly’s Mission Rock, 817 Terry Francois Blvd., SF. www.blowupsf.com

BLOOD, SWEAT, AND QUEERS

Bmore funk and booty jams from DJs Davo and Bunnystyle for two floors of hot queers in a Chinatown dive. ‘Nuff said!

Sat/11, 10:30 p.m., $5. Li Po Lounge, 916 Grant, SF.

MIXMASTER MIKE WITH DEL THE FUNKY HOMOSAPIEN

It’ll be a classic hip-hop throwdown when the Beastie Boys DJ and mind-warping rapper join forces at this Electronic Arts shindig. There’s something about a ” sexy exotic cars” showcase, too, but why burn the fossil fuels when you can inflame the brain cells? With DJs Sake One, Ren the Vinyl Archeologist, and more.

Sat/11, 9 p.m., free with RSVP at Mighty website. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

The man behind the meme

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 7, 2010

9

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC When I finally manage to get in touch with Berkeley rap phenom Brandon McCartney, a.k.a. Lil B, he’s just landed in Oakland, having returned from a brief — and in his words, “amazing!” — stay in Atlanta with Internet-rap legend Soulja Boy. He played a show or two down South, and got a lot of love from local radio. “It’s just amazing the respect I’m getting offline,” says, “just from being at a computer, doing what I do.”

What does Lil B do online? He has a prolific Twitter account, more than 100 MySpace accounts, a self-published book on positive living (Takin’ Over, available from Kele Publishing), and dozens of hastily-made videos on YouTube. Most of the top comments on his YouTube account are from B himself, and he leaves comments on blog posts about Lil B with a blogger account, Tropical Doves (tropicaldoves.blogspot.com). At a recent New York City show, Lil B’s status as an Internet star was apparent as soon as he stepped on the stage — dozens of cameras (and one spatula) went up in the air to record or TwitPic the performance, making online footage available to everyone, including anyone unlucky enough to be in the back of the room.

Lil B’s friendship with Soulja Boy makes sense; both are young, motivated rappers who have found ways to harness various social media platforms to generate huge followings online. Their songs and dances are, in essence, Internet memes — dances and credos that get adopted and modified by their listeners, the sort of thing ad agencies throw millions of dollars at in vain attempts to imitate. Together, they make some of the most fun, mindless swag rap out there, ideal for watching on YouTube, on repeat. In “Swag OD,” a recent black-and-white video directed and edited by B during his stay in the South, they ride around suburban Atlanta office parks in Soulja’s black Mercedes. “Ice chain, ice, ice watch, ice neck/ Ice watch, ice, ice, hoes, ice chest (rich!),” B raps at one point. “Swag OD” has this jaded, over-it sound, Soulja sort of yawning between bars. Something’s not right.

Soulja Boy’s blasé attitude is pitch perfect for the aging child star — how else should he feel? But Lil B, who claims to be a Berkeley hippie at heart, seems out of place putting on this act. Even on crushingly low-brow YouTube hits like “Suck My D*&* HO” (his second most watched video, with about 300,000 views), B brings way more energy. This enthusiasm — on stage, on camera, wherever — accounts for a good portion of Lil B’s appeal. You can tell he loves what he’s doing.

The “Suck My D*&* HO” video is a great starting point for those curious about Lil B. “Ten on my dick and my girlfriend Persian,” B lipsyncs from inside an Apple store. “Bitch sucked my dick ’cause I look like a surgeon.” That Lil B gets all sorts of special treatment for looking like people he doesn’t actually resemble — Madonna, Mel Gibson, Matlock, Moses, Jesus, Patrick Ramsey, to name a few — is just something you have to accept if you want to enjoy his music. It’s akin to the suspension of disbelief you bring to a summer blockbuster.

That’s why it surprises me to hear Lil B lamenting all the dishonesty in rap. The problem is structural, he explains. To rap you have to rhyme, and in his words, “It can’t all be true ’cause you’re consciously changing around words and scenarios in your mind to make it add up in the rap.” While rappers may whine about a perceived decline in quality of rap over the years, it’s rare to hear one criticize inherent flaws in the medium; plenty of early-1990s backpack rappers dazzle with their knowledge of Egyptology’s finer points, but this sort of meta-critique is far more impressive. It also pinpoints something people often forget about Lil B: he’s clever, and he cares about and thinks about rap music. It seems like he really wants to overcome this central flaw in hip-hop and doesn’t see any problem with making songs that are nothing but lies in the process. It makes his hoes-on-my-dick-cause-I-look-like-X bit that much more clever — something like a parody of the absurd claims that rap music traffics in.

Though B’s mixtape collaborations with Soulja Boy will likely be fruitful for generating mainstream publicity, and his YouTube dirty raps good for getting pageviews and new followers, what he considers his most honest work, the work he’s most proud of, is his upcoming album Rain in England. The beats, all produced by Lil B, have an ambient, waves-of-sound feel, with occasional keyboard flourishes but no percussion or clear time-signature. It sounds half new age, half spoken word. “The crazy thing is that a lot of people say it’s like spoken word,” B agrees, when I ask him about the similarities. “But really I wrote that as if I was writing a rap.” That Lil B never made beats before Rain in England highlights his enigmatic appeal: it’s often hard to tell whether he’s brilliant, just sort of crazy, or both. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” he explains, “but somehow Rain in England came about.” He speaks of the recording as if it was inevitable — an odd thing to suggest about a new age/spoken word/rap album. Artistic intent aside, B knows his market: the album is being released on Weird Forest, an experimental/electronic label. How’s that for a guy who collaborates with Soulja Boy?

It’s worth noting that Lil B wrote Rain in England at a coffee shop. Also, he talks about it the way you hear people with lots of tattoos explain their tattoos. “I’m gonna look back and [the album’s] gonna remind me of the time period I was in,” he says. The album’s subject matter is about as un-stereotypically “hip-hop” as its process would suggest. On one track, “My Windowsill,” Lil B free-associates about his neighborhood and his future while looking out his window; on another, “All Women,” Lil B rhapsodizes about the beauty and wisdom of the fairer sex. It’s a far cry from the Lil B of YouTube fame: the Lil B who makes songs like “Violate That Bitch,” which would probably make Tipper Gore return to politics, if she ever heard it; the Lil B who, alongside San Francisco’s Messy Marv, claims he is Hannah Montana, on a song that would make your gender studies TA’s head spin. But it’s still Lil B.

That this apparent divide is downright bizarre is not lost on B. “I have a lot of different, you know, feelings and personalities,” he tells me, explaining that this translates into versatility. “I can do ‘Swag OD’ but then my favorite musical artist right now could be Antony and the Johnsons. That’s the difference between me and these other rappers, and other musical artists in general.” This is true to a certain extent: Lil B has a tendency to draw on other genres of music that don’t have a home in mainstream rap — or even rap in general — to infuse his music with pathos.

A relatively recent video for Lil B’s “The Worlds Ending” is a great example of this technique; the first two minutes present B smoking a joint with a gun to his head, listening to “Angeles” by Elliott Smith. Once he starts rapping, it’s B at his darkest and most poignant. He touches on taxes, drugs, death, consumer culture, and tornado watches in Orange County — in his mind, a sign of the apocalypse — with a gun to his head the whole time. Sure, Kanye West, Kid Cudi, and others have been doing something similar for more than a minute, but Lil B’s lo-fi recordings, accompanied by his hastily-made, no-budget videos, result in a scrappier, less calculated, and ultimately more honest feel.

With all this variegated and prolific output, it’s easy to forget where people first heard Lil B: on the lead-in verse of “Vans”, the Pack’s out-of-nowhere 2006 hit. The Berkeley foursome — of which Lil B is still a part — just released their third album, Wolfpack Party, on Aug. 24, while B was in Atlanta. “I’m still in The Pack 100 percent,” he says, when asked about the new release. “You know, congratulations, and I’m happy The Pack album Wolfpack Party is out. It’s been a while since we [put out] some new material.”

It’s hard not to sense B’s detachment when he offers congratulations to a group he’s a part of, and also difficult not to find it noteworthy that the first thing he says about The Pack is that he’s still part of it. He knows what people are thinking, and that he was out of town with Soulja Boy when the album was released. Wolfpack Party is more self-consciously a party record than other work The Pack has done in the past, and it’s a lot of fun to listen to. But Lil B is absent from a significant number of the tracks.

Needless to say, Lil B is a busy young man, even if one leaves out his most notorious facet: the prodigious way he uses his computer and phone to promote his music. He tells me he’s capable of spending 20 consecutive hours online. “There’s always somebody talking to me, hitting me up, uploading a video about me, watching me, you know, giving me comments,” he says. “It’s very addicting.”

Life online is both a blessing and a curse for B, and he’s made a song about that experience too. It’s called “Age of Information.” Toward the end of the track, B claims that the Internet is “destroying the human race,” but in conversation he recognizes that his current trajectory would be impossible without it. “I’m not on TV right now,” he points out. “I don’t have a single on the radio, but people know my songs word-for-word at my shows.”

I recently read in The New York Times that your early 20s are all about figuring out who you are and what you’re going to do with your life, or something like that. It would seem to an outsider that 21-year-old Lil B has a lot to figure out, and that he might be at an artistic crossroads. But that’s not how B sees it. When I ask him which direction he plans on taking his music, he responds, with confidence: “The direction I’m trying to take it in the future is making amazing music.”

Everything that Lil B is working on now, he tells me, will culminate in a forthcoming album with a secret title. “The title is private,” he insists. “I can’t really tell right now.” This from the man who tweets, like, 70 times a day. “I’m just creating and I’m definitely just being truthful and honest, so I’m glad people like me for me,” he says, still waiting at the Oakland airport for a ride back to Berkeley, where he’ll probably head straight to his computer. “That’s the best feeling ever. It’s amazing that I can do me and people are respecting it.”

Appetite: Studying drink

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 1, 2010

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Left Coast Libations by Ted Munat with Michael Lazar — Left Coast Libations, released today (catch the launch party on 9/18 at Heaven’s Dog), is, as far as I’m concerned, a must for the library of any West Coast cocktailian, not to mention drink aficionados everywhere. Ted Munat clearly displays a fan’s love of drink and the bartenders behind them in his cheeky, delightful bartender bios, Jenn Farrington’s pristine photos give the book a sleek, pure look, and Michael Lazar painstakingly made every recipe to ensure workability for those of us trying these recipes at home. Naturally, San Francisco makes a strong showing with LA, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver bartenders sharing many of their greats, all highlighting the innovation happening in cocktails on the West Coast. You’ll find recipes for local favorites like Daniel Hyatt’s Southern Exposure or Joel Baker’s Pear Sonata. I’ve been making many of these at home and the book is rich with possibility. In the midst of intriguingly unique recipes calling for homemade syrups or tinctures, I am also grateful for simple beauties like Murray Stenson‘s Stephan’s Sour with Beefeater gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and Bitter Truth celery bitters.

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh — After meeting him and attending his Hollywood Cocktails seminar at Tales of the Cocktail, I can say Ted Haigh is one crazy guy… and one of the best resources in the world for history behind drinks (just read his regular column in Imbibe magazine). With a well deserved win as Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book at Tales, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails feels like the kind of tome that would be a definitive resource in any era. Focused on the classics, it’s rich with historical notes, vintage artwork, and approachable, standard-setting recipes every bartender (or at-home novice) should know. Kudos for the spiral bound presentation, making it easy to use while mixing drinks.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent — Last Call is an almost textbook-detailed approach to the history, people and circumstances surrounding Prohibition and how it changed the face of America in issues as far-ranging as personal freedom to organized crime. Daniel Okrent is best known as the first public editor of the New York Times, but is also a Pulitzer nominee. His painstaking research reveals fascinating stories (Carry A. Nation, the temperance “saloon smasher” with a hatchet, for one), and debatable but thought-provoking conclusions. Just delve into the introduction with eye-opening stats on just how much America drank pre-Prohibition, and you’ll be hooked.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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August 31, 2010

1

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The rich are getting screwed in the United States today. And that’s not a statement from Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, or the remnants of George W. Bush’s brain. It’s coming from mainstream, even liberal economists, who have looked at the hard numbers around the battle over the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

See, if you consider anyone who makes more than $250,000 a year "rich," then they’re due to lose the income-tax break they got under Bush. And they can afford to pay higher taxes, and most of them are doing fine, despite the complaints about the cost of private schools these days.

But they’re still getting screwed. Because, as James Surowiecki noted in the Aug. 16 issue of The New Yorker, ordinary, garden-variety rich people haven’t seen a lot of income growth in the past decade. They aren’t gaining much more than the middle class. The money in this country isn’t going to the rich any more. It’s not even going to the very rich, say, the people who make more than $500,000 a year, or even $1 million a year.

No, the extraordinary income growth in this country has been going to the very, very rich, the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent —the 5,600 families who now have more wealth than the bottom 120 million. And, as Surowiecki points out, those very, very, exceedingly filthy rich pay the same tax rates as the people who earn $250,000 a year.

The New York Times ran an interesting report Aug. 29 on the looming problems of crumbling old infrastructure in the United States — dams that are well beyond their designed life, levees that are crumbling, subway switching stations designed and built in the 1920s. Millions of people can’t find jobs and the government can’t afford to pay for the work that desperately needs to be done. The economic policies of the past decade have sucked all the money out of society — and given it to a tiny number of people who live like ancient feudal royalty.

That’s what we’ve achieved in this country of late. I don’t know why this isn’t the biggest — or the only — issue in the fall campaigns.

Next stop Mustaine: rappin’ with the Megadeth man

Sue Vaughan

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August 31, 2010

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Next stop Mustaine: rappin’ with the Megadeth man

Dave Mustaine has seen more than his fair share of difficult obstacles to overcome throughout his musical career due to his past drug and alcohol addictions, which famously got him kicked out of the early line up of Metallica. Even during his ensuing triumphs with his own band, long-time metal favorites Megadeth, he struggled often with his demons.

Now clean and sober, the singer and guitarist is riding high on his current successes, which include a new autobiography, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir (Harper Collins) which hit the New York Times’ best seller list earlier this month when it was published. Megadeth’s latest studio album, 2009’s Endgame (Roadrunner Records) was received well by both fans and critics, and the band is currently on the road as part of the “American Carnage Tour” with Slayer and Testament.

Mustaine and company hit the Cow Palace tonight; he also did a book signing this morning. The first-time author is happy with the ways things have been going so far during his first foray into the literary world.

“I’m very excited about it, because when I initially set out to write this thing, it wasn’t to be on the Oprah book club — although now that I know a little bit more about books it would certainly be cool to sit on the couch and tell her a little bit about my story,” says Mustaine, speaking by phone before a concert in Albuquerque.

“My story is about helping other people and just giving people an indication that they’re not the only one that’s going through hard shit — and that you’ve just got to turn your collar up and lean into the wind, and persevere.”

In the book, Mustaine details his troubled upbringing; how his mother had to take her children and constantly flee from his alcoholic father, how her struggles led to an involvement with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and how this religious indoctrination would eventually cause a rift between mother and son that resulted in his moving out on his own at the age of 15. There are the stories of sex and drugs along with the music, as is pretty much a requisite of any rock n’ roll memoir, but Mustaine doesn’t attempt to glorify his past mistakes.

“I’ve always wanted to tell the truth to people about what happened to my career, so they don’t think that I’m such a horrible person. I remember when my son was just a little guy and we did VH1’s Behind The Music and I had talked about crack — my son was coming home on the bus and some of the older students started chanting ‘Your dad’s a crack head’ to the point where he was in tears. It was really painful.”

Mustaine’s now-infamous stint in the early days of Metallica are covered as well, giving an insider’s perspective on what really happened — and despite years of trading barbs in the press, the axeman has appeared to have resolved most of the issues that he had with the other members of that band, who unceremoniously gave him the boot during a 1983 trip to New York. Earlier this year Megadeth and Metallica, along with Slayer and Anthrax — collectively known by fans as “The Big Four” — performed a handful of concerts together in Europe.

“I saw them over in Europe, we had dinner and it was fine. I was sitting there at the table with Lars and James, and I thought it was so great that we were together again — we’re in different bands, but the fact that we as three young little guys, what we accomplished, how we changed the world. I mean honestly, you can’t even listen to a television program anymore without hearing music that’s [evolved from] what we created. To be able to sit there with our brethren and knowing that in this room stands the cream of the crop of American heavy metal talent, and it was such a great feeling.”

“My relationship with Lars and James has been publicized a lot, so I went up to James and I said, ‘I don’t want to try to repair our old relationship. That would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I want to have a new relationship with you,’ and I think that’s what we have now, it’s great, and I’m going to see the guy when I get into town.”

At one of the concerts they played together, the guys got on stage to jam on old favorite, “Am I Evil?,” a cover song that goes back to the formative days of Metallica, when they used to live and play in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

“We would play the Stone and the Old Waldorf, and one of the songs that we would play, guaranteed, every single set, no matter where we played, no matter how big we got, we always played ‘Am I Evil?’ a song by Diamondhead. If you could have been in the little jam room right before we went on, it was so moving, because when the band stops there’s a little guitar part where there’s some hammer-ons, and Lars looked over to James and he said, ‘Hey, who should we have play this?’ He was pointing to me like he wanted me to do it and I thought, dude that is so cool. Who would ever have thought that we would have gone to that place where we were so hurt, and we just kept lobbing grenades at each other, to the place now where we’re playing together again, and we’re hanging out and hugging and having dinner with our wives.”

As he continues on his concert and book tours, Mustaine enjoys meeting the multiple generations of fans that come out, and the fact that he gets to talk to them about what he’s been through in his life.

“One of the things that I want the reader to know is that this wasn’t something that I wrote to be this self-absorbed book. It’s just a lot of revealing stuff that I share about my life and my walk, and how my life changed in 2002 when I became Christian.”

“I really have a hard time saying that I’m Christian because so many Christians are hypocrites, and have just given Christianity a bad name; I believe in God and I believe in Jesus, that’s my bag, that’s it, no more, I don’t push it on anybody. Being a dude who read the Satanic bible and did witchcraft and put hexes on people, that’s pretty cool.”

Doing both tours at the same time have been draining on the metal icon, but he says he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m exhausted right now, my voice is sore, my arm is sore, my wrist is sore, but this is what I signed up to do, this is the job I do. I’ve always wanted to be the best at what I do.”

“We’re just constantly searching for that next riff that’s going to set us over the top and give us that number one record, that next lyric that’s going to break us through mainstream radio and we have a number one hit again, that perfect guitar solo, so that we get back on top again. We’re doing everything that we can, we’re every ounce of strength that we have.”

After this current tour wraps up, more touring around the world lays on the horizon — but first, Mustaine is excited about going back into the studio to record a new album — one that will again feature founding bassist David Ellefson, who had not played with the band since 2002 until re-joining earlier this year.

“The cool thing is having the signature bassist back, it gives a certain root to the bottom end again that people have grown to love, I’m excited about how our lives our progressing. I’m just so blessed I can’t even tell you, I look at my career right now and to think there was a period where no one wanted to touch us anymore — here we are,” Mustaine emphasizes.

“I’ve got the band back, we’ve got a great record that’s getting critical acclaim, I’ve got the book on the best seller list, the tour, everything is so magnificent and I’m so grateful for all of this.”

Slayer, Megadeth, and Testament

Tonight, 7 p.m., $39.50

Cow Palace

2600 Geneva Ave., Daly City

www.cowpalace.com

www.livenation.com

Our Weekly Picks: August 25-31, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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August 24, 2010

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WEDNESDAY 25

THEATER

The Penny Dreadful Project

If you know what a penny dreadful is, and you know who Andrea Yates is, and you’re still reading this, The Penny Dreadful Project will probably be up your alley (you sick freak!) Directed by Mario El Caponi Mendoza, this experimental play concerns an anonymous woman and a triad of men who are three different versions of her son. Mommy goes mad, and potentially murderous, as she finds herself in the hell she’s created. The production is also inspired by Susan Eubanks who, like Yates, murdered her sons. It’s one thing to read about this stuff, and another to see it unfold in front of you. Prepare to be shaken. Oh, and don’t bring the kids. (Ryan Lattanzio)

8:30 p.m., free

Studio Theatre

Creative Arts Bldg., Room 102

SF State University

1600 Holloway, SF

(415) 338-2467

www.creativearts.sfsu.edu

THURSDAY 26

MUSIC

“Mexico: Los Soneros de la Bahía”

Under the artistic direction of Nydia Algazzali Gonzalez, the music ensemble Los Soneros de la Bahía brings traditional Mexican son to the Yerba Buena Gardens lunchtime concert series. Known for its danceable, dynamic rhythmic patterns and elements of improvisation, son fuses colonial and indigenous music traditions and embodies Mexican mestizo culture. Dedicated to preserving and reviving this unique art form, the musicians, dancers, and poets (also known as soneros) of Los Soneros de la Bahía deliver Mexican music and dance that evoke both old traditions and contemporary aesthetics. Let’s just hope their lively son brings out some sol. (Katie Gaydos)

12:30 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Gardens Esplanade

740 Mission, SF

(415) 543-1718

www.ybgf.org

MUSIC

Boris

It’s easy to reflexively dislike Boris, if only because it’s the one heavy band that a guy wearing a purple keffiyeh to a cocktail party will profess his undying affection for. But despite all the too-cool-for-school trappings, the Japanese trio is a potent rock ‘n’ roll force, combining drone, doom, and scuzz into a noisy, inimitably raw package. It’s a particular favorite of the band’s fellow musicians, having collaborated with SunnO))), Torche, and the Cult’s Ian Astbury, with whom they’ll release a four-track EP in September. Great American Music Hall — one of the city’s best-sounding venues — should be a perfect location for its sonic excursions and incursions. (Ben Richardson)

With Red Sparowes and Helms Alee

9 p.m., $18

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

FILM

“Dark in August: Rare Vampire Films”

For folks of the ever-more-prevalent view that vampire cinema these days totally bites, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is here to staunch the wound. Over four days, it is screening bloodsucking fare from decades past, kicking off with Kathryn Bigelow’s cult Western-tinged fang flick Near Dark (1987). The following days bring Vampire Hookers (1978), ostensibly a trashy vamp romp shot in the Philippines and starring David Carradine; and two showings of Vampyr (1932), Carl Theodor Dreyer’s first sound film. Hookers is reportedly standing in for an unsatisfactory print of Daughters of Darkness (1971), but it seems the range of camp to class will still be maintained. (Sam Stander)

Near Dark tonight, 7:30 p.m.; Vampire Hookers Fri/27, 7:30 p.m.;

Vampyr Sat/28, 7:30 p.m. and Sun/29, 4:30 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

FRIDAY 27

MUSIC

Nekromantix

Expect some spooky and sinfully delightful musical mayhem when Danish imports Nekromantix hits the stage tonight after the sun goes down. You may just want to bring some wooden stakes and holy water with you, unless you’ve already been bitten — er, smitten — by its infectious songs. Founding member Kim Nekroman’s wild antics on his signature coffin bass have given unholy life to the band’s funeral-march-on-speed psychobilly blasts since 1989, when he played the part of the classic movie mad scientist and melded the sounds of punk and rockabilly and fused them together. Listen to them, children of the night. What music they make. (Sean McCourt)

With Howlers and Mutilators

9 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

DANCE

“Café Flamenco”

So you can’t go to Andalucia for your flamenco fix this summer. Not to worry. This time of the year its cities are really hot and the parking is lousy. Much better to indulge that all-encompassing passion at home, offered in a fresh guise to boot: Caminos Flamencos, SF’s foremost flamenco company, is inviting pianist-composer Alex Conde from Valencia and bassist Haggai Cohen of Israel for a jazz-flavored evening. They join Caminos’ own formidable dancers and musicians, including the always-welcome singer Jesus Montoya from Seville. (Rita Felciano)

8 p.m., $22

Verdi Club

2424 Mariposa, SF

1-800-838-3006

www.caminosflamencos.com

SATURDAY 28

VISUAL ART

16777216

A Web browser-based digital art piece, Richard S. Mitchell’s new work comprises millions of single-colored frames, across the spectrum that makes up the RGB color model. It runs for seven days, 18 hours, 24 minutes, and 48.64 seconds, and is simultaneously viewable from any computer that accesses the Jancar Jones Gallery website. That may seem like a mouthful of data, and there’s more to be had on the site, but little in the way of stated intent or contextual mumbo-jumbo. This is a minimalist exercise focusing on color rather than shape and allowing anyone, anywhere to synchronously experience a nonstatic piece of art. But if you want to rub elbows with other appreciators, it will be showing in the gallery for three hours. (Stander)

Through Sept. 5

Reception tonight, 6–9 p.m., free

Jancar Jones Gallery

965 Mission, Suite 120, SF

(415) 281-3770

www.jancarjones.com

MUSIC

Valerie Orth

Valerie Orth is a sexy, soulful singer-songwriter whom I’ve been lucky enough to catch for truly memorable sets ranging from a powerful performance at Cafe du Nord to an intimate acoustic session rolling across the playa in an art car with a konked out generator at Burning Man last year. Now the SF artist has just come out with a new album, Faraway City, that beautifully captures a voice and style that is reminiscent of Ani DiFranco or Björk, two of her key influences. The album, filled with catchy original songs developed over the last two years, was produced by Jon Evans, another local who plays bass for Tori Amos and helped record music for the likes of Tom Waits, Third Eye Blind, and Boz Scaggs. Stop by this CD release party and see what I mean. (Steven T. Jones)

With Emily Wells and Kindness and Lies

8 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

SUNDAY 29

MUSIC

Slash

For more than 20 years, Saul Hudson — better known to his millions of fans around the world simply as Slash — has exuded the very essence of what it means to be a rock star. His iconic stage image: trademark top hat, sunglasses, and low-slung Les Paul is instantly recognizable, as are his innumerable guitar licks and solos that are now part of the rock ‘n’ roll canon. Although on this tour he’s supporting his new self-titled solo album, which hit stores in April, fans should probably expect a decent dose of some classic Guns N’ Roses tunes in the mix as well. (McCourt)

With Myles Kennedy and Taking Dawn

8 p.m., $32–$40

Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

MONDAY 30

MUSIC

Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos

Es la hora de salsa — or make that, la hora de hora. Either dance would be an appropriate response to the music at this live album recreation. The year was 1961 when Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos was released, Yiddish folk tunes remixed by top Latin jazz musicians into dance floor fusions fit to blow off your yarmulke. The Idelsohn Society is sponsoring its on-stage rebirth featuring Larry “El Judio Maravilloso” Harlow, Wil-Dog of Ozomatli, and Jeremiah Lockwood of the Sway Machinery; the whole shebang is led by Arturo O’Farrill of the Afro Cuban Sextet. They’re playing in conjunction with an exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum that highlights congruent notions of Zion, “Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations.” (Caitlin Donohue) 8 p.m., $18

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

TUESDAY 31

MUSIC

Lower Dens

If you combine Jana Hunter’s saturnine vocals, or found (like Nico’s) between masculine and feminine, with Will Adams’ shoegazing guitar, you get what sounds like something caught in the wind. Or sometimes you get music that sounds like was recorded in the most depressing bedroom ever. For the most part, the Baltimore, Md., quartet Lower Dens keeps things in a minor key, and its 2010 debut Twin-Hand Movement glistens with brooding songcraft, riding a dark and stormy (new) wave. This band was already on the rise before it was stabbed with a certain Pitchfork, as Hunter had been kicking it solo since early in the aughts. (Lattanzio)

9 p.m., $10

Hotel Utah

500 Fourth St., SF

(415) 546-6300

www.thehotelutahsaloon.com EVENT

MUSIC/LIT

Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir

Dave Mustaine has seen more than his fair share of difficult obstacles to overcome throughout his musical career due to his past drug and alcohol addictions, which famously got him kicked out of an early Metallica lineup. Even during his ensuing triumphs with long-time metal favorites Megadeth, he struggled often with his demons. Now clean and sober, the singer and guitarist is riding high on his current successes, which include a new autobiography, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir (Harper Collins), that hit the New York Times Best Sellers List earlier this month. Fans won’t want to miss this rare opportunity to meet a true metal icon when he signs copies this afternoon before taking the stage at the Cow Palace tonight with Slayer and Testament. (McCourt)

10:30 a.m. (updated event time!), free

Borders Stonestown

233 Winston, SF

(415) 731-0665

www.borders.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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August 24, 2010

1

tredmond@sfbg.com

Every once in a while, The New York Times Magazine drops a profound and staggeringly important bit of information into a slot that typically reserved for softer articles. So I read at least the first few paragraphs of everything — and on Aug. 22 the opening essay by Judith Warner made a point that ought to be the center of the national debate on the Bush tax cuts, the value of philanthropy, and the direction of economic policy in a lingering recession.

Warner was struck, as I was (see Editor’s Notes, Aug. 18) by the massive praise heaped on Bill Gates and Warren Buffet for their vows to donate half their wealth to charity. "After all," she noted, "what better illustration could there be of the great social good that wealthy people can do when the government lets them keep their hard-earned dollars to spend as they please?"

Yet it turns out that Gates and Buffet are very much the exception. It’s odd and counterintuitive, but the truth is that most rich people give less of their money to charity than most poor people. Upper-class people, studies show, are much less compassionate toward others and more likely to be selfish with their money.

"This compassion deficit," she wrote, "is perhaps not so surprising in a society that for decades has seen the experiential gap between the well-off and the poor (or even the middle class) significantly widen."

In other words: we already know that cutting taxes on the rich hurts the economy, makes the deficit worse, and does little or nothing to improve the lot of others. Trickle-down economics has been widely proven a fraud.

But the new evidence shows that letting the very wealthy decide how the wealth of society should be divided doesn’t work well either. For one thing, very little of the charity coming from the rich goes to the poor; those tax write-off donations tend to wind up helping big cultural institutions or successful universities — and those gifts, Warner notes, "come with the not-inconsequential payoff of enhancing the donor’s status among his or her peers."

More important, it’s a public policy failure. You can’t trust the rich to make the right decisions about where the nation’s resources should go; that’s why we have elections, open government hearings, political debates. And that’s why that big, bad word "taxation" — taking the money from the rich and giving it out the way the representatives of the rest of us decide is best — is actually a far more efficient and fair way to go.

Gods of distortion

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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August 3, 2010

0

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC No one can agree on how guitar distortion was invented, or by whom. The only thing the experts do concur on is that, like many of humanity’s most excellent leaps forward, it was a complete and utter accident.

Whether it was created by a punctured speaker cone, a faulty cable, or a malfunctioning vacuum tube, distortion is now inescapable. Distorted guitars birthed rock ‘n’ roll, and rock ‘n’ roll birthed the idea that anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. For Greg Anderson, founder and proprietor of cult metal label Southern Lord Records, amplified excess is more than just an artistic pursuit — it’s a philosophy. This August, Anderson will appear on stage with his band Goatsnake as part of the Southern Lord Mini Tour, a three-date testament to distortion that will batter the United States’ Western coast with an avalanche of overdriven, fuzzed-out guitar tone.

The guitarist is best known for his work in experimental outfit SunnO))), bane of eardrums and copy editors, whose ribcage-rattling drone compositions and be-robed stage presence were the subject of a widely-read New York Times feature in 2009. If Anderson can be considered the pontiff of an experimental, distortion-worshiping subculture, then SunnO))) is his Easter Mass. But it is his day-to-day work at Southern Lord’s Unholy See that has the more profound effect on the musical landscape.

A CAVE OF WONDERS

Reached by phone in, as he put it, “the caves of Southern Lord,” Anderson is eloquent and good-humored, and though he perches at the absolute pinnacle of metal coolness, he discusses the music in the earnest tones of a die-hard fan: “I’m a seeker, man … when I find out about a band, I want to know everything about them — what other bands the members have been in, who’s influenced by them, who their influences were.”

From the point of view of this kind of music junkie, Anderson is living the dream, effectively populating his label with bands that appeal to his personal taste. Rather than being a vanity project, however, Southern Lord performs an important cultural role, curating a uncompromising collection of metal bands that push the boundaries of the possible by wringing the most out of their distorted electric guitars.

Spread thin over three decades and thousands of miles, this underground community can be ephemeral and capricious. Armed with his own significant talent and an omnivorous musical ear, Anderson rides herd on an army of devil-worshiping iconoclasts, elevating up-and-coming acts to positions of prestige, while simultaneously cultivating older bands that have either been long forgotten or driven deep into the cultural topsoil.

HEAVY BREATHING

Anderson’s description of his newest signing (and Southern Lord Mini Tour opening act), Seattle death metal-crust punk hybrid Black Breath, typifies the former process: “Over the last couple of years, especially playing with SunnO))), I really turned away from, or wasn’t listening to, much aggressive music. I was actually really into jazz. And then something snapped. I started listening to old hardcore records. I wanted something that was the complete opposite.” Newly re-attuned to the D-beaten tones of hardcore, Anderson received a demo — a four-song, 12-inch vinyl record — in the mail, and couldn’t believe his luck. The album — Black Breath’s self-financed Razor to Oblivion EP — was a distorted revelation. “The font of their band logo was stolen from Celtic Frost, and they listed Poison Idea and Dismember as influences!” Anderson effuses.

Soon after hearing the record, the label headman was due to return to Seattle for the holidays, where the incendiary quintet had a show scheduled. Speaking by phone from his home in Seattle, Black Breath guitarist Eric Wallace describes the madness that ensued. “The details are kinda hazy,” he begins, “but we’ve been telling people that our guitarist Funds [real name: Zack Muljat] and Greg [Anderson] were having an argument about a song that was playing on the jukebox … Funds was arguing that it was S.O.D., and Greg was arguing that it wasn’t, and they were putting bets down and stuff. We ended up singing with Southern Lord after that. It may or may not have been part of the bet.”

CORRODED AGAIN

Though Anderson’s fingerprints are all over the forthcoming Southern Lord Mini Tour, his band Goatsnake will not headline. That honor goes Corrosion of Conformity, a legendary underground metal band founded in Raleigh, N.C., in 1982. Though they charted in the early ’90s with two albums’ worth of thick, Southern-fried Sabbath worship, C.O.C (as they’re often called) started as a lightning-fast hardcore trio, churning out political anthems over adrenaline-soaked pogo beats. This summer’s tour boasts the reunited three-piece lineup of guitarist Woody Weatherman, drummer Reed Mullin, and bassist/singer Mike Dean, who will perform the group’s seminal 1985 release Animosity (Metal Blade Records) live in its entirety.

Anderson and the Piedmont power trio go way back. “They stayed at my house in 1986, when C.O.C played in Seattle, actually, on the Animosity tour.” While band’s output in recent years has been limited to 2005’s under-appreciated In the Arms of God (Sanctuary Records), Anderson’s curatorial instincts were ever-vigilant. Reached by phone as he decompressed from a tour rehearsal, Dean explained how it went down: “He reached out to us. He was looking to reissue some of our old stuff. We mentioned that we were gonna record a new release. We just started talking to him about doing that, and he said, ‘Hey, you wanna play some shows out here?’ and we were like, ‘Oh yeah!’ It kinda lit a fire under our ass to get some new songs down and go out and play ’em.”

The existence of new songs was of crucial importance to both parties. For better or worse, reunited metal bands has been emerging from their dingy practice spaces lately like underfed jackals, and results are mixed. To avoid getting lumped in with the rest of the Lazarus-rock scene, Dean wrote songs: “The only thing I can do to allay my feelings of not wanting to be part of that is to attempt to offer something new. At this point, we have four or five new songs that we can perform. We’re doing this as part of readying ourselves to do something new.”

Despite all the hand-wringing about illegal downloading, Anderson attributes this explosion of reinvigorated headbangers to “the fact that information is so easily available, cataloged, and documented meticulously on the Internet. It’s like a trail, a path you can get on, on which you find one thing, and it leads to another thing, and it’s just a snowball effect. It makes it possible for these bands to come out and play to three to four times as many people as they did in their heyday. It’s a real testament to the fact that this music is valid and incredible. It needs to be heard, and it needs to be given the respect that it’s due.” With people like Greg Anderson keeping watch for the young talent and shepherding the old, it definitely will be.

THE SOUTHERN LORD WEST COAST MINI TOUR

Corrosion of Conformity, Goatsnake, Black Breath, Eagle Twin, Righteous Fool

Tue/10, 7 p.m., $25

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-2532

www.dnalounge.com

FAIR: WikiLeaks and the U.S. Press

David Talbot

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July 30, 2010

0

Media resistance to exposure of government secrets

The website WikiLeaks posted tens of thousands of classified intelligence documents relating to the Afghanistan War on Sunday, July 25. Spanning the years 2004-09, the documents had been shared in advance with reporters from the New York Times, the British Guardian and the German Der Spiegel, all of which produced long pieces offering their interpretations of the documents.

In corporate U.S. media, the documents produced several narratives. For some, the WikiLeaks revelations were either not all that important, or certainly not as important as the leak of the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers. As a Washington Post story put it (7/27/10), “Unlike the Pentagon Papers, these documents–although they are closer to a real-time assessment and although they land in the superheated Internet era–do not reveal any strategy on the part of the government to mislead the public about the mission and its chances for success.” The New York Times (7/26/10) noted that

overall, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements–attributing the downing of a helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles, or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos.

Such comments reflect a somewhat puzzling standard for what qualifies as official deception. But the overriding message of some prominent outlets was that there was little to glean from the disclosures. The July 27 Washington Post provided a remarkable case study. One news story, headlined “WikiLeaks Disclosures Unlikely to Change Course of Afghanistan War,” presented the leaks as good news for the war effort, asserting that the “release could compel President Obama to explain more forcefully the war’s importance,” and conveying White House claims that “the classified accounts bolstered Obama’s decision in December to pour more troops and money into a war effort that had not received sufficient attention or resources from the Bush administration.”

Another Post story, headlined “WikiLeaks Documents Cause Little Concern Over Public Perception of War,” suggested that the White House and Congress were trying to turn the leaks into “an affirmation of the president’s decision to shift strategy and boost troop levels in the nearly nine-year-long war.” The same could be said for the Washington Post, which also editorialized that the WikiLeaks release “hardly merits the hype offered by the website’s founder.”

One area of obvious concern were documents that described attacks on civilians by U.S. and NATO forces. The WikiLeaks files brought this issue back into the media spotlight, but it’s worth considering how different papers treated the issue. One of the Guardian‘s July 26 stories began with this lead:

A huge cache of secret U.S. military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and NATO commanders fear neighboring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency.

While the British paper led with civilian deaths, the New York Times‘ July 26 story reported that the archive of classified documents “offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.” The article’s second paragraph describes it as a “daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.” Ten paragraphs into the piece there is a reference to commando missions that “claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.” But the documents’ numerous accounts of civilians killed by U.S. or allied forces got little attention in the Times‘ write-up, a choice justified that executive editor Bill Keller (NYTimes.com, 7/25/10) attempted to justify by saying that “all of the major episodes of civilian deaths described in the War Logs had been previously reported in the Times.”

The possibility that the leaked documents might lead to more discussion of civilian casualties was frequently raised as a concern in U.S. media. The Washington Post editorial tried to minimize the documents’ revelations on this issue: “The British newspaper in turn highlights what it says are 144 reported incidents in which Afghan civilians were killed or wounded by coalition forces. But the 195 deaths it counts in those episodes, though regrettable, do not constitute a shocking total for a four-year period.” That point of view was echoed on CBS Evening News by correspondent Lara Logan:

Well, the issue of civilian casualties is a major one. And the U.S. has taken a lot of criticism because of this. However, what’s interesting to note is that according to the documents, 195 Afghan civilians have been killed. But also according to the documents, 2,000 Afghan civilians have been killed by the Taliban, which is more than 10 times the number said to be killed by U.S. and NATO forces. And very little is being made of that. If the coverage would indicate that it’s more of an issue for the U.S. to kill Afghan civilians than it is for the Taliban to do so.

The suggestion that this tally of 195 Afghan civilian deaths is comprehensive is absurd on its face, given that the WikiLeaks documents are in no way at all a comprehensive account of any aspect of the war. As the Guardian noted, that number “is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.” Estimates of civilian casualties vary, but several thousand noncombatant Afghans were killed by U.S. and coalition forces during these years of the war. As for Logan’s point about who bears more responsibility for civilian killings, there have been various attempts to make such determinations. In 2008, for instance, U.N. monitors counted over 2,000 civilian casualties; when responsibility could be determined, 41 percent of the deaths were attributed to U.S./NATO forces.

On the same broadcast in which Logan offered her critique, CBS reporter Chip Reid stressed that civilian deaths would remain a potent issue for the White House. Reid feared that the Obama administration

may be underestimating the problems here because, yes, people were aware and certainly the president was aware of the problem with civilian casualties, but if we’re now going to be bombarded for days on end with a long series of specific examples, that’s going to make it more difficult for both the Afghan people and the American people to support this war.

It is difficult to imagine that corporate media would be “bombarding” anyone “for days on end” with stories of dead Afghan civilians. Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson (7/27/10), for instance, downplayed the importance of WikiLeaks‘ information about civilian deaths:

We already knew that U.S. and other coalition forces were inflicting civilian casualties that had the effect of enraging local villagers and often driving them into the enemy camp. The documents merely reveal episodes that were previously unpublicized–an October 2008 incident in which French troops opened fire on a bus near Kabul and wounded eight children, for example, and a tragedy two months later when a U.S. squad riddled another bus with gunfire, killing four passengers and wounding 11 others.

Old news, in other words–albeit news about which we were unaware.

Post columnist Anne Applebaum struck a different note (7/29/10), congratulating the media for already thoroughly documenting the sorts of events described in the WikiLeaks documents: “If you don’t know by now that the ISI helped create the Taliban, or that civilian casualties are generally a problem for NATO, or that special forces units are hunting for Al-Qaeda fighters, all that means is that you don’t read the mainstream media. Which means that you don’t really want to know.” (It’s true that regular readers of outlets like the Post may be under the impression that Afghan civilian deaths are more of a problem for NATO than they are for Afghan civilians–FAIR Blog, 5/7/09.)

In the new issue of Time magazine (dated 8/9/10), managing editor Rick Stengel notes that WikiLeaks “has already ratcheted up the debate about the war,” and that Time is trying “to contribute to that debate.” They do so with a cover photo of a disfigured Afghan woman with the headline “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.” The clear implication is that the Taliban will commit similar atrocities without the presence of U.S. forces. It is difficult to imagine the magazine proposing the opposite: a headline like “What Happens If We Stay in Afghanistan,” accompanied by a photo of the corpse of an Afghan child killed in an airstrike or a house raid.

Stengel argues, “We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it,” adding: “What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents: a combination of emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land and the consequences of the important decisions that lie ahead.”

The idea that the way to respond to the WikiLeaks documents is to highlight atrocities committed by the Taliban is precisely what CBS correspondent Lara Logan called for. And it’s also more propaganda than it is journalism.

FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.

Best of the Bay 2010 Editors Picks: Shopping

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 27, 2010

0

Best of the Bay 2010 Editors Picks: Shopping

BEST SUBJUGATION TO A QUEEN

Well before colony collapse disorder became a phrase of terror, Bay Area bee geeks were eyeing their neglected backyard anise and eucalyptus plants as potential ambrosial fill-up stations for honeybees. In 2008, Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper entered the scene, giving the city’s swelling ranks of colonial wannabees the ultimate sweet spot: a one-stop source for everything Apoidea. The clean, light-filled store — which has the distinction of being the only urban beekeeping store in the country — stocks backyard starter kits and supplies, those fabulous white hazmat-style suits (and really, haven’t you always wanted one for demonstrations or Halloween?) beeswax candles, books, bee DIY products (i.e., honey and honeycombs), and, yes, bees. Let’s face it, you haven’t really tasted SF or embraced its hive mentality until you’ve drizzled some Gold Fine Crystal over your locally baked artisanal bread.

3520 20th St., SF. (415) 744-1465. www.hmsbeekeeper.com

BEST STEAMY SHOPPING

Shopping at P-Kok can be exhausting. You have to the cross the street, sometimes several times, just to take in all the cute clothes, bags, jewelry, scarves, etc. (and all at affordable prices) at P-Kok’s two Haight Street locations. It’s enough to make you want to find a tranquil garden, flop down on a chaise lounge with a beverage, and soothe your weary self with a sauna. At the P-Kok on the even side of the street (the one at 776 Haight), you can. Formerly the site of a day spa, P-Kok has preserved and replanted the inherited backyard garden sauna — renamed Eden — and rents it for $15 an hour. The best part: it accommodates up to 10. Packed like sardines or solo, it’s the perfect antidote to bustling Haight Street— and the perfect refreshment before going back out into P-Kok(s) and loading up on more cute stuff.

776 Haight, SF. (415) 503-1280, www.pkoksf.com

BEST PLACE TO PLAY FOOTSIE

Distraction is the enemy of sock shopping — you came for ultrathin running socks, but omigod, the store has lilac suede Fluevogs with four-inch heels! Before you know it, you’re out $250 and you still have no socks. That cannot happen at SockShop Haight Street. The small, newish, locally-owned store has nothing but socks and sock-related habiliment, including high socks, low socks, toe socks, boot socks, jock socks, kids socks, dad socks, tights, slipper-socks, and sock monkeys. And within those categories, SockShop goes way deep with wool socks, striped socks, plain socks, dot socks, cotton socks, argyle socks, cashmere socks, skull socks, floral socks, flag socks, food socks, animal socks, music socks, holiday socks, fox socks, blocks socks, and rocks socks … Really, need we say more?

1780 Haight, SF. (415) 396-5400, www.sockshoponhaight.com

BEST MAJOLICA RUSH

OK, not all of us can afford to buy some ancient heap of stones fixer-upper villa in Siena where, caressed by sun and Italian hunks, we blossom into writers (bite us, Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany). No, we must make do in our fog-shrouded garrets, scrounging for dropped change for a $2 cappuccino. But at some point, we can all afford to splurge on at least one small piece of authentic Italian splendor to add luster to our hardscrabble lives. That’s when we head to Biordi Art Imports in North Beach, a floor-to-ceiling treasure trove of hand-painted Majolica ceramics. And once you start sipping your coffee from a gorgeous De Simone mug or spooning your gruel from a colorful Eurgenio Ricciarelli bowl, the virtual sunlight comes rushing in. You won’t miss that stinkin’ villa at all. Maybe the hunks.

412 Columbus, SF. (415) 392-8096, www.biordi.com

BEST CACHE OF GRACE NOTES

Be it ever so humble or token, city dwellers always seem to crave some connection to the natural world: the single bathroom orchid, the three desktop seashells, the rock and glass arrangement lining the windowsill. When it comes to finding these small grace notes (outside of illicitly pocketing them from Glass Beach or Muir Woods), our vote goes to Xapno. The small one-woman shop in the Lower Haight offers a beautiful and fragrant cornucopia of the best that nature and humanity create: fresh and dried flowers, plants, vases, candles, jewelry, cards, shells, branches, cacti, books, paper, paintings, and sometimes clothes and shoes. Furthermore, about half the artists are local, including a ceramics student at City College who has been baking baskets-full of delicate ceramic roses in varying shades of ivory, peach, and pink.

678 Haight, SF. (415) 863-8199, www.xapno.com

BEST GIRLY GIFTERIA

Ombre feather earrings, Hollywood Regency lamps, and two-headed chicks by way of the taxidermist — that’s what BellJar is made of. Less evocative of Sylvia Plath’s total collapse than a delicate glass chamber filled with oodles of fascinating objects, the Mission boutique has made a name for itself as the discriminating gothette or vintage girl’s go-to for unique tchotchkes and gifts for loved ones — or, better yet, one’s own bad, sweet self. Here, and on the store’s recently revamped website, you’ll find delightfully retro-esque and oh-so-womanly clothing, witty trinkets that draw inspiration from nature’s bounty, exquisite earrings and necklaces, and founder Sasha Darling’s dark-femme ‘n’ fabulous eye for the Francophile, the girly, and the gorgeously Grimm.

3187 16th St., SF. (415) 626-1749, www.shopbelljarsf.com

BEST HANDCRAFTED NIP-HUGGERS

Seductively snug latex over a perfectly pert nipple — yes, please! Skip the tassels, beads and sequins, and go for a super-sexy set of pasties that show off your breasts and hint at the budding shape beneath. The Heartbreaker pasties by Madame S are individually fashioned by hand in the SoMa fetish wear and sex shop’s very own latex production lab by Madame’s devilishly talented crafters. Hidden in the back behind kinky-costumed mannequins and closed doors, your breast’s friend is taking on a cute, heart-shaped form right now and you should be anticipating ways to fit them into your daily wardrobe. Traditional black- and red-rimmed, these pasties are coquettish, classy, and come-hither all at once. Guaranteed to make jaws drop and temperatures rise with appreciation.

385 Eighth St., SF. (415) 863-9447, www.madame-s.com

BEST GOLD-GILDED GUIGNOL

Nothing celebrates life more than death — or at least, nothing is more invigoratingly creepy than opening a beautifully wrapped gift to find a life-size crown of thorns made with an assortment of deceased birds’ legs. Haight boutique Loved to Death is stocked with goose-bump inflicting fancies, many of which are gold-encrusted and way more thought-provoking than a living bouquet. Say “I love you” with a 24-karat badger-claw brooch, surprise him with a scorpion in a vial, or show her you care by putting an antique baby doll head under her pillow. Taxidermy (no animals were killed in the making — they were dead already), resurrected art, antiques, and goth-hip jewelry are way more fun when they test your lover’s limits. And if your delicate beloved can’t handle your purchase, you’ll get to keep the muskrat mandible gold-gilded earrings yourself.

1681 Haight, SF. (415) 551-0136, www.lovedtodeath.net

BEST HOMEGROWN DISNEY ALTERNATIVE

“We want to make things that have joy and humor, but that people aren’t embarrassed to have lying around their house,” says Gama-Go cofounder Greg Long. When Long and Chris Edmundson quit their day jobs at an East Bay toy company 10 years ago, they were following a dream to make well-designed, cartoon-inspired clothing and products that played off the enormously popular, collectible-crazy pop surrealism movement happening in L.A. at the time. It was a vision that launched a thousand T-shirts. Today, some of Gama’s cute-with-bite stock characters like Tigerlily, DeathBot, and that cuddly ice-bluish fave, Yeti, are common sights on city streets, clubbers’ chests, and shopaholics’ totes. And now there’s Go for your pad too. Guitar-shaped spatulas and “pot” holders that resemble big old Mary Jane leaves make perfect gifts for that urban class clown.

335 Eighth St., SF. (415) 626-1213, www.gama-go.com

BEST SMELL OF AEROSOL IN THE MORNING

Photo by Ben Hopfer

Screw a monument and urban planning: we live in City Beautiful. Walk down nearly any street in SF and there on the pavement and buildings you will find the stencils, murals, super burners, tags, and — how do you say? — art that makes this town rich in color, rich in mind. So where does the discerning street artist go for the tools and gear she needs to make these blocks pop? It’s gotta be 1:AM gallery, where prices on paint pens and aerosol spray trump the art supply and hardware stores every time. (1:AM as in “First Amendment” — and a tagger’s preferred rise and shine.) Not to mention the whole gallery side of the space, which hosts some of the most original sometimes-street artists around — who often tag the outside of the store’s Sixth Street walls in kaleidoscopic temporary letterings and designs.

1000 Howard, SF. (415) 861-5089, www.1amsf.com

BEST MAKEUP AS DRAMATIC AS YOU ARE

Word to the aspiring pageant queens: (apparently) it’s not all about the Vaseline on the teeth and duct-taped boobs. You want that crown, you need a face full of grade-A goos and glosses — and we know just the place to get them, girl. Kryolan Professional Makeup has been in the primp game since 1942, plumping and perking a passel of pretties, including the 2010 Miss USA contestants. But maybe you’re a DIY kind of queen? All good — Kryolan’s got a kaleidoscopic showroom full of the glitz and glamour for them bright lights, including glitter in animal, vegetable, and mineral form (the company produces more than 16,000 products in 750 colors — over the top, just like you!). If you need help slopping it on in style, or just some tips on how to blend with a little subtlety, then strut, mamma, strut to application classes in the same building.

132 Ninth St., SF. (415) 863-9684, www.kryolan.com

BEST RUN TO FREEDOM

Better circulation, cardiovascular health, time to reflect: running makes you free. (Especially if it’s away from an out-of-shape cop.) But pounding these city streets can be tough on the joints and bones. You’d like a little freedom from aching discomfort as well. So jog over to On the Run, an Inner Sunset shoe store that specializes in helping peeps in pain — seriously, half the store’s first-time customers arrive with a doctor’s referral. Its trained staff will send you for a walk on an electronic pad that measures foot pressure, plus pronation and supination (both refer to the angle at which your foot hits the block). They use a fancy device to measure your feet accurately, then hook you up with some sweet kicks that have you feeling fit, fast, and fab. You pay a bit more for all this podiatric prognostication, but hey, all runners know there’s gotta be some pain in the gain.

1310 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 665-5311, www.ontherunshoes.com

BEST SUCCOR FOR SUCCULENTS

The fog makes a great excuse for those with black thumbs. Usually we can blame our houseplants’ premature striptease of this mortal coil on the clouded vagaries of our mini-ecosystem. However, even fact-based finger-pointing fails when it comes to the death of a beloved succulent. One simply should not be able to kill a cactus. And yet one does. Sigh. Should your astrophytum be stymied or your once-verdant aloe shade into an unbecoming red, Succulence is there. This secret garden store is hidden away on a Bernal Heights video store’s back patio, packed with many a bulbous, spiny, or just plain prickly new friend for you to take home in an inventive recycled planter. But don’t ditch that sickly chum languishing in your window box! Succulence also mixes a special soil blend that can resuscitate even the saddest looking ball o’ spikes.

402 Cortland, SF. (415) 282-2212

BEST TEMPLE OF LIFE

In some lovely, distant universe, all we buy are magnificent orchids, and all the money goes to AIDS prevention and relief organizations. This impractically gorgeous fantasy becomes reality at nonprofit Orchid Mania’s beautifully named Orchid Temple, based in an unassuming house in the Excelsior District that contains a three-climate greenhouse. OM has packed its temple with orchids that resemble dancing ladies, some smelling of blood (all the better to woo their insect pollinators), that will stop your housemates in their tracks with their glory on your kitchen table. Call ahead to alert the temple guards — or show up during the all-volunteer operation’s open orchard hours, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sundays — and take your time browsing for a worthy cause. The temple also functions as a bulb foster home to keep rare species from extinction. Let’s just say they’re into the preservation of beautiful lives all around.

717 Geneva, SF. (415) 841-1678, www.orchids.org

BEST ONE-STOP SKULL SHOP

You can’t walk by Martin’s 16th Street Emporium without ogling the ghoulish delights displayed in the windows. Casual strollers might be forgiven for thinking the place is called “The Skull Store” — an apt description, anyway, considering that the store is stuffed floor-to-ceiling with skulls galore. Though it’s not open very often (try Thurs.-Sat. afternoons — look for the pirate flag out front), it’s well worth a special visit to pick up a gift for your favorite skull collector. Sterling silver jewelry is the main attraction, with everything from dangerous-looking knuckle-duster rings (scary skull!) to delicate pendants and earrings (fashion skull!). It also carries skull figurines and other knickknacks, not all of them skull-related, but many of them vintage. Imagine stumbling upon an uber-cool, slightly spooky estate sale. If the estate was owned by Cap’n Blood, that is.

3248 16th St., SF. (415) 552-4631, www.skullsinsf.com

BEST STASH OF CULTURED BOOTIE

Do you need a dashiki-looking starter jacket, a grafted Italian fresco, an antique colored glass chandelier — like, yesterday? Friend, welcome to the power of collection. And welcome to Cottage Industry, the domain of a one Claudio Barone. The Italian-born Barone has spent the last 22 years traipsing about the globe, purchasing goods from indigenous craftspeople (at prices reasonable to all parties involved), and then retreating to Fillmore, treasure secured and ready to be squeezed into his darling shop — waiting for the day when you must, absolutely, positively, have that carved ebony figurine from the Congo, right away! Even if your mission lacks a hysterical level of urgency, do drop by. The piled shelves of goods ranging in price from 10 cents to $30,000 will either heighten or assuage the most pressing case of wanderlust.

2326 Fillmore, SF. (415) 885-0326

BEST FOLDING FANATICS

A gorilla sits in Japantown’s classic origami store. She’s squat and a little wrinkly, but say what you want about her lumps and rolls, she’s fantastically multidimensional — and even carries a little baby on her back. You can expect that kind of artistic wonder from Paper Tree, opened by the Mihara family in 1978 and run to this day by sisters Vicky and Linda, who constructed the primate in question. Not only can their shop meet your most fantastical origami needs (and those for quirky Japanese “office supplies” like sushi-shaped erasers and beribboned money envelopes), but the Miharas are serious about taking a role in their neighborhood community. Their lively origami classes and art, a staple for the last 43 years at the Cherry Blossom Festival, are testament to their desire to share the love of a good fold.

1743 Buchanan, SF. (415) 921-7100, www.paper-tree.com

BEST BEACHY DREAMS

There are those who blow and bluster about the lack of true beach weather in our city of rolling fog. And then there are those that smile and manifest sunbeams. Of the latter faction is Meggie White, whose Marina boutique, .meggie., imparts the same hope for rays as its fetching blonde owner. A breezy interior of hardwood and weathered white fixtures plays snazzy backdrop to .meggie.’s wonderland: fly floral sundresses share racks with the thinnest of sherbet-colored tees and cardigans. So stock up — what if that freak summer sunburst pokes through, and you without your pastels! .meggie. stocks several local designers, and White herself makes a supremely sand-worthy line of hand-forged silver, stone, and shell jewelry. So much more fun than that panicked schlep to J.Crew.

2277 Union, SF. (415) 525-3586, www.meggiejewelry.com

BEST SOLUTION TO THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA

Stymied on the menu for tonight’s dinner? Try this: start with a solid base of local, independent business, add two cups of foodie focus, stir in equal parts retro chic and current craze, bake with a product no one can get enough of, and never allow to cool (serve each slice with a celebrity sighting.) Problem solved! Such is the taste of your new culinary North Star, Omnivore Books, which happens to be the hawtest cookbook-only lit shop in Noe Valley. Owner Celia Sack has stocked her shelves with yummy tomes both new and old, and the small space packs in hungry audiences for its stellar author events. Recent speakers have included New York Times food writer Frank Bruni and local cheesemonger Gordon Edgar. It’s enough food inspiration to sate the least decisive dining divas among us.

3885 Cesar Chavez, SF. (415) 282-4712, www.omnivorebooks.com

BEST TL ROUGHNECKS

So you’re headed to psych class at City College one day when, on a dime, you say forget it — I’m going to follow my love and start a mini-skateboard empire in the Tenderloin instead. Welcome to the life of Johnny Roughneck. The boarder opened tee shirt treasure trove Dwntwn Skate Supply to hawk his Roughneck line of skate hardware and give a hand to new designers, like those of TL-repping clothing line The Loin, all while establishing a let’s-have-fun attitude in a neighborhood that often has its odds stacked against it. Occasional barbeques out on the Hyde Street pavement have given the shop some presence on the block, and Dwntwn has even played jump-off to some wildly legit skating events. Check out the video of the Roughneck crew’s 2010 Caltrain tour for Bay skating inspiration.

644 Hyde, SF. (415) 913-7422, www.dwntwnsf.com

BEST PRINTER WITH A PURPOSE

Raising your fist is all well and good, but if your arm gets tired, you’ll want that rebel yell printed on your T-shirt for good measure. After helping to found the Mission’s community screen-printing shop, Mission Gráfica, radical artist Jos Sanches opened Alliance Graphics in 1988. He needed a place where he could continue to churn out his poster print protests against the world’s various sources of evil (capitalism, neoimperialism, commercialism, and a busted justice system, to name some of his faves) — and still be a resource for the progressive causes that to this day need a voice on the street. Does your war cry scream out to be monogrammed on a bumper sticker, backpack, or umbrella? Alliance can get the job done right, with union labor and made in the USA products to boot.

1101 Eighth St., Berk. (510) 845-8835, www.unionbug.com

BEST FAST TRACK TO THRIFT BLISS

Lord, these used clothing stores. The racks of oversized leggings, the bins of kitty-appliquéd sweatshirts, the puff paint visors. (Wait, are those hip now?) Who has the time for such excavations? There are times when you just want to throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care and head to the local Anthropologie. But back down off that ledge! Delisa Sage’s Collage on Potrero Hill can be your one-stop cool kid shop when you haven’t the time to rifle through Grandma’s old church dresses. Skone-Rees has stocked her boutique with well-edited used clothing at prices not too far above Goodwill price gouges. (Her nifty store of scavenged home décor is next door.) And you’ll never find her array of locally-made jewelry and well-preserved boots and slippers at any Salvation Army. But be forewarned: Collage’s collection of late 1990s failed tech startup mascot hats is a bit lacking.

1345 18th St., SF. (415) 282-4401, www.collage-gallery.com

BEST BOUTIQUE STARR

Is there anything that Bianca Starr owner Bianca Kaplan can’t do? After moving on from her and hubby’s bangin’ DJ spot, 222 Hyde, Kaplan turned her eyes from beats to threads — secondhand designer label threads, which her Mission boutique sells to all the fly ladies looking for a clubby, classy, strappy looks (with just a hint of “Dynasty” decadence and chola sass) in which to creature up the night. Dresses, separates, handbags, belts, jewelry, and footwear: no detail is overlooked. Always collaborative, Kaplan picks chic up-and-coming designers to feature at her packed monthly stylist boutique events, and hands them the reigns to her racks for the night. And if you happen to stroll past Bianca Starr (so-called for her childhood friend’s coolest name ever) on a sunny day, you might just catch Kaplan and her girlfriends lounging streetside with a bottle of champagne. Wearing the cutest frocks you’ve ever seen, natch.

3552 20th St., SF. (415) 341-1020, www.biancastarr.com

BEST FANTASY FABRICATORS

Photo by Ben Hopfer

The mother-in-law’s birthday approaches, and all we know is that she likes to knit socks. Maybe we can help out with her frosty feet at the ImagiKnit store we always pass in the Castro? Probably great for some yarn — maybe a little bit fusty, too, though, and maybe somewhat intimidating to those who’ve never pearled. Imagine our surprise as we enter a rainbow wonderland busting with spectacular spun materials — spiky mohair, luminous silk, titillating cashmere, speckled cotton — and staffed by immediately accommodating people who don’t want to stick needles in our naïve newbie eyes. More shock: we run into several of our hippest friends leafing through vintage pattern books and holding court at the DIY wool winders. ImagiKnit’s community vibe and vibrant stock draw us in for hours. In the end we make the momentous decision to knit those socks ourselves. Sorry about the six toes, Mom.

3897 18th Street, SF. (415) 621-6642, www.imagiknit.com

BEST NIBSTER

Fountain pen lovers are a strange bunch. We spend hundreds of dollars on something that’s part status symbol, part jewelry, part objet d’art and, oh, yes, part writing instrument. Sometimes these works of exquisite craftsmanship write beautifully; sometimes they leak, skip, spurt ink all over the paper (and our hands), and don’t write at all. That’s why Stephanie Boyette, the fountain pen expert at Flax, is our favorite nibster. She can help you pick the right pen and ink, tell you how to use acrylic flow enhancers, give you tips on maintenance, and often tell you with a quick glance why your precious pen is malfunctioning. In fact, she’s so devoted that she’s been chosen to work as an apprentice to John Mottishaw, the Los Angeles nib-repair expert who is widely regarded as the best fountain pen surgeon in America.

1699 Market, SF. (415) 552-2355, www.flaxart.com

BEST PLACE TO FLIP YOUR WIG

What’s that on your head? If it ain’t a wig, get thee to the Wig Factory, pronto, because every man, woman, boy, girl, dog, cat, bird, and goldfish needs at least one follicular embellishment to send their look into another, more fabulous dimension. The Wig Factory’s capital selection includes everything from utter realness to costume frivolity — it’s got you covered like Andre Agassi’s cranium after half a can of Ron Popeil’s spray-on hair. Devotees know that Wig Factory is subject to some controversy because of its rules limiting the number of hairpieces you can try on in a single visit, which some people complain about. Such folks conflate whining with Yelping — ignore them. Do you want to try on a wig that’s already been tested by a hundred finicky entitled shoppers who think their scalps don’t stink? We don’t think so. Queens and princesses, beauty is here, on a mannequin head. Kings and princes, you can look like Adam Lambert or a Brylcreemed silver fox in a single fitting.

3020 Mission, SF. (415) 282-4939

BEST MINTY FRESH FASHIONS

It’s easy to show your California love when it’s directed at Mint Mall, a SF-based online clothing shop that mixes fine originals with vintage finds. An appreciation for natural fabrics, an eye for vibrant eras of well-known and obscure labels, and the type of tough dedication required to make the best thrifting finds are three of the special ingredients that make up Mint Mall. But the two main factors are co-owners Corina Biliandzija and Genevieve Dodge, who teamed up over half-a-decade ago and have refined their own designs and vintage visions with each passing day. Mint Mall items are fun to wear and born from the pair’s love and enthusiasm for fashion and everyday style. Native fringe, Aztec or cartoon prints, bell-sleeved tunic tops, Grecian gold thread minis, Bergdorf Goodman floral maxis, Diane von Furstenberg silk wraps, Givenchy platforms, original hoodies — the dynamic duo behind Mint Mall work hard for your closet, so you better treat them right.

www.stores.ebay.com/the-mint-mall

BEST SWEET SHOP TO MAKE A SUPERSTAR PROUD

Even before it opened, Candy Darling had a reputation, thanks to its fabulous name and kicky red plastic sign. Passersby were left to wonder — would it be a candy shop, or a drag queen fashion emporium? Those with a sweet tooth were the ones who received the happy answer, though, to be honest, there’s something wonderfully Grey Gardens about the store’s vintage 1960s or ’70s feel. Candy Darling the Warhol superstar was utterly unique, the essence of feminine glamour, and as soft and lovely as a lilac-scented breeze. Candy Darling the corner shop is a little paradise of sea-salt caramels, milk chocolate turtles, rocky road clusters, English toffee bars, and dark chocolate-dipped candied ginger. It does its namesake proud, which is no small feat. Visit Candy Darling just once and you might never see Mrs. See again.

798 Sutter, SF. (415) 346-1500

BEST BOOK HAVEN FOR ART LOVERS

A great bookstore is almost like an inspiring place of worship, except more fun and more grounded in palpable truth. Some of San Francisco’s best bookstores are nestled into nooks, like the esoteric Bolerium, or ready to move, like 871 Fine Arts. The numbers in this tome emporium and gallery’s name are enigmatic: for years, it brought some historical heart and heft to the art biz maze that is 49 Geary, and now it’s at 20 Hawthorne, another half-hidden location. (So the name’s obviously not address-oriented; perhaps it refers to the year Viking king Bagsecg died?) Owner Adrienne Fish has developed a selection of art books that is simply second to none in SF — 871 mixes old and new titles, is well-organized, and brings a sense of depth and breadth to any movement or era. The layout and lighting are attractive and efficient, and browsers and buyers can also enjoy an art show during a visit, since Fish’s curatorial acumen regarding California art is extra-sharp.

20 Hawthorne, SF. (415) 543-5155

BEST KANDI WHEN YOU’RE RANDY

Great reasons to use a glass dildo: they last longer, they’re less likely to harbor harmful bacteria, they retain temperature well — and on first glance, they more resemble works of fine art than hump handles. It was this urge toward aesthetic excellence that compelled Samantha Liu to open Glass Kandi, the display shop for her online catalog Glass Dildo Me. Liu provides expert guidance to the adventurous singles and curious couples who grace her door, smoothly introducing them to the exact masterpiece of whorled glass and embedded metals that will rev their engines. And don’t worry if you have a lady who likes to accessorize — Glass Kandi’s arsenal of whips, wigs, jewelry, and more is tinglingly top notch.

569 Geary, SF. (415) 931-2256, www.glasskandi.com

BEST SQUEAKY-SHARP WHEELS

It’s a bad cliché. The snooty bike repair dude, sniffing down his (lensless) thick-frame glasses at your beloved, if somewhat mind-boggling, bicycle. Will he overquote you? Will he really fix the problem with due diligence? Will you regret asking him the question in the first place? Blow by those stereotypical scaries and enter the world of Roaring Mouse Cycles. Racks and racks of high-quality road, track, and mountain bikes await to be sized expertly to your frame. (Should your size not be in stock, they’ll order it for you with a perfect-fit guarantee). Plus, the racing enthusiast staff is pro enough to know exactly what your two-wheeled buddy needs to get rolling again. They pride themselves on a steel frame code of service, and definitely won’t hurt your bike — or your ego. You’ll never feel velo-vapid again!

1352 Irving, SF. (415) 753-6272, www.roaringmousecycles.com

BEST REFINED RUGGEDNESS

Photo by Ben Hopfer

Way out west, where Midwestern dreams take form, there’s a Victorian that predates the great 1906 quake. There, you’ll find men’s workwear goods refined to something like an art form. They’re well-arranged in a shop known to sport an American flag or two, not in any jingoistic way, but as a reflection of its “finest quality dry goods”: jeans, shirts, bags, boots, and other masculine items, all selected by Todd Barket, whose design eye has influenced some of the more popular mass-market clothing brands on Market Street. The attire in Unionmade is considerably pricier for the most part, but with a sharpness, durability, and practical ingenuity (they’ve carried Chester Wallace canvas bags built to fit two six-packs) you won’t find for a lower tag. While a different nearby store has Japanese denim for those whose wallets can indulge in jean dreams, Barket stocks Levi’s from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, a tack that taps into the brand’s SF past and relates to it newer brands such as Woolrich and Gitman Tanner. Look for the Unionmade label, or rather, for the stamp on your bag when you’ve made a purchase.

493 Sanchez, SF. (415) 861-3373, www.unionmadegoods.com

BEST FRILLS OF A LIFETIME

If you can’t find something to geek out on in Japantown’s five-story New People Tokyo fashion mall, you’re not doing it right. But not many of the pop culture palace’s multitudinous corners have spawned their very own local subcultures — which brings us to Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, a Harajuku ministore mecca, and one of the original brands responsible for the “Sweet Lolita” dress up movement in Japan. Lady-like Lolita adherents flounce around in intensely festooned outfits otherwise seen only on the most precious of collectible baby dolls. And since this is the BSSB brand’s only U.S. retail source, pretty-pretty princesses come from far and wide to partake in the store’s frillfest of matching dresses, bonnets, Mary Janes, and parasols. For extra credit, the Lolitas can play at BSSB-organized tea parties, held at pinkies-up swank spots all over the city.

1746 Post, SF. (415) 525-8630, www.newpeopleworld.com

Quick Lit: July 28-Aug 3

David Talbot

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July 27, 2010

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Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week

Jennifer Weiner, Brande Roderick, Comedy Talks, Aging as a Feminist Issue, Seminars About Long-term Thinking, and more.

Wednesday, July 28

Fly Away Home
New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Weiner will read from her new book, answer questions, and sign copies.
6 p.m., free
Book Passage
Ferry Building #42
1 Ferry Building, SF
(415) 835-1020

Thursday, July 29

Before Sita Sang the Blues
Award-winning cartoonist and animator Nina Paley will showcase her new book, Before Sita Sang the Blues: Spotlight on Nina Paley, a retrospective filled with selections from Paley’s comic strip, illustrations, and prints, paintings, and other materials from Paley’s film, Sita Sings the Blues.
7 p.m., free
Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission, SF
(415) CAR-TOON

Bounce, Don’t Break
Get tips on how to be resilient, work hard, create clear, defined goals, and become an overall successful woman from Playmate of the Year (2001), actress, reality star, and business woman, Brande Roderick.
7 p.m., free
Borders
400 Post, SF
(415) 399-1633

Dog Days
Celebrate the release of artist Michael Werts’ new children’s book Dog Days, that he wrote, illustrated, and letterpress printed, at this dog-friendly celebration.
6 p.m., free
Austin/Burch Gallery
San Francisco Center for the Book
300 De Haro, SF
(415) 565-0545

Over the Cliff
Authors David Neiwert and John Amato present their new book that explains the rise of right-wing threatening behavior and how ordinary Americans can stop the madness.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Berkeley
1760 4th St., Berk.
(510) 525-7777

Saturday, July 31

“Love in the Age of Enlightenment”
Abbot Paul Haller, from the Zen Center, and Polly Young-Eisendrath, Jungian psychologist, will discuss love and awakening from the perspectives of Zen and Jungian psychotherapy.
3 p.m., $20
Koret Auditorium
de Young Museum
Golden Gate Park
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF
(415) 354-0437
www.sfzc.org

Sick City
Tony O’Neill will read and sign his new book, about a legendary sex tape, dope fiends, and the trouble that ensued.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688

Sunday, Aug. 1

George Segal, Paul Mazursky, and Ronnie Schell
See a classic late night talk show format live on stage at this installment of Comedy Talks. Host Robert Strong talks with a panel of three comedy legends about their careers, personal lives, insider gossip, and comedic tips.
4 p.m., $35-$75
USF Presentation Theater
2350 Turk, SF
www.comedytalks.com

Monday, Aug. 2

“Life’s Future in the Cosmos”
Martin Reeves, president of the Royal Society and England’s Astronomer Royal, will discuss the whether human success on Earth determines life’s success in the universe as part of the Long Now Foundation’s series, Seminars About Long-term Thinking.
7:30 p.m., $10
Chabot Space and Science Center
10000 Skyline, Oakl.
www.longnow.org

“Population Aging as a Feminist Issue”
Adele M. Hayutin, Senior Research Scholar and Director of the Global Aging Program at Stanford’s Center on Longevity, will discuss the challenges facing women and provide a framework for understanding historical changes in the status of women.
5:45 p.m., $20
Commonwealth Club
2nd floor
595 Market, SF
(415) 597-6700‎

Sweetness and Blood
Author Michael Scott Moore will discuss his new book, Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results, about his discovery of a vibrant surfing community in Germany and some other unlikely places.
7:30 p.m., free
The Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
www.booksmith.com

The bridge isn’t the only problem with Lennar’s plan

Mary Magee

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July 26, 2010

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I’m glad to see the New York Times circle back to the Candlestick-Shipyard development with an article that was a tad more critical than their previous piece.

But while I enjoyed NYT’s joke about how the proposed bridge over the Yosemite Slough “has become a 950-foot-long chicken bone that keeps getting stuck in San Francisco politicians’ throats,” I’m afraid the Board is in greater danger of choking on the bones of red herrings that they have been fed about this project, along with last week’s bombshell that the Board won’t be able to amend Lennar’s plan, after all, when it votes July 27 on this massive proposal..

D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly says if that bombshell turns out to be true, it’ll be another example of what he calls, “The bait and switch and switch,” on the deal.

“I’m worried that the Board is getting advice that is less about a case of not being able to vote, and more a case of, if you vote, you could open up the city to liability,” Kelly said.

“Back in 2008, folks were told, just vote for Prop. G because it’s just a concept and we’ll have a robust conversation about the plan itself, but they’ve been running away from that promise ever since,” Kelly explained. “And during the EIR hearings, we were told that folks were simply approving the environmental impact report, not the plan itself.”

Kelly’s critiques of Lennar’s plan and the process by which it has been winning final approvals helped him win former Board President Matt Gonzalez’s endorsement last week in the pivotal race to replace termed-out D. 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell.

But Kelly worries about the fallout that the next D. 10 supervisor will be left to mop up, if the Board goes ahead and approves Lennar’s plan, as is.

“What I’d dread to see happen is that this plan get bullied through on an up and down vote, and then a fifth, or even a tenth of people’s concerns prove to be true, and the next D. 10 supervisor spends the next 4-8 years apologizing to the people of the Bayview, because they won’t be able to do anything else for the area, and this plan keeps lumbering along and doesn’t even work,” Kelly explained.

He says he wants to know who can amend the plan, if it’s not the Board and when.

“ My concern is that after the July 27 vote, the city and Lennar will never have to come before the Board again,” Kelly said, pointing to the uncritical endorsement of the project EIR that the Planning and Redevelopment Commissions, the lead agencies on the plan, made June 3, and who would likely be tasked with any additional studies and findings.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi confirmed today that the Board has been told that it has limited reach because of Redevelopment law, which supercedes municipal law.”
“But, nonetheless, I’m going to try to make some amendments,” Mirkarimi said.

He noted that the five amendments that Board President David Chiu introduced July 12 during a Land Use Committee hearing were “very benign.”

‘They mostly restated what was already in the project agreement or project EIR,” Mirkarimi said. “So, they don’t amend much, because they are statements of what has already been evaluated or pre-agreed to by Lennar and the city. And they are very benign because they do not require any changes to the plan.”

Mirkarimi observes that the current process by which the city is trying to push this deal through is designed to lock the Board out.

“There are larger questions in play here about our relationship with the Redevelopment Agency and redevelopment law,” Mirkarimi continued. He notes that San Francisco is one of only a few counties in California where the Board is not the same entity as the Redevelopment Agency.

“It’s long overdue that we return to the idea of having the Board have authority over the Redevelopment Agency, it’s been a problem for 40 years,” Mirkarimi said, referring to Redevelopment’s disastrous handling of the Fillmore, which resulted in the massive and mostly permanent displacement of the Western Addition’s African American community—a negative consequence that many fear will be repeated by the plan for Candlestick-Hunters Point.

“There is a real capitalization on a starving population which is desirous of and at times desperate for positive changes and for jobs and housing, which is understandable,” Mirkarimi continued. “But absent of any alternative, it’s logical that this plan would move forward.”

In an effort to improve the plan, Mirkarimi says he will try to introduce a range of amendments at the Board’s July 27 meeting.

‘These include an attempt to make sure that whatever changes the Board makes are indeed enforceable,” he said. “And I am not satisfied with the discussion on the bridge, and how the gate has been left open on a bridge of any kind.”

Mirkarimi notes that there has been a lot of fanfare surrounding a community benefits agreement that various community-based organizations, labor and the project proponents entered into, in spring 2008.

“But I think they can do better, especially in reaching out to a community that has a high ex-offender population, and connecting to other disadvantaged communities throughout the city,” Mirkarimi said.

He also wants to ensure that if public power is not implemented, or fails, then Community Choice Aggregation program would automaticcally take over.

Mirkarimi is further concerned that there is nothing in the current plan that defines the percentages of housing units offered for rental and for home ownership.

“We are proposing to build 10,500 units but we have no idea what percentage is rental,” he said, noting that he also has concerns about air quality, air monitoring and parcels of land that have not yet been cleaned up to residential standards.

“Parcel E-2 is the most famous, but it’s not the only one,” he said. “The bridge and Parcel E-2 have become major distractions in that they have sucked the oxygen out of other areas of these gargantuan project.”

So, is it true that elected officials on the Board can’t amend a plan sent to them by the Redevelopment Agency, whose commissioners are all political appointees of the mayor?

“It’s a yes or no vote, if you will,” a deputy City Attorney told the Guardian, on background, noting that the Board could tell Redevelopment that it doesn’t like the plan and wants the Agency to make some changes and bring it some amendments.

“Ultimately, the Board has the final say, but it has to have gone through the Redevelopment process and its PAC (project area committee) and have seen a plan that has been referred to it by the Planning Commission,” the deputy city attorney continued.“So, they could communicate their dissatisfaction and the agency would have to take their view into account. It’s not that the Board has no authority, but it can’t decide unilaterally.”

The City Attorney’s Office also confirmed that under Redevelopment Law, local jurisdictions can decide how to implement redevelopment plans.

“In a number of jurisdictions, the city council has made itself a Redevelopment entity, just as our Board is also the Transportation Authority in San Francisco,” the deputy said.“And if the same body proposes the plan, it probably will be satisfied.”

The City Attorney’s office noted that if agencies that regulate permits to fill the Bay, as is required to build a bridge over Yosemite Slough, deny the city those permits, then the city would require amendments to its planning documents, but no further environmental impact review would be required, if the bridge was gone.

With the Board’s July 27 vote around the corner, D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly says he has a bunch of concerns that include, but are not limited to the bridge, starting with the projects financing mechanisms.

Kelly points to the fact that city staff recommended and the Board approved July 13 that “significant blight in the project area cannot be eliminated without the increase in the amount of bonded indebtedness from $221 million to $900 million and the increase in the limitation on the number of dollars to be allocated to the Agency from $881 million to $4.2 billion.”

Kelly wants the city to explain to the Board how much tax increment financing money will be left for the Bayview, now that the area’s debt ceiling has been tripled.

“Does this mean that all BVHP property tax revenues for the next 30 years will go towards paying down this debt and nothing else?” Kelly asked. “And what will that mean for the rest of BVHP in terms of service and programs it won’t be able to afford?

Kelly would also like to see the Board request an audit of Lennar’s record on Parcel A. As Kelly points out, the Navy conveyed Parcel to the city in 2004, and the city gave Lennar the green light to develop 1,600 mostly luxury condos on that parcel, in 2006.

“But no one has ever done an audit of Parcel A,” Kelly said. “Given the scrutiny that the Board usually brings to five figure numbers, the supervisors should be demanding this information, since we are dealing with a ten-figure number ($4,220,000,000) in future.”

It would be helpful if the City would also brief the Board as to who it believes will be investing in the project, including the investment companies’ names, their board of directors, and whether these companies are based in the US. Rumors are swirling that some project proponents have entered into side-deals that involve limited liability companies that are selling Lennar’s proposed condos to folks in China, and that a $1 million investment in a condo could translate into a work permit for the condo owner or occupant.

Kelly worries that the city and Lennar’s joint redevelopment plan is being allowed to squeak past the Board’s financial review simply on the basis of vague estimates.
“They rely once again on promises that won’t show up,” Kelly said, pointing to a recent report that emerged from the Controller’s Office.

Arc Ecology’s Saul Bloom notes that the Controller used averaged figures in that report, an approach that neatly obscures the fact that many of the project’s alleged and benefits– will not be created or felt for years. Bloom for his part is hoping the Board can introduce a maritime uses amendment. This would allow relatively unskilled jobs to be created at the shipyard in short order, compared to vague promises of building a green tech office park there, some day.

Last week, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor Michael Cohen suggested that plan amendments would delay project construction.

But Cohen was quick to add that, “702 acres of waterfront land in San Francisco is an irreplaceable asset. It’s not a question of if—but when—it gets developed.”

Others are less sure that Cohen’s much promoted vision will ever translate into reality.

So, here’s hoping the Board will grill Cohen and city staff over the financial details, including the internal rate of return (IRR) that Lennar is demanding, and what will happen to promised community benefits, if the IRR doesn’t pencil out. D. 10 candidates DeWitt Lacy, Chris Jackson and Tony Kelly have suggested that some form of liquidated damages are needed, but if the City believes these are unnecessary, it should explain why.

And then there are questions about the impact on air quality of the traffic related to an additional 24,500 residents and 10,000 workers into the city’s southeast.

Personally, I was fascinated by an April 2010 report from the Redevelopment Agency in which the agency discussed the challenges of driving piles through contaminated soil, which is what could happen if a bridge is built over the Yosemite Slough. In the past, the city made the argument that the NFL and the 49ers were requiring this bridge.

But last week, in the wake of Santa Clara’s vote in favor of a new stadium for the 49ers near Great America, the city began arguing that the bridge would make the project more attractive to financers, because employers want to get their employees quickly in and out.

This was the first time I ever heard city staff make that particular argument and they made it when it’s still not clear who these employers even are.

So, let’s flesh out the list of potential employers, so the Board can determine if design decisions are being made in the interest of the local community or out-of-state businesses.

And then there’s the fact that it appears that this proposed $100 million bridge would only save commuters a few minutes, while permanently filling the San Francisco Bay.

Today, the Sierra Club, the Golden Gate Audobon Society, the California Native Plant Society and San Francisco Tomorrow released a report that asserts that the Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard EIR “misrepresents the need for a bridge.”

“A statistical review demonstrates that a route around Yosemite Slough could be as efficient as a bridge route while being better for the environment,” stated a letter that the Sierra Club-led environmental coalition released today. “It’s time for the Board of Supervisors to reject the bridge alternative and insist that the feasible upland route around Yosemite Slough be seriously considered.”

The letter argues that a regression model result found in the Transportation Study Appendix F of the Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Phase 11 EIR provides “no statistically significant evidence to support the claim that a 5 minute increase in transit travel time would lead to a 15 percent decrease in transit ridership, or, indeed, to any decrease in ridership.”

“Therefore, routing the BRT around Yosemite Slough is as consistent with a transit-first redevelopment goal as a bridge alternative, but without the environmental damage wrought by the bridge,” the Sierra Club-led report states in summary. “The results of the regression analysis used in the EIR and relied upon to support the bridge alternative have been misinterpreted in such a way that even if they were statistically significant they are off by a factor of ten: the decrease in transit ridership associated with 5 extra minutes of transit time would be predicted to be approximately 1.5 percent, not 15 percent,” it concludes.

“When the analysis [presented in the Sierra Club’s letter] is combined with previous analyses by LSA Associates (which estimate the increase in travel time would be approximately 2 minutes, rather than the 5 minutes in the final EIR) and other available information, one must reach the conclusion that the FEIR misrepresents the effect on travel time and ridership that would result from a route around Yosemite Slough. Overall, it poses further questions about the need for a bridge over San Francisco’s largest wetland restoration project.”

The Sierra Club-led report lands two weeks after Board President David Chiu introduced his July 12 package of amendments which seeks to narrow the bridge, not eliminate it, and require the Board to hold hearings before the Navy transfers Parcel E-2 to the city.

It’s a good idea for the Board to require hearings before E-2 is transferred to the city. But does this mean the Board will be able to direct the Navy, when it’s time to decide whether to cap or excavate the contamination in that parcel? The answer appears to be no. All the Board can do is to reject the Navy’s proposed solution.

But how would this work? What would happen then? And Parcel E-2 isn’t the only parcel on the shipyard where seriously nasty stuff has been found and is still be cleaned up.

The good news is that at this point, the project still doesn’t belong to the Board.

The bad news is that, as of tomorrow, it could belong to them, if the supervisors opt to approve Lennar’s plan with a simple up-down vote. And given the rush and the political pressure that the process has been subjected to since 2006, it’s almost certain that some scandal will engulf the project, some time in the future. And this Board of Supervisors’ names will be on it. Even if nothing ever gets built at the shipyard.

“How can the city say nothing will be built for years, because we have promised so much, when they say out of the other side of their mouth, that the only way that we can make these promises to the community, is if the community supports the plan?” Kelly asks. “On what planet do we think this makes sense? I think we are moving out of the solar system with every passing week.”

There’s no crime in members of the Board admitting tomorrow that they have not read the entire plan and don’t understand all the details. As the folks in Alameda humbly admitted last week, when they kicked out developer SunCal, it took them years to understand what was being proposed—including the fact that the project might leave their city in the hole, financially.

But it would be a crime for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to vote yes on this massive proposal without first having done that homework. Yes, I’ve heard supervisors say in the past they are deferring to Sup. Maxwell, since the project lies in her district. But Maxwell is termed out, and the project will impact all of the city, especially in terms of its ethnic and economic diversity, in future. So, as we’ve said, buyer beware!

According to Matthew

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 21, 2010

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It is an understatement to say that the work of Matthew Barney elicits strong reactions. Critics have alternately hailed him as “the most important American artist of his generation” (that’s the New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman) and complained of his art’s Wagnerian grandiosity, needless inscrutability, pretentiousness, and icy perfection (“loveless” was one of the words the San Francisco Chronicle’s Kenneth Baker used to describe “Drawing Restraint 9,” Barney’s 2006 show at SFMOMA).

As someone whose initial infatuation with Barney’s work is increasingly tempered by skepticism, I think there is truth to both camps. You’ll be able to deliver — or perhaps revise — your own verdict at the Roxie Theater, which is presenting all 7.5 hours of the epic Cremaster Cycle (1995-2002), Barney’s five-part, officially-never-gonna-be-available-on-commercial-DVD magnum opus. The theater is also screening De Lama Lâmina, Barney’s near hour-long 2004 film, in which he collaborates with a Brazilian Carnaval krewe to orchestrate a performance aboard a float in Salvador da Bahia’s annual parade.

Barney’s art becomes increasingly frustrating and seductive the longer one attempts to decode its carefully staged and indisputably visually stunning pageantry, which encompasses death metal covers of Johnny Cash, the esoteric intricacies of Masonic symbolism, Busby Berkeley-style revues in football stadiums, androgynous water sprites, and the complex biology of sexual differentiation in the fetus (the series is named after the muscle that controls the descent of the testes). The one constant is Barney’s display of his body: frequently nearly-nude, but more often subject to some physically demanding ordeal or engaged in an athletic feat.

As Daniel Birnbaum astutely observes in Artforum, “Barney is a believer in ‘the meaning of meaning.'” Which is to say, nothing is done just for show in Barney’s world, even if the systems of meaning he draws upon — developmental biology, Celtic mythology, Mormonism, minimalist sculpture — are themselves enclosed within, and at times frustratingly occluded by, his art’s glossy packaging and Hollywood-level production values. It’s hard not to ask: what does it all mean? But the question easily gets lost within the Cremaster Cycle‘s lavishly appointed echo chambers.

That said, Barney’s art offers no shortage of beautiful moments and otherworldly imagery. His universe encompasses elegance (Aimee Mullins as a gorgeous cheetah woman in Cremaster 3) and horror (the conception scene early on in Cremaster 2). Whether or not all this beauty is truth is still up for debate.

THE ODD COUPLE

Robert Koch Gallery is currently home to quite the odd couple. From the 1960s to 1985, Czech artist Miroslav Tichy, formerly a painter, took thousands of surreptitious pictures of women in his hometown of Kyjov using various homemade cameras made from whatever was on hand: cardboard tubes, wood, sanded Plexiglass lenses.

The photographs — creased, badly printed, all in soft focus — are as dreamy as they are creepy: Tichy often cropped off the heads of his unknowing subjects (many of whom are in swimwear), leaving their identities anonymous while reducing them to bared legs and torsos. Despite their aura of timelessness, you feel dirty looking at Tichy’s photos. It’s hard, though, not to keep staring.

Plenty of isolated gams appear in the work of Hungarian artist Foto Ada, also at Koch, but the effect is far less sinister. Ada (maiden name, Ada Ackermann, married name, Elemérné Marsovsky) created her remarkable photo-collages from the late 1930s through World War II, clipping magazine and newspaper images of soldiers, Hollywood starlets, and industrial landscapes into sharp and humorous comments on the accelerated culture of her time. The Nazis, in particular, gets theirs: Hitler and Goebbels converse in skeleton-filled catacombs, appropriately oblivious to the death that surrounds them.

THE CREMASTER CYCLE PLUS DE LAMA LÂMINA

July 30– Aug. 8, $5–$9.75

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

MIROSLAV TICHY + FOTO ADA

Through Aug. 21, free

Robert Koch Gallery

49 Geary, SF

(415) 421-0122

www.kochgallery.com

Our Weekly Picks: July 21-27, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 20, 2010

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WEDNESDAY 21

MUSIC

Nobunny

There’s no telling where Justin Champlin, clad in tighty-whiteys and a bunny mask, got his rabbit obsession, though Bunnicula comes to mind. Known for his stage antics, the Nobunny leader — and sole member, really, if you exclude the backing musicians shuffling in and out — is something of a rock ‘n’ roll animal classified in the punk rock phylum (or garage rock class). Love Visions (2008), with homages like “Chuck Berry Holiday,” produced catchy tracks faster than a rabbit could procreate. Champlin’s histrionics, and even messier sound, recall the Ramones or more recently, Hunx and His Punx. (Ryan Lattanzio)

With Spits, Scumby, and Carolyn the DJ

9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

THURSDAY 22

FILM

Five Easy Pieces

A few years after creating wannabe-pop group the Monkees, Bob Rafelson wrote — along with Carole Eastman — and directed 1970’s Five Easy Pieces. Like Easy Rider (1969), it’s a man-is-a-lonely-island-unto-himself picture starring Jack Nicholson and the squalid splendor of the American landscape. Bobby leaves his affluent family for the life of an oil rigger, but what he finds are consequences both understated and overwhelming. Nominated for four Oscars, Pieces is not an easy film. Like the literature of Cormac McCarthy or Hemingway, it’s biblical, masculine stuff. Yet for all its ruggedness, it has a bittersweet side worth noting for Laszlo Kovacs’ muted cinematography, as well as the weepy country tunes of Tammy Wynette. (Lattanzio)

7 p.m., $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

VISUAL ART

“Wondrous Strange: A Twenty-First Century Cabinet of Curiosities”

The medieval notion of a cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkammern holds great fascination to this day, even though a room filled with animal bones, coins, and unmarked pottery shards would seem a fairly undisciplined display format for scientific artifacts at this point. But if the Wunderkammern is academically anachronistic, the folks at SFMOMA Artists Gallery still find it a useful vehicle for conveying art and culture. The opening of “Wondrous Strange” will feature a time traveler costume contest, burlesque performance by the Burley Sisters, and music from the Grannies. The opening ceremonies will also extend to the nearby Long Now Foundation (also in Fort Mason’s Building A), where interested parties can check out their prototypes for the 10,000 Year Clock. (Sam Stander)

Through Aug 28

5:30 p.m., free

SFMOMA Artists Gallery

Bldg. A, Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

(415) 441-4777

www.sfmoma.org

FILM

Behind the Burly Q

While relatively tame by today’s standards, burlesque was once perceived as a scandalous art form. Featuring comedians, strippers, and satire, burlesque threatened conservative views about sex and sought to undermine accepted social norms. Even though vaudeville-inspired acts have recently made a nostalgic comeback, their roots remain widely misunderstood. Director Leslie Zemeckis’ documentary Behind the Burly Q goes straight to the source to uncover more than just pasties. By interviewing many of the women and men who starred and worked in the industry, Zemeckis traces the often overlooked history of American burlesque and honors all those who managed to use a g-string as a political weapon. (Katie Gaydos)

Thurs/22-Sat/24, 7:30 p.m.;

Sun/25, 4 and 6 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

FRIDAY 23

MUSIC

Cynic

Along with most of the rest of his band, Cynic guitarist Paul Masvidal avoided an awkward ’90s-metal swan song by disappearing into the jazz scene. Suddenly, in 2006, Masvidal and his main collaborator, drummer Sean Reinert, resurfaced with a renewed sense of purpose, and the release of 2008’s Traced in Air ushered in an era of relentless touring that saw the prog-metallers quickly reestablish their towering reputation. This summer’s Decibel-sponsored headlining tour features the band playing its 1993 classic Focus in its entirety, so prepare for Mixolydian assault. (Ben Richardson)

With Intronaut, Dysrhythmia

8 p.m., $17

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

DANCE

Carmina Burana: Revisited

For a few years, choreographer Enrico Labayen disappeared from the local radar screen. He now has reemerged with an ambitious full-evening work based on two rituals from opposing sides of the planet. Turns out that Labayen, an early member of Alonzo King’s LINES Dance Company who also has 15 years’ experience as an independent choreographer, spent the intervening years in his native Philippines to study the matriarchal aspects of its culture that have long fascinated him. His new Carmina Burana: Revisited delves into Carl Orff’s raucous reimagining of Medieval European Christianity for a work that explores the choreographer’s own memory of Tadtarin, a Philippine ritual that celebrates femininity. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/23-Sat/24, 8 p.m.; Sun/25, 7 p.m., $30

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 273-4633

www.brownpapertickets.com

MUSIC

Grouper

Portland, Ore.’s Liz Harris, who records and performs ambient drone music as Grouper, has composed a new piece specifically for the Berkeley Art Museum, which incorporates video as well as tape music and live instrumentation. This continues the “L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA” series’ dedication to avant-garde performance. Previously, L@TE has brought in such luminaries as Terry Reilly and the Residents; later this summer the series features sometime Grouper collaborator Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu. Grouper’s premiere of “SLEEP” will be preceded by music from Eugene Petrushansky, who plays early music on a harpsichord of his own construction, an interesting juxtaposition and perhaps fitting complement to Harris’ intense soundscapes. (Stander)

7:30 p.m., $5

Berkeley Art Museum, Gallery B

2625 Bancroft, SF

(510) 642-0808

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

SATURDAY 24

EVENT

Tori Spelling

The Oxygen Network — the equivalent of an unclaimed baggage room for celebrities past their prime — still airs Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, where Tori Spelling can be seen redecorating her house or renewing her vows (eep!) But unlike most stars in the dreary constellation of reality TV, Spelling actually isn’t that dumb. With a resume longer than the New York Times best seller list she topped in 2008, she’s the ultimate media mogul. In her new book, uncharted terriTORI, she returns to the Narcissus pool of sTORI Telling with some fresh anecdotes like her bout with H1N1 and her life as a Twit. Err … I mean, a Tweeter. (Lattanzio)

7 p.m., free

Books, Inc.

2251 Chestnut, SF

(415) 931-3633

www.booksinc.net

DANCE/MUSIC

“Salsa on the Fillmore”

Why watch Dancing With the Stars when you can dance under the stars? All right, the summer fog might not stay away long enough for us to actually see any stars, but thanks to dance festival “Salsa on the Fillmore,” we can safely say, for once, a night in SF will be hot and sweaty. Forget bar hopping in the Mission. With open dance floors and live music at Yoshi’s, Rasselas Jazz Club, Sheba Piano Lounge, and 1300 on Fillmore, it’s time to go rumba hopping! Start off the night at Fillmore Center Plaza with free salsa lessons by Bay Area Latin dance instructors Juan Gil and Rebecca Miller, and live music by Los Bolores. (Gaydos)

7 p.m.–2 a.m., free–$25

Fillmore between Eddy and Geary, SF

(808) 352-4315

www.salsaonfillmore.com

MUSIC

Bay Area Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus

If you have any affinity at all for the American labor movement, these are depressing times. All that populist energy generated in the wake of 2008’s financial meltdown seems to have been wasted on fruitless antigovernment paranoia, while essential state services are being eliminated nationwide, taking thousands of union jobs with them. Those sympathetic to the cause of social justice can be forgiven for not feeling much like singing. On the other hand, nothing rabble-rouses like a good anthem, and no movement ever got far on despair. The Bay Area Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus realizes this, and is presenting, as part of the Bay’s yearly LaborFest, a program of union songs old and new, celebrating victories won and anticipating those still to come. (Zach Ritter)

7 p.m., $5

ILWU 34 Hall

801 Second St., SF

(415) 648-3457

www.laborfest.net

SUNDAY 25

MUSIC

Queensryche

Queensryche and burlesque. On the one hand, it’s a completely arbitrary juxtaposition, akin to, say, “submarines and kumquats.” On the other, it makes perfect sense. The veteran Seattle prog-metal act have always had a flair for the theatrical, the lushly orchestrated, the ever-so-slightly over the top. And during a break in the recording of its new album, the band decided to really go for broke, setting out on the road with the “world’s only adults-only rock show,” featuring contortionists, trapeze artists, jugglers, and other delights. If you’ve been waiting your entire life to combine scantily clad women and immaculately composed concept albums, wait no longer. (Richardson)

8 p.m., $40

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

MUSIC

Bomba Estéreo

While our government issues frantic safety advisories to Colombia-minded travelers, Locumbia ticks out a merry beat toward a perch atop South America’s creative culture heap. Medellín, Bogotá, Chico Trujillo, the via-L.A. party tunes of Very Be Careful — this a land where you festivate like you mean it, even if a decades-long battle between the guerrillas and army rages in the hinterlands. Lucky for media-boozled us: the international tour. Bomba Estéreo mixes hawt psychedelic cumbia beats with Caribbean folkloric sound and enough echo to qualify as a dance group. Speaking of dance group — start one under the Stern Grove green at the group’s free show. (Caitlin Donohue)

With Jovanotti

2 p.m., free

Sigmund Stern Grove

Sloat and 19th Ave., SF

(415) 252-6252

www.sterngrove.org

TUESDAY 27

MUSIC

Obits

The album cover for Obits’ I Blame You claims it is “Xtra Compressed for Maximum Listener Fatigue,” and, while 41 minutes doesn’t seem like such a short album these days, the music itself has a tight, claustrophobic intensity that really good garage rock delivers so well. Lead guitarist Rick Froberg, formerly of Hot Snakes and Drive Like Jehu, journeys through all manner of rock in those 41 minutes, skewing the familiar sounds of surfer twang and post-punk into a nonstop groove that leaves the listener just as breathless as the cover promises. Obits knows you don’t have to break any musical barriers to crack a few eardrums. (Peter Galvin)

With Night Marchers and Moonhearts

9 p.m., $14

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

EVENT

“Visions of the Gameocalypse”

In a world where gaming is “no longer just for kids!” or nerds, and where major members of the artistic establishment (cough-Ebert-cough) take up arms against the perceived aesthetic immaturity of videogames for no good reason, it would do us all a little good to get a firmer grasp on how computerized gaming has developed. Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games and author of The Art of Game Design: a book of lenses, will be presenting his thoughts on the “social, cognitive, and technological trends” in gaming. We can only hope the event’s gloomy title, “Visions of the Gamepocalypse,” is tongue-in-cheek, though it definitely implies a refreshingly futurist approach to games. (Stander)

7:30 p.m., $10

Novellus Theater

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

700 Howard, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

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Addicts unanimous

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 20, 2010

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arts@sfbg.com

LIT What is it about addiction memoirs? Like Pringles — something food junkie Frank Bruni might know something about — you just can’t have one. They’re easy to devour and easy to digest, as compulsively consumable as the impulsions they’re filled with.

While they certainly won’t have the final say in the matter, two recent addiction memoirs, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man (Little, Brown, and Company; 240 pages, $23.99) by Bill Clegg and Born Round (Penguin, 368 pages, $16) by Frank Bruni, fit the genre’s high-stakes bill.

“I can’t leave and there isn’t enough,” declares the first line of Portrait, as Clegg stares at the crumbs in a bag of crack and the crumbs of his successful career as a literary agent. This is only the beginning of what quickly becomes a journey into an all too lucid nightmare.

The articles in the title suggest that Clegg’s story — while not anonymous the way Go Ask Alice was in the ’70s when readers were convinced of its authenticity — isn’t remarkable because addiction is, well, wholly unremarkable. Clegg makes this clear in his episodic telling of day after day, night after night of crack binges and self-inflicted explosions and implosions.

Clegg’s prose is like beautiful quicksand — calm in its capture, deadly in its swallow. In some of the book’s ugliest moments, he abstracts himself from the mire through third-person, conjuring an out-of-body experience and pressing himself against the glass case of his own madness. ” … He feels the high at first as a flutter, then a roar … It is the warmest, most tender caress he has ever felt and then, as it recedes, the coldest hand.” The book’s brazen unsentimentality is its best and most addictive ingredient.

Yet whatever goes down comes up. There’s always the flipside to addiction and consumption: expulsion. While Clegg, with the crack toke count rising, arrives at a sickly ectomorphic physique — perfectly captured in the perhaps unfelicitously cartoonish book cover — Frank Bruni, in his college years, aims for a similar build with the help of amphetamines and bulimia. In Born Round, he “regurgitates” — his words, not mine — his insatiable struggle with appetite as he moves up the food chain from addict to critic. It’s something he believes he was “congenitally rigged” for, he tells me in a phone interview.

Born hungry into a large Italian family of enablers, Bruni pokes fun at his gut — and his gastronomical gusto — with flippant prose that puts everything out on the proverbial five-course table. Food is Bruni’s own version of crack, and Born Round shows how his diet stood in the way of promotions, led to body dysmorphia, and found him getting cozy with the fridge on date night. (“It was Haagen-Dazs or love. I couldn’t have both.”)

In working with a genre that’s been tried-and-sometimes-true (think James Frey’s 2003 A Million Little Pieces), these books beg the question: Do we really need another addiction memoir?

“I didn’t think of keeping it fresh or whether or not the world needed another one,” Clegg tells me when I broach the question. “The landscape of other addiction memoirs didn’t occur to me. The writing of [Portrait] preceded any idea of it being published. When I first started, it was just a transcription of memories while I was in rehab.”

Bruni, former food critic for the New York Times and still a writer there, performs a similar rewinding of the memory-tape. He even goes back to a time when, as a toddler, he wept for a third hamburger. “I couldn’t just sit down and … reproduce chapters of my life,” he says during our conversation. “I had to do an in-my-head interview with myself like I would with a profile subject.”

Bruni is among a minority of men in dialogue about eating disorders today. “Almost all the discussion about eating disorders is focused on women,” he says. “Society … tells men to be stoic and that talking about ooey-gooey vulnerabilities is not masculine.”

Both memoirs get at the heart of addiction’s tedium. In each tawdry vignette of Clegg’s cracked-out narrative, he moves like a sleepwalker with no hope of waking, prodding the underbelly of New York in the mean search for a fix. It’s a broken record: cab ride, hotel room, cab ride, hotel room, and the paranoia in-between. These urban encounters are the stuff of Hubert Selby Jr.

Bruni moves at a like rhythm, throwing up meals as if it were breathing or blinking: a habit he just can’t kick. Something, as he writes, “encoded in [his] genes.”

Perhaps the act of buying into a memoir is like paying admission for a nasty, self-indulgent carnival (for example, Eat Pray Love). Or perhaps it’s just fuel for postmodern narcissism. Ex-denizens of addiction’s terrain will marvel at how both Bruni and Clegg balk at blaming others. Though if I were Bruni, I might blame his mom and her bacon-wrapped hot dogs.

There are moments in Portrait where Clegg peers beneath the detritus to blame some bad parenting, but in the end, he really blames no one. “The process of repair will be going on for the rest of my life,” Clegg tells me. “My primary work is with other alcoholics and addicts. It’s through that work I stay sober and rebuild my relationships.”

Bruni says the heavy lifting is in “constantly reminding yourself where you’ve been, where you don’t want to go, and how you got to those places that make you unhappy.” His temptations to binge remain at large. “Just last night after … a really good meal in a restaurant,” he explains, “I came close to buying a pint of ice cream. I took a deep breath and said, okay, are you really hungry? Are you thinking about the potential subtle difference you’ll feel in your pants tomorrow if you eat this?” Bruni’s a funny guy, and I want to laugh, but I don’t. “It’s … an ongoing struggle that I don’t think will ever end.”

Though there’s no end in sight for Clegg and Bruni, at least they’re not tacking on a happy ending and pulling any punches, because, ultimately, that would be relapsing.

FRANK BRUNI: BORN ROUND

Sun/25, 4 p.m. free

Omnivore Books

3885 Cesar Chavez, SF

www.omnivorebooks.com

Mon/26, 7 p.m., free

Books Inc.

1760 Fourth St., Berk.

www.booksinc.net

Congress is acting stupidly

David Talbot

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July 19, 2010

1

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka has it right. It’s not the heat in Washington, D.C., that’s bothering him and many other advocates of working people. It’s the stupidity – the economic stupidity of Congress refusing to give financial aid to states that badly need help in order t o save the jobs of some 300,000 teachers, nurses, firefighters, police and other public service workers who are facing layoffs because of budget deficits.

The possible remedy is at hand – a pending $100 billion jobs bill. Most of the money would go to states for quickly creating or saving up to one million jobs in public and private employment, restoring government services that have been cut, and averting other planned cuts, mostly in education, public safety and job training.

Republican opposition has kept the jobs bill from passage. The GOP also opposes a companion bill that deals with another bit of economic stupidity in Washington – the stupidity of Congress’ refusal to extend the unemployment insurance benefits of the 1.4 million Americans who will run out of benefits by the end of July, and the 325,000 who already have run out of benefits.

By year’s end, more than eight million workers will have exhausted their benefits. Their regular benefits, averaging $300 a week, ran out after 26 weeks and have not been extended as they usually have been during periods of heavy unemployment. The House voted for extension, and President Obama urged extension. But the Senate has refused to act.

The AFL-CIO’s Trumka calls the situation tragic, as well he should. He notes that almost 15 million Americans are currently unemployed, a number that’s been growing by about 250,000 workers per week.

So, 15 million people who need jobs – many who desperately need jobs – are unable to find them. About one million have been jobless for more than a year.

Overall, the jobless make up about 10 percent of the workforce. They’ve been out of work an average of 35 weeks. Another 11 million Americans are underemployed, including temporary and part-time workers and others who are underutilized and underpaid.

Nearly half of all the jobless have been out of work for more than six months. As Trumka says, “Families are stretched to the limit and state budgets are under incredible strain, putting hundreds of thousands more jobs in danger. Yet the Republicans in Congress repeatedly have blocked efforts to take action, create jobs and rebuild our battered economy.” Although it’s mainly Republicans who’ve opposed extension of benefits, some conservative Democrats have also opposed extension.

Trumka, noting that many politicians, including every member of the House, will be on the ballot in the coming mid-term elections, urges union members to demand that the office seekers take concrete action to “rebuild our economy and create jobs now.” If they don’t take action, Trumka warns, “they may not be elected officials anymore.”

New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman blames Congress’ failure to provide relief to the jobless on “a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused.”

Krugman defines the heartless as “Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do – especially anything that might ease the country’s economic problems – improves their chances in the midterm elections.

And the clueless? Try Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for senator from Nevada. She’s repeatedly claimed that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay jobless so they can keep collecting the benefits of a few hundred dollars a week.

The confused include politicians and others who apparently are too confused to understand the obvious – that the unemployed need money, and will quickly spend whatever they get in the way of extended benefits, thus boosting consumer spending, helping create jobs quickly and otherwise expanding the economy.

Except to the heartless, clueless and confused, saving money at the expense of the unemployed by denying them benefits is, as Paul Krugman says, “cruel as well as misguided.”

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

Bad faith

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 13, 2010

3

steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his business allies are actively trying to sabotage the various revenue measures that have been put forth by the labor movement and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, employing deceptive rhetoric, sneaky tactics, and a refusal to bargain in good faith.

In fact, Newsom — the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor — is so averse to supporting anything that could be called a “tax” that he rejected a hard-won compromise measure created by powerful developers, affordable housing advocates, a pro-business think tank, the building trades, and his own directors of housing and economic development.

Just as that story was breaking in the New York Times (produced by Bay Citizen) on July 9, members of the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee discovered that Newsom’s proposed ballot measure to close loopholes in the city’s hotel tax that favored airline employees and online travel companies — a widely supported change, but one worth just $6 million per year — contains language that would nullify any increases in the hotel tax. Earlier in the week, labor unions turned in signatures on an initiative to increase the hotel tax by 2 percent, which would bring in more than $30 million per year.

“This poison pill is an intentionally deceptive, underhanded move,” Gabriel Haaland, an organizer with Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which sponsored the hotel tax, told us. “It’s so frustrating. It’s not even a good faith fight. He’s trying to create confusion and fool the voters. If our measure passes fair and square, it should be implemented.”

Meanwhile, Newsom and business groups have been attacking a reform measure by Board President David Chiu that would make the currently flat payroll tax more progressive, exempt more small businesses from paying it, and create a commercial rent tax to spread the tax burden more widely than the 10 percent of businesses who now pay tax to the city.

Critics complained that the measure would hurt local businesses — but that’s just not true. The city’s Office of Economic Analysis concluded that Chiu’s original proposal would have no effect on private sector jobs and would generate $34 million annually for the city, preserving some government jobs and spending.

Then Chiu amended the measure to spare even more small businesses. Now the OEA says that the measure would actually create private sector jobs — and still bring $28 million in to the city. Yet Newsom and the business community are still withholding their support.

This trio of Machiavellian moves comes just a week after Newsom pulled out of budget negotiations with board progressives concerning about $40 million in board add-backs to programs that Newsom proposed to cut after they wouldn’t agree to his precondition that they withdraw unrelated measures proposed for the November ballot, such as splitting appointments to the Rent, Recreation and Park, and Municipal Transportation Agency boards and requiring police officers to do foot patrols.

The series of events has led many progressives to say that conservative ideological blinders — a knee-jerk opposition to anything that saves government jobs and services or that Republicans might criticize — is the only logical explanation for the intransigent stance adopted downtown and by Newsom.

“It’s ideological. It’s not economic, and it’s not even political,” said Calvin Welch, the affordable housing activist who helped negotiate the transfer tax compromise with developer Oz Erickson, San Francisco Planning Urban Research Association director Gabriel Metcalf, Mayor’s Office of Housing Director Doug Shoemaker, and others.

That measure would have created a transfer tax on sales of properties over $875,000 and generated approximately $50 million annually for affordable housing (funds that were drastically reduced in Newsom’s proposed 2010-11 budget) while cutting in half the current requirements and fees on market-rate developers to create below-market-rate units. The plan would have stimulated both types of housing and created desperately needed construction work — an approach those involved called an elegant solution to several problems.

“To me, this was a win-win, solving two problems that are each a big deal,” Metcalf told us. “I don’t know what his reasons were for not supporting it. I was surprised.”

But Welch said, “It collapsed straight up because the mayor didn’t want to support a tax.” Although Newsom told the Times it was because there wasn’t broad enough consensus yet, “the mayor’s reason is whole-cloth bullshit,” Welch said, noting the role of the Mayor’s Office in brokering the deal. “The mayor walks away from it because everyone wasn’t in the room? Well, it’s your room, motherfucker. Show some leadership.”

Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker refused to discuss these issues by phone, responding to our written inquires by noting that Newsom opposes taxes and thinks the best way to address budget deficits are privatizing city services and pension reform (although he opposes Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s initiative, the only pension reform measure on the fall ballot).

“The mayor is opposed to the Board of Supervisors’ proposals to increase taxes because they’re not needed to balance the budget and they will strangle our still young economic recovery,” Winnicker wrote, refusing to answer follow-up questions or support a statement about Chiu’s measure that the OEA concludes is not accurate.

Like many political observers of all stripes, those from downtown and progressive circles, Welch criticized Newsom for his lack of engagement with city business and its long-term fiscal outlook, contrasting him with former Mayor Willie Brown, who met regularly with former Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano even as the two ran a bitter campaign for mayor against one another in 1999. “They dealt with the city’s business like two adults who cared about the city,” he said.

Welch acknowledged that there was still work to be done building political support for the transfer tax measure. He and other progressives would have had to win over city employee unions who wouldn’t like the budget set-aside aspect, and Erickson and Metcalf would need to placate some of their downtown allies who oppose taxes on ideological grounds. But given how downtown groups are behaving right now, that might not have been an easy sell.

“There are members of the small business community that are averse to any taxes,” said Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the city’s Office of Small Business and staffer to the Small Business Commission, which was withholding a recommendation on the Chiu measure but planned to meet again to consider it July 12 (look for an update on the sfbg.com Politics blog). She said the small business community is having tough times and “they are just not sensitive to keeping city workers employed.”

Larger commercial interests are being even more forceful in opposing the revenue measures. While a parade of workers, social service providers, and progressive activists testifying at the July 9 Budget Committee hearing implored supervisors to place all the proposed revenue measures on the ballot, representatives from the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce were the only two speakers urging supervisors to drop the measures and focus instead on creating private sector jobs.

“You’re trying to create a little revenue here and it’s not going to work,” said Ken Cleaveland, director of BOMA SF, arguing that big banks and financial services companies — entities exempt from the payroll tax that Chiu is hoping to target with the commercial rent tax — will buy their buildings to avoid paying the tax. “They aren’t going to create more jobs and they really aren’t going to create more revenue.”

Yet Chiu noted that it was the business community and fiscal conservatives who pushed to create the Office of Economic Analysis, whose work they have regularly used to attack progressive legislation. Now that the office has concluded that a piece of progressive legislation is good for the local economy, Chiu told Cleaveland and the Chamber spokesperson Rob Black at the hearing, “I ask you to respect the work this office has done.”

Black said the Chamber board will consider Chiu’s amended legislation, but said businesses are in no mood to help the city. “How many times have you gone to your neighborhood merchant and had them say, ‘Gee, my rent’s too cheap’?<0x2009>” he said during his testimony.

Yet Chiu said landlords of small tenants (those paying less than $65,000 in rent per year) are exempt from the rent tax and only 26 percent of SF businesses would pay any city business tax under his plan. “I hope the mayor will support this proposal and the business community will give it a good look,” Chiu said as the hearing ended.

At the beginning of the hearing, Chiu framed the dire situation facing San Francisco, citing Controller’s Office figures showing this year’s $500 million budget deficit (out of a $6 billion total budget) will be followed by a $700 million deficit next year and a $800 million gap the following budget cycle as a result of a deep structural budget imbalance.

“We have budget deficits as far as the eye can see,” Chiu said at the hearing. “We have to consider measures that will provide more stable sources of revenue.”

He also noted that city employee unions have agreed to give back about $250 million in salary and had their ranks reduced by about 2,000 workers in the last two years. So he and the other progressive supervisors say it’s time for the rest of San Francisco to help address the problem.

“We, as a city, should not be trying to balance this budget simply through cutting,” Sup. David Campos said.

Sup. John Avalos, the committee chair, amended his transfer tax measure in the wake of Newsom’s rejection of the deal by making it a simple 2 percent tax on properties that sell for more than $5 million, and 2.5 percent tax on properties over $10 million. He estimates it will bring in about $25 million per year from the city’s wealthiest corporations and landlords.

“That’s who we’re socking it to,” Avalos told us, saying he was disappointed the compromise fell through. “The amendment is going to be more progressive than what was originally planned.”

Even Sup. Sean Elsbernd, a strong fiscal conservative who announced early in the hearing, “You want to do that [balance future budgets] by adding taxes, but I want to do it through ongoing service cuts,” later told the Guardian that he was intrigued by the amendments Avalos and Chiu made to their measures and has not yet taken a position on them.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is also sponsoring a measure to increase the city’s tax on parking lot operators from 25 percent to 35 percent, the first change to that tax in 30 years, and will include valet parking for the first time. The measure would bring in up to $24 million per year, and OEA analysis shows it would decrease the number of cars trips by 1.3 percent, another benefit.

SFMTA supports the measure, with board member Cameron Beach testifying that the money will be used to subsidize Muni and “it links the use of private automobiles and is consistent with the city’s transit-first policy.” Mirkarimi, who chairs the Transportation Authority, also has proposed a $10 local vehicle license fee surcharge that would bring in another $5 million per year for Muni.

All the revenue measures require six votes by the full Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled to consider them July 20, after which they would need a simple majority approval by voters in November to take effect.

The mayor has the authority to directly place measures on the ballot, so the committee hearing on his hotel tax loophole measure and a $39 million general obligation bond that he’s proposing to create a revolving loan fund for private sector seismic improvements were mere formalities, so supervisors criticized aspects of each but were unable to make changes.

Avalos even grudgingly acknowledged the hotel tax poison pill was an effective way to kill that revenue source, saying at the hearing, “This is very smart. I don’t agree with it, but it’s very smart.”

Haaland was less charitable, criticizing a provision designed to confuse voters. “This kind of move means both measures won’t pass because now we have to oppose [Newsom’s measure],” he said, criticizing the mayor for running away from the hard decisions facing the city. “He won’t be around next year, when we have an even bigger structural budget deficit, to clean up this mess. Absent new revenue sources, this city starts to fall apart.”

Oliver Stone hits the spin cycle with South of the Border

Andrew Lam

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July 9, 2010

3

Gosh I love a good bite of propaganda. But maybe instead of “good” I should demur to “appealing”; it’s probably a bit redundant to say that I don’t brook with the smug-mongering on FOX, and even if it’s couched in concern for the personal safety of Americans, the advisories that our government puts out on the countries of our brothers and sisters in South American scared the dickens out of my mom when I decided to do Carnaval in Colombia.

Point being, we’re surrounded by propaganda. And I know Oliver Stone thinks so too. The fact appears to be the motivation behind his new movie South of the Border (opens Fri/16 in Bay area theaters), in which he travels down there to meet with Hugo Chavez and seven other leaders of what he believes to be the new Bolivarian movement. “I think that there has been so much unbalance [in American coverage of Latin America] that we are definitely a counter to that,” the director told the New York Times.

And like any good propaganda, the movie’s raised a tidy amount of hullabaloo. Maria Conchita Alonso is raising a stink at Stone appearances, and Larry Rohter wrote a scathing piece on the film’s inaccuracies for the NYT (see the film’s rebuttal to his points here). Even that astute analyzer of Western Hemisphere policy, Perez Hilton “weighed in.”

So why then did our friendly neighborhood center for Latino arts care to show such a piece of inflammatory rhetoric? I hollered at Jason Wallach, who was the evil mastermind behind a recent showing of South of the Border at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. Jason, you crazy commie red, what gives?

“It’s like this,” said Wallach, cheerfully disregarding my hate speak. “The cultural center for many years has taken it upon itself to be the outlet for news and critical analysis in Latin America, and helping the community stay up to date on development.” Wallach told me that the Latino activist community has taken issue with Washington’s trade policies, which “are only there so that the U.S. can have access to new markets and have nothing to do with those countries. We never hear that in the U.S.”

Somewhere between Evo Morales supplying Oliver Stone with amphetamines and what happens next in this scene with Hugo and some kid’s bike lies the genius of South of the Border. Photo by Jose Ibanez

Wallach noted that although MCCLA does not endorse everything said in the film, and that even though the left also has its concerns about Chavez (see in particular his sorry record on freedom of the press) “our job is to create a space for open debate.”

And so it came to be that the other night I turned off Hannity and Colmes for a moment, and had the pleasure of watching the Bay area premiere of the film at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, where it was screened for an assemblage of political activists and alternative press (meaning for once I was the most mainstream journalist in the room, ha!).

It was a highly amenable audience. In one Stone-Chavez interview scene, the two discuss the aftermath of the 2002 attempted coup on the president (that many have found similar to CIA interventionist operations in the past). Chavez described his version of non-violence, the art of being “pacífico, pero armado” (peaceful, but armed). Seated behind me, a man breathed a sigh of relief. “Exacto,” he whispered. Like I said, every once in awhile we all need a shot of the propaganda that tastes good to us.

South of the Border opens Fri/16 at the Sundance Kabuki (1881 Post, SF. (415) 929-4650, www.sundancecinemas.com) and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood (2966 College, Berk. (510) 433-9730, www.rialtocinemas.com) )

Political litmus test for Hunters Point Shipyard access?

Mary Magee

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July 1, 2010

4

Even though the U.S. Navy abandoned the Hunters Point Shipyard in 1974, the military has continued to control access to the shipyard that helped launch the A-Bomb. That’s because the Navy still owns most parcels of land on the shipyard and remains on the hook for cleaning up pollutants on these sites, including a radiologically impacted dump on Parcel E2, which has been deemed to be the dirtiest land on the site.

Currently, the Navy is proposing to cap, not excavate this landfill, despite repeated requests from the local community, and a citywide vote in support of Proposition P in 2000, which urged the Navy to clean up the land to the best extent possible, which would mean excavating the Parcel E2 landfill and replacing it with clean uncontaminated soil. And oddly, the City appears to want government agencies and officials to sign off on its final EIR for Lennar’s massive 770-acre redevelopment plan for the shipyard and Candlestick Point, even though the Navy has not yet completed an environmental impact statement (EIS) related to its proposed shipyard cleanup activities.

Currently, the Navy controls access to the facility beyond a couple of trailers that the city’s Redevelopment Agency has set up just within the yard’s main gate. And to gain access to the shipyard these days, you need to call or visit Redevelopment’s trailer and get a pass. Or, alternatively, if you know any of the artists who continue to rent studios at shipyard, you can call them to try and get the city to give you a pass.

Underlying these limits to accessing the shipyard are some legitimate safety concerns related to equipment and excavations on what is now an active clean up and construction site, along with fears that untoward characters could break into the abandoned buildings or bother the artists who still have studios in operation at the shipyard. But has an additional political litmus test been put in place when it comes to critics of Lennar’s redevelopment plan, who want to access to the yard? If so, does it mirror the tap dancing that the local community has had to undergo to get its voices heard as Lennar pushes to get final approval for its shipyard/ Candlestick Point redevelopment plan.

Those questions resurfaced last week when a private security guard manning the shipyard’s front gate denied access to D. 10 supervisor candidate DeWitt Lacy, who had dropped by hoping to take this reporter around the yard as part of an ongoing conversation about Parcel E2, which Lacy believes needs to be excavated completely, and how best to hold the Navy accountable for cleaning up a mess it created decades ago. The security guard told Lacy that folks who want to visit must get a pass at the Redevelopment Agency trailer.

At the Redevelopment trailer, Micah Fobbs, administrative assistant for W.B. Kennedy and Associates, which has a contract with Redevelopment’s Citizen’s Advisory Committee. told Lacy that without a preauthorized pass, he couldn’t let us onto the site. Fobbs added that he would be happy to take us on a tour himself, but he could not leave the trailer unmanned, since he was the only staff member there at the time. Fair enough. Though the rebuff gave us the feel that the City doesn’t want pesky investigative reporters that have been critical of the development running around the site. “And if they found out I was a civil rights attorney, they probably wouldn’t want me out here, either,” Lacy joked.

But the next day, I encountered what sounded like overt hostility to other critics of Lennar’s plan, when I tried to ride along on what had been billed as a “Toxic Tour of the Navy Shipyard” by POWER (People Organizing to Win Employment Rights). POWER had advertised its tour in an email which said it would involve 23 expert urban planners, who happened to be in the Bay Area for a Progressive Planning Forum. The tour was billed as happening on the morning of June 17, before an afternoon discussion at POWER’s Third Street office in the Bayview, which was to focus “on alternative approaches to the city’s current plan for development at the Shipyard/ Candlestick Point.”

Caught in traffic, I didn’t arrive at the Boys and Girls Club on Kiska Road in Bayview Hunters Point in time to join POWER’s kick-off get together. So, I headed direct to the shipyard, a move that meant I arrived alone and ahead of the school bus that POWER had rented for the occasion. At the gate, I was told by the security guard that I couldn’t get in, that another guard lost his job for letting unauthorized individuals onto the site, that POWER didn’t have a pass and that they’d been warned to watch for POWER “because they want to stop the development.”

“If you are not authorized with badges, you are not let through,” the guard said, giving me the telephone number of the Hunters Point Duty police officer, who in turn said I needed to call the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, which in turn told me to call the folks at the Redevelopment Agency’s shipyard trailer. And so I called Fobbs again, who confirmed that the Navy still controls all the property, except Parcel A which has already been conveyed to the City which in turn has granted developer Lennar the right to develop thousands of condos on that particular parcel.

“As far as viewing the rest of the property, you have to put in a request, and no photography or videography is allowed,” Fobbs said. This stated ban on photography came as a surprise, given recent photos of the shipyard that ran in a New York Times article about Lennar and the city’s vision for the 770-acre property.

And the sudden difficulties in gaining media access seemed odd, given that Lennar’s PR firm, Sitrick and Company, offered to take the media on a tour on the morning of June 3—the day the Redevelopment and Planning Commissions subsequently approved the final EIR for Lennar’s plan to redevelop the rest of the shipyard, plus Candlestick Point, a FEIR that has now been appealed to the Board, on the grounds that it was rushed for political reasons, leading to fatal flaws in the final document.

“Well, if folks come here through Redevelopment or the Mayor’s Office, then they have been able to take photographs,” Fobbs said. “But we have had people trying to climb fences and get through doors of some of the buildings.” (Fobbs last comment was a reference to a recent climbing of the fence that the Nation of Islam’s Leon Muhammad engaged in, in an effort to determine if air quality monitoring devices near the Nation’s school and Oakdale public housing site were operating. (After Muhammad scaled the fence and reported that he’d found an empty bin where monitoring equipment was supposed to be, a kafuffle ensued, with the US EPA saying Muhammad was looking in the wrong place for the monitors which, it claimed, were in operation.)

Ultimately, Fobbs told me to call Redevelopment’s Audrey Kay if I wanted a tour, and several shipyard artists told me they would be happy to arrange a day pass so I can visit their studios and hear concerns that they will be required to move from a couple of shipyard buildings before replacement studios have been completed–an arrangement that would amount to a breach of promise that Lennar and the city previously made to the shipyard artists.

Shortly after I was turned away for a second time, POWER’s bus arrived at the gate, only to be blocked–a denial of access that meant 23 progressive planners were forced to view the shipyard from various remote viewing spots atop the hills that surround the site.

Together these episodes left me wondering what kind of political litmus test could end up being enforced at the site, if Lennar’s mega project gets the green light this summer, and what will happen if the Board decides to kick the plan back to the drawing board until the Navy completes a environmental impact statement and all of the community’s ongoing environmental and economic justice concerns are addressed.

So stay tuned, and don’t forget to mark July 13 on your calendar when the full Board of Supervisors is tentatively to hear appeals of the project’s final EIR, which the Planning and Redevelopment Commissions rubberstamped June 3. And, as always, it will be revealing to see which candidates in the hotly contested race for D. 10 supervisor, show up and speak truth to power.

Quick Lit: June 23-June 29

David Talbot

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June 24, 2010

0

Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week

The Cheesemonger, William Dalrymple, Tim Wise, skating on the margin of error, the Golden Age of Chinese nightclubs, and more.

Wednesday, June 23

Cheesemonger: My Life on the Wedge
Former punk rock activist turned cheese connoisseur Gordon Edgar will pass around some cheese and discuss his new book about the amazing world of artisan cheeses that he discovered while working at Rainbow grocery.
7 p.m., free
Get Lost Travel Books
1885 Market, SF
(415) 437-0529

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India
British historian and travel writer William Dalrymple explores how modernity is changing India’s oldest traditions and the human pursuit of the divine.
6 p.m., $12
Mechanics’ Institute
57 Post, SF
(415) 393-0100
www.milibrary.org

This is Where We Live
New York Times, Vogue, and Elle journalist Janelle Brown discusses her new novel.
7:30 p.m., free
Books Inc. Marina
2251 Chestnut, SF
(415) 931-3633

Tim Wise
Prominent antiracist essayist, educator, and activist Tim Wise will discuss his new book, Colorblind: The Rise of Post Racial Politics and the Retreat From Racial Equity.
7 p.m., free
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus, SF
(415) 362-8193‎

Thursday, June 24

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error
Journalist Kathryn Schulz explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken, and how this attitude toward error corrodes our relationships.
7 p.m., free
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia, SF
www.mtbs.com

Ex-GayNo Way
Jallen Rix discusses this new novel tackling the topic of “Reparative Therapy” and the after-effects this cult movement has on it’s victims.
7:30 p.m., free
Books Inc. Castro
2275 Market, SF
(415) 864-6777

Forbidden City: The Golden Age of Chinese Nightclubs
Author Trina Robbins reads from her new book which uses interviews, photos, momentos, and Art Deco posters to tell tales of the dancers and singers of Chinatown nightlife from the 1930’s to the 1960’s.
6:30 p.m., free with $15 museum admission
Asian Art Museum
200 Larkin, SF
(415) 581-3500
www.asianart.org

Hand Bookbinders Anniversary Exhibition
The 38th Annual Hand Bookbinders of California exhibition features the work of professional, amateur, and student bookbinders that range from the traditional to the very contemporary. Enjoy a special tour of the show led by members of the Hand Bookbinders of California on every other Thursday through August 12.
11 a.m., free
San Francisco Public Library Main Branch
100 Larkin, SF
(415) 557-4277

Hitch 22
Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens discusses his new book, which draws on his experience as a U.S. and U.K. citizen, as a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam, and as a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq.
7 p.m., free
Borders
400 Post, SF
(415) 399-1633

No Cartoon Left Behind: The Best of Rob Rogers
Political cartoonist Rob Rogers offers an interactive combination of live drawing and a cartoon slide presentation that takes the audience behind his creative process. His new book features cartoons documenting five presidencies, the end of the Cold War, 9/11, 25 years of health care, and economic and political scandals of every shape and size.
7 p.m., $5
Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission, SF
(415) CAR-TOON

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Author Aimee Bender discusses her new novel about a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
7:30 p.m., free
Books Inc. Marina
2251 Chestnut, SF
(415) 931-3633

Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan’s America
Author Gerald Nachman, joined in conversation by SF Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik, discusses his novel that traces the history of the 23 year run of the Ed Sullivan Show, that introduced America to a diverse array of performers.
6 p.m., $12
Mechanics’ Institute
57 Post, SF
(415) 393-0100
www.milibrary.org

“The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”
Hear journalist and author Nicholas Carr discuss how the internet is rewiring our synapses and dangerously upending our cultural priorities and other mental and social transformations that are being created by our new electronic environment.
7:30 p.m., $12
Berkeley Hillside Club
2286 Cedar, Berk.
(510) 848-6767

Saturday, June 26

Gene Yang
Award-winning comics artist Gene Yang, author of American Born Chinese, Gordon Yamamoto and The King of the Geeks, discusses his creative process and his love for the comic medium. Yang will also share his personal history as a Chinese-American, the inspiration for many of his books.
Sat. and Sun. Noon, free with $15 museum admission
Asian Art Museum
200 Larkin, SF
(415) 581-3500
www.asianart.org

Monday, June 28

Penguin Books 75th Anniversary
Celebrate a quarter of a century of Penguin publishing at this event hosted by Micheal Pollan, featuring Penguin’s collection of 75th anniversary favorites.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Berkeley
1760 4th St., Berk.
(510)525-7777

Summer Poetry Festival
All poets, painters, musicians, and arts and crafts people are invited to participate in this two-day, day-long festival in North Beach. Registration at 11 a.m.
Mon.-Tues. 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free
Rouge Ales Public House
673 Union, SF
hackett.philip@gmail.com

Tortured: When Good Soldiers Do Bad Things
Journalist and author Justine Sharrock brings us an eyewitness account of what it feels like to torture based on interviews with young, low-ranking soldiers who worked at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
12:30 p.m., free
Alexander Book Company
50 2nd. St., SF
(415) 495-2992
www.alexanderbook.com

Tuesday, June 29

Understanding the Crash
Graphic artist Seth Tobocman and journalist and writer Eric Laursen offer progressive account of how bad mortgages turned into a financial meltdown and how we can get out of this mess.
7 p.m., free
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia, SF
www.mtbs.com

From great man to great screw-up: behind the McChrystal uproar

David Talbot

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June 23, 2010

0

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

When the wheels are coming off, it doesn’t do much good to change the driver.

Whatever the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan, the U.S. war effort will continue its carnage and futility.

Between the lines, some news accounts are implying as much. Hours before Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that “the firestorm was fueled by increasing doubts — even in the military — that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise.”

It now does McChrystal little good that news media have trumpeted everything from his Spartan personal habits (scarcely eats or sleeps) to his physical stamina (runs a lot) to his steel-trap alloy of military smarts and scholarship (reads history). Any individual is expendable.

For months, the McChrystal star had been slipping. A few days before the Rolling Stone piece caused a sudden plunge from war-making grace, Time Magazine’s conventional-wisdom weathervane Joe Klein was notably down on McChrystal’s results: “Six months after Barack Obama announced his new Afghan strategy in a speech at West Point, the policy seems stymied.”

Now, words like “stymied” and “stalemate” are often applied to the Afghanistan war. But that hardly means the U.S. military is anywhere near withdrawal.

Walter Cronkite used the word “stalemate” in his famous February 1968 declaration to CBS viewers that the Vietnam War couldn’t be won. “We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders both in Vietnam and Washington to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds,” he said. And: “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.”

Yet the U.S. war on Vietnam continued for another five years, inflicting more unspeakable horrors on a vast scale.

Like thousands of other U.S. activists, I’ve been warning against escalation of the Afghanistan war for a long time. Opposition has grown, but today the situation isn’t much different than what I described in an article on December 9, 2008: “Bedrock faith in the Pentagon’s massive capacity for inflicting violence is implicit in the nostrums from anointed foreign-policy experts. The echo chamber is echoing: the Afghanistan war is worth the cost that others will pay.”

The latest events reflect unwritten rules for top military commanders: Escalating a terrible war is fine. Just don’t say anything mean about your boss.

But the most profound aspects of Rolling Stone’s article “The Runaway General” have little to do with the general. The takeaway is — or should be — that the U.S. war in Afghanistan is an insoluble disaster, while the military rationales that propel it are insatiable. “Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further,” the article points out. And “counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war.”

There was something plaintive and grimly pathetic about the last words of the New York Times editorial that arrived on desks just hours before the general’s White House meeting with the commander in chief: “Whatever President Obama decides to do about General McChrystal, he needs to get hold of his Afghanistan policy right now.”

Like their counterparts at media outlets across the United States, members of the Times editorial board are clinging to the counterinsurgency dream.

But none of such pro-war handwringing makes as much sense as a simple red-white-and-blue bumper sticker that says: “These colors don’t run . . . the world.”

Fierce controversy has focused on terminating a runaway general. But the crying need is to terminate a runaway war.

_________________________________________

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

alt.sex.column: Clip show

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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June 22, 2010

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Dear Readers:

Nah, I’m not really going to saddle you with a “clips” column — that would be cheesy. But I do happen to have a bunch of interestingish non-question stuff from my inbox, so bear with me.

First up, an article from The New York Times called “The Perils Of Sexual Roundelays,” which is kind of refreshing because, despite the title, it actually pokes some holes in the “ZOMG hooking up and friends with benefits will be the death of love and marriage as we know it” cultural panic usually expressed in articles called “the perils of sexual” whatever. Sort of. The article (www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/fashion/09Studied.html) describes what may be the first major study of non-monogamous behavior among adults). The study sets out to examine whether what the researchers call “non-serious relationships,” (a.k.a. “hooking up”) lead to “concurrent partnerships” (hooking up with lots of people, a.k.a. being a big old’ slut”).

The writer, Pamela Paul, keeps her head better than most, but even so it’s interesting to note the way the article treats non-monogamy not as a risk factor for STDs or eventual loneliness and heartbreak, but as an unquestioned Big Bad all on its own, something to be avoided even by those who appear to want it.

Eventually, though, Paul does come around to the sensible conclusion that “all this doesn’t necessarily mean hooking up leads to non-monogamy.”

On to the next item, a press release that may be of interest to you job hunters who may be just a little bit curious about what it might be like to work in the sexual entertainment industry. As a code monkey.

The sex industry’s premier trade show — CyberNet Expo — takes place July 8-10 in San Francisco.

This year exhibitors are making a real effort to attract and meet with jobseekers who have Web design, programming, and technical skills.

The adult online industry is hiring! Hiring companies are meeting with professionals who have skills in Web designing, photo and video editing and encoding, Web hosting and billing, and technical programming of any online language (PHP, C++, Java, etc.). Consultant and freelancers are in demand, too. Bring your resume and receive 20 percent off admission fee

You’re welcome. Good luck.

My last item is more in the way of a question for you intrepid sex scouts. I got a come-on from one of my favorite independent sexe shoppes, Babeland, and was reminded that I haven’t had an opportunity to examine either the SaSi, the very expensive smart not-a-vibrator that was last year’s big sex-toy sensation, or the more recent, vaguely comical “Sqweel oral sex simulator.” The Sqweel is a disk-shaped apparatus that resembles a small, pornographic Ferris Wheel, or my asthma meds dispenser — if my asthma meds dispenser could perform cunnilingus. It’s a little wheel studded with cute little pink “tongues” and it’s so peculiar yet promising that I need to hear from someone who’s encountered one in real life. Does it work? Does it get, um, tangled? Can you use it without laughing?

Sorry for the clips show. See ya next week.

Love,

Andrea

Got a question? Email Andrea at andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

The insanity of cutting pensions

Zelda Bronstein

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June 21, 2010

15

The New York Times has picked up the pension-reform banner, promoting the issue to the lead story on the front page of the June 20th issue.

If, as the Times reports, some of the reformers want to cap pensions – that is, go for the folks at the very top of the pile – it’s worth discussing. But most of the “reform” ideas involve either cutting the take-home pay of existing employees, cutting the take-home pay of pensioners or making sure that future workers don’t get as much of a pension.
The problem with that is simple: We’re in a deep recession. And the last thing we need to do is cut paychecks and encourage people not to spend money.

Let me quote from a brilliant blog post on Calitics.com from the always insightful Robert Cruickshank:

Cutting pensions would be like taking a shotgun, aiming it at our feet, and pulling the trigger. It would cause a cascade of economic problems that would dramatically worsen our economic crisis…

And yet the solution being proposed – slashing benefits – will do absolutely nothing to make state government fiscally solvent. It will mean there’s less money available to spend, meaning less sales tax revenue. Less consumer activity means there’ll be less jobs available, meaning less income tax revenue. With fewer jobs available, and wage stagnation, and now the added financial burden of paying the costs of retired family members that used to be borne by the pensions and other state services that have been cut, younger folks won’t be able to sustain the economy. Retirees and baby boomers will have to sell their homes for the cash, and in a recessionary environment where the young aren’t able to afford the present market value, home values will spiral downward, causing further economic ripple effects as well as reducing property tax revenues.

… The notion that ‘everyone needs to give back’ just doesn’t make sense given our economic distress. We’ve already given back too much. We gave back our wages. We gave back our ability to afford health care and housing and transportation. We gave back the robust public sector services that created widespread prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s. We gave back affordable, quality education. And too many of us have given back our future.
No, it’s time for someone else to give back. It’s time for the wealthiest Californians, and the large corporations, to give back. For 30 years now they have benefited from economic policy designed to take money and benefits from the rest of us and give it to those who already have wealth and power.
We are now experiencing the predictable outcome of such policies – the worst recession in 60 years, an intractable downturn. The way out isn’t to worsen the crisis by slashing pensions. The way out is to return to the sensible tax rates of the 1950s and 1960s and make the rich pay.

That’s what I’m talking about.

SF mayoral analysis in the NY Times misses the mark

Sasha Cuttler

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June 18, 2010

4

SF mayoral analysis in the NY Times misses the mark

I have praised Bay Citizen’s early work and I think Gerry Shih is a smart young reporter, but I think their analysis of who will be San Francisco’s next mayor – which ran in today’s New York Times – was off the mark and shows they don’t yet have a good grasp of this city’s political dynamics. And a big reason for that is – just like the Examiner and the Chronicle – they relied too much on downtown players who consistently misread those dynamics, at least in recent years.

The one thing it got right was naming Aaron Peskin as one of the frontrunners to succeed Newsom if he is elected lieutenant governor. Peskin is really the only politico in town he has been putting big plays together these days, whether it be keeping Democratic Party leadership in progressive hands or defeating the 555 Washington project. So he might be the only one who can count to six with this current progressive-dominated board.

But nobody really thinks David Chiu is a frontrunner, despite Shih’s claim. Chiu has been a pretty good board president, but remember that he was elected as a compromise candidate (with lots of help from Peskin) after the then-frontrunners, Ross Mirkarimi and Bevan Dufty, couldn’t put the votes together. And since then, he has disappointed his progressive colleagues on several votes, making them unlikely to support him for mayor.

Besides, it will be difficult for any supervisor to get six votes when they can’t vote for themselves, which also makes me scoff at Shih’s contention that John Avalos and David Campos are running for mayor (two supervisors who are close to the Guardian and have never indicated to us that they’re running, even when we’ve asked, although they might each eventually become mayors). Ross Mirkarimi is more likely and wants the job, but would have a tough time getting a board majority to give is to him.

Shih told the Guardian that he’s been getting lots of critical feedback on his article today, and while he said Chiu and Peskin are names that kept coming up in his interviews, Shih admits that the attractive narrative of the protege challenging his mentor perhaps skewed the final analysis: “The relationship between those two guys ended up getting played up in the story.”

The article makes several other mistakes as well (and not just the obvious factual errors, like getting the mayoral election year wrong, as well as the year Feinstein left office, both of which have since been corrected online). It left City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s name out entirely, despite the fact that he’s already declared his intention to run for mayor and could certainly be a compromise candidate. Public Defender Jeff Adachi also wasn’t mentioned, even though he has a better chance than half the people on Shiu’s list, such as Willie Brown or Ed Harrington, who downtown may like but progressives really don’t.

Two strong possibilities for mayor – Mark Leno and Leland Yee – were given only passing mention in the article even though they are far more likely choices than Chiu. Both Leno and Yee have aggressively worked both the centrist and progressive sides of the aisle and are in great positions to run for mayor or be appointed by the board.

The hopes for a Chinese-American mayor that Shih placed with Chiu are probably better placed with Yee, who has worked with Rose Pak and other business interests while also having a history of endorsing progressive candidates, which he’ll be able to call in when he runs (and yes, unlike other candidates on Shih’s list, Yee has actually declared his intention to run).

Similarly, Leno has good relations with progressives on the board, which will be tested a bit this fall as he campaigns for moderate supervisorial candidate Scott Wiener and navigates the wedge issue minefield, but it’s easy to see how with the right outcomes this fall and key deals cut, Leno could emerge as the frontrunner.

The dynamics of this thing are incredibly complicated, but if I was in Shih’s shoes and was asked to name the two frontrunners, I’d probably say Peskin and Leno, with Yee a close third and Herrera as an outside possibility. Or it could be none of them if nobody can count to six and the option of a caretaker mayor who agrees not to run later (such as an Art Agnos) seems like the only way forward.

As politicos Alex Clemens and David Latterman said in their post-election analysis on June 10, this is very complicated and will be the subject of many deals by experienced insiders (of which Chiu really isn’t one just yet). “Everyone is gaming this thing out and trying to figure out what happens,” Clemens said.

But there is one scenario in which I could see Chiu figuring prominently, and that’s in what happens if both Newsom and Kamala Harris win their respective state races. Chiu has expressed a desire to be District Attorney, a chance that he might get if he can help play kingmaker with whoever becomes our next mayor.

So perhaps that qualifies him as a frontrunner of sorts after all.