Oakland Archives — Page 103 of 115 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The tragic tale of Tamesha Tobie

September 12, 2007

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

At first, police believed it was a terrible, self-inflicted mishap.

It happened April 15, just after the funeral held for a San Francisco man who’d succumbed to diabetes. Mourners were gathered in the Western Addition home of Tamesha Tobie’s grandmother, Edna Tobie. Tamesha, a 14-year-old first-year high schooler in town from Stockton for the funeral, was hanging out with two teenage boys, her cousins, in a bedroom — a room where, it turns out, another family member had stashed a powerful .357 Magnum revolver. Suddenly, the house filled with the sound of the gun’s pop.

Tobie’s aunt was cooking in the kitchen. She rushed to find out what was going on. The two boys met her in the hallway and told her there was a gun; she found Tobie on the bed, not moving. Nearby lay the pistol, with five live rounds and a shell still visible in the cylinder under the hammer.

The family dialed 911, and soon the area was packed with uniforms. Paramedics arrived with the police, as did a media flack who expected reporters, a crisis response team from the health department, the local medical examiner, and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, whose district includes Edna Tobie’s Oak Street home.

"These are vivid experiences you don’t lose," Mirkarimi said. "The gut-wrenching part is that it was a young girl."

Fox, CBS, the Associated Press, and the San Francisco Chronicle all reported what the cops told them: Tamesha Tobie had accidentally shot herself with the gun.

But it turns out that wasn’t true. In fact, according to an autopsy completed by the medical examiner June 1, Tobie didn’t pull the trigger.

Her death has become another in a long list of unsolved homicides in San Francisco — and another sign that gun violence, both accidental and intentional, is raging out of control.

THE COPS DON’T KNOW

Months after the killing, the San Francisco Police Department didn’t seem aware that Tobie’s death was anything but an accident.

When we contacted the SFPD’s press office early in September, the staffers weren’t aware that her death had been ruled a homicide, nor was Lt. John Murphy, head of the homicide unit. Department spokesperson Sgt. Neville Gittens even requested that the Guardian fax him a copy of the report.

Now the SFPD acknowledges that Tobie was a homicide victim. "We believe it was done at the hands of someone else," Gittens said a week after receiving the report.

A homicide inspector assigned to the case said he learned of the medical examiner’s final report two weeks ago but explained that he’d already regarded Tobie’s death as suspicious.

Inspector Mike Johnson said he thinks one of the two cousins in the room with Tobie fired the weapon. Police have also concluded that the gun was used in an unrelated San Francisco homicide a few months prior by another young family member before being hidden in the home of Tobie’s grandmother.

Nobody has been arrested in that case either. Despite the fact that this gun has now been used to kill at least two people, Johnson conceded that not enough evidence exists to make an arrest in the first murder, even though a suspect has been identified — an exasperating fact for a city already near last year’s total of 85 murders.

If nothing else, the gun’s owner could possibly be guilty of negligence or child endangerment — but no charges are pending.

"The capacity of government not to do something about this at the pace that it is rocketing is what is absolutely alarming," said Mirkarimi, who’s pushed the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice to provide better data on violent crime in the city, "because it’s not going to abate itself…. The way that the number is traveling out of the reach of the Police Department and the district attorney — I think we’re going to need to send red flares up, SOS."

DEADLY HORSEPLAY

The Tamesha Tobie case is tricky; there were only three people in the room, and one is dead. The boy who police believe accidentally ended Tobie’s life won’t confess, Johnson said. Some relatives dispute the police’s view that one of the boys mistakenly fired the weapon and instead believe the story the pair have stuck to so far — that the gun fired on its own from the bed as they horsed around, the bullet smashing through the right rear of Tobie’s jaw.

"Obviously the one boy who did it doesn’t want to say anything to us," Johnson said. "And the other boy is somewhat traumatized, and his parents are worried about any possible criminal charges against him for associating with the first boy. So right now we’re trying to corroborate the stories and what happened through other people who were in the house…. It’s kind of a sensitive thing at this point."

But either way, Tamisha Tobie is the ultimate victim of gun violence, and while her death likely wasn’t intentional, it’s joined the city’s steadily climbing homicide rate nonetheless.

Attempts to reach Tobie’s family for comment were unsuccessful.

Statewide in 2004, 10 kids were killed after being accidentally shot either by themselves or by someone else, according to figures maintained by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More recent figures won’t be available until later this year. But according to media accounts and calls to local police jurisdictions, over the past 12 months, three children died similarly just in the Bay Area.

In June a five-year-old boy in Oakland shot himself while playing with a relative’s gun, and a 28-year-old man was arrested for child endangerment — in notably less time than it took San Francisco to complete Tobie’s autopsy.

Just days after Tobie was killed, an 18-year-old girl accidentally shot a younger male teen in the city of Richmond with a revolver he’d found in the home where his death occurred. Last November a 16-year-old boy in Contra Costa County was killed after a friend accidentally shot him in the chest while playing with a .22-caliber revolver. Several other accidents occurred during 2006 in San Francisco and the East Bay, including one involving an Alameda toddler who that spring mistakenly shot his 20-year-old cousin with a .38 that belonged to a family friend.

The gun lobby complains that news stories depicting such deaths overstate the problem of accidents among kids and foster hysteria.

But Shawn Richard of the local nonprofit Brothers Against Guns has a response. The volume of deaths, he argues, isn’t the story.

"It could be a low number. It could be a high number," Richard said. "Regardless, it’s still ridiculous to deal with lives that are being taken by a gun."

Richard founded Brothers Against Guns after two of his siblings were shot to death in San Francisco during the 1990s. He joined the Mayor’s Office, District Attorney Kamala Harris, and the Legal Community Against Violence in drafting a batch of local antigun ordinances that passed the Board of Supervisors last month. One requires local firearms dealers to send inventories of their weapons to the police chief every six months, and another requires all handgun owners to disable their weapons with trigger locks.

Richard is also working with Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) to ban gun shows at the Cow Palace, which is located on state property near the Sunnydale housing project, where violent crimes are a frequent occurrence.

But would all of the antigun news releases in the world have saved Tobie? Homicide inspector Johnson wonders aloud whether they would.

"If the gun’s used in a homicide," Johnson said, "and it’s hidden in the house by children, who’s going to put a gun lock on it?"

Frugal feasts

September 12, 2007

>>Click here for FEAST, our guide to sexy suppers, classic cocktails, and more hot eats for the season

At Cowgirlpalooza, I ate four bowls of gumbo. I’m not bragging, just setting a scene — a scene featuring the smell of gumbo and the flavor of gumbo, with heart-shaped corn bread and phallic biscuits that were possibly supposed to resemble guitars or banjos or drumsticks but, uh, didn’t. The patio at El Rio, early evening, Outer Mission, lemon trees, blue sky, the chill of oncoming fog, Denise Funiami, five or six twangy bands, and the sticky syncopation of flip-flops on the dance floor …

Every time I made eye contact with Denise, whom I personally consider the queen of San Francisco’s country music scene (although she was conspicuously absent from the stage that day), she would raise her eyebrows questioningly. I would look at the current bowl of gumbo in my left hand, look back at her, and hold up however many fingers. When I got to three, she cursed me loudly, over a sea of cowboy hats, and she cursed my whole family with our hollow legs.

I get bored with drinking. And broke with drinking. There was a $10 cover charge. My family doesn’t have hollow legs so much as empty pockets. This is Gastro-Economy 101: $5 for a beer, and the gumbo’s free. What, are you kidding me?

As usual, I was the soberest person in the place. Afterward I staggered home like everyone else and opened my refrigerator door, like everyone else, and stood there stuffed, with my eyes half open, in a sort of a swoon. Was everyone else looking at what I was looking at? Do you keep a jar of salsa from Papalote Mexican Grill in your fridge? Do you treat it with respect and reverence? Turn to it for solace and support in times of need, boredom … loneliness? I’m talking about the stuff with roasted tomatoes and pumpkin seeds in it.

If you came into a kitchen in a house in the middle of the night and saw me licking this San Francisco delicacy off a stick of celery (in lieu of tortilla chips), my eyes glazed and my lips on fire, my hardly hollow legs already weak with gumbo … I don’t know if you would fall in love with me or not, but you would almost certainly invite me out to eat sometime.

Everybody wants to eat with me. I’m not bragging — just exaggerating. A lot of people want to eat with me. Even vegans, and that’s a journalistic fact. A dude I’ve known for years but have hardly ever eaten with (so for all I know he might be magic) says, in an e-mail, "I would love to make you a salad."

Bam, crash, boom: I’m seduced. No matter which way I take the simple sentiment, I am so there. I love salad and would love to be salad.

Someone else has a new favorite Korean restaurant, ohmigod, the Kim Chee, or a barbecue joint, and they want me in on it. And I want in on it! I’m the luckiest little chicken farmer chick alive, and don’t think I don’t know that. Miraculously, given my two-year campaign to destroy my credibility as a critic, if not a human being, by declaring every single place I eat my new favorite restaurant, people still think I know shit.

Or they want me to. Or something.

Truth is, philosophical fine points aside, as well as semantic silliness (but no way am I giving up hyperbole, so don’t ask), there are certain things at certain restaurants, yes, that I dream about and drool over and want to marry and couldn’t live without. Flavors, textures, smells, memories, fucking feelings that can call out to me even after a burrito or four bowls of gumbo and bring me to my knees. I’m talking about my favorite favorites, if you will, for real and in no particular order. I love each and every one of these dishes more than madly. I love them beyond numbers, alphabets, art, or laws of gravity and with all my hollow heart, until death do us part and then some.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN WINGS AT MEMPHIS MINNIE’S

There’s this thing in folk music or blues, right, or … I don’t know where it comes from originally, but you have to have heard at least one take on it: "When I die, don’t bury me at all/ Just pickle my bones in alcohol/ Put bottles of whiskey at my head and feet/ And then I know that I will keep."

My song substitutes butter for alcohol, of course, but in real life, between me and you, I would prefer to be preserved in barbecue sauce. I just couldn’t think of anything that rhymes with it.

Since Cliff’s closed, my go-to rib joint has been Memphis Minnie’s in San Francisco, only I don’t get no ribs. And — surprise — I don’t much care for any of the three kinds of sauce they keep on the tables either. If you mix the so-so vinegar-based one with the so-so tomato-based one, that’ll put you somewhere between North Carolina and Texas, or in other words, Birmingham, Ala., which has fine barbecue, but Christ, Flint’s is just over the bridge in Oakland. If you want ribs or brisket, go to Flint’s.

But if you want chicken wings, and I, for one, do, Memphis Minnie’s not only has you covered, it’s got you covered in the best barbecue sauce I know of right now. It’s sticky, a little bit sweet, and a lot hot, and why it ain’t in bottles on the tables with the so-so ones is for better minds than mine to figure out.

You have to order the Smoky Mountain Wings if you want that particular sauce. If you don’t want the wings, get them anyway and lick and suck them dry. Chicken is hit or miss at barbecue joints, I know. But two out of every three times, you do want the wings. They’re smoked and fried, for crying out loud — on the starters menu for $5.75. Order them twice, if you must, or once, with a side of my favorite slaw (no mayo!) and a big glass of sweet tea.

Who the hell else serves sweet tea around here? That in itself would make Memphis Minnie’s one of my favorite favorite restaurants. The Smoky Mountain flap-flaps just seal the deal. And the tart and tangy slaw sweetens — or sours — it.

576 Haight, SF. (415) 864-7675, www.memphisminnies.com

MARINATED RAW BEEF AT LE CHEVAL

Now, I’ve been carrying on for years about fried barbecued chicken, or barbecued fried chicken (which is the order I do it in). But actually, my all-time favorite favorite way to cook meat is not to cook it, not even once.

I’m thinking specifically about that raw beef salad you sometimes find at Vietnamese restaurants. At Le Cheval, which is just a great place, period (although not undiscovered), the bò tái chanh ($9) will make you fly out of your seat and zip willy-rip-snort all over the place’s considerable atmosphere like a blown-up-and-let-go balloon. I’m speaking figuratively. Although, if you’re a vegetarian, you might in fact have visions.

Otherwise, expect to be instantly hooked and almost explosively happy when your teeth and tongue hit this thin-sliced, lemon-drenched meat, with 1) cilantro, 2) mint, 3) ginger, and 4) onions. I mean, come on. It’s almost not fair to stack the deck like that. These are, if not the essential elements of our universe, the exact ingredients that make it wacky and wonderful and that cause the people in it to have to sing. Cilantro, mint, ginger, onions, lemons.

Not to mention peanuts and sesame. (I was afraid if I put them all in the same paragraph I might lose my readership.) And not to mention the meat itself, which kind of half seviches and half stays pink, and in any case is wholly succulent and tender.

If they put a bò tái chanh stand at either end of the Golden Gate Bridge, you would never again have to hear or think about the words suicide barrier in connection with the span. I’m convinced of that.

1007 Clay, Oakl. (510) 763-8495, www.lecheval.com

CURRY GOAT ROTI AT PENNY’S CARIBBEAN CAFE

I’m also, of course, a clown. The first time I ate at Penny’s Caribbean Cafe in Berkeley, I was moved to go out to the van and get my steel drum and come back in and serenade the chef and the server and the proprietor, in fact the only person in the place, Penny.

Since then I have been back at least 30 times with at least 30 different people. My mission: to single-handedly or double-handedly or in any case greasy-handedly keep this place in business. Because I’m afraid it’s too good to be true, like those dreams in which your dearly departed loved ones are alive again, in the yard, pecking corn and laying eggs.

I’ll say it: curry goat roti ($8) is my favorite favorite thing to eat, and Penny’s is my favorite favorite restaurant. And Penny is one of those rare people, like Fran of the late Ann’s Cafe, whom I love even beyond her capacity to cook. If bò tái chanh literally did contain all the most fun pieces of the universe, Penny might be the universe itself. I just want to hug her, to disappear into her floury apron and kitchen smells, then decide for myself whether or not to come back.

Know what I mean?

Then maybe you should give this place a try. It’s a dive, in the divine sense: it has two or three tables, and it’s not always exactly all the way clean, or quick (she makes everything to order). Neither efficient nor organized, Penny’s is not a well-oiled machine. But you will be after your roti, which you eat with your hands, like Ethiopian food.

Just so you know, West Indian roti is nothing like East Indian roti. It’s a soft, layered dough with chickpeas crumbled into it and enough flavor to start or stop wars, even before the curry goat touches it. You can also get curry chicken, jerked chicken, or just vegetables. That’s chickpeas, potatoes, and sometimes maybe some other things, like spinach. With or without your meat, it’s ridiculously, eyes-rolling-back-in-the-headedly delicious.

But get the meat. The goat. Trust me on this. Goat is actually smoother and subtler tasting than lamb, if you’re worried about it. In which case you must not have ever had it.

2836 Sacramento, Berk. (510) 486-1202

BEEF LARB AT MANORA’S THAI

Here’s a dish, larb, that I had and had and had about a million times, on the East Coast and on this one, not to mention most points in between, since even small towns in Kansas have Thai restaurants now. Why I ordered larb so many times, considering that I never once liked it, is a big fat mystery, even to me. Theories include: 1) it’s just an irresistibly funny word, and 2) maybe I knew, deep down inside (where all the weird, oniony dream images hang), that one day I would find Manora’s Thai Restaurant in San Francisco.

Manora’s is my favorite Thai place now. It looks like it’s going to cost you, because the atmosphere is nice, as in fancy-framed pictures, cloth tablecloths, candles, flowers, chandeliers, and a waitstaff who all have good posture.

But don’t be scared off. The food is great, and it’s really not any more expensive than anywhere else — just nicer. Larb, basically a meat salad, goes for $7.50. However, whereas most places make their larb with ground or minced beef (or chicken or sometimes duck), Manora’s uses chunks of grilled steak. It’s got juice to it, even pinkness, sometimes even redness, and you know how I feel about all that.

Also: lemon, mint, and hot pepper, hoorah, but the distinctive flavor is roasted ground rice. And I think maybe most places overroast the rice or overrice the roast, just to mess with me. The bastards! If you haven’t tried larb, don’t — not until you can try it at Manora’s.

And if you know of another place that uses grilled, not ground, meat in this dish — take me there.

1600 Folsom, SF. (415) 861-6224, www.manorathai.com

LONGANISA AT JUST FOR YOU

My favorite favorite breakfast place is still Just for You. I love the beignets. I love the cornmeal pancakes. I love the chili scramble over corn bread. I love, love, love the Hangtown fry (oysters and bacon together — I rest my case)…. But the thing that I dream about and wake up craving, of course, is longanisa.

That’s those Filipino sausages I affectionately (and foolishly) refer to as sausage donuts. They have nothing to do with dough. They’re just meat. They’re sausages, only absurdly and sweetly and greasily delicious. Like donuts.

Because they are sweet and pork and therefore good for you, they make a perfect, perfectly healthy breakfast sausage. Why don’t more places have them on the menu? I blame the chicken and apple industries. Not even all Filipino restaurants serve longanisa.

Just for You is not a Filipino restaurant. It’s a New Orleans–y, Southern-style joint with some Mexican touches. For going above and beyond the call of duty to bring me longanisa, Just for You will always be for me.

732 22nd St., SF. (415) 647-3033, www.justforyoucafe.com

CARNE ASADA BURRITO AT PAPALOTE

Everyone, no matter where they live, has to have a favorite breakfast place. If you live in San Francisco, you have to have a favorite burrito place too. This is a burden. For years, for me, it was easy: Taqueria Can-Cún. Then I finally tired of its on-again, off-again carne asada, its stale chips …

For the next few years I didn’t have a favorite taquería and was so embarrassed that I moved to Sonoma County.

Well, I’m back in the city, for now, and so I had to have a favorite taquería again. Right? No-brainer: Papalote! I resisted it for a long time, because it looked so fancy-pants and hipsterish. But then I got over all my snobby prejudices and gave the place half a chance.

Holy shit, the salsa! Last time I tasted such an earth-shaking, mind-blowing, eye-watering condiment, it was the green bread-dip Peruvian potion at Rincon Peruano in 1996. Papalote’s salsa, served with actually warm, fresh tortilla chips, is roasted Roma–based, flourished by cilantro and hot, hot peppers, and the secret ingredient is pumpkin seeds.

You can bring a jar and fill it up to bring home, but what the hell, you may as well suck down a carne asada burrito ($5.49) while you’re there. I’m not sure I can forgive Papalote for not having lard in its beans, but the meat is grilled to order, not sitting in a bin, and that makes a huge difference.

Then too, they could be rolling up dog food with leftover fried rice and hospital cafeteria beans in a stale, store-bought tortilla, and, drenched in my favorite favorite salsa in the history of the whole wide world, ever, it would still be the best burrito in town. I swear.

3409 24th St., SF. (415) 970-8815

DUCK NOODLE SOUP AT CHINA LIGHT RESTAURANT

Sorry to take you out of town for this one, but get in the car. We’re going to Santa Rosa. And I’m not shuttling you to no wine country froufrou, chichi chateau either. We’re eating at one of the scariest- and sorriest-looking Chinese dives in one of the bluest-collarest parts of a pretty dumb-ass town: China Light Restaurant, where warehouse workers and truck mechanics break for lunch.

I was pretty much zombied into this place, initially, against even my better judgment, by the irresistible allure of a dish called oil-dripped chicken. It was the most appetizing sounding of seven $4.35 lunch specials.

Five, six, seven visits later, and I still haven’t tasted this sure-to-be-spectacular specialty. I was permanently derailed by a sheet of plain white paper under the glass on the table casually mentioning, among other things (but don’t ask me what else), duck noodle soup ($6.15).

I looked up from those three simple promises with tears of hunger forming in the corners of my eyes and a drop of drool on my lip. I remember there was an old guy wearing rubber boots slowly sloshing from the kitchen, across the dining room, to the parking lot in a manner I would describe, retrospeculatively, as plumberesque.

Don’t fret! Get back in the car! Get back in the car! I have saved the best for last, I promise.

Now, I know there is no shortage of duck noodle soup right here in the city. If anyone wanted me to, I would very, very (very, very, very) happily do another one of those detailed investigative reports on just duck soup. A lot of Thai restaurants and noodle houses have it, and it almost always floors me. In a good way.

In the best possible way.

I just love duck noodle soup, and right now my favorite favorite example of it is an hour away. It’s Chinese, not Thai. It’s like a whole half of a roasted duck, bones and skin and all, chopped up on a bed of thick noodles and bok choy in a dark, rich broth. But you can’t even see any of this other stuff for the meat, and by the time you get to it, you are pretty much full and silly and slippery and just juiced.

China Light’s duck noodle soup makes me crazy and makes me do crazy things — like right now, in my mind, in my hollow, insatiable head, I am driving a little tiny car full of every single one of my readers, even vegans, all the way to Santa fucking Rosa. For dinner. Tonight.

Right now.

Close your eyes.

80 College, Santa Rosa. (707) 527-0558

L.E. Leone is a Bay Area writer and musician and the author of The Meaning of Lunch and Eat This, San Francisco. Her next collection of stories, Big Bend, is forthcoming from Sparkle Street Books. She writes the weekly Cheap Eats column in the Guardian.

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

Looks that kill

September 11, 2007

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER When does music news boil down to a form of disaster reporting? Behold the universal slagging that accompanied the tepid Sept. 9 Video Music Awards performance by a sluggish, underwear-clad Britney Spears, postpreggers bulgy and freshly toasted from a supposed turn at Burning Man (yet another sign of the event’s apocalyptic death throes, scuttling my long-dreamed-of plans for a Playa Hater’s Camp at Black Rock?). OK, Brit is a mess — the nonstop media slam dance is starting to nauseate me, despite Spears’s unconvincing pleas to give her more.

But maybe in a microfragmented, nano-niched pop universe, we’re all just looking for a few things to agree on, like: Rihanna embodies class (is it the Posh Spice asymmetrical bob?), Justin Timberlake looks good next to his Mickey Mouse Club ex and his Sept. 12 Shark Tank opener Good Charlotte, and Spears needs a handler she can trust so we can cease critically burning her. There is such a thing as too much freedom — as several Mötley Crüe-dites have proved of late. San Jose native Nikki Sixx’s collection of ’80s journal entries The Heroin Diaries — out Sept. 18 — shows that it’s never too late to exploit one’s excesses, while Bret Michaels from Poison’s VH1 series Rock of Love takes The Bachelor‘s formula to a skanksome low, as his prospective mates — coldly self-promoting, sharky rock chicks all — manage to outshine the shameless star with their backbiting, bitchery, and oh so many looks that kill.

Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. Witness, a galaxy away, the communal, mammalian planet Animal Collective. Much has been made in the past five years or so of the collectivist spirit infusing art groups like Hamburger Eyes, Royal Art Lodge, and Space 1026. Music collectives have been overshadowed, although San Francisco’s Thread Productions collective seems to be finding its rhythm via Tartufi, Silian Rail, Low Red Land, Birds and Batteries, and Sky Pilots, and a few art ensembles like Forcefield persist via recordings.

Through it all, though, Animal Collective have continued to fly their fellow-feeling flag high, despite multiple solo outings, loudly thumping the drum for the notion of continual artistic exploration and Strawberry Jam (Domino), their latest, almost poppily upbeat album. All the members possess the freedom to leave anytime they want to — and to combust messily all over blogosphere gossip sites if they care to — but they choose to stay and play with their happily bent song structures.

Panda Bear, né Noah Lennox, has seen his share of success with this year’s solo Person Pitch (Paw Tracks) and has had to struggle with the tug of his Lisbon, Portugal, home, where he’s lived for more than three years with his wife and daughter, and touring with the loose collection of onetime Baltimore schoolmates now scattered between New York City and Washington, D.C. Stuck in traffic with Avey Tare (David Portner), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Deakin (Josh Dibb) outside Toronto, where they have a show, the 29-year-old Lennox says earnestly, "I hope people show up. I get nervous about performing — it takes over from the worry about whether people are going to be there."

Strawberry Jam‘s title came to him during a dreamy airline encounter. "On the little tray of food was a packet of strawberry jam. I opened it up and looked at that stuff," he explains. "It was futuristic looking, gooey, but it also looked sharp in a way. I thought it would be cool if it we could get the music to sound like that."

The final recording, produced by longtime Sun City Girls producer Scott Colbourn, who also oversaw Feels (FatCat, 2005), drones and shimmers with fewer overdubs than they’ve used in the past, surging with the band’s trademark bell-shaking, ethereal gloss ("#1"), an almost Madchester bounce ("Peacebone"), and infectious, nearly melodic manifestos ("Winter Wonderland"). "I guess we wanted to do something different than anything we’d done before and hopefully different from anything we’d ever heard before," Lennox says. "That’s what we get psyched about overall."

Having only to dread the retread, Lennox even embraces that three-letter word — jam — in reference to the band. "Maybe there’s a bit of a crossover," he says sweetly. "That’s cool. There’s a lot of Grateful Dead fans in our band."

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

Mon/17, 8 p.m., $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

WHAT GOES AROUND

AD HAWK

Coalition of Aging Rockers just keeps on noisily aging: Charalambides’s Tom Carter and other acolytes pay tribute to the fab space rock fossils of Hawkwind. Wed/12, 6 p.m. $5. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

MASERATI

The Kindercore survivors play alongside Thread Records collectivists Silian Rail and Sky Pilots. Wed/12, 9 p.m., $8. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. www.12galaxies.com

YO MAJESTY

Sunshine State crunk-punkers promise to pick up where ESG left off. Wed/12, 9 p.m., free with RSVP at going.com. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

BONFIRE MADIGAN

Ex–<\d>SF riot grrrl cellist Madigan Shive joins the local Best Wishes. Thurs/13, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

TOMUTONTUU AND VODKA SOAP

Finland band generates eerie cryptonoise alongside Skaters spin-off project. Fri/14, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

VHS OR BETA

The Southern dance rockers bring their comets. Fri/14, 9 p.m., $15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

SPECTRUM

Spaceman 3 alum Sonic Boom helms one of the finest free street-fair experimento lineups ever at the Polk Street Fair. With Triclops!, TITS, Los Llamarada, and Lou Lou and the Guitarfish. Sat/15, noon–7 p.m., free. Polk and Post, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

HANDSOME FURS

Wolf Parader Dan Boeckner breaks out his silky Sub Pop side project. Mon/17, 8 p.m., $10–$12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

HIGH ON FIRE

Death be not proud, the Oakland metallists claim, waving a fierce new Relapse disc, Death Is This Communion. Tues/18, 7 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF.

Six Years after 9/11, my son is off to Iraq

September 11, 2007

By Sarah Phelan

My son leaving Oakland Airport on his way to Iraq

Six years ago, when the first planes hit the World Trade Center, I never imagined that my son would end up being deployed to Iraq as part of Bush’s 2007 troop surge. I also never imagined that there was a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. That’s because there wasn’t one, even though Bush kept trying to make one, and can now claim that Al Qaeda is in Iraq–even though he won’t explain his own role in creating a vacuum in Iraq, which Al Qaeda and other faith-based militias have since filled. But enough about Bush.

My son was 14 years old in 2001 and already showing interest in all things military, despite or perhaps because of, my own peacenik tendencies. But as I watched horrific images of the towers burning and imploding in New York, I had no inkling of the personal price that Bush’s warmongering was going to cost my family on the West Coast, or the losses that the people of this nation and Iraq would start to endure within two years of the 9/11 attacks.

But within weeks of those attacks, I did get my first clue of Bush’s takeover plans for Iraq when I interviewed a former UN ambassador to Iraq, a weapons inspector, and an activist who delivered medicine to Iraqis in defiance of US sanctions during the 1990s.

These three experts on Iraq warned that Bush was serious about invading Iraq, a country they said was broken from years of sanctions and not home to weapons of mass destruction—though Saddam Hussein’s pride would not allow him to admit as much to the US and the rest of the world .

In the ensuing years, I saw the claims of these three experts being proven right, and those of Bush’s experts being proven wrong, over and over again. And yet, once the invasion was in full force, opposition to Bush’s illegal invasion was successfully framed by his spin meisters as “opposition to our troops”.

The “Stop the War” sticker came first, then the “Army Mom” sticker. And then is a yellow ribbon on the side bumper, of my car too. Proving that you can support the troops and oppose the war on Iraq all at the same time

Want to know a secret? Stating the obvious, namely that US military intervention can’t solve Iraq’s civil war. But stating this stark truth won’t endanger our troops, nor will it dishonor them or their families. It will endanger the credibility of all those who peddled the war and have still not taken ownership for misleading the public.

Feast: 5 East Bay breakfasts

September 6, 2007

San Francisco is a city of the night. We like to go out late, stay out till early, and start our days when most other cities are half-finished with theirs. But if the city is ruled by the moon (and maybe some MDMA), the East Bay is ruled by the sun — and not just because they actually get some. Sure, there are places in Berkeley and Oakland to go after dark, but our sisters across the water are places best experienced while clear yellow light is still shining through green trees onto wide streets lined with charming wooden houses — or charming little breakfast spots. I won’t argue that the East Bay has better breakfast places than San Francisco does — though the competition is formidable — but I will say that if I’m in Emeryville or Alameda, the likelihood of me getting up in time to have breakfast is much, much greater than if I’ve spent the last hours of yesterday and the first of today in the Mission or Polk Gulch. And so here is a guide to my favorite places to enjoy that first meal of the day at a time when you don’t have to call it dinner, and in a place where being up that early is, well, worth it.

WAT MONGKOLRATANARAM (A.K.A. THE THAI TEMPLE)

There’s nothing that says Berkeley like Sunday brunch at the Thai Temple: ethnic food, an eccentric crowd, ridiculous prices, and a certain amount of in-the-know-ness that’s required to even find yourself there. Sure, the mango and sweet rice or spicy green beans and tofu are more lunch fare than what we’d traditionally think of as breakfast food, but the temple starts serving them at 9 a.m. — and the delicious and just-oily-enough meat or veggie options are the perfect hangover cure for a night out in the city. A few extra hints: bring your own drinks, unless you want the stellar Thai iced tea; get there before 12:30 p.m., when they start running out of the good stuff; and, if in a group, use a divide-and-conquer, multiline approach to ordering. Then stretch out on the lawn of the library next door for a nice, sunny afternoon nap.

1911 Russell, Berk. (510) 849-3419

COCKADOODLE CAFÉ

The name may be silly, but the Mexican-inspired fare at this Old Town Oakland eatery is serious. The real draw is the back patio, which manages — with large umbrellas and red and white checkered tablecloths — to be both classy and casual at the same time. But crispy potatoes served with sour cream, savory crepes with chicken-apple sausage, and an omelet made with slow-roasted pork would even make sitting inside worth it. Extra extra bonus points for including a Michelada (a beer and tomato juice cocktail, sometimes called a poor man’s Bloody Mary) on the menu, as most people have never even heard of it.

719 Washington, Oakl. (510) 465-5400, www.cockadoodlecafe.com

MEAL TICKET

Don’t let the fact that you have to order at the counter fool you — this is no fast-food bagel joint. It’s cornmeal blueberry pancakes and bacon-onion scrambles so deliciously and lovingly prepared that when you’re done, you’ll hardly remember that no one showed up at your table with a notepad. Plus, you can enjoy your meal either in the intimate dining room — breakfast with your best bud, anyone? — or on the back patio. Who needs table service too?

1235 San Pablo, Albany. (510) 526-6325

CAFÉ CACAO

I love breakfast food. Always have, even if I’m eating it at midnight. So it’s hard to make me unhappy with an early-day menu. But it’s equally hard to impress me with every single part of a breakfast — and Café Cacao manages it. You could argue I’m distracted by the aroma of chocolate wafting over from the Scharffen Berger factory next door, or that I’m charmed by the classy-yet-casual Eurostyle architecture. But I know it’s really that the eggs are poached to perfection, the levain toast has just the right combination of texture and taste, the rosemary brown butter is rich and flavorful without being too heavy, the accompanying salad is fresh and not overdressed, and the hot chocolate (made with real chocolate) is the best I’ve ever had in my life.

914 Heinz, Berk. (510) 843-6000, www.cafecacao.biz

VENUS

How is it that Venus is both pretty and unpredictable? With breakfast haunts, usually you have to choose one or the other. But not at this lovely, less crowded alternative to La Note. Brick walls and a map-inspired (or maybe collage-inspired) menu give it a homey feel. Creative options — from a framboise mimosa to Indian breakfast served with banana raita — make the food distinctive. And true culinary virtuosity — the fresh fruit and cashew, almond, and poppyseed brittle over yogurt could make me give up omelets forever — make the establishment worth trying again and again. Plus, everything here is seasonal, organic, and sustainable: good for your body and your conscience.

2327 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 540-5950, www.venusrestaurant.net

Board youth

September 4, 2007

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Wanna take your backyard pool party to the next level? You’ll need the Traditional Fools on speed dial: their infectious, scuzzy surf punk is the best accompaniment this century has to offer to the twist, the shimmy, and the ladling of tropical punch. The three young men who make up the Fools — guitarist-drummer-vocalist Ty Segall, bassist-vocalist Andrew Luttrell, and guitarist-drummer-vocalist David Fox — all grew up in sunny South Orange County but later moved to San Francisco, where they became acquainted shortly after arriving two years ago.

"We all just wanted to get out of Orange County," Luttrell, 21, explains. According to Luttrell, who gladly skateboarded along with Segall, 20, into the Mission to be interviewed, the Mexican food may be excellent back home, but when it comes to playing music in Orange County, "nobody cares except people in other bands." Reservations aside, the Fools consider themselves de facto products of Southern California, which makes sense when you hear them: they excitedly cite X, the Screamers, and the early ’80s Los Angeles punk generally found on the Dangerhouse label as a shared influence, and their eyes and smiles widen further at the mention of Redd Kross, from whose catalog the Fools can play a remarkable dozen covers at will, including a killer rendition of "Annette’s Got the Hits." All things considered, it’d be pretty inaccurate to pin down what they’re doing as straight-ahead surf rock: those kinds of riffs are most definitely present, but these guys sound way more subterranean than, say, Dick Dale or the Ventures.

When the three first musically convened early last year, they jammed on the Cramps’ "Human Fly," and it clicked quickly enough for them to crank out their first three songs: "Layback," "Street Surfin’," and "Rock ‘n’ Roll Baby," all prominently featured on their first demo CD-R, which was a surf-washed slice of garage punk glory. Their style has only become more refined since then, as evidenced by their fantastic live cassette, Live at Wizard Mountain (Wizard Mountain Tapes, 2007), and their new, self-titled 7-inch on the Bay Area’s Chocolate Covered Records. They block-printed all the covers for the single, which sports the benevolent gaze of a "chillin’ cheeseburger" and their sharpest tunes yet: "Surfin’ with the Phantom" gets the Vincent Price award for its spooktastic cackle and sense of impending wipe-out doom, and "River" is dialed in to the kind of raw, giddy party punk that Rocket from the Crypt were once able to muster.

The Fools have already opened for such heavyweights as the Phantom Surfers and strangely have never had to book themselves a Bay Area show, despite their frequent gig schedule: they’ve always been brought in by invitation, which also goes for their upcoming appearance at the now-renowned Budget Rock festival in Oakland. As well established as they may be locally, the Fools look poised to make waves overseas: their next release will be a split single put out by a label in Italy. In any case — look out, collectors! — they’re only getting 30 copies to sell themselves. "We’ll sell them for 15 bucks," Segall and Luttrell agree before laughing aloud. "Nah, we wouldn’t do that."<\!s>*

THE TRADITIONAL FOOLS

Sat/8, 8 p.m., $6

924 Gilman Street Project

924 Gilman, Berk.

(510) 525-9926

www.924gilman.org

Calling all island girls

September 4, 2007

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Oh, island music — the soft swish of silky trade winds, the gentle rustle of swaying palms, and the way-organic click-hop drone of crickets. From where I’m lounging at press time, in a humid picture-postcard tourist paradise outside the ’20s-era pink pachyderm of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, it’s also the sound of a few bruddahs playing a 12-string and electric bass version of "Brown-Eyed Girl." That was my island soundtrack growing up in Honolulu, along with the music of the Rascals and Earth, Wind and Fire, though surprisingly little Beach Boys, who had the vocal interplay Hawaiians adored but sounded like they probably didn’t really surf.

The Beach Boys just liked the idea of it, but then, don’t we all, buying into the seductive constructs of island fantasias, though we native born have always had a complicated hate-love relationship with the visiting cultural imperialists who drive the tourism-focused economy. Little surprise locals use the term transient like it’s a dirty word.

Speaking of island music, locally we have the Treasure Island Music Festival, the first two-day music event of its size on the human-constructed isle built to boost San Francisco pride by proximity and buoy the 1939 World’s Fair. The lineup, by the way, banishes memories of pop-period Van Morrison (though not fond thoughts of Hawaiian music materfamilias Aunty Genoa Keawe, who still plies audiences with her dulcet falsetto every Thursday at the Waikiki Marriott’s Moana Terrace) and includes Modest Mouse, Thievery Corporation, Spoon, Built to Spill, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, M. Ward, Gotan Project, MIA, Ghostland Observatory, Dengue Fever, and Mocean Worker, in addition to a bevy of talented locals like DJ Shadow (with Cut Chemist), Two Gallants, Zion-I, Honeycut, and Trainwreck Riders.

Noise Pop founder and IODA CEO Kevin Arnold, 38, told me the event has been a long-cherished dream for himself and Noise Pop co-organizer Jordan Kurland. The organizers had expanded NP in the past, to Chicago, before pulling back; they’re now venturing out again, working with Another Planet Entertainment. And why this fantasy island? "Because it was there," Arnold says. "We spent a lot of time looking around San Francisco and where people have been able to stage concerts in the past and make the event stand out. The island has all of that going for it: the location is pretty idyllic and beautiful, and it seemed like a fun thing to do."

Arnold and Kurland had come to a turning point with Noise Pop 14, and lately, he says, "we felt like it was time to really go for it and see if we can expand and actually make some money on what had been a large hobby for a long time. [Noise Pop] had broke even but had not done much more." So they took a loan out, hired staffers like general manager Chris Appelgren, Lookout! Records’ last head, and are now — in addition to coproducing a series of music-oriented City Arts and Lectures talks — putting on an event that, at an estimated 10,000 attendees per day, threatens to consolidate SF’s rep as a ground zero for must-catch music fests. And who can resist the chance to see these acts with an open-air backdrop of the city, glistening across the water? "I think for a lot of people, it’s this big question mark in the middle of the bay — what is it?" Arnold says, recalling that he witnessed a Robot Wars event there a decade ago but has never tangled with the military police once positioned there (ask a certain Oakland hip-hop star about that). "I think it’s a neglected space, and it’ll be good to educate people about what the island is."

SHAPE-SHIFTING CLUBLAND Venues come and go and morph radically — hey, maybe Treasure Island will become our next no-parking Speedway Meadow. Thus, while the Make-Out Room has been getting a makeover, to be unveiled Sept. 7, and scales live music back to Fridays to Sundays, word comes from D’Jelly Brains’ John Binkov that legendary SF punk joint Mabuhay Gardens will reopen at 443 Broadway, under the aegis of punk and metal bookers Tambre Bryant and Tonus Atkins. D’Jelly Brains join Victim’s Family member Ralph Spight’s Freak Accident for the revived Fab Mab’s first show Sept. 7. "Hard to believe," he e-mails. "Went by there to check it out last night. Locked and shuttered…. But at least no sports bar, yuppie tunnel crowd, meat market."<\!s>*

TREASURE ISLAND MUSIC FESTIVAL

Sept. 15–<\d>16, 12:30–<\d>10 p.m.; $58.50 per day, $110 for a two-day pass

www.treasureislandfestival.com

FREAK ACCIDENT

With D’Jelly Brains and the Radishes

Fri/7, 9 p.m., $8

Mabuhay Gardens

443 Broadway, SF

www.myspace.com/mabuhaygardens

SETTING THE STAGE FOR OKKERVIL RIVER’S WILL SHEFF

Are Tinsel Town train wrecks responsible for Austin, Texas, band Okkervil River’s latest CD, The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar)? Inspired by documentaries about Clara Bow, various show folk, and the poet John Berryman, vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Will Sheff wrote the album in a cheap rental in Brooklyn, a vast change from the rustic origins of 2005’s Black Sheep Boy. There, he found several lyrical themes running through the songs, concerning "having to be a fan and having to do with entertainment and what happens to you when you’re on the furthest extreme of life after entertainment. But it wasn’t necessarily as if I was trying to make some sort of finely tuned point, because if I wanted to do that I would write an essay and post it on the Internet."

To read the full interview, see the Noise Blog at www.sfbg.com/blogs/music.

OKKERVIL RIVER

Wed/5, 8 p.m.,$13 (sold out)

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.theindependentsf.com

Also Thurs/6, 6 p.m., free

Amoeba Music

1855 Haight, SF

www.amoeba.com

Stormy leather

September 4, 2007

Cruising for a Bruising By Jason Shamai

FILM William Friedkin, like it or not, has contributed so much to mainstream queer cinema that it’s remarkable his name primarily calls up images of projectile vomiting and Gene Hackman running a lot. The Boys in the Band (1970) and the more high-profile Cruising (1980) are bookends to a decade of comparatively unencumbered gay sex that is legendary to gay men of my generation (I was alive for a gloriously unencumbered two months of it), yet there was almost no mainstream representation of gay men in pop culture between the two films that didn’t involve guest spots on Match Game or The Hollywood Squares.

Last year’s excellent Friedkin offering, Bug, spent its first 15 minutes or so, gratuitously but innocuously, within a lesbian community. And let’s not forget Father Dyer’s gayer-than-gay proclamation in The Exorcist (1973) that “My idea of heaven is a solid white nightclub with me as a headliner for all eternity, and they love me.” Friedkin’s representations of queer people are hardly consistent in their degrees of sophistication, but the venom he’s inspired in so many activists is certainly excessive and arguably not worth the energy. If he can be accused of exploitation, what he’s exploiting is of no mere passing fascination to him. For some reason the man, whether or not he’s welcome, has clearly thrown in his lot with the queers.

Cruising — let’s just get it out of the way — is a pretty terrible movie in most of the major categories: dialogue, acting, and plot all add up to a big fat blecch, and the restored version playing at the Castro Theatre beginning Sept. 7 in anticipation of the DVD release does nothing to remedy the narrative inertia. The murder mystery it purports to be — regarding an undercover cop’s pursuit of a serial killer in the West Village’s leather-clad S-M scene — is a murky and parenthetical excuse for a series of Boschian tableaux of boot licking, fist fucking, and ass ramming. But beyond a frustrating mess of implications about the scene’s negative influence on Officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino), Friedkin isn’t guilty of much beyond overexuberance.

The initial vitriolic reaction to Cruising, it seems, had more to do with its depiction, embellished a touch, of a significant chunk of the gay world with its legs up in the air. The flatteringly concentrated sexual activity in the bar scenes may be less of an issue nowadays because of the growing number of politically engaged queer people, unconcerned with assimilation and happy to sign off on anything that makes jittery straight people uncomfortable. But does this say enough about the movie’s sexual proclivities? There isn’t much talk about Cruising as a pageant of eroticized violence or as a film eager in its bloodiness for the titillated approval of its viewers. Were Friedkin’s murder scenes — overt visual associations of anal and violent penetration, blood sprayed across the screen in a porn booth — intended as an extension of his conception of S-M play? Would it be wrong for him to do so, or for the audience to be duly turned on?

I’ve always taken for granted that Cruising‘s two major scenes of police harassment were your garden-variety (though highly effective) critiques of injustice, a risk-minimizing way of approaching an unfamiliar culture. But now I’m wondering if these scenes were intended as an indictment of the police at all (was the unnecessarily long, squirm-inducing raid on an all-black bar in The French Connection intended as an indictment?) or if they were simply elaborate fetish scenarios, artistic expansions of the imagery and dynamics already well integrated into the S-M scene? Mr. Friedkin, are you trying to get us off? ——————- ——————-

Stormy Leather by Matt Sussman

When Cruising (1980) finally arrived in Bay Area theaters Feb. 15, 1980, San Francisco’s gay community had long been up in arms. The 1978 murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone were still fresh in many people’s minds. Gay bashing was still a regular occurrence. Word had spread through the gay press about efforts to disrupt the movie’s filming in New York, and the verdict was clear: Hollywood was profiting from gay murder.

In a December 1979 Oakland Tribune article, Konstantin Berlandt, a member of the group Stop the Movie Cruising and perhaps the film’s most vociferous adversary in local gay rags, called Cruising “a genocidal attack on gay people.” Two months later, the STMC helped organize a demonstration at the Transamerica Pyramid, protesting one of Transamerica’s subsidiaries — the film’s distributor, United Artists. On opening day hundreds of protesters picketed the St. Francis Theatre.

“I don’t remember what I thought of the whole thing other than it was kind of stupid and annoying,” recalls Marc Huestis, one of the cofounders of the city’s Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (now the SF International LGBT Film Festival). “As long as I’ve been here, there has always been the battle between the respectable gays and the fringe gays,” Huestis continues. “The respectable gays — many of whom I will say probably went to the leather bars to cruise after their protests — were all into showing a positive face.”

The issue of positive representation — and whether or not Cruising‘s problematic yoking of gay sadomasochism and serial murder warranted merely protest or outright censorship — was at the core of much of the debate. One reader wrote to San Francisco’s Sentinel, “It is ironic that we who have long been victims of prejudice and censorship should attempt to use these weapons of oppression against the movie.” In a February 1980 cover story, “The Men of Cruising,” in Mandate (the gay “international magazine of entertainment and Eros”), Rod Morgan, one of the gay extras in the film’s bar scenes, commented, “If the protesters want progay propaganda, let them get the money together and make their own movie.”

“The stakes of gay representation were very different at the time,” reflects Michael Lumpkin, artistic director of LGBT media nonprofit Frameline. “They were much higher because it was, like, ‘Hollywood hasn’t given us anything, and then they give us this?’ ” However, critic Scottie Ferguson, writing in the Advocate in April 1980, found a thrilling frisson in Cruising‘s portrayal of gay men and asked readers, “What Hollywood film has made the sexual electricity of the gay male seem so vibrant and visceral and unnerving?”

By 1995, when the Roxie Film Center revived Cruising, Ferguson’s observations had been somewhat vindicated. Mainstream LGBT film was taking off, and thanks to the risky work of directors like Gregg Araki and Tom Kalin, new queer cinema had confronted audiences with visceral and unnerving representations of violence-prone gay men.

In contrast to the largely positive reevaluations in the local press, David Ehrenstein implied in the Bay Area Reporter that the Roxie’s revival was tantamount to screening the notorious anti-Semitic film The Eternal Jew (1940). Representatives from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation showed up to hand out protest literature. “It was hilarious,” former Roxie programmer Elliot Lavine recalls. “There was a line around the block, and 90 percent of those waiting were in the leather crowd, and these GLAAD folks are trying to persuade them not to see the movie.”

Cruising has, to some extent, been defanged by the passage of time, its campier moments and macho signifiers embraced by a younger generation of queers. Clearly, though, the film still touches nerves: flame wars are being ignited as fast as they are being put out on Craigslist.com. And even for this gay fan of slasher movies, the film’s murder scenes are incomparably unsettling.

After a recent local media screening of the restored movie’s DVD release — at which director William Friedkin was present — DJ Bus Station John, whose clubs Tubesteak Connection and the Rod evoke the milieu of gay nightlife at the time Cruising was made, commented in an e-mail that “Friedkin’s present claim that contemporary audiences are more ‘sophisticated’ and therefore more receptive to Cruising, if not more friendly [to the film], doesn’t mitigate the damage done to our community at the time [of its release].”

CRUISING

Sept. 7–13, $6–$9

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

For Johnny Ray Huston’s interview with Cruising director William Friedkin, go to Pixel Vision at www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

Divatrocious

August 29, 2007

› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO OK, I figure I’ve got fewer than five readers this week because of, oh yeah, fucking Burning Man, so let’s drop all the usual hyperintellectual lip gloss and get intimate. It’s just you and me and the scent of a Mariah Carey M eau de parfum sample strip from a ripped-off copy of Glamour in the air between us. First, this just in: there’s actually a Cuban drag queen in Miami named Fidela Castrato. Topical! Second, screw the burners — for a couple of glorious weeks, the Bay is ours. Let’s get go-go-toasted. Let’s get ho-ho-noxious. Let’s get divatrocious. Below are some delish party picks for the fortnight ahead to keep us busy while others pluck playa dust from their sun-baked cracks. Take back the night! And check out the Noise Blog at www.sfbg.com, where I’ll be posting more Labor Day weekend and beyond kookiness. Just for us.

DMX KREW AT EGGS

Years ago I got my first glimmer of the juggernaut that the whole blank-parody white-kid electro-hop scene would become when I scored a CD from the Guardian‘s Johnny Ray Huston sometime in the late ’90s, put out by an awesome kid named Ed DMX, who vocoder-rapped over analog beats about rainbows and Adidases and probably unicorns — but who the hell knows, I just needed the CD cover to cut up … er, my nails. Anyway, it was awesome, and DMX is still alive! He’ll be stepping lively with his Krew at one of the most raucous parties in sodomyville, Eggs, with PJ Pooterhoots and Safety Scissors.

Thu/30 10 p.m.–2 a.m., $8

Mighty

119 Utah, SF

(415) 762-0151

www.might119.com

www.eggseggs.com

AMANDA LEPORE AT THE CRIB

The world’s most phenomenal piece of transgendered flesh-sculpture talks! Will we ever understand? Do we want to? The legendary inflatable club goddess is interviewed onstage by inflatable Asian tranny whore Monistat, at the hippest nightspot for underage East Bay queer kids of color into Bryan Adams techno remixes and Rihanna mash-ups (and who can cough up $15). Fearfully intriguing.

Thu/30, 9:30 p.m.–2 a.m., $15

715 Harrison, SF

18 and older

www.thecribsf.com

www.amandaleporeonline.com

JEFRODESIAC’S FOURTH ANNUAL FUCK YOU BURNING MAN

It’s on. DJs Jefrodesiac (Frisco Disco, Blow Up) and Funk (Dancemania) hit the decks with some fine, fine chaos, and Hot Tub, that crazy, bubbly girl electro-rappin’ trio from Oakland, perform live at this must-do event for non-naked-yoga-for-Gaia people.

Sun/2, 9 p.m.–2 a.m.

Free with RSVP at going.com/djfunk

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

MOTOR CITY MADNESS

What?! A Detroit-themed night at a queer club? Hells yeah. DJ Chicken hatches his latest feather-brained scheme at Truck, playing every genre of music that launched from tha D, which is, like, everything. (Hey, I’m from there — work it out.) Motown, techno, Iggy, Eminem, White Stripes, MC5 … need I go on? Also featuring — and if you’re not a Michigander, you won’t get it — Faygo cocktails! What, no Vernors? Chicken also tells me that Truck’s kitchen may also include a chili dog minus the dog (Coney Special), a burger smothered in ketchup (Murder Burger), or an onion ring on a hamburger bun (Spare Tire). Rawk.

Sept. 5, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., free

1900 Folsom, SF

(415) 252-0306

www.trucksf.com

LUCKY PIERRE HAIR PARTY

Gays in frilly panties! Strip poker! Mayhem! DJ Mickey Moniker from Vancouver (Uncanny, Pumpjack) joins DJ Donimo and DJ6 for a night of electro madness at Lucky Pierre — the steamy monthly at the Stud for three-way lovers and their lovers’ lovers. Plus, this month’s theme is "hair" (as in fluff it up, show it out, shave it off — not the musical, I dearly hope), so grab your giant novelty comb and hop to. Coco Canal hosts, Artemis Chase deals, and the toilets overflow. With love!

Sept. 7, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $7

399 Ninth St., SF

(415) 252-STUD

myspace.com/clubluckypierre

Class of 2007: Ship

August 29, 2007

QUOTE "We’re kind of getting our hands dirty in all the different ways we like to, sometimes making music, sometimes taking pictures of ourselves in underpants."

CLUBS Fresh Air Fiends Unlimited, Cross-Disciplinary Disciples

If Virgos are master catalysts at organizing earth energy into new ubergrounded forms, both functional and artful, Ship is all Virgo. The multitalented twosome, David Wilson and Frank Lyon, embody Virgocity and more, even on the cusp of certain show disaster, as when they put together a performance this spring in a World War II military tunnel in the Marin Headlands. Ship were just closing out the night, singing around a campfire as the cold air swept in and everyone gathered around the blaze, when bright lights suddenly began swirling at the other end of the tunnel, and someone whispered, "I think the police are here."

"It was a nice moment because everyone joined us in song and started singing the final lines, over and over and over," Wilson says while scouting for a good drawing locale on the brink of his "golden" 25th birthday Aug. 25 (he and Lyon, born Sept. 7, are planning a "little Virgo party" soon). "The police all sat waiting for it to end, and it just kept going. It felt eternal. When the last note rang out, they saw us sitting at the center of the group and gave us a $500 fine."

That gesture too was transformed into a beacon of possibility as attendees sent dollars, coins, and tokens of support to Ship in the weeks following. In the end, they gathered $350, "raising money for the park service."

Add in shows at Ship’s nature-based venues of choice — including a Mount Diablo musical campfire sleepover, an Oakland crater turned creekbed performance with Soft Circle, High Places, and Lucky Dragons, and the forthcoming Aug. 31 sing-along slumber party event for LoBot Gallery’s "Mystical Enchanting Forest" exhibit, which includes drawings by Wilson — and it’s clear that Ship’s free-floating, expansive vessel is unstoppable in its quest to connect and explore. Witness the vibe at Hotel Utah last week as the pair — who met dancing to boom-box jams at Wesleyan University in Connecticut — crooned awkward, winsome harmonies while pinning yarn to their white T-shirts and throwing the balls out into the audience, creating a web of performer-audience interconnectedness. Or behold artbooks by the twosome, working under the name Ribbons, including Sea Past Landscapes, which comprises Wilson’s drawings of his journeys from Cape Cod dunes to pebbly Bay beaches as well as a sweet accompanying CD of Ship’s seafaring songs.

All such endeavors will come together in the pair’s January 2008 exhibition at Eleanor Harwood Gallery, titled "Enter the Center: Our Gentle War with Entropy." The show will encompass Wilson’s drawings and collages, Ship music, Ribbons books, perhaps sounds from their sample- and beat-heavy project Maneuver, and, of course, music and dance performances. "It’s kind of about growing and feeling the forces of aging and time," Wilson explains. "I sometimes feel like I’m between being a kid and having a kid."

Now they’ll just have to find a way to work their love of yoga into the art and make "New Age deep yoga dance music" under the handle Yoga Lazer. Dancing and sing-alongs are all swell, but, as Wilson says, "If we can get everyone to do yoga, we’ll be at our peak." (Chun)

ribbonsribbons.blogspot.com

SHIP "What Fire Sounds Like" sleepover with Almaden, One Bird, and Yoga Lazer, with an invitation to sing your ultimate campfire cover. Fri/31, 8 p.m. doors, $5–$10. LoBot Gallery, 1800 Campbell, Oakl. www.lobotgallery.com>.

Class of 2007: J.Nash

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August 28, 2007
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SUPERLATIVE Most Likely to Get Nasty

QUOTE "I’m about to eat your ass like soul food."

If you’re looking for the future of hyphy, vocalist J.Nash is already there. Never mind that his versatile vocals link the two hottest Bay Area rap albums this year: Mistah FAB’s Da Baydestrian (SMC) and Turf Talk’s West Coast Vaccine (Sic Wid It). His own album, Hyphy Love (Soul Boy/Urban Life), is a genre unto itself, a fusion of hyphy and R&B that Nash calls R&Bay. Hailing from East Oakland’s Murder Dubs — otherwise known as the 20s and home to Beeda Weeda, who appears on Hyphy Love — Nash used to rap, but, he points out, "Everyone was rappin’, so I switched," employing skills learned primarily at church. Nonetheless, apart from a brief stint as a member of vocal group Rewind, he says, "I always messed with rappers, like Laroo and Keak."

Nash’s date with destiny, however, was meeting up-and-coming rapper FAB, who appeared on Nash’s 2005 out-the-trunk album, Real Man (Soul Boy), shortly before blowing up with Son of a Pimp (Thizz Ent., 2005). "I thought I was doing him a favor," Nash says with a laugh, acknowledging how much the association with FAB boosted his career.

FAB protégé Rob E also produced half of Hyphy Love, letting his hair down even more than on Baydestrian. These tracks are fleshed out with productions by heavyweights like Droop-E and Sean T, whose beat on "Hyphy Dancin’" transforms the sound with a throwback ’80s paint job, resulting in one of the disc’s most unique songs.

Lest anyone think Hyphy Love is all hyphy and no love, Nash delivers a number of excellent, more conventional slow-jam-style ballads, with a flexible tenor that moves up to alto and down to baritone. As an artist who writes his own material, Nash never suffers from the lyrical banality typical of contemporary R&B. Like R. Kelly, whose work he admires, Nash brings out the nasty. There’s something hilarious about hearing the line "I’m sucking on those big ol’ boobs" delivered with the agonized passion of a slow jam. It’s a much more realistic thought in a sexual situation than the usual "Hold you in my arms" crap.

Nash has already started to generate buzz thanks to a lo-fi video for his advance single, "Cupcakin," with J-Stalin, which has scored more than 35,000 hits on YouTube and has been cross-posted all over the Net. A second, more professional video for the more hyphy "Show You Love" has just debuted. Expect live shows in clubs around the Bay.

"Once you see me perform," Nash says with a rapper’s swagger, "it’s over. I got you. You’re going to become a fan." (Garrett Caples)

Supes should run redevelopment

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August 22, 2007
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EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, scrambling to blunt community criticism of the Redevelopment Agency’s activities in Bayview–Hunters Point, has appointed a new agency director, Fred Blackwell. But the problem was not with the top of the agency (the outgoing director, Marcia Rosen, was neither corrupt nor incompetent) but rather with the entire direction that redevelopment has taken in San Francisco under several generations of mayors. It’s time to take seriously the suggestion of Sup. Ross Mirkarimi — that the agency be taken out of the mayor’s control and given to the district-elected supervisors.

Redevelopment is a powerful tool that has been terribly misused all over the nation, and the scars in San Francisco are real and lasting. A rapacious Redevelopment Agency determined to wipe out low-income housing devastated huge swaths of the Western Addition and South of Market in the 1960s, and the communities still haven’t fully recovered. Some people argue that the entire program should be abolished — that redevelopment should be consigned to the dustbin of bad urban history.

But at a time when it’s terribly hard for cities like San Francisco to raise money for affordable housing, basic infrastructure (see accompanying editorial), and ambitious programs like public power, the legal advantages of redevelopment are too good to give up. A state-chartered redevelopment agency sells bonds and raises money with nothing to back up the bonds except the projected increase in property taxes expected from improving a blighted area. The city can’t do that on its own; if it could, then raising, say, a billion dollars for affordable housing would be relatively simple.

In theory, the redevelopment agency could also fund municipal wi-fi, public power, and all sorts of other major projects.

The problem, of course, is that a lot of people in low-income neighborhoods don’t trust redevelopment — and given the history, it’s hard to blame them. But part of the essential problem with the Redevelopment Agency in past years has been its utter lack of accountability; the Western Addition and SoMa plans were drawn up in secret and executed with little regard for community input.

As long as San Francisco supervisors are elected by district, they will be, by definition, more accountable, closer to the neighborhoods, and less corrupted by money than any citywide elected official. Giving the board control over redevelopment is a far better model.

Plenty of cities allow their legislature to run redevelopment. The city councils of both Oakland and Berkeley also function as the directors of those cities’ redevelopment agencies. It’s time to move San Francisco into that column. *

Limber up

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August 21, 2007
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Are you looking for edginess? Do you prefer subtlety to pizzazz? The upcoming dance calendar has it all, however exotic or traditional your tastes. Fortunately, presenters seem to be aware of the Bay Area’s knowledgeable and supportive dancegoing audience. Cal Perfomances’ monthlong focus on Twyla Tharp — with the American Ballet Theatre and the Joffrey and Miami City ballets — and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ presentation of international companies whose work circles around big ideas (reality, peace, identity) are particularly noteworthy. Two smaller venues deserve equal attention: ODC Theater, long a stalwart supporter of local companies, has restarted an excellent presenting series of touring artists who can’t fill larger spaces; and CounterPULSE, which, in addition to showcasing fresh works, offers ongoing postperformance conversations between dancers and their audience.

Nora Chipaumire Chipaumire left the Bay Area to join Urban Bush Women, the country’s preeminent African American all-female dance group. Nobody who saw her last performance at ODC could possibly have forgotten the fierce intensity of the statuesque Zimbabwean’s dancing. She returns with Chimurenga, her one-woman multimedia show in which she meditates on her and her country’s history.

Sept. 9. ODC Theater, 3153 17th St., SF. (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org

Erika Shuch Performance Project Shuch is never afraid of pushing sensitive buttons. She also does her homework and often works with collaborators. Her new 51802 looks at how incarceration imprisons and liberates those left behind.

Sept. 13–29. Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia, SF. (415) 626-3311, www.theintersection.org

Chris Black Black really wanted to be a baseball player, but she ended up a dancer-choreographer of witty and theatrically savvy dance theater works. In her newest, Pastime, she gets to be both, with nine innings, nine dancers, and three weekends of free shows.

Sept. 15–30. Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero at Washington, SF; Precita Park, Precita at Harrison, SF; Golden Gate Park, Peacock Meadow, JFK near Fell entrance, SF. www.potrzebie.com

Mark Morris Dance Group Morris choreographing to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has to be either sublime or a travesty. By all accounts, he has succeeded where just about everyone else (except George Balanchine) has failed. The West Coast premiere of the tripartite Mozart Dances will surely enthrall the Morris faithful; it may even convert a few straggling skeptics.

Sept. 20–23. Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Lower Sproul Plaza (near Bancroft at Telegraph), Berk. (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.net

Smuin Ballet One of Michael Smuin’s great accomplishments was the encouragement he gave to performers whose dances could not be more different from his own. Amy Seiwert is an exceptionally gifted choreographer whose reach and expertise have been growing exponentially. Her new piece will be the seventh for the company, joining works by Smuin and Kirk Peterson.

Oct. 5–14. Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.smuinballet.org

Armitage Gone! Dance In the ’80s, Karole Armitage’s steely-edged choreography to punk scores shook up the New York dance world. Now, after 15 years of self-imposed exile in Europe, she has come home. For her company’s Bay Area debut, she brings the enthusiastically acclaimed Ligeti Essays and Time Is the Echo of an Axe Within a Wood.

Oct. 13–14. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org

Oakland Ballet Company At 72, Oakland Ballet’s Ronn Guidi won’t give up. He is bringing the company back with a splendid, all–French music program: Marc Wilde’s Bolero, set to Maurice Ravel; Vaslav Nijinsky’s The Afternoon of a Faun, to Claude Debussy; and Guidi’s Trois Gymnopédies, to Erik Satie.

Oct. 20. Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakl. (510) 763-7308, www.rgfpa.org

Marc Bamuthi Joseph When Joseph’s Scourge premiered at the YBCA two years ago, it was impressive though uneven. No doubt this hip-hop-inspired — and by now heavily traveled — look at family and society from a Haitian perspective has since found its groove.

Oct. 25–Nov. 3. ODC Theater, 3153 17th St., SF. (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org

Lines Contemporary Ballet Alonzo King opens his company’s 25th season with two world premieres inspired by classical music traditions that allow for improvisation, baroque and Hindustani. Freedom within strictures — leave it to King to find their common ground where none seems to exist.

Nov. 2–11. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 987-2787, www.linesballet.org

Faustin Linyekula/Les Studio Kabako For his return engagement, the Congolese choreographer is bringing his Festival of Lies, an installation–fiesta piece that both celebrates and mourns what his country has become. The Nov. 10 show runs from 6 p.m. to midnight and includes local performers.

Nov. 8–10. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 987-2787, www.ybca.org

Fall Arts: Sing or swim

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August 21, 2007
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AUG. 28

Aesop Rock, None Shall Pass (Def Jux) We’ll see if ‘Sop has lost his edge livin’ in ol’ Frisky. Blockhead and Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle take a pass on the nervy rhymes.

Akon, Konvicted (Konvict/Upfront/SRC/Universal Motown) Konvinced? Or just plain a-korny?

Evelyn Champagne King, Open Book (RNB/Jaggo/Fontana) The disco queen who was discovered while cleaning the offices of Philly International brings “Shame” into the 21st century.

Ledisi, Lost and Found (Verve Forecast) The local singer’s debut for the true diva cathedral of all jazz labels has been three years in the making.

Liars, Liars (Mute) Work that skirt.

Noreaga, Noreality (Babygrande) Wake me up when Noreality TV has finished its broadcast day. Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Jadakiss, Three 6 Mafia, David Banner, and a cast of thousands trade off on enabling duty.

Scorpions, Humanity — Hour 1 (New Door/UME) Oh, the inhumanity; Billy Corgan scorps out new turf.

Yung Joc, Hustlenomics (Block/Bad Boy South) Joc’ed up on java with the first single, “Coffee Shop,” off this Neptunes-, Fixxers-, and Gorilla Zoe–produced disc.

SEPT. 4

Calvin Harris, I Created Disco (Almost Gold) The brazen Scot is irreverent enough to lay claim to inventing the big D, the buzzword of this year and the year before.

SEPT. 11

Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam (Domino) Helmed by frequent Sun City Girls producer Scott Colburn, their eighth album’s nine songs include one dedicated to Al Green.

B5, Don’t Talk, Just Listen (Bad Boy) Diddy’s answer to the Backstreet Boys unknowingly use the favorite phone phrase of the Weepy-Voiced Killer as the title for their album.

Dirty Projectors, Rise Above (Dead Oceans) Another punk machismo-reclamation project? Queerific art rockers team with Grizzly Bear playas to rewrite Black Flag’s Damaged — from memory and with a hearty helping of cracked experifolk whimsy.

50 Cent, Curtis (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope) The artist also known as a form of VitaminWater that tastes like grape Kool-Aid continues his marketing onslaught.

Go! Team, Proof of Youth (Sub Pop) Will their first single, “Grip Like a Vice,” hook till it hurts?

Jenny Hoyston, Isle Of (Southern) The Erase Errata guitarist finds paradise far from the dashboard blight.

Modeselektor, Happy Birthday! (BPitch Control) Genre-hopping Berlin duo go the celebrity cameo route, enlisting the vox of Thom Yorke and others.

Pinback, Autumn of the Seraphs (Touch and Go) Will this top Pinback’s last album, Summer in Abbadon, which sold more than 80,000 copies? Indie music sellers wanna know!

Qui, Love’s Miracle (Ipecac) Jesus Lizard David Yow’s quid pro quo — with covers of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” and Frank Zappa’s “Willie the Pimp.”

Simian Mobile Disco, Attack Decay Sustain Release (Interscope) I got my pulverizing bass in your acid keyboard scrunchies!

Kanye West, Graduation (Roc-A-Fella) West’s mom has been caught saying that this is his best album ever. Making or breaking the case: West has said that Lil’ Wayne will rap over a song titled “Barry Bonds.”

SEPT. 18

Babyface, Playlist (Mercury) The onetime close, personal friend of Bill just wants do covers, like “Fire and Rain,” “Time in a Bottle,” and — hoo boy — “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

James Blunt, All the Lost Souls (Custard/Atlantic) U-g-l-y, this ain’t got no alibi.

Chamillionaire, Ultimate Victory (Chamillitary/Universal Motown) The H-town star’s long-delayed sophomore effort has a mammoth supporting cast even by commercial-rap standards; it kicks off with a single featuring Slick Rick.

The Donnas, Bitchin’ (Purple Feather/Redeye) Named after the fluffy puppies overrunning their studio?

Eve, Here I Am (Aftermath/Interscope) Had anyone been looking? Listening in are producers Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Swizz Beatz, and Pharrell Williams.

Rogue Wave, Asleep at Heaven’s Gate (Brushfire/Universal) Just don’t drift off around Marshall Applewhite while wearing black-and-white Nikes. A new bass player — Patrick Abernathy — and a new label for the locals.

Angie Stone, The Art of Love and War (Stax/Concord) The road back from VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club may yet be one to salvation, since it’s passing through the holy land of Stax.

SEPT. 25

Devendra Banhart, Smokey Rolls down Thunder Canyon (XL) Gael García Bernal sings on one track, and Vashti Bunyan sings on two; Noah Georgeson produces a collection that is supposed to flit from Gilberto Gil breezes to Jackson 5–style pop.

The Cave Singers, Invitation Songs (Matador) Pretty Girls Make Graves–Murder City Devils, Hint Hint, and Cobra High grads calcify in intriguing country-folk shapes.

Keyshia Cole, Just like You (A&M/Interscope) Two years on, it’s clear that Oakland girl Cole’s The Way It Is was the best R&B debut since What’s the 411? Through the sheer intense focus of her singing, she rescues overexposed Missy and Lil’ Kim on the first single here.

José González, In Our Nature (Mute) Yes way, José. The long wait for the follow-up to Veneer is over. González recorded this in his hometown over a three-week period after obsessing about today’s religion and (lack of) ethics.

PJ Harvey, White Chalk (Island) Peej draws in longtime collaborator Eric Drew Feldman and Jim White of the Dirty Three.

Iron and Wine, The Shepherd’s Dog (Sub Pop) Here’s hoping three’s the charm for Sam Beam.

Jagged Edge, Baby Makin’ Project (So So Def/Island) Yet another case for population control.

Mick Jagger, The Very Best of Mick Jagger (Rhino UK) It’s semiofficial: the best of Mick Jagger is worse than the worst of the Rolling Stones.

Bettye LaVette, The Scene of the Crime (Anti-) A singer who can bring out the black-and-blue tone of that title, especially because the scene of the crime is Muscle Shoals, Ala., where she returned to record this album. She’s backed by Drive-by Truckers.

Matt Pond PA, Last Light (Altitude) Neko Case and Kelly Hogan hold a candle.

Múm, Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy, Let Your Crooked Hands Be Holy (Fat Cat) Mum’s the word?

Meshell Ndegeocello, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams (Decca) Connecting her MySpace page to the gender-bending edges of her cover of Bill Withers’s “Who Is He (and What Is He to You?),” you might say the man of her dreams is Miles Davis.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand (Rounder) Why does my mouth fill with sand when I think about this project?

Queen Latifah, Trav’lin’ Light (Verve) Latifah steps to a song that will always be owned by Billie Holiday — and sings some other songs as well — on her debut album for one of Lady Day’s main labels today.

Scott Walker, And Who Shall Go to the Ball? (4AD UK) The enigma returns more quickly than usual, albeit with a four-movement instrumental mini-LP composed for a dance piece.

Will.i.am, Songs about Girls (Interscope) The Black Eyed Pea with the lamest name loves the ladies, egged on by Snoop Dogg.

OCT. 2

Cassidy, B.A.R.S. (Full Surface/J) The Philly battle rapper rebounds from injury and lockup and leans on Bone Thugs, John Legend, and others for faith.

Annie Lennox, Songs of Mass Destruction (Arista) No doubt about it, “Why?” can be very irritating. But this title suggests she’s really amped up the damage inflicted by her tunes.

OCT. 9

Band of Horses, Cease to Begin (Sub Pop) Ben Bridwell expresses his love for YouTube video directors on this Phil Eks–produced second LP.

Dengue Fever, Untitled (M80 Music/NAIL/Allegro) On recordings, they’re sometimes glorious, sometimes not — will the third time be a charm for the group led by Chhom Nimol’s dynamic voice?

The Fiery Furnaces, Widow City (Thrill Jockey) The prolific sibs thrust forth their sixth full-length, emboldened by engineer John McEntire of Tortoise.

The Hives, The Black and White Album (Interscope) The ebullient Swedes will be donning black after a dozen or so shows opening for Maroon 5.

Jennifer Lopez, Brave (Epic) Are listeners courageous or is she?

Robert Pollard, Coast to Coast Carpet of Love and Standard Gargoyle Decisions (Merge) Two releases in one day — guided by bipolar voices?

She Wants Revenge, This Is Forever (Geffen) Let’s hope not.

Amy Winehouse, Frank (Island) Pre–US juggernaut album by the singer in rehab, for anyone who doesn’t think she’s overexposed or wouldn’t rather look at Ronnie Spector and listen to Ruth Brown.

OCT. 16

Nicole Scherzinger, Her Name Is Nicole …(Interscope) …and she’s the Pussycat Doll whom you can tell apart from the other Pussycat Dolls — I think. She falls in seconds-long love at first sight with prospective members of her group during auditions, if the trashiest TV show in recent memory is to be believed.

OCT. 23

Ashanti, The Declaration (The Inc.) I’ll flabbergast many by saying that Ashanti has served up more quality hit singles than the other R&B diva releasing an album this week.

Alicia Keys, As I Am (J) She can sing, she can play, she can sell Proactiv Solution like few others. But will she ever truly let that voice loose?

OCT. 30

Backstreet Boys, Unbreakable (Jive) Do we really want it that way again? Can they give it to us that way? One thing’s for sure — this should give Chelsea Handler months of comedy material.

Chris Brown, Exclusive (Jive) Yeah, he’s cuter than kitten posters. But his appearance in a tribute to the Godfather of Soul at last year’s Grammy Awards verged on sacrilege.

NOV. 13

Wu-Tang Clan, The 8 Diagrams (Street Recordings) Their first album in six years — thus their first post-ODB recording — takes its title from the Shaw brothers’ film Eight Diagram Pole Fighter; in tune with the George Harrison revival, it includes a cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

NOV. 20

Six Organs of Admittance, Shelter from the Ash (Drag City) The Redwood Curtain’s guitar-wielding heir to John Fahey breaks out a new LP, said to be smokin’.<\!s>*

Bay Area fall fairs and festivals

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August 21, 2007
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Summer may technically be on the outs, but don’t put away your baggies, huarache sandals, and that bushy, bushy blond hairdo just yet, all you Gidgets and Big Kahunas out there: it’s still Surfin’ USA in the Bay. Hell, summer doesn’t even start in San Francisco until September at the earliest. You can wax up the board and get busy, stuff the kidlets into the Woody, and hit one of the bevy of cool fiestas listed below, or maybe just lay out on a towel in Dolores Park, waiting for a wayward Lothario or Lothariette to rub cocoa butter on your fleshy hind regions. Ah, how good do we have it in the Sucka Free City?

AUG. 25

Jazzy Tomatoes Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center at MLK Jr. Way, Berkeley; (510) 548-3333, www.ecologycenter.org. 10:30am-3pm. Free. This collaboration between the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival series and the Berkeley Farmers’ Market features the sounds of local mandolinist Mike Marshall and Brazilian pianist Jovino Santos Neto, plus the flavors of Venus Restaurant’s Ann Murray.

AUG. 25-26

Bodega Seafood Art and Wine Festival Watts Ranch, 16855 Bodega Ave, Bodega; (707) 824-8717, www.winecountryfestivals.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm. $8-12. The sleepy village where Alfred Hitchcock filmed The Birds hosts this celebration of the best beer, wine, and seafood California has to offer. Sip on a Cline Cellars pinot noir and enjoy albacore wrapped in bacon while taking in the sounds of Marcia Ball’s Texas-style roadhouse blues.

Golden Gate Renaissance Festival Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; (415) 354-1773, www.sffaire.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm. $5-15. Stilt walkers, fire-eaters, jesters, jousters, knights, peasant wenches, and Shakespeare fetishists abound in the fourth installment of this medieval fair. Amid the feasting and storytelling, you’ll get a chance to practice your chivalry and maybe ride a horse.

AUG. 26

Arab Cultural Festival County Fair Building, Ninth Ave and Lincoln, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.arabculturalcenter.org. 10am-7pm. $2-5. Hikayatna (Our stories) is the theme for this year’s Arab Cultural Festival, featuring a bazaar with jewelry, henna, and Arab cuisine, as well as assorted folk and contemporary musical performances.

Taste of Marin St. Vincent’s School for Boys, 1 St. Vincent Dr., San Rafael; (415) 663-9667, www.marinorganic.org. 4-10pm. $150. Dedicated to supporting and promoting the exquisite food that is grown and produced in Marin, this event features a silent auction, chances to meet the farmers and chefs, and an elaborate sit-down dinner. Soulstress Maria Muldaur provides the musical entertainment.

AUG. 31-SEPT. 2

Monterey Bay Reggae Fest Monterey County Fairgrounds, 2004 Fairground Road, Monterey; (831) 394-6534, www.mbayreggaefest.net. The sprawling Monterey County Fairgrounds plays host to this annual festival featuring the liveliest of modern reggae acts. Eek-a-Mouse, Mighty Diamonds, and you-know-who’s brother, Richard Marley Booker, are just a sample of this year’s lineup.

SEPT. 1-3

Art and Soul Oakland Frank Ogawa Plaza and City Center, 14th St. and Clay, Oakl; (510) 444-CITY, www.artandsouloakland.com. 11am-6pm. $5. The seventh incarnation of this annual downtown Oakland festival includes dance performances, lots of art to view and purchase, an expanded Family Fun Zone, and a notably eclectic musical lineup: big-name performers include Lucinda Williams, Against Me!, the Legendary Fillmore Slim, Johnny Rawls, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.

Sausalito Art Festival Army Corps of Engineers-Bay Model Visitor Center and Marinship Park, Sausalito; (415) 331-3757, www.sausalitoartfestival.org. Check Web site for times. $5-20. The Sausalito waterfront will play host to hundreds of artists’ exhibits as well as family entertainment and top-notch live music from the likes of Jefferson Starship and the Marshall Tucker Band.

SEPT. 1-23

Free Shakespeare in the Park Presidio parade ground, SF; (415) 558-0888, www.sfshakes.org. Sat, 7:30pm; Sun and Labor Day, 2:30pm. Free. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream gets a brilliant rendition under the direction of Kenneth Kelleher on the outdoor stage. Families fostering budding lit and theater geeks should take note.

SEPT. 3

Cowgirlpalooza El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com. 3-9pm. $10. This sure-to-be-twangy evening on El Rio’s patio features music by the most compellingly country-fried female musicians around, including Kitty Rose, Starlene, Axton Kincaid, Burning Embers, 77 El Deora, and Four Year Bender.

SEPT. 5-9

San Francisco Electronic Music Festival Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida, SF; www.sfemf.org. 8:30pm. $12-16. The seventh in an annual series of weeklong electronica parties. Fred Frith, Annea Lockwood, Univac, and David Behrman round out this year’s lineup.

SEPT. 8

911 Power to the Peaceful Festival Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF; (415) 865-2170, www.powertothepeaceful.org. 11am-5pm. Free. This event calling for international human rights and an end to bombing features art and cultural exhibits and a talk with Amy Goodman, as well as performances by Michael Franti, the Indigo Girls, and DJ Spooky.

SEPT. 8-9

Bay Area Pet Fair Marin Center, 10 Ave of the Flags, San Rafael; (415) 229-3174, www.bayareapetfair.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm. $5-7. This event does double duty as a celebration of companion animals and a venue for a massive pet adopt-athon, so bring the kids and the dog.

Brews on the Bay Jeremiah O’Brien, Pier 45, SF; www.sanfranciscobrewersguild.org. 12-4:30pm. $8-40. Beer tasting, live music, and food abound at the San Francisco Brewers Guild’s annual on-deck showcase.

Chocolate Festival Ghirardelli Square, 900 N Point, SF; www.ghirardellisq.com. 12-5pm. Free. An indisputably fun weekend at the square includes chocolate goodness from more than 30 restaurant and bakery booths, various activities for kids and families, and a hands-free Earthquake Sundae Eating Contest.

SEPT. 9

Solano Avenue Stroll Solano between San Pablo and the Alameda in Berkeley and Albany; (510) 527-5358, www.solanoavenueassn.org. 10am-6pm. Free. The long-running East Bay block party features a clown-themed parade, art cars, dunk tanks, and assorted artsy offerings of family fun, along with the requisite delicious food and musical entertainment.

SEPT. 15-16

Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival Old Mill Park, Mill Valley; (415) 381-8090, www.mvfaf.org. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-5pm. $7. Dig this juried show featuring original fine art, including jewelry, woodwork, painting, ceramics, and clothing.

Wisdom Festival Fort Mason Center, SF. (415) 452-0369, www.wisdomfestival.com. Sat, 10am-8pm; Sun, 10am-7pm. $8-$55. This fest features interactive panels, workshops, symposiums, and lectures, all geared toward your inner Shirley MacLaine.

SEPT. 22-23

Autumn Moon Festival Grant between California and Broadway and Pacific between Stockton and Kearney, SF; (415) 982-6306, www.moonfestival.org. 11am-6pm. Free. At one of Chinatown’s biggest annual gatherings you can see an acrobatic troupe, martial artists, street vendors, and, of course, lots of moon cakes. I like the pineapple the best.

SEPT. 28-30

A Taste of Greece Annunciation Cathedral, 245 Valencia, SF; (415) 864-8000, www.sfgreekfoodfestival.org. Call or check Web site for time. $5. Annunciation Cathedral’s annual fundraising event is an all-out food festival where you can steep yourself in Greek dishes, wine tasting, and the sounds of Greek Compania.

SEPT. 29-30

World Veg Festival San Francisco County Fair Building, Ninth Avenue and Lincoln, Golden Gate Park, SF; (415) 273-5481. www.sfvs.org. 10am-6pm. $5. For those afraid of hamburgers, this event features speakers, live entertainment, and local cuisine of the meatless variety.

SEPT. 30

Folsom Street Fair Folsom between Seventh and 12th streets, SF; www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm. Free. The world’s largest leather gathering, coinciding with Leather Pride Week, features a new Leather Women’s Area along with myriad fetish and rubber booths. Musical performers include Ladytron and Imperial Teen, and comedian Julie Brown also will appear.

OCT. 3

Shuck and Swallow Oyster Challenge Ghirardelli Square, West Plaza, 900 North Point, SF; (415) 929-1730. 5pm. Free to watch, $25 per duo to enter. How many oysters can two people scarf down in 10 minutes? Find out as pairs compete at this most joyous of spectacles, then head to the oyster and wine pairing afterward at McCormick and Kuleto’s Seafood Restaurant, also in Ghirardelli Square.

OCT. 4-9

Fleet Week Various locations, SF; (650) 599-5057, www.fleetweek.us. Cries of “It’s a plane!” and “Now there’s a boat!” shall abound at San Francisco’s impressive annual gathering. Along with ship visits, there’ll be a big air show by the Blue Angels and the Viper West Coast Demonstration Team. And for the lonely among us, North Beach will be assholes and elbows with horny sailors and jarheads.

OCT. 4-14

Mill Valley Film Festival CinéArts at Sequoia, 25 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; 142 Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley; Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (925) 866-9559, www.mvff.com. Check Web site for times and prices. Documentaries and features of both the independent and international persuasion get screen time at this festival, the goal of which is insight into the various cultures of filmmaking.

OCT. 5-6

San Francisco Zinefest CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; (415) 750-0991, www.sfzinefest.com. Fri, 2-8pm; Sat, 11am-7pm. Free. Appreciate the continuing vitality of the DIY approach at this two-day event featuring workshops and more than 40 exhibitors.

OCT. 5-7

Berkeley Juggling and Unicycling Festival King Middle School, 1781 Rose, Berkeley; www.berkeleyjuggling.org. Fri, 5-10pm; Sat, 9am-10pm; Sun, 9am-5pm. Check Web site for prices. More balls than hands. More feet than wheels.

Pacific Pinball Exposition Marin County Civic Center Exhibition Hall, San Rafael; www.nbam.org/ppexpo. Fri 2-10pm; Sat-Sun, 10am-12am. $20-35. Focusing on vintage machines, this inaugural festival promises to extol all things pinball. I think you get in free if you’re a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who can play a mean pinball.

OCT. 6-13

Litquake Various locations, SF; www.litquake.org. San Francisco’s annual literary maelstrom naturally features Q&As and readings by a gazillion local authors, including Daniel Handler, Jane Smiley, Dave Eggers, and Ann Patchett. The gang is honoring local writer Armistead Maupin with a lifetime achievement award.

OCT. 11-14

Oktoberfest by the Bay Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.oktoberfestbythebay.com. Check Web site for times. $25. One of the few places your lederhosen won’t look silly is the biggest Oktoberfest left of Berlin, where the Chico Bavarian Band will accompany German food and a whole lotta beer.<\!s>*

WOW, a slice of Black Rock City

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August 16, 2007
0

By Scribe
These are frantic days for many Burning Man artists, a stressful race to the finish line that is next week’s departure for Black Rock City. I got the call from my old camp, Opulent Temple, that they needed some extra minions so I agreed to help out with their impossibly ambitious project: a massive 10-foot tall steel “star” stage (which is actually five stages, all cut and welded from scratch) and a huge open air bamboo dome. I’d already put in a few recent work days on the stage at the Box Shop on Hunter’s Point (where I’d spent more than nine months reporting this story a couple years ago), so I opted to head out to the West Oakland Warehouse (WOW) to do some dome work and peak in on some other projects, particularly “Crude Awakening” by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito, who are most widely known around SF as the sculptors of Passage, which now resides near the Ferry Building.
It was like stepping into another world.

Their neighborhood

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August 14, 2007
0

› amanda@sfbg.com

Some interesting mail landed in the boxes of Potrero Hill residents last week: flyers with a photograph of industrial stacks spewing plumes of pollution. They read, "Potrero Hill doesn’t need three more power plants in our neighborhood."

There’s a handy clip-out membership card to join the Close It! Coalition, from which you can "find out more about the city’s rush to judgment and their plan to put more power plants in our neighborhood." The return address on the card is 77 Beale, which isn’t in "our" neighborhood at all.

It’s the address of the downtown headquarters of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

The utility, in the guise of a grassroots community organization, is opposing the contract that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is currently hammering out with a private company, J-Power USA, to build a new 145-megawatt, natural gas–<\d>fired power plant on a four-acre plot at 25th and Maryland streets. The plant would be owned and operated by J-Power for a period of 10 to 12 years, after which the title would turn over to the city.

This so-called peaker plant, one of three that would run when San Francisco’s power needs exceed the normal load, would be cleaner burning than Mirant’s dirty old Potrero Hill power plant, which city officials and environmentalists want closed. Mirant’s "Reliability Must Run" contract with the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) could be terminated once the three peakers (whose generators the city received years ago through a lawsuit settlement) are built, according to the SFPUC.

Though PG&E, which has a questionable environmental record, claims to be against the peaker plants for pollution reasons, public power advocates say this is really opposition to the city owning its power sources. "PG&E has finally gone over the line. This is a good thing because this is so egregious and so transparent," said Joe Boss, a Dogpatch resident who received the mailer. "They’ll do all they can do to kill public power in San Francisco."

Boss and a group of neighborhood activists who support the construction of the peakers have put together their own mailer countering the claims of the Close It! Coalition, which has been dormant lately but was active prior to 2006, when community activists were fighting for the shuttering of PG&E’s Hunters Point power plant.

Other anti–<\d>public power literature also circulated recently in supervisorial district 11, where the California Urban Issues Project sent a flyer urging residents to oppose Community Choice Aggregation, the city’s gradual public power plan that is focused mostly on renewable energy sources. The mailer was apparently sent before the Board of Supervisors voted to approve the plan, which it did in June.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who coauthored the CCA legislation with Sup. Tom Ammiano, called the CUIP flyer "shameful" and told the Guardian, "This is signature PG&E, but it’s not just PG&E. It now very well implicates the [Gavin] Newsom administration either with complicity or silence." The CUIP board includes Committee on Jobs director Nathan Nayman, small-business advocate and Newsom appointee Jordanna Thigpen, Democratic Party political consultant Rich Schlackman, Golden Gate Restaurant Association executive director Kevin Westlye, and other Newsom supporters.

Newsom signed the CCA legislation but tacked on a letter vaguely expressing concerns about the plan. He recently authored a letter to Cal-ISO expressing his support for the peaker project. While PG&E is opposing peakers here, it has plans under way to build at least two farther south, near communities it is also battling.

The San Joaquin Valley Power Authority has filed a formal complaint against PG&E with the California Public Utilities Commission regarding how the utility is conducting itself as the community moves forward with a plan for public power.

The SJVPA is a group of 11 cities and two counties, representing about 300,000 citizens, that has filed a plan with the CPUC to purchase its power through a CCA plan. Assembly Bill 117, written by Sen. Carole Migden when she was in the State Assembly and made law in 2004, allows communities to act as their own wholesale power customers and purchase electricity for residents.

San Francisco, Marin, Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville are working on CCA plans, but the SJVPA is the furthest along. With CCA, power is still transmitted by utility companies, but residents pay their electricity bills to the city. The SJVPA plans to build its own 500 MW power plant — which PG&E also opposes, claiming studies show it isn’t necessary — and has issued a request for proposals from interested companies for 400 MW of renewable energy. It estimates citizens would save about 5 percent with CCA.

But representatives of PG&E have been attending city council meetings in the area and even holding their own informational workshops at which they refute elements of the CCA plan.

In a lengthy memo sent to a Hanford City Council member and very similar in tone and content to one distributed to San Francisco nonprofit organizations a couple of months ago, PG&E offers misleading claims such as "Over 30 percent of PG&E’s supply comes from a diverse portfolio of renewable energy … about 20 percent comes from PG&E’s large hydro system, and approximately 12 percent comes from smaller renewable generation sources."

But according to state law, a large hydro system does not qualify as a renewable energy source — a rule the utility doesn’t apply to itself but is quick to point out a paragraph later when it attacks the CCA plan for renewable energy.

The SJVPA complaint details several examples of PG&E spokespeople cautioning against the plan in local media and at public meetings. CEO Peter Darbee even penned an editorial for the Fresno Bee in which he wrote, "The fundamental problem with the program is that the numbers don’t add up," a statement he attempted to clarify with unsourced data showing that rates will go up even if the CCA plan says they won’t. Darbee went on to say that PG&E is just looking out for the best interests of the people.

The Fresno City Council recently voted 4–<\d>3 not to join the SJVPA, a close vote that "was based in large part on PG&E raising questions," said David Orth, the general manager of the Kings River Conservation District, which is overseeing the implementation of the CCA plan. "That is their intent, frankly — to clutter the discussion and decision-making field with a lot of uncertainties and threats of complexity."

Fresno would have been the largest consumer of power in the coalition, using 45 percent of its electricity.

Orth said obfuscation has been the utility’s tool, coupled with reassurances that power "is too difficult for you to understand, so accept the status quo."

He said PG&E hasn’t been entirely factual with its advice and cited a specific example in which PG&E claimed that if a community opted out of CCA after joining, it could be liable for as much as $11 million. "It was a fabricated number, and it was a fabricated scenario, but it lead certain council members to believe there was a risk we weren’t explaining," Orth said.

Lawyers representing the SJVPA say the utility is using ratepayer funds for its anti-CCA marketing, and that’s a violation of the CPUC’s rules. AB 117 states clearly that utilities should cooperate fully with municipalities enacting CCA plans. In a December 2005 decision seeking to clarify how CCAs will be implemented, the CPUC wrote, "There is little if any benefit from permitting a battle for market share between CCAs and utilities. Of course, we expect utilities to answer questions about their own rates and services and the process by which utilities will cut-over customers to the CCA. However, if they provide [sic] affirmatively contact customers in efforts to retain them or otherwise engage in actively marketing services, they should conduct those activities at shareholder expense. We do not believe utility ratepayers should be forced to support such marketing."

"SJVPA is informed and believes and thereon alleges that these marketing and related activities were undertaken at PG&E’s ratepayer expense to compete against SJVPA," the authority’s lawyers wrote in the complaint to the CPUC.

Even if PG&E is drawing from the proper budget for the marketing, the appearance that it isn’t needs to be addressed, and the SJVPA complaint further calls on the CPUC to clarify its rules on what utilities can and can’t do. Local customer representatives, usually salaried by ratepayer funds, are telling folks to stick with PG&E, and that’s a betrayal of trust. "You have someone who’s worked with a customer for years and years and years saying, ‘Don’t support CCA,’<\!q>" Orth said.

PG&E, which has disputed the allegations in the SJVPA complaint, did not return our calls seeking comment. The two parties are currently in mediation, and SJVPA attorney Scott Blaising said the utility has yet to provide solid evidence that ratepayer money isn’t footing the bill for the anti-CCA marketing. Southern California Edison Co., which provides about a quarter of the SJVPA’s current power, has not been as contentious as PG&E, Orth said.

"Theoretically, [anti-CCA marketing] should be covered by shareholders," said Bill Marcus, an energy consultant who works with the Utility Reform Network. "Realistically, a bunch of it leaks into ratepayer accounts."

He pointed out that PG&E’s budget allocation for local public affairs has stood at 22 percent over the course of several general rate cases, despite clear peaks in marketing for certain campaigns.

Some San Franciscans will be closely watching what happens next as a sign of things to come as this city moves forward with its CCA plan. As Mirkarimi told us, "What San Joaquin is experiencing is likely a prelude to what San Francisco will be confronting as it pertains to PG&E’s desire to deny CCA and San Francisco’s pursuit of energy independence."

Migden, who wrote the CCA law, said, "PG&E’s alleged actions controvert the letter and the spirit of the bill. The utility and the SFPUC should take heed, because green public power is the people’s passion."<\!s>*

PS PG&E can’t even get its own Web site right.

Oakland’s Saviours sign with Kemado

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August 14, 2007
0

Saviours’ first ‘un, Crucifire.

This in recently from Kemado Records:

“Explosive, Oakland, CA outfit Saviours has inked a deal with NYC label Kemado Records. The self-described “piss-angry metal band”, known for its ferocious live performances and original stamp on the classic power and thrash metal of decades past, will enter Los Angeles’ A&M/Henson Studios in late August with producer Joe Barresi (Melvins, Kyuss, Tool) to record its sophomore album.

“Merging howling lyrical venom with an endless arsenal of corrosive guitar orchestrations, harmonized leads and runaway locomotive rhythms, Saviours have been rapidly garnering international attention as one of the best heavy bands active today. Fresh off a red-hot tour of the United Kingdom as hand-picked direct support to progressive metal giants Mastodon, Saviours have launched a fourteen city road jaunt that will see the band’s “not-to-be-missed” live sets including many of the new songs that will comprise the new full-length. The as-yet-untitled album is expected to see an early 2008 release.

Editor’s Notes

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August 8, 2007
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› tredmond@sfbg.com

John Ross has always known, as he says in this week’s cover story, that there’s a bullet out there with his name on it. Reporters who aren’t afraid to go where the news takes them, people who want to let the world know about deep injustice in parts of the world where most of us would never dare tread, risk their lives every day.

Brad Will was one of those people. He was an activist reporter in the grand old tradition, carrying a used video camera all over Latin America, drawn to the most explosive flash points, seeking images and stories. Often he paid his own way and posted his work for no wage on places like Indymedia.

He arrived in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the fall of 2006 to cover a violent strike by radical teachers. Will didn’t have the third-world street smarts that John has developed over a quarter of a century, but he was fearless — and when the bullet finally came for him, he filmed his own murder. John this week tells the story of how Will’s killers escaped prosecution — and he reminds us how popular it’s becoming to kill the messenger.

Apparently, you don’t have to be in a Mexican gunfight to fall victim to that sentiment either. Last week, the editor of the Oakland Post was assassinated; police now say the murderer was a worker at Your Black Muslim Bakery, an organization known for past violence that Chauncey Bailey was investigating.

Reporters in this country tend to think we’re pretty safe from the sorts of retributive violence common in other parts of the world. It’s rare that an American journalist is killed at home because somebody didn’t want a story told. But times are changing; more reporters are facing prison at the hands of the authorities, and now at least one local writer is dead, quite possibly on account of what he had to say.

Scary shit. *

Show us the money

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August 7, 2007
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

By 9 a.m. on July 28, 13-year-old Bay Area music-star hopeful Nyles Roberson, accompanied by a support group that included his mom and two other family members, had secured a coveted position at the very front of the line outside the doors of the Oakland Convention Center. A full 25 hours later, the doors would finally be opened by the producers of Showtime at the Apollo, who, visiting from New York for the day, would hold this year’s only West Coast auditions for the long-running American talent show that has, over a historic 73 years, launched the careers of such legends as Billie Holiday, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Usher, and Lauryn Hill.

In the next 28 hours, another 374 Bay Area Apollo hopefuls, 75 of whom would be turned away, would patiently fall in line behind Roberson, who goes by the stage name Yung Nittlz. And the music that Yung Nittlz would be performing? You guessed it: rap with a distinctly Yay Area feel. In fact, the majority of those assembled, many of whom had traveled to the large venue adjacent to the Oakland Marriott from all over the Bay after hearing about the tryouts on KMEL, would perform some form of hip-hop, mostly of the popular, homegrown hyphy school.

"There was a lot of rappers to choose from … even more than I expected," chief Showtime at the Apollo judge Vanessa Rogers said following the intense day of some 300 auditions, which wound up at 7:30 p.m. after each act had gotten about 90 seconds to show their stuff. For close to a decade, Rogers has been tirelessly judging thousands of performers for the famed weekly Apollo amateur night, both on the road in select US cities such as Houston and Detroit and back home in Uptown Manhattan. In May, at the most recent tryouts at the Apollo Theater, on 125th Street in Harlem, she judged another 300 hopefuls.

On the morning of the Oakland audition, GGH (Girls Gone Hyphy) from Fairfield jockeyed for position in line and were soon assigned audition number 262. The three confident, upbeat teens — Felicia, Tajarae, and Tajaniique — would dance, rap, and sing over a track produced by one of their moms. "We’re already getting famous. Most of our families are already there," Tajarae said, noting that among the trio’s extended family in the local rap industry are San Quinn, Black C, and Shag Nasty. Farther up the line — which was about 95 percent African American — that snaked down Oakland’s 10th Street was another 707 area code rap artist, Semaj (James spelled backward), who later accompanied himself on keyboards as he spit his original rhymes. In the meantime, East Bay MC Antonio (real name: Mario), who was number five and close to the top of the long queue, took the bold step of performing an a cappella rhyme that he "just wrote late last night" while waiting outside the tryouts.

Farther along the row were Trauma, a colorfully dressed 11-member hip-hop dance troupe who had driven from Stockton the day before. Also camped out from the night before were well-prepared Richmond rap crew Da Trendsettaz, accompanied by their manager-producer, Bay Area rap vet Rob J Official, ready with flyers and promo CD-Rs in hand. With a median age of 18, the quartet’s Mister Trend, Digg, Sticky, and Blank-Blank would pack a lot into their allotted 90 seconds: dwarfed by the cavernous venue and decked out in oversize white Ts, they delivered their entertaining Yay Area–<\d>flavored rap "Strike a Pose" while busting carefully choreographed moves that clearly delighted Rogers and the other two judges from New York, show producer Suzanne Coston and video tech person Joe Gray.

First, however, was Roberson, or rather, Yung Nittlz, waiting at the top of the line and ready to perform for the three judges. Citing fellow Berkeley High School students the Pack as an inspiration, the extremely ambitious and multitalented ninth grader looked older than his years — he writes all of his material and makes his own beats, boasting two albums’ worth on his MySpace page. Before the panel of judges, looking not at all nervous, the teen confidently performed his song "Money in the Air," adding a little carefully planned flavor midway through by throwing in the air a fistful of cool-looking promotional play money — oversize, full-color $5 bills with his image and contact info strategically positioned on both sides, designed at home on his computer.

The next day Roberson was feeling satisfied with the whole experience. "I thought the auditions were great…. I gave 110 percent and I felt like the judges liked my song," he said by e-mail — naturally — adding that "my dream and my goal is to get a record deal." Whether he’ll make it to the Apollo stage this fall remains to be determined. Rogers, who described the Oakland Apollo tryouts as "challenging" (seemingly because of the disproportionate amount of nonrappers the Apollo likes to showcase), said there were about seven acts she was pretty sure were ready for the big time but that her team would need a few weeks to carefully study the tapes back in New York before deciding who would make the trip from the Bay to Showtime at the Apollo.<\!s>*

Chin music, pin hits

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August 7, 2007
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Drifting into a coma at last week’s lethargic Oakland A’s–<\d>Los Angeles Angels game, I suddenly woke with a snort, dropped my bag of peanuts, and realized what was missing. No, not some bargain-price rookie flamethrower, though that wouldn’t hurt. It was too quiet. I needed some screeching Queen songs to drown out the deranged A’s fans screaming behind me.

But it wasn’t just me — the A’s and their fans were suffering from a dearth of head-bobbing, fist-punching at-bat music, in addition to a real game. One lousy Nirvana snippet does not inspire high confidence or achievement, making it hard for the team to compete with the sleek multimedia machine of, say, the Giants, the Seattle Mariners, or heck, any other ball team out there blasting tunes at top volume to work up the crowd into a bubbling froth whenever a hometown hitter saunters to the plate or whenever the action lags. Of course, the selections have fallen into predictable patterns: Barry Bonds has tended to favor Dr. Dre minimalist power hooks to usher in his home-run hits. There are the inevitable Linkin Park, Metallica, and T.I. tunes as well as "Crazy Train," "Yeah!" and, naturally, DJ Unk’s "Walk It Out," beloved of so many athletes and audio staffers — although sometimes musicians have their say, as when Twisted Sister asked John Rocker and the Atlanta Braves to stop playing "I Wanna Rock" after the player’s racist, homophobic, and sexist mouth-offs back in 2000.

Maybe we’re just damaged, in need of a perpetual soundtrack to go with our every activity and our shrinking attention spans — though some might argue that baseball, like so many sports, needs an infusion of new but not necessarily performance-enhanced energy. We can all use some style to go with our substance, which might explain why presidential candidate John Edwards was said to be pressing flesh at the still-unfolding, long-awaited Temple Nightclub in SoMa last week. And why it wasn’t too surprising to get an invite on a bisected bowling pin to Strike Cupertino, a new bowling alley–<\d>cum–<\d>nightclub down south in Cupertino Square, a withering mall off 280 where the venue has planted itself on the basement level. Its neighbors: a JC Penney, a Macy’s, a Frederick’s of Hollywood, an ice-skating rink, an AMC 16-plex, and lots of darkened store spaces. I stopped to admire the wizard-embellished pewter goblets and marked-down Kill Bill Elle Driver action figures at the sword-, knife-, and gun-filled Armour Geddon — still open for all your raging goth armament needs.

Strike, however, was raging all on its own, without the skull-handled dagger it never knew it needed. In a wink toward the Silicon Valley work-hard-play-hard crowd Strike’s owners hope to attract, Angela Kinsey from The Office threw out the first ball in the black-lit, modish alley. A luxe bar dreamed up by Chris Smith, one of the team that designed Nobu, was swarming with guests clamoring for free Striketinis.

Apparently Strike Cupertino isn’t original: the first one sprung, after a full makeover, from Bowlmor Lanes in Greenwich Village, New York City, in 1997, and went on, according to the press literature, to become the highest-grossing bowling alley in the world. Others are located in Bethesda, Md., Long Island, and Miami. But what, no Vegas? Strike seems perfectly suited for Sin City, with its bright, flash, well-upholstered decor — equal parts retro ’50s and ’60s, both American Graffiti and Goldfinger — and multiple massive plasma screens distractingly flickering the Giants game, ESPN, any game, above the lanes, the lounge, and every surface. Peppy, poppy ’80s rock and R&B — "Hey Mickey" and "Little Red Corvette" — coursed from the DJ booth next to the raft of pool and air hockey tables and the game arcade as upscale clubbish figurines, blue-collar bowling diehards, and Asian and Latino kids tried out the lanes and tables and some fair American and Asian finger food.

I stuck a kiwi into a chocolate fountain and spurted sticky brown stuff all over my white shoes and shirt and wondered, could this be the future of clubbing — or sports? Amusement parks for adults, lubricated with fruity but muscley cocktails? Or maybe this is as hellacious as it gets in drowsy Cupertino.

Still, I thought Strike was worth swinging by, if only to play on a sparkling, well-waxed, seemingly nick-free lane for the first time, in fresh, BO-free shoes, with immaculate, grimeless balls. Also, knowing how many miles per hour your ball is traveling is a trip, if somewhat discouraging for featherweights like yours truly. Yes, I know the $5 cover after 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays seems excessive for, well, a bowling alley, but Monday evening seems a deal with all-night unlimited play for a flat $14. Word has it that the nightspot also enforces a dress code — and that even Bonds would have to leave his cap at home — but I say perhaps just cut back on the supershort bowling-shirt dresses and fishnet stockings on the teenagey waitresses. We’re not in Vegas yet, Toto.

STRIKE CUPERTINO

Cupertino Square

10123 Wolf Road, Cupertino

(408) 252-BOWL

www.bowlatstrike.com

YOU SCORED

OLIVER FUTURE

The Los Angeles buzz band generates scratchy, acidic melodic rock with plenty of post-punk seasoning. With Boy in the Bubble and 8 Bit Idiot. Wed/8, 9 p.m., $7. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

ROBBERS ON HIGH STREET

Veering from tree cities to familial familiars, the NYC combo come with Grand Animals (New Line). With the Wildbirds and the Old-Fashioned Way. Thurs/9, 9:30 p.m., $8. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

GREAT NORTHERN

Melodic pop for modern-rock romantics. With Comas and Twilight Sleep. Sat/11, 9 p.m., $13–<\d>$15. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

MIKAELA’S FIEND AND SEXY PRISON

Driving punk tumult meets salacious death disco. With Mika Miko and Twin. Sun/12, 8:30 p.m., call for price. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org

PELICAN

The Windy City instrumentalists skew shorter — seven minutes at most — and focus on songs on their new City of Echoes (Hydra Head). With Clouds and Garagantula. Sun/12, 8:30 p.m., $13–<\d>$15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.musichallsf.com

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