Oakland

East Bay Endorsements for the June 5 election

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East Bay Endorsements for the June 5 election

There aren’t a lot of contested races in the Oakland/Berkeley area. Every member of the county Board of Supervisors is running essentially unopposed. When termed-out Assemblymember Sandra Swanson decided not to challenge state Senator Loni Hancock, the East Bay left avoided a bruising primary fight. In essence, voters will be addressing a series of no-contest primaries and two statewide ballot measures. So there’s not a lot to drive the voters to the polls.

But there are two important races — a contest for Swanson’s 18th Assembly seat and a rare election for an open seat on the Alameda County bench. Our recommendations follow.

STATE SENATOR, 9TH DISTRICT

LONI HANCOCK

Always solid on the issues, Hancock has taken a lead role in fighting bogus foreclosures and takes on the often-challenging job of killing bad bills as chair of the Public Safety Committee. She’s been a strong advocate for ending the death penalty.

STATE ASSEMBLY, 15TH DISTRICT

NANCY SKINNER

Another strong progressive, she’s currently pushing to preserve affordable education in the UC system. She’s also a leader in the campaign to tax online sales.

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 18

ABEL GUILLEN

Several strong candidates are seeking this seat, which represents one of the most progressive districts in the state. Our choice is Abel Guillen, a member of the Peralta College Board. Guillen has a strong record in the progressive community and the support of the teacher’s and nurse’s unions. He’s a strong advocate for education and speaks about aggressively seeking new revenue (including a split-role modification of Prop. 13). We were a little concerned about his reluctance to support state Sen. Mark Leno’s efforts to allow local government more authority to raise revenue (Guillen’s worried about statewide equity) but on balance, he’s the best candidate.

We were also impressed with Rob Bonta, vice-mayor of Alameda, who is strong on transit issues and understands the needs of local government. But although he told us he would support repeal of the “three-strikes” law, he’s the candidate of law-enforcement and has the support of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, the dangerous statewide cop union that tries to block nearly every piece of progressive criminal-justice reform. He told us that in the past he’s supported the death penalty because “it’s the voters’ choice.” On the relatively simple question of legalizing pot, he said he “probably” would vote for it.

Thanks to the two-two primary system, it’s likely these two will be facing off again in November. Vote for Guillen.

SUPERIOR COURT, OFFICE NUMBER 20

TARA FLANAGAN

Three East Bay lawyers are running for this rare open seat. Our choice is Flanagan, whose progressive credentials and background make her the strongest candidate.

A former prosecutor in Los Angeles who now does civil litigation and family law, Flanagan is a supporter of open courtrooms and told us she would have no objections to cameras and tape recorders. She agreed that the administrative meetings of the county judges should be open to the public. She’s served as a temporary judge, so already has courtroom experience.

The Alameda bench is still mostly a boy’s club — only 30 percent of the judges are women, and a dismal 1.4 percent come from the LGBT community. Flanagan would bring some needed diversity to the court.

COUNTY SUPERVISOR, 5TH DISTRICT

KEITH CARSON

Incumbent Keith Carson has been a stalwart in the Oakland and Berkeley progressive communities for decades. He’s running unopposed.

International movement

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International movement

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE How do you keep a performance festival alive in a city known for its fractured arts community? A place where officialdom is not exactly ready to jump on the bandwagon, especially when belt-tightening by cutting the arts has become a national sport? Simple. You enlist the people who have always been the arts’ biggest supporters — the artists themselves. They know how to work with limited resources; they are risk-takers and have accepted that what they love to do will never make them rich.

The approach seems to work. “This year, we have had the biggest advance ticket sales ever,” says Andrew Wood, executive director of the San Francisco International Arts Festival. What Wood has done since 2003 is develop his own version of “think globally, act locally.”

The British-born impresario has programmed discoveries from around the world that often erase traditional boundaries between theater and dance. They bring a whiff of global artistic trade winds and broaden our sometimes narrow perspectives. In 2009 it was South Korea’s stunning Cho-In Theatre, which performed The Angel and the Woodcutter without speaking a single word. Last year, Polish import Teatr Zar’s multi-venue performance of The Gospels of Childhood Triptych seared itself into memory. Sometimes, glimpses into non-American cultural productions can look eerily prescient, as with 2006’s The Solitary — an exchange between a prisoner and his jailer — by Syria’s Al-Khareef Theatre Troupe.

Engagements by international companies are only possible because they bring a lot of their own funding, either from their own governments or cultural organizations in this country. Sasha Waltz and Guests’ 2009 Travelogue I, for instance, would not have been possible without the Goethe-Institut’s support.

“Most people [abroad] don’t realize how under-resourced we are in this country,” Wood explains. In terms of performance fees he tells the artists that “this is what I can offer if we get the money, otherwise I’ll pay you what I can.”

One of Wood’s biggest challenges, besides patching together the money for the companies he wants to present, is getting them here at all. The State Department has its own ideas of who should be seen by Bay Area audiences. Last year an Iraqi group’s engagement fell short when only two of its company members received visas. This year the “permission slips” for Cuba’s Raices Profundas, SFIAF’s opening act, came through at the last minute.

Raices’ mixed program will offer a perspective on Afro-Cuban dance grounded in both its ritualistic and popular social dance traditions. While he greatly admires the breath and depth of their artistry, bringing this company to the fest “is as much a political act as any thing else,” Wood says. “We have to maintain the human connection [with these artists]. They are in such difficult positions, and they work so hard living in a kind of netherworld where rules don’t work.”

One of the festival’s hallmarks has become the shared programs between local and guest dancers. One can only image the backstage cross-cultural fertilizations that must take place between artists that previously may have known very little of each other.

This year the Swiss company Cie 7273’s Listen and Watch is sharing an evening with Thieves by Oakland’s Dance Elixir. Both works are based on the intimate relationships with music performed live on stage. Two first US showings and a world premiere (created in Tallinn, Estonia; San Francisco; and Helsinki) are on a triple bill with Cid Pearlman Performance Project, Post: Ballet’s Robert Dekkers, and Susanna Leinonen Company.

A welcome opportunity to see two previously shown pieces will come from AXIS Dance Company’s astounding 2011 collaboration with Marc Brew Company, Full of Words. Brew will also dance the American premiere of his solo Remember When. In 2010, inkBoat’s The Crazy Cloud Collection, named after a 15th century Zen monk — the purported subject of this astounding collaboration with Butoh artist Ko Murobushi — looked anarchic, maddeningly obscure, and totally mesmerizing. I’ll attend this encore performance for sure. *

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

May 2-20, free-$70

Various venues, SF

www.sfiaf.org

 

Pix of May Day in Oakland

Sasha Cuttler
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Photos by Tim Daw

Oakland protest: Tear gas, one arrest

Zelda Bronstein
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Tuesday morning brought an eruption of protests though out downtown Oakland as Occupy activists marched and rallied in support of a national general strike day to mark May Day.

Though the action lacked the numbers of last fall’s Port of Oakland strike, three early morning marches of several hundred protesters made there way through Oakland drawing attention to issues of gentrification, patriarchy and what protesters characterized as the injustices of capitalism.

In a city still waiting for an economic recovery, the protests were a reminder that simmering tensions over economic disparities continue to cause major disruptions of business as usual in Oakland.

Activists focused attention on Child Protective Services and the family court system. The agency was criticizing the for dividing families and sharpening the financial strain on poor families.

“This is where lawyers get rich, where judges get rich, and everyone else suffers,” stated an Occupy Oakland activist on the steps of the courthouse on 13th and Oak.

By noon various marches and protests converged on Oscar Grant Plaza, as roughly 1,000 protesters blocking traffic at 14th and Broadway. Protester danced to a portable sound system carted around in wheel chair, and danced around a maypole erected in the intersection.

OPD’s new crowd-control tactics were in display as riot police entered the crowd to make an arrest as bystanders were moved away with tear gas, concussion grenades and batons.

One woman was arrested and a 19-year-old Oakland woman, was struck in the head with a police baton. Bleeding heavily from the blow, she was rushed to the hospital after Occupy medics determined her wound was beyond their capacity to treat.

It was unclear what provoked the arrest.

Further protests are planned for this afternoon.

UPDATE: Sergeant Jeff Thomason, OPD public affairs, told us there have been four arrests, related to an incident in which paint was allegedly thrown at a police officer. Oakland has summoned mutual aid from the California Highway Patrol, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and the Pleasanton and Hayward PDs.

May Day protests begin with ferry workers strike

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[Editor’s Note: We’ll be covering May Day events in San Francisco and Oakland throughout the day, so check back for regular updates.]

May Day activities have begun with a strike by ferry workers and Golden Gate Transit workers, halting parts of the morning commute.

About 100 ferry workers picketed at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, as well as the Larkspur Ferry Terminal. In anticipation of the strike, the Golden Gate Bridge District announced that they would cancel morning ferry service yesterday. Service should resume at 2:15.

Workers from the Golden Gate Bridge Coalition say that they have offered concessions of more than $2 million and are still locked in labor disputes, prompting the strike for the traditional International Workers Day. 

“The last thing that bridge, bus, and ferry workers want to do is to inconvenience passengers, but what other option has management left us?” said Alex Tonisson, co-chair of the Golden Gate Bridge Labor Coalition, in a press release.

The strikes come after a rough start to May Day demonstrations in San Francisco. A plan for workers on the Golden Gate Bridge to strike and shut down traffic on the bridge was called off two days before the planned demonstration. Last night, protesters vandalized store windows, cars, and the Mission Police station in a march along Valencia St. Organizers with Occupy SF and Occupy Oakland were quick to distance themselves and condemn the destruction, both physically at the protest and in subsequent statements. 

We will continue to update as events unfold.

On eve of May Day, Valencia, Mission Police Station vandalized

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A group of protesters left a trail of broken glass and paint tonight as they made their way from Dolores Park to Duboce on Valencia. Windows were broken, garbage cans overturned, paint bombs thrown, and messages saying “yuppies go home” as well as anarchist symbols were spray-painted on several restaurants, art galleries and cafes.

The façade of the police station on Mission and 17th was vandalized and broken.

A gathering at Dolores Park was advertised as a “a ruckus street party to counter gentrification, capitalism, and the policing of our communities.” About 200 attended, and chatted about their plans for the following day’s May Day activities while music played.

Shortly after 9pm, the group left the park and began to march on Dolores. Some overturned recycling bins and vandalized the windows at Farina restaurant minutes after turning the corner on 18th St, while others held back.

Dozens flocked to the sidewalk and began yelling, “this is not an Occupy SF action!”  while passers-by looked on, concerned.

The group turned on Valencia, continuing to shrink in size and break windows. Within half an hour there were less than 50 people in the march.

About 40 of police on foot followed the march along Valencia, trailing behind as vandalism continued. SFPD representatives were not immediately available for comment, but based on witness accounts there were no arrests.

Neighborhood residents were angered and confused by the destruction. One man who did not wish to be named said, “They kept doing it while other people in the march were trying to get them to stop. It was childish.”

Occupy Oakland protester Jesse Smith told CBS he was “more than a little shaken” by the events. 

“I know Occupiers,” Smith told CBS. “None of us have any idea who they were.”

A message on the Occupy SF website reads, “The march in the Mission Monday night was not an OccupySF event. OccupySF does not endorse this kind of destruction of the 99%’s property. The individuals involved in this destruction are not known to OccupySF, and we believe they are outside provocateurs sent in to tarnish the image of Occupy prior to the May Day actions.”

What’s going on for Bay Area May Day?

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UPDATE: The Golden Gate Labor Coalition has announced a change of plans. Instead of Golden Gate Bridge pickets, the coalition will be supporting a strike of ferry workers, who plan to bring all morning ferry service to a standstill. They have announced that the actions at the Golden Gate Bridge are cancelled, and instead workers will be demonstrating in solidarity with ferry workers in Larkspur- specific locations will be announced later today.

May 1, International Workers Day — May Day — used to strike fear into the hearts of bosses. The first May Day in 1867 was a fight for the eight-hour workday in Chicago (see more history at Citizen Radio at the Occupy Oakland Tribune). Since then, May 1 has remained a day when grievances are aired, when students and workers party in the street, when people strike in ways that shows whose really boss (you can’t have that work that keeps everything running without all those workers.) But mostly in other countries.

In the US, the day has diminished in importance, although it has resurged in recent years focused on immigrants rights. But what with Occupy Wall Street, labor and union organizing ramping up, and student strikes, and all these people working more and more closely together, May Day is coming back to the US.

The Bay Area certainly won’t be left out. Here is a list of May Day events, starting tonight and ending–well, who knows when. If you know of others, write them in the comments: it wouldn’t be a decentralized massive attempt at a full-on general strike without you!

THE NIGHT BEFORE (Mon/30)

5:30pm, San Francisco:

City workers from SEIU Local 1021 will gather at City Hall in a continued offensive surrounding their ongoing contract negotiations. The program runs until 7:30 pm, but the protest will go on “until they kick us out!”

8pm, San Francisco:

“The strike starts early” with a gathering at Dolores Park. According to a press release, demonstrators will meet “for a ruckus street party to counter gentrification, capitalism, and the policing of our communities.” www.strikemay1st.com/the-strike-starts-early

MAY DAY (Tue/1)

All day:

National Nurses United/California Nurses United is on strike at Sutter Health locations throughout the Bay Area. According to a press release, “some 4,500 RNs will be affected by the planned walk-out.”

ILWU Local 10, which worked in solidarity with Occupy Oakland in two port shutdowns last fall, is planning another one. They say that a work stoppage will halt the Port of Oakland’s operations all day.

7-10am, San Francisco:

The Golden Gate Bridge labor coalition, representing several unions of workers on the bridge, have been without a contract since April 2011. They originally called for a strike and resulting shut down of the bridge- and had massive support behind them. They’re now saying the protest will involve picketing at the bridge instead. So come join a picket, or if you cross the bridge don’t take the workers for granted- the bridge doesn’t work without them. www.occupythebridge.com

7am, San Francisco:

Meet at 16th st and Mission to be a part of the first SF Bike Cavalry of the day, a critical mass that will ride to the Golden Gate Bridge in solidarity with the picket. www.sfbikecavalry.org

8:30am – 12pm, Oakland:

Occupy Oakland will join others protesting, picketing, and generally striking at three (or four?) “action stations.” Meet at Snow Park for a “flying picket” that will “shut down banks and the Chamber of Commerce.” Meet at First and Broadway to “occupy Child Protective Services” in response to a decision they made to de-grant custody of one woman’s children based in part on her involvement in Occupy Oakland. Meet at 22nd and Telegraph to cause mayhem at uptown and downtown business associations. www.strikemay1st.com/119/

10am, San Francisco:

A rally and march for immigrants rights (the people who have been holding down US May Day for years.) Meet at 24th St Mission Bart for a march to 16th St. 

11am, San Francisco:

Janitors and retail workers at Westfield Mall are engaged in an ongoing labor dispute, and they’ll be picketing in solidarity at 5th and Market. 

11am, San Francisco:

A second SF Bike Cavalry will convene at Justin Herman Plaza to support the janitors strike, the immigrants’ rights march, and the Peoples Street Festival

11:30am, Hayward:

The Amalgameted Transit Union Local 192 will protest “substandard conditions” and “institutionalized racism” (according to a press release) at the operators of AC Transit, A-Para Transit Corporation, 22990 Clawiter Rd in Hayward.

12pm, San Francisco:

All the San Francisco students who walk out of school, workers who call in sick, people who usually do all the housework, who, for the day, say screw it, and other “general strike” participants will converge at Montgomery and Market for the People’s Street Festival. Music, performance, art and fun for the whole family. 

Noon-1pm, Oakland:

A mass rally in Oakland, at 14th and Broadway, with food, speakers, music, activities, and generally a lot to do that you can’t if you’re at work. 

1-3pm, Oakland:

According to Occupy Oakland “After the rally, those in attendance have the opportunity to stay downtown or join one of the autonomous actions that will be departing from 14th & Broadway to continue shutting down various capitalist institutions in the downtown area.”

3pm, Oakland:

Meet at Fruitvale Plaza (next to the Fruitvale Bart station) for likely the biggest action of the day. The March for Dignity and Resistance is being called the Bay Area’s regional protest and supporters will be there from all over the area. mayday2012.blogspot.com

6pm, San Francisco:

Celebrate workers rights at a fundraiser for Young Workers United, a self-described “multi-racial and bilingual membership organization dedicated to improving the quality of jobs for young and immigrant workers.” The party is at El Rio, 3158 Mission. www.occupysf.org

On May Day, local groups who have taken to occupying spaces in ways other than public square-camping will be ramping up their efforts. The occupied farm at Gill Tract will push on, and in a message from Occupy San Francisco: “On May Day, the SF Commune will open it’s doors and conduct another Open Occupation in solidarity with the May 1st General Strike.” So if you’re looking for someone to sleep while protesting a complex web of oppressive forces Tuesday night, you may be in luck.

For more information, see www.strikemay1st.com, a clearinghouse for Bay Area May Day plans.

Also see:

www.occupythebridge.com

www.occupysf.org

mayday2012.blogspot.com

www.decolonizeoakland.org

www.occupyoakland.org

Guardian endorsements for June 5 election

Andrew Lam
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Guardian endorsements for June 5 election

>>OUR ONE-PAGE “CLEAN SLATE” PRINTOUT GUIDE IS HERE. 

As usual, California is irrelevant to the presidential primaries, except as a cash machine. The Republican Party has long since chosen its nominee; the Democratic outcome was never in doubt. So the state holds a June 5 primary that, on a national level, matters to nobody.

It’s no surprise that pundits expect turnout will be abysmally low. Except in the few Congressional districts where a high-profile primary is underway, there’s almost no news media coverage of the election.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some important races and issues (including the future of San Francisco’s Democratic Party) — and the lower the turnout, the more likely the outcome will lean conservative. The ballot isn’t long; it only takes a few minutes to vote. Don’t stay home June 5.

Our recommendations follow.

PRESIDENT

BARACK OBAMA

Sigh. Remember the hope? Remember the joy? Remember the dancing in the streets of the Mission as a happy city realized that the era of George Bush and The Gang was over? Remember the end of the war, and health-care reform, and fair economic policies?

Yeah, we remember, too. And we remember coming back to our senses when we realized that the first people at the table for the health-policy talks were the insurance industry lobbyists. And when more and more drones killed more and more civilian in Afghanistan, and the wars didn’t end and the country got deeper and deeper into debt.

Oh, and when Obama bailed out Wall Street — and refused to spend enough money to help the rest of us. And when his U.S. attorney decided to crack down on medical marijuana.

We could go on.

There’s no question: The first term of President Barack Obama has been a deep disappointment. And while we wish that his new pledge to tax the millionaires represented a change in outlook, the reality is that it’s most likely an election-year response to the popularity of the Occupy movement.

Last fall, when a few of the most progressive Democrats began talking about the need to challenge Obama in a primary, we had the same quick emotional reaction as many San Franciscans: Time to hold the guy accountable. Some prominent left types have vowed not to give money to the Obama campaign.

But let’s get back to reality. The last time a liberal group challenged an incumbent in a Democratic presidential primary, Senator Ted Kennedy wounded President Jimmy Carter enough to ensure the election of Ronald Reagan — and the begin of the horrible decline in the economy of the United States. We’re mad at Obama, too — but we’re realists enough to know that there is a difference between moderate and terrible, and that’s the choice we’re facing today.

The Republican Party is now entirely the party of the far right, so out of touch with reality that even Reagan would be shunned as too liberal. Mitt Romney, once the relatively centrist governor of Massachusetts, has been driven by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum so deeply into crazyland that he’s never coming back. We appreciate Ron Paul’s attacks on military spending and the war on drugs, but he also opposes Medicare and Social Security and says that people who don’t have private health insurance should be allowed to die for lack of medical care.

No, this one’s easy. Obama has no opposition in the Democratic Primary, but for all our concerns about his policies, we have to start supporting his re-election now.

U.S. SENATE

DIANNE FEINSTEIN

The Republicans in Washington didn’t even bother to field a serious candidate against the immensely well-funded Feinstein, who is seeking a fourth term. She’s a moderate Democrat, at best, was weak-to-terrible on the war, is hawkish on Pentagon spending (particularly Star Wars and the B-1 bomber), has supported more North Coast logging, and attempts to meddle in local politics with ridiculous ideas like promoting unknown Michael Breyer for District Five supervisor. She supported the Obama health-care bill but isn’t a fan of single-payer, referring to supporters of Medicare for all as “the far left.”

But she’s strong on choice and is embarrassing the GOP with her push for reauthorization of an expanded Violence Against Women Act. She’ll win handily against two token Republicans.

U.S. CONGRESS, DISTRICT 2

NORMAN SOLOMON

The Second District is a sprawling region stretching from the Oregon border to the Golden Gate Bridge, from the coast in as far as Trinity County. It’s home to the Marin suburbs, Sonoma and Mendocino wine country, the rough and rural Del Norte and the emerald triangle. There’s little doubt that a Democrat will represent the overwhelmingly liberal area that was for almost three decades the province of Lynn Woolsey, one of the most progressive members in Congress. The top two contenders are Norman Solomon, an author, columnist and media advocate, and Jared Huffman, a moderate member of the state Assembly from Marin.

Solomon’s not just a decent candidate — he represents a new approach to politics. He’s an antiwar crusader, journalist, and outsider who has never held elective office — but knows more about the (often corrupt) workings of Washington and the policy issues facing the nation than many Beltway experts. He’s talking about taxing Wall Street to create jobs on Main Street, about downsizing the Pentagon and promoting universal health care. He’s a worthy successor to Woolsey, and he deserves the support of every independent and progressive voter in the district.

U.S. CONGRESS, DISTRICT 12

NANCY PELOSI

Nancy Pelosi long ago stopped representing San Francisco (see: same-sex marriage) and began representing the national Democratic party and her colleagues in the House. She will never live down the privatization of the Presidio or her early support for the Iraq war, but she’s become a decent ally for Obama and if the Democrats retake the House, she’ll be setting the agenda for his second term. If the GOP stays in control, this may well be her last term.

Green Party member Barry Hermanson is challenging her, and in the old system, he’d be on the November ballot as the Green candidate. With open primaries (which are a bad idea for a lot of reasons) Hermanson needs support to finish second and keep Pelosi on her toes as we head into the fall.

U.S. CONGRESS, DISTRICT 12

BARBARA LEE

This Berkeley and Oakland district is among the most left-leaning in the country, and its representative, Barbara Lee, is well suited to the job. Unlike Pelosi, Lee speaks for the voters of her district; she was the lone voice against the Middle East wars in the early days, and remains a staunch critic of these costly, bloody, open-ended foreign military entanglements. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

U.S. CONGRESS, DISTRICT 13

JACKIE SPEIER

Speier’s more of a Peninsula moderate than a San Francisco progressive, but she’s been strong on consumer privacy and veterans issues and has taken the lead on tightening federal rules on gas pipelines after Pacific Gas and Electric Company killed eight of her constituents. She has no credible opposition.

STATE SENATE, DISTRICT 11

MARK LENO

Mark Leno started his political career as a moderate member of the Board of Supervisors from 1998 to 2002. His high-profile legislative races — against Harry Britt for the Assembly in 2002 and against Carole Migden for the Senate in 2008 — were some of the most bitterly contested in recent history. And we often disagree with his election time endorsements, which tend toward more downtown-friendly candidates.

But Leno has won us over, time and again, with his bold progressive leadership in Sacramento and with his trailblazing approach to public policy. He is an inspiring leader who has consistently made us proud during his time in the Legislature. Leno was an early leader on the same-sex marriage issue, twice getting the Legislature to legalize same-sex unions (vetoed both times by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger). He has consistently supported a single-payer health care system and laid important groundwork that could eventually break the grip that insurance companies have on our health care system. And he has been a staunch defender of the medical marijuana patients and has repeatedly pushed to overturn the ban on industrial hemp production, work that could lead to an important new industry and further relaxation of this country wasteful war on drugs. We’re happy to endorse him for another term.

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 17

TOM AMMIANO

Ammiano is a legendary San Francisco politician with solid progressive values, unmatched courage and integrity, and a history of diligently and diplomatically working through tough issues to create ground-breaking legislation. We not only offer him our most enthusiastic endorsement — we wish that we could clone him and run him for a variety of public offices. Since his early days as an ally of Harvey Milk on gay rights issues to his creation of San Francisco’s universal health care system as a supervisor to his latest efforts to defend the rights of medical marijuana users, prison inmates, and undocumented immigrants, Ammiano has been a tireless advocate for those who lack political and economic power. As chair of Assembly Public Safety Committee, Ammiano has blocked many of the most reactionary tough-on-crime measures that have pushed our prison system to the breaking point, creating a more enlightened approach to criminal justice issues. We’re happy to have Ammiano expressing San Francisco’s values in the Capitol.

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 19

PHIL TING

Once it became abundantly clear that Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting wasn’t going to get elected mayor, he started to set his eyes on the state Assembly. It’s an unusual choice in some ways — Ting makes a nice salary in a job that he’s doing well and that’s essentially his for life. Why would he want to make half as much money up in Sacramento in a job that he’ll be forced by term limits to leave after six years?

Ting’s answer: he’s ready for something new. We fear that a vacancy in his office would allow Mayor Ed Lee to appoint someone with less interest in tax equity (prior to Ting, the city suffered mightily under a string of political appointees in the Assessor’s Office), but we’re pleased to endorse him for the District 19 slot.

Ting has gone beyond the traditional bureaucratic, make-no-waves approach of some of his predecessors. He’s aggressively sought to collect property taxes from big institutions that are trying to escape paying (the Catholic Church, for example) and has taken a lead role in fighting foreclosures. He commissioned, on his own initiative, a report showing that a large percentage of the foreclosures in San Francisco involved some degree of fraud or improper paperwork, and while the district attorney is so far sitting on his hands, other city officials are moving to address the issue.

His big issue is tax reform, and he’s been one the very few assessors in the state to talk openly about the need to replace Prop. 13 with a split-role system that prevents the owners of commercial property from paying an ever-declining share of the tax burden. He wants to change the way the Legislature interprets Prop. 13 to close some of the egregious loopholes. It’s one of the most important issues facing the state, and Ting will arrive in Sacramento already an expert.

Ting’s only (mildly) serious opponent is Michael Breyer, son of Supreme Court Justice Breyer and a newcomer to local politics. Breyer’s only visible support is from the Building Owners and Managers Association, which dislikes Ting’s position on Prop. 13. Vote for Ting.

DEMOCRATIC COUNTY CENTRAL COMMITTEE

You can say a lot of things about Aaron Peskin, the former supervisor and retiring chair of the city’s Democratic Party, but the guy was an organizer. Four years ago, he put together a slate of candidates that wrenched control of the local party from the folks who call themselves “moderates” but who, on critical economic issues, are really better defined as conservative. Since then, the County Central Committee, which sets policy for the local party, has given its powerful endorsement mostly to progressive candidates and has taken progressive stands on almost all the ballot issues.

But the conservatives are fighting back — and with Peskin not seeking another term and a strong slate put together by the mayor’s allies seeking revenge, it’s entirely possible that the left will lose the party this year.

But there’s hope — in part because, as his parting gift, Peskin helped change state law to make the committee better reflect the Democratic voting population of the city. This year, 14 candidates will be elected from the East side of town, and 10 from the West.

We’ve chosen to endorse a full slate in each Assembly district. Although there are some candidates on the slate who aren’t as reliable as we might like, 24 will be elected, and we’re picking the 24 best.

DISTRICT 17 (EAST SIDE)

John Avalos

David Campos

David Chiu

Petra DeJesus

Matt Dorsey

Chris Gembinsky

Gabriel Robert Haaland

Leslie Katz

Rafael Mandelman

Carole Migden

Justin Morgan

Leah Pimentel

Alix Rosenthal

Jamie Rafaela Wolfe

 

DISTRICT 19 (WEST SIDE)

Mike Alonso

Wendy Aragon

Kevin Bard

Chuck Chan

Kelly Dwyer

Peter Lauterborn

Hene Kelly

Eric Mar

Trevor McNeil

Arlo Hale Smith

State ballot measures

PROPOSITION 28

YES

LEGISLATIVE TERM LIMITS

Let us begin with a stipulation: We have always opposed legislative term limits, at every level of government. Term limits shift power to the executive branch, and, more insidiously, the lobbyists, who know the issues and the processes better than inexperienced legislators. The current system of term limits is a joke — a member of the state Assembly can serve only six years, which is barely enough time to learn the job, much less to handle the immense complexity of the state budget. Short-termers are more likely to seek quick fixes than structural reform. It’s one reason the state Legislatures is such a mess.

Prop. 28 won’t solve the problem entirely, but it’s a reasonable step. The measure would allow a legislator to serve a total of 12 years in office — in either the Assembly, the Senate, or a combination. So an Assembly member could serve six terms, a state Senator three terms. No more serving a stint in one house and then jumping to the other, since the term limits are cumulative, which is imperfect: A lot of members of the Assembly have gone on to notable Senate careers, and that shouldn’t be cut off.

Still, 12 years in the Assembly is enough time to become a professional at the job — and that’s a good thing. We don’t seek part-time brain surgeons and inexperienced airline pilots. Running California is complicated, and there’s nothing wrong with having people around who aren’t constantly learning on the job. Besides, these legislators still have to face elections; the voters can impose their own term limits, at any time.

Most of the good-government groups are supporting Prop. 28. Vote yes.

PROPOSITION 29

YES

CIGARETTE TAX FOR CANCER RESEARCH

Seriously: Can you walk into the ballot box and oppose higher taxes on cigarettes to fund cancer research? Of course not. All of the leading medical groups, cancer-research groups, cancer-treatment groups and smoking-cessation groups in the state support Prop. 29, which was written by the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association.

We support it, too.

Yes, it’s a regressive tax — most smokers are in the lower-income brackets. Yes, it’s going to create a huge state fund making grants for research, and it will be hard to administer without some issues. But the barrage of ads opposing this are entirely funded by tobacco companies, which are worried about losing customers, particularly kids. A buck a pack may not dissuade adults who really want to smoke, but it’s enough to price a few more teens out of the market — and that’s only good news.

Don’t believe the big-tobacco hype. Vote yes on 29.

San Francisco ballot measures

PROPOSITION A

YES

GARBAGE CONTRACT

A tough one: Recology’s monopoly control over all aspects of San Francisco’s waste disposal system should have been put out to competitive bid a long time ago. That’s the only way for the city to ensure customers are getting the best possible rates and that the company is paying a fair franchise fee to the city. But the solution before us, Proposition A, is badly flawed public policy.

The measure would amend the 1932 ordinance that gave Recology’s predecessor companies — which were bought up and consolidated into a single behemoth corporation — indefinite control over the city’s $220 million waste stream. Residential rates are set by a Rate Board controlled mostly by the mayor, commercial rates are unregulated, and the company doesn’t even have a contract with the city.

Last year, when Recology won the city’s landfill contract — which was put out to bid as the current contract with Waste Management Inc. and its Altamont landfill was expiring — Recology completed its local monopoly. At the time, Budget Analyst Harvey Rose, Sup. David Campos, and other officials and activists called for updating the ordinance and putting the various contracts out to competitive bid.

That effort was stalled and nearly scuttled, at least in part because of the teams of lobbyists Recology hired to put pressure on City Hall, leading activists Tony Kelley and retired Judge Quentin Kopp to write this measure. They deserve credit for taking on the issue when nobody else would and for forcing everyone in the city to wake up and take notice of a scandalous 70-year-old deal.

We freely admit that the measure has some significant flaws that could hurt the city’s trash collection and recycling efforts. It would split waste collection up into five contracts, an inefficient approach that could put more garbage trucks on the roads. No single company could control all five contracts. Each of those contracts would be for just five years, which makes the complicated bidding process far too frequent, costing city resources and hindering the companies’ ability to make long-term infrastructure investments.

It would require Recology to sell its transfer station, potentially moving the waste-sorting facility to Port property along the Bay. Putting the transfer station in public hands makes sense; moving it to the waterfront might not.

On the scale of corrupt monopolies, Recology isn’t Pacific Gas and Electric Co. It’s a worker-owned company and has been willing to work in partnership with the city to create one of the best recycling and waste diversion programs in the country. For better or worse, Recology controls a well-developed waste management infrastructure that this city relies on, functioning almost like a city department.

Still, it’s unacceptable to have a single outfit, however laudatory, control such a massive part of the city’s infrastructure without a competitive bid, a franchise fee, or so much as a contract. In theory, the company could simply stop collecting trash in some parts of the city, and San Francisco could do nothing about it.

As a matter of public policy, Prop. A could have been better written and certainly could, and should, have been discussed with a much-wider group, including labor. As a matter of real politics, it’s a messy proposal that at least raises the critical question: Should Recology have a no-bid, no contract monopoly? The answer to that is no.

Prop. A will almost certainly go down to defeat; Kopp and Kelly are all alone, have no real campaign or committee and just about everyone else in town opposes it. Our endorsement is a matter of principle, a signal that this longtime garbage deal has to end. If Recology will work with the city to come up with a contract and a bid process, then Prop. A will have done its job. If not, something better will be on the ballot in the future.

For now, vote yes on A.

PROPOSITION B

YES

COIT TOWER POLICY

In theory, city department heads ought to be given fair leeway to allocate resources and run their operations. In practice, San Francisco’s Department of Recreation and Parks has been on a privatization spree, looking for ways to sell or rent public open space and facilities as a way to balance an admittedly tight budget. Prop. B seeks to slow that down a bit, by establishing as city policy the premise that Coit Tower shouldn’t be used as a cash cow to host private parties.

The tower is one of the city’s most important landmarks and a link to its radical history — murals painted during the Depression, under the Works Progress Administration, depict local labor struggles. They’re in a bit of disrepair –but that hasn’t stopped Rec-Park from trying to bring in money by renting out the place for high-end events. In fact, the tower has been closed down to the public in the past year to allow wealthy patrons to host private parties. And the city has more of that in mind.

If the mayor and his department heads were acting in good faith to preserve the city’s public spaces — by raising taxes on big business and wealthy individuals to pay for the commons, instead of raising fees on the rest of us to use what our tax dollars have already paid for — this sort of ballot measure wouldn’t be necessary.

As it is, Prop. B is a policy statement, not an ordinance or Charter amendment. It’s written fairly broadly and won’t prevent the occasional private party at Coit Tower or prevent Rec-Park from managing its budget. Vote yes.

 

Utopia, mon amour

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Utopia, mon amour

marke@sfbg.com

VISUAL ARTS With Occupy gearing up again and a fresh round of election hell full upon us, another cycle of protest — and the urge to engage with the problems of the world while somehow escaping them — is in the air. The Oakland Museum’s current “1968 Exhibit” (through August 19) offers a family-friendly, multimedia trip through the Bay Area’s most famous political and cultural upheaval. But here are three ongoing shows that look closely at individual creators from the past whose work transcends nostalgia, transmits a fair amount of beauty, and drums up some idealistic lessons for the present.

 

“ARTHUR TRESS: SAN FRANCISCO 1964”

A miracle to inspire cafe artists everywhere. In 1964, 23-year-old NYC photographer Arthur Tress winged through San Francisco for a season, shooting the populace at a particularly turbulent time: the Republican National Convention, the Beatles’ first North American tour, auto worker protests along Van Ness, the passage of the Civil Rights Act. He developed the negatives in the communal darkroom off Duboce Park, had an unremarkable show in the back of a cafe, packed the photos up at his sister’s, and moved on. After his sister died, he found them in a box of her effects, and realized their significance.

And what a find: Forget Mad Men, this is the real 1964, perched on the edge of a cultural unraveling, its existential beehive slowly loosening into flower child ideals. The 70 photographs on show at the de Young, curated by James Ganz, expertly play with composition to bring rough social patches to artful life. A distorted shot of a George Romney presidential campaign poster delivers Orwellian chills. Screaming girls hoisting “Ringo for President” banners intimate repressed political hysteria. Dashing union workers form impressive phalanxes. Patrons at a Fifth and Market diner embody an microcosm of economic disillusionment. A transgender woman suns her hairy legs on the Embarcadero, a plaid-shirted boy holds up a hand-drawn hammer and sickle.

All of it coated with the glamour of deconstructed nostalgia, in which one can indulge and critique at once. But there’s more: “You have throw into the mix a heavy dose of social commentary and criticism — the idea that the photograph can be a vehicle for social change,” Tress tells an interviewer in the show’s handsome if carelessly annotated catalogue. “You photographed street demonstrations, you photographed protests … it was a way of becoming part of the movement.”

Through June 3. De Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr., deyoung.famsf.org

“THE UTOPIAN IMPULSE: BUCKMINSTER FULLER AND THE BAY AREA”

Inside the great Henry Ford automotive museum just outside of Detroit, you can tour an actual Dymaxion House, designed by preternaturally productive designer, philosopher, and dissembler R. Buckminster Fuller. It’s as perfect a realtime experience of walking around in someone’s 1940s sci-fi Utopian dream as one can ever have. A polished aluminum mushroom cap subdivided into tiny rooms bursting with ingenious “squee!”-worthy gadgetry to handle all of life’s projected needs, the Dymaxion House never took off as vernacular American architecture, despite its supposed ease of construction, light weight, and good intentions to house an expanding population. (Among its bland nemeses: rain, expense, and snarky architecture critics.)

But while it’s particularly poignant to see this polished dream deferred nestled among the many wheeled ones populating Henry Ford’s shrine to the former glories of the Motor City — and even though geodesic monument Spaceship Earth at Disney’s Epcot, another eerie graveyard of sleek Utopian ideals, remains Bucky Fuller’s only famous American architectural manifestation — the Dymaxion concept, and several other Bucky wonders, have had a profoundly positive and energizing effect on the Bay Area, as this visionary show at the SFMOMA reveals.

Curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher forewarned, “To be clear, it’s not so much a show about Fuller.” Indeed, but in the first rooms prepare to be blown away by gorgeous blow-ups of Massachusetts-born Bucky’s hyper-geometric blueprints, which will surely provide several indie electro bands with album cover inspiration for years to come, and a wall of insanely detailed notecards from “Everything I Know,” his late-life video-recorded brain dump.

Then the real magic of the show kicks in, as it opens up into displays of Bay Area movements and products directly traceable to Fuller, from glorious hippie artifacts like the Ant Farm architecture collective, the Whole Earth Catalog scene, and the iconic North Face “Oval Intention” dome-shaped tent (really!) to contemporary tech initiatives, like bright neon specimens from the “One Laptop One Child” campaign and the utterly transfixing “Local Code” by UC Berkeley Assistant Professor Nicholas de Monchaux, which digitally renders the transformation of all the unused public space in SF into “a common ecological infrastucture.”

Beyond reviving interest in Fuller, the ambitious project of SFMOMA here is to showcase the deep connection between the Bay Area’s brilliant tech legacy and its transcendental communal one, an audacious, successful synthesis that would bring Bucky joy — and one that only a full-size recreation of Steve Wozniak’s garage could probably best.

Through July 29. SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF. www.sfmoma.org

“RADICALLY GAY: THE LIFE OF HARRY HAY”

Harry Hay seemed to drop almost effortlessly into so many essential 20th century ideal-driven environments — Hollywood, unions, the Communist Party, gay rights, naturism, really the list goes on. That this modest show at the SF Main Library, curated by Joey Cain, not only clearly distills Hay’s timeline and influence, but also manages to illuminate new corners of his life and sometimes bring on a few tears, is rather a sensation.

Seriously, the man was multitude. Hay is best known as the founder of one of the first gay rights organizations, the Mattachine Society — here revealed through documents, org charts, and touching photos to have been a sort of Moose Lodge for “homophiles.” In one of the show’s most astounding touches, the exquisite Edwardian tea set used by his mother Margaret to caffeinate the early Mattachine meetings is displayed in full.

But of course there was more for this Mad Hatter, including pleading the Fifth before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s for his Communist party membership and Marxist musicology studies, his 1930s radicalizing tryst with actor and union supporter Will Geer, a.k.a. Grandpa from The Waltons, the “Circle of Loving Friends” desert commune, the national campaign to stop the damming of the Rio Grande — all laced through with references to underground SF gay clubs and arts happenings. (Some things, like his controversial early support for NAMBLA, which could benefit from some honest contextualization, seem glossed over, perhaps due to space concerns.)

Hay’s creation in the 1970s of the Radical Faeries, a collective whose anti-assimilationist, Pagan aesthetic continue to influence and inform Bay Area style, is well-represented here, as is perhaps Hay’s most stable pursuit: his loving 40-year relationship with John Burnside. Two seemingly politically contradictory Utopian ideals, embodied in one mercurial spirit, revealed beautifully.

Through July 29. SF Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF. www.sfpl.org

Stage Listings

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

THEATER

OPENING

Killing My Lobster Chops Down the Family Tree TJT, 470 Florida, SF; www.killingmylobster.com. $10-22. Opens Thu/26, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm (May 12, shows at 7 and 10pm); Sun, 7pm. Through May 13. The sketch comedy troupe performs a new show inspired by contemporary families.

Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Previews Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm; Sun/29, 5pm. Opens May 3, 7:30pm. Runs Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through May 27. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.

BAY AREA

In Paris Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $22.50-125. Opens Wed/25, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 13. Mikhail Baryshnikov stars in Dmitry Krymov’s romantic new play.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Fri/27, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through May 19. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two Phoenix Arts Association Theatre, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 12. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs the beginning of a new, unfinished play by a local author — and creates an ending on the spot once the script runs out.

*The Aliens SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 5. On the heels of Aurora Theatre’s production of Body Awareness, SF Playhouse introduces local audiences to another of contemporary American playwright Annie Baker’s acclaimed plays, in a finely tailored West Coast premiere directed by Lila Neugebauer. The Aliens unfolds in the days just around July 4, at slacker pace, in the backyard of a Vermont café (lovingly realized to palpable perfection by scenic designer Bill English), daily haunt of scruffy, post-Beat dropouts and sometime band mates Jasper (a secretly brooding but determined Peter O’Connor) and KJ (a charmingly ingenuous yet mischievous Haynes Thigpen). New employee and high school student Evan (a winningly eager and reticent Brian Miskell) is at first desperate to get the interlopers out of the “staff only” backyard but is just lonely enough to be seduced into friendship and wary idolatry by the older males. What unfolds is a small, sweet and unexpected tale of connection and influence, amid today’s alienated dream-sucking American landscape — same as it ever was, if you ask Charles Bukowski or Henry Miller, both points of reference to Jasper and KJ, who borrow Bukowski’s poem The Aliens for one of their many band names. An appropriate name for the alienated, sure, but part of the charm of these characters is just how easy they are to recognize, or how much we can recognize ourselves in them. Delusions of grandeur reside in every coffee house across this wistful, restless land. It’s not just Jasper and KJ who may be going nowhere. A final gesture to the young and awkward but clearly capable Evan suggests, a little ambiguously to be sure, that there’s promise out there yet for some. But more than that: the transaction makes clear by then that there are no fuck-ups, really; not among people with generous and open hearts — never mind how fucked up the country at large. (Avila)

Any Given Day Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Extended run: Wed/25-Sat/28, 8pm (also Sat/28, 2:30pm); Sun/29, 2:30 and 7:30pm. Magic Theatre performs Linda McLean’s Glasgow-set play about modern, urban life.

“Bay One Acts Festival” Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.bayoneacts.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also May 5 and 12, 3pm); Sun, 3 and 7pm. Through May 12. Ten bold and adventurous short plays by local playwrights, performed two full programs running in repertory.

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu, 8pm (no show Thu/26); Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm (no show May 6). Through June 10. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

*Glengarry Glen Ross Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.brownpapertickets.com. $26-40. Wed/25-Sat/28, 8pm. Actors Theatre of San Francisco and director Keith Phillips offer a sharp, spirited production of the 1984 play by David Mamet in which four real estate agents (Mark Bird, Sean Hallinan, John Krause, and Christian Phillips) jockey and scheme for advantage in their Chicago office in a landscape of insecurity and fierce competition symbolized by the selective doling out of the best leads by manager and company man John (Frank Willey). Clients (like the gullible young husband played by Randy Blair), meanwhile, are just witless marks for the machinations of the predatory salesman, no more meaningfully human than the “muppets” targeted by Greg Smith’s Goldman Sachs. If the scenic design is a little shabby, the strong cast makes that hardly an impediment to a story that feels especially timely in its sharply etched, not to say angry portrait of the ruthless and corrosive business mentality to which egos, livelihoods, and lives — not to mention the culture at large — are enthralled. (Avila)

Goodfellas Live Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm. The Dark Room offers a comedic take on Scorsese’s gangsters.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through May 19. Cheap thrills don’t come much cheaper or more thrilling than at a Thrillpeddlers musical extravaganza, and their newly remounted run of Hot Greeks affords all the glitter-dusted eye-candy and labyrinthian plot points we’ve come to expect from their gleefully exhibitionist ranks. Structured as loosely as possible on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Greeks appropriately enough follows the trials and tribulations of a college sorority tired of “losing” their boyfriends to the big football match every year (Athens U vs. Sparta Tech). Pledging to withhold sex from the men unless they call off the game results in frustration for all, only partially alleviated by the discovery that sexual needs can be satisfied by “playing the other team,” as it were. But like other Cockettes’ revivals presented by the Thrillpeddlers, the momentum of the show is carried forward not by the rather thinly-sketched narrative, but by the group song-and-dance numbers, extravagant costuming (and lack thereof), ribald wordplay, and overt gender-fuckery. In addition to many TP regulars, including a hot trio of Greek columns topped with “capital” headdresses who serve as the obligatory chorus (Steven Satyricon, Ste Fishell, Bobby Singer), exciting new additions to the Hypnodrome stage include a bewigged Rik Lopes as stalwart sister Lysistrata, angelically-voiced Maggie Tenenbaum as the not-so-angelic Sodoma, and multi-faceted cabaret talent Tom Orr as heartthrob hunk Pendulum Pulaski. (Gluckstern)

It Is What It Is and The Watchtower Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.myadultland.com. $20. Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm; Sun/29, 3pm. Short plays by Diane Karagienakos and Christopher Barranti, presented on the same stage with a brief intermission.

It’s All the Rage Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm, Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 27. Longtime comedian and radio host Marilyn Pittman’s solo play wrestles with the legacy of her parents’ violent deaths in a 1997 murder-suicide initiated by her father. It’s disturbing material that Pittman, a stout middle-aged woman with a gregarious and bounding personality, approaches indirectly via a good deal of humor — including recounting the first time she did her growing-up-lesbian bit before her mother in a DC comedy club. But the pain and confusion trailing her for 13 years is never far behind, whether in accounts of her own battle with anger (and the broken relationships it has left in its wake) or in ominous memories of her too complacent mother or her charming but domineering father, whose controlling behavior extended to casually announcing murderous dreams while policing the boundaries of his marriage against family interference. A fine mimic, Pittman deploys a Southern lilt in playing each parent, on a stage decorated with a hint of their Southwestern furnishings and a framed set of parental photographs. In not exactly knowing where to lay blame for, or find meaning in, such a horrifying act, the play itself mimics in subtler form the emotional tumult left behind. There’s a too brief but eerie scene in which her veteran father makes reference to a murder among fellow soldiers en route to war, but while PTSD is mentioned (including as an unwanted patrimony), the 60-minute narrative crafted by Pittman and director David Ford wisely eschews any pat explanation. If transitions are occasionally awkward and the pace a bit loose, the play leaves one with an uncomfortable sense of the darker aspects of love, mingled with vague concentric histories of trauma and dislocation in a weird, sad tale of destruction and staying power. Note: review from the show’s 2009 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

Thunder Above, Deeps Below Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-25. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 5. Bindlestiff presents A. Rey Pamatmat’s dramatic comedy about three homeless young adults.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through May 26. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Anatol Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $30-55. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through May 13. Aurora Theatre Company performs a world premiere translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s drama about the love life of an Viennese philanderer.

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Wed/25-Thu/26, 7pm; Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm; Sun/29, 5pm. Shotgun Players present Tom Stoppard’s riff on pre-revolutionary Russia.

A Hot Day in Ephesus Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; info@aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; May 13, 2pm. Through May 19. Actors Ensemble performs the world premiere of a musical based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.

John Brown’s Truth La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-15. Sun/29, 7:30pm. The story of abolitionist John Brown comes to life via William Crossman’s script-libretto, plus dance, spoken word, and a variety of improvised music styles.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 6. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Lucky Duck Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Thu and Sat, 7pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, noon and 5pm (additional performance May 11, 7pm). Through May 13. Berkeley Playhouse performs a musical inspired by the “Ugly Duckling” tale.

Of Mice and Men TheatreWorks at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Wed/25, 7:30pm; Thu/26-Sat/28, 8pm (also Sat/28, 2pm); Sun/29, 2pm. TheatreWorks performs the Steinbeck classic.

Oleanna Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $15-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through May 13. TheatreFIRST performs David Mamet’s tense two-charater drama.

Red Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-83. Tue and Thu-Fri, 8pm (also Thu/26, 2pm; no show Fri/27); Wed, 7pm; Sat-Sun, 2pm (also Sat, 8pm; no 8pm show May 12; Sun, 7pm). Extended through May 12. Mark Rothko (David Chandler) isn’t the only one painting with a broad brush in this labored and ultimately superficial two-hander by John Logan, enjoying a competent but underwhelming production by outgoing Berkeley Rep associate artistic director Les Waters. Set inside the late-1950s New York studio of the legendary abstract expressionist at the height of his fame, the play introduces a blunt and brash young painter named Ken (John Brummer) as Rothko’s new hired hand, less a character than a crude dramatic device, there first as a sounding board for the pompous philosophizing that apparently comprises a good chunk of the artist’s process and finally as a kind of mirror held up to the old iconoclast in challenging proximity to a new generation that must ultimately transcend Rothko’s canvases in turn. The dialogue holds up signs announcing intellectual and aesthetic depths but these remain surface effects, reflecting only platitudes, while the posturing tends to reduce Rothko to caricature. Much of the self-consciously reluctant filial interaction here smacks of biographical sound bites or heavy-handed underscoring of theme, and tends toward the outright hokey when touching on the credulity-bending subject of Ken’s murdered parents — with the attendant shades this adds to Rothko’s and the play’s chosen color palette. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: May 5-27 (Sat-Sun, 11am); June 3-July 15 (Sun, 11am). Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Bad Unkl Sista Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm (also Sat/28, 2pm). $35. The company melds Butoh, aerial installations, couture costuming, and more in the world premiere First Breath — Last Breath.

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina and Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Fri/27, 8pm: “Theatresports Madness,” $20.

“Comedy SuperPAC: Promoting Good Comedy and Great Causes Since 2012!” Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF; www.hemlocktavern.com. Mon, 7pm. Through May 7. $5. Nate Green and W. Kamau Bell present this ongoing comedy showcase; this week’s performers are Chris Garcia, Brendan McGowan, Jeff Kreisler, and Brandie Posey.

Company C Contemporary Ballet Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm; Sun/29, 2pm. $23-45. The company’s spring program includes works by Charles Anderson, Gregory Dawson, and Peter Anastos.

“Dancers’ Group presents 2012 Bay Area Dance Week” Various locations; www.bayareadance.org. Through Sun/29. Free. Over 600 free dance events at locations throughout San Francisco, the East Bay, and beyond.

“Dances From the Heart” Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.helpisontheway.org. Mon/30, 7:30pm. $30-50. Dancers from Ballet San Jose, Diablo Ballet, ODC, and more perform to raise money for the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“Mark Foehringer Dance Project SF: Young Choreographer’s Forum” Kunst Stoff Arts, One Market, SF; www.mfdpsf.org. Sat/28, 11:30am-12:30pm. Free. As part of Bay Area Dance Week, dance makers ages 16-24 perform.

“Move to the Now” 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF; www.asimagery.org, www.postballet.org. Sat/28, 6-9pm. Free. As part of National Dance Week, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery and Post: Ballet present “one night of extravagant dance” featuring performances by numerous Bay Area companies.

“Poems Under the Dome” City Hall, North Light Court, One Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Pl, SF; www.poemdome.net. Fri/27, 5:30-8:30pm. Free. Celebrate National Poetry Month with this open mic at City Hall.

Smuin Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.smuinballet.org. Fri/27-Sat/28 and May 1-5, 8pm (also Sat/28 and May 5, 2pm); Sun/29 and May 6, 2pm. $25-62. Program includes the West Coast premiere of Val Caniparoli’s Swipe and the world premiere of Ma Cong’s Through.

“Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam” Masonic Auditorium, 1111 California, SF; www.youthspeaks.org. Fri/27, 7pm. $6-18. Sixteen finalists battle it out in Youth Speaks’ 16th annual slam competition.

David Zambrano Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm. $20. The renowned choreographer performs Soul Project.

BAY AREA

“April Follies Same Sex Dance Sport Competition” Just Dance Ballroom, 2500 Embarcadero, Oakl; www.aprilfollies.com. Sat/28, 10am-5pm (competition); 6:30-7:30pm (beginning lessons); 8-11pm (showcase of champions). $15-35. Styles include tango, swing, merengue, salsa, something called “American Smooth,” and more.

“CubaCaribe Dance Festival” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.cubacaribe.org. Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm; Sun/29, 7pm. $10-24. The festival’s final week features Oil and Water, a world premiere by Alayo Dance Company. 

 

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 25

Court support for Oaksterdam arrestees Oakland federal courthouse, 1301 Clay, Oak, 9:30 am, free. About 60 percent of Californians support medical marijuana, and a similar percentage are likely quite pissed off following federal raids on Bay Area businesses that dispense medical cannabis as well as the trade school that launched careers in the growing industry, Oaksterdam University. When property was seized and medical marijuana defenders arrested last week, there was an uproar, and that uproar continues Wednesday, when a handful of those detained have a court date. Show up to held support those arrested and continue the fight for safe access.

SATURDAY 28

Learn the Art of Seeding San Francisco Public Library- Parkside Branch, 1200 Taraval, SF, www.feeltheearth.org, 3-4pm, free. Join Jonathan Silverman (aka Victory Farmer), director of Feel the Earth, for a workshop teaching kids how to plant seeds and keep them growing. Anyone three years old and above is welcome to connect with their plants and learn to cultivate them at this engaging workshop. They will probably get to leave with some brand new peas.

Walk Against Rape The Women’s Building, 3548 18th St, SF www.sfwar.org 11am, free or fundraising optional. Every two minutes, a sexual assault occurs in the United States. Women Against Rape have long provided a crisis hotline and other services for people dealing with sexual assault, as well as a safe space to share stories. April is sexual assault awareness month, and WAR will conclude it with the Walk Against Rape- continuing the struggle against sexual abuse of all kinds.

Green Action Walkathon McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan, SF www.greenaction.givezooks.com 10:30am, free or $15 for T-shirt towards fundraising. A beautiful walk through Golden Gate Park, for a good cause. Green Action is an organization dedicated to fighting localized environmental hazards. It’s stopped toxic waste dumping from Hunters Point to indigenous land in Ward Valley. Now, it invites you to “Join communities and individuals affected by environmental pollution in the march toward a healthy planet.”

TUESDAY 1 May Day Many locations. See www.strikemay1st.com for round-up of Bay Area events. This is going to be big. A call for a May Day general strike has resonated throughout the world, and in the Bay Area everyone from labor to Occupy groups plan to heed that call, hard. There will be a slew of events as organizers tell everyone: no work, no school, no shopping, no housework. Instead, take to the streets for everything from a family-friendly street festival to a marches throughout Oakland and San Francisco to what Occupy SF has announced as a “rebirth of the San Francisco commune.” Some groups will even kick off the day early, with an April 30 “ruckus street party” in Dolores Park and SEIU protest at City Hall. So call in sick- you might not be able to get to work anyway, as a group plans to occupy the Golden Gate Bridge that morning.

Live Shots: Childish Gambino and Danny Brown at the Fox

Tony Robles
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It can be hard to take comedians and comic actors seriously as musicians. Particularly when you consider the questions posed by earlier models. Did Eddie Murphy’s girl really want to party all the time? (And if so, why didn’t he?)

In his last few albums as Childish Gambino, Donald Glover, the writer-actor best known for portraying lovable goof Troy Barnes on NBC’s cult sitcom Community, has combated the typical skepticism with a self-aware, post-Kanye confessional style of hip-hop. His show at the Fox in Oakland last Thursday made it clear that no matter how funny Childish Gambino’s lyrics are, as a performer, he’s serious.

Glover’s opener for the night was Detroit’s Danny Brown, whose latest release on Fool’s Gold Records, XXX, has been billed as an obscene concept album. It’s not the most thought-out idea, though, and lacking the inventiveness of concepts like Deltron 3030, Madvillainy, or Dr. Octagonecologyst, it seems more of an excuse to revive a 2 Live Crew Style of hedonism. (A common topic for Brown is eating pussy, and the MC, amusingly, has a habit of sticking his tongue out for emphasis.)

There’s definitely a perverse humor at work, but with lyrics like “Fuck bitches like AIDS don’t exist, I’m a young ruthless nigga on some Eazy-E shit,” your mileage may vary.

As with OFWGKTA, it can be hard to tell where the joke begins and ends, and as Brown’s DJ repeatedly played a “Swag!” vocal sample, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was done ironically. But Brown’s voice – like a strange hybrid of Dr. Octagon and Larry Blackmon – has a unique trill to it and an appealing cadence, and from the start of his set there were noticeably quite a few people in the front row mouthing along and shaking the floor boards like they didn’t give a fuck.*

Brown finished his set noticeably tired, which is understandable, since the Fox is a large venue for a solo rapper to energize. At one point I had the same concern with Childish Gambino, but Glover was backed by an impressive band.**

It wasn’t a surprise, as my expectation had been primed from videos of the first week of Coachella, where Glover gave a lively, physical performance despite wearing a large black boot on one leg, stemming from a fractured foot that caused him to cancel performances earlier in the year.

At the Fox there was no boot in sight, and Glover appeared entirely unburdened, bounding around the stage, breaking out a silly step between verses, and generally hyping the crowd up as he split his time performing tracks mainly from last year’s Camp and 2010’s Cul-de-sac, with a confidence that seemed well beyond the few tours he had under his belt.

Combined with a slick stage production – consisting of some minimal pup-tent/tree decorations and well timed, follow-along visuals – Glover seemed entirely in control of the show, which managed to come off as intimate and sincere. If it is a joke, I get it.

Setlist:
-Outside
-Fire Fly
-Freaks and Geeks
-Do Ya Like
-Backpackers
-I’m On It
-I Be On That
-Rolling in the Deep (Adele cover/John Legend version)
-All The Shine
-LES
-Heartbeat
-You See Me
-Bonfire
-Sunrise
Encore
(Freestyles)
-That Power
-Lights Turned On

*Although, one of the guys that seemed to know all the lyrics was also wearing a Davy Crockett coonskin cap. So there’s that.
**One of the members – alternating between keys, guitar, and violin – looked particularly familiar, until I recognized him as the impressively talented Ray Suen, who performed with the Flaming Lips at Bimbo’s.

Even more from the tUnE-yArDs interview

Tony Robles
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Even more from the tUnE-yArDs interview

Despite a relentless touring schedule, and an intense side-project, scoring the upcoming SFIFF-presented evening of Buster Keaton shorts at the Castro Theatre with Oakland-based guitar virtuoso Ava Mendoza, Merrill Garbus, the artist otherwise known as tUnE-yArDs, gave us a great interview, and not all of it could fit in this week’s print feature on Garbus and St. Vincent.

While currently living in Oakland, Garbus hails from the East Coast, and has also lived in Kenya and Montreal, a combination of influences that allows her and her singular, quixotic music to avoid falling into a trap of regionalism or simple categorization. Catch tUnE-yArDs with Ava Mendoza at the Castro on April 23, and at the Fox Theater April 24, in concert with St. Vincent.

SFBG: You spent time studying music in Kenya, what elements of your current musical style do you attribute directly to that experience? What are some of your other influences?

Merrill Garbus: I mostly was very humbled in my study of music there. I studied taarabu (Taarab music) and I was a pretty weak student at the harmonium. So much of that music is based on the Swahili poetry, which was so complex linguistically that I hardly understood it.

But studying any music is a way of absorbing it, as well as a way of practicing those basics of musicianship: playing by ear, repetition on an instrument, playing with other people.

It was also the experience of listening to the popular music in Kenya at that time that really influenced me, specifically pop music from Congo, which they called Lingala in Kenya. I had never heard music like that, and especially that kind of music that compelled a person to dance so instantaneously.

SFBG: What made you decide to use the uke as your primary instrument instead of the fiddle or guitar or something more “traditional” as a lead?

MG: The ukulele is so unassuming; it sounds nice when you’re not even trying – it even has a charm when it’s really out of tune, I think. It makes a space for itself. As a guitar player one has to really prove themselves, to stand out among all the other guitar players of the world and of the past. The ukulele made the songs the focal point, instead of putting pressure on me to be particularly virtuosic on an instrument.

SFBG: Tell me a little about your previous vocal training.

MG: I studied a bit of classical singing in high school, and sang with a madrigal group which taught me a lot about blending with other voices. I sang in a college a cappella group which was great performance training and is more about belting and volume, which has certainly helped me; and I took some opera lessons when I wrote a puppet opera.

Theater training gave me a lot of vocal skills, too, particularly studying with members of the Roy Hart Theater and doing work with Viewpoints and Suzuki (Theater Suzuki, different than the musical training.) Through the theater work, I learned to expand the palette of vocal sounds that were accessible to me.

SFBG: I’d love to hear a little more about your theatrical background, and how you think it influences your approach to staging.

MG: I think it’s more than staging, although recently we’ve been talking about stage props and lighting and all of these other things that bring me right back to undergraduate theater studies…I know a lot of bands who struggle with live performance because it’s a secondary thing to writing songs, and for me I’m realizing how primary it is to consider the performance. Even in the studio, even in front of my computer doing busy-work editing, it’s a kind of performance, an improvisation of sorts, following my instinct in the moment.

SFBG: You have a fondness for creative spelling, not just with alternating caps, but also with dropping the “r”’s at the end, adding “z”’s, etc. What’s your intention there?

MG: I like to play with spelling because poor spelling is, most of the time, associated with ignorance and being wrong, but as we learn from Black culture, misspelling and screwing around with language is often an intentional reappropriation, to turn the language of the over-powering forces into a language of one’s own.

In Swahili, there are certain words, like “taksi,” which are Swahili spellings of things that didn’t exist before the language of the colonizers appeared, so what’s left is a British/Western idea, a British/Western word, with an African spelling.

I tend to use spelling and pronunciation as a humbling force, for instance, people feel slightly stupid every time they say, “Pow-a.” It makes people uncomfortable, and there’s a sense the friction: they have to make a choice. Do I say, “Pow-er” or “Pow-a?” Which makes me look like less of the asshole?

SFBG: You take a playful approach towards video-making, especially in regards to face-paint/costuming. But are you ever afraid people will misinterpret your style as some sort of cultural appropriation? Do you think worries about “cultural appropriation” are even still relevant in this hyper-connected, global-mashup day-and-age?

MG: There have been instances where tUnE-yArDs was associated with a kind of cultural appropriation that I wasn’t cool with, such as when an artist used a Native American-style headdress on a poster for one of our shows. It wasn’t my decision, and I didn’t see the poster before it went out, but of course, there’s my band’s name on the poster, and the well-intentioned artist who didn’t think hard enough about that particular choice, and a whole bunch of offended people. However, I try to concern myself less with being politically correct and not stepping on anyone’s cultural toes, and more with righting things, in the limited ways I have to do that…

(But) yes “cultural appropriation” is an important thing to consider carefully for an artist like me…I, as a white woman with a college education and access to the world of pop music and all of its resources, have a lot of power. I can rip off not only the style but the note-for-note music of another culture, and get away quite easily without having to justify or explain that. It’s really up to me: will I use these tense moments of cultural appropriation, which I believe are inevitable in this time we live in, to draw attention to those with less power and less of a voice, or will I skirt the issue completely?

SFBG: Who are some of your favorite Oakland/Bay Area-based artists at the moment?

MG: Beep Trio is my favorite Oakland band. It is but one example of the brilliant, creative, avant-garde, jazz-influenced bands in the area. Dominique Leone and Ava Mendoza are a couple of others. Mwahaha and Kapowski are great friends of ours and great up-and-coming bands, more on the pop end of things. And V-Nasty.

For your consideration: Short takes from SFIFF, week one

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For your consideration: Short takes from SFIFF, week one

The gargantuan San Francisco Film Festival opens this week after a particularly fraught year in which the San Francisco Film Society tragically lost two well-respected executive directors. But never fear! SFIFF is still tops, and we’re here to guide you through it, from throught-provoking experimental flicks to unheralded-as-of-yet crowd-friendly fare. We’ve rustled upmore than a dozen previews of appealing flicks after the jump — and check out our complete coverage, including indepth features and interviews, here.

THU/19

Farewell, My Queen (Benoît Jacquot, France, 2012) Opening early on the morning of July 14, 1789, Farewell, My Queen depicts four days at the Palace of Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution, as witnessed by a young woman named Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) who serves as reader to Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). Sidonie displays a singular and romantic devotion to the queen, while the latter’s loyalties are split between a heedless amour propre and her grand passion for the Duchess de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen). These domestic matters and other regal whims loom large in the tiny galaxy of the queen’s retinue, so that while elsewhere in the palace, in shadowy, candle-lit corridors, courtiers and their servants mingle to exchange news, rumor, panicky theories, and evacuation plans, in the queen’s quarters the task of embroidering a dahlia for a projected gown at times overshadows the storming of the Bastille and the much larger catastrophe on the horizon. Farewell, My Queen screens as part of the SFIFF’s opening night festivities, which are dedicated to the memory of SF Film Society executive director Graham Leggat. Thu/19, 7pm, Castro. (Lynn Rapoport 

 

FRI/20

Palaces of Pity (Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, Portugal, 2011) Just under an hour, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s Portuguese curiosity is hardly fettered by the limits of time, let alone imagination. Its wayward story focuses on two precocious young female cousins whose closeness goes south when their beloved grandmother dies, leaving them rivals for her estate. Before that happens, however, this fabulist curio hits a deadpan peak in an extended medieval dream sequence that pits punitive Catholic Church against happy sodomites — ah, some things never change. Fri/20, 6pm; Sat/21, 7pm; April 26, 9:15pm, Kabuki. (Dennis Harvey)

The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2011) Korean auteur (Woman Is the Future of Man, 2004) Hong Sang-soo’s latest exercise in self-consciousness, this black-and-white, fable-like study of a frustrated filmmaker (Yu Jun-sang), returning home to Seoul to visit an old friend after spending time in the countryside teaching, adds up to a kind of formal palimpsest. Surrounded by sycophants, vindictive former leading men, and women who seem to serve a purely semiotic purpose, he participates in an endless loop of drink, smoke, and conversation in a series of dreamlike scenes that play on the theme of coincidence and endless variation. Hong’s layering of alternate scenarios at times feels like a bit of a gimmick, but the way he infuses specific urban spaces with forlorn significance in mostly static shots is affecting — even if the film’s ultimate narrative slightness has the cut-and-paste haphazardness of fridge poetry magnets. Fri/20, 7:15pm; Mon/23, 9:30pm, Kabuki. April 25, 9pm, PFA. (Michelle Devereaux)

Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece/France, 2011) Yorgos Lanthimos is well on his way to a reputation for sick yet oddly charming high-concept spectacles. Here, a group calling themselves Alps offers substitution services for the recently bereaved — that’s right, they’ll play your dead loved one to fill that hole in your life. Pitch-black comic moments abound, and the sensibility that made 2009’s Dogtooth so thrilling is distinctly present here, if not quite as fresh. Beyond the absurd logline, the plot is rather more conventional: things get out of hand when Alps member Anna (Aggeliki Papoulia, the eldest daughter from Dogtooth) gets too invested in one of her assignments, and the power structure of Alps turns on her. If Alps is not exactly a revelation, it’s still a promising entry in a quickly blossoming auteur’s body of work. Fri/20, 9pm, FSC. Sat/21, 2:30pm; Tue/24, 6:30pm, Kabuki. (Sam Stander)

Gimme the Loot (Adam Leon, U.S., 2012) Biggie Smalls’ track is just a smart starting point for this streetwise, hilarious debut feature by Adam Leon. Young graf artists Malcolm (Ty Hickson) and Sofia (Tashiana Washington) are hustling hard to get paid and fund a valiant effort to tag the Mets’ Home Run Apple to show up rival gang-bangers. The problem lies in raising the exorbitant fee their source demands, either by hook (selling pot to seductive, rich white girls) or crook (offloading cell phone contraband). The absurdity of the pair’s situation isn’t lost on anyone, especially Leon. But their passion to rise above (sorta) and yearning for expression gives the tale an emotional heft. Arriving with much post-SXSW buzz, Gimme the Loot stays with you long after the taggers have moved onto fresh walls. Fri/20, 9:15pm, Kabuki. Sat/21, 9:30pm, FSC. Tue/24, 6:30pm, Kabuki. (Kimberly Chun)

 

SAT/21

Choked (Kim Joong-hyun, South Korea, 2011) Baby, it’s cold outside: urban Seoul is the site of this debut feature by Kim Joong-hyun, but those familiar with the dog-eat-dog realities of getting ahead in the modern world, in any country, will recognize this unrelenting indictment of capitalism. In the de-centered middle of a financial mess left behind by his AWOL mom, the striving, good-looking Youn-ho (Um Tae-goo) holds down an unsavory job, evicting tenants for developers, to raise funds to support his materialistic fiancée. He’s under assault from his mother’s creditors, including her desperate divorcee friend who peddles black-market doodads. Moments of grace — and instances of human connection — are few and far between in this scorched emotional landscape of so-called bad mothers, where unselfish tenderness is scarce and money speaks volumes, and Kim’s smart, humanistic perspective won’t let you tear your eyes away. Sat/21, 1:30pm; April 28, 6pm; May 1, 9pm, Kabuki. (Chun)

Dreileben — Beats Being Dead (Christian Petzold, Germany, 2011) Originally made for German TV, the Dreileben trio is ideally viewed in order, one right after the other (SFIFF offers that option on two different days). It’s worth blocking off time to see all three, for maximum enjoyment of this tense, offbeat crime series; made by different directors, the films — which take place in a small town surrounded by fairy-tale forests containing monsters both real and imagined — link together in unexpected ways. The first entry, Beats Being Dead, focuses on nursing student Johannes (Jacob Matschenz), whose carelessness allows a convicted murderer to escape, and whose recklessness allows him to romance stormy hotel maid Ana (Luna Mijovic), while still pining for his rich, princessy ex (Vijessna Ferkic). Seldom has young love been portrayed so realistically — or set amid such an atmosphere of bucolic foreboding. Sat/21, 1:30pm; Tue/24, 9:45pm; April 29, 2:45, Kabuki. (Cheryl Eddy)

Bitter Seeds (Micha X. Peled, U.S., 2011) Just what we all needed: more incontrovertible evidence of the bald-faced evil of Monsanto. This documentary on destitute Indian cotton farmers follows an 18-year-old girl named Manjusha, a budding journalist who investigates the vast numbers of farmer suicides since the introduction (and market stranglehold) of “BT” cotton — which uses the corporation’s proprietary GMO technology — in the region of Vidarbha. Before BT took over in 2004, these cotton farmers relied on cheap heritage seed fertilized only by cow dung, but the largely illiterate population fell prey to Monsanto’s marketing blitz and false claims, purchasing biotech seed that resulted in pesticide reliance, failing crops, and spiraling debt. It’s a truly heartbreaking and infuriating story, but much of the action feels stagey and false. Should Indian formality be blamed? Considering the same fate befell Peled’s 2005 documentary China Blue, probably not. Still, eff Monsanto. Sat/21, 3:45pm, FSC. Tues/24, 8:50pm, PFA. April 26, 6:15pm, Kabuki. (Devereaux)

The Waiting Room (Peter Nicks, U.S., 2011) Twenty-four hours in the uneasy limbo of an ER waiting room sounds like a grueling, maddening experience, and that’s certainly a theme in this day-in-the-life film. But local documentarian Peter Nicks has crafted an absorbing portrait of emergency public health care, as experienced by patients and their families at Oakland’s Highland Hospital and as practiced by the staff there. Other themes: no insurance, no primary care physician, and an emergency room being used as a medical facility of first, last, and only resort. Nicks has found a rich array of subjects to tell this complicated story: An anxious, unemployed father sits at his little girl’s bedside. Staffers stare at a computer screen, tracking a flood of admissions and the scarce commodity of available beds. A doctor contemplates the ethics of discharging a homeless addict for the sake of freeing up one of them. And a humorous, ultra-competent triage nurse fields an endless queue of arrivals with humanity and steady nerves. Sat/21, 3:50pm, PFA. April 30, 1pm; May 1, 6:30pm, Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Dreileben — Don’t Follow Me Around (Dominik Graf, Germany, 2011) The second Dreileben film offers a shift in tone and style; it’s more of a procedural (but only sorta), and is the only trilogy entry shot on 16mm. Police psychologist Jo (Jeanette Hain) — her full name, Johanna, mirrors that of the first film’s Johannes — is summoned to Dreileben, ostensibly to help local cops track the murderous escapee (and, it would seem, taste the local cuisine, what with the endless dining scenes). But just when you start anticipating Jo slamming the cuffs on the murderer, you realize this story’s really about Jo’s relationship with estranged BFF Vera (Susanne Wolff), who invites Jo to stay at her crumbling country house while working on the case. When the women realize they unwittingly dated the same man years ago, old resentments bubble quickly to the surface. Plus: the pursuit of the killer, with the help of a chainsaw artist. Sat/21, 4pm; April 25, 6:15pm; April 29, 5pm, Kabuki. (Eddy)

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (Matthew Akers, U.S., 2011) Matthew Akers’ sleek and telling doc explores the career and motivations of the legendary Serbian-born, New York-based performance artist on the occasion of 2010’s major retrospective and new work at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Abramović, self-styled the “grandmother of performance art” at an eye-catching 63, steels herself with rare energy — and a determination to gain equal status for performance in the world of fine art — for an incredibly demanding new piece, The Artist Is Present, a quasi-mystical encounter between herself and individual museum patrons that takes the form of a three-month marathon of silent one-on-one gazing. Meanwhile, 30 young artists re-perform pieces from her influential career. Akers gains intimate access throughout, including Abramović’s touching reunion with longtime love and artistic collaborator Ulay, while providing a steady pulse of suspense as the half-grueling, half-ecstatic performance gets underway. A natural charmer, Abramović’s charismatic presence at MoMA is no act but rather a focused state in which audiences are drawn into — and in turn shape — powerful rhythms of consciousness and desire. Sat/21, 4:15pm; April 28, 3:30pm, Kabuki. April 29, 5:40pm, PFA. (Robert Avila)

Dreileben — One Minute of Darkness (Christoph Hochhäusler, Germany, 2011) In part three, Molesch (Stefan Kurt), the muddy man we’ve seen skulking around the edges of the first two films, finally comes into focus. Early on, we learn his murder conviction was based on circumstantial evidence — a surveillance camera marred by “one minute of darkness” at a crucial moment. As veteran detective Kirchberg (Marcus Kreil), the Tommy Lee Jones to Molesch’s Harrison Ford, pursues his prey (while reconsidering the man’s guilt), the fugitive hides out in the woods, playing childlike alphabet games and absconding with lunches packed by passing hikers. But we’ve been waiting for the dark twist since part one’s cliffhanger — resolved here, though the events do not neatly align with what’s come before. The only conclusion: in Dreileben, truth is in the eye of the beholder. Sat/21, 6:30pm; April 26, 9:45pm; April 29, 7:15pm, Kabuki. (Eddy) 

Bernie (Richard Linklater, U.S., 2011) Jack Black plays the titular new assistant funeral director liked by everybody in small-town Carthage, Tex. He works especially hard to ingratiate himself with shrewish local widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), but there are benefits — estranged from her own family, she not only accepts him as a friend (then companion, then servant, then as virtual “property”), but makes him her sole heir. Richard Linklater’s latest is based on a true-crime story, although in execution it’s as much a cheerful social satire as I Love You Philip Morris and The Informant! (both 2009), two other recent fact-based movies about likable felons. Black gets to sing (his character being a musical theater queen, among other things), while Linklater gets to affectionately mock a very different stratum of Lone Star State culture from the one he started out with in 1991’s Slacker. There’s a rich gallery of supporting characters, most played by little-known local actors or actual townspeople, with Matthew McConaughey’s vainglorious county prosecutor one delectable exception. Bernie is its director’s best in some time, not to mention a whole lot of fun. Sat/21, 9:30pm, Kabuki. (Dennis Harvey)

SUN/22

Will (Ellen Perry, England/France/Turkey, 2011) A far cry from director Ellen Perry’s 2005 political doc The Fall of Fujimori, this sweet-twee tale follows the adventures of a newly orphaned 11-year-old (Perry Eggleton) who slips away from his nun-run boarding school to attend a Very Important Soccer Game. Improbably kind strangers — including a taciturn Serb (Kristian Kiehling) with a troubled past — help guide Will on his journey. Tears are shed, life lessons are learned, etc. The one thing saving Will from drowning in its own sap is its enthusiastic, endearing embrace of European football culture; the game that Will (a diehard Liverpool supporter) is hellbent on attending is the 2005 Champions League Final. For LFC fans smarting over the current season, Will is a must-see: “You’ll Never Walk Alone” soars, and Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, and “King Kenny” Dalglish make cameos. Sun/22, 11:30am; May 1, 6pm, Kabuki. (Eddy)

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Terence Nance, U.S., 2011) Terence Nance’s first feature might remind you of Barry Jenkins’ 2008 Medicine for Melancholy, in that it’s an ambivalent love story between two young African Americans that owes more the restive, intellectually curious, meta-cinema feel of the Nouvelle Vague than more contemporary U.S. cinema. The big differences are that Nance’s vision is both explicitly autobiographical and largely animated. He charts and muses upon an on-off relationship in stream-of-consciousness terms that encompass everything from the summary of a Louise Erdrich novel to an earlier-film-within-the-film (and a Q&A session that occurred after its screening). This kind of structureless navel-gazing can get tired, and indeed Beauty might ideally be experienced in sections rather than over one long haul. But still, just about any chosen few minutes are as clever and inventive as could be. Sun/22, 8:30pm, PFA. April 30, 9pm; May 1, 12:15pm; May 2, 4pm, Kabuki. (Harvey) 

 

MON/23

Darling Companion (Lawrence Kasdan, U.S., 2012) When the carelessness of self-absorbed surgeon Joseph (Kevin Kline) results in the stray dog adopted by Beth (Diane Keaton) going missing during a forest walk, that event somehow brings all the fissures in their long marriage to a crisis point. Big Chill (1983) director Lawrence Kasdan’s first feature in a decade hews back to the more intimate, character-based focus of his best films. But this dramedy is too often shrilly pitched and overly glossy (it seems to take place in a Utah vacation-themed L.L. Bean catalog), with numerous talented actors — including Richard Jenkins, Dianne Wiest, Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, and Sam Shepard — playing superficially etched characters that merely add to the clutter. Most cringe-inducing among them is Ayelet Zurer’s Carmen, a woman of Roma extraction who apparently has a crystal ball in her psychic head and actually speaks lines like “My people have a saying….” Mon/23, 6:45pm; Tue/24, noon, Kabuki. (Harvey)

TUE/24

Target (Alexander Zeldovich, Russia/German, 2011) The year is 2020, and a group of disaffected upper-class Russians make a pilgrimage to an energy accumulator known as the Target, which halts aging, among other effects. The setting is an unsettlingly believable near-future culture based on standardized “ratings” for each member of society and an escalated fixation on age and appearance. What follows the transmutation of these five characters is an operatic mess of love, adultery, debauchery, and violence. It’s a weird admixture of philosophical science fiction, social satire, and intense character drama. In some ways, its closest relative is the bloated Wim Wenders dystopia Until the End of the World (1991), but its absurdities are more calculated and its acting more grounded. Complete with nods to Anna Karenina and Top Chef, it’s a consuming entertainment with consistently surprising creative choices. Tue/24, 2:30pm; April 27, 10pm, Kabuki. (Stander)

The San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 19-May 3; most shows $13. Venues: Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk.; SF Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; and Sundance Kabuki Cinema, 1881 Post, SF. More info at www.sffs.org.

Our Weekly Picks: April 18-24

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 18

Wild Flag

Though it could be called an all-star band based on previous groups and collaborations, which include Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi, and the Minders, the members of Wild Flag have made sure their new project stands firmly on its own solid ground. Last September saw the release of the band’s excellent self-titled debut album on Merge Records, highlighted by the singles “Future Crime” and “Romance,” proving that Carrie Brownstein, Rebecca Cole, Mary Timony, and Janet Weiss have a special chemistry and searing musical bond that comes across on both tape and stage. (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $20

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com


THURSDAY 19

Anoushka Shankar

“The daughter of legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar.” It must be a daunting label to perform under, but after training and performing extensively with her father beginning at age nine, Anoushka has carved out her own following. The younger Shankhar recorded a live album in New York’s Carnegie Hall at 19 and has received two nominations for Grammy Awards. She uses classical Indian instruments and techniques to delve into other genres, including jazz and electronica. Her sixth studio release, Traveler, recently released stateside, is an exploration into the relationship between sitar and flamenco that features a variety of Spanish artists and vocalists. (Kevin Lee)

7:30pm, $25-$60

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness

(415) 392-4400

www.sfjazz.org

 

“Tease-O-Rama”

In a celebration of all things sultry, seductive, sexy and saucy, “Tease-O-Rama 2012” promises four days and nights of the best in burlesque, showcasing the brightest modern talents awhile also honoring several legends of the scene. Boasting live shows, workshops, meet and greets, and more, the festival features standouts of today such as Catherine D’Lish and performers from Cirque Du Soleil’s Zumanity, and appearances by icons such as Satan’s Angel, who started her career back in 1961 here in San Francisco. (McCourt)

$12–$45 per event; $150 for a festival pass

Multiple venues, SF

www.teaseorama.com

 

Madness

British two-tone ska act Madness has enjoyed considerable commercial success in its native UK, charting numerous hit songs over a more than 35 year career, but it seems to be best known here in the states for one hit single, 1982 release “Our House,” which exposed the band to American audiences via radio and MTV’s heavy rotation of the tune’s cheeky video. Local fans will want to make sure to catch the group when it comes to the city tonight between its two slots at Coachella, and hear the full breadth of the band’s varied ace catalog. (McCourt)

With DJ Harry Duncan.

8pm, $35–$42.50

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 567-2060

www.thewarfieldtheater.com


FRIDAY 20

Cuba Caribe Festival

Perhaps we are a little too smug about living in the “second largest” dance community in the country. But then arrives — for the eighth year — another Cuba Caribe Festival. Where else would you see, in one program, companies such as Las Que Son’s jubilant women dancers; storyteller Muriel Johnson; Cunamacué’s Afro-Peruvian music and dance, and Grupo Experimental Nagó’s East-Cuban traditions? On weekend two, at Laney College Theater in Oakland, Ramón Ramos Alayo, who synthesizes tradition with modernism, is premiering “Oil and Water,” his perspective on the despoiling of the oceans. Also workshops, lectures, and film presentations. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm; Sun/22, 3 and 7pm, $10–$24

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 826-4441

www.cubacaribe.org

 

School of Seven Bells

The rejiggered School of Seven Bells marches on with vocalists Alejandra Deheza and producer Benjamin Curtis after Alejandra’s twin Claudia left the band a couple of years back for “personal reasons.” Ghostory, the first SVIIB LP since the lineup shift, has more of a free flow and electronic feel than previous releases; think of a Ladytron-like sound rather than the melodious pop heard in the band’s first release, Alpinisms. Alejandra’s ethereal voice takes on a plaintive tone that melds especially well with Curtis’ low-slung shoegaze atmospherics on highlight track “Love Story.” (Lee)

With Exitmusic

9pm, $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

STS9

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that there may be a general correlation between interest in 2012 phenomena and smoking a righteous amount of pot. If getting supremely baked and attributing significance to arbitrary dates is your thing, then truly the stars align this 4/20 with Sound Tribe Sector 9 performing at the Fox. As if the popular electronic jam band wasn’t reason enough for stoners to organically celebrate, STS9 will be bringing its Great Cycle Spectacles — featuring a glowing LED Mayan pyramid — to the already dazzling venue. End of the world or beginning of the next stage? Either way, smoke up. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Nosaj Thing (4/20), Mimosa (4/21)

8pm, $29.50

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 548-3010

www.thefoxtheater.com


SATURDAY 21

Cesar Chavez Festival

For too many of us, Cesar Chavez Day passes by in a blur of I’m-not-at-work (or dammit-I’m-at-work) chaos. We don’t really stop to celebrate the man, and that’s a shame because as you can tell from the way Rainbow Grocery shuts its door to celebrate him, he was a seminal figure in California history, Chicano history, and labor movement history. Luckily, we all get a hall pass this and every year if we didn’t observe the man on his state-sanctioned holiday. Today, the Mission will be marked by a parade in his honor, leading to a street fair on 24th Street with live music by Carlos Santana’s son Salvador, local hip-hop phenom Bang Data, and the Cuicacalli Youth Ballet Folklorico, among many other acts. (Caitlin Donohue)

11am parade; noon-6pm fair, free

Street fair: 24th St. between Bryant and Treat, SF

(415) 621-2665

www.cesarchavezday.org


MONDAY 23

All Tiny Creatures

There are a lot of voices on Harbor, the debut album from Wisconsin’s All Tiny Creatures, some from the quartet itself — featuring musicians from Collections of Colonies of Bees and Volcano Choir — and then a number of guest collaborators, most notably Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon (who All Tiny Creatures also open for at the Bill Graham) and members of Megafaun. Given the number of vocalists, it’s surprising how restrained they are in the mix, lightly drawing on their instrumental quality instead of normal lyrical structuring. The result — from the driving opener “Holography” to the scattered march of “Aviation Class” — is an immediately catchy album of prog pop that moves along weightlessly. (Prendiville)

With Minor Kingdom, Kill Moi

9pm, $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com


TUESDAY 24

Real Estate

While listening to the dazed, sun-baked surf rock of Real Estate, the pulse of Southern California comes to mind. But, wait. These guys are describing New Jersey? Yes. Childhood buddies Martin Courtney, Matt Mondanile, and Alex Bleeker started making music a few summers back in their hometown of Ridgewood, N.J. and have cited the state itself as a major influence. Now the band is based in Brooklyn (phew!), but the bliss and nostalgia attached to carefree, suburban teenage summers of partying discretely in parents’ basements and spending long days with a first love permeates its freshman and sophomore albums. Congratulations, New Jersey! You were due for this type of artistic beautification. (Mia Sullivan)

With the Twerps, Melted Toys

8 p.m., $17

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell St.

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

Neon Indian

When your debut album features ADHD-affected sampling, retro arpeggios, and tracks like “Should Have Taken Acid With You”, “(AM)”, and “Mind, Drips” it can be hard to sustain that level of weirdness. Despite its title, Era Extraña — the sophomore release from Denton, Texas’s Neon Indian — is a comparatively straightforward record, with Italo influenced, electro dance tracks more attuned to a club performance as a band than the product of fiddling around in a bedroom. But rather than running out of or exhausting its oddball energy, Neon Indian seems to have just redistributed it to the fringe, releasing a freak EP with the Flaming Lips as well as recording a future-vintage VHS manual for its limited release toy synth, the PAL198X. (Prendiville)

With Lemonade

8pm, $25

Fillmore

1850 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

Rusko

Leeds native Christopher Mercer chose to go the retrospective route with new release Songs, bringing dubstep back to its, well, roots. The artist popularly known as Rusko pays homage to the UK two-step garage popular in the ’90s with tracks “Pressure” and “Whistle Crew.” Mercer fills out the album with dub-like tracks that feature a healthy serving of Jamaican vocals and a moderate indulgence in full-on wobbliness. As a whole, Songs is more likely to invoke respectful head-nodding, rather than the injury-inducing cranium-banging that has become the dubstep norm these days. (Lee)

With Sigma

8pm, $33

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 567-2060

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

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Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

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

THEATER

OPENING

"Bay One Acts Festival" Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.bayoneacts.org. $25-45. Opens Sun/22, 3pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also May 5 and 12, 3pm); Sun, 3 and 7pm. Through May 12. Ten bold and adventurous short plays by local playwrights, performed two full programs running in repertory.

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Opens Thu/19, 8pm. Runs Thu, 8pm (no show April 26); Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm (no show May 6). Through June 10. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

BAY AREA

A Hot Day in Ephesus Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; info@aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Opens Fri/20, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; May 13, 2pm. Through May 19. Actors Ensemble performs the world premiere of a musical based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.

Lucky Duck Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Previews Sat/21, 2pm. Opens Sat/21, 7pm. Runs Thu and Sat, 7pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, noon and 5pm (additional performance May 11, 7pm). Through May 13. Berkeley Playhouse performs a musical inspired by the "Ugly Duckling" tale.

Oleanna Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $15-30. Previews Fri/20, 8pm. Opens Sat/21, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through May 13. TheatreFIRST performs David Mamet’s tense two-charater drama.

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two Phoenix Arts Association Theatre, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Opens Thu/19, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 12. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs the beginning of a new, unfinished play by a local author — and creates an ending on the spot once the script runs out.

*The Aliens SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 5. On the heels of Aurora Theatre’s production of Body Awareness, SF Playhouse introduces local audiences to another of contemporary American playwright Annie Baker’s acclaimed plays, in a finely tailored West Coast premiere directed by Lila Neugebauer. The Aliens unfolds in the days just around July 4, at slacker pace, in the backyard of a Vermont café (lovingly realized to palpable perfection by scenic designer Bill English), daily haunt of scruffy, post-Beat dropouts and sometime band mates Jasper (a secretly brooding but determined Peter O’Connor) and KJ (a charmingly ingenuous yet mischievous Haynes Thigpen). New employee and high school student Evan (a winningly eager and reticent Brian Miskell) is at first desperate to get the interlopers out of the "staff only" backyard but is just lonely enough to be seduced into friendship and wary idolatry by the older males. What unfolds is a small, sweet and unexpected tale of connection and influence, amid today’s alienated dream-sucking American landscape — same as it ever was, if you ask Charles Bukowski or Henry Miller, both points of reference to Jasper and KJ, who borrow Bukowski’s poem The Aliens for one of their many band names. An appropriate name for the alienated, sure, but part of the charm of these characters is just how easy they are to recognize, or how much we can recognize ourselves in them. Delusions of grandeur reside in every coffee house across this wistful, restless land. It’s not just Jasper and KJ who may be going nowhere. A final gesture to the young and awkward but clearly capable Evan suggests, a little ambiguously to be sure, that there’s promise out there yet for some. But more than that: the transaction makes clear by then that there are no fuck-ups, really; not among people with generous and open hearts — never mind how fucked up the country at large. (Avila)

Any Given Day Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Wed/18-Sat/21, 8pm (also Sat/21, 2:30pm); Sun/22, 2:30pm. Magic Theatre performs Linda McLean’s Glasgow-set play about modern, urban life.

*The Caretaker Curran Theater, 445 Geary, SF; www.shnsf.com. $25-175. Wed/18-Sat/21, 8pm (also Wed/18 and Sat/21, 2pm); Sun/22, 2pm. Harold Pinter’s 1960 drama gets its first major revival since the death of the playwright in 2008 in this touring English production featuring Jonathan Pryce in the ambiguous title role. Set in a worn and cluttered attic apartment amid a triangular power play between its seemingly nonchalant tenant, Aston (the excellently vacant, vaguely creepy Alan Cox), an older homeless man he’s just rescued named Davies (a shifty, richly detailed Pryce), and the tenant’s younger brother and landlord Mick (a tightly coiled yet comically skittish Alex Hassell). The story is minimal, the tensions and pivoting interpersonal dynamics all. The spookier aspects of the play are toned down, meanwhile, though not necessarily to bad effect. While the opening scenes are played with somewhat unexpected levity, director Christopher Morahan ensures a subtle shift midway through into a more threatening and serious tone that is perhaps all the more palpable for being less foreseen — as Davies, egged on by the hyper Mick’s persuasive vision of remaking the dumpy room into an elegant penthouse, makes an ill-considered play for dominance over his seemingly gentle but inscrutable host. (Avila)

*Glengarry Glen Ross Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.brownpapertickets.com. $26-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through April 28. Actors Theatre of San Francisco and director Keith Phillips offer a sharp, spirited production of the 1984 play by David Mamet in which four real estate agents (Mark Bird, Sean Hallinan, John Krause, and Christian Phillips) jockey and scheme for advantage in their Chicago office in a landscape of insecurity and fierce competition symbolized by the selective doling out of the best leads by manager and company man John (Frank Willey). Clients (like the gullible young husband played by Randy Blair), meanwhile, are just witless marks for the machinations of the predatory salesman, no more meaningfully human than the "muppets" targeted by Greg Smith’s Goldman Sachs. If the scenic design is a little shabby, the strong cast makes that hardly an impediment to a story that feels especially timely in its sharply etched, not to say angry portrait of the ruthless and corrosive business mentality to which egos, livelihoods, and lives — not to mention the culture at large — are enthralled. (Avila)

Goodfellas Live Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through April 26. The Dark Room offers a comedic take on Scorsese’s gangsters.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 5. Cheap thrills don’t come much cheaper or more thrilling than at a Thrillpeddlers musical extravaganza, and their newly remounted run of Hot Greeks affords all the glitter-dusted eye-candy and labyrinthian plot points we’ve come to expect from their gleefully exhibitionist ranks. Structured as loosely as possible on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Greeks appropriately enough follows the trials and tribulations of a college sorority tired of "losing" their boyfriends to the big football match every year (Athens U vs. Sparta Tech). Pledging to withhold sex from the men unless they call off the game results in frustration for all, only partially alleviated by the discovery that sexual needs can be satisfied by "playing the other team," as it were. But like other Cockettes’ revivals presented by the Thrillpeddlers, the momentum of the show is carried forward not by the rather thinly-sketched narrative, but by the group song-and-dance numbers, extravagant costuming (and lack thereof), ribald wordplay, and overt gender-fuckery. In addition to many TP regulars, including a hot trio of Greek columns topped with "capital" headdresses who serve as the obligatory chorus (Steven Satyricon, Ste Fishell, Bobby Singer), exciting new additions to the Hypnodrome stage include a bewigged Rik Lopes as stalwart sister Lysistrata, angelically-voiced Maggie Tenenbaum as the not-so-angelic Sodoma, and multi-faceted cabaret talent Tom Orr as heartthrob hunk Pendulum Pulaski. (Gluckstern)

It Is What It Is and The Watchtower Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.myadultland.com. $20. Thu/19-Sat/21 and April 27-28, 8pm; April 29, 3pm. Through April 29. Short plays by Diane Karagienakos and Christopher Barranti, presented on the same stage with a brief intermission.

It’s All the Rage Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm, Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 27. Longtime comedian and radio host Marilyn Pittman’s solo play wrestles with the legacy of her parents’ violent deaths in a 1997 murder-suicide initiated by her father. It’s disturbing material that Pittman, a stout middle-aged woman with a gregarious and bounding personality, approaches indirectly via a good deal of humor — including recounting the first time she did her growing-up-lesbian bit before her mother in a DC comedy club. But the pain and confusion trailing her for 13 years is never far behind, whether in accounts of her own battle with anger (and the broken relationships it has left in its wake) or in ominous memories of her too complacent mother or her charming but domineering father, whose controlling behavior extended to casually announcing murderous dreams while policing the boundaries of his marriage against family interference. A fine mimic, Pittman deploys a Southern lilt in playing each parent, on a stage decorated with a hint of their Southwestern furnishings and a framed set of parental photographs. In not exactly knowing where to lay blame for, or find meaning in, such a horrifying act, the play itself mimics in subtler form the emotional tumult left behind. There’s a too brief but eerie scene in which her veteran father makes reference to a murder among fellow soldiers en route to war, but while PTSD is mentioned (including as an unwanted patrimony), the 60-minute narrative crafted by Pittman and director David Ford wisely eschews any pat explanation. If transitions are occasionally awkward and the pace a bit loose, the play leaves one with an uncomfortable sense of the darker aspects of love, mingled with vague concentric histories of trauma and dislocation in a weird, sad tale of destruction and staying power. Note: review from the show’s 2009 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

Maple and Vine American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-95. Wed/18-Sat/21, 8pm (also Wed/18 and Sat/21, 2pm); Sun/22, 2pm. American Conservatory Theater presents the West Coast premiere of Jordan Harrison’s thoughtful, mildly amusing, increasingly cluttered fantasy about an affluent but unsatisfied urban couple — Katha (Emily Donahoe) and Ryu (Nelson Lee) — who try to restart their lives and relationship by joining a cult-like community devoted to living in 1955 America in perpetuity. Directed swiftly but with a slightly shrill comic tone by Mark Rucker, it’s an intriguing premise that tries to be unexpected in its twists around modern modes of alienation and "simpler times." Community leaders (and Katha and Ryu’s new best friends) Dean (Jamison Jones) and Ellen (Julia Coffey) make it clear that they choose 1955 because 2012 is too easy, not too complicated: In the 1950s, technology has not yet completely subsumed human action, while the discrete spice of old-fashioned repression compensates for the sorry spectrum of salt and ketchup at the dinner table. When it becomes clear that the casual white superiority of Ryu’s new boss at the box factory (Danny Bernardy) masks his despair as a closeted homosexual, intrigue and power plays ensue. But the characters and situations have already started to become less and less credible, even for so whimsical a storyline, and the narrative more heavy-handed too as Katha begins to narrate a series of meaningful dreams conflating the characters and characteristics of their present-past and past-future. (Avila)

Thunder Above, Deeps Below Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-25. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 5. Bindlestiff presents A. Rey Pamatmat’s dramatic comedy about three homeless young adults.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through May 26. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar "doood" dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Anatol Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $30-55. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through May 13. Aurora Theatre Company performs a world premiere translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s drama about the love life of an Viennese philanderer.

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through April 29. Shotgun Players present Tom Stoppard’s riff on pre-revolutionary Russia.

Hairspray Fox Theatre, 2215 Broadway, Redwood City; www.broadwaybythebay.org. $20-48. Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm (also Sat/21, 2pm); Sun/22, 2pm. Broadway By the Bay opens its 47th season with the John Waters-based, Tony-winning musical.

John Brown’s Truth La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-15. Sun, 7:30pm. Through April 29. The story of abolitionist John Brown comes to life via William Crossman’s script-libretto, plus dance, spoken word, and a variety of improvised music styles.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 6. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Of Mice and Men TheatreWorks at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through April 29. TheatreWorks performs the Steinbeck classic.

Red Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-83. Tue and Thu-Fri, 8pm (also April 26, 2pm; no show April 27); Wed, 7pm; Sat-Sun, 2pm (also Sat, 8pm; no 8pm show May 12; Sun, 7pm). Extended through May 12. Mark Rothko (David Chandler) isn’t the only one painting with a broad brush in this labored and ultimately superficial two-hander by John Logan, enjoying a competent but underwhelming production by outgoing Berkeley Rep associate artistic director Les Waters. Set inside the late-1950s New York studio of the legendary abstract expressionist at the height of his fame, the play introduces a blunt and brash young painter named Ken (John Brummer) as Rothko’s new hired hand, less a character than a crude dramatic device, there first as a sounding board for the pompous philosophizing that apparently comprises a good chunk of the artist’s process and finally as a kind of mirror held up to the old iconoclast in challenging proximity to a new generation that must ultimately transcend Rothko’s canvases in turn. The dialogue holds up signs announcing intellectual and aesthetic depths but these remain surface effects, reflecting only platitudes, while the posturing tends to reduce Rothko to caricature. Much of the self-consciously reluctant filial interaction here smacks of biographical sound bites or heavy-handed underscoring of theme, and tends toward the outright hokey when touching on the credulity-bending subject of Ken’s murdered parents — with the attendant shades this adds to Rothko’s and the play’s chosen color palette. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: May 5-27 (Sat-Sun, 11am); June 3-July 15 (Sun, 11am). Louis "The Amazing Bubble Man" Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Alonzo King LINES Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Novellus Theater, 700 Howard, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Wed/18-Thu/19, 7:30pm; Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm; Sun/22, 5pm. $30-65. The company performs Scheherazade.

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina and Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Fri/20, 8pm: "BATS Improv vs. Stanford Improv," $20. Sat/21 and April 28, 8pm: "Improvised Hitchcock," $20. April 27, 8pm: "Theatresports Madness," $20.

"CockTales: Fathers and Sons" McKenna Theater, Creative Arts Bldg, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway, SF; creativearts.sfsu.edu. Fri/20, 7pm. $8-15. Investigations of masculinity via poetry, monologues, music, and more.

"Comedy SuperPAC: Promoting Good Comedy and Great Causes Since 2012!" Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF; www.hemlocktavern.com. Mon, 7pm. Through May 7. $5. Nate Green and W. Kamau Bell present this ongoing comedy showcase; this week’s performers are Chris Garcia, Brendan McGowan, Jeff Kreisler, and Brandie Posey.

"CubaCaribe Dance Festival" This week: Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.cubacaribe.org. Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm; Sun/22, 3 and 7pm. $10-24. Up first in this two-week festival (this year’s theme: "Poder Popular) is a mixed program featuring local artists (Grupo Experimental Nagó, Arenas Dance Company, and more), plus a Sunday matinee with youth performers.

"Dancers’ Group presents 2012 Bay Area Dance Week" Various locations; www.bayareadance.org. April 20, 29. Free. Over 600 free dance events at locations throughout San Francisco, the East Bay, and beyond.

"Elect to Laugh" Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

"The Great Flood" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. Sat/21, 8pm, $25-65. Guitarist Bill Frisell’s multimedia investigation into the 1927 Mississippi River flood.

"Gutterbunny in Chinatown" Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; (415) 401-7987. Mon/23-Tues/24, 7 and 8pm. $10. Spy Emerson’s performance series is described as "theater of the absurdist vaudevillian furry-fetishists."

"Ironic/Not Ironic" Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; (415) 401-7987. Sat/21, 10pm, $15. Comedian Harmon Leon performs.

Labayan Dance/SF ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm; Sun/22, 3pm. $25. The company performs its spring 2012 season, including the premieres of Kulang and Dasal and Rice Blues.

"Natya and Narration — Rebelution" CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm; Sun/22, 3pm. $20. Collaborative presentation of short stories, personal essays, and poems through narrative expression and dance.

"Qcomedy Showcase" Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.qcomedy.com. Mon/23, 8pm. $8-20. With headliner Cookie Dough.

"RAWDance presents the Concept Series: 11" 66 Sanchez Studio, 66 Sanchez, SF; www.rawdance.org. Sat/21-Sun/22, 8pm (also Sun/22, 3pm). Pay what you can. RAWdance hosts EmSpace Dance, Christy Funsch, and other artists at this informal, intimate contemporary-dance salon.

"Round One Cabaret" Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm; Sun/22, 4pm. $30. Not Quite Opera Productions presents this shocase of new musical-theater songs by Bay Area composers.

"The Standard Bearer" Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/2-Sat/21, 8pm. $25. Julian Sands directs Neil Dickson in this limited run of Stephen Wyatt’s play about a Shakespearean actor traveling through Africa.

"Subvert" Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.eventbrite.com. Fri/20, 8pm. $15-25. Comedian Heather Gold performs.

"Tease-O-Rama" Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF; www.teaseorama.com. Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm. $40-150. Main showcase event in a weekend of burlesque-themed performances, classes, and more.

Summer camp on wheels

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
1
Summer camp on wheels

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC While Rupa Marya of Rupa & the April Fishes and Gabe Dominguez of Shake Your Peace are crossing their fingers for cloudless, sunny days ahead during their joint week-long bicycle trek around the Bay Area, in some ways, they were brought together by a storm.

It was a storm both physical and figurative: the scattered downpours during their first encounter at the now-dispersed Occupy SF campsite at Justin Herman Plaza last November (11.11.11) during the Occupy Music Festival — where both bands played — and, the subsequent storm of ideas that lead to the bike tour agreement.

“So it was kind of like the perfect storm,” says Dominguez, sitting next to Marya in the Nervous Dog Coffee cafe on Mission Street in early April. “It was an auspicious day,” Marya later adds. “Oh my god, what a day.”

The fruit of that brainstorm, the Bay Rising Tour, will kick off tomorrow at Stanford University, with the ragtag bicycle caravan of around 15 core riders heading counterclockwise around the Bay, stopping in nine cities over 10 days, playing both conventional music venues and guerillas art spaces. The musicians on bikes piled high with gear will turn their final corner on to Divisadero to play the Independent April 28.

Marya and Dominguez had walked into the Nervous Dog that afternoon smiling, bubbling with expectations of the impending tour. The two are clearly platonically smitten with another other’s passion for social justice, global music, and good old-fashioned bike fun.

As Marya nibbles an empanada from the cafe, Dominguez continues their story. “We made the connection that both of our bands make multicultural dance rebel music, rock music for the ecotopian revolution. Bicycles, bioregionalism, now being the time — it all just coalesced.”

One key difference that’s soon to evaporate: Shake Your Peace has done many bike tours, but this will be Rupa & the April Fishes’ first (though they’ve done some trial runs in preparation).

Along with leading Shake Your Peace, and playing in Tiny Home with his girlfriend, Sonya Cotton, Dominguez is a co-founder of the yearly Bicycle Music Festival (since 2007) with Paul Freedman, who too plays a role in the Bay Rising Tour.

Freedman’s company is Rock the Bike, which built the pedal-powered audio system the groups will use in the open space and outdoor venues — San Jose Bike Party, Fremont Earth Day Grounds, Keller Beach Park.

Along with those mentioned, the tour will roll to A Place for Sustainable Living in Oakland for an Earth Day party (with food cooked by Marya’s urban farmer brother), a Beaver Liberation show in Martinez, and a Glen Cove ceremony by Ohlone Leaders in Vallejo.

Out on the road between venues, the caravan has three transportation strategies: people carrying their own instruments on bicycles, those packing larger instruments like guitars on Xtracycles — an Oakland company that sells an extension for the back of the bike — and lastly, a few riders on electric-hybrid bikes carrying six-to-eight foot trailers.

They also are encouraging other cyclists and Bay Area residents to come along for the day rides between shows — to help map out the flattest routes. There’s a real community effort feel to the plan.

“In the wake of where we find ourselves right now, economically, sociopolitically, we can’t wait for someone to hand us the reality we want. We have to build it, we have to create it. And that’s what’s so exciting about this way of touring,” Marya says.

She adds, “it’s not asking for permission, it’s just doing what you do as a musician, which is to mobilize yourselves…bring people on your journey, have a chance to interact with them in another way, which is so different than get on the tour bus, be isolated, be backstage. We’re going to create the stage, we’re going to create the experience.”

Both bands make the kind of music that invites interaction and discussion, so an interactive tour, flipping the tradition of a clear separation between artist and audience, seems the right direction.

Rupa & the April Fishes — now wrapping up their third studio album, Build — have long been fixtures on the global music scene, a Bossa nova bumping mix of Brazilian, Indian, Latin, and French influences, sung in three languages. While based out of San Francisco, they’re often out exploring the world, most recently Chiapas, Mexico; Amsterdam; and Athens, Greece.

Shake Your Peace started out in New York as folk trio, but now “Shake Your Peace 2.0” makes a style of music that Dominguez has dubbed “whup” — a melding of Afro-Latin beats with bluegrass instruments such as fiddle, and gospel harmonies.

“W-H-U-P, it’s a celebratory spirit with a philosophy, a political approach,” Dominguez explains excitedly. “We’re not just fighting for better wages, we’re fighting for life. It’s the spirit of your heart kicking. The scream when you come out of the womb. Life, yaow!”

He appears equally amped on the Bay Rising tour itself, adding again that others should join the rides with the bands — “they’re welcome to experience this rolling summer camp with us.” And they’ll both be Tweeting their locations along the way for the day rides.

As the effusive conversation in Nervous Dog comes to a close, Dominguez and Marya are still talking about the logistics of the trip, including where they’ll crash at night, and the importance of gathering tarps to cover all their gear, just in case of bad weather. 

BAY RISING TOUR

With Rupa & the April Fishes, Shake Your Peace

Thu/19-Sat/28

Various venues, Bay Area

www.theaprilfishes.com

 

Alter egos

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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13
Alter egos

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC At first blush the music of St. Vincent, the alter-ego of accomplished guitar hero Annie Clark, and that of live looping sensation tUnE-yArDs, born Merrill Garbus, don’t appear to have a lot in common.

Sure, they share a gender, a label, and an impulse for quirky alias and chimerical shape-shifting, but Clark’s complex guitar-and-synth driven compositions and Garbus’ polyrhythmic ukulele and percussion spree emerge from completely different musical impulses and backgrounds.

Even so, their upcoming double-header at the Fox Theater promises to be a thrilling combination, as both ladies share a reputation for explosive stagecraft and are currently creating some of the most uniquely stylized pop music in the country.

Annie Clark aka St. Vincent, may have hit the cover of Spin‘s “Style” issue, but in interviews Clark is more likely to refer to herself not as fashionista but as a “nerd”. As in, a prog-rock-loving, guitar-shredding, architecture of music kind of nerd.

Her third solo album Strange Mercy (4AD, 2011), an oblique reflection on old traumas and fresh starts is characterized by contrast. Bell-clear vocals edging towards the ethereal, meaty guitar riffs ricocheting in from unexpected directions, and soaring organ and mini-Moog fills contributed by acclaimed gospel musician, Bobby Sparks, (easily the second most striking musician on the album).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eOt1GWD7gU

A study in contraposition both as a musician and as a media personality,Clark admits to a fondness for playing with character — further evidenced by her stage alias and deceptively delicate off-stage physicality, which belies the raw power of her live performances — but is equally quick to assert ownership of all of her public faces.

“Whenever you walk onto a stage you are fundamentally yourself,” she explains over email. “It’s just that you hold a mixing board to your personality and turn up some aspects and turn down others.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB3dBiD5Bj4

It’s almost impossible to speak of Oakland-dwelling Merrill Garbus, or tUnE-yArDs, without referencing the time she spent studying Taarab music in Kenya. The frenetic, border-blending polyrhythms on w ho k i l l (4AD, 2011) transport the listener into an experiential space in which music and body are inextricably enmeshed.

In the current ranks of American pop-makers it’s difficult to find an act to compare her to, though TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe does occasionally rise to mind, particularly in the context of vocal phrasing and politicized lyrical content.

No less of an onstage powerhouse than labelmate Clark, Garbus’ personal aesthetic skews more towards that of performance artist than rock star. With a fondness for facepaint, explosive vocalization techniques, and the rubber-mask facial tics of Lily Tomlin, Garbus’ previous training in the theater arts still serve as a springboard for her approach to performance, as well as composition.

“The music stems from how I can envision myself performing it,” she explains. “I like to think of the music in terms of…altering space, and transformation, and the experience of the group.”

Whether onstage or in the studio, Garbus flows smoothly between laying her own rhythm tracks, pounding fiercely on her uke, and charging into the musical fray with her battle cry vocals, but her personal fascination is with uncomfortable moments — highlighting them as absurdities and working thorough them with her audiences. Her other proclivity — that of an almost exaggerated playfulness — is less a spontaneous expression of id than an intentional construction of a persona who unifies the many strands of Garbus’ transcontinental influences and obsessions into one cohesive force.

“There is power in the facepaint, and in the performance, and of a warrior stance of sorts,” she opines. “I’m not using ‘tribal fashion’ in an ironic, disconnected and aloof way. I’m a freaking badass. And I wear face paint.” *

 

Can’t get enough of that tUnE-yArDs character? Look for extended interview highlights with Merrill Garbus online at sfbg.com

 

MERRILL GARBUS OF TUNE-YARDS WITH BUSTER KEATON SHORTS

Mon/23, 8pm, $20–<\d>$25

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.sffs.org

 

ST. VINCENT/TUNE-YARDS

With Kapowski Tue/24, 7:30pm, $29.50

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 548-3010 www.thefoxoakland.com

Truth or consequences

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Truth or consequences

arts@sfbg.com

SFIFF It’s possible to have an almost perfect Sundance Film Festival viewing experience if you hew to one simple rule: only go to the documentaries. Sure, see some of the dramatic entries too, after the 40th person has told you such-and-such title is great. But you can rarely go far wrong with the documentaries. Sundance has its pick of the annual crème de la crème in that genre (among U.S. if not necessarily international films).

As pretty much a “best of other festivals” festival taking place in late spring — thus perfectly situated to grab the best docs not just from Sundance, but also Berlin, Rotterdam, South by Southwest and elsewhere — the San Francisco International Film Festival can potentially offer the crème de la crème de la crème. Thank god documentaries, unlike that imaginary dairy substance, are not high in saturated fat or cholesterol. You can consume them for SFIFF’s entire span and remain your slim, lovely self, mentally refreshed by enormous quantities of new information ingested the fun and easy way.

Actually, a portrait of conspicuous consumption in its most corpulent form was among Sundance’s opening night films this January, and will duly boggle your mind at SFIFF. Lauren Greenfield’s obscenely entertaining The Queen of Versailles takes a long, turbulent look at the lifestyles lived by David and Jackie Siegel. He is the 70-something undisputed king of timeshares; she is his 40-something (third) wife, a former beauty queen with the requisite blonde locks and major rack, both probably not entirely Mother Nature-made. He’s so compulsive that he’s never saved, instead plowing every buck back into the business.

When the recession hits, that means this billionaire is — in ready-cash as opposed to paper terms — suddenly sorta kinda broke, just as an enormous Las Vegas project is opening and the family’s stupefyingly large new “home” (yep, modeled after Versailles) is mid-construction. Plugs must be pulled, corners cut. Never having had to, the Siegels discover (once most of the servants have been let go) they have no idea how to run a household. Worse, they discover that in adversity they have a very hard time pulling together — in particular, David is revealed as a remote, cold, obsessively all-business person who has no use for getting or giving “emotional support;” not even for being a husband or father, much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM43Wyulc7w

What ultimately makes Queen poignantly more than a reality-TV style peek at the garishly wealthy is that Jackie, despite her incredibly vulgar veneer (she’s like a Jennifer Coolidge character, forever squeezed into loud animal prints), is at heart just a nice girl from hicksville who really, really wants to make this family work.

Other docs pipelined from Sundance to SF include acclaimed ones about dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry), Ethel (as in Kennedy), pervasive rape in the U.S. military (The Invisible War), and the Israeli military legal system that governs civilian Palestinians under occupation (The Law in These Parts). Of particular local interest is David France’s excellent How to Survive a Plague, about how ACT UP virtually forced the medical and pharmacological establishments into speeded-up drug trials and development that drastically reduced the AIDS epidemic’s U.S. fatalities within a decade. Don’t expect much about SF activism, though — like so many gay docs on national issues, this one barely sets foot outside Manhattan.

Of actual local origin are several SFIFF nonfiction highlights, not least festival closing nighter Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey, Ramona Diaz’s film about the incredible journey of Filipino superfan Arnel Pineda, from fronting a Journey cover band to fronting the actual Bay Area outfit itself as its latest lead vocalist. There’s also Micha X. Peled’s last globalization trilogy entry Bitter Seeds, focusing on hitherto self-sufficient farmers in India increasingly driven toward bankrupting debt (and widespread suicides) by costly biotech “advances;” Peter Nicks’ The Waiting Room, which sits us right there at Highland Hospital in Oakland, illustrating the heroically coping status quo and desperate need for improvement in a microcosm of U.S. healthcare; and Jamie Meltzer’s world premiere Informant. The latter’s subject is activist-turned-FBI snitch Brandon Darby, whose testimony got two anarchists imprisoned — and who fully participated in this portrait, even its re-enactments of his protest-group infiltration. Darby is expected to attend the festival; given this town’s political leanings, he might want to wear a raincoat.

Speaking of audiences hurling things — abuse, at the least — Caveh Zahedi (plus his lawyer) was evidently met with a shitstorm after the SXSW premiere of The Sheik and I. You, too, may feel the spasmodic urge to throttle him during this latest naughty-boy’s own adventure, in which he accepts a commission to make work for a biennial perversely themed around “art as subversive act” in the far-from-liberal United Arab Emirates. Professed fans, the curators had duly seen his prior work; surely they knew they were inviting trouble in these circumstances?

Nonetheless, they play perfectly into his hands, expressing dismay and barely masked fear as Zahedi faux-naively proceeds to do everything he shouldn’t. That includes ridiculing Islam and the host sheik, stereotyping Arabs in general, putting everyone (including himself and his two-year-old son) in potential danger, all the while claiming his aim is “a critique of imperialism.” Is he really the very model of the privileged Western artist, railing about artistic freedom while ignorant that sometimes, some places, some things (like blasphemy, and prison) must take precedent? Or is the whole act just a deliberate provocation (hardly his first), albeit one with disturbingly dire potential consequences? Alternately very funny and completely infuriating, The Sheik and I is one movie you might want to attend just for the Q&A afterward. Odds are, it’s gonna get ugly. 

www.sffs.org

 

The hunt for authentic Bay BBQ

Andrew Lam
-
2
The hunt for authentic Bay BBQ

virginia@sfbg.com

For a child of East, West, and Middle America, I have an unexpected and profound affinity for the music and food of the South. Traveling in the region, my love grows. Florida conch and stone crab, Tex-Mex and Texas brisket. But when I dream of the South, I think Deep South. Start talking low country and Gullah cuisine, or Cajun and Creole cooking, and I become brutally homesick for a home I never had.

Then there is the barbecue. And by barbecue, I mean pulled pork, those words being synonymous in the Deep South. Texas brisket? Naturally. Memphis ribs? Hell yeah. But pulled pork, that tender, shredded, fatty mound of piggy goodness, for me, is the pinnacle of BBQ. Don’t even get me started on sauces. South Carolina mustard or thick, sweet Kansas City sauce? I’ll take it all, thank you. A proper sauce turns impeccable meat into ecstasy.

One of the more memorable journeys the Renaissance Man and I ever took was a two-week road trip through four Southern states for BBQ, music, and food. Though I’ve been a California girl for the larger part of my life, in this glorious state of endless riches I rarely find barbecue comparable to that of my Southern exploits — even coming from those who claim to be Southern natives. There are whispers of true BBQ here, but often something indefinable is lacking. The problem commonly lies in sauces, smoking techniques and woods used, or the meat’s tenderness (I’m sorry: it ain’t real BBQ if it’s not fatty). Even delicious ‘que is missing a certain raw, gut-level sense of place outside the South.

Regardless, some worthy Bay Area spots have emerged to satisfy ‘que cravings. Uncle Frank’s was the best BBQ I’ve had in California, until it tragically closed last fall. Frank’s brisket was thick with fat, served in the back of a dodgy dive bar in suburban, staid Mountain View.

Bo’s Barbecue (3422 Mount Diablo Boulevard, Lafayette. (925) 283-7133, www.bosbarbecue-catering.com) specializes in solid brisket. Golden Gate Park golf course houses an unexpected gem, Ironwood BBQ (around 47th Ave., SF. (415) 751-8987, www.ironwoodbbq.com) which is strong on pulled pork. Years ago, Brother-in-Law’s BBQ morphed to Lilly’s and became Da Pitt (705 Divisadero, SF. (415) 440-7427, www.dapittbbq.com). Though past its glory days, it’s still a worthy detour, wafting glorious smoke aromas down the street. What of ever-popular Memphis Minnie’s (576 Haight, SF. (415) 864-7675, www.memphisminnies.com)? I must admit that despite a love for their rowdy Southern tunes and spirit, I can’t get behind the lackluster meats and watery sauces.

We go through waves of ‘que openings and we’re in the midst of another now. Here are five recent BBQ openings.

SNEAKY’S BBQ

From Wednesday to Sunday, this pop-up kitchen in Rebel steps outside tradition with items like Kurobuta pork belly. But more than any of the other newer ‘que joints on this list, it gets Carolina-style pulled pork right — Sneaky’s is among the best in town. Only downside is the price — a single platter of meat and two sides is $17, a two meat combo $26, compared to $12 and $18 for the same options at CatHead’s BBQ.

Sauces: Vinegar BBQ, spicy jalapeno-habanero, South Carolina mustard, Rooster (a creamy version of spicy sauce)

Stand-outs: Aforementioned pulled pork is tops here, as is South Carolina mustard sauce (and they’re perfection together). Sneaky’s brings it with Creekstone Farms brisket and baby-back ribs. The outfit is to be commended for using all natural, hormone-free meats, smoked with locally-cut almond wood. Sides ($4) include a classic coleslaw, and fresh — not soggy or overcooked — collard greens. Cheeky points for Rebel’s fancified gay biker bar setting, and the majestic motorcycle that serves as the room’s centerpiece.

1760 Market, SF. (415) 431-4200, sneakysbbq.blogspot.com

CATHEAD’S BBQ

Nate’s BBQ had quite a following — not to mention coveted home delivery. It recently morphed into CatHead’s BBQ under the direction of Tennessee native Richard Park and Pamela Schafer, and has become one of the city’s best BBQ options. Thankfully, it still offers delivery. Vegetarians get a nod with cornmeal-crusted BBQ tofu. Mains are wonderfully priced at $7 with a mini-biscuit and pickles, while a platter with two sides is $12. Of note: large biscuits are aptly described as having the size of a cat’s head

Sauces: Mustard, ketchup-based BBQ sauce, North Carolina finishing sauce, habanero, CatHead’s catsup, pepper vinegar

Stand-outs: They had me with Coca Cola-smoked brisket. A subtle sweetness permeates the über-smoky beef. Ribs are also strong, the best of any place listed. The secret is extra fat, rendering the meat fall-apart tender. All sides ($4 each) are vegetarian, including mustard or spicy habanero slaw. Collard greens taste healthy, a fresh change of pace from traditional collards. Though I miss the ham hocks.

1665 Folsom, SF. (415) 861-4242, www.catheadsbbq.com

B SIDE BBQ

Tanya Holland of West Oakland’s beloved Brown Sugar Kitchen opened B Side Barbeque a few months ago, a hip, comfortable space lined with photos of African American cowboys. Look closely through the smoky, rich air and you’ll see Tanya and her husband in one of the old-timey shots on the walls.

Sauces: Hot vinegar, Carolina mustard, or traditional

Stand-outs: Pulled pork is tender and lush in Carolina mustard sauce, but they shine with smoked brown sugar-rubbed brisket ($9 half order; $16 full order). Fatty beef sings with sugary crust. Ribs are succulent. A side of fresh, spicy coleslaw ($4), light on the mayo, is a happy companion. Food is prepared with care, a step above many East Bay ‘que joints.

3303 San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 595-0227, www.bsidebbq.com

CEDAR HILL

The Marina has itself a BBQ restaurant. Small, welcoming, and lined with rustic artwork and paraphernalia from Texas to the Carolinas, Cedar Hill is a big win for the neighborhood to the north. The ‘que is not as soul-satisfying as it is in the South, but has plenty to offer with dishes like Cajun shrimp on Anson Mills grits topped with andouille sausage and piquillo peppers ($17), or sweet tea-fried chicken ($7.50–$19 for a quarter to whole chicken).

Sauces: Texas red, KC BBQ, South Carolina mustard, North Carolina vinegar

Stand-outs: Tender smoked pork ($4.50-16) wins out over Texas beef brisket ($4.50-16), while Memphis baby back ribs ($5-25) are a little dry. Worthy sides ($3.50–$11.50, portion to quart) include a fresh, bright coleslaw, or pit beans glorified with burnt tips. Ruth’s buttermilk pie ($5) with graham cracker crust is a creamy delight. Extra points: Cedar Hill serves bottles of North Carolina’s classic wild cherry soda, Cheerwine.

3242 Scott, SF. (415) 934-5403, www.cedarhillsf.com

SOUTHPAW BBQ

Southpaw BBQ has the most welcoming, festive atmosphere of any of the new ‘que joints, with beer brewed right in the dining room, additional beers on draft (like Bruery Mischief, Brother Thelonious, and Deschutes Green Lakes), and a playful cocktail menu offering sazeracs made with Germain-Robin craft brandy and tea syrup.

Sauces: Alabama white sauce, Eastern North Carolina, South Carolina mustard, sweet potato habanero, sweet chili vinegar, Memphis

Stand-outs: Slightly smoky Honey Bunny cocktail (blanco tequila, red pepper, orange and carrot juice, agave) is lively and fun. Platters ($14-19) come with cornbread and two sides. As much as I wanted to love the ribs, brisket and pulled pork, they bordered on being either dry or not as flavorful as other ‘que joints. Though not barbecue, fresh, flaky catfish ($14) from Louisiana is my favorite here: comfortingly fried and not at all fishy.

2170 Mission, SF. (415) 934-9300, www.southpawbbqsf.com

Localized Appreesh: Grandma’s Boyfriend

Tony Robles
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Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

Not only does San Francisco punk act Grandma’s Boyfriend have the best name ever, but the group took it upon itself to add its own questions to the Localized Appreesh survey. Truly, a band after my own heart.

While it doesn’t have any shows this week (check back in early May for a house show in Oakland, and a show June 7 at Knockout, plus July 3 at El Rio), Grandma’s Boyfriend is celebrating a milestone: the release of brand new six-song seven-inch EP on Loglady Records, which can be downloaded here.

It’s agile power pop/snot-punk joy, the Romantics meet FYP, with darker lyrical themes straddling anxiety, fear, love, and redemption. Check out the EP, then check out their answers below.  Just make sure to hide the octogenarians.

Year and location of origin: Grandma’s Boyfriend (originally RubberThumbFoolAroundRachelSweat) formed in San Francisco in October 2009. George joined summer 2010. Thea joined in February 2012. We are all San Francisco natives.

Band name origin: While visiting a friend of ours’ parents, that said friend asked us if we’d met her grandma’s boyfriend. We said “no.”

Band motto: “Fuck if I know.” That’s what it is.

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Rock ‘n’ roll sensori.

Instrumentation: Mike: rhythm guitar and vox; Malcolm: drums; George: bass and vox; Thea: lead guitar

Most recent release: Our self-titled seven-inch. For some reason a lot of them are about getting killed and lost love and girls that just take things too far. It’s being released on Loglady Records later this month (pre-orders up now!!!).

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: The fog.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Bands that form in San Francisco and then move to New York and still try to claim SF.
Interesting tour story: While touring in Japan two summers ago, we arranged to take an overnight bus from Yokohama to Kobe. One of the bands we just played with in Yokohama took us out for “all you can drink” at some restaurant. After drinking and eating for two hours, we were in a rush to get to our bus before it left. Our new friends kept assuring us there was a bathroom on board. There wasn’t. We tried to sleep it off because we weren’t sure when we’d get to a rest stop. I remember waking up in the back row of the bus in the pouring rain to George pissing into a water bottle between Malcolm and myself.

First album ever purchased: Mike: It’s Time to See Who’s Who, Conflict; Malcolm: Rocket to Russia, Ramones; George: Bad Hair Day, Weird Al; Thea: Nevermind, Nirvana

Most recent album purchased/downloaded: Mike: Slave to Love, Symbolick Jews; Malcolm: I vacuumed the floor at Recycled Records for a Smashing Pumpkins tape; George: A copy of Born in the USA Mike found in a box of tapes; Thea: Received a mixtape from a friend of Reigning Sound, True Widow, and the Parting Gifts

What do you see when you look in the mirror?: Mike: Catholic guilt; Malcolm: I’m not answering this. This is question is dumb; George: Fuck if I know; Thea: Solitude, tranquility and balance

Favorite local eatery and dish: Mike: Golden Era – everything; Malcolm: El Castillito on Church & Duboce – burrito; George: Brother’s Pizza – pizza; Thea: El Toro – baby super prawn burrito, no lettuce, no tomato!

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