Oakland

Best of the Bay 2011: BEST HOME ROASTS IN THE AVENUES

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The gracious husband and wife team behind the beans at Brown Owl Coffee have been roasting together as Hearth Coffee Roasters for a few years now. Their passion shows — the two serve lush coffees at their tiny, cozy cafe. Impeccable cappuccinos and a mean cup of drip pair well with breads and pastries from local producers like Mi2Sweets; Oakland’s Pepples Donuts; and baklava from Richmond Egyptian restaurant Al Masri. Affogato lovers, take note — theirs is a beaut, made with Straus vanilla ice cream. Tucked out in the avenues, Brown Owl’s a big "how now?" to those who locate SF’s superior beans solely Mission and SoMa-side.

1131 Taraval, SF. (415) 242-1426, www.brownowlcoffee.com

Best of the Bay 2011: BEST RETURN OF THE MAC

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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A one-room schoolhouse feel, minus the ‘marm but plus the mac? That seems right for a light-hearted, full-flavored spot that zaps you back — maybe not to Little House on the Prairie days (although the ingredients are Ingalls-fresh), but at least to second grade, when a grilled cheese and tomato soup were all the haute cuisine one needed. Oakland’s cute Homeroom makes us want to check that we have both of our mittens clipped to our sleeves as we dive into updated youth classics: grilled cheese with Inna jalapeño jam, Blue Lake string beans, and Three Twins root beer floats. Best of all, oodles of mac ‘n’ cheese, made with everything from tangy chevre to hot chorizo, Gilroy garlic to vegan-version walnut. School’s in for summer!

400 40th, Oakl. (510) 597-0400, www.homeroom510.com

BEST OF THE BAY 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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BEST OF THE BAY 2011

Welcome to the Guardian’s Best of the Bay 2011! This is our 37th annual celebration of the people, places, and things that make living here such a great experience — from Best Burrito and Best Local Band to Best Strip Club, Best Shoe Store, Best Drag Queen, and beyond.

More than 15,000 of our readers voted in our 2011 Best of the Bay Readers Poll for their favorites in more than 200 categories. You’ll find the results inside — as well as 150 Editors Picks that highlight some Guardian favorites, old and new, that we think deserve special recognition for lighting up our lives this year. 

Our theme for 2011 is “Beautiful Rebels” — and inside this year’s Best of the Bay, we’ve highlighted eight of our favorite “beautiful rebels” who we think are helping change the Bay Area for the better.  Throughout its history, the Bay Area has attracted wave upon wave of people looking to create something unique. From Barbary Coast explorers to Belle Epoque, Jazz Age, and Beatnik free spirits, from hippies and queer and civil rights pioneers to tattooed 1990s swing kids and Burning Man visionaries, to today’s global tech innovators and their DIY, local, organic, small-batch counterparts. 

We seem to be living in a time when a certain conservatism and conformity reigns, when speaking out gets you pilloried in the comments section and big-box consumerism squeezes out charming idiosyncrasies. That’s why we wanted to take this Best of the Bay opportunity to celebrate the Bay Area’s proud perseverance in remaining the weirdest, oddest, most interesting and rewarding place in the world, somewhere where “freak” is a compliment and “out there” equals “gorgeous.”

In 1974, Esquire magazine asked us for ideas for its Best of the USA issue, which led to us publish the original Best of the Bay. Made by the people of the Bay Area for the people of the Bay Area, it’s our annual opportunity to celebrate the people and places that make this city great. We were the first weekly paper to publish a regular “best of” issue. Thirty-seven years on — and 45 years after we opened our doors — we’re still going strong.

Editing this year’s installment was a hoot. I shower grateful smooches on all my collaborators, especially my right-hand amiga Caitlin Donohue, creative wiz Mirissa Neff, amazing illustrator Renee Castro, photographer Ben Hopfer, the Guardian staff, and the ever-supportive Hunky Beau, my own personal Best of the Bay.

But most of all I thank you, dear reader, for your generous participation, for making the Bay Area such an astounding place to live, and for turning us on to some great new things this year.

Marke B.,

Best of the Bay 2011 co-editor

 

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Like the Guardian, Renee “Lady Reni” Castro is native to the Bay Area — really. Born in Oakland, Castro’s heritage stems from the Ohlone Native American tribe. (You can’t get more local than that.) Her background serves as inspiration for much of her art, especially her subjects’ clothing and their deeply-rooted connections to the natural world. Her other influences for her illustrations in this year’s “Beautiful Rebels”-themed Best of the Bay include Mexican and Spanish folklore, broken-hearted femmes fatales, disheveled muses, and erotic heroines. Castro’s current projects include commissions for SF companies the Loin and Peasants and Travelers, shows in local galleries, plus an apprenticeship at Amor Eterno Tattoo in Oakland, where you’re welcome to drop by and see her.

 

 

 

BEST OF THE BAY STAFF

BEST OF THE BAY EDITORS

Marke B., Caitlin Donohue

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Mirissa Neff

ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR

Ben Hopfer

ILLUSTRATOR

Renee Castro

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Jackie Andrews, Emily Appelbaum, Rebecca Bowe, Richard Boyce, Kimberly Chun, Angelina Kravich,  Cheryl Eddy, Nicole Gluckstern, Sean Hurd, Steven T. Jones, Heather Mack, Virginia Miller, Carly Nairn, Sarah Phelan, Julie Potter, Tim Redmond, Paul Reidinger, Kat Renz, Charles Russo, Amber Schadewald, Ariel Soto-Suver, Diane Sussman, Hannah Tepper, Christopher Trenchard

BEST OF THE BAY PHOTOGRAPHY

Francesca Balaguer, Stephen Heraldo, Ben Hopfer, Eric Lynch, Virginia Miller, Ariel Soto-Suver, Erik Anderson

COPY EDITORS

Emily Appelbaum, Diane Sussman

 

Grab your deck, Tha Hood Games riding out tomorrow Sat/23

Andrew Lam
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Grab your deck, Tha Hood Games riding out tomorrow Sat/23

Mini ramps in front of murals, skate shoes stomping around, multiple forms of media sharing the spotlight for tomorrow (Sat/23)’s all-day multimedia art exhibit at the African Art and Culture Complex. Thanks to Parks and Recreation and an East Bay youth creativity non-profit you can shoulder your deck and head to Tha Hood Games exhibition.

Founded in East Oakland in 2005 by Keith “K-Dub” Williams & Ms. Barbara “Adjoa” Murden, Tha Hood Games was created to give “youth a creative platform to share their talents,” according to the group’s website. Tha Hood Games has ramped up 30 skate events and youth art festivals all over the Bay Area, in Las Vegas, Long Beach, and at the X Games.

The group’s events highlight the talents of Bay Area youth skateboarders. In an interview with the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, Williams said that, “Tha Hood Games gives youth an opportunity to showcase and nurture their skills in skateboarding, music, dance, and the visual arts in their own communities. This exhibition is our way of sharing our journey visually, and spotlighting our family of creative people and the many youth, cities and communities we have visited.”

So of course, there’s gonna be art on Saturday — the exhibit features murals and paintings on helmets and car hoods. There’s gonna be skateboarding – a temporary park’s been erected in the parking lot of the the African Art and Culture Complex that’ll be open from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Also included will be live performances, live art, skate demos, and vendor booths.  Pro skater and associate of Tha Hood Games Karl Watson will be in attendance, as will be pro skater Nyjah Huston. An opening reception in the art gallery will take place from 5-7 p.m., and a fashion show  from 7-9 p.m.

 

“Tha Hood Games: Kids, Community, Comrades”

Sat/23, 11 a.m.-9 p.m., free

African Art and Culture Complex

762 Fulton, SF

(415) 292-6172

Facebook: Tha Hood Games Exhibition

www.aaacc.org


 

Party with the new, movie-making Yard Dogs Road Show Sun/24

Andrew Lam
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Party with the new, movie-making Yard Dogs Road Show Sun/24

It’s not every day that you get a missive from the carnival, so when I saw Eddy Joe Cotton’s email in my inbox I read it. Holy damn, Yard Dogs Road Show is making a movie. Even more than that — he was extending the invite to go play with the traveling pack of musico-gypsies on Sun/24 at their Oakland clubhouse. You can come too. No, really.

“The Yard Dogs Road Show wants to be a movie right now,” says Cotton, author of one of the best road journals ever (Hobo) and long-time member of the long-time traveling burlesque-vaudeville experience that is the YDRS. It kind of always did (if not another novel) — the band’s provenance has always been romanticized by its members, if not made into an urban legend. Take a gander at my interview with the group’s song and dance man Miguel for a look at magic and mystery. 

The band’s developed a nationwide following through its bohemian wonderland of a live show. So cool, it wants to share its roots. Of course, there is a Kickstarter involved. See, movies don’t just pop up from nowhere. Cotton explains — actually, he really explains, maybe I’ll just cut ‘n’ paste. The band needs your dough for:

– Editing, obtaining additional footage, purchasing archival-stock footage, music publishing fees, audio production, camera upgrades, hard drives, film festival entry fees, film promotion, graphic design, DVD manufacturing, etc.

– We have a 7-year old mini-DV camera that has stopped accepting tapes. We’ve had it repaired too many times. We need a new HD camera – price tag $4000

– We still need more footage to tell the story we want to tell. This will mean more of everything. 

Plus publicity, DVD manufacturing, cuts to Kickstarter and Amazon, mailing the DVDs, and for video gear they’ve already bought. 

Bla bla bla. Contributing to the project through the Kickstarter site will mean you get anything from YDRS love (this is not totally broken down, so feel free to let your imagination run rampant) to lifetime tickets to see the band giggin’. And the party in Oakland will feature a movie Q&A, sushi rolls, and lasso tricks. 

 

Yard Dogs Road Show movie party

Sun/24 5 p.m.-midnight, free

Yard Dogs Art Shack

2509 Myrtle, Oakl.

www.yarddogsroadshow.com

Shuttle wars at SFO

Andrew Lam
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Shuttle wars at SFO

news@sfbg.com

It’s a misty morning at San Francisco International Airport, with the fog breaking into a slight drizzle. At the ground transportation area, travelers were repeatedly running in to each other in their head-down dash across packed taxi lanes.

The biggest bottleneck wasn’t the cars, though; it was the confused populace staring up at multicolored, multiarrowed transportation-related signs. Taxi? No. Shuttle? Yes, but which shuttle — reserved, hotel, or shared-ride?

I watch the collective confusion from the shared-ride zone, itself a tricolor ménage. A small sign shows that the red, yellow, and blue zones each correspond to a set of shuttle companies, but it takes some time to figure out which is which. Someone (official or not, I can’t tell) has crossed out and reassigned companies with a permanent marker. Good thing I don’t actually need a ride.

I ask a curb coordinator on duty, Carlos Marenco, about the colored zones. He explains that there are eight small shuttle companies that share the yellow zone — they rotate every five minutes. Two companies use the red zone and rotate every seven minutes. And one company, SuperShuttle, has its own blue zone. Why are the zones distributed like this, I ask?

“SuperShuttle and Lorrie’s (a red zone company) are bigger. More people know them, so they need more space,” Marenco said.

Just then a bewildered couple approached the shared-ride zone. They began talking to the driver of a small yellow zone company who is about to finish his allotted five minutes.

“No,” a coordinator shouts as he comes bustling toward passengers. “You need to go down to the blue zone.”

“Why?” the man asks.

“It is not this driver’s turn. You need to go to the blue zone,”

The coordinator takes their bags from the driver and begins wheeling them to the blue zone.

“They want to ride with me!” he shouts.

The couple is already down the sidewalk though, guiltily following their bags to a waiting SuperShuttle — and the next yellow zone driver idles nearby waiting for their spot at the curb. The driver curses, slams his door, and drives off empty.

 

AT THE CURB

Curb space at SFO is prime real estate, and a battle is underway between the giant SuperShuttle — owned by a French conglomerate — and a group of small, locally owned airport shuttle companies that say that they’re being pushed aside.

It gets heated out at the curb — when I talked to him after the unlucky driver left without his potential passengers, Marenco explained that the coordinators are often yelled at by enraged drivers.

“They think we cheat them, but we do not,” Marenco said. He says his job is to make sure drivers do not solicit passengers and that each zone gets an equal number of walk-up customers. He has come up with his own system — three large rectangular red, yellow, and blue magnets he puts on a pole at the front of the line to show drivers who gets the next passenger.

But Aaron Chan, owner of Advance Airporter, a small company stuck in the yellow zone, said that “the drivers are always telling me that the curb coordinators give many more passengers to SuperShuttle, even when it is not their turn.” And some small companies say that the big outfit pays the coordinators for more favorable treatment.

Marenco insists he never took money (which you can call tips or bribes, depending on your attitude). But Matt Curwood, San Francisco SuperShuttle general manager, acknowledged that “there have been a number of situations where our drivers are forced into circumstances where coordinators will only escort passengers to their shuttle if they are provided with payment of some form.”

There are no shining angels here. Both parties blame the other side; both deny bribery themselves (but claim the others do it), and the coordinators deny it happens at all.

And the whole mess is getting dropped in the lap of the Airport Commission, which in the past has been very friendly to SuperShuttle.

 

GET RID OF THE LITTLE GUYS

When the new Terminal 2 opened in April, airport staff asked each shuttle company to submit a letter discussing how zoning should be organized at the new curb. SuperShuttle responded — and took the opportunity to push a topic it has been trying to get SFO officials to adopt since the early 1990s: limiting the number of shuttle companies allowed to serve SFO to no more than two or three.

Curwood says that of the airports SuperShuttle operates in, SFO is the most difficult for customers to navigate. In the letter, he proposed the solution of “a competitive RFP process [that] enables competition and improves the quality of service the customer currently experiences. The essence of the problem SFO faces is that it is trying to accommodate too many substandard operators at the jeopardy of the public’s experience and safety.”

Gil Sharabi, general manager of Airport Express, a yellow zone company his father started in 1979, told me that his company has a perfect safety record and is just as qualified to serve the public as SuperShuttle. Sharabi says that SuperShuttle is really aiming to eliminate local business competition.

SuperShuttle’s corporate offices are in Illinois, and it serves 36 airports in the United States.

Curwood says it’s unfair to make this about the big company versus the little guy. “When you see one of those SuperShuttles on the road, that’s its own business. That’s its own franchise. I want that to be clear because we talk about small companies, and in fact what we are is a franchise for over 100 small companies.”

SuperShuttle may be made up of franchises, but the company itself is owned by Veolia Transportation, part of French multinational company Veolia Environment. Veolia is a Fortune 200 company with four divisions — water, energy, environmental services, and transport — and is the 34th-largest employer in the world. Its website boasts that it is the leading private water service provider in the world and the “No. 1 private transportation operator in Europe and North America.” So much for the little guy.

Sharabi says that aside from monopolization threats, the real problem is the special treatment SuperShuttle is given by airport staff.

The current tricolor system began in 1993 when the airport tried to terminate space in the yellow zone. The issue went to the Board of Supervisors, which directed the airport to give yellow zone companies their space back.

Since then, the companies in the yellow zone have been forced to share their space eight ways, which means fewer customers for them. If each colored zone gets one-third of walk-up customers, a company in the yellow zone — if it’s lucky — one out of every 24. SuperShuttle, on the other hand, gets all blue zone customers and can wait to pile in passengers, saving on gas and time. Furthermore, the eight yellow zone companies pay more of the third-party curb coordinator’s salaries than SuperShuttle.

 

A FREE BILLBOARD

Ray Sloan-Zayotti of the local lobbying firm Public Policy Advocates, which has represented the eight yellow zone companies since 1993, said that by not making SuperShuttle rotate, “they essentially have a free billboard right outside the terminal — and they don’t have to pay the fees the others pay to loop through the airport.”

Sharabi said the situation at SFO is unusual. “There are even more shuttles at Oakland Airport, but no one complains there,” Sharabi said. “It’s because everyone over there is treated fairly — and that’s all we’re asking for.”

Indeed, Sharabi said, one of the most aggravating parts of this debate is that the day after airport staff received SuperShuttle’s letter, it led to a long discussion at the Airport Commission. He said his and other yellow zone companies have been trying for years to get the commission and staff to listen to their complaints of unequal treatment.

“They don’t want to listen to us,” Sharabi said. “They have decided that they want SuperShuttle here, and not us. And they haven’t given us a reason why.

“We’ve been sending letters and doing proposals and lots of work for years,” he added. “And they have not only never cared for us, they have never forwarded anything to the commission,” Sharabi said.

In exasperation, the eight yellow zone companies sent a response letter directly to the Airport Commission outlining their position. “For nearly two decades a majority of companies — many that have been around much longer than SuperShuttle — have sent letters to SFO and the commission that have been received with little or no interest,” it stated. The letter went on to ask the commission to consider giving all 11 companies equal time at the curb.

 

A MATTER OF SURVIVAL

Sharabi and Sloan-Zayotti both point out that SuperShuttle hired Platinum Advisors, a well-known local lobbying firm. Curwood confirmed that SuperShuttle has hired the company, adding that it’s common for businesses dealing with the city to hire lobbyists. (Indeed, yellow zone companies have a lobbyist of their own.) He said SuperShuttle’s proposal will benefit passengers, but that it is ultimately up to the commissioners and airport staff.

“The system is right now catering to the small companies to ensure their survival rather than catering to the public,” Curwood said. “[The letter is] not saying ‘I want to kick everyone out of business,’ it’s saying that these are serious issues our customers say they face and proposing a way to put standards in place that will change it.”

“In all honesty, we understand what SuperShuttle is doing — and that’s reducing the competition for them,” Sharabi said. “It’s business, right? But what’s not right is that unelected officials get to make decisions that affect small business owners like us without having to answer to the public. That right there is the problem.”

“I do not know where that’s coming from,” said Michael McCarron, director of the SFO Bureau of Community Affairs. “We listen to everyone. We can’t make everyone happy, but we try to listen to everyone and work out the best possible arrangements for all the operators.”

Sharabi disagreed. “Everybody drops the line ‘You know we support the local people.’ But it couldn’t be further from the truth.”

 

Our Weekly Picks: July 20-26

Andrew Lam
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FRIDAY 22

FILM/MUSIC

Casablanca with the San Francisco Symphony

When you think about the music from the classic 1942 film Casablanca, the first thing that likely comes to mind is “As Time Goes By,” the Herman Hupfeld song that Sam is asked to play (again) by both Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart. As iconic as the piano tune is, one shouldn’t overlook the outstanding score by Max Steiner, who incorporated themes from the French and German national anthems to act as motifs and punctuate the onscreen drama. At tonight’s special concert, the San Francisco Symphony performs the score live as an accompaniment to a screening of the movie, and concertgoers are encouraged to show up early for cocktails and a piano sing-along, a party truly befitting Rick’s Café Américain. (Sean McCourt)

8 p.m., $30–$70

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.sfsymphony.org

 

MUSIC

Doc Martin

The exact date is unclear, but noted electronic musicologist and rave historian David Sevene of Chicago University believes it took place between 1990-91. The location was a Where the Wild Things Are-theme party, an all-night Wild Rumpus in L.A. Doc Martin, already at the forefront of the West Coast scene, entered the DJ booth to find Charlie Sheen, Flavor Flav, and Nicolas Cage exchanging drugs. The three were making a pact: to “go all out,” “party the night away,” and “cut loose.” It was the beginning, many believe, of a path that would lead to collective insanity, assault convictions, self-destruction, and 1992’s Honeymoon in Vegas. For Doc Martin, who remains an unparalleled deep house DJ, it was just another night. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Garth, Nikola Baytala, Galen, Bo, and Rouzbeh

10 p.m., $15–$18

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

THEATER

Bay Area Playwrights Festival

Be the first to see a local hit or even a work by a future Tony winner at the 34th Bay Area Playwrights Festival, a two-week showcase of fresh works by seven emerging playwrights, performed script-in-hand at Potrero Hill’s Thick House. The fest includes full-length works like Lauren Gunderson’s Rock Creek: Southern Gothic and Dan Dietz’s Home Before Zero, as well as a program of short plays (Bay Area Shorts, or BASH!). A highlight will surely be Oakland-born writer-on-the-rise Chinaka Hodge’s new short play about a friendship between two track stars, the East Bay-set 700th & Int’l. (Cheryl Eddy)

July 22–31, $20

Thick House

1695 18th St., SF

www.playwrightsfoundation.org

 

MUSIC

1-2-3-4 Go! 10th Anniversary

Since its inception in 2001, 1-2-3-4 Go! has proven itself not only as the proprietor of the best record store in the East Bay, but as a quality label in its own right, boasting an impressive (and ever expanding) roster of punk and garage bands from our own backyard and beyond. In honor of these achievements, 1-2-3-4 Go! is hosting a three day festival packed full to bursting with every act your punk-hungry ears could dream of. It would be impossible to list every noteworthy band on the bill without simply reproducing it in its entirety, but to name a few: the Bananas, the world’s greatest/drunkest pop-punk band, will be joined by a reunited Zero Boys and local garage-champion Nobunny, as well as King Khan and many more, plus record swaps and DJs … and now I’m out of breath. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

Through Sun/24

8:30 p.m., $14–$15

Oakland Metro Operahouse

630 Third St., Oakl.

(510) 763-1146

www.oaklandmetro.org

 

FILM

Harold and Maude

This is it, folks: the last film to ever play the Red Vic as we know it. The Haight Street theater shuts its doors after more than three decades following a run of one of its perennial favorites, Hal Ashby’s 1971 black comedy, Harold and Maude — an appropriate choice not just for its Bay Area setting, but also because of its bittersweet themes (helped along by Cat Stevens’ soundtrack songs). The Red Vic’s final day coincides with its 31st birthday. Expect a profusion of daisy petals and not many dry eyes. Head out, pull up a bench, dig into some yeasty popcorn, and celebrate the collectively-run theater — and thank its staff for their long run of matching quirky programming with a one-of-a-kind film going experience. Red Vic, you’ll be missed. (Eddy)

Fri/22–Mon/24, 7:15, 9:15

Also Sat/23–Sun/24, 2, 4), $6–$9

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

MUSIC

Earth

Mixing stately, meditative guitar hums with a new-found twang, influential Seattle outfit Earth is poised to thrill San Francisco concertgoers — at least those with long attention spans. Since its founding in 1989 the band has perfected “drone doom,” a repetitive, tectonically shifting subgenre of extreme music. Though some elements have stayed constant — slow tempos; warm, somnolent guitar tones — Earth has gradually transformed its sound, incorporating keyboards, cellos, and aforementioned twangy leads, redolent of country music. The result is ominous, evocative music that often sounds like the score from some depressing, not-yet-filmed psychedelic western. (Ben Richardson)

With Angelo Spencer and Les Hauts Sommets, Whirr

9 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415)-255-0333

www.slims-sf.com


SATURDAY 23

MUSIC

Uncle Rebel

Definitive Uncle Rebel song “Take Your Rest” has no percussion. Instead, the backbeat is held down by a bizarre, eerie sound effect that sounds like someone plucking a tightly coiled spring. Over top appears the haunting acoustic guitar and pained, bluesy singing of Matt Welde, who eventually launches into a shuddering solo on electric. Welde’s band and its somber, Americana-inflected tunes will be joined at Slim’s by the Soft White Sixties, a five-piece that, as its name implies, seasons exuberant, danceable rock with hefty does of 1960s R&B. Fans of homegrown rock ‘n’ roll with vintage sensibilities are sure to enjoy what they hear. (Richardson)

With the Hypnotist Collectors

8:30 p.m., $14

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415)-255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

 

PERFORMANCE

“Brave New Voices Grand Slam Finals”

I just watched Russell Simmons’ HBO-ification of the international youth spoken word competition Brave New Voices, and even through the reality show treatment, the kids’ performances were making my fists ball and throat hurt — such was the emotional power hemorrhaging out of their poet bodies as they spat the biggest issues in their world. Their ultimate showdown comes to the Bay Area for the first time this year. Tonight’s finals are the culmination of writing workshops and multiple rounds of competition featuring pieces the teams busted so hard that the stages were left covered with un-ignorable piles of real, young-person emotion. Damn, there’s that lump in my throat again. Go see it. (Caitlin Donohue)

7–10 p.m., $18–$100

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF

www.bravenewvoices.org


SUNDAY 24

FILM/EVENT

“2011 SFJFF Freedom of Expression Award: Kirk Douglas”

Actor, producer, and author Kirk Douglas is a true Hollywood legend and icon. For nearly 70 years, he has not only entertained and enlightened audiences, he has stoically fought for what he believes in. Perhaps the most famous example is when he broke the Hollywood blacklist by insisting that Dalton Trumbo be given screenwriting credit for his work on the 1960 epic Spartacus — an action for which, along with his incredible career, he is being honored today by the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Douglas, who was born Issur Danielovich, will appear live on stage to receive the 2011 Freedom of Expression Award, and to be on hand for a special 50th anniversary screening of Spartacus. (McCourt)

1 p.m., $16–$18

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.sfjff.org

 

TUESDAY 26

MUSIC

Symbolick Jews

Making good on the promise of lo-fi, bombarding an audience with equal parts noise and rock ‘n’ roll, and releasing more albums in a year than most bands eek out in a lifetime, the Symbolick Jews embody much of what is great about independent music. Loud, raucous, fun and always on the verge of collapsing, a Symbolick Jews song is like a dog pile with your wasted friends on the Fourth of July. Fireworks explode somewhere deep inside the pile of beer-soaked flesh and denim and all you can do is laugh-scream as chaos erupts and bodies slump to the side. It isn’t incoherent: part shitgaze, part Pixies-era indie rock, Symbolick Jews captures something like the avant-garde songcraft of Pere Ubu, but at its most rocking heights rather than its weirder experimental adventures. (Berkmoyer)

With Baby Talk and the Gems

7 p.m., $5

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elriosf.com

 

MUSIC

Yuck

While it might be impossible to ignore the blatancy with which Yuck wears its late-1980s and early-1990s indie rock influences on its sleeves, the band pulls it off so flawlessly that it ultimately winds up little more than an afterthought. Obvious touchstones include Dinosaur Jr.’s fuzzy guitar assault and the loose charm of early Pavement albums, all coupled with a melodic sweetness that stops just short of turning overly saccharine. The London-born songwriting pair of Daniel Blumberg and Max Bloom lies at the core of Yuck, and thanks to a firestorm of hype after the release of the band’s debut LP early this year, the two have found themselves touring nonstop and headlining SXSW showcases before they’d even hit their 20s. (Landon Moblad)

With Unknown Mortal Orchestra

July 26–27, 8 p.m., $13–$15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com


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Youth Speaks finds its Brave New Voices at this week’s international poetry slam

Andrew Lam
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Youth Speaks finds its Brave New Voices at this week’s international poetry slam

Bay Area, meet your home team. Their names are Joshua Merchant, Noah St. John, E.J. Walls, Gretchen Carvajal, Cassanda Euphrat Weston, and Jade Cho – spoken word poets, representatives of their cities in an international competition that has been the subject, even, of an HBO reality series, and all under the age of 18. Do you know about Brave New Voices?

A performance from BNW 2010 on everyone’s (least) favorite sustenance diet

 The international youth spoken word competition has been shocking senses and giving young people a way to spit the most difficult and important aspects of their lives since 1998 (go here for our recent post on Youth Speaks, the SF organization that was instrumental in making this slam royale happen and coordinates the Bay’s BNV representatives). What happens is teams of high school poets, usually selected through city-wide slams in their own areas, hit the stage during three rounds, reciting poems in tandem and solo that they’ve been revising and perfecting for months. Offstage, the kids get to meet fellow poets from around the world, ciphering and practicing their performances into the night.

We’re stoked at the Guardian for our Bay beatniks, and we somehow hooked two of them for an email interview in the middle of their preparations for the competition, which starts tomorrow, Wed/20, and culminates in the final slam Sat/23 at the SF Opera. Like Youth Speaks executive director James Kass says, here’s your “unadulterated, uncensored kids.”

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Introduce yourself to the city — how old you are, how long you’ve been involved with Youth Speaks, what do you like about spoken word?

Cassandra Euphrat Weston: I’m 18, I’ve been involved with Youth Speaks for about a year. I love the directness and honesty that spoken word demands of me as a writer. There is only one chance to connect with the audience; there’s no leisurely re-reading spoken word poems, and that immediacy creates an extremely powerful connection.

Gretchen Carvajal: I’m 17, I’ve been involved with Youth Speaks for almost three years now, and I love the entire spoken word community, the freeing environment [of] integrity and vulnerability coexisting.  All in all, spoken word is dope.

 

SFBG: You guys are less than a week out from Brave New Voices, how are you feeling?

GC: It feels surreal, we’ve been working at this for so long and it’s finally coming down to the wire, it’s Judgment Day. For real. Make it or break it. Think of every cliché used to describe this eye of the tiger moment, that’s what it is, times a million.

 

SFBG: What’s been the most challenging part about training for an international competition like this?

GC: Traveling from Newark to Oakland and Berkeley and San Francisco, it’s a lot of money to drop on BART. Also, several edits on the same poem can get a little repetitive, but it’s all for making the pieces stronger. 

 

SFBG: What are you most looking forward to about BNV? What do you think is going to be happening there when a country full of young spoken word artists meet?

CEW: I can’t wait to meet poets from all over the country and hear their work. I don’t know exactly what will happen, but I know the experience will be absolutely phenomenal.

 

SFBG: Tell me something that you’re proud of about your San Francisco team.

CEW: I love how different we all are, and how close we’ve become over the course of the past few months. Everybody has pushed themselves into the most difficult conversations and poems. This effort definitely shows.

GC: I’m proud of the mix we have in our team, and how we coincide. Our team has so many different styles and we can contribute to each other’s style, making everyone diverse within themselves. I just love my team.

 

Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival

Wed/20-Sat/23, $6-100

Various Bay Area venues

www.bravenewvoices.org

 

Repulsed by Recology’s tactics, Kopp strikes name from Adachi initiative

Mary Magee
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Repulsed by Recology’s tactics, Kopp strikes name from Adachi initiative

Who knew that a bunch of garbage could get a taxpayer watchdog like former supe/state senator/judge Quentin Kopp threatening not to endorse Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s pension reform initiative? But that’s what happened according to Kopp, who adds that he was “personally insulted’ by a signature gatherer outside the West Portal post office last week, after he struck his name from a petition he had signed in support of Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s pension reform measure.

Adachi, who has reportedly been paying up to $5 per signature, also came under fire this week from opponents of his measure, who are threatening legal action after an undercover video showed four signature gatherers for Adachi’s measure soliciting signatures while making misleading statements about the proposal.

But this misbehavior had not been made public when Kopp encountered a signature gatherer last Friday, who asked if he would sign the Adachi petition. “I wrote my name and has just started to print it, when he said, how do you feel about Recology?” recalled Kopp, who is backing a ballot initiative that would require competitive bidding and hundreds of millions of dollars in franchise fees from firms who seek to win San Francisco’s garbage collection and recycling contract.

As such, Kopp’s initiative threatens to up-end the terms of an 80-year old charter amendment that resulted in Recology (formerly Norcal Waste Systems) gaining a contractless monopoly on San Francisco’s $226 million-a-year garbage and recycling stream. 

When Kopp asked the signature gatherer, who identified himself as Tim McArdle, why he was asking about Recology, McArdle said he had another petition on hand, which referred to the allegedly satisfactory service that Recology is providing.

At which point, Kopp began to strike his name from Adachi’s $5-a pop petition. McArdle allegedly interrupted, saying, “No, that’s not the same petition as Recology’s.” And when Kopp kept scratching out his name, McArdle allegedly began swearing at him, even allegedly employing the time-honored F-word. “A woman walked by and was shocked,” Kopp said.(So far the Guardian has been unable to locate McArdle, but when we do, we’ll be sure to update this post.)


When McArdle grabbed back his clipboard, Kopp said he was able to see that on its backside was what Kopp describes as ‘Recology’s phony petition.”

So, why is Kopp so repulsed by Recology? According to Kopp. Recology recently signed up the city’s top signature-gathering firms to work on their petition thereby preventing Kopp and his associates from hiring these firms to collect signatures for his competitive bidding initiative. “And they are doing so from our rates, the money we pay, its legalized misappropriation of our money,” Kopp claimed

So far, it seems as if Recology’s strategy is paying off, at least in the short term. This week, sponsors of the competitive bidding initiative announced that they will turn in their signatures by December 11 to qualify their measure for the June 2012 ballot—and not their original target of November 2011.

Their decision followed less than three weeks of signature-gathering, a tight squeeze that occured, in part, because the City Attorney’s Office  took the full 15 days allowed by law to review the language of the Kopp initiative, which was first submitted June 3.

Even so, and despite an extensive Recology-financed media campaign that included push polls and network and cable TV ads against competitive bidding,  proponents and volunteers with Kopp’s campaign managed to gather the 7,168 signatures they needed to qualify his initiative by the city’s July 11 deadline for submitting petitions for the November election. But some signatures could prove invalid, hence the decision to delay the competitive bidding initiative until June.

And the Guardian learned today that the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee has scheduled a July 20 hearing on whether to award Recology the city’s $11 million-a-year landfill disposal contract, with the full Board set to vote on the issue on July 26 and August 2. In other words, the Board is rushing to make a decision on the landfill, which would further consolidate Recology’s monopoly on the city’s waste stream, before the Board’s summer recess.

The Guardian has also learned that the Budget and Finance Committee will hear a resolution July 20 concerning Recology’s existing agreement with the city over garbage. Rumors are swirling that this hearing will allow Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who sits on the committee, is running for sheriff and has allegedly been meeting with Mayor Ed Lee and Recology president and CEO Mike Sangiacomo behind closed doors, to insert a clause to allow for the payment of a $4 million franchise fee. But insiders assure the Guardian that Mirkarimi has no such plans, although Mirkarimi himself could not be reached.


Either way, as Kopp points out, the alleged proposed $4 million fee would only amount to 2 percent of Recology’s annual revenue from San Francisco ratepayers. ‘That’s almost an insult,” Kopp said, noting that Oakland, whose population is 340,000, (42 percent of San Francisco’s daytime population) gets a franchise fee of $30 million.

Now, in a recent report to the Board’s LAFCO committee, Recology claimed it provides $18 million annually in “free services” to the city. But the report did not include an independent analysis of Recology’s estimates, and therefore these claims raised the hackles of Kopp, Kelly and other competitive bidding proponents.

Kopp predicts a $4 million franchise fee would allow city leaders who oppose his measure to claim that one of the two objectives of his proposed initiative have been addressed.

In an interview with the Guardian earlier this year, Mayor Ed Lee said he felt that Recology “has justified its privilege to be the permit holder in San Francisco because of the things that it has been willing to do with us.”

Kopp said Lee repeated this position in June, and that Board President David Chiu recently said that he is opposed to monopolies in concept, but felt that any effort to allow competitive bidding on garbage services would tear the city apart.

“Chiu spoke in such draconian terms I thought I was in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Kopp said.

But these latest developments have strengthened Kopp and Kelly’s resolve to push ahead with their effort to give local residents a chance to decide whether competitive bidding would be better for San Francisco rate payers. As they point out, such a vote doesn’t mean Recology would be ousted from the city because they stand an excellent chance of winning any competitive bid. But it could mean that Recology is ousted from its current cost-plus arrangement with the city that allows them to make an estimated 10-20 percent profit.

And whatever happens, the upcoming battle threatens to shed light on Recology’s business model, which is based on vertical expansion into other counties and states, and the knowledge that, unlike the competitive bids it submits everywhere else in California, it has a guaranteed annual revenue of $225 million in San Francisco. In its 1996 filings with the Securities Exchange Commission, NorCal Waste and its 45 subsidiaries (now known as Recology) reported that San Francisco accounts for 50 percent of its annual revenue. And while those public filings are 15 years old, it’s clear Recology continues to rely on San Francisco for a large and guaranteed chunk of its income.

Or as one insider put it, “When you have a cost-plus contract, you can start buying things—like the Pier 96 development, and the recycling facility. And you can move profits to a different part of the company. You’re not competitively bidding the composting. And you can shift your profits out of San Francisco. And with a cost-plus contract, you put everything in the rates. For instance, the city says it wants composting. Ok, here’s the cost, here’s the bill. But you take the profit from the composting and invest it in San Jose, or San Bernardino, and use it to advance your other objectives, like buying two large landfills in Nevada and financing political campaigns.”

Meanwhile, Kopp says he plans to take Adachi to task for hiring the same signature gathering firm that is trying to undermine his petition.


“And I’m not planning to sign his petition now, and I might not endorse it,” Kopp said.
 




 

Music Listings

Andrew Lam
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Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alvon Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

David Bazan + Band, Rocky Votolato Independent. 8pm, $15.

Shannon Bryant Union Square, Geary at Powell, SF; www.jewelssf.org. 12:30pm, free.

Jonathan Butler Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $18-25.

“Christmas in July” Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. With Yule Logs, Uni and Her Ukelele, Mary Van Note, DJ Real, and DJ Neil Martinson.

Elected, Whispertown, Mike Bloom Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Foxtail Somersault, Fake Your Own Death, Foreign Cinema, Manatee Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Freshlyground Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF; www.brickandmortarmusic.com. 9pm, $20.

Alex and Lily Holbrook 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Mental 99, Wesley Morgan Madrone Art Bar. 7pm, free. Every Wed. in July.

Mist, Sudden Oak, Headboggle, Swanox Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Phantom Kicks, Bad Bibles, Here Come the Saviours Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Rademacher, Slow Trucks, Built Like Alaska Knockout. 9pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cat’s Corner with Nathan Dias Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Jazz organ party with Graham Connah Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 8pm.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, free. Funk, swing, rare grooves, and more with Dr. Musco and guests.

Mary Go Round, the New Generation Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 10pm, $5. Drag with Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro, and Ginger Snap.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

THURSDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“Blue Flame” DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20. Emerging artist showcase with Starting Six, Iamsu, Symba, and more.

Dead Westerns, Slow Motion Cowboy, Bad Backs Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Nellie McKay Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $15-20.

My Victim, Midnight Chaser, Lazerwolf Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7-10. Save KUSF Benefit with DJs Loren, TheLastAngryManny, and Lil Joe.

“Nerd Rock Fest Night #1” Hemlock Tavern. 7:30pm, $12. With Three Day Stubble, Weird Paul, Shitappa Oyabun, and HogWind.

Paper Bird, Shannon McNally Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Portugal the Man, White Arrows Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $13.

“Save KUSF Benefit: Garage-A-Go-Go” Independent. 8pm, $15. With the Standells, Devil-Ettes, C’Mon Everybody, Bitter Honeys, and more.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Bastille Day Celebration with Gaucho Gypsy Jazz” Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100. 7pm, $18.

Cosmo Alleycats featuring Ms. Emily Wade Adams Blondie’s, 540 Valencia, SF; (415) 864-2419. 9pm, free.

Dave Parker Quartet Purple Onion, 140 Columbus, SF; (415) 956-1653. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 8pm.

Mike Irwin Trio Rose Pistola, 532 Columbus, SF; www.rosepistola.com. 8pm, free.

Nate Wong Trio Savanna Jazz. 7pm, $5.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and “Tender” Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

SF Jazz Hotplate Series Amnesia. 9pm.

Soul jazz party with Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Lagos Roots Afrobeat Ensemble, DJ Jeremiah and the Afrobeat Nation Café Du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Rolando Morales Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Tinariwen, DJ Harry Duncan Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $30.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk with DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, plus Strongholdsound.

Culture Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 10pm, free. Roots reggae, dub, rocksteady, and classic dancehall with DJ Tomas, Yusuke, Vinnie Esparza, and Basshaka and ILWF.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party features video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

Thursdays at the Cat Club Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests.

Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, free. Salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and more with DJs Don Bustamante, Apocolypto, Sr. Saen, Santero, and Mr. E.

FRIDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Colbie Caillat Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $27.50.

Cash’d Out, Sweet Chariot, Jeffrey Luck Lucas Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF; www.brickandmortarmusic.com. 9pm, $13.

Corner Laughers, Debutante Hour Amnesia. 7pm, $5.

Crazy Squeeze, Lydia and the Projects Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Dear Hunter, Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, O’Brother, Native Thieves Bottom of the Hill. 7:30pm, $15.

Dirty Vegas, Frail, Polaris at Noon Independent. 9pm, $17.

Generationals, Gardens and Villa, HIJK Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Groovality Union Room at Biscuits and Blues. 8:30pm, $10.

Hindershot 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Steve Kimock and friends Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $30.

“Nerd Rock Fest Night #2” Hemlock Tavern. 7:30pm, $12. With Three Day Stubble, Chablis, John Trubee, Gyoriagyo, and Merchants of the New Bizarre.

Tamika Nicole, Chamara Pittman Showroom, 1000 Van Ness, SF; (415) 346-5597. 9pm, $10.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Strangelove: A Tribute to Depeche Mode, Luv n’ Rockets: A Tribute to Love & Rockets, Spellbound: A Tribute to Siouxsie and the Banshees Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Streetlight Manifesto, Reel Big Fish, Rodeo Ruby Love, Maxies Regency Ballroom. 7pm, $23.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Mon David Savanna Jazz. 7pm, $10.

Jazz organ party Graham Connah Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 8pm.

North Beach All Stars Rose Pistola, 532 Columbus, SF; www.rosepistola.com. 8pm, free.

Tito Puente, Jr. Orchestra Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $24.

Vaughan Johnson Jazz Combo Jack’s Club, 2545 24th St., SF; (415) 641-1880. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Gondwana, One Chot, Jah Yzer, DJ Julicio Elbo Room. 10pm, $20.

Lulacruza Red Poppy Art House. 9pm, $12-20.

Mahadev Kaleidoscope Free Speech Zone, 3109 24th St, SF; www.kaleidoscopefreespeechzone.com. 8pm, $5-10.

Windy Hill, TED Plough and Stars. 9:30pm, $6-10.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bardot A Go Go’s Post-Bastille Day Party Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10. With DJs Brother Grimm and Pink Frankenstein, the Devil-Ettes, and more.

DJ What’s His Fuck Riptide Tavern. 9pm, free. Old-school punk rock and other gems.

Trannyshack: Kylie Minogue Tribute DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $12. Drag fun with Becky Motorlodge, Precious Moments, Raya Light, Miss Rahni, and others, plus a Kylie look-a-like contest and more.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alkaline Trio, Smoking Popes, Dead Country Slim’s. 8pm, $25.

Aunt Kizzy’s Boyz Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Black Dynamite Sound Orchestra, Lord Loves a Working Man, Struts Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Quinn Deveaux and the Blue Beat Review, Mumlers Independent. 9pm, $15.

Form and Fate, Shuteye Unison, Glaciers Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Left Alone, Static Thought, Civil War Rust Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

“Patiopalooza” El Rio. 8pm, $8. With Burn River Burn, Art in Heaven, Mission: Blackout, Chris James, and Mavalour.

Silent Comedy, Saint Motel, Tambo Rays Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

“We All We Got” Club Six. 9pm, $10-15. Hip-hop showcase with Keith Murray, hosted by Sellassie.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Mon David Savanna Jazz. 7pm, $10.

Eddie Duran Duo Rose Pistola, 532 Columbus, SF; www.rosepistola.com. 8pm, free.

Eggplant Casino 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 8pm.

Soul Jazz Party with Jules Broussard and Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

Tito Puente, Jr. Orchestra Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $24.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

David Aguilar Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF; www.missionculturalcenter.org. 7:30pm, $12.

Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, Brothers Comatose, Misisipi Rider, Bootcuts Great American Music Hall. 8:30pm, $15.

Seun Anikulapo Kuti and Egypt 80, Khaira Arby and her Band Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $26.

Lulacruza Red Poppy Art House. 9pm, $12-20.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bootie SF: Hubba Hubba Revue DNA Lounge. 9pm, $8-15. Mash-ups and burlesque.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. Indie music video dance party with DJs Blondie K and subOctave.

New Wave City Masquerade Party Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.newwavecity.com. 9pm, $7-12. New wave and 80s alternative with Skip and Shindog. Masks encouraged!

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Sixties soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Smiths Night SF Rock-It Room. 9pm, free. Revel in 80s music from the Smiths, Joy Division, New Order, and more.

Sunugal.CA Bollyhood Café. 9pm, $7-10. Celebrate West Africa and the African Diaspora with VJ-DJ Sabar and DJ Migane, plus host VJ Oumar.

Triple Threat vs. Oakland Faders Mighty. 10pm. All-vinyl DJ battle.

Wild Nights Kok BarSF, 1225 Folsom, SF; www.kokbarsf.com. 9pm, $4. With DJ Frank Wild.

World Town Ruby Skye. 10pm. With PeaceTreaty, Trevor Simpson, and St. John.

SUNDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“Battle of the Bands” DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. Competition with Kings and Crooks, Lions Become Lambs, Weslester, and more.

English Beat, My First Earthquake Sigmund Stern Grove, 19th Ave at Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. 2pm, free.

Kamp Kamille, Eddie Cohn, As Is Brass Band Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

Mallard, Poodles, Woolen Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

“Seaweed Sway Showcase” Make-Out Room. 8pm, $7. With Masuga, Miwa, and Moomaw.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Jazz organ party with Lavay Smith and Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3202 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30pm, free.

Joe Cohen Trio Rose Pistola, 532 Columbus, SF; www.rosepistola.com. 8pm, free.

“Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone” Rrazz Room. 7pm.

Kelly Park Savanna Jazz. 7pm, $5.

Dave Solbach, Jason Martineau, Fred Randolph, Benn Bacot Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Shahrzad Sepanlou Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $35.

Sunday jazz jam 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Pezhham Arkhavass Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-20.

DANCE CLUBS

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep and guests DJ Shockman and Dub ID.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2. Raise money for LGBT sports teams while enjoying DJs and drink specials.

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

MONDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Daniel Menche, Damion Romero, R. Jencks, Gerritt Wittmer, DJ That Hideous Strength Amnesia. 7pm.

Lipbone Redding Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Scream Like You Mean It, Breathe Carolina, Chiodos, I See Stars, Color Morale, Mod Sun, Air I Breathe Regency Ballroom. 5:45pm, $18.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Liam O’Maonlai, Colm O’Riain, Lucia Comnes Café Du Nord. 8pm, $20.

Pistolera, Candelaria, DJs Santero and El Kool Kyle Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

TUESDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Buster Blue, Tyler Jakes, Calafia Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Griffin House, Peter Bradley Adams Café Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Mishka, Beautiful Girls, Anuhea Independent. 8pm, $15.

Owl City, Mat Kearny and Unwed Sailor Warfield. 7pm, $28.

Parenthetical Girls, Extra Life, Sam Mickens (the Dead Science) Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7,

Eric Sardinas Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Scarlet Stoic, theRUMBLEFISH, Blank Manuscript Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $8.

Yourself and the Air, Angel Island, Jake Mann and the Upper Hand Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Brazilian Wax Elbo Room. 9pm, $7. Samba and forro with DJs P-Shot and Bambino.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

 

Great Bay escapes

Andrew Lam
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0
Great Bay escapes

culture@sfbg.com

 

AÑO NUEVO STATE PARK

Due to their penis-noses and penchant for lazing about, no animal invites as much tittering as the male elephant seal. We are currently in the thick of their molting season (older males nap and shed on the beach from July until the end of August), the perfect time to hike out to their hangout on the tip of Año Nuevo. Be sure you snag your visitor’s permit — you’ll need one to enter from April-August — from the entrance station.

Open March–Sept., 8 a.m.–6 p.m. 1 New Year’s Creek, Pescadero. (Off Highway 1) (650) 879-2025, www.parks.ca.gov

 

ALAMEDA BOOZE DISTRICT

On the western edge of the island of Alameda, a one-time naval station has been repurposed into the discerning boozehound’s day trip of choice. Located within a easy block’s stumble of one another lie the tasting rooms of St. George Spirits (boasting absinthe, flavored vodkas, and coffee liqueur on the shelves) and Rock Wall Wine Company, a co-op of local wineries. They’re both a sunny walk from the ferry terminal — stroll by the massive aircraft carriers docked farther down the shore if you need to sober up after, or west to Rosenblum Cellars (2900 Main, Alameda) if you need more tastes.

St. George Spirits, 2601 Monarch, Alameda. (510) 769-1601, www.stgeorgespirits.com; Rock Wall Wine Company, 2301 Monarch, Alameda. (510) 522-5700, www.rockwallwines.com

 

CANDLESTICK POINT STATE RECREATION AREA

Candlestick Point has gone through a lot of changes in its varied history — but its current incarnation as a well-tended, if sometimes landscaped-feeling, urban refuge perfectly jibes with our times. Refreshing views of the bay, some fantastic hiking trails, and a sense of seclusion (despite the nearness of Highway 101 and the stadium) make this a neato spot to picnic, bird watch, or fish. Don’t forget to bring those layers though becuase sometimes the wind attempts to rifle gently through you.

Candlestick Park exit off Highway 101, SF

 

CHINA CAMP STATE PARK

Historically this waterfront slice on San Pablo Bay is important as the site of a Cantonese immigrant shrimp-fishing village in the 1800s (there’s a wee museum). For nature, there’s a delightful salt marsh and lazy-day winding paths drenched in sunlight and the calls of waterfowl. But — why hide it? — this is one of the best make-out places on the bay, with couples gladly making hay in the grasses. After the picnic, of course. Wet your whistle for the Annual Heritage Day Celebration on Aug. 27, 11:30 a.m.–4 p.m.

101 Peacock Gap Trail, San Rafael. www.parks.ca.gov

 

INK WELLS

Damn this SF summer fog! Escape north to Marin, where just past Boonville and just inside the border of Samuel P. Taylor State Park lie these cool pools. The rocky, clothing-optional swimming holes cascade into each other and feature prime jump-off spots for the daredevils among us who can’t be satisfied with a shady forest and some cold water on a hot day. Park your car just past Shafter Bridge (coming from Lagunitas) and walk underneath the copper-colored bridge to arrive. Samuel P. Taylor Park, Sir Francis Drake, Lagunitas

 

SLACKER HILL

Don’t freak, you don’t have to go far for nature adventures. This inappropriately-named Marin Headlands summit is just a 15 minute — albeit gnarly — hike up a gorgeous trail from a stop on the No. 76 Muni line. Once you’ve peaked, rest in the tall grass with a phenomenal 180 degree view of Sausalito, the bay, the bridges, and the city from downtown to the avenues. It’s like you’re inside one of those awesome Panoramio pics, but it’s not freezing your computer.

Trailhead begins on the right, 100 feet downhill on McCollough from the Conzelman intersection, Marin County.

 

UPCOMING FESTIVALS

SUNSET CAMPOUT

Three-day dancing and frolicking to superlative house music with thousands of others. With DJ Larry Heard, a.k.a. Mr. Fingers.

Fri/15-Sun/17, $125–>$150, Belden. www.sunsetcampout.com

 

PAL BLUES FESTIVAL

A smokin’ BBQ competition will satisfy, as will roots and blues music from dozens of performers.

Friday, July 22, 6 p.m.–8 p.m. and Saturday, July 23, 11 a.m.–8 p.m., free.

Courthouse Square, 2200 Broadway, Redwood City. www.palbluesfestival.com

 

SONOMA COUNTY FAIR

It’s the 75th year for this bonanza of California country living, with carnival rides, turkey races, vaudeville performances, wine tasting, and live music.

July 27–Aug. 14, various times, $9, kids under six and seniors free. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, www.sonomacountyfair.com

 

WANDERLUST

Bend over backward, outdoors, as yoga meets music with Michael Franti and Spearhead, Girl Talk, Cornflower, MC Yogi, and more.

July 28–31, $24.50–$450, Squaw Valley. squaw.wanderlustfestival.com

 

GAIA FESTIVAL

Celebrate the earth by getting down (and dirty?) with India.Arie and Idan Raichel, Aaron Neville, the Wailers, Funky Meters, and dozens more.

Aug. 5-7, $5–$180. Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville. www.thegaiafestival.com

 

GOOD OLD FASHIONED BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL

The Northern California Bluegrass Society goes all out with three days of pickin’ and pluckin’ campground jams and family fun.

Aug. 12–14, $8.50–$65. Bolado Park, Tres Piños. www.scbs.org/events/gov

 

OUTSIDE LANDS

A revamped food and wine aspect refreshes the massive SF music fest, whose star power includes Muse, Phish, and Arcade Fire.

Aug. 12–14, times and prices vary. Golden Gate Park, www.sfoutsidelands.com

 

BODEGA SEAFOOD ART AND WINE FESTIVAL

Drink, dine, and shop to your heart’s content. Also: Bodega Seafood Festival rubber duck races!

Saturday, Aug. 27, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 28, 10 a .m.–5 p.m., $8–$15. children under 12 free. 16855 Bodega Hwy, Bodega. www.winecountryfestivals.com

 

LOVEVOLUTION

The Bay’s hugest legal outdoor rave returns, now in Oakland for your fun-fur, hands-in-the-air pleasure. There will be a million DJs.

Sept. 24, price and time TBD. Oakland Coliseum Grounds, Oakl. www.sflovevolution.com


For more summer fairs and festival fun, visit www.sfbg.com/summerfests.

 

Big solar, little solar

Andrew Lam
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4
Big solar, little solar

rebeccab@sfbg.com

At a business conference this past May hosted by Wired Magazine, Bill Gates, the billionaire chair of Microsoft and an influential philanthropist, offered his two cents on solar energy. “If you’re going for cuteness,” he told Wired, “the stuff in the home is the place to go. It’s really kind of cool to have solar panels on your roof. But if you’re really interested in the energy problem, it’s those big things in the desert.”

Those big things in the desert are solar farms, designed to concentrate energy from the sun using arrays of mirrors or parabolic troughs spanning vast swaths of land. They’re green versions of the types of power plants big energy companies have always relied on — centralized, dependent on transmission lines, and requiring billions of dollars in investment. Some rely on water from desert aquifers for cooling, cleaning, and steam generation. Yet the plants can replace electricity that traditionally has been derived from burning coal, representing a significant advancement away from fossil fuels.

It’s too early to say whether California’s energy future will follow Gates’ maxim that rooftop solar is “cute” while desert solar represents the serious stuff. Others have argued just the opposite, and momentum is building on both fronts. Gov. Jerry Brown has endorsed the idea of installing 12,000 megawatts of rooftop solar, and was expected to bring stakeholders together in late July to discuss how to accomplish that goal.

At the same time, large-scale desert solar is attracting billions in investment, and big-name companies such as Bechtel, Chevron, AECOM, and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. are engaged in its development. The California Energy Commission approved nine desert solar-thermal projects last year, capable of producing 4,100 megawatts.

As California moves toward fulfilling a mandate of generating 33 percent of electricity from renewable power sources by 2020, there’s bound to be a political edge to solar development too. Giant utility companies profit by sending power along their transmission lines from desert solar farms to the grid. On the other hand, if energy-conscious customers generate more power than they use with rooftop solar panels, the utility company has to cut them a check. So there’s little incentive for utilities to encourage customer-owned, distributed generation of renewable power.

Jeanine Cotter, CEO of San Francisco-based Luminalt, a small solar installer, says it takes her work crew about a day and a half to mount new panels onto a rooftop. “That will produce power for that home for the next several decades,” Cotter notes. “It’s a rapidly deployable technology that is durable and will last a long time.”

Cotter practices what she preaches. “At my house, if you turn on all the appliances, you can look at the meter and see that we’re still relying on PG&E to bring us power,” she says. Cutting down results in the meter showing that the panels are producing electricity for the grid.

Self-empowerment is a major draw for proponents of rooftop solar. “The choice is pretty clear: pay for the ongoing cost of remote central-station renewable power or pocket the savings of locally-generated renewable power,” Al Weinrub of the Sierra Club writes in a pitch for decentralized solar generation in a January 2011 report. “Businesses with large rooftops or parking lots can become small power companies that feed electricity into the grid. Community cooperatives can pool the rooftop area of their neighborhoods to form, for example, an East Oakland Power Company.” The revenue could be rolled into job creation and more green-energy development.

Rooftop solar has gained traction in California over the past five years with a $3 billion program to subsidize installations. The California Public Utilities Commission recently touted the California Solar Initiative (CSI) program’s success — a 47 percent growth in installations since 2009. All told, the Golden State boasts 924 megawatts of solar generation capability, installed at 94,891 locations. Consultants for the California Public Utilities Commission found that 11,543 megawatts of solar could be generated on large urban rooftops statewide, while another 27,000 megawatts could be generated on empty lots near rural substations.

The potential is huge, but a cost barrier remains. Even with incentives, residential solar remains largely inaccessible to people who aren’t rich enough to own property or finance the upfront cost. In San Francisco — recently declared the greenest city in North America by Siemens — roughly 70 percent of residents are renters who almost never have the option of going solar. Proponents of desert solar farms claim that the large-scale, centralized technology offers something that rooftop panels can’t — the potential to bring renewable energy to the masses.

The largest desert solar plant under construction worldwide is BrightSource’s Ivanpah plant, which Bechtel is building in the Mojave Desert. Spearheaded by an Oakland company, the plant uses sunlight and mirrors to generate steam to power a turbine. The energy will flow onto the grid to serve PG&E and Southern California Edison customers. It’s a dramatic improvement compared with burning coal, but there are other issues. On a yearly basis, it will use enough groundwater in the arid desert to cover 100 acres, one-foot deep. And it riled environmentalists who worried that it would affect the habitat of an endangered tortoise.

No one disputes that on a per-watt basis, it’s cheaper to install desert solar than rooftop solar. According to estimates from Go Solar California, it costs more than $8 per watt to install small-scale rooftop solar systems, while recent costs for desert solar farms have been calculated at around $4 per watt. “Because they have the economy of scale, they can be built at less cost,” notes John White, executive director of the Sacramento-based Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies.

Yet a renewable energy expert who formerly worked for the California Energy Commission (CEC) says comparing costs of desert and rooftop solar from the point of view of the customer tells a different story. In April, Sanford Miller delivered a presentation at UC Davis that could have been considered subversive. His analysis essentially found that ratepayers shell out less to subsidize rooftop solar installations than they do to finance the purchase of energy from desert solar farms once the full cost of transmission and environmental mitigation are factored in.

“From a ratepayers’ perspective, rooftop solar would be significantly cheaper than the desert solar,” Miller says. When he sent his findings around to his colleagues at the CEC, “no one disputed it,” he said. “But the view was that desert solar was inevitable.”

But that still leaves the question of who can afford solar — and this is where Tom Price, former executive director of Black Rock Solar and now part of a solar investment firm called CleanPath, believes he’s found a middle way. As things stand, every utility customer chips in to subsidize the cost of individualized solar panels for the lucky few who are installing them, he points out, and those same customers are footing the bill for energy companies to buy power from giant solar farms. He’s pushing the Community Solar Gardens bill as an alternative.

Introduced as Senate Bill 843 by Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis), the bill would allow any customer to purchase a subscription to a centralized renewable energy facility, and receive credit on their utility bill in exchange for the monthly fee.

White takes the view that all the different solar technologies are needed — rooftop, desert, and “intermediary” — the kind of small-scale, centralized facility that is located closer to the customers who will use it, like the solar array at the Sunset Reservoir in San Francisco. “After Fukushima [Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan], we need to begin talking seriously about reducing our dependence on nuclear power,” White says. “When you look at what we’re trying to replace and what we’re trying to avoid, it’s like we’re trying to assemble a new portfolio.”

 

Upcoming summer festivals

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

July 14-24

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various Bay Area venues. (415) 627-9141, www.midsummermozart.org . Prices vary. You won’t be hearing any Beethoven or Schubert at this midsummer series — the name of the day is Mr. Mozart alone.

 

July 16-17

Connoisseur’s Marketplace Santa Cruz between Camino and Johnson, Menlo Park. (650) 325-2818, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Let the artisans do what they do best — you’ll polish off the fruits of their labor at this outdoor expo of artisan food, wine, and craft.

 

July 21-Aug 8

SF Jewish Film Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfjff.org. Times and prices vary. A three week smorgasbord of world premiere Jewish films at theaters in SF, Berkeley, the Peninsula, and Marin County.

 

July 22-Aug 13

Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso, Atherton. (650) 330-2030, www.musicatmenlo.org. Classical chamber music at its best: this year’s theme “Through Brahms,” will take you on a journey through Johannes’ most notable works.

 

July 23-Sept 25

 SF Shakespeare Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfshakes.org. Various times, free. Picnic with Princess Innogen and her crew with dropping a dime at this year’s production of Cymbeline. It’s by that playwriter guy… what’s his name again?

 

July 30

Oakland A’s Beer Festival Eastside Club at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl. www.oakland.athletics.mlb.com. 4:05-6:05pm, free with game ticket. Booze your way through the Oakland A’s vs. Minnesota Twins game while the coliseum is filled with brewskies from over 30 microbreweries, there for the chugging in your souvenir A’s beer mug.

 

July 30-31

 Berkeley Kite Festival Cesar Chavez Park, 11 Spinnaker, Berk. www.highlinekites.com. 10am-5pm, free. A joyous selection of Berkeley’s coolest kites, all in one easy location.

 

July 31

Up Your Alley Dore between Folsom and Howard, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm, $7-10 suggested donation. Whether you are into BDSM, leather, paddles, nipple clamps, hardcore — or don’t know what any of the above means, this Dore Alley stroll is surprisingly friendly and cute once you get past all the whips!

 

Aug 1-7

SF Chefs Various venues, SF. www.sfchefs2011.com. Times and prices vary. Those that love to taste test will rejoice during this foodie’s paradise of culinary stars sharing their latest bites. Best of all, the goal for 2011’s event is tons of taste with zero waste.

 

Aug 7

SF Theater Festival Fort Mason Center. Buchanan and Marina, SF. www.sftheaterfestival.org. 11am-5pm, free. Think you can face about 100 live theater acts in one day? Set a personal record at this indoor and outdoor celebration of thespians.

 

Aug 13

San Rafael Food and Wine Festival Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission, San Rafael. 1-800-310-6563, www.sresproductions.com. Noon-6pm, $25 food and wine tasting, $15 food tasting only. A sampler’s paradise, this festival features an array of tastes from the Bay’s best wineries and restaurants.

 

Aug 13-14

* Nihonmachi Street Fair Post and Webster, SF. www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Founded by Asian Pacific American youths, this Japantown tradition is a yearly tribute to the difficult history and prevailing spirit of Asian American culture in this SF neighborhood.

 

Aug 20-21

Oakland Art and Soul Festival Entrances at 14th St. and Broadway, 16th St. and San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 444-CITY, www.artandsouloakland.com. $15. A musical entertainment tribute to downtown Oakland’s art and soul, this festival features nationally-known R&B, jazz, gospel, and rock artists.

 

Aug 20-22

* SF Street Food Festival Folsom St from Twenty Sixth to Twenty Second, SF. www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. 11am-7pm, free. All of the city’s best food, available without having to go indoors — or sit down. 2011 brings a bigger and better Street Food Fest, perfect for SF’s burgeoning addiction to pavement meals.

 

Aug 29-Sept 5

Burning Man Black Rock City, Nev. (415) TO-FLAME, www.burningman.com. $320. This year’s theme, “Rites of Passage,” is set to explore transitional spaces and feelings. Gather with the best of the burned-out at one of the world’s weirdest, most renowned parties.

 

Sep 10-11

* Autumn Moon Festival Street Fair Grant between California and Broadway, SF. (415) 982-6306, www.moonfestival.org. 11am-6pm, free. A time to celebrate the summer harvest and the end of summer full-moon, rejoice in bounty with the moon goddess.

 

Sept 17-18

SF International Dragon Boat Festival California and Avenue D, Treasure Island. www.sfdragonboat.com. 10am-5pm, free. The country’s largest dragon boat festival sees beautiful man-powered boats take to the water in 300 and 500 meter competitive races.

 

Sept 23-25

SF Greek Food Festival Annunciation Cathedral. 245 Valencia, SF. www.sfgreekfoodfestival.org. Fri.-Sat., 11am-10pm; Sun., noon-9pm, free with advance ticket. Get your baba ghanoush on during this late summer festival, complete with traditional Greek dancing, music, and wine.

 

Sept 25

Folsom Street Fair Folsom between 7th and 12th St., SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org . 11am-6pm, free. The urban Burning Man equivalent for leather enthusiasts, going to this expansive SoMa celebration of kink and fetish culture is the surest way to see a penis in public (you dirty dog!).

 

Sept 30-Oct 2

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com. 11am-7pm, free. Pack some whiskey and shoulder your banjo: this free three day festival draws record-breaking crowds — and top names in a variety of twangy genres — each year.

 

Items with asterisks note family-fun activities.

Hot sexy events: July 6-12

Andrew Lam
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0
Hot sexy events: July 6-12

Good news this week’s gang: Femina Potens has found a new brick and mortar gallery! The sex-positive, high-art fetish org will be moving out to Cesar Chavez between Mission and Valencia, high times for those of us in favor of artsy bondage nights and feminist porn-o-rama. We’ll keep you posted as this story progresses… now onto the sex events!

 

Feelmore510 erotic film night

Didja catch our recent profile of Oakland’s dopest new sex toy store? Certainly worth a trip to downtown Oak-town, so why not make it tonight for owner Nena Joiner’s screening of blue films. Tonight’s theme is vintage – maybe it’ll get you all stoked for next week’s YBCA retro porn festival?

Weds/13 7:30-9 p.m., free

Feelmore510 

1703 Telegraph, SF

(510) 891-0199

www.feelmore510.com


Pink 

Oh man, you’re all dressed up in your marabou finery, you’re at Mission Control, there’s a sexy cat or Dorothy or mermaid sitting across the room giving you the come-hither gaze – and you freeze. Don’t worry, times like these just call for a workshop. You can get that before you hit this week’s Pink play party at the regular pre-party class, which this time around features Martha Baczynski teaching you the fine art of the swinger come-on. Just remember, you gotta bring a “responsible partner” to Pink.

Pre-workshop 9-10:15 p.m.

Play party 10 p.m.-3 a.m., $30 for both, members only

Mission Control 

www.missioncontrolsf.org


Screwup

Guess what trannies, genderqueers, and the like: you now have your very own coffee meet-and-greet! Hie thee hence to Wicked Grounds, where you will find not only a gender-nuetral bathroom, but a roomful of fun, interesting, sexy folks who defy the gender binary that persists in asking: coffee or tea? at SF’s S-M cafe extraordinaire. 

Sat/9 7-9 p.m., free

Wicked Grounds 

289 Eighth St., SF

(415) 503-0405

www.wickedgrounds.com

 

11th Annual South Bay Kink Ride

Board your choppers and bring your appetite – this South Bay tradition takes you to that most suburban of restaurants, to a small park for singetail slingin’, and then out through the Santa Cruz Mountains – and lunch, of course. Perfect for those who enjoy the feel of fresh air whipping by their sexy loins. And whips, of course. 

Sun/10 9 a.m. breakfast, 10:30 ride, free except for cost of food

Marie Callender’s

18500 Sutter, Morgan Hill

www.soj.org/calendar

 

Naked Girls Eating

The gang — Lady Monster, Carol Queen, Cherry Galette, Ophelia Coeur de Noir, and Isis Starr from Naked Girls Reading is back — and they’ve brought snacks. This month, the rude nudes will be orating from tales of delectable food porn — and all the while you can feast on their bodacious bods and treats from SF’s own BDSM coffeeshop, Wicked Grounds. Delicious!

Sun/10 8-10 p.m., $15-20

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

(415) 552-7399

www.sexandculture.org

 

 

 

“Fabulous Fellatio: The Art of Oral Sex” and “Petting the Kitty: Cunnilingus and Female Massage”

Megan Andelloux‘s gotta have a great mouth. The sexpert is teaching not one, but two nights that’ll teach all comers the art of going downtown on their Charlie Brown (and Lucy). Hetero couples: going to one and not the other? Not fun at all, make it a two-fer and everyone goes home happy! 

Fellatio: Mon/11 6:30-8:30 p.m., $20-25

Petting: Tues/12 6:30-8:30 p.m., $20-25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com 

 

Biting the Big Apple

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Biting the Big Apple

arts@sfbg.com THEATER The world’s largest arts festival, the now-venerable Edinburgh Festival Fringe, got its start in 1946 as a scrappy party-crasher outside the official Edinburgh International Festival. Thanks to its inspired blend of difficult-to-categorize, anything-goes performances, the Edinburgh Fringe helped create a definitive theatrical format that has since flourished in Fringe Festivals around the world. Among other things, Fringe is a catalyst for new works, new companies, and new interpretations of how theater can be made, and experienced.

Of all the Fringe Festivals in the United States, the one that generates the most buzz is by far the New York International Fringe Festival (this year’s dates are Aug. 12-28). That the New York Fringe is curated is a sticking point among festival purists because it violates one of the founding precepts of Fringe: that anyone with a story to tell and a willing venue can take part. Despite that breach, there still manages to be a pretty broad spectrum of representation.

Works originating in the Bay Area display a staggering variety: the tale of an Iranian-American woman striking a compromise with her Islamic family over her live-in atheist boyfriend; a provocative series of multigenerational monologues on body image and acceptance; a musical homage to a 19th century black opera pioneer; and a transcontinental coming-of-age story.

When Bay Area comedian Zahra Noorbahksh began developing her solo show All Atheists Are Muslim at the Bay Area’s Solo Performance Workshop in 2008, she discovered something about the material that she had previously worried about being alienating or inaccessible.

“The Muslim and non-Muslim public is [hungry] for a three-dimensional view of a mainstream Islamic-Iranian American family that isn’t some heavy-handed political discourse,” she shares over e-mail. “I love seeing that moment when the audience that came in with their arms crossed, ready to challenge me and my ‘ludicrous’ title, realize that by my father’s very mathematical equation, all atheists are in fact Muslim.”

For Noorbahksh, the fest offers not only the opportunity of performing in New York but of expanding on the very definition of Fringe.

“It gives a ‘fringe’ culture and religion like Islam a platform and an opportunity to open up a dialogue with the non-Islamic world,” she says. “[And it] has given me an opportunity to be a part of the healing that needs to happen between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans and the general image of Islam in the public consciousness today.”

Oakland native ‘rie Shontel (a.k.a. Anita Woodley) raises consciousness every week as a producer for syndicated North Carolina Public Radio show The Story in Chapel Hill. But it wasn’t until 2009 that Shontel was moved to tell her own story, initially to friends and family, and Mama Juggs was born. Inspired by the memory of her 100-year-old great-grandmother, Suga Babe, and her repertoire of breast-feeding songs, Shontel performs four interwoven monologues wrestling with body image and breast awareness (her mother, one of the characters portrayed, died of breast cancer at 47), and the cultural myopia surrounding both. What sounds on the page like potentially heavy-handed material reveals itself on the stage as a thoroughly engaging, irreverent take on “titty juggs,” her great-grandmother’s term.

August may mark Mama Juggs‘ first foray into Fringe, but Shontel has already been drumming up national support via her “100 Living Rooms” tour, performing in private homes across the U.S.

“The intimate parlor performances have raised many interesting discussions and encouraged many to get breast exams,” she reports. “My mission for Mama Juggs is to make breast health a topic for conversation.”

“I was inspired by this very accomplished woman of color and wanted to give voice to her story that has been largely forgotten.” Opening up an entirely different conversation, Oakland-based opera singer Angela Dean-Baham’s solo show The Unsung Diva traces the history of 19th- century black opera sensation Sissieretta Jones. In a format reminiscent of Tayo Aluko’s tribute production Call Mr. Robeson, Dean-Baham’s one-woman work of musical theater combines American folk and spirituals with operatic arias and character vignettes drawn from the life of a woman once so influential that she was the first African American to perform at the then-unnamed Carnegie Hall. Like her hero, Dean-Baham is excited about what a successful run in New York could mean for her future.

“NY Fringe offers its artists a tremendous opportunity to put work before NY agents, producers, press, diverse audiences at a reasonable cost to self-producing artists,” she said. “As a juried theater festival, they offer the immediate gratification that other artists find the work engaging and that there is an audience for the work.”

San Francisco-born Aileen Clark knows firsthand the universality of a good story. Raised speaking three languages on four continents, Clark nevertheless refers to herself as the “whitest Latinita” on the planet, and her solo show How I learned to Stop Worrying and Lost My Virginity has touched a nerve among audiences of all colors and persuasions.

“I’ve always loved telling stories and acting out everything I see and do,” she says, describing the impetus behind the show’s creation. “I set out to make a play that would feel like we were just hanging out at a party and talking.” With John Caldon of Guerrilla Rep and Claire Rice of AMP, she crafted a comedic coming-of-age memoir packed with 21 characters, which debuted at the EXIT Theatre in November 2009. Newly transplanted to Brooklyn, Clark hopes Virginity will help introduce her to New York audiences.

“This show definitely gives me a wonderful connection with the people who come to see it,” she enthuses. “I’m hoping Fringe can be a door that opens other doors to great opportunities.”

www.fringenyc.org

Na Nach hey hey

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Na Nach hey hey

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO My ever-ahead Hunky Beau just introduced me to Na Nach techno — and I’ve been kinda freaking out about it, like I would about 3-D animated GIF nail polish, that you could upload Hipstamatic photo booth pics of you and your friends to, reenacting tacky 1980s movie dance montages, but happening on your nails, in 3-D, if it even existed, which it doesn’t, so why don’t you just get off your boring global warming-proving ass and do something fabulous about that, Mr. Scientist. I already know the weather’s weird. I want Footloose on my fingernails!

Na Nach is the name of a newish Hasidic Jewish subsect of followers of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the kabbalist mystic who lived 200 years ago. But unlike the larger Breslovian following, it has mobile rave units. Driving around Israel in white vans graffitied with giant Hebrew letters, the Na Nach stop at intersections and come tumbling out, blasting homemade electro trance, chanting “Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me’uman” (the Rebbe’s name spelled out), and dancing ecstatically in outfits that are part typical Orthodox dude and part Ali G. It’s basically a glorious logical conclusion to the whole “trance music as religious experience” thing. Of course the Sufis already got there centuries ago but, one suspects, without the aid of JBL 18-inch portable subwoofers and a pirated copy of Ableton Live.

The happy, energetic music and mood are actually pretty infectious. And the Na Nach, some of them former ravers and gangsters, have become so ubiquitous that hilarious parodies have started springing up — including one by the great gay Tel Aviv party Arisa (whose video flyers rule the homo Web right now.) Have a Na Nach look and listen at www.sfbg.com/nanach.

 

TABOO

DJ David Harness’s lovely, deep-yet-breezy party anchored San Francisco’s soulful house scene throughout the early 2000s, one of those joints where you could use the words “vibe” and “spiritual” and not feel like you were tossing up disco clichés. Yes, there were candles and, er, incense involved, and quite a few flowers tucked behind perked-up ears — hands snaking luxuriously up into the air as well. Now the party returns, finding a new biweekly Oakland evening home at the spacious Bench and Bar. Organic sounds, no labels.

Thurs/7, 6 p.m.–midnight, free. Bench and Bar, 510 17th St., Oakl. www.bench-and-bar.com

 

TIPPER SOUND EXPERIENCE

Cosmic, Burner-like blasts of time-warped bass and cheeky step from multimedia mindblower Tipper, the modest Brit who takes his audio technology fetish to another level. Gotta love it when he drops the lingo: “Featuring a five-way crossover sound system in a Quadraphonic Array with specialized subwoofers dedicated to 45 hertz and below … ” With a six-screen projection rig thrown in, you’ll basically be entering the electronic space-pod of your ear dreams. It’s an experience.

Fri/8, 8 p.m., $22.50. Regency Ballroom, 1290 Sutter, SF. www.theregencyballroom.com

 

LEE BURRIDGE

The bloke from Bournemouth who was crucial in spreading the acid house gospel in the ’80s — and brought rave to Asia, with his storied seven-year stint in Hong Kong — has become a reliably sunny, techno-twisty force on Top 100 DJs lists and better global dance floors. Good, solid fun is had whenever he gets to town (and sometimes I just randomly prance around and drop to his xylo-yummy 2010 track “Wongel” in my head) so go already. Nikola Baytala, Rooz, and other locals work the build-up.

Fri/8, 10 p.m.–late, $15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

 

LEE FOSS

Guess it’s a battle of the Lees this week — luckily there’s some after-hours leeway to hit up both. This Lee comes to us from the Midwest via Los Angeles and London, were his chiseled looks and dreamboat eyes were at first as much of a talking point as his music. Luckily he overcame that crippling handicap to inject some bouncy tech-funk flavor into the trademark R ‘n’ B house of the Wolf and Lamb set. Call it the new New Jack Swing sound if you like. And you will like, especially when grouped at Public Works with Beats in Space radio host Tim Sweeney and my not-so-secret French house crush, Le Loup. (I love his little fuzzy mustache!)

Fri/8, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $12. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

Feelmore510 is bringing sexy back to Oakland

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

The Bay’s east side can seem a little prudish, especially when compared to its slutty sister city. Until February, Oakland’s only retail resources for sex were a couple of trashy adult “superstores.” Those places can be fun and functional, but it’s safe to bet the cashier probably isn’t too concerned about answering a list of questions and making you feel comfortable with your purchase. Nenna Joiner, the owner of Oakland’s new sex-positive shop, Feelmore510, is quite the opposite and simply can’t wait to start friendly conversations about sex with everyone in her community.

Joiner, a sex educator and adult film director, has been dreaming about opening an Oakland shop for years, but her ideas go far beyond retail. From terminology to etiquette, Joiner says her community needs to start at the beginning, birds and bees style. “I love talking to people. People teach me new things everyday. I’m open and not judgmental. I’ll talk about anything,” she says after ushering a couple ladies out the door who had spent their lunch break browsing. 

From basic questions to the personal, Joiner is educating from the inside out. “A guy came by the other day asking if it was gay for him to want to play with his girlfriend’s butt,” she says. “San Francisco takes its sexual openness for granted — the community there is so exposed, probably overexposed,” she laughs, a playful swipe at the close-knit kink communities and accessible sex-positive resources she loves.

Joiner says Oakland residents may attend erotic events like Folsom or shop for dildos west of the bridge, but when they return home, the conversation goes flaccid. She puts partial blame on years of serious bedroom talk: preventative health and safe sex practices have been a priority due to the high number of HIV cases in the area. No one is contesting the importance of these topics, but in terms of fast, slutty fun they can be total Debbie Downers. Joiner wants to put the spunk back into conversations about sexuality. 

Before the shop opened, the surrounding neighborhood seemed nervous about the addition of a sex shop on the block, but Joiner has been extra careful to make sure people understand that her intentions are purely rooted in the revitalization of Oakland. She keeps up on local politics, attends city meetings, directs tourists to other neighborhood businesses, and even watches high school band concerts. She waves at people from across the street and welcomes anyone inside to chat and enjoy the space. Joiner feels supported by the city around her, which she thinks is happy to recognize her role as a successful business owner. She regularly gets friendly calls from the Alameda Small Business Association, casual check-ins to make sure she’s doing well.

“They know I’m a young woman of color, working my ass off. Maybe they don’t watch porn or have interest in the products I sell, but they support me because they know how hard I’m working.”

Nestled between downtown office buildings on Telegraph Avenue, Feelmore510 lures in its share of curious customers during the day with a modest store front that looks more art gallery than porn hub. Inside the store, Joiner loves to play her late grandmother’s vinyl collection, including Sinatra and Perry Como, which perfectly compliment the space’s glowing chandeliers and velvet curtains. The shop stays open until midnight, way past the bedtime of most of her neighbors’, but with the Fox Theater nearby and a collection of bars and clubs in walking distance, Joiner likes providing the night owls some after-party options.

“I stay open late because I want to help more people have great sex.” Getting people off the streets and under the sheets with body-safe, pleasurable accessories– now that’s community activism!

 

Feelmore510

1703 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland

(510) 891-0199

www.Feelmore510.com

 

Hunger strike highlights horrible prison conditions

Sasha Cuttler
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14
Hunger strike highlights horrible prison conditions

In a state that’s still floundering for ways to comply with court orders to drastically reduce the number of inmates in a prison system that has long been severely overcrowded, people in prison face unconstitutionally inhumane and degrading treatment on a daily basis. And now a group of inmates is highlighting the problem with a hunger strike that begins this Friday, July 1.

Lawyers for and supporters of the group of inmates from the Secure Housing Unit at the notorious Pelican Bay prison will hold a press conference tomorrow (Thu/30) at 11 am outside the state building at 1515 Clay Street in Oakland to announce the hunger strike to back up a list of demands they have submitted to the warden and Gov. Jerry Brown. Their demands include an end to long-term solitary confinement, collective punishment, and forced interrogation on gang affiliation, and they say they will continue their hunger strike until their demands are met.

“The prisoners inside the SHU at Pelican Bay know the risk that they are taking going on hunger strike,” Manuel LaFontaine of All of Us or None said in a prepared statement. “The CDCR must recognize that the SHU produces conditions of grave violence, such that people lose their lives in there all the time.”

The anti-war group World Can’t Wait is also supporting the hunger strike and calling for a supportive demonstration on Friday at 11 am outside the state building in San Francisco at Van Ness and McAllister streets. California officials have for years defied judges’ orders to reduce the prison population, which is at 180 percent of capacity, and the Supreme Court this year upheld the order and is requiring the state to reduce the prison population to 109,000 inmates, of 137.5 percent of the levels the prisons were designed to house.
The Brown Administration is seeking an extension of the deadline as it wrestles with political gridlock and a budget debacle that has stymied the governor’s efforts to transfer more prison inmates to county jails. But that plan avoids the reality that the U.S. has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, a situation that is both inhumane and fiscally unsustainable.

Burner artists go bigger and wider

Sasha Cuttler
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66
Burner artists go bigger and wider

I’ve been covering Burning Man for many years, both for the Guardian and my book, so it’s easy to feel a little jaded about another year of preparing for that annual pilgrimage to the playa. But then I plug into the innovative projects that people are pursuing – as I did last week for the annual Desert Arts Preview – and I find myself as amazed and wide-eyed as a Burning Man virgin.
And when the weekend came, I watched my old camps go bigger than ever – with Opulent Temple throwing a rocking Rites of Massive six-stage dance party on Treasure Island, and the Flux Foundation lighting up the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas with its newest installation, BrollyFlock – demonstrating the ambitious scale at which veteran burners are now operating.
Increasingly, burners are putting their energies into real world projects not bound for Burning Man, often with the help of Black Rock Arts Foundation, the nonprofit spinoff of Black Rock City LLC that funds and facilitates public art projects. BRAF’s latest, a project that is also receiving a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, is The Bike Bridge, which pairs noted burner artist Michael Christian with 12 young women from Oakland to turn old bicycles and bike parts into sculptures that will be built at The Crucible and placed throughout Oakland.
“The Bike Bridge is the next evolution of our community-focused public art projects,” BRAF Executive Director Tomas McCabe said in a June 23 press release. “This educational and creative project is designed specifically to engage Oakland’s youth.”
Later that evening, McCabe and other burners gathered on the waterfront in Kelly’s Mission Cafe for the Desert Arts Preview, where he ticked off a long list of projects that BRAF was working on around the world, from the conversion of a bridge in Portland, Ore. into an elaborate artwork to a sculpture made of sails for next year’s Figment festival in New York City to a bus opera (written about bus culture and performed aboard buses) in Santa Fe to a cool interactive floating eyeball artwork that will tour Paris, London, Barcelona, and San Francisco to the BOOM Parade (combining bicycles and boom boxes) that will roll through Bayview Hunters Point in October.
But the most ambitious artworks are still being planned for that limitless canvas of the Black Rock Desert, where Burning Man will be staged in late August. This year’s temple, The Temple of Transition, is being built out of Reno by a huge international crew from 20 countries headed by a pair of artists known simply by their nationalities, Irish and Kiwi, who built Megatropolis at last year’s event.
“We built a city block of buildings and burned it to the ground,” Kiwi told the gathering, noting how impressed he’s been by a number of recent projects he’s watched. “When you start doing that, you feel challenged and wonder what you can do next.”
Irish said they were particularly inspired by watching the Temple of Flux go up last year, a project involving more than 200 volunteers that I worked on and chronicled for the Guardian, and said it made them want to bid to build this year’s temple. “That’s what inspired us,” Irish said.
The project includes a series of towers and altars, the tallest one in the center reaching about 120-feet into the air, a phenomenal height against the vast flatness of the playa. They said volunteers have been plentiful and the city of Reno has actively facilitated their work, “but our main concern is having enough finances,” Kiwi said.
The project got a grant from the company that stages Burning Man, Black Rock City LLC, which gave almost $500,000 to 44 different projects this year, but most didn’t come anywhere close to covering the full project costs. The Temple of Transition bridged its gap by raising almost $25,000 in a campaign on Kickstarter, which many projects are now using.  
“It’s a great way to cut out the middle man. You guys are funding art directly,” longtime artist Jon Sarriugarte, who got a BRC art grant this year to build the Serpent Twins (with his partner, Kyrsten Mate), said of Kickstarter, where he was about three-quarters of the way to meeting his goal of the $10,000 he needs to cover his remaining project costs.
Serpent Twins is a pair of Nordic serpents crafted from a train of 55-gallon containers and illuminated with fire and LED effects that will snake their way around the playa this year, one of many mobile artworks that have been getting ever more ambitious each year.
“I love the playa. It’s a beautiful canvas, but it’s also a beautiful road,” Sarriugarte told the group, conveying his excitement at driving his art into groups of desert wanderers: “I can’t wait to split the crowds and then contain them.”
Another cool project that is in the final days of a much-needed Kickstarter campaign is Otic Oasis, whose artists (including longtime Burning Man attorney Lightning Clearwater) brought a scale model to the event. It’s a slotted wood structure made up of comfy lounging pods stacked into a 35-foot pyramid design that will be placed in the quietest corner of the playa: deep in the walk-in camping area, inaccessible to art cars and other distractions.
That and other projects that are doing Kickstarter campaign are listed on the Burning Man website, where visitors can get a nice overview of what’s in store.  
One project that didn’t meet its ambitious Kickstarter goal was Truth & Beauty, artist Marco Cochrane’s follow-up to last year’s amazing Blissdance, a 40-sculpture of a dancing nude woman that has temporarily been placed on Treasure Island. But the crew has already made significant progress on the new project, a 55-foot sculpture of the same model in a different pose (stretching her arms skyward), and Cochrane told me they will be bringing a section of her from her knees to shoulders as a climbable artwork.

The Flux crew has been working for months on BrollyFrock, a renegade flock of flaming, illuminated, and shade-producing umbrellas that was commissioned by Imsomniac for its Nocturnal and Electric Daily Carnival music festivals, and it was placed at the latter festival near Wish, large dandelions that were built near the Temple of Flux at Burning Man last year, as well as new artworks by Michael Christian. Flux’s Jessica Hobbs said burners artists have become much sought-after by the large festivals that have begun to proliferate.

“I really think a lot of these music festivals are looking at how our pieces make an experience,” Hobbs said, citing both the spectacularity and interactivity that are the hallmarks of Burning Man artworks of the modern era. The Flux crew was pushed to meet a tight deadline for the project, preventing them from doing a big project for Burning Man this year, but that’s just part of the diversification being experienced by burner artists these days. “We challenged ourselves and we came away with another great project.”

 

Girls just want to have fun

Andrew Lam
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9
Girls just want to have fun

culture@sfbg.com

SEX It was their first official slumber party and a late-night run to the grocery store for pink hair dye was in order. Decked out in a combination of pink, pajamas, and leather, the San Francisco girls of Leather shrieked and giggled as they wandered the aisles searching for anything rosy-colored. The girls could easily have been mistaken for a freshman herd of coeds soaked in Malibu and cheap vodka, but as the group’s president, Leland, remembers, they were “just high on girls.”

Until they discovered the store’s collection of pink and white unicorns — on sale.

“We all oohed and ahhed and ended up purchasing six of them, surprising the other girls by returning to the party with an entire unicorn herd,” Leland says. From sleeping bags and hair braiding to dirty storytelling and play piercing, the night teetered between innocent and naughty, sweet and sexy. “So many unicorns, so many needles, and so much blood!” she said.

The SF girls of Leather (the girls prefer a lowercase “g” and uppercase “L” out of respect for the traditions of the leather community) are giddy and flirty: the epitome of seventh-grade girliness, complete with kinky sleepovers, hearts, and cuteness. As this year-old group sees it, maturity is overrated when it comes to BDSM — and a hint of silliness in a dark dungeon can only heighten the sex appeal. Who else is going to giggle or blush after a spank?

The group’s approach to leather is hardly in line with the masculine traditions that have come to be associated with the history of the kink community. But in the year since the girls formed their group, they’ve been working to secure their place in the continuum of leather lovers. And judging from the group’s growing membership — and accolades from the leather community at large — SFgoL is providing a much-needed refuge for marginalized fans of lighthearted play, splashing accents of pink across the traditional wash of black.

 

GIRL GOALS

Historically, a girl in the leather community has been defined as the female-identified version of a boy — a submissive expected to service a dominant individual in various kinds of BDSM play. But in SFgoL parlance, girl means something way more fun. Top, bottom, submissive, dominant, giver, receiver, experienced, or curious: all roles are welcome in the group, as long as you “girl” identify.

Which means what, exactly?

“Leather doesn’t have to be serious,” says Leland, who is of the mind that people of all ages, bodies, and sexual preferences can find bliss by tapping into their own personalized “girl-space.”

“You’re a leathergirl if you feel like it,” says SFgoL Vice President Kate McKinley. Even boys and bois are allowed in the group — as long as they have a “girl heart.” Coincidentally, McKinley wears one of these around her neck — a silver heart necklace.

“I play girly and therefore this group is where I belong,” she says.

An important tenet of the leather life, service (traditionally, the practice of obediently pleasing a dominant character) is still an integral part of the girl group’s goals — but its definition of the term goes beyond tending to masters and daddies.

In the year since the group’s inception, SFgoL has volunteered at multiple fundraisers and organized charity drives for nonprofits benefiting women in the leather community and beyond. Members are free to service individuals but are required to serve the community by means of philanthropy: grown-up Girl Scouts earning merit badges for kink.

Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed — the San Francisco Bay Area Leather Alliance recognized SFgoL as its best new organization of 2010. “Contributing to the community makes it easier for us to enjoy what we’re doing,” says SFgoL member Anita, who asked that we not use her last name for professional reasons.

Anita moved to San Francisco from Norway on a work visa, but soon found herself lusting for a close encounter with leather. She discovered some BDSM groups for women interested in playing with women, but because she identified as straight when she arrived in the city, the SFgoL’s more inclusive membership requirements felt like a better fit.

She was also attracted to the group because it didn’t require members be in a dominant-submissive relationship. She was free to play with whomever, whenever, and however she pleased. “I’m a girl and I was interested in exploring the leather community in a group where I could just be myself and share my feelings,” she says.

Last month the SFgoL celebrated its one-year anniversary with 18 full members and more than 100 girls on its Listserv. The numbers are a strong indicator of its success, especially since the current version of the SFgoL isn’t the city’s first attempt at a girly collective. In 2004, a leathergirl group was formed, but failed to secure footing in the established leather community. The second time around seems to be the shiny charm — or maybe these girls are just extra-charming?

“We do have a smokin’ hot group of girls,” giggles Leland, looking around the table and raising her eyebrows at Anita and McKinley.

It’s lunch hour on a Tuesday and the three girls flirt like crazy, constantly laughing and finishing each other’s sentences between small bites of spicy Thai food. The three are a prime example of the group’s demeanor and exactly why Leland has enforced a “no cruising” rule during official meetings.

“The meetings are meant to be safe space and for taking care of business. But yes, we can play outside the meetings,” she says, batting her lashes as the other girls smirk, hiding a thousand secrets anyone with a pulse would die to hear.

 

RESIZING THE LEATHER FIT

Since its inception, the leather community has been predominately male. Icons like Marlon Brando, and the work of Tom of Finland and the Satyrs Motorcycle Club, defined modern masculinity in the 1950s, igniting a kinky obsession in the gay community. A badass jacket, muir cap, and related wardrobe of black hide became a symbol of sexual power and masculine independence, eradicating the stereotype that all gay men were effeminate.

Leather rules and traditions grew from military protocol and were diligently enforced by masters and their slaves, daddies and their boys. Women were intrigued, but struggled to find a place among the men; many leather bars turned away women at the door.

Over time, elements of BDSM became associated with leather and the community began to flex. During the ’80s, leatherwomen competitions popped up, and in the ’90s, groups like San Francisco’s Outcasts — now the Exiles —provided the community with strong female-identified role models. In 2006, the Exiles helped open Betty Paige’s Secret, which in subsquent years of the festival became Venus’ Playground. It was the first leatherwomen play space at the Folsom Street Fair.

It’s been six years since the Venus milestone, yet during this April’s International Ms. Leather competition in San Francisco, it was apparent that questions about the role of women in the leather community remain.

In a moment of call and response, “Where are the leatherwomen?” was shouted into the microphone. The answer was loud and proud: “Here we are! We’re here!” followed by a rumble of audience applause. Women may be standing their ground with paddles in hand, but the exchange was telling of their struggle for continued acknowledgment.

Deborah Isadorah, a veteran of kink and current leather momma, has been entranced by the leather community for more than 40 years, and is proud to have watched the roles of women expand. But in Isadorah’s eyes, the progression has been slow going.

“We live in a patriarchal society and that reflects on every part of our society, including leather,” she says, sipping a latte in Oakland and soaking in the spring sun.

“The men outnumber us physically in this community, [but that] doesn’t mean women’s voices are missing,” she continues. Isadorah is pleased with the progress of her generation of leatherwomen and is happy to sit back and nurture the younger crop. “I think we’ve done our job: to educate women about their bodies and the opportunities they have to explore sexuality beyond what society thinks is appropriate.”

Today, nearly half the current directors of the Leather Alliance, the community’s well-respected governing board, are female.

“We’re sitting at the table now,” says Daddy Vick Germany, a female-bodied leather daddy who has been a part of the Bay Area’s leather community for more than 15 years and serves as a director for the Alliance. Overall, Daddy Vick is content with the community’s moves toward inclusivity. “The men are leaving more space for us,” she says.

But traces of segregation can still be found. “Sometimes men just don’t see you — you’re not even in their line of vision,” she says, referring to a recent experience at the Up Your Alley street fair where a man blindly butted in front of her while she stood in a concession line. She recognizes that these incidents can be subconscious, but any female who roams the SoMa leather fairs is bound to encounter this feeling of invisibility. It makes her “mad as hell.”

Elected SF Dyke Daddy in 2002, Vick made substantial efforts to bridge gaps between the sexes. She’s currently running for SF Leather Daddy, a traditional competition built on fundraising for the AIDS crisis. In 2009 a transman won the competition, but if she wins, Daddy Vick would be the first female-bodied daddy to hold the title. Her candidacy alone is sure to shake things up with leathermen who believe in upholding traditional roles — but her motives are pure.

“I’m not doing this to make a statement as a female daddy. I’m running because I think I’m a good daddy for the community,” she says, meaning she cares about being a supportive, reliable father figure for those around her. The “working title” would help her foster change more effectively than her individual efforts.

Besides Folsom’s Venus’ Playground, there are no official social spaces intended for leatherwomen. This makes sharing communal bars and events incredibly important. Change is a slow process, but Daddy Vick says ample motivation is brewing in all corners, and — paired with the diffusion of kink — the space for growth can only flourish. Leather is opening into an umbrella term with the capacity to encompass multiple elements of fetish, and to further accept people of all genders, bodies, and preferences in any role.

In this respect, Daddy Vick thinks the SFgoL could play an important role. “It just takes people like Leland, coming in with a different energy. People who stand up in the crowd, see a need, and start organizing.”

 

FOLLOW THE PINK BRICK ROAD

While leatherwomen made slow but steady strides in the past decade, those straddling the space between butch and femme — the girl space — began breaking ground for themselves, too. In 2003 an international Leather Girl Network was born, led by the Bay Area’s Cheryl D. The group intended to mirror the already well-established leather boy community. Girls everywhere were giddy with possibilities.

“I had always identified with the title of ‘girl.’ I was a girl who liked to serve the community, but I was also a switch,” says Mistress Pilar, a longtime leather veteran and member of the original, and now revived, SF girls of Leather. Being a switch — someone who doesn’t commit to top or bottom exclusively — meant her definition of girl didn’t fit with that of the Leather Girl Network, which stated: girl equals submission. She wasn’t alone in her dilemma.

In 2004, San Francisco girls decided to put together their own troop, headed by girl Lori, the 2003 San Francisco Leather Dyke girl (a contest that no longer exists), and girl Hayden, the 2004 title-holder. They intentionally left the definition of girl open to allow for individual interpretation. The leather community shuddered at the loose restraints, confused by the men, boys, and transpeople that joined the girl ranks.

“People in the leather community were not comfortable with this idea at the time. No one even liked talking about it,” says Pilar, referring to the notion that a girl didn’t need to be a biological woman to be in their group. “The attitude that people should ‘get off the fence’ really hurt.”

The initial group grew to about 30 members and its short three years as a successful alliance was packed with fundraising, volunteer work, and super-girly fun. But eventually the negative attitudes, biased expectations, and confusion over the definition of “girls” wore down on moral.

“People would walk up to me and demand, ‘girl, clean my boots’ and I would say, ‘I don’t serve you, I serve the community,'” Pilar says shaking her head.

Even Daddy Vick remembers how the group of strong, independent individuals struggled to prove themselves to the wider leather community. The girls, she says, “took a lot of flak” for contesting tradition. “There was still a belief in place that girls and boys couldn’t be leaders. Some thought girls and boys should be seen and not heard.”

The girls managed to have good times regardless, but Pilar says by early 2007 the group was down to five members who reluctantly agreed the end had come. It wasn’t until the 2010 International Ms. Leather competition — when Pilar decided to donate the leftover SF girls memorabilia and a curious Leland started asking questions — that SFgoL sparked back into life, with a little PR and a lot of ambition.

“Leland is a wonderful leader. She creates a really positive image of a girl,” says Pilar, nostalgically looking over an old stack of meeting notes, scribbled calendars, and photos from the original group. The dissolution of her crew hit hard, and it’s bittersweet for Pilar to hear about the new group’s instant success. But more than anything, she’s proud. “I feel like a proud mom. Those are my girls.”

Coincidentally, just as the girls sprung out of the woodwork and formed an official group, the San Francisco boys of Leather, a longstanding and once very active organization, hung up their chaps and caps due to a decline in membership. The boys generously donated all their remaining funds to the girls.

Steve Gaynes, the 1994 SF Leather Daddy and Alliance director representing the 15 Association, a longstanding sexual fraternity for men interested in BDSM, has been a leatherman since 1978 and has watched all kinds of groups come and go. He says the ebb and flow is just a reflection of the community’s current needs.

“The energy ran of out the boys and ran into the girls. If there’s no driving force behind a group, it will die,” he says, noting the community’s excitement for the new girl group. “They’re enthusiastic, inclusive, and have clear ideas for their future. And they’re doing [it all] with a lot of respect for tradition.”

And the SFgoL’s continued dedication to volunteer work and partnerships with other groups have shown the community at large that it values the path paved by the forefathers — and foremothers — of leather.

Paying tribute to old protocol is simple. Isadorah boils it down to three simple rules: integrity, honesty, and service to the community. Judged by this metric, she says, anyone who thinks the SFgoL is out of line is just being stubborn. “Whenever something happens in the community that brings change, there will always be someone who is offended,” Gaynes says. “You won’t know you’ve created change until you’ve offended those people. Change is good and should be embraced.”

 

LOOKING OUT FOR THE GIRLS

Leland and McKinley agree that there seems to be a buzz of excitement surrounding the SfgoL lately. The group’s logo is everywhere, and partnerships are being fostered across the community. Leland has even been asked to serve as a director for the SF Leather Alliance.

But her primary concern is making sure the SFgoL remains a safe, welcoming landing pad for girls who are new to the leather community. And these days, the media is providing all sorts of inspiration for curiosity. Rihanna’s song “S&M” speaks directly to sexual play, but even a quick Google search for “girls in leather” retrieves images of celebrities in fetish gear, from Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus in leather leggings to Emma Watson in a full latex suit with collar. In general, our society is opening up to alternative sex and women want in on the action.

But girls who jump in with little research and few friends may not leave with the most positive experiences. The inherent power dynamic associated with BDSM relationships and play can blur the lines between consent and abuse, and Leland says it’s important for newbies to have mentors within reach. “Sometimes the person you’re playing with may not have your best intentions at heart,” she says. “But as an alliance of girls, we can look out for each other.”

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