Performance

Quintessence

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THEATER San Francisco’s Brava Theatre is mostly dark, except for the spotlights on stage. Under the white light, singer Nomy Lamm’s face peers out from under the beak of a vulture headpiece. She flaps her feathered wings and thrusts her hips, like she is working a hula hoop in slow motion.

"I remember the feel of your hands on my body," Lamm sings. "Makes me scream, ‘Am I broken?’"

It is three weeks before the premiere of this year’s Sins Invalid’s performance art show of the same name, and artistic director Patty Berne sits near the back of the theater. She watches Lamm’s rehearsal intently, and as the performance ends, her face splits into an approving smile. "Oh Nomy, I am so frickin’ excited," Berne exclaims. "That was so hot — you don’t even know!"

Currently in its fourth year, Sins Invalid is an annual performance project about sexuality and disability. The upcoming show, which runs for three nights at Brava, showcases 12 performances from local and international artists, including Oakland’s Seeley Quest and the U.K.’s Mat Fraser. The collection of theatrical, musical, spoken word, and multimedia performances includes passages that are confrontational and provocative and moments that are soft and sweet.

According to Berne, who is also the cofounder of Sins, the show’s dimensions reflect the diverse issues that people with disabilities face, living in societies where they are traditionally perceived as unsexy, or even sexless. "[People with disabilities] are thought of as asexual and [it’s assumed] that our lives are defined by our disabilities," she says. "Thinking that we are neutered is absurd. It’s like assuming parents stop having sex because they have a child."

According to the Sins Invalid mission statement, the performance project not only supports artists with disabilities, it also strives to centralize "artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists." The goal of the organization, explained cofounder Leroy Moore, has been to create a community of historically marginalized artists and to provide a mirror for those who are disabled, queer, or of color.

The tone of this year’s two-hour show is set with Lamm’s opening act, "a sexy monster rock opera" called The Reckoning. Dressed as a vulture, Lamm plays a dejected animal that struggles to know itself and its place in the universe. In the more intimate Bird Song, she is an abandoned baby bird that sings from a nest made of stuffed panty hose and prosthetic legs.

"[Bird Song] is about quiet power. It’s like, ‘I know what I have, and when you’re ready to see it, come say hi,’" said Lamm.

Other artists, among them Fraser and choreographer/dancer Antoine Hunter, use their bodies to create powerful performances. In the solo act No Retreat, No Surrender, Fraser taps into his martial arts training to simulate being physically beaten to a soundtrack of insults commonly hurled by ableists. In The Scene, theater marries film in a sexually explicit and tense performance about a man who visits a dominatrix and unexpectedly undergoes an inner transformation.

Moore, who plays the visitor in The Scene, explained that in addition to flipping the notion of who visits a dominatrix, the piece is about loving oneself. "In the beginning [of the scene, the man going to the domme] is not sure what to expect. At the end, he comes to love himself and know ‘I am beautiful.’"

Since the inaugural Sins Invalid showing at Brava in 2006, what once was a one-night annual event has blossomed into a three evenings of performance. According to Berne, previous shows have packed full houses. The public’s reaction to the project, many Sins artists say, has been a validating — if not overwhelming — experience.

For Sins performer Quest, who lives day-to-day as a "broke-ass artist schlep," receiving shout-outs from past audience members is one of the most rewarding parts of the experience. "All year ’round, people are like, ‘I saw you at the show, and I told about my friend about you guys!’ People are circuutf8g the news and it’s totally gratifying."

By helping to create new dialogue among the disabled and able-bodied communities, many of those involved with Sins feel like they are making history — and as Moore states, rewriting the books as well. "[Being involved in Sins] feels like I’m correcting history for people with disabilities," says the Berkeley activist. "History is not written from us — it’s always about others. Now we get to speak our own stories."

Houston-based Maria Palacios, a spoken word artist who has been with Sins for three years, feels that the project passes the torch of hope to the next generation of people with disabilities. "When I was growing up, I didn’t have a Barbie with a wheelchair," Palacios said. "But now kids will have us as heroes to look up to — they will have a history in place already."

SINS INVALID

Fri/2–Sat/3, 8 p.m.; Sun/4, 7 p.m.

Brava Theatre

2789 York, SF

(510) 689-7198

www.brownpapertickets.com, www.sinsinvalid.org

Music listings

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Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and 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 at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alma Desnuda, Lady Danville, Davey G Project, Ilaya, Brett Hunter Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Little Junior Davis and the All-Star Blues Hounds Rasselas Jazz. 8pm, free.

Hamilton Loomis Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Hammerlock, Holley 750 Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $7.

Ida Marie, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head Fillmore. 8pm, $20. Hosted by Perez Hilton.

Mason Jennings, Crash Kings Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

Mo’Fone, Brothers Goldman Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $5.

Publish the Quest, Radioactive Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Gil Scott-Heron, Ise Lyfe, Orgone Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $35.

Sermon, Blank Stares Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Sonos, Austin Hartley-Leonard Hotel Utahl. 9pm, $10.

Stripmall Architecture, Sweet Trip, Boy in Static Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Tell-Tale Heartbreakers, Green Lady Killers, Hooray for Everything Knockout. 10pm, $6.

Works Progress Administration, Molly Jenson Independent. 8pm, $15.

BAY AREA

Kylie Minogue Fox Theater. 8pm, $58.50-99.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"B3 Wednesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Nick Rossi Trio.

Cat’s Corner Savanna Jazz. 7pm, $5-10.

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

Swing With Stan Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8pm, free.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

49 Special Climate Theater, 285 9th St., SF; (415) 704-3260. 8pm, $7-15 sliding scale. Part of the Music Box Series.

Soja, Kapakahi, Movement Slim’s. 9pm, $21.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Lonestar Sound, Young Fyah, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Abe Vigoda, Psychic Reality, Mi Ami DJs Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

David Bazan, Say Hi Independent. 8pm, $15.

Heather Combs, Aiden James, David Greco, Francesca Lee Hotel Utah. 7:30pm, $8.

Datarock, Esser, Kav Slim’s. 8:30pm, $16.

Glenn Labs, Mark Matos and Os Beaches, TV Mike and the Scarecrows Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Hot Fog, Private Dancer, Careerers Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Hot Toddies, Foxes!, Ian Fays, DJs from Your Latest Crush Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

*Kylesa, Saviours, Bison BC, Kowloon Walled City DNA Lounge. 7pm, $15.

Maldroid, We Should Be Dead, Hooks Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Mass Fiction, DoubleDouble, Dubious Ranger Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

Please Do Not Fight, Bird by Bird, Ghost and City, Finish Ticket Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $10.

Boz Scaggs and the Blue Velvet Band Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $100. Benefit for the Richard de Lone Special Housing Fund.

Seconds on End Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $5.

Johnny Vernazza Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

*Gillian Welch Fillmore. 8pm, $29.50.

BAY AREA

Kylie Minogue Fox Theater. 8pm, $58.50-99.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Debashish Bhattacharya Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Laurent Fourgo Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7:30pm, free.

"Full Moon Concert Series: Blood Moon" Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF; www.luggagestoregallery.org. 8pm, $6-10. With James Kaiser and AC Way, and Past-Present-Future.

Lisa Lindsley and Walter Bankovitch Trio Shanghai 1930. 7pm, free.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

Oz Noy Coda. 9pm, $15.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Dark Hollow Band Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Shannon Ceili Band Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Whisky Richards Maggie McGarry’s, 1353 Grant, SF; (415) 399-9020. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, and B Lee spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Bingotopia Knockout. 7:30-9:30pm, free. Play for drinks, dignity, and dorky prizes with Lady Stacy Pants.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Holy Thursday Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Bay Area electronic hip hop producers showcase their cutting edge styles monthly.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro.

LovEvolution Pre-Party Supperclub. Dinner 7-9:30pm, $55; afterparty 9pm, $10. Join the LovEvolution staff for dinner and performances at 7pm, or get down at the after party to some dance beats.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Mizra Party and Soul Movers Infusion Lounge. 9pm, free. Featuring DJ Cams.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest. Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

Studio SF Triple Crown. 9pm, $5. Keeping the Disco vibe alive with authentic 70’s, 80’s, and current disco with DJs Peeplay, Pat Les Stache, and Marnacle.

Toppa Top Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, $5. Jah Warrior, Jah Yzer, I-Vier, and Irie Dole spin the reggae jams for your maximum irie-ness.

FRIDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Armagideons, Eric McFadden, Hooks, Two Timin Hussies, Interchords Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10. Seventh annual SF Joe Strummer Tribute and benefit for Strummerville.

Asobi Seksu, Loney, Dear, Anna Ternheim Slim’s. 9pm, $17.

L’Avventura, Music Lovers, Honneycombs Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

Chris Cain Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Clipd Beaks, Experimental Dental School Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Dark Star Orchestra Fillmore. 9pm, $31.

Destroyer 666, Accused, Witchhaven, Wietus Mortuus, DJ Rob Metal Thee Parkside. 9pm, $15.

Digital Bliss, Return to Mono, Divasonic, Celeste Lear, Weather Pending 111 Minna. 9pm.

John Predny, Fleeting Trance, Andy Mason Retox Lounge. 9pm, $5.

Boz Scaggs and the Blue Velvet Band Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $100. Benefit for the Richard de Lone Special Housing Fund.

Tartufi, Geographer, Judgement Day Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

Tornado Rider, My Revolver, Stirling Says Red Devi Lounge. 9pm, $10.

Wicked Mercies, Hi-Nobles, I Love My Label Annie’s Social Club. 9pm.

Zony Mash, Horns Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

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

Broun Fellinis Coda. 9pm, $10.

"Cultural Encounters: Friday Nights at the deYoung presents Jazz at Intersection" Wilsey Court, de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; www.deyoungmuseum.org. 6:30pm, free. With Will Bernard/Beth Custer Ensemble.

Duo Gadjo Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Lucid Lovers Rex Hotel, 562 Sutter, SF; (415) 433-4434. 6-8pm.

Plays Monk Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-20.

Ramsey Lewis Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Christopher Dallman Dolores Park Café. 7pm, free.

*"Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 9" Speedway, Marx, and Lindley Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com. 2-7pm, free. Today’s performers include MC Hammer, Fireants, Poor Man’s Whiskey, Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman, John Prine, and Lyle Lovett and His Large Band.

Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Rosie Flores, Sadies, Sally Timms, Rico Bell Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 7:30pm, $20.

Mild Colonial Boys Plough and Stars. 9pm, $5.

Montana Slim String Band, Bucky Walters, Innapropriaters Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Tin Cat, Apple Orange, Avi Vinocur, Grace Woods Red Vic, 1665 Haight, SF; (415) 864-1978. 7:15pm, $2.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

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

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Jam on It Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Hip-hop with host Z-Man and DJs Quest, Roy Two Thousand, Tyra from Saigon, and Lady Fingaz.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Lovesick Etiquette Lounge, 1108 Market, SF; (415) 863-3929. 9pm, $10. A pre-party for LovEvolution hosted by South Sound Collective featuring DJs DRC, Alland Byallo, Dizzy Dave and more.

Martinez Brothers Mighty. 10pm, $15. Get your dancing legs warmed up for Saturday’s LovEvolution parade and festival at this pre-party hosted by Pink Mammoth.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat spin doo-wop, one-hit wonders, and soul.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

Tyrant Club 525. 7pm, $25. London DJ duo Lee Burridge and Craig Richards spin the Love at this LovEvolution festival pre-party.

Undead Wedding Cat Club. 9pm; $10, $3 for zombie brides and grooms. Featuring goth, industrial, and death rock music along with wedding ceremonies, cake, and photographers.

Upper Playground and Sonic Living Happy Hour Laszlo. 6-9pm, free. Resident DJs Amplive and Tourist with special guests. Drink specials and giveaways.

SATURDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bugs, Dadfag, Sad Horse Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Dark Star Orchestra Fillmore. 9pm, $31.

Fat Bottom Girls, Sassy, Yes Gos, Bloody Hells, Horror-X Annie’s Social Club. 9pm.

Horrors, Japanese Motors, Rocket Independent. 9pm, $20.

Love Songs, Ed Mudshi, Cobra Skulls, Airfix Kits El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Monophonix Deluxe Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $10.

Sunny Rhodes Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Schande, Who Cares, Belly of the Whale, Sleeptalks Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Shinedown, Sick Puppies, Adelitas Way Regency Ballroom. 7pm, $30.

*Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Pine Box Boys, Tiny Television Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Miike Snow, Jack Peñate, Loquat Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Stone Foxes, Soft White Sixties, Courtney Janes, Anna Troy, DJ Joel Selvin Hotel Utah. 8:30pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Ralph Carney and friends Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Mads Tolling Trio Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

Ramsey Lewis Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Bonanza Plough and Stars. 9pm, $5.

Jordan Carp Caffe Trieste, 1667 Market, SF; (415) 551-1000. 8pm, free.

Danny Cohen, Jonah Kit, Magic! Magic Roses House of Shields. 9pm, $5.

Folk4Parks Rock-It Room. 8pm, $10. Help stop the impending closure of over 100 California State Parks at this benefit featuring Sioux City Kid and the Revolutionary Ramblers, Kristina Bennett, Better Maker, and more.

*"Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 9" Speedway, Marx, and Lindley Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com. 11am-8pm, free. Today’s performers include Okkervil River, Boz Scaggs and the Blue Velvet Band, Old 97s, Steve Earle and the Bluegrass Dukes, Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, Richie Havens, and many more.

Belle Monroe and Her Brewglass Boys, Shut-Ins, Gayle Lynn and Her Hired Hands Plough and Stars. 9pm, $10.

Pladdohg Ireland’s 32. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

BADNB Lovelution Afterparty Club Six. 9pm, $15. Featuring three stages of drum and bass with DJs KJ Sawka, Gridlok, Bachelors of Science, Method One, Maneesh the Twister, and more.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. Wear a flannel, get in free before 11pm to this 90s alternative dance party with DJs Jamie Jams and Emdee.

Everlasting Bass 330 Ritch. 10pm, $5-10. Bay Area Sistah Sound presents this party, with DJs Zita and Pam the Funkstress spinning hip-hop, soul, funk, reggae, dancehall, and club classics.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Gemini Disco Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Disco with DJ Derrick Love.

Get Loose! Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJ White Mike spinning dance jams.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Leisure Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $7. DJs Omar, Aaron, and Jet Set James spinning classic britpop, mod, 60s soul, and 90s indie.

LovEvolution Parade starts at Market and 2nd St. and ends at Civic Center Plaza for a dance music festival, SF; www.sflovevolution.org. Parade starts at noon, free; festival from noon-8pm, $10. Featuring a diverse and extensive line up of dance music DJs.

Rebel Girl Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $5. "Electroindierockhiphop" and 80s dance party for dykes, bois, femmes, and queers with DJ China G and guests.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul spin 60s soul on 45s.

So Special Club Six. 9pm, $5. DJ Dans One and guests spinning dancehall, reggae, classics, and remixes.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

Summer Saturdays Bar On Church. 9pm, free. With DJ Mark Andrus spinning top 40, mashups, hip hop, and electro.

SUNDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blakes, Music for Animals, Lucky Jesus Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Trevor Childs and the Beholders, Echo Falls, Cyndi Harvell Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Dark Star Orchestra Fillmore. 8pm, $31.

*John Doe, Sadies, Brothers Comatose Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $12.

Jolie Holland, Michael Hurley Independent. 8pm, $20.

Dr. MoJo Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, free.

Lloyd Gregory Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Liquid Indian, Mujaheddin Bernstein Affair, North Fork, White Pee Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

New Model Army, Salty Walt and the Rattlin’ Ratlines DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $12.

Soulfly, Prong, Cattle Decapitation Regency Ballroom. 7pm, $24.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"Contemporary Insights: Music and Conversation" ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell, SF; www.sfcmp.org. 4:30pm, $5-10. Performance and discussion of John Harris’ "The Seven Ages."

Imani Winds with Stefon Harris Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.performances.org. 7pm, $27-39.

Mr. Lucky, Ramshackle Romeos Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8pm, free.

Rob Modica and friends Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 3pm, free.

Ramsey Lewis Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

*"Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 9" Speedway, Marx, and Lindley Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com. 11am-8pm, free. Today’s performers include Billy Bragg, Chieftains, Old Crow Medicine Show, Marianne Faithfull, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Earl Scruggs, Hazel Dickens, Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3, Mavis Staples, Neko Case, Dr. Dog, and many more.

Mucho Axé Coda. 8pm, $7.

Quin and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm free.

DANCE CLUBS

Body and Soul Mighty. 8pm, $25. A nonstop dance fest featuring DJs Francois K, Joaquin "Joe" Claussell, and Danny Krivit.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and Vinnie Esparza.

5 O’Clock Jive Inside Live Art Gallery, 151 Potrero, SF; (415) 305-8242. 5pm, $5. A weekly swing dance party.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Shuckin’ and Jivin’ Knockout. 10pm, free. DJs Dr. Scott and Oran spin rock, doo-wop, jive, stomp, and more on 78rpm records.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Billy Bragg Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $30.

*God Dethroned, Abigail Williams, Woe of Tyrants, Augury, DJ Rob Metal Thee Parkside. 8pm, $15.

Fever Ray, Vuk Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

*Motorhead, Reverend Horton Heat, Nashville Pussy Warfield. 8pm, $38.

Serious Bees, Ms Cloud Hemlock Tavern. 7pm, $5.

69 Eyes, Dommin, Becoming Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $17.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"From the Top" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfcmp.org. 8pm, $10-28. San Francisco Contemporary Music Players present five pieces by American composers Harbison, Reich, Wuorinen, Feldman, and Campion.

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

Project, Classical Revolution Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Dubstep/DNB Underground SF. 9pm, $5. With DJs Tromaone, Qzen, Rastatronics, and more.

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Chris Ayer, Steph Johnson Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Bane, Trash Talk, Foundation, Grace Alley Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12.

Billy Bragg Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $30.

Busdriver, Themselves, Nocando Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Cave Singers, Lightning Dust Independent. 8pm, $14.

Elm, Higuma, New Red Sun Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

School of Seven Bells, Warpaint, Phantogram Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Stratovarius, Pagans Mind Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

"Jazz Mafia Tuesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Joe Bagale.

Kaweh Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $22.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Suzanne Cronin and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Gema, Terroritmo Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Tim Holt West Portal Library, 190 Lenox, SF; (415) 355-2886. 6:30pm, free. A performance of American history through folk songs.

Tina Dico Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

DJ Ism Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, free.

Drunken Monkey Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. Rotating DJs and shot specials.

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

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Mixology Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, (415) 441-2922. 10pm, $2. DJ Frantik mixes with the science and art of music all night.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Events listings

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Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 30

Where the Wild Things Are Metreon Theater, 101 4th St., SF; www.826valencia.org. 7pm, $75. Enjoy a special screening of Where the Wild Things Are followed by a Q and A discussion with director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers. All proceeds to benefit 826 Valencia.

THURSDAY 01

BAY AREA

Night Bazaar Jack London Square, Broadway at Embarcadero, Oak; oaklandunwrapped.org. 5:30pm, free. Enjoy this nighttime market organized in the festive tradition of Italian village fairs, German holiday markets, and Moroccan bazaars. Featuring local artisans, merchants, music, ice skating, and more.

FRIDAY 02

Clash of the Heroes Bayfront Theater, Building B, Fort Mason Center, SF; (415) 474-6776. Fri.-Sat. 8pm, Sun. 7pm; $20. Join BATS Improv troupe for a competition between improve teams performing scenes, games, and musical numbers which will be scored by judges.

Gandhi Birthday Poetry Reading Gandhi Statue, San Francisco Ferry Building, foot of Mission and Market Streets, SF; (510) 845-5481. 4:30pm, free. Attend a poetry reading on the bay to celebrate the 140th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth followed by a walk to the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Yerba Buena Gardens.

Oktoberfest By the Bay Pier 48, San Francisco Waterfront, across from AT&T park, SF; 1-888-746-7522. Fri. 3pm-Midnight, Sat. 11am-5pm, Sat. 6pm-Midnight, Sun. 11am-6pm; $30-35. Bring the spirit of Germany to the Bay Area at this festival featuring great beer, German food, and authentic German music. Tickets cover admission and entertainment only.

Redefining the Universe Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 392-4400. Fri. 8pm, Sat. 10am, Sat. 1:30pm; $20-100. In honor of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope, Humanities West is presenting a two-day program of lectures, discussions, music, and dance presentations titled, Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler: Redefining our Place in the Universe.

SATURDAY 03

Fall Garden Festival Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco Botanical Garden, 9th Ave. at Lincoln, Golden Gate Park, SF; (415) 661-1316. 10am, free. Garden lovers and gardeners can enjoy a full day of activities and demonstrations about plants and gardening from local horticultural and conservation organizations.

Heroes of the Environment Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF; (415) 431-6800. 5pm, free. Hear author Harriet Rohmer discuss her new book Heroes of the Environment: True Stories of People Who Are Helping to Protect Our Planet with special guest Erica Fernandez, the 14 year old who helped stop an offshore mining operation.

Hispanic Heritage Day Mission Branch Library, 300 Bartlett, SF; (415) 355-2800. Noon, free. Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month at the Mission Branch library with dance and music from Mexico, a presentation about the history of Argentinean tango, bilingual poetry, and more.

LovEvolution Parade starts at Market and 2nd St. and ends at Civic Center Plaza for a dance music festival, SF; www.sflovevolution.org. Parade starts at noon, free; festival from noon-8pm, $10. If you like to dance, people watch, and dress colorfully, check out this celebration of music and love featuring a diverse line up of dance music DJs.

Open Studios Preview SOMArts Main Gallery, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 861-9838. 7:30pm, $60. Get your Open Studios engine revving by being the first to view the SF Open Studios Exhibition, featuring work from over 400 SF Open Studios artists. Admission includes open bar and creative cuisine.

Original Plumbing Seventh Heart, 1593 Market, SF; www.originalplumbing.com. 3pm, free. Attend the release party for the first issue or Original Plumbing magazine titled The Bedroom Issue. The magazine seeks to document the diversity within the female-to-male transgender community with photos, essays, personal narratives, and more.

Sandcastle Contest Ocean Beach, near Cliff House, SF; (415) 512-1899. 10am, free. This year’s theme, Stories in the Sand: Classic Children’s Books, promises to unearth giant monsters and characters. Participate in the community sandcastle building area for a $5-10 suggested donation and help raise money for the arts in Bay Area schools.

SUNDAY 04

Castro Street Faire Castro at Market, SF; (415) 841-1824. 11am, $5 suggested donation. "Come Get Hitched" at this years Castro Street Fair and enjoy a wedding party, music and dance performances, art, a dating game, and more. Proceeds from admission and vendors go toward charitable causes important to the Castro Community.

TUESDAY 06

Margaret Atwood Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 392-4400. 8pm, $20. Poet, novelist, and social historian Margaret Atwood is hosting an evening of music, performance, and readings from and inspired by her new novel The Year of the Flood.

Noam Chomsky Commonwealth Club, 2nd floor, 595 Market, SF; (415) 597-6700. 6pm, $18. Hear world-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky discuss how the masses are kept in line and how to remain a freethinking, active citizen.


UC walkout could ignite a larger movement

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By Sarah Morrison
strike-on.jpg
UPTE’s logo for tomorrow’s UC walkout.

While UC Berkeley might have a long history of noisy protests and student activism, tomorrow’s UC-wide faculty and student walkout and worker strike seems unprecedented even within its own tumultuous history.

As a coalition of faculty, staff, students and workers across all of the UC campuses arrange to walk out of scheduled classes first thing tomorrow and protest against state cuts in funding, fee hikes, and changes to the traditional UC system of shared governance, the Berkeley community is expecting thousands to congregate in Sproul Plaza, the university’s traditional hub of student activity.

“The walkout tomorrow is just one milestone on what is likely to be a pretty long road to recovery,” said UC Berkeley professor of theatre, dance and performance studies, Catherine Cole. “It’s a moment to make visible the cuts and changes that are happening in our University – changes that are of profound importance and not yet necessarily made visible to all.”

Stiglitz: GDP Fetishism

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Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

GDP Fetishism

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – Striving to revive the world economy while simultaneously responding to the global climate crisis has raised a knotty question: are statistics giving us the right “signals” about what to do? In our performance-oriented world, measurement issues have taken on increased importance: what we measure affects what we do.

If we have poor measures, what we strive to do (say, increase GDP) may actually contribute to a worsening of living standards. We may also be confronted with false choices, seeing trade-offs between output and environmental protection that don’t exist. By contrast, a better measure of economic performance might show that steps taken to improve the environment are good for the economy.

Preview: “Corpo/Ilicito: The Post-Human Society 6.9”

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By Robert Avila

luna.jpg
Violeta Luna photo by Zach Gross.

Humans and post-humans take note: Corpo/Ilicito: The Post-Human Society 6.9, latest provocation-installation from acclaimed Mexican American performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Violeta Luna (aka La Pocha Nostra), unfurls for two nights only, this Friday and Saturday, at CounterPULSE.

Corpo/Ilicito premiered in the 2009 Habana Biennale in Cuba and the Trouble Festival in Brussels. This weekend marks its Bay Area premiere. In terms of what you might expect, here’s this from their press release: “In their latest project, la Pocha creates a performance setting that is both live jam session and reflective zone. The full environment installation ultimately allows the audience to co-direct the fate of the performance.

“Gomez-Peña has said about this project: ‘As live artists, our task is to create living metaphors that articulate a new aesthetic, culture, spirituality and a sexuality that emerge out of the ruins of our Western civilization.’”

These are the ambassadors from badass. Go ahead and call them edgy, especially if by edgy you mean pissed off. Or edgy as in the fractured, fractious frontier running between Mexico and the United States — slithering East to West, West to East, in all its slippery serpentine significance, delusional substance, riotous pretense and delightful permeability. And while you’re at it, throw in all the other frontiers of identity that go into limning our “postmodern” “Western” borderline personalities.

Fri/11-Sat/12, 8 p.m., $15-20
CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF
(415) 626-2060, https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/73700

Hot sex events this week: September 9-15

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

OrgasmutationStill_0909.jpg
It’s a week of film, fun, and frolic at the Independent Erotic Film Festival, starting Saturday.

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>> Secret Desires: Playing with Erotic Edges
Cleo Dubois, BDSM educator and creator of the Academy of SM Arts, will help you explore your erotic edges and demonstrate ways to play with the ones you find most exciting.

Wed/9, 8pm. $25-$30/pair.
Good Vibes Valencia Store
603 Valencia, SF
(415) 522-5460
www.events.goodvibes.com

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>> Red Hots Burlesque
Dottie Lux brings a different show of dazzling performers every week.

Fri/11, 7:30pm. $5-$10
El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF
www.redhotsburlesque.com

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>> Jeeti Singh Art Opening Reception
FP Edge and Madame S present body image in a new light with an exhibition of artwork by painter Jeeti Singh, whose subjects face their insecurities. Exhibit runs through December 12, with special reception this Saturday.

Sat/12, 7-9pm. Free.
Madame S, 385 Eighth St, SF
www.fpedge.com

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>> Independent Erotic Film Festival
Good Vibrations’ week of films and events kicks off with a party at El Rio (Sat/12, 9pm. $7. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF), continues with a vintage movie night hosted by Dr. Carol Queen (Sun/13, 9pm. $8. Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF), and features BDSM – It’s Not What You Think screening and Q&A with director Erin Palmquist (Tue/15, 7:30pm. $10. Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission, SF). Check the website for more information and the following week’s events.

Sat/12-Sept 17. Times, locations, and prices vary.
www.gv-ixff.org

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>> Sacred Pain: The Heroine’s Journey
Omg it’s a BDSM musical. Seriously. The performing arts group Sacred Pain presents an edgy blend of musical theater and avant garde performance, including clever musical covers, parodies, and originals – all produced and written by former Cockettes member Jack Killough.

Sat/12, 9pm. $30.
Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory
1519 Mission, SF.
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/78007

Taxi cab confessions

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER We all have fantasies, and considering the fact that he happily goes to the sick, hilarious places only you and your silliest, closest pals go, comedian Brent Weinbach’s is remarkably simple. He’d love to drive you … no, not insane, but around in a cab. Of course, when the dream sort of came true — he got to tool around with a cabbie-curator for "Where to," a 2007 art show of taxi-related art at the Lab — one bubble was brutally burst, spurring a joke, of sorts.

"Not a lot of people got it," confesses the longtime SF comedian, now based in his native Los Angeles and back in town for his Outside Lands fest performances. In the cab, he says, "I met a wide variety of people: I met two yuppie girls, a yuppie guy, and more yuppies — and a stripper. A yuppie stripper.

"The point was," Weinbach continues, "I thought it was going to be more like New York City, where all kinds of people take cabs. But that’s really what it was — a bunch of yuppies and a stripper. It turns out the only people who ride around in taxis in San Francisco are yuppies."

A disappointingly homogenous experience for a comic who has found plenty of very specific and strange black, queer, Chinese, Russian, Mexican, and just plain twisted voices to filter through his hilariously stiff, straight-guy comic persona — and despite the perk that, as a Travis Bickle manque, one would have a captive audience in the backseat. Still, cabbing it provided a theme of sorts for the wildly diverse array of live performance recordings, studio-recorded skits, and Weinbach-penned tunes and video game-inspired backing sounds making up the comedian’s second album, The Night Shift (Talent Moat), the focus of a release show at the Verdi Club on Sept. 11. Weinbach sib and comedy co-conspirator Laura of Foxtail Brigade opens, along with Moshe Kasher and Alex Koll.

The tunes on Night Shift are a new touch, setting me off on a daydream about Weinbach doing the duelin’ piano (and laughs) routine with Zach Galifianakis. (Weinbach once teased the ivories professionally in the lobby of Union Square hotels like the Mark Hopkins.) "Sometimes I close my set with one of those songs," Weinbach says. "After hearing the word ‘penis’ a bunch of times and talking about poo-poo, it’s kind of funny to end the set with a sweet old-fashioned song." He worries, though, about the track-by-track re-creation of the album at the Verdi Club: "I hope they don’t kill the momentum of the set."

Yet Weinbach is game — the ex-Oakland substitute teacher has had to be (memories of the letter from a student apologizing for calling him a "bitch" ghost-ride by). He dives into a rapid-fire, impassioned discussion of his comedy, which rarely discusses race directly, yet clearly emerges from the mashed-up, pop sensibility of a half-Filipino, half-Jewish Left Coast kid.

"The only time I’ve ever talked about race is right after the presidential election, when I wrote this: ‘On Nov. 4, 2008, history was made’ … — I usually get a little applause here — ‘It was a remarkable thing to see so much of the black community come together and deny gay people their civil rights. So now that the black man is keeping the gay man down, that means gay is the new black. And that means suburban teenagers will have to get used to a whole new way of acting cool.’"

Weinbach pauses, then explains heatedly, "I was really upset that 70 percent of black voters in California voted against gay marriage, when this whole election was about getting a black president into office. It just blew my mind." As for the joke itself, well, "It gets a good response, though sometimes people think I’m making fun of gay people or black people. I don’t even know what’s going through their head, actually. I do remember doing the joke once and hearing people hissing. It was like, ‘What are you hissing at? Are you glad gay people were denied their rights or are you a snake?’ And if you’re a snake, that’s OK … ‘" *

BRENT WEINBACH

Sept. 11, 8 p.m., $10–<\d>$12

Verdi Club

2424 Mariposa, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/72659

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JONESIN’


The cute couple loves their bubblegum and Casio-pop on Hi, We’re Jonesin’ (Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare). Thurs/3, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

AL GREEN


The rev has his finger on the holy trigger. Wed/2, 8 p.m., $56–<\d>$85. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. www.goldenvoice.com

SF CENTER FOR THE BOOK BENEFIT


Literati party down at a book arts-zine exhibit, with dance sets by Vin Sol, Honey Soundsystem, and Pickpockit. Fri/4, 9 p.m., free before 9 p.m., $7–<\d>$10. 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com

Dreams come true

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DUAL INTERVIEWS Cass McCombs and Karen Black — not exactly Marvin and Tammi, or Elton or Kiki, or Waylon or Tammy, but undeniably classic from the very first listen. "Dreams-Come-True Girl" kicks off McCombs’ new album Catacombs (Domino) in style, immediately staking a claim for song of the year.

The partnership between McCombs and Black seems made in heaven — a strange heaven. It turns out that it was born from friendship: specifically, Black’s friendship with McCombs’ frequent collaborator Aaron Brown, who has created some of McCombs’ cover art and directed his music videos; and Black’s and Brown’s friendship with Bay Area filmmaker Rob Nilsson. "Rob introduced me to Aaron, and we just hit it off," Black relates via phone from Macon, Georgia, where she’s auditioning actors for a play she’s written called Missouri Waltz. "I invited him to have breakfast. Then one day he said, Listen, my friend Cass is cutting a CD next Tuesday, why don’t you come by and sing with him? That’s all I knew. I just did it because of the trust I had in Aaron, and my opinion of Aaron."

Black’s trust is a reward to McCombs and the listener. Beginning in Buddy Holly territory, "Dreams-Come-True Girl" moves handsomely through contemplative passages before Black arrives. It isn’t an overstatement to say that she turns in a country-rock grand dame performance worthy of a Wynette or Loretta Lynn while very much putting her distinct stamp on the song, switching from sublime siren calls to comic dance requests on a dime. "She’s just a gas," McCombs says admiringly from Los Angeles. "Out jaws were on the floor as she was riffing. She was in control. It was amazing to watch, and pretty inspiring."

Anyone lucky enough to have seen Black move from Bessie Smith to Katherine Anne Porter with graceful unease in her one-woman show knows that her musical performances in 1970’s Five Easy Pieces and 1975’s Nashville — two of McCombs’ favorite Black movies — merely hint at her vocal range and interpretive ability. Considering songwriters such as Dean Wareham have covered Black’s compositions, it’s bizarre that there isn’t a full-length Karen Black recording. Fortunately, producer Ariel Rechtshaid and McCombs are looking to remedy that situation next year.

For now, Black is busy with the usual amazing array of projects, ranging from plays (readings of her Mama at Midnight have been put on in L.A. and New York City) to new movies (The Blue Tooth Virgin; a bit part in Alex Cox’s Repo Man sequel Repo Chick) and an HBO pilot (Magical Balloon) by the people behind Tim and Eric Awesome Show.

As for McCombs and Black in "Dream-Come-True Girl," their relationship continues to bloom with each new performance. "The two characters have evolved," says McCombs. "Her character is reaching out to mine and saying C’mon, let’s go! It’s Saturday, let’s go out and have some fun! My character defuses the situation and looks away. It’s easy for both of us to do those roles. It comes naturally" — he laughs — "I suppose."

"You know, I’m no dream girl," Black says coyly. "But he’s so cute. They said, Come and dance for hours in your three-inch heels, and I said, Well, let’s try it. It turned out that I could do what the song was leading us to do, which was sort of flirt with him, sort of think about him, and sort of feel ridiculous because I shouldn’t be thinking about a young man like that. He’s so cute lookin’. He’s just the darlingest boy."

RAWdance presents the Concept Series: 5

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PREVIEW RAWdance’s Concept Series is the brainchild of dancer-choreographers Ryan T. Smith and Wendy Rein, who needed a lab situation in which to test concept and show works in progress. They invited friends and artists who looked interesting and who had similar concerns. The result is a series of informal presentations that sparkle with fresh ideas, although the individual works are rarely finished. Watching this type of dance is so inviting, despite the tiny, near-impossible performance space. It’s long and narrow, and audiences must be prepared to move the furniture to accommodate a particular artist’s requirements. Concept 5 looks especially intriguing. In addition to Smith and Rein’s latest experiments, you’ll get the inimitable Mary Armentrout; Bob Webb/Bare Bones Butoh — you probably know him better as the ubiquitous stage manager who keeps dance shows on track; improv dancers Christine Cali and Amy Stemstetter, freshly back from the East Coast; Printz Dance Project, who have their own show Nov. 5-7; and Lily Dwyer and Scott Marlowe, LEVY Dance members who are striking out on their own. Parking is tough, so patronize Muni. But the price is right: pay what you can — and the popcorn is free.

RAWDANCE PRESENTS THE CONCEPT SERIES: 5 Sat/5–Sun/6, 8 p.m. (also Sun/6, 3 p.m.), pay what you can James Howell Studio, 66 Sanchez, SF. (415) 686-0728.

art.tech

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PREVIEW As I write this, I’m eating one of those new giant Cheetos — you know, the latest delectable Alice Waters heart attack, sheer processed junk food Armageddon, elephantiasis of the puffed balls? Yum. My point here is that there’s no form of art that hasn’t been deeply and irrevocably touched by technology, and also that I’m a little stoned. Pitched somewhere between Maker Faire and head trip, the three-day art.tech festival at the Lab explores the intersection of artistic exploration, experimental fabrication, and digital prestidigitation and includes performance, workshops, presentations, and interactive flights of fancy. Among the highlights: a Virtual Knitting demo that entwines physical and virtual space; a "relational presentation" of Anti-Pandora, a hand-made backpack that generates usable energy from walking or running, and Seek ‘n Spell, an interactive iPhone game that’s a cross between Scrabble and a scavenger hunt. Dang, my fingers just painted my keyboard neon orange.

ART.TECH Fri/4-Sun/6, various times, $12–$20 daily, $36 for three-day pass. The Lab, 2948 16th St., 415-864-8855, www.thelab.org

Events listings

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Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 2

Rebecca Solnit Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF; (415) 431-6800. 7pm, free. A release party for Solnit’s new book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, where the award winning author explores themes of altruism and hope through several histories of the shaken commons in the aftermath of calamity.

THURSDAY 3

Divisadero Art Walk Divisadero from Haight to Geary, SF; www.divisaderoartwalk.blogspot.com. 6pm, free. Get in touch with the burgeoning art scene on Divisadero street, with 35 participating merchants offering specials, art, music, and community.

Oy Vey! Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF; (415) 655-7800. 5pm; free, $5 admission to exhibits and programs. Kvetch with friends over drinks after work while enjoying some art and architecture. Featuring Susan G. Solomon giving a talk titled, The Art of Listening: Oral Histories from Voice of Witness and StoryCorps.

Art and Wine for PACT San Francisco PACT office, 635 Divisadero, SF; (415) 922-2550 to RSVP. Enjoy wine tasting, food, and student made art at this fundraiser for PACT, Inc., an non-profit that provides low income and first generation students guidance through the college, financial aid, and scholarship application processes.

FRIDAY 4

Art.tech The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF; (415) 864-8855. Fri. 8pm, Sat. 1-8pm, Sun. 1-7pm; $12-20 sliding scale per day, $36 for a three day pass, $8 for single evening performance. A festival of art, performance, sound, workshops, demos, and lectures featuring cutting-edge artistic experiments created with and related to technology.

SATURDAY 5

Food For Thought Toby’s Feed Barn, 11250 State Route One, Point Reyes Station; (415) 663-1542. 7pm, free. Hear author David Mas Masumoto read from his books and talk about his experience as a third generation organic peach and grape farmer, whose organic farming techniques have been widely adopted.

SUNDAY 6

Penguins to Penguins Great Highway, connecting Golden Gate Park to the San Francisco Zoo, SF; sundaystreetssf.com. 10am, free. Take advantage of this month’s Sunday Streets, a safe, fun, car-free area for people to get out and get active in San Francisco neighborhoods.

TUESDAY 8

Lang Lang Zellerbach Auditorium, UC Berkeley Campus, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berk; (510) 642-9988. 7:30pm, $20. Hear this highly influential Chinese pianist interview with Sarah Cahill, also a pianist, from KALW’s Sunday evening show Then and Now, about his new book, Journey of a Thousand Miles in this program and book signing.


Night repper

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D Tour and Rogue Wave Joe Granato’s award-winning doc about musician Pat Spurgeon, with an acoustic post-screening performance by Spurgeon’s Oakland band. Sept. 3, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; www.sfmoma.org.

"Cocky White Guys" Jesse Hawthorne Ficks of Midnites for Maniacs serves up a triple platter of cockiness: Risky Business (1983), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), and the very closet-gay Last American Virgin (1982). Sept. 4, Castro; www.castrotheatre.com.

"Speechless: Recent Experimental Animation" The program includes the 3-D amazements of local wonder woman Kerry Laitala’s enticingly titled Chromatic Cocktail Extra Fizzy. Sept. 8, Pacific Film Archive; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

SF Shorts This year’s lineup includes over 60 short films and music videos. Sept. 9-12, Red Vic; www.redvicmoviehouse.com.

Bigger Than Life Nicholas Ray’s gonzo look at suburban family ideals gone amok was too weird for 1956. Todd Haynes has stolen from this movie as much as from any Sirk work. Sept. 10, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org

Lucha Beach Party Will the Thrill takes his showmanship to the Balboa, along with Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters (1969) and longtime contender for best movie title ever, Wrestling Women vs. Aztec Mummy (1964). Sept. 10, www.thrillville.net

Rialto’s Best of British Noir A chance to see Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) on the big screen. Sept. 11-16, Castro; www.castrotheatre.com.

"Top Bill: The Films of William Klein" The great photographer’s underrated film output gets a thorough survey, ranging from his prescient and sharp 1960s portraits of Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver to his madcap yet dry looks at fashion in Paris. Sept. 11-Oct. 11, Pacific Film Archive; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Independent Erotic Film Festival Good Vibrations presents the event’s fourth incarnation. Highlights include a potential screening of Gerard Damiano’s The Devil in Miss Jones and a program of 1920s peep show reels. Sept. 12-17, various venues; www.gv-ixff.org.

Spectrology Mad Cat Women’s Film Festival presents a one-off screening of a new work by Kerry Laitala. Sept. 16, El Rio; www.madcatfilmfestival.org

Film Noir at the Roxie You can always count on the Roxie to play host to the less obvious dark alleys of noir. Sept. 17-30, Roxie; www.roxie.com

Liverpool Lisandro Alonso’s highly acclaimed 2008 film finally get a SF gig. Sept. 17-20, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.

Iranian Film Fest This year’s festival focuses on women’s roles in Iranian society. Sept. 19-20, various venues; www.iranianfilmfestival.blogspot.com.

"Life’s Work: The Cinema of Ermanno Ulmi" A comprehensive retrospective of films by a director known for his masterful renderings of work, such as 1961’s Il posto. Sept. 25-Oct. 30, Pacific Film Archive; www-bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Grease Sing-Along The San Francisco Film Society presents this key 1978 addition to the canon of Randal Kleiser. Sept. 26; www.sffs.org.

The Room Avoid The Room at your peril. Sept. 26. Red Vic; www.redvicmoviehouse.com.

Dario Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy Together at last: Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Mother of Tears (2007). Be there or be violently stabbed by a hand in a black glove. Oct. 1-4, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.

The Red Shoes A new print — which debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 gem. Oct. 1, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; www.sfmoma.org.

Found Footage Festival Trash is a treasure as curators Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher host the fourth incarnation of the event. Oct. 2-3, Red Vic; www.redvicmoviehouse.com.

"Julien Duvivier: Poetic Craftsman of Cinema" The lengthy and perhaps erratic career of the man who made Jean Gabin an icon gets a full treatment. Oct. 2-31, Pacific Film Archive; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Barry Jenkins’ Shorts The San Francisco filmmaker shares his work to date, including his feature debut Medicine for Melancholy (2007). Oct. 3, Artists’ Television Access; www.othercinema.com

"Nervous Magic Lantern Peformance: Towards the Depths of the Even Greater Depression" Ken Jacobs in the house, aiming to "get between the eyes, contest the separate halves of the brain" with a magic lantern that uses neither film or video. Oct. 7, Pacific Film Archive; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Pink Cinema Revolution A series for the Japanese genre and industry that has schooled some master filmmakers while titilutf8g audiences. Oct. 7-25, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.

Robert Beavers The experimental filmmaker’s fall stint in the Bay Area includes four programs presented by SF Cinematheque. Oct. 8-10, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.sfmoma.org, www.ybca.org.

"Eyes Upside Down" Great title. A program of films curated by the writer P. Adams Sitney. Oct. 11, www.sfcinematheque.org.

Arab Film Festival This year’s festival lasts ten days. Oct. 15-24, various venues; www.aff.org

French Cinema Now Contemporary film in France condensed into a series. Oct. 29-Nov. 4, Sundance Kabuki; www.sffs.org.

Halloween Gore ‘n’ Snorefest Thrillville returns to the Balboa with Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) and Zontar, the Thing From Venus (1966). If only the characters of these movies could time travel to meet one another. Oct. 29; www.thrillville.net.

"Running Up That Hill" Michael Robinson, creator of the eye-blinding and hilarious video Light is Waiting (2007), borrows a title from Kate Bush for this program, which he’s curated. Nov. 6, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.

It Came from Kuchar Jennifer Kroot’s documentary about the Kuchar brothers hits the screen after raves at Frameline. Nov. 14, Artists’ Television Access; www.othercinema.com.

New Italian Cinema The San Francisco Film Society presents a sample of recent films from Italy. Nov. 15-22, Sundance Kabuki; www.sffs.org.

Recent Restorations: George and Mike Kuchar You can never have too much Kuchar. Dec. 10, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; www.sfmoma.org.

No brainer

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FALL ARTS PREVIEW Who would have pictured Green Day’s anthemic 2004 punk-rock concept album, American Idiot (Reprise), as the stuff of musicals? It took merely two unlikely kindred spirits, meeting in the fall of 2007 for the first time: the Oakland band’s lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong and Tony-winning Spring Awakening director Michael Mayer.

Armstrong — that punk-rock diehard who even now plays Gilman with his side project Pinhead Gunpowder? Turns out that as a tyke growing up in Rodeo, he serenaded the elderly and infirm in local hospitals with standards and show tunes from musicals like Oliver! and Annie Get Your Gun.

"That’s how I learned how to sing," says Armstrong, laid back and low-key in stark contrast to the manic rabble-rouser who’ll soon take command over a stage at San Jose’s HP Pavilion. He’s on the phone from his Oakland home during a brief stop in Green Day’s arena tour for 21st Century Breakdown (Reprise), the follow-up to American Idiot. "There’s a real old-school craft to it," he continues, measuring that quality against Shrek, Legally Blond, and other recent disposable Broadway musicals. "That’s kind of a corny way of doing things, but when you see something like Spring Awakening, it’s … it’s real life, and it’s something that everybody relates to, and it’s inspiring and emotional. American Idiot was really tailor-made for something like this to happen to it, y’know."

At the same time that Armstrong tried to heal the ailing with music — and ’80s-era punks everywhere greeted "Morning in America" with a snarl — the generation-older Mayer was earning his MFA on the other side of the country in theater at NYU. No surprise, then, that Mayer "felt such a surprising kind of simpatico" on meeting the Green Day leader. "Even though we come from different worlds and are such different people," Mayer says, "you know, at the end of the day, Billie Joe is such a showman! Such a theatrical guy. Not since Al Jolson have I seen someone so in love with the audience and with putting on a performance for them."

Mayer radiates a similar high-wattage intensity, one that’s fully prepared to kick out the jams. Wide-eyed and unblinking behind his black frame specs, clad in a Justice League T-shirt and floppy shorts, he’s hiding out with me in what looks like an old classroom within the downtown Berkeley building enlisted for rehearsals of the musical version of American Idiot. "I feel like where we connect is old school," he says of Armstrong, slapping the table for emphasis. "Tin Pan Alley." Slap. "Vaudeville." Slap. "That’s the music he grew up with. He became a punk-rocker — I became a theater homo!"

Together, Armstrong and Mayer are making a piece of theater that combines the musical’s narrative tradition and holy union of song and dance with a breed of feisty alternative rock fed by the streetwise political punk of Gilman Street. A musical that unites the ironclad craft of the American Songbook and the heady, arena-sized artistic ambition of classic rock. Now, in the wake of the Broadway acclaim of Los Angeles punk vet Stew’s Passing Strange (which also got its start in at Berkeley Repertory in 2006 and has just been transferred to film by Spike Lee), American Idiot appears poised for critical and popular success when it opens Sept. 4.

American Idiot arrives at a time when musical theater is going through a wave of growing pains. The genre is casting about for ideas, whether they are from films like Shrek and Billy Elliott (to cite a Tony success from last year), or — as with Spring Awakening, which spotlit music by Duncan Sheik — from rock songwriters more comfortable with the life of gritty clubs, merch tables, and tour buses than the mountain-moving, time-devouring, and costly group mechanics of putting on a full-tilt musical. Unlike singularly conceived rock operas like the Who’s Tommy, the first notable union of an established rock band and theater on Broadway, so-called juke box musicals — collections of songs by one group like Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys — have met with mixed results.

"There’s a whole variety, like Ring of Fire, the Johnny Cash one, that just haven’t made it," opines Michael Kantor, writer of the Emmy-winning 2005 PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical. "It’s very much dependent on the conception of the director and the book writer who is putting together the story that’s going to encapsulate the music. I do think Broadway right now is keenly scavenging from movies or recordings — anything they feel like they can get quality material from as a launching point."

With the closing of a host of musicals earlier this year, producers are looking for the new and innovative. "Many of the most important musicals," Kantor theorizes, "have come from the most unexpected sources or most unusual approaches." And there’s the scramble for the youth entertainment dollar, as the High School Musical TV-music franchise taps into the passion so many kids have for song, dance, and drama. "Kids are always attracted to musicals," Kantor muses, "but once they get into their midteens, a lot of them lose their interest in musicals as an art form and gravitate to other stuff. High School Musical catches them at their natural inclination for that kind of entertainment. The question is, will a show like [American Idiot] capture that much-sought-after 18- to 30-year-old demographic, which is when musicals tend to lose people. Kids go off to college, it’s not too cool to like musicals, and a lot of adaptations are mainstream or traditional — and it doesn’t appeal to rebellious youth."

Young people also might have a hard time springing for costly theater tickets — yet the kids were out in force, filling the HP Pavilion last week when Green Day played to a hometown crowd with a show punctuated by pyrotechnic pillars of flames and fireworks-style explosions, gleeful costume changes, and squirt-gun shenanigans with Armstrong’s mom. It was a big-room amplification of the string of Bay club dates Green Day played earlier this spring at intimate venues like the Independent, DNA Lounge, and the Uptown.

Below a cleverly conceived 3-D urban skyscape backdrop, Armstrong fully embraced his onstage ham and flexed his crowd-control abilities à la Bugs Bunny in a Looney Tunes cartoon, taking running leaps from the monitors, stage-diving, soloing in the bleachers, donning a faux police cap and mooning each side of the audience, and entreating all assembled to raise their fists or sing along, before launching into more serious numbers like "Murder City," written about the Oakland riots that followed the Oscar Grant killing. Live, the band couples the playfully goofy, childlike comedy that tickles the 14-year-olds up front with the palpable sense of morality — driven by a beaten yet still beating anarchist heart — found on its increasingly serious-minded, idealistic recordings.

Armstrong won’t be onstage for the American Idiot musical — though the production includes a live band — and it’s not the Billie Joe Armstrong or Green Day Story. Instead, the musical is embedded in a specific time and hybridized with video-screen projections that simulate a familiar media-saturated landscape: it’s 2004, in the dark years. America has sent its idiot back to the White House, and we’re on the brink of Hurricane Katrina. Across that stage comes a series of almost archetypal characters one recognizes from the album: the Jesus of Suburbia, here dubbed Johnny for the lead actor it was written for, John Gallagher Jr., who won a Tony for his portrayal of Moritz in Spring Awakening; his antagonist St. Jimmy; and the rebel girl Whatshername.

Just about a week before the concert, the hyperactive, pogo-friendly energy of a Green Day show appeared to be finding its perfect translation at a rehearsal for American Idiot. Three weeks in, the cast — including Passing Strange‘s Rebecca Naomi Jones, here portraying the riot grrrly heroine Whatshername — tackled a round of "She’s a Rebel." In leggings and a Green Day T-shirt, Jones bounced on her toes as a barefoot Mayer dispensed hugs to cast members. A scruffily bearded Gallagher circled the group, then took his place in the desk jockey center for "Nobody Likes You." Choreographer Steven Hoggett tweaked the movements of the cast members as they tossed papers and marched up and down a moveable metal staircase

"When someone is a 20-something with all that angst and energy — where do you put that?," Hoggett said later by phone, pondering the task of "putting songs on their feet onstage." The goal of the choreographer who won an Oliver for his strong, subtle work in Black Watch and came up in the ’90s U.K. clubbing scene: create movement that serves Green Day’s songs and isn’t "too showbiz." To that end, he took in a Green Day show in Albany, N.Y., and fell in love with the mosh pit. "That was absolutely brilliant," he remembers. "Nerves gave way to absolute revelation. It’s just seeing what thousands of people do when they see Green Day — this is the world we need to do onstage."

Collaborating mainly via phone, e-mail, and text with Armstrong from 2007 through 2008, Mayer wanted to focus on a trio of friends — Johnny, Will, and Tunny — as he created the libretto. In true rock operatic form, all the dialogue is sung, using just the songs’ lyrics and text from the special edition CD of American Idiot.

Mayer and arranger Tom Kitt, whose work eventually scored him a spot creating string arrangements for Breakdown, took apart the songs — "letting them breathe in a theatrical way," as Mayer puts it — and placed the lyrics in the mouths of various characters. B-sides and new numbers like "Know Your Enemy," "21 Guns," and "Before the Lobotomy," which Armstrong offered to Mayer during the making of Breakdown last year, were inserted into the flow. Nonetheless, Mayer maintains it was crucial to him to preserve the original track order. "I didn’t want to violate the form of the record," he says. "I wanted to expand it, because the record’s only 52 minutes, and that’s not a full evening, and with these extra characters, they need more material to serve the arcs of their journeys."

It’s been a very personal journey for lead actor Gallagher, who confesses that he’s been a huge Green Day fan since fourth grade, when he’d wait eagerly for the trio’s "Basketcase" video on MTV. His character is Johnny, the Jesus of Suburbia, or as he describes it, "the son of rage and love." Raised in a broken home. Johnny is on "this path, caught between self-improvement and self-destruction, which is something I think we can all relate to," says the actor, who until not long ago had a band of his own. He and Mayer came up with the notion to deepen and intensify Johnny’s descent into drug addiction. "When the chips are down, it’s always easier to just implode on yourself rather than explode outward in a positive fashion that might be helpful for others."

Countering that is the positive process, littered with emphatic yesses, according to Mayer, of putting together American Idiot. In contrast with the difficult but rewarding eight-year gestation of Spring Awakening, Mayer — who has worked on such disparate productions as Thoroughly Modern Millie and the national tour of Angels in America — sees this musical’s trajectory as absolutely charmed. The spell has been in place from the day he proposed his idea to Green Day’s management in 2007, to the moment he was allowed six months to put together a libretto (a process that flew by in six weeks because Mayer says he was so "charged" by meeting Armstrong), to the instant last year that he and coproducer Tom Hulce decided to stage the musical at Berkeley Rep, a company he’d been wanting to work with for years, with his friend, artistic director Tony Taccone.

It’s all coming strangely, beautifully, together — like a punk-rocker besotted with pop hooks and a theater-infatuated one-time Julliard instructor. "It makes me very, very nervous," Mayer confesses, chuckling. "Oh, it’s terrifying! There’s something wrong with it — it’s too joyous. It’s been too easy in terms of everything falling into place."

AMERICAN IDIOT

Sept. 4-Oct. 11

Tues., Thurs.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Wed., 7 p.m.;

Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.

(no matinees Sept. 5–6 and 12–13); $16–$86

Berkeley Repertory

Roda Theatre

2015 Addison, Berk.

(510) 647-2949

www.berkeleyrep.org

Stage four

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You Can’t Get There from Here Prized Bay Area performer Anne Galjour’s latest solo play suggests you are where you live, while unearthing the real class and cultural divides underneath American feet, in this intensely researched and sharply amusing mapping of the nation 2009 courtesy of Z Space. Sept. 10-27, Theatre Artaud; www.zspace.org.

Brief Encounter American Conservatory Theater’s new season opens with a wildly successful British import, Kneehigh Theatre’s inspired production of Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, a mashup of film, theater, and song adapted by Emma Rice from Coward’s own words and music. This limited engagement coincides with the 100-year anniversary of the former Geary Theater’s legacy as a movie theater, and is something of a must-see (Nota bene: ACT is offering a limited number of $10 sweet and vertiginous second-balcony seats for this show). Sept. 11-Oct. 4, American Conservatory Theater; www.act-sf.org.

Ghosts of the River The mysterious, insubstantial and quintessentially human realm of shadows and borders come together in a uniquely poetical, politically charged evening of "Twilight Zone–like vignettes" set along the snaking Rio Grande. The world premiere of Ghosts of the River re-teams leading SF-based playwright Octavio Solis with Larry Reed’s Shadowlight Productions in a theatrical experience combining Balinese shadow theatre technique, the scale of film, and live performance accessible to both Spanish- and English-speaking audiences. Oct. 1-11, Teatro Vision; Oct. 28-Nov. 8, Brava Theater Center; www.shadowlight.org.

Dead Boys The world premiere of a new musical by writer-director-choreographer Joe Goode leads off the new main stage season at UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, where Goode is faculty by day (and otherwise artistic director of famed SF dance-theater company Joe Goode Performance Group). Collaborating with Portland-based composer-songwriter Holcombe Waller, Dead Boys is billed as "a freak folk musical about trust, gay activism, gender identity, talking to the dead, and the privileged culture’s pursuit of happiness." Oct. 9-18, Zellerbach Playhouse; http://events.berkeley.edu.

South Pacific Speaking of musicals, the big fat Rodgers and Hammerstein luau revived to critical acclaim last year — and for the first time since its 1949 premiere — comes to the Pacific Coast this fall, courtesy of SHN’s Best of Broadway series. Celebrated director and SF homeboy Bartlett Sher pilots this Tony winner for Best Musical Revival 2008, set on a frisky but fraught tropic isle during WWII with classic themes in the air, including the baldly asserted "There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame." Sept. 18-Oct. 25, Golden Gate Theatre; www.shnsf.com.

The Creature SF playwright Trevor Allen has created a monster. It began in 2006 as a staged reading and a live radio play, then a podcast. Now The Creature, a fresh take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is a full-blown walking, talking, play-thing making its world premiere in time for Halloween. Stitched together from some prime parts, including direction from Cutting Ball Theatre’s Rob Melrose and no less than venerable Bay Area actor James Carpenter in the title role, The Creature promises to be lively, to say the least. Oct. 23-Nov. 7, Thick House; www.thickhouse.org.

The Future Project: Sunday Will Come This first-time collaboration between Intersection for the Arts’ two resident companies, ESP Project and Campo Santo, explores popular and idiosyncratic conceptions of the future in an existentially rich and rollicking series of "mini-plays, songs, dances, and ‘moments’" in conversation with the not-yet. Oct. 15-Nov. 7, Intersection for the Arts; www.theintersection.org.

Boom Peter Sinn Nachtrieb offers his own conception of the future in a new play about the end of the world that, true to form for this award-winning SF playwright (Hunter Gatherers, T.I.C.), takes the form of a scathingly funny comedy in this Bay Area premiere from Marin Theatre Company and director Ryan Rilette. Nov. 12-Dec 6, Marin Theatre Company; www.marintheatre.org.

Music listings

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Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and 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.

WEDNESDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Tia Carroll Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Carta, Shuteye Unison, Form and Fate Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Casy and Brian, Bad Friends, Dadfag, Ornithology Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

David Thorton Blues Band Rasselas Jazz. 8pm, free.

Dodos, Spencey Dude and the Doodles Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

Dredg, RX Bandits, As Tall As Lions Fillmore. 7:30pm, $20.

Funeral Pyre, Early Graves, Elitist, Cestus, DJ Rob Metal Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $7.

Middle Distance Runner, Aushua Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Goh Nakamura, Tomo Nakayama, Odessa Chen Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

100 Suns, Circle of Eyes Tyrant Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Phenomenal Handclap Band, Bart Davenport, Tempo No Temp Knockout. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Cat’s Corner Savanna Jazz. 7pm, $5-10.

"Marcus Shelby Jazz Jam" Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Les Nubians Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26.

Odes Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Jon Bennett Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Gaucho, Michael Abraham Jazz Session Amnesia. 8pm, free.

Leigh Gregory Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Club Shutter Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Goth with DJs Omar, Nako, and Justin.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Lonestar Sound, Young Fyah, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Akron/Family, Howlin’ Rain Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Fresh and Onlys, Box Elders Knockout. 10pm.

Goddamn Gallows, Frankenstein L.I.V.S., Mutilators, Horror X Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $7.

Have Heart, Ceremony, Cruel Hand, Shipwreck, Bitter End Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $12.

20 Minute Loop, Famous, Billy and Dolly Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Rats, Back CCs, Pipsqueak Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Sex Type Thing Red Devil Lounge. 9pm, $10.

"Weezer Tribute Show" Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10. With Trophy Fire, Judgement Day, Matches, and Silian Rail.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Al Coster Trio and jam Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $5.

Beep! Trio Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

Nathan Clevanger Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Lloyd Gregory Shanghai 1930. 7pm.

Michael Gold Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Paul Kimura Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

"New Frequencies @ YBCA: Musicians Respond to Wallworks" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. 6pm, free with gallery admission ($5-7). With Chris Brown/Mason Bates and David Arend Duo.

Les Nubians Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26.

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

Tri-Cornered Tent Show, AnyWhen Ensemble Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF; www.luggagestoregallery.org. 8pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass and Old Time Jam Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Dunes El Rio. 9:45pm, $5. A North African Dance Band.

Flamenco Thursday Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30; $12. With Carola Zertuche and Company.

"Roots and Ruckus" Hotel Utah. 8pm, $6. With Chloe Makes Music, Samuel Doores, Alynda Lee, Feral Foster, Willy Gantrim.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Trainwreck Riders, Kerosene Kondors, Autumn Sky Amnesia. 9pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, and B Lee spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Bingotopia Knockout. 7:30-9:30pm, free. Play for drinks, dignity, and dorky prizes with host Lady Stacy Pants.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Toppa Top Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, $5. Jah Warrior, Jah Yzer, I-Vier, and Irie Dole spin the reggae jams for your maximum irie-ness.

FRIDAY 28

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

ALO, Counter Clarkwise, Newfangled Wasteland Mezzanine. 10pm, $20.

Five Eyed Hand Connecticut Yankee, 100 Connecticut, SF; www.theyankee.com. 10pm, $10.

Good Enough for Good Times Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $15.

*Hammers of Misfortune, Ludicra, Amber Asylum, DJ Rob Metal Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14.

Insomniacs Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

DJ Lebowitz Madrone. 6-9pm, free.

Limbeck, Stitch Up, Mini Mansions Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

LuckyIAm and Scarub with Conscious Souls, Xienhow, Enzyme Dynamite, Tantrum vs. Fredo Elbo Room. 10pm, $15.

Marilyn Manson Warfield. 9pm, $51.50-71.50.

Mayyors, Lamps, Christmas Island, Wounded Lion Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

"Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival" Golden Gate Park, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 1pm, $95-595. With Pearl Jam, Incubus, Thievery Corporation, Tom Jones, and more.

Joe Pernice, John Cunningham Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $15.

*Personal and the Pizzas, No Bunny, Ultra Twist, Pipsqueak Annie’s Social Club. 10pm, $7.

Street Sweeper Social Club Independent. 10pm, $25.

2Me Ireland’s 32. 10pm, $5.

Velvet Teen, Ghost, Drowning With Our Anchors, For.The.Win. Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Yellow Dress, Foxtails Brigade Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. 8pm, $6.

Wave Array, Goodbye Nautilus Café du Nord. 10pm, $10.

BAY AREA

R. Kelly, Keyshia Cole, Plies, New Boyz, Dorrough Music Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum Wy, Oakl; www.ticketmaster.com. 7:30pm.

Turbonegra, Death Valley High, Distance From Shelter, Loudness of the Brethren Uptown. 9pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

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

Equinox Trio Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Mint Condition Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35.

Susanna Smith and band Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $8.

Terry Disley Experience Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Seth Augustus Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Cuban Nights Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30; $15. With Fito Reinoso, and Eddie and Gabriel Navia, and utf8 dancing Buena Vista style.

Culann’s Hounds Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Rob Reich and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Tippy Canoe SoCha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Go Bang! Deco SF, 510 Larkin St; (415) 346-2025. 10pm, $5. Recreating the diversity and freedom of the 70’s/ 80’s disco nightlife with DJs Eddy Bauer, Flight, Nicky B., Sergio and more.

High Times in Low Places Slim’s. 9pm, $20. With Opio and Pep Love, Aesop and Bicasso, DJ Fresh Cambo, Understudies, JB Nimble, Venture Capitalists, Poe Jangles and Ro Knew Influence, and DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Loose Stud. 10pm-3am, $5. DJs Domino and Six spin electro and indie, with vintage porn visual projections to get you in the mood.

Lucky Road Amnesia. 9pm, $6-10. Balkan, Bangra, Latin, and Gypsy party with DJ Sister Kate.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Mob Life Rock-It Room. 10pm, $15. With Yukmouth, Gr and Phee and Rhyson Hall, Hugh E MC, and more.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

Suite Jesus 111 Minna. 9pm, $20. Beats, dancehall, reggae and local art.

Teenage Dance Craze Party Knockout. 10pm, $3. Teen beat, twisters, and surf rock with DJs Sergio Iglesias, Russell Quann, and dX the Funky Gran Paw.

SATURDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

GG Amos and the GG3 Riptide. 9pm, free.

Blue Sky Black Death, Boy Eats Drum Machine, Boy in Static Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

*Boxcar Saints, Kira Lynn Cain Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $7.

*Calexico, Sergio Mendoza y La Orkesta Independent. 10pm, $25.

*Clipse Mighty. 8pm.

Quinn Deveaux Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Dirtbombs, Sermon, Ty Segall Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10.

Eric Friedmann and the Lucky Rubes, Highway Robbers, Small Change Romeos Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Good Enough for Good Times Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $15.

Heavy Hindenberg, Mongoloid, Sex Presleys El Rio. 10pm, $7.

John Lee Hooker, Jr. Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Monsters of Accordion feat. Jason Webley, Stevhen Iancu, Mark Growden, Geoff Berner,

Eric Stern Slim’s. 8pm, $13.

Mt. Vicious, Ifihadahifi, Pegataur Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band Mezzanine. 10pm, $25.

Olehole, Anchor, Atom Age Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

"Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival" Golden Gate Park, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. Noon, $95-595. With Dave Matthews Band, Black Eyed Peas, Mars Volta, Jason Mraz, and more.

Rancho Deluxe, Cowlicks, 49 Special Café du Nord. 8pm, $15.

SF Blaze Crew Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $10-12.

Short Fuse, Deadringers, Tyrannosaurus Christ Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Slender, Trevor Childs and the Beholders, Corruptors Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $7.

2Me Ireland’s 32. 10pm, $5.

BAY AREA

*Death Angel, Skinlab, Kaos Uptown. 9pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Big B. and His Snakeoil Survivors Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.tuesdaynightjump.com. 8:30pm, $10.

"Bird and Beckett Bash" Miraloma Clubhouse, 350 O’Shaughnessy, SF; (415) 586-3733. 1pm, $10. With Jimmy Ryan Trio, 77 El Deora, Woe Legion, Chuck Peterson Quintet, Jonathan Richman, and more.

Pascal Bokar and band Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $5.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Jessica Johnson Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm.

Mint Condition Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Candela Ramp Restaurant, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm.

Carnaval Del Sur Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, $12.

Jordan Carp Caffe Trieste, 1667 Market, SF; (415) 551-1000. 7:30pm, $10.

Toshio Hirano Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Erston Pearcy Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Ashley Rains Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Sean Smith Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Wholphin DVD Release Party Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10. With live music performances by Jeff Manson and the Lonesome Heroes, and Wholphin DVD magazine screening.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx. Colombia y Panama Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Cumbia and Latin with DJs Beto, Vinnie Esparza, and Vanka.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm-2am, $5. Hip-hop from the 90s with DJs Jamie Jams, Emdee, and Stab Master Arson.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Keys N Krates Club Six. 9pm, $10. With DJs Franchise, Sake1, and Double A spinning hip hop.

Knocked Up Knockout. 6-9pm, free. With DJ Touchy Feely.

Minimal Dose Jelly’s at Pier 50, 295 Francois, SF; (650) 533-9048. 10pm, $20. With a live performance by Seuil and DJs Alland Byallo, Clint Stewart, and J. Philip spinning techno and house.

TekAndHaus Anu, 43 6th St., SF; (415) 543-3505. 10pm, $5. With DJ Zenith and special guest Brett Johnson spinning house and techno.

Villainy DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10. DJs Party Ben, Tomas Diablo, Dangerous Dan, and Donimo spinning electro, dance, new wave, and indie.

SUNDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Chris "Kid" Anderson Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Alyse Black, Aly Tadros Retox Lounge. 8pm.

George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $42.50.

Cuban Cowboys, Cordero, Carne Cruda Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $12.

Dungen, Woods, Kurt Vile Bottom of the Hill. 8pm, $14.

Gang Gang Dance, Ariel Pink, Amanda Blank Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

*"Grind for the Green" Yerba Buena Gardens, Fourth St at Mission; www.grindforthegreen.com. Noon-4pm, free. With Dead Prez, Mistah F.A.B., Fiyawata, and more.

"Indie Abundance Tour" El Rio. 1pm. With Chantelle Tibbs, Deborah Crooks, and Emily Bonn.

Mike Dillon’s GoGo Jungle Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $10.

Minus Five, Baseball Project and Steve Wynn IV Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

*Os Mutantes, Extra Golden Independent. 9pm, $25.

"Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival" Golden Gate Park, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. Noon, $95-595. With Tenacious D, M.I.A., Ween, Modest Mouse, and more.

Space Waves, Dreamtiger, Heavy Water Experiments Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lucid Lovers Harris’ Restaurant, 2100 Van Ness, SF; (415) 673-1888. 6:30pm.

Mint Condition Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

Savanna Jazz Trio and jam Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Fiesta Andina! Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7pm, $12. With Eddy Navia and Sukay.

Forro Brazuca Ramp Restaurant, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm.

Jack Gilder, Kevin Bemhagen, Richard Mandel, and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Salsa Sunday El Rio. 4:15pm, $8. With Mazacote.

Uptones, Coup De Ska Amnesia. 8pm, $7-10.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJs Sep and guests Maga Bo and DJ Chicus.

45Club the Funky Side of Soul Knockout. 10pm, free. With dX the Funky Granpaw, Dirty Dishes, and English Steve.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Quinn Deveaux and the Blut Beat Review, Con Brio, Dirty Boots El Rio. 8pm, $5.

Indianna Hale, Old Believers, Red River Hemlock Tavern. 7pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

Quartet San Francisco Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Gino Napoli Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Paulo Presotto and the Ziriguidum Orkestra, Tribaletricos Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Krazy for Karaoke Happy Hour Goes All Night Knockout. 7pm-2am, free. With host Deadbeat.

Mainroom Mondays Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. Live the dream: karaoke on Annie’s stage and pretend you’re Jello Biafra.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Punk Rock Sideshow Hemlock Tavern. 10pm, free. With DJ Tragic and Duchess of Hazard.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bridge, Allofasudden Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $8.

Casualties, Krum Bums, Mouth Sewn Shut, Static Thought Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12.

DeatHat, Peculiar Pretzelmen, Corpus Callosum Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Tim Easton, Brandi Shearer Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

*MDC, Poison Control, Bum City Saints Knockout. 10pm, free.

Duke Robillard Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Smile Brigade, Bunny Numpkins and the Kill Blow Up Reaction Kimo’s. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

Everest Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Mucho Axe, Fogo Na Roupa Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck, Taypoleon, and D-Runk.

Drunken Monkey Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, free. Rock ‘n’ roll for inebriated primates like you.

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

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx. *

Time travelers

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"I thought it would be funny to do a total stereo split, as if the past and the present were trying to have a conversation with each other," says Scott Ryser, describing "East West," a track on the compilation History of the Units: The Early Years, 1977-1983 (Community Library). "I like the idea that these radically different sounds can share a ‘present’ time together."

That idea is the motivation behind this article’s collection of short profiles. Recently singled out for a rave by Pitchfork, Ryser’s synth-punk group the Units is one of four innovative or fierce Bay Area musical forces currently experiencing a contemporary renaissance. Sugar Pie DeSanto’s soul, the Pyramids’ free jazz, and San Francisco Express’s fusion have also inspired reissues or archival compilations. The message is loud and clear: old is new and radical in this era of free-floating sound. (Johnny Ray Huston)

SUGAR PIE DESANTO It’s no surprise that New Yorkers called Sugar Pie DeSanto the female James Brown. Like a woman possessed, she pantomimed her petite frame across the stage almost comedically, gyrating to the doo-wop, soul, and R&B that dominated Chicago’s famed Chess record label. In fact, De Santo sang with Soul Brother No. 1 in the early 1960s, and her presence made a competitive impression upon the hardest-working man in showbiz. "James was cool with Sugar," De Santo says over the phone, her voice husky and distinctive. "He was a fanatic about his music."

Now in her 70s, the San Francisco-born Oakland resident has seen much during her 57 years in the music industry. DeSanto’s list of contemporaries includes Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Jackie Wilson, and Etta James. She may not perform live quite as often as she once did, but she’s as risqué now as ever. The new compilation Go Go Power: The Complete Chess Singles 1961-1966 (Ace/Kent) is a great starting point if you aren’t familiar with her work. The package includes a dynamic photo of her scissor-locking an unassuming Londoner with her thighs during a performance. Lyrically, "Use What You Got" deals with notions of natural beauty, superficiality and what it was like to grow up African American and Filipino in SF’s Fillmore District. "There was a lot of jealousy," DeSanto remembers. "I had long Filipino hair. It [being multi-racial] wasn’t as common or as easy as it is today. Girls would talk crap in the neighborhood."

With 100 original songs under her belt, DeSanto still receives residuals for compositions penned for Fontella Bass and Minnie Ripperton. A producer at Chess heard a similarity between DeSanto and James, and a few of their subsequent duets are included on Go Go Power. "We recorded in the studio together [in Chicago]," says DeSanto. "We didn’t go on the road together." Today, the Queen of the West Coast Blues likes to ride her bike. She’s looking forward to performing at Oakland’s Jack London Square on September 12th. (Andre Torrez)

THE PYRAMIDS Bad seeds can accidentally generate something good — you can thank an exploitative imposter for contributing to a new surge of interest in the free jazz of the Pyramids. According to the group’s Idris Ackamoor, "someone masquerading as a Pyramid" gave the blessing for the respected Japanese label EM to reissue the group’s 1976 album Birth Speed Merging on CD. Shortly after Ackamoor discovered this ruse, EM embarked on a more expansive — and legit — collection of his music, Music of Idris Ackamoor, 1971-2004. Now, Birth Speed Merging and two earlier Pyramids albums — 1973’s Lalibela and 1974’s King of Kings — are alive again on vinyl, thanks in part to Dawson Prater’s Ikef label.

"I’ve lost a lot of things in my life, but for all these years, I’ve managed to hold on to all of the masters of the Pyramids," says Ackamoor, who is busier than ever today due to Cultural Odyssey, his multi-faceted collaboration with Rhodessa Jones. (Before a new set of Bay Area performances next year, a trip to Russia is on the horizon.) Ackamoor was right to hold on to his barely-tapped treasure trove of Pyramids material, because the group’s music is built to last. Birth Speed Merging scorches ears with proto-noise. Accompanied by Ted Joans’ written ideas about Afro-Surrealism, King of Kings astounds (the bass runs of "Nsorama") and hypnotizes ("Queen of the Spirits"), in turn.

Such sounds will be a revelation to young listeners, even — or perhaps especially — those whose sensibilities have been shaped by the journeying spirit of the late Alice Coltrane. To paraphrase a credo, the Pyramids played music to make fire and make souls burst out from bodies. "They’ve tried to snuff out that avant-garde energy," Ackamoor notes, when discussing then and now. "This music wasn’t meant to sell drinks. When I listen to it, it even inspires me. I listen to how I sounded, and the freedom with which I played when I was so young — 19, 20, 21. The intensity is so refreshing. I didn’t realize I could play so long." (Huston)

SAN FRANCISCO EXPRESS In the 1970s, San Francisco churned out quality music like nobody’s business. But many of those recordings — despite their innovation or solidity — never saw the light of the day. And so today preservationists abound, seeking to revive the lost treasures discarded in the wake of this music renaissance. Recently, the one and only effort of jazz-funk outfit San Francisco Express, Getting It Together (Reynolds/ Family Groove, 1979), hit the shelves for a new generation. The album embodies the lush cosmic spirit of free form jazz grounded seamlessly in deep pocket funk.

Little is known about Getting It Together. Daniel Borine, Family Groove label owner and source of the reissue, says that the set was recorded circa 1975 at Dr. Patrick Gleeson’s infamous Different Fur studios in SF’s Mission District. Gleeson, who played Moog synthesizer for the arrangement, doesn’t remember the album by name. But oddly enough, Getting It Together recalls Gleeson’s monumental direction for Herbie Hancock on the visionary, electrified jazz of Crossings (Warner, 1971) and Sextant (Sony, 1972) as well as Charles Earland’s epic odyssey, Leaving This Planet (Prestige, 1973). Even though Getting It Together was recorded just after these groundbreaking works, the small independent label Reynolds postponed its release until ’79, possibly due to in-house quarrels. The original pressing provided no substantive information on the recording. And, seemingly outdated amid the burgeoning new sounds of modern soul and disco, it quickly faded into dusty record bins across the country.

Despite Getting It Together‘s unfortunate reception, few jazz-funk records of the mid-1970s sound as cohesive. The sonic landscape shifts effortlessly between conventional melodies and spacey grooves without losing a consistent magnetism. Virtuoso trumpeter Woody Shaw carries the powerhouse horn section, bursting with psychedelic warmth over heavy hitting drum breaks courtesy of Afro-inspired drummer E.W. Wainwright. Gleeson’s keys evoke a sensual intelligence and informed taste for adventure. A remarkable synthesis of the lively experimental jazz era, Getting It Together still feels as inspired and fresh as ever. (Michael Krimper)

THE UNITS Fate and a bond with the musician Bill Nelson once led them to share three squares a day with Robert Plant, but the Units were a punk or post-punk band. And like any great punk or post-punk band, they lived for confrontation. They played in JC Penney storefront windows and even performed the national anthem at a boxing match.

Still, when the Units invoked the smashing of guitars, they did so as a gesture of contempt towards that six-string signifier of readymade rebellion as much as a protest against traditional authority. Whether singing about burritos and how "the Mission is bitchin’" or adapting Gregory Corso’s poetry to song, the Units, you see, wielded keyboards as sonic weapons.

The group’s Scott Ryser has some primarily fond and often very specific memories of the keyboards in question. The Arps, the Octigans, the Roland Junos, and various Korgs and Casios. The Sequential Circuits 800 Sequencer, "without question the most promising and at the same time most belligerent" of the group’s many "unruly kids." And his "sweetheart," the Minimoog, an invention "better than the automobile and the electric dildo combined." For Ryser, "the Minimoog sounds like god and the devil singing in harmony."

God and the devil sing in harmony throughout History of the Units: The Early Years, 1977-1983 (Community Library) — that is, when they aren’t breaking down gloriously. Or colliding against the live drumming that distinguishes the Units from just about any other synth group. ("I just don’t see how a synth band can kick ass without real drums," opines Ryser.) Nervy narratives like "Bugboy" and "High Pressure Days" reflect Ryser’s background writing stories and novels, while the sprawling, gorgeous instrumental "Zombo," inspired by Walter/Wendy Carlos, sounds contemporary today. Unlike many retrospective collections, History of the Units avoids nostalgia — in fact, Ryser adds a blitz of contemporary images to the sleeve art. "To me, the best thing about our band was just the idea of it," he says. Maybe so, but the reality of the Units will trigger more fine ideas. (Huston)

YACHT rocks

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER The path of true love — even the healing, heartfelt, pathologically curious, perpetually vision-seeking path of Newest Age, dance-punk, pop-mantra true love — is never smooth. Nor bruise-free, when reality — and task of where exactly to place those four feet — meets calamity.

"There were kinks to work out when Claire joined the band," says YACHT’s Jona Bechtolt on the inclusion of kindred spirit and soul mate (and writer, artist, and musician) Claire L. Evans in his once one-man project. "We didn’t know how to work in each other’s space."

"We still don’t," Evans cheerfully interjects.

"I stepped on Claire the other night!" exclaims Bechtolt, 28. But like so many other things in the curiouser-and-curiouser whirl of YACHT (Young Americans Challenging High Technology), what might seem like an issue — or grounds for a major band or couple’s squabble — is actually a point of modest, optimistic pride.

"We are incredibly paranoid," he continues. The couple first met four years ago while playing the same basement noise show in Los Angeles. "We don’t want to play the same show twice. I’ve played in countless rock bands before, so I know what it’s like to play the same memorized parts again and again. That sort of thing doesn’t work for me as a human being, though I’m not putting those bands down at all. We want to provide an alternative to rock performance, using PowerPoint, video screens …"

"We want to make it a two-way performance where the audience is a part of it," adds Evans, 24.

"We want to break the rules of honoring personal space," Bechtolt says, laughing. "We want to enter people’s personal space physically and emotionally and visually!"

To that end, YACHT wants to take its performance to the audience floor, through the crowd itself, into caves and high schools, or onto a barge boasting a sustainable geodesic dome and drifting down the Hudson River — just as they did the other night under the aegis of WFMU. Space and all the physical and psychic mysteries, conspiracy theories, and belief systems, within and without, are a preoccupation for the pair, who, over the phone from NYC, come across like wonderfully wise, fresh-headed, and all-American enthusiasts — wild-child music ‘n’ art makers in a persistent state of evangelical high energy.

Marfa, Texas’ mystery lights made their way, for sure, onto YACHT’s new album, See Mystery Lights (DFA): the otherwise-Portland, Ore.-based couple relocated to the town for an unofficial residency to study the phenomenon and expand on the seeds of the LP: eight minute-long mantras. "We gave the first version of the record to DFA and asked them for notes, and they were like, ‘Whoa, this is really weird.’ It was eight minutes long," says Bechtolt. "They were freaked out and said, ‘It’s really good, but how do we put it out?’ They gave us the challenge to turn those mantras in pop songs."

(Though never fear, those mantras aren’t lost to the ages: the pair plans to release them on 100 lathe-cut copper discs, as well as a slew of companion works including a "bible" of sorts and software that will allow followers to keep tabs on YACHT. "We’re really into objects right now," confesses Bechtolt.)

And what pop. Lights twinkles then zigzags with all the frenetic future-boogie ("Summer Song," "It’s Boring /You Can Live Anywhere You Want") and raw pop hooks ("I’m in Love with a Ripper") of a so-called DFA combo, as well as nuggets of life-and-death wisdom ("Ring the Bell," "The Afterlife"). YACHT appears to be making music that harks to less than widely referenced sources like Art of Noise, Malcolm McLaren, and other awkward yet insinuating, conceptually-minded pop experimentalists of the ’80s — and those final seconds when the pop charts seemed to skeptically embrace the musical musings of so many art school refugees.

"There’s a repetitive nature built into pop and dance music, so for these atonal mantras we were working on, it turned out to be a better way to disseminate our message," Evans explains. "We’re excited that you can hide a lot in pop music. You can appreciate it on two levels." Two true. *

YACHT

Fri/7, 8:30 p.m., $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

rickshawstop.com

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GRIS GRIS

The crafty psych magicians are dormant no more. With Spindrift and Ty Segall. Fri/7, 9 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

LA PLEBE AND HIGHTOWER

Party with us, punkers, for la causa. With Bar Feeders and Fucking Buckeroos. Sat/8, 4 p.m., $8–$20 sliding scale donation for the SF Tenants Union. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. www.elriosf.com

TECUMSEH

Sunn O))) worshipers might appreciate the Portland, Ore., foursome’s black atmospherics, anarchic electronics, and love o’ the heavy. With Barn Owl, Squim, and Oaxacan. Sun/9, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

See here now

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This is the third year of the Guardian’s photography issue, and fittingly, three themes or commonalities are at the forefront.

First, there is an emphasis on urban landscape or place — while we’ve always only showcased work by Bay Area artists, this year a number of photographs overtly consider specific settings in SF and surrounding areas as part of their subject matter. Or, in the case of John Chiara and Aaron Rosenstreich, their chief subject.

Second, this issue often — though not always — looks like trans or queer spirit. Molly Decoudreaux, Jack Fulton, Katy Grannan and Josh Kirschenbaum all capture moments in the neverending gender play that is San Francisco life. The vast breadth and wildly different shadings of their collective vision is itself quite different from the East Coast trans visions of Diane Arbus and, later, the "Boston School" (David Armstrong, Nan Goldin, and the under-known Mark Morrisroe).

Third, there is a tension between now and then, thanks to a 1968 photo by Fulton, a contribution from archivist Robert Flynn Johnson, and the issue’s more contemporary looks at local faces and places.

To borrow a phrase from SF Camerawork curator Chuck Mobley — who remodeled it from documentary filmmaker Thom Andersen, who in turn took it from porn director Fred Halsted — in the images that follow, San Francisco plays itself. It’s a great performance. (Johnny Ray Huston)

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459-chiang.jpg

JAMES CHIANG

TITLE Untitled

BACKGROUND This image is from a recent collaboration with the kind folks of the San Francisco Food Bank.

SHOUT OUTS Josh Kirschenbaum’s work has always been my primary source of photographic inspiration. Special thanks to the Academy of Art Photo Department, and the wonderfully talented students there for allowing the exigency of my work to expand beyond just the printed medium.

WEB www.jameschiang.com

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459-chiara.jpg

JOHN CHIARA

TITLE Bowdoin at Harkness, 2008

BACKGROUND I photograph cityscapes in a process that is part photography, part event, and part sculpture — an undertaking in apparatus and patience. Many times this process involves composing pictures from the inside of a large hand-built camera that is mounted on a flatbed trailer and produces large scale, one-of-a-kind, positive exposures.

SHOUT OUTS Artists I have worked with and those who have been inspirational are Jean Graf, P.K. Steffen, Michael Ninnan Hermann, Sue Ciriclio, Linda Flemming, Jim Goldberg, Stephen Goldstein, Larry Sultan, Richard Misrach, Marco Breuer, and Muriel Maffre .

SHOW "An Autobiography of the Bay Area, Parts 1 and 2," Sept. 1 through Oct. 31. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020. www.sfcamerawork.org.

WEB www.lightdark.com

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MOLLY DECOUDREAUX

TITLE Go-Go Outfit, Lamp, and Heels (Mica Phelan), 2008

BACKGROUND This is from "The Creatives: Daytime Portraits From a Queer Nightlife," a series of portraits of San Francisco’s DJs and drag queens in their personal spaces. Mica Phelan, a.k.a. "VivvyAnne ForeverMore," is the creator of Tiara Sensation and Beast clubs and the designer behind House of Horseface, as well as a method go-go dance master.

SHOWS "The Creatives," Sept. 15 through Oct. 15. The Seventh Heart, 1592 Market, SF. (415) 431-1755, www.myspace.com/theseventhheart. Also: Nov. 10-Dec. 18 at the Lexington Club, 3464 19th St., SF. (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com

WEB www.mollydecoudreaux.com

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SERGIO DE LA TORRE

TITLE Waiting for Olafur Eliasson (from "Drivers"), 2009

BACKGROUND The idea is to photograph a series of limousine service drivers at different international airports. In front of the camera, a driver patiently waits with a sign in hand for an artist that will never arrive. The artists include Gabriel Orozco, Olafur Eliasson, and Francis Alÿs, among others. The artists’ names are selected based on their international presence within contemporary art spaces including museums, galleries, publications, and art events over the last nine years.

The process involves hiring a limousine driver to go to the airport and pick up a given artist. Drivers are expected to arrive five minutes before the arrival and wait for 10 minutes. These photos are not staged. The driver is real and he believes the artist he is waiting for will likely arrive, like in Waiting for Godot where two tramps wait by a sickly-looking tree for the arrival of M. Godot. The tramps quarrel, make up, contemplate suicide, try to sleep, eat a carrot, and gnaw on some chicken bones. Between the first and second day, the tree has sprouted a few leaves.

SHOW "An Autobiography of the Bay Area, Parts 1 and 2," Sept. 1 through Oct. 31. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020. www.sfcamerawork.org.

WEB www.maquilopolis.com

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JACK FULTON

TITLE Three on a Cadillac (from the portfolio "Nellie’s (K)night: Black and White Photographs From Halloween 1968, the Tenderloin, San Francisco, CA")

BACKGROUND The prelude to this is Martin Luther King’s death in April, and Mario Savio’s defiance at University of California Berkeley in 1964. It is ALL about freedom of being who you are and being appreciated for that. In 1968, when these photographers were made, the only night a man could "legally" dress as a woman in public places was on Halloween. In the then-Tenderloin, the baths were open and fun was everywhere with the police supporting the whole thing.

SHOUT OUTS Thank you to Brennan and Don Guynes

SHOW "New Works by Togonon Gallery Photographers," Nov. 5 through Dec. 5. Togonon Gallery, 77 Geary, second floor, SF. (415) 398-5572.

WEB www.jackfulton.net; www.togononongallery.com

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ROBERT FLYNN JOHNSON

TITLE "Buddha Pests"

BACKGROUND In this anonymous photograph, Bohemian Club members somewhat irreverently sit in the hands of a 70-foot plaster replica of the Daibutsu of Kamakura, Japan that was made for the "Buddha Jinx" of 1892 in Muir Woods. The next year, the Bohemian Grove was permanently relocated north to Monte Rio.

MONOGRAPHS Anonymous: Enigmatic Images From Unknown Photographers (Thames and Hudson) and The Face in the Lens (University of California, 208 pages, $45).

SHOW "Hunters and Gatherers: Photographs from the Private Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson," through Aug. 29. Modernism Gallery, 685 Market, SF. (415) 541-0425,

www.modernisminc.com

WEB flynnjohnson@gmail.com

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ROCKY MCCORKLE

TITLE Wishing Well (from "You and Me On A Sunny Day," 2007)

BACKGROUND For the past few years, I have been constructing a silent film narrating the internal discourse of an elderly woman in today’s pervasively influential world. Through a sequence of stills, "You and Me On A Sunny Day" explores the impact that film and fictional media has on her way of life.

SHOUT OUTS Special thanks to Gilda Todar for her extraordinary acting and dedication. We’ve taken photographs for this project nearly every Sunday since 2007.

AWARD McCorkle is one of the winners of Flash Forward, the Magenta Foundation’s annual international competition for emerging photographers. A book launch will be held at Lenox Contemporary in Toronto, Canada, in October.

WEB www.rockymccorkle.com

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AARON ROSENSTREICH

TITLE Illinois Street, San Francisco (from Ocular Landscape), 2007

BACKGROUND This is an image taken from my studio window near the Mirant power plant. In that particular moment the sky was extraordinarily apocalyptic. This image is part of a series of constructed landscapes in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SHOUT OUTS Eugene Atget, William Christenberry, vernacular landscape photographs, neighborhood histories, urban planning

SHOW "PastForward: The 25th Anniversary Exhibition," through Aug. 29. The LAB, 2948 16th St., SF. (415) 864-8855, www.thelab.org www.thelab.org

WEB www.aaronrosenstreich.com

The blackout factor

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news@sfbg.com

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This chart shows how customers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. face far more power outages than customers of any of the public power agencies in the Bay Area

Noel Birbeck makes signs. In a low, nondescript building tucked into a south of Market side street, a printing machine spits out personal greetings and corporate messages in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

Until the power goes out.

"We print things that are up to 50 feet long," said Birbeck, the business manager of Budget Signs. "If the power goes out at foot 35, we have to start the printing process all over and throw out all that time and money that went into the initial printing."

And that, unfortunately, has been happening far too often. In fact, a Guardian review of available data shows that customers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. lose power much more frequently than customers of municipally-owned and operated utilities.

That costs money and harms the local business climate.

"[Any disruption] is a huge deal," Birbeck said. "If we’re in the middle of a deadline and a customer expects something at a certain time, that can cost Budget Signs a huge amount of money. No one is going to pay you for something that is only kinda done."

The last major outage cost Budget Signs more than $300 in employee and company time as Birbeck and her workers waited for the power to return. It’s a manageable amount, but she insists she can’t put a price on the inconvenience, the uncertainty, and the potential loss of business.

Reliable power is a basic requirement of most businesses. Restaurants and markets need refrigeration, factories need to power production lines, office buildings run large computing systems, retailers need to run cash registers, lights, and credit card machines. An unexpected power outage can cost San Francisco businesses thousands of dollars.

A 2001 study by the Electric Power Research Institute estimates the cost of power disruptions to California businesses is between $11.5 million and $17.8 million annually.

No utility can guarantee year-round power without disruptions, surges, brownouts, or severe weather-related outages. But reliability varies widely among California utilities.

PG&E breaks its service area into districts, and, according to reports it submits annually to the California Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco customers experienced an average of two hours of non-weather-related outages per year over the last six years. (Weather-related incidents are not reported at the district level.)

That’s better than the three-hour average across PG&E’s entire California service area. Still, PG&E customers in San Francisco lose power, on average, 2.5 times as often as customers of other Bay Area utilities.

The Palo Alto Utilities Department, Silicon Valley Power in Santa Clara, Alameda Municipal Power, and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District have dramatically better records, ranging from 82 minutes a year of outage time in Sacramento to only 16 minutes in Santa Clara — and these numbers include all weather-related events.

In other words, the municipal utilities deliver power more consistently and at considerably lower rates — even before factoring in PG&E’s impending rate hike of 3.3 percent to 5.4 percent.

"We consider any widespread blackout a major event," said Larry Owens, division manager at Silicon Valley Power. "Systems can be managed to minimize storm related events — we do [that]."

MONEY FOR MAINTENANCE


There are a number of reasons why these public power sources are more reliable than PG&E: size of the service area, age of the infrastructure, administration of the organization.

"The general concept is that the more complex the topography is and the older the urban areas are … the more unreliable the system is going to be," said Mark Loy, a ratepayer advocate at the CPUC.

"For PG&E there are negative powers of scale," he continued. "They are so large and spread out that being bigger actually makes things more difficult for them to fix. In San Francisco, the circuitry PG&E uses hasn’t even been mapped out in some places, so it is all haphazard and harder to keep on top of."

Public power agencies also have more incentive to invest in maintaining their infrastructure.

Patrick Valath, manager of electric engineering at the Palo Alto Utilities Department, attributes his city’s annual average of only 65 minutes of power disruption to an "aggressive and sustained infrastructure replacement program that is spread over many years."

Alameda Municipal Power’s Alan Hangar said the annual average of only 25 minutes of outage in that city is due to years of building stability and redundancy into the system.

Santa Clara is by far the most reliable utility company in the area, Owens said, and is often ranked second in the nation. "Our current operating philosophy is to load the system with only half of what it is capable of carrying," he said. "That allows us to switch a customer to another circuit quickly, so we restore their power and make repairs on our time, not their time."

He also noted that the vast majority of Santa Clara’s power lines are underground, making them far less susceptible to damage from storms, accidents, and other interference.

Municipal utilities have more freedom than investor-owned companies like PG&E to shift the focus away from profits, revenue, and shareholder returns toward quality and customer satisfaction.

"We are customer-driven," Owens said. "They repeatedly tell us that reliability is the No. 1 priority. The cost of power is second. We have some customers who say they lose $1 million a minute in an outage, and that by far trumps the cost they pay for energy."

THE RIPPLE EFFECT


Business owners don’t need studies to tell them they are losing money because of PG&E.

Arienne Landry, owner of Just for You Café in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, faced a blackout during lunch service at her café several months ago.

"The power was out for four or five hours," she said. "During that time I’m paying people to work, but I can’t serve customers without power. I probably lost a couple of grand in sales. It’s not a severe loss, but it takes a little while to catch up."

Birbeck of Budget Signs remembers a power disruption that occurred when she was in the middle of two large printing jobs. She and an employee returned to the shop at 10:30 p.m. after a neighbor alerted her that the power had returned. She said they worked through the night to complete the jobs on deadline.

"They were our two largest jobs for our two largest companies at the time," she said. "Both jobs were over $10,000. Potential loss of either or both of these companies would have been disastrous to a small company. I really couldn’t even put a price on it."

And the cost of an outage doesn’t stop at that initial business. If the power goes out at Birbeck’s sign shop and a sign doesn’t get finished and a deadline isn’t met, Birbeck might lose money or even a client. But that client might have needed that sign for a business event, and that business event may have needed that client … and the losses can go on and on.

Those ripples are larger and go farther in many high tech industries. Larry Owens of Silicon Valley Power said that consistent, reliable power is especially important for the high tech firms located in Santa Clara, including Applied Technologies, Inc., McAfee, Inc., and Intel Corp.

"There are some processes that require a 21-day burn in," he said. "If there is a power outage, they have to start all over again. An outage can cause a company to lose market share or dominance or preferred vendor status. It ripples out a long way."

Some companies have such sensitive systems that a drop in voltage for a mere fraction of a second can shut them down and require rebooting.

"Our customers have become power-quality sensitive," Larry Owens said. "It doesn’t take an outage to harm a business. A fault on a transmission line causes the whole system to dip, a voltage dip. If you have a heavy load, it knocks the voltage down for milliseconds. If it drops enough, companies’ systems drop out."

State Sen. Mark Leno is intimately familiar with the problem — he owns Budget Signs. And he has called on the California Public Utilities Commission to investigate the problem.

"As a San Francisco small business owner, I am personally aware of the lost business I experience as a result of PG&E’s performance failures," Leno said in a press release. A June 18 letter Leno sent to the CPUC noted: "As the commission considers PG&E’s request to upgrade its grid, I would ask you to include both an investigation of these problems and PG&E’s proposed solutions to them."

Almost a month later Michael R. Peevey, president of the CPUC, responded, arguing that PG&E’s reliability rate in 2008 was better in the previous few years. He also pointed out that the utility has a formal process for filing claims and that the commission has no authority over system reliability.

That, Leno said, is unacceptable. "From reading that letter, one would never know that the mission of the California PUC is to be the protector of the ratepayer," he told us. "The ratepayers are being badly served by PG&E and the CPUC."

FILING A CLAIM


In theory, state law requires PG&E to reimburse businesses for losses caused by blackouts. A business owner or manager can find the claim form on PG&E’s Web site or can call the claims office. Each case is assigned to one of the 21 claims investigators who cover the utility’s service area. With the help of supporting documents, investigators look into the occurrence, determine PG&E’s liability and the degree of monetary loss, and compensate the business accordingly. All, according the Web site, within an average of 30 days.

Emily Mitra, owner of Dosa, which operates Indian restaurants in the Mission District and the Fillmore District followed this process — and it wasn’t that simple.

On Dec. 18, 2008, a PG&E transformer blew and both locations of Dosa lost power. Mitra had to contend with food spoilage, staff costs, down equipment, lost business, all of which added up to about $12,000.

"We filed claims, but it was a long process," she said. "A check came for the Valencia Street location immediately but for the Fillmore location, PG&E didn’t even have record of an outage."

After three months of badgering PG&E to no avail, Mitra said she contacted Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s office and the Small Business Commission.

"I was ready to sue them," she said. "I had dozens of witnesses, but that didn’t seem to faze them. It could have been a coincidence that they found the data right after we talked to the Small Business Commission. But it was a pretty quick turnaround after that."

A check arrived for the full amount of the claim. But Mitra couldn’t claim compensation for the time, energy, and frustration the claims process cost her over its three-month duration.

Birbeck told us PG&E never informed her that there was a formal claims process. "No one ever mentioned a claim to me — that has never been offered at all," she said. That’s a common complaint — although the forms are on PG&E’s Web site, the utility doesn’t widely promote or advertise that fact.

PG&E also asks business owners to provide a slew of paperwork ranging from tax records and bank statements to payroll records, revenue and expense statements, and sales receipts.

"We had to give them a lot of data," Mitra said. Because Dosa’s records are mostly digital and automated, supplying them to PG&E was the least of her problems. But, she conceded, "if you don’t run your business in a way that keeps all that data, it would be a pain in the ass."

Of course, the claims process does nothing to address issues of reliability. Neither does it guarantee that Mitra’s refrigerators won’t fail without notice, leaving her without food to serve.

It is, however, another reminder that San Francisco is not being well-served by its private utility monopoly.

Editor’s Notes

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tredmond@sfbg.com

I am done talking about Chris Daly’s personal life. It’s been a nasty, ugly discussion this past week or so, and if you want a taste, you can go to the Guardian politics blog and read dozens and dozens of comments attacking Daly, attacking me, attacking progressives in general, and raging about hypocrisy.

Okay, I’m almost done. I want to say a word about hypocrisy. I’m not so into buying foreclosed houses; it does stink of profiting off someone else’s misery. But the banks are the ones doing the foreclosure and eviction, not the buyer.

Which is not the case with Ellis Act evictions and tenancy-in-common purchases/condo conversions. You buy a TIC, you’re evicting someone, some tenant who is not quite as well-off as you. It’s legal, and not everyone who buys a TIC is evil, and I know all the caveats — but nearly all the people who have been attacking Daly (and me) in the online comments I’ve read (and in print articles, witness Michela Alioto-Pier) are supporters of TICs and condo conversions, which they refer to as homeownership opportunities.

Yes: homeownership opportunities. Yes: evictions. I’m not defending Daly here, I’m just saying.

Now then: The thing I’m not done talking about is the constant, implied, and often direct supposition that the suburbs are better places than San Francisco to raise kids. I beg to differ.

I grew up in a suburb, mostly white, mostly middle class. (More middle class than the suburbs today because the middle class was bigger and doctors, plumbers, and factory workers lived in the same subdivisions — but still, pretty homogenous.)

Today’s suburbs are more racially mixed, slightly. But they’re still essentially homogenous.

My kids go to a wonderful public school (McKinley Elementary) where everyone isn’t just like them. Some kids have one parent, or two, or are raised by relatives. Some kids go on nice fancy vacations for spring break, and some kids get their main caloric intake from the subsidized breakfast and lunch. A lot of kids don’t speak English as a first language. And for my son and daughter, they are all classmates and friends.

Yes, Chuck Nevius: Michael and Vivian see homeless people on the streets. Usually we give them money. And we talk, my kids and I, about why there are people who have no place to live, and why it’s important not just to give to charity but to try to change the conditions that allow billionaires to pay low taxes while people sleep on the streets.

And last Friday, Vivian and the other seven-year-old campers at Randall Museum camp (public, city-funded, open to all) finished a two-week session on hip-hop dance with a performance that literally made me cry.

My kids are city kids, San Francisco kids. We kick suburban ass. *

Live Shots: Tito Gonzales at Red Poppy, 7/31/09

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Text and photos by Ariel Soto

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I love how everyone makes Latin music their own, from the blonde dude shaking his head and slapping his leg in time, to the Asian couple cha-cha-chaing across the room with elegant ease and perfectly choreographed movements. At a performance on Friday, July 31st, at the Red Poppy Art House, Tito Gonzales, a renowned Cuban tres player (an instrument similar to guitar), stated that the bolero was born in Cuba, but then someone in the audience shouted out “No, es de Colombia!”

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But none of this really mattered because the only important thing that night was that everyone had a good dance partner and just enough space to shake and twist a bit. Tito’s band played all the classics, including “Besame Mucho,” and made it totally impossible for anyone to stay in their seats. If you like the Buena Vista Social Club, you’ll love Tito and his Son De Cuba. And if you missed the show on Friday, they’ll be preforming again at the San Jose Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 8th. As for the original birth place of Latin music, well, that will always be a mystery.

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