Pot

Go for Goth

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Go for Goth

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM On paper, it seems like an odd match: director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett of indie horror hit You’re Next (2011), and British actor Dan Stevens, Downton Abbey‘s erstwhile heir. On screen, however, the trio’s The Guest is the boogeyman movie of the year, weaving a synth-scored tale of a small-town family startled by the sudden appearance of a soldier (Stevens) who claims to have known the son and brother they lost in Afghanistan. David is polite, handsome, and eager to assist in any way — whether it’s carrying kegs into a party with just-out-of-high-school Anna (Maika Monroe), or breaking faces on behalf of bullied teen Luke (Brendan Meyer).

You know what happens when something’s too good to be true, and the filmmakers know you know, enabling them to have a great time teasing out this trick-or-treat of a thriller, which is set during the cell phone era but references films like 1987’s The Stepfather and John Carpenter’s 1980s heyday (which, again, they know you know — and love, just like they do). I spoke with all three during a recent phone interview.

San Francisco Bay Guardian The Guest reminded me of another thriller that came out this year, Cold in July — both tell contemporary stories using 1980s retro style. What inspired that approach?

Simon Barrett After You’re Next, Adam and I wanted to think about what got us making movies in the first place. All three of us came of cinematic awareness during the 1980s, so a lot of the movies that inspired us were genre films of the mid-to-late ’80s. We wanted to do something that had that same fun spirit and aesthetic, but we didn’t just want to do an homage or an imitation, because that’s really easy and lazy. It was about taking that same tone those movies had, and doing something original with it. That was our goal from the very beginning, when Adam started talking about The Terminator (1984) and Halloween (1978).

Adam Wingard I read an article recently about how the most homaged filmmaker of the year is John Carpenter. There’s this weird zeitgeist of filmmakers who are inspired by Carpenter and other ’80s filmmakers. All of us making these movies are around the same age, and we all grew up on movies like Big Trouble in Little China (1986). It seems like that’s what’s in the air.

SB They Live (1988) is one we’ve referenced quite a bit — the humor in that film is so extraordinarily innovative and insane. There’s never any overt jokes, but there’s a fight scene in an alley that keeps going and going, until it becomes hysterical. That’s the humor that we were influenced by and respond to: letting something become ridiculous, and calling attention to the ridiculousness, but still taking your story and characters seriously. Carpenter just nailed that and I don’t think he gets enough credit for it.

SFBG Dan, were you a fan of horror before making The Guest?

Dan Stevens Adam and Simon are far more steeped in that specific genre than I am, but I certainly grew up on a lot of cult 1980s and 1990s American horror films. The Halloween films were huge in the UK. The action thriller genre was also massive, and something we were kind of baptized with in Britain.

AW It’s interesting how these cult 1980s genre films are, pretty much worldwide, a good connecting point. When we first talked, Dan and I had a very easy conversation, because we had those through lines. Beyond that, we both connected on understanding the sense of humor in Simon’s script, and realized we should be working together.

SFBG The soundtrack — which includes Sisters of Mercy, Front 242, and Love and Rockets — plays a huge role in The Guest. What motivated your musical choices?

AW Growing up in Alabama, I knew these pot dealers who were super gothed out. I always thought that was interesting, that even in the smallest towns there are still these weird subcultures. Through people like that I became aware of bands like Death in June and Front 242. I always thought that would be an interesting thing to bring into a movie, because I hadn’t seen somebody take a realistic approach to goth sensibilities.

I had a couple of songs in mind that I thought would be good for the movie, but I didn’t want to just make a film that had a bunch of music that I thought was cool. If it’s gonna be in there, it’s got to be story-oriented and character-motivated. I knew, also, that this wasn’t a straightforward horror film, but that I wanted it to take place during Halloween. So the approach to horror in The Guest isn’t necessarily in terms of it trying to be scary. It was more taking that goth approach to it in general, which is like having fun with the macabre and that type of energy. It’s more like fun-scary imagery than it is actually horrifying. 2

 

THE GUEST opens Fri/10 in Bay Area theaters.

Now that Willie Brown is a lobbyist, will the SF Chronicle finally cut him loose?

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Now that Willie Brown is a lobbyist, will the SF Chronicle finally cut him loose?

Years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle handed Willie Brown a megaphone, but now that he’s officially recognized as a paid lobbyist, isn’t it time to yank it back?

Weekly Chronicle columnist and former Mayor Brown’s newest Ethics Commission filings show he’s been paid $125,000 to lobby the city on behalf of Boston Properties, negotiating for the developers who are threatening to sue the city over a tax deal worth up to $1.4 billion to San Francisco. Boston Properties were told going into the deal they’d pay taxes based on property values in the South of Market district, where the high-rise Salesforce Tower (formerly the Transbay Tower) and other developments will soon be built.

The loss of funding in the special tax zone known as a Mello-Roos District (which, in a twist of another sort, was created when Brown presided over the California Assembly) could jeopardize the high-speed rail extension from the Caltrain station at 4th and King streets to the new Transbay Terminal, possibly downgrading it into a very expensive bus station. We left an interview request with Brown’s assistant for this piece, but received no reply.

Brown has long sold his influence to the highest bidders, although he claimed to be their lawyer and not their lobbyist, but now Brown is legally out in the open as an advocate against the city’s interests. He’s now officially a registered lobbyist (finally).

But the Chronicle still publishes Brown’s column, Willie’s World, giving “Da Mayor” a weekly space in its prominent Sunday edition to charmingly joke away his misdeeds (which raised the eyebrows of the Columbia Journalism Review for its maddeningly obvious ethical concerns). In his newest column, Brown kiddingly brags about taking bribes:

“John Madden got off a great line the other night when we were sitting in the St. Regis lobby.

I was reading off my itinerary for the evening when he stopped me, turned to another guy and said, pointing my way, ‘He’s the kind of politician who goes everywhere. As a matter of fact, he’ll show up for the opening [sic] an envelope.’

It all depends on what’s in it.”

In his column the week before, he trumpeted a potential political ally while taking pot-shots at high speed rail, the very same project that Boston Properties seeks to defund by depriving the city of tax dollars for the Salesforce Tower project:

“There is a very impressive star on the horizon. Her name is Ashley Swearengin. She is the mayor of Fresno, and she’s running for controller against Democrat Betty Yee.

She is also a Republican who is being pilloried by other Republicans for her support of Gov. Jerry Brown’s high-speed rail project. Unlike some politicians, Swearengin has a concrete reason for backing what some are calling the ‘train to nowhere.’ It means a ton of construction jobs for Fresno.

Supporting high-speed rail, however, has cost her in the fundraising department because many potential Republican donors hate the project.”

And maybe because he’s digitally disinclined to use Twitter, in July he used the Chronicle as his own personal communications service to contact federally indicted and alleged-gun-running Sen. Leland Yee:

“Where’s Leland Yee? I’ve got everybody in town looking for our indicted and suspended state senator, and no one can find him. Leland, if you read this, call me.”

We reached out to Chronicle Managing Editor Audrey Cooper to ask her if San Francisco’s paper of record would consider retiring Brown’s column now that he’s a registered lobbyist, but didn’t hear back from her before we published. But you know, they could always go the other way: Why stop with Willie? Just give up guys, and give editorial space to BMWL (who are pushing against the Soda Tax), to Sam Singer (the high-powered public relations flak), or Grover Norquist (he could write about the virtues of libertarianism and Burning Man at once!).

But Brown is a special case all on his own. He’s no ordinary lobbyist: He has the ear of the mayor (and helped elect the mayor), and his influence cuts a swath through the city’s biggest power players, from PG&E to Lennar Corporation. He helped many current city politicians and staffers get their jobs in the first place.

The average reader not steeped in wonky political backdoor deals may not understand why giving him a column is such a bad idea. Journalist Matt Smith has long-written on Brown’s SF Chronicle conflict of interest, first for the SF Weekly and then for the now-defunct Bay Citizen. In 2011, an anonymous Chronicle staffer told this to Smith:

“‘Should the newspaper be in the business of helping an influence peddler peddle?’ the journalist asked.

‘If you believe him even 50 percent of the way, Willie Brown has a big say in San Francisco politics, which he reminds us of every week. He has a certain self-deprecating style that makes him even more charming, which kind of hides the fact that what he is really doing is bragging about all the people he knows, and all the influence he peddles. What that does is it has a multiplier effect.'”

That multiplier effect works in a few ways. First, it works almost as information-laundering: When Brown “jokes” about taking bribes, it makes any accusations of impropriety seem quaint. After all, it’s just Willie Brown, we already know he’s a wheeler-and-dealer, right? What harm could he do?

Second, it amplifies his already formidable position as a kingmaker in San Francisco politics, possibly allowing him to charge even more cash to special interests for his influence. Since he registered as a lobbyist, Brown has met five times with Mayor Ed Lee over the Salesforce Tower tax issue. And until the Chronicle’s surprising and incredibly rare editorial stance against Mayor Ed Lee’s deal, Brown almost succeeded in negotiating hundreds of millions of dollars out of city coffers and into the pockets of Boston Properties.

The Chronicle wrote scathingly in their editorial:

“The deal is baffling — and infuriating. The group of developers had already gotten special favors from City Hall.”

Swap the words “the group of developers” with “Willie Brown,” and you could say the exact same thing about Brown’s Chronicle column.

Brown even used his San Francisco Chronicle headshot in his lobbyist registration with the Ethics Commission. If that’s not a “fuck you” to the Chronicle’s sense of journalistic ethics, I don’t know what would be. The Chronicle’s photo editor told us in an email that Brown did not have permission to use the photo.

I don’t think he cares.

BROWN1

BROWN2

Keys of life

Michael Redmond
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Keys of life

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM The music biopic is a tricky beast. Very few directors are able to compellingly compress true-life tales into films that actually have some interest beyond “Hey, that famous/infamous thing you already knew about happened like this!” — though superior performances (recent Oscar-winning examples: 2004’s Ray, 2005’s Walk the Line) can help buoy the results. Far rarer are more artistically daring films that unfold more like docu-dramas than glossovers, like Control (2007) and Sid and Nancy (1986).

As with any based-on-truth film, there’s also the question of whose version of the truth is being told. In music biographies, that’s especially important, because if whoever owns the song rights doesn’t like the portrayal of the subject — or if he or she doesn’t have a finger in the box-office pie — you just might end up with a musical story that contains very limited music. This is a problem facing Jimi: All Is By My Side, written and directed by John Ridley, who won an Oscar for scripting 2013’s 12 Years a Slave. The Hendrix family noped any song permissions, so you won’t be seeing star André Benjamin, aka OutKast’s André 3000, wail through “Foxy Lady” or any other songs that hit big during the film’s time frame (it ends just before Hendrix’s stateside breakout at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival). He does get to noodle on some blues riffs, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s notorious cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” — played days after its release in front of a crowd that included astonished Beatles — is one of Jimi‘s few exhilarating moments.

However, the absence of any signature tunes is just one of the film’s problems. Controversy has already swirled around the script’s portrayal of Hendrix as a violent drunk. Former girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (Hayley Atwell) has publicly objected to the film’s depiction of her relationship with Hendrix. Faring marginally better is Linda Keith (Imogen Poots), who famously used her connections as Keith Richards’ girlfriend to help Hendrix break into the music biz. Both women come across as bossy and needy, though Jimi also spends a lot of time making Hendrix out to be an aimless drifter who probably wouldn’t have made much of himself, despite his talent, were it not for people like Keith or his manager, Chas Chandler (Andrew Buckley).

Most of Jimi takes place in swingin’ London, and Ridley conveys the cultural mood with collage snippets (the Who performs! A monk sets himself on fire!), costumes heavy on the go-go boots, and a lot of non-Hendrix tunes. The film addresses racial issues in a few scenes that don’t otherwise fit into its flow, making them feel like afterthoughts: Jimi and Kathy are harassed by the police; Jimi meets a pot-smoking activist named Michael X who encourages him to politicize his music. Stripped of his guitar, Hendrix’s preferred mode of communication is soft-spoken hippie patter (“I’m in a constant struggle against the color gray…”); he’s also fond of thrusting scribbled lyrics at the women he’s wronged as a matter of apology.

Without those electrifying songs to punctuate Hendrix’s day-to-day drama, Jimi‘s narrative is meandering at best. We already know he’s going to become a star. We know he’s going to die young. (Ridley might not know we know, however; for an Oscar-winning screenwriter, he’s sure quick to violate the “Show me, don’t tell me” rule by using onscreen text to ID such obscure characters as “George Harrison.”) Sure, maybe we don’t know how Hendrix wrote “Purple Haze,” but this movie, which contains precious few insights into his creative process, isn’t going to tell us.

 

CAVE OF WONDERS

Fortunately, the music-movie genre isn’t limited as Hollywood would like audiences to believe. Also, it helps with the authenticity factor when one’s subject is a living, willing participant. Lushly filmed by artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 20,000 Days on Earth purports to be a day in the life of moody Aussie troubadour-screenwriter-novelist Nick Cave — but is really an experimental docudrama in disguise.

It opens with Cave, now in his mid-50s, getting out of bed and admitting in voice-over, that he “cannibalizes” everything that happens in his life for his songs. Thus begins an intimate look into Cave’s songwriting, a rambling adventure that includes studio sessions for 2013’s Push the Sky Away (including some goofing off — yes, he smiles!); a chat about his childhood with psychoanalyst Darian Leader; a meal with bandmate Warren Ellis; sorting through his career archives; and scenes of Cave driving around his adopted hometown of Brighton, visiting with cohorts (Kylie Minogue, Blixa Bargeld, Ray Winstone) who appear and disappear in perfect cadence with 20,000 Days‘ themes of memory, the art of performance, and storytelling.

“Who knows their own story? Certainly it makes no sense when we’re living in the midst of it,” Cave muses. “It only becomes a story when we tell it and re-tell it.” Jimi may have lacked the catharsis from a scene depicting its subject’s triumph in Monterey, but 20,000 Days builds to a Sydney Opera House gig in which Cave croons the songs we’ve seen him create, interspersed with footage of a younger Cave thrashing around the stage in pursuit of what the film vividly captures: “this shimmering space where reality and imagination intersect.” *

 

JIMI: ALL IS BY MY SIDE and 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH open Fri/26 in San Francisco.

Head First: On “dysfunction,” freaking out, and my huge, THC-fueled orgasms

Sasha Cuttler
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Head First: On “dysfunction,” freaking out, and my huge, THC-fueled orgasms

I have very little experience with marijuana — mostly because I’m from a small, East Coast town where such a substance is referred to as “the Devil’s lettuce.”  So when Mathew Gerson, founder and inventor of the THC lube, Foria, offered me the opportunity to test out his new product, I was intrigued. 

Foria is supposed to enhance female sexual pleasure. I’ve personally never had issues with orgasms (I can hump a chair and come), but I was interested to see how some oil could make them feel even better. So I decided to try it.

Foria is THC and coconut oil mixed together. The THC functions as an aphrodisiac that relaxes you, and the coconut oil smells nice and helps to keep the PH balanced in your vagina. On Foria’s website, the product is advertised as an “all-natural plant-based medicinal.” When I asked Gerson about what inspired him to create Foria, he said that 49 percent of women in American culture report some kind of sexual disorder, and he wanted to lend a hand (or two fingers, if you will).

There aren’t sufficient facts to prove that female sexual displeasure is a physical malady, even though medical companies have been trying to sell women bullshit medication for decades (see the documentary Orgasm Inc. for the details on that heinous scheme). I think that if women have problems with arousal, the dysfunction lies in the failings of society (i.e. “pussy pounding” in mainstream porn, religious slut-shaming, etc.) and not in their physical bodies.

When I questioned Gerson on the terminology, he said: “I’m not a scientist or a physician. I use [dysfunction] hesitantly. It’s more about dissatisfaction,” said Gerson. “[The word] ‘dissatisfaction’ feels better because it’s more addressable directly, without medical intervention. If you’re dissatisfied, you feel more empowered to do something about it, but if you’ve got a dysfunction, then you feel like you have to go see an expert.”

So the language is sticky. It’s a new company. He’s a nice enough guy. I decided to let it slide… into my crotch.

The first time I tried Foria, I followed the directions to a T. I spread eagled on my bed, applied the smallest suggested dose (four sprays), massaged the Foria into my crotch, and waited 30 minutes for the THC to soak in. Then, I masturbated for 20 whole minutes and… nothing happened. Well, nothing different than usual, anyway.

The second time I tried it, I used six sprays, then masturbated for 20 minutes and… nothing happened. I even squirted four spritzes into my mouth to see if it would take the edge off. I didn’t feel any different and didn’t orgasm any harder. 

I sent Gerson a text to tell him that the Foria bottle was faulty, to which he replied: “Expectations create residual stress in the body that actually inhibit plant medicine from doing its thing.” 

So if I was thinking or worrying too much about orgasm, then Foria would have no effect? Isn’t this product for women who are worried about or can’t have orgasms? 

I was convinced the bottle was shoddy. So in my confident bout of ignorance, I sprayed the highest dose of Foria (8 sprays) into my mouth, convinced it would have no effect.

Let me take a moment to offer you some advice: If you’re a small town chick with little to no experience with drugs of any kind, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES  spray 16 mg of THC into your mouth when you’re alone in your house on a Tuesday afternoon. 

Why? 

Because you will panic and call your ex-girlfriend who you haven’t spoken to in years and she won’t be in the mood to walk you through a bad high. You will open all of the drawers and cabinets in your house and trip over them in your daze. You will try to eat fruit salad, but because you’re so high, the watermelon will taste like rubbing alcohol. You will freak out and let your brain trick you into thinking you’re having a heart attack (you’re not). And you will keep telling yourself that no one has ever died from pot until you stick your finger down your throat and puke for 10 minutes.

So, yeah, the bottle wasn’t faulty. Hindsight’s a dick, isn’t it? I decided to give the Foria one more go. 

The next night, I sprayed on the oil, waited a whole hour, and then my boyfriend and I had sex. Really, really good sex. And finally… something happened. 

I had a super long orgasm. It lasted around 45 seconds, when usually my orgasms last about 10-15. My boyfriend’s wrist and tongue started cramping. When I finally stopped coming, my abs hurt and I was so out of breath that I told my boyfriend to wait a couple minutes before continuing. So we took a break, and then we did it again. And again. And again. And then I was so tired from having orgasms that I thought I would pass out.

The third try was a charm. 

I believe that all women can have fully functioning orgasmic vaginas with nothing but patience, a loving partner, and a map of the clitoris. But since Foria actually worked for me (eventually) to produce longer orgasms, then I can only imagine how it would help to enhance the sexual experience of someone who can’t come at all. I don’t think that women should permanently rely on a substance to get them off, but I see no reason why Foria can’t be used as a tool to help women begin to connect with their bodies.

Plus, giving people the opportunity to get high off pussy encourages the act of cunnilingus — and Lord knows society needs more practice with that.

Jock joints

Michael Redmond
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Jock joints

culture@sfbg.com

CULTURE Jim McAlpine wants the world to know that not all marijuana users are lazy, permanently couch-locked, junk-food addicted stoners. That’s why McAlpine is organizing the 420 Games, a series of athletic competitions in which weed enthusiasts will run, walk, and bike their way to larger societal acceptance.

The Games’ inaugural event, a five kilometer fun run in Golden Gate Park Sat/13 that McAlpine hopes will attract 500 participants, will be followed by a road cycling competition in Marin County, a “Marijuana Olympics Challenge” in Sacramento, and foot races across the state. “What better way to prove that you’re not a stoner just because you use marijuana, than [by] going out and being motivated and athletic?” McAlpine points out in an e-mail interview with the Guardian.

The visual of hundreds of healthy weed users jogging en masse through Golden Gate Park’s winding green thoroughfares seems like an apt PSA for responsible pot use. The 420 Games also just sound like a good time. At the inaugural event, attendees have the option to skip the athletics completely and come for the afterparty, which features an artisanal beer garden sponsored by Lagunitas and a set by Zepparella, an all-female Led Zeppelin cover band.

Those expecting the baseball bat-sized joints and puking, littering high schoolers present each year at the 4/20 celebrations on Hippie Hill in the park, be warned: There will be no sanctioned on-site cannabis use at the 420 Games, and attendees are encouraged to drag only on legal weed before and after the event. The Games are not a free-for-all smoke out, radical demonstration, or a call to legalize weed now; rather, McAlpine has packaged his sporting events in a way that will encourage even cannabis skeptics to examine their views about marijuana in 2014.

In his previous life, McAlpine was an entrepreneur who ran a discount ski pass company. But drought and years of dismal snowfall have driven McAlpine to find additional ways to spend his time. He was inspired by the potential of the cannabis industry, and seeks to use many of the proceeds from the 420 Games to fund a 501c3 nonprofit, the PRIME Foundation, which he’s establishing. Though PRIME has yet to begin educational programming and McAlpine has few details on when it will begin operating, he told the Guardian that he wants the organization to be a source of education for youth and adults about marijuana addiction, and about the very real benefits of weed and hemp. “I hope we can begin to raise some money to create campaigns to really educate the public on topics like this,” he says, referring to the 420 Games kickoff.

Of course, the 420 Games are not the only proof that weed-smoking athletes exist. One need only look at the countless Olympians and NFL, NBA, and NFL players who have been caught with pot to know that the sporting life is not one that is necessarily devoid of THC. The highest-profile case was that of swimmer Michael Phelps, the Olympic phenom who has won more medals than anyone in the history of the Games (22 total, 18 of them gold). In 2009, three months after dominating the lanes in Beijing, a leaked photo appeared to show Phelps smoking a bong. Since the photo’s depicted infraction took place during the off-season, Phelps escaped Olympic sanctions, but he did receive a competition suspension and lost a few endorsement deals.

In 1998, Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was nearly stripped of his Olympic gold medal after a post-competition positive drug test, but ducked punishment when it was proven that marijuana wasn’t officially on the banned list of the Olympics’ governing board. It was added three months later, which meant American judo star Nicholas Delpopolo was expelled from the 2012 London Olympics when his results came back positive for pot (he maintains he unwittingly ate weed-infused food, but no exception was extended for ignorance of intoxication).

Josh Gordon of the Cleveland Browns was the NFL’s leading receiver during the 2013 season when he failed a drug test for pot. The league recently announced he will be suspended for the entire 2014 season. Pittsburgh Steelers running backs Le’Veon Bell and LeGarrette Blount were pulled over with weed in their car last month, but have yet to be suspended from play. And of course, who could forget SF Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum’s 2009 off-season misdemeanor charge, when a pipe and weed were found in his car’s center console during a traffic stop? The list of athletes who have been discovered with weed is rather lengthy, all things considered.

The NHL has removed marijuana — and all drugs not deemed to be performance-enhancing — from its list of banned substances, choosing instead to offer optional addiction counseling to athletes who repeatedly test positive. But NFL spokespeople have repeatedly asserted that no change will be forthcoming in the league’s weed policy. This is especially distressing given that football players likely stand to benefit much more than most people, particularly athletes, from marijuana’s pain management effects. A lawsuit filed earlier this year by 750 ex-NFL players takes on the league for alleged distribution of opioid painkillers that have been shown to have detrimental long-term effects on players’ health.

Cannabis’ natural painkillers are a different story. In an interview with the Fusion network, former Chicago Bears defensive tackle Tank Johnson estimated that 70 to 80 percent of NFL players “gravitate toward the green,” and not just for recreational use. “Managing and tolerating your pain is how you make your money in this game,” Johnson said.

Berkeley doctor Frank Lucido knows full well why sports enthusiasts would turn to marijuana. “Some athletes might benefit from using cannabis after sports for the acute pain and inflammation from that recent activity or trauma,” Lucido writes in an e-mail interview with the Guardian. “Depending on the sport, a player may use cannabis before to ease chronic pain or muscle spasm, so they can function better.”

Lucido said he has prescribed various ex-NFL players medical marijuana, has worked with patients on seeking cannabis treatment since the passage of Prop. 215 in 1996, and holds the opinion that performance in some noncompetitive sports can benefit from cannabis use beforehand. He’s not alone. Others have commented anecdotally that weed can improve sporting ability, especially in pursuits involving high levels of finesse like golf and bowling.

McAlpine says thus far no pro athletes have announced their support of the 420 Games. In our interview, he alludes to plans to approach Phelps’ management, but he might have better luck shooting for Rebagliati. After his close shave with Olympic disgrace, the snowboarder is now the CEO of Ross’ Gold, a Canadian company that sells 14 strains of premium branded medical cannabis. Philadelphia Flyers veteran Riley Cote is another ex-pro in the world of marijuana — he recently started a foundation to teach people about the role hemp can play in a sustainable lifestyle.

But perhaps the 420 Games will manage to sway public opinion not with the appearance of gold medal winners, but rather everyday people who use weed in their everyday lives — something that weed expos, with their green bikini babes and emphasis on innovative new ways of getting blasted, have failed to do.

“I believe very strongly that there is a huge problem with public perception of marijuana users,” says McAlpine. “Even as it becomes legal. I knew it would be a big step to take on this new venture, but it is 100 percent for a cause I believe in, so that makes it all a lot easier to get up and put the hours in.”

There’s no question that it will take many muscles to change much of professional sports’ opinion on marijuana. But maybe we can start here. Call it a joint effort. *

420 GAMES 5K FUN RUN/WALK

Sat/13, 7am check-in; 8am race; 9am-noon afterparty, $60 (afterparty pass, $42)

Bandshell, Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF

www.420games.org

Messed up: Did this man vandalize Alejandro Nieto’s memorial?

Erica Hanna
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Messed up: Did this man vandalize Alejandro Nieto’s memorial?

Alejandro Nieto was killed after a hotly debated, horrifying confrontation with the SFPD nearly five months ago. Since his death, his family and loved ones often gather at a memorial on Bernal Hill to remember Nieto. Now however, that memorial is allegedly being desecrated.

Just a week ago, a bystander caught the alleged vandal on video, following him after watching him throw pieces of the memorial down a hill.

Is this the man vandalizing Nieto’s memorial? 

From Justice4AlexNieto.org: 

Before this man was captured on video, the vigil keepers had noticed that the vandal’s most recent MO was to wait until no one was looking, then grab something from the altar, and toss it across from the altar, downhill, off the path. (Before he had also been spray painting the banner.) Sometimes only one item was missing, sometimes everything was tossed. Clearly, he didn’t want to be seen carrying off an item, so he tossed them away out of sight, whenever and whatever he could when people were not watching.

Adriana came upon him around 1:30pm on Aug. 1, 2014, just as he was tossing a set of pebbles (used to weigh down the flower pot) off the side of the hill. She took out her phone and started walking towards him. As soon as he saw her, he started walking away, keeping his face off to the side (like a knowing pro.) She didn’t confront him, because she wanted to verify the missing memorial item. Once she verified the missing pebbles, and found the pebbles exactly underneath the spot he had been standing, she felt certain that this was the Memorial Vandal.

Even more problematic is the August vandalization wasn’t even the first time Nieto’s memorial had been spray painted, or otherwise disturbed. Apparently the site had been vandalized at least three times before. Banners have been spraypainted, flower pots thrown, and other items on his memorial were trampled. 

Supervisor John Avalos, who worked closely with Nieto, told the Guardian this was “pathetic. It’s hard to ascribe any motive for vandalizing the shrine, but it certainly shows callous disregard for the community still grieving, and angry at the SFPD’s questionable killing of Alex Nieto.” 

nieto family

Nieto’s parents reconstruct their son’s memorial. Image via Justice4AlexNieto.org

There are images and video of the alleged vandal at Justice4AlexNieto.org, which you can see here. If you can identify the alleged vandal, please send any information to info@justice4AlexNieto.org. The Guardian contacted the SFPD to see what, if anything, had been done. We will update if we hear back. 

Much controversy has swirled around Nieto’s death. As the Guardian has reported, an initial examination of Nieto’s body suggests he died from wounds inflicted by at least 10 bullets, fired by multiple officers. Police initially encountered Nieto in Bernal Heights Park in response to a 911 call reporting a man with a gun. Nieto, who was employed full-time as a security guard, actually possessed a Taser and not a firearm. 

Some say it was an understandable mishap by police, as SFPD Chief Greg Suhr has claimed the setting sun obscured officers’ vision of the taser, which they assumed to be a gun due to its laser sight. Nieto’s family and others strongly question that narrative, and filed a claim against the SFPD with attorney John Burris, the fate of which is still up in the air.

No matter which side of the debate about Nieto’s death you fall on though, we should all be able to agree that desecrating a memorial site of a dead young man is just plain wrong. 

Starred, Striped

Michael Redmond
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4
Starred, Striped

culture@sfbg.com

THE WEEKNIGHTER Dave’s bar is America. I don’t mean that in the sense that you walk in the door and get the hairy eyeball, with a chaser of, “What the kind of hippie-communist-homo are you?” (Spoken in a drawl, of course). I mean it in the most basic sense — the mythic melting pot of equality and freedom. When you enter Dave’s (29 Third St, SF) you are entering a new world. It doesn’t matter how much you make (or don’t make), what you drive, or whether you work on construction sites or the human brain. All of that is left at the door. The only thing that matters is if you like to drink.

There are no mustachioed bartenders in suspenders playing with tinctures distilled from random Amazonian berries you’ve never heard of. Instead, you’re often greeted by an Irish lady who you can tell won’t take any shit, but who will also chat with you all day long. This is a fucking bar, man. Some days you show up and there’s free food put out. Other days you sit on a stool and somebody you’ve never met buys a round for the entire bar. It’s almost like Dave’s has some supernatural ability to give you whatever it is that you need on that particular day.

You sit at that bar long enough you’ll hear every kind of story imaginable, from every kind of person. You’ll walk in just to have a quick shot and a beer — and leave four hours later, having met, dunk, and talked shit with a car salesman from Oklahoma, a recently off-work janitor, a tech millionaire, and someone whose family has had 49ers season tickets since they played at Kezar Stadium. You will never see any of these people again in your life, unless you go back to Dave’s.

I’ve actually taken a few girls on first dates to Dave’s. I mean, we didn’t spend the entire time there, but used it more as a meeting place from which to embark on the rest of our activities. You’re probably saying, “Hey Stu, why would you take girl you’re trying to impress, and with whom you’re hoping to touch special places, to a dive bar like Dave’s?” Besides the fact that I’m broke and can actually afford the awesomely cheap drinks, Dave’s, in its own way, makes everyone feel comfortable. It was voted least pretentious bar in SF for this reason. Dave’s is the bar that everyone has had a good time at, even if they’ve never been there before.

These days I worry about places like Dave’s. Sure it’s been there for like 30 years or something, but it doesn’t have the shine and sheen that so many recently opened bars in SF have. For those of us who know better, this is exactly why it’s attractive. I just worry that the Robert Moseses of the world, the people who would plow a giant freeway through quaint Greenwich Village, have too much steam behind them right now. These are the people who don’t realize that having reclaimed wood and Edison bulbs and $13 cocktails doesn’t make a place special. In fact, it makes a place just like everywhere else. I’ll take a shot and a beer at Dave’s over all that fluff any day of the week. Hell, I’ll probably see you there.

Stuart Schuffman aka Broke-Ass Stuart is a travel writer, poet, and TV host. You can find his online shenanigans at www.brokeassstuart.com 

 

Read the memo detailing Mayor Ed Lee’s punishment of supervisors who supported Muni

Erica Hanna
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Read the memo detailing Mayor Ed Lee’s punishment of supervisors who supported Muni

The story is snowballing.

Mayor Ed Lee is furious at supervisors who voted for Sup. Scott Wiener’s Muni funding measure, and told reporters Monday he would hold them “accountable.”

News of the mayor’s retribution has circled round, and the timing of a memo issued by Kate Howard, the mayor’s budget director, has raised eyebrows. The memo directs city departments to prepare for budget cuts she said are called for due to Wiener’s measure.

The Guardian has obtained the memo and is embedding it below.

“Last week, the board of supervisors sent a measure to the ballot that the budget does not contemplate,” Howard wrote. “As a result of this unanticipated measure, the Mayor’s Office is directing departments to propose contingency plans that could be implemented should the measure pass.”

Howard is referencing Wiener’s new Muni funding measure, which would raise the transit agency’s funding with the population. The cost is estimated to be about $22 million annually.

Now it seems the mayor is playing for keeps. Following through on his promise to hold supervisors “accountable” for supporting Wiener’s measure, Howard directs city agencies to prepare to make cuts to new programs, hiring plans, and to “scale back existing services.”

But what Howard’s memo doesn’t say is that Muni has its own budget problems, caused not by Wiener’s new ballot measure, but by Mayor Ed Lee.

It’s really a case of the pot calling the kettle black: Lee is saying Wiener’s ballot measure will hurt the General Fund, but supervisors contend Lee hurt Muni’s budget when he pulled his Vehicle License Fee measure off the ballot.

Wiener’s new Muni funding measure was a contingency plan after Lee dropped the VLF, which blew a $33 million hole in Muni’s proposed budget.

The SFMTA outlined the consequences of a failure to pass multiple ballot measures (of which the VLF was one) in its proposed 2015/16 budget. The proposed cuts are a doom and gloom list that would make any Muni rider cut up their Clipper Card in disgust. 

 The agency said such an outcome would make it impossible to improve transit travel time and reliability, and fund pedestrian safety projects. It would also mean fewer buses and lightrail vehicles, a decline in existing infrastructure, and less funding for bicycle infrastructure, among other problems.

In other words, without ballot measures to increase Muni funding, the SFMTA is screwed. 

But when Lee’s license fee measure initially polled poorly, he got cold feet and yanked it. Yet he continued to push forward with a $500 million transportation bond measure, which remains on the ballot. Now he’s feverishly hoping to stop any competing ballot measures which may have the remote possibility of hurting its chances to succeed. 

“I agree with the mayor on many things,” Wiener told the Guardian. But, “ultimately the mayor is elected and I have to exercise my best judgment. It’s not personal, it’s a policy disagreement.”

We asked Sup. David Campos if there’s a fear that these cuts would only hit projects the supervisors favor.

“I think there’s definitely that fear,” he told us. But he noted something important.

“When we’re talking about punishing, you’re not punishing a supervisor, you’re punishing a district they represent,” he said. “Ultimately, you’re punishing constituents.”

Still, at this point, it’s not entirely clear the directives from Howard will target specific supervisor’s projects. 

“We’re concerned,” Campos said, “but we need to ask the budget director what this means.” 

Update [8/1]: Supervisor Scott Wiener sent an email to press today giving further backstory on the memo from Kate Howard regarding the budget.

From his email:

“On Wednesday, in what can only be described as an empty scare tactic, the Mayor’s Office announced that due solely to the transit measure (totaling .25% of the budget), all departments were directed to formulate emergency 1.5% contingency cuts for the 2015/16 fiscal year. The Mayor’s Office further indicated that the cuts will be directed at the “priorities” of the six Supervisors who voted to place the measure on the ballot.

For whatever reason, the Mayor’s Office felt the need to issue these emergency instructions now – a full year before the fiscal year at issue, in the middle of an election campaign, without even knowing whether the measure will pass, and regarding an amount of money that is tiny in the context of the budget. Moreover, there will be a full budget process next spring for the 2015/16 fiscal year, and if the measure passes, the $22 million at issue will simply be part of that budget.

What the Mayor’s Office neglected to mention in its announcement is the existence of a $32 million hole in MTA’s budget for the 2015/16 fiscal year. If this gap isn’t filled – and [Supervisor Wiener’s] measure will fill two-thirds of it – MTA will have to forego plans to purchase new vehicles, rehabilitate run down vehicles, replace failing train switches and signals, rehabilitate broken station elevators, make needed pedestrian safety improvements, and implement the Embarcadero Bikeway.”

Kim’s affordable housing ballot measure gutted then approved

Erica Hanna
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Kim’s affordable housing ballot measure gutted then approved

Housing is out of whack in San Francisco, and Sup. Jane Kim’s affordable housing ballot measure would’ve gone a long way towards fixing it. But that was then. Now, things are more uncertain. 

At yesterday’s [Tues/29] Board of Supervisors meeting, the board unanimously approved Kim’s Housing Balance proposal. But this was not her original ballot measure: it was gutted. Or as Kim told the board, “We were not able to come to an agreement on everything I wanted to see.”

Her originally proposed ballot measure required new housing developments to provide 30 percent affordable housing, with an opt-out mechanism possible through a hearing. Currently, developers can provide on-site affordable housing or pay money into a pot of affordable housing funding. That’s the system we’ve got now, and you can check San Francisco’s soaring rents and home prices to see how well that’s working out.

The 30 percent requirement was a strong, clear ask which may have spurred much-needed housing for middle and lower-income San Franciscans. Too strong, apparently. 

Kim’s negotiations with the affordable housing community and Mayor Ed Lee hit more than a few snags, sources told us. The mayor, frankly, didn’t like it. 

We reached out to the Mayor’s Office but didn’t hear back from them before press time. But it doesn’t take a soothsayer to see the mayor wanted the measure dead: He sent a strong signal by creating a rival ballot measure, which, if approved by voters, contained a “poison pill” which would’ve killed Kim’s measure.

“We were still negotiating down to the last minute what we’re announcing today,” Kim told the board. 

Kim’s new ballot measure no longer includes the 30 percent affordable housing requirement. In exchange for dropping the strong mandate, Kim said she wrested a number of concessions from the mayor, including: 

 

  • Pledges of a 33% affordability housing goal for all new development in Central SoMa and future area plans
  • Interim planning controls in the Central SoMa to prevent displacement in advance of the approval of the Central SoMa Plan
  • The creation of a Neighborhood Stabilization Trust to fund Affordable Housing Acquisition & Rehabilitation program
  • Commitment to identify new revenue to accelerate affordable housing projects languishing in the City’s pipeline and land acquisition strategies, including tiered in-lieu fees
  • Pledges to find sufficient funding to jumpstart public housing rehab and HOPE SF –without tapping the Affordable Housing Trust Fund
  • A legislative path forward to continue goals of Housing Balance Act, including unit count

 

Peter Cohen, co-director of the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations, put the compromise this way: “What the supervisor ended up doing [through negotiation] is forcing the city to commit itself to substantive policies for real action, in exchange for that conditional use trigger [contained in the original legislation, which would have subjected market-rate projects to addition scrutiny when affordable housing dropped below 30 percent].”

“Obviously,” Cohen said, “some people think thats a bad tradeoff.”

So Kim lost the 30 percent trigger, but gained a number of compromises. So were they a big win for affordable housing advocates? 

Sources told us the Neighborhood Stabilization Trust is a long sought-after goal of the affordable housing community, but so far no plans have been revealed about how the trust (or any of the other proposals) would be funded. The ballot measure may offer Kim some leverage to make sure those promises are funded by Lee, especially considering San Francisco’s impending 2015 mayoral race. 

“We’re presenting [voters] a ballot measure that constitutes our core values and memorializes the agreement,” Kim told the board. “Housing balance had a large journey, and it does not stop today. Thirty percent: this is a goal we should commit to as a city. Our voters want this.”

Earlier Tuesday, Kim stood with Lee at the unveiling of 60 new affordable housing units on Natoma street. Now, without a mandate, the only guarantee the city will build more affordable housing is the mayor’s word.

Housing supply and demand theory on trial at City Hall

Erica Hanna
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Housing supply and demand theory on trial at City Hall

The November ballot is shaping into a housing supply theory showdown, and yesterday’s [Thu/17] Board of Supervisors Rules Committee hearing was the first round.

The committee hosted two hearings on rival housing proposals for the November ballot: Sup. Jane Kim’s City Housing Balance Requirement and Mayor Ed Lee’s Build Housing Now initiative. The two purport to set similar goals for building affordable housing, but Lee’s proposal contains a poison pill that would invalidate Kim’s measure. 

The mayor’s philosophy on housing, a strict supply and demand argument, was on full display. 

“[Housing] is a competition based on who has the most dollars in their pocket, and the ones with the most dollars win,” Olson Lee, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing said at the hearing. “If we limit the supply, the people with the most dollars will win.”

The arguments are a little complicated, but let’s try to break them down: Kim’s initiative lays out a requirement for new construction to build 30 percent affordable housing and 70 percent market-rate housing. Currently, new construction projects can build on-site affordable or pay a fee into a pot, known as the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. If new construction needs to be exempt from the balance requirement, under Kim’s measure, that can be decided by the Planning Commission. 

But the mayor and his deep-pocketed development allies are shrinking away from this like the Wicked Witch of the West from water. Affordable housing doesn’t make a dime for developers, and the mayor fears Kim’s policy will slam the breaks on market-rate housing construction. 

Activist and San Francisco historian Calvin Welch argues supply and demand housing theories won’t solve the San Francisco housing crisis, via 48hills.

Yet Kim’s measure is based on what many progressives in San Francisco believe: San Francisco’s housing market is hot, profits are high, demand is insatiable, and building lots of market rate housing that will never be affordable to most San Francisco won’t solve the city’s affordable housing crisis. The construction pipeline won’t slow down with a few dings to profit margins, she argued. 

“I just have to say if building 30 percent affordable housing will halt development, we’re in a whole lot of trouble,” Kim said to her critics. “We have to build. Even people that make money leave San Francisco every day.”

No one is saying Kim doesn’t believe more housing needs to be built. But Lee’s staffers emphasized a belief that more housing construction alone is the solution to the city’s ills, a strategy that hasn’t exactly netted stellar results recently. They also defended the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, as the Mayor’s Office of Housing is funded about “40 percent” from developer’s fees, Olson Lee said. Sarah Dennis Phillips, from the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, argued sharply that any hit to developer’s fees, even marginal ones, would result in a loss of dollars for the city’s General Fund, the funding pot feeds most city services.

The mayor’s ballot initiative essentially asks for a vote of confidence in his plan to build or rehabilitate 30,000 housing units by 2020, which some in the press have pilloried as depending heavily on already-existing units. While 30,000 sounds like a lot, the Controller’s Office said San Francisco would need as many as 100,000 housing units to even make a dent in San Francisco’s skyrocketing housing prices, according to the SF Examiner (though he has since written the Examiner to say his sentiments were misconstrued). The city’s Civil Grand Jury recently released a scathing report of the mayor’s 30,000 housing unit goal, saying “While the residential real estate market is enjoying a strong recovery, it is doubtful the city can build its way out of the current affordability crisis.”

Meanwhile, people are losing their homes and fleeing the city. Some who are holding on by a thread came out to speak at the dueling hearings. 

“I have health challenges including cerebral palsy,” Justin Bennet said during public comment. He spoke with a difficulty in his jaw, haltingly and with much effort. He said the housing market made it difficult to move from the dangerous areas of the city he calls home. “I’ve been robbed outside several residences I’ve lived in, so I’m hoping for a change in my housing situation in the future. Thanks for letting me speak.” 

A family came up to the podium to speak, with two young housing activists, a brother and sister, 9 and 6, saying they didn’t want to see so many lose their homes.

Advocates from the SEIU 1021, South of Market Community Action Network, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and the Chinese Progressive Association, to name a few, were on hand at the hearing. They were also on hand for a press conference on the steps of City Hall shortly before the hearing. Ed Donaldson from ACCE called out the mayor’s housing measure, saying its only intent was to torpedo Kim’s. 

“I say we should play chicken with the mayor,” Donaldson said at the podium. Metal bands have sung with less volume than the baritone he used while booming, “Let’s see if he has the gall.”

Inside the hearing, Patrick Valentino (who championed luxury development on the waterfront) and Tim Colen of the Housing Action Coalition spoke, defending the mayor’s measure.

“As San Francisco, as a city in affordability, we’re failing. Our rate of failure is accelerating,” he said flatly. He criticized Kim’s plan and asked, “Where’s the money? No one disagrees we need it. The shortcoming I see in the housing balance measure is its premise that if we increase restrictions on market rate housing, it helps subsidize housing.” 

He argued instead to gather more stakeholders together (i.e. deep pocketed developers) to negotiate more private funding, a strategy he said that worked in the past. 

As others came to the podium to argue against developer greed, Colen watched on, shaking his head, seemingly in disagreement. When someone in public comment argued that developers so far have shirked their responsibilities to build affordable housing, he shook his head again and left the hearing room. 

There’s a stark divide in housing philosophy, and supply and demand’s ability to save San Francisco will soon see a trial by voter if Kim’s charter amendment can win six vote at the full Board of Supervisors. 

The mayor’s policies seem to be more of the same, Kim said, and now the city seems to be fighting over the crumbs of developers’ fees. Despite opposition from the mayor, Kim told the Guardian she’s open to new ideas from the mayor. 

But she also said she won’t back down. 

“We’re on a two-fold path right now. If there’s a compromise to get [the city] to 30 percent affordable housing, like new revenue, we’re open to that compromise,” she said. “But we always intended this to go to the ballot.”

#TBT: That time we called for California’s break-up

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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#TBT: That time we called for California’s break-up

So another scheme — in a long and rich history of such schemes — is attempting to break California into more digestible parts, and gaining national attention. Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s Six Californias is all but on the ballot, attempting to rechristen the Bay Area as Silicon Valley. Good luck with that! (Although we have to say, it might create the first openly weed-driven state economy — Northern California — which would be fun to see.)

In 2009, we, too, put forth a proposal to split California up — building on an idea from conservative Central California, and echoed in Daily Kos. It was a doozy, but a logical one, with some actual Six Californias affinity.

Our May 27 cover story, written by Rebecca Bowe and Tim Redmond, proposed to split Cali up for better management, representation, and economic/social justice, creating the playfully named states of Greenland, Sierrastan, Pinkostan, Coastland, Palm Sprawl, North Mexico, and Disney. (The accompanying cover, designed by Ben Hopfer and shown above, aped the New Yorker’s famous “New Yorkistan” cover.)  

The cover story itself grew from a Politics Blog post Tim Redmond had written in March of 2009, asking “Should California be split up?” — read the post below. As for creating states, we’ll be dreaming of Puerto Rico …

SHOULD CALIFORNIA BE SPLIT UP?

By Tim Redmond

It’s an interesting question. Nothing new, really — folks up in the northern part of the state have been talking about secession since the 1940s.

But these days, the talk has shifted from North-South to Central Valley-Coast.

There’s plenty of discussion going on — the New York Times
reports on a move by farmers in Visalia, who say those of us in the more liberal western regions don’t understand what it’s like in the center of the state:

Frustrated by what they call uninformed urban voters dictating faulty farm policy, Mr. Rogers and the other members of the movement have proposed splitting off 13 counties on the state’s coast, leaving the remaining 45, mostly inland, counties as the “real” California.

The reason, they say, is that people in those coastal counties, which include San Francisco and Los Angeles, simply do not understand what life is like in areas where the sea breezes do not reach.
“They think fish are more important than people, that pigs are treated mean and chickens should run loose,” said Mr. Rogers, who said he hitched a ride in 1940 to Visalia from Oklahoma to escape the Dust Bowl, with his wife and baby son in tow. “City people just don’t know what it takes to get food on their table.”

A former Assembly member is pushing a vertical split, too :

“Citizens of our once Golden State are frustrated and desperately concerned about the imposition of burdensome regulations, taxation, fees, fees and more fees, and bureaucratic intrusion into our daily lives and businesses,” declares downsizeca.org, the movement’s website.

And all of this comes as reformers form both the left and the right are talking about a new Constitutional Convention.

Athough some of the proponents are clearly nutty, the idea isn’t. As the noted political economist Gar Alperovitz wrote two years ago

The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.

He was talking about California becoming its own nation, but I’d argue that the same problem applies here. The budget crisis, the gridlock in Sacramento … all of it suggests that maybe California itself is too big to govern. There’s also clear evidence of dramatic regional differences. If you take the Central Valley from about Redding on down, and wrap in Orange County, you have a red state within a blue state where most of the residents say they want lower taxes and smaller government. Along the coast from about Sonoma County down to the southern part of Los Angeles County, you have people who generally would like to see taxes pay for public services. If the coast were a state, we could repeal Prop. 13 and build world-class schools. We’d have same-sex marriage and single-payer health insurance. And we’d still be one of the biggest states in America.

Now, I’m not sure the people in the central valley quite realize the problem with their plans, which is illustrated in this wonderful chart that comes from the office of Assemblywoman Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa (PDF).

The chart shows that the people who dislike and distrust government and don’t want to pay taxes are in fact the beneficiaries of the tax dollars that the rest of us pay. In California, tax money from the coast winds up paying for services in the central valley.

But that’s okay — if they don’t want our money any more, maybe we should tell them we’re fine with that. Maybe we should split the state not just in two but into three: Let the northern counties become the state of Jefferson, where pot will be legal and the residents will be so wealthy from taxes and exports of that cash crop that they’ll make oil-richAlaskans seem like paupers. Pot will be legal in the coastal communities, too, and will generate tax revenue.

We’ll have a Democratic governor, and overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, fewer prisons, better schools, cleaner air, no Ellis Act, rent controls on vacant apartments, more money for transit, strict gun control, support for immigrant rights … and no more of these ugly battles over budgets held hostage by right-wing Republicans.

And in the central valley, they can have their low taxes and conservative values, and watch their roads, schools, and public services go to hell. Maybe eventually they’ll figure it out.

Of course, we’d have to figure out the water rights. The folks in Jefferson would have control over much of the water that now goes South, and there would have to be some long-term water contracts between the states, but that shouldn’t be an insurmountable roadblock.

And the solution would create its own problems; The GOP would control the central state, and would move to abolish the Agricultural Labor Relations Act and make life even more miserable for farmworkers. But then, maybe Jefferson would turn off the water and big agribusiness would be SOL anyway.

As part of the break-up, all parties would have to agree to create a special relocation fund to help lonely, sad liberals from Modesto come west and to help lonely, sad Republicans in San Francisco to move east. I wonder which way the net migration would go.

Meanwhile, Evans has introduced my favorite tax bill of the year, AB 1342, and it’s related to this entire discussion. She wants to allow counties to levy their own income taxes and vehicle license fees. “We went through this difficult process of trying to arrive at a budget,” her spokesperson, Anthony Matthews, told me. “For those communities that have a different view of government [than the Republicans], this bill would let them raise their own taxes to fund their priorities.”

 

San Jose cracks down on pot clubs after eschewing SF’s regulatory approach

Sasha Cuttler
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San Jose cracks down on pot clubs after eschewing SF’s regulatory approach

San Jose’s current (and harsh) crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries contrasts with San Francisco’s decade-old (and still working well) regulations.

Over the last five years, cannabis club after cannabis club sprouted throughout San Jose while the city’s local government debated, wavered, and faltered over the best way to regulate their pot clubs. But last month, San Jose City Council members, citing an abundance of pot clubs as the cause of a surge of marijuana use in schools, got tough. They voted to enact regulations that would make it too costly for more than 70 of their pot clubs in the city to operate. Only about 10 would survive.

Meanwhile, San Francisco pot clubs rest easy, undisturbed, and untouched — at least by the San Francisco officials who pioneered regulations in the city early on. In fact, the city’s Planning Department has recently recommended expanding the so-called Green Zone where dispensaries are allowed to operate by allowing dispensaries closer to schools.

As it stands, getting a permit to open a dispensary in San Francisco is no easy task. San Francisco regulations mean dispensaries are limited to less than 10 percent of all of San Francisco.

“Because zoning is so limited, the biggest struggle is finding a location,” Shona Gochenaur, director of Axis of Love SF Community Center, told the Guardian. “I’ve known collectives that have searched for over two years for a space correctly zoned. If you get through all those mindfields and to your Planning Commission hearing, it’s smoother. Very few permits have been denied if they survive to that point.”

But San Jose’s proposed regulations take it a step farther: they would limit pot shops to industrial areas that make up roughly 1 percent of San Jose. Plus, under San Jose’s proposal, San Jose’s pot shop owners will have to grow their own cannabis and produce any topicals and edibles in house. For that, they’ll need kitchens, labs, health inspections, and a host of costly equipment. Also unlike San Francisco, no concentrates will be allowed, causing many marijuana patients to suffer from lack of access to the medicine they need.

After San Jose approved the relegations, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to enact a temporary moratorium on the establishment of medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated Santa Clara County. David Hodges,  a member of the Silicon Cannabis Coalition and owner of the All American Cannabis club, says he has until July 18 to put forth a referendum that would undo San Jose’s vote.

“I want regulations that work,” he said. “We want to remove the language that makes it impossible for dispensaries to operate and to keep everything else.”

The problem, he said, is that San Jose hadn’t enacted regulations soon enough. San Francisco was way ahead of them.

Gochenaur worked on some of San Francisco’s early regulations, recognizing that the feds would step in if cannabis activists didn’t act first.

“[The] San Francisco movement came with the AIDS crisis with city electeds that were both empathetic and personally affected by watching loved one’s suffering, our ZIP code being hit the hardest,” said Gochenaur .“We had the risk takers and the trail blazers willing to open their doors.”

Risk taking for San Francisco included regulating dispensaries in ways the state has since failed to do. Since San Francisco began regulating dispensaries in 2004, anyone wanting to open up a dispensary in San Francisco has had to jump through a series of tough bureaucratic hoops while also garnering neighborhood support.

San Jose, instead, opted for the laissez faire approach, allowing their dispensaries to grow, and then regretting it later.

When San Jose attempted to enact similar regulations back in 2011, Hodges used a referendum to stop the council’s plans. But, once he succeeded in defeating San Jose’s proposal, no new regulations were proposed.

“The cannabis movement in San Jose is back at square one,” Hodges wrote on his website after his referendum succeeded.

John Lee, director of the Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition, said his organization’s biggest mistake was repealing, rather than revising, San Jose’s proposal 3 years ago. “We just knew that we couldn’t do with what they were proposing,” he said. “We just wanted to stop their relegations. But we had no idea how to regulate this back then. Now we want to.”

Having narrow relegations to begin with leaves San Francisco with room for revision later. For instance, Sup. John Avalos is working with the Planning Commission to help expand the Green Zone by bringing dispensaries 600 feet away from schools rather than 1,000 feet now. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Santa Clara Deputy County Executive Sylvia Gallegos has claimed before that San Jose’s dispensaries, totalling over 90 at the time,  caused a 106 percent increase in drug abuse-related suspensions of students in East San Jose schools in 2011-2012.

“I was smoking pot in high school before I even knew what a cannabis club was,” Hodges said. “Keeping dispensaries away from schools won’t stop that.”

If Hodges referendum fails, he says he’ll leave the cannabis industry for good.

“Right now, this could happen anywhere. There’s no safe place,” he said. “Save for Oakland – kind of. And San Francisco. But they have the territory well-covered in those areas. There’s no need for me there.”

San Francisco dispensaries may have local support, but without statewide regulations, they’re not immune to federal crackdowns, either, as the closures of Vapor Room and HopeNet made clear back in 2012. For years, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano has been trying to create statewide regulatory framework for California to help limit the crackdowns. In May, his most recent bill to address statewide regulation failed to pass the Assembly Floor. Since then, Ammiano has backed a bill from Senator Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) that would force dispensaries to obtain local approval prior to obtaining state approval.

David Goldman, a former member of the San Francisco Medical Marijuana Task Force, told us, “It’s basically the only sensible approach towards state framework. The US Attorney is less likely to go after states with a strong structure. The tighter the regulations, the less the feds will go after dispensaries.”

For now, cannabis owners in San Jose must focus on their own, local battle to save themselves. As for the San Francisco cannabis owners who’ve passed their bureaucratic tests and received their golden permits, business resumes as usual.

Tropical impressions

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Tropical impressions

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM We’re neck-deep in local film festival season right now — which, yeah, is kind of 12 months out of the year around here, but the SF Silent Film and Green Film festivals just ended, DocFest is underway, and Frameline starts June 19 — but there are plenty of reasons to carve out time for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ outstanding New Filipino Cinema mini-fest this weekend.

A big one is opening-night selection How to Disappear Completely; director Raya Martin, a bright light in the Philippines’ burgeoning indie film scene, will appear in person at the screening. This is a good thing, since Disappear is a bit of a head-scratcher, but in a commendable way — part coming-of-age drama, part dreamy puzzle, part old-school exploitation flick (I can’t be the only viewer who sees Martin’s shot of someone pawing through a pot full of intestines and immediately thinks of Herschell Gordon Lewis). Martin told the Philippine Star that Disappear was partially inspired by 1980s American horror filmmakers like Wes Craven, and there are fragments of 1984’s Nightmare on Elm Street lurking in this tale of a troubled tomboy (Ness Roque) whose vibrations of high-tension fear conjure a sinister spirit only she can see. This, on top of threats both natural — her island home is dark and lush, with nature’s stormy menace permeating every frame — and domestic: “You think the road home is safe? No one will hear you when you scream,” snarls her mother, who has a bit of Carrie White’s Bible-thumping mama in her.

Mom’s not even the biggest issue, though — that’d be the girl’s drunk, leering father (Noni Buencamino, one of the country’s most acclaimed actors — along with his wife, Shamaine Buencamino, who plays his wife in Disappear), who lurches around with a loaded shotgun and spends all his money betting on cockfights. Aside from its more experimental sequences, which are set to a buzzing electronic soundtrack (and thankfully, no Radiohead), Disappear‘s deliberately loose narrative pivots around strained dinner-table conversations among this dangerously dysfunctional family. Most of the longer passages of dialogue take the form of recitations: Bible stories (Lot and his daughters get a thematically appropriate shout out); folklore (a surprisingly funny tale involving a royal chicken); and a school recital on Filipino history, in which the young heroine plays a gun and her classmates, portraying vengeful villagers, warn the parent-filled audience: “We are going to hunt you down!”

Disappear‘s title card appears a full hour in, or nearly at the end of this 79-minute tale; it’s a blazing beacon in a film otherwise dominated by water imagery. Things only get bleaker, more surreal, and more shockingly violent from there. “If you’re wondering why we’re making such a fuss about new Filipino cinema, this is a great place to start,” explain series co-programmers Joel Shepard and Philbert Ortiz Dy in their program notes.

A far sunnier view of youth in the Philippines emerges in Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo’s Anita’s Last Cha-Cha, also about a tomboy, whose coming-of-age through first love begs the question why this film isn’t called Anita’s First Cha-Cha instead. Anita is 12 and not ready to embrace puberty, despite her widowed mother’s best efforts to dress her up like a princess for the community’s annual fertility festival. This all changes when she catches sight of long-limbed lovely Pilar, the former town beauty who’s returned after a stint studying physical therapy abroad. As Pilar sets up a massage practice in her house (not surprisingly, the local men line up for appointments), Anita begins spending all of her time daydreaming about the older woman.

Of course, her fantasy girlfriend — who has a tortured romantic past with Anita’s age-appropriate male cousin — is just that, and the two become allies as the story takes a melodramatic turn. Writer-director Bernardo will attend the screening in person to discuss her feature debut.

Probably the most high-profile entry in the YBCA series is Sean Ellis’ urban thriller Metro Manila, which won an Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, as well as the top prize at that year’s British Independent Film Awards. Ellis is a Brit, but Metro Manila is acted (splendidly) by an all-Filipino cast. After a meager harvest, naïve farmer Oscar (Jake Macapagal) convinces his wife, Mai (Althea Vega), to move with their small children to the big city in search of work. But the grimy metropolis proves a dangerous place, and what’s essentially a predictable tale of country-bumpkin-learns-a-hard-lesson-on-the-mean-streets is elevated by a ruthlessly desperate tone and a killer performance by John Arcilla (as Oscar’s shifty new co-worker). Even better: a couple of clever last-act twists that shake up the story’s seemingly inevitable arc.

These three films are just a surface glimpse of what New Filipino Cinema has in store. Closing night’s screening of Brillante Mendoza’s Thy Womb, starring veteran superstar Nora Aunor, is already sold out, but fret not: The film, the much-praised latest from the director of 2009’s controversial Kinatay, returns to the YBCA for its own engagement June 26-29. Also screening post-fest is Lav Diaz’s acclaimed Norte, The End of History (June 19-20), a 250-minute epic inspired by Crime and Punishment. *

NEW FILIPINO CINEMA

Wed/11-Sun/15, $8-$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

To the desert and back

Michael Redmond
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To the desert and back

arts@sfbg.com

The early May Sunday afternoon when I meet up with Fresh and Onlys frontman and songwriter Tim Cohen, he’s has just reached a milestone in his career: His firstborn child has just seen his band play for the first time in her life. The day before, Cohen and co. played the Hipnic IV festival in Big Sur to a seated audience. The mainstays of San Francisco’s garage rock scene were able to catch the attention of the one-year-old for a bit before her interest evaporated into the air like pot fumes at a music festival. It’ll likely be years before the child knows she had a profound influence on her dad’s band’s newest album, House of Spirits, due out June 10 on the Mexican Summer label.

Our rendez-vous is set at Cafe Abir on ever-buzzing Divisadero Street, which of course is being consumed with another hot new opening. This time, it’s 4505 Meats, which is making a splash of a debut with its inviting smells wafting over from salacious BBQ concoctions. The unofficial fogline of San Francisco feels foreign to Cohen, who’s been a resident of the adjacent Alamo Square neighborhood for almost 13 years. That’s because he’s just spent 15 months in rural Arizona. When we reach the inevitable topic of San Francisco’s recent changes, Cohen remarks, “I was gone for 15 months and almost everything changed in that time. I can see six places that weren’t here when I left. It’s a culture shock.”

For those 15 months, Cohen decamped with his wife, newborn baby, guitar, Korg keyboard, and drum machine to a horse ranch 10 miles outside of Sedona, Arizona. Later on during his stay, he picked up an eight-track recorder from a kid on Craigslist to record his demos on. “It’s simple and gives me a lower-quality song; it’s my favorite device to record on.” says Cohen.

The storyline behind House of Spirits lends a feeling of concept album, thanks to the songwriting’s foreign backdrop. It’s still very much connected to the feel, themes, and sounds of earlier Fresh and Onlys productions, but the intrigue lies in how noticeable an effect the desert environs had on the record.

Cohen ventured to the desert of Northern Arizona expecting a new jolt of creative energy and a deviation in his songwriting, but underestimated the effect absolute desolation — amplified by its contrast to San Francisco’s bustle — would have on himself and the album. “I went there knowing I would have a lot of time to myself, [but] I didn’t know how much or how dire that solitude would become, which definitely fed into my creative process…If you’ve ever spent any time in the desert or anywhere that’s just your environment, there’s no people walking by, trains, cars, planes, it’s just where you’re at and you. I had no way to contest the silence and openness of it all. I just sat there and took it in. Finally after living there for a months, I figured how to manage my space in the environment, and just dug out my space,” says Cohen.

Part of the reason for Cohen’s retreat was the idea of not raising a baby in a big loud city. He does concede that, in addition to learning how to negotiate the vacuum of the Arizonan desert, the album was significantly influenced by his other major learning experience, that of understanding how to be both “a parent with someone and to someone.”

Like a friend coming back from a sweet vacation, Cohen highly recommends the rural experience for fellow artists. “It made me more of a prolific artist, because I came back with tons and tons of material. I worked. I say if you can afford it, give yourself that emptiness and blank agenda.”

But Cohen’s foray into the desert wasn’t all artistic introspection and exploration. The lack of constant and face-to-face communication with his bandmates exacerbated tensions already simmering in the band. That inevitable and familiar dilemma of young parents trading time with their lifelong friends for time with their nascent families provided another strain.

“People were being pulled in a lot of different directions. It began with me moving away. When your buddy has a kid and moves away, a lot of times you can feel a sense of abandonment. In a lot of ways we think of this band as our own baby,” he says. “It was almost like running off and having a baby with someone else.” Not to mention, other bandmates were dealing with evictions and layoffs.

Did the stress ever seriously threaten the album? “Absolutely, at almost every turn,” says Cohen. “We had a limited amount of recording days when I came back to SF, which created a sense of urgency and contributed to inflammation of the issues afflicting the band. These were my songs and demos. [Normally] I send the demos to guys way in advance, they think ‘How can I hear this and contribute to it?’ and that’s how it pretty much works. This time around it was a little less of that.”

For all his recounting of the hurdles and “external and internal issues,” Cohen presents a stoic demeanor, and seems confident that the band has escaped its stormy period.

“In the end we won the big victory,” he says. “This album is definitely a grower.”

Fresh and Onlys record release show

With Cold Beat, Devon Williams

July 5, 8pm, $15

The Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

www.thechapelsf.com

Stage Listings: May 28-June 3, 2014

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

THEATER

OPENING

Devil Boys From Beyond New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/28-Fri/30, 8pm. Opens Sat/31, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Buddy Thomas and Kenneth Elliot’s campy sci-fi saga.

Each and Every Thing Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Previews Thu/29-Fri/30, June 5-6, and 12-13, 8pm; Sat/31 and June 7, 8:30pm. Opens June 14, 8:30pm. Runs Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through July 12. Dan Hoyle presents his latest solo show, about the search for real-world connections in a tech-crazed world.

Homo File CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. $20-35. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 15. Eye Zen and CounterPULSE present Seth Eisen’s interdisciplinary performance about queer author and tattoo artist Sam Steward.

Macbeth Fort Point (beneath the Golden Gate Bridge), SF; www.weplayers.org. $30-75. Previews Fri/30-Sun/1, 7pm. Opens Thu/5, 7pm. Runs Thu-Sun, 7pm. Through June 29. We Players performs the Shakespeare classic at the historic fortress at Fort Point.

“Savage in Limbo” Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Previews Thu/29, 8pm. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Sat/31, Sun/1, June 3-6, 8pm (also Sun/1, 2pm); June 7, 2pm. Through June 7. Rabbit Hole Theater Company performs John Patrick Shanley’s Bronx-set drama.

Triassic Parq Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; www.rayoflighttheatre.com. $25-36. Previews Thu/29, 8pm. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also June 21 and 28, 2pm). Through June 28. Ray of Light Theatre presents the Bay Area premiere of Marshall Pailet’s musical involving “dinosaurs, show tunes, and sex changes.”

Walk Like A Man Costume Shop, 1117 Market, SF; www.therhino.org. $15-35. Previews Wed/28-Fri/30, 8pm. Opens Sat/31, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 15. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Laurinda D. Brown’s dramedy centered around issues in the African American lesbian community.

ONGOING

Chasing Mehserle Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; theintersection.org/chasing-mehserle. $15-25. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm. Intersection for the Arts, Campo Santo, and the Living Word Project present Chinaka Hodge’s performance piece about Oakland in the aftermath of the Oscar Grant killing.

The Crucible Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $10-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 15. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Arthur Miller’s drama.

Dracula Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; sfdracula.blogspot.com. $35. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm. Kellerson Productions presents a new adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic.

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat-Sun, 5pm. Extended through July 13. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

The Homosexuals New Conservatory Theatre Center, Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Philip Dawkins’ play about a young man struggling with his identity amid a new group of friends.

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Fri/30, 8pm; Sat/31, 8:30pm. Award-winning solo theater artist Marga Gomez brings her hit comedy back for a limited run before taking it to New York in June.

Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through June 28. Five years ago, Thrillpeddlers breathed new life into a glitter-dusted piece of Sixties flotsam, beautifully reimagining the Cockettes’ raunchy mock-operetta Pearls Over Shanghai (in collaboration with several surviving members of San Francisco’s storied acid-drag troupe) and running it for a whopping 22 months. Written by Cockette Link Martin as a carefree interpretation of a 1926 Broadway play, the baldly stereotyped Shanghai Gesture, it was the perfectly lurid vehicle for irreverence in all directions. It’s back in this revival, once again helmed by artistic director Russell Blackwood with musical direction by Cockette and local favorite Scrumbly Koldewyn. But despite the frisson of featuring some original-original cast members — including “Sweet Pam” Tent (who with Koldewyn also contributes some new dialogue) and Rumi Missabu (regally reprising the role of Madam Gin Sling) — there’s less fire the second time around as the production straddles the line between carefully slick and appropriately sloppy. Nevertheless, there are some fine musical numbers and moments throughout. Among these, Zelda Koznofsky, Birdie-Bob Watt, and Jesse Cortez consistently hit high notes as the singing Andrews Sisters-like trio of Americans thrown into white slavery; Bonni Suval’s Lottie Wu is a fierce vixen; and Noah Haydon (as the sultry Petrushka) is a class act. Koldewyn’s musical direction and piano accompaniment, meanwhile, provide strong and sure momentum as well as exquisite atmosphere. (Avila)

Seminar San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun/1 and June 8, 2pm. Through June 14. San Francisco Playhouse performs Theresa Rebeck’s biting comedy.

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blond innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: The energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $65-100 (gambling chips, $7-10 extra; after-hours admission, $10). Wed-Sat, 7:30, 7:40, 7:50, 8pm, and 9pm admittance times. Extended through June 21. Boxcar Theater’s most ambitious project to date is also one of the more involved and impressively orchestrated theatrical experiences on any Bay Area stage just now. An immersive time-tripping environmental work, The Speakeasy takes place in an “undisclosed location” (in fact, a wonderfully redesigned version of the company’s Hyde Street theater complex) amid a period-specific cocktail lounge, cabaret, and gambling den inhabited by dozens of Prohibition-era characters and scenarios that unfold around an audience ultimately invited to wander around at will. At one level, this is an invitation to pure dress-up social entertainment. But there are artistic aims here too. Intentionally designed (by co-director and creator Nick A. Olivero with co-director Peter Ruocco) as a fractured super-narrative — in which audiences perceive snatches of overheard stories rather than complete arcs, and can follow those of their own choosing — there’s a way the piece becomes specifically and ever more subtly about time itself. This is most pointedly demonstrated in the opening vignettes in the cocktail lounge, where even the ticking of Joe’s Clock Shop (the “cover” storefront for the illicit 1920s den inside) can be heard underscoring conversations (deeply ironic in historical hindsight) about war, loss, and regained hope for the future. For a San Francisco currently gripped by a kind of historical double-recurrence of the roaring Twenties and dire Thirties at once, The Speakeasy is not a bad place to sit and ponder the simulacra of our elusive moment. (Avila)

36 Stories by Sam Shepard Z Below, 470 Florida, SF; www.36stories.org. $35-55. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 22. Word for Word performs director Amy Kossow’s original adaptation of Shepard’s poetry and fiction.

BAY AREA

Candida Town Hall Theatre, 3535 School, Lafayette; www.townhalltheatre.com. $20-32. Fri-Sat and June 12, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 14. Town Hall Theatre performs the Shaw classic.

The Color Purple Hillbarn Theatre, 1285 East Hillsdale, Foster City; www.hillbarntheatre.org. $23-38. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm; Sun/1, 2pm. Hillbarn Theatre closes its 73rd season with the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s classic novel.

The Crazed Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 23. Central Works performs Sally Dawidoff’s play, based on Ha Jin’s novel about coming of age in Communist China.

Daylighting: The Berkeley Stories Project Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Previews Wed/28-Thu/29, 7pm. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (June 22, show at 2pm). Through June 22. Shotgun Players present Dan Wolf’s new play inspired by real-life tales from Berkeley residents past and present.

“Fringe of Marin” Angelico Concert Hall, Dominican University, 20 Olive, San Rafael; www.fringeofmarin.com. $10-20. Schedule varies. Through Sun/1. Fringe of Marin celebrates its 33rd season with 11 original one-act plays presented in two programs.

The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-89. Tue, Thu-Sat, 7:30pm (also Thu/29, June 26, and all Saturdays in June, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 29. Berkeley Rep performs the West Coast premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play.

The Letters Harry’s UpStage, Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $28-32. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Extended through June 8. American playwright John W. Lowell’s The Letters harkens back to Stalinist days and some unspecified ministry, where a dutiful staff goes about censoring the personal and openly homoerotic correspondence of an iconic Russian composer (Tchaikovsky). Directed by Mark Jackson for Aurora Theater’s new upstairs black box, the two-hander unfolds in the small but tidy and dignified office belonging to the ministry’s director (an imposing Michael Ray Wisely). He has summoned one of his employees, a widow named Anna (a taut Beth Wilmurt), for reasons not immediately clear to her or us. A careful dance around a minefield of protocol, sexual innuendo, and hidden agendas ensues, as a dangerous and deadly scandal surrounding the aforementioned letters makes itself felt. Given the Ukraine crisis, the ramping up of Cold War II, and Russia’s increasing authoritarianism — including its new law against homosexual “propagandizing” in the cultural realm, and a Ministry of Culture vowing to withhold funding from art lacking in “spiritual or moral content” — it’s all a remarkably timely little time warp. And Lowell’s story is cleverly crafted for the most part. Unfortunately, the production’s two capable actors have a hard time conveying a lifelike (if however strained) relationship or the perspiration-inducing tension the drama purports to carry. At the same time, the drama’s dialogue, at least as played here, can stretch the bounds of verisimilitude by veering from flinty, cagey ducks and jabs to outright insubordination, sarcasm, and ineffectual blustering — the latter outbursts seeming to leave the pressure pot of the Great Terror far behind. It’s still a long way from Tom and Jerry, but as a cat and mouse game the stakes, and the arc of the story, feel more fantastical then pressingly contemporary. (Avila)

Mutt: Let’s All Talk About Race La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 8. Impact Theatre and Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company present the world premiere of Christopher Chen’s political satire.

Nantucket Marsh Berkeley MainStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-100 (all tickets include a picnic dinner). Thu and Sat, 7pm. Through June 14. Acclaimed solo performer Mark Kenward presents his “haunting yet hilarious” autobiographical show about growing up on Nantucket.

Not a Genuine Black Man Osher Studio, 2055 Center, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $30-45. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm. Brian Copeland brings his acclaimed, long-running solo show to Berkeley Rep for a 10th anniversary limited run.

Other Desert Cities Barn Theatre, 30 Sir Francis Drake, Ross; www.rossvalleyplayers.com. $10-26. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 15. Ross Valley Players perform Jon Robin Baitz’s Pultizer-nominated drama about a tense family holiday.

South Pacific Cushing Memorial Amphitheater, 801 Panoramic Hwy, Mill Valley; www.mountainplay.org. $20-60. Sun and June 7, 2pm (arrive one hour prior to showtime). Through June 15. Mountain Play Association performs the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; www.centerrep.org. $37-65. Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Saturdays in June, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Through June 21. Center REP performs the Tony-winning musical by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Alaska is a Drag” Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.theintersection.org. Wed/28, 7pm. $5-15. The Big Table Read hosts this staged reading of Shaz Bennett’s screenplay.

“The Amazing Acro-Cats” Fort Mason Center, Southside Theater, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.circuscats.com. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8:30pm; Sun/1, 2 and 5pm. $24. Samantha Martin and her performing cat troupe, including “the only cat band in existence” (with a chicken on tambourine), take the stage. As its press release insists, “Yes, this is real!”

“Auto(SOMA)tic: Creative Responses to the SOMA” Arc Studio and Gallery, 1246 Folsom, SF; www.kearnystreet.org. Sat/31, 10am and 2pm. $30. Kearny Street Workshop and Shaping San Francisco present Allan S. Manalo’s interactive performance bus tour.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. June 17, 22, 29, July 12, 19, and 27, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Dash: Improv in a Flash” Un-Scripted Theater Company, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.un-scripted.com. Sat, 10pm. $15. Ongoing through Aug 30. A late-night, free-form improv show with Un-Scripted Theater Company.

“Dogeaters” ACT’s Costume Shop, 1119 Market, SF; www.magictheatre.org. Mon/2, 7pm. Free. Magic Theatre’s 2014 Martha Heasley Cox Virgin Play Series presents this staged reading of Jessica Hagedorn’s satirical soap opera.

“Dream Queens Revue” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/28, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, and more.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: “Michael Feinstein with Paula West, in Celebration of Feinstein’s at the Nikko’s One-Year Anniversary,” Sun/1, 7pm, $80.

“Gender Assimilation: A Rebuttal” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.theygobythey.com. Thu/29, 7:30pm. $10. Jaq Victor performs a cheeky coming-out tale as part of the United States of Asian America Festival.

“Hysteria” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.dancemission.org. Fri/30-Sat/31, 8pm; Sun/1, 7pm. $20. BodiGram takes on Dissociative Identity Disorder in this satirical performance work.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“Mais Oui” 2946 Third St, SF; www.sanfranciscobicycleballet.org. Sat/41, 6:45-10m. $8. The San Francisco Bicycle Ballet performs.

“Out of Line Improv” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; outoflineimprov.brownpapertickets.com. Sat, 10:30pm. $12. Ongoing. A new, completely improvised show every week.

“San Francisco Comedy College” Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.purpleonionatkells.com. $5-10. “New Talent Show,” Wed-Thu, 7. Ongoing. “The Cellar Dwellers,” stand-up comedy, Wed-Thu, 8:15pm and Fri-Sat, 7:30pm. Ongoing.

“Spring: Water Ritual” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Grand Lobby, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Sat/31, 1-2:30pm. Free. Artist Dohee Lee performs a celebration of “the regenerative power of the ocean.”

“Threepenny Opera” Phoenix Annex Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 406, SF; www.waffleopera.com. Sat/31, 7:30pm; Sun/1, 2pm. $15-25. Waffle Opera performs the Weill and Brecht classic.

“Walking Distance Dance Festival — SF” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Fri/30-Sat/31, 7:30pm (also Sat/31, 3, 4, 6, and 9:30pm). $25 (festival pass, $65). ODC Theater’s fringe-style fest presents samplings of contemporary dance from around the world.

“Yerba Buena Gardens Festival” Yerba Buena Gardens, 760 Howard, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. Free. Through Oct 26. This week: Will Magid Trio, Wed/29, 12:30-1:30pm; Ensemble Mik Nawooj, Sat/31, 1-2:30pm.

BAY AREA

“After Juliet” Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway, Oakl; www.grittycityrep.org. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm; Sun/1, 2pm; June 8, 2 and 8pm. $5-25. Gritty City Repertory Youth Theatre performs Sharman Macdonald’s drama.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“The Expulsion of Malcolm X” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thu/29-Sat/31, 7:30pm (also Sat/31, 2:30pm). $30-40. A play exploring the rocky relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad.

Risa Jaroslow and Dancers, Peiling Kao Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/30-Sat/31, 8pm; Sun/1, 4pm. $15-18. The choreographers present What’s the Upshot and Ludic Numerologies.

“34th Annual Planetary Dance” Santos Meadow, Mt. Tamalpais State Park, Mill Valley; www.planetarydance.org. Sun/1, 11am. Free. This year’s theme of Anna Halprin’s annual participatory performance is “Remember the Children.” *

 

Theater Listings: May 7 – 13, 2014

Michael Redmond
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0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Chasing Mehserle Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; chasingmehserle.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Opens Thu/8, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sun and Mon/12, 8pm. Through May 24. Also May 29-31, 8pm, $15-25, Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. Intersection for the Arts, Campo Santo, and the Living Word Project present Chinaka Hodge’s performance piece about Oakland in the aftermath of the Oscar Grant killing.

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Opens Sat/10, 8:30pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through May 31. Award-winning solo theater artist Marga Gomez brings her hit comedy back for a limited run before taking it to New York in June.

BAY AREA

The Color Purple Hillbarn Theatre, 1285 East Hillsdale, Foster City; www.hillbarntheatre.org. $23-38. Previews Thu/8, 8pm. Opens Fri/9, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 1. Hillbarn Theatre closes its 73rd season with the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s classic novel.

ONGOING

Communiqué N°10 Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through May 25. Amid a fractious band of young rebels from the urban underclass and ongoing rioting in the streets, a young immigrant named Hassan (Damien Seperi) searches for the man who killed his 16-year-old brother. French playwright Samuel Gallet’s Communiqué N°10 draws immediate inspiration from the Paris riots of 2005, but the tinder box of extreme inequality and anti-immigrant policies are hardly a French monopoly (indeed, the stand-off last year between immigrant rights demonstrators and French police following the deportation of a Roma student, snatched off a school bus in front of her classmates, sounds all too familiar to Americans living through Obama’s unprecedented wave of deportations and incarcerations of undocumented people and the popular protest rising against it). Cutting Ball Theater’s US premiere of Gallet’s play, however, strains after its subject, timely though it is. Presented in association with Golden Thread Productions as part of the second biennial Des Voix&ldots; festival of new French plays and cinema, director and translator Rob Melrose’s production sets the action on a spare set (designed by Michael Locher) ringed by a two-tier framework of metal piping, about which some of the seven-member cast climb and roost. But the sparse setting is in fact overwhelmed with altogether too much stage business, including Emma Jaster’s somewhat labored choreography and Cliff Caruthers’ often distracting soundscape, which only detracts from the already difficult-to-follow plot points and further undermines an ensemble that never really coheres. Add to this contrived dialogue such as Hassan’s retort to having his picture snapped by love-interest Marlene (Maura Halloran) — “Images. We never know what purposes they serve in the end” — and what should be a tense and dynamic drama instead becomes a dreary, vaguely didactic ball of confusion. (Avila)

“DIVAfest” Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.divafest.info. Prices and showtimes vary. Through May 24. This 13th annual festival celebrates the work of women artists, with performances including the premiere of Rat Girl (adapted from the memoir by rocker Kristin Hersh), Margery Fairchild’s ballet comedy The Pas De Quatre, a reading by acclaimed poet Diane di Prima, and more.

Dracula Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; sfdracula.blogspot.com. $35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 31. Kellerson Productions presents a new adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic.

Du Barry Was a Lady Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstmoon.org. $25-75. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm (also Sat/10 and May 17, 1pm); Sun, 3pm. Through May 18. 42nd Street Moon presents Cole Porter’s saucy musical comedy, with comedian and writer Bruce Vilanch starring.

E-i-E-i-OY! In Bed with the Farmer’s Daughter NOHSpace, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.vivienstraus.com. $20. Fri/9-Sat/10, 8pm. Vivien Straus performs her autobiographical solo show.

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Starting May 17, performance schedule changes to Sat-Sun, 5pm. Extended through July 13. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 31. Five years ago, Thrillpeddlers breathed new life into a glitter-dusted piece of Sixties flotsam, beautifully reimagining the Cockettes’ raunchy mock-operetta Pearls Over Shanghai (in collaboration with several surviving members of San Francisco’s storied acid-drag troupe) and running it for a whopping 22 months. Written by Cockette Link Martin as a carefree interpretation of a 1926 Broadway play, the baldly stereotyped Shanghai Gesture, it was the perfectly lurid vehicle for irreverence in all directions. It’s back in this revival, once again helmed by artistic director Russell Blackwood with musical direction by Cockette and local favorite Scrumbly Koldewyn. But despite the frisson of featuring some original-original cast members — including “Sweet Pam” Tent (who with Koldewyn also contributes some new dialogue) and Rumi Missabu (regally reprising the role of Madam Gin Sling) — there’s less fire the second time around as the production straddles the line between carefully slick and appropriately sloppy. Nevertheless, there are some fine musical numbers and moments throughout. Among these, Zelda Koznofsky, Birdie-Bob Watt, and Jesse Cortez consistently hit high notes as the singing Andrews Sisters-like trio of Americans thrown into white slavery; Bonni Suval’s Lottie Wu is a fierce vixen; and Noah Haydon (as the sultry Petrushka) is a class act. Koldewyn’s musical direction and piano accompaniment, meanwhile, provide strong and sure momentum as well as exquisite atmosphere. (Avila)

Romeo and Juliet Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; www.eventbrite.com. $20. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun/11 and May 24, 3pm. Through May 24. Ninjaz of Drama performs Shakespeare’s tragic romance.

Seminar San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); May 18 and June 1 and 8, 2pm. Through June 14. San Francisco Playhouse performs Theresa Rebeck’s biting comedy.

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blond innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: The energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

Sleeping Cutie: A Fractured Fairy Tale Musical Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; sleepingcutiemusical.tix.com. $30-40. Thu/8-Sat/10, 8pm; Sun/11, 2pm. Off a Cliff Productions and PlayGround present Diane Sampson and Doug Katsaros’ world-premiere musical.

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $70 (gambling chips, $5-10 extra; after-hours admission, $10). Thu-Sat, 7:40, 7:50, and 8pm admittance times. Extended through May 24. Boxcar Theater’s most ambitious project to date is also one of the more involved and impressively orchestrated theatrical experiences on any Bay Area stage just now. An immersive time-tripping environmental work, The Speakeasy takes place in an “undisclosed location” (in fact, a wonderfully redesigned version of the company’s Hyde Street theater complex) amid a period-specific cocktail lounge, cabaret, and gambling den inhabited by dozens of Prohibition-era characters and scenarios that unfold around an audience ultimately invited to wander around at will. At one level, this is an invitation to pure dress-up social entertainment. But there are artistic aims here too. Intentionally designed (by co-director and creator Nick A. Olivero with co-director Peter Ruocco) as a fractured super-narrative — in which audiences perceive snatches of overheard stories rather than complete arcs, and can follow those of their own choosing — there’s a way the piece becomes specifically and ever more subtly about time itself. This is most pointedly demonstrated in the opening vignettes in the cocktail lounge, where even the ticking of Joe’s Clock Shop (the “cover” storefront for the illicit 1920s den inside) can be heard underscoring conversations (deeply ironic in historical hindsight) about war, loss, and regained hope for the future. For a San Francisco currently gripped by a kind of historical double-recurrence of the roaring Twenties and dire Thirties at once, The Speakeasy is not a bad place to sit and ponder the simulacra of our elusive moment. (Avila)

The Suit ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-120. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, Wed/7, and May 14, 2pm); Sun, 2pm (May 18, show at 1pm); Tue, 7pm (Tue/13, show at 8pm). Through May 18. ACT performs Peter Brook, Marie Hélène Estienne, and Franck Krawcyzk’s music-infused drama about betrayal and resentment adapted from the short story by South African author Can Themba.

Tipped & Tipsy Marsh Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 5pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 17. Last fall’s San Francisco Fringe Festival began on a high note with Jill Vice’s witty and deft solo, Tipped & Tipsy, and the Best of Fringe winner is now enjoying another round at solo theater outpost the Marsh. Without set or costume changes, Vice (who developed the piece with Dave Dennison and David Ford) brings the querulous regulars of a skid-row bar to life both vividly and with real quasi-Depression-Era charm. She’s a protean physical performer, seamlessly inhabiting the series of oddball outcasts lined up each day at Happy’s before bartender Candy — two names as loaded as the clientele. After some hilarious expert summarizing of the dos and don’ts of bar culture, a story unfolds around a battered former boxer and his avuncular relationship with Candy, who tries to cut him off in light of his clearly deteriorating health. Her stance causes much consternation, and even fear, in his barfly associates, while provoking a dangerous showdown with the bar’s self-aggrandizing sleazeball owner, Rico. With a love of the underdog and strong writing and acting at its core, Tipsy breezes by, leaving a superlative buzz. (Avila)

“Des Voix: Found in Translation Biennial 2014” Various venues, SF; www.desvoixfestival.com. Prices vary. Through May 25. In addition to Communiqué N°10 (listed above), this festival of contemporary French playwrights and cinema includes four new play translations, a “New Play Nightclub,” film screenings, and more. Presented by Playwrights Foundation, Tides Theatre, Cutting Ball Theater, French International School, and the French Consulate of San Francisco.

Waxing West Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. $20. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 18. Brava! For Women in the Arts and RasaNova Theater present the West Coast premiere of Saviana Stanescu’s tale of a Romanian mail-order bride haunted by her country’s past.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Extended through May 25. The popular, kid-friendly show by Louis Pearl (aka “The Amazing Bubble Man”) returns to the Marsh.

BAY AREA

Fences Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $37-58. Wed/7, 7:30pm; Thu/8-Sat/10, 8pm (also Sat/10, 2pm); Sun/11, 2 and 7pm. Marin Theatre Company performs August Wilson’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning drama, with an all-star cast of Bay Area talent: Carl Lumbly, Steven Anthony Jones, and Margo Hall.

Geezer Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. New show schedule: Wed, 8pm; Sat, 3pm. Extended through May 24. Geoff Hoyle moves his hit comedy about aging to the East Bay.

The Letters Harry’s UpStage, Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $28-32. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 1. American playwright John W. Lowell’s The Letters harkens back to Stalinist days and some unspecified ministry, where a dutiful staff goes about censoring the personal and openly homoerotic correspondence of an iconic Russian composer (Tchaikovsky). Directed by Mark Jackson for Aurora Theater’s new upstairs black box, the two-hander unfolds in the small but tidy and dignified office belonging to the ministry’s director (an imposing Michael Ray Wisely). He has summoned one of his employees, a widow named Anna (a taut Beth Wilmurt), for reasons not immediately clear to her or us. A careful dance around a minefield of protocol, sexual innuendo, and hidden agendas ensues, as a dangerous and deadly scandal surrounding the aforementioned letters makes itself felt. Given the Ukraine crisis, the ramping up of Cold War II, and Russia’s increasing authoritarianism — including its new law against homosexual “propagandizing” in the cultural realm, and a Ministry of Culture vowing to withhold funding from art lacking in “spiritual or moral content” — it’s all a remarkably timely little time warp. And Lowell’s story is cleverly crafted for the most part. Unfortunately, the production’s two capable actors have a hard time conveying a lifelike (if however strained) relationship or the perspiration-inducing tension the drama purports to carry. At the same time, the drama’s dialogue, at least as played here, can stretch the bounds of verisimilitude by veering from flinty, cagey ducks and jabs to outright insubordination, sarcasm, and ineffectual blustering — the latter outbursts seeming to leave the pressure pot of the Great Terror far behind. It’s still a long way from Tom and Jerry, but as a cat and mouse game the stakes, and the arc of the story, feel more fantastical then pressingly contemporary. (Avila)

Mutt: Let’s All Talk About Race La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 8. Impact Theatre and Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company present the world premiere of Christopher Chen’s political satire.

Nantucket Marsh Berkeley MainStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-100 (all tickets include a picnic dinner). Thu and Sat, 7pm. Through June 14. Acclaimed solo performer Mark Kenward presents his “haunting yet hilarious” autobiographical show about growing up on Nantucket.

Not a Genuine Black Man Osher Studio, 2055 Center, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $30-45. Wed, 7pm (no shows May 14, 21, or 28); Thu-Sat, 8pm (no shows Fri/9-Sat/10). Through May 31. Brian Copeland brings his acclaimed, long-running solo show to Berkeley Rep for a 10th anniversary limited run.

“Pear Slices” Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 25. Original short plays from the Pear Playwrights Guild.

Tribes Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-99. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm; no 2pm show May 18). Through May 18. Berkeley Rep performs Nina Raine’s family drama about a young deaf man who comes of age.

Wittenberg Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Wed/7-Sat/10, 8pm; Sun/11, 2 and 7pm. Aurora Theatre Company performs David Davalos’ comedy about reason versus faith.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey” Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF; cargocollective.com/aliencitizen. Sat/10, 8pm. $12. Elizabeth Lang performs her solo show about her mixed heritage. Part of the United States of Asian America Festival 2014.

“Asian American StoryFest” Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF; ww.ethnohtec.org. Fri/9, 8pm. Also Sat/10, 1:30pm, 3:30pm, 7pm (panel), 8pm, $10-20, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St, Oakl. Seven nationally-recognized storytellers take the stage to perform Asian folk tales, myths, and contemporary stories. Part of the United States of Asian America Festival 2014.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sat/10, May 17, 25, June 17, 22, and 29, 6:15pm; Sun/11, 1pm. $15-19 (Sun/11, call for price). Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

Company C Contemporary Ballet Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; www.lesherartscenter.org. Thu/8-Sat/10, 8pm; Sun/11, 2pm. $25-48. With two world premieres by Maurice Causey and Charles Moulton.

“The Escapement” Joe Goode Annex, 401 Alabama, SF; theescapement.eventbrite.com. Fri/9-Sat10, 8pm. $15-25. Emerging choreographer Katharine Hawthone presents a new, evening-length work.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: Wesla Whitfield, Thu/8-Fri/9, 8pm, $30-45; Kim Nalley, Sat/10-Sun/11, 7pm, $30-45.

“The Fifth String: Ziryab’s Passage to Cordoba” Brava Theatre Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.goldenthread.org. May 15-17, 8pm; May 18, 3pm. $15-22. Golden Thread continues its “Islam 101” performance series with this family-friendly play with live music.

“Golden Gate Dreams and Evil Schemes: Short Plays by Short People” Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. Thu/8, 6:30pm; Fri/9, 7pm. $10-25. Professional actors and musicians perform six short plays written by fifth graders at Starr King Elementary School.

“Indulge” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Tue/13, 8-10pm. $50-150. This ODC Theater benefit features dinner with artists and choreographers, pop-up performances, and more.

“Jackie Beat: If You See Something, Say Something” Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sat/10, 7 and 10pm. $25-30. Drag superstar Jackie Beat performs “hilarious new material and a sprinkling of tacky classics.”

“Let’s Get Nautical: A Mother’s Day Yacht Rock Extravaganza” Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF; (415) 637-3386. Sun/11, 7-11pm. $10. Nautical-themed burlesque and disco-funk jams.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“Mortified” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Fri/9, 7:30pm. $21. Also Sat/10, 7:30pm, $20, Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. Fearless storytellers share their most adorably embarrassing childhood writings.

“Out of Line Improv” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; outoflineimprov.brownpapertickets.com. Sat, 10:30pm. $12. Ongoing. A new, completely improvised show every week.

“San Francisco Comedy College” Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.purpleonionatkells.com. $5-10. “New Talent Show,” Wed-Thu, 7. Ongoing. “The Cellar Dwellers,” stand-up comedy, Wed-Thu, 8:15pm and Fri-Sat, 7:30pm. Ongoing.

Sara Bush Dance Project Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.dancemission.com. Fri/9-Sat/10, 8pm; Sun/11, 4 and 7pm. $23-50. The company performs Rocked By Women, an homage to the feminist movement.

Summation Dance and The Thick Rich Ones Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. Fri/9-Sat/10, 8pm. $15-25. The two companies — from New York, all-female troupe Summation Dance, and from Oakland, performance collective the Thick Rich Ones — join forces to present “Three.”

“They Call Me Q” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.theycallmeq.com. Thu/8, 8pm; Sat/10, 2pm. $20-25. Qurrat Ann Kadwani performs her solo show, comprised of 13 characters. Part of the United States of Asian America Festival 2014.

“Thou Swell! Thou Witty! The Rodgers and Hart Salon” Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstmoon.org. Mon/12-Tue/13, 7pm. $45-70. Tony winner Faith Prince stars in 42nd Street Moon’s celebration of the Rodgers and Hart songbook.

“Unbecoming MILF: Confessions of a Bi Butch Breeder” Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF; www.sexandculture.org. Sat/10, 7:30pm. $5-20. Lori Selke debuts her solo show.

“Uncertain Weather” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Sat/10-Sun/11, 1 and 4pm. ODC School/Rhythm and Motion Dance program presents this youth performance showcasing a variety of dance styles.

“Yerba Buena Gardens Festival” Yerba Buena Gardens, 760 Howard, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. Sun/10, 1pm. Free. Through Oct 26. This week: San Jose Taiko.

BAY AREA

“Asian Pacific American Comedy” Pacific Pinball Museum, 1510 Webster, Alameda; www.pacificpinball.org. Sat/10, 7:30pm. $15. Stand-up comedy for adults with Josef Anolin, Lilybeth Helson, Justin Lucus, and Molly Sokhom.

Diablo Ballet Shadelands Arts Center Auditorium, 111 N. Wiget Lane, Walnut Creek; www.diabloballet.org. Fri/9-Sat/10, 8pm (also Sat/10, 2pm). $24-39. The company performs works by Val Caniparoli and George Balanchine, among others.

“First Annual Contemporary Performance Diasporas Festival” South Berkeley Community Church, 1802 Fairview, Berk; www.infernotheatre.org. Fri/9-Sat/10, 8pm; Sun/11, 6pm, $10-35 (festival pass, $30-50). Interdisciplinary and multi-cultural live ensemble and solo performances, presented by Inferno Theatre.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“3 Still Standing” Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; www.throckmortontheatre.org. Fri/9, 8pm. $23-35. Stand-up with Will Durst, Larry “Bubbles” Brown, and Johnny Steele.

*

 

Don’t police the pot docs

Michael Redmond
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3

 

By Ahimsa Porter Sumchai

OPINION

Senate Bill 1262 was introduced in the California Senate on Feb. 21 by veteran legislator Lou Correa. It is a medical marijuana bill designed to regulate physicians, dispensaries, and cultivation sites via rigid government oversight. Sponsored by the California Police Chiefs Association, SB 1262 promises to “provide a clear road map for the responsible implementation of Proposition 215 in California since voters approved it in 1996.”

The Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which created Heath & Safety Code 11362.5, ensures that seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes when the use is deemed appropriate and recommended by a physician.

As a licensed physician with a registered medical practice in San Francisco, I have reviewed the wording of SB 1262. The bill is highly punitive, clearly seeking to punish doctors who recommend medical marijuana (MM). SB 1262 concerns me most because it duplicates and violates existing state and federal statutes that clarify the physicians’ role in recommending MM.

In the 2002 case Conant v. McCaffrey, the federal government was enjoined by the US District Court in San Francisco from punishing physicians for recommending MM. That ruling affirms physicians’ First Amendment right to make recommendations.

SB 1262 requires the Medical Board of California to audit any physician who recommends MM more than 100 times a year. On April 2, the US Supreme Court struck down limits on federal campaign donations under the auspices of First Amendment free speech rights. Thus, a SCOTUS precedent was set that can be legally interpreted to defend a physician’s free speech right to authorize as many patients to use MM as deemed medically necessary.

SB 1262 establishes requirements for prescribing and record-keeping for physicians who recommend MM in a bill sponsored by law enforcement officials who lack medical or relevant education training. Guidelines and accepted standards for recommending MM were developed by licensed California physicians and adopted by the MBC on May 7, 2004.

SB 1262 violates the California law that protects the privacy of patient medical information — The Confidentiality of Medical Information Act — as well as federal law protecting health information, by mandating physicians report all MM recommendations along with private patient records. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires patient authorization for disclosure of patient health information. HIPAA is a federal regulation, and MBC has no authority to evaluate HIPAA violations.

SB 1262 mandates a training and certification requirement for any doctor who recommends MM, with a $5,000 fine for noncompliance. I support SB 1262’s efforts to establish standards for quality assurance and testing of marijuana cultivated for medical use, but even that section duplicates guidelines developed and adopted by the Attorney General’s Office in 2008.

Physicians are capable of regulating their practice standards without law enforcement oversight and SB 1262 is opposed by the California Medical Association, which issued guidelines for physicians recommending MM in 2004, which includes proper record-keeping and annual examinations.

“Medical marijuana evaluation clinics are engaged in the practice of medicine, and physicians are responsible for their patients,” that 20-page Digest for Medical Marijuana Clinics affirms.

Marijuana remains listed in Schedule 1 of the federal Controlled Substances Act and has no accepted medical use. The lack of dose response curve research conducted in large population-controlled trials coupled with the lack of standardized cannabinoid profiling, potency, pesticide, and microbiological testing make it difficult for the physician to offer dosing recommendations for MM short of the adage “start low, go slow.”

The American Public Health Association, American Academy of HIV Medicine, and many other medical institutions join Americans for Safe Access — the largest member-based marijuana advocacy organization in the country — in promoting safe and legal access to MM for therapeutic uses and research. Polling shows Americans of all political stripes support medical marijuana, and SB 1262 would be a step backward that the public doesn’t want to take.

Ahimsa Porter Sumchai is a physician and former District 10 supervisorial candidate.

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