Pot

Obama and state’s rights

Zelda Bronstein
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Obama and state’s rights

So how many angry pot smokers (and how many of my libertarian-leaning blog trolls) are going to love this? The governors of four western states want to take control of federal land inside their borders, and they’re organizing to do it. Mostly a political stunt — the governors want to allow more mining, ranching, and drilling on public lands, and the feds are taking it a bit more slowly. And nothing new — we’ve had these western range wars for decades, and for decades Utah governors have insisted that the state ought to be making the decisions around the 66 percent of the total Utah land mass that’s owned by Washington.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the administration is doing the right thing by resisting — you can’t just take national parks and national forests and Bureau of Land Management land and turn it over to development-oriented states. Much of that was federal land before there were states. And it’s not as if the Interior Department is all pristine about it — there’s already far too much resource development on public property, and the public doesn’t get anywhere near enough money for it. Sometimes it’s so bad it’s nutty.

But Obama’s got a problem, and it’s called medical marijuana — and he’s doing the same dumb thing that presidents before him have done, and all it does is create allies for the far right. Hell, after the U.S. attorney started attacking dispensaries I was ready to seceed. Let’s take California and walk; we’re already the ninth largest economy in the world, and we pay far more in federal tax money than we get in federal benefits. The Sierra makes a pretty defensible permiter; who needs Washington?

Of course, I’m quite happy that Obama doesn’t want to let the nuts in Arizona and Alabama get away with their racist and oppressive anti-immigrant laws and I’m happy to argue (in those cases) that immigration is a federal issues and that states shouldn’t try to mess around with it.

Except that San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and we have our own policy, which is excellent and the feds should leave us alone. And when this city did same-sex marriage, in defiance of state law, that was one of the coolest things ever.

You see where I’m going here.

Both sides can raise this Constitutional stuff and argue state’s rights and a long list of other things, and any good law school professor can spend years talking and writing about the historical and legal issues. There are some things that should be left to the states, and some things that the federal government should do, and that is always evolving.

But really, a lot of this is about policy. Legal pot is a good thing. So is same-sex marraige. Crackdowns on immigration are bad. Drilling and mining on public land are a problem, whether it’s state land or federal land. Politics isn’t perfect, and I’m willing to take our victories where we can get them.

But when the president is inconsistent (he’s cracking down on medical marijuana in CA but not Colorado; he’s against the Arizona/Alabama laws but still his ICE trying to mess with SF’s Sanctuary City) and does things that make his allies and supporters (that’s us potheads) mad at him, then it’s easier for the governor of Utah to say the feds are on his land and should leave him alone. Just like the pot farms.

 

 

 

For your consideration: Short takes from SFIFF, week one

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For your consideration: Short takes from SFIFF, week one

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

THU/19

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

 

FRI/20

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

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

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

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

 

SAT/21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUN/22

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

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

 

MON/23

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

TUE/24

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

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

Our Weekly Picks: April 18-24

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 18

Wild Flag

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

8pm, $20

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com


THURSDAY 19

Anoushka Shankar

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

7:30pm, $25-$60

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness

(415) 392-4400

www.sfjazz.org

 

“Tease-O-Rama”

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

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

Multiple venues, SF

www.teaseorama.com

 

Madness

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

With DJ Harry Duncan.

8pm, $35–$42.50

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 567-2060

www.thewarfieldtheater.com


FRIDAY 20

Cuba Caribe Festival

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

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

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 826-4441

www.cubacaribe.org

 

School of Seven Bells

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

With Exitmusic

9pm, $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

STS9

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

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

8pm, $29.50

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 548-3010

www.thefoxtheater.com


SATURDAY 21

Cesar Chavez Festival

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

11am parade; noon-6pm fair, free

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

(415) 621-2665

www.cesarchavezday.org


MONDAY 23

All Tiny Creatures

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

With Minor Kingdom, Kill Moi

9pm, $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com


TUESDAY 24

Real Estate

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

With the Twerps, Melted Toys

8 p.m., $17

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell St.

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

Neon Indian

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

With Lemonade

8pm, $25

Fillmore

1850 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

Rusko

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

With Sigma

8pm, $33

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 567-2060

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

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Into new territory

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Into new territory

arts@sfbg.com

SFIFF How to account for the desire for difficult terrain that runs through so much contemporary art cinema? Exploring the margins and crevices of what’s readily visible is just what good filmmakers do, but extremes have become commonplace. The irony that these far-flung films live on in the cosmopolitan vapors of the festival circuit cannot be lost on the filmmakers themselves. Remoteness may be a relative matter, with patience revealing islands everywhere, but inaccessible landscapes nonetheless guide a handful of interesting features showing at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.

>> Read our complete coverage of the San Francisco International Film Festival here.

The bourgeois couple stripped bare by vacation is a standby of modernist cinema, with Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia (1954) still the gold standard and Maren Ade’s Everyone Else (2009) the best in recent memory. Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet is an almost classical work in this mode. An engaged couple (Gael García Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) hire a local guide (Bidzina Gujabidze) to lead them through the magnificent Georgian steppe, and so the psychological roundelay begins. Fraught staging, language difficulties, Gerry-rigged tracking shots, and significant pocks in the Caucasus landscape are all worked out with great expertise but little verve.

Where The Loneliest Planet draws on landscape to reveal repressed instincts, Ulrich Köhler’s Sleeping Sickness drifts towards further occlusion. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is the obvious reference point, though here it’s a black European who pursues a white man gone native. In the film’s first half we watch as rueful Dr. Ebbo Velten (Pierre Bokma) prepares to leave Cameroon’s lush danger with his wife and daughter. The imminent departure emboldens him to accuse the local authorities of bilking international aid donors for a nonexistent sleeping sickness crisis. Then Alex Nzila (Jean-Cristophe Folly) arrives in Cameroon to evaluate the medical program and finds Velten changed: he’s in a business partnership with a man he openly despised in the first half of the film, and we hardly hear any mention of his European family. Berlin School director Köhler works displacement as a figure of psychology, politics, and narrative and smartly uses the international aid question as a frame to plunge deeper mysteries of identity.

Conrad is a significant presence in The Rings of Saturn, the peripatetic novel by W.G Sebald that’s also the focus of Grant Gee’s suitably oblique documentary portrait. Patience (After Sebald) offers astute commentary on the moods of Sebald’s prose from thinkers like Adam Phillips, Robert Macfarlane, and Tacita Dean, though Gee succumbs to the spectacle of Google Earth mapping of the novel and some decidedly sub-Sebaldian spiritualism. Still, hearing the author speak his own mind on Virginia Woolf’s moth and the phenomenology of walking is worth the price of admission for fans.

Gonçalo Tocha eschews the Google’s eye view in It’s the Earth Not the Moon, his resplendent study of Corvo (the tiny northernmost island of the Azores, close enough to being in the middle of the ocean and a far outlier of European Union). Tocha and his sound man Dídio Pestana dropped anchor there to capture every face, bird, and rock on the island — a self-consciously grandiose goal with something of the 19th century about it. The film first approaches Corvo with statistical lyricism: dimensions, number of residents, number of roads, and so on. The notion that you could hold the entire island in your head at once is an illusion, of course, but a sustaining one. Corvo is an island such as you might have imagined as a child, which is not to say that It’s the Earth is innocent of the world. As economic math and electoral politics sweep the second part of the film, Tocha proves himself an inheritor of the French essay-film tradition of Chris Marker and Agnès Varda. The film’s three hours pass easily in the intimacy of encounter, but one still admires the desire to give the film experience some qualitative measure of being marooned.

Corvo’s aging population might well feel at home in the timeless Brazilian village of Found Memories, the fable of a young woman born in the wrong time coming to a community of people who have forgotten to die. Along with It’s the Earth and other SFIFF selections Palaces of Pity and Neighboring Sounds, Júlia Murat’s first narrative feature seals a particularly strong year of Portuguese-language films. She delineates time and space through routine, patiently unfolding characterization in the adjoining repetitions. Lucio Bonelli’s cinematography is beautiful work in itself, fearlessly embracing darkness and shadow (the rural village must have seemed like easy street after lensing Lisandro Alonso’s formidable landscapes). Found Memories doesn’t break the mold of slow cinema — its melancholy mingling of photography and myth is especially reminiscent of Manoel de Oliveira’s The Strange Case of Angelica (2010) — but a late passage of clipped post-punk demonstrates that Murat can handle a sudden swerve.

That leaves little space for Davy Chou’s assured debut, Golden Slumbers, and it deserves an article of its own. The remoteness we experience here is that of phantoms: Chou’s film excavates the thriving Cambodian cinema that was rubbed out by the Khmer Rouge. All that remains are fugitive traces of printed ephemera and soundtracks of curling orchestral ballads and psychedelic nuggets — and the memories of those people who made or relished the films and survived Pol Pot. Most of the films discussed in this article use offscreen sound to develop a sense of place beyond the frame, but Golden Slumbers is a special case, with the poverty of archival materials turned to an advantage as elegy. Chou’s gliding Phnom Penh interludes and spaciously staged interviews reflect the influence of Jia Zhangke and Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), but these cinephilic touchstones never overwhelm the personal, defiant accounts of moviemaking at the heart of the film. Ever after is the tragic refrain of Chou’s film, but the once upon a time is as golden as he says. 

 

www.sffs.org

I get by with the help of my local DIY classes

Andrew Lam
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I get by with the help of my local DIY classes

What would the ultimate DIY day look like? There’s heaps of classes you can take in the Bay Area to make yourself more handy and sustainability-minded. Here’s a hypothetical 24 hours using the skills you can cull from those courses — scroll to the end of the article for details on where you can take each class concerned.

It’s Saturday! Wake up to the smell of coffee you roasted yourself (“Home Coffee Roasting”). Pour in your homemade almond milk for a nutty kick. (“Everyday Nut Milks and Cheeses”) For breakfast, you’re having toast with the jam you preserved (“Basics of Food Preservation and Jam-Making”) and fresh honey from your backyard beehive. (“Backyard Beekeeping”) Say hello to the chicken peeping outside, and thank your favorite hen as you enjoy that plate of scrambled eggs. (“Intro to Backyard Chickens”)

Mosey out to your freshly-landscaped garden, picking your way past the brand-new bank of sprightly succulents. (“Strategies in Urban Permaculture”) Admire your new water-saving irrigation system — she’s a real looker. (“Greywater, Rainwater Catchment, Earthworks”)

Time to primp for your day. Wash your body with the soap you made from scratch (“Cold Process Soap Making”) and afterwards, spritz yourself with handcrafted perfume. (“Making Natural Perfumes”) Head to your closet and pick out the fresh new frock you sewed (“Patternmaking and Design”), adorning yourself with those homemade earrings and pendant. (“Stitch DIY Class: Jewelry Making”)

After running a few errands around town, return to your garden to enjoy a cup of seasonal tea. It’s perfectly steeped — no need for artificial sweeteners. (“Tea and Food Pairing”) For lunch, you’re thinking crab ravioli with tomato cream sauce. (“Using Your Noodle”) Sprinkle fresh herbs gathered from your garden onto your plate for that extra kick. (“Starting an Herb Garden”)

Your out-of-town friends have been eating out every day of their trip, so you invite them over for a home-cooked meal. You remember hearing one of them saying that he craved sushi — sounds like the perfect night for nigiri and maki. (“We Be Sushi Workshop”) The handsome wooden table you built last weekend (“Wood and Metal”) makes the perfect centerpiece over which to catch up on each other’s lives.

The evening is going smoothly. Until, that is, one of your guests bumps into a burning candle on her way to the bathroom. The fire spreads quickly, but what do you know, those skills you copped from San Francisco’s firefighters save the day. (“Disaster Preparedness Training”)

Singe avoided, you and your friends get in the car to head to a mutual friend’s art show. Snap — the car sputters out! But you dodge an evening of tow trucks and mechanics’ waiting rooms. That auto repair class (“Essentials of Auto Maintenance”) taught you everything you need to save the day. Again.

You drift off to a deep sleep wrapped in a warm nest of your favorite knitted blankets. (“Knitting 101”) Sweet dreams, most capable person ever. 

“Home Coffee Roasting” May 3, 6pm-9pm, $30–$60. Modern Coffee, 411 13th St., Oakl. (510) 927-3252, www.iuhoakland.com

“Everyday Nut Milks and Cheeses” May 2, 6pm-8:30pm, $40-65. Instructor’s private home in Oakland, www.rawbayarea.com

“Basics of food preservation and jam-making” Fri/20, 6:30pm-8pm, $10. Pot and Pantry, 593 Guerrero, SF. (415) 206-1134, www.potandpantry.com

“Backyard beekeeping” Tue/24, 6pm-9pm, $35. Sticky Art Lab, 1682 University, Berk. (510) 655-5509, www.biofueloasis.com

“Intro to Backyard Chickens” Sun/15, 2pm, $35. Mill Valley Chickens, 106 Lomita, Mill Valley. (415) 389-8216, www.millvalleychickens.com

“Strategies in Urban Permaculture” Sun/15, noon-5pm, $25. Hayes Valley Farm, 450 Laguna, SF. (415) 753-7645, www.hayesvalleyfarm.com

“Greywater, Rainwater Catchment, Earthworks” basics of home irrigation Sun/29, 10am-1pm, $15. EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins, Berk. (510) 548-2220, www.ecologycenter.org

“Cold Process Soap Making” Fri/20, 6pm-9pm, $65. Nova Studio, 24 West Richmond, Point Richmond. (510) 234-5700, www.thenovastudio.com

“Making Natural Perfumes” May 6, 10 am-5 p.m., $125. Nova Studio, 24 West Richmond, Point Richmond. (510) 234-5700, www.thenovastudio.com

“Patternmaking and Design” Four weekly classes, $175. Apparel Arts, 2325 Third St. Suite No. 406, SF. (415) 436-9738, www.apparel-arts.com

“Stitch DIY Class: Jewelry Making” Sat/14, 2:30pm-3:30pm, free. Indie Industries Castro Store, 2352 Market, SF. (415) 861-1150, 5titch.eventbrite.com

“Tea and Food Pairing” Tue/17, 7pm-8:30pm, $85. Tea Time Room, 542 Ramona, Palo Alto. (650) 328-2877, www.tea-time.com

“Using Your Noodle” 5/1, 6:30pm-9:30pm, $45-60. Marina Middle School,104A, 3500 Fillmore, SF. (415) 749-3495, www.ccsf.edu/continEd

“Starting an Herb Garden” May 5, 10:30am, $39. Common Ground Organic Garden Supply and Education Center, 559 College, Palo Alto. (650) 493-6072, www.commongroundinpaloalto.org

“We Be Sushi Workshop” Sat/14 and Sat/21, 10am-1pm, $65-80. We Be Sushi, 538 Valencia, SF. (415) 565-0749, www.ccsf.edu/continEd

“Wood and Metal” April 23 through July 2, Mon. 6pm-9pm, 10 sessions for $520. The Crucible, 1260 Seventh St., Oakl. (510) 444-0919, www.thecrucible.org

“Disaster preparedness training” Tues/17, 6:30pm-9:30pm, free. Valencia Gardens Community Room, 390 Valencia, SF. (415) 970-2024, www.sf-fire.org

“Essentials of Auto Maintenance” Sat/14, 11am, $60. Metric Motors, 1480 Howard, SF. (415) 295-4486, www.thedistilledman.com

“Knitting 101” Weekly instruction hours Mon. and Wed., 7 p.m.-9pm; Sat., 8:30am-10:30am, $66. Imagiknit, 3897 18th St., SF. (415) 621-6642, www.imagiknit.com

 

Oh high!

Andrew Lam
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Oh high!

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Say “cannabis,” not “weed.” Couch discussion in the language of medicine, not intoxication. There are a lot of rules when it comes to talking about marijuana — and the country’s most beloved cannabis publication breaks most of them.

That’s because at High Times magazine, the general take is that herb should be legal across the board, not just for consumption by the verifiably sick. “Until it’s legal for all adults, medical marijuana patients are going to be regarded as second class citizens,” said Elise McDonough, who besides having worked as a graphic designer with the magazine for 10 years is the author of the brand-new-for-420 Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook (Chronicle Books, 160pp, $18.95).

>>Join the Guardian and a stellar lineup this Friday 4/20 at El Rio for the Stoned Soul Picnic party!

In her Guardian phone interview, McDonough pointed out that eating may be the first way human beings consumed cannabis. She’s certainly done her part to give us options beyond the basic brownie — the book includes recipes for “psychedelic” spanikopita, tamales, cocktails, holiday feasts, and a host of canna-bases, from dosed butter to olive oil. McDonough wrote many, but also gets help from other High Times luminaries, like the dearly departed Chef Ra, who contributed to the rag’s recipe column for 15 years.

Interest, ahem, sparked? The following recipes from the book will make a stellar foundation for next week’s holiday festivities, medicinal or not. 

 

SIMPLE CANNABUTTER

Makes 1/2 cup

1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter*

1/4 ounce cannabis buds, finely ground

*To make cannamargarine, simply substitute margarine for butter in this recipe

1. Melt the butter on low heat in a saucepan. Add the ground buds, and simmer on low heat for 45 minutes, stirring frequently.

2. Strain the butter into a glass dish with a tight-fitting lid. Push the back of a spoon against the plant matter and smash it against the strainer to squeeze out every drop of butter available. When you’re done, discard the plant matter.

3. Use your cannabutter immediately, or refrigerate or freeze until it is time to use. You can easily scale this recipe up for larger batches of cannabutter. One pound of butter (4 sticks) can absorb 1 ounce of cannabis, but you may want to simmer for up to 60 minutes.

Drizzle this cannabutter over freshly cooked pasta or popcorn for instant satisfaction. Reserve large batches in the fridge or freezer for use in recipes.

 

GREEN GANJA GARLIC SMASHED POTATOES

Stones 4

1 1/2 pounds potatoes, unpeeled and cut into chunks (Yukon Gold potatoes are great)

1 pound parsnips, peeled and cut into chunks

1 head garlic, cloves separated and peeled

1 1/2 tablespoons salt, plus more as needed

4 tablespoons Simple Cannabutter

Black pepper

1. Put the potatoes, parsnips, and garlic in a large pot and cover them with water. Bring to a boil over high heat and then add the salt. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for about 15 minutes. The potatoes, parsnips and garlic should be tender and easy to smash. Drain the vegetables and reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking water.

2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the cannabutter.

3. Return the vegetables to the pot or a large serving bowl, and begin to smash them with a potato masher, slowly adding the melted cannabutter a little at a time. Use spoonfuls of the reserved cooking water to thin the mixture if the smashed veggies are too thick. Season with black pepper and more salt and serve.

 

Why Wall Street loves the War on Drugs

Zelda Bronstein
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Why Wall Street loves the War on Drugs

The raid on Oaksterdam has just about everyone in local politics engaging in a little head-scratching: What possible reason would the Obama administration have to crack down on medical marijuana in an election year? How does it help the president, who will be facing an unsettled and angry electorate in a still-tough economy, to alienate the pot smoking liberals of the world, who were at one point among his most loyal constituents?

What a fucking idiot.

Here’s what make it worse: I don’t think anyone at Goldman Sachs talked to the White House about this, but the 1 percent clearly have a lot to gain from the drug war.

And it has nothing to do with drugs.

Let’s be logical here. There’s only one possible way to increase economic equality in this country, and it involves government intervention. With union membership at a fraction of what it once was, government is the only institution with the power these days to enforce income redistribution. The wealthy have to be forced to pay higher taxes, and that money has to be spent on public education, affordable housing, economic development, public-sector-driven job creation and other programs that are proven to narrow the wealth gap.

But that’s tricky, since the Right has done such an effective job (with the help of corrupt politicians of every stripe, including liberals) of making Americans mistrust government. How do you get people to vote for higher taxes when they think the money’s going to be wasted on pointless wars and crony contracts — and on sending federal agents to roust pot clubs?

The two factors that most accounted for the fall of economic liberalism in the 1960s were Vietnam and pot. My parents generation saw the government as the nation’s leaders who got us out of the Great Depression and won World War II. My generation saw government as the assholes who were sending us to die in Southeast Asia and putting us in jail for smoking weed. That’s why when Ronald Reagan announced that “government is not the solution, it’s the problem,” so many of my peers nodded (through the haze) and said: Right on.

There are more progressives in the Bay Area today who distrust and dislike the federal government than there were before the raids began. We’re going back to the days when “the feds” became a dirty word. And it’s undermining everything that Obama is tyring to do with the economy.

Yeah, Wall Street, which is trying to get rid of pesky regulations, loves this — if you hate the feds in Oaksterdam, it’s hard to love them at the IRS and Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s what the 1 percent relies on. And it’s working.

 

 

Our Weekly Picks: April 4-10

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WEDNESDAY 4

 

Nile

Death metal fans are eagerly awaiting At the Gate of Sethu, the newest album from South Carolina speed-demons Nile. Influenced, as always, by singer-guitarist Carl Sanders’ exhaustive study of Egyptian history and myth, the band’s new offering is sure to feature Nile’s distinctive traits: impossibly fast blast-beats (courtesy of drummer George Kollias), keening, Middle Eastern chords, and creepy, atmospheric interludes played on traditional instruments. Still, the chief delight for any Nile fan should be witnessing the band’s superhuman stamina and chops in person — despite a truncated opening set, few bands can play more individual notes in a single night.(Ben Richardson)

With the Black Dahlia Murder, Skeletonwitch, Hour of Penance

7:30pm, $21

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

Blank Tape Beloved featuring Brother Ali

“Sometimes I don’t write a lot/ I know folks out there call that writer’s block/ I just call it my process/ It comes out when it’s ready to, I guess…” So explains Brother Ali in new single “Writer’s Block,” perhaps as a reply to fans asking about the lengthy stretches between releases. The Minneapolis-based emcee brings a big-picture perspective, striking a lyrical balance between brevity and bookishness. New (and free!) seven-song EP The Bite Marked Heart provides the appetizer for upcoming LP Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color. Ali brings in the band Blank Tape Beloved for what he describes as an impromptu and intimate performance. (Kevin Lee)

9pm, $10

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

Cults

Cults sound like a ’60s girl group (think the Shangri-Las/Ronettes) drenched in dreamy, lo-fi noise. New York-based couple and artistic collaborators Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion began making music in their home as a hobby not too long ago. Shortly after their hit single “Go Outside” went viral in the blogosphere, however, they landed a record deal and released their first album (Cults). Their vocals, which Follin belts out in a sweet, crooning manner, suggest foreboding themes like senseless depression, unalterable inadequacies, and uneven, entrapping love. You’ll most likely want to slowly sway to these songs — and reverently mimic Oblivion’s steady, controlled head banging. (Mia Sullivan)

With Spectrals, Mrs. Magician

8pm, $21

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

Thu/5, 8 p.m., $21

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

THURSDAY 5

“Behind The Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema”

As a costume designer in Hollywood, Deborah Nadoolman Landis has worked on a host of legendary films and created iconic looks such as the fedora and jacket of Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones) in Raiders of The Lost Ark (1981), the candy apple red leather jacket for Michael Jackson in Thriller, the “College” shirt worn by John Belushi in Animal House (1978), and many more. Landis will be appearing at PFA this week to discuss her work as part of “Behind The Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema,” a special two-night program — on Thursday she will be joined by her husband, director John Landis, for a screening of Three Amigos! (1986) — one of several projects they’ve worked on together over the years. On Friday she will join fellow costume designer Aggie Guerard Rodgers for a talk and screening of the classic American Graffiti (1973). (Sean McCourt)

Thu/4-Fri/5, 7pm, $5.50–<\d>$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-1412

bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

Argentine Tango USA Festival

There are few cities more similar to San Francisco than Buenos Aires — leaving aside the vagaries of bistec versus burrito and geographic shaping (121 compared to 203 square kilometers). The two are major cities with world-class art scenes, passionate histories of social protest, and dammit, we dance. Be you a hippie-shaker or a vogue hand-waver, the motion in your ocean will most surely respond to the sultry allure of tango, brought to us this week in spades in a big-time competition authorized by the Buenos Aires city government. Spring to attend a milonga, which is like a tango jam session, or take a seat to watch the pros pivot it out. (Caitlin Donohue)

Thu/5-Sun/8, $20 competition spectator admission Check website for competition times

San Francisco Airport Marriott

1800 Old Bayshore Highway, Burlingame

www.argentinetangousa.com

 

 

Dark Star Orchestra

Depending on how much second-hand pot you’ve smoked, if you close your eyes and listen up to Dark Star Orchestra, it’s possible to convince yourself you’ve transported back to 1969 for a Grateful Dead show. Yes, DSO is a nationally recognized and acclaimed Dead tribute act (seriously, the band really sound like the Dead) that is coming to show us young whippersnappers what we missed in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. So melt into the sunny jams that have shaped our fair city’s culture, expose your inner ecstasy, and rub against the person next to you; lovingly. Also, consider this is a prime opportunity to people-watch and swap Jerry Garcia-related personal transformation stories. (Sullivan)

9pm, $35

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

FRIDAY 6

 

Yours and Mine

If contemporary performance originated partly in response to the cultural primacy of visual art, Macklin Kowal’s Yours and Mine suggests a full-circle act of reclamation in which performance shares not only space but a full dynamic partnership with other objets d’art. In it Kowal, a San Francisco performer-choreographer and current artist-in-residence at Meridian Gallery, responds with capable, thoughtful intelligence to an exhibition by leading Irish contemporary painter Patrick Graham, in an hour-long performance installation involving ten dancers and all three floors of the gallery. The piece promises a further livening of the rooms beyond the already electric effect of Graham’s roiling canvases, as well as an exploration of the way we literally embody the aesthetic experience. (Robert Avila)

Fri/6-Sat/7, 7:30pm, $10–<\d>$20

Meridian Gallery

535 Powell, SF

(415) 624-6765.

www.meridiangallery.org

 

“Beautiful Rebels: A Celebration of the Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier”

You got epaulet envy trawling the paparazzi shots from the opening of the JPG-de Young exhibit a few weeks ago. Chin up girl, your chance to fete fashion’s enfant terrible hasn’t passed you by. Sashay to Golden Gate Park to hang with the Guardian (we’re the media sponsors) at this Friday night happy hour event. Drag-cinema supernova Peaches Christ will be doing us the honor of emceeing, and would you believe there will be a fashion show featuring the work of Mister David and others — not to mention a performance by SF’s queer-hop representatives Double Duchess and a craft table by Some Thing artisan Haute Gloo? (Donohue)

Fri/6 5:30pm, free de Young Museum 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, SF (415) 750-7694

Facebook: Beautiful Rebels www.peacheschrist.com

 

dead prez

The dead prez anthem “It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop” may as well apply to both dead prez lyricists-producers M-1 and stic.man. Since teaming together in New York in the mid-1990s in New York, M-1 and stic.man have developed from hip-hop artists into social change activists, revolutionary lecturers, and health advocates. (Legend has it the duo used to fling apples into the crowd at concerts.) Both have kept busy with their own projects — stic.man came out with a “fit-hop” album The Workout (Boss Up Inc) espousing the benefits of good breathing tactics and calisthenics, while M-1 has paired with Italian electro producer Bonnot of Assalti Frontali to become AP2P (aka All Power to the People). But dead prez is still very much alive, continuing to tour and working on the long-delayed LP Information Age. (Lee)

With Los Rakas, DJ Mr. E

9pm, $20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

 

 

Thrones

Game on: the band Thrones has been around far longer than that newbie medieval fantasy television show (though not quite as long as the book series it’s based on). Another key difference, this Thrones is actually just one dude: Seattle’s Joe Preston, the metal-grinding doom bassist/Moog-enthusiast who’s spent time on tastemaker labels Kill Rock Stars and Southern Lord, and played alongside Earth, the Melvins, and High on Fire. If Preston were to play his own Thrones game, it would likely involve some sort of underground “chew up this sheet metal and spit it out stylishly” auditory sensation contest. Coda: I was advised against relating Thrones in any way to Games of Thrones, but it has now just happened, so do with that what you will. (Emily Savage)

With Helms Alee, Grayceon

9:30pm, $10

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

 

GWAR

You know a band is worth seeing when the singer has a seven-syllable name for his prosthetic penis. The “Cuttlefish of Cthulu” has flopped mightily at the forefront of GWAR shows for over 20 years, and the Richmond, Va. outfit shows no signs of slowing down. The tunes are still mostly straightforward, forgettable headbanger fuel, but the elaborate costumes and stage show change every tour — half the fun is discovering which foam-rubber politician effigy GWAR is going to disembowel next. My money’s on Rick Santorum this time around. (Ben Richardson)

With Municipal Waste, Ghoul, Legacy of Disorder

8pm, $25

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

MONDAY 9

Jeff Mangum

How much do we owe the Elephant Six Recording Company collective for our current slate of folk and indie rock? Two decades after a group of four friends launched their own record label in Denver, Elephant Six bands and spin-off projects (The Apples in Stereo and of Montreal among them) are still pushing critically acclaimed music. Core member Jeff Mangum remains among the collective’s most followed musicians, even though his Neutral Milk Hotel released the last of its two LPs fifteen years ago. The everlasting appeal of On Avery Island and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea may stem from a refreshing rawness devoid of glossy production. In these two shows before Coachella, Mangum’s acoustic performances highlight his signature sweet serenade. (Lee)

With Laura Carter and Andrew Rieger of Elf Power and Scott Spillane of the Gerbils

Mon/9-Tue/10, 8pm, $36

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 548-3010

www.thefoxoakland.com 

 

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Live Shots: ‘Fart of Gold,’ Home Theater Festival

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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“Make sure to get a spot towards the back of the room,” I told Sam Love as we made our way to Dana Street Theater on Berkeley. “Philip’s shows often involve things and sometimes liquids flying.” And I was right. There was some definite yam peeling, neti-pot-pouring, and chair-flying moments sprinkled throughout the show. Did I mention that we were in Philip’s bedroom?

“That’s the whole point, honey!” Philip told me.

The Home Theater Festival is an opportunity for actors and artists to perform and showcase their work, including GOLDIE winner Philip Huang’s “Fart of Gold” — and it’s all done from the comfort of their own home. Now in its third year, the Home Theater Festival concept has taken off as an alternative for performers who can’t afford a professional venue, and is happening all over the world.
 
The evening started with some seriously hilarious story telling by Cassandra Gorgeous (the topic was really too intimate to talk about… go see her perform yourself!), followed by Philip and his director, Theo Knox, taking us through an evening of mini-shows, ranging from alien-butoh to a dance performance by a character with limited arm movement, at which point the dude sitting next to me exclaimed, “Boy, this is soo uncomfortable to watch,” as tears of joy streamed down his face.
 
The Home Theater Festival runs until June 3rd, and “Fart of Gold” runs Friday and Saturday night. Don’t miss the weirdness. It’s good for you.

Appetite: The very latest in LA cocktails

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After years of hunting, the day finally came when I could find proper cocktails in LA, even if the scene itselfwas years behind NYC or SF. I’ve covered LA cocktail bars in recent years as the quality has rapidly grown, with my latest visit yielding the most consistent drinks yet. The LA cocktail renaissance is indeed coming into its own.

There have still been a few hyped-up letdowns, like Next Door Lounge in Hollywood, which is a fantastic space: roomy, mellow, old world, with comfy leather couches, friendly service, and classic Powell and Loy movies playing on a big screen. I absolutely loved the environment which it made it even more disappointing in sampling four expensive drinks ($12-14) to find them unbalanced and generally unappetizing.

Perhaps Next Door’s execution will improve to match the interior. In the meantime, here are some spots worth checking out down south.

Italian and Peruvian pleasures:
SOTTO, Culver City

My favorite drinks this visit were served by my favorite bartender Kate Grutman at Sotto restaurant. She exudes style and panache, while keeping customer service and comfort foremost. In a spacious building housing Picca Peruvian Cantina upstairs, Sotto’s low ceilings and buzzy vibe are the backdrop for Neapolitan pizzas and Italian pleasures like sardines or house lardo on toast.

Both restaurants opened just under a year ago with menus created and bars managed by Julian Cox, well known for his cocktail menu at Rivera in downtown LA. He poured rare Italian amari from Sotto’s vibrant collection, while Kate served cocktails exhibiting restraint, balance, and sheer drinkability. At Sotto, amaro is king and in cocktails is given a range of interpretations.

I particularly adored Kate’s off-menu creation of Junipero gin, Suze, house sage and parsley bitters, Angostura bitters, and vermouth infused with pineapple and thyme. The drink hit all the right herbaceous, bitter, aromatic notes, shining as an aperitif or dinner accompaniment.

More amaro fun was had with a Carroll Gardens, typically made with rye, amaro, and maraschino liqueur. Instead, Kate used Averna, maraschino liqueur, and Cocchi for a bitter brightness. Menu stand-outs include a spiced Amaro Daiquiri: Fall Redux (rhum agricole, lime, Averna, allspice dram), a subtle, soft Smart & Fennel (London dry gin, lemon, house bitter orange marmalade, fennel-scented egg, fennel frond), a boozy but elegant Bicycle Thief (Scotch, Holland gin, vermouth, West Indian orange bitters), and a vivid Il Cavallo Bianco (reposado tequila, pineapple/thyme-infused dry vermouth, Cocchi, grapefruit peel).

PICCA, Culver City

Upstairs from Sotto is the aforementioned bustling Picca. While impeccable Peruvian food is reason to visit, the bar is a destination on its own for South of the Border spirits. Mezcal, tequila, pisco and cachaca are showcased here. There are infusion shots ($6), like pisco with coconut, pineapple or Concord grapes, or mezcal with rocoto pepper.

Cocktails are once again by Julian Cox, while the friendly bartending crew exhibit a love for the spirits they work with. After two visits, my top drink is Zarate’s Tomahawk # 15 ($12). It utilizes my beloved mezcal, infusing it with rocoto peppers, shaken with lemon juice, agave, and huacatay (Peruvian black mint), topping it with a soft cucumber foam. Heat, citrus tart, pepper, smoke and silky sweet weave into a balanced whole.

Boots with Fur ($12) shows off Italia-varietal pisco in a Tiki-inspired drink. Brightly spiced with bonded apple brandy, lime, and ginger, orgeat and falernum offer texture and nuttiness. It’s served over crushed ice in a copper mug, the most playful presentation on the menu. Texture rules in Avocado Project ($12), blending fresh avocado with the excellent Banks 5 Island white rum, lime, agave, ascorbic acid for balance, and a bit of salt for a sweet, salty, vegetal imbibement.

A bartender said actress Frida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) was just in days before and they served her their Slumdog Chamomillionaire ($11). Subtle Quebranta pisco earthiness  marries well with red grape cardamom black pepper coulis, balanced by lemon and evaporated cane sugar. Picca’s bar menu is as lively and vivid as its food.

Rum and cigar havens:
CANA RUM BAR, Downtown

Cana Rum Bar transports. Yes, you need a membership to enter, but it’s merely $20 for a whole year. I find this seemingly pretentious charge at the door actually keeps out “riff raff” (allow me to digress for a moment and explain my apparent snobbery. By riff raff, I mean vodka tonic partiers who ruin the setting at some of the more craft cocktail bars. There’s nothing more frustrating for those of us who really care about quality and a relaxed space to imbibe than to have that space overrun by those uninterested in craft and there to get drunk – they can do so at any of the hundreds of bars and clubs around that cater to exactly that crowd. There’s far less quality cocktail havens than party dens, so even more reason we pine for a few civilized spots in which to savor a well-made drink and conversation.)

Don’t worry: the place is sans attitude. Mellow on my visit with roaring patio fireplace, embracing glow, and cozy booths, Cana makes many a night a party with funky DJs and celebrations like Bob Marley’s birthday.

General Manager Allan Katz knows his rum… and his cocktails. Though not as encyclopedic as our own Smuggler’s Cove menu, rum geeks will delight in a well-curated menu grouped by island and continent. There are also tasting flights and cigar pairings.

I’m delighted with cocktails like Tennessee Isle ($12) made with Prichard’s Fine Rum, overripe mango-infused absinthe (subtle), and coconut Peychaud’s bitters. The menu describes it best: “This is what a sazerac would taste like if the wicked witch of the west overtook Kansas and sent Tennessee to the Caribbean via flying monkey.”

On the low alcohol front is a Trader Vic recipe adapted by bartender Danielle, an Angostura Fizz ($13): a full shot of bitters with house pomegranate reduction, lemon, cream. It’s a bitter, frothy, elegant beauty. An Actual Apple Martini ($12) changes the game for a typically dreadful drink using apple-infused Plymouth and Death’s Door gins, Pommeau de Normandie (a marriage of Calvados and fresh apple juice), Dolin Dry Vermouth, and Bitter Truth Creole Bitters. No fake green apple pucker here.

In keeping with Cana’s vibe, the drinks are refined yet entirely approachable.

LA DESCARGA, Hollywood

La Descarga is mobbed when live burlesque and Cuban jazz are scheduled, while bartenders in the main bar seemed disinterested and “too cool” to engage. But in an open air back room (appears to be closed but is vented around the ceiling), I encountered two delightful bartenders who knew their rum. Only a couple basic cocktails are served in this room, otherwise, it’s straight rum and cigars. I truly appreciate that you can bring your own cigar or purchase one from their selection. In the main bar, I made my usual off-menu request and was served a Mr. Boston classic, the Chet Baker cocktail (named after the swoony musician), using Zacapa 23 rum, Punt e Mes, Angostura bitters, honey.

Though I slipped away for live jazz in the body-to-body main room, Renaissance Man and I were more than content to linger in the smooking room over rum and a cigars, savoring La Descarga’s musty, Old World ambiance.

I was delighted with each rum pour selected by back room bartenders:

– A light brown Martinique agricole (French West Indies rhum made from sugar cane juice vs. molasses): lovely Clement Rhum Vieux http://www.ministryofrum.com/rumdetails.php?r=755 exudes minerality with apple brandy and fig notes.
– Vascaya 21yr Cuban-style rum http://www.vizcayarum.com/ from Dominican Republic has whispers of vanilla cream soda.
– Pot-stilled beauty Plantation 1990 https://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1058663 from Guyana is earthy, even slightly smoky, alongside vanilla and soft spice.

La Descarga evokes Old World Havana: divey, dim, a little run down. Despite the beautiful Hollywood crowd, this is not merely a hipster haven but a true rum bar.

Note: make a reservation (email via the website).

Along Hollywood Blvd.:
LIBRARY BAR, Hollywood

Returning to Library Bar in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel confirms thoughts in my review last year: creative, farmers market cocktails remain impeccable, some of the best LA has to offer, but I missed the higher level of service given by Matt Biancaniello in prior visits. Clientele was as frustrating as before, asking for basic, vodka tonic-type cocktails or coffee, packing out the intimate, chic bar the longer we were there, turning it into a pick-up scene.

Despite these downsides, a full farmers market spread and bartender creations (be aware: there is no menu) resulted in more winning drinks. Simple and sweet, Barsol Pisco was perky with mint, agave, lime, and grapefruit.

Mezcal mixed happily with jalapeno heat, herbaceous thyme, and agave for gentle sweetness. Another creation of Basil Hayden bourbon with plump cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, and lemon, defined “garden fresh.”

The best cocktail of the night was bartender Chris Hughes’ Controlada (he also provided best service of the night). Hughes blends five chiles with two of my top agave spirits: Del Maguey’s Chichicapa mezcal and Fortaleza Blanco tequila. Additionally, he adds ginger lemon honey, arbol chile-infused St. Germain elderflower liqueur, red and yellow peppers. It may sound like too many ingredients but balance is spot on. Spice, color and brightness shine, while the overall effect is vivacious and refreshing.

Just be ready for a NYC-priced bill of about $16 per cocktail at the end.

WOOD & VINE, Hollywood

Packed crowds mar the scene at Wood & Vine – I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way for it. But if you’re in the area and on a mild LA night, Wood & Vine’s back patio and laid back staff are inviting.

Late night happy hours keep prices low and though there are only a few cocktails, there’s a solid spirits and beer selection and classic drinks like a Bee’s Knees or classic Daiquiri.

Their own creations vary in quality, from a Millennium, surprisingly delightful with softly bitter Cocchi, gin, and white creme de cacao, to a Kentucky Cashmere, with dominant spice from chai vanilla-infused bourbon, Jelinek Fernet, and chocolate chili bitters, which ultimately felt off balance.

Drinks with a view:
HOTEL WILSHIRE ROOFTOP BAR, Mid-City West

Staying at the new boutique Hotel Wilshire was a welcome respite from busy LA streets. Spending each sunset on their rooftop bar by the pool was a pleasure. Surrounded by LA hills and high rises, it’s a gorgeous urban view and peaceful place from which to take in rosy-pink LA sunsets.

The drinks menu is fairly basic but there is care in the details. They make their own ginger beer, which is delicious on its own or makes a vivid Dark & Stormy, garnished with candied ginger. Also of note, the hotel’s restaurant chef is Eric Greenspan of Next Iron Chef fame.

And you can’t beat that view.

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com

Does electrifying Caltrain really help high-speed rail?

Sasha Cuttler
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Does electrifying Caltrain really help high-speed rail?

Mayor Ed Lee and other regional political and transportation officials are celebrating this week’s agreement to take bond money approved by state voters for the California High-Speed Rail Project and apply it to electrifying the Caltrain’s tracks up the peninsula, which has long been a goal for that troubled transit agency. Electrification will lower operating costs, reduce noise, and be better for the environment.

“Electrifying Caltrain as an early investment and extending Caltrain into the heart of downtown San Francisco at the new Transbay Transit Center are essential for the success of high speed rail and the future economic growth of our region,” Lee said in a prepared statement released yesterday.

Yet his office didn’t respond to questions about how the new agreement – which will apply $700 million in high-speed rail bond money from Prop. 1A to the $1.5 million electrification project, arguing it lays the foundation for high-speed trains to come later – will help the Transbay Terminal. That project needs to come up with the more than $2 billion for the 1.2-mile tunnel from the current Caltrain station at 4th and King streets to bring the trains downtown. The mayor’s press release argued only that it would “provide the momentum upon which to build the Downtown Extension to the Transbay Transit Center.”

Transbay Terminal Joint Powers Authority spokesperson Adam Alberti called the latest agreement “a big deal for transportation” and told us, “The MOU agrees that the early investment of Prop 1A funds should be placed on the electrification of Caltrain.” Even though it doesn’t give money directly to Transbay Terminal, Alberti said it advances a project in which that station is the designated terminus and it frees up future transportation funding for the needed tunnel.

But Quentin Kopp, who launched the high-speed rail project as a state legislator in the ’90s and until recently served on the project’s board, said this latest agreement doesn’t help Transbay Terminal (which he has derided as little more than a real-estate deal) and it represents a violation of Prop. 1A and other high-speed rail provisions.

“Here’s a pot of money and everybody wants to steal from it,” said Kopp, who has criticized recent changes in the high-speed rail plan, such as San Francisco-bound passengers having to transfer to Caltrain in San Jose rather than coming directly into San Francisco and how Caltrain’s tracks limit how many trains can run per hour, hurting the overall project’s financials. “It’s hardly the project that was envisioned.”

As we reported in January, the high-speed rail project has been working to overcome doubts and attacks by fiscally conservative politicians here, in Sacramento, and in Washington DC. And this latest agreement helps overcomes Caltrain’s deep fiscal problems and the opposition of many peninsula politicians and neighborhood groups to creating a larger and more robust high-speed rail line up the peninsula.

5 PM UPDATE: Lee Press Secretary Christine Falvey just responded to my inquiry and said, “The region is pursuing funding the $1.5 billion Downtown Extension through a combination of additional sources, including New Starts, and we expect to announce additional good news on this front soon.” It’s unclear why there is a discrepancy between Alberti’s figures and Falvey’s. Lee has pledged to make a priority of ensuring the train extension to Transbay Terminal gets built.

In the SXSW green room

Andrew Lam
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In the SXSW green room

culture@sfbg.com

HERBWISE DIY pop star Lisa Dank doesn’t smoke marijuana to help with her art — smoking weed is her art. The Seattle singer-producer — known for her florid, handmade costumes and gonzo stage presence — crafts odes to cannabis (check out her aural fixation at www.soundcloud.com/lisa-dank), and has a day job at 4Evergreen Group, a patient network that supplies legal and educational resources to its members, as well as physician recommendations for medical marijuana.

Dank was headed down to South By Southwest to do shows at house parties and on the street with the aide of a PA system jacked into her car, but she managed to snag an artist wristband and also logged in hours in the green room chatting with performers about weed culture today. She’ll be publishing her findings in 4Evergreen Group’s new bi-monthly lifestyle magazine — but first, we got her to share her favorite snippets from South By.

 

TOP 11 MEDICAL MOMENTS FROM A POTSTAR AT SXSW

1. My Omicron hash oil vaporizer pen. Didn’t leave my side. Not even on the airplane. ‘Nuff said.

2. Austin loves pot. Especially at the Wells Fargo. Every time I went to withdraw cash, the point was brought up that I work in the medical marijuana industry. These boys couldn’t get enough! They sang the praise of medical pot (literally — shouting and fist-pumping.) They even brought out their camera-phones to show me the NORML cop car rolling around town.

3. MPP (Most Popular Piece): Quartz glass pieces are popular amongst locals and musicians for their affordability, cleanliness, and durability. Local glass pieces were a close second. Note: My all-star award goes to the editor of UC Berkeley’s student newspaper, who pulled out a gorgeous hand-blown, sandblasted Sherlock similar to the work of glass artist Snic. The editor had bought it at the smokeshop across the street from campus on Bancroft Way. We loaded bowl after bowl of Sour Diesel and Grape Ape six feet from Diplo in the VIP section of Speakeasy’s rooftop patio all Tuesday night, as Teki Latex and the Sound Pelligrino team did their thing.

4. Let’s just say Talib Kweli and his crew are fortunate that I have such a good weed connect in Texas.

5. Chali 2na smokes joints! Hemp extra-long! He had his own stash but took my number just in case. You can never have enough weed connects in Austin. He’s also a sweetheart because he let me use one of his papers.

6. Shiny Toy Guns does not smoke pot.

7. Bands on the run: Brick and Mortar (from New Jersey), Fox and the Law (Seattle), and The Sundresses (Cincinnati) stocked up on buds at home and drove slow all the way down to Austin.

8. Sub-pop recording artists Spoek Mathambo and Thee Satisfaction enjoyed the relief brought forth by the herb after a long walk and checking out Sub Pop’s great showcase at Red 7 on Friday night.

9. Strain trend: Sour Diesel. My guy had it. When he was out, the pedi-cab that I tried to buy from told me he had Sour Diesel too. Just hours later on the official SXSW artist’s deck-lounge at the Austin Convention Center, some locals pulled out two grams of S.D. to roll up in our blunt.

10. Underground future-super-producer Dubbel Dutch had a quandary for me: “I can’t smoke weed anymore! I used to smoke weed every day when I was younger, but now I take one hit and I’m done!”

I explained to him the brain schematics of cannabis, how we have cannabinoid receptors built into our brain but don’t produce cannabinoids endogenously. I hypothesized that his adult brain’s super-sensitivity to THC was due to his excess smoking during the formative years of his brain’s development. I told him he’d trained his brain to be extra-receptive to cannabinoids.

11. Smoking joints throughout my house party set. And for that I thank you, kids of Wilson House.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Soojin Chang. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 7

San Francisco Green Film Festival closing night film and party San Francisco Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post, SF. (415) 742-1394, www.sfgreenfilmfest.org. 5:30 p.m., $12 per film. Whether you’ve had the chance to check out the second annual Green Film Fest’s activist-making movie screenings, make sure to check out its final night celebrating sustainable living and the fight to save our environment. The closing film Just Do It is a tale of modern-day outlaws and illegal activism in England.

THURSDAY 8

International Women’s Day March sign-making party New Valencia Hall, 747 Polk, SF. (415) 864-1278, www.radicalwomen.org. 7 p.m., $7.50 suggested donation for dinner. Sisters United Front is having a rally on March 10 to oppose budget cuts that have hit poor women the hardest. In anticipation of the march, Radical Women is hosting this evening of food and sign-making.

FRIDAY 9

Make Do! recycling exhibit and fashion show K Gallery at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding, Alameda. (510) 865-5060, www.rhythmix.org. 6 p.m.-9 p.m., free. Recycling is not only something that happens when sorting out your garbage, but is also when finding creative ways to create functional treasures out of seemingly useless trash. The opening night of Make Do! will feature vintage vendors, delicious treats, and an upcycle-oriented fashion show.

SF Beer Olympics Impala Bar and Ultra Lounge, 501 Broadway, SF. (415) 982-5299, www.impalasf.com. 8:30 p.m., free to play; $10 to drink. Are you a lover of beer games with friends who hate them? Come make a mess with like-minded individuals who are more than ready to ditch the overpriced cocktails for a duel over brew.

Avant-garde sound and visual night with Edmund Campion Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Gallery B, 2626 Bancroft, Berk. (510) 642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 7 p.m., $7. Edmund Campion is a pioneer of computer-enhanced performance practice and is the special guest for this week’s BAM/PFA Friday Late Night event. He promises to deliver a truly tripped-out experience through a mix of video projections, a choir scattered throughout Gallery B, and his unique take on electronic tunes.

SATURDAY 10

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Out of Chaos opening reception Kala Gallery, 2990 San Pablo, Berk. (510) 841-7000, www.kala.org. 4 p.m.-6 p.m., free. The friend and publisher of many Beat writers, Ferlinghetti drew from his well of experiences when working on his poetry and art. Come meet the one-time poet laureate of San Francisco as he launches Out of Chaos, a portfolio that showcases his original artwork and poetry.

“Sweeping of Giants” abstract ink artwork opening reception Old Crow Tattoo and Gallery, 362 Grand, Oakl. (510) 834-2769, www.oldcrowtattoo.com. Through April 9. 8 p.m., free. There are always samples of previously inked designs in the albums and on the walls of tattoo shops, but they’re usually small renderings or unsatisfying snapshots. Come see how visually orgasmic it is when detail-attentive ink artists really let loose in a surrealist painting, design-oriented composition, or a geometric field of color.

World Naked Bike Ride San Francisco edition Northeast corner of Justin Herman Plaza, 1 Market, SF. www.sfbikeride.org. 11 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Take a naked stance against our society’s global dependency on oil cartels in this mobile protest. Feel the liberating breeze as you ride as bare as you please through San Francisco’s favorite spots. Fingers are crossed for outstanding weather.

“Reflecting on his Politics, Music, Fighting Capitalism, and Cancer” jazz performance and panel discussion Multicultural Community Center in the Associated Student Union Center Building at UC Berkeley, Bancroft and Telegraph, Berkeley. (510) 548-2350, www.asiabookcenter.com. 2 p.m., free. Fred Ho is a saxophonist and social activist who underwent intense surgery and chemotherapy and came out of the battle with a new understanding of what “true healing” means. Join Ho as he discusses health, sustainability, raw foodism, and of course, indulges us with a little jazz.

Kiteboarding party and benefit event Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com. 6 p.m.-9 p.m., $10 donation. San Francisco is kind of the perfect place for kiteboarding because of the ever-present wind and the beautiful scenery. Help keep our city beautiful by supporting nonprofit Baykeeper’s work in preventing pollution in the Bay Area — you might even win some cool kite gear in the process.

SUNDAY 11

“Lazy Sunday Shopping Day”: Opening weekend of Chronicle Books at the Metreon Chronicle Books, 165 4th St., SF. (415) 369-6271, www.chroniclebooks.com. 10:30 a.m., free. Sunday should be for strolling and snacking, and Chronicle Books is honoring this sacred ritual with coffee and Top Pot doughnuts at its shop opening in downtown’s Metreon.

MONDAY 12

Bargain Basement Concert Night Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com. 8:30 p.m., free. The weekend might have drained your pockets but there’s not reason you can still dance. Local bands and DJs totally understand — they are hosting a cover-free night of surprisingly eclectic music. Think how delicious your moves will feel when you’re rocking them to Arms and Legs, Jackal Fleece, Surf Shit, and Junkdrawer sans financial damage.

Food-truck battle at the board of supes

Zelda Bronstein
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Food-truck battle at the board of supes

The supervisors are weighing in on a state bill that would ban food truck from parking within 1500 feet of schools — and it’s really tricky.

Let’s start with a bit of reality: My kids go to public schools, my son’s in middle school, he rides Muni home — and there’s ample opportunity for him to buy some really nasty stuff. There’s a 7-Eleven a couple of blocks from his school, and kids walk over there all the time and buy those disgusting 32-ounce sugar bombs. If a truck selling chips and soda and greasy tacos showed up at 3:30 p.m., the kids would be lined up to spend the money their parents though was going for a nice healthy lunch.

And the trucks would go there, if they could, the same way the ice cream trucks used to cruise through my suburban neighborhood in the 1960s (yeah, I’m old, old, old) in the late afternoon, when they could guarantee America’s children would be hungry and ready to spoil their supper.

But they can’t, see, because San Francisco already bans food trucks from within 1,500 feet of a public middle school or high school — which is a pretty broad zone.

Now Assemblymember Bill Monning has introduced a bill that would make that ban statewide — and would include middle schools and private schools. Sounds good, and some healthy-food advocates love it. But San Francisco’s a little different than, say, Hayward or Fresno — this is such a dense city that there are schools almost everywhere. If you ban food trucks from within 1,500 feet of all schools, then you ban them from about 80 percent of the city. Burrito Justice has a great set of maps that give you the picture (burritohibition!)

The maps also suggest the problems with banning anything from within 1,500 feet of a school in San Francisco. Pot clubs, liquor stores, sex clubs … there are all sorts of places where you really don’t want your kids hanging out, but if you make those broad exclusions, you force them all into a very few small areas (including northern Soma, the waterfront and Bayview) and that’s not exactly fair, either. Should all the food trucks in the city be congregated in those crowded places that fit the 1,500 foot rule?

My 10-year-old daughter walks through the heart of the Castro, which is probably within 1,500 feet of her school, and there’s some stuff in the storefronts that isn’t exactly age appropriate, and we deal. She asked me once why people were walking around naked, and I said “because they like to,” and she shrugged and that was that.My 12-year-old son knows that people smoke pot and that it’s legal for adults to use as medicine; I don’t think the notion of him walking past a well-regulated dispensary is going to make him any more (or less, god help me) likely to try some for himself some day.

So I’m kind of with Sup. Scott Wiener, who wants the city to oppose the Monning bill — not because I want trucks selling Doritos out in front of Aptos in the afternoon, but because I think San Francisco already prevents that, and 1,500 feet is way too much for a city this size. Maybe amend the bill to allow cities to make their own rules, but have the state rules apply if they don’t. Maybe allow cities beyond a certain density to change the distance to 500 feet.

Maybe think a little more about what it really means to ban things because they’re close to schools. It doesn’t always make sense.

PS: Actually, I’m thinking maybe we should ban all multimillion-dollar condos from anywhere within 5,000 feet of a school. Exposing the impressionable minds of small children to such graphic, disgusting, ostentatious displays of wealth has to be bad for them. Worse than seeing a sex club, anyway.

 

Dame good fun

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Dame good fun

arts@sfbg.com

FILM What with the internet, the paparazzi, Rupert Murdoch’s CIA-level spy techniques, and the general displacement of actual news by “celebrity news,” it’s pretty hard these days for a star of any sort to keep their debauchery private. Not like the good old days, when Hollywood carefully stage-managed publicity and only those who’d become a real liability risked having their peccadilloes exposed.

Such rare windfalls aside, the public were mostly restricted to watching beautiful people behave badly onscreen — a pastime that took a big blow once the censorious Production Code was instituted in 1934. Elliot Lavine’s latest Roxie retrospective of movies from that golden-shower period of post-silents, pre-Nannywood licentiousness — this time entitled “Hollywood Before the Code: Nasty-Ass Films for a Nasty-Ass World!” — provides plentiful early talkie titillation. Now that the bodies involved are long buried, we also know a few tales of their stars’ off-screen misadventures, too.

The week-long series of double bills sports its share of familiar titles, notably Howard Hawks’ terrific original Scarface (1934); Edgar G. Ulmer’s Karloff vs. Lugosi smackdown The Black Cat (1934); and the first, probably best version of H.G. Welles’ prescient biotech fable Island of Lost Souls (1932). There are women in prison (1931’s Ladies of the Big House), women in Faulkner (1933’s The Story of Temple Drake, a watered-down adaptation of W.F.’s then-notorious Sanctuary), women in everything else (1932’s Three On a Match, whose Depression-era Valley of the Dolls-esque trio includes a very young Bette Davis), and just plain Joan Blondell (1933’s Blondie Johnson).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzxnEDEY2Hs

It’s a few choice dames in lesser-remembered pictures that provide the biggest “nasty-ass” discoveries this go-round, however. March 4 offers a shocking double dose of pure white femininity finding themselves in, ahem, “Yellow Peril” — miscegenation being something Hollywood could only begin to embrace a few decades later. Frank Capra’s atypically erotic The Bitter Tea of General Yen, with Barbara Stanwyck alllllmost surrendering the white flag to a “charismatic Chinese warlord” (Swede Nils Asther, eyes narrowed), has become a minor classic since flopping in 1933.

No such luck for The Cheat (1931), a remake of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 shocker that was part of Paramount’s brief, failed attempt to make stage sensation Tallulah Bankhead a movie star. Her gambling-addicted socialite gets branded (literally) in lieu of repayment not by the original’s Far East businessman (dashing Sessue Hayakawa) but by a mere rich Caucasian perv with Sinophile pretensions (Irving Pichel). The big courtroom climax is a notable howler.

Bankhead remained a Broadway star and a popular “personality,” her throaty voice hinting at a semi-private life that included a great deal of bourbon, a fondness for unexpected nudity, and sexual appetites all along the Kinsey scale. After two decades off screen she arguably found her camp métier as a berserk Bible-clutching hag terrorizing Stefanie Powers in 1965’s Die! Die! My Darling.

Much less of a survivor was poor Clara Bow, who was beloved when she played the wild thing yet unduly punished when it turned out that role had relevance in real life. The quintessential flapper and “It Girl” (“it” meaning sex appeal) was never much of an actress, but an incandescent, live-wire screen presence.

Call Her Savage (1932) is a pre-Code jaw-dropper that was supposedly her personal favorite. Running an A-to-Z gamut of emotions (and hairstyles), her Texas heiress heroine Nasa “Dynamite” Springer is “never two minutes the same” — a nice way of saying she’s nuts. In 88 minutes she rides a horse like it’s something else, plays with her mastiff likewise, is near-raped by an estranged husband, turns streetwalker, causes a brawl in Greenwich Village café catering to “wild poets and anarchists,” gets in two catfights, hits the bottle, and finds peace upon discovering she’s a part Indian “half-breed,” which apparently explains all.

Emotionally unstable, due in part to a pretty horrific upbringing, Bow must have related. At the time she was enduring myriad problems, notably some embarrassing public revelations spilled by a blackmailing secretary. Savage would be her next-to-last film, after which she retired into a deep and troubled seclusion.

Heading thataway as well was Juanita Hansen, a silent star who’d gone down in flames a decade earlier thanks to a “Queen of Thrills” image that unfortunately she enacted a little too enthusiastically in real life. She quit cocaine, got hooked on morphine, quit that, and became an anti-drug crusader — but nothing re-ignited her career. Certainly not lone comeback vehicle Sensation Hunters, a 1933 Poverty Row exploiter in which she was fifth-billed as “Trixie Snell,” manager-slash-madam to a troupe of “Hot-Cha Girls” who kinda dance, kinda sing, but mostly roll customers at Panama City’s “Bull Ring Club.” It was a sad exit. Puffy and peroxided, Hansen is all too convincing as a woman with too many hard miles on her to go anywhere but further downhill.

Waaaay uptown — glittering Broadway via glossy Paramount — 1934’s Murder at the Vanities offered the last hurrah for pre-Code naughtiness. And what a hurrah: chorus girls in pasties and less (at one point they simply clutch boobs as if on a latter-day Vanity Fair cover); production numbers like “The Rape of the Rhapsody” (the “rape” being Duke Ellington’s “colored” jazz musicians and dancers invading a classical orchestra with something called “Ebony Rhapsody” — until a white gangster jokingly machine-guns them all down); plus sexual humor so blunt that Jack Oakie ends the film telling a giggly blonde “Come on, let’s do it,” meaning exactly what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCoj855Vdo8

On the side of the angels — definitely for losers here — there are numerous horrible songs (excepting standard “Cocktails for Two”), gag-inducingly sweet romantic leads, and kitschy-great ideas like having stage impresario Earl Carroll’s patented “Most Beautiful Girls in the World” pose en masse as tropical waves and cosmetics products. Representing Satan and evening gown-wearing pot smokers everywhere is villainous Gertrude Michael, who infamously sings torch song “Sweet Marijuana.” Michael was an elegant stage and radio star whose own recreational taste leaned more toward cocktails for one. Indeed, she was fictionalized as the hard-drinking love object in one-time lover Paul Cain’s 1932 novel Fast One, an early classic of hard boiled American pulp.

Saving the sleaziest for last, the series will truly flabber your gast with its closer. Normally prim MGM found itself reviled in early 1932 with the fleeting release of Tod Browning’s Freaks (playing the Roxie March 3), a much-misunderstood, now celebrated fable starring actual circus sideshow performers. It was considered so grotesque and unsettling that Freaks was banned in many areas — Britain didn’t see it until 1963.

Yet there’s no evidence of any similar backlash to the infinitely scuzzier Kongo, unleashed by Metro a few months later. A remake of Browning’s 1928 Lon Chaney vehicle West of Zanzibar, it stars Walter Huston as wheelchair-bound “Deadlegs” Flint. He’s used cheap magic tricks to appoint himself fearsome white-man “god” amongst spear-carrying tribesmen in a “dunghill” African outpost, all part of an elaborate, insidious plan to wreak vengeance on the rival who stole his wife and health long ago.

What this revenge eventually encompasses reads like a list of nearly everything the Production Code would soon bar from the screen: depicted or suggested drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, rape, sadism, and a convent-bred ingénue (Virginia Bruce) recalling “hot hairy hands pawing and mauling” her unwilling virginal body. Not to mention human sacrifice and a unique substance abuse “cure” using leeches.

One can almost hear the censuring voice of Will Hays, the Code’s original enforcer, when one character tells Deadlegs “The swamp’s wholesome compared to you!” It would arguably be 40 years before MGM distributed another movie so flagrantly perverse — and even then the studio was so ashamed they put it (Paul Bartel’s 1972 Private Parts) out under a fake subsidiary’s auspices.

 

HOLLYWOOD BEFORE THE CODE: NASTY-ASS FILMS FOR A NASTY-ASS WORLD!

March 2-8, $11

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

Bounce to this: Rusty Lazer does Mardi Gras

Andrew Lam
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1

Due to health problems, Big Freedia had to cancel her and Rusty Lazer’s Noise Pop gig at Public Works Sat/25. The event been transmutated into a big gay dance party with Double Duchess, DJ Bus Station John, and more. You should still read this interview, though.

With all its technicolor thrift flair, Mardi Gras costumes in state of midway-preparedness, and sleepy passels of breakfast-cooking houseguests, Jay Pennington’s New Orleans clapboard house is pretty hallucinatory on the Saturday afternoon of Carnaval weekend. Staring out the window waiting for the bounce DJ to call me up for our interview, I was to be excused for imagining that the shed in the side lot was producing actual chords while the New Orleans monsoon that raged outside hit it.

When I come across him in his bedroom, Pennington – who is also known as Rusty Lazer, and is the now-famous transgender NOLA bounce artist Big Freedia’s DJ and informal manager – is threading colored paper onto a string. He was going to be Hanuman the monkey god at the Mardi Gras parades on Sunday, his day off from work over Mardi Gras weekend. Around him, the city has ballooned with tourists and locals chucking beads at targets, high-stepping through brass numbers, eating frosted king cake, and peeing in inappropriate places.

I braved the rain that afternoon to talk about bounce music and Mardi Gras with Pennington, so it was kind of a surprise when our conversation swerved into the intricacies of 501(c)3 registration. It shouldn’t have been. He is a lot like New Orleans itself, a town that counts as a centuries-old melting pot, where the frat boys hang at the same bars as the career jazz musicians hang at the same bars as the pretty queer kids who sometimes party at dark gay leather bars (I was privy to this last comingling within six hours of landing in the Big Easy, at Daddy Aki’s Peacock party at the Phoenix Eagle Leather Bar where Pennington and his new managee Nicky Da B spun). [Correction: An earlier version of this article identified Peacock as Jay Pennington’s party. It is actually organized by Daddy Aki. Our bad.]

If you are a NOLA entertainer, Mardi Gras weekend counts among the most hectic of the year. Pennington had evenly informed me that my suggested meet-up time of noon was at least two hours too early considering the aftermath of the night shift on the decks he’d pulled before and that he would surely pull again that evening. But it’s two thirty now and for the moment, he’s able to focus on Hanuman, and attempt to tell me what’s so special about his city.

Hands-on Hanuman: Rusty Lazer in mid-Mardi Gras repose. Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

Though the DJ is playing less and less a role in Big Freedia’s career as she blows up and sells out shows around the country, Pennington continues to be a driving force in bounce’s dispersal outside NOLA. He signed his first official managerial contract with Nicky Da B, an adorable local whose track with Diplo hit Soundcloud last week. Bounce is indigenous to New Orleans — like Chicago’s juke and Detroit’s jit — a Caribbean-inflected dance music that is well known for the way its dancers pop their hips at machine gun rates.

Pennington is also is the co-founder along with Delaney Martin of New Orleans Air Lift, an international program he made to support local artists post-Katrina. This loosely-incorporated organization (it’s not 501(c)3 and relies instead on private donations, like the sales of the work of Swoon, one of the few females in the upper echelons of the street art world – her intricate, delicate wheatpastes blanket the fence next to Pennington’s house.) The Airlift Project has sponsored trips by New Orleanian artists to Berlin, even the import of Siberian breakdancer Ivan Stepanov to New Orleans.

This last story illustrates one of Pennington’s biggest turn-ons — fostering the artistic combustion that happens when a bunch of different energies get together. As illustration, he shows me a high fashion video shoot made by Lady Gaga’s stylist Nick Knight featuring the 19-year-old local bounce dancer Quack. 

After seeing a video of the improbably Barbie-bodied dancer, Knight contacted Pennington to ask if she’d care to do the same dance wearing Alexander McQueen for a fashion film series. Quack didn’t have a passport, but she went and got one with Pennington. The next day they went to London, found themselves “sitting in a room with nothing but Amazonian models.” Quack danced for eight hours to make the video, which turned out to be a testament to not just the extreme sexuality of bounce music, but also its athleticism, and emotional panacea. 

“This is the music that makes people forget that they’re hungry,” Pennington tells me, excitedly clicking through videos of schoolkids bouncing in rec centers, and endless YouTube clips of home bounce practice, done against a wall, ass to the camera. “It’s finally tuned to helping you forget your problems.” He wants to “take a New Orleans plane full of people all over the world,” to teach bounce to the masses. “In case anybody around here has forgotten how to have fun.”

The music lends itself to teaching — singers often give specific commands in songs, a popular request being for everbody to bend over and keep their ass popping. “Bounce is all instructions,” Pennington says.

The ability to move among social groups is one of the reasons why Pennington fell in love with New Orleans. 

“Here, you’re part of a community, not just part of a scene,” he reflects. “The difference is that the communities include all the people in your community. I don’t feel that in Portland or Austin.” He says the young arrivals in other artsy, liberal towns “hang out in mirrored social groups. I don’t know if that means anything, but it makes sense to me.” Pennington considers the neighborhood connections he’s made through participating in NOLA’s famous informal second line parades as, if not more, crucial than the ones he’s made with fellow travelers who have alit upon New Orleans as a haven for weirdos and music freaks. “New Orleans black community is nothing if not family-oriented,” he says.

Those mirrored social groups are a concept that should make sense to those beyond DJ Rusty Lazer. Part of what makes gentrification such a bummer is that when young bohos move into low-rent, family-oriented neighborhoods, they don’t form connections with the existing culture, imposing their own wacky adventures on top of the landscape as though they’re the first to really enjoy it. 

This missed connection leads newcomers away from frequenting established neighborhood businesses, and doesn’t provide for enough interconnectedness to get any kind of organizing come when rents start to rise and the condos come in. So good for New Orleans, and especially the rapidly changing Bywater neighborhood if they can avoid the typical storyline of minority community attracting broke artists attracting yuppies who can pay first, last, second, and third months’ rent in cash. 

Not the town doesn’t have other defense mechanisms. “The heat, the bugs, that lack of industry, the violence — that keeps it from growing out of control,” says Pennington. “It keeps the excessively ambitious away. When this place piles it on, it really piles it on. You can’t just casually live in New Orleans.” Wise words to the San Franciscan exodus that will surely come in the next months after tech boom 2.0. 

And for the record, I wasn’t hallucinating the house making music. The Ninth Ward’s musician mad scientist Quintron installed a rain organ into the Music Box, a small village of structures built in Pennington’s sideyard by 70 people to be played like a symphony, complete with Quintron playing conductor and a capacity crowd crammed into bleacher seating and crouching amid the structures themselves. At recent performances during last fall, 750 people showed up to watch the show. There was space for 250 in the sidelot. 

The key is patients

Andrew Lam
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14
The key is patients

HERBWISE “Never in a million years would I have chosen to do this,” wrote Randy Thompson’s mother in the September 1997 issue of Good Housekeeping. The title of Karen Thompson’s article was “I Broke the Law to Save My Son.” Her choice? To allow Randy to use marijuana to mitigate the gastrointestinal irritation, nausea, vomiting, and lack of appetite he suffered chronically from his Crohn’s Disease.

Two months after Karen’s article appeared, the magazine published letters it had received in response under the header “A Controversial Choice.” One respondent, a Crohn’s sufferer who opted to have her small bowels re-sectioned to mitigate her symptoms, claimed to be “disgusted” with the Thompsons: “It was the best decision I ever made. How foolish of Simon’s parents to not exhaust all medical possibilities before allowing him to smoke pot.”

Today Randy, undeterred by such suggestions, helps other cannabis users to find healthy ways to smoke. He is the sole proprietor of a San Jose vaporizer distribution company, Puff It Up (www.puffitup.com). Medical studies have suggested that using vaporizers dramatically cuts down the amount of tar ingested compared to smoking joints.

Johnson’s company is entirely staffed by patients — he has had his card since before Proposition 215 passed — and tries to stock the “little guys” of the vaporizer world, like San Diego’s Magic-Flight company. Surprisingly, Puff It Up doesn’t sell Volcano vaporizers, the most popular “vape” brand whose products you’ve probably seen filling massive plastic bags with smoke on a dorm room coffee table somewhere.

Randy says Volcanoes, which begin at $539 for a starter package, just aren’t practical. “Simplicity, that’s what we’re going for,” he says. Thompson’s favorite vaporizers — which he proceeded to pull out of his backpack by the handful at his Guardian interview on a sunny day on the Zeitgeist patio — are the kind of affordable, easy-to-use, portable tools you would expect people to use for self-administering medicine. Many of the models he brought go for under $200.

“We’re non-evil,” he says of Puff It Up’s small box approach. “We don’t like to think of ourselves as profit-driven, we’re just trying to get the word out that there’s a better way to smoke.”

Randy is still dealing with blowback from his decision to be involved with marijuana. Like many greater Bay Area dispensaries, Puff It Up received a letter from the Department of Justice a few months ago threatening punitive action if it did not stop selling vaporizers, which exist in a legal netherworld.

In the 1997 article, the Thompsons went by aliases. But in 2012, Randy is done with hiding. He thinks it’s important to stick his neck out for the medicine that he says has made his life better so that other people might have the same option.

In the struggle to make cannabis accessible to everyone who needs it, he thinks patients have a big role to play. Says Randy: “People need to stand up and say ‘I’m human too.'” 

Next week in Herbwise: We test out Randy Thompson’s favorite vaporizer — does the Magic Flight live up to its name?

 

3 recipes for a (booze-filled) vegan Super Bowl

Andrew Lam
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3

Leaving aside the fact that the Niners will not be playing in it, Super Bowl 2012 is shaping up to be a helluva game. For one, you’ll be able to get your play-by-play commentary from polar bears, corporate trickery though it may be. Two, the Bay Area will not be subjected to dead fetus ads at half-time. Three, Madonna’s probably bringing M.I.A. and Nikki Minaj to whatever color of glitter explosion halftime will be. Four, you will undoubtedly have the opportunity to gorge yourself on salty snacks, cold beers, and hearty stew, all of the above because we live in Amurrca and that’s how it works. 

Yes vegans, even you! John Schlimm, author of the Tipsy Vegan (Da Capo, 176pp, $17)— which we reviewed in this winter’s Guardian Books Issue — was good enough to share with us some recipes for a nice little lineup of vegan Big Game treats, including whiskey-specked hot-to-trot peanuts, aforementioned hearty veggie-and-beer stew, and a prescription for guacamole that necessitates tequila. See that? Each of Sclimm’s dishes are not only animal product-free, but also embued with that lifeblood of all vegans, alcohol. Sure, not all vegans booze, but don’t tell that to the denizens of the monthly SF Vegan Drinks because those kids get some serious networking done over happy hour. Are you ready for some cow, pig, chicken, and fish-free football?!?!!? 

(all recipe descriptions are Schlimm’s)

Flaming Hot Peanuts

For those who like it hot, you’ve come to the right place. Have a fire extinguisher (or, in tipsy vegan speak, a cool cocktail) on standby and open your hatch for these blazing little dazzlers, which have been paired with a few swigs of whiskey. But, if you must, you can control the heat in this zippy snack by selecting bottled sauces with less flame. Though I plead with you to have a heart — this recipe is really intended for adventure seekers who like their kissers ignited with flavor.

2 pounds dry-roasted, salted peanuts

1⁄8 cup Tabasco sauce

1⁄8 cup peanut oil

Juice of 1 lime

1 teaspoon sugar, or 2 teaspoons prepared sweet red pepper relish

1/4 cup bottled crushed jalapeños, drained

3 tablespoons whiskey

8 droplets of liquid smoke (optional)

Other hot sauces of your choice to make 1 cup of liquid (or mild sauces for a little less kick)

Pour the peanuts into a large, resealable plastic bag. In a 1-cup glass measure, blend the remaining ingredients.

Stir the mixture thoroughly and pour over the peanuts, seal the bag, and squeeze it to mix thoroughly.

Marinate the peanuts overnight in the refrigerator, turning the bag a few times.

Preheat the oven to 250°F. Line a baking sheet or jelly roll pan with parchment paper. Spread the peanut mixture evenly over the sheet. Roast slowly for 2 to 21/2 hours, stirring every half hour.

Turn the oven off, and let the peanuts rest in the closed oven overnight to dry out.

Store in airtight container(s) lined with paper towels.

Yield: 2 pounds hot peanuts

Note: begin the recipe two days before you want to serve the peanuts.

 

Tequila Seduces Guacamole

What would guacamole be without a tequila chaser? ¡Ay caramba! Luckily for us, with this recipe we’ll never again have to ponder that terrifying question. Share the love and mix a few tablespoons of the lively spirit directly into this classic south-of-the-border dip. Just beware the fire hazard: when adding the jalapeños, carefully taste a slice to determine the sizzle factor, which can vary wildly. as for the limes, usually the smoother the skin, the juicier the lime.

3 ripe Hass avocados

1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves, nicely chopped

1/2 medium red onion, diced

1 to 3 jalapeños (depending on your heat preferences), stemmed, seeded, and finely diced

Juice of 1 lime, about 3 tablespoons

2 to 3 tablespoons good tequila

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

lightly warmed tortilla chips, for serving

Halve the avocados and remove the pits by whacking them with a knife blade and twisting them out. Use a spoon to scrape the avocado flesh into a large mixing bowl and mash with a fork just until chunky. Add the cilantro, red onion, jalapeños, lime juice, tequila, salt, and pepper and combine with the fork. If the mixture seems too thick, add a bit more tequila. Serve at room temperature with plenty of warm tortilla chips.

Yield: About 2 cups

 

Bottom’s Up VegeBean Stew

Served warm on a snowy Sunday or chilled on a hot summer afternoon, a good basic golden lager or dark beer of choice tops off this festival of vegetables and beans, infusing the ingredients with the hearty twist and twang of earthy hops. also, feel free to roll out a barrel of your own homebrew or favorite fresh ingredients, making this dish a true original every time.

1 (14 1/2-ounce) can cut green beans

1 (15-ounce) can black beans

1 (15 1/4-ounce) can corn

1 (15-ounce) can light red kidney beans

1 (15 1/2-ounce) can pinto beans

1 (15-ounce) can green and white lima beans

1 (14 1/2-ounce) can green and shelled beans

1 quart (14-ounces) regular V-8 juice

1 (7-ounce) can peeled and chopped green chiles

2 (16-ounce) bags frozen stir-fry vegetables (thawed)

1 small head cabbage, chopped

1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh chives

2 to 4 (or to taste) tablespoons barley

3 tablespoons (or to taste) minced garlic

Season salt (to taste)

Garlic salt (to taste)

1 (12-ounce) bottle lager or dark beer (preferred) of choice

In a large pot, combine all the ingredients, except the beer. Cook, covered, over medium heat for 21/2 to 3 hours, until the vegetables are soft. Slowly pour the beer into the pot about 45 minutes before serving. Simmer until ready to serve.

This is a very versatile dish. Feel free to experiment by adding other beans, vegetables, or seasonings (i.e., crushed red pepper flakes, vegan Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce) of choice. There is even a variety of V-8 juices, including a “Spicy Hot” version, that could each add a really unique kick to the stew.

Yield: 12 to 15 servings.

Our Weekly Picks: February 1-7

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 1

Kapowski

Oakland-based indie pop quartet Kapowski is celebrating the release of its debut album, Boy Detective, with a party at Rickshaw Stop. With influences including George Gershwin, the Velvet Underground, and David Bowie, it’s no wonder Kapowski’s sound seems very much its own unique creation — sort of a dreamy, eerie, dissonant electric piano-driven march. While Thursday marks the release of the band’s debut album, Kapowski’s vibe has been slow cooking since front man and group visionary Jesse Rimler began collaborating with bassist Jon Gondo during middle school. (Mia Sullivan)

With Mwahaha and Bells

8 p.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com


THURSDAY 2

Mostly British Film Festival

February is traditionally an uber-boring month for cinemaniacs — but fret not, local film fans: you need not resort to queuing up at the megaplex to weep at Channing Tatum’s romantic troubles. Not only is IndieFest looming (opening night is Feb. 9), but the Mostly British Film Festival — co-presented by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation and the California Film Institute — kicks off tonight, with 28 new and vintage films from the U.K. (duh), Ireland, Australia, and South Africa. Highlights include Ken Loach’s latest, political thriller Route Irish; a complete screening of Michael Apted’s “Up” documentary series; and swinging London time capsule Performance (1970). (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Feb. 9, $12.50

Vogue Theatre

3290 Sacramento, SF

Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center

1118 Fourth St., San Rafael

www.mostlybritish.org

 

moe.

There’s nothing quite like seeing a jam show. They tend to involve hours of emphatic lyric shouting, sensual hip swinging, and persistent head nodding. The air smells more like pot than oxygen, lulling you into a stupor that causes you to forget you’ve been expressively swaying to the same song for thirty minutes. While lesser known than Phish and its omnipotent predecessor, the Grateful Dead, moe. has developed a similarly fanatical fan base by producing fun, danceable jams, perfecting the art of improvisation, and consistently engaging audiences at live venues. moe.’s been at it since 1989 and shows no signs of subsiding into irrelevance. Not to be missed. (Sullivan)

Thurs/2-Fri/3, 9 p.m., $30

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

“Elegy”

A beatific child, arms outstretched, rides a polar bear through a snowy landscape. A baby rhinoceros ascends through a pink cloudscape, glowing halo floating above its wrinkly gray ears. A brown-robed Saint Francis gazes upon a bleeding fawn — but, wait a second, what’s that falling space junk in the background? And how’d that toy robot get in there? Menlo Park native David Michael Smith’s drawings and paintings “hearken back in style to elegant Renaissance Madonnas and saints, while simultaneously borrowing images from contemporary pop culture,” according to Dana DeKalb’s essay in the catalogue for “Elegy,” his new solo exhibition. The drawings and paintings, many situated in elaborate frames constructed by the artist, have an effect that’s as calming as it is unsettling. (Eddy)

Through March 17

Reception tonight, 5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m., free

Scott Richards Contemporary Art

251 Post, Ste. 425, SF

(415) 788-5588

www.srcart.com

 

Dengue Fever

During a trip to Cambodia in the 1990s, Zac Holtzman became enamored with ’60s Cambodian pop and set out to create a sound that integrated the genre’s powerful female vocals with the psychedelic surf sound of the American ’60s. Enter Dengue Fever — a six-piece rock band whose Cambodian female vocalist, Chhom Nimol, sings in Khmer and English (sometimes in the same song, often wearing something sparkly), while Holtzman puts down a dazed, surf riff reminiscent of “Wipe Out” with his double-necked guitar chapei. Dengue Fever is set to shake the Great American Music Hall on Thursday and Slim’s Friday, to the delight of Bay Area indie pop fusion enthusiasts. (Sullivan)

With Secret Chiefs 3

8:30 p.m., $20–<\d>$44.95

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com


FRIDAY 3

“WTF with Marc Maron”

Part comedy discussion and part no holds barred interview program, Marc Maron’s WTF podcast has emerged as can’t miss listening for anyone curious about the thought processes of modern comedians and performers. The stripped-down feel and anything goes attitude of the show has led to some incredibly personal moments — Todd Glass coming out on a recent episode immediately comes to mind — that are respectfully ushered along by Maron’s neurotic but attentive and no bullshit personality. In a special live taping of the show, he’ll be chatting with a handful of eclectic guests that includes political satirist Will Durst, Arden Myrin (Chelsea Lately), and original Saturday Night Live cast member, Laraine Newman. (Landon Moblad)

10:30 p.m., $25

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com


SATURDAY 4

“Between Me and the Other World”

Dissecting wounds in under-reported aspects of American history has allowed Joanna Haigood to create some of the Bay Area’s most remarkable dance theater works. So there is every reason to look forward to her newest endeavor, “Between Me and the Other World,” which examines W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of “double-consciousness,” as analyzed in his The Souls of Black Folk. Using the “veil” as a metaphor, Du Bois eloquently explained the fractured state of being imposed on people who are not allowed to be themselves. Written in 1903, his observations have stood the test of time. For “Between” Haigood, in addition to her own dancers, has enlisted first-rate collaborators in Antony Brown for the music and David Slzasa for the design. This is a work in progress showing and includes a post-performance discussion. (Rita Felciano)

2 p.m., free

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 822-6744

www.zaccho.org

 

Bob Odenkirk with The Birthday Boys in “Seven-Man Sweater”

Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show) joins up-and-coming Upright Citizens Brigade troupe The Birthday Boys for two Saturday night performances of “Seven-Man Sweater.” Gaining steam over the past couple years with videos for Funny or Die and writing jobs for the MTV Movie Awards, The Birthday Boys create comedy that successfully blends smart satire and pop culture send-ups. The Los Angeles-based troupe’s style should mesh well with Odenkirk — a legend of the sketch form — in this sure to be hilarious mix of live performance and video shorts. (Moblad)

8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., $20

Eureka Theatre

215 Jackson, SF

(415) 788-7469

www.sfsketchfest.com

 

Exodus

In the 1980s, thrash reaffirmed the faster-is-better trajectory of heavy metal that was already developing in the mechanistic speed and rhythm of acts like Judas Priest, replacing the big, rounded tones and psychedelic aftertaste of the ’70s with piston-like riffs and angular dual-guitar leads. Thrash, the supremely-aggro next step in this sequence, exists today as something of a brief and punctual link in the great, forbidding chain of heavy metal, but one whose dogged endurance (see: Slayer) guarantees it a permanent appeal. The show brings together fellow Bay Area thrash legends Possessed, Heathen and Forbidden in a memorial for Paul Baloff, the late vocalist of Exodus, who died 10 years ago. (Tony Papnikolas)

With Mad at Sam, Angerhead, Mudface, Hysteria, Hell Fire, and the Venting Machine

6 p.m., $30

Oakland Metro

630 Third St., Oakl.

(510) 763-1146

www.oaklandmetro.org


SUNDAY 5

“Apocalypse Cakes Reading + Eating”

The world is ending soon. Why not eat as much dessert as possible before the inevitable? And why not get into the end-times spirit by whipping up one of Shannon O’Malley’s concoctions from Apocalypse Cakes: Recipes for the End? O’Malley’s book (an offshoot of her tasty and notorious blog) has all the recipes you’ll need to celebrate doomsday, as long as you have a sense of humor: Black Deforestation Cake, Impending Meteorite Rock Candy Cake, Whore of Babylon Fruit Tart, Shifting Poles Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, and, yes, 2012 Mayan Chocolate Cupcakes. Swing by Omnivore Books for a reading and tasting — the countdown is on, so calories totally don’t count. Right? (Eddy)

3 p.m., free

Omnivore Books

3885a Cesar Chavez, SF

www.apocalypsecakes.com


MONDAY 6

Thee Silver Mt Zion

You know how the creation of epic classical music appears to be on the edge of madness, at least, the way it’s depicted in Amadeus (1984)? All ferocious scribblings, and sore hands from tearing furiously into instruments with the passion of a particular set of notes pumping through the veins for hours, days, months. Bloody hands arise, ‘I’ve got it!’ This is how I picture Thee Silver Mt. Zion working. A modern, Canadian, post-punk version of that. Perhaps it’s because of the frequent title reworkings that suggests hyper attention to detail: A Silver Mt. Zion, The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band with Choir and Thee Silver Mountain Reveries. As part of the Godspeed You! Black Emperor collective, the Montreal-based band gained notoriety for its likewise stunning arrangements, droning movements, improvisational jazz style, and punk ethos. With name changes, lineup shifts, and sound tweaks over the past decade, it’s a wonder they’ve yet to collapse. (Emily Savage)

With Matina Roberts

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com


TUESDAY 7

Leni Stern and the Masters of African Percussion

When German-born guitarist Leni Stern traveled to Mali in 2005, she met master musician Bassekou Kouyate, and became entranced with the local percussion instruments and style — later releasing albums such as 2007’s Africa and 2010’s Sa Belle Belle Ba, incorporating the West African sound. A lifelong musician (she won Gibson’s Female Jazz Guitarist of the Year award for five consecutive years) and traveler, she was inspired, to the say the least. At Yoshi’s, she’ll play guitar, n’goni ba, and jeli n’goni, alongside Kofo on talking drum, Alioune Faye on djembe, and Mamadou on bass and additional percussion. (Savage)

8pm, $16.

Yoshi’s

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com


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Hot sexy events: January 18-24

Andrew Lam
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Thankful. I am thankful for San Francisco sex. Just got back from the AVN awards in Vegas this weekend and couldn’t get over the fake boobs (literally — mountainous cleavage), rubber ducky-esque lips, and rote couplings that took over the Hard Rock Hotel for the better part of the week. Don’t get me wrong, the weekend was all kinds of wonderful and there were buffets and penthouse hot tubs filled with Tina Horn, Princess Donna, and Akira Raine — salacious tweeting and rumors of Robin Leach and deep red carpet conversations about being forced to wear condoms. But for me, SF.

Also, the trailer for James Franco’s new movie based on the life of Kink.com actress-writer Lorelei is out: 

Why am I so stoked on this city? Read on about what San Francisco does best: weird, original, affirming sex events in the City By the Bay. Here’s four reasons that’ll make you glad you’re here (pervert).

 

Good Vibrations’ Lakeshore store opening

Once an employee-owned store in the Mission, Good Vibes has expanded into a nationwide business, powered by an Ohio sex toy corporation, and teaching everyone from Florida to Washington about the power of gadgets in the bedroom through an award-winning sales and education website. (Read our interview with the company’s C.O.O. and staff sexologist Carol Queen here.)The empire gets one bigger today, with the opening of Good Vibes’ first Oakland brick and mortar location. Kandi Burress of Real Housewives of Atlanta will be on hand to promote her superlative line of vibrators, Bedroom Kandi. 

Sat/28 6-9 p.m., free

Good Vibrations

3219 Lakeshore, Oakl.

(510) 788-2389

www.goodvibes.com

 

Perverts Put Out: Midwinter Edition

Accepting his honor at this year’s Guardian Goldies art awards, performance provacateur Philip Huang utilized a neti pot in ways surely frowned up by the Health Department. The man is inappropriateness, embodied — just ask those “God Hates Fags” people, he’s crashed their protests with a colander head, carrying a sign that says “No Fags on the Moon.” So what does a Huang do at a reading made for and by pervy weirdos? You’ll just have to attend the latest edition of Perverts Put Out, to find out. Tonight’s event also features sexy solliquies by horehound stillpoint, Sherilyn Connelly, and Jen Cross. 

Sat/28 7:30 p.m., $10-15

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

 

John Leslie one-year memorial

Harken back to your best memories of golden age porn star John Leslie, who passed away in 2010. Center for Sex and Culture will be hosting this memory circle for friends of his work — which includes Talk Dirty To Me (1980), Nothing To Hide (1981), and Talk Dirty To Me, Part II (1982). One of the first actor-cum-director hyphenates in adult film, the man was big back in the days of well-budgeted productions. Perhaps this will also be a look back on the long, strange road the porn industry has traveled over the past few decades (after all, Leslie did finish out his career directing gonzo releases). 

Sun/29 5:30 p.m., free

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

(415) 902-2071

www.sexandculture.org

 

[SSEX BBOX] premiere 

Name the sexiest cities in the world. Did Sao Paolo, Berlin, and San Francisco make it on there? They’re the obvious choices, of course — and fertile territory for this global documentary project. The team behind [SSEX BBOX] chased tail around the globe, chatting with all orientations and genders about what makes them tingle below (above) the equator.

Mon/30 8:30 p.m., free

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

(415) 902-2071

www.ssexbbox.com

 

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