Progressive

Chiu talks MTA reform as agency fails to support Muni

Sasha Cuttler
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Chiu talks MTA reform as agency fails to support Muni

With the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors poised to approve a truly terrible two-year budget today (4/20) – one that locks in Muni service cuts, subsidizes the police and other city departments, and fails to seek new revenue sources – there is talk about reforming an agency run exclusively by appointees of Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The most significant figure sounding that call is Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who told the Guardian that he plans to hold hearings this year on the MTA board failures to support transit service, with the goal of placing reform measures on the November ballot. Helping that effort will be his newest board aide, Judson True, who comes from a fire-tested stint as the MTA’s spokesperson and before that was a board aide to then-Sup. Gerardo Sandoval.

“We’re going to have a very serious discussion about MTA reform,” Chiu told the Guardian. “I’ve got some real questions and for the next six months, that will be front and center…I expect there to be a very robust discussion about the MTA and balancing that budget on the backs of transit riders.”

Those discussions will be wrapped into city budget season, a realm in which Chiu is also adding firepower right now by hiring Cat Rauschuber as his other new board aide. Rauschuber has her masters in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, most recently worked for city Budget Analyst Harvey Rose, and earlier worked in the city’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“It’s important that we hire folks who have experience in city government, particularly solid policy experience,” Chiu said, adding that his third board aide, Victor Lim, came from the Asian Law Caucus and has experience in immigration reform, another valuable asset given the ongoing standoff between the board and Newsom over sanctuary city policies. 

True and Rauschuber are also master networkers with strong and extensive connections in the progressive community, as well as more mainstream arts, culture, and political communities (Full disclosure: They’re also friends of mine). Those connections and social skills could help unite the varied critics of the current MTA budget, which range from the downtown-oriented SPUR to the new San Francisco Transit Riders Union (SFTRU) to the radical ANSWER Coalition, all of whom have areas of policy disagreement over the best way forward.

All are expected to weigh in today (4/20) at 2 p.m. when the SFMTA convenes in City Hall Room 400 to discuss and vote on the agency’s two-year budget. And while the groups may differ over partial solutions like extended parking meter hours, they all agree this a truly terrible budget that disproportionately punishes low-income people who rely on Muni.

“The budget is irresponsible and dishonest,” SFTRU project director Dave Snyder. “It reveals the hypocrisy in the mayor’s stated environmental commitments. This action will cut public transit permanently and that’s irresponsible.”

Mayoral press secretary Tony Winnicker has not yet responded to the accusations or to Chiu’s calls for MTA reform, but I’ll post his response in the comments section if I hear back.

The Daily Blurgh: Tea Party Grammer

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The Daily Blurgh: Tea Party Grammer

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

Finally, a true case of teabagging? Yes, Virginia, it IS possible to be the spokesperson for a new “right-wing TV network” while starring in “La Cage Aux Folles” on Broadway. Kelsey — he is what he is.

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“Since many San Franciscans seem to work on a freelance, contract, or they don’t work basis they have plenty of time to spend posting pithy narratives about their experiences, or pictures of things in the Mission, or pictures of things outside of the Mission that they can write funny or nonsensical captions for. Often nonsensical things are the funniest or vice versa and San Franciscans have totally picked up on this.” Does linking to this damn me as part of the punchline? I’m feeling a little meta right now. Please excuse me.

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This NY Times article does a nice job discussing the increased visibility of LGBT comic fans, as well as LGBT characters in comics, when it’s not fawning over the cosplay-themed sausage party where, “the muscle-cuddling garb often leaves little to the imagination.” Of course nothing, neither gay nor super, could possibly ever surpass this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0kUeQDPaGU

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Shocker: Pope’s lawyer is actually ex-dirty hippy, Berkeley resident (maybe he and John Yoo should do a power lunch?)

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San Francisco has a new art publication, titled in a no-nonsense fashion, The San Francisco Arts Quarterly. In addition to running a listings calendar, the Art Quarterly will also, according to the magazine’s manifesto (because what is an art publication without a manifesto?), “direct a dialogue with a highlighted neighborhood in San Francisco, rotating to different areas of the city with every issue. Each edition will consist of interviews with individuals and collectives who are showing an interest in the advancement of the San Francisco arts community and thus helping to further stimulate the city’s progressive nature.” The inaugural issue, which can be viewed online or downloaded as a pdf file, focuses on up-and-coming arts district the Tenderloin (aka San Francisco’s gritty, new tourist destination).

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All I have to say to this is no shit, SFGate:

 

 

Examiner and PRI target Greenlining Institute

Sasha Cuttler
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Examiner and PRI target Greenlining Institute

We chronicled the right-wing campaign to destroy ACORN – which promoted voting rights and economic justice for low-income Americans — as well as the crazy right-wing editorials in the San Francisco Examiner. And this week, we saw them join forces to go after another effective progressive organization: the Berkeley-based Greenlining Institute.

The Examiner newspapers here and in Washington D.C. today concluded a five-part series of industry-sponsored opinion pieces masquerading as journalism attacking Greenlining, ACORN, and the finally 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, claiming that their encouragement of banks to lend money in poor areas amounts to a criminal shakedown of corporations and one that caused the financial crisis.

The series was produced by a partnership that included San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute (a right-wing think tank funded by big corporations and conservative foundations), its CalWatchdog propaganda project, and the Examiner, which is owned and operated by Denver-based billionaire businessman Philip Anschutz, whose foundation also helps fund PRI.

While it might be tempting to dismiss such a blatant effort by corporate-funded patsies to discredit an effective progressive foe, using the pages of marginalized newspaper that denies global warming. But considering what these same reactionary forces did to ACORN using evidence that was just as flimsy, it’s important that the people push back.

Greenlining Institute Executive Director Orson Aguilar raised that same concern when we contacted him: “This is pretty weak journalism, but the underlying issue is serious. They’re using us to attack the Community Reinvestment Act and the whole idea that huge Wall Street financial institutions have some responsibility to the communities they serve. We may be the scapegoat du jour, but the real aim is to blame low-income communities for a financial crisis that was caused by inadequate regulation and greed. We have no intention of backing down.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

SF’s Tax Day protests: Progressives 300, Teabaggers 4

Sasha Cuttler
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For all the hype about Tax Day Tea Parties, include two in San Francisco this afternoon, it was progressive causes that put the most protesters on the streets today. In fact, at a 1 p.m. Tea Party outside City Hall, the teabaggers were way outnumbered by journalists and satirical “teabaggers” doing street theater.

For awhile, 70-year-old Al Anolik – clad in his American flag shirt and NRA hat – was the only teabagger present, although he was joined by 23-year-old Odell Howard (wearing his American flag on his hat) at about 1:20 p.m. Another pair arrived later, making it four in all.

“It is San Francisco,” Anolik offered by way of explaining the anemic gathering.

Contrast that with two other rallies going on at the same time: Service Employees International Union fielding about 200 protesters on Mission Street near the federal building demanding immigration reform and respect for immigrants, and about 100 people who turned out for the Mobilization for Climate Justice, protesting a conference on carbon offsets.

“Nobody should be given credit for creating greenhouse gas emissions,” Ana Orozco, an organizer for Communities for a Better Environment, Richmond, told the gathering.

CBE was one of several groups demonstrating on Fourth Street outside the Marriott, which was hosting New Direction for Climate Action, put on by Navigating the American Carbon World, a group that promotes a cap-and-trade market for pollution credits.

The protesters said that system would only legitimize pollution and delay the strong actions needed to avert the worst impacts of global warming. “Keep the cap, nix the trade,” the group chanted at one point.

I asked one conference attendee (who wouldn’t give his name) what he thought of the protesters and he called them, “watermelons – green on the outside and red on the inside.” Longtime progressive activist Chris Carlsson said accusing someone of being a communist has always been tactic capitalists use to shut down real debate on important issues.

Anolik and Howard were also quick to play the red card, accusing the Obama administration of plotting to take away people’s guns and instituting a government takeover of the health care system, and neither would listen to arguments that their claims were demonstrably false.

But the progressives on the street today were all about sparking debate, including two members of the Raging Grannies that were at the climate event and then headed over to the Tea Party, where they satirically advocated for a health care system run by wealthy corporations.

“Billionaires for Wealthcare,” was the sign one held, while the other’s read, “Blue Cross, Palin, 2012,” advocating that we cut out the middle man and elect Blue Cross as the next president, with Sarah Palin as its running mate.

And then they broke into the song “We shall overcome,” but with a modified chorus: “We shall overcharge.”

Sit/lie debate takes a strange new turn

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Emails are rocketing around San Francisco political circles in anticipation of an April 21 meeting of the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC), the policy-making body for the Democratic Party in San Francisco. Committee members are slated to discuss the city’s proposed sit/lie ordinance, a controversial measure backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief George Gascon meant to afford police more powers for dealing with hostile youth occupying sidewalk space.

Labor activist Gabriel Haaland, a DCCC committee member, touched off a small firestorm early this week when he submitted a resolution against the sit/lie ordinance. Haaland, who has lived in the Haight for around 15 years, said wayward youth have been flocking to that neighborhood and hurling occasional barbs at passersby (including himself) since he can remember, and recent interest in the issue does not make it a new problem. “What would actually solve the problem?” Haaland asked, and offered that sit/lie is not the answer. According to a post on Fog City Journal, his resolution for the Democratic Party to oppose sit/lie was co-sponsored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, Supervisor David Campos, Supervisor Chris Daly, Supervisor Eric Mar, Aaron Peskin, Hene Kelly, Rafael Mandelman, Michael Goldstein, Joe Julian, Jane Morrison, Jake McGoldrick, Michael Bornstein, and Debra Walker.

While some might look at a grungy street kid and see a menace to smooth business functioning or an unruly vagrant not being properly dealt with because the laws are too weak, Haaland said he perceives a kid from a broken home who already feels alienated from society. Incarceration for a nonviolent crime such as lying on the sidewalk would only further alienate these youths, he argued, possibly nudging them toward criminal behavior instead.

“This legislation will not solve longstanding, complex problems,” Haaland’s resolution reads. “City Hall has openly and repeatedly admitted in the press that the criminal justice system is failing to deal with similar issues in the Tenderloin, and has created an alternative known as the Community Justice Court (CJC) that is founded on principles of Restorative Justice.”

Restorative Justice is an alternative approach to dealing with crime that involves bringing together those who are directly affected to understand and address the harm that has been done, with emphasis on personal accountability and transformation. Some models also seek to change the conditions in which harmful actions occurred.

Haaland’s resolution urges the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor to oppose sit/lie, and to explore successful alternatives to incarceration.

The proposal sparked a second resolution, this one from committee member Scott Wiener, who is a candidate for the District 8 seat on the Board of Supervisors. Wiener submitted that the Democratic Party should officially get behind the CJC, and should acknowledge its error in opposing the court, a Newsom pet project, in 2008. “When I saw Gabriel’s resolution … I noticed it contained a positive reference to the [CJC],” Wiener told the Guardian. “I was pleasantly surprised.”

Furthermore, his resolution “encourages the Mayor and Board of Supervisors, budget permitting and based on careful analysis, to consider future expansion of the CJC’s geographic boundaries to include the Haight-Ashbury.”

Wiener is fully behind the sit/lie ordinance. “Right now, the police do not have enough enforcement tools to deal with some of the behavior on the streets,” he said. The measure has been an issue in the District 8 race, since progressive candidate Rafael Mandelman opposes the ordinance.

The resolution contest wasn’t over yet. In response to resolution No. 2, Haaland submitted yet another resolution — along with a personal note that appeared to extend an olive branch — revising Wiener’s proposal by urging support for “the restorative justice model as an alternative to incarceration.” (Haaland wrote an in-depth piece about restorative justice in a recent Guardian editorial.)

“I appreciated him doing that,” Wiener said when asked what he thought about resolution No. 3. “But I’m not convinced that that’s the way to go. That’s why I did not agree to it.”

Perhaps there won’t be any kum-ba-ya moments after all.

Along other email-blast circuits, Haaland’s initial proposal prompted David Villa-Lobos, a strong sit/lie advocate and District-6 contender, to sound his own alarm by urging SFPD officers to attend the April 21 meeting and defend the sit/lie ordinance.

The city Planning Commission recently voted 6-1 against the measure, and a grassroots group that brought opponents of the rule onto city sidewalks last month will hold another Stand Against Sit Lie citywide protest on April 24. The measure is expected to go before the Board of Supervisors near the end of the month.

The DCCC meeting will be held on Wednesday, April 21, at 6 p.m. in the basement auditorium of the California State Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave.

Andy Stern to quit SEIU

Sasha Cuttler
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3
Andy Stern to quit SEIU

Just days after a San Francisco trial aired the ugly battle between Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern and some of his former top aides in the Bay Area, Stern has confirmed that he’s resigning after 38 years in the movement, 14 as head of SEIU.

Stern was once thought of as a rising figure in the progressive movement, but in recent years he has become a polarizing figure within the labor movement, prone to undemocratic power-building and starting fights with other unions. He was criticized as too close to corporations and the Democratic Party, but he doesn’t endear himself to either in an exit interview with the Huffington Post.

The fight between SEIU and the National Union of Healthcare Workers has created bad feelings on both sides, as indicated by the comments section every time we write about it, and I can’t help but think that Stern’s decision can only help the labor movement. But I suppose we’ll see.

BTW, there’s more on the SEIU-NUHW fight here at Spot.us, which we partnered with on this week’s story.

An inconvenient war

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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An inconvenient war

By Christopher D. Cook

news@sfbg.com

For two weeks, in the marble-walled modernist grandeur of the Ninth Circuit U.S. District court in San Francisco, I watched nearly a dozen well-dressed lawyers for the Service Employees International Union — long my favorite union and one I’ve written about and marched with over the years — sue the bejeezus out of two-dozen former SEIU comrades-in-arms, some of labor’s most committed soldiers.

Judge William Alsup’s courtroom was packed and tense every day for two weeks, patrolled watchfully by U.S. marshals as former coworkers shot glares across the aisle and rushed by each other in the hallway outside. “This is like a bad family reunion,” one told me. Indeed, there’s a painful, often quite personal fight inside the family of labor — a fight one can only hope will lead to strong, deep democratic unionism down the road.

In the latest chapter of a saga that’s simmered to a boil over four years, SEIU sued 24 former staffers of its powerful 150,000-member Bay Area local, United Healthcare Workers West (UHW), alleging they used the union’s money and resources to create a rival organization. Since SEIU took over the old local in a bitter trusteeship fight in January 2009, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), led by former UHW president Sal Rosselli, has been organizing workers in droves, challenging SEIU’s hold on health care workers in California.

In the end, following grueling testimonies and cross-examinations, it came to this: on April 9, the jury hit NUHW and 16 of its leaders with a $1.5 million penalty (which might be reduced to $737,850 depending on Alsup’s interpretation of the jury’s intent). It’s a lot of money, but far less than SEIU’s original claim seeking $25 million, and the appeals are likely to drag on into next year.

After dozens of interviews and whispered conversations in the hallways outside Alsup’s courtroom, I was left wondering: how could this be happening? At a time of historic lows in union membership (7.2 percent in the private sector last year) and a recession that may never end for workers, how could SEIU, once the darling of the progressive labor movement, be embroiled in a brutal war with one of its flagship former locals? How could these two unions be tearing each other apart, exchanging ugly accusations that threaten to further tarnish labor’s tenuous reputation? All at a time when California unemployment sits stubbornly at 12.5 percent and more than 90 percent of workers remain unorganized. Hospital executives who are accustomed to tangling with a unified labor front must be thanking their lucky stars.

But this isn’t some union corruption story or simply a scuffle for personal power. Beyond the name-calling lie crucial questions about how unions function, about whose voices are heard both in union offices and on the shop floor. How much voice will workers have in union decisions, not just about break rooms and arguments with the boss, but in the shape and direction of the labor movement?

Ultimately this fight won’t be decided by any jury or judge: despite the verdict, NUHW and its volunteer organizers are pressing on with SEIU for the right to represent California’s health care workers, 400,000 of whom currently pay dues to SEIU. Over the past year, more than 80,000 of those dues-payers have signed petitions to join NUHW, which has won seven of nine elections of health care workers called so far. With more big elections coming soon, most notably among 47,000 Kaiser Permanente workers this June, the stakes are only getting higher.

In a nutshell, the two sides argue thus: SEIU contends that Rosselli and company flouted the will of President Andy Stern, and ultimately its members, by refusing to abide by Stern’s decisions on a union consolidation. That led to a trusteeship of Rosselli’s local, with its leaders allegedly using SEIU resources to form their own union. Rosselli and NUHW insist they were boxed into an untenable corner by Stern’s centralization of power in Washington, D.C., at the expense of locals and workers and that they tried many times to resolve disputes internally, and only broke away to form a new union after they were forced out by Stern.

To convince a jury of its claims, SEIU amassed a formidable legal team drawing from four firms at a cost of roughly $5 million, according to SEIU spokesman Steve Trossman. (An expert witness hired by SEIU testified the union paid him roughly $300,000 just to prepare testimony for the case; defendants say the trial cost SEIU closer to $10 million.) Whatever the number, it’s an awful lot of time and money that could be spent organizing new workers and winning strong contracts instead.

Asked if he thinks the trial is worth the expense, Trossman said, “I think members of the union, when this is over, are going to get the truth of what happened — that they directly used union resources … to hold onto personal power.”

Dan Siegel, NUHW’s chief attorney, casts it differently: “This case is about punishing the defendants and sending a message” to other union dissidents across the country.

 

A LONG-TERM BATTLE

The rift that ended up in federal court has its roots in a 2006 move by Stern to consolidate California’s long-term health care workers, such as home care and nursing home employees, into a single statewide local — a move that would peel away 65,000 long-term care workers from Rosselli’s union.

The most likely beneficiary of the consolidation was the Los Angeles-based Long-Term Care Workers Union, local 6434, headed by Tyrone Freeman, who had been fending off corruption charges (allegedly stealing more than $1 million in union funds for personal gain) since 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Nowhere else but in California did SEIU attempt splitting long-term care and acute care workers into different unions,” said John Marshall, an SEIU strategic researcher who resigned in protest of UHW’s trusteeship, but who remains active in the labor movement. “But it’s worse than that — here SEIU proposed forcing long-term care workers into a local that was widely known to be corrupt, that had contracts with substandard wages and benefits. And on top of it all Stern and SEIU refused to allow those workers to vote on whether or not the transfer should occur.”

When Freeman’s alleged corruption became front-page news in the Times in 2008, and even after SEIU put the L.A. local in trusteeship later that year, Stern continued to push the consolidation. Rosselli resisted, arguing the shift would weaken workers’ voice and standards; wages for workers in Local 6434 were often far lower than those for their counterparts up north, and the mounting corruption charges didn’t bode well for union bargaining power or democracy.

SEIU’s Trossman insists union leaders were not aware of the Freeman allegations until they appeared in the L.A. Times, though one of those stories quotes an unnamed inside source saying Trossman knew of the charges as early as 2002. But Trossman said the issue was not Freeman. “The proposal was to create a new long-term care local in California, and by the time that decision was made in January 2009, Tyrone Freeman was already long out of the picture,” he told us, insisting the long-term care decision was made after hearings and an “advisory member vote.”

Yet 15 months after the takeover of UHW, the consolidation of long-term care workers remains on hold.

Friction between Stern and Rosselli — over the merger, leadership, and labor movement strategy — heated up throughout 2007 and 2008; Rosselli was unanimously booted off of Stern’s “kitchen cabinet” of labor leaders, and removed from his post as president of SEIU’s California State Council.

Then on Jan. 22, 2009, an SEIU-commissioned report by former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall recommended trusteeship — if Rosselli’s union didn’t abide by the transfer of its long-term care workers. A few days later Rosselli and the UHW executive board sent Stern a letter saying they would abide by the merger — if the UHW rank and file could vote on it first. No deal: on Jan. 27, UHW was put into trusteeship: its buildings were locked up, security guards patrolled the perimeters, and many of the deposed union staff camped out on the floors of their old offices.

On the afternoon of the 27th, Rosselli, who had been reelected UHW president earlier that month, spoke to cheering supporters: “[It’s] your right to determine what union you want to be in!”

NUHW members insist it’s never been about Rosselli or the other defendants. “We are not just a bunch of lemmings — we do what we believe,” said Tonya Britton, a Fremont convalescent home worker. “They couldn’t make it this far if there weren’t all of us members … When I heard about the trusteeship, I wanted a union that was for members, not top-down. We were making gains. Now it seems we’re doing nothing but fighting.”

 

Christopher D. Cook is a former Bay Guardian city editor. He has written on labor for Mother Jones, Harper’s, The Economist and others. This story was funded in part by spot.us.

The dawn of Earth Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The dawn of Earth Day

tredmond@sfbg.com

GREEN ISSUE The heavens welcomed Earth Day to America. All over the country, April 22, 1970 dawned clear and sunny; mild weather made it even easier to bring people into the streets. The Capitol Mall was packed, and so many members of Congress were making speeches and appearing at events that both houses adjourned for the day.

Mayors, governors, aldermen, village trustees, elementary school kids, Boy Scout troops, labor unions, college radicals, and even business groups participated. In fact, the only organization in the nation that actively opposed Earth Day was the Daughters of the American Revolution, which warned ominously that "subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them."

By nightfall, more than 20 million people had participated in the First National Environmental Teach-In, as the event was formally known. It established the environmental movement in the United States and helped spur the passage of numerous laws and the creation of hundreds of activist groups.

It was, by almost all accounts, a phenomenal success, an event that dwarfed the largest single-day civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the era — and the person who ran it, 25-year-old Denis Hayes, wasn’t happy.

His concern with the nascent movement back then says a lot about where environmentalism is 40 years later.

Gaylord Nelson, a mild-mannered U.S. senator from Wisconsin, came up with the idea of Earth Day on a flight from Santa Barbara to Oakland. Nelson was the kind of guy who doesn’t get elected to the Senate these days — a polite, friendly small-town guy who was anything but a firebrand.

A balding, 52-year-old World War II veteran who survived Okinawa, Nelson was a Democrat and generally a liberal vote, but he got along fine with the die-hard conservatives. He kept a fairly low profile, and did a lot of his work behind the scenes.

But long before it was popular, Nelson was an ardent environmentalist — and he was always looking for ways to bring the future of the planet into the popular consciousness.

In August 1969, Nelson was on a West Coast speaking tour — and one of his mandatory stops was the small coastal city that seven months earlier had become ground zero for the environmental movement. Indeed, a lot of historians say that Earth Day 1970 was the coming out party for modern environmentalism — but the spark that made it possible, the event that turned observers into activists, took place Jan. 28, 1969 in Santa Barbara.

About 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, a photographer from the Santa Barbara News Press got the word that something had gone wrong on one of the Union Oil drilling platforms in the channel just offshore. The platforms were fairly new — the federal government had sold drilling rights in the area in February 1968 for $603 million, and Union was in the process of drilling its fourth offshore well. The company had convinced the U.S. Geological Survey to relax the safety rules for underwater rigs, saying there was no threat of a spill.

But shortly after the drill bit struck oil 3,478 feet beneath the surface, the rig hit a snag — and when the workers got the equipment free, oil began exploding out. Within two weeks, more than 3 million gallons of California crude was on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, and a lot of it had washed ashore, fouling the pristine beaches of Santa Barbara and fueling an angry popular backlash nationwide.

Nelson received an overwhelming reception at his Santa Barbara talk — and horrified as he was by the spill, he was glad that an environmental concern was suddenly big news. But, as he told me in an interview years ago, he still wasn’t sure what the next steps ought to be — until, bored on an hour-long flight to his next speech in Berkeley, he picked up a copy of Ramparts magazine.

The radical left publication, once described as having "a bomb in every issue," wasn’t Nelson’s typical reading material. But this particular issue was devoted to a new trend on college campuses — day-long "teach-ins" on the Vietnam War.

Huh, Nelson thought. A teach-in. That’s an intriguing idea.

Hayes was a student in the prestigious joint program in law and public policy at Harvard. He’d been something of a campus activist, protesting against the war, but hadn’t paid much attention to environmental issues. He needed a public-interest job of some sort for a class project, though, so when he read a newspaper article about the senator who was planning a national environmental teach-in, he called and offered to organize the effort in Boston. Nelson invited him to Washington, was impressed by his Harvard education and enthusiasm, and hired him to run the whole show.

The senator was very clear from the start: the National Environmental Teach-In would not be a radical Vietnam-style protest. The event would be nonpartisan, polite, and entirely legal. Hayes and his staffers chafed a bit at the rules (and the two Senate staffers Nelson placed in the Earth Day office to keep an eye on things), and they ultimately set up a separate nonprofit called the Environmental Action Foundation to take more aggressive stands on issues.

Meanwhile, Hayes did the job he was hired to do — and did it well. Everywhere he turned, from small towns to big corporations, people wanted to plug in, to be a part of the first Earth Day. Many wanted to do nice, noncontroversial projects: In Knoxville, Tenn., students decided to scour rivers and streams for trash to see if they could each clean up the five pounds of garbage the average American threw away each day. In dozens of communities, people organized tree-plantings. In New York, Mayor John Lindsay led a parade down Fifth Avenue.

A few of the actions were more dramatic. A few protesters smashed a car to bits, and in Boston, 200 people carried coffins into Logan International Airport in a symbolic "die-in" against airport expansion. In Omaha, Neb., so many college students walked around in gas masks that the stores ran out. But it was, Hayes realized, an awful lot of talk and not a lot of action. The participants were also overwhelmingly white and middle-class.

Hayes wasn’t the only one feeling that way. In New York, author Kurt Vonnegut, speaking from a platform decorated with a giant paper sunflower, added a note of cynicism.

"Here we are again, the peaceful demonstrators," he said, "mostly young and mostly white. Good luck to us, for I don’t know what sporting event the president [Richard Nixon] may be watching at the moment. He should help us make a fit place for human beings to live. Will he do it? No. So the war will go on. Meanwhile, we go up and down Fifth Avenue, picking up trash."

Hayes finally broke with the politics of his mentor early on Earth Day morning when it was too late to fire him. The next day, the National Environmental Teach-In office would close and the organization would shut down. From that moment on, he could say what he liked and not worry who he offended.

"I suspect," he told a crowd gathered at the Capitol Mall, "that the politicians and businessmen who are jumping on the environmental bandwagon don’t have the slightest idea what they are getting into. They are talking about filters on smokestacks while we are challenging corporate irresponsibility. They are bursting with pride about plans for totally inadequate municipal sewage plants. We are challenging the ethics of a society that, with only 6 percent of the world’s population, accounts for more than half the world’s annual consumption of raw materials.

"We are building a movement," he continued, "a movement with a broad base, a movement that transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a movement that values people more than technology and political ideologies, people more than profit.

"It will be a difficult fight. Earth Day is the beginning."

I first met Hayes in 1990, near the office in Palo Alto where he was planning the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. He’d continued his environmental work inside and outside government, at one point running the National Energy Laboratory under President Jimmy Carter. Earth Day 20 was shaping up as a gigantic event, one that would ultimately involve 200 million people around the globe. Earth Day was becoming the largest secular holiday on the planet.

Hayes was excited about the event, which he was running this time without the moderating influence of a U.S. senator. And he was aiming for a much more activist message — in fact, at that point, he was pretty clear that the U.S. environmental movement was running out of time.

"Twenty years ago, Earth Day was a protest movement," he told a crowd of more than 300,000 in Washington, D.C. "We no longer have time to protest. The most important problems facing our generation will be won or lost in the next 10 years. We cannot protest our losses. We have to win."

And now another 20 years have passed — and by many accounts, we are not winning. Climate change continues, and even accelerates; an attempt at a global accord just failed; and Congress can’t even pass a mild, watered-down bill to limit carbon emissions.

And Hayes, now president of the Bullitt Foundation, a sustainability organization in Seattle, thinks the movement has a serious problem. "Earth Day has succeeded in being the ultimate big tent," he told me by phone recently. "To some rather great extent, is had some measure of success."

But he noted that "in American politics these days, it’s not the breadth of support, it’s the intensity that matters. Environmentalists tend to be broadly progressive people who care about war and the economy and health care. They aren’t single-issue voters. And somehow, the political intensity is missing."

Hayes isn’t advocating that environmentalists forget about everything else and ignore all the other issues — or that the movement lose its broad-based appeal — but he said it’s time to bring political leaders and policies under much, much sharper scrutiny and to "stop accepting a voting record of 80 percent."

It’s hard today to be bipartisan, and compromise is unacceptable, Hayes told me. "I was probably right [in 1990]," he said. "If what you’re aspiring to do is stop the greenhouse gases before they do significant damage to the environment, it’s too late." At this point, he said, it’s all about keeping the damage from turning into a widespread ecological disaster.

"I would like to see Earth Day 50 be a celebration," he said. "I would like to see by then a real price on carbon, nuclear power not proliferating, and a profound, stable investment in cost-effective, distributed renewable energy." But for that to happen, "we need to have a very intense core of environmental voters who realize that these threats to life on the planet are more important than a lot of other things."

Tim Redmond is the author, with Marc Mowrey, of Not In Our Back Yard: The People and Events that Shaped America’s Modern Environmental Movement (William Morrow, 1993) which can still be found in the remainder bins of a few used book stores.

Quick Lit: April 14-April 20

David Talbot
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Quick Lit: April 14-April 20

Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week — including Alice Walker, Men and Dogs, Marin Poetry Festival, “Adapting to Climate Change,” and more

Wednesday, April 14

Louann Brizendine

Hear Neuropsychiatrist, author, and media commentator Dr. Louann Brizendine discuss her theories on the relationship dynamics that result from the neurobiology of the male and female brains, as outlined by her bestselling books, The Male Brain, and The Female Brain.

8 p.m., $20

Herbst Theater

401 Van Ness, SF

www.cityboxoffice.com

 

“Let Our Words Be Heard”

Attend this queer writing workshop and open mic that will take on the empowering, interactive process of discovering the use of words for healing, sharing histories, and celebrating community. Part of CUAV’s Safetyfest.

6 p.m., free

Modern Times Bookstore

888 Valencia, SF

www.mtbs.com

 

The Long Man

Best known for his work on DC Comics’ Detective Comics series in the 1970’s that produced many memorable Batman stories, Steve Englehart discusses his writing career and his new novel, The Long Man, a follow up to his first novel, The Point Man.

7 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Cartoon Art Museum

655 Mission, SF

(415) CAR-TOON

 

Men and Dogs

Hear San Francisco resident and author Katie Crouch discuss her new book about a girl who’s father went missing on a fishing trip in Charleston and how the mystery of his disappearance tests the whole family’s concept of loyalty and faith years later.

7:30 p.m., free

The Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

 

The Montefeltro Conspiracy

Join a humanities forum to discuss Marcello Simonetta’s The Montefeltro Conspiracy, a Renaissance mystery uncovering a nefarious plot, a murder, and a coded letter. In conjuction with the upcoming Humanities West 25th anniversary program, The Florence of the Medici: Commerce, Power, and Art in Renaissance Italy, starting April 30.

5:30 p.m., free

Commonwealth Club

595 Market, 2nd floor, SF

www.humanitieswest.org  


Thursday, April 15

If You Can Read This: The philosophy of bumper stickers

At this reading of his new book, Jack Bowen explores the philosophical ideals reflected in the most popular bumper stickers and claims that every bumper sticker holds at least a kernel of truth.

7:30 p.m., free

The Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

 

Noe Valley Celebrates the Book

Celebrate the 25th anniversary of Phoenix Books, an independent bookstore in Noe Valley, at this reading by local authors Allison Hoover Bartlett, Tony DuShane, Clare Willis, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet and with music by Ted Savarese.

6 p.m., free

Phoenix Books

3957 24th St., SF

(415) 821-3477

 

Friday, April 16

Offbeat Bride

Hear Ariel Meadow Stallings discuss her new book, Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides, where she offers inspiration, encouragement, and advice for brides on a budget.

7:30 p.m., free

The Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

 

Saturday, April 17

“Adapting to Climate Change”

Attend this daylong “BioForum” about the challenges of climate change and prospective actions California could take to make a difference. Experts from UC Davis, NOAA, PG&E, and the California Academy of Sciences will be on hand to talk about impacts on local agriculture, fisheries, and energy policies. You might want to ask the PG&E representative why their company is trying to kill progressive, local Community Choice Aggregation efforts for the sake of preserving profits. 

9 a.m.; $25, lunch and coffee included

Pacific Energy Center

851 Howard, SF

1-800-794-7576

 

Melissa Broder

Hear Broder read from her first collection of poems, When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother.

6 p.m., free

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

 

Poetry at Pegasus

Celebrate National Poetry Month at this reading with poets Stephen Ratcliffe, Erica Lewis, and Benjamin Perez.

7:30 p.m., free

Pegasus Books Downtown

2349 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 649-1320

 

“The Revolution Starts at Home”

Attend this workshop on practicing community accountability in real life with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha discussing partner abuse within queer, politicized communities. Part of CUAV’s Safetyfest.

2 p.m., free

Modern Times Bookstore

888 Valencia, SF

www.mtbs.com

 

2048: Humanity’s Agreement to Live Together

Hear about author Kirk Boyd’s plant to draft an enforceable international agreement that could allow the people of the world to create a social order based on human rights.

7:30 p.m., free

The Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

 

Sunday, April 18

Marin Poetry Festival

Enjoy a free afternoon of poetry and music featuring Avotcja and Pedro Rosales, Dancing Bear, C.J. Sage, Adam David Miller, Michelle Baynes, and more.

2 p.m., free

Old Mill Park Amphitheater

300 Throckmorton, Mill Valley

Later in the evening, attend readings featuring San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane di Prima, winner of the 2006 National Book Award in poetry Nathaniel Mackey, and award winning poet Branda Hillman.

7 p.m., $20

Dominican University Campus

Angelico Hall

50 Acacia, San Rafael

marinpoetryfestival.com

 

“Writing and Publishing the Novel”

Attend this adult writers’ seminar lead by author Jason Roberts with panelists Vendela Vida, Daniel Alarcón, Rabih Alameddine, Andrew Foster Altschul, and Danielle Svetcov discussing the writing process, and issues relating to publishing, agents, and publishing houses.

6:30 p.m., $75

826 Valencia, SF

www.826valencia.org

 

Monday, April 19

Get Lit!

Bring your own literary contributions or those of your favorite authors to share at this candle lit, wine bar literary salon.

7 p.m., free

1550 Hyde Café and Wine Bar

1550 Hyde, SF

(415) 775-1550

 

Poetry at Pegasus

Celebrate National Poetry Month at this reading with poets Cheryl Dumesnil, Judy Halebsky, and Tiffany Higgins.

7:30 p.m., free

Pegasus Books Downtown

2349 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 649-1320

 

Tuesday, April 20

Diane di Prima

Hear San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane di Prima discuss her career as an activist in the 1960’s, a writer of the Beat movement, author of 43 books of poetry and prose, and many more accomplishments in conversation with Alan Kaufman.

6 p.m., $12

Mechanics Institute

57 Post, SF

(415) 393-0100

 

For you Mom, Finally

In her latest book, food magazine editor, restaurant critic, and memoirist Ruth Reichl examines her mother’s life, giving voice to the painful truth that many women of our mothers’ generation had to sacrifice their dreams.

11 a.m., $10-18

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

Kanbar Hall

3200 California, SF

(415) 292-1233

 

Alice Walker

Essayist, poet, fiction writer, and ardent social activist Alice Walker will discuss her upcoming book, Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters “the horror” in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel, about her travels to each of those three regions, charting the aftermath of violent conflict and political upheaval. In conversation with Michael Krasny.

8 p.m., $20

Herbst Theater

401 Van Ness, SF

www.cityboxoffice.com

 

 

Music listings

David Talbot
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Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Beach House, Bachelorette Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $18.

Beatbeat Whisper, Todayokay, Vandella Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Little Dragon, VV Brown, Hottub Independent. 9pm, $20.

Pleasure Kills, Tranzmitors, Facts on File Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Ash Reiter, Y La Bamba, Belly of the Whale Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

La Roux Fillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

Kevin Russell Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Sia, Body Language Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $33.

Frank Turner, Franz Nicolay, Jonathan Devoto Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Whitest Boy Alive Slim’s. 9pm, $18.

Yogoman Burning Band, Uncle Charlie, Buds Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Yung Mars Project, Wooster Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Infatuation Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 10pm, $10. With DJs Erol Alkan, Sleazemore, Shane King, and White Girl Lust.

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

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

Nacht Musik Knockout. 10:30pm, $5. Dark and minimal with DJs Omar, Josh, and Justin.

Open Mic Night 330 Ritch. 9pm, $7.

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

THURSDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Apache Thunderbolt, Outlier, Zodiac Death Valley, Damage the Dream, Greg Dale and Sotto Voice Paradise Lounge. 9pm, $7. Proceeds go to Haight-Ashbury Street Fair.

Cast of Clowns Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Bart Davenport, Kacey Johansing, JL Stiles Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

*Dead Weather, Ettes Fillmore. 8pm, $35.

Foolproof Four, Caldecott, Riot Professor Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

*King Khan and the Shrines, Fresh and Onlys Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $17.

Laurie Morvan Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Passion Pit, Mayer Hawthorne and the County Bear Hands Warfield. 8pm, $29.50.

Petunia and the Vipers, B-Stars, Hotsy Totsy Hillbilly Jazzbos Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Pretty Lights, Eliot Lipp Mezzanine. 9pm, $20.

Psychedelic Horseshit, Dadfag, Murkins Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Corinne Bailey Rae, Daniel Merriweather, Overtone Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $27.50-30.

Rubbersidedown Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

RX Bandits, Builders and the Butchers, Zechs Marquise Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

Soft Pack, Male Bonding, Nodzzz Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Steve Taylor-Ramirez, Essence, Ziva, Dogman Joe, Valerie Orth 111 Minna. 9pm, $10-20. Benefit for the American Diabetes Association. Also with RYP, Kindness and Lies, Alice Tong, and more.

Yann Tiersen Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Christian Scott Borders, 233 Winston, SF; (415) 731-0665. 7pm, free.

Snake Plissken Quintet with Pocket Presidents Coda. 9pm, $7.

Terrence Blanchard Quintet Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $12-18.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-7. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

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

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

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Good Foot Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

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

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

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Meat DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $2-5. Industrial with BaconMonkey, Netik, Mr. Smith, and Holy Filament.

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

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

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

FRIDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bad Lieutenant, Run Run Run Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $27.

Jeff Beck Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF; www.livenation.com. 8pm, $42.50-78.

City Center, Baths, Ben Bracken Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Crime in Stereo, Robbers Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

*Dead Weather, Ettes Fillmore. 8pm, $35.

ii, Gomorran Social Aid and Pleasure Club, Karina Denike Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $14.

Jonsi Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.livenation.com. 8pm, $36.50.

Love is All, Princeton, Butterfly Bones Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $14.

*Red Meat, Dave Gleason, Golden Cadillacs Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

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

Tea Leaf Green Great American Music Hall. 8:30pm, $25.

*Wolves in the Throne Room, Earth, Lori Goldston Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

*Z-Man, Kirby Dominant, Trunk Drank, Spank Pops, DJ E Da Boss, B-Cause, A-R0N Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Activating the Medium” Lab, 2948 16th St, SF; www.thelab.org. 8:30pm, $8-15. With G*Park, Joshua Churchill, Adam Sonderberg, and a panel-lecture hosted by Cheryl Leonard.

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

Bruno Pelletier Bacquart Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

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

Emily Anne’s Delights Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

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

Monterey Jazz All-Stars Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26-32.

*Pharaoh Sanders Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-50.

Terry Disley Experience Trio Vin Club, 515 Broadway, SF; (415) 277-7228. 7:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Chicago Afrobeat Project Coda. 9pm, $15.

Earl Brothers, Devine’s Jug Band Plough and Stars. 9pm, $6-$10 sliding scale.

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

Sila, DJ Jeremiah, Chicago Afrobeat Project Coda. 10pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10. With rotating DJs.

Deep Fried Butter, 354 11th St, SF; (415) 863-5964. DJs jaybee, David Justin, and Dean Manning spinning indie, dance rock, electronica, funk, hip hop, and more.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

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

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

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

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Hubba Hubba Revue DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Disco-themed burlesque.

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

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

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

Major Lazer Mezzanine. 9pm, $30. With Rusko, Mike Snow, and more.

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

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Followed by Warm Leatherette at Space Gallery, 1141 Polk, SF; (415) 377-3325. 9pm. A back to back traveling Cold Wave night with DJs spinning danceable post-punk and psychedelic.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

SATURDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Frankie Alpine, Group Rhoda Amnesia. 9pm, $5. Presented by O.K. Hole.

Bananas, Pins of Light, Lenguas Larvae, Underground Railroad to Candyland Knockout. 5pm, $6.

Collie Budz, Phife Dawg Independent. 9pm, $28.

Dust, Mariana Trench Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

*Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jogger, AM Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 8pm, $37.50.

*Heavy Hindenberg, Inferno of Joy, Smokestacks El Rio. 9pm, $7.

Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, Ferocious Few, Hudson Bell Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Debora Iyall, Persephone’s Bees Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Jonsi Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 2:30pm.

Judgement Day, Battle Hooch, 7 Orange ABC Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Paranoids, Midnight Strangers, Pets Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Public Image Ltd. Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $53.

Tea Leaf Green, Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers Great American Music Hall. 8:30pm, $25.

Earl Thomas and the Blues Ambassadors Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Wires in the Walls, Real Numbers, Procrastinators Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Yeasayer, Sleigh Bells Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Activating the Medium” Lab, 2948 16th St, SF; www.thelab.org. 8:30pm, $8-15. With Cheryl Leonard, Pedestrial Deposit, Jesse Burson, and Rale.

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

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

“Jazz Mafia Presents Remix: Live with Supertaster” Coda. 10pm, $10.

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

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

Caetano Veloso Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-90.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Clerestory St. Gregory of Nyssa Church, 500 DeHaro, SF; clerestory.org. 8pm, $20.

Ya Elah Women’s Ensemble Seventh Avenue Performances, 7th Ave., SF; (415) 664-2543 ext. 3.

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

DANCE CLUBS

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

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups with special guest Moldover.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $6. Locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm and hostess Felicia Fellatio.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Blondie K and subOctave spinning indie music videos.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

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

Non Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $20. World beats.

Prince vs. Michael Madrone Art Bar. 8pm, $5. With DJs Dave Paul and Jeff Harris battling it out on the turntables with album cuts, remixes, rare tracks, and classics.

Saturday Night Live Fat City, 314 11th St; selfmade2c@yahoo.com. 10:30pm.

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

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

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

SUNDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bermuda Triangle Service, Canja Rave, Bouvier Girls Kimo’s. 9pm, $6.

Foxy Shazam, Young Veins, Bad Rabbits Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Hungry Merch Band, Kally Price Amnesia. 9pm, $10.

*Overkill, Vader, God Dethroned, Warbringer, Evile, Woe of Tyrants Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $30.

Society of Rockets, Little Bridges, Panduh Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Transatlantic Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.ticketmaster.com.8pm, $49.50-74.50.

Uriah Duffy Band, Jamie Wong and the Emergency Pants, Gentry Bronson Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Yoshitake Expe, Barn Owl, Why Because Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Celia Malheiros Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-55.

“Resonant World: An Afternoon of Music by John Cage” Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell, SF; www.meridiangallery.org. 3pm, $10.

Anton Schwartz and Grant Levin Noe Valley Jazz at the Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleyministry.org/jazzvespers. 5pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Arborea Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm, free. With Jeffery Luck Lucas and Lily Taylor.

Birdlips Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Blue Diamond Fill Ups, Ghost Writer Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

*Ceu, Boca Do Rio, DJ Felina Independent. 8pm, $22.

Hungry March, Kally Price Band Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

International Sitar and Tabla Festival Red Poppy Art House. 6pm, 7pm; $10 per show, $40 full day pass.

“Te Gusto Musical … Chelle and Friends” Coda. 8pm, $10.

*Tribute to Buffy St. Marie Make Out Room. 7:30pm, $8. With Emily Jane White, Mariee Sioux, Michele Hannigan, Heidi Alexander, Conspiracy of Venus, and more.

DANCE CLUBS

All Fall Down Knockout. 9pm, free. With DJs Melanie Anne Berlin and Jessica Beard.

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

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

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

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

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

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

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

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

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

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

MONDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

As Tall As Lions, Bad Veins, Civil Twilight Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Band of Skulls, 22-20s, Saint Motel Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $14.

Bitch, Your Cannons Café du Nord. 8pm, $14.

Echo and the Bunnymen Fillmore. 8pm, $27.50.

“Felonious Presents: Live City Revue” Coda. 9pm, $7.

John Brown’s Body, Toubab Krewe Independent. 8pm, $22.

Mr. Gnome, Moonbell Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Ceremony Knockout. 10pm, $10. DJs Deadbeat and Yule Be Sorry, plus live performances by Chameleons Vox, Veil Veil Vanish, and the Magic Bullets.

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with guest DJ Ronan Harris.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

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

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

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

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest Djs.

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

TUESDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Almighty Defenders Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

Awesome Color, Hair Police, Glitter Wizard Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Cypress Hill Warfield. 8pm, $45.

HIM, We Are the Fallen, Dommin, Drive A Regency Ballroom. 7pm, $33.

Killola, Sick of Sarah, Jonesin’ Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

*Lidtoker, Hazzard’s Cure, Nine Worlds, Burns Red Kimo’s. 8pm, $7.

Megafaun, Trampled By Turtles, Breathe Owl Breathe Independent. 8pm, $14.

Moonalice Slim’s. 7:20pm, $4.20. Gary Numan Fillmore. 8pm, $27.50.

Rademacher, Sporting Life, Last of the Steam Powered Trains Knockout. 9pm, $5.

Chantelle Tibbs, Tyler Stafford, Nathan Hughes Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck and Johnny Repo. Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro. La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton. Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house. Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx. *

Force is the weapon of the weak: decrying the right’s violent rhetoric

Sasha Cuttler
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16
Force is the weapon of the weak: decrying the right’s violent rhetoric

American political discourse is being poisoned by some truly scary rhetoric from the right-wing, which is increasingly resorting to threats and condoning of violence, a trend that has played out in recent weeks right here on the Guardian’s Politics blog. Now is the time to recognize and stop it, just as a new coalition is calling for. 

San Francisco resident Greg Lee Giusti was arraigned in federal court this morning for making threatening phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one day after the arrest of Charles Alan Wilson for threatening to kill Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). In both cases, the subject was the recent health care reform bill, the anger of the suspects stoked by misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric from top conservative politicians and media figures, as well as the Tea Party movement.

But these cases – along with the recent domestic terrorism plot by Christian fundamentalists and other incidents of overt and implied threats of violence – aren’t isolated examples; they are closer to the norm of rhetoric emanating from the right-wing these days, a trend not seen in this country since the months that led up to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by right-wing radical Timothy McVeigh, the biggest act of domestic terrorism before 9/11.

Consider Giusti, who also wrote a scary letter to me and the Guardian in the midst of his threats against Pelosi, taking issue with our recent cover story that was critical of police crackdowns on SF nightlife. In additional to praising police violence and encouraging cops to “crack a few skulls open,” just like his NYPD cop uncle, who “knows how to inflect [sic] excruciating Paine [sic] on someone without leaving any signs of what happened.”

But Giusti was far from alone in promoting violence over the issues we’ve raised. SFPD Southern Station Capt. Daniel McDonough praised the sometimes-violent tactics of the two undercover cops who bust parties and nightclubs, strongly implying those tactics were justified to counter the unspecified threats of violence that nightclubs represent. “Because of their diligence and professionalism the amount of violence and disorder has been reduced,” McDonough wrote, echoing a troubling strain of right-wing political thought that condones violence to prevent even speculative threats of violence, a perspective that led us to invade Iraq.

And when I wrote about McDonough’s response yesterday, a commenter wrote that aggressive police tactics are justified because, “The unprecedented ascendancy of nightclubs and violation of the Constitutional rights of residents to peaceful use of their property calls for drastic measures.”

In a similar vein, our blog post this week on a newly released video of American soldiers in a helicopter opening fire on a crowd in Baghdad that included journalists and children while making disturbing comments that seemed to relish the opportunity to kill people also provoked some equally disturbing comments.

“So a couple of journalists embedded with terrorists killing Americans got wiped out…congrats to the shooters! A couple of terrorists in training got shot up in a terrorist rescue attempt…congrats to the shooters! Everyone on scene who died got what was coming to them,” one wrote, while another warned, “Raise a weapon against America or Americans and prepare to experience the worst day in the rest of your life. Hoowa!”

Even though the helicopter was miles away and the video showed no credible threats toward it or anyone else, supporters of the war seemed to think that quickly resorting to violence is acceptable. “This is the price we pay for are [sic] freedom. put yourself in that chopper and then put yourself on the ground they all no [sic] what can and will happen. It will happen at home again 911 just give it time. We will do are [sic] best to defend are [sic] country. GOD BLESS USA.”

And I will do my best to defend this country from right-wing extremists. That effort starts with challenging Sarah Palin’s winking exhortation for her followers to “lock and load,” and with letting commentators like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, on a nightly basis, cast liberals as enemies of the state to their well-armed listeners.

This is simply not OK, a point that’s being made by the prosecutors of Giusti and Wilson, as well as the new Stop Domestic Terrorism campaign by a coalition of organization concerns about the increasing violent rhetoric of the rights. 

“Law abiding Americans do not advocate violence against fellow Americans,” campaign spokesperson Brad Friedman said in a public statement. “As Americans, we all need to engage in a vigorous debate of the issues based on facts and reason rather than fear and prejudice.”

But even in San Francisco, it’s common for conservatives and so-called “moderates” to condone violence against the homeless, drug users, petty criminals, ravers, Critical Mass bicyclists, “illegal immigrants,” or others that they dismiss as “getting what’s coming to them” for daring to violate laws or social mores. I’ve personally had violence wished on me more times than I can count, in letters, phone messages, and to my face. 

As a full-time newspaper journalist for almost 20 years, I’ve dealt with right-wing crazies for a long time, but there are times when you can sense their indignation getting ratcheted up to dangerous levels. In 1994, I wrote stories for the Auburn Journal and Sacramento News & Review about right-wing “patriots” and “constitutionalists” that were part of the militia movement in Placer County.

They warned me that then-President Bill Clinton was an agent of the “New World Order” who was plotting a socialist takeover of the “real Americans,” and that violent resistance was necessary. They spun elaborate fantasies about the impending civil war, which they said the federal government had already started with their raids in Ruby Ridge and Waco. 

“You won’t be able to write an article like this anymore because the government will come and kick in your door and murder you and your children,” one militia member told me after my first article came out.

On April 19 of the next year, while I was working for the Santa Maria Times, I remember vividly when the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed, killing 168 people. For the first 24 hours, most media outlets speculated that it was an attack by terrorists from the Middle East, but as soon as I heard it was the anniversary of the Waco incident, I knew exactly who was really responsible: the dangerous right wing extremism that pushed militia member Timothy McVeigh to attack his own country.

And now, it’s happening again. Overheated rhetoric on the right is casting Pelosi and fellow Democrats not just as political opponents, but as dangerous enemies of the “real Americans” that Palin claims to champion. They have, like Wilson said of Murray, “ a target on her back.”

When Sen. Leland Yee tried to find out how much Palin was being paid to speak at California State University-Stanislaus, he was aggressively attacked by her acolytes for trying to “take away her constitutional right to free speech,” according to an anonymous message left on his answering message yesterday, which his office shared with the Guardian. “Maybe we ought to have a homosexual with a long enough dick so he can stick it up his ass and fuck himself while he’s on stage giving a speech.”

Such crass, semi-literate, weirdly homophobic comments might be funny if they weren’t part of a larger, more dangerous trend in this country. Once again, a Democratic president is being actively accused of treasonous hostility to “real Americans” by major conservative figures with huge audiences, and once again, the lunatic fringe is being worked up into a frenzy.

The recently uncovered plot by Michigan militia members to murder police officers in the hopes of starting a holy war with the enemies of Christianity is just one indication for what this kind of rhetoric is leading to in isolated pockets around the country. Now is the time to put a stop to condoning violence in any of its forms, whether it’s cops cracking the skulls of clubbers or street denizens, soldiers firing on crowds of people, or citizens threatening our elected representatives.

“Force is the weapon of the weak,” said the radical pacifist-anarchist Ammon Hennacy, a quote that was often repeated by folk singer and progressive writer Utah Phillips, who I had the honor of covering at the same time I was covering the militia movement. It’s true, and at this difficult moment in our country’s history, let’s all try to stay strong.  

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Boy in the Bubble, Actors, Catholic Radio, DJ Dudehouse El Rio. 9pm, $6.

*Faith and the Muse, Jill Tracy, Tell Tale Heartbreakers, Sunshine Blind DNA Lounge. 9pm, $15.

Gram Rabbit, Spindrift, Foxtail Somersault Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $8.

Adam Green, Dead Trees Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

*Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller Fillmore. 8pm, $35.

Moira Scar, Attic Ted, Slow Poisoner Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $5.

Moldover, Nonagon, Celeste Lear Hotel Utah. 8pm.

Curtis Salgado Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $18.

Sherwood, Seabird, Black Gold, Reece Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Afreaka! Attic, 3336 24th St, SF; souljazz45@gmail.com. 10pm, free. Psychedelic beats from Brazil, Turkey, India, Africa, and across the globe with MAKossa.

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

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

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

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

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

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

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

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Growlers, Sandwitches Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Miles Kurosky, Pancho-san, Lia Rose Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $12.

Late Young, Jaws Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

Light This City, Comadre, Funeral Pyre, Early Graves Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $12.

Montana 1948, DownDownDown, Beta State, Brooks Was Here Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $10.

Murder By Death, Ha Ha Tonka, Linfinity Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

*Ty Segall, Numerators, Bridez Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

"Stevie Ray Vaughn Tribute with Alan Iglesias" Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $16.

White Buffalo, Joey Ryan Hotel Utah. 9pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

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

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-7. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

CakeMIX SF Wish, 1539 Folsom, SF; www.wishsf.com. 10pm, free. DJ Carey Kopp spinning funk, soul, and hip hop.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

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

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

Good Foot Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

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

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

Kissing Booth Make-Out Room. 9pm, free. DJs Jory, Commodore 69, and more spinning indie dance, disco, 80’s, and electro.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

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

Motion Sickness Vertigo, 1160 Polk, SF; (415) 674-1278. 10pm, free. Genre-bending dance party with DJs Sneaky P, Public Frenemy, and D_Ro Cyclist.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest.

FRIDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Citizen Cope Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

*Fear Factory, Amon Amarth, Eluveitie, Dirge Within Regency Ballroom. 7pm, $27.

Roy Gaines Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

John n Jesse, Ziggy King and the Jokers Epicenter Café, 764 Harrison, SF; (415) 543-5436. 7pm.

Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, DJ Logic Independent. 9pm, $25.

Love of Diagrams, Weekend, Fever Dream Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Miko Marks, Andre Thierry Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Noodles, All Ages, Golda and the Gunz, El Nino Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $12.

Retribution Gospel Choir, Carta, Sarah June Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

7 Walkers featuring Bill Kreutzmann and Papi Mali with George Porter Jr. Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $25.

Rube Waddell, Sweet Bones, Cheetahs on the Moon, Unpopable Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $9.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

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

Sounds of Blackness Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $24-34.

Thorny Brocky Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Jackie Rago and the Venezuelan Music Project El Rio. 4pm, $10-25 sliding scale. With DJ La Rumorosa.

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

"That Night in Rio" Café du Nord. 9pm, $15. Samba party with Grupo Samba Rio and Dj Fausto Sousa.

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

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10. With rotating DJs.

Evil Breaks DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $20. Breaks with Fine Cut Bodies, Left/Right, Aaron Jae, and more.

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

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

Fo’ Sho! Fridays Madrone Art Bar. 10pm, $5. DJs Kung Fu Chris, Makossa, and Quickie Mart spin rare grooves, soul, funk, and hip-hop classics.

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

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Gui Boratto Mighty. 10pm, $15. With Nikola Baytala and more spinning techno.

Gymnasium Stud. 10pm, $5. With DJs Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, disco, rap, and 90s dance and featuring performers, gymnastics, jump rope, drink specials, and more.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

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

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

Menage a Birthday Party Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10. Benefit for Northern California Youth Leadership Seminar with DJs spinning music celebrating famous threesomes (like TLC!)

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Sensitive Thug Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Whooligan and J. Boogie spinning hip hop, soul, funk, dancehall, and breaks.

Strictly Video 111 Minna. 9pm, $10. With VDJs Shortkut, Swift Rock, GoldenChyld, and Satva spinning rap, 80s, R&B, and Dancehall.

Treat Em Right Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop, funk, and more with DJs Vinnie Esparza, B. Cause, and guest Joe Quixx.

SATURDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Exene Cervenka Rasputin Music, 67 Powell, SF; www.rasputinmusic.com. 4pm.

Citizen Cope Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

"Fifth Annual Funk Out with R.O.C.K." Café du Nord. 9pm, $15-25. With Stymie and the Pimp Jones Luv Orchestra.

*Grannies, Fast Takers, Blank Stares El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, DJ Logic Independent. 9pm, $25.

*Kowloon Walled City, Hollow Mirrors, Across Tundras, Lost Machine Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

*McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Orange Peels, Ralph Carney’s Serious Jass Project Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Society Dog, Hot Farm, Empireslum Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Tender Mercies, Naked Barbies, Yard Sale Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Tornado Rider, Stomacher, 3rd Rail, I the Mighty Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $14.

Phillip Walker Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $20.

We Are Wolves, Parlovr, Off Campus Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Bobby McFerrin’s VOCAbuLarieS Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-85.

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

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

Sounds of Blackness Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $34.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

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

Derek Lassiter Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Audio Alchemy Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $15-25. With Mix Master Mike, DJ Shortkut, and Jazz Mafia All-Stars.

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

Blowoff Slim’s. 10pm, $15. With DJs Bob Mould and Rich Morel.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. DJ Earworm headlines this mash-up party.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $7. DJ Nuxx and guests spin at this queer-friendly dance party.

Dead After Dark Knockout. 6pm, free. With DJ Touchy Feely.

Electricity Knockout. 10pm, $4. A decade of 80s with DJs Omar, Deadbeat, and Yule Be Sorry.

Frolic Stud. 9pm, $3-7. DJs Dragn’Fly, NeonBunny, and Ikkuma spin at this celebration of anthropomorphic costume and dance. Animal outfits encouraged.

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

Mini Non-Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. Noon-3pm, $5-10. Family-friendly Bollywood dance party.

No Way Back 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 10pm, $10. With DJs Trevor Jackson, Solar, and Conor.

Same Sex Salsa and Swing Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; (415) 305-8242. 7pm, free.

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

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

Spotlight Siberia, 314 11th St, SF; (415) 552-2100. 10pm. With DJs Slowpoke, Double Impact, and Moe1.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Electro cumbia with Ghosts on Tape, Disco Shawn, Oro11, and more.

SUNDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Battle of the Bands" DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With Amalgrama, Ten Days New, Wheels Have Eyes, and more.

Edie Sedgwick, Pozor, Leslie Q Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Ordstro, Tigon, Former Thieves, Benoit, Caulfield, Deadman, Versions Submission Art Space, 2183 Mission, SF; (415) 503-1425. 7pm, $6.

P.K. 14, Carsick Cars, AV Okubo Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Michael Rose, R2D2, Reggae City Slim’s. 9pm, $30.

Serena Ryder, Ryan Star Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

*Slough Feg, Bible of the Devil, Orchid Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lua Hadar, Jason Martineau Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

Noertker’s Moxie Musicians Union Hall, 116 Ninth St, SF; www.noertker.com. 7:30pm, $10.

Sounds of Blackness Yoshi’s San Francisco. 2 and 7pm, $5-34.

Tomasz Stanko Quintet Florence Gould Theatre, Legion of Honor, 100 Legion of Honor Dr, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 2pm, $25-40.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Country Casanovas Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with J Boogie and Vinnie Esparza.

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

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

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

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

Lonely Teardrops Rock n’ Roll Night Knockout. 9pm, $4. With DJs dX the Funky Granpaw and Sergio Iglesias.

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

Movement Temple. 9pm, $15. A benefit for CommuniTree and after party for the Green Festival featuring a live performance by Abstract Rude with DJ Drez, and DJs Ana Sia, David Satori, Aima the Dreamer, Sake One, and Abai.

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

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

MONDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Buxter Hoot’n, Mark Matos and Os Beaches, Nick Jaina Elbo Room. 8:30pm, $5.

MGMT Fillmore. 7pm, $30.

Ruby Suns, Toro y Moi, Dreamdate Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

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

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

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

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

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.
Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest Djs.
Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.
TUESDAY 13
ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP
Taina Asili y la Banda Rebelde, Lila Rose, Genie Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.
Blue Scholars, Bambu Slim’s. 9pm, $13.
Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.
Jen Grady, Kevin Florence, Ploughman Club Waziema, 543 Divisadero, SF; (415) 346-6641. 8pm, free.
Jel, Serengeti, Odd Nosdam Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $20. Benefit for Haitian relief by Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL).
Little Dragon, VV Brown, Hottub Independent. 9pm, $20.
MGMT Fillmore. 7pm, $30.
Neighbors, Lazer Zeppelin, Ghost to Falco Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.
Robot Bombshelter, Marrow, Girls N Boomboxes Elbo Room. 9pm.
DANCE CLUBS
Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck and DJ Crystal Meth.
Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.
La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.
Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.
Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.
Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

A couple of weeks ago, political consultant David Latterman, who often works with downtown interests, sent off an e-mail warning that the pro big-business, moderate bloc needed to get its act together. "It appears as if different groups are unwilling to set aside their egos or agendas, and pool together resources in a comprehensive plan to take back the [Democratic County Central Committee]," he wrote. "And guess what, we’re going to lose, in June and November."

His point: the DCCC matters, a lot. "The DCCC controls the supe endorsements that matter most," he noted, adding, "The mayor’s race starts now."

And that’s absolutely true — and unless the folks downtown are foolish or have given up (and neither is terribly likely) they’re going to get the message, and there’s going to be a big-money push in the next two months to oust the progressive majority on the county committee.

The DCCC controls the Democratic Party endorsements — and the party slate card is among the most influential political slates in a city where the vast majority of the population votes for Democrats. The DCCC could well make the difference in some of the key supervisorial races this fall — and could play a key role in choosing the next mayor of San Francisco.

But it’s not a high-profile election. More than half the votes will probably be absentees. That means it’s critical that the progressive candidates can raise money, do mailers, and fight back.

At this point, there’s a pretty good consensus on a progressive slate. We published our endorsements last week, and the Milk Club, Sierra Club, Tenants Union, and Assembly Member Tom Ammiano have endorsed most of the same candidates. In the fall, labor, environmental groups, tenants, and other progressive interests will be putting a lot of money into the races for district supervisor. But I could argue that the DCCC is just as important — and if we don’t fight this one to win, it’s going to be a lot harder in November.

Revenue for all

David Talbot
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2
Revenue for all

OPINION Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut: this is the sound of your government — parks, schools, playgrounds, hospitals, clinics, public transportation, programs for youth and seniors, arts, social services, the whole fabric that makes San Francisco what it is — fading away as state and local politicians refuse to raise revenue to revitalize our economy.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and big business groups have promoted a defeatist politics of low expectations, cutting spending, laying off city workers by the thousands, and offering tax breaks to businesses and developers rather than tapping San Francisco’s deep pockets of wealth to generate economic opportunities citywide.

It’s time for a new path: a fiscal politics of optimism, opportunity, and addition rather than subtraction. It’s time for an unapologetic progressive taxation movement for this November’s ballot and beyond, to make the city’s great wealth — individual and corporate, often badly undertaxed — work for all San Franciscans.

As California crumbles, local revenue movements could fuel a statewide campaign of towns, cities, and counties to overturn Proposition 13. San Francisco can take the lead with progressive taxation to create jobs, promote small neighborhood businesses, expand affordable housing and public transit, save public health, and more.

A citywide campaign for progressive taxes is building, including leaders from community-based nonprofits, grassroots organizing and neighborhood groups, labor unions, and some corners of City Hall. There are many promising ideas; with the right political will and organizing, the city could, for instance, tax large-scale real estate and levy profits from large firms. Progressive taxes could, at minimum, bring in close to $100 million and help save critical city services.

To win this campaign, a strong coalition must educate and mobilize the public about the vital importance — and citywide benefit — of raising revenue through targeted taxes on large firms and wealthy individuals. The city’s political leaders will need prodding, pressure, and support to get this done.

Progressive taxation will benefit all of San Francisco, not just some — working-class people of color and immigrants who endure the cuts’ harshest effects, everyone from youths to seniors, and vitally needed city employees like social workers, nurses, librarians, park workers, and firefighters.

The politics of austerity poses false choices between public safety and public health — as if health isn’t a safety issue. San Franciscans of all stripes must reject the pitting of services and "constituencies" against each other, reject the wedge politics that pit labor against nonprofits (both of which work to uplift working-class and poor residents), and unify around progressive revenue.

Nobody likes taxes, least of all the middle class, working class, and poor (the vast majority of us) who shoulder the bulk of the burden. But wealthy individuals and corporations can and must pay their fair share. According to a 2007 World Wealth Report produced by Merrill Lynch, 123,621 households in the Bay Area — many of them in San Francisco — "had $1 million or more in financial assets in 2007, up 10.8 percent from the year before," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

At a Feb. 14, 2007 Town Hall on Poverty in Bayview-Hunters Point, Newsom asserted, "we haven’t addressed the wealth divide; we haven’t addressed the health divide; we haven’t addressed the economic divide … why in a city like San Francisco has income inequality grown like it has?"

Yet Newsom and others continue to avoid progressive taxation — despite polls suggesting such measures can win. Tell Mayor Newsom, and your district supervisor, to make San Francisco’s wealth work for everyone. Now. *

Christopher Cook, an award-winning journalist and former Bay Guardian city editor, is communications director for the Revenue for All campaign of Budget Justice, a coalition of members from dozens of community organizations, labor unions and their allies working to raise revenue and protect the most vulnerable San Franciscans from budget cuts.

Momentum shifts against sit-lie

Sasha Cuttler
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19
Momentum shifts against sit-lie

Proponents of criminalizing sitting or lying on San Francisco sidewalks have seen their prospects of success steadily dwindle in the last week, starting with the creative and well-covered Stand Against Sit-Lie protests on March 27 and continuing through last week’s Planning Commission vote against the measure to yesterday’s debate on BBC’s The World, in which opponent Andy Blue clearly bested proponent Ted Loewenberg.

In fact, Blue and his grassroots band of progressive allies deserve tremendous credit for flipping the momentum on the issue away from the narrative pushed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, Police Chief George Gascon, and the reactionary Haight area property owners from Loewenberg’s Haight Ashbury Improvement Association.

While Newsom and Loewenberg tried to argue this was about giving police another “tool” to use against violent street ruffians, Blue and the progressives have correctly pointed out that the overblown examples proponents cite (ie hoodlums punching passersby, barricading businesses, and spitting on babies) are already illegal and that the law actually punishes the simple act of lounging in public.

That argument by progressives got strong support from a Planning Department report on how the sit-lie ordinance cuts against a variety of city policies and goals that promote open space and using sidewalks for more than just transportation, a view that the Planning Commission endorsed on a surprisingly lopsided 6-1 vote, with even Newsom’s appointees crossing him on the issue.

Few members of the Board of Supervisors have embraced the push for sit-lie, so it’s likely to be dead-on-arrival when the board considers it later this month, but Blue’s group isn’t taking any chances. Stand Against Sit Lie is planning another day of creative protest – with more sidewalk picnics, games, and maybe a return of Chicken John’s sidewalk hot tub – on April 24.

A very special piece of fan mail

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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7

The Guardian recently received a hostile letter in response to last week’s cover story, The New War on Fun, which spotlighted the aggressive tactics of two undercover officers at the center of a crackdown on San Francisco nightlife.

Unable to verify the author’s identity, we’ve withheld his name. As champions of free speech, however, we decided to give this writer an opportunity to share his opinion not just with the writers he seeks to attack, but a wider audience of readers, who undoubtedly also hold strong opinions. While this letter might amount to hot air from one individual whose opinion holds about as much sway as any internet troll creeping across the blogosphere, airing it can perhaps shed some light on the mindset of someone who would position progressive values — not to mention fun in San Francisco — squarely in the crosshairs. And it’s kind of funny, too.

The other thing is that the far right has touched off a great deal of discussion as of late, with its bizarro streak on full public display. Receiving a letter crammed with hate-filled speech while witnessing pockets of far-right extremists grab headlines, we thought it best not to ignore it, but to call attention to it.

Without further ado, here is the colorful opinion of one pissed-off Guardian reader, in mostly raw form. 

Dear MR Jones and MRS Bowe
I am writing to you about your story in the SF Bay Guardian Titled The New War On Fun. I think it is in bad taste the way you are putting down fine
officers like Larry Bertrand from the San Francisco police Dept And officer Michelle Ott from the Alcohol Beverage and Control these two officers are doing what they are paid to do and that is to protect the citizens of the city and County of San Francisco. And if they have to CRACK A FEW SKULLS OPEN TO DO IT SO BE IT. I wish this city had a few dozen more OFFICERS like Bertrand and OTTS. Then this city would be a much safer place to live. I mean if these promoters of theses events obey by the laws then everything would be fine but in my opinion these parties should not be allowed in the first place. For where ever A large Group of people gather and there is Booze present there bound to be trouble. and if these promoters are to STUPID to realize that then i say to bad for them if POLICE OFFICERS LIKE BERTRAND AND OTT HAVE TO BUST UP THE PARTY AND START DOING SOME HEAD BUTTING AND ARRESTING ALL THOSE INVOLVED all I can say to that is OH WELL MORE POWER TO THESE FINE EXAMPLES OF POLICE OFFICERS . Even if it means confiscating every piece of equipment there. And making a few arrest even better.

For I know that a lot of the people that attend these after hour events are MINORS and way under the legal drinking age. I know this for a fact for I have a good friend that use to be a bartender in one of these after hour clubs and he told me he has seen more teenagers in these clubs getting loaded to the gills. he told me that some of the other bartenders never asked to see there id’s they just took there money and gave them there drinks. My friend got reprimanded several times from the promoters of the event as well as his boss for asking for there ID’S. Look these places will let any one in if they just look older. OR they slip the Doorman a few bucks and he looks the other way. And all i can say about the Promoter’S AND THE OWNERS OF THE PLACES WHERE THESE PARTIES TAKE PLACE THEY SHOULD KNOW THAT FINE OUTSTANDING OFFICES LIKE LARRY BERTRAND AND MICHAEL OTT show up knowing there record for doing so is TOO BAD FOR THEM..

But on the other hand what can i expect from a LIBERAL YELLOW JOURNALISTIC RAG LIKE THE SF BAY GUARDIAN TO RUN A ONE SIDED PIECE OF TRASH STORY AND MAKING THE COPS LOOK LIKE THE BAD GUYS. AND MAKING THESE POOR PROMOTERS AND CLUB OWNERS AND PARTY GOER’S INNOCENT VICTIMS OF CIRCUMSTANCES. HELL THESE CLUB OWNERS ARE BREAKING THE LAW BY SELLING BOOZE TO UNDER AGE MINORS THEN THESE GUYS GET DRUNK AND THEN TRY TO DRIVE HOME WHERE SOME OF THESE IDIOTS BLOOD ALCOHOL IS WAY ABOVE THE LEGAL LIMIT. SO THEN THEY EITHER KILL SOME INNOCENT PERSON OR KILL THEM SELVES. AND ITS LIBERAL REPORTERS LIKE YOURSELVES AND THE BOARD OF STUPID-VISORS IN THIS CITY THAT AGREE TO THESE EVENTS.

If I were Mayor of this City I would call a press conference with every major news paper TV And Radio and make EXCELLENT EXAMPLES OF THESE TWO FINE OFFICERS. And to give them each a certificate of Merit and Valor in going beyond there call and line of duty. MR JONES AND MRS BOWE I bet you would be singing a different tune if someone you know and love got hurt or killed by someone who left one of these after hours events loaded with BOOZE and tried to drive home and got in to a wreck and killed themselves or killed or crippled an innocent person and that person could be someone you know. And then again knowing liberals like i do you might say oh-well they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I Emailed a copy of yourarticle To my Uncle who is a retired NY CITY Police OFFICER of 40 years. And he has several awards and medals for Valor and Bravery and for doing things beyond the CALL OF DUTY. He Said if these STUPID PROMOTERS tried that in HIS CITY not only would they be facing jail time and major fines. they might have a little accident on the way to the squad car and to the station-house. He did not say what kind of accident but knowing him it would be one they would not forget. For my uncle is also an ex UNITED STATES NAVY SEAL TRAINER. SO he knows how to inflect excruciating Paine on someone without leaving any signs of what happened. My Uncle hates these SOB’S who throw these types of parties for legal reasons and for personal reasons. and he got infuriated when he read your article. HE called your paper A PIECE of SHIT paper that he would not even let his bird CRAP ON.

but he said what do you expect from a STUPID CITY LIKE SAN FRANCISCO WHERE THE F—– PRACTICALLY RUN THE TOWN. AND WHERE MOST OF THE PEOPLE VOTED FOR THAT N—– OBAMA. AND THAT UGLY WITCH NANCY PELOSI. WELL IKE I SAID I HOPE THAT THESE
PROMOTERS AND CLUB OWNERS GET MORE THEN JUST A SLAP ON THE WRIST AND A FINE I SAY THAT THEY SHOULD BE TOSSED IN JAIL AND OR PRISON FOR WHAT THEY ARE DOING HOLDING THESE EVENTS AND LETTING MINORS IN TO THESE EVENTS AND LETTING THEM GET STONED. BUT THEN IF IT WERE NOT FOR LEFTIST MAGAZINES LIKE THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN THEY WOULD NOT GET ANY PUBLICITY AT ALL. AND IF THESE STUPID PROMOTERS AND CLUB OWNERS DON’T LIKE BEING FORCED TO OBEY THE LAW THEN LET THESE STINKING PROMOTERS AND CLUB OWNERS FACE THE FULL WRATH OF THE LAW . .

SO ALL I CAN SAY ABOUT YOUR ARTICLE IS IT IS A LEFT WINGED PIECE OF YELLOW JOURNALISM. THE SAME TYPE OF LEFT WINGED COMMUNISTIC PROPAGANDA THEY USE TO PUT OUT IN THE 60’S SO TAKE CARE YOU TWO PINKO COMMY AND TO YOUR LEFT WINGED COMMY PAPER YOU WRITE FOR. NO WOUNDER IT’S FREE NO ONE WOULD WANT TO BY IT. AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR YOUR PAPER BY LETTING SICK PROMOTERS OF PERVERTED PORNOGRAPHY ADVERTISE IN IT AND THESE SO CALLED DOPE DESPNCERIES WHO I THINK SHOULD BE ALL SHUT DONE PERMANENTLY AND THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THEM BE THROWN IN TO A MAXIMUM FEDERAL PRISON FOR AT LEAST 40 YEARS WITH NO CHANCE OF PAROLE.

SINCERELY,

[name withheld]

Ross on the road: The great white north

Zelda Bronstein
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1
Ross on the road: The great white north

Editors note: Guardian correspondent John Ross is traveling across the nation pomoting his new book, El Monstruo — Dread & Redemption in Mexico City, and is sending us dispatches from the road. This week: Twin Cities, Madison and Northern Michigan.


 1. BLUE IGLOO


As I deplaned the Southwest Shuttle from Denver wrapped in my blue igloo, a puffed up garment that doubles my skeletal girth, a sudden spasm of panic punched me in the gut. Had I slept through my stop and disembarked in Fargo, North Dakota instead?
Minneapolis might just as well have been Fargo. The dead winter landscape lay frozen under week-old snowdrifts and the Twin Cities shivered in negative wind chill numbers beneath a leaden sky from which a cold hard rain would pelt down for a week. Fargo or Minneapolis? It didn’t much matter where I had landed – just don’t toss me into the wood chipper.


On my first evening in this desolate region, I was invited to dialogue with the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network at a community center in St. Paul. About 15 transplanted Mexicans, many of them related by marriage or friendship, pulled together in a circle in the gymnasium while the kids romped in the other room. Each called out his or hers’ “patria chica,” their home state or region or town. I talked about Mexico down on the ground today in the cheerless winter of 2010, the 100th anniversary of a distant revolution. How four out of every ten heads of households are out of work. 10,000 farmers and their families forced to abandon their milpas as millions of tons of NAFTA corn inundate the country. 19,000 dead in Felipe Calderon’s disastrous attempt to beat down the drug cartels. Who will be next?


Those in the circle leaned forward on their folding chairs, bending into my words as if I was a messenger bringing bad news from home. One woman began to weep and another rose to comfort her.


Later, I pulled out my book, El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption in Mexico City to show them what I had written. Families who would probably not eat meat for a week if they bought one snapped up three Monsters and asked me to sign them for their children — Alejandra, Yesica, Jeni, Alfonso, Jonaton — so that they could learn about the country they had been forced to abandon, in their new language.


As the session wound down, Mariano (not his real name) invited the families to a Jewish Seder the next week at a progressive Minneapolis schul. Then they would get on the buses and head for Washington D.C., a 150 hour round trip, to march for immigration reform on March 21st, the first day of spring. In the nooks and crannies of Obama’s America, Mexicans were beginning to come out of four years of social hibernation to rally for immigration reform, not a hot button issue in this economically strewn landscape.


I hung up with my old camarada Tomas Johnson, one of the apostles of fair trade Zapatista coffee — similar dispensaries like Just Coffee in Madison and Higher Grounds in Michigan are sprinkled over the frigid Midwest. Café has played a diminished role in the slender Zapatista economy ever since Muk’Vitz, a Tzotzil Indian cooperative, imploded when coffee prices soared — coyotes, bottom-feeder speculators, started showing up on the members’ doorsteps offering a few pesos more than the fair trade price.


Coffee is not an ideal resource upon which to build Zapatista autonomy — the price is set far away on commodity exchanges in London and New York and the product itself is destined for the jaded palettes of the connoisseur class in the cities of the north. Moreover, the coffee crop soaks up corn land and adds nothing to indigenous nutrition.


I marked my journey into my 73rd year at a house fiesta hosted by Tomas’s steady squeeze, an audiologist who gifted me with a hearing aid so that I might be able to decipher that questions hurled at me from the small audiences I address. This time last year, I was being wheeled into a green, antiseptic operating room for a round of chemotherapy that would k.o. the tumor that had taken over my liver. This birthday is the real gift.


I entertained privileged white students at several universities during my stay in the Twin Cities, got hopelessly lost in a frigid wasteland trying to find a Lutheran college, told tall tales to a handful of Raza at the U. of Minn, and attended a showing of the Benny More bio-pic at a jam-packed local theater. Benny’s scintillating calor radiating from the screen in waves of tropical heat juxtaposed oddly against the backdrop of the frozen north. Minneapolis-St Paul, with their new populations of color – Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Hmung, and Latinos – spice up this staid old state with exotic flavors. The music has changed: Reggaeton and Rancheros have replaced Spider John Koerner. I drink in the Albert Ayler-like contortions of a longhaired white boy at a jam session downstairs at the Clown Lounge.


Politics too are not as usual in this once-upon-a-time farmer-labor socialist paradise: Keith Ellison is the nation’s first Muslim congress person and a middle-of-the-road Democrat comedian stands small in the shoes of Paul Wellstone. In the other corner, the pit viper Michelle Bachman spits her venom into the black lagoons of Obamalandia.


II. TURKEY MOLE


I’m back on the Big Dog — there are plenty of Mexicans here but no Mexican bus. On the jump over to Madison, I chat with a well-seasoned black man during a smoke break. He wants to know where I’m headed. I’m on a low-rent book tour, I explain, I move from city to city to sell my books. “I’m on a book tour myself,” he laughs, “I get off where I want to and see if I like it or not. Hung up in Oswego for eight days but wasn’t anything there for me…”


There is a down-at-the-heels traveling class — the evicted and foreclosed, laid off and uprooted — rolling around the underbelly of this damaged country with no fixed destination in mind, looking for a place to light, some place that feels like home.


Norm Stockwell, who keeps WORT-FM, the Voice of Madison’s Voiceless, choogling, picks me up at the Greyhound depot, a furniture-less warehouse that resembles an immigrant detention center on the outskirts of town, and drives me over to the once-a-month Socialist pot-luck, but only scraps and few stained paper plates are left. A few hours earlier, the Madison P.D. visited the premises at the behest of the Wisconsin Socialist Party to remove a truculent member who had been abruptly expelled from its ranks, an astonishingly unpolitical resolution to a political dispute.


Madison is a city that doesn’t leave much up to chance. Cops are ever at the ready to surveil radical meetings. One cannot post a hand-scrawled street sign protesting injustice without first obtaining a permit from the city. No household is allowed to house more than three chickens (no roosters), a law that necessitates chicken inspectors and has given birth to the Chicken Liberation Front.


The State Capitol, a knock-off the Nation’s, is forever on the eyeline in Madison to remind one of the power of the State, I expect. The city is laid out on a grid so that all avenues spoke off from its monstrous dome – you have to move out of town to escape the radiation.


On Saturday, March 20th, a fistful of eternal protestors gathered at the foot of this granite beast to mark the start of the eighth year of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and the decimation of millions of its people. As I trudged up State Street towards the Capitol, I flashed back to our feverish days as Human Shields in Baghdad in March 2003 and thought about Sasha for whom the war never goes home, climbing the hills of Amman, delivering collateral repair from dawn to dusk to the million Iraqi refugees that forgotten war has exiled to the Jordanian capitol.


Our presidents invade so many foreign countries that they can’t even remember the name of the last one they destroyed. Iraq has been erased from the North American mind screen in favor of Afghanistan, the Good War on Obama’s agenda. Last month, Sasha and Mary’s Collateral Repair Project took in just $50 in donations and CRP is in danger of folding. Send them some Yanqui shekels at (www.collateralrepairproject.org.)


The annual commemoration of the Iraqi genocide draws smaller and smaller knots of humanity each year — 80 or so souls in Madison, 500 in San Francisco, not 10,000 in Washington. But the next day, as Baracko’s Dems braved the racist jibes and hard fruit of the Teabaggers to enter the hallowed halls of Congress and narrowly vote up a phony health care reform bill that excludes immigrants from coverage and leaves the insurance congloms on top, 200,000 assembled outside to back up a proposed immigration reform that smells just as cheesy as Obamacare.


The rally proved to be the largest confluence of immigrant workers since that miraculous May 1st four years ago when millions came out of the shadows to shout “aqui estamos y no nos vamos.” After that milestone moment, the immigrant rights movement was driven into the underground by Bush’s ICE raids, Lou Dobbs, the Minutemen, real-time Mexico bashing with knives and bottles, Sheriff Joe’s Arizona storm troopers, good ol’ American-as-apple-pie racism, and the squeamish response of the official Latino leadership.


Now the indocumentados are taking their first baby steps back into the maelstrom of U.S. politics. Hundreds of grassroots groups like the Minnesota Immigration Freedom Network rented buses and drove off to Washington on the first day of spring and May 1st, the day on which immigrant workers first took to the streets of America 124 years ago in the battle for the eight hour day, now looms large on the calendar of resistance.


Lester Dore is a graphic artist who operates under the influence of the king of the calaveras Jose Guadalupe Posada, the brothers Flores Magon, and the breathtaking explosion of popular art that detonated on the walls of Oaxaca during the 2006 uprising in that southern city. Lester whips up a pair of prints to celebrate the publication of “El Monstruo” and the life after death of Praxides G. Guerrero, the first anarchist to fall in the 100 year-old-this-year Mexican revolution. He serves up a big pot of Mole de Guajalote (Turkey) and invites us over. Three compas from Toluca in Mexico State share the sumptuous repast and the conversation quickly slides into Mexican. I learn the origin of the Chilango-ismo “teparocha” (falling down drunk) but eschew the vino (the liver lives on.)


III. SANCTUARY IN THE HEARTLAND


Driving the long route around Lake Superior into northern Michigan, the first tentative fingers of spring have brought a thawing to the land. The cherries that draw thousands of migrant workers to the Lower Peninsula are threatening to burst into bud. Gladys Munoz (her real name) directs Migrant Health Services for seven northern Michigan counties. She is based in Traverse City, a comfortable upper crust enclave — the billion buck mansions out on the peninsula are in the El Chapo Guzman category of ostentation (Michael Moore is rumored to be in residence in the environs ensconced in a lavish log cabin roughly the size of downtown Flint.)


Gladys knows where the bodies are buried. We ply the backroads to the labor camps hidden away down in the dank gullies. Guatemalans and Mexicans stream into this region each spring to do the stoop labor no gringo will do and pick the Maraschinos that top off the parfaits of the few upwardly mobile Americans left in the wake of the ravaged economy (Michigan unemployment clocks in around 15%.) Gladys tells me about three babies born without brains — she suspects pesticides. She speaks about a man from Chiapas who hung himself when he found out that he had contacted AIDS — a priest was called upon to perform an exorcism at the house where he expired. And a young Triqui Indian mother from Oaxaca picking cucumbers for a Vlasic pickle contractor who was stranded in a country that doesn’t recognize her language after her husband went fishing for supper without a license and Fish & Game turned him over to the Migra.


We visit with Liliana (not her real name) from the drug war-riddled hot lands of Guerrero state. The patron is a kindly old farmer who has installed cable TV for the workers and we watch Barack Obama extol the wonders of his tarnished health care bill. Liliana’s husband is picking oranges in Florida but will soon return to work the cherry. She says he doesn’t much believe that an immigration reform measure will make it out of congress – “just some more blahblahblah…” But Liliana will march this May 1st if she can get a ride — undocumented workers are not permitted drivers’ licenses in the state of Michigan.


Traverse City is good to me. I perform at a local organic coffee roaster for a roomful of social change agents. The next morning, Jody T. who gave up her life to drive this garrulous old gaffer around the bioregion, steers the Viva into a trepidatious triangle. Cadillac was once the home base for Timothy McVeigh and the Michigan Militia, a recent flashback on the Ten O’clock News after a Christian posse purportedly targeted cops for blood sacrifice in preparation for the appearance of the Anti-Christ. To the west, small towns with Dutch-inflected names like Holland and Zeeland and Vreland dot the lakeside.


White clapboard outposts of the Dutch Reform Church, the architect of South African apartheid, their steeples spiring piously into the spring breeze, hug the highway. The Dutch Reform Church is the spiritual home of the Prinz family whose most celebrated spawn, Eric, is the go to guy at Blackwater. Further south we slide into Grand Rapids where the similarly affiliated DeVos dynasty’s Amway holds sway. The Prinzes and the DeVoses (a good reason not to root for the Orlando Magic) finance such repositories of right-wing fanaticism as Focus On The Family and Operation Rescue. The largesse of Dick DeVos rivaled the Mormon Church in putting California’s homophobic Proposition 8 over the top.


Grand Rapids, once the furniture capitol of the known universe and now the home of the Gerald Ford Museum of Presidential Imbeciles, is a good boxing town (Buster Mathis and Roger Mayweather have gyms here) and a swelling Latino population has changed the complexion of the city. Despite the downturn, Grand Rapids is trying to upgrade its downtown but the further one gets from the core of the city, the seedier things look.


Koinonia House is a sanctuary near the old demolished heart of Grand Rapids — in fact, it is the only structure left standing on its block. Established by disaffected seminarians like Jeff Smith in the early 1980s when the U.S. waged war on Central America, K House became a station on the underground railroad built by the Sanctuary Movement. The first refugees were Guatemalan Indians fleeing the scorched earth genocide of Efrain Rios Montt. In recent years, K House has taken in Mexicans fleeing that “desgraciada pobreza” back home, like Carlos and Alynn (their real names) who have brought their remarkable art with them to El Norte.


Jeff kicks back and reminisces about the fates of former tenants. The big-bellied wood stove belches out waves of warmth on a chill late March morning. The big arms of the fluffy old lounger envelop a weary traveler and hold him close. K House remains a sanctuary deep in the heart of a wounded land.


Stay tuned. Chicago, St Louis, Jackson Mississippi – there is still a whole lot of traveling to do as the Monstruo tour moves eastwards.               


FIN


John Ross and “El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption in Mexico City” will visit St. Louis April 4th-7th, and Millsaps College Jackson Mississippi April 9th for a symposium on Mexico City – he will tour Baltimore, Washington, New York, and Boston April 19th through May 1st. For details write johnross@igc.org.

Our Endorsements: For DCCC

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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10
Our Endorsements: For DCCC

The Democratic County Central Committee isn’t the most high-profile elected agency in San Francisco, but it’s really important. The committee sets policy for the local Democratic Party — and that includes endorsements. The people who control the committee control a slate card that goes out to every registered Democrat in the city, and that’s a vast majority of the voters. DCCC endorsements, carrying the imprimatur of the party, have a significant impact on local elections, particularly in district supervisor races.

For years, the DCCC was controlled largely by the old Brown-Burton machine, but two years ago, the progressives took back control, and that made a huge difference in electing good supervisors. The DCCC endorsement will also matter in the next mayor’s race.

The folks downtown realize this. David Latterman, a political consultant who often works with more moderate candidates and interest groups, sent a memo out March 17 titled “Headed toward the cliff in 2010 elections.” The memo, which we’ve obtained, argues that downtown and the moderates need to get organized, now: “If we can have one person run a coordinated effort with $150K … we can really pick up DCCC seats. Only a few will make a difference in the fall endorsements. The mayor’s race starts now.”

So it’s crucial that the progressives turn out to vote June 8, and vote for strong candidates for the DCCC who will support district elections, public power, tenant rights — and progressive candidates for supervisor.

We’ll be publishing endorsements for all of the June primary races and ballot measures in a few weeks, but we’ve decided to do early endorsements for the DCCC. Twelve people are elected from each assembly district. Here are our choices:

 

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 12

John Avalos

Michael Borenstein

Sandra Lee Fewer

Chris Gembinski

Hene Kelly

Eric Mar

Milton Marks

Jake McGoldrick

Jane Morrison

Melanie Nutter

Connie O’Connor

Larry Yee

 

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 13

David Campos

David Chiu

Michael Goldstein

Robert Haaland

Joseph Julian

Rafael Mandelman

Kim-Shree Maufas

Carole Migden

Aaron Peskin

Eric Quezada

Alix Rosenthal

Debra Walker

 

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Blue Bear School of Music Band Showcase" Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $12-20.

Hugh Cornwell Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10-20. Benefit for victims of the Haitian earthquake.

Epiphanette Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

"Fundraiser for Precita Eyes 14th Annual Urban Youth Arts Festival" El Rio. 8pm, $5-20. With Genie, A-1, Orukusaki, Cio Castaneda, and more.

Laura Gibson and Ethan Rose, Emily Jane White, Garrett Pierce Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Ari Herstand, Brett Hunter Trio Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Kidz in the Hall, 88 Keys, Izza Kizza, Donnis Independent. 8pm, $15.

Koalacaust, Ghost Town Refugees, Travis Hayes Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $7.

Never Shout Never, Cab, Hey Monday, Every Avenue, Summer Set Regency Ballroom. 6pm, $18.

Perfect Age of Rock n’ Roll Blues Band with guests Elvin Bishop, Tim Reynolds, and Ray Manzarek Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $30.

Radio Moscow, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Naam, Zodiac Death Valley Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Kevin Russell Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Rachel Wonder, Tiny Little Blackouts, Skyflakes, Golda and the Guns Rock-It Room. 8:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kasey Anderson Plough and Stars. 9pm.

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

Kami Nixon and Bill Spooner Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 441-4099. 7pm, free. Featuring Sharon Maher.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Greatest Hits Knockout. 9pm, $4. With DJs Sergio Iglesias and Omar.

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

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

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

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

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

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

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Jonny Craig, Tides of Man, Eye Alaska, Honor Bright, Mod Sun Bottom of the Hill. 7:30pm, $12.

Cult of Youth, Veil Veil Vanish, Ssleeping Desiress Knockout. 9:30pm, $5.

Destruments feat. Monophonic Horns Coda. 9:30pm.

Lesbian, White Mice, CCR Headleaner, Nuclear Death Wish Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Allison Lovejoy and Graves Brothers Deluxe, Brother’s Horse, Fuzzbucket, Ed, Atomic Lucy Paradise Lounge. 9pm, $7. Benefit for the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair.

Tim Reynolds and TR3, Alma Desnuda, Marcus Eaton Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $15-30. Benefit for victims of the Haitian earthquake.

Surfer Blood Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; (415) 831-1200. 6pm, free.

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

Terror, Ignite, Hour of the Wolf, Crucified, Boundaries Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $15.

Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt, Shakes, Blank Tapes, Pony Village Amnesia. 9pm.

Pat Wilder Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

*Zion I Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Habib Koite and Bamada Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $24.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Heather Combs, Austin Willacy, Stewart Lewis, Chi McClean Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-7. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Assemblage 23, Angel Theory, Savi0r DNA Lounge. 8:30pm, $16.

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

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

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

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

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

Good Foot Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

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

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

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

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro. Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

1320.SF Temple. 9pm, $10. With DJs David Murphy, David Phipps, Nalepa Dub Orchestra, Flying Skulls, Virtual Boy, and more spinning electronic music.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

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

Studio SF Triple Crown. 9pm, $5. Keeping the Disco vibe alive with authentic 70’s, 80’s, and current disco with DJs White Girl Lust, Ken Vulsion, and Sergio.

FRIDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Astronautalis, Oona, Le Vice Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $10.

Larry Graham and Graham Central Station, Slave, DJ Harry D Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $46.

Honor Society, Just Kait, Ashlyne Huff Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $18.

Maria Muldaur Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Okmoniks, Touch-Me-Nots, Wrong Words Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Passenger and Pilot, Cola Wars, All My Pretty Ones El Rio. 9pm, $6.

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

Scraping for Change, Solid State Logic, Cloverleaf Drive, Fever Charm Slim’s. 8pm, $14.

Texas Thieves, Sharp Objects, Ruleta Rusa, Bad Tickers Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $7.

*Zion I Independent. 9pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

Habib Koite and Bamada Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $22-26.

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

Miya Masaoka, David Wessel, Nils Bultmann Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell, SF; www.meridiangallery.org. 8pm, $10.

Shotgun Wedding Symphony Coda. 10pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Dead Dreams Connecticut Yankee, 100 Connecticut, SF; (415) 552-4440. 10pm, $10.

Jesse Jay Harris, 77 El Deora, East Bay Greaser, Merle Jagger Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Left Coast Special Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Manicato, Palenke Soul Tribe, Funky C and Joya Elbo Room. 10pm, $15.

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

Yonder Mountain String Band Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

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

"Ball of Justice" DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $20. With live performances by Los Straightjackets and the Phenomenots, plus Fishnet Follies Burlesque Revue, DJ Melting Girl, and more.

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

Brass Tax Amnesia. 9:30pm, $5. DJs Ding Dong, Ernie Trevino, and Lil’ Bear Hat spin house, breaks, electro, and hip-hop.

Braza! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, $10.

DatA Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $12. With DJs Jeffery Paradise and Ava Berlin spinning disco, funk, dance, and more.

Deeper 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With rotating DJs spinning dubstep and techno.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

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

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

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

*Golden Era Mighty. 10pm, $10. With DJs Apollo, Sake One, D-Sharp, Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist, Jah Yzer, Proof, Whooligan, and Vickity Slick spinning a tribute to the Golden Era of hip hop.

Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

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

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

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

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Strangelove: Vinyl Night Cat Club. 10pm, $6.

SATURDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Mark David Ashworth, Beehavers, Mira Cook Kaleidoscope, 3109 24th St, SF; www.kaleidoscopefreespeechzone.com. 9pm, free.

"Benefit for City of Hope Cancer Center of LA" Slim’s. 8:30pm, $20. With Mo’Fessionals, Fungo Mungo, Bang Data, and Butterscotch.

Contribution Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Damn Near Dead Abbey Tavern, 4100 Geary, SF; (415) 221-7767. 9pm, free.

Deadfall, Dean Dirg, Face the Rail El Rio. 10pm, $7.

English Beat, Impalers Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $22.

Five for Fighting, Matt Wertz Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $32.

Ghost Pepper, Fred Torphy, Sean Leahy Trio Connecticut Yankee, 100 Connecticut, SF; www.theyankee.com. 9pm, $10.

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

Impediments, Danny James and Pear, Colossal Yes Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Inca Silver, Kalrissian Make-Out Room. 7:45pm, $7.

Love Dimension, Honey, Spyrals, Greg Ashley Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Jonah Matranga, Hours of Op Epicenter Café, 764 Harrison, SF; (415) 543-5436. 7pm, $10.

Murkin, J. Ward, Head Slide Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Scissors for Lefty, Hundred Days, Saint Motel Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Spandex Tiger Grant and Green. 9:30pm, free.

Tyrone Wells, Tony Lucca, Roy Jay Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $16.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Broun Fellinis Coda. 10pm, $10.

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

"Filipino American Jazz Appreciation Month Celebration" San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; (415) 557-4430. 1-5pm, free.

Habib Koite and Bamada Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

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

Jarrett Fenlon, Tenderloins Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

Yonder Mountain String Band Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

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

*Bardot A Go Go’s Serge Gainsbourg Dance Party Knockout. 9pm, $10. With DJs Brother Grimm, Pink Frankenstein, and Cali Kid.

Crystal Method Ruby Skye. 9pm, $25.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. DJs Jamie Jams and Emdee spin 90s alternative.

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

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Foundation Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm.

Gemini Disco Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Disco with DJ Derrick Love and Nicky B. spinning deep disco.

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

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

Kontrol Endup. 10pm, $20. With resident DJs Alland Byallo, Craig Kuna, Sammy D, and Nikola Baytala spinning minimal techno and avant house.

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

New Wave City DNA Lounge. 9pm, $7-12. Eighties dance party.

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

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

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

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

Soundscape Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. With DJs C3PLOS, Brighton Russ, and Nick Waterhouse spinning Soul jazz, boogaloo, hammond grooves, and more.

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

Tiefschwarz Mighty. 10pm, $15. Spinning techno and house.

White Party Trigger, 23 Market, SF; (415) 551-2582. 9pm, $10. With DJ Claksaarb. White attire required.

SUNDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP
Flatliners, Broadway Calls, Cobra Skulls, Longway Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.
*Grayceon, Lesbian, Hazzard’s Cure Knockout. 6pm, $5.
Music for Animals, Mata Leon, Links, Doll and the Kicks Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $12.
Triclops!, Brent Weinbach and Alex Koll, Tubers, SF School of Rock, Peijman and Ben Kunin Bottom of the Hill. 5pm, $10.
U-Melt Connecticut Yankee, 100 Connecticut, SF; www.theyankee.com. 8pm.
JAZZ/NEW MUSIC
Brass Menazeri vs. Emperor Norton’s Jazz Band Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.
"Hot Air Music Festival" San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak, SF; www.hotairmusic.org. 2-10pm, free. Contemporary music marathon run by SFCM students.
Habib Koite and Bamada Yoshi’s San Francisco. 5 and 7pm, $5-26.
FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY
Tomorrow Men, Hurtinanny Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.
DANCE CLUBS
Afterglow Nickies, 466 Haight, SF; (415) 255-0300. An evening of mellow electronics with resident DJs Matt Wilder, Mike Perry, Greg Bird, and guests.
Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.
Dance-A-Thon Shoebox Studios, 864 Folsom, SF; (415) 861-5976. 10am-6pm, $10. Featuring dance classes all day to celebrate the opening of the new studio.
Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Goth, industrial, and synthpop with DJs Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.
DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.
Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and guest DJ Sun.
Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.
Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?
Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.
Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.
Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.
Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.
Shuckin’ and Jivin’ Knockout. 10pm, free. Jivers and stompers with DJs Dr. Scott and Oran.
Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.
MONDAY 5
ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP
Angels and Airwaves, Say Anything Warfield. 9pm, $29.
Rocco Deluca Café du Nord. 9pm, $15.
"Felonious Presents: Live City Revue" Coda. 9pm, $7.
Dave Lionelli, Ben Fuller, Jon Ji Rock-It Room. 10pm.
Macabea, Ruinitas Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.
Owl City, Lights, Paper Route Fillmore. 6:30pm, $20.
Puddle of Mudd, Burn Halo, Veer Union Slim’s. 8pm, $25.
DANCE CLUBS
Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.
Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!
M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.
Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with DJs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.
Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.
Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.
Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest Djs.
TUESDAY 6
ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP
Church Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $30.
Adam Green, Dead Trees Café du Nord. 8pm, $15.
Jeepster, Build Us Airplanes, X-Ray Press, Aimless Never miss Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.
Owl City, Lights, Paper Route Fillmore. 6:30pm, $20.
DANCE CLUBS
Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJs What’s His Fuck, Taypoleon, and Mackiveli.
Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.
La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.
Mixology Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; (415) 441-2922. 10pm, $2. DJ Frantik mixes with the science and art of music all night.
Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.
Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.
Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Sit, lie, stand and fight

Sasha Cuttler
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14
Sit, lie, stand and fight

A version of the following op-ed by Ben Rosenfeld ran in this week’s Guardian, edited for space reasons, and it’s generating quite a lively discussion here. He has asked us to post this extended dance mix of his piece, which offers more political context and gets into some of the issues raised in this weeks’ cover story, which is also generating heated debate. So here it is:

            This is a call out to creative, fun-loving San Franciscans: The mayor, the police chief, and their downtown cronies have declared war on our grassroots arts culture, and they are coming for your actual and conceptual space next. All that stands between the town you love and their vision of San Francisco as one big mercantile zone is a single vote progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors. But come November, they see the chance to take that away. The future they promise is already manifest in their many recent attacks on public and private gatherings, and their efforts to wrest the commons from the commoners.

            On Halloween 2009, the San Francisco Police, under their new chief, Los Angeles transplant George Gascón, shut down the Take Back Halloween Flashdance in front of the Ferry Building before DJ Amandeep “Deep” Jawa even arrived. Then they shut down several smaller street parties. (SFBG, 11/2/09) Their official reason—that organizers lacked permits—is what Bill Clinton famously termed an explanation, but not an excuse. The SFPD has a long history not only of tolerating unpermitted gatherings, but of re-routing traffic around and even escorting them. They are fully empowered to grant the equivalent of on-the-fly permits, a concept recognized in federal parks regulations. Applying for an actual permit is cumbersome, costly, anti-spontaneous, and reinforces the government’s view of itself as censor.

            Since Halloween, Chief Gascón’s force has been striking a mighty blow against crime by writing scores of open container citations to revelers in Dolores Park; fining or forcing the closure of SOMA clubs and bars for failing to conform to every fickle letter of the law; and sending undercover officers into warehouse and studio parties to bust them from within, sometimes violently, and without warrants. Their alpha party-crasher is a twitchy undercover cop named Larry Bertrand. He reportedly makes a habit of gratuitously attacking partygoers and vandalizing property, especially DJ equipment. One DJ wrote on a confidential email list: “I have been telling every DJ I know to run with their gear when your party gets busted [by Bertrand].” Not only has the chief failed to rein in Bertrand, but he wants to put a Taser in his hand, and in the hands of a rotten core of approximately 100 other officers whom the Chron found in 2006 are responsible for most citizen complaints, but whom the Department and this chief have systematically failed to discipline.

            Perhaps the most un-San Franciscan of all of Gascón’s initiatives is his demand for an anti-sit/lie ordinance, which would literally criminalize the very act of sitting or lying on certain public sidewalks at certain times. Never mind the fact that most violent crime is committed by people standing up and in striking range. Gascón appears to share the mayor’s philosophy that homelessness is just an aesthetic problem the rest of us should hose off our sidewalks. Not only is the idea just plain mean, it is anathema to San Francisco’s culture of compassion and broadmindedness, and its affirmative celebration of vibrant street culture. The danger is not that the police will arrest everyone who dares to take a load off or sit and sip a Snapple against the side of a building, but that they will enforce the law selectively according to their own purity tests, while robbing the rest of us of a diverse street scene that makes us all richer.

            To be sure, essential San Francisco has reasserted itself in the teeth of earlier culture wars, if in ever wealthier iterations. When Willie Brown stood in front of Critical Mass in 1997 and declared it illegal, riders blew by him like he was a grand prix flagman, and ridership surged from one or two thousand to five to seven thousand. What’s different this time are the demographics. San Francisco is richer than ever before, even at the height of the dot.com boom. Rents are through the roof. Everywhere, industrial warehouses and studios are drying up and concept industrial restaurants and bars are sprouting up. A new wave of young, hip residents has arrived seeking Dionysus, but they want no part of the political machinations under his robe. They are liberal, but they are not active. At least not yet. The mayor, the chief, and the norm core they serve are counting on our collective non-engagement. If we don’t band together—hipsters, activists, artists, and fun-loving folk all—we will watch the San Francisco we cherish slip away.

            On March 27, reclaim public space. Sit and lie on the public sidewalk. March and sing in the public street. Picnic on the pavement. Pop open a beer in Dolores Park. Do it without a permit. The Constitution is your permit. San Francisco’s heritage of artistic experimentation is your permit. Hell, the people telling you to get a permit flocked here because people like you marched around them in the first place and made this City a model of art and innovation for the world. Do it for them too. This is a defining moment. They are playing for keeps and so must we. Let’s bask in San Francisco’s ongoing heyday, not in quaint stories of the good times that used to be.

Hammers of fortune!

Sue Vaughan
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0
Hammers of fortune!

Big news on the local metal scene: San Francisco prog-shredders Hammers of Misfortune have just signed to Metal Blade Records. Hot off the Metal Blade press-release telegraph:

“Metal Blade Records is pleased to announce the signing of San Francisco’s progressive metal outfit HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE. Metal Blade Records will release four of the band’s previous releases in late summer 2010 with a new studio album expected in 2011.”

According to the release, the band (conceived as “break-up proof” by band founder John Cobbett) will continue to produce their own albums. Along with Cobbett (who’s also in Ludicra) on guitar, Hammers’ regular members include Chewy Marzolo on drums (also a member of swingin’ side project King City), multi-instrumentalist (keyboards, flute, and haunting vocals) Sigrid Sheie, and bassist Max Barnett (of Old Grandad fame). News to me, thanks to Metal Blade’s PR, is that guitarist-vocalist Leila Abdul-Rauf (whose previous band, solid black-metal outfit Saros, is on “indefinite hiatus,” according to their Myspace page) has joined the Hammers line-up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwPZ3lqg19g

Frankly, I’m stoked — in a world where far too many shitty, quasi-metal bands get record contracts, this is great news for one of San Francisco’s most innovative, talented, hardworking, and (lest we forget) awesomely furious bands. Horns up, Hammers!

Read Josh Wilson’s 2007 profile of the band in the Guardian here; check out the full press release on Metal Blade’s site here.

alt.sex.column: Oh, grow up!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
alt.sex.column: Oh, grow up!

Dear Andrea:

My really sweet, nice new boyfriend is into S–M and I’m not sure I even understand the attraction. I can get behind the sensation aspect but I have some moral and feminist objections. He insists it’s just a way to play, but it doesn’t sound like play to me. From what I read, people seem to take it pretty seriously. Plus calling it play (“pain play” “play-dates,” “play partners”) doesn’t really convince me that it’s all in good fun. You’re going to think this is ridiculous, but honestly all the talk about “play” sounds immature to me. We are 30 and 33 years old! Do we really need to spend our free time “playing”? Convince me.

Love,

All Play And No Work …


Dear All:

Wow, I feel faintly reprimanded for ever calling anything “play” that wasn’t an organized sport or a dramatic presentation. Then again, I am kind of immature — it keeps us young, don’t you know — so what do I care?

In response to what I expect are your political and feminist objections, I think many nice, progressive, egalitarian types such as (I presume) yourself (and also myself) initially have this reaction when presented with S–M iconography and terminology. Isn’t it time to move beyond rigid hierarchies? Doesn’t all this black leather look a little SS-ish? Would we even have such a concept as “top” and “bottom,” let alone “master” and “slave,” if we didn’t have this wretched history of the strong subjugating the weak, century after century, culture after culture? Would people born on Planet Liberty and Justice for All ever come up with S–M? And if they wouldn’t, should we? And isn’t it unhealthy for both genders to have women kneeling at men’s feet, or recapitulating scenes that in real life would be examples of brute patriarchy at work (all those abused school girls, corrected parlor maids, and so on)? And I say unto you, what makes you think it’s always or even usually women doing the kneeling, or that all those parlor maids are female? In the absence of a Planet Liberty and Justice to use as a control, we have no idea if people would play power games or not.

As for your (implied) definition of maturity — taking responsibility for your actions, not whining, not blaming others for your own mistakes — there are many qualities I would ascribe to the mature human. But “doesn’t play” isn’t one of them. Humans are neotenic — hanging on to aspects of infancy long past physical maturity — and it’s entirely possible that our flexibility, creativity, and ability to learn and grow as adults is due to that built-in childishness. Mature adults play all the time — in sports, outdoor adventuring, Burning Man, and so on. None of these activities are necessary to our survival as grownups. We just do them for fun. And some of us do similarly with adults-only indoor sports.

If you don’t want to play, don’t. But if you do want to play, don’t sweat the semantics.

Love,

Andrea

Got a question? Email Andrea at andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Hank Plante’s exit interview

Sasha Cuttler
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2

Hank Plante ends a three-decade run as a political journalist with tonight’s (March 24) broadcast of the CBS 5 Eyewitness News, where he has worked since 1986 after starting his career with newspapers in Washington DC. So we took the occasion to talk politics with him, learning that his loyalties lie downtown.

Plante agreed that politics has become ugly these days. “It’s just so much more acrimonious, that’s one thing that’s changed. The other is just the money that’s involved,” Plante told us, marveling at Meg Whitman’s plans to spend $40 million of her own money to run for governor and the $1 million per day that corporations spent lobbying against the health reform bill signed by President Obama.

But the changes haven’t gotten Plante down, as they have many political junkies, who decry the crippling of government’s ability to combat corporate power and address real social and economic problems. “I’ve never become a cynic, and I think that’s one thing that sets me apart from many political journalists,” he said, adding, “I still think politicians can make a difference.”

Yet like many political journalists, when I ask who his favorite politicians have been, he rates them based on whether they’ve made good stories, not whether they good for the people. For journalists, bad is often good, whether it be natural disasters or disgraceful politicians.

“Arnold is a great story. Willie Brown was a great story. Gray Davis was a dull story until he got recalled, then he was a good story,” Plante said.

What about Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has often given Plante exclusive access (including Newsom’s first extended interview after his 2007 sex scandal), but who has also angrily walked out in the middle of an interview with Plante. 

“Personally, I like the mayor. But I have to ask him tough questions, so he can be mercurial. Right now, he’s running for office again, so he’s charming,” Plante said.

In fact, for a journalist, Plante makes clear his preference for Newsom over the progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors, joking, “If I had a month to live, I’d spend it with the Board of Supervisors because it would seem like five years.”

Plante also said that he opposes district elections — which he said have prevented the emergence of big-stature political figures like Dianne Feinstein and Quintin Kopp — and Plante said he doesn’t see the value of district elections in counteracting the political power of downtown corporations. “I’m a capitalist and I have no problem with people making money,” he said.

Yet Plante acknowledges the divide between downtown and progressives is San Francisco’s dominant political dynamic, noting, “You see how afraid downtown is of the Board of Supervisors appointing the new mayor.”

While Plante said he believes in the importance of politics, he does decry how political science and public relations have been manipulated in recent years.

“They’re taken a page out of the Karl Rove playbook to talk over the journalists right at the public,” Plante said, noting how many politicians no longer feel the need to be accessible to journalists or honestly and directly answer their questions. “They really want to control the message, so the accessibility is diminished.”

Nonetheless, Plante said he regularly emphasizes the importance of political engagement: “In a place like the Bay Area, where people are inundated with lots of information sources, you have to keep saying it over and over again.” 

Plante, 63, is retiring and moving to his home in Palm Springs with his partner, Roger. Among the many awards and accolades he earned during his career are several Emmys and a prestigious Peabody Award. His station sent out a press release praising Plante, including this comment by anchor Dana King: “There is an entire population of politicians breathing a sigh of relief at the news of Hank’s retirement. Hank was the consummate professional, never combative but he did his homework and asked tough, pointed questions. Politicians, love him or hate him, respected and answered them, every single time. Our newsroom will suffer a huge intellectual void when he leaves.”

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acid Mothers Temple, OGOD Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $12.

Asteroids Galaxy Tour Independent. 8pm, $15.

Bridez Knockout. 10pm, $5.

Keith Crossan Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

High Places, Mi Ami, Protect Me Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Nadas, Blue Bonfire Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

No Captains, Black Sails Western Shores, Why I Hate, Singularity Thee Parkside. 8pm, $5.

*Pentagram, Ludicra, Slough Feg, Orchid DNA Lounge. 8:30pm, $22.

Power Solo, Chris Jones, Chief Nowhere, Federale, DJ Neil Martinson Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

*Rainbow Arabia, Sutekh, K. Flay, Shlohmo, Oy Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Somerville and Keehan Plough and Stars. 9pm.

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

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

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

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

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

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

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

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

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Al Qaeda, Nondor Devai and Ben Wolcott, Bank of Christ Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Cymbals Eat Guitars, Bear In Heaven, Freelance Whales Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Deeper, Socialized, Scar Pink Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Enne Enne, Rad Cloud, Sexx Act Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Flakes, Hot Lunch, Silver Skies Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

Garotas Suecas, Lumerians, Greg Ashley Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Phil Gates Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Swann Danger, Monozid, Bootblacks, DJ Nako Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

"Thursday Night Live" Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; thursdaynightnow@gmail.com. 9pm, free. With Holly Saucy, EyeZon, Serendipity Project, and Isis Genesis.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"Full Moon Concert Series: Storm Moon" Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF; www.luggagestoregallery.org. 8pm, $6-10. With Joshua Churchill and Paul Clipson, and Peter Kolovos.

Hauschka and Dustin O’Halloran with MagiK*MagiK String Quintet Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 7:30pm, $16.

"Music at Large: The Rites of Spring" Velma’s, 2246 Jerrold, SF; (415) 824-4606. 7pm. With Lewis Jordan and more.

Najee Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20-26.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bautista Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

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

Christopher Dallman Dolores Park Café. 7:30pm, free.

Eric Maskol Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

Montana Slim, Greensky Bluegrass, Nat Keefe Independent. 8pm, $15.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-7. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Apoptygma Berzerk, Anix, Dismantled DNA Lounge. 9pm, $16.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Dirty Dishes LookOut, 3600 16th St., SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs B-Haul and Gordon Gartrell spinning electric-hop, bassy-house, indielectronica, and more.

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

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

Good Foot Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

Gymnasium Matador, 10 Sixth St, SF; (415) 863-4629. 9pm, free. With DJ Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, hip hop, and disco.

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

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

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

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

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

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

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest.

Swedish Invasion Club Six. 9pm, $10. With live performances by Looptroop Rockers, Timbuktu and Chords, Adam Tensta, and more and DJ Platurn spinning hip hop.

FRIDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Chatmonchy Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF; (415) 831-1200. 6pm, free.

Chatmonchy, Red Bacteria Vacuum, Omodaka, Okamotos, JinnyOops! Independent. 8pm, $15.

Coathangers, Spencey Dude and the Doodles, Aerosols Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Fall of Troy, Envy on the Coast, Twin Atlantic Slim’s. 7:30pm, $16.

Field Music, Old-Fashioned Way, Sands Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

*Hammerfall, Powerglove, Ruffians Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $28-60.

Jeremy Goodfeather Band, Sioux City Kid, Stow Aways, Jeff St. John Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Kite Operations, XYZR_KX, Gold Medalists, Jack Tung Retox Lounge. 10pm, $5.

Life in 24 Frames, Loaded for Bear, Myonics El Rio. 9pm, $5.

Low Anthem, Timbre Timber, Barr Brothers Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Money Mark, Tommy Guerrero, and Marc and the Casuals Gallery 16, 501 3rd St., SF; (415) 626-7495. 7pm, $20. Part of Soulfood No. 2.

Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

*Midnight Bombers, Get Dead, My Life in Black and White, Rockfight Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $7.

Think About Life, Heavenly States, Kill Moi Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

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

Najee Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $22-32.

Trombone Trio Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

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

Culture Canute Grant and Green Saloon. 9:30pm. With the Rockstone Players and the Realization Crew.

Jeffery Halford and the Healers, Tom Heyman Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Jeremy Goodfeather Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Toshio Hirano Mercury Café, 201 Octavia, SF; (415) 252-7855. 7:30pm, free.

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

Lagos Roots Connecticut Yankee, 100 Connecticut, SF; (415) 552-4440. 10pm, $10. With members of Fela Kuti and the Afrika 70, and more.

Paper Raincoat Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; (415) 454-5238. 8:15pm, $17. With Vienna Teng.

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

Rumbache Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

"Sila Presents Sahara" Coda. 9pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10. With rotating DJs.

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

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

4OneFunktion Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Hip-hop and turntablism with Apollo and Shortkut.

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

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Gymnasium Stud. 10pm, $5. With DJs Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, disco, rap, and 90s dance and featuring performers, gymnastics, jump rope, drink specials, and more.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

House of Voodoo Medici Lounge, 299 9th St., SF; (415) 501-9162. With DJs voodoo, Purgatory, and Stiletto spinning goth, industrial, deathrock, and eighties.

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

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

Psychedelic Radio Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Kial, Tom No Thing, Megalodon, and Zapruderpedro spinning dubstep, reggae, and electro.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

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

Teenage Dance Craze Party Knockout. 10pm, $3. With DJs Sergio Iglesias, Russell Quann, and dX the Funky Gran Paw.

Trannyshack DNA Lounge. 10pm, $12. Bowie tribute night with David J, Ejector, and more.

Underground Expression Club Six. 9pm, $10. Live performances by Bicasso, Z-Man, Dregs One, and Sound Earth and DJ BeatsMe spinning hip hop.

SATURDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Area Codes: The Bay Area’s Regional Hip-Hop Monthly" Etiquette Lounge, 1108 Market, SF; (415) 863-3929. 10pm, $10. With guest DJs Platurn and Doc Fu.

Big Sam’s Funky Nation Independent. 9pm, $15.

Burmese, Mayyors, Arms and Leg Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Copeland, I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody’s Business, Person L, Deas Vail Slim’s. 8pm, $17.

"Dear Companion Tour" Swedish American Hall. 8pm, $15. With Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore.

Dead Meadow, Imaad Wasif, Upside Down Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

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

*Fleshies, Classics of Love, Tubers El Rio. 10pm, $8.

Heavy Liquid and friends Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Chrisette Michele, Laura Izibor Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $35.

Moccretro, Feie, Thee Landlords Epicenter Café, 764 Harrison, SF; (415) 543-5436. 7pm, free.

Sacred Profanities, Fiver Brown and the Good Sinners, Jeff Cotton’s Gin Joint Hotel Utah. 9pm, $7.

Neil Schon Fillmore. 9pm, $35.

Sex With No Hands, Minks, Antioquia Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

"Slumberland Records 20th Anniversary Party" Rickshaw Stop. 5pm, $20. With Boyracer, Go Sailor, Henry’s Dress, the How, Brilliant Colors, and more.

Earl Thomas and the Blues Ambassadors Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Tobacco, Hood Internet, New Slave Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Tumbledown, Famous, Andrew Anderson, Jesse Morris and the Man Cougars Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

*Weedeater, Black Tusk, Gates of Slumber, Struck By Lightning Elbo Room. 9pm, $13.

Wizzard Sleeve, Andy Human, Steeples Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

"Jazz Mafia Presents Remix: Live" Coda. 10pm, $10.

Josh Jones Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

Marlina Teich Quintet Savanna Jazz. 8pm.

Najee Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $32.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Big Bad Wolf, Bell Tower Amnesia. 6pm, $5. Part of the Songbird Festival.

Debbie Friedman Congregation Emanu-El, 2 Lake, SF; (510) 451-8874. 8pm, $36.

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

Lagos Roots Connecticut Yankee, 100 Connecticut, SF; (415) 552-4440. 10pm, $10. With members of Fela Kuti, the Afrika 70, and more.

Ralph Towner with Paolo Fresu Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-50.

Whiskey Richards Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Y La Bamba, Sean Flinn and the Royal We Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Barracuda 111 Minna. 9pm, $5-10. Eclectic 80s music with Djs Damon, Phillie Ocean, and Javier, plus free 80s hair and make-up by professional stylists.

Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups with Kleptones, Adrian and Mysterious D, Dada, and more.

Flying Lotus, Kode 9 Mezzanine. 9pm, $16.50.

Go Bang! Deco SF, 510 Larkin, SF; (415) 346-2025. 9pm, $5. Dress up as your favorite superhero or villain and enjoy some disco beats with DJs Steve Fabus, Nicky B., Sergio and more.

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

OG Productions In the Darkroom, Club Six. 9pm, $5. With DJs Capp St. Girls, Evergreen Dub, Angel Island, and more spinning house.

Reggae Gold Club Six. 9pm, $15. With DJs Daddy Rolo, Polo Mo’qz, Tesfa, Serg, and Fuze spinning dancehall and reggae.

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

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

SUNDAY 28

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Caspian, Arms and Sleepers, Silian Rail Hotel Utah. 8:30pm, $8.

Paper Chase, Generalissimo, Kiss Kiss Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

*Bone Cootes, San Similar Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Titus Andronicus, Let’s Wrestle Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Washed Out, Small Black, Pictureplane, Young Prisms Knockout. 7pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cyril Guirand Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 441-4099. 6pm, free.

Hapa Yoshi’s San Francisco. 5 and 7pm, $5-30.

NY Hard Bop Trio Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

"Switchboard Music Festival 2010" Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.switchboardmusic.com. 2-10pm, $10-40. Genre-defying, eight-hour marathon concert.

Tord Gustavsen Quintet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-40.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bodice Rippers, Gilded Rooks Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Krishna Das, Deva Premal and Miten, Manose Warfield. 7:30pm, $40.

Modal Kombat Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Ol’ Cheeky Bastards, Howlin’ Houndog Plough and Stars. 4pm.

"Salsa Sundays" El Rio. 4pm, $5. With Andy y Callao.

"Te Gusto Musical" Coda. 8pm, $10. With John Calloway.

Ten Foot Tall and 80 Proof Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludachris, and guest Mexican Dubwiser.

45Club the Funky Side of Soul Knockout. 10pm, free. With Dx the Funky Gran Paw, Dirty Dishes, and English Steve.

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

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

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

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

Lowbrow Sunday Delirium. 1pm, free. DJ Roost Uno and guests spinning club hip hop, indie, and top 40s.

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

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

MONDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Agent Orange, Gutwrench, Fukm Kimo’s. 9pm, $10.

"Blue Bear School of Music Band Showcase" Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $12-20.

"Felonious Presents Live City Revue" Coda. 9pm, $7.

Greg Ginn and the Texas Corrugators, Guella, Barney Cauldron Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Nellie McKay, Howard Fishman Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Photo Atlas, Rouge, Rival Parties Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Red Light Mind Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 441-4099. 8pm, free.

Tempo No Tempo, World’s Greatest Ghosts Knockout. 9pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

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

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

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

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

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

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest Djs.

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

TUESDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Blue Bear School of Music Band Showcase" Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $12-20.

Michael Burks Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $20.

Congress with Valerie Troutt and Mic Blake Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

Art Elliot, Comeuppance El Rio. 8pm, free.

*Hank III and Assjack, Kyle Turley Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

Moonbell, Sea Bright, Heavy Hills Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Morning Benders, Miniature Tigers, Mumlers Independent. 8pm, $15.

Otep, Bury Your Dead, Through the Eyes of the Dead, Destrophy, Arise DNA Lounge. 7pm, $22.

Pierced Arrows, Lullaby Arkestra, Only Sons Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Story of the Year, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, After Midnight Project, Terrible Things Slim’s. 7:30pm, $17.

Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights Boom Boom Room. 9:45pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

AJ Roach, Evie Ladin, Sweetwater Revolver Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

Dawn Oberg Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 8pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. "Stump the Wizard" with DJs What’s His Fuck and the Wizard.

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

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

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

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

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

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