racism

Best of the Bay 2009: Local Heroes

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ANGELA CHAN

As staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, Angela Chan has been at the forefront of a yearlong effort to ensure that all undocumented juveniles have the right to due process in San Francisco.

That effort began last summer, shortly after Mayor Gavin Newsom, who had just decided to run for governor, announced that undocumented juveniles henceforth would be reported to federal authorities the minute they are booked on suspicion of having co

mmitted a felony — and before they can access an immigrant-rights lawyer.

These changes primarily affect Latino youth, but Chan, whose Cantonese-speaking parents ran a restaurant in Portland, Ore., sees the broader connections to other immigrant communities.

“I grew up in an immigrant community in a white working-class neighborhood,” Chan explained. “I saw the barriers — language, culture, racism, xenophobia — and I realized that there was not a lot of power and awareness. I learned to appreciate civil rights.”

As a teenager, Chan was determined to become an attorney. The temporary passage of California Prop. 187 — prohibiting undocumented immigrants from using social services, health care, and public education — intensified her determination. Chan graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, and has been able to focus on this particular juvenile justice battle thanks to a Soros Justice Fellowship and the ALC’s “innovative, fluid, creative, and client-centered vision.”

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“I’ve tried different ways of challenging inequality — direct confrontation, anger — but I’ve found the best way is through policy, and being very educated and strategic,” Chan said.

She said she’s hopeful that Sup. David Campos has the votes this summer to pass veto-proof amendments to the city’s undocumented-youth protection policy. As she put it: “People are starting to understand the difference between the juvenile and adult justice system and the issues around due process.” (Sarah Phelan)

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JULIAN DAVIS

Take a look at just a few of the things Julian Davis has done: He ran the 2008 public-power campaign. He’s on the board of San Francisco Tomorrow. He’s president of the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center. He’s a founder of the MoMagic Collaborative, which fights youth violence in the Western Addition. He’s on the board of the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation. He’s been appointed by the Board of Supervisors to serve on the Market-Octavia Citizens Advisory Committee. He’s a founder of the Osiris Coalition, which is working to ensure that public-housing tenants have the right to return to their homes after renovations. He’s hosted countless events for charities and political campaigns.

Then think about this: he’s only 30.

Davis grew up in Palo Alto, and moved to the corner of Haight and Fillmore after getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy from Brown University. Philosophers weren’t exactly in demand at the time, so he wound up “playing my guitar on the streets for burrito money” while starting a PhD program at Stanford.

He also saw three people shot to death on his corner. “And I realized,” he explained, “that the academic life wasn’t going to be for me.”

Davis started organizing against community violence, and, inspired by Matt Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign, ran for supervisor in 2004. That got him started in local politics. He’s headed to law school at Hastings this fall, and it’s a safe bet that he’ll be a leader in the progressive political community for years to come. (Tim Redmond)

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DAVID SCHOOLEY

“He’s a visionary. He’s very determined. He never gives up.”

That’s how Ken McIntire, executive director of San Bruno Mountain Watch, describes David Schooley, who founded the Mountain Watch nonprofit four decades ago.

“For many years, David led every Sierra Club hike, organized every restoration party, and even took the bus to community fairs up and down the Peninsula so he could set up a table and distribute fliers about San Bruno Mountain,” McIntire recalls.

Now snowy-haired and allegedly semiretired, Schooley, 65, remains as nimble as a goat when it comes to hiking across his beloved mountain, which rises and cuts across the Peninsula just south of San Francisco in San Mateo County — and whose ecosystem has been identified as one of 18 global biodiversity hotspots in need of protection

Schooley’s love for the mountain — which is covered with low-growing grasses, coastal sage, and scrub year-round and is dotted with wildflowers each spring — led him to found SBMW in 1969 and fight the expansion of the Guadalupe Valley Quarry and the growth of nearby Brisbane. Both were threatening to destroy the biggest urban open space in the United States and the habitat of rare butterflies, including the San Bruno elfin.

As Schooley explains, while the mountain is often hit with strong gusty winds and enveloped in thick fog, it is a great butterfly habitat and the last fragment of an entire ecosystem — the Franciscan region — the rest of which has been buried beneath San Francisco’s concrete footprints.

Two years ago, Schooley had the pleasure of once again finding the tiny raspberry-colored elfin caterpillars on some sedum (its host plant) on the north-facing upper benches of the quarry.

“It’s a miracle,” Schooley told me at the time, delighted by this living example of nature’s ability to overcome human-made damage on the mountain.

At the time, Schooley was hoping the state park system would annex the property where the elfins were found. That hasn’t happened yet. But as McIntire says of Schooley (who dreams of a wildlife corridor that runs from the bay to the ocean), “David is always pushing for more open space around the mountain, for more nature and less development, and trying to reach a bigger audience.” (Sarah Phelan)

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SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE

The San Francisco Mime Troupe is the conscience of the city, our proudest export, and — as it celebrates its 50th year — perhaps our most enduring sociopolitical institution. That’s a lot of kudos to heap on an artists’ collective, particularly one that delivers its theatrical social satire with such over-the-top comedy and music, but it isn’t a statement that we make lightly.

The SFMT embodies the very best San Francisco values — limitless creativity, a hunger for justice, courage under fire, an uncompromising commitment to creating a better world, and a progressive missionary zeal — and offers a powerful and entertaining reminder of those values every July 4, when it presents its new show in Dolores Park.

After it sings (and preaches) to the progressive choir of San Francisco, the troupe hits the road, visiting such less-than-enlightened outposts as the Central Valley and rural Northern California, delivering important messages to audiences that need to hear them most. “First of all, it’s humorous, so that breaks down a lot of barriers from the get-go,” SFMT general manager Jenee Gill tells us.

But even here in the early ’60s, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission tried to use obscenity laws to ban the SFMT from performing in public parks. The troupe successfully fought the commission in court, setting an important free speech precedent. Modern San Francisco has grown up with the SFMT showing us the way forward with its uniquely high-stepping, knee-slapping, consciousness-raising style, and we’re a better city for it. (Steven T. Jones)

All local heroes photos by Pat Mazzera

FAIR: The 2009 P.U.-Litzer Awards

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FAIR: The 2009 P.U.-Litzer Awards

FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.

The 2009 P.U.-Litzer Awards

For 17 years our colleagues Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have worked with FAIR to present the P.U.-Litzers, a year-end review of some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness.

Starting this year, FAIR has the somewhat dubious honor of reviewing the nominees and selecting the winners. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. So, without further ado, we present the 2009 P.U.-Litzers.

–The Remembering Reagan Award
WINNER: Joe Klein, Time

Time columnist Joe Klein (12/3/09), not altogether impressed by Obama’s announcement of a troop escalation in Afghanistan, wrote that a president “must lead the charge–passionately and, yes, with a touch of anger.”

He described the better way to do this:

Ronald Reagan would have done it differently. He would have told a story. It might not have been a true story, but it would have had resonance. He might have found, or created, a grieving spouse–a young investment banker whose wife had died in the World Trade Center–who enlisted immediately after the attacks…and then gave his life, heroically, defending a school for girls in Kandahar. Reagan would have inspired tears, outrage, passion, a rush to recruiting centers across the nation.

Ah, Reagan–now there was a president who could inspire people to fight and die based on lies.

–The Cheney 2012 Award
WINNER: Jon Meacham, Newsweek

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham declared (12/7/09) that Dick Cheney running for president in 2012 would be “good for the Republicans and good for the country.” He explained that “Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people…. A campaign would also give us an occasion that history denied us in 2008: an opportunity to adjudicate the George W. Bush years in a direct way.”

While the 2008 election might have seemed a sufficient judgment of the Bush years, it’s worth pointing out that at beginning of the year (1/19/09), Meacham was adamantly opposed to re-hashing Cheney’s record, calling it “the rough equivalent of pornography–briefly engaging, perhaps, but utterly predictable and finally repetitive.” The difference? That was in response to the idea that Cheney should be held accountable for lawbreaking. Apparently a few months later, the same record is grounds for a White House run.

–The Them Not Us Award
WINNER: Martin Fackler, New York Times

The New York Times (11/21/09) describes the severe problems with Japan’s elite media–a horror show where “reporters from major news media outlets are stationed inside government offices and enjoy close, constant access to officials. The system has long been criticized as antidemocratic by both foreign and Japanese analysts, who charge that it has produced a relatively spineless press that feels more accountable to its official sources than to the public. In their apparent reluctance to criticize the government, the critics say, the news media fail to serve as an effective check on authority.”

The mind reels.

–The Thin-Skinned Pundits Award
WINNER: Dana Milbank, Washington Post

Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Chris Cilizza got into trouble when, in an episode of their “Mouthpiece Theater” web video series, they suggested brands of beer that would be appropriate for various politicians. What would Hillary Clinton drink? Apparently something called “Mad Bitch.” The video, unsurprisingly, was roundly criticized, and was pulled from the Post site. So what lesson was learned? Milbank complained (8/6/09) that “it’s a brutal world out there in the blogosphere…. I’m often surprised by the ferocity out there, but I probably shouldn’t be.”

Yes, the problem with calling someone a “bitch” is the “ferocity” of your critics.

–The Sheer O’Reillyness Award
WINNER: Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Channel–TWICE!

1) Asked by a Canadian viewer, “Has anyone noticed that life expectancy in Canada under our health system is higher than the USA?,” Fox’s O’Reilly (7/27/09) responded: “Well, that’s to be expected, Peter, because we have 10 times as many people as you do. That translates to 10 times as many accidents, crimes, down the line.”

2) Drumming up fear of Democrats’ tax plans: “Nancy Pelosi and her far-left crew want to raise the top federal tax rate to 45 percent. That’s not capitalism. That’s Fidel Castro stuff, confiscating wages that people honestly earn.”

Perhaps Castro was president of the United States in 1982-86, when the top rate was 50 percent. Or maybe all of the 1970s, when it was 70 percent. Or from 1950-63, when it was 91 percent.

–The Less Talk, More Bombs Award
WINNER: David Broder, Washington Post

Post columnist Broder expressed the conventional wisdom on Barack Obama’s deliberations on the Afghanistan War, writing under the headline “Enough Afghan Debate” (11/15/09):

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision–whether or not it is right.

–The Racism Is Dead Award
WINNER: Richard Cohen, Washington Post

Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote (5/5/09): “The justification for affirmative action gets weaker and weaker. Maybe once it was possible to argue that some innocent people had to suffer in the name of progress, but a glance at the White House strongly suggests that things have changed. For most Americans, race has become supremely irrelevant. Everyone knows this. Every poll shows this.”

For the record, “every poll” does not actually show this; the vast majority of Americans continues to recognize that racism is still a problem. Cohen went on to write months later–still presumably living in his racism-free world–that he did not believe Iran’s claims about its nuclear program, because “these Persians lie like a rug.”

–The When in Doubt, Talk to the Boss Award
WINNER: Matt Lauer, NBC News

Today show host Lauer announced a special guest on April 15: “If you really want to know how the economy is affecting the average American, he’s the guy to talk to.” Who was Lauer talking about? Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke. The ensuing interview touched on the Employee Free Choice Act, which Lauer noted was supported by many unions but opposed by some large corporations–leading him to ask Duke, “What’s the truth?” Yes, look for “the truth” about a proposed pro-labor bill from the new CEO of an adamantly anti-labor corporation.

–The Socialist Menace Award
WINNER: Michael Freedman, Newsweek

Newsweek’s “We Are All Socialists Now” cover (2/16/09) certainly turned heads, but one of the stories inside explained in more detail the real threat. As senior editor Michael Freedman asked: “Have you noticed that Barack Obama sounds more like the president of France every day?”

The real problem, though, is what that’s going to do to us Americans, says Freedman: “If job numbers continue to look dismal, or get even worse, an ever-greater number of people will start looking to the government for support…. It’s very easy to imagine a chorus of former American individualists demanding cushy French-style pensions and free British-style healthcare if their private stock funds fail to recover and unemployment inches upward toward 10 percent and remains there.”

Pensions and healthcare for all–this is worse than we thought!

–The Iraq All Over Again Award
WINNER: Too Many to Name

After the invasion of Iraq, countless journalists who had treated allegations about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as facts were embarrassed when there were no such weapons to be found. So you’d think they’d be more careful about thinly sourced claims that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. But in 2009, many journalists are still willing to treat such allegations as facts.

-NBC’s Chris Matthews (10/4/09): “As if Afghanistan were not enough, now there’s Iran’s move to get nuclear weapons.”

-NBC’s David Gregory (10/4/09). “Iran–will talks push that country to give up its nuclear weapons program?”

-Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly (9/25/09): “All hell breaking loose as a new nuclear weapons facility is discovered in Iran, proving the mullahs have been lying for years…. Iran’s nuclear weapons program has now reached critical mass. And worldwide conflict is very possible. Friday, President Obama, British Prime Minister Brown and French President Sarkozy revealed a secret nuclear weapons facility located inside Iran.”

Some even went further, turning allegations of a nuclear weapons program into the discovery of actual nuclear weapons:

-ABC’s Good Morning America host Bill Weir (9/26/09): “President Obama and a united front of world leaders charge Iran with secretly building nuclear weapons.”

–The Talking Like a Terrorist Award
WINNER: Thomas Friedman, New York Times

In a January 14 column, New York Times superstar pundit Tom Friedman explained Israel’s war on Lebanon as an attempt to “educate” the enemy by killing civilians: The Israeli strategy was to “inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical.” Friedman added, “The only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians–the families and employers of the militants–to restrain Hezbollah in the future.” That strategy of targeting civilians to advance a political agenda is usually known as terrorism; Osama bin Laden couldn’t have explained it much better.

–The It Only Bothers Us Now Award
WINNER: Wall Street Journal editorial page

When Barack Obama only called on journalists from a list during a press conference, the Wall Street Journal did not like the new protocol (2/12/09):”We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors.”

Actually, Bush was famous for calling only on reporters on an approved list; as he joked at a press conference on the eve of the Iraq War (3/6/03), “This is scripted.”

–The No Comment Award
WINNERS: MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Rush Limbaugh

When asked by Politico (10/16/09) to name her favorite guest, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski named arch-conservative Pat Buchanan “because he says what we are all thinking.”

Rush Limbaugh on Obama (Fox News Channel, 1/21/09): “We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles…because his father was black.”

8, 9 … 2010

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8, 9 … 2010

1. SF garage rock goes pop This year saw Bay Area garage rock go pop in style and impact without losing its soul. I’m thinking of the Fresh and Onlys, and of Ty Segall’s second solo effort Lemons (Goner), a lovely one. I’m thinking of Girls’ Album (True Panther/Matador), which threw down the crossover-move gauntlet with no shame in its game: Christopher Owens’ interviews were as entertaining as his music and brasher — his real talk about sex and drugs made good headline fodder for the excitable British press, but contained the kind of truth that honors life over rules or boring definitions. The secret keeper, though, was the Mantles’ self-titled debut on Siltbreeze. Drew Cramer’s lead guitar and Michael Oliveras’ vocals were even better live, the mark of a band in bloom.

2. The AfroSurreal In May, D. Scot Miller helped put together a special AfroSurreal issue of the Guardian, a collection of words and visions journeying beyond the potential of Barack Obama’s presidency. The Kehinde Wiley piece on the cover wasn’t the only AfroSurreal image on this paper’s front pages — just last week, Conrad Ruiz’s Godzilla-size Yes We Can stomped around the city. Musically, AfroSurrealism manifested in the mind- and mirror-bending quality Dam-Funk’s Toeachizown (Stones Throw) and the rehab hallucinations and Dante-like funeral marches of Chelonis R. Jones’s Chatterton (Systematic). It floated in through cracks in the time warp as well: the ghetto opera of 24 Carat Black’s Gone: The Promises of Yesterday (Numero Group); the proto-punk of Death’s For the World to See (Drag City), especially “Politicians in My Eyes”; and weirdest of all, the gothic funk and skronk of Wicked Witch’s Chaos: 1978-1986 (E.M.).

3. 21st century goth From blackness to deathly whiteface — something gothic this way came in 2009, thanks to Cold Cave’s Cremations (Hospital Productions) and Love Comes Close (Matador). Both staked a claim that the genre is as applicable as death metal to a post-Bush presidency globe. But while those albums notched acclaim and attention, the similar yet more audacious Cure and Cabaret Volatire moves of Jones’ months-earlier Chatterton went ignored and unappreciated. Evidence of racism, proof that German techno only gets appreciated years after the fact, or both?

4. Hauntological mutations In 2009’s sonic mansion, ghosts haunted the hallways leading to and from the gothic banquet hall, and hauntology — a Derrida term applied to music by the critic Simon Reynolds — continued to morph, just as any self-respecting specter should, well beyond dubstep. The maze-like passages of Rooj’s The Transactional Dharma of Rooj (Ghost Box) and Broadcast and the Focus Group’s Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age (Warp) both suggested that spirits have short attention spans, while Demdike Stare’s Symbiosis (Modern Love) traded seances on wet afternoons for retro-futurist meetings with medieval wicked witches.

5. Library music For evidence that the past resides in and fuels the present, go to the library. Specifically, to the abundant compilations and Web sites dedicated to library music — the scores of incidental music produced and recorded for soundtrack use on film, television, and radio. In the wake of his gorgeous book The Music Library (Fuel Publishing), Jonny Trunk released more albums devoted to library labels. The Parisian DJs Alexis Le-Tan and Jess put out a pair of Space Oddities library collections — one electronic, one psychedelic — on Permanent Vacation. Wax Poetics published a lengthy piece to the subject. In an interview, Trunk noted that his Scrapbook (Trunk) shares the same fast-change aesthetics of Broadcast and the Focus Group’s hauntological recordings, just one example of how library music of the past forms the music of now.

6. The new ambient The new ambient is not afraid of extreme melancholy, or long compositions — no longer only Kompact, it can be epic. One of the form’s peak representatives is San Francisco’s Brock Van Wey, whose White Clouds Drift On and On (Echospace) bravely strived for, and sometimes reached, sublime solitude. Another was Klimek, whose Movies is Magic (Anticipate), on which a track such as “pathetic and dangerous” lives up to its death-knell title. The last was Leyland Kirby. His three-CD contribution sums up the current moment in both its title and the name of its label: Sadly, the Future is No Longer What it Was (History Always Favours the Winners).

7. 2009=1989, synthpop and shoegaze I explored this theme in last week’s Decade in Music issue. See: Atlas Siund (in particular “Shelia,”), Crocodiles, Fuck Buttons, Loop, Night Control, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Washed Out (responsible for two of this year’s most gorgeous tracks, “Belong” and “Hold Out”), Wavves, and the xx.

8. How old is now? As the music industry continues to fracture, reissues or uncovered old sounds were as vital and revelatory as new releases. In San Francisco, this meant new rereleases by San Francisco Express, the Units, and most excitingly, Honey Soundsystem’s work on behalf of Patrick Cowley and Jorge Socarras’ Catholic project. Beyond SF, it meant a one-of-a-kind treasure like Connie Converse’s How Sad, How Lovely (Lau derette): one woman, one guitar, one tape recorder, and perhaps the best music of this sad, lovely year.

Dick Meister: Too damn old!

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The right to protection from age discrimination will remain a second class civil right

(Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)

Racism and sexism we know plenty about. But what of ageism?

Ageism can strike anyone once they reach a certain age – sometimes as early as 40 – and it can make the victim feel unwanted, unneeded and oppressed by all in this work and youth oriented society.

It doesn’t matter if you’re white or black, brown or Asian, man or woman. What matters is your age.

Federal law and several state laws say employers cannot consider your age in deciding if you should be hired, fired, retired, promoted, laid off or whatever. But the laws are widely violated, and sometimes invalidated by courts.

Some of the court decisions have been downright bizarre. One recent ruling, for example, found that an employer who told a worker he was being fired because “you’re too damn old for this kind of work” was not violating the law. Another court said a boss who told a worker he had to make way for younger workers was simply stating “a fact of life.”

The Supreme Court recently made a key ruling that workers who are fired because of their age will have to prove that their age was the decisive factor in the firing, not just a contributing factor. A bill currently in Congress would invalidate that ruling.

The number of workers filing legal complaints of age discrimination has been growing steadily. Between 2007 and 2008, the number grew by 30 percent to nearly 25,000 cases. The actual number of older workers discriminated against is undoubtedly even higher, if only because many victims can’t afford the court proceedings that often follow the filing of complaints.

Age discrimination is expected to become an even greater problem as the number of older workers continues to grow steadily and because of current economic conditions that are forcing more and more older workers of retirement age to seek jobs.

The drying up of pension funds and the increase in the Social Security retirement age has also led more older people to seek jobs – jobs that are hard enough for anyone to find, but particularly hard for many older workers. Their unemployment figures have been consistently higher than those of most other groups.

Not all the unemployed older workers want or need jobs. But most do, as has been shown repeatedly in studies by private and public agencies. Many badly need the income. Most also seek jobs as the way to gain self-esteem and an active, meaningful existence.

But younger workers, of course, can be paid less than older workers with seniority and usually are less demanding and more easily directed because of their inexperience and eagerness to secure a foothold.

Employers also are greatly influenced by the myths about older workers that many people still accept as fact.

The widely-held assumption that as workers age their productivity declines, for instance, is simply not true on a general basis, As a matter of fact, the studies show that among white-collar workers, those 45 or older produce more than their younger counterparts, thanks to their greater knowledge and experience. Among blue-collar workers, there is no substantial difference in output.

Older workers also have lower rather than higher rates of absenteeism than younger workers, fewer on-the-job accidents and at least as great a capacity to learn new skills required by new technology.

Generally, older workers also are more stable and dependable. They show more satisfaction with their jobs and hold them much longer.

Those facts alone should be enough to cause employers to mend their prejudicial ways. But they haven’t been, and aren’t likely to be in the future. The right to protection from age discrimination, the right to protection from ageism sadly will remain what one writer calls a second-class civil right.

Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century. You can contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

Our weekly picks

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Our weekly picks

WEDNESDAY 9th

DANCE/PERFORMANCE

Keith Hennessy: Saliva: The Making of and Saliva


Saliva is probably Keith Hennessy’s best known and least seen work of the last 20 years. When it premiered on a cold December night in 1988 under a San Francisco freeway overpass — and when it was performed again in March 1989 — it had not been advertised, word got around in the underground arts community. Saliva was a ritualistic solo in which Hennessy forcefully, poetically, and hopefully spoke for his own manhood and for a community caught in the anguish of AIDS. To use spit — an "uncouth" bodily fluid — as healing balm was a revolutionary act in both humanistic and theatrical terms. It may be difficult in 2009 to recreate the sense of pain, helplessness, and fury that generated the work. But isn’t that what memorials are for? Lest we forget, these events are the opening act of a celebration of Hennessy’s work and contribution to the Bay Area that continues in January. (Rita Felciano)

Saliva: The Making of discussion and screening: 7:30 p.m., free

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

Saliva performance: Sun/13, 8 p.m.; $15–$25 (no one turned away)

check www.circozero.org for location, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com

THURSDAY 10th

MUSIC

Espers


Don’t expect fairy folk and mythical critters to prance through the new Espers album, III (Drag City) — regardless of song titles like "Trollslända." That’s Swedish for dragonfly, band member Meg Baird assures me. Despite appearances and a name that evokes paranormal-minded cultists, it’s clear the group of mostly Philadelphians is more earthy and no-nonsense, as Baird reels off the various scratch song names and ideas Espers toyed with as they were making III — a witchy, intoxicating blend of psychedelia, prog, and English folk revival. For Baird’s interview, see this week’s Noise blog. (Kimberly Chun)

With Wooden Shjips and Colossal Yes

8 p.m., $13–$15

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.independentsf.com

EVENT

Historic Libations


San Franciscans have long enjoyed a romance with alcohol — from the debauchery of the Barbary Coast era to the modern renaissance of the artisan cocktail, the City by the Bay knows how to knock ’em back. You can celebrate this high-proof history at Historic Libations, a party inspired by Cocktail Boothby‘s American Bartender (Anchor Distilling, 152 pages, $14.95), an expanded reprint of a classic 1891 book by one of the city’s earliest and most influential mixologists. Revelers can sample a variety of uniquely San Francisco cocktails, including the pisco sour and the Martinez. At the end of the festivities, they’ll be given their own copy of the book to take home and consult to perfect historic and potent concoctions. (Sean McCourt)

6 p.m., $40–$50

California Historical Society

678 Mission, SF.

(415) 357-1848, ext. 229

www.californiahistoricalsociety.org.

THEATER

SF Mime Troupe 50th Anniversary Exhibition Birthday Bash


Even if 50 is the new 40, it’s rare for many 50-year-olds to be as robust as the SF Mime Troupe. Challenging entrenched racism, endemic poverty, and politics-as-usual regionally and nationally since 1959, the Mime Troupe has earned theatre’s greatest awards — three Obies, a Tony, and an obscenity trial. Celebrate a half-century of provocative street performance — and toast the next 50 with one of San Francisco’s most venerable, anti-institutional institutions— at this birthday party, which includes a special staging of its 1981 Christmas Carol remix Ghosts, an ode to those displaced by the building of the nearby Moscone Center. Stop back on Saturday for a four-hour interactive workshop with Mime Troupe collective members Ed Holmes and Keiko Shimosanto in which participants will be called upon to create their own "anticonsumption" pageant and parade it through downtown SF. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Performance: 7:30 p.m., free

Workshop: Sat/12, 12:30 p.m., $15

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

www.sfmt.org

FRIDAY 11th

FILM/MUSIC

Artists’ Television Access 25th Anniversary


The year 1984 contained delights and horrors, some more Orwellian than others: Ronald Reagan, Apple computers, Cabbage Patch Kids, Mary Lou Retton, Gremlins, Dynasty, New York’s "subway vigilante," American punk rock, etc. Amid that churning, neon-wearing, Cold War-tensed milieu, Artists’ Television Access was formed, and the activism-through-art hub has been keeping tabs on news and culture ever since. Toast 25 years of independent, radical, community-oriented programming at ATA’s Valencia Street gallery, the site of both a decades-spanning screening of works by staff and associates (Lise Swenson, Craig Baldwin, Rigo 23, Konrad Steiner) and a day-long musical get-down (with Ash Reiter, Eats Tapes, a raffle, and much more). (Cheryl Eddy)

"ATA 25: Quarter Century of Alternative Work": 7:30 p.m., free

"Underground — Experimental — Unstoppable": Sun/13, 11 a.m.–10 p.m., $10

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.atasite.org

MUSIC

Eyehategod


Hell yeah, y’all: New Orleans’ legendary Eyehategod is coming to town, seeping into your eardrums on a slow-moving sludge tide of doom, noise, reefer smoke, and fuck-the-system politics. Singer Mike Williams famously overcame his heroin addiction during a post-Katrina jail stint, and the band — semi-dispersed since the early aughts, with most members engaged in other projects (Down, Mystick Krewe of Clearlight, Soilent Green, etc.) — is at last back on the road. Everyone who’s been fiending since 1993’s Take as Needed for Pain (Century Media) can finally feast on what Decibel magazine called "a series of buzzing, lurching dirges steeped in feedback and contempt." (Eddy)

With Stormcrow, Brainoil, Acephalix

8 p.m., $20

DNA Lounge

375 11th St, SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

DANCE

Mark Morris Dance Company: The Hard Nut


If you have never seen The Hard Nut, Mark Morris’ extraordinarily musical and equally touching and hilarious version of the holiday classic, go now. The times are a-changing in Berkeley as well, and it may be quite some time until this glittering jewel comes back. The company is not scheduled to perform it here again in the near future. Morris set the piece in a cartoon version of the ’60s, removed some of the sugar but not much of the sweetness, kept the family spirit (though somewhat reinterpreted) alive, and heard things in the music as only he can. You will never see a dance of the Snowflakes — brilliant — like that and the grand pas de deux becomes a glorious grand pas de tutti. The score — Morris used every single note — will be performed live by the Berkeley Symphony conducted by Robert Cole. (Rita Felciano)

7 p.m., (through Dec. 20), $36–$62

Zellerbach Hall

UC Berkeley Campus, Berk.

(510) 642-9988

www.calperfs.berkeley.edu

SATURDAY 12th

EVENT

Tetris Tournament


Hey Tetris Master, here’s your chance to finally go out on Saturday night, do something semi-social at an art gallery, and win a prize — all while playing your favorite game of Tuck-Every-Tile-Rack-In-Snugly. But don’t get carried away: although you’ll have a chance to impress everyone with your phenomenal organizational skills, you won’t be taking anyone home. One other thing: you’re not going to have those cute little Tetris ditties to keep you in rhythm. Instead, there will be live bands (Microfiche, White Cloud, and Middle D). They might remind of those well-worn synth loops, but they’re more dynamic, more human. This is the night you’ve been waiting for; don’t let that sheep baaaaaah. (Spencer Young)

8 p.m., $5–$15 (free with membership)

The Lab

2948 16th St., SF

(415) 864 8855

www.thelab.org

FILM

San Francisco Silent Film Festival Winter Event


Perfectly timed as an antidote for all the year-end noise at first-run theaters, the SF Silent Film Festival Winter Event dips into cinema history, unspooling films made long before Peter Jackson got his mitts on CG technology or Guy Ritchie decided Sherlock Holmes should learn kung fu. The four selections include a 1927 Thailand-shot adventure from the future minds behind the original King Kong (1933), Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness; a U.S. premiere (90 years after the fact!) in Abel Gance’s 1919 World War I epic J’accuse; the Tod Browning-Lon Chaney collabo West of Zanzibar (1928); and a pair for Buster Keaton fans: the 1921 short The Goat, and delightful 1924 featurette Sherlock Jr. (Eddy)

11:30 a.m., $14–$17 per film (all-day pass, $52)

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

1 (800) 838-3006

www.silentfilm.org

EVENT

Bazaar Bizarre


Handmade letterpress stationery, Scottish shortbread, dolls dressed up in home-knitted pinafores, wind chimes made from rusted dining utensils — love those old fairs and festivals. This local incarnation of the nationwide Bazaar Bizarre includes a one-woman metal studio, ceramic wares, boutique cupcakes, children’s clothes, hand-bound books, silk-screened apparel — and birds as finger jewelry. There will also be music by Slide and Spin Studios, crafty workshops, and giveaways. Get ready to overdose on cuteness and creativity. (Jana Hsu)

Noon–-6 p.m. (also Sun/13, noon–6 p.m.), $2 (children free)

San Francisco County Fair Building

Golden Gate Park

Ninth Ave and Lincoln, SF

(415) 831-5500

www.bazaarbizarre.org

SUNDAY 13th

MUSIC

Jenny Scheinman


As any music aficionado knows, describing an act that avoids prescribed categories can result in verbal apoplexy of a most unfortunate kind. How then to best convey the many talents of one Humboldt County-born Jenny Scheinman, whose collaborative projects and studio sessions have ranged over the years from avant-garde jazz to moody blues, and whose formidably-wielded violin is the perfect foil for her straight-shooting, honky-tonk-inflected voice? From John Zorn’s Tzadik label to Lucinda Williams’ recording sessions, Sheinman’s been making a widening splash since leaving the Bay Area in 1999. Skillfully combining a wiser-than-her-years strain of down-home melancholia with sturdy yet evocative multilayered orchestral composition, her appeal lies not in a narrowness of focus, but an expansive, expressive musical palette. She’s showcasing her range in three separate sets — an instrumental duet with pianist Myra Melford, a vocal set with guitarist Robby Giersoe, and a final act with singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn. (Nicole Gluckstern)

8 p.m., $18.50–$19.50

Freight and Salvage

2020 Addison, Berkeley

(510) 644-2020

www.freightandsalvage.org

www.jennyscheinman.com

TUESDAY 15th

MUSIC

Kid Cudi


More Urban Outfitters than the rooftops of Brooklyn, Kid Cudi has successfully capitalized off of Kanye West’s hipster niche. For the MTV crowd in search of someone less embarrassing than West, Kid Cudi is their go-to neon hoodie. He makes intergalactic pop-hop mixed with lazy lyrics like "The lonely stoner needs to free his mind at night" and "I’ve got some issues that nobody can see<0x2009>/And all of these emotions are pouring out of me." A poet he ain’t. It’s more spectacle than speculation. The songs "Heart of Lion" and "Up Up & Away" are infectious with youthful ambition, and we’re reminded this is a kid from Cleveland who now wears his Air Yeezys on the streets of Brooklyn. Is this the future of hip-hop? I don’t know. I just came here to get high and dance in my skinny jeans. (Lorian Long)

8 p.m., $29.75–$33.00

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

415-673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

State of the art displacement

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State of the art displacement

OPINION What does the loss of 11 residences and a few jobs matter if it means a state-of-the-art hospital will be built?

That’s the question Examiner columnist Ken Garcia asked Oct. 20. The line cut like sharp knives into my eyes and heart as I read about Sutter Health/California Pacific Medical Center’s proposal to put a billion-dollar hospital subsequently displacing elder and disabled tenants and low-income workers at Geary and Van Ness streets, on the edge of one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Francisco.

As I read and reread the hypothetical question, I knew it could only have been written by someone who hadn’t witnessed countless low-income elders die or become seriously ill after they were evicted or displaced or hundreds of poor migrant workers and their families struggle and go hungry because they couldn’t find a steady job with a living wage.

How do you quantify the importance of even one decent job for a poor person struggling to survive? Or one business owned by a small business owner who treats his or her employees with respect and love? Or the loss of one long-term residence of a disabled and elder tenant?

How do you rationalize the pain of relocation and job eradication in lieu of the building of a huge structure supposedly there to “heal people?”

And then there is the question of the building of a “state of the art” hospital – read: rich people’s hospital – in a community where the majority of people are poor. And the issue of how the corporation funding the building made another, perhaps more devastating, decision to leach resources and support from St. Luke’s, a truly community-based hospital.

“I won’t be able to sit in Mama Dee’s chair anymore.” My six-year-old son looked down as he spoke. We were sitting in the Van Ness Bakery & Cafe at the corner of Van Ness and Geary, one of the many small businesses facing displacement.

When my son and I heard about the pending proposal to demolish and build, not only did we know that the spirit of my Mama Dee, cofounder of POOR Magazine who passed on her spirit journey in March 2006, was very angry with the demolition of her favorite spot. But more important, as someone who struggled with poverty, racism, and gentrification her entire life, I knew my mama was also mad, as I was, at the lie of California Pacific Medical Center, for proposing to build a hospital that isn’t really needed, in a community it isn’t really geared toward, and in the process dismantling the jobs, homes, and livelihoods of tenants, poor workers, and small business owners.

“This is a bad economy, and I really have no other job options. I don’t know what we workers will do” said Ruthie Seng and Oy, two of the workers at the family-owned and humanely-operated Van Ness Bakery.

As we consider granting the plans for this $1.7 billion dollar hospital proposal, perhaps we should reassess what hospitals are there to do and whom, they are doing it for.

Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia is a poverty scholar and daughter of Dee, coeditor of POOR Magazine and the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America.

Film Listings

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Film Listings

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, Matt Sussman, and Laura Swanbeck. The film intern is Fernando F. Croce. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide at www.sfbg.com. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

OPENING

Armored Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, and Jean Reno star in this action flick about a group of armored-truck workers who plot to steal $42 million. (1:28) Shattuck.
Brothers One’s a decorated Marine (Tobey Maguire) and one’s a fuckup (Jake Gyllenhaal) in this remake of a 2004 Danish film. (1:50) Embarcadero, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.
*Collapse Michael Ruppert is a onetime LAPD narcotics detective and Republican whose radicalization started with the discovery (and exposure) of CIA drug trafficking operations in the late 70s. More recently he’s been known as an author agitator focusing on political cover-ups of many types, his ideas getting him branded as a factually unreliable conspiracy theorist by some (including some left voices like Norman Solomon) and a prophet by others (particularly himself). This documentary by Chris Smith (American Movie) gives him 82 minutes to weave together various concepts — about peak oil, bailouts, the stock market, archaic governmental systems, the end of local food-production sustainability, et al. — toward a frightening vision of near-future apocalypse. It’s “the greatest preventable holocaust in the history of planet Earth, our own suicide,” as tapped-out resources and fragile national infrastructures trigger a collapse in global industrialized civilization. This will force “the greatest age in human evolution that’s ever taken place,” necessitating entirely new (or perhaps very old, pre-industrial) community models for our species’ survival. Ruppert is passionate, earnest and rather brilliant. He also comes off at times as sad, angry, and eccentric, bridling whenever Smith raises questions about his methodologies. Essentially a lecture with some clever illustrative materials inserted (notably vintage educational cartoons), Collapse is, as alarmist screeds go, pretty dang alarming. It’s certainly food for thought, and would make a great viewing addendum to concurrent post-apocalyptic fiction The Road. (1:22) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet Famed documentarian Frederick Wiseman turns his camera on the storied ballet company. (2:38) Elmwood, Smith Rafael.
The End of Poverty? Martin Sheen narrates this doc about the root causes of poverty. (1:46) Four Star.
Everybody’s Fine Robert De Niro works somewhere between serious De Niro and funny De Niro in this portrait of a family in muffled crisis, a remake of the 1991 Italian film Stanno Tutti Bene. The American version tracks the comings and goings of Frank (De Niro), a recently widowed retiree who fills his solitary hours working in the garden and talking to strangers about his children, who’ve flung themselves across the country in pursuit of various dreams and now send home overpolished reports of their achievements. Disappointed by his offspring’s collective failure to show up for a family get-together, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey to connect with each in turn. Writer-director Kirk Jones (1998’s Waking Ned Devine) effectively underscores Frank’s loneliness with shots of him steering his cart through empty grocery stores, interacting only with the occasional stock clerk, and De Niro projects a sense of drifting disconnection with poignant restraint. But Jones also litters the film with a string of uninspired, autopilot comic moments, and manifold shots of telephone wires as Frank’s children (Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore, and Sam Rockwell) whisper across the miles behind their father’s back — his former vocation, manufacturing the telephone wires’ plastic coating, funded his kids’ more-ambitious aims — feel like glancing blows to the head. A vaguely miraculous third-act exposition of everything they’ve been withholding to protect both him and themselves is handled with equal subtlety and the help of gratingly precocious child actors. (1:35) Presidio. (Rapoport)
*Everything Strange and New See “Triumph of the Underdog.” (1:24) Roxie.
Serious Moonlight From a screenplay by the late actor, writer, and director Adrienne Shelly, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines constructs a few scenes from a marriage in various kinds of jeopardy. The caddish-seeming Ian (Timothy Hutton) is on the verge of leaving his powerhouse-lawyer wife of 13 years, Louise (Meg Ryan), for a considerably younger and somewhat dimmer woman (Kristen Bell) when Louise throws a wrench in his plans with the help of a well-aimed flower pot and a roll of duct tape (are there any household problems this miracle material can’t solve?) What follows, with the unpredictable assistance of a gardener (Justin Long) who wanders onto the scene, is a sort of marathon couple’s-counseling session under duress that largely takes place within the confines of their bathroom — a roomy space, but rather smaller than your average therapist’s office. It’s not always easy to be in such close quarters with the pair as they rehash their relationship — a lot of decibels bounce off the walls as Ian yells and Louise endeavors to force him to recall, and feel, what he once felt. And while the circumstances, and the camera, give Ryan and Hutton the opportunity to leisurely express their characters’ conversational and interrelational habits, the larger issues are too much to work through all at once. The faint overlying tone of darker comedy and a scattering of physical gags restrain us from much emotional involvement, the backstory of the marriage gets pieced together in large, unlikely sections, and the film feels like an exercise or a sketch, rather than a deeply considered undertaking. (1:35) Opera Plaza. (Rapoport)
Transylmania Holy Vlad, another vampire movie? At least this one’s a spoof. (1:32).
Up in the Air After all the soldiers’ stories and the cannibalism canards of late, Up in the Air’s focus on a corporate ax-man — an everyday everyman sniper in full-throttle downsizing mode — is more than timely; it’s downright eerie. But George Clooney does his best to inject likeable, if not quite soulful, humanity into Ryan Bingham, an all-pro mileage collector who prides himself in laying off employees en masse with as few tears, tantrums, and murder-suicide rages as possible. This terminator’s smooth ride from airport terminal to terminal is interrupted not only by a possible soul mate, fellow smoothie and corporate traveler Alex (Vera Farmiga), but a young tech-savvy upstart, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), who threatens to take the process to new reductionist lows (layoff via Web cam) and downsize Ryan along the way. With Up in the Air, director Jason Reitman, who oversaw Thank You for Smoking (2005) as well as Juno (2007), is threatening to become the bard of office parks, Casual Fridays, khaki-clad happy hours, and fly-over zones. But Up in the Air is no Death of a Salesman, and despite some memorable moments that capture the pain of downsizing and the flatness of real life, instances of snappily screwball dialogue, and some more than solid performances by all (and in particular, Kendrick), he never manages to quite sell us on the existence of Ryan’s soul. (1:49) (Chun)

ONGOING

Art and Copy (1:30) Roxie.
*Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2:01) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki.
The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article “The Ballad of Big Mike” — which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game —nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher — a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a Sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) Cerrito, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Daniel Alvarez)
*Capitalism: A Love Story (2:07) Red Vic, Roxie.
Christmas with Walt Disney (:59) Walt Disney Family Museum.
Coco Before Chanel (1:50) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.
Defamation (1:33) Roxie.
Disney’s A Christmas Carol (1:36) 1000 Van Ness.
*An Education (1:35) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont.
*Fantastic Mr. Fox A lot of people have been busting filmmaker Wes Anderson’s proverbial chops lately, lambasting him for recent cinematic self-indulgences hewing dangerously close to self-parody (and in the case of 2007’s Darjeeling Limited, I’m one of them). Maybe he’s been listening. Either way, his new animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, should keep the naysayer wolves at bay for a while — it’s nothing short of a rollicking, deadpan-hilarious case study in artistic renewal. A kind of man-imal inversion of Anderson’s other heist movie, his debut feature Bottle Rocket(1996), his latest revels in ramshackle spontaneity and childlike charm without sacrificing his adult preoccupations. Based on Roald Dahl’s beloved 1970 book, Mr. Foxcaptures the essence of the source material but is still full of Anderson trademarks: meticulously staged mise en scène, bisected dollhouse-like sets, eccentric dysfunctional families coming to grips with their talent and success (or lack thereof).(1:27) Elmwood, Empire, Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Devereaux)
*Good Hair (1:35) Opera Plaza.
The Maid (1:35) Clay, Shattuck.
The Men Who Stare at Goats (1:28) 1000 Van Ness, Roxie, Shattuck.
*The Messenger (1:45) Albany, Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael.
*Michael Jackson’s This Is It (1:52) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.
New York, I Love You (1:43) Lumiere.
Ninja Assassin (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.
Old Dogs (1:28) Elmwood, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness.
Pirate Radio (2:00) Elmwood, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki.
Planet 51 (1:31) Oaks, 1000 Van Ness.
*Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire (1:49) SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.
Red Cliff (2:28) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.
The Road (1:53) Embarcadero, California, Piedmont.
*A Serious Man (1:45) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont.
2012 (2:40) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2:10) Cerrito, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.
(Untitled) (1:30) Bridge, Shattuck.
*William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (1:30) Shattuck.

REP PICKS

The Cardinal In 1963 Otto Preminger was an old-guard titan of prestige Hollywood projects as yet unaware he’d just passed his peak. That this three-hour epic of priestly life got six Oscar nominations –- winning none, including what was only Preminger’s second go at Best Director –- testifies more to its scale and expense than to any great enthusiasm from press or public. Soon the famously tyrannical director would be considered by many a dinosaur in need of extinction so that new, less lumbering species could invigorate the medium. He did go away, too, or at least became irrelevant, via a painful late-career stretch of movies. Still, as a next-to-last effort (preceding 1965 John Wayne war spectacular In Harm’s Way) from his “superproduction” period, the seldom-revived Cardinal is not without interest. Based on a 1950 novel by Henry Morton Robinson, it charts the steady rise of idealistic but occasionally self-doubting Boston priest Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon). Taking him from humble beginnings to Vatican insiderdom, the episodic narrative features Carol Lynley as a sister who becomes (for forbidden love of a Jew) a fallen woman; John Huston, Burgess Meredith, Raf Vallone, and Josef Meinrad as mentoring fellow men of the cloth; Ossie Davis as a black Georgia priest whose agitation against racism attracts KKK violence; and Romy Schneider as the Viennese girl who nearly lures Stephen from his vocation, then encounters him years later as a married woman threatened by the Gestapo. There’s also a completely unnecessary musical sequence with “Bobby (Morse) and His Adora-Belles,” a Passion of the Christ-like whipping scene, and other sporadic incongruities. For the most part, however, The Cardinal is all too steady of pulse, its 175 minutes consistently interesting yet without cumulative power. That’s long been blamed on Tryon, a tall, handsome, placid actor who fails to communicate a difficult role’s inner turmoil. But it’s also the producer-director’s fault. He hews to the cinematic era’s disinterest in real period atmosphere, renders gritty episodes corny, and demonstrates no stage-management flair for big setpieces like a late Nazi riot. Nonetheless, the film’s seriousness about church politics –- especially conflicting personal ethics and institutional necessity –- remains potent. This Film on Film Foundation screening features a very rare surviving 35mm widescreen Technicolor print, and is shown as a sidebar to but not an official part of the PFA’s current Preminger retrospective. (2:55) Pacific Film Archive. (Harvey)

*“Four by Hungarian Master Miklós Janksó” See “They Were Expendable.”

Son of the source

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Son of the source

California my way: Pacifica in all her roaring glory; "Bluebird"; Gene Clark suffering for his art at the Troubadour; Arthur Lee perched atop Laurel Canyon as dark magus of the Sunset Strip; "Free Huey!"; George Hunter and the Charlatans giving birth to the ’60s in Frisco and Virginia City; redbones holding it down at Alcatraz; Barry White’s boudoir epics vs. War’s low rider country-funk; r.i.p. Nudie Cohn; surf-and-skate as spiritual practice and Third World coalition builder at street level; "We’ll Get By"; Mary Ellen Pleasants; Sly Stone’s pop hoodoo; "¡Viva Cesar Chavez!"; the Watts Towers as organic temple and pan-African signifier; Iron Eyes Cody; the impenetrable alien secrets of Joshua Tree; Citizen Kane; Country Joe McDonald in a helmet ripping "Section 43" at Monterey; Jack London’s and Charles Manson’s erudite racism; rebellions yielding the "black Woodstock," Wattstax; Skid Row tacos; alas, poor Ishi; is Mount Shasta really an Atlantean portal?; "Snakes on Everything"; RTX; a great big wave looming to wash away Neil Young and his spindly wood home from Topanga Canyon; Chet Helms, my hero; really tall red trees — and the glossy harmonies of the Mamas & the Papas, much beloved favorites of my mother before she left upon her starship. Their masterpiece "California Dreamin’" was on my mind as Indian summer gave way to autumn and the 40th anniversaries of polarized cosmic events such as the man on the moon, Woodstock, the Manson murders, the late Michael Jackson’s pop debut unfolded apace.

Harvey Kubernik, a keenly clued-in and cosmically sensitive Pisces born in Hollywood, just dropped this season’s key entry chronicling that era and its ever-lingering aftereffects: the fine Laurel Canyon study Canyon of Dreams (Sterling, 384 pages, $29.95). Much of what made California north and south such a prime destination to escape the limits and cruel lacunae of Manifest Destiny in the 1960s went down in the postwar boomtowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles and their ex-urban satellites. Kubernik focuses on the tall tales of L.A . He reveals how the creativity, social experimentation, and mystery yearning of the denizens of canyons on L.A.’s west side changed America as it was teleported on the airwaves and on the backs of freaky-deak human hosts. The elite and cult acts that largely power Kubernik’s fables — Gene Clark; Arthurly; Gram Parsons; Lowell George; John and Michelle Phillips; the magicians of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young — have left towering sonic, sartorial, and spiritual legacies. Yet Kubernik is not mired in the misty mountain-hopping of yesteryear — he’s keen enough to close Canyon of Dreams with a portrait of one of that halcyon era’s most important heirs: Jonathan Wilson.

Y’all can ken whether Wilson deserves to be the coda of Kubernik’s book when his Emerald Triangle Tour featuring Jonathan Rice, Farmer Dave Scher, and local light Andy Cabic rolls into town. Yet the evidence is there in his extant albums — 1998’s The Ballad of Hope Nicholls (by his former band, North Carolina’s Muscadine); 2007’s Frankie Ray, and 2008’s Gentle Spirit — and his myriad contributions to the projects of friends. I can hear, see, and most important, feel some measure of all that makes California utopian, the South home, and America an ideal worth fighting for, despite their respective horrors, in Wilson’s music.

New York, N.Y., with its epic filth, noise, and madding crowds, was not so kind to Wilson when he made the inevitable leap from North Cackalack. Still, he excavated a great artifact of the artist-as-young-man from the experience: Frankie Ray. With the move to California, that recording’s odes to heartbreak and alienation gave way to shimmering hymns to nature arrayed across no less than four unreleased song cycles and counting. Gentle Spirit simply displays Wilson as revelation, but it was his cover of an innocuous Madonna hit (first offered to Michael Jackson) from the mid-1980s that truly convinced me of his indelible gifts. He transfigures "La Isla Bonita" beyond recognition — it starts out as an Allman Brothers outtake and slowly, steadily evolves into a 3-D spaghetti western, then a metallic, mountain-ringing treatise of electric guitar evangelism. His forthcoming covers album, I’m Covered, OK?, should make plain the wonders of his rare gift for interpretation.

To quote the once-mighty Pointer Sisters as they backed Wilson’s fellow underrated North Carolina maverick Betty Davis: "Y’all got to believe, believe in sumthin’ … Why not believe in me?" This grandbaby of a Southern Baptist preacher from southwest Georgia would never steer your ears or asses wrong. I was once accused by a former editor of dancing around my keyboard as I wrote (and what’s wrong with that?). I don’t; I have "spells" like Harriet Tubman, like Joseph Smith in the upstate New York woods, or Edgar Cayce’s automatic writing — as with this piece. Yes, I want to convert you, get you onboard the underground smellroad to Glory. I follow the Spirit and my black ass — and the loose booty’s hollerin’: make pilgrimage with Jonathan Wilson and ‘nem up the coast if you’re magical and mystical friends of the road.

THE EMERALD TRIANGLE TOUR

Mon/2, 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30 p.m.), $15

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.independentsf.com

Anti-doofus agenda

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Anti-doofus agenda

arts@sfbg.com

LIT/MUSIC With influences ranging from the Cuban Revolution and Malcolm X to musical orishas such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Sun Ra, Amiri Baraka is renowned as the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the 1960s that became, though short-lived, the virtual blueprint for a new American theater aesthetic. The movement and his published work — such as 1963’s signature study on African American music Blues People and the same year’s play Dutchman — practically seeded "the cultural corollary to black nationalism" of that revolutionary American milieu.

Baraka lives in Newark, N.J., with his wife and author Amina Baraka; they have five children and head the word-music ensemble Blue Ark: The Word Ship and co-direct Kimako’s Blues People, an art space housed in their theater basement for some 15 years. I spoke with him on the eve of an upcoming visit.

SFBG What brings you to the Bay Area this time around?

AMIRI BARAKA We’re doing two sets at Yoshi’s with Howard Wiley. Those are the kinds of musical things we have a nice time doing. I hope to bring the poetry and music to Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. And I’m giving a talk at the library.

SFBG What will you be discussing?

AB Obama and his first 10 months, based on an essay I wrote a few months ago called "We’re Already in the Future." I support Obama and I think that the people who supported him initially should keep supporting him because they are forgetting the huge difficulty he faces. This society, they don’t want any kind of change. They do not want him, first of all. Only 43 percent of the white people even voted for him, and a lot those people resent the fact that white America is now mulatto. That election proved that it’s not white America, it’s multinational America, so they’ve set up this roadblock to almost anything he does.

Anytime you can, you see how doofus Americans are, to oppose their own quality of life improvement, their own health care. They’d rather mope along with little health care or none simply because the corporations have convinced them it’s bad for them — it shows you that we have a real education gap in America. Not to mention the racism, which is behind a lot of it, big time.

The people who support Obama need to stand together to fight the right wing. It’s the right wing that is the enemy. Those huge corporations including those mouthpieces they have. The media is just absurd, with [Sean] Hannity, [Bill] O’Reilly, [Glenn] Beck, Rush Limbaugh. These guys are just too much. If they’re not racist, there is no such thing as racism.

SFBG I know that you spent some time in SF. What are your impressions of our city?

AB I was a visiting professor at San Francisco State for about three or four months, that was the extent of my residency. I like San Francisco. I’m drawn to the vibe there. The last time I was in San Francisco, I was reading at Ferlinghetti’s bookstore [City Lights]. Most of my stuff is in Oakland, but whenever I’m in Oakland, I stop by San Francisco.

Seems to me that San Francisco is very expensive, like New York. I live in Newark, N.J., which is 12 miles outside of New York City — it’s got that Oakland-San Francisco relationship. When you’re dealing with New York, you have that high-rent district all the way around. San Francisco is a beautiful city, but going there and being there are two different things.

SFBG Happy birthday. I know you just turned 75. Any wisdom to impart from three-quarters of a century?

AB I’ve been 75 for about five days. I can say that you really need to take care of yourself. That’s the cliché: "If I knew I was going be this old, I would have taken better care of myself," but it’s some better wisdom than what you hear generally.

SFBG You coined the term "Afrosurreal Expressionism." Can you share your definition?

AB If you know the African tales or even African writers and African cultures, then you know they understand the concept of having relationships reversed, which exposes new concepts and dimensions. They understood the power of the conscious and unconscious mind to change the dimensions of the world. The various forces of nature that people developed, that people saw as gods, these elemental forces: the wind, the water, the sun, the moon. They understood how human beings interrelate to those forces. Henry Dumas’ work dealt with these changing dimensions, and people who do strange things in realistic situations. It was Surrealism that changed the relationship to things. Dumas influenced Toni Morrison, who was his editor at Random House. He was a strong writer and he went out of here in a tragic way, being murdered by the police. His stories and poems are Afrosurreal, with African psychology imposing these dimensions on reality.

SFBG What is the role of the artist in the current climate, and what are the tools we can use to bring about social change?

AB The way things work: cause and effect, action and reaction. The ’60s and the ’70s were a period of intense struggle. The Black Arts Movement and the antiimperialist movement laid the foundation to get Obama elected. But then you get a reaction, and it has been quite evident. Imperialist commerce has taken over the arts. Once we were struggling to get black movies made — now we see what kinds of movies are being made by black people, and they are very backward. Act, react. We have to struggle anew to do something about these backwards elements.

Black people have 27 cities: we need 27 theaters, 27 galleries, 27 periodicals. We need to have poets, rappers, painters, actors struggling to raise the consciousness of the people. That is the role of the artist. Black people still live in these ghettos and these ‘hoods. There may be more of a black middle-class, but they often are the ones helping to keep us duped and bamboozled. This is a struggle that has to be. This is reality — like they say, "Keep it real." This is a struggle that has to be.

AMIRI BARAKA WITH THE HOWARD WILEY TRIO

Nov. 9, 8 p.m., $16–$20

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

www.yoshis.com

We want free parking!

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We want free parking!

steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The strong visceral reactions to extending parking meter hours in San Francisco and Oakland present a difficult challenge to those who seek to have motorists pay for more of their societal impacts and help offset declining public transit resources.

When the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency held an Oct. 20 public hearing on its proposal to extend parking meter hours to evenings and Sundays in order to better manage parking demand and raise $8.8 million for Muni in the process, the proposal was fiercely attacked as a tax on motorists and burden on businesses.

That outrage was expected from conservative factions — landlords, west side residents, and much of the business community — who consistently oppose progressive reforms. But it was surprising to hear the antiwar ANSWER coalition, an immigrant group, and self-described socialists also angrily opposing the proposal.

"The working class is being driven out, and I hope this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back," ANSWER’s Forrest Schmidt said at the hearing, calling for taxes on rich individuals and companies instead. "Someone else needs to pay for the budget deficit that giant corporations created."

"This is a class issue. The rich and the well-to-do don’t have to worry about where to park in this small and crowded city. They have garages or can afford to pay for parking. It is overwhelmingly working class people who are being hit and who will be hit much, much harder if the new policy goes into effect," ANSWER (which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) wrote in a press release the next day.

But it’s a demonstrably false statement that the working class will be disproportionately affected by the proposal. Average incomes for drivers are far higher than those of Muni riders, who have borne the brunt of MTA budget cuts and will be hit even harder if this proposal fails.

A recent Transportation Authority study associated with the stalled proposal to charge a congestion-pricing fee on motorists entering the city core found that only 6 percent of them earned less than $50,000 per year. And in the census tract around ANSWER’s Mission District office, where Schmidt said poor workers who need cars are being aggressively ticketed, less than half the households actually own cars.

Beyond the fact that drivers are generally richer than the carless, there’s the established fact that they don’t come anywhere close to paying for their full societal impacts, from road building and maintenance to health care costs from accidents and air pollution to global warming.

"These are facts that a lot of people ignore," said Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, calling ANSWER’s position "just a very limited perspective that they haven’t thought through yet."

Indeed, when I discussed the campaign with ANSWER’s regional director, Richard Becker, his arguments were almost entirely anecdotal. "I participate in the scramble for parking on a daily basis," he said.

The emotional reactions to taking away free parking also cause critics to lose sight of the facts. The proposal only affects metered spots in commercial districts, not street parking in neighborhoods. And the study treats every neighborhood differently based on parking demand, with the goal of reaching 85 percent occupancy to make parking more available — the very thing many critics of the proposal are demanding.

"They don’t understand that if we don’t raise the price of parking, we’re going to raise the price of Muni. They are extremely naïve beyond all reason," said Jason Henderson, a San Francisco State University geography professor who has studied the politics of parking and is current writing a book on the subject.

"There are people who want to democratize unsustainable lifestyles," Radulovich said, calling it "a strategy without a future."

Transportation activist Dave Snyder got into a heated discussion with some ANSWER members outside the hearing room, faulting them for failing to oppose the Muni fare hikes and service cuts that were approved last spring and for refusing to accept the need to discourage environmentally damaging activities like driving cars.

"To use price to discourage that is indeed a regressive tax. It’s still worth doing, but we have to think about [ANSWER’s reaction]," Snyder later told us.

But Henderson, Snyder, and Radulovich see a silver lining in this discussion. "It’s a sign of progress," Henderson said. "The more this floats to the surface and we can deal with it now, the better we’ll all be in the long run."

Batty up

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Batty up

superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Hi, I’m a big faggot who loves reggae. And I’m not alone in my puff-puff-pass pinkness — not just because everyone goes through an "experimental reggae phase" in college, but because I see tons of queer kids getting down to reggae-derived dancehall and reggaeton hits at the Crib parties (www.thecribsf.com) and the Café (www.cafesf.com). I’ve run into other reggays at the always welcoming Jah Warrior Shelter Hi Fi events (www.jahwarriorshelter.com), Dub Mission joints (www.dubmissionsf.com), and Reggae Gold nights (www.reggaegoldsf.com). And praise Miss Jah for all the laidback homo hotties at the annual Reggae in the Park fest.

Yet in the latest round of queer-reggae controversy, I felt like a rarer bird than ever. Here’s the bones: Almost 20 years ago, a young Jamaican reggae-dancehall singer named Buju Banton wrote a really catchy song called "Boom Bye Bye" that advocated murdering queer batty boys like me by, among other things, riddling us with Uzi bullets and melting us in tires. Charming. It made him famous, he still sells tons of downloads, and he seems to have no regrets. Every time he comes around on tour, members of the gay community get rightly pissed and attempt to shut him down. That’s what happened Oct. 12 when Banton was set to perform at San Francisco’s Rockit Room. Somewhat amazingly, Banton, who claims to have embraced a "more peaceful" lifestyle and to no longer perform "Boom," agreed to meet with gay folk for the first time. Everyone involved listened to each other for an hour, and the show went ahead as planned — this time at least with channels open and peaceful protests outside the club.

The frustrating part to me was watching many people on both sides overreact, allowing the whole issue to blow up into a giant "queers vs. reggae" thing, rather than a protest targeting one specific hater. People who should know better immediately raised the stakes into the ridiculous. At one point, SF Weekly falsely accused lead protester Pollo Del Mar of bursting into the concert in full drag and pepper-spraying the crowd, yeesh. Yes, my gays, reggae Rastafarianism is as queer-hating as most other religions, but there’s no such thing as "homophobic music," only homophobic people. Reggae, like hip-hop and rock, is a broad trope that encompasses all kinds of expression. You don’t have to be conflicted to be a fan. And no, Buju-heads, this wasn’t an attack by wily "gay activists" on reggae culture — and, by extension, black culture. Gayness isn’t a white thing, no matter what the Jamaican government says to justify its persecution of queers there. Many Buju defenders also keep framing the continuing nationwide protests as an attack on Banton’s freedom of speech. It’s not. He can say whatever he wants; it’s saying it in our community and making money off of it that people object to.

I have friends in each camp, and it sucked dreaded pubes to hear coded racism and homophobia creep into their comments. Worse, though, was the sense that we were all being played. This exact same thing happened three years ago when Banton came to town. Once again his name was in all the papers, like this one. Once again, his fanbase solidified in the face of a perceived threat. Tickets to his show were $40. Just sayin’.

KID SISTER

Electro hipsters, set your heads to explode. The spunky neon-rap artist and Swedish Pop Mafia protégé hits the Rickshaw bricks with toothy duo Flosstradamus.

Thu/22, 9 p.m., $20. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

THE VERY BEST

MIA aptly channels Siouxsie Sioux on the wonderful Malawi-Parisian trio’s border-hopping, genre-popping debut, Warm Heart of Africa (Green Owl).

Fri/23, 10 p.m., $12 advance. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

CYRUS

The hypnotic dubstep originator heads a brutal Brit train of bass mechanics, including Cluekid, Kutz, and Darkside, in honor of Big Up mag’s first birthday.

Sat/24, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $20. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, www.paradisesf.com

STEPPIN’

Who’s ready for a boogaloo revival? Knock out your Nuyorican doowops with some shaggy mambo as the Steppin’ band, featuring trumpet legend Oscar Myers, jazzes up Madrone. Total hot cakes.

Tuesdays, 9 p.m., $3. Madrone Art Bar, 500 Divisadero, SF. www.madronelounge.com

Collective growth

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Collective growth

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Last December, Anticon celebrated its 10th anniversary with a concert at the Knitting Factory in New York. It was an emotional reunion. Many fans flew from around the world to see a hip-hop collective that hadn’t performed together since a 2002 concert at Slim’s in San Francisco. Peter Agoston, the event’s promoter, says it took a year to pull it together.

This was a far cry from 1999, when most of the original Anticon seven (along with more than a few couch-surfers) lived communally in an East Oakland warehouse. Tim "Sole" Holland, Adam "Dose One" Drucker, Yoni "WHY?" Wolf, Brendon "Alias" Whitney, Jeffrey "Jel" Logan, David "Odd Nosdam" Madson and James Brandon "the Pedestrian" Best sought to revolutionize hip-hop, injecting the art form with absurdist humor and beatnik poetry. Every month, they held court at Rico’s Loft in San Francisco, performing college radio hits like "It’s Them" and "Rainmen" as throngs of Bay Area backpackers shouted along. Doseone, Anticon’s madcap poet, says, "We were crew, posse, label, brotherhood, and boys-club."

A decade later, Anticon has become a brand and a myth. Baillie Parker, who faithfully attended those Rico’s Loft showcases, became an eighth member, label manager, and co-owner in 2001. Slowly (and sometimes painfully), he steered the label toward solvency, streamlining the collective’s unpredictable adventures into a small business. Then he ceded day-to-day responsibilities to his former intern Shaun Koplow, a student at UC Berkeley. After Koplow graduated, he moved back to his native Los Angeles, and now runs the label there.

Today, Anticon Records is surprisingly durable and stylistically varied. Recent albums include melancholy rock (Anathallo’s Canopy Glow, 2008), wintry indietronica (Son Lux’s At War With Walls and Mazes, 2008) and punchy, synthesized instrumental beats (Tobacco’s Fucked Up Friends, 2008).

Meanwhile, the collective that founded the label has splintered and scattered across the country. Some remained in the Bay Area (Dose One, Jel, Odd Nosdam, and Parker) while others moved elsewhere (Sole in Denver, Colorado; Alias in Portland, Maine; and the Pedestrian in Los Angeles; Yoni Wolf is currently "homeless" while he embarks on a months-long tour). They still own the label and make major decisions together. However, each pursues his individual career. Some collaborate, others do not.

What does it all mean? It doesn’t take a Rashomon-like investigation to figure it out. "We all send each other friendly [e-mail] messages every few months, but we’re not like this cult. And I think that’s good," says Sole. "When we tried to be a cult, we realized that none of us made very good cult members."

ORIGINS OF AN ICON

Anticon’s symbol is an ant, designed by Aaron Horkey of Burlesque Design. Ant-icon. The name comes from the Pedestrian, a Los Angeles native, and Sole, who grew up in Portland, Maine. The two met in 1992 on a Prodigy message board for cassette trading. Both were avid tape collectors, the lingua franca for music dispersion before the Napster era. They bonded over a love for the Los Angeles scene, where Freestyle Fellowship and the Shapeshifters pioneered speed-rapping and obtuse, free-associative rhymes; early Midwest battle-rap crews like Atmosphere and 1200 Hobos; and obscure Canadian groups like the Sebutones.

Anticon coalesced around a series of fortuitous happenings. Alias and Sole met when both lived in Portland; there was the 1997 Scribble Jam, famous in rap circles for its battle between Dose One and a pre-Slim Shady Eminem; Doseone’s frenzied networking skills brought him in touch with Jel, and then Sole; and Dose One made fast friends with WHY? and Odd Nosdam when he lived in Cincinnati in the late 1990s.

After Sole and the Pedestrian came up with the Anticon concept in 1998, Sole moved to Oakland to work for Listen.com. The rest of the crew eventually followed him there. "I was making $50,000 a year during the dot-com rush," he says. "I didn’t have any expenses, so I just put all the money into starting the label."

Anticon’s first release, 1999’s Music for the Advanced Hip Hop Listener EP was an invitation and a challenge, with Alias’ "Divine Disappointment," which imagines an argument between father and son, and "Holy Shit," a posse track marked by precociously off-kilter rap flows. A compilation, Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop, followed later that year. "For me, it was about representing these underground aesthetic movements," says the Pedestrian.

But the only song anyone remembers from those records was Sole’s missive "Dear Elpee." On the surface, it was a battle record directed at El Producto, the incredibly talented rapper/producer whose group Company Flow recorded the 1997 opus Funcrusher Plus. El-P memorably coined the term "independent as fuck" to distance himself from mainstream rap, then lost in the throes of Puff Daddy’s hyper-commercial "jiggy" era. But Sole saw hypocrisy in East Coast tastemakers such as Rawkus Records, which distributed Company Flow’s records. He felt they excluded anyone who didn’t live in New York City, and was disgusted at how they extolled "independent" virtues while launching sophisticated marketing campaigns to promote themselves.

"Dear Elpee" wasn’t just a dis against a popular rapper, it was a distillation of Anticon’s scrappy, outsider stance. "Underground hip-hop is a mentality. It’s not supposed to be commercial. You’re supposed to spit an 80-bar verse and people are going to love it," says Sole. "I felt like [hip-hop] needed a little chin check."

On his subsequent two solo albums, 1999’s Bottle of Humans and 2001’s Selling Live Water, Sole honed his sarcastic and brutally honest persona. He criticized himself and attacked his unnamed enemies, exposing thoughts of paranoia and depression. With songs like the brilliantly melancholy title track, he sowed the seeds of what would later become known as "emo rap."

Meanwhile, Jel and Odd Nosdam (along with other producers such as Alias and DJ Mayonnaise) drew from a wide breadth of influences, from orchestral rock like Radiohead and Flying Saucer Attack to electronic acts like Boards of Canada. They made tracks using rudimentary equipment, including 4-track and 8-track recorders and SP-1200 sampling keyboards, resulting in songs that expounded a murky and intimate low-fi aesthetic.

Anticon’s recordings were imbued with a childlike playfulness. In 1998, Sole, Doseone, and Alias collaborated with Minneapolis rapper Slug [from Rhymesayers group Atmosphere] under the name Deep Puddle Dynamics. Alias explains the concept: "[The group name is] in reference to puddles … because of how they form, you sometimes can’t tell how deep they are until you stand in them or observe them really closely."

Deep Puddle Dynamics’ 1999 album, The Taste of Rain … Why Kneel (a title inspired by Jack Kerouac’s poem "Some Western Haiku"), mixed wide-eyed abstraction with introspective thoughts. On the yearning "June 26, 1998," they trade lines until their voices became a kind of Greek chorus. "What is the meaning of life?" they chant. "Fortune, health, knowledge, success / Woman, man, trust, progress / Culture, faith, healing, destiny / Endurance, family, science, society."

"It was so inspiring to be around those cats and see how they operate," says Alias of those recording sessions. His shy New England demeanor contrasted sharply with Doseone and Sole’s bravado. "It’s weird to go back and listen to it now. … It shows its age, and it shows its awkwardness."

However, Anticon’s precocious search for deeper truths through hip-hop, a genre often maligned for its lack of intellectual discourse, endeared them to listeners around the world. The collective helped spark a cottage industry of aspiring rappers, a sensibility built around tweaked flows and five-minute soliloquies, and nourished a brief, exhilarating moment of hip-hop experimentalism in the early 2000s.

Alias says, "I’ve been at shows and had kids come up and tell me how much my music has meant to them. They’ll tell me stories like when their father passed away, all they did was listen to ‘Watching Water’ [from The Other Side of the Looking Glass, 2002] for a week. Then they’ll show me that they have these Anticon-related tattoos or something. It’s crazy. It makes me feel embarrassed."

OFFBEAT STREET

If Sole is the blustery visionary who led Anticon into war, then Doseone is the eccentric who personifies its unfettered creativity. His catalog, issued via several record labels, ranges from the bleak tone poems of Circle, his 2000 album with producer Boom Bip; to Subtle, a band formed with Jel and keyboardist Dax Pierson. Over the course of three albums (including 2008’s Exiting Arm), Subtle molded rap, electronics, rock, jazz-fusion and whatever else they could find into a searing and dense whirlwind of word and sound.

"We were artists’ artists without a doubt. Still are," says Doseone. "It was DIY … and you could hear the flaws, the sensitivities, the trying-something-new, even when it was over the top or egregious."

Doseone’s strangely disembodied, half-sung raps epitomized Anticon’s greatness as an offbeat take on hip-hop culture. It should have made a bigger impact on the rap industry, and there are several reasons why it didn’t. First, Sole’s battle with the iconic El-P, whose music was just as experimental and groundbreaking as anything Anticon made, turned many people against him. And yes, Anticon was undoubtedly too weird for a generation raised on 2Pac and Jay-Z.

Most damaging were assumptions that Anticon was full of rich, ego-driven art-school snobs who made hip-hop for white people.

Those accusations struck Jel as funny. The Midwest native has been devoted to hip-hop for most of his life, and his placid, straightforward demeanor results from a staunchly lower-middle-class background. "All the shit that came out of nowhere about us not paying dues all comes from the racism that was involved," he says.

The Pedestrian admits that part of the problem was attitude. "When we were doing that whole pretentious ‘Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop’ shit, for me it was about representing these underground aesthetic movements," he says. "I didn’t imagine we would look as white as we did. It really surprised the shit out of me. And in retrospect, we should have done things differently.

"In those early years, the crowd was pretty fucking white," he continued. "I know there was definitely a consciousness about it — we were thinking about it. But we were fucking kids. We didn’t know how to deal with these really difficult situations."

By the summer of 2002, when Anticon held a series of come-to-Jesus meetings to determine the label’s future, all of its members realized they weren’t a hive-mind group of crazy MCs à la Wu-Tang Clan (with Sole as the RZA), but eight very different people. Wolf, whose esoteric music masks a highly disciplined songwriting approach, felt those aspirations were "unrealistic." "There was almost a utopian idea about record-making, that it could almost be a socialist affair," he says.

As Anticon evolved from a movement into a traditional company, it meandered creatively and financially. Some released material that paled in comparison to past efforts (Sole’s Live from Rome, 2005). New signings, such as indie-pop multi-instrumentalist Dosh (self-titled, 2003) struggled to gain recognition for music that had nothing to do with hip-hop. Eventually, though, Anticon Records learned how to promote releases by its onetime collective as well as its growing indie-rock and electronic roster.

"The way it’s perceived by artists, particularly rock artists, I think they see it as a natural progression," says Sole of Anticon Records’ development. "All the outside-of-hip-hop-world friends we’ve made over the years see it as a natural evolution because what we’ve done has always been pretty melodic and rock and musical anyway."

Some of the onetime "cult" members who felt overshadowed during those early years forged individual identities. Alias, who always felt "awkward" when he rapped, moved back to Maine with his wife and focused on production instead. His efforts yielded 2007’s Brooklyn/Oaklyn, an evocative collaboration with Brooklyn singer Rona "Tarsier" Rapadas.

After a somewhat uneven solo debut (2003’s Oaklandazulasylum), Wolf formed a trio under his old WHY? moniker. Their next two albums (Elephant Eyelash, 2005; Alopecia, 2008) impressively blended Wolf’s prior talent for harmonies, loquacious wordplay, and poetic imagery with the band’s newly-minted melodic rock arrangements. By scoring rapturous national press, he epitomized Anticon Records’ new status as a fast-rising independent label.

WHY? just released its fourth album, Eskimo Snow, which consists of unused material from the Alopecia sessions. Wolf still does a fair amount of rapping, or rhyming in rhythm, even if the results can no longer be classified as strictly hip-hop. "I’ve incorporated it into my pantheon of musical styles," he says, adding that "the next record could be a disco record, for all I know."

BRAND OF OUTSIDERS


Anticon hasn’t abandoned hip-hop. Doseone and Jel just released their third album as the cryptically-named Themselves; their 2000 debut was notable for producing the indie-rap classic "It’s Them." With CrownsDown, Doseone returns to the arena he once flourished in. "There’s purity to the construction and presentation of this record that is derived from Guru and Premier," Doseone says, referring to the classic rap duo Gang Starr.

This year has also brought Chicago duo Serengeti & Polyphonic’s Terradactyl; and Bike for Three!, a collaboration between Buck 65 (formerly of Sebutones) and Belgian electronic musician Greetings from Tuskan. The difference between now and 10 years ago is that these albums aren’t the latest missives from Anticon the collective. They just enhance the label’s reputation for honest, lyrically-driven, complex music.

Amid all this activity, Anticon’s original theorists seem like the odd men out. Back in the day, the Pedestrian was the crew’s sardonic (and sometimes arrogant) prankster, sending out eloquent and confrontational press releases inspired by Dadaism and Situational Ethics. By 2002, however, the former high-school dropout went back to school, enrolling in Laney College. He transferred to UC Berkeley, earned a degree in literature, then enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he’s working on a PhD in ethnic studies.

"There was once an aesthetic collective. And now we’re a record label whose brand name has some lingering connection to that aesthetic," says the Pedestrian, who still treats hip-hop as a hobby and elaborate game theory. "But what we decide to put out and the music we all make is infused with those early years of collaboration. Those were important, foundational years for all of us."

Sole lives in Denver with his wife, and works as an IT technician for Denver Open Media, a public-access station. "It’s not my label anymore. I’m just one voice in it, and I try to contribute as meaningfully as I can to it," he says, adding that he wishes Anticon had a traditional rap profile. So for his new album, Plastique, he decided to work with Fake Four Inc., home to underground artists like Awol One and Mikah 9 (from Freestyle Fellowship).

With Plastique, he focuses on a wide-ranging critique of political injustice, capitalism, and Western hegemony, fed by radical works like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. Sometimes, Sole fits the American lone wolf profile, railing about the world’s troubles.
"Do I wish it was still a crew? Yeah. I miss that. To me, that’s what it’s all about," he says. "But when you’re married, you don’t want to be hanging out all the time. You want to be home, making a stew and watching Heroes."

WHY?
With Mount Eerie, Au, Serengetti and Polyphonic
Sat/17, 9 p.m. (doors 8 p.m.), $16
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750
www.gamh.com

SOLE
With Astronautalis, Sahib
Sat/17, 10 p.m. (doors 9 p.m.), $10-12
Uptown Nightclub
1928 Telegraph, Oakl
(510) 451-8100
www.uptownnightclub.com

The weird attacks on Van Jones

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By Tim Redmond

It’s no surprise that the right-wing nuts are going after Van Jones, the Bay Area activist who is now Obama’s green-jobs advisor. The loonies have picked up on the fact that Jones was one of 100 people (along with Daniel Ellsberg and Paul Hawken) who signed a letter raising questions about the government response to the 9/11 attacks. It’s actually not that radical a letter; Indybay has posted it here.

But what amazes me is how quickly people who aren’t typically considered wackos have bought into this — take, for example, the former wife of the mayor of San Francisco, who appeared on Sean Hannity’s show to denounce Jones with some bizarre claims:

GUILFOYLE: Well, that’ s a problem. When you say, is there a problem with the vetting process? Clearly he wasn’t vetted. All they had to do was go and ask a couple of questions in San Francisco about this individual. You know there’s a problem when he’s not even wanted in the city of San Francisco where I come from. OK?

HANNITY: That’s a good point.

GUILFOYLE: That’s a huge red flag right there. What is this man’s qualification besides his anti-American theory? He’s far left, radical.

HANNITY: No, he’s a communist. I mean avowed.

GUILFOYLE: Yes.

CUPP: Self-avowed. Yes.

GUILFOYLE: Self-avowed communist. Why is he even in the White House? Is that the reward?

He’s “not even wanted in San Francisco?” What? Van Jones is an icon in this town. Some people think he gets too much fawning press; nobody I know thinks he’s unwanted.

And, um, self-avowed communist? Kimberly, that’s so 50s. I know Van Jones, and I know some communists, and I can tell you that Van Jones — for better or for worse — is not a communist. Guilfoyle must know that, too — in fact, there really aren’t a whole lot of communists left, even in the Bay Area. In the 1980s, I used to see the Revolutionary Communist Party types at political events, but you hardly ever hear from them any more. Calling someone a communist these days doesn’t even qualify as red-baiting; it’s just nutty-mouth.

More:

HANNITY: All right. This is back in March of 2008. We examined this. He called on participants to take a pledge of resistance and — “Not in our name will we invade countries, bomb civilians, kill children, letting history take its course over the graves of the nameless.”

Now, I mean, we can keep going, look at the comment that he made about white polluters steering poison into black communities.

CUPP: Right.

GUILFOYLE: Well, this is an individual that doesn’t have the qualifications to be in the bizarre job that he’s in. And it just raises the issue here about these czars gone wild. This is someone who actually just doesn’t even like the United States of America, wants to reshape it, remake it into something that we would not even recognize, and what’s so wrong with this country that we have an individual like this coming in, meddling in our affairs that has no idea what he is doing, who really is traitorous in his comments against this country.

Actually, I spent several years of my life researching a book on the American environmental movement, which is now available in the remainder bins of finer used books stores here and there, and I can tell you that the question of environmental racism — in this case, of white-owned companies dumping toxic waste in black communities — is well settled. In fact, I was surprised to learn that chemical pollution wasn’t entirely a class issue — poor white communities got less poison than middle-class black communities. That’s 20-year-old news.

I know these guys need ways to attack Obama, but come on, Kimberly: You know better.

At least, I guess, Newsom can always distance himself; isn’t that what ex-wives are for?

‘Can I buy your park?’

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sarah@sfbg.com

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, recently donned his best suit and a sandwich-board saying "Can I buy your park?" then headed to some of the city’s most popular open spaces: Dolores Park, Golden Gate Park, Crissy Field, and Ocean Beach.

Bloom’s quest? Pose as a developer and videotape reactions to a fictitious proposal to sell 25 percent of the parks for housing, a ruse designed to illuminate how the city and its master developer, Lennar Corp., have never been nearly that honest about their plan to get the state to sell 25 percent of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area so Lennar can build luxury condos on prime waterfront parklands.

Predictably, responses to Bloom’s poll were mainly negative, occasionally violent. "A couple of people tried to clock me over the head," Bloom recalled. "They got aggressive. They said ‘You’re an asshole, man.’ But the predominant reaction was ‘I love my park.’ People asked, ‘Why do you want to sell them?’ They feel there’s not enough open space."

Perhaps the most chilling response came when Bloom told folks about the city’s actual plan to build condos at Candlestick Point SRA in the Bayview District. "Their response was, ‘Oh, it’s in the Bayview? Who cares?’" said Bloom, who fears that apparent indifference to the plight of the Bayview may explain why the city and Lennar see Candlestick Point SRA as a development opportunity.

Arc isn’t the only group accusing Lennar and the city of not properly informing the public that a vote for Proposition G, which was billed as the "clean-up the shipyard initiative" during the June 2008 election, was also a vote to push Senate Bill 792, state tidelands legislation that authorizes the Candlestick Point sell-off.

Introduced by State Sen. Mark Leno in February, SB 792 has since been amended and approved by the full Senate and is currently scheduled for a hearing by the Assembly Appropriations Committee Aug. 19. Passage by the committee is virtually certain, given that it only delays legislation based on fiscal impacts.

But even some Prop. G supporters, including Bloom, are now raising questions about the deal.

San Francisco’s Park, Recreation, and Open Space Advisory Committee (PROSAC) unanimously approved a resolution recommending that the city’s Recreation and Park Commission and the sponsor of SB 792 require both the city and Lennar to "provide detailed accounting of the park and open space acreage in the Candlestick Project." The committee asks that no net open space in the region be lost in the transfer.

PROSAC claims it was in the dark about the deal and asked those who pushed Prop. G to "provide documentation of when PROSAC and any other relevant advisory committees were informed of the intention to purchase state parkland for the Candlestick Project." So far Lennar and the city have pointed to conceptual maps and a couple of notices of public meetings as evidence that the public was adequately informed before voting.

But according to Bloom, who studies the maps and attends the meetings, "There really is not anything other than two graphics, neither of which call out the alteration to the park boundary. You’d really have to know what you were looking for. And why would the city’s own advisory committee be asking Lennar and the city for information if they were in fact told of this plan?"

Adding fuel to the fire is a July 21 resolution by Sups. Chris Daly and John Avalos, which argues that it should be official policy of San Francisco to oppose SB 792 in its current form and remind city lobbyist Lynn Suter "to accurately represent the City and County of San Francisco policy in Sacramento."

The resolution has been assigned to the board’s Land Use Committee and likely won’t be heard until September. It contends that SB 792 is "premature and preempts the process for public input and environmental assessment since the environmental impact reports for the proposed development on Candlestick Point and the Hunters Point Shipyard will not be released until the fall of 2009."

Noting that the state "purchased this beautiful waterfront parkland for $10 million in 1977," Daly and Avalos assert that "this land represents a valuable and irreplaceable asset to the state of California that should not be disposed of for private development."

The resolution notes that many people oppose the transfer "because of the impact of environmental racism caused by selling a clean park to a private developer for condominium construction denying Bayview Hunters Point residents equal access to healthy open space as is enjoyed by other neighborhoods in San Francisco."

As Daly told the Guardian, "Everyone wants the shipyard site cleaned up, development that works for the community, and real open space opportunities on the shoreline. And Prop. G was billed as doing this, which led to a division of people who believed Lennar and those who didn’t."

As a result, Daly said, people like Saul Bloom, who supported Prop. G, are coming out against SB 792. "So now, it seems, the skeptics are right," Daly said. "A lot of promises have been made. But unless you get them in writing, and have an insurance policy, Lennar is not delivering."

But Lennar Communities of California, the developer’s major political action committee, seems to be delivering when it comes to advocating for the park sell-off. In the second quarter of this year, Lennar more than doubled its spending on lobbying, including on SB 792. And Aug. 3, it alerted its Prop. G supporters that help is needed "passing SB 792 through the California State Legislature."

The e-mail blast claims that SB 792 is "straightforward and necessary legislation that reconfigures the state park boundaries at Candlestick Point and exchanges under-utilized land (most of it dirt, rubble, and a parking lot) for tens of millions of dollars of needed new improvements to the state park and a steady stream of dedicated funding to operate and maintain the improved park and open space."

But recently, there has been talk of an SB 792 compromise. According to insiders, the city and Lennar are willing to concede 20 acres of the contested 42-acres of park, although the developer insists it needs to build hundreds of condos (of which only 15 percent will be below market rate) on the 22 remaining acres of state park land if its entire 700-acre development is to pencil out.

Privately, environmental advocates say they may be unable to stop the land grab. And they worry that seven of the 20 acres Lennar is prepared to concede could be inundated by rising seas caused by global warming, as shown in a 2007 study by engineering firm Moffat & Nichol. It would be an ironic fate given Mayor Gavin Newsom’s July 30 announcement of a proposed United Nations center focused on climate change and green technology as part of Lennar’s project.

The Sierra Club opposes selling state parklands, building a bridge over Yosemite Slough, and capping a radiologically-affected dump on the shipyard’s Parcel E2. But the club does not oppose Lennar’s entire redevelopment plan. Arthur Feinstein, the group’s local representative, said, "We’re interested in saving as much land as possible. We are pushing to save the park’s grasslands. It’s existing habitat."

Noting that some amendments to SB 792 have been made, including removing proposed exchanges of parklands for shipyard land, Feinstein said that "there’s now a map that defines the project and no longer carries shipyard land."

Michael Cohen, Newsom’s chief economic adviser, said, "At Leno’s request, we’ve made amendments to address concerns, including taking steps to ensure there is no adverse impact on wildlife habitat."

Cohen called Newsom’s United Nations Climate Center "the perfect institution" for the entire redevelopment project, since it provides the shipyard with a green technology anchor. Cohen said he was unaware of the study showing the area could be flooded by global warming.

"But no one disagrees," Cohen continued, "that the state park will benefit from infrastructure and much needed capital for operations and maintenance."

Leno told the Guardian that his goal is to arrive at the best possible bill. "At the request of the opposition, we did amend the bill so that land at Hunters Point Shipyard won’t be part of any exchange," Leno said. "But it is conceivable that once the cleanup is completed, there could be a gift from the city to the State Parks Commission."

Leno said he hadn’t seen the flood map and joked, "If someone thinks they know exactly where the water is going to stop, they can place some bets now."

Assuming a more serious tone, Leno added that "the entire park system is under threat." He recalled how Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed to eliminate all General Fund money for parks and said, "We fought back and were able to restore most of the money."

But with the state’s ongoing fiscal woes and political stalemate, "Anyone who believes CPRSA is going to be open and funded indefinitely is not thinking clearly … so this deal has the potential for being an opportunity for our taking responsibility for the future of our state park system."

As currently drafted, SB 792 provides millions for improvements and $700,000 annually for operations and maintenance, Leno explained. "So I’m trying to make a bad situation better in a way that brings along this bill’s opponents so that they see that they are being taken seriously."

Best of the Bay 2009: Local Heroes

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>>BEST OF THE BAY HOME

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ANGELA CHAN

As staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, Angela Chan has been at the forefront of a yearlong effort to ensure that all undocumented juveniles have the right to due process in San Francisco.

That effort began last summer, shortly after Mayor Gavin Newsom, who had just decided to run for governor, announced that undocumented juveniles henceforth would be reported to federal authorities the minute they are booked on suspicion of having committed a felony — and before they can access an immigrant-rights lawyer.

These changes primarily affect Latino youth, but Chan, whose Cantonese-speaking parents ran a restaurant in Portland, Ore., sees the broader connections to other immigrant communities.

"I grew up in an immigrant community in a white working-class neighborhood," Chan explained. "I saw the barriers — language, culture, racism, xenophobia — and I realized that there was not a lot of power and awareness. I learned to appreciate civil rights."

As a teenager, Chan was determined to become an attorney. The temporary passage of California Prop. 187 — prohibiting undocumented immigrants from using social services, health care, and public education — intensified her determination. Chan graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, and has been able to focus on this particular juvenile justice battle thanks to a Soros Justice Fellowship and the ALC’s "innovative, fluid, creative, and client-centered vision."

"I’ve tried different ways of challenging inequality — direct confrontation, anger — but I’ve found the best way is through policy, and being very educated and strategic," Chan said.

She said she’s hopeful that Sup. David Campos has the votes this summer to pass veto-proof amendments to the city’s undocumented-youth protection policy. As she put it: "People are starting to understand the difference between the juvenile and adult justice system and the issues around due process." (Sarah Phelan)

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JULIAN DAVIS

Take a look at just a few of the things Julian Davis has done: He ran the 2008 public-power campaign. He’s on the board of San Francisco Tomorrow. He’s president of the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center. He’s a founder of the MoMagic Collaborative, which fights youth violence in the Western Addition. He’s on the board of the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation. He’s been appointed by the Board of Supervisors to serve on the Market-Octavia Citizens Advisory Committee. He’s a founder of the Osiris Coalition, which is working to ensure that public-housing tenants have the right to return to their homes after renovations. He’s hosted countless events for charities and political campaigns.

Then think about this: he’s only 30.

Davis grew up in Palo Alto, and moved to the corner of Haight and Fillmore after getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy from Brown University. Philosophers weren’t exactly in demand at the time, so he wound up "playing my guitar on the streets for burrito money" while starting a PhD program at Stanford.

He also saw three people shot to death on his corner. "And I realized," he explained, "that the academic life wasn’t going to be for me."

Davis started organizing against community violence, and, inspired by Matt Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign, ran for supervisor in 2004. That got him started in local politics. He’s headed to law school at Hastings this fall, and it’s a safe bet that he’ll be a leader in the progressive political community for years to come. (Tim Redmond)

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DAVID SCHOOLEY

"He’s a visionary. He’s very determined. He never gives up."

That’s how Ken McIntire, executive director of San Bruno Mountain Watch, describes David Schooley, who founded the Mountain Watch nonprofit four decades ago.

"For many years, David led every Sierra Club hike, organized every restoration party, and even took the bus to community fairs up and down the Peninsula so he could set up a table and distribute fliers about San Bruno Mountain," McIntire recalls.

Now snowy-haired and allegedly semiretired, Schooley, 65, remains as nimble as a goat when it comes to hiking across his beloved mountain, which rises and cuts across the Peninsula just south of San Francisco in San Mateo County — and whose ecosystem has been identified as one of 18 global biodiversity hotspots in need of protection

Schooley’s love for the mountain — which is covered with low-growing grasses, coastal sage, and scrub year-round and is dotted with wildflowers each spring — led him to found SBMW in 1969 and fight the expansion of the Guadalupe Valley Quarry and the growth of nearby Brisbane. Both were threatening to destroy the biggest urban open space in the United States and the habitat of rare butterflies, including the San Bruno elfin.

As Schooley explains, while the mountain is often hit with strong gusty winds and enveloped in thick fog, it is a great butterfly habitat and the last fragment of an entire ecosystem — the Franciscan region — the rest of which has been buried beneath San Francisco’s concrete footprints.

Two years ago, Schooley had the pleasure of once again finding the tiny raspberry-colored elfin caterpillars on some sedum (its host plant) on the north-facing upper benches of the quarry.

"It’s a miracle," Schooley told me at the time, delighted by this living example of nature’s ability to overcome human-made damage on the mountain.

At the time, Schooley was hoping the state park system would annex the property where the elfins were found. That hasn’t happened yet. But as McIntire says of Schooley (who dreams of a wildlife corridor that runs from the bay to the ocean), "David is always pushing for more open space around the mountain, for more nature and less development, and trying to reach a bigger audience." (Sarah Phelan)

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SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE

The San Francisco Mime Troupe is the conscience of the city, our proudest export, and — as it celebrates its 50th year — perhaps our most enduring sociopolitical institution. That’s a lot of kudos to heap on an artists’ collective, particularly one that delivers its theatrical social satire with such over-the-top comedy and music, but it isn’t a statement that we make lightly.

The SFMT embodies the very best San Francisco values — limitless creativity, a hunger for justice, courage under fire, an uncompromising commitment to creating a better world, and a progressive missionary zeal — and offers a powerful and entertaining reminder of those values every July 4, when it presents its new show in Dolores Park.

After it sings (and preaches) to the progressive choir of San Francisco, the troupe hits the road, visiting such less-than-enlightened outposts as the Central Valley and rural Northern California, delivering important messages to audiences that need to hear them most. "First of all, it’s humorous, so that breaks down a lot of barriers from the get-go," SFMT general manager Jenee Gill tells us.

But even here in the early ’60s, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission tried to use obscenity laws to ban the SFMT from performing in public parks. The troupe successfully fought the commission in court, setting an important free speech precedent. Modern San Francisco has grown up with the SFMT showing us the way forward with its uniquely high-stepping, knee-slapping, consciousness-raising style, and we’re a better city for it. (Steven T. Jones)

All local heroes photos by Pat Mazzera

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BEST OF THE BAY 2009:
>>BEST OF THE BAY HOME
>>READERS POLL WINNERS
>>EDITORS PICKS: CLASSICS
>>EDITORS PICKS: CITY LIVING
>>EDITORS PICKS: FOOD AND DRINK
>>EDITORS PICKS: ARTS AND NIGHTLIFE
>>EDITORS PICKS: SHOPPING
>>EDITORS PICKS: SEX AND ROMANCE
>>EDITORS PICKS: OUTDOORS AND SPORTS

They will not be silent

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

July 4 is Mime Troupe day in San Francisco, by tradition. Dolores Park, the place. There the venerable San Francisco company launches its annual free summer show — this year, the excellently timed and executed Too Big to Fail — surrounded by a varied throng of activists fanning out with ironing boards and literature among an audience of many hundreds basking in July rays, subversive laughter, and their own cheerful numbers.

Call it a day of independence from the usual bullshit, the jingo-jingle of national unity played for the masses from on high. This year Mime Troupe day got a city government imprimatur (making it actually "Mime Troupe Day" on official parchment somewhere) in a nod to the rabble-rousing satirical political theater troupe’s 50th year raising hell and inciting revolution. Generally speaking, when the government pats you on the back for that kind of thing, you want to check it didn’t leave behind a sticky with a bull’s eye. But the gesture seemed genuine enough. After all, the San Francisco Mime Troupe has in no small way contributed to the cultural clout the city enjoys as one-time font of the now revered (or at least hotly marketable) ’60s counterculture.

Founded in 1959 by RG Davis as a definitely not silent but highly physical instrument of radical aesthetic and political convictions, the Mime Troupe didn’t just mirror the counterculture; it was a driving force for it. And the free plays in the park — which began in 1962 and took the form of irreverent, politically charged reworkings of 16th-century commedia dell’arte scenarios and characters — were central to its aggressively popular, anti-bourgeois orientation.

From those early, gleefully spectacular free speech fights in Golden Gate Park — days when it was actually pitted in "obscenity" battles against the city government, in the form of the Parks Commission and the police — to clashes with cops and courts in Colorado and Canada over its still-provocative takes on American racism and civil rights in the guise of an old-fashioned minstrel show; to its midwifery of radical activist theaters like Teatro Campesino or anarchist rebels like the Diggers and their everything-free movement, it’s fair to say the Mime Troupe was more than a twinkling reflection of the zeitgeist.

Through the following four decades, the Mime Troupe, which became a collective in 1970, evolved and notably diversified with the times and their audiences, riding the vicissitudes of avid but also chaotic years, much of them spent touring extensively. Over what you might call three general and overlapping waves of collective leadership, it has endured. But has its mission?

"Absolutely," affirms Ed Holmes, a couple of days before the July 4 premiere. With the currently 10-member collective since 1986, Holmes is one of four members who came on in the mid- to late 1980s, and a powerful comedic performer revered for, among much else, his exquisite imitation of Dick Cheney. He fires off a definition: "To take a political analysis — radical, progressive, leftist, political analysis — make it entertaining, and take it out to the people in the parks, and give it away for free."

"The story’s the message," adds Pat Moran, a member since 2005 and the principal composer-lyricist of the Troupe since longtime member Bruce Barthol retired a few years ago. "But also the message is the going and setting up the show. The people working together, the people doing it, the fact that it’s produced every year on a slim budget with little time. That commitment is just as much a part of the show as the written piece."

Michael Gene Sullivan adds: "The audience should always leave any play, not just a Mime Troupe show, different people than they were when they entered. If they leave the same and are just entertained, the show is an abysmal failure." And how should they leave a Mime Troupe show exactly? "I want them to rush right out and overthrow capitalism," says Sullivan, the collective’s head writer since 2000, when he took the baton from longtime head writer Joan Holden. "That would be a good day."

At the same time, the challenges facing the company in 2009 are very real, most of them economic. Sullivan, with other members, points to the recent drastic yet financially necessary scaling-back of tours as a serious frustration. Bay Area living costs have also impinged on the day-to-day business of the organization, according to Ellen Callas. "People have had to take more and more outside work to fill in the gaps. It’s harder and harder to have a critical mass, even at meetings where important decisions are made," explains Callas, a member of the collective since 1986, "[But] none of us are willing to give up the dream of the Mime Troupe."

With their own building in the Mission District (purchased in the 1970s), unusual dedication, and commitments that include a teaching program for at-risk teens and workshop internships, the Mime Troupe does seem happily determined to press forward. Arthur Holden, veteran Trouper from the early 1960s until the 1990s, suggests it’s the collective structure of the Troupe itself that is key to its longevity — and no doubt part of its larger appeal too. "It’s what distinguishes the Mime Troupe from most other theaters: a sense of the collective members that they are really controlling their existence. That’s very important and it isn’t too easily found, in the theater or generally in the world."
TOO BIG TO FAIL

Various Bay Area venues through Sept. 24

(415) 285-1717, www.sfmt.org

Bending toward oblivion

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culture@sfbg.com

Gay liberation changed Martin Duberman’s life. In the 1960s, Duberman taught history at Princeton, hardly a bastion of radical thought. Yet he found himself invigorated by nascent counterculture movements and became a champion of the left, penning essays in The New York Times and serving as faculty advisor to the Princeton chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. At the same time, Duberman spent years in intensive psychotherapy in desperate attempts to "cure" his homosexuality. Soon after the emergence of the gay liberation movement, however, he rejected this homophobic vision and embraced a gay identity. His work also became queerer.

Over the years, he has written more than 20 books — biographies, plays, memoirs, history texts, and a novel — on a wide range of topics ranging from antislavery activism to the civil rights movement and Stonewall. His new book, Waiting to Land: A (Mostly) Political Memoir, 1985-2008 (The New Press 352 pages, $26.95), is a combination of diary entries and recollections from the Reagan years to the present. This latest work serves as a window into Duberman’s activist and scholarly careers, as well as his critiques of the mainstreaming of the gay and lesbian movement.

SFBG We’re approaching the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the symbolic event of early gay liberation, and I’m wondering if you think there’s any of this liberationist spirit left in the gay movement.

Martin Duberman Well, I guess it depends on how you define liberationist. In the early days, gay liberationists were aware of a great many other ills in the society besides their own. Their own were real, and they were well aware of that. But there was a lot wrong, they felt, with the system, and their central goal was to challenge many of the established institutions and values. Today most LGBT people seem to think of themselves — certainly they tell the mainstream — as "just folks," except for this little matter of a separate sexual orientation. That they’re patriotic Americans and they want the same things that everybody else wants, etc.

SFBG In Waiting to Land, you cover this assimilationist turn in the gay movement. You talk about the March on Washington in 1993 where gays in the military became the dominant issue. You also talk about Stonewall 25, which happened one year later in New York City, where one of the biggest fundraising events was held onboard a U.S. aircraft carrier, and where corporate sponsorship arguably overwhelmed any celebration of resistance, history, or culture. Has anything changed in the last 15 years?

MD The early ’70s were still fueled by the countercultural movement of the ’60s, and the early gay movement built on the insights and the demands of, say, the feminist movement or the antiwar movement. I mean there was so much going on in the ’60s, and together it all amounted to a challenge to the so-called experts. There was an across-the-board challenging of many traditional views, so finally that began to seep down, or up — whatever it is — to us. That’s the whole trouble, I think, with the assimilationist turn. It denies our own gay past and our culture and our politics. I mean, they’re willing to throw all that away in order to make stronger the claim that we’re just folks.

SFBG And do you feel like mainstream gay people have become more heterosexualized? I mean in that particular way of embracing long-term committed partnership, monogamy, or now even marriage, as the only type of love or intimacy that’s valid?

MD Yeah. Once again, the banner of lifetime monogamous pair-bonding has been raised. Now some of that is the result of AIDS, in which people were scared to death, so they settled down into so-called permanent relationships. Not everybody. But many more than had done so in the ’70s.

SFBG When you talk about AIDS in Waiting to Land, it punctures the style of your writing. You’ll be writing something that’s more ruminative, and then you’ll have three or four sentences about a friend who died or a series of friends who died, and then you go back into your thoughts about something outside of that.

MD I think that’s right. It’s why I put that subtitle in. I say "mostly political," because when it came to the death of friends, I did talk about my personal feelings, and my sadness, whereas most of the time in Waiting to Land I’m talking about external events or public policies.

SFBG You yourself have played a role as both an insider and outsider in a variety of realms. In Waiting to Land, you deliver scathing critiques of the rigid hierarchies and competitive structures of academia. You talk about the homophobia of the straight left, and you talk about the limited agenda of the gay mainstream. You talk about the exclusiveness of establishment theatre and mainstream media. Yet you’ve also worked inside all these structures. So I’m wondering how these institutions have formed your politics and how you’ve helped to form or transform these institutions.

MD [W.E.B.] Du Bois, the great African American leader, once said something — I think he called it double vision. He said that although he had had a superb education and was accepted by mainstream whites, nonetheless he felt he was a spy in the culture, a spy who was bringing the news about the mainstream back to his own people. And on one level, I have had a very easy time passing — I went to very good schools, I was on the tennis team in high school, etc. Nobody, I think, or very few people, guessed that I was in fact homosexual, and I did my best to play along with that. I was very career-oriented, I was very competitive — I always wanted to be first in my class, win the best prize for an essay, and that’s where most of my energy went throughout my 20s. But then once the counterculture began, I sort of leapt on it. I was immediately sympathetic, and I wrote lots of essays during the ’60s in which I was very strongly on the side of the New Left. And then it took a while longer after that before I realized that of course the same applies to being gay.

SFBG In terms of your role as both insider and outsider, do you feel that that’s helped you to develop stronger critiques of all those institutions, whether on the straight left, in the gay mainstream, or in establishment theater and media?

MD I think so, because I knew the inner workings of many of these mainstream institutions, and so I was able to see the falsity of many of the attitudes, especially toward people who are not middle-class whites. White men, I should say.

SFBG I think one thing you’ve tried very deliberately throughout your career, whether as a writer, an academic, or an activist, is to build movement ties across lines of class, race, gender, and age. In the new book, you talk about trying to bring an awareness of queer and feminist issues into the straight left, and an awareness of race and class into the gay mainstream — and feeling mostly like you’ve failed.

MD I think it’s because the mainstream left is no more receptive — they all claim that, "well of course we believe you people should have your rights, and of course we’re tolerant of your lifestyle." But when it comes right down to it, you cannot get them to hang around long enough to listen to the ways in which queer values and perspectives might inform their own lives. They don’t believe that for a second. And that hasn’t changed at all. At least, if it has changed, I haven’t seen it.

SFBG And what about in terms of the other side of the equation? With the dominant agendas of the big gay institutions centering on marriage, military service, ordination into the priesthood, adoption, and unquestioning gentrification and consumerism, do you think that those particular emphases prevent a deeper analysis of structural issues of racism and classism?

MD Well, of course they do. Mainstream America is still further behind the gay movement in dealing with any of those issues. So when you’re bending your energy to turning into the mainstream, you’re simultaneously burying your awareness of the class and racial and economic divisions that continue to characterize our country.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) is the author, most recently, of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights) and the editor of an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull).

Dick Meister: Slavery and Segregation

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It was racism that in 1935 kept farm workers and domestics from being granted protection of U.S. labor law

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a print, broadcast and online reporter, editor and commentator.)

It’s been three-quarters of a century since enactment of the National Labor Relations Act that grants U.S. workers the basic legal right of unionization
– the right to bargain with employers on setting their wages, hours and working conditions.

But for all that time, two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law’s protections – farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.

Looking at ‘Looking In’

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More on SFBG.com:
>>Johnny Ray Huston’s take on the epic SFMOMA Robert Frank retrospective

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"All original art looks ugly at first," Clement Greenberg wrote in defense of modern art. Implicit in Greenberg’s statement is the sense that time would eventually vindicate what was seen as anathema to prevailing tastes. Such has been the fate of The Americans, Robert Frank’s once reviled, now iconic photographic poem that traces the warped, smudged, and tattered fabric of our nation. Now 50, Frank’s odd little book (initially published in France in 1958 and brought to these shores the following year by Grove Press) of old glories, hardened faces, ghostly jukeboxes, in-between moments, and public rituals that captured the social inequalities and strangeness entrenched in the everyday of postwar America still cuts to the quick.

Frank, in collaboration with curators at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has given his magnum opus something of the CSI treatment in "Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans." As its title suggests, "Looking In" offers an expanded view of the original volume’s 83 photographs (displayed in their original order, with each of the book’s four sections in its own gallery), incorporating contact sheets and other behind-the-scenes artifacts from the Guggenheim Fellowship-funded cross-country road trips Frank made with his wife and two kids in 1956 and ’57, as well as selections of Frank’s earlier and later photographic projects. But so much context and annotation to what was, even in the strictest sense, a self-contained work, often results in more noise than signal.

Frank pared his final choices from 20,000 frames, ordering the images in such a way to form daisy chains that relay visual puns, common themes, shared details (a decorative star motif or the position of a hand), and stark contrasts among them. A personal favorite occurs in a series of photographs that touch on driving, in which the tarpaulin covering a ride in Long Beach deflates in the next photo into the cloth draped over a car accident victim in rural Arizona. As with all art, the power and pleasure of viewing The Americans comes in discovering these subtle affinities and motifs by oneself. At times the interpretative cues offered by the explanatory texts all but erect a neon sign directing you toward significance. Some interpretive breathing room would’ve been nice.

Conversely, Frank’s conflicted relationship to his most famous work in the decades following its subsequent reappraisal and canonization by the art world — when he started to turn his attention to filmmaking — is shoehorned into a tantalizing but all too brief section, "Destroying The Americans," at the exhibit’s close. (Sarah Greenough’s excellent catalog essay of the same title goes into further detail.) It is curious to end a retrospective that largely adds to the hagiography already surrounding Frank’s work on such a sour, doubt-filled note. But perhaps it can be read as a warning to those who would be quick to call The Americans merely a reflection of its time. Frank’s "sad poem," as Jack Kerouac dubbed it in his introductory text to the American edition, may no longer look as ugly as it once did. But we are still a nation riddled by racism and poverty, worshipful of false prophets and political theater; a nation of gullible consumers, fervent believers, and drifters forever tethered to the horizon. As Frank himself said in response to initial criticism of the book, "It is important to see what is invisible to others — perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness."

That crazy feeling

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>johnny@sfbg.com

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Robert Frank, “San Francisco, 1956”

The world writes a story far beyond — or deeper and more twist-riddled than — any author’s imagination. How else to explain the fact that Robert Frank’s peerless photographic book The Americans turned 50 the same year that Barack H. Obama was elected president of the United States? Looking in — again, and again — at The Americans, thanks to a handsome new edition (Steidl, 180 pages, $39.95), or at "The Americans," thanks to a traveling exhibition connected to Frank’s landmark work, one finds a vision of this country that is anything but dated.

Jack Kerouac raved about the way Frank captured "that crazy feeling in America," and to be sure, even if his prosaic descriptions of Frank’s photos come off a bit redundant now, there’s still some insightful gold to be gleaned from his observation that Frank was always taking pictures of jukeboxes and coffins. There’s been no shortage of writing about The Americans since Kerouac’s at-times stifled response. Is there anything left to say about The Americans? If there’s anything left to say about America, the answer is yes.

There are infinite views. One is Frank’s very particular sense of place. For a San Franciscan, that means an untitled image of a couple on Alamo Square, perhaps the most iconic of at least three Bay Area pictures. Frank has cited this photo as his favorite in The Americans, because the facial expressions of the couple he’s caught unaware bring across loud and clear what an intrusive presence the photographer is by nature. But this shot also is a document of the Western Addition when it was a thriving African-American neighborhood. It’s existence confronts the face of San Francisco today.

In a Charleston, S.C., image from The Americans, a pampered, already entitled-looking snow white baby looks out from the cradling arms of a black maid whose face — seen in profile — is more fascinating and harder to read. The picture is a blunt image of race in the South, and of race in America on the eve of civil rights uprisings. It also raises an interesting side question: why did it take European exiles to photographically render that subject with candor? This keepsake of Charleston by the Swiss Frank is the black-and-white counterpart to the Technicolor ironies that German expatriate Douglas Sirk brought to the 1959 version of Imitation of Life. (Racism was flagrantly institutionalized during the making of The Americans, and Frank has long had an critical eye for U.S. institutions — a Frank film series at SFMOMA doesn’t just showcase the Beat work Pull My Daisy, it also includes Me and My Brother (1969) a look at this country’s concepts of mental illness that’s more personal than, and just as direct as, Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies (1967).)

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Robert Frank, “US 90, En Route to Del Rio, Texas”

For any person who has lived with The Americans — spent time over the years looking through its pages, locking eyes on a particular picture and contemputf8g it — there’s a peculiar card-shuffle déjà vu-gone-slightly-askew-or-anew feeling to encountering the same photos in succession along the walls. This is the experience of looking at "Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans,’" the Frank exhibition currently on view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Alongside rather than on top of one another, an alphabet of American hats point in different directions, each one reflecting a viewpoint. An array of flags mask people’s faces, or point sorrowfully toward the ground.

One facet or extension of "Looking At" explores Frank’s influences, and in turn, his influences on, American photography. To be sure, Diane Arbus’s trannies and butches and Lee Friedlander’s broadcast TVs owe a debt to Frank’s visions of censored-or-taken-for-granted everyday 20th century life. The through line from the Depression-era photography of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans to Frank’s look at a family crammed into a car in Butte, Mont., is obvious. Absent, though, are some definite predecessors and peers. Weegee’s hard-boiled naked city is nowhere to be seen — except in Frank (and frank) images such as one of people in Miami Beach. William Klein’s pictorial rephrasing of urban adspeak is absent save for a look at a department store in Nebraska, an arrow on the wall of a building in Los Angeles, or a newsstand in New York City or a sidewalk in New Orleans.

With one photo in The Americans, Robert Frank maDE gas pumps look like a series of tombstones, all gathered by a sign that declares SAVE. There are legions of artists today making images less contemporary or relevant. Take a look at The Americans, and you’ll find cowboys, starlets, funeral parties, boys in arcades, queens on stoops, leather rebels, bored or contemplative waitresses, street preachers, a parade of pedestrians, wheelers and dealers — and workers. Take another look at The Americans today, 50-plus years after it made its first impression, and you’ll probably find yourself.


LOOKING IN: ROBERT FRANK’S "THE AMERICANS"

Through Aug. 23, free–$15

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St, SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

ROBERT FRANK RETROSPECTIVE

Through June 27

Phyllis Wattis Theater

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

State of the movement

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news@sfbg.com

As local antiwar activists continue to oppose the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they are struggling to mobilize popular support under a presidential administration that is less overtly bellicose than the Bush regime.

Antonia Juhasz, author of The Bush Agenda (William Morrow, 2006) and last year’s The Tyranny of Oil (William Morrow), has worked with a number of Bay Area antiwar groups. Over coffee in the Mission District, she said much has changed since President Barack Obama took office.

"It’s an amazing victory for the antiwar movement that we pushed people to elect a president who pledged to end the Iraq war. Now our job is to make that pledge a reality," she said, visibly tired from long work on a report about Chevron Corp.’s profiteering in Iraq and even at home in Richmond, where it’s sued the city to block a voter-approved tax increase.

Juhasz argues that all U.S. troops and contractors should leave Iraq immediately and that all bases be closed. But Obama’s plan includes a slower withdrawal timeline and for some U.S. forces to be left there indefinitely.

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CodePink and Global Exchange, told the Guardian that Obama supporters need to realize that it’s fine to disagree with our first African American president on some policies. She described MoveOn.org, the prominent liberal organization that was a key player in Obama’s campaign, as "very top down," and focused on pro-Obama talking points. "It’s very hard because a lot of groups have become appendages to the administration."

Juhasz feels the antiwar movement needs to better communicate that "the organizing isn’t over when the campaign is over. Even if the leader agrees with you, they still need activists to push them."

But she acknowledges the difficulty of the task. "We want to keep from telling people they’re wrong. They won, which is great. But we need to say ‘You have the responsibility to keep organizing for the issues, not just the individual.’ It’s critically important to see beyond the leader, so it doesn’t become a cult of personality," she said, recalling that "under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, if there wasn’t a mass movement for revolutionary change, there wouldn’t have been a New Deal."

That kind of pressure is clearly not being exerted on Obama. Tom Gallagher, a San Francisco resident active with the Bernal Heights Democratic Club, told us during a March 21 San Francisco demonstration commemorating the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war, "If McCain had been elected there would be many more people here protesting. Obama is using the schedule Bush agreed to on pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq."

Gallagher grew more irked as he said, "Obama has sent 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. He’s getting a pass on it, and McCain wouldn’t."

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has continued to agitate against war and for social justice. Richard Becker, ANSWER’s Western Regional Coordinator, told us the relatively low turnout on March 21 was not surprising.

Becker said he sees Obama’s popularity as "elation" over Bush’s exit. But no matter how bad the past or good the intentions of a candidate, once the candidate is elected U.S. president, he said, "the job description is CEO of the Empire." Becker cautioned that it will take time for postelection euphoria to wear off and for people to realize that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are dragging on under Obama.

Local activist David Solnit, a mainstay of Direct Action to Stop the War, works with Courage to Resist, which supports military war resisters. The group also helps recruits fight "stop-loss," which sends soldiers back to Iraq for additional tours of duty without their consent. "Obama said he’s going to change it eventually, but we’re worried about right now," he said.

Courage to Resist organizer Sarah Lazare agrees with Solnit that peace activists should oppose U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Lazare says it’s important to communicate that "Afghanistan is not a good war" and that "terrorism is a tactic" that cannot be destroyed militarily.

"Measuring the number of people at a demonstration is not the only way to measure what’s going on," she said. Among her examples of ongoing, dynamic organizing is the work of Courage to Resist and Iraq Vets Against the War.

IVAW is directly organizing active-duty members of the military to engage in dissent. SF Bay Area chapter member Peter Schlange told us that their ranks are growing as the Iraq war continues.

IVAW is also challenging the Afghanistan buildup. In a recently passed resolution, the antiwar veterans group "calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces in Afghanistan and reparations for the Afghan people, and supports all troops and veterans working towards those ends."

Paul Kawika Martin, organizing and policy director for Peace Action, says his group wants all troops out of Iraq by 2010, with no "residual forces" or contractors left behind. Martin also says it’s important for activists to march and to lobby Congress. He stressed that both Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi lobbied for reform, and U.S. peace activists also need to do so.

Martin feels the peace movement will have an important impact on the new administration. "I don’t think he fears being too liberal," Marin told me. "But he wants to get things done, and like any politician he will be more pragmatic than we want him to be."

Martin said the troop escalation in Afghanistan was a concern for Peace Action. Martin is working with a group of 70 activists, think tanks, and aid workers who make up the Afghanistan Policy Working Group. He points to Reps. Raul Grijalva (now the co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus), Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters as key allies of antiwar activists in Congress. "We need to support them," he told me.

The antiwar movement itself also needs support, given that many of its top activists have been arrested repeatedly in the last six years.

Organizer Stephanie Tang with the World Can’t Wait dismisses hope for Democrats as a trap. She pointed to Nancy Pelosi’s early knowledge of torture and Obama’s recent announcement that the administration would block release of torture photos in the courts. In March 2008, Tang was arrested for allegedly obstructing police at a Berkeley demonstration opposing a military recruiting center.

Walter Riley, Tang’s lawyer, told the Guardian: "It’s my contention they identified Stephanie as a leader and are vioutf8g her constitutional rights to protest an illegal war."

Berkeley police referred inquiries to the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, which had not returned our call at press time. Riley said a Berkeley policeman "blind-sided her," and, holding his club horizontally, slammed Tang off her feet.

Police later attempted to get a statement from Tang while she was receiving medical treatment for injuries sustained during the incident. Berkeley police only later charged her with obstructing police at the march. Tang faces one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Undead again

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Resident Evil 5

(Capcom; Xbox 360, PS3)

GAMER With sales hovering around the 35 million mark, Capcom’s Resident Evil series has become less of a cash cow and more of a cash elephant. If I explained to you that Resident Evil 5 is in fact the seventh game in the main series, you might care, but suffice to say that between a bookshelf’s worth of games, novelizations, comic books, and feature films, expectations for the most recent installment are running high.

The new title takes place in Africa, where franchise stalwart Chris Redfield has arrived to be gruff and kill things in the name of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. The world is beset on all sides by misanthropes with syringes full of tentacle-rich zombifying megavirus, and only the BSAA can keep us from being turned into creatures that look like a walking combination of ground beef and motor oil.

Redfield is joined by his hard-bodied counterpart, Sheva Alomar, a local operative who accompanies the player throughout. Cooperation is the name of the game this time around, and you’ll have to pool resources and abilities to survive. Sidekick A.I. is one of gaming’s greatest deficiencies, and though Sheva’s is certainly passable (read: not a constant frustration), simple online and same-room co-op features make two-person play the optimal approach.

The game retains Resident Evil’s infuriating "stop-and-pop" controls, rooting you to the spot every time you aim your weapon. This is ostensibly to preserve the series’ survival-horror roots, although you would be hard-pressed to find anything scary during the game’s paltry 12 hours of gameplay. RE5 plays like an action title, with streamlined item-management and save utilities and a lot of relentless gunplay.

Visually, the game is stunning, creating an atmospheric and detailed world for the player to riddle with bullets. If only the other aspects of the game’s presentation had received even half as much attention — the writing is horrifically stilted, and the story is incomprehensible. Sometimes it seems like the designers are purposefully insulting the players’ intelligence — "The power is off. Maybe there’s some way to turn it back on" — and every single point is made with a sledgehammer. Early trailers for the game brought accusations of racism (white cop mows down herds of bug-eyed Africans), and while this charge loses potency in context, the appearance of grass-skirted "tribal" zombies who literally throw spears at you is extremely problematic. Thankfully, when your back’s to the wall and you’re running out of ammo, it doesn’t really matter if the zombies are black, blue, or green.

Representation

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS I’ve lost track of how many parts there have been in this three-part series. Hopefully more than three. Hopefully not more than six. I wouldn’t want to rock anyone over the ridge. Same time, I do want to show off my new neighborhood.

So: Rockridge Cafe. Been there twice, and both times I got the same thing, the Italian scramble, which is great. They also have ricotta cheese pancakes, and a lot of other cool stuff, but I’m telling you: Italian scramble. Sausage, provolone, some other things, eggs of course, and I think parsley. The potatoes aren’t real good.

But speaking of scrambled Italians … I’m on the train again, coming home, and my right eyeball is all a-wobble in its socket. I needs me a night of completely horizontal, unrattled sleep, and of course a long bath.

When I returned up from one of many trips to the toilet, I accidentally attracted the attention of a black man of color, who addressed me as Sweetie or Baby or Honey — I forget which because I was so astounded by the next words out of his mouth. He liked my perfume, he said. What was it?

"My perfume?" I said, stalling for something smart-ass. It worked! "Oh, that’s Eau de Three Days On The Train," I said.

He laughed and all the people in the seats around him laughed.

I’d have left it at that, but he was wearing a black doo-rag and a Raiders jersey and he had a beautiful ruby set in the middle of his one front tooth, so, recognizing the potential for a date with a hometownish boy (I just know there’s a cooler way to say that) … I sniffed myself and said, "Gee, do you like it? Really?"

"Come here," he said, still laughing. And that was it. The whole train had to put up with us for the rest of the way. Which was Sacramento. I’d misread him.

He didn’t misread me. There is a class of man, thank God, which recognizes and appreciates the Kind of Woman That I Am. A chicken farmer. Well, a recovering chicken farmer.

Whereas my man is a recovering gangster. Between slow deep kisses, copped feels, and heartfelt professions of "representation," he explained to me about L.A., drugs, drug dealing, and how, if I understood him correctly, he’d killed some people.

It’s important, especially in the early stages of romance, to establish common ground, so I told him about having killed my chickens. "But not these last ones," I said, to be clear. "I gave them away."

He kept looking at me, into me, smiling, laughing, and shaking his doo-ragged head, saying things like, "Girl, you are so cool." And, "Girl, you are the bomb." And he liked my hat and how did he find me and he knew every time he watched me walk down the aisle how real I was. And how real he was.

What else he was, of course, was drunk. And worried about his breath. So you know, there is something very touching about an ex-gangster who is self-conscious about his breath.

Which was fine, by the way, so I gave him my number, and agreed in spirit to the terms of our "representation."

I think I’m his woman.

Yeah, that’s how it goes: I am his woman, and he is my man, and when we are out with his homos, or homies (or something like that), I represent him and he represents me, and when we are not together I have his back. He has mine. I like this!

In fact, we both had the chance to prove ourselves on the train. A young white rap-ripping poseur from the suburbs of somewhere disrespected my man’s woman by "informing" him, when he went to get a beer, that, yo, he was kicking it with a dude.

As if after half a day of heart-to-heart and hand-to-body he didn’t know exactly what kinda woman his woman was! Well, my man is no poseur. He comes from a sexually diverse family, and a tough, diverse, forward city, and, in fact, he did have my back.

However, in the aftermath of the ensuing hard feelings, the bigoted wannabe’s racism gurgled to the surface too, and she had the bad sense to call my man a "niggah." Then, when that didn’t go over so well, she changed her pronunciation to "nigger." And spitted the word, repeatedly, with venom.

I had to pull my man away before something happened that might be construed as drunk and disorderly. Back in our seat, he cried. And I represented him.

ROCKRIDGE CAFE

Daily: 7:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

5492 College, Oakl.

(510) 653-1567

No alcohol

MC/V

Ending war

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› sarah@sfbg.com

As Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama takes the reins of power, the peace movement is watching to see if he will follow through on foreign policy campaign promises — and preparing to apply pressure if he doesn’t.

CodePink has compiled a list, "President Obama’s Promises to Keep," taken from his campaign statements on which activists intend to hold him accountable. These promises include a pledge to end the war on Iraq, close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, reject the Military Commissions Act (which critics say violates the civil rights of people deemed enemy combatants), adhere to the Geneva Convention, work to eliminate nuclear weapons, support direct diplomacy with Iran without preconditions, and abide by international treaties.

But as CodePink’s Media Benjamin noted in an article that was published in the Huffing ton Post last summer, the peace movement helped Obama beat Sen. Hillary Clinton, who supported the invasion of Iraq, in the primaries — only to see Obama begin talking tough on Afghanistan and pledging to essentially escalate the war there.

"This has come back to hit us in the face during Barack Obama’s Middle East trip, where he called for sending 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan," Benjamin observed, noting the high death tolls of both US soldiers and innocent Afghans almost eight years after the US invasion.

"The Taliban has gained new strength, opium production has soared, and Osama bin Laden has not been found," Benjamin wrote. "And amid it all, Afghan people continue to be among the poorest in the world, its women continue to be oppressed and the US has not succeeded in rebuilding Afghanistan."

But Benjamin acknowledged that it’s not enough to simply say "troops out now."

"We, the peace movement, need to come together and develop a strategy before our troops are sent from the ‘bad war’ in Iraq to the ‘good war’ in Afghanistan," Benjamin warned.

Given Obama’s naming of Clinton as his Secretary of State and his pledge to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Benjamin reiterated her belief that increasing troop levels is not going to help subdue a country that has resisted invasions from the likes of Genghis Khan and the Soviet Union.

"Yes, it’s a complex region, but what has history taught us about it?" Benjamin told the Guardian last week. "That foreigners get defeated. Yes, maybe by increasing troops they’ll get to stay for a few more years, but in the end, they leave with their tail between their legs, having suffered more deaths and without imposing their will."

"Theirs is a very tribal culture, so it’s not easy to get a centralized government," added Benjamin, who first visited Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, at the height of the US-led invasion. "And the oppression of women, unfortunately, preceded the Taliban."

Observing that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has admitted to engaging in low-level talks with the Taliban, which the Saudis helped broker, Benjamin claimed that "plenty of US military reps know that a negotiated settlement is the way forward."

"Our concern is that women will be at the table when that happens and that women’s issues and rights are at the front," Benjamin stressed. "So, we want a negotiated settlement with a more moderate faction of the Taliban. And troops going into Pakistan isn’t the solution, either."

Benjamin, who attended Clinton’s Jan. 13 Secretary of State confirmation hearings, says she got the sense that Obama’s administration wants a policy overhaul.

"So, yes, we are sending 30,000 more troops, but we are not pretending it is a surge, à la Iraq. It’s more of a holding pattern," Benjamin said. "We are hoping this is going to be an administration that disengages. Maybe the focus in the US on the economy will help."

A press release sent out on the eve of Obama’s inauguration by Courage to Resist and Direct Action to Stop the War, a San Francisco–based organization that coordinated nonviolent opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, stated that both groups are urging the new President not to escalate the war in Afghanistan, to stop attacks inside Pakistan, and to cut military aid to governments that violate human rights or international law, "such as Israel, in what Amnesty International calls an ‘unlawful attack’ on Gaza."

The release came just days after Clinton said, during her confirmation hearing, that she and Obama "understand and are deeply sympathetic to Israel’s desire to defend itself under the current conditions, and to be free of shelling by Hamas rockets. However, we have also been reminded of the tragic humanitarian costs of conflict in the Middle East, and pained by the suffering of Palestinian and Israeli civilians."

"This must only increase our determination to seek a just and lasting peace agreement that brings real security to Israel; normal and positive relations with its neighbors; and independence, economic progress, and security to the Palestinians in their own state," Clinton elaborated, adding that Obama is committed to "responsibly ending the war in Iraq and employing a broad strategy in Afghanistan that reduces threats to our safety and enhances the prospect of stability and peace."

In the November 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs, Barnett Rubin, director of Studies at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, outlined the steps that they believe are critical for those serious about ending the ongoing chaos in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond.

Stating that sending more troops to Afghanistan "would be insufficient to reverse the collapse of security there," the authors opined that "A major diplomatic initiative involving all the regional stakeholders in problem-solving talks and setting out road maps for local stabilization efforts is more important."

Arguing that such an initiative would reaffirm that the West as a whole is committed to the long-term rehabilitation of Afghanistan and the region, they recommended that the West — with support from if not led by the US — back that commitment with measures to address economic development, job creation, the drug trade, and border disputes.

"The goal of the next US president must be to put aside the past, Washington’s keenness for "victory" as the solution to all problems, and the United States’ reluctance to involve competitors, opponents, or enemies in diplomacy," Rubin and Rashid wrote. "

But the A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition is reemphasizing the importance of building an independent people’s movement and ending imperialist occupations, wherever and whenever they occur. "We are for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan," San Francisco–based A.N.S.W.E.R. organizer Saul Kanowitz told us. "There are those in the Obama administration who say that Iraq is the wrong war, in the wrong place, but we are against all US imperial conquests abroad."

Noting that he doesn’t believe there is a fundamental difference between Bush’s and Obama’s policies on Afghanistan, Kanowitz says, "It’s just a tactical difference … withdrawing US troops from direct engagement with Iraq, because they don’t believe US can’t win there, and redeploying them to Afghanistan, where they believe they can — it’s the same strategy. It’s about maintaining dominance.

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