San Francisco Archives — Page 125 of 517 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Life’s a gas

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November 6, 2012

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO OK, first of all, there is now the first all-night whipped cream supply delivery service in the world right here in SF — the evocatively named Hippie Gap. “We do NOT condone ANY MISS use [sic] of our products!!!” says the About. “Whip-it! Original N2O” it then goes on, before linking to the Wikipedia entry for nitrous oxide. 10pm-10am, y’all. The best parts of rave may have been the stroboscopic aneurysms (and the bisexual Smart Drinks vendors): when the nitrous tank arrived the carnival truly began. But I’ll really sit up if someone bikes a gasmask greased with Vick’s VapoRub to my stoop. Screw your Backstreet Boys crap, that’s when the ’90s really will be back.

Also, right now there is a gang of kick-ass, stiletto-heeled Estonian girls in Miami getting vulnerable rich businessmen drunk at “Russian-style” bars and tricking them into buy extravagantly tacky things like Dom Perignon and boatloads of caviar. They are known as the B-Girls and they grifted one poor slob out of $48,000. They are kind of my girl-gang heroes? Well, right after Pussy Riot, Foxfire, Steel Magnolias, the Mi Vida Loca cholas, and the Sisterhood of the Transgender Pants.

MAYA JANE COLES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShMAgi_d77w

Young Brit phenom has been on an unstoppable tear the past few years, and while the hype has cooled somewhat, the skills have stayed white hot. Jazz-eared, soulful tech-house and killer bass augmentation swing wonderfully wide across a variety of moods, and always hit the spot. With local favorites Moniker and Brian Bejarano.

Thu/8, 9pm, $20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com

STARKEY

Ethereal Philly street bass hero bangs the floor out with his futuristic swoops and sticky-starlight arpeggios — get a preview of new album Orbits, dropping in December, at new beats ‘n bass party Sway. Soulful fellow bass-face Kastle, of San Francisco and awfully good looking, dubs it up to open.

Thu/8, 9pm, $10–$15. 330 Ritch, SF. starkeyandkastle.eventbrite.com

ASC

A sweet night of thoughtful techno that doesn’t shy away from rippling drum and bass ecstasy from this grown-up veteran of the UK hardcore scene. Local smarties Ghosts on Tape, Bells and Whistles, and Mossmoss jumpstart the sophisticated, super-danceable aural vibes at the monthly As You Like It party.

Fri/9, 10pm-late, $10–$20. Beatbox, 314 11th St., SF. www.ayli-sf.com

MOUNT KIMBIE

A lineup to make cerebral bassheads’ hearts go boom. Transcendent UK duo Mount Kimbie aren’t afraid to take you off the rails and down a winding trail with their live sets. Gorgeous Floridian tech-dubber XXYYXX also appears, with SF electronic dreamer Giraffage (“Feels” is one of my fave 2012 tracks), D33J, Dials, and the Lights Down Low nutters.

Fri/9, 10pm-3am, $17–$20. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

RAREBITS

One of the cutest little secrets of nightlife music nerds has been this wildly eclectic night of, well, rare bits of sonic loveliness and genius off-kilter projections, put on by three cute bearish guys and tucked away in gay bar Truck. For this anniversary free-for-all, they’ve invited 16 DJs (including residents Chicken, Bearno Kardashian, and Bobby Please) to spin 20-minute sets of yummy, weird stuff. Plus there’ll be pop-up food from Two Tarts and a Stove. Delish.

Fri/9, 6pm-2am, free. Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF. rarebits.tumblr.com

ALL NIGHT LONG

If you’ve just moved here from another planet, or know a friend who really needs to catch up, witnessing classic DJ Garth take the decks for a fabuloso marathon five-and-a-half hour set in the Public Works loft — well, that’s the perfect crash course in 20 years of San Francisco dance music.

His titillatingly wicked blend of psychedelic rock, cosmic disco, acid house, and pagan grooves will have you howling at the moon right quickly, friend.

Sat/10, 10pm-3:30am, $7. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

NON-STOP BHANGRA DIWALI CELEBRATION

Meanwhile, downstairs at Public Works, one of my favorite monthly parties celebrates the Indian festival of lights, Diwali, with a bhangra-riffic blowout, with the dholrythms dancers, live dhol drummers, and DJs Jimmy Love, rav-E, Santero, and Harvi Bhachu. It all kicks off with a seriously great bhangra flashmob and procession at 16th Street and Valencia at 9pm. Bring a light and let it shine!

Sat/10, 9pm-3am, $10–$15. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

The displaced businesses

Andrew Lam

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November 6, 2012

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news@sfbg.com

Grant’s Tobacconists is a rare San Francisco business that can trace its roots all the way back to the Gold Rush. For more than 160 years, the company has been selling cigars, pipes, tobacco tins, house blends, and smoking accessories; legend has it Emperor Norton was among the early customers. It’s also been home to California’s first and largest walk-in humidor, and one of the only tobacco shops offering its customers a lounge area to smoke and relax in.

As of last month, however, you won’t be able to find Grant’s in San Francisco. A storefront on Market and 2nd Street has been home to the outfit since 1963 — but now, as a new gold rush hits the Market Street corridor, the rent has gone too high. Grant’s lost its lease; what may be the oldest continuously operated small business in San Francisco is now homeless.

“It started as off them wanting to renovate and build into our space in the humidor,” Jason Quijano, the store manager, said. “It seemed to me they just wanted us out. They definitely want to increase the rent in here and overhaul everything.”

My Dutch Bike, right across the street from Grant’s, also lost its home — under similar circumstances. The company is owned by Oscar Mulder and Soraya Nasirian and sells family-friendly, handmade Dutch city bicycles that allow people to ride safely around town with a small child in tote.

“We started in 2009. My husband is Dutch,” Nasirian said. “We had a little baby and rode our bikes in Holland with our son up front. It was an amazing and eye-opening experience to be able to ride with my little one on my bike. It was liberating,”

For three and a half years, they’ve operated out of 575 Market Now, if you’re looking for one of the Dutch specialty bikes, you’ll have to order it online or hike up to 60 Gate Five Road in Sausalito, where the new store is.

SIGN OF THE TIMES?

Small businesses in San Francisco lose their leases all the time; rents go up, landlords want to renovate buildings … it’s just part of life for local entrepreneurs.

But the rent hikes along Market Street may be an indicator of a new wave of changes driven by the surge in tech money.

While Mayor Ed Lee is happily touting the changes that have come to Market Street — with tech companies drawn to the formerly rundown mid-Market area by healthy tax breaks — there’s a downside to San Francisco economic booms. As landlords scramble to get in on the cash coming from companies willing to pay high rents, the little folks get pushed out.

That happened on a grand scale between 1999 and 2001, when the dot-com boom drove up rents and forced community businesses and institutions out. One of the most famous battles revolved around what was then the Bay View Bank building on 22nd and Mission streets, where a dot-com called Bigstep took over space that had been used by community-serving businesses (immigration lawyers, tax advisors, nonprofits). All of the existing tenants were forced out; many left the city. Across the street, a dance studio that served hundreds of people and several organizations was evicted to make room for a dot-com.

It’s a challenge that the city can’t seem to handle: How do you do economic development in an area that needs it without forcing longtime tenants who have reasonable rents out of town?

Thea Selby, a candidate for District 5 supervisor, runs a small business that’s a direct victim of the Twitter Effect. Her company, Next Step Marketing, works with magazines, online entities, and occasionally newspapers. She and her seven employees were recently displaced after 10 years at Market and Mason.

“The landlord came to us about three months before our lease was up and said, ‘We’re going to raise the rent on this entire floor. We’re going to take everybody out of here and we’re going to put a high tech company in here because we can get 2-3 times the rent.’ They were very blunt about it,” Selby said.

“The city talks about the revitalization of mid-Market and it’s still pretty dismal out there. But the rents are going through the roof. They think we’re going to have a great high tech company and they’re going to give us 5,000 jobs, so they bend over backwards for these companies and ultimately end up screwing the small businesses that are here in the boom and in the bust.”

Now an entire floor of small locally owned businesses is looking for office space — and some may be lost to the city altogether. Selby said she and others are looking east, towards Oakland.

HUGE SPECULATION

It’s the same story up and down the city’s major artery as San Francisco faces what John Kilroy, the head of the giant Kilroy Realty Co., told investors recently is the hottest commercial real estate market ever. J.K. Dineen, the Business Times reporter who covers real estate, quoted Kilroy saying, “I’ve never seen so much visible demand.”

Chris Daly, a former San Francisco supervisor who recently shut down his bar, Buck Tavern, at 1655 Market, said the increasing rents made it impossible for him to stay in business.

“In discussions about the new lease for space, the property manager did mention mid-Market revitalization as a reason why the building owner was holding out for what she was holding out for,” he told us. “Clearly in the last year, there’s been huge speculation on commercial property. There’s vacant spaces with asking prices that are pretty ridiculous.”

He explained that the neighborhood is no longer friendly to an inexpensive operation: “I wanted to have a community-oriented type of place with reasonable prices. Unfortunately, the rent that was being asked would not allow that kind of format to work.”

San Francisco Scooter Centre is on the ground floor of a boxy, three story, red-brick building on 10th Street, two blocks south of Market. Owner Barry Gwin says his business has been booming since the recession hit because scooters are a cost-effective alternative to driving when gas prices increase. Over the eight years, he’s been at his current location he’s seen other businesses on the block leave and, despite his success, he knows his time will come.

“It sucks,” he says. “I know I won’t be here in four years.”

Others aren’t as optimistic. Around the corner is a small nonprofit where an employee says she read in a local paper that her landlord sold her building to a developer who plans to build a hotel. After five years at the same address, her organization is going to have to find somewhere else to go.

In the second quarter of 2012, mid-Market’s vacancy rate was above 29 percent — high if you consider the Financial District’s vacancy rate is sub 10 percent. But as the end of the year approaches, that vacancy rate has fallen seven points.

John Bozeman of the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of San Francisco sees the neighborhood’s appeal. “If I was trying to lease commercial space, I’d say it was attractive because it’s near SoMa which is at capacity or near it,” said Bozeman. “If you look at the Twitter headquarters, that’s probably the biggest footmark on Market and tech survives around like-minded people.”

There are some who have no fear of the coming changes. At the corner of Market and South Van Ness is a small eatery called the Pastry Cupboard. From her restaurant’s window, owner Chona Piumarta points to a run-down hotel she calls an eyesore. And across the street is a parking lot she believes will be demolished for condos. She said new development is necessary for the area and she isn’t concerned about big high tech companies like Twitter moving in.

“I’m not worried. We actually do business with Twitter. They order here occasionally and we deliver to them.”

Editor’s notes: The flood at home

Andrew Lam

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November 6, 2012

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EDITORS NOTES My brother was lucky — the old-growth maple and oak trees around his house in Putnam Valley, NY didn’t fall over, and his roof didn’t blow off. The electricity was off for a week, which meant the water pump didn’t work, but he hauled buckets up from a nearby stream to flush the toilets. He heats with a wood stove. He’d stocked a few cases of beer in advance and filled up the truck with gas.

“It’s an inconvenience,” he told me. “But we’re fine. We’re rednecks; the fear the IRS, not hurricanes.”

But he’s 50 miles north of New York City — where people aren’t so fine. When I was in college, we used to go to hang out on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey in the summer; it’s not there any more. Staten Island is an utter disaster area. Parts of Long Island may never recover.

Hurricanes weren’t part of the picture when most of New York was developed; Sandy was what you would once call a 100-year storm. Now, the weather folks are saying, this sort of thing will be fairly common. The mid-Atlantic is warmer. The tides are higher. We’ve already changed the climate dramatically, and we aren’t doing nearly enough to change direction.

So unless something radical happens, big sections of the world’s leading financial center are going to be underwater fairly often.

Jeffrey Mount, professor of geology at UC Davis, was on KQED’s Forum this morning talking about how incredibly expensive it is to protect low-lying urban areas against the now-inevitable storm surges and flooding; we’re talking multiples of tens of billions of dollars. And, he said, if the business community doesn’t step up, it isn’t going to happen.

And when he talked about the “business community,” he wasn’t just talking about New York. It’s no secret that the Bay Area is also in a precarious position, not just because of the earthquake we all know is coming but because we’re in a coastal area, too, and the waters of the Bay are rising, and if you put together an El Nino year, a king tide and one of those big wet storms out of the West … it’s not going to be pretty.

And nobody in the Bay Area seems remotely prepared.

Imagine flooded BART and Muni tunnels, underground electrical transformers exploding, sewers backing up, power off for days or more, a foot or two of water in the Financial District. And it would be worse on the Peninsula, where, Mount noted, Google, Facebook, and Apple could find their headquarters inundated and unusable.

The point is that climate change and its impacts, particularly on sea-level rise, are an issue right here at home. Since 2009, SPUR, the normally conservative think tank, has been doing studies and reports and talking about everything from massive new investments in sea walls to wetland restoration to “strategic retreat” — that is, moving residential and commercial development away from shorelines — but I don’t see any of that happening.

A lot of downtown San Francisco — and the Marina, and parts of the Mission and the Southeast — are built on fill. That land used to be water. Unless we’re planning to act like the Netherlands, and cut off our waterfront with big dikes, they may be underwater again.

It took 50 years to build the existing seawall. Protecting the low-lying areas is a long-term project. And what I see the business community in San Francisco talking about is tax breaks.

Big picture, folks.

An icon’s icons

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 6, 2012

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arts@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART The new Jasper Johns retrospective currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opens not with his seminal 1955 painting Flag, but with one much less well known from 1956, a painted object titled Canvas. That work is made from a wood stretcher frame and canvas panel turned around to face the wall, the entire back of the thing covered in gray encaustic. Above it on the wall is a quotation from Johns, “I’ve always considered myself a very literal artist.”

This greeting at the show’s entrance is meant to tell you two things: that you may not be seeing all the most iconic works by one of the world’s most famous living artists, and that you’ll want to take this one slowly, since you’re going to be presented with a methodical review of Johns’ handling of artworks as objects. The central narrative of this excellent show — comprising some 90-plus works, some new and never before exhibited — is Johns’ continuing inquiry into the relationship between what an artwork is as an object and what it depicts.

The first two galleries are dedicated to Johns’ Numbers works, which bookend his nearly 60-year career. The numbers stand in for the other early works, the flag and target paintings that made him an immediate star in the late 1950s and announced the arrival of the post-Abstract Expressionist era. The room is framed by a high key oil painting titled 0 through 9 (pun probably intended), in which a stack of superimposed numerals competes with loud bursts of brushed color. Also in the same room is 1959’s White Numbers, a large relief grid of ordered numerals painted in very thick white encaustic. That impasto grid, texture and all, recurs in a cast bronze wall work from 2005, and a silver sculpture from 2008. Likewise, 0 through 9 is shown also as a charcoal drawing, a lithograph, and a lead relief.

The thing about numbers, of course, is the same about targets or flags. Namely, a painting of a flag is in fact a flag (distinct from how, say, a painting of a tree is not actually a tree). Letting this sink in and acknowledging that Johns is interested in the literal facts (pun intended here, too) of painting and sculpture helps frame how you encounter the rest of the works on display. From start to finish of the show, Johns’ works slowly build in visual and textual intricacy, but tend to circle around this same main refrain.

Johns wants you to understand the complex objects he’s creating, but that doesn’t mean he’ll make it easy. Proceeding by a kind of diffracted metonymy, the various components in Johns’ artworks are both meant to be exactly whatever they are, and also to stand in for a set of other things that also might have been included. This is made explicit in the way Johns mulls over compositions, and transmutes them across media, recasting — sometimes literally — a work in different iterations. Compounding this self-reflexivity, you’ll find statements once proposed as standalone artworks recur later as motifs or referents.

In other hands, this activity might be inexcusably hermetic or academic, but in Johns’ best works the effect is to establish at once both a harmonic resonance between concepts and a continual scrutiny of his own conclusions. For example, in the 1970s-80s Crosshatch paintings, you notice that same numerical grid from 20 years prior, this time reintroduced as the underlying compositional structure of works like Usuyuki (1979-81) or Scent (1973-74). Or, beginning with his 80s Seasons series and continuing to his new Shrinky Dink and Bushbaby images, entire compositions from past works are miniaturized and sampled in new ones, in a highly complex virtualization that juxtaposes metonymy with metaphor. When it works it is astonishing.

It’s axiomatic that an artist will return to established precepts over the course or her career, but few have done so with the explicitness of Johns, who uses his own process as fodder for new deconstructions and assemblages. That the show contains several new works and two new series suggests that Johns, now 82, is not done yet. *

JASPER JOHNS: SEEING WITH THE MIND’S EYE

Through Feb. 3

SFMOMA

151 Third St., SF

www.sfmoma.org

ALSO RECOMMENDED:

MARIE BOURGET, KENNETH LO, AND DANIEL SMALL

Marie Bourget’s arabesque paintings take from tile work and ceramics and combine them with translations of Walt Whitman to lovely effect. Through Nov. 22, Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph, Oakl; www.johanssonprojects.com

JAMES STERLING PITT

Pitt’s painted wooden sculptures recall both Jonathan Lasker and Richard Tuttle. And that ain’t a bad thing. Through Dec. 8, Eli Ridgway Gallery, 172 Minna, SF; www.eliridgway.com

ROBERT SAGERMAN

Sagerman’s paintings reimagine Georges Seurat’s pointillism as luminous color field paintings. Through Dec. 22, Brian Gross Fine Art, 49 Geary, Fifth Flr., SF; www.briangrossfineart.com

Win tickets to The Bold Italic Presents: The Haberdash

Maria Poblet

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November 6, 2012

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Win tickets to The Bold Italic Presents: The Haberdash

Celebrate menswear and style with an evening fashion, art, and music. A fashion show will showcase a number of excellent brands and local boutiques including the Artful Gentleman, Department Seventeen, Self Edge, Bonobos, D Structure, Freeman’s Sporting Club, and others.

Making this a real party, the event will also feature exclusive musical performances, courtesy of Willcall, from Wildcat! Wildcat! And AB & The Sea. Blogger, TV host, author, and man about town, Broke Ass Stuart, will host the evening and Popscene’s DJ Omar will spin records.

Launched in 2010, The Haberdash is an annual fashion event paying tribute to the San Francisco’s many men’s looks. This year’s event will also be raising money and awareness for Movember, the men’s health campaign supporting prostate and testicular cancer initiatives.

Buy tickets here. To win a pair of tickets ACT FAST! Email your full name to sfbgpromos@sfbg.com by Wed/7 at noon.

Wednesday, November 7 from 8-11pm @ Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF

Vote early and often

Zelda Bronstein

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November 6, 2012

1

The most expensive, ugliest, longest and most money-dominated election in my memory is finally winding down, and unless something really weird happens, Obama’s going to win another term. It’s likely the Democrats will control the Senate and the GOP will retain a narrow edge in the house, meaning four more years of gridlock (and possibly the end of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s career).

But the real message will be the role of big money — not just ordinary big money, but billionaire money — in California and San Francisco elections.

The state ballot has become a billionaire playground, with four of the ten initiatives created, written, put on the ballot and funded by stinking rich individuals who have their own personal and political agendas. In San Francisco, billionaires Ron Conway and Thomas Coates are trying to buy the District 5 election. An Arizona group linked to the Koch brothers is trying to shut down Prop. 30 (and leave the state in fiscal disaster).

And I’ve never seen as much real-estate money go into one supervisorial district.

We know both presidential campaigns are billion-dollar operations, and a lot of the same bad money is going into each of them. But on the local level, it’s a very different situation. There’s a concerted campaign here to drive progressives out of local office and install people more friendly to landlords and developers — at a time when the city’s going to be facing the greatest displacement pressure since the first dot-com boom. You don’t see the Association of Realtors putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into local races very often; there’s an opportunity here and they see it and they want to weaken tenant protections so they can make more money.

One of the best arguments in favor of district elections is that money doesn’t necessarily buy electoral success. In a district with roughly 30,000 voters, it’s possible to practice old-fashioned grassroots retail politics, to win by knocking on doors and going to house parties and meeting people. It’s not all about TV ads. And if that holds up with this election, Sup. Eric Mar — with a far superior field operation — will survive the blistering assault he’s under in District 1. If David Lee — who has taken the Mitt Romney approach and refused to speak to reporters (they might ask him a question or two about his inaccurate campaign dirt) — wins, it will be the greatest blow to democracy in San Francisco that we’ve seen in years.

On the other hand, if the D1 voters reject all that money and sleaze and Mar wins — and if the District 5 voters reject the billionaire money and someone other than London Breed wins — San Francisco will be sending a profound message: We don’t want your dirty money here, and our votes are not for sale.

Polls are open until 8. Vote early and often.

So-called DV group doing PG&E’s dirty work

Zelda Bronstein

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November 3, 2012

34

So-called DV group doing PG&E’s dirty work

Any pretense that the group called San Francisco Women for for Responsibility and an Accountable Supervisor is anything more than a downtown sham vanished with the arrival in District 5 mailboxes Nov. 3 of a mailer attacking Sup. Christina Olague for supporting public power.

The mailer uses pictures of Olague and Julian Davis — and that alone is a not-so-subtle attack on Olague. Davis has lost all credibility in the race, thanks to a string of allegations that he groped women.

It then goes after the two for “support [ing] a $20 million taxpayer giveaway to Big Oil.” The utterly misleading line is based on Olague’s vote to support Clean Power SF, a community choice aggregation program that has the support of public power advocates all over California.

Olague’s not supporting Shell Oil; she just realized, as did a supermajority of the board (including both left stalwarts David Campos and John Avalos and the far more conservative Scott Wiener) that the program makes sense for San Francisco and will lead in the long term to much greater energy self-reliance. The only ones putting out the Shell Oil line are PG&E and its house union, IBEW Local 1245.

Oh, and now a group that supposedly advocates for domestic violence victims.

This is a disgrace, an embarassment to the district and the city. Ron Conway and Thomas Coates are attacking Olague because they’re afraid she’ll vote against their development and landlord interests, not because they care about domestic violence.

This election matters, a lot. It’s clear where the big-money interests are; I hope D5 residents reject this attempt to buy the election.

Live Shots: another Nobunny Halloween

Tony Robles

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November 2, 2012

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Walking to the Brick and Mortar Music Hall on Halloween night for the Nobunny show, I was disappointed by how few costumed people were roaming the streets of San Francisco. Doesn’t anyone have time for fun anymore? Turns out I need not have worried. My Halloween-loving peers pulled through, turning the small, darkened venue into a veritable haunted house full of Jedi, devils, skeletons, cats, and so much more.

After dancing and moshing through four punk-and surf-tinged opening bands, the sold-out crowd was dripping with sweat, facepaint was a distant memory, and bruises were already beginning to materialize. Despite long delays between sets and fast-flowing booze, the crowd stayed amazingly positive for a Halloween punk show. When Nobunny still hadn’t come on by one in the morning, instead of growing tired and restless, the crowd seemed only to be getting more excited — and very, very drunk.

Still riding the high from Shannon and the Clams’ awesome, hits-heavy Misfits set — Oakland’s Shannon Shaw makes a better Danzig than Danzig — the crowd was ready and rowdy when Nobunny finally crawled onto the stage on all fours. His tangled hair, creepy, matted mask, and single scissorhand (a la Edward) looked quite at home in the costumed crowd. Barefoot, he hopped around the stage in a frenzy, bouncing, gyrating, howling, and snarling at the audience.

One moment I was watching some girls in the front row spank Nobunny’s cutoff-covered behind, and then after looking away for no more than two seconds, I turned around to see the infamously clothing-optional artist crouching on the stage in nothing but a moth-eaten sweater. Barely acknowledging his state of undress, Nobunny continued his commanding performance and full-body dance spasms.

Charging around the stage, phallus flopping, Nobunny made sure that this would be a Halloween to remember. Even though his was one of the shortest sets of the night, sadly clocking in at only about 30 minutes, Nobunny made every song count. He ripped through Halloween favorites like “Purple People Eater,” “The Monster Mash,” and “Ghostbusters” with lightning-charged energy. His husky, growled vocals lent a welcome grunge tinge to the classic tunes, and the audience responded gratefully, dancing and slamming into each other with renewed vigor.

About six songs in, he rasped, “This is our last song. It’s called, uh…any requests?” After a playful argument with audience members and a lot of name calling, the band charged through one final song before Nobunny shouted “Happy Halloween!” and hopped off the stage and out into Mission Street, leaving his pants behind.

True facts: there are at least 15 movies opening this week

Sue Vaughan

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November 2, 2012

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Pack up the leftover Halloween candy and head to the movies this weekend — what better way to escape election-related craziness and/or rest your liver after all that LET’S GO GIANTS damage you just did?

Your options are pretty spectacular, as well: intriguing Israeli doc The Flat, in which a Jewish filmmaker learns his grandparents counted a Nazi couple among their social circle (my interview with director Arnon Goldfinger here); bonkers 1987 rock ‘n’ roll taekwondo spectacular Miami Connection (Dennis Harvey’s take on this newly discovered instant cult classic here)

Plus, RZA’s The Man With The Iron Fists, an homage to chopsocky classics (with, I’m assuming, a much better soundtrack); Denzel Washington playing an airline pilot whose secret drinking problem comes to light only after he prevents a plane from crash landing in Flight; and Deep Dark Canyon, a NorCal-set thriller by former locals Silver Tree and Abe Levy starring Ted Levine.

And that’s not even the end of it! Read on for video game characters run amok, two found-footage horror flicks, a musically-inclined Pacific Film Archive program, tributes to Tony Bennett (speaking of the Giants) and Monty Python’s Graham Chapman, and, I kid you not … even more.

Amber Alert An audition tape for The Amazing Race quickly turns into an epic chase in this low-budget “found footage” drama. Arizona BFFs Nate (Chris Hill) and Sam (Summer Bellessa, wife of director Kerry Bellessa) — and Sam’s teenage brother, shaky-cam operator Caleb (Caleb Thompson) — notice they’re driving behind the very Honda that’s being sought by an Amber Alert. “Following at a safe distance,” as advised when they call the cops, leads to high-decibel arguments about how to handle the situation — and for the next hour-plus, the viewer is trapped in a car with two people communicating only in nails-on-chalkboard tones. Amber Alert‘s nonstop bickerfest is so tiresome that it’s actually a relief when the child molester character starts taking an active role in the story. Not a good sign. (1:20) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctkkn1qSYKw

The Bay Top-quality (i.e., realistically repulsive) special effects highlight this otherwise unremarkable disaster movie that’s yet another “found footage” concoction, albeit maybe the first one from an Oscar-winning director. But it’s been a long time since 1988’s Rain Man, and the Baltimore-adjacent setting is the only Barry Levinson signature you’ll find here. Instead, parasites-gnaw-apart-a-coastal-town drama The Bay — positioned as a collection of suppressed material coming to light on “Govleaks.org” — is a relentlessly familiar affair, further hampered by a narrator (Kether Donohue) with a supremely grating voice. Rising star Christopher Denham (Argo) has a small part as an oceanographer whose warnings about the impending waterborne catastrophe are brushed aside by a mayor who is (spoiler alert!) more concerned with tourist dollars than safety. (1:25) (Cheryl Eddy)

“Don’t Shoot the Player Piano: The Music of Conlon Nancarrow” The late Texarkana-born composer’s birth centenary is celebrated in this two-part (Fri/2 and Sun/4) program of films examining his unique contribution to 20th century music. Frustrated early on by the inability of standard musicians to play his incredibly complicated scores, he turned to composing for player pianos, with their greatly heightened capacity for producing density of notes and rhythms. A member of the American Communist Party, he returned from fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War to discover the U.S. government had revoked the passports of many citizens with similar political convictions. As a result, in 1940 he moved to Mexico, where he remained until his death 57 years later — his reputation remaining an underground musicologists’ secret until the early 1980s, in large part due to his disinterest in fame and dislike of crowds (he’d always avoided any gathering of over five people). But in his last years he became much more widely known, thanks in large part to fans like fellow composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who in one documentary here calls him “the most important composer of our time,” comparing him to Beethoven and saying “his work is completely, totally different from [his contemporaries].” Among the movies screening are Uli Aumuller and Hanne Kaisik’s 1993 German Music for 1,000 Fingers, in which the reclusive, elderly subject allows us into his studio to explain his (still somewhat inexplicable) methodologies. The brand-new, hour-long Conlon Nancarrow: Virtuoso of the Player Piano offers a posthumous appreciation of his life, music and influence. It’s a first film from James Greeson, a professor of music at the University of Arkansas who knew the man himself. Also featured are several international shorts that provide interpretive visual complements to Nancarrow pieces. His widow and daughter, as well as kinetic sculptor Trimpin and composer-former KPFA music director Charles Amirkhanian will appear at both PFA programs. Pacific Film Archive. (Dennis Harvey)

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

A Late Quartet Philip Seymour Hoffman is fed up playing second fiddle — literally. He stars in this grown-up soap opera about the internal dramas of a world-class string quartet. While the group is preparing for its 25th season, the eldest member (Christopher Walken) is diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s. As he’s the base note in the quartet, his retirement challenges the group’s future, not just his own. Hoffman’s second violinist sees the transition as an opportunity to challenge the first violin (Mark Ivanir) for an occasional Alpha role. When his wife, the quartet’s viola player (Catherine Keener), disagrees, it’s a slight (“You think I’m not good enough?”) and a betrayal because prior to their marriage, viola and first violin would ”duet” if you get my meaning. This becomes a grody aside when Hoffman and Keener’s violin prodigy daughter (Imogen Poots) falls for her mother’s old beau and Hoffman challenges their marriage with a flamenco dancer. These quiet people finds ways to use some loud instruments (a flamenco dancer, really?) and the music as well as the views of Manhattan create a deeply settled feeling of comfort in the cold —insulation can be a dangerous thing. When we see (real world) cellist Nina Lee play, and her full body interacts with a drama as big as vaudeville, we see what tension was left out of the playing and forced into the incestuous “family” conflicts. In A Late Quartet, pleasures are great and atmosphere, heavy. You couldn’t find a better advertisement for this symphonic season; I wanted to buy tickets immediately. And also vowed to stay away from musicians. (1:45) (Sara Vizcarrondo)

A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman Blessed with recordings made by Monty Python member Graham Chapman (King Arthur in 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Brian in 1979’s Life of Brian) before his death in 1989 from cancer, filmmakers Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson, and Ben Timlett recruited 14 different animation studios to piece together Chapman’s darkly humorous (and often just plain dark) life story. He was gay, he was an alcoholic, he co-wrote (with John Cleese) the legendary “Dead Parrot Sketch.” A Liar’s Autobiography starts slowly — even with fellow Monty Python members Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin lending their voices, much of the bone-dry humor falls disappointingly flat. “This is not a Monty Python film,” the filmmakers insist, and viewers hoping for such will be disappointed. Stick with it, though, and the film eventually finds its footing as an offbeat biopic, with the pick-a-mix animation gimmick at its most effective when illustrating Chapman’s booze-fueled hallucinations. In addition to opening theatrically, the film also debuts Fri/2 on premium cable channel Epix. (1:22) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIIMFHcC1Fc

The Loneliest Planet Travel broadens, they say — and has a way of foregrounding anxiety and desire. So the little tells take on a larger, much more loaded significance in The Loneliest Planet when contextualized by the devastatingly beautiful Caucasus Mountains in Georgia. In this film by Russian American director and video artist Julia Loktev, adventuring, engaged Westerners Nica (an ethereal Hani Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael García Bernal) hire a local guide and war veteran (Bidzina Gujabidze) to lead them on a camping trip through the wilderness. They’re globe-trotting blithe spirits, throwing themselves into new languages and new experiences, though the harsh, hazardous, and glorious Georgian peaks and crevasses have a way of making them seem even smaller while magnifying their weaknesses and naiveté. One small, critical stumble on their journey is all it takes for the pair to question their relationship, their roles, and the solid ground of their love. Working with minimal dialogue (and no handlebar subtitles) from a Tom Bissell short story, Loktev shows a deliberate hand and thoughtful eye in her use of the space, as well as her way of allowing the silences to speak louder than dialogue: she turns the outdoor expanses into a quietly awe-inspiring, albeit frightening mirror for the distances between, and emptiness within, her wanderers, uncertain about how to quite find their way home. (1:53) (Kimberly Chun)

The Other Son The plot of ABC Family’s Switched at Birth gets a politically-minded makeover in Lorraine Lévy’s The Other Son, in which the mixed-up teens represent both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. When mop-topped wannabe rocker Joseph (Jules Sitruk) dutifully signs up for Israeli military duty, the required blood test reveals he’s not the biological son of his parents. Understandably freaked out, his French-Israeli mother (Emmanuelle Devos) finds out that a hospital error during a Gulf War-era evacuation meant she and husband Alon (Pascal Elbé) went home with the wrong infant — and their child, aspiring doctor Yacine (Medhi Dehbi), was raised instead by a Palestinian couple (Areen Omari, Khalifia Natour). It’s a highly-charged situation on many levels (“Am I still Jewish?”, a tearful Joseph asks; “Have fun with the occupying forces?”, Yacine’s bitter brother inquires after his family visits Joseph in Tel Aviv), and potential for melodrama is sky-high. Fortunately, director and co-writer Levy handles the subject with admirable sensitivity, and the film is further buoyed by strong performances. (1:53) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCD00LLZmys

A Simple Life When elderly Ah Tao (Deanie Ip), the housekeeper who’s served his family for decades, has a stroke, producer Roger (Andy Lau) pays for her to enter a nursing home. No longer tasked with caring for Roger, Ah Tao faces life in the cramped, often depressing facility with resigned calm, making friends with other residents (some of whom are played by nonprofessional actors) and enjoying Roger’s frequent visits. Based on Roger Lee’s story (inspired by his own life), Ann Hui’s film is well-served by its performances; Ip picked up multiple Best Actress awards for her role, Lau is reliably solid, and Anthony Wong pops up as the nursing home’s eye patch-wearing owner. Wong’s over-the-top cameo doesn’t quite fit in with the movie’s otherwise low-key vibe, but he’s a welcome distraction in a film that can be too quiet at times — a situation not helped by its washed-out palette of gray, beige, and more gray. (1:58) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87E6N7ToCxs

Wreck-It Ralph Wreck-It Ralph cribs directly from the Toy Story series: when the lights go off in the arcade, video game characters gather to eat, drink, and endure existential crises. John C. Reilly is likable and idiosyncratic as Ralph, the hulking, ham-fisted villain of a game called Fix-It-Felix. Fed up with being the bad guy, Ralph sneaks into gritty combat sim Hero’s Duty under the nose of Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), a blond space marine who mixes Mass Effect‘s Commander Shepard with a PG-rated R. Lee Ermey. Things go quickly awry, and soon Ralph is marooned in cart-racing candyland Sugar Rush, helping Vanellope Von Schweetz (a manic Sarah Silverman), with Calhoun and opposite number Felix (Jack McBrayer) hot on his heels. Though often aggressively childish, the humor will amuse kids, parents, and occasionally gamers, and the Disney-approved message about acceptance is moving without being maudlin. The animation, limber enough to portray 30 years of changing video game graphics, deserves special praise. (1:34) (Ben Richardson)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLxP8snjdGc

The Zen of Bennett Landing somewhere between a glorified album making-of and a more depthed exploration, this documentary about famed crooner Tony of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” fame shows him recording last year’s all-standards Duets II disc. His vocal collaborators are an eclectic — to say the least — mix of mostly much younger artists including Norah Jones, John Mayer, Carrie Underwood, Willie Nelson, and Andrea Bocelli. Some pairings are clearly a matter of commerce over chemistry, while others surprise — Lady Gaga is better than you might expect, while Aretha Franklin is certainly worse. Most touching as well as disturbing is his session with the late Amy Winehouse, whose nervous, possibly hopped-up appearance occasions his most gentlemanly behavior, as well as genuine admiration for her talent. (Others on the record, including Mariah Carey and k.d. lang, do not appear here.) Unjoo Moon’s rather mannered direction includes little displays of temperament from the octogenarian star, and glimpses of his family life (which extends well into his work life, since they all seem to be on the payroll), but just enough to tease — not enough to provide actual insight. Still, fans will find this less than-definitive portrait quite satisfying enough on its own limited terms. (1:24) (Dennis Harvey)

The billionaire attack on D5

Zelda Bronstein

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November 2, 2012

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The attack on Sup. Christina Olague, funded by a couple of right-wing billionaires, is in full swing in District 5, with mailers, robocalls, a social-media buy and even TV ads. It’s a disgraceful effort to buy an election in the final week, a flood of sleaze that’s outrageous even by modern political standards.

On the surface, the PAC called San Francisco Women for Responsibility and an Accountable Supervisor is talking about domestic violence. One mailer features a woman whose daughter was killed by an abuser saying she is “appaled” that Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi still has his job — and that Olague voted not to throw him out. A 60-second TV ad features Ivory Madison, the Mirkarimi neighbor whose video was the centerpiece of the campaign to oust the sheriff.

But the PAC is entirely funded by Ron Conway, his wife Gayle, and Thomas Coates. Conway hasn’t been a leading voice on domestic violence issues, and neither has Coates — they are business people who are primarily interested in making money. In the case of Conway, he’s someone who has publicly announced that he wants to “take San Francisco back” from progressives and install more big-business-friendly politicians at City Hall. Coates is a real-estate investor who has spent a lot of time and money fighting to limit tenant-protection laws.

Why are these two so interested in the D5 race? Well, in an email, Conway told me that “the Committee that my wife Gayle and other women, including longtime anti-domestic violence advocates, have formed and that I and others support exists solely to oppose Christina Olague because she put her own politics ahead of women and the victims and survivors of domestic abuse.”

But it’s eminently clear that there’s a larger agenda here, that the wealthy donors are using the domestic violence issue to get rid of a supervisor who they see as not sufficiently friendly to their economic interests. And there’s probably a bit of payback involved: Olague defied the mayor with her Mirkarimi vote — and while a lot of observers still say this was all a setup to demonstrate her independence in time for the election, Conway, one of the mayor’s closest allies and advisors, clearly didn’t get that message.

Coates lives in Los Angeles. Conway lives in Pacific Heights. Neither of them has any connection the D5 — except for their desire to get rid of Olague. They’ve taken a real, serious issue — domestic violence — and used it to their own political advantage.

We haven’t endorsed Olague, but we know a shady scam when we see one, and that’s exactly what this is. The voters of District 5 should reject this kind of outside-influence politics and not let a couple of billionaires decide the future of their the city.

Record-breaking spending floods District 1 with political propaganda

Sasha Cuttler

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November 2, 2012

19

District 1 supervisorial candidate David Lee and independent expenditure campaigns supporting him have spent nearly $800,000 – shattering previous spending records for a district election – bombarding Richmond District voters with a barrage of mailers and other media pushing a variety of claims and criticisms about incumbent Sup. Eric Mar that sometimes stretch credulity and relevance.

But is it working? Or is the avalanche of arguments – much of it funded by “big money from Realtors, Landlords, and Downtown Special Interests,” as a recent Mar mailer correctly notes – feeding speculation that Lee would do the bidding of these powerful players on the Board of Supervisors?

Mar campaign manager Nicole Derse thinks that’s the case, arguing the Lee campaign would have leaked internal polls to the media if they were favorable, and it wouldn’t be escalating its attacks on so many fronts hoping for traction, such as yesterday’s press conference hitting Mar on the issue of neighborhood schools.

“They’re pretty desperate at this point and throwing anything out there that they can,” Derse told us, later adding, “I feel good, but we really have to keep the fire up.”

Mar and the independent groups supporting him, mostly supported by the San Francisco Labor Council, have together spent about $400,000. Most of the mailers have been positive, but many have highlighted Lee’s political inexperience and his connections to big-money interests, raising questions about his claims to support tenants and rent control.

Lee campaign manager Thomas Li, who has been unwilling to answer our questions throughout the campaign, did take down some Guardian questions this time and said he’d get us answers, but we haven’t heard back. On the issue of why the Realtors and other groups who seek to weaken tenant protections were supporting Lee, Li simply said, “Our position has been steadfast on protecting rent control and strengthening tenant protections.”

The Lee campaign has repeated that on several mailers – possibly indicating it is worried about that issue and the perception that Lee’s election would give landlords another vote on the board, as tenant and other progressive groups have argued – but most of its mailers recently have attacked Mar on a few issues where they must believe he is vulnerable, even when they distort his record.

Several mailers have noted Mar’s support for a city budget that included funding for a third board aide for each of the 11 supervisors – a budget the board unanimously approved – as well as his support for public campaign financing, despite the fact that Lee’s campaign has taken more than $150,000 in public financing in this election, 30 percent more than Mar’s. They have also criticized Mar for supporting the 8 Washington high-end condo project, even though Lee also voted for the project as a member of the Recreation and Parks Commission.

As this Ethics Commission graphic shows, Lee has been by far the biggest recipient of independent expenditures in this election cycle, with hundreds of thousands of dollars coming from the downtown-funded Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth and the Realtor-created Citizens for Responsible Growth.

Mar and his allies have hit back with mailers noting that most of the funding for the Chinese American Voter Education Project, Lee’s main political and communications vehicle in recent years, has simply gone to pay his $90,000-plus annual salary, which he didn’t fully report on financial disclosure forms required of city commissioners. They have also hit Lee for his support for the Recreation and Parks Department’s closure of recreation centers and other cuts while he “consistently supported privatization of our parks.”

At this point, it’s hard to know how this flood of information and back-and-forth attacks will influence District 1 voters, but we’re now days away from finding out.

Calaveras and chysanthemums: Where to celebrate Dia de los Muertos

Andrew Lam

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November 1, 2012

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I don’t know about you, San Francisco, but after the orange-and-black, champagne-and-candy-corn geyser that the past week has been, I’m ready for a little sobriety, a little quiet reflection, and a lot of community-crafted art (that vagina costume I saw walking down South Van Ness the other day notwithstanding.)

Thank goodness, the next few days are full of lovely Dia de los Muertos moments, and collections of altars honoring those who have passed continue to pop up in more and more places. I’ll even give up on harping on facepainted gringos for a moment. The Bay’s way may not be exactly how the holiday is celebrated in Mexico — but we have created a unique tradition of our own.

“Fluorescent Virgins”

“I realized we don’t talk about death, don’t bring the subject to surface even though we are extremely vulnerable to it,” SF State student Pilar Gordillo told me when I asked her why she was organizing a Dia de los Muertos altar exhibition. The resulting assemblage of shrines by six artists pays homage to passed loved ones, but with a distinctly contemporary patina, bringing the Day of the Dead celebrations all the way out to the Park Merced campus.

Through Nov. 8. Opening reception: Thu/1 5-8pm, free. SF State Cesar Chavez Student Art Center, 1650 Holloway, SF. Facebook: Fluorescent Virgins

Supper of the Souls

Raise money for the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts at a three-course meal in this neo-taqueria. On the menu are chicken with mole colorado, tamales, empanadas, arroz con leche, pan de muertos, and walls bearing art by the man who made La Catarina who she is today, turn-of-the-20th-century Mexican cartoonist Jose Guadalupe Posada.

Thu/1 6-9:30pm, $75. Tacolicious, 741 Valencia, SF. www.tacolicioussf.com

SOMArts’ altar installation

We love father-son team Rio and Rene Yañez, and the artistic duo’s curatorial powers shine at the yearly SOMArts altar exhibition. The cavernous main gallery of the arts center is turned into an atmospheric labyrinth of multimedia tributes to the dead, with some altars large enough to enter, sit down, and meditate on the fleeting nature of life.

Through Nov. 10. SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF. (415) 863-1414, www.somarts.org

Los Lupeños de San José

The dancers may not be spinning in full white-and-black face, but this edition of City Hall’s free dance series will teach you more about authentic Mexican culture than many of the other events on this list. This Latino troupe has been twirling its skirts since 1969, benefiting from cheorography and mentorship from dance teachers both here and south of the border.

Fri/2 noon, free. SF City Hall rotunda, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett Pl., SF. www.dancersgroup.org

North Berkeley Day of the Dead

Bay Area Day of the Dead: not just for the Mission anymore. This year, you can play La Catrina in the burgeoning restaurant district of North Berkeley — or, if you’re not just looking for an excuse to wear facepaint, view altars and mourn those who have recently passed with a candle and your community in the somber night-time processional.

Fri/2 community altars: 5-7:30pm; candle-lit procession 7:45-9pm, free. Shattuck and Rose, Berk. www.gourmetghetto.org

“Death on Installment/La Muerte En Plan de Pagos”

We love the Mission Cultural Center’s ability to push dialogue forward when it comes to Latino art, and this year’s Day of the Dead exhibition curated by Maurizzio Hector Pineda promises to continue its tradition of excellence deeply rooted in community. Wander the colorful displays, check out Aztec dancers, maybe even make a mask while the Mission roils around you in Muerto fesitivities.

Through Nov. 17. Gala reception: Fri/2 6:30-10pm, $5. Mision Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. www.missioncultural.org

Pre-procession sugar skull workshop

Galeria de la Raza was the original center of the Mission’s Dia de los Muertos celebrations, so it only makes sense that you would come here before this year’s procession begins to celebrate with the neighbors. The gallery has been holding workshops teaching the finer points of refined sugar artistry all through October — whip up a sugar skull of your own real quick on this day of Catarina and candle.

Fri/2 6pm, free. Galeria de la Raza, 2857 24th St., SF. www.galeriadelaraza.org

Mission District parade and altars

There’s no denying that the community-led, candle-lit procession and park full of homemade altars can be breathtakingly lovely. Arrive early at Garfield Park to tiptoe around meticulously, sometimes even extravagantly decorated tributes to dead family members and public figures. Add a note of your own to the interactive exhibits, and await the arrival of the costumed procession, whose inevitable approximations of La Catrina are a distinctly San Franciscan way of celebrating the holiday. The all-ages percussion group Loco Bloco will be massing up at 5:30pm in front of Brava Theater (2781 24th St., SF) if you’re looking for the hot spot for skeleton beats, and to get your face painted.

Fri/2 Procession: 6-7pm, free. Starts at Bryant and 22nd St., SF; festival of altars: 6-11pm, free. Garfield Park, Harrison and 26th St., SF. www.dayofthedeadsf.org

SF Symphony Dia de los Muertos community concert

Is a skeleton a xylophone or a marimba? You can bet your sweet sugar skull there’ll be an ocean of chromatic bones, dancing akimbo, at the vibrant annual celebration of the afterlife. The family favorite boasts performances from the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra (playing Aaron Copland’s El Salón México and Jose Pablom Moncayo’s Huapango), dance company Los Lupeños de San José, Mariachi Nuevo Tecalitlán, and more, all narrated by the twinkling Luis Valdez, “father of Chicano theater.” Face painting, paper flower-making, tons of colorful art, and a pre-show by the Mixcoatl Anahuac Aztec dancers, the 30th Street Chorus, and the Solera singers boost the fun — but really they had us at cinnamon-infused Mexican hot chocolate and pan de muerto. (Marke B.)

Sat/3 2pm, $17.50–$68. Davies Symphony Hall, 401 Van Ness, SF. (415) 864-1000, www.sfsymphony.org

Giants’ revelers who crossed the line face charges

Sasha Cuttler

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November 1, 2012

17

Yesterday’s parade celebrating the Giants’ World Series sweep almost went down without a hitch, no thanks to a handful of inebriated miscreants. Among the estimated one million revelers that attended, the SFPD reports that 22 were arrested, including 13 for public drunkenness. Others were charged for robbery, battery and unlawful possession of a loaded firearm.

Yesterday’s violations, however, paled in comparison to the chaos that ensued after the final game on Sunday night, when even more arrests were made and major damage was done to the city. District Attorney George Gascón is prosecuting nine individuals detained in connection to the shenanigans that occurred around the city last weekend.

“What occurred last Sunday was inexcusable,” Gascón at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. “We want to send a clear message that we will prosecute all the cases presented to us, to the fullest extent of the law.”

The nine charged so far include eight men and one woman, all of them locals. “So far I believe everyone we have are San Francisco residents,” says Gascón.

Seven are charged with assaulting or threatening a peace officer. SFPD Officer Carlos Manfredi says two officers – whose names he could not release – suffered injuries after confrontations with rioters. “One suffered a hand injury and one suffered lacerations to the leg from a glass bottle that was thrown.”

Tomas Lunsford was arrested on charges of robbery after he allegedly stole a phone from a woman who was filming the celebration. He then allegedly punched her female friend while attempting to evade capture. Additional charges include resisting arrest with force, battery and arson of property.

The latest arrest associated with the carnage occurred Tuesday after police identified a man who was photographed shattering a Muni bus window. Gregory Tyler Grannis, 22, of San Francisco was detained on felony charges of vandalism and destroying a passenger transit vehicle. Police were led to him after tips from social media sites. Grannis is scheduled to be arraigned Friday.

The DA’s office has been presented with several other individuals who have yet to be reviewed. Gascón anticipates more violators will be charged in the coming days: “We expect additional cases, including cases involving damage to city vehicles.”

SFPD is currently investigating the torched Muni bus incident. On Wednesday, Police Chief Greg Suhr released cell phone video and photographs of two suspects wanted in connection with the arson of the bus. “We are now asking for public assistance in identifying these two arsonists and bringing them to justice,” Suhr said. Photos and video can be viewed at sf-police.org.

It is unknown what the ultimate cost of the damage from Sunday night’s chaos will be. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said that in addition to being charged criminally, public offenders will receive civil fines commensurate with their offenses. “I’m here to tell folks that you will be hit in your pocket book,” he says. “If you damage the city we will seek retribution and damages.”

Celebrations turned chaotic in North Beach and Downtown, but it was the Mission District that saw the most damage. Along Mission Street, 24^th Street and Valencia Street vandals tagged several businesses, damaged public property and set fires. In a statement Monday, Mission District Supervisor David Campos said, “I have been in communication with the Department of Public Works and we are working closely to clean up the streets and help affected businesses.”

Orange and black forever: The city greets its champions in a Halloween World Series parade

Andrew Lam

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November 1, 2012

0

Photographer Charles Russo walked 12 miles to snap these shots of our San Francisco Giants celebrating their World Series victory yesterday — on Halloween no less! Could it have been the most orange and black day ever, anywhere? The boys all looked good, but major props to pitcher Sergio Romo for his style sense.

>>CHECK OUT RUSSO’S SNAPS OF THE POST-GAME FOUR REVELRY… AND ENSUING VANDALISM

On the Om Front: Yoga politicking

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November 1, 2012

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I’ve heard it said that the best test for how enlightened you’ve become is to see how calm you are while spending an entire week living in your parents’ home. I think election time is an even better test. All of the non-judgment and non-violence we’ve been cultivating all year in our yoga practices seems to go out the window once politics jumps in.

Though politics has become a 7000-watt Technicolor light show of power play and ego (and maybe it always was, short of the glowing billboards and the nationally televised verbal gladiator-style showdowns), it is not inherently corrupt or evil. Government, at its best, is an attempt for all of us earthlings to live peaceably together. To create some kind of system that will help us co-exist on this planet from which we sprung sans guidebook (or even, apparently, access to more than 10 percent of our own brains). Politics, stripped to its bare essentials, is a way for us to determine who writes that guidebook.

The goal of creating harmonious rules to live by is not a problem—in fact, it’s kind of a noble pursuit. The problem is that different people have different ideas for what those rules should be, and everyone thinks that their rules are right. And once we introduce “right”, “wrong” is never far behind. Once we have right and wrong, we have … suffering. Yoga speaks directly to this. In fact, the point of yoga, as outlined in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, is to create a steady and easeful meditation practice that will liberate us from the suffering that develops from this very play of opposites—right and wrong, pleasure and pain, winning and losing.

It’s not that Mr. P. has anything against politics. I feel pretty sure that if his right to live freely and practice yoga was being threatened by the government of the time, he would have advocated some kind of resistance. But his point is a good one. If we cling too tightly to one of the opposing forces, the other one is sure to take over at some point and make us miserable. For instance, if you just love winning, you’re going to really hate losing. And you can’t experience one without, eventually, experiencing the other. This isn’t just philosophy, it’s physics. As per Sir Isaac Newton: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

This is why election time creates so much suffering—because we can’t all win, which means someone has to lose. The loser suffers because, well, losing sucks. The winner suffers because he will lose again at some point—and deep inside, he knows it.

So does that mean we shouldn’t bother with the whole thing? Oh, no. So long as we exist in the material world, opposites will occur, and we have a responsibility to ourselves and our fellow planet-inhabitants to volley for a fair guidebook to the best of our human abilities. But in our fight for our freedoms, we can also stay cool and present.

As you take part in the dramatic duel that is the election, and watch (quite literally) the play of opposites in action, can a small part of you step out, and observe the drama from the outside? When things get tense, can you cultivate a steadiness that keeps you sane and non-reactive? And when the results come in, can you maintain an awareness that those results (for better or for worse) are not permanent, and that things in the material world are in a constant state of flux? And can you somehow be ok with that? Tall order, sure. But no one ever said that the road to freedom—democratic or spiritual—would be easy.

Get Your Yoga (and Politics) On:

Election Night Parties
Celebrate democracy in action (non-reactively) on election night! Obama supporters will gather at the 100-Percent Election Night Party (at the Independent, 6pm), and Romney supporters will congregate at the Election Night Watch Party with SF Young Republicans (at the Alfred Steak House, 5:30pm). Yogic breathing suggested, no matter which side you’re on.

Yoga on Your Own—Develop a Home Practice
The yoga studio is a great place to learn yoga, and also comingle with fellow practitioners, but at a certain point it’s essential to learn how to practice on your own. Join Brenna Geehan for a rich weekend of self-exploration as you learn how to create a personalized home practice.
Sat/3, $35, Yoga Tree Hayes, SF.

5 Yamas, 5 Days: Expand Into the Teachings
What is non-violence? How do you practice truthfulness? In this 50-hour immersion with Janet Stone, learn more about another one of the most referred to sections of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras—the yamas or “restraints.”
November 9-13, $508, Yoga Tree Mission, SF.

The Body of Mantra
When it comes to chanting Sanskrit mantras, pronunciation is key if you want to tap into the complete power of the mantra. In this workshop with Hawaiian-based yogini Anandra George, you’ll learn all the 50 seed sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet, enabling you to correctly pronounce any mantra you chant.
11/11, 6:30-8:30pm, $25 suggested donation, Shanta Shala, 355 Roosevelt Way, SF. Call 808-440-0691 for more info.

Living Anatomy
This weekend starts a 4-part series with anatomy expert Paul Roache, MD, that will open your eyes to a whole new way of viewing your muscles, bones, and connective tissue. It’s part of a teacher training program at The Loft, but it’s open to any yogi who wants to get intimate with his or her physical form.
11/10-11 (first weekend of series), $60-$220 (depending on how much you attend), The Yoga Loft, San Francisco

Karen Macklin is a yoga teacher and multi-genre writer in San Francisco. She’s been up-dogging her way down the yogic path for over a decade, and is a lifelong lover of the word. To learn more about her teaching schedule and writing life, visit her site at www.karenmacklin.com. Follow On the Om Front on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ontheomfront

Olague attacks led by billionaires and a consultant/commissioner with undisclosed income

Sasha Cuttler

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October 31, 2012

72

Olague attacks led by billionaires and a consultant/commissioner with undisclosed income

Understanding how political activists are being paid is important to understanding what their motivations are. For example, is Andrea Shorter – a mayor-appointed former president of the Commission on the Status of Women – leading the campaigns against Sup. Christina Olague and Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi out of concern for domestic violence, or is it because of their progressive political stands, such as supporting rent control and opposing corporate tax breaks?

As a city commissioner who is required under state law to report her income on annual financial disclosure forms to the city, the public should be able to know who is paying this self-identified “political consultant.” But we can’t, because for each of the last five years, Shorter has claimed under penalty of perjury on Form 700 to have no reportable income, which means less than $500 from any source – an unlikely claim that was the source of complaints filed today with the Ethics Commission and Fair Political Practices Commission.

Shorter led efforts to have her commission support Mayor Ed Lee’s failed effort to remove Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct, and now she’s become one of the main public faces leading an independent expenditure campaign called San Francisco Women for Accountability and a Responsible Supervisor Opposing Christina Olague 2012, funded with more than $100,000 by Lee’s right-wing financial supporters: venture capitalist Ron Conway and Thomas Coates (and his wife), who has also funded statewide efforts to make rent control illegal.

Neither Shorter nor Conway responded to our requests for comment, but tenant advocates and Olague supporters are pushing back with an 11:30am rally at City Hall tomorrow (Thurs/1). Organizers are calling on activists “to beat back the attacks on rent control and workers by billionaires Ron Conway and the Coates family. The 1 Percent Club, Coates and Conway want San Francisco to be a playground for the rich. Take a stand to say that these opportunists CANNOT buy elections!”

The Ethics Commission complaint against Shorter was filed this morning by sunshine activist Bob Planthold, who also filed a similar complaint a couple weeks ago against District 1 supervisorial candidate David Lee, who also appears to have grossly understated his income of the same financial disclosure form during his service on the Recreation and Parks Commission.

“There’s been too little attention by mayor after mayor after mayor in that the people they appoint are allowed to be sloppy, negligent, unresponsive, and under-responsive to these financial disclosure requirements,” Planthold told us.

Although the Ethics Commission doesn’t confirm or deny receiving complaints or launching investigations, Planthold said Ethics investigators have already notified him that they were investigating the Lee complaint, and he expects similar action against Shorter. “Ethics is pursuing my complaint against David Lee. It’s not one of the many that they decided to ignore,” Planthold said.

The FPPC complaint against Shorter is being filed by former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who told us, “The complaint speaks for itself.”

Although Shorter claims no income on public forms, the political consulting firm Atlas Leadership Strategies lists Shorter as the CEO of Political Leadership Coaching, which works with political candidates and causes. Atlas also represents PJ Johnston, who was press secretary for then-Mayor Willie Brown and now represents a host of powerful corporate clients.

“Her brand of discreet, highly confidential, political coaching works to equip leaders with tools to exercise more effective, impactful, innovative and – where possible – transformative leadership,” was one way Atlas describes Shorter.

Is she working in a discreet and confidential way to elect moderate London Breed to one of the city’s most progressive districts? Is she being paid for that work by Conway or anyone else? Is she doing the bidding of Mayor Lee and his allies in hopes of greater rewards?

Or should voters just take at face value her claim to really be standing up for “accountability” from public officials? Is this really about the statement Shorter makes in the video prominently displayed on the sfwomenforaccountability.com website: “Christina Olague has lost the trust of victims’ advocates. She has set our cause back. I’m profoundly disappointed in her and I can’t support her anymore.”?

With less than a week until the election, voters can only speculate.

Now Disney gets a nice tax break

Zelda Bronstein

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October 31, 2012

30

There’s an element of Disney buying Lucasfilm that hasn’t made the news yet: The giant SoCal outfit is now inheriting Lucas’s nifty annual tax break, cheating San Francisco out of property taxes worth about $60 million. See, part of what Disney gets is that shiny Lucas building in the Presidio — a private office complex built in a national park. And since it’s on federal land, not San Francisco land, Lucas doesn’t pay the city property taxes.

Nice to know the rest of us working stiffs are helping Disney out.

Oh, and $4 billion for the entire Lucas empire? Disney got it cheap.

Why free Muni for kids makes sense

Zelda Bronstein

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October 31, 2012

13

For a moment this morning, Mission Street looked the way it might in a world where the city actually got beyond cars. About a million people were a block away, on Market, and everyone with an ounce of sense knew not to try to drive downtown. So I rode my bike along a busy city street that was given over entirely to pedestrians, bicycles and Muni buses. The buses moved at a rapid clip with no traffic to slow them down. And despite the parade a few hundred feet to the north, it felt … quiet. Peaceful. Yes, Mission Street.

How totally cool.

Imagine how easy it would be for transit to serve the downtown corridor if nobody drove cars. Imagine how comfortable people would be biking and walking to work. It just takes a Giants World Series (and a huge regional parade) to show us that a different urban world is possible.

Which brings me to free Muni for kids.

There’s enough money now, from a federal grant, to do a pilot program in San Francisco. Except that Sup. Scott Wiener thinks the money should go to general system improvements. I get it — Muni has lots of problems and Wiener thinks we should fix the system for everyone before we make it free for some.

I admit I’m biased — I have two kids who go to public school, and ride Muni. The school bus system is nearly gone; most kids can’t get an old-fashioned yellow bus in the morning or at night. So their only option is the have parents or friends drive them, or to ride Muni. Yeah, it would save me a little money if my kids didn’t have to pay, but it’s not making me choose between food and rent.

For a lot of low-income familes, the cost of Muni fare is a real issue — and it’s difficult getting a reduced-fare youth pass. (Among other things, you need a birth certificate or passport to prove your age; you think immigrant families including some members without documents are going to go to a government agency and present that sort of information?) It seems to me it’s the city’s responsibility to help young people get to school, and since we can’t afford school buses, this is one of the best options.

There’s another side of the story, though. Getting kids to ride Muni as a matter of normal course — showing them that it’s the best way to get around town — is a huge investment in the future. We can’t keep going on the way we are with personal automobiles, particularly in urban areas. We want to get to the point where just about everyone uses Muni or rides a bike or walks — and I say, start young.

Listen to the comic! Save CCSF, vote yes on Prop A

Andrew Lam

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October 31, 2012

10

San Franciscans were bummed when, this summer, it looked for a second like we’d lose our only community college. And we weren’t the only ones who would have been affected — City College of San Francisco isn’t just the biggest school in the city, it’s the biggest school in the entire state, providing vital job training, family development classes, continuing education, and a springboard into four-year university for undergrads.

The folks at Mission Mini-Comix sent us this comic stating the case for Prop A, which would ensure that CCSF gets the funds it needs to keep educating us. (You can check it out in its full glory on their website, or snag one of the free mini-books they’ve been handing out around town.

>>PRINT OUT OUR QUICK ‘N’ GUIDE TO THE CITY, STATE, AND NATIONAL RACES

>>READ UP ON THE FULL GUARDIAN ENDORSEMENTS

Here’s the skinny on the panels, from Mini-Comix artist Rio Roth-Barreiro (who won an all-ages Guardian comics contest when he was younger — says mom Robin Roth the recognition “got him started on this path!”):

So, this is another comic that attempts to tackle local San Francisco issues. We do tend to do this every couple years or so, with mixed results, but we’re normally drawing a comic against whatever legislation is being voted on. In this case, we’re happy to do a comic supporting Proposition A and City College of San Francisco.

City College is a very personal issue for me. Not only are my mom and god-cousin teachers there, but I got my AA degree and most of my job skills training there which did end up setting me up well with a career in the tech industry (newsflash, cartooning doesn’t really pay the bills) and I’d like to see every young person in this city, county and larger bay area have access to the same opportunity and resources I did. This goes to the larger issue of where our priorities are in this country, with trillions being spent on our military, foreign wars and tax cuts for the rich while schools at home are literally falling apart (both physically and financially). Even in the liberal “hotbed” of San Francisco, we’re seeing the same tired arguments that are being trotted out all over the country to justify the systematic dismantling of public education.

“Teacher’s are getting paid too much!” “It’s all the Teacher’s Unions’ fault!” I see this sentiment getting echoed with infuriating regularlity in the Chronicle and in online news sources such as SFGate, but it doesn’t really mesh with the actual facts of life for City’s teachers, who have seen their classes double in size (twice the work) with many not having seen a raise in 5+ years. Having California cut money to education every year isn’t helping things. CCSF is being starved for funds and then the fact that they can’t meet their budget is being used as an excuse to take away their accreditation and/or close them down. Teachers are being painted as being greedy when every year they are getting less and having to work more.

Meanwhile, crushing education is going to have long term negative impact on local and national economies as our schools prepare less kids with the skills they need for technical and skilled jobs. People getting paid less means there will be even less government income to pay for things in the next budget and having a less skilled workforce will only lead to more jobs getting outsourced to India and China. It’s a vicious cycle pulling our economy down the drain, but some can’t see beyond the latest budget or the need to invest in our (and our children’s) future.

Proposition A on the San Francisco ballot and Proposition 30 on California’s ballot both seek to raise funds and prioritize education and I hope y’all be voting for them. And if you aren’t registered to vote yet, go get yourself registered, son! California now has online registration so you can be ready to stand by our schools and CCSF’s mission statement for a affordable and high quality education to be available for all. Registration deadline is October 22nd and voting is on November 6th

Oh yeah, I almost forgot our own accreditations, but this comic was written by me with a lot of help and input from Robin Roth, Leslie Simon and Amber Straus (and my wife Beth came up with the subtitle) and was drawn by me, Mike, Audrey and Justin.

Localized Appreesh: The Parmesans

Tony Robles

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October 31, 2012

1

Localized Appreesh is our thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

That’ll teach me to judge a book by its cover; or better yet, to judge a whole lineup by its headliners. I first caught the Parmesans opening up for Buffalo Tooth, Poor Sons, and Uzi Rash at Elbo Room this summer, so I naturally assumed they’d be in the same thrashy vein, or at least, they’d play some variation on the loud rockn’roll theme. Untrue: they lined up, strumming guitars, banjos, a mandolin, a stand-up bass, and the like, and launched into a fun set of bluegrass, folk, and Americana ditties, some covers and some originals.

Since then, I’ve been casually following along, occasionally checking their band page for upcoming shows and releases. Turns out, they’re doing one of those Halloween shows I love (bands costumed as other bands, c’mon, I’ve talking about it all week) and they have another record release coming later this month. Get in on the Parmesans early, check them out as the Kinks tonight at Thee Parkside, and read up below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekQ8iC3i4yc

Year and location of origin: 2012, San Francisco

Band name origin: After partaking in the Devil’s lettuce, it seemed like a good idea.

Band motto: [none]

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Something new and something old.

Instrumentation: Guitars and mandolins and basses and banjos and trumpets.

Most recent release: Uncle Dad’s Cabin and Horse Crumbs were released back to back earlier this year.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: [none]

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Being poor.

First album ever purchased: 40 Dayz and 40 Nightz by Xzibit

Most recent album purchased/downloaded: Plumb Restless by Hungry Hands from Brooklyn, NY.

Favorite local eatery and dish: Friday lunch buffet at the Gold Club in SOMA.

Hallorager at Thee Parkside

With Glitter Wizard, Twin Steps, Meat Market, the Parmesans

Wed/31, 8pm, $8

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

www.theeparkside.com

Support the Roxie’s Kickstarter campaign!

Sue Vaughan

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October 31, 2012

1

Support the Roxie’s Kickstarter campaign!

Yeah, I know — at this point, you have your email set up to funnel any messages with the word “Kickstarter” in them to go directly to spam. But for every CD you never receive or artist who seems to misappropriate her crowd-sourced dollars, there’s an honest cause that’s well worth whatever support ($5 minumum) you can toss its way.

For example: the new campaign for San Francisco’s beloved Roxie Theater, the second-oldest theater in the world and the oldest continuously running theater in the US — though I’d venture a guess programming in 1909 looked a little different than it does today. (Speaking of which, check out Dennis Harvey’s review of the mind-blowing Miami Connection, luring Roxie audiences into its cult starting this Friday.) The Roxie‘s eclectic schedule always features a mix of first-run films, one-off special events, local-filmmaker showcases, and film festivals (DocFest starts next week!)

In 2009, after weathering a financial hit when a partnership with the bankrupt New College fell apart, the theater became a non-profit; several successful fundraisers later, it’s almost reached a landmark goal. From the press release:

“The Roxie is launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise $60,000 to support the final phase of its transition to becoming a sustainable 501c3 non-profit. The proceeds will be used to support our 2012-2013 theater programming, events, and institutional upgrades including a redesign of the Roxie website.

The Kickstarter campaign features weekly shorts by filmmakers whose work has been impacted by the Roxie’s commitment to supporting independent filmmakers who take risks with non-traditional and experimental projects. Contributing filmmakers include: John Waters, Barry Jenkins, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Valerie Soe, Hima B., IndiFest, Jane Reed, Zachary Booth, Everything is Terrible, Scarlett Shepard, Chip Lord, Mike Ott, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Michael Tully. Dave Eggers will lend words of Roxie support to the campaign as well.”

Bla-zam! Do your part, San Francisco film lover, and kick in some bucks in honor of this valuable local resource. There are some pretty cool premiums for donating, including getting your name painted into one of the Roxie’s lobby murals (!), so head to the Kickstarter page and give whatever you can.

Cosmetic changes

Andrew Lam

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October 30, 2012

0

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN “Oh, now there’s someone taking a picture of us,” says Swagger Cosmetics founder Blake Karamazov, gesturing at a paparazzi who is snapping away through the cafe’s plate glass window. No shade, shutterbug — drag visions being interviewed while eating vegan Asian pear pie at 2:30pm deserve a capture or 10. (But c’mon, next time ask first.)

Glossy crimson lips, exaggerated lined cat eyes, black bow, LBD, wig. Today, Karamazov’s is a nice, daytime teal, her signature color. You can buy it in sparkly eyeshadow form on her line’s website. The hue’s called Swagger, natch.

Karamazov’s experiments in makeup began as a way to facilitate her own total disregard for normative wardrobe choices. Not surprisingly, given her own penchant of out-of-this-world looks, her line celebrates others with non-fuckwithable attitude.

A Swagger shoot this summer starred Sailorhank, a nine-year old boy from Seattle who crosses gender lines like a champ and, providentially, was a cinch for the diminutive Karamazov to style — they share a shoe size. She tells me that her colors are made for “any club kid, anyone interested in genderbending, androgyny.”

We get back to her line of drag-ready shadows and glosses, which are spread out on the counter in front of us in the brand’s bow-and-diamond-bedecked containers. The woman outside the window keeps snapping.

Karamazov’s makeup is made by her own darling little hands right here in (well, South) San Francisco. Every little box of glitter and glow is completely animal product-free. Vegan. Like the pie. Karamazov steers clear of animal products in her diet and elsewhere.

“The main problem [with conventional makeup lines] is the animal testing,” she tells me. Little-known, undeniably icky substances like carmine (extracted from beetles) and lanolin (charmingly, from the grease in sheep’s wool) are present in trace amounts in makeup products.

But it is the mainly the practice of testing substance on defenseless furry friends — incredibly difficult to suss out, given flaccid labeling requirements — that led Karamazov to the first bulk purchase of the ingredients she needed for her club looks.

Besides, she tells me, “when I was in college there was no brands that had weird colors. If you wanted green lipstick, you had to get clown makeup.” She’s not knocking theatrical brands, but since she wears vivid shades on her face all the time, Karamazov needed something that smelled better, lasted longer, was less greasy than costume products. Glamour is a lifestyle, after all.

After mastering her own mixes, she’d make special blends for birthday presents, whip up a peachy blush for a friend who couldn’t find just the right hue in stores. One thing led to another, and now she’s a business owner, selling colors named after Amanda Lepore and Kanye West songs (“one day all these people will sue me and I’ll know I’ve made it,”) through her site to places as far away as Portugal, Canada, even.

So quickly now, before the camera points in another direction: what kind of looks is Karamazov favoring for these shorter days and longer nights? Darker, vampy hues, she tells me, especially when worn all around the eye. She’s feeling smoky and metallic shades, and only the occasional pop of color. “Mostly really neutral” for fall. And a hint of dewiness, easily attained with a pot of her Champagne in the Bubble Bath highlighter. But only to supplement to your pre-existing glow.

Our Weekly Picks: October 31-November 6

Andrew Lam

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October 30, 2012

0

WEDNESDAY 31

Halloween at Thee Parkside

There was a pretty sizable chunk of paper last week dedicated to the eye-popping range of spooky/trashy/candy-coated Halloween events out there for you to dig into. Though on this night, this favorite holiday of many, I throw my vote to the tribute band. It’s just fun to see local bands dressed as other bands, rocking a catalogue they likely researched on Wikipedia and/or Youtube. That’s why I doff my cat-eared hat to Thee Parkside’s linup: Glitter Wizard as the Seeds, Twin Steps and the Cramps, Meat Market as G.G. and the Jabbers, and the Parmesans as the Kinks. Plus, some monster mashups via DJ Dahmer, MOM’s spook booth, tarot card readings, and (creepy?) silent film projections. (Emily Savage)

8pm, $8

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

THURSDAY 1

Mr. Kind

Less than a year old, Oakland foursome Mr. Kind is still in its infancy. But when the band formed in March, it hit the ground running, releasing its first EP OK just a few months in. Now, three months later, Mr. Kind is taking on another ambitious project by playing Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in its entirety. The 2002 best-selling, alt-country masterpiece celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. When the band discussed which album they wanted to honor with a tribute show, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the unanimous choice, described in the group’s press release as “a classic album that has played a big part in influencing the members of Mr. Kind.” To top off the celebration, Mr. Kind will be joined onstage by various Bay Area musicians, including members of Please Do Not Fight and Finish Ticket. And one more thing: be sure to keep wearing your costume, Halloween’s not over yet. (Haley Zaremba)

With River Shiver, Marquiss

9pm, $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

When We Were Young and Dumb: the Stranger vs. Believer

You’re currently reading the San Francisco Bay Guardian (thanks!), but if you lived in Seattle, you would probably be scanning Dan Savage’s home paper, the Stranger. As comrades in free-thinking liberal media, we can’t help but support their appearance in a face-off with another great publication, the Believer. One of Dave Eggers many projects, the literary journal lets writers do what they do best: ramble. It started by publishing only rejects from other literary journals and now specialize in longer form interviews and original work. Writers from both publications will be speaking of their younger days, including some key cornerstones: Jesus, LSD, and virginity. (Molly Champlin)

6pm, free

Makeout Room

3225 22 St., SF

(415) 647-2888

www.makeoutroom.com

Kirk Von Hammett Presents: Day of the Dead Bash

That guy from Metallica? Stringy-haired lead shredder Kirk (Von) Hammett? He’s also way into horror paraphernalia, and has packed his home with a collection of monster-movie memorabilia, including Bela Lugosi’s Dracula script and original Frankenstein posters. He’s got so much stuff, that he compiled an entire 224-page coffee table book on the subject — Too Much Horror Business — and will fête said tome’s release with zombies, Day of the Dead burlesque by Hubba Hubba Revue, and live performances by veteran Concord metal band Death Angel, and local string-metal trio Judgement Day tonight at Public Works. (Savage)

9pm, $13.99

Public Works

161 Eerie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

FRIDAY 2

“Private Life Studies”

Being a soldier and an artist is not a natural fit. But think about it. For both you need dedication, discipline, a willingness to submit your ego to something bigger than yourself and, for dancers, an ability to work with others. So, perhaps, it should be no surprise that Private Freeman, one of ODC/Dance’s most generous, witty, and focused dancers, managed to successfully integrate these two, seemingly contradictory impulses. Deborah Slater’s work-in-progress Private Life Studies is exploring some of these issues as a series of “dance stories”, based on strategies from Sun Tzu’ “The Art of War.” Sun was just one of some of history’s most brilliant minds writing about war; Machiavelli and von Clausewitz were others. Odd, isn’t it? (Rita Felciano)

Also Sat/3, 8pm; Sun/4, 2pm, $15–$25

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission St. SF

(877) 297-6805

privatelife-eorg.eventbrite.com

Day of the Dead altars and procession

Although the changing nature of the crowd at the Mission’s annual night of remembrance for those who’ve passed has earned it the affectionate nickname “Dia de los Dead Gringos,” there’s no denying that the community-led, candle-lit procession and park full of homemade altars can be breathtakingly lovely. Arrive early at Garfield Park to tiptoe around meticulously, sometimes even extravagantly decorated tributes to dead family members and public figures. Add a note of your own to the interactive exhibits, and await the arrival of the costumed procession, whose inevitable approximations of La Catrina are a distinctly San Franciscan way of celebrating the holiday. (Caitlin Donohue)

Procession: 6-7pm, free

Starts at Bryant and 22nd St., SF

Festival of Altars: 6-11pm, free

Garfield Park

Harrison and 26th St., SF

www.dayofthedeadsf.org

Chilly Gonzales

It’s not hard to come up with a list of catchy things about Chilly Gonzales to entice you to go to his show. And he knows it. While his strongest talents lie in piano, he has made quite a scene on Youtube, adapting his skills to popular demand with his genuine love of rap (and bongos, hula hoops, and pink suits). He has provided compositions for Feist, Drake, and Steve Jobs and then turned the tables to rap with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Now though, like a true artist, he’s returning from his pop adventures and getting serious with his latest work, “Piano Solo II,” which is mostly short piano pieces showcasing serious skill in a still modern, easily digestible format. (Champlin)

8pm, $20

Swedish American Hall

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

SATURDAY 3

Informant

No documentary subject in recent memory is as infuriating as Brandon Darby — the radical activist turned FBI informant turned Tea Party chucklehead at the center of Informant, local documentary filmmaker Jamie Meltzer’s most recent work. (Prior to this, Meltzer was probably best-known for 2003’s wonderfully bizarre Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story.) Scream at the screen (you will want to) at Other Cinema tonight, Informant’s first local showing since its San Francisco International Film Festival bow earlier this year. (Cheryl Eddy)

8:30pm, $6

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

www.othercinema.com

SF Symphony Dia de los Muertos community concert

Is a skeleton a xylophone or a marimba? You can bet your sweet sugar skull there’ll be an ocean of chromatic bones, dancing akimbo, at the vibrant annual celebration of the afterlife. The family favorite boasts performances from the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra (playing Aaron Copland’s El Salón México and Jose Pablom Moncayo’s Huapango), dance company Los Lupeños de San José, Mariachi Nuevo Tecalitlán, and more, all narrated by the twinkling Luis Valdez, “father of Chicano theater.” Face painting, paper flower-making, tons of colorful art, and a pre-show by the Mixcoatl Anahuac Aztec dancers, the 30th Street Chorus, and the Solera singers boost the fun — but really they had us at cinnamon-infused Mexican hot chocolate and pan de muerto. (Marke B.)

2pm, $17.50–$68

Davies Symphony Hall

401 Van Ness, SF.

(415) 864-1000

www.sfsymphony.org

AU

In my younger and more vulnerable years, certain music videos left definitive scars on my brain. Faith No More’s “Epic” — seemingly an over-the-top ode by Mike Patton to drowning fish and exploding pianos — taught me the meaning of the word in a way that no amount of Greek literature could. Things have largely remained that way until listening to the latest adventurous pop album from Portland’s AU, which opens with another “Epic” — an instrumental soundscape where technical, Hella-tight drumming is joined by impossibly high rising GY!BE guitars as part of a larger Tim-Riggins-winning-the-big-game-triumphant structure. The lexographically challenging track is only the first surprise on the record, and demands a live rendition. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Zammuto

9pm, $15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

SUNDAY 4

Kid Koala

It’s been a big year for Eric San, the Montreal turntablist better known as Kid Koala. Not only did he contribute to the revival of Deltron 3030 after a decade-long hiatus; he’s also managed to release 12 Bit Blues, his first solo record in six years. Conceptually inspired and determined, the album utilizes a clunky, old-school sampler, à la Public Enemy, to reconstruct blues music from the ground up, resulting in a man vs. machine sort of tension that makes for a constantly engaging listen. Luckily, for those fans hesitant to watch a dude spin records for two hours, Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville Tour” is loaded with bells and whistles to keep things interesting: Puppets! Dancing girls! Parlor games! Robots! If only more electronic acts were bold enough to co-opt these kooky antics of the Flaming Lips variety. (Taylor Kaplan)

With Adira Amram and the Experience

9pm, $20

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

MONDAY 5

Jens Lekman

“Hey do you want to go see a band? No I hate bands. It’s always packed with men spooning their girlfriends, clutching their hands, as if they let go their feet would lift off the ground and ascend,” Swedish pop master Jens Lekman sings on I Know What Love Isn’t, his first full-length since 2007’s classic Night Falls Over Kortedala. Gone are the enraptured recollections of romantic highs — this is the ever autobiographically charming Lekman, soberly looking at relationships from the outside. But on this “break-up” album, Lekman’s observations on past failures and limitations break through to a melancholic optimism for the future. Recreating the album’s full palette of ’80s balladry, Lekman will be performing with a full band. (Prendiville)

With Taken By Trees, Big Search

8pm, $25–$35

Fillmore

1850 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

TUESDAY 6

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band must be exhausted. Not only does the trio have to live up to its highfalutin’ damn big title, it found time this year to release its eighth full-length album while maintaining its ridiculous, awe-inspiring average of 250 shows per year. The Indiana-based Americana blues band consists of a Reverend Peyton on guitar and vocals, his wife Breezy on washboard, and Peyton’s cousin, Aaron “Cuz” Persinger on drums. For the band’s newest effort Between the Ditches, the Rev. and company slowed down enough to get into a studio and lay out the record instrument by instrument, track by track, instead of recording it live all in one big, enthusiastic rush as usual. The result is a beautifully recorded bit of nostalgia that transports the listener to a big wraparound porch in the Southern summer. And trust me, it’s exactly where you want to be. (Zaremba)

With The Gypsy Moonlight Band, Anju’s Pale Blue Eyes

9pm, $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

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Lightning strikes twice

Andrew Lam

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October 30, 2012

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emilysavage@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY If experimental artist Nick Zammuto was pulling from a storied sample library after all those years with beloved former band the Books, he’s now building from scratch with his new band, Zammuto. The first Zammuto record sprang from a more angsty place, a fear of the unknown after the breakup of the Books. Skyping from a McDonald’s in Springfield, Mass., a humble Zammuto admits to fears about “lightning striking twice,” regarding his musical evolution.

His fears are unwarranted; the Zammuto self-titled debut (Temporary Residence, 2012) is as invigorating as it is multifaceted; mixing classic pop sensibilities with digital burps, buzzy electronics, sampled found objects, and still a more traditional band set-up than the Books, the artist has again found his own creative niche: the mad scientist family man, digging through crates of toys and creating emotional connections with the sounds he squeezes out of them. And he’s kept his humor in tact, with tracks titled “Zebra Butt,” “Groan Man, Don’t Cry,” and “FU C-3PO.”

Zammuto, the band, travels to the Independent this week (Sat/3, 9pm, $15. 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com) but it’s been to SF once before. It came out west this spring to open for Explosions in the Sky at the Palace of Fine Arts. And after that show, Zammuto met some young Australian rockers. I’ll let him tell the story:

Nick Zammuto I was at the merch table, and this group of Australians comes up and buys everything on the table. I’m like, ‘you guys look like you’re in a band or something.’ And they’re like, ‘oh yeah, we’re Gotye.’ And I’m like, ‘cool, I’ve never heard of you, I’ll check it out.’ Literally, in that moment, they had the number one single in like, eight countries. I felt like a moron. Two weeks later I got a call from Wally [De Backer] to come tour with them, so we ended up playing seven shows with them. I live under a rock, I don’t have time for anything except working in my studio, and playing with my kids.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Has having children has affected your music?

NZ I have all boys, three sons, who are six, three, and one, you can’t help but live vicariously through them, because they experience life in such directness. I think it’s tuned me in to a simpler way of looking at things, and to be around that kind of innocence is inspiring. Just the sense of wonder they have is infectious.

SFBG How has your approach to songwriting shifted with Zammuto, as compared to the Books?

NZ I’ve never really been part of a band, I sort of came to that realization when we started rehearsing the [Zammuto] material. The Books was really a meta-band in a lot of ways, and at the end I was starting to think of it as a sort of glorified karaoke; we’d get up on stage and have all these electronic rhythms going on and we would just kind of play along with it. With the new project I really wanted to make something that was meant to be played live.

Key to that was finding a great drummer, and I think I found just an amazing drummer [in Sean Dixon]. Having a live time keeper on stage has been the biggest difference between the new project and the Books. And for me it’s been the most fun, to play with him, and see what he does. We really connected over this idea of polyrhythms. He helps me find these grooves that are really unusual. And I think the reason why I shied away from drums for so long is that it’s a very kind of genre-fying instrument. It’s hard to do anything out of the ordinary because it all sounds too ubiquitous. But Sean’s the kind of guy who sounds like nobody else. It’s a real balance with Sean between precision and heart.

I have [Dixon, Gene Back, and brother Mike Zammuto] up for sessions and we record things in a very loose way and then I go through those recordings later and pull out the parts that can go beyond expectation and build from those elements, rather than the sample library that the Books were drawing from.

SFBG But you’re still creating your own instruments out of found objects.

NZ It’s such a weird habit, and it’s something I’ve been doing a long time. My interest in music came out of recording these sculptures back in college…I started to make these sculptures that had this sound component, and I needed a way to record those sculptures. So it’s kind of been in the backdrop of everything I’ve done for a long time.

One of the first things I started doing was cutting into vinyl, cutting patterns into the circle at the end of each side of a record, and using that as a percussion. That sound sounds like clicks and pops, but if you take those impulses and put them through various environments you get amazing sounds, so playing them through PVC pipes or through filing cabinets with subwoofers installed in them you get these really strange but kind of naturalistic sounds at the same time, where you can’t put your finger immediately on what they are, and I think that’s why I’m interested in them. They have this mysterious quality.

SFBG What about the thematic elements, lyrically, on the record, it seems like it’s coming from a lot of new beginnings, new experiences, “The Shape of Things to Come” and so forth?

NZ The end of the Books was a harrowing experience, it took a very long time for it to go through its death throes. Lots of frustrations, then finally giving up and being like, ‘OK, what the hell do I do now?’ I’m asking lightning to strike twice, starting another band at this point in my life, so the lyrics are coming out of a very angsty place on this record. And I think I’m getting out of it, finally. Now that the band has come together in such an amazing way. I’m not in such a dark mood anymore [laughs].

I think I was writing about my own experiences, but in the frame of something more universal, for somebody who is frustrated out of their minds and in need of a new beginning. Just a general expression of having this need to move forward, but also going into unexplored territory.

ENDLESS SUMMER

San Francisco’s own Future Twin (soundcloud.com/futuretwin) released the second of its Summer Single series tracks last week. Angular “Sara” is tethered by a driving guitar line, and singer Jean Yaste’s caramel-coated vocals. Lyrically, it’s a testament to Yaste’s personal female heroes, and a call to action to all women to question the status quo and explore alternative experiences.

WOODKID (CANCELLED DUE TO TRAVEL CONDITIONS AFTER THE STORM)

French composer-artist Woodkid (a.k.a Yoann Lemoine) creates sounds that bloom like live-action role-playing background music. Or, video game music using entirely classical orchestration, strings, and Lemoine’s low octave, accented pipes. (You could easily picture Link chasing after Zelda during “Iron.”) Each track builds like a sassy, page-turning epic, which make his two EPs feel like brief odysseys. That’s right, he’s yet to release a full-length, but that record — The Golden Age — is coming. Though you might have seen his stylish videos for Agyness Deyn-featuring “Iron” or “Run Boy Run.” Or hell, you may know him from his other life as a music video director: Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” anyone? With Pacific Air.

Fri/2, 9pm, $20

Bimbo’s

1025 Columbus, SF

www.bimbos365club.com