San Francisco

Gascon and mayoral corruption

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EDITORIAL The indictments of two executives of an airport shuttle company on charges of laundering campaign money are, in themselves, a rarity and something to celebrate: the district attorney of San Francisco is actually attempting to enforce the laws against political corruption. That’s unusual in this city, and worthy of note.

But at this point, the entire sum total of prosecutions involving the scandal-ridden campaign of Mayor Ed Lee amounts to a pair of cases against people who made what appear to be illegal contributions. As of today, the message that’s being sent is that nobody in the Lee campaign did anything wrong. And that seems a little bit curious.

Lee’s late entry into the race — after he’d promised for months not to run — and his refusal to abide by the rules of public financing forced his supporters to raise a large amount of money very quickly. There were so-called independent expenditure committees collecting donations and running parallel campaigns that, by law, should have been entirely distinct from Lee and his official effort. We’ve always been dubious about the supposed lack of coordination.

Then there were the well-documented instances of irregularities serious enough that every other candidate in the race asked for state and federal monitors to watch the election. Several eyewitnesses told local reporters that they saw volunteers for one of the supposedly independent groups filling out absentee ballots for voters, using a special template that ensured the votes would go for Lee. Some said they saw ballots being collected at a makeshift voting booth. In a video provided by the campaign of State Sen. Leland Yee, it appears that volunteers were both filling out ballots and placing them in bags — both clear violations of law.

Gascon’s announced investigations of all the allegations — but more than three months later, nothing has come of it. His office won’t confirm or deny whether investigations are ongoing or whether any further indictments may be forthcoming. But at the Chinese New Year Parade, Chinatown powerbroker and Lee ally Rose Pak announced that she had heard Gascon was investigating her.

There’s been plenty of time to collect evidence, and Gascon has a responsibility to let the public know, as quickly as possible, what’s happened to the rest of the allegations. If everyone in the Lee campaign is really innocent, and none of the independent groups supporting the mayor did anything wrong, he should say that, and present the evidence.

It doesn’t help Lee, the city, or the integrity of the voting process to have these cases drag out. Gascon needs to conclude them, expeditiously.

Justin Vivian Bond talks Occupy Wall Street, the power of language, and the politics behind the music

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When Justin Vivian Bond was a little kid, v (more about that unique pronoun below) confidently wore Iced Watermelon lipstick to school and, inspired by feminist movements of the time, brandished a sign reading “Kids Lib!” Adults told the young Mx. Bond that these things were wrong, but v knew how right they felt, and represents for queer pride and radical poltics to this day. The writer, singer and activist is best known for v’s role as Kiki DuRane in Kiki and Herb, a drag cabaret show with partner Kenny Mellman. The show started in San Francisco and made it to Broadway, and was nominated for a 2007 Tony award. V’s memoir Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels was released this year (wherein Bond tells the lipstick story and a lot more about growing up gender-free). Bond is still touring and will be back in San Francisco Feb. 23, performing from v’s new album, Dendrophile. I talked with v about the upcoming concert, v’s recent performance at Occupy Wall Street, and how music can bring people together.

SFBG What can people expect at your upcoming concert?

JVB I’m going to be performing songs from Dendrophile. I did my release concert when I was in the Bay Area in the spring. So some songs from that, some others songs, and some monologues about contemporary political observations. Also– 20 years ago I married a local performer by the name of Leigh Crow, aka Elvis Herselvis, and she and her band the Whoa Nellies are going to be opening. So it’s going to be an anniversary celebration.

SFBG You performed at Occupy Wall Street. What was that like?

JVB It was really awesome. I performed for the Trans-form the Occupation rally Nov. 13. It was a lot of trans activists talking about trans issues and establishing a presence of trans people within the revolution. It was so inspiring, empowering and exciting for me to perform my song on the Peoples’ Mic. The song, New Economy, is about the current obsession with whether people have enough and who has it. It was such a great experience.

Of course, the next day the police came in and closed Zuccoti park down. In my show I joked that once the queers and the trans people started making their presence known the police they realized they’d better shut it down. They were probably having flash backs to the ACT UP and Queer Nation days!

SFBG Do you think there has been a good presence of queer and trans issues in the Occupy movement?

JVB There certainly was that day. We didn’t get to see how that manifested within the community at the park. But I do feel that there are a lot of queer and trans people involved in raising awareness about social and economic disparities within our culture, so I think that its an inevitability that the subjects are going to be part of the Occupy conversation. Because trans people are constantly being oppressed and harassed.

SFBG How do you think music can help bring that kind of political awareness?

JVB I think that music is a way of bringing people together, especially people that may not realize how much they have in common, or may not have an excuse to be in the same space. If there’s an artist who starts voicing thoughts, ideas, and political sentiments, that’s one person making a statement, and people all of a sudden find themselves in a room with like-minded people. Community is formed. That community can become a larger voice, and that’s a powerful way of affecting the culture. Historically, music and artists have been a rallying potent for great and powerful change.

SFBG What’s your most powerful political song?

JVB Probably New Economy, this song that I did at occupy Wall Street . There’s also my cover of 22nd Century, which was written by Exuma, whose a Bahamian voodoo priest and spiritual revolutionary writer. That one really seems to get people going.

 

SFBG What inspired New Economy?

JVB I wrote it when the stock market was collapsing and everybody was freaking out. People were losing their 401k plans or health insurance. As an artist, I’ve never had those things. So seeing people freaking about something I’m so used to dealing with was kind of comforting. It was like, we are all going to be on a similar level for a while and try to figure out how to solve peoples problems. The song is about our commonality. The final line is “take what you need and give a little back,” because I believe there is enough out there for everybody.

SFBG You’ve been involved with Radical Faeries, a group that celebrates queer sexuality, connection with the earth, and community. Have you been involved recently, and what does it mean to you?
 

JVB I haven’t been to a Faerie Gathering since the fall, but yes, I’m still involved. Its about community, and its about finding alternative economies, and ways of sharing and supporting each other on a very human, person-to-person level. That’s as opposed to having your reality dictated by the mass media and corporations.

SFBG Last year, you announced your official pronoun: V. You also use the honorific Mx. The move raised awareness for genderqueer and non-gender-conforming people, and also created backlash. It’s been a year now—how are you feeling about your pronoun decision?

JVB It’s been really great for me. Of course there’s frustration with people who somehow feel like they know me or my trip better than I do. But in general its been really liberating. And on a social level, I’ve met a lot of wonderful people who are going through similar experiences, that are not interested in being part of a fundamentalist or gender-fascist paradigm. So it’s nice to meet other people who feel this same way, and amazing to find out how many of those people there are out there.

SFBG I know some writers don’t like using gender-neutral pronouns (some commonly-used pronouns that don’t signify a particular gender include ze and they.) But as a writer who has used the incorrect pronoun for somebody in the past, then edited the piece, I feel– it’s not that hard to respect how people identify!

JVB I’ve been shocked to find out how heavily invested some writers are are in what they’re used to. For people that make their living using words, I’m almost shocked at how inflexible they can be. As for me, I love language and the power of it. The conversation that the pronoun provokes has been a great conversation to have with so many people. There have been times when people have done that same thing with me, then they fix it online and apologize, so that’s a nice thing.

SFBG Well thank you, and we’re excited for your concert.

JVB It’s going to be really fine show. It’s going to be a celebration, and I’m looking forward to it.

Localized Appreesh: Churches

Tony Robles
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Localized Appreesh: Churches

Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.
 
There’s a whole lot of religious imagery going on within new local guitar-and-drums superduo Churches. Most vivid, beyond the obvious, is the guilty, desperate strain in mesmerizing first single, “Save Me,” and its jittery remixes. The track and remixes (available on Bandcamp) are both pleading and sensual, evoking the classic good/evil ecstasy of sacred customs.

Musically, the band – made up of Caleb Nichols (Grand Lake, Port O’Brien) and Pat Spurgeon (Rogue Wave) – arouses memories of ’90s bedroom angst; “Save Me,” recorded at Tiny Telephone, utilizes this vibe and mixes it with distorted pop, repetitive calls, and lightly-employed synth. Second single “Feel Alright,” released today, follows the garage trail deeper, occasionally evoking an early Nirvana-lite.

What better way to showcase an auspicious local act than with a slot during Noise Pop? Churches plays Bottom of the Hill this week with Fresh & Onlys. But first, they gave us the rundown on a new life as Churches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AH9XkyhkQE

Year and location of origin: September 2011. San Francisco and Oakland. Tiny Telephone and Harlan Street.

Band name origin: I came up with the name while on tour with WATERS (I was playing bass with them). I remember that Van and Niko and I were talking about what my next music thing should be and we came up with the idea for Churches, which is the English translation of my middle name, Kirke, but plural.

Band motto: Aequalis opus aequalis stipendium.

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Re-experience teen angst through distortion and chorus plus loud drums.

Instrumentation: Guitar, Singing, Drums + (a little) Bass and Moog.

Most recent release:  “Feel Alright”  – a self-released single, out today, Feb. 21.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: Lots of great venues, lots of great musicians and studios.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Living here can be expensive. Being a musician can be expensive. Many musicians are poor. So, the math is against some of us.

First album ever purchased: Michael Jackson Dangerous.

Most recent album purchased/borrowed from the Web: Cloud Nothings, Attack on Memory.

Favorite local eatery and dish: Super Duper on Market and Castro.  Best burger in the WORLD.

Noise Pop: Churches
With Fresh and Onlys, Talkdemonic, Disappears
Wed/22, 8 p.m., $12
Bottom of the Hill
www.bottomofthehill.com

Living the green dream

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Living the green dream

FILM Bay Area filmmakers Steve and Ann Dunsky (2005’s The Greatest Good) have a pair of documentaries making waves right now: Green Fire, about conservationist Aldo Leopold, which plays at the upcoming San Francisco Green Film Festival; and Butterflies and Bulldozers, an exploration of the decades-long fight to save San Bruno Mountain. Bulldozers screened at the 2011 Green Film Festival, and has a coveted slot amid the 20th anniversary programming at Washington, D.C.’s Environmental Film Festival later this spring. (It also features Guardian editor and publisher Bruce B. Brugmann among its interviewees.) I chatted with the busy couple about their latest projects.

SFBG I have to admit, I hadn’t even heard of Aldo Leopold until I saw Butterflies and Bulldozers, which opens with a Leopold quote.

Ann Dunsky I think maybe 99.9 percent of all the people we’ve ever spoken to have never heard of Aldo Leopold. But for those people who do know of him, he’s like their god. He’s had an amazing influence on the field of conservation.

SFBG How did you get involved with the San Bruno Mountain story?

Steve Dunsky We had just made The Greatest Good, and it was a really intensive period of time. So [we] decided to take some time off from our regular jobs, with the U.S. Forest Service making films, and maybe do an independent film. At that time we’d been living in Brisbane for about 20 years, and we’d heard about this amazing story that had national implications, both historically and in a contemporary sense. And since that’s what we do — we make films about conservation and conservation history — we thought we’d look into it.

SFBG What was the biggest challenge you faced?

AD What intrigued us was the heart of the story, which is what you’re always looking for: the wonderful relationship and dynamic between [film subjects] Fred [Smith] and David [Schooley], these two really good friends who bonded over their joint efforts to save the mountain, and ultimately had a major falling-out about the best way to do that. So we thought, “There’s the thread that we would like to weave throughout he film.”

SD The reason we chose that Leopold quote at the beginning is that we ultimately realized that it’s a story about compromise. It’s an uncomfortable subject for a lot of people, especially in the environmental community, because it does create a lot of tension over where you draw the line. At what point do you say it’s OK to have some development in exchange for other protections?

AD It was a challenge to find that proper balance where we were very respectful to all sides. Telling the story completely without any narration is a very hard way to make a film, but ultimately I think it’s much more satisfying, because our voices aren’t in there trying to tell the viewer what to think.

SFBG The film discusses how San Bruno Mountain was, in some ways, ground zero for the environmental movement.

SD The early 60s were a formative time for the environmental movement, and San Bruno Mountain and Save the Bay played a critical role in that. And then, you have this whole second layer of the story, which deals with the Endangered Species Act and the Habitat Conservation Plan amendment, which is also very historically significant.

SFBG What’s next for San Bruno Mountain? 

SD It’s really a success story, despite the compromises that were made. As we say in the film, it is one of the largest open spaces in any urban area in the United States. Most of the mountain, 2,000 acres, is state and county park. And that was the result of these protests, as well as the political and legal processes that went on in the 1970s behind the scenes. [Currently] a developer wants to build on some sand dunes that are on the west side of the mountain, so that’s a fight going on right now.

SFBG Do you hope the movie will inspire people to take up the fight?

SD For people in the Bay Area, what I would like them to do is — when they drive by San Bruno Mountain, they don’t look at it as a big, ugly, brown lump, but actually realize that it’s a haven for biodiversity, and also that there was this 50-year ongoing struggle to save it. I think it’s important for people to know the history of their surroundings.

From a national perspective, we really hope that it gets people to think about these deeper issues of conservation, questions about compromise, and questions about development versus preservation.

AD One of my favorite Leopold quotes is “Conservation without a keen realization of its vital conflicts fails to rate as authentic human drama; it falls to the level of a mere utopian dream.” I love that because I think it’s so easy to say “No development anywhere!” A lot of us would like things to be that easy, but they’re not. And I think this film, hopefully, will help people recognize that it’s not that simplistic. 

Green Fire screens March 5 at the Green Film Festival (www.sfgreenfilmfest.org) and March 8 at the Randall Museum (www.sfns.org). For more information on Butterflies and Bulldozers, visit www.butterfliesandbulldozers.com; DVDs available for institutional and home use at www.bullfrogfilms.com.

 

A taxing situation

Andrew Lam
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A taxing situation

HERBWISE It’s happening again. Last autumn when your favorite dispensary got shut down in the wake of receiving a threatening cease-and-desist letter from the Department of Justice — well there’s warning signs that the remaining 21 cannabis collectives in San Francisco won’t be 21 for much longer. The DOJ requested the Department of Public Health records for 12 dispensaries in January, a move that preceded its last round of forced dispensary shut-downs.

It’s a time of a lot of uncertainty for the medical marijuana (although you could make a compelling argument that it’s never been on completely solid footing). Various tactics are being taken to shore up its legality, including a passel of proposed ballot initiatives that have varying chances of presenting themselves to California voters in November, from bids to legalize weed entirely to proposals for a statewide regulatory body for the existing medical system. Hey, there’s even reality TV shows (the Discovery Channels Weed Wars, which focused on Oakland’s Harborside Health Center) out there on which earnest dispensary staffers let the United States public in on just how above-board working in a cannabis center can be.

Henry Wykowski is not a signature collector. Nor is he a television producer. Wykowski is actually a San Francisco-based trial attorney, one that specializes in the field of cannabis tax law. This fact makes him the perfect candidate for the endeavor he is currently embarking on: to kickstart a nationwide campaign to convince the federal government to change a part of the national tax code that disallows cannabis dispensaries from deducting business expenses on their taxes — a tactic recently harnessed by the IRS to demand $2.4 million from Harborside in “owed” taxes (Wykowski represented Californians Helping to Alleviate Medical Problems in a similar case in 2007, in which a court decided that business expenses were deductible for cannabis dispensaries except where they pertained to the actual dispensing of marijuana).

How does Wykowski hope to enthuse a nation over tax code quibbles? The Guardian contacted him via email to find out. His answers were somewhat tax lawyerly — which definitely doesn’t mean we don’t applaud his efforts. 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What’s the goal of the 280E reform campaign?

Henry Wykowski: To have IRS Section 280E modified to exclude state authorized medical cannabis dispensaries. 280E was instituted to deprive drug dealers from being able to deduct their business expenses before any states passed laws authorizing the sale of medical marijuana. There are now 16 states and the District of Columbia that have authorized the use of medical marijuana. It was not intended to deprive dispensaries of the right to deduct ordinary and necessary expenses and should not be used to do so.

SFBG: How do you plan to make this campaign go forward?

HW: By letting people know that there is an organized effort to change this punitive provision and enlisting their support in doing so.

SFBG: Do you imagine it’ll be difficult to get people behind an imitative to change the tax code?

HW: No. The majority of people support the legalization of medical cannabis. Once the patients and other supporters learn that the unfair application of 280E could tax dispensaries out of business, the support will come. Right now most people aren’t aware of Section 280E or its potential consequences.

SFBG: How will you activate people that aren’t cannabis’ traditional base? Will you need to?

HW: By getting the message out. We welcome everyone’s support.

Find out more about Wykowski’s campaign at www.280ereform.org

 

San Francisco honors the memory of Warren Hellman with a free daytime concert

Tony Robles
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San Francisco will honor the memory of philanthropist Warren Hellman this weekend with a fittingly free, live bluegrass showcase. The event includes performances by: Poor Man’s Whiskey, John Doe, Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane & Fats Kaplin, Dry Branch Fire Squad, Steve Earle, Buddy Miller, The Wronglers (Hellman’s old band) with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Gillian Welch, Boz Scaggs, Old Crow Medicine Show, Robert Earl Keen, Emmylou Harris with special guest The Go to Hell Man Clan.    

The Warren Hellman Public Celebration takes place Sun/19 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. down by Ocean Beach,  in the Great Highway (Hwy 1) parking lot between JFK Drive and  Lincoln Avenue. The event also will be streaming live at www.strictlybluegrass.com. 

As Guardian city editor Steven T. Jones expressed the week following Hellman’s death late last year, “Warren Hellman left a hole in the heart of San Francisco when he died.” As most San Franciscans know by now, Hellman, a venture capitalist, was a music lover at heart – he bankrolled the city’s prized fall festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YDTx_yXfeI

When culture writer Caitlin Donohue visited Hellman in his office two years before his passing she noted, , “I realize that central to [Hellman] is bluegrass music. His corner office is comfortably packed with stacks of banjos and guitars, a signed CD from Emmylou Harris that wishes him a happy birthday, a metal sculpture that wears aviator sunglasses and a white cowboy hat, thank you plaques from the Berkeley music venue Freight and Salvage, where Hellman is a keystone donor and acted as chairman for the club’s fundraising campaign in years past. It’s impossible to avoid the music in the room, indeed the music is the room.”

Warren Hellman Public Celebration
Sun/19, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free
Great Highway (Hwy 1) parking lot
Between JFK Drive and  Lincoln Avenue, SF
www.strictlybluegrass.com

Lackluster finish to case that made serious political charges

Sasha Cuttler
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Lackluster finish to case that made serious political charges

A jury awarded the City and County of San Francisco $24,498 yesterday following its deliberations of a complicated civil case filed by the city in 2003 against a minority-owned computer services company accused of fraud and breach of contract, a company that countersued with a claim of being harmed by top city officials.

But that paltry sum and the jury’s verdict of shared responsibility in failing to root out corruption in city government belied the more politically significant accusations made through depositions in the case that Mayor Ed Lee and former Mayor Willie Brown overrode city staff to give contracts to a “fraudulent” yet politically connected company, which proved to be a tangential issue that was left largely unexplored at trial.

In CCSF vs. Cobra Solutions, the jury found that both the city and Cobra Solutions failed in their responsibilities to prevent a former Department of Building Inspection information technology manager, Marcus Armstrong, from fraudulently bilking the city out of at least $482,000 between 1999 and 2001. An alleged Armstrong accomplice, Government Computer Sales, Inc. – which witnesses said Brown and Lee improperly certified, and which they say they don’t remember – fled and was never brought to justice.

Cobra Solutions, which was awarded master contract status in 1998, was bound by a provision in its agreement with the city that required Cobra to “supervise” sub-contractors. The allegation of fraud against Cobra, however, was effectively dropped from the city’s complaint, but not until the end of the trial when consideration of fraud was omitted from the city’s closing arguments.

The award to the city was the difference between the monies paid by the city to Cobra Solutions ($269,739.93) and the monies paid by Cobra Solutions to Armstrong’s phony companies ($245,241.93), or the markup Cobra Solutions received from the city following the submission of several fraudulent invoices from two phony sub-contractor companies, Monarch Enterprises and Mindstorm technologies, set up by Armstrong.

Following the verdict announcement, a juror who did not want to be identified, said there wasn’t a single piece of evidence that was most compelling, but that, “the city proved its case. Cobra failed to prove its case.” The “vast majority” of jurors shared that opinion, the juror said. “It wasn’t even close.”

“The jury thought there was obviously a failure to supervise,” the juror continued. “[Cobra Solutions] took on work without even knowing who the party was that was working for them. Who was Monarch?”

Several invoices from Armstrong’s phony companies contained different addresses that the juror described as “a bit of a red flag.”

“If I’m in business, I’m not going to have someone working for me who I don’t know, and I’m not going to be paying them checks,” the juror said.

“The city also bore responsibility” in its failure to detect Armstrong’s kickback scheme, the juror said, mirroring the same sentiment echoed by then-City Controller Ed Harrington, who took the stand and conceded the city’s internal controls – as well as those of Cobra Solutions – failed to detect Armstrong’s kickback scheme.

Cobra had sought damages for breach of contract (the city’s failure to pay monies owed Cobra) and due process violations in connection with the city’s alleged debarment of Cobra from doing further business with the city.

“I’m disappointed,” said Cobra Solutions founder and president James Brady. “Life goes on. We’ll continue to move forward and repair our damaged reputation, raise our grandchildren, and focus on our families.”

Asked about the issue of sub-contractor supervision, Brady said, “I don’t think anybody could supervise a con man and the city was negligent in hiring this guy – they wouldn’t even bring him in the courtroom – so it’s just betrayal. And it’s a sad day that you hire con man and you won’t take any responsibility for his actions and you blame the small business. That’s not the American way.”

On the jurors finding that Cobra was not intentionally or defacto debarred from doing further business with the city, Brady said, “I think they got it wrong. I have no doubt about that.”

“The jury missed a lot of important facts,” said Mr. Brady’s wife, Deborah Brady, a co-founder of Telecon, the parent company of Cobra Solutions. The city had originally sued Telecon in its case-in-chief, but pursued no claims against Telecon at trial. “I don’t know how they missed them, but they missed them.”

Ms. Brady said the city gave another company, Desktop, the opportunity to defend itself against debarment, but “they never gave us that opportunity.”

“Judith Blackwell, she told the whole story in terms of Monique Zmuda saying they wanted us out, that we’re crooks,” Ms. Brady continued. “They accused us… and never gave us the opportunity to respond, ever.” Monique Zmuda is the deputy City Controller.

“I feel really betrayed by a city that I used to really love and [City Attorney] Dennis Herrera, who is our private attorney, betrayed us,” a tearful Ms. Brady said. “Ed Lee, who claims he barely knew us, betrayed us. Ed Harrington? I don’t know what that was all about, or Monique Zmuda… but Ed Lee and Dennis Herrera, they let down really good people who used to live in this city and loved this city and did all that we could to do good in the community and this city. “

“So I pretty much call it, ‘The City of Betrayal.’”

Cobra’s lead counsel in the case, Whitney Leigh, told us, “The jury made its decision. We’re concerned that the jury was allowed to find that Cobra could have breached the contract by refusing to submit to an audit by the City Attorney. So we believe there are some issues that need to be researched, so we’ll be looking at those issues.”

Asked if there would be post-trial motions, Leigh said, “Post trial motions and/or appeal.”

“Obviously we’re disappointed,” Leigh added, “but we’ll review the transcripts and see what options are available.”

Because of the possibility of an appeal, Herrera was unable to comment on the verdict or to discuss city’s costs in trying the case, said Herrera spokesperson Matt Dorsey.

 

Valentine’s Day dump the banks rally: If only all break-ups involved this much singing (VIDEO)

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Valentine’s Day dump the banks rally: If only all break-ups involved this much singing (VIDEO)

Protesters across the country participated in “break up with your bank” day on Feb. 14. Several protesters happened throughout the Bay Area, including a demonstration organized by Causa Justa :: Just Cause, Occupy Bernal, Occupy SF Housing, and the San Francisco Tenants Union.

In past months those organizations have variously stopped evictions and foreclosures, prevented homes from being auctioned off, and organized mass protests. They’ve created trouble shutting down bank branches, sometimes for hours, on dozens of occasions.

For Valentine’s Day, protesters decided to have a little fun.

“Our intention is not to shut down the banks,” insisted Causa Justa organizer Maria Zamudio. “Just to break up with them.”

About 60 marched through the financial district Feb. 14, presenting large red broken hearts and “dump the banks” banners decorated with pink balloons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-f6pHXQkbs

Security guards at the banks that the group approached locked their doors. Protesters, amused, began chanting “the banks shut themselves down.”

Bank of America building locked their doors when they saw the protest approaching. At the Wells Fargo west coast headquarters around the corner, a representative who identified himself as David accepted the card.

Afterwards, a dozen members of the group headed to City Hall for a Board of Supervisors meeting in support of a resolution brought by Supervisor John Avalos and co-sponsored by Supervisor Eric Mar. The resolution supports the city treasurer’s office in its recent efforts to include social responsibility and community reinvestment in its evaluation criteria as it searches for new banks in which to invest San Francisco’s money. The resolution passed.

“It’s not a victory, but a great step in the right direction,” said Zamudio. She hopes that the social responsibility assessment will look at a bank’s history with predatory loans, investment in small businesses, and refinancing mortgages.

Conversation on Golden Gate Park concerts continues

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“I call for this hearing each year,” said District 1 Supervisor Eric Mar. The focus of the hearing was large events in Golden Gate Park, and each year, hundreds of San Franciscans have something to say about it.

At the Land Use Committee meeting Feb. 13, the room was packed with concert industry representatives, local artists, police officers, a couple dozen members of the Carpenters In Action from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 22, and neighbors. Lots and lots of neighbors.

Many of the Richmond and Sunset residents who spoke are furious with the many large concerts that take place in Golden Gate Park throughout the year, including Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Alice’s Summerthing, Outside Lands, and Power to the Peaceful.

They spoke of unbearable noise, impossible parking, and crime spilling over from the event crowds. One man said that during Outside Lands, his house shakes so much that he feels “trapped inside an acoustic guitar for three days straight.”

The Recreation and Parks Department has implemented several measures addressing these ongoing concerns since the first annual hearing on this topic in 2009. Dana Ketchum and Nick Kinsey represented the department at the hearing, speaking in detail of tightened permitting measures, increased outreach to the community about upcoming events, and a hotline set up so neighbors can call in noise complaints more efficiently during large concerts and performances.

Ketchum said that noise complaints have resulted more than once in Rec and Parks representatives threatening to pull the plug on amplified sound in the park if partiers don’t turn it down. One neighbor called the hotline, “more useless than yesterday’s spit.”

Proponents of the events, too, were passionate.

Local hip hop artist Tom Shimura, aka Lyrics Born spoke on the importance of the events to the San Francisco music scene. Shimura praised how the Outside Lands lineup is 20 percent local artists.

“These festivals launch careers and create Bay Area success stories,” said Shimura.

“I just wanted to say that I’m a big fan,” said Supervisor Mar.

Many supporters cited a recently released San Francisco State University Study, which finds that Outside Lands generates “more than $60 million for the San Francisco economy,” and even claims the festival creates “683 full-time equivalent jobs” in the city.

Some Richmond residents demanded that all the festivals be cancelled, and, barring that, that they be issued the personal cell phone numbers of the Rec and Parks staff.

“It’s clear everyone supports these events,” said Supervisor Mar at the hearing’s conclusion.

“It’s a matter of collaboration.”

CLIFT Sessions 2012: Coachella Performer araabMUZIK to drop electronic hip hop beats

Maria Poblet
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CLIFT Sessions 2012: Coachella Performer araabMUZIK to drop electronic hip hop beats

CLIFT San Francisco is pleased to invite all music fiends to CLIFT Sessions, a series of special musical performances in a unique, intimate setting. araabMUZIK will continue the series this year on February 15. The Sri Lankan hip hop record producer from Rhode Island will give a nice preview of his “ferocious, diamond-hard gangsta rap beats with a pervading sense of dystopic anxiety” (Pitchfork) that will be displayed at Coachella this year.  The exclusive Redwood Room and Velvet Room at CLIFT will continue to play host to some of the most talked about new names on the music circuit, while hotel guests and locals alike can enjoy cocktails and an invitingly warm ambiance. Upcoming acts include Unknown Mortal Orchestra on February 24.
 
Wednesday, February 15 at 9:00PM at Velvet Room, Clift Hotel, 495 Geary, SF | Free with RSVP

Check out araabMUZIK owning this MPC:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A6YeaXb-qY&feature=related

Riding the ‘Dark Wave’: Jay Howell comes home for a zine release

Andrew Lam
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Jay Howell may have left us for the palm trees in Silverlake, but that doesn’t mean that he’s gone forever. 

You may know Howell for his zine Punks Git Cut, his drawings of people with neon faces on vintage book pages, or as that really tall guy you always used to see in the coffeeshop. Upon moving to sunny (and smoggy) Los Angeles, Howell has gotten a car, finished up doing the character development for Bob’s Burgers, and is currently working as the art director for a show on Nickelodeon. He returns to San Francisco on Sat/18 for an art show at Fecal Face Dot Gallery to celebrate the release of his new zine The Dark Wave — a 50-page comic book about the lead singer of a death metal band and his existential journey to the ocean.

On a rainy Monday afternoon, the Guardian called up Howell – who was more than likely basking beneath the Southern Californian sun – for a phone interview about writing The Dark Wave and his obsession with Harlequin romance novels: 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Hey Jay. How’s life in Los Angeles? 

Jay Howell: LA is awesome. I love the weather. I like beach-sunny-California style stuff. It’s really cheesy but I love it. I’ve been drawing more beach themes and things like that. I moved here to work on Bob’s Burgers and then around the same time got offered a pilot deal for Nickelodeon. Our show is just about completed and I think it’s the most favorite thing I’ve ever made.

SFBG: We’re excited to have you back this weekend for your show. What’s Dark Wave all about anyways? 

JH: The lead singer of a death metal band has a panic attack on stage and runs in to the night. He runs in to the forest and finds surfing somehow. It’s pretty weird. He basically falls asleep in an empty coffin, then a flash flood spills him out of the coffin, and then the coffin lid comes off and turns in to a surfboard. There’s some writing, but the pictures mostly tell the story. I drew everything in pieces with Rapidograph pens and used Photoshop to put it all together. 

THE DARK WAVE from Eighty Four Films on Vimeo.

SFBG: Is the story all in the course of one night?

JH: It’s a wild night.

SFBG: Does this guy have a name? And are there other characters? 

JH: I just call him the singer. There are other people in the beginning but it’s usually just him and his surfboard. [The story] is all about this guy’s weird journey. He just wants to keep running and see what happens. 

SFBG: What prompted your panic attack?

JH: I don’t know. I get them all the time too. Probably living too much outside of your mind and then wondering where the hell you are.

SFBG: Why death metal and why a coffin? 

JH: I was drawing and I thought it would be really funny to have black metal dudes surfing. You know, like really morose surfers. And then I just started writing a story in my head about it. [The singer] never turns in to a happy dude, but he takes up surfing the only way that suits him. 

SFBG: You usually ditch the canvas and opt for pages off of books for your artwork. Do you have specific books that you use? 

JH: I generally buy the same brand of book every time. They’re called Harlequin novels and they have a romance series. I was in a thrift store maybe six months ago and I noticed that the titles in these books were just so funny. I was doing all these drawings about people reading books with funny titles [because] I really like making up fake names and fake book titles. Then I saw those books and it was just so perfect. It turned out that there were hundreds and hundreds of these books published in the 1970s and ‘80s. So I bought them on eBay 40 or 50 at a time. 

SFBG: Back to Dark Wave. Is it much different from Punks Git Cut? 

JH: Definitely. It’s way more of a comic book. I’ve been reading tons of comic books lately and I’ve been doing some comics myself. I’m moving away from the zine format a bit and I’m even working on a full, proper comic book right now. I just kind of want to get more in to that kind of stuff.

SFBG: I noticed that a lot of your usual humor was toned down for television. What can readers expect from Dark Wave?

JH: Dark Wave is all about sex and drugs. Yeah, it’s nasty. It’s definitely an adult comic for sure. I’m really excited for people to see it. My buddy Scott – he’s in a death metal band in San Diego – even wrote a theme song for it.

“Midnight on the Sun” zine release and art show

Sat/18 6-9 p.m., free.

Fecal Face Dot Gallery

2277 Mission, SF

(415) 500-2166

www.ffdg.net 

 

NATHANIEL BLUMBERG, 1922-2012

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NATHANIEL BLUMBERG, 1922-2012

Nathan Blumberg, a great journalist who insisted on meeting deadlines, wrote his own obituary so that he would not miss his final deadline,  on Valentine’s Day, in 2012, when he died of complications from a stroke in Kalispell, Montana. Below is his obit,and his final byline, updated and corrected by Wilbur Wood, his former student and former city editor of the Guardian in the late 1960s.  Wood said that  Nathaniel wrote his own obit to insure that it would be complete and accurate. Nathaniel’s critique of mainstream journalism, and his  vision of independent journalism, were a major influence in the founding of the Guardian and the alternative press.

Nathaniel Blumberg was a World War II combat veteran, Rhodes Scholar, investigative reporter, national press critic, novelist, visiting professor and lecturer at major universities, dean and professor during his 35-year tenure at the University of Montana, and a man devoted to Montana for the last 55 years of his life.

He died February 14, 2012, at the age of 89 in Kalispell, Montana, where he had been hospitalized since a stroke February 8 in his home near Big Fork.     

Born April 8, 1922, in Denver, Colorado, Nathaniel Bernard Blumberg was the eighth and last child of Dr. Abraham Moses and Jeanette Blumberg. His father was a country doctor in Siebert, Colorado, for many years and had moved to Denver with his family to serve as superintendent of a tuberculosis sanitarium.

Nathaniel grew up in the west side of Denver with his four brothers and three sisters in a vibrant home filled with newspapers, magazines, books, music and long discussions of current events at the dinner table. He was graduated from East Denver High School after covering the city’s high school sports for the Rocky Mountain News while a senior.

His education at the University of Colorado was interrupted by the attack on Pearl Harbor and in August, 1942, he enlisted in the Army. After basic training, he was sent to the Army Specialized Training Program in Logan, Utah, and then to Camp Bowie in Texas. He was assigned to the forward observation team of Battery C of the newly formed 666th Field Artillery Battalion, a 155mm howitzer non-divisional unit trained to change mission on short notice. The Triple Sixes entered the war during one of the coldest winters of the century in Belgium against elite German SS troops in the Battle of the Bulge, the largest land battle in the history of the United States Army. The battalion then drove across the Roer river and the Rhine, through the heart of Germany and into occupation in Austria. He earned three battle stars and a Bronze Star in combat. 

Shortly after VE Day in 1945, he published the first history of a unit in World War II, “Charlie of 666,” which he had begun writing when the battalion was formed in 1944. With his poker winnings and combat pay, he published the 32-page booklet in a German print shop and distributed it to members of his battery to send home.

After the war he returned to the University of Colorado, was named editor of the student newspaper and received a bachelor of arts in journalism and a master of arts in history. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for two years of study at Oxford University, where he earned a doctorate in modern history under the tutelage of the internationally known and controversial historian, A.J.P. Taylor. He was a starting guard for Oxford in the first Oxford-Cambridge basketball game ever played in 1949.

Nathaniel was an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska from 1950 to 1955, when in 1954 the University of Nebraska Press published his “One-Party Press?,” the first significant study of press performance in a presidential election. He went to Michigan State University for a year as an associate professor and in 1956 at the age of 34 he was brought to the Universty of Montana by President Carl McFarland to become dean and professor of the School of Journalism. He served under four presidents and two interim presidents during his 12 years as dean.

He established the annual Dean Stone Night in 1957 to honor the founder and first dean of the School of Journalism, to present awards to outstanding students and to bring a prominent journalist to lecture on the campus, a tradition still followed.

He formed the Department of Radio-Television in 1957 and brought in Phil Hess to put KUFM on air Jan. 31, 1965, six years before National Public Radio was begun in 1971. He has been called on air “the grandfather of Montana Public Radio, a public service of the University of Montana.”

With Mel Ruder of the Hungry Horse News, president of the Montana Newspaper Association, Nathaniel installed the Montana Newspaper Hall of Fame in the School of Journalism in 1958.

Also in 1958, he founded the Montana Journalism Review, the first journalism review in the United States, three years before the Columbia Journalism Review. It is still going.

Shortly after the inauguration of President Kennedy in 1961, the U.S. State Department asked him to serve as an “American Specialist” in Thailand for the summer. Three years later, under President Johnson, he again served in the same capacity for the summer in Trinidad, Guyana, Surinam and Jamaica.

He was elected vice president of the American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism in 1962, declining to run for president because it meant he would be sponsoring a national journalism competition he and his faculty regarded as unethical. He was elected national chairman of the accreditation committee of the American Council on Education for Journalism in 1967 and national president of Kappa Tau Alpha, the society honoring scholarship in journalism, in 1969.

He was a member of the Rhodes Scholarship state selection committee from 1956 to 1987, including seven years as state secretary. He served six times on the western seven-state Rhodes regional selection committee.

Nathaniel was a staff writer for the Denver Post, associate editor of the Lincoln (Neb.) Star and assistant city editor of the Washington Post. He accepted invitations to serve as a visiting professor at Pennsylvania State University for fall quarter of 1964, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for the 1966-67 year and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley in 1970.

He married Lynne Stout in 1946 and they had three daughters, Janet Leslie, Jenifer Lyn and Josephine Laura. They divorced in 1970 but remained a close family. Their children and grandchildren gathered in Missoula on many occasions and spent long summers on the east shore of Flathead Lake.

Starting a new life in 1970, Nathan took the full name of Nathaniel on his birth certificate. In 1973, he married Barbara Farquhar, a college English professor and a widely published poet, who came to Missoula with her daughter, Nina. Barbara introduced him to Newfoundland dogs and they shared their 34 years together with seven Newfies (and a wolf with a touch of dog in her from the Helena hills). They enjoyed traveling together to beaches and fishing villages in the Canary Islands, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Nova Scotia, and frequently to Florida, Mexico, Costa Rica, Orcas Island and the central Oregon coast. They balanced these adventures with quiet periods of writing in the cabin they designed and helped build near Big Fork.

In 1980 he established WoodFIREAshes Press to publish books which he hoped to write, edit and design without commercial publishers, editors or agents. He crafted “The Afternoon of March 30, A Contemporary Historical Novel” in l984, which centered on facts never reported by mainstream newspapers or on television about the attempted assassination of President Reagan by John W. Hinckley Jr. It received many warm reviews except for the Missoulian reviewer who didn’t care for the book although he termed the chapter on Hinckley’s trial “riveting.” Bud Guthrie wrote that he had “written a pretty bad novel but a forceful and persuasive book.” Doris Lessing, years before she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote Nathaniel, “I have read ‘The Afternoon of March 30’ with fascination. I really could not put it down, once I had started. If you ever come to London – and why should you, if you live in Montana, which I understand from friends of mine is one of the special places – then do let me know.”    
 
Nathaniel rarely spoke of his part in World War II until 19 survivors of his artillery battery gathered for a reunion in 1992 and urged him to write the uncensored story of their time at war. He returned to Belgium and Germany three times, including a three-day meeting with 32 German veterans of the Ardennes battle. In 2000 he published “Charlie of 666, a Memoir of World War II,” which included his 1945 history and his recollections on the war 55 years later. It was nominated for the 2002 Distinguished Book Award of the Society of Military History.

From 1991 to 1999 he published 20 issues of the “Treasure State Review, A Montana Periodical of Journalism and Justice.” Many of his graduates contributed to the 12-page newsletter. It served as his commentary on that decade of Montana history.

He wrote many articles for magazines, but he was most proud of his coverage of the “March on the Pentagon” in 1967 and his long essay, “Chicago and the Press,” based on his time on the streets and in the parks covering the protesters during the chaotic week of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He was co-editor with Warren Brier of “A Century of Montana Journalism” and editor of the two-volume “Mansfield Lectures in International Relations.”

He was a demanding teacher with high standards who encouraged his students to live up to the highest principles of the journalism profession, to treat their native language with accuracy and affection, to always be skeptical but never cynical, and to remember that “sacred cows make the best hamburgers.” He was teacher, friend and counselor to hundreds of his students and took great pride in their professional success, their contributions to journalism in Montana and the nation, and their strong sense of public service in their chosen careers. They have written an extraordinary number of books. Scores of his graduates became lifelong friends.

Nathaniel was outspoken and had strong opinions. When he was honored by the Montana Newspaper Association along with Mel Ruder of the Hungry Horse News and Hal Stearns of the Harlowtown Times as the first three Master Editor/Publishers in 1991, he told a cheering audience of weekly journalists that “I am just as proud of the kind of people who don’t like me as I am of the kind of people who love me.” At the 25th anniversary of the Montana Constitutional Convention in Helena in 1997, his critique of the Montana daily press drew the longest standing ovation of the meeting.

His beloved Barbara Ann died of a stroke on the Autumnal Equinox, Sept. 21, 2007, a few days before her 73rd birthday. He also lost his youngest daughter, Josephine Loewen, in a tragic accident on Jan. 7, 2001, at the age of 46.

Survivors include his daughters, Janet Leslie Blumberg of Bothell, Wash., Jenifer Blumberg of Charlo, and stepdaughter Nina Gutierrez and husband Miguel of Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica; grandchildren Caleb Knedlik and wife Janine of Philadelphia, Pa., Asher Loeb of San Francisco, Ariel Diaz and husband Victor of Phoenix, Aram Loeb of Dayton, Ohio, Laramie and Kiam Loewen of Missoula, Adam Loewen of Portland, and Helen, Valerie and Sofia Gutierrez of Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica; numerous nieces and nephews and his first wife, Lynne Blumberg in Missoula.

He spent his last years in his cabin working on a book, including a chapter on “My 30 Years With John W. Hinckley, Jr.” in which he named Neil and Sharon Bush as co-conspirators in the attempt to assassinate President Reagan.

He requested no formal services and that his ashes be scattered with those of Barbara among the trees around their home near Big Fork.

No country

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No country

arts@sfbg.com

FILM “The male stereotype makes masculinity not just a fact of biology but something that must be proved and re-proved, a continual quest for an ever-receding Holy Grail,” wrote Marc Feigen Fasteau in The Male Machine, a 1975 Gloria Steinem-approved polemic (she wrote the introduction) that attempted to catalyze American men into joining their sisters in the women’s movement in reexamining and casting off traditional gender roles.

Masculinity of the variety rhapsodized by Ernest Hemingway and scrutinized by Fasteau is now something talked about in scare quotes (see Old Spice’s man on a horse) or presented as a relic of an earlier time à la Don Draper, even if magazines such as GQ routinely make it into a fetish object. Even a cursory scan of contemporary pop culture, from Drake’s broody makeover of hip-hop swagger to Will Arnett’s stay-at-home dad in Up All Night, shows that men today seemingly have more options, and consequently different sets of expectations, when it comes to being a man.

And yet, the ties that bind to that “ever-receding Holy Grail” still grip some men, causing fresh wounds and opening up old scars. It’s a struggle that runs through many of the remaining programs in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ ongoing series “Bros Before Hos: Masculinity and its Discontents,” a collection of leftfield representations of masculinity, often under duress.

The hitchhiking bisexual hustler at the center of Meat Rack (1968), a gritty piece of Gay Lib-era San Francisco film history, protests the loudest. Director Michael Thomas, who appears in person at the screening, has his boy-toy clanking his can against the prison bars of pop Freudian psychology as he works out his Mommy issues, turning tricks in Market Street cinemas (appropriate, given that Thomas owned the infamous Strand Theater and later founded its namesake, indie film distributor Strand Releasing). Although the film’s sexual politics are at times as confused as its protagonist’s, Meat Rack depicts with lysergic abandon the panic that can happen when the injunction to be a man is simply too much to bear.

That pressure is also touched on again and again by the various Finnish men Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen interviewed for their tender documentary Steam of Life (2011). Within the steam-filled confession booth of a sauna, men talk candidly and emotively about their lives, loves, and losses, their famous Scandinavian reserve seemingly melting away into streams of tears with each new puff of steam. “What are the options for boys?” a solider asks a bench-mate, reflecting on his inability to mourn. “Silence and drinking”

Steam of Life wears its nationalism, as well as its heart, on its sleeve, intercutting gorgeous long shots of the Finnish countryside between its in-the-buff interviews, and ending with a dedication, not merely to its subjects, but to, “all Finnish men.”

But the ballad of aging strongman Stanley Pleskun, a.k.a. Stanless Steel, as documented in Zachary Levy’s Strongman (2009), can be called uniquely American. Pleskun’ abilities are the stuff of classic tall tales — he can lift 10,000-pound trucks with his legs and hold aloft three adults with just one finger — even if his chaotic home life and uphill battle to keep his career going, sympathetically captured by Levy, is straight Arthur Miller. For all his might, Pleskun is at times painfully oblivious to his emotional shortcomings, making his quest for the ever-receding Holy Grail of fame and glory one of the rougher paths that “Bros Before Hos” traces. 

“BROS BEFORE HOS: MASCULINITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS”

Through Feb. 26

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

“A way to find your people”: the best of Bawdy Storytelling

Andrew Lam
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Dixie De La Tour wants you to talk about sex, for the sake of San Francisco’s reputation. “I am still baffled at how a city as cosmopolitan as SF could not realize that perverts tell the very best stories,” says the host of Bawdy Storytelling. That’s why she started the pervy monthly event that gathers up our city’s sex-positive to share their most tawdry tales of love and lust. Recent Bawdy themes have included cheap sex, public sex, cockblocking, and December’s “Dick in a Box” night (holiday sex!) Usually held at the Mission’s Blue Macaw, the five-year anniversary edition of Bawdy will occupy the stage of the Verdi Club on Sat/18.

We asked De La Tour to recount five of her favorites Bawdy stories in honor of the event’s milestone, which she did happily, including this scene-setting by way of introduction:

My career as a sexuality-based raconteur started innocently enough: about six years ago, a friend invited me to hear him tell a story in a café in the avenues…a story from his life, told to friends and strangers. While other cities have events like the Moth, we don’t, and I didn’t understand what I was going to see, but I ended up loving it. I was immediately hooked: all the stories were true, the person who stood in front of me was telling me a story from their life and how they’d made it happen…it seemed like the Ultimate Insider Guide, a roadmap to finding like minds and the way to create that unlisted San Francisco adventure. I saw immediately that storytelling was a way to find your people. 

Except for one thing: My stories were about the u­nderground sex scene… dungeons and sex parties, Craigslist hook-ups. With so many years as a sex event ‘party starter’ (my real superpower), there was not a single story I could share with these storytelling people without using the f-word. The event’s leader suggested I just shy away from profanity and allude to the sex in the story, but I balked: Sex is not an aside, sir; sex is the point of the story. 

So five years ago this month, my life took an interesting turn and I became a Sex and Storytelling show producer. Had anybody else ever seen fit to fill this niche, I would not be doing this today (and how glad I am that they didn’t: I truly love creating Bawdy Storytelling). I am still baffled at how a city as cosmopolitan as San Francisco could not realize that perverts tell the very best stories, but it just takes experiencing it once for many people to realize just how essential these stories are. Sex-related storytelling guarantees interesting true tales, and while Donna Reed is standing onstage recounting an awkward attempt to get laid or figuring out she likes girls after all, you’re ticking off factoids in the back of your head: How to find a sex party? Check. How to write a personal ad that can land you in a threesome? Check. Why a dildo needs to be flanged? Ahhh… got it. 

I truly believe storytelling is the antidote to loneliness and social anxiety – it may sound counterintuitive, but talking about sex is easier than talking about climbing Kilimanjaro; you know the listener is hanging on your every word when you’re talking about sex. So how’s about we all figure out this shit together?

CURTIS

For his 50th birthday, Curtis’ wife surprised him with a trip to Vegas and asked him to tell her his secret fantasy, the one he’d never dared to share. He told her he’d always wanted to have sex with a transgendered sex worker, and they invited Maria to our hotel and shared a night with her. She liked them and stayed after to talk and at one point she told them that at 14, she’d confessed to her mother she wanted to live her life as a woman. She then showed them the scars: six deep stab marks where her mother had tried to kill her. Curtis raised a toast and said they should all live our own lives as who and what we want to be, and asked them to drink to Maria’s bravery and self-knowledge. (There was not a dry eye in the house.)

SAHRA

Sahra was raised Mormon and expected to wait till marriage for sex, but at 18 she decided to lose her virginity to a guy she  was dating. The same week they  broke up, her parents found out and put her out on the street, so she called an older gentleman she knew who had a room for rent. Over dinner, he hit on her and when she got back to his house, he brought out a strap-on, a dominatrix outfit and other accoutrements and talked her through using them. She’d never even seen porn and had no idea what she was doing, but in one night she went from sexually inexperienced (she’d had sex three times, missionary position, period) to performing sexual acts that most people have never heard of. In the three years she lived there, she never slept in that room for rent; they repeated those acts for years and she later married him. [Dixie’s note: The reason I love this story is that Sahra had been coming to the show for 6 months, all the while thinking she had no stories of her own worth telling onstage. How wrong she was!]

CATIE

Catie wanted to go to an all-girl sex party, but didn’t want to go alone so she asked someone she barely knew to attend with her. While talking about not knowing what they were looking for, they were approached by a woman and presented to three pro-dommes, out for a good time on a Saturday night. They bound them, spanked them, used them sexually, and when she  wasn’t experiencing pleasure she was watching my partner-in-crime’s pleasure – until they fisted her, and Catie thought “I could never do that!’ When debriefing later at home, Catie told her this and her friend side-eyed her… Catie had been fisted, her friend insisted. She later tried to find those professional dominants to see if it were true. You’d think you’d know if you were fisted, right? Sometimes, you just don’t know. 

MOLLENA 

A handsome young blond man couldn’t stop staring at Mollena, and they ended up going out on a date. Later in bed during sex, he reached around her and grabbed her belly fat. She was appalled; grabbing her ass, she reasoned, was fine, but not her stomach! After he did it repeatedly, she yelled at him to stop and he replied, “I like it. Shut up.” She quickly learned that she was tiny compared to the type of big black women he lusted after…In fact, he liked her extra pounds so much that eventually, she came to like them, too. If you aren’t born loving your body, find somebody who does and let them pass along a little secondhand appreciation for what you’re packing. It’s not the ideal way to find acceptance, but is anything ideal, really? 

The final story is one that occurred offstage: 

JENNIFER

My husband and I go to Bawdy Storytelling every month, and one night we came home after the show, I sat him on the edge of the bed and announced a final storyteller that night: me. A year before, they’d gone to Burning Man and had given each other a hall pass to do anything without penalty, and then had come home with an unspoken “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in place. After hearing the true stories onstage that night, she felt compelled to tell him about the young cowboy she’d spent the week with and the adventurous “hell, we don’t know each other, so let’s live out our every fantasy together” non-stop sex they’d enjoyed. Her husband sat quietly and then announced “now THAT was the best story all night,” and he told her about his own hall pass adventures. After a year of being with each other every day, it took an evening out gave them the right place to tell each other everything. 

Five Hard[core] Years of Bawdy 

Sat/18 7 p.m., $15 presale

Verdi Club

2424 Mariposa, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com 

 

 

Shorts: More top picks from Noise Pop

Andrew Lam
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SNOB THEATER

Noise Pop isn’t all studied, somber plucking, ethereal soundscapes, or morose, twisting in the night song lyrics; there are solid yucks to be had. Kata Rokkar and Noise Pop are presenting another installment of Snob Theater at the Noise Pop-Up Shop pre-main events. Hosted by comedian-music blogger Shawn Robbins, it’s a mashup of indie rockers and indie comics, a real giggle fest for the musically-inclined. Brendon Walsh (Comedy Central, Jimmy Kimmel), Dave Thomason (SF Sketchfest), Janine Brito (Laughter Against The Machine), and Chris Thayer (Bridgetown Comedy Festival) bring the comedy, rockers the Ferocious Few and Bobby Ebola and the Children MacNuggits bring the raucous tunage. (Emily Savage)

Feb. 17, 8 p.m., $10

Noise Pop-Up Shop

34 Page, SF

2012.noisepop.com

 

DIE ANTWOORD

 The chances that this South African freak-hop duo will roll onstage with LED-tricked wheelchairs, wearing onesies that make flat-topped emcee Ninja and devil-pixie singer Yo-Landi Vi$$er look like plushies are not high — the two already worked that look for the “Umshini Wam” video, accessorizing with a telescope-sized joint and firearms. No matter, this hot-ticket sell-out show will have a gonzo pack of hipsters twerking to the weird-ass lyrics like there’s no tomorrow. Die Antwoord, like most hip-hop groups these days, is plagued by questions of authenticity (it reps for South Africa’s working-class demographic that its members may not actually hail from), but the performative aspect of its schtick makes it a cultural artifact regardless of where Ninja went to high school. Hot tip for those that dig a long shot: keep one eye peeled for Celine Dion. Die Antwoord’s pegged her as their dream collaborator. Weirdos. (Caitlin Donohue)

Feb. 22, 7 p.m., sold out

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

2012.noisepop.com

 

HIT SO HARD: THE LIFE AND NEAR-DEATH STORY OF DRUMMER PATTY SCHEMEL

Along with Last Days Here, currently screening as part of the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Hit So Hard is one of the most inspiring rock docs in recent memory. Patty Schemel was the drummer for Hole circa Live Through This, coolly keeping the beat amid Courtney Love’s frequent Lollapalooza-stage meltdowns after Kurt Cobain’s 1994 death. Offstage, however, she was neck-deep in substance abuse, weathering several rounds of rehab even after the fatal overdose of Hole bandmate Kristen Pfaff just months after Cobain (who appears here in Schemel’s own remarkable home video footage). P. David Ebersole’s film gathers insight from many key figures in Schemel’s life — including her mother, who has the exact voice of George Costanza’s mother on Seinfeld, and a garishly made-up, straight-talking Love — but most importantly, from Schemel herself, who is open and funny even when talking about the perils of drug addiction, of the heartbreak of being a gay teen in a small town, and the ultimate triumph of being a rock ‘n’ roll survivor. If you miss Hit So Hard at Noise Pop, it’ll be back around for a San Francisco theatrical run starting April 27. (Cheryl Eddy)

Feb. 22, 9 p.m., $10

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

2012.noisepop.com/film

 

GRIMES

After listening to Grimes on heavy rotation for the past couple years I still find myself mesmerized by Claire Boucher’s voice. It leaps and falls, circles words in repetitive motions, ciphering their sonic texture and tone into a perpetual undoing of sound. Grimes consistently induces this siren effect, inhabiting that mysteriously seductive threshold somewhere between waking life and dream world. Its third full-length, Visions (Arbutus/4AD), is no different. It continues to draw resources from spectral pop wherever it can, from the processed rhythms underpinning a constellation of electronic dance genres, to the gushing melodies of New Age cassette tapes and 1990s R&B, and even disparate psychedelic folk from across the globe. What holds Grimes’s aesthetic together though is, simply put, mood: whirling awfully close to planetary rapture. (Michael Krimper)

Feb. 22, 8 p.m., $10, sold out

Grimes and oOoOO

With Born Gold, Yalls

Rickshaw Shop

155 Fell St., SF

2012.noisepop.com

 

THE BUDOS BAND

Few bands working within the new wave of funk revivalism during the past decade are as tight as The Budos Band. The Brooklyn-based outfit has released all three of their records, each simply self-titled and numbered, on Daptone Records, home to powerhouse soulstress, Sharon Jones. But The Budos Band has a bit more of a worldly spectrum than other Daptone releases firmly rooted in 1960s R&B. They take influence ultimately from the funk diaspora launched by James Brown: Fela Kuti’s afrobeat jams and the Latin soul of Fania, to the psychedelic ethio-jazz culled by Mulatu Astatke. The drums are deep in the pocket, wah-wah guitars get gritty, and the horn section hits hard, all with the frenetic urgency of a score straight out of a Melvin Van Peebles’ blaxpoitation flick. (Michael Krimper)

Feb. 23, 7:30 p.m., $20

With Allah-Las, Pickwick, Big Tree

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

2012.noisepop.com

 

JOLIE HOLLAND

This longtime San Franciscan (and seventh-generation Texan) may call the road her home — with brief pauses for righteous swimming holes — but we’ll always think of her as a perfectly impure product of the Bay’s musical bohemia, the latest in long line of city songsmiths succored on prog politics, cultural patchwork, and high times. Whether Holland’s warbling about her mind reeling, blood bleeding on “Black Stars,” that wicked good “Old Fashioned Morphine,” or real-world psychic vampires (referenced in the title of her latest long-player, Pint of Blood (Anti), she taps a deep vein of blues —one related to a familial history steeped in Texas swing and her own soulful explorations here and abroad. This waltz around, she alights in trio form, playing with Carey Lamprecht and Keith Cary. Long may she ramble and roam. (Kimberly Chun)

With Will Sprott of the Mumlers, Dreams, and Emily Jane White

Feb. 24, 7 p.m., $16.50–$18.50

Swedish American Hall

2174 Market, SF

2012.noisepop.com

 

MATTHEW DEAR

Matthew Dear has a talent for surprisingly rewarding detours. With Asa Breed (Ghostly) in 2007, he departed from the pure percussive bliss of minimal techno and house, which occupied the scope of his previous efforts, in favor of pop song structures and vocal stylings in the spirit of Brian Eno. My favorite winding road came with 2010’s Black City (Ghostly): a record prefaced by bubbly vocals and rhythms, whose lightness quickly disperses into an orgiastic sort of density typical of film noir’s crowded urban landscapes, and the lustful encounters they tend to prompt. Last month’s Headcage EP (Ghostly) marks the most recent tangent into drum patterns that glide and skitter, but if Matthew Dear’s past wanderings are any indication, it promises yet another fruitful pathway in the ever expanding multiverse of his sound production. (Michael Krimper)

Feb. 24, 8 p.m., $16

With Maus Haus, Exray’s, Tropicle Popsicle, DJ Mossmoss

Public Works

161 Erie St., SF

2012.noisepop.com

 

VERONICA FALLS

There are a lot of great bands returning to the Bay Area this year during Noise Pop, but one in particular hasn’t made it yet. Veronica Falls was originally scheduled for its debut SF performance at the Brick and Mortar Music Hall last September, when an issue with visas forced the UK quartet of indie pop morbid romantics to cancel at the last minute. At the time of the cancellation the group was also releasing its first self-titled LP on Slumberland Records, so on the plus side there’s been extra time for anyone awaiting Veronica Falls’s appearance to take in the music. It’s an album that delivers on the promise of early singles “Beachy Head” and “Found Love in a Graveyard” — a hauntingly retro British sound with layered vocals led by the bittersweet Roxanne Clifford, laid on top of the classic combination of jangled guitar rhythms and a punchy back beat. (Ryan Prendiville)

Feb. 24, 8 p.m., $14

With Bleached, Brilliant Colors, Lilac

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

2012.noisepop.com

 

UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY

Danny O’Connor’s doc about legendary British indie label Creation Records is named both for the Jesus and Mary Chain single that helped launched the imprint — and the go-for-broke attitude shared by many of the freewheeling characters involved in its story. Most of them chime in to help tell the tale, including founder Alan McGee, a Scot whose thick accent is among many collected here that may make Americans long for subtitles. And, of course, what a tale — filled with colorful encounters, drugs, major-label wooing, drugs, “shockingly out of control” behavior, drugs, and all of the expected trappings of music-biz stardom. The soundtrack is filled with Creation’s many alt-rock, acid house, shoegaze, and Brit-pop success stories, including Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Swervedriver, Teenage Fanclub, and Oasis. Where were you while they were gettin’ high? Director O’Connor appears in person for a Q&A after the screening. (Cheryl Eddy)

Feb. 25, 7 p.m., $10

 Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF 

2012.noisepop.com/film

No country

Andrew Lam
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No country

FILM “The male stereotype makes masculinity not just a fact of biology but something that must be proved and re-proved, a continual quest for an ever-receding Holy Grail,” wrote Marc Feigen Fasteau in The Male Machine, a 1975 Gloria Steinem-approved polemic (she wrote the introduction) that attempted to catalyze American men into joining their sisters in the women’s movement in reexamining and casting off traditional gender roles.

Masculinity of the variety rhapsodized by Ernest Hemingway and scrutinized by Fasteau is now something talked about in scare quotes (see Old Spice’s man on a horse) or presented as a relic of an earlier time à la Don Draper, even if magazines such as GQ routinely make it into a fetish object. Even a cursory scan of contemporary pop culture, from Drake’s broody makeover of hip-hop swagger to Will Arnett’s stay-at-home dad in Up All Night, shows that men today seemingly have more options, and consequently different sets of expectations, when it comes to being a man.

And yet, the ties that bind to that “ever-receding Holy Grail” still grip some men, causing fresh wounds and opening up old scars. It’s a struggle that runs through many of the remaining programs in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ ongoing series “Bros Before Hos: Masculinity and its Discontents,” a collection of leftfield representations of masculinity, often under duress.

The hitchhiking bisexual hustler at the center of Meat Rack (1968), a gritty piece of Gay Lib-era San Francisco film history, protests the loudest. Director Michael Thomas, who appears in person at the screening, has his boy-toy clanking his can against the prison bars of pop Freudian psychology as he works out his Mommy issues, turning tricks in Market Street cinemas (appropriate, given that Thomas owned the infamous Strand Theater and later founded its namesake, indie film distributor Strand Releasing). Although the film’s sexual politics are at times as confused as its protagonist’s, Meat Rack depicts with lysergic abandon the panic that can happen when the injunction to be a man is simply too much to bear.

That pressure is also touched on again and again by the various Finnish men Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen interviewed for their tender documentary Steam of Life (2011). Within the steam-filled confession booth of a sauna, men talk candidly and emotively about their lives, loves, and losses, their famous Scandinavian reserve seemingly melting away into streams of tears with each new puff of steam. “What are the options for boys?” a solider asks a bench-mate, reflecting on his inability to mourn. “Silence and drinking”

Steam of Life wears its nationalism, as well as its heart, on its sleeve, intercutting gorgeous long shots of the Finnish countryside between its in-the-buff interviews, and ending with a dedication, not merely to its subjects, but to, “all Finnish men.”

But the ballad of aging strongman Stanley Pleskun, a.k.a. Stanless Steel, as documented in Zachary Levy’s Strongman (2009), can be called uniquely American. Pleskun’ abilities are the stuff of classic tall tales — he can lift 10,000-pound trucks with his legs and hold aloft three adults with just one finger — even if his chaotic home life and uphill battle to keep his career going, sympathetically captured by Levy, is straight Arthur Miller. For all his might, Pleskun is at times painfully oblivious to his emotional shortcomings, making his quest for the ever-receding Holy Grail of fame and glory one of the rougher paths that “Bros Before Hos” traces. 

“BROS BEFORE HOS: MASCULINITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS”

Through Feb. 26

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Junk bonds

Andrew Lam
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CHEAP EATS Yeah, ever since they shot Prop 8 tentatively down, I have had to hire grad students and interns to sift through all the marriage proposals. Their job is to weed out the ones with typos in them, suspected vegetarians, those that contain the words “growth” or “cicadas,” and most importantly any that aren’t from Hedgehog, the dyke of my dreams.

As you might imagine, it’s grueling work. And since Hedgehog is not one to repeat herself, the “slush pile” is rapidly taking over our apartment.

Recycling comes on Friday.

Meanwhile, I think I understand now why the queers I play flag football with in San Francisco hate the idea of ever playing co-ed. I’m always saying, at our under-if-at-all-attended practices out at Big Rec, “There’s some boys over there with a football. Let’s play them.” And my teamies look at me like I just suggested charades, or voting Republican.

Well, my New Orleans flag football team is co-ed. And very straight, at that. Although our team color is pink, and our name is Piggy and the Conch Shells, and we lost our first game 63-6. (I could go on and on: I play for us, blazzy blazzy blah.) Anyway, so, last night, en route to winning our second straight game, I found out why no one I know votes Republican.

I was rushing the quarterback, see, and I was getting to him. If it was football football, I would have wrapped him up around the legs or waist, toppled him or driven him to the turf, and then done a funky fuck-you-I-kicked-your-ass dance. But no. It’s flag football. So you have to reach for and pull off one of three flags we all wear on a belt around our waist: there’s one on each hip, and one on the butt.

So I’m reaching for his left hip, and, understand, please: there are alleged blockers trying to be in my way, one of my blitzing teammates reaching for the right hip, and (does anyone see where this is going?) as soon as I make my grab, the quarterback twists away from the other rusher, leaving me with a handful not of flag, but of man-junk. Yes, I missed the sack, but did yank me some penis. Note: accidentally. And shorts-enshrouded. Nevertheless, he threw an interception.

Which is of course an even better result than a sack. But I couldn’t find it in me to do a dance, or celebrate, or even smile. I just stood there and felt squirgly. And hoped he wouldn’t get his way with the ref, at whom he was screaming. In vain, thank God.

What would the penalty have been? … Holding?

Illegal use of hands?

Ruffling the quarterback?

Later in the game, I did get called for roughing the quarterback when I popped him in the face, trying to block his pass. That time (wisely) he didn’t let go of the ball, and I pulled his flag. And the ref threw his. Still, the dude was so mad he kicked the ball into the stands — at which my 15-yard penalty became offset by his, ha ha.

In summary: I now know first-hand (ha ha again) why my queers back home no like play football with the boys. It was a disturbing moment for me, and I’m theoretically bisexual! I’ve held that shit before — albeit not on a football field. Not to mention he was a complete stranger. I mean: eww.

I did apologize to him after the game, and hinted that if he didn’t like to play rough, he might consider a boys-only league. Sike. I just said I was sorry I hit him in the face, I was trying to block the pass.

“I know. That’s ok,” he said. “I was mad at the ref, not you.” And he asked me out. (So I guess it was better for him than me.)

“No, thanks. Prop 8 went down,” I explained. “I’m a betrothalled woman.”

In all possible seriousness, though, my new favorite restaurant for real (if not for long) is Pho 2000, in the ‘Loin. They pile all the steak up together so it’s bright-red raw when it comes to your table. You want it cooked, you have to push it into the broth.

I’m telling you: Fuck Turtle Tower. 

PHO 2000

Mon.-Sat. 8:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m.; Sun. 8:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m.

637 Larkin, SF.

(415) 474-1188

Cash only

No alcohol

 

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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Schedules are for Wed/15-Tues/21 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Miss Shannon// Underground (A) (T) (A) Laserbeam Premiere [Q] [A] [Z],” Wed, 8.

BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; www.balboamovies.com. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (Yates, 2011), Thurs, 7:15.

BAY THEATER Pier 39, SF; sfoffspecialscreening.eventbrite.com. $10-20. “San Francisco Ocean Film Festival Special Screening:” •One Beach (Baffa, 2011) and Thirty Thousand: A Surfing Odyssey from Casablanca to Cape Town (James and James, 2011) Thurs, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. The Skin I Live In (Almodóvar, 2011), Wed, 2:30, 5:15, 8. •Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), Thurs, 2:45, 7, and Circumstance (Keshavarz, 2011), Thurs, 4:50, 9. •Thunder Soul (Landsman, 2010), Fri, 3:30, 7, and Black Dynamite (Sanders, 2009), Fri, 5:10, 8:40. Sutro’s: The Palace at Lands End (Wyrsch, 2011), Sat, 1, 3. •The Lineup (Siegel, 1958), Sat, 7:30, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956), Sat, 5:45, 9:10. “Scary Cow Prime Cuts: Fifth Anniversary Film Festival Extravaganza,” Sun, 4. More info at scarycow.com/primecuts. Hugo 3D (Scorsese, 2011), Mon, 2:30, 5:15, 8.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. “Rafael Film Club” with guest David Templeton, Thurs, 1. Chico and Rita (Trueba, 2010), Feb 17-23, call for times. “2012 Oscar Nominated Short Films,” narrative and documentary (separate admission), call for dates and times.

DE YOUNG MUSEUM Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; deyoung.famsf.org. Free. What’s Going On: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye (Marre, 2006), Sun, 2. With host Kevin Epps and music historian Rickey Vincent.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Hollywood Dames: Beauty and Brains:” Leave Her to Heaven (Stahl, 1945), Fri, 6.

“NOISE POP FILM SERIES” AMC Loews Metreon 16, Fourth St at Mission, SF; 2012.noisepop.com/film. $11.50. Re: Generation Music Project (Bar-Lev, 2011), Thurs/16 and Feb 23, 8.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “African Film Festival 2012:” Kongo: 50 Years of Independence in Congo (Various directors, 2010), Wed, 7. “Seconds of Eternity: The Films of Gregory J. Markopoulos:” The Illiac Passion (1966-67), Thurs, 7. “Austere Perfectionism: The Films of Robert Bresson:” A Man Escaped (1956), Fri, 7; Une femme douce (1969), Sat, 6:30; Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971), Sat, 8:20. “Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man:” The Dawn Patrol (1930), Fri, 8:55; Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Tues, 7.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-10. SF IndieFest, through Feb 23. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. “Bay Area Community Cinema Series:” More Than a Month: One Man’s Journey to End Black History Month (Tilghman, 2012), Tues, 5:45.

SFFS | NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $10-11. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Ceylan, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 2, 5:30, 8:30. Margaret (Lonergan, 2011), Feb 17-23, 2, 5:30, 8:30.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $7 donation. “The Second Coming of the Vortex Room:” Zardoz (Boorman, 1974), and The Night God Screamed (Madden, 1971), Thurs, 8.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Bros Before Hos:” Meat Rack (Thomas, 1968), Thurs, 7:30; Steam of Life (Berghall and Hotakainen, 2010), Sun, 2.

Our Weekly Picks: February 15-21

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 15

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour

Do Danish hipsters listen to American funk music? Apparently the Asteroids Galaxy Tour is keen to show its repertoire goes beyond the catchy pop you’ve likely heard on an Apple iPod ad (“Around the Bend”) or a Heineken commercial (“The Golden Age”). Asteroids, the brainchild of vocalist Mette Lindberg and producer Lars Iversen, gained popularity with their nostalgia-inducing sound on 2009 release Fruit (Small Giants). Lindberg and Iversen push that retro-funkiness even further in newest release Out of Frequency (B.A.R. Music), employing more horns and electronic organ sounds to add some oomph to Lindberg’s sweet tones. It’s as if technicolor was suddenly brought into this high-definition world. (Kevin Lee)

With Vacationer

8 p.m., $10–$15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com


THURSDAY 16

El pasado es un animal grotesco

Acclaimed Argentine director Mariano Pensotti found the roots of this play in a heap of random photographs salvaged from a defunct photo lab. The narrative impulse came from Balzac. The title he borrowed from an Of Montreal song. The result is an ingenious, giddy “mega fiction” that follows the tortuous careers of four 20somethings in Buenos Aires over a single decade, 1999 to 2009, with its intervening economic meltdown and a million other matters expected and unimagined — the detritus of an unwieldy but irresistible urge to meaning. Pensotti makes his San Francisco debut with this low-tech yet wildly ambitious theatrical production. (Robert Avila)

Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm, $20–$25

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

BUMP Records on Mark Bradford

Jam the playlist on the website for the Bay Area Video Coalition’s BUMP Records youth-run label and you’ll get a sampling of catchy R&B and hip-hop songs, polished sound from young people who produce and perform their own work, learning about the importance of having a voice in society along the way. But they’re not just radio-ready, these kids. At this SF MOMA event of creative souls established and on-the-rise, BUMP artists will reinterpret hair stylist cum artist Mark Bradford’s character exploration of a Teddy Pendergrass-Pinnochio character, Pinnochio is on Fire. To warm up the crowd, artist Reneke Djikstra will talk about the spirit behind her luminous portrait work. (Caitlin Donohue)

6 p.m.-9:45 p.m., free with $18 museum admission

SF MOMA

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org


FRIDAY 17

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus: A Greek Comedy Rock Epic

trixxie carr and Ben Randle put the libation in liberation with the return of their Great Recession–era musical about a lil grape-stained deity named Tiny Dionysus (carr) who, after getting booted off Mount Olympus, comes to San Francisco, where a group of unemployed artists call on him for help weathering the general storm. Randle directs playwright, faux queen, and chanteuse carr and a cast of five as classical Greek and classic rock converge, along with puppetry, drag, and original carr tunes, until no one is sure who is what is where is when — is why it’s so liberating. (Avila)

Fri/17-Sun/19, 8p.m., $20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.counterpulse.org

 

The FP

Ever since Snake Plissken played a sadistic life or death version of HORSE in 1996’s Escape from L.A., one question above all has been on the mind of serious filmmakers: what formerly non-threatening competition will inevitably become a bloodsport in our twisted future dystopia? With their directorial debut, The FP, the Trost Brothers have perhaps answered the question once and for all: Dance Dance Revolution (or at least something very similar to avoid trademark violations.) Make sure to strap on your most hardcore head band for the SF IndieFest’s 21+ DDR afterparty at 518 Valencia, where you can scout recruits for your video gang. The film opens theatrically March 16. (Ryan Prendiville)

7:15 p.m., $11

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

 

Tanya Bello and Alyce Finwall

If Tanya Bello and Alyce Finwall have anything in common besides their friendship and a performance history on the East Coast, it’s fierceness and a take-no-prisoners approach to dance. When the petite Bello’s is on stage, it’s difficult to watch anybody else. If she brings anything like that kind of intensity to her new “Sol y Sombra” for her not even two-year-old Project B company, we should be in for a treat. In one of their early SF performances Finwall Dance Theater’s quartet of women in “Wide Time” just about bounced off the walls. Yet despite its wildness, the work also was tightly controlled. Turns out that Finwall has choreographed for over 10 years. In this program she will premiere the duet “Angel”. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/17-Sat/18, 8 p.m., $10–$20

The Garage

975 Howard, SF

www.975howard.com

 

Trainwreck Riders

Trainwreck Riders: a collision of country twang and good old rock’n’roll interspersed with hints of bluegrass and notes of garage punk. Their songs feel nostalgic, even upon first listen, and tend to focus on heartbreak. Yet they sing the blues in a way that makes you want to jam out instead of tear up. Yeah, these guys aren’t your run-of-the-mill indie act; but there is something quintessentially indie about them. Maybe it’s their preference for flannel. Or that Peter Frauenfelder’s voice bears a striking resemblance to Isaac Brock’s. Clearly, they’re from San Francisco. Ghost Yards, the band’s fourth full-length release, drops this spring. (Mia Sullivan)

With the Blank Tapes, and the Human Condition

9 p.m., $14

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com


SATURDAY 18

Bonobo

Bonobo, aka Britain’s Simon Green, has long reigned as one of the masters of the post-party, chillout tracks that deters drinking headaches in both lounge and living room. With his 2010 release Black Sands (Ninja Tune), Green opted for a more lush, jazzy, and spontaneous sound that edged slightly away from downtempo and toward the dancefloor. Ninja Tune has just released a remix CD of Black Sands that uses Green’s tracks and vocals from Andreya Triana as rich source material. Green could stick in a slow burning rework to begin the set, such as with Letherette’s sublime version of “All In Forms,” then turn up the energy a notch with a track like Machinedrum’s percussive-heavy production on “Eyesdown.” (Lee)

9 p.m.

Mezzanine

444 Jessie

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com


SUNDAY 19

Girl Walk // All Day and Cheryl Dance Party

Partly a 71-minute long music video centered around Girl Talk’s latest mashup album All Day, Girl Walk // All Day is also an ecstatic musical feature following young one dancer as she bursts out of the confines of ballet class and dances her way across New York City. Financed through Kickstarter and filmed largely on the sly in public and not so public (Bloomingdales) spaces, GW//AD involves over 100 dancers, and takes a fanciful poke at the tendency of people to ignore the exceptional, even when it breaks, two steps, or tumbles into their daily life. This screening — followed by a set from CHERYL (NY) — will be suitably projected over the dance floor. (Prendiville)

7 p.m. $10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

Prime Cuts Film Festival Extravaganza!

The Scary Cow indie film co-op is one of those magical organizations that provide creative people with the network and resources to engage in collaborative creativity. The co-op’s mission is, simply, to cultivate a San Francisco film community equipped to make better films by connecting people who want to make films, and actually making them. (Genius?) Scary Cow has helped fund local films since 2007 and is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a screening of 13 shorts the co-op deems its “prime cuts.” Chosen shorts span the genres — from mockumentary to horror/comedy to sci-fi rock musical —and range from three to 24 minutes in length. (Sullivan)

4 p.m., $15–$40

Castro Theater

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.scarycow.com


MONDAY 20

Chucho Valdes and the Afro-Cuban Messengers

Perhaps the eminent Cuban pianist of his time, Jesus “Chucho” Valdes has spent four decades wowing audiences as performer, composer, and arranger. A co-founder of the legendary Latin American jazz-rock band Irakere, Valdes has won four Grammy awards, including one for his most recent album, Chucho’s Steps (Four Quarters). In Steps, Valdes pays homage to several renowned musicians, including John Coltrane, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Joe Zawinul. His current band references Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, which produced driving, bebop sounds and served as a platform for younger jazz musicians to showcase their skills. (Lee)

7:30 p.m., $35–$75

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 621-6600

www.sfjazz.org

 

TUESDAY 21

Doug Stanhope

While his style of comedy has been called abrasive and caustic, Doug Stanhope simply tells it like it is on a variety of cultural and societal subjects, all with hilarious results. Since he won the San Francisco International Comedy Competition in 1995, he has earned a well deserved, wild reputation for his routines and shows, captured most recently on his live DVD/CD Oslo: Burning The Bridge To Nowhere (Roadrunner 2011). Last September Stanhope performed in a maximum security prison in Iceland, telling fans that if they committed a heinous enough crime to be sent there, they could see him for free — thankfully you’ve got an easier option tonight. (Sean McCourt)

8 p.m. $23.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

 

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

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

The Real Americans Marsh Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Opens Fri/17, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 18. Dan Hoyle revives his hit solo show about small-town America.

Scorched American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-85. Previews Thurs/16-Sat/18 and Tues/21, 8pm (also Sat/18, 2pm). Opens Feb 22, 7pm. Runs Tues-Sat, 8pm (Feb 28, show at 7pm); Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm (no matinee Feb 22). Through March 11. Oscar nominee David Strathairn stars in ACT’s performance of Wajdi Mouawad’s haunting drama.

Three’s Company Live! Finn’s Funhouse, 814 Grove, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Fri/17, 7 and 9pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 7 and 9pm. Through March 3. Cat Fights and Shoulder Pads Productions (best production company name ever?) brings the classic sitcom to the stage.

Tontlawald Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Previews Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 5pm. Opens Feb 23, 7:30pm. Runs Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through March 11. Cutting Ball Theater presents this world premiere ensemble piece, using text by resident playwright Eugenie Chan, a capella harmonies, and movement to re-tell an ancient Estonian tale.

BAY AREA

Mesmeric Revelation Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. Previews Thurs/16-Fri/17, 8pm. Opens Sat/18, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Central Works opens its season of world premieres with Aaron Henne’s Edgar Allen Poe-inspired drama.

ONGOING

*Blue/Orange Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). Through March 18. Lorraine Hansberry Theater offers an uneven but worthwhile production of British playwright Joe Penhall’s sardonic comedy of ideas and institutional racism, an intriguingly frustrating three-hander about a young doctor (a bright Dan Clegg) at a psychiatric teaching hospital who begins a battle royal with his suave and pompous supervising physician (a comically nimble Julian Lopez-Morillas) over the release of a questionably-sane black patient. Originally brought in by police for creating a disturbance, Christopher (the excellent Carl Lumbly) still exhibits signs of psychosis and his ability to care for himself seems doubtful to the young doctor treating him. The older physician appeals to the patient’s general competence, hospital procedures, the shortage of beds, and the exigencies of career advancement in countering the younger doctor’s insistence on keeping the patient beyond the mandatory 28-day period required by law. For his part, Christopher, nervous and rather manic, is at first desperately eager to be released back to his poor London neighborhood. Competing interviews with the two doctors complicate his perspective and ours repeatedly, however, as a heated debate about medicine, institutionalization, cultural antecedents to mental “illness,” career arcs, and a “cure for black psychosis,” leave everyone’s sanity in doubt. Although our attention can be distracted by a too-pervading sound design and less than perfect British accents, Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe directs a strong and engaging cast in a politically resonant not to say increasingly maddening play. (Avila)

Cabaret Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldc C, Room 300, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 381-1638, cabaretsf.wordpress.com. $25-45. Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 7pm. Shakespeare at Stinson and Independent Cabaret Productions perform the Kander and Ebb classic in an intimate setting.

52 Man Pick Up Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Thurs-Sat, Wed/15, and Feb 27, 8pm. Through March 3. Desiree Butch performs her solo show about a deck of cards’ worth of sexual encounters.

Geezer Marsh San Francisco, MainStage, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Geoff Hoyle’s hit solo show returns.

Glengarry Glen Ross Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.brownpapertickets.com. $26-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 24. David Mamet’s cutthroat comedy, courtesy of the Actors Theatre of San Francisco.

Higher Theater at Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Howard, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-65. Wed/15-Sat/18, 8pm (also Wed/15 and Sat/18, 2pm); Sun/19, 2pm. American Conservatory Theater premieres artistic director Carey Perloff’s ambitious but choppy play about renowned architect Michael Friedman (an affably egotistical Andrew Polk) and brilliant but still up-and-coming Elena Constantine (a restlessly clever yet vulnerable René Augesen), lovers who find themselves competing for the same commission to design a memorial at the site of a bus bombing on the Sea of Galilee. The spunky widow (Concetta Tomei) of a wealthy American Jewish businessman is funding the memorial, and supervising the competition with the help of a handsome young Israeli, Jacob (Alexander Crowther), grieving for his father. The jet-set lovers only gradually realize they’re competitors (Michael very late in the game, which seems a bit too clueless). Meanwhile, Michael attends to the strained relationship with his grown-up but too-long-neglected gay son (Ben Kahre), a convert to “born-again Judaism” in contrast to his father’s attenuated affiliations; and shiksa Elena finds inspiration for a radical design in the grief-stricken (but soon smitten) Jacob, kneading the burnt sand at the shore of a lake “filled with Jewish tears.” In a play dealing with land and memory, reconciliation, chauvinism, and short-sightedness, the absence of any mention of Palestinian “tears” in the same water (or Palestinians at all) seems a conspicuous absence. The dialogue, meanwhile, while often witty, can be labored in its mingling of airy architectural notions with earthier matters. Mark Rucker’s direction gives scope to an admirably tailored performance from Augesen (the small stage offers a rewarding chance to watch the ACT veteran work up close) but not enough attention goes to the supposed sexual tension between Elena and Michael, which, despite sporadically randy dialogue and some awkward blocking on a mattress, is effectively nil. (Avila)

Jesus in India Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-55. Wed/15-Sat/18, 8pm (also Sat/18, 2:30pm); Sun/19, 2:30pm. Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap is still one of Magic’s strongest premieres in recent years; his latest makes a disappointing contrast. There’s again an absent father (or two) and a sense of dislocation, but Suh’s “Jesus in India” does little or nothing with them. Director Daniella Topol assembles a bright cast headed by musically adept charmer Damon Daunno — on Michael Locher’s colorful, all-encompassing street mosaic set (comprised of floor-to-wall stickers, spray-paint, and mandalas around a central thicket of abandoned bicycle wheels) — but it all serves an insipid chronicle of the deity’s wayward teen years. (Avila)

*Little Brother Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Feb 25. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Josh Costello’s adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s San Francisco-set thriller.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5 and 8:30pm. Extended through Feb 25. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

Olivia’s Kitchen Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.generationtheatre.com. $20-40. Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 3pm. GenerationTheatre offers this “remix” of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Private Parts SF Playhouse, Stage 2, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 25. Graham Gremore performs his autobiographical solo comedy.

*True West Boxcar Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; (415) 967-2227, www.boxcartheatre.org. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through April 7. The first installment of Boxcar Theatre’s four-play Sam Shepard repertory project, True West ushers in the ambitious run with a bang. This tale of two brothers who gradually assume the role of the other is one of Shepard’s most enduring plays, rich with humorous interludes, veering sharply into dangerous terrain at the drop of a toaster. In time-honored, True West tradition, the lead roles of Austin, the unassuming younger brother, and Lee, his violent older sibling, are being alternated between Nick A. Olivero and Brian Trybom, and in a new twist, the role of the mother is being played by two different actresses as well (Adrienne Krug and Katya Rivera). The evening I saw it, Olivero was playing Austin, a writer banging away at his first screenplay, and Trybom was Lee, a troubled, alcoholic drifter who usurps his brother’s Hollywood shot, and trashes their mother’s home while trying to honor his as yet unwritten “contract”. The chemistry between the two actors was a perfect blend of menace and fraternity, and the extreme wreckage they make of both the set (designed by both actors), and their ever-tenuous relationship, was truly inspired. (Gluckstern)

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 3. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of the Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

*Vigilance Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; (415) 335-6087, secondwind.8m.com. $20-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 25. Ian Walker (The Tender King) directs a sharp revival of his own lucid, involving 2000 domestic drama about three households brought to the brink by the arrival of a menacing working-class loner. Seamlessly staged in a single pair of rooms (designed by Fred Sharkey) representing all three suburban middle-class homes — as well as downstage on the street where dream-home lottery winner Duncan (an imposing Steven Westdahl) throws his beer cans and leers at the wives and children — Vigilance begins with three friends meeting under the pretext of a poker game. Host Virgil (played with gruff charm by a commanding Mike Newman) is a 30-something husband, father, and guy’s guy whose Montana-grown libertarian machismo compensates for the agro of a stormy marriage and rocky finances. He talks the suggestible, nebbishy Bert (a slyly humorous Ben Ortega) and the equally nerdy but independent-minded Dick (a nicely layered Stephen Muterspaugh) into forming a “committee” to deal with the troublesome Duncan. Walker’s well-honed dialogue brings out the false notes in the supposed pre-Duncan harmony right away, and the play strikes best at the buried politics of marriage and friendship. (Avila)

Waiting for Godot Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; (415) 336-3522, www.tidestheatre.org. $20-38. Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm. The fuchsia papier-mâché tree and swirling grey-on-white floor pattern (courtesy of scenic designer Richard Colman) lend a psychedelic accent to the famously barren landscape inhabited by Vladimir (Keith Burkland) and Estragon (Jack Halton) in this production of the Samuel Beckett play by newcomers Tides Theatre. The best moments here broadcast the brooding beauty of the avant-garde classic, with its purposely vague but readily familiar world of viciousness, servility, trauma, want, fear, grudging compassion, and the daring, fragile humor that can look it all squarely in the eye. (Avila)

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 24. Brian Copeland returns with a new solo show about his struggles with depression.

BAY AREA

Arms and the Man Lesher Center for the Arts, Margaret Lesher Theater, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-7469, www.centerrep.org. $38-43. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 25. Center REPertory Company presents George Bernard Shaw’s classic romantic comedy.

*Body Awareness Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $30-48. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 11. In Annie Baker’s new comedy, receiving a top-notch Bay Area premiere at Aurora Theatre, peppy psychology prof Phyllis (Amy Resnick) hosts “Body Awareness Week” at her small Vermont college, while back home partner Joyce (Jeri Lynn Cohen) talks to her 21-year-old son Jared (Patrick Russell) about the porn pay-per-view bill he’s racked up. Phyllis contends that Joyce’s introverted, somewhat explosive virgin son (who in addition to bouts of violent anger soothes himself compulsively with an electric security toothbrush) has Asperger’s Syndrome — a diagnosis that Jared, a budding not too say obsessive lexicographer, hotly contests. That same week, the couple hosts a guest artist, Frank (Howard Swain), a breezy man’s man whose career stands squarely on a series of photographs of nude women and girls. The young man seeks sexual advice from the older one, much to Phyllis’s disgust and Joyce’s relief, while also tempting Joyce with the notion of posing for a nude portrait and “reclaiming her body image,” in a well-used phrase. An already delicate balance thus goes right off kilter as, between the poles of Phyllis and Frank, Joyce and Jared chase competing notions and definitions of themselves and the world. In the volatile tension between perspectives, power trips, and extreme personalities, playwright Baker initially pushes a comic form toward an unsettling edge, only to retreat in the end for safer ground and a family-friendly resolution. While that feels like a lost opportunity, Body Awareness is still a stimulating and solidly entertaining evening, brought to life by a warm and dexterous ensemble under fine, lively direction by Joy Carlin. (Avila)

Counter Attack! Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 444-4755, ext. 114, www.stagebridge.org. $18-25. Wed-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 4. Stagebridge presents the world premiere of Joan Holden’s waitress-centric play.

A Doctor in Spire of Himself Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Opens Wed/15, 8pm. Runs Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees Thurs/16, Feb 25, March 1, 8, and 15; no show March 23); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through March 25. Berkeley Rep performs a contemporary update of the Molière comedy.

Ghost Light Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Wed/15 and Sun/19, 7pm (also Sun/19, 2pm); Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm (also Thurs/16 and Sat/18, 2pm). Berkeley Rep performs Tony Taccone’s world-premiere play about George Moscone’s assassination, directed by the late San Francisco mayor’s son, Jonathan Moscone.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through March 25. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

A Steady Rain Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, SF; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs/16, 1pm; Feb 25, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Feb 26. Marin Theatre Company performs Keith Huff’s neo-noir drama.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: Sun/19, Feb 26, March 11, and 18, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Tanya Bello’s Project. B. and Alyce Finwall Dance Theater Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.975howard.com. Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm. $15. New work by choregraphers Bello and Finwall.

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now 2012” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Fri/17-Sat/18 and Feb 24-25, 8pm; Sun/19, 4pm; Feb 26, 7pm. $10-25. Celebrate African and African American dance and culture at this multi-part festival, with works by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, and more.

Company C Contemporary Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787. Fri/17, 8pm; Sat/18, 6:30pm (gala benefit); and Sun/19, 3pm. $23-175. The company opens its 10th anniversary season.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tues, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“The Eric Show” Milk Bar, 1840 Haight, SF; www.milksf.com. Tues, 8pm (ongoing). $5. Local comedians perform with host Eric Barry.

“Forever Tango” Marines Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com. Wed/15-Sat/18, 8pm (also Sat/18, 2pm); Sun/19, 2pm. $45-75. Dancing With the Stars’ Anna Trebunskaya stars in this tango extravaganza.

“Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus: A Greek Comedy Rock Epic” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/17-Sun/19, 8pm. $20. Trixxie Carr and Ben Randle’s San Francisco-set multimedia performance returns.

Holly Johnston/Ledges and Bones ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org. Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 7pm. $17-37. The contemporary dance company world-premieres Want.

“The Past is a Grotesque Animal” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm. $5-25. Argentine writer-director Mariano Pensotti presents the Bay Area premiere of his acclaimed drama.

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