San Francisco

Campaign to regulate health insurance premiums launched in SF

Sasha Cuttler
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Campaign to regulate health insurance premiums launched in SF

Representatives from Consumer Watchdog and other groups today launched a ballot measure campaign to regulate health insurance rates in California with an event outside the San Francisco headquarters of Blue Shield of California, which is in the process of substantially increasing health premiums for a second consecutive year despite sitting on billions of dollars in cash reserves.

Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court told us the measure and the campaign to gather the 505,000 valid signatures needed to qualify it for the November ballot would be similar to the group’s landmark 1988 campaign to pass Prop. 103, which regulated car insurance rates. That will include an extensive effort to mail petitions directly to voters and seek donations for the efforts, supplemented this time by an e-mail campaign.

“On 103, they got all but 100,000 signatures that way,” Court said, adding, “This is Prop. 103 for health insurance.”

The 800-word measure would require health insurance companies to publicly justify their rate increase requests, make the company CEOs affirm that financial data under penalty of perjury, and make the rate increases subject to approval by California’s Insurance Commissioner.

Significantly, the first person to sign the petition was U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who Court told us is co-chairing the campaign. “She has a real passion for the issue,” he said, describing how she was so outraged by a Blue Shield executive’s testimony to Congress over its double-digit proposed rate hike last year that she sponsored legislation to regulate health insurance premiums, which was defeated.

Blue Shield is officially a nonprofit company, and Court said its public filings show it has $3.4 billion in reserves, with is about 1400 percent more than the state requires. He also said many Blue Shield customers will be hit with a 15 percent rate hike on March 1, and he cited California Healthcare Foundation figures showing health insurance premiums have increased 153 percent in the last decade, while inflation increased by just 29 percent.

Calls to Blue Shield’s press office have not been returned, but I’ll update this post if/when they call.

Right about now

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Right about now

THEATER It’s a rare thing, really too rare, to find an audience eagerly erupting into political discussions between acts of a play. But that’s what Little Brother inspires, and in an unaffected way, without pretension or unwelcome goading. It’s too cool, confident, and contemporary for that. After all, the night I saw the play — adapted by director Josh Costello from the 2008 teen novel by Canadian sci-fi author and activist (and co-editor of Boing Boing) Cory Doctorow — was just one night after Occupy Oakland tried to convert a vacant building into a much-needed community center for the needier of the 99 percent. That didn’t go too well. The street clashes with shock-trooping Oakland police forces led to something like 400 arrests before the night was over.

That latest incident, in an ongoing resistance to systemic and overweening injustice, resonated effortlessly with the proceedings onstage at Custom Made Theatre. There, on an intimate thrust stage, three sharp young actors (Daniel Petzold, Marissa Keltie, and Cory Censoprano) smoothly embodied a fleet series of characters in a story pitting a group of Mission District high school teens against the Department of Homeland Security. The battle takes place in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that levels the Bay Bridge and unleashes an all-out totalitarian crackdown by the federal government. It’s a dramatic, humorous, irreverent, and urgent story all at once. While far from a perfect play (dramatic consistency and verisimilitude are stretched a bit thin by the end), Little Brother is probably the most exciting thing on stage just now, alive like few other productions in its response to the present moment.

Behind the dynamic trio onstage stands a patchwork wall-projection screen (courtesy of set designer Sarah Phykitt, video designer Pauline Luppert, and video engineer Darl Andrew Packard) papered over with pages seemingly torn from radical histories and revolutionary tracts (it was easy enough to make out Emma Goldman’s visage among the repeated black-and-white pages), and periodically set aglow with live video feed, scene-setting photo montage, text messages, and hacker scrawl across computer and videogame screens.

While DHS is synonymous with Big Brother throughout, and for good reason — the agency is at the forefront of a total invasion of American private life and the Gitmo’ing of American teens — it can also be understood at times as a synonym for the state at large, from high school vice principals on up. As main character Marcus Yallow (a bright, engaging Petzold) explains in an early address to the audience, he’s a senior at a San Francisco public high school. Even before the Bay Bridge attack, “that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world.”

Before being transformed into an all-out revolutionary by his violent, extra-constitutional encounter with DHS, Marcus and buddy Darryl (a sharp and versatile Censoprano) are fun-loving rebel hackers and gamers often on the receiving end of unwanted attention by the usual authorities. In an early scene, an inept school administrator interrogates Marcus, believing him, correctly, to be the hacker menace “w1n5t0n” (though, hilariously, pronouncing the handle literally instead of the intended “Winston”). Marcus outwits him, and the administrator loses his grip on the free-roaming online hooligan who, among other things, has handily derailed the “snitch tags” the school plants in library books to track the students.

At this point, Little Brother bears a striking similarity to The North Pool, Rajiv Joseph’s psychological two-hander set in a vice principal’s office after school, which had its premiere last year at Palo Alto’s TheatreWorks. But Joseph’s battle, while resonating with a larger political and historical context, ultimately remains more personal than political. Little Brother moves via the next terrorist attack into the realm of all-out political crisis, as short a distance from here as that may seem, and in this way resists reducing its themes to merely personal terms, highlights a tension with the personal throughout — even as it cleaves to a familiar coming-of-age narrative involving Marcus and girlfriend-coconspirator Ange (played compellingly by Keltie).

Costello shrewdly emphasizes this tension in his staging, which begins with the three principal characters recreating the story for a video cam so that it can be posted online. As Marcus begins a first-person account, his cohorts interrupt him almost immediately. “Dude, you can’t make it all about you,” says Darryl, with good-humored conviction. “It’s too big.”

 

LITTLE BROTHER

Through Feb. 25

Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m., $25-$32

Gough Street Playhouse

1620 Gough, SF

www.custommade.org

Local control of cops

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Local control of cops

news@sfbg.com

Sup. Jane Kim has introduced legislation to the Board of Supervisors calling for a re-examination of the San Francisco Police Department’s participation in some aspects of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was created by the Federal Bureau of Investigations to do domestic surveillance.

The proposed ordinance would prohibit the SFPD from working with the JTTF to collect intelligence on individuals in the absence of criminal wrongdoing, which has been a concern of civil libertarians since last year when a secret memo revealed that local officers were under FBI command and not bound by local and state restrictions on such surveillance (see “Spies in blue,” 4/26/11).

Kim said the ordinance was necessary to ensure the “requirement of reasonable suspicion before we do any type of investigation of criminal activity. And we don’t base it on ethnic identification or religious practice as some of the members of the community have been experiencing the last couple of years.

“Our office is sponsoring this because many members of the Arab, Asian and the Muslim community worship in the district and own many small businesses,” she said.

Critics of the relationship between local and federal law enforcement agencies, facilitated through participation in the JTTF, have long raised concerns about racial profiling and unnecessary spying ordered at the federal level, and carried out by SFPD inspectors assigned full time to the task force.

Federal regulations governing FBI intelligence gathering are weaker than standards set by San Francisco and California’s Constitution. In 1990, the San Francisco Police Commission established rules requiring that intelligence-gathering involving any First Amendment activity be based on reasonable suspicion of significant criminal activity. Those rules reflect the California Constitutional requirement of an “articulable criminal predicate” before law enforcement agencies engage in intelligence-gathering activity.

However, because the SFPD inspectors assigned to the JTTF work under the direction of the FBI, the local regulation and control of law enforcement is effectively limited in JTTF investigations.

“It’s important that a clear prohibition against policing based on race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion applies to all of our officers, all of the time,” said John Crew, police practices expert for the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is one of more than 30 civil rights and community organizations participating in the Coalition for Safe SF, which helped develop the proposed ordinance.

According to the coalition, current rules prevent the SFPD from barring its inspectors assigned to the JTTF from joining FBI agents in collecting intelligence on San Franciscans without any “particular factual predication.”

“The purpose of this legislation is to restore local control, civilian oversight, and transparency over the SFPD’s participation in FBI intelligence-gathering,” stated attorney Nasrina Bargzie of the Asian Law Caucus, which is part of the coalition.

The coalition was a major participant in the San Francisco Human Rights Commission hearing in 2010 on the issue of baseless spying and racial profiling in JTTF investigations. The result was a comprehensive report, endorsed by the Board of Supervisors last spring.

But in 2011, the ACLU and Asian Law Caucus learned that key protections for civil liberties — including civilian oversight of intelligence activity and safeguards to limit intrusive tactics — were thrown out the window and replaced by a secret Memorandum of Understanding with federal law enforcement in 2007.

Under the MOU, SFPD paid officers work out of the local FBI office. The secure nature of their work means they must seek federal permission to even talk to their superiors in the SFPD about their work, effectively removing them from the local chain of command. Despite mandated requirements on local law enforcement, the MOU does not allow for any civilian oversight of the work of officers assigned to the JTTF.

San Francisco Chief of Police Greg Suhr said he believes that the concerns have already been addressed. In his first days in office, Chief Suhr issued a binding Bureau Order #2011-07 setting forth the requirement that officers comply with local standards.

An excerpt of the order reads, “SFPD officers shall work with the JTTF only on investigations of suspected terrorism that have a criminal nexus. In situations where the statutory law of California is more restrictive of law enforcement than comparable federal law, the investigative methods employed by SFPD officers working on JTTF investigations shall conform to the requirements of such California statutes.”

“With this Bureau Order, the language of the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding no longer applies and SFPD personnel are bound by the provisions of the 2011 Order,” SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza told the Guardian.

But Crew said that as long as the MOU between the SFPD and federal law enforcement remains in place, Suhr’s order at best creates contradictory policy. “The Memorandum of Understanding is a binding legal contact with the federal government. Which do you think will take legal precedence when it comes up against a local police chief’s departmental order?” said Crew, who urged the department to clarify the matter by withdrawing from the MOU, a step the SFPD has thus far been unwilling to take.

A letter from Sept. 28 of last year to Coalition for Safe SF from FBI Special Agent Stephanie Douglas regarding the contradiction clarifies the matter. “I do retain the right to assign FBI JTTF cases,” states Douglas, who goes on to assert it is she who makes the confidential judgment of which cases fall afoul of the state and city rules and which do not.

After years of intelligence-gathering authorized under a secret memorandum, public mistrust in the SFPD’s relationship to federal law enforcement persists. Kim says she believes the proposed ordinance will still help make San Francisco safer. “It increases the trust of the community members that are working with public safety in reporting, and in cooperating around many of the actual criminal activities that might be going on in the city,” she said.

The proposed legislative approach of regulating the scope of local participation in federal JTTF work is not unprecedented. The city has the option of terminating the MOU with 30 days notice, a step that the city of Portland, Oregon has taken to prevent its police force from spying on citizens in violation of local and state law.

In December, the city of Berkeley suspended its agreement with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (an arm of the Joint Terrorism Task Force) as part of a broad review of that city’s relationship to other local and federal law enforcement agencies (see “Policing the police,” 12/13/11).

“What this is about is maintaining local control of law enforcement and ensuring the civil liberties of the people of San Francisco,” Crew said. “Don’t San Franciscans deserve the same protection of their civil liberties as the people of Portland?”

Kim was joined by Sups. David Compos and John Avalos in sponsoring the ordinance. Supervisors are expected to vote on the whether to adopt the ordinance this spring after the measure is heard by the city’s Public Safety Committee following the normal 30-day hold. The measure seems to have the support it needs to pass the Board of Supervisors, but it remains unclear whether Mayor Ed Lee, who did not answer our inquiries, will sign it.

The sex worker struggle

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The sex worker struggle

yael@sfbg.com

Google has come under fire in the past year for everything from privacy policies to censorship. But in December, some Bay Area residents were protesting the tech giant for a very different reason. The group that marched in front of the company’s San Francisco office was angry over the company’s donation to organizations fighting human trafficking.

The flyers declared, “Google: Please fund non-judgmental services for sex workers, NOT the morality crusaders that dehumanize us!”

Google had donated a whopping $11.5 million to organizations that “fight slavery” last December, including the anti-sex trafficking groups International Justice Mission, Polaris Project, and Not For Sale.

But the activists said that these are religious organizations that ignored the rights of consensual sex workers.

According to a press release from Sex Worker Activists, Allies, and You (SWAAY), “As frontline sex-worker support services struggle for funding to serve their communities, it is offensive to watch Google shower money upon a wealthy faith-based group like the International Justice Mission, which took in nearly $22 million in 2009 alone.”

“I appreciate what they’re trying to do, but I wish that they had done more research,” Kitty Stryker, a local performer, sex worker and activist, of Google’s choice to fund the organizations.

In a society where the term “sex worker” — coined to describe those who consensually engage in commercial sex and consider it legitimate labor — is still new to most people, this sex workers rights struggle can be an uphill battle. But it rages on, and San Francisco remains one of its most important front lines.

 

FREE SEX FOR HIRE

The heart of the struggle is, and or years has been, fighting the prohibition of prostitution, and the ultimate goal of the sex workers movement is the repeal of the laws that criminalize sex for hire. Decriminalization would be a vital safety measure for escorts, people working on the street, phone-sex operators, exotic dancers, porn actors, and other occupations that fall under the umbrella category of sex work.

Sex workers held worldwide conferences in the 1980s, meeting in Amsterdam and Brussels. Sex work was legalized and decriminalized in several countries around the world, including New Zealand, the Netherlands and Germany. The Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) became one of the most important organizations fighting for the cause, with chapters around the world.

Here in San Francisco, the city remains a hub for sex-workers rights advocates, who raise awareness about issues ranging from STD prevention to consent in BDSM contexts. The Saint James Infirmary supports and treats sex workers when they need medical assistance, and the Center for Sex and Culture is a resource and community center that embraces all San Franciscan’s with their minds in the gutter, sex industry workers included.

San Francisco’s sex workers rights history includes two unions. Workers at the North Beach strip club the Lusty Lady formed the Exotic Dancers Union in 1997. The union became part of the Service Employees International Union, and the Lusty Lady remains the only collectively run, sex-worker-owned strip club in the United States.

Maxine Doogan founded the Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU) in 2004 as an umbrella organization for sex workers in various industries. The ESPU has been active in opposing regulations of the massage industry and sponsoring Proposition K, a 2008 ballot measure that would have decriminalized sex work in San Francisco.

I spoke to a handful of Bay Area sex-workers rights activists to get a sense of the major issues and priorities for the next year.

NO VISAS

Activists are currently planning for the July, 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.

Many international sex workers rights advocates have been denied visas to get to the conference. The U.S. typically bars convicted felons — but there’s a special exception for people guilty of misdemeanor prostitution charges.

“SWOP has an idea of getting in touch with some of the people denied entrance and asking them what they were going to present on and to try and present their papers in their place, to make sure these organizers voices are heard,” said SWOP-Bay Area spokesperson Shannon Williams.

But that’s not where the government’s weird exclusion of sex workers from its efforts to fight AIDS ends.

The Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) fund allocates $48 billion to organizations around the world engaged in AIDS treatment and prevention. But thanks to the religious right, the law, approved in 2003, includes a stipulation that all recipient groups must make a pledge decrying prostitution. It’s known as the “anti-prostitution loyalty oath.”

A court ruling July 6, 2011 declared the oath a violation of the free-speech rights of organizations in the United States, but the U.S. still blocks PEPFAR funding for international organizations based on the “loyalty oath.”

“Sex worker activists are going to converge in D.C. for the AIDS conference and talk about the loyalty oath. The US is exporting its ideology through this funding requirement” said Carol Leigh, a longtime activist who curates the annual San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Art Festival.

 

EMPHASIZING CONSENT

Sex workers rights activists continue to be engaged in their complex, decades-long struggle with anti-sex trafficking organizations.

People who want safer working conditions say that decriminalization would make it easier for police to distinguish between coerced and consensual prostitution and encourage those with knowledge of crimes perpetuated against sex workers to come forward without risking prosecution for their own illegal work.

But many anti-trafficking advocates dismiss the distinction between forced and consensual prostitution in their efforts. According to a document called “Ten reasons for not legalizing prostitution,” on the website of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, “There is no doubt that a small number of women say they choose to be in prostitution, especially in public contexts orchestrated by the sex industry… In this situation, it is harm to the person, not the consent of the person that is the governing standard (emphasis theirs).”

It’s this refusal to acknowledge the importance of consent that really pisses off advocates —and has a powerful effect on the policy that governs them.

The federal definition of sex trafficking includes consensual prostitution, and defines coerced prostitution as “severe sex trafficking.” “Law enforcement agencies can use anti-trafficking funds to arrest sex workers in prostitution, on the grounds that the feds define all prostitution as trafficking, even though the government distinguishes between trafficking and severe trafficking,” said one sex workers rights activist.

According to Leigh, anti-trafficking organizations are not all bad; she named the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women as an organization that “has been allied with sex workers rights movement and takes rights-based approach.”

But organizations that conflate consensual and coerced commercial sex are often big-time recipients of public and private funding.

Doogan is wary of any attempt to further regulate or criminalize sex work. She says that often, laws meant to deter prostitution trap people who may want to change occupations.  “Women have to continue working in the industry because no one else will take them for work when they have those convictions on their record,” said Doogan.

That may be the case with Lola, an occasional Erotic Service Providers Union volunteer who was arrested on prostitution-related charges outside California earlier this year. She moved to the Bay Area and is looking for a job, but after a promising interview last week, she’s nervous that a background check will reveal her arrest.

“I’m waiting to hear whether that’s going to be an issue or not. They could tell my landlord, and then I could lose my house too…all I’m trying to do is get a job,” Lola told the Guardian.

 

THE WORK GOES ON

For most sex-workers rights activists, the long-term goal remains decriminalization. For now education, creative projects, and protest in service of that goal continue.

Members of SWOP-Bay Area have a program called Whorespeak that does outreach at colleges, and “we’ve also been speaking in classes for therapists about how to work with current and former sex workers and not pathologize them,” said Williams.

According to Stryker, one of the most exciting projects happening now is Karma Pervs. The website, run by local queer porn star Jiz Lee, sells unique sex-positive porn and donates the proceeds to organizations like the Saint James Infirmary.

Then, of course, there’s the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, when sex workers and allies gather to commemorate sex workers who have been assaulted and killed.

Sex workers often can’t go to police to report crimes for fear of being locked up themselves, society retains a huge stigma surrounding sex work, and there is an insidious cultural myth that “you can’t rape a prostitute.” These all add up to put sex workers at high risk for assault and murder; serial killers, such as the Green River Killer in Seattle and a murdered in Long Island-area this past summer, are disproportionately likely to target prostitutes.

That’s why, for Williams, “Our long-term goal is to decriminalize prostitution. But the real goal is to end violence against sex workers.”

Plastic bags banned from all SF stores

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Plastic bags banned from all SF stores

The Board of Supervisors voted to expand a 2007 ban on plastic checkout bags to cover all retail and food establishments.

The law bans all businesses from providing plastic bags to customers. It also requires a ten cent fee for paper bags, to be pocketed by the store. With the ban, only paper bags, compostable bags, and reusable bags will be permitted at checkout. The city hopes to encourage shoppers to carry reusable bags.

Supervisors acknowledged that this ordinance could create confusion and inconvenience for business owners.

Many supervisors, notably Chiu and Weiner, emphasized that in the past few months they had done outreach in their districts, explaining the bill at open forums and neighborhood association meetings, and getting community feedback.

Two amendments– an exemption of certain items, such as fresh flowers, bulk candy and loose nails, and a cap of the paper bag cost at ten cents- -were the were results of community feedback.

With the amendments, the ban passed unanimously, with ten votes (Supervisor David Campos was ill and not in attendane.)

Melanie Nutter, Director of the city’s Department of the Environment, helped lead the outreach efforts.

“I am pleased. The legislation being considered today will encourage customers to reuse their bags. This will dramatically reduce the impact of hundreds of millions of disposable bags currently in use in our city. These bags end up on our streets, in our bay and oceans, and in landfills,” said Nutter.

The most notorious effect of plastic pollution on the Pacific Coast is the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” a floating conglomeration of trash that has been known to kill marine life and has been a target of environmental concern.

The ban will take effect Oct. 1.

Nutter said that the city is looking into a bag giveaway program to ease access to reusable and compostable bags for consumers and businesses. She added that, for businesses that are not able to use up their inventory of plastic bags by Oct. 1, some exemptions to the implementation date may be made.

Original legislation to ban plastic bags from grocery stores and chain pharmacies passed in 2007.  Since, several California cities have followed suit, including Malibu, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, San Jose and Long Beach.

“Now, it’s time for San Francisco to catch up and continue to show environmental leadership,” said Supervisor Christina Olague.

Twisted misters

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Twisted misters

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM This year’s San Francisco Independent Film Festival kicks off with a film that knows exactly what time it is: 4:44 Last Day on Earth.

Abel Ferrara’s latest imagines what the end of the world might be like for a volatile Lower East Side couple — he’s an ex-junkie (Ferrara favorite Willem Dafoe), she’s a young painter (Shanyn Leigh, Ferrara’s real-life companion). The film’s title refers to the predicted instant that an environmental catastrophe will completely dissolve the ozone layer, but 4:44 is mostly set indoors, specifically within the headspace of Dafoe’s character. It’s a gritty film that veers between self-indulgence and stuff that honestly seems pretty practical (sure, there’s a lot of Skyping, but if the world were ending, wouldn’t you?); as far as inward-looking disaster movies go, anyone planning an apocalypse film festival could double-bill 4:44 nicely with 2011’s Melancholia.

IndieFest is not an apocalypse film festival, per se. You could choose to have a jolly old time; there’s a power ballad sing-along, and even a flick called I Like You. But the selections for sick puppies are truly, truly outstanding this year. Personally, I recommend going as dark as you can possibly stand.

Start your journey with Michael R. Roskam’s Bullhead, a Belgian import that just scored a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination. The five-second description of this film, which is about a cattle farmer who injects both his livestock and his own body with illegal hormones, doesn’t do it justice. Who knew there was such a thing, for instance, as a “hormone mafia underworld”? While some of Bullhead‘s nuances, which occasionally pivot on culture-clash moments specific to its Belgium setting, will inevitably be lost on American viewers, the most important parts of the movie come through loud and clear, and you won’t soon forget them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fvLVNlMvus

Also memorable is Snowtown, another standout Australian crime film on the heels of Animal Kingdom (2010). While Snowtown — whose vérité shooting style recalls Andrea Arnold’s films about desperate living amid Britain’s council estates — isn’t quite as exportable as Animal Kingdom, it is just as uncomfortably tense, and features a teenage protagonist struggling to survive amid close-to-home evil. It’s based on the real-life case of Australia’s worst serial killer, and follows the gruesome facts quite closely. The film has a lot of characters that come and go without much explanation or introduction, which starts to seem deliberate after awhile. Fortunately, the core cast is magnetic. Remember 2005’s Wolf Creek? Snowtown is just as intense.

Still have a lust for blood? Of course you do. British director Ben Wheatley made a splash with 2009 gangster drama Down Terrace; he’s back with much buzz surrounding Kill List, with a review in the IndieFest catalog citing it as “the number one horror film of the year.” I’d hate to hand out that accolade so early in 2012, but this hired-killer-down-the-rabbit-hole tale is indeed worth considering.

Of course, there’s more to horror than guts and torture; if you need a reminder as to why, check out the festival’s pair of home-is-where-the-creepy-is films from Austria, Beside My Brother and Still Life. Beside My Brother‘s set-up — an emotionally disturbed father pretends his twin sons are the same person, and forces them to live as such, a practice they maintain into adulthood — is more promising than its payoff. Remember how in Dead Ringers (1988), the doppelganger bros were gynecologists? Here, they’re painters, and pretty bland ones at that. Far more harrowing is Still Life, about the irrevocable damage wrought by a father’s single, horrible revelation. First-time feature director Sebastian Meise manages to distill the complete crumbling of a seemingly normal-ish family into a slender, wrenching 77 minutes.

Speaking of harrowing, there’s nothing scarier in all of IndieFest than the early scenes of documentary Last Days Here, made by Don Argott and Demian Fenton (directors of 2009’s excellent The Art of the Steal). The film alights upon Bobby Liebling, dubbed the “godfather of doom” for his forty-plus year stint fronting legendary band Pentagram, as a fiftysomething crack addict living in his parents’ basement. Last Days Here is both heartfelt and gloves-off; it’s also blessed with having one of the most unbelievable comeback stories at its core (not a spoiler if you keep abreast of Bay Area concerts; Pentagram’s played here several times in recent years). It, like many of the films discussed here, has a distributor and will be coming around after IndieFest, but I implore you not to sleep on this one — even if you don’t love heavy metal, but especially if you do.

Less successful but no less intriguing is Atlanta oddity Snow On Tha Bluff, which is somewhere between an old-school ethnographic film — like, Robert Flaherty old — and self-aware product of the YouTube generation. The opening and closing scenes are obviously staged, as a drug dealer named Curtis Snow steals a video camera and decides he’ll make an autobiographical movie from the footage he collects. What’s between those bookends is what appears to be an authentic record of life in Snow’s crime-infested neighborhood, complete with drive-by shootings, home invasions, run-ins with the police, copious drug use, etc. Why any of the involved would allow their faces to be shown on camera while, say, firing a non-street legal weapon into a rival’s home is the film’s biggest mystery; its biggest accomplishment is obscuring the obvious lines of demarcation between what’s real and what’s not.

To end your IndieFest experience on a slightly uplifted note, you will have to die — or at least be cool with hanging out with the ghosts in Finisterrae, the first feature from Catalan artist Sergio Caballaro.

Expressing themselves via droll, post-production “dialogue” (in Russian, subtitled in English), the newly-deceased, sheet-wearing duo decides they would like to live again. A-journeying they go, following the wind and encountering an array of strange characters, including enough taxidermied animals to make Chuck Testa‘s head spin. Finisterrae starts slow but builds to glorious, gorgeously filmed and supremely weird heights. Hippies beware.

SAN FRANCISCO INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL

Feb. 9-23, most films $11

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.sfindie.com

 

Eternal return

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Eternal return

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Gregory Markopoulos was born in Toledo, Ohio, but his Greek heritage lights the way in critical appraisals of his refined and elusive body of work. Many of the films featured in the Pacific Film Archive’s “Seconds of Eternity” series are imagined on the stage of Greek myth. After leaving New York in 1967 with his partner Robert Beavers, an outstanding filmmaker in his own right, Markopoulos drew still closer to his ancestral home. He died in 1992, but Beavers, who will be on hand at the PFA to shepherd the films, has preserved the work for the Temenos, a unique archive and biennial outdoor screening cycle located near Lyssaraia, Markopoulos’s father’s home. This June brings another such event.

Markopoulos’s films have themselves long achieved mythic stature. He was a colossal figure during the heroic phase of the American avant-garde and then left it behind. Dissatisfied with exhibition standards, he withdrew his prints from circulation (the Temenos screenings represents the idealistic rejoinder). Remarkably, he requested that critic P. Adams Sitney excise a full chapter on his works from Visionary Film, generally considered the central critical survey of the American avant-garde. So Markopoulos went to almost unthinkable lengths to maintain the primacy of his early films (he continued making new ones, as well). Any opportunity to watch these ravishing films close to home is unusual.

Markopoulos once remarked that “locations and beautiful faces have been the backbone of my work,” and one sees that to an archetypal degree in Psyche (1947), the first film of his Du Sang, de la volupté et de la mort trilogy, made when he was still a teenage student at USC living across the hall from Curtis Harrington. Inspired by a Pierre Louÿs novella, the film replaces spoken language with dynamic color and framing. We begin with a man and woman crossing each other on a leafy Angeleno street: a few steps further and they turn back to consider what they’ve just passed. All that follows might be transpire within this instant: a languid fantasia hatched within a fugitive moment of lost time. Markopoulos frames the couple in deep focus two-shots, grazing shoulders and lips and tumbling toward dreams.

An evident poverty of means only concentrates the film’s withdrawal into a private world of frustrated beauty (across town Kenneth Anger was fashioning his more explicitly Dionysian Fireworks). The dive into inexpressible desire reaches a peak when Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “Serenade” suddenly drops out and the image snaps to a silent interlude of natural splendor bordering on abstraction — sea grass gorgeously superimposed upon the sea. This image gives magnificent form to the phrase “out of the blue” and overflows the frame in such a way as to shake loose the film’s more studied visual effects.

Markopoulos would later articulate in written form (“Towards a New Narrative Form in Motion Pictures”) what he set out to accomplish beginning with Psyche: “The film maker gradually convinces the spectator not only to see and to hear, but to participate in what is being created on the screen, on both the narrative and introspective levels. The magnificent landscapes of emotions, with colors brighter than the film viewer has ever been concerned with, begin to exist. The transient impact of meetings, handshakes, kisses, and the hours apart from these contacts becomes revealed in all its astounding simplicity.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59mrfKQRdQ

That “astounding simplicity” is readily apparent in A Christmas Carol (1940), a compressed bildungsroman evoking a richly embroidered fabric of memory with only a few spare images (mother setting the table, father looking up over his newspaper, figures dancing on a nearby rooftop). Twice a Man (1963) reveals the full extent of Markopoulos’ dream of a new narrative language. A psychologically fraught interpolation of the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra (son seduced by mother and liberated from suicidal thoughts by a healer-artist), the film surfaces an internal state of emergency in a persistently emergent form.

Most remarkable is the densely interleaved editing by which Markopoulos folds multiple registers of time, color, and theme. Though often likened to other seminal works of the American avant-garde (especially Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man, 1961-64), Twice a Man‘s fractal form also recalls contemporaneous French films like Alain Resnais’s Muriel (1963) — though if anything Markopoulos’s cutting seems more evolved for its thoroughgoing commitment to simultaneity. Beginning with a ferry ride into blue New York, suggestive of any number of mythic crossings, there is an ever-sharpening concordance of different blocks of imagery. The protagonist’s central struggle to get out from under his mother and be reborn as his own person takes root in these syntactical somersaults. Indeed, this is where the modernist character of Markopoulos’s work shines through: a classical story embodied in the radical address of the senses. (You don’t need a neurologist to know that your brain gets a tune-up watching this film). Less successful is the cut-up spoken address that Phaedra delivers to her son, with which Markopoulos seems a little too assured of his genius. The haranguing pure speech dampens an otherwise brilliant film with a faintly misogynistic mist.

Though Markopoulos delved still deeper into myth with his Illiac Passion (1964-1967), he also gravitated towards more focused portraits of people and places in these years. San Francisco Cinematheque will screen Galaxie (1966), his anthology of New York people, in May. Meanwhile, the PFA sneaks in Ming Green (1966) before the epic Illiac Passion. The silent film gathers up images of the New York home Markopoulos was soon to leave as if for a bouquet. Edited in camera with great fluency, Ming Green revises the still life for cinema: the apartment’s objects sit in repose, vibrating with the articulation of color and residue of memory. Flourishing superimpositions put on a terrific show without abandoning the refined air of quietude. It’s unlikely that you’ll see a more exquisite short roll of film this year.

SECONDS OF ETERNITY: THE FILMS OF GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS

Feb. 9-16, $5.50-$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

bampfa.berkeley.edu

Our Weekly Picks: February 8-14

Andrew Lam
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FRIDAY 10

The Great Gatsby: John Harbison’s Opera

Set 1920s New York wealth, style, and tragic disillusionment to chamber orchestration and what do you get? John Harbison’s ambitious opera, The Great Gatsby, which is, of course, based on the modern American classic by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ensemble Parallèle, a local contemporary opera company, describes The Great Gatsby as its “most ambitious project to date” and will be performing San Francisco composer Jacques Desjardins’ re-orchestration of Harbison’s masterpiece this weekend. Expect stunning costumes and rich scores that throw you back into the great American Jazz Age. And characters that take you back to high school English class. (Mia Sullivan)

Fri/10-Sat/11, 8 p.m.; Sun/12, 2 p.m., $35–$65

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

Orchid

Striking from its secret lair, deep in the heart of Marin county, Orchid has become an international force to be reckoned with. Though European fans demand the band’s throbbing, Sabbathian riffs, powerful drumming, and soulful vocal incantations, stateside heshers are no less eager. The quartet’s local shows tend to be both raucous and intimate, and Orchid is known to treat the audience to an unreleased track or two. Come for the candelabras, the satanic gong, and the best in spiritual, throwback doom. (Ben Richardson)

With High Horse, Castle, The St. James Society

9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

Los Campesinos!

Now on its fourth album — last November’s Hello Sadness — Wales-formed/not-Welsh group Los Campesinos! remains one of the most exuberant acts in indie rock. Thanks to a more streamlined sound on that last record, it’s also becoming increasingly possible to drop the “indie” altogether (although then again, considering the band’s ongoing zine Heat Rash and general openness to fans, there’s definitely still some of that original twee likeability.) Los Campesinos! will be joined by the always entertaining Parenthetical Girls with its enfant terrible bandleader Zac Pennington, who, if memory serves, broke every single glass he got his hands on last time at the Hemlock. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Parenthetical Girls

9 p.m., $21

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

SATURDAY 11

CHINESE NEW YEAR AT THE SYMPHONY

Everyone living in a world-class city catches them sometimes: those I’m-not-being-cultural-enough blues. Our lives are tough (THIS IS A JOKE). But just when we’re tucking our flannel sheets despairingly up over our azure foreheads, in prances an entry-level event that not only showcases one of SF’s most vibrant communities, but also employs superlative artistic minds. The symphony’s Chinese New Year performance features musical arrangements penned exclusively by Chinese and Chinese American composers, Carolyn Kuan conducting, and — oh yes — lion dancing with traditional snacks and tea during the family-friendly pre-concert reception. (Caitlin Donohue)

Reception 3 p.m.; concert 4 p.m., $15–$68

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.sfsymphony.org

 

“Our Feet Speak the Rhythms of Our Hearts”

Feet, whether bare or in shoes, propel dance in space, but perhaps more complexly, in time. Every culture has realized that the foot — leaping, sliding, tapping — is the dancer’s most essential instrument. “Our Feet Speak the Rhythms of Our Hearts” is paying tribute to our being bipeds as seen, primarily, from Spanish language cultures. Flamenco and Tango, but also more clearly folkloric genres, make up the fare. SF’s Barbary Coast Cloggers may be outsiders but who wouldn’t welcome these infectiously intrepid dancers. Especially welcome will be La Tania, too long absent from San Francisco’s Flamenco scene. Now about another program by unshod feet — African, Indian, Indonesian? (Rita Felciano)

Sat/11, 8 p.m., $25, 6:30 p.m. champagne reception; Sun/12, 3 p.m.

Cowell Theater

Fort Mason Center, SF

(415) 345-7575

www.fortmason.org

 

The Grannies

Only San Francisco could produce a five-piece, all-male punk rock band whose members are known for their unceasing desire to dress up like old women and “fuck shit up.” (Their words.) To wrap your head around the Grannies live, think hard-edged, wailing death punk sound coming from people wearing multi-colored wigs, floral nightgowns, and black platform boots. This show is not for the faint of heart, as vocalist Special Edna has a propensity to rile up the crowd, chiefly by gyrating his hips and stripping. Make sure to listen up for their brash, funny, and occasionally vile lyrics, and don’t forget to bring your moshing wig. (Sullivan)

With Bottom, Cormorant

9 p.m., $7

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

 

Social Distortion

On the road for more than 30 years now, Orange County punk stalwart Social Distortion is much like the hot rod you might see at a classic car show; it’s been nearly driven off the road on more than one occasion, and has had its fair share of nicks and scratches, but these days it’s a more polished and well-oiled machine than ever before. Touring behind last year’s excellent Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes (Epitaph), expect Mike Ness and company to deliver a night of punk rock love songs, blistering rockabilly, blues-infused swagger, and more than enough sing-alongs to leave you hoarse for the next week. (Sean McCourt)

With Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls, Sharks

8 p.m., $32.50

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.thefoxoakland.com

 

No Way Back: Optimo

Any major city should have one. The Haçienda. Fabric. The Paradise Garage. Certain spots that define a scene and a sound. In Glasgow, there’s Sub Club, and from 1997 to 2010 it was held down by DJs JD Twitch and JG Wilkes and their weekly show Optimo, where the duo gained a reputation for playing just about everything — Eurodisco, acid funk, post-punk — whether anyone else at the time thought it belonged in a club or not. Now that their show is on the road, they’re returning to SF for this edition of No Way Back. Whatever they play, it should sound rad on the cherry sound system in Monarch’s basement. (Prendiville)

With DJs Conor, Solar

10 p.m., $10-20

Monarch

101 Sixth St., SF

(415) 284-9774

www.monarchsf.com


SUNDAY 12

East Bay Tour de Bière

Fellow booze buds, the gauntlet of SF Beer Week has been thrown. After a tasting event or four will you be the one with a swollen belly and hops overdose, or will you rise like an effervescent head to the occasion? Here’s one event that will tip the pints in your favor: an East Bay brewery crawl made to be biked. Meet-and-greet the friendly sudsters at Trumer Pils, Linden Street, Triple Rock, Elevation 66, and Pyramid in between pleasant two-wheeled group jaunts. Hell, you’ll be so endorphin-blessed and booze-baited that afterward you just might make it to Sierra Nevada night at Downtown Oakland’s Beer Revolution. (Donohue)

9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., $25

Trumer Pils Brauerei

1404 14 St., Berk.

www.thegrandcru.org

www.sfbeerweek.org


TUESDAY 14

James Adomian

Let’s face it. Valentine’s Day is silly, and at times scary. So why not take the edge off and spend the night at a comedy show? James Adomian, an up-and-coming comedian known for his impressions of a range of characters including Orson Welles, Huell Howser, and Jesse Ventura, produces the type of politically and socially critical, laugh-out-loud material that reminds you how fucked up our world is; and that we must poke fun at it to stay sane. Gaining inspiration from the likes of Todd Glass, Paul F. Tompkins, and Peter Serafinowicz, Adomian consistently delivers intelligent, high-energy performances. (Sullivan)

With Jamie Lee, Ivan Hernandez, and Vince Mancini

8 p.m., $12

Milk Bar

1840 Haight, SF

(415) 387-6455

www.milksf.com

 

Yob

Atma, Yob’s transcendent, thunderous 2011 album, caused a critical sensation. NPR listeners new to the inimitable Eugene, Ore. band may have been pleasantly surprised, but for fans on board since 2002’s Elaborations of Carbon, the tersely-titled LP was simply the next step in a natural progression. Mastermind Mike Scheidt pairs the band’s shuddering, rubbery riffs with lyrics that belie metal’s usual tropes in favor of the cosmic and sublime, stretching his voice from the highest highs to the lowest lows. Valentine’s Day concertgoers should take the opportunity to subsume themselves in the stately repetitions and guttural, hypnotic power of Yob. (Richardson)

With Walken, Black Cobra

8 p.m., $13

New Parish

579 18th St., Oakl.

(510) 444-7474

www.thenewparish.com

 

“Love: Ali MacGraw”

It’s been more than 40 years, but fashionistas are still ripping off Ali MacGraw’s preppy-chic look from the 1970 tearjerker classic Love Story. Nobody else has rocked the swingy, parted-in-the middle locks and dark-eyebrow combo like MacGraw (I see you steppin’, Jordana Brewster, and you ain’t got it). Beyond her style-icon status, of course, MacGraw also has a colorful life and career: marriages to Robert Evans and Steve McQueen, a role on ’80s shoulder-pad juggernaut Dynasty, and, in recent years, using her star power to promote yoga and animal rights. Marc Huestis presents MacGraw in person for a special Valentine’s Day Love Story screening and tribute. Bring your own Kleenex. (Cheryl Eddy)

8 p.m., $25–$45

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.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

Blue/Orange Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Previews Wed/8-Fri/10, 8pm. Opens Sat/11, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). Through March 18. Lorraine Hansberry Theatre performs Joe Penhall’s comedic drama about a hospital patient who claims to be the son of an African dictator.

52 Man Pick Up Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Opens Tues/14, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, Feb 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. Opens Thurs/9, 8pm. Runs Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Geoff Hoyle’s hit solo show returns.

BAY AREA

A Doctor in Spire of Himself Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Previews Fri/10-Sat/11 and Tues/14, 8pm; Sun/12, 7pm. Opens Feb 15, 8pm. Runs Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees Feb 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.

ONGOING

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

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. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm; no matinee Wed/8). Through Feb 19. American Conservatory Theatre presents Carey Perloff’s smart and sexy world premiere.

Jesus in India Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-55. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Feb 18, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 19. Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap is still one of Magic’s strongest premieres in recent years, an intriguingly funny and affecting cross-cultural tale of an absent Korean father’s return to the family he abandoned in West Texas 15 years earlier. Suh’s 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, which are spent getting high and playing in a punk band in India. Pure irreverence might have been worthwhile, but the “dude, fuckin’ &ldots; dude” humor here — one-note and rarely that funny — comes yoked to a fourth-quarter theme (basically a Henry IV thing, the sowing of wild oats ahead of the taking on of a “king’s” responsibilities) that proves even sketchier, not to mention out-of-step with these deliberately leaderless times. (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-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Feb 19. 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, especially in the volatile arguments between Virgil and wife Marla (a sure Natalie Palan Walker) and the passive but more troubled confrontations between Dick and his distant, frustrated wife Cathy (a subtly fraught Kim Stephenson). While the insular, repressed lives of the moderately well off come across well, Duncan’s final monologue is a compressed, if dramatically necessary, attempt at voicing the other side. Vigilance strikes best at the buried politics of marriage and friendship, the latter further invoked in the concerned intervention of cop and childhood friend Frank (a sympathetic Leon Goertzen). (Avila)

Waiting for Godot Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; (415) 336-3522, www.tidestheatre.org. $20-38. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 18. 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. Director (and Tides’ producing artistic director) Jennifer Welch layers the avant-garde classic with some audio accents as well (although Jon Bernson’s minimalist industrial soundscape is a bit low in the mix to be very effective). More compelling is the gentle, sad humor and couched intelligence captured expertly by Halton in the circular but deliberate rhythms of his hapless tramp. Burkland as pal Vladimir exudes a palpable presence as well, though lacks the same focus. Timing is all in vaudeville — the parallel universe from whence these tangible modernist archetypes hail — as well as in a play whose plot goes intentionally nowhere, or rather loops back on itself in an implied dance with eternity. The halting aspect to Tides’ staging gets compounded with the arrival of brash whip-cracker Pozzo (a suitably stentorian but inconsistent Duane Lawrence) and his pitiful slave Lucky (a haunted, generally sharp Renzo Ampuero, made up to look like a goth doll à la some Tim Burton movie). That said, the best moments here broadcast the brooding beauty of the play, 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. $34-55. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 4. Aurora Theatre performs Annie Baker’s comedy.

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.

Ghost Light Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and Feb 16, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through Feb 19. 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)

The Pitman Painters TheatreWorks at Mountain View Center for the Arts, 500 Castro, SF; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Wed/8, 7:30pm; Thurs/9-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat/11, 2pm); Sun/12, 2 and 7pm. TheatreWorks performs a new comedy from the author of Billy Elliot about a group of British miners who become art world sensations.

A Steady Rain Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, SF; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/11 and Feb 25, 2pm; Feb 16, 1pm); 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/12, Feb 19, 26, March 11, and 18, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“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.

“Epic Romance” Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 474-6776, www.improv.org. Tues/14, 8pm. $25. BATS Improv taps its collective quick-wit talents to conjure a romantic play on the spot.

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

“How We First Met” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.howwefirstmet.com. Tues/14, 8pm. $40-75. Jill Bourque’s long-running holiday tradition is inspired by audience members’ real-life tales of romance.

“The I Hate Valentine’s Day Show” Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; www.crackpotcrones.com. Tues/14, 8pm; Feb 19, 5pm. $20. “Sketch comedy and improv as a public service for the romantically challenged” with Crackpot Crones Terry Baum and Carolyn Myers.

“It’s Got to Be Love” Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Mon/13-Tues/14, 8pm. $20. Craig Jessup sings Rodgers, Hart, Gershwin, and Sondheim to benefit the San Francisco Arts Education Project.

“Love Bites — and So Did the ’80s” Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF; www.lgcsf.org. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm. $15-30. The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco celebrates the neon decade with this cabaret and musical extravaganza.

“Mortified! Doomed Valentine’s Show” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Fri/10, 7:30pm. $21. Also Sat/11, 8pm, $20, Shattuck Down Low, 2184 Shattuck, Berk. The awkward storytelling series returns with a romance-gone-awry theme.

“Our Feet Speak the Rhythms of Our Hearts” Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 345-7575, www.fortmason.org. Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 3pm. $15-25. Tango and More Argentine Dance and World Arts West present this event featuring six ethnic dance companies, including La Tania, Ensembles Ballet Folklórico de San Francisco, Valverde Dance, Barbary Coast Cloggers, and Ballet Pampa Argentina.

“Through the Night” Brava Theatre, 2781 24th St, SF; www.communityworkswest.org. Sat/11, 7pm. $40-100. Daniel Beaty performs at this evening honoring author Nell Bernstein and activist Sujatha Baliga; proceeds benefit Community Works’ programs for Bay Area children, families, and communities impacted by incarceration.

“The Weight Game” NOHspace Theater, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/10-Sat/11 and Feb 17-18, 8pm. $15. Sarah Abbey performs her semi-autobiographical solo show about diets and self-esteem.

BAY AREA

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now 2012” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 4pm. Also Feb 17-18 and Feb 24-25, 8pm; Feb 19, 4pm; Feb 26, 7pm, Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF. $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.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete listings, including more Ongoing films, see www.sfbg.com.

INDIEFEST

The 14th San Francisco Independent Film Festival runs Feb 9-23 at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF. For tickets (most films $11) and schedule info, visit www.sfindie.com. For commentary, see “Twisted Misters.”

OPENING

*Elite Squad: The Enemy Within A huge hit in its native Brazil, this drama from director José Padilha (2002’s Bus 174) uses insane amounts of bullets to spin a twisted tale of police and government corruption. It’s a sequel of sorts to 2007’s The Elite Squad, though having missed that film isn’t a barrier to enjoying part two. Special ops cop Roberto Nascimento (Wagner Moura) returns; he’s higher up the bureaucratic food chain, but finds himself locked in a constant battle with bad guys both criminal and co-worker. (“I created the monster that would eat me up,” he realizes after an elaborate scheme to eliminate drug dealers and dirty cops goes horribly awry.) Meanwhile, his wife is now his ex-wife, and she’s remarried a lefty politician (Irandhir Santos) who’s particularly interested in exposing the same villains making Nascimento’s life hell, while also making Nascimento’s life hell himself. Fans of The Wire and particularly City of God — Enemy co-writer Bráulio Mantovani was an Oscar nominee for that 2002 film — will have particular interest in Enemy, though it never quite achieves those works’ memorable heights. One possible reason: too much Nascimento voice-over. How do you say “show me, don’t tell me” in Portuguese? (1:55) Four Star. (Eddy)

*I Am Bruce Lee Not to be confused with Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (2000), this Spike TV co-production is nonetheless a similarly praise-filled portrait of the groundbreaking, charismatic action star. Warrior’s Journey‘s main coup was revealing long-thought-lost footage from 1978’s The Game of Death, one of only five feature films starring Lee (two of which were posthumous, including 1973 smash Enter the Dragon). I Am Bruce Lee tilts more toward exploring Lee’s lasting legacy — an extended debate over whether or not he invented what we now call “mixed martial arts” definitely plays to the doc’s Spike TV interests — but also contains the expected biography, with an emphasis on Lee’s unique approaches to martial arts and philosophy, as well as input from suspects usual (Lee’s widow and daughter, top Lee student Dan Inosanto, etc.), understandable (boxer Manny Pacquiao, martial arts champ Cung Lee), and fanboy (Mickey Rourke, Ed O’Neill). Screening in a very limited run, I Am Bruce Lee is a flashy, entertaining primer for beginning students of Lee (lesson one: he was basically the coolest guy who ever lived); longtime fans may not learn anything new, but will no doubt find much to enjoy anyway. (1:34) Four Star, Metreon. (Eddy)

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Dwayne Johnson and Vanessa Hudgens play a father-daughter team of explorers in this sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. (1:34)

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s deconstructed Turkish police procedural offers little action but plenty of atmosphere. The search for a corpse by a group of men — a prosecutor, a commissar, a doctor, and their two main suspects— through the desolate, wind-scoured hills of rural Anatolia, is in fact something of a Hitchcockian MacGuffin. Ceylan’s real investigation is philosophical, zeroing in on the way in which each of these men constructs his own truth out of the re-telling and mis-telling of past events. And the drudgery of this protracted investigation, much of it depicted in real-time, provides plenty of opportunities for all of the players to tell their stories or to simply ruminate, often bitterly, about their own lives. There is palpable loneliness that courses through all the chatter, formally mirrored by Ceylan’s penchant long-takes of isolated figures swallowed by the countryside or the darkness of night. But despite the endless landscape that surrounds them, there is no exit for these small men. (2:37) SF Film Society Cinema. (Sussman)

Safe House Denzel Washington is a rogue CIA agent who goes on the run with a rookie (Ryan Reynolds) when mercenaries attack. (2:00) Presidio.

Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 3D Spoiler alert: no matter how rad the special effects look in 3D, this movie will still contain Jar Jar Binks. (2:16)

This Means War Another flick about battlin’ CIA agents — this time, though, it’s Chris Pine and Tom Hardy fighting over Reese Witherspoon. (2:00)

“2011 Oscar-Nominated Short Films, Live Action and Animated” See the shorts tipped to compete for Oscar gold in two separate programs, divided into live-action and animated films. Lumiere, Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

The Vow Sorry Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, but 1987’s Overboard is the best amnesia-themed romance of all time. (1:44) Marina.

W.E. Madonna’s having a big week, no? (1:59) Bridge.

ONGOING

Big Miracle Three gray whales trapped beneath the Beaufort Sea ice near the tiny town of Barrow, Alaska become an international cause célèbre through the uneasily combined efforts of an Anchorage reporter (John Krasinski), a Greenpeace activist (Drew Barrymore), a group of chainsaw-toting Inupiaq fishermen, a Greenpeace-hating oilman (Ted Danson), a Reagan-administration aide (Vinessa Shaw), a U.S. Army colonel (Dermot Mulroney), a pair of Minnesotan entrepreneurs (James LeGros and Rob Riggle) with a homemade deicing machine, and the crew of a Soviet icebreaking ship. The magical pixie dust of Hollywood has been sprinkled liberally over events that did indeed take place in 1988, but the media frenzy that blossoms out of one little local newscast is entirely believable. Everyone loves a good whale story, and this one is a tearjerker — though the kind that parents can bring their kids to without worrying overly much about subsequent weeks of deep-sea-set nightmares and having to explain terms like “critically endangered Western North Pacific gray whale” if they don’t want to. The film makes clear that the weak-on-the-environment Reagan administration and Danson’s oilman stand to gain some powerfully good PR from this feat, with potentially devastating ecological results down the line, and Barrymore’s character gets to recite a quick litany of impending oceanic catastrophes. But this kind of talk is characterized as less useful than a nice, quick, visceral pull on the heartstrings, and while offering us the pleasurable sight of whales breaching in open water, the film avoids panning out too much farther, which may be why the miracle looks so big. (2:03) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

*Chronicle A misfit (Dane DeHaan) with an abusive father and an ever-present video camera, his affable cousin (Matt Garretty), and a popular jock (Michael B. Jordan) discover a strange, glowing object in the woods; before long, the boys realize they are newly telekinetic. At first, it’s all a lark, pulling pranks and — in the movie’s most exhilarating scene — learning to fly, but the fun ends when the one with the anger problem (guess which) starts abusing the ol’ with-great-power-comes-great-responsibilities creed. Chronicle is a pleasant surprise in a time when it’s better not to expect much from films aimed at teens; it grounds the superhero story in a (mostly) believable high-school setting, gently intellectualizes the boys’ dilemma (“hubris” is discussed), and also understands how satisfying it is to see superpowers used in the service of pure silliness — like, say, pretending you just happen to be really, really, really, good at magic tricks. First-time feature director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max “son of John” Landis also find creative ways, some more successful than others, to work with the film’s “self-shot” structure. The technique (curse you, Blair Witch) is long past feeling innovative, but Chronicle amply justifies its use in telling its story. (1:23) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Come Back, Africa Opposition to apartheid didn’t really pick up steam as a popular cause in the U.S. until the early 1980s. Which makes it all the more remarkable that New York City-based documentarian Lionel Rogosin made Come Back, Africa (1959) about a quarter-century earlier — though less surprisingly, the film itself was barely seen here at the time. Now finally playing American theaters outside his home town in a restored print, it’s a time capsule whose background is as intriguing as the history it captures onscreen. The horrors of World War II and some subsequent global travel had stirred a profound awareness of social injustices in Rogosin, who began planning a feature about South Africa while still working at his father’s textile business. He had very little filmmaking experience, however, so he took $30,000 of his earnings and as “practice” made On the Bowery (1956), a semi staged portrait of Manhattan’s skid row area that won considerable praise, if also some shocked and appalled responses from Eisenhower-era keepers of America’s wholesome, prosperous self-image. Armed with the confidence bestowed by that successful effort and several international awards, Bogosin traveled to South Africa — not for the first time, but now with the earnest intent of making his expose. In the mid- to late ’50s, however, that was hardly a simple task. The film, which mixes a loose, acted narrative with completely nonfiction elements, follows the luckless wanderings of an agreeable protagonist played by a first-time actor — Zacharia Mgabi, a 30-ish bearded worker “discovered” on a bus queue. His character, Zachariah, is caught in one catch-22 of apartheid life: he can’t get a job without the appropriate permits, and can’t get the permits without a job. And so on. All show and almost no “tell,” Come Back, Africa wasn’t shown in South Africa until the late 1980s; it nonetheless proved a great influence on development of the whole continent’s indigenous cinematic voices. (1:24) Roxie. (Harvey)

*Coriolanus For his film directing debut, Ralph Fiennes has chosen some pretty strong material: a military drama that is among Shakespeare’s least popular works, not that adapting the Bard to the screen has ever been easy. (Look how many times Kenneth Branagh, an even more fabled Shakespearean Brit on stage than Ralph, has managed to fumble that task.) The titular war hero, raised to glory in battle and little else, is undone by political backstabbers and his own contempt for the “common people” when appointed to a governmental role requiring some diplomatic finesse. This turn of events puts him right back in the role he was born for: that of ruthless, furious avenger, no matter that now he aims to conquer the Rome he’d hitherto pledged to defend. The setting of a modern city in crisis (threadbare protesting masses vs. oppressive police state) works just fine, Elizabethan language and all, as does Fiennes’ choice of a gritty contemporary action feel (using cinematographer Barry Ackroyd of 2006’s United 93 and 2008’s The Hurt Locker). He’s got a strong supporting cast — particularly Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus’ hawkish mother Volumnia — and an excellent lead in one Ralph Fiennes, who here becomes so warped by bloodthirst he seems to mutate into Lord Voldemort before our eyes, without need of any prosthetics. His crazy eyes under a razored bald pate are a special effect quite alarmingly inhuman enough. (2:03) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*Haywire Female empowerment gets its kung-fu-grip thighs around the beet-red throat of all the old action-heroes. Despite a deflated second half — and director Steven Soderbergh’s determinedly cool-headed yet ultimately exciting-quelling approach to Bourne-free action scenes — Haywire is fully capable of seizing and demanding everyone’s attention, particularly that of the feminists in the darkened theater who have given up looking for an action star that might best Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft. Former pro mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano, who plays it as studiedly intense and charismatic as crossover grapplers Lee, Norris, and Seagal before her, is that woman, with convincingly formidable neck and shoulder muscles to distract from her curves. Her Mallory Kane is one of the few women in Haywire‘s pared-down, stylized mise-en-scene — the lone female in a world of men out to get her, starting with the opening diner scene of a watchful Mallory confronted by a man (Channing Tatum) playing at being her boyfriend, fed up with her shit, and preparing to pack her into the car — a scenario that doubtless many rebel girls can relate to until it explodes into an ultraviolent, floor-thrashing fight scene. Turns out Mallory is an ex-Marine and Blackwater-style mercenary, ready to get out of the firm and out of a relationship with her boss, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), when she learns, the bruising way, that she’s been set up. The diner scene sets the tone for rest of Haywire, an otherwise straightforward (albeit flashback-loaded) feminist whodunit of sorts, limned with subtextual currents of sexualized violence and unfolding over a series of encounters with men who could be suitors — or killers. (1:45) California, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Pariah A teenage girl stands stock-still in a dark nightclub, gazing with desire and fear at the half-naked female dancers on the stage. Later, riding home on the bus, she slowly removes the layers of butch that held her together in the club, stripping down to some version of the person her parents need to see when she walks in the door. Nearly wordlessly, the opening scenes of Dee Rees’s Pariah poignantly depict the embattled internal life of Alike (Adepero Oduye), a 17-year-old African American girl living in Brooklyn with her family and struggling both to be seen as she is and to determine what that might look like. The battles are being waged externally, too, between Alike’s adoring father (Charles Parnell), living in willful ignorance, and angry, rigid mother (Kim Wayans), desperately enforcing a feminine dress code and steering Alike away from openly butch friend Laura (Pernell Walker). Rees’ script beautifully conveys a household of landmines and chasms, which widen as husband and wife and daughter struggle and fail to communicate, asking the wrong questions, fearfully skirting the truth about Alike’s sexuality and her parents’ crumbling marriage. And the world outside proves full of romantic pitfalls and the tensions of longtime friendship and peer pressure. The poems in which the talented Alike takes solace and makes her way toward a more truthful existence are beautiful, but at a certain point the lyricism overtakes the film, forcing an ending that is tidy but less than satisfying. (1:26) Lumiere, SF Center. (Rapoport)

The Woman in Black Daniel Radcliffe (a.k.a. Harry Potter) plays a grieving young widower in an old-fashioned ghost story, set in the era of spirit hands and other visitations from beyond the veil. But while Victorian séances were generally aimed at the dearly departed, the titular visitant (Liz White), who haunts the isolated estate of Eel Marsh House and its environs, is a vindictive, mean-spirited creature, avenging the long-ago loss of her child by wreaking havoc and heartbreak among the families of the nearby village, among them a local landowner (Ciarán Hinds) and his wife (Janet McTeer). Radcliffe’s character, a lawyer named Arthur Kipps, has been tasked with settling the affairs of the mansion’s recently deceased owner, an assignment that requires sifting through mounds of dusty, crumpled ephemera in one of the creakiest, squeakiest buildings ever constructed. Set at the end of a narrow spit of land that disappears into the surrounding wetlands when the tide is high, Eel Marsh House is a charming place to be marooned after dark. But no amount of horrified screams from the audience will keep Kipps from his duties, though it’s hard to make much headway amid the unrelenting creepiness. Nearly every moment brings a fresh inexplicable thumping noise from an upper floor; a new room full of dead-eyed dolls that Kipps has no business wandering into; another freakishly screaming face next to his as he gazes out the window. The house is a richly textured set piece; the horror is of the sort that makes you jump and then laugh, both at the filmmakers, for springing the same tricks on you over and over, and at yourself, for falling prey to them every time. (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Brews you can use

Andrew Lam
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0

caitlin@sfbg.com

BEER Even if your hankering for a beer paunch pales in comparison, say, to your desire to fit into your Valentine’s Day party dress, you have a responsibility to indulge during SF Beer Week. It’s not just a gustatory pleasure — consider yourself stumping for a burgeoning local industry. From Feb. 10-19, the fest will stage everything from urban beer hikes to beer-and-chocolate pairing events, beer-and-cheese couplings to a showcase of the finest in local bitter ales. Recently, the Guardian had the pleasure of a one-on-one (via email) with David McLean, the mastermind behind the superlative suds at Magnolia Brewery. He is also a member of the SF Brewer’s Guild, the organizing entity behind Beer Week. McLean shared with us his can’t-miss picks for hobnobbing and hops during this year’s festival. And yes, they include an stout made with Hog Island oysters.

SFBG: How has the beer scene changed over the past year in the Bay Area? Has there been a profound expansion? 

DM: Here and everywhere. We started in 2011 with about 1,700 breweries in the country. We are creeping up on 2,000 a year later and there are something like 800 or so known to be in planning. It’s safe to say craft beer is exploding right now. In the Bay Area, some notable highlights are Southern Pacific, Elevation 66, Dying Vines, Pacific Brewing Laboratories, and Heretic Brewing. There are plenty more on the way in 2012.

SFBG: Anyone new on the scene whose brews you’re excited to sample? 

DM: After many delays (all par for the course) it is super-exciting to have Southern Pacific Brewing Company open just in time for Beer Week. As the first new brewery built in San Francisco in many years — close to 10 — that one leads the pack in terms of excitement level. Another SF company just getting off the ground is Pacific Brewing Laboratories, which is starting to get its Squid Ink IPA and a couple of other beers into bars and restaurants. Almanac’s latest seasonal release, Winter Wit, should be hitting the streets just in time for Beer Week too, and it’s worth hunting down.

SFBG: A food-beer pairing event you think is a can’t-miss?

DM: Some pairings are just so perfect as to be timeless. They’re less about being creative and more about flavors that need no help fitting together. A personal favorite is oysters and beer, particularly oysters and certain kinds of stout, especially dry stouts. We go a step further at Magnolia with an oyster stout we make using Hog Island Sweetwater oysters in the beer. The effect is subtle, and maybe it is gilding the lily, but a few freshly-shucked Sweetwaters and a glass of that beer, Oysterhead Stout, is about as good as it gets. We’ll be spending all day on Valentine’s Day shucking a variety of oysters and serving them with that stout and some other good oyster-pairing beers until the oysters run out. If I were free on Mon/13, you might find me at the “Butcher and the Beer at the Beast and the Hare” — it’s a dinner with [4505 Meats butcher] Ryan Farr and Almanac Beer.

SFBG: Your tip for making it through Beer Week — how do you survive such a strenuous schedule?

DM: The well-timed vacation waiting on the other side of Beer Week helps maintain my sanity during Beer Week. With multiple events to work everyday, it’s a definitely a marathon and not a sprint. But it is also one of the premier celebrations of craft beer in the country and the sense of enthusiasm, camaraderie, and support from the beer community is more than enough to help us all get through the week. It’s energizing, actually. But don’t forget to hydrate.

SF BEER WEEK OPENING CELEBRATION

Fri/10 6-10 p.m., $65

Concourse Exhibition Center

635 Eighth St., SF

www.sfbeerweek.org

 

Making black herstory, every day

Andrew Lam
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8

news@sfbg.com

Deconstructing the roots of

The black n gray suits

with hands in the Loot

That has buried the truth

About our black, brown and disabled youth

— excerpt from KKKourt by Tiny

OPINION On the first day of Black Herstory Minute (I mean, Month), I practiced black herstory, and walked through activism and breathed organizing and lived resistance by putting my body in the benches belonging to the criminal injustice system (a.k.a. the plantation) at 850 Bryant. I was there to support a struggle against injustice in the case of a young African warrior for truth, Fly Benzo, a.k.a. Debray Carpenter — student, son, media producer, organizer, and hip-hop artist who is facing a felony charge, jail sentence and $95,000 fine for nothing more than exercising his First Amendment right to free speech.

How many among you, overwhelmed with multiple Face-crack postings and a cacophony of tweets, might have missed the story of Fly, who spoke the truth about racism, police brutality and the unjust death of Kenneth Harding Jr. to a cop in a poor-people-of-color neighborhood, Bayview, which is under seize from the occupying army known as the police (or po’lice as we call them at POOR Magazine)?

As a woman criminalized and incarcerated for the sole act of being poor and houseless, the melanin-challenged daughter of a poor black single mother who spent all of her life in poverty and in struggle, I have witnessed first hand unequal justice against people of color and poor people. It’s a fact that remains, in 2012, still a very dire reality.

“They arrested me for exercising my Constitutional right to free speech,” said Benzo, 22.

Benzo’s revolution began when he was born to conscious African-descendant parents who, like many African descendant people in San Francisco, have been under the constant threat of removal, displacement, redlining, and ongoing police harassment for decades. He has been speaking out about injustices since he was a teen, starting with the fact that hardly any Bayview residents were hired to construct the multi-million-dollar T-Train that runs from downtown to Third Street — and the dramatic rise in the violent policing of the T-Train and the Muni bus lines that run through the poor communities of color in S.F.

But the beginning of Benzo’s current battle with the criminal injustice system began when he began to speak up about Harding, murdered by San Francisco police officers for not having a $2 dollar bus transfer. The judge might not admit the video that was taken at the scene of Benzo’s arrest, making his case all the more difficult to fight, and the truth all the more difficult to hear and see, which is where community support comes in.

A lot of people and organizers and politricksters talk about stopping the violence and how to “deal” with the inequities of racism and classism and violence on our youth of color. And yet when this brother spoke out, used his voice for nothing but truth and resistance about injustices he personally experiences everyday, who comes out to support him?

Practicing revolutionaries at POOR Magazine, the Idriss Stelly Foundation, The BayView Newspaper, Education not Incarceration, and United Playaz have been there, as well as his hard-working attorney, Severa Keith, and a few more. But we all need to be there, fighting for a very alive, very revolutionary, young truth-teller who is making black history, every day.

Tiny, a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, is an editor at POOR Magazine. Opening statements in the trial of Debray Carpenter are expected to begin Feb. 8 in Dept. 27.

Ellison wins, SF loses

Andrew Lam
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6

EDITORIAL San Francisco’s not going to lose the America’s Cup. Oracle CEO and yachting billionaire Larry Ellison is too excited about the prospect of bringing the sport (and his company’s logo on the sail of his boat) to a mass audience for the first time in history that he’s not about to abandon San Francisco Bay. The process is too far along; that much is a done deal.

But the development agreements for the city’s waterfront is not a done deal at all — in fact, the proposal could wind up giving Ellison effective control over five piers and a valuable waterfront lot that he could develop for condos. And the city won’t get anywhere near enough out of the deal.

The development agreement is really just a sideshow in the cup planning; nobody’s disagreeing that Ellison’s America’s Cup Event Authority will need space to stage the race, and that will require the renovation of some waterfront property. And nobody disputes that the event will bring tourism and revenue to the city, which will offset some of the cost of allowing Ellison rights to the waterfront.

The rest of it is purely a real estate deal: Ellison’s offering to put millions of dollars into renovating crumbling and underused piers, and in exchange the Port of San Francisco — which lacks the money to rebuild the waterfront and has no credible plans for a good part of its property — could give Ellison long-term low-cost leases and development rights on Piers 26, 28, 30-32 and possibly 29, as well as Seawall Lot 330 at Embarcadero and Bryant.

The city’s never been terribly good at cutting tough deals with real-estate developers, and the history of San Francisco is littered with examples of the taxpayers losing out to the speculators and builders. And in the furor of excitement over the America’s Cup, this development agreement could become the latest sellout.

The original projections for the economic impact of the event are looking more and more questionable; it’s entirely possible that San Francisco will wind up with far less than the $1.4 billion in spending and the thousands of jobs that cup promoters have promised. It’s still going to be a big deal, and the city (particularly the hospitality industry) will do well — but it’s not the answer to all of San Francisco’s problems. By the end of 2013, the event will be over — and Ellison will have essentially taken title to a huge amount of public land, for as long as 60 years into the future. And he won’t be paying the city the normal development fees, the normal impact fees, or even reasonable annual rent to the Port.

The supervisors need to put aside the hype around a sailing regatta and look at this for what it is: A real-estate development agreement with one of the world’s richest people. And right now, it’s not a good deal for the city.

Guardian editorial: Ellison wins, San Francisco loses!

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3

EDITORIAL San Francisco’s not going to lose the America’s Cup. Oracle CEO and yachting billionaire Larry Ellison is too excited about the prospect of bringing the sport (and his company’s logo on the sail of his boat) to a mass audience for the first time in history that he’s not about to abandon San Francisco Bay. The process is too far along; that much is a done deal.

But the development agreements for the city’s waterfront is not a done deal at all — in fact, the proposal could wind up giving Ellison effective control over five piers and a valuable waterfront lot that he could develop for condos. And the city won’t get anywhere near enough out of the deal.

The development agreement is really just a sideshow in the cup planning; nobody’s arguing that Ellison’s America’s Cup Event Authority will need space to stage the race, and that will require the renovation of some waterfront property. And nobody disputes that the event will bring tourism and revenue to the city, which will offset some of the cost of allowing Ellison rights to the waterfront.

The rest of it is purely a real estate deal: Ellison’s offering to put millions of dollars in to renovating crumbling and underused piers, and in exchange the Port of San Francisco — which lacks the money to rebuild the waterfront and has no credible plans for a good part of its property — will give Ellison long-term low-cost leases and development rights on Piers 26, 28, 30-32 and possibly 29, as well as Seawall Lot 330 at Embarcadero and Bryant.

The city’s never been terribly good at cutting tough deals with real-estate developers, and the history of San Francisco is littered with examples of the taxpayers losing out to the speculators and builders. And in the furor of excitement over the America’s Cup, this development agreement could become the latest sellout.

The original projections for the economic impact of the event are looking more and more questionable; it’s entirely possible that San Francisco will wind up with far less than the $1.4 billion in spending and the thousands of jobs that cup promoters have promised. It’s still going to be a big deal, and the city (particularly the hospitality industry) will do well — but it’s not the answer to all of San Francisco’s problems. By the end of 2013, the event will be over — and Ellison will have essentially taken title to a huge amount of public land, for as long as 60 years into the future. And he won’t be paying the city the normal development fees, the normal impact fees, or even reasonable annual rent to the Port.

The supervisors need to put aside the hype around a sailing regatta and look at this for what it is: A real-estate development agreement with one of the world’s richest people. And right now, it’s a lousy deal for the city.

 

San Francisco celebrates same-sex marriage ruling

Sasha Cuttler
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30
San Francisco celebrates same-sex marriage ruling

While the usual procession of heterosexual couples beamed as they said their wedding vows on City Hall’s Grand Staircase this morning, a historic celebration took place in the South Light Court: hundreds applauded the announcement that same-sex couples are a big step closer to achieving equality in the basic right to marry.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held today that Proposition 8, which eliminated same sex marriage rights for couples in California, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The court ruled that Prop. 8 served no purpose but to discriminate against one class of people, and the Constitution does not allow for “laws of this sort.”

The ruling specifically addressed the arguments advanced by proponents of Prop 8 that gay marriage would interfere with childrearing and religious freedom in the state.

“All parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only. It stripped same-sex couples…of the right to obtain and use the designation ‘marriage’ to describe their relationships. Nothing more, nothing less,” the judges wrote.

The ruling does not mean that marriage licenses will immediately be issued to same sex couples. A stay on the ruling has not been lifted. But the stay could be lifted in as early as 21 days from now. But more probably, it will take months or even years; the case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry Stewart – the lead attorney that defended San Francisco’s 2004 decision to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which later triggered the Prop. 8 campaign – said the city is eager to see marriage equality, and that “city mechanisms and machinery stand ready to do whatever we can to expedite the process.”

The decision was based partly on logic that, since LGBTQ Californians already have parental rights and the right to domestic partnerships, denying them the right to marry could not be rationalized. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said that this is a “narrow decision,” meaning that if the Supreme Court upholds the ruling, it would apply only to California.

There remains a possibility that the Supreme Court will reject the case, and in that situation the Ninth Circuit decision striking down Prop. 8 would take immediate affect.

Members of the Bay Area coalition of Welcoming Congregations were present at the announcement.

“I’m jubilant,” said Rev. Roland Stringfellow of the Pacific School of Theology in Berkeley. “When it comes to equality, this is something we preach.”

He adding that his church had been performing same-sex marriages since the 1970s, and that he eagerly awaits legal recognition of his own union with his partner.

Sup. Scott Wiener acknowledged, “the fight is not over yet.”

But he said, “Every so often we get a court ruling that reaffirms our faith in the judicial system…this is a time for us to come together and celebrate.”

California political leaders issued several statements praised the court’s decision.

“The court has rendered a powerful affirmation of the right of same-sex couples to marry. I applaud the wisdom and courage of this decision,” said Gov. Jerry Brown.

Mayor Ed Lee issued a statement saying:
“I celebrate the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court today. This is a great day for marriage equality and a great day for California families. The Court affirmed today that there is nothing in the Constitution that allows discrimination and we are on our way to protecting the fundamental rights of everyone in our State. And, we will continue the fight until everyone is treated equally.  

“San Francisco stands ready to begin marrying same sex couples, and we remain as deeply committed to the fight for marriage equality today as we did nearly eight years ago when then Mayor Gavin Newsom started one of the most important civil rights issues of our generation to ensure equality for all.

“I would also like to acknowledge the tireless work of our City Attorney Dennis Herrera and his team in defense of marriage equality and the California Constitution these last eight years. Together, we will take this fight all the way to the nation’s highest court, if necessary.”

Localized Appreesh: The Yellow Dress

Tony Robles
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0
Localized Appreesh: The Yellow Dress

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

Dogs, ghosts, kids, hand-clapping, whistling on a sunny park day – it’s all in the video for the Yellow Dress’s “This Could Be Anything.” The song itself is already a treat, kicking off with the aforementioned clapping and whistling and a solitary guitar, in pipes mariachi trumpet and swallow-you-whole powerful vocal pipes à la orchestral pop master Beirut. (It also has garnered comparisons to Magnetic Fields and a drug-less Velvet Underground.)

The Yellow Dress closed out 2011 with a metaphoric group hug, thanks to the video and a well-received second album, Humblebees. This year, it’s already off to a run through the park, pull your dress up and get mud on your ankles, start. In the next seven days, the San Francisco band will play three local shows, all at interesting venues, perhaps a bit off the beaten path. Do it up big and catch a trio of Yellow Dress performances.

Year and location of origin: 2007, San Francisco (the corner of Haight and Fillmore to be exact)

Band name origin: We used to be called Mr Stopmotion and the Yellow Dress after a particularly dapper couple I saw walking through Golden Gate Park, back then we were just a two-piece, and the name was pretty unweildy. For about a day we were Mr Stopmotion, which sounds like a Devo/XTC cover band. We decided on The Yellow Dress, which immediately led to a dramatic (and affirming!) number of yellow dresses in both (me and original bandmember Jon) of our lives. For a not very interesting story that sure took a lot of time to write.

Band motto: I’m sorry.

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Earnest-indie-twee-folk-pop.

Instrumentation: Acoustic and electric guitar, bass, drums, glockenspiel, male/female vocals, trumpet, organs, whistles, hand claps, if anyone reading this plays the cello and love dinosaurs please call me.

Most recent release: Humblebees.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band: With so many artistic people around it’s easy to find like minded folks to play with, slowly envelop in your ever growing line-up.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: With so many artistic people around you are rarely the only game in town any given night.

First record/cassette tape/or CD ever purchased: The Top Gun soundtrack. It was great.

Most recent record/cassette tape/CD/or Mp3 purchased/borrowed from the Web: West Indies Funk Volume 3 (2012 is the year of the steel drum).

Favorite local eatery and dish: I miss Mission Burger so much, you have no idea. The Yellow Dress is however willing to give a full endorsement to the chicken millanesa torta at La Torta Gorda.

The Yellow Dress
With Adam Balbo, the Slaves
Thurs/9
Alley Cat Books
3036 24th St., SF


With Matt Dorrien, Fox and Woman
Fri/10, 8 p.m., $8
924 Gilman, Berk.
www.924gilman.com


Valentine’s Day Monthly Rumpus: Sugar’s Coming Out Party
With Pocket Full of Rye, Janine Brito
Feb. 14, 7 p.m., $10
Verdi Club
2424 Mariposa, SF
www.therumpus.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noise Pop Photo Retrospective, with Plastic Villains and Cool Ghouls

Tony Robles
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1
Noise Pop Photo Retrospective, with Plastic Villains and Cool Ghouls

The 20th anniversary of Noise Pop is oh-so-close to upon us. In celebration and commemoration of how far the festival has come, and of the musicians who’ve made Noise Pop a much-anticipated Bay Area tradition, Bottom of the Hill will be hosting a retrospective photo gallery. The exhibit’s opening reception takes place Tues/7 from 6 to 9 p.m. and is free to the public.

Noise Pop producer Stacy Horne says Bottom of the Hill is an ideal home for the Photo Retrospective because the venue just celebrated its own 20th anniversary and has been an important Noise Pop venue throughout the years. (Bottom of the Hill has been hosting Noise Pop shows since 1994.) The gallery will be up in Bottom of the Hill’s back room from tonight through the last day of the festival (Feb. 26) and will include photos of former Noise Pop acts that have since achieved widespread acclaim such as Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Photographers include Eduardo Acorda, Marlu Aufmuth, Jeanne Ellenby, Peter Ellenby, Charlie Homo, Sheila Menezes, Paige Parsons, Mike Rosati, Julie Schuchard, Shoka Shafiee, Matt Seuferer, and Deb Zeller.

Noise Pop, which began as a nightlong music festival at The Kennel Club (now The Independent) showcasing five bands, has developed into the largest independent music festival in San Francisco. It has also evolved into a comprehensive independent culture event that exposes Bay Area art, film, and design in addition to music. The Noise Pop festival officially kicks off Feb. 21.

In the Noise Pop spirit of exposing the young, up-and-coming, and local acts, performances by Plastic Villains and Cool Ghouls will follow Tuesday’s reception.

Plastic Villains, which formed fewer than six months ago and received “The Deli’s Bay Area Band of the Month Award” in November, is comprised of mostly USF undergrads that practice and record their “psychedelic garage rock blues hop” jams in their garage.

Cool Ghouls, also a San Francisco-based band, describe their sound simply as “rock-n-roll” and attribute the creation of their modern doo-wop goodness to tall cans, 40s, blunts, and crime.

Let the Noise Pop festivities begin.

Noise Pop Photo Retrospective
With Plastic Villains, Cool Ghouls
Tues/7, 6 p.m., free
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
www.bottomofthehill.com

 

 

Conflicted Chron buries the lead in city corruption case

Sasha Cuttler
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67

UPDATE 2/15: READ OUR CURRENT STORY ON THE CASE HERE. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross love to poke snarky fun at progressives such as Matt Gonzalez, as they did again today when they wrote about his work on the Cobra Solutions vs. San Francisco case, for the second time. But they waited until the last paragraph in this second-to-last item in their column to reveal the real news: Mayor Ed Lee was deposed in the case last week and may be called as a witness.

Wow, talk about burying the lead. Here you have a sitting mayor implicated in a major corruption scandal – acting on orders from then-Mayor Willie Brown, who last year helped elevate Lee into Room 200 (and who just happens to write a weekly column for the Chronicle) – in a case that could cost city taxpayers $16 million.

The Chron hasn’t really covered the substance of the case, but Guardian readers may remember our investigative report on it last year. That’s when we unearthed evidence that Ed Lee, who was the city purchaser at the time, approved a fraudulent city contract – overruling city staff in the process – allegedly on orders from Brown.

It’s a complicated case and a long story well worth reading, but essentially it involves a company called Government Computer Sales Inc. (GCSI) that had ties to Brown. It’s accused of improperly getting a multi-million-dollar city contract with Lee’s help and then soliciting kickbacks from its subcontractors, including Cobra Solutions.

Cobra claims it didn’t know payments to GCSI were kickbacks and that it was damaged by the accusations and being frozen out of its city work by the City Attorney’s Office (under Dennis Herrera, who has his own interesting conflicts in the case). Also implicated in the case are SFPUC Director (and then-Controller) Ed Harrington; Monique Zmuda, still a top official in the Controller’s Office; and Steve Kawa, the chief-of-staff for Lee, Brown, and Gavin Newsom, and a powerful player at City Hall.

In a deposition, a city computer operations manager named Deborah Vincent-James testified that she and other city staffers knew GCSI was a fraudulent company, but that they were placed in the Computer Store (a list of qualified city contractors) to do work for the Department of Building Inspection on orders from above: “[Lee] was directed by the Mayor’s Office and told to do an evaluation process. They evaluated them. They were put in the store.”

UPDATE 2/7: Mayor Lee took the witness stand in court yesterday, where he was questioned by attorney Whitney Leigh about overruling staff to certify GCSI, which the City Attorney’s Office has deemed a fraudulent company that has since left town and evaded justice. More on what he said later.

Maximum Consumption: Bay Area bands choose their favorite eateries

Tony Robles
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0

I know, it’s so close to the weekend that you can taste it. But before you sign off for the day, your peepers sore and fingers trembling, here’s a comprehensive list – sure to get your tummy rumbling – of Bay Area bands’ favorite local restaurants, food trucks, and eateries. I compiled these answers from our On the Rise questionnaire (results of which are in this week’s issue) and my ongoing Localized Appreesh column. Enjoy.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: So local Bay Area musicians, what’s your favorite local eatery and dish?

DJ Theory: Cubano sandwich and sangria from Parada 22 in Upper Haight.

Dirty Ghosts: I don’t wanna be boring and say the super burrito at Cancún which is my real answer, so the margarita pizza at Una Pizza Napoletana

Metal Mother: Tacubaya in Berkeley, all the vegetarian dishes are amazing. My favorite is probably the ‘seasonal vegetable’ tamales.

Main Attrakionz: Buffet Fortuna in Downtown Oakland; chow fun noodles

Seventeen Evergreen: So many options here but let’s nominate the Chilaquiles at the farmer’s market in the Ferry Building or a number of places in the Mission for the same.

Jhameel: Cheeseboard Pizza in Berkeley. Perfect vegetarian pizzas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPLYLsVDG8w

Future Twin: Secret Spot has delicious bagels, fresh squeezed juice, and homegrown greens.

Terry Malts: The #6 at Turtle Tower, best for hangovers.

Tycho: Thai Time — Red Chicken Curry (or anything else there).

Black Cobra: 1. Cathead’s Barbecue. Cornmeal crusted tofu is killer!
2. The Submarine Shop on West Portal. Italiano center sub with a Coke.

Silver Swans: El Metate Mexican Veggie burrito, the vegetables are roasted and always fresh. Everything there is delicious and on the cheap, right down to their alfajore cookies, I fully endorse the entire menu.

Le Vice: Broken Record — fresh organic soul food in a grimy-ass dive bar. Tasty as fuck. Hipster bling.

Ash Reiter: House of Curries – chicken tikka masala with potato nan.

Magic Touch: Ken Ken Ramen – Japanese ramen + veggie up.

The Fucking Buckaroos: Mission’s Kitchen – Breakfast Burrito.

Prize: Millenium for overall vegetarian dining experience, and the garlic spread from Stinking Rose for the best actual thing to put in my mouth.

Swiftumz: Fresh Dungeness crabs!

Buffalo Tooth: Morty’s in the TL, Chicken BLT.

Cosmo  Alleycats: Steve: Le Colonial’s brussels sprouts; Mike: Cordon Blue, California @ Hyde, menu #5; Emily: Where to begin? The food trucks at Off the Grid are ridiculous. I’m addicted to Curry Up Now’s chicken tikka masala burrito. Also, the veggie burger at the Plant Organic is to die for. And I love my Thursday night ‘liquid dinners’ with the band at Blondie’s Bar & No Grill.

Mental 99: Joe: Iwashi (sardine) at Tataki South (Church and 29th). Dawn: It’s hard to go wrong in SF – so many good places to eat. But the veggie burrito at Taqueria Cancún is pretty tasty – and close by, especially if you just played El Rio.

Uni & Her Ukelele: Green Chili Kitchen.

Symbolick Jews: The Philly cheese steak at Mission Kitchen is forged in the fires of gastro-intestinal hell, and I stand by its superiority over any other cheese steak in the city.

G-Eazy: Gordo’s on College Ave in Berkeley, without a doubt.

The Spyrals: That’s a tough one. Probably Los Compadres. It’s a family owned Taqueria in South City, near where we rehearse. Damn good carnitas.

TurbonegrA: Esperpento. It’s cheap and fast – like us!

The Sandwitches: Chevys and fried chicken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1871NoR6IMQ

Debbie Neigher: Plantain black bean burrito at Little Chihuahua.

Violet Hour: Sausages at Rosamunde’s on Haight

Waterstrider: We frequent Taqueria La Familia. It is the best Mexican food in Berkeley. Their veggie burritos or chile rellenos do the trick for me.

Dreams: Shakin’ Jesse at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe. Guinness, espresso, and ice cream – can’t go wrong with that.

The 21st Century: Al Pastor at El Metate–dynamite.And the Cold House Noodles at Yamo.

Rank/Xerox: Golden Gate Indian Cuisine and Pizza on Judah. Best restaurant in the city, eat everything but the Italian dishes.

The Jauntying Martyrs: Lucca Foods on Irving and 20th.  Best deli in SF, baby. Get the Billy Filly. (You can only get it when Billy’s working).

Religious Girls: Bake Sale Betty’s fried chicken sandwich

Coit Tower battle: How do we fund the parks?

Zelda Bronstein
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59
Coit Tower battle: How do we fund the parks?

The emerging battle over whether San Francisco should allow private parties at Coit Tower is really part of a much larger political debate: How do we fund public parks? Is public space something that resources are put into, something that’s paid for by tax money and preserved and made available for everyone — or should part of the role of parks be to generate cash?

The Republicans in Congress, with the help of San Francisco’s own Rep. Nancy Pelosi, came down clearly on the side of self-funding around the Presidio, and it’s been a disaster.

I have friends who work at Rec-Park, and they tell me that at least the new revenue initiatives have prevented layoffs and kept some programs going. Which is true. But it’s the wrong question.

Parks are public commons. They’re not supposed to be private space (yeah, they rent out space for weddings in the park, but that’s a pretty minor deal). The city ought to be funding the parks. The city ought to be raising taxes enough to do it. Yeah, I know — you’re bored. I’m tired of saying it, too.

 

 

Bronstein and mergers are not what local journalism needs

Sasha Cuttler
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11
Bronstein and mergers are not what local journalism needs

Local, independent, public interest journalism – which is what Warren Hellman sought to create by founding the Bay Citizen in 2009 – could be undermined by a proposed merger between that newsroom and the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) under the leadership of former San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein.

It is unseemly that Bronstein is claiming support for the idea from Hellman, who died in December, making comments to the Bay Citizen that misrepresent Hellman’s intentions. How do I know? Because I spoke with Hellman about his concerns about the Bay Area media landscape and what it needed several times before he announced its creation – a story that I broke on the Guardian website, scooping this incipient newsroom and others by a day.

“We’re forming a new media news center. Basically, it will be a not-for-profit 501c3 that will be source of Bay Area news,” Hellman said in that article. “It will focus on local news events, including politics and the arts, the kind of thing that is just dying at the Chronicle.”

That interview was a culmination of conversations that I’d had with Hellman on the subject for more than a year. He thought the Chronicle was doing a terrible job at covering the city – a legacy that began under the leadership of Bronstein, who was always more concerned with high-profile projects that might win awards and with expanding the paper’s reach and focus into suburbia than the bread-and-butter local coverage of issues and events that were important to San Franciscans.

In his comments to Bay Citizen, Bronstein (who has not returned our request for comment) cynically leaves the impression that Hellman would have supported his takeover bid, and that what he wanted was a combination of investigative reporting and quirky features like “Rascal of the Week, Crook of the Week, hilarious stuff.”

He might as well be describing the Chronicle, which was not what Hellman was seeking to duplicate. Nor was he pursuing the CIR model of using philanthropy and grants to fund journalism projects that would run in the Chronicle and other mainstream newspapers. No, what Hellman wanted was more media outlets with less dependence on advertising revenue, not to simply subsidize a newspaper that he thought was lacking.

Frankly, this whole proposal is very suspicious. Bronstein officially left Hearst Newspapers, which owns the Chronicle, just last month to play an unspecified new role at CIR, where he sits on the board. He and other Chronicle brass opposed and belittled the Bay Citizen when it was created, but since then, the Bay Citizen has been real bright spot on the local media landscape, often scooping the Chronicle on important stories that run in the New York Times, for which BC supplies content. And now, Bronstein wants to execute a deal that would potentially kill that competition.

I’m really not sure what’s going on at the Bay Citizen these days, or why all its top brass seems to be jumping ship. But it’s clearly not all bad. The departure of top executive Lisa Frazier – who consulted on BC’s creation and then gave herself a ridiculously high salary – seems like good news, at least for BC’s bottom line. I acknowledge that some kind of change might be needed.

But whatever happens, it should be about maintaining and improving strong local news coverage. The BC board only has one token journalist on it, and that’s not a good sign. CIR does good work and has a good journalistic ethos, but its board should realize that merging with BC (and cutting almost $2 million from their combined operations, as Bronstein is reportedly proposing) is bad for local journalism and bad for San Francisco.

Corporate journalism is the problem to which nonprofit journalism was the supposed antidote. That was Hellman’s vision. But we’re all in trouble if this experiment gets co-opted by a longtime Hearst company man, the very person who undermined local coverage and public interest journalism in the first place, a corporatist with a history of undermining competition with his illegal Chronicle-Examiner JOA, his backroom deal with Media News Group, and other bottom line tactics.

That’s bad enough, but to falsely invoke the spirit of the recently deceased to justify it, that’s just disgusting.

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