San Francisco

The woman remembered

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The woman remembered

The changeover from silent to sound cinema revolutionized the world’s most popular entertainment form. As in most revolutions, some heads got lopped off. The industry saw this upheaval as a chance to clean house, getting rid of pricey or difficult talent by claiming they couldn’t make the transition. The public went along, suddenly hungry for all things talking, singing, dancing, and new, eager to dismiss yesterday’s favorites as old-fashioned.

Certainly stardom’s internationalism was largely over — those with heavy foreign or regional inflections were kaput. But myths persisted for decades about native-born stars like John Gilbert whose nasal, “light,” or otherwise unappealing voices purportedly derailed their careers. Heard today, Gilbert seems just fine — was MGM simply punishing him for being an expensive pain in the ass? If so, it worked: by 1936 he’d drank himself to death.

A similar aroma of failure hovers around Norma Talmadge, one of the biggest stars of the silent era yet largely forgotten now. Critics howled at her supposed vocal uncouthness in 1930’s Du Barry, Woman of Passion. Talmadge took equally famous, already retired sister Constance’s advice, quitting while she was still ahead — at least financially, thanks to mama’s trust fund setup. Yet clips from the era reveal nothing at all wrong with her voice. Was she a victim of simple out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new media frenzy? Perhaps an affair with actor Gilbert Roland ended the career support of her husband, powerful executive Joseph M. Schenck. Was she being punished?

She and Roland star in 1928’s The Woman Disputed, her last silent vehicle and one of many highlights in this weekend’s 15th San Francisco Silent Film Festival. She’s an Austrian prostitute — not exactly named as such, of course — who barely escapes a murder charge after a seeming john instead uses her flat to kill himself in. Two wealthy rescuers then become romantic rivals for this hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, whom they help attain respectability. (The other man is Arnold Kent, an Italian actor fatally struck by a car after playing this final role.)

Directed by Henry King (an A-list Hollywood director through the 1950s), Woman moves from heavy tragedy to disarming romantic comedy and back again — then World War I intervenes. The fervency of its trio’s romantic friendship is very touching. No matter that the concept is typical Hollywood fantasy ignoring class-impasse reality: the film finesses its corn syrup via discreet handling and potent star power. Doing the most emotive heavy-lifting, Talmadge has moments that make her appeal very clear.

Thrust forward by a world-class stage mother, Talmadge was huge throughout the 1920s. According to screenwriter pal Anita Loos’ memoir, her screen retirement was addled by stupefying addiction to arthritis painkillers. It’s said she started the Hollywood Walk of Fame by accidentally stepping into wet cement. It’s also said she inspired the monstrous Norma Desmond in 1950’s Sunset Boulevard, as well as Jean Hagen’s Brooklynese-screeching imploding silent star in 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain. Yet again these may just be derogatory rumors that have had decades to harden into pseudo fact.

SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL

July 15–18, free–$30

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.silentfilm.org

She’s a briiide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
She’s a briiide

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO A couple of Friday evenings ago, Hunky Beau and I went out on a bourgeois love date in SoMa. It was there that I was reminded that, along with loquats, plums, figs, and fat guys on the Internet pretending they’re in armed militias, we are in the midst of bachelorette season. Children, be warned!

To kickstart our romantic rendezvous, Hunky had called me from Mr. Smith’s, a bar that still exists, where he’d gathered with coworkers for clock-out cocktails. Alas, I couldn’t hear him over all the squealing. “Always a bridesmaid. Always.” he texted. “Run for your wife!!1!” I pecked back. We sheltered ourselves in the tidy environs of Terroir (www.terroirsf.com) on Folsom Street, a chill unmarked wine bar that reminds me of Seattle’s Living Room, with a nifty furnished mezzanine and vinyl Shins and Cure on the phonograph. Settling in with a few glasses from the smart and sassy list and some fatty-licious French food cart grub from Spencer On the Go across the street, we commenced our rendezvousing. Until a look of terror clouded the cute Terroir co-owner’s face and the screaming started streaming in. No exit! Bachelorette attack! It was Sex and the City 3-D: less menopause, more claws.

Hastily, the besieged Terroirier apologized, saying “We’re not usually this back country.” I would’ve gone off, but mocking roving bachelorette parties (or BPs, ’cause that shit’s toxic and endless) is like shooting Kardashians in a barrel. Viva stereotypical drunk heterosexuals, all is full of love. So I just plugged my good ear with a Bordeaux cork and marveled at my favorite BPers: the sheepish bridesmaid of color, the childhood friend who can’t stop making toasts to hide her unfathomable bitterness, the warring former college roommates, the pushy “leader,” and — bestest— the puggy one with bad bangs and a lemon face who wanders around picking fights with random strangers, slurring, “Leave ‘er alone … sh-sh-she’s a briiide.” Snooki lives. And I want a girls night out with 10 of her.

Treasure Island preview: Get your Long John Silvers out — the lineup’s been announced for this year’s festival on Oct. 16 and 17, and it’s pretty rad. “Electronic music” highlights? Four Tet, Holy Fuck, our own Wallpaper party boys, LCD Soundsystem, and (zef yes!) Die Antwoord. Kruder and Dorfmeister will be drifting us back to the early ’00s. I am typing the name Deadmau5. Full lineup and tickets at www.treasureislandfestival.com

 

HOT WAX

An all-vinyl night always guarantees my nightlife blessing — and this regular one at 222 is too-too-too nice to pass up. This month’s installment is themed “Ladies of the ’80s,” with an all-female DJ crew that includes Sweaterfunk’s DJ Mamabear, Shred One, Chungtech, and Sabrina spinning you delightful, deep-crated retro R&B and soul shakers of the XX-generated variety.

Thu/15, 9 p.m., $5. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

 

DJ DRM

I’m loving the jazzy beats revival raining down this summer, spawned by the choppy R&B re-edits scene, dubstep’s more melodic turn, a Latin funk infusion, and a general interest in sparkling, danceable vibes. Killer weekly Loose Joints is bringing in Brooklyn sizzler DRM of Bastard Jazz Recordings to get swingy. Loose Joints regulars Tom Thump, Centipede, and Damon Bell warm it up.

Fri/16, 10 p.m., $5. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com

 

SOME THING ELSE

Fresh off its cheeky “9/11 in July” night, weekly dragstravaganza Some Thing is getting even more dangerous, with an imposters night that sends up San Francisco’s most boisterous queens of stage and toilet. Newcomers will impersonate — with affection! — old-schoolers. Expect some bewigged heads to explode as some big fish in our little pond get roasted, one birdseed boob at a time.

Fri/16, 10 p.m.–late, $7. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.studsf.com

 

RAIZ

Vividly named L.A. brothers Vangelis and Vidal Vargas, formerly known as Acid Circus, have aptly switched monikers to Raiz, but still deliver the throbbing, bass-heavy minimal tech that razes the roof. They’ll be in town, accompanying local melodic thumper DJ Zenith, to celebrate the fierce monthly Tekandhaus party’s first anniversary.

Fri/16, 10 p.m., $5. Anu, 43 Sixth St., SF. www.tekandhaus.com

Minty fresh

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Minty fresh

DANCE/THEATER After rapidly selling out its two-week premiere in May 2009, the Joe Goode Performance Group returns to San Francisco’s lavish Old Mint for a luxurious one-month run of Traveling Light. JGPG’s haunted tour of SF’s oldest stone building, a monument to money power, unfolds as a series of made-up but history-laden vignettes scattered throughout the edifice, adding up to an inspired meditation on greed and desire, success and failure, the material and immaterial. On the eve of opening night, acclaimed Bay Area–based director-choreographer Joe Goode — who says the piece has changed only slightly since last year (“We’re filling up the space better and perhaps telling the story more clearly”) — spoke to SFBG from his East Bay home.

SFBG In addition to Traveling Light, you premiered another site-specific work last year, Fall Within, at the Ann Hamilton Tower in Geyserville. What’s the appeal with site-specific work? Do you approach such pieces very differently?

Joe Goode You have to in a way because there’s no front. People can see things from many different vantage points. Also some theatrical illusions are taken away from you. On the other hand, you have the personality, character, and history of the site, which is contributing enormous amounts of information to the moment. That is really exciting and delicious, and there’s a lot that you can do with it.

The way I work with performers—the way I elicit material from them so that it feels personal to them—[remains] similar. I’m interested in an intimate, close-up glimpse of a real human experience. Many site artists get involved with the contours of the architecture, the aural properties of the site. I’m interested in all that, too, but retain my interest in that personal narrative.

SFBG That personal aspect, though, intersects with the Mint , an edifice reverberating very strongly with a larger social crisis, namely the enormous, growing disparities in wealth.

JG That’s ultimately what the piece is all about. There’s a kind of grandeur to some of the interiors of the building, which is just a disgraceful, ostentatious display of wealth. You can’t help but feel it when you walk in there. This is the disparity that’s been present in this city since 1850! I tend to think of San Franciscans as this very egalitarian, alternative, radical, and thoughtful group of people, when in fact there’s an underpinning of those who have and those who don’t. Those who have make a lot of decisions about what happens in this city. Those who don’t, don’t have a voice particularly. [The Mint] reflects that for me.

SFBG How is that relation between social systems and personal narratives worked out in creating the performances?

JG A lot of it comes from my imagination. I spent a lot of time in those rooms. Some of the narratives don’t have anything particular to do with the history of the building, but there’s a gilded balcony or a particular corner that makes me think of a narrative—a particular time, a person, what they might have been going through. Then I begin to weave the characters, again working very intimately with the performers, asking them their stories and how they felt about this issue, what it brought to mind for them. And I go off and write it. That’s how it works.

SFBG You’ve used the term “felt performance” in referring to your work and your teaching method. Can you explain that term?

JG My theory is that I can’t make a resonant, rich, performative moment on onstage, or in a site, unless I’m having that experience. I can’t just package it. Really the job for the performer is constructing a road map, or an obstacle course even. You’re not working to create an experience for someone else; you’re working to create an experience for yourself. Human beings can share that. We have a very good authenticity meter in our hearts and minds. We [the audience] can get on the boat with you. But you have to be taking the ride as a performer; that’s what’s essential. If you’re not taking the ride, there’s no way we’re going to take it.

SFBG In your approach, dance-theater it’s sometimes called, you’ve been synthesizing forms, dialogue, movement, text, music, for over 30 years …

JG And I’m only 40! How does that work?

SFBG It’s a precocious body of work. But there must have been dance purists and theater purists who balked at the synthesis …

JG Well, there still are. Don’t suffer the illusion that those people have gone away. There are people who look at my work and say it’s not dance. There are certainly people who look at my work and say it’s not theater. It falls between the cracks; they’re unsettled by it and they don’t want any part of it. I think the contemporary viewer — I mean, we’re so much about the mashup; we’re so much about computer animation infiltrating live action. All these collisions are happening in media. For a younger audience to see dancers speak? They don’t care. “That’s cool, whatever, why wouldn’t they?” And that’s how I always felt.

There’s another element there too. When I started making this kind of work: I wanted to have some frank expression of myself as a gay man. Not in a silver jock strap waving a rainbow flag, but as a fully- dimensional human being. Not hiding that very essential part of my identity, but somehow bringing it in. I felt I needed my voice to do that. My body was going to get to an essential part of that, but there was another whole part that needed to be addressed. And pretty much from the beginning, there was a huge audience for it. I feel like I’ve definitely found my place with it. I don’t feel like there’s any going back, that’s for sure.

Free as the breeze?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Free as the breeze?

arts@sfbg.com

>>Read Robert Avila’s interview with Joe Goode here

DANCE/THEATER Walking behind the tour guide who led us through the old San Francisco Mint’s elegant rooms for the Joe Goode Performance Group’s striking Traveling Light, I kept thinking of the Medicis and the Ming Dynasty. For their own selfish purposes, these corrupt supercapitalists commandeered and bought great beauty, of which we are the beneficiaries. On a more modest scale, the Mint, as so accurately described by Goode, was a temple of money. It was also a splendidly designed locus of hope for ordinary Joes and Janes who placed their trust, and their cash, in a place that promised the security that an expanding, institution-building nation could provide.

That’s why the Mint’s exquisite architecture speaks loudest in the basement. Jack Carpenter’s magisterial lighting creates shrines to the ordinary citizens on whose shoulders the Mint — and the country — was built. Carpenter ignores the presence of chandeliers — in a basement of all places! — and places red spots along the brick walls, transforming the hallway into a gallery.

Deep inside the safes — protected by exquisitely crafted steel doors — Goode places his works of art: a woman knitting, another in a bathtub, a perhaps homeless couple, and a tea-drinking Victorian lady tied down by propriety. Masterfully, Carpenter’s murky lighting transforms them into silent witnesses of a problematic past. Yet the atmosphere feels like one of your favorite watering holes on a Friday night.

Upstairs, Goode moves his seven dancers, supplemented by eight additional ones, through the Mint’s ostentatious public rooms and stark courtyard. For the next hour, they bring to life finely designed mini-dramas that possess a diorama-like quality. Watched over by a splendidly uniformed Fire Marshall who is quite at home in the building’s opulence, Traveling Light becomes an elaborately designed machine with interlocking gears that shuttle witnesses from one station to another.

I happened to be with the people who first see wealthy and bored Damara Vita Ganley abandon her “exalted” position to mingle with the groundlings. Here, worldly goods mean clean water. At least, the thinking went, these folks have each other. Out of robust duets and trios two men peel off, sent into a better future. Noble sentiment, terrible dramatic ending.

In the courtyard, which suggests a prison yard thanks to Carpenter’s lighting and Goode’s omnipotent voice from above, Filipe Barrueto-Cabello struggles as a poor working man. Haunted and perhaps supported by female spirits, he is barricaded against the elements, but longs for beauty. Andrew Ward and Alexander Zendzian are marvelous as W.C. Fields-like storytellers. The courtyard yields one of the evening’s most poignant moments: Barrueto-Cabello hugging and losing some cabbages as a solo clarinet wails. (Jay Cloidt’s score is first rate and invaluable throughout.)

In one of the inside rooms, Carpenter covers the chandeliers and hangs empty picture frames to better facilitate a detailed trip down memory lane. Jessica Swanson, a proper middle class lady, muses about a summertime affair with a young man (Melecio Estrella) whose calloused hands linger on in her mind. Their stiff-limbed yet passionate struggle doesn’t need words to be eloquently rendered. Elsewhere, in a Virginia Woolf-like touch, Patricia West searches desperately for a quiet place to get her life on track. Buffeted by intruders, she is caught in a turmoil that has more than a current of violence. It leaves her wan, alone, with only the echoes of her own words.

The carefully-honed Traveling is a very special vehicle for Goode’s excellent dancers-actors-singers, who are well supported by the additional cast. At one point Cloidt gives a quartet a four-part a cappella harmony, and they sail through it with ease. Goode badly wants the world to be a better place, but that’s not why we keep watching him and listening to him. We go back because his work sings, dances, and speaks with rare eloquence. I think what we want — and get — is what Barrueto-Cabello hungered for: beauty.

TRAVELING LIGHT

Wed-Sun, 8 p.m. (also Fri.–Sat., 10 p.m.), through Aug. 1, $29–$44

The Old Mint Building

88 Fifth St., SF

(415) 561-6565

www.joegoode.org

 

Bad faith

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Bad faith

steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his business allies are actively trying to sabotage the various revenue measures that have been put forth by the labor movement and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, employing deceptive rhetoric, sneaky tactics, and a refusal to bargain in good faith.

In fact, Newsom — the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor — is so averse to supporting anything that could be called a “tax” that he rejected a hard-won compromise measure created by powerful developers, affordable housing advocates, a pro-business think tank, the building trades, and his own directors of housing and economic development.

Just as that story was breaking in the New York Times (produced by Bay Citizen) on July 9, members of the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee discovered that Newsom’s proposed ballot measure to close loopholes in the city’s hotel tax that favored airline employees and online travel companies — a widely supported change, but one worth just $6 million per year — contains language that would nullify any increases in the hotel tax. Earlier in the week, labor unions turned in signatures on an initiative to increase the hotel tax by 2 percent, which would bring in more than $30 million per year.

“This poison pill is an intentionally deceptive, underhanded move,” Gabriel Haaland, an organizer with Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which sponsored the hotel tax, told us. “It’s so frustrating. It’s not even a good faith fight. He’s trying to create confusion and fool the voters. If our measure passes fair and square, it should be implemented.”

Meanwhile, Newsom and business groups have been attacking a reform measure by Board President David Chiu that would make the currently flat payroll tax more progressive, exempt more small businesses from paying it, and create a commercial rent tax to spread the tax burden more widely than the 10 percent of businesses who now pay tax to the city.

Critics complained that the measure would hurt local businesses — but that’s just not true. The city’s Office of Economic Analysis concluded that Chiu’s original proposal would have no effect on private sector jobs and would generate $34 million annually for the city, preserving some government jobs and spending.

Then Chiu amended the measure to spare even more small businesses. Now the OEA says that the measure would actually create private sector jobs — and still bring $28 million in to the city. Yet Newsom and the business community are still withholding their support.

This trio of Machiavellian moves comes just a week after Newsom pulled out of budget negotiations with board progressives concerning about $40 million in board add-backs to programs that Newsom proposed to cut after they wouldn’t agree to his precondition that they withdraw unrelated measures proposed for the November ballot, such as splitting appointments to the Rent, Recreation and Park, and Municipal Transportation Agency boards and requiring police officers to do foot patrols.

The series of events has led many progressives to say that conservative ideological blinders — a knee-jerk opposition to anything that saves government jobs and services or that Republicans might criticize — is the only logical explanation for the intransigent stance adopted downtown and by Newsom.

“It’s ideological. It’s not economic, and it’s not even political,” said Calvin Welch, the affordable housing activist who helped negotiate the transfer tax compromise with developer Oz Erickson, San Francisco Planning Urban Research Association director Gabriel Metcalf, Mayor’s Office of Housing Director Doug Shoemaker, and others.

That measure would have created a transfer tax on sales of properties over $875,000 and generated approximately $50 million annually for affordable housing (funds that were drastically reduced in Newsom’s proposed 2010-11 budget) while cutting in half the current requirements and fees on market-rate developers to create below-market-rate units. The plan would have stimulated both types of housing and created desperately needed construction work — an approach those involved called an elegant solution to several problems.

“To me, this was a win-win, solving two problems that are each a big deal,” Metcalf told us. “I don’t know what his reasons were for not supporting it. I was surprised.”

But Welch said, “It collapsed straight up because the mayor didn’t want to support a tax.” Although Newsom told the Times it was because there wasn’t broad enough consensus yet, “the mayor’s reason is whole-cloth bullshit,” Welch said, noting the role of the Mayor’s Office in brokering the deal. “The mayor walks away from it because everyone wasn’t in the room? Well, it’s your room, motherfucker. Show some leadership.”

Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker refused to discuss these issues by phone, responding to our written inquires by noting that Newsom opposes taxes and thinks the best way to address budget deficits are privatizing city services and pension reform (although he opposes Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s initiative, the only pension reform measure on the fall ballot).

“The mayor is opposed to the Board of Supervisors’ proposals to increase taxes because they’re not needed to balance the budget and they will strangle our still young economic recovery,” Winnicker wrote, refusing to answer follow-up questions or support a statement about Chiu’s measure that the OEA concludes is not accurate.

Like many political observers of all stripes, those from downtown and progressive circles, Welch criticized Newsom for his lack of engagement with city business and its long-term fiscal outlook, contrasting him with former Mayor Willie Brown, who met regularly with former Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano even as the two ran a bitter campaign for mayor against one another in 1999. “They dealt with the city’s business like two adults who cared about the city,” he said.

Welch acknowledged that there was still work to be done building political support for the transfer tax measure. He and other progressives would have had to win over city employee unions who wouldn’t like the budget set-aside aspect, and Erickson and Metcalf would need to placate some of their downtown allies who oppose taxes on ideological grounds. But given how downtown groups are behaving right now, that might not have been an easy sell.

“There are members of the small business community that are averse to any taxes,” said Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the city’s Office of Small Business and staffer to the Small Business Commission, which was withholding a recommendation on the Chiu measure but planned to meet again to consider it July 12 (look for an update on the sfbg.com Politics blog). She said the small business community is having tough times and “they are just not sensitive to keeping city workers employed.”

Larger commercial interests are being even more forceful in opposing the revenue measures. While a parade of workers, social service providers, and progressive activists testifying at the July 9 Budget Committee hearing implored supervisors to place all the proposed revenue measures on the ballot, representatives from the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce were the only two speakers urging supervisors to drop the measures and focus instead on creating private sector jobs.

“You’re trying to create a little revenue here and it’s not going to work,” said Ken Cleaveland, director of BOMA SF, arguing that big banks and financial services companies — entities exempt from the payroll tax that Chiu is hoping to target with the commercial rent tax — will buy their buildings to avoid paying the tax. “They aren’t going to create more jobs and they really aren’t going to create more revenue.”

Yet Chiu noted that it was the business community and fiscal conservatives who pushed to create the Office of Economic Analysis, whose work they have regularly used to attack progressive legislation. Now that the office has concluded that a piece of progressive legislation is good for the local economy, Chiu told Cleaveland and the Chamber spokesperson Rob Black at the hearing, “I ask you to respect the work this office has done.”

Black said the Chamber board will consider Chiu’s amended legislation, but said businesses are in no mood to help the city. “How many times have you gone to your neighborhood merchant and had them say, ‘Gee, my rent’s too cheap’?<0x2009>” he said during his testimony.

Yet Chiu said landlords of small tenants (those paying less than $65,000 in rent per year) are exempt from the rent tax and only 26 percent of SF businesses would pay any city business tax under his plan. “I hope the mayor will support this proposal and the business community will give it a good look,” Chiu said as the hearing ended.

At the beginning of the hearing, Chiu framed the dire situation facing San Francisco, citing Controller’s Office figures showing this year’s $500 million budget deficit (out of a $6 billion total budget) will be followed by a $700 million deficit next year and a $800 million gap the following budget cycle as a result of a deep structural budget imbalance.

“We have budget deficits as far as the eye can see,” Chiu said at the hearing. “We have to consider measures that will provide more stable sources of revenue.”

He also noted that city employee unions have agreed to give back about $250 million in salary and had their ranks reduced by about 2,000 workers in the last two years. So he and the other progressive supervisors say it’s time for the rest of San Francisco to help address the problem.

“We, as a city, should not be trying to balance this budget simply through cutting,” Sup. David Campos said.

Sup. John Avalos, the committee chair, amended his transfer tax measure in the wake of Newsom’s rejection of the deal by making it a simple 2 percent tax on properties that sell for more than $5 million, and 2.5 percent tax on properties over $10 million. He estimates it will bring in about $25 million per year from the city’s wealthiest corporations and landlords.

“That’s who we’re socking it to,” Avalos told us, saying he was disappointed the compromise fell through. “The amendment is going to be more progressive than what was originally planned.”

Even Sup. Sean Elsbernd, a strong fiscal conservative who announced early in the hearing, “You want to do that [balance future budgets] by adding taxes, but I want to do it through ongoing service cuts,” later told the Guardian that he was intrigued by the amendments Avalos and Chiu made to their measures and has not yet taken a position on them.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is also sponsoring a measure to increase the city’s tax on parking lot operators from 25 percent to 35 percent, the first change to that tax in 30 years, and will include valet parking for the first time. The measure would bring in up to $24 million per year, and OEA analysis shows it would decrease the number of cars trips by 1.3 percent, another benefit.

SFMTA supports the measure, with board member Cameron Beach testifying that the money will be used to subsidize Muni and “it links the use of private automobiles and is consistent with the city’s transit-first policy.” Mirkarimi, who chairs the Transportation Authority, also has proposed a $10 local vehicle license fee surcharge that would bring in another $5 million per year for Muni.

All the revenue measures require six votes by the full Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled to consider them July 20, after which they would need a simple majority approval by voters in November to take effect.

The mayor has the authority to directly place measures on the ballot, so the committee hearing on his hotel tax loophole measure and a $39 million general obligation bond that he’s proposing to create a revolving loan fund for private sector seismic improvements were mere formalities, so supervisors criticized aspects of each but were unable to make changes.

Avalos even grudgingly acknowledged the hotel tax poison pill was an effective way to kill that revenue source, saying at the hearing, “This is very smart. I don’t agree with it, but it’s very smart.”

Haaland was less charitable, criticizing a provision designed to confuse voters. “This kind of move means both measures won’t pass because now we have to oppose [Newsom’s measure],” he said, criticizing the mayor for running away from the hard decisions facing the city. “He won’t be around next year, when we have an even bigger structural budget deficit, to clean up this mess. Absent new revenue sources, this city starts to fall apart.”

Beyond the rage

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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46
Beyond the rage

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Downtown Oakland became supercharged with emotion in the hours following the July 8 announcement of the verdict in the trial of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle. And in the days that followed, the city remained electrified as residents struggled to make sense of the verdict, the rioting that occurred in its wake, and the historic significance of these developments.

But as the emotions dissipate, the issues behind the verdict and its aftermath remain — along with a series of questions that could determine whether this intensely scrutinized shooting of an unarmed man will lead to any changes in police practices or the justice system, as well as how the community will react if the judge imposes a light sentence.

After being moved out of the Bay Area because the publicity surrounding the case, a Los Angeles jury found Mehserle, a white officer, guilty of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed black man who was detained on a BART train platform in Oakland on Jan. 1, 2009 following reports of a fight.

The verdict stood out as an almost unprecedented conviction of an officer in a case involving deadly use of force, and a departure from an all-too-familiar narrative in which tragedies resulting from police shootings bring no consequences for those responsible for pulling the trigger. However, in the wake of the verdict, Grant’s family members made it clear that they did not believe that justice had been served.

“This involuntary manslaughter verdict is not what we wanted, nor do we accept it,” Oscar Grant’s uncle, Cephus “Bobby” Johnson, said at a July 10 press conference at True Vine Ministries, a West Oakland church. “It’s been a long, hard road, but there are chapters in this war. The battle’s just getting started.”

To Grant’s relatives and a coalition of supporters who came together in response to the shooting, the trial is intrinsically linked to a long history of police brutality that occurs with impunity in cases involving youth of color. Meetings organized by clergy and community members have been held weekly in West Oakland over the past 19 months with the ultimate goal of bringing about greater oversight of the BART police and effective police reform on a broader scale.

On July 9, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that its Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the FBI have opened an investigation into the shooting and would determine whether prosecution at the federal level is warranted. Defense Attorney Michael Rains also made a motion to move Mehserle’s sentencing to a date later than Aug. 6, the date it was originally expected.

As the events of July 8 solidify into the Bay Area’s collective memory, attention is now shifting toward the next steps, and to lingering questions. Mehserle’s sentencing is key: will his sentence be light, reflecting the jury’s conclusion that he simply made a mistake — or will it include substantial prison time, reflecting the fact that he shot and killed an unarmed man without justification? Will he receive a lighter sentence than someone else without a criminal record found guilty of involuntary manslaughter simply because of his identity as a former officer with law enforcement organizations still in his corner? If Mehserle receives a long sentence, will it signify a shift in a justice system that many perceive as biased — or a stand-alone result of intense public scrutiny?

And as a result of all this, will the BART police finally get the type of training and serious civilian oversight they so badly need?

 

RAW REACTION

On the day the verdict was announced, thousands turned out for a peaceful rally near Oakland’s 12th Street BART Station and City Hall to hear speakers sound off about how their lives had been affected by police brutality.

As night fell, looting and rioting began to break out as the media covered scenes of rage set against small trash fires, causing anger and frustration for many Oakland residents who were dismayed and frightened by the chaos and disorder. More than 80 arrests were made, and dozens of stores including Sears, Whole Foods, Subway, Foot Locker, and numerous banks were damaged or looted. Police efforts to respond to the situation gave downtown city blocks the feeling of a war zone for several hours.

Reactions to the verdict, and the chaotic aftermath that followed, varied in the following days.

“The truth is that in American history, this is both a high point and a low point,” Olis Simmons, executive director of Youth UpRising — an Oakland nonprofit that works with youth of color — told the Guardian the following day. Speaking to the fact that an officer had been convicted in a case involving a wrongful death, she said: “I think it really is a signal that America is changing. This is the farthest we’ve ever gone.”

She said she hoped that people who were infuriated enough to react violently on the evening of July 8 would channel that energy toward constructive goals of pushing for a more satisfactory outcome. Before rallies and later rioting began that night, Youth UpRising sent people into the crowd to hand out glossy flyers proclaiming “violence isn’t justice.”

Davey D Cook, an independent radio journalist who extensively covered activity surrounding Grant’s death on a news site called Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner, said he thought the mainstream media was ready to have “a field day” with the riots, pointing out that they ran special coverage in the days leading up to verdict, building up anticipation of violent outbreaks. He also said that the scope of the rioting should be kept in perspective.

On his July 9 KPFA radio show, Hard Knock Radio, Cook added a salient point: “Broken windows can be replaced, and in two weeks, they will be. Stolen merchandise can be replaced, and it will be. But who’s going to replace this justice system that got looted? What insurance policy takes care of that?”

Just before the July 10 press conference, a town hall meeting was held inside True Vine Ministries. It was crammed full of supporters from Oakland, San Francisco, and beyond who listened as Minister Keith Muhammad — a representative of the Nation of Islam who has worked closely with the Grant family and traveled to Los Angeles to watch the trial — spoke at length. Muhammad was dressed immaculately in a suit and tie, and spoke with an air of fiery conviction.

“In the outcome of this case, there is surely more to be resolved that has yet to be addressed,” Muhammad said. He emphasized that “we’re not satisfied,” but added: “You should know that dissatisfaction is the foundation of all change.”

He raised a number of questions about the proceedings, asking why there was an absence of African Americans on the jury, and why the judge called an early recess when Grant’s teenage friend, Jamil Dewar, sobbed uncontrollably on the witness stand — but not when Mehserle sobbed on the stand. He noted that Grant’s friends were kept in handcuffs for six hours after witnessing Grant’s death.

In the days following July 8, much was also said about mainstream media coverage of the events, in particular the notion that “outside agitators” would come in and start trouble. “I do not like this divisive campaign to divide our community and protestors by calling people outsiders,” Oakland defense attorney Walter Riley wrote in a statement posted on Indybay.org. “This is a great metropolitan area … we expect people from all over the map to participate in Oakland. Calling people outsiders in this instance is a political attack on the movement. The subtext is that the outsiders are white and not connected to Oakland. From the days of the civil rights movement to now, the outsider labeling failed to address the underlying problems for which people came together. We must engage in respectful political struggle. I understand the frustration. I do not support destruction and looting as political protest.”

 

LOOKING FORWARD

Mehserle’s conviction suggests the jurors believed his defense that he meant to draw and fire his Taser instead of his gun. In legal terms, settling on involuntary manslaughter, rather than second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, means the jury was not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Mehserle had malice toward Grant. But the jury found that he was criminally negligent when he failed to notice that he had his gun instead of his Taser in the moments before he pulled the trigger.

“In California, and really in any state, it is extremely difficult for jurors to convict a police officer. There’s an extreme reluctance to do that,” Whitney Leigh, an attorney who formerly worked in the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, told us.

“There are undoubtedly instances where things like this have happened at some time in the past in California, that weren’t videotaped,” Leigh continued. “But for the videotape, if you walked 10 witnesses in who said that what happened, happened, no one would believe them if the officer took the stand and said that’s not what happened. The only reason there’s a case at all is that there’s a videotape.”

Leigh said he thought that unless the public develops a better awareness that police misconduct regularly occurs, “individuals are going to continue to be victimized by a system that effectively encourages officers to believe that they can act with significant impunity.”

Asked whether he thought it was likely that the federal government would decide to step in after concluding its investigation, he said it was a tough call. “The Justice Department is highly selective in the cases it chooses to prosecute for these crimes,” he cautioned. “That said, the kinds of cases they choose are ones that tend to have a lot of public attention and concern, so this fits within that category. Since it’s such a public case, it can have more of a widespread impact.”

If Mehserle was prosecuted at the federal level, the case would invoke Criminal Code 18 U.S.C. Sec. 242, used when a government agent or an individual acting under the color of authority denies someone their civil rights through force, threats, or intimidation, based on their race, gender, or another protected category.

Then again, the federal government’s decision over whether or not to step in may be linked to the degree of severity of Mehserle’s sentence.

California Penal Code Section 193 specifies the mitigated, midterm, and aggravated sentences for involuntary manslaughter: two, three, or four years in state prison, respectively. Because Mehserle’s case involves his personal use of a firearm, a sentence enhancement of three, four, or 10 years can be added to his prison time under California Penal Code Section 12022.5.

The judge will weigh circumstances to determine Mehserle’s sentence, possibly including his record as a police officer, his criminal record, age, remorse, and other factors, explained Jim Hammer, a former prosecutor and current San Francisco Police Commission member. The judge could toss out the sentence enhancement for personal use of a gun — and there’s a possibility he would deem extreme circumstances, such as his police record, to warrant probation rather than prison time. But Hammer said he thought both of those outcomes are unlikely.

“The judge will want to appear more than fair, not giving special treatment,” Hammer said. “Judges have to stand [for] election too, and in the light of the fact that somebody’s dead, I think the chance of probation is incredibly slim.”

Even if Mehserle receives a light sentence and then faces prosecution at the federal level, there is a chance that information about his past record as an officer — which was not admitted as evidence, thanks to laws that afford protections for police officers in these kinds of cases — would continue to be shielded. The protection applies even though Mehserle resigned.

“The average person just wants courts to be fair,” Leigh said. “And there’s an inherent unfairness in a system that allows a government or a police department that has all the resources and records to … use against you while shielding what might be much more serious and relevant acts by police officers. That’s one change that would be great if that did happen.”

A key legal issue in the case and any possible federal case is reasonable doubt, Hammer said. “Reasonable doubt is everything, and no one talks about it. They just say, ‘Oh, he didn’t have intent.’ That’s not the issue. Can anybody really, honestly say that they don’t have some doubts about his intent?”

At the same time, Hammer tempered his legal analysis with some understanding of Grant’s mother’s pain in light of what happened to her son and as the verdict was reached.

“If the dictionary had three pictures of murder for a picture image, one would be shooting somebody in the back who is unarmed,” he told the Guardian. “What she’s saying is not outrageous. If it were my relative I would probably call it murder too. She’s not crazy.”

As things continue to unfold with Mehserle’s sentencing and the federal civil rights investigation, civil litigation is in the works too. Wrongful death civil lawsuits will likely be filed against BART by Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris on behalf of Grant’s mother, as well as another suit by five friends who were with Grant the night he was killed. BART settled a suit filed on behalf of Tatiana Grant, the slain man’s five-year-old daughter, in January. That total settlement should amount to more than $5.1 million, according to a media release on Burris’ website.

During an interview after the July 10 press conference, Johnson was asked how Grant’s young daughter was doing. He responded: “Tatiana is still struggling with the issue of when her daddy’s coming home. So it’s going to take time for her, when she does understand that he is not coming back home.”

Outside Grant’s family, many observers hope to see systemic change come out of this tragedy. Assembly Member Tom Ammiano introduced legislation to create civilian oversight of BART police after the shooting, but was unhappy to see how it was watered down during the legislative process. Now he wants to see stronger reforms.

“I think Oscar Grant’s death was inevitable based on the lack of caring about how those police were trained,” he told us. “If you’re going to have the kind of independent civilian oversight that’s going to prevent a repeat of what happened to Oscar Grant, you can’t have this namby-pamby law. The mantra has been, well, this is better than nothing. Unless they’re made to do it … it’s not going to happen the way we want.”

Whitman criticized for opposing high-speed rail

Sasha Cuttler
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10
Whitman criticized for opposing high-speed rail

By Brittany Baguio

Although Republican gubernatorial Meg Whitman claims job creation is one of her top priorities, she recently stated that she opposes the plan to build a high-speed rail system in California – a project that is being eagerly anticipated in San Francisco, its northern terminus.

Whitman says the state does not have enough money to fund the project because of the state’s current budget deficit, but labor, environmental, and other groups say it will be a boon to the state’s economy and environment. Voters approved Proposition 1A in November 2008, supporting the construction of a high-speed rail system with an initial investment of $9.95 billion in bond money.

Proponents say the project will alleviate freeway and airport congestion and provide a green transportation option that has both short- and long-term economic benefits. According to the California High-Speed Authority website, the project would create 160,000 constructed-related jobs as well as 450,000 more jobs by 2035. The construction of the rail system would also improve the movement of people, goods, and services throughout California and ultimately raise more than $1 billion in surplus revenue a year.

“We are eager to thoroughly brief whoever the next governor is on this project and work with him or her to make California’s high-speed rail system a reality,” California High-Speed Rail Authority representative Rachel Wall told the Guardian.

Supporters of the bullet train disagree with Whitman’s analysis and contend that the construction of a bullet train would create revenue and jobs. In a press release, California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski said, “In her glossy TV ads, Whitman says she understands the daily hardships facing our state’s unemployed, but it’s clear that’s just more campaign rhetoric. In opposing high-speed rail, she’s shown her true colors on jobs. It’s shocking that a candidate for Governor could be so detached from the economic hardships facing our state’s families. With one in eight Californians out of work, how can we afford not to invest in the creation of hundreds of thousands of permanent, good new jobs?”

Communications director of the California Labor Federation, Steve Smith, believed that Whitman’s opposition exhibited her political inexperience and uninformed decisions. “She’s out there talking a big game about job creation, but no specifics about how she would create jobs,” Smith told us. “Her proposals would be devastating to California and would lead to higher unemployment in California. She says that California can’t afford the project, but what we can’t afford is not to take advantage of improving our economy and environment.”

Whitman isn’t the only one opposing the project. Bay Area cities of Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Burlingame, Belmont, and Atherton have all voiced concerns about the project and the impact of trains move rapidly through those communities, filing a lawsuit seeking to halt the project.

The bullet train project was awarded $2.25 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act last January and is currently undergoing supplemental environmental reviews. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2012, with improvements such as rail electrification expected to improve rail service on the San Francisco peninsula even before the high-speed trains start running around 2020.

Assuming the public-private project isn’t derailed politically and can raise the estimated $40 billion total cost, the trains will travel at speeds of up to 220 mph and take passengers from the LA Union Station to San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal in less than 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Stage listings

David Talbot
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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.

THEATER

ONGOING

Abigail: The Salem Witch Trials Temple SF, 540 Howard; www.templesf.com. $10. July 29, Aug 5, 12, 19, 26, 9pm. Through Aug 26. Buzz Productions, with Skycastle Music and Lunar Eclipse Records, presents an original rock opera based on the Salem witch trials.

Beijing, California Thick House Theater, 1695 18th St; www.asianamericantheater.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sat/17. Asian American Theater Company presents a new play by Paul Heller set in the year 2050, when China invades America.

Cindy Goldfield & Scrumbly Koldewyn in Cowardly Things New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. $20-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through July 31. Cindy Goldfield and Scrumbly Koldewyn in a tribute to Noel Coward.

Comedy Ballet The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm, Sun, 3pm. Through Sun/18. Dark Porch Theatre presents an outlandish and unusual dance and theater hybrid.

Dead Certain Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; (866) 811-4111. $12-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 14. Expression Productions presents a psychological thriller by Marcus Lloyd.

Foresight Fort Mason Southside Theater, Building D; www.fortmason.org. $22-27. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 8pm. Through July 18. Easily Distracted Theatre presents a new play by Bay Area filmmaker Ruben Grijalva.

Gilligan’s Island: Live on Stage! The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sun, 8pm. Through August 29. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts brings the TV show to the stage, lovey.

How the Other Half Loves Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason; (800) 838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $35, Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through July 31. In Alan Ayckbourn’s 1971 comedy, a night of infidelity propels two colliding couples into menacing a third, a pair of innocents unwittingly drawn into the whole affair as alibis. The collisions are made all the more kinetic by the fact that Ayckbourn cheekily drops the two principal couples into overlapping living rooms, where they continually brush by each other in ironic obliviousness. At the outset of this droll two-act, Fiona Foster (a smart, cucumber-cool Sylvia Kratins) has just slept with Bob Phillips (a brilliantly sourpussed James Darbyshire), junior colleague of her husband Frank (Jeff Garrett, exuding the animated splendor of the full-on English twit), on the night of the couple’s wedding anniversary (pure coincidence for the forgetful, loveless Fiona). In loose coordination with lover Bob, Fiona explains her late night absence with reference to a pair of vague acquaintances, the Featherstones (Jocelyn Stringer and Adam D. Simpson). Bob does the same with Teresa (a spunky Corinne Proctor), his homebound wife and a new, deeply disgruntled young mother. Naturally, back-to-back dinner parties with said alibis ensue, much to the horror and chagrin of the adulterers. Off Broadway West Theatre Company’s production, smoothly helmed by Richard Harder, makes the most of the complex staging as both time and space collapse over intersecting dining tables. If the play is slow to catch fire, it reaches a nice sustained peak that proves worth the going. Shaky accents from Garrett and especially Simpson can distract at times, but Harder’s cast is generally solid and engaging, with particularly enjoyable work from Darbyshire and Proctor as the volatile younger Phillips with their crass bickering, canned erotic energy, and barely countenanced off-stage baby. (Avila)

The 91 Owl African American Arts Cultural Complex, 762 Fulton; 574-8908, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-25. Nightly, 8pm. Through July 22. A production of Bernard Norris’s play about the life of a San Francisco bus stop.

Peter Pan Threesixty Theater, Ferry Park (on Embarcadero across from the Ferry Bldg); www.peterpantheshow.com. $30-125. Tues and Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 2pm; Sun, 1 and 5pm. Through August 29. JM Barrie’s tale is performed in a specially-built 360-degree CGI theater.

Piaf: Love Conquers All Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-36. Tues-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm. Through August 7. Tone Poet Productions brings a portrait of Edith Piaf to the stage.

Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker Dolores Park and other sites; 285-1717, www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat-Sun, 2pm; also Sept 6, 2pm; Sept 17, 8pm. It may have been just a coincidence, but it certainly seems auspicious that the San Francisco Mime Troupe, itself collectively run since the 1970’s, would preview their latest show Posibilidad on the United Nations International Day of Cooperatives. The show, which centers around the struggles of the last remaining workers in a hemp clothing factory ("Peaceweavers"), hones in on the ideological divide between business conducted as usual, and the impulse to create a different system. Taking a clip from the Ari Lewis/Naomi Klein documentary The Take, half of the play is set in Argentina, where textile-worker Sophia (Lisa Hori-Garcia) becomes involved in a factory takeover for the first time. Her past experiences help inform her new co-workers’ sitdown strike and takeover of their own factory after they are told it will close by their impossibly fey, new age boss Ernesto (Rotimi Agbabiaka). You don’t need professional co-op experience to find humor in the nascent collective’s endless rounds of meetings, wince at their struggles against capitalistic indoctrination, or cheer the rousing message of "Esta es Nuestra Lucha" passionately sung by Velina Brown, though in another welcome coincidence, the run of Posibilidad also coincides with the National Worker Cooperative conference being held in August, so if you get extra inspired, you can always try to join forces there. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Reading My Dad’s Porn and French Kissing the Dog The Marsh Studio Theater, 1074 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/17. The title of San Francisco writer-performer Cherry Zonkowski’s confessional solo show gives only a little away—a passing detail from the Nordic diversions of a spirited army brat and daughter of an alcoholic father—but the rest of the narrative leaves even less to the imagination. An account of Zonkowski’s initiation into the sex party and BDSM scene, Reading My Dad’s Porn bounces gleefully between comically graphic depictions of sweaty, writhing Bay Area meet-and-greets and a childhood and young adulthood buried in family dysfunction, a loveless marriage, and the grueling teaching load of a recent English PhD. Ultimately, it’s the story of a woman finding her own identity and community, and if the outlines sound familiar they also feel that way. The straightforward plot—peppered with humorous details and asides (as well as the odd song, accompanied by accordionist Salane Schultz, alternating nights with Aaron Seeman)—lacks both urgency and characters of much complexity. The story’s patina of outré sex, meanwhile, is far from revelatory and too superficial and jokey to offer much dramatic heft. Nevertheless, the show, developed with director David Ford, draws a limited appeal from the force of Zonkowski’s extroverted personality, whose orientation sexual and otherwise skews toward fun—although her more aggressive attempts to corral the audience into participating (mainly vocally) in the show’s narrative high jinx may put some off even more than the fisting by the snack table. (Avila)

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through August 28. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

Young Frankenstein Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor; 551-2000, www.shnsf.com. $30-99. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm, also Tues/13, July 20, 8pm; Wed/7, July 24, 21, 2 and 8pm. Through July 25.

For all its outlandish showmanship, Mel Brooks’s other movie-turned-musical is not quite as grand a beast as The Producers . Still, the adventures of Victor Frankenstein’s reputation-conscious grandson, Frederick Frankenstein—played with exceeding charm and surgeon-like skill by major cut-up Roger Bart, originator of the role on Broadway—remains a monster of a show, in more ways than one. The rapid-fire repartee, for starters, is scarily deft, the comic timing among a first-rate cast all but flawless (even when milking a line shamelessly), the fancy footwork (choreographed by director Susan Stroman) pretty fancy, and the mise en scène holds some attractive surprises as well. At the same time, and despite the fecund humor revolving around questions of size and virility, the show’s actual two-and-a-half-hour length proves a bit wearying, especially as many of the best jokes (though by no means all) are the much-loved and universally much-repeated gags from the film. Moreover, Brooks’s songs, while very able, rarely rise to memorable and sometimes feel perfunctory or a bit busy. One of the glorious exceptions is the blind hermit scene (played brilliantly by Brad Oscar), which combines the hilariously plaintive song "Please Send Me Someone" with a lovingly faithful rendition of the original spoof for a sequence that literally smokes. (Avila)

BAY AREA

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. July 24, 31, 8pm; Sun/18, July 25, Aug 1, 7pm; Fri/16, 9pm. Through August 1. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

Left of Oz Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-50. Fri-Sat, 8pm, Sun, 7pm. Through Sun/18. Stephanie’s Playhouse presents a lez-queer musical comedy following the out west adventures of Dorothy.

Speech & Debate Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm, 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Sun/18. Aurora Theatre closes its 18th season with Stephen Karam’s comedy about three teen misfits connected to a small town sex scandal.


PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Theatre Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, B350 Fort Mason; 474-6776, www.improv.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 31. Bay Area Theatresports presents an evening of theater and comedy.

The Bowls Project: Secrets of the Apocalyptic Intimate Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sculpture Court, 701 Mission; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Various times. Through August 22. Charming Hostess presents a series of performances in conjunction with an interactive sound sculpture.

Liz Grant Variety Pack Comedy Show Purple Onion, 140 Columbus; 200-8781, www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri, 4:30pm. Through Sept 3. $10. A changing lineup of stand up comedy.

"San Francisco Olympians Festival" Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy; www.sfolympians.com Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm, $10. A series of one-act perfomances by No Nude Men Productions.

Music listings

David Talbot
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0

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

WEDNESDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Sean Bonnette, Kepi Ghoulie, Gnarboots Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Cellar Door, Shapes Stars Make, Ventid El Rio. 8pm.

Excuses for Skipping, Lovers, Fake Your Own Death Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Guitar Shorty Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Bettye LaVette, Milton Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $26.

Rykarda Parasol, Kevin Junior (Chamber Strings), Mark Matos and Os Beaches, Dolly Rocker Movement Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $14.

Raccoons, Red Blue Yellow, Jhameel, Alee Kharim and Science Fiction Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

Rattlesnakes, Zodiac Death Valley, Electric Sister Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Wakey! Wakey!, Wave Array, Doom Bird Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

*Bardot A Go Go Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $7. Bastille Dance Day Party with DJs Brother Grimm, Pink Frankenstein, and Cali Kid.

Bastille Day on Belden Belden Place between Pine and Bush, SF; www.belden-place.com. 4pm, free. With DJs Pheeko Dubfunk, Jared F, Nima G, and Hakobo.

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

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

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

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

Mod vs. Rockers Make-out Room. 9pm, free. A Bastille Day dance off.

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Action Design, Hypernova, Yellow Dogs Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Battlehooch, Cash Pony, Wise Wives Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Jesse Brewster, Felsen, Luce, Brad Brooks Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Built to Spill, Fauxbois Slim’s. 9pm, $26.

Congress with Moon Candy, Mai-Lei, and Ge-ology Coda. 9pm, $10.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Mary Gauthier, Peter Bradley Adams Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $20.

Live Evil Make-Out Room. 5pm, free.

Lords of Acid, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult DNA Lounge. 9pm, $23.

Part Time, Sam Flax and Higher Color, Bridget St. John, Elisa Randazzo with Robinson, Amy Blaschke Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

Tippy Canoe and the Paddlemen, Olivia Mancini, AntonetteG Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Savanna Blu Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Very Be Careful, Franco Nero, DJs Special Lord B, Ben Bracken, and Phengren Oswald Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

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

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

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

Good Foot Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. With DJs spinning R&B, Hip hop, classics, and soul.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

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

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

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

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

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

Solid Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, free. With DJs Daddy Rolo and Tesfa spinning roots, reggae, dancehall, soca, and mashups.

FRIDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Antibalas, Sway Machinery Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $23.

Inquisition, Altar of Plagues, Velnias, Dispirit Elbo Room. 8pm, $14.

Maria Taylor Andy LeMaster, Foolproof Four, Morgan LeMaster Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Carlton Melton, Nothing People, Hans Keller Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Mighty Mo Rodgers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Shabazz Palaces Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $20.

Slowness, Skeletal System, Sunbeam Rd., Nuns of Justice Retox Lounge. 8:30pm, $2.

Struts, Mighty Slim Pickins!, Minks Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Teenage Bottlerocket, Banner Pilot, Complaints Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

3rdrail, Absent Society, Saint Vernon, Falling to Pieces Slim’s. 9pm, $14.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

Chris Brown, Animal Divino Project, Chad McKinney, Joe Salvatore Li Po Lounge. 9pm, $5.

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

Pieces of a Dream Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $16.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Broken Glass Beach Coda. 10pm, $10.

Going Away Party Plough and Stars. 9pm, $6-$10.

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

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

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

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

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

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

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

Hubba Hubba Revue: Bootie Pirate Show DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Bootleg mash-ups and buccaneer burlesque.

Noze, Worthy, and Moomaw Mighty. 9pm, $17. Spinning electronica.

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

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Synth sounds of the cold war era.

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

Some Thing The Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

TekAndHaus Anu, 43 6th St., SF; (415) 931-7292?. 10pm, $5. With DJ Raíz.

SATURDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acephalix, Self-Inflicted, Vaccuum Elbo Room. 5pm, $7.

Bare Wires, Moccretro, Heavy Hills, Family Matters Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Drink Up Buttercup, I Come to Shanghai Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

*Halford Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $40.

Howlin Rain, Sean Smith and the Present Moment, 3 Leafs El Rio. 9pm, $8.

Igor and Red Elvises, Gun and Doll Show Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Maps and Atlases, Cults, Globes Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Sons of Champlin, Electric Flag, Fishbear Fillmore. 8pm, $30.

Stone Foxes, Mata Leon, Strange Vine Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Sweet Baby Jai Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Ben Taylor, Katie Herzig Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $18.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

Hillbilly Jazbos Club Deluxe. 10pm, $5.

Pieces of a Dream Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Terry Disley Experience with Erik Jekabson Coda. 7pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Blue Diamond Fillups Thee Parkside. 11am, free.

Hillbilly Jazzbos Deluxe, 1511 Haight, SF; (415) 552-6949. 10pm, $5.

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

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

Orquesta lo Clave The Ramp, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm, free.

Robert Gastelum Latin Jazz Amnesia. 6pm, free.

Justin Roberts and the Not Ready for Naptime Players Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). Noon, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Bootie: Chernobyl DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. John!John! presents a disaster-themed stage show, plus DJs Adrian and Mysterious D spin mash-ups.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Booty-shaking hip-hop with DJ Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickenson.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. Gay locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm.

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

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

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

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

Jump Up to Get the Beat Down Club Six. 9pm, $5. With live performances by All Soul, Makeshift, Sevent Day, Ophrap, and 5th P and DJs Xole and One-Way.

Non Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $15. Live dhol (drum) players, dance performers, and DJs.

O.K. Hole Amnesia. 10pm, $5. With live performances by Bronze, Altars, Jason Greer, and resident DJs C.L.A.W.S., Muscledrum, and Nay Nay.

Party Like It’s 1994 Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $10. With DJs Jeffery Paradise, Richie Panic, Deevice, and more spinning 90’s music.

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

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

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

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

Alloy Trex Project One, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 938-7173. 9:30pm, $10. CD release party with guests Cubik, Origami, Outersect, and DJ Yap.

Wet and Wild Club 8, 1151 Folsom, SF; (415) 431-1151. 9pm, $8. With DJs David Harness and Dr. Proctor and a live performance by Lady TaTas.

SUNDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

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

Shanta Loecker, Arian Saleh Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Loquat, Downer Party, Ross Sea Party, Mister Loveless Milk. 8pm, $8.

Mahjongg, Return to Mono, Actors Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

*Origin, Gigan, Brain Drill, Embryonic Devourment DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $16.

Primus Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $36.

Secret History, Jetskiis, Kids on Crime Spree, Matthew Edwards and the Unfortunates Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $10.

Secretions, Ashtray, Hounds and Harlots, Bastards of Young Thee Parkside. 8pm, $6.

Still Flyin’, Poison Control Center Knockout. 9pm.

Sweethead, Nico Vega Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTY

Caravan Palace, DePedro Sigmund Stern Grove, 19th Ave at Sloat, SF; www.sterngrove.org. 2pm, free.

Ash Reiter, Fpod Bpod, Jesse Denatale, Amber Gougis Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10.

Rolando Morales The Ramp, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm, free.

Watcha Clan, Charming Hostess Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. 8pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJs Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and guests Roy Two Thousand and DJ Quest.

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

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

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

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

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

Makeup Showdown, 10 6th St., SF; (415) 503-0684. 8pm, free. With host Triple Cobra and guest DJs spinning glam rock.

Mission Creek Music Festival presents the After-Park Closing Night Dance Party El Rio. 9pm, $5. With DJs Primo, Nick Waterhouse, and Carnita.

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

Slick Idiot, Mona Mur Paradise Lounge. 9pm.

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

Sunday Mass The Endup. 8pm, $15. With DJs David Harness, Leonard, Greg Yuen, and more.

Watcha Clan with Charming Hostess New Frequencies, YBCA Forum and Sculptural Court, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787. 8pm, $25

MONDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alex Band Café du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Dig, Amateurbation, Poison Control Center Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Semi Feral, Spider Garage, Sorry Mom and Dad El Rio. 7pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Shed House Jamboree, Pick Amnesia. 6pm, free.

Ana Tijoux, Funky C and Joya, Disco Shawn Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

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

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

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

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

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

Musik for Your Teeth Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St., SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Soul cookin’ happy hour tunes with DJ Antonino Musco.

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

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

TUESDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Con Brio, California Honeydrops, Blood and Sunshine Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Happy Birthday, Residual Exhoes, Young Prisms Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

(HED) P.E., Kutt Calhoun, Big B, Johnny Richter, Blestenation Slim’s. 8pm, $19.

*Kowloon Walled City, Rosetta, City of Ships, Litany for the Whale Knockout. 8:30pm, free.

Kevin Seconds, Emily Davis Thee Parkside. 8pm, $5.

Tan Dollar, Dash Jacket, Weed Diamond, Neighbors Sub-Mission, 2183 Mission, SF; www.sf-submission.com. 9pm.

Tunnel, Tigon, Red River Choir Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Weiner Kids, 3 Leafs, Sudden Oak, Mira Cook, Danishta Rivero Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

The New Things Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Alejo Aponte y Latonera, DJs Fausto Sousa and Carioca Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ Crystal Meth and DJ Motley Cruz.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

On the cheap listings

David Talbot
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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 14

Make Beer in Your Basement Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 7pm, free. Learn to make your own beer to both save money and get invited to more parties. Home brewer Caleb Shaffer presents an overview of the beer brewing process, complete with explanations on technique, equipment, and ingredients.

Vive le Film! Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.disposablefilmfest.com. 8pm, free. In honor of Bastille Day, the Disposable Film Festival will present a collection of disposable films with a French flare. Enjoy drink specials courtesy of Hotel Rex and valet bike parking provided by Globe Bikes.

THURSDAY 15

Hayes Valley Farm Tour Hayes Valley Farm, Laguna between Oak and Fell, SF; www.laborfest.net. 3pm, free. Attend this LaborFest sponsored tour of Hayes Valley Farm, an urban agriculture education and research project, and learn about the alliance of urban farmers, educators, and designers that comprise the Hayes Valley Farm Project Team and the innovative strategies used on the farm in order to meet the needs of our planet and the surrounding communities of San Francisco. Tours of the farm are held every Thursday and Sunday.

FRIDAY 16

Free Museum Weekend Various museums in San Francisco, visit www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/target for exact dates and times. Fri.-Sun., free. The de Young Museum, Asian Art Museum, SFMOMA, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Museum of African Diaspora, Zeum, and the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival are all offering free admission days throughout the weekend for all ages along with hands-on art activities, and family friendly performances.

SATURDAY 17

“Art Show” Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF; (415) 703-8964. 5pm, $5 suggested donation. Watch interpretive drag performances devoted to the works of Keith Gaspari, who will be hosting along with the lovely Bebe Sweetbriar. Featuring works by local artists and performers, champagne toasts, a raffle, and special Bulleit bourbon cocktails to benefit Visual Aid, a non-profit that supports artists living with HIV.

“Beatles to Bowie” San Francisco Art Exchange, 458 Geary, SF; (415) 441-8840. 7pm, free. Attend the opening of this Rock n’ Roll photo exhibition displaying original photos showcasing the evolution of music from the British invasion to glam rock from 1962 to 1974. Featuring never before seen photos by Terry O’Neill.

Behind the Storefronts Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco, 3rd floor, 750 Kearny, SF; (415) 252-2598. 2pm, free. Learn about how Art in Storefronts, a citywide project that temporarily places original art installations and murals into vacant storefront windows and exposed walls, from some of the artists and property owners who participated in the current Chinatown exhibition. An artist-led tour of the storefronts and murals will follow the discussion.

Night Light SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 552-1770. 9pm, $5 suggested donation. Get lost in a multimedia garden party featuring temporary multimedia, abstract sound, video, and film installation set in the garden of SOMArts. In conjunction with the current “Totally Unrealistic: the art of abstraction” exhibit.

Schools for Salone El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; (415) 648-4767. 4pm, $10 suggested donation. Enjoy an afternoon of dancing, eating, drinking, and probable sunshine to benefit Schools for Salone, a non profit that build schools in Sierra Leone. Featuring music by DJs Marcos, Eschew, SpinCycle, PMS, and Ras Kanta, African food by Bissap Baobab, and raffle prizes.

Song and Poetry Swap The San Francisco Folk Music Club, 885 Clayton, SF; (415) 648-3457. 8pm, free. Join the Freedom Song Network to help keep the spirit of labor and political song alive in the Bay Area by bringing songs or poems to share at this swap of picket line, rally, and concert songs and poems. No musical training or talent required. Part of LaborFest 2010: www.laborfest.net.

Union Square Art Walk Participating galleries along Post and Sutter streets, SF; for exact locations visit http://artwalksf.com/. Noon-5pm, free. Take a free, self-guided walking tour of Union Square art galleries at this art walk featuring artist talks, performance art, live music, film screenings, refreshments, and more.

SUNDAY 18

Lots of Abundance Meet at CCA Farm, 8th St. at Hooper, SF; www.sfbike.org. 9:45am, $5 suggested donation. Discover local projects that reclaim abandoned lots and former freeways for public use and for the purpose of restoring connections to food on this two and a half hour bike tour led by TransitionSF and the San Francisco Permaculture Guild. The tour will highlight local efforts to create community and garner support for both the environment and the economy.

MONDAY 19

Ubu Roi Theater Pub, Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.sftheaterpub.wordpress.com. 8pm, free. Take in a one night performance of Alfred Jarry’s 1896 bawdy and nihilistic re-imagining of Macbeth, translated and modernized by Bennett Fisher. Enjoy this original work and workshop at the Café Royale bar featuring musical accompaniment by DJ Wait What.

For Lit, Talks, and Benefits listings, visit the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

Rep Clock

David Talbot
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Schedules are for Wed/14–Tues/20 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $5-10. “OpenScreening: Free NYC 2009,” Thurs, 8. “Short Movie Revolution,” Fri, 8. Why Isn’t Chris von Sneidern Famous? (McNamera, 2009), Sun, 8. All events co-presented by the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Cedar, Berk; (510) 841-4824, www.bfuu.org. Free. Defamation (Shamir, 2009), Thurs, 7:30.

BRIDGE 3010 Geary, SF; (415) 668-6384. $10. “Rocksploitation with Citizen Midnight:” Little Shop of Horrors (Oz, 1986), Sat, midnight.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-20. •Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945), Wed, 7, and Leave Her to Heaven (Stahl, 1945), Wed, 9:10. “San Francisco Silent Film Festival:” The Iron Horse (Ford, 1924), Thurs, 7; “Amazing Tales from the Archives: Lost and Found Films,” Fri, 11:30am (free admission); A Spray of Plum Blossoms (Bu, 1931), Fri, 2; Rotaie (Camerini, 1929), Fri, 6; Metropolis (Lang, 1927), Fri, 8:15; “The Big Business of Short, Funny Films,” with Pete Docter in person, Sat, 10am; “Variations on a Theme: Musicians on the Craft of Composing and Performing for Silent Film,” Sat, noon; The Flying Ace (Norman, 1926), Sat, 2; The Strong Man (Capra, 1926), Sat, 4; Diary of a Lost Girl (Pabst, 1929), Sat, 6:30; Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Christensen, 1922), Sat, 9:30; “Amazing Tales from the Archives: First the Bad News … then the Good!”, Sun, 10am (free admission); The Shakedown (Wyler, 1929), Sun, noon; Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929), Sun, 2:30; The Woman Disputed (King and Taylor, 1928), Sun, 4:30; L’heureuse mort (Nadejdine, 1924), Sun, 7:30. For more information, visit www.silentfilm.org.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10.25. The Girl Who Played With Fire (Alfredson, 2009), call for dates and times. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Oplev, 2009), call for dates and times. OSS 117: Lost in Rio (Hazanavicius, 2009), call for dates and times. Touching Home (Miller and Miller, 2009), call for dates and times. “San Francisco Opera: Grand Opera Cinema Series:” Don Giovanni, Thurs, 7 and Sat, 10. Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929), Mon, 7:15. With a score performed by Alloy Orchestra (tickets for this event, $15).

DELANCEY STREET SCREENING ROOM 600 The Embarcadero, SF; http://action.eff.org/ninapaley. $30. Sita Sings the Blues (Paley, 2009), Tues, 7. With Nina Paley in person; benefit for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cartoon Art Museum.

FORBIDDEN ISLAND TIKI LOUNGE 1304 Lincoln, Alameda; www.forbiddenislandalameda.com. Free. “Forbidden Thrills: Mermaid Mania!”: •Night Tide (Harrington, 1961), Mon, 7:30, and Mermaids of Tiburon (Lamb, 1962), Mon, 9:15.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Stealing America, Vote By Vote (Fadiman, 2008), Wed, 7:30.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Akira Kurosawa Centennial:” •The Most Beautiful (1944), and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945), Wed, 7; Seven Samurai (1954), Sat, 7. “A Theater Near You:” Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969), Thurs, 7 and Sun, 7:10. “Modernist Master: The Cinema of Francesco Rosi:” Salvatore Giuliano (1961), Fri, 7; The Moment of Truth (1965), Fri, 9:05; Hands Over the City (1963), Sun, 5.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. The Secret in Their Eyes (Campanella, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:35 (also Wed, 2). Wild in the Streets (Shear, 1968), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sat, 2, 4). Lolita (Kubrick, 1962), Sun, 2, 5, 8, and Mon, 7:30. Freaks (Browning, 1932), July 20-21, 7:15, 9:15 (also July 31, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-11.50. “SF Indie Presents: Another Hole in the Head Film Festival,” through July 22. See www.sfindie.com for schedule.

“TEMESCAL STREET CINEMA” 49th St at Telegraph, Oakl; www.temescalstreetcinema.com. Free. The Beard Club (Lukitsch, sneak preview), Thurs, 8. With free popcorn and live music.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com/films. $8-10. “Samurai Saga Vol.1: From Classic Noir to New Colors:” Samurai Rebellion (Kobayashi, 1967), Wed, 4:30; Fri, 4:15; and Sat, 7; Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron (Gosha, 1976), Wed-Thurs, 7, and Sat, 3:15; Three Outlaw Samurai (Gosha, 1964), Thurs, 4:45; Fri, 7; and Sat, 1; Twilight Samurai (Yamada, 2002), Sun, 11:20, and July 22, 4:30, 7; The Hidden Blade (Yamada, 2004), Sun, 1:50; Tues, 7; and July 21, 4:15. Love and Honor (Yamada, 2006), Sun, 4:20; Mon, 7; and Tues, 4:30. Yamazakura: The Cherry Tree in the Hills (Shinohara, 2008), Sun and July 21, 7; Mon, 4:50.

VOGUE 3290 Sacramento, SF; www.lolsf.org. $10. “LOL-SF: A Celebration of Comedy On-Screen,” comedy films with celebrity presenters, through Thurs/15.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Something From Nothing: Films on Design and Architecture:” Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio (Douglas, 2010), Sun, 2.

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, JULY 14

Anarchists abound


This summer in Detroit nearly 20,000 people attended the June 2010 U.S. Social Forum, a conference and collaboration to build a platform for an international political movement that unites oppressed communities. Hear about the forum from attendees Sarolta Jane, Sarah Lazare, Sam Brown, and Marshall Hillton as they discuss the role anarchists played at the forum.

7:30 p.m., $2–$5 suggested donation

Station 40

3030B 16th St., SF

(415) 661-1852

THURSDAY, JULY 15

"In Deepwater"


Hear about what’s really happening with the oil spill in the gulf from two experts who have been in the region since the blowout occurred: Texas shrimper turned activist Diane Wilson and Riki Ott, a marine biologist who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill. Hear about the projected long-term effects on the environment, human health, and local communities as well as more ways BP can be held accountable.

7 p.m., $10–$20 sliding scale

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Theater

The David Brower Center

2150 Allston, Berk.

(510) 859-9100

FRIDAY, JULY 16

Peaceful warriors


Demand that we bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan now at this rally for peace. The total cost of the U.S. wars has already surpassed the $1 trillion mark during the worst economic recession since the Depression. Join the East Bay Grey Panthers in protest.

2 p.m., free

Corner of Action and University, Berk.

(510) 548-9696

SATURDAY, JULY 17

General Strike Walk


Tour key historical sites of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike with historian Luis Prisco, ILWU Local 10 longshoreman Jack Heyman, and others and learn why the strike was successful, how it was organized, and why the issues of the strike are still relevant to working people today. Bring lunch and prepared for a long walk.

10:30 a.m., free

Meet at Harry Bridges Plaza

Ferry Building

Embarcadero at Market, SF

(415) 841-1254

Streetsweeper for a day


Help beautify one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist destinations by joining other volunteers and the San Francisco Department of Public Works to plant trees, work on greening projects, remove weeds, paint over graffiti, and pick up litter. Students can accumulate hours for community service.

9 a.m., free

Fisherman’s Wharf

Embarcadero at Bay, SF

(415) 641-2600

MONDAY, JULY 19

Revolution remembered

Hear Alejandro Murguia, cofounder of the Mission Cultural Center, read from his new book, Southern Front. In the book, Murgiua describes his experience fighting in the international guerrilla Southern Front of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Murguia will also read some of his poetry and discuss the legacy of the Sandinista revolution on its 21st anniversary.

7 p.m., free

Modern Times Bookstore

888 Valencia, SF

www.mtbs.com

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Get rid of the water bond, now

David Talbot
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Get rid of the water bond, now

OPINION A Field Poll released last week showed decent support among progressives for Proposition 18, the $11 billion water bond on the November ballot. We shouldn’t let the bond’s cheery name fool us. Prop. 18 is a con job.

Sold as the Safe, Clean, and Reliable Drinking Water Act, Prop. 18 has been getting a lot of press recently for the “pork” that was added to it to gain votes when it went before the Legislature last November. But for progressives, the real concern isn’t the pork; it’s the other meat in the bond. Prop. 18 would maintain a status quo that’s bad for our budget and water supply.

With polls showing lagging support for the bond, Gov. Schwarzenegger asked the Legislature to delay the measure until 2012. Bay Area residents have nothing to gain from the measure — this year or in two years. We need our legislators to fight for the bond’s termination, now.

Prop. 18 provides a $2 billion downpayment for a peripheral canal to send more water from the Sacramento Delta to deep-pocketed interests to the south. In 1982, Northern Californians overwhelmingly rejected the peripheral canal; we should do the same with the bond. The Westlands Water District, Beverly Hills billionaire-owned Paramount Farms and other megafarms stand to gain immensely from any additional water these projects might bring. The Bay Area does not.

Worse, some of these landholders skip farming altogether in order to resell the water we’ve subsidized at a huge profit to real estate developers. They pay about $25 to $50 per acre-foot of water, but can easily resell the water for over $200 per acre-foot. Corporate giant Cargill is looking to buy water from landowners in Kern County to supply its proposed 12,000-unit housing development on bay salt marshes in Redwood City.

The meat of Prop. 18 is $3 billion for the construction of more dams, an expensive and inefficient way to manage water. California’s rivers already have hundreds of dams. The water that evaporates from them each year is enough to supply 4 million people.

With interest, Prop. 18 would add $24 billion in debt to the state’s General Fund — roughly $16 million a week for 30 years. Already facing a $19 billion deficit, California has made drastic cuts to vital public services like education, housing, and healthcare — and this bond will make things worse.

Although there is some money in the bond for projects that could actually benefit us, it’s too little, too late. And the state still has $7 billion available from past water bonds that has not been spent. When the Legislature passed a bill in 2009 to invest that money in regional water projects, the governor vetoed the bill. The same will likely be true here. And even if we do see that money someday, will the trade-offs be worth it?

There is no question that California needs to invest billions in rebuilding and upgrading our vital water infrastructure. Here in the Bay Area, we are already spending billions on rebuilding our sewer and drinking water systems. Unfortunately, the bond provides only a trickle of money for such important investments or to boost conservation and efficiency in the urban and agricultural sectors. It’s no wonder that the Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, San Francisco Baykeeper, Clean Water Action, the California Teachers Association, and United Farm Workers all oppose the bond.

Fortunately, state Sens. Mark Leno, Leland Yee, and Ellen Corbett and Assembly Members Tom Ammiano, Loni Hancock, and Nancy Skinner all voted against placing this bond on the ballot. We now need them to step up and urge their colleagues not just to delay but to repeal this bond, now. *

Elanor Starmer is the western region director for the consumer advocacy nonprofit Food and Water Watch (www.foodandwaterwatch.org).

Board votes on Candlestick-Shipyard project EIR appeal today

Mary Magee
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All images by Luke Thomas

The Chronicle’s suggestion that the city’s massive Candlestick-shipyard project may be facing smoother sailing seems like wishful thinking to those who attended a July 12 noontime rally that was organized by POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) and featured two Louisiana-based advocates who protested the project’s EIR and shared many of the longstanding concerns about project cleanup, infrastructure and financing.

The Chronicle was of course referring to five amendments to the city’s massive redevelopment proposal that Board President David Chiu introduced during yesterday’s July 12 meeting of the Board’s Land Use committee. The Chron interpreted these amendments as a sign that Chiu plans to approve the project’s environmental impact report, which comes before the Board today, after several groups appealed the final EIR that the Planning Commission approved last month.

But while city officials fear the developer will walk, if the Board does not approve the final EIR, some environmental advocates hope a better plan could be reached.

At POWER’s July 12 rally, nationally acclaimed environmental scientist Wilma Subra called on the District Attorney’s environmental justice department to “step up.” Subra claimed that the project’s final EIR “failed to evaluate and assess the cumulative impacts of exposure to children, adults and the environment as a result of exposure to all of the chemicals at the site.”

Monique Harden, co-director and attorney for Advocates for Environmental Health Rights (AEHR) of New Orleans, Louisiana, pointed to “deep flaws in the environmental regulation system,” as a reason why low-income communities of color should be concerned about the proposed plan.
“Why in the middle of an environmental crisis caused by BP in the Gulf am I coming to San Francisco?” Harden asked. “Because San Francisco is providing unequal environmental protection to its residents. As a resident of New Orleans, I’m concerned that San Francisco is careening towards making a decision that can crush the future of Bayview Hunters Point,”

But as local Bayview resident Jose Luis Pavon began talking about seeing gentrification occur in his lifetime within San Francisco, he and others got shouted down by a group of yellow and green-shirted project supporters, who were led by a guy calling himself Bradley Bradley and Alice Griffith public housing resident Stormy Henry.
“This is the devil’s trick in the last hour,” Henry said of the POWER rally.

Henry shared her heartfelt belief that if the Board approves the project’s final EIR, she and other Alice Griffith residents will get desperately needed new housing units. even if it takes some years to build them. Others in her group were unable to answer media questions: they had difficulty speaking in English, but were clutching neatly written statements in support of the project that they later read aloud at the Board’s Land Use Committee hearing.

As these project supporters prepared to move inside to attend the Land Use Committee meeting and lobby supervisors for their suppor, D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly shared his concerns that the Navy has a demonstrated history of finding nasty things at the shipyard years after they say everything’s clean, and that this pattern could jeopardize the plan.

“This happened at Parcel A,” Kelly said, referring to the first and only parcel of land that the Navy transferred to the city for development in 2004. “Since then, Parcel A has gotten smaller and as they found stuff on sites they then renamed as new parcels, like UC-3, which has radiological contamination in a sewer line that goes into the Bayview. So, that means the contamination is now in the Bayview.”

Kelly is concerned that the city is trying push through EIR certification before the Navy completes an environmental impact statement (EIS) related to shipyard cleanup activities. “The EIS is supposed to go before the EIR, as far as I know,” Kelly said

At the Land Use Committee meeting, Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes Candlestick and the Shipyard,said, the project was about “revitalization and opportunity.”

She noted that the certification of the project’s final EIR has been appealed to full Board’s July 13 meeting. She further noted that she intends to introduce legislation next week to address concerns that Ohlone groups have expressed.

The next two hours were full of testimony from a bevy of city officials, beginning with Michael Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor in the Office of Workforce and Economic Development.

“Every single element [of this project] has been discussed and debated at countless meetings,” Cohen claimed, as he sought to quell fears that the community had not been properly consulted with over the plan. “As we get closer to a vote, all of a sudden pieces of paper start circulating, criticizing project and suggesting that community involvement just began,” he continued. ” That’s factually untrue.”

He also sought to reassure the supervisors that the Board will have a say-so as to whether the city accepts early transfer of shipyard parcels from the Navy.
“Neither the city nor the developer have any specific authority over the cleanup,” Cohen said, noting that the cleanup is governed by specific rules set out in CERCLA [Comprehensice Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, aka Superfund].

“Regardless of what we do, CERCLA will continue to be the regulatory tool,” Cohen said. ” I urge you not to be confused by CEQA and CERCLA.”

So, how can the city implement Prop. P, which voters overwhelmingly supported in 2000, urging the Navy to clean up the shipyard to highest attainable standards.
“Prior to any transfer, US EPA and DTSR have to concur in writing that the shipyard is safe,” Cohen explained, noting that, thanks to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the Navy has already spent over $700 million on shipyard cleanup efforts.

“We have 250 artists at the shipyard….but not a shred of scientific evidence to say that the shipyard is not safe,” Cohen claimed. “It’s safe to develop the shipyard in precisely the manner we are proposing.”

When Sup. Eric Mar raised the question of radiological contamination on Parcel UC-3, Cohen downplayed Mar’s concerns.
“The exposure levels are lower than watching TV,” Cohen claimed. “The primary source is very low level radiation from glow-in-the-dark dials.”
Indicating a map that showed a network of old sewers (in blue) and old fuel lines (in red) under the entire development area, Cohen said, “The radiological contamination that has and will be addressed at the shipyard is quite low level. You have radiation, you get nervous. We asked EPA to come out and do a scan to deal with the issue.”

IBI Group’s David Thom, the lead architect and planner for the project said the plan is designed “to connect new development back into the Bayview.”
“And this plan connects the Bayview through to the water.”

Tiffany Bohee, Cohen’s deputy in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, insisted that project’s proposed bridge is better than Arc Ecology’s proposed alternative route, which would not involve constructing a bridge over an environmentally sensitive slough.
“The non-bridge route increases the number of intersections,” Bohee said, seeking to turn an environmental question (the impact of bridge on wildlife and nature experience) into a public safety issue.”
She claimed the BRT route over bridge was 5-10 minutes faster than Arc’s proposed alternative, “because there are fewer turns, it can go at higher speeds.” But Arc’s studies suggest the BRT route over the bridge is only a minute faster, and would cost over $100 million.

Bohee noted that $50 million from the sale of 23 acres of parkland for condos at the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area (CPSRA) will be “set aside for the state, and won’t be able to be raided by the city,” with $40 million going to improvements, and $10 million to ongoing operation and maintenance costs.

She also cited additional benefits that the project would bring to the community, including thousands of construction job opportunities.

“We are working with City Build to make sure they are for local residents,” Bohee said.“And there is absolutely no displacement for the rebuild,” Bohee continued referring to proposal to place current Alice Griffith public housing iresidents n new units, on a 1-1 basis

Eric Mar said he was impressed by many elements of the plan, but continued to express reservations.
“I’m still concerned that is seems to serve newcomers as proposed to existing residents,” he said. “And I’m still not convinced that the bridge is the best for existing residents.”

Rhonda Simmons, who works in Cohen’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development,  tried to flesh out details of the project’s job creation promises.
“The most immediate workforce is related to the construction site, and as you know, this project goes over a 15-20 year span,” Simmons said, pointing to green tech and retail as job opportunities that will exist once the project is built.

Mar expressed concern that the jobs may not be at the level of D.10 residents
“How is this gonna bring their skill level up?” he asked.
“The idea is that training gives first level entry at a variety of building trades,” Simmons said, pointing to the project’s large solar component.

“What about women?” Sup. Maxwell asked
Simmons pointed to retail opportunities,
“The idea of the training is to give folks job readiness skills, like getting there and showing up on time,” she said

Mar wanted to know who would have oversight of monitoring and compliance.
“In the city we have a tapestry of folks who do contract compliance,” she said. “The oversight will come from a variety of places.”

After Kurt Fuchs of the Controller’s Office listed the estimated economic benefits of the project, Board President David Chiu observed that the city is “at a crossroads.”

“I do not plan to prejudge,” Chiu continued, as he introduced his five amendments to regulate the Parcel E-2 cleanup, the size of a proposed bridge over the Yosemite Slough, expand healthcare access in the Bayview, create a workforce development fund and lay the groundwork for bringing public power to the project.

During public comment, Bayview resident Fred Naranjo pleaded for project support.  

“Please don’t let the train leave the station,” Naranjo said. “If Lennar leaves, the Bayview will never be developed.”

And Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council expressed hope that an agreement was getting closer.
“There really is a path to getting this done,” Paulson said. “This really is a model project in many ways for the rest of the United States.”
But D. 10 resident Linda Shaffer with the Yerba Buena chapter of the California Native Plant society indicated the huge pressure exerted on folks to support the project
“I do not want to be classified as an opponent, but we have concerns,” Shaffer said, noting that her group has filed an appeal of the project’s final EIR.

And while the Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein thanked Chiu for proposing to reduce the size of the bridge, he pointed out that Chiu’s amendment wasn’t really a compromise.
“That’s because it’s still a bridge,” Feinstein said, as he explained how noisy the area surrounding the slough will become as traffic whizzes by.

Connie Ford of the Labor Council accused some project critics of being “disrespectful.”
Ford took particular issue with claims that the project will gentrify the area
“The neighborhood is changing,” she said. “Since 1990, African American families have been leaving the Bayview in huge numbers. I encourage you to see this project as a good plan.”

Gabe Metcalfe of SPUR expressed his unconditional support for the plan,
“This plan is being asked to fix a huge number of problems,” he said.
Noting that the bridge continues to be a sticking point, Metcalfe said he sees opposition to every transportation project these days.
“We seem to be in a moment when you can’t build anything without it being opposed.”

But other speakers from the Sierra Club reiterated their stance that there are better and viable options to the bridge, noting that it is too costly, and that the surrounding community and wildlife would be better off without it.”

All these competing viewpoints suggest that whatever decision the Board makes today, it will take some time and create plenty of uproar. So, here’s hoping the Board votes in a way that will truly benefit the D. 10 community, not career politicians, city officials and out-of-state developers. It’s about time.

Oakland considers limiting and licensing marijuana growers

Sasha Cuttler
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Oakland considers limiting and licensing marijuana growers

Updated info below

The medical marijuana community – everyone from small growers to Harborside Health Center, the biggest dispensary in Oakland – are reacting strongly against an ordinance proposed by Oakland City Council members Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid to limit and license marijuana cultivation, a proposal that will be heard tonight (7/13) at 6 p.m. by the council’s Public Safety Committee.

They say the measure is an affront to medical marijuana patients and the small growing operations that have been at the forefront of the long struggle to legalize pot for medical uses. While the measure stems from concern about growing weed in residential areas – it would allow only a few large growing operations exclusively in industrial areas – critics characterize it as an attack on patients that violates Prop. 215, the 1996 measure that legalized medical marijuana and explicitly allows patients to grow their own medicine.

“It’s a disturbing turn of events for the usually forward thinking Oakland City Council,” medical marijuana consultant Gaynell Rogers, who works with Harborside, the city’s premier dispensary, wrote in a press release. It went on to quote Harborisde executive director Steve DeAngelo as saying, “This ordinance would deprive hundreds of patient-farmers of their livelihood. It seems a very unfair way to repay them for the years during which they courageously stood up to the federal government, and faithfully supplied patients with the medicine they could not get anywhere else…I’d rather see Harborside’s own opportunity to produce on a centralized efficient-scale basis reduced, than to see the small patient-farmers who are the backbone of this movement driven to extinction.”

Kaplan did not immediately return a Guardian call seeking comment, and neither did Oakland City Attorney John Russo, who is one of the few active law enforcement officers and elected officials to come out in support of Prop. 19, the fall ballot measure that would legalize marijuana for even recreational use by adults.

In addition to regulating growers for the first time, the proposed legislation would also increase the number of licensed dispensaries from four to six. San Francisco, a trailblazer in regulating medical marijuana, currently has more than 22 licensed dispensaries and no licensing program for growers, although Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has said there is a need to better protect growers from prosecution and even to explore having the city grow medical marijuana.

While medical marijuana advocates welcome regulations as a necessary step toward legitimizing the industry, they generally oppose anything limits a patient’s rights to grow their own weed. “We support local regulation but not when it’s at the expense of patients,” Mike Meno, a spokesperson for the DC-based Marijuana Policy Project, told the Guardian.

The hearing will be held in council chambers, with this item last on the agenda for a meeting that begins at 6 p.m.

Update: Kaplan has been in a closed session on Oakland Police Department issues all day, but her staffers just got back to me and clarified that the measure allows small grows of up to 96 square feet or 72 plants (Oakland’s standard for the needs of three patients) to continue unlicensed, although they say the intention is to eventually set standards and a legal framework for all medical marijuana growers.

Policy analyst Ada Chan said Kaplan is concerned about commercial grows in residential areas and its related crime and fire risks and “she feels we need to move it out of residential areas.” She said Harborside and other medical marijuana players were consulted in drafting the legislation, which she said would likely be subject to more staff work before being approved: “This is just the first step.”

But Harborside attorney James Anthony told us that he had not seen language or specifics on the legislation until it was publicly released last week, he’s still concerned that small growing operations will be hurt by the measure because of ambiguity in the legislation, and he fears the council intends to move quickly on an unworkable policy: “This thing is on track to go to the full City Council next week and pass.”

Buyer beware of Candlestick-Shipyard project

Mary Magee
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Board President David Chiu has introduced five amendments to the city’s Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment proposal. All five are a good start, but longtime observers question if they are too little, too late, in the face of intense lobbying by a city and a developer intent on getting project approvals before a new Board and possibly a new mayor occupy City Hall in January 2011.

Chiu’s amendments address key concerns with the city’s proposed redevelopment plan, and they come as the Board prepares for its July 13 hearing into three separate appeals of the project’s final EIR certification, as well as amendments to the Bayview Hunters Point and Shipyard redevelopment plans.

Two of Chiu’s amendments seek to address concerns about the clean-up of radiologically impacted waste at Parcel E-2 on the shipyard, and environmental impacts of a proposed bridge over Yosemite Slough.

Chiu’s other three amendments seek to finance the expansion of the Southeast Health Center, create a workforce development fund and analyze the feasibility of providing public power, including natural gas at the site.

But while all five amendments are welcome, some observers worry they do not fully address concerns about the project’s sustainability, financing and infrastructure.  But before we get to those concerns, let’s review Chiu’s five amendments in greater detail:

1. The Parcel E-2 amendment.
This amendment declares that the Board’s adoption of CEQA findings for the project “shall not in any way imply support of a cap for Parcel E-2.” 

As such, this amendment is a critical step towards insisting that the parcel get completely cleaned up, not just capped, as the Navy is currently proposing. On the other hand, it’s not a watertight demand to excavate and haul away all contamination from this parcel, which is the cleanup alternative that many in the community would prefer..

Instead, Chiu’s Parcel E-2 amendment declares that the U.S. EPA, California EPA and the Navy, “should pursue the highest practicable level of cleanup for Parcel E-2.”
And that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency “should not accept the property unless and until that cleanup is satisfied.”

It also establishes that the Board shall conduct a hearing regarding final cleanup strategies for Parcel E-2 before a final remedy is selected, urges the U.S. EPA, California EPA and the Navy to participate in such a hearing, and further establishes that the Board shall conduct a separate hearing prior to any transfer of Parcel E-2 to Redevelopment.”

(There was some question as to why the Board was saying “should” in some parts of this amendment, and “shall” in others. The reason I heard was, you can’t force the Navy to do anything, but you can urge them, and you certainly can refuse to accept the property, if it is not cleaned up a city’s requirements.But this needs to be clarified.)

2. The Yosemite Slough Bridge amendment
Chiu notes that the city’s EIR for the project analyzed a non-49ers-stadium alternative that “includes an approximately 41 ft. wide bridge spanning the Yosemite Slough which is limited to bike, pedestrian and transit use.”
“However, in the event the San Francisco 49ers elect to build a new stadium on the shipyard site, the project will include a bridge spanning Yosemite Slough that is wider than 41 ft. across to accommodate game-day traffic,” Chiu’s amendment states.
(So, Chiu’s amendment doesn’t throw the bridge entirely out with the 49ers’ stadium, and that leaves environmental groups uneasy, afraid that the anticipated 25,000 new residents in the proposed development will subsequently push for legislation to allow for a wider, car-accessible bridge.)

3. The Southeast Health Center amendment
Chiu’s Southeast Health Center amendment demands that the developer contribute $250,000 to the Redevelopment Agency for a needs assessment study regarding the need to expand the center and the ongoing health needs of local residents, and, to the extent such expansion is needed, to help pay for predevelopment expenses associated with this expansion.
The capital costs for expanding the center would be funded through a combination of  tax increment dollars, a $2 million Wellness Contribution paid by the developer, and the City’s ability to finance savings that would accrue to the Department of Public Health by moving from leased space into owned space at the expanded center.

4. The Workforce Development Fund amendment
Chiu’s amendment would modify language in the current community benefits agreement to require the developer to contribute $8,925,000 to a workforce development fund to be used for programs “designed to create a gateway to career development, fiirst for residents of District 10 and secondly for “at-risk job applicants.”
(A member of the public suggested that veterans be specified as “at-risk job applicants,” an idea D. 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell seemed to support during yesterday’s July 12 Land Use Committee hearing, which was where Chiu introduced his five proposed amendments.)

 5. The Public Power amendment 
Chiu’s public power amendment notes that the SFPUC confirmed the feasibility of providing electric service to the shipyard sire, but requires the agency to update this study and include the Candlestick site and include “an analysis of the feasibility of providing natural gas to the project site.”

But will these steps be enough to ensure that the development actually delivers on its promises of thousands of jobs, and hundreds of affordable housing units,? And is a bridge really necessary across Yosemite Slough, if the 49ers go to Santa Clara as planned?

Long-term observers of the project point to the first phase of the project, which began on the shipyard’s Parcel A, as a warning of where things might end up.

“We approved the fast-tracking of Parcel A based on a bevy of assurances and enthusiastic endorsements from the best and brightest this administration has to offer,” said a source who wishes to remain anonymous. “But what has happened since then, and what are we to learn from this experimental test case?”

This source noted that recent maps of the shipyard show that Parcel A, which the Navy conveyed to the city in 2004, has since been carved up into several new pieces.

“How did Parcel A get divided into two areas that don’t even border one another?” my source asked.

The answer appears to be that sections of the shipyard, including Parcel A,  have since been renamed as new and separate parcels, after it was discovered that shipyard sewers on those parcels contained radiologically contaminated material.

One of these sewer lines, as indicated on recent project maps, leads from a site now known as Parcel UC-3, into the Bayview. In other words, it appears to lead off the shipyard site and into the surrounding community. If so, this raises concerns that shipyard contamination is no longer limited to the shipyard in the Bayview, and could be impacting residents and businesses that are not covered by the Navy’s clean-up commitments.

Either way, it seems that the Board could use an update on what happened on Parcel A, since it was conveyed, what’s the deal with UC-3, and other recently renamed parcels, before they consider an early transfer of the rest of the shipyard.

“How can we start Phase 2 of the project, when we haven’t completed Phase 1?” my source asked.

And since the Navy is still tasked with cleaning up the rest of the shipyard parcels, it would be helpful if the Navy updated the Board on what the Navy is proposing in its Records of Decisions for each of these parcels, including UC-3, before the Board votes on Phase 2 of the project.

My source also noted that since the project plans to use 100 percent recycled water at the site, it would be helpful to have an update as to how issues with sewer contamination and groundwater concerns might impact the project’s sustainability plans.

“These issues touch on half of the documents that make up the EIR, but are now obsolete, because of the issue of radioactive contamination on UC-3,” my source claimed.

And then there’s the question of fproject financing and who the developer for the project actually is, these days.

“The city’s exclusive negotiating agreement (ENA) was with Lennar, so who is CP Development and why do we have an ENA with them?” my source asked.”What happened to Lennar? And why would we be obligated to negotiate solely with this CP Development group?”

Now, hopefully the Board has greatly reassuring answers to all these questions, so that the community can rest assured that the supervisors really do understand the ramifications of a project that they are being asked to approve in what appears to be an awful hurry.

Yes, there are plenty of project supporters who keep on urging “no delays.” I understand their concerns. They want jobs, housing, parks and other promised community benefits. And I don’t blame them.

But it’s up to the Board to ensure that it doesn’t get rushed into approving a project that perhaps doesn’t guarantee any or all of these things. So, let’s keep asking questions so the Board of Supervisors doesn’t end up with buyer’s remorse, but instead can truly claim to having secured a deal that really helps all the folks who currently live and work in the city’s southeast sector. Stay tuned.

 

 

T

 

 

SFBG Radio: Should SF ban pet sales?

Zelda Bronstein
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SFBG Radio: Should SF ban pet sales?

In today’s episode, Johnny argues that San Francisco should ban all pets in the city. Tim says his dog has a great life. Plus: The latests on the Mehserle verdict. You can listen after the jump.

sfbgradio7/12/2010 by jangel

Live Shots: World Cup Final watching party, Civic Center, 07/11/2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Paul was right! Will Spaniards give up eating octopus? Will the Dutch avenge their loss with grimmer graphic design and tinier eyewear? In any case, yesterday’s Civic Center scene was one of friendly competition and colorful exuberance. (Check out the entire ON SIDES: San Francisco Watches the World Cup photo series here.)

Sunday Streets creates public benefits from private labors

Sasha Cuttler
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By Kristen Peters

San Francisco locals will take to the streets this weekend as main roads in the Mission neighborhood are closed to automobiles for the sixth installment of Sunday Streets. On July 11, a three-mile route from 17th and Valencia to Dolores Park to Potrero Avenue will be car-free from 10 am until 3pm.

Taken from Bogota’s weekly ciclovía, in which nearly 100 miles of city streets are reserved for pedestrians and other recreationalists, Sunday Streets began in San Francisco almost two years ago. Since then, the tradition has made its way to other California cities including Los Angeles and Oakland.

“In San Francisco we have our own unique style,” event coordinator Susan King, who works for the nonprofit group Livable City, said. “We have different routes and we hit different neighborhoods year after year. In each neighborhood, the featured events have their own flair.”

This Sunday, revelers can look forward to performances by Grupo Azteca as well as capoeira and salsa dancing lessons, not to mention the countless restaurants in the area opening their doors early to the public. While the event has some support from the city and its San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, mostly in the form of permit fee waivers, it is run by Livable City and funded from corporate donations.

“Our corporate sponsors provide everything from durable goods, in-kind donations and cold, hard cash,” King said.

City officials have even curtailed helping with hanging “no parking” signs, leaving that task to volunteers from the SF Bicycle Coalition. That job was usually designated to the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic, but they have now stopped providing that service to an event that Mayor Gavin Newsom trumpets as something he’s bringing to the people. But King still calls Sunday Streets a good example of a public-private partnership.

“Everybody brings something to the table,” King said. “It’s a real cooperative entity with everyone pulling together to produce something really special.”

According to King, the benefits are widespread. Not only is it refreshing for the public to ditch their cars for a few hours, but it also reinvigorates the local economy. “It’s a real boom for the city,” King said. “Lots of people on the street means lots of eating. It’s good for business and good for the community.”

Acting executive director for the SF Bicycle Coalition Renee Rivera said that the Mission in particular has benefited from the crowds at Sunday Streets. “Everyone is enjoying the outdoor activities the event has to offer but, at the same time, are going to get ice cream, stopping for tacos or getting to enjoy all the merchants on 24th and Valencia,” Rivera said.

There are three more Sunday Street events following the Mission neighborhood closure. The Great Highway and areas of Golden Gate Park will be closed on August 22 followed by the Western Addition on September 19. The series will conclude on October 24 with the closure of the Civic Center and Tenderloin areas.

Snap Sounds: Björk and Dirty Projectors

John Elberling
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Snap Sounds: Björk and Dirty Projectors

BJÖRK AND DIRTY PROJECTORS
Mount Wittenberg Orca

Mount Wittenberg Orca is neither the first nor last time Björk sings about oceans, mothers, and plant life (re: “Oceania”). But now, she has the genius of the Dirty Projectors ­– in particular, producer and Dirty frontman David Longstreth – looking at Mother Nature, too.

On Orca – and I don’t mean Bitte Orca, the Dirty Projectors’ 2009 indie instant-classic  – the Icelandic songstress and Longstreth have teamed up to produce an album for charity. This is a 20-minute, seven track release – short, but oh how sweet ­– whose proceeds all go to the National Geographic Society. It’s the first time we’ve been able to hear studio recordings of these tracks since Dirty/Björk played a benefit concert last year at Housing Works in New York.

Perhaps the titular mountain is our very own, in Marin. Either that or, judging by the album art, it’s some Middle Earthian alternate world. The eponymous orca – a killer whale – holds especially pertinent ground for Björk since, back in the Aughts, she developed some kind of maritime obsession on Medulla and the Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack. It’s also interesting to note that, back in 2005, Björk’s hubby Matthew Barney gave ambergris, aka whale shit ­– one of his many fetishized materials – a starring role in Drawing Restraint 9. If you want to connect the dots even more, Barney was born in San Francisco.

Reminisicent of Medulla, Orca is like an epic chamber piece: harmony-heavy, flippantly sliding up and down scales, often ending up in a round of disparate melodies. Both Björk and the Dirty Projectors foreground imaginative vocal arrangements, and thus, the vocals here are strong and full of nuance.

The opening track, aptly titled “Ocean,” features some frightening feedback and disquieting vocals that wouldn’t be out of place in Krzysztof Penderecki’s scariest nightmares. Later, the bouncy “Sharing Orb” showcases the Dirty girls’ piquant “eh eh eh”s to match Björk’s Yoko-like, banshee-wailing “waaaaw.” “How do you say ‘love’?” she asks. Well, I know how I say it, Björk, and it’s definitely not the same way you do (“laaaaaave”). But as on the rest of her canon, her Neanderthalic cadence is totally successful in the context of the album’s conceit: A return to nature and the elements, a vision of an a priori universe of sound, to create modern, tightly woven aural textures.

“No Embrace” sounds like typical Dirty Projectors fare: spooky, yet wistful. Longstreth and his leading ladies – Angel Deradoorian, Hayley Dekle, and Amber Coffman – never clash with Björk’s typically dominant voice. The two work well in concert (both in the literal and figurative sense if you’ve seen the performances) yet you can still tell who’s singing and when.

The best song is “All We Are,” the final track and also the Björkiest. It almost sounds like a b-side from Medulla or the separated Siamese twin of “Sonnets/Unrealities XI.” The choir-like incantations, offering plenty in the way of falsetto, wax ethereal beneath Longstreth’s romantic lyricism. But like the best of Bjork’s Icelandic-to-English words, beauty is met by danger, and emotions are met with undermining qualifications (“I looked out for you/But looking never meant less”).

Mount Wittenberg is a pleasant, lovely climb, both brisk and a breath of fresh air. It’s enough to satisfy fans of either Bjork or Dirty Projectors, and you’ll most likely freak out if you’re a follower of both like myself. Yet at 20 minutes, it still leaves you wanting more. You can purchase the mp3s at mountwittenbergorca.com for pretty cheap, or you can stream the album on YouTube.

Caution! Don’t miss Very Be Careful’s next SF gig

Andrew Lam
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Who do you drink to? I guess it really depends on what you’re drinking. Moonshine: The Devil Makes Three. Thug Passion: Tupac. Shot of a Patron, beer back: Very Be Careful. And hell no I’m not getting mom on you — that’s the vallenato five-piece from Los Angeles that’s ready to party with you next week at The Rickshaw Stop (Thurs/15). VBC, formed by brothers Ricardo (accordian) and Arturo (bass) Guzman, sticks pretty close to the sounds that originated in their hard-partying parents’ homeland in the sun-soaked Colombian Caribbean coast. Their music sticks close to the tunes from down south, but something in that onstage swagger – that’s all Californian. I interviewed the two the other day over the phone, and I must say, I like the cut of their jib. Anyone whose professed purpose in life is to play about getting “the most out of life and love” while everyone boozes and lights up the dancefloor is very okay con esta chica.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Your shows are meant to be real, real fun. What are the key ingredients to a good party?

Arturo Guzman: Dancing and drinking is always fun.

 

SFBG: Well, yeah. What do you like to drink?

Ricardo Guzman: You mean during the show or during the day? I like Sapporo, that’s my favorite beer. At the show, it’s Patron with a beer back. We go through phases. And about your last question, I think at the shows, people enjoy our enthusiasm, and we really enjoy theirs.

 

SFBG: Who writes your songs?

RG: My mom writes a good number of our songs, and I write the lyrics for many. The band itself writes the music … I don’t even know how, Sometimes at the show.

 

SFBG: Wait, your mom writes your songs?

RG: Her name’s Daisy Guzman. She was inspired by us playing this music and she said songs started coming to her, so she’d pass them on to me. Some of our best songs are by her. She’d write songs about her experiences and imagination – she has quite a few now, she really enjoys them. 

 

SFBG: Does the music come to her? Just the lyrics?

RG: She’ll sing [what she’s come up with] sometimes and I’ll work with that. It’s awesome. Everybody loves those songs, they’re special to us. 

 

SFBG: Very Be Careful has been around for awhile, what’s your secret of longevity?

RG: We started in ’97, so [we’ve been together for] 12 years I believe. But those are secrets that we can’t really reveal. We’re like a family, you know what I mean? I would say that’s one of the biggest things that keeps us together. Like a family you have your ups and down. There’s no weird, deep things going on. Well I guess there is, we’re like a family. It’s like a survival thing

VBC also enjoys props. And sunsets. 

SFBG: What do you see in the future of Very Be Careful?

AG: We’ve already seen it. It looks great!

 

SFBG: Where are you getting your musical influences from?

RG: the music comes from Colombia, a town called Valledupar in Northern Colombia. It’s spread through the coastal town — and through the world. It started with accordian, guacharaca — a scratching instrument typical to Colombia – and the caja. That’s the drum. That’s of course our main influence, but there’s a lot of influences that maybe people don’t see in our music, but maybe they will in our performance. We all like hip hop, rock, jazz music. 

 

SFBG: What draws you to vallenato, besides your cultural heritage?

RG: I think it was luck. We started hearing records, and it kind of fell in our laps in a way. I was drawn to it because a lot of the accordion music I heard when we were younger I didn’t like. But now I see, wow, this is really up my alley.

AG: It’s local, village sort of music that is a part of other styles of music that we like. It’s music of the working class. What its like to be poor, but still get the most out of life and love.

RG: When we first started playing it we noticed the reaction people had to it from all walks of life, I was astonished – I had found what I want to do in life. 

 

SFBG: What’s the message that people are going to take away from a Very Be Careful show?

RG: I want people to remember as much as possible the next day. And to remember that they’ve had a great time, and hopefully their feet are tired from dancing.

AG: Yeah, but I don’t know how anyone’s gonna remember. The thing about the live show we do, everyone surrenders to it. We work together on this abandoning and surrendering. It’s an in-the-moment thing, all you can say to people is, this is amazing. And besides that, we just want people to look into the roots of this music. It’s not really into the radio, even on the Internet. And, you might also meet someone nice on the dance floor.

 

SFBG: Any other words for your San Francisco audience?

RG: We hope that since our time up there is limited that everyone comes out and support Very Be Careful.

AG: Don’t worry about working on Friday. That should be the least of your worries. Take the day off. Whatever you need to do, get your groove on. We might not even make it to Friday.

 

Very Be Careful 

feat. Franco Nero and Intl Freakout Djs Special Lord B, Ben Bracken, and Phengren Oswald

Thurs/15 8 p.m., $10

The Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

Docs! More Another Hole in the Head reviews

Sue Vaughan
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Docs! More Another Hole in the Head reviews

More bloodthirsty coverage of the San Francisco IndieFest’s horror-fest offshoot, Another Hole in the Head, in this week’s Guardian.

Another Hole in the Head’s two documentary offerings concern themselves with the distinctly American roots of two related strains of genre filmmaking. Elijah Drenner’s American Grindhouse traces the history of exploitation film, with a particular focus on the grindhouse theater as a cultural institution. Narrator Robert Forster recounts the tendency of even the earliest films to cater to prurient interests, and how the establishment and eventual dissolution of the Motion Picture Production Code stimulated the development of exploitation subgenres. The featured film clips are impeccably selected, mixing titillation and shock with a healthy sense of humor about the over-the-top absurdity of films like Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975). Surprisingly candid interviews with gore luminary Herschell Gordon Lewis and blaxploitation director Larry Cohen prevent the film from taking on a too-self-important tone — these folks knew they were making b-pictures, and were damn proud of it. One of the most charming aspects of the documentary is the juxtaposition of different attitudes, wherein one interviewee will sing the praises of a classic, followed in quick succession by another talking head declaring it to be trash. It feels like John Landis gets the most screen time of any subject, but his charisma as well as the breadth of his oeuvre make it seem appropriate.

Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue, on the other hand, focuses specifically on horror, and director Andrew Monument in turn delivers a harsher, more self-serious take on shocking cinema. Some interviewees cross over, but standouts here include John Carpenter and modern torture porn auteur Darren Lynn Bousman. The editing here is less edifying and more irritating, though since we’re dealing with horror films, sometimes the heavy-handedness works — case in point, a lengthy montage of nudity and sex from slasher films effectively communicates both the puerile interests and blunt moralizing of much of the genre. Nightmares is also more explicitly concerned with how horror films relate to America, with many interview subjects noting how each decade’s horror trends mirrored its political issues, hence the title’s direct allusion to the perversion of the American dream.

Both films provide a historical framework for films that, as Grindhouse insists, have become part of our modern mythology and mindset. Grindhouse is more watchable, but both are worth seeing for anyone who didn’t live through the long history of genre madness and brilliance.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL
July 8–29, $11
Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF
Viz Cinema, New People, 1746 Post, SF
www.sfindie.com

Gore … and bores: more Another Hole in the Head reviews

Sue Vaughan
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Gore … and bores: more Another Hole in the Head reviews

More bloodthirsty coverage of the San Francisco IndieFest’s horror-fest offshoot, Another Hole in the Head, in this week’s Guardian.

Grotesque (Koji Shiraishi, Japan, 2009) When did gorno stop being sick and start becoming sad? In Koji Shiraishi’s Gurotesuku, or Grotesque – banned in the UK – a chainsaw is brought to chests, arms, legs, and fingers when really it should be brought down on this celluloid garbage. Shiraishi presents a film that is sloppy, badly written, badly acted, and is above all things, deeply unentertaining. The plot is as thin and drawn-out as one of the protagonist’s intestines: While on a date, two dumbfucks get picked up by a craaaaaazy doctor (at least I think he’s a doctor – and I think he’s lost his board certification) who proceeds to do sick but unoriginal things to them (sawing off a girl’s fingers and stringing them on a necklace for her BF? C’MON!). There are some brief moments of respite, albeit painfully acted and ridiculous respite, but the torture tries not to let up its chokehold on the audience. Unfortunately, it just ends up being a chokehold on our time. Fri/16, 5 p.m. and Sun/18, 7 p.m., Roxie.

Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives (Israel Luna, USA, 2010) Trannies should get ticked-off more often. In a mock-exploitation fest like this one – which has the candid crudeness of a John Waters film – the tranny is the ultimate hero because she embodies the street smarts and agility of a woman, and the muscles and thirst for vengeance of a man. After an aggressive brush-up with some nasty bros (and what’s worse than a weapon-wielding homophobe?) the titular trannies in Ticked-Off set out to put the ol’ Hammurabi’s Code to the test – and with results both hilarious and flat-out gross. The cheeseball aesthetics and maudlin acting are surprisingly funny and self-conscious rather than self-effacing – yet in dealing with something like a hate crime, how else can you approach the material? July 22, 5 p.m., Roxie and July 23, 9 p.m., Viz.

Doctor S Battles the Sex Crazed Reefer Zombies (Bryan Ortiz, USA, 2008) Apparently, Reefer Madness (1936) and the public health warnings like it were right: weed does turn you into a monster. But in this underachieving student film, the message arrives a little too late. Doctor S has a promising start: some hilarious faux-film reel ads, and many a nod to cult horror films. In stark black-and-white, it’s as if Candace Hilligoss were running from stoners in Carnival of Souls (1962). But once the PhD of the title teams up with a cheerleader, saved from her post-puff zombified boyfriend at Make Out Hill, the film quickly devolves into amateurism. The thrills are cheap – too cheap – and the laughs are forced. Not to mention the title is way cooler than the movie itself. July 23, 7 p.m and July 26, 9 p.m., Viz.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL
July 8–29, $11
Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF
Viz Cinema, New People, 1746 Post, SF
www.sfindie.com

Boxer’s better off than Brown

Zelda Bronstein
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Boxer’s better off than Brown

I know this is political heresy, but I was encouraged by the results of the Field poll on Boxer and Fiorina. I remember back in 1982, when Milton Marks, then a liberal Republican state senator, challenged incumbent Congressmember Phil Burton — the legendary Democratic leader — with an anti-incumbent message fairly similar to what Fiorina is throwing at Boxer. “The arrogance of power” was the slogan, and while Marks didn’t try to say that Burton was too liberal (this was, after all, a San Francisco seat) the basic push was that an entrenched incumbent had grown stale and was unpopular. And in fact, the early polls showed Burton losing.

But a campaign consultant who was there at the early Burton strategy meetings told me a few years ago what the mood was like when the numbers came in: “We saw that he was down ten points, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. Because we knew we could make that up.”

Some thing when Silicon Valley whiz kid Ed Zschau took on incumbent senator Alan Cranston in 1986. Cranston, the polls showed, had been around too long, was old and boring, an entrenched incumbent … all the same messaging. Zschau was young, exciting, a moderate Republican who everyone thought was a shoo-in to unseat the incumbent. And Cranston ran a great campaign and beat him.

Boxer’s negatives are too high, but she hasn’t really reminded Californians yet of what she’s been doing in Washington and who she really is. And she hasn’t even begun to remind voters that Fiorina is anti-choice — a position that really, really doesn’t play in California.

Jerry Brown also has some good news from the Field poll, but he’s not the campaigner that Boxer is. And he’s got more trouble with younger voters. Frankly, he’s worse off right now than she is. In fact, if I were in Boxer’s camp right now, I’d be heaving a sigh of relief: She can turn this around.

 

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