San Francisco

Appetite: Giant legs and Willy Wonka — adventures at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Giant legs and Willy Wonka — adventures at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic

I was one of the lucky ones, spending eight days in NY, my old stomping grounds, for the first annual Manhattan Cocktail Classic, which highlights and celebrates the art of the cocktail and its greatest talents. Or so I thought… I won’t gripe too much, though I will say that despite the stunning transformation of the already gorgeous New York Public Library for the opening gala, a scene rife with cocktail luminaries like Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders and Dave Wondrich, along with some of the country’s best bartenders, the crowds were not quite the cocktailians I expected, while some events were far from what was advertised. For example: at the May 17 “contest” at Keen‘s, the competition and notable judges had completely wrapped up and left by the listed START time of the event, leaving only a few cocktails to sample and the incomparably cool, old school Keen’s space to stand around in. I could have spent the same money with more exciting results at any of NY’s great bars.

Let’s recap a few of the best and worst moments of the racous week that was the 1st annual Manhattan Cocktail Classic:

WORST

1. Starvation : At the opening gala, despite spotting Mario Batali, the guy who had supposedly cooked up something special for the night, I never once saw his food. Every other whiff of food was devoured by the time I got near it, mainly in the one air-conditioned room in all of the NYPL, where beloved Fatty ‘Cue served up giant legs of meat, an odd “cocktail party” choice, but hilarious to watch others gnaw on a leg with drink delicately in hand. Once I finally got to the last table with any food, the line was so long it wasn’t worth the wait, despite food-less hours endured with sips of multiple drinks (many of the fruity, vodka, soda, flavorless kind)… a bite never came until I hit a diner at 2am.

A wasteland of unfinished drink & chewed-up meat at Opening Gala. Photo by Virginia Miller.

2. Non-Cocktailian Crowds at the opening gala: I expected a slew of the country’s and NY’s most hardcore drink fans, the kind that mix Jerry Thomas recipes at home, await Mud Puddle book releases, and value craft and taste above a “scene”. Um, try drunken carousers breaking glasses and leaving trash lying around in the historical NYPL? What about having your photo taken with vodka models? Seriously: you, a bottle of vodka, and sexy models in a brightly lit, LA-style photo shoot. Or maybe I’m still just creeped out by the Oompa Loompas or the giant Queen Victoria towering over us in the Hendricks’ Gin area (at least there was Charlotte Voisey mixing cocktails below the Queen).

3. Events not as advertised: I’ve already mentioned the misleading representation of the cocktail competition at Keen’s and the drunken, packed-to-the-gills mayhem of the opening gala where check-in, getting a drink or even entering a room, meant yet another 15 minute wait. And where were the fine cocktails? Several came from our San Francisco crew who manned a number of tables (negronis!), or the playful Willy Wonka-themed candy counter, but there were few even tolerable out of four floors of cocktails.

BEST

1. Astor Center bar and bartenders from around the country: The Astor Center was ground zero for many of MCC’s daily events, panels and classes. The best part was having bartenders from all over New York and the country cover varying shifts. I met mixologists from St. Louis, LA, San Fran, and NY bars like Employees Only, Clover Club and Rye House. Not only did these guys whip up some of the better drinks of the entire event, but they were friendly, chatty, engaging, making the Astor Center feel like your favorite watering hole.

The respite of the Virgin Room. Photo by Virginia Miller.

2. The Virgin Room at the opening gala: What is normally NYPL’s staid, lovely Periodicals Room became the Virgin Room, a detox refuge in the midst of the body-to-body storm of revelers, ego-tripping bodyguards and completely frazzled staff. Coolers were stocked with energy drinks while the latest copies of Interview magazine lined the tables. Never mind that one couldn’t find a bit of water anywhere. At least I could read about Madonna staying sexy in her ’50’s via lamplight.

3. Gin Masters: Let’s call this third one a tie between the gracious English class and knowledge of master distillers, Desmond Payne (of Beefeater Gin) and Sean Harrison (of Plymouth Gin), at the English Gin Seminar on May 16.

4. The Stork Club: At the opening gala, one could catch a welcome respite from the oppressive heat of the rest of the building in the rarely seen NYPL basement, dubbed the Stork Club for the night. Thanks, Diageo, for turning the room into a relaxed but funky party with brassy Budos Band and proper cocktails, including a Bulleit Bourbon Mint Julep and a Mary Pickford made with Zacapa 23 year rum.

Newsom’s budget includes a few ideas “Supervisors can’t stand”

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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City department heads, members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representatives from major news outlets, and others crowded into the Luggage Store Art Gallery at 6th and Market streets on June 1 to hear Mayor Gavin Newsom discuss his proposed 2010-2011 budget.

Colorful artwork, such as a collage fashioned from cereal boxes, adorned the walls, and Newsom said he’d selected the venue to emphasize his commitment to improving the blighted mid-Market area.

Newsom’s $6.48 billion budget is being put forth in the face of a roughly $480 million deficit, which places the city in a similar financial situation to last year, when the mayor’s budget proposal sparked an outcry from progressive supervisors and a wide array of advocacy organizations for its deep blows to public health programs and critical services.

At first glance, the Department of Public Health seems to have fared better this time around, as a partial result of outside funding through federal programs. However, Newsom proposed slashing $22 million from DPH, compared with a total department budget of approximately $1.4 billion.

Newsom’s budget eliminates a total of 993 positions that are filled and unfilled, though the mayor said he anticipated 350 actual layoffs, bringing the total number of city employees to the lowest level in more than a decade. He thanked those he referred to as “enlightened city employees” for wage concessions that made fewer layoffs possible. There were no layoffs in the San Francisco Police Department or the San Francisco Fire Department, Newsom noted. The mayor also announced that an additional $5.9 million would be allocated to remedy the plagued crime lab.

The most contentious issue to emerge from the budget announcement was a proposal to generate $8 million through condo-conversion fees, under a system that would make it easier for people to turn rental units and tenancy-in-common units into condominiums.

Newsom accounted for funding from this proposal despite a lack of support from the Board of Supervisors. “I know the Board of Supervisors can’t stand this,” he said. “But I can’t stand the alternative. … This is a debate that I want to have, because I think this is principled and right.” He added that he thought supervisors’ resistance to accelerated condo conversions was “so darn ideological that it gets in the way of having a real discussion.”

Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget & Finance Committee, said that he and other supervisors fear this could lead to more owner move-in evictions, a trend that would upend tenants’ lives and ultimately deplete the city’s affordable housing stock. “That’s been a concern of mine for months,” Avalos noted. Newsom’s decision to go forward with including it in the budget means that if the Supes reject it, they’ll have to find an additional $8 million to make up for the gap. “It’s kind of like putting a gun to our heads,” he said.

Newsom asserted that the budget was balanced “Without draconian cuts,” saying, “We were able to avoid the kind of cataclysmic devastation that some had argued … was inevitable in this budget.”

Yet Avalos described it as “pretty much an all-cuts budget,” because it contained no new revenue generating measures. “There are no new taxes in this budget,” Newsom said. “I know some folks prefer tax increases. I don’t.”

Avalos said he and other members of the board were working on a number of revenue-generating measures, including a nickel-per-drink tax on alcoholic beverages that would be aimed at the level of distributors, not small independent businesses.

Expect more on the mayor’s budget in coming weeks.

Our Weekly Picks: June 2-8, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 2

MUSIC

WHY?

Listening to Yoni Wolf’s lyrics can sometimes feel kind of icky — not so much because he explicitly recalls masturbating at an art exhibit or watching two men copulate on a basketball court in Berlin (though if that turns you off you can call it quits now). WHY? creates discomfort because Wolf uses his songs as an aural journal. His frank words are morbidly fascinating and brave, giving the impression that he has a personal stake in these songs beyond creating catchy jams that you can bump in your car. An amalgam of hip-hop and indie, WHY? thankfully keeps its distance from backpack rap acts, its collage-like formations rightfully earning the band’s place on Oakland’s avant-garde Anticon label. (Peter Galvin)

With Donkeys, Josiah Wolf

8 p.m., $16

New Parish

579 18th St., Oakl.

(510) 444-7474

www.thenewparish.com

THURSDAY 3

MUSIC

Ikonika

“I sing in synths,” U.K. dubstep sensation Ikonika told Pitchfork in March. If so, her voice is blippier than Twiki, wobblier than Jah, and as seductive as a dripping-wet siren. A Hyperdub labelmate of legends Kode9 and Burial, she gets a lot of creative mileage out of simple things: melting melodies, clanging percussion, and a few well-placed tempo changes. Latest album, Contact, Want, Love, Have belongs to a handful of releases that have helped change the dubstep game by focusing more on synth sounds (absorbing the lessons of the latest synth wave revival) while backing slightly off from the endless, deafening boom. That’s a great thing when it leads to slices like “The Idiot,” which sounds like a traditional English morris dance gone cosmically batty. “To me, that’s the whole point: Making these machines express their emotions, just like WALL-E ,” she continued. Beam us down, sister. (Marke B.)

10 p.m., $5–$7

Paradise Lounge

1501 Folsom, SF

www.paradisesf.com

EVENT

“Matcha: The Shanghai Dress Fashion Show”

Some people consider fashion to be the vile heart of a multibillion dollar industry fueled by the single goal of growing consumerism. And you know what? They might be right. But fashion, at its core, is about expressing a certain artistic individuality with the clothing you wear. Shanghai mega-designer Jane Zhu has spent most of her career mastering the art of the qipao pattern-making, an endeavor that has landed her in Vogue, Newsweek, Elle China, and more. Tonight Zhu shares her work and discusses the historical craftsmanship that inspired her pieces. (Elise-Marie Brown)

5 p.m., $10

Asian Art Museum

200 Larkin, SF

(415) 581-3500

www.asianart.org

STAGE

Golden Girls

Truly, one hasn’t lived until one has experienced a drag episode of Golden Girls — live and in person. Heklina and her gang of merry players (Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Matthew Martin) have returned just in time for Pride month to regale us with their geriatric-themed barbs and snipes. The tight set-up onstage at Mama Calizio’s is perfect for the fixed-view sitcom look, and recordings of ads from the era play during the breaks for costume changes. One gets the sense that for this cast of kooky queens, the Girls deserve all the acting prowess worthy of say, Pinter, or Tennessee Williams. Their love for the form is contagious. Get your tickets before they go. (Caitlin Donohue)

Through June 25

Thurs.–Sat., 7 and 9 p.m., $20

Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 504-2432

www.helkina.com

VISUAL ART

“Hipster Apocalypse”

Hipsters are an interesting and continuously morphing breed. The goal is simple: discover the newest forms of fashion, listen to as many talentless bands as possible, and remain ironic while doing so. Although many hipsters feel they are unique — with their tastes for Pabst Blue Ribbon, mustaches, and flannel — in the end, they all look the same. In the 1950s, we had the beatniks with their poetry and theories on society. Today we have Web-obsessed, fixed-gear bike-riding foodies prolonging the path to their inevitable corporate jobs and suburban tract homes. This group art installation, pointedly titled “Hipster Apocalypse,” chronicles the rise of hipsterdom and the beast it has become. (Brown)

Through June 27

8 p.m. (reception), free

Cafe Royale

800 Post, SF

(415) 441-4099

www.caferoyale-sf.com

FRIDAY 4

VISUAL ART

“If Only”

“If Only,” a solo installation by Norway-born artist Rune Olsen, is tragicomedy at its simplest and finest. Involving tethered sculptures of zombie children connected criss-cross throughout the gallery space, “If Only” begs a few important — if ridiculous — questions. Are children actually pets? Can they be trusted? And, should we train them like we do dogs and horses? Also of particular import to San Francisco (where pets outnumber children), a reverse phenomenon occurs where pets are treated like children: doggies get designer haircuts and custom Air Jordans, and cats get fine food and strollers. If only our pets could graduate college and help us retire. (Spencer Young)

Through July 17

5–8 p.m. (reception), free

Johansson Projects

2300 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 444-9140

www.johanssonprojects.net

SATURDAY 5

STAGE

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival

One wonders what would happen were we to kick out Obama, Cameron, Jintao, and Ahmadinejad tomorrow and install in their places the most accomplished dancer in each country. Would their swirls, toe points, and hip thrusts communicate with more eloquence than current G20 summits and United Nation convergences do today? One can only dream. At this festival, though, we can see the cultures of the world uniting for a month-long celebration of that physical language spoken by most cultures from the onset of culture itself. Featured this year (the fest’s 32nd) are Bay Area groups presenting dances from Uzbekistan to the Congo and back again. Shake a leg to the performances for some truly stunning art as well as some cross-cultural contrasts and compliments. (Caitlin Donohue)

Through June 27

Sat.–Sun., 2 p.m. (also Sat, 8 p.m.), $22–$44

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

(415) 474-3914

www.worldartswest.org

MUSIC

Matt and Kim

A guy on keys and a girl on drums, singing catchy pop songs, Matt and Kim are poster-children for keepin’ it simple. Famously putting on shows that resemble chummy block parties more than performances, the Brooklyn duo of Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino may have slowed down their aggressively DIY pop-punk a notch for their second LP, Grand, but the change in tempo hasn’t slowed the band’s knack for irresistible sing-alongs. Why brave the Sunday crowds at Shoreline Amphitheater (see Hole pick, below) when you can get that intimate experience from Live 105’s BFD pre-party right here in the city? Also acceptable: going to both. (Galvin)

With Golden Filer, Soft Pack

9 p.m., $20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

EVENT

The Glorious World Cup party

Forget the fuckin’ Super Bowl — the only sporting event involving football and a true world champion is the World Cup. The 2010 installment gets underway June 11 in host country South Africa; Team USA plays its first match (vs. Team England — it’s gonna be revolutionary!) the following day. Get yourself even more pumped for a solid month of footy fiending (and those 4:30 a.m. games, thanks to the time difference between Calif. and S.A.) at the extremely timely book launch for Alan Black and David Henry Sterry’s The Glorious World Cup, subtitled A Fanatic’s Guide. Events include a contest to see who can scream “GOOOOOAAAALLLL!” with the most roof-rattling excitement. Consider it a warm-up for many exciting GOOOOOAAAALLLLs to come. (Cheryl Eddy)

8 p.m., free

Edinburgh Castle Pub

950 Geary, SF

(415) 885-4074

www.castlenews.com

SUNDAY 6

MUSIC

Hole

For nearly 20 years, Courtney Love has been a polarizing figure in alternative rock, first with her band Hole, then through her well-documented relationship with Kurt Cobain, on through to her various transgressions in the media. Tabloid headlines aside, Love is someone you can’t take your eyes off of. Whether you compare her voyages to watching a train wreck or consider her a talented yet troubled performer, she remains a fascinating study. But the 45-year-old seems to have put her notorious habits to bed, at least for now, as evidenced in her calm and collected visits on several talk shows lately, even putting in an appearance on The View, where she recounted living in San Francisco in the 1980s. But don’t assume the coherent and sober Love has abandoned all of her ferocity. With the freshly resurrected Hole and a new album Nobody’s Daughter, her searing vocals can cut through distorted guitars as sharply as they did circa 1994. (Sean McCourt)

Live 105’s BFD

Noon, $32.50

Shoreline Amphitheater

One Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mtn. View

www.live105.radio.com

MUSIC

Jaguar Love

I guess it was silly to think that the break-up of hardcore band the Blood Brothers in 2007 would mean the end of Johnny Whitney. While his less-screamy former partner, Jordan Blilie, was last seen singing within the lines as Past Lives, Whitney has consistently taken a more bombastic approach, first infusing his side-project Neon Blonde with electro-clash and now packing his full-time band Jaguar Love with dance cues. Jaguar Love continues to spotlight Whitney’s infamous vocals but follows more traditional song structures that make the hooks a co-headliner. The actual co-headliner of the “Coin-Toss Tour” is Japanther, and the two bands will share gear and flip a coin before each show to see who plays first. (Galvin)

With Japanther

9:00 p.m., $14

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

MONDAY 7

MUSIC

Bone Thugs-n-Harmony

It’s been a long time since “Tha Crossroads” hit the airwaves back in the ’90’s. Only a group as smooth and poetic as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony could write a rap song about the afterlife and make it a No. 1 hit. The Grammy-winning hip-hop group from Glenville, Ohio, has worked with the (now-deceased) likes of Eazy-E, Notorious B.I.G., and Tupac Shakur, and has still managed to stay in the game. Come out and raise a glass, or a 40, as they introduce some songs from their upcoming album, Uni-5: The World’s Enemy. (Brown)

7:30 p.m., $30

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.independentsf.com

TUESDAY 8

EVENT

Henry Rollins

Having made a name for himself in the early hardcore punk scene with his muscular delivery as singer for Black Flag from 1981-86, and later with his own eponymous band, Henry Rollins has again turned his attention to spoken word performances. He approaches the medium as intensely as he does a musical performance, energetically sharing his political and social viewpoints, stories from his life, and tales from his experiences on the road. On this stop of his “Frequent Flyer” tour, expect a barrage of entertaining and enlightening anecdotes presented as only Rollins can do. It will be three hours of nonstop talking, but it will be over before you know it, with the feeling that you just experienced a concert, comedy show, current affairs lecture, and cathartic confessional all rolled into one exhilarating time. (McCourt)

8 p.m., $25

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

www.apeconcerts.com

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The facts of Cloris

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The facts of Cloris

arts@sfbg.com

STAGE With nearly 250 credits in film, television, and stage roles to her name, Cloris Leachman is a true entertainment icon. It’s hard to believe the ever-vivacious and lively actress got her start in show business competing in the Miss America pageant back in 1946, but the now 84-year-old star has generously filled a career spanning more than 60 years.

But age is irrelevant when talking to Leachman, who continues to work with a full schedule in film and television projects as her solo stage show comes to San Francisco this week at the Rrazz Room. Speaking by phone from Palm Springs, where her former husband, George Englund lives — or as she says, her “Once upon a time” husband — “I don’t like to say my ‘ex.’ I don’t think that’s appropriate. It doesn’t mean what happened,” she said.

“A couple of years ago my family got all concerned about me. I don’t really know what it was, but they felt I wasn’t my old self. My daughter talked to her father, and they decided I should write a book, have a one woman show, do talks — and we did it all,” Leachman said, laughing in a deeply infectious and endearing way.

Incorporating spoken passages along with a little piano, singing, and a healthy dose of humor, the show promises to touch on a broad spectrum of Leachman’s career, which includes notable performances as the bombshell beauty in the noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955); her Oscar-winning role as neglected wife Ruth Popper in The Last Picture Show (1971); a long string of successful television appearances (which have garnered her nine Emmys) on programs including The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Phyllis, and, of course, her portrayal of Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein (1974).

The normally forthcoming Leachman demurred when asked about particulars of the show, preferring that people see it for themselves. She did stress that one of her favorite parts of this show — which has been performed in several warm-up gigs leading up to her arrival here — has been interacting and meeting with her fans.

“That’s the fun part, that’s the other half of your show,” she said. “We laugh and hug and cry — having a live audience is thrilling.”

Reminiscing about some of her favorite memories of San Francisco, Leachman espoused her love of the city’s cuisine before commenting — with somewhat embarrassed but gleeful candor — on her fling in a local hotel with Gene Hackman in the 1970s, an assignation she revealed in her autobiography, Cloris, released last year.

“We met in the lobby and he asked if I wanted to have dinner, so we had dinner. I don’t know what happened, we just got on fire, we couldn’t run fast enough to the room,” she laughed heartily. “I remember the first 10 seconds after we got in the room, but I don’t remember anything after that — isn’t that terrible?”

After this week’s shows, Leachman has an array of projects on the horizon, including a new show on Fox from the creators of My Name Is Earl and a role in the film The Fields, a psychological thriller due out in the fall. She will also appear in a movie called You Again with her friend and former Mary Tyler Moore costar Betty White.

Asked about any possible secrets to her success, her openness and self-deprecating humor showed themselves. “I always went on the Johnny Carson show after I’d done a character so people would know I wasn’t that character,” she said seriously, before cracking herself up, and laughing hysterically. “I was even worse!” 

CLORIS! A ONE-WOMAN SHOW

Through June 11

Wed-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 7 p.m., $40–$45

Rrazz Room

222 Mason, SF

www.therrazzroom.com

 

Composite material

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Composite material

MUSIC This Thursday, Yoshi’s SF hosts an experiment fusing of the border-crossing sound of songstress Rupa (best known for leading SF’s rousing global agitpop band The April Fishes) with the grand indie rock orchestrations of bassist Todd Sickafoose (who has lived in Brooklyn for the past several years while leading his band Tiny Resistors and working with Ani Difranco). What initially seemed to be a cross-country collaboration is actually taking place closer to home now that the prodigal Sickafoose has returned to the Bay Area to live part-time. Mark Orton of Tin Hat Trio lends his arrangements to this sonic amalgam.

SFBG How did you two meet?

RUPA MARYA I met Todd through Ara [Anderson] and I think I’ve heard Todd’s band play more than any other band in the last year. I love his compositions. Then I heard that he was possibly moving back to the Bay Area. So when Yoshi’s wanted to book me, I wanted to do something different. This is a chance to show the more intimate side of my music, which I don’t get to do when I’m playing with a big, raucous band. To share that with Todd is really exciting.

SFBG: Todd, you lived here in the Bay Area, then moved to New York about five years ago. Why?

TODD SICKAFOOSE: All my musical friends had migrated there. In some sense it was an obvious move. But that’s also when I started playing with Ani, and she was in Buffalo. So everything became very New York-centric.

SFBG: But you recently moved back?

TS: I’m still playing music with everyone in New York, so I’m excited to be truly bicoastal. My family still lives here. This is home. But I’m part of the scene in Brooklyn, and it’s an exciting time there. So that’s home too. Coming back here it’s great to check in, see what’s going on, and to find people to play my music with. There’s a collective of people playing my music at this point. I never meant for it to be that way, but it seems right because it requires a large band.

SFBG: How many people are playing at Yoshi’s?

RM: There will be a string quartet with Todd on bass, so a string quintet, percussion, saxophone, marimba …

TS: Then clarinet, trombone, duduk …

RM: The duduk is an Armenian flute. It makes such a beautiful sound.

SFBG: What’s the night going to be like?

RM: Instead of just playing a set of my music and then a set of Todd’s, we’re trying to figure out a way to weave the different elements together. I have no idea how it’s going to sound. In The April Fishes I’ve been playing with some of the same people for five years. So to step away and play with a completely fresh group of people is thrilling. It started out of an impetus to welcome Todd back to San Francisco. And Yoshi’s is a quiet listening room where you can have a different kind of musical exploration. I hope to always play with lots of amazing, inspiring people, like Todd.

TS: I like the idea of this collaboration because Rupa’s music sounds very inclusive to me. I think that’s her mode of operation. In New York there’s such an overload of everything — musicians, ideas, and projects — that a lot of people figure out what they are by shutting out other possibilities. What’s left becomes what they are. San Francisco has a tradition that’s the other way around. I like the idea of being a magnet for many different things. To the point where you don’t know what it’ll be in the end, but it’s a recipe for a good night of music.

RM: Basically it’s just to have fun.

TS: And sushi.

RM: Really good sushi.

RUPA WITH TODD SICKAFOOSE

Thurs/3, 8 and 10 p.m., $10-$15

Yoshi’s SF

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 665-5600, www.yoshis.com

Political juggernaut

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Political juggernaut

sarah@sfbg.com

City officials are scrambling to secure final approvals to allow Lennar Corp. to move forward with its 770-acre Candlestick/Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment of San Francisco’s impoverished and polluted southeast sector. But the community remains divided on the project, raising concerns that wary residents will end up being steamrolled by this politically powerful juggernaut.

Some groups say the project needs major amendments, but fear it will be rushed to the finish for political reasons. Others say they are hungry to work and desperate to move into better housing units, so they don’t want all the myriad project details to slow that progress. And Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration is arguing that approving the project’s final environmental impact report by June 3 is crucial if San Francisco wants to keep the San Francisco 49ers in town.

But many observers fear Lennar wants its entitlements now before its project can be subjected to greater scrutiny that could come with the November elections. Newsom, who made Lennar’s project the centerpiece of his housing policy, will be replaced as mayor if he wins the lieutenant governor’s race. And a crowded field of candidates, many of them progressives concerned about the project’s impacts on the poor and the environment, are vying to replace termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes Lennar’s massive territory.

“It’s 180 percent about the 49ers,” land use attorney Sue Hestor told the Guardian, referring to the city’s proposed rush job, as evidenced by a rapid entitlement schedule that the Newsom’s administration wants city commissions and the board to follow.

Under that schedule, which Hestor procured from the Mayor’s Office, Planning and Redevelopment commissioners are expected to certify the project’s final 6,000-page EIR, adopt California Environmental Quality Act findings, approve amendments to the project’s original disposition and development agreement, and authorize land trust and open space reconfigurations — all during a June 3 meeting where public comment will likely last for many hours.

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, a community-based nonprofit that tracks the development, says this schedule stretches the credulity that this is a deliberative process. “There’s no way anyone could make a functional reasoned assessment,” Bloom told us. “How do you have any meaningful public conversation under those circumstances?”

Michael Cohen, Newsom’s chief economic advisor, asserted in an April 29 article in The New York Times that Lennar’s plan is a “really, really good project,” echoing the glowing praise he’s heaped on the project since its conception.

“But there’s nothing new in their proposal,” Bloom told us. “That’s because they haven’t been listening to the public’s concerns. [Cohen] says, ‘Haven’t we talked enough? The community’s been waiting all these years!’ But waiting to get what done?”

Lennar’s project — which had early backing from Newsom, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and other political power brokers — was sold as creating “jobs, housing, and parks” and “revitalizing the abandoned shipyard” when voters approved the Lennar-financed Proposition G in 2008.

“Proposition G is from the community and for the community,” Lennar’s campaign promised. “You can turn the abandoned Hunters Point Shipyard into a clean, healthy, sustainable, livable neighborhood — a place where people can raise their children.”

The shipyard once employed thousands of workers, including African Americans who were recruited from the South in the 1940s and ’50s. But the district’s economic engine fell into disrepair when the military left in 1974. Today the neighboring Hunters Point and Bayview neighborhoods have the highest unemployment and crime rates and the largest concentration of African American families in the city.

But the city’s final EIR for the project, which the Planning Department released mid-May, shows that 68 percent of the developer’s proposed 10,500 new housing units will be sold at market rates unaffordable to area residents, and that many of these units will be built on state park land at Candlestick Point.

Lennar is also proposing to build a bridge across the environmentally sensitive Yosemite Slough, significantly changing the southeast waterfront. Lennar says it plans to develop the project’s remaining 3,000 units at below market prices, including one-for-one replacement of rundown Alice Griffith public housing units. Its proposal includes a dozen high-rise towers, 2.7 million square feet of commercial space, 1 million square feet of retail space, a performing arts theater, and an artists colony.

Lennar claims its proposal will create 1,500 construction jobs annually during the project’s 20-year build-out, along with 10,000 permanent jobs, thanks to a United Nations Global Compact Sustainability Center and a vaguely defined green technology office park.

The project and its impacts are already an issue in this year’s District 10 supervisor’s race (see “The battle for the forgotten district,” Feb. 23). Candidate Chris Jackson says Lennar’s proposal is weak when it comes to creating well-paying, low-skilled green collar jobs. He supports Arc’s proposal to including green maritime industrial use at the shipyard.

Arc recommends that the city’s final EIR allow recycling and repairing of ships, including the Suisun Bay Ghost fleet — decommissioned U.S. Navy, cruise, and ferry ships — arguing that “ship recycling and repair are resurgent strategic industrial activities yielding employment opportunities for our existing pool of skilled and unskilled workers.”

Jackson, who was elected to the Community College Board in 2008 and recently jumped into the District 10 race, wants the city to assert that the project is not a regional housing plan.

“It’s a local housing plan for local residents,” Jackson asserts. “It’s not here to provide housing for Silicon Valley. It’s for Bayview-Hunters Point and District 10 residents.”

Jackson understands why some local residents want no delays on final EIR approval: “I can never blame folks in Alice Griffith public housing for coming out and saying ‘no delays.’ They really want something real, housing that is not rat and cockroach infested.”

As a policy analyst (a position he’s quitting to focus on the District 10 race) for the San Francisco Labor Council — which gave key backing to the project in the 2008 election — Jackson knows labor is frustrated by all the project meetings. “I try to tell them it’s better to get this project right than rush it through and find out later that it goes against the interests of labor,” Jackson said.

In May 2008, the Labor Council signed a community benefits agreement (CBA) with Lennar. Since then labor leaders have urged no delays on the project’s draft EIR review. But Jackson believes the city must demand that financial consequences, such as liquidated damages, be a project approval condition if the developer reneges on the CBA.

“Right now the only push-back the city has is to threaten to kill the whole project if Lennar doesn’t meet its timeline,” Jackson said. “But people are really invested in this project, and I don’t believe anyone would pull the trigger and end the entire development. We don’t need to throw everything out; we just need to change them.”

Jackson wants to see the inclusion of a special-use district that would create a cooperative land trust to ensure affordability and home ownership opportunities for local residents. “I love open space and sustainability, but I also want affordable housing and real light-industrial opportunities that can employ people living in the district now.”

Special-use districts, Jackson argues, give city commissioners a way to amend this project to make it more acceptable.

Jackson wants to see strong tenant protections for public housing residents. “The vast majority of those residents are African American. At the end of the day, I want to see economic and environmental justice, so we can say we brought the right change to our community.”

Jackson also would like to see a more independent Mayor’s Office. “Don’t you feel like its 2002/2003, and that if you speak out against the project, it’s like you are speaking out against the Iraq war, and all of a sudden you are not patriotic?”

Fellow District 10 candidate Eric Smith concurred. “The powers that be are definitely moving this thing forward,” he said. “And this is a monster train, a juggernaut that is gathering steam. But how it shakes out down the road remains to be seen. My whole mantra is that there needs to be greater transparency down the line. If I become the sheriff, I’ll be shining a light on all this stuff.”

Smith warned that the community needs to work together or it won’t win a better deal. “It’s clear that folks in the city are hoping against all odds that Lennar can pull this stuff off so they can prove all the naysayers wrong and these community benefits can be realized, and that scrutiny of the projects can go on while all this happens,” he said.

But Arthur Feinstein, the Sierra Club’s political chair, worries that the city’s rush job is resulting in seriously flawed documents and decision-making. “It’s difficult for folks to digest 6,000 pages of comments and responses on the draft EIR in the three weeks since planning posted them online,” Feinstein said. “And nothing has changed despite all the comments, which is why it continues to be a nonsense process.”

Feinstein says the Sierra Club’s top concerns are the Parcel E-2 cleanup on the shipyard, a deal to transfer 23 acres at Candlestick Park for development, and the bridge over Yosemite Slough.

“You can cover most of the site,” he said. “But when it comes to Parcel E-2, where the dump burned for six months in 2002, that’s only 20 acres, it could and should be removed. This is the environmental justice issue that has the community up in arms.”

Feinstein worries about the precedent that selling a state park for condos sets. “This is our park, and they are shrinking it.” He is also concerned that the developer wants to bridge Yosemite Slough for cars.

How many of these concerns will be addressed at the June 3 hearing, which is just days before Santa Clara County voters decide whether to try to lure away the 49ers with a new publicly financed stadium? We’ll see.

Triumph of tenacity

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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10
Triumph of tenacity

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Nearly four years after City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit against Frank and Walter Lembi and their dizzying array of companies affiliated with CitiApartments for “an outrageous pattern of corporate lawlessness,” the powerful and notorious San Francisco landlords have watched their empire crumble.

The Lembi empire consisted of more 300 apartment buildings in San Francisco at its peak. Four Lembi subsidiaries that owned 16 buildings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. Twenty Lembi properties were taken over by Lennar spin-off LNR in late May; another 24 buildings are slated to be foreclosed in early June; 51 were deeded back to UBS bank in lieu of foreclosure early last year; and still others are now held by court-appointed receivers and managed by Laramar, an unaffiliated property-management company.

CitiApartments still owns and manages a large portion of the buildings it controlled in its heyday, but it’s had to either restructure loans or get payment extensions to hold onto many of them, according to general counsel Ed Singer. The Lembi Group staff has dwindled, and a team of 18 dedicated solely to relocating tenants is now long gone.

For many renters in foreclosed units who managed to ride out what San Francisco Tenants Union director Ted Guillicksen has labeled CitiApartments’ “war of terror” against its occupants, the dust has finally settled. Gullicksen says that living in limbo is better than living under Lembi.

There are no more harassing phone calls pressuring them to move. No more sudden utility shutoffs. No armed agents showing up at the doorstep unannounced. No illegal construction projects clamoring away on the other side of paper-thin walls, destroying any hope of tranquility at home.

These are tactics CitiApartments used to drive people out, according Herrera’s 2006 complaint and an award-winning Guardian series (“The Scumlords,” March 25), in order to vacate units so they could be renovated and removed from rent control protections. A San Francisco Rent Board roster of 174 current and former Lembi properties as of May 25 lists no fewer than 1,890 cases associated with those buildings, the majority of them now settled.

While the sordid history of CitiApartments’ strong-arm tactics has been well-documented, tenant-rights advocates say the untold story of the Lembis’ rise and demise is that its entire business model hinged on evicting and relocating existing tenants — but that strategy failed, in large part because of a grassroots organizing effort that emboldened renters to stand their ground.

“The economic downturn played a role in it because the money stopped flowing,” says Gullicksen, who helped form the CitiStop Campaign in 2004 in response to reports of outrageous tactics. “But if the money kept flowing, I think they would have failed anyway. The end result was inevitable, given the tenant resistance.”

Darin Dawson moved into his apartment at 2 Guerrero St. in 1994 on a lease secured through the federal Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS program. Dawson, who was diagnosed in 1987, said things turned sour in 1998 when Trophy Properties I DE LLC — one of the Lembis’ dozens of subsidiaries — snapped it up.

Their first contact was to inform him that he would have to move “because we don’t allow those kinds of leases in our buildings,” he recalled. He fought it with the help of the Housing Authority and managed to stay put. It was the first in a series of standoffs that ultimately stopped last September when the property was repossessed.

“Basically, I just dug my heels in and knew that I couldn’t get evicted,” Dawson said. Nonetheless, he spent years embroiled in conflict with the Lembi subsidiary while also battling AIDS-related illnesses.

There was the time he was ordered to vacate his apartment for two weeks during a seismic retrofit only to find it trashed when he returned. “The floors were ripped up,” he said. “The ceiling was hanging in some places. There was black grease smeared all over the walls.” He repaired it himself. Then came the constant phone calls, which started off artificially cheerful but turned threatening if he refused to accept money to relocate.

Dawson pays a base amount of $635 per month for his rent-controlled studio, so he suspected he might be a target. Once a residential manager discreetly warned him that his name was on a “hit list” of tenants whom the owners wanted gone, he said.

According to a confidential document leaked to advocates by an anonymous source, tenants who paid the least came under the greatest pressure to relocate since San Francisco rent-control laws prohibit raising existing occupants’ rents to market rate. The document outlines how loan repayment and estimated profits were calculated wholly on the expectation that existing tenants would vacate, rather than relying on normal projections like natural turnover.

“Tenants with significantly below market rents are chosen for thorough screening to see if they might be relocated,” according to the document, a 2008 Credit Suisse prospectus concerning a pool of 24 buildings under Lembi ownership that have since been foreclosed. “Those tenants most below market and/or with the longest history are the priority for relocation.”

All 24 buildings in question — including properties on Larkin, Market, Cesar Chavez, Post, and Leavenworth streets, in addition to others — were subject to rent control. “At acquisition [Aug. 30, 2007], the portfolio was approximately 5 percent vacant,” it notes. “As of May 2008 the portfolio was 19 percent vacant, as a result of Lembi successfully executing their business plan of vacating units and rolling them to market.”

Although the paperwork spelling this out in stark terms didn’t surface until recently, advocates who worked on the CitiStop campaign essentially figured it out years ago. A collaboration between the Tenants Union, Pride at Work, and other advocacy groups, the campaign sent organizers door-to-door to inform tenants of their rights, hosted potlucks where people could swap horror stories and forge alliances, and staged demonstrations outside CitiApartments’ Market Street offices.

They tracked public records from the Assessor-Recorder Office and swooped in to warn tenants whose buildings had fallen into the Lembis’ clutches. It didn’t always work. According to the Credit Suisse document, Lembi had relocated 2,500 units as of August 2008, a fact pointed to as evidence of its “successful track record.” But the relocation team only drove out a small number of the lowest-paying tenants; the vast majority of those who took buyout offers left units that paid closer to market rate.

“They really needed to get more turnover than what they accomplished,” Gullicksen said. “The fact that they couldn’t is attributable to the CitiStop campaign.”

Singer rejected this assessment, saying the real problem was the economic downturn and the loss of capital availability. “I can see why they want to say that, why they want to take credit for bringing down the Lembis,” he said. “But I don’t think it would have made any difference if [tenants] left or not.”

A common complaint nowadays is that former tenants haven’t gotten their security deposits back, a matter that has spurred a class-action lawsuit against 57 corporate defendants associated with the Lembi Group.

“They’re claiming that they have no money,” Brian Devine, an attorney with Seeger Salvas LLP, told the Guardian. Devine estimates that he will end up representing several thousand tenants who are entitled to their deposits. In March, a judge awarded sanctions of $30,000 to Devine’s firm because the Lembi Group refused to cooperate with discovery, withholding documents necessary for the case to proceed.

Herrera has encountered a similar recalcitrance in his own suit and won court sanctions of $50,000 in February for the same reason. “We have been engaged in discovery for a long, long time,” noted city attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey. “We’re hoping that the judge is at the edge of his patience.”

Singer said the problem was that there wasn’t enough “people power” to photocopy thousands of documents. The Lembis were never up to any nefarious purpose, Singer insisted — they only wanted to make the buildings nicer. As for the tenants who endured the most brutal relocation tactics? “I can understand why they didn’t want to leave,” he said. “Some of them didn’t leave — and they’re still there.”

“Beach, fun, drinks, girls, and a good time”: Chico Trujillo is your Memorial hangover cure

Andrew Lam
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0

Thank you holiday weekend, you have memorialized whatever brain cells and desire to integrate into the everyday world of not being drunk by 2 p.m. I still had left. I suppose it was a fair trade for all the lovely memories that I of course won’t remember. Shall we turn then, to something fun that’s happening this upcoming weekend (Fri/4 La Peña Cultural Center) to keep us going? A lovely South American cumbia party that goes by the name of Chico Trujillo? Hurry, before sobriety catches you, cue the mp3 and hold on for the interview! 

Click here, then proceed.

Now that the tunes are swirling through those alcohol and sunshine wasted synapses — a note of historical significance. For those who have never ratcheted their hips to a sensual beat on a cobblestone colonial street, cumbia originated in the wilds of Colombia. It was originally played for courtship rituals by the area’s enslaved African population. Throughout the years, cumbia’s rolling stone gathered snippets of the culture around it, rhythms from the indigenous Colombians, the use of European instruments, etc, etc. Let’s just say it was adept at bringing people together to party.

Chico Trujillo (who are good old chicos from Chile), inherited this mish-mash legacy, and saw it the addition of ska — a fact which imparts an evident swagger to their most recent release, Chico de Oro. Although on the whole, Chilean cumbia’s been ceding its popularity to the ear drum exploding beats of reggaeton, Chico Trujillo’s gigs still get crazy and light roofs on fire, I guess symbolically speaking. 

Heartened by how cool it’s proven itself to be in the homeland, Chico’s now taking its show to Gringolandia — they’ll be rocking the stage at La Peña Cultural Center as part of that East Bay progressive organization’s 35th anniversary party. I chatted with the band recently via email, and their responses, I guarantee, will make that first day back on your grind a little smoother to jibe with.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: I’ve heard that most of your shows in Chile sell out. They sound like amazing parties. What makes a good party, in your opinion? 

Chico Trujillo: In Chile, a good party means the best loud music, best drinks, nicest women (and men, I guess), and everybody dancing and singing. But I think that is a good party anywhere. And yes, all of our shows sell out.

 

SFBG: Oh my. What makes cumbia so awesome?

CT: Its simplicity, and its hypnotizing effect on the people. Once we start, the people just can’t stop, and neither can we.

 

SFBG: Tell us about the social issues you touch on in your music. Do you consider yourselves activists?

CT: As human beings, we consider ourselves activists, and are very concerned with social issues happening in Chile. Although we may not always agree with the “left” all the time (and almost never with the “right”), we do actively participate in events that we feel are important. [There’s] a lot of things concerning the environment in Chile, the native people’s rights there, etc. We just arrived in the US, and have seen non-stop on the TV things about the oil spill.  We would love to do something, anything to help that out. But as for our lyrics, and the music of Chico Trujillo, well, they speak more to the utopian ideals that we have of beach, fun, drinks, girls, and a good time, a break from the real world – [which is] the only things people should think about when we hit the stage. If everyone lived by the lyrics of Chico Trujillo, the world would be a better place…

Chico Trujillo feat. Tokezon

8-10 p.m., $15-18

La Peña Cultural Center

3105 Shattuck, Berkl. 

(510) 849-2568

www.lapena.org

Benefits: June 2-June 8

David Talbot
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0
Benefits: June 2-June 8

Ways to have fun while giving back this week


Wednesday, June 2

Headlands Center for the Arts Auction
Attend this benefit featuring work by more than 85 contemporary artists with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and entertainment.
6:30 p.m., $100
Herbst International Exhibition Hall
The Presidio
385 Moraga, SF
www.headlands.org/auction

“Escape from the Opera House”
Catch “escapees” from Bay Area opera and musical theater companies performing an evening of fun and fine music to benefit the Life After Exoneration Program and the Unrepresented Death Row Prisoner Project. Reception to follow.
8 p.m., $15
First Congregational Church of Berkeley
2345 Channing, Berk.
(510) 486-8006

Thursday, June 3

WGirls Bachelor/Bachelorette Auction
Bid on some of the most eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in the Bay Area at this fundraiser for local charity Oasis for Girls featuring dancing, raffles, an hour open bar, and more.
6:30 p.m., $40
330 Rich, SF
http://wgirls.org

“Where is Tibet?”
Attend this Qinghai Earthquake Benefit featuring a two part presentation of Genny Lim’s “Where is Tibet?” performed by Tsering Bawa, Francis Wong, Lenora Lee, and Genny Lim followed by a slideshow by the Tibetan Association of Northern California on the earthquake devastation in Qinghai.
7 p.m., $10 suggested donation
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists
1924 Cedar, Berk.
(510) 841-4824

Friday, June 4

SummerTini
Kick off the summer at this fundraiser for Episcopal Community Services employment programs featuring live jazz, martinis, and specialty hors d’ oeuvres from Bay Area restaurants.
6 p.m., $75-$100
Galleria at the San Francisco Design Center
101 Henry Adams, SF
www.summertini.org

21 Grand Art Sale
Come early for the best view of everything because as the art is sold, it will come down immediately ready to go home with whomever buys it. Art is donated by nearly 90 different artists and sales will benefit 21 Grand.
7 p.m., free
21 Grand
416 25th St., Oakl.
www.21grand.org

Saturday, June 5

“Even More Glitter”
Enjoy a gallery talk with photographer Daniel Nicoletta, who’s show “More Glitter-Less Bitter” documents San Francisco’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. Proceeds to benefit the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.
6 p.m., $100
Electric Works
130 8th St., SF
www.sfelectricworks.com

GLAAD Media Awards
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) will recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives. GLAAD will also honor actress Cybill Shepard and filmmaker Lee Daniels.
4:30 p.m., $350
San Francisco Marriott Marquis
55 4th St., SF
www.glaad.org/mediaawards

VisionWalk
This fundraising walk for the Foundation Fighting Blindness brings hundreds of people together to take part in finding preventions, treatments, and cures for people with retinal degenerative diseases.
10 a.m., raise $100 or more for a t-shirt
Golden Gate Park
Music Concourse Bandshell, SF
www.visionwalk.org

Walk for Hope
This year City of Hope has expanded their annual 5k walk to benefit all women’s cancers, so sign up to walk or voluteer today.
9 a.m., $30 registration
Justin Herman Plaza
Market Street and Embarcadero, SF
www.walk4hope.org

“What the World Needs Now…”
Attend this gala fundraiser and opening night for a juried exhibit of children’s art featuring hors d’ oeuvres, wine tastings, an artists’ marketplace, and entertainment by youth performance troupes. The exhibit features artwork by Bay Area children in grades K-12 on the themes of social justice, community awareness, and world peace.
5 p.m., $50
Museum of Children’s Art
538 9th St., Oakl.
www.mocha.org

Sunday, June 6

Scavenger Crawl
Go on a scavenger hunt and pub crawl to build awareness and advocacy for Bay Area non-profits, where clues and puzzles lead you through different restaurants, bars, and retail shops throughout San Francisco. Gift certificate prizes for the winning teams.
2 p.m., $20
Start at Sports Basement
610 Old Mason, SF
www.scavengercrawl.org

Quick Lit: June 2-June 8

David Talbot
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0
Quick Lit: June 2-June 8

Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week

Maude Barlow, the female farming revolution, Babylon Salon, Mahnaz Afkhami, The Art of Baseball, Nerd Nite, and more.

Wednesday, June 2

Mahnaz Afkhami
Afkhami, exiled from Iran under threat of death during the Iranian Revolution, has worked as a leading advocate for women’s rights internationally for more than three decades. Hear her discuss some of the most pressing issues for women in the Middle East today.
6 p.m., $25
Omni Hotel
500 California, SF
RSVP at 415-543-4669 ext. 27, or email events@imow.org

Talk Softly
Author Cynthia O’Neal reads from her inspiring memoir.
7:30 p.m., free
Books Inc. Castro
2275 Market, SF
(415) 864-6777

Thursday, June 3

The Art of Baseball
Author and journalist Jeff Gillenkirk will read from his novel, Home, Away, about the evolving relationship of a father and his formerly estranged son, that develops at odds with the father’s multi-million dollar contract to pitch for the Colorado Rockies.
6 p.m., free
George Krevsky Gallery
77 Geary, SF
(415) 397-9748

Maude Barlow
Barlow is the Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the UN. Hear talk about how California’s misuse of water may actually be changing the hydrological cycle and contributing to global warming.
8 p.m., $20
Herbst Theater
401 Van Ness, SF
www.cityboxoffice.com

Nancy’s Theory of Style
Author Grace Coopersmith discusses her book that shows that happiness and love, like fashion, aren’t about playing it safe.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Berkeley
1760 4th St., SF
(510) 525-7777

Nerd Nite
Gather with other nerds to discuss nerdery of all sorts at this meet-up featuring talks “I Was  a Teenage Ichthyologist” with Bart Bernhardt, “It’s Not Its Size, But How You Work It” with Brady Burgess, and “Is It Fake Money If You Can Buy Real Hookers With It?” with Jennifer Russel.
8 p.m., $10
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
www.nerdnite.com

79th Annual California Book Awards
Watch as gold medals are presented to D.A. Powell (Chronic) for poetry, Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell) for nonfiction, Lori Ostlund (The Bigness of the World) for first fiction, Yiyun Li (The Vagrants) for fiction,  Susan Patron (Lucky Breaks) for juvenile, Sherri Smith (Flygirl) for young adult Daniel C. Matt (Translation and Commentary, The Zohar Pritzker Edition, Volume Five ) for contribution to publishing, and Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi (Wherever There’s a Fight) for Californiana. Silver medal awards will also be given out.
6 p.m., $20
Commonwealth Club
2nd floor
595 Market, SF
(415) 597-6700

Friday, June 4 

Farmer Jane: Women changing the way we eat
Featuring stories about over 30 women farmers, chefs, policy wonks, and educators, author Temra Costa celebrates women’s role in changing how we eat and farm for the better. Hear local food stories, taste delicious foods, and meet the author.
7 p.m., free
Green Arcade
1680 Market, SF
(415) 431-6800

Long Time Passing
Author Susan Galleymore began interviewing mothers across The U.S. and the Middle East about war and its consequences after her son was deployed to Afghanistan in 2003. Hear her read and discuss her book, Long Time Passing: Mothers speak out about war and terror.
7:30 p.m., free
St. Joseph the Worker Church Chapel
1640 Addison, Berk.
(510) 499-0537

Saturday, June 5

Babylon Salon
This installment of the reading and performance series presents poet Rusty Morrison, the true keeps calm biding its story and Whethering, and novelist Tom Barbash, The Last Good Chance and On Top of the World: Candor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11, along with writers Deborah P. Bloch, N.A. Jong, and more.
7:30 p.m., free
Cantina SF
580 Sutter, SF
www.babylonsalon.com

The Glorious World Cup
Alan Black presents this guide to the World Cup, filled with tales of the teams, fans, goals, saves, divas, divers, myths, and madness.
3 p.m., free
Borders
400 Post, SF
(415) 399-1633

Jim Nisbet
Hayes Valley resident, sailor, and author Nisbet celebrates his new book, Windward Passage, and the re-issue of his cult classic novel, Lethal Injection.
7 p.m., free
Green Arcade
1680 Market, SF
(415) 431-6800

Monday, June 7

A Soft Place to Land
Susan Rebecca White discusses her new book about sisters whose relationship becomes complicated by resentment, anger, and jealousy.
7:30 p.m., free
Books Inc. Marina
2251 Chestnut, SF
(415) 931-3633

Peter Allen
Hear the Green Party candidate for California Attorney General discuss energy policy as it relates to the tragic oil spill happening in the Gulf of Mexico, and what the spill can teach us when discussing nuclear energy.
7 p.m., free
Green Arcade
1680 Market, SF
(415) 431-6800

Second Nature: The inner lives of animals
Author Jonathan Balcombe, joined by the Berkeley Humane Society, presents his book that shakes human supremacy and opens the door to the inner lives of animals.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Berkeley
1760 4th St., SF
(510) 525-7777

Tuesday, June 8

The Accordionist’s Son
Stanford scholar and author Bernardo Atxaga will give a literary reading and discussion. Atxaga is a Basque novelist known for writing in Euskera, a language forbidden in Spain by the Franco regime. He will discuss his early experiences writing in a suppressed language and his identity as both a Spanish and Basque writer.
12:30 p.m., free
111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna, SF
(415) 974-1719‎

“Giacomo Puccini’s The Girl of the Golden West”
Join the San Francisco Opera and the California Historical Society for this presentation on Puccini’s opera about the California Gold Rush.
6 p.m., free
California Historical Society Museum
678 Mission, SF
RSVP at (415) 357-1848, ext. 229, or email kjacobson@calhist.org

The Golden Game: Writers on Soccer
Alon Raab will read and discuss his co-edited book of soccer stories. Share your own soccer stories and legends in celebration of the 2010 World Cup.
6 p.m., free
Unversity Press Books
2430 Bancroft, Berk.
(510) 548-0585

“How to Ride Anywhere and Fix a Flat”
Attend this cycling skills and basic maintenance class that will provide helpful instructions for people who bike in the city and want to learn more about urban cycling.
6:30 p.m., free
REI
840 Brannan, SF
www.sfbike.org

Missing Mentor
Mary Stutts wil discuss her book, Missing Mentor: Women advising women on power, progress, and priorities.
7:30 p.m., free
Books Inc. Alameda
1344 Park, Alameda
(510) 522-2226

The More I Owe You
Hear author Michael Sledge discuss his new book about the beloved poet Elizabeth Bishop, including her life in Brazil and her relationship with her lover Lota de Macedo Soares.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Laurel Village
3515 California, SF
(415) 221-3666

Peepshow
Author Joshua Braff will read and discuss his book about a 17 year old boy who chooses to help his father run a porn theater in New York’s Times Square instead of embracing his mother’s Hasidic Jewish sect.
7:30 p.m., free
Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
www.booksmith.com

Writing on My Forehead
Nafisa Haji presents his bestselling book that meditates on the meaning of family, tradition, and the ties that bind.
7 p.m., free
Books Inc. Opera Plaza
601 Van Ness, SF
(415) 776-1111

Let the ICE picket begin

Mary Magee
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7
Let the ICE picket begin

Members of the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee launched a picket outside US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s Detention and Removal Operations office at 630 Sansome Street today to decry the activation of Secure Communities, which they describe as a “dangerous police-ICE collaboration program that threatens public safety.”


“In the wake of massive protests this weekend against Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, a broad coalition of immigrant rights advocates will stage a protest Tuesday in San Francisco against the implementation of a new police-ICE collaboration initiative which will harm public safety, the so-called ‘Secure’ Communities or S-Comm program,” SFIRDC’s press release states.

Concerned community members plan to form a picket line holding placards of enlarged fingerprints and multi-lingual messages “to expose the danger the program poses to the community.”

 “If we oppose Arizona’s SB1070, then we cannot stand aside while a dangerous policy with disturbing similarities to SB1070 is forced on our own city,” Carolina Morales of Community United Against Violence stated. “S-Comm gives dangerous discretion to police officers to falsely arrest or overcharge immigrant residents, who would then be automatically reported for deportation.”

The picket comes as a veto-proof majority of eight SF Supervisors stands poised to vote next week (there is no Board meeting today) on a resolution calling on local law enforcement to opt-out of S-Comm, noting that the policy “puts at risk even those subject to arrest for a minor infraction and those who did not commit any crime at all but were falsely arrested. “

To date, the Mayor’s Office has not indicated that Newsom has any concerns with the program.
But San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who requested to opt out of the program, has stated that S-Comm “will widen the net (of people reported to ICE) excessively” and that ICE has a “record of secrecy.”

Last year, the California Dept. of Justice signed a memorandum with ICE on the S-Comm program; the cover letter indicated that counties needed to agree to the program by signing a “statement of intent.” But last week, Attorney General Brown denied the Sheriff’s request to opt out, so community and legal advocates continue to explore their options.
 
 “The Attorney General is mistaken in believing that this program will only affect people who have already been apprehended and deported by ICE or charged with serious offenses,” said Francisco Ugarte, an immigrant rights attorney with Dolores Street Community Services.

.
 According to ICE’s own data, 5  percent of the people identified under the S-Comm program were U.S. citizens, and some 9 out of 10 of the total identified were charged with low level offenses, including property and traffic violations, not serious crimes.
And then there’s the fact that ICE’s data does not indicate whether those deported were actually found guilty of crimes, or were simply charged with crimes—a key distinction for anyone who professes to believe in human rights.

 “Our city’s families are living in fear that if they report a threat to their own safety, they or their family member may risk deportation, “ Nour Chammas with the Arab Resource and Organizing Center stated in SFIRDC’s press release. “This policy will tear at the very fabric of San Francisco’s rich and diverse culture.”

And Bobbi Lopez of La Voz Latina observed that folks are working on a federal level for immigration reform because they know real solutions to a broken immigration system.  “However, we cannot just sit idly by and wait while ICE’s police collaboration schemes threaten our families daily,” Lopez warned. “ We are proud that city officials are standing with community members to halt this attack on our San Francisco community.” 

Today’s picket was called for by the following members of SFIRDC:
African Advocacy Network, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Asian Law Caucus,
CARECEN, Causa Justa: Just Cause, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Chinese Progressive Association, Communities United Against Violence, Dolores Street Community Services, East Bay Alliance for Sustainable Economy, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Instituto Familiar de la Raza, La Raza Centro Legal / SF Day Labor Program, La Voz Parents Council, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, National Lawyers Guild SF Bay Area Chapter, People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, SF Pride at Work, and South of Market Community Action Network.

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.

THURSDAY 3

Craft Bar Museum of Craft and Folk Art, 51 Yerba Buena Lane, SF; (415) 227-4888. 6pm; $5 includes gallery admission and craft supplies. Explore your crafty creative process at this outdoor craft garden featuring crochet fabric appliquéd jewelry, Asian pop culture emporium Giant Robot launching their new pop-up store, a free-form stitch and bitch area, live music, and refreshments from Trumer Pilsner.

Divisadero Art Walk Divisadero between Geary and Haight, SF; divisaderoartwalk.blogspot.com. 5pm-midnight, free. Spend the night enjoying the best of the Divisadero corridor with art openings, food and drink specials, extended hours for galleries and retails stores, and more.

“Hipster Apocalypse” Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 441-4099. 8pm, free. Artists Megan Wolfe, Teppei Ando, Kevin Buckley, Mario Delgado, Albert Nguyen, Tamar Solomon, Marcus Thiele, and David Young V imagine a world where alternative culture is pop culture and are showcasing paintings and drawings that focus on the rise of hipster culture in the mainstream and challenge it’s very survival as a culture based on opposing the mainstream. Oh, the irony.

SpaceCRAFT CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.cellspace.org. 7pm, free. Check out new works by CELLspace resident artists at this monthly reception featuring performance artists, music, dance, food, and drinks.

FRIDAY 4

SF Underground Market SomArts, 934 Brannan, SF; www.foragesf.com. 11am-Midnight, $2. Taste and purchase food that is being produced in backyards and home kitchens in the Bay Area at this market with live music, food and drinks. The market helps producers without the cash for a commercial kitchen tap into a “homemade community” to get some exposure.

BAY AREA

Oakland Under $100 Temescal Art Center, 511 48th St., Oakl.; (510) 923-1074. 7pm, free. Shop for affordable local art at this community event happening in conjunction with the monthly Oakland Art Murmur featuring local musicians and work by artists Mark Peterson, Allyson O’ Brien, Terrence Dowd, Hollyce Jones, Rachel Hubbard, Alice Worland, and more.

SATURDAY 5

Mujeres Unidas y Activas Family Festival Dolores Park, above the tennis courts, Dolores at 18th St., SF; (415) 621-8140, ext. 310. 1pm, free. Cheer for the participants in the Latino Food Contest, enjoy delicious food, and take part in fun activities for the whole family at this Taste of MUA Family Festival.

National Parks Free Days Participating National Parks in California, for a full list of participating parks, visit www.nps.gov/findapark/feefreeparks. Sat.-Sun, regular park hours. All weekend, the National Park Service is waiving entrance fees, tour fees, and transportation entrance fees on select parks across the United States. Participating California parks include Muir Woods National Monument, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, Yosemite National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Sequoia National Park, and many more.

Nature Fan Fest SF Botanical Garden Recreation Room, Golden Gate Park, SF; RSVP at heydayooks.com. 2pm, free. Celebrate Bay Area nature and the work of John “Jack” Muir Laws at this informational session and party featuring presentations on how to get involved with local organizations like Tree Frog Treks, Bay Nature, and Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, Teacake Bake Shop cupcakes, buttons, books, and more.

Union Street Fair Union between Gough and Steiner, SF; 1-800-310-6563. 10am-6pm, free. Enjoy arts and crafts booths, gourmet food vendors, live music, bistro style cafes, and more at this year’s eco-urban themed Union Street Fair featuring two blocks of green exhibitors, educational displays, and sustainable art.

BAY AREA

Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival Sidewalks along North Shattuck, Berk.; www.anotherbullwinkleshow.com. 10am, free. Sign up for free to be assigned an area of sidewalk to create your best chalk drawing and to be entered to win prizes or purchase a packet of tickets ($10) to sample chocolate treats from participating businesses in the area.

East Bay Open Studios Artist Studios across the East Bay. For more info and to get a map, visit www.proartsgallery.org/ebos. Sat-Sun, various times; free. Gain access to over 400 artists’ studios around the East Bay and peek into the creative process of local artists, socialize with other art lovers, and get a chance to buy works directly.

La Peña Day Prince and Shattuck, Berk.; (510) 849-2568. Noon-6pm, free. Enjoy this street fair and carnival to celebrate La Peña’s 35th anniversary as an open space for community action through the arts featuring cultural dance and music performances that showcase the talents of it’s diverse community, food, art, vendors, and more.

SUNDAY 6

Indie Mart Design & DIY Street Fair Thee Parkside, Wisconsin between 16th and 17th St., SF; www.indie_mart.com. Noon-6pm, $3 suggested donation. Indie Mart is back and bigger than ever with over 100 vendors bringing you locally made and designed, unique goodies, art, and baked treats, live music with Music for Animals, Jonesin’, Magic Magic Roses, and Red, White, and Drunken, stiff drinks, cheap beers & fresh BBQ from Thee Parkside, a demo station brought to you by Workshop, San Franpsycho live printing, Heavy Metal Aerobics, DJs, and more.

BAY AREA

Oral History Project: Our Elders’ Stories Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar, Berk.; (510) 841-4824. 2pm, free. Join member of your community for good food and to hear some of recorded stories from the Oral History Project and enjoy the accompanying photo exhibit of participating elders paired with quotes from the project. The recordings will be transferred into the UC Bancroft Library.

 

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

OPENING

Abigail: The Salem Witch Trials Temple SF, 540 Howard; www.templesf.com. $10. Opens Thurs/3, 9pm. Runs June 10, July 8, 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.

"Durang Me!" Next Stage, 1620 Gough; 1-800-838-3006, www.custommade.org. $10-28. Previews Fri/4-Sat/5, 8pm. Opens Tues/8, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (no show July 4). Through July 10. Custom Made performs two comedies by Christopher Durang: Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, and The Actor’s Nightmare.

Forever Never Comes Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-25. Previews Sat/5, 8pm; Sun/6, 5pm. Opens June 9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. Crowded Fire performs Enrique Urueta’s world premiere "psycho-Southern queer country dance tragedy."

Krapp’s Last Tape Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-30. Previews Fri/4-Sat/5, 8pm; Sun/6, 5pm. Opens June 10, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through July 3. Cutting Ball Theater performs Samuel Beckett’s comedy, which the company has previously mounted to wide acclaim.

BAY AREA

John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Wy, Orinda; (510) 548-9666, www.calshakes.org. $34-70. Previews Wed/2-Fri/4, 8pm. Opens Sat/5, 8pm. Runs Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also June 26, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through June 27. Cal Shakes kicks off its season with Octavio Solis’ world-premiere adaptation of John Steinbecks’s 1932 novella.

Opus Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $27-62. Previews Wed/2-Fri/4, 8pm. Opens Sat/5, 8pm. Runs Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 27. TheatreWorks performs Michael Hollinger’s drama, set in the world of chamber music.

ONGOING

All My Sons Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.ticketweb.com. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. Actors Theatre performs Arthur Miller’s masterwork.

Andy Warhol: Good For the Jews? Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida; 292-1233, www.tjt-sf.org. $15-45. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 20. Renowned monologist Josh Kornbluth is ready to admit his niche is a narrow one: he talks about himself, and more than that, he talks about his relationship to his beloved late father, the larger-than-life old-guard communist of Kornbluth’s breakthrough Red Diaper Baby. So it will not be surprising that in his current (and still evolving) work, created with director David Dower, the performer-playwright’s attempt to "enter" Warhol’s controversial ten portraits of famous 20th-century Jews (neatly illuminated at the back of the stage) stirs up memories of his father, along with a close family friend — an erudite bachelor and closeted homosexual who impressed the boyhood Josh with bedtime stories culled from his dissertation. The scenes in which Kornbluth recreates these childhood memories are among the show’s most effective, although throughout the narrative Kornbluth, never more confident in his capacities, remains a knowing charmer. (Avila)

The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-30. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 12. SF Playhouse presents the world premiere of William Bivins’ new play, set at the sleazy Lazy Eight Motel, as part of its stripped-down Sandbox Series.

Bone to Pick and Diadem Cutting Ball Theater, Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 20. Cutting Ball Theater closes its tenth season with a pair of plays by Eugenie Chan.

Boys Will Be Boys New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 26. What happens when you realize you have Gay Attention Deficit Disorder? This comedic musical aims to find out.

The Breath of Life NohSpace, 2840 Mariposa; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Thurs/3-Sat/5, 8pm; Sun/6, 5pm. Spare Stage Productions performs David Hare’s drama about a wife and mistress dumped by the same man.

Giant Bones Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (650) 728-8098, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-50. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 19. Fantasy author Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) penned the source material for Stuart Bousel’s world-premiere play.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Thurs, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 27. On the principle that when you’ve got it you should really flaunt it, San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers essay their second revival of a musical by the storied Cockettes. Hot Greeks, which premiered in midnight performances at the old Palace Theater in 1972, was the gleefully crazed cross-dressing troupe’s only other fully scripted musical besides, of course, Pearls Over Shanghai.

While not the Oresteia or anything, Hot Greeks is more than an excuse for a lot of louche, libidinous hilarity. Okay, not much more. But it is a knowing little romp — supported by some infectious songs courtesy of Martin Worman and Richard "Scrumbly" Koldewyn — wedding trashy high school romance with the trashy ancient Greece of Aristophanes and the Peloponnesian War. (Avila)

*How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lost My Virginity SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Sun, 7pm. Through June 27. A natural born charmer and a comedic actor with hard-won training behind her, Aileen Clark wins over an audience within about ten seconds. But her stories (co-scripted by John Caldon and ably directed by Claire Rice) turn out to be just as solid: all of them loving, irreverent, and unfailingly hilarious autobiographical accounts of coming of age across three cultures. Born to a Nicaraguan mother and a Scottish father and raised principally in Brazil, Managua and San Francisco, Clark’s perfectly pitched monologue comes liberally spiced with Spanish and Portuguese, sweetened by an affecting but never maudlin honesty, and stirred with a feisty humor clearly a lifetime in the making. As well paced and energetic as this Guerilla Rep and Ann Marie co-production is, it could probably be tightened further by shaving some 10 minutes off the 90-minute run time. Nonetheless, you are not likely to regret a minute of this frank and funny, wise and sassy visit to Aileen’s world. (Avila)

Marga Gomez is Proud and Bothered New Conservatory Theater Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $18-40. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (no show June 25); Sun, 2pm. Through June 26. Gomez performs her GLAAD Media award-winning comedy.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St.; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 26. Starting July 10, runs Sat, 8pm and Sun, 7pm. Through August 1. Thrillpeddlers presents this revival of the legendary Cockettes’ 1970 musical extravaganza.

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.

Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show Marines’ Memorial Theater, 609 Sutter; 771-6900. $30-89. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 27. From somewhere before the Beatles and after Broadway "Beatlemania" comes this big band cigarettes-and-high-ball nightclub act, recreating the storied Vegas stage shenanigans of iconic actor-crooners Frank Sinatra (David DeCosta), Dean Martin (Tony Basile), and Sammy Davis Jr. (Doug Starks), and sidekick comedian Joey Bishop (Sandy Hackett). The band is all-pro and the songs sound great — DeCosta’s singing as Sinatra is uncanny, but all do very presentable renditions of signature songs and standards. Meanwhile, a lot of mincing about the stage and the drink cart meets with more mixed success, and I don’t just mean scotch and soda. The Rat Pack is pre-PC, of course, but the off-color humor, while no doubt historically sound, can be dully moronic. (Avila)

"Something C.O.O.L.: The Summer Cabaret Festival" Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; www.brownpapertickets.com. Free-$10. Mon-Tues, 7:30pm; Wed, 8pm. Through June 27. Cabaret singer Carly Ozard presents six diverse showcases (Mon-Tues nights) and hosts open mics (Wed nights) with professional performers.

Speed the Plow Royce Gallery, 2910 Mariposa; 1-866-811-4111, www.speedtheplowsf.com. $28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 19. Expression Productions performs David Mamet’s black comedy.

The New Century New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; June 13, 20, and July 11, 2pm. Through July 11. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Paul Rudnick’s bill of short comedies.

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through July 30. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

BAY AREA

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri/4, June 11, 18, 9pm; Sun/6, June 20, 7pm; June 12, 8pm. Through June 20. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

"Fireworks Festival" Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $25-35. Through July 3, showtimes vary. This performance festival includes work by John Leguizamo, David Sedaris (whose show is already sold out), Dan Hoyle, and Wes "Scoop" Nisker.

God’s Ear Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-28. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; and Sun, 5pm. Through June 20. Against a frozen, deceptively empty-looking landscape of perpetual winter, an anguished married couple stagnates in grief over the accidental death of their young son. Estranged by the sorrow and guilt they feel, they spend most of the time apart but not alone: Mel (Beth Wilmurt) stays at home, where she loses herself in obsessive domestic projects while fielding questions from their surviving daughter — the equally traumatized but far more resilient Lanie (Nika Ezell Pappas) — with assists from the Tooth Fairy (Melinda Meeng) and G.I. Joe (Keith Pinto); meanwhile, Ted (Ryan O’Donnell) wanders in his business suit through a string of airports and airport bars commiserating with other lost souls (Joe Estlack and Zehra Berkman). New York-based playwright Jenny Schwartz’s whimsical meditation on the process of grieving is something like The Rabbit Hole as written by Ionesco, fueled by dialogue that makes an overly showy and eventually tedious hysterical poetry of the banalities, clichés, and platitudes spoken by her stricken characters as a kind of prefab linguistic armor — everything and anything to avoid saying something. Director-choreographer Erika Chong Shuch stages the action in this Shotgun Players production with warm energy and imagination, however — and a handful of tuneful, clever songs from composer Daveen Digiacomo — compensating somewhat for the motionless plot. Moreover, Shuch undercuts the play’s maudlin tendencies by moving her able actors and even the stage properties around in swift, comical, aptly dreamlike fashion, as the stunned couple continue their largely separate meanderings, meaningfully spouting "meaningless" lines about bucking up, or settling in, or riding off, etc. The problem is there is not much beneath this frozen surface of clichés beyond more cliché. (Avila)

*In the Wake Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $13.50-71. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees Thurs/3, June 12, or 17; no show June 25); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 27.

Brilliantly weaving the political and the personal, New York playwright Lisa Kron takes on the myth and mayhem of American exceptionalism through the prism of a compelling lefty smarty-pants named Ellen (Heidi Schreck) and her "alternative" family circle, as it slowly unravels during the first decade of the 21st century. From her modest Manhattan perch — shared with adoring, wise-cracking longtime boyfriend Danny (Carson Elrod) — Ellen rails against the ineptitude of the Democrats in the face of the rising Right and its season of havoc. But she’s already told the audience she has a problem with "blind spots," much like the country. Projections of headlines and sound bites, intermittently splayed across the fortified proscenium arch, locate the action at precise moments in the dreary political timeline of the last decade, beginning with the 2000 election coup that has put a damper on Thanksgiving festivities (despite inclusion of Pilgrim smocks). Her sister (Andrea Frankle) and sister’s wife (Danielle Skraastad) are there too, along with Ellen’s older friend Judy (Deidre O’Connell), a cranky, deceptively oblivious relief worker just back from a refugee camp in Africa. As time goes by, and Ellen turns to an open relationship with a woman filmmaker (Emily Donahoe), our protagonist’s bedrock assumptions about the natural order of things get sorely tested. Leigh Silverman directs a top-notch cast in a remarkably engaging mix of political dialogue and personal entanglements, written for the most part with stirring intelligence and incisive humor. If the play loses focus and momentum by the second act — despite a wonderfully charged scene between Ellen and Judy that is the play’s most memorable — its wit, real anger and constructive irreverence still make it too good to miss. (Avila)

1001 Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 488-4116, www.justtheater.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (no show Sun/6). Through June 20. Just Theater performs Jason Groete’s Arabian Nights-inspired tale of post-9/11 life.

Twelfth Night La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 12. You’ve got to hand it to Impact Theatre: they make reimagining Shakespeare look so darned easy. To set a crass comedy about class, obsession, and mistaken identity at "Illyria Studios" in the heart of tawdry Tinseltown seems like such an obvious take, you wonder why it took someone so long to get around to doing it. True, the execution is not as vivacious as last year’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but overall, the enthusiastic cast and timeless humor win the night. (Gluckstern)

Woody Guthrie’s American Song Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-54. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also June 10, 1pm; Sat/5 and June 20, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Marin Theatre Company presents Peter Glazer’s musical based on the life and times of the legendary songwriter.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $10-50. Sun, 11am. Through June 27. The Amazing Bubble Man, a.k.a. Louis Pearl, performs his family-friendly show.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

"Bakla Show II" Thick House, 1695 18th St; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 12. $15-20. Bindlestiff Studio presents this theatrical exploration of queer Filipino identities, inspired by myths and folktales.

"Festival of New Voices II: The Next Wave of Solo Performance" Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Wed-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5, 5:30, 8:30, and 9pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 13. $7.50-50. Six new full-length works and 11 shorter works make up this solo-performance fest.

"Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation presents One Night Only Cabaret" Theatre 39, Pier 39; 273-1620, www.helpisontheway.org. Mon, 7:30. $38-58. This fundraising show features cast members from Broadway musical In the Heights, plus Jai Rodriguez, Marga Gomez, and RJ Helton.

"San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival" Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon; 474-3914, www.worldartswest.org. Sat-Sun, 2pm (also Sat, 8pm). Through June 27. $22-44. Nearly 600 Bay Area performers representing 20 cultures participate in this 32nd annual festival.

"Standing in the Current" Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St; 273-4633, www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. $20. Spinning Yarns Dance Collective performs in partnership with Robin Anderson and Chicago-based RE/Dance.

"Ungrateful Daughter: One Black Girl’s Story of Being Adopted into a White Family That Aren’t Celebrities" StageWerx, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 12. $20-25. Lisa Marie Rollins performs her autobiographical show.

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. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Enrique Bunbury Fillmore. 8pm, $45.

Tinsley Ellis Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $18.

First Aid Kit, Samantha Crain, Grand Lake Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $15.

Local Natives, Suckers Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Mumford and Sons, Middle East Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Telltale Heartbreakers, Distance from Shelter, Culo a Boca Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Afreaka! Attic, 3336 24th St, SF; (415) 643-3376. 10pm, free. Psychedelic beats from Brazil, Turkey, India, Africa, and across the globe with DJs MAKossa and Om.

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.

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

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.

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.

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ashdautas, Volahn, Axeman, Arizmenda Kimo’s. 9pm, $8.

Citay, Barn Owl, Sarees Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

DBC, Bronze, DJ Yule B Sorry, DJ Deadbeat Knockout. 10pm, $6.

50 Cent Warfield. 8pm, $49.75-69.75.

Heavy Hills, Mystery Lights, Mrcy Hot Spngs Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

LCD Soundsystem Fillmore. 9pm, $35.

Laurie Morvan Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Monks of Doom, Jack Curtis Dubrowsky Endemble Eagle Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Rayband Coda. 9:30pm, $7.

Screaming Females, Songs for Moms, Street Eaters Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Thrice, Kevin Devine, We Barbarians Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $24.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

High Country Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Mister and Sweetie Show Mercury Café, 201 Octavia, SF; (415) 252-7855.

*Tag Team Trio Shift Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF; (415) 255-5971?. 8pm, $6-$100 sliding scale. Over 20 musicians will participate in this tag team trio performance in memory of Matthew Sperry.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Base Turns 5 Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585?. With DJ Joris Voorn spinning underground house.

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 Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

Holy Thursday Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Bay Area electronic hip hop producers showcase their cutting edge styles monthly.

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

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro.

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

Nullsleep, 8 Bit Weapon, ComputeHer, Crashfaster DNA Lounge. 9pm, $12. Chip music.

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.

Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

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

Studio SF Triple Crown. 9pm, $5. Keeping the Disco vibe alive with authentic 70’s, 80’s, and current disco with DJs White Girl Lust, Ken Vulsion, and Sergio.

FRIDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Born Ruffians, Young Rival, Tempo No Tempo Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

Crown City Rockers, J-Boogie’s Dubtronic Science, DJ Zeph, Skins and Needles Independent. 9pm, $18.

Cute is What We Aim For, Friday Night Boys, Bigger Lights, Down With Webster Slim’s. 7:30pm, $15.

Sage Francis, Free Mortal Agents, B. Dolan Fillmore. 9pm, $22.50.

Isis, Tombs, Jacob Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $17.

Junior Panthers, B and not B, Kill Moi Milk. 8pm, $7.

*Midnite Snaxxx, Chemicals, Bill Collectors Pissed-Off Pete’s, 4528 Mission, SF; www.pissedoffpetes.com. 9pm.

Coco Montoya Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

*Morne, Flood, Vastum Elbo Room. 10pm, $7.

Screaming Females, Winter Ox Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

X (Australia), A Frames, Mantles Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

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

Dr. John and the Lower 911 Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $28-36.

Jazz Mafia Big Band Coda. 10pm, $10.

Pascal Boker Group with Donald Bailey Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $5.

Paul Dresher Ensemble Double Duo Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento, SF; www.oldfirstconcerts.org. 8pm, $17.

Renee Rosnes with Bill Charlap, Toshiko Akiyoshi with Lew Tabackin Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-50.

“San Francisco Guitar Summit” Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 8:15pm, $18.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Devine’s Jug Band Red Poppy Art House. 9pm, $10-$20.

White Buffalo Hotel Utah. 9pm, $12.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Big Tune DNA Lounge. 8pm, $5. Hip-hop with DJ Toomp and Rick Rock.

Braza! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521.10pm, $10.

Deeper 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With rotating DJs spinning dubstep and techno.

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.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. 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.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

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

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.

Strange Love Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF; (415) 703-8965. 9:30pm, $6. A “Battle of the Sexes” with DJs Tomas Diablo, Justin, Mz. Samantha, and Starr spinning goth and industrial.

SATURDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Captured! By Robots, Don’ts, Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $12.

Bart Davenport, Winfred E. Eye, We Is Shore Dedicated Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Dodos Independent. 8pm, $20-40.

Insane Clown Posse, Kottonmouth Kings, Coolio, Kittie Warfield. 7pm, $35.

Hans Keller, Spiral Bombs, Spyrals, Joe Salvatore Li Po Lounge. 8:30pm, $5.

Loquat, Hot Toddies, Frail, Lindy Lafontaine, DJ Miss Watkins Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $15.

Matt and Kim, Golden Filter, Soft Pack Mezzanine. 9pm, $20.

Eric McFadden and Friends of the Faraway Family Coda. 10pm, $10.

Nothington, Classics of Love, Spanish Gamble, Fire Whiskey Thee Parkside. 9:30pm, $8.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Primal Fear, Havok Slim’s. 9pm, $21.

Red Light Circuit, Jeepster, Little Black Bats Epicenter Café, 764 Harrison, SF; (415) 543-5436. 7pm, free.

“School of Rock presents R&B Royalty” Thee Parkside. 2pm, $10.

Shakin’ Michael J, John Predny, Icekat and the Mengs Pissed-Off Pete’s, 4528 Mission, SF; www.pissedoffpetes.com. 9pm.

Stormy California, Mote Elbo Room. 5:30pm, $7.

Super Adventure Club, DownDownDown, Giani Velcreaux Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

“US Air Guitar Championships: San Francisco Regional” Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

Veil Veil Vanish, Bleassure Grave, Deathday Party, Sleeping Desires Milk. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Big B and His Snakeoil Survivors Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.snakeoilswing.com. 8:30pm, $10.

Dr. John and the Lower 911 Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $36.

Donny McCaslin Trio with Hans Glawischnig and Jonathan Blake Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 8pm, $25.

Susanna Smith Group Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $8.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Old Man Markley Plough and Stars. 9pm, $6-$10.

Rachid Taha, Cheb I Sabbah Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Dead After Dark Knockout. 6-9pm, free. With DJ Touchy Feely.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. Nineties alternative with DJs Jamie Jams and Emdee.

Everlasting Bass 330 Ritch. 10pm, $5-10. Bay Area Sistah Sound presents this party, with DJs Zita and Pam the Funkstress spinning hip-hop, soul, funk, reggae, dancehall, and club classics.

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.

Foundation Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm.

Gemini Disco Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Disco with DJ Derrick Love and Nicky B. spinning deep disco.

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.

Kontrol Endup. 10pm, $20. With resident DJs Alland Byallo, Craig Kuna, Sammy D, and Nikola Baytala spinning minimal techno and avant house.

Leisure Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $7. DJs Omar, Aaron, and Jet Set James spinning classic britpop, mod, 60s soul, and 90s indie.

Mini Non-Stop Bhangra Rickshaw Stop. Noon-3pm, $5-10. Family-friendly event.

New Wave City DNA Lounge. 9pm, $7-12. Smiths tribute with Skip and Shindog.

Rebel Girl Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $5. “Electroindierockhiphop” and 80s dance party for dykes, bois, femmes, and queers with DJ China G and guests.

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

Souf Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Jeanine Da Feen, Motive, and Bozak spinning southern crunk, bounce, hip hop, and reggaeton.

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

Soundscape Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. With DJs C3PLOS, Brighton Russ, and Nick Waterhouse spinning Soul jazz, boogaloo, hammond grooves, and more.

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

SUNDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“Indie-Mart” Thee Parkside. 12:30pm, free. With Music for Animals, Jonesin’, Pleasure Kills.

Japanther, Jaguar Love Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14.

MC Chris, MC Lars feat. YTCracker, Math the Band Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

“School of Rock” Make-Out Room. 2pm, $10.

Sunday Services with Lord Nasty, TSG Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

*”20th Anniversary Party for the List” Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $10. With Filth, Needles, Pigs, and Fix My Head.

Luther Wright and the Wrongs, Jack Grace Band Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Hot Frittatas Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $15-$20.

DANCE CLUBS

Afterglow Nickies, 466 Haight, SF; (415) 255-0300. An evening of mellow electronics with resident DJs Matt Wilder, Mike Perry, Greg Bird, and guests.

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, $8-11. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJs Vinnie Esparza and Maneesh the Twister.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.

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

Shuckin’ and Jivin’ Knockout. 10pm, free. Boppers, rock, and more, at 78 RPM with DJs Dr. Scott and Oran.

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

MONDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Independent. 8pm, $30.

Crash Test Dummies Café du Nord. 9pm, $16-18.

Fever Dream, Rival Parties, Mallard El Rio. 7pm.

Good Old War, Yukon Blonde, Audra Mae Bottom of the Hill. 8pm, $10.

Yogoman Burning Band, Revival Soundsystem Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

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.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

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 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Zachary Blizzard, Lookbook, Winebirds Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Cheap Girls, Menzingers, Good Knives, Singularity Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

Chief Hotel Utah. 8pm, $6.

Corner Laughers, Farewell Typewriter, Clarences Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Karen Elson Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $15. Holy Fuck, Nice Nice Independent. 9pm, $15.

*Pestilence, Warbringer, Vital Remains, Enfold Darkness, Sacrificial Slaughter DNA Lounge. 6:30pm, $20.

Henry Rollins Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 8pm, $25.

Rufio, Higher, Goodnight Caulfield, Loomis and the Lust Slim’s. 8pm, $15. DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck and DJ Chaos.

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

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Mixology Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; (415) 441-2922. 10pm, $2. DJ Frantik mixes with the science and art of music all night.

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.

Alerts

David Talbot
-
0

alert@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, JUNE 3

"Heather Has Cool Mommies"


In honor of Pride month and in light of current events around same-sex marriage, the San Francisco Public Library will be presenting a weekly documentary film series throughout June about LGBT parents. Films include Choosing Children, In My Shoes: Stories of Youth with LGBT Parents, Transparent, Transamerica, and Daddy and Pappa.

Noon, free

San Francisco Public Library

Main Branch

Koret Auditorium

100 Larkin, SF

(415) 557-4400

"Rape, Prostitution, and Trafficking"


Attend this discussion about the issue of consent in the occurrences of rape, prostitution, and trafficking worldwide and the growing international movement for women’s safety. The movement seeks to stop equating prostitution with rape, supports decriminalizing sex work, and opposes the use of trafficking laws to deport immigrant sex workers. Featuring keynote speaker Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock.

5:30 p.m., free

San Francisco Public Library

Main Branch

Latino Hispanic Room B

100 Larkin, SF

(415) 626-4114

FRIDAY, JUNE 4

Nuclear Abolition Day


In preparation for Nuclear Abolition Day on Saturday, Tri-Valley CAREs, United for Peace and Justice, and Peace Action West are organizing a protest at Bechtel Corporation, one of the top profiteers of the war in Iraq. Join protesters worldwide in demanding that governments begin negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention to ban all nuclear weapons.

Noon, free

Bechtel Corporation Headquarters

50 Beale, SF
www.trivalleycares.org

Respect for women


Join this conversation about violence against women and the need to foster shared respect and dignity. Featuring Elayne Doughty from Planet Breathe, Carolyn Thomas-Russell from A Safe Place, and Robert W. Plath from Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance. Proceeds benefit these organizations.

7 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall

1924 Cedar, Berk.

(415) 370-5466

SATURDAY, JUNE 5

Fight for Immigrant Rights


Attend this organizing meeting with the International Socialist Organization to demand amnesty and stop the racist scapegoating that Arizona’s anti-immigration law, AB 1070, encourages. A panel of immigrants’ rights and labor activists discuss what we can do to stop this civil injustice and to build a movement that can win justice and equality for all.

1 p.m., free

Redstone Building

Luna Sea Room, 2nd floor

2926-2948 16th St., SF

http://norcalsocialism.org

SUNDAY, JUNE 6

Grassroots House Collective


Attend this fundraiser for the Grassroots House Collective, a nonprofit community space and meeting place for grassroots organizations and projects like Copwatch, Prisoners Literature Project, Industrial Workers of the World, and more. Bay Area singer-songwriters will present new arrangements and interpretations of their songs.

3 p.m., $15-$25

Grassroots House Collective

2022 Blake, Berk.

www.grassrootshouse.org 2

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.

Newsom’s lousy economics

David Talbot
-
0

EDITORIAL Every major newspaper in California should have plastered the May 2010 report from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research across the front page. The headline: “Governor’s budget will destroy 331,000 jobs.”

It’s a stunning analysis. Ken Jacobs, who heads the center, and two associates used a sophisticated computer program to track exactly how the cuts would play out in the current California economy. If the governor’s proposals are adopted, the job losses would greatly exceed any new job creation, causing the unemployment rate in the state to rise by 1.8 percent.

On the other hand, the study shows, raising taxes on rich people and oil companies would save 244,000 jobs.

So if, as nearly every politician of every party in the state insists, the biggest policy goal in California today is job creation, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going about it entirely the wrong way.

The good news is that the Democrats in the state Legislature are finally talking seriously about an alternative budget plan that includes about $5 billion in new revenue. The plans by the Assembly and Senate leadership aren’t perfect and will still require significant cuts to cover the budget gap. But after years of cuts-only budgets and a pervasive fear of tax increases in Sacramento, the Democratic proposals are encouraging. (Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor, shouldn’t worry about associating himself with the plans: two-thirds of Californians favor increased taxes on wealthy people to pay for better public education, according to the most recent Public Policy Institute of California poll.)

So at the very least, the state Capitol — a place not known as a bastion of progressive thought — is going to have an intelligent debate over how to address the budget deficit without further damaging the economy. Yet in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom continues to cling to a no-new-taxes budget that will devastate community services — and add to the city’s unemployment rate.

That’s just disgraceful.

Every city-employee union has stepped up to the plate and offered concessions. City workers are taking furloughs (actually, pay cuts) and layoffs. They’re giving back scheduled raises. They’re making a good faith effort to be part of the solution — in fact, labor is now pushing for an increase in the hotel tax to help cover the costs of public services.

Newsom isn’t asking any of the wealthy businesses or individuals in town to give anything.

That’s not just bad politics, it’s bad economics.

The Berkeley study acknowledges that raising taxes on the rich and big corporations has an economic impact — an oil severance tax, for example, would raise $1.4 billion a year for the state, reduce economic output by $128 million, and lead to the loss of 400 jobs. A 1.5 percent increase in the top income tax rate for individuals who earn more than $250,000 would bring the state $2.1 billion, and lead to the loss of 13,000 jobs.

But on balance, both of those are a good deal for the state — because cutting that $3.5 billion from the budget would cost the state far, far more than 13,400 jobs. That’s because when you eliminate public sector jobs, particularly lower-paid jobs, there’s a direct, immediate impact on consumer spending. Although a rich person may spend slightly less if he or she has to pay slightly higher taxes, a middle-income worker who gets laid off stops spending much of anything — and the local merchants who relied on that person’s spending see the impact.

In fact, the Berkeley study points out, more than half the jobs that would be lost under Schwarzenegger’s plan would be in the private sector. The same goes for San Francisco: saving jobs requires new revenue solutions. And if Newsom’s budget doesn’t address that, the San Francisco supervisors must.

Newsom’s lousy economics

David Talbot
-
0
Newsom’s lousy economics

EDITORIAL Every major newspaper in California should have plastered the May 2010 report from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research across the front page. The headline: “Governor’s budget will destroy 331,000 jobs.”

It’s a stunning analysis. Ken Jacobs, who heads the center, and two associates used a sophisticated computer program to track exactly how the cuts would play out in the current California economy. If the governor’s proposals are adopted, the job losses would greatly exceed any new job creation, causing the unemployment rate in the state to rise by 1.8 percent.

On the other hand, the study shows, raising taxes on rich people and oil companies would save 244,000 jobs.

So if, as nearly every politician of every party in the state insists, the biggest policy goal in California today is job creation, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going about it entirely the wrong way.

The good news is that the Democrats in the state Legislature are finally talking seriously about an alternative budget plan that includes about $5 billion in new revenue. The plans by the Assembly and Senate leadership aren’t perfect and will still require significant cuts to cover the budget gap. But after years of cuts-only budgets and a pervasive fear of tax increases in Sacramento, the Democratic proposals are encouraging. (Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor, shouldn’t worry about associating himself with the plans: two-thirds of Californians favor increased taxes on wealthy people to pay for better public education, according to the most recent Public Policy Institute of California poll.)

So at the very least, the state Capitol — a place not known as a bastion of progressive thought — is going to have an intelligent debate over how to address the budget deficit without further damaging the economy. Yet in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom continues to cling to a no-new-taxes budget that will devastate community services — and add to the city’s unemployment rate.

That’s just disgraceful.

Every city-employee union has stepped up to the plate and offered concessions. City workers are taking furloughs (actually, pay cuts) and layoffs. They’re giving back scheduled raises. They’re making a good faith effort to be part of the solution — in fact, labor is now pushing for an increase in the hotel tax to help cover the costs of public services.

Newsom isn’t asking any of the wealthy businesses or individuals in town to give anything.

That’s not just bad politics, it’s bad economics.

The Berkeley study acknowledges that raising taxes on the rich and big corporations has an economic impact — an oil severance tax, for example, would raise $1.4 billion a year for the state, reduce economic output by $128 million, and lead to the loss of 400 jobs. A 1.5 percent increase in the top income tax rate for individuals who earn more than $250,000 would bring the state $2.1 billion, and lead to the loss of 13,000 jobs.

But on balance, both of those are a good deal for the state — because cutting that $3.5 billion from the budget would cost the state far, far more than 13,400 jobs. That’s because when you eliminate public sector jobs, particularly lower-paid jobs, there’s a direct, immediate impact on consumer spending. Although a rich person may spend slightly less if he or she has to pay slightly higher taxes, a middle-income worker who gets laid off stops spending much of anything — and the local merchants who relied on that person’s spending see the impact.

In fact, the Berkeley study points out, more than half the jobs that would be lost under Schwarzenegger’s plan would be in the private sector. The same goes for San Francisco: saving jobs requires new revenue solutions. And if Newsom’s budget doesn’t address that, the San Francisco supervisors must.

 

The hidden zinger in Prop. 14

David Talbot
-
11
The hidden zinger in Prop. 14

 

By Richard Winger

OPINION Proposition 14, a June 8 ballot measure, would mandate that all candidates for Congress and state office appear on the same June ballot, and that all voters use that ballot. Only the two candidates who got the highest vote totals could run in November. Even write-ins would be banned in November for Congress and state offices.

Prop. 14 also has a hidden zinger in it that would remove the Peace and Freedom and Libertarian parties from the ballot. But so far only one daily newspaper has mentioned it — the San Francisco Chronicle, in a March 11 story by Wyatt Buchanan. The state ballot pamphlet says nothing about this particularly nasty detail of Prop. 14.

California has six recognized political parties: Democratic, Republican, American Independent, Green, Libertarian, and Peace and Freedom. The parties remain ballot-qualified either by polling 2 percent of the vote for any statewide race in a midterm year (all parties get a free ride in presidential years) or by maintaining registration equal to 1 percent of the last gubernatorial vote.

In practice, it’s far easier for the smaller parties to meet the first test. The Peace and Freedom Party has 58,000 registered members, and the Libertarian Party has 85,000 registered members. But these parties always meet the 2 percent vote test. Minor parties typically draw far more votes than they have registered members.

The problem is that Prop. 14 eliminates, in practice, the 2 percent vote test. Under Prop. 14, no party officially has any nominees for any office except president and vice-president. And since minor party candidates almost never place first or second in the June primary, minor party members would never be able to run for statewide office in November. And, the catch is that only the November vote counts for meeting the 2 percent vote test.

Prop. 14 also says that members of unqualified parties will not be permitted to list their party label on the June ballot.

The real irony is that the big newspapers of California know about this problem with Prop. 14 but refuse to mention it. That’s ironic because back in 1981, when Democrats in the Legislature wanted to toughen the ballot-access requirements, the big newspapers of California denounced that bill with full fury. Forty of California’s biggest newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations editorialized against that measure.

This year the Los Angeles Times (which led the charge for minor-party access in 1981) refused to mention that Prop. 14 has the same characteristic as that bill, only worse. The Times has rejected at least 10 op-eds submitted by various individuals in the last year that mentioned this problem. None of the Los Angeles Times stories about Prop. 14 have mentioned it. None of the political columnists for that newspaper have mentioned it.

Prop. 14 is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the for-profit health insurance companies, the for-profit hospitals, and various multimillionaires, and the Yes on 14 campaign has a huge war chest. Why won’t the L.A. Times even mention this flaw in the measure? Who are the big dailies afraid of offending?

Richard Winger is the editor of Ballot Access News.

 

Public employees step up; when will Newsom and downtown?

Sasha Cuttler
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7
Public employees step up; when will Newsom and downtown?

With news that Muni union leaders are backing salary givebacks to help close San Francisco’s $483 million budget deficit, all city employees are now making sacrifices to preserve city services that we all rely on. But as we eagerly await the release of the mayor’s budget on June 1 – in which some city departments have been asked to make cuts of up to 30 percent – the question is whether Mayor Gavin Newsom will find the courage to ask other San Francisco entities to help.

For example, will he support the 2 percent increase in the hotel tax that labor is pushing (and which polls show would probably pass muster with voters if Newsom backed it), a real estate transfer tax that would hit the comfortably rich, or a downtown transit assessment district that would make corporations finally help pay for the transit services their employees rely on?

So far, it’s doesn’t look like it (and his Communications Office won’t respond to the question). Instead, Newsom has cynically engaged in deceptive blame games that scapegoat public employees for a problem he created (for example, by approving bloated police and fire contracts to win political support and then blocking efforts to seek new revenue sources), while still pushing gimmicky new spending programs designed to burnish his political image as he runs for state office.

This could be Newsom’s last chance to finally show some leadership, and now is the time when it’s needed most. After offering cuts-only city budgets his entire tenure in office, most city departments are unable to go any further without sacrificing needed services.

The situation has become dire, as workers said Wednesday during a budget rally outside City Hall. Guardian news intern Kaitlyn Paris was there covering the action and offers this report:

Community groups from around San Francisco rallied in front of City Hall on Wednesday to protest the drastic reductions that health and human services face in the Governor’s proposed state budget and Mayor Newsom’s impending city budget.

A graveyard of tombstones representing each of the organizations stuck out of the sand next to the grassy square where participants gathered. Identifiable by their maroon sweatshirts, the largest faction present was the Community Housing Partnership. The proposed budget would cut over $100,000 from the agency and its programs that provide help with employment, substance abuse, and habitation development.

“Supervisors need to be constantly reminded of the merits of these services,” CHP employee Gabriel Haywood told us.

The partnership runs a jobs retention program that Haywood says has exceeded its city-mandated job retention rate by 25 percent, keeping 75 percent of the people it serves employed for longer than three months. Still, Cameron McHenry told the Guardian the city thinks the groups services are duplicative. [Editor’s Note: information in this paragraph has been corrected since his article was posted].

The city’s OneStop employment service is suited to workers displaced by the recession, not the multiple-burdened clients helped by CHP, said McHenry: “We can’t take a 30 percent cut and still do the work we do.”

After speakers from various groups addressed the crowd from a flatbed truck, District 5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi took to the stage to demand alternative ways of generating revenue. The progressive revenue tactics championed mainly involved increased hotel tax to reduce the budget burden felt by community service groups. Mirkarimi and members of the crowd also criticized the city for its continued funding of Sharp golf course in Pacifica.

“We’re trying to force the Mayor to have a fair budget,” Coalition on Homelessness Director Jennifer Fredenbach told us. “We believe he can do it through alternative revenue like the hotel tax, a more progressive tax base, and a property transfer tax on high end real estate. It has real consequences for poor San Franciscans, not only in quality of life, but in the ability to live.”

Birds & Batteries move out of the fog and into the bright light

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Birds & Batteries move out of the fog and into the bright light

Part haunted house, half honky-tonk and a lot of freak funk, the sounds emitted via San Francisco band Birds & Batteries— playing Fri/28 at Rickshaw Stop— is a mixed bag of awesome that seems to come from a questionable place. Drug trade, mental instability and disturbing sadness inhabited the streets below band member Mike Sempert’s former apartment in the Tenderloin and crept into his songwriting with dark undertones. Now that he’s officially transplanted to greener grass in Oakland, the only thing creepin’ into the band’s new tunes is a little sunshine. 

Sempert and his band of three, Jill Heinke, Christoper Walsh and Brian Michelson, have been playing as Birds and Batteries since 2005, but last year’s killer EP, Up To No Good (Eightmaps, 2009) was especially stocked with magic and spook. Electronic elements churn beneath salty guitars and rusty keys, and even the song titles, “The Villain” and “Out of the Woods” give hints of shadows in the night and goosebumps. A group of hipsters with a dark side?

“A lot of things were happening at the same time…The financial upheaval. World events. And living in the Tenderloin with my girlfriend– I was confronted on a daily basis with scary, sad things. It definitely influenced the sound a bit,” Sempert says, explaining the band’s minor feel. 

Touring, writing more songs, keeping spirits high and transporting life to a less depressing neighborhood, Sempert reports Birds and Batteries new album, to be released this summer, is more on the “dancey-quirky side.” 

“It’s a more open sound with more major keys. More folk-Americana,” he says to my disbelief, and I’m worried he’s been getting too many rays in Oakland. “It will be more uplifting.”

Like a moody teenager, Birds and Batteries feels emotions in waves– currently it’s a tidal wave of happy…with a nice bronze glow. 

“The sunshine…ahh, ya. It’s much better than the fog…and heroin addiction.”

 

 

Birds & Batteries

Fri/28, 10pm, $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

www.rickshawstop.com

Fees rise in SF, but some supervisors prefer taxes

Sasha Cuttler
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5
Fees rise in SF, but some supervisors prefer taxes

By Brittany Baguio

 The Board of Supervisors this week voted to impose non-resident fees for admission into Botanical Gardens in an effort to help alleviate the city’s $483 million budget deficit, as requested by the Mayor’s Office. But even supervisors who supported it say they hope to end the fees if they can find some general revenue sources, a process that will begin next week after Mayor Gavin Newsom releases his budget on June 1.

Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget Committee, began Tuesday’s discussion by stating that he believed that this non-resident fee would stop the layoffs of Botanical Gardens staff and help offset the 30 percent drop in their budget. Despite supporting the fees, Avalos expressed hope that they could be replaced by a 2 percent increase in the hotel tax, something labor and community groups are pushing that would raise $38 million to $45 million per year.

He even amended the item to include a provision that the non-resident fee will be eliminated within 90 days from the effective date of the new tax. Despite Avalos’s amendment, AIDS Grove founder and volunteer community gardener Nancy McNally said she was appalled that Avalos would support a non-resident fee. “He is not committed to preserving significant public park commons that San Franciscan generations before him have paid taxes to preserve,” McNally told the Guardian. “No one wants to brainstorm and come up with creative options to alleviate this crisis that is not really a crisis. Greed is the crisis.”

One thing McNally did appreciate was sober assessments made at the hearing by Sup. Eric Mar, who stated that Botanical Gardens serves as a haven for low-income and immigrant families who can only enjoy the facilities because admission is free. He declared that once fees are attached to Botanical Gardens, it will lose its appeal. He also added that passing this fee will be the first step in initiating fees for all.

San Francisco resident Daniele Erville shared Mar’s concerns. “A fee acts as a deterrent to a place that by its very nature is welcoming,” Erville told us. “The place makes us feel at home, it reminds us that we are a part of nature and reminds us of our common humanity. Spirituality means that you are in touch with what unites us all, and so differentiating on any level just clashes.”

The imposition of fees – $7 for non-resident adults, $5 for seniors, and $2 for children – was approved on a 8-3 vote, with Sups. Mar, Bevan Dufty, and Ross Mirkarimi in dissent.

Why is SFUSD signing on to Race to the Top?

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Why is SFUSD signing on to Race to the Top?

The Obama administration, to its credit, is actually paying attention to, and putting money into, urban public education. But Arne Duncan, the education secretary, is using some of the money to push a broad agenda that, frankly, drives me nuts and undermines a lot of what public education ought to be about.


The New York Times Magazine did a good job laying out the agenda May 23. The self-styled reformers want to encourage charter schools, push standardized testing (and other easily quantifiable methods of evaluating classroom performance) and change the way teachers are hired and fired. In fact, in many ways, the Duncan agenda is all about blaming the teachers for the problems in public schools.


There are, absolutely, some bad teachers out there. There are people who are so burned out they should leave and find other work. There are people who never were terribly good at teaching anyway. There are people who can’t do the job, and somehow stick around year after year, dooming students to poor-quality classes. There are 300,000 public-school teachers in California; not all of them will be great. (There are also, by the way, terrible lawyers who never get disbarred and terrible doctors who kill and maim patients and manage to protect their medical licenses.)


But in California, certainly, the relatively modest number of poor teachers is not by any stretch the biggest problem with public education. And tests, particularly standardized tests, are not remotely a valid way of determining which teachers are good and which aren’t.


Teachers in California cities face widely divergent student populations. In some San Francisco classrooms, a majority of the students are English learners, or come from broken or troubled families, or lack proper nutrition, or are homeless … and those are just the surface issues. Telling a dedicated first-grade teacher that he or she is going to be fired because of test scores in a classroom where it takes heroic efforts every day to get 20 troubled kids to sit down and pay attention for even 15 minutes isn’t just unfair. It’s crazy.


The teachers unions have fought some of these efforts, and — thanks to world-class organizing efforts and a fair amount of campaign money — have managed to beat some of them back in Congress and state Legislatures. That’s where Race to the Top comes in.


Duncan and his merry band of “reformers” are dangling out federal money to districts that desperately, desperately need any pennies they can get — but the price is high. In essence, you have to sign on to at least part of the Duncan agenda, which promotes testing, charter schools, etc. 


The highest number of points — 138 of the 500-point scale that Duncan and his staff created for the Race — would be awarded based on a commitment to eliminate what teachers’ union leaders consider the most important protections enjoyed by their members: seniority-based compensation and permanent job security.


It’s almost a cruel bargain: You don’t have enough money to buy chalk for the chalkboard or pencils for the kids, and the feds are happy to help — as long as you stick it to the teachers unions and sign onto an agenda that a lot of progressive school boards despise.


And that’s where San Francisco is.


In a special meeting May 20, the San Francisco School Board signed on to a Memorandum of Understanding with the state of California that will be part of California’s application for Race to the Top funding. You can read the MOU here. It’s not as bad as some of what Duncan is pushing, but still: SFUSD is participating in this madness.


I asked Jane Kim, president of the School Board, about it, and she told me that the district’s proposal “doesn’t have anything about charter schools or merit pay. It’s really just a continuation of the work that we’re already doing.” And that’s true, although Dennis Kelly, the head of the local teachers union, United Educators of San Francisco, isn’t happy about it, though; he told me that “this is not something we could sign on to. It’s pretty much the standard state form.”


And the board passed it unanimously, and a lot of the local board members are good progressives who know more about education than I do. And as Kim pointed out, at a time like this, “I don’t think we should refuse to go for the extra funding.”


Frankly, the San Francisco Unified School District isn’t going to get any Race to the Top money anyway — not with districts all over the country selling their souls and going way, way further than we are to scrap for that cash. But I have to ask: Since Race to the Top is such a bad idea, why are we even playing the game?

Is Secure Communities opt-out still an option?

Mary Magee
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5
Is Secure Communities opt-out still an option?

Immigrant rights attorney Francisco Ugarte, who works for SFILEN,  just talked to me about why it’s critical that folks raise their concerns about immigrant rights with their elected officials in the face of Secure Communities, a program ICE is planning to bring to San Francisco June 1, and to all U.S. jails by 2013, without the openness and transparency that we have come to expect under the Obama administration.

“There’s a rise in xenophobia and the economy is going down, so this is the time when people should be speaking up for immigrants,” Ugarte said. “ICE is among the least transparent governmental agency in the U.S. It’s hard enough for lawyers to get information about their clients, let alone a member of the public who is trying to get information about an ICE program like Secure Communities.”

Ugarte notes that ICE’s own MOA (Memorandum of Agreement) with individual states prohibits them from providing information about Secure Communities to the media, without first getting the consent of ICE.

“ICE needs to be asked, whose confidentiality are you protecting, your own, or that of the members of the public that are being detained under this program?” Ugarte said.

He believes ICE is being so secretive because it doesn’t want to tell the stories of deportations and trauma that have created in the local community.

I asked Ugarte if he’d support the idea of a national I.D. card, based on the premise that if ICE is going to fingerprint and I.D. everyone anyways, then why not parlay this into giving folks who aren’t found guilty of a felony some kind of I.D. Card as a first step towards amnesty? (Provided folks aren’t found guilty of a felon, in which case ICE would deport them.)

“I’m not sure if we can support a national I.D. card,” Ugarte said. ‘The point is that ICE is intent on removing folks who they deem ‘dangerous,’ but they are not offering any relief for the millions of people who work hard and pay taxes yet remain second-class citizens. We need some kind of commensurate relief.”

Ugarte worries that a national I.D. card program would allow the federal government to become an even bigger Big Brother.
“But it’s crystal clear that there has to be some relief provided for the millions who have worked hard and contributed to their communities,” Ugarte said.

He noted that ICE deported 400,000 folks last year alone.
‘That’s more folks than in any of the Bush administration’s years,” he said. “This is affecting us directly. We did not elect Obama to destroy our community.”

Ugarte said that he doesn’t believe that Obama is controlling ICE, but that he should start doing so now.
“Obama needs to assert more control. He has the power through executive order to stop the deportation of people who have U.S. citizens in their families. He has the power to reform the system to prevent the destruction of people who live here. Right now, we’re seeing enforcement only, and it’s creating a human rights crisis.”

And Ugarte has not given up on the notion that San Francisco can opt out of Secure Communities, no matter what AG (and gubernatorial candidate) Jerry Brown says.

“Right now, it appears that the Department of Justice is resisting the opt-out idea from San Francisco, but the Attorney General did not cite any legal authority in his letter,” Ugarte observed. “All he said was based on policy reasons, in contrast to San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey’s concerns, which were based on the impact of the program on public safety.”

Summing up Jerry Brown’s missive as a “political letter,” Ugarte says folks need to double their efforts to ensure that folks in Sacramento understand the implications of local police-ICE collaborations and their similarities to Arizona’s immigration law.

“We need to ensure that our voices are heard. Three people in D. C. and three people in Sacramento should not be dictating policy for millions.”

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