San Francisco Archives — Page 369 of 517 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

City College raid moves us closer to accountability

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May 7, 2009

By Steven T. Jones

News that prosecutors have raided the administrative offices at City College of San Francisco seeking documents associated with a scheme to launder public funds into campaign contributions (a story that Chron investigative reporter Lance Williams broke in 2007, and which the Guardian has furthered a couple times) is a big deal and a long time in coming.

As the Guardian has written repeatedly over the years, City College administrators from former Chancellor Phil Day on down have always played fast and loose with the people’s money and need to be held accountable.

The DA’s investigation should cast a wide net in learning who knew about this money laundering scheme, including looking at longtime board members who enabled Day and held back the reformers. Luckily, that board now has some public spirited members, including Milton Marks, John Rizzo, and Chris Jackson (who just joined the board last year), but they’re still in the minority. Nonetheless, they need to push this board to work hard to restore the public’s confidence in this important institution.

Layoffs at the San Francisco Chronicle

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May 7, 2009

5

By Steven T. Jones

Hearst dropped the hammer on the San Francisco Chronicle this morning, laying off 20 people in the newsroom, including award-winning veteran writers Susan Sward and Jane Kay. SFist was the first up with a fairly complete list, which our sources at the Chron has confirmed is accurate.

The layoffs follow voluntary buyouts that dozens of Chron employees took, including political writer John Wildermuth. Most of the terminations, both the layoffs and buyouts, go into effect at the end of the month. Although Chron employees knew this was coming, it was still tough blow to morale at the paper.

An employee meeting to discuss the news has been set for 4:30 pm. We’ll have more on this story as it develops.

Marin paper chokes on Mirkarimi appointment

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May 7, 2009

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By Tim Redmond

The Marin Independent Journal is going nuts about the fact that San Francisco Sup. Ross Mirkarimi got a slot on the state Coastal Commission. The IJ wanted a Marinite, Sup. Steve Kinsey, and is blasting Sen. Mark Leno for recommending Mirkarimi (which for all practical purposes guaranteed that the San Francisco environmental leader would get the post).

According to the IJ:

Leno said it was a difficult choice and that he respects Kinsey’s experience. He said Mirkarimi offers strong environmental credentials and stressed that a San Franciscan has not held the North Coast seat for 32 years. He pointed to Mirkarimi’s leadership in winning passage of San Francisco’s ban on plastic bags. Leno said he also heard from some environmentalists who asked him not to pick Kinsey. Apparently Kinsey works harder than they would like to balance historic private property rights and local agriculture with protection of California’s coast.

You get the point — Kinsey thinks that the Coastal Commission should “balance” property rights and coastal protection. Actually, that’s not the panel’s job. The commission was set up to prevent development along the coast; it’s supposed to be really, really hard to get a permit to do anything that would limit public access or damange a pristine coastal area.

A former Sierra Club president makes the point nicely here.

But wait — the IJ isn’t done. In an oped column May 5th, Brad Breithaupt insists that Leno was snubbing the northern part of his district:

For the first time in 30 years, a Marin resident isn’t serving on the commission, even as an alternate.

Guess what? It’s been more than 30 years since San Francisco had a seat on the commission.

But that’s not the issue. The issue is that coastal protection is more important than whether someone lives in San Francisco or Marin — and on an increasingly conservative and pro-development commission, the representative from the SF/Marin/Sonoma area needs to be a hard-core enviro, someone who isn’t looking to compromise with property owners or developers.

“And I think Ross Mirkarimi has already proven he’s doing an excellent job,” Leno said. So lighten up, Marin.

Recurrent debacle

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May 7, 2009

27

By Julian Davis

(Julian Davis is on the board of San Francisco Tomorrow, an urban environmental organization. He chaired last November’s Clean Energy campaign, prop H.)

In the wake of Tuesday’s vote on the Recurrent solar power deal for the Sunset Reservoir, long time progressive activists have to ask themselves, what happened?

A widespread commitment to positive government courses through the veins of San Francisco’s political community. Whether it’s defending the public health care system against cuts or the perennial advocacy of public power, one thing that unites progressives is a belief that government should work for the people and that corporate special interests have no place dictating or writing the terms at City Hall.

Shades of time: Q&A with Matt Keegan

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May 7, 2009

0

Barack Obama boarding an Air Force One plane for the first time. Gay calendars from the 1960s. A New York Times article on the death of a major urban newspaper. Sundays at the Alemany Flea Market. These are some of the temporal markers at play in Matt Keegan‘s exhibition “Postcards & Calendars.” The show (reviewed in the current Guardian) could be Keegan’s postcard to New York about time spent in San Francisco. It’s also an exploration of the ways in which calendars and other time keepers can be used subversively to convey forms of experience or forge communities. Keegan is no stranger to the such endeavors: his 2008 book AMERICAMERICA (Printed Matter, 140 pages, $35) gathers interviews, old People magazines, memorabilia connected to the “Hands Across America” project, artifacts from his small-scale update of that endeavor, and unorthodox archival material into a journal that doubles as a portrait of the Reagan era. The artist and I recently sat at a petite lemon yellow table with pretty lemon yellow flowers in Altman Siegel Gallery to discuss his current exhibition.

View of Matt Keegan’s “Postcards & Calendars.” All images from “Postcards & Calendars” courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery

SFBG Many shows repeat the same execution of a single theme, over and over. In contrast, “Postcards & Calendars” has many forms and facets.
Matt Keegan The thematic of this show is definitely influenced by my time in in San Francisco, but not relegated to being here. Lots of things at play are continuations of my preexisting engagement with photography.
In terms of local influences, the calendars from the GLBT Historical Society had a tremendous impact on this show. Before I met with Rebekah Kim, the Historical Society’s archivist, I was trying to figure out how to map the ways time is not only recorded but visually structured — to think about such rudimentary things as a planner, or a calendar, or a newspaper, in terms of how days and months can be iterated.
When I saw their collection of calendars, part of the power of those objects comes from the way they integrate a social history into an innocuous form. Also, some of the calendars that have a clear porn element, also have a social element. For example, Fizeek from the mid-‘60s — the back of that calendar has notations about who shot which photo and where the photographers are based, which provides it with this added level of social exchange.

Matt Keegan

SFBG In the past year I’ve amassed a stack of the 1970s SF gay magazine Vector, so it was serendipity to come across a calendar from Vector on the wall in your show. More than with microfiche of local newspapers, I get a sense of what was going on in San Francisco at the time from a publication such as that magazine, simply through the addresses in advertisements.
MK Material that might be considered insubstantial or peripheral in terms of formal archiving and recording has a historical implication. Close to the time when I met with Rebekah, I met with Gerard Koskovich, one of the founding members of the GLBT Historical Society. He told this amazing anecdote about Bois Burke placing an ad in The Hobby Directory that is significant in helping to understand a 1940s and ’50s queer history of correspondence. Within this guide, people would reach out about hobbies such as nude sunbathing and physique photography. I am very interested in the various ways that such print-based and distributed publications were activated to serve unintended purposes. And, I love the way that the calendars, specifically, embed such a social history so that it becomes part of daily and monthly activities.

Barack Obama, 31 shades of white, newspapers as endangered species, the archivist’s life, the art of interviewing, and more, after the jump

Super Ego: Mophono, wet jocks, tiny spoons, lazers

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May 7, 2009

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By Marke B.

Some smooth and mellow Mophono pho’ ya

Oh, the transient grunts and groans of the dance floor: Just got word yesterday that the eagerly awaited appearance of disco progenitor Nicky Siano at Paradise Lounge has been cancelled — my deep throat tells me there were sound and venue concerns (although I love the ‘Dise!). In any case, there’s plenty of other things to hold your ear-nterest and get you bangin’ this weekend. Besides my rundown in this week’s Super Ego column, below are some more earth shakers and affairs.

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He loves me, he loves me not

Wanna spoon?

I had absolutely no idea that those little plastics coffee spoons from McDonald’s were banned because of illicit uses (or perceived one, anyway.) You’d think after all this time, plastic + noses = OK. But no. In any case, snort in luxurious style with the unveiling of a perfect publicity stunt: renowned hip mens’ clothiers and artists Ju$t Another Rich Kid, Nice Collective, Terence Koh, and more have designed cute, exclusive, and most likely expensive little Bolivian helpers (watch that terrorism funding!). They’ll be giving the dish at Harput’s from 6pm-9pm tonight (expect beautiful people), and then there’ll be a kiki afterparty at Triple Crown. Don’t try to force your way into the stalls. It’s all called “He loves me, he loves me not” which brings to mind a kinky game somehow.

Thu/7, 6-9pm, free. Harput’s Market, 1527 Fillmore, SF. www.harputsmarket.com
Afterparty, 10pm-midnight, free. Triple Crown, 1760 Market, SF. www.triplecrownsf.com

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Lazer Sword + Mophono live

Lazer Sword, can you blap me for loving you?

Local future blap fave raves Lazer Sword are back from their whirlwind Euro tour with an uptempo live set to get you moving, supported by Bay man of intrinsic deep dance knowledge, Mophono at, yes, the Paradise. Put ’em up and get down, child — and let’s see if those speakers still work.

Lazer Sword at 111 Minna San Francisco 1/15/09

Fri/8, 10pm, $10. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, SF. www.hacksawent.com

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The Rod

Post-Cinco uprising

Why, yes, I DO host a wet jock strap contest. Come down to Bus Station John’s retro bathhouse disco monthly, The Rod, at Deco this Friday around midnight and see me and Hunky Beau scare up a willing and wet bevy of gorgeous, unclad alternaqueer boys — and see who’ll win $100. (No muscle queens need apply, thanks.) Then stay and dance until 3am to the best disco you’ve only ever heard sampled in other songs before. It’s fun and a little scary: frisson alert!

Fri/8, 10pm-3am, $7. Deco, 510 Larkin, SF. www.decosf.com

When dinos go wild: Dengue Fever scores ‘Lost World’ at the Castro

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May 6, 2009

2

By Kimberly Chun

Surprise: no theremins in earshot at the Castro Theatre on May 5 when Dengue Fever unleashed its new score for the 1925 silent adventure film, The Lost World, as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Instead the seemingly sold-out audience got plenty of laughs, the compelling Wallace Beery as the seemingly mad Professor Challenger, herky-jerky yet still marvelous stop-motion dinosaurs, shameful black-face in the form of Sambo sidekick (Jules Cowles), and the fab scene of an astonishingly resilient Brontosaurus crashing through London city streets before plummeting from the famed bridge. The latter moment clearly evoked King Kong – and no wonder: the special effects were produced by Willis O’Brien, who also coaxed Kong to life.

Bike Coalition honors Sunday Streets

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May 6, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones

Proponents of Sunday Streets accepting their award. Photo by Orange Photography courtesy of the SFBC.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition honored the proponents of Sunday Streets – the temporary closure of San Francisco roads to cars that was created by a partnership of groups ranging from Livable City to the Mayor’s Office – at its annual Golden Wheels awards event, held last night in the War Memorial Building across from City Hall.

Sunday Streets, part of an international trend toward adopting the ciclovias popularized in Columbia as a means of expanding public space and promoting fitness and recreation, started last year in San Francisco with two events and there are six planned for this year, with the second coming this Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. from AT&T Park to the Bayview Opera House.

“The streets belong to us, they are the public spaces of the city, but they don’t feel like they belong to us,” said Livable City director Tom Radulovich, who praised the unlikely coalition that brought these events together. “I don’t get a chance to thank the mayor for very many things…But the mayor was committed to this.”

Loitering outside clubs banned

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May 6, 2009

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Asking for change outside local nightclubs could end up costing you $100 or a stint in the county jail, thanks to a newly enacted loitering ban that’s aimed at making clubbing safer but threatens First Amendment rights.

Google the phrase “we met outside the club” and you’ll get all sorts of interesting hits, mostly involving luscious bands, lascivious strippers and a crazy story titled “Getting laid Brazilian style.”

But meeting band members, picking up strippers and getting laid San Francisco style by people you met outside clubs here just got potentially harder, thanks to loitering legislation that the Board of Supervisors passed yesterday, in an effort to make clubbing safer. And then there are the usual questions about how this legislation impinges on people’s First Amendment rights and how it will most likely end up netting a bunch of homeless folks rather than hardened criminals.

“The areas outside nightclubs have become the site of robberies, assaults, stabbings and shootings” states the loitering ban that the Board passed in a 9-2 vote, with Sups. Chris Daly and John Avalos dissenting.

Why does the Potrero power plant operate with an expired water permit?

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May 6, 2009

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By Rebecca Bowe

choking fish.gif

On Dec. 31, 2008, Mirant’s wastewater-discharge permit expired — but the gas and diesel-fired power plant still runs an average of nearly 20 hours a day, according to figures released by the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO).

One unit at the facility uses a system called once-through cooling, which means it takes in huge quantities of water from the bay to cool the machinery, then dumps it all back at temperatures high enough to impact surrounding ecosystems. This process is regulated by a permit issued by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. A spreadsheet on the agency’s Web site shows that more than five months into 2009, a hearing to outline the terms of a new wastewater-discharge permit still hasn’t been scheduled. The water board is waiting on a state policy decision regarding once-through cooling before it acts, a note explains.

The man in “Control:” Jim Jarmusch interview

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May 6, 2009

3

By Erik Morse

Poster for Jim Jarmusch’s latest film, The Limits of Control.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: I was trying to think how to go about this interview and present something slightly different to you than the same old questions you’ve been asked a hundred times over. I kept going back to various anthropology texts I’ve been reading recently. Have you heard of James Clifford’s essay “Traveling Cultures”?

Jim Jarmusch: No.

SFBG: Would you mind if I read a bit of it to you? I think it could be very relevant to our discussion.

JJ: Sure.

SFBG: “To begin, a quotation from C.L.R. James in Beyond a Boundary: ‘Time would pass, old empires would fall and new ones take their place. The relations of classes had to change before I discovered that it’s not quality of goods and utility that matter, but movement, not where you are or what you have, but where you come from, where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there.’”

“Or begin again with hotels: Joseph Conrad, in the pages of Victory: ‘The age in which we are encamped like bewildered travelers in a garish, unrestful hotel.’ In Tristes Tropiques, Levi-Strauss evokes an out-of-scale concrete cube sitting in the midst of the new Brazillian city of Goiania in 1937. It’s his symbol of civilization’s barbarity, ‘a place of transit, not of residence.’ The hotel as station, airport terminal, hospital: a place ou pass through, where the encouters are fleeting, arbitrary.”

It’s a very long and incredible essay and I thought of it immediately after seeing your latest film.

Hot sex events this week: May 6-12

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May 6, 2009

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

Femina Potens curator, international award winning Bondage Model and Feminist Porn Star Madison Young hosts this month’s “Sizzle.”

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>> Sizzle
Femina Potens celebrates Masturbation Month with an auto-erotica reading and open mic extravaganza, featuring writer and sexologist Carol Queen, porn performer and BDSM professionalDusty Horn, queer porn producer and bondage model Madison Young, and Xicana burlesque mistress Chica Boom. (Also check out the benefit for Femina Potens at The Lex on Saturday.)

Fri/8, 8pm. $10-15.
Femina Potens
2199 Market, SF
www.feminapotens.org

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>> School of Shimmy
Learn to shake it on the stage or in the bedroom with Dottie Lux and guest teachers in this two-hour workshop. Includes history of burlesque, how to create a character, and basic choreography. All ages, genders, and experience levels welcome.

Thurs/7, 7:30pm. $30.
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.sexandculture.org

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>> Sex Work on Wheels Tour
The Bike Coalition combines two of our favorite things – bikes and sex – with this two-wheeled tour of San Francisco’s sexy side, including stops by streets named for Gold Rush-era madams, sites of 19th century parlor houses, and discussion of labor struggles in the sex industry..

Sat/9, 11am-2pm, free.
Main Library at Fulton Street steps, SF
www.sfbike.org

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>> Girl Girl Tricks for Men, Part 2
Ever suspect lesbians have secrets about sex with women that would make you a better lover? Dig deeper into the world of lesbian sex with this sexy and intellectual romp through lesbian bedsheets with bisexual dyke and sex educator Kristy Lin Billuni. Men only.

Tues/12, 8pm. $25-30.
Good Vibrations
1620 Polk, SF
www.goodvibes.com

Live review: Kreator and Exodus deliver the quality bangover

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May 6, 2009

1

By LC Mason

Kreator at a German fest earlier this year

Quality bangover: the gloriously painful aftermath that results after a night of heavy headbanging to brutal bass drum runs and diabolic guitar solos, characterized by roaring tinnitus, aching neck muscles, bruises and scrapes from slamming and stomping into others, as well as stiff hands from gratuitous handing and devil horn-throwing.

This was my condition when I woke up the next morning, ringing ears and all, after witnessing the merciless onslaught of the Kreator and Exodus show at Slim’s on Tuesday, April 28. Except I wasn’t brave enough to enter the roiling whirlpool of 200-pound man-bodies, because a lot more than bruises and scrapes would have gone down, especially as Kreator vocalist-guitarist Mille Petrozza repeatedly and ravenously commanded the audience to “kill each other in the mosh pit.”

In a rhapsodic homecoming performance that surely sated the entire pantheon of thrash metal gods, San Francisco’s legendary sons Exodus played faster and harder than any band half their age and challenged their fans, both young and old, to act accordingly.

Sing those blues, Sita

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May 6, 2009

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By Dennis Harvey

Sita Sings the Blues

A few years ago, independent animator and comic strip artist Nina Paley left San Francisco for India, where her boyfriend had found employment. A while later, during a visit home, she received a surprise, brusque communication from the bf informing her she need not return — the relationship was over. Just what the bf ultimately got out of this episode is unknown. But Paley got posterity: her first feature film, inspired by both the breakup and the ancient Sanskrit epic the Ramayana, is artistic therapy that also happens to be just about the most delightful movie in eons, cartoon or otherwise. Utilizing very different animation techniques, she cuts between a blatantly autobiographical tale of romantic woe and the mythological travails of Sita, beloved of the noble Rama. He rescues her from an amorous, abducting rival, but his chivalry dies when false accusations about her "purity" threaten to tarnish his image. Then, as now, men are pigs. Sita wriggles through her fate like a Bollywood Betty Boop, frequently crooning vintage 78 tracks by Jazz Age blues chanteuse Annette Hanshaw, and the visual wit on display is akin to Max Fleischer’s antics plus intellectual gamesmanship, grotesque streaks, and eye-popping color. Paley breaks the fourth wall in umpteen ingenious ways. Sita Sings the Blues is so full of fun and invention you may start looking forward to seeing it again after it’s barely started.

Sita Sings the Blues trailer

SITA SINGS THE BLUES runs Fri/8–Tues/12 at the Red Vic..

Time passages

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May 6, 2009

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johnny@sfbg.com

The past is vanishing, more than ever before. Or so it seems, as so many temporal placeholders — including the newspaper you might be holding in your hands right now — give way to digital facsimiles. This quandary is a morphing source of inspiration for "Postcards & Calendars," a solo show by the New York artist and temporary San Francisco resident Matt Keegan, who is about to complete a teaching stint at California College of the Arts.

While Keegan engages a consistently time-based theme throughout "Postcards and Calendars," he does so via refreshingly varied forms and motifs. He’s dedicatedly studious enough to turn a trip to the GLBT Historical Society into an semi-installation, yet easygoing enough to use sexually-charged archival pieces as material, spontaneous enough to try out something different with each piece in his overall show, subversive (or formally perverse) enough to digitally photograph newspapers, and irreverent enough to break his own rules regarding what constitutes a record of daily life.

Keegan first stung my eyes and queer spirit with a piece from the Altman Siegel Gallery’s inaugural group show. It visually manifested the infinite recess of a ex-romantic relationship in a manner that interspersed teasing hints of still-extant attraction with a palpable sense of emotional loss. All of these aspects brought the "memory drawings" of San Francisco artists Colter Jacobsen to mind, so it’s only fitting that Jacobsen contributes a booklet to "Postcards & Calendars" that plays off of Keegan’s theme. In fact, one can draw further connections between Keegan, Jacobsen, and the NYC filmmaker Matt Wolf — three artists of roughly the same generation who share similar queer historical imperatives while allowing humor, traces of casual lust or longing and even some lovelorn aspects into their art. Keegan’s book AMERICAMERICA (Printed Matter, 140 pages, 2008), an exploration of national identity through the Reagan era’s "Hands Across America" phenomenon, possesses enjoyable parallels to Wolf’s films about the late David Wojnarowicz and Arthur Russell, and Jacobsen’s arrangements of trinkets and trash into expressions that find meaning or power in degradeability.

"Postcards & Calendars" is a direct array of works, often candid, and at times (in the case of the gay calendars from the ‘1970s) full-frontal. But the show’s lingering strength comes from more elliptical gestures, such as a wall of personal imagery that Keegan has rendered more enigmatic and evocative through an unconventional series of drawing and photo processes. In fact, to tap into the depth of what Keegan does here, you need to look closely at the walls themselves, where you might discover 31 passages of time.

MATT KEEGAN: POSTCARDS & CALENDARS

Through May 23

Altman Siegel Gallery

49 Geary, fourth floor, SF

(415) 576-9300

www.altmansiegel.com

New art and style on Geary

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May 6, 2009

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With a calm demeanor and a pulled-together, no-nonsense appearance, Claudia Altman-Siegel isn’t an obvious suspect when it comes to identifying the driving force behind a conceptual art show that draws well-heeled European tourists and people clad in Converse shoes and skinny jeans. Both types, and more, are drawn to Matt Keegan’s "Postcards & Calendars," where they’re confronted by an eight-foot list of days of the week and a larger-than-life photograph of a New York Times reader hidden behind dismal headlines.

The four month-old Altman Siegel Gallery is set apart from neighboring galleries by its inclusion of a window, a trait that trades art hermeticism for the possibility of sunshine. Street noise is present but not disruptive — a reminder that another world exists beyond the space’s light cocoon of images and ideas. It has a distinctively different aura from the other galleries in the 49 Geary St. building, something Altman-Siegel says she is "sort of blind to."

After 10 years of work in New York City, Altman-Siegel slipped over to San Francisco to fill a gap in the West Coast gallery scene, bringing emerging local and internationally established artists who are still early on the trajectory to significance in the art canon.

Local art or specificity is prominent in Altman-Siegel’s curatorial work to date. The current show, though by a New York artist, includes sketches of familiar San Francisco street corners. Bay Area artist Trevor Paglen’s surreal cosmic photographs were the focus of the gallery’s first solo show.

Across the street, mannequins wearing teal trousers topped by black, multipocketed jackets and craftily reconstructed vintage dresses stand defiantly among an installation of birch tree branches and rusted machinery. A former STA travel office has been transformed into Shotwell, a cutting-edge update of a funky Aunt Edna boutique.

Newlyweds Michael and Holly Weaver needed somewhere to hawk their extensive collection of vintage clothes. When they landed a lease at 36 Geary St., the shop expanded to fuse groundbreaking European fashion and clothes by Bay Area designers. Denim from local menswear line B.Son is paired with chic shirts by Parisian collective Surface2Air. Shape-shifting square dresses from the San Francisco duo Please Dress Up! hang alongside bold separates by British label Scout. On the other side of Silverman Gallery’s recent move to Sutter Street, the openings of Shotwell and Altman-Siegel suggest that something new and bold is creeping up on Union Square.

The accidental tourist

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May 6, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Using dystopian prophet William Burroughs’ landmark essay The Limits of Control as his titular and narrative starting point, auteur Jim Jarmusch meditates on language and travel in his latest cinematic offering. While it’s undeniable that Jarmusch has always worn his Burroughsian influences on his black velvet sleeve, his own Limits of Control is less an explicit pastiche of Burroughs’ theories than a nod to his unique creative methodology.

"[Burroughs’] theories on language and the use of control are really fascinating," Jarmusch explained during a recent phone interview from his downtown New York City office. "But I would say more important for me from Burroughs were his notebooks and scrapbooks, in which he would cut up things from newspapers and magazines. That whole philosophy of the cut-up is very important to me in the construction of The Limits of Control."

Jarmusch’s Limits follows a laconic Lone Man (Isaach De Bankolé) as he travels through the extreme landscapes of Spain, seeking out unnamed contacts and cryptic ciphers that propel him toward some unforeseen climax. Lone Man wanders through the maze of clues with rarely a word spoken. This is not the garrulous Jarmusch of 2003’s Coffee and Cigarettes. Rather, language exists here through an intimate series of picaresque exchanges. Soliloquies are eschewed for images of De Bankolé’s contoured face and the striking architectonic wonders of Madrid and Seville; dialogue is equally parsimonious, with moments of wiry, philosophical meandering and hip, pop-culture musings bubbling up spontaneously between visitors before retreating into long swathes of silence and static.

In their repetitions of catchphrases and rituals, these vignettes — staged by actors Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, and Paz de la Huerta, among others — become increasingly oracular, Rivette-inspired performances communicated in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. Are these inexplicable codices part of an elaborate conspiracy through which Lone Man will complete his mission, or are they simply coincidental cut-ups leading him toward the lost horizon of the Spanish desert?

With a typically austere, Jarmuschian cool, The Limits of Control cites numerous French and American gangster-outlaw films of the 1960s and ’70s in its hermeneutic, almost mystical, field-study of the nomad. Despite its lack of conventional narrative action, The Limits of Control is largely about the postmodern experience of traveling and experiencing "foreign" lands and languages, a theme recounted in Jarmusch films from Stranger than Paradise (1984) to Mystery Train (1989) to Broken Flowers (2005).

Jarmusch points to Claude Levi-Strauss’ Tristes Tropiques and Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel as two anthropological inspirations for his own recurring explorations of transition and translations. "[Traveling] used to be a bit more of an adventure," Jarmusch said. "When I was younger and traveled to Europe for the first time, at the airports people would dress up to travel. Now it’s just a frustrating exercise in getting from one place to the next, and the act of travel itself seems almost erasable." *

THE LIMITS OF CONTROL opens Fri/8 in San Francisco.

MORE AT SFBG.COM

Pixel Vision: Erik Morse’s full interview with Jim Jarmusch.

Mirant’s last gasp?

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May 6, 2009

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rebeccab@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY A new multipronged effort to shut down San Francisco’s Mirant Potrero Power Plant is raising hopes that the end could be in sight for the controversial fossil-fuel-fired facility.

An ordinance proposed by Sup. Sophie Maxwell suggests that the entire facility — including the primary unit 3 and the smaller, diesel-fired units 4, 5, and 6 — could be shut off without having to create any new fossil fuel generation within city limits. The legislation would direct the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to figure out how to bridge the in-city electric generation gap using energy efficiency, renewable power, and other alternatives.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed against Mirant by City Attorney Dennis Herrera targets Mirant’s failure to perform seismic upgrades. The effort wouldn’t close the plant directly, but could make it more burdensome for Mirant to do business here. Mirant did not return calls for comment.

"Mirant has been given a free pass for a while, and the city doesn’t want to give it to them any more," Deputy City Attorney Theresa Mueller told the Guardian. "Part of the reason they’ve gotten away with not doing it is because it was expected to close."

City efforts to replace the Mirant plant’s power with combustion turbines that San Francisco already owns were derailed last year after Mayor Gavin Newsom withdrew his support for the plan, instead backing an alternative pushed by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. that would have retrofitted the Mirant plant, a proposal that consultants said didn’t pencil out and that failed to win Board of Supervisors’ approval (see "Power possibilities," 11/5/08).

Despite various city efforts to shutter the plant going back nearly a decade, Mirant Potrero still runs an average of 20 hours per day, according to figures released by the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO). In 2007, the plant released 235 tons of harmful pollutants into the air, and 336,300 tons of carbon dioxide.

For now, Cal-ISO requires Mirant to continue running to guarantee that the lights would stay on in the city even if major transmission lines fail. But with the installation of the Trans Bay Cable — a high-voltage power cord that will send 400 MW of electricity under the bay from Pittsburgh in 2010 — Mirant’s largest unit will be unnecessary.

"We assume that the Trans Bay Cable will be in service sometime in mid 2010. We can then drop Potrero [unit 3]" from the reliability contract, says Cal-ISO spokesman Gregg Fishman. The dirtier, diesel-powered units 4, 5, and 6 would still be required, he says.

Not everyone accepts this as the final word on the matter. Maxwell’s legislation calls for the SFPUC "to take all feasible steps to close the entire Potrero power plant as soon as possible." That ordinance, expected to go before the Land Use Committee on May 11, would direct the SFPUC to update a plan for the city’s energy mix, called the Electricity Resource Plan, to reflect a goal of zero reliance on in-city fossil-fuel generation.

The original plan, issued in 2002, was also designed to eliminate the Potrero plant. This time around, key assumptions have changed. Last year, as Newsom and some members of the Board of Supervisors battled over the Mirant-related projects, PG&E sponsored a study indicating that the city might not need new local power generation.

Maxwell’s new proposal, citing information from the PG&E assessment, now suggests that after the installation of the Trans Bay Cable and other transmission upgrades, the electricity gap for in-city generation will be much smaller than previously assumed. This gap, which Joshua Arce from the Brightline Defense Project likes to refer to as the "magic number," has apparently shrunk to 33 MW in 2012, as opposed to 150 MW. But Arce said, "We want the magic number to be zero."

Barbara Hale, assistant manager for power at the SFPUC, confirmed that the city agency was preparing to update the plan and noted that it would likely contract with a Colorado-based firm, Rocky Mountain Institute, to do it. "We are hoping we can meet San Francisco’s electricity needs in a way that does not involve fossil fuel generation in San Francisco," Hale told the Guardian.

Encouraged by the recent activity, environmental justice groups are organizing for what they hope will be the last push to shut down the Potrero plant. Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Boosters and an activist on power plant issues, is optimistic. "There really is an end in sight to that power plant," he says.

Some eyebrows have been raised over the implications of the Trans Bay Cable, which by most accounts will be plugged into a fossil fuel-powered facility in Pittsburgh. "We really are going to be highlighting that San Francisco needs to take responsibility … so that we don’t have clean air on the backs of poor people and people of color in the East Bay," says Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice.

Nor is everyone feeling optimistic that the closure of the plant is near. Joe Boss, a member of the city’s Power Plant Task Force for about nine years, says he still doesn’t expect Cal-ISO to budge, and believes the city will have to live with the Potrero plant for years to come.

Fishman, from Cal-ISO, said that as things stand, units 4,5, and 6 will "almost certainly" still be required. Almost. "Between now and when the Trans Bay Cable is in service, we can conduct … studies on transmission projects that are officially presented to us," he added. "Based on the hard data that comes from those studies, we may reevaluate the need for local generation."

TICed off

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May 6, 2009

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news@sfbg.com

San Francisco tenants who are supposed to be protected by city and state laws are now facing eviction as a result of real estate speculators working hand-in-hand with banks in a scheme that has been implicitly endorsed by federal regulators and the courts.

Kaushik Dattani, whose company owns multiple properties throughout San Francisco, won a summary judgment to use the Ellis Act to evict four families from their rent-controlled apartment. Judge Charlotte Woolard’s April 21 ruling, denying the low-income Mission District families a jury trial, could leave the 12 longtime residents — seniors, disabled, single mothers, and children — homeless within a couple of weeks.

In August 2007, court records show Dattani secured an 18-month, interest-only $1.3 million loan from Circle Bank of Marin to buy the Victorian building at 19th and Lexington streets. The loan included an agreement that he would pull the units from the rental market using the Ellis Act, renovate the building, and sell the five Victorian units as tenants-in-common (TICs).

Traditionally banks haven’t offered loans to individual TIC owners, but Circle Bank of Marin was one of the first banks to start offering such "fractional" loans in 2005, a practice that created a strong market for TICs, loan officer Mark Skolnick (who says he’s an independent contractor and not a bank employee) told the Guardian.

In making the loan to Dattani, court documents show Skolnick predicted a 42 percent profit, which would require all five TIC units to be sold for $3.3 million. But according to Tenderloin Housing Clinic attorney Steve Collier, Dattani has not yet paid off the balloon payment — due April 1 — putting the building at risk of getting handed over to the bank, emptied of residents.

Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, said the lending scheme is contrary to the federal Community Reinvestment Act, which encourages banks to meet the credit needs of the low-income communities. "It’s within the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s power to say these kinds of loans that result in the displacement of low and moderate income tenants are not helping to meet the community’s credit needs," he said, noting that the FDIC has refused to get involved.

Others argue the importance of creating home ownership opportunities in a city where about two-thirds of residents rent.

"Here we have what looks like a condo, feels like a condo, but it’s a TIC. It’s a way of creating affordable housing," Skolnick said. "Some people lose their home, some people gain a home. The TIC platform is proving to be a very affordable option for this different subset of people."

But for the subset of people being displaced using the Ellis Act — a state law intended to allow existing landlords to get out of the rental business, not to encourage real estate speculation — the affect can be devastating in a city where little new rental or affordable housing is being built.

"They just come in out of nowhere and they see this place, buy it and kick everyone out. There’s no soul there," said Luise Vorsatz, who lived in the house for 30 years before being evicted.

This is not Dattani’s first Ellis Act eviction (when the Guardian contacted Dattani for comment, he hung up on us). In 2000, he hired infamous antitenant lawyers Wiegel & Fried to evict senior Alma Augueles from her flower shop in the Mission. In 2007, he evicted a group of tenants living above Revolution Café on 22nd and Bartlett streets. That building has sat empty for over a year, something that could also happen with his new property given the slumping real estate market.

Under the Ellis Act, if the unit go back on the rental market within five years, the evicted tenants have first priority at their old rent level, but that’s up to the tenants to enforce. "It’s possible the landlord won’t be able to sell and will end up renting it at higher rents," Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, told us.

"They don’t look at the fact that we have pride of tenancy—that we have lived here all these years," said 23-year resident Ronny Ruddrich, who raised her children here and walks to her job as a Noe Valley shoe store manager for the past 22 years. "He drives up in his Mercedes and shows no respect whatsoever."

Shop local, City Hall!

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May 6, 2009

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news@sfbg.com

On Dec. 3, 2008, just before noon, Mayor Gavin Newsom arrived at a press conference in Noe Valley to remind city residents why it’s important to shop locally. The mayor climbed out of his shiny new hybrid SUV, walked into the Ark Toy Company, showed charts and graphs, and talked about how money spent in town helps the local economy. Joined by Steve Falk, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Newsom urged holiday shoppers to look first in San Francisco before buying something on the Internet or in some suburban mall.

The mayor’s shop-local press conference was a clear sign that the debate over the role of small business in the San Francisco economy is over. Everyone from the mayor’s business advisors to the Chamber of Commerce to small business advocates and progressive economists now agrees that small local businesses provide the vast majority of the jobs, keep their money in town, and generate more tax dollars, more wealth, and more prosperity for this city than the big out-of-town chains.

It was a picture-perfect scene, until KPIX-TV reporter Hank Plante asked the mayor an embarrassing question: Why, he wanted to know, did the Mayor’s Office buy Newsom’s new car in Colma?

Newsom said he didn’t have a clue.

Actually, the reason was pretty simple: the dealership in Colma submitted the lowest bid. But San Francisco lost out on the sales tax, a local Chevy dealer that was going out of business lost a local sale, San Francisco workers lost a commission — and in the end, the city almost certainly lost more on the deal than it saved with the Colma discount.

That’s the untold story behind the mayor’s promotion. San Francisco, as a buyer of goods and services worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, does a terrible job at shopping local. Indeed, for years small business advocates have been trying to get city officials to make it easier for local merchants to get city contracts — and they’ve made very little progress.

"I’ve worked so hard on this, year after year, and nothing ever happens," Scott Hauge, a small business activist and organizer, told us. "After a while, I just threw in the towel."

Hauge is devoting his energy these days to statewide issues. But on the local level, there’s a growing sense that the city needs to do more to help small local businesses get their share of the massive public spending pie.

"The Small Business Commission has made it clear that this will be a priority over the next year," Regina Dick-Endrizzi, the commission’s acting director, told us.

Nobody knows exactly what percentage of city contracts for goods and services go to local businesses. Hauge said the Mayor’s Office did a limited survey about a year ago, but the data wasn’t very good. And while Newsom signed an executive order in 2005 directing departments to look for ways to patronize local businesses, there’s not much to show for it.

"I think probably less than 10 percent [of city spending] goes to local businesses," Hauge said.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, a former small business commissioner, agrees. "I think it’s accurate to say that at least 70 to 90 percent of all city contracts go to out-of-town businesses," he told us.

As Dick-Endrizzi pointed out, city purchasing has strict rules — and for good reason. "In most cases, you have to put out a request for proposals and take the lowest bid," she said. "If you didn’t have that, you’d have a big problem with favoritism."

But when the lowest bid is the only criterion, San Francisco businesses are at a distinct disadvantage.

"Say a city agency wants to buy five hammers," said Steven Cornell, owner of Brownie’s Hardware. "I have the hammers for $6, but somebody in Nowhere, Miss., can sell them for $5.99.

"Well, the shop in Mississippi doesn’t have to pay San Francisco’s minimum wage, doesn’t have to pay for sick days, doesn’t have to pay for health care … We’ve asked businesses to contribute to all these good social policies, then those businesses get penalized because someone else can sell something cheaper."

Cornell — who says he agrees that local businesses should pay well and give their workers benefits — is frustrated that when it comes to purchasing, the city doesn’t give anything back. "We lost S&C Ford, we lost Ellis Brooks Chevrolet," he said. "Those were all union jobs, with good benefits. And how many cars did the city buy from them?"

When Cornell was on the Small Business Commission, he remembered some small locally owned cabinet-making shops came to complain about a $4 million city contract for woodwork. "They told us that they lost the contract to a Canadian firm," he said. "The costs of operating in San Francisco were higher than in Canada, so they couldn’t compete."

"We do not as a city reflect the fact that we ask employers to do good things for their workers," Chiu added. "When we spend perhaps $1 billion a year in city contracts, those employers don’t have a level playing field."

Sure, on the surface and in the short term, the city gets a better deal when it awards contracts based entirely on price. But San Francisco has, as a matter of public policy, already decided there are good reasons to give minority-owned contractors some advantage in bidding, and that public contractors should pay prevailing union wages and offer benefits to domestic partners. Local enterprises get a modest advantage in some bids, but nowhere near enough to make up for the cost difference of operating in San Francisco.

And as Newsom himself has made clear, spending money locally has a long-term economic benefit that almost certainly outweighs the price differential in most bids. "When Newsom bought his car in Colma, the city lost the sales taxes, and lost the multiplier effect of the money being spent in town," Cornell noted.

In fact, a 2007 study by Civic Economics, sponsored by the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance, showed that if city residents shifted just 10 percent of their purchasing from national chains to locally-owned businesses, the city would gain 1,300 new jobs and $200 million in economic activity every year.

Imagine the activity — the positive benefits to the local economy — that would come with the city shifting, say, 25 percent of its spending to local businesses.

Obviously the city can’t buy everything in town. "Nobody in San Francisco makes Muni trains," Cornell noted. But a lot of what city departments buy, from hammers and paper to cars and trucks, is available from local suppliers — or could be. "If the city made it known it was looking to buy something locally, some entrepreneur would come along and figure out a way to supply it," Cornell said.

So how could this work on a policy level? It’s not that complicated. The city controller, or the Human Rights Commission, which oversees contracting policy, could devise a formula showing how much the cost of complying with city laws like the minimum wage, health care, and sick days (laws that most of us, and many small businesses, fully support) drives up the cost of doing business in San Francisco. Then give local merchants an equivalent advantage in the bidding process.

In other words, if the hammers at Brownie’s Hardware cost 25 cents more than the hammers in Nowhere, Miss., because Cornell pays for his workers’ health insurance, he should only have to come within 25 cents of the cut-rate suppliers’ price to get the city’s business. And if the taxpayers have to fork over a few cents more to buy local hammers, the money will come back, and more, from the demonstrated benefits of shopping locally.

Chiu thinks that’s a good idea, and he’s already taken the first steps to forcing the city to shop local. Chiu introduced legislation in April requiring the city to set aside a portion of all contracts for locally-wned businesses and to increase the financial advantage local firms get in bidding.

And at Chiu’s request, the HRC will appear before the supervisors Land Use Committee May 11 to present the latest data on how much city spending goes to local businesses. "I’ve been asking for this for two years," Chiu said.

"It is unwise for our city not to take $1 of public money and give it to a local business that will pass that dollar onto its local employee, who will then spend it at another local business," he added. "The multiplier effect of this is that money spent locally is better for the economy, and for the taxpayers."

On the rise

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May 6, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Even when times are shaky in San Francisco, it’s a fine time to head to PlayGround. At the upcoming 13th annual Best of PlayGround festival — which rides into the Thick House on steadily mounting popularity for an unprecedented four-week run beginning May 7 — a ticket will get you a lot of theater, in terms of quantity, quality, and novelty.

Since 1996, the annual festival has drawn from the best work presented in PlayGround’s signature short play contests — a monthly challenge (from October through March) to develop a 10-minute script in four days around a given theme ("When Pigs Fly" served one time), with winning scripts getting staged readings by leading Bay Area acting and directing talent in Monday Night performances at Berkeley Repertory Theater. The festival, meanwhile, gives the cream of the yearly crop (those earning PlayGround’s Emerging Playwright Award) fully staged productions, again with the collaboration of the finest Bay Area directors, actors, and designers.

This unusual mix of fresh, untested (or just emerging) talent on the page and seasoned professionals on and off the stage means there’s really nothing else quite like it in Bay Area theaters, and it remains a crowd-pleaser. Attendance at Monday Night performances broke all records this year, notes artistic director Jim Kleinmann, who founded PlayGround in 1994 with colleagues Brighde Mullins and Denise Shama.

But it’s also been a marked success in the underlying mission of developing new theatrical voices and strengthening the theater community as a whole in the Bay Area. (A recent Theatre Bay Area Magazine article listing the region’s 13 top emerging playwrights included no less than eight PlayGround alumni.) Kleinmann says the inspiration for PlayGround came from a playwriting exercise developed by his old teacher at Brown University, renowned playwright Paula Vogel, but has steadily expanded to include several commissions for full-length work from PlayGround writers. This year’s five commission winners will have their work presented in staged readings as part of the festival. The thrust throughout has been to nurture craft in the context of encouraging ties between new and seasoned theater makers.

"It certainly has evolved," Kleinmann says. "As the number of writers increased over time and the writers started to have longer-term relationships with PlayGround a couple of years into the Monday Night format, we added the festival, [which] became a really important showcase." These festival playwrights would have their works published too in a PlayGround anthology, making them available to readers and theater companies elsewhere. Still, a few years later Kleinmann and colleagues began work on new avenues of support.

"We’d always hoped that if we could discover these writers and worked to nurture them, midsize theaters would take them under their wings," he says. "That wasn’t happening as quickly as we might have hoped. So we found there was a need to bring writers to another level [with the commissions], where they would be able to be supported in their full-length work."

It’s a formula that has paid off with writers and audiences for more than a decade. Among the other enticements of new work in this format, there’s a serious vicarious thrill that goes with seeing actors of the caliber of a Stacy Ross or Jim Carpenter, under direction of a Barbara Oliver or Chris Smith, assay work by a gifted but still-developing or even unknown voice. In addition, "there’s no question it creates a dialogue about their work and [the actors and directors] become champions for their work," Kleinmann says. "What you [end up having] is a stronger community."

"BEST OF PLAYGROUND FESTIVAL"

May 7–31 Thu–Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 7 p.m., $28-$40

Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF

(415) 401-8081, www.playground-sf.org

Our 2009 Small Business Awards

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May 6, 2009

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Why can’t City Hall shop local?

EMPLOYEE-OWNED BUSINESS AWARD

Photo by Pat Mazzera

CHURCH STREET FLOWERS

"It was really all about trust," says Stephanie Foster of Church Street Flowers, when asked about the benefits and perils of transferring ownership of the delightful bouquet boutique — and perennial Guardian Best of the Bay winner — near the Castro to the employees. Foster, along with Rachel Shinfeld and Brianna Foehr, took over in December 2008 from previous owners Michael Ritz and Thomas Teel, who’d run the shop for a decade. "The three of us had worked here for a while and we knew our stuff, so Michael and Tom knew they could rely on us to preserve the legacy. And the outpouring of support from our neighbors and regular customers has been overwhelming."

The ownership change of the cozy shop, bursting with vibrant blooms and friendly energy, went off without a hitch. "We were part of the lucky few who received a small business loan before the economic collapse," Shinfeld says. "But our business plan was smart, and the bank saw that we knew what we were doing." And, even in the current climate, business is thriving. "Our arrangements aren’t your standard cookie-cutter stuff," Foster says. "People nowadays want personalized, reasonably priced, green-minded, and locally sourced. We fit into all that — most of our flowers are from the downtown flower market and we keep an eye out for organic. Plus we strive to create a real connection with our customers, so we can give them exactly what they want."

"Sure, there have been some adjustments," Shinfeld adds. "There’s a lot of paperwork — and the first thing we needed to tackle was a Web site redesign. But our experience working here helped us through, and I think we’re just beginning to blossom in our new roles." (Marke B.)

CHURCH STREET FLOWERS

212 Church, SF

(415) 553-7762

www.churchstreetflowers.com

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GOLDEN SURVIVOR AWARD

Photo by Charles Russo

GREEN APPLE BOOKS

What is the special ingredient that transforms a business from just another store into a place that makes people feel inspired and connected? After 42 years as a San Francisco independent bookseller, Green Apple Books and Music seems to have found it. Located on Clement Street in a building that predates the 1906 quake, it’s a "big, sprawling, dusty and funky new and used bookstore," as co-owner Pete Mulvihill describes it, creating an atmosphere for interactions that might seem impossible in a big-box store. Several weeks ago, for instance, a customer approached the store clerks, presented a CD, and requested that they play it. He also asked them to clear out the philosophy room. "I want it to myself for just a minute," he explained. The staff complied, the music started, and the man whisked his girlfriend into the philosophy room and proposed to her.

"To me, that’s an honor that somebody loves the place so much that they would propose to their girlfriend here," says Mulvihill, one of three owners and an employee for more than 15 years. A founding member of the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance, he has been at the forefront of a push to identify and promote the city’s small, independent businesses. "Locally-owned businesses recirculate more money in the local economy than national chains," the SFLOMA Web site points out.

"Frankly, we’re invested in the community," Mulvihill explains. "[We] love San Francisco, and we don’t want to go anywhere." (Rebecca Bowe)

GREEN APPLE BOOKS

506 Clement, SF

(415) 387-2272

www.greenapplebooks.com

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CHAIN ALTERNATIVE AWARD

Photo by Charles Russo

HUT LANDON

Hut Landon is responsible the past few years for helping direct millions of dollars into small business in San Francisco and beyond, and millions more into the local economy.

He does it through his energetic and creative leadership of two key organizations that promote the interests of locally-owned small business. Landon has been the executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA), which promotes the interests of 200 independent bookstores in the region. He is also executive director of the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance (SFLOMA).

Under Landon’s stewardship, the two groups commissioned a pioneering 2007 study that quantified the value of locally-owned businesses in the city. Their stunning finding: if consumers redirected l0 percent of their retail purchases from chains to locally-owned merchants, the result would generate about $200 million for the economy, l,295 jobs, and $72 million new income for workers.

Landon’s timing could not have been better. As the economy tanked, local merchants and neighborhood business organizations used the l0 percent consumer shift as a mantra. The study also pointed out that the local economy could get another big boost if the city would shop locally with the tens of millions it now spends outside the city for goods and services.

Landon likes to use the example of two brothers who live together. One works on Potrero Hill and eats lunch at one of the many locally-owned restaurants. The other works at Stonestown shopping center and eats at a chain restaurant because that’s all there is out there. The Potrero Hill money, he points out, stays in the community. The chain store money is sent back to headquarters. (Bruce Brugmann)

HUT LANDON

Northern California Independent Booksellers Association

1007 General Kennedy, SF

(415) 561-7686

www.nciba.com

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SMALL BUSINESS ADVOCATE

Photo by Abi Kelly

REGINA DICK-ENDRIZZI

Small business owners often feel as if they don’t have many advocates at City Hall. But they do have Regina Dick-Endrizzi.

Dick-Endrizzi, acting director of the Small Business Commission, has been moving rapidly on ways to help small businesses feel more comfortable dealing with the city — and to help them thrive in a tough economic environment. She helped establish the Small Business Assistance Center, which guides local merchants and prospective entrepreneurs through the thicket of city regulations. "It’s a tremendous asset," she told us. "When people walk through the door, we can take the time to help them develop a roadmap to doing business here." And she’s a driving force behind the Shop Local campaign, which will launch this month with bus shelter and bus-side ads designed to encourage San Franciscans to keep their money in town (co-sponsored by the Guardian).

Known in political circles as a former aide to Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, Dick-Endrizzi has a solid background in business. She moved to San Francisco in 1986 to open the Haight Street Buffalo Exchange store, and worked with that company for 13 years. "We bought our inventory from local people, and I had to have a close relationship with local small businesses," she said. "I have an intimate understanding of what it takes to run a business."

After several years in Mirkarimi’s office, she learned of the opening at the Small Business Commission, and plans to stay there for a while. "I truly believe in what this department offers to small business," she said. "There’s such a tremendous need." (Tim Redmond)

REGINA DICK-ENDRIZZI OFFICE OF SMALL BUSINESS

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, SF

(415) 554-6134

www.sfgov.org

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GOOD NEIGHBOR AWARD

URBAN SOLUTIONS

Urban Solutions has its roots in the South of Market Foundation, an economic development corporation formed in 1992 in response to what SoMa merchants, residents, and community-based organizations felt was a lack of accountability in their neighborhood’s development.

A decade later, the organization changed its name and Urban Solutions was born. Two years after that, the burgeoning nonprofit opened a second office, this time in the Western Addition, becoming an important source of service in both neighborhoods.

Urban Solution’s executive director Jenny McNulty says she is currently excited about her organization’s Green Business initiative, which helps educate small business on how to conserve resources and reduce their carbon footprints — and save money in the process.

McNulty is also amped about Urban Solution’s effort — undertaken with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency — to revitalize Sixth Street’s commercial corridor.

"We’re expanding our Green Business Initiative program, which offers free consulting to help small businesses go green by implementing cost-saving practices to increase the sustainability of their business operations," McNulty said.

Urban Solutions’ Sixth Street revitalization effort includes beautifying the area and helping businesses, in conjunction with Redevelopment Agency grants, by improving their facades, installing new awnings, repainting buildings, and replacing windows, storefronts, and entrance ways.

"Our focus is low-income businesses," McNulty said. (Sarah Phelan)

URBAN SOLUTIONS

1083 Mission, SF

(415) 553-4433

www.urbansolutionssf.org

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GOOD NEIGHBOR AWARD

Photo by Abi Kelly

JENS-PETER JUNGCLAUSSEN

Jens-Peter Jungclaussen had a dream: Buy a gutted, camouflage-painted school bus on eBay, convert it to biodiesel, and put it to use as a mobile classroom by day and a party on wheels by night, a rollicking omnibus of education, culture, and sustainability. With a few flicks of his wrist, Jungclaussen, a former German windsurfing pro and biology and PE teacher, transforms the bus to suit the need at hand — pulling down a movie screen from the roof; unpacking a buffet table, wet bar, or set of turntables from beneath the seats; or simply switching on the "party lights." Dubbed das Frachtgut ("the good freight"), the bus has hosted dinner parties on Twin Peaks, ecology classes in Muir Woods, sunrise raves on undisclosed beaches, and screenings of The Big Lebowski (complete with bowling and White Russians). It also serves as a mobile billboard for its various local, eco-friendly sponsors and can be rented for field trips and corporate events.

The ever-enthusiastic and tireless Jungclaussen recently turned his attentions to youth education, this year offering for the first time a "mobile summer camp." Teaming up with fellow teachers Michael Murnane, Gretchen Nelson, Justin Ancheta, and Leah Greenberg, he’ll present three, 11-day sessions on wheels that will introduce young people to a variety of Bay Area natural, artistic, and historical treasures. But don’t worry, the parties will still keep rolling. As Jungclaussen promises of the bus, "What you want it to be, it will become." (Marke B.)

JENS-PETER JUNGCLAUSSEN

(415) 424-1058

www.teacherbus.com

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ARTHUR JACKSON DIVERSITY IN SMALL BUSINESS AWARD

IRENE HERNANDEZ-FEIKS

It’s easy to assume that the purpose of Chillin’, the brainchild of Mexico City native Irene Hernandez-Feiks, is simply to have a good time. But the multimedia parties Hernandez-Feiks has been throwing for 11 years are much more than entertainment. Their actual purpose is to stimulate the economy and support one of the most difficult small businesses to sustain: the business of art.

A former designer herself, Hernandez-Feiks started out organizing weekly happy hours at 111 Minna where she would feature up to five independent Bay Area designers. Her philosophy? Charge the designers nothing for the opportunity and take no commission. The formula worked so well that Chillin’ eventually grew from weeknight happy hours to Saturday night events, complete with DJs. Now Chillin’ is a full-fledged happening — indeed, the June 13 anniversary show at Mezzanine features 180 photographers and artists, 40 filmmakers, 80 fashion designers, and 12 DJs.

But watching Chillin’ grow — and seeing participating artists transform themselves from local to international names — isn’t enough for Hernandez-Feiks. She also devotes much of her time to charity work, including involvement with Gen Art, the Mexican Consulate Cultural Affairs division, the United Nations and Natural World Museum, and the Art Seed Apprenticeship Program benefiting Bayview- Hunters Point youth.

"Because of Chillin’, I have relationships with so many artists," she says. "I want to use those connections to help everybody out." (Molly Freedenberg)

IRENE HERNANDEZ-FEIKS

Chillin Productions

(415) 285-1998

www.chillinproductions.com

Sita Sings the Blues

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May 5, 2009

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REVIEW A few years ago, independent animator and comic strip artist Nina Paley left San Francisco for India, where her boyfriend had found employment. A while later, during a visit home, she received a surprise, brusque communication from the bf informing her she need not return — the relationship was over. Just what the bf ultimately got out of this episode is unknown. But Paley got posterity: her first feature film, inspired by both the breakup and the ancient Sanskrit epic the Ramayana, is artistic therapy that also happens to be just about the most delightful movie in eons, cartoon or otherwise. Utilizing very different animation techniques, she cuts between a blatantly autobiographical tale of romantic woe and the mythological travails of Sita, beloved of the noble Rama. He rescues her from an amorous, abducting rival, but his chivalry dies when false accusations about her "purity" threaten to tarnish his image. Then, as now, men are pigs. Sita wriggles through her fate like a Bollywood Betty Boop, frequently crooning vintage 78 tracks by Jazz Age blues chanteuse Annette Hanshaw, and the visual wit on display is akin to Max Fleischer’s antics plus intellectual gamesmanship, grotesque streaks, and eye-popping color. Paley breaks the fourth wall in umpteen ingenious ways. Sita Sings the Blues is so full of fun and invention you may start looking forward to seeing it again after it’s barely started.

SITA SINGS THE BLUES runs Fri/8–Tues/12 at the Red Vic. See Rep Clock.

“Desiree Holman: Reborn”

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May 5, 2009

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REVIEW It’s time to dance — to sashay from the video installation within Nick Cave’s "Meet Me at the Center of the Earth" at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to the video aspect of Desirée Holman’s part of the SECA exhibition, now in its last days at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. To hustle between the two is revealing. Not only do Cave and Holman share an irreverent interest in choreography and the unity or community that can spring from mutual movement, they also devote considerable creative energy to costuming. Most compelling of all, these strange kin tap into and surrealistically subvert (in Holman’s case) or explode (in Cave’s instance) conventions regarding race relations in the early Obama era. Think about it. Dance to this.

Closer to the Tenderloin at Jessica Silverman Gallery, Holman turns her attention to the feminine and maternal in "Reborn," a solo show that, much like her SFMOMA contribution, mixes drawings, mask-making (or more precisely here, doll-making), and video involving choreography. Holman’s drawings for the exhibition are as sickly they are lovely — a woman’s split ends take on a windswept weeping willow quality. In the alluring yet disgusting series of images, milk spills from mothers’ mouths as they nurse unsettlingly complacent babies. The video Reborn, nestled perversely in the cement block back room — or should I say back womb? — of Silverman Gallery, mines comedy and the type of incipient frustration that can grow into rage. It does so via games of duck-duck-goose, hummed lullabies, and the occasional bedazzled burka.

DESIRÉE HOLMAN: REBORN

Through May 30. Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Silverman Gallery, 804 Sutter, SF. (415) 255-9508. www.silverman-gallery.com