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Movers/Shakers: Two rare visits by European contemporary dance-makers this weekend

Sue Vaughan

February 28, 2014

Movers/Shakers: Two rare visits by European contemporary dance-makers this weekend

Here are two very special opportunities to see (and, in at least one case, join in on) the work of some leading European contemporary dance/performance makers passing through town this weekend…

My Own Bodies – a solo for many

Sweden-based Shake it Collaborations (SiC) is an internationally active company comprised of Tove Sahlin and Dag Andersson. A small crowd of friends and acquaintances was in attendance last Sunday, in the Tenderloin, for the couple’s highly social duet, Roses & Beans, which featured no roses (but a few flowers) and no beans (but one hell of a layer cake). Deploying exuberant as well as exasperated movement, popular song (sung a cappella and sometimes directly into each other’s mouths), and a shrewd sense of humor, the piece sparked and built upon spontaneous interactions with and among the audience — all the while exploring various frames for the conception, reception, transmission, rejection, and abeyance of love as an organizing principle.

It was a memorable encounter, and, fortunately, not the last: This Friday and Saturday at CounterPULSE, Tove Sahlin will perform her everybody-in-the-pool solo, My Own Bodies.

The piece, which premiered in Stockholm’s House of Dance in 2013, is a 40-minute shakeout in which the audience contributes to a “common shake action.” The piece explores shaking as movement, as metaphor, as empathetic medium, as emotional trigger and state, and whatever else ends up on the floor. Come ready to quake. It should be a Richter 9.

Fri/28–Sat/1, 8pm, free (RSVP at counterpulse.org)

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.counterpulse.org

An Evening of Contemporary Dance

Meanwhile, a few blocks away on Market, you can find ACT’s Costume Shop alive this Saturday night with two more contemporary dance pieces.

From Italy, well-known choreographer and dancer Caterina Basso presents Il Volume Com’era, her solo piece, which was selected for the Venice Biennale project Prima Danza in 2013.

“The project arises primarily from the desire to be alone in the room and to work on movement, movement that is not guided by the prompting of others,” reads Basso’s statement from the Biennale premiere. “The work takes shape on the basis of a body that moves invisible objects, in a kind of action composed of displacements and short paths through the spaces. A fragmented but natural pace that is transmitted by the activity of the hands to the entire body. A fragile body because it is blocked by clearly defined limits, it seeks a place but is an obstacle to itself, its parts do not collaborate, as if each of them were engaging in passive resistance. A body that cannot find a suitable place, the comfort of feeling welcomed in a detail of time and space, the relief of a relationship. A halting movement that becomes rhythm, which searches for the way out of paths and rules, without really finding them.”

Sharing the bill with Basso are San Francisco dancer-choreographers Liz Tenuto and Monique Jenkinson, who will reprise the excellent duet they premiered at last year’s West Wave festival: the witty, sensual, vital Am I Square?

Sat/1, 8pm, $10

ACT Costume Shop

1117 Market, SF

RSVP to bbasso@act-sf.org

I watched Rebelution next to Dusty Baker

Steven T. Jones

February 27, 2014

I watched Rebelution next to Dusty Baker

“Put in this story that you watched Rebelution next to Dusty Baker,” said Dusty Baker. As I stood against the railing on the upper level of the Independent Tuesday night, I was unknowingly chatting up the former San Francisco Giants’ manager. The baseball legend chuckled at my slight embarrassment at not recognizing him. He leaned over the railing as he talked about supporting live music and coming here with his best friend from 2nd grade. We overlooked a sold-out room, filled to the brim with an eclectic group of high school and middle-aged reggae lovers.

Rebelution opened the show with a tight guitar riff before the rest of the band jumped in with drums, bass, keyboard, and saxophone — a signature Rebelution move. No fog machine needed, dozen of joints lit up within the first minute creating a hazy shadow around the musicians. If you weren’t high before, you certainly would be through second-hand smoke alone — which got me wondering, is Dusty Baker high right now? Within the first song, my thoughts turned to nostalgia for simpler times.

Disclaimer: Rebelution has been a long time favorite band of mine. I remember listening to the sweet reggae songs on road trips down the coast during high school. In college, I drove through the night to see the band play at Lollapalooza. My ringtone still to this day is the first 30 seconds of “Safe and Sound.”

The band’s front man, Eric Rachmany, started the show off with the crowd favorite “Attention Span.” Images of lazy afternoons and thoughts of making the world a better place overtook me. “It’s a pleasure to meet ya,” he sang.

It really was a pleasure for him. The SF native was genuinely pumped to be playing in his hometown. At every bridge, transition, and break between songs, Rachmany called out to the sold-out venue. “How are we doing San Francisco?” The crowd cheered back with matching enthusiasm. This mutual delight in each other’s presence is such a rare occasion in live music nowadays; Rebelution has a riveting stage presence.

Beyond Rachmany, the keyboard player Rory Carey softly caressed the keyboard offering harmonious beats to Wesley Finley on the drums. Carey’s long blonde locks flowed side to side as he swayed back and forth over the keyboard. Standing well over six feet tall, the timid bassist, Marley D. William, occasionally stepped out from the shadows and commanded the stage. And the excellent touring member Khris Royal stole the show by blowing insane saxophone melodies that matched up perfectly with Rachmany’s guitar.

“He used to play guitar in the hallways at Drew,” said Adam Swig, a high school friend of Rachmany’s whom I met at the show. Rachmany grew up in the Sunset and went to the Drew School. “I was like ‘Man, that’s cheating. Girls are here.’” It’s no doubt that Rachmany is a babe magnet. With his soothing vocals and honest energy, the lead singer had girls in tube tops fawning over him. To be fair, dudes in backwards baseball caps, graphic T-shirts, and oversized hoodies partook in the fawning, especially during his epic guitar solos.

While the vocals and instrumentals were perfectly on par, Rebelution’s performance was not only about music — it was about community. The Santa Barbara band opened for Israel Vibration at the Independent back in 2007, after independently releasing its first full-length album “Courage to Grow.” Since then, the band has played all across the California coast and around the country, selling out local venues and opening music festivals. Two years later, Rebelution founded its own record label 87 Music, named after the band members’ address while at UCSB, where they met. With three albums, an independent label and an upcoming fourth album, the reggae band found its way back to its roots at the Independent in celebration of the venue’s 10th anniversary.

With just a few simple strums of the acoustic guitar, Rachmany quieted the room for “Feelin’ Alright,” the band’s most popular single, about releasing hatred and surrendering to the music. The soft strings reverberated around the hall. To no one’s surprise, the entire crowd joined in with vocals. “I’m trying to pick up the soul’s intention to soak in music relaxation,” he sang.

“They are probably the most successful ‘true’ independent touring band,” said Swig about his high school buddy’s band. Bias aside, the band’s success can be measured by the community love. As Emma wrote last week, the Independent is at the heart of the city. Much like the Divisadero venue, Rebelution relies heavily on the community, which was clearly seen at last night’s show, from Dusty Baker showing support to a surprise performance by Zion I. The show wasn’t about Rebelution; it was a celebration of live independent music. Rachmany spit a verse during Thrive’s opening set. The trumpet player of Brass Magic (first opener) played alongside sax player Royal during “Roots Reggae Music,” a new song from Rebelution’s upcoming album.

At the end of the set, Rebelution performed a wonderful two-song encore, including “Green to Black” with complementary green lights. Basking in the green-soaked room, the audience roared with excitement and the fan-made smoke machine started up again. Rarely have I seen such pure happiness and tranquility in this condensed space. It didn’t matter that the show was almost over, it happened. Waves of enlightenment overpowered Rebelution’s fans, including myself.

“We appreciate your energy,” yelled Rachmany through the thick fog. The crowd cheered back. From the light tunes of “Lazy Afternoon” to the socially conscious lyrics of “Good Vibes,” Rebelution’s intention was to bring honest joy to San Francisco, and I couldn’t get enough of the good vibes.

Feds indict SFPD cops, alleging a drug ring and shakedowns of the poor

Sasha Cuttler

February 27, 2014

Feds indict SFPD cops, alleging a drug ring and shakedowns of the poor

Federal grand juries today indicted four San Francisco Police Department officers, an SFPD sergeant, and a former SFPD officer on a variety of corruption, civil rights violations, and theft charges stemming from illegal raids on poor residents of single room occupancy hotels in San Francisco.

“Our department is shaken,” Police Chief Greg Suhr told reporters at a morning news conference. “This is as serious a matter as I’ve ever encountered in the Police Department.”

Yet Suhr also distanced himself from scandal, telling reporters, “This conduct occurred before my time as chief.” Shortly after Suhr was sworn in as chief in April 2011, he changed department policies related to the SROs, including preventing officers from using pass keys to enter the buildings without a warrant or the rooms without probable cause.

The pattern of alleged criminal behavior by SFPD officers was exposed in early 2011 by Public Defender Jeff Adachi, whose investigators found video surveillance from the Henry Hotel and other local SROs that supported defendants claims that police were shaking them down and then submitting false police reports.

“The indictments today are a victory for ordinary San Franciscans,” Adachi told reporters today, emphasizing that in addition to personally profiting from the shakedown, these officers were also submitting false testimony in perhaps hundreds of cases, including 100 that his office has gotten dismissed. “These allegations not only involve violations of the constitutional rights of our clients, but also lying on police records that were used to sent individuals to prison based on the testimony of these officers.”

Once the videos were made public, the investigation was referred to federal investigators because District Attorney George Gascon’s office had a conflict of interest, given that he had just come from serving as police chief in the SFPD, where he presided over the officers involved in this scandal.

Gascon issued a public statement saying, “I am relieved to know that the officers have been indicted after I referred the matter to federal authorities. It is extremely disappointing that the officers violated the trust of the community and tarnished the reputation of all the hard working men and women in uniform. As law enforcement, we must all work hard to ensure our agencies operate with the highest integrity and are deserving of the trust the public bestows upon us.”

Raw video of the press conference via KTVU.

His office didn’t respond to Guardian questions about his culpability in the scandal, but Gascon is likely to be asked about it when he holds a press briefing this hour. [UPDATE 5:30PM: During a brief press availability, Gascon said the indictments shouldn’t be considered a reflection of his leadership of the department: “Anytime you have a large organization, you are going to have people who operate outside the boundaries of what is acceptable.” Asked by the Guardian when he became aware of allegations that his officers were being accused of shaking down tenants in the SROs, he said, “We became aware at the same time everyone else did, when the videos came out.” The press availability was cut off after 10 minutes because Gascon was giving a State of Public Safety speech upstairs, showing up 25 minutes later, but spokesperson Alex Bastian said he would try to get answers tomorrow to Guardian questions about Gascon’s record and independence when it comes to prosecuting police abuse cases.]

Those indicted today were Officers Arshad Razzak, Richard Yick, Raul Eric Elias, and Edmond Robles, and Sgt. Ian Furminger. Also indicted was former officer Reynaldo Vargas, who was caught on videotape appearing to steal a laptop computer from a tenants in the Henry Hotel, and who Suhr said was dismissed from the SFPD before the federal investigation began.

Suhr also said that all of those involved have been on administrative duties throughout the investigation, which the SFPD cooperated with, and that some of them (he couldn’t say how many) were also required to turn in their firearms.

These indictments also don’t appear to be the end of this unfolding scandal. “There were other officers involved and they will be dealt with administratively,” Suhr said without providing details. When asked by the Guardian whether anyone in the command staff may face discipline, Suhr said “no.”

But with these six facing possibly lengthy prison terms, it will be interesting to see what they have to say about what others in the SFPD knew about their actions, which also allegedly involved running a drug ring out of Mission Station, where Furminger, Robles, and Vargas are accused of illegally seizing and selling marijuana.

Adachi wants to see this investigation continue: “It would be hard to believe that nobody who was involved in supervising these officers was aware of it.”

Courtney Barnett gets droll at the Rickshaw Stop

Steven T. Jones

February 27, 2014

Courtney Barnett at the Rickshaw Stop Monday night.

By Sloane Martin

Standing outside the Rickshaw Stop before Courtney Barnett‘s set, I’m watching her chat with her bandmates when one of the girls working merch pops out to let Barnett know that they’ve run out of everything — shirts, albums, posters. “Oh, hang on,” Barnett cries. “I think we have a couple more t-shirts in the car!” And she’s off, grabbing the minivan keys from her drummer so she can dig out something to sell to San Francisco. Despite the shaggy hair and the tomboy-cool outfit of striped t-shirt, jeans, and Chelsea boots, she genuinely has appreciation for the fans who have come out.

That moment set the right tone for a goofy, humble, and electrically entertaining set on Monday night, one of several sold-out shows kicking off Noisepop 2014. Courtney Barnett (and the Courtney Barnetts, a rhythm section comprised of drummer Dave Mundy and bassist Andrew Loane) is a former bartender from Melbourne, Australia. Her debut album The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas has gained considerable popularity over the past several months, fueled by a lauded performance at CMJ in October 2013. If you weren’t one of the fans lucky enough to grab a copy of the record before it sold out, you’ll have to order one from Barnett herself. The performer started her label, Milk! Records, which she described onstage as “me packing up CDs in my bedroom,” to release her own music as well as that of friends like Jen Cloher and Fraser A. Gorman. New York independent label Mom + Pop Music will release A Sea of Split Peas on CD and vinyl in the US later this year.

Wandering onstage and looking a bit bemused by the crowd’s excitement, Barnett launched into 40 minutes of tight, shredding guitar riffs and droll lyrics. Her eager, energetic drummer and bassist provided a heavy low-end that nearly drowned out some of her funnier moments. Her signature impassive delivery of the drawling line, “Just because you’re older than me / doesn’t mean you have to be so condescending,” on “Out of the Woodwork,” and the opening of “Lance Jr.,” “I masturbated to the songs you wrote / resuscitated all my hopes,” was too enjoyable to be missed. After a slow start, Barnett and her bandmates seemed to loosen up, or maybe wake up, as they’ll finally be headed back to Australia for a much deserved rest after this final US show. All that time on the road made for a tightly rehearsed show, however, as at one point even the headbanging of each band member was perfectly in sync. Once the onstage banter started, it became clear that Barnett comes by her lyrical humor quite naturally, as she assured us that if we missed the chance to buy a t-shirt or a CD, “I’ll hug each and every one of you, and Andy will kiss you, and Dave will sign your chest.”

The crowd of hesitantly spastic dancers seemed not to know quite what to do with the deadpan vocals set against an enthusiastically kinetic rhythm section. Word to the wise: Either bob your head or bounce up and down or choose noodle arms, lest you lose your expensive beer to the floor, as the gentleman next to me did. Hopefully these fans figure out their dance strategies by the time the next record comes out, as the new song Barnett played us midway through her set was a promising sign of consistently fantastic work ahead. As the crowd sang along to “Avant Gardener,” Barnett’s sprawling narrative of an asthma attack suffered in her front garden, it was easy to sympathize with lines like, “Should have stayed in bed today / I much prefer the mundane,” but I, at least, was glad to have gotten out of bed to see her.

SF just won the Beyoncé video parody contest

Steven T. Jones

February 27, 2014

SF just won the Beyoncé video parody contest

…with this sensuous art film about the deepest love of all, the love of donuts. “Dunkin Love,” for your viewing pleasure below, features Bay Area artists Reggie White and Adrian Anchondo, and was shot at our very own, very chilly, Ocean Beach.

The multi-faceted White, it turns out, is also one of the players in Hundred Days, the “folk-rock odyssey” of a musical theater piece that premieres this week at Z Space. All the actors are also musicians, or, you know, amazing parody music video stars — read more about it in this week’s issue.

Anchondo is a Berkeley-based actor and former bartender at Hi Tops in the Castro who will, unfortunately, be departing for his hometown of LA in the coming weeks. The two met while working on a play at the Aurora Theatre, in which Anchondo played White’s abusive boyfriend. Acknowledging that the Bay Area is, yes, damn expensive for a struggling actor, Anchondo wrote us: “The best thing about being a performer is that when you feel stuck, you can just create something on your own. I seriously had only $100 to spend and I was like ‘Do I buy this wig and dress and these donuts? Or do I pay my internet bill?’ I think I made the right decision.”

We also asked to hear where in San Francisco the performers actually do get their donut fix, since Dunkin Donuts is out of the question — at least for now — and will report back as more details come in.

BRB, just got hungry.

Feds indict SFPD officers for allegedly stealing from the poor

Sasha Cuttler

February 27, 2014

Feds indict SFPD officers for allegedly stealing from the poor

Update: Click here for the latest as this story develops.

Federal civil rights and corruption charges have been filed against several San Francisco Police Department officers in connection with a series of raids on poor people’s SRO apartments, where the officers allegedly stole property, according to a report by KTVU.

The SFPD will be holding a press conference on the indictments within the hour, following by an afternoon press conference by Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who raised the issue in 2011 after obtained video surveillance footage that appeared to show an officers taking a laptop and other property, a story we covered at the time.

Surveillance video footage from the Julian Hotel, which Adachi’s office posted to YouTube in May 2011.

“We’re pleased to see the federal government appears to be taking these civil rights violations seriously,” Public Defender’s Office spokesperson Tamara Aparton told the Guardian.

Although the officers names haven’t been released, KTVU reports that five current officers and a former officer were indicted. Officers named by Adachi in 2011 as involved in the illegal alleged activites were Ronaldo Vargas and Richard Guerrero, although the SFPD says it won’t comment on the indictments until the press conference.

So check back here later for more on this breaking story.

Surveillance video footage from the Henry Hotel (above) and the Jefferson Hotel (below), which Adachi’s office posted to YouTube in December 2010.

A personal goodbye to Bush Man 2, RIP

Erica Hanna

February 26, 2014

San Francisco has lost one of its own. Gregory Jacobs, KTVU confirmed today, passed away of heart failure last Sunday.

He’s less known by his full name, but better known by his moniker, “The Bush Man.”

No, he’s not the original Bush Man. That would be David Johnson, who’d been there for 36 years, compared to Jacobs’ 30.

Little matter. Jacobs was a San Franciscan through and through. Like many San Franciscans, he came here from somewhere else, in his case the “somewhere else” was Arkansas. But Jacobs was known and loved here in The City.

The man was dedicated to his work: sitting along Jefferson street and spooking tourists by shouting “boo!” from behind two large and bushy tree branches.

From the KTVU story:

Jacobs’ cousin says he was a father and brother and a man who always wanted to be in that spot down on the Wharf. And even in his final days he took every opportunity he could to come back.

“Yeah every time he got out of the hospital he would come straight out and sit down (at the Wharf) with his hospital ban (still on his wrist),” Jacob’s cousin Chris Tolbert told KTVU. “He got in his spot as if nothing was wrong with him.”

His family says they just hope people remember him and that what he loved to do was to make people laugh.

Many will share their favorite “I got spooked so bad!” memory, but I want to share a more personal story about Gregory Jacobs from my time working on the streets of the wharf.

At age 17, I was living with a friend after irreconcilable differences with my mother led to too many shouting matches. The day I turned 18 I tried to go back home, but my father’s death years ago put too many strains on my relationship with my mother. At the time, we couldn’t coexist.

So I set out to live with my friend Morgan, who stayed in an in-law apartment in her family’s home in the Marina. Three kids, two parents, a grandmother living upstairs and a golden retriever named Indy welcomed me with open arms (and paws). The house was in the family for generations but the Blackburns were not Marina wealthy, and this wasn’t charity. I needed to pay rent, and I needed to do it fast.

I went to the Wharf.

Where better to earn rent money in a hurry, in summertime? On my own and a little confused about what life beyond high school should be about, I found the Wharf a somewhat daunting place. Beneath the facade of smiling tourists and the scent of tasty clam chowder lies a cutthroat network of businessmen, fleecers and street traders — all looking to make a buck.

Bush Man was there of course, but also many more: Kenny the Clown, a mute magician with “mystery” rings, the Latino graffiti artists, caricature painters, a homeless man begging from inside a trash can (ala Oscar the Grouch), Mary the juggler, and even a fire-eating local comedian who walked barefoot on glass. They, the weird, the bastard stepchildren of Emperor Norton.

Desperate for money, I joined their noble ranks.

A friend set me up selling tickets for the nearby Blue and Gold fleet. Wear some slacks, he said. Clean yourself up, he said. I did both, and with a Gavin Newsom style hair slick and ferry tickets in my back pocket I stood on the sidewalk across Ripley’s Believe it or Not to ply my trade.

I couldn’t have screwed up more. There are rules to the sidewalks, invisible rules you learn only by pissing off the wrong people. I was a newbie, a fresh fish with no claims.

The Wharf buskers let me know that right away.

A jazz musician with an electric keyboard tore me a new one. “This is my spot, damnit!” is the effect of what he said over the course of five minutes, through the haze of a decade-ago memory. It was akin to a dressing down from Kenny G, and just as surreal. I moved 20 feet East to the front of Boudin’s, only to be slapped back by a homeless man in a cowboy hat named William. “Get your own damn spot!” he said. The look on his face went from genial-change-collector to “I’ll kick your ass, kid” in under a second, his fists cocked for a brawl.

This, if you haven’t guessed, is where Jacobs the Bush Man comes in. Intimidated and confused, I wandered to his spot near the Anchorage Mall. He sat perched on a crate, jumping up and shaking his branches like a madman to scare the folks walking by.

I always preferred his style of showmanship to the “original” Bush Man’s — Jacobs had attitude.

“Bet YOU never made her scream like that sir!” he’d say to the husband of a shrieking blonde. “Welcome to America!” he’d say to an Asian family he made jump (who could easily have been from Arkansas themselves). “If you’re havin’ fun, put a tip in the can!” he’d say to the crowd nearby, who applauded approvingly of his spook and scare routine.

And his laugh, god his laugh. You could hear his cackle halfway down the block, and you knew his salt and pepper eyebrows were arched up as he laughed it up at his own jokes.

Gregory Jacobs asked people to call him “G,” at least when I knew him. G showed me the ropes, told me when I could occupy certain spots, and how to get on the other buskers’ good sides. I even took cues from his showy style.

“YOU sir, you look like you could use a bay cruise,” I’d say to a passing tourist with inflections reminiscent of my favorite Bush Man, and at a vocal volume that was similar too. “Don’t you think you ought to take your gorgeous girlfriend on a cruise around the bay?”

Bush Man’s sales tips helped. I was rakin’ in the cash, at least, for an 18 year old. G made much more, pulling in hundreds of dollars a day during peak time in the summer.

G wasn’t a saint for sure. More than once I saw him fist fight with the “original” Bush Man, David Johnson, who told me once that he taught Jacobs everything he knew. They used to split the proceeds, only Johnson claimed he was double crossed later on when Jacobs went off on his own as “Bush 2.”

I don’t know much about all that. All I know is, G was kind, and I liked him.

The Wharf liked him too (for the most part), and he was considered a local luminary. A year after I was selling cruise tickets, I started selling video games at a shop right by the In and Out Burger. One day walking out of my store I was startled, but not surprised, to see G judging a wet T-shirt contest starring the nearby Hooter’s girls.

He paced up and down, taking a good gander, pondering like a man with grave concerns on his mind. He took his job very, very seriously. Everyone watching smiled wide.

Yeah he was ornery, cranky, and loud. But Jacobs had heart, and he looked out for his fellow Wharf folk. G once protected me from the wackier buskers out there on the sidewalk.

One day as I strode down Jefferson street, Kenny the Clown (who ran for mayor at least once, and somehow obtained Steve Jobs’ stolen iPad) decided he thought I needed a hug (and more). If clowns aren’t frightening enough, Kenny is at least 6’5” — he’s a large man. Maybe he was harmless, but I didn’t want to find out.

As Kenny chased me down the street, G took me by the shoulders and said “Run! I got this, I got this!” Swirling around on one foot he raised his palms up to Kenny’s sky high shoulders. “Kenny Kenny Kenny Kenny,” he said, “slow down man! Let’s talk.”

Sometime shortly after that, I sleepily walked to work to inventory the stock of Nintendo games. The sun was still rising. Keys in hand, my mind drifted to the stillness of the street, how early morning Fisherman’s Wharf belongs to the buskers, fishermen and shop owners getting ready for the day. Most of all, I loved how the scent of sea air is easier to detect when you’re not distracted by hundreds of loud tourists.

I breathed in the air absentmindedly, enjoyably, as I reached out with my keys to unlock the gate to the store.

“BOO!” shouted G from just behind my ear, and I jumped halfway off of my skeleton.

“Holy crap G what’d you do that for?! I work here man, I’ve lived here my whole life, I thought you only did that shit to tourists,” I said, a little startled.

I still remember what he said. “Hey man, everyone’s got their time.”

That they do G. I will miss you, and so will San Francisco.

Eyewitness account from Molotov’s conflicts with Google Glass Explorer’s story

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

February 26, 2014

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Eyewitness account from Molotov’s conflicts with Google Glass Explorer’s story

A Google Glass “Explorer” and social media consultant from San Mateo made international headlines after visiting San Francisco for being “verbally and physically assaulted … because of some Google Glass haters,” she wrote on Facebook.

But her official account of the incident as reported to police conflicts with an eyewitness account from someone who saw the fight unfold.

On Feb. 22, Sarah Slocum went with some friends to Molotov’s, a punk bar in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood. It was sometime around last call. The patrons did not take kindly to the idea that she was donning Google Glass, and thus possibly recording them, inside the bar.

Google Glass is a hands-free device that connects users to the Internet via a tiny screen that floats in front of the wearer’s eye. It’s capable of streaming live video. Those testing it out are called “Explorers,” and Google specifically directs its Explorers to “ask permission before taking photos or videos of others.”

According to Albie Esparza, San Francisco Police Department spokesperson, Slocum reported that she was “engaged in a verbal altercation with three suspects,” because they “believed she was videotaping without their consent.”

During that confrontation, “one of the suspects grabbed the Google Glass off her face,” Esparza said, “and she ran out of the bar in pursuit. She retrieved the Google Glass,” Esparza said, but when she returned to the interior of the bar, she discovered that her purse and cell phone had gone missing.

Esparza said there is an open investigation, but no charges have been filed.

In a video Slocum released to KRON 4, a woman can be heard telling Slocum that she, as a techie, is “ruining the city.”

According to a source who did not want to be named, that woman was a bartender at Molotov’s who was not working that night, but has been fired in the days since this incident blew up in the news. When reached by phone, a staff member at Molotov’s said he was not authorized to comment on that.

According to a bar patron who was there that night, the situation didn’t really get out of hand until Slocum’s male companion threw a punch at one of the individuals who had been asking Slocum to stop recording.

Bryan Lester, who was outside the bar with a friend who was unlocking his bike when Slocum emerged from Molotov’s onto the sidewalk, said Slocum was still wearing her Google Glass when she exited the bar.

“I had seen her in the back when I had gotten a drink,” said Lester, who said he was hanging out near the pinball machines in the front of the bar that night.

“She was with a group of friends and … they seemed to be attracting a little bit of attention, but nothing serious, before last call.”

On the sidewalk outside Molotov’s, Lester said, “I believe that some words were exchanged … and then I saw the man protecting her throw a punch at the other gentleman and push him into a car and took a couple swings at him on the hood of the car.”

According to a different source who also saw things unfold from the street, “He did grab it from off her face but he told her to stop recording him and then he handed it back to her.” After that, “her boyfriend came, socked him in the face, then the fight broke out and the bouncer stopped it.”

Lester said the scuffle on the hood of the car lasted “about 30 seconds.” After that, “they were separated and the fight was over.”

Based on all accounts, it seems Slocum did have her purse and cell phone robbed. Which totally sucks.

We sought an interview with Slocum for this story, but were unable to make contact.

Mainstream media outlets have sensationalized this bar fight, because it plays so perfectly into the narrative that techies are somehow unsafe in San Francisco due to widespread anger over tech’s presence in gentrifying neighborhoods.

A tension certainly exists, because long-term residents are getting evicted and displaced at higher rates than ever before in the face of soaring rents. At the same time, it should be obvious to anyone that entering a punk bar at last call wearing Google Glass is going to ruffle some feathers. Combine this with alcohol, and the fact that a fight broke out isn’t terribly surprising.

There’s another issue here that few seem to be questioning. Isn’t there a privacy concern that arises when patrons go into bars wearing devices that can record live video and instantly stream it? I wondered about this the time I tried on Glass. (By the way, Glass can run facial recognition software.)

Instead of having an in-depth discussion about privacy, unfortunately, the controversy around this bar fight remains mired in some nonsense about whether the incident should be considered a “hate crime.”

“What makes this story special,” Slocum wrote on her Facebook page, “is that no one has experienced a hate crime or been targeted for a hate crime, which is what it was, for wearing Google Glass.”

But it’s not. The phrase “hate crime” has a very specific definition, as determined by Congress. Unless a victim has been targeted out of a bias against his or her race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation, it’s factually inaccurate to characterize any incident as a “hate crime.”

This could get even uglier. Already on Twitter, one of Slocum’s supporters has called for Glass wearers to congregate at Molotov’s in support of Slocum. And just wait and see what happens when people start wearing Lambda hats.

Logan Hesse contributed to this report.

Bike registry program nets 500 in first two weeks

Erica Hanna

February 26, 2014

Bike registry program nets 500 in first two weeks

A new program registering San Francisco bicycles and their owners enrolled just over 500 bicyclists in its first two weeks, a small success story in the effort to reunite riders with their stolen bicycles.

The program in question is Safe Bikes, a joint venture between the SFPD and SF Safe. Cyclists can log onto their website, register their bike’s make and model, and when victims report a bike theft to police they can be reunited with their two wheeled friend just as easily. There are 75,000 bike riders a day in San Francisco, according to the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office, a buffet of tantalizing goods for bike thieves.

More than 500 bikes is a small dent in that number, but for only a two week start it isn’t too bad. Safe Bikes Manager Morgan St. Clair said they’ve only just begun their outreach. Next month they plan to host an event at Twitter headquarters, where they’ll give away 50 Kryptonite locks, funded by the San Francisco Police Officers Association.

“We’ve only gone to three bike shops so far,” she said. But in the coming months St. Clair and her team of 15 volunteers have a city full of shops they plan to visit.

An estimated 4,000 bicycles were stolen from riders in 2012, though only 812 were reported to police. St. Clair said there is a perception problem.

“They think the police department isn’t doing anything and say ‘oh, what the heck,’ and don’t think they’ll ever get it back,” she said. “We’re trying to change that mentality.”

In fact, the SFPD has been a strong driver of getting bikes back into the hands of owners, mostly at the behest of officer Matt Friedman. He runs @SFbiketheft, a Twitter handle that tries to recover stolen bicycles and link them to owners.

Plz RT: Sent to me from a Mission Unit, homeless guy had three bicycles attempting to find the rightful owner pic.twitter.com/vgnFL28c17

— SFPD Anti Bike Theft (@SFPDBikeTheft) February 26, 2014

And if you want to see a sight that’ll make a San Franciscan cry, show them the SFPD’s graveyard of stolen bikes.

There, hundreds of bicycles sit unclaimed, some of which may find their way into a children’s program at the behest of a Board of Supervisors resolution proposed by John Avalos.

But ideally, the bikes would be reunited with their owners.

“We really want people to report more bicycle thefts,” St. Clair said. And to have those reports be effective, people need to register their bikes. You can register yours now by clicking here.

P.S. Guardian Editor Steven T. Jones had been planning to register his three bikes with the program, and then two of those bikes were stolen from outside his third floor apartment yesterday. They were a Trek Fast Track 420 road bike, purple with green tires, and a black Rocky Mountain bike with knobby tires and red handlegrips. Let his loss be a lesson to the rest of us: Don’t procrastinate, register today.

Tweets from https://twitter.com/sfbg/lists/primary-coverage-2014

Is Newsom on the wrong side of high-speed rail history?

Sasha Cuttler

February 26, 2014

Is Newsom on the wrong side of high-speed rail history?

As California struggles to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and meet the long-term transportation needs of a growing population, officials from Gov. Jerry Brown to Mayor Ed Lee have steadfastly supported the embattled California High-Speed Rail Project, which Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently withdrew his support from. California now has until July 1 to find funds to match the federal grants.

It’s not exactly surprised that this calculating and politically ambitious centrist would cave in to conservatives like this, particularly as Newsom tries to set himself up to succeed Brown in four years. But it’s a sharp contrast to more principled politicians like Brown, and to those trying to create the transportation system future generations will need, as President Barack Obama took a step toward doing today by announcing new federal transportation funding.

US Transportation Secretary Anthony Fox is also taking part in the three-day High Speed Rail Summit, sponsored by the United State High-Speed Rail Association, that began yesterday in Washington DC. Its theme is Full Speed Ahead.

“Secretary Foxx’s experience at the local level as mayor of Charlotte is extremely valuable for shaping national transportation policy. We look forward to working with the Secretary to advance high speed rail in America across party lines,” USHSRA President and CEO Andy Kunz said in a press release.

While Newsom’s new tact may play well with myopic, penny-pinching, car-dependent moderate and conservative voters, many of his allies and constituents were furious with his about-face on a project that promises to get riders from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in less than three hours.

Among those unhappy is San Francisco resident Peter Nasatir, who forwarded the Guardian a well-written letter that he has sent to Newsom’s office:

Dear Lt. Gov. Newsom,

I am a long time San Francisco resident, and although I have criticized many of your policies, I’ve always respected your commitment to be at the forefront of controversial issues. Even if the issue could have wrecked your political career, you still had the guts to take the lumps for a righteous cause.

That is why I’m so shocked you would publically decry the High-Speed Rail project. Yes there are cost overruns. Yes the public is sour to it today, but what would you propose as an alternative: more freeways, more runways? Every expert in the field has already signed off that runways and freeways have expanded as far as they can. Are you not a leading voice in demanding technical innovation in all levels of government?

In your book, Citizenville, did you not put forth the clarion call for citizens to embrace technological change? Did you not say that San Francisco was behind the likes of Estonia and South Korea in terms of digital governance? Is it not fair to say that California is behind Europe and Asia when it comes to high speed rail?

Could you have said something along the lines that the trajectory the project is going is troubling, but Californians for generations to come will benefit from it. This project must be saved, because to do otherwise will send California back 60 years.

You are a political maverick who had put his career on the line many times with such controversial positions as same-sex marriage, and walking the picket line with hotel workers on Union Square. High-speed rail is coming. The economy demands it, the environment demands it, and Central Valley population growth demands it. You may get some votes from moderates in the short run, but in the long run, you have positioned yourself as the most prominent person in the state to be on the wrong side of history.

Peter Nasatir

Music Listings Feb. 26-Mar 4, 2014

February 26, 2014

WEDNESDAY 26
ROCK
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. The Ever After, The Proofs, 8pm, free.
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Noise Pop Happy Hour: CCR Headcleaner, Skate Laws, Bicycle Day, 5pm, free.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Strange Vine, French Cassettes, Dante Elephante, Irontom, 7pm, $10-$12.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: The Fresh & Onlys, Cool Ghouls, Sandy’s, Luke Sweeney, 8pm, $12-$14.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Papercuts, Vetiver, The Donkeys, Eric D. Johnson, DJ Britt Govea, 8pm, $15-$18.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Beast Fiend, Neurotrash, Twat, 8pm, $5.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Dancer, Gravys Drop, 8:30pm, free.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Thieves of Malta, Great Highway, Future Us, 8pm, $8.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Little Person, April & The Paradigm, Harriot, The Tender Few, DJ Ryan Smith, 8pm, $5-$8.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. The Midnight Snackers, Spooky Flowers, Jet Trash, Friends W/O Benefits, 8pm, $5.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Ty Segall, Burnt Ones, Endless Bummer, 8pm, sold out.
SFSU Campus, Cesar Chavez Student Center: 1650 Holloway, San Francisco. Midnight Sons, Adult Books, Wyatt Blair, Bicycle Day, 6pm, free.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Cibo Matto, Salt Cathedral, 8pm, $26.
DANCE
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “BroMance: A Night Out for the Fellas,” 9pm, free.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Sticky Wednesdays,” w/ DJ Mark Andrus, 8pm, free.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bondage A Go Go,” w/ DJs Damon, Tomas Diablo, & guests, 9:30pm, $5-$10.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “Electro Pop Rocks,” 18+ dance night with Borgeous, DJ Audio1, Non Sequitur, Self Dustrukt, Nano Sage, LegitSoda, more, 9pm, $10-$20.
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “1964,” w/ DJ Matt B & guests, Second and Fourth Wednesday of every month, 10pm, $2.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Bodyshock,” w/ Chrissy Murderbot, Blk Rainbow, DJ Crackwhore, Unit 77, 9pm, $8-$10.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Housepitality,” w/ Acidman, Tyrel Williams, Bai-ee, Mrs. Blythe, 9pm, $5-$10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Indulgence,” 10pm
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “What?,” w/ resident DJ Tisdale and guests, 7pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Rock the Spot,” 9pm, free.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ DJ Big Bad Bruce, 10pm, free.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Booty Call,” w/ Juanita More, Joshua J, guests, 9pm, $3.
HIP-HOP
Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement, San Francisco. “Over the Hump,” w/ Children of the Funk, 10pm, free.
The NWBLK: 1999 Bryant, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, Stones Throw Records showcase featuring performances by Peanut Butter Wolf, J Rocc, Jonwayne, and Knxwledge at 8pm, preceded by a screening of the documentary Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton: This Is Stones Throw Records at 5pm, $20-$25.
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Mixtape Wednesday,” w/ resident DJs Strategy, Junot, Herb Digs, & guests, 9pm, $5.
ACOUSTIC
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, 7pm, free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, Every other Wednesday, 9:30pm, free/donation.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. The Toast Inspectors, Last Wednesday of every month, 9pm
JAZZ
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session, The Amnesiacs, 7pm, free.
Balancoire: 2565 Mission St., San Francisco. “Cat’s Corner,” 9pm, $10.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Royal Jelly, 9:30pm, $5.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6pm, free.
Club Deluxe: 1511 Haight, San Francisco. Patrick Wolff Quartet, 9pm, free.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. The Cosmo Alleycats featuring Ms. Emily Wade Adams, 7pm, free.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Michael Parsons Trio, Every other Wednesday, 8:30pm, free/donation.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Sebastian Parker Trio, 8pm
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Ricardo Scales, Wednesdays, 6:30-11:30pm, $5.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Thelonious Monk Institute All-Star Sextet with Ambrose Akinmusire & Lisa Henry, 8pm, $16-$20.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Amanda King, 7:30pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Baobab!,” timba dance party with DJ WaltDigz, 10pm, $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Bachatalicious,” w/ DJs Good Sho & Rodney, 7pm, $5-$10.
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Individúo, 8pm
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “International Freakout A Go-Go,” 10pm, free.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cafe Latino Americano, 8pm, $12.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Redwood Tango Ensemble, 8pm, free.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. The Cash Box Kings, 7:30 & 9:30pm, $15.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Big Bones & Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Takezo, 9:30pm
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Loop 2.4.3, Prism, 8pm, $5-$12.
SOUL
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Color Me Badd,” coloring books and R&B jams with Matt Haze, DJ Alarm, Broke-Ass Stuart, guests, Wednesdays, 5:30-9:30pm, free.

THURSDAY 27
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. “Mods v. Rockers,” w/ Little Wild, The M-Tet, DJ Dutch Crunch, 8:30pm, $5-$7.
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Noise Pop Happy Hour: Dude York, A Million Billion Dying Suns, A-1 & Rawdad, 5pm, free.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Hibbity Dibbity, Big Baby Guru, Wag, 9:30pm, $5 advance.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Bottomless Pit, Kinski, Vir, Wild Moth, 8pm, $15.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Mark Mulcahy, Mark Eitzel, Vikesh Kapoor, Whiskerman, 8pm, $12-$14.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Mother Falcon, Foxtails Brigade, Kan Wakan, The Airplanes, 8pm, $15.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: The Limousines, Nova Albion, The Hundred Days, Taxes, DJ Immigre, 8pm, $15 advance.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Bad Bad, Talk of Shamans, Pleasure Gallows, 8pm, $5.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Pleistocene, Lauren O’Connell, The Jerfs, 8:30pm, $6.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Popscene with Broods, ASTR, DJ Aaron Axelsen, 9:30pm, $13 advance.
S.F. Eagle: 398 12th St., San Francisco. Ritchie White Orchestra, Deep Teens, Younger Lovers, Club Meds, 9pm, $8.
SFSU Campus, Cesar Chavez Student Center: 1650 Holloway, San Francisco. Cool Ghouls, Mystic Braves, Mr. Elevator & The Brain Hotel, Knits, 6pm, free.
DANCE
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Digital Mystikz, DJ Rashad, Paradigm, Nebakaneza, Lud Dub, Johnny5, Mr. Kitt, 10pm, $17.50 advance.
Abbey Tavern: 4100 Geary, San Francisco. DJ Schrobi-Girl, 10pm, free.
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “Tubesteak Connection,” w/ DJ Bus Station John, 9pm, $5-$7.
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Men at Twerk,” 9pm, free.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “¡Pan Dulce!,” 9pm, $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” ‘80s night with DJs Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests, 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “XO,” w/ DJs Astro & Rose, 10pm, $5.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “The Crib,” 9:30pm, $10, 18+.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Afrolicious,” w/ DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, and guests, 9:30pm, $5-$8.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “I Love Thursdays,” 10pm, $10.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Night Fever,” 9pm, $5 after 10pm
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Com Truise, Phantoms, Kauf, DJ Dials, 9pm, $15-$17.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Gen-Y, Witowmaker, Fever Witch, Dirty Coyote, Alice Cunt & Myst Connection, DJ Doggie Chow, 8pm, $5.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursday,” w/ DJ Jay-R, 9pm, free.
Raven: 1151 Folsom, San Francisco. “1999,” w/ VJ Mark Andrus, 8pm, free.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Mardi Gras,” w/ Jerome Isma-Ae, Riggi & Piros, 9pm, $15-$20 advance.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bubble,” 10pm, free.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Base,” w/ Nic Fanciulli, 10pm, $5-$10.
HIP-HOP
Eastside West: 3154 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” w/ DJ Madison, 9pm, free.
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Quattro,” w/ DJ Dino, Fourth Thursday of every month, 9pm
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Peaches,” w/ lady DJs DeeAndroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, Umami, Inkfat, and Andre, 10pm, free.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Shabazz Palaces, Cities Aviv, Extra Classic, Raw-G, 8pm, $20-$22.
SPARC: 1256 Mission, San Francisco. Jel, Maus Haus, Grown Kids Radio DJs, 7pm, free with RSVP.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. Thugg Chains Launch Party, w/ Indaskyes, VNDMG, Chains & Frames, Sayer, Groucho, Free Fall Crew, Intellitard, more, 10pm, $5.
ACOUSTIC
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Jam Session, Last Thursday of every month, 8-10pm, free.
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Acoustic Open Mic, 7pm
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Wendy Colonna, Kendra McKinley, 9pm, $10.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Emperor Norton Céilí Band, 9pm
JAZZ
Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Doug Martin’s Avatar Ensemble, 7:30pm, free.
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Nova Jazz, 7:30pm, free.
Cafe Royale: 800 Post, San Francisco. The Hexaphonics, 9pm
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Charged Particles, 8pm
Feinstein’s at the Nikko: 222 Mason, San Francisco. Paula West, 8pm, $35-$50.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Swing Fever, 7:30pm
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Art Lewis Trio, 7pm, free.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Charlie Siebert & Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin, San Francisco. Terrence Brewer Jazz Quartet, Mosaic CD release party (in the Joe Henderson Lab), 7 & 8:30pm, $20.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Stompy Jones, 7:30pm, $10.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Jackie Ryan, 8 & 10pm, $16-$25.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 7:30pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Pa’Lante!,” w/ Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky, 10pm, $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. VibraSÓN, DJ Good Sho, 8pm, $12.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Jueves Flamencos,” 8pm, free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Therianthrope, Ian Faquini & Rebecca Kleinmann, 7:30pm, $10-$15.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Gary Flores & Descarga Caliente, 8pm
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. The Verdi Club Milonga, w/ Christy Coté, DJ Emilio Flores, guests, 9pm, $10-$15.
REGGAE
Pissed Off Pete’s: 4528 Mission St., San Francisco. Reggae Thursdays, w/ resident DJ Jah Yzer, 9pm, free.
BLUES
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. Bill Phillippe, 5:30pm, free.
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Alan Iglesias & Crossfire, 7:30 & 9:30pm, $20.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. T-Wrex & The Primitive Rhythm, 4pm; Cathy Lemons, 9:30pm
Tupelo: 1337 Green, San Francisco. G.G. Amos, 9pm
COUNTRY
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Twang Honky Tonk & Country Jamboree,” w/ DJ Little Red Rodeo, 7pm, free.
EXPERIMENTAL
The Luggage Store: 1007 Market, San Francisco. Collin McKelvey with Paul Clipson, HeadBoggle, Eric Sanchez, 8pm, $6-$10.

FRIDAY 28
ROCK
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Noise Pop Happy Hour: Future Twin, Cocktails, Blood Sister, 5pm, free.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Sofa Kings, 9:30pm, $10 advance.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: No Age, Hindu Pirates, Dune Rats, Creative Adult, 9pm, $12-$14.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Stu Allen & Mars Hotel, 9pm, $15-$18.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: The Soft White Sixties, No, The She’s, Cannons & Clouds, 8pm, $13-$15.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. The Moth & The Flame, The Trims, Ghost Town Jenny, Frozen Folk, 8pm, $10-$12.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Friday Live: Tiburona, DJ Emotions, 10pm, free.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Sonny & The Sunsets, Penny Machine, 9pm, $12.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Pebble Theory, Silver Griffin, Van Aragon, 9pm, $9.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Real Estate, The Shilohs, Dream Boys, 8pm, $20.
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco: 3200 California, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Throwing Muses, Mark Eitzel, 8pm, sold out.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Tournament of Hearts, Tall Fires, Midnight DJ set, 9pm, $5.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Bleached, Terry Malts, Mystic Braves, Tropical Popsicle, 9pm, $13-$15.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Cold Cave, Painted Palms, Dirty Ghosts, Happy Fangs, 8pm, $16-$18.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Dave Hause, Northcote, 9pm, $10.
Vacation: 651 Larkin, San Francisco. Breakarts, Murder Murder, Planes of Satori, 9pm, free.
DANCE
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Scene Unseen III with Mr. Carmack, Kelela, Majical Cloudz, Supreme Cuts, Purple, plus DJs from Honey Soundsystem, Popscene, Push the Feeling, Trap City, Isis, and more, 9pm, free with RSVP.
Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. Prok & Fitch, Festiva, 9pm, $10 advance.
BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Eye Candy,” w/ VJ Bill Dupp, 9pm, $10.
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Manimal,” 9pm
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Boy Bar,” w/ DJ Matt Consola, 9pm, $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Dark Shadows,” w/ DJs Daniel Skellington, Melting Girl, Panic, and Skarkrow, 9:30pm, $7 ($3 before 10pm).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “F.T.S.: For the Story,” 10pm
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Trap & Bass,” w/ HeRobust, UltraViolet, Napsty, Harris Pilton, Smookie Illson, 9pm, $10-$20.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “120 Minutes,” w/ Little Pain, Sad Andy, Santa Muerte, Chauncey CC, 10pm, $8-$10.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Trade,” 10pm, free before midnight.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “A Night of Rong Music,” w/ DJ Spun, Jeffrey Sfire, Corey Black, Ken Vulsion, 9pm, $10.
The Grand Nightclub: 520 Fourth St., San Francisco. “We Rock Fridays,” 9:30pm
Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. Richie G, 9pm
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Flight Fridays,” 10pm, $20.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “HYSL: Handle Your Shit Lady,” 9pm, $3.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “I ♥ the ‘90s,” w/ DJs Samala, Teo, Mr. Grant, & Sonny Phono, Fourth Friday of every month, 9pm, $5.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “F-Style Fridays,” w/ DJ Jared-F, 9pm
Mercer: 255 Rhode Island, San Francisco. “SoulHouse,” w/ Le Charm, Lawrence Petty, Timoteo Gigante, 9pm
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Beardyman, The Genie, Matt Haze, 9pm, $19-$21.
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Night Moves: 2-Year Anniversary,” w/ John Tejada, Shiny Objects, J-Boogie, Deejay Theory, Papa Lu, 9pm, $10-$20.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “Resonate,” w/ Esgar, DJ Nobody, Ruff Draft, Mophono, Citizen Ten, Bdot, Mr. Muddbird, Tone, Joe Mousepad (in the OddJob Loft), 9pm, $5-$10; Danny Tenaglia, Nikita, John Kaberna, in the main room, 9pm, $20-$30.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Pump: Worq It Out Fridays,” w/ resident DJ Christopher B, 9pm, $3.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Mardi Gras,” w/ Manufactured Superstars, Niko Zografos, Daun Giventi, 9pm, $20 advance.
Supperclub San Francisco: 657 Harrison, San Francisco. “Spin,” w/ Eric Lee, WhiteNoize, DJ Taj, 10pm
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bionic,” 10pm, $5.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Project X,” w/ Sebastian Concha, Clarisse & Josephine, Rose, 10pm, $10-$30.
Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bridge the Gap,” w/ resident DJ Don Kainoa, Fridays, 6-10pm, free.
HIP-HOP
EZ5: 682 Commercial, San Francisco. “Decompression,” Fridays, 5-9pm
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Flow,” w/ The Whooligan & Mikos Da Gawd, Fourth Friday of every month, 10pm, free befoe 11pm
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. “Back 2 the Basics,” w/ Andre Nickatina, J. Espinosa, J-Pro, Chuy Gomez, Fran Boogie, 10pm, $15-$25 advance.
Sloane: 1525 Mission, San Francisco. “Lift Off: The Darling Society Edition,” w/ DJ DC Is Chillin & DJ Amen, 9:30pm, $20.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Tommy P, M.J. Lee, Wesley Woo, 7pm, free.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. “Hillbilly Robot: An Urban Americana Music Event,” w/ The Harmed Brothers, Emily Bonn & The Vivants, 9pm, $10-$15.
The Sports Basement: 610 Old Mason, San Francisco. “Breakfast with Enzo,” w/ Enzo Garcia, 10 a.m., $5.
JAZZ
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Jazz at the Atlas, 7:30pm, free.
Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Johnny Smith, 8pm, free.
Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Chuck Peterson Quintet, Fourth Friday of every month, 5:30pm
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Jinx Jones Jazz Trio, 7:30pm, free.
Feinstein’s at the Nikko: 222 Mason, San Francisco. Paula West, 8pm, $35-$50.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30pm, free.
The Palace Hotel: 2 New Montgomery, San Francisco. The Klipptones, 8pm, free.
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Frank Tusa Band, 8pm, free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Broken Shadows Family Band, 7:30pm, $10-$15.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Jules Broussard, Danny Armstrong, and Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Trio, 7pm, $8.
SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin, San Francisco. Terrence Brewer Latin Jazz Quintet, Mi Historia CD release party (in the Joe Henderson Lab), 7 & 8:30pm, $20.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Black Market Jazz Orchestra, 9pm, $10.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Joyce Grant, 8pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Baxtalo Drom, International shimmying for lovers of Balkan music, bellydancers, and burlesque., Fourth Friday of every month, 9pm, $5-$10.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10pm, $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Taste Fridays, featuring local cuisine tastings, salsa bands, dance lessons, and more, 7:30pm, $15 (free entry to patio).
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Candela, 10pm
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cuban Night with Fito Reinoso, 7:30 & 9:15pm, $15-$18.
Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “Stereo,” w/ DJ Chico X & Monchis the DJ, 9:30pm, $5-$10.
REGGAE
Gestalt Haus: 3159 16th St., San Francisco. “Music Like Dirt,” 7:30pm, free.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Alan Iglesias & Crossfire, 7:30 & 10pm, $22.
Cafe Royale: 800 Post, San Francisco. Allister’s Chicago Blues Jam, Last Friday of every month, 9pm
Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson, San Francisco. Nat Bolden, 6pm
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Jan Fanucchi, Last Friday of every month, 4pm; Ron Thompson, 9:30pm
FUNK
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Loose Joints,” w/ DJs Centipede, Damon Bell, and Tom Thump, 10pm, $5-$10.
SOUL
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Soul Crush,” w/ DJ Serious Leisure, 10pm, free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Sissy Strut,” w/ The Handsome Young Men (DJs Ponyboy, Lil MC, Katie Duck, & Durt), Fourth Friday of every month, 10pm, $3-$5.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Dave Hollister, 8 & 10pm, $34-$45.

SATURDAY 1
ROCK
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Noise Pop Happy Hour: Winter Teeth, Tiger Honey Pot, Disastroid, 5pm, free; Fatso Jetson, The Grannies, 10pm, $5.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Free Salamander Exhibit, Black Map, Lasher Keen, Happy Diving, 9pm, $15.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: No Age, Cheatahs, GRMLN, Straight Crimes, 8pm, $12-$14.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Mikal Cronin, Blood Sister, Old Light, Vertical Scratchers, 8pm, $13-$15.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Fang, Texas Thieves, Trouble Maker, 9pm, $10.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Buffalo Tooth, Creative Adult, The Vibrating Antennas, Culture Abuse, 9pm, $8.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Real Estate, The Shilohs, Dominant Legs, 8pm, $20.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Nomad, Permanent Ruin, Pig DNA, Apriori, 5pm, $7.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Bedrücken, Hazzard’s Cure, Butt Problems, Szandora LaVey, benefit show for Miss Eva von Slüt, 8pm, $7.
The Riptide: 3639 Taraval, San Francisco. Jinx Jones & The KingTones, 9:30pm, free.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Moistboyz, Qui, 9pm, $16.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Madball, Twitching Tongues, Born Low, Never Healed, 9pm, $15.
DANCE
Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. Amtrac, Light Echo, Jayko, 9pm, $10 advance.
BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Industry,” w/ DJs Joe Gauthreaux & Jamie J. Sanchez, 10pm, $20 advance.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Leisure,” w/ DJs Aaron, Omar, & Jetset James, First Saturday of every month, 10pm, $7.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Bootie S.F.,” w/ DJs Adrian, Faroff, Tripp, Fox, Kool Karlo, Medic, Starr, Tannhäuser Gate, and more, 9pm, $10-$15.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Play,” First Saturday of every month, 10pm
Il Pirata: 2007 16th St., San Francisco. “Requiem,” w/ DJs Xiola, Calexica, and Noveli, 10pm, $5.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Bounce!,” 9pm, $3.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “The Prince & Michael Experience,” w/ DJs Dave Paul & Jeff Harris, First Saturday of every month, 9pm, $5.
Mercer: 255 Rhode Island, San Francisco. “Surface Tension,” w/ Powell, Beau Wanzer, more, 10pm, $10-$15 advance.
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. Opel 12-Year Anniversary, w/ Elite Force, Meat Katie, Syd Gris, Melyss, Kimba, Alain Octavo, DJ Denise, Andy P, DJ Dane, A.M. Rebel, more, 10pm, $18 advance.
The NWBLK: 1999 Bryant, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Ladytron (DJ set), Jimmy Tamborello, 9pm, $20.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. Sixth Annual Eye Heart SF Mardi Gras, w/ Party Favor, Manics, The Schmidt, MyKill, R3y, more, 9pm, $15-$50.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Trapeze XI: The Big-Bass Burlectro-Swing Affair, Smokey Joe & The Kid, The Klown, and DJ Delachaux provide the music for burlesque routines by Bunny Pistol, Reagan Riot, Double Dang Duo, and more., 9pm, $12-$15.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Mardi Gras,” w/ Super8 & Tab, Jaytech, Nick G, 9pm, $20 advance.
The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Go Bang!,” w/ DJs Shawn Ryan, Glenn Rivera, Steve Fabus, and Sergio Fedasz, 9pm, $7 (free before 10pm).
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Push the Feeling,” w/ Nitemoves, Al Lover, Yr Skull, Epicsauce DJs, 9pm, $6.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Swank,” w/ Plastik Funk, Pheeko Dubfunk, 10pm, $10-$30.
HIP-HOP
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “N.E.W.: Never Ending Weekend,” w/ DJ Jerry Ross, First Saturday of every month, 9pm, free before 11pm
Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “Touchy Feely,” w/ The Wild N Krazy Kids, First Saturday of every month, 10pm, $5 (free before 11pm).
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Afrika Bambaataa (DJ set), DJ Jahi, 10:30pm, $24-$26.
ACOUSTIC
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. The Wild Reeds, The Herbert Bail Orchestra, 9pm, $7-$10.
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Craig Ventresco and/or Meredith Axelrod, Saturdays, 4-6pm, free.
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Migrant Pickers, Dinner with the Kids, Jonny Mac, 7pm
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Sugar Ponies, Andrew Levin Band, Tim Brochier Band, Thunderegg, 9pm, $10.
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Slow Motion Cowboys, 9pm
Pa’ina: 1865 Post, San Francisco. Kapala, 6:30pm
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Paddy O’Brien with Richard Mandel, Opening night of the Crossroads Irish-American Festival., 9pm, $15-$20.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Seth Augustus, First Saturday of every month, 9pm, free/donation.
JAZZ
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. Oakland Byrds, 7pm, $8.
The Emerald Tablet: 80 Fresno, San Francisco. Faith Winthrop with Tammy Hall, Aaron Germain, and Carmen Cansino, 8pm, $15 suggested donation.
Feinstein’s at the Nikko: 222 Mason, San Francisco. Paula West, 7 & 9:30pm, $35-$50.
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30pm, free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Trio, 7pm, $8.
SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin, San Francisco. Amina Figarova Sextet, in the Joe Henderson lab, 7 & 8:30pm, $25.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Robert Stewart Experience, 9pm
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 8pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco. “Pura,” 9pm, $20.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10pm, $5.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “El SuperRitmo,” w/ DJs Roger Mas & El Kool Kyle, 10pm, $5 before 11pm
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Eddy Navia & Pachamama Band, 8pm, free.
Roccapulco Supper Club: 3140 Mission, San Francisco. 47th Friends of Brazil Carnaval Ball, w/ Sotaque Baiano, Fogo na Roupa, Aquarela, DJ Elle, DJ Kblo, more, 9pm, $30 advance.
Space 550: 550 Barneveld, San Francisco. “Club Fuego,” 9:30pm
REGGAE
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. J Boog, Los Rakas, Bayonics, DJ Jah Yzer, 9pm, $30.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Janiva Magness, 7:30 & 10pm, $22.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Jukes, First Saturday of every month, 4pm; Daniel Castro, First Saturday of every month, 9:30pm
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Bones to Breakers, Benefit for motorcycle accident victim Vanessa Bezerra featuring blues music by The Blue Swamis., 3pm, $5.
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Choreographies of Creation & Destruction: The Live Cinemas of John Davis & Greg Pope, Experimental film screenings with live soundtrack performances., 7:30pm, $5-$10.
FUNK
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Willie Waldman Project, 9:30pm, $15-$20.
SOUL
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Hard French,” w/ DJs Carnita & Brown Amy, First Saturday of every month, 2pm, $7.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Saturday Night Soul Party,” w/ DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, & Paul Paul, First Saturday of every month, 10pm, $10 ($5 in formal attire).
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Will Downing, 8pm, sold out.

SUNDAY 2
ROCK
The Chapel: 777 Valencia, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Rogue Wave, Trails & Ways, 4pm, $20.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Marbler, The Krypters, The Yes Go’s, 8pm, $5.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Big Tits, Warm Soda, Dimples, 8:30pm, $6.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. The Hodges, Shot in the Dark, 8pm, $7.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Lydia (performing Illuminate), Saint Motel, Golden Sun, 7pm, $15.
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. Rainbow Beast, 12:30 & 4:30pm, $10-$20.
DANCE
Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Full of Grace: A Weekly House Music Playground,” 9pm, free.
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “Replay Sundays,” 9pm, free.
The Edge: 4149 18th St., San Francisco. “’80s at 8,” w/ DJ MC2, 8pm
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Dub Mission,” w/ Alpha Steppa, DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm).
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “T.Dance,” 6 a.m.-6pm; “BoomBox,” First Sunday of every month, 8pm
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Stamina,” w/ DJs Lukeino, Jamal, and guests, 10pm, free.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Sweater Funk,” 10pm, free.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Jock,” Sundays, 3-8pm, $2.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Bounce,” w/ DJ Just, 10pm
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ Tara Brooks, Lee Reynolds, Dmitry Purple, Jamie Schwabl, Zach Walker, 9pm, $5-$10.
The NWBLK: 1999 Bryant, San Francisco. Noise Pop 2014: Closing Night Party with Machinedrum, 6pm, $10.
Otis: 25 Maiden, San Francisco. “What’s the Werd?,” w/ resident DJs Nick Williams, Kevin Knapp, Maxwell Dub, and guests, 9pm, $5 (free before 11pm).
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” w/ DJ Marc deVasconcelos, 9pm, free.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Gigante,” 8pm, free.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Sunset Arcade,” 18+ dance party & game night, 9pm, $10.
HIP-HOP
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Return of the Cypher,” 9:30pm, free.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Swagger Like Us,” First Sunday of every month, 3pm
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Shooz,” w/ DJ Raymundo & guests, First Sunday of every month, 10pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Bernal Mountain Bluegrass Jam, 4pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Spike’s Mic Night,” Sundays, 4-8pm, free.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church: 1755 Clay, San Francisco. “Sunday Night Mic,” w/ Roem Baur, 5pm, free.
Tupelo: 1337 Green, San Francisco. “Twang Sundays,” w/ The Gravel Spreaders, 7pm, free.
JAZZ
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Kally Price Old Blues & Jazz Band, First Sunday of every month, 9pm, $7-$10.
Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Jinx Jones’ Jazzabilly All-Stars, 4:30pm
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30pm, free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” 10pm, free.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Jazz Revolution, 4pm, free/donation.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Chris Siebert, 7:30pm, free.
SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin, San Francisco. Amina Figarova Sextet, in the Joe Henderson lab, 5:30 & 7pm, $20.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Chris Duggan, 7:30pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Atmosphere: 447 Broadway, San Francisco. “Hot Bachata Nights,” w/ DJ El Guapo, 5:30pm, $10 ($18-$25 with dance lessons).
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Brazil & Beyond,” 6:30pm, free.
Thirsty Bear Brewing Company: 661 Howard, San Francisco. “The Flamenco Room,” 7:30 & 8:30pm
REGGAE
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. J Boog, Los Rakas, Thrive, DJ Jah Yzer, 9pm, $30.
BLUES
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Blues Power, 4pm
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 8pm, free.
Swig: 571 Geary, San Francisco. Sunday Blues Jam with Ed Ivey, 9pm
CLASSICAL
San Francisco Conservatory of Music: 50 Oak, San Francisco. Hot Air Music Festival, Fifth annual student-run showcase of avant-classical compositions featuring free performances by the Ignition Duo, Mobius Trio, Friction Quartet, New Keys, and more., 12:30-9pm, free.
COUNTRY
The Riptide: 3639 Taraval, San Francisco. “The Hootenanny West Side Revue,” First Sunday of every month, 7:30pm, free.
EXPERIMENTAL
Musicians Union Local 6: 116 Ninth St., San Francisco. Noertker’s Moxie, Ze Bib!, 7:30pm, $8-$10.
SOUL
Delirium Cocktails: 3139 16th St., San Francisco. “Heart & Soul,” w/ DJ Lovely Lesage, 10pm, free.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Will Downing, 7pm, $55-$75.

MONDAY 3
ROCK
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. PigPen Theatre Co., The Tragic Thrills, 9pm, $7-$10.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. We Butter the Bread with Butter, King Loses Crown, Honour Crest, Lions Lions, 7:30pm, $10-$13.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. The Wild Feathers, Saints of Valory, Jamestown Revival, 8pm, $13-$15.
DANCE
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Death Guild,” 18+ dance party with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, & guests, 9:30pm, $3-$5.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Wanted,” w/ DJs Key&Kite and Richie Panic, 9pm, free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Vienetta Discotheque,” w/ DJs Stanley Frank and Robert Jeffrey, 10pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Front Country, First Monday of every month, 9pm, free.
The Chieftain: 198 Fifth St., San Francisco. The Wrenboys, 7pm, free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, 9:30pm, free/donation.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Open Mic with Brendan Getzell, 8pm, free.
Osteria: 3277 Sacramento, San Francisco. “Acoustic Bistro,” 7pm, free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Peter Lindman, 4pm
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Nicole Atkins, Arc Iris, Davey Horne, 8pm, $15.
JAZZ
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Rob Reich, First and Third Monday of every month, 7pm
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Eugene Pliner Quartet with Tod Dickow, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Le Jazz Hot, 7pm, free.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “The Monday Make-Out,” w/ Talk More, Eli Wallace’s Platform, Timothy Orr Ensemble, 8pm, free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. City Jazz Instrumental Jam Session, 8pm
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Riley Bandy, 7:30pm, free.
REGGAE
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Skylarking,” w/ I&I Vibration, 10pm, free.
BLUES
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Bachelors, 9:30pm
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Mchtnchts, John Shiurba’s 3-3 on 3/3, Crystal Moon Cone, 7:30pm, $8-$10.
SOUL
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “M.O.M. (Motown on Mondays),” w/ DJ Gordo Cabeza & Timoteo Gigante, 8pm, free.

TUESDAY 4
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Cellar Doors, Cool Ghouls, 9:15pm Starts . continues through March 25, $7-$10.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. The Casket Girls, The Stargazer Lilies, Dott, Dreamend, 8pm, $10.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Kevin Moan & The Reptiles, Vamos, 8:30pm, $5.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Bend Sinister, Grand Tarantula, Ensemble Mik Nawooj, 8pm, $8.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Ava Luna, Chastity Belt, Dude York, Krill, 9:30pm, $7.
DANCE
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “High Fantasy,” w/ DJ Viv, Myles Cooper, & guests, 10pm, $2.
Laszlo: 2532 Mission, San Francisco. “Beards of a Feather,” Enjoy classy house records, obscuro disco, and laid-back late-’80s jams with DJ Ash Williams and guests, First Tuesday of every month, 9pm, free.
Monarch: 101 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Soundpieces,” 10pm, free-$10.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Switch,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & Andre, 9pm, $3.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Shelter,” 10pm, free.
Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Tight,” w/ resident DJs Michael May & Lito, 8pm, free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Songwriter in Residence: Lonnie Lazar, 7pm Starts . continues through March 25.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Mariee Sioux, Yesway, Honey.Moon.Tree., 8pm, $10.
JAZZ
Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Gerry Grosz Jazz Jam, 7pm
Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Kally Price & Rob Reich, 7pm, free.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Mardi Gras with Wil Blades featuring the Jazz Mafia Horns, Stanford Marching Band, Brass Band Mission, 8pm, $12-$15.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6pm, free.
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Chris Amberger, 7pm
Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Clifford Lamb, Mel Butts, and Friends, 7:30pm, free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, 7pm
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. West Side Jazz Club, 5pm, free; Conscious Contact, First Tuesday of every month, 8pm, free.
Tupelo: 1337 Green, San Francisco. Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz Band, 6pm
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. “Tuesday Night Jump,” w/ Stompy Jones, 9pm, $10-$12.
Wine Kitchen: 507 Divisadero St., San Francisco. Hot Club Pacific, 7:30pm
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Emily Hayes, 7:30pm, free.
INTERNATIONAL
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Salsa Tuesday, w/ DJs Good Sho & El de la Clave, 8:30pm, $10.
The Cosmo Bar & Lounge: 440 Broadway, San Francisco. Conga Tuesdays, 8pm, $7-$10.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Carnaval Fat Tuesday with Fogo na Roupa, DJs Elan & Carioca, 9pm, $10.
F8: 1192 Folsom, San Francisco. “Underground Nomads,” w/ rotating resident DJs Amar, Sep, and Dulce Vita, plus guests, 9pm, $5 (free before 9:30pm).
REGGAE
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. “Bless Up,” w/ Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi, 10pm
BLUES
Fillmore Center Plaza: Fillmore (at O’Farrell), San Francisco. Fat Tuesday in the Fillmore with Bobbie Webb, 5pm, free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Lisa Kindred, First Tuesday of every month, 9:30pm, free.
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Joseph Van Hassel: New Music for Snare Drum, 7:30pm, $10-$15.
FUNK
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Mardi Gras with the Fat Tuesday Band, 7:30 & 9:30pm, $15.
SOUL
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. The JRo Project, First Tuesday of every month, 9:30pm, $5.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Lost & Found,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and guests, 9:30pm, free.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Moonchild, 8pm, $12-$14. 2

The magic of Mark J. Mulcahy

Steven T. Jones

February 25, 2014

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL To an ’80s baby, at this point, calling Nickelodeon’s The Adventures of Pete & Pete a cult favorite is a little like thinking your childhood love of The Labyrinth or The Neverending Story is somehow quirky or unique — it goes without saying that they’re excellent, but we’re gonna need a lot of Kool-Aid: These are some pretty big cults we’re dealing with.

Which doesn’t mean, of course, that there wasn’t an air of “giant secret club meeting” at the Sketchfest Pete & Pete reunion that took place at the packed Marines Memorial Theater in 2013. That live show marked, I will admit, the first time I realized how crucial a role music had played in constructing the show’s singularly surreal, hilarious, kid-centered universe. I’d had the show’s jangly, irreverent theme song, “Hey Sandy,” on my iPod for years, and had read about how Polaris — the show’s own house band — was a sort of one-off project for members of the early-R.E.M.-era college-rock band Miracle Legion, which dissolved under a heated label dispute; the show’s creators were simply fans of that band and asked lead singer Mark Mulcahy to chime in. I knew both acts were driven by bright, breezy guitar riffs and Mulcahy’s distinctive, sometimes erratic, Lou Reed-esque vocals.

But it wasn’t until hearing Mulcahy sing a few songs from Polaris’ oeuvre live that — enamored, nostalgic, weirdly emotional — I went home and promptly dove headfirst into his solo work, of which there are four complete albums. If you want to work backward, Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You, released in July of last year after a nearly eight-year hiatus, is a beautiful starting point. It’s a moody, introspective, but clear-thinking and meticulously arranged record, stamped all over with the Mulcahy trademark: Lyrics that veer toward magical realism, the intonation of a less-goofy Jonathan Richman, gently dark witticisms that don’t quite make sense but you understand their feeling in your bones, bleak stories that don’t really seem autobiographical, but then — who can be sure?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggi_2Vy8KOw

Mulcahy can, but he doesn’t owe us an explanation. The gentlest, happiest track on the record, “The Rabbit,” — on which the songwriter sweetly confesses “I’m a sucker for magic/where’s the rabbit?” — is punctuated with sleigh bells; it’s the sound of an artist almost surprising himself with how much hope and curiosity he still has for the world. That’s followed by “Where’s the Indifference Now?,” a bitingly cynical guitar opus about the media’s vulture-like coverage of Heath Ledger’s death. (“You could apply it to Philip Seymour Hoffman now, I guess,” says Mulcahy.) If he often deals in surrealism, his gift is in the human honesty of that contrast, the recognizable sense of home base in the space between those moods.

“I was home most of the day, it’s a snow day,” is the first thing he says, however, when, after a bit of phone tag, I finally reach him at the Massachusetts home he shares with his two young twin daughters. “I’m looking out the window right now at snow, just as far as you can see…so it’s a bit strange to be thinking about playing in San Francisco [for Noise Pop].”

One reason for the extended hiatus: In 2008, Mulcahy’s wife passed away quite suddenly, and he’s been raising the kids on his own ever since. A tribute album to help raise money for the family, Ciao My Shining Star (named for a line in the obituary Mulcahy wrote her), was arranged almost entirely without his knowledge and released in 2009, with artists who happen to be Mulcahy fans — folks like Thom Yorke, Michael Stipe, Dinosaur Jr., Frank Black, The National, Elvis Perkins, and Juliana Hatfield — performing Mulcahy’s songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB74TOPiIr4

It didn’t make sense to be away from home for long, explains Mulcahy of the break; since the most recent record (which draws its title from a note someone gave him) came out last summer, he’s been navigating the balance between touring and his home life with kids who, he says, are still too young to really understand much about what he does.

“I hadn’t played in such a long time, when I first started again I almost couldn’t believe I was doing it. But it’s felt really nice,” he says of touring so far. “I don’t know how I would do with a month-long thing, but so far it’s just great and really surprising that [the record] has done as well as it has. When I was in Miracle Legion, we always did pretty well, and I kind of assumed I would do that well on my own…I didn’t really put it together until later that it wasn’t a built-in success story. This album, I’m playing shows that are crowded, and it’s just a pleasant surprise to be feeling like I’m back to a point where I was before.” He’s done short stints in Ireland and England, and opened for fellow Bay Staters the Pixies on their tour warm-up in Northampton, MA.

As for the record, which Pitchfork (among others) has called his best solo work yet, the distinct moods of the tracks are at least in part the result of Mulcahy’s studio process: He recorded each song in entirety on its own day, then thought carefully about order and narrative. “I definitely don’t think of anything I write as one song, and I’m not really a big fan of ‘shuffle,'” he says. “I guess I come from the old school of sequencing.” He’s old-school in other ways, he will admit; he doesn’t pay too much attention to what’s currently on the radio. Lou Reed and the ’90s Connecticut indie band Butterflies of Love are first on his tongue when asked what he’s been listening to as of late. He’s no snob, though: “I go easy on guys like him,” is his comment on Bruno Mars. “Pop music…I mean, you take Miley Cyrus. I really thought she was terrible for a long time, I just didn’t get it. And then I really listened to ‘Wrecking Ball,’ and that’s a great song! I’m not gonna hate her just because I’m supposed to.”

And if people still wind up knee-deep in his catalogue because of his most mainstream, cable-televised work, as I did — well, that’s OK too.

“Polaris was a really unexpected twist in my musical career, but it was just a band that existed in your TV,” he says. “We never really played any gigs, which was probably a mistake. To the point where, when we did the Pete & Pete reunion in LA and played with a full band, it was surprising to realize, ‘Wow, we could play shows!’ And it’s funny, I haven’t really found anywhere that wants to book us since then, but we definitely want to do it. I absolutely still enjoy playing those songs.”

Hear that, Bay Area bookers? You could make a lot of ’80s babies very, very happy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj9pFcUof7c

Mark Mulcahy
With Mark Eitzel, Vikesh Kapoor, and Whiskerman
Thu/27, 8pm, $14
Brick & Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission, SF
www.brickandmortarmusic.com
www.noisepop.com

SF’s Happy Fangs just want you to dance already

Steven T. Jones

February 25, 2014

What do you get when two incredibly energetic performers — a guy and a girl who are each accustomed to being at the helm of a band, to commanding attention as the focal point of the room — decide to form a band together?

If the guy and girl in question are Mike Cobra of King Loses Crown and Rebecca Gone Bad (aka Rebecca Bortman), formerly of My First Earthquake, what you get is Happy Fangs — a band known for a ferocious, fiery, determinedly and cathartically fun live show, with music that owes equal debts to anthemic pop and classic ‘70s punk rock, and an aesthetic that’s maybe one part French New Wave, two parts experimental art school final. They also make up a new song, on the spot and with audience participation, once during every performance. Did I mention they seem to be having fun?

Ahead of their Noise Pop show this Friday at Slim’s — at which they’ll be performing for the first time with their third member, brand-new drummer Jess Gowrie — we caught up with the pair to hear about their influences, their onstage dynamic, and the importance of having cute girls dancing in the front row.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: I know Happy Fangs started when another project ended. How did the two of you meet up?

Rebecca Bortman: My old band shared a practice space [with Mike’s]…and when word went out that I was quitting, he sent me an email.

Mike Cobra: I contacted her asking what she was up to next, because if she said she was gonna stop making music, I would tell her that she shouldn’t, because she’s super talented.

RB: He was jumping in front of my talent train.

MC: And she sent back an email saying, “Well, I’m looking to start a band with just one other person and see what happens.” So I said, “OK, let’s do a couple demos.” We shared demos via email back and forth for a couple months before we decided to get together and start writing songs.

SFBG: So much of your energy and dynamic onstage seems to come from the contrast between you. Is it always harmonious, being a band made of front-people?

MC: As far as personas go, it’s true we’re very different: we say she’s the happy and I’m the fangs. But I don’t think we compete onstage, exactly. That’s part of our goal with adding the drummer, as well — she’s a very expressive, animated person, and we like to give people something to look at, even if it is competing. If anything, I think it keeps us on our toes.

SFBG: What did each of you listen to growing up? Do your influences complement each other?

RB: The one tape I listened to when I was young was The Big Chill soundtrack. Wait, also, [Michael Jackson’s] “We Are the World,” which has a B-side that’s Bruce Springsteen doing [Jimmy Cliff’s semi-obscure song] “Trapped,” live. Which is a really powerful song that gets really quiet, and then really loud. That song sculpted my desire to be on stage, Bruce Springsteen on the live “Trapped.”

MC: There’s one very first song that I remember listening to. I had an older brother, and when I was four years I would listen to his 8-tracks, with headphones, and I remember just rewinding and replaying this one song, one guitar riff, over and over again. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized it was Kiss’ first album. So I’ve been kinda stuck to that my whole life. I also got a lot of old-school country music, late ‘60s, early ‘70s music from my mom. And then I started listening to a really weird mixture of things as an adult, lots of punk rock, hardcore, metal. I say I like everything from Johnny Cash to Cannibal Corpse.

SFBG: I read another interview with y’all where you mention drawing inspiration from Kathleen Hanna, whom I also adore a borderline embarrassing amount. What is it about her work that strikes you?

RB: For me, the girl-punk, Riot Grrl stuff was all genuinely transformational for me when I was younger. I always think of that moment when a little girl realizes it’s not all about ballerinas and choo-choo trains…I love the idea of the moment when someone who’s maybe been proper and cute up until that point discovers her power — to me there’s an emotion of a five-year-old screaming [in our music]. This woman actually sent us this video of her daughter running around screaming [our song] “Lion Inside You,” and we were just like, “Yes! Do it!!”

MC: And for me, even being a guy, she was kind of one of the only people in the past 15 years who I feel like was very truly punk rock, in the sense of say, [Minor Threat/Fugazi frontman] Ian MacKaye, or Henry Rollins, in that she stayed very true to what she was, and she’s still doing it, still making music. She broke down a lot of boundaries, which is really inspiring.

SFBG: You both live in the city, yeah? Any thoughts on the current doomsday-ish conversation about how artists are fleeing SF because it’s so expensive?

RB: I want to be respectful and sympathetic to people who are leaving, because that totally sucks. I do have an affordable place to live in SF, in the Castro, and I know a lot of people are not in that situation. I also do think the culture of the city is totally changing. One thing that keeps us here is Mike and I also both work in an industry that’s here — we’re both designers. We kind of never stop working.

MC: I think San Francisco is a tough place to make music right now, and the situations where music venues are closing definitely affect everybody. And bands like Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall — I definitely understand why they would want to [leave], if you’re a touring band and thats how you’re making your money, you don’t want to spend it all on rent! That has definitely sucked a lot of the arts out of the city. At the same time, I think it’s a city that’s constantly been about change, from the time of the forty-niners. The same thing happened in the ‘60s, and with punk rock in the ‘80s, then metal…it’s a place of constant change, and I do think you kind of have to roll with it.

RB: Also, both of us are from much shittier places. I’ve been here 7 years, he’s been here 14, but we’re still in utter appreciation of the fact that we live in paradise. Yes, paradise is changing, but it’s still way better than Pittsburgh.

SFBG: You guys released a self-titled EP in October. What’s next for the band?

RB: Well, first, with this show, we have to haze our new drummer, Jess. This will probably involve some sort of vegan blood substitute. And we’ll be playing an awesome show with a bill of all female-fronted bands at Bottom of the Hill on April 5. Then later in the year, we’re going to record and release a full-length album, hopefully this fall, and go on tour — we’re going to Canada in the summer for a festival, so alert the officials.

SFBG: What else should people be on the lookout for at this show in particular?

MC: Well, it’s our first time playing without a drum machine, so if people haven’t seen us before, great; if they have, I think it’ll be a pretty big change in a really good way.

RB: The other thing I’ve been thinking about is people dancing at our shows, and how I wish it would happen more. To be totally sexist, I’ve noticed that having a couple of really hot girls dancing up front really helps. So girls, women, ladies, if you will dance, please come out. In fact, you can email us and we’ll put you on the list: happyfangsmusic [at] gmail.com.

Happy Fangs (w/ Cold Cave, Dirty Ghosts, and Painted Palms)
Fri/28, 7pm, $16
Slim’s
333 11th St, SF
www.slimspresents.com

UC Berkeley drops hyperlocal news website Mission Local

Erica Hanna

February 25, 2014

UC Berkeley drops hyperlocal news website Mission Local

A memo released today revealed a striking split that could affect media coverage in the Mission district: hyperlocal news site Mission Local is being dropped by its main fiscal sponsor, the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

“It’s now time for Mission Local to take the next step and re-launch itself as an independent, stand-alone media operation,” J-School Dean Edward Wasserman wrote in a department-wide memo. “That means ending its role in the J-School’s curriculum.”

The website is one of a trio of hyperlocal news websites run by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, including Oakland North and Richmond Confidential. It is still unclear if the other websites will be affected as well, though the memo says they will be the center of future discussion among faculty.

Mission Local is a journalism lab for the UC Berkeley graduate students, covering everything in the Mission District from the Tamale Lady to the eye-rolling of Google public relations employees. They’re popular in the neighborhood, and even present the website in a Spanish-language format.

The UC Berkeley graduate students serve as the site’s reporters and a little bit of everything else, from advertising and sales to audience-building. That was a problem, Wasserman wrote.

“That’s not really what we do,” he wrote. “Those are specialized areas, and the J-School doesn’t have the instructional capacity to teach them to a Berkeley standard of excellence.”

But the main issue seems to be cost. “It’s an expensive undertaking,” he wrote. The sites were initially funded with grants from the Ford Foundation, but UC Berkeley started picking up the tab when they ran out, among other fundraising avenues. Wasserman was also concerned that working for a hyperlocal newspaper away from campus pulls students away from campus activities.

The PDF above is the memo sent to students and faculty of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism department concerning Mission Local.

Lydia Chavez, a professor at the J-School and the head of Mission Local told the Guardian she disagreed with Wasserman’s decision.

“To be clear, I would have preferred to have Mission Local and the other hyper locals at the core of the school’s curriculum,” she said.

But tales of Mission Local’s demise would be exaggerated.

Chavez, a reporter who’s written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, op-ed pieces in the San Francisco Examiner and more, isn’t willing to walk away from Mission Local despite the challenges.

The journalism bug, it seems, bit her hard.

“The Mission is now ground zero for so much that is happening in the city and the country that if I walked away from it now, it would be like walking away from a terrific story,” she wrote to the Guardian in an email.

“Mission Local will remain alive and innovative,” she wrote.

We’ll follow up with this story as it develops, and are planning a look into the state of hyperlocal journalism in San Francisco. Look for it in next week’s print edition of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

The memo in full:

J-School Community:

The Mission Local hyperlocal site has been a vibrant and valuable part of the School of Journalism since it was created five years years ago. It has developed well beyond its initial scope as an incubator for J200 students, and under Prof. Lydia Chavez’s imaginative, impeccably professional and tireless leadership has become the premier place for the community it serves to learn about itself and talk about its future.

It’s now time for Mission Local to take the next step and re-launch itself as an independent, stand-alone media operation. That means ending its role in the J-School’s curriculum. While Prof Chavez would have liked to see the school keep the site, she is ready to assume responsibility for the site, and we expect that it will continue under her ownership.

My reasons for spinning off ML are several.

First, it’s an expensive undertaking, which obliges us to operate a remote site on a year-round basis, even when the curricular value to our students is limited or even, at times, non-existent (as when we pay non-students to keep the site from going dark.)

Second, it draws students away far from North Gate at the very moment we’re bulking up and enriching the curricular and co-curricular offerings here—new required courses, more speakers, town hall meetings, reinvigorated career services, generally pumped-up intellectual life. From the perspective of Mission Local’s needs, renewed activity in North Gate is a distraction, and I think that unintentionally does our students a disservice.

Third, the natural evolution of the site itself is toward being an integrated media operation, and that requires sustained attention to marketing, audience-building, ad sales, miscellaneous revenue-generation, community outreach, special events, partnerships, and 1,001 other publishing activities that are essential to any site’s commercial success.

That’s not really what we do. Those are specialized areas, and the J-School doesn’t have the instructional capacity to teach them to a Berkeley standard of excellence. What’s more, our students wouldn’t have the curricular bandwidth to learn them—not unless we pared back other areas, and redefined our core mission as something other than journalism education.

(Let me add that as part of our larger curricular rethinking, I’m hopeful we will be introducing, and requiring, more business-side instruction than we currently offer, but ML’s needs are still of a different order of magnitude.)

Whether other changes are in the works for J200 is up in the air at the moment. The curriculum committee is in the process of considering alternative approaches to J200, and the roles of Oakland North and Richmond Confidential as teaching labs are among the matters the faculty will discuss.

Mission Local has produced dozens of loyal alums, many of them strong enthusiasts who recall their experience there with affection and gratitude. Let me assure them—and you—that as we weigh the future of J200 it’s with the intention of improving on what we’ve done in the past, and making sure the future offers opportunities here at least as rewarding and memorable as theirs have been.

Let me conclude with a word of profound thanks to Prof. Chavez. While I respect and admire her loyalty to the Mission, I very much look forward to her getting more deeply involved in the exciting work that’s going on in North Gate.

Regards,
Edward Wasserman, Dean

Alerts: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

WEDNESDAY 26

Hoodies Up! A Day of Remembrance for Trayvon Martin Fruitvale BART Plaza, Oakl. www.stopmassincarceration.net. 4pm, free. On the two-year anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death, join others in sending a message that we will not stand by in silence while youth of color are brutalized, locked up, and murdered. Now is the time for youth, professors and students, artists and writers, athletes, musicians and prominent voices of conscience to rise up in spirited resistance with the clear objective of stopping mass incarceration, criminalization, and the murder of our youth. Wear your hoodie and join the rally to commemorate Trayvon and the many others like him.

Protest the NSA Four Seasons Hotel, 757 Market, SF. codepink.nancy@gmail.com. 6:30-7:30pm, free. National Security Agency Deputy Director Chris Inglis stepped down from his post last month, but he continues to defend the work of the NSA and criticizes the important documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Documents leaked by Snowden show that the NSA created a formula for generating random numbers to create a “back door” in encryption products. RSA became a distributor of that formula by putting it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used on personal computers and other products. Inglis will be in San Francisco to attend the RSA Conference.

THURSDAY 27

Keep the Warriors off the Waterfront Unitarian Universalist Center, 1187 Franklin, SF. sanfranpda@aol.com. 7pm, free. Former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos will be speaking against the proposed building by the Golden State Warriors which will include a 12-story basketball and entertainment complex, a 175 feet high residential tower, a hotel, a 500 space private parking garage, and a 90,000 feet shopping mall on the waterfront and on the Bay itself. Is this what we want for San Francisco’s future? Come hear Agnos challenge the corporate vision of our city.

FRIDAY 28

The Congo in Crisis 2969 Mission, SF. www.answercoalition.org/sf. 7pm, $5-10 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds).More than 5 million people have been killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) over the past 15 years. Why is this history rarely reported in the corporate media here? What is the role of the U.S. government and its allies in this ongoing crisis in the Congo and the region? Come listen to speakers Maurice Carney and Akbar Muhammad discuss this little known tragedy.

SATURDAY 1

March Against Corruption: San Francisco Justin Herman Plaza, Market and The Embarcadero, SF. tinyurl.com/marchcorruption. 12pm, free. The March Against Corruption is an international campaign to raise awareness about the corrupting influence of money in politics, to organize the public to speak out against and resist the power of special interests, and to work toward abolishing the corrupt relationship between private wealth and public policy. We welcome all individuals and groups to participate in this nonviolent struggle to create the mass movement we need to end the corruption of our corporate plutocratic state.

This Week’s Picks: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

WEDNESDAY 26

Fresh and Onlys

Yeah, Ty Segall moved to LA and Thee Oh Sees are on an indefinite hiatus, but chin up! The Fresh and Onlys aren’t going anywhere. Keeping the SF garage rock scene alive, these hometown heroes are tireless, performing almost constantly around the city since their inception in 2008. Sure, you’ve seen ’em before and you’ll probably see ’em again, but this is prime: headlining the city’s greatest (and most fitting) down n’ dirty rock club as a part of Noise Pop, the city’s greatest (and most affordable!) arts festival. And if you haven’t seen ’em before, get on it! These dudes can write a catchy tune with just the right amount of melancholy like nobody’s business. (Haley Zaremba)

With Sandy’s

8pm, $14

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

THURSDAY 27

Com Truise

It is only fitting that Com Truise embarks on a national tour at the same time the new RoboCop film is in movie theaters. Both the electronic funk producer and the futuristic peace officer are products of the ’80s, borrow heavily from the era, rely on shiny technological weaponry, and owe a shout-out to Michigan. Since 2010, Ann Arbor’s trendy Ghostly International label has championed Truise’s artistic exploits, including the shimmering Wave 1 EP released this year. Truise concocts muddled, vintage, bass-heavy synthwave, the type of emphatic sound that might arise if Joy Division or New Order were selected for RoboCop reprogramming. (Kevin Lee)

With Phantoms, Kauf, DJ Dials

9pm, $19

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

Jel

Forget the music, watching Jel repeatedly punch drum machine pads and twist sampler knobs on bulky, last-gen machinery would be worth the price of admission. The East Bay-based electronic hip-hop producer manages to keep his appendages intact while stabbing out a dizzying array of kick drums, snares and percussion in ever-shifting breakbeat arrangements and tempos. On his latest LP, Late Pass (Anticon), Jel balances bass with shoegaze melodies, hints of psychedelia, electric guitar chords and some of his own emceeing. In line with the political undertones throughout the album (“Don’t get comfortable,” the title track advises), this show marks the two-year anniversary of the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, a medical cannabis nonprofit. (Lee)

With Maus Haus, Grown Kids Radio DJs

7pm-10 pm, free (RSVP required for non-Noise Pop badge holders)

Sparc

1256 Mission, SF

(415) 252-7727

www.sparcsf.org

FRIDAY 28

Bleached

It won’t surprise anyone to learn that Bleached’s Clavin sisters are longtime friends of Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino. Bleached dishes out the same brand of blissed-out, beach-blonde pop morsels that has been pouring out of Southern California (San Fernando Valley, in the Clavins’ case) for the past few years. This isn’t to say that there’s nothing special about this sister act: The Clavins have an amazing aptitude for earworms and feel-good noises paired with feel-bad lyrics, and Bleached’s recent debut album establishes that the band is not to be dismissed as one of the crowd — the sisters have been sneaking into punk shows and honing their musical chops for years, and it shows. (Zaremba)

With Terry Malts, Mystic Braves, Tropical Popsicle

8:30pm, $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Other Minds Festival

What do jazz saxophone legend Roscoe Mitchell, experimental composer Joseph Byrd, and an African grey parrot have in common? They’re all sharing a bill at the 19th annual Other Minds Festival, a two-day celebration of avant-garde music, taking place for the first time at the SFJAZZ Center. This year’s festival also includes performances by award-winning pianist Myra Melford, the premiere of synthesizer superstar Donald Buchla’s Drop by Drop, and a specially commissioned performance of Roscoe Mitchell’s Nonaah for four bass saxophones — a rare instrument in its own right. The LA Times calls this the “West Coast’s premier festival of new music,” so if you’re not afraid to get a little out there, this is the place to be. (Emma Silvers)

8pm, Fri/28 – Sat/1, $25-$65

SFJAZZ Center

201 Franklin, SF

(866) 920-5299

www.otherminds.org

SATURDAY 1

James Bond

While most people are probably familiar with James Bond as a character from the film and literary worlds, the iconic spy has also had his danger- and damsel-filled missions and adventures featured in comics and newspaper strips around the globe. Suit up and join Alan J. Porter, author of the book James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007, for a discussion and slideshow highlighting the secret agent’s other realm of action. Cartoon Art Museum chairman Ron Evans and artist Mike Capozzola will host this evening’s festivities, which will also include a look at vintage Bond memorabilia, prizes, an auction, and of course, martinis — shaken, not stirred, naturally. (Sean McCourt)

7:30-9:30pm, $7

Cartoon Art Museum

655 Mission St, SF

(415) CAR-TOON

www.cartoonart.org

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.

Perhaps Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. should transition into full-time DJ work. On one track of their new (and free to download) mixtape Produce Vol. 1, indie rockers Joshua Epstein and Daniel Zott cheekily layer vocals from both the Notorious BIG and the Beach Boys over 16-bit video game beats, creating an unexpected and playful mashup. “Beach Blanket Biggie” epitomizes the irreverent approach and wide-ranging musical influences of the Detroit-based duo. Their sophomore LP The Speed of Things (Warner Bros. Records) collects bright vocals, moody folk, electronically shifted acoustic samples, and a splash of uptempo synth-pop, as evidenced by the recent single “If You Didn’t See Me [Then You Weren’t On The Dancefloor]”. (Lee)

With Chad Valley

9 pm, $20

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

Afrika Bambaataa

Without Afrika Bambaataa, hip-hop as we know it would not have existed; he is credited for coining the term “hip-hop” back in 1982, more than three decades ago. That same year, Bambaataa released his seminal single “Planet Rock,” a daring electrofunk track featuring vocoders and synthesizers that transformed rap and electronic music genres. Part of the hip-hop patriarch’s staying power can be attributed to the connections he fostered in the ’70s and ’80s, when he hosted gatherings to promote peace and social change, and shaped a generation of artists. Continuing to DJ and produce tracks that mix funk, breaks, fusion, and rock also helps to ensure fans that hip-hop’s godfather isn’t going anywhere. (Lee)

With DJ Jahi

10:30 pm, $26

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com/sanfrancisco

SUNDAY 2

SF History Expo

With the city by the Bay going through yet another period of transformation, now is the perfect time to look back on its incredible history and learn some of the stories that shaped the modern metropolis we know and love today. The 2014 San Francisco History Expo will feature more than 50 exhibitors creating special “mini-museums” and booths onsite, along with a variety of presentations, films, displays, and more — all taking place at the Old Mint, one of the few buildings to survive the earthquake and fire of 1906. (Sean McCourt)

$5, 11am-5pm Sat, 11am-4pm Sun

The Old Mint 88 5th St, SF

www.sfhistoryexpo.org

Isness Productions Presents First Sundays Yoga

Who’s trying to get downward dog tonight? For those who like to get down on the dance floor as well as on their yoga mats, head to the Regency for an evening of yoga, live music, organic food, eco-vending and holistic healing. Isness Productions’ Scott Franklin Manning has been using music as a healing power and a means to break down barriers since the ’90s, but this event marks the grand opening of his First Sundays gatherings. Practice yoga with two Yoga Tree instructors, Laura Burkhart and writer/spiritual man-about-town Mark Morford, with an electronic soundtrack by DJ Little John. Later on, DJ Garth will start the dance party, followed by an all-vinyl set by Wicked Sound System. The all-ages event will also feature a yoga class for kids and holistic activities from tarot reading to collective chair massages and an organic tea and raw chocolate lounge. As if it couldn’t get anymore wholesome, 100 percent of the proceeds fund school garden projects in San Francisco. (Laura B. Childs)

3pm – 9pm, $35

The Regency

1290 Sutter, SF

www.firstsundays.com

Murder in Pigalle launch party with Cara Black

French private investigator (and magnet for trouble) Aimée Leduc is back at it again in Murder in Pigalle. San Francisco Library Laureate and best-selling author Cara Black celebrates her latest installment in the French mystery series with a book reading and signing. Inspired by a true-crime story during the summer of 1998, Murder in Pigalle follows Aimée Leduc as she tries to slow down her hectic lifestyle — until a serial rapist wreaks havoc on Paris’ Pigalle neighborhood. When the criminal strikes too close to home, Aimée can’t help but become involved. The suspense will leave you au bout de souffle. (Childs)

3pm, free

Books Inc. at Laurel Village

3515 California, SF

www.booksinc.net

MONDAY 3

Marshall Elementary School Second Annual Best Tamales Contest

There are few Central American delicacies as exceptional as the tamale. Wrapped up like a present, the masa dish can be filled with gooey cheeses, spiced meats, or an assortment of veggies. But what makes a tamale the best tamale? Marshall Elementary School is a on a quest to find el major tamale de la Mission. After its immense success last year, the tamale contest will once again bring the community together to help raise money for the underfunded school. Parents of students and the school’s Mission neighbors will cook up a variety of homemade tamales based on their places of origin, ranging from the Yucatan to right here in San Francisco. Expect tastes from many other regions of Mexico and Latin America as well! (Childs)

6pm – 8pm, $30

Roosevelt Tamale Parlor

2817 24th St, SF

TUESDAY 4

Tosca

Tosca is the sound you hear in a dimly-lit lounge, resplendent with plush velvet seats and sensual wisps of scented candle smoke. Austrian downtempo luminaries Richard Dorfmeister and Rubert Hubert make a rare foray this side of the Atlantic with a six-stop trip through North America. Sophomore studio album Suzuki (!K7 Recordings) remains a gold standard in the lounge music genre, as refreshingly lush and catchy today as when it was released at the turn of the millennium. Their newest LP, Odeon, is a vocal-laden voyage that entices listeners through layered atmospherics and dramatic tones. This live performance will feature the longtime pair alternating between piano and electronics, accompanied by vocalists and visuals from Austria’s Ars Electronica Futurelab. (Lee)

With Cath Coffey and Robert Gallagher

8pm, $35

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF (415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

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Rep Clock: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

Schedules are for Wed/26-Tue/4 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $5-12. Cine+Mas SF Latino Film Series: Lemon (Brownson and Levison, 2012), Wed, 7. “Adjectives in the Halting Speech: Films by Jonathan Schwartz,” Thu, 7. Noise Pop: Revenge of the Mekons (Angio, 2013), Fri, 7; Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker (Keber, 2013), Fri, 9; Kids Like You and Me (Cody, 2013), Sun, 4. Other Cinema: “SisPics:” The Motherhood Archives (Lusztig, 2014), Sat, 8:30. With Irene Lusztig in person; a percentage of proceeds goes to SF’s Internet Archives.

BALBOA THEATRE 3630 Balboa, SF; cinemasf.com/balboa. $7.50-10. Broken Eggs: The Looming Retirement Crisis in America, Wed, 5. “Popcorn Palace:” The Secret of NIMH (Bluth, 1982), Sat, 10am. Matinee for kids. Academy Awards party with live commentary by MC Reed Kirk Rahlmann, Sun, 4. Advance tickets advised.

BAY MODEL 2100 Bridgeway, Sausalito; www.tiburonfilmfestival.com. Free. Decoding Deepak (Chopra, 2012), Tue, 6.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •No Country for Old Men (Coen and Coen, 1997), Wed, 7, and A Serious Man (Coen and Coen, 2009), Wed, 9:15. •Star 80 (Fosse, 1983), Thu, 7, and Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001), Thu, 9. “Lesbians Who Teach Summit,” Fri. More info at lesbianswhoteach.org/summit. Call for Sat-Tue program info.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. times. “Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014,” call for dates and times. Gloria (Lelio, 2013), call for dates and times. If You Build It (Creadon, 2013), Sat, 7.

“CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL 2014” Various venues, San Jose; www.cinequest.org. Film festival with narrative, documentary, and short films, plus tributes to Neil Gaiman, Christopher Meloni, and others, March 4-16.

GOETHE-INSTITUT SAN FRANCISCO 530 Bush, SF; goethe.de/ins/us/saf/enindex.htm. $5. Sisters (Wild, 2013), Wed, 6:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Villains We Love:” Ripley’s Game (Cavani, 2003), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Film 50: History of Cinema:” There’s Always Tomorrow (Sirk, 1956), with lecture by Emily Carpenter, Wed, 3:10. “African Film Festival 2014:” Nairobi Half Life (Tosh Gitonga, 2012), Wed, 7. “The Brilliance of Satyajit Ray:” Rabindranath Tagore (1961), Thu, 7. “Against the Law: The Crime Films of Anthony Mann:” Side Street (Mann, 1950), Fri, 7. “Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema:” Une femme mariée (1964), Fri, 8:45. “Afterimage: Kamran Shirdel:” “The Films of Kamran Shirdel (1965-80),” Sat, 5:30. With Kamran Shirdel in person. “Jokers Wild: American Comedy, 1960-1989:” The Apartment (Wilder, 1960), Sat, 8:30. “Rediscovered:” Too Much Johnson (Welles, 1938), Mon, 7.

PARAMOUNT THEATRE 2025 Broadway, Oakl; www.ticketmaster.com. $5. Roman Holiday (Wyler, 1953), Fri, 8.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. 7 Boxes (Maneglia, 2014), Feb 28-March 6, 7, 9 (also Sat-Sun, 3, 5). “Hump! Tour,” films from the Hump! Film Festival, Fri-Sat, 6, 8, 10 (also Sat, 3). This event, $20; more info at www.humptour.com.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; Facebook: The Vortex Room. $10. “The Last Rites of the Vortex Room:” •Spectre (Donner, 1977), Thu, 9, and Shadowman (Franju, 1975), Thu, 11.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “Design and Architecture Films Showcase:” Design is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli (Brew and Guerra, 2013), Thu-Sat, 7:30; Sun, 2. *

Rocked worlds

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

THEATER

There are two sides to every road. But ask a long-haul trucker, a traveling salesman, or a pair of wandering minstrels like the Bengsons, and they’ll remind you that those sides converge at the horizon line.

The Bengsons — married musician-songwriters Abigail and Shaun — met randomly through a gig in New York City back in the late aughts. A mutual attraction, immediate and fierce, led them to become engaged within weeks of their first conversation. Both then in their early 20s, with serious and eclectic musical backgrounds, they recall the courtship as a whirlwind of powerful new emotions, bright and dark. Fast on the heels of marriage came five years of traveling across the country as their own band — a sure blend of musical influences that slips across various genres, in a sort of indie folk, neo-vaudevillian, truck stop cabaret, and drive-by rock opera that more or less dovetails with their daily selves. Among much else, living and learning as peripatetic artists and lovers has given them the opportunity to explore the meaning of all those feelings that led to their highly creative, itinerant relationship.

The fruit of that exploration is in the world premiere this week of Hundred Days, a major musical-theatrical venture carefully nurtured by Z Space and three years in the making. Directed by Anne Kauffman and with a book by Bay Area–based playwright Kate E. Ryan — both fully collaborative partners in the project, the Bengsons readily acknowledge — Hundred Days is something like a real-life Once: a true love affair cast through a darkly playful fictional story about Sarah (Abigail Bengson) and Will (Shaun Bengson), two 20somethings who find their powerful new love comes with a serious expiration date.

The production is no mere concert (though it rocks, loudly and well), but every inch a theatrical experience. Ryan provides a complete and involving narrative spine to the at times raucous, at times haunting musical set pieces. Moreover, Hundred Days features a large and talented cast of actors and musicians (including El Beh, Melissa Kaitlyn Carter, Geneva Harrison, Kate Kilbane, Jo Lampert, Amy Lizardo, Dalane Mason, Joshua Pollock, and Reggie D. White); a moody and mercurial set design by Kris Stone (aglow with a sort of post-industrial romanticism courtesy of lighting designer Allen Willner); and choreography by renowned San Francisco dance maker Joe Goode.

But at its heart are a body of songs of surprising force and subtlety, in dynamic arrangements that showcase both the Bengsons’ hard-won skills as musicians and composers, as well as their exhilarating ability to convey a rare sense of emotional honesty, of uncensored feeling, in their work. Before a recent rehearsal ahead of the show’s first previews, the couple sat down and shared musings on the journey that brought them here.

SF Bay Guardian You’ve described your courtship as being a kind of existential crisis, in that it suddenly put life in an unsettling new perspective.

Shaun Bengson It did start to feel incredibly short.

Abigail Bengson It’s life’s irony that in rushing to live life fully you do collide more quickly with the end of it. Rushing towards life is inevitably rushing towards death. That’s true of everybody. In the play, we put a timer on it, to help us talk about it in a more concrete way. But that’s just how we feel every day anyway [laughs] It’s just sort of the situation.

SB They’re such big feelings, it’s taken a really long time to sort them out and figure out what’s going on there — a lot of the wonder, and also the neurosis and the fear — all of that is where the show came from.

AB The more we’ve unpacked what was initially just an enormous feeling of life and dread in one package, the more we’ve discovered how ordinary that is. I’d say that’s been my primary comfort. In that moment I felt like, “I am struck by lighting. I am going to die.” My experience of life is no longer separate from my experience of death. I’m finding that that is true for so many people.

Any big love, not necessarily for a spouse, but for a child or for a parent, can have that same effect of making life an emergency and making death feel near. But also, in living with that breath in my throat for long enough, I’ve started to be able to soften into that and say, “OK, so now we make a sandwich.” I mean, how do we live in an ordinary way in the face of this thing that feels so enormous? Why is it all we’re thinking about all the time? I don’t know. I guess that’s why we ended up writing all those songs about it.

SFBG And that led you out on the road. How did five years of traveling, your day-to-day life on the road, actually come about?

SB We were living in an apartment in Brooklyn, and I had one year left on my teaching contract. We were playing in our band and working on the show. At the end of my school year, I still had the whole summer [paid]. At the same time, our very dear friend David was going back to South Africa, so he said, “You can stay in my house for the summer.” So we had these two months when we’d still have money from my teaching gig and we’d have a place to live. So we went and lived in the Berkshires for a couple of months, finished a show and set up tour dates, and left from there. We thought maybe we’d go back—maybe I could go back to teaching, if things didn’t work.

AB I never felt that. [Shaun laughs.]

SFBG It felt right to leave?

SB It felt really good. It felt like such a relief.

AB It felt honest. It felt right. True to the way I think and what I am. It meant our life became, you know, gas money and Taco Bell, but it also became playing a lot of shows, doing a lot of service work in different places and learning a lot through that. We got to be students again in that sense, by putting ourselves in situations that were intensely uncomfortable over and over again, and writing music about them. It was a little songwriting boot camp of our own design. And we were getting to know each other’s styles and how we would write. I also feel, like, thank god we were married. I don’t know how you could be a musician and not marry a musician.

SFBG You hit the road five years ago and haven’t turned back. Was there a point early on where you hesitated? Were there any gigs that made you think again?

AB The first crappy gig I remember being really educational — and making me want to do it more even, though it was painful — was when we were at this biker bar…

SB Oh, yeah, this was in the Valley outside of Los Angeles. What was it called? Something like—it’s not Topanga. Tujunga? Is that place?

AB Fact-check all of this, we’re totally full of crap. [Fact check: Sunland-Tujunga sits in northeastern Los Angeles.] But we were playing this bar. Everybody was angry looking, a lot of shaved heads. I was [looking around the room, thinking], “What is going on with you?” Scared. So we got up and we played all the songs that we had written to date that were the most ferocious and aggressive and loud — and then we were kind of running out of those. So at the very end of the night we played this one song. It’s actually about a woman we knew well, whose daughter had passed away, and her struggling with that. And we sang for her and about that, in the moment sort of ready to get booed.

Then, when the set ended, this pack of — now, I know, lovely gentlemen, but at the time, terrifying — figures came towards me, and were weeping. They just said, “That one. Wish you had played more like that.” And I was like, “Fuck, me too.” I mean, I love those aggressive songs, too, they’re a big part of what we do, but it was such a lesson in prejudice for me — that I had judged what they would like, and assumed that it wouldn’t be anything honest for me.

SB It’s the lesson I’m still constantly learning. It takes so much more courage to be actually genuine in a moment. If I’m not careful, my tendency can be to play towards what I perceive people’s expectations are for the event, versus when we try to play the songs we most want to play and are most “us.”

AB But I also think it’s incredible training to play in rooms that are not receptive at first. Because part of the task then is to create the space where people can lean forward. I feel it was one of the best trainings for me. Play somewhere where they wish you were just playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. Where they wish you were a DJ. That’s the best place to go.

SFBG Have you two every attempted anything on the scale of Hundred Days before?

SB and AB No.

AB That was part of why we called it an opera at first. Because opera, they say, is the most collaborative art form — that you need every possible kind of artist to come in and make it happen. And that’s what Z Space has done, is allow for that.

SB It’s been really amazing.

AB It’s been a dream. *

HUNDRED DAYS

Through April 6, $10-$100

Previews Wed/26, 7pm; Thu/27-Fri/28, 8pm; opens Sat/1, 8pm

Runs Wed and Sun, 7pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

www.zspace.org

Theater Listings: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

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

Mommy Queerest Exit Studio, 156 Eddy, SF; www.divafest.info. $15-25. Opens Fri/28, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 29. DIVAfest and Guerrilla Rep present Kat Evasco (who co-wrote with John Caldon) in an autobiographical solo comedy about the relationship between a lesbian daughter and her closeted lesbian mother.

“Risk Is This … The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival” Tides Theater, 533 Sutter, Second Flr; www.cuttingball.com. Free ($20 donation for reserved seating). Opens Fri/28, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. (Starting March 14, venue changes to Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF). Through March 29. Five new works in staged readings, including two from Cutting Ball resident playwright Andrew Saito.

Tipped & Tipsy Marsh Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Sat/1, 5pm. Runs Sat, 5pm; Sun, 7pm. Through April 6. Solo performer Jill Vice performs her Fringe Festival hit.

ONGOING

The Altruists Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.shewolftheater.com. $19-34. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through March 8. She Wolf Theater performs Nicky Silver’s “politically incorrect” play that exposes the real motivations behind altruistic behavior.

Children Are Forever (All Sales are Final!) Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 22. W. Kamau Bell directs Julia Jackson in her solo show about adoption.

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (Sun/2, performance at 2pm; March 9, performance will be a reading of Charlie Varon’s Fish Sisters). Through March 16. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Hundred Days Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $10-100. Previews Wed/26, 7pm; Thu/27-Fri/28, 8pm. Opens Sat/1, 8pm. Runs Wed and Sun, 7pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through April 6. Z Space presents the world premiere of a folk rock odyssey conceived and created by Abigail and Shaun Bengson.

An Indian Summer Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.wehavemet.org. $20-40. Thu/27-Sat/1, 8pm. Multi Ethnic Theater presents local playwright Charles Johnson’s parable of race relations in the Deep South of the 1980s. On a small stage split into two alternating scenes by a movable wall in director-designer Lewis Campbell’s set, two sets of working-class residents of rural Alabama, one white and one black, have their discrete worlds unexpectedly collide. Musician Charlie Ray (a less than convincing Kevin Wisney) is fresh from the pen and living with girlfriend Pearle (AJ Davenport). Plucking at his guitar, he dreams of getting some money to afford time in a recording studio. But his brother Bobby (Paul Rodriguez) has a way of talking him into sketchy schemes, which has Pearle worried, especially after a visit from the Sheriff (Richard Wenzel). For his part, Bobby is hoping to make some money to appease his pregnant wife, Sarah (Bree Swartwood), who wants Bobby to move her and their baby to Maine. Meanwhile, Junior (a forceful Bennie Lewis, alternating nights with Stuart Hall) is a feisty wheelchair bound African American man living in a small trailer. Junior’s friend Emmitt (Fabian Herd, alternating with Vernon Medearis) tries to convince him he should put his money in a bank rather than keeping it in his trailer — especially now that Junior is selling his land for a tidy sum — but Junior doesn’t trust banks. Next, Junior gets a letter from a lawyer claiming half the profit from the land sale on behalf of a long lost, half-white relative — the offspring of an illicit romance between Junior’s father and a white woman, related to Pearle. The situation, of course, spells trouble. But while we see it coming, there’s meant to be pathos in the tangled connections among these parallel stories. Unfortunately, the artificial nature of the plot makes it hard to credit, while the desultory pace and uneven acting make the going harder still. (Avila)

Jerusalem San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through March 8. SF Playhouse presents the West Coast premiere of English playwright Jez Butterworth’s West End and Broadway hit, a three-act revel led by a larger-than-life rebel, a stout boozed-up drug-dealer, habitual fabulist, and latter-day Digger of sorts named Johnny “Rooster” Byron (Brian Dykstra). The dominion of this Falstaffian giant is the English countryside outside his squalid trailer door, not far from Stonehenge, where he seems to incarnate a rather dissipated version of an ancient English independence, like one of the great mythical beings of rural lore. Aptly enough, it’s Saint George’s Day, the feast day of England’s national saint, but it’s not all a party this time around. Authorities have issued a final 24-hour eviction notice on Rooster’s tin door; there are luxury apartments in the works; and there’s concern in town about the underage teens who flock to Rooster like so many fledglings — one, in particular, has gone missing: Phaedra (Julia Belanoff), who we see at the very outset of the play donning a fairy costume and singing the title song, based on the Blake poem and England’s unofficial national anthem. The next 24 hours will be either the breaking point or the apotheosis for all Rooster has made himself out to be. In Butterworth’s big-eyed comedy, we are meant to feel a stake in this outcome whether we actually like Rooster or not — his independence, the scope of his life and vision, suggests the outer limit of possibility in an ever more disciplined and circumscribed world. Director Bill English (who also designed the impressive bucolic-trailer-park set) and his large cast (which includes a strong Ian Scott McGregor as longtime Rooster sidekick, Ginger) dive into the comedy with gusto. But somehow the drama, the larger stakes in the storyline, falls short. A certain requisite intensity and momentum are only fitfully achieved. Dykstra, as the expansive antihero, has the biggest burden here. And while he has an appealing swagger throughout, his wayward brogue and unconvincing bellicosity undercut the culmination of the play’s (admittedly somewhat overwrought) mythopoeic proportions. (Avila)

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 15. Theater artist and comedian Marga Gomez presents the world premiere of her 10th solo show, described as “a rollicking tale of incurable romantics.”

Napoli! ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $10-120. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm; Tue, 7pm (Tue/4, show at 8pm). Through March 9. American Conservatory Theater offers Bay Area audiences a rare look at one of the Neapolitan plays by Italy’s famed writer Eduardo De Filippo (1900-1984). Set in a humble home in working-class Naples during and just after World War II, amid the transition from Fascism to the postwar order, the play’s broad comedy comes with a strong undercurrent of social drama, as well as unexpectedly poignant moments. Its hero is the head of the household, Gennaro (former ACT core company member Marco Barricelli in a boisterous and gently moving performance), whose upright nature proves increasingly out-of-step with the times and indeed his own family, as his wife, Amalia (a commanding Seana McKenna), begins a black-market trade in coffee beans that becomes an all-out family crime ring by war’s end. While this dynamic offers fodder for some rather hokey if not unenjoyable comedy, the play gathers itself into a serious and timely indictment of privilege and its corrosion of community, as well as the need for solidarity as the only viable, indeed the only satisfying way forward. If the message and the playwright-messenger (De Fillipo, also an actor, originated the part of Gennaro himself) come across today as somewhat heavy-handed, it remains hard to dismiss Napoli! as just a museum piece. That’s due in part to director Mark Rucker’s large and graceful cast, as well as a buoyant new translation by Linda Alper and ACT’s Beatrice Basso. But it’s also the prescience and appositeness for us, all these many years later and miles away, of the play’s fundamentally social and political concerns. (Avila)

The Scion Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-60. Thu/27-Fri/28, 8pm; Sat/1, 5pm. Brian Copeland’s fourth solo show takes on “privilege, murder, and sausage.”

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri/28-Sat/1, 8pm. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blonde innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: the energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $60-90 (add-ons: casino chips, $5; dance lessons, $10). Thu-Sat, 7:40, 7:50, and 8pm admittance times. Through March 15. Boxcar Theatre presents Nick A. Olivero’s re-creation of a Prohibition-era saloon, resulting in an “immersive theatrical experience involving more than 35 actors, singers, and musicians.”

Twelfth Night Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.calshakes.org. $20. Thu/27-Sun/2, 8pm (also Sun/2, 2pm). California Shakespeare Theater kicks off its 40th anniversary season with a touring performance of Shakespeare’s classic romance, featuring an all-female cast.

Ubu Roi Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Cutting Ball Theater performs Alfred Jarry’s avant-garde parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, presented in a new translation by Cutting Ball artistic director Rob Melrose.

The World of Paradox Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.paradoxmagic.com. $12-15. Opens Mon/24, 8pm. Runs Mon, 8pm (no show March 10). Through April 7. Footloose presents David Facer in his solo show, a mix of magic and theater.

Yellow New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 23. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs the Bay Area premiere of Del Shores’ Mississippi-set family drama.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through March 9. The popular, kid-friendly show by Louis Pearl (aka “The Amazing Bubble Man”) returns to the Marsh.

BAY AREA

Can You Dig It? Back Down East 14th — the 60s and Beyond Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-35. Fri/28, 8pm; Sat/1, 8:30pm. Don Reed’s new show offers more stories from his colorful upbringing in East Oakland in the 1960s and ’70s. More hilarious and heartfelt depictions of his exceptional parents, independent siblings, and his mostly African American but ethnically mixed working-class community — punctuated with period pop, Motown, and funk classics, to which Reed shimmies and spins with effortless grace. And of course there’s more too of the expert physical comedy and charm that made long-running hits of Reed’s last two solo shows, East 14th and The Kipling Hotel (both launched, like this newest, at the Marsh). Can You Dig It? reaches, for the most part, into the “early” early years, Reed’s grammar-school days, before the events depicted in East 14th or Kipling Hotel came to pass. But in nearly two hours of material, not all of it of equal value or impact, there’s inevitably some overlap and indeed some recycling. Note: review from an earlier run of the show. (Avila)

Escanabe in da Moonlight Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 8. TheatreFIRST performs Jeff Daniels’ raucous comedy.

Geezer Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Thu/27, 8pm; Sat/1, 5pm. Geoff Hoyle moves his hit comedy about aging to the East Bay.

Gideon’s Knot Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 9. Aurora and director Jon Tracy’s Bay Area premiere of Johnna Adams’ two-hander features strong acting, strong enough almost to make us believe in its premise. A harried mother named Corryn (a terrific Jamie J. Jones) arrives at the empty middle-school classroom overseen by a distracted teacher, Heather (a subdued yet agitated Stacy Ross). Corryn, proud but somehow desperate, admits to having not slept. Heather initially doesn’t know why she’s there — until it becomes clear she’s the mother of a recent suicide, who has come to keep her appointment for a parent-teacher conference. The two women await the arrival of the absent principal, but Corryn presses for answers now to the circumstances surrounding her child’s final days, which included his suspension from school and a beating received at the hands of fellow students. Heather, who seems to be hiding some separate anxiety or grief of her own (and is, though what we don’t learn until nearly the end of the play), does her best to deflect any such conversation until the principal arrives but is soon embroiled in an argument with the headstrong and canny mother in front of her, a literature professor at a major university. Their dance centers on Corryn’s son’s last assignment, a short story, one his teacher sees as nothing but “hate-filled poisonous attacks,” but his mother calls “poetry.” In addition to the clash between a teacher’s authority and a mother’s regard, there’s a class component to these differing perspectives, we presume. Yet there is a real issue here, somewhere, about art and education and authority — or would be if it did not end up buried along with the young writer we never meet. Playwright Adams advances the dramatic tension by tacking this way and that around her subject, but loses sight of the shore meanwhile, as her characters debate whether or not the short story contains a virtuous accusation against an instance of child abuse, only to drop this crux a moment later in a hard-to-credit squeamishness on Corryn’s part over the potentially homoerotic longings of her deceased son. The final note lands in an even hokier key of mutual sorrow and understanding. (Avila)

The House That Will Not Stand Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-59. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and March 13, 2pm); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. July 4, 1836: As a white New Orleans patriarch (Ray Reinhardt) passes from the scene, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, his longtime mistress, Beartrice (an imposing, memorable Lizan Mitchell), and their daughters (the charmingly varied trio of Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Flor De Liz Perez, and Tiffany Rachelle Stewart) — all free women of color — vie for dominance while trying to secure their respective futures in Berkeley Rep’s sumptuous and beautifully acted world premiere. Nationally acclaimed playwright and Oakland native Marcus Gardley (And Jesus Moonwalked the Mississippi; This World in a Woman’s Hands) brews up a historically rich and revealing, as well as witty and fiery tale here, based on the practice of plaçage (common-law marriages between white men and black Creole women), grounding it in the large personalities of his predominately female characters — who include a nosy and angling intruder (played with subtlety by Petronia Paley) — and lacing it all with a delirious dose of magical realism via the voodoo charms of Beartrice’s slave, Makeda (Harriett D. Foy, who with Keith Townsend Obadike also contributes lush, atmospheric compositions to the proceedings). Gardley delves productively into the history overall, although he sometimes indulges it too much in awkward and ultimately unnecessary expository dialogue. When he allows his characters full scope for expression of their personalities and relationships, however, the dialogue sails by with brio and punch —something the powerhouse cast, shrewdly directed by Patricia McGregor, makes the most of throughout. (Avila)

An Ideal Husband Douglas Morrison Theatre, 22311 N. Third St, Hayward; www.dmtonline.org. $10-29. Thu/27-Sat/1, 8pm; Sun/2, 2pm. Douglas Morrison Theatre performs Scott Munson’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic, reset in 1959 Washington, DC.

Lasso of Truth Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $37-58. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/1 and March 15, 2pm; March 6, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 16. Marin Theatre Company performs Carson Kreitzer’s new play about the history of Wonder Woman.

The Lion and the Fox Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 30. Central Works performs a prequel to its 2009 hit, Machiavelli’s The Prince, which depicts a face-off between Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia.

A Maze Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.justtheater.org. $20-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 9. Following a well-received run last summer at Live Oak Theater, Just Theater’s West Coast premiere of Pittsburgh-based playwright Rob Handel’s 2011 jigsaw drama gets a second life, courtesy of presenter Shotgun Players, in this remounting at Ashby Stage. Half the pleasure of a play like this is the unfolding of its serpentine plot, which becomes much more linear in the second half but initially seems to hover around three very disparate situations: 17-year-old Jessica (Frannie Morrison), recently escaped from eight years of captivity in the home and cellar of her kidnapper, prepares for an interview with a Barbara Walters-like TV journalist (Lauren Spencer); Oksana (Sarah Moser) and Paul (Harold Pierce), who head up their own highly successful rock band (suggestively titled the Pathetic Fallacy), are in the midst of a tough transition as Oksana checks Paul into rehab; and a fairytale King (Lasse Christiensen) responds to the Queen’s (Janis DeLucia) news that they are about to have an “heir” by beginning construction on a gigantic, seemingly endless maze emanating outward from their cozy den to the furthest reaches of the kingdom. Meanwhile, the director of the rehab clinic (Carl Holvick-Thomas) introduces Paul to another artist-resident, a fussy, eccentric author named Beeson (Clive Worsley) at work on a multi-volume graphic novel of maddening intricacy. As the three storylines begin to coalesce, the play asks us to consider questions about artistic liberty, authorship, responsibility, human connection — big themes like that. It does so in a mostly playful, only slightly eerie way, despite the grim central situation revolving around the bright and surprisingly outgoing Jessica. Employing almost the identical cast as last time, again under director Molly Aaronson-Gelb, the proceedings unfold with generally solid acting, if not always persuasive dialogue, at least where things are meant to be more or less realistic (to an extent, the fairytale segment comes across more compellingly for being strictly bound by the artificial nature of its narrative). There’s a quirky quality to the play, and the production, that amuses, even as the coy plotline bemuses. And much like an amusement park adventure, the play makes sure no one really gets lost. This is a play that is happy to tell you the various ways the central “maze” might be read metaphorically, for instance, so that everything is tidy and clear — like a fairytale, or a graphic novel — not so mysterious in the end, just tinged with a kind of comfortable melancholy. (Avila)

The Music Man Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-60. Fri and March 20, 7pm; Sat, 1 and 6pm; Sun, noon and 5pm. Through March 23. There’s trouble in River City! See it unfold amid all those trombones at Berkeley Playhouse.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“The Aftermath Affair” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Fri/28-Sun/2, 8pm. $20-35. Blind Tiger Society performs a world premiere by choreographer Bianca Cabrera.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sat/1, March 8, 16, 22, and 30, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Collected Stories” Cartwright Hotel, 524 Sutter, SF; www.collectedstoriessf.com. Thu/27-Sat/1, 8pm (also Sat/1, 2pm); Sun/2, 2pm. $21-28. Expression Productions performs a “pop-up theater” take on Donald Margulies’ drama about a university professor and her protégé.

“Dream Queens Revue” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/26, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, and more.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: Paula West, Thu/27-Fri/28, 8pm; Sat/1, 7 and 9:30pm, $35-50.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“The Magic Flute” Center for New Music, 55 Taylor, SF; themagicflute.brownpapertickets.com. Thu/27 and March 7, 7pm; Sun/2, 2pm. $15-20. Waffle Opera performs a stripped-down version of Mozart’s classic, with new English dialogue.

“Partyiac Arrest: A Post-Valentine’s Hangover Cabaret” Mojo Theatre, 2940 16th St, #27, SF; www.mojotheatre.com. Fri/28-Sat/1, 8pm. $10-15. Raucous variety show (comedy, music, circus acts, short films, and more) with Mojo Theatre.

“Point Break Live!” DNA Lounge, 373 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. March 7 and April 4, 7:30 and 11pm. $25-50. Dude, Point Break Live! is like dropping into a monster wave, or holding up a bank, like, just a pure adrenaline rush, man. Ahem. Sorry, but I really can’t help but channel Keanu Reeves and his Johnny Utah character when thinking about the awesomely bad 1991 movie Point Break or its equally yummily cheesy stage adaptation. And if you do an even better Keanu impression than me — the trick is in the vacant stare and stoner drawl — then you can play his starring role amid a cast of solid actors, reading from cue cards from a hilarious production assistant in order to more closely approximate Keanu’s acting ability. This play is just so much fun, even better now at DNA Lounge than it was a couple years ago at CELLspace. But definitely buy the poncho pack and wear it, because the blood, spit, and surf spray really do make this a fully immersive experience. (Steven T. Jones)

“The Romane Event Comedy Show” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.pacoromane.com. Wed/26, 8-10pm. $10. With Bay Area comedy all-stars Paco Romane, Will Durst, Karina Dobbins, and Nick Palm.

BAY AREA

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now” This week: Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Fri/28-Sat/1, 8pm. $10-25.The festival, which runs through March 8, continues its 10th anniversary with “BCF Oakland,” featuring works by Joanna Haigood, Gregory Dawson, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Portsha Jefferson, and Kendra Kimbrough Barnes.

“The Buddy Club Children’s Shows” JCC of the East Bay Theater, 1414 Walnut, Berk; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/2, 11am. $8. With acrobat and juggler Dana Smith. Also Sun/2, 11:30am, $8, Kanbar Center for the Performing Arts, 200 N. San Pedro, San Rafael; www.thebuddyclub.com. With magician Brian Scott.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“Poetry Express” Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University, Berk; poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com. Mon, 7pm. Free. Ongoing. This week: Zora Raab, plus open mic. *

Events: February 26 – March 4, 2014

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

Listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.

THURSDAY 27

Lisbeth Haas California Historical Society, 678 Mission, SF; saintsandcitizens.eventbrite.com. 6pm, $5. Author and UC Santa Cruz professor Haas discusses her book Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California.

Rachel Kushner City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. The author celebrates the paperback release of The Flame Throwers.

Michelle Richmond Drew School Theater, 2901 California, SF; (415) 409-3739. 7pm, free. The author (The Year of Fog) discusses her new novel, Golden State, and her new short story collection, Hum.

FRIDAY 28

“Michio Kaku: The Scientific Quest to Understand and Empower the Mind” First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. 7:30pm, $15. The San Jose native, theoretical physicist, author, and co-creator of the string theory discusses “the future of the mind” in this event hosted by KPFA Radio.

SATURDAY 1

“The Art of Living Black Open Studios” Oasis Gallery at American Steel Studios, 1960 Mandela Parkway, Oakl; facebook.com/TheArtOfLivingBlack2013. 11am-6pm. Through Sun/2. Free. One stop on a multi-gallery tour highlighting works by over 50 local African American artists; check out the Facebook page (it’s updated to 2014, despite that URL) for more details.

“Mardi Gras Weekend at Playland-Not-at-the-Beach” Playland-Not-at-the-Beach, 10979 San Pablo, El Cerrito; www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org. 10am-5pm. Through Sun/2. $10-15. Enjoy the museum’s historic amusement games, plus take part in mask-making and other Mardi Gras special activities.

“San Francisco History Expo: Piecing Together Our Past” Old Mint, 88 Fifth St, SF; www.sfhistoryexpo.org. Today, 11am-5pm; Sun/2, 11am-4pm. $5 (children under 12, free; no one turned away for lack of funds). The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society presents this fourth annual event, bringing together over 60 local history groups, genealogists, small museums, and libraries to celebrate the unique history of San Francisco. Plus: films, storytelling, a treasure hunt, presentations about the histories of Angel Island and the Presidio, and more.

“White Elephant Sale” White Elephant Sale Warehouse, 333 Lancaster, Oakl; www.whiteelephantsale.org. 10am-4pm. Through Sun/2. Free. Calling all bargain hunters: Now in its 55th (!) year, this sale hosted by the Oakland Museum Women’s Board benefits the Oakland Museum of California. Expect a huge array of clothing, books, household goods, sports equipment, furniture, and more.

SUNDAY 2

“A Home Bringing for Amiri Baraka” Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF; www.emtab.org. 7pm, free. Musicians and poets — including Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and David Meltzer — pay tribute to the late writer and activist.

“Poetry Unbound #10” Art House Gallery, 2905 Shattuck, Berk; berkeleyarthouse.wordpress.com. 5pm, $5 (no one turned away for lack of funds). With featured readers Joan Gelfand, David Shaddock, and Todd Temkin, plus a brief open mic hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger.

Nellie Wong Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University, Berk; www.asiabookcenter.com. 3pm, free. The Chinese-American poet and activist reads from her latest, Breakfast Lunch Dinner, inspired by her Oakland childhood working in her family’s Chinese restaurant.

MONDAY 3

“Going Rogue: Planets Without Parent Stars in the Galaxy” Morrison Planetarium, California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.calacademy.org. 7:30pm, $8-12 (advance tickets required, as seating is limited). Jacqueline Faherty, Hubble Fellow at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, discusses how “free-floating planets” help us understand planet formation and evolution.

TUESDAY 4

Eleven/Eleven Journal release party City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. Hugh Behm-Steinberg hosts this celebration of issue 15, with readings from contributors.

“Reel San Francisco Stories: An Annotated Filmography of the Bay Area” Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. 6pm, $15. Christopher Pollock discusses his book showcasing films shot in the Bay Area, as well as actors and directors who call the Bay Area home. *

Doin’ it in the dark

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

SUPER EGO “If people want to accuse me of being a heteronormative queer assimilationist, they can come to my traveling amateur porn film festival and say it to my face!”

That’s Dan Savage — spunky sex columnist, “It Gets Better” maestro, and editor of Seattle’s the Stranger — calling me on the way to the airport. He’s flying the friendly skies for the nationwide Hump Tour (coming Fri/28 and Sat/1 to the Roxie Theater in SF, humptour.strangertickets.com), which is giving the Stranger’s notorious — and notoriously successful — annual homemade skin flick competition more, er, exposure.

In fact, the Hump Tour reminds me a little of the hilarious Sodomy Bus from Michael Moore’s 1990s TV show, filling the hills and crevices of America with resounding squeals and joyful bangs. Of course, the Sodomy Bus deliberately targeted anti-gay areas to make a political point — back when sodomy was still illegal, remember then? Whereas the Hump Tour projects handcrafted erotica with titles like Rumpy Pumpy (“an animated starter with funny, floppy dicks”), D&D Orgy (“roll for experience as the dungeon master’s fantasy game gets extremely real”) and Go Fuck Yourself (“one man time travels to save the world and fuck himself. Then things get complicated”) onto big screens in major cities with a side of popcorn. You can’t get more cuddly-quaint than that, no?

“I’m actually kind of worried about coming to San Francisco, though,” Savage said with an emphatic laugh. “Here I am, with my monogamish husband, editing this severely liberal paper and writing a sex column, my schedule full of porn, and I always feel like I’m going to be attacked for not being radical enough for SF, because I spoke out for same-sex marriage and other things.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him how much things have changed here — our overheated scandal du jour is over a queer club in Oakland politely asking straight people not to come because it’s too crowded, sigh.

So, what are the benefits of touring the country with a suitcase full of funny, irreverent, poignant, crude, and sweet stag films? “I’m at the point now where I’ve been writing about sex for so long that people mob me after each screening to say how they grew up reading me, how they would sneak my column into their bedroom, how I convinced them to try some things. And now I’ve enticed them to come see some porn with their friends and family. That’s kind of funny.”

Meanwhile, his stacked hubby has become a fixture on Seattle’s underground queer dance scene — does Dan ever hit the dance floor with him? “I usually hide in my room and write. It would never work if we were into the same things. You need some difference for that spark that makes you want to screw each other rather than just be each other.”

We’ll forgive you, Dan. Just keep the smut coming.

AUDION

Techno heartthrob Matthew Dear’s dirtier, funkier alter ego Audion steps back into the limelight with what’s said to be an insane visual experience for this tour. (The team behind Amon Tobin’s mindblowing ISAM tour designed it.)

Wed/26, doors at 7pm, show at 8pm, $20, all ages. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

DIGITAL MYSTIKZ

Dark south London dubstep visionaries Mala and Coki drop in for Noisepop to school the kids on beautiful angst and swooping boom. With Chicago juke kingpin DJ Rashad.

Thu/27, 10pm, $17.50–$20. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com

DANNY TENAGLIA

Danny’s been spinning for 30 years and has become the elder statesperson when it comes to dance music in America. But the mixes! Oh, the mixes. He’s a master of creating a roiling, huge-room groove, bending the sound of each track toward a glimmering whole. Most DJs give you crap about how they “take you on a journey” — Danny actually delivers. A four-hour set with Nikita and John Kaberna supporting.

Fri/28, 9pm-4am, $25–$30. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

DJ SPUN

Wickedly good NYC house player headlines a Rong label showcase with local heads Corey Black of 40 Thieves, Jeffrey Sfire of Ghostly International, and — woot! — DJ Ken Vulsion, finally out of retirement and ready to enchant.

Fri/28, 9pm-3am, $10. F8, 1192 Folsom, SF. www.feightsf.com

RIOT GRR

This is a monthly Riot Grrrl tribute night at the bear bar. So perfect. February’s installment celebrates Carrie Brownstein, right after the new “Portlandia” season debuts, and we think how happy we are for her success, but please get on that Sleater-Kinney reunion already. With DJs Crowderism and Jimmy Swear.

Fri/28, 8pm, free. Lone Star Saloon, 1354 Harrison, SF. www.lonestarsf.com

JOHN TEJADA

The magic techno man from LA is a smooth, smart beast on decks, laying on the pulsing rhythms and subterranean energy. He’s at the Night Moves party with Shiny Objects and Brother in Arms, the nifty new “slo-mo deep house” collab from hometown heroes Deejay Theory and J-Boogie.

Fri/28, 9pm-4am, $20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF. www.monarchsf.com

RESONATE

Killer broken bass sounds at this regular party, bringing Low End Theory’s DJ Nobody and IZWID Records’ Esgar to the tables, along with the heady Slayers Club crew supporting. It’s a release party for one of my favorite local basshead Joe Mousepad’s new EP, too.

Fri/28, 9pm-3am, $5–$10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

AFRIKA BAMBAATAA

You could do way worse than to jam out to “World Destruction,” this hip-hop god’s legendary 1984 collaboration with the Sex Pistols’ John Lydon, while you’re applying your mascara in the evening. Or do the dip to “Planet Rock” when you take it off the next morning. Zulu Nation has you covered round the clock.

Sat/1, 10:30pm, $26, 18+. Yoshi’s SF,1330 Fillmore, SF. www.yoshis.com

Facetime found

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

rebecca@sfbg.com

It’s rare for a member of the tech elite to sit down with the Bay Guardian for candid discussion on how the region’s burgeoning technology industry is impacting San Francisco. Despite our frequent attempts to obtain comment from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway, for instance, the billionaire investor never seems to have a free moment to chat.

So when we received an unexpected invitation to interview Randi Zuckerberg, CEO of Zuckerberg Media and former marketing executive at Facebook (founded by tech mogul Mark Zuckerberg, her brother), we took the opportunity.

Zuckerberg is a friend of Conway’s; early on in her book, Dot Complicated (HarperOne, 2013), she relates an anecdote of how he relied upon her to secure VIP seating for MC Hammer when she was arranging a live-streamed address by President Barack Obama in Silicon Valley in 2011.

In addition to being a singer, a mom, and a supporter of the Jewish community (the night of our interview, she spoke at a “friend-raiser” for Birthright Israel, which sponsors trips to Israel for Jewish young adults), Zuckerberg’s focus is on promoting “tech-life balance” — which can pretty much be summed up as not spending so much time on Facebook.

Jim Henson Productions recently purchased rights to air an animated series based on her children’s book, Dot, about a tech-savvy little girl who discovers that life sans digital devices can be fun. Zuckerberg also aims to encourage young women to go into tech.

In the early days at Facebook, when the social media arena was extremely male-dominated, “I would show up for meetings and people would expect that Randi was a guy,” she reflected.

As important of an issue as gender imbalance in Silicon Valley may be, it nevertheless takes a back burner to San Francisco’s most pressing issue du jour: the mounting tension between its tech set and long-term residents, those facing of soaring rents and witnessing neighborhood gentrification unfold at a rapid clip.

We asked Zuckerberg what she thought about the city’s gentrification and affordability crisis. “I’m really glad the conversation is starting, because it has to,” she told us. “There definitely is a real problem in the city. There have been a few members of the tech community who have come out with not-so-desirable responses,” she continued, referencing derisive comments made by Y Combinator entrepreneur Peter Shih and AngelHack CEO Greg Gopman, “and that’s definitely not representative of how the community as a whole feels.”

Zuckerberg recently visited Glide Memorial, once of the city’s largest homeless services centers. “That really opened my eyes a lot, spending that day there,” she said. “It’s changed my own view: I should be doing more, I can be doing more.”

Asked what in particular could be done, Zuckerberg said, “I do think that there are a lot of ways that tech can help. … How could we take all of these new, seamless, web and Munchery-type food delivery services, and make sure that the excess that’s being cooked is being delivered to families in need?” she said, referencing a startup that cooks and delivers healthy cuisine. “I think the same tech that’s dividing the community groups can bring them together.”

As for the tech bus protests that made international headlines, “it’s not those people riding the buses that are the ones who are making so much money and having this wealth disparity,” she said, saying the anger was misdirected.

But Zuckerberg added that she thought people working in tech should take the responsibility to become more aware of the city’s economic divide. “I would really encourage people in tech: maybe, instead of taking that fancy trip to Napa as an off-site, go volunteer in a soup kitchen. Go do something like that — to really understand what it’s like for people who have not won the ‘uterus lottery,’ like the rest of us have.”

Evolution of yoga

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

steve@sfbg.com

YOGA Being suspended upside down in an aerial yoga swing in Peaceful Warrior position, transitioning into Happy Buddha as I reached for the Quantum Playground to deepen my stretch, I gained a new perspective on the world — and the ongoing evolution of yoga in the Bay Area.

Innovation and the cross-pollination of various ideas and practices are as quintessential to the Bay Area as yoga and other mindful approaches to self-improvement and secular spirituality. So it makes sense that local yoga teachers and entrepreneurs are developing new twists on a timeless art.

My yoga practice began in 2001, and I was fortunate to have an instructor who emphasized that yoga is about breathing more than stretching or exercise. It’s about being present and maintaining that presence through the pain of life and its contortions. Inhale to lengthen, exhale to deepen; breathe in, breathe out, repeat indefinitely.

When aerial yoga instructor Jen Healy first hung me upside down in her San Rafael home and “Healyng Sanctuary” while we were dating in 2012, that focus on breathing was essential just to keep my lunch down (or up, in this case). Yoga can have that disorienting quality, particuarly in the inverted postures.

And then I worked through it, finding a new world opened up on the other side where previous limits yielded to new openness and flexibility. It can be playful, as in Healy’s Aerial Yoga Play swings and teacher trainings; or the partner-based AcroYoga that emerged here about 10 years ago.

“You get to play your way to a healthier and happier state of being,” Healy says, calling her swings and jungle-gym-like Quantum Playground she built tools for “awakening the courageous inner child.”

Or the new approaches to yoga can cultivate a deeper sense of self-awareness, purpose, and integration of our mental, emotional, and physical bodies, as instructor Dina Amsterdam strives for with her InnerYoga approach.

“Yoga is about finding balance. We are walking around so out of balance as a culture,” Amsterdam says, describing her teachings as helping people better understand their inner landscape “so they can discover what is out of balance within them…InnerYoga is not a style, it’s an approach to life.”

San Francisco’s progressive, humanist values have also helped project yogic teachings onto the sociopolitical scene through groups such as Off the Mat, Into the World (OTM), with the mission “to use the power of yoga to inspire conscious, sustainable activism and ignite grassroots social change.”

A new local company called YOL is trying to marry that sense of activism with the yoga retreats to exotic locales that have become so popular, creating trips that combine yoga and meditation with volunteer work on service projects.

“I do think it’s part of yoga’s evolution,” says YOL co-founder David Cherner. “It’s taking that good feeling you get from yoga and channeling it into giving to someone else.”

A DAY TO BREATHE

In this hustle-bustle world of ours, it feels grounding and luxurious to take a full day to breathe, to meditate, and to practice yoga. Retreats of a day to a week have become big in the yoga world, but my first one was Feb. 23 at Amsterdam’s home near Mt. Tamalpais.

“Yoga in the United States, particularly in the Bay Area, became very focused on the physical component,” says Amsterdam, who instead strives “to really make self-awareness and connection to essence the primary purpose of yoga.”

She developed her InnerYoga approach in 2008 during the economic crash — since then graduating 36 teachers who now employ her approach — using the mindful evolution of her own practice to meet the growing anxiety and imbalance she saw in the community.

“What I was most effective at teaching is what people were really needing,” Amsterdam said. “My classes slowed way down.”

I met Amsterdam through the YinYoga classes that she teaches at Yoga Tree, classes that involve holding postures for extended periods of time — from a few minutes up to a half-hour — which can open up both joints and deep emotions as practioners breathe through their resistance.

But Amsterdam says that YinYoga is just part of InnerYoga, which involves active and passive poses, meditation, and teachings and exercises designed to connect yoga with a mindful approach to life. Its four foundations are “awareness, kindness, breath, and ease.”

“I’m teaching people self-care practices both on the mat and off the mat,” Amsterdam said.

That idea was the basis for OTM, which is “in the business of creating leaders and helping leaders connect to their passions,” says Rebecca Rogers, who splits her professional time between teaching yoga and working for OTM on its seva fundraising campaigns.

“When you slow things down, you have more time to make choices,” Rogers said, describing the notion of mindfulness that yoga helps create. “A big part of mindfulness is the ability to tune into the world.”

That bridge between the yoga and political worlds will be tested this year as yogini and renowned author Marianne Williamson runs for Congress in Southern California, promoting mindfulness, a campaign that OTM’s Yoga Votes project is supporting.

Between the connections to self and to the world, AcroYoga is a hybrid of yoga, acrobatics, and Thai massage, a fluid practice where partners use one another for pressure or as a plaform for poses.

“I don’t think there’s enough safe touch in the world, so AcroYoga allows that,” says Tyler Blank, who discovered the practice in 2004 and became one of its first certified teachers.

Later, in Hawaii, Blank discovered the concept of ecstatic dance — with its “contact improv” techniques that are similar to AcroYoga — and brought it to the Bay Area, where its twice-weekly events in Oakland have grown in popularity.

“I realized we could take partner yoga and start to dance with it very slowly,” Blank said. “I think yoga is evolving into dance.”

However yoga evolves, the Bay Area is likely to be at the center of that process.

Climate fight is a street fight

Michael Redmond

February 25, 2014

STREET FIGHT

Prolonged warm-weather droughts seem a normal part of California life, but the intensity of drought impacts — shrinking snowpack, intense wildfires, crop failures, and the devastation of wildlife habitat and fisheries — is likely accentuated by global warming.

So it’s not enough to simply save water. In this drought, our sense of urgency about global warming should be ramped up. The science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, respected scientists like James Hansen, and even the World Bank (historically no friend to radical ecologists) all stress that droughts will get worse unless greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next decade.

The science is clear. If we are to avoid a disastrous future of ecological upheaval, violence, and forced mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people (many of whom produce the least amount of carbon emissions) then we must dramatically reduce emissions now, and we must do it in a globally fair and equitable way. And to be fair and equitable, we must reduce driving. Here’s why.

Globally, transportation is the fastest growing sector of greenhouse emissions, owing in large measure to the expansion of global automobility. Presently 500 million passenger cars are in use (approximately one-third of them in the United States), but by 2030, this figure is expected to reach 1 billion worldwide.

This increase in automobility will contribute substantially to the “trillionth ton” of cumulative carbon emissions, which is an emissions threshold signaling global climate catastrophe. Today we are more than halfway there (556 billion tons). At current rates of consumption, including America’s ownership of 800 cars and trucks per 1,000 persons, we hit the trillionth ton in 28 years.

To avoid this, we must keep as much fossil fuel as possible in the ground. Because the United States is disproportionately responsible for at least 27 percent of the cumulative carbon emissions since industrialization, and has a disproportionate number of cars compared to the rest of the world, we in the United States have a particular responsibility to keep carbon in the ground.

If China, which has produced 10 percent of global emissions so far, had the same per capita car ownership rate as the United States, there would be over 500 million more cars, doubling the current worldwide rate. This would be madness. It would be worse than building the Keystone pipeline, which is what Hansen called “game over” for the global climate because it’s a spigot into the sticky, tarlike oils in Alberta which, if fully tapped, would be a carbon time bomb.

Ask yourself this: If China (and possibly India) successfully copy American-style driving, how much tar sands would that require? What kind of world would that look like? And if Americans (and especially environmentalists) expect the global middle class in China and India to stand aside while we keep on driving, that is stark, crass, and inequitable.

Many well-meaning environmentalists and progressives think that driving a Prius or buying an electric car will be adequate in mitigating this conundrum. They must reconsider. There is no “green” car when a global middle class replicates American driving patterns.

If the world’s fleet of gasoline-powered automobiles magically shifts to electric, hydrogen fuel cells, or biofuels, the change will draw resources away from industrial, residential, and food systems, or it will have to involve an entirely new layer of energy production (more tar sands). Massive quantities of coal and petroleum will be needed to scale-up to wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear, and other arrays of energy, as well as for all the new “clean cars.”

Are environmentalists still planning to drive around the Bay Area while waiting for this magic? I sure hope not.

In these global warming days, with drought on everyone’s mind, we must avoid wasting precious water washing cars, and we must reallocate street space with fewer cars in mind. A critical piece of the puzzle is to prioritize public transit and bicycles over automobiles by building exclusive transit and bicycle lanes, remove the lanes and curbside parking available to cars, install signal prioritization for transit and bicycles at intersections, queue-jumping so that transit can bypasses traffic stalled at intersections, restrictions on turns for automobiles, and transit stop improvements including bus stop bulb-outs and amenities.

Reconfigured streets must furthermore exclude car-oriented land uses like more off-street parking in the 92,000 new housing units projected for San Francisco by Plan Bay Area. These units, whatever size or income, should be completely car-free. And this must include removal of existing parking beneath homes, replacing garages with housing and returning the privatized curb cut to the public.

VISIONS FOR HAIGHT

In many respects, the Haight Street corridor is a model for the kind of global warming mitigation strategy the rest of America should follow. The corridor has high density, transit dependent, and car-free households (over 30 percent in the Upper Haight and almost 50 percent in the Lower Haight/Hayes Valley) It has several walkable neighborhood commercial districts, as well as several hundred units of new housing (some of which are below market rate) under construction in Hayes Valley. Almost 25,000 passengers take the Haight buses (6-Parnassus and 71-Haight Noriega) daily, making it one of the busiest combined transit corridors in the city.

But the buses are crowded and often stuck in traffic, so the SFMTA has plans to improve service by increasing frequency, converting more of the existing route into faster “limited” service whereby some buses stop only at key points and removing the “jog” at Laguna and Page which adds delay to the inbound buses.

As I’ve written before, the Muni staff has a good plan known as the Transit Effectiveness Project, with a modest reallocation of street space for higher transit reliability, attracting more ridership, and potentially enabling San Franciscans to conveniently reduce driving to half of all trips by 2018 (it was at 62 percent in 2012). But on both ends of Haight Street, the city has fumbled. While not a disaster, hopefully Muni can learn some lessons and tweak the plans.

On the eastern end, Muni will shift buses off Page Street, converting a short segment of Haight back to two-way. The new two-way Haight includes a transit-only lane between Laguna and Gough/Market streets, which will dramatically improve travel times and reliability. Part of it will enable buses to bypass queues of cars making the right turn from Haight onto Octavia.

Where this scheme falls short is in the plans to simply give former bus stops on Page to private cars for parking. A more progressive plan would instead use the space to help make room for needed bicycle improvements on Page between Laguna and Market. Nearby are multiple housing construction sites where curbside parking has been temporarily removed — such as at the 55 Laguna site. The city has a great opportunity to innovate with transit-first policies at all of these construction sites.

Instead of turning space over to private cars when construction concludes, the city could instead build more bus lanes, pedestrian space, curbside car sharing, and bicycle space. The city could also return some of the space to parking, but only in exchange for parking removal upstream, such as at Haight and Fillmore, where bus stop improvements are sorely needed.

Throughout the city, there are block-by-block opportunities like these, where the city can help the climate instead of giving away parking. As the city discontinues bus stops and sees more housing construction, the policy should be to use curbside space for bicycles, pedestrians, or curbside car share — not simply giving it away to private car parking.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Haight, the city has also fumbled in proposing to reroute the 6-Parnassus, an important electric trolley bus line, off the Frederick-Cole-Parnassus segment. Bus riders in the Upper Haight are incensed. At a recent public meeting, a crowd of 90 people balked at the cut. Muni planners defended the proposal, arguing that ridership is low in the hilly segment above, and that a less productive segment would be shifted to the more crowded Haight Street.

This might seem logical but it may also be shortsighted, especially since the existing segment has overhead trolley wires. Drought notwithstanding, the electric trolley buses are the greenest motorized mobility in San Francisco, propelled by hydroelectricity from Hetch Hetchy.

Taking a longer and more progressive view, it might be useful to think of the debate over the 6-Parnassus this way: If the city is hoping to wean motorists from their cars by achieving the laudable goal of having 30 percent of all trips in the city by transit (up from 17 percent today), cutting service, even in relatively low ridership routes, is counterproductive. It raises the question: Is the ridership level low because the service was poor to begin with, including such irritating factors as less frequency, less reliability, or fewer hours of service? What would ridership levels look like if these less-crowded routes had high frequency, all-day and late-night service with high reliability?

Moreover, what would demand for these routes look like if parking were substantially reduced throughout the city while car-travel lanes were removed, creating space for bicycle lanes and transit lanes? Or what if there were a regional gasoline tax, a congestion charge, or other measures that priced automobility closer to its real social cost, thus producing higher demand for transit?

Surely, reducing the footprint of transit service, however inefficient that service might seem now, is not creating a template necessary for carrying 1.4 million daily passengers in the future, which is what it would take to reach significant emissions reduction goals and 30 percent mode share. Removing segments like the 6-Parnassus on Frederick will only make it harder to rebuild and accomplish that goal. And for political expediency it will also make it harder for Mayor Ed Lee to sell his transportation funding ballot proposals to progressive voters in November.

Muni planners ought to ditch the proposal to reroute the 6-Parnassus, and instead focus on maximizing improved reliability and transit efficiency on the other end of Haight Street by removing parking and prioritizing transit and bicycling on Haight and Page respectively.

Thinking globally about climate change means acting locally, on the streets of San Francisco.

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, a professor at San Francisco State University’s Department of Geography and Environment.

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