San Francisco

The grateful undead

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Looking back at Outside Lands and ahead to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and the last lingering Indian summer sighs and huzzahs of the festival express season, I’d say we all have plenty to be grateful for. At Outside Lands, I was thankful for Sharon Jones’ sass, Radiohead’s nu-romantic lyricism (amid two moments when the sound cut out and Thom Yorke’s jesting "OK, who put beer in the plug?"), Beck’s persistent pop groove as fence jumpers leapt the barriers, Regina Spektor’s and Andrew Bird’s old-time songcraft, Los Amigos Invisibles’ and Little Brother’s bounce, and Primus’ pluck. No doubt the bison are grateful for the quiet betwixt gatherings — and we all envy them after those night strolls through the cool, darkened park, passing kids listening to the music echo through the arboreal cathedral.

I could go on about how gratified I am for a somewhat chiller city now that burner getups on Haight Street are discounted and their would-be buyers are happily grilling on the playa. But the most grateful of all has gotta be Sam Adato, who I chatted up last week on the eve of practice with his hard rock band Sticks and Stones. The group has a Sept. 5 show at Slim’s, for which he’s likely grateful, but most of all he’s happy to be alive and not buried beneath some beater. He was on his way to his store, Sam Adato’s Drum Shop, July 31 when, he says, a woman driver running a red light at Ninth Street was hit by another car heading down Folsom. "The impact made her swerve and go directly into my shop," he says. "It had to be quite fast to crash through the storefront." Adato usually gets to the store by 11 a.m. — he missed colliding with the driver by about 15 minutes. "Thank god," he marvels. "I probably would have been dead." His wife rushed over thinking he was in the store when the crash occurred, and their tearful embrace outside was captured by at least one photo-blogger. "Thank god no one was hurt," Adato adds. "Walking on the sidewalk or in the shop — it could have been a bloodbath. Things can be replaced — people can’t."

Adato’s alive, but half the storefront was wiped out, and he estimates that about $10,000 in inventory was destroyed. Now everything is in storage, the store is boarded up, and repairs have begun. Meanwhile he’s been producing a CD for his other band, The Bridge, which opened for Deep Purple at the Warfield last summer. "That’s been keeping me busy, but the ironic thing is Oct. 12 will be my 15-year anniversary — it just might be the grand reopening, 15 years after I first opened," he says wryly. At that time he was at a crossroads. "Rather than audition for touring bands, which is great but it’s hard to make a living and more often than not you’re just a hired gun, I decided to open a drum shop. I had no doubt in my mind it would succeed," he says firmly. "There are no drum shops like it anywhere. A drummer can come in and say they need their drum fixed, and I’ll fix it right there and then."

Until a certain car crash, he was living the drummer’s dream. Though Adato now throws down his sticks in South San Francisco, he actually resided in his SF shop for its first two years. "It was great," he recalls. "Stay up late, get up, take a shower, turn on the lights, open the door, and you’re ready for business, surrounded by drums day and night. Thank god for giving me this life." *

STICKS AND STONES

Fri/5, 9 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

www.slims-sf.com


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HOWLS IN THE WILDERNESS

CENTRO-MATIC AND SOUTH SAN GABRIEL


Will Johnson unites his two groups on the release of a two-CD set on Misra. With Sleepercar. Wed/3, 8 p.m., $10–$12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

DESOLATION WILDERNESS


The Olympia, Wash., combo on K Records jangles brightly at the end of a dreamily desolate echo chamber. With Family Trea and Ben Kamen and the Hot New Ringtones. Wed/3, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

MOMMYHEADS


Reunited and it feels like Mommy is home. After the 2007 passing of drummer Jann Kotik, the ‘heads decided to track old and new songs for the revitalized You’re Not a Dream (Bladen County). With Brad Brooks and The Mumlers. Wed/3, 9:30 p.m., $12. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

DAEDELUS


Taz Arnold of Sa-Ra and rapper Paperboy make it onto the LA beat-R&D specialist’s new Love to Make Music To (Ninja Tune). Thurs/3, 7 p.m., free. Apple Store, 1 Stockton, SF. Fri/5, 10 p.m., $5–$10. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

MORTIFIED


You know you like it — the pathos and chuckles of reading oh-so-private love letters and diary entries in public. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8 p.m., $12–$15. Make-Out Room, SF. www.makeoutroom.com

NINE INCH NAILS AND DEERHUNTER


Certainly one of the more unexpected pairings of late: the determinedly independent Trent Reznor meets the persistently raucous Bradford Cox. Fri/5, 7:30 p.m., $39.50–$55. Oracle Arena, Oakl. www.apeconcerts.com

DEATH VESSEL AND DAME SATAN


DV’s heartfelt folk meets its ideal match in SF’s DS, whose Andrew Simmons is planning to drop a haunting solo EP, Tabernacle Word, Pioneer (Ghost Mansion). With Micah Blue Smaldone. Sat/6, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com
ISE LYFE
The über-versatile Oakland MC recently cometh with Prince Cometh (7even89ine). With Bambu and DJ Phatrick, Do D.A.T., Power Struggle, EyeASage, and Emassin. Tues/9, 9:30 p.m., $10–$13. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

“Peering Through the Portal”

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PREVIEW This weekend CounterPULSE features two groups that thrive on collaboration. They have in common an Asian American background that informs but doesn’t determine the work they do. Melody Takata is a San Francisco artist with a broad perspective and 20 years of experience. Trained in taiko (she is the founder of GenTaiko), the three-stringed shamisen, and Japanese classical and folk dance, she grounds her pieces in the past but creates a contemporary language for them. In 2007’s Quest (with saxophonist Francis Wong and poet Genny Lim), Takata uses taiko drumming and both styles of Japanese dance to demystify some of the exoticism that surrounds Japanese American culture. This year’s Shimenawa (Rope) grew out of a concern that plans for the extensive remodeling of Japantown will cut one of the ties that bind the Japanese American community. Los Angeles–based Elaine Wang and San Francisco resident Lenora Lee, who began their modern dance partnership in the early 1990s, recently revived Lee & Wang Dance. Their 2007 Gale Winds and Turya explores conflicting internal voices and the role of dreamscapes and memory in the search for identity. Wang’s new duet, Swoon, pairs her with flautist/dancer Kaoru Watanabe in an exploration of connection, separation, and the quiet space between the two. Mina Nishimura and musicians Tatsu Aoki and Hideko Nakajima also perform in this interdisciplinary program.

PEERING THROUGH THE PORTAL Sat/6, 8 p.m.; Sun/7, 1 p.m. CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, San Francisco. $10–$15. 1-800-838-3006, www.counterpulse.org, www.brownpapertickets.com

SF Electronic Music Festival

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PREVIEW Five days, 18 performers, one ensemble, countless cords and magic boxes, and weird sounds times infinity. I mean, hell, if you’ve got an electric current and an instrument (in its broadest interpretation), you may as well use ’em together.

In this spirit, eight Bay Area sound-art wizards have organized the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival for eager electro-lovin’ ears for the ninth year in a row. Could there be a musical gathering more eclectic than this? Not likely. After nearly a decade of tapping into the electro-acoustic grab bag, the lineup is still stretching diversity to new levels, ranging the melodic-discordant gamut from drone to pop and contemporary chamber to industrial and then some. There’ll be internationally renowned pioneers such as sonic meditator Pauline Oliveros, and emerging artists like Oakland’s folklore-inspired pop duo Myrmyr. Many performances feature sfSoundGroup lending its modern improvisational twist. And don’t forget the science-derived computer music and harsh noise, synth-y innovations and rearranged Persian classics, electro-trombone and minimalism by way of New York City. You know you wouldn’t dare argue with an "intense noise artist" named Sharkiface.

SFEMF pummels the boundaries of your deconstructed notions of avant-garde postmodernism, then does it a few more times, till you’re left with the sharpened edge of experimental glinting through the soundwaves. Why not totally saturate your sonic-scape and save a few bucks with the five-day ticket? ‘Cause you love the Moog and the Mac, and for one week, you have it all.

SF ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVALWith Jen Boyd, Monique Buzzarté, Edmund Campion, Clay Chaplin, Ata Ebtekar, Hans Fjellestad, Christopher Fleeger, Phill Niblock, Tujiko Noriko, Carl Stone, Alex Potts, Akira Rabelais, Rutro and the Logs, Ray Sweeten, and Richard Teitelbaum. Wed/3–Sun/7, 8 p.m. (Sat/6 at 7 p.m.), $12–$17 per day; $55 all five days. Project Artaud Theatre, 450 Florida, SF. (415) 626-4370, www.sfemf.org

Horn dogs unite

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Lately I’ve been thinking about buying a trumpet. I had one once, though my mom sold it back to an instrument shop years ago — long after I’d ditched it and jumped the fence to a cappella choir about midway through high school. By that point I couldn’t have cared less, but more recently I’ve found myself daydreaming about it, its gleaming shine, its sleek curves. Mostly, though, I reminisce about its power — roaring and robust and showy as hell, that trumpet gave my mild-mannered little self a shot at being loud and free. And yet somehow, incredibly, I gave it up: too uncool, I’d told myself. Damn fool, what was I thinking? I take a mental inventory of my favorite songs — trumpets everywhere. I scan my record collection — yep, brass galore. I recall the new artists who are getting me the most hot ‘n’ bothered — can you guess the common thread? So, anyone want to sell me a trumpet?

As much as the current brass boom appears to be in full flourish from coast to coast, we here in the Bay Area are particularly spoiled for choice when it comes to horn-driven delights: rapturous Balkan brass bands, wickedly deep Afro-funk, and sweet soul music are all solid fixtures on the local menu for lovers of trumpets, trombones, and beyond. Still, the range of flavors extends even further than this quick list. As the longstanding booking agent for San Francisco’s Amnesia Bar, Sol Crawford, can attest: "I was thinking about all of these amazing bands we have in our area, when it occurred to me — so many of them feature brass! So, I decided, why not put together a festival to spotlight brass in all its diversity?"

And what a spotlight it will be. Boasting 11 days’ worth of brass-tastic revelry involving 30-plus artists and 21 shows, Crawford’s showcase offers thrilling testimony to the endless taste combinations proffered by local horn players — and the bands who love ’em. The festival’s name was inevitable. "As I began organizing this festival, I thought of it as a feast," he elaborates over iced tea at a Mission District café. "Then I pictured a cornucopia — this great big horn-shape with food spilling out. Perfect. A hornucopia, then!"

With a roster as impressive as this, the Hornucopia Festival is a veritable bounty deserving of the food analogy. Consider the sweet-and-savory possibilities of any given evening, and you’ll have rung Pavlov’s bell and set your mouth a-salivating: there’s the hot-pepper punch of Afrobeat powerhouse Aphrodesia, the hard bop/hip-hop grease of the Realistic Orchestra, the crisp crunch of punk-rock march-brigade Extra Action Marching Band, and the corn whiskey–marinated Dixieland delirium of the Gomorran Social Aid and Pleasure Club, for a start. Floor-burning Balkan brass band bacchanalians Brass Menazeri will elevate heart rates with a release party to herald the arrival of their latest self-released CD, Vranjski San. Lord Loves a Working Man’s heavy-soul workouts should keep crowds feeling limber … and so on. Add them all up, and that’s some serious Bay-representing horn love. One last coup: Crawford also enlisted the help of eminent New York klezmer daredevil Frank London, who will debut a sure-to-electrify ensemble: the SF Klezmer Brass Allstars.

Asked about the drive behind orchestrating such an enormous event that not only includes shows but workshops and panel discussions, Crawford’s answer is simple. "It’s about connecting," he explains. "There’s a great return to acoustic-based music happening right now, and a lot of these artists are mixing and melding genres in fascinating ways. And I want to bring them to a larger audience." My eyes continue to widen in awe upon hearing the full extent of what it has taken to put together this colossal labor of love, but he returns my sense of wow with an easy smile. "My friends have been great in helping out," the organizer adds. "So have the bands. It’s the scrappy brassy little festival that could."

HORNUCOPIA FESTIVAL

Sept. 4–14. Includes Frank London’s SF Klezmer Brass Allstars Sept. 5 at Café Du Nord; Brass Menazeri, Aphrodesia, and bellydance Sept. 12 at Great American Music Hall; and Polkacide Sept. 13 at Café Du Nord. For more information, go to www.hornucopiafestival.org

“Not tough”

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It wasn’t long ago that I stood in a small gallery, getting the same feelings I have on the F train in August: I’m going to get stampeded or dehydrate, and no one will notice. But since the Tea Elles had come highly recommended and was the only band playing, I stuck it out — along with a pack of sweaty citizens who, despite the B.O.-heavy sauna atmosphere, didn’t budge from the front of the room.

Months later in SoMa, I’m sitting in an airy kitchen with three of the four Tea Elles. It’s a bit like you imagine the "cool kid" dorm room to be: people with rolled cigarettes and guitars filing in and out and obscure music crackling out of a boom box.

"We picked the name, thinking Tea and Elles are like British and French. The most pansy, flamboyant name, which is kind of fitting for what we are doing," drummer Jigmae Behr tells me. "I mean, we’re not tough."

It’s true, the Tea Elles — which includes vocalist-guitarist Jeremy Cox, guitarist-vocalist Amelia Radtke, and bassist-vocalist Tanner Griepentrog — are not "tough." But funny enough, I’d have to say they’re kind of punk. Kind of punk and kind of surf — and kind of psychedelic too. Oh, yeah, and they’re also amazing.

The randomness of the band’s music is its most enticing aspect. It’s like a cocktail made by a mad scientist that hangs out at your favorite record store — a little Billy Childish with some Ventures and a dash of Syd Barrett thrown in. It makes a lot of sense when you hear it, but I’m amazed someone made this monster walk.

And the Tea Elles aren’t alone. The more independent shows I go to, the more I see this style emerging. Behr has his theory. "There was a mass consciousness," the 26-year-old explains, rolling another cigarette. "There were a lot of kids all over the country, going to the same shows, buying the same records, and loving the same bands. We all made these projects that came from the same cesspool. We are just all coming through the same filter of a punk aesthetic.

"So we evolved and whatever direction we take is going to be through that lens. If we decide we’re gonna be surf-oriented, or have more girl group harmonies, it’s all coming through that lens."

Oh. Where was I when everyone was getting so awesome? While some of us feel like having instant access to every type of media in the world has become daunting, other young musicians are pulling muses from every vine they can reach. And in a city like San Francisco, where — unlike Los Angeles or New York City — you won’t have a talent scout from MTV at every show, these performers seem to be making music for all the right reasons.

"When I’m writing a song or playing music I’m not thinking about any of that shit," says Cox, 19. "I’m thinking about a handful of people whose music I like."

The so-called egocentric notion of a frontperson is out, too, along with the idea that a band would ever release an album — unless it was done independently. It’s as if groups like the Tea Elles never imagined anyone would ever help them, although David Fox of local art collective Wizard Mountain recently recorded the band free of charge. That session, along with a recent Portland, Ore., jaunt means the Tea Elles probably have enough material for a full-length, which means I can finally stop listening to the melodic howling of "Chance of a Trance" on the outfit’s MySpace page. Before the band left for Portland, they felt that their songs weren’t "album material" — but apparently now they are. And regardless of whether San Francisco listeners are finally handed a DIY-burned CD or some indie label gets wise to the Tea Elles’ innovation, I just want to hear them. (Jen Snyder)

TEA ELLES

With Maus Haus and Ty Segall

Fri/5, 8 p.m., call for price (Sew-Op benefit)

Cellspace

2050 Bryant, SF
(415) 648-7562

www.myspace.com/teaelles

Paper weight

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Call me wasteful, call me Luddite, call me nostalgic, call me obsolete. I’m not ashamed to admit it: I like paper. I like it a little too much. These days, when I look at paper, I have a pair of scissors in my mind if not my right hand — I want to take the complete form of detritus that a single sheet or a full book represents, and cut it into a new shape. Maybe it’s a visual extension of editing words for a living. Maybe it’s a basic reaction to the stacks of visual and text-based matter that I shuttle from one space to another in the city when I’m not staring into the Valhalla of the computer screen or — heaven forbid — reminding myself that I have a body.

This week, I’ve been carrying a couple of heavyweights from work to home and back again: Glamour of the Gods (Steidl, 272 pages, $65) and The Stamp of Fantasy: The Visual Inventiveness of Photographic Postcards (Steidl, 216 pages, $60). Both books are testaments to the specific charms of paper, with tactile qualities — a gloss and an undivided directness, for starters — that no expensive flat-screen monitor can match. They’re made to be ravished, not ravaged. They also tell — via numerous knockout illustrations — a story. That story is of paper’s important role in relation to art and photography (or photo-documentary) in the 19th and 20th centuries.

A few weekends ago I went to a paper expo in San Francisco, where I admit to being nonplussed by the dozens of vendors with box upon box of postcards that cost $25 or more apiece. The sheer surplus of matter, coupled with the collectors’ prices, was off-putting. The Stamp of Fantasy, however, instantly reminded me of the artistic value of the postcard, a form I first fell for in high school, when I’d thumb through decks of cards for a well-executed trick image of a person with a cat’s or baby’s head. Curated by Clément Chéroux from the collections of Peter Weiss and Gérard Levy, the book presents those types of pictures, along with other puns and surrealist touches: melting Eiffel Towers; Victorian women with roots for torsos; human faces blooming from trees, emerging from mountain- and moonscapes or blooming from the tail-ends of trails of pipe smoke. Less predictable visions — a mass of Chinese baby faces akin to one of Weegee’s Coney Island photos; children riding butterflies in a realm not far from Henry Darger’s imagination — have a wow or jolt factor. They also effectively preview Hannah Höch’s innovative postcard-based collage.

Hollywood movie-star stills — the oft-luminous portraits that icons like Joan Crawford would autograph and send to thousands of fans — are the subject of Glamour of the Gods. It draws from the peerless collection of the late biographer and gadfly John Kobal, who helped bring renown to artists such as Crawford’s favorite cameraman, George Hurrell, via the 1980 book The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers. When I look at Greta Garbo’s reliably stunning close-up collaborations with the undersung and influential Ruth Harriet Louise, I think of Garbo’s remarkable skill at blocking paparazzi shots from any angle with her hands (demonstrated in Gary Lee Boas’ sweet 1999 book Starstruck) and ponder the old camp quip about the lie that tells the truth. Something has been lost in the journey from glossy paper to the infinite sea of candid digital imagery. Ramon Novarro and Clara Bow weren’t all about going to Starbucks for Frappuccinos. As someone once said, they had faces.

Locking up the press

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› sarah@sfbg.com

On Aug. 20 the San Francisco Chronicle reported that video blogger Josh Wolf, who spent 226 days in federal prison in 2006 for refusing to testify before a grand jury and hand over his video of a protest turned violent, had begun working as a reporter with the Palo Alto Daily Post.

"Video blogger gets job as ‘real journalist,’<0x2009>" crowed the headline.

The article noted that some critics believe Wolf was a protest participant and not an impartial news gatherer, and accurately observed that his case fueled the debates over what defines a reporter and who deserves to be protected by the reporter’s privilege to protect confidential sources.

But it failed to mention that one of Wolf’s harshest critics was Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders, nor did it clarify that in recent years several federal courts have found that reporters — all reporters, even from major newspapers — can be forced to testify before grand juries.

California doesn’t allow its courts to compel journalists to reveal unpublished information, but the federal government has no such shield law. That’s why prosecutors could jail New York Times reporter Judith Miller, charge Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada with contempt, and slap USA Today‘s Toni Locy with hefty fines — all for refusing to disclose confidential sources and materials.

And as reporters continue to face contempt charges in federal court cases nationwide, Congress has been considering two very different versions of a federal shield bill.

These two versions take widely varying approaches toward who and what is protected. And thanks to Senate Republicans, who blocked all business not related to energy legislation before Congress’ August recess, a vote on the Senate bill did not occur at the end of July.

As a result, if the Senate doesn’t act by the end of September, both versions of the federal shield will likely die. And, depending on whom you talk to, that may or may not be a good thing.

The Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 (HR 2102), which the House of Representatives passed in October of that year, only protects journalists if their work is done for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood or for substantial financial gain. In other words, no protection for Wolf, for most bloggers, or for many freelancers.

The good news is that the House bill extends protections to any documents or information obtained during the newsgathering process.

By comparison, the Senate bill (S 2035) only protects the identity of confidential sources, and any records, data, documents, or information obtained under a promise of confidentiality.

The Senate shield would cover any journalist who "engages in the regular gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public."

But it no longer requires the government to prove by preponderance of evidence that the information it seeks is essential, or that it has exhausted all other methods. And it makes more difficult any challenge by the reporter, based on whether the information involved is "properly classified" or whether its disclosure would harm national security.

It also expands the list of exceptions for which protection would be precluded: if disclosure could prevent criminal activities, terrorism, kidnapping, or imminent death or bodily harm; identify a person who has released some categories of private business and medical information; and where reporters witness criminal or tortuous conduct.

"I can’t overstate how much better the House bill is," Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told the Guardian.

Although Dalglish is hopeful Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will schedule the bill for a vote, she fears there won’t be enough time for a conference committee to iron out the differences between the two bills before the end of September, which means that only one version will have a chance of passing into law.

"My guess is that it will be the Senate bill, because the House will pass the Senate bill in a heartbeat, but the Senate will never pass the House bill," Dalglish observed.

Reached on break from his reporter gig, Wolf voiced his opposition to the Senate bill. "A shield law riddled with holes is no shield at all," Wolf said.

"It boggles my mind that any journalist could support the bill the way it is written," said Wolf, who would like to see a common law reporter privilege similar to the one for psychiatrists and therapists. "This is a shield law, in which, as best as I can tell, every single federal contempt case is carved out as an exception," Wolf opined.

While Dalglish acknowledges that the Senate shield only addresses subpoenas that seek to identify confidential sources (about 20 percent of subpoenas), she believes the Chronicle‘s Williams and Fainaru-Wada would have been protected, as would Locy.

"But Josh [Wolf] would not have been covered because he was not protecting confidential sources, and Judith Miller would have had a shot, though her case would have a more difficult time because of national security implications," Dalglish said. "And while by far the most subpoenas don’t have to do with confidential sources, they are the holy grail of journalism ethics, and you certainly have to, at a minimum, protect them — and the Senate bill is minimal."

Dalglish believes that both the Senate and House bills would allow the truthful, accurate, and independent gathering of information to go public, so the public could use this information at ballot boxes and in city halls, and ensure that people who have information to share could share it with reporters and the public.

"It’s not about protecting reporters," Dalglish added. "Reporters are not that special, in any shape or form. It’s about protecting the right of reporters to freely work on the public’s behalf, without being viewed as agents of the US Attorney."

Noting that the law in the Senate is not going to change what happened to Wolf in that instance because he was not protecting a confidential source, Dalglish’s message for reporters facing subpoenas, first and foremost, is: "Resist, tell them you don’t have it.

"Your obligation is to be independent, not an agent of the government," he continued. "So take your video, put it on a Web site, and make sure the public gets to see it at same time as the US Attorney."

Sanfranciscoism

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OPINION It appears the San Francisco Chronicle‘s editors have chopped "progressive" from the paper’s approved lexicon for local political reporting, replacing the term with "ultra-liberal" and "far left" to characterize politicians whose views they don’t share. Should we care? After all, the terms of political discourse have been so twisted, warped, and debased in recent years, one might be forgiven for not telling right from left or conservative from liberal. For most Americans, it’s all one big Babel of ideological tongues — confusing to be sure, but increasingly irrelevant.

But I think words do matter. Years ago, in Left Coast City, I took a stab at defining the city’s progressivism as "a system of values, beliefs, and ideas that encourages an expanded role for local government in achieving distributive justice, limits on growth, neighborhood preservation, and ethnic-cultural diversity under conditions of public accountability and direct citizen participation." The major problem with this working definition is that it’s local in scope and closely tied to San Francisco’s unique political culture, history, and setting.

We all know the ideological spectrum is left-shifted in San Francisco, and local politicians labeled as "liberals" or even "radicals" in faraway Washington, DC are often pilloried as moderates or even conservatives back here. Indeed, a major reason driving the use of "progressive" in the city’s local political discourse was precisely to differentiate anti-establishment political leaders from pro-establishment ones who were happy to serve and support a corrupt capitalist system while promising to reform it from within.

San Francisco is the nation’s vanguard city of political reform and social change. It is a working model of progressive community that leads all others in fusing the agendas of economic growth, social justice, and environmental protection.

All great movements must begin and radiate from some place. As Robert Wuthnow put it in his Communities of Discourse, a study of the origins and spread of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism: "None of these ideologies sprang into bloom on a thousand hilltops as if scattered there by the wind. They grew under the careful cultivation of particular movements that arose in specific places and that bore specific relations to their surroundings."

San Francisco activists must find a way to free their homegrown progressive ideology from its local context and scale it up to reach and persuade other Americans. Ironically, most of that scaling up is taking place now under the rubric of "San Francisco values," a derisive epithet originally coined by right-wing pundits but now proudly brandished by some city leaders and opportunistically embraced by others to fuel their political ambitions. By whatever name ("Sanfrancisoism"?), the city’s values have noisily infiltrated national political discourse and have pulled the ideological spectrum back toward the left. Gay civil unions, for example, suddenly seemed acceptable to national politicians, even George W. Bush, after Mayor Newsom began issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

So the term "progressive," although contested, works well in San Francisco. Don’t suppress it or throw it away. Outside the city, scale up with another term that average Americans can relate to and understand.

Rich DeLeon

Rich DeLeon is professor emeritus of political science at San Francisco State University.

Unaffordable nation

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› amanda@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Bay Area author Michael Pollan opened the first event of Slow Food Nation by pointing out that food prices have risen more than 80 percent in the past three years. "Food has emerged as one of the most important issues," Pollan said from the stage of the Herbst Theatre, where he was discussing "The World Food Crisis" with Indian author and activist Vandana Shiva, Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini, and authors Raj Patel and Corby Kummer in front of a sold-out crowd.

"Prices are going up, but wages aren’t," Patel said to Pollan, and the real crisis is in that gap between what people make and what people spend on food — and that includes the people who grow our food.

"The World Food Crisis" was one of several panels held during the three-day Slow Food Nation, the first major event staged in the United States for what has become an international movement focused on the pleasures and politics of eating. San Francisco, a city with a food consciousness that chimes with many tenets of the slow-food movement — and one with a proximity to fertile regions that provide a wide range of local food — seems the perfect host. An oft-repeated phrase at Slow Food events throughout the weekend was that eating healthy is a right, not a privilege.

But how can that sentiment be translated into sustenance? Can the people who grow our food even make a decent living? And how does an event where tickets went for as much as $159 focus on the needs of people who struggle just to get adequate nutrition?

This much is sure: prices may be up, but small farmers aren’t getting rich. "It’s very difficult for many of our farmers," Aliza Wasserman of Community Alliance with Family Farmers told the Guardian.

Jeff Larkey runs Route One Farm in Santa Cruz. He’s been farming for 27 years and rents 65 acres for about $45,000 per year because it’s too expensive to buy the land. In the past he’s worked up to 150 acres, but now, he said, "Going forward is a big question in my mind because the costs of doing business have skyrocketed so much."

Larkey has many long-term workers making wages that vary based on experience, with the bottom rung starting at or slightly above minimum wage. "I’d love to pay them all $20 an hour because that’s what the work is really worth," he said.

A way to solve the problem might be for growers to raise their prices — but many already consider organic, sustainably-grown food as fuel fit only for the well-heeled.

"To eat organic, healthy, local food generally costs more," Pollan admitted in a later talk. "The whole system is canted to support fast food. That’s what we subsidize."

He pointed out that Americans spend only 9.5 percent of their income on food — an all-time and international low — and people need to become more comfortable with paying more so growers and processors can earn fair wages. "We all need to spend some amount more on food."

That’s tough for people who can barely afford food now.

Anya Fernald, director of Slow Food Nation, said the group constantly struggles with the financial issue. Fernald also said proceeds from ticket sales will be used to seed future events and the next course of action, which will be determined by the farmers, food artisans, and nonprofits that participated.

When asked how they intended to get their message out to people who might have been priced out of attending the event, she said the group chose the Civic Center as a way to reach a broad audience. She pointed out that 60 percent of the events were free.

Pollan also said that policy needs to change to make food more accessible, and that’s what the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture seems to speak to. The document was unveiled in the rotunda of City Hall on the eve of Slow Food Nation and outlines 12 principles that "should frame food and agriculture policy." Included are statements that affordable, nutritious food should be accessible to everyone and it shouldn’t mean exploiting farmers, workers, or natural resources to get it. Roots of Change, which coordinated drafting the declaration, is hoping for 1 million signatures by fall 2009, when they take it to policymakers in Washington, DC.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I made my nine-year-old son sit down and watch Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. I told him this was history happening, that he would never forget this moment, that when I was his age the idea of a black man standing up and accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party to be president of the United States was even beyond the stuff of dreams.

His response: "Why was that?"

Yes, we are making progress. Michael’s public school class learns about Martin Luther King Jr., but the kids are struggling to comprehend how this country could once have forced black and white people to drink out of different water fountains. We are not a post-racist society by any means, but even in my most depressed and cynical moments, I know we are making progress.

And so we sat through a good speech, possibly a great speech, although I can’t go along with the bloggers and commentators who announced just a few minutes after it ended that it was the best convention speech anyone ever made. I kind of think Obama was better in 2004.

But it’s tough to do all the things his handlers said he needed to do. They think he hasn’t been aggressive enough in responding to John McCain’s attacks, so he spent far too much of his prime time talking about why the other guy is a chump. They worry about how popular McCain’s oil drilling proposal is, so he had to make a really dumb comment about safe nuclear energy, which is an oxymoron if ever there were one.

He had to lay out a specific plan so he wouldn’t sound vague.

It got better toward the end, when he started sounding like the inspirational leader he has the potential to be. And what struck me — and what will be a huge part of this campaign, under the surface — was this comment:

"Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us."

And this on negative campaigning:

"And you know what — it’s worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn’t work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it’s best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know."

I think one of the central questions of American policy today is going to be rectifying the profound difference between John F. Kennedy and the Avengers. Kennedy, of course, urged his generation to "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." The Avengers, Penelope Houston’s 1980 San Francisco punk band, put it another way: "Ask not what you do for your country / What’s your country been doin’ to you?"

I grew up with the second one. The government sent you to Vietnam and spied on you and locked you up for smoking pot, and we joked about the greatest lie in the world being, "I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you."

Denver last week was full of people too young for either slogan, and their energy is what fuels the Obama movement. Government working for us, not against us, lacks Kennedy’s rhetorical flourish, but the idea is right — and if Obama can make that a theme for the next eight years, he’ll be doing something truly revolutionary.

Take Lowe’s off the table

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EDITORIAL The battle over a proposed Home Depot store on Bayshore Boulevard several years ago dominated politics for a while in two supervisorial districts and became a nasty battle over race, jobs, small business, and community development priorities that spread citywide. In the end, with Sup. Aaron Peskin providing the swing vote, the Board of Supervisors approved the giant chain store.

And then — as giant out-of-town chains will do — Home Depot abruptly pulled the plug last spring. After all the tumult and the shouting, the bitterness and bad feelings, the big-box retailer decided it really didn’t want a store in southeast San Francisco.

Since then Sups. Tom Ammiano (who opposed Home Depot) and Sophie Maxwell (who supported it) have met and worked together to create a development plan that makes sense for the big empty lot on Bayshore. The two supervisors involved community leaders and tried to create a public process that would prevent the kind of fight the neighborhoods faced over Home Depot.

It was a hopeful sign — until now. Because the owners of the lot — the Goodman family, which once ran Goodman Lumber there — have come forward with a new proposal that’s almost exactly the same as the old one. This time, it’s Lowe’s Home Improvement.

If the supervisors, the mayor, and the community learned anything from the past few years, it’s that big-box chains can’t be trusted and aren’t an appropriate base for community and economic development in San Francisco. The mayor and the supervisors should make it clear now, before we go through another long, ugly battle, that big-box isn’t part of the future of Bayshore Boulevard.

Big chain stores defy all the basic premises of progressive urban planning. They exist and operate on a car-driven suburban model, with large parking lots that attract drivers. They add traffic and pollution to local streets and are inconsistent with the city’s attempts to be a greener, more sustainable community. They pay low wages (in fact, Lowe’s is the subject of a class-action suit in 11 states charging that the chain makes its employees work overtime without pay). The money they make leaves the community immediately, offering little in local economic benefits. And they destroy neighborhood-serving small businesses.

They are, by their nature, monocrop economic entities — when the entire future of an area depends on one so-called anchor store, then the community is vulnerable to decisions made elsewhere. Home Depot could have opened, then been closed after a year. Lowe’s could do the same.

The Eastern Neighborhoods plan envisions a huge new influx of housing into the area, and city planners admit the result will be a loss of blue-collar jobs. So the city can’t let the Bayshore site sit empty for years while some North Carolina–based megaretailer decides the neighborhood’s fate. And the last thing the Bayview, the Mission, and Bernal Heights need is another drawn-out conflict over a home improvement store.

The Mayor’s Office ought to be working with Ammiano and Maxwell to come up with an alternative plan for the area (solar energy? local home improvement stores?) that creates decent jobs, generates tax revenue — and remains true to a sustainable economic and environmental vision for the city. Step one is to take Lowe’s off the table.

Death and the maiden

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

REVIEW Somewhat eclipsed by the mob scene upstairs at "Frida Kahlo," the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s "The Art of Lee Miller" abounds with riveting images — not least those of the late photographer herself, who was, at different times, a nude model for her father, a high fashion mannequin for Vogue, and a muse and collaborator for her onetime lover Man Ray. Many will fix in your mind long after this sizable show ends — the tattered window into an otherworldly Egypt of Portrait of Space (1937), the chorus line of dangling rat posteriors in Untitled (Rat Tails) (1930), and the persistently chic English ladies in wartime protective headgear of Women with Fire Masks, London (1941).

But two Miller images — sensational were they not so sober — bid you return to examine them further: The Suicided Burgermeister’s Daughter, Leipzig, Germany (1945) and Untitled [Severed Breast from Radical Mastectomy] (circa 1930). Both play morbidly within the haunted dreamscapes of surrealism, teasing out a certain tongue-in-cheek formalism, or, in the case of the portrait of the deceased fräulein, upend classical aesthetic values with a detachment that’s chilled to the bone and coolly black-humored.

Experimenting with architecturally focused abstraction, dadaism, and surrealism in the early ’30s, during her Parisian tryst with Man Ray, Lee said she was working as a medical photographer in the city when she managed to spirit away a breast amputated in a mastectomy operation from a local hospital. Back at the studio she photographed it two ways: once with its sagging skin-side exterior facing her camera, and again with its gory innards threatening to spill out like kidney pie. In both images the breast lies in an elegant ivory plate on a creased, innocuously striped, lightly grid-printed place mat, with a fork and knife laid out for an imagined meal. The two perspectives on print are displayed side by side, as if to ironically mimic the natural placement of these mammaries. If not for the card, one would mistake the slab on the plate for a somewhat unappetizing kidney pie or pig’s ear. Whitney Chadwick, the author of Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (Thames & Hudson, 1991), described Miller re-envisioning this breast "not as an object of male desire, but as dead meat," and it does seem as if Miller sought to load these life-giving symbols of nurturance and desire with connotations of vulnerability and sacrifice. She takes the dismembered body part’s symbolism to its bitter end — while referencing the common surrealist obsession with those primal glands as well as the Catholic iconography of St. Agatha, who is often pictured proffering her plated breasts to devout viewers. The frequently and easily commodifiable body parts are served up for your visual consumption.

Exhibition catalog author Mark Haworth-Booth points to the surrealist notion of "convulsive beauty" and the movement’s general fascination with effigies in reference to Miller’s stunningly lit and composed The Suicided Burgermeister’s Daughter, shot during her tenure as the only female photojournalist allowed into combat during World War II. The body’s hair, skin, brow, pretty lids, and steepled nose evoke the eternal appeal of an angel aloft above a headstone. Her arms caress the front of her heavy wool Nazi nurse’s coat. Her lips, unnaturally pale and marble-like, are slightly parted, revealing perfect teeth with a whiff of inadvertent eroticism, and she lies on a leather couch — on which the one distended button and a small rip in the leather arm are the only hints of decay.

Most intriguing, Miller seems to have blurred the area above the body, making it appear as if a fine mist or fog is descending on the prone form. In the accompanying original dispatch for Vogue, the magazine she once posed for and later reported for, Miller writes of "the love of death which is the under-pattern of the German living caught up with the high officials of the regime," text that went unpublished in the magazine. The careful formality of Burgermeister’s Daughter‘s composition brings to mind and counterpoints those of more recently deceased Germans: Gerhard Richter’s paintings of the also-suicided members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Yet, with Burgermeister’s Daughter and Untitled, it’s hard to imagine another artist so associated with the temporal flash of fashion making images as powerful and as fueled by the death urge.

THE ART OF LEE MILLER

Through Sept. 14.

Mon.–Tues., Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 10 a.m.–8:45 p.m.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

$7–<\d>$12.50, free for members and 12 and under (free first Tues.; half price Thurs., 6–8:45 p.m.)

(415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

Man in the middle

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>>More: For the Guardian’s live coverage of the Democratic National Convention 2008, visit our Politics Blog

› steve@sfbg.com

As the Democratic National Convention was drawing to an explosive close Aug. 28, Barack Obama finally took center stage. In an address to more than 70,000 people, he presented his credentials, his proposals, and his vision. Most in the partisan crowd thought he gave a great speech and left smiling and enthused; some bloggers quickly called it the greatest convention speech ever.

I liked it too — but there were moments when I cringed.

Obama played nicely to the middle, talking about "safe" nuclear energy, tapping natural gas reserves, and ending the war "responsibly." He stayed away from anything that might sound too progressive, while reaching out to Republicans, churchgoers, and conservatives.

He also made a statement that should (and must) shape American politics in the coming years: "All across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is this isn’t about me — it’s about you."

Well, if this is really about me and the people I spend time with — those of us in the streets protesting war and the two-party system, people at Burning Man creating art and community — then it appears that electing Obama is just the beginning of the work we need to do.

As Tom Hayden wrote recently in an essay in the Guardian, Obama needs to be pushed by people’s movements to speed his proposed 16-month Iraq withdrawal timeline and pledge not to leave a small, provocative force of soldiers there indefinitely.

After a 5,000 mile, 10-day trip starting and ending at Black Rock City in the Nevada desert with Denver and the convention in between, I’ve decided that Obama is a Man in the Middle.

That creature is essential to both Burning Man and the Democratic National Convention, a figure of great significance — but also great insignificance. Because ultimately, both events are about the movements that surround and define the man.

THE BIG TENT


Nominating Obama was a historic moment, but the experience of spending four days at the convention was more like a cross between attending a big party and watching an infomercial for the Democratic Party. It was days of speeches followed by drinking — both exclusive affairs requiring credentials and connections for the biggest moments.

This year’s convention saw a new constituency come into full bloom. It was called the Big Tent — the literal name for the headquarters of bloggers and progressive activists at the Denver convention, but it also embodied the reality that the vast blogosphere has come of age and now commands the attention of the most powerful elected Democrats.

The tent was in the parking lot of the Alliance Building, where many Denver nonprofits have their offices. It consisted of a simple wood-frame structure two stories high, covered with a tent.

In the tent were free beer, food, massages, smoothies, and Internet access. But there was also the amplified voice of grassroots democracy, something finding an audience not just with millions of citizens on the Internet, but among leaders of the Democratic Party.

New media powerhouses, including Daily Kos, MoveOn, and Digg (a Guardian tenant in San Francisco that sponsors the main stage in the Big Tent) spent the last year working on the Big Tent project. It was a coming together of disparate, ground-level forces on the left into something like a real institution, something with the power to potentially influence the positions and political dialogue of the Democratic Party.

"When we started doing this in 2001, there just wasn’t this kind of movement," MoveOn founder Eli Pariser told me as we rode down the Alliance Building elevator together. "The left wing conspiracy is finally vast."

The Big Tent constituency is a step more engaged with mainstream politics than Burning Man’s Black Rock City, an outsider movement that sent only a smattering of representatives to the convention, including me and my travel mates from San Francisco, musician Kid Beyond and Democratic Party strategist Donnie Fowler, as well as the Philadelphia Experiment’s artistic outreach contingent.

It’s an open question whether either constituency, the Big Tent bloggers and activists or the Black Rock City artists and radicals, are influencing country’s political dialogue enough to reach the Democratic Party’s man in the middle. Obama didn’t mention the decommodification of culture or a major reform of American democracy in his big speech, let alone such progressive bedrock issues as ending capital punishment and the war on drugs, downsizing the military, or the redistribution of wealth.

But those without floor passes to the convention represent, if not a movement, at least a large and varied constituency with many shared values and frustrations, and one with a sense that the American Dream is something that has slipped out of its reach, if it ever really existed at all.

These people represent the other America, the one Obama and the Democratic Party paid little heed to during their many convention speeches, which seemed mostly focused on bashing the Republican Party and assuring heartland voters that they’re a trustworthy replacement. But that’s hardly burning the man.

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Photo by Mirissa Neff

AMERICAN DREAM


It’s been almost a year since Burning Man founder Larry Harvey announced that the art theme for the 2008 event would be "American Dream." I hated it and said so publicly, objecting to such an overt celebration of patriotism, or for setting up a prime opportunity for creative flag burning, neither a seemingly good option.

But I later came to see a bit of method behind Harvey’s madness. After announcing the theme, Harvey told me, "There was a cascade of denunciations and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. It pricked people where they should be stimulated." He asks critics to read his essay on the Burning Man Web site explaining the theme: "It says that America has lost its way."

But he also said that the disaffected left and other critics of what America has become need to find a vision of America to fight for, something to believe in, whether it’s our Bill of Rights (pictured on Burning Man tickets this year) or some emerging manifestation of the country. "Americans need to find our pride again," Harvey told me. "We can’t face our shame unless we find our pride."

I was still dubious, since I tend toward Tolstoy’s view of patriotism: that it’s a bane to be abolished, not a virtue to be celebrated. Harvey and I have talked a lot of politics as I’ve covered Burning Man over the past four years, and those discussions have sharpened as he has subtly prodded participants to become more political, and as burners have reached out into the world through ventures such as Black Rock Arts Foundation, Burners Without Borders, and Black Rock Solar.

I’ve become friends with many of the event’s key staffers (some, like BWB’s Tom Price, through reporting their stories). This year, one employee (not a board member) I’m particularly close to even gave me one of the few gift tickets they have to hand out each year, ending my five-event run of paying full freight (and then some). I’m also friends with my two travel mates, Kid Beyond, a.k.a. Andrew Chaikin, and Fowler, who handled field organizing for Al Gore in 2000, ran John Kerry’s Michigan campaign four years later, and was attending his sixth presidential convention.

Kid Beyond and I arrived at Black Rock City late Friday night, Aug. 22, and found the playa thick with deep drifts of dust, making it a difficult and tiring bicycle trek into the deep playa where San Francisco artist Peter Hudson and his crew were building Tantalus. But it was worth the ride, particularly if seeking a great take on the American Dream theme.

Like most creations at that early stage of the event, it wasn’t up and running yet, but it would be by Aug. 24, when the event officially began. Still, even in its static state, it was an art piece that already resonated with my exploration of how the counterculture sees the national political culture.

Tantalus looks like a red, white, and blue top hat, with golden arms and bodies around it. And when it spins around, totally powered by the manual labor of visitors working four pumper rail cars, the man — a modern American Tantalus — reaches for the golden apple being dangled just out of his reach and falls back empty-handed.

It’s a telling metaphor for such a big week in American politics.

There were plenty of political junkies on the playa, including two friends who let me crash in their RV for two nights and who left the playa for Denver after a couple of days. Fowler’s sweetie, Heather Stephenson, is with Ideal Bite (their logo is an apple minus one bite) and was on an alternative energy panel with Mayor Gavin Newsom, Denver’s mayor, John W. Hickenlooper, and Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado.

"The American Dream to me is not having barriers to achievement," Stephenson told me. It is Tantalus getting some apple if he really reaches for it. Fowler said that it is "the freedom to pursue your own dream without interference by government or social interests." But, he added, "the American Dream is more a collective dream than an individual dream."

Bay Area artist Eric Oberthaler, who used to choreograph San Francisco artist Pepe Ozan’s fire operas on the playa, hooked up with the Philadelphia Experiment performers years ago at Burning Man — including Philly resident Glenn Weikert, who directs the dance troupe Archedream. This year they created "Archedream for America," which they performed at Burning Man and the Democratic National Convention. Weikert told me the artistic and collaborative forces that Burning Man is unleashing could play a big role in creating a transformative political shift in America.

"These are two amazing events that are kind of shaping the world right now," Weikert said. "A lot of the ideas and views are similar, but people are working in different realms."

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Tantalus. a Burning Man installation
Photo by Steven T. Jones

MEDIA, 15,002 STRONG


Kid Beyond and I arrived in Denver around 8 a.m., Aug. 25, after a 16-hour drive from Black Rock City, cruising through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, a couple of which Obama will probably need to win in November if he’s to take the White House.

We headed into the city just as a gorgeous dawn was breaking, arriving with a few hours to spare before our Democratic National Convention press credential would have been redistributed to other journalists, who reportedly numbered more than 15,000. After arriving at my cousin Gina Brooks’ house, we showered, got settled, and jumped on our bikes to pick up our press credentials.

All week, we and others who rented or borrowed the thousands of bicycles made available to visitors used the beautiful and efficient Cherry Creek Bike Trail to get around. It cut through the heart of Denver, passing the convention and performing arts centers, which boasted a great sculpture of a dancing couple, and ran close to the Big Tent in downtown on one side and the convention hall, the Pepsi Center, on the other.

It was a great way to travel and a marked contrast to the long car trip, which felt as if we were firing through tank after tank of gas. Bike travel also proved a smart move — most of the streets around the convention were closed off and patrolled by police in riot gear riding trucks with extended running boards, with military helicopters circling overhead.

The massive Pepsi Center was less than half full a couple hours after the gavel fell to open the convention, but it filled quickly.

The broadcast media had it good, with prime floor space that made it all the more congested for the delegates and others with floor passes. Most journalists were tucked behind the stage or up in the cheap seats, and we couldn’t even get free Internet access in the hall. But journalists could get online in the nearby media tents, which also offered free booze and food.

Even though Hillary Clinton announced she was releasing her delegates to vote for Obama, those I spoke to in San Francisco’s delegation — Laura Spanjian, Mirian Saez, and Clay Doherty — were still planning to vote for Clinton on that Wednesday, although all said they would enthusiastically support Obama after that.

"It’s important for me to respect all the people who voted for her and to honor the historic nature of her candidacy," Spanjian said. "And most of all, to respect her."

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tried to rally the faithful for the "historic choice between two paths for our country." She belittled the view that John McCain is the most experienced presidential candidate. "John McCain has the experience of being wrong," she said, emphasizing his economic views and his instigation of the "catastrophic" Iraq War.

There were only a smattering of protesters outside the convention center, the most disturbing being anti-abortion activists bearing signs that read, "God hates Obama," "God is your enemy," "The Siege is Here," and one, wielded by a boy who was maybe 12, that read "God hates fags." Family values indeed.

THE ROLL CALL


San Francisco Sup. Chris Daly was giddy when I joined him in the two-thirds full California delegation during the nominating speeches for Obama and Clinton. It was partly because he was finally an official delegate, having been called up from his role as alternate a couple of hours earlier. But an even bigger reason for his joy was that he’s a serious political wonk and just loves the roll call, the only official business of the convention.

"This is the best part of the convention, roll call. It’s cool," Daly, the consummate vote counter, told me as we watched the chair ask each state for their votes. "The speeches are OK, but this is what it’s about."

And pretty soon, this kid in the candy shop was losing his mind as we watched a series of genuinely newsworthy developments in an otherwise scripted convention: California Democratic Party Chair Art Torres was saying "California passes" rather than reporting our votes, states like New Jersey and Arkansas were awarding all their votes to Obama and causing the room to go nuts, and a series of states were yielding to others.

As the chair worked alphabetically through the states, Obama’s home state of Illinois became the second state to pass. Very interesting. Indiana gave 75 of its 85 votes to Obama. Minnesota gave 78 of its 88 votes to Obama, then erupted in a spirited cheer of "Yes we can." Daly and San Francisco delegate London Breed were on their feet, cheering, chanting, and pumped.

With Obama getting close to the number of delegates he needed to win the nomination (there was no tally on the floor and I later learned Obama had 1,550 of the 2,210 votes he needed), New Mexico’s representative announced that the state was "yielding to the land of Lincoln." Anticipation built that Illinois would be the state to put its junior senator over the top.

Then Illinois yielded to New York, and the screens showed Clinton entering the hall and joining the New York delegation. "In the spirit of unity and with the goal of victory," Clinton said, "let us declare right now that Barack Obama is our candidate."

She made the motion to suspend the vote count and have the whole hall nominate Barack Obama by acclamation. Pelosi took the podium and asked the crowd, "Is there a second?" And the room erupted in thousands of seconds to the motion on the floor. She asked all in favor to say "aye," and the room rumbled with ayes. To complete the process, Pelosi said those opposed could say no, but simultaneously gaveled the motion to completion, causing the room to erupt with cheers. I heard not a single nay.

The band broke out into "Love Train" and everyone danced.

NEWSOM’S STAGE


Mayor Gavin Newsom threw a big party Aug. 27, drawing a mix of young hipsters, youngish politicos, and a smattering of corporate types in suits and ties. Although he didn’t get a speaking slot at the convention, Newsom is widely seen as a rising star in the party, far cooler than most elected officials, and maybe even too cool for his own good.

Comedian Sarah Silverman did a funny bit to open the program at the Manifest Hope Gallery (which showcased artwork featuring Obama), then introduced Newsom by saying, "I’m honored to introduce a great public servant and a man I would like to discipline sexually, Gavin Newsom."

Apparently Newsom liked it because he grabbed Silverman and started to grope and nuzzle into her like they were making out, then acted surprised to see the crowd there and took the microphone. It was a strange and uncomfortable moment for those who know about his past sex scandal and recent marriage to Jennifer Siebel, who was watching the spectacle from the wings.

But it clearly showed that Newsom is his own biggest fan, someone who thinks he’s adorable and can do no wrong, which is a dangerous mindset in politics.

Another slightly shameless aspect of the event was how overtly Newsom is trying associate himself with Obama (the party was a salute to the "Obama Generation") after strongly backing Clinton in the primaries. And then, of course, there’s the fact that his party was sponsored by PG&E (a corrupting influence in San Francisco politics) and AT&T (facilitators of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping policy).

I was able to interview Newsom about Clinton before the party. "People can criticize her, but I do think that you’ve never seen a runner-up do so much to support the party’s nominee," Newsom told me. "She’s done as much as she could do, privately as well as publicly."

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Clinton’s dramatic roll call moment
Photo by Mirissa Neff

OBAMA NIGHT


Amid all the excitement, there were scary moments for the progressives. For example, Joe Biden, accepting the vice-presidential nod, urged the nation to more aggressively confront Russia and send more troops into Afghanistan.

During one of the most high-profile points in the convention, halfway between the Gore and Obama speeches, a long line of military leaders (including Gen. Wesley Clark, who got the biggest cheers but didn’t speak) showed up to support Obama’s candidacy. They were followed by so-called average folk, heartland citizens — including two Republicans now backing Obama. One of the guys had a great line, though: "We need a president who puts Barney Smith before Smith Barney," said Barney Smith. "The heartland needs change, and with Barack Obama we’re going to get it," he added.

Of course, these are the concerns of a progressive whose big issues (from ending capital punishment and the war on drugs to creating a socialized medical system and fairly redistributing the nation’s wealth) have been largely ignored by the Democratic Party. I understand that I’m not Obama’s target audience in trying to win this election. And there is no doubt he is a historic candidate.

Bernice King, whose father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech 45 years to the day before Obama’s acceptance speech, echoed her father by triumphantly announcing, "Tonight, freedom rings." She said the selection of Obama as the nominee was "decided not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. This is one of our nation’s defining moments."

But there is still much work to do in convincing Obama to adopt a more progressive vision once he’s elected. "America needs more than just a great president to realize my father’s dream," said Martin Luther King III, the second King child to speak the final night of the convention. Or as Rep. John Lewis, who was with King during that historic speech, said in his remarks, "Democracy is not a state, but a series of actions."

BACK TO THE BURN


We left Denver around 1:30 a.m. Friday, a few hours after Obama’s speech and the parties that followed, driving through the night and listening first to media reports on Obama’s speech, then to discussions about McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The Obama clips sounded forceful and resolute, directly answering in strong terms the main criticisms levied at him. Fowler said the Republicans made a very smart move by choosing a woman, but he was already getting the Democrats’ talking points by cell phone, most of which hammered her inexperience, a tactic that could serve to negate that same criticism of Obama.

We arrived back on the playa at 5:30 p.m. Friday, and a Black Rock Radio announcer said the official population count was 48,000 people, the largest number ever. The city has been steadily growing and creating a web of connections among its citizens.

"That city is connecting to itself faster that anyone knows. And if they can do that, they can connect to the world," Harvey told me earlier this year. "That’s why for three years, I’ve done these sociopolitical themes, so they know they can apply it. Because if it’s just a vacation, we’ve been on vacation long enough."

Yet when I toured the fully-built city, I saw few signs that this political awakening was happening. There weren’t even that many good manifestations of the American Dream theme, except for Tantalus, Bummer (a large wooden Hummer that burned on Saturday night), and an artsy version of the Capitol Dome.

Most of the people who attend Burning Man seem to have progressive values, and some of them are involved in politics, but the event is their vacation. It’s a big party, an escape from reality. It’s not a movement yet, and it’s not even about that Black Rock City effigy, the Man. Hell, this year, many of my friends who are longtime burners left on Saturday before they burned the Man, something most veterans consider an anticlimax.

It’s not about the man in the middle, either; it’s about the community around it. And if the community around Obama wants to expand into a comfortable electoral majority — let alone a movement that can transform this troubled country — it’s going to have to reach the citizens of Black Rock City and outsiders of all stripes, and convince them of the relevance of what happened in Denver and what’s happening in Washington, DC.

Larry Harvey can’t deliver burners to the Democratic Party, or even chide them toward any kind of political action. But the burners and the bloggers are out there, ready to engage — if they can be made to want to navigate the roads between their worlds and the seemingly insular, ineffective, immovable, platitude-heavy world of mainstream politics.

"As hard as it will be, the change we need is coming," Obama said during his speech.

Maybe. But for those who envision a new kind of world, one marked by the cooperation, freedom, and creativity that are at the heart of this temporary city in the desert, there’s a lot of work to be done. And that starts with individual efforts at outreach, like the one being done by a guy, standing alone in the heat and dust, passing out flyers to those leaving Black Rock City on Monday.

"Nevada Needs You!!!" began the small flyer. "In 2004, Nevada was going Blue until the 90 percent Republican northern counties of Elko and Humboldt tilted the state. You fabulous Burners time-share in our state for one week per year. This year, when you go home please don’t leave Nevada Progressives behind! ANY donation to our County Democratic Committee goes a long way; local media is cheap! Thanks!!!"

Change comes not from four days of political speeches or a week in an experimental city in the desert, but from the hard work of those with a vision and the energy to help others see that vision. To realize a progressive agenda for this conservative country is going to take more than just dreaming.

Ed Note: The Guardian would like to thank Kid Beyond, who traveled with Jones and helped contribute to this report.

MarketBar

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› paulr@sfbg.com

We have the other white meat and the other woman, and in the Ferry Building we have had, for the past five years, the other restaurant, the Not-Slanted Door. Of course I mean MarketBar, which is pretty wonderful and surprisingly not pricey, and how often do you find yourself thinking that when you’re in or near the Ferry Building?

The Slanted Door has held the pole position in the Ferry Building since that venerable structure’s rebirth as a food mecca and the restaurant’s arrival therein by a hop-skip-and-jump route that began at its birthplace on Valencia Street in the mid-1990s and continued to an interregnum spot at an Embarcadero location previously held by Embarko and, later, La Suite. Those were nice digs, but the Slanted Door’s Ferry Building set-up is nonpareil: it’s huge, with huge windows looking on the water and a reputation that draws the building’s flocks of food cognoscenti like ducks — perhaps roasted with five-spice powder — to june bugs.

If the Ferry Building is the manse of a grand food family, then MarketBar is the younger brother who got the bedroom over the garage with the smaller closet. The restaurant looks not onto the bay but the Embarcadero itself, a much-beautified roadway but a roadway nonetheless, a swirling parfait of cars and streetcars and pedestrians. Yet the trade-off isn’t a bad one. While the Slanted Door enjoys Zen-tranquil water views, it can be chaotic inside; MarketBar looks upon the urban circus but is just far enough removed from it to remain peaceable.

A large part of the restaurant’s magic has to do with its immense sidewalk-side patio, set with large umbrellas and discreetly but firmly fenced off from the madding crowd. The Parisians are masters of this arrangement, but you don’t see it much here, maybe because the weather is less favorable or because our city doesn’t have the sorts of public places, like the Place de la Bastille, that Paris does. Many of our al fresco efforts are impromptu: a few flimsy tables and chairs teetering at the brink of the curb. MarketBar, by contrast, is built around, and seems to exist for, its patio.

There’s an inside too, a mirror-backed bar flanked by dining rooms like the wings of a big house. The colors are the reassuring ones of the earth, the look is classic San Francisco, and although no one is whispering, the noise is not insane. But what is everyone whispering about — the prix-fixe menu? Probably, since MarketBar has a good one, three courses for $29.95.

Usually I find a prix-fixe option to be irresistible. But chef Rick Hackett’s regular menu, a Mediterranean-inflected mélange, is chockablock with temptation: lively dishes at competitive prices. Some are little more than nibbles: a bowl of spicy peanuts ($3.75), say, with a nice balance of salt and sweetness; and fresh-cured green olives ($4.75), large, round, and vivid green — if you’ve ever been curious about fresh olive fruit, these orbs are close — draped with shreds of pickled red onion.

Some are big and substantial enough to be called sides, such as a warm salad of chopped romaine leaves and fresh fava beans ($5.75), simply dressed with a little shallot, olive oil, and salt. It made a nice starter; my only criticism is that it was too green, nothing but green, like a Monet painting of a lawn, bordered by shrubbery and surrounded by leafy trees.

As a rule I don’t have pasta much in restaurants, since I make it so often at home, but I was curious about MarketBar’s meatballs and pasta in broth ($14.75). I expected, more or less, a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, with more than the usual amount of sauce, but what I got was basically an Italian version of pho: a deep bowl filled with an herbed broth in which bobbed a half-dozen or so meatballs (rather beefy, I thought), along with several ravioli discs stuffed with spinach.

The prix-fixe menu includes first and main courses along with dessert, and there are choices within each of those categories. A simple salad of heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese reflected the lusciousness of this year’s tomato crop — the fruit has been intensely juicy and flavorful even in the early going — but while red tomatoes are handsome, so are the yellow, orange, green, and pink ones, and a little color play never hurts any salad.

Main dishes tend toward the straightforward and hearty: grilled veal rib eye with quartered new potatoes, morel mushrooms, and English peas; a swordfish filet striped with artichoke aioli and laid atop braised Swiss chard and spring onions. Desserts, as befits the restaurant’s name and location, are largely seasonal, and in berry season you naturally end up with marriages between berries and pastry, as galettes and little pies. But there are other sweet possibilities available, including an orange-soda float ($7.50) — "like a Dreamsicle," one of my companions said, except in liquid form and presented in a sundae glass. Creamy, but mighty sweet, as if Orange Crush and not Orangina was used.

The wine list is diverse and offers a fair number of choices by the glass, but these are pricier than the food would lead one to expect, with many costing well into double digits. Still, that’s a manageable splurge if you just plan to sit with a friend under the umbrella on the patio, sharing a bowl of spicy peanuts while watching others, many, many others, go about their business.

MARKETBAR

Dinner: nightly, 5–10 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–5 p.m.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 9 a.m.–3 p.m.

One Ferry Building, Embarcadero at Market, SF

(415) 434-1100

www.marketbar.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Comfortable noise level

Wheelchair accessible

No more bush: Meet Lonni’s Punani

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Lonni Kutzen is the owner/operator of Lonni’s Punani, a hair removal boutique in Potrero Hill that specializes in Brazilians and Manzilians (that’s pussies and balls to you and me) — and just scored a Guardian Best of the Bay award. We caught up with Kutzen recently to see what happens when people stop being hairy and start getting waxed.

Lonni_Shop1a.jpg

SFBG: So what’s your deal?
Lonni Kutzen: My name’s Lonni and I’m an aesthetician here in San Francisco. I do Brazilians and manzilians all day long.

SFBG: What exactly is a Brazilian and why do they call it that?
Kutzen: A Brazilian is the removal of all, or nearly all, of the hair down in your nether regions –butt hair, labia hair, all of it. I’m not really sure why they call it that. If I had to guess, though, I’d say it’s because Brazilian bathing suits are really tiny. I’ve been there three times and you can see everything.

SFBG: Yeah, I guess that’d look pretty gross if all those sexy chicks were rocking full bushes all the time.
Kutzen: Exactly!

SFBG: But you usually leave some hair right? My girlfriend went to Kabuki Springs recently and she said almost every girl had a different haircut down there.
Kutzen: There are a lot of different ways to go about it, but I usually leave my trademark triangle. So if you meet someone with a cute little triangle down there, you know they’ve probably been to Lonni’s Punani.

American Dreamer, at the convention: Roll Call

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TheRoad.jpg
Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly was giddy when I joined him in the two-thirds full California delegation this afternoon during the nominating speeches for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It was partly because he was finally an official delegate, having gotten called up from his roll as alternate a couple hours earlier. But an even bigger reason for his joy was that he’s a serious political wonk and just loves the Roll Call, the only official business of the convention.

“This is the best part of the convention, roll call. It’s cool,” Daly, the consummate vote counter, told me as we watched the chair ask each state for their votes. “The speeches are OK, but this is what it’s about.”

And pretty soon, this kid in the candy shop was losing his mind as we watched a series of genuinely newsworthy developments in an otherwise scripted convention: California party chair Art Torres saying “California passes” rather than reporting our votes, states like New Jersey and Arkansas awarding all their votes to Obama and causing the room to go nuts, and the series of states yielding to others that culminated in Clinton herself, after a dramatic entrance into the hall, making the motion to end the count and name Obama as the nominee by acclimation of the whole convention.

PG&E: the best politicians we can buy!

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

For a complete list (2.35 MB) of everyone who signed on to a PG&E-paid ballot argument and a full list of all of the individuals, companies, and nonprofits that got PG&E money in 2007, click here (Excel).

Click here to read Amanda Witherell’s story, PG&E’s blank check: Who is the utility buying off? Start with Newsom, Feinstein, and Willie Brown.

And so there they are, up on the website of PG&E’s front group (www.closeitcoalition.org), in their blizzard of mailers and doorhangers, and on PG&E’s ballot arguments against the Clean Energy Initiative (Prop H):

The best politicians that PG&E can buy!

For starters, as Amanda Witherell lays out in the current Guardian (“PG&E’s Blank check, who is the utility buying off?”) note that the list is headed by two former mayors who churned away for PG&E during their terms in office (Diane Feinstein, of the sellout Turlock/Modesto contracts fame, and Willie Brown, of the “stolen election” and missing ballot box tops fame) and our current Mayor Gavin Newsom, who with PG&E funding and sponsorship is throwing a big expensive party tonight called “Unconvention ’08” at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Stop the presses: Guardian city editor Steve Jones sends the following blog item on Newsom’s refusal to allow him to come to tonight’s PG&E party with this email note: “’Due to the high volume of submissions, we were unable to process your request at this time. If tickets become available we’ll send you an e-mail and SMS text with details,’” it said. Unable to process my request? And this is the guy who wants to be governor? I plan to go anyway and see if I can crash the party, backed by my publisher’s promise to bail me out of jail if I get arrested. Wish me luck.”

Alas, maybe Steve’s problem is that he doesn’t qualify for the PG&E donor list or the permitted press list of press people and bloggers who don’t write critically of PG&E or write supportively of Prop H and clean energy and renewables. With Steve, it’s a story whether he gets in or gets kicked out. Watch for it on the Bruce blog.

I am putting up two instructive lists on who PG&E is buying. One is the list of everyone who signed on to a PG&E-paid ballot argument, plus those who paid for the argument themselves. The other is a full list of the hundreds individuals, companies, and non-profits that PG&E gave tens of millions of dollars to in 2007, according to a financial statement PG&E filed with the California Public Utilities Commission.

The key point: go through the lists so that you can pose the right questions: Why did they sign on with PG&E to take chunks of money from PG&E? Why did they sign ballot arguments retailing PG&E lies? Why did they take money for PG&E, what did they do for PG&E (example: what did Willie Brown do for his $200,000 in “consulting services’)? Are they getting money during the campaign and if so, how much and what services are they providing?
I think you will be surprised at who is getting what from PG&E and how embarrassed they will be when you start asking questions. Let me know what you find out.

B3, watching from my office window today’s smoggy fumes from the Potrero HIll power plant, courtesy of PG&E, Mayor Newom, Willie Brown, and Hearst journalism

Ballot Arguments paid for by PG&E:

SF Firefighters Local 798, POA, and David Wong
Professional Property Management Association and Coalition for Better Housing
SF Republican Party
Doug Chan
Anni Chung, senior activist
FDR Democratic Club, under August Longo
Elsa Cheung
SF Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
Nadine Weil and Rev. Sally Bingham
Bay Area Council
Citizens for a Better San Francisco, Michael Antonini, Edward Poole, Harmeet Dhillon
Golden Gate Restaurant Association
Lorena Hernandez and Joe Manzo, residents of Potrero Hill
Asian Pacific Democratic Club
Thom Lynch and Don Cecil
Nancy Lenvin and Claire Pilcher, former PUC commissioners
Mel Lee, Library commissioner
Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 38 and IBEW Local 6
SF Small Business Network
Sandy and Jeff Mori
Amos Brown and Calvin Jones
Rudy Asercion

Not paid for by PG&E:

Jeff Brown
Chamber of Commerce
BOMA SF PAC
Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods
Plan C
IBEW Local 1245
James Fang
Harold Hoogasian

City Sued over Care not Cash, again

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by Amanda Witherell

Berkeley-based Disability Rights Advocates filed suit in US District Court today against the city of San Francisco for denying access to shelter beds for disabled homeless people. The suit alleges that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Care not Cash program sets aside a certain amount of beds that are thus unavailable to disabled people who are banned from the program.

“There are limited resources in the shelter system and there are large numbers of beds that are set aside that people with disabilities don’t have access to as a statutory matter,” said Julia Pinover, DRA’s attorney on the case. “The city has a responsibility to provide services equally.”

Care not Cash, which was passed by voters in 2002, pools the General Assistance money that used to go to individuals into a fund for financing housing and supportive services. People still receive small portions of their $395 GA cash — $29 checks every two weeks – and they’re guaranteed shelter beds in exchange for giving the rest of the cash to the city. Not everyone uses their allocated beds, but they still must be set aside – thus eliminating them from the pool of beds available to other people seeking shelter.

Homeless people who receive Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability Insurance, or veterans and disabled benefits do not get GA money and therefore cannot participate in Care not Cash. The suit alleges there are 60 to 80 Care Not Cash beds that go unfilled every night while hundreds of people seeking shelter are turned away. At least 50 percent of homeless people self-identify as disabled, though many consider that a low figure. “Because any person who is eligible for disability benefits is not able to participate in the CNC program even is there is an empty CNC bed at a shelter, a homeless person with a disability may be denied shelter solely because of his or her disabled status,” states the claim.

“Right now the shelter system for disabled people with mental illness is the equivalent to having a shelter at the top of a hill with a giant staircase and you’re in a wheelchair,” said Paul Boden of Western Regional Advocacy Project, a nonprofit homeless rights group based in San Francisco that is party to the class action suit. “It’s being run more like a capitalist venture than a social program. If it was a social program with a soul then disabled people, seniors, and women would be your priorities.”

American Dreamer: The Big Tent’s vast left-wing conspiracy

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TheRoad.jpg
Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Steven T. Jones

The Big Tent, which is the central hub for bloggers and progressive activists here in Denver, offers more than just free beer, food, massages, smoothies, and Internet access. It offers up the amplified voice of grassroots democracy, something finding an audience not just with millions of citizens on the Internet, but among Democratic Party leaders.

New media powerhouses including Daily Kos, MoveOn, and Digg (a Guardian tenant in San Francisco which sponsors the main stage in the Big Tent) have spent the last year working on the Big Tent project with progressive groups in Denver, many of whom have offices in the Alliance Building, the parking lot of which houses the Big Tent (a simple wood-framed floor, stairs, and decks above it, covered by a tent).

“This is where we have the people on the ground doing the work on progressive causes,” said Katie Fleming with Colorado Common Cause, one Alliance Building tenant. “It’s been a year in the planning. The idea was having a place for blogs to cover the convention,…It’s a way for us to all come together for the progressive line that we carry.”

But it’s really more than that. It’s a coming together disparate, ground-level forces of the left into something like an real institution, something with the power to potentially influence the positions and political dialogue of the Democratic Party.

“When we started doing this in 2001, there just wasn’t this kind of movement,” MoveOn founder Eli Pariser told me as we rode down the Alliance Building elevator together. “The left wing conspiracy is finally vast.”

LGBT activist Del Martin slips away

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Renowned LGBT activist Del Martin died today, according to a press release from State Senator Carole Migden.

Del Martin, 87and her partner Phyllis Lyons, 83, became the first gay couple in the nation to legally marry on Feb. 12, 2004, after having spent almost 50 years as a couple.

Their marriage was deemed void later that same year, but this summer, when the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is legal, Del and Phyllis were, once again, the first to wed.

State Senator Carole Migden’s (D-San Francisco/North Bay) released the following statement today in response to Martin’s death:

“Del Martin slipped away from us just moments ago but her spirit and legacy will never be extinguished within the LGBT community. Del and her loving, longtime partner, Phyllis Lyon, were harbingers for change and activism long before lesbian issues became au courant and socially acceptable. All people and movements in search of true liberation owe an immeasurable debt to Del Martin who, along with other early brave souls, was determined to speak out and change the world to better the plight and lives of those whose voices are not heard. “

Curtain calls

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Fall arts resolution No. 1: have no faith in leaders. Obummer and McPain will only disappoint, or worse. (Probably worse.) If faith you must ooze, kindly direct it toward people who really care about you and have your interests at heart. Why did Gore Vidal write his play The Best Man (1960), for instance? Most likely it wasn’t to get elected (though he did try). And Frank Wedekind was even less enamored of the powers that be when he penned his way-pre-punk "tragedy of childhood," Spring Awakening, a late 19th-century cri de coeur against authority whose transition to Broadway and electric guitars has both an aptness and an irony going for it that might have amused old FW. As Tom Stoppard confirms, power is a compromised and compromising affair whatever side of history you happen to be on, but rock ‘n’ roll will save your soul. So will Teddy Pendergrass, for that matter, as soul-survivor and kinetic Philly memoirist Colman Domingo brilliantly attests. So this fall, remember who your real friends are. You can direct any remaining or follow-up questions to author-playwright Kobo Abe, as well as the other miscellaneous sage nonconformists referenced in the list below.

The Best Man A Broadway hit for Gore Vidal, this political comedy-drama remains fresh as a daisy, if such a sweet olfactory simile can apply to the mosh pit of electoral politics.

Now playing through Sept. 28. Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk. (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org

San Francisco Fringe Festival The mighty Exit Theatre turned 25 this year. The SF Fringe Festival, the annual small-theater smorgasbord the Exit serves up each fall, turns a sexy 17. Judging by this year’s lineup, that means stripped-down, butt-plugged, bare-bones, rock-hard, strap-on sexy.

Sept. 3–14. Various venues, including the Exit Theatres, 156 Eddy, SF. www.sffringe.org

A Boy and His Soul (Thick House) and A Bronx Tale (Golden Gate Theatre) If only it were a double bill. These two solo plays about growing up (in Philadelphia and the titular Bronx) take place on radically different Bay Area stages, and deal with radically different stages in the lives of what you might call radically different actors (Coleman Domingo and Chazz Palminteri, respectively). Both are masterful, and as long as you’re at it, throw in Carlo D’Amore’s own deft and hilarious family-centered solo, No Parole, coming to the Marsh in November (www.themarsh.org).

Sept. 3–14. Thick House, 1695 18th St., SF. www.thickhouse.org

Sept. 23–Oct. 19. Golden Gate Theatre, One Taylor, SF. www.shnsf.com

Spring Awakening Best of Broadway brings to town this rock musical makeover of Wedekind’s great drama.

Sept. 4–Oct. 12. Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF. www.shnsf.com

Rock ‘N’ Roll Here comes Tom Stoppard’s character-concentrated take on Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution, as well as on leftist politics across several decades of Cold War history. It’s a good play to argue about afterward, in your highest pinko dudgeon, over pinot and tartare de boeuf at the Grand Cafe.

Sept. 11–Oct. 12. American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary, SF. (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org

HyperReal Bay Area performance artist Sara Kraft’s low-key brilliance by now merits a neologism: krafty (with a k!). Krafty = shrewd, inventive, technically savvy, wry, playful, tuneful, eerie, unsettling, and, generally speaking, not to be missed.

Oct. 10–12. CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF. 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/36251

War Peace: The One Drop Rule Living Word Festival 2008, titled "Race Is Fiction," features a new collaborative work by Youth Speaks alumni and Teen Poetry Slam champions Chinaka Hodge, Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs, and Nico Cary. Directed by festival curator Marc Bamuthi Joseph, War Peace imagines a drought-ravaged Bay Area as potential war zone.

Oct. 23–24. Theater Artaud, 450 Florida, SF. www.youthspeaks.org

Angry Black White Boy Felonious’ Dan Wolf and Tommy Shepherd unveil a poetical rap-fused remix of Adam Mansbach’s satirical and incendiary novel about race and identity in the United States, adapted by Wolf.

Oct. 23–Nov. 16. Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia, SF. www.theintersection.org

Continuous City Last year’s work-in-progress is this year’s full-fledged multimedia outing as New York City–based boundary pushers, the Builders Association, returns with a three-pronged narrative (incorporating much Bay Area–derived material) negotiating the ever-more permeable membrane between the global and the local, and our networked and unplugged experience.

Nov. 6–8. Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Friends Brava! For Women in the Arts’ new artistic director Raelle Myrick-Hodges carries forward the spirit of its founding mission with offerings eclectic and unexpected. The revival of Woman in the Dunes author Kobo Abe’s play Friends promises to be a timely and potent production, though Abe penned his scathing absurdist take on gentrification some four decades ago.

Nov. 6–17. Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St., SF. (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org

‘Daughter’ goes to the opera

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The most successful Asian American novelist of her generation, Amy Tan tests her penmanship as an opera librettist this fall, when the San Francisco Opera presents the world premiere of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, the operatic adaptation of the Oakland native’s 2001 Putnam bestseller with a score composed by Stewart Wallace.

While holding the utmost respect for the polish and clarity of Tan’s voice as a novelist, I have always been a bit skeptical of her writings. These often read suspiciously close to the admonitions and remembrances of parents and elder Chinese relatives, repackaged with great skill for maximum melodramatic impact. Most Chinese children raised by parents who survived the Sino-Japanese wars and the Cultural Revolution will tell you that they are keenly familiar with the gestalt of these tales — carrying unspeakable tragedy and suffering — which the aforementioned aged deploy with a numbing frequency as a tool to awe, preach to, strike fear in, and taunt offspring.

Still, Tan is decidedly correct when she points out that, melodramatic or not, the unarticulated truth of these stories is intensely evident in the endemic presence of depression and the dysfunctional intergenerational relationships that afflict the transplanted expatriate Chinese community of the war generation. "There are lots of tragedies in people’s lives," observes the Sausalito resident by phone from New York City. "Especially in [those of] people who decided to leave their country behind."

Local audiences have been exposed to Wallace’s music — most notably when his opera, Harvey Milk, premiered locally with the SF Opera in 1996 — but for Tan, The Bonesetter’s Daughter commission provided her with an in-depth exposure to the creative process of an entirely new medium. "When I was asked to do this opera, I was happy to turn over the story," Tan says. "I wasn’t thinking that I would be committing myself to doing a libretto."

Initially intimidated by the technical aspects, she soon found herself immersed in the process. "It’s a very free form, as a matter of fact," she explains. "It wasn’t about cutting back the novel, but rather to find the heart of the story and recreate it all over again."

At its core, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is the story of three generations of Chinese women whose secrets and unspoken traumas are carried forth between grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. In preparation for the work, Wallace and Tan traveled together to remote villages in China, attending religious ceremonies, and collecting inspiration in traditional folk music and rituals.

As a result, Wallace created a score — which will be conducted by Steven Sloane and performed by Zheng Cao, Ning Liang, Qian Yi, Hao Jiang Tian, Wu Tong, James Maddalena, and Catherine Cook — that is at times percussive and at other moments hauntingly lyrical, according to Tan. It also includes music written for the suona, a high-pitched, reedy Chinese oboe, as well as some fire-breathing drama. "We will see acrobatics," she adds. "In the beginning prologue there will be dragons: a water dragon and a fire dragon. I am a water dragon, and my mother is a fire dragon, and together we make steam." Far from the typical Chinatown parade dragons, "these will be beautiful, flying dragons made of light paper," she says, "and inside are these flying acrobats."

With martial arts and acrobatic elements integrated into the staging by director Chen Shi-Zheng, will Bonesetter carry close resemblance to a Chinese opera? "Not at all," Tan said. "There are parts of my life, which are based in China, that have been transformed into my American life. Stewart’s music includes, in the same way, those references. But they are part of Stewart’s voice now — and he has a very strong voice."

THE BONESETTER’S DAUGHTER

Sept. 13–Oct. 2, various times, $15–$290

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com

CHING CHANG’S TOP CLASSICAL AND OPERA PICKS

KATIA AND MARIELLE LABEQUE


Like Madonna, the Labeque sisters are past 50 now, and showing remarkable artistic longevity and re-invention. The virtuoso French pianists offer a rare performance of Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos at the San Francisco Symphony’s season opener. Sept. 4–7. (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org

PYGMALION


Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra opens its fall program with a gem of French baroque, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion. Paired on the program will be the Thomas Arne’s Comus, based on a masque by John Milton. Sept. 13–20. (415) 392-4400, www.philharmoniabaroque.org

ISABEL BAYRAKDARIAN AND THE MANITOBA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA


Overachiever Bayrakdarian has an engineering degree and speaks five languages, yet it is in singing that this freakishly talented young Canadian shines most brightly. The soprano perform works by Bartók, Ravel, Gideon Klein, Nikolaos Skalkottas, and Gomidas Vartabed. Oct. 4. (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org

MARSALIS BRASILIANOS


Saxophone virtuoso Branford Marsalis’ love affair with Brazilian music shows no signs of waning. Here he forges a vibrant musical dialogue across the Americas, joined by members of Gil Jardim’s Philarmonia Brasileira to perform works by Villa-Lobos, Stravinsky, Bach, and Milhaud. Oct. 5. (650) 725-ARTS (2787), livelyarts.stanford.edu.

THE COAL-SELLER’S CONCERT


The Bay Area early music ensemble Musica Pacifica recreates a typical concert by coal-seller Thomas Britton, who presented the world’s first known public concert series in London around 1678. Oct. 31. (510) 528-1725, www.sfems.org


>>More Fall Arts Preview

Notes of a dirty old man.

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"YOWWWWWWW!"

I was having visions in those days. They came mostly when I was drying out, not drinking, waiting around for money or something to arrive, and the visions were very real — Technicolor and with music — mostly they flashed across the top of the ceiling while I was on the bed in a half-slumberous state. I had worked in too many factories, had seen too many jails, had drunk too many bottles of cheap wine to maintain any sort of cool and intelligent state toward my visions —

"OH, GO AWAY YOU BASTARDS! I BEG YOU! GET THE HELL OUT! YOU’RE GOING TO FLAKE ME FOR SURE! OH MY GOD OH MY JESUS, MERCY!"

It was San Francisco. Then I’d hear a knock on the door. It was the old woman who ran the place, Mama Fazzio.

"Mr. Bukowski?" she said through the door.

"AAAAAAAAKKKK!"

"What?"

"Ulll. Ummph…."

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, sure."

"Can I come in?"

I’d get up and open the door, sweat now cold behind my ears.

"Say …"

"What?"

"You need something to keep your wine and beer cold, you don’t have a refrigerator. Even a pan of water with ice in it would help. I’ll get you a pan of water with ice in it."

"Thanks."

"And I remember when you were here two years ago you used to have a phonograph. You’d play symphony music all the time. Don’t you miss your music?"

"Yeah."

Then she left. I was afraid to lie down on the bed or the visions would come again. They always came just the moment before sleep. Or the moment before one would have slept. Horrible things: spiders eating fat babies in webs, babies with milk-white skin and sea-blue eyes. Then came faces, 3 feet across with puss-holes circled with red, white, and blue circles. Things like that. I sat in a hard wooden chair and peered at the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Then I heard a rumbling sound on the stairway. Some giant beast crawling toward me? I opened the door. There was Mama Fazzio, 80 years old, pushing and twisting an ancient stand-up green wooden Victrola, the wind-’em-up kind, and the thing must have been twice her weight and clumsy up that narrow stairway and I stood there and said, "Jesus Christ, hold it, don’t move!"

"I can get it!"

"You’re going to kill yourself!"

I ran down and grabbed the thing but she insisted on helping me. We took it into my room. It looked good.

"There. Now you can have some music."

"Yes. Thanks very much. As soon as I get some records."

"You had breakfast?"

"Not hungry."

"Come on down to breakfast any day."

"Thanks."

"And if you don’t have the rent, don’t pay it."

"I’ll try to have the rent."

"And excuse me, but my daughter was helping me clean your room when she found some papers with writing on them. She was very fascinated with your writing. She and her husband want you to come to dinner at their place."

"No."

"I told them that you were funny. I told them that you wouldn’t come."

"Thanks."

After she left I walked around the block a few times and when I came back there was a huge pan of ice with 6 or 7 quarts of beer floating in it plus 2 bottles of good Italian wine. Mama came up 3 or 4 hours later and had a beer.

"You goin’ to dinner at my daughter’s?"

"You’ve bought my soul, Mama. Name the night."

She fooled me. She named the night.

The rest of that night I drank the stuff and wound up the old Victrola and watched the empty felt-covered wheel run at different speeds, and I put my head down to the little wooden slits in the belly of the machine and listened to the humming sound. The whole machine smelled good, holy, and sad; the thing fascinated me like graveyards and pictures of the dead, and the night went well. Later in the night I even found a lone record in the belly of the machine and I put it on:

"He’s got the whole world

in His hands

He’s got you and me, brother

He’s got the little babies

in His hands

He’s got everybody

in His hands….."

This scared me so much that the next day, hangover and all, I went out and got a job as a stock boy in a department store. I started the day after. Some old gal in cosmetics (she seemed to be at the bad age for women — 46 to 53) kept hollering that she had to have the stuff RIGHT AWAY. I think it was the insistent shrill insanity in her voice. I told her: "Keep your pants on, baby, I’ll be along soon to relieve you of your tensions…." The manager fired me 5 minutes later. I could hear her screaming over the phone: "If that isn’t the damndest SNOTTIEST STOCK BOY I ever heard!!! Who the hell does he think he is?"

"Now, Mrs. Jason, please calm yourself …"

At the dinner it was confusing also. The daughter looked real good and the husband was a big Italian. They were both communists. He had a fine fancy night job somewhere and she just laid around and read books and rubbed her lovely legs. They poured me Italian wine. But nothing made sense to me. I felt like an idiot. Communism didn’t make any more sense to me than democracy. And the thought often did come to me as it came to me at the table that night: I am an idiot. Can’t everybody see that? What’s this wine? What’s this talk? I’m not interested. It had no connection with me. Can’t they see through my skin, can’t they see that I am nothing?

"We like your writing. You remind us of Voltaire," she said.

"Who’s Voltaire?" I asked.

"Oh Jesus," said the husband.

They mostly ate and talked and I mostly drank the Italian wine. I got the idea that they were disgusted with me but since I had expected that, it didn’t bother me. I mean, not too much. He had to go to work and I stayed on.

"I might rape your wife," I told him. He laughed all the way down the stairway.

She sat in front of the fireplace, showing her legs above the knees. I sat in a chair, watching. I hadn’t had a piece of ass in two years. "There’s this very sensitive boy," she said, "who goes with my girlfriend. They both sit around and talk communism for hours and he never touches her. It’s very strange. She’s confused and …"

"Lift your dress higher."

"What?"

"I said, lift your dress higher. I want to see more of your legs. Pretend I’m Voltaire."

She did show me a little more. I was surprised. But it was more than I could stand. I walked over and pulled her dress back to her hips. Then I pulled her to the floor and was on top of her like some sick thing. I got the panties off. It was hot in front of that fire, very hot. Then when it was over I became the idiot again:

"I’m sorry. I’m out of my mind. Do you want to call the police? How can you be so young when your mother is so old?"

"It’s grandma. She just calls me ‘daughter.’ I’m going to the bathroom. Be right back."

"Sure."

I wiped off with my shorts and when she came out we had some small talk and then I opened the door to leave and walked into a closetful of overcoats and various things. We both laughed.

"Goddamn," I said, "I’m crazy."

"No, you’re not."

I walked on down the stairway, back over the streets of San Francisco, and back to my room. And there in the pan was more beer, more wine, floating in water and ice. I drank it all, sitting there in that wooden chair by the window, all the lights out in the room, looking out, drinking.

The luck was mine. A hundred dollar piece of ass and ten bucks worth of drink. It could go on and on. I could get luckier and luckier. More fine Italian wine, more fine Italian ass; free breakfast, free rent, the flowing and glowing of the goddamned soul overtaking everything. Each man was a name and a way but what a horrible waste most of them were. I was going to be different. I kept drinking and didn’t quite remember going to bed.

In the morning it wasn’t bad. I found a half empty and warm quart bottle of beer. Drank that. Then I lay down on the bed, started to sweat. I laid there quite a time, became sleepy.

This time it was a lampshade that turned into a very evil and large face and then back into a lampshade again. It went on and on, like a repeat movie, and I sweated sweated sweated, thinking that each time, that face would be the unbearable thing to me, whatever that unbearable thing was. There it came AGAIN!

"AAAAAAAAKKKKK! AKKKKK! JESUS! JESUS EAT PUSSY! SAVE ME, OH LORD JESUS!

The knock on the door.

"Mr. Bukowski?"

"Ummph?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yowp?"

"I said, ‘Are you all right?’"

"Oh fine, just fine!"

In came old Mama Fazzio. "You drank all your stuff."

"Yes, it was a hot night last night."

"You got records yet?"

"Just ‘He’s got the little babies in His hands.’"

"My daughter wants you to come to dinner again."

"I can’t. Got something going. Got to clear it up."

"What do you mean?"

"Sacramento, by the 26th of this month."

"Are you in trouble of some sort?"

"Oh no, Mama, no trouble at all."

"I like you. When you come back, you come live with us again."

"Sure, Mama."

I listened to the old woman going down the stairs. Then I threw myself down on the mattress. How the wind howls in the mouth of the brain; how sad it is to be alive with arms and legs and eyes and brain and cock and balls and bellybutton and all the else and waiting waiting waiting for the whole thing to die, so silly, but nothing else to do, nothing else to do, really. A Tom Mix life with a constipation flaw. I was almost asleep.

"AAAAHHHHHHHHKKKKK! WHEEEEE! MOTHER OF MARY!"

"Mr. Bukowski?"

"Glaglaa$$$"

"What’s wrong?"

"Wha’?"

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, fine, jus’ fine!"

I finally had to get out of San Francisco. They were driving me crazy. With their free wine and free everything. I’m in Los Angeles now where they don’t give anything away, and I’m feeling a little bit better…

HEY! What was THAT??? …

Reprinted from National Underground Review, May 15, 1968, courtesy of David Stephen Calonne.

From the forthcoming City Lights collection Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays 1944-1990, edited by David Stephen Calonne.

Cinemania

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Mock Up on Mu Craig Baldwin’s latest opus, on rocket science and Scientology in California, with the director in person.

Sept. 2. Pacific Film Archive

Obscene A new documentary about Evergreen Review and Grove Press publisher Barney Russet and his many battles on behalf of free speech and real art.

Sept. 5–11. Roxie Film Center

Lost Indulgence and In Love We Trust A pair of films by up-and-coming Chinese directors Zhang Yibai and Wang Xiaoshuai.

Sept. 6–20. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wattis Theater, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

"History Stutters: Found Footage Films" Bruce Conner’s John F. Kennedy–assassination film Report (1965) and Ken Jacobs’ Malcolm X. assassination response Perfect Film (1984) is on the same bill; program also includes a movie with Ed Henderson.

Sept. 9. Pacific Film Archive

Leave Her to Heaven The 1947 Technicolor noir — and ultimate swimmer’s nightmare — returns with a demonstration of film restoration.

Sept. 12. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org

"MilkBar International Live Film Festival" Three days of experimental cinema, including more than 20 local short works.

Sept. 12–14. Noodle Factory Performing Arts Center, 1255 26th St. #207, Oakl. (510) 289-5188, www.milkbar.org

"Unknown Pleasures: The Films of Jia Zhangke" At last, China’s vanguard contemporary filmmaker gets an extensive Bay Area retrospective.

Sept. 12–Oct. 17. Pacific Film Archive

"The People Behind the Screen" Local programmers contribute to "Bay Area Now": Jesse Hawthorne Ficks presents girl rock; Stephen Parr of Oddball Films shares a giddy taste of his mega-montage project Euphoria; and kino21 puts together performance cinema; Peaches Christ, Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, and DocFest also have nights.

Sept. 13–Oct. 18. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Shatfest Thrillville’s tributes to the one and only William Shatner continue with his 1968 spaghetti western White Comanche.

Sept. 18. El Cerrito Speakeasy Theater, 10070 San Pablo, El Cerrito. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net

"Taylor Mead: A Clown Underground" The legendary wit Mead visit for screenings that showcase his best starring roles (1960’s The Flower Thief and 1967–68’s Lonesome Cowboys).

Sept. 18–21. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Forbidden Lies The Roxie is distributing this look at con artist Norma Khouri, which gets a theatrical run after a successful trip through the festival circuit.

Sept. 19. Roxie Film Center

MadCat Women’s International Film Festival Ariella Ben-Dov’s fest turns 12 with eight archival greats (including one by Samara Halperin) and silent films with live rock scores.

Sept. 19 and 23. Various venues. (415) 436-9523, www.madcatfilmfestival.org

"Psychotic and Erotic: Rare Films by Tinto Brass" Ass-fixated erotica that includes talking animals and naked cannibals.

Sept. 24. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"How We Fight: Iraqi Short Films" Kino21 kicks off a series with Argentine director Mauro Andrizzi’s feature-length compilation of short videos shot by US or British soldiers, Iraqi militia members, and corporate workers.

Sept. 25. Artists’ Television Access

"James Dean Memorial Weekend" Come back to the five and dime, or failing that, the Castro, and be sure to wear your red windbreaker.

Sept. 26–28. Castro Theatre

Film in the Fog Gene Kelley is singing in the rain — and the Presidio fog.

Sept. 27. Main Post Theatre, 99 Moraga, SF. (415) 561-5500, www.sffs.org

The World’s Largest Shopping Mall The debut or preview of a film by Sam Green and Carrie Lozano is at the heart of a program devoted to psychogeography.

Sept. 27. Other Cinema

Deathbowl to Downtown Coan Nichols’ and Rick Charnoski’s look at the history of NYC street skateboard culture, narrated by Chloë Sevigny.

Sept. 29. Castro Theatre

"Bette Davis Centennial" She’ll tease you, she’ll unease you — all the better just to please you.

Sept.–Oct. Castro Theatre

Dead Channels You can never get enough weird horror and fantasy.

Oct. 2–5. Roxie Film Center

Mill Valley Film Festival The major fall Bay Area festival turns 31.

Oct. 2–12. Various venues. (415) 383-5256, www.mvff.org

Rosemary’s Baby and The Devils Double the demonic hysteria!

Oct. 3. Castro Theatre

"No Wave: The Cinema of Jean Eustache" The series includes 1965’s Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes, his 215-minute masterpiece The Mother and the Whore (1973), his hog-slaughtering documentary — shades of Georges Franju? — The Pig (1970), and a 1997 doc portrait of him.

Oct. 4–22. Pacific Film Archive

"Rediscovering the Fourth Generation" The post-Mao cinema that laid groundwork for directors such as Jia Zhangke gets a SF showcase.

Oct. 4–30. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wattis Theater, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

Vertigo The greatest San Francisco movie ever — maybe greatest movie ever — gets the outdoor screening treatment from Film Night in the Park.

Oct. 4. Union Square, SF. (415) 453-4333, www.filmnight.org

"Spirit of ’68" and "Know Your Enemy" A pair of programs compiled by Jack Stevenson

Oct. 5. Oddball Films, 275 Capp, SF. (415) 558-8117, www.oddballfilm.com

Manhattan and Muppets Take Manhattan Mariel Hemingway, meet Miss Piggy.

Oct. 7–9. Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994. www.redvicmoviehouse.com

"French Cinema Now" A new minifestival from the San Francisco Film Society.

Oct. 8–12. Various venues. (415) 561-5000, www.sffs.org

"Superstars Next Door: A Celebration of SF Amateur Sex Cinema from the ’60s" Stevenson looks at that time in SF when everyone would take off their clothes for a camera — with film in it.

Oct. 9–11. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Midnites for Maniacs: Back to School … in the ’90s" Jesse Hawthorne Ficks serves up Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1991), Romeo and Juliet (1995), and Starship Troopers (1997).

Oct. 10. Castro Theatre

"Envisioning Russia: A Century of Filmmaking" The expansive 16-film program extends across eight decades.

Oct. 10–30. Pacific Film Archive

"Protest-sploitation" A lecture-demo by Christian Divine looking at six "youth" films made in 1970, along with a screening of that year’s The People Next Door.

Oct. 11. Other Cinema

RR James Benning’s train film finally reaches a Bay Area destination.

Oct. 14. Pacific Film Archive

Arab Film Festival The festival turns 12 this year.

Oct. 16–Nov. 4. Various venues. (415) 564-1100. www.aff.org

DocFest IndieFest’s doc extension turns seven this year with a slate of at least 60 films.

Oct. 17–Nov.6. Roxie Film Center and Shattuck Cinema, 2230 Shattuck, Berk. (415) 820-3907, www.sfindie.com

Leslie Thornton A three-program SF Cinematheque series devoted to the director behind Peggy and Fred in Hell (1985–present) and other experimental works, with Thornton in-person.

Oct. 19–26. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

United Nations Association Film Festival Environmentalism is the focus of the festival’s 11th year.

Oct. 19–26. Various venues. (650) 724-5544, www.unaff.org

"I Love Beijing: The Films of Ning Ying" Ning and her acclaimed Beijing trilogy — which spans from the Peking Opera to dogs, cops, and taxi drivers — visit the Bay, capping things a screening of her 2005 "Chinese Sex and the City" feature Perpetual Motion.

Oct. 23–27. Pacific Film Archive

The Werewolf of Washington The president’s speechwriter is a lycanthrope in this Nixon-era flick.

Oct. 31. Pacific Film Archive

"The New Talkies: Bollywood Night" Kino21 presents six works of live narration to Bollywood film scenes.

Nov. 1. Artists’ Television Access

"Occult on Camera" Erik Davis charts out the Aleister Crowley–Kenneth Anger–Led Zeppelin triumvirate-of-evil — what does Jimmy Page’s appearance in the closing ceremony of the Olympics mean?

Nov. 1. Other Cinema

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine The SF premiere of a new documentary devoted to the sculptor.

Nov. 2–3. Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Ghosts Nick Broomfield’s excellent first non-documentary feature, about the abuse of Chinese immigrants in the United Kingdom.

Nov. 7–13. Roxie Film Center

San Francisco International Animation Festival The burgeoning fest and showcase turns three with a program that includes the Cannes favorite Waltz with Bashir.

Nov. 13–16. Various venues. (415) 561-5000, www.sffs.org

Luther Price New works by one of the more scathing and harrowing filmmakers on the planet, presented by SF Cinematheque.

Mid-November. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

New Italian Cinema Will it include Matteo Garrone’s Cannes critic’s fave Gomorra?

Nov. 16–23. Various venues. (415) 561-5000, www.sffs.org

"Films by Martha Colburn" A night of kinetic works by the collage creator, presented in conjunction with a show at Berkeley Art Museum.

Dec. 2. Pacific Film Archive

Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy Thrillville stuffs your stocking with a gem from 1957.

Dec. 11. El Cerrito Speakeasy Theater, 10070 San Pablo, El Cerrito. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net

James Hong A sneak peek at the local director’s expose on Japan’s rewriting of history, Lessons in the Blood.

Dec. 13. Other Cinema

"At Sea" Peter Hutton’s At Sea (2004-7), about the life and death of a colossal container ship, is the centerpiece of an oceanic SF Cinematheque program.

Dec. 14. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS/OTHER CINEMA

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.othercinema.com

CASTRO THEATRE

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

ROXIE FILM CENTER

3317 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS

701 Mission, screening room, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

>>More Fall Arts Preview

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