San Francisco

Localized Appreesh: Sunbeam Rd.

Tony Robles
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Localized Appreesh is our thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com

I’m a lover of past treasures. I like my music vinyl, and I like my mail snail. Sure, I download thousands (millions would be hyperbolic, right?) of tracks a year, send hundreds of emails a day, tweet with the rest of them, and then some. Technology is still my friend, but vintage pleasures will always be my lover. Hence, my delight with the arrival of a colorfully confetti’d physical postcard from psychedelia-minded local fuzz-pop trio Sunbeam Rd., announcing the group’s 50th show.

The  San Francisco band’s debut LP, Breathers, came out last October, and I slept on it then, so I’m not making the same mistake twice. And while its psychedelic guitars, tender melodies, and fuzz-layered pop hooks may be blissfully of another era, Sunbeam Rd. also knows how to harness modern technology – it raised enough money through Kickstarter last year to press the record on vinyl. 

The band is made up of brothers Trevor Hacker and Clive Hacker, along with Harrison Pollack – all graphic design graduates from California College of the Arts (you might get a sense of that in the cat-filled video for swirling “Lucy”).

Check it out below and then see the trio live this weekend at Bottom of the Hill, celebrating 50 performances on the Sunbeam Rd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ziAxlNZa4

Year and location of origin: TREVOR: We formed in early 2009 after setting up a drumset and some amps in the kitchen of the flat where Harrison and I used to live near Glen Park. Our roommates must have hated us.

Band name origin: HARRISON: In the ’80s, NASA was planning to build a big spaceport near the Air Force base in our hometown. It was slated to be like the West Coast Cape Canaveral but NASA pulled out at the last minute for some reason relating to the Challenger disaster, leaving the town in a severe recession.

One time my friend that worked on the base took me to the hangars that NASA built and never used. “The Sunbeam Road” was the nickname give to one of the landing strips, which had been gradually falling apart over the last 20-30 years. It was a super eerie place in contrast to the overly optimistic name. It kind of stuck with me for some reason.

Band motto: CLIVE: Wise men say forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza.

Description of sound in 10 words or less: Hook-laden, fuzz-saturated trance states.

Instrumentation: CLIVE: Drums; TREVOR: Vox/Guitar; HARRISON: Bass.

Most recent release: BREATHERS (our debut LP) and BREATHERS Remixed.

Best part about life as a Bay Area band:
TREVOR: Road trips to Mt. Diablo, Big Sur, Point Reyes, and course all of the live music & great record stores.

HARRISON: Close proximity to the Based God.

CLIVE: What Harrison said; Also, it’s certainly never boring being a band in the Bay Area. There’s constantly something new and/or different happening that has yet to be explored.

Worst part about life as a Bay Area band:

TREVOR: It aint cheap!

HARRISON: The feeling that the Based God is so close, yet so far away.

CLIVE: What Harrison said; Also, it’s too easy to be complacent here in San Francisco.  

First album ever purchased:

CLIVE: I believe it was Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five.

TREVOR: Blur, Blur.

HARRISON: Smash, The Offspring.

Most recent album purchased/downloaded:

CLIVE:  Acquiring the Taste, Gentle Giant.

TREVOR: Stone Shift, Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core.

HARRISON: Jack The Tab/Tekno Acid Beat, Psychic TV.

Favorite local eatery and dish:

CLIVE: #19 on the menu at Evergreen Garden (pho with five-spice chicken). It’s just great!

TREVOR: Little Yangon in Daly City. Pork and sour bamboo shoot curry with coconut rice

HARRISON: Taqueria Vallarta’s street tacos are basically the only things I like to eat.

Sunbeam Rd.
With Halsted
Sun/7, 9pm, $9
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17 St., SF
www.bottomofthehill.com

Ennui and I

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Ennui and I

FILM Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s international breakthrough, Last Life in the Universe, came out 10 years ago, but its themes of isolation and loneliness still feel very much of the moment. Eternally cool Japanese star Tadanobu Asano plays librarian Kenji, whose Better Off Dead-style existential turmoil leads him to attempt suicide, or at least think long and hard about it, multiple times. His morbid fantasies are varied: hanging (with a note, “This is bliss,” later repurposed by his crass brother as scratch paper: “Gone jogging”); gunshot; bridge-jumping.

The latter brings him into contact with a pair of sisters, Nid and Noi (real-life siblings Laila and Sinitta Boonyasak); when Nid is suddenly killed in a car accident, Kenji and Noi form a cross-cultural attachment against the backdrop of the girls’ ramshackle Bangkok house — a riot of dirty dishes and slobbery that contrasts sharply with Kenji’s obsessively tidy apartment, though that space has been lately littered by two dead bodies, courtesy of some inconvenient yakuza-on-yakuza violence.

Working from a script by Thai writer Prabda Yoon, and benefiting from Christopher Doyle’s meticulous cinematography, Ratanaruang structures his film along a non-linear timeline, suggesting, as Doyle points out in Last Life‘s DVD commentary, the way the human mind jumps back and forth, mixing flashes of memories into perceptions of the present. It’s a film that will most benefit a viewer willing to pay close attention to its “implications, rather than explications, of ideas” (Doyle again), and certainly holds up under repeat viewings. Another added benefit of watching it again: appreciating the humor that Ratanaruang sneaks in on occasion, as when director Takashi Miike (whose Asano-starring 2001 Ichi the Killer is referenced early on), in a cameo as a gangster, tells a woman she has seaweed stuck in her teeth. (It’s all in the delivery.)

Director, writer, cinematographer, and star reunited in 2006 for the noirish Invisible Waves, which has its own moments of dark comedy, as Kyoji (Asano), a chef with underworld ties, murders his lover at the behest of her husband — his boss — before sailing on the world’s grimmest cruise ship from Macau to Phuket. Aboard, he meets a wistful single mother with the familiar name of Noi (Kang Hye-jung from 2003’s Oldboy); her baby’s named Nid. (Another connection to Last Life: a shady, karaoke-loving character who goes by Lizard, echoing a reptilian motif from that earlier film.)

Kyoji’s journey is complicated by his malfunctioning room, with its haywire shower head and temperamental front door. “I’m inside the room and I cannot get out,” the frustrated man explains over the phone to an unhelpful concierge. It’s clear long before he gets off the ship and begins fumbling around an unwelcoming Phuket, however, that the biggest trap Kyoji is caught in was set by his own dubious life choices. Not for nothing does someone dub him “the stupidest smart guy I ever met.”

Ratanaruang’s most recent film, 2011’s Headshot, makes its local debut as part of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ “Thai Dreams: The Films of Pen-ek Ratanaruang.” Dubbed a “Buddhist neo-noir,” Headshot features a flashy poster and an even flashier tag line: “Bangkok’s most dangerous cop is about to have his world turned upside down.” This is meant literally; the film concerns cop-turned-assassin Tul (Nopporn Chaiyanam) who suffers an injury that inverts his eyesight. Thankfully, the film is shot right side up, for the most part — and in Ratanaruang’s hands, what could’ve been a cheap gimmick becomes an entry point into a surprisingly layered tale.

Ratanaruang will be at the YBCA in person — his first-ever visit to San Francisco — for screenings of Headshot (Thu/4) and 2009 ghost story Nymph (Sun/7), which both star Chaiyanam. The YBCA’s retrospective also includes Last Life and Invisible Waves, plus 2007’s Ploy, about an endangered marriage, and 1999’s loopy thriller 6ixtynin9. 

“THAI DREAMS: THE FILMS OF PEN-EK RATANARUANG”

April 4-21, $8–$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

ybca.org/thai-dreams-films-pen-ek-ratanaruang

 

Stage listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

The Bereaved Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Previews Thu/4-Sat/6, 8pm. Opens Mon/8, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through April 27. Crowded Fire Theater launches its Mainstage season with Thomas Bradshaw’s wicked comedy about “sex, drugs, and the American dream.”

Carnival! Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstreetmoon.org. $25-75. Previews Wed/3, 7pm; Thu/4-Fri/5, 8pm. Opens Sat/6, 6pm. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm (also April 13, 1pm); Sun, 3pm. Through April 21. 42nd Street Moon performs the Tony Award-winning musical.

Show Me Yours: Songs of Innocence and Experience Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $27. Opens Thu/5, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through April 27. New Musical Theater of San Francisco performs a new musical revue written by Pen and Piano, the company’s resident group of writers and composers.

BAY AREA

The Arsonists Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $35-60. Previews Fri/5-Sat/6 and April 10, 8pm; Sun/7, 2pm; Tue/9, 7pm. Opens April 11, 8pm. Runs Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through May 12. Aurora Theatre Company performs Max Frisch’s classic comic parable, translated by Alistair Beaton.

Being Earnest Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Previews Wed/3-Fri/5, 8pm. Opens Sat/6. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through April 28. TheatreWorks performs the world premiere of Paul Gordon’s musical take on Oscar Wilde’s comedy.

Love Letters Various Marin County venues; www.porchlight.net. $15-30. April 5-28. Porch Light Theater performs A.R. Gurney’s romantic play at four different Marin venues; check website for addresses and showtimes.

“Pear Slices” Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-30. Previews Thu/4, 8pm. Opens Fri/5, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 28. Nine original short plays by members of the Pear Playwrights Guild.

ONGOING

The Bus New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $32-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 28. NCTC performs James Lantz’s tale of two young men whose meeting place for their secret relationship is a church bus.

The Chairs Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $20-45. Thu/4, 7:30pm; Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm (also Sat/6, 2pm); Sun/7, 5pm. In Rob Melrose’s new translation of Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs, an elderly couple sit in the austere parlor of their lonely lighthouse, chortling over a spate of private wordplay and reminiscing of sprightlier times, until their initially frantic and disjointed dialogue settles into a smooth flow, well-polished by decades of endearments and gentle bickering. Possibly the last two survivors of a not entirely explained apocalypse, the isolated nonagenarians (magnificently played by David Sinaiko and Tamar Cohn) nevertheless make it known that important guests are expected to arrive at any moment in order to hear a hired orator (Derek Fischer) deliver the Old Man’s “message,” which he has spent a lifetime honing. As the doorbell begins to ring, a jarring squall, and invisible guests and dozens of mismatched chairs begin to crowd their peaceable empire in claustrophobia-inducing numbers, their companionable seclusion is shattered for good. Director Annie Elias manages to coax both gravitas and decorum out of this little-produced, yet influential absurdist relic, imbuing her protagonists with a depth of character that belies their farcical circumstances, while Theodore J.H. Hulsker’s murmuring sound design of crashing waves, angry winds, and the strident doorbell could almost be another character in the play, so thoroughly does it set the tone in ways that Ionesco might not have approved of, but is all the better for. (Gluckstern)

The Couch Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.3girlstheatre.org. $30. Thu/4-Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 2pm. As the centerpiece of its second annual festival of plays in honor of Women’s History Month, 3Girls Theatre, devoted to Bay Area women playwrights, revives Lynne Kaufman’s fitful but enjoyable 1985 dramatic comedy about the inception of the famous sexual and psychiatric triangle between Carl Jung (Peter Ruocco), wife Emma Jung (Courtney Walsh), and his mistress and analysand Toni Wolff (Maggie Mason). In this, her first play, Kaufman (whose most recent play, Acid Test, explores the life of Ram Dass) folds in Carl’s critical 1912 break with mentor Sigmund Freud (Louis Parnell) for an action-packed day Chez Jung. (Also on the scene is the Jung’s precocious daughter Katherine, played by a sure and animated Hattie Rose Allen Bellino). Amy Glazer directs a solid cast who convincingly blends the farcical aspects of the dialogue with its meatier and more dramatic ones, as new ties and power dynamics are sometimes roughly, other times genteelly negotiated. The former is usually the stuff of high comedy, as when Freud goes apoplectic upon learning Jung is not necessarily the disciple and “son” he had thought him to be. And Jung’s (proto-) New Agey leanings only add fuel to the fire: When Carl turns to the I Ching to decide on the best course of action for his career going forward, Freud erupts, “You idiot! You’re playing tiddlywinks with the human race!” But it is ultimately the politics of love and the household that take center stage, with Walsh’s vulnerable yet ever dignified Emma emerging as, if not the greatest psychiatrist, perhaps the greatest strategist of them all. (Avila)

Eurydice Gough Street Playhouse, 1622 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through April 14. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Sarah Ruhl’s inventive take on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, exploring the story through the heroine’s eyes.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

The Happy Ones Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Third Flr, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $22-62. Opens Wed/3, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2:30pm; no matinee April 20); Sun, 2:30pm; Tue, 7pm. Through April 21. An Orange County appliance store owner finds his life turned upside down in Julie Marie Myatt’s drama at Magic Theatre.

reasons to be pretty San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through May 11. San Francisco Playhouse’s tenth season continues with Neil LaBute’s romantic drama.

The Resurrection of SHE Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. $20-30. Thu/4-Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 3pm. San Francisco’s inimitable Rhodessa Jones is the beguiling heart of this musically transcendent and visually evocative performance-memoir, co-produced by Brava Theater and Cultural Odyssey. It’s a surefooted meander through a great swath of personal and historical experience led by an African American woman whose decades-long theater career has been the expression and instigation of many female “resurrections.” Backed by a multimedia collage designed by Stephanie Johnson and Pam Peniston, and accompanied onstage by excellent multi-instrumentalists and composers Idris Ackamoor (who also directed the show) and David Molina, Jones begins with a fraught poetical invocation of an African girl child roaming free on the deck of a slave ship. From there she delves into a by turns humorous, harrowing, and inspiring narrative rooted in her own Southern family history and the origins of what she calls her life-saving encounter with theater — one manifestation of which has been her powerful work with incarcerated women in the Medea Project. A recent iteration of the Project, in South Africa’s Naturena prison, forms the narrative anchor of the second act. A formidable performer and expert storyteller, Jones commands attention whether channeling specific characters, speaking impromptu to her audience, or erupting into song (in one a several canny musical numbers). In the process, she makes trivial the show’s few hiccups or loose ends with a sense of communion as impressive as her remarkable life. (Avila)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. It seems a no-brainer. Not just the HBO series itself — that’s definitely missing some gray matter — but putting it onstage as a drag show. Mais naturellement! Why was Sex and the City not conceived of as a drag show in the first place? Making the sordid not exactly palatable but somehow, I don’t know, friendlier (and the canned a little cannier), Velvet Rage Productions mounts two verbatim episodes from the widely adored cable show, with Trannyshack’s Heklina in a smashing portrayal of SJP’s Carrie; D’Arcy Drollinger stealing much of the show as ever-randy Samantha (already more or less a gay man trapped in a woman’s body); Lady Bear as an endearingly out-to-lunch Miranda; and ever assured, quick-witted Trixxie Carr as pent-up Charlotte. There’s also a solid and enjoyable supporting cast courtesy of Cookie Dough, Jordan Wheeler, and Leigh Crow (as Mr. Big). That’s some heavyweight talent trodding the straining boards of bar Rebel’s tiny stage. The show’s still two-dimensional, even in 3D, but noticeably bigger than your 50″ plasma flat panel. (Avila)

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through May 18. Self-awareness, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement — for these things we turn to the professionals: the self-empowerment coaches, the self-help authors and motivational speakers. What’s the good of having a “self” unless someone shows you how to use it? Writer-performer Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook wants to sell you on a better you, but his “Better Than You” weekend seminar (and tie-in book series, assorted CDs, and other paraphernalia) belies a certain divided loyalty in its own self-flattering title. The bitter fruit of the personal growth industry may sound overly ripe for the picking, but Bodden’s deftly executed “seminar” and its behind-the-scenes reveals, directed by Mark Kenward, explore the terrain with panache, cool wit, and shrewd characterization. As both writer and performer, Bodden keeps his Steve Seabrook just this side of overly sensational or maudlin, a believable figure, finally, whose all-too-ordinary life ends up something of a modest model of its own. (Avila)

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Opens Thu/4, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 1. Thrillpeddlers’ sixth annual Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival presents a restored version of the Cockettes’ 1971 Art Deco-inspired musical extravaganza.

The Voice: One Man’s Journey Into Sex Addition and Recovery Stage Werx Theater, 446 Valencia, SF; thevoice.brownpapertickets.com. $10-18. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm. Ticket sales for David Kleinberg’s autobiographical solo show benefit 12-step sex addiction recovery programs and other non-profits.

BAY AREA

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage & Shipwreck Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Shipwreck runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through May 5. Voyage opens Wed/3, 3pm. Runs April 13, 20, 27, and May 4, 3pm. Last year in the Shotgun Players’ production of Voyage, the first part of Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia trilogy (also playing in repertory through May 4), we were introduced to a tight circle of Russian thinkers and dreamers, chafing against the oppressive regime of Nicholas I. In the second part, Shipwrecked, we find them older, perhaps wiser, struggling to keep their revolutionary ideals alive while also juggling familial concerns and personal passions. Focused mainly on Alexander Herzen (Patrick Kelley Jones) and family, Shipwrecked travels from Russia to Germany, France, Italy, and the English Channel, buffeted from all directions by the forces of the uprisings and burgeoning political consciousness of the European proletariat. It’s an unwieldy, sprawling world that Stoppard, and history, have built (made somewhat more so by the Shotgun production’s strangely languid pace during even the most dramatic sequences) but it’s worth making the effort to spend time absorbing the singular world views of Russian émigré Herzen, his impulsively passionate wife Natalie (Caitlyn Louchard), the cantankerous, influential critic Vissarion Belinsky (Nick Medina), professional rabble-rouser Michael Bakunin (Joseph Salazar) and up-and-coming writer Ivan Turgenev (Richard Reinholdt) as they desperately seek to carve out both their personal identities and a greater, cohesive Russian one from the imperfect turmoil of Western philosophy. (Gluckstern)

Fallaci Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-89. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through April 21. Berkeley Rep performs Pulitzer-winning journalist Lawrence Wright’s new play about Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci.

The Mountaintop Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; www.theatreworks.org. $23-75. Wed/3-Thu/4, 11am (also Thu/4, 8pm); Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 2pm. TheatreWorks performs Katori Hall’s play that re-imagines the events on the night before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

The Real Americans Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri/5, 8pm; Sat/6, 5pm. Dan Hoyle shifts his popular show about small-town America to the Marsh’s Berkeley outpost.

The Whipping Man Marin Theatre Center, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $36-57. Tue-Sat, 8pm (also April 20, 2pm; April 11, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through April 21. Marin Theatre Company performs the Bay Area premiere of Matthew Lopez’s Civil War drama.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“The Buddy Club Children’s Shows” Randall Museum, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/7, 11am. $8. The Bubble Lady performs.

“Cabaret Showcase Showdown: Best Pop Cabaret Singer” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF; (415) 241-0205. Sun/7, 7pm. $7. With guest judge Dylan Germick and musical arranger Lynden Bair.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sun/7 and April 13, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Fifth Annual Flow Show/San Francisco” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.dancemission.com. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 7pm. $20 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Contemporary dance and flow arts showcase, incorporating props like hoops and yo-yos.

“A Kind of Sad Love Song” Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.bindlestiffstudio.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3:30pm); Sun/7, 3:30pm. Through April 14. $10-20. Bindlestiff Studio presents the world premiere of Jeffrey Lo’s relationship drama, performed in repertory by two separate casts of Pilipino American actors.

“The Madness of the Elephant” Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Kanbar Hall, 3200 California, SF; www.jccsf.org/arts. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm. $15-30. West African dance, music, and theater group Duniya Dance and Drum Company perform an exploration of the reign of Guinea’s first president, Sekou Touré.

“Miss Coco Peru: She’s Got Balls!” Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; www.ticketfly.com. Sat/6, 8pm. $28-45. Miss Coco Peru (a.k.a. Clinton Leupp) reminisces about her life in this solo musical comedy.

“Mission Position Live” Cinecave, 1034 Valencia, SF; www.missionpositionlive.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Stand-up comedy with rotating performers.

“The Moth StorySLAM” Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; www.rickshawstop.com. Mon/8, 7pm. $8-16. Open mic storytelling competition affiliated with KQED’s “The Moth Radio Hour.”

“OCB: Obsessive Compulsive Broadway” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/3, 7pm. $7. Steven Slatten performs a comedy about the highs and lows of working on Broadway, with songs from Rent, Hair, and other shows.

Ophelia Fort Mason Center (starting at the Firehouse), Marina at Laguna, SF; www.carteblanche-sf.com. Thu and Sat-Sun, 8:30pm. Through April 14. $22. Carte Blanche performs a walk-through performance featuring dance, theater, and interactive video.

“Pamtastic’s Comedy Clubhouse Presents: The Mutiny Radio Comedy Showcase” Mutiny Radio, 2781 21st St, SF; www.mutinyradio.org. Fri/5, 8:30pm. $5-20. With Jamie Bell, Vince Mancini, Dustin Hempstead, and more.

Red Hots Burlesque El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.redhotsburlesque.com. Wed, 7:30-9pm. Ongoing. $5-10. Come for the burlesque show, stay for OMG! Karaoke starting at 8pm (no cover for karaoke).

“Rotunda Dance Series: San Francisco Ballet School Trainee Program” San Francisco City Hall, Van Ness and Grove, SF; www.dancersgroup.org. Fri/5, noon. Free. The most advanced students at SF Ballet’s school present a free, public performance under City Hall’s rotunda.

“San Francisco Magic Parlor” Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

“Up in the Air” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.milissapayne.com. Wed/3-Thu/4, 8pm. New dance work inspired by hot air ballooning by the Milissa Payne Project.

BAY AREA

“The Divine Game” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. April 15 and 29, 8pm. $20. First Person Singular and Shotgun Cabaret present this dramatic re-enactment of Nabokov teaching at Cornell in the 1950s.

“I Look Like An Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. Mon/8-Tue/9, 8pm. $20. Heather Gold brings her hit solo comedy (with cookies!) to the East Bay.

On the Cheap listings

Andrew Lam
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Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 3

The Great Debate: Should marijuana be legalized? Commonwealth Club, 595 Market, second floor, SF. www.commonwealthclub.org. 11:30am-1pm, $20. Tonight Kevin Sabet, a drug researcher who has served on the Clinton, Bush II, and Obama administrations, will debate Clint Werner, author of Marijuana Gateway to Health. The two will discuss the potential impact of marijuana on youth, driving laws, mental health, and medical industry.

THURSDAY 4

“The Art of Baseball” George Krevsky Gallery, 77 Geary No. 205, SF. www.georgekrevskygallery.com. Through May 25. Opening reception: 5:30-7:30pm. See America’s favorite pastime depicted by more than 40 artists from across the country in this exhibit at the George Krevsky Gallery’s 16th annual “Art of Baseball” exhibition. Head over tonight for the opening reception and come back May 2 for a night of poetry, literature, music, and short films inspired by the game.

Free rock wall climbing class Lombardi Sports, 1600 Jackson, SF. www.outdooradventureclub.com. 6-7:45pm, free. RSVP required. Take a break from your usual gym routine and give the 25-foot climbing wall at Lombardi Sports a go. The free class is put on by the Outdoor Adventure Club, which provides expert instruction and gear to new and seasoned climbers.

FRIDAY 5

“Hand to Mouth Comedy” The Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF. 10pm, $5–$8. A unique comedy show that asks comedians to write and perform all new material on a specific social, cultural, or political issue. This month’s topic: crime. Local comedians Bucky Sinister, Kevin Munroe, Clare O’Kane, and more will add a humorous spin to a felonious topic. The evening will also include a performance by bluegrass band The Creak and a burlesque routine by Rosey Booticelli.

SF Ballet School Rotunda Dance Series SF City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett, SF. Noon, free. Take a lunch break and peek into City Hall for a free lunchtime performance presented by the San Francisco Ballet trainee program. The event is part of the Rotunda Dance series, put on by the Dancers’ Group, an organization dedicated to helping artists produce work, build audiences, and connect with the community. World Arts West, which has supported and presented world dance artists throughout the San Francisco Bay Area for over three decades, also had a hand in the afternoon’s creation.

Guardian Presents: Another World deYoung Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, SF. www.famsf.org. 5-9pm, free. Check out our ode to the peacemaking power of drag, in homage to the “Eye Level in Iraq” photography exhibit on display at the deYoung. Radical queens Lil’ Miss Hot Mess, Phatima and the League of Burnt Children, Miss Rahni, Rheal Tea, Mother Chucka, and more bring their fabulous freaky view of social change to the stage. Plus, a craft table and a panel discussion by the photogs whose work is on display in the museum.

SATURDAY 6

Yellowbike Project’s Upcycle Ball SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF. www.sfyellowbike.org. 6pm-midnight, $10 door, presale available online. The second annual Upcycle Ball will rally cyclists from across the Bay Area to support local bicycle culture and nonprofit organizations. The evening will begin with a silent auction and workshops and finish out with a dance social with DJ Jays One.

Eileen Fisher Fashion Tips Macy’s, 170 O’Farrell, SF. www.macys.com/flowershow. As part of Macy’s annual flower show, fashion designer Eileen Fisher will be hosting a fashion show and behind-the-scenes event. Sip on refreshments and enjoy some snacks while you check out what’s in store for fall style.

SUNDAY 7

Fierce Fat Girls book signing Curvy Girl Lingerie, 1535 Meridian, San Jose. www.curvygirlinc.com. 2-4pm, $15. RSVP required. Plus-size lingerie company Curvy Girl celebrates the grand opening of its Willow Glen location with author of Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love, and Fashion Virgie Tovar. The author and sex educator will speak with guests while signing copies of her book.

Free hot dog day at Frankenart Mart Gallery Frankenart Mart Gallery, 515 Balboa, SF. www.frankenartmart.com. 1-6pm, free. Art and free food collide today as part of the quirky gallery’s monthly tradition. Check out some sweet interactive art projects currently on display at the 200 square foot gallery and chow down on either a beef or veggie dog.

MONDAY 8

The Shout: Life’s True Stories Grand Lake Coffee House, 440 Grand, Oakl. www.theshoutstorytelling.com. $5-20 donation accepted. The Shout is a monthly event where invited storytellers tell amazing but true 10-minute stories plucked from their daily lives. Audience members have the opportunity to put their name in a hat in hopes of being picked for a six-minute wild-card turn. Head over to the coffeehouse to hear stories about anything from a soft-core pore actress who stared in a sexy version of Don Quixote to a young man’s discovery that he was part of the witness protection program as a child.

TUESDAY 9

Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. When author Caroline Paul and illustrator Wendy MacNaughton lost their kitty Tibia they thought she was gone for good. Five weeks later she came home. The two became curious as to where their cat was spending her days so they turned to technology. Join Paul and MacNaughton as they share their brief stint in the pet detective business.

Film Trivia Pub Quiz The New Parkway, 474 24th St., Oakl. www.thenewparkway.com. 7-9pm, free. Head over to New Parkway for a pub quiz that’s not actually in a pub but a movie theater. Test your knowledge of movie history, famous characters, and classic film titles. Those with the highest cinema IQ will win prizes like free beer and movie passes.

 

CAREERS AND ED: 5 fun classes

Andrew Lam
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0
CAREERS AND ED: 5 fun classes

culture@sfbg.com

QUILTMAKING

Develop or improve your skills in sewing, patchwork, and quilting at this non-credit class at City College of San Francisco that students are welcome to join at any point in the semester, regardless of skill level. Beginning students will construct a sampler quilt, intermediate or advanced students will work on individually designed projects. Non-credit CCSF classes are tuition-free, but students are expected to bring the required materials, so email the instructor in advance to come prepared.

Saturdays, 9-11:50am, free. City College of San Francisco downtown campus, 88 Fourth St., SF. www.ccsf.edu

MEXICAN FOLK DANCE

Tradition is the name of the game at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art’s folkloric dance class taught by Zenon Barron, founder of Ballet Folklórico of San Francisco. Reflecting Hispanic customs, beliefs, and legends, Barron’s instruction serves up festive new moves with a historical twist.

Saturdays, 2-3:30pm, $10. 2868 Mission, Studio: E, SF. www.missionculturalcenter.org

MOSAIC 101

Is there a surface in your house that needs … something, and your Bedazzler gun is triggering untoward 1980s flashbacks? Try a medium that is slightly less time-sensitive. Oakland’s Institute of Mosaic Art has a host of courses in the tiled arts, and this weekend’s primer course is begging to jumpstart your grout-and-ceramic phase. Instructors teach you where to find your supplies in the real world, the basic physical properties of materials involved, and will instruct you in making your very own creation to take home.

Sat/6, 10am-4pm; Sun/7 10am-1pm (three-day option: April 10, 10am-1pm), $165. Institute of Mosaic Art, 3001 Chapman, Oakl. www.instituteofmosaicart.com

HATHA YOGA AT THE ASIAN ART MUSEUM

Grab a mat and bring the whole family to the Asian Art Museum for a free Hatha yoga class. Local yogi, Lorna Reed, will lead today’s practice, which teaches basic poses focusing on balance, flexibility, and strength. Reed adds a special artsy element to today’s class by incorporating positions inspired by sculptures in the museum. Your momma always called you statuesque — prove her right by inhaling deeply in this unique yoga primer.

Sun/7, 2-3pm, free. 200 Larkin, Samsung Hall, SF. www.asianart.org

FRENCH CINEMA SCREENING AND DISCUSSION

What better way to get to know the language of love than with free wine, popcorn, and a film? Designed to help non-French speakers discover the country’s cinema, the Alliance Française of San Francisco offers a weekly film screening followed by discussion. The theme for April is “Women Behind the Lens,” and the April 23 film pick 17 Filles follows a group of 17 high school girls who, after one of their number is impregnated, make a pact to follow suit.

Every Tuesday, 6:45pm, $5. Alliance Française, 1345 Bush, SF. alliance-francaise-sf.weebly.com.

CAREERS AND ED: Learn to eat

Andrew Lam
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0
CAREERS AND ED: Learn to eat

caitlin@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED Don’t tell me you’ve been eating your whole life and you don’t need any lessons on food. Hardy har har, how’s your waist line? Energy level? Food budget? You can always learn more about how to make your diet healthier, cheaper, and above all, more sustainable. The Bay Area has to be one of the best places in the world to learn about how to eat well, and the institutions that put on each of these course offerings are phenomenal places to start dabbling in the area. No more plastic-wrapped sandwiches, ill-informed beer purchases, or factory farm chicken for you, boo boo.

“GROW YOUR OWN FOOD”

No excuses: you can garden in San Francisco year-round, and that doesn’t matter anyway because we’re in the rosy pink of spring, when even your uncle up in Minneapolis is turning his thoughts to sprouts and soil. Garden for the Environment has a host of classes dedicated to greening that fat lil’ digit of yours, but today’s offering is particularly salient for snackers. Organic gardening instructor Carey Craddock will take charge among the rows today, teaching you what plants are perfect for April, and how to get your space ready to raise edible flora.

April 13, 10am-2pm, $25. Garden for the Environment, Lawton and Seventh Ave., SF. www.gardenfortheenvironment.org

“BUILD A CHICKEN COOP”

At the end of the day in this urban chickenry class, you’ll have not only witnessed but aided in the construction of a “Garden Ark” portable chicken coop. Carpenter Joan Weir has designed this one-off course to be of maximum service to the community — you’ll learn coop-building skills, and Rosa Parks Elementary School will score a brand-new home for its feathered flock.

April 14, 10am-5pm, $50. Rosa Parks Elementary School, 920 Allston, Berk. www.biofueloasis.com

“DEBUNKING THE MYTHS OF VEGANISM”

The talk is actually part of Oakland Veg Week (April 22-28), which includes tons of free veg and vegan cooking classes, lectures on sustainable eating, a screening of the plant-based diet booster Forks Over Knives (April 25), bus trip to a Grass Valley animal sanctuary (April 27), and grand finale buffet at the Lake Merritt Sailboat House (April 28). But start here, with Colleen “The Compassionate Cook” Patrick-Goudreau’s presentation that addresses all the excuses that fly about for not going veg. No time to be meat-free? Not enough protein in greens? She’ll set you straight.

April 23, 6:30pm, free. Oakland Library, Temescal branch, 5205 Telegraph, Oakl. www.oaklandveg.com

“BREW LAB: HOMEBREW AND BEYOND”

Brew and bottle two batches of your very own suds in this three-class seminar, billed as the most comprehensive homebrew 101 in town that doesn’t require any investment in equipment, for all you newbies to the brew scene. Mission Gastroclub (www.missiongastroclub.org) founder Eric Denman is the instructor, which means you can expect delicious bites at each session, happily crucial in your quest to understand the flavors of your beer.

April 23, 30, and May 14, 7-9pm, $160. 18 Reasons, 1874 18th St., SF. www.18reasons.org

“COTTAGE LAW 101”

Huzzah for the California Homemade Food Act! Recently signed into law, it allows small producers to make low-risk foods like candy, empanadas, baked goods, and dried teas in their home, without renting a spendy commercial kitchen space. If the news has you itching to start a homemade chocolate stand, stop off at ForageSF’s class first. It’s a primer on the law’s ins and outs, perfect for those looking to join the ranks of Forage’s lauded Underground Market artisans. Bring a plate to share with 20 people and get a discount on your tuition.

April 27, $30 if you bring a dish to share, $50 without. SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF. www.somarts.org

The other home team

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le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

IN THE GAME I still think it’s easier to get to A’s games than Giants ones. You get on BART, you get off BART. Tickets are relatively cheap, and really very all-around available.

What the Giants have on the A’s is a prettier stadium with better concessions, including gluten-free hot dogs and gluten-free beer.

What the A’s have on the Giants, besides tickets, is Jed Lowrie.

Not since my Favorite Player Ever, Omar Vizquel, came to San Francisco from Cleveland in 2004 have Bay Area baseball fans been in for such a pleasant surprise.

Mind, Lowrie is not a flashy defensive shortstop with exciting speed, the world’s sweetest smile, and a sexy Venezuelan accent. He’s just an adorable white guy. From Oregon. Like Omar, he’s also an artist. A photographer. Who plays shortstop very well, and — without drawing too much attention — hits a ton. Well . . . 1,998 pounds, let’s say.

Last Opening Day Hedgehog and I were living in New Orleans, where the only baseball we could get on TV was the Houston Astros. The lowly Houston Astros. The 55-107 Houston Astros.

For once in our life we had a television, a 50-inch one, and a giant leather couch, and what was on was the worst team in baseball.

Bu we watched a lot of Houston Astros games. That’s how we happened to see Matt Cain’s perfect game. And that’s how we happened to fall in love — both of us — with Jed Lowrie.

Who was traded by Houston to Oakland in the off-season.

Lucky us. Lucky him, too. From worst team in baseball to playoff contention is not bad.

In a way, interestingly, Lowrie kind of brought the Astros with him. Like a bad smell, Houston drifts this year from the overcrowded NL Central to the A’s division, the AL West. That means the A’s will see a lot of Lowrie’s old team.

I like the matchup. Combined, the A’s and Astros enter the season with a payroll about two-thirds that of the Giants. Combined.

I know what you’re thinking: what does this have to do with me?

Depends . . .

Who are you? Are you Matt Cain? If so, you won’t be pitching any perfect games this year. Are you Brett Anderson? You might be. Are you neither? Just an average every day cash-strapped alternative weekly sports fan? Well, root root root for the other home team this season, I’m saying. They’ll give you more bang for your buck; it’s kind of a specialty of theirs. Remember? There was a whole movie about this.

Good as we’ve got it on this side of the pond, they have Jed Lowrie and Brad Pitt.

Yeah, but we have World Seriousness, you say.

I say . . . yeah, you’re right. There’s that, but I watched that World Serious, and it was boring. Fun, but boring. The good guys won; but kind of boringly, didn’t you think?

League Championship Series, maybe, but I don’t remember much about the Fall Classic. It went quickly. At the Mission and 22nd Street bonfire, I got spray paint on my favorite coat. Um . . . something about a bus.

Ask me about the Oakland-Texas series, though, and it’s synapse city inside my little head. Ask any A’s fan lucky enough to be there the last day of the regular season, the day the A’s came back from four runs down to sweep the defending (x2) American League champion Rangers and win the division; it is etched in their memory like the 20-game win streak of 2001, or the taste of carnitas in mine.

Texas was in first place all season. They came to Oakland Oct. 1 with three games left and a two-game lead over the surging A’s. On a whim, back in June, when the A’s were at least 10 games back, I had bought $2 tickets for the last game of the season, Oct. 3.

And that’s the other thing: BART $2 Wednesdays. This year there are ten of them, starting April 3. Hey — what are you doing after work?

Oct. 3, 2012, was sold out, the only regular season sellout at the O.co Coliseum except Opening Day. I have never witnessed anything like it in my baseball-game-going-to life. It felt like football in there, that’s how raucous it was. It felt like the fans had a say, like in football. And maybe we did.

And maybe we do.

Wednesday, April 3 vs. the Seattle Mariners. My guy Jed will be playing shortstop, batting probably second.

Oakland A’s

O.co Coliseum

http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/oak/ticketing/bart_2_wed.jsp

 

Tech Bubble 2.0

Andrew Lam
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58

OPINION We all remember the first dot-com bubble, right? Web technology start-ups flocked to San Francisco in the late 1990s. Thousands of would-be entrepreneurs and techies filled up the city. Gentrification of Central City neighborhoods accelerated sharply. Apartment rents jumped, followed by the condo boom. Demand for commercial office space, especially South of Market, quickly grew red-hot. Rents zoomed, and office developers rushed dozens of proposed new projects forward.

The leaders of Mayor Willie Brown’s gutless Planning Department rubber-stamped all they could, and decried the annual limit imposed on their approvals by the 1986 community-activist-sponsored Proposition M ballot measure.

The activists and the mayor put two competing measures on the November 2000 ballot in response. Both lost, but the progressive slate for the Board of Supervisors swept that election, defeating most of the mayor’s candidates.

And then Tech Bubble 1.0 popped. The peak year was 2000. The big dot-com bust, 9/11, and finally the Great Recession all followed.

The city’s office market crashed. Some new office buildings were foreclosed by their lenders. Many approved office developments went unbuilt. Overall office market vacancies approached 20 percent by 2010.

Ah, but here we go again — Tech Bubble 2.0! A new wave of recent technology industry start-ups — like Twitter and Yelp — are joining the growing survivors of Bubble Number 1 — like Salesforce. And San Francisco has become a premiere national media venue for the tech industry.

Thousands of would-be entrepreneurs and techies are again filling up the city. Apartment rents are going through the roof. Gentrification of Central City neighborhoods is accelerating even faster. Demand for commercial office space, still in SoMa, is red-hot again.

But by 2011 so much vacant space was on the market, and so many approved buildings were waiting for anchor tenants to start construction, that there has been room for them all so far. Several new buildings got underway. Mayor Ed Lee strategically took advantage of this market boom to target economic expansion to the Central Market District, the last disinvested zone of San Francisco’s Downtown.

Even today though, city office vacancies still exceed 5 percent. And according to the most recent Planning Department report, more than a dozen already-approved new buildings, totaling more than 4.5 million square feet, are waiting to start construction in the Transbay Transit District, South of Market, and Mission Bay. Another 5 million feet of office space is proposed for more than a dozen more pipeline projects for those areas. Plus another 2.5 million feet is planned for projects on Port property — including the San Francisco Giant’s huge project — that are not even on the Planning Department’s list yet!

How does this total of 12 million square feet of pending new San Francisco office buildings compare to historic demand? Going back to 1986, the amount of new office space actually built — true long-term market demand through the boom/bust business cycles — averages out to about only 750,000 square feet a year. The city’s old-school corporate headquarters dramatically downsized or even moved out of San Francisco — like Chevron and Bank of America — and that’s still ongoing. The new tech industry is mostly replacing them. So these 30+ identifiable current projects would provide a 16-year supply of office space at historic rates.

But even in the face of this evident market glut of future office buildings, the usual civic development hypsters are once again muttering about gutting Proposition M, and radically upzoning Soma for even greater office expansion. Is that who City Hall will listen to this time too?

Bubble? What Bubble? [Pop!]

John Elberling is executive director of the Tenants and Owners Development Corporation.

Time to enforce the law

Andrew Lam
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83

EDITORIAL The new tech companies that are making waves in San Francisco — Airbnb in the short-term rental business and Lyft and Uber in the taxi industry — may describe themselves as innovative and disruptive, and they may be appealing to investors.

But there’s a more accurate word that describes their relationship to the city:

Cheaters.

The way these companies are luring customers isn’t really about high-tech applications or brilliant business models. They’ve just found a way to get around the rules that everyone else has to obey.

Some city officials are talking about hearings and new legislation, all of which is fine. But in the rest of the business community, when someone flagrantly, openly violates the regulations, the City Attorney’s Office cracks down. That’s what needs to happen here, and soon.

Airbnb has a slick and appealing promise: You can rent out your house or apartment on the Internet to someone who wants to stay in the city for a few days, but is looking for an alternative to a traditional hotel. The homeowner or tenant gets some extra bucks; the visitor gets to stay in a cool neighborhood at a bargain price. What’s not to like?

Well, for one thing, most leases in San Francisco bar unauthorized sublets, so renters who offer their places on Airbnb face problems with their landlords, including possibly eviction. City laws also bar the use of residential property for commercial purposes. And, as we’ve pointed out repeatedly, Airbnb isn’t collecting the transient occupancy tax that every other hotel operator in the city has to pay. The total tab: At least $1.8 million a year.

Lyft and Uber say they’re using creative apps to offer an alternative to the screwed-up taxi system. Drivers offer rides to people who can “volunteer” to pay at the end — but if nobody pays, the whole business model fails and the venture capitalists who put up the money lose. So everyone knows that these are pay-for-hire taxis.

Except that San Francisco requires every taxi driver to have a permit, called a medallion — and drivers have to go through training, background checks, and carry extensive insurance. If a driver overcharges or refuses a fare, a customer can complain to the city, and get recourse. The startups don’t follow the same rules.

There are reasons the city regulates cabs and charges hotel taxes. Cab drivers are ferrying people, some of them vulnerable; it’s only a matter of time before a rogue driver who sneaks into the new unregulated startups winds up in a horrible crash or criminally preying on riders.

Driving a cab without a medallion is illegal. Failing to pay city taxes is, too. City Hall can debate and dither and try to avoid offending the mayor (who, unfortunately, is trying to help Airbnb slide). But this is a clear-cut case of businesses flouting city law. Herrera needs to put an end to it.

 

Dirty war over clean power

Andrew Lam
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10
Dirty war over clean power

tredmond@sfbg.com

It was supposed to be part of Ed Harrington’s legacy, and the chief of the city’s Public Utilities Commission delayed his retirement to make sure it happened.

But six months after the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to move forward with CleanPowerSF, the plan is under attack from all sides. Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s house union is spending big chunks of money to shoot it down. The press is loaded with accounts of how expensive it’s going to be for customers. Advocates on the left are blasting it as too limited.

Critics say Harrington’s replacement, Harlan Kelly, is far less interested in making a program work that clearly lacks the support of a PG&E-friendly mayor.

That’s left Sup. David Campos, City Hall’s chief proponent for CleanPowerSF, trying to move forward with a program that, for all its flaws, is the city’s best chance to put a crack in PG&E’s monopoly.

CleanPowerSF will offer San Franciscans a greener alternative to PG&E power, most of which comes from nonrenewable sources. The city will buy renewable power in bulk, through Shell Energy, and distribute it to customers along PG&E’s lines.

A similar system is working well in Marin County, and communities all over the state are looking to see if a city the size of San Francisco — where PG&E has kept out any hint of competition for a century — can pull it off.

Clean power is more expensive right now, and that’s one sticking point: City officials recognize that not all San Franciscans will be willing to pay a premium (of perhaps $10 to $20 a month) for the option. An SFPUC survey released March 25 showed that about 45 percent of the city’s customers would pay extra for clean power and stick with the new program. Earlier studies suggested that 90,000 customers will remain with CleanPowerSF — enough to make the system financially viable.

(Interestingly, the areas most likely to pay extra to avoid fossil fuels are not the wealthiest parts of town. Most of the customers would be on the Eastside, in communities like the Mission, Potrero Hill, the Haight, and Noe Valley.)

The bigger problem with the current debate is that advocates and city officials can’t agree how much money the city ought to spend, on what schedule, to build its own renewable generation system, which would eventually replace much of the power purchased by Shell.

“In the past we would have figures and claims from all sides, and Ed Harrington would look at the numbers and figure it all out, and everybody trusted him,” Campos said. “But we don’t have Ed any more, and Kelly doesn’t seem to be as strongly behind this.”

Building a green-power infrastructure was always a critical part of the CleanPowerSF plan. And once the city has a system up and running, it can use the revenue stream to float bonds to pay for building solar, wind, and cogeneration facilities.

Over time, the locally generated power would be far cheaper than what anyone can offer today, meaning rates would come down.

“We agreed to move the sales agreement forward to get the system started, then keep working on the build-out,” Campos explained.

But a campaign by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, which represents PG&E employees and is historically allied with the company’s political goals, is trying to scare customers away with claims of high rates. And in fact, the first rate proposals were above what Campos and others were hoping for.

So the Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees CleanPowerSF for the supervisors, and the SFPUC, have send staff back to try to find ways to cut rates.

Meanwhile, Kelly wants to de-couple the public build-out from the Shell agreement, in essence launching the program with the most expensive elements in place — and potentially undermining the future of a publicly owned energy infrastructure.

That has some clean-energy advocates furious — and they’ve threatened to withdraw their support for the program.

“Ever since Harlan Kelly took over, the PUC staff has been less supportive of a robust build-out,” Eric Brooks, who works with Our City has been a longtime supporter of CleanPowerSF, told us. “We’re not saying the city should stop moving forward with the Shell deal, but the city has to continue the planning work for the build-out. It can’t be a piecemeal thing.”

The SFPUC hired a Marin-based outfit called Local Power, led by longtime clean-energy advocate Paul Fenn, to do some preliminary work on how a build-out could proceed. Fenn’s conclusion: The city could create 1,500 to 3,000 jobs and build enough renewable energy to power much of the city, over a seven-year period — at a cost of about $1 billion.

That’s a huge tab — and almost certainly more ambitious than this SFPUC and Board of Supervisors could accept.

Fenn told us that his economic analysis, presented to the SFPUC’s Rate Fairness Board Feb. 18, indicates that the city’s cash flow from CleanPowerSF with a renewable build-out would more than cover the payments on the bonds. But he also agreed that he’s suggesting the best possible alternative — and he expects the city would go for a much smaller piece.

“The Board of Supervisors hasn’t made the decision to spend that kind of money,” he said.

Fenn’s contract expired April 1, and the SFPUC hasn’t renewed it. Instead, another consultant will review Local Power’s work, Campos said.

Part of the political challenge is that Local Power has proposed that much of the build-out include what’s known as “distributed generation” — small-scale solar, wind, and cogen projects on private houses and buildings.

Those installations would be “behind the meter” — that is, they would allow households and businesses to generate their own power without buying it through PG&E’s distribution system.

The build-out proposals that the SFPUC staff have discussed are primarily larger solar arrays, some on land the city owns in the East Bay.

“That’s the most expensive way to do this, and it allows PG&E to still control the transmission and distribution,” Brooks said.

[TK-SFPUC comment Monday.]

Meanwhile, PG&E is preparing to roll out its own competing “green energy” plan — while IBEW ramps up it assault on CleanPowerSF.

The IBEW campaign includes robo-calls, mailers, and advertising, all aimed at convincing customers to opt out of the city program.

And now, with advocates from the Sierra Club to Our City criticizing the program on the left, and IBEW trying to undermine it before it gets going, there’s a real chance that a plan more than 10 years in the making could be in trouble.

That concerns Campos. “All I’m hearing from the advocates is negative,” he said. “I want more build-out, too, but unless we move forward with the program, we won’t be able to do that.”

In fact, he said, “you could wind up killing it and have nothing to show for it at all.”

That, of course, would be PG&E’s preferred alternative.

Are you experimental?

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Are you experimental?

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM At 52, the San Francisco Cinematheque is nearly the same age as the San Francisco International Film Festival, which kicks off its 56th incarnation later this month. And though there’s bound to be some filmmaker overlap between SFIFF and SF Cinematheque’s fourth annual Crossroads festival,

fans of avant-garde, experimental, and non-commercial films won’t want to miss the latter, a weekend packed with works by 48 artists across eight esoterically-titled programs.

Crossroads, which is curated by Cinematheque artistic director Steve Polta, boasts several world premieres, including a pair worthy of particular attention: Jodie Mack’s Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project, and Scott Stark’s The Realist. At 40-something minutes each, these are among the longer works included in the program; both make the most of their running times to achieve artistically innovative and thematically complex results.

A partially animated, fully musical chronicle of the rise and fall of her mother’s mail-order poster shop, Mack’s Dusty Stacks of Mom lifts its tunes and certain motifs from Dark Side of the Moon. (Though the connection is never explained, it’s likely the Dark Side poster was a best-seller for the store, which specialized in dorm-room classics.) “Come and tour with me/my mother’s poster factory,” Mack sings by way of narration, as her camera discovers piles of cardboard tubes, stacks of handwritten invoices (which hint at why the business faltered in the Internet age), and images of stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp frozen in time as their 1990s selves.

Stop-motion animation and eye-candy collages bring these paper performers to life, with Mack’s good-sport mother appearing periodically alongside what’s left of her inventory. Though some of the Pink Floyd covers-with-new-lyrics can skew a bit twee, Dusty Stacks‘ visuals never falter; this was clearly a labor-intensive labor of love for Mack, who teaches animation at Dartmouth. A particularly inspired sequence flashes between the holy trinity of college-dude decor: Che, Bob Marley, and Tony Montana.

Dusty Stacks anchors Crossroads’ “Gigs in the Sky: Let There Be More Light!”, which contains films tied together by music and “this post-Kenneth Anger kind of colorful thing,” as Polta calls it. Unlike more mainstream fests, which curate shorts programs with an eye for obvious links between the works, Polta tapped into a more intuitive process.

“The program ‘on the beach (at night)’ has a really interesting film by Jim Drain and Ben Russell called Ponce de León. It’s got these really strange camera techniques in it, and the way it deals with visual space is really interesting, outside of what it’s saying about the way people spend their time and the way generations look back and forth at each other,” he says. “When I saw the opening film of that program, Danielle Short’s Lost Ambulation, it was like, ‘Oh yeah. There’s this sort of depth and flatness going on.’ At a certain level there’s a whole thread in the avant-garde world about these issues; it’s just like talking about painting when you talk about depth and flatness.”

The programs began to take shape early on, while he was looking at all 400-something Crossroads submissions. “You start to take notes: here are some trends. This film and that film would look really interesting back to back. They start to assemble in these little sort of gravitational groups,” he says. “That’s the fun, or the challenge, of curatorial work. It’s like cooking: how can you get a certain kind of flavor, and what can you do to bring that flavor out? Here’s a really interesting film, and putting this other film next to it will sort of change the way you look at it.”

However, he adds, “I also think it’s worth leaving these connections a little bit mysterious. It’s interesting to kind of put these ideas out there and let the viewers sort of pick up on them, or not.”

Local filmmaker Scott Stark is the only artist in this year’s Crossroads to command a solo program (save the inclusion of a 1947 short by Fernand Léger). Stark’s latest, The Realist, uses flickering images of mannequins and consumer goods to investigate themes of “loneliness, desire, and presenting yourself in a certain way,” Polta says; it’s a mesmerizing work. But Polta is quick to note that, again, a sense of mystery is key to the viewing experience. “Part of the fun of The Realist is discovering, as you’re watching it, that there’s some suggestion of a narrative.”

A program of sorta-family-related films, “(as if clinging could save us),” contains another of Polta’s standouts: Jonathan Schwartz’s Animals Moving to the Sound of Drums.

“The film resonates with a well-known classical avant-garde film, [Jack Chambers’ 1970] The Hart of London, which also has to do with repetition of generational experiences through time, and relationships between animals and humans,” Polta says. More than that, though, “[Schwartz] makes films that are really bold in the ways they reach out and embrace sentimentality and emotionalism. They have a faith in sincere emotion that hasn’t been really hip in the last decade. I’d like to think that there’s a balance of that in this festival, between a certain kind of irony and a certain kind of sincerity. People are trying to work that out right now in the avant-garde world right now, whether to be sincere or ironic.”

Another emerging avant-garde star, Michael Robinson, has addressed this dichotomy in his work. His dreamy, glimmering 45-minute Circle in the Sand closes out Crossroads’ last program, “Slaves of Sleep”/”Destroy, She Said.”

“[Robinson has] made a lot of short films using found footage, stuff from video games, and music you’d hear on the radio — but in a way that sort of dares you to squeeze some real, serious emotion out of pop culture that most people would treat as this kind of ironic thing,” Polta says. “Circle in the Sand is mostly, if not completely, footage that he shot. It’s a science fiction film with a vague narrative; it feels like it’s set at a certain point in human evolution where the mundane world that we live in now isn’t going to matter anymore. It’s got a lot of mystery in it about what’s going to happen next to the human race — which is what we’re sort of leaving you with in the final program.” *

CROSSROADS 2013

Fri/5-Sun/7, $10 (festival pass, $50)

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St, SF

www.sfcinematheque.org

 

Sabor de Oaxaca

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Sabor de Oaxaca

marke@sfbg.com

WORLD EATS The first thing you probably need to know about the magical Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca is that sensory overload is always on the menu.

Ancient sci-fi Zapotecan ruins, Technicolor one-story colonial buildings, and an endless stream of live music, whirling dance, outspoken political protest, and eye-popping art justify the eponymous capital city’s reputation as one of the most vibrant crucibles of human culture on the planet. (Seriously, there is live music and dancing, from traditional to punk, outdoors in multiple venues until 3am most nights. San Francisco, where you at?)

The soaring mountains of the countryside host innumerable villages, each with their own dazzling take on local customs and artistic expression. The beaches, like renowned global hippie-nudist beauty Zipolite, expand expectations by drawing a saucy mix of laidback locals, hard-partying city folk, and misfit spiritual wanderers from around the world who greet the golden waves with fire-twirling at sunset and impossible-looking naked yoga at dawn. And for any travelers worried that this land of UNESCO World Heritage Sites has been completely sanitized for first-world tourists, there’s plenty of everyday chaotic Mexican street life and colorful off-the-map adventures in which to satisfactorily immerse oneself.

But all that’s not even talking about the food. Any foodie explorer worth her rock salt knows that Oaxaca is the “land of the seven moles” — rich, fragrant sauces, traditionally poured over roasted turkey, made from a range of pulverized ingredients including chili peppers, chocolate, nuts, cloves, dried fruit, and tomatillos. (A great SF introduction to mole can still sometimes be found at the Mission’s La Oaxaqueña, which has unfortunately been seesawing lately between being one of the city’s best restaurants and a bacon-wrapped hot dog stand on random nights.)

But in an area where dozens of indigenous languages are still spoken and villages are separated by vertiginous, day-long hikes through spruce cloud forests dripping with blooming epiphytes and eerie Spanish moss — by all means take a couple days out of your stay for a eco hike with Expediciones Sierra Norte to blow your nature-loving mind — innovation and improvisation is a way of life. Hunky Beau and I hopped down there for a far-too-affordable March getaway, and here’s what we dug our forks into.

 

ON THE STREETS

Mole gets all the press, but the backbone of Oaxacan street cuisine is the piping hot tlayuda, a very large grilled tortilla loaded with with bean sauce, guacamole, fresh and stringy Oaxacan cheese, and a hunk of grilled meat or scoop of zesty tinga de pollo stew that’s either served open-faced like a pizza or folded over like a crepe. The best ones we found in the city were at a pair of carts on Calle las Casas, conveniently located just down the street from the historic La Casa del Mezcal, opened in 1935. Ensconced in the Casa’s low light, you can slow-sip several kinds of maguey-derived liquor among baroquely carved wood fixtures, kitschy paintings of Zapotec warrior gods, and a motley assortment of fascinating locals. The mezcal flows until 3am, and the roughly $2.50 tlayudas even later, so you’re set for a good night out.

Oaxaca’s favorite fast food: the tlayuda. Photo by David Schnur

Or snatch a tlayuda for a perfect cheap dinner, paired with a steamy, meaty bowl of pozole from the carts down the block. (Fun fact: pozole is descended from the stew Zapotecs used to make of leftover human sacrifice parts. Now it’s mostly pork and corn.) Cheap breakfastwise, we were blown away by the scrumptious, hefty $2 morning chorizo- and omelet-filled tacquitos toasted on hot rocks by charming women on Calle García Vigil, near the Mercado 20 de Noviembre main market. Self-serve bakery Pan Bamby across from the huge, ever-bustling central zócalo serves a dizzying array of perfectly flaky empanadas for about 30 cents each, including several rare veggie options like creamed spinach and spiced vegetables. And, as always, the market is the best place to acquaint yourself cheaply with the local cuisine: witness the overflowing seafood cocktails at Mariscos Panchos and delectably overloaded roasted pork soft tacos, five for $3, at Carnitas Patlan.

Fascinating traditional drinks served at outdoor cart Nieves Cholito el Tule in the Plazuela de Carmen Alta include tejate (a crazy-sweet maize and cacao Zapotecan drink with a plasticky foam on top), chilacayote (made from a succulent squash with edible seeds as chewy treats), and syrupy tuna, a.k.a. cactus fruit.

And the mole? I want you to look up fabulously dramatic, yodeling folk singer Geo Meneses right now and imagine her backed by a full orchestra (six tubas!) in the open air of Oaxaca suburb Santa Cruz Xoxocotlan, which hosts enchanting, slightly witchy open-air Tuesday evening “Martes de Brujas” concerts, featuring an array of miracle street tamales from local venodors: chicken marinated in chocolaty mole negro, pork in tangy red mole coloradito or zippy mole verde, wrapped in eucalyptus-like yerba santa leaf. Kind of unbelievable.

 

IN THE SEATS

Mole, of course, also served as an entry into the more experimental cuisine of this tastebud paradise. When you can get a three-course meal for two with a bottle of surprisingly satisfying Mexican wine (Casa Madero of Parras de la Fuente is producing a quality chenin blanc, and Baja’s Cavas Valmar a perky grenache) for around $50, we went and splurged a little.

Intimate and colorful La Olla, near the imposing Santa Domingo church, is where you go for regional authenticity with flair. Wide, thin slices of beef tongue soaked in a mole verde of almonds, raisins, tomatillo, and cilantro; mole negro de fandango, a fantasy-fulfilling 25-ingredient mole negro over roasted chicken; and mole amarillo con pitiona, lively and yellow with corn masa, three kinds of peppers, and lemon verbena vanished from our table in a mad scramble of sauce-sopping tortillas.

La Biznaga is the hip joint, a “very slow regional food” operation named for a portly flowering cactus, its large courtyard decked out in vibrant Cuban hues, with towering chalkboards announcing the fascinating menu and a globe-hopping clientele lapping up pulque cocktails. (Mixing with milky, beer-like pulque, derived from the maguey plant, is super-trendy in Mexico right now, and should hit here any minute.) An appetizer of yerba santa-wrapped bricks of Oaxacan cheese drizzled with citrus liqueur-infused crema came off a lot lighter than it sounds. “El Necio,” a large hunk of flank steak stewed in a mole-like sauce of smoked chili, plums, and mezcal submerged us in flavor world several fathoms deep, while a mushroom and goat cheese-spiked coloradito lifted a fleshy fish fillet to the top of our list.

Jicama taquitos with grasshoppers, corn smut, and quesillo at Casa Oaxaca. Photo by David Schnur

If you’re looking for a true gourmet Oaxacan experience, though, the gorgeous Mission-style Casa Oaxaca, with its upstairs dining patio overlooking the kaleidoscopic downtown street hustle, is where you’ll find some of the most forward-thinking menu items that still pack an authentic local punch. Salsa is mixed and ground to tasted tableside in traditional molcajete mortar. Start with the exquisite, crunchy jicama taquitos filled with fried grasshoppers, cuitlacoche (corn smut), and quesillo cheese. Then, as the candlelight and atmosphere take hold, move on to absurdly tender venison bathed in ethereal mole amarillo and juicy slices of duck breast covered in nutty, deep orange mole almendrado.

Finally, for desert, slip back out into the captivating streets and share the refreshing carrot-apple-pecan ice cream flavor Beso Oaxaqueño, as the hypnotic local marimba music known as son istmeño drifts from the zócalo.

Two men, one spark

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Two men, one spark

emilysavage@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY It’s the B-story scene that rules 1983’s Valley Girl. Popped collar-sporting Skip is nervously riding his bike to the suburban home of his preppy high school girlfriend, Suzi — but we the audience know he’s more interested in her young step-mom. (He met the feisty Valley mom when she served him sushi at a house party. Gross me out.) It’s a palpable moment of orgasmic anticipation — with a surprise twist — that bops along perfectly to the soundtrack: “Eaten By the Monster of Love,” by experimental pop duo, Sparks (www.allsparks.com).

“Well, it’s worse than war, it’s worse than death/There ain’t too many left who ain’t been/Eaten by the monster of love(Don’t let it get me),” Sparks vocalist Russell Mael opines with a wide-ranging, Broadway-ready bravado, as his brother Ron Mael tickles a bouncy new wave blast out of his keyboards and synthesizers.

This is just one iteration of Sparks — the flashy new wave version, proudly on display in ’82’s Angst in My Pants LP, two tracks of which were used in that early Nicolas Cage vehicle, Valley Girl. But that’s only a small snippet of the band’s robust timeline, which got a running start in ’71 at UCLA, and continues to this day, with 22 albums and counting.

Sparks has had countless rebirths since the first record was released in ’71, the band then known as Halfnelson. There have been landmark albums like ’74’s electric Kimono My House, with that iconic cover of two powdered and kimono-swathed ladies, along with ’83’s synth-heavy In Outer Space, ’02’s chamber pop Lil’ Beethoven, and most recently, ’09’s The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, a radio musical commissioned by Sveriges Radio Radioteatern, the radio drama department of Sweden’s national radio broadcaster. (More on that later.)

“It seems like the people that stick with Sparks appreciate that the band doesn’t rest on its laurels,” says Russell, a lifelong Angeleno, speaking to me from his home “in the hills above Beverly Hills.”

“I think that’s why we’re really proud of what we’re doing now; it doesn’t sound like a band that’s necessary had 22 albums,” he says. “Someone can come in fresh — a person that’s maybe never heard of Sparks — and if they hear the latest thing, we would be just as happy as we would be for them to have heard the first album.”

Sparks will perform much of its extensive back catalog during its Two Hands, One Mouth (the hands on the keyboard, mouth at the mic) tour’s rare stop in San Francisco next week, April 9 and 10 at the Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF. www.thechapelsf.com. As of press time, only April 10 is sold out.

The brothers Mael have recorded with dozens of other musicians over the decades, and nearly always toured with a live backing band, so the Two Hands, One Mouth trip has been a unique challenge. “It’s kind of the ultimate expression of self-containment for the band,” Russell says. “We just thought that at this point, it might be an interesting challenge to see what would happen if we just played as the two of us, and without computers or backing tracks.”

He adds, as if reading my mind, “It sounds simple, but we also didn’t want it to read as oh, singer-songwriter, that kind of thing where it lulls you to sleep with an acoustic guitar. We wanted it to keep the power that Sparks has had with the recordings and live band.”

The process has been about choosing the appropriate songs from the duo’s rich recording history, and distilling it with just one keyboard, and vocals. So far, the tour’s been well-received in Europe and Japan, with fans commenting on how this format has brought the strong vocals and songwriting to the forefront.

And the Maels work hard to layer those lyrics with humor, depth, and a drop of speculation. “It’s important to us to have something that’s provocative, but in ways that maybe aren’t like, being a punk band with a stance that you know what it is in five minutes. The Sparks stance is a little bit hard to articulate and place. We kind of like that too, that there is an ambiguity to what we’re doing.”

Their most recent project is that The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman piece. The plot of the radio drama is a farcical situation imagining that Ingmar Bergman had been lured to Hollywood and got trapped in the LA film industry in his worst nightmare — a big-budget action film he can’t figure out how to escape. The Swedish radio spot went so well that Sparks was asked to perform it live at the LA Film Festival last year, where they did so with a cast of 14.

The brothers are currently working on turning it into an ongoing theatrical performance — and also a motion picture. They have the Canadian director Guy Madden on board to direct, but still need the financial backing, so they’ll be flying out to the Cannes Film Festival in May to look for funders.

But before Cannes, Sparks will first play the massive sweaty shitshow that is Coachella for the first time. And yes, they will do it as a stripped-down duo — still just Two Hands, One Mouth.

“We know the show works in our own context, so we thought we should be faithful to ourselves and do it there as well, even if it seems incongruous with what you might expect at a big festival,” Russell says. Do I detect a tiny smirk through the phone? Perhaps wishful thinking on my end.

“It’ll be received however it will be received — [but] it will be different from other things there,” he says. “You tend to get blinded by an assault of 160 indie bands doing their indie thing. We’ll be doing whatever we do, whatever you want to call it.”

 

ESBEN AND THE WITCH

With swelling crescendos, emotional lyrics, gothy undertones, and shimmering vocals in tow, UK post-rock trio Esben and the Witch comes across the pond for the first time in two years, on tour with newest record, Wash The Sins Not Only The Face (Matador). Should be a witchy one. With Heliotropes.

Thu/4, 9pm, $13. Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF. www.brickandmortarmusic.com.

 

GLAM.I.ROCK

Lyrically gifted young Oakland rapper Glam.I.Rock — the first half an acronym for “Good Lyrics And Music” — will perform a free in-store during Art Murmur this Friday. If you want to be in on an artist at the tipping point, this would be your chance. The MC has that classic ’90s female-empowerment hip-hop vibe but with some different interests (check the “Who is Glam.I.Rock?” video of her tapping out the Rugrats theme), and a more modern style.

Though like her predecessors, she still very much reps her home-base, performing “Inspire Oakland” at Oakland Digital’s Inspiration Awards last December. Makes sense, she’s the daughter of Nic Nac — the only female member of the Mobb crew — and Dangerous Dame, a member of Too $hort’s Dangerous Crew. Glam.I.Rock’s debut EP, The Feel, recently dropped on Savvie1ent/The Olive Street Agency.

Fri/5, 8pm, free. Oaklandish, 1444 Broadway, Oakl. www.oaklandish.com.

 

GOP ‘dark wizard’ and Occupy ‘anti-leader’ to speak in SF on the same day

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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GOP ‘dark wizard’ and Occupy ‘anti-leader’ to speak in SF on the same day

This coming Thursday, a central intellectual figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement will give a talk on “Austerity and its Discontents.” And across the city, at the very same time, powerful anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist will mix it up with an elite group of San Francisco Republicans (yes, they really do exist).

Graeber, an American anthropologist and anarchist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, was dubbed “the anti-leader of Occupy Wall Street” in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek Magazine article published shortly after a determined band of committed activists staked a claim on Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, kicking off the global Occupy movement. Graeber’s tome on wealth inequality, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, recounts the ages of human history through the lens of the indebted, vis-à-vis their creditors. The book helped give rise to Occupy activists’ famous chant: “We are the 99 Percent!”

Norquist hails from the polar opposite end of the political spectrum. An influential lobbyist who leads Americans for Tax Reform, he was once described as “the dark wizard of the Right’s anti-tax cult,” in the words of Arianna Huffington. The fiery conservative is most well known for his role as keeper of “the Pledge,” which essentially asks Republican lawmakers to swear that they will never, ever vote to raise taxes for any reason. 

The Thursday meet-and-greet, billed as “Cocktails with Grover Norquist,” is being hosted by the San Francisco Republican Party – a political body that barely registers as a blip as far as local elections are concerned, but apparently has enough clout to make it worthwhile for a famed operative like Norquist, whose group is based in D.C., to dip into San Francisco for a visit. The cocktail hour will be held at The City Club, a financial district venue. It costs $100.

Just as San Francisco Republicans sip cocktails and discreetly await the chance to engage Norquist in a few moments of powerful face-time, an audience of lefties will gather to hear Graeber’s studious analysis of global austerity measures and anarchist organizing tactics. Billed as a forum that’s free and open to the public, Graeber’s talk is being hosted by the Anthropology and Social Change Department of the California Institute for Integral Studies, located at 1453 Mission Street.

In a recent interview about the round of national budget cuts known as the sequester, Norquist told The Daily Beast: “I’m for the spending cuts. Just let them take effect. … The only thing worse than the sequester would be not reducing spending.”

And here’s Graeber’s take on the underlying economic climate that gave rise to the Occupy movement: “It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. … The economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad – the latter, in the name of the ‘third world debt crisis.’ But the global south fought back. … The debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of ‘austerity.’”

Three for the road

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Three for the road

arts@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART Traveling juggernaut Christian Marclay: The Clock touches down at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this week for the latest stop along its endless summer tour of major world museums.

Marclay’s sprawling, oh-shit-inducing video work collages 24 hours worth of clips taken from both obscure and popular films, during each minute of which the correct time is shown on screen. Nominally, the artwork is about the representation of time in film, but it also manages to address some pretty heady concerns, including both the legacy of sweeping Victorian Age attempts to organize every last thing, and also the postmodern, now-seamless interchangeability of simulacrum with reality, making The Clock possibly the perfectly appropriate artwork for the era of Big Data. For the art wonk set, it caps conceptual investigations about indexes and taxonomies that stretch back at least as far as the 1970s, serving as the new-media, zero-degree equivalent of Ad Reinhardt’s all-black paintings. But more than that, it’s something unnervingly similar to Jorge Luis Borges’ fictional map of the world that is the same size as the world, an eerie herald of the age of Orwellian mindfuck as art.

You’re going to see it. Of course you are; it’s the most talked-about work of art since Damien Hirst dropped a preserved shark into a vitrine. But that said, you’re very unlikely to see all of it, unless you do so in May during one of SFMOMA’s scheduled 24-hour viewings.

And if you should give the entire viewing a go, you’ll be participating in what I suspect is the subversive heart of the The Clock, one that makes the entire concept of real time a kind of flimsy absurdism. Actually sitting in the museum in front of a single piece of work for a full day becomes a kind of performance, observing not just the comings and goings on screen, but also in the theater, engaging and disengaging in real life in equal, contesting proportion.

Marclay’s exhibition completes a crescendo at the museum, peaking just before the building closes for expansion, and the exhibits hit the road for various area temporary sites over the next couple years. Together with the current shows dedicated to photographer Garry Winogrand and architect Lebbeus Woods, The Clock is the third in SFMOMA’s trilogy on prolonged, meticulous fascination executed with utmost competence.

And about that Garry Winogrand retrospective, which in its way is even more overwhelming than the Marclay show: the thing you can’t escape while hopping, transfixed, from image to image, is that not only have half of these 300 photographs — many of them stunning — never been shown before, but that it was assembled from a massive archive including some 250,000 images that have never been seen, promising that Winogrand’s posthumous career will stretch on for quite a while.

And good thing, too, since these photographs, while rooted in the mid-late 20th century, are timelessly contemporary. We immediately recognize in them the same mix of unease, willful optimism, and absurdity that mark the post-9/11 world, realizing that disjointedness to be both a continuous thread and defining characteristic of American social fabric.

On the continuum of photographers, Winogrand is somewhere between Weegee’s operatic flair and Walker Evans’ incisive and empathic eye. There are definitely theatrical liberties taken with composition, but at heart Winogrand is a humanist. His particular knack inverts spectacles and intimacies, and his off-kilter shots deliver their actors amid a slippery, complicated search for the American dream.

His famous quote, that “there is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described,” speaks to both the allure and the central lie of his (and indeed all) photography. Although he began his career as a photojournalist, his main contribution was visual poetry over raw documentation. The tone of Winogrand’s later work, during which he focused on taking rather than developing or reviewing his photographs, is shot through with distress and disillusionment, as if the world imploded and dissolved completely somewhere around 1977. That late work, long ignored and incompletely catalogued, is featured here, and feels increasingly familiar and prescient.

On the second floor of the museum, the Lebbeus Woods retrospective offers a tonal break from the intense scrutiny of human interaction exhibited by the Marclay and Winogrand shows, but is no less sweeping or meticulous. Woods was a visionary architect of the possible, and although only one of his large scale projects was ever constructed, his psychologically-charged, intellectually-overloaded vision continues to reverberate throughout architecture and design worlds.

The show of 175 works, including models, drawings, and prints, is framed roughly by the Woods quote, “Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.” In the Woods universe, those rules bend physics and gravity for the sake of a complete reimagining of human-built structures. Part sci-fi, part utopian thought-experiment, the carefully and expertly drafted renderings of Woods’ theoretical architectural systems are as dizzyingly hypnotic as they are confounding to normal, run-of-the mill concepts of what a building is or should be.

 

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: THE CLOCK

April 6-June 2

GARRY WINOGRAND

LEBBEUS WOODS, ARCHITECT

Through June 2

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St, SF www.sfmoma.org

Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
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Is everyone else emotionally and physically exhausted from the Easter/Passover-torrential hailing downpour-April Fool’s Day (who can you trust on the Internet?) mess of the last few days? I certainly am, and I only participated in a few of those spiritual debacles.

No mind, I’m ready to strap on my wellies and/or sunglasses and embark on a week of Esben and the Witch, Mac DeMarco, Babysitter, Glam.I.Rock, Portland Cello Project, Future Twin, and Polkacide with Fuxedos.

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Mac DeMarco
“Mac DeMarco has written seven albums and EPs on a guitar that he bought for 30 Canadian dollars. He uses effects pedals that he claims no serious musician would be caught dead with. He’s self released four albums and coined a new genre — “jizz jazz.” Listening to DeMarco’s jangling, blissed-out pop tends to be a pleasant, laid-back experience, more reminiscent of surf pop than jazz. His calming baritone, soft and velvety, sounds like a less depressed Ian Curtis. Compared to his summery sound, DeMarco’s live shows, full of lewd humor, nudity, and scaling stage equipment with wild abandon, provide a sharp contrast. If you are easily shocked or offended, this may not be the show for you.” — Haley Zaremba
With Trails and Ways, Cocktails, Calvin Love
Wed/3, 8pm, $12
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bfTTeZOrs4

Portland Cello Project
The Portland, Oreg.-based indie orchestra, which is seven-deep on the cello, by the way, will play selections from the Beck song reader featuring Laura Gibson, along with some Brubeck and Bach, for good measure.
Wed/3, 8pm, $25
Yoshi’s SF
1330 Fillmore, SF
www.yoshis.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K8ou0iA_68

Esben and the Witch
With swelling crescendos, emotional lyrics, gothy undertones, and shimmering vocals in tow, UK post-rock trio Esben and the Witch comes across the pond for the first time in two years, on tour with newest record, Wash The Sins Not Only The Face (Matador). Should be a witchy one.
With Heliotropes.
Thu/4, 9pm, $13
Brick and Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission, SF.
www.brickandmortarmusic.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnfx0cij2rw

Babysitter
Victoria, BC “grunge-and-roll” / “long-hair scuzz rocker” trio Babysitter has made its way through the tapes-splits-and-EPs scene since forming in 2010. Now signed to Montreal tastemaker label, Psychic Handshake Record, the band released its first proper full-length, Eye, in late ’12. This current tour takes the thrashy punks through house shows and taquerias, as it should.
With Easy Living, Hazels Wart
Thu/4, 7pm, $5
Casa Sanchez
2778 24th, SF
Facebook: Babysitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yqP71Y87_4

Glam.I.Rock
Lyrically gifted young Oakland rapper Glam.I.Rock — the first half an acronym for “Good Lyrics And Music” — will perform a free in-store during Art Murmur this Friday. If you want to be in on an artist at the tipping point, this would be your chance. The MC has that classic ’90s female-empowerment hip-hop vibe but with some different interests (check the “Who is Glam.I.Rock?” video of her tapping out the Rugrats theme), and a more modern style. Though like her predecessors, she still very much reps her home-base, performing “Inspire Oakland” at the city’s Digital’s Inspiration Awards last December. Makes sense, she’s the daughter of Nic Nac — the only female member of the Mobb crew — and and Dangerous Dame, a member of Too $hort’s Dangerous Crew. Glam.I.Rock’s debut EP, The Feel, recently dropped on Savvie1ent/The Olive Street Agency.
Fri/5, 8pm, free.
Oaklandish
1444 Broadway, Oakl.
(510) 251-9500
www.oaklandish.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHVIRAIFBEU

Rock/See: A Concert for the Roxie Theater
In the grand tradition of Live Aid, Farm Aid, and Kidney Now! (that last one might have been fictional), musicians in SF are stepping up to help something they care about: the Mission’s beloved Roxie Theater. The event is to support the Roxie’s campaign to renovate and upgrade its smaller theater, the Little Roxie. As the theater explains , “While many nonprofit arts organizations are joining forces with corporate entities…[we’re] partnering with members of San Francisco’s indie music community.” The Rock/See benefit boasts live performances by favored Bay Area lo-fi/garage rockers Thee Oh Sees, Sonny and the Sunsets, Future Twin, and Assateague. Being that this is for a movie hub, local filmmakers and artists are also getting in on the support: the event includes projections by Barry Jenkins, Jim Granato, and more.
Fri/5, 8:30pm, $25
Verdi Club
2424 Mariposa, SF
www.roxie.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMEGlZCY1o0

Polkacide and Fuxedos
“Sometimes, sweet serendipity steps up to create a lineup so stunningly perfect you can’t believe it’s true. That pretty much sums up the upcoming Polkacide and Fuxedos co-headlining gig, with the imitable Borts Minorts along for the ride as opening act. Individually, each band is well-worth the price of admission alone. You’ve got your punk rock polka, your post-punk, big band, nihilistic freakout (plus props) — and your avant-garde alien lifeform wields his dangerous dance moves and a bass made from a ski.”  —  Nicole Gluckstern
Sat/6, 9:30pm, $12
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St, SF
(415) 861-1615
www.bottomofthehill.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IdrMuOdVPg

Live Shots: Texas is the Reason at Bimbo’s

Tony Robles
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1

Texas is the Reason’s show at Bimbo’s was not sold out, but it sure seemed packed as I struggled to find a good vantage point on Friday night. When I eventually got a clear view, I saw that the stage was hazily lit by dark blue-purple lights. The amplifiers and drum kit on stage were glowing, heavily draped with white Christmas lights. The visual, in its stark simplicity, was stunning.

This perfect, quiet kickoff was the reassurance I needed to prove that this wouldn’t be the gaudy, overwrought reunion that I had feared, but the graceful, tasteful gathering that I had hoped for.

Texas is the Reason was originally created in a flash flood of sad basement bands in the early ’90s. This era in rock saw an extreme surplus of angst and overly-emotional, self-indulgent music that created the term emo and then turned it into a dirty word. Distracted by all the Dashboard Confessionals and Saves the Days, it’s easy to forget about the bands that started the movement and influenced an entire era of musicians — the bands worth listening to.

Texas is the Reason was one of those watershed early emo bands. The band only released an EP and one full album before imploding in 1997, but its take on post-hardcore had already quietly spread its influence across the industry. Just around 16 years later, the group has resurfaced for one final nine-stop tour before it officially and permanently disbands.

The audience, which had been waiting at least a decade, to see this band, screamed as Texas is the Reason slunk onto the stage and started tearing through its first song. The hiatus took no toll on the band’s live presence. Guitarist Norm Arenas’ reverential expression seemed like transcendence as Scott Weingard swung his bass around like a weapon and Garrett Kahn crooned a whine, looking appropriately pained.

The sound, packed in taut layers over Chris Daly’s focused drumming, packed a serious punch. The musicians seem to play with great ease, as their years of experience have created an unbelievably tight groove. The entire performance, more than anything, seemed incredibly sincere. The lyrics didn’t seem outdated or outgrown, the songs were treated with just as much respect and conviction as they would be if they were new.

Fans responded in kind, shouting “thank you” between the songs. Some sang along, but most watched quietly and intently, stoically swaying and nodding. In the midst of shouted requests, one woman called out, “Anything! You guys rock! Play whatever you want!” This comment perfectly embodied the content, appreciative atmosphere of the concert.

The entire show felt like a meeting of old friends, catching up. The band clearly felt this closeness and camaraderie as well. “We’re happy you’re with us,” Kahn shouted, before asking, quite seriously, “Who’s coming to Los Angeles with us tomorrow? We’ve got room in the fucking van! Who’s coming?”

The band made no attempt to shield the crowd from its future state. “How many of you are seeing us for the first time tonight?” Kahn asked. “Well it’s the last time. It’s bittersweet.” After about an hour, the set drew to an emotional close. “This will be our last one,” Kahn told the crowd. “These songs belong to you now. They’re yours.”

Behind the decision to accept cuts to in-home support services

Sasha Cuttler
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Behind the decision to accept cuts to in-home support services

For the last four years, advocates for those with disabilities have successfully fought to stave off the 20 percent cut in In-Home Support Services that then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had proposed to help balance California’s budget, each year winning legal injunctions preventing the cuts while the case wound it way through the federal court system.

Their main argument is that such deep cuts in these vital services would discriminate against disabled or elderly Californians by forcing them into nursing homes rather than allowing them to receive services at home, which they contended was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (I discuss this and other systemic devaluing of caregiving in last week’s Guardian).

The Ninth Circuit of Appeals was set to hear the California case (Oster v. Lightbourne) on March 19, and the judges in this famously liberal San Francisco-based court had just ruled against Washington state’s effort to make similar cuts (MR v. Dreyfus) just over a year ago. But then, on the eve of that hearing, proponents in the case announced a settlement that will result in an 8 percent across-the-board to IHHS services (allowing a 3.6 percent cut made by Gov. Jerry Brown now and another 4.4 percent cut to go into effect July 1).

While disabilities rights groups and other opponents of the IHHS cuts issued public statements that put a happy face on the settlement, emphasizing that it had avoided much deeper cuts, many advocates privately grumbled about accepting still-deep cuts to this popular and important program. After all, these cuts will hurt the families of those with disabilities (it is often relatives who are paid as caregivers by the program) and likely result in greater long-term costs from nursing home care and more emergency room visits.

So why did they settle? Sources close to the case who don’t want to be identified say a big factor was that two of the three judges assigned to the case – Carlos Bea and Diarmuid O’Scannlain – are the most conservative on the Ninth Circuit bench and seemed likely to rule against the disability rights community. In other words, those with disabilities drew bad cards.

Bea was appointed to the Ninth Circuit in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush after serving more than 20 years as a San Francisco Superior Court Judge (appointed in 1990 by another fellow Republican, then-Gov. George Deukmejian), where he received poor marks from local attorneys, who said he was biased in favor of Big Business.

O’Scannlain was a founding member of the right-wing Young Americans for Freedom back in 1960, later serving as a tax attorney for Standard Oil. He was in private law practice and serving as chairman of the Oregon Republican Party in 1986 when then-President Ronald Reagan – whose presidential campaigns he had worked on – suddenly appointed him to the Ninth Circuit bench.

And if their histories and ideological leanings weren’t enough to tip the balance in favor of settling, there’s the fact that it was Bea who wrote a strong dissenting opinion in the MR v. Dreyfus case, dismissing the disability rights arguments completely.

He wrote: “Mind you this case does not involve the provision of certain social services to one group of disabled – those in nursing homes – but not to another group – the disabled residing at their own homes. No, the panel majority’s decision proceeds on the premise that the very reduction of social services currently provided the at-home disabled will risk their going to nursing home, and that such reduction therefore ‘discriminates’ against the at-home disabled, although not in favor of the disabled in nursing homes, or anyone else. But virtually everything the government does involves discrimination; it is in the nature of laws that they treat some people differently from others. This is not generally impermissible discrimination. Most government spending affects some groups more than others, but that doesn’t mean that the result in impermissible discrimination.”

He then rues the fact that “since the decision interprets and applies the ADA, it constitutes binding precedent in our nine Western states, with 20 percent of the nation’s population,” calling it a flawed decision that violates other court precedents with its “strained interpretation of the ADA.” Then, Bea goes on at length about how the state voluntarily and generously provided these in-homes services and says it should be allowed to suddenly withdraw them as well.

“To the contrary, this program is a flexible one: coverage is dependent in part on how much money the state has,” he wrote, later concluding by calling the majority opinion, “anti-democratic budgeting by judicial fiat.” Judge O’Scannlain is also a strong critic of “judicial activism,” which is often right-wing code for any rulings that expand the rights of society’s least powerful members, as opposed to the interests of the wealthy and powerful that they normally protect.

Yeah, I can see why disability right advocates might have wanted to cut their losses and settle the case.

Boooooooooooks: 2 spots to buy ’em cheap

Andrew Lam
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0
Boooooooooooks: 2 spots to buy ’em cheap

Since you might be having a hard time finding the funds for your 1. your ticket to Phu Quoc and 2. the Opening Ceremony-Spring Breakers mall trash collection you’ll need for those white sand beaches, you should at least let us help you out with the third essential component of your hypothetical spring escape: books!

You’ll need them for those hypothetically long hours in the sun, and lucky you, two epic sales are going on shortly so you can save your ducats for neon logo cropped tees and duty-free Toblerones. You might also hit up Adobe Books, which has been served its final eviction notice in the face of incoming yuppie muck *sad face*

Friends of the San Francisco Library book fair

What: 250,000 specimens of all kinds of media, the sale of which will not only augment your lit-loving vacay, but also go towards supporting the good old SF Public Library, YAY. If you’re a Friend of the public library with a capital “F,” you can hit up the space on Tuesday night for a special preview, which we hope goes down like those videos from the ’80s of crazed parents trying to bumrush Toys ‘R’ Us for the best Cabbage Patch Doll.

Cop: There’s gonna be hardcover books for $3, and $1 DVDs and CDs since no one knows what those things are anymore — but for the purposes of your Vietnam getaway, immerse in the $2 paperback section. (Please, not The Beach.)

Fri/3-Sun/7, 10am-6pm, free. Fort Mason Center Pavilion, SF. www.friendssfpl.org

Chronicle Books “Back to School” warehouse sale

What: James Franco specifically told us that spring break was forever, but apparently Chronicle Books didn’t get the memo — it’s celebrating the childrens’ return to classes with this storewide sale — selected titles are 65 percent off. 

Cop: You can get the discounted price on all of Chronicle’s titles in travel, literature, food and drink, etc. We are particularly intrigued by the new NPR book, though the book of Andy Warhol fashion sketches may be better suited to your hypothetical vacay.

April 11-12, 9am-7pm; April 13, 10am-3pm, free. Chronicle Books warehouse, 680 Second St., SF. www.chroniclebooks.com

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