Scene

People’s Beach

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Rating: D

Although we can’t recommend People’s Beach, a few people somehow still make their way down its crumbling, eroded, and very dangerous path. Worse yet, the beach disappears in high tide. And incidents of sex on the sand have driven away former regulars. In its heyday, up to 60 nudists a day wound up on the sand, recalls Dave Smith, of San Leandro. “You had to jump the last eight feet until somebody added a plank.” The site, he says, later “became a gay scene.” Remembers Bay Area resident Timothy Moscow: “It was heaven.”

“All I can say is that it’s not a very good beach,” says Carl Ernst, former operator of nearby Devil’s Slide. The path to the beach is so dangerous that it’s been officially closed for years — and the Guardian continues to recommend you avoid it. Users say the steep trail gives way to a 20 foot drop at the end. Wear hiking shoes and be prepared to turn back.

Legal status:

State property, believed to be part of Montara State Beach.

How to find it:

From San Francisco, take Highway 1 south past Pacifica to Montara Beach. Park at the Montara State Beach lot, then walk north along the highway to the trailhead. The beach path begins next to a highway turnout. Look for the “Hiking, Climbing Prohibited” sign.

The beach:

“On a good day, it’s maybe 80 to 100 yards long,” estimates Ernst. During high tide, the site may disappear altogether. Does the beach have any nice qualities? “It’s very quiet, which is why I go here,” one reader says. Another says it’s less windy than Devil’s Slide.

The crowd:

Often deserted: a big crowd here would be five people.

Problems:

Brutally steep, breakaway trail; nearly inaccessible; fog; cold water; small beach; lack of precise trail directions; reports of sex on the beach.

Golden Gate Bridge Beach

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Rating: A

On the hottest days, Golden Gate Bridge Beach becomes so packed with people that one visitor describes it as a “gay mob scene.” But the rocky shore, which connects three picturesque coves, also gets its share of straight men and women. Prime, non-cruising activities include sunbathing, enjoying breathtaking views of the Bridge, and even taking some dips in the water. “You can sometimes go out over 100 feet during low tide,” says a woman.

Legal status: 

Part of the GGNRA.

How to find it:

Directions: from the toll booth area of Highway 101/1, take Lincoln Boulevard west about a half mile to Langdon Court. Turn right (west) on Langdon and look for space in the parking lots, across Lincoln from Fort Winfield Scott. Park and then take the beach trail, starting just west of the end of Langdon, down its more than 200 steps to Golden Gate Bridge Beach, also known as Marshall’s Beach.

The beach:

A trio of adjacent coves located below Fort Scott provide an easy view of San Francisco’s most famous landmark and the beach’s namesake: the Golden Gate Bridge. Despite recent improvements, the trail to the beach can still be slippery, especially in the spring and winter.

The crowd:

“On weekends, you feel like a piece of meat on display,” a male visitor told us. Most users take their suits off, while joining up to 100 or more other naked people, including small but growing numbers of heterosexuals. It can get even more crowded: several times a year, as many as 300 bare bodies try to find space on the sand. Suggestion: visit during the week, when you may encounter only a few dozen beachgoers.

Problems:

Too many people jammed into too little space; not enough sand; garbage; wind and fog; cold water; unsafe swimming conditions; muddy cliff trails; and sex on the beach.

Best of the Bay 2009: Sex and Romance

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Best of the Bay 2009: Sex and Romance

Editors Picks: Sex and Romance

BEST FAIR THAT’S UP YOURS

While the Folsom Street Fair has grown into an international destination for kinksters and the tourists who ogle them, the Up Your Alley Fair has become increasingly important as a more intimate oasis for local leatherheads who remember the scene’s old days. The fair — better known as Dore Alley Fair, though the event was named when it started in 1985 on a different street — has brought much-needed attention to the oft-overlooked SoMa neighborhood. We love the organization’s dedication to supporting groups and charities like the Episcopal Community Services, AIDS Emergency Fund, and Transgender Law Center. What we don’t love is that this event may be the next target on the Police Department’s Death of Fun Crusade. Show your support this year so that Up Your Alley doesn’t go the way of Castro Halloween.

Last Sunday in July, Dore Alley, between Folsom and Howard. www.folsomstreetevents.org/alley

BEST SEX AND SERVICE

Having sex doesn’t take much: a partner (or not), a place, a modicum of desire. But feeling sexy isn’t always so easy — especially if you’re in a relationship that has reached the sweatpants, TV–dinner, oral-sex-what? stage. Enter Intima Girl, the Marina’s boudoir of a boutique. The small, upscale shop stocks a variety of items meant to up the ante in the bedroom, from sex toys to lotions to lingerie, most geared toward girls (and their partners) who want a little class in their kink. Think sleek vibrators, high-end candles, silk bondage ropes, and sex books that could sit on your coffee table. But Intima Girl doesn’t skimp on the fun. Adventurous types can head home with an edible candy bra, assless panties, and metallic condom compacts for stylish safe-sex on the go. Best of all, the owner and staff are as knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful as you always wished your big sister would be.

3047 Fillmore, SF. (415) 563-1202, www.intima-online.com

BEST SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

Dim, crimson lighting. The Stones on the sound system. Attractive youngsomethings lounging languidly on plush couches. And there, across the room, a tall, lean brunette, sipping a PBR, staring through the haze. Will Amber, the worker-owned watering hole with stiff drinks and legal cigarette smoking (thanks to labor law loopholes), be the setting of your “How We Met” story? Are those the tears of love at first sight? If you’re not a smoker, your eyes might just be irritated or you might be frustrated knowing tonight’s bar clothes will smell when you wear them to work tomorrow. But for those brave (stupid? nah) few who still toke the tobacco stick, this Duboce Triangle destination is a sexy, sultry, smoky oasis in a world that’s become increasingly cold (literally) to the dwindling minority. Just for this moment, in this beautiful bar out of time, nothing exists but you and your beloved. Not work. Not cancer. Maybe not even a future for your relationship. But what does it matter? Since the first release of studies on the dangers of smoking, people who continue to puff have lived in the here and now. And at Amber, there’s no better place to be now than here.

718 14th St., SF. (415) 626-7827

BEST WEDDING SINGERS WHO AREN’T ADAM SANDLER

You’re getting married to the love of your life, and every member of your extended families will be in attendance, including your Aunt Jolene, who lives in an RV in the Nevada desert and talks to inanimate objects, and your future spouse’s Harvard-educated litter, all flying in from Martha’s Vineyard. How are you going to pick a wedding band that will get everyone — from your lumpy litigator father-in-law-to-be to your own Crazy Uncle Cletus — on their feet dancing? Tainted Love, the best ’80s tribute band since The Wedding Singer, is the answer. This talented seven-piece act regularly draws sold-out crowds to venues like Bimbo’s and Red Devil Lounge, while also happily playing private parties, corporate events, and, yes, weddings. Now that ’80s music is almost the golden oldies, you can count on the fact that Love’s renditions of “Purple Rain,” “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” and, of course, “White Wedding” will appeal to all the guests on your list — no matter how far they traveled (or how much they put in for the ceremony).

(510) 655-7926, www.taintedlove.com

BEST COCK RING FOR THE CREATIVE CLASS

What’s wrong with loving a product for its design? That’s really why Apple fanatics love all things “i.” And that’s why we lust after sex toys from Jimmyjane, the Potrero Hill pleasure purveyors whose vibes, games, and accessories would look as natural in a museum gift shop as they would in your minimalist, modern bedroom. The Form 6 vibrator looks like a cross between a stylized pen and a high-end electric toothbrush, while the Little Chromas model has the sleek grace of a bullet, or a small cigar (we refuse to make that joke). And Jimmyjane’s Usual Suspects line is nothing short of inspired — celebrating both form and function by interpreting classic toys, in flawless white. Yes, the company does seem to cater to Audi drivers and iPhone users — collaborating on expensive special editions with well-known designers and bragging about appearances on cable TV shows. But we can’t argue with the nontoxic materials and the unprecedented one-year warranty. And the fact that they just look so cool.

www.jimmyjane.com. Available at Good Vibrations, various locations. www.goodvibrations.com

BEST QUEER PORN

The problem with mainstream porn is that most of it is made in the San Fernando Valley by brainless douche bags and lazy ex-cheerleaders looking for a quick buck. But this is San Francisco. This is the art capital of the world, the home of the free thinker, the land of the awesome. Can’t we get some porn made for us? Yes, we can! Yes, we can! If you’re as sick of Barbie Doll smut as we are, then you should know about local filmmaker-producer-writer-artist Courtney Trouble. Trouble is the founder of a queer porn site called Nofauxxx.com (“queer” as in not just homo, but alternative as well). She’s the final word when it comes to smut with attitude, character, and soul. Not only is No Fauxxx the oldest running queer porn site on the Internet, it’s also the only spot that mixes alt, gay, lesbian, straight, trans, kink, and BBW content. It’s sexy, artsy, entertaining, all-inclusive, and totally DIY. In a word: ours.

www.nofauxxx.com

BEST CONTEST FOR WANKERS

The Masturbate-a-thon is an annual pledge drive for the Center for Sex and Culture during which people gang up in a hot and sweaty room to watch each other jerk off for an entire day. Sounds like fun, right? But what if you’re not an exhibitionist? No worries. The whole show (held in May, which is Masturbation Month) is broadcast live on the Internet so that shy people can join in too. Categories include “Most Money Raised,” “Most Orgasms,” and “Longest Squirt,” and the winners in each division receive sexy prizes from Good Vibrations (and perhaps a lifetime of wishing Google and YouTube were never invented). Score! Exhibitionists, porn addicts, and the rest of us are encouraged to ogle, vote, and even participate alongside certified wank-masters such as Dr. Carol Queen, Fellatio Brown, and Masanobu Sato, a Japanese toymaker who holds the world record for “Longest Time Spent Masturbating” (to be fair, it should be noted that his company, Tenga, makes masturbation cups for men). The time to beat next year is nine hours and 58 minutes, so fire up Fleshbot.com now and start practicing. You can be sure that’s what Masanobu is doing.

www.masturbate-a-thon.com

BEST PLACE TO PARK WITH YOUR PARAMOUR

The place where Broadway meets Lyon and dead-ends into the edge of the Presidio is almost always empty. Here, the steep angle of the land affords swoon-inducing vistas of the Marina, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the bay, and tranquility hovers amid the perfectly manicured gardens and the improbably large and ornate houses to which they are attached. The drawback? If you’re not in the mood for a workout on the Lyon steps, there’s not really anything to do here except park, which, if you’ve brought an attractive friend along for the ride, is no drawback at all. If there’s an ounce of chemistry, the solitude and stunning view will have you two making out in the backseat of your car. In fact, come here with someone for whom you have feelings that run deeper than lust, and you may just be inspired to make things official. There are few better spectacular, proposal-inducing viewpoints in our spectacular, proposal-inducing city that haven’t been completely co-opted by tourists. Relationship-phobes and impulsive romantics, consider yourself forewarned.

Broadway at Lyon

BEST TASSELS WITH TALENT

Burlesque is bawdy. It’s lowbrow. It’s often political, and always boundary- pushing. But sexy? Not necessarily. As the new burlesque movement merges with circus and performance arts, it sometimes sacrifices the delight of the tease in favor of mere shock and awe. But Rose Pistola knows how to balance her solo performances so they get your panties wet and in a bunch. The classic beauty has graced stages in an octopus skirt, an Elvis costume, a mullet, a Victorian mime outfit, and a full tulle gown (that she rolled out of) — always mastering a blend of humor and class. But it’s not just her performances at places like Hubba Hubba Revue and Bohemian Carnival that rev our engines — Pistola also designs costumes, including tiny hats, vinyl corsets, and almost all of her fabulous stage get-ups. What could be sexier than a woman with pasties and a pincushion? How about one who plays with fire? Oh yeah, Pistola does that too.

www.myspace.com/rosepistola

BEST MEETING GROUND FOR SWINGERS

Not big on commitment? At Lindy in the Park, the weekly swing dance party that’s been uniting partners with fancy footwork since 1996, change companions as often as you change your mind. With free lessons starting at 11 a.m. and open to the public, it’s the perfect place to flirt with fellow Lindy Hop fans and then flee. But this outdoor event near the de Young Museum isn’t just for eternally happy singles. Couples know the best thing about the swingout is the swing-back-in. And once you’ve seen your honey doing the sugar push, you might just find that your hip-to-hip leads to lip to lip.

JFK Dr. (between 8th and 10th avenues), Golden Gate Park, SF. www.lindyinthepark.com

BEST PLACE TO PICK UP CHICKS (WHO LIKE CHICKS)

Whatever your definition of cockblocking — whether it’s using a friend to pose as a lover to deter unwanted advances, or stopping a fellow suitor from stealing your paramour with their charm and free drinks — the idea is clear: there’s a third-party penis, and its plans must be thwarted. What better name, then, for a dance night geared toward girl-on-girl love? But it’s not just clever nomenclature that fuels our love for Cockblock, the monthly lesbian dance party at the Rickshaw Stop. It’s the fact that these get-togethers feature infectious music, cheap drinks, good vibes, and that rare chance for girls-who-like-girls to get together without sweaty heteros trying to get in the way (or cast them in their personal porn fantasies). Plus, queer ladies should have at least one surefire place other than the Lex to scope out a hottie.

Second Saturdays, Rickshaw Stop,155 Fell, SF. www.cockblocksf.com

BEST CIRCLE TO JOIN AND JERK

Masturbation need not be a covert mission reserved for solo artists behind bedroom doors or within shower stalls. If you’re the type who is more of a team player, you might like SF Jacks, a group of like-minded men who appreciate a good circle jerk. The group has been perfecting its “loose and goofy environment” for 26 years, regularly drawing as many as 70 Jacks and Joes who want to lose their clothes — and their inhibitions — together. Meetings are held every second and fourth Monday at the Center for Sex and Culture, where lube and refreshments are provided. Just show up with your $7 donation (though no one’s turned away for lack of funds), ready to do the hand jive. But just remember to follow the rules. You can touch your dick, but don’t be one.

Second and fourth Mondays, 7:30-<\d>8:30 p.m. $7. Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission, SF. (415) 267-6999, www.sfjacks.com

BEST WAY TO GET YOUR DATE SWEATY

Dinner and a movie, a night at the bar, a drive down the coast — all these date options have their merits. But when you’re trying to plan a partner activity that’s off the beaten path, consider renting bikes from Golden Gate Park Bike and Skate and exploring less charted territory (especially on Sundays, when Golden Gate is closed to car traffic). For just $5 an hour, you can check out hidden trails, watch the legendary bison do whatever it is bison do, and take a breather by the ocean. Not only will you get beautiful views (of park and partner), but the chemicals you release while exercising will bring you and your paramour closer together. This is an especially good thing if you’re looking to take your relationship to the next level, because producing endorphins together might just lead to … uh … producing endorphins together.

3038 Fulton, SF. (415) 668-1117, www.goldengateparkbikeandskate.com

BEST PLACE TO PARTY LIKE A PORN STAR

Unbeknownst to pretty much everyone, Dogpatch Studios, the nondescript warehouse on Tennessee Street marked by a benign and vaguely cutesy flag featuring a black Labrador, is where the Mitchell Brothers filmed Behind the Green Door, the first feature-length hardcore porn film to be widely released in the United States. Today, with enough green of your own, you can host a private event inside this historic sex landmark. While the venue still welcomes movie shoots, your options are unlimited. Dogpatch Studios will provide you with flexible floor plans, kitchen facilities, wireless internet, lighting services, staffing, and just about anything else you require, whether it’s for a sedate corporate retreat, a no-holds-barred bacchanal, or even a wedding. Because nothing says everlasting love quite like tying the knot where Marilyn Chambers (R.I.P.) filmed money shots.

991 Tennessee, SF. (415) 641-3017, www.dogpatchstudios.com

BEST XXX XX IN THE CASTRO

Remember when the Castro was just a big boys’ club? That’s changed somewhat, thanks in no small part to Femina Potens, the nonprofit art gallery dedicated to women, transgendered folk, kink, and the sex worker community that anchors the corner of Market and Sanchez. Cofounded by renaissance porn star and queer BDSM queen Madison Young, the cozy spot has been hosting exhibits, workshops, spoken word performances, film screenings, and readings by queer literary and artistic legends like Michelle Tea, Annie Sprinkle, and Inga Muscio since 2001 — and recently has added health and wellness programming into the mix. With showcases tackling topics from body image to safer sex, suicide prevention, and breast cancer awareness, there’s no question that what Femina Potens does is important. But we think art shows about bondage and performances about breasts are also just damn sexy. Plus, it’s about time the Castro got a little more double-X (chromosome) action.

2199 Market, SF. (415) 864-1558, www.feminapotens.org

BEST KINKY DINNER

Dark Tasting is the most unintentionally kinky thing to happen to dining since the invention of the hot dog. The very concept sounds like something out of a Marquis de Sade novel. The San Francisco group believes that sight deprivation heightens the sensory experience of having a meal, from the taste, smell, and feel of your food, to the sound of your company’s voices. Before the meal is served, diners are blindfolded and rendered submissive. (Doesn’t that alone sound like something out of a deliciously depraved Japanese bondage flick involving nyotaimori?) Sponsored by TasteTV and held at a different venue once every two months, Dark Tasting events offer gourmet multicourse meals with wine parings, with the caveat that you have to pay $95 per person and can’t see what you’re eating. Events are described as a “sensual dining experience,” and given that no one can see what a pervert you are, you can freely grope your partner under the table without eliciting “Get a room!” remarks from fellow diners. If you’re into BDSM, we highly recommend Dark Tasting as a romantic prelude to being hog-tied in a cage (where the real fun begins).

www.darktasting.com

Best of the Bay 2009: Arts and Nightlife

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Best of the Bay 2009: Arts and Nightlife

Editors Picks: Arts and Nightlife

BEST BLOODY QUEEN

A gut-spewing zombie drag queen roller derby in honor of Evil Dead 2. An interview with The Exorcist‘s Linda Blair preceded by a rap number that includes the line, “I don’t care if they suck their mother’s cock, as long as they line up around the block!” A virtual wig-pulling catfight with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. All this and more have graced the proscenium of the Bridge Theater as part of the jaw-dropping (literally) Midnight Mass summertime B-movie fun series, brought to us by the always perfectly horrific Peaches Christ. Her wigs alone are usually enough to scare the jellybean-bejeezus out of us, but Peaches combines live craziness with wince-worthy flicks to take everything over the top. After this, her 12th season of disembowelled joy, Peaches is moving on from Midnight Mass to become a director in her own right — she just wrapped up filming All About Evil with Natasha Lyonne and a cast of local fleshbots. Look for it in your googleplex soon, and know that Peaches still stumbles among us.

www.peacheschrist.com

BEST FLAMIN’ FUN

Kids, really, don’t try this at home. Don’t hook up your two-player Dance Dance Revolution game to a row of flamethrowers. Don’t rig said game to blast your dance competitior with a faceful of fire in front of an adoring crowd if they miss a step. Don’t invest in enough propane to fuel a small jet, a flaming movie screen for projecting all those awkward dance moves onto, and a booming sound system to play all the Japanese bubblegum techno you could ever hope to hear. Leave the setup to Interpretive Arson, whose Dance Dance Immolation game has wowed participants and spectators alike from Black Rock City to Oaktown — and will scorch Denmark’s footsies this fall. Do, however, seek out these intrepid firestarters, and don a giant silver fireproof suit with a Robby the Robot hood. Do the hippie shake to the mellifluous tones of Fatboy Slim and Smile.dk, and prepare yourself to get flamed, both figuratively and literally.

www.interpretivearson.com

BEST PENGUIN PARTY, PLANETARIUM INCLUDED

Penguins are damn funny when you’re drunk. They’re pretty entertaining animals to begin with, but after a couple martinis those little bastards bring better slapstick than Will Ferrell or Jack Black. But tipsily peeping innocent flightless birds — plus bats, butterflies, sea turtles, and manta rays — is just one of many reasons to attend Nightlife, the stunningly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences’ weekly Thursday evening affair. This outrageously popular (get there early) and ingenious party pairs gonzo lineups of internationally renowned DJs and live bands with intellectual talks by some of the world’s best-known natural scientists. Cocktails are served, the floor is packed, intellects are high — and where else can you order cosmos before visiting the planetarium? Another perk: the cost of admission, which includes most of the academy’s exhibits, is less than half the regular price, although you must be 21 or older to attend. Come for the inebriated entertainment, stay for the personal enrichment.

Thursdays, 6 p.m., $8-<\d>$10. California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr., Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 379-8000, www.calacademy.org/events/nightlife

BEST LINDY HOP TO LIL’ WAYNE

Retain a fond nostalgia for the 1990s swing revival scene? Swing Goth is the event you’ve been waiting for. Not quite swing and not even remotely goth, Swing Goth gives swing enthusiasts the go-ahead to boogie-woogie to modern tunes at El Rio. This isn’t your grandmother’s fox trot: rock, rap, ’80s, alternative, Madchester, Gypsy punk, and almost anything else gets swung. Held on the first and third Tuesday of each month and tailored for beginners, this event draws an eclectic crowd that includes dudes who call themselves “hep cats,” Mission hipsters, and folks who rock unironic mom jeans and Reebok trainers. If you’re new to swing, arrive at 7:30 and take a one-hour group lesson with ringleader Brian Gardner, who orchestrates the event, to get a quick introduction to swing basics before the free dance. Lessons are $5, but no extra charge for ogling the cute dykes who call El Rio their local watering hole. Swing? Schwing!

First and third Tuesdays, 7 p.m., free. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.swinggoth.com

BEST CELESTIAL TRAJECTORISTS

Who can take a sunburst of boomer rock inspirations — like The Notorious Byrd Brothers-<\d>era Byrds and Meddle-some Pink Floyd — sprinkle it with dew, and cover it with chocolaty nouveau-hippie-hipster blues-rock and a miracle or two? The fresh-eyed, positive-minded folks of Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound can, ’cause they mix it with love and make a world many believed had grown hack and stale taste good. Riding a wave of local ensembles with a hankering for classic rock, hard-edged Cali psych, Japanese noise, and wild-eyed film scores, the San Francisco band is the latest to make the city safe once more for musical adventurers with open minds and big ears. What’s more, the Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound’s inspired new third album, When Sweet Sleep Returned (Tee Pee) — recorded with help from Tim Green at Louder Studios — has fielded much press praise for space-traveling fuzzbox boogie blowouts like “Drunken Leaves” and blissed-out, sitar-touched jangle rambles such as “Kolob Canyon.” Consider your mind burst.

www.myspace.com/theassembleheadinsunburstsound

BEST DANCE DYNAMO

You can’t miss him. He has legs like tree trunks and arm muscles that ripple like lava. When he leaps you think he’ll never come down, and his turns suggest the power of a hurricane. He is dancer Ramón Ramos Alayo, Six years ago he founded the CubaCaribe Festival that now packs in dance aficionados of all stripes, and he’s one of the shaping forces behind the wild San Francisco Carnaval celebration. He runs Alayo Dance Company, for which he choreographs contemporary works with Afro-Cuban roots, and he teaches all over the Bay Area — as many as 60 people show up for his Friday salsa classes at Dance Mission Theater. But Ramos is most strikingly unique as a performer. Ramos is as comfortable embodying Oshoshi, the forest hunter in the Yoruba mythology, as he is taking on “Grace Notes,” a jazz improvisation with bassist Jeff Chambers. No wonder Bay Area choreographers as radically different as Joanna Haigood, Sara Shelton Mann, and Robert Moses have wanted to work with him.

www.cubacaribe.org

BEST BLUEGRASS AMNESIAC

Toshio Hirano packs a mean sucker punch. At first glance he’s a wonderfully eccentric Bay Area novelty, a yodeling Japanese cowboy playing native songs of the American heartland. Yet upon further inspection, it becomes as clear as the skies of Kentucky that Toshio is the real deal when it comes to getting deep into the Mississippi muck of Jimmie Rodgers-<\d>style bluegrass. Enchanted by the sound of American folk music as a Japanese college student, Toshio soon ventured stateside to spend years traveling and playing from Georgia to Nashville to Austin before finally settling in the Bay Area. Today, Toshio plays once a month at Amnesia’s free Bluegrass Mondays to standing-room-only crowds. Stay awhile to hear him play Hank Williams’s “Ramblin’ Man” or Rodgers’s “Blue Yodel No. 1(T for Texas).” It’ll clear that Toshio’s novelty is merely a hook — his true appeal lies in his ability to show that there’s a cowboy lurking inside all of us.

www.toshiohirano.com

BEST COMMUNITY CHOREOGRAPHERS

A collective howl went up in 1995 when it was announced that the annual festival Black Choreographers: Moving into the 21st Century at Theater Artaud was ending due in part to lack of funding. But two East Bay dancers, Laura Elaine Ellis and Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, actually did something about it, working to ensure that African-American dancers and dance-makers received attention for the range and spirit of their work. It took 10 years, but in 2005, Ellis and Kimbrough Barnes helped launch Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now, which takes place every February in San Francisco and Oakland. The three-week event is a fabulous way for a community to celebrate itself and to invite everyone to the party. While the choreographers’ range of talent and imagination has been impressive — and getting better every year — the performances are merely the icing on the cake. Master classes, mentoring opportunites for emerging artists, and a technical theater-training program for local high school and college students are building a dance infrastructure the next generation can plug into.

www.bcfhereandnow.com

BEST MADCAP POP MAIDENS

San Francisco can always use another all-female band — and Grass Widow satisfies that need beautifully, cackling with brisk, madcap rhythms and rolling out a happy, crazy quilt of dissonant wails. Drummer-vocalist Lillian Maring, guitarist-vocalist Raven Mahon, and bassist-vocalist Hannah Lew are punk as fuck, of course — in the classic, pre-pre-packaged noncodified mode — though many will instead compare the trio’s inspired, decentered pop to dyed-in-the-bluestockings lo-fi riot grrrl. Still, there’s a highly conscious intensity to Grass Widow’s questioning of the digital givens that dominate life in the late ’00s, as they sing wistfully then rage raggedly amid accelerating rhythms and a roughly tumbling guitar line on “Green Screen,” from their self-titled debut on Make a Mess: “Flying low into trees. We exist on the screen. Computer can you hear me? Understand more than 1s and 0s?” Grass Widow may sweetly entreat the listener, “Don’t make a scene,” but if we’re lucky, these ladies will kick off a new generation of estrogen-enhanced music-making.

www.myspace.com/grasswidowmusic

BEST PURPLE SING-ALONG

Karaoke is one of those silly-but-fun nightlife activities that always has the potential to be awesome but usually isn’t. The song lists at most karaoke bars suck, the sound systems are underwhelming, and no matter where you go there’s always some asshole bumming everyone out with painful renditions of Neil Diamond tearjerkers. Well, not anymore! Steve Hays, a.k.a. DJ Purple, is a karaoke DJ — or KJ — who has single-handedly turned the Bay Area’s once tired sing-along scene into a mother funkin’ party y’all. DJ Purple’s Karaoke Dance Party happens every Thursday night at Jack’s Club. Forget the sloppy drunks half-assing their way through Aerosmith and Beyoncé songs. DJ Purple’s Karaoke Dance Party is all about Iron Maiden, Snoop Dogg, Led Zeppelin, and Riskay. No slow songs allowed. An actual experienced DJ, Hays keeps the beats running smooth, fading and blending as each person stumbles onstage, and even stepping in for saxophone solos and backup vocals when a song calls for it. And sometimes even when it doesn’t.

Thursdays, 9 p.m., free. Jack’s Club, 2545 24th St., SF. (415) 641-5371, www.djpurple.com

BEST FLANNEL REVIVAL

In this age of continual retro, it comes as a surprise that listening to mainstream ’90s alternative rock can give you, under the right inebriated circumstances, the kind of pleasure not experienced since heroin went out of vogue. Debaser at the Knockout has become one of the best monthly parties in San Francisco, largely because it gives ’80s babies, who were stuck playing Oregon Trail in computer class while Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland were rocking it out in Portland, the chance to live out their Nirvana-era dreams. Debaser promoter Jamie Jams is the only DJ in San Francisco who will spin the Cranberries after a Pavement song, and his inspired mixology is empirically proven to induce moshing en masse until last call, an enticingly dangerous sport now that lead-footed Doc Martens are back in style. Sporting flannel gets you comped, so for those still hung up over Jordan Catalano and the way he leans, Debaser is rife with contemporary, albeit less angsty, equivalents.

First Saturdays, 9 p.m., Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. (415) 550-6994, www.myspace.com/debaser90s

BEST CRANIUM MONOPOLY SCRABBLE RISK

The shaky economy’s probably put your $60 concert plans on hold and relegated those high-rolling VIP nights to the back burner. So it’s a great time to return to the simpler forms of social interaction, such as shaking some dice and screaming, “Yahtzee, bitches!” or guffawing maniacally every time some poor fool attempts to pass your two hotels on Boardwalk. Fortunately, game night at On the Corner café on Divisadero fills your staid Wednesday evenings with enough card-shuffling, Pop-o-matic popping, I-want-to-be-the-thimble classics to sink your battleship blues. Plus, there’s coffee and beer. Working in collusion with the colossal collection of neighboring Gamescape, On the Corner provides a plethora of gaming options to fit its large tables and vibrant atmosphere. Stratego, Scattergories, and other trivial pursuits are all available, and the 7 p.m.-<\d>to-<\d>closing happy hour includes $2.50 draft beers and sangria specials. The tables fill up quickly, though — arrive early so you won’t be sorry.

Wednesdays, 7–10 p.m., free. 359 Divisadero, SF. (415) 522-1101, www.sfcorner.com

BEST PARTY OF ONE

Perfect moments are never the ones you work hard to create. Too much effort kills the magic. Instead, the moments we treasure are those that steal up on us, slipping past our defenses to reveal, for just an instant, the sublime wonder of the universe. This is precisely what happens during one’s first encounter with the Lexington Street disco ball, innocuously spinning its multifaceted heart out on a quiet neighborly block in the heart of the Mission District. One moment you’re just walking down the street minding your own business — perhaps rehashing the “should have saids” or the “could have beens” in the muddled disquiet of your mind — when suddenly you spot it, the incongruously located disco ball suspended from a low-hanging branch, throwing a carpet of stars across the sidewalk for anyone to enjoy. All is still, but the music in your heart will lead you. Hold your hands in the air, walk into the light, and dance.

Lexington between 20th and 21st streets, SF

BEST BLOCK-ROCKIN’ BIKE

Amandeep Jawa’s bright blue, sound-rigged party-cycle — Trikeasaurus — is our bestest Critical Mass compadre and bike lane buddy, and an essential component of his impromptu FlashDance parties. This three-wheelin’, free-wheelin’, pedal-and-battery-powered funk machine has been bringing the party to the people — and leading spontaneous Michael Jackson tributes — from the Embarcadero to the Broadway tunnel for the past two years. Even if you’re just out for a stroll or a bit of that ephemeral San Francisco “sun”-bathing, when Trikeasaurus comes rolling along you just have to boogie on down the road, bust a move, get your groove thing on, let your freak flag fly, and insert ecstatic cliché here. We can pretend all we want in the privacy of our own hip sancta sanctorum that Destiny’s Child or OutKast will never move us, but somehow when Trikeasaurus comes bumping by, we just can’t help but bump right back. Don’t fight the feeling! Join the 500-watt, 150-decibel velolution today.

www.deeptrouble.com

BEST HOLES FOR YOUR KRAUTROCK SOUL

If you’ve done ketamine, you know what it’s like to get lost in the cosmic K-hole. To those who have entered the mystical D-hole, however, your ketamine story is child’s play. The Donuts dance party, thrown at various times and locations throughout the year by DJ Pickpocket and visual artist AC, provides adventurous club-goers with that most delicious of drugs: donuts, given away free. First timers, be careful: these potent little sugar bombs are highly addictive and can often lead to an all-night binge of ecstatic power-boogie, which can result in terrible withdrawal symptoms. Like many other popular club drugs, donuts are offered in powdered form, though they can also be glazed, which leaves no tell-tale residue around the mouth. But as long as you indulge responsibly, entering the Hole of the Donut is perfectly safe. Amp up your experience to fever-pitch perfection with Donuts’ pulse-pumping Krautrock, new wave, retro disco, and dance punk live acts and beats.

www.myspace.com/donutparty

BEST PLACE TO PARTY LIKE A SLOVENIAN

If there’s one thing all Slovenians have in common, it’s that they know how to deck a muthafunkin’ hall, y’all. It stands to reason then that Slovenians run one of the biggest and best halls in town. The Slovenian Hall in Potrero Hill is available for all your partying needs — birthdays, anniversary bashes, coming-out fests, etc. The rooms inside the hall are spacious and clean, the kitchen and bar spaces are outfitted to serve an entire army, and there are plenty of tables and chairs. But it’s the decor that makes this place unique: Soviet-era and vintage tourism advertisements are sprinkled throughout the place and banners promoting Slovenian pride hang from the ceiling. The hall also hosts live music events — recently an Argentine tango troupe took up residence there, making things border-fuzzingly interesting, to say the least.

2101 Mariposa, SF. (415) 864-9629

BEST FUTURE RAP CEO

Odds are you’ve not yet heard of East Bay teen hip-hop talent Yung Nittlz — but one day soon you will. The ambitious, gifted Berkeley High student has already amassed five albums worth of smooth and funky material that he wrote, produced, and rapped and sang on. In August 2007, when he was just 13, the rapper born Nyles Roberson scored media attention when Showtime at the Apollo auditions came to town and he was spotted very first in line, having camped out the night before. And while Yung Nittlz wasn’t among the lucky final few to be picked, he did make a lasting impression on the judges with his strong performance of the song “Money in the Air” and choreography that included him strategically tossing custom-made promo dollars that he designed and made. The gifted artist also designed the professional-looking cover for his latest demo CD, which suggests fans should request the hit-sounding “Feelin’ U” on KMEL 106 FM. Stay tuned. You’ll likely be hearing it soon.

www.myspace.com/yungnittlz

BEST B-MOVIE SURVIVOR

The crappy economy has ruined many things. It’s the reason both the Parkway and the Cerrito Speakeasy theaters — where you could openly drink a beer you’d actually purchased at the concession stand, not smuggled in under your sweatshirt — closed their doors this year. But even a bummer cash crunch can’t dampen a true cult movie fan’s love of all things B. Deprived of a permanent venue for his long-running “Thrillville,” programmer and host Will “The Thrill” Viharo adjusted his fez, brushed off his velvet lapels, and started booking his popular film ‘n’ cabaret extravaganzas at other Bay Area movie houses, including the 4-Star and the Balboa in San Francisco, and San Jose’s Camera 3. Fear not, devotees of film noir, tiki culture, the swingin’ ’60s, big-haired babes, Aztec mummies, William Shatner, the Rat Pack, Elvis, creature features, Japanese monsters, and zombies — the Thrill ain’t never gonna be gone.

www.thrillville.net

BEST GAY FLIPPER ACTION

Much like travel agents, beepers, and modesty, pinball machines are slowly becoming relics of the past. But it’s difficult to understand why these quarter-fed games would fall by the wayside, since they’re especially fun in a bar atmosphere. What else is there to do besides stare at your drink, hopelessly chat up the bartender, constantly check your phone, and try to catch that one cute patron’s eye. At the Castro’s Moby Dick, pinball saves you from such doldrums. Sure, the place has the requisite video screens blaring Snap! and Cathy Dennis chestnuts, and plenty of hunky drunkies to serve as distractions. But its quarter-action collection — unfortunately whittled down to three machines, ever since Theater of Magic was retired due to the difficulty of finding replacement parts — is a delightful retro rarity in this gay day and age. So tilt not, World Cup Soccer, Addams Family, and Attack from Mars fans. There’s still a queer home for your lightning-quick flipping.

4049 18th St., SF. www.mobydicksf.com

BEST BLAST OF JUSTICE

Founded in 2002, the many-membered Brass Liberation Orchestra has been blowing their horns for social justice all over the Bay Area — from the San Francisco May Day March and Oakland rallies for Oscar Grant, to protests against city budget cuts and jam sessions at the 16th Street BART station. Trombones out and bass drums at the ready, this tight-knit organization of funky folk recently returned from New Orleans, where they played to support community rebuilding projects in the Lower Ninth Ward. With a membership as diverse as they come, the BLO toots their horns specifically to “support political causes with particular emphasis on peace, and racial and social justice” — especially concerning immigrants’ rights and anti-gentrification issues. But the most joyful part of their practice is the spontaneous street parties they engender wherever they pop up, and their seemingly impromptu romps through neighborhoods and street festivals. Viva la tuba-lution!

www.brassliberation.org

BEST WITTY WONG

Is your idea of hell being trapped in a room with a white, collegiate, spoken-word “artist” — or worse yet, being forced to wear an Ed Hardy t-shirt? Are you a veteran of the 30 Stockton and the 38 Geary, with the wounds and the stories to prove it? Can you just not help but stare at someone who somehow can’t resist an act of street corner masturbation? Then you’re ready to lend an ear to Ali Wong, the funniest comedian to stomp onto a San Francisco stage in a long time. Some people get offended by Wong, which is one reason she’s funny — comedy isn’t about making friends, and she’s not sentimental. She draws on her family history and writing and performing experience in implicit rather than overt ways while remaining as blunt as your funniest friend on a bender.

www.aliwong.com

BEST SITE FOR SHUTTERBUGS

Take a picture, it’ll last longer. Especially if you take it to — or even at — RayKo Photo Center, a large SoMA space that boasts a studio, a shop stocked with new and used cameras, a variety of black-and-white and color darkrooms, a digital imaging lab (with discount last-Friday-of-the-month nighttime hours), and classes where one can learn the latest digital skills as well as older and arcane processes such as Ambrotype (glass plate) and Tintype (metal plate) image-making. Devoted in part to local photographers, RayKo’s gallery has showcased Bill Daniel’s panoramic yet raw shots of a post-Katrina Louisiana and has likely influenced a new generation of shutterbugs affiliated with groups and sites like Cutter Photozine and Photo Epicenter. One of its coolest and truly one-of-a-kind features is the Art*O*Mat Vending Machine, an old ciggie vendor converted into a $5-a-piece art dispenser. And of course RayKo has an old photo booth, so you can take some quick candid snapshots with or without a honey.

428 Third St., SF. (415) 495-3773, www.raykophoto.com

BEST RAPPING CABBIE

The great myth about cab drivers is that they’re a bunch of underappreciated geniuses who write poetry and paint masterpieces when they’re not busy shuttling drunks around. Most cabbies, however, aren’t Picassos with pine-scent air fresheners. They clock in and out just like we all do, and then they go home and watch reality TV. There are, however, a few exceptions to the rule: true artists who have deliberately chosen the cabbie lifestyle because it allows them the freedom to pursue their passions on the side. MC Mars is such a cabbie. A 20-year veteran on the taxi scene, Mars is also a hip-hop performer, a published author, and an HIV activist. You can check his flow every Wednesday night at the Royale’s open-mic sessions. Or, if you’re lucky enough to hail his DeSoto, you can get a free backseat show on weekends. And don’t forget to pick up his latest CD, “Letz Cabalaborate,” available on Mars’ Web site.

www.mcmars.net

BEST FRESH POETICS

The Bay Area knows poetry. And people in the Bay Area who know poetry today realize that the San Francisco Renaissance, the Beats, the Language poets, and even the New Brutalists might inspire contemporary writers, but they don’t own them. You can encounter proof in places like Books and Bookshelves, and read it in publications like Try. As the Bay Area Poetics anthology edited by Stephanie Young made clear in 2006, Bay Area verse is enormous and ever-changing. One year earlier, David Larsen established a space for it in Oakland with his New Yipes Reading Series, which frequently paired poets with filmmakers. He’s since moved to the East Coast, but Ali Warren and Brandon Brown re-energized the concept, simplifying its name to The New Reading Series and refining its content to readings with musical interludes. It’s the best place around to hear Tan Lin and Ariana Reines and confront notions of the self through Heath Ledger. It’s also hosted a kissing booth, for all you wordsmiths who aren’t above romantic trappings.

416 25th St., Oakl. www.newyipes.blogspot.com

BEST HOUSE OUTSIDE

For 15 years, the much-loved and lovable warm weather Sunset parties have shaken various hills, isles, parks, patios, and boats with funky, techy house sounds. Launched by underground hero DJ Galen in 1994, the outdoor Sunset gigs have amassed a huge following of excited party newbies and familiar old-school ravers — and now even their kids. Early on in the game, Galen was soon joined by fellow Bay favorite DJs Solar and J-Bird, and the three — collectively known as Pacific Sound — have kept the vibe strong ever since. This year saw a remarkable expansion on the Sunset fan base: attendance at the season opener at Stafford Lake reached almost 4,000, and Pacific Sound just launched an annual — and truly moving — party on Treasure Island that had multiple generations putting their hands in the air. The recent Sunset Campout in Belden drew hundreds for an all-weekend romp with some of the biggest names in electronic music — true fresh air freshness.

www.pacificsound.net

BEST SECRET OF ETERNAL RAVE

According to murky local legend, sometime in the early ’90s a Finnish archaeologist named Mr. Floppy passed through Oakland on a quest to find an inverted pyramid rumored to hold the secret to eternal life. He didn’t find anything like that, of course, but he did discover a really cool apartment complex run by an obsessive builder named George Rowan. The sprawling place, which housed multiple dwelling units as well as an outdoor dance area and an out-of-use bordello and saloon famously frequented by Jack London in the 1800s, was an interconnected maze of rooms decorated with found objects and outsider art. It was a perfect spot to throw underground raves, which is exactly what Floppy and Rowan did until the day they got slapped with a fire-hazard citation. Nobody really knows what happened to the psychedelic archaeologist after that, although his spirit lives on: Mr. Floppy’s Flophouse has recently re-opened as a venue for noise shows, freaky circuses, and all-night moonlit orgies.

1247 E. 12th St., Oakl

Meet Lolita… and dig on New People’s Tokyo trends

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Text and photos by Caitlin Donohue

Lolita 1 0110.JPG
“Sweet lolita” Maria Elena-Diaz is cute as a button shopping at SF’s new hotspot for Japanese subculture

It is rare that you see live baby dolls perusing the racks at an American mall. Abercrombie & Fitch just isn’t cornering the bonnet and bloomer market these days.

But- not to sound redundant- the Japanese do things differently. Case in point: New People, the newest import shopping center to open up in Japantown. It’s here that a subculture from the Empire of the Sun based on dressing like Strawberry Shortcake is finding new visibility in San Francisco.

New People is a vast complex of urban Japanese culture, housing five floors of various wonders and accoutrements. One story is devoted to art, a gallery showing sleekly interesting works in a variety of mediums from stuffed animal chandeliers to leaves rendered in ceramic. One floor’s all about film, now featuring a full month of movies about music in the basement theater. They’ve got a small café offering Blue Bottle coffee and bento boxes that encourages leisurely manga perusal and a vast selection of Japanese tchotchkes- smoke machines, psychedelic origami paper and brave vegetable action figures. But it’s their floor devoted to hard-to-find Japanese clothing labels that makes New People a truly unique place.

The mall is the home of Kyoto-based Sou Sou shoes- tabi footwear in stylee patterns reminiscent of children’s bedding with unusual, toe-cleaving designs. It is also the only west coast retailer of clothing brands Black Peace Now and Baby, The Stars Shine Bright– two O.G. names in the lolita/goth scene from Tokyo.

Woodyland

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Woodyland

YEAR IN FILM The defining adjective for Woody Harrelson is hard to pin, but I’d nominate … limber. Not just because he’s a deft physical comedian — in The Late Henry Moss, a star-encrusted but not very good Sam Shepard play that premiered in San Francisco in 2000, he stole the show from the likes of Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, and Cheech Marin with a 20-minute bit as a cabbie stuck in a front door. But also because he undergoes gymnastic changes from one screen role to another without ever seeming to break a sweat, or lose

his essential congeniality.

He appears to be a laid-back guy, and he’s a certainly a laid-back actor — one never sees the heavy Actor Man gears rotating (unlike with Sean Penn). It all seems to be pure pleasure and/or instinct. Maybe because he makes it look so easy — and because he’s so good a goofball — Harrelson has seemed kinda taken for granted, a guy who lucked out in TV (Cheers), then movies. He’s had a haphazard career by the usual upwardly-mobile standards, mixing leads, support parts, cameos, mainstream and indie projects, network guest spots, heavy drama and low comedy. One suspects he takes work because he likes the people involved or it sounds like fun. No wonder he’s not the possessor of a screen image as carefully calibrated (and, at least until recently, lucrative) as Tom Cruise.

I’m sure there was no intentionality involved — dig the randomness of his 2008 output — but 2009 turns out a year that insisted attention be paid. Closet Harrelson fans (why would you hide that love?) emerged. How could they not? His conspiracy theorist was the sole spontaneous note in humungous idiot’s-delight 2012. He gave the sublime Steve Zahn a run for his scene-owning money in undervalued indie flop Management, as principal rival for Jennifer Aniston’s affections.

More significantly, he ruled as brokenhearted macho blowhards in two wildly different films. In Zombieland, his joyriding undead hunter has gorgeous comic rapport with Jesse Eisenberg’s shambling teen coward, improving their material considerably. That surprise box-office triumph was followed by underachiever The Messenger, in which Harrelson plays the officer who trains-partners Ben Foster in the terrible task — considered by many the military’s worst job — of informing home-front families their loved ones

have been killed.

Harrelson’s role in that was sarcastic, hostile, loutish, hilarious, tender, tragic — a tribute to director-coscenarist Oren Moverman, for sure, but especially to the actor he rightly figured as best possible choice. It’s a beautiful performance. But in a toss-up between that and Zombieland, I’d be hard-pressed to choose a favorite.

Yet even those movies don’t let Harrelson dominate as in Defendor, a 2009 Toronto International Film Festival premiere not due theatrically until next year. In that, he plays a near-homeless schizophrenic who imagines himself a superhero. That tricky role brings out nearly all his colors, especially the loopy, athletic, and pathos-driven ones.

It’s another small film in a career whose highlights are often under-the-radar, like his gay Southerner escort to Manhattan socialites in 2007’s The Walker; the quiet hired gun in 2007’s No Country For Old Men; guess-who in 1996’s The People vs. Larry Flynt; the grenade recipient in 1998’s The Thin Red Line; and so forth. Not to mention such funny-farm swerves as Natural Born Killers (1994), Kingpin (1996), Wag the Dog (1997), and (in drag) Anger Management (2003).

To his credit, Harrelson has also been a high-profile spokesman for hemp, veganism, and overall greening. At his Mill Valley Festival tribute in October, he was charmingly abashed by his own success and serious about attributing achievement to others. All this overcoming a most unfortunate familial background fictionalized in fellow-Texan-turned-local-playwright Octavio Solis’ brilliant Santos & Santos.

Will he age out? Unlikely — already straddling Steve Buscemi and Matthew McConaughey terrain, he can be our next Jeff Bridges for another 30 years.

2000 and gone

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2000 and gone

YEAR IN FILM I will follow him. The opening moments of Pablo Stoll’s Hiroshima convey that sentiment’s dedication in a single shot, a lengthy behind-the-shoulder look at Stoll’s brother Juan Andres as he traverses a suburban street in Uruguay. Such a simple film, Hiroshima: a day-in-the-life structure; silent film intertitles instead of spoken dialogue; “only” one brother’s look at another. Yet there is passion beneath Juan Andres Stoll’s mute detachment, and grief beneath Pablo Stoll’s at times humorous familial portrait of a half-somnambulant with dark circles around his eyes. The passion is revealed in the final scene, when the film’s potent and unconventional use of music reaches a climax. The grief floats around the edges of the screen, and is locked within the closing dedication to Juan Pablo Rebella, Stoll’s co-director on 2001’s 25 Watts and 2004’s Whisky, who killed himself with a gun three years ago, at 32.

Mapping infinite negative space within the movie maze, I can’t help but see Stoll’s brother as Rebella, and connect Hiroshima’s opening shot with the last major shot of Whisky: an uncomfortably extended look at forsaken Marta (Mirella Pascual), tears streaming down her face, in the back of a taxi going who knows where. When Whisky was released, that scene might have seemed like a pale descendant of the notorious 10-minute crying jag at the end of Tsai Ming-liang’s 1994 Vive l’amour. But as time goes on, the increasingly arch Tsai’s vision of isolated sorrow seems less genuine, if not potent. In contrast, Whisky‘s farewell is some kind of transformation, a baton, both end and beginning.

Wherever he may go. Last week, rummaging through a drawer, I came across Alexis Tioseco’s card. My heart hurt more than usual. I remember when I first saw Alexis, at a screening of Jacques Rivette’s Out 1 in Vancouver. During short breaks between segments of Rivette’s 12-hour opus, I’d wonder who he was, recognizing he was important to me before we’d even said hello. A few days later, after we’d met, I remember him walking out of an obnoxiously provocative film, and how his wasn’t an empty or dramatic gesture, just an honest decision. At the end of the festival, Alexis, the filmmaker John Torres, Chi-hui Yang, and I had dinner, and over the course of close conversation with knees touching, I realized my nascent crush was actually a matter of meeting someone extraordinary whom I admired. A month or two later, Alexis let me excerpt part of one of his best essays for the type of year-end Guardian film issue you’re reading now.

On Sept. 1, Alexis and his girlfriend and fellow writer Nika Bohinc were shot to death in their apartment in Manila. There are tributes to them online, many written by people who knew him far better than I. I’m trying now, but I can’t pay respect to Alexis yet. When I’m not feeling rage about his killing, I’m haunted by the purity of his commitment to film and his culture, and how I fall short of it. (As for most U.S. film critics, don’t get me started. The entertain-me imperial indulgence typical of them is especially disgusting in the context of Alexis’s death, a context it now lives within for me.) My failure is something I think about daily, and aim to change.

This is not sentimental. Alexis wasn’t faultless, but he was that special. I remember coming across a short entry on one of Alexis’s sites that not just pointedly but also poignantly exposed the colonialism of a Bruce Baillie film. That little piece of illustrated writing provided a counterpoint to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s valuable appreciations of Baillie. I thought about it this year through tear-blurred eyes while watching Apichatpong’s For Alexis. “The Letter I Would Love to Read to You In Person,” Alexis’s essay for Nika, is a great piece of film writing. Its title is downright painful to behold. Revolutions happen like refrains in a song, he wrote. I will follow him, wherever I may go.

 

This Week’s Picks

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WEDNESDAY 30th

DANCE

Rhythm & Motion 30th Anniversary Dance Bash

If you’re really going to throw down on the dance floor this New Year’s Eve, it’s time to train, and there is no better time or place than the 30th birthday celebration of Rhythm and Motion, a center for global dance and dance workout created by Consuelo Faust. The events include team-taught, all-star master classes, an evening performance by the Rhythm and Motion teachers, and a dance party finale. Everyone is invited. (Johnny Ray Huston)

10 a.m.–midnight, free

ODC Dance Commons

351 Shotwell, SF

(415) 863-9830 x100

www.rhythmandmotion.com

MUSIC

X

Legendary Los Angeles punk rockers X distinguished themselves from other bands of their era by honing the same searing energy that propelled their counterparts and adding the rock solid rhythms of DJ Bonebrake, the guitar virtuosity of Billy Zoom, and the poetic lyrics and intimate vocal interplay of John Doe and Exene Cervenka. This holiday season finds the band celebrating a “Merry Xmas,” having recently released new recordings of holiday favorites “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.” Despite Cervenka’s recent multiple sclerosis diagnosis, she and the band sound stronger than ever. They’re the perfect musical friends to help welcome in a rockin’ New Year. (Sean McCourt)

With Dave Gleason and the Golden Cadillacs (Wed.) and the Heavenly States (Thurs.)

9 p.m. (also Thurs/31), $31–$71

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com.

THURSDAY 31st

MUSIC

Boyz IV Men

Don’t be fooled: you might think this band altered their name in parodic jest, but really, it was just an evasive maneuver to throw everyone off while they continue campaigning under their banner of complicit subjection to everything that is male. Boyz IV Men like to think of it as being in the closet — a closet inside an even bigger closet. Their sound is of equal subterfuge: two of them play children’s keyboards with pinky fingers while the third cranks out aggressive, tantrum-driven disco beats. This is all to say that I also grow my beard out for every one of their shows. Spending NYE with a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested boys and men? Count. Me. Down. (Spencer Young)

With 1.2..3 … Knife!, DJ Summer Camp, and B4M DJ Set

9 p.m., free

Five Points Art House

72 Tehama, SF

(415) 989-1166

www.fivepointsarthouse.com

FILM

“Quintessential Chaplin”

Things you could do tonight at the movie theater: visit an overstuffed multiplex, and suffer through something with the word “Squeakquel” in its title. What you should do instead: head to gorgeous Grace Cathedral for three Charlie Chaplin shorts with live organ accompaniment by Dorothy Papadakos. The bill compiles three movies from 1917: The Cure, in which the Little Tramp is a drunk on the mend; The Immigrant, in which he encounters immediate money woes upon landing in America; and The Adventurer, in which he’s an escaped convict. Classic shenanigans all, with nary a chipmunk in sight. (Cheryl Eddy)

7 and 10 p.m., $10–$15

Grace Cathedral

1100 California, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.gracecathedral.org

MUSIC

Disco 2010 with Glass Candy

Mirror mirror, on the wall, which is the fairest disco NYE event of all? No question: it’s Disco 2010. Aside from some Popscene DJ spots, this is a showcase for the formidable Johnny Jewel, bringing two of his musical projects together on one bill. Most people know of Glass Candy and their aerobic appeal. Not as well-known and newer on the scene is Desire, whose debut recording on Italians Do it Better brought one of 2009’s catchiest and most haunting pop songs, “Don’t Call,” a four-minute breakup anthem that tapped into the “Billie Jean” backbeat before MJ’s death, adding a mournful but propulsive string arrangement to a tale of new independence. (Huston)

9 p.m., $45

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

FRIDAY 1st

EVENT

Supper Club’s Breakfast in Bed

I enjoy my bed. Comfortable, familiar, a place where everybody knows my name. But after this year’s fabulous New Year’s Eve carousing, how anticlimactic will it be to sink into the same old sheets? Luckily, I don’t have to, because Supper Club is planning a party. Breakfast in Bed includes a breakfast buffet, mimosas, the chain’s trademark mattress hangouts, and house beats that are respectful of the fact that this is probably not the first party you’ve gone to in the last 12 hours. For $140, you and three of your accomplices can even reserve your own bedstead, complete with pillow-side food and drink service. If you’re not a total hedonistic degenerate, you can go to bed when the ball drops and head out here sober to live vicariously through the hangovers of others. (Caitlin Donohue)

5–11 a.m., $10–$40

Supper Club

657 Harrison, SF

(415) 348-0900

www.supperclub.com

SATURDAY 2nd

VISUAL ART

“When Lives Become Form: Contemporary Brazilian Art, From the 1960s to the Present”

Kick off the new year with a blast of Technicolor via this traveling exhibition dedicated to the formidable and ever-morphing visual art and music phenom known as tropicália. With a range that extends from the Brazilian movement’s originator, Hélio Oiticica, to newer artists such as the pre-Ryan Trecartin and pre-Paper Rad color assaults of assume vivid astro focus, “When Lives Become Form” might make it a little easier to forgive Os Mutantes for that McDonald’s commercial. (Huston)

Noon-8 p.m. (through Jan. 31), $5–$7

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

SUNDAY 3rd

FILM

You, the Living

“Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot.” This Goethe quote opens Roy Andersson’s You, the Living, the sequel to his 2000 tragicomedy Songs From the Second Floor. Composed of 50 absurdist vignettes, You, the Living does not transcend existential ennui; neither does it wallow in angst. Rather, it couples pain with love, portraying a bleakly comic world where despair and happiness carry the same weight. The palette of drab blues and yellows mimic the color of pills, and one could say the film serves as an advertisement for Prozac. The dissonant noise of sousaphones, bass drums, and banjos create an artifice of comedic musicality set against a backdrop of frumpy bedrooms, bars, and office buildings, where nothing really happens. Just everyday life. (Lorian Long)

2, 4, 7:15 and 9:20 p.m. (also Mon/4, 7:15 and 9:20 p.m.)

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com

CLASS

Yoga and Ayurveda for Real Life

Here, tallied and totaled, is the approximate intake of the average festive individual over the last week: a cheese plate, a bite of questionable ham, three scoops of black-eyed peas, two pounds of turkey, 15 latkes with applesauce, 110 frosted cookies, a barely edible door off of some poor child’s gingerbread house, a carafe of mulled cider, six cups of eggnog, eight flutes of champagne, a half bottle of Jack Daniels, three trips to the mall after you said you weren’t going to go this year, and the guilt of getting a camera tripod from Aunt Sara when you sent her a very nice bar of soap. A few days late. Yes, your body hates you. Get back in its good graces with a class from one of the most affordable, least judging yoga/massage studios in the city. The Mindful Body’s Kate Lumsden is offering a tutorial on integrating yoga — back? — into your life for the new year, the perfect chance to feel centered again before Monday. (Donohue)

1–4 p.m., $35

The Mindful Body

2876 California, SF

(415) 931-2639

www.themindfulbody.com

MUSIC

Hunx and His Punx, Brilliant Colors

The world was in need of a true gay Teen Beat pin-up, not a closeted one. Luckily, the fun and sexy Hunx came to the rescue, posing in a jockstrap splayed out on a bed filled with pop culture treasures. He’s made some great clips with music video wunderkind Justin Kelly, and his new LP Gay Singles (True Panther/Matador) is great front and back — as evidenced by its cover, which presents crotch-and-ass close-ups of zebra bikini briefs. Do your makeup, and then do someone at this show, which doubles the pop appeal with Slumberland girls Brilliant Colors. (Huston)

With Gun Outfit

9 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

TUESDAY 5th

MUSIC

Pirate Cat Radio Benefit Show

After 13 years of putting the “arr!” in radio (sorry, couldn’t resist), Pirate Cat Radio has officially been fucked by the FCC. The corporate whores slapped the unlicensed broadcast radio station with a $10,000 fine back in August, and gave founder Daniel K. Roberts (“Monkey”) 30 days to either pay up or challenge the fine. As Roberts fights to put Pirate back on the air, several benefit shows are being held to help save SF’s favorite renegade station. One such show will be at Bottom of the Hill, where local music cuties Hey Young Believer and Blood and Sunshine will play electropop alongside UK electronic artist Con Brio. (Long)

8:30 p.m., $9

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

FILM

Rocky

SFMOMA’s “Museum Highs, Museum Lows” film series continues the binary theme of last year’s film series “Vegas Highs, Vegas Lows,” but shifts locales. The Italian stallion, Mr. Balboa, starts things off, not just because he’s everyone’s favorite underdog — and thus the perfect archetype for overcoming the terrible economy — but because he’s enshrined in bronze at the top of the Philadelphia MoMA’s steps. The thought behind this whole “High/Low” dichotomy is in line with camp — so bad it’s good — so perhaps SFMOMA’s is out to reverse Philly MoMA’s embarrassment about the statue. But who cares about that damned thing? It’s Rocky’s will to survive that we want to see. (Young)

Noon, free

Phyllis Wattis Theater

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4400

www.sfmoma.org

Top films of 2009! SFBG film critics weigh in, part two

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More top ten lists — and lists of other stripes as well! And don’t forget to check out our annual Year in Film issue, out Wed/30.

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Jerry McDaniel in Everything Strange and New.

Dennis Harvey’s Overlooked Performances of 2009

1. Liam Neeson in Five Minutes of Heaven (Oliver Hirschbiegel, UK)
2. Anna Faris and Celia Weston in Observe and Report (Jody Hill, USA)
3. Steve Zahn in Management (Stephen Belber, USA)
4. Everyone in A Perfect Getaway (David Twohy, USA); Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan); Black Dynamite (Scott Sanders, USA); and Everything Strange and New (Frazer Bradshaw, USA)
5. Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat in Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, USA)
6. Alec Baldwin in Lymelife (Derick Martini, USA)
7. Spock (Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy) in Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, USA/Germany)
8. Michael Cera in Paper Heart (Nicholas Jasenovec, USA)
9. Kali Hawk in Couples Retreat (Peter Billingsly, USA)
10. Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man (John Hamburg, USA)
11. Zach Gilford in Dare (Adam Salky, USA)
12. Woody Harrelson in Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, USA) and 2012 (Roland Emmerich, USA/Canada)
13. Michael Shannon and John Ventimiglia, The Missing Person (Noah Buschel, USA)

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A scene from Paranormal Activity.

Top films of 2009! SFBG film critics weigh in, part one

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It’s that time of year again — Oscar contenders (and wannabes) are hogging the theaters, and just about every film writer who put fingers to keyboard in 2009 is making his or her top ten list. Here at the Guardian, some of us make top ten lists, and some of us make whatever kind of list we want. Check out our annual Year in Film issue, out Wed/30, and read on for our contributors’ top (and otherwise) picks.

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Louis Peitzman’s Top Ten Performances of 2009

1. Colin Firth in A Single Man (Tom Ford, USA)
2. Mo’Nique in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Lee Daniels, USA)
3. Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, USA/Germany)
4. Marion Cotillard in Nine (Rob Marshall, USA/Italy)
5. Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, USA)
6. Jackie Earle Haley in Watchmen (Zack Snyder, USA)
7. Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, USA/UK/France)
8. Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh, USA)
9. Meryl Streep in Julie and Julia (Nora Ephron, USA)
10. Carey Mulligan in An Education (Lone Scherfig, UK)

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Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds.

Erik Morse’s Top Ten Films of 2009

1. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, USA)
2. The Missing Person (Noah Buschel, USA)
3. The Beaches of Agnès (Agnès Varda, France)
4. Coraline (Henry Selick, USA)
5. Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan)
6. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
7. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, Austria/Germany/France/Italy)
8. Mother (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea)
9. Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
10. Thirst (Chan-wook Park, South Korea)

Erik Morse’s honorable mentions: Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani, USA); Revanche (Götz Spielmann, Austria); Tyson (James Toback, USA); Orphan (Jaume Collet-Serra, USA/Canada/Germany/France); Examined Life (Astra Taylor, Canada); Science is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painleve (Criterion Collection DVD); Rembrandt’s J’accuse (Peter Greenaway, Netherlands/Germany/Finland); Valentino: The Last Emperor (Matt Tyrnauer, USA); Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama, USA)

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Scene from Goodbye Solo.

The halting dance of Sirron Norris and Fox TV

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By Caitlin Donohue

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One more quirky animated show for FOX TV? Hey, at least it’s something to keep you busy in between episodes of The Cleveland Show!

Some may see it as a big leap to go from working on street murals in San Francisco to designing a pilot for Fox, but for painter Sirron Norris, it all comes down to the cheese. “Making a living is important to me,” says the Bay Area artist. Norris has been keeping busy working on the creative design for “Bob’s Burgers,” an animated series that the network just ordered 13 episodes of, set to debut in early 2011 with a cast of comedians in the vocal roles.

In our recent interview for this week’s SFBG Scene magazine, Norris leveled with me about the process his team went through to make “Bob’s Burgers” a TV series that was appropriate for the network home of the country’s first cartoon family.

Getting Xmas Twisted

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Getting Xmas Twisted

SONIC REDUCER “I saw mommy fellating Santa Claus /Under balls so snowy white last night.”

Rude and crude — yes. But outrageous and sacrilegious — and worth stumbling out of the Las Vegas Hilton as fast as your aged legs can take you? Maybe. Though Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider gave us plenty of goofy warning that he was going there, giving us “the real story” — meaning his bawdy, rowdy rock ‘n’ roll story — behind the voyeuristic kicks of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” our last illusions were shattered, sorta, in the spirit of the gently taboo-busting song.

Ah, and so this is Vegas — just the place to use, abuse, and hock that illusion. The land of The Hangover, neon flash, and an expected and cheesy yet palpable air of convivial good cheer in the buffet line and beneath omnipresent the casino cameras, lurking amid the underutilized Millionaire’s Club slot machines.

“Mommy” was definitely one of the many highlights at Twisted Sister’s three-night stand “Twisted Christmas,” a mix of holiday classics with a goofy rock ‘n’ roll twist and yesteryear hits — the live successor to the group’s 2006 yuletide album of the same name. I had to tear myself away from the Kitty Glitter penny-slot amid the dated beige glam of the Hilton Elvis built, lured by post-show free margaritas and the reverently irreverent metal ‘tude promised by the band that hit it big at the Headbanger’s Ball with “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

We took in Dee Snider in full clown makeup (“Sarah Jessica Parker dipped in acid!” proclaimed guitarist-manager Jay Jay French, quoting the British press) and a black-and-hot-pink body suit entering in a sleigh drawn by dancers and vixens in skimpy Suicide Girl-wear, Twisted rewrites of holiday classics like the tweaked new last line of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” (“Christ wa-ah-s a Jew!”), and predictable yuks like the mohawked and pantless Santa Satan who joked about adjusting his sack, or a “12 Heavy Metal Days of Christmas” that naturally included “eight pentagrams” and “five skull earrings.” That’s as satanic as matters got, and though the playing was at times a bit less than tight, the band’s original members were in impassioned form, getting in as many jokes at Ozzy’s expense as Santa’s.

As we watched dozens of likely comped retirees piling into their seats, my companion, Prof. Fluffenheimer, muttered to himself, “I wonder how many of these people will be leaving in the first 15 minutes.”

Lo, our entire row had pretty much cleared halfway into the hour-and-a-half concert — too bad, ’cause they missed the malevolent and very unmerry “Burn in Hell” and a fist-punching sing-along “I Wanna Rock,” which had the remaining metal heads and rockers, 40-something dad-ish fans in polo shirts, wrestling team sprats, Sarah Palin look-alikes, table tennis conventioneers, and sundry other Vegas casino crawlers all hollering “Rock!” in unison. Let’s say it wasn’t the total madhouse the Ramones inspired at the Stone back in the late ’80s. But it brought back those chestnut-toasty, black-leather memories when French and guitarist Eddie Ojeda, now seemingly recovered from his recent back surgery thanks to “massive hallucinogens,” riffed off the Brudders by working “Ho! Ho! Let’s go” into “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

All of which inspired me to fantasize about other Christmas musical extravaganzas that oughta be on every music fan’s list. I’m not talking about Andy Williams and Wynonna, who filled the Hilton theater after Twisted Sister had moved their raucous NYC rawker selves along. And American Idol grads don’t count, being programmed to perform the cheesiest song on hand, on command. How about a little Christmas cheer from these pop types?

Beyonce “Baby Boy” is readymade for a rejiggered “Santa Baby,” or at least a nativity scene featuring “Ave Maria” and “Halo.”

Lady Gaga Her platinum tresses make her a natural Christmas angel. “Boys Boys Boys” must be reappropriated as “Toys Toys Toys.”

Justin Timberlake Picture the Timberlad poking around for a yule log in his “SexySack”.

Kanye West Embracing the chill of West’s last album with songs like “Coldest Winter,” this holiday should look ahead to the New Year by ringing it in KaNYE style. After the graduate gets in a scuffle with Santa, the show ends with a contrite, winged West delivering a bushel of MTV Video Music Awards to a virginal Taylor Swift.

SCENE: N.I.C.E. Collective designs a community

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The N.I.C.E. boys. All photos by Spencer Hansen

Designers Joe Haller and Ian Hannula of burgeoning San Francisco fashion brand N.I.C.E. Collective (www.nicecollective.com) met in a club more than a decade ago and started collaborating on projects — the first one was repurposing an electric blanket into a jumper — complete with tag and plug. Their big idea was to fuel fashion with a musical and nightlife sensibility, enabling the duo to build a community of artists. N.I.C.E. (an acronym for “navigate, inform, create, explore”) rocked New York Fashion Week last spring with a show that felt more art installation/dance party than runway presentation, and whose backdrop included a 19th century carriage and much charred wood. The impeccably edgy Time Machine line they introduced there took off and now holds its own on the floors of retail boutiques next to editorial darlings Rag & Bone and more established brands like Comme des Garcons.

But what next? Between constant trips back and forth from New York to the site of their “live fashion installment” in Bolinas, we managed to snag Joe and Ian for a moment to ask them about the concept for their latest, “communal” clothing line.

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SFBG When did you start cultivating the concept for a communal line launch?
N.I.C.E. We came across this stretch of land in Bolinas, and we looked over it and thought, “with the economy tanking, why don’t we just set up a little commune together?” This thought became the jump-off point for our design inspiration for spring 2010. We decided to name it the Gathering.

Then when we didn’t find what we were looking for to show the clothes in New York during Fashion Week this fall, we thought back to Bolinas and decided to go ahead and actually set up a temporary community there. Instead of art directing an outdoor photo-shoot, we would live it and take pictures of our line that way.

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SFBG How did it go? Were any of the models eaten by bears?

N.I.C.E. It was absolutely fantastic. We underestimated how difficult it would be. We could only drive so far, and had to carry everything to the site for a quarter mile. We didn’t finish unloading until 3 a.m. We were up there for four-and-a-half days, with perfect weather, building domes and tents and art installations.

The models were great: they were pitching tents and carrying sound equipment. Even models are creative: they were building visual platforms that had a good flow. We ended up chasing light a lot of the time to capture what was going on, and the images were not as haphazard as we had envisioned. But in the end, it was really a magical experience.

The biggest thing for us is to be able to share our thought process. The design is so close to our hearts, but I think oftentimes it’s missed by the customer. We want to give people a path to see it.

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SFBG Do tell a bit about the clothes, then.
N.I.C.E. The idea we’re focusing on is pioneering, which highlights utilitarian use. But we try to make the utilitarian component hidden, and clothes that fit and work no matter what environment you’re in. Nothing is too precious: everything is beautiful but still sturdy. Each garment has a little way of achieving a secondary use; technology is layered in to communicate that a little more. We have a fabric that has stainless steel woven into it, so it holds where you form it, creates a great wrinkle. And garments reconstructed from military tents that can be worn as either a parka or a skirt.

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SFBG Brilliant. So seems like you’ve entirely eschewed New York.
N.I.C.E. In New York, there is this typical fashion noise where everyone is kind of vibrating at the same pace. San Francisco lets us be apart from that and do our own thing. It is a challenge working here. The fashion industry is not here, but it’s such a great, inspiring city to work in that the benefits are worth it. When we came back from Fashion Week, we needed a month to recover. But since we’ve been back from the Gathering, we’ve still got an inspirational glow.

SCENE: N.I.C.E. Collective designs a community

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Interview by Laura Palmer. From SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour on stands in the Guardian now

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The N.I.C.E. boys. All photos by Spencer Hansen

Designers Joe Haller and Ian Hannula of burgeoning San Francisco fashion brand N.I.C.E. Collective (www.nicecollective.com) met in a club more than a decade ago and started collaborating on projects — the first one was repurposing an electric blanket into a jumper — complete with tag and plug. Their big idea was to fuel fashion with a musical and nightlife sensibility, enabling the duo to build a community of artists. N.I.C.E. (an acronym for “navigate, inform, create, explore”) rocked New York Fashion Week last spring with a show that felt more art installation/dance party than runway presentation, and whose backdrop included a 19th century carriage and much charred wood. The impeccably edgy Time Machine line they introduced there took off and now holds its own on the floors of retail boutiques next to editorial darlings Rag & Bone and more established brands like Comme des Garcons.

But what next? Between constant trips back and forth from New York to the site of their “live fashion installment” in Bolinas, we managed to snag Joe and Ian for a moment to ask them about the concept for their latest, “communal” clothing line.

DJ nice collective.jpg

SFBG When did you start cultivating the concept for a communal line launch?
N.I.C.E. We came across this stretch of land in Bolinas, and we looked over it and thought, “with the economy tanking, why don’t we just set up a little commune together?” This thought became the jump-off point for our design inspiration for spring 2010. We decided to name it the Gathering.

Then when we didn’t find what we were looking for to show the clothes in New York during Fashion Week this fall, we thought back to Bolinas and decided to go ahead and actually set up a temporary community there. Instead of art directing an outdoor photo-shoot, we would live it and take pictures of our line that way.

Spencer Hansen nice collective 409.jpg

SFBG How did it go? Were any of the models eaten by bears?

SCENE: Lazer Sword zaps the boom-blap

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By Michael Krimper. From SC ENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour, on stands in the Guardian now!

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Lazer Sword photo by Beryl Fine

San Francisco-bred electronic duo, Lazer Sword, has a secret weapon. Bryant Rutledge (a.k.a. Low Limit) and Antaeus Roy (a.k.a. Lando Kal) have developed a musically enhanced dehydration gun that zaps the sweat out of dance crowds like a soul-sonic Super Soaker. There’s no escaping it. Inside investigators report that this weapon emerged mysteriously from a Mission District apartment building in 2006, conceived from a reactive mixture of 1980s sci-fi psychedelia and a futuristic bass-rattling force unanticipated by even the most forward-thinking predictions of the oncoming 2010s. It’s manufactured out of grime-ridden computer technology and 8-bit video game parts, designed with the stuttering ferocity of electro-house synthetics and drum machines, and blessed by the hustlers and gangstas of swagger rap. Welcome to Lazer Sword’s boom blap.

And just like one of those vintage sci-fi films, Rutledge and Roy seem to be on their way to world domination. The duo just returned from their second European tour, slaying dance floors from London, England, to Bialystok, Poland. “Crowds overseas are pretty open to electronic music in general,” says Rutledge, “but I get the feeling that two guys jamming on their midi controllers making weird rap beats mixed with dolphin noises and Hanna Barbera samples is a little different and new for them.” Unabashed, Lazer Sword welcomes the challenge of converting unknowing club fiends, wallflowers, and beat heads alike to their leftfield, electro hip-hop bounce. “There’s always an awesome feeling when the crowd doesn’t know what to expect at first,” Roy weighs in, “then over time, cats are dripping in sweat and falling over themselves.”

SCENE: Sirron Norris bears all

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Interview by Caitlin Donohue. From SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour — on stands in the Guardian now!

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“When you walk into a room in San Francisco, half the people in there are going to know who I am — or at least the bear,” says “cartoon literalism” artist (and palindrome) Sirron Norris. Norris may be right about his citywide ubiquity. The friendly blue bears and pink rabbits that frolic through his Technicolor streetscapes are probably brightening up a wall near you, from Balmy Alley to the neighborhood cheesesteak restaurant. But the lightheartedness of Norris’ popular work belies an artist with an intense drive to be commercially viable in the increasingly barebones world of art. Upcoming projects include Bob’s Burgers, an animated series on Fox, and a studio at 1406 Valencia where he’ll hawk his own work and teach cartooning classes — even a proposed reality show. Ever opinionated, Norris pulls no punches when it comes to taggers, the Mission anti-gentrification movement, and the value of commercialism.

SFBG How did you get started in the SF art scene?
SIRRON NORRIS I fell into fine art. I’d never planned on it at all. I was making video games at a software development company in San Rafael and painting on the side out of frustration. I was doing these canvases on my own and [one day] I took them down to Luggage Space, which was the hot gallery at the time. A few months later, I had a show.

SFBG I think, given the aesthetic of your work, a lot of people would be surprised to find out that you don’t come from a graffiti background.
SN I have a huge disdain for graffiti. My murals have been ripped apart by it. I exercise a lot and the main reason I started is honestly because I wanted to stay up super-late at night and run around with a baseball bat and find [taggers]. People don’t understand when they ruin my murals how hurtful that is. You are stealing that artist’s life away from them. And for what — you want people to notice you? I just think that it’s sad and self-indulgent. I’m an artist too, but when [someone tags a wall] it’s gonna be their name, or an elaborate form of their name, or their crew. It’s not like the murals, where we’re trying to tell some rich indigenous history or something about apartheid.

Retail for the people: Black Panther Clothing

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By Caitlin Donohue

It’s possible that on December 3rd, 1969, when he was arrested for alleged death threats against President Richard Nixon, Black Panther Chief of Staff David Hilliard could not have predicted he’d have a lasting fashion legacy. It was near the height of the Panthers’ international freedom fighting activities. The group was involved in providing food, medical care and legal aid to underserved African-American communities- but in a time of serious governmental persecution, Hilliard was arrested on numerous occasions for everything from possession of a weapon in a public place to his participation in the Oakland police shoot out that killed his comrade Bobby Hutton.

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“Hey Panther, where’d ya get that jacket?” A fashion show Friday’s got the answer

They were rebels, social leaders, badasses- and man, could they dress. The “Panther look”- berets, traditional African textiles and sharp leather jackets- were a hipper, sleeker activist chic than the haphazard “hippie” look prevalent at the time. Although they didn’t set out to be style icons, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States” (as J. Edgar Hoover memorably dubbed them) definitely made their mark on the fashion scene.

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SF fashion designer Andrea Lamadora with her artistic inspiration, Black Panther David Hilliard

It’s a tricky business, commodifying a social movement, but in preparation for creating a clothing line based on the Panthers’ innate vogue, fashion designer Andrea Lamadora had the unique chance to learn from a key player in the movement- Hilliard himself. Her friendship with the activist gave her “the privilege of seeing the Black Panther Party archives, including never seen by the public images and photos of actual Panther clothing from the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Lamadora says. “I was immediately inspired to lend my creative style to this very important historical, political and cultural organization.” After the jump, what she came up with.

Flashing lights

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Flashing lights

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Guardian illustration of DJ AM, Daft Punk, and Steve Aoki by Matt Furie and Aiyana Udesen

DECADE IN MUSIC Good lord. Who can remember all the strobe-lit twists and turns that Bay Area nightlife slid down in the past decade? Even if I wasn’t utterly and gloriously hung over from 10 years of being 86ed, it would still be a sweat-drenched, dry-iced, hypnotic blear. That’s a lovely thing. The ABC crackdown on underground parties in the late 1990s still held strong — and lively licensed spaces like Café Du Nord, Slim’s, Buckshot, and DNA Lounge as well as many music-oriented street fairs are still feeling the pressure of the War on Fun. But you can’t stop the party. And, baby, we lived through it.

One point about nightlife in general this decade: no one could ignore it. From hip-pop’s odiously capitalist-utopian "da club" to the tourist-trap explosion of global dance music festivals, club culture was on everyone’s radar. Today’s pop stars blithely name-check underground nightlife legends like Leigh Bowery and Larry Levan, and middle-school kids fill their notebooks with fantasy club outfits. Oh yeah, edgy nightlife has been completely commodified — thank you, Steve Aoki and DJ AM — but it’s a testament to its amazing versatility that going out is still enormously subversive fun, and the onslaught of bottle service and stretch-limo-packed music vids have had little impact on a vibrant independent scene. (In fact, the independent scene has gotten a ton of mileage out of parodying and reinterpreting mainstream club dreams.)

The last 10 years of the local club scene certainly gave me a lot to write and think — and drink — about. That was probably nightlife’s most distinctive feature: it finally came into its own as an art form, one that welcomed multiple interpretations while devilishly playing with our heads. The best party promoters in the Bay worked hard not only to present immersive subcultural experiences but also to contextualize their parties in terms of global movements. You couldn’t just fly in a supastar DJ and set the light show on random anymore. Clubgoers rejected that kind of dollar-driven cynicism. They wanted to know how a party would plug them into something different, something relevant, something uniquely of the moment, something beyond.

In short, they wanted personality. At times, this meant that concept trumped music — how many times did you find yourself spazzing on the dance floor to someone’s hodgepodge iPod playlist in 2005, just because that someone was ironically amazing? But it sure was fun for a while, giving dance culture a kick in the fancy-pants and throwing open the door to a glittering array of musical styles. And everybody looked fantastic. Irony freed us from previous expectations like beat-matching, genre hegemony, fashion anxiety, and bland slickness. (It also introduced a flood of unicorns and neon accessories.) Deconstruction at last! For good or ill, but mostly for good, anyone could be a DJ, throw a party, design a flyer, work a look. All you needed was a little space, a big idea, and a sense of adventure. A crowd helped, too, but only if you worried about something as mundane as paying the bills. Reality? Oh, really.

That mid-period chemical peel of irony neatly divided the decade. We cruised and shmoozed into the new millennium on the Boom-bubble back of a lazy lounge wave — the sunny house-lite sighs of Naked Music and Miguel Migs, the mushroom jazz of Mark Farina, OM’s smooth-beats Kaskade, and the friendly turntablism of Triple Threat popping the pink Champagne. That wave soon crested, churning up a foam of pink-slip parties, when discount daytime raves and increasingly baby-powdered coke binges took over. Luckily, happy hour took credit cards. Clubland reverted to a pre-Internet sensibility, with small spaces ruling and breakbeats all the rage again.

Alongside the breaks (a sound the Bay actually had a big hand in developing) the club music menu was still hogged by chunky techno, diva house, Burner trance, retro overload, and sing-along hip-hop. Post-punk, electro-funk, radical eclecticism, and global-eared sounds popped their heads up at times: Joy at Liquid, Milkshake at Sno-Drift, Club KY at Amnesia, Knees Up at Hush Hush, Popscene at 330 Ritch, Step at An Sibin, Fake at Cat Club, roving Bardot-a-Go-Go, and one-offs at 26Mix, Blind Tiger, Jezebel’s Joint, Pow!, Annie’s, Tongue and Groove, Storyville, and Justice League. Electroclash had its brief moment, too — anyone remember Electro Rodeo at Galaxy? — and reggaeton made a thrilling brief appearance. But in general the Bay was a little late in breaking free from the ’90s.

That sounds absolutely pukey, but it wasn’t. Some beautiful nights came out of this period — I’m half-remembering Said’s Afro-house Atmosfere, David Harness’s deep-souled Taboo, and anything at the Top, EndUp, or the Cellar. And living in the ’90s wasn’t so bad considering primo parties like Qoöl, Wicked, Stompy, Thump, Death Guild, and New Wave City maintained a presence. Also, if you were looking for "exotic" sounds, you could easily find them at some of the best ethno-audio spaces, like Bissap Baobab and Café Cocomo. But yes, those four-four beats got tiresome.

Then, around late-2004, came a return of the repressed, an explosion of Day-Glo styles that had been incubating in a clutch of neon-oriented, omnivorous-eared parties like Le Freak Plastique at Hush Hush and DJ Jefrodesiac’s Sex With Machines (later Frisco Disco) at Arrow. Soon San Francisco was in the midst of a small-venue, independent promoter golden age — and a rosy flush of youth. Finally, more than the same four people were throwing parties! And you were never sure of what you’d hear.

After a few debauched months of those rag-tag iPod-oriented shindigs, things sorted out into a handful of heady genres. Technology spookily inserted itself — almost every dance floor was bathed in the light of a little half-eaten apple. Serrato and Ableton software made live edits and mind-boggling mashups, like those heard at Bootie, possible, and timelines fell away to reveal gleaming ahistorical sonic landscapes. Beat-matching gradually came back into vogue, but wittily revealing the seams between tracks became the ne plus ultra of DJ craftsmanship.

The French invaded in the form of Daft Punk- and Justice-inspired electro bangers, spraying young clubbers with American Apparel and shutter shades. To my ears, Richie Panic and Vin Sol were our best balls-out interpreters of this fuck-all party sound and spirit, and Blow Up at Rickshaw Stop its finest venue. Minimal techno made sure hot nerds with little glasses were still in control — Kontrol at EndUp, in fact, was the club that did the most to nurture the Berlin-based sound here, with venue Anu and now the near-perfect 222 Hyde offering various party backup. Genius local minimal players like Nikola Baytala and Alland Byallo worked hard to stretch the boundaries, while Claude Von Stroke and the Dirty Bird Records crew added some much-needed humor.

There was a backlash to all the technology, which revolutionized gay clubs. DJ Bus Station John’s all-vinyl, unmixed bathhouse disco sets goosed the moribund queer scene into exploring its AIDS-shrouded past, and threw open the back door to the far-reaching sets of freestyle and rare ’80s fetishist Stanley Frank and the kiki-technotics of Honey Soundsystem.

London’s dubstep sound morphed into glitch-tipsy future bass — another genre the Bay can claim as its own — before it got a firm party foothold here. Which is more than all right, considering that mutation spawned beloved duo Lazer Sword and led Burner techno giant Bassnectar to change his sonic stripes. Most inspiring to me was the outpouring of global sounds in the Bay, from NonStop Bhangra’s whirling saris to Surya Dub’s growling dubstep-bhangra hybrid, from Tormenta Tropical’s bass-bomping nueva cumbia to Kafana Balkan’s breathless, Romani-delirious funk.

So where are we now? If any moment could be called "post-whatever," this is it. Anything goes, excellently, but it’s accompanied by a feeling that we’ve informed ourselves fully of the past, that we’ve mastered the technology of the present, and that, no matter how intelligent the music, we can still have a damn good time. My only gripe about the past decade in nightlife — other than I wished we’d had a more conscious reaction to war — is, alas, the same one as last decade. Where are all the women? Big ups to Ana Sia, Sarah Delush, Forest Green, J. Phlip, Felina, Dulcinea, Miz Margo, Nuxx, Black, and the Stay Gold, Redline, and B.A.S.S. sisterhoods. But seriously, I hope the teens see less testosterone-driven talent behind the decks. We’ve got the style down — now let’s change the look. OK?

Nothing like it

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Nothing like it

119-hiphop.jpg
Guardian illustration of E-40, Mac Dre, and Mistah F.A.B. by Matt Furie and Aiyana Udesen

Crack baby anthem, you can feel this music — Mistah F.A.B., "Crack Baby Anthem," from Baydestrian (SMC, 2007)

DECADE IN MUSIC In retrospect, it’s easy to see 1999 as the end of Bay Area rap’s glory. The ’90s mob music era was pretty good around here. Too Short had paved the way from releasing local discs to landing a major deal. A spate of acts were signed in the early ’90s (Digital Underground, E-40, Spice-1, the Delinquents) and the mid-’90s (the Luniz, Dru Down, Richie Rich, 3X Krazy), not to mention that the world’s most popular rapper, 2pac, claimed Oakland as his home.

So what happened? 2pac’s murder in 1996, for starters, took the jewel in the Bay’s crown. The second round of signings yielded less sales than the first, with only the Luniz’s debut, Operation Stackola (Noo Trybe/Virgin, 1995), hitting putf8um. Conventional wisdom and conspiracy theory generally hints that the murder of Queens rapper Notorious B.I.G. in L.A. in 1997 — frequently portrayed as a revenge killing for 2pac — turned major label interest away from Bay Area rappers, though it’s unclear whether anyone from the Bay had anything to do with either Biggie’s or Pac’s death. The majors stopped signing Bay Area rappers around that time, a situation that remains largely, though not entirely, unchanged today. The final factor was the purchase of local rap station KMEL by Clear Channel in 1999. KMEL never played enough Bay Area music, but soon stopped altogether, save for E-40 and Too Short, the only two acts to retain their major deals as the new century dawned.

Enter "the drought." With no radio and no major-label interest, Bay Area rap languished. Local alternative rap fared better because its business model usually didn’t include the radio or the majors. Though the Hieroglyphics had been around since the early ’90s, the collective stepped up their activities in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Given their devoted following, heavy touring, and iconic symbol, Hiero was Bay Area hip-hop for many outside the region. The Bay was also home to hip-hop collectives like the Solesides-derived Quannum Projects, whose Blackalicious put out Blazing Arrow through MCA in 2002, during a brief blip of major label interest in progressive hip-hop.

Two of the significant records from this period were Party Music (75Ark/Warner, 2001) by the Coup and Sonic Jihad (Guerilla Funk, 2003) by Paris. A neo-P-Funk dust-up, Party Music achieved much notoriety for its original cover depicting members Boots Riley and Pam the Funkstress seemingly blowing up the World Trade Center. Scheduled for September release, the album was of course put on hold after 9/11 until new art could be arranged. Paris was one of the earliest local acts to go major. He predates the concept of "alternative" rap — when he began, you could be a militant rapper like Chuck D and still get signed. After two years of mind-numbing flag-waving in this country, Paris had the audacity to release an album whose cover depicted a plane about to fly into the White House, and whose lyrics excoriated the Bush administration, accusing it of complicity with the 9/11 attacks. It was a bold action in an otherwise spineless cultural moment.

Meanwhile, the Bay was reloading. Special mention must go to Mac Dre, who, with the Delinquents and a few others, held the scene together in its lean years. Dre went to jail for four years beginning in 1992. When he emerged in 1996, major label opportunities were drying up, but he refused to let it stop him. From 1998 to 2004, he released 11 solo albums on his Thizz Entertainment label, not to mention innumerable compilations and side-projects. At a time when almost no records were selling locally, Dre was moving between 30,000 and 60,000 units. In an increasingly homogenized MC environment, Dre’s distinctive personality shone through, manifesting itself in a series of humorous characters on Thizz: Thizzelle Washington (2003), Ronald Dregan (2004), and The Genie of the Lamp (2004).

During the ensuing hyphy movement (circa 2005-07), debates ensued over who was responsible for the new music. Dre was a huge influence on hyphy’s colorful, comic aesthetics, but he was murdered before he could reap the rewards of his efforts. Producer Rick Rock, one of the Bay’s few national hitmakers, landed a deal with Virgin for the Federation, breaking them onto the radio with the hit "Hyphy" in 2003. Former 3X Krazy-member Keak da Sneak, however, was the man who brought this particular bit of Oakland slang to hip-hop, asserting his own claim with the Traxamillion-produced, local No. 1 "Super Hyphy" in 2005.

In between, newcomers the Team had a 2004 local radio hit, "It’s Gettin’ Hot," and inked a deal with a Universal imprint which ultimately fell through, while producers EA-Ski and CMT got their own protégés, Frontline, a deal with Ryko-imprint Penalty Records. Still in high school, E-40’s son Droop-E also contributed to the sound through radio singles like Mistah F.A.B.’s 2005 track "Super Sic Wid It."

Even this tiny amount of major interest and radio support resulted in heady times: "the drought," it seemed, was officially over. Yet after a couple of years of valuable if lukewarm support, KMEL again stopped playing local hip-hop, and the few major deals haven’t panned out. Clyde Carson from the Team was picked up by Capital, only to be dropped three years later without releasing an album. Mistah F.A.B., who continues to enhance his profile through collaborations with the likes of Snoop Dogg, remains subjected to Atlantic Records’ agonizing delays, which would have killed the career of anyone less determined.

After a couple years, the post-hyphy period of Bay rap took on a discernible personality. Though many complained hyphy was too oriented toward kids, that trend has continued to develop. The new crop of Bay Area acts — including J. Stalin, Shady Nate, Beeda Weeda, D-Lo, Stevie Joe — identify with their high school-age fans, whereas previous generations rapped as adults, even acts like Dre or the Mob Figaz who were still in high school when they began their careers. The generational shift might be considered in terms of the 1980s rise of crack, for whereas Dre, the Jacka, and others dealt crack as teenagers, the current crop was born at this time.

J. Stalin, for example, literally is a crack baby, and all these younger MCs grew up with crack as an established fact of life. The new vibe might be labeled "crack baby music," for this fact is explicitly if inarticulately present as a subject or theme. The anger of this generation manifests in the extreme violence of its lyrics, and the gangsta social consciousness of 2pac’s time is extremely attenuated, though not entirely gone. Its appeal to ghetto youth growing up in this appalling post-9/11 era is perfectly comprehensible. Yet despite its darkness, the current music also illustrates the resilience of this regional culture even in the face of indifference and neglect. In terms of the overall American rap world, there’s nothing quite like the Bay.

Peeping Tomás

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Peeping Tomás

Pedro Almodóvar has always dabbled in the Hitchcockian tropes of uxoricide, betrayal, and double-identity, but with Broken Embraces he has attained a polyglot, if slightly mimicking, fluency with the language of Hollywood noir. A story within a story and a movie within a movie, Embraces begins in the present day with middle-aged Catalan Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), a blind screenwriter who takes time between his successful writing career to seduce and bed young women sympathetic to his disability. “Everything’s already happened to me,” he explains to his manager, Judit (Blanca Portillo). “All that’s left is to enjoy life.” But this life of empty pleasures is brought to a sudden halt when Judit reports that a local business magnate Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) has died; soon after, Ernesto Jr. (Rubén Ochandiano), who has renamed himself Ray X, visits Caine with an unusual request. Judit’s son, Diego (Tamar Novas), who is also Caine’s secretary, is a witness to these strange circumstances and inquires into the mysterious past of Caine.

To wit, the action retreats 14 years when Caine was a young (and visually abled) director named Mateo Blanco. In the classic noir set-up, Blanco encounters a breathtaking femme fatale, Lena (Penelope Cruz) — an actress-turned-prostitute named Severine, turned secretary-turned-trophy wife of Ernesto Martel — when she appears to audition for his latest movie, Girls and Suitcases. As Lena’s marriage with the aging Martel is one of convenience, she quickly engages in a torrid off-camera affair with Mateo. But their tryst is compromised by the constant presence of Ernesto Jr., who has been tapped by his father to shoot a behind-the-scenes “documentary” of Lena and Mateo for his own private consumption. When the secret is exposed with the help of a freelance lip-reader (in a classic Almodóvarian scene), the fates of Mateo, Lena, Ernesto, and Judit collide with tragic consequences.

If all of the narrative intricacies and multiplicitous identities in Broken Embraces appear a bit intimidating at first glance, it is because this is the cinema of Almodóvar taken to a kind of generic extreme. As with all of the director’s post-’00 films — All About My Mother (1999), Talk to Her (2002), Bad Education (2004), and Volver (2006) — which are often referred to as Almodóvar’s “mature” pictures, there is a microscopic attention to narrative development combined with a frenzied sub-plotting of nearly soap-operatic proportions. But, in Embraces, formalism attains such prominence that one might speculate the director is simply going through the motions. The effect is a purposely loquacious and overly-dramatized performance that pleasures itself as much by setting up the plot as unraveling it. So, throughout the overlong 127 minute film, two distinct types of scenes become readily apparent: those which are Almodóvar at his best — arriving with a striking visual and musical style and leaving one nearly breathless; and Almodóvar at his worst — those which are purely convention, lumber about far too long and veer into dialogic minutiae. If the audience can withstand these long-winded asides, the cinematic prize is great indeed.

For a obsessive appropriationist, Almodóvar has never been so blatantly referential as he is in Broken Embraces. Apart from the most obvious nods to Hitchcock, the director has included scenic love-letters to Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy (1954), and Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950). Those fans of Almodóvar’s 80s comedies will even recognize the director’s send-up of his own oeuvre in Girls and Suitcases, a potpourri of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) and What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984) Whether or not this confirms that the young iconoclast Almodóvar has, in his old age, become an unashamed nostalgic merits some debate. But, regardless of the verdict, Broken Embraces proves itself to be an impressive lexicon.

Broken Embraces opens Fri/18 in San Francisco.

Our weekly picks

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Our weekly picks

WEDNESDAY 16th

FILM

Free Form Film Series: "Awesome and Painful"


The folks from Lost Media Archive and the FFFF (Free Form Film Festival) have a Christmas treat for y’all: a screening of the "universally loathed" Star Wars Holiday Special. Before that, six dudes from various parts of the U.S. will treat viewers to experimental videos. With titles like Hulk Smash, Cakestain! and Polygon Sun, it’s likely — well, very likely (I did some interweb research) — that these videos are of the laffy taffy, low-tech, seizure-inducing variety. While this might suggest everything jejune and sarcastic, I would also qualify that suggest with smartly so. (Spencer Young)

8 p.m., $6

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.atasite.org

THURSDAY 17th

FILM

Kenneth Anger: Restored Prints


Not one to dabble so much as drench himself in the occult, Kenneth Anger has been dubbed a weirdo. Committed to the underground, his short films are weird, too, but in an interesting and entertaining kind of way as opposed to creepy and cloying. Two of the Anger movies showing tonight — Scorpio Rising (1960) and Kustom Kar Kommandos (1964) — worship handsome James Dean-type men and their equally handsome machines through serene, phantasmagoric pans across shiny engines, belt buckles, and bulging biceps, all queerly contrasted with 1960s pop. The other two films on the program, Fireworks (1947) and Rabbit’s Moon (1950/1971) are equally hunky-dory. Also, the 82-year-old weirdo might be in attendance. (Young)

7 p.m., $7–$10

Phyllis Wattis Theater

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

MUSIC

Popscene Holiday Gala with Mike Relm


‘Tis the season for video mashups. The holidays always make me want to break out the TV Carnage DVDs — nothing says gift quite like John Ritter making horrified faces to Rosie O’Donnell’s performance in Riding the Bus With My Sister (2005). Mike Relm is one of SF’s chief video turntablists, with a resume that includes Mike Patton’s Peeping Tom project. He won my heart by naming his debut DVD Clown Alley, after the defunct semi-North Beach burger dive known to inspire the Guardian’s own Marke B. to break into song. He makes the scene at Popscene’s festive gala. (Johnny Ray Huston)

With DJ Sharp

10 p.m.–2 a.m., $5–$10

330 Ritch

330 Ritch, SF

(415) 541-9574

www.popscene-sf.com

FRIDAY 18th

PERFORMANCE

Hubba Hubba Revue’s Chrismanukkah


Hubba Hubba Revue is big in England. Word of the SF burlesque troupe’s shenanigans had reached my burlesexual friend Lou Lou, who knows about tassel-twirling because, back in Blighty, she’s a "maid" who flounces about the stage between acts cleaning up the dancers’ tossed underthings. Lou Lou was convinced "the maid" was a universal feature of burlesque shows, and was surprised to learn that in the Hubba Hubba Revue, her role is played by a man-monkey named Zip the What-Is-It, bald but for a tuft of hair on his crown. Things are different here. But they do have lovely ladies stripping all retro-like and enough shiny bells and whistles to keep even the burlesque-shy (does such a person exist?) jaw-dropped and fancy free. The troupe’s holiday celebration promises peace and goodwill to (wo)man, and performances by Bunny Pistol, Professor Shimmy, and Meshugga Beach Party, a Jewish folk surf jam experience. (Caitlin Donohue)

9 p.m., $12–$15

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

www.hubbahubbarevue.com

LIT

Glam Gender Release Party


You can never have too much drag for the holidays. Or can you? No, no you can’t — especially if your stocking is not only filled with enough bird seed to size you up to a triple-D cup, but also with the ravishing new book Glam Gender, a glossy to-die-for tome self-published by photographer Marianne Larochelle and art director-stylist-drag legend Jose Guzman Colon, a.k.a. Putanesca. Contained within is an encyclopedia of the most well-known local drag queens of the past decade, including many no longer with us. The project, with punchy bios written by paparazzi punk Bill Picture, was "such a beautiful thing to work on," Putanesca told me. "It’s a real community celebration, and also a bit insane." Freshly released, the book will be available — along with glorious prints and most of the queens themselves — at zany Victorian wonderland Finn’s Funhouse. Watch your dress. (Marke B.)

6–10 p.m., free

Finn’s Funhouse

814 Grove, SF

www.glamgender.com

MUSIC

Super Adventure Club


Up-sides to cold weather: the dependable absence of mosquitoes, eggnog, layers of $4 Goodwill sweaters that nicely camouflage Christmas cookie bulge, and socially acceptable hibernation. Wait, scratch that last one — you’re going out. You’ll wanna brave those arctic winds for multitasking duo Jake Woods and Michael Winger, who combine their strange genius to form Super Adventure Club, a band you could like for the name alone, but don’t have to because their punchy riffs on everything from German "üntz" music to French love songs deliver a restorative kick to the circulation system. I straight up challenge you to get through their set — or that of headliners Diego’s Umbrella — without jumping about like a crazy person. You’ve got a tough first step past the front welcome mat, but know — just know — that your winter woes are about to melt like a square snowflake in funky town. (Donohue)

With Diego’s Umbrella and How To Win at Life

9 p.m., $8

Elbo Room

(415) 552-7788

647 Valencia, SF

www.elbo.com

SATURDAY 19th

EVENT

Renegade Craft Fair


December mall jaunts tend to induce claustrophobia, Santa terrors, and unpredictable, Manchurian Candidate-style reactions to all those cheery Christmas carols. Avoid the commercial hustle at the Renegade Craft Fair, founded in 2003 in Chicago — where a Renegade Handmade store remains open year-round — and now a multicity phenomenon. SF’s version opens shop just in time for the last-minute gift scramble, with more than 150 local DIY denizens (who had to apply to participate, so you won’t have to sift though sub-par crap) offering up all manner of bow-worthy ideas: fabric goods, silkscreened art, jewelry, accoutrements for babies, housewares, toys, stationary, and more. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/20

11 a.m.–7 p.m., free

Herbst Pavilion, Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

www.renegadecraft.com/holiday-sf

PERFORMANCE

Trannyshack Star Search


The queen, apparently, is not dead. Beloved and be-loathed trash-drag emporium Trannyshack glitter-axed its weekly operations at the Stud last year. But like the chunky-jewelried zombie ass-slave Mrs. Roper hostess that she is, Heklina rises from the ash heap of Manhunt addiction to bring back the Trannyshack Star Search competition, thirsty for new blood to fill her ghoulish needs. She’ll be joined onstage by the wonderfully horrific Peaches Christ to oversee performances by "special" guest judges Sherry Vine and Kembra Pfahler of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. Hoku Mama, Putanesca, Princess Kennedy, and Anjie Myma also judge the 10 hopefuls, and DJ Omar glam-sluts up the crowd, if that’s even more possible. (Marke B.)

10 p.m.–3 a.m., $15–$20

DNA Lounge

(415) 626-1409

375 11th St., SF

www.dnalounge.com

EVENT/PERFORMANCE

Circus Ignite!


Does it seem like circus is everywhere? It’s true. And that’s not just in local venues, mainstream media, and fashion. Circus groups are taking their clowning, juggling, stilting, and acrobatics out of American cities and into under-served communities across the world. They’re entertaining, educating, inspiring self-esteem, and fostering cross-cultural communication in communities affected by natural disaster, dislocations, and military conflicts. One such group is Dreamtime Circus, a fantastic organization that launched with a trip to India last year and plans to spend next spring in Peru. Help support the cause by attending this weekend’s fundraiser, featuring DJs, a silent auction, and performances. (Molly Freedenberg)

9 p.m.–4 a.m., $12–$20

Siberia

314 11th St, SF

(415) 552-2100

www.dreamtimecircus.org

EVENT/MUSIC

Carols in the Caves


Candlelight. Cave acoustics. Ancient instruments playing age-old carols. And you as part of the angel choir. Could there be anything more classically festive than Carols in the Caves? The brainchild of percussionist/musician the Improvisator (a.k.a. David Auerbach), this tradition has been delighting audiences for 24 years in a variety of caves and wine cellars around the Bay Area. This time Auerbach brings his dulcimers, flutists, drums, and bells to Hans Fahden Vineyards, a gorgeous property on a ridge above Calistoga that features panoramic views of Mount Saint Helena. Buy your tickets, save some extra cash to purchase wine, and get ready to settle in to a sound spa for the mind. (Freedenberg)

2 p.m. (also Sun/20), $45

Hans Fahden Vineyards

4855 Petrified Forest, Calistoga

(707) 224-4222

www.cavemusic.com

FILM

The Birds


So … 500,000 European starlings did an air show in Bodega Bay, I mean Sacramento, this past week. Video evidence is flying across the Internet. It’s official, a real-life version of The Birds (1963) can’t be far off. Of all of Hitchcock’s classics, this is the one best served by the big screen. If you’ve only seen it on TV, you don’t know it. Out of your gilded cages, Melanie Daniels fans, and into the Castro to fend off angry beaks with your impeccably manicured hands. (Huston)

2:30 and 7 p.m. (double feature with Notorious), $7.50–$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

SUNDAY 20th

MUSIC

Brian Setzer Orchestra


Brian Setzer has made a long-lasting career of resurrecting musical styles from the past with his formidable talents. He first came to fame as leader of the Stray Cats, energizing traditional rockabilly with his scorching guitar skills. He then went on to revamp swing and the classic big band sound of the 1930s and ’40s with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, whose hits included a cover of Louis Prima’s "Jump Jive An’ Wail." Tonight’s stop here in SF is part of Setzer’s seventh annual "Christmas Rocks!" tour, featuring revved-up versions of timeless holiday songs like "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas," as well as selections from his own hit discography.(Sean McCourt)

8 p.m., $55–$69.50

The Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 775-7722

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

TUESDAY 22nd

VISUAL ART

Taravat Talepasand: "Situation Critical"


Bay Area artist Taravat Talepasand’s explorations of cultural mores in Iran and America manifest as everything from motorcycles to graphite drawings. Her second show at Marx and Zavaterro casts a sharp eye at xenophobia and assorted manias circa-1979, among other things. "Situation Critical" should be worth a visit simply to see the nightmarish Disney-esque painting Ayatollah Land. (Huston)

10:30 a.m.–5 p.m., free

Marx and Zavattero

77 Geary, second floor, SF

(415) 627-9111
www.marxzav.com

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