SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Julia, Haight and Ashbury
Tell us about your look: “I like the soldier look, boots and big buttons.”
SF
Newsom talks about taxes, bikes, and SF’s future
By Steven T. Jones
Mayor Gavin Newsom, with Bike Coalition director Leah Shahum and Department of Public Works head Ed Reiskin, helped create new space for bikes yesterday.
As he helped paint San Francisco’s first green “bike box” and celebrate the creation of the first new bicycle lanes in more than three years, Mayor Gavin Newsom yesterday finally seemed to really reengage with the press and public for the first time since his failed gubernatorial campaign and the testy period that followed.
The occasion was right in Newsom’s sweet spot — urban greening and livability initiatives — and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition actually delayed this scheduled press conference for two days so the mayor could attend after returning from a trip to India. Also in attendance were Sups. Ross Mirkarimi (the only elected official who biked to the event), Bevan Dufty, and Sophie Maxwell, SFMTA director Nat Ford and SFMTA board president Tom Nolan, DPW head Ed Reiskin, and a variety of activists.
I’ll have more on the press conference and San Francisco’s quick pace for making bike improvements in next week’s Guardian, but for now I want to focus on Newsom’s extended conversation with journalists after the main event, which went almost 30 minutes and covered a variety of issues.
Newsom was still combative and petulant at times, and he continues to take a dismissive approach to those who say he must take a more active role in finding new revenue sources. But he took all questions and stayed engaged in the conversation until most of the journalists had peeled away.
And for those who remained, Newsom and Ford ended up announcing some significant news: Clear Channel Communication has failed to exercise its contractual right to create a bike-sharing program for San Francisco – a 50-bike proposal that the Guardian and activists had criticized as more symbolic than significant – and the city is now seeking a new vendor for a bike-sharing program that would include about 2,700 bikes.
Guarded secrets
By Rebecca Bowe
How much did the mayor’s security detail cost when he campaigned outside SF? SFPD isn’t telling.
When San Francisco Police Department Assistant Chief Jim Lynch spoke before the Rules Committee this morning, he mentioned that the Police Chief George Gascon was unable to attend because he was at the swearing-in ceremony of Los Angeles’ new police chief.
“Out of curiousity,” Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier asked Lynch, “How many officers went to L.A. with Chief Gascon?” She was referring to his security detail for an event that was clearly unrelated to San Francisco city business.
Lynch replied that he could not say. When pressed whether security had in fact been provided for him by SFPD, he gave the same response. Sorry. Can’t tell you.
It’s the same response that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi received for months when he tried in vain to get the dollar amount for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s security detail for campaign-related events outside city and state borders. According to the SFPD, divulging that information could compromise security tactics.
The discussion at this morning’s Rules Committee focused on legislation authored by Mirkarimi, co-sponsored by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Chris Daly, which would require elected officials to reimburse the city for the cost of “dignitary security” (think bodyguards) when that protection is provided on the campaign trail outside San Francisco.
“It’s not about one elected official,” Mirkarimi noted, while acknowledging that Newsom’s frequent travel had sparked interest in the issue. “It’s about reviewing standard operating procedure,” he said, and creating a system for cost recovery when taxpayer dollars are used to send SFPD forces off to campaign-related events. With the General Fund already in rough shape, Mirkarimi added, “fiscal vigilance is demanded.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Max, Broderick and Haight
Tell us about your look: “Dress differently”
Sight + Sound fundraiser: For a more beautiful, harmonic green
By Caitlin Donohue
Myrmyr (inset) and Odessa Chen raise their voice for arts and the environment
“How does sound affect the environment and how does the environment affect sound? How can sound help the environment? How do we green sound? What compositions and performance can influence environmental change? How can the environment innovate the sound experience? How can environmental concepts engage, inspire, and challenge audiences and performers with a new, exciting, bold and intense aural experience?”
I totally know how important these questions are- dog, I went to a solar powered Dead Prez show this summer at Yerba Buena Center, I’m on it. If you’d like to be as environmentally on the ball as I- who doesn’t, really?- trot yourself over here to buy tickets for Green Sight + Sound, tomorrow’s benefit fundraiser for the forces of good in the eco-friendly art world.
The event will accrue funding for two very up-on-it causes; ME’DI.ATE’s fourth Soundwave Festival and Ecoartspace. Here’s their deal:
ME’DI.ATE’s Soundwave Festival seeks to provide exceptional auditory experiences for its attendees, actually paying its artists (revolutionary!) so that they are able to treat the performance not as a gig, but a project. Next year’s festival, “Green Sound” (whose formative questions I swiped to begin this post) will include music in the Batteries up in the Marin Headlands, a performance that promises to rival this year’s “musical bus rides” in concert-going uniqueness. You’ll be delighted to know that they have arranged for a few wonderful musicians to partake in Friday’s benefit, including electro-acoutical duo Myrmyr and wintry songstress Odessa Chen.
Snap them up at Green Sight + Sound’s silent auction (its for a good cause/s!): Christy Rupp’s Kitchen Towel, woven by a co-op in Guatemala “to combat that queasy feeling at home” and Linda MacDonald’s print, Map of California
Ecoartspace was one of the first national organizations to bring together and support all types of creative forces looking to make positive moves on environmental issues. They will be coordinating a silent auction of environmentally themed piece, priced from $5-$5,000 up for bidding. Their selection most definitely meets my critieron for ripe holiday shopping, as well- one more reason (as if you needed another) to make Sight + Sound your destination tomorrow night.
Green Sight + Sound
Fri/4 6 p.m.-4 p.m., $25-$35
Mina Dresden Gallery
312 Valencia, SF
www.me-di-ate.net/green-sight-sound
www.projectsoundwave.com
www.ecoartspace.org
Hot sex events this week: Dec 2-8
Compiled by Molly Freedenberg
Fetish star Rubber Doll performs at Saturday’s Von Gutenberg Fetish Ball.
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>> Intro to Burlesquercise Mini-Session
Bombshell Betty hosts a three week course including the bump-and-grind warmup and workout, lessons in how to create your own retro style dance moves, how to work a boa and twirl tassels, and more.
Wed/2, 7-8:30pm. Also Dec 9 and 16
$60
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.bombshellbetty.net
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>> Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop
Gina de Vries hosts this workshop for current and former sex workers who want to share their writing and get honest, non-judgmental feedback.
Wed/2, 6-8pm
$10-$20
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.sexandculture.org
————-
>> Miz Margo’s Going Away Big Dance Party
The Flying Fox is leaving for New York City and the burlesque community is seeing her off with a dance party featuring goth, deathrock, postpunk, and glam music.
Thurs/3, 10pm
$5
DNA Lounge
375 11th St, SF
www.dnalounge.com
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Gift fairs galore
By Caitlin Donohue
Rep it up: Support your crafty community this holiday season
Yes, I know, holiday shopping is painful and spendy and at the moment I’m way more into figuring out if I can pay rent for the month of December than what my unconsciously greedy loved ones will unwrap by the menorah/tree/kinara (I am nothing if not inclusive). But this week’s gift fairs have anticipated the Scrooge-like crab apple that has flourished down where my heart should be and have rendered me helpless in their path. They met my three qualifiers for appropriate gift suppliers, these being:
1. Cheap gifts
2. Non corporate/recycled/handmade/blablablayou’reaware gifts
3. Booze while you shop (exceptions noted)
Lemme guess, those are your criteria too? Smashing! I’ve even included a “Lazy man (or woman) gift suggestion” for each bazaar for those who just can’t be bothered. Here’s your three day plan, plus one to keep you busy next weekend:
Handmade Ho Down Urban Craft Fair
Thur/3 6 p.m- 12 a.m., free
1015 Folsom, SF
Brought to you by the 200 odd Bay Area artists that make up SF www.etsy.com/ Etsy (a website that has destroyed my life, in a good way, many times over), this event makes good on its club location with swingin’ DJs and cold beverages. This is where you head to score www.laserkitten.com/ Laserkitten’s “send me the link” bling-blangin’ lasercut necklace (so urban!) and other such high quality crafts. Get there with the quickness and score one of the swag bags they’re handing out to the first 200 shoppers.
Lazy man (or woman) gift suggestion: Eristotle‘s pillow embossed with a moose design. I dare you to find an emotive human being who doesn’t want this on their couch. And don’t forget the gift wrapping table, cuz I know you’re not doing that yourself you lazy wo/man, you.
SF moves quickly on bike improvements
By Steven T. Jones
The latest bike lane is on Mississippi Street in front of the Guardian Building.
In the week since a judge freed San Francisco to finally do bicycle improvements, city crews have already installed three new bike lanes and dozens of bike racks and shared lanes markings, known as sharrows or bike boxes.
“This is huge. We’re really pleased with the pace the city is moving on. We’re thrilled to see so much on the streets already,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director Leah Shahum told us.
The latest lane, still being striped as I write this, is on Mississippi Street, right in front of the Guardian building. Yesterday, crews converted one of two turn lanes at 9th and Howard streets into a bike lane. And on Monday, they created a bike lane on Scott Street through The Wiggle, a route popular with bicyclists.
Tomorrow at 1 p.m., SFBC will hold a press conference at Scott and Oak streets, where city crews are creating one of the new bike boxes (intersection spots where cyclists can safely wait for the light to change) going up around the city. Attendees will include Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Bevan Dufty, and SFMTA chief Nat Ford.
“The SFMTA is poised to make San Francisco the pre-eminent city for bicycling in North America,” Ford said in a press release announcing the partial lifting of the three-year-old injunction against new bike projects. “Today’s action by the Superior Court will foster the responsible promotion of bicycling envisioned in the Charter-mandated Transit First policy.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Shane, Haight and Ashbury
Tell us about your look: “This shirt is from Calcutta.”
Our Weekly Picks
WEDNESDAY 2
MUSIC
Baroness
Baroness became one of the most promising bands in heavy music with the release of 2007’s The Red Album (Relapse), generating high expectations for its new monochromatic opus, The Blue Album (Relapse), released this fall. Driven by the squalling vocals and versatile technique of guitarist John Baizley (who also has made a name for himself as a visual artist) the band has exceeded the high hopes of their fans with an offering that combines muscular riffing, allusive Southern flair, and affecting dynamics. Those gathered at Bottom of the Hill will rock out to standouts like “Ogeechee Hymnal” and “The Sweetest Curse.” (Ben Richardson)
With Earthless, Iron Age
9 p.m., $14
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th, SF
(415) 626-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
THURSDAY 3
EVENT
Handmade Ho-Down
Over 55 crafty bitches will participate in the Handmade Ho-Down, SoMa’s first craftstravaganza urban street fair. This means you will have 55 very good reasons to blow some cash. From pillows to wall prints, there will be something precious for everyone. Forget the stench of mothballs, this ain’t your grandmother’s fluorescent-lit craft show. And what’s a street fair in San Francisco without booze and music? There will be a full holiday bar along with a DJ so you can drink, dance, and shop to your heart’s content. Bring unused art supplies to benefit Drawbridge, a nonprofit art program for homeless and at-risk youth, and get there early for a free SWAG bag. (Lorian Long)
6 p.m., free
1015 Folsom
1015 Folsom, SF
www.handmadehodown.com
FILM
Black Christmas
Some call 1974’s Black Christmas the first-ever slasher film — it predates Halloween by four years, and its sorority-sister victims are picked off one by one as the movie progresses. (It also beat 1979’s When a Stranger Calls to the creepy prank-caller punch.) With an incredible cast (Olivia Hussey! Margot Kidder! John Saxon! Keir Dullea!) and atmospheric direction by the late, great Bob Clark (who also helmed that other holiday classic, 1983’s A Christmas Story), Black Christmas remains legitimately spooky, as well as one of the greatest holiday-horror flicks ever made. Traveling moviemeister Will the Thrill presents the film tonight with live music by Project Pimento; check the Thrillville Web site for deets on the Dec. 10 show in San Jose. (Cheryl Eddy)
8 p.m., $10
Four Star
2200 Clement, SF
(415) 666-3488
www.thrillville.net
FILM/MUSIC
Joshua Churchill and Paul Clipson
In conjunction with NOMA Gallery’s current “Until the Bright Logic is Won/Unwishpering as a Mirror is Believed” exhibit by artists Peggy Cyphers and Joshua Churchill, Churchill and Paul Clipson are presenting a this one-off sound and film performance. I’m imagining two hours filled with Brian Eno-y abstractions and spiritual glosses of nature’s lovely things. If that isn’t unclear enough, maybe the curious misspelling in the show’s title, lifted from Hart Crane’s poem “Legend,” might help. I’m referring to switcheroo of the h in “Unwishpering” (the original being “Unwhispering”). Assuming it was intentional, we now have a new word that undoes the whispering of a wish. Come witness this etymological birthing as Churchill and Clipson unwishper in your eyes and ears. (Spencer Young)
7-9 p.m., free
NOMA Gallery
80 Maiden Lane, 3rd floor, SF
(415) 391 0200
www.nomagallerysf.com
THEATER
Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes
Dreading December’s inevitable mall trip? Consider Golden Girls’ Dorothy your inspiration: “You know Robbie wants a Batman hat. I went to six different stores, they were all sold out … Ugh, I cannot believe a person would push a perfect stranger out of the way, step on her hand, and give her an elbow to the forehead just for a Batman hat. But I did it anyway.” Ah Bea Arthur, what ever will we do without you? But although our favorite sassy grandmas may no longer be churning out the pithy one-liners they once were, their torch has happily been plucked and held aloft by San Francisco drag queens. The ladies will be performing two of the original series’ very special Christmas episodes line-for-line — rumor has it the fearsome foursome takes on a soup kitchen in one. Get some silver-haired sass for your holiday soul. (Caitlin Donohue)
7 and 9 p.m. (also Fri.-Sat., through Dec. 26), $20–$25
Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory
1519 Mission, SF
www.trannyshack.com
www.cookievision.com
www.ticketweb.com
FRIDAY 4
EVENT/VISUAL ART
The 13th Small Format Art Sale
My grandma did beautiful paintings of Texas hill country, but nowadays I’ve only got one ’cause the durn things are too large to qualify as carry-on luggage. Would that Grandma had lived in the age of the The Lab’s small-work-and-postcard art show. The space’s 13th annual celebration of all things tiny and beautiful is perfect for that nomadic creative type on your shopping list. And as a nomadic creative, I’m fully ready to celebrate some innovative, postal service-friendly designs, accumulated during an egalitarian open submissions call. If while there you are shoulder-tapped by a man or woman who wants to show you what’s in their pocket, be not alarmed. They’re a representative of the Museum of Pocket Art, a group that piggybacks larger gallery events to show wallet-sized works. Or they’re a total perv. Only one way to find out … (Caitlin Donohue)
6–-9 p.m. reception (continues through Sun/6), free
The Lab
2948 16th St., SF
(415) 864-8855
www.thelab.org
www.mopaonline.com
MUSIC
The Dead Hensons Finale Extravaganza
While cuddly Muppets and innovative creature designs are probably the first things that pop into most people’s minds when they hear the name Jim Henson, the late creative genius also incorporated wildly catchy music into his productions, using songs that still have the power to transport listeners back to their youth when hearing just a few bars of tunes such as “Pinball Number Count.” Capturing that unbridled sense of joy and innocence, The Dead Hensons perform selections from the early days of The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, and are known to cause spontaneous bouts of dancing and sing-alongs with their rockin’ interpretations. Tonight the eight-piece band will joined by several special guests, including members of Rogue Wave, No Doubt, and more. (Sean McCourt)
9:30 p.m., $12
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF.
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
EVENT/VISUAL ART
Lower Haight Art Walk
Whether you like it or not, the holidays are here. Avoid the bloated shopping malls and the schizophrenia of Union Square, and hit up the Lower Haight for its “Holiday Edition” Art Walk instead. The event takes place between the 400 and 700 blocks, and nearly 30 merchants will participate with live music, art shows, live painting, and waistband-threatening holiday munchies. There will be window and tree display contests, which means you might see Baby Jesus robotripping with a pacifier in his mouth, or Santa and Rudolph getting bestial under the mistletoe. This is the Lower Haight, after all, and one should expect something subversive and oddly charming from such a crazy yet cozy spot in the city. Fuck Macy’s and fuck carolers, the Xmas spirit thrives with the freaks and geeks of Haight Street. (Long)
7–10 p.m., free
Haight (between Pierce and Webster), SF
www.lowerhaight.org/events
SATURDAY 5
MUSIC
The Cranberries
Before emo came along and turned 13-year-olds into crybabies, there was the Cranberries. Dolores O’Riordan was the mouthpiece for many angst-ridden adolescent girls in the mid-1990s. Say what you will about the band, there’s no denying the sense of dreamy giddiness one feels whenever “Linger” or “Dreams” plays on the radio. Memories of flannel dresses, cassette tapes in your backpack, and the anticipation of another glorious episode of My So-Called Life can overwhelm you with sugary-sweet nostalgia. Following in the footsteps of such holy-shit! reunions like Pavement, Jesus Lizard, and Sunny Day Real Estate, the Cranberries — performing with the original lineup — could name their tour “Everyone Else Is Reuniting, So Why Can’t We?” It’s been seven years since the band last toured, so let’s hope “Zombie” still has sharp teeth. (Long)
8 p.m., $36
Regency Ballroom
1290 Sutter, SF
(415) 673-5716
www.theregencyballroom.com
EVENT/LIT/VISUAL ART
“Exercises in Seeing”
Wish you could give up the heavy-lidded responsibility of having eyeballs day in day out? Hate having to constantly gaze, blink, scan, squint, divert, and cry? And tired of going to art shows where all you do is look at things? Or maybe you just hate art altogether? Well, tonight’s your lucky night. You can wear two eye-patches if you want, because those pesky wet balls will be useless at this exhibit. For one night only, poet David Buuck will audibly walk you through artwork in the dark by 30 local and international artists — artwork even he hasn’t seen! All you have to do is listen or sleep or walk around and relive your first sexual experiences by “accidentally” groping people. (Young)
9 p.m.–6 a.m.
Queen’s Nails Projects
3191 Mission, SF
(415) 314-6785
www.queensnailsprojects.com
SUNDAY 6
FILM
Om Shanti Om
Om my gawd, y’all — Om Shanti Om is playing the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts! Set within the world of Bollywood, this 2007 monster hit from director-choreographer Farah Khan (she choreographed 2001’s Monsoon Wedding) works cameos galore into the tale of good-hearted, 1970s-era bit player Om (Shah Rukh Khan), who falls for movie star Shanti (Deepika Padukone), not realizing she’s already entangled with sinister producer Mukesh (Arjun Rampal). Stuff — betrayals, tragedy, reincarnation, revenge plots, haunting — happens, but you know you wanna see Om Shanti Om primarily for the glorious musical numbers, and for the mighty SRK, gloriously corny here (as always). (Eddy)
2 p.m., $6–$8
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission, SF
(415) 978-2787
www.ybca.org
MUSIC
Marduk
Formed in Sweden in 1990, legendary black metal group Marduk was designed, in the words of founding member Morgan Hakansson, to be “the most blasphemous metal act ever.” Although it draws from similar lyrical themes as other groups in its genre, such as the requisite references to Satanism and gore, Marduk adds several other diabolical layers, notably imagery and historical content from World War II. Marduk had to cancel its opening slot appearance for Mayhem earlier this year due to visa issues — this is the first chance in years for Bay Area metal fans to see one of the most brutal acts in our neck of the woods. (McCourt)
With Nachtmystium, Mantic Ritual, Black Anvil, Merrimack and DJ Rob Metal
8 p.m., $20
DNA Lounge
375 11th St., SF
(415) 626-1409
www.dnalounge.com
MONDAY 7
MUSIC
A Multimedia Event with Califone
The lonesome crowded West has an apt soundtrack in the music of Califone, whose very name evokes rustic Americana. Some groups never let a good song get in the way of atmosphere, while others are guilty of just the opposite. In contrast, Califone frequently manages to combine strong songcraft with an attention to scene-setting detail. And that it should — its new album All My Friends are Funeral Singers (Dead Oceans) shares the same title as the feature film directorial debut of the group’s Tim Rutili. In fact, tonight the band supplies a live score to Rutili’s movie, which stars Angela Bettis, the petite-but-tough-as-nails presence at the core of low-budget horrors such as May (2002) and Tobe Hopper’s not-bad 2003 remake of Toolbox Murders. A throwback to a time when actual actresses rather than Hollywood fembots had lead roles in U.S. movies, Bettis plays a fortune-teller who lives in an old house at the edge of the woods. Califone plays the music. (Johnny Ray Huston)
8 p.m., $16
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750
www.gamh.com
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Answer me!
SONIC REDUCER As changeable, transformative chameleon year ’09 draws to a close, El Niño flurries sweep out the past, and all present plunge into the hassle and hustle of the holidays, I’m looking for answers — signposts if not certainties. Like so many others, I’m poking at the tea leaves and searching for clues to elemental queries, laying out the cards and reading into the arcana, listening to the muses and studying the alchemy generated by that admixture of human breath, reverberating strings, and sounds that make the air shiver and shimmer.
Q: Who are you?
A: Bend an ear to the recent past: namely Devendra Banhart’s What Will We Be (Warner Bros.), a release that likely never truly got its due. A lethally laid-back hybrid of ragged ragtime, weird new blues, and soak-in-the-rays beach music perfect for lounging in the hot sand, What Will We Be struck me at first as almost too amorphous, soft and shapeless, languorous and borderless to get a grip on. It’s as if Banhart has made the sonic equivalent of a slippery-slidey alien sock monkey.
But listen to it loud with headphones or earplugs, and you find plenty of earthly details and many off-kilter digressions to love — and recognize, like those Renaissance Faire carousers who live in the flat below on “Chin Chin and Muck Muck,” the young turks on the loose in “16th and Valencia, Roxy Music.” You’ll also discover a deep spiritual yearning (aphorisms and nuggets of wisdom stud the album) to break through the bounds of pop forms into something wholly else. Banhart has acquired some major industry projectors of late — Warner Bros., and Neil Young manager Elliot Roberts — but considering What Will We Be, a cunning, sprawling work that gently urges you to sink your feet into its mud and stay awhile, it’s clear he’s chosen a higher path.
Q: What do you want?
A: Parse “What Would I Want? Sky” and the petite, avidly recycling footprints of Animal Collective on the new five-track EP, Fall Be Kind (Domino), out digitally last week and physically Dec. 15. Marking the first time the Grateful Dead have ever licensed a sample — the exquisitely sweet, polyrhythmically complex “Unbroken Chain” — “What Would I Want? Sky” artfully entwines Animal Collective’s flirtations with dance music, washes of choral color, and a snippet of Phil Lesh’s tweaked “sky” cry.
The Dead’s blissed-out ode to the threads connecting the singer and the song of the western wind, lilac rain, and willow sky grows fresh, forceful tendrils and takes on new contours as Animal Collective chooses one beat (a levitating one) and one natural image and follows it. “Oh, grass is clinking/and new order’s blinking/and I should be footing/but I’m weighted by thinking,” goes the call to the natural world, as synthetic violins ripple like blades of grass. The woods of would-be “would”s and clanging metal percussion fall away, and the thicket of vocals unifies into a declarative, “What I want: Sky!” Just one gem among many within this a sparkling end-of-the-year grab bag.
Q: What shall we do?
A: We shall have a “Funky Funky Christmas,” according to Electric Jungle on In the Christmas Groove (Strut), a comp of rare soul, funk, and blues tracks. Bumping the brass and the organ vamp like the holiday party in some lost Blaxploitation flick of your dreams, “Funky Funky Christmas” pays tribute to mommy fixing food and daddy watching football, along with, oh, yeah, love and peace (“Pass that biscuits please”).
Gimme a piece of the shit-hot harp ’n’ bass interplay of In the Christmas Groove‘s Jimmy Reed opener, “Christmas Present Blues,” and the locked-down rhythm section, background screams, and jittery, shopping-damaged guitar solo of Funk Machine’s “Soul Santa” (“Wouldn’t it be so revealing if Santa had black janky hair?” the Machine asks). I’m irked that for whatever reason the reputedly super-soulful “Getting Down for Xmas” by Milly & Silly isn’t on my copy, but Strut has put together the best Christmas album in an age — and the perfect soundtrack for your next funky ’Mas massive.
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TWO TEARS
The ex-Red Aunt garage-rock girl Kerry Davis ekes out the rage alongside the South Bay rockabilly fiend Legendary Stardust Cowboy. With Touch-Me-Nots. Fri/4, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. www.hemlocktavern.com
JONATHAN RICHMAN
Succumb to real-deal righteousness as the SF legend breaks out the annual holiday show. Sun/6, 8 p.m., $15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com
Love sex fear death
Philadelphia freedom can become Philadelphia gothdom. Cinematically, I’m thinking of David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), the very definition of black-and-white bleakness, and a Philly-filmed movie set within a nightmare. More recently (and obscurely), I’m thinking of Andrew Repasky McElhinney’s far-from-literal 2004 film adaptation of George Bataille’s Story of the Eye, seemingly based in blasted-out sections of the City of Brotherly Love.
Bataille’s obsessive focus on eros’ fusion of love and death is in keeping with Cold Cave, the latest musical project of Wesley Eisold. But gothdom and an appreciation of the occult or morbidity took root in Eisold’s life long before he set base in his current home of Philadelphia, let alone visited Madame Blavatsky’s house there. “We’ve really kept to ourselves, which was the impetus for settling in Philly for a bit,” he says, referring to bandmates Dominick Fernow of Prurient and former Xiu Xiu member Caralee McElroy. “Less distraction, more work. Cheap rent, no need for money.”
For Eisold, the influences behind his current sound can be traced back to adolescent VHS tapes of 120 Minutes, a rare constant during a nomadic youth. “I met my cousin Jacy — who lives in San Francisco, actually — for the first time when I was 11 and he was maybe 13,” he remembers. “You never know what your family is going to be like. He came into my house wearing a Sisters of Mercy shirt and I had a Cure shirt on.”
If the bass on “Hello Rats” from Cold Cave’s Love Comes Close (Matador) recalls the Cure’s Seventeen Seconds (Fiction, 1980) and “I’ve Seen the Future and It’s No Place for Me” on the group’s compilation Cremations (Hospital Productions) sounds like the Cure’s Pornography (Fiction, 1980) blaring from a room down the hall, then cousin Jacy’s tee-shirt cast a spell as well. The bottomless baritone of Sisters of Mercy leader Andrew Ridgely informs Eisold’s vocal approach to tracks such as Cremations’ “An Understanding” and “I’ve Seen the Future,” and Love Comes Close‘s “The Laurels of Erotomania” and title track.
But Cold Cave has more going on than mere ’80s pastiche and nostalgia. A fan of small publishers such as Hanuman and Black Sparrow (“I think Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger is massively underappreciated,” he says) who runs his own small press called Heartworm, Eisold doesn’t merely strike dark poses in his lyrics. An example would be Cremations‘ opening track “Sex Ads,” a direct, truthful song about a pretty common phenom in contemporary life: sexual self-commodification.
“It’s probably the most literal song I’ve ever written,” Eisold says of the track, which ends with a sense of ghostliness akin to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 film Kairo. “Of course, us humans will find a way to make intimacy even more detached. I don’t find it strange at all. We’ve built all these machines to do everything else for us, so of course we’ll have a computer be the enabler our friends could never be. It didn’t catch on, but remember 10 years ago or so the Internet was trying to sell thse pieces you could attach to the computer for a simulated fuck? This makes much more sense. Really, I can’t believe how unexcited we are about the world we live in and how realities overlap from a screen to the day-to-day. This meshing of worlds happens so fast that no one has the time to appreciate how strange it is.”
Not exactly “Boys Don’t Cry” — or Fall Out Boy, for that matter. One gets the sense that Cold Cave is still developing, an exciting and perhaps hauntological prospect considering their music to date. Cremations contains some powerful sounds and instrumental passages, from the Nico-caliber fugue “E Dreams” to the outer space loneliness of “Roman Skirts” and the apocalyptic, nuclear radiance of “Always Someone.” If Love Comes Close sacrifices such experimentation on the altar of pop, during a track like McElroy’s vocal star turn “Life Magazine,” the blood tastes like fine wine. Alienation has rarely sounded so ebullient.
COLD CAVE
with Former Ghosts and Veil Veil Varnish
Thu/3, 9 p.m., $10
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
Tony’s Pizza Napoletana
paulr@sfbg.com
Carrying coals to Newcastle is hard work, so when we’ve finished up, how about some pizza to refresh ourselves? And where would we begin the search — North Beach, the Newcastle of pizza? No, too obvious. Chic pizza these days is found practically everywhere in the city except North Beach — in Dogpatch, in Glen Park, in the Mistro, and the Marina. Why would anyone go to North Beach?
Well, one good reason would be Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, which has an air of Neapolitan or Roman authenticity that goes far beyond the pies themselves and is really unmatched in this respect by any of the newer places, despite their commendable pizzas. While I am not a huge fan of trying to recreate the foods and styles of other places — restaurants are not zoo exhibits, and the best way to have authentic food experiences is to travel to the places where those experiences are indigenous — Tony’s is relaxed enough in look and atmosphere, and intense enough about the food, to become an authentic experience in its own right. It feels unforced and right, like a place that’s been there forever yet is as fresh as if it opened yesterday. (It actually opened early in the summer in the longtime home of La Felce.)
One of the underrated joys of North Beach is the display of fabulous, oversized culinary apparatus — the kind of implements you could never have in your own home, unless you’re Pat Kuleto. One example is the coffee roaster in the window of Caffe Roma, and another is the pizza oven — I should say, one of the pizza ovens, since there are three — at Tony’s, which isn’t in a window, but you can get a booth quite nearby and watch the action.
The oven of which I speak is gas-fired (no, not coal-fired, this isn’t Newcastle) and has an attractive dome covered in a mosaic of red tiles. The oven’s heat is steady and fierce, and as the clad-in-white pizzaioli — led by owner Tony Gemignani — wield their long-handled peels, you have a brief sense of men working in a foundry, except that what emerges from the heat isn’t a sequence of gold ingots but of pizzas, and pizzas in a surprising variety of shapes and forms.
At most of the newfangled places, pizza takes its familiar form, as a yeast-leavened wheat dough rolled into a thin disk and topped with various combinations of sauces, cheese, vegetables, and meat before being baked. You might luck out and spot a calzone, in which the disk is folded over on itself to form a mezzaluna-shaped pocket. But nowhere else are you likely to find stromboli, a sort of pizza roulard in which the pie is rolled up into a log, baked, then sliced into rounds like a büche de Noel. Tony’s Romanos Original 1950 version ($11) is stuffed with ham, pepperoni, sliced Italian sausage, sweet peppers, and mozzarella and American cheeses — and if that isn’t rich enough, the crust acquires a pastry-like flakiness, perhaps from the rolling.
Also plenty rich-looking are the Sicilian-style pies, which are baked in square pans, like focaccia, and heavily laden with toppings. They look like party platters as they emerge from the oven and are rushed to large, clamorous tables of partiers. Smaller parties, though, can probably make do with the more svelte, conventional pies, among them the margherita ($18), which is probably the signature Italian pizza, and also Tony’s, and is baked in a 900-degree wood-fired oven.
The margherita also is so simple that there isn’t much maneuvering room. You have your crust, your tomato sauce, a few blobs of mozzarella, and some basil leaves. Not much to go wrong; not much to stand out, either. Tony’s tomato sauce is tangy, the basil leaves lightly blistered but still basically fresh and fragrant, the coins of melted mozzarella like reflections of a full moon on the still surface of a pond. One’s attention, then, is drawn to the crust, and it is gorgeous: a thin but not too thin mat, soft but not droopy and blistered just enough on the bottom to lend character. I would hesitate to say Tony’s is the best margherita pizza I’ve ever eaten only because I’ve eaten so many good ones, and in part this must say something about the soundness of the recipe. I’ve never had a better one than Tony’s, can I put it that way?
Since humans do not live by pizza alone — or bread (and the bread is excellent, with pesto, EVOO, and chopped garlic for dipping) — there is also a host of unleavened items on the menu, including pastas, small plates, and salads. An antipasto-style plate of white Italian anchovies ($10) couldn’t be plumper, nestled on their bed of fresh arugula leaves like middle-aged, bleached-out snowbirds surrounded by palm fronds on a Florida beach in February while, nearby, lurks a clutch of Calabrese peppers — sort of like blood-red pepperoncini, sweet with a bit of bite. They could be snowbirds who’ve been in the sun way too long.
For a salad, how about spinach ($10) with pine nuts, goat cheese, slivers of red onion, a balsamic reduction, and EVOO? All immaculately fresh and nicely balanced, though the sweet-tooth found the balsamic a bit too sweet, and I thought the price was a little dear for what was, in the end, ordinary.
The sweet-tooth did like the chocolate truffle cake ($7 for a massive, ship’s-prow slice), which was refreshingly not all that sweet. Sometimes it’s best to carry fewer coals to Newcastle, particularly if the coals are sugary.
TONY’S PIZZA NAPOLETANA
Wed.-Sun., noon–11 p.m.
1570 Stockton, SF
(415) 835-9888
www.tonyspizzanapoletana.com
AE/DS/MC/V
Beer and wine
Noisy
Wheelchair accessible
Alerts
Wednesday, Dec. 2
Battle for Whiteclay
Attend a screening and discussion of this documentary, which follows Native American activists to Nebraska’s state capitol to end alcohol sales to residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation by stores in the neighboring town of Whiteclay. The film serves as an inside look at the conflict between Native Americans’ rights and state and local governments’.
7:30 p.m., $6 suggested donation
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia, SF
(415) 821-6545
Thursday, Dec. 3
Die-in for Bhopal
Join a die-in to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Union Carbide’s (now Dow Chemical) gas tragedy in Bhopal, India. Honor the thousands who died in the tragedy and protest the abandoned chemicals that continue to pollute the groundwater.
Noon, free
Union Square
Powell at Geary, SF
Bhopal.net
Prison Reduction Plan
Michael Bien, lead counsel in Coleman vs. Schwarzenegger, answers questions about the implementation of the California Prison Population Reduction plan. Judges in the case ordered the state to reduce its inmate population because of prison overcrowding. Sponsored by the Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) Coalition.
6 p.m., free
CURB Office
1904 Franklin, # 504, Oakl.
(510) 444-0484
Friday, Dec. 4
Oaktown on wheels
Participate in a community bike ride through Oakland to display, promote, and celebrate healthy transportation. Ride ends at the Art Murmur community street party
6 p.m., free
Meet at Frank Ogawa Plaza
14th and Broadway BART station, Oakl.
Saturday, Dec. 5
Celebrate free clinic opening
Attend opening day of the Mabuhay Health Clinic and its services, a free, student-run community health clinic that aims to reduce health disparities in the SoMa district. The clinic is in partnership with the South of Market Health Center, the Bayanihan Community Center, and UCSF. Sup. Chris Daly and staff from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office will be present. Also features food and entertainment.
2 p.m., free
Mabuhay Health Clinic
1010 Mission, SF
(415) 336-5277
Backpacks for the people
Help assemble "warm wishes" packs filled with gloves, socks, scarves, and more to be distributed to 4,000 homeless men, women, and children in the Bay Area.
8 a.m., free
Unity in Marin
600 Palm Drive, Novato
(415) 472-0211
Sunday, Dec. 6
Help class-war prisoners
Attend this fundraiser for the Partisan Defense Committee’s Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund, which helps victims of racist prison and death sentences. Featuring a buffet, door prizes, silent art auction, and more.
3 p.m., $10
Women’s Building
3543 18th St., SF
(510) 839-0852
Fast for our climate
Send a message to the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen that the world needs to make a strong commitment to reduce emissions at this afternoon of fun sans food. Show solidarity with 21 other countries staging hunger strikes.
1 p.m., free
U.N. Plaza
Market at Hyde, SF
(484) 319-1115<0x00A0><cs:5>2<cs:>
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