SF

Superior sounds

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In the dead of last winter, the enigmatic and bombastically-titled "The Very Best" Mixtape (Ghettopop) cracked the frozen-over music blogosphere, thanks to its barrage of blasts straight from the center of an African sun. Self-baptized as The Very Best, European production/DJ duo Radioclit (another unfortunate name) teamed up with the Malawian born, London-based singer Esau Mwamwaya. The resulting left-field effort virtually burned through rigid or frigid genre horizons, blending multilingual African vocals, synth-heavy indie pop, thunderous polyrhythms, and an outer-national pastiche of celebratory dance thumpers.

Riding high on an internet buzz that is still multiplying, The Very Best has been hard at work on its upcoming official debut, The Warm Heart of Africa (Green Owl), scheduled for release this fall. If Internet leaks can predict anything, the recording expands on Radioclit’s worldly sensibility. Brace yourself for hazardous dance floor anthems well-fed on the homegrown African sounds of high-life and marabi, as well as bass-laden pop grooves from, well, all over the globe. Mwamwaya’s pipes wander and work wonders over Radioclit’s multitextured, voracious production. Versatile melodies and subtly intricate lyricism uplift the percussive hymns to create a remarkable sonic balance between earthly thrust and airy lightness. In addition to The Very Best’s core dynamism, the debut also promises guest collaborations with MIA (on the enchanting "Rain Dance") and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig (the hypnotically incandescent "Warm Heart of Africa"). Ah, the revival of spasmodic, sun-drenched Afro-pean music. My year looks brighter already.

BLASTHAUS PRESENTS THE VERY BEST

With Bersa Discos

Fri/17, 9 p.m., $15.

Mighty, 119 Utah, SF

(415) 762-0151

www.mighty119.com

Magic man

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

A young musician’s sojourn after a successful debut album is often a grueling lesson about the fickleness of fans. But U.K. producer, DJ, and multiinstrumentalist Bonobo — also called by his more earthly moniker Simon Green — has transcended expectations and narrow definitions since his first full-length LP Animal Magic (Tru Thoughts, 2001). Once lauded by critics and listeners as the sanguine monkey king of downtempo "chill," Green has refined and filled out his inspired sonic vision long after the dissolution of that nebulous genre.

"There’s definitely a jazz sensibility [to Bonobo’s music]," Green tells me on the phone from Montreal, at the dawn of a North American tour. "Jazz is the main ingredient and then it swings off into different genres." But Green quickly qualifies his statement, pointing out that his music feeds hungrily on electronic narratives and a hip-hop aesthetic for mixing samples and loops. Dial ‘M’ For Monkey (Ninja Tunes, 2003) highlights just this talent for arranging sample cuts and live instrumentation into textured narratives. Composed of languid keyboard loops, horn blares, spacey flute riffs, and programmed atmospherics, the sensually percussive sound travels like moonlit waves. Green forged stronger and more intricate compositions in his most recent release, Days To Come (Ninja Tunes, 2006). This record sees Green’s younger somnambulant drive mature into the insightful introspection and passion conveyed by human rhythms and voices. A collaboration with the incredible vocalist Bajka emboldens Bonobo’s paradoxical balance between ephemeral and earthly wavelengths.

Today, Green is still following the elusive muses into realms of experimentation. He just finished producing an acoustic folk project for songstress Andreya Triana (of Fly Lo’s alluring "Tea Leaf Dancers"). "I think you can get bogged down with one way of working," Green says. "I like the idea of trying something else away from making my own music, because it expands [my] boundaries." For Triana’s upcoming debut Lost Where I Belong (Ninja Tunes), Green abandoned sampling for tabula rasa song production. The lo-fi, sparse arrangements emphasize the fullness of Triana’s effusive voice.

Green came out of the bottom-up recording experience rejuvenated and ready to write stories into tracks. He says his next effort will strive for cinematic orchestration. "I want to make sure it’s a progression from the last one," he says. "One tune has three different tempos and hugely different arrangements as it progresses." But adventurous strands of jazz continue to shift within Bonobo’s music. He’s still writing tales of love and isolation. We listen, navigating infinite horizons, and yes, more days to come.

BONOBO

With Andreya Triana

Sat/18, 9 p.m., $25

Mighty

119 Utah St, SF

(415) 626-7001

www.mighty119.com

Squeeze me

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO Obama’s been in office for a whole 200,000 blog centuries, but times are still so tight I have to make my own mascara out of Marlboro butts and melted-down pantyhose. Why won’t he magically fix everything immediately! Flasks are making a flashy comeback on the club scene, spontaneous street parties are all the rage, and 2 p.m. at Dolores Park is the latest rave time for the hip, half-naked underemployed. (The free San Francisco Symphony performance then and there on Sun/19 will be an awesome culture clash.) It’s a freakonomical conundrum that just as delicious-sounding specialty cocktails are taking off and a new crop of fascinating DJs are touring, no one really has the ducats to taste or hear them.

But the worst thing you can do is stay home. Fortunately, some of the best parties in the city are free — and many more, don’t forget, are gratis if you arrive early enough (bring a crossword or something) or pimp inventive drink specials to help you fight the squeeze. Look Out Weekend (Fridays, 4–9 p.m., free. Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF. www.lowsf.com) is a bumpin’ electroish happy hour that boasts two-for-one well drinks and an überstylish crowd. The weekly hip-hop-laced glass of adventure that is Red Wine Social (Wednesdays, 8 p.m., free. Dalva, 3121 16th St., SF. www.myspace.com/dalva_cocktails) has been getting scruffsters loopy for the better part of a decade, while hip-hop upstart West Addy (Wednesday, UndergroundSF, 424 Haight, SF. www.myspace.com/westaddy) gooses the neon youth. The eclectic Drunken Monkey (Tuesdays, 9 p.m., free. Annie’s Social Club, 917 Folsom, SF. www.anniessocialclub.com) brings together goth and hip-hop — goth hop? Gnip gnop? — while the occasional, usually free Alcoholocaust parties (various dates, Argus Lounge, 3187 Mission, SF. www.arguslounge.com) get your rock rocks off.

The gays love it the free: Honey Sundays (Sundays, 9 p.m., free. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, SF. www.honeysoundsystem.com) brings the best underground queer sounds in town to a lovely cross-section of post-weekend freaks — and is celebrating its second anniversary Sun/19 — while Charlie Horse (Fridays, 9 p.m., free. The Cinch, 1723 Polk, SF. www.myspace.com/charliehorsecinch) is an actual delicious freakshow, with Anna Conda and her merry band of blackouts dishing out punk rock drag for a packed house. Tiara Sensation (Mondays, 9 p.m., free. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.myspace.com/tiarasensation) is a mad mix of outré drag themes — Bea Arthur never died here — and DIY outfits, many of them constructed onscene. Freesational!

WATCHA-CLAN


Breakbeat revival in full effect? Maybe, but how about "world ‘n bass." French-Algerian phenom Watcha-Clan puts a refreshing, live global spin on the fractured obsession of yesteryear, in keeping with our borderless times. The Afrolicious boys crack it all open.

Wed/15, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

JUST ANOTHR PARTY


My fave ‘Loin-hearted electro band, the Tenderlions, will be rocking it with super-naff Ferrari Party kids Jason D. and Primo and glam-slam DJs Sarah Delush, Mario Muse, Pony P. and other razor-sharp untouchables.

Fri/17, 10 p.m.– 3 a.m., $5. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

SMACK


Could I go at least a week without writing about Detroit? Sheesh, y’all go back home! But not before Smack, a D-lovely affair, that pairs scene queen Juanita More with the Motor City’s Sass and Family crews, with quite-right techno-reppin’ DJ Chuck Hampton, aka Gay Marvine, on the decks.

Fri/17, 10 p.m., $5. UndergroundSF, 424 Haight, SF.

PHEEKO DUBFUNK


More North African dancefloor diaspora, as the man from Oran-El-Bahia rips out some seriously silky smooth house and, well, dubfunk at Temple. Although he became well-known for his sets in South Beach, Miami, Pheeko’s no mere sparkly sunglass-wearing slickster, keeping the tunes deep and intelligently constructed.

Sat/18, 10 p.m., $5 before 11 p.m., $20 after. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

Making great streets

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steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY There’s a growing movement to transform San Francisco’s streets into safe, vibrant public spaces, part of an international trend that has drawn together disparate partners around the belief that roadways shouldn’t simply be conduits for moving automobiles.

Recent advances include the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s approval of a package of 45 bicycle projects and the success of the Sunday Streets program, a series of temporary road closures to cars (the next one is this Sunday, July 12, in the Mission District).

And there are new players on the scene, from Streetsblog SF (see "Street fighters," 1/14/09) to the San Francisco Great Streets Project (www.sfgreatstreets.wordpress.com), a newly formed organization sponsored by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), the Livable Streets Initiative, and the Project for Public Spaces.

The Great Streets Project focuses on facilitating temporary conversions of streets into plazas (such as the new 17th Street Plaza at Castro and Market streets), parties, and other carfree spaces and with creating a civic conversation about the role of roads by bringing in renowned urban thinkers such as Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, who spoke at the main library July 6 and sat down for an interview with the Guardian the next day.

"The heart and soul of a city is its public pedestrian space," said Peñalosa, who banned parking on sidewalks and expanded Bogotá’s protected bikeways, ciclovias (temporary road closures that were the model for Sunday Streets), and bus rapid transit system, creating an urban renaissance that he has since promoted in cities around the world.

"It became clear that the way we build cities could make people so much happier," Peñalosa said, noting how such urban design concepts dovetailed with his advocacy for the poor. "In a poor city, the inequality is felt most during leisure time … My main concerns are equity and happiness and the way cities can contribute to those things."

Peñalosa noted that "the 20th century was a terrible century for human habitat. Cars took over for people. Later we realized that was a big mistake." Such growth patterns, Peñalosa said, are simply unsustainable in the 21st century, particularly as Asia and Africa modernize.

Many European cities have taken aggressive steps to correct that mistake, but in the U.S. — whose dominant economic position during those years created the most car-dependent infrastructure on the planet — change has come slowly.

"Change is difficult, but change is already happening," he said, noting the strong carfree movements in San Francisco, New York City, and other U.S. cities.

Peñalosa transformed Bogotá at a time when the country was besieged by a violent civil war, timing he said was more propitious than unlikely. As with the current global warming imperatives and the traffic congestion that is choking many big cities, times of crisis can be moments of opportunity.

"When the crisis is so big, people are willing to risk different things and make experiments," Peñalosa said.

While most San Franciscans have yet to truly embrace the transition from car culture, Great Streets Project proponents are using temporary projects to push the envelope and gradually introduce new ideas into the public realm.

"It’s important for everyone to come into this with a spirit of experiment," said SFBC program director Andy Thornley. "Presenting these things as trials helps people get comfortable with the ideas."

SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf said temporary projects often bypass the need for cumbersome and expensive environmental studies and outreach efforts, placing innovative urban design concepts on public display as ongoing experiments.

"They allow you to make adjustments. It’s an option that exists with public spaces that you don’t have with buildings," Metcalf said. "It de-escalates the fear people have over change."

Plus, as the project’s director Kit Hodge notes, temporary placements let transportation planners and advocates try out new ideas instead of just endlessly studying them. As she put it, "San Francisco has a tradition of creating great plans that don’t get implemented."

The prime example is Market Street, an inefficient street for automobiles and a dangerous one for bicycles and pedestrians, and one that has been subject to countless studies about how to make it more livable. Yet little changes. "You need to achieve as much consensus as possible," Peñalosa said, "but in the end, you have to take risks."

Or as Metcalf put it, "It’s time to start enjoying some of the fruits of urbanity that we’ve been denying ourselves."

Something for nothing

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>>CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS GUIDE ON ONE PAGE

You can’t get much cheaper than free. And at a time when many of us are counting every penny, the Bay Area is full of free stuff. Some of it’s right in front of your face, but most of it takes a little digging to find. This guide should send you in the right direction.

Oh, and by the way: some economists and political thinkers are suggesting that, as the over-financed, money-driven economy of the last century goes into, well, free-fall, the idea of giving things away could be the model for a more sustainable future.

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FREE FOOD

You can eat like a gourmet for the price of a drink

By Virginia Miller

Eating free doesn’t have to begin and end with soup kitchens. Here are some spots where, for the price of a drink — or sometimes for nothing — you can get good food, and sometimes excellent food, for everybody’s favorite magic number of zero.

ADESSO HAPPY HOUR

Adesso is much more than wine bar with an Italian-centric list of wines by the glass. The drinks are (relatively) inexpensive and creative concoctions. But the best part (besides a Foosball table) is food that comes out continuously from the kitchen during weekday happy hours. We’re not talking about your average free bar food here — this is stuff from the regular menu, like excellent house-made charcuterie, cheeses, hefty arancini (fried Italian rice balls), pates, sardine crostini, and all kinds of goodness. Happy hour, indeed.

Mon.–Fri., 5-7pm. 4395 Piedmont, Oakl. 510-601-0305

ALISHA’S HOME COOKIN’ FRIDAYS AT THE RIPTIDE

It’s happy hour and it’s Friday … what could be better? Especially at dive bar extraordinaire the Riptide, all the way out by the ocean in the Sunset District. From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. (or until the food’s gone), Alisha cooks up down-home goodness that pairs well with the ‘Tide’s PBRs and fireplace (in case — shall we bet on it? — the fog rolls in after a sunny summer day). You get chili con carne, chicken pot pie, and something called "blushin’ bunnies."

4–7 p.m. 3639 Taraval, SF.415-681-8433. www.riptidesf.com

MAYA HAPPY HOUR WITH BOTANAS

The $5 drink specials all night on margaritas, mojitos, and sangria are already a good deal. Add in free all-you-can-eat Mexican snacks and it’s a party. Free stuff includes Mexican bites like guac, quesadillas, taquitos, jicama with ceviche, tamales, and black bean dip. Arriba!

Weekdays, 4–7pm www.mayasf.com

EL RIO’S MONTHLY PANCAKE SATURDAYS

El Rio is one generous bar — the place serves free pancakes from the griddle the third Saturday of the month. Further cool points won by calling it "Rock Softly and Carry a Big Spatula." Breakfast is kindly served at 1 p.m., so after you’ve rolled out of bed and wandered over, ease into wakefulness with soft rock and hot flapjacks. Wear the "funkiest kitchen couture" and you could win their Golden Apron honors. After a meal that costs nothing, it’s easy to feed the tradition with generous tips. There’s also free barbecue at Friday night happy hours until 9 p.m. and on Sunday afternoons during the summer.

3rd Saturdays, 1–3 p.m. 3158 Mission, 415-282-3325. www.elriosf.com

PALIO D’ASTI’S PIZZA

Any two drinks (of the alcoholic kind, $6–$9) and you’re given a generous-sized pizza for two (or one massive eater). Devour the sauceless pizza d’Asti (shaved asparagus, fontina val d’aosta, thyme), a classic Margherita, or a Siciliana (fabulous Berkshire pork fennel sausage, fire roasted peppers, and smoked mozzarella). It’s no trouble drinking cocktails when they’re as playful as rosemary "sweet tea" (bourbon, muddled rosemary, lemon, and a splash of Moscato d’Asti), or a rhubarb margarita with lime and a salt rim.

Mon-Fri, 4–7pm. 640 Sacramento, SF.415-395-9800. www.paliodasti.com

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FREE DRINKS

Sometimes, even the booze is on the house

By Amy Monroe

If you’re curious and thirsty on a Friday, head to Spuntino’s free wine tasting from 4 to 6 p.m. Let the friendly staff pour and explain a flight of wines organized around a different theme each week. Drink free and get educated — imagine that.

1957 Union, 931-0122, www.spuntinosf.com

Cash-strapped social butterflies need only round up a group of friends and bring them to Tropisueno any night of the week to earn free drinks, and lots of them. The host imbibes gratis all evening provided she brings five friends with her to the bar.

75 Yerba Buena Ln., 243-0299, www.tropisueno.com

If you happen to be walking by one of the city’s many Kimpton hotels between 5 and 6 p.m. on a weekday, you might want to wander in and mingle with the guests in the lobby. If you look the part (and nobody asks you to show your room key), you can partake in the hotel chain’s free wine hour. Bonus: many locations pour free Anchor, too.

Nine locations in San Francisco, www.kimptonhotels.com

Like beer, music, and crowds? Then head to tiny Laszlo on the first Friday of the month for GroundSound Happy Hour. Hosts Upper Playground and SonicLiving buy you beer — and good beer at that, Trumer Pils and Shiner Commemorator — from 6 to 7 p.m. while DJs spin for your listening pleasure.

2526 Mission, 401-0810, www.laszlobar.com

upperplayground.com/wordpress/?tag=groundsound-happy-hour

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JOHNNY FUNCHEAP’S FAVORITE WAYS TO ENJOY THE CITY, FREE

By Johnny Funcheap

When you’re broke in San Francisco, sometimes even "cheap" can seem like a four-letter word. So thank God for free. Here are a few ways you can still enjoy the fun of living in San Francisco without cracking open your wallet even once.

GET LECTURED ABOUT YOUR DRINKING

The Mission District bar Elixir hosts a free Thursday night "Cocktail Club" with tastings (whiskeys, vodkas, tequilas … even absinthe) and a guest expert to help guide you through the process of finding new ways to appreciate staying off the wagon. For beer and wine drinkers, most BevMo! locations in the Bay Area have regular free tasting parties with themes like summertime ales and Mexican beers.

Elixir, 3200 16th St. http://www.elixirsf.com

ART GALLERY RECEPTIONS AND WALKS

To help lure in and lubricate casual art fans into being art-buyers, most galleries have regular receptions with free-flowing wine and a tasty platter of things to nibble on while you research art you can’t yet afford. If one reception a night isn’t enough, try sauntering from gallery to gallery during one of several monthly art walks — the most reliable of which clusters around Union Square with regular collective receptions the first Thursday evening of each month.

www.firstthursdayart.com

VOLUNTEERING MADE EASY: ONE BRICK

Unemployed? Got time on your hands? Do something useful with it — and meet new friends in the process. One Brick is a local nonprofit that hosts upwards of 20 different flexible volunteering opportunities each week, ranging from working a short shift beautifying a local park to serving food to the homeless. It’s not just about doing good — One Brick aims to help you make new friends by organizing meet-ups after each event so volunteers can get to know one another in a relaxed setting over a meal or a drink.

www.onebrick.org

GET YOUR GEEK ON: STAR PARTIES

If you’ve ever looked up to the heavens and wondered what the hell was up there, the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers might be able to give you some answers. The group gives free lectures the third Wednesday of each month at the Randall Museum. When skies are clear, it hosts free monthly Star Parties at Point Lobos at Lands End with a lecture and a public telescope viewing.

RandallMuseum, 199 Museum Way; Point Lobos, El Camino Del Mar in Lands End;

www.sfaa-astronomy.org

AURAL PLEASURES: MARKET STREET MUSIC FESTIVAL

If the live music at the Stern Grove and Yerba Buena Gardens Festivals make you sad that most weekdays are quiet, the annual People in Plazas festival should help fill in any remaining gaps in your work-week concert schedule. This free July-to-October Market Street music festival puts on more than 145 free lunchtime concerts of all types in 16 different public plazas from the Embarcadero through the Castro.

www.peopleinplazas.org

FRIDAY NIGHT SKATE

Rather than plunking down a big portion of your salary (or unemployment check) on a gym membership (or signing up for a free introductory pass at a different gym each week: a.k.a. "gym slutting"), get sweaty by donning your blades or old-school roller skates and join the Midnight Rollers’ weekly Friday Night Skate. A large group of skaters embark from the Ferry Plaza on a 10-mile dance party/skate tour of the city, which includes plenty of stops for ice cream, Frisbee-throwing, and a chance for slowpokes to catch up.

www.cora.org/friday

TASTE-MAKING

Macy’s Union Square puts on free monthly cooking demonstrations in the Cellar, where top local chefs reveal their secrets for dishing up creative yet healthy meals. Not only do you get to learn skills like how to barbecue like a grill master, expertly pair chocolate and wine, or make a brunch worth waking up early for, you also get to sample the yummy delights the experts have cooked up. It’s like watching your favorite cooking show on the Food Network, but getting to magically reach inside the TV to grab a taste.

www1.macys.com

Johnny Funcheap runs FunCheapSF.com, a free San Francisco-based service that uncovers and shares a hand-picked recommendation list of upwards of 50 cheap, fun, unique Bay Area events each week.

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FIVE FREE THINGS TO DISCOVER IN SF

Urban adventures don’t have to cost money

By Broke-Ass Stuart

Although wasting a day in Dolores Park or purposefully misdirecting tourists might be great way to have some free fun, anything can get redundant after a while. That’s why I put together this list of amazing free things to discover in San Francisco. Whether you’ve been here your whole life or just landed today, you’re bound to find something entertaining on this list.

The Wave Organ at the end of the jetty extending past the Golden Gate Yacht club in the Marina. It’s not bellowing quite like it used to, but the Wave Organ is a perfect particle of San Francisco’s quirkiness. Built by the Exploratorium, the Wave Organ consists of 25 PVC pipes of various lengths jutting through concrete into the bay below. The sounds it makes depend on the height of the tide.

The Seward Street Slides at Seward and Douglass streets in the Castro District. Cardboard: free. Concrete slides: free. Getting bloody scrapes from combo of cardboard and concrete slides: priceless. The two concrete chutes are constructed so that when you get to the top and sit on a piece of cardboard, you slide down. Bring wax paper for even greater velocity.

The Xanadu Gallery at 140 Maiden Lane. If you’re excited about free stuff, chances are you can’t afford anything in this gallery. But looking around is free — and awesome! Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright at the same time that he was doodling the Guggenheim, Xanadu Gallery (built as the VC Morris Gift Shop), has a remarkably similar interior to its New York City cousin — seemingly devoid of right angles and full of curving ramps. I’d pay so much money to see Tony Hawk go to town in here.

The Tiled Steps and Grand View Park, 16th Avenue at Moraga. Bring your sweetie and climb the lovely 163 tiled steps. Stop at the top and breathe a bunch. Then climb the next set of stairs to the right, and the ones after that. Now you’re in Grand View Park. Breathe a bunch more while checking out the staggering view. Smooching at the top is optional (but excellent).

The Jejune Institute, 580 California, Suite 1607,. Imagine if Lost took place in San Francisco. But instead of wandering the jungle dodging weird smoke monsters and "the others," you could explore the city in ways you never imagined. The JeJune Institute is kinda like that, only better. I don’t want to ruin anything for you, so all I’m gonna say is go there with a couple free hours, a cell phone, and $1.10 (not technically free but seriously the best $1.10 you’ll ever spend). The Jejune Institute blew my mind so hard that the top of my skull still flaps in the wind.

If you like cheap stuff, check out BrokeAssStuart.com.

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FREE HAIRCUTS

Let the students practice on your head

By Mayka Mei

Has anyone ever said you have a great face for hair modeling? Volunteering as a hair model gives salon trainees a chance to fulfill all their requirements for becoming full-time stylists. True, salons have become more guarded about their freebies, sometimes nixing the programs altogether. But a few freebies are still out there.

A few caveats: you’ll need an open, available schedule. Some salons have casting calls or will screen you for certain characteristics online or over the phone. Decide if you want a cut or color, and exactly what type of styling you have in mind. With specific days devoted to specific lessons, they may not need another graduate specializing in bobs the week you need a cut. Here are two places that still cut hair, absolutely free.

Festoon Salon

Haircuts Mondays at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Coloring second and fifth Mondays at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m.

1401 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berk.

(888) 35-SALON or (510) 528-5855, www.festoonsalon.com

Visual Image

Hair modeling vacancies available one or two times a month, or once a quarter

5200 Mowry, Suite C, Fremont

(510) 792-5922, www.visualimagesalon.com

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FREE PHONES, MOVIES, AND WI-FI

Why are you still paying for Internet access?

By Annalee Newitz

Information may want to be free, but Internet service providers want to charge you too see it. That doesn’t have to crimp your style; there’s plenty of free Wi-Fi — and ways to get free movies and phone service.

Let’s start with a little disclaimer: When you’re talking about getting things like free Wi-Fi, or free phone service, even "free" comes with a price. You’re going to have to invest in some equipment to get free stuff later. You might also need some training — but that’s available free.

For free classes where you can learn more about how to build some of the technologies I’ll be talking about below, check out the Noisebridge hacker space near 16th and Mission streets (www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge).

Now, here’s the dirt on how you can stop paying for phone service, cable, Internet, and online media.

FREE INTERNET SERVICE

Novice level: If you have a laptop with a Wi-Fi card, you should never have to pay for an Internet connection while you live in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are countless cafes that provide free Wi-Fi to their customers. Yelp offers a good, up-to-date list of free Wi-Fi cafes in San Francisco at www.yelp.com/list/free-wireless-cafes-in-sf-san-francisco.

In San Francisco, check for free Wi-Fi provided by commercial vendor Meraki using this map: sf.meraki.com/map. Every branch library in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland offers free Wi-Fi.

Techie level: If you’d like to get free Internet service at home and not have to visit your local cafe all the time, you can build a cheap antenna so that you can see countless networks all around your house. Find out how to build such an antenna using this free online guide at www.en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wifi/Building_an_antenna.

If you are going to be borrowing your neighbors’ Wi-Fi service, please observe this cardinal rule: You are a guest, so use their service sparingly. Checking e-mail is fine, surfing the Web is fine, but downloading giant movie files is extremely uncool.

FREE MOBILE PHONE SERVICE

Novice level: Make all of your phone calls over the Internet using an IP phone. You can either invest in an IP phone and make phone calls using free Wi-Fi cafes and free city networks, or you can get the headset and microphone to plug into your laptop so that you can use Skype or another free Internet voice service.

Techie level: Turn your home phone into an IP phone.

Here are other ideas that some people have tried (and we, of course, don’t recommend that anyone does anything against the law). One of the open secrets about cordless phones is that it is extremely easy to steal phone service using them. Many cordless phones use the DECT chipset, and special laptop cards are available that that allow the users to trick cordless phones system into thinking that the laptop user is one of the cordless phones associated with it. www.dedected.org/trac

FREE CABLE

Novice level: Miro is an online service that allows you to turn your computer into a Tivo-like device that will download the shows you want to watch as soon as they are available via file-sharing programs. Find out more here: www.getmiro.com

Techie level: Turn your computer into a television tuner using Myth TV. www.mythtv.org

FREE MEDIA

Novice level: There are plenty of services online that offer free media, from Hulu.com, which offers a lot of free television and movies, to Archive.org, which has a vast collection of public domain films. Neither Hulu nor Archive.org requires you to download any special software. Or if you’d like something classier, you can download free, public domain classical music at MusOpen! www.musopen.com

Techie level: Use a BitTorrent client to download public domain music and movies that you can save on your computer. CreativeCommons.org lists many artists who offer their music for free. Public Domain Movies offers torrents of movies available to you for free. www.publicdomaintorrents.com

Other options people have tried: Some use a BitTorrent client to download any movie, television, music, software, or books that they like, using a popular Torrent search engine like Isohunt. There are a lot of what you might call grey area legal media at the Pirate Bay. That oufit is located in Sweden, a country that recenty elected representatives of the Pirate Party to serve in the European Parliament.

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FREE POT

You may be broke, but you can still smoke

By Rachel Buhner

It’s not well advertised, but if you’re short on money and need your organic herbal medicine, many of the city’s pot clubs will give it to you, free. Some places ask for proof of income or require membership while some are more loose about it. You won’t get big bags, either — typically the freebie is a gram. But while the American Medical Association and the insurance companies argue in Washington, D.C., about how to keep their fingers on the cash, local medical marijuana dispensaries are actually trying to serve needy patients.

The Green Door offers free marijuana every Thursday from 12 noon to 2 p.m. for those who can’t afford it. No proof is required.

843 Howard Street. (415) 541-9590. www.greendoorsf.com

The Market Street Cooperative offers free marijuana every Sunday for those who can’t afford it. No proof is required.

1884 Market. (415) 864-6686 www.marketstreetcooperative.com

The Hemp Center offers compassionate donations to all members when available; no proof of income is required. There’s also free Internet access, free bottled water, and free rolling papers.

4811 Geary (415) 386-4367www.thehempcenter.com

Sanctuary offers free medical marijuana, but there’s currently a waiting list and priority if given to terminally ill patients. Proof of income required; open to San Francisco residents only.

669 O’Farrell (415) 885-4420

Harborside Health Centers offers a care package program to low-income patients. Paperwork showing a fixed low income is required; patients can receive a free gram and a half each week. Additionally, members from any income bracket can volunteer at the center performing general activist work (calling local representatives, writing letters, etc.). After one hour of work, patients receive a free gram.

And there’s more: every Sunday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., the center offers members free how-to-grow classes taught by David Gold, author of The Complete Cannabis. Members also get a free lending library for cannabis-related materials as well as free holistic health services such as hypnotherapy, chiropractic, naturopathy, yoga, reiki, traditional Chinese medicine, Western herbalist consultations, and Alexander Technique classes.

1840 Embarcadero, Oakl. (510) 533-0146, www.harborsidehealthcenter.com

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FREE PAINT

Not many colors, but the price is right

Every wonder what happens to all that old paint that good, responsible San Franciscans drop off at the city dump? It gets recycled, in the best possible way. The dump workers sort it by color, pour it into big buckets, and give it away.

You don’t get a wide color selection (off-white is the big choice) but the price is right and it keeps the stuff out of the landfill. Schools and community groups get priority, but San Francisco residents can stop by and pick some up whenever there’s extra.

501 Tunnel Avenue. 330-1400. www.sfrecycling.com/sfdump

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FREE SEX

Clubs, classes, and clinics dedicated to low-cost lovin’

By Molly Freedenberg

As anyone with a broken bed frame or a broken heart knows, even sex you don’t exchange money for is rarely free. But we’ve compiled a list of sex-related events, resources, health centers, and club nights that are easier on the pocketbook than most.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Good Vibrations is always hosting free events, classes, and book signings at its Bay Area stores. This month, check out Paul Krassner reading from his book In Praise of Indecency on July 15 and Kevin Simmonds presenting his new project "Feti(sh)ame," based on interviews with gay men about sexual fetishes, on July 16, both at the Polk Street location, and a reading/signing of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Prostitues Writing on Life, Love, Work, Sex, and Money (featuring stories by Annie Sprinkle and Tracy Quan, among others) July 30 in Berkeley. www.goodvibes.com

CHAPS

With no cover and nightly drink specials, this SoMa gay bar is the place to ogle hot men on a budget. Ongoing events include Shirts Off Mondays, Trumer Tuesdays (featuring $2 Trumer drafts and specials on Jäger and fernet); the sports-gear and jock-strap-themed Locker Room Wednesdays (with specials on Speakeasy ales, Wild Turkey, and shooters with names like Cock Sucker and Golden Showers); Thursday’s Busted (with whiskey specials and indie, electro, and ’80s remixes); Men in Gear on Saturdays, Cheap Ass Happy Hour every Monday through Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m.; and Rubber (hosted by the Rubbermen of SF Bay) every second Friday.

1225 Folsom, SF. (415) 255-2427, www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com

CENTER FOR SEX AND CULTURE

This nonprofit organization provides education and resources across the gender spectrum. Though there’s a fee to attend many of the events hosted here, visiting the extensive library/media archive is free. So is checking out "Erotic Embrace of the Corset," an exhibit featuring 50 years of photography of bodies tied up tight, on display through Sept. 10. Call before you visit (the center is run by volunteers and has irregular hours), or try stop by between 1 and 5 p.m. weekdays.

1519 Mission, SF. (415) 255-1155, www.sexandculture.org

FIRST FRIDAY FOLLIES

Burlesque, by its very nature, is meant to be accessible to the masses — which means it should be not only lowbrow, but low cost. This monthly burlesque, music, and comedy revue takes "low" even lower by cutting out the cover charge entirely.

9:30pm. Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. www.myspace.com/firstfridayfollies

FEMINA POTENS

Part art gallery, part performance space, part community center, this nonprofit dedicated to greater visibility for women and transgendered artists has become a favorite of luminaries like Annie Sprinkle, Michelle Tea, and Carol Queen. Many events are low or no cost, and it’s always free to check out the art, including this month’s "Show Me Your Fantasy," featuring Malia Schlaefer’s photographs addressing contemporary female sexuality.

Thurs–Sun, 12–6pm. 2199 Market, SF. (415) 864-1558, www.feminapotens.org

SF JACKS

When you’re poor and bored, nothing perks you up quite like a good session of self-love. But if you’re tired of the solo mission, join other like-minded men for group "therapy" every second and fourth Monday. Though a $7 donation is suggested (insert "donation" pun here), no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Just remember the rules: mandatory nudity, jack-off play only.

7:30–8:30pm. Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission, SF. (415) 267-6999, www.sfjacks.com

ST. JAMES INFIRMARY

Run by and for sex workers, this 10-year-old nonprofit provides free STI counseling and testing, rapid HIV testing, transgender healthcare and hormone therapy, self-defense classes, legal advice, and much MUCH more to sex workers and their families.

1372 Mission, SF. (415) 554-8494, stjamesinfirmary.org

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FREE TIPS GRAB BAG

More free stuff we love

You can watch Giants games free through the outfield fence; three-inning limit when there’s a crowd … Thrift stores all say "no dumping," but people leave stuff out in front late at night anyway … Ask someone leaving Muni for their transfer (and always take a transfer, even if you don’t need it, to share) … There’s almost always great free music at street fairs …. You can actually ski free at a lot of resorts if you do the old-fashioned thing and hike up the slopes instead of buying a lift ticket; on busy days nobody notices (obviously, this works best for short-run beginner hills) … There’s some great stuff at freecyle.org, but it’s a Yahoo newsgroup and floods your inbox so you have to keep up with it … The free stuff listings on Craigslist are also good … Casual carpools are a great way to get a free ride across the Bay … The Lyrics Born, Toto La Momposina, Kailash Kher’s Kailasa and the San Francisco Ballet all perform free this summer at Stern Grove, Sundays at 2 p.m., see www.sterngrove.org/2009season … Catch Wicked, Beach Blanket Babylon, Killing My Lobster, and more at the SF Theater Festival free shows; see www.sftheaterfestival.com and Yerba Buena Gardens Festival (till Oct. www.ybgf.org) … You can get free movie passes many weeks from the Guardian … Buy a Muni pass before the end of the month, and you can share your old one; it’s good for three days of free rides at the beginning of the month … Almost every used bookstore has a free box; mostly crap, but sometimes some gems …. The Cal Sailing Club in Berkeley offers free introductory sailing sessions on summer Sundays; for the schedule and details check out www.cal-sailing.org. San Francisco Brew Craft offers free beer-brewing classes every Monday night at 6 p.m. 1555 Clement, 751-9338 … You can catch free outdoor movies at Jack London Square in Oakland every other Thurs. night through August (www.jacklondonsquare.com/newscenter/upcomingevents) … Free Shakespeare in the Park performs The Comedy of Errors Sat. and Sun. afternoons in August and September at the Presidio Parade Grounds (schedule at www.sfshakes.org/park/index)

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FREE TRADE

Go ahead, give it away — that’s the way the next economy may work

By Cecile Lepage

The 2003 documentary film The Corporation established that corporations were psychopathic entities, prone to irresponsibility, manipulation, and remorselessness. Now writer Douglas Rushkoff contends that we — the human beings — have started to act like corporations. His new thought-provoking book — Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back (Random House) — retraces how society has internalized the corporate values that disconnect us from one another. The current economic meltdown, he argues, is our chance to overthrow this dysfunctional model. We talked to him about a very different economy — one based on things that are free.

SFBG Your outlook is bleak, but you are still optimistic enough to see a way out. What’s your plan?

Douglas Rushkoff This crisis is an opportunity to start doing things for each other. First we have to be daring enough to enter gift economies, where we exchange favors freely and openly without even keeping track, just assuming that it’s all going to work out. So if someone needs tutoring or help mowing his lawn, you should do it. Eventually we’ll realize how much less money we need to earn to get what we need.

SFBG You acknowledge that accepting favors in exchange for other ones feels messy and confusing to us. Why is that?

DR We’re afraid of being indebted to somebody else. In order to accept something from another person, you also accept your indebtedness and acknowledge your gratitude. Money feels cleaner to us. People prefer hiring a person to babysit for their child rather than accepting a favor from the old lady down the street — because if you accept, what social obligation have you incurred? What if she wants to join you at your next barbecue? What if she now wants to be your friend? So now we all have to work more to get money to buy things that we used to just exchange freely with each other.

SFBG You blame the corporations for convincing us that we are self-interested beings. How did they achieve that?

DR They thought that the mathematician John Nash’s bad game theory applied to real life. A number of experiments tried to show that human beings made decisions like poker players for personal short-term gain and assuming the worst about other people. None of the experiments actually worked: the secretaries they did the experiment on behaved collaboratively and compassionately.

The better scientists, like Dr. Glynn Isaac, an Africanist from Harvard, demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that food-sharing and collaboration are what allowed homo sapiens to survive. Nevertheless, we intentionally built an economy and a scarcity-based currency to promote the self-interest.

People look at the economy we’re living in as a fact of nature. They don’t see it as a set of rules that was put in place by a particular people at a particular time. They look at money the way a doctor looks at the bloodstream. They don’t understand that it’s a social construction and that we can rewrite it.

Flour + Water

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paulr@sfbg.com

In an era when the naming of restaurants resembles the naming of Japanese cars — the ideal being a single, elegant, mysterious word like "Incanto" or "Lexus" — it seems rather daring to give a new place such a defiantly plain, yet weirdly complex, name as Flour + Water. One suspects that the idea is to suggest simplicity and forthrightness, but a certain austerity is also implied — not to mention the ubiquitous ness of flour in this country. We eat way too much flour, too much of it white and refined. It silts up our insides. I do like the "+" for its distinctiveness.

As it happens, pizza crust consists largely of flour and water, and one of the bigger deals at Flour + Water (which opened by a pair of Davids, White and Steele, late in the spring on the ground floor of a big Victorian building in the innermost heart of the Mission District) is pizza. The pies are made in the Neapolitan style, which means a thin crust and a very hot oven. This style of pizza has become very, very popular in San Francisco in the past few years — a winsome development for those of us who suffered through a long Dark Age of foam-rubber crusts. Are Flour + Water’s crusts up to the high standard set by Pizzeria Delfina, Gialina, Pizzetta 211, and Piccino? That, Horatio, is the question.

The duet of flour and water also figures in pasta, but the routine here can be more complex, since if you replace the water with egg, you end up with noodles. Flour + Water’s — excellent — pastas are hand-rolled, just from semolina flour (the slightly yellowish stuff produced from durum wheat) and water, I would guess. The name we give to this combination, macaroni, faintly suggests that it came from a box on a supermarket shelf, but in fact Flour + Water’s pastas are not only brilliantly sauced but produced in unusual shapes with evocative names — "maltagliati," for instance, or "rags," a type of pasta made from leftover scraps. One evening I saw a plate of this arriving at the festive table next to ours, and it did look like a tiny pile of old clothes waiting to be stuffed into a Goodwill bag.

My own plate of pasta, already dispatched, had consisted of agnolotti ($16), a swarm of little ravioli-like pockets filled with seasoned minced pork and bathed in a sauce of butter, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. (Our well-schooled server said that the name meant "clouds," but I might have misunderstood her; "agnolotti" is also said to refer to the shape of priests’ hats.) The pasta itself had the slight, not-unpleasant toughness I associate with fresh macaroni; fresh noodle pasta is a bit more pliant and luxurious. It’s like the difference between wool and cashmere.

Given the apparent pedigree of the pizza operation (chef Thomas McNaughton’s kitchen has its own pizzaiolo, Jon Darsky), I was struck by the condition of the crust under a margherita pie ($12 for a decent-sized one). I am all for blistering, and the restaurant’s Web site boasts of an ultra-hot oven, but there is a difference between blistering and charring. Blistering good, charring bad. Charring makes an un-pretty spectacle and leaves an off taste — we are talking about burnt flour, after all — while research suggests that it’s bad for you. By the time we were done with the pie, the serving tray was littered with twisted little lumps of charcoal, like burned-out tanks on a miniature battlefield. The toppings were fine and included fior di latte (a mozzarella cheese made from cow’s rather than water-buffalo milk). The half-wilted basil leaves clearly had spent some time in the oven.

In a small irony, some of the restaurant’s best dishes have nothing to do with pizza, pasta, or flour. A trio of plump marinated sardines ($9) wore bikinis of roasted-pepper slivers — they looked like a chorus line in some musical about a beach — while a simple side dish of chickpeas ($5) turned out to feature fresh chickpeas. These have a wonderful spring-green color and a bit more juiciness than the reconstituted, beige kind. F+W’s lot was also enlivened by a fine dice of pancetta, carrot, and onion (a meaty twist on mirepoix) and broth, which we daintily sipped after the chickpeas were gone.

Best of all, Flour + Water’s brief dessert list includes an authentic star: a block of olive-oil-scented cornmeal cake ($8) topped with a globe of olive-oil ice cream — a dense, smooth reminder that olives are fruit — and flanked by split strawberries tossed with shreds of candied fennel. Fennel is a root, not a fruit, and candied or not, its looks are unprepossessing (like a frosted-glass lightbulb that’s shattered), but its licorice flavor takes well to sweetening and to a union with sweet-tart, ripe strawberries. Enchanting!

FLOUR + WATER

Dinner: 5:30 p.m.–midnight

2401 Harrison, SF

(415) 826-7000

www.flourandwater.com

Beer and wine

Pleasant noise

AE/MC/V

Wheelchair accessible

The Bush era

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SAT IN YOUR LAP: THE LATEST DAUGHTERS OF KATE BUSH FLESH OUT THIS WOMAN’S WORK

By Marke B.

Kate Bush was gifted with a fierce female originality at a time when the rock world was starved of it: her golden run of eccentric achievement in the late 1970s and early 1980s placed her next to Joni Mitchell in terms of adventurous — if not always intellectual — influence in the minds of aspiring young women singer-songwriters. (And there’s some extremely perverse pleasure to be taken in the little factoid that her stunning 1985 EMI comeback album Hounds of Love snatched the top U.K. album slot from Madonna’s Like A Virgin.)

But that gift was also a curse: Bush was so original in so many ways that it’s easy to forget the myriad musical pathways she forged. This “artist in a female body” — as she famously protested when her panicked record company started pimping her rack on sleeves to shift units — has mostly been boiled down to spiritual oracle, swooping-voiced Sybil, and, ever since concept albums by women were banished to exile in Guyville, keeper of the idiosyncratic prog-rock flame. In other words, Stevie Nicks with a Fairlight synthesizer and a degree in Celtic mythology. Or else just plain weird.

Fortunately, musical weirdness is so much with us today that other Bush qualities are starting to be glimpsed through the babushka, including her production abilities, precocity, sincerity, humor, and unabashed gender-fucking. For the past three decades, it’s never been rare for artists to be compared to Bush — mostly for childlike vocalizations or way with a silver space suit and Circe metaphor. But in our post-neo-neo-soul moment (sorry Wino), a new crop of female British singers has arisen that takes its cues, mostly acknowledged, from Bush’s kaleidoscopic talent.

FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE

Without Kate Bush, flouncy freak-folker Florence Welch and her ever-changing backup band could be heard as a product of the unholy union of Devendra Banhart and Tori Amos — except those two probably wouldn’t exist without Bush either. Florence grounds her lyrics in the sexually frantic Bush. “I must be the lion-hearted girl,” she sings in the vid for “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” just before her wedding banquet table folds up into her coffin.

www.myspace.com/florenceandthemachinemusic

MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS

Marina and the Diamonds, a.k.a. the singular singer Marina Diamandis has been gaining huge traction with her excellent “I Am Not A Robot” track, calling up the more vulnerably affirmative, “Don’t Give Up” Bush. But it’s her screwy, cuckooing “Mowgli’s Road” that effectively conjures up woozy Kate at a post-rave bonfire.

www.myspace.com/marinaandthediamonds

BAT FOR LASHES

Half-Pakistani lovely Natasha Khan works the gleaming edge of Bush’s dark underworld glamour, and grounds her post-goth balladry and soft electro sparks in the sensual world. Her single “Daniel” de-Eltons the title character and places him among Bush’s slightly menacing, jig-footed cosmic effigies.

www.myspace.com/batforlashes

MICACHU AND THE SHAPES

Mika Levi calls herself Micachu and spits out shiv-sharp blasts of dissonant micro-punk — seemingly the opposite of Bush’s epic dramas. But Levi echoes Bush both in the sheer Englishness of her lyrics, the knockout oddity of her instrumentation and starry-eyed gender-bending. Micachu’s rambunctious, exhilarating new album Jewelry (Rough Trade) could easily have been shaken out of Bush’s backing track outtake archives.

www.myspace.com/micayomusic

MICACHU AND THE SHAPES

With tune-yards, Tempo No Tempo

July 22, 8 pm., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com ————

MOTHER STANDS FOR COMFORT: KATE BUSH IN THE SOUNDS OF NOW

By Irwin Swirnoff

It’s always exciting when you sense universal consciousness in motion. Like so many around me lately, I can’t stop listening to Kate Bush. I play Hounds Of Love (EMI, 1985) from start to finish again and again, allowing a different song from the album to become my theme or guiding light for weeks at a time. I play The Dreaming (EMI, 1982) and let it spin in and out of my head. These songs are as dramatic as they are sincere. They conjure magic while maintaining an emotional core. Bush’s undeniable integrity travels through her songs like a force of nature, from soft-lit soap opera to primal realms.

Many great records by other artists in the last few years have been stamped with undeniable Kate Bush moments. A new generation of musicians is learning that avant and pop sensibilities can coexist in exciting ways and that it is possible to blend the organic and the mechanical to create songs that soar with a mission. Here are some of today’s cloudbusters.

GANG GANG DANCE

“House Jams” (from Saint Dymphna)

(from Saint Dymphna, Social Registry, 2008)

On its latest album, Gang Gang Dance not only embraces its love of the dance floor — it invites the spirit of Kate Bush to a psychedelic midnight rave.

M83

“Skin Of The Night”

(from Saturdays =Youth, Mute, 2008)

No strangers to teenage mellow drama and melodrama, M83 makes music with a cinematic quality, much in the same way that Kate Bush’s records sound like movies unto themselves.

PAAVOHARJU

“Kevatrumpu”

(from Laulu Laakson Kukista, Fonal, 2008)

This Finnish group roams through a landscape that varies from dusty fairytale to psychedelic future. This track is by far the most dancepop — and Bush-like — moment on a record that also channels Kurt Weill, Edith Piaf, and Robert Wyatt.

JOANNA NEWSOM

Ys

(Drag City, 2006)

Many eccentric female artists are compared to either Kate Bush or Björk by lazy critics, but few actually reach that kind of ecstatic individuality. Joanna Newsom is one. Her complete belief in her vision is apparent in these commanding, flawlessly executed songs.

TELEPATHE

“Drugged”

(from Dance Mother, IAMSOUND)

Much like their New York City neighbors Gang Gang Dance, Telepathe calls Bush to mind when it branches out from its experimental roots into a slow burning state that’s ready for the dancefloor.

CHROMATICS

“Running Up That Hill”

(from Night Drive, Italians Do it Better, 2007))

It takes major guts to cover this Bush composition, a contender for one of the most poignant songs of the last quarter century. The air of magic and mystery here is very Kate.

FEVER RAY

Fever Ray

(Mute)

The debut solo record from Karin Dreijer Andersson of the Knife is more internal and intense than the dance floor stylings of her well-known group. Andersson plays with different voices and personas while creating sounds that are creepy and comforting. The result feels like a perfect contemporary response to Bush’s explorations of 20 years ago.

Flyaway Productions

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PREVIEW Imagine what it would be like to be working on the new span of the Bay Bridge — perilously dangling in the wind, high above freezing waters, would be just another day on the job. Inspired by the female ironworkers, laborers, crane operators, and other brave souls who’ve helped create and tend to local bridges since the 1970s, Jo Kreiter’s Flyaway Productions presents The Ballad of Polly Ann (named for the badass wife name-checked in "The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer"). Like all of Kreiter’s creations, Polly Ann is an "apparatus-based" performance; appropriately, the dancers will move about a bridge replica inspired by the suspension system used for the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge, which spans the Carquinez Strait. The Flyaway crew is used to being graceful in unlikely places (fire escapes, rooftops) and have no fear of heights (past pieces have hoisted dancers up to 100 feet over audiences) — so they’re the ideal company to mount this unique tribute. Polly Ann was created with help from labor historian Harvey Schwartz and musician Pamela Z, who weaves real-life bridgeworker tales into her accompanying soundscape.

Flyaway Productions Through July 25 Tues–Sat, 8 p.m., $25. Somarts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF.

1-800-838-3006, www.flyawayproductions.com

Vieux Farka Toure

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PREVIEW A torrent of questions arose amid the global mourning over Michael Jackson’s sudden passing. Was he addicted to prescription pain meds? How much was he actually worth? Did his father’s abuse scar the star beyond repair? Speaking of paternal influence, will 12-year-old Prince Michael Jackson follow his famous father’s musical calling? If he displays even an ounce of MJ’s talent, the pressure will be enormous.

A similar scenario played out in the African music world following the 2006 passing of Malian blues guitarist Ali Farka Touré from bone cancer. Farka Touré’s son Vieux expressed an early interest in music, but his father objected, hoping to shelter him from a professional musician’s grueling tour circuit. It didn’t work. Vieux picked up the guitar, releasing a self-titled debut on Modiba/World Village in late 2006, followed by the creative, youth-embracing Remixed: UFOs Over Bamako (Modiba) in 2007. With guidance from legendary Malian kora player Toumani Diabat, the younger Touré’s first two releases express a reverence for his father’s emotive, blues-soaked guitar style while exploring rock and electronic music interests.

These traditional and modern threads entwine so thoroughly that they fuse on the new Fondo (Six Degrees). Vieux gives voice to swirling Saharan dust storms on the energetic "Sarama," explores Mali’s quiet spirituality on "Paradise" (featuring Diabate’s kora solos) and ponders West African struggles in the 21st century on the reggae-tinged "Diaraby Magni." Like his father, Vieux’s music has taken him from Bamako, Mali to Bonnaroo, the massive Tennessee music festival where his American summer tour begins. As U.S. indie bands like Vampire Weekend and Fools Gold incorporate African rhythms into their repertoires, it’s worth hearing a talented African guitar hero whose taste for rock isn’t just skin deep, it’s in his DNA.

VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ With Luke Top, DJ Jeremiah. Sat/18, 8 p.m., $20. The Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1420. www.theindependentsf.com

Collision Fest, Convergence Fest, and “Faux Real”

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PREVIEW Children, go where I send you. Seek out the wild women of the Mission Creek Music Festival Collision Fest.

Sure there are some sweet boys — any pleasure-seeker with eyes and ears should enjoy Mike Mantle of the Mantles (headlining July 22 at Hotel Utah), or Myles Cooper’s solo journey outside the Passionistas (opening a June 24 El Rio bill). But this year’s MCMF says here’s to the ladies who launch — the women who make new musical rules in order to break them.

Ryder Cooley reps recent Bay Area ingenuity on Thursday at the LAB. But the double bill bonanza crazier than any acid trip involving Tony Danza goes down same place, same time the next night, when Dynasty Handbag and Ann Magnuson take the stage. Dynasty girl Jibz Cameron is a treasure as classy as your mom’s favorite perfume — not even Lypsinka sinks her teeth into the art of lipsyncing with such ferocity. Try not pee yourself as she puts the p in performance and prepares you for the musical dramatics of Ms. Magnuson. What can be said about the queen of Bongwater, besides that on the cover of Power Of Pussy (Shimmy Disc, 1990), she was both outdoing and lampooning Burning Man before it even became a phenomenon?

Since Magnuson rubbed extremely pointy shoulders with Klaus Nomi back at the Mudd Club, it’s safe to assume she would be intrigued by the Nomi-esque stage theatrics of Fauxnique, a.k.a. Monique Jenkinson, who is bringing her recent show Faux Real back for a weekend stint outside of the Mission Creek rubric. Word has it that the show is brilliant — for real.

While Magnuson and Dynasty Handbag exemplify the Collision Fest’s cross-disciplinary antics, the Convergence Fest is a trip into filmdom. And in the case of Ira Cohen’s 1968 cinematic mirror-warp The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (Sun/19 at Artists’ Television Access), I do mean trip. Along with a documentary about Krautrock godheads Faust (Sat/18 at ATA), Cohen’s movie is one of MCMF’s screen gems.

FAUX REAL Thurs/16–Sat/18, 8 p.m. $20. Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St., SF.(415)704-3260, www.climatetheater.com

COLLISION FEST AND CONVERGENCE FEST www.mcmf.org

Partial Suspension for Complete Sadists and the Marquis Fetish Ball

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PREVIEW As we working stiffs watch more and more of our peers enjoying their government-funded, sun-filled funemployment, it’s hard not to feel tied down by the weight of the work week. But remember: not all bondage is bad. Case in point: Mike West’s Partial Suspension for Complete Sadists and the Marquis Fetish Ball, both happening this week to remind us that being told what to do can be a treat. On Thursday, the Japanese rope bondage expert will host a course featuring theories on challenging ties, installation of overhead points at home or on the go, testing a suspension ring, and the advantages of partial suspension. (Couples and singles welcome, but all must participate.) Two days later, sex educator, author, and bondage model Midori will make an appearance at MarquisAmerica.com’s celebration of all things leather, latex, and laced-up. Still not convinced the leash that chains you to your job is sexy? Consider a career change and enter Marquis’ live model casting.

PARTIAL SUSPENSION FOR COMPLETE SADISTS Thurs/16, 7:30pm. $25–$30. Stormy Leather, 1158 Howard, SF. (415) 626-1672, www.stormyleather.com

MARQUIS FETISH BALL Sat/18, 9pm. $35–$65. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. www.marquisamerica.com

Psy-lick the Israeli Infected Mushroom

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The fiercely invidious sound of psytrance has been popping up again all over, like, well, button mushrooms on the underside of this wet log we call meatspace. The gamma-beta-brainwave-boom-boom sound was an odd choice to headline Pink Saturday (and give more than a few unsuspecting Madonna queens headaches, I bet). Somehow, however, psytrance seems just right when it emanates from, of all Europhile places, Israel — especially if mixed with a grandiose goth sensibility, a little clever world music parody, and a totally inappropriate guitar solo. Behold the quivery somewhat-astral thumps of Infected Mushroom, and tear out your hair a little to the beat.

Infected Mushroom
W/ DJ Taj
Fri/17, 9pm, $30
Regency Ballroom
1300 Van Ness, SF
www.goldenvoice.com

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Savannah, 18th and Valencia

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SF Indie Fashion: Read local, shop local

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By Mayka Mei

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It’s always a gamble meeting people who work in fashion, be it in design or in editorial, because there’s a looming pressure in what your interviewee might think of your clothes. Luckily for me, SF Indie Fashion blogger Lorraine Sanders didn’t seem to be judging me at all for my touristy surf shop tee and discount rack jeans. Instead, Sanders seemed very easygoing, and doesn’t describe herself as the garrulous socialite type one might expect of a self-made fashion editor.

Independents daily.
Pulling in nearly 20,000 hits a month, SF Indie Fashion has become a central news source for all things Bay Area fashion, emphasis on the “news.” While personal style blogs like Lulu and Your Mom are fun to scroll through for personality, SF Indie Fashion is more of a resource aggregate of stylemakers, events, and updates.

Sanders’ lifelong goal has always been to support herself as a freelance writer. Years ago while establishing herself in the Bay Area, Sanders sifted through sources for stories to pitch to potential employers. Eventually, her (actual) drawer of ideas ranneth over, and the need for a repository of all things SF fashion-related was no longer avoidable.

Appetite: Pomegranate molasses, pickled radishes, wild boar dogs, and more

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Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.

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Cocktails at Clock Bar. Photo by Virginal Miller

EVENTS

7/13-17 – Clock Bar’s 1st Anniversary Week with guest bartenders and special cocktails every night
Cocktailians, take note! SF Cocktail Week is past, and many of our bartenders are working their way back from New Orleans’ Tales of the Cocktail, but this
week there’s a stellar guest line-up at Michael Mina‘s Clock Bar to commemorate the bar’s first anniversary. Each night, choose from well-crafted beauties, both classic and specialty cocktails featuring different spirit brands. Monday starts with a bang as none other than Scott Beattie and Jacques Bezuidenhout are behind the bar mixing with Partida Tequila. Tuesday’s got the dynamic duo of Brooke Arthur (Range) and Neyah White (Nopa) concocting Domain Canton and Chartreuse-based drinks. The next night, Steven Liles (Boulevard) creates cocktails with Plymouth and Beefeater 24 gins. Thursday, Erik Adkins (Heaven’s Dog) showcases Bols Genever, while Friday features “Mr. Mojito,” Dave Nepove, mixing Flor de Cana cocktails. It’s a unique week to enjoy the stylish (but not
chichi) setting and the handiwork of some of our city’s best. Happy Anniversary, Clock Bar!
7/13-17, 4pm-2am
Westin St. Francis
335 Powell, SF
415-397-9222
www.michaelmina.net

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NEW OPENINGS

Daniel Patterson’s casual eatery, Cane Rosso, debuts
Highly-trafficked Ferry Building is the site of Daniel Patterson’s latest, with chef Lauren Kiino at the helm. Since we can’t afford Coi as often as we’d like, there’s now Patterson’s quick-serve rotisserie and sandwich shop… comforting, convenient, on the other side of experimental. The rotisserie (in former Mistral space) is churning with chickens, pork, and other meats, while a host of sandwiches (such as gorgonzola and roasted peaches with walnut arugula pesto), asti (try marinated anchovies with pickled radishes), and breakfast options (like broken farro with salted butter, raisins and almonds) are available. Welcome to your new lunch (with Bay views) and take-out spot.
One Ferry Building #41
415-391-7599

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Shelley, 18th Street and Valencia

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Treasure Island lineup announced: Flaming Lips, MGMT, Beirut, Girl Talk, Grizzly Bear, and more

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This just in from the folks at Another Planet:

July 13, 2009 – San Francisco , CA – San Francisco ’s Indian summer is around the corner and with it brings the 3rd Annual Treasure Island Music Festival, the West Coast’s most anticipated boutique music festival. Set against panoramic views of the city by the bay, Treasure Island Music Festival will stick true to form in offering an electronic and dance centric lineup on Saturday, October 17th and an indie rock lineup on Sunday, October 18th. With two stages and no overlapping sets, fans can enjoy every note of every act. Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment are pleased to announce the following lineup…

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

MGMT
MSTRKRFT
Girl Talk
Brazilian Girls
The Streets
Passion Pit
LTJ Bukem feat. MC Conrad
DJ Krush
Federico Aubele
Dan Deacon
Murs
Crown City Rockers
The Limousines

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

The Flaming Lips
The Decemberists
Beirut
Grizzly Bear
Yo La Tengo
The Walkmen
Bob Mould
Thao with The Get Down Stay Down
Vetiver
Spiral Stairs
Sleepy Sun
Tommy Guerrero
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

In only its third year, Treasure Island Music Festival has garnered national acclaim and become a must see on the United States ’ festival circuit. SPIN described it as a “full blown love affair,” while the SF WEEKLY claimed, “NorCal has its own Micro-achella” and declared that Treasure Island boasted “an impressive lineup with bands from all over the world.” PASTE MAGAZINE said, “For the second year in a row, a 70-year-old, man-made island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay was home to some of the finest live bands in the country.”

Treasure Island Music Festival will continue its tradition of exposing emerging and critically established artists to the tastemakers and fans of independent music… all going down smack-dab in the middle of the San Francisco Bay . In addition to the tunes, there will be a multitude of activities for the audience including a 60-foot tall Ferris wheel, an interactive art tent, a vendor village showcasing local designers and an array of healthy and affordable food and beverages.

“Treasure Island has a unique feel for a music festival due to its intimate size and beautiful setting. It’s very much a communal experience with artists and fans sharing similar moments together,” says Bryan Duquette of Another Planet Entertainment.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with this year’s line-up,” adds Noise Pop’s Jordan Kurland, “It’s a well-balanced cross section of established veterans of the independent and electronic music communities alongside some of the most celebrated breakout artists of the last couple years. It’s also a chance to spend a day on an island with the Flaming Lips and a 60-foot Ferris wheel.”

A limited quantity of $99.99 2-Day tickets and VIP Single Day 2-Packs go on sale on Tuesday, July 14th at 12pm PST through www.treasureislandfestival.com. A VIP 2-Pack includes 2 VIP tickets to one day, 1 parking spot on island, preferred viewing area with bleachers, lounge with full bar and other amenities. Single Day tickets go on sale on Friday, July 17th at 10am PST. To off-set traffic congestion and the limited amount of parking on the island, Treasure Island Music Festival will be providing shuttles on and off the island to ticket holders at no additional cost.

Your Treasure Island experience is brought to you by your friends at Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment.

For more information on Treasure Island Music Festival please visit
www.treasureislandfestival.com

Sonic Reducer Overage: ‘American Idols,’ Slumber Cats, Slayer, and more

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By Kimberly Chun

Entombed in SF gloom? Silly, rabbit, this is the best weather to get your musical kicks in a dark, cloudy bar.



A-Frames and Climax Golden Twins
Three guitars and a rhythm section and soaring gamelan-sludge rawk? We’re talking ‘bout the real team players, Raider Nation. With Hank IV and Fresh and Onlys. Sat/11, 9:30 p.m., $7. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325.

American Idols Live
Haven’t had enough? Sample A-Lam in the flesh as Adam Lambert, Danny Gokey, Allison Iraheta, Anoop Desai, Kris Allen, Lil Rounds, Matt Giraud, Megan Joy, Michael Sarver, and Scott MacIntyre provide. Sat/11, 7 p.m., $38.50-$66.25. Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum, Oakl. (415) 421-8497.

Hot sex events July 8-14

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

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“i wanna give you my ass” and other works by Nicoz Balboa, as well as three more visual artists, are on display at Femina Potens through July.
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>> Rubber
The Rubbermen of SF Bay present their monthly party at CHAPS, featuring $3 Trumer and Big Daddy drafts, $2.50 Prohibition bottles, $4 Skyy cocktails, and $5 for those made with Junipero Gin – plus go gos and the bootdog on duty.

Fri/10, 8pm. Free.
Chaps
1225 Folsom, SF
www.chapsbarsanfranciso.com

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>> Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Orgasms
Take a tour among America’s obsessions with spanking, erotic literature and fetishes! Discover why handcuffs have more than one meaning when we examine the American cultural landscape through the use of the media, current events and court cases. This interactive, fun and thought provoking workshop examines your sexual rights and erotic potential, before they are stripped away.

Opening Sat/11, 1-3:30pm. $25-$30.
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
(415) 267-6999
www.sexandculture.org

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Silent Film Fest gets Lupe

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By Dennis Harvey

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Ms. Lupe Valez

According to (disputed) legend, the 1944 death of 36-year-old Lupe Velez was far from glamorous, yet had classic Hollywood form: face-down in the toilet, choked on the pills she was regurgitating in a suicide attempt that succeeded, albeit not as planned. That sad end — she was despondent over a married lover and their unborn child — provided high contrast with her live-wire persona on and off-screen. The latter included high-drama involvements with legendary hunks Gary Cooper and Johnny "Tarzan" Weissmuller. In movies, she both defined and transcended a "Mexican Spitfire" stereotype (the actual name of her popular B-flick comedy series) with manic comic energy reminiscent of a Latina Clara Bow on one hand and a blueprint for Charo on the other.

Two features in this year’s Silent Film Festival find her minus speaking voice, but hardly muzzled. She was just 18 (and a convent school dropout) when picked to star opposite superstar Douglas Fairbanks in 1927’s The Gaucho. As his highly temperamental, jealous sweetheart, she gave as good as she got, frequently engaging his rakish hero in knock-down fights — a rehearsal for notorious later public spats with short-term husband Weissmuller, perhaps? Two years later she’d assumed a title role herself in Lady of the Pavements, a very late silent (its added "part-talkie" sequences have been lost) and one of D.W. Griffith’s last films. She plays a 19th-century Parisian cafe dancer who gets the Pygmalion treatment by a duplicitous countess seeking to humiliate her ex-fiancée. Material better suited to Lubitsch or Von Stroheim, this sophisticated seriocomic fluff wasn’t ideal for stuffy Griffith; and he couldn’t (or didn’t want to) tap Velez’s natural rambunctiousness as Fairbanks had. But this rare antique is still worth a look.

Other festival program highlights include Josef von Sternberg’s Oscar-winning gangster tale Underworld (1927), Victor Sjostrom’s poetic melodrama The Wind (1928), Gustav Machaty’s scandalous Czech Erotikon (1929), early W.C. Fields vehicle So’s Your Old Man (1926), and delirious Russian sci-fi exercise Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924). Live music will accompany each program.

SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL July 10–12, free–$20. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF.

(415) 621-6120, www.silentfilm.org

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Mateo, Castro and Clipper

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Tell us about your look: “My boyfriend got me this shirt.”

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Bruce, Castro Theatre

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Tell us about your look: “It’s opening night of the gay and lesbian film festival so I just had to dress up!”

The deep end

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Lucrecia Martel’s three mischievous films scramble normal narrative hierarchies, privileging sensation to exposition, desire to explanation, and intuition to realism. Thunder-clapped fairy tales of unknowing, they have an adolescent’s sensitivity to the strangeness of the adult world. Outside of Tsai Ming-liang, it’s difficult to think of another working director with such a productive obsession with water. Martel is attracted to locations where her characters can sink, like pools and beds, and she arranges her multiplanar compositions so that these figures appear as floating heads and torsos.

The apprehensive tilt of Martel’s stories is left undefined, just on the cusp of horror, but the director’s formal coordination of sound and image is anything but imprecise. Her humid aesthetic popped out fully formed in the opening minutes of 2001’s La Ciénaga ("The Swamp"), in which the sloshing reds of blood and wine, a padded sound design, and viscous handheld camera movements conduct an atrophying bourgeois scene with the heavy-lidded amplitude of a Caravaggio. The Holy Girl (2004) further demonstrated Martel’s skill at playing for senses other than reason. Her new work, The Headless Woman, is her most expressly psychological yet, and thus entails a newly concentrated application of her unusual narration style — a kind of intimate, hooded third person in which neurosis and desire register as phenomenology.

The woman of the title (which doesn’t translate literally) is another of Martel’s dislodged bourgeoisie women. Driving home from a gabby gathering, she runs over something while absentmindedly reaching for her cell phone; after this, her mind absents her. Perhaps amnesiac, but at the least traumatized, Veronica (Maria Onetto) reenters her everyday life in a fog. Her weak smiles and mute replies will irritate some viewers, especially those who reflexively despise the withholding ambiguity of Antonioni films like 1964’s Red Desert (Martel’s characters, like Antonioni’s, often put on sunglasses at odd moments, as if to shield their wanting souls). What’s remarkable about The Headless Woman in comparison to so many art house pretenders, however, is that Martel is able to maintain this high level of uncertainty without letting the story go slack. As much as Veronica seems to drift, the film’s carefully calibrated ruptures make it so she cannot keep the world at bay.

HOLY GIRLS AND HEADLESS WOMEN: THE FILMS OF LUCRECIA MARTEL

July 14–15 and 23, 7:30 p.m. (Martel in person July 14–15), $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Cold, cold hearts

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cheryl@sfbg.com

Metalheads: before you gang up on Until the Light Takes Us — a new documentary by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell, who dare to admit they weren’t really into metal before starting their film — consider the sinister fact that there’s now an imdb entry for the 2010 release of Lords of Chaos. This narrative take on Michael Moynihan and Didrik Sonderlind’s 1998 book (subtitled The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground) casts Twilight vamp Jackson Rathbone as scene boogeyman Varg Vikernes.

Remember, also, the cursory attention afforded Scandinavian black metal in the sprawling doc Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005). You may not recall that same year’s Metal Storm: The Scandinavian Black Metal Wars — an interesting if technically rough look at the subject — because it screened locally just once, as part of a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series on heavy metal cinema. Metal Storm featured interviews with a young (circa 2000) Vikernes. The erstwhile Count Grishnackh, late of Burzum, returns in Until the Light Takes Us, which hits YBCA for a three-night stand.

Locked up in 1993 for murdering Mayhem’s Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, Vikernes was very recently paroled. But he was still incarcerated in Until the Light Takes Us, and he doesn’t seem terribly put out, likening his time behind bars to "a stay in a monastery." He’s articulate, intelligent, and unrepentant, reflecting on his various deeds. He claims he provided the shotgun ammo used by another Mayhem member, Per Yngve Ohlin (a.k.a. "Dead"), to committ suicide. (Of course, after Euronymous discovered Dead’s body, he took a photo that was later used as Mayhem cover art. Seriously, these were spooky dudes.)

Vikernes may be a fascinating fellow — a worst-case scenario for anyone eager to believe that heavy metal is a recruitment tool for Satan worshippers — but Until the Light Takes Us isn’t centered on him. This is not a true-crime tale (though it does offer some striking footage of Norwegian churches set ablaze during black metal’s criminal zenith). Nor is it trying to teach Metal 101 (though it does touch on black metal’s eerie, atmospheric sound, pagan themes, and deliberately lo-fi production). Instead, Until the Light Takes Us attempts to show what happens when a very specific, proudly isolationist art movement becomes commercialized — to the chagrin of founding members like Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell, memorable for his demon-like appearance in full corpsepaint on the cover of his band Darkthrone’s 1994 release, Transilvanian Hunger (Peaceville Records).

"I don’t want to be blamed for black metal becoming a trend," Fenriz says, some 16 years after an article in the U.K. magazine Kerrang! introduced black metal to the mainstream. Though the film interviews other players like Mayhem drummer Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg and former Emperor drummer Bård "Faust" Eithun (himself a convicted murderer who appears as a voice-altered silhouette), Fenriz is Aites and Ewell’s focus, drifting around icy Oslo, working on current music projects, and ruefully reminiscing about the movement he helped create: "I guess the sale of black lipstick went through the roof."

Rather than focusing on copycat bands, Until the Light Takes Us explores black metal’s influence on artists like Bjarne Melgaard, whose "Sons of Odin" installation earns smirks from Fenriz, and Harmony Korine, who earns smirks from the filmmakers. Not mentioned in the film: the Vice-produced 2007 internet videos series and Peter Beste’s subsequent book of photographs, True Norwegian Black Metal. Of course, Until the Light Takes Us — full of artful shots of Norway’s stark, gorgeous countryside and cityscapes, which go a long way toward illustrating what inspired the black metal guys in the first place — is also opening up the scene for curious outsiders.

"It’s out of our hands now," Fenriz shrugs. He’s bitter, but he’s got a point. Murders and mayhem and Mayhem aside, once pop culture snatches up your subculture — see: Guitar Hero‘s black-metal character, Lars Ümlaüt, or the aforementioned Lords of Chaos flick — there’s no stealing it back.

UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US

Thurs–Sat, 7:30 p.m.

(also Fri–Sat, 9:30 p.m.), $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

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