SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Abbey, Dolores Park
Tell us about your look: “I feel kinda over dressed today. It was super cold in my neighborhood this morning so I’m wearing a lot of color to counter balance the gray sky.”
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Jared, Pier 14
Tell us about your look: “I just got these pants from the Goodwill, and I’m eating chicken and rice from Chinatown.”
By Steven T. Jones
An era ended last night while my colleagues and I taped the final episode of the City Desk Newshour, a Comcast television program that has provided continuous weekly coverage of San Francisco City Hall for almost 30 years. It is simply the latest blow in a steady erosion of political and local government coverage by experienced journalists.
I’ve been a regular panelist on the show for a couple years now, but I was really struck by what an institution it is in November when we did a segment on the anniversary of the Harvey Milk and George Moscone assassinations. I glanced at the monitors and saw our B-roll footage of Milk, Moscone, and Dan White being interviewed in our studio for our show back in the day.
Comcast decided to slash its locally originated programming budget and fire half its Bay Area staff, something it is allowed to do because local governments have lost the legal ability to set local programming standards for cable companies as part of their franchise agreements. If you have Comcast cable, try to catch the final episode replays this weekend on Channel 11 and/or check out old episodes in the OnDemand section under hometown local programming.
But there is a silver lining to this story. Comcast officials in California successfully fought to save our show as long as we can retool it to have a more regional focus, which we’ll be working on over the next couple months. So tune in later this summer for a new show with a new name and new focus, but some of the same faces from the Guardian, Chronicle, Examiner, and KQED.
Every Monday, 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.
Campy/classy Good Evening Thursdays
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EVENTS
Good Evening Thursdays at Bruno’s… a sexy, weekly, speakeasy-like supper club
Take "Pussycat" in giant, Parisian ’60’s lettering, white tablecloths and waiters in vintage suits, a Rat Pack-vibe menu (reasonably priced) of Filet Mignon with bone marrow, chop salad, martinis, and Oysters Rockefeller, throw in a leering cat from the rafters, and, yes, a gold pole in the middle of the room (hmmm…?) and you have Good Evening Thursdays (at least until another name is decided upon). Up leopard-carpeted stairs in Bruno’s intimate, 35-seat private room, you’ve got yourself about the coolest non-restaurant, meal ticket in town. The genius behind this concept? A cracker-jack chef line-up of Chris Kronner (from Serpentine), Slow Club, Chez Panisse), Danny Bowien (of Bar Tartine), Sam White and Howie Correa (both front of house at Chez Panisse), and Oliver Monday (from brand new flour+water) who create and cook the meals each week. I went on debut night, May 7, and found it worth dressing up for. Sans reservations, the downstairs ’60’s-chic lounge celebrates Thursdays, too, no res. required, with old school imbibements and killer bar food, like Let’s Be Frank dogs with kimchi and bacon mayo, or pork banh mi. Read more and see photos in my latest Perfect Spot newsletter.
7pm-1:30am
Reservations: goodeveningthursday@gmail.com
2389 Mission, SF
415-643-5200
www.brunossf.com
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Artic char at Bar Crudo
NEW OPENINGS
Who says there’s a recession? All these new openings are keeping me busy… 5A5 Steak Loungeofficially debuted last week (mentioned in soft opening phase in my Perfect Spot newsletter). Ebisu just re-opened, remodeled and with new menu. In SoMa, Italian La Briciola opened where Vino e Cucina used to be. Swell took over in the former Bar Crudo space with Japanese Euro ethos still in play. Moroccan fave Tajine even returned… inside a Van Ness club, Heights Lounge. Little Skillet’s chicken ‘n waffle window is finally up and running and it’s tasty, y’all!
Bar Crudo moves to bigger digs on Divisadero
Bar Crudo is a spot like no other. Long one of my favorite places for seafood, it’s the place to be wowed with delicate, inventive crudo. The original spot, long situated downtown, recently closed, making way for a larger locale in the Western Addition. Fans like me are delighted to know there’s five new crudos to try (and eight hot dishes, thanks to a bigger kitchen). Owners (and actual bros), Tim and Mike Selvera, converted a former pizza joint on Divis into a new Bar Crudo, debuting this week. With Tim’s love of obscure, artisan beers, there’s fine ales to pair with your oysters, like Deschutes Brewery’s The Abyss, plus an impeccable wine list, even five cocktails created by non other than Jacqueline Patterson of Heaven’s Dog. Though I’ll kinda miss the charming, cramped layout of the original, thankfully, I don’t have to miss sparkling-fresh seafood and crudos like Arctic char with creamy horseradish, wasabi tobiko and dill.
665 Divisadero, SF
415-409-0679
www.barcrudo.com
flour+water opens in the Mission
This one’s been long-awaited from a foursome with Gary Danko/La Folie and Postrio/Plouf pedigree. Yes, it’s yet another Italian restaurant (across from Cafe Gratitude) with salumis, wood-burning oven for pizzas and a communal table, but with a quality-focused menu based around the "four pillars" of Italian cuisine: pizza, pasta, salumi, and, of course, vino. In the pizza realm, I like the sound of the Novo, with potato, farm egg, house pancetta, oregano, or the Cariciofi: artichokes, onion, pecorino and capers. Hand-rolled pastas intrigue, like Corzetti Stampati with braised Monterey squid and fava beans. Antipasti include sweetbread, Meyer lemon and spring onion fritto – works for me! There’s a handful of entrees, salads, and desserts like olive oil cornmeal cake with honey-thyme ice cream. Don’t forget a mostly Italian wine list of around 60 bottles priced between $30 and $60. I can’t wait to see what Sean Quigley, owner of Paxton Gate, has done with the interior design.
2401 Harrison, SF
415-826-7000
www.flourandwatersf.com
From East (NYC) to West (here), 54 Mint debuts in Mint Plaza
Umbrian native Alberto Avalle, founded and helmed New York’s famed Il Buco and after 15 years in the Big Apple, desired the relaxed pace and weather of California. Thankfully for us, he’s also bringing his passion for, and mastery of, Italian food to our city. Slated to open today, 54 Mint (neighbor to Blue Bottle Cafe and Chez Papa Resto), is a place for pure simplicity and high quality: hand-rolled pastas, truffles, Sicilian rice cakes with black squid, and wines all happily under $35 a bottle. Starting with dinner this week, by early June they plan to add lunch… for a Summer of la dolce vita.
54 Mint (between Jessie & Mission Streets)
415-543-5100
www.54mint.com
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.
Oh yes, there shall be chef: SF Chef. Food. Wine. period.
———-
EVENTS
August 6-9: SF Chefs.Food.Wine (calling food, wine and spirits lovers)
Start saving pennies, mark your calendar and buy your tickets now for an unparalleled event coming up in August I’m quite excited about, the first of its kind in our fair city. SF Chefs.Food.Wine is going to be a Pebble Beach/Aspen Food and Wine Classic- reminiscent event but right in an urban city center at a fraction of the price (though you’ll still shell out $150 for a one-day pass). Union Square will be turned into a sea of tents housing not only Bay Area food, wine, beer, and spirits vendors offering day-long tastings (beer garden, cocktail samplings, wine tasting, food), but each day offers over 20 sessions/panels/classes appealing to food, wine and spirits cognoscenti and uninitiated appreciators alike.
An example of just a few sessions over three days:
FOOD – "Haute vs. Bistro" cooking demo from Hubert Keller (Fleur de Lys) and Roland Passot (La Folie); "Heirloom Tomatoes" with Gary Danko and Joanne Weir; interviews with cooking luminaries and authors like Martin Yan, Joyce Goldstein, Georgeanne Brennan; a cooking competition between Jamie Lauren (Top Chef/Absinthe) and Chris Cosentino (Incanto/Iron Chef America).
SPIRITS/COCKTAILS – "Green Cocktails" with Scott Beattie (author of Artisanal Cocktails), H. Joseph Ehrmann (Elixir) and Thad Vogler (Bar Agricole); "Agave Academy" with Rebecca Chapa (Tannin Management) and Julio Bermejo (Tommy’s).
WINE – "Raid the Cellar" with Rajat Parr (Michael Mina restaurants) and Larry Stone MS (Rubicon Estate); "Sparkling Personality" with sparkling wine masters from Schramsberg Vineyards, Domaine Carneros and Roederer Estate.
These are just a few examples… there are sessions on chocolate, sushi, oysters, cheese, eggs, making the perfect coffee, beer brewing, trends in wine and spirits, marketing, design and service, food reviewing and everything of interest to those who love food and drink.
Evenings are equally enticing: the Opening Reception highlights Rising Star Chefs and Bar Stars from the SF Chronicle’s last five years of winners, as well as an advance screening of Julie and Julia, the highly anticipated Meryl Streep film. Galas run nightly, like a Pacific Rim feast from Charles Phan, Martin Yan and Arnold Eric Wong; an LBGT culinary gala at Orson with Elizabeth Falkner, Emily Wines, Harry Denton; American Culinary Pioneers Awards given to Joyce Goldstein, Judy Rodgers, Patricia Unterman, Emily Luchetti, Patrick O’Connell; a dinner honoring Master Sommelier, Larry Stone; a bluesy rock party from chefs with musical ties.
Convinced yet? The hard part now is choosing which events, days and sessions to splurge on. This surely creates a problem when your choices are this good and plentiful. Go online and take a look at the line-up and whether you’re a cocktail hound, wine imbiber, beer brewer or food fanatic, you’ll want to be a part of this momentous event.
$40-250 (discounts for Visa Signature card holders)
August 6-9
www.sfchefsfoodwine.com
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NEW OPENINGS
Spencer on the Go!
Maybe the food cart mania is getting to you, or, like the rest of us, you’re ever thrilled to find gourmet food on-the-cheap popping up around town. Well, here’s one we haven’t seen before. Laurent Katgely, Chez Spencer’s talented chef, launched Spencer on the Go! last Thursday night outside of Terroir wine bar, offering fine French fare from a shiny, converted taco truck with Spencer’s chic logo on the side. It was a long wait for food debut night, and Frog Legs and Curry were sadly sold out by the time I got there, but I hear waits have already improved, the crowd was friendly and festive, and I dig the Grilled Sweetbreads and amazingly addictive Escargot Puffs (escargot, breaded and on a stick)! With a menu all under $9, pair French snacks with Perrier and cookies or take it across the street to Terroir and order a glass of wine. Watch for the truck to soon be at Tuesday and (upcoming food cart-centric) Thursday farmers markets at the Ferry Building. It’s the bon vivant’s ideal "fast food".
6pm-12am
Thursday-Saturday
415-864-2191
http://spenceronthego.com
Urban Burger
It’s time for a new burger joint on Valencia near 16th, Urban Burger opened last week in the tiny, former Yum Yum House space, now brightly painted sporting white leather stools, orange walls, and playful signs with phrases like "Nice Buns". Besides build-your-own burger options, there’s a list of ten hefty special burgers like a Breakfast Burger loaded with cheese, bacon, fried egg and fries (yep, all together), Mission Heat, with chilies, pepper jack and chipotle, or a Cubano with grilled ham and swiss. Opening day, I enjoyed the Buffalo version with blue cheese and hot sauce. Want it a bit lighter? Choose turkey, gardenburger, or Portabella mushroom instead of beef. But if you’re downing a hearty burger, why not pair it with a Mitchell’s milkshake and beer-battered onion rings?
581 Valencia Street
415-551-2483
http://urbanburgersf.com
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Liz, Market and Montgomery
Tell us about your look: “My boyfriend’s mom got me this dress at the thrift store in Paris.”
It takes a lot to get your head around William Kentridge. His nebulous existence in the world of modern art makes him a slippery figure, able to exist between things we can name. Though he is an internationally known South African artist who works in etches, collages, sculptures, and performance (SFMOMA recently presented his rendition of Monteverdi’s opera The Return of Ulysses), he is best known for his "cartoons."
As on view in the current exhibition "William Kentridge: Five Themes," Kentridge’s animated drawings are sublime, provocative, and mesmerizing. He films a charcoal drawing, and by making slight changes using erasures for light and depth and then repeating the process, he tells profound stories about oppression, deterioration, and social justice — in less than 10 minutes. He later shows the drawings with the films as finished pieces. His mastery of drawing is magical. It can cloud judgment. We see William Kentridge; we do to not see William Kentridge.
William Kentridge: Five Themes (Yale University Press, 264 pages, $50), the monograph accompanying the current SFMOMA exhibit, suggests the breadth of Kentridge’s contributions — from opera set design to printmaking — and the depth of his explorations. Versed in opera, Kentridge centers much of his work on the form’s classic themes but updates, twists, and transforms them to speak of his native South Africa and current social conditions. Editor Mark Rosenthal mixes Kentridge’s commentary, plates, sketches, and photos with writers’ explorations of his process and purpose. Not quite a microscope, the result is more like a pair of tweezers, bringing the reader-viewer closer to someone who loves the word erasure.
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: FIVE THEMES
Through Sun/31, $7–$12.50
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third, SF
(415) 357-4000
a&eletters@sfbg.com
What began as a frugal effort to make use of leftover paint, something all painters grapple with on occasion, has spawned a late career style that realigns everything previously thought about the artistic practice of Theophilus Brown, now 90 years old. Best known for his figurative paintings as a seminal member of a group of painters gathered around David Park and Richard Diebenkorn, Brown has also been associated with painters as diverse as Rothko and Picasso, both of whom he knew.
These new pieces, embarked on during the last decade, originated as abstract works composed on a peel-away palette. Brown then cuts and pastes his way to a new composition, adding acrylic paint when necessary. Part collage, part painting, the finished products have all the gravitas of the large canvases of the New York School. Although relatively small (they range from 8 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches to 17 by 21 inches), these works conceive a larger, formal enterprise reminiscent of the monumental experience projected by Conrad Marca-Relli’s smaller works.
On exhibit through mid-June at Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, "Theophilus Brown at 90: Recent Abstract Collages" reveals little evidence of Brown’s earlier figurative style other than a general nod to formal elements of spatial configurations; the collages on view are rather more akin to the Abstract Expressionist gestural emphasis, and to the movement’s early work when the Surrealist influence was greatest (of note here is Brown’s 1950s friendship with Chilean Surrealist Roberto Matta).
Some undoubtedly will see this as an interesting turn in the well-known official account of Bay Area Figuration, which is commonly said to have diverged from the East Coast fixation with abstraction, in favor of emphasizing the figure, with the exhibition of Park’s canvases Rehearsal (1949-50) and Kids on Bikes (1951). Brown’s collages might evoke that narrative, with a new twist, or return, to abstraction.
But the official story belies a well-known truth among the painters themselves: many of these artists never fully abandoned abstraction. And many of the New York painters whom the Bay Area painters were said to oppose still rendered the figure at the height of Abstract Expressionism (for example, de Kooning’s "Woman" series began in 1950-52).
Theophilus Brown first came to prominence in 1956, when Life magazine published photographs of a series of his football paintings — cubist-influenced modernist compositions that somehow allowed figuration to coexist with the abstract. What may not be known is that these works were preceded by fully abstract experiments he started while living in post-World War II Paris on the GI Bill (Brown fought in the Battle of the Bulge when he was assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corps), and in New York City among the burgeoning artist scene of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
These recent collages, then, are a re-engagement with the formal elements of abstraction that Brown experimented with when he was in the circle of Elaine and Willem de Kooning in the early 1950s. Less concerned with the hard edge and lines of those earlier years, Brown fully embraces greater ambiguity and freedom here, suggesting a surrender to the subconscious, which the Surrealists likewise sought to achieve.
These collages are non-objective color experiments and shape studies. Brown succeeds in presenting a finished canvas that evokes something accidental, yet with purpose — the natural expression of a skilled painter who has the courage to embark on a new path regardless of what those comfortable with his thought-to-be "settled style" might say. Ultimately, Brown’s figurative era will be seen as preparatory for this mature work. *
THEOPHILUS BROWN AT 90: RECENT ABSTRACT COLLAGES
Through June 15, free
Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery
49 Geary, suite 520, SF
(415) 981-1080
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.
Oh yes, there shall be chef: SF Chef. Food. Wine. period.
———-
EVENTS
August 6-9: SF Chefs.Food.Wine (calling food, wine and spirits lovers)
Start saving pennies, mark your calendar and buy your tickets now for an unparalleled event coming up in August I’m quite excited about, the first of its kind in our fair city. SF Chefs.Food.Wine is going to be a Pebble Beach/Aspen Food and Wine Classic- reminiscent event but right in an urban city center at a fraction of the price (though you’ll still shell out $150 for a one-day pass). Union Square will be turned into a sea of tents housing not only Bay Area food, wine, beer, and spirits vendors offering day-long tastings (beer garden, cocktail samplings, wine tasting, food), but each day offers over 20 sessions/panels/classes appealing to food, wine and spirits cognoscenti and uninitiated appreciators alike.
An example of just a few sessions over three days:
FOOD – "Haute vs. Bistro" cooking demo from Hubert Keller (Fleur de Lys) and Roland Passot (La Folie); "Heirloom Tomatoes" with Gary Danko and Joanne Weir; interviews with cooking luminaries and authors like Martin Yan, Joyce Goldstein, Georgeanne Brennan; a cooking competition between Jamie Lauren (Top Chef/Absinthe) and Chris Cosentino (Incanto/Iron Chef America).
SPIRITS/COCKTAILS – "Green Cocktails" with Scott Beattie (author of Artisanal Cocktails), H. Joseph Ehrmann (Elixir) and Thad Vogler (Bar Agricole); "Agave Academy" with Rebecca Chapa (Tannin Management) and Julio Bermejo (Tommy’s).
WINE – "Raid the Cellar" with Rajat Parr (Michael Mina restaurants) and Larry Stone MS (Rubicon Estate); "Sparkling Personality" with sparkling wine masters from Schramsberg Vineyards, Domaine Carneros and Roederer Estate.
These are just a few examples… there are sessions on chocolate, sushi, oysters, cheese, eggs, making the perfect coffee, beer brewing, trends in wine and spirits, marketing, design and service, food reviewing and everything of interest to those who love food and drink.
a&eletters@sfbg.com
Whether one thinks of them as a dreamy drone duo who happen to be married or a married couple who happens to make dreamy drone music, Windy & Carl endure. Their first release, the Instrumentals EP (Burnt Hair), dates back to 1994; while most American guitars were tuned down for grunge’s payday, Windy & Carl waxed celestial.
Spacey drones are now in fashion, but Windy & Carl’s influence remains relatively unsung, in spite of their being one of the Kranky label’s flagship acts. Perhaps it’s the duo’s Michigan roots, since ambient music fans are often swayed by Eurocentric cravings. Whatever the case, their prodigious oeuvre now swells with several earthily-titled monolithic albums (1995’s Portal on Ba Da Bing; 1997’s Antarctica on Darla; 1998’s Depths and 2001’s Consciousness on Kranky) and enough compilation appearances and singles to supply a triple-CD set (2002’s Introspection on Blue Flea).
I first plunged in with Depths, though it took me the better part of a year to make it through its viscous 70 minutes in one sitting. Windy & Carl’s music is like a mood ring: its timbre is responsive to emotional currents, some of them hidden. More often than not, dark thoughts surface after 30 or 40 minutes. This makes me suspect that many of those critics who fling adjectives like "blissful" and "glittering" at their records have only dipped their toes in the maelstrom. At the very least, these seem overly simplistic adjectives for music that tilts towards tumult as it limns stillness.
There is a common misconception that ambient music is intrinsically passive or inert: this, in fact, is only true of bad ambient music, of which there is plenty (unsurprisingly, it often accompanies tactless interior design). Windy & Carl, like the kosmische innovators before them, realign one’s sense of space rather than simply flattering it. This process occurs at the periphery of consciousness — trying to put it to words tests the limits of music writing. It’s clear, however, that much of the Michigan duo’s mastery comes down to a well-honed understanding of texture and scale. In a typical jam, the gigantic crest of a thousand distortion pedals curls around the intimate pluck of a lonely guitar in an arresting, Rothko-like frieze. Time is adjourned; foreground and background drift by one another in the fog.
The durational aspect of Windy & Carl’s music has two aspects: lost in the length of any one given piece, we also feel ourselves afloat on the broader body of work, a 16-year drone. This superimposed condition, with every conversation dissolving into all other conversations, should be familiar to anyone who has been inside a long-term relationship. Ambient music implies a porous self, and thus has interesting applications for a couple. Watching A Woman Under the Influence (1974) a few weeks ago, I was struck by the way John Cassavetes draws us into Nick (Peter Falk) and Mabel Longhetti’s (Gena Rowlands) nonverbal communication: the nonsense utterances, whispers, and cries. Something similar happens in Windy & Carl’s echo chamber of tone, feedback and voice.
For all the songs about love, how many actually document its dormant time and space? John and Yoko, Nelson Angelo and Joyce, and Mimi and Richard Fariña’s works spring to mind. Windy & Carl’s latest, Songs for the Broken Hearted (Kranky, 2008), belongs in any such pantheon. Their albums have always been "home recordings," but Dedications to Flea (Brainwashed Recordings, 2005), the duo’s disc-long contemplation of their dog’s death, marked a new degree of intimacy. Field recordings of Flea on a walk and Windy’s explanatory linear notes thickened the mise-en-scène of private loss, making for an album occupying the unknown zone between home movie and séance.
The last few years seem to have been a dark time for the couple (under her full name Windy Weber, Windy released a solo album for Blue Flea last year called, no joke, I Hate People). But one doesn’t require the details of estrangement to immerse into its recesses of fear and forgiveness. There’s more of Windy’s Nico-ish purr than before, and the lyrics are newly decipherable ("You already know so much of what I keep /From the rest of the world /But you did not shy away from me"). The album’s sequencing is distinct too, fluttering between vast passages of oblivion and brief statements of bare, shorn beauty. Whether the broken-hearted of the album’s title refers to Windy & Carl themselves or an imagined listener, Songs for finds fierce beauty in the hide-and-seek of cohabitation.
WINDY & CARL
With Jonas Reinhardt and Nudge
Wed/27, 8 p.m., $10
The Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415)861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
johnny@sfbg.com
One shorthand description of Ramona Gonzalez’s recording project Nite Jewel is that it’s disco on quaaludes. I don’t know if I like Nite Jewel quite as much as Glass Candy’s underrated B/E/A/T/B/O/X (Italians Do It Better, 2007) — c’mon, they’re funnier than they are given credit for, and they made "Computer Love" melancholic, what’s not to love? — or if I love it more.
Throughout Good Evening (Gloriette, 2008) and Nite Jewel (Human Ear, 2008) Gonzalez’s singing is both high-pitched and kinda dazed. On "Weak 4 Me," she reminds me of Mr. Bill, which can never be a bad thing. "What Did He Say" is the best Nite Jewel song so far. It sounds like a radio playing "I Can’t Wait" by Nu Shooz slowly sinking to the bottom of a pool. I recently caught up with Gonzalez on the phone.
SFBG I hadn’t realized you’re from the Bay Area. How was Berkeley High? What did you like about the Bay Area and not like about it?
Ramona Gonzalez Berkeley High when I went there was transitioning between being out of hand and horrible and pretty much a normal school. Now it’s nice. Back when I went, it was not like that. There were 23 arson attempts when I was a sophomore.
Certain teachers I had there were some of the best ones I’ve ever had. As for the school itself — fuck, it’s hard for a kid to get along in a 2300 person student body. Lots of aggro annoying kids, popularity contests and danger, everyday. But overall it was rewarding.
SFBG How were your experiences in the Oakland Interfaith Youth Choir and the Berkeley Jazz School Music Ensemble?
RG Oakland Interfaith Youth Choir was pretty awesome. My friend Emily introduced me to it, because her dad was singing in the adult choir. The songs are incredible and really difficult — the girls in that choir were unbelievably talented. I wasn’t as good as them. Singing soprano in a chest voice — that’s crazy.
I did that for 2 years and then joined the Berkeley Jazz school, just taking piano. I ran into one of the girls from the Youth Choir there.
SFBG You’ve said Kevin Shields would be a dream artists to work with.
RG I got into my shoegaze period in college and started listening to Lilys whenever possible. Me and my friend Shane tried to start a fan club.
One of my favorite bands is Woo. Their It’s Cozy Inside (Independent Record Publishing, 1989) and Whichever Way You’re Going, You’re Going Wrong (no info available) might be the two albums I’ve listened to the most in my entire life. They’re these two brothers who are Hare Krishna who live in the UK. I recently found out where they are, and they wrote me back and we’re totally going to hang out when I go to England.
SFBG We have to talk Bruce Haack. What do you love about him?
RG Bruce Haack to me is psychedelic electronic music. It also has a playfulness, because he’s making music for kids. His music has this relaxing quality and aggressive quality at the same time. There’s a simplicity I like. I like his fervor and bitterness towards the music industry, especially on Haackula (Omni Recording, 2008). But the one I listen to most is Electric Luficer (Omni Recording, 2007). His music doesn’t have a direct correlation with Nite Jewel in terms of textures and sounds, but more in terms of what it means to be a punk electronic musician.
NITE JEWEL
With Telepathe, Hawnay Troof
June 12, 10 p.m., $10
Bottom of the Hill
133 17th St, SF
(415) 621-4455
› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS I have never needed a hammock more. Heat wave, it had been a long time since I’d haunted my woodsy shack … accidentally work 40-hour work weeks all of a sudden (not counting this), and have no idea how y’all have been doing it. As it happens, I love my work. Some don’t, I am led to believe. And I just want to buy these ‘uns a bagel and pat them on the back. I can’t imagine. But I kinda can.
So, for the first time in my life, I get weekends. I understand the need for them, crave them, and don’t exactly have them. Six days I work. On the seventh day, I flip Yahweh the bird, lazy fuck, and go play soccer. Sometimes as many as three games in one day.
But this day was hot hot hot, so I only played two, and then needed me a hammock like never before. A little lunch with my teamies, an over-an-hour drive up into the woods, open the windows, peel myself out of the salty shorts and sweat-sticky sports bra, finally, a soak in the tub on the porch … and I was ready.
I put on some clean short shorts and a husband beater T-shirt. I gathered up the book that I am re-rereading, Love In The Time Of Cholera, a bottle of very cold well water, a bowl of cherries, and I went to it.
My hammock is strung between redwoods. Between uses, it becomes nested with dried needles and twigs. You have to shake and shimmy it off into the bed of same underneath. This I did.
Then I nestled in with my book, bottle, and bowl (of cherries) and within less than a second we were all scattered on the forest floor. Well, I wasn’t technically scattered so much as shoulder planted. Damn thing gave, winter-worn ropes ripping, and left me a little bit hog-tied, blinking up at my bare feet, which did look pretty against the green-screened blue sky, but now there were redwood needles sticking out of my upper back and neck, spider webs and twigs in my hair.
As testimony to my insecurelessness, or, rather, the precise flavor of my insecurity, it never even crossed my mind that I had gained weight. Just that I was an idiot for not taking better care of my hammock, and therefore needed another bath.
I washed my car with the still slightly warm water from my last one, then took a shower, which I can do now because I reconverted the shower from a storage closet back into a shower. But it had been years since I used it, and the shower that I took was orange. Pipes rust.
I wiped off and went to the beach.
What a beach the beach is, where I used to live and now visit. The drive there is enough to break your heart. Then, if you know where to go, you don’t get sand but tiny stones which store the sun in them and kind of adjust to your exact shape, given wiggle. You can be held and hugged by the sun itself!
And you can eat cherries, and drink cold well water, and not re-reread Marquez, the greatest love story ever told, because you are making one instead, in stones. Sifting through them, picking out the ones-in-a-gazillion that sing to you with unexpected streaks of color or peculiar shapes or a special resemblance to beans, for example. It’s like choosing your words very carefully.
Christ, I love a language barrier! Lying on my stomach in the sun, almost literally, I made a song of stones and held it in the palm of my hand. Then, when the cherries were gone, I poured my heart into the Ziploc bag, a handful of California, me. Stones.
Yahweh laughs last: Post Office ain’t open on Sunday, ha ha, the working girl, on her one day off, looking forward to Monday — good one, you card you, king of kings of comedy.
Hopeless romantic, I stayed for sunset, climbed the cliff, and drove home very carefully, very recklessly in love, and dedicated to survival. Nothing more than — nothing short of — the very next breath. For dinner: two small chunks of warmed-over roast duck and something slightly somewhat potstickerish, left from lunch at my new favorite restaurant: King Sing.
KING SING
Daily 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m.
501 Balboa, SF
(415) 387-6038
Beer & wine
MC/V
L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.
By Steven T. Jones
The fabulous DJ Adrian Roberts — of Bootie SF and Piss Clear fame — will be headlining a pair of equally fabulous events tonight and tomorrow night, the latter in support of his new book: Burning Man Live: 13 year of Piss Clear, Black Rock City’s alternative newspaper.
It’s a great book, and I’m not just saying that because I contributed a few essays to it (which, like almost everything in the book, were reprinted from issues of Piss Clear). If you attend Burning Man or are curious about the event, it offers a great overview from decidedly hedonistic point-of-view. And supporting the book release party tomorrow night at Mighty will be a bevy of burner all-stars, as if they just stepped off the pages, as well as a showing of the Burning Man film Dust & Illusions.
And tonight’s gig is the Guardian’s Explore SF party at Temple party, where Adrian’s Bootie SF will be squaring off against their Popscene nemesi. See you there.
Compiled by Molly Freedenberg
Take home some of your very own after attending Miss Indigo Blue’s class. (I mean pasties, you pervert.)
>> Book Signing and Discussion with Deborah Sundahl
The international sex educator specializing in the G-spot and female ejaculation meets and greets readers and discusses her favorite topics.
Wed/27, 6-7pm. Free.
Good Vibrations
603 Valencia, SF
(415) 522-5460
events.goodvibes.com
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>> Bellydance Moves for the Burlesque Stage
Join Fuchsia FoXXX for this sexy 1.5-hour dance class for all levels, where you’ll learn core movements, basic posture, articulation, and isolations perfect for use in a sultry strip-tease.
Sat/30, 1-2:30pm. $15 with pre-registration.
Click for info and registration
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>> Headdresses, Fascinators, and YOU
It’s more burlesque-themed fun in this class with Shanghai Pearl. You’ll learn to work with feathers, sequins, buckram, flowers, clips, and more. Bring your accoutrements and a glue gun.
Sat/30, 2:30-4pm. $20 with pre-registration.
Optional $20 materials fee to be paid in class.
Click for info and registration
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>> How to Make Pasties!
Miss Indigo Blue of TwirlyGirl Pasties teaches the basics of pastie construction and tassel twirling. You’ll leave class with a completed pair of your very own.
Sat/30, 4-5:30pm. $20 with pre-registration.
$20 materials fee to be paid in class.
Click for info and registration
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>> Opening the Deep Heart Through Tantra
Tantra: It’s not just for New Agers and hippies anymore. Let Evalena Rose guide you through learning to release your mind and enjoy being cherished, to experience the power and presence that this ancient art makes possible. Or, in short, to have even better sex.
Tues/2, 6-7pm. Free.
Good Vibrations
603 Valencia, SF
events.goodvibes.com
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>> Poly Living West Conference
In a polyamorous situation and wanting some support? Check out this three-day conference with seminars on topics such as creating intimacy, rebuilding broken trust, legal issues, jealousy, and creative flirting.
Fri/29-Sun/31. $220 (excluding hotel stay)
Double Tree Hotel SFO
835 Airport Blvd., Burlingame
www.polyliving.org
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s look: Adri from Costa Rica, Mission and 18th
Tell us about your look: “I make my own clothes.”
By Ben Richardson
BIG BUSINESS
Mind the Drift
(Hydrahead)
Big Business: an irresistible concoction of infectious, heavy, and bizarre. Drummer Coady Willis and bassist/singer Jared Warren are joined by guitarist Toshi Kasai. The band tempers its sludgier excesses with dynamic and compositional progress, plus plenty of weirdo headbanger hooks.
Big Business
10pm, $12
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
www.bottomofthehill.com
a&eletters@sfbg.com
A full range of involuntary facial-muscle responses have already been triggered by the trailer to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which premieres at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. First 2008’s Valkyrie, now this: Brad Pitt’s Tennessee-hills-bred Lt. Aldo Raine twangily informing his Jewish-American Secret Service unit, "Each man under my command owes me ONE HUNNERD NAAATSEE SCALPS!" while Hostel auteur-turned-actor Eli Roth smirks in approval.
Will the whole turn out righteous, raucous, controversial, or just juvenile? We proles will have to wait until the film’s August theatrical release to decide for ourselves. Meanwhile, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is letting inquiring minds do their advance homework by reviving Enzo G. Castellari’s less orthographically challenged Inglorious Bastards, the 1978 Italian action movie Tarantino’s latest pays tribute to — though his isn’t a remake but a separate, newly crassed-up riff on The Dirty Dozen (1967).
That latter all-star World War II caper spawned umpteen "Europudding" imitations, including the QT-beloved Bastards, showing this week in a new 35mm print. A sort of Filthy Five to the original Dozen — budget reduced accordingly, with sharp eyes ID’ing the same extras experiencing different death throes in scene after scene — it centers on a quintet of U.S. Army grunts in 1944 France.
There’s Bo Svenson (who’d become a sorta-star by replacing the suspiciously car-crash-slain Buford Pusser in 1975’s Walking Tall Part II) as swaggering Lt. Yeager; Fred Williamson’s Pvt. Canfield, an incongruous 1940s fount of ’70s Black Power ‘tude; smirking wiseass, murderer, and racist Tony (Peter Hooten), who calls Canfield "Bongo;" Nick (Michael Pergolani), a long-haired hipster aping Donald Sutherland’s similar character in 1970’s hit Dirty rip Hell’s Heroes; and Jackie Basehart as fraidycat youth Berle.
After being sent to the brig for various misdeeds, they escape their captors, intending to flee to neutral Switzerland. En route they pick up a nice Nazi (Raimund Harmstorf, horny hero of 1971’s The Long Swift Sword of Siegfried) and bare collective musculature to some bathing Rhine maidens. But mostly they machine-gun everyone in sight, unfortunately including Yankee spies disguised in Third Reich uniforms.
Penitent, our protagonists vow to take over their late comrades’ dangerous mission. This culminates in an exploded train, and an SS commander foaming "All Americans are mongrels! Negro, Jew, Polish, Italian, Irish — every possible race! And your vimmen are whores! Coca-Cola! Hollyvood! Chewing gum! Stupid cowardly bastards!" just before his ass is whupped by Canfield. Musta been that soda remark.
Inglorious begins with psychedelic-silhouette images underlining two key things about Castellari: 1) he honed his energetic macho action style in spaghetti westerns; and 2) he isn’t considered "the poor man’s Peckinpah" for nothing, being absolutely addicted to balletic slow-mo violence. About a bazillion Germans here do the spastic dance of death, riddled by bullets or leaping from yet another explosion.
Yet the film’s tone is larky, at times even goofy. Hardly a neglected masterpiece, or a campy delight like some of Tarantino’s other retro faves, it’s a good example of another era’s disposable entertainment. Unlike the grim check-cashing air emitted by many similar Europudding exercises, here you can sense the fun that went into making it.
His big-screen career of Westerns, policiers, Mad Max and Escape from New York clones eventually tapped out, Castellari moved on to TV work. But at age 70, Castellari is still capable of rising to the exploitable moment. Currently being hawked at Cannes — alongside the considerably more hyped you-know-what — is his Caribbean Basterds, which appears to cobble together nods to Tarantino, contemporary sea piracy, Point Break (1991), and A Clockwork Orange (1971).
INGLORIOUS BASTARDS
Fri/29, 7:30 p.m.; Sun/31, 2 p.m., $8
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF
(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org
paulr@sfbg.com
For a small restaurant, Contigo is physically complex. As you enter, you glide along a six-seat food bar at the edge of a display kitchen, while beyond the host’s checkpoint opens a two-level dining room enclosed by white oak banquettes, like the remains of a Viking ship. (The wood was actually recovered from a Connecticut barn.) One sidewall consists of a bank of stainless-steel refrigerators, standing at attention like troops awaiting review; opposite is another bar — smaller, emphasizing wine, and partly recessed in the manner of a church nave. Beyond a wall of glass doors at the rear of the space is an enclosed garden, set with tables and space heaters and covered with a big sheet of clear plastic, since sunny Noe Valley can be surprisingly cold and windy.
Some years ago the city’s Board of Supervisors imposed a kind of restaurant cap on Noe Valley: new establishments could open only in spaces being vacated by departing restaurants. As far as I know, Contigo (the name means "with you") is the first endeavor to breach this line. It occupies what had been a computer store. The restaurant’s build-out has emphatically erased that past while honoring a green ethic, from the reuse of old siding as interior paneling to the deployment of glassware made from recycled wine bottles. To drive the point home, the paint scheme consists of green in several shades. I like green, but I like other colors too.
Apart from that small irritant, Contigo is as good-looking a new restaurant as I’ve visited in a long time. It manages to be modern, slick, and warm without growing sweaty from the effort, and it would probably look quite at home on a little street near the Sagrada Familia, in Barcelona’s Eixample. Chef/owner Bret Emerson’s Spanish-Catalán food would probably be a hit there, too, since the cooking honors both its traditional Iberian roots and our local ecological imperative; Cataluña, birthplace of Miró, Picasso, and Casals, has long been Spain’s most sophisticated and forward-thinking region.
The menu tilts toward smaller plates ("pica-pica") but also offers larger dishes and includes separate sections for hams and cheeses. (Spain’s air-cured hams, the most famous of which are serrano and ibérico, are worthy rivals to their more famous Italian cousin, prosciutto.) The smaller plates ($8 each, or $7 each for three or more) are divided among jardi (garden), mar (sea), and granja (farm) — or, roughly, vegetables, seafood, and meat. They could also be divided among the familiar, familiar with a twist, and unexpected.
Patatas bravas, for instance, could be the classic tapa, and Contigo’s version, finished with a peppery salsa brava and a big puff of aioli, is classic. But the potato quarters are wonderfully crusty, making them competitive with french fries and allaying the unease of persons (some of them known to me) who dislike soft, mushy, or mealy potatoes.
We did find the tacopi butter beans — big white beans, like cannellini — to be overcooked and a little floury. But the shallow bath they swam in, of erbette chard and sofrito (tomato-less here), was full of assuaging flavor.
Among the familiar we would also put albóndigas, the little meatballs — I have rarely seen a tapas menu without some version — but here they’re served in a shallow pool of ajo blanco, a white gazpacho made slightly grainy by the presence of pulverized almonds. And while croquetas (basically fritters) are a common dish and a clever way of using up leftover mashed potatoes, it’s not every day you find them filled with oxtail meat or plated with razor-like leaves of mizuna.
Among the most California-influenced small plates are a pulpo salad — braised squid tossed with shredded fennel, chopped black olives, and citrus segments that were supposed to be grapefruit but looked and tasted more like mandarin orange — and a pair of crostini-like toasts, each bread spear topped with a smear of avocado and a plump, juicy grilled sardine.
These little dishes are so good and so varied that the larger courses (called platillos, an odd use of the diminutive) seem almost beside the point. The most interesting ones are the cocas, Catalán-style flatbreads that resemble white (i.e. tomato-less) pizzas. And you probably won’t miss that tomato sauce when firepower consisting of artichoke hearts, green garlic, and arbequinas olives is mustered atop your pie ($13). Flavorful? Yes, and then some, with a subtle crust hinting of pastry. But also slightly salty even for my taste. Maybe a little acid, from tomatoes or some other source, wouldn’t be superfluous, or overcomplex, after all.
CONTIGO
Dinner: nightly, 5:30–10 p.m.
1320 Castro, SF
(415) 285-0250
Beer and wine
AE/MC/V
Noisy but bearable
Wheelchair accessible
a&eletters@sfbg.com
"Fukú Americanus" does not actually translate as "fucked-up American," but it might as well. Fukú refers to a curse, a bad piece of destiny that clings to your behind like a genetically transmitted boot up the ass, passing on through generations until it runs its course, which is who-knows-how-long. And if you want to get really specific about it, as does the narrator in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, fukú is an imprecation brought to the Americas in the mouths of kidnapped Africans, amounting to nothing less than "the Curse and Doom of the New World." Which means we all get a turn.
So maybe it’s appropriate that Díaz’s titular hero is a chubby nonentity, an hombre of no importance, and a fully fledged geek whom his mom (Maria Candelaria) can barely stand and no girl seems destined to come within a quarter mile of. Despite a passion for women unusual even among his fellow Dominicans — according to confessed player and reluctant sidekick Yunior (Carlos Aguirre) — Oscar (Brian Rivera) stands to be the first Dominican man to die a virgin. Ultimately, however, he’s more than a subtraction sign. As incarnated with zest and goofy likeability by Rivera, he’s an indefatigable survivor, maybe even the fifth member of the Fantastic Four, if only in his own mind. He’s also a mad scribbler, ever composing his magnum opus in an endless series of marbled notebooks. (The "Wao" comes from someone’s misapprehension of an Oscar Wilde reference that sticks to our Oscar ever after. A fervent sci-fi, anime, Dungeons-and-Dragons dweeb, he’s actually trying to look like Doctor Who at the time, so the confusion turning a "who" from the D.R. to a "wao" in the U.S. becomes all the more poetical, and culturally laden.)
Oscar’s terrible virginity is only one of several burdens propelling the action in the world premiere of Fukú Americanus, Campo Santo’s boisterous post–hip-hop stage adaptation of Díaz’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, now up and pulsing — with lots of high-end but not enough in the bass — at Intersection for the Arts. The play cuts its largest swath through the New Jersey–based chapters of Diaz’s immigrant tale (which loosely aligns with the author’s own childhood passage from the D.R. to the U.S.), and features the travails of Oscar’s razor-sharp but wounded sister, Lola (Vanessa Cota), a goth-clad teen rebel against their cancer-ridden but nevertheless indomitably feisty mother. Meanwhile, Lola’s macho onetime-boyfriend Yunior gets cast in the role of Rutgers roomie and caretaker to Oscar.
Back of these plot points, and the transnational culture they limn, stands the inscrutable but ever-present designs of Fukú, in the lanky human form of our narrator (Biko Eisen-Martin), shirtless and shoeless in a black suit and silver bling. When not listening in on the action, he jumps in, usually literally, with a choice bit of information or opinion culled from the novel’s hefty footnotes and digressions. Intertwined with fukú is the burden of histories familial and colonial.
Given its subaltern subject matter, its slang-fueled homeboy/homegirl wisdom, curbside humor, and restive energy, Diaz’s novel would seem a natural fit for the kind of hip hop–inspired theatre Intersection for the Arts has championed with the Living Word Project as well as recent successes like Angry Black White Boy. On stage, however, it amounts to a high-energy but shallow distillation of the ample novel’s several decades of private history that are set meaningfully against a diasporic backdrop of colonial peonage, imperial intervention ("Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq!"), hopeful and desperate migrations, New World ennui, oppression under a series of local and globetrotting top dogs — especially dictator Trujillo, here introduced only in the second act and a bit too inconsequentially — and disillusionment with that American Dream.
Codirectors Marc Bamuthi Joseph (of LWP) and Sean San José (who directed Angry) find their way into the material through a fluid physicality and driving beat (although actual beatboxing from Aguirre and singing by the cast are kept to a minimum). The effortless bounce and verve never gets close to the bone, though, since the relentlessly playful tone and broad if charming characterizations can’t sustain the full weight of the narrative. Straddling comedic melodrama and turned-out hip-hop performance, Fukú satisfies the requirements of neither too well, leaving its deeper themes marooned in the shallows of a fleetingly infectious celebration of outsider status.
FUKÚ AMERICANUS
Through June 21
Thurs-Sat, 8 p.m., $15–$25
Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia, SF
(415) 626-3311, www.theintersection.org
PREVIEW First come the horns, then the bass, an emphatic high hat and a sparkle of percussion, a trill of electric guitar, more brass, and it’s on. Thanks to "Shelter," Sila and the Afrofunk Experience’s second album Black President (Visila Records, 2009) has a funky kickoff. With inspired grooves that recall the jazzy Afrobeat of standard-bearers both old (Fela Kuti) and new (Lagbaja) and layered with a tireless P-funk aesthetic, the group goes on to represent the best of all possible worlds in World Music terms: uptempo, polyrhythmic, socially conscious (but not pedantic), strikingly melodic, and eminently danceable.
While Sila and the Afrofunk Experience’s first album The Funkiest Man in Africa (Visila Records, 2006) explored the musical and social legacies of Fela Kuti, Black President brings it all back home — literally to our door step (or our turntable) — with a track cautiously celebrating the election of America’s first black president ("Mr. President … the people are hungry for change"). Africa never strays far from the rotation, though. "Shelter" is an examination of the ongoing AIDS epidemic, "I’m So Tired" speaks to the diaspora experience, and "Africa" is sheer Afrobeat magic. The official release party for Black President — which is already available online — kicks off a busy summer of touring for SF’s favorite adopted son Victor Sila and his tightly-knit ensemble. It’ll be a challenge to get enough of a Sila fix in a single night to last until the group returns from its travels, but I’m game to try.
SILA AND THE AFROFUNK EXPERIENCE With Fool’s Gold, Diego’s Umbrella. Sat/30, 9 p.m., $15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF.(415) 625-8880. www.mezzaninesf.com
PREVIEW Here’s a page right out of any rabid metalhead’s book of wildest, mind-blowingest dreams: What if the Norse gods Thor, Odin, and Tyr descended from the stormy heavens and formed a power trio? What would it sound like? What earthly buildings would crumble to the ground? What souls would be raised from their shadowy graves? What chaos would ensue?
To answer that first question: what if? What’s more metal than thunder, lightning, magic, and Valhalla? Those dudes invented it. They started their band approximately 1,300 years ago, before you or guitars existed. Second, they would sound like Los Angeles bone-crushers Big Business, whose giant leaden riffs, primordial Cro-Magnon rhythms, and thunderous hollow vocals pretty much sound like a band Thor might have dreamt up after an all-nighter spent smiting Viking tribes with lightning bolts and joyriding in his goat-drawn chariot with a ravishing blonde goddess.
The guys in Big Business, cut from the same pitch-black cloth as any fearsome Nordic god, are fast approaching their own place in the pantheon of mortal metal royalty. Their sludgy, doom-soaked sound is forged by ex-Murder City Devils drummer Coady Willis and bassist Jared Warren, formerly of Karp. And if their musical resumes weren’t already steeped in metal street cred, Willis and Warren joined the Melvins to record (A) Senile Animal (Ipecac, 2006) and Nude with Boots (Ipecac, 2008). The Biz added guitarist Toshi Kasai to its lineup in 2007, just after its sophomore album Here Come the Waterworks (Hydra Head) won it a hailstorm of critical success and a spot touring with Tool.
Now Big Business’s third album has arrived. While retaining the group’s visceral low-end attack, Mind the Drift (Hydra Head) adds more of Kasai’s quick-fire guitar work to the murk — it gives the album an atmospheric discord that swings like a wrecking ball. The Biz gets almost prog-metal when it adds vocal harmonies (wait, now they sing, too?!) and an organ solo to the dirge of "Ayes Have It." Bottom of the Hill, look out. Will King Buzzo join them on stage? Whatever happens, Big Business won’t be taking prisoners.
BIG BUSINESS With Tweak Bird. Wed/27, 10 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St, SF (415) 621-4455
PREVIEW Moving in its fourth year from autumn to an early summer slot, San Francisco’s CounterCorp Anti-Corporate Film Festival now provides an apt alternative-entertainment prelude to Memorial Day — because what, after all, is more patriotic these days than asking the question, "What are we fighting for?" Fittingly, the opener is about Big Oil. Sandy Cioffi (who’ll be present) at one point spent five days in the custody of Nigerian security forces while making Sweet Crude, an investigation of Shell Oil Corp. and other companies’ violence and environmental ruination in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Likewise, Robert Cornellier’s Black Wave documents the seemingly neverending efforts to exact justice from ExxonMobil over the catastrophic Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska 20 years ago. Other highlights in this year’s all-documentary edition of CounterCorp include Sam Bozzo’s Blue Gold: World Water Wars, about the escalation of conflict and privatization around that most precious (and vanishing) natural resource; Steven Greenstreet’s Killer at Large, which analyzes the industrial agribiz/food processing causes behind an obesity epidemic that has begun reversing Americans’ previously steady trend toward longer life expectancies; and Brett Gaylor’s RIP: A Remix Manifesto, a "mash-up movie" about the wars between copyright law and free expression. No doubting where Gaylor stands on that issue: his entire movie is already available to download and remix yourself at www.opensourcecinema.org.
COUNTERCORP ANTI-CORPORATE FILM FESTIVAL Thurs/28–Sat/30, $5–$10. Victoria Theater, 2961 16th St., SF. www.countercorp.org
OPINION On Tuesday, May 19, poor and working-class families of color packed the San Francisco School Board with a powerful message of hope, opportunity, and justice: we want the right to a secure future in our own city. To get a good job here, we know we need a high quality education that prepares us for college, career, or union trade — not poverty or prison.
After a year of research, organizing, and talking to thousands of families, collecting 3,000 postcards, and mobilizing hundreds of parents and youth, our proposal — that every San Francisco student have access to the so-called A–G classes — was approved, setting the stage for a systemic change in our public schools that could dramatically improve the lives of tens of thousands of students of color over the next few years.
A–G describes the high school coursework that state colleges require for admission. Setting A-G as part of the graduation requirement will finally give low-income black and Latino students access to high expectations and our state college system.
We will have to stay on top of the district and monitoring will be intense and long-term, but we have parent and student leaders ready for the task, because their own lives are at stake.
Our experience is that thousands of parents and students get the issues, but that so many San Franciscans, even progressive ones, just don’t. In San Francisco, 75 percent of children are black, Latino, Asian, or Pacific Islander, and more than 80 percent of those families are low income. A full 90 percent of the students in public schools are students of color. This means kids’ issues in San Francisco are issues of racial and economic justice.
Our issues are often not the ones that make front page news. Education outcomes for black children — right here in San Francisco — are the worst of the state’s urban districts. But this gets lost in the inside baseball reporting about City Hall politics, the flinging about of political self-righteousness, and frankly, issues like JROTC.
We believe that organizing families for racial equity in our public school system is core to a progressive agenda in the 21st century. Consider the following.
•<\!s> Young people’s future in the 21st century San Francisco economy now requires a college education. More than 50,000 blue-collar jobs that paid a living wage without requiring a degree have disappeared from SF over the last generation.
•<\!s> Only one in three students from SF schools graduated from high school prepared for a four-year university in 2008. Without access to college and career-ready A-G classes, most graduating students weren’t even eligible for either the U.C. or California state universities or prepared for a union apprenticeship exam.
•<\!s> Most black, Latino and Pacific Islander students do not have access the A-G college, career, and union trade path in San Francisco. In fact, five out of six Latino students and 9 out of 10 African American students graduated without the A-G classes required to even be eligible for a U.C. or state university.
This new school board policy might be one of the most important steps toward racial equity in a generation. Join our work to make San Francisco public schools a vehicle of economic opportunity, racial justice and democracy. *
N’Tanya Lee is executive director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth.
The sun is out – and so are you, capering and carousing at these musical shindigs, all so worthy yet unable to make it to print.
St. Vincent
Out of work? G’wan. Annie Clark is playing with ya on her hotly anticipated, Tin Pan Alley-inspired Actor (4AD). With Pattern Is Movement. Wed/27, 8 p.m., $16. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365.
Tiga
“Beep Beep Beep” – make way for Montreal’s Ciao baby, With Jaimie Fanatic and DJ Omar. Thurs/28, 9 p.m., $18. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422.
