SF

Do the right thing, Dianne

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OPINION At the end of World War II, approximately 36 percent of American workers belonged to a union. Today that number has shrunk to about 12 percent, lagging behind the world’s other industrial democracies. But now, with a Democratic president in office, we have a realistic chance of enacting the most significant piece of labor legislation in decades, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect the right of workers to organize into a union.

The opposition, of course, is well organized and well funded. Opponents will spend more than $200 million to defeat the bill in the Senate. They will argue that EFCA is just a special interest bill that helps big labor. But the truth is that the legislation should be part of the long-term economic recovery plan and is key to rebuilding the middle class.

In 1980, average CEO pay was 42 times that of the average blue-collar worker. By 2006, CEO pay had grown to 364 times the average blue collar worker’s pay. A survey of median weekly earnings in 2007 revealed that union workers make 30 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, and are 59 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage than other workers.

The key EFCA reform, and the one that has generated the most controversy, is called “card-check.” Under EFCA, if the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finds that a majority of employees have signed written authorization forms designating the union as their collective bargaining representative, the union is certified.

Opponents of card-check often argue, erroneously, that EFCA will deprive workers of their right to a so-called secret ballot. In fact, EFCA preserves both options, but it places the choice in the hands of workers, not employers. Moreover, the history of these “secret ballot” elections shows that they are often anything but democratic. Too often employers use their power over unorganized employees to intimidate them into voting against the union. Such documented employer tactics have included mandatory attendance at antiunion meetings, one-on-one meetings, threats to close the business if the union wins the vote, and harassing or even firing workers engaged in organizing activity.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has an 87 percent lifetime voting record from the AFL-CIO and has co-sponsored EFCA in the past. But now, with EFCA finally within reach, she has announced that she is looking for a “less divisive” option.

Say it isn’t so, Senator.

For many years progressive activists have had concerns about Feinstein, even going as far as to seek her censure at a state Democratic convention two years ago. In 2007, the party leadership reminded the activists that although she may stray occasionally, Feinstein is really a good Democrat who shares our basic values and commitments. There was no censure.

But workers’ rights is no side-issue in our Democratic Party. Economic justice is the issue. This is a moment of truth for Feinstein — and all of us who are her constituents have an obligation to help her get to the right answer.

On April 28 at 7 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center, the SF Labor Council, Pride at Work, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club are sponsoring a community briefing on our campaign to urge Feinstein to support working people. Join us. *

Robert Haaland is the co-chair, SF Pride at Work. Rafael Mandelman is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

 

Jimmy Sweetwater Presents

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PREVIEW In the era of Slow Food in the City of Fog, I wonder why more people don’t slow down for a second and get out to taste some local music. Think about the last time you were willing to fork over more than a fiver for some local talent. Seriously. San Franciscans sometimes seem fonder and more aware of what the Bay Area attracts than of what it produces. Jimmy Sweetwater is out to change that. Sweetwater is the rare breed of promoter who is also a musician — he plays a mean harmonica and a dirty washboard. He has been giving his all to keep his series of local music going in a town drawn to touring bands. Sweetwater, a historian of Mission District music from the past 20 years, has put on five shows at the Great American Music Hall, four at Slim’s, and one at Cafe du Nord. According to Sweetwater, club staff has largely been supportive, but it’s a struggle to fill venues in these times of financial woe. "There’s a ton of local talent that never gets to play the big clubs," he says, noting that he tries "to combine different kinds of music in one night." All-local nights and combinations of different genres — these aren’t traditional strategies, but the Bay Area is the perfect place to unleash them.

This weekend sees a diverse Jimmy Sweetwater Presents lineup at the Red Devil Lounge, including the high-speed-Calexico-like Diego’s Umbrella, honkeytonkers 77 El Deora, the East Bay’s Ben Benkert, and the Mission Three, a group including Sweetwater that will play a number of tunes by the Band, even one of my favorite (and rarer) Band joints, "Acadian Driftwood." Sweetwater always seems to be doing a thousand things at once. It’s all for the love of song in this songlike town.

JIMMY SWEETWATER PRESENTS: DIEGO’S UMBRELLA, BEN BENKERT, 77 EL DEORA, AND THE MISSION THREE Sat/25, 9 p.m., $10. Red Devil Lounge, 1695 Polk, SF. (415) 921-1695. www.myspace.com/jimmysweetwater

At the desert shore

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

At some point between the group’s termination in 1981 and re-formation in 2004, Throbbing Gristle entered the canon. The more Throbbing Gristle music you’ve heard, and the more you’ve read about it, the less likely that conversion will seem. Matmos’ Drew Daniels acknowledged as much in his contribution to Continuum’s 33 1/3 series on classic albums, an exegesis of the band’s most accessible statement, the puzzling 20 Jazz Funk Greats (Industrial Records, 1979). The group’s relationship with music-as-such was perverse enough to make contemporaries like the Sex Pistols look like Chuck Berry revivalists. Back in the saddle after nearly a quarter-century, Throbbing Gristle mark two has less in common with the noise pranksters of old than the divergent, innovative projects the group has splintered into: spokes(wo)man and singer Genesis P-Orridge’s Burroughsian reengineering of rock’s DNA with Psychic TV; synth whiz Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson’s protean electronic voyages with Coil; and the rain-slick, dark disco of Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter’s Carter Tutti project all figure in the group’s latest recording, the appropriately bizarre Part Two: The Endless Not (Mute, 2007).

P-Orridge, the most visible and outspoken member, is seductively articulate about the band’s intentions: they have little to do with making music that plays into the pleasure of listening, and much to do with music’s mainline connection to culture. For all of Throbbing Gristle’s touted firsts, its music often verges on indecipherable. None of the group’s gritty, lo-fi recordings evoke emotions beyond a vague, lingering unease. But, the achievements: Throbbing Gristle literally invented modern industrial music with the founding of its so-named label, members Carter and Sleazy are credited with developing an early keyboard-triggered sampler, Tutti’s "Hot on the Heels of Love" was a prime inspiration for first-wave Detroit techno, and "(We Hate You) Little Girls" predates Whitehouse’s power electronics and the whole harsh-noise underground long since percoutf8g in the U.S. and Japan. And so on.

The weird thing about such innovations is that those committed to establishing Throbbing Gristle’s major authorship risk freezing and trapping these self-appointed culture-creeps within one historical moment or another. Despite all the collateral riding on Throbbing Gristle’s "seminal" place in the last half-decade of musical and cultural history, the band’s deliberate failure to be just that — a band — in any conventional sense needs to be acknowledged, partly as a tactical gambit. If Throbbing Gristle is a band more talked about than listened to, it seems inconsequential. Individually and collectively, they were prescient enough to choose culture as their medium, and music as a tool for scrambling it. It’s a foresight that has been borne out by MTV and then the Internet, but the tricky thing is that Throbbing Gristle’s actual accomplishment — the meaning behind what it does — isn’t in music itself, but in culture. That’s a zone where significance tends to be more protean; we can’t simply rely on albums as self-contained, coherent statements that we can either identify with or reject. There’s something trickier going on here, as if Throbbing Gristle’s music is meant to be heard at the second or third degree, when everything’s been attenuated.

The Throbbing Gristle project grew out of COUM Transmissions, a sort of umbrella term for performances and art projects that had strong affinities with the extreme performance artists known as the Vienna Aktionists, William Burroughs, and occultist Aleister Crowley. Their best-known installation, "Pornography," in a gallery within spitting distance of Buckingham Palace, most notably exhibited images of Cosey from various British porn magazines. It was a publicly-funded blight whose purpose was, in part, to convert sensationalist press into a feedback loop worth contemputf8g: the group framed and mounted outraged press clippings, and when newspapers published articles about this détournement, framed those as well. This press-driven mise-en-abyme probably offers the best example of how to listen to TG. The band plumbed new depths with feedback and delay, but their raison d’être was, beyond electronic trickery, setting up circular cultural patterns that explode hypocrisy. In doing so, the creative forces within Throbbing Gristle afford themselves the freedom to play any villainous or anti-heroic role handed to them.

THROBBING GRISTLE

Thurs/23, 8 p.m., sold out

Grand Ballroom, Regency Center

1290 Sutter, SF

www.throbbing-gristle.com

HOW TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSE — PART 6

Thurs/23–Sun/26, various venues

www.mobilization.com

Throbbing Gristle vs. Machine Sex

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P>Though San Francisco might be eternally hampered by the stereotyped perception of a hippie wonderland replete with flowery hair, free love, and fluffy puppies, in reality, SF has long been as much a haven for radical dystopians as it is for their wistfully upbeat foils. From robot circuses to urban exploration to electric sheep, San Franciscans have a demonstrated predilection for the bionic, the blighted, and the bizarre. Add in a penchant for situational absurdism and a fervent appreciation for electronic music predating the Summer of Love, and it becomes clear why San Francisco was ground zero for the first wave of North American industrial noise music, and the city with the strongest connection to its European progenitors — Throbbing Gristle.

Throbbing Gristle is, in every sense of the word, the seminal industrial band, whose confrontational performance tactics, nihilistic lyrics, and audio sampling techniques foreshadowed acts as divergent as Skinny Puppy, Negativland, and 2 Live Crew, despite their repeated assertions that they were not really meant to be a band at all. "Assuming that we had no basic interest in making records, no basic interest in music per se, it’s pretty weird to think we’ve released something like ten albums … that have had an effect on the popular music scene forever." So declared Throbbing Gristle’s Genesis P-Orridge in the Industrial Culture Handbook, first published in 1983. Beginning their Bay Area association in 1976 through correspondence with Oakland-based shock artist Monte Cazazza — who traveled to England to assist with their nascent Industrial Records project and coined their company slogan: "industrial music for industrial people" — Throbbing Gristle’s aural extremism was also painstakingly documented by local champion of the underground V. Vale, first through fifth issue of the publication of RE/Search, and then through Industrial Culture Handbook.

It wasn’t just the Dada-esque, cut-up compositions of Throbbing Gristle and Bay Area-based industrial noise peers like Boyd Rice and Z’ev that gained an early foothold in the collective consciousness of the SF underground. Survival Research Laboratories, founded in 1978 by Mark Pauline, gave mecha-fetishism a physical expression — with installations of and performances by a bevy of robotic entities, often decorated with animal carcasses for ultimate shock value. SRL’s first public event, Machine Sex, featuring dead pigeons on a conveyor belt trundling toward a rotating blade, debuted on St. Patrick’s Day 30years ago. Not long after, Vale introduced Pauline to Monte Cazazza, who became one of SRL’s early collaborators — and the bridge between the musical and mechanical arms of industrial culture.

Industrial music, permanently positioned outside the mainstream by design, has long struggled for recognition in the U.S. But early industrial’s lasting influence on the Bay Area arts is readily apparent in the confrontational panhandling robots of the Omnicircus, the large-scale mechanical sculptures of the Flaming Lotus Girls, the electro-noise/"weirdcore" performances of the Katabatik Collective, the flesh-eating fantasia of industrial music club MEAT, and even in the Mad Max-ian flamethrowing antics and electronica oases found at Burning Man and live looping sensations such as Kid Beyond and Loop!Station. Considered in that vein, you could say a little bit of Throbbing Gristle resides in us all. Chew on it.

A THROBBING GRISTLE AFTERPARTY

With DJs D-SYN, pink noise, R.M.S.

Thurs/23–Sun/26, 11 p.m.-2 a.m., free

Space Gallery

1141 Polk, SF

www.mobilization.com

SFIFF: 52 pick-up

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cheryl@sfbg.com

In early April, a long-range rocket blasted off from deepest, darkest North Korea; according to a Reuters.com news report, the communist country claimed that its satellite was "launched into orbit and [is now] circling the Earth transmitting revolutionary songs." Um, yeah. Most folks say the rocket failed — and that its real purpose was to test North Korea’s dropping-warheads-on-our-enemies capabilities. Recent rumors of ill health aside, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il appeared shortly after the incident to mark his re-election as the chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s National Defense Commission.

As scary as it is to imagine the pompadored, isolationist "Great Leader" with his mitts on nukes, to focus on North Korea’s threat to the outside world takes away from the atrocities committed within its borders, against its own citizens. As NC Heikin’s quietly terrifying Kimjongilia reveals, the dictator’s country is a cruel, brutal place. The doc features interviews with North Korean refugees whose tales of escape are as harrowing as their recollections of life back home — a place where simply listening to music from a capitalist country or dropping a newspaper with a photograph of Kim on the floor were infractions that could mean imprisonment for three generations of a single family. Starvation, torture, and constant fear factor into nearly every story; families are separated, and even those who escape struggle, such as a woman whose "freedom" in China translated into years of sex slavery. For these people, WMDs are the least of their concerns.

Peering beyond what’s obvious is a theme at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival, with a slate that’s particularly doc-heavy. For every gesture that’s a little debatable (you can spin that Francis Ford Coppola directing award however you want, but Apocalypse Now came out in 1979, and 2007’s Youth Without Youth sucked), there are many that deserves high praise: groundbreaking local documentarian Lourdes Portillo receiving the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award, for example. Read on for the Guardian‘s coverage of this year’s fest, and keep watching the skies.

KIMJONGILIA

May 3, 3:30 p.m.; May 6, 3:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki

May 4, 6:30 p.m., PFA


THE 52ND SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs April 23–May 7. Main venues are the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF. Satellite venues are Premier Theater, Letterman Digital Arts Center, Bldg. B, One Letterman Drive, Presidio, SF; and Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF. Tickets (most shows $12.50; special programs vary) and additional information at www.sffs.org.

More: Reviews, interviews, and more SFIFF 52 coverage on the Pixel Vision blog as the festival unfolds.

First Person Magazine benefit party featuring Gudrun Gut

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PREVIEW Now two years old, I Put A Record On (Monika Enterprise, 2007) is a record worth lingering over. In addition to being the first solo release from Berlin-based musical gadabout Gudrun Gut, it’s remarkable for how unhurried Gut was in getting around to it: she’s been appearing on recordings and taking part in bands, including a very early incarnation of industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten, for more than 25 years. Her intervening projects give her the aura of a post-punk Zelig: the all-female punk band Malaria! formed in 1981, toured with the Birthday Party, put out records on Belgian boutique label Les Disques du Crepuscule, and performed with Nina Hagen at Studio 54. That the group’s "Kaltes Klares Wasser" would later be covered by Chicks on Speed was a foregone conclusion.

The synthy Matador followed Malaria!’s collapse, but Gut’s ear eventually led her, like any good punk, to techno. With typical great timing too: Berlin had just undergone a techno surge, spearheaded by local duo and label Basic Channel. Abandoning the constraints of playing in a rock-derived idiom in favor of more uncharted territory, Gut also had the good fortune to run across Thomas Fehlmann, a producer with post-punk roots who had recently collaborated with Alex Paterson’s downtempo pace-setters the Orb. The two founded Ocean Club, producing a weekly genre-stomping radio show as well as parties that paired up the likes of experimental techno producer Thomas Brinkmann and splay-shirted southern gothic aficionado Nick Cave.

None of this is new information, yet all of it is useful in figuring out how something like I Put A Record On came to be. It’s beguiling, though free of big emotions — a left-field album that functions as an homage to the hypnotic state that arrives when you’re sucked into your favorite records. The best indication of its intentions is provided by the sole cover, of Smog’s "Rock Bottom Riser." Gut’s multitracked delivery, over a pistoning and downtrodden bass drum, is affectless enough to make Bill Callahan’s stoic delivery on the original seem fraught. But by the end, she’s wracked by giggles, as flecks of color appear like dried spittle around the monochrome production’s edges. Gut is not an innovator: both she and Callahan are committed to the old, inexhaustible pleasure of listening, regardless of genre. And this is exactly what allows them to give back to their respective genres, if we care to name them, some missing essence.

FIRST PERSON MAGAZINE BENEFIT PARTY FEATURING GUDRUN GUT with Thomas Fehlmann, Grecco Guggenheit, and Nate Boyce. Fri/24, 10 p.m., $10-$15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880. www.firstpersonmag.com/events.htm

NorCal nuggets

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Now playing: Locals Only II (see part one here). You can’t stop it from happening, even if you crumble to the ground like Keanu, fire your pistol in the air, and scream, "Nooo!" NorCal bands gotta make some noise, Bay-bies.

Hey, what gives? The Fresh and Onlys promised to release their self-titled Castle Face debut in May, yet last week I spied the CD, prominently displayed, twinkling brightly on an Amoeba Music endcap. Could it be an inside job, being that Fresh and Onlys Tim Cohen and Shayde Sartin have passed through the store’s payroll? Whatev, Kev, be happy it’s there, polishing off rough gems like "Endless Love": "Why don’t we live forever /inside this little mirror /so that your eyes and my nose /and your ears and my mouth /and your chin and my beard /they all fit together? / Na-na-na-na-na-na-na!"

Just as you turn to dismiss "Endless Love" as another joke song — albeit one tuned to a staticky channel of surf and ’60s-style garage rock by way of Flying Nun novitiates and Jonathan Richman’s post-punk pop naifs — the group unleashes a mini-nugget of "A Man Needs a Maid" wisdom: "Don’t you know you gotta give yourself / to get somebody else." Happily tucked into an echo chamber of passion-first rock ‘n’ roll, and armed against the apocalypse with a here-to-help sincerity that could stand the test of time ("The Mind Is Happy." "Feelings in My Heart"), the Fresh and Onlys pull off the seemingly impossible: discovering a clunky sweetness and lo-fi grace in a very singular rock primitivo.

"Snap back like a bungee chord — Lord!" Watch yourself, Raw Deluxe. The Bay Area group’s flow is as satisfyingly smooth and substantive as classic Del tha Funkee Homosapien times three on "Can You Spend It," off its new Raw Communication (Reel Deal). MCs Lexxx Luthor and Mic Blake of Alphabet Soup and Soulati of Felonious are unstoppable and at the top of a mix that showcases the sheer delight of word-slingers riding the exact same wavelength. There’s nothing particularly uncooked about the smokily intoxicating old-school jazz-funk gumbo on Raw Deluxe’s third long-player: keyboardist Matt Fleming, saxophonist Tony Jurado, bassist Christ Arenas, and drummer Chris Spano are on point on "Something to Build Upon" — a celebration of the band’s actual music-making process — which would chart in a better world and provide the foundation for a more maximalist hip-hop.

On the post-rock-cum-math side of the spectrum is the far-too-scarce From Monuments to Masses, now SF-NYC bicoastal and back with a new mostly instrumental full-length, On Little Known Frequencies (Dim Mak), possibly the most powerful recording yet by Francis Choung, Matthew Solberg, and Sergio Robledo-Maderazo. Mars Volta and Minus the Bear — MTB keyboardist Matt Bayles coproduced, engineered, and mixed the disc — are obvious referents. though neither band finds its voice via fragments of sampled dialogue like FMTM does, as if tapping directly into the culture’s transmissions. Almost monochromatic in its clear-eyed devotion to alt-rock propulsion, FMTM’s music has the closed-circle urgency and internal fury of a sonic dialectic. Are these frequencies to be plumbed with increased frequency?

THE FRESH AND ONLYS

Thurs/23, 10 p.m., $5

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

www.theknockoutsf.com

RAW DELUXE

Fri/24, 10 p.m., $10

Club Six

60 Sixth St., SF

www.clubsix1.com

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UPCOMING:

FLIPPER

The punk legends are turning over a new leaf in honor of their new 4 Men With Beards vinyl reissues, including 1982’s Generic Flipper. The battle continues with Flipper’s new Love/Fight albums on May 19. Fri/24, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba, 2455 Telegraph, Berkeley. www.amoeba.com. Also Sat/25, 9 pm $10. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. www.elriosf.com

AUTOLUX

The L.A. combo veers toward the dark, detuned, and deliciously distorted, judging from the music released from its long-awaited, forthcoming second disc, Transit Transit. With Odawas and Mini Mansions. Sat/25, 9 p.m., $18. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

THE GROUCH AND ELIGH

Is three the magic number for the West Coast indie MCs? Check for lofty concepts on the new Say G&E (Legendary). With Exile and DJ Day and Afro Classics. Sat/25, 9 p.m., $18. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com. Also Mon/27, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com

Grass Widow

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PREVIEW Grass Widow’s harmonious post-punk tension is fostered below SF street level, in a former meat locker containing, among other things, a very charming quilt with the band’s name patched into it. In anticipation of an impending record release, I met there with bass player Hannah Lew and drummer Lillian Maring (guitarist and trumpet player Raven Mahon was overseas), who, although living far apart — Maring is on the East Coast at present — were clearly very happy to be together.

"It’s not like there are any dispensable characters," explains Lew. After the dissolution of Shitstorm, Lew’s former band with Mahon, the two started playing together in 2007 with Maring, who was in the city for the summer from Washington state. Though Maring went back up north for a bit, she says she quickly returned and the trio "got really serious" — serious enough to tour the U.S. the following summer after cranking out a wonderful demo CD-R/ cassette that makes up most of their upcoming self-titled 12-inch on the local Make a Mess label.

Grass Widow artfully molds anxiety, love, and sturdy musicianship into a mesmerizing shape — a sound in which haunted beauty is tempered alternately by pain and, as Lew puts it, "the cathartic experience of playing the song itself." The group’s three-part harmonies are intricate, with an incidental, spoken quality. Imagine a darker shade of the Raincoats, with minimal, vocal harmony-centric arrangements — really terrific stuff.

A seven-inch EP is projected for summer release through Cape Shok, and Grass Widow has been making short films, some of which will be screened at the record release show. "So much of it is about survival and friendship that we’re not gonna quit," Maring said. "It’s a reason to live."

GRASS WIDOW With Ty Segall. Thurs/23, 8 p.m., $5. Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF. (415) 864-3890. www.atasite.org>.

Bruno’s Pizzeria Cucina

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paulr@sfbg.com

What do pizza and jazz have in common? Why, two z’s, of course — the pair of identical twins that also appears in such exciting words as nozzle, nizzle, pizzle, pazzo, and cazzo. Put these all together and shout them from the rooftops and you’ll have quite a riff, if not quite a jazz riff. For music, play ZZ Top. Then run from the obscenity police.

Other than that, pizza and jazz go together like … well, they don’t actually go together. There is no connection I know of. Nonetheless, our drastically refurbished jazz district, along Fillmore south of Geary, now has a creditable pizzeria to go along with the fancier places across the street, Yoshi’s and 1300 Fillmore. The pizzeria is called Bruno’s and, in a most un-Italian development, is unrelated to the Mission District old-timer of the same name. Old Bruno’s has had enough facelifts to rival Phyllis Diller. New Bruno’s, on the other hand, is new — with freshly painted reddish-brown walls, nicely upholstered booths, a gleaming bar against a far wall, a showy kitchen, and jazz memorabilia everywhere, the walls laden with portraits and plaques.

In Europe, jazz has long appealed to the French more than the Italians, but Bruno’s, despite these musical festoonings, is Italian to its core, right down to the patrone, Claudius Oliveira (owner of several other Italian restaurants in northern California, many in the East Bay) who circulates through the dining room, shaking hands and checking, and the service staff with their winsome accents. The cultural flavor is very much that of Little Italy, and part of its beguiling spell is to intensify the experience of the food.

Pizzerias aren’t generally known for their grace notes, but Bruno’s offers several. To begin, there’s the basket of marvelous garlic bread, which is not only flavorful but of a brioche-like tenderness and plumpness. Tasty bread so often exacts a steep price in crustiness and toughness, but not this stuff. Even if you couldn’t eat it, you’d be happy enough just feeling it with your fingers. But you will eat it, and then they bring you more, along with an amuse-bouche — a little ramekin of roasted red pepper soup, say, with a broad hint of cayenne kick. One is typically afforded this type of treatment only when ordering seven-course tasting menus at much starchier places.

Given the slight sports-bar aura, it isn’t surprising to find that the list of appetizers includes buffalo wings ("Texas style"), along with a parade of goodies from the deep fryer, among them calamari and zucchini sticks. But a better choice might be the drunken prawns ($10.95), spiked with tequila.

There is both an Aloha and a Hawaii 5.0 pizza, both with pineapple. Fruit (tomatoes excepted) does not belong on pizza, but pepperoni does, sausage does, salami too, and you’ll get all that and more with the signature Bruno’s special ($14.99 for a 14-incher), along with bell peppers, onions, mushroom slices, and a sprightly tomato sauce.

Most noticeable is the crust, which bucks the current trend toward thinness and crispiness: It’s big, puffy, and bready in true old-school California style. Although I prefer thinner crusts for a variety of reasons — a thin crust doesn’t distract from the toppings but does provide a discreet, pleasurable crackle — there is a case to be made for the more billowy kind. Such a crust does make any pizza look bigger and so, perhaps, enhances one’s perception of value, no small matter in shrinking times.

A nice bonus: if you show up in a ZipCar, you get 10 percent off. And ZipCar has only one Z!

BRUNO’S PIZZERIA CUCINA

Sun.–Thurs., 11 a.m.–midnight

Fri.–Sat., 11–2 a.m.

1375 Fillmore, SF

(415) 563-6300

www.sfbrunos.com

Full bar

AE/DS/MV/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

The “tax day” defense

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boasuspect.jpg
This surveillance photograph of the suspected bank robber is posted at the SFPD’s website.

The San Francisco Police Department has issued a description of a bank robbery suspect who threatened to blow up the Bank of America at 50 California Street, on April 15, aka tax day, if his demands weren’t met.

Carrying a black lap top case, the suspect, who is described as “a white male, 6’, 190 lbs., last seen wearing a
baseball cap with “SF” on it, a khaki buttoned shirt, and blue jeans,” allegedly “entered the
Bank of America on California Street, at approximately 12:50 P.M, and asked an employee to speak with the manager because he wanted to make a large withdrawal,” according to a SFPD press release.

The manager took him to a room, where the suspect allegedly “explained that he worked for an organization that is concerned about government bailouts of corporations.”

The suspect, who apparently was smiling throughout, then demanded cash, stating, that unless the manager complied, he would “detonate a bomb that he was carrying with him.”

The cash, the suspect explained, “would go to people who deserve it,” according to the SFPD.

The manager withdrew a large amount of cash from a vault and gave it to the suspect, who fled the bank on foot.

For more information–or if you have information for the police, call the SFPD’s Public Affairs Office at 415.553.1651.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Vivian Girls, Ghost, Spinal Tap, How to Destroy the Universe, and more

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Take the wheel: Vivian Girls’ “Tell the World.”

How to destroy a weekend – or, for that matter, a weeknight? Sticky, sweaty, and sill up for fun – SF knows how it’s done. Telling ya, there’s so much more to see and hear than we could fit into print.

Dry Spells
Folk rock gets another angelic kick upstairs when the Bay Area band gets onstage. With Pillow Queens and Vultures. Wed/22, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

The Pets
The Oaktown garage-rock threesome preps for its European journey. With International Espionage and Master Volume. Wed/22, 9 p.m., $5. Kimo’s, 1351 Polk, SF. (415) 885-4535.

Hot sex events this week: April 22-28

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

tattoopinups_0409.jpg
Charles Gatewood has been documenting the underground sex and fetish scene for decades. Check out his retrospective slideshow at The Citadel on Thursday.

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>> “Give Her a Hand” Sexual Massage Course
Get all the skills you need to turn your hands into amazing sex toys, including advanced fingering, labia play, combining vaginal, clitoral, and anal stimulation, adding toys, and more.

Wed/22, 8pm, $25-30
Good Vibrations
603 Valencia, SF
www.goodvibes.com

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>> Charles Gatewood: A retrospective slideshow
In his slide lecture, Gatewood – known for documenting America’s sexual underground in the mid-60s, will show photos from every phase of his career, including work from Sidetripping, Forbidden Photographs, Primitives, True Blood, and Photography for Perverts.

Thu/23, 7-9:30, $30
SF Citadel
1277 Mission, SF
(415) 626-1746
www.sfcitadel.org

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>> Hypnosex Workshop
Learn to eliminate sexual inhibitions and shame, enhance your pleasure, and go beyond full-body orgasms at this two-day play-and-personal-transformation workshop. Bring a friend or lover and you’ll each get $100 off.

Sat/25, 9am-Sun/26, 6pm, $397-497
Secret, intimate location in the Bay Area
www.hypnosex.eventbrite.com

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>> Diamond Daggers Femme Follies
Burlesque! Brains! Brawn! It’s the official Bay Area book release party for Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities, and it’s sure to be a blast, thanks to performances by Simone de la Getto, Vixen Noir, Twilight Vixen Revue, and more..

Sat//25, 9pm, $12-20
Fat City
314 11th St., SF
www.diamonddaggers.com

Freakin’ with Dan Deacon

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

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I first saw Dan Deacon perform at Oberlin College’s venue the ’Sco, a den of nascent creativity that eventually brought me to a city sometimes referred to by the same three-letter abbreviation. Deacon was there, balding and bearded, his glasses taped to his head, his muffin-top iced by a bright pink T. He set up his mad scientist’s table of electronics in the audience’s usual domain. Different colored cords sprang out in every direction and there were multiple mics for his one-man show. Lit by a neon green skull, Deacon began stretching, then implored the audience to stretch. They did.

Not only did we all stretch with Deacon, we danced with Deacon. For a generation that has been taught that to move is to be judged — or whatever excuse keeps scenesters so static — such an act is similar to the miracle of the Virgin Mary getting pregos. Deacon’s inhibition-less philosophy was infectious: not only were the undergrads dancing, they were willing to participate in a high-five conga line and compete in a dance-off.

Dan Deacon, “Crystal Cat”

Although the complexities of Deacon’s music become clearer when heard on an iPod, the experience verges on seizure-inducing. Live, the same music becomes hypnotic. Like his earlier work, Deacon’s newest album Bromst (Carpark) is as much a singular composition as a collection of tracks, which should make it exhilarating to encounter. In concert, he has arranged for it to be played by a 15-piece ensemble. Now that he’s decidedly bigger — in band, popularity, and girth — it’s hard to predict how the intimacy and audience participation aspects of his performance will be affected. But it is sure to be a blast. And a bromst. (Deacon said he made up the word for his album title because it doesn’t have a meaning and he likes the way it sounds.)

DAN DEACON With Future Islands and Teeth Mountain. Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $13. Great American Music Hall. 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.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: Rollin, 18th Street and Castro

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Tell us about your look: “I got this jacket in Hong Kong.”

Appetite: Hot tamales, banana cookies, $1 martinis, and more

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By Virginia Miller

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Hot Tamales on Sun/26. See “Events” below

As long-time San Francisco resident and writer, I’m passionate about this city and obsessed with exploring its best food-and-drink spots, events and news, in every neighborhood and cuisine type. I have my own personalized itinerary service and monthly food/drink/travel newsletter, The Perfect Spot, and am thrilled to share up-to-the minute news with you from the endless goings-on in our fair city. View the previous installment of Appetite here.

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NEW OPENINGS

Anthony’s Cookies satisfies your cookie craving all day long
On the same Mission block as Suriya Thai (R.I.P.), is a new cookie kitchen that can help assuage the loss of my favorite Thai. Anthony (who has spent over 10 years perfecting his craft) and his staff give a friendly welcome as they bake, for now offering a half dozen cookies for $5, or $9.25 a dozen, eventually selling them individually. On the blessedly smaller side, they’re warm and about as homemade tasting as they smell. There’s toffee chip, banana (like banana bread in cookie form), cinnamon sugar, whole-wheat oatmeal cranberry, gooey chocolate chip, and maybe my favorite? Cookies and cream. Tastes like home.
1417 Valencia, SF
415-655-9834
www.anthonyscookies.com

Moussy’s brings French cooking classes, movies and Petit Dejeuner to Nob Hill/Polk Gulch
Downstairs from Alliance Francaise, there’s a new stop pre or post AF’s French language classes and film screenings: Moussy’s, an intimate, candlelit cafe for a morning croissant and cappuccino, or lunch time respite, serving salads, baked brie, and pot pies. They’ll soon be offering French cooking classes and film nights, too, ensuring that foodies, expats, bohemian artists, poets and aspiring cooks have a true Parisian cafe hangout.
1345 Bush, SF.
415-441-1802
www.moussys.com

Snap Sounds: Two San Franciscos

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By Marke B.

Two recent releases, both based on the Bay by Bay favorites. The first, “Young San Francisco” by SF’s Boy in Static, aka Alexander Chen and Kenji Ross, from their new album, Candy Cigarette (Fake Four Inc & Circle Into Square) is way too cute — check out their new “East Bay to Back Bay” XLR8R podcast mix for a great listen to some more new, slightly twee West Coast indie pop (loving “To the Sea” by Portland’s Mint Julep).

Boy in Static, “Young San Francisco”

The second recent track focusing on the Bay is by SF hip-hop stalwart Kero One, “Welcome to the Bay,” off his sophomore disc, Early Believers (Plug Label). I really wanted to like this one more — I’ve been a fan for a while, and Kero’s def got the chops, working with everyone from Talib Kweli to Mark Farina — but it seemed a tad too polished for me, despite the nice groove. Still, it’s a breezy listen for a steamy day. From what I’ve heard of Early Believers it’ll be a perfect summer BBQ collection.

Kero One, “Welcome to the Bay”

Something both of these songs have in common is a young Asian American perspective on the homebase. Kero’s is especially poignant, talking about why his parents came here at a time when “words like ‘chink’ were teachable.” Really feeling the latitude of historical perceptions coming forth in two distinct tunes.

View the previous Snap Sounds here.

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: Tinker Bell, Market and Noe

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Tell us about your look: “Wear whatever you want. I like vintage, but I also really love high fashion. I just try to build it all together.”

Sonic Reducer Overage: Silversun Pickups, Bloc Party, Atmosphere, Kylesa, free shows, and so much more

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Manic panic: Silversun Pickups’ “Panic Switch.”

Lucky you, you aren’t broiling in the desert at Coachella – you’re keeping your cool in SF, and boy, you’ve got a lot to keep your bad self outta trouble. So partake in the Coachella spillover – and then some…

Intelligence
“Icky Baby” is in the eye of the beholder – and the mind of the Intelligence, those hard-driving, gristly lo-fi smarty-pants. With Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall. Fri/17, 9 p.m., $8. Annie’s Social Club, 917 Folsom, SF. (415) 974-1585.

Loop!Station
Loops, vocals, and cello are Robin Coomer’s and Sam Bass’ tools, arriving now with a new CD.
Fri/17, 8 and 10 p.m., $10. Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600.

Mini-Japanther: a quick, claws-out Q&A with Ian Vanek

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Kristy Geschwandtner caught up with the pun-happy, former-Brooklyn, art-punk duo Japanther‘s Ian Vanek after their show at the Hemlock on 4/13.

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SFBG: When will Japanther perform “Dump That Body in Rikki Lake” in San Francisco?
Ian Vanek: We are keen to do JAPANTHER performance pieces the world over. DTBIRL was a giant puppet rock opera we did on 06, if you didn’t know. The puppets are in art storage so anything is possible. Know any investors?

SFBG: Did Japanther really relocate to Southern California?
Vanek: Yes, we spent the winter in sunny LA and the greater west coast. Now that the spring is here it’s back to work! Basically we went homeless to tour in 09. Paying rent in a recession is so 1990s.

SFBG: Where is your favorite place to play?
Vanek: SF is up there for sure (and the whole Bay). We also love Australia, Montreal, Toronto, Juarez and of course our hometown, BROOKLYN.

SFBG: Did you ever make it to Russia to play?
Vanek: Not yet but we got as far as the official invites… We will make there in the next year for sure!

‘Domestic Vacations’: Artist Julie Blackmon gets trippy

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By Ari Messer

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Snow Day, 2008

One of my most uninteresting college professors used to insist that negatives only exist in language, but couldn’t explain what this meant. That’s funny, I thought, because I can physically feel a complete lack of interest in your class. In fact, I think you can feel it too; it’s contagious. Nonetheless, I was never bored as a child, and I’m still never bored. The boring and the uninteresting are different concepts. Julie Blackmon’s lucid, staged photographs of childhood fantasy worlds in the twilight of America are stunning for a ton of reasons, but first and foremost they get their signature bite and sting by recognizing that everyone in each scene is interested in different things. There is no sincere panorama. From the modern intrusions into Blackmon’s protoclassical, Dutch-inspired scenes — a miniature FedEx truck, Netflix mail — to trippy little things such as the almost lurid dog eyes and discarded gloves in Snow Day (2008), every person, place, and thing appears distracted by an otherworldly mission.

Adding to this sense of confused biography, Blackmon, the oldest of nine kids and now a mother of three, uses people and things from her life in her work like a novelist trussing out character relations pictorially. She reminds me of some essays by Orhan Pamuk about his daughter, Rüya. It’s not the stories themselves that are so thrilling, but the palpable feeling of love in their narrative arcs, plus the vectors they send out into Pamuk’s novels, where characters seem to have little aspects or shimmers of Rüya (even if she wasn’t born when the story was written): her young mind, her toys and delusions, the way she gazes out the window and finds it startlingly new every day.

JULIE BLACKMON: DOMESTIC VACATIONS Through May 23. Tues.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020. www.sfcamerawork.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: Tim, Market and Castro

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Tell us about your look: “Cowboy drag”

Sunday Streets corporate sponsorships, writ small

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By Steven T. Jones

Responding to criticism of the corporate sponsorships of this year’s Sunday Streets events, which begin April 26, organizers say it was a necessary evil that will barely be noticeable to attendees of the six street closure events.

“It will be the same exact Sunday Streets that you saw last year,” Wade Crowfoot, who is coordinating the event for the Mayor’s Office, told us, promising that corporate signage and promotion would be minimal. “The average person will not be aware that there’s private entities funding the direct costs.”

Crowfoot headed up fundraising for the events, tapping many of the same entities that have funded Mayor Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions, including Lennar, PG&E, WebCor Builders, Clear Channel, and Warren Hellman. But with six events costing up to $300,000, he said the grassroots help from Livable City, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF and other progressive groups is more important that ever.

Members of those groups love the Sunday Streets concept and recognize the city’s fiscal realities, but say this isn’t ideal. “I would have loved to have a city-sponsored event,” Livable City director Tom Radulovich told us. “It ought to be the city’s responsibility to create safe recreational spaces for people.”

It’s raining cats and dogs

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By Johnny Ray Huston

Call me corny, call me crazy, call me Anne Heche, but it’s true: it’s raining cats and dogs. There’s an influx of cat- and dog-related art and events happening in the Bay Area.

Yesterday brought “Walk the Dog Electric,” a walking event at Heaven’s Dog restaurant with dog portraits by Judy North, who currently has a show of non-canine work up at Electric Works. I like what little I’ve seen of North’s dog portraits, and hope she puts on a show of them sometime.

Judy North, Benni, 60 inches by 40 inches, watercolor
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Next week, Visual Aid gets into the act with an April 25 gallery walk that includes “Purrrrseus,” Charles Bierwirth‘s exhibition of feline oil paintings that use vintage studio portraits as source material.

Charles Bierwirth, Purrrrseus #2, 56 inches by 72 inches, oil painting
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Lastly (unless someone mentions soemthing I’ve missed), this weekend brings DogFest 2009.

A DogFest 2008 participant makes his/her voice heard. Photo by Kira Stackhouse-Fetch Photo and Aaron Anderson
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Do you look like your dog?
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On the subject of DogFest, here’s what Guardian contributor Michelle Broder Van Dyke has to say in this week’s issue:

“There should be a lot of ass-sniffing at DogFest 2009. Other things to expect: dogs howling or singing, a giant bouncy castle shaped like a doggie, dogs dressed up to look like carrots and batteries, people dressed as dogs, and of course, people who simply look like their dogs (or vice-versa). All of you who’ve spent hours patrolling the Internet studying dog and owner look-alike photos — I recommend doyoulooklikeyourdog.com — will be relieved to know that a recent study from Bath Spa University has confirmed that the lady in heels is more likely to have a poodle and the big burly man does in fact own a pit bull. Instead of checking them out on the online, encounter them in real life at this benefit for SFUSD McKinley Elementary School.”

DOGFEST 2009
Sat/19, 11 a.m.–3 p.m., free ($20 for contestants)
Duboce Park
Duboce and Noe, SF
(415) 241-6300
www.mckinleyschool.org/dogfest

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