SF

Kowloon Walled City

-
0

PREVIEW If it sounds like metal, and it looks like metal, it’s gotta be metal. Right?

Vocalist-guitarist Scott Evans of San Francisco’s Kowloon Walled City doesn’t think so. "I think it’s heavy, but it’s not metal," he said after KWC’s recent Annie’s Social Club show. "We occasionally throw in metal parts, but I stand by us not being a metal band."

Guitarist Jason Pace disagreed: "It may not be a heavy metal band, but it’s a fucking metal band. Despite Scott’s reluctance to say we’re a metal band, I think, within the metal genre, there’s about 800 subgenres, and I think we’re somewhere in there."

It doesn’t really matter how you categorize KWC’s music. What does matter is the group’s impregnable wall of sound, driven by Scott Evans’ throat-ripping, barked vocals, Jeff Fagundes’ groovy, syncopated drumming, and fuzzy, imposing riffs reminiscent of a mutant Chia Pet.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the Kowloon Walled City, a neglected tenement in British Hong Kong, grew into a squalid, dilapidated enclave of prostitution, drugs, gambling, and all around good times. Unsurprisingly, the outfit sees many parallels between that labyrinthine dystopolis and the portion the Tenderloin where they rehearse. Named for a street in that neighborhood, KWC’s new Turk Street EP (Wordclock) is an uncompromising slab of downtuned power with Fagundes and bassist Ian Miller forming a taut rhythm section and allowing the guitars to deviate from each song’s base without compromising the prodigious grooves. Still, while Turk Street rocks ass, I can’t help but think KWC are at their best onstage, feeding their fans’ faces with second and third helpings of their sludgy, hardcore-influenced … metal. There, I said it. Sorry, Scott.

KOWLOON WALLED CITY With Helms Alee. Mon/17, 7 p.m., free. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com.

Lucky Dragons

-
0

PREVIEW Los Angeles’ Lucky Dragons make music that’s not very musical: many of the sounds Luke Fishbeck and Sara Rara use could come from faked field recordings or electronic noodling, and these ethnographic forgeries are further subjected to intense sampling that reduces the sense of space or regular pacing that usually marks sounds as music in our brains. Still, listening to the chirping, loop-happy compositions found on the pair’s recent album, Dream Island Laughing Language (Marriage), without the aid of Fishbeck’s peculiar brand of new-primitive modern dance or the duo’s stuttering, gentle videos, you only get part of the story.

Lucky Dragons don’t make music to prove that making music is foolish or to exaggerate its narcissism. Their work is radical because it encourages connections between show-goers over the standard-issue connection between a band and their creation and the audience’s emotions. Lucky Dragons’ music may convey a sense of pastoralism, but it works here as a conduit for a futuristic kind of sociability, upsetting the standard band–audience interaction by establishing fragile, temporary human networks that stand in stark contrast to obligatory social networks.

If there were a way to describe the disarming piece that YouTube calls "Make a Baby" without getting into technical details, it would go something like this: in the middle of a rock concert, you suddenly find yourself on the floor with strangers, touching their skin, creating shorts and flows that change the course of a fizzing, neon synth drone. When I saw Lucky Dragons perform at 21 Grand last year, I remember the tentative then bold ways kids’ bodies inched towards each other, this organic sculptural mass of flesh and fabric and finally, at the end, the way those bodies unstuck from one another, not unsweetly and not without some regret. You came to receive and ended up creating, came to stay in your bubble and ended up drawn into a strangely open, nascent community.

LUCKY DRAGONS With Hecuba and Pit Er Pat. Sun/16, 9 p.m., $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com. Also with Hecuba, Pit Er Pat, and Chen Santa Maria. Mon/17, 8 p.m., check site for price. Lobot Gallery, 1800 Campbell, Oakl. www.lobotgallery.com

Clubs: Bitch, B*tch, Booty Call

-
0

In this week’s Super Ego clubs column, I feature some truly cutting edge homosexual dance parties to wiggle your Prop 8 blues away at. Of course, there wasn’t room for all of them — here’s a couple more, with more to come, to whet your limp-wrist whistle.

To get us going, here’s the brand-spankin’-new vid for “Tweaker Bitch” by SF’s very own rockin’ crazies Mon Cousin Belge (one of our 2008 Hot Pink List queers we love). Tweak it, Tina!

———
All aboard for Booty

What’s better than a club hosted by wild personalities that drags you into a phenomenally, artistically decorated back room to snap your photo? One that comes out with it’s own freakin’ calendar. Yes, I’m talking about Booty Call, Juanita More and Joshua J.‘s packed weekly Wednesday night affair at the haplessly-named Bar on Castro.

This Wednesday is Booty Call’s first anniversary, and they’ve just released their 2009 calendar, featuring hot More Boys (and one girl) photographed by the ever-cute Brandon Norris, which you can purchase here.

bootycallcal08.jpg

Booty Call Wednesdays
9pm, free
Bar on Castro
456 Castro, SF.

But wait — there’s more!

No Prop 8: Arnold speaks, LDS forgiveness?

-
2

Arnold finally “comes out” on his position and hopes for a Prop 8 overturn. First, a bit late. Second: er, is it just me or is there so much awful beige and bad fake chestnut rinse happening here that poor Schwarzy is basically camouflaged into the crappy background? Interior decorators, hairstylists, and makeup artists will have their revenge!


(via Andrew Sullivan)

In other news: A Mormon begs forgiveness, at forgivenessfor8.blogspot.com. There are rumblings among the more conservative gay assesvoices that we are wrong to target religions — especially Mormons — with demonstrations, but I think that yesterday’s peaceful protests outside St. Mary’s Church and the Mormon thingy in Oakland, scheduled to not interrupt services “out of respect” were effective in terms of drawing attention to Prop 8’s supporters, with more “catholic,” as in “universal,” targets to come….

PS Another rally tomorrow at City Hall:
Title: San Francisco Rally
Time: 2008-11-11 (Tues) 5pm – 8pm
Where: SF City Hall

Also: we totally stole this from Brock at SFist, but this pic by Darwin Bell is exactly appropriate, heh.

discofried.jpg

Prop 8: Nobody walks in LA?

-
6

As Stephen Torres reports, even though Prop 8 won in LA County (WTF?) there was still plenty of protest action on the streets of West Hollywood, home of the bleached bi-level bob/Daisy Dukes combination …

As a native Angeleno, I would say that most of the time that “nobody walks in LA” is, sadly, very true. Last night, however, my hometown did me proud and, apparently, is doing so again today.

Like many, here in the SF, I joined the gathering in front of City Hall last night to hold vigil against the injustice of the recently passed Proposition 8 and marched to Castro Street to rally my fellow city dwellers to demonstrate our conviction.

San Francisco was and is at the forefront of this battle, but now it is clear that the city is not the crazy, singular enclave that some terrified religious-types would have you believe.

Newsflash: Prop 8 doesn’t discriminate!

-
2

screwball8a.jpg

Hey, everyone! Guess what? Prop 8 didn’t discriminate against us at all — and it certainly didn’t take our rights away. That’s what the “oficial (sick) statement” direct from the glorious Yes on Prop 8 bunker buried deep within Dick Cheney’s waxed asshole — cloth napkins provided — says, so you know it’s true, as well as sponsored by seething ex-polygamists who rocket to other planets in sacred Underoos when they die. And the Knights of Columbus, whatever the hell that is.

“Proposition 8 has always been about restoring the traditional definition of marriage. It doesn’t discriminate or take rights away from anyone. Gay and lesbian domestic partnerships will continue to enjoy the same legal rights as married spouses. Our coalition has no plans to seek any changes in that law.”

How christianist of them. Meanwhile, in the real world where people actually love one another, not rape them religiously, the protests are ON. Will we stop paying our taxes? Will we hold giant kiss-ins outside Catholic preschools? I’m not gonna say here, because that takes away the delicious, faggotty surprise.

However, here’s this:

Protest Proposition 8
2008-11-07 5:30pm – 8pm
Civic Center Station, SF

More to come and come.

Conservative SF capitalists waste $633,000

-
0

pig.jpg
Click here to give something back for all downtown has given.

By Steven T. Jones

It’ll take awhile to get a full accounting of all the money that downtown’s would-be power brokers spent in their apparently fruitless effort to buy the Board of Supervisors, but my calculation of all of their independent expenditures attacking swing district supervisorial candidates Eric Mar, David Chiu, and John Avalos — and supporting their more conservative opponents — comes to about $633,000.

We won’t know for sure whether the election day results will hold after the final absentee and provisional votes are tallied and the ranked choice voting formulas are run, which starts tomorrow, but the consensus of the political number crunchers at yesterday’s SPUR post-election event was that Mar, Chiu, and Avalos look like the winners. That means the $633,000 — which was perhaps chump change for these wealthy interest groups — succeeded only in sullying the campaign with the nastiest and most dishonest attacks of the season — and clearly identifying who’s hostile to progressives, renters, labor, and other working class San Franciscans.

Arrr, SF’s Pirates Press in the spyglass

-
0

pirates press 1 sml.jpg

By Jen Snyder

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sound advice and the name of the game for Eric Mueller, 27, who founded Pirates Press, a San Francisco vinyl record brokerage company, in 2005. Coasting on the rise – and fall – of the CD and the renewed popularity of vinyl, Pirates Press has brought in more than $5 million in sales this year.

The walls of Pirates Press’ SOMA office are coated with candy-colored singles and full-lengths – some with pictures, others with etchings. Some of these albums are as much visual art as they are musical art.
“Jocks collect baseball cards and nerds collect records,” explains Mueller, trying to make sense of the variety. “A lot of people collect something. For those people vinyl is great.”

It’s amazing to me that in a world where an album is just one click away, record manufacturing is doing so well. I love records for the way they look on my shelf, the smell of the jacket, and the pop and hiss of the needle, but in an iPod world is that enough to keep a so-called dead product alive?

pirates press sml 2.jpg

Bill Berkson

-
0

Bill Berkson’s poetry is a tortoise-and-hare countryside — no one’s watching the clock, although it’s lunchtime in early fall. When you read his poems, you say, "They’re doing it for me, I’ll do it for them." His life in art (first as a self-described "kid on the scene of the first New York School," later as a sleeper cell in the New York–Bolinas "axis of poetry evil") could be signified by a freshly minted tarot card: Collaboration. See the new magic of this year’s Bill (Gallery 16 Press, 45 pages, $25), with Colter Jacobsen’s great two-way mirror drawings and Berkson’s fugitive lines spun in juvenile detective silk. Bring your own tightwire.

A teenage crystal hanging by a thread — or as he puts it, a "human blood medallion" — spins through Berkson’s folio. An alphabet of poets and artists from Ashbery to Guston to Waldman to Warsh shows up in his prism, ricocheting light — "a puzzling brightness" open at all points where points leap into the second dimension. "Bands of distracted emotion snap" their fingers to a Hart Crane tune: "I have no system / but there is a motor," Berkson writes in the 1973 Angel Hair collection Recent Visitors, "primitive / American / sophisticate." And yet: "I insist on the poem having its own life, its own existence," he explains over the phone during a recent visit to Los Angeles, where his son Moses Berkson’s photography is on view at Constant Gallery.

What about Berkson’s art writing? His reviews read more like travelogues, with an equivalent claim to autonomy. In 2003’s The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings (Qua Books), he gives form to "the parallel text" through a string of dispatches from inside paintings. The poet’s eye becomes a 360-degree liquid camera unfreezing Franz Kline’s bridge spans: the paint is wet to us. Elsewhere, in reviews and in last year’s Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 2001-2006 (Cuneiform Press, 114 pages, $10), there’s a sweet-tooth accuracy of description — Wayne Thiebaud’s SF Victorians are "each a different pastel tone like those of Necco wafers" — paired with fluent shoptalk. It’s so much fun to be here.

"Functionally, art writing serves as commercial expository prose," Berkson explains. It’s often a portrait of the artist painting portraits of the market, and that’s why Berkson left it behind, mostly, for 15 years. (Artforum buttonholed him for monthly reviews in 1984. "Arrogant as ever," he explains, though at first it’s easy to mistake arrogant for elegant, "I thought I could make a little difference." Later: "I love to describe things — something that stays still…") Yes, for Berkson, "the sentences in a review turn up in a kind of order," but here comes the doozy: "Cracks in the order may show an alertness to, and duplicitous tolerance for, the actual chaos occurring in the mental space between the reviewer and the work."

What’s throwing all that heat called "actual chaos"? The birth of trust? Berkson’s pages are like starlit nights above the suburbs — to their own devices left, eyeing attic windows in Transylvania, they’re at home among "a host of secret, ephemeral, and often unspeakable perceptions." Best of all is their mysterious shimmer, which appears when an older writer gets replaced by a younger experience. A snapshot of Berkson’s out-of-body landscape as seen from the air: rivers of molten brass with tributaries of friendship bridged by action. Wonderful stuff. A great deal of valuable work. Fifty years of slow-dawning epiphany.

High speed rail coming to SF

-
2

By Steven T. Jones

Amid all the hoopla about last night’s big election, many people are overlooking another big win for San Francisco: the narrow approval of Prop. 1A, the $10 billion bond measure that is the first huge step to bringing high-speed trains into San Francisco. Just imagine walking, biking, or taking BART or Muni to the Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco, buying a $77 ticket, hopping on a sleek train that reaches up to 220 mph, and then arriving a Union Station in Los Angeles two and a half hours later.
In 10 years, you may not have to imagine it because it’ll be a reality. We’ll have more on this in the next couple days, including what those next steps will be and the status of a couple of lawsuits that challenging the project.

Matt Furie

-
0

There is no emoticon that captures how it feels to look at Matt Furie’s art. But if anyone could create one, it would be Furie. Funny, frightening, disgusting, and endearing all at once, his drawings and paintings and comic books are both direct and unpredictable.

This past year brought a number of new shows by the self-described "Lord of Moldovia," who has brought space-hopping creativity to Bay Area art over the last five years. "Nature Freak" at Jack Fischer Gallery blasted the 49 Geary first-Thursday crowds with sexually graphic and seriously morbid imagery — but in a good-natured way. Vine-veined creatures cradled infant-size mates. A cadaverous Mother Nature and a two-legged beast with a beaked asshole for a head took a doggy-style page from The Joy of Sex. "I researched the Black Plague, and thought about the whole modern dilemma," Furie explains with typical low-key candor, as we sit outside a Russian Hill café and watch people yammer into cell phones on their way to the gym. ("This is an SF Weekly neighborhood, people here don’t read the Guardian," he jokes.)

No Bay Area art show this year matched the uncanny pleasure of Furie’s show "Heads," at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. He crammed the small space with hundreds of drawn or painted heads, solo and in groups: a scrappy chick (as in female bird) with a sideways ponytail and a heart-shaped pendant; frogs and gators with mirrored shades; a triple-scoop ice cream cone sporting a bereft expression; a tough and pissed-off hot dog with an ear-piercing; hamburger-bun eyes. An installation that crammed stuffed animals beneath a giant fan evoked Mike Kelley, but Furie’s deeper passions run from Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel ("He’s the master") to R. Crumb and Charles Schulz. Beneath the comic imagery — and within his talent for rendering personality — lurks truly imaginative social commentary. "There’s a balance between having fun and being conscious of the views I have," Furie says. "I’m concerned with ecology and animal welfare. It comes out, but I don’t want to do it with a heavy hand. I want it to sneak up on you."

Attention readers: Also in 2008, Buenaventura Press published boy’s club and boy’s club #2, where the artist (who appreciates the absurdity of the Geico gecko and of Mystery from VH1’s The Pick Up Artist) uses a Sesame Street palette to render the antics of a Furie-ous four: easygoing and smart-assed Andy, stylin’ and energetic Bret, prankish and party-ready Landwolf, and everyman-with-a-frog-face Pepe. Unlike the unnamed characters of “Heads” — an acid-spiked Kool Aid mass portrait of San Francisco hipsterdom with perhaps more breadth and wamth than the subject deserves — the comic-book bros of boy’s club are drawn from aspects of Furie’s personality. "I’m going back to a time in my life when I didn’t think about factory farming," he says. "Growing up in Ohio, I did a lot of goofing off indoors."

From the growing number of endangered species to the perils of a champagne-and-SpaghettiOs diet, you can count on Matt Furie to get it all down on paper. "It’s better than working in a slaughterhouse," he admits. "Or being a politician."

www.myspace.com/mattfurie

The Dodos

-
0

At the beginning of 2008, San Francisco knew about the Dodos. Eleven months later, a lot more of the world does. This is largely due to Visiter (Frenchkiss), the group’s vibrant second album. Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, and a few dozen other musical arbiters have joined a chorus of praise for the 14-song collection decked out in kid-drawing sleeve art. Mention Led Zeppelin’s III (Atlantic, 1970) and Physical Graffiti (Swan Song, 1975) here, cite the influence of West African syncopation there, and you have the ingredients of a typical rave for vocalist-guitarist Meric Long and drummer Logan Kroeber. But the appeal and the rewards of Visiter transcend such reference points, tapping into something individually instinctive and collaboratively intuitive. It’s there in the spirit of Krober’s rhythms, a spirit which has nothing to do with the contrivances of the current indie Afrobeat vogue. It’s there in Long’s vocal melodies, which possess a rare, casually natural aplomb. It’s there in the way they work together.

"It’s a really slow process," Long says when asked about the sing-your-life quality of his tenor vocals. "Something has to sit with me for a really long time. I’ll happen on a rhythm or melody and take it with me wherever I go. It’s a practice."

Sequestered in his bedroom for much of the last month because of mono, Long has been writing new tunes in between the occasional trip to the corner store or walk around the block. "I have this [unfinished] song stuck in my head — it’s worked its way in and I don’t like it," he says. "But I’ll probably love it eventually and it’ll become my favorite song." While many critics might think that Robert and Jimmy or John and Paul are the songwriters Long aspires to match when he croons to a girl ("Jodi," "Ashley") or renders masculine foibles ("Men," "Beards," "Fools"), that isn’t necessarily the case. He’s just as likely to strive for the effect of a less canonical duo: Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. "I’ll know something is good because it reminds me of OMD," he enthuses. "It sounds like home."

The Dodos have recorded both their albums — Visiter and 2006’s self-released Beware of the Maniacs — in Portland, Ore., with John Askew. That producer’s past studio experience with the Northwest’s plethora of indie and punk duos informs the surprising scope and dynamics of his work with the Dodos. While labels like K and Kill Rock Stars and groups such as Beat Happening and the Spinanes have revealed the merits of a two-piece approach, the Dodos build upon that exploration, concocting a sound that verges on epic without ever becoming muddled. Long views the group’s initial formation as a matter of economic practicality as much as aesthetic tactics and, indeed, a third member, Joe Haener, has recently joined the group.

For much of this year, Long and Kroeber have been touring. "It gets to the point where you’re playing and performing and it’s all about muscle memory," Long says. The repetition of life on the road, of playing the same songs over and over, has something to do with that feeling. But Long and Kroeber’s music is physical — it gets down into the veins and bones and heart. It’s simple, really. The Dodos move you. (Johnny Ray Huston)

The Dodos play with Kelley Stoltz Thurs/6, 8 p.m., at Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365.

www.bimbos365club.com

www.dodosmusic.net

Citay

-
0

"There’s lots of ways to be a Guitar Hero. I just think it would be cooler if people tried to be real guitar heroes. I want people to find their inner guitar hero."

Amen, Ezra Feinberg. The Citay songwriter freely admits he’s never played the game, but we know exactly what he means: why add the competitive veneer of a sporting match to something as inherently pleasurable as playing guitar? Feinberg needed no prod when he started practicing. "I was really nerdy," he recalls of his hermetic early music-making sessions. "I wanted to learn my instrument really well, and I was really into guitar technique, and I used to sit in my bedroom and learn complicated guitar parts like Van Halen."

Then one day he realized, "Wait a minute, it’s much more fun and interesting and cool to work on songs and work on playing with different people and in different styles rather than sit in my room."

Metal, classic rock, jazz, fusion, punk, indie, and "weirder" sounds all left an impression, but after putting in time with the Piano Magic collective and the "stonery" Feast, Feinberg seems to have finally found his voice amid Citay’s fragrant blend of psychedelia, folk, synth-rock, and AOR. Taking its name from a Feinberg mixtape of songs utilizing that only-in-rock pronunciation ("The Journey song is included, but there’s also ‘Living for the City’ by Stevie Wonder and ‘Fool for the City’ by Foghat"), the onetime home recording project assumed a life of its own after Feinberg’s move in 2004 from Brooklyn to San Francisco, in collaboration with Tim Green of the Fucking Champs, who had previously recorded Feast.

Seemingly bursting full-blown from the brow of a rock ‘n’ roll Zeus, Citay’s startlingly excellent 2006 self-titled debut found a home on Important Records, inspiring Feinberg to tell people "we were their Partridge Family, next to all the found sound shit, Merzbow, Axolotl."

Naturally, Feinberg adds, "The next challenge was to see if these songs could be pulled off live because it was a studio-centric project." But no worries, he managed wonderfully, with the help of, at various times, Green and members of Tussle, Ascended Master, and Skygreen Leopards. The latest additions — following the amicable departure of Jesse Reiner of Jonas Reinhardt and Crime in Choir, and Adria Otte of the Dry Spells (Feinberg also drums with that band of kindred Bard graduates) — are Sean Smith and Josh Pollock of Daevid Allen’s University of Errors. And how does he rope in such talented players? "I’m pretty gregarious," drawls Feinberg, sounding like those nerdy homebound practice sessions are far behind him.

Still, judging from the sublimely interwoven acoustic and electric guitars and lushly appointed folk-rock streaked with sweeping synthesizer found on Citay’s most recent long-player, Little Kingdom (Dead Oceans), perhaps the onetime bedroom-rocker’s guitar hero — and musical visionary — days are here to stay.

Citay perform at the Goldies party, Tues/11, 9 p.m., free. 111 Minna Gallery, SF. (415) 974-1719

www.111minnagallery.com

www.citay.net

My kingdom for a dumpling

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

As kingdoms go, Kingdom of Dumpling is a rather Lilliputian affair — a runt, actually, if that word can be used in conjunction with "kingdom." Dumplings are small objects, of course, even the Bavarian ones made from potatoes, also known as knödel, and they seem even smaller when described in the singular. Kingdom of Dumpling? Is there only one kind of dumpling, or only one permitted per customer, or (our worst-case scenario) only one of one kind permitted per customer? The answers are No, No, and No — but I leap ahead.

The Kingdom (an adjunct of Kingdom of Chinese Dumpling, on Noriega) opened last spring, in the snug Sunset space once occupied by the excellent David’s Kitchen. That restaurant was a culinary multilinguist, fluent in the major idioms of east and southeast Asian cuisines; it was like a miniature Straits Cafe. The new place has retained much of that spirit, right down to the Magic Marker board that hangs above one corner of the dining room proclaiming the day’s specials, such as duck curry. David’s Kitchen offered a similar dish, if I remember rightly.

What is different is the massive infusion of dumplings, steamed buns, and general dim-summery. If you’re a haunter of noodle bars, this is an alternate universe. It’s as if some restaurant geneticist created a hybrid by mixing the DNA of a pan-Asian place and a dim sum house — and did so in a space that would feel crowded with a dozen people inside. But the space is still an attractive shade of creamy yellow, the tables and chairs are comfortable, and the food is excellent.

The truly fresh, handmade Chinese dumpling is a revelation, when you actually find one and bite into it. KoD’s are warm and juicy inside their soft pouches of dough; eating one is like biting into a piece of perfectly fresh fruit that’s been warmed by the sun, except the flavors aren’t fruity but (in the main) meaty, with generous tweakings of ginger and garlic. I liked the pork dumpling with napa cabbage ($5.95) slightly better than the chicken dumpling with corn ($6.45), mainly because the chicken didn’t assert itself with quite the same quiet sensuousness as the pork, and the peak-of-the-season corn was a little too sweet. But either way, you get a dozen for about six bucks, and the individual dumplings aren’t small.

The appeal of warm food is primal — does the heat sound an ancient echo of fresh kill? — but cold dishes have their own charms, especially when they’re as tasty as KoD’s. Marinated seaweed salad ($3.95) is a treat I associate with Japanese restaurants, but KoD’s is just as good, if in a quite different way. The seaweed itself, for starters, isn’t a mass of green, crinkled threads but a bowlful of what look like julienne poblano peppers, or perhaps tiny eels that have only just stopped writhing. And while Japanese seaweed salads are typically dressed with some form of ponzu sauce, KoD’s carries another charge, more savory and with less citrus-tart balance.

A salad of bean stick ($4.95) consisted of flaps of bean curd — corrugated, like Ruffles potato chips — and tossed with plenty of chopped cilantro. With some minced garlic and grated ginger, this simple ensemble became addictive, and the fact that was served cold — not cold, really, more on the low end of room temperature — faded from one’s consciousness, bite by bite.

More minced garlic was assigned to enliven crispy lotus root ($5.95), an enormous platter of cream-colored disks punctuated by vacuole-like interior spaces. I had the brief sense of examining a cross-section of bacteria under a microscope. The root sections themselves were indeed tender-crispy, as if they’d been briefly stir-fried, steamed, or otherwise tenderly handled; lotus root is really a starchy rhizome, and while some authorities compare it to potato, it reminded me of a cross between jicama and daikon. The root is rich in various vitamins and minerals as well as dietary fiber and is widely enjoyed throughout east Asia.

XO sauce, as browsers at Asian markets may know, is an irresistible, if pricey, confection — a lumpy paste — of dried seafood (including shrimp and scallop) along with various seasonings and degrees of chili heat. It’s quite good right out of the jar, as I am embarrassed to say I know from personal (though not recent) experience. How much better, though, to use the precious XO to flavor a dish like beef chow fun ($6.95), a Cantonese festival of wide noodles, strips of tender meat, and bean sprouts. The color palette here was a little too thoroughly earthen to be ideal, but the glistening of the noodles and beef did bring a bit of joy to the eye.

It’s not surprising that a restaurant serving food this tasty, interesting, and carefully prepared at such modest prices should attract young people, nor that — given the restaurant’s location deep in the Sunset District — so many of those young people should appear to be of Asian ancestry. Their presence suggests that some kind of college or university campus must lie nearby, but we couldn’t think of one. City College? Not too close. San Francisco State? Closer, though hardly at hand. The Sunset might be a neighborhood not a kingdom, but it’s a pretty good-sized neighborhood that shows signs of reinvention and renewal — and now it has a place where you can eat like a king, for a lot less than the king’s ransom.


KINGDOM OF DUMPLING

Daily, 10 a.m.–9:30 p.m.

1713 Taraval, SF

(415) 566-6143

www.kingofchinesedumpling.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Bearable noise

Wheelchair accessible

The Thousand Faces Ball

-
0

PREVIEW Imagine the unsavory digs of the Mos Eisley Cantina of Tatooine stormed by a horde of previously barred droids and miscreants and forced to hold a variety show to stave off certain destruction — it’s a scene reminiscent of those generated by San Francisco’s OmniCircus, which has been simultaneously thrilling and troubling audiences for two decades. Founded by local surrealist artist and roboteer Frank Garvey, first as a film project, then as a live performance troupe, OmniCircus combines the high tech with the lowdown, propagating an environment where down-and-out robot performers and their human counterparts can come together under one roof, creating a spectacle part Transmetropolitan, part Captured! By Robots, and part The Black Rider. No mere vehicle for cream pies and contortionists, this darkly subversive one-ring circus has all the hallmarks of an ecstatically apocalyptic experience: music, mayhem, and mechanical mendicants. The Thousand Faces Ball marks the latest incarnation of the project, introducing the Moth nor Rust band starring OmniDiva Joan Loon, and retaining the talents of longtime DeusMachina collaborators, including Daniel Berkman and Geoffrey Pond, as well as an army of robotic riffraff: junkies, beggars, street preachers, and whores. Billed as the world’s first robotic theatre ensemble, OmniCircus is nevertheless no ephemeral vision of the future, but a thorough examination of the present through an unsentimental, yet curiously life-affirming lens.

THE THOUSAND FACES BALL Sat/8, 8 p.m., $10 donation. OmniCircus, 550 Natoma, SF.

(415) 701-0686, www.omnicircus.com

Alice Russell

-
0

PREVIEW When I see the name Alice Russell, I think first of Alice Coltrane and Arthur Russell before I think of this Brighton, UK, blue-eyed soul revivalist. And I’m aware that this may unfairly predispose me to her music, which is not without its charms.

The two other major UK soul vocalists to make an impact stateside, Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, arrived as self-generating publicity machines whose public images matched their respective styles. In contrast, Russell’s music is up without being overtly rebellious. The posturing’s explicitly enthusiastic, without the attack of Winehouse or the reggae-pop concision of Allen, on Russell’s fourth LP, and first bid for a wider audience, Pot of Gold (Six Degrees/Little Poppet), which are at their best and most unique on songs like "Let Us Be Loving," which stitches together a dubby, tumbling rhythm and gives Russell some space disco ethereality.

But the album also has moments of superfluity. I don’t get the sense that Russell felt compelled to cover Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy" because she could coax some radical reading of it. Instead, it’s plunked down in the disc’s otherwise-decent closing stretch, as if another anchor wouldn’t do a better job of giving listeners a sense of how Russell stands apart from the nu-soul pack. In this light, it’s hard not to see nu-soul as a rockist backlash against the perceived inauthenticity of nu-rave, which ultimately isn’t inauthentic enough to bother anyone.

ALICE RUSSELL Mon/10, 9 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421, www.theindependentsf.com

Dungen

-
0

PREVIEW Calling all Invisibl Skratch Picklz: one of your most unlikely acolytes is dying to meet you — and perhaps someday even be like you: Gustav Ejstes of Dungen, Sweden’s premier psych-rock band. "I’m a huuuge fan!" exclaims Ejstes by phone from the offices of his label, Kemado. "They’re definitely not underrated. I realized this when I went to a record store in New York. I was looking for scratch records, and this girl said, ‘No one listens to that anymore,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t care!’ This is the shit. I love it."

Scratching his hip-hop itch was the shaggy-haired band leader’s sole comfort after an intense bout of touring following the US release of Dungen’s much-praised Ta Det Lugnt (Subliminal Sounds/Kemado, 2004). "I went to this house and practiced scratching for a year and only did that!" he marvels. Only later did he get a piano from his grandmother and started playing during breaks from his scratching exercises. He started writing songs and soon realized, "’OK, here’s another album. Now I feel like I really enjoy this again.’"

The end result was 4 (Kemado): a passionate and, yes, piano-based recording brimming with eloquent, stretched-out jams and jazzy coloration, spattered by guitarist Reine Fisk’s touches of shred and aching, airborne lines of flute and strings, both played by multi-instrumentalist Ejstes. A new approach to songwriting and recording might have contributed to the disc’s loose and spacious bright sound. Instead of impatiently recording each tune the same day he wrote it, much as he had in the past, Ejstes let the songs breathe and mutate before bringing them to the rest of the group. These days he’s far from precious about the process — or many other things, for that matter. Asked about the bare-bones 4 title — for Dungen’s fifth album — Ejstes stammers, "I just felt like this was the fourth, the fourth piece of shit," before howling with laughter. "I have to write that down."

DUNGEN With Women and Social Studies. Mon/10, 9 p.m., $14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

“Relay”

-
0

REVIEW Those of you who can remember them know that cassette tapes aren’t exactly sturdy. Forever getting tangled in car stereos or being left to bake on dashboards, during their commercial heyday they practically advertised their obsolescence — Maxell ads be damned. But anyone who has managed to wrest the audio from within a warped plastic shell knows that the metamorphosed sound can be strangely beautiful. Composer Daniel Basinkski has made a second career out of looping the death rattles from his magnetic tape archive, and Kevin Shields nearly bankrupted Creation Records while trying to make his guitars sound like so many corroded C-90 tapes.

Dan Nelson invokes the cassette’s history of planned obsolescence in "140 Ways to Make a Cassette Tape Unlistenable," his contribution to "Relay," a modest group show of sound-related art at the LAB. Nelson is no stranger to lists, as attested to by his handsome grimoire All Known Metal Bands (McSweeney’s, 300 pages, $22). Here, though, he catalogs his repeated and sometimes frustrated attempts at destruction rather than posterity. Lining the walls are vitrines and photographs displaying the remains of cassettes: encased in cement, mobster-style; wrapped in electrical tape; atomized from hammer blows; power-sawed in two. There are letters documenting Nelson’s attempts to send tapes over Niagara Falls and into outer space on a NASA rocket. Most hilariously, a missive to the Gagosian Gallery pleads for one of Nelson’s cassettes to be interred with Ed Ruscha when Ruscha passes on.

Nelson’s installation mines its laughs and its conceptual heft from a self-deprecatory stance: cassettes have long been declared a dead medium, despite whatever nostalgic eternal return may be planned by the Urban Outfitters cultural industrial complex. The ridiculous length to which Nelson is willing to pursue his mission only further underscores this fact. The flogging of a dead horse is rarely so much fun to watch.

RELAY Through Nov. 15. Wed.–Sat., 1–6 p.m. The LAB, 2948 16th St., SF. (415) 864-8855. www.thelab.org

Labor Council Celebrates Victory for Obama, Prop A

-
0

At first only one thing mattered to the organizers and workers at San Francisco Labor Council party at the Temple Bar. The MSNBC screens on the wall called the election for Obama just minutes after the western polls closed. Shocked silence gradually turned into giddy exuberance as the reality set in that Barack Obama had won the election, and handily at that.

After the president elect delivered his victory speech Damita Davis-Howard, President of SEUI 1021 delivered the news that Prop A was ahead by 80 percent, Avalos and Chiu were leading and Mar was trailing by only one point.

“This is everything that SEIU has been working for,” said Steve Stallone, President of the International Labor Communications Association. “ This is our election.”

Brenda Barros, who has worked at SF General for 27 years, said that she was “ecstatic” about the outcome.

“I’m so glad the people of San Francisco have validated the importance of SF General,” she said.

As the Supervisor races remain too close to call and Prop 8 seems to be trailing dangerously, San Francisco labor is celebrating the victory of Barack Obama and what looks like a solid victory on Prop A.

“There is nothing we can’t do, said Davis-Howard. “We can get up in the morning and say: Yes, We Can.” To which the audience responded, “Yes, We Can, Yes, We Can!”

Yes on A has passed

-
0

Saadia Malik reports:

The Yes on A campaign first heard word that their measure passed at about 9pm, just after Obama began his acceptance speech.

The measure passed overwhelmingly by 80.3 of the vote. The crowd anxiously awaited the results sipping on wine and nibbling on hors d’ouevres while taking in the national election coverage at the Prop A party headquarters.

Gene Marie O’Connell CEO of SF General said she had been laboring on the campaign sine 2000, when the state mandate for hospital seismic upgrades first passed. “This was a historic night. I’m glad Yes on A could be part of it.”

With tears in their eyes the crowd hugged each other and “It’s done” was heard.

Obama wins, but no SF results yet

-
0

by Amanda Witherell

TomAmmiano11.4.08.JPG
Soon to be Assemblymember Tom Ammiano greeted by supporters at Campos for Supervisor headquarters

Up and down Valencia Street you could hear cheers echoing from bars and balconies when Florida flipped for Barack Obama. We have a new president.

But here in San Francisco, the new slate of supervisors is still pending. Outgoing supervisor Tom Ammiano just stopped by the David Campos headquarters at 24th and Mission Streets. He said the word from City Hall is “There’s a long line at SFSU still waiting to vote and they’re not releasing any results until everyone has voted.” He’s predicting no results on local races until 9:45.

In the meantime, a crowd of Campos supporters just took in Sen. John McCain’s brief concession speech. “Good-bye,” several waved to the campaigner’s departing figure shown by projection on a blank wall in the back of the campaign office.

First results from City Hall

-
0

Tim Redmond calls in:

The absentee votes are now in – and they show interesting trends in D1 Eric Mar and Sue Lee are in a virtual dead heat, with Lee about 1% ahead. Since the absentee voters tend to run conservative, this is good news for Mar.

In D3, David Chiu is well ahead beating Joseph Alioto, Jr., by 12 points.

In D9, David Campos is 7 points ahead of Mark Sanchez, with Eric Quezada a distant third.

In D11, John Avalos and Myrna Lim and Ahsha Safai are within 1 percentage point.

Prop 8 is going down 67 to 33 in SF.

On the ballot measures it’s a mixed bag:

Prop A is well ahead with 80 % of vote and will pass easily.

Prop B losing 55-45 anfd that will tighten up but be close.

Prop H has taken a beating from the $10mill PG&E campaign – it’s behind 67-33 …

The three revenue measurea — N, O, and Q — are all ahead and looking to pass.

It appears we will not be naming a sewage treatment plant after G.W. Bush: It’s down 70-30

If the trends hold as they usually do, with progressives picking up considerably on election day, this could turn out to be a very strong night for progressive candidates.

at this point it does not appear that downtown has successded in its efforts to buy the board.

Prop 8 numbers may change fast

-
0

Tim Redmond calls in from City Hall:

We still have no results at SF Cit Hall for local races. Apparently there are still people voting at SF State — and the city’s not releasing anything until that last polling place closes.

What that means among other things is that any statewide numbers on Prop 8 are bound to be flawed because they don’t include roughly 400,00 projected votes in SF – the vast majorityj of which will be no on 8. It’s probably the same in LA.

Prop 8 numbers with 10% of CA reporting:

Yes: 1,598,117
No: 1,348,648

Ed Note — so don’t despair yet!

Election-night bashes off the grid

-
1

OK, we all know about the free election-daze bevvies at Starbuck’s and gratis donuts at Krispy Kreme (if you’re so hot for free caff, why not get your fix at a local kawfee-seller like Farley’s on Potrero Hill instead?) – but what about all those other parties out there for you freedom-lovin’ America-for-Americans? Tonight it’s time to celebrate (and toast the outgoing, seemingly never-ending campaign cycle). Say “s’long” to those perpetually looping, loopy infomercials… here, there, everywhere:

PARTY LIKE AN ART STAR
Free pizza when the polls close! And an opportunity to write on the walls, think historical thoughts, and live it up at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. YBCA put a call out to makers to help them dream up a got-out-the-vote getdown. And boy did they respond: participants include Hella Hella Acapella with Lara Maykovich, Maya Dorm, Nichole Rodriguez, Marissa Greene and Madeleina Bolduc; Sri Satya Ritual Movement with Micah Allison, Isis, Indriya and Nikilah Badua; Anahata Sound; Derick Ion and the Satya Yuga Collective; Dancing the Dead Dharma (Sara Shelton Mann and Dance Brigade); Alleluia Panis and Dwayne Calizo; Anna Halprin; DJ Wey South; DJ Aztec Parrot with YBCA Young Artists at Work; rigzen; Maji; Sara Shelton Mann; Dance Brigade; Bruce Ghent; Rajendra Serber; Sonya Smith; Kira Maria Kirsch; Folawole Oyinlola; Lena Gatchalian; Sarah Bush; Hana Erdman; Karen Elliot; Richelle Donigan; Kimberly Valmore; Krissy Keefer, and Guardna contributor D. Scot Miller. Whew. Pass the Joe Six-Pack. 6–11 p.m., free with cash bar. YBCA, 701 Mission, SF.

CHICK-CHICK-CHICK THAT BOX
For finger-licking good times after licking the GOP? Free chicken if Obama wins from 9-10 p.m. at Farmer Brown, 25 Mason, SF. (415) 409-FARM.

SAN FRANCISCO’S OBAMA VICTORY PARTY
Oh, why not just call it now. Drink specials, guest speakers, and live election coverage. First 100 attendees get a free Shephard Fairy “Hope” poster. Doors 6 p.m., free. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880.

DON’T DODGE THE DRAFTS
Drafts – that’s our cue to drink up! The Guardian bash boasts a free beer special (while it lasts) when you present a voter receipt or sticker. Win prizes like Beach Blanket Babylon tickets at an election trivia challenge. 7-9 p.m., free. Kilowatt, 3160 16th St., SF. (415) 861-2595.

1...327328329...427Page 328 of 427

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org