SF

PG&E grantees: Revealed

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By popular demand, here’s some highlights from PG&E’s 2007 charitable giving. If you want to see the complete list, look at pages 58-90 of this PDF. That document also includes the dues they pay to belong to certain organizations which tend to have certain sway with certain politicians and voting blocks. Example: a whopping $325,000 to belong to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Who shows up at the first public hearing on the Clean Energy Act, to argue — with PG&E talking points — against putting it on the ballot? The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

PG&E also paid $90,000 to the Committee on Jobs, $92,500 to the Bay Area Council (on top of the $40,000 gift they also gave the group — which has also shilled for them at public meetings), and $26,500 for BOMA

There are some other interesting grants to note. For example, Slide Ranch got $5,000. Who’s on the board of Slide Ranch? Francesca Vietor, who’s up for possible appointment to the SF Public Utilities Commission.

Most of the grants are pennies to PG&E, but a couple nudge up into significant chunks of change. Over a million each went to the Foundation for Environmental Education and the National Energy Education Development Project.

See some other familiar faces, after the jump:

Cindy Sheehan’s ballot push

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Cindy Sheehan wants to challenge Nancy Pelosi , which is a fine idea, but she’s having a bit of trouble getting enough signatures to make the ballot. I quote from a press release:

The percentage of “valid” signatures that the SF Department of Elections are allowing is getting
lower and lower as we get closer to our goal.

We turned in 1932 on Monday and they invalidated 49% of the signatures.

We turned in 425 yesterday and they invalidated 78% of them.
The thing about that, is that I personally checked every signature in that batch, and I came up
with a 55-60 percent valid rate.

We figure at this rate, we need to turn in 3000 by tomorrow at 5pm.

HELP! HELP! HELP! We have 24 hours……

If you want to help Sheehan make the ballot, you can stop by her campaign office at 1260 Mission St (open 24 hours) or call 415 621 5027.

The Weekly’s publisher knows nothing

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sschultz.jpg
Fromson tries the Sgt. Schultz defense

By Tim Redmond

The publisher of the SF Weekly, who harshly criticized the professional qualifications of his Bay Guardian counterpart during our predatory-pricing trial, said yesterday under oath that he knows almost nothing about his business.

Josh Fromson testified in a sworn deposition as part of the Guardian’s efforts to collect on the $17 million that the Weekly and its parent company, Village Voice Media, owe us after a jury verdict in a five-week trial.

Guardian attorney Robert Pollak was attempting to find out where the company’s resources are. The so-called debtor’s exam is a common procedure in civil cases, and the company that owes the money is supposed to provide honest information about its finances.

Fromson provided almost nothing. In fact, if the Weekly’s top local executive, who claims to run everything except the editorial department at the paper, was telling the truth, he is astonishingly lax in his understanding of his job.

Fromson testified that he was responsible for all of the business activities of the Weekly, that he oversaw everything except editorial. That’s typical for a newspaper publisher.

But from then on, his answers were – to be kind – a bit hard to believe.

Fromson started off by saying that he didn’t know who his boss worked for.

He said his immediate supervisor was Jim Larkin, who is listed on the Weekly’s masthead as the chief executive officer of Village Voice Media. Nowhere in any of the thousands of pages of lawsuit documents was there any suggestion that Larkin was anything but a VVM employee, and to my knowledge nobody at VVM has ever suggested that either.

When Fromson was asked, almost as a matter of course and for the record, who Larkin’s employer was, he said:

“I don’t know.”

That became a refrain in a deposition that Fromson clearly didn’t take seriously. He spent much of it leaning back in his chair and chewing gum.

And by the end, it became clear that Fromson – again, if he’s telling the truth – doesn’t know whether his company owns or leases its office equipmemt, doesn’t know what bank his company uses for its accounts (although he signs the checks), doesn’t know what his weekly expenses are, doesn’t know whether there’s enough money in the bank to cover the checks he signs, doesn’t know who the paper owes money to, doesn’t know who deposits the checks the Weekly gets from its advertisers, doesn’t know whether any records of those deposits exist or where they are … in short, he doesn’t know any of the basic financial information that the publisher of any newspaper I’ve ever heard of is responsible for knowing.

Some examples of Fromson’s purported ignorance:

Pollak asked him if he knew what type of corporate form the SF Weekly took.

“I don’t know,” he said. (That’s pretty lame, considering that the Weekly’s corporate structure was laid out in detail in the lawsuit.)

Pollak asked whether the Weekly owned the desks, chairs, computers and other equipment in the office.

“I don’t know,” Fromson said.

“Who would know that?” Pollak asked. “I don’t know right off hand,” Fromson said.

Pollak asked what happens to the money that the Weekly collects from its advertisers (does it get deposited in a bank account, for example?).

Fromson: “I don’t know.”

What bank does the SF Weekly use for its accounts?

“I don’t know.”

When you sign the rent check each month, what bank is it drawn on?

“I don’t pay attention.”

What are your average expenses each week?

“I don’t know.”

What bank account are the operating expenses paid through?

“I don’t know.”

Who decides which bills get paid and when?

“I don’t know.”

Pollak asked for documents showing deposits in bank accounts. Fromson said they don’t exist. He asked if Fromson ever checked the balance in the company’s account; Fromson said he didn’t. “When you write a check,” Pollak asked, “how do you know there’s money in the account?”

Fromson: “I don’t.”

When clients send checks to the SF Weekly, Pollak asked, who takes the deposit to the bank?

“I don’t know.”

When that person gets a receipt for the deposit, where is that filed?

“I don’t know.”

You get the picture.

During the trial, Fromson took the stand and launched a harsh attack on Guardian co-publisher Jean Dibble, who oversees the paper’s finances, saying she didn’t go out on sales calls (which he was proud to say he does).

But after today, I have to wonder:

Can a sophisticated operation like VVM really have a publisher who doesn’t know which bank he uses, who doesn’t know if there’s money to cover the checks he signs, who doesn’t keep track of the deposit receipts, who seems to have no knowledge of the most important aspects of his job?

Is Josh Fromson really that dumb and incompetent?

Or was his sworn testimony, perhaps, a bit short of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Sandoval, Dufty, Daly attack MOH

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The Mayor’s Office of Housing has come under attack for failing to construct enough inclusionary affordable housing units and for not doing enough financially to help folks facing foreclosures.

Trulia SF Foreclosure 12-11-07.jpg
Map of SF foreclosures, as of December 2007.

The charges come as D 11 Sup. Geraldo Sandoval and D 6 Sup. Chris Daly seek to amend off-site inclusionary affordable housing requirements.

The amendments would allow that twenty-five percent off off-site units may be built outside the currently required one-mile radius from a developer’s market rate project.

They would also provide that off-site units cannot be located in industrially-zoned areas, or within one-quarter of a mile of developments containing 200 or more publicly-owned and operated affordable housing developments.

“The fact that not one affordable housing development has been promoted by the Mayor’s Office of Housing or the non-profit sector, in District 11 tells me that something is wrong,” said Sandoval, whose district includes the Outer Mission and the Excelsior and is home to the highest foreclosure rate in the City.

Sandoval noted that when he proposed an emergency fund last year to fight foreclosures, MOH opposed the idea.

“That program went nowhere,” Sandoval observed.
“And every time I have tried to get a non-profit housing developer into District 11, they do not and have not got any help from the Mayor’s Office of Housing,” he added.

Noting that the proposed amendment also amounts to a small program (Twenty-five percent of a 25 percent mandate is a small subset,) Sandoval said, “I can’t understand why the Mayor’s Office of Housing is so eager to oppose it. This is about fairness.”

MOH’s Doug Shoemaker countered that the amendments are “a solution in search of a problem.”

Shoemaker reminded the Board why the supervisors updated inclusionary affordable housing legislation a few years ago to make sure that offsite units were built within a one- mile of developers’ market rate sites.

“It was because affordable units were being built where no one wanted it, under freeways, the far end of city, and remote from retail, services and transportation,” Shoemaker recalled.

“Our main concern,” he said, “is that development will end up being built under the cloverleaf of 101 and 280. Developers seek lowest land prices. They are rational. They seek cost savings.”

Sup. Maxwell sided with Shoemaker, noting that the legislation that Daly and Sandoval seek to amend was put together less than 18 months ago.

“The poorest people need to be where the infrastructure and schools are,” Maxwell said.

Sup. Tom Ammiano also opposed the amendments.
“It takes away a lot of the choices we have,” he said

But Sup. Bevan Dufty supported Daly and Sandoval’s efforts, noting that he’s been seeking more affordable housing in his district in the last years, with almost no success.

“To me this is not a mandate that 25 percent [of these affordable units] has to be a mile away.” Dufty said.

Claiming that if developers proposed inaccessible offsite units, the Board would not support it, Dufty added, “But a little bit of flexibility isn’t a bad thing.”

“This is such a modest proposal. I can’t believe we’re denying it,” Sandoval lashed out.

Sandoval observed that thanks to the MOH opposition to the Board’s proposed $2 million revolving foreclosure fund, all the City has, on the foreclosure front, is a task force and a comprehensive report.
“That’s not the same thing as helping people, “ he said. “If this passes, we might be able to.”

MOH contends it’s been busy trying to put infrastructure in place, so it can help people access the federal foreclosure package that President Bush just signed into law.

2006_foreclosure_rate_heat_map.png
Nationwide foreclosure rate “heat” map.

In the end, the Board kicked Sandoval and Daly’s amendments back to committee.

“Perhaps some massaging is in order,” Daly acknowledged.

Shoot from the hip

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Def Leppard and Nickelback: you know I want my fantasy, and everyone is aware of how those cool, desirable, shocking, or subversive photographs are integral to fanning the flames of so many rock ‘n’ roll clowns’ dreamscapes. But it’s those moments when a picture delivers more than words that have inspired some to pick up a camera and keep shooting. Local noise-punk photog Lars Knudson can verify this, concerning one Arab on Radar show at Bottom of the Hill back at the turn of the millennium. "I saw this band Pink and Brown, and this audience of people who were absolute freaks, ultra-nerd ‘tards, hipsters, scenesters, or whatever you want to call it, and I felt so alive and so at home," Knudson recalls today from his work as a chef in San Carlos. "I tried to describe it to everyone I worked with, and they looked at me like, ‘Huh?’ Then I stumbled on these images that were taken by Virgil Porter [Burn My Eye] and showed them to people, and they said, ‘ooh!’"

As SF photographer Peter Ellenby [Every Day Is Saturday (Chronicle)] testifies, Jim Marshall put the Bay on the map for music photography and shooters like Jay Blakesberg have kept it there. But what about the newbs — armed with the latest digi point-and-shoot and inspired, à la Knudson, to begin capturing a fragment of the sound and the fury? Around the same instant everyone began to believe they could be a DJ, so too did all and sundry start to assume that they could also be an ace lens swinger.


John Vanderslice: Photo by Peter Ellenby

So how does one carve out a name as a music photog when the glut of images on Flickr and assorted photoblogs threatens to overwhelm? I gathered snippets of sage advice from a few area rock photogs: Knudson, Ellenby, and Debra Zeller, who honed her craft focusing on local indie combos via her Playing in Fog online project and concert series, has since expanded into professional wedding photography (originally shooting the nuptials of the Red Thread’s Jason Lakis), and currently books live music at the Make-Out Room.

•Be a music lover, foremost. "That’s why I did photography part-time for so long — it’s really hard to make a living in music photography," says Zeller (www.playinginfog.com, www.dazrocks.com), who has shot Cat Power, among others, at the behest of their labels. "What magazines pay is absolutely ridiculous and getting the work is another challenge." Additionally, Knudson says, "Part of the reason I have good photos is I know when they’re going to rock out. If you’re not prepared to get lost in the moment, you should go home and be an artist, because it isn’t about you and what you got that night, it’s really about what the band did onstage that night." In the spirit of shareware and the scene he has documented, Knudson makes thousands of his images freely available to bands — and really anyone — on a not-for-profit basis at www.pbase.com/pistolswing.

•Show everyone your work. "I showed my photos to as many people as possible," says Ellenby (www.ellenby.com), who photo-edited zines like Snackcake and Devil in the Woods. "All the bands and my friends knew I was for hire, and you have to not be afraid to be take criticism and set goals. When I was starting out my favorite band was Overwhelming Colorfast, and my goal was to shoot them, and Bob Reed would rip on them all the time."


Elliott Smith: Photo by Debra Zeller

•Know the craft, natch. "I think it’s important to shoot in manual and really know how to work your camera," Zeller insists. "That’s how you get the images. If you just rely on program mode, chances are you’ll be lucky to get a couple of good shots."

•"Don’t be afraid to work for a six-pack," advises Ellenby, who cofounded tech company GeoVector and is currently working on a Joe Strummer photo project. "Don’t think it’s your road to riches, either — especially if you like indie music. I would make more money if I wanted to, but I don’t like working for a giant music corporation. I like it better when I’m working one-on-one for a band — when you’re hired by a band you can let the creativity flow."

•"My only other piece of advice is, shut up and push the button," Knudson says. "When you’re shooting live bands, you’re going to miss the shot if you’re busy telling your friend how cool you are."

I CAN GO FOR THAT

SON AMBULANCE


Dulcet Midwestern pop-smiths take on Someone Else’s Déjà Vu (Saddle Creek). Wed/6, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

FUTURE BLONDES AND C.L.A.W.S.


Malevolent Houston beats call up the ground-control SF bass-meister. With Skozey Fetisch. Thurs/7, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES


Punk supergroupers grope classic hits anew with Have Another Ball! (Fat Wreck Chords). Sat/9–Sun/10, 8 p.m. $15. Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. www.theeparkside.com

PROJEKT REVOLUTION


A revolution in rock-hip-hop pairings begins with Linkin Park, Chris Cornell, Bravery, Ashes Divide, Busta Rhymes, Hawthorne Heights, and Street Drum Corps. Sat/9, 2 p.m., $34–$77. Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View. www.ticketmaster.com

DARYL HALL AND JOHN OATES


Private eyes, they’re watching you, watching you, watching you-o-o-o-o-o. Tues/12, 7:30 p.m., $49.50–$78. Mountain Winery, 14831 Pierce, Saratoga. www.ticketmaster.com

Enviro-metalists

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"There was this fateful moment where we were like, ‘Fuck this shit! Hippie commune? Black metal band? Let’s do this!’<0x2009>" Wolves in the Throne Room drummer Aaron Weaver says, describing the synergistic beginnings of his group’s music and their 10-acre working farm, Calliope.

WITTR is living every nature-loving hessian’s dream. Not content with the icy, masturbatory satanism of Scandinavian death-metal forebears like Mayhem, or with the politics of the dogmatic punk scene from which they spawned, or about to hold hands and coo "Kumbaya," the three-piece from Olympia, Wash., has united a scathing brand of metal with inspired ecological spirituality. Say what?

To enviro-heads concerned with planetary destruction and nuclear apocalypse, and metalists banging their heads to songs about violent destruction and nuclear apocalypse, the connection is obvious.

"If we had to boil our band down to one thing: we’re just so fucking miserable and pissed all the time about the stuff that is going on in the world, just this wholesale war against anything beautiful or good or whole or pure," explains Weaver by phone from his little house across the courtyard from WITTR’s practice space.

Running counter to the activist tendencies of its punk cousins, the traditional metal scene has generally recoiled from politically correct statements. WITTR blends the two, embracing eco-feminism and radical ecology on a spiritually intuitive level rather than an overbearingly didactic one. Their second, latest album, 2007’s Two Hunters (Southern Lord), creates a dynamic continuum — not unlike nature itself — by pointedly channeling the sorrow and deep rage of a planet in crisis. Bookended by buggy chirps of the witching hour and twittering birds, the four tracks slowly creep with a plodding, atmospheric tension, climaxing in speed-of-light picking, drums to move mountains, and the throat-raking terror screams of Weaver’s younger brother and guitarist, Nathan.

Is this how Mother Earth would sound if she could respond in minor chords and time signatures? WITTR’s lyrics too are one with nature. As Two Hunters‘ 18-minute closing saga, "I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots," goes, "The wood is filled with the sounds of wildness / The songs of birds fill the forest on this new morning / This will be my new home / Deep within the most sacred grove."

Production-wise, WITTR carries through a similar awareness and intricacy, intent on crafting meticulously layered recordings. "The black metal aesthetic is just what we happen to use, but the main goal is to create soundscapes," Weaver says, noting that a typical song has about 20 guitar tracks. Earth producer Randall Dunn gave Two Hunters a palpable warmth, working primarily in analog at Aleph Studios in Seattle, and the band is planning to collaborate with Dunn again on its third full-length, due in February 2009. On it, touring bassist Will Lindsay will take over as the vocalist and second guitarist from new dad Rick Dahlin.

In a sense, WITTR’s devotion to re-awakening an ancient spirit rooted in their home turf is nothing new. Black metal is steeped in bioregional qualities, whether exuding a chilly clime and calling on Nordic deities or reading tarot cards and summoning the melancholy, intense quiet of the Pacific Northwest’s mossy old-growth forests. "That’s always been the explicit goal, to really express the spirit of this place, which has a very specific feel to it," Weaver says. "It’s a really dreamy kind of energy."

So next time you put on WITTR, remember it’ll sound best if you’re snug within a sacred grove — and make sure you have a lunar calendar and a Jepson Manual on hand. As the outfit argues in its band bio — required reading for fans of Derrick Jensen and Burzum alike — "If you listen to black metal, but you don’t know what phase the moon is in, or what wildflowers are blooming, then you have failed."

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

With Ludicra and the Better to See You With

Tues/12, 8 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

We be clubbin’? Just barely

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

One night around 11 this spring, I stepped out of a cab at Sixth and Mission streets, only to enter a chaotic scene. Enhancing the block’s usual charms — destitute dudes in wheelchairs, crack enthusiasts, an old man in a denim skirt clutching a baguette — was a row of police cruisers parked in the street. Officers roamed the block, herding people around.

Had I stumbled onto a grim tragedy? Nope. I was just trying to catch a hip-hop show. Like the other 150 people waiting outside Club Six, I was hoping to get into KUSH, a party hosted by the Demolition Men. My chances seemed slim. I was on the guest list, but the list was "closed." So I stood in the long but well-behaved line. Security yelled at us to keep on the sidewalk, though the sidewalk ended well before the line did. Finally a guard bellowed at us to leave.

Half the line drifted away. The rest remained, texting friends inside the club and trying to devise a way in. Soon, with a combination of threats and cajolery, police and security began clearing the sidewalk around the club. A short, powerfully built man pleaded with stragglers, the way tough guys plead with you not to force them to kick your ass. Someone addressed him. He was Angel Cruz, Club Six’s owner, whom I’d interviewed for this story by phone. I introduced myself. He signaled a guard, and suddenly I was inside.

If this was New York City or Los Angeles, I might have felt the smugness engendered by such special treatment. But this was San Francisco, and all I felt was weariness. The club had devoted two rooms to the party, yet only one was full. Still, the vibe was friendly, and Jacka tore it up with his radio smash, "All Over Me." Although I heard some dudes got salty over the guest list, there were no arrests.

Sadly, such scenes are typical. Actually, we were lucky: I’ve seen cops shut down shows entirely over trifling incidents, usually ones occurring outside the club. This state of affairs affects more than the club-goers. Owners make less at the bar, promoters make less at the gate, and performers have fewer places to perform. Hip-hop, in its myriad forms, is one of the most popular genres on earth, and San Francisco is a world-class city. Yet this town seems hostile toward this musical nightlife with such revenue-generating potential. Why?

Naturally there’s no simple answer, and even investigating is difficult. Owners don’t want to alienate the police, promoters don’t want to alienate owners, and the San Francisco Entertainment Commission wants cooperation among all concerned. Few people I interviewed would name names or particular events, and some would only speak off the record, due to the delicate web of professional relationships involved. Even so, common issues emerge.

"Hip-hop is synonymous with fights and shootings, to authority figures," said Desi Danganan, whose Poleng Lounge is one of the few venues committed to the music. "The police are very hesitant about any club that plays hip-hop. That was one of the first things that came up, ‘Are you playing hip-hop?’<0x2009>"

The association between hip-hop and violence is nothing new: violence is the theme of many raps. Yet this is hardly the case with all hip-hop. The Bay Area in particular has produced an abundance of progressive, nonviolent lyricists, from veterans Hieroglyphics to up-and-comer Trackademicks. Yet the distinction is lost on the city and the police, according to Fat City general manager Hiroshi Naruta. "They don’t know the difference between hyphy and backpacker," he said.

Unlike the Panhandle-based Polang, Fat City is in the SoMa District, a longtime site of contention between police and clubs. As a result, the venue is shying away from booking hip-hop. "I want to," Naruta said. "But I don’t want pressure from the city or SFPD."

"Pressure," of course, is a nebulous concept and hard to substantiate, but according to John Wood, political director of the SF Late Night Coalition, there are typical tactics. "If the police feel your venue is creating a nuisance, they show up every night, check your permits, walking into your venue, upsetting your customers," he said. "They do frequent inspections with the fire department and the building department, and get you for every little violation. Short of suspending permits and filing lawsuits, there’s lots of ways city bureaucracy can make it difficult to do business."

But just how much of a "nuisance" do hip-hop shows create? Are they really that violent? No more than other genres, according to Robert Kowal, whose Sunset Promotions has brought everyone from Grandmaster Flash to Jurassic 5 to SF. "The city has safety as its primary concern," he acknowledged. "Occasionally some shows have problems the police have to deal with. Almost without exception that label gets thrown at hip-hop, when most events, including hip-hop, are very cool."

"Right now there’s a gun problem in SF," Kowal continued. "Instead of addressing that, the city wants to blame entertainment and specifically hip-hop. But violence is rare inside the venue itself."

Wood concurred with this assessment. "There have been incidents where there were shootings," he said, "not in the clubs, but a block away, that may have possibly involved people who were at the club. Frequently police will blame the club for incidents in the neighborhood."

An SFPD spokesman, Sgt. Steven Mannina, wouldn’t respond to this contention. It’s worth noting that much of SoMa can get rough, even during the day. To the contrary, Kowal believes venues like Club Six have improved the tone of the neighborhood: "Angel Cruz deserves a lot of credit. That Club Six is open four nights a week has enabled other bars and restaurants to open around it. That area has been somewhat revitalized."

Wood suggests an influx of new neighbors may, in fact, be the main issue. "The city’s changing," he explained. "It’s older demographically, wealthier, more harried, and professional. Aside from hip-hop and violence, people are less tolerant about noise young people create." Yet that lack of tolerance among the condo crowd may also be rooted in fear. "Neighbors sometimes freak out when a club is bringing large groups of minorities into the neighborhood," Wood added, "whether they’re behaving or not."

That assessment was echoed, mostly off the record, by many I interviewed. But veteran hip-hop commentator Davey D didn’t pull punches. "They just don’t want black people there," he said. "For a city that prides itself on being progressive, when it comes to nightlife, it has the most reactionary policies that seem based around race, using words like ‘urban’ as cover."

Regardless of hip-hop’s alleged role in violence, this spring the city attempted to deal with the issue via two pieces of legislation: one required a hefty $400 permit per show, and the other was an anti-loitering law, empowering police to clear the area around a club. Both proposals were bad ideas: the former threatened to stifle local entertainment, and in an era of eroding civil liberties, the latter promised to give police discretion to arrest people just for being in the club’s vicinity. Even more disturbing is Sgt. Mannina’s assertion in April that "this is an enforcement strategy around clubs that field operations have already launched." How can this be, if it was not yet a law? "I thought it was already in place," he said.

Clearly the police act as though it is, given what I witnessed outside Club Six. In the meantime, it’s tough to understand why SF hip-hop fans must, for instance, travel to Petaluma to see local acts like Andre Nickatina. "You want to know the solution?" a club owner asked, off the record and out of frustration. "There is no solution."

The Gysin file

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› johnny@sfbg.com

I associate the dreamachine with Christmas. The first and only time I’ve directly encountered a version of the device was a holiday five or six years ago. My friend Julien used a turntable to set up a homemade dreamachine in a corner room of his family’s cabin. I took a turn sitting with my eyes closed in front of its stroboscopic play of light and darkness. I didn’t have an epileptic fit; nor did I go into a hypnagogic state. It wasn’t a drugless high, but it was a mind’s eye stimulus. I’d try the dreamachine again.

"I don’t think [the dreamachine] really works unless you’ve smoked a pipe of hash," Kenneth Anger declares during FlicKeR, Nik Sheehan’s documentary about the device and its chief creator, the writer, painter, and mystic Brion Gysin. "I think it’s too dangerous if you’ve taken acid," he adds. You get the feeling Anger is speaking from experience, even if he doesn’t face a dreamachine in front of Sheehan’s camera. Such a meeting isn’t necessary, because FlicKeR‘s first 15 minutes serves up a Who’s Who of dreamachine enthusiasts in action: Marianne Faithfull, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, and Genesis P. Orridge of Psychic TV are among those Sheehan captures sitting and staring — with eyes closed — before the contraption’s oscilutf8g light.

The dreamachine makes for potent visual imagery, but distilling or truly conveying its effect is a tougher task for a filmmaker, even if Sheehan’s camera briefly stares directly into one (and later, incorporates Tony Conrad’s 1965 film The Flicker, a potent projector-based dreamachine corollary). For Sheehan, the mechanism provides a kinetic introduction to or threshold into, a portrait of the late Gysin. Though Gysin — who invented the Cut-Up literary methods popularized by best friend William S. Burroughs — is a shadowy figure to hang a feature-length film portrait on, FlicKeR‘s hopping, skipping, and jumping approach to his life at least energizes his enigma.

In Victor Bockris’ 1981 interview collection With William S. Burroughs: A Report From the Bunker (Seaver), Burroughs — who also says, typically, "[Gysin] taught me everything I know about painting" — relates Gysin’s description of a milk bar just after a terrorist blast: "People were lying around with their legs cut off, spattered with maraschino cherries, passion fruit, ice cream, brains, pieces of mirror and blood." Without a living subject, Sheehan must turn to various vivid Gysin acquaintances — mirror man Ira Cohen and a spry John Giorno, for example — to bring across similar illustrations of anarchic spirit. In the process, offhand observations come to mind: Genesis P. Orridge has transformed herself into a sisterly peer of rad auntie Faithfull (who praises Gysin’s warmth in her autobiography, where she’s largely disdainful of all men), for one. It’s easy to lose sight of Gysin amid such colorful characters, but FlicKeR is steadfast in its belief that Gysin is influential; a variety of academics use Gysin as a gateway to discussions of everything from the changing nature of terrorism to iPods.

He may not be the center of 20th-century history, but Gysin’s influence on the present is undeniable. This is partly due to another wave of ’60s resurgence. FlicKeR kicks off "Stoned Apocalypse," a Joel Shepard–curated Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series that includes a program devoted to the legendary light shows that overtook late-’60s music concerts. While most people associate such light shows with rock music, the new collection, The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde (University of California Press, 322 pages, $27.50), explores its links to avant-garde cinema and music in the Bay Area.

The dreamachine-like notion and practice of live cinema is building momentum in recent years, thanks to practitioners such as Bruce Fletcher, a new surge of interest in Conrad, and a 2007 San Francisco Cinematheque series that inspired an anthology of writing on the subject. Last year at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Anthony McCall’s installation You and I, Horizontal filtered Conrad’s and Gysin’s ideas about pure light into a communal rather than individual experience so potent it was akin to near-death or first-moments-of-life. That which flickers still illuminates, and it may soon turn into a piercing beam of light.

FLICKER

Thurs/7, 7:30 p.m., $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2700

www.ybca.org

Charitable cash cow

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Nonprofit charities in the Golden State should have been raking in the cash in 2004. Gracious Californians gave $60 million more toward fundraising campaigns that year than they did in 2003, totaling almost $293 million. The following year, donors gave even more: $332 million.

Yet despite the increasing generosity of Californians, the percentage that nonprofits actually took away from those campaigns steadily decreased from 2003 to 2005.

Most of the gains went to private, for-profit fundraising companies hired to conduct telemarketing services and coordinate special benefit events like gala dinners, rodeos, and variety shows.

Such companies charge steep fees and commissions that frequently leave charities, especially smaller or less experienced ones, with little or even nothing at all, according to state disclosure records.

Commercial fundraisers collect millions each year relying on the public image of selflessness projected by nonprofits devoted to promoting cultural literacy, saving lost or exploited children, finding cures for deadly diseases, or improving the welfare of defenseless animals.

Some desperate nonprofits elect to allow commercial fundraisers to take a percentage of the money they raise, at times as much as 80 to 90 percent. Alternately, larger charities may agree to set costs and fees associated with the campaign, but that strategy can also prove costly.

For example, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hired the Los Angeles company SD&A Teleservices in 2004 for a phone solicitation campaign that raised $12,000. But because the company’s fees were greater than the contributions received, the museum had to pay $19,854 more to cover the venture. Similarly, the San Francisco Ballet lost $3,400 in 2005 to the same company after SD&A raised $12,745 from donors, thousands less than what it charged.

Several people we interviewed said the benefits of a fundraising campaign might not materialize until later if contributors eventually become long-term supporters. But unless the typical donor has time to find out how much ultimately makes it to the cause they care so much about, they’re unlikely to be aware of the extraordinary costs involved in nonprofit fundraising.

"The charity agrees to it because they want the easy money that they don’t have to do any work for," Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy in Chicago, told the Guardian. "Then the person goes out and spends $1 million to get that $200,000, and the charity tries to rationalize it by saying ‘Well, it’s money we wouldn’t normally have. We don’t have staffing for fundraising.’ But they’re ripping off the public and disrespecting the intentions of the people who gave that money."

The Los Angeles Times published a months-long investigation July 6 that examined required forms submitted to the California Attorney General’s Office showing the total revenue generated from 5,800 nonprofit fundraising campaigns and how much of that money went to the charities.

Between 1997 and 2006, the paper discovered, 430 campaigns raised a total of $44 million — but in each case, every dime went to the fundraising company. Charities lost money in 337 more cases. In hundreds of instances, charities entered into contracts that assured them only 20 percent or less of the funds raised, regardless of how successful the campaign turned out to be. The AIP recommends spending no more than 35 cents on each dollar raised. The Times also pointed out that donors enjoy tax deductions from their contributions, even if huge portions go to for-profit companies.

"Nonprofits spend a lot of money attracting donors and then they fall away the next year, so they have to reach out and attract even more donors," Elizabeth Boris, director of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy in Washington, DC, told us. "So there’s a lot of churning that goes on, because a lot of the same people don’t give to the same organization year after year. It is an expensive process of getting the names and contacting people."

Because California is behind in processing the required disclosure forms, the Times had to specially request records from 2006, meaning more recent figures aren’t available. The Guardian took a far less extensive look at the records, but we still found plenty of examples of charities earning astonishingly low rates of return.

In 2004, Campbell-based TBS Productions raised $418,377 for the San Francisco Police Officers Association and its annual "Parade of Stars" event held at the Palace of Fine Arts. But just $87,094 made it into the union’s nonprofit Community Services Fund, which redistributes it in small increments to a variety of causes.

"I’ve wrestled with this since I’ve come on," said POA President Gary Delagnes. "There are two ways of looking at it. Do we really want to lend our name to an outfit that’s taking 80 percent off the top? … The decision we made was: you know what, we’re to do so much good with the charitable money that it’s worth it to us."

That same year the Oakland Police Officers Association also hired TBS for its "Cavalcade of Stars" event. The company raised $402,515 on behalf of the East Bay union for charitable purposes, but only $88,603 remained after covering the event’s costs, a return to the union of 22 cents on the dollar.

That year, TBS coordinated events for at least 16 groups across the state representing law enforcement and emergency personnel, from the San Jose Firefighters Burn Foundation to the Fresno Deputy Sheriffs Association. But almost no one received a better return rate than 20 percent, and two raised just 15 cents on the dollar after accounting for the for-profit company’s take. No one at TBS was available for comment when we called.

More than 250 fundraising campaigns in California netted 20 cents or less from each dollar raised for charities in 2004, according to figures maintained by the state.

Rich Steinberg, a longtime scholar of nonprofits at Indiana University, said several factors mitigate all this. He explained that the United States Supreme Court has been reluctant to permit heavy regulations on charity fundraising because a seemingly poor cost ratio isn’t necessarily bad for a nonprofit.

"Big charities could do everything wrong but still have a good cost ratio" because their support is widespread, Steinberg said. The San Francisco Ballet and SFMOMA, for example, have done much better in some telemarketing campaigns, earning from 54 percent to 81 percent in return rates despite other times losing money.

Could it be that there are too many small, inefficient nonprofits with similar missions, each created in the belief that government wasn’t filling some need? Perhaps. But attempting to curtail them could undermine the democratic spirit that leads to their creation.

"We should make it legitimate for any group of idiots to get together and try to do something good," Steinberg said.

If they want to succeed, he said, charities should not accept terms that give fundraisers a percentage of the donations. Instead they should establish fixed fees so that every dollar beyond that amount goes toward services. Second, to ensure more favorable rates, they can require competitive bidding among fundraisers.

Ken Larson, director of public policy for the California Association of Nonprofits, said that few of the tens of thousands of charitable organizations registered in California use commercial fundraisers to attract donors, a fact confirmed in reports compiled by the attorney general. Many hire full-time professional fundraisers to seek foundation and government grants or relationships with repeat donors, intangible benefits that can go beyond immediate fundraising goals.

As for telemarketing, Mike Smith, chief operating officer of New Jersey-based Charity Navigator, suggests that when donors receive a call, they can just hang up and cut a check directly to the nonprofit.

The debate over nonprofit fundraising costs is nothing new, but with information increasingly available on the Web, consumers are in a much stronger position to give wisely.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation publicly and angrily parted ways with its commercial fundraiser, Pallatto Teamworks, in 2001 due in part to a dispute over how much the company charged to operate the California AIDS Ride. The charity has since created its own fundraising arm, steadily improving its rate of return from an average of 54 percent over the past seven years to 66.5 percent last year.

The foundation uses another company, MZA Events, to manage its annual AIDS Walkathon, which has averaged a healthy 63 percent return since 1999 with improved results over each of the last three years.

But officials with the SF AIDS Foundation believe telemarketing has enabled it to achieve greater public awareness. It also began moving the task in-house during the past six months and anticipates greater savings.

"Every dime we save in production is a dime that can go to our clients and our programs and our services," said Dave Ellison, spokesperson for the foundation. "We’re always extremely aware of how important it is to keep the costs down because we see the benefits every day in the lives of our clients."

Optic nerve

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› johnny@sfbg.com

This is the second year that the Guardian has devoted an issue to local photographers. I’ll wait until it happens a third time before deeming the project an annual endeavor. It’s easy to believe in that possibility, because the range of photography in the Bay Area right now is exceptional. This great state of affairs is partly due to spaces and organizations such as SF Camerawork, RayKo Photo Center, and PhotoAlliance. It’s also due to more do-it-yourself street-level groups such as Hamburger Eyes and one of this issue’s 10 contributors, Cutter Photozine.

Last year’s photography issue focused on portraiture, but this year I’ve opted for a survey approach that allows for spontaneous connections. Jessica Rosen and Sean McFarland both utilize collage, but with vastly different results. Keba Konte’s collage aesthetic adds objects to imagery and links history to autobiography. Investigative work leads to political or societal exposure within Trevor Paglen’s and David Maisel’s photography. Adrianne Fernandez and Bayeté Ross-Smith focus on youth as they bring new twists to traditions such as the family album and the prom portrait. Dustin Aksland’s portraiture also includes teenagers, sometimes plopped onto or stopped within American landscapes, while Mimi Plumb likens rural landscapes to the backs of horses.

August may be when summer winds down and a portion of SF prepares to camp elsewhere, but it’s an important time for local photography. This issue coincides with PhotoAlliance’s and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery’s annual exhibition of local photographers. Two of the 10 artists on the following pages are part of that show. American photography also will be playing a major role at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art next year, when that space presents an exhibition devoted to Robert Frank and his classic monograph The Americans (Steidl).

In honor of an old adage or clichéd truth, there aren’t a lot of words next to the pictures that follow. But the text does include Web site information. In most cases, these photographers’ sites function as another gallery of sorts, one that lacks the tactile nature and dimensions of an actual photograph but at least suggests the variety of a body of work to date. Scope them out, and scope out Pixel Vision, the Guardian‘s arts and culture blog, for interviews and other photography-related pieces this week. Last, before you look, some thanks are due to Glen Helfand, Chuck Mobley, and Mirissa Neff for their help in the selection process, and to Kat Renz for a last-minute idea.

Also in this issue:

>>Killer shots from the bowels of rock

>>Before stalkerazzi, there was Gary Lee Boas

>>Q&A with Heather Renee Russ of Cutter Photozine

>>Q&A with Jessica Rosen

>>Molly Decoudreaux looks beneath local nightlife
———-

NAME Adrianne Fernandez

TITLE Daddy Sends His Love

BACKGROUND In my "Alternative Album" project, the interplay of social and personal history is essential. It yields a complex tension between irony and nostalgia for the so-called family album.

SHOUT OUTS My influences include artists such as Larry Sultan and Elinor Carruci, who have worked with their prospective families to create intimate images that provide a compelling look into family dynamics.

SHOWS "Gender Agenda," through Sept. 14. The Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, Mich. www.thegalleryproject.com. Also "Not Your Mama’s World," Fri/8 through Sept. 9. Washington Gallery of Photography, Bethesda, Md. www.wsp-photo.com

WEB AlternativeAlbum@aol.com

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NAME Jessica Rosen

TITLE I Could See the Amazon from the 5th Floor of the Robert Fulton Projects
BACKGROUND This work is a large-scale photo collage installation made from cut-up, layered C-prints of my original photographs. It measures about 10 feet by 12 feet. Because this scale relates to human scale, it allows the viewer to experience the image as an environment rather than as an isolated image.

SHOUT OUTS My work stems from a fascination with people. Over the years my art practice has continually focused on portraiture. Although my newer collage works may seem quite fantastic, most are truly portraits in the traditional sense.

SHOW "Jessica Rosen," through Oct. 1. Open 24/7 (storefront window). Keys That Fit, 2312 Telegraph Ave, Oakl., http://www.xaul.com/KEYS/home.html

WEB www.jessicarosen.com

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NAME Cutter Photozine

TITLE Top to bottom, untitled photos by (1) Ethan Indorf; (2) Keith Aguiar; (3) Ace Morgan; (4) Darcy Sharpe

BACKGROUND Cutter is a San Francisco documentary photo magazine. Founded by Heather Renee Russ and Alison O’Connell, it has a DIY ethic and is eco-positive (it uses recycled paper and soy-based inks). Cole Blevins, Jesse Rose Roberts, Sara Seinberg, and Rachel Styer also worked to put out the first issue, which includes 20 photographers and spotlights Ace Morgan’s uncanny blend of rage, longing, joy, and punk rock.

SHOUT OUTS Cutter is dedicated to people telling their stories and documenting their existence. We seek to undo traditional voyeurism toward the "other" and place the power of sight in the focused home of the author.

SHOW The first issue can be purchased at local shops such as Needles & Pens. They’re currently accepting submissions for the second issue, due this fall. There will be a release party and photo show in late November.

WEB www.cutterphotozine.com

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NAME David Maisel

TITLE 1165 (from Library of Dust)

BACKGROUND The large-scale photographs of the "Library of Dust" series depict individual copper canisters, dating from 1913 to 1971, which contain unclaimed cremated remains of patients from Oregon’s state-run psychiatric hospital.

SHOUT OUTS Robert Smithson, NASA photographs, 19th-century exploratory landscape photographers (especially Timothy O’Sullivan), and the New Topographics photographers from the mid-1970s.

SHOW "David Maisel: Library of Dust," Sept. 4–Oct. 4. Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Haines Gallery, 49 Geary (suite 540), SF. (415) 397-8114, www.hainesgallery.com. Library of Dust (Chronicle Books, 108 pages, $80) will be released in October.

WEB www.davidmaisel.com

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NAME Keba Konte

TITLE Detail from "888 Pieces of We"

BACKGROUND The eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year is approaching, and in alignment with this auspicious moment I have created this exhibition of 888 photographs printed on wood, copper, and vintage books. I’ve had to select from thousands of images spanning 42 years in order to choose 888 that reflect my journey: there are protests and portraits, street moments and political movements; freaks, friends, and family members. As a documentary and portrait photographer, one observes the beautiful strangers. However, looking at this large body of work, another story comes into focus: my own.

SHOUT OUTS Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, Sebastião Salgado, Ruth Bernhard, Kimara Dixon.

SHOW "888 Pieces of We: A Photo Memoir," Fri/8 through Sept. 8. Oakland Art Gallery, 199 Kahn’s Alley, Oakl. (510) 637-0395, www.oaklandartgallery.org

WEB www.kebakonte.com

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NAME Sean McFarland

TITLES Untitled (park)

BACKGROUND I work from an archive of photographs I’ve made, along with images gathered from print and other media. Through collage, new pictures are formed. Recently my work has focused on weather, nighttime, and the ocean.

SHOUT OUTS For now, two books: National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather, (Knopf, 1991), and Gerhard Richter’s Atlas (D.A.P., 2007). Also, students, friends, and just about any archive.

SHOWS "18 Months: Taking the Pulse of Bay Area Photography," through Sept. 17. Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–8 p.m. San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlet Place, SF. (415) 554-6080, www.sfacgallery.org. Upcoming: "Johanna St. Clare, Paul Wackers, Sean McFarland, Dan Carlson," October. Thurs.–Sat., 1–5 p.m. Eleanor Harwood Gallery, 1295 Alabama, SF.

WEB www.sean-mcfarland.com

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NAME Dustin Aksland

TITLE Paso Robles, CA (2005)

BACKGROUND This was shot during a trip to Paso Robles. My friend and I pulled off the highway to take the back roads into town. As soon as we pulled off, we passed this man sleeping in his car. We went about a half-mile and I made my friend turn around. We pulled up in front of the car and I shot two frames out of the passenger window.

INSPIRATION "Useful pictures don’t start from ideas, they start from seeing." — Robert Adams.

SHOWS "States of Mind," September. TH Inside, Brussels, Belgium. "States of Mind," November. TH Inside, Copenhagen, Denmark.

WEB www.dustinaksland.com

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NAME Bayeté Ross-Smith

TITLE Here Come the Girls

BACKGROUND This is part of a series that documents high school students in Berkeley, east Oakland, San Francisco, and Richmond as they mark their ascension from childhood to adulthood through the celebratory rite of passage known as prom. Taking a cue from traditional prom photos, the portraits allow for seriousness and playful flamboyance, depicting a vast array of budding identities.

SHOUT OUTS Walter Iooss, the Magnum photographers, and James Van Der Zee.

SHOW "Pomp and Circumstance: First Time to Be Adults," Sept. 4–Oct. 11. Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Patricia Sweetow Gallery, 77 Geary (mezzanine), SF. (415) 788-5126, www.patriciasweetwogallery.com. Upcoming: "Off Color," Sept. 19–Nov. 1. RUSH Arts Gallery, New York.

WEB www.patriciasweetowgallery.com

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NAME Mimi Plumb

TITLE Harley

BACKGROUND These photos are part of an ongoing series that began about 10 years ago when I photographed a herd in the John Muir Wilderness of the Sierra Nevada. The horses in this new series live in Petaluma.

SHOUT OUTS Horses’ backs embody the landscape. They become the horizon and horizon line, at times transforming into the rolling hills of the California landscape where I grew up, before tract houses and strip malls became the norm.

SHOW "18 Months: Taking the Pulse of Bay Area Photography," through Sept. 17. Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–8 p.m. San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlet Place, SF. (415) 554-6080, www.sfacgallery.org

WEB www.mimiplumb.com

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NAME Trevor Paglen

TITLE KEYHOLE 12-3 (IMPROVED CRYSTAL) Near Scorpio (USA 129), 2007

BACKGROUND This is a photo of reconnaissance satellite, taken from the roof of my house in Berkeley. It’s part of a series of photos of American spy satellites.

SHOUT OUTS I got interested in photography because I was working on projects that were nonfiction allegories, projects that played with notions of truth and what we can and can’t see. To me, photography is the medium that does that best. It captures reality and at the same time doesn’t. I like that tension. I also became interested in photography post-9/11 because photography became an aggressive gesture in a way that it wasn’t before — people could be arrested for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge. The act of taking photographs outside became an exercise in civil rights.

SHOWS "The Other Night Sky," through Sept. 14. Wed.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft, Berk. (510) 642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. Upcoming: Taipei Biennial, Sept. 13–Jan. 11, 2009; Istanbul Biennial, 2009; "2008 SECA Art Award Winners," Feb.–May, 2009, SFMOMA.

WEB www.paglen.com

B Star

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› paulr@sfbg.com

If you run a successful restaurant on Clement Street, apparently you face a terrible temptation to open another restaurant on Clement Street — across the road, perhaps, or on the next block. And the new place should appeal to a different socioeconomic stratum. For grand Clémentine, this formula resulted in the opening, about four years ago, of Bistro Clement, an earthier and less formal sibling that trafficked in traditional French bistro dishes.

Now the Burma Superstar people, just a block or so to the west of Clémentine, have borrowed a page from the Clémentine script and, in early May, opened their own companion venture, B Star. In a small, or not-so-small, irony, B Star occupies the space held by Bistro Clement before it went under. If that is a bad omen, let’s consider some favorable ones: unlike Bistro Clement, B Star represents an upmarket, not downmarket, move. (Burma Superstar’s lofty reputation has to do with its food, not its ambience) Also, the menu is, of course, Burmese (-ish), and the new place is on the same side of the street as the parent restaurant.

If you’re on foot, in fact, you’re not likely to miss B Star. It’s the mid-block spot with would-be patrons idling and swirling on the sidewalk and in the doorway. Yes, the crowds have already descended, apparently drawn by alluring whiffs of upmarketry and innovative Asian cooking. That formula has been working at nearby Namu, and now it works at B Star, though the two are hardly interchangeable. While Namu is of the night, B Star has the look of day: knotted pine floors, creamy yellow walls, globes of soft light dangling from the ceiling, and a fair amount of lush greenery. If Namu is an ersatz nightclub, then B Star has a certain gazebo quality, even in the evening.

The menu card adverts to "simple and wholesome Asian-style comfort foods." Never have so few syllables signaled so much to so many; they make me think of meatloaf tataki. B Star doesn’t offer that (does anyone?), but the kitchen does turn out dishes all along the innovation spectrum, from a fabulous, if traditional, platha ($4.50) — a disc of pastry-like flatbread, cut into quarters and presented with an irresistible curry sauce for dipping — to a heart-shaped potpie ($14) filled with Thai-style salmon, carrots, red peppers, zucchini, and snap peas awash in a green curry coconut milk sauce that doesn’t lack for chile punch.

Most of the dishes strike a reasonable balance between familiarity and wildness. Care is taken with putf8gs and other small touches, and the ensemble of crockery, rich in eccentric shapes, has a museum-of-modern-art feel that subtly elevates the food it carries. Also, the kitchen is keenly attentive to the matter of texture and to the value of crunchiness, in particular. We detected a definite crispness in a vegetarian samusa soup (a $7 bowl was plenty for two), whose delights included cabbage, lentils, potatoes — worthies all, though soft — and falafel. I love falafel but had never before enjoyed it in any other form than wrapped in a pita or lavash. Here it resulted in a soup that went crunch, and we only wished that the murky, curry-scented, slightly metallic broth had been a little less harsh.

"It’s missing something," my companion said. Salt? Salting helped but did not cure. Something freshening or fruity, maybe?

Additional crunch turned up in kau soi ($11), a large, shallow bowl filled with noodles, bean sprouts, pickled mustard greens, and ground chicken, each in its place, which made the bowl look like a 3-D map of some ethnically fractured island. It fell to the diner to mix and mingle (as with the Korean beef salad known as bi bim bop), and one of the first things this diner noticed was that the chicken — more shredded than ground, I thought — was wonderfully crispy, in contrast to the soft-focus players. If any dish at B Star manages a rustic sophistication, it’s this one.

Since the menu offered no meatloaf tataki, we settled for a spicy-tuna version ($8.50). The fish had been crusted with crushed peppercorns au poivre-style, seared, cut into slices, and served with a gingery mush dotted with bits of jalapeño pepper and flecks of cilantro. It was also quite chilly, which suggested pre-preparation but also brought a cold-flash counterpoint to a parade of dishes that ranged from warm to scorching.

A nicely balanced dish, in this respect, was the duck lettuce cups ($8). The lettuce consisted of long spears, crisp and cool as an early spring in morning; they were on hand here so we could scoop up the duck, a pile of cooling but still warm shredded meat (like the pork in mu shu pork) perfumed with five-spice powder and laced with a mince of red bell pepper, carrots, celery, and scallions. Our only complaint was that the lettuce spears were not particularly useful as scoops; the regular lettuce cups (of broader and more pliant butter-leaf lettuce) would have been better.

Just as it must be hard to be the child of a famous or accomplished parent, so it must be difficult to be the offspring of a restaurant that uses "superstar" for part of its name. Expectations are bound to be stoked. "Star" is at least more modest than "superstar," particularly when it’s denoted by a symbol rather than spelled out as a word. And B Star does have glints of something special: the best dishes are memorable, the look is appealing, and the staff is as young and energetic as the crowd. A B is good, but give us an A !

B STAR

Dinner: Tues.–Thurs., 5–9:30 p.m.; Fri.–Sun., 5–10 p.m.

Lunch: Tues.–Sun., 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

127 Clement, SF

(415) 933-9900

www.bstarbar.com

Beer, wine, soju

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Dinosaur tattoos are the new tramp stamp: Meet Sam Kehl

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Sam Kehl is a singer/producer/DJ from Seattle who I randomly met on a camping trip in Morrow Bay. He was wearing a pink hat, a leather jacket, and really really cool sneakers, which was odd because all his friends were decked out in REI gear. Obviously the dude had never been camping before, and I don’t think he’ll ever go again. I mean, a man can drink whiskey and use his shoes for a pillow right here at home can’t he?

I’ve gotten to know Sam pretty well over the past few months and although he may suck at camping, I can say without a doubt that he rules at being weird. Oh and his music is really rad too. Check him out at The Eagle Tavern on August 7th at 10pm where he’ll be performing as both Samuelroy and Samnation. Listen to his tunes here. X-Ray Press and No New York will also be performing.

sam1.jpg

SFBG: So what’s your deal?
Sam Kehl: Hi, my name is Samuel Kehl. It’s spelled K-E-H-L. So I’m not related to the face products, Kiehl’s, or whatever. Sometimes people put me on flyers and spell my name like the face product. I hate that. Kehl is a German name, but I’m from Seattle.

SFBG: Why did you move to San Francisco?
Kehl: Well, San Francisco has a particular history of being queer and open-minded and there’s always been a lot of electronic music here. Seattle just got boring and I had already lived in New York so I decided to check out SF, mostly for the music.

SFBG: Any bands in particular?
Kehl: Well, I know there’s a lot of really really early experimental stuff here and all those Drum-&-Base people like UFO and DJ Abstract. There are others too, but I can’t remember. And um, Safety Scissors, Eats Tapes. Tiger Beats records. OK, so, not all the people I like are from SF, but I had already done New York and Seattle and I’m petrified of LA, so, well, I came here to do my music.

SFBG: So what’s up with your music anyway? How’d you develop your sound?
Kehl: I’ve been doing music for a really long time and I’ve been deejaying for exactly ten years. I don’t have any musical training, but I had choir and I sang in college. Oh and I played cello too. So I had all these different musical interests and then bands like the Postal Service and The Blow came out and I was like oh God, why don’t I do that? Why don’t I sing and make electronic music? Most of the electronic music that had vocals at that time was really bad. I was more into bands like Plaid and Aphex Twin, and Boards of Canada, like Warp Records stuff, you know? It didn’t really have vocals, but then those other bands came out, and I was like, Oh of course. What the hell? I should do that.

New wave reunion

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PREVIEW I’m too young to know for sure whether or not it’s normal that so many older bands are re-forming to record novelty albums and go on reunion tours, but it certainly does seem strange. I mean, sure, there’s the money (just check the inflated ticket prices) and the thrill of seeing thousands of aging fans sing along to all your songs — but at some point it must get kind of depressing to realize they would probably rather be teleported back to 1981 when they could see you for $10 in a small club when everyone was 40 pounds lighter.

But nostalgia is a powerful thing, and the reunion-industrial complex keeps chugging on. This summer’s Regeneration Tour unites all the best new wavers — the Human League and ABC included. Unfortunately, it’s bypassing San Francisco, so we’ll have to settle for back-to-back shows at smaller venues. On Saturday night, Sheffield, England synth pioneers the Human League performs at the Mezzanine. The band, which never officially broke up, put out its last album of fresh material in 2001, the much-overlooked Secrets (Ark 21). On Sunday, ABC plays the Independent, drawing material from its first batch of new songs in 11 years, 2008’s Traffic (Vibrant).

But, hey, who am I to judge? I’m sure one day I’ll shell out $150 to see the Strokes at the Greek Theatre so I can experience two hours of joy before rushing home to pay the babysitter. I only hope they play "12:51."

HUMAN LEAGUE With DJs Skip and Shindog. Sat/9, 8 p.m., $40. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com. ABC With DJ Funklor. Sun/10, 8 p.m., $27. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421, www.independentsf.com

2008 Cuervo Black US Air Guitar Championships

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PREVIEW For those about to air (guitar), we salute you. All it takes is viewing the big-hearted 2006 doc Air Guitar Nation or a few minutes in a sweaty club with the contestants to sample the craft, sass, and brash fearlessness needed to risk making a royal air-guitar-noodling ass of yourself in front of hundreds of sodden, mouthy armchair air-ax-slingers who believe — nay, know — they can kick as much as air-ass as you.

So kudos to San Francisco winner Awesome, a.k.a. Shred Begley Jr., a.k.a. comedian Alex Koll, for making the transition from the bedroom to the national 2008 Cuervo Black US Air Guitar Championships Aug. 8 at the Grand Ballroom. So what’s with the multiple monikers? Mob rules: it was chosen for him at the sold-out June 25 regional finals at the Independent by the all-too-ready-with-the-boos crowd.

"I was in a sleeveless tank top that said, ‘AWESOME!’, which is my name and my way of life," Koll says by phone. "The audience responded the only way they could. It chanted, ‘Awesome, awesome,’ until it became my official stage name." Attempts to "melt faces" culminated in a second-round performance that, well, continued the hype. "I rode my friend’s face into the crowd, which was very popular," Koll says. In return, the crowd "paid the ultimate price to get me back onstage — I had to use a couple as human shields. Then I had to do more ceremonial headbanging, and the stage started to crack in half, but I was able to pull it together — with my feet."

Sure, and we all know Koll can’t be held responsible for the recent Los Angeles quake, though he admits he was practicing at the time. Meanwhile he’s refining the awesomeness for the national bout — the winner goes to the world air-off in Finland — since the event includes Brooklyn winner Bettie B. Goode, who severed her toe in competition. "She still won," Koll moans. "These are the kind of people I’m up against. In light of that, I’m stepping up my game: I bought six new tassels."

2008 CUERVO BLACK US AIR GUITAR CHAMPIONSHIPS Fri/8, 8:30 p.m., $20. Grand Ballroom, 1290 Sutter, SF. www.apeconcerts.com

“Summer Reading”

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REVIEW I wish I were Jorge Luis Borges. The Argentine man of letters was top among those writers, such as Orhan Pamuk, Margaret Atwood, and Ali Smith, whose nonfiction is even more potent, surreal, and addictive than their fiction. Borges once remarked on a translation of William Beckford’s Vathek: "The original is unfaithful to the translation." I’d say the same about "Summer Reading" at Hosfelt Gallery. Taking as their inspiration a range of literary classics, from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) to Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), the 18 works on display at the group show manage to be more than just windows into each artist’s reading of a particular book. They provide a bird’s-eye view of internal floor plans, acting as translations from the literary into the visual, increasing ambiguity while lowering page count.

Su Blackwell’s four wall-mounted sculptures use actual books, their pages cut and molded into little trees of text and gallivanting characters, creating miniature worlds so fragile that they seem to have been frozen in time so they will not break. In Blackwell’s The Secret Garden — inspired by the book of the same name — a little girl is supported by tree branches from one angle, but from another appears to be reaching for them unsuccessfully, frightened and alone.

John O’Reilly’s collage, Dead Centaur — Of Cormac McCarthy, captures the dark textures of reality in McCarthy’s writing, and José Antonio Suarez Loñdono’s intimate notebook drawings, inspired by Kafka and Evan S. Connell, are like footnotes in the form of silhouettes. Amy Hicks’ videos, ReAdaptation: the book series (2007–08), use flip-books meticulously constructed by taping pictures onto book pages. One of the volumes is on display and looks like something a stalker would construct, but the videos are more melancholic than creepy.

SUMMER READING Through Sat/9. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Glenn Kurtz reading, Fri/8, 6 p.m. Hosfelt Gallery, 430 Clementina, SF. (415) 495-5454, www.hosfeltgallery.com

Local Artist of the Week: Lauren DiCioccio

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LOCAL ARTIST Lauren DiCioccio
TITLE Mount Rushmore: The Four Presidents (hand embroidery on organza and pleather, 2008)
THE STORY “These embroideries are life-size sculptural re-creations of 35mm slides I have collected. I am drawn to slides as precious objects: the fragility of the translucent material and the intimacy of scale of a palm-size slide are particularly endearing. I hope to capture this tenderness in my sculptures. To make these little pieces, I embroider directly onto bridal organza, a delicate translucent material, and allow the excess threads to pour out the back and hang down the wall.
BIO DiCioccio’s current work employs tedious handiwork to investigate the beauty of commonplace mass-produced media objects (newspapers, magazines, office papers, writing pads, plastic bags, 35mm slides) in lamentation of their approaching obsolescence. She received a BA from Colgate University in 2002 and now lives in Woodside.
SHOW “Lauren DiCioccio, Aliza Lelah,” through Aug. 16. 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m., Mon.–Sat., Jack Fischer Gallery, 49 Geary, Suite 440, SF. (415) 956-1178, www.jackfischergallery.com
WEB SITE www.laurendicioccio.com

Sonic Reducer Overage: Staycation nation with Projekt Revolution, Sam McPheeters, Balmorhea, more

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Busta Rhymes busts a move in “Dangerous” – and at Projekt Revolution at Shoreline this week.

As summer fades into a hazy, chilly miasma of Blood Marys, Krautrock beats, and high gas prices, the time has come to make the rounds at those lingering shed shows, avant-punk readings, burbling throwdowns.

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A.Skillz
Sunset Promotions showcases the UK hip-hop-breakbeat turntablist, surfacing at Mighty for his first show in SF in four years. With Murphstar, AnTenNae, and Motion Potion. Fri/8, 10 p.m., $10-$15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.sunsetpromotions.net


“I’m my own worst enemy”: Linkin Park’s “Given Up.”

Projekt Revolution
A revolution in WTF! pairings begins here: Linkin Park, Chris Cornell, Bravery, Ashes Divide, Busta Rhymes, Hawthorne Heights, and Street Drum Corps. Hey maybe it’s time to check those damn assumptions; you’re breaking both your back – and mine. Sat/9, 2 p.m., $34-$77. Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View. www.ticketmaster.com


Born free: Born Against back in the day.

Sam McPheeters
Take another, literary look at the local underground. The hardcore legend of Born Against fame reads from his new magazine, alongside Sarah Cathers of 16 Bitch Pileup (who will render love horoscopes from rock lyrics), Erika Anderson of Gowns (who will perform an exorcism), Tara Tavi of Amps for Christ (who will play traditional Chinese music and screen a documentary on the subject), and George Chen of KIT and Club Sandwich (who will do stand-up comedy). And yep, there’s even more. Sun/10, 7 p.m., $6-$10, 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl.

Balmorhea
Austin, Texas, ambient bohos dream in elegant, string- and banjo-shaded colors. With Lazarus and Tiny Vipers. Mon/11, 8:30 p.m., $12. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

Aloha SF! Aloha Fest chills out — pics

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By Ariel Soto

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Twirling hips, shaved ice and the aloha spirit filled the Precidio this weekend for the 14th Annual Aloha Festival. Hula dancers of all ages took to the stage to perform the fluid and precise dance famous of the tropical islands of Hawaii. Everyone seemed to be wearing flowers in their hair (appropriate not only for a Hawaii festival, but also perfect for a San Francisco event) and even a few canine friends got into the aloha mood. Visitors to the festival enjoyed munching on authentic Hawaiian fare and browsed amongst the numerous booths selling everything from bolts of blooming cloth, to cookies packed with macadamia nuts and even hula dancing dolls. What a perfect way to welcome in the misty Indian summer of an SF August than with such a sunny celebration as the Aloha Festival!

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Radiohead Jonny Greenwood’s ‘Popcorn’ gets its West Coast premiere in SF

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There will be “Popcorn.” Radiohead player Jonny Greenwood’s “Popcorn Superhet Receiver” will get its West Coast premiere in SF, courtesy of the Wordless Music Series, right before his group appears at Outside Lands music fest in Golden Gate Park. This press release came over the transom yesterday:

“On August 21, 2008, New York’s intrepid Wordless Music Series concludes its ’07-’08 season with a surprise San Francisco debut, reprising the centerpiece of the inaugural Wordless Music Orchestra concerts from last January by presenting the West Coast premiere of “Popcorn Superhet Receiver.”

“The night before Radiohead takes the stage at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, Wordless Music will feature composer and multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver for string orchestra. Maestro Benjamin Shwartz, resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, will lead the Magik*Magik Orchestra in a program of music by Arvo Pärt, a major influence on the music of Greenwood and Radiohead, along with Bay Area composers Fred Frith, Mason Bates, and John Adams.

Carbs rebound: ahoy gourmet donuts

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See you latte: Lemon and thyme and vanilla bean donuts with caffeine side. All photos by Kimberly Chun.

Remember turn-of-the-century Atkins? Remember pushing that bread basket away and diving head first into a slab of sirloin? Well, maybe those nutty notions are ready to go the way of cut-glass Jello salad and all-pineapple diets. Carbs are back – big time. Proof: the line forming every morning – much earlier than you’d expect – at Dynamo Donuts and Coffee at 2760 24th St., San Francisco.

It’s those little niblets of fried batter that are making it happen. Personally, I’ve been waiting for the donut revival to hit any moment: few treats can beat a piping hot wad of cake dough covered in sugar or glaze or whatever, as the ideal desert. Add in the lovely, imaginative, only-in-Ess-Eff flavor combos at Dynamo Donut and you’ve got a hit. Enough of a hit that the line gently wound out of the almost brand new little stand on two separate weekday morns.

So far I’ve tried the lemon-thyme donut, the apricot honey-stuffed and iced number, the spiced chocolate, the salted caramel with fleur de sel, and the vanilla bean, all priced at $2 to $2.50. The lemon-thyme is bedecked with glaze, but the petite flecks of lemon and herb still peek out from their cakey home. The spiced chocolate was complex and amazing – my fave and worth the extra 50 cents. I even dug the apricot – I, who otherwise despise ‘cots. All appear to be low on the grease factor, and amazingly not too sweet despite the thick swathe of frosting and the liberal amounts of sugar coating the top and bottom of each donut. More, please.

P.S. I can’t wait to try the maple-glazed apple and bacon number, though I’ve no clue when that comes around next. Better to keep it a surprise. And word has it the current three flavors – which often sell out early – will soon expand to seven.

DYNAMO DONUTS AND COFFEE
Mon.-Sat., 7 a.m.-5 p.m.
2760 24th St. at Hampshire, SF
(415) 920-1978

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Puppy brutally stabbed to death

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First there was this news about a horrifying “puppy mill” being busted in Los Gatos — then we got this release. Please contact Lt. Le-Ellis Brown of Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9400 if you have any information!

Animal Care & Control Seeking Info on Stabbing Of Foster Puppy

San Francisco – San Francisco Animal Care & Control is asking the public for help to find the person – or persons – responsible for stabbing to death a seven-month-old puppy in foster care with Grateful Dogs Rescue.

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Pogo

The puppy – named Pogo – was being exercised by his foster parent at Ocean Beach in San Francisco at Sunset on July 22. He disappeared behind a sand dune and wasn’t seen again until his body was discovered dumped in an unincorporated area of the Bayview on the morning of July 29. Pogo had been brutally stabbed to death.

Pogo was a friendly, trusting pit bull puppy who had been taken from Animal Care & Control – SF’s open-door animal shelter – by Grateful Dogs Rescue. He had a genetic defect that required the amputation of one hind leg. The surgery to remove the leg was partially donated by San Francisco Veterinary Specialists – Pogo had fully recovered and was expected to lead a long and normal life. Grateful Dogs Rescue is one of the most active animal rescue groups working with Animal Care & Control. Their volunteers have taken and re-homed hundreds of needy dogs from the shelter.

Pogo was a brindle pit bull puppy with a white blaze, white around his nose and a white chest. He weighed approximately 40 pounds, was missing his right rear leg and was wearing a red collar when last seen.

Anyone with information about Pogo’s death – or info on Pogo being taken from Ocean Beach – should call Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9400. A $2000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator has been established by Grateful Dogs Rescue and The Friends of SF Animal Care & Control. To contribute to the reward fund, please contact Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9412.

O Tara! Ex-Rodan and Retsin player steps out from behind the canvas

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Ah, Tara Jane O’Neil – how I admired her indie rock Rodan project from afar and dug her raw-as-rain country-folk Retsin collaboration with Cynthia Nelson. Now the currently Portland, Ore., resident is back in town and showing off all sides of her fine, multi-faceted self: she’ll showcase her latest acoustic musings – found on **In Circles** (Touch and Go) – at Hemlock Tavern on Saturday, Aug. 2; exhibiting her artwork alongside pieces by Vanessa Renwick at Needles and Pens’ “Cackle Cackle Rackle,” which opens Friday, Aug. 1; and, word has it, will give a “magical PowerPoint presentation” at Sadies Flying Elephant, Sunday Aug. 3. Whew. Plenty of opps to catch the woman who makes “evocative dream music based on the buzz and hum of the city’s late night symphonies” (so says The Wire).

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TARA JANE O’NEIL
With PALMS and Katy Davidson
Sat/2, 9:30 p.m., $7
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
(415) 923-0923

Homegirl

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Of the many unsung, possibly fabulous, potentially limitless unexplored combos floating round in the ether — up there with the now-familiar chocolate and peanut butter or pizza flavoring and dog-biscuits-for-humanoids — has to be rock music and housework. Natch, Heloise would probably be in hell contemputf8g the crusty state of most band’s vans or rehearsal spaces. Few jam it home-econo.

Leave it to Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables — a Bay Area player who has been consistently reimagining old music and traditional folk with an often theatrical, punky sensibility — to rescue the most mundane of tasks, so far from the neggy decadence and glam hysterics of most rock and pop cliché-peddlers, and bring together music, hearth, and home on her new EP, A Table Forgotten (Drag City). Coproduced by Nurse with Wound’s Matt Waldron, Table is a palate-tickling, four-track taste of Faun Fables’ 2009 full-length — roving compactly from the Irish bodhran drum beat and "happy clinks" of spell-casting opener "With Words and Cake" to the spine-tingling, fiddle-swept "Pictures" to the epic "Winter Sleep," cowritten with Björk producer Valgeir Sigurdsson, whom McCarthy worked with on Bonnie "Prince" Billy’s The Letting Go (Drag City, 2006).

The focus on home and family came in part from McCarthy’s residency at Idyllwild Art Academy in the San Jacinto Mountains, where she began to develop some of these songs as part of a student musical theatrical production, although she’s been meaning to undertake this ode to home work for a while. "I’m going to sound like an Amish woman or something," she says with a chuckle by phone from Oakland. "But over the years I found a lot of solace and joy in doing household stuff. It’s kind of one of those hidden arts. And I find that it’s those little day-to-day things that make or break my happiness."

McCarthy’s family is expanding: she’s pregnant and expecting her child around the time of year she herself was born, Oct. 30. "I have pregnancy brain," she says after one inadvertently long pause. And her home is shifting: after living near the Oakland zoo for eight years in an old rustic cottage "that time forgot," as she describes it, and more recently in an artists’ warehouse near Jack London Square, she’s hoping to move to Sonoma. In the meantime she hopes to make edible saleables like vinegar pie for her Café Du Nord merch table. "The singing and performing and shows feel amazing," she says. "I can tell the baby is happy with it."

FROM THE GUT On the bill at Faun Fables’ upcoming Du Nord show: über-productive bicoastal player Bonfire Madigan Shive, who also headlines at the Henry Miller Library Aug. 2. The activist-musician dazzled all and sundry who caught the recent American Conservatory Theater production of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore where she performed, suspended above the stage and outfitted in angel’s wings, ripping alternately dulcet and dissonant unearthly sounds from her cello and thereby commenting on, counterpointing, or lamenting the gory, incestuous goings-on below.

"Now that it’s wrapped, I’m proud and happy with what I created for that," Shive says of her "duets for hair and gut," as she dubbed the music she composed for ‘Tis Pity. "For me, it was a lot of surrender, getting out of the way of preconceived notions and focusing on the style and time and being a part of this world, to work on this text that’s 400 years old, and how that world reflects this one."

Up amid the sensuous lines of ‘Tis Pity‘s almost futuristic discotheque set, Shive told me — speaking in the ecstatic, enthusiastic streams of an earthbound angel — she’d often study the audience’s reactions from on high. "I would have moments when I’d zone in on a person and they’d realize, ‘I’m a part of this show.’<0x2009>"

Shive is likewise often pulled into others’ shows: since we last spoke she’s toured or played with the Good, the Bad, and the Queen; Laibach; Carla Bozulich and Silver Mt. Zion members; Kimya Dawson; and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark. Somehow she’s also found a moment to publish an essay in Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction (Seven Stories Press), and she’s looking forward to self-releasing her next album, which includes contributions from Joan Jeanrenaud and Jolie Holland. Apparently it’s just one fastball after another from the onetime member of the Guardian softball team.

"I’ve known Dawn [McCarthy] for a long time now," Shive says. "When she moved from New York to the Bay Area, she came to my apartment and said, ‘I heard you’re a yodeler. Yodel for me!’ Dawn’s one of those kindred spirits. It’s all about community and art."

FAUN FABLES

With Bonfire Madigan

Thurs/31, 9 p.m., $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

LOOK, LISTEN, YEARN

EEF BARZELAY


Clem Snide, we never knew ye. So meet the band’s songwriter, touting a new solo CD, Lose Big (429). Wed/30, 8 p.m., $14. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

THE HERBALISER


Hot on the heels of Same as It Never Was (!K7), London’s Ollie Teeba turns in a DJ set. Fri/1, 10 p.m., $12. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.sunsetpromotions.net

CONOR OBERST AND THE MYSTIC VALLEY BAND


"Sausalito" is the name of one song on the Bright Eyes’ front-guy’s first solo LP in 13 years, Conor Oberst (Merge). Fri/1–Sat/2, 10 p.m., $25. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

TITUS ANDRONICUS


Glen Rock, N.J.’s finest, Titus Andronicus, dust off and spit-shine a rustic punk-pop. Sun/3, 9 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

NOMO


Haunted by Fela Kuti and Francis Bebey as well as Can and Miles Davis, the new Ghost Rock (Ubiquity) finds the Michigan collective ushering a new post-rocky fusion. Tues/5, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

“Getting in on the Ground Floor and Staying There”

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PREVIEW I read those articles in Vanity Fair blathering on about a woman’s ability to be funny. First, Christopher Hitchens says women can be witty, but since they issue children, ours is a dignified, cerebral kind of humor. Unless we’re fat or gay. Then along comes Alessandra Stanley’s article, which fixates on how all the new funny ladies are smokin’ hot, and if you’re not, you won’t ever get on MTV, or something. Well, long before those stories, I saw Carole and Mitzi, a local female comedy duo who combine a powerful sexual magnetism with down-in-the-dirt, clit-tickling humor. So I find it shocking that the pair — who are hotsy-totsy (especially when naked), kinda gay, and possibly pregnant — still haven’t managed to get their big break on cable — not even local access, really. They are, of course, the alter egos of Beth Lisick and Tara Jepsen, two bizarrely funny bosom buds whose kindred spirit–ship dates back to their days on the 1999 Sister Spit tour, when their imaginations gave birth to the failed child pop stars Miriam and Helen. On her own, Lisick has penned a number of semi-autobiographical novels — among them Everyone into the Pool (William Morrow, 2005) — spent eight years keeping a weekly nightlife column for the Chronicle called "Buzz Town," formed the sketch comedy group White Noise Radio Theatre, actually had a kid … with her husband … and started the popular Porchlight Storytelling series. Meanwhile Jepsen organized the long-running queer spoken word night, K’vetch, and teamed up with Jenny Hoysten of Erase Errata to form the issues-centric rock band, Lesbians. I know, it still hasn’t really quite sunk in how women can be funny, gorgeous, and not on TV. Go figure. And go see the show. (Deborah Giattina)

GETTING IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR AND STAYING THERE Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission, SF. Thurs/31–Sat/2, 8pm. $12–$14. (415) 255-1155, www.centerforsexandculture.org, www.brownpapertickets.com

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