SF Archives — Page 340 of 427 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The Lumerians

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July 29, 2008

PREVIEW The Lumerians have landed, and with frequent local gigs and one EP under their belt, the band is poised for maximum impact on the Bay Area psych scene. Take a listen to the group’s self-titled recent disc on the Subterranean Elephants imprint: there, they’ve produced five great tracks of hypnotic rhythms warmed up by droning keyboards and weirded up by synthesized noise squiggles.

"Corkscrew Trepanation" drills your brain with its kick- and bass-drum stomp, and layers organ on top of keyboards to cool hypnotic effect. Other tracks slow a bit but then take off into space via those eerie, vacilutf8g synths. "Orgon Grinder" shines a light on a warm and dreamy female vocal that boosts the song into memorable melody territory. Most numbers stretch out for five to seven minutes, propelling this ensemble into the now-crowded electronic and prog-rock family tree that’s home to a certain cluster of oft-referenced German bands. The upside of that propensity for lengthy jams: Lumerians takes the listener on an extended trip into deep headspace.

THE LUMERIANS With Darker My Love and Eulogies. Tues/5, 9 p.m., $9.99. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421, www.independentsf.com

Exposer

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July 29, 2008

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REVIEW Some early Bay Area figurative painting, wrote Peter Selz in 2002, encountered "the human figure by means of the physicality and the gestural performance of abstract expressionism." More explicit figures later emerged from this abstract cauldron. Ana Teresa Fernández, however, would rather start with the explicit body and work backward. Fernández, who grew up in Mexico, isn’t a figurative painter, performance artist, videographer, feminist, or Latina artist — although she assumes all of these roles from time to time. The best work at her 2008 Headlands Center for the Arts Tournesol Award exhibition, "Tela Araña Tela" (a mirroring of the Spanish for spider web), is so powerful, the movements in her work so difficult to look away from, that she acts as a detective, an intuitive investigator of the emotions embedded in human muscle tone and media complacence — an exposer of the skin-tight, commonplace untruths of so-called manual labor.

By meticulously documenting stills from her own performance work — which uncovers, overstimulates, and ironically decapitates familiar images of femininity and the female worker — Fernández manages to blend forcefulness and stillness into her brand of revelation. The two large, untitled paintings depicting her body in muscular heels, beset — I don’t know how else to say it — by laundry on a clothesline, show no human face. The face has been smothered, disappearing into a wavering white sheet. The even larger painting shown here between those two, Untitled, a documentation of Jennifer Locke’s 2007 Artists’ Television Access performance in which she covered her body in glue, reveals a lattice or an amorphous web around Locke’s face, making it hard to tell if it’s the skin or the glue that’s melting. The works on paper displayed here — also performance documentations — lack the forcefulness of the paintings. But don’t miss the video installation, where balloons are popped like they’ve never been popped before.

TELA ARAÑA TELA Through Aug. 9. Wed.–Sat., noon–5 p.m., and by appointment. Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF. (415) 255-5971, www.luggagestoregallery.org

Clean Energy Act makes ballot

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July 29, 2008

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The San Francisco Clean Energy Act isn’t the only charter amendment on the November ballot, but it’s already shaping up to be the political lightning rod of this fall’s election.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. sent out mailers opposing the measure even before the Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 on July 22 to place it on the Nov. 4 ballot. Mayor Gavin Newsom also announced his opposition to the act moments after Assemblymember Mark Leno, former San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal, and a cadre of progressive supervisors announced their support for it on the steps of City Hall.

Authored by Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, the Clean Energy Act requires San Francisco to fulfill 51 percent of its electricity needs through renewable sources by 2017. That requirement rises to 75 percent by 2030, and to 100 percent, “or the greatest amount technologically feasible or practicable,” by 2040.

The SF Clean Energy Act also mandates that a feasibility study be undertaken to look at the best way to provide clean, green energy, which could lead to PG&E losing its stranglehold on energy if the study finds public power to be the best option.

Explaining the importance of mandating a feasibility study, Mirkarimi said, “Otherwise PG&E has a monopoly here until the planet dies.”

Supporters say it is important for San Francisco to set up a model that others can follow. “As goes San Francisco, so goes the state of California, and so goes the nation,” Peskin said at the July 22 rally, just before the Board voted to place the act on the ballot. “This is a time when people can change the destiny of the planet.”

Moments after that rally ended, Mayor Newsom took a minute to explain his opposition.

“We have other things we should be focusing on,” Newsom told reporters at a press conference at the War Memorial Building to announce housing bonds for veterans. “Let’s call it what it is. It’s a power takeover of PG&E,” he said.

But the elected officials and myriad organizations who showed up at City Hall to support the Clean Energy Act say that public vs. private power is not the main issue.

“The public power considerations have been drafted in a thoughtful and reasonable way,” Leno told the crowd. “It would involve study after study after study, and testimony from experts.”

Leno noted that 42 million Americans have public power, and if San Francisco did turn to public power, it would be embracing something as American as mom and apple pie. “Unlike their private power company counterparts, public power systems serve only one constituency: their customers,” Leno said.

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval opined that government is better able to assume renewable energy risks. “The private industry is not going to take that risk,” Sandoval said. “It’s always going to take the cheap way out, which is fossil fuels.

Others warned the audience not to be swayed by PG&E’s anti–Clean Energy campaign, which Newsom’s chief political consultant Eric Jaye is working on.

“This is not some crazy takeover scheme,” Leal said. “It’s about protecting the environment and the rights of San Franciscans and their rate payers.”

The Clean Energy Act has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, San Francisco Tomorrow, ACORN, the San Francisco Green Party, the League of Young Voters, Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice, the San Francisco Green Party, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education and a supervisorial candidate in District 9, described showing “An Inconvenient Truth” to the eighth-grade science class he teaches. “What can I say to my kids — we don’t have the policies in place to mitigate the damage they see?”

The Sierra Club’s John Rizzo noted, “This act insures that San Francisco is at the center of this economy. Not in Japan, China, or Germany. It will be here.”

Aliza Wasserman of the League of Young Voters stated that “PG&E is not investing $1 in renewable energy beyond state mandates, and they lobby against measures to raise those mandates.”

Click-click, bag-bag: Procrastinate with style

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July 29, 2008

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By Dona Bridges

Everyday fashion via sfstyle.blogspot.com

Rejoice, voyeurs and procrastinators! I have found a new timesuck for you. My longtime perusal of Jezebel, Fashionista.com, and Facehunter led me to the truly amazing wastes of time that are personal and street fashion/style blogs. I gobble them up like candy, and during some of my over-consumption sessions I’ve managed to find a few that deal with Bay Area fashion specifically:

Rumi mugs on fashiontoast.com

Coquetteis a general fashion and style blog by SF writer Natalie Zee Drieu, with some coverage of local designers and stores.

SF Indie Fashion concentrates on local independent designers, stores and events.

SFBayStyle is a local fashion e-zine/blog with multiple contributors, many of whom are based in the Peninsula; it has a slightly more mainstream focus.

Fashiontoast is the personal style page of SF girl Rumi, with lots of pretty pictures of her in Kate Moss-ish getups, along with links and reviews relating to fashion.

SFStyle does street fashion ala Facehunter, except with tons of hilarious analysis and commentary.

Streetfancy is another street fashion blog, very heavy on nightlife coverage and very recognizable locals like Merkley. Sadly, it hasn’t been updated in almost six months.

You didn’t expect to actually get any work done today, did you? You’re welcome.

PG&E’s PUC appointee

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July 29, 2008

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The Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors voted Monday to forward the appointment of Nora Vargas to the SF Public Utilities Commission, without recommendation. The three supervisors on the committee (Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, and Bevan Dufty) all expressed concern that Vargas’ lack of experience with local politics and public utilities issues might be a setback should she fill the seat.

Vargas is director of Latino Issues Forum, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group, with offices in Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. LIF works on healthcare reform, educational issues, and consumer rights for immigrants and Latino populations. Vargas would fill the ratepayer advocate seat on the PUC.

Vargas, when questioned by the Rules Committee, said she felt confident of her ability to act independently of her appointing authority, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and that she would put ratepayers and consumers first. When asked if she’d be able to push back against powerful entities like Pacific Gas and Electric, which takes an active interest in many things the SFPUC control, Vargas cited her experience advocating on behalf of ratepayers at the California Public Utilities Commission.

We know PG&E likes to spread their money and influence throughout the city. In this case, between 2004 and 2006, PG&E has given $150,000 to Latino Issues Forum, as part of their community grantmaking.

This is the same kind of giving that would presumably end should San Francisco voters approve the Clean Energy Act this November. “We no longer will be contributing to San Francisco’s non-profits and service organizations,” PG&E’s Brandon Hernandez told a June 27 meeting of the Rule Committee, at which they voted to put the Clean Energy Act on the November ballot. The measure calls for San Francisco to move toward 100 percent clean and renewable energy, possibly through public construction and ownership, thus putting PG&E out of business in this city.

Additionally, Guillermo Rodriguez, Jr., former public relations flak for PG&E, is on the board of Latino Issues Forum (along with two other private utility executives.) Rodriguez left PG&E to head the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which also receives lots and lots of PG&E’s money on a regular basis.

Vargas’ appointment to the SFPUC is up for approval by the full Board of Supervisors at today’s meeting, along with Newsom’s four other appointments – Ann Moller Caen, FX Crowley, Francesca Vietor, and Dick Sklar. Sklar, at the last PUC meeting, withdrew his candidacy for the seat.

Local Artist of the Week: Michelle Blade

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July 28, 2008

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LOCAL ARTIST Michelle Blade
TITLE Untitled (Celebration)
THE STORY Using Dura-lar as her primary work surface, Blade paints in gestural and restrained styles, highlighting the extreme variances between her subjects. Bringing to mind Romantic sublimity, she accentuates nature’s vastness while expressing a harmonious human connection with it.
BIO Blade was born in Los Angeles and received an MFA from California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Park Life, and Electric Works. She has also shown in Philadelphia and Copenhagen.
SHOW “The Elliptical Good-Kind,” through Aug. 8. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Jack Hanley Gallery, 395 Valencia, SF. (415) 522-1623, www.jackhanley.com
WEB SITE www.michelleblade.com

SF Flood Watch

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July 25, 2008

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Yeah, we know. It hasn’t rained in months and fires, not floods, are on your mind.

But we couldn’t help noticing that 16 months after the Guardian broke the news that San Francisco is the only city in the Bay Area that does not have a flood map, (even though its surrounded by water on three sides, and sea level is on the rise, thanks to climate change), the Board of Supervisors is deciding whether to authorize enrollment in the National Flood Insurance Program and establish a floodplain management program.

The way things stand, the City has a map of “subsidence areas,” but not much else.

Right now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing a Flood Insurance Rate Map for the City and County of SF.

That map, which should be published in early 2009, will provide flood risk information for insurance and floodplain management purposes.

It could also affect development in SF.

As the ordinance that Sup. Sean Elsbernd authored notes, “FEMA’s publication of a final FIRM for San Francisco may affect new development in San Francisco, especially renovation and reuse of finger piers.”
Elsbernd’s legislation “urges the Port of San Francisco and FEMA to develop, before that final map gets published, long-term floodplain management controls that both address any flooding hazard risks and allow the City to implement the Waterfront Land Use Plan and the Capital Plan…and achieve the goals of that Plan, including the preservation of historic piers.”

Summing up SF’s historic rally for clean energy

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July 23, 2008

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By Bruce B. Brugmann and Janna Brancolini (Scroll down for Jean Dibble’s photo essay of the rally and comments by the speakers)

It was a historic rally Tuesday on the City Hall steps to kick off the third initiative aimed at bringing clean energy and public power to San Francisco.

As our photo essay shows, there was a formidable and diverse array of politicians and environmental and social justice organizations lined up with their signs and speeches to support the measure.

Five supervisors, including the board president, spoke at the rally (Ross Mirkarimi, Aaron Peskin, Tom Ammiano, Bevin Dufty, and Gerardo Sandoval) and then went into a board meeting in City Hall and hours later voted with two other colleagues (Sophie Maxwell and Chris Daly) to put the pioneering initiative on the November 2008 ballot. The vote was 7-4, with Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Michaela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, and Jake McGoldrick voting against. The rally and the vote were cannon shots heard round the city, the state, and the nation.

Susan Leal, former general manager of the SF Public Utilities Commission, made her first public appearance since her dismissal by Mayor Newsom, at the urging of PG&E, for her moves toward public power. The Sierra Club, which fought the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park a century ago and still wants to tear the dam down, was standing tall with the group (John Rizzo).

All in all, it was one of the most impressive starts to a tough initiative campaign that i have seen in 42 years of covering City Hall for the Guardian. More: having covered the clean energy/public power beat since l969 and our first expose of the PG&E/Raker Act scandal, I think this initiative and this emerging campaign has an excellent chance of winning in November. Remember: when the public power movement revved up in the late l990s, it faced a PG&E-friendly mayor (Willie Brown), a PG&E friendly City Attorney (Louise Renne, whose husband worked for a downtown law firm getting big PG&E money) and a PG&E-friendly Board of Supervisors (only Tom Ammiano and the late Sue Bierman were pro-public power) and had to go around City Hall by going the route of a Municipal Utility District (MUD) ala the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (MUD). This time around, the board turned against PG&E and the city attorney’s office drafted the initiative for the board president and an emerging mayoral candidate.

The November ballot is filled with the juicy issues that bring out the voters: Obama, seven supervisorial races, and a raft of good initiatives aimed at dealing with major city problems (an affordable housing plan, two new tax plans focused on bringing in revenue from the wealthy, a big bond act to rebuild San Francisco General hospital, and the green energy and public power plan.) This time around, clean energy and public power are in the news and the media carried the story widely. PG&E is more worried than ever before and is already launched an early carpet bombing campaign and setting up astroturf and greenwashing operations allegro furioso. And their operatives are out and about and lurking everywhere. On guard!

The Jean Dibble photo essay

Julian Davis, campaign chair, leads off the event and introduces the speakers.
The group stretching across the steps from left to right: representatives from the SF Green Party, the Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash Network, the Sierra Club, Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, Julian Davis of San Francisco Tomorrow, John Rizzo of the Sierra Club (speaking), Mirkarimi,
Sierra Club, Green Action, Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash, League of Young/Pissed Off Voters, more Sierra Club, Global Exchange, Power Vote, and League of Young Voters. (Not pictured in this photo were some l5 people from ACORN.

Another overview of the group with Davis at the microphone.

Assemblyman Mark Leno: “Jimmy Carter predicted 30 years ago that by 2000 we could be down from 40 per cent dependence on foreign oil to 20 per cent dependence. We didn’t listen. Instead we were up to 60 per cent by 2000 and now we’re pushing 70 per cent…This measure will take our fate out of PG&E’s hands and put it into the hands of our communities, who have a profound stake in providing clean, sustainable, reliable, and reasononably priced electric services.”

Former PUC General Manager Susan Leal: “This initiative is about protecting the environment and the rights of San Franciscans and their ratepayers…It’s 167 miles (from San Francisco) to Hetch Hetchy (valley.). The first 140 miles of movement is cheaper than the last 27 miles because PG&E controls it. There’s an economic piece and an environmental piece. We have the technology–geothermal and solar trough. How are you going to move that power? We aren’t going to be able to make it (financially) because PG&E jacks up the rates on the last 27 miles. In 20l5 they’re jacking them up again…this is taking back what is ours.”

Sup. Ross Mikarimi, co-author of the initiative: “This is not a ‘hostile’ take over,”he said. This is a “meaured way to make the city l00 per cent green and clean in 20 years. This act mandates a feasibility study on how we can provide green and clean energy…otherwise PG&E has a monopoly here until the planet dies.”

Sup. Aaron Peskin, board president and co-author of the measure: “It’s a very profound thought. This is a time when people (and San Francisco) can change the destiny of the planet…As goes San Francisco, so goes California. As goes California, so goes the nation.”

Sup. Tom Ammiano, author of two previous public power initiatives: “This issue has a sordid history….500 missing ballots (in the first election), where did they go? …It involves environmental justice. Some have called the (green movement) the Queenhouse effect.” He then said PG&E is avaricious, immoral, and takes homophobic measures. “It wants to shoot the messenger.” He concluded, “This is our time. We’re going to win. We’ll keep the lights on for years.”

Sup. Bevin Dufty: PG&E’s utility undergrounding system is “an example of PG&E mismanaging things.” He said people in his district were without electricity for 24-48 hours. “This is a referendum for change.”

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval: “As we’re leaving office, a lot of us want this to be our crown jewel. ..Government works. Government works well because government is better able to assume risk. There is still a lot of risk in renewwable energy, investments, and so on. The private industry is not going to take that risk. It’s always going to take the cheap way out, which is fossil fuels.”

Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, said that children in our schools were affected by the ramifications of PG&E’s monopoly.

John Rizzo of the Sierra Club: “(Al) Gore said the future of civilization is at stake. Gore’s challenge is a moral one–one that we’ve embraced in San Francisco.” He said that “renewable energy and the green movement will change the world’s economy. Not in Japan, China, or Germany. It will be here.”

Another overview photo.

Aliza Wasserman of the League of Young/Pissed Off Voters: She warned of PG&Es propaganda campaign claiming to be green. “Take a step back and think about where they’re investing. PG&E is not investing one dollar in renewable energy beyond state mandates and they lobby against measures to raise those mandates.
PG&E is one per cent solar, one per cent wind, and 98 per cent hot air.”

Nicholas Perez, my l4-year-old grandson from Santa Barbara, attended the rally with his dog Charlie.
Early on, as the speakers warmed up on PG&E, Charley summed up PG&E’s position eloquently. He made a timely deposit on the sidewalk in front of the rally. (Nicholas cleaned it up quickly.) Much more to come,

B3, still watching the fumes from the Potrero Hill power plant from my office window at the bottom of Potrero Hill, courtesy of PG&E and Mayor Gavin Newsom

P.S. Incidental question: how can Newsom pretend to be the “green” mayor and be the “green” candidate for governor when he buckles under to PG&E so ignominously? He’s buckled twice to PG&E, first by flip flopping on the Potrero Hill peakers, then on coming out so strong and so quickly against the Clean Energy Act initiative.
Brugmann’s Law: you can’t be a “green” mayor or a “green” anything if you knuckle under to PG&E on the big green issues.

P.S.: A tip of the Potrero Hill martini glass to the seven supervisors who defied PG&E and voted for clean energy: Aaron Peskin, Ross Mirkarimi, Bevin Dufty, Tom Ammiano, Gerardo Sandoval. Sophie Maxwell, and Chris Daly.
The opposition four will be known from now on as the PG&E Four (Sean Elsbernd, Carmine Chu, Michaela Alioto-Pier, and (gulp) Jack McGoldrick). Jake? Jake? What happened to you? Can you please explain? It’s not too late to change your position.

Between two worlds and then some

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July 23, 2008

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

There have been books, documentaries, feature films, and more than one play about Ishi, the last "wild" California Indian who emerged from the hills of northern California in 1911 and became friend and subject of renowned Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and his colleagues. Purportedly the sole surviving member of the Yahi tribe — just one of many indigenous groups decimated by white settlers’ diseases as well as the state-sanctioned genocidal violence against California’s native populations in the late 19th century — Ishi succumbed after five years in San Francisco to the white man’s disease of tuberculosis, only to rise again years later (thanks in part to a famous biography written by Kroeber’s second wife, Theodora) as a symbol of new age spiritualism and the elevation of naturalism as ennobling.

Ishi has been the subject of many stories, then, though none necessarily entirely or even remotely his own. Ishi: The Last of the Yahi — Bay Area playwright and Theatre Rhinoceros artistic director John Fisher’s own foray into the history, legend, and meaning of Ishi — takes the idea of the native Californian’s true story as its supple (if somewhat overworked) premise, boldly mixing fact and fiction as well as contemporary and early 20th-century mores to tell a tale of deeply rooted systemic violence that, among other things, links the production of scientific knowledge and the construction of difference (especially racial and sexual difference) to the all-out homicidal impulses of a colonial system of conquest.

This bracing scope, however, is only fitfully fulfilled by the play’s uneven characterization and somewhat tortuous plot, which attempts to ground the play’s more abstract and polemical aspects in a set of human relationships that reverberate across the cultural gulf separating Ishi from his white hosts. Bounding across roughly 150 years, three cities, and two continents, Ishi throws up promising ideas throughout, but ends by being too disjointed and dramatically hit-and-miss to adequately sustain them.

The play brackets the principal action, set between 1911 and 1916, with an academic job talk and a university undergraduate course dealing with the history and implications of Ishi’s story, interspersed with loud and violent scenes of bounty hunters running down Ishi’s relatives. Alfred Kroeber (Kevin Clarke), and colleagues Thomas Waterman (Aaron Martinsen) and Dr. Saxton Pope (Matt Weimer), meanwhile, move effortlessly between the early 20th century and the contemporary setting, in which terms like "postcolonial multiculturalism" are confidently bandied about.

Our first glimpse of Kroeber is of a highly ambitious man courting the favor of a rich benefactress — Phoebe Apperson Hearst (Kathryn Wood) — to secure the necessary funds for a world-class anthropology museum. He is also a loving husband whose wife, Henrietta (Jeanette Harrison), is slowly dying of TB. Here, Henrietta is supposedly the daughter of Kroeber’s renowned former teacher, Franz Boas, a problematic father figure Kroeber has broken with. These connections will find echoes in the relationships in Ishi’s own family. The deal brokered between Kroeber and Hearst, meanwhile, ends up turning on Kroeber’s success in extracting the personal history of the last Yahi, who has just been discovered half-starved and rummaging for scraps in Oroville.

Played with an air of abiding confidence, subdued sorrow, and quiet humor by Michael Vega, Fisher’s Ishi must negotiate a world in which everyone wants a figurative or literal piece of him but where human sympathy and the growing bonds of friendship have their own pull, bidding him to reveal more of himself. Solidly crafted performances from Clarke and Harrison help anchor the drama in the complexity and heartache of the death-shrouded Kroeber marriage. Martinsen is a persuasive and sympathetic Waterman, while Wood’s turn as a jocular and surprisingly ribald Hearst lends further pluck to an otherwise uneven cast. But at more than three hours, including back-to-back addresses from three characters driving home a moral-laden and convoluted conclusion, there is a leaner play waiting to come out here.

ISHI: THE LAST OF THE YAHI

Wed/23–Sat/26, 8 p.m.; Sun/27, 3 p.m., $15–$35

Theatre Rhinoceros

2926 16th St., SF

(415) 861-5079, www.therhino.org

No Age ways

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July 23, 2008

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER No Age is in dire need of some vulture repellent. The much-acclaimed Los Angeles duo might have been decreed the future of rock by cultural gatekeepers like those yuksters at New Yorker, sailing forth via the freedom-first joys of "Miner" and negativity-bemoaning "Teen Creeps" on their urgent latest, Nouns (Sub Pop), but that doesn’t mean all is peachy keen in No Ageland, says drummer-vocalist Dean Spunt.

"We get e-mails all the time from managers and people who want to make our merch for us — I call them the vultures. Everyone kind of wants a piece of whatever’s going on," explains Spunt, 26, keeping it casual and amiable from LA as he and guitarist Randy Randall, 27, prepare to go on tour. "It’s like, ‘Hey, guys, I can charge you $8 for a shirt.’ I think most bands that aren’t DIY don’t know how much a T-shirt actually costs to make."

No Age happens to print its T’s at a silkscreen shop owned by Spunt’s mother. Making things there — and skate culture — left an impression concerning the hands-on pleasures and tangible economics of doing it yourself. "I really want to keep it fun for us, but it’s also now kind of become our living," Spunt confesses. "I think a lot of the vultures would try to have you not make it so fun. There’s a definite way, a cookie-cutter approach, that people take to music and bands, and I think a lot of people — the vultures I talk about — they just see it as that. It’s, like, ‘Well, hey, this is what bands do.’ But me and Randy don’t really do what bands do."

That goes for everything from taking money from their label to fund tours to renting a bus that costs the same amount a day as a van might per month. "I just like to keep the books clean," Spunt continues. "The whole Minutemen ‘jam econo’ thing — it sort of applies to us, you know."

DIY is far from dead for the band. Spout says he silkscreened No Age’s first seven singles by himself at his mother’s shop, as well as the band’s first "product": a bandanna, which the two ex-Wives members sold along with a DVD-R of art videos during their first tour. As much as any non-self-released album, Nouns reflects those values — born amid punk, fostered by riot grrrl and hardcore, and now nurtured by community at the Smell, in addition to those at like-minded venues like Gilman Project and 21 Grand (the latter is reportedly again under pressure to discontinue regular shows).

"We had an opportunity to record in a nicer studio," Spunt said of Infrasonic in LA and Southern Studios in London. "With Weirdo Rippers [FatCat, 2007] we were limited in terms of what we could do with sound, which is a big part of our band. The reason we’re two people is we kind of like the limitations being put on us so it makes us more creative and stuff, but we wanted to open the sound up a little more with Nouns, and I think we did. The noisier parts got noisier, and the poppier parts got poppier, and it’s a little more direct. The ambient stuff doesn’t run as long, and it just kind of gets you there." Mainly, he adds, they wanted to write songs that were fun to play live.

With Nouns, imagine No Age fingering its predecessors’ punk and post-punk garments longingly when it isn’t generating the larger-than-its-numbers blast of Hüsker Dü or Volcano Suns. The twosome looks directly back to an Alternative Nation for touchstones, while documenting a many-hued spectrum of faces and places in Nouns‘ accompanying booklet, snapping haunts and audiences that look startlingly alike, regardless of whether they were captured in Portland, Ore., or London. You might draw a line from one city, one space, or one gen to the next — from the 60-year-olds Spunt says write them fan e-mails to the 14-year-olds who might materialize at the all-ages shows. "It’s awesome," marvels Spunt. "It sort of goes with the name, I guess."

As for their future as "DIY professionals," as Spunt puts it, the pair simply want to keep making whatever they like. "I’m sure someday that will not be cool," he offers with a chuckle. "I’m waiting for the backlash."

NO AGE

With Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda

Mon/28, 8 p.m., $13

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

Also Club Sandwich two-year anniversary

With Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda, and KIT

Tues/29, 9 p.m., $8

Lobot Gallery

1800 Campbell, Oakl.

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

SIDEBAR 1

A BLAST, FAST

CAROLINER

More unforgettable noise pageantry from underground OG Grux. With Hans Grusel’s Krankenkabinet, Loachfillet, Amphibious Gestures, and Bones. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

THE DUKE SPIRIT

That’s the spirit of UK retro rock with girlish sighs. With Aarrows and Scene of Action. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill,1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

EDGETONE NEW MUSIC SUMMIT

The seventh annual experimental music hoedown gathers such diverse players as No More Twist!, a "sound and light lie detector" No More Twist!, local Chinese American hardcore unit Say Bok Gwai, Moe! Staiano’s Mute Socialite; High Mayhem–ite Carlos Santistevan’s the Late Severa Wires, and Birgit Ulher Trio with Gino Robair and Tim Perkis. Wed/23–Sat/26 at Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF. See www.edgetonemusicsummit.org for details.

WYCLEF JEAN

The ex-Fugee brings out a full band. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $35–<\d>$50. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

TOILING MIDGETS

Up from the ashes of Negative Trend and the Sleepers. With Cloud Archive and VIR. Fri/25, 10 p.m., $10–<\d>$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

HARVEY MILK

Harvey Milk lives — in the form of his namesake Athens, Ga., art-metal band, which plays live for the first time in SF. Sun/27, 8 p.m., $14. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

Sadsters unite over blown speakers

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July 23, 2008

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Who leaves a perfectly good acoustic guitar in the street? Hard to say, but Kevin DeBroux, the fellow behind the elusive downercore of Pink Reason, found one on the sidewalk during his first week living in New York City, where he spoke from by phone earlier this month: "I picked it up and thought, ‘Nobody leaves their guitar on the street like this!’<0x2009>" The forlorn instrument quickly joined the modest guitarsenal with which DeBroux realizes his dirgy, psychedelic visions, ranging from slow-as-folk to blisteringly quick workouts, onto 4- and 8-track cassette machines.

DeBroux’s origins lie in the Brett Favre–frenzied town of Green Bay, Wis., but he also lived in Kurgan, Siberia, as a teenager from 1992 to ’93, where he tuned in to Russian punk bands like Grazhdanskaya Oborona, that, along with the sounds of ’80s American hardcore, had a major bearing on the shape of his eventual band’s bummer buzz. Pink Reason started simply enough after several prior bands, including Hatefuck. "I ended up driving back to Green Bay one night when there was this huge snowstorm, so I stayed with my friend Shaun [Handlen] and we started Pink Reason," DeBroux said. Handlen eventually moved to China, and Pink Reason has since consisted of DeBroux and whatever musicians, instruments, and recording resources are within reach.

His shape-shifting folkstuff was a shade too difficult for Wisconsin. For several years, he released only CD-Rs and had trouble being taken seriously as a musician in his home state. "It was kind of thought of as a joke," he said. "We played shows, but it was sporadic because nobody wanted to book us." When DeBroux sent a copy of his self-released 2006 seven-inch "Throw It Away" to the Siltbreeze Records–associated Siltblog for review, however, excited non-Cheesehead ears quickly got hip to his sensibilities. About a month later he was contacted by Tom Lax, Siltbreeze proprietor, with an offer to put out an album.

That record was last year’s Cleaning the Mirror, a six-song LP of ghostly, depressed low-fi folk moans and mysterious tones: it’s hard to tell whether the high-pitched twinkle that accompanies his exclamation of "It’s all over now!" consists of birds in an arboretum, a ringing phone, or a bizarrely contorted guitar passage. DeBroux put together his 2006-07 releases using older material from the aforementioned CD-Rs, but this year’s singles include new recordings — the flip to "Winona" (Woodsist) and both sides of "Borrowed Time" (Fashionable Idiots) are fresh cuts.

Pink Reason’s continual flux in lineup and style is one of DeBroux’s biggest live selling points: "You can take a song and change it to the point that the audience doesn’t even realize it’s the song that you’re doing," he noted. Still, it’s hard to tell that new single "Borrowed Time" is from the same guy who made Cleaning the Mirror: where that record was slow, stark and drawn-out, "Borrowed Time" is blistering, muddled pop running slightly more than a minute.

Garage-punk aficionados’ ears have lately turned toward Pink Reason and other Midwestern speaker-blown pop bands like Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit, to whose Columbus, Ohio, ‘hood DeBroux moved for a year after a grand night of acid-dropping. He served a tour-long gig as bass player for Psychedelic Horseshit, and now plans an Australian winter tour with Clockcleaner, as well as the release of a split with Hue Blanc’s Joyless Ones and a new LP. Nonetheless, sadsters needn’t worry about all these new friendships, or his description of the new record as "more upbeat": the subterranean, inward-gazing murk will surely assume a form as compelling as those it’s assumed so far. *

PINK REASON

Sat/26, 9:30 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

Fishing for hooks

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July 23, 2008

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Jackson, Miss., might not top everyone’s cities-to-see list, but Juan Velazquez of Chino band Abe Vigoda makes it sound like a damn fun place to play a show. "Everyone was really psyched, and there were a bunch of younger people there," raved Velazquez by phone while en route from Atlanta to Athens, Ga. "It was really, really fun." He and the rest of the band are pretty young themselves: they’re currently taking a break from their work and collegiate studies to tour across the states with their cloudy pop homies in No Age, fellow fixtures at the Smell in downtown Los Angeles.

Making time has allowed the four-year-old Abe Vigoda some taking of time, especially with the recording process. They just released their third full-length, Skeleton (PPM), which sharpens their tightly wound, clanging sensibilities into a set of songs more aggressively constructed than anything they’ve committed to tape before.

Various listeners and critics have been trumpeting Abe Vigoda’s racket as "tropical punk/pop," a label that the band sees little reason to complain about, even if it is arbitrary pigeonholing to a certain degree. "People like to make up genres for things, and I’m a little tired of it, especially because a lot of our new songs aren’t like that," Velazquez said. "But nobody’s calling it ‘shit punk’ or ‘shit rock,’ so it’s OK." Shit it is not. The record reveals itself to be a few shades darker than its murky production on repeat listens, but its enthusiasm and refined approach makes Skeleton Abe Vigoda’s first record that allows listeners to dig deeper. Songs like "Cranes" and "Hyacinth Girls" have an Afro-pop beat, care of drummer Reggie Guerrero and corroborated by David Reichart’s bass playing, and the zap-gun guitars of "Endless Sleeper" collide in rousing, unusually anthemic fashion.

To produce their wire-crossed jangle, Velazquez explains that the group’s other singer-guitarist Michael Vidal plays "thick-sounding and full" chords on his guitar in standard tuning, while Velazquez employs an alternate tuning that he’s been using since 2007’s Kid City (Olfactory) and a Ricky Wilson–esque employment of single, finger-picked notes. "It’s more jarring live because we’re playing very high frequencies that are off from each other — harsh, ringing, and kinda kraut rock–sounding."

Although the group has become more traditional in its song structure, it’s not really "pop" that they put together: their cataclysmic, yelping noise of yore has given way to a polyrhythmic pogo twist with opportunities aplenty for fist-shaking and epic metalhead finger-waving.

ABE VIGODA

With No Age and Mika Miko

Mon/28, 8 p.m., $13

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

Also Club Sandwich’s second anniversary with No Age, Mika Miko, and KIT

Tues/29, 7 p.m., $8

Lobot Gallery

1800 Campbell, Oakl.

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

For more on the show and No Age, see this week’s Sonic Reducer.

At the Gates again

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July 23, 2008

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There was a time, maybe two decades ago, when a subgenre called melodic death metal would have been considered a ridiculous oxymoron on par with something like smooth industrial or power–New Age. These days it’s possible to look back on this mid-1990s development as the source of that decade’s most enduring metal as well as the unwitting inspiration for some of this decade’s worst.

Ground zero for this unofficial movement was Gothenburg, Sweden, home to In Flames, Dissection, and At the Gates, whose 1995 swan song, Slaughter of the Soul (Earache), is probably the quintessential melodic death metal album and one of the greatest so-called extreme metal albums of all time, period.

It’s not just my opinion: there are also the countless bands — Shadows Fall, Darkest Hour, the Black Dahlia Murder, and seemingly hundreds of others — who have tried to imitate At the Gates in the years since. There was a time several years ago when every other new metal release — especially if it was American and had any sort of hardcore or metalcore slant to it — paid a degree of unspoken homage to the Gothenburg sound that At the Gates helped put on the map. Some of these bands have achieved reasonable commercial success, playing the Ozzfest’s second stage or getting airplay on whatever stations there are that play music videos anymore.

The thing is, none of those other hacks is ever going to match Slaughter, an inspired, magical album made by a bunch of desperate-sounding, beer-gulping Scandinavian twentysomethings.

"We wanted to make a short, intense, and to-the-point kinda album," explains guitarist Anders Björler via e-mail in May. "We had [Slayer’s] Reign in Blood as a reference somehow."

Slaughter was the band’s fourth and final album in a brief career that covered the first half of the 1990s — they broke up in 1996. Their earlier albums were a sometimes-confusing mix of guttural thrash, classical-tinged riffs, lopsided time signatures, and even the occasional violin interlude. By the time of Slaughter, though, they had streamlined their sound into something leaner and more direct. The breakneck thrash tempos and strategically placed tempo shifts may owe a debt to speed-metal bands like Slayer and Kreator, but there’s a heroic classical tinge to their guitar riffs that adds another, more epic dimension.

Then there are Tomas Lindberg’s tortured lyrics and vocals, which further distinguished ATG from their peers. Other bands growled and grunted about Satan, dead bodies, or the evils of multinational corporations. Lindberg’s strangled shriek, on the other hand, conveys a genuine sense of psychological torment. His sudden "aaaoooohhhh" during the intro to "Suicide Nation" is priceless.

"I think some of the hype came after we split up," writes Björler of the album’s reputation. Possibly, but there’s also the fact that they went out on top, without subjecting fans to a slow decline or gradual sellout à la their peers In Flames, who smelled a crossover market in the wake of bands like Slipknot’s success and watered their sound down accordingly.

After ATG split, Björler and his brother, bassist Jonas, went on to form the Haunted — who are still active but currently taking a break in between recording and touring. That partly explains the timing of their current reunion tour. Writes Björler, "We didn’t want to do this reunion when we turn 50 years old."

Instead, he continues, "it feels nice with a short reunion to say farewell in a proper way," aware that they broke up suddenly the first time around. "It’s only this tour, and it’s a sort of ‘farewell, last chance’ to see us thing. I think we ended it with a classic album. It would be hard to top."

AT THE GATES

With Municipal Waste, Darkest Hour, and Repulsion

Fri/25, 8 p.m., $27.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 421-TIXS

www.ticketmaster.com

Disco of the Gods

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July 23, 2008

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I use my favorite pair of scissors to cut out photos of dancers and models from the late ’70s and early ’80s. Sometimes the designs and imagery on the other side of the magazine paper are more compelling and attractive than the literal combos of flesh and clothing that produce the silhouette.

The past is the present is what you make it. So Walter Benjamin and Fredric Jameson said, in torturously profound terms. For a sonic illustration, look and listen no further than Hercules and Love Affair’s self-titled debut (Mute), a contender if not outright champion in the 100-point rating realms of metacritic.com and Pitchfork Media.

When critics aren’t running from the phobic fantasies of joining soulless fuck zombies at the Continental Baths that Hercules and Love Affair apparently provokes in fevered, perhaps repressed, imaginations, they’re keyword-searching variants of "gay," "AIDS," and "disco" to provide shorthand blog-banal references for the album’s sound. Thus the usually vaguely defined spirit of Arthur Russell is invoked more often than the influence of living, breathing Kevin Saunderson, even though Hercules and Love Affair‘s "You Belong" is like a whiteface Goth niece-nephew of Inner City’s "Good Life." Thus no one compares Antony Hegarty’s countertenor to Boy George’s and wonders if Hegarty is given more respect and awards simply because he honors pretense over humor. Hercules and Love Affair sports two, maybe three of 2008’s most glorious songs. On "Hercules’ Theme," "Athene," and "Blind," core member and songwriter Andrew Butler crafts superb horn and string arrangements and layers them over a live rhythm section to produce swank, strutting syncopation. The sound is lush and swoony — as unique as the fluorescent pastels of the disc’s cover art — and unlike anything else floating out of speakers and headphones at the moment. I can’t resist comparing the time-lapse vaudevillian blooms at the close of "Hercules’ Theme" to "Doin’ the Do" by Betty Boo — where are you? — if only to add some irreverence to the poker-faced hosannas for the group. But Butler is a rare talent — one who’ll flourish the further he gets from art school.

In theory, Butler’s communal approach to assigning vocalists — which tweaks an earlier landmark club crossover, Massive Attack’s 1991 Virgin effort, Blue Lines — should yield a singing bouquet to match his arrangements. Hegarty is Hercules and Love Affair‘s most florid singer. His strained emoting suits his tunes on the disc better than any Antony and the Johnsons track, yet not once does his falsetto match the sensuality and soul that his antecedent Sylvester brings to a song like "I Need Somebody to Love Tonight." Kim Ann Foxman inhabits Athene in a song of the same name, but stumbles off-key through the plodding "Iris." Butler does a good Russell in "This Is My Love," but no vocalist can rescue the obvious lyric of "True False/Fake Real."

Hercules and Love Affair revive the silhouettes if not always the spirits of disco’s and house’s native New Yorkers. At best, they create their own haunted wonderland. At worst, they host a pose party that’s the musical equivalent of the narcissism that motored Shortbus (2006). Once upon a time, Manhattan was wilder and hungrier.

HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR

Sat/26, 9 p.m., $16–$20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

Testimonies

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July 23, 2008

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Italy seldom figures much in Holocaust studies, as its Jewish population was relatively small (just under 50,000) and only about one-fifth failed to survive the war — even after far more anti-Semitic German occupiers and policies wrested power from Benito Mussolini in 1943.

But statistically limited evil is still evil. Italian (even papal) complicity in crimes against Jewry has weighed more heavily on the national conscience lately, if a recent spate of meditations on the subject in various media is any indication. This year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the 28th, includes a program of films devoted to the subject. Titled "Italian Jews During Fascism," it presents a mix of documentary, historical drama, and contemporary fiction.

As elsewhere, the history of Jews in Italy has run a gamut from bad to worse to tolerable and back again. Propelled by basic racism as well as that "Christ-killer" concept favored by early Biblical-text revisionists and Mel Gibson, sacred and secular powers-that-were targeted Italian Jews (among others) during the Crusades and the Inquisition, then literally walled up their Roman populace in a ghetto for 300 years. By the time the extreme ghettoization was abolished, in the mid-19th century, Italian Jews (at least outside Rome) were fairly well integrated into society. They certainly were by 1938, when Mussolini announced a slew of anti-Semitic laws after years of appearing indifferent to Hitler’s particular racial obsession. ("Il Duce" hadn’t been impressed with the Nazis until his own empire-building ambitions required an alliance.)

Italian Jews were abruptly barred from serving in the military, and from attending or working at schools and universities. Thousands lost their jobs due to knee-jerk reactions from employers anxious to toe the repressive party line. These hard times got much worse when the weakened nation ceded primary control to the Nazis, and "Il Duce" became a mere figurehead for the "Republic of Salo." Mussolini rubber-stamped the mass arrest of Jews, mostly in the occupied north. Nearly 7,000 were shipped off to concentration camps. The question of what ordinary Italians — let alone the Vatican — did to oppose this murderous sweep remains a blot on the country’s 20th-century history.

The Jewish Film Festival’s quartet of related features offer various perspectives on these events. Most direct is Mimmo Calopresti’s 2006 documentary Volevo Solo Vivere (I only wanted to live), a compilation of latter-day testimonies assembled from interviews recorded for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation. Focusing on survivors (mostly female) of Auschwitz who were between the ages of four and 30 at the time, it provides first-person stories that range from poignant to hair-raising. Meeting a life love on the train en route to the camp, enduring Mengele’s "medical experiments," being forced to walk one’s father to the gas chamber. These precise recollections are illustrated not just by brutally familiar footage of starved prisoners and piled corpses, but also by earlier photo-album glimpses of family life.

Dubbed "the Italian Schindler" when his deeds first won recognition, Giorgio Perlasca was a Paduan former soldier and disillusioned ex-Fascist working abroad to procure supplies for the Hungarian army in Axis-occupied 1944 Hungary. Posing as a Spanish diplomat, he bullied and bluffed his way into rescuing and hiding thousands of Budapest Jews despite a Nazi policy of deportation and extermination. This extraordinary tale is dramatized in Perlasca: An Italian Hero. With an Ennio Morricone score and Luca Zingaretti in the title role, Alberto Negrin’s 2001 made-for-TV film is compelling. Yet it’s also overworked, painting Perlasca as a one-dimensional superhero — albeit a balding and pudgy one. The result lands somewhere between the harshness of Schindler’s List (1993), the hysterical melodrama of Black Book (2006), and the maudlin treacle of Life Is Beautiful (1997).

A fascinating footnote, the 2007 hour-long documentary Tulip Time: The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano tells the story of three Dutch sisters who became enormously popular in Italy as harmonizing swing vocalists. Mussolini was a fan, though even that couldn’t save them from abrupt career termination and poverty once their Jewish background was discovered. The 2003 novelistic drama Facing Windows, which had a theatrical release, finds Turkish Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek departing somewhat from his usual gay themes. Giovanna Mezzogiorno stars as an unhappy working-class Roman woman whose husband brings home a disoriented older man (the late Massimo Girotti, a screen veteran since 1940) who turns out to have concentration camp numbers on his arm. *

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

The 28th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 24–Aug. 11 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk.; CineArts @ Palo Alto Square, 3000 El Camino Real, bldg 6, Palo Alto; and the Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. Tickets (most shows $12) and additional information are available at www.sfjff.org

“The Exiles” on Main Street

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July 23, 2008

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TAKE ONE For a sharp perspective on Kent Mackenzie’s neglected 1961 classic The Exiles, push aside most contemporary reviews heralding the film’s rerelease. In the spring of 1962, Benjamin Jackson reviewed Mackenzie’s debut feature for Film Quarterly, and began by noting something no one today seems to think worth mentioning: only 28 years before The Exiles came out, the American Indians who starred in the movie weren’t even considered citizens by the US government.

That basic fact should be at the center of any appraisal of The Exiles, and yet, with the exception of Armond White in the New York Press, most 21st-century critics don’t contextualize the racist history and cultural prejudices the film confronts; forces that have since threatened to erase it. Almost 50 years and countless Sundance Film Festivals after Mackenzie’s look at Native American life in the city and off the rez, it’s still — unfortunately — a one-of-a-kind work. Just as Milestone Films’ successful release of Charles Burnett’s 1977 Killer of Sheep exposed American independent cinema’s lack of artistic imagination and societal insight, the return of The Exiles is partly inspired by the utter failure of American filmmakers to follow Mackenzie’s lead.

In Another Country (Vintage), first published one year before The Exiles‘ release, James Baldwin writes of a New York “so familiar and so public that it became, at last, the most despairingly private of cities,” adding: “One was continually being jostled, yet longed, at the same time, for a human touch; and if one was never — it was the general complaint — left alone in New York, one had, still, to fight very hard in order not to perish of loneliness.” The Exiles tracks a similar fight in Los Angeles, as waged by pregnant Yvonne (Yvonne Williams) while her husband Homer (Homer Nish) goes carousing through bars at Third and Main. Mackenzie follows both with a Weegee-like attention to detail that alights on everything from mechanical monkeys that blow bubbles to boisterous queens at a bar.

This major work of American cinema was created from film stock salvaged from a plane crash and short ends from I Love Lucy. Its potent original score of lip-biting rock ‘n’ roll is by the Revels, whose “Comanche” was exploited by Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction. Its restoration is by Ross Lipman, who has also rescued Killer of Sheep and the work of Kenneth Anger. Further credit for The Exiles‘ revival belongs to Thom Andersen, whose 2003 survey Los Angeles Plays Itself first brought the film to the attention of a new generation. One year before Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1963), Mackenzie made an unsentimental movie about a woman who goes to the movies — in fact, The Exiles reaches its midway point just as Yvonne watches an intermission jingle that urges people to raid the concession stand. Both Yvonne’s night and this film’s are far from over. (Johnny Ray Huston)

TAKE TWO One reason we watch film noir is to look at the forgotten city. As American crime pictures got grittier, they stumbled from the plush nightclubs of Gilda (1946) to the sticky bars of Kiss Me Deadly (1955). First shot in 1958, Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles is set in the same dilapidated Bunker Hill neighborhood valorized by John Fante and Charles Bukowski. Mackenzie’s ethnographic focus on a small group of urbanized American Indians would seem to place his film in a different league, but then many noir films open with statements not so different from his voice-over: “What follows is the authentic account of 12 hours in the lives of a group of Indians who have come to Los Angeles, California.”

Noir comparisons only go so far in elucidating The Exiles‘ enduring appeal. By focusing on a sloshed night-in-the-life of this group, Mackenzie locates urban malcontent rather than inventing it. After the first of many exquisite evening shots of a long-extinct LA funicular, we’re introduced to Yvonne: her moony face is inexpressive, and her voice-over amplifies her solitude in a bustling marketplace. She explains she’s pregnant and is glad to be having the baby away from the reservation, but worries about her husband Homer’s commitment. Homer’s boys’ club favors a Keroauc-ish jive-talk — with disenfranchisement for heritage, they adapt the “wherever I may roam” frontiersman-speak of the hipster.

Mackenzie wasn’t a native Angeleno, much less an American Indian, but his outsider perspective enlarges The Exiles. If the location details in Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep seem incidental, here they are part of a broader lyrical-documentary design. The fact that we can make out so many prices — mackerel for 21 cents a pound, gas for 27 cents a gallon — is symptomatic of the characters’ hand-to-mouth milieu and Mackenzie’s aesthetic calculus. The filmmaker’s anachronistic tendency to play the peripheries reaches fullest bloom when Homer burns with unnamed anomie, surrounded by the Café Ritz’s unsavory characters. The moody scene is a vivid if intense evocation of the kind of democratic mixing place Mike Davis eulogizes in his 1990 LA history, City of Quartz (Vintage).

If The Exiles anticipates both Jim Jarmusch (the outsider-as-hipster and jukebox soundtrack) and Gus Van Sant (the bender crawl and the combination of voice-over and neorealism), it’s more a sign of Mackenzie’s intuition than his priorities. The bitter irony of the title is that Mackenzie’s characters are exiles from both the past and the future. The director was well aware of City Hall’s redevelopment slate for Bunker Hill when he framed his long-take vistas. “Time is just time to me,” hep-cat Tommy (Tommy Reynolds) muses on voice-over. “I’m doing it outside, so I can do it inside.” Not so for Mackenzie, a true preservationist whose work has now been treated in kind. (Max Goldberg)

THE EXILES

Aug. 1–7

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

Manufacturing Frida

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July 22, 2008

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REVIEW Though overshadowed during her lifetime by her famous muralist husband Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo is one of many examples of driven artists who achieved their icon status posthumously. And, like other historical figures with life stories loaded with tragedy, Kahlo underwent her share of suffering, which makes for great book sales and dramatic film plots. But as anyone who knows a bit of her story beyond her groundbreaking art can attest, she handled the physical and emotional pain with flair: she was a modern, intelligent Mexican woman who, from the 1930s through early ’50s, chose to flamboyantly dress herself in celebration of her cultural ancestry. She was exotic — even among her circles of culture vultures and political activists — and strikingly beautiful, so it’s no wonder that nearly half of her paintings are self-portraits. One thinks she might have wowed herself. Nonetheless, the well-known photographers who caught her on film left more telling documents than her paintings — of someone who radiated charisma and soul.

Before we dismiss a round of would-be Fridamania as an attempt to generate even more profits from Kahlo reproductions on bags and T-shirts, we should remember why she was plucked from history. Currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is the first major American exhibition of Kahlo’s works in nearly 15 years. Last year, for the centennial of Kahlo’s birth, the Palacio De Bellas Artes in Mexico City held a comprehensive show of her artistic accomplishments, along with personal photos and documents. Visitors to SFMOMA’s "Frida Kahlo" — which was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis — will get a similar experience to the Mexican exhibition: beyond almost 50 Kahlo paintings, there is a trove of documents and photographs. Don’t expect to see just the greatest hits, though those are present.

Strange still-lifes — like the pile of bodylike root vegetables in Still Life: Pitahayas (1938) — are displayed alongside bizarre folkloric conglomerations of Aztec mythology, Mexican jungle life, and political figures merged with events from Kahlo’s life. Her portrayals of other people are as mesmerizing as her self-portraits. Portrait of Luther Burbank (1931) presents the odd scene of the elder Burbank sprouting from the soil of a browned landscape. The area where his feet should be is a mass of roots growing into a decaying corpse. He holds a leafy tropical plant — a reference to his horticultural focus. Another compelling work rarely viewed outside of Japan’s Nagoya City Art Museum is Girl with Death Mask, (1938) in which a skull-masked child in a pink dress stands on a barren, sky-dominated expanse with a mask of a tongue-wagging monster at her feet.

When we enter the last rooms of the show, we are greeted with walls and display cases of family photographs, many with Kahlo’s handwritten notes. Two photos of Rivera, from 1929 and 1940, have her lipstick kiss prints on the back, and several other images are marked with pencil or ballpoint doodles. These funny, poignant bits of reality were not meant for public consumption, and the fan is given a deeper view into the real person. Add the early color photos of Kahlo and a home movie of Kahlo and Rivera fawning over and goofing around with each other, and you could begin to think that you actually know her.

So when one views the photos of Kahlo in traction, her strained face attempting to smile, or the pre-tragic pregnancy photos, subjects explored repeatedly in her art suddenly become even more clearly felt. Icons rarely get to be real after their ascension: we don’t want them to be mortal, perish, and take their magnetism away. When Kahlo died in 1954 at 47, a final diary entry read, "I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope to never return." Yet no one wants her to go.

FRIDA KAHLO

Through Sept. 28

Mon.–Tues. and Fri., 10 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs. 10 a.m.–9:45 p.m.; Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–7:45 p.m.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

www.sfmoma.org

Outside the HRC dinner

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July 22, 2008

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OPINION On July 26, the Bay Area’s gay and lesbian elite will gather at the posh Westin St. Francis to raise money for the Human Rights Campaign in the name of securing and protecting LGB rights. Despite flip-flopping its position on a federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which should include protections for gender identity as well as sexual orientation, HRC will rake in money to further advance a version of human rights in the political world of Washington, DC in which transgender and gender-non-conforming people are apparently less than human.

Luckily, there’s a fabulous alternative. Outside the Westin St. Francis we’ll be throwing the "Left Out Party: A Genderful Gay-la" in support of an inclusive ENDA that protects gender identity. Leaders in the city’s progressive community will be partying in the streets in support of our transgender brothers and sisters.

Why outside? The not-so-fabulous truth is that in promoting a noninclusive ENDA, the Human Rights Campaign abandoned the values of equality and inclusion. Transgender Americans need employment nondiscrimination protections at the federal level. Period. A recent study of the transgender community in SF found that 70 percent of transgender women in San Francisco are unemployed. This points to the need for an inclusive ENDA.

When ENDA was being discussed in Congress last autumn, important discussions surrounding political strategy were raised: should we secure legislation that protects all LGBT Americans, or should we compromise the rights of those most vulnerable among us for the gains of many?

A unified front made up of every single prominent LGBT organization nationwide, more than 350 LGBT organizations total, answered in favor of protecting all of us.

Publicly, HRC Executive Director Joe Solomonese promised to transgender activists that the organization would oppose any attempt to introduce a noninclusive ENDA. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the nation’s supposed leading LGBT political organization worked to strip gender identity protections from the bill in the name of "political expediency" and "incrementalism."

Since that decision, trans activists have organized pickets at HRC’s annual dinner in Washington and at subsequent dinners in cities across the country. Here in San Francisco, we are raising the bar.

In our city, prominent local elected officials and political organizations came out in support of an inclusive ENDA. The San Francisco LGBT Pride Committee nominated HRC for its annual "Pink Brick" award. All of the city’s LGBT elected officials, as well as many allies such as City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, are refusing to attend the dinner.

HRC’s failed strategy on ENDA has needlessly divided our community at a time when we are poised to make great gains in civil rights. If any silver lining can be found in this debacle, it’s that a huge majority of queer progressive and even mainstream organizations have come forward to remind everyone that civil rights are not something that can be compromised. That’s a San Francisco value we’re all proud of.

Which is why you’ll find us outside the Westin St. Francis this Saturday — because we want to party with all members of our community. Come join the long list of trannies, queers, gender-fabulous performers, studs, twinks, soft butches, queens, shark femmes, and all fighters for social justice — outside!

SF Pride at Work

SF Pride at Work is an LGBT labor organization.

The verdict stands

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July 22, 2008

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Judge Marla Miller on July 18 rejected attempts by the SF Weekly and its chain owner to overturn the Guardian‘s victory and $16 million jury award in a predatory pricing case.

The ruling marked the end of the first full round of this legal fight and sets the stage for a shift to the California Court of Appeal.

SF Weekly and Village Voice Media had asked Miller to overturn the jury verdict or order a new trial, and the company lawyers spent hours July 8 arguing that the evidence presented in a five-week trial didn’t justify the jury’s decision. They also claimed that Miller had issued improper jury instructions.

Attorneys James Wagstaffe and H. Sinclair Kerr also tried to get the judge to sever the 16-paper chain from the damages part of the case. That would have left the Weekly as the only guilty party. And VVM had admitted that the Weekly has no assets and would be unable to pay the Guardian anywhere near $16 million.

Miller, with little comment, denied both requests.

The defendants have consistently said they plan to appeal.

The case centered around the Guardian‘s charge that the Weekly had for years sold ads below the cost of producing the newspaper for the purpose of injuring the locally owned, independent competitor.

Evidence presented at trial showed that the Weekly had consistently lost money, as much as $2 million a year, since New Times — now known as VVM — bought the paper in 1995.

The evidence also showed that VVM’s executive editor, Michael Lacey, had vowed to put the Guardian out of business, and that Weekly advertising and business staff were instructed to try to take business away from the Guardian, whatever the cost.

And while the VVM lawyers mounted a convoluted legal argument to claim that the parent company wasn’t legally liable for any damages, the trial showed that the senior executives at the Phoenix-based chain were not only aware of the predatory strategy but were active participants in it.

In fact, two senior officers, CFO Jed Brunst and group publisher Scott Tobias, admitted that the SF Weekly would have gone out of business years ago if the chain hadn’t subsidized its operations.

For more details and key documents, go to sfbg.com/lawsuit

2008 Bay Area Playwrights Festival

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July 22, 2008

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PREVIEW Even 32 years after the Playwrights Foundation chose a young Sam Shepard for its first Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 1976, the annual celebration of the script still runs below the radar of the larger local theater-going audience. Perhaps that’s because most fans of the stage want to see a full production — with costumes, sets, and lighting design — rather than the bare-bones staged readings at the festival. Over the decades, the event has played an important role in keeping stages across the country full of vital new works and aiding the budding careers of now-established playwrights such as Pulitzer Prize–winner Nilo Cruz and Liz Duffy Adams, who won critical acclaim with 2002’s Dog Act. (SF’s Crowded Fire is currently premiering her latest, The Listener). Venture off to Fort Mason during the 10-day festival and you can check out the up-and-coming talent. Of particular interest to conspiracy theorists will be Dominic Orlando’s Danny Casolaro Died for You. In the thriller, the writer attempts to suss out the circumstances of his brother’s death. A freelance journalist, Casolaro was found dead in a hotel room in 1991 while investigating labyrinthine connections between spy software company Inslaw, US and Israeli governments, and various Islamic organizations. Marcus Gardley is another promising writer worth getting a peek at. The Yalie who made a name for himself here with the East Bay historical drama Love Is a Dream House in Lorin brings a new work, every tongue must confess, about the burning of black Baptist churches in a small Alabama town during the late 1990s. Proving that there is an art to the reading of the play, popular Bay Area director Amy Glazer takes on Whisper from the Book of Etiquette, Claire Chafee’s look into the dynamics of wooing surrogate mothers.

2008 BAY AREA PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL July 25–Aug 3. See Web site for details. Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina and Buchanan, SF. $15–$25. (415) 626-0453, ext. 105, www.playwrightsfoundation.org

Goofy name, good band

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July 22, 2008

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PREVIEW Start with the name, take in the oversized T’s, and then turn an ear toward the big, fat, buzzy beat. Just who were these dudes, we all wondered, as the group took the Fader Fort stage at this year’s South By Southwest and proceeded to dangerously distract the ironically mulleted, sarcastically sunglassy hipsters and jaded music-biz buzzards from the free bevs at the bar. As the set progressed, all and sundry tromped to the front, pulled by the massive beats and the leaping, high-stepping antics of lead vocalist James Rushent.

Yeah, these guys were not cool in the strictly hyper-trendoid sense of the word — meaning cool down to the millisecond edge of the moment. The band’s floppy shorts and wholesome miens probably reminded bleary-eyed, cynical scenesters of normal suburban dudes down the block more than any affected decadent they might ordinarily aspire to ape. Yet there was nothing poseur about the cool kids’ fists pumping down front: the fact that the guys of Does It Offend You, Yeah? — goofy name and all — managed to get the most tired of industry booty moving was a testament to the power of their sound and their infectious enthusiasm onstage. Apart from a few tracks like the nu-rave "Battle Royale" and "With a Heavy Heart (I Regret to Inform You)," does their new album offend with its inconsistency — and its occasional trite Euro-rock tropes? Yeah. But that’s what iTunes is for: pick and choose which Does It Offend You, Yeah you prefer — and unlike some other dance poppers, rest assured, they won’t repulse live.

DOES IT OFFEND YOU, YEAH? With Steel Lord. Fri/25, 9 p.m., $13. Popscene, 330 Ritch, SF. (415) 541-9574, www.popscene-sf.com. Also with Bloc Party, July 30, 9 p.m., $27.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.ticketmaster.com

Orson

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July 22, 2008

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› paulr@sfbg.com

If there was ever a doubt that Elizabeth Falkner had a thing for Orson Welles, her new restaurant — named Orson — should lay to rest any lingering uncertainties. Falkner’s first venture, a bakery called Citizen Cake, first appeared in the late 1990s in a northeast Mission District space (near Rainbow Grocery) now occupied by Chez Spencer. After a few years it moved to considerably posher quarters in the performing arts quarter while retaining its Wellesian moniker.

But even the upscaling of Citizen Cake, including its expansion to a full-scale, full-service restaurant, could not begin to prepare people for the strange wonder of Orson. (Orson is a fine name, but am I alone in being reminded first not of Orson Welles but of Orson Bean, the character actor who’s turned up in all sorts of movies and TV shows over the years?) The restaurant’s design doesn’t offer much in the way of clues, either. It’s very au courant SoMa: large and lofty, with a huge wall of exposed concrete, a mezzanine, swaths of industrial carpeting on the floor, and a persistent hiss of ambient sound, as if a huge white-noise machine in some hidden corner had been turned up to "loud" but not "very loud." The noise doesn’t preclude conversation, but, like cigarette smoke, it’s impossible to ignore. Perhaps this is the new standard.

So we have a SoMa restaurant with a whimsical name, bearing a general physical resemblance to other SoMa restaurants with whimsical names and run by a woman whose reputation is rooted in high-style baking and what we might call classic California cuisine. And we find, on the menu of that restaurant, a dish called parmaggiano pudding ($5), an ivory-colored custard presented in a crock. The idea of a savory flan made with parmesan cheese might seem like plenty of cleverness for one dish, but Orson’s kitchen, under the guidance of Falkner and chef de cuisine Ryan Farr, isn’t likely to be called complacent. They are full of wild and wacky ideas, such as lacing the parmesan pudding with cocoa nibs. The wonder is not that a few of these gambits fail — they do, spectacularly, like some of those early space shots in which the rocket collapses in flames or whizzes off in the wrong direction — but that so many of them so sensationally succeed. The parmesan pudding is only one such success.

The only dish on Orson’s rather complex menu I would describe as a total flop is the foie bonbon ($5), a chocolate truffle filled with a buttery pâté de foie gras. One by one, the faces around our table wrinkled in distaste after a nibble, and while I didn’t hate the bonbon, I did think it was a bad marriage between incompatible elements that had nothing more than richness in common.

On the other hand, the jolt of espresso in the potato cream bathing the short ribs ($15) was, like the cocoa nibs, a cunning bit of counterpoint, adding depth, mystery, and a little smokiness to what might otherwise have been an ordinary soupy sauce. (Leaves of braised spinach brought some color but were texturally uncooperative; they reminded me of sails left in choppy water by a capsized sloop.) And the egg atop a pizza ($14) of tomato, crisped guanciale, chile flakes, and robiola cheese was less out of place than it looked — and it looked quite out of place, as if there’d been some kind of head-on collision in the kitchen. But the yolk drained nicely across the pie (imagine flooding a rice paddy, in miniature, with yellow paint) and added a nice note of velvetiness to what was otherwise a rather brash Neapolitan pizza.

Not all the food is eccentric. A boudin noir pizza ($14), for instance, was topped with (in addition to the blood sausage), arugula, oregano, and thin slices of potato — a perfectly genteel combination you might find at any number of places. Garganelli ($11) — pasta tubes that looked like mottled cinnamon sticks — were tossed in a simple sauce of basil and splinters of summer squash. A sprightly kimchee ($5) was festooned with throw pillows of fried tofu. Chicharrones ($5), a.k.a. pork rinds, arrived in a tall cup looking like twisted French fries suitable for dipping in the shallow tub of barbecue sauce on the side. And a chicken beer sausage link ($14), although accompanied by flecks of nectarine, whispers of frisée, and a hint of pistachio, was satisfyingly all about the sausage.

Some of the exotic touches were discreet to the point of being unnoticeable. Actual French fries ($7) were cooked in duck fat and presented with a small ramekin of browned butter béarnaise, a subtle aioli alternative. Tongue ($5), never an easy row to hoe, was transformed into a golden-crusted, nicely rectangular croquette and served with cherries and what might be one of our most underappreciated greens, purslane.

Does all this sound like the stuff of DIY tasting menus, a sequence of memorable bites? The glory of DIY is the randomness of it — we’ll have a few of those and one of that — but for more orderly types, Orson does offer four formal tasting menus that consist of three to five courses and cost from $50 to $65. One is vegetarian, another pork-based. Caveat: your whole table must participate. Tables for two have several additional "for two" options, though Orson doesn’t really strike me as a restaurant for couples. Its pulsing energy is that of a crowded club for the young and the restless, whose packs are forever rearranging themselves. It’s easy to picture them talking about movies. But do they talk about, or have they even seen, Citizen Kane?

ORSON

Dinner: Mon., 6–10 p.m.

Tues.–Sat., 6 p.m.–midnight

508 Fourth St., SF

(415) 777-1508

www.orsonsf.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Fairly noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Weekly comments too good to pass up: “butt-to-nut”

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July 18, 2008

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Damn, we just can’t pass this one up. A commenter over at the SF Weekly‘s blog posted a message agreeing with Benjamin Wachs that there are some fine folks in the Midwest contrary to what so many San Franciscans seem to believe. I won’t speak for rest of the newsroom here, but I agree with Wachs, too. I grew up in Tulsa and resent any implication that Oklahomans are somehow dysfunctional because popular pundits have encouraged the country to divide each state into two colors and thus make broad assumptions about millions of people. But there’s a problem. Read the comment closely:

Posted at: July 17, 2008 10:54 AM

Dan says:
When San Francisco got too expensive in the late 90s, the ex and I took our freelancing selves to a small town in the Midwest. The generalizations made by the coasters were always amusing to read; our small town of about six thousand was populated by other refugees from big towns, artists and radicals and iconoclasts made it something of a weekend destination and arts center. These people had real cultural connections and credentials but very little of the pretension you’d find at, say, the Lexington (which, more than likely, is jammed butt to nut with a bunch of people who are actually from the Midwest and would be mortified if you found out). I found that we did travel more than when we lived in California. But that was mostly because we were still making San Francisco wages but paying small town Midwestern rent.

Wait. Huh? Wha? Are you talking about the Lexington in the Mission? You’ve been there before, right? Are you sure your parenthetical description of it is, uh, accurate? You’re right about one thing, however. The Lexington, like so many other places in town, contains a lot of refugees from elsewhere who may actually be proud of where they came from but couldn’t stand being treated like second-class citizens there anymore.

Judge denies SF Weekly motion for new trial

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July 18, 2008

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Judge Marla Miller July 18th rejected attempts by the SF Weekly and its chain owner to overturn the Bay Guardian’s victory and $16 million jury award in a predatory pricing case.

The ruling on the defendants’ post-trial motions marked the end of the first full round of this legal fight and sets the stage for a shift to the California Court of Appeal. All that remains to be decided by Judge Miller is the Guardian’s upcoming motion for attorneys’ fees, which are expressly allowed to a prevailing party under the California Unfair Practices Act.

SF Weekly and Village Voice Media had asked Miller to overturn the jury verdict or order a new trial, and the company lawyers spent hours July 8th arguing that the evidence presented in a five-week trial didn’t justify the jury’s decision. And they claimed, in a laundry list of challenges, that Miller had issued improper jury instructions and erred in admitting evidence at trial.

Defense attorneys James Wagstaffe and H. Sinclair Kerr also tried to get the judge to overturn the 16-paper chain’s liabilty for any damages awarded by the jury. That would have left the Weekly as the only guilty party. VVM had admitted in earlier post-trial proceedings that the Weekly has a negative net worth and alone would be unable to pay the Guardian anywhere near $16 million.

Miller, with little comment, denied those requests.

In her “order denying defendants’ motion for new trial” Miller stated:

“To the extent that the motion for New Trial is based upon the grounds of insufficiency of the evidence to justify the verdict (Civil Procedure Code #657(6) and excessive damages (Civil Procedure Code #657(5) the court has weighed the evidence and is not convinced from the entire record, including reasonable inferences therefrom, that the jury clearly should have reached a different verdict. To the extent that the motion for New Trial is based upon errors at law which Defendants contend occurred at the trial and were excepted to by them (Civil Procedure #657(7), the Court finds these contentions lack merit.”

The defendants have said they plan to appeal.

The case centered around the Guardian’s charge that the Weekly had for years violated California’s Unfair practices Act by selling advertising space below the cost of producing it for the purpose of injuring the locally owned, independent competitor.

Evidence presented at trial showed that the Weekly had consistently lost money, as much as $2 million a year, since New Times, now known as VVM, bought the paper in 1995.

The chain later bought the East Bay Express, and transformed it from a profitable paper to one that consistently lost money. Between the Weekly and the Express, VVM has lost some $25 million in San Francisco.

The evidence also showed that VVM’s executive editor, Michael Lacey, had vowed to put the Guardian out of business, and that Weekly advertising and business staff were instructed to try to take business away from the Guardian by below cost pricing, whatever the sacrifice in revenue and profits.

And while the VVM lawyers mounted a convoluted legal argument to claim that the parent company wasn’t legally liable for any damages, the trial showed that the senior executives at the Phoenix-based chain were not only aware of the predatory strategy but were active participants in enabling the Weekly to carry out its pervasive program of below-cost sales..

In fact, two senior officers, CFO Jed Brunst and Controller Jeff Mars, testified on the stand or in pretrial depositions that the SF Weekly would have gone out of business years ago if the chain hadn’t made a policy of shipping large sums of money from headquarters into the San Francisco operation to subsidize below-cost sales.

After the trial, jurors said they were convinced that VVM sought to destroy local competition. Juror Kerstin Sjoquist, a local business owner and graduate student, said in an interview that “it felt overly predatory on the part of the Weekly” and that “the predatory intent trickled down from the top.”

Although the VVM lawyers have 60 days to file their notice of appeal, there’s already some indication of what the chain will try to argue to the higher court. Even before the trial started, Andy Van De Voorde, VVM executive associate editor, who flew in from Denver to cover the trial for the Weekly, argued in his blogs that the California Unfair Practices Act was out of date and irrelevant. Referring to the act as a “depression era law,” (actually, the act dates back to 1913, California’s Progressive Era), Van De Voorde suggested that modern competitive markets made such a law pointless.

The law bars any business from selling a product or service below cost with the intent to harm a competitor or destroy competition. That prohibition has been upheld by many appellate court decisions, some as recent as the 21st century. The state Legislature has reviewed and even amended that part of the state code many times in recent decades, but has declined to make any fundamental changes in the protections afforded by the Unfair Practices Act.

And the trend toward chain ownership and consolidation of businesses in everything from coffee shops to bookstores and hair salons would seem to suggest that the need for a law protecting independent local merchants from predatory chains is greater than ever today.

That’s certainly true for the news media: One company new owns almost every daily newspaper in the Bay Area.

Both before and after the trial, the VVM lawyers also argued that a ban on predatory pricing would violate the Weekly’s First Amendment rights. If the paper was forced to live within its means – that is, to raise ad rates and stop relying on big subsidies from the chain – Weekly managers might have to cut the size of the staff, thus reducing editorial coverage, the lawyers argued.

Two judges – first Richard Kramer, who handled pre-trial rulings, and later Miller – rejected that argument wholesale.

As the Guardian’s lawyers argued, newspapers have always had to follow basic business regulations – even when they might cost money that could have gone to editorial staffing. No newspaper has ever seriously tried to claim that labor laws, or environmental laws, or workplace-safety laws, or tax laws were a First Amendment violation.

Still, those claims may appear again in the appellate briefs.

Meanwhile, the costs to VVM and the Weekly will continue to rise: If the verdict is upheld on appeal, the chain will have to pay interest on the jury award, which is now accruing at about $4,300 a day. And at this point the Guardian has an additional statutory right to recover reasonable attorney’s fees, which could add a substantial amount to the current judgment of more than $16 million

The Guardian’s lawyers are Ralph Alldredge, Richard Hill and E. Craig Moody.

You can read the Guardian’s key legal brief on the post-trial motions here. For a detailed history of the case, click here