SF

Rock Candy

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REVIEW May 15 was one of those few cheery days in San Francisco when a sunny morning transitioned into a "warm wind blowing, stars are out" night. Oh yeah, and that whole State Supreme Court lifting the ban on gay marriage thing probably raised overall spirits a bit. But no, that wasn’t the reason the evening mood was so upbeat. In fact, the joyous news that day was that a straight couple, refusing to be disenfranchised any longer, announced their engagement at the Stud’s mixed, bimonthly, electro-punk-pop night Rock Candy. I know, it’s all so unclear, but it wouldn’t be the city by the Bay if the fog didn’t continuously roll in, right? And as I rolled into the club, ready to rock, I too refused to be left out in the cold any longer and searched the venue for my next ex.

Sure, I came up in the age of rock star divorces like those of Tommy Lee and Heather Locklear or Locklear again and Richie Sambora. So I vow that if I were a rock, I’d be jade — because I no longer have faith in the so-called sacrament of marriage. Still, I say if straight people want to live in acrimony, they should be able to. But ear candy beat eye candy for the night-creatures in attendance amid the polyamorous union of DJed new rave, goth, indie, and Brit-pop, and club hosts Marc Blinder and Virginia Suicide’s rousing gay marriage-themed sing-along, which culminated with the inspiring "We Are the Champions." Truth be told, I think it’s great that the happy couple delayed their announcement until everyone achieved the freedom to marry. Nonetheless, my more disillusioned half wondered what all the commitment-phobic gay partners, who previously shooed off marriage with "Darling, I’d marry you if I could," will do now.

ROCK CANDY First and Third Thursdays, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $5. Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.elasticfuture.com

“Matt Gil: Reel to Real”

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REVIEW Remember those jazzy Raymond Scott tunes that accompanied many Depression–era Bugs Bunny cartoons? The rhythmic tinkling of the xylophone, the metronome and piano one-two-ing, while the trumpets and clarinets wah-wahed to our wise-ass rabbit scrambling to free himself from the inner workings of a factory. Those images merged Technicolor fantasy and swinging wackiness to the dumb, impersonal nature of mass production, a cartoonish combo that comes to mind when entering Matt Gil’s exhibition at the Marx and Zavattero Gallery. Residing over the majority of the space is Gil’s kinetic work Conveyor with 24 Sculptures (2007-08), a nonstop catwalk of coffee-tabletop-size ceramic forms parading in a loop for the viewer. The slip-cast, candy-colored glazed shapes are straight out of the space-age Googie design era: it’s the kind of curvy, biomorphic, and geometrically surreal commercial art our parents and grandparents bought at department stores. Gil’s mechanism rotates smoothly, though the forms occasionally wobble. Nothing like wobbling ceramics to make one nervous in a gallery. This carousel, however, leads one to imagine that — like Schroeder’s closet full of Beethoven busts — there might be a replacement or two in the artist’s studio. What transforms Gil’s piece further is that it’s underlit by floodlights, generating Dr. Seuss–like shadows on the walls that grow larger, then smaller. There are other large-scale sculptures — including the blue standing noodle Puzzle Piece and the almost 11-foot-tall black tiki comb Muckracker 1.0. Nevertheless, Conveyor‘s humor and nod to Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction makes it deservedly the most attention-worthy thing in the room. Along the walls are Gil’s ink and watercolor sketches of would-be monumental forms. These too radiate a giddy simplicity, inviting viewers to appreciate form and space for precisely what they are.

MATT GIL: REEL TO REAL Through July 2. Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Marx and Zavattero Gallery, 77 Geary, second floor, SF. (415) 627-9111, www.marxzav.com

A drone supreme

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Talking to Barn Owl is something of an evangelical experience. Longhaired duo Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras confess they’re often mistaken for brothers, but their kinship actually began when they met at San Francisco State University, where they both played in metal bands.

"I guess it was through folk music and roots music and Indian classical and some other things that we started to see the validity of the drone — what it was besides this new experimental genre or whatever," Porras recollects. The three of us are hunched over tea and coffee outside a sleepy Outer Richmond café, and I keep thinking about how it’s been a long time since I’ve talked to rockers so plainly obsessed with refining the kind of music they play. "I’ve definitely reached a point where I’m not interested in music that doesn’t take risks of some sort," Caminiti says. "Having this new freedom is almost like an addiction."

Drone music is as old as Tuvan throat singing, though many of the modern Western incarnations refer to the vibrationally attuned literature and compositions of mid-20th-century minimalist composer La Monte Young, who Barn Owl has studied up on. Unlike Brian Eno’s electronics-based tone poems, Barn Owl’s West Coast drone is distinctly earthy. It’s Metal Machine Music from the organic aisle, with smoky landscapes of guitar and vocals hovering in heated sustain. Though layered effects overlap, the overall sound still bears the imprint of guitar strings, in keeping with predecessors like Charlambides, as well as heavier hitters like Om.

"Just having that hand directly on what’s making the vibrations really appeals to me," Caminiti explains. "There’s something about starting with that organic element, and then adding effects upon that to do something else, rather than having it completely computerized."

The duo is obviously interested in space, but they also have a natural sense of drama, something left over, perhaps, from their metal days. When a loose drum beat emerges after three hazy tracks of their handsomely designed LP, From Our Mouths a Perpetual Light (vinyl on Not Not Fun; CD forthcoming from Digitalis), there’s a sudden focusing effect; when a gigantic guitar chord thunders from out of nowhere a few seconds later, it’s seismic. A clear-eyed frieze of acoustic guitar takes on extra potency within the duo’s minimalist architecture.

Barn Owl’s current tactic of frequent releases on a few sympathetic microlabels suits their constant recording habit, though their growing reputation means Aquarius Records can’t keep these limited editions in stock for long. "The home aesthetic is what the majority of our work has been based off of, and I’d say we definitely prefer that," Caminiti says. "Especially with free music, it goes along with having the freedom to explore."

Of course, this freedom is on prime display in concert, in which the duo pushes dialogued concepts into chancy, sculptural terrain, forging a physical relationship with the audience in the process. "That’s our ultimate goal," Porras opines, "a room full of people just being consumed by this wall of energy." And inspiration is everywhere, or so it seems from a story Porras relays about being awakened by a terrifying sound a few weeks earlier: "In the middle of the night, the water heater just started making this insane noise…. It was definitely a drone," he says, laughing. "When the terror dwindled, we just started listening to it, and it sounded so cool."

BARN OWL

Tues/1, 9:30 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

Back to the land

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

I hold no truck with keeping too firmly tethered to the here and now. A little let-go does the soul a world of good, and nothing beats floating off on a cloud of question marks as time and place melt from view. I already have the perfect soundtrack for the occasion: Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop), the debut by the Seattle band of the same name, could very well offer the deepest decade-leaps and blurriest geographic-muddles you’re likely to encounter this year.

In their quest to fuse pre-rock ‘n’ roll sounds with indie-rock sensibilities, Fleet Foxes don’t simply settle for 20th-century American Music 101. Rather, their time-travel extends all the way back to the Black Plague. Along with offering fresh takes on the smooth sounds of ’70s SoCal pop; the baroque folk whimsies of Crosby, Stills, and Nash; and the hillbilly twang of your great-great-grandpappy’s barn dances, the quintet is also more than willing to get medieval on your unsuspecting ears. Listen closely, and the odd madrigal flutters forth now and again. Little wonder, then, that the Pieter Bruegel painting on the album cover hardly feels like an anachronism. Instead, it arrives thoughtfully recontextualized, much like the pan-decade musical explorations the group pulls off so effortlessly.

Mountains, rivers, birds, and forests — these are the main signifiers of Fleet Foxes’ pastoral, pre–Industrial Age mood-making, along with plenty of references to family and death. On paper, most of their lyrics could pass for traditional folk songs. Translated to plastic, however, the words take on a different character. Wafting and drifting in goose bump–raising harmonies and vocal rounds cloaked in hilltop echo, they at times evoke an agrarian Beach Boys or a less lustful My Morning Jacket. Vocalist Robin Pecknold is endowed with an equally hall-filling tenor as that of MMJ’s Jim James, and fluent in a full range of ghostly falsettos, tear-jerking howls, and sweet rally cries — each has been steeped in delicious reverb by producer Phil Ek (Built to Spill). Combined with the remaining members’ soaring vocal arrangements and deft instrumentation, Fleet Foxes manages to somehow feel comfortingly familiar yet bracingly fresh and new.

From its wordless sighs-from-country-heaven introduction to the heartbreaking Ronettes melodrama of its chorus, "He Doesn’t Know Why" might be the band’s most immediately persuasive pairing of otherwise perfect strangers, musically speaking. It’s also the recording’s most full-blown rock moment, along with "Ragged Wood," a transcendent country-rock shuffle powered by Pecknold’s exhilarating mountain cries of "You should come back home, back on your own now."

Lest they leave us too anchored to the modern age, Fleet Foxes peel back the centuries without a hitch on the spectral lilt of "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song," a spooky madrigal in which Pecknold ponders, "Dear shadow alive and well, how can the body die?" in harrowing echoes while a single acoustic guitar mournfully picks away in agreement. Elsewhere, in their boldest brain-rattle of century-confusion, Fleet Foxes weld ancient Andean flute melodies to furious Led Zeppelin folk-stomp on "Your Protector," a heavier-than-heavy meditation on death hoisted aloft by wide-eyed shouts of "You run with the devil!" Fierce words, but I’ll lose myself in Fleet Foxes’ fractured tableaus any ole time, thanks.

FLEET FOXES

Thurs/26, 9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

Queercore, many mornings after

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THE QUEER ISSUE Call it a harmonic convergence of two queer legends of indie rock and queercore. Victor Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven and Jon Ginoli of Pansy Division got together recently to talk about the way it was, coming out in the repressed 1980s and coming into their own experientially, politically, and musically in 1990s San Francisco — each, as Krummenacher puts it, a "gay guy suddenly in Candyland." Life is still sweet — and hella active — for these old friends: Krummenacher celebrates Camper’s 25th anniversary with a June 28 show at the Fillmore, and Ginoli is unleashing Pansy Division’s new documentary, Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band, at Frameline June 26, complete with an afterparty performance at the Eagle. And naturally, this won’t be the last you’ll hear from these prolific players: Pansy Division is working on a new album and Ginoli has a memoir coming next year on SF’s Cleis Press, while Krummenacher is recording as McCabe and Mrs. Miller with the Sippy Cups’ Alison Faith Levy and recently completed a fifth solo full-length. (Kimberly Chun)

JON GINOLI Before I started Pansy Division, I’d been actively trying to find other gay musicians’ records. I’d listen to records, listen for hints, and it just seemed like I was always getting disappointed in that there were musicians I heard about who were supposed to be gay that would flat-out deny it in interviews. I thought, OK, if all these people who I think are lying are not going to come out, or really aren’t … that’s when it finally dawned on me that I should do this band. At the same time I had that idea, so did Tribe 8. It was Tribe 8 and us and Glen Meadmore in Los Angeles. When we started that’s what was going on in queer rock. The only other thing I knew about — and I didn’t know about this till I started playing — was Fifth Column in Toronto.

There really wasn’t much you could point to, and that’s partly why I wanted to be as out and blunt as I could. Because it seemed like if you were gay and you liked rock ‘n’ roll, it was something you had to hide and it was something that there was some shame attached to.

VICTOR KRUMMENACHER It was an interesting time. From my perspective, we had the [Michael] Stipe rumors and we had the Hüsker Dü rumors. But it was kind of, like, don’t ask, don’t tell. Kid Congo was always out. He was always what he was, which I admired a lot.

JG I remember meeting him in New York, in ’94, ’95, and by that time, I knew he was gay. But I’d been a fan of all bands he’d been in — the Gun Club, the Cramps, and the Bad Seeds — and I didn’t know he was gay until 10 years after I’d started buying his records.

VK A lot of the reason I was attracted to punk rock was because I knew queer people in it. My friends were gay, and I was coming out, and it was just really easy to deal with because they liked the same music, and it was fun. But it was a hard time, and the ’80s sucked. I’m 43 now, and I deal with people in their 20s who have no clue how much it sucked.

JG Only the highlights have filtered down to them.

VK There was Phranc, and there was some chatter about Morrissey.

JG It’s interesting — I was thinking, OK, it’s like a ladder. You’re taking a step at a time to reach a certain place, and I was thinking about the women’s music scene, the lesbian music scene, from the late ’70s. The folk scene.

VK Which seemed a little bit more coherent.

JG But it also seemed more insular, especially when I talk to people from that period. It was about being separate, and the thing about me wanting to do Pansy Division was that I wanted to engage by using rock music. It was kind of like taking the music that’s popular but doing something that people would consider subversive with it.

People were dying, and that’s why — even though I was horny and wanted to sing these pro-gay songs — we sang about condoms a lot. We had some songs that were cautionary tales. But for somebody who was born in 1987, there’s no way that they could have much of a clue about what we’re talking about, because they just didn’t see the people dying. I moved here in ’89 from Champaign, Illinois, and one of the first things I did was join ACT UP.

VK My experiences with ACT UP and Queer Nation meetings were rowdy good times — it was go out and be visible and be noisy — and then it got very bureaucratic, which I think was a natural progression.

JG ACT UP ran its course, which was right around the time I had the idea to do Pansy Division. I’m a political person, but I don’t like too much music that’s really didactic and up front about its politics. I didn’t want to make music that people would agree with but wouldn’t really enjoy. I thought this is my way to do cultural activism.

What I wanted to mention was I had a band [the Outnumbered] before Pansy Division that had three albums. They were indie in the ’80s, and at the time, I was out to my band members, I was out to people in Champaign, but I didn’t feel like I could write about being gay in my music because I was trying to represent the band and they were all hetero.

So did you have any bands before Camper?

VK Camper was my first band, when I was 18. It was funny — I came out, and my band broke up [in 1990]. It might have had something to do with why I wanted to leave the band at the time, but it had nothing to do with the band breaking up. Basically when I came out, they were like, "And … ?" I don’t think it was any great surprise.

But the interesting thing was as soon as I came out, it was immediate acceptance. Seldom did I run into any problem, which made me wonder, why the hell didn’t I do it sooner, and why the hell didn’t more people do it?

JG It seems to me both Michael Stipe and Bob Mould have made statements about how they didn’t want to come out because they didn’t want to be seen as role models. The problem was to me, well, you’re already role models to people and some of them are gay and some of them are straight.

My own thought about it was, well, if no one is going to come out and be out in music playing the style I like, then I’ll do it. I mean, I had nothing to lose, and I do respect that other people have a lot of pressures, record companies.

VK The truth of the matter is, you guys did a lot of legwork that did ripple up.

JG So now you’re doing Camper, and you’re out, and you’re in a long-term relationship. Were you been able to meet guys at shows, even if you wanted to back then, and now that you’re out, do you have a gay contingent at Camper shows?

VK I wind up with gay contingents usually in the strangest, most unexpected ways. It’s been more than once that I’ve gone home with a guy, and he figures out, "You look familiar." Anonymity can be something you can thrive on. Or I guess, bluntly, it’s nice to fuck around and have people not know who you are — because I’ve frequently been hit on because of who I am.

What I’m interested in is, where do you see younger people going?

JG We came along pre-MySpace, pre-Internet, really. It’s so different now. It used to be a guessing game where you’d trade rumors with other gay people about people you heard that were gay. Now Pansy Division has a MySpace page, and I’m getting messages and friend requests from other queer bands all the time and a lot of straight bands, too, that like our music. So I think it’s not that big of a deal anymore unless you’re trying to make it in the mainstream. Then there’s still a wall where you can’t make it unless you’re already successful to some point, or you set out to be. Look at Rufus Wainwright. He’s on a major label, but it was obvious from the outset that he was going to be a cult figure.

VK Especially if he’s going to be doing the Judy Garland things. Not to dig too hard, but I did actually see it the other night [on PBS], and it was, like, "Why did you do that?" In a certain way, ironically, it’s great progress — "Oh, yeah, a gay guy doing all of Judy at Carnegie Hall at Carnegie Hall." My mom used to play Judy at Carnegie Hall, and I’ve always loved Judy Garland, but then I was just going, "That’s not Judy Garland. That’s just Rufus Wainwright." I feel like he’s better in his own context.

JG Given that I’ve always chafed against the gay identity that posits show tunes as part of the essential experience, I made myself sit down with the Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall double CD, and, you know, his between-song patter was campy but he didn’t camp those songs up anymore than they already were. But I don’t want to hear anybody singing "The Trolley Song." I really don’t.

PANSY DIVISION: LIFE IN A GAY ROCK BAND

Screening Thurs/26, 7 p.m., $9–<\d>$10

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

Show begins 10 p.m., $7

Eagle

398 12th St., SF

www.frameline.org

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN

Sat/28, 9 p.m., $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

Welcome to the jungle

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

THE QUEER ISSUE Mark Twain’s observation (cribbed from poet Thomas Campbell) that "distance lends enchantment to the view" could serve as a guiding axiom for the languorous, enchanting films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Apichatpong shows more than he tells, and his camera often obscures rather than explicates the minute, alchemical operations taking place before it.

Somnambulant features such as the day-tripping Blissfully Yours (2002), the shape-shifting gay fable Tropical Malady (2004), and the double-exposed parental portrait Syndromes and a Century (2006) have left many critics bewildered but entranced. Others just seem confused by the elliptical, dream-like logic of the films, in which local lore and landscape shape the narrative as much as characters’ peripherally observed actions. Viewers hoping for glints of elucidation in Apichatpong’s juvenilia and nonfeature projects will probably be disappointed by "Mysterious Objects," the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ latest program honoring the director, for as its title indicates, his short films may be his most enigmatic.

All of Apichatpong’s signature traits — a fascination with the local and mundane, an unabashed love of syrupy pop songs, and a flair for throwing curve balls — are present in this grab bag of films made between 1994 and 2007. In the gleeful Anthem (2006) three elderly women listen to a supposedly blessed techno-lite number. Inexplicably, they are dropped, table and all, into a busy gym (and into the dead center of a badminton match), around which the camera makes multiple 360-degree circuits. Other such narrative jumps merely frustrate. Malee and the Boy (1999) begins with the scrolling text of a transcribed comic book, then switches to footage of hospital visitors. Whereas Anthem suggests a leap of faith, Malee just feels indecisive.

The program’s heart is Worldly Desires (2005), a half-hour trek across the same superstition-laden terrain of Tropical Malady. Dedicated to his "memories of the jungle," Worldly Desires is Apichatpong’s most meta film yet: a music video, a romantic drama, and a composite document crafted from "behind the scenes" footage.

In the opening sequence, a forest’s nighttime choir of insects is interrupted by a bossa nova groove. Suddenly a spotlight washes out the middle ground, illuminating the camera and lighting rigs trained on a singer and her background dancers as she lip-synchs a love song with familial undercurrents. The next few shots follow a man and woman as they hurry through the brush. It takes a few seconds before one can disambiguate the crosshairs in the center of the frame from the dense foliage.

Apichatpong keeps us at the periphery. Each re-shoot of the video is from the same, distanced vantage point. The couple’s arduous journey to find an enchanted tree unfolds through playback monitors, the director’s instructions, and the grumblings and random musings of an exhausted crew. We’re never told if the lovers cross paths with the pop star, or whether what we’re watching is the staging of something staged or a video diary.

Though Tropical Malady‘s first half focuses on a gay love story, it feels somewhat disingenuous to pin a queer sensibility on Apichatpong, even if he is gay. However, with its humorous foregrounding of the labor-intensive means by which the pop culture industry packages "normal" heterosexual love, Worldly Desires certainly invites queer labeling — if not at least queer readings such as this critic’s.

MYSTERIOUS OBJECTS

Thurs, July 3, 7:30 p.m. (program 1) and Sun, July 6, 2 p.m. (program 2), $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Heart shaped box

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"Let’s pretend we own the world today," Kathleen Hanna sings midway through the uncharacteristic Bikini Kill ballad "For Tammy Rae." In her new solo show "An Archive of Feelings," the woman Hanna was singing for, Tammy Rae Carland, breaks down and reframes some of what she owns from a queer, feminist perspective that upsets emotional and financial conceits. Carland can wittily point out the beauty of mold and frame it in gold, but her show’s largest C-prints are perhaps the most powerful. My Inheritance presents 21 objects that belonged to her late mother. The widely varying forms of worth that might be ascribed to bingo memorabilia and domestic objects take on a tough, acidic irony here — through the piece’s title, and through a presentation that resembles and critiques the kind of white-page auction presentation found in Sotheby’s catalogs. One Love Leads to Another similarly presents the tape culture (via cassettes such as Let’s Rock from the 1980s that kick-started K Records in Carland’s onetime home of Olympia, Wash. Like Carland’s mother’s keepsakes, these punk feminist objects have a colorful Yard Birds’ aesthetic specific to Washington state, but their countless communal and creative connections showcase the power of sisterhood beyond bloodline.

AN ARCHIVE OF FEELINGS

Through July 27

Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m., free.

Silverman Gallery

804 Sutter, SF

Cans and can’ts

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS There’s a reason you don’t see electric can openers anymore. They’re completely idiotic. But maybe you have arthritis, or a wrist-related disability. With you (and lots and lots of money) in mind, some cat in Hong Kong invented the One-Touch can opener, which runs on batteries. I came across one in an able-bodied young friend’s kitchen drawer. To her credit, the battery was dead, or MIA. Ergo, I couldn’t figure out how to work it.

Which wasn’t, by the way (and speaking of idiocy), for lack of effort on my part. In fact, we got into a bit of a brawl, me and this nifty, innovative, as-seen-on-TV assemblage of plastic and metal parts. It won. After about an hour and a half — bloodied, bruised, and fuming — I swallowed my pride, along with four teeth, and asked my friend in different words how the goddamn fucking piece of shit bastard worked.

She was in the other room, nursing the baby. "Oh, that?" Someone had given it to her as a present, she said, as embarrassed as I was (to her credit). It needed a battery. There should be a "real" can opener somewhere in the same drawer, she said.

Oh.

I limped back to the kitchen, found the familiar, trusty, stalwart hand-crank Swing-A-Way, and the feel of it in my hands was like mother’s milk to the tongue. I was so soothed and content I fell asleep. On my feet. At the counter. On the clock. So to speak. Next to the refrigerator.

Through no fault of my own, dinner was late. Modern technology was to blame. Anyone who can’t see that is even dumber than me. Some things can’t be improved upon, and the classic model rotary can opener is one of them. Anyone who tries … I hate them.

I love cooking in other people’s kitchens, but I’m going to have to start traveling with my own can opener — ideally, for effect, in a holster. Just one week after being humiliated by a device designed for senior citizens, I was in another friend’s kitchen, helping out eatswise before a party, and I had another run-in with yet another kind of can opener that wasn’t your standard Swing-A-Way rotary opener, and therefore didn’t work.

Technically it wasn’t my run-in so much as my friend Kizzer’s. At least initially. We were working side-by-side, me chopping up stuff for the coleslaw, and she opening cans for the bean salad. Trying to open cans, I should say. But this particular new, improved, innovative state-of-the-art can opener had different ideas, which included Kizzer almost having to go to the emergency room and me pretty much smelling and feeling like bean juice for the rest of the day.

Ironically, the idea behind this alleged improvement on perfection is to cut the lid down below, on the can side of the seam, rather than the top, so that you don’t end up with that ragged and dangerous lid to dispose of. You end up with a ragged and dangerous can.

Not to mention it took three people with graduate degrees, a couple of knives (without), and about 15 minutes to finish the job that my old $2 opener would have finished in less than 10 seconds (I checked). And the mangled can, afterward, looked very much like a weapon.

So I verbally abused our lovely and gracious hostess for keeping such a thing in a house with small children, and she said it was the only kind they had at Rainbow Grocery.

Ah. Leave it to my favorite kind of people, vegetarian hippies, to turn can opening into a bloody, beany battlefield, and in the interest of what? Safety? Ergonomics? The environment?

Look, if they don’t have a $2 can opener down at your local thrift store, you can order one brand new online for $6. I’m sure of it. I really did check: eight wrist-twists and five seconds opens a standard-size can. And if that sounds too exhausting, too time-consuming, or somehow dangerous to you, get the hell out of the kitchen please. I’ll cook. *

My new favorite restaurant is Puerto Alegre. I was eating something brunchy there with Earl Butter, my brother, and my nephew when it occurred to me that I’ve been eating here pretty consistently for longer than I’ve been pretty consistently eating anywhere else around here. So it must be good. It’s not the best Mexican food in the Mission District, but I love the atmosphere. And if you show up right at 11 a.m., even on weekends, you can sit right down.

PUERTO ALEGRE

546 Valencia, SF

(415) 255-8201

Mon., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Tues.–Sun., 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

Full bar

MC/V

A different light

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› johnny@sfbg.com

THE QUEER ISSUE It’s best to begin at the edge. Gay urban photography has a fleeting yet reliably revelatory home at those places where water laps up against land. On the East Coast, from 1975 through 1986, Alvin Baltrop explored the Hudson River side of Manhattan, capturing black-and-white visions of sex, murder, and architecture by cruising the piers as a peer rather than as an exploitative outsider. On the West Coast, during the ’50s and ’60s, Denny Denfield used Baker Beach and its nearby wooded areas to invent an Adam-only Eden best glimpsed solo through 3-D. And around the same time in Montreal, Alan B. Stone was hiding in a shed, looking through a shutter at the dock-working men and sunbathing boys who populated the city’s port. In the zone known as the city’s historical heart, his camera cautiously hinted at desires that could lead to prison time.

Curated by David Deitcher, the SF Camerawork exhibition "Alan B. Stone and the Senses of Place" proves Stone’s photographic versatility ranged from a low-key form of William Klein–like typographic artistry to extremely subversive pastoral romanticism — in commissioned Boy Scout photos — to the candid portraiture of the beefcake genre. Such a showcase isn’t Deitcher’s intent, though — he’s structured the show (and written about it, in an autobiographical essay) to foreground a specifically gay vision and experience of Montreal from a time when men were arrested and publicly vilified in newsprint for being homosexual. Stone provides the nuanced vision; Deitcher identifies its facets and identifies with it. His analysis of Montreal through Stone’s camera takes on special resonance when placed next to Douglas Crimp’s look at post-Stonewall New York through Baltrop’s camera in a February 2008 Artforum piece.

The difference between the liberated time of Baltrop and the closeted era of Stone is evident in their views of waterfront lazy sunbathers. Perhaps the brightest — in tone and in quality of light — of the Baltrop photos showcased in Artforum (also on view at www.baltrop.org) gazes from a few hundred feet away at a half-dozen naked men as they soak up the sun, converse, and dangle their feet off the edge of a pier. The gay-lib visibility inherent to the men’s affectionate nudity is doubly emphasized by Baltrop’s distanced yet full-frontal perspective. In contrast, Stone’s 1954 photo Untitled (Lachine Canal) glimpses the back of a boy in a swimsuit seated at the Port of Montreal’s shoreline — the identity of his solitary subject remains poignantly invisible to the photographer, who, as Deitcher notes, was stricken with arthritis at an early age.

There’s a similar echo to a pair of photos — one by Stone, one by Baltrop — that depict men standing at the sunlit thresholds of waterfront warehouses. Stone’s 1954 Untitled (Dock Workers, Port of Montreal) is a furtive from-behind vision of a shirtless, assumedly heterosexual dockworker. One image from Baltrop’s "Pier Photographs, 1975-1986" glances at a shirtless man, also from behind, but from a much nearer vantage point. Attired in tight jeans and black boots, he’s the painter Alva, at work on a large piece of sexually explicit graffiti. The picture’s dominant darkness and the roughness of its lit threshold — a window-size hole in a warehouse wall — suggest an edge of menace that Baltrop’s photos of body bags make plain. An unauthorized space for gay sexuality in a bombed-out urban zone, the piers were rife with dangers unknown.

Stone’s and Baltrop’s photographs could form chapters within an imagined monograph about the changing relationship between gay sex and the city. Such a book could venture into the garishly colorful Times Square seen in Gary Lee Boas’ 2003 book New York Sex, 1979-85 (Gallerie Kamel Mennour) — the title alone prompts comparisons to Baltrop’s equally unsentimental vision of a different space within pre-Giuliani, pre-Disney Manhattan. It could draw from David L. Chapman’s and Thomas Waugh’s recent San Francisco–set monograph Comin’ At Ya!: The Homoerotic 3-D Photographs of Denny Denfield (Arsenal Pulp), to show the California-dreaming answer to New York grime, and to further reveal — through the inherent solitude of the 3-D stereoview process — the inner recesses of a pre-gay lib experience far from Baltrop’s and Boas’ sights and sites of group sexuality.

Such a book could open into film as well, since movies such as João Pedro Rodrigues’ O Fantasma (2000), Jacques Nolot’s Porn Theatre (2002), Tsai Ming-liang’s The River (1997) and Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003), and William E. Jones’ V.O. (2007) foreground age-old connections between the edges of urban society and sexuality. The portrait of Montreal that emerges from "Alan B. Stone and the Senses of Place" hints at the possibilities of such a project — and leaves one wondering about the worlds of desire that can exist outside computer screens today.

ALAN B. STONE AND THE SENSES OF PLACE

Through Aug. 23

SF Camerawork

657 Mission, second floor, SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org, www.baltrop.org

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Chronicle has suddenly discovered that the middle class is leaving San Francisco.

Staff writer James Temple broke the news on the front page of the Sunday, June 23 paper with a lead sentence that boggles the mind in its insight and news value: "The number of low- and middle-income residents in San Francisco is shrinking as the wealthy population swells, a trend most experts attribute to the city’s exorbitant housing costs."

I don’t want to downplay the importance of this story. It could have (and should have) been written a decade ago, when Willie Brown was mayor and city planning policy, combined with the dot-com boom, started San Francisco on the path toward becoming the first fully gentrified big city in America. And I’m always frustrated when a daily newspaper reports after the fact on something that could have been prevented, or at least slowed, back when the story first became a story.

But the news is still news today, and the fact that the Chronicle has facts and figures and demographers denouncing and community leaders deploring means the problem will be getting some additional attention this fall. That matters, because this November, the future of San Francisco will again be on the line.

And that could be a very good thing.

Calvin Welch, who has been fighting for a progressive city longer than many of today’s activists have been alive, remembers the summer 1972 state ballot: "You had George McGovern. You had the Coastal Commission [Act]. You had the farmworkers [labor law]. You had marijuana [decriminalization]. And you had every constituency on the left coming out to vote for them all. And they all won."

This fall in San Francisco we will have perhaps an even greater perfect storm: a proposed rebuild of SF General Hospital, which is a huge priority for organized labor. A housing justice measure that sets aside money for affordable housing (and could help address the single biggest issue in the city, something even the Chronicle now puts on page 1). A green energy and public power measure (which would shift energy policy toward renewables and bring in millions of dollars). Two new revenue measures that tax the wealthy. Six seats on the Board of Supervisors, including three swing districts that will determine whether the progressive majority that has controlled the board since 2000 will remain intact. And all of that will happen in the context of the Obama campaign and a massive statewide mobilization to protect same-sex marriage.

We are a fractious crew, the San Francisco left, but if we can come together this fall, share resources, and run some sort of large coalition campaign for progressive values, this could be an election for the ages.

Tie the same-sex knot

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› culture@sfbg.com

For opposite-sex couples, getting married never had to be difficult; it was as simple as a jaunt to City Hall for a marriage license or a flight to Las Vegas for a midnight ceremony.

As of June 17, San Francisco became a worthy competitor for same-sex couples. Since the California Supreme Court ruling legalized same-sex marriages that day, choices for weddings have begun to expand.

Indeed, if you’re in town for Pride Weekend and you feel the urge, the decision to marry may not call for any planning at all. For a spontaneous ceremony, head to the Heart of the Castro Wedding Chapel (4052 18th St., SF; 415-626-7743, www.heartofthecastro.com).

Designed to offer the convenience and accessibility of a Las Vegas–style wedding chapel, the Heart of the Castro was founded by the Rev. Victor Andersen after he learned of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

"Las Vegas was the original inspiration for the chapel, but we’re definitely trying to make it classy and more San Francisco," Andersen said. "But we adopted the convenience aspect of Vegas, and we’re trying to keep it affordable for people who just want a sweet and simple wedding."

The Heart of the Castro already has booked several couples for ceremonies, and Andersen projects that plenty more will arrive during Pride Week, when the chapel will serve couples on a walk-in basis.

"We have a notary on hand for couples who can’t get an appointment at City Hall," Andersen said.

At the Heart of the Castro, the ceremony can take place as soon as the license is issued in as little as 30 minutes. The chapel has two rooms connected by double-doors and can comfortably seat 30 to 40 guests. Andersen says the two rooms will enable simultaneous ceremonies during Pride Week.

Future wedding ceremonies can be as extravagant as couples wish, including costume and theme weddings, and ceremonies in Spanish. "In the future, we will work with couples to plan more elaborate ceremonies," Andersen said. "We encourage couples to take their weddings to a more playful place."

If couples want to take a short drive south, Kate Talbot of California Marriages in San Mateo (www.californiamarriages.com, 650-571-5555) can perform the ceremony and issue a marriage license. No witnesses are required, but couples can bring guests. Talbot, a licensed notary, has been performing weddings for 10 years, and is excited that she is now able to provide same-sex couples with her services.

"I take great pride in making each ceremony really special," said Talbot, who offers a variety of poems and blessings to be read at the couple’s request. "I can reduce everyone to tears if they want, or I can make the ceremony all bang-bang in one stop," she said.

While small ceremonies can be held in her San Mateo home, many couples choose the public Japanese Friendship Garden across the street. For an additional $25, Talbot will go anywhere the couple chooses. "People can come anytime," said Talbot, who can carry out a couple’s nuptials with as little as an hour’s notice. "I can issue the license and perform the ceremony the same day."

Although Marcinho Savant recommends that couples "seriously consider planning" their weddings instead of marrying impulsively, a couple can still show up at City Hall for quickie marriage.

Savant is the senior events coordinator for www.savvyplanners.com, a wedding-planning service that caters to same-sex couples. "In theory, couples can get married instantly," he said. But in practice, that depends on the number of people who have the same idea at the same time.

"The challenge is that there are so many couples trying to do this," Savant said, recalling the enormous crowd at City Hall in 2004 when Mayor Gavin Newsom first legalized same-sex marriage in San Francisco. "It’s completely dependent on the crowd that has amassed."

Theoretically, a ceremony can be scheduled at City Hall 30 minutes after the license is issued, providing that appointments are available. Savant recommends that couples download the marriage license application from City Hall’s Web site to save time waiting in line. "But don’t sign it or else it’s invalid," he advised. "The application needs to be signed on site."

The license is good for 90 days. And, you don’t need a minister or notary; in California, a couple can have a friend or family member perform the ceremony, although the person must acquire a license from City Hall within 60 days of the ceremony.

If a couple decides to take the religious route, many churches and some synagogues are available, although most require some advance notice:

•The First Congregational Church of San Francisco, United Church of Christ (1300 Polk, SF; 415-441-8901, www.sanfranciscoucc.org) has been performing same-sex ceremonies for more than 20 years, according to the Rev. Dr. Wilfred Glabach. The church can accommodate religious services with a minister on staff, or couples can have the minister sign their licenses. Couples are also welcome to hire their own officiant.

•Swedenborgian Church (3200 Washington, SF; 415-346-6466, www.sfwedding.org) also offers services. Services will be free Wednesday, June 25 and Thursday, June 26.

•The Metropolitan Community Church (415-863-4434) of San Francisco has been performing same-sex marriage ceremonies since 1971. The Rev. Lea Brown said that while they are unable to provide a place to hold weddings, they can provide clergy and music. Call for details.

•For Jewish couples, Congregation Sherith Israel (415-346-1720) is available for members. And Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (290 Dolores, SF; 415-861-6932, www.shaarzahav.org) will perform ceremonies regardless of membership.

•Additional churches conducting ceremonies for same-sex couples are First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco (1187 Franklin, SF; 415-776-4580, www.uusf.org); Interfaith Center at the Presidio (130 Fisher Loop, SF; 415-561-3930, www.interfaith-presidio.org); and Unity Christ Church (2960 Ocean Ave., SF; 415-566-4122, www.unitychristchurch.org).

Beretta

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› paulr@sfbg.com

Restaurant archaeologists might not have much occasion to use carbon dating, but we do have the space at 1199 Valencia Street as a window into the past, and therein hangs a tale of the city. A decade ago, the occupant was Radio Valencia, a cheerful boho cafe that served art displays, live music, and ecologically sensitive sandwiches. It was, in its faintly grubby coolness, the epitome of the 1990s Mission District. But it closed around the turn of the millennium, first giving way to a Thai restaurant (J.J. Thai Bistro) and then to the Last Supper Club — a nice place and cool in its way, but not at all grubby, just as Valencia Street itself lost much of its jagged urban edge on the way to being the flâneur-friendly promenade we know today.

The Last Supper Club changed hands in 2005, when the original owners, Joe Jack and A.J. Gilbert, bowed out to Ruggero Gadaldi, whose other concerns include Antica Trattoria and Pesce. There is some evidence Gadaldi didn’t like his new restaurant’s name, since earlier this spring he gave the place a makeover and a re-christening. It’s now called Beretta — a name perhaps too redolent of weaponry for some tastes, but less overripe than the other one — and its interior has been given a slick minimalist treatment. The Last Supper Club’s baroque cherubs and fountain are gone, replaced by SoMa-esque black-topped tables, including a large and rather Chaucerian community table in the middle of the dining room, where you might find yourself sitting next to complete strangers with whom you can build some spontaneous social capital.

The menu, meanwhile, is like the love child of SPQR and Pizzeria Delfina. In other words, it hosts a wealth of exquisite small plates — known here by their traditional name, antipasti, since traditionally they’re served before the pasta course — along with salads, risotti, and an impressive list of pizzas. There’s also (in an echo of Gialina) a main course that changes nightly. But for many — if not most — of the tables (not to mention the community table), a pizza is the main event, to judge by the pizzas that seem to come sailing out of the kitchen like Frisbees.

The antipasti divide into vegetable, fish, and meat sections, the last consisting of such usual cured-flesh suspects as prosciutto, mortadella, and soppressata. The vegetable choices are more varied and seasonal. We practically inhaled a plate of bruschetta ($6) — the correct pronunciation, by the way, is "bru-SKATE-ah," not "bru-SHETT-ah" — slathered with a spring-green puree of fresh fava beans and sprinkled with salty-sharp pecorino cheese. And while quarters of artichoke heart ($6), roasted alla romana, are commonly filled with seasoned bread crumbs, they are less commonly spiked, as they are here, with that dynamic duo of spicy Italian-style sausage, hot pepper and fennel seed.

And a tip of the locavore cap to the Monterey Bay sardines ($7), a set of luxuriously plump and oily fish, grilled and plated "en saör," a Venetian technique that combines slivers of white onion and red bell pepper, a generous splash of extra-virgin olive oil, and an equally generous blast of white vinegar.

If white rice strikes you as a little boring, you’ll probably approve of the squid-ink risotto with calamari rings ($13). The briny-sweet flavor is direct, in the best Italian tradition, and the rice grains themselves are cooked nicely al dente — as are the tentacles, for that matter. But it’s the color that commands attention: a purplish-black with a sheen of green, like summer thunderheads billowing over the Mississippi. The color is so profound and unusual as to become tastable.

While the pizzas aren’t precious, they do reflect a thoughtfulness about ingredients. Even more, they remind us that pizza-baking has its subtleties. I was especially pleased to find, when a prosciutto-arugula pie ($14) reached us on its little wire stand, that those two delicate ingredients had been added after the pizza had emerged from the oven, crust abubble with tomato and mozzarella. It would have been simpler to throw everything on at once, but that would have cost the prosciutto and arugula something of their distinctive characters.

Desserts tend heavily toward gelato, and, surprisingly for an Italian restaurant, there is no tiramisù. For those who can’t do without that deathless warhorse, the baba al rum ($8) might do; it consists of spongecake leaves soaked with rum and topped with a cap of simple cream gelato (not even vanilla added as a flavoring, just cream) and a pinch of orange zest looking like bright orange sawdust. Tasty, but plenty of fumes; you would not want to light a match until the bowl had been emptied and cleared and several minutes had passed.

For those who can’t do without chocolate, there’s a dish of chocolate gelato ($7), given textural interest by crumblings of amaretti (the famous almond biscuits) and few squirts of caramel sauce. The sauce cools and becomes chewy on the slopes of the gelato blob, like lava turning to rock on the side of a volcano.

The crowd: familiar-looking. It seemed to me that I’d seen the same group in recent visits to Spork, Dosa, and Range — all of which are within two or three blocks, as the flâneur strolls. Median age I would guess to be in the early 30s; median income, considerably higher. If, like me, you’ve noticed that traffic across the Mission has hugely thickened in the past 10 years and wondered who’s living in all those loft-style buildings that have sprung up as if by magic, the Beretta clientele suggests some answers. Now where did I put my Beretta?

BERETTA

Dinner: nightly, 5:30 p.m.–1 a.m.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–3 p.m.

1199 Valencia, SF

(415) 695-1199

www.berettasf.com

Full bar

AE/DISC/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Charo gives a pluck

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› culture@sfbg.com

My first exposure to Charo was in a high school–era Christmas gift from my parents, The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste. There she was: strawberry blonde Pebbles hair framing a face that defined pert, a guitar poised scepter-like, and an impressive décolleté shrink-wrapped in enough sequins to cover all of Carnaval.

I think Charo would laugh at being included in such a Who’s Who, which also included Liberace and Chesty Morgan. The singing, dancing, and "cuchi-cuchi!" spouting Castilian sex kitten that pratfalled with the best of 1970s television, the Vegas institution who wound up in that sub-A list purgatory The Surreal Life, is the Charo America knows and loves. But according to this 40-year show biz veteran, the other Charo — a classically trained musician with serious Spanish guitar chops — is just getting warmed up. A Pride celebrity grand marshal, she’ll be riding on a parade float full of Charo look-alike drag queens, followed by a show at the Herbst Theatre.

SFBG How does it feel to be coming back to San Francisco after three years?

CHARO I call it Planet San Francisco because it’s different from everything else in this country. And I am honored and very glad [to be a Pride grand marshal], due to the fact that all my life I have detested oppression, dictatorship, and discrimination. ‘Cuz, you know, my early learning years were under the fear and dictatorship of [Gen. Francisco] Franco. I was surprised when I came to America that people used such titles as black, fag, skinny, Catholic, yellow. None of this exist in my education.

[Being a grand marshal] is also perfect timing because I am introducing my new single, "España Cani," as remixed for the dance clubs! It’s the best thing I have done in my career, and it’s just destined to make people live for 10 minutes and feel the passion of flamenco. That will be playing on the float with my flamenco dancers dancing around, and I will be with several look-alikes.

SFBG Are they going to be the same drag queens you judged at the Trannyshack Charo night back in 2005?

CHARO That was a hot-hot-hot evening! But I think this time they will be different. I think that one is better-looking than I am, and I am pissed off because that means I have to have to put a lot of push-up to have bigger tits. And he’s a 30-year-old boy!

SFBG Your publicist told me that you lost a Charo look-alike contest in Puerto Rico.

CHARO That was the lowest point in my career [laughs]. I made a big mistake since I dressed like a look-alike. I had a big, big wig instead of my natural hairdo, and instead of dancing like me I tried to copy them. The idiot judge said, "Number 3" — which was me — "needs more practice!"

SFBG What can we expect from your new show at the Herbst?

Charo: The show is faaabulous. I am going to play as much [guitar] as the audience can take of the new me. I will do it until they ask me to stop. I am a musician in high heels [laughs]. I even sleep with high heels, in case I have to run and the fire department guys can’t find me. I am 5 feet 3 inches, and I wear heels all the time. But the bottom line is that I am a musician. I am an entertainer number second.

SFBG When you started making TV appearances it was all "cuchi-cuchi!" all the time.

CHARO Yes. When I was on Johnny Carson and he starts talking to me in English, I just kept saying "cuchi-cuchi" to survive. And the rating was so big that I keep coming back. But the TV producer said if you want to play guitar, do it in your own time.

SFBG On a few of the episodes of The Love Boat your character April Lopez plays guitar for the passengers, no?

CHARO I went to producer Mr. [Aaron] Spelling and said, "OK, in this episode can I play a little of the guitar?" And he said, "OK, but don’t be too good. Don’t destroy the character of April, because April is a wetback and she’s not supposed to know so much music."

SFBG It’s just so funny because here’s Madonna trying to play guitar on tour and she’s pretty terrible, but right of out the gate you were a classically trained guitarist who could also write hit dance singles.

CHARO [Laughs]. Yes, Madonna used to be my neighbor. But then she moved to England. I would be very happy — and this is not bragging, because I like Madonna — to say to her how to play the guitar. I think I could help her with "La Ilsa Bonita."

THE RETURN OF CHARO AND HER LAS VEGAS SHOW

Sun/29, 8 p.m., $40–$100

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF.

(415) 392-4400, www.koshercomedy.com/charo

The Hot Pink List 2008

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>>ALLAN AND LEO HERRERA



Yes, they’re gay brothers, which is, like, totally hot. But even if they weren’t related, their individual artistic creations would have us on the hook. Heads of HomoChic (www.homochic.com), the new gay mafia collective that combines gallery shows, fashion design, and nightlife craziness into mind boggling events, they’re inspiring the latest generation to revel in its scandalous past. Leo’s photography mixes porn with historical reference to dizzying, stimuutf8g effect. Allan’s costuming and styling brings bathhouse and backroom gay culture to light. Currently the Chihuahua, Mexico-born siblings have pieces in the queer Latino "Maria" show at Galería De La Raza. Leo features pants-raising boy-pics and a video installation centered on Harvey Milk. Allan, whose Money Shots underwear line graces many an alternaqueer’s backside, displays a chandelier made of 2,000 pink condoms.

MARIA

Through July 4

Galería De La Raza

2857 24th St., SF

(415) 827-8009

www.galeriadelaraza.org


>>ANNIE DANGER



Who’s the superbusy M-to-F artist and activist stirring up trouble with the mighty force of a Dirt Devil — the one they call Annie Danger? She’s sketched flora and fauna for environmental manifesto Dam Nation (Soft Skull Press, 2007), appeared as a blackjack-playing nymph in a shit-stirring Greywater Guerillas performance, dressed like a wizard at a recent Gender Pirates party, and just played Pony Boy in a queered-up "Outsiders." Right now at Femina Potens gallery (www.feminapotens.org), you can see her as Sister Wendy, the wimpled PBS art nun, in her video for "Untold Stories: Visual and Performative Expressions of Transwomen." In a rare occurrence, you can meet Annie Danger as herself at the National Queer Arts Festival’s edgy "TransForming Community" spoken word event. Who she’ll be when she MCs Friday’s thrilling Trans March (www.transmarch.org) is anyone’s delightful guess.

TRANSFORMING COMMUNITY

Thurs/26, 7:30 p.m., $8–$15

LGBT Community Center

1800 Market, SF

(415) 865-5555

www.queerculturalcenter.org


>>DEXTER SIMMONS



"I worry not just for fashion, but for the future of television," this multitalented fashion designer, stylist, hair and makeup artist, model, and Oakland native told us with a laugh backstage at the Vans Warped Tour, where he was frantically preparing bands for the stage. "There’s a cheesy aspect creeping in right now because of fashion reality TV that scares me. It looks too easy, and creates too many followers. Wise people want one-of-a-kind, personalized looks. That’s why I love San Francisco," he adds. "It’s small but big — global even — and it likes to take risks." Dexter’s company, FLOC (www.teamflocouture), formed with his best amigo Lauren Rassel, has been taking local runways and nightclubs by fierce, feathery storm since it was formed two years ago, and local rockers like Von Iva and Svelt Street swear by FLOC’s Warriors-inspired designs. Now working as a stylist for SF-based online retail giant Tobi.com, Dexter seems destined for the big time — his designs are penetrating the world and making heads turn a wee bit sharper.


>>CHELSEA STARR



She’s too-too much, this Miss Starr. A genre-straddling DJ and ubiquitous promoter celebrated for her many regular parties (including new weekly Buffet at Pink, a fabulously popular all-female DJ weekly shindig, and Hot Pants, a queer biweekly that draws out the crème de la crème of the city’s thigh-baring night owls), as well as a groundbreaking writer who just toured the country as part of the Sister Spit all-girl spoken word road show, and a fashion designer with her very own eponymous line of eminently wearables — there are just so many ways to love her. This week she’ll find time to spin at umpteen Pride parties, as well as at her very own special Pride edition of Hot Pants. "I’m also a twin, a Gemini, and a cookie monster," Chelsea tells us with a wink.

HOT PANTS

Fri/27, 10 p.m., $5

Cat Club

1190 Folsom, SF

(415) 703-8964

www.myspace.com/hotpantsclub


>>JOSH CHEON



We can’t fib — smarties turn us on. So when we heard that cutie DJ Josh Cheon, host of West ADD Radio’s thuper-queerific "Slave to the Rhythm" program (www.westaddradio.com/slavetotherhythm) held advanced degrees in cell biology, neuroscience, and psychology, we suddenly had to hide our pointiness. An integral member of San Francisco’s gay vinyl-fetishist collective Honey Soundsystem (www.honeysoundsystem.com), Cheon just got back from rocking London’s premiere alternaqueer club, Horsemeat Disco. While his radio show’s name pays homage to Grace Jones, his eclectic sets encompass Candi Staton classics and Detroit Rock City jams. As a featured disc-meister at Bibi, San Francisco’s glorious, charitable party for Middle Eastern and North African queers, he taps his Lebanese roots with Arabian and Persian pop and disco favorites like Fairuz, Googoosh, and Dalida — and some surprise grin-givers from the likes of Boney M.

BIBI

Fri/27, 9 p.m., $20

Pork Store Café

3122 16th St., SF

(415) 626-5523

www.myspace.com/BibiSF


>>MONISTAT



She’s everywhere, lately, this feisty mistress of the night. Trash drag fanatics, glamorous electro freaks, after-hours hipster hot tub revelers — she’s a muse to many, with a sharp tongue and handmade Technicolor outfit for all. Plus, just in general: hot Asian tranny fierceness. "I’m thoroughly inspired by the pigeons in the Civic Center," she tells us. "Also, parties full of beautiful people worshipping me." She’ll be hosting the Asian and Pacific Islander stage at this year’s Pride festivities. But first this plus-size supermodel, trainwrecking DJ, oft-blacklisted performer, and dangerous skateboarder will be throwing a sleazoid party called Body Rock on gay-historic Polk Street "for the musically impaired and fans of a man in a dress, which would be me. I’ve walked through the fire and come out blazing!"

BODY ROCK

Thu/26, 10 p.m., free

Vertigo

1160 Polk, SF

(415) 674-1278

www.myspace.com/monistat7


>>CHRIS PEREZ



Which highly influential SF gallery owner brought John Waters, Todd Oldham, the mayor, and hundreds of sweaty kids together (with a couple kegs) under one roof this spring for photographer Ryan McGinley’s West Coast solo debut? Chris Perez of Ratio 3, whose shows also helped artists score Artforum covers and big time awards. Perez pairs an intuitive talent for identifying a popular hit with innovative curatorial decisions. But his space is no mere white box in the gourmet ghetto: "You’re never just walking down Stevenson," explains this escapee from Catholic school and former San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts volunteer. "Unless you’re hooking up or getting cracked out." Or peeping great art. On Friday, Ratio 3 dresses up as ’90s queer-radical gallery Kiki, for "Kiki: The Proof is in the Pudding," a group tribute to late curator-activist Rick Jacobsen.

KIKI: THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING

Fri/27, reception 6–8 p.m., free

Ratio 3

1447 Stevenson, SF

(415) 821-3371

www.ratio3.org


>>HUNTER HARGRAVES



If you think constant AIDS activism is exhausting, try doing it in drag. Stanford grad Hunter heads up StopAIDS (www.stopaids.org) community initiatives by day, and is a board member of diversity-seeking And Castro For All (www.andcastroforall.org), through which fellowships in his name are awarded to young queer activists every year. By night and early morning he becomes Felicia Fellatio, a precariously-heeled tranny who’s single-handedly hauling grunge back onto drag stages — a recent flannel-drenched lipsync of Pearl Jam’s "Jeremy" teared up many a jaded eye — and he DJs queer punk parties like Trans Am (www.myspace.com/transamtheclub) and Revolution, the hot monthly tea dance for HIV-positive men at Club Eight (www.positiveforce-sf.com). Felicia also auditioned for America’s Next Top Model (seriously) but was eliminated when her man hands slapped someone prettier. You can catch Hunter and Felicia, although probably only half of each, at the StopAIDS booth at this year’s Pride celebration.


>>ALICIA MCCARTHY



Hipsters sporting $80 faux-penciled rainbow patterns and glossy-mag ads with jagged color intersections are fronting a style artist Alicia McCarthy helped originate — but she does it a hundred times better. Her current show at Jack Hanley takes off in a dozen different directions from her signature shapes and spectrums in a manner that reflects an honestly fractured identity. Coiled thought forms, a wooden chair facing the backside of a scruffy penguin flying toward a wall of mirrors, and a show-within-the-show by friend Stormy Knight that includes sketches by a parrot named The National Anthem and sculpture by Redbone the dog. McCarthy’s latest exhibition also displays more than a few small works subtly placed where a wall meets the floor, which goes to show that she’s still making some art that only people who pay attention will discover.

ALICIA MCCARTHY

Through Sat/28, free

Jack Hanley Gallery

395 Valencia, SF

(415) 522-1623

www.jackhanley.com


>>MON COUSIN BELGE



Half-naked, goo-spitting art rock in a sling never got so deliciously tawdry. When this San Francisco quartet of self-professed "bunch of fags with vision and bacon cheeseburgers" takes the stage and launches into "Tweaker Bitch" or "Pigdog" off their new album Quelle Horreur (World Famous in SF Records), anything involving titilutf8g revulsion can happen and usually does. Fronted by enigmatic singer Emile, a Belgian addicted to plastic surgery — 39 procedures to date — and leather thongs, Mon Cousin Belge (www.moncousinbelge.com) updates queercore for the ambivalent masses with "deep faggotry jams" and knickers-wetting live performances. Bring a towel to their launch party at Thee Parkside bar in Potrero Hill. You’ll definitely need it — the crowd of cute intel-queers they draw is over-the-top steamy.

QUELLE HORREUR LAUNCH PARTY

Sat/28, 10pm, $6

Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 503-0393

www.theeparkside.com

The Guardian Queer Issue 2008

Pride 2008 events

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› culture@sfbg.com

ONGOING

Frameline Film Festival Various locations; see Web site for dates and times, www.frameline.org. The humongous citywide queer flick fest is still in full eye-popping effect.

Golden Girls Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, 1519 Mission, SF; (415) 690-9410, www.voicefactorysf.org. 7 and 9pm, $20. Through Sat/28. Revisit all the "gay" episodes of this classic and tragic sitcom, as performed with panache and pratfalls by gender clowns Heklina, Pollo Del Mar, Cookie Dough, and Matthew Martin.

National Queer Arts Festival Various locations; see Web site for details, www.queerculturalcenter.org. Experience scandalously good spoken word, cabaret, art installations, and so much more as this powerhouse monthlong celebration of queer revelations continues.

THURSDAY 26

PERFORMANCES AND EVENTS

Marriage Is Not Enough: Radical Queers Take Back the Movement New Valencia Hall, 625 Larkin, SF; (415) 864-1278. 7pm, $7 donation. Spread-eagled with one foot in the past and the other in the future, Radical Women host a forum to honor the efforts of drag queens and queers of color in 1969’s Stonewall rebellion and to discuss the docile nature of LGBT leadership in the face of poor and working-class queer issues today.

"Our Message Is Music" First Unitarian Church and Center, 1187 Franklin, SF; (415) 865-2787, www.sfgmc.org. 8pm, $15-$35. The world’s first openly LGBT music ensemble will kick off Pride Week with a range of music from Broadway to light classical. Includes performances by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band.

Pansy Division Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., SF; (415) 626-0880, www.pansydivision.com. 9pm, $7. Homoerockit band Pansy Division plays a live set with the handsome help of Glen Meadmore and Winsome Griffles following a screening of the film Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band.

CLUBS AND PARTIES

Body Rock Vertigo, 1160 Polk, SF; (415) 674-1278. 10pm, free. Incredibly energetic tranny-about-town Monistat hosts a bangin’ electro night for queers and friends featuring San Francisco’s favorite crazy DJ Richie Panic. Expect wet panties.

Cockblock SF Pride Party Minna, 111 Minna, SF; www.cockblocksf.com. 9pm-2am, $5. DJs Nuxx and Zax spin homolicious tunes and put the haters on notice: no cock-blockin’ at this sweaty soiree.

Crib Gay Pride Party Crib, 715 Harrison, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.thecribsf.com. 9:30pm-3am, $10. The hopefully soothing Ms. Monistat (again!) and the irritating — in a fun way — Bobby Trendy set it off at this homolicious megaparty popular among the 18+ set, complete with a Naked Truth body-art fashion show and a T-shirt toss, in case you lose the one you came with in the melee.

The Cruise Pride Party Lexington Club, 3464 19th St, SF; (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com. 9pm-2am, free. Hey, dyke sailor! Hike up your naughty nauticals and wade into this ship of dreams (yes, it’s a theme party) with DJs Rapid Fire and Melissa at the lovely lesbian Lex. Land, ho.

The Tubesteak Connection Aunt Charlie’s, 133 Turk, SF; (415) 441-2922, www.auntcharlieslounge.com. A warm and bubbly tribute to early Italo house, wonderfully obscure disco tunes, and outfits Grace Jones would die for. With DJ Bus Station John.

FRIDAY 27

PERFORMANCES AND EVENTS

Same-Sex Salsa and Latin Ballroom Dance Festival and Competition Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF; (415) 581-1600. www.queerballroom.com. 7pm-12am, free. With $100 awarded to the winner of this fancy-footwork competition, the stakes for this event’s salsa-hot dancing surpass the single bills slipping into thong strings this week.

San Francisco Trans March Dolores Park, Dolores and 18th Sts; (415) 447-2774, www.transmarch.org. 3pm stage, 7pm march; free. Join the transgender community of San Francisco and beyond for a day of live performances, speeches, and not-so-military marching.

CLUBS AND PARTIES

Bibi: We Exist and We Thrive Pork Store Café, 3122 16th St., SF; (415) 626-5523, www.myspace.com/BibiSF. 9pm, $20. The Middle Eastern and North African LGBT community hosts a charitable happy hookah party to native tunes spun by DJs Masood, Josh Cheon, and more.

Bustin’ Out III Trans March Afterparty El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; 282-3325. 9pm-2am, $5-$50, sliding scale. Strut your stuff at the Transgender Pride March’s official afterparty, featuring sets from DJs Durt, Lil Manila, and giveaways from Good Vibes, AK Press, and more. Proceeds benefit the Trans/Gender Variant in Prison Committee.

Charlie Horse: No Pride No Shame The Cinch, 1723 Polk, SF; (415) 776-4162, www.myspace.com/charliehorsecinch. 10pm, free. Drag disaster Anna Conda presents a bonkers night of rock ‘n’ roll trash drag numbers, plus Juanita Fajita’s iffy "gay food cart" and Portland, Ore.’s Gender Fluids performance troupe.

Cream DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF; (415) 626-1409, www.creamsf.com. Two levels of sexy girl energy and a catwalk to scratch your lipstick claws on, plus a Latin lounge with hip-grinding tunes from DJs Carlitos and Chili D.

GIRLPRIDE Faith, 715 Harrison, SF; (415) 647-8258. 8pm-4am, $20. About 2,500 women are expected to join host DJ Page Hodel to celebrate this year’s Pride Weekend, and that’s a whole lotta love.

Hot Pants Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF; (415) 703-8964, www.myspace.com/hotpantsclub. 10pm, $5. DJ Chelsea Starr and many others make this alternaqueer dance party a major destination for hot persons of all genders and little trousers.

Mr. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF; (415) 762-0151, wwww.mighty119.com. 10pm-6am, $20. Darling promoters Big Booty, FSLD, Beatboxevents, and Big Top join forces to produce the party premiere of Pride week with DJ Kidd Sysko and Lord Kook spinning alternative techno sounds, and a special deep and dirty set from soulful house god David Harness.

Sweet Beast Transfer, 198 Church, SF; www.myspace.com/beastparty. 10pm-2am, $10. Reanimate your fetish for leather and fur by dressing up as fiercely feral fauna for the petting-zoo of a party. This week, after all, is mating season.

Tranny Fierce Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF; (415) 348-0900, www.supperclub.com. 8pm dinner, 10pm afterparty. $85 dinner, $15-$25 afterparty. Total ferosh! Project Runway winner Christian Siriano hosts a four-course meal of trash-talking and looking fierce. The afterparty serves up drag nasty from Holy MsGrail, Cassandra Cass, and more.

Uniform and Leather Ball Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF; (415) 777-0333, www.frantix.net. 8pm-midnight, $25 & $40. The men’s men of San Francisco’s Mr. Leather Committee want you to dress to the fetish nines for this huge gathering, featuring men, music, and more shiny boots than you can lick all year. Yes, sirs!

SATURDAY 28

PERFORMANCES AND EVENTS

Dykes on Bikes Fundraiser Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., SF; (415) 626-0880, www.dykesonbikes.org. Noon. Dykes on Bikes can’t drink and drive: they need your help. A pint for you means a gallon of gas for them. Stop by before heading to the march.

LGBT Pride Celebration Civic Center, Carlton B. Goodlett Place and McCallister, SF; (415) 864-3733, www.sfpride.org. Noon-6pm, free. Celebrate LGBT pride at this free outdoor event featuring DJs, speakers, and live music. This is the first half of the weekend-long celebration sponsored by SF Pride. Also Sun/29.

Pink Triangle Installation Twin Peaks Vista, Twin Peaks Blvd parking area, SF; (415) 247-1100, ext 142, www.thepinktriangle.com. 7-11am, free. Bring a hammer and your work boots and help install the giant pink triangle atop Twin Peaks for everyone to see this Pride Weekend. Stay for the commemoration ceremony at 10:30am to hear Mayor Gavin Newsom and Assemblymember Mark Leno speak.

Pride Brunch Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF; (415) 777-0333, www.positiveresource.org. 11am-2pm, $75-$100. Raise a mimosa toast to this year’s Pride Parade grand marshals with many of the community’s leading activists.

Same-Sex Country, Swing, and Standard Ballroom Dance Festival and Competition Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF; (415) 626-8000, www.queerballroom.com. 6:30-8pm, free. The Queer Jitterbugs get reeling at this one-of-a-kind contest that’ll shine your spurs and get you swingin’ out of your seat.

San Francisco Dyke March Dolores Park, Dolores and 18th Sts, SF; www.dykemarch.org. 7pm, free. Featuring music from the Trykes, Papa Dino, Las Krudas, and more, plus a whole lot of wacky sapphic high jinks.

CLUBS AND PARTIES

Bearracuda Pride Deco, 510 Larkin, SF; (415) 346-2025, www.bearracuda.com/pride. 9pm-3am, $8 before 10pm, $10 after. Hot hairy homos generate serious body static on the dance floor at this big bear get-down.

Bootie Presents The Monster Show DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; (415) 626-1409, www.bootiesf.com. The city’s giant mashup club hosts a drag queen bootleg mix extravaganza, as Cookie Dough and her wild Monster Show crash the Bootie stage.

Colossus 1015 Folsom, SF; (415) 431-1200, www.guspresents.com. 10pm-8am, $40. The beats of mainstream club favorite DJ Manny Lehman throb through the largest and longest, uh &ldots; dance party of Pride week.

Deaf Lesbian Festival Dyke Ball San Francisco LGBT Center, Rainbow Room, 1800 Market, SF; (415) 865-5555, www.dcara.org. 8pm, 440. Feel the music, close your eyes, and dance to the rhythm of your smokin’ partner at the Deaf Lesbian Festival’s first ever Dyke Ball.

Devotion EndUp, 401 Sixth St, SF; (415) 357-0827, www.theendup.com. 9pm, $15. This storied dance party is back with "A Classic Pride." DJs Ruben Mancias and Pete Avila spin all-classic soulful and stripped-down house anthems for a sweaty roomful of those who were there back when.

Dyke March After Affair Minna, 111 Minna, SF; www.diamonddaggers.com. 8pm-11pm, $12-$20 sliding scale. An early-ending party featuring drag queens, burlesque stars, and belly dancers ensures that beauty sleep comes to the next day’s easy riders whose love of bikes and beer rivals that of any Hell’s Angel or fratboy. Or, stick around for Minna’s ’80s night, Barracuda.

Manquake The Gangway, 841 Larkin, SF; (415) 776-6828. 10pm, $5. Disco rareties and bathhouse classics in a perfectly cruisy old-school dive environment with DJ Bus Station John.

PlayBoyz Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.clubrimshot.com. 10pm-3am, $10. The stars of legalized gay marriage, Obama’s candidacy, Pride week, and Black Music Month all align for this hip-hop heavy celebration.

Queen Pier 27, SF; www.energy927fm.com. 8pm, $45. Energy 92.7 FM brings back the dynamism of the old-school San Francisco clubs for this Pride dance-off. Chris Cox and Chris Willis headline. Wear your best tear-away sweats and get ready to get down, Party Boy style.

Rebel Girl Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; wwww.rebelgirlsf.com. 9pm-2am, $12. Rebel Girl brings the noise for this one with go-go dancers, Vixen Creations giveaways, drink specials, and, you know, rebel girls.

SUNDAY 29

PERFORMANCES AND EVENTS

LGBT Pride Celebration Civic Center, Carlton B. Goodlett Place and McCallister, SF; (415) 864-3733, www.sfpride.org. Noon-7pm, free. The celebration hits full stride, with musical performances and more.

LGBT Pride Parade Market at Davis to Market and Eighth Sts, SF; (415) 864-3733, www.sfpride.org. 10:30am-noon, free. With 200-plus dykes on bikes in the lead, this 38th annual parade, with an expected draw of 500,000, is the highlight of the Pride Weekend in the city that defines LGBT culture.

True Colors Tour Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley Campus, Hearst and Gayley Streets, Berk; (510) 809-0100, www.apeconcerts.com. 5pm, $42.50-$125 Cyndi Lauper, The B-52s, Wanda Sykes, The Puppini Sisters, and queer-eyed host Carson Kressley bring it on for human rights and limp wrists.

CLUBS AND PARTIES

Big Top The Transfer, 198 Church, SF; (415) 861-7499, www.myspace.com/joshuajcook. A circus-themed hot mess, with DJs Ladymeat, Saratonin, and Chelsea Starr, plus Heklina’s "best butt munch" contest. Will she find the third ring?

Dykes on Bikes Afterparty Lexington Club, 3464 19th St, SF; (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com. 1pm, free. How do they find time to ride with all these parties?

Juanita More! Gay Pride ’08 Bambuddha Lounge, 601 Eddy, SF; (415) 864-3733, www.juanitamore.com. 3pm, $30. Juanita More! hosts this benefit for the Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial, with DJs Robot Hustle and James Glass, and performances by fancy-pants Harlem Shake Burlesque and the Diamond Daggers. Fill ‘er up, baby!

Starbox Harry Denton’s, 450 Powell, SF; (415) 395-8595, www.harrydenton.com. 6pm-midnight, $7 High atop the Sir Francisc Drake Hotel, the swank Harry Denton’s presents DJ Page Hodel’s patented brand of diverse and soulful bacchanalia.

Sundance Saloon Country Pride Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF; (415) 626-8000, www.sundancesaloon.org. 6pm-11pm, $5. Hot hot bear husbands on the hoof, line-dancing for the pickin’ at this overalls-and-snakeskin-boots roundup.

Unity Temple, 540 Howard, SF; www.templesf.com. Legendary kiki-hurrah club Fag Fridays rises again with a sure-to-be-smokin’ DJ set from the one and only Frankie Knuckles, the goddess’s gift to deep house freaks and friends.

Towards Carfree Cities: Everybody into the streets!

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Steven T. Jones covered the Towards Carfree Cities conference, which closed yesterday with the first Sunday Parkways, and brought back these photos and words.
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Clear the streets of cars and they will fill with happy people riding their bikes, playing games or music, strolling with their families, communing with friends and strangers, teaching children to bike or skate, and generally building community across class, racial and regional lines.

That’s a lesson pioneered during the Sunday road closures known as Ciclovias in Bogota, Columbia and other foreign cities, events that made their U.S. debut yesterday in Portland, Oregon, drawing huge crowds and rave reviews. The city’s six-mile Sunday Parkways loop connected several North Portland parks and created a healthy, fun, communal atmosphere.

Next up are New York City, Baltimore, and San Francisco, which are all working on Ciclovias planned for later this year. SF’s version, dubbed Sunday Healthways, proposes to open up more than four miles of roadways from the Bayview Opera House to Portsmouth Square in Chinatown along the waterfront for three weekends starting in August (officials tell me more details are due for release after July 4 once current permitting discussions wrap up).

There’s bound to be a backlash among the cars-first set in San Francisco once the event is publicized and underway. But as Gil Peñalosa, who developed the concept as parks director in Bogota and now promotes it internationally, said at last week’s Towards Carfree Cities conference in Portland, “The educational benefits are huge.”

Simply having a community discussion about carfree concepts – even if it means arguing about the details and scale of Ciclovias — helps people understand the environmental and social imperatives behind reallocating urban spaces, he said. In many U.S. cities, more than half of all land goes to circulating automobiles, but as Peñalosa said, “The roads are big enough for people to do many things.”
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The Chron discovers what’s wrong with SF

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It’s taken long enough, but the San Francisco Chronicle has finally figured out the biggest story in town, a story that’s been the single most important part of the city’s political and social landscape for more than a decade: Housing prices are “>driving the middle class out of town.

There’s lots of handwringing and comments from people like Roberta Achtenberg:

“It’s not very healthy for the city’s social fabric or the city’s economy,” said Roberta Achtenberg, an economic development consultant who focuses on workforce housing.

Gee — until recently, Achtenberg worked for the Chamber of Commerce, which has been a big part of the reason that the city drives out poor people and the middle class.

Nowhere in the story is there any mention of the reason official city policy is in large part to blame. You know why there’s no affordable housing? Because we only build housing for rich people.

‘Tokyo Gore Police,’ ‘Machine Girl’ splash down at Hole in the Head’s finale

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One-armed bandit: Machine Girl‘s Asami lost an arm in her battle against a shady ninja family, but that doesn’t mean you should stand in the way of her quest for vengeance (witness the poor slob in the rear).

Ho boy, are you ready for the nightmares? That’s practically guaranteed this weekend as the Another Hole in the Head fest closes out with its final mow-down. Fans of arterial spray, extreme Japanese filmmaking, random acts of unkind dismemberment, and fatal flying guillotines will be able to get their geek on one last, but hella amazing time with this last-minute double feature of Japanese shock-and-argh at Brava, showcasing the late add Tokyo Gore Police and crowd fave Machine Girl. The quickie downlow:

MACHINE GIRL

Possibly the most exuberantly bloody and cartoonish offering in the fest, which bites off/pays homage to Grindhouse AND Kill Bill. This archetypal Japanese revenge story – passionate and cruel by turns – hinges on the trials and tribulations of Ami Hyuga (Asami), a high-school basketball nut, fresh-faced daughter of an accused killer, and loyal big sister. Her younger brother becomes snared by spiralling gambling (!?) debts and ends up in hock to the local budding young hoods, including the son of a yakuza/ninja kingpin (whose devil ‘do bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Prodigy’s lead vocalist) – it doesn’t end prettily. Something snaps in Ami, and she goes after the kids responsible for her bro’s death, only to come up against a formidable array of monstrous parents driven to protect their equally rotten offspring. Losing her arm – slowly – in a nasty torture scene just sends her over the edge. Don’t even ask yourself how she can possibly operate a attachable machine gun with a stump – Rose MacGowan figured out how in Planet Terror, so can she.

You won’t soon forget the memorably ’60s-ish comicbook-like action sequence opener, evocative of both Seijun Suzuki and Sin City, or the finale, less a balletic bloodbath than a completely over-the-top showdown between the “Super Mourner Gang” of grieving parents (just because your son chose to become a ninja doesn’t mean you don’t hurt), giant holes blasted in bodies, a driller bra donned by the meanest mama ever, and a scalping scene that combines disco strobing and an almost Looney Tunes-esque dark comedy.

TOKYO GORE POLICE

Also produced by the venerable exploitation house Nikkatsu (well, they made all kinds of films, though their “roman porno” and “pink” softcore films brought them infamy) with a few of the same actors popping up, Tokyo Gore Police is the eagerly awaited, latest turn by the cruelly beauteous Audition S&M star Eihi Shiina. Here, she’s a girl cop – part of a sinister Philip K. Dick-ish privatized police squad commissioned with ridding the world of monstrous psychopaths who grow weapons out of whatever body part they lose. Sound familiar? Yes, these are the same good – or bad, depending on how you feel about this level of gore – people at Nikkatsu who gave you Machine Girl.

Directed by first-time auteur Yoshihiro Nishimura (who crafted special effects makeup for Machine GIrl, the also memorable Hole in the Head features Exte and Meatball Machine), Tokyo Gore Police is chock-full of disturbing scenes: point-blank exploding heads (recurring like a child’s bad dreams), exposed brains, intimations of limbless sexual servitude, and natch the Snail Girl, above. But the movie’s blend of Ultraman live-action monster brouhahas and a Burner-y, nouveau goth-steampunk aesthetic that, personally, pulls me out of the narrative. I felt a little less invested in Tokyo Gore Police than the more, ahem, classically B-minded Machine Girl. But, hey, this isn’t a competition – unless you want to see how far I can throw a severed hand – so stick around for both flicks. Shock fiends won’t be disappointed.

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Creepy crawlies: Snail Girl

MACHINE GIRL AND TOKYO GORE POLICE
June 22, 6 and 8 p.m., call for price
Brava Theater
2781 24th St., SF
For tickets or more information, call (415) 820-3907
www.sfindie.com

Free glam lashings at Shu Uemura, all summer long

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Color me impressed: the source (water) color palette from Shu Uemura‘s limited-edition summer collection, Hana-bi.

I had too much sake to steer last night – the Muni was just the ticket after the fab lil’ get-together at Shu Uemura‘s Fillmore Street boutique. Shopping Spy dug the Osaka sashimi and sushi and admired the diamond-lined lash jobs going down at the store’s Tokyo Lash Bar.

But even if you didn’t make the soiree last night, you can taste the pleasure of the (faux) lash as well. In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the first Shu Uemura boutique in Tokyo, the store is offering complimentary eyelashes and lash application every Thursday beginning today, June 19, and continuing through July 31. Make an appointment for a spot between 5 and 7 p.m. Will your life – or your gorgeous peepers – ever be the same?

Shu Uemura
1971 Fillmore at Pine, SF
For reservations, call (415) 395-0953

Montreal Fringe Festival: on y va le Fringe!

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By Nicole Gluckstern

It’s official, I’ve gone bi. Bi-coastally Fringe that is. The 18th annual Montreal Fringe Festival has begun, and I’m here to play my role. Like the San Francisco Fringe, of which I’m also a part, the Montreal Fringe offers an eclectic array of unjuried theatrical performances, from dance to drama, acrobatics to absurdities, spoken word to shadow puppetry. Unlike the SF Fringe however, Montreal is a major player in the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit, attracting a large variety of international performers, many of whom will spend the entire summer fringing on the road. It’s also one hell of a party. I’m not cheating on San Francisco, I reason. I’m broadening my horizons. If last year’s Montreal Fringe, my first, was but a dalliance, this year’s for real. While normally it’s fringe performers who do the touring, I figure that as a fringe technician, I shouldn’t have to get left out of the fun.

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Fringe folk. Photo by Cindy Lopez.

And so it’s started. It’s humid and the air is redolent with cooking grease from nearby fry haven (heaven!), Patati Patata, as the Fringe kicks off in the Parc des Amèriques with a performance from local lo-fi band, The Unsettlers. My new favorite band! Whisky-soaked is such a cliche by now, so I’ll just say the lead vocals rasp purposfully somewhere between Tom Waits, Mark Lanegan, and the Pogues, while the band keeps the shipwrecked melodies trembling and swinging with a variety of duct-tape repaired instruments such as the accordian, the bowed bass, harmonium, trombone, clarinet, a kickdrum made of an industrial plastic garbage can, and a two-foot tall baby grand piano.

Towards Carfree Cities: Spreading the word

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Steven T. Jones reports from the Toward Carfree Cities conference in Portland

My head and two notebooks are filled with alarming indicators of the need for more people to go carfree and with innovative ideas for making that happen. The solutions range from facilities like the floating bicycle/pedestrian path on the eastside of the Willamette River…
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…to technologies for making transit more accessible (such as online trip planners and the Nextbus system used by Muni, which San Francisco’s Michael Smith gave a presentation on yesterday) to key research (consultant Peter Jacobsen finds bikers and walkers are safer in large numbers: “There’s something going on with motorists behavior changing”) to sociopolitical movements, including the many freeway revolts around the U.S. (SF’s Jason Henderson moderated a session on that yesterday) and reclaim the streets pushes such as Critical Mass, depaving, and creative protests against expanded roadways.

Whew, that lightened my head a little bit, but there’s still just so much to say about carfree issues, which have only in recent years penetrated the mainstream consciousness. Bay Area residents Brian Smith and Jonathan Winston each maintain good blogs on the topic, and up here there’s the great BikePortland.org site and one from Canadian journalist Jude Isabella. But the standard these days is being set by the New York City Livable Streets Movement, which includes Streetsblog, Streetfilms, and the Open Planning Project.

And with stable funding from carfree-minded entrepreneur Mark Horton (who started the file-sharing service Limewire, among other things) and a desire to reach into more U.S. cities, Streetsblog is eyeing San Francisco and other California cities to expand its reach and impact.
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San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director Leah Shahum, author/activist Chris Carlsson, and Streetsblog editor-in-chief Aaron Naparstek.

‘Tony and Tina’s Wedding,’ SF Style

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Today’s Ammianoliner:

Tony and Tina’s Wedding, San Francisco style. Madonna Mia.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Wednesday, June 18, 2008) B3

Blood in, blood out

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

In John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, when Parma’s bright and talented Giovanni (Michael Hayden) confesses to Friar Bonaventura (Steven Anthony Jones) his passion for his equally exceptional sister, Annabella (René Augesen), the friar is quick to understand the stakes, declaring, "We have need to pray." He advises Giovanni to turn from so unnatural a desire to repentance and sorrow. "Acknowledge what thou art," he tells him, "a wretch, a worm, a nothing." But this strikes us as something of a denial of nature too, especially given our protagonist’s rare qualities. And it’s soon clear that religion will give him no solace or cure anyway. This is unsurprising, since the church — headed by a slimy cardinal (Jack Willis) — is a thoroughly dishonest institution deeply implicated in the pervasive corruption of the age. So where should Giovanni’s faith and ultimate allegiance lie in such a world? And where, in turn, should our sympathies lie?

Such questions go to the heart of what remains provocative and compelling in John Ford’s Jacobean tragedy four centuries on. It makes a kind of irrefutable sense within the context of the play that Giovanni and Annabella (clearly intended as a darker version of Romeo and Juliet) would pursue a mutual affinity and blood bond to the extremes of physical and emotional passion — with tragic consequences of course. But the surprise is that while tragic, the consequences are also, morally speaking, far from straightforward. Forging a bond that denies and defies a fallen world and its judgment, their relationship finally succumbs to the order of the day — which is to say, the disorder of violence — by self-destructing in an orgy of blood vengeance.

‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Ford’s best-known work — whose central incest plot comes wrapped in intervening subplots driven by jealousy, power, and revenge — plumbs moral confusion and the individual conscience in a hypocritical and vicious age. No wonder it feels thematically and dramatically vital in our own spiraling time. Ford depicts a world — the tumultuous mid–17th century — where the Elizabethan certainties of Shakespeare’s day have dissolved and authority has blurred. Meanwhile, material and carnal appetites have bloomed like overripe fruit in a dilapidated garden that looks more like a jungle. The cruelty and gore here barely merit a raised eyebrow by today’s brassy standards, whether in the realm of entertainment, art, or politics. But in Ford’s time and ours, taboos don’t so much disappear as they become tantalizingly flimsy, porous and seductive, Guantánamo being one byword for this.

The still-burning fire in Ford’s tragedy is inconsistently sustained, however, in American Conservatory Theater’s new production, requiring a wade through a fairly static and fitfully persuasive first act to get to the juicier scenes and forceful momentum of the second. Artistic director Carey Perloff puts wonderful care into the production values and her casting is generally shrewd (in addition to leads Augesen and Hayden, who really heat up by the end, Anthony Fusco, Susan Gibney, and Gregory Wallace turn in particularly noteworthy performances). The baroque world of Ford’s play and our time is architecturally bridged, meanwhile, in Walt Spangler’s multileveled scenic design — an abstracted cathedral in its jewel-like beaded curtains, scattered candles in soft-colored glass, steep metallic stairways, and a treelike cluster of massive dangling organ pipes enshrouding composer-musician Bonfire Madigan Shive and her cello on a recessed tier. The "avant-baroque" cello score and Shive’s occasional anguished vocal lines add a somewhat thinner aural texture to character and scene than seems intended. But the set is stunningly integrated with Robert Wierzel’s sensual lighting design, evoking baroque canvases while draping the action in a sense of carnal luxury and exquisite decadence.

It’s a bumpy ride, but the end is well played and gripping, casting a memorable image of Giovanni drenched in the blood of his sister and lover, having utterly retreated into himself — literally into the womb of his flesh and blood, where sibling, wife, and child have all become horribly blurred. In the play’s crowning and irresolvable tension, incest is both a fundamental violation of natural order as well as an assertion of blood as the only terra firma in a world of quicksand. *

‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE

Tues.–Sat., 8 p.m. (also Wed. and Sat., 2 p.m.); Sun., 2 p.m., $14–$82

American Conservatory Theater

415 Geary, SF

(415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org

Bag drag

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER As a once-impressionable protein unit who wrapped my eyeballs around any and all TV comedy, I’m slightly abashed to say I haven’t caught Saturday Night Live regularly in many a year. So I was surprised to hear rumors a while back that the series was allegedly biting off one of the Bay Area underground music scene’s fave figures: Jibz Cameron — known and loved for her garage-rock spaz-outs with the Roofies and her pretension-leveling levity behind the counter at Lost Weekend Video. And then there’s her super-girl-group of sorts, Dynasty, with Numbers drummer Indra Dunis and Neung Phak vocalist Diana Hayes, and her solo spin-off project, Dynasty Handbag.

“I don’t watch it either,” Cameron says from Brooklyn, as pet Chihuahuas struggle over a chew toy in the background. “But I get a phone call every other Saturday, ‘Omigod, you won’t fucking believe it…’ and I say, ‘I already know.'” She’s talking about SNL‘s house DJ Dynasty Handbag, a character that first popped up on the show in 2005, hosting a faux-MTV talk show. The occasional Kenan Thompson character is a far cry from Cameron’s Dynasty Handbag, a crazed kitsch-waver — a kind of schizo Bride of Peaches and Krystle Carrington — that Cameron developed on petite SF music stages before moving east four years ago. The project started life as the portable version of Dynasty and turned into a multi-referent alter ego.

The SNL character hasn’t reappeared in the last year, but it still offends. “It’s still on their DVDs, and I do performance that’s comedy-related,” she says. “People research me on the Internet, and my site comes up first, but they’re there, though I’m the OG, the OD, the OGD.” She says she sent SNL a cease-and-desist letter and when “that didn’t go anywhere, I took it to Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. I’m not in a full-blown lawsuit with them, but we’re sort of in discussion with them.” At press time, SNL representatives have not responded to requests for comment.

Cameron says she does have a new “plan of attack.” Her friend Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio will be producing a podcast radio show called Radio Woo Woo, which she will cohost. “My plan is to just keep talking about it on the air,” she says, adding that the podcast will premiere TV on the Radio’s new album this fall.

The low-broiling brouhaha hasn’t stopped Cameron from developing her Dynasty Handbag performances into narratives. This week she’ll unveil three short pieces at CounterPULSE. One, Bags, revolves around Cameron’s relationships with five empty shopping bags: “Each one sucks my soul in a different way, like bad relationships in my 20s. One is really needy; one’s really demanding; and one just wants to get fisted.” A work in progress, O Death, sees Cameron attempting to bury her own dead body.

Cameron has been far from dead and buried in New York: within months of moving to the Big Snapple she was crowned Miss Lower East Side in Murray Hill’s annual pageant, and she has presented solo shows at PS 122 and Galapagos Art Space. “Everybody works so hard here — it’s really influenced me to go ahead with my stuff. And there’s just the intensity of seeing so many insane people every day,” says Cameron, who was raised by hippie parents in Mendocino County (“My childhood was peppered by characters with beards and long, droopy fun bags”). “That’s really helpful, too.” *

DYNASTY HANDBAG: TALES FROM THE PURSE

Thurs/19 and Sat/21, 8 p.m., Fri/20 and Sun/22, 10 p.m., $20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.directfromnyc.com

MAGIC NUMBERS, FLYING DRUMS: THESE NEW PURITANS

Southend-on-Sea, UK’s These New Puritans purvey an austere, twinkling breed of synthetic/organic art-pop — one that evokes both Wire and the Klaxons. Who suspected the murky mystical inclinations embedded in the band’s debut, Beat Pyramid (Domino)? “Pyramids are about secrets and chambers,” vocalist Jack Barnett, 20, offers from his band’s tour stop in Chicago. “Some of the songs have to do with magic.” He claims 16th-century occultist-mathematician John Dee plays into his searching New Puritans as much as the Wu-Tang Clan, which Barnett praises for the “eerie, tiny little sounds in the background” of their productions.

Now the combo is attempting to write music that marries “the round canons of Steve Reich” with the beats of dancehall — provided Barnett manages to dodge the projectiles heaved by his drummer twin, George. When making music with your twin, Jack says, “you’re honest to the point of getting completely out of hand. As in drums being thrown at me. On a regular basis.”

Thurs/19, 8 p.m., $12–$13. Popscene, 333 Ritch, SF. www.popscene-sf.com

THE HAPPENINGS?

 

100 YEARS AT THE HOTEL UTAH

The 1908 edifice where Robin Williams, Cake, Counting Crows, and countless others broke out brings back witnesses and whoops it up. With Penelope Houston, Paula Frazer, Jesse DeNatale, Colossal Yes, Greg Ashley, Blag Dahlia, and others. Thurs/19; reception 7 p.m., ceremony 7:30 p.m., music 9 p.m.; $8 show. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300

 

JAYMAY

The bookish Long Island chanteuse flirts with song stylings slouching betwixt Feist and Keren Ann. Thurs/19, 9 p.m., $12. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016

 

GEORGE MICHAEL

He’s never going to dance again through this sort of arena show, the UK pop star hinted recently. Thurs/19, 8 p.m., $56–<\d>$176. HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose. (415) 421-TIXS

 

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

Narrow Stairs finds the Seattle cabbies stretching into darker realms. With Rogue Wave. Sat/21, 8 p.m., $39.50. Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berk. www.apeconcerts.com

 

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