SF

Mike Lacey ducks the big ones

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I missed the trial on Friday, so if the SF Weekly’s hit man, Andy Van De Voorde, wants to take a swing at me for posting information on the testimony, fine: I’m smiling, Andy. (I’m also not the only person in the courtroom from the Guardian who knows what’s going on and can take notes.)

But before we get to the day’s events, let me do my all-too-regular Van De Voorde correction file. From his most recent blog:

“What’s your official title?” asked Weekly attorney H. Sinclair Kerr Jr. in what is a traditional first question for witnesses.

“I’m the executive editor of the company and apparently the mascot,” Lacey replied.

The remark was a reference to testimony from Guardian executive editor Tim Redmond, who last week said under oath he thought of Lacey as a New Times mascot.

Um, no Andy. I didn’t say that, under oath or otherwise. That testimony was from Jennifer Lopez, who used to work for the SF Weekly.

And jeez, Andy’s in court every day.

Another correction:

[Guardian attorney Ralph] Alldredge was also skeptical about why [New Times CEO Jim] Larkin hasn’t attended the trial—an odd question given that he could have subpoenaed the New Times executive.

Actually, Andy, you might check with your lawyers: This is a California case, and as long as Larkin doesn’t live here and can’t be found within the borders of the state, we can’t subpoena him. Interesting that he hasn’t shown up once for the trial; if he had, we could have compelled him to take the stand and answer a few questions.

Now then, since we have that cleared up, let me go to the day’s events. Here’s our report:

Mike Lacey took the stand in the Guardian’s predatory pricing trial against the SF Weekly and had some trouble answering some key questions.

The editor in chief of the SF Weekly’s parent chain, the VVM/New Times/SF Weekly, said at one point that the SF Weekly was a better paper in “most all respects” to its competitor, the Guardian.

Lacey said that the Weekly was better in layout, stories, design, graphics, readers, everything. Also, he said that the Guardian was “obsessed with City Hall and City Hall minutiae” and the city was full of young people who didn’t vote and weren’t interested in politics and they came to the Weekly.

If the Weekly is such a better paper, Guardian Attorney Ralph Alldredge prodded on cross examination, why does the Weekly sell its advertising at rates so much lower than the Guardian? Why doesn’t a Weekly advertising sales person sell its advertising space at a rate higher than the Guardian? Why doesn’t the Weekly command a premium price?

Lacey ducked the questions.

Clubs: I feel so Debaser

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debaser2 sml.bmp

Yes, shake yourself, wake yourself, shiver ye timbers, and don ye olde kinderwhore frock. There’s a newish club in town, courtesy of those Neon kids: Debaser, a ’90s alternative dance party that has yet to find its firm monthly footing but will nonetheless shake the rafters at the Knockout Saturday, Feb. 9.

Tomorrow’s Valentine’s special showcases DJs Jamie Jams (Avery Island), EmDee (Club Neon), and Jessica (Club Lovely); bearer of the best Courtney Love-style baby doll dress gets a gift certificate to Thrift Town. Sorry, no lurid imagery available yet: Jams confesses that lame ole 2D pics fail to convey the “sheer mania” going down. Last month, he says, “We seriously had 300 people in flannels moshing to records and screaming all the words to the Cranberries.” Scary! But fun at the same time, no? And never fear, Breeder babies, if you miss this month’s, you can always get your Kurt on at the next party on March 1.

Debaser
Saturday, Feb. 9; 10 p.m.; free with flannel before 11 p.m., afterward $5
Knockout
3223 Mission, SF

Partying Indiefest style

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By Vanessa K. Carr

Yes, the SF IndieFest is about great independent film, but let’s be real: it’s also about theme parties and free booze.

indie.jpg

The opening party last night at Cellspace did not disappoint. What better way to follow two hours in a dark theater than with a rowdy mechanical bull, enough free beer and lychee martinis to loosen the hips and morals of everyone in the place, a live alt-bluegrass band in the back, and Dolly and Burt presiding over the whole affair as Best Little Whorehouse in Texas rolled on the big screen?

Predatory pricing: A primer

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The jury in the Guardian’s lawsuit against the SF Weekly got a primer today on how prdatory pricing by a big chain works.

Guardian controller Sandy Lange took the stand, and outlined the results of information she’d compiled on below-cost sales by the Weekly and the East Bay Express. The Guardian is charging that Village Voice Media, formerly known as New Times, which owns the Weekly and until recently owned the Express, has been selling ads below the cost of producing them to harm a competitor.

That’s a violation of California law.

Lange explained how she and other Guardian staffers and legal assistants had entered into an Excel spreadsheet some 20,000 sales transactions from the Weekly and the Guardian, involving 128 accounts, over eight years, from 1999 to 2007. In each case, the computer tracked whether the Weekly’s ads were sold below cost — and how often those cut-rate sales were linked to the Guardian either losing a client or being forced to cut prices to salvage the deal.

The spreadsheet showed that in 91 percent of the transactions, the Weekly’s sale price was below cost. That’s consistent with data Lange presenting showing that the Weekly had consistently lost money. In 2003, she noted, the cost of producing a page of the SF Weekly was $1,936.17 — and the paper’s revenue was just $1,634.36. That meant the Weekly was losing about $300 for every page it produced. A few years later, the gap had grown: The cost of producing a page was $2,730 and the revenue was $1,900 — meaning the Weekly was losing $800 a page.

How was this possible? Simple: The chain kept pouring in money from its 15 other markets to prop up San Francisco and the East Bay.

Then Lange explained her correlation report: In 34 percent of the transactions involving below-cost sales, the Weekly’s rate-cutting was associated with the Guardian deeply discounting its own ads (threatening the financial viability of a local paper with no deep-pockets parent). And when she added in the accounts that the Guardian lost entirely after the Weekly’s predatory pricing, the total came to 66 percent.

In other words, in two-thirds of the cases where the Weekly had sold below cost, the Guardian had either had to follow suit and sell for less than the ads were worth — or lost the account and the business.

Lange also presented charts that showed how the predatory behavior had eroded the Guardian’s share of the local alternative-weekly ad market.

On cross-examination, Weekly attorney Ivo Labar tried to argue that the market itself had shrunk. In 2000, he pointed out, the two papers together sold $13 million worth of display ads. By 2007, that number had shrunk to $8.8 million. “Isn’t it true,” Labar asked, “that advertisers chose to spend only $8.8 million in 2007?”

Lange said she disagreed with the premise of the question. “Because of your predatory pricing,” she testified, “you put negative pressure on the market.” In other words, the Weekly depressed the costs of all alt-weekly ads in San Francisco.

Labar then pointed to a handful of accounts in which the Weekly either sold ads for a higher price than the Guardian or the Guardian appeared to have lost the business for reasons that had nothing to do with price, and tried to discredit the entire report on the basis of a few examples. That’s been the Weekly’s practice in this case: Take a clear trend (years of below-cost pricing) and clear results (damage to the Guardian) and try to poo-poo it by saying there are a few cases here and there that don’t fit the pattern.

Lange’s testimony will continue tomorrow morning.

Guardian vs. SF Weekly: The Lawsuit

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@@http://www.sfbg.com/lawsuit@@

On the ground

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>>How Clinton and Obama split California

>>Photos from Obama’s party

>>Obama party coverage
***“Change is coming” (if you didn’t know)
***Lack of diversity in the City?
***The scene at the Fairmont Hotel ballroom

>>Obama wins San Francisco

>>Clinton party coverage
***The scene at Hillary’s SF headquarters
***Hillary supporters snub Obama camp

>>Prop A victory party

>>Watching the California returns roll in

>>A real convention for once?

>>Dining with Ron Paul supporters

>>Drinking to democracy at the Kilowatt

>>Partying with the Democrats

>>Who can beat McCain?

>>Bill and Gavin stump for Hillary

>>A vote for Edwards

Gee, the SF Weekly is bored

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Some interesting evidence emerged in the Guardian’s lawsuit against the SF Weekly and its corporate parent today, most of it in the form of depositions from witnesses. If you were looking for the kind of drama we had yesterday, this was fairly mundane stuff — but if you listened to what a former publisher of the Weekly said in his depositions, it showed exactly why this case has gone to trial.

Before I start on that, though, one note: I’m trying to play this fairly straight, and not get into personality stuff, but I have to say: The Weekly’s hit man, Dandy Andy Van De Voorde, is … how else can I say this? Making stuff up.

From the lead of his blog (if you can call it that) tonight:

After yesterday’s fireworks from Bruce Brugmann, Guardian attorneys returned to their plodding ways Wednesday, subjecting the jury to an entire day of testimony from witnesses who weren’t there.

Brugmann, who treated the court to a three-hour display that included spluttering, shouting and fist pounding yesterday, sat quietly in the gallery as his lawyers put on a noticeably dull performance that had at least two jurors visibly napping at times

Um … I was there yesterday, and I can say with absolute certainty that Bruce Brugmann never once pounded anything with his fist and never shouted. That’s just wrong. It didn’t happen. (I don’t know what “sputtering” is, so I can’t comment on that.)

And Andy: Most bloggers use links to connect to other stuff they’re talking about. You’ve blasted me a few times, but your poor readers don’t have the help of these simple little bits of HTML code that let you go from one blog to another so they can see what you’re attacking. It’s not that hard; I bet someone at your 16-paper chain could teach you how to do it.

Now then, back to the story:

Most of the morning was devoted to the (admittedly unexciting) reading of the deposition of Chris Keating, who until early 2007 was publisher of the SF Weekly and group publisher for the Weekly and the East Bay Express. Keating started out the deposition insisting that when he came to San Francisco (and to a paper that was losing lots of money) he was determined to control expenses and bring them into line with revenues.

In fact, he testified, one of his primary goals was to raise ad rates.

But somehow, that didn’t happen. The losses kept rising — and, apparently with Keating’s permission, the Weekly continued to sell ads below cost.

In fact, Keating admitted that “given the level of costs, [the Weekly was] not pricing at a level to cover those costs.”

In other words, the Village Voice Media chain, which owned the Weekly, was selling ads below what it cost to produce them.

There are three elements required to prove the Guardian’s case: The Weekly and Express had to be selling ads below cost, for the purpose of harming a competitor, and there had to be damages.

Keating as much as admitted to the first part.

Then he proceeded to come close to admitting to the second.

In a Sept. 26, 2005 email that was presented to the jury, Keating, discussing a national ad buy, said the Weekly and Express “would give the most amount of rate break to get the business over the Guardian. If that means I net $18 an inch I’ll take it.”

Keating had previously said that the Weekly needed to sell ads for at least $18.75 to $19.25 an inch to make any profit.

And his deposition was filled with references the the Guardian as the Weekly’s main competitor (a fact that undermines the chain’s argument that the San Francisco market is so diversified that the head-to-head between the Guardian and the Weekly is only a small part of the competitive landscape.)

Evidence admitted this morning showed that the Weekly prepared regular “Guardian reports” on how the locally owned paper was doing in ad count — and that there was no other competitor that rated that sort of treatment.

The Guardian lawyers also presented parts of the deposition of Jed Brunst, the chain’s top financial officer, who was asked what happened when the Weekly was losing money and couldn’t pay its bills. Simple, he said: The Weekly got “cash advances from the parent.”

Did those “advances,” he was asked, come with promissory notes or anything else that would suggest they were loans?

No, Brunst said. Nothing like that.

In other words, the chain was propping up a money-losing operating in San Francisco, which was selling ads below cost in an effort to get the business away from the Guardian.

That’s quite a set of admissions. Sorry Dandy Andy was bored.

How Obama and Clinton split California

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We know that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton basically split California, with the latter winning the popular vote by about 10 percentage points. But it’s interesting to look at how they split the Golden State using this map.

Clinton’s margin of victory seems to be counties with lots of Latino voters, which have been slow to warm to Obama. She posted her biggest numbers in the Central Valley counties of Stanislaus (60%), San Joaquin (58), Merced (59), Tulare (60), and Madera (56), and in the border county of Imperial (67).

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa delivered his county for Clinton (55 to 41.5), but Mayor Gavin Newsom failed to do so in San Francisco, where Obama won by 8 points. The candidates split the Bay Area, with Alameda, Marin, and Sonoma counties joining SF in backing Obama and San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Contra Costa counties going for Clinton. Obama got Sacramento and Yolo counties, while Clinton took sprawling San Bernardino County by a large margin

Interestingly, coastal counties were more supportive of Obama, both on the liberal North Coast and more conservative San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. If there is one lesson to be learned, it is that Obama is going to have to make inroads with Latino voters, both in the primary and the main event if he gets there, particularly given John McCain’s reasonable immigration stance (as opposed to the hysterical and racist approaches of the other GOP contenders).

Weekly tries a “gotcha” — and fails

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It was a wild day in court in the Guardian’s lawsuit against the SF Weekly. Bruce Brugmann took the stand. He generally made the SF Weekly’s lawyer look silly – but the Weekly’s out-of-town hit man, Andy Van De Voorde, was almost giddy with his attempts to say that Bruce Brugmann did poorly as a witness.

I’m biased, of course (so is the hit man), but I have to disagree: Bruce laid out the Guardian’s history, explained how the Weekly had attacked us, and stood up remarkably well under a cross-examination that may have given Van De Voorde something to write about, but didn’t really present many relevant facts to the jury.

Several times during cross examination, Weekly attorney H. Sinclair Kerr tried to pull the legal equivalent of a “gotcha.” He kept pushing the notion that the media marketplace in San Francisco is so crowded with so many competitors that the Weekly and the Guardian really aren’t fighting over a discrete slice of that market. Bruce had none of it. Kerr kept trying to get Bruce to talk about competition in general and kept trying to get him to admit that the Weekly isn’t our biggest or most important competitor; Bruce would have none of it.

“I’m talking about competition in general,” Kerr said at one point.
“Well, I’m talking about competition with New Times,” Bruce replied.

Kerr tried to say Bruce wasn’t much of a publisher because he didn’t go on sales calls, but Bruce made quick work of that, too, saying that he was the Guardian’s editor as well, that editors generally don’t do sales calls, that we have a sales staff to do that, and besides “I’m a busy guy – I’m blogging.”

The jury members laughed.

Ballin’

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "I get to go to the ball!"

Longtime Oakland soul hopeful Ledisi isn’t spilling the beans about what designer she’ll be wearing to the Grammy Awards on Feb. 10, but on the phone from New York City, where she’s as deep into the wardrobe as the lion and the witch, she guarantees, "I’ll be cute!"

Red-carpet frocks, on-and-off awards ceremonies, and nominations for Best R&B Album for last year’s Lost and Found (Verve Forecast) and, get this, Best New Artist ("People say I’m a new artist, and I am a new artist in this mainstream world," says the woman who put out her previous two CDs on her LeSun label. "I’ve never had third-party involvement in anything!") — it’s all high drama for Ledisi Anibade Young. Nonetheless, she knows she’ll be enjoying herself to the core and even more because she’ll be exactly where she wants to be: namely, comfortable in her own skin.

"I just feel like I’ve finally come into my own, meaning I’m OK with myself," the vocalist says, bubbling like de Brignac. "I’m still hungry, but I’m not begging anymore."

As we speak, Ledisi is floating, as she puts it, in more ways than one: she’s drifting between residences in NYC, Oakland, and Washington DC and lifting higher about the national spotlight that comes with her nominations, a recognition laid on a clutch of other once and present Bay Area artists like Keyshia Cole, Machine Head, and Turtle Island Quartet and local indie label Six Degrees (for Bebel Gilberto, Ce’U, and Spanish Harlem Orchestra). Regardless of how you feel about the continuing relevance of the Recording Academy paperweights — yes, the Best Polka Album category is still in place — the thrill a nominee like Ledisi feels is catching, especially when one considers the flights of ups and downs she’s undergone over the years.

"I didn’t think I wanted the pressure of being in the front again, with all the issues of image and the style of singing and choosing a category to be in — you know, all that kind of the pressure!" she says, recalling the times she thought about giving up performing. After her debut, Soulsinger (LeSun, 1999), won near-universal praise but garnered zero coveted R&B radio attention, she left Oakland and moved to NYC because, she says, she was "tired of going around in circles." With an understudy role in Broadway’s Caroline, or Change in her change pocket, Ledisi had begun developing the stage version of The Color Purple when she signed to Verve and dropped out of the production to work on Lost and Found.

But after working for a year and a half to get her deal, "the guy who signed me," Verve president Ryan Goldstein, was suddenly laid off among many others. She finished the record, took a breath, and went back into the studio, fearing the new powers that be would require further alterations.

Meanwhile, she adds, "I was finding myself in my personal life": she ended a long relationship and met her father. Her R&B vocalist mother had already told her that her biological father was Larry Saunders, but only when Ledisi traveled to Amsterdam and mentioned his name to a DJ there did she realize others knew The Prophet of Soul, the name of Saunders’s 1976 Soul International LP. "He said, ‘We know who he is!’ and pulled out his record," Ledisi remembers. Her parents had met on tour when Saunders was a starring performer and her mother a backup singer, and when Ledisi finally met her father, "it was just like peas in a pod. I never felt so complete. Now I don’t have those things around me going, ‘Who am I?’<0x2009>"

Ledisi also discovered that her father was the love child of blues vocalist Johnny Ace, who achieved legend as an early rock ‘n’ roll casualty, allegedly shooting himself during a Russian roulette game on Christmas Day, 1954. "When I found out," she says, "I was, like, ‘No wonder we’re all singers!’<0x2009>"

"You know this record is really powerful, with all this happening during its process," she says of Lost and Found, which eventually debuted at number 10 on Billboard‘s R&B chart. "I tell you, with all the stuff that went on, it’s all worth it. Win or lose, I’m just so complete. I just want to stay in the moment — couldn’t ask for a better moment to happen."

WALKING PNEUMONIA, HERE WE COME

THE EVERYBODYFIELDS


Everything’s OK with these tenderhearted crust-country kids. With I See Hawks in LA. Wed/6, 8 p.m., $12. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

PIERCED ARROWS


Dead Moon rising: "Walking Wounded" vets Fred and Toody Cole keep flying that lo-fi flag. With Black Lips. Fri/8, 9 p.m., $15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

TERRIBLE TWOS


Motor City kiddies trade in snot-laced cacophony. With Top Ten and Wylde Youth. Sat/9, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

PALEO


Gimmick or gimme-gimme? Brooklyn’s David Strackany followed in the footsteps of Suzan-Lori Parks with his "Song Diary" project: 365 songs, one written and recorded each day for a year. But his next trick after that media blitz? With the Blank Tapes and Eddy Burke. Sun/10, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

MERLE HAGGARD


NorCal’s country music giant reaches east with 2007’s The Bluegrass Sessions (McCoury/Hag) — see where it takes him. Mon/11, 8 p.m., $65. Grand at the Regency Center, 1290 Sutter, SF. www.ticketmaster.com

LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES


The very newest sounds from the Venezuelans of disco derring-do? With Si*Se and DJ Franky Boissy. Mon/11–Tues/12, 8 p.m., $22. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Hungry men

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

"This is not a midlife crisis," 51-year-old John Zeigler insists. "I see this as a wonderful adventure." But when the this in question is a 3,000-mile rowboat race across the Atlantic Ocean, it’s hard not to speculate about his motivation. Zeigler’s teammate, 41-year-old Tom Mailhot, shares Zeigler’s determination, not to mention his daddy issues — as Row Hard, No Excuses is quick to point out, both men feel they have something to prove to their respective fathers (perhaps by coincidence, the doc’s director, San Francisco’s Luke Wolbach, coproduced the film with his father). After a failed hockey career and an early exit from college, Mailhot is dead set on rowing his way to victory: "It’s important to me to finish what I’ve said I’m going to do."

But back up a sec. Yeah, I said 3,000 miles, all the way from the Canary Islands to Barbados. The Atlantic Rowing Challenge is no joke, with duos spending 50 to 100 days at sea in hand-built boats that contain all of their food and other supplies. It also requires $19,000 in entry fees, not to mention time away from jobs and families. "This is really a mind game," one of the other participants notes; the race draws a colorful, international crowd of serious athletes who, necessarily, are all a little nuts. At least, that’s what Zeigler and Mailhot discover once they’re adrift on the ocean: close quarters shared between "a perfectionist and a bull" draw subterranean personality conflicts into the boiling sun; the task of rowing, rowing, rowing can cause inconceivably bizarre injuries (including a tremendous butt rash that nearly cripples one of the men); and transcendent moments, when they finally come, can involve some mighty trippy hallucinations.

Row Hard, No Excuses relies quite a bit on video-diary footage shot by the men, and as the days stretch on the film’s themes of competition, masculinity, and — no matter how in shape these dudes are — aging come into undeniable focus. Similar in some ways to Touching the Void (2003), Row Hard is especially effective in illustrating how extreme physical conditions can lay bare a person’s true self; the race also helps both men gain new appreciation for their lives on dry land. The press notes specifically ask reviewers not to reveal how the men fare in the race — so I won’t — but even as it approaches, the finish line seems less important than Row Hard‘s deeper message of self-improvement by any means necessary.

After seeing the muscle-bound geezer posing in the promo photo for The Bodybuilder and I, you might be surprised to hear the film is pretty similar to Row Hard, No Excuses. Made by Canadian Bryan Friedman, it is ostensibly about Friedman’s father, Bill, a 59-year-old who found his way into the competitive bodybuilding world after a self-esteem-crushing second divorce. But Bryan, who spews some unnecessarily literal voice-over, quickly lets us know he never liked his father because Bill was basically AWOL for Bryan’s entire life; he also finds Bill’s new pursuit utterly ridiculous. After witnessing Pops bake under a tanning lamp, Bryan muses, "Here’s a guy who could spend so much time and energy on a bizarre hobby but who could never spend any time and energy on a relationship with his own son."

It soon becomes clear that The Bodybuilder and I is more about the I than anything else. Oh, you get well-oiled, senior-discount-qualifying beefcakery, but you have to sit through some major family drama to get there. Still, the circumstances are so oddball (seriously — would you want to see your estranged dad in a Superman Speedo?) and Bryan Friedman so unflinchingly honest about his misery that the film’s shortcomings are eventually overcome. Once Bill’s big competition rolls around, the weepy father-son bonding feels well earned — plus, you won’t want to miss cinema’s most gob-smacking "How does that head go on that body?" moment since 2001’s Ichi the Killer.

THE BODYBUILDER AND I

Sat/9, 5 p.m.; Sun/10, 2:45 p.m.; Roxie

ROW HARD, NO EXCUSES

Feb. 16, 2:45 p.m.; Feb 17, 9:30 p.m.; Victoria


The 10th San Francisco Independent Film Festival runs Feb. 7–20 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Film Center, 3117 16th St., SF; and Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF. For tickets (most films $10) and additional information, see www.sfindie.com.

Double visions

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

After almost 10 years and four albums, Pinback’s Rob Crow and Armistead "Zach" Burwell Smith IV rightly take it in stride that major differences, and slender fissures, will occasionally open up between them. Consider, for example, this Osmonds fixation of Crow’s, soon to appear in the form of a rock block of tunes by the ’70s Mormon clan band on one of two Goblin Cock LPs Crow is now resurrecting after a certain hard-drive disaster. "A lot of Donny’s synthesizer work is really outrageous and predates a lot of people!" Crow, 36, mumbles enthusiastically over the phone from San Diego, comparing the Osmonds’ "My Drum" to something off the Melvins’ last LP. "There’s no Osmonds record that’s good all the way through, but there’s at least one awesome song on each one."

"Yeah, I don’t get that one at all," the easygoing Smith, 37, says, speaking separately from the band’s hometown. He’s toiling on his own projects — Three Mile Pilot and Systems Officer discs — during Pinback’s monthlong break. "He played me something once, and I said, ‘Oh, this is all right,’ and ever since, he’s, like, ‘But you said you liked it one time in the car!’ Oh, god, I’ll never live that down."

Similarly, arguments during the making of albums are a given — although of all their recordings, Crow says, their latest, Autumn of the Seraphs (Touch and Go), inspired "the least amount of bickering. I think it had to with drinking wine during the day, which made everything go faster and seem more productive." Likewise, side projects have become de rigueur for the twosome, with Crow unofficially becoming known as the most prolific songwriter-collaborator in the so-called Southland — thanks to Goblin Cock, Aspects of Physics, Thingy, and various other diversions. "We both have different outlet for things that don’t work with us," Smith offers. "He has 20 of them, and I try to keep it to two."

Yet all of that doesn’t mean Pinback isn’t still meaningful for both musicians. The proof lies in Autumn of the Seraphs: like the best full-lengths, it ebbs and glows, tugging the listener along from the percussive, Genesis-style AOR pop of "How We Breathe" through the arch, rubbery progressions of "Blue Harvest" and its softer, more sorrowful relation "Torch" to the fittingly stirring closing epic, "Off by 50." They’re songs that not only "displace you from reality," as Smith puts it, but also satisfy Crow’s requirements for honest music making. "I just try to make sure we like what we’re doing and it has an emotional thing for us," the latter says.

If the pair can avoid pinning those emotions to new obsessions, they hope to put out another Pinback album within a year and a half rather than their standard three years. The danger for Smith: World of Warcraft. "You need to have groups for this, like Warcraft Anonymous or something," he says with a rueful laugh. "Luckily, I have too much music to do."

PINBACK

Sun/10, 8 p.m., $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

They need more

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It’s probably not fair to expect that if your duo goes bass free, if its rock falls somewhere under the crude banner of garage, and if your early riff education occurred in Detroit, you won’t be assailed with comparisons to the White Stripes. It’s even less fair if the best song on your debut pulls off the protoblues swagger and gnarly scale work that once made Jack and Meg interesting. But as applied to Leopold and His Fiction — the pairing of Motor City expat and current Russian Hiller Daniel Toccalino and drummer Ben Cook, formerly of Kentucky — that match is a little too neat. As Toccalino dryly put it to me the other week, checking in from a tour stop at the Sundance Film Festival, "There are garages everywhere."

Indeed. Toccalino and Cook — who have been playing together for three years, releasing one self-titled LP along the way — have their reasons for limiting personnel to two. Cook’s training is in jazz, and as his frontman sees it, this has taught the percussionist to carry a heavier load — to artfully sub in where the bass is supposed to go. "He fills up a lot of the low end," Toccalino notes admiringly. This doesn’t always come up on the album, on which songs are colored in by other instruments. But it’s a central skill when it comes to Leopold’s two-person live show, and the studio session drops clear hints in this direction. "Promise to Reality," a Doors-ish epic late in the record, is heated by a boplike boil of toms and kick drums.

Still, this is a jazz tactic being used in the service of rock. It’s a way to launch a leaner attack without losing depth, which makes sense: Leopold’s overriding urge is toward the primitive. Spare blues structures, ragged guitar riffs, and spent vocals abound on the LP, the last given extra wear by Julian Casablancas levels of distortion. This skuzzy bent can go several different ways. The trashed-up "Gonna Be Your Boy" — as opposed to your dog? — is the Stooges with the blues kept more audible. Yet — almost as if to even things up with his Kentucky bandmate — Toccalino can also twang out his melodies and head up a country and Southern rock path, as on the wide and glowing "Miss Manipulation," which evokes My Morning Jacket. The group may be at its best when covering a few scenes at once: "Mother Natures Son" feels like Iggy Pop up front with an Exile on Main Street–era Keith Richards on guitar.

There can be an itch, in supposedly bearish times for back-to-blues rock, to fetishize a band like this — to get giddy about the so-called honesty of its raw sound. To Toccalino’s credit, he seems to have little interest in playing the ideologue or the prophet. He mostly just likes the rapport of playing with only one other dude, feeling that it accelerates the creative process. "In three years we’ve gotten as far as [other bands] get in 10," he told me.

Besides, austerity has its limits. Ticking off the changes we’ll find on the pair’s second full-length, already cut and set for a late-spring release, he could only come up with increases: "A little more country, way more Motown, more Stooges." More, it seems, of everything.

LEOPOLD AND HIS FICTION

With Candy Apple

Sun/10, 8 p.m., call for price

Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

Furries, for real

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Super Furry Animals are a mischievous lot. Having marked the universe with their tech-pop grandeur for 15 years, they must now keep the world wondering where their music will pop up next and in what form. For their new album, Hey Venus! (Rough Trade), the Welsh quintet maintain their love of vast, Donald Fagen–esque noodling but have stripped down into a craftily introspective niche. In keeping with their new sound, they have a secret weapon in the studio, and it isn’t bleeding-edge sonic wizardry or Timbaland at the desk. It’s a dulcimer — a hammer dulcimer, to be exact, and it’s wielded on some songs with as much aplomb as any siren, blip, or squawk that’s graced any of their previous seven full-lengths. What gives? "For some reason, [the album] has a ‘band playing in a room’ kind of mood," lead vocalist Gruff Rhys offers simply, speaking on the phone from Cardiff, Wales, in early January. "Nobody brought any samplers to the recording sessions."

Super Furry Animals emerged from the Welsh capital city amid a wave of other acts, effectively marking a movement that included bands like Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and Catatonia. The core members of the group had originally come together as a techno outfit — a background that set them apart from their contemporaries. The group’s first album, Fuzzy Logic (Creation, 1996), saw the combo establish its mastery of cheekily strident pop tunes. Its next release, Radiator (Flydaddy, 1997), upped the ante with an inventive melodic complexity that the Furries had obviously already mastered.

The band made its mark by continuing to issue fearless, originally crafted indie rock that stemmed at least in part from Rhys’s schizoid musical background: he was in a jangle-pop band called Emily before moving on to noise ensemble Ffa Coffi Pawb. The Furries’ next release, Guerilla (Flydaddy, 1999), is a densely layered technorock symphony that ranges between the cheeky blips of songs like "Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home)" and the introspective balladeering of tracks like "Fire in My Heart." Each disc since has been notable for a particular reason, whether it’s an all-Welsh double album (2000’s Mwng [Placid Casual]), a special DVD with a video crafted for each song (2001’s Rings around the World [Sony]), or the quirky explorations into spaced-out country rock and überharmonic ruminating on recent albums Phantom Power (XL, 2003) and Love Kraft (XL/Beggars, 2005). Hey Venus!, Rhys explains, is partially based on the mellow mood he described earlier in our conversation. "In the past I wrote all the lyrics, and then the last two years [the band has become] more confident and has started to bring complete songs to the soup." He pauses, then confirms, "I suppose this was a songwriting kind of record."

Which brings us back to that dulcimer, most prominently used on the bittersweet "Carbon Dating." It’s a signature Furries multicultural hash: a kaleidoscopic ballad that begins as a carnival waltz before morphing into Motown–meets–Ennio Morricone doo-wop surrealism. Rhys credits its composer, keyboard player Cian Ciárán, calling it "the most beautiful song on the record" before explaining that Ciárán also played dulcimer on it. Demonstrating the band’s virtuosity and playfulness in the studio, the dulcimer is showcased like a sonic effect throughout Hey Venus!, echoing like a ghost as all other instruments drop away. Lest fans think the Furries have gone fully folk, Rhys laughs and explains the instrument’s lure: "Dulcimer for us represents a lot of the old Michael Caine cold war spy movies. He always had [it] going on in his soundtracks."

Cosmopolitan kitsch aside, Hey Venus! runs an emotional and socioeconomic gamut, albeit with a wink of the eye. On the Shangri-Las throwback "Runaway," lovers flee each other while wistfully recalling the other’s "banking details." (The video is an ’80s-inspired romp with Matt Berry of United Kingdom comedy series The Mighty Boosh.) There are also moments of quintessential SFA lyrical humor, as on "Baby Ate My Eightball," which offers the apologetic understatement of the decade, "See you on the other side / Sorry to cut your life so short." Equally acerbic is the track "Suckers!," which offers a straightforward litany of gripes concerning the world and its gullible inhabitants. Rhys wryly calls it a "miserable, complaint-rock song" that came to him at a dark moment on a rainy day in Cardiff: "Sometimes I sing that song tongue in cheek, and at other times I sing it and it’s absolutely sincere."

Rhys sounds like he’s still skating on that schizoid musical past. Yet while Hey Venus! seems to function as a musical exorcism of sorts, the frontman sees it as part of the natural order of the Super Furried Universe, with each recording a reaction to the last. He suggests that the next effort will depart from their current space age moodiness. "Maybe next time we’ll bring back the electronics," he says. He pauses and laughs before adding, "And I can start writing lyrics that are less exposed!"

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS

With Holy Fuck and Here Here

Sat/9, 9 p.m., $20

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

My so-called hell

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This World of Ours, a youthfully nihilistic, epic, and episodic take on nihilistic youth in 21st-century Japan, represents the coming out of its writer and director, Nakajima Ryo, not just as a filmmaker to watch but in a larger sense as well. Nakajima made his debut feature after a period of post–high school isolation when he became a hikikomori, one of the growing number of young Japanese who voluntarily cocoon themselves in their rooms for months and sometimes years.

The fundamental disconnect that drives the hikikomori to solitary confinement is made palpable in the three high school students at the center of Nakajima’s ambitious, unwieldly, and at times ugly film, even as they flit through populated hallways and shopping arcades. At the start of the film Hiroki (Yoshihiko Taniguchi) and Ryo (Satoshi Okutso) spend their time bullying ugly duckling Mitarai (Hasegawa Souta) while enduring the verbal abuse of one of their teachers, Mr. Iwayama (Shinmon Akao). Mitarai is also a plaything for the blankly coy Ami (Arisa Hata), who encourages him to seek revenge when she isn’t shit-talking him with his tormentors.

These schoolyard cat and mouse games give way to the film’s unsettling centerpiece: after a night out drinking, Ami stumbles home alone, while the boys, at the behest of an older peer, take one of their female companions to his lair and brutally gang-rape her. The scene is clearly indebted to 1971’s A Clockwork Orange (as is the film, which also evokes Akihiko Shiota’s contemporary cruel stories of youth and even Wakamatsu Koji’s gonzo 1969 film Go Go Second Time Virgin), down to the reedy, compressed version of Beethoven’s Ninth — which, appropriately, is more suggestive of a ringtone than a symphony — on the soundtrack.

A Clockwork Orange was controversial because of its highly stylized presentation of graphic violence. Like director Stanley Kubrick, its protagonist, Alex (Malcolm McDowell), is obsessed with aesthetics: it’s not the film’s mere juxtaposition of "Ode to Joy" with heinous acts that is so shocking but rather the criminal’s adulatory investment in something so beautiful. In comparison, Nakajima’s youths hardly have an investment in anything, and the director seems marginally invested in them. Hiroki is clearly paralyzed by what he has done but is so unempathetic that he can only fret over how a criminal record will lower his already dismal prospects of landing a white-collar job. They commit their acts of self-mutilation, bullying, and murder in a zero-sum game of identity formation, with every painful twist caught by Nakajima’s washed-out, often handheld camera. If there are aesthetics at work here, they are clearly those of the YouTube auteur: Nakajima keeps his characters in anxious proximity to the lens. Every shot is practically a close-up.

It is unsurprising then, that these youths talk about Sept. 11 in tones of respectful awe, treating it as the ne plus ultra of how to leave your mark on the world. Ryo, reeling from a bloody confrontation with Iwayama and rejection at the hands of his older sister, decides — much like real-life counterpart Seung-Hui Cho or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold — the only way out is to commit an act of terrorism. This World of Ours even opens with slo-mo footage of the Twin Towers burning, accompanied by the portentous strains of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, a juxtaposition that Ryo could have made in a computer lab while cutting class.

The same music wafts over the crowded halls of the high school in Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003), a far more elliptical take on teen-on-teen violence whose cataclysmic ending is made all the more so by the camera’s constant gentle proximity to the revolving social cross section on display. But while Van Sant’s film seems perfumed by adolescent ennui, that isn’t the only emotion the director trafficks in. (Unfortunately, Van Sant’s most recent foray into the troubled private lives of teens, Paranoid Park — which also screens at SF IndieFest — can’t get out of its funk, despite some beautiful footage of cherubic skater boys lensed by Christopher Doyle.)

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the anger and disenfranchisement on display in Nakajima’s film or want to knock the chutzpah with which he wields them. IndieFest is about first steps, whether they’re accompanied by insecure shrugs or grandly demonstrative gestures. By the time This World of Ours has ended with a bang and much whimpering, it’s offered a few of each.

THIS WORLD OF OURS

Sun/10, 9:30 p.m., Victoria

Mon/11, 9:30 p.m., Roxie

Accidental tranny

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Guilty! I’m totally real-time guilty. Yeps, frenz, I’m that spastic whore on the dance floor whooping like a neon cough, flinging my Mary Kate triceps up when a thump drops in the mix. If a club has one of those heinous black lights at the door, I sneak in the back so no one spots the glowing spunk on my skirt or my phosphorescent VCR. I always ask for extra antioxidant-rich lychees in my pomegranatini, to offset the American Spirits. OK, I’ve blown the DJ. And although I’ve never stuffed a tube sock down my sequined thong or Botoxed my rosy areolae, those are my fake digits you just beamed into your contacts, sweetness. Thanks for the pomegranatini. Call me!

Also, I take things for granted. Some parties in this town have been around since Y2K was ripped-knee-high to a troll doll (New Wave City, 1984, Popscene, Death Guild, Red Wine Social, Qoöl). I’ve surely enjoyed them all. But in my ravenous quest for novelty I’ve watched them gradually fade from my schedule, like tears of joy evaporating on a monitor. Thus I was shocked when word squirted down the pudding pipe that — after 12 years of lunatic antics at the Stud — weekly trash-drag frenzy Trannyshack was slamming its barn door shut in August. Just where the heck will club pervs get their weekly fix of "two trannies, one cup"?

"I never intended to become a professional drag queen, Marke B. It was almost an accident," Trannyshack hostess Heklina said, laughing groggily into the phone when I rang for dish. I’d woken her up: it was 2 p.m. "I was merely dabbling in drag when the Stud approached me a dozen years ago to fill the Tuesday night slot. It’s been wonderful, but I’m ready for a change — and I’m too much of a control freak to let Trannyshack go on without me."

The lady was feeling candid. "I’m done with punk-rock drag," she added. "I’m tired of feeling like I have to haul in my own amps, manage the entire bar, and clean up afterwards. At this point I simply want to walk onstage and have the light show ready and the sound board all cued up. And I want more challenges, to work more in theater, expand my horizons, travel, figure myself out. You get trapped in a persona. This great thing comes along, people love it, and then suddenly it’s your whole life. For 12 years. Time for a breather!"

Hold on to your panicked panties, though. "Trannyshack the brand isn’t going away," Heklina continued. "I’m working on making it a monthly party somewhere nice, and we’ll still do big events like the annual pageant, Trannyshack Reno, international gigs, and maybe bring back the cruise." The weekly Trannyshack’s planning to go out with a bang too: a countdown of greatest hits and command performances has begun, with Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters hosting Feb. 12 and an explosive 12th-birthday blowout Feb. 19.

Heklina is one of the OG rave-era club kids who made San Francisco fabulously unsafe at any speed, and Trannyshack freed drag from its Judy Garland fetters, flooding punk spirit — and oodles of bodily fluids — into the stalls of gay nightlife. The ‘Shack’s now venerable enough to be thought mainstream by some young turks, but it still feels like the scene’s bloody wig’s been yanked off.

TRANSPORTING How’s this for a leap of global proportions? The papacito of the nightlife’s global grooves movement, DJ Cheb i Sabbah — himself a proprietor of one of SF’s longest-running parties, 1002 Nights (now at Nickie’s in the Lower Haight on Tuesdays) — has just released another stunningly internationalist CD, Devotion (Six Degrees), and he’ll be throwing down, celebration-wise, at the huge returning one-off Worldly at Temple. Boosting Cheb’s subcontinental turntable wizardry live will be Pakistani vocalist Riffat Sultana and percussionists Salar Nadar and Mitch Hyare. Also trading on the tables: electrotabla etherealist Karsh Kale and bhangra breakster Janaka Selekta. Fold dem paper planes and twirl.

TRANNYSHACK

Tuesdays, 9 p.m., $8

Stud

399 Ninth St., SF

(415) 866-6623

www.studsf.com

www.trannyshack.com

CHEB I SABBAH AT WORLDLY

Sat/9, 10 p.m., $8

Temple

540 Howard, SF

www.templesf.com

www.chebisabbah.com

Namu

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› paulr@sfbg.com

Of the city’s many village centers, I have always had a special fondness for the Inner Richmond enclave along Balboa, from Arguello to Eighth Avenue or so. Here you find Russian bakeries nestled across the street from sushi bars, with a Korean barbecue at one corner, a Chinese joint at the next, and a chic Cal-Med spot a few steps beyond the traffic light. Add a butcher shop, a nursery school, and a cleaners, and you have a self-sustaining little world. It’s like a less-trafficked Clement Street.

The backwater charm has persisted for years, despite the occasional incursions of upscaleness: Katia’s Russian Tea room, with its immaculately starched tablecloths, and, of more recent vintage, the Richmond, which opened a few years ago in the old Jakarta space. The latest spit-and-polish entrant, Namu, isn’t as conspicuous as either of those two restaurants; it opened about a year ago in a midblock storefront, and you could easily walk right by it if you weren’t paying attention.

At least you could in the middle of the day. By night, Namu attracts the young the way a lantern attracts moths on a summer evening; they gather in clusters on either side of the door and along the curb, dressed in night shades of blue, gray, and black, talking on cell phones while waiting for a table to open up or the rest of their party to appear. If you were rushing along the sidewalk, you could probably pick your way past without too much fancy footwork, but you’d notice the crowd, certainly, and wonder what was up.

Part of what is up is certainly chef Dennis Lee’s cooking. (Lee owns the place with his brothers, David and Daniel.) Although Namu’s menu includes elements of both Japanese and fusion cooking, its most striking quality is its elegant recasting of Korean themes. It’s not quite a Korean bistro, but it’s more than a step in that direction and away from the traditional Korean barbecue, an honorable example of which stands at the corner.

Namu does offer that well-known Korean staple, kimchee (cabbage pickled with garlic and red chiles), and it’s just about indistinguishable from the corner barbecue’s: both offer excellent, sour fire. But at Namu the kimchee is served as part of a banchan plate (the first is complimentary, after that $4), in the company of, say, surprisingly rich sautéed chives and coils of pickled carrot, all presented on a museum-of-modern-art dish that looks like a flattened candelabra. There is a sense of stylish balance in both presentation and flavor that announces the kitchen’s sophistication.

You could satisfy yourself entirely with Japanese items, if you were so inclined, and you might even be able to convince yourself that you were at a sushi bar. Although there’s no sushi on the menu, the restaurant’s look is agleam with dark minimalism, including the unframed urban-industrial photographs hung on the walls as if at a hip gallery. Anyway, tataki — lightly seared tabs of fish — is almost like sushi, and Namu’s version ($10), with albacore tuna, is cleverly enhanced by a drizzle of Thai chili ponzu. Seaweed salad is also a sushi bar standard; here it’s called ocean salad ($8) and is made from a jumble of red, green, and wakame seaweed and looks like leftover Christmas wrapping. Nice touches: halved cherry tomatoes beneath the seaweed, and ume vinaigrette (ume is a pickled Asian plum) to give the salad fruitiness that isn’t quite sweet.

Pan-seared dumplings (a.k.a. pot stickers) are a commonplace throughout east Asia. Here ($9) they’re filled with slivered shiitake mushrooms and served in a shallow bowl with yet more shiitake slivers and a dashi broth reduced to dark intensity. (Dashi is one of the basics of Japanese cooking and is a stock made from kelp and dried skipjack.) Fresh rolls are also an east Asian commonplace, but Namu’s version ($6) feature a cross-cultural twist: chunks of grilled skirt steak, for a hint of the American southwest and, simultaneously, Korea. Just as unexpected is the mung bean cake ($6), and if you shy away from mung beans as the principal ingredient of indifferent desserts, you’ll be surprised here by the resemblance to crispy polenta triangles, suitable for dipping in ponzu sauce. And there is an explicitly Italian touch to the buckwheat noodles ($9.50); they’re tossed with shiitake mushrooms but also pesto (from Thai basil!), pine nuts, and garlic before getting a good sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese.

We didn’t particularly respond to the broccolini ($7), which wasn’t bad but wasn’t special despite embellishments of yuzu ponzu and fried garlic. It seemed too much like ordinary steamed broccoli. But we did respond to the prawns ($9), which had been glazed with den jang (a Korean fermented bean paste similar to miso) and grilled in pairs on skewers.

Too much culinary globe-trotting? The hamburger ($9), then, is restful in a juicy, tasty, villagy way, with a first-rate bun and good fries that would be just a bit better if more svelte, more in the frites line. Of course, even B+ fries tend to get gobbled up, even by those who mean to save some room for dessert. Namu’s desserts are well above the ordinary: a chocolate brioche bread pudding ($7) for instance, napped with raspberry sauce (is any dish with brioche disappointing? I say no), and a puddinglike crème brûlée ($7) lifted from the mundane by little butter cookies flavored with our friend ume, the distinctive Japanese preserved plum last observed in the seaweed salad vinaigrette. Some plums certainly get around.

NAMU

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–3 p.m.

Lunch: Tues.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

Dinner: nightly, 5:30–10:30 p.m.

489 Balboa, SF

(415) 386-8332

www.namubar.com

Beer, wine, sake

AE/MC/V

Noisy if crowded

Wheelchair accessible

Duck me, I’m sick

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS It had been a few years since I’d been sick, and I’d forgotten how to do it. I walked around in the rain, looking for this party. And when I found it, I stayed until almost the end. Then I called up the Boy Who I’m Kissing and asked if I could come over and kiss him.

In my defense, I didn’t know at the time that I was sick sick, as in the flu. I thought it was just lung cancer or something, from breathing all the smoke that I breathe. One of the advantages of an active imagination is hypochondria, or what I call "my sick mind" — without which I would never have compiled this amazing record of miraculous recoveries.

I have bested brain tumors by closing one eye and opening the other real wide. I’ve conquered cardiac arrest with cups of hot tea and survived strokes by slapping the side of my head, then getting some rest.

So the combination of my sick mind and an actually pretty fucking healthy body means that when I do get sick sick, as in the flu, I tend to think I can lick it by licking the Boy Who I’m Licking, or drinking more wine than usual, or stepping away from my smoky shack in the woods for a weekend.

This is unfortunate, and not just for the Boy Who I’m Infecting. It’s unfortunate for me because I probably would have been better by now if I’d gone, "Oh, the flu," and stayed home in bed with Weirdo the Cat. And it’s unfortunate for Weirdo the Cat, who could have been warm and cozy and well fed while I stayed in bed with her all weekend, albeit moaning and groaning.

As it was, Mookie got to get me in his bed, moaning and groaning, which, on the surface, might have seemed like business as usual, woo-hoo, but trust me, this wasn’t like that. It was the first time ever that we didn’t have sex. I just laid there with my eyes kind of open, coughing inconsolably and gradually realizing that it wasn’t lung cancer, goddamn it, but the flu.

By morning I hurt so bad I couldn’t even speak straight. "You have a sick chicken farmer on your hands," I tried to say. But it came out "chick sicken farmer."

He brought me coffee in bed, as usual, and offered to go to the store for Robitussin.

I was pretty sure I had cough syrup at home with codeine in it. Probably four years old, and certainly someone else’s prescription. But without codeine, cough syrup has never done much for me. It’s like duck soup without duck in it. Or chicken soup. I love chicken soup. And tea, and rest. But only two things can cure the common cold, and they are, in order of efficacy, duck soup and codeine.

Thinking I was closer to duck soup than codeine, I spent an hour on Mookie’s couch with a laptop and a telephone. Oakland’s Chinatown was just on the other side of the tunnel, for crying out loud.

And failing that, Crawdad de la Cooter’s freezer was in Berkeley. I happened to know that there were wild ducks in it. However, restraining orders prevent me from raiding her refrigerator, or coming over without calling first, or, um … writing about her in Cheap Eats.

I’m delirious. How, in other words, did I wind up without my face in a bowl of dark, rich, greasy, spicy duck soup? It was through no fault of Mookie’s. Let me rephrase that: it was all his fault. Because when Thanh Ky had a line out the door into the rain, he remembered for sure seeing duck soup at a place in Alameda. Only they were closed. Sunday.

For future reference, I’m never going to start seeing someone ever again without first finding out where the closest duck soup is to their house and having little cards printed up with business hours and directions. Then, when I’m laid up with flulike symptoms or the flu and they offer to go get medicine, I can hand them the card like a prescription.

"Ask for extra hot sauce."

I’ll either say that or have it printed on the card.

My new favorite restaurant is Bai Som Thai Kitchen. It’s a comfortable, colorful, and fun little place. Its motto is "Cooking with care" … and my soup was almost cold by the time the others at the table were served. So that proves it! Tom yum with salmon and pineapples, superspicy. And mealworthy, with a plate of plain noodles on the side. Look up at the ceiling while you’re there.

BAI SOM

Lunch: Daily, 11 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Dinner: Daily, 4:30–9:45 p.m.

2121 Clement, SF

(415) 751-5332

Beer, wine

MC/V

Guardian trial heats up

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The fireworks have started to explode in the trial of the Guardian‘s lawsuit against the SF Weekly and its chain parent corporation as three witnesses testified that the chain’s top executive had vowed to put the Guardian out of business.

Lawyers for the Weekly and Village Voice Media, which owns the San Francisco paper and 15 others, tried aggressively to undermine the critical testimony. The Guardian is claiming the SF Weekly sold ads below cost for years in an effort to damage the local competitor. That’s illegal in California.

The Weekly lawyers aren’t putting up much of a fight so far over whether the paper sold ads at such cheap rates that it was losing money. In fact, evidence presented in court shows that VVM has lost $25 million over the past 11 years in San Francisco and the East Bay, where the chain until recently owned the East Bay Express.

But VVM lawyers H. Sinclair Kerr and Ivo Labar have contended the Weekly and the Express were simply cutting rates to meet competition or were trying to increase market share — and harming a competitor was never a motivation.

Three Guardian witnesses provided evidence to the contrary. Jennifer Lopez, Carrie Fisher, and Andrew O’Hehir all worked for the Weekly when the chain, then known as New Times, bought it in 1995. Lopez sold ads, Fisher was copublisher, and O’Hehir was the editor.

All three testified that Mike Lacey, one of the two top executives at the chain, arrived at the Weekly offices in January 1995 to announce the sale and told a meeting of the staff that he intended to wipe out the local competitor. At one point, Fisher said, Lacey picked up a copy of the Guardian, threw it on the floor, and said, "We don’t just want to compete — we want to put the Guardian out of business."

Two of the early witnesses were Guardian copublisher Jean Dibble and me. Dibble talked about how the paper had survived recessions, economic changes, and legions of competitors over the years but was put on the ropes by the chain’s predatory tactics. I talked about the impact — how the Guardian, which has to live on its revenue and has no chain with deep pockets to subsidize it, has been forced to cut costs, lay off staff, and reduce the size of the paper.

Kerr and Labar pushed us both, trying to make the case that it was the rise of the Internet and the changing demographics of the city that caused the Guardian‘s problems. But in fact, Dibble stated, the Guardian has lost very little display advertising business to the Internet.

On Feb. 4 the Guardian lawyers read from the depositions of Jim Larkin, VVM’s chairman, and Scott Tobias, the chain’s president. Among the fascinating information: Larkin testified that VVM paid between $5 million and $6 million for the East Bay Express and sold it for around $3 million, taking a big loss on the deal. Larkin also said both the Weekly and the Express were profitable when the chain bought them but that they’ve lost money ever since.

Most important, both Larkin and Tobias testified that they received monthly "Guardian reports" focusing on how the Weekly and the Express had been competing with the local alternative newspaper in San Francisco. The depositions were riddled with references to the Guardian as the two VVM papers’ main competitor — which undermines the claim by VVM lawyers that the chain papers were focused on a broad range of other media, not just the alternative-paper market.

In one instance, the depositions show, VVM cut a deal with Clear Channel for naming rights at the Warfield theater that specifically stated the Weekly and the Express would get 85 to 90 percent of the ads from concert promoter Bill Graham Presents, then owned by Clear Channel — and the Guardian would get "15 percent to nothing."

The next phase of the trial will focus on financial data, as the Guardian presents records to the jury that show how the Weekly and the Express were consistently selling ads below cost.

Paul van Dyk

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PREVIEW In the late ’90s, Paul Oakenfold opted for pop stardom and Sasha and Digweed journeyed into the darker tones of progressive house, leaving Paul van Dyk as the final bastion of trance music’s golden age. Some might argue that one of the Dutch contingency — Armin van Burren, Ferry Corsten, and the prominent DJ Tiesto — has wrested the mantle of trance king from the Berlin DJ and producer. The short answer is a defiant nein. In their own ways, the Dutch headliners have attempted to shift away from traditional trance music’s familiar pattern of build-up then breakdown (now known as Euro or NRG). Trance’s new formula involves grounding a track with vocal talent, then layering melodies and synths on top. While the Hollanders achieve sufficient results, the accomplished van Dyk has overmastered them, even nabbing indie popsters St. Etienne in 2000 for "Tell Me Why (The Riddle)." Since then, his 2003 "Time of Our Lives" with Vega 4 has been played on American TV commercials, and "The Other Side" with Wayne Jackson won Best HI-NRG/Euro Track at the 2006 Winter Music Conference (it was also nominated for Best Progressive House/Trance Track — go figure). Van Dyk’s newest album, In Between (Mute US, 2007), continues the trend with a bevy of guest vocalists, including Jackson, David Byrne, and Jessica Sutta of the Pussycat Dolls. The album title could represent a transitional phase: on well-received single "White Lies" with Sutta, familiar drums and hi-hats mingle with a heavy bass line atypical of the German’s normally fleet-footed sound.

PAUL VAN DYK With Taj and Dirtyhertz. Fri/8, 9 p.m., $40. 1015, 1015 Folsom, SF. (415) 431-1200, www.1015.com

James Blackshaw

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PREVIEW Those seeking musical majesty need to acquaint themselves with the 12-string acoustic guitar playing of James Blackshaw, a Londoner and, at 25, one of an ever-expanding set of John Fahey acolytes. Fahey expanded the purview of folk-blues structures in his 1960s and ’70s prime to accommodate a roving interest in sundry classical forms. The journeying compositions stood apart from the contemporaneous folk revival but immediately attracted disciples, notably Fahey’s Takoma labelmates Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, and Mark Fosson.

Of the current crop of acoustic shamans, Blackshaw is perhaps the most fluid player and the most frankly transcendental in his musical themes. His song titles are indicative of this mood: "Transient Life in Twilight," "Spiraling Skeleton Memorial," "Stained Glass Windows," and so on. He’s already the owner of a longish discography — three out-of-print early releases are soon to be reissued by Tompkins Square — and his spiral jetty compositions flurry forth with transposed phrases and delicately twisting tempos. The recordings have a pantheistic quality in their detailed sensuousness, a glistening shimmer that begs comparison as much to Terry Riley and My Bloody Valentine as to Fahey and Peter Walker.

Blackshaw has pursued Eastern-tinged, droning passages with increasing frequency over his past two albums, O True Believers (Important, 2006) and The Cloud of Unknowing (Tompkins Square, 2007), and if these segments are less immediately successful than his Gregorian guitar mode, it’s still gratifying to hear the young talent pushing his limits. The Cloud of Unknowing caps its culminating steel-string swirl with a protracted bout of nail-biting strings, not unlike the effect that closes the Beatles’ "A Day in the Life." It sounds like a promise of things to come, a sonogram of the great depths underlying Blackshaw’s placid surfaces. Catch the guitarist in the flesh in a rare stateside appearance, in support of guitar guru Sean Smith’s Eternal (Gnome Life) record release.

JAMES BLACKSHAW With Sean Smith and the Present Moment, Spencer Owen, and Colossal Yes. Wed/6, 9 p.m., $10. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

“Enter the Center”

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REVIEW Full disclosure would take up the full piece, so I’ll just say that in spite of knowing both David Wilson and Frank Lyon well as friends, I’m hardly alone in counting them as two of the Bay Area’s most celebratory and engaging young creators. They’ve largely steered their efforts away from the typical venues that comprise San Francisco’s music-art coordinates thus far, especially in their periodic outdoor music gatherings. A eucalyptus grove in Berkeley, old military tunnels overlooking the Pacific, a comfy crater — all have been transformed into communicative commons under the purview of Ribbons Productions, Wilson and Lyon’s encapsuutf8g entity for performances, small-press books, a blog par excellence, and now their premier SF exhibition, "Enter the Center."

The show — comfortably and spaciously laid out in the Eleanor Harwood Gallery — is a new turn for Ribbons in its expansion beyond direct collaborations, although both artists’ solo contributions echo Ribbons’ overarching ethos involving landscape, temporality, and process. Wilson’s billowy pencil drawings of Contra Costa hills and decorative collections of seeds, fruits, and other fibrous materials possess a persistent attentiveness and loose-limbed appreciation: his gigantic HEAL landscape unfolds over several record-sleeve panels, gently nudging viewers toward an equation of space and time. Lyon’s entrancing collages pose as hats, capes, and tree stumps. Beyond these preoccupying surfaces, the pieces function as windows onto emotional reckoning and magnificent obsession. The exhibit also showcases a new book, which arrives with a DVD including a generous helping of Ship songs — Wilson and Lyon’s music duo, one of the Guardian‘s picks for its class of 2007 — performed in treetops. Finally, it wouldn’t be Ribbons without communion: the second of two special concerts is scheduled at the gallery for Feb. 9 and highlights recent Guardian cover model Arp, a new Brendan Fowler (BARR) project, and Pocahaunted.

ENTER THE CENTER Through Sat/9. Thurs.–Sat., 1–5 p.m. Eleanor Harwood Gallery, 1295 Alabama, SF. (415) 867-7770, www.eleanorharwood.com

Photos from Obama’s party at the Fairmont

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The crowd here grumbled loudly when CNN announced that Hillary had a substantial lead in California. But the state is far from lost to Clinton. A massive portion of California’s voters submitted absentee ballots that have not been counted. And as we pointed out earlier, even if the rest of the state’s Democratic establishment goes for Hillary, San Francisco would rather share a tumbler of bourbon with Obama. Here are some images from his Super Tuesday party at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown SF:

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G-Spot: Valentine’s Day events

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PARTIES, EVENTS, AND BENEFITS

Amor del Mar Aquarium of the Bay, Pier 39, Embarcadero at Bay; 623-5326, www.aquariumofthebay.com. Feb 14, 6pm, $100. Celebrate San Francisco’s love affair with the bay and support the nonprofit Aquarium of the Bay Foundation at this gala celebration featuring global cuisine, decadent drinks, live music, and exhibitions.

Erotic Playground One Taste, 1074 Folsom; www.tantriccircus.com. Sat/9, 8pm; $30 single women, $50 single men, $60 couples. The Tantric Circus presents a sexy evening of burlesque, striptease, male lap dance, fruit feeding, DJs, and more.

Eternal Spring SomArts Bay Gallery, 934 Brannan; 1-888-989-8748, eternalspring08.com. Sat/9, 2-10pm, $7. Celebrate life, love, arts, and creativity at this all-day event including a fashion show, performances, free classes (hoop, poi, yoga, and more!), DJs, and shopping.

Heroes and Hearts Luncheon Union Square; 206-4478, www.sfghf.net. Feb 14, 11:30am, $300. Celebrate those who have helped the community and support the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation by attending this luncheon and auction of artist-created tabletop heart sculptures.

My Sucky Valentine XIII ARTworkSF Gallery, 49 Geary; 673-3080, www.artworksf.com. Feb 14, 8pm, $15-25. Listen to tales of tainted love and bad sex by good writers including Thomas Roche, Carol Queen, Michelle Tea, and mi blue, all to benefit the Women’s Community Clinic and the St. James Infirmary.

One Night Stand X ARTworkSF Gallery, 49 Geary; 673-3080, www.artworksf.com. Sat/9, 6-11pm, $15-25. Support the Center for Sex and Culture and the SF Artists Resource Center at this sexy multimedia event including live nude models, paint wrestling, erotic food feeding, and performances.

PINK’s 2nd Annual Valentine’s Day Party Look Out Bar, 3600 16th St; 703-9751, www.mypartner.com. Sat/9, 8pm-2am, $25. MyPartner.com cohosts this year’s party and benefit for the GLBT Historical Society. About 300 single gay guys are expected to enjoy an open Svedka vodka bar and hobnobbing with guests like Assemblymember Mark Leno and Sup. Bevan Dufty.

Poetry Battle of (All) the Sexes Beat Museum, 540 Broadway; 863-6306, www.poormagazine.org. Feb 14, 7:30pm; $20 to fight, $15 to watch. Challenge your partner (or future partner) to a battle of spoken word, hip-hop, poetry, or flowetry in the ring at this benefit for Poor magazine.

Prom Pete’s Tavern, 128 King; 817-5040, www.petestavernsf. Feb 14, 9pm, $10. What’s more romantic than prom? Prom in the ’80s! Enjoy music, decorations, mock gambling, and dancing, all to benefit Voices, a nonprofit that works with emancipated foster youths. Admission includes one drink, gambling chips, and a photo.

Queen of Arts: A Profane Valentine Coronation Sssshh…!, 535 Florida; www.anonsalon.com/feb08. Feb 15, 10pm, $10-20. The production team that brought us Sea of Dreams presents a sexy night of DJs, dancing, art, and performance, including Kitty-D from Glitch Mob, Mancub from SpaceCowboys, Fou Fou Ha!, and Merkley.

Queen of Hearts Ball Mighty, 119 Utah; 974-8985, www.goodvibes.com. Feb 14, 8pm, $25. Good Vibrations and Dr. Carol Queen host this decadent fairy-tale-themed costume party featuring MC Peaches Christ, circus performances by Vau de Vire Society, a fetish fashion show, and dancers from the Lusty Lady.

Romancing the Reptiles: Wild Love! Tree Frog Treks, 2112 Hayes; 876-3764, www.treefrogtreks.com. Sat/9, noon-2pm; $40 adults, $25 kids. Join animal care director Ross Beswick as you learn about how animals pick their mates and where baby animals come from.

Sensualité 111 Minna, 111 Minna; www.celesteanddanielle.com/party.html. Feb 15, 9pm; $15 advance, $20 at the door. Wear something sexy to this multimedia Valentine’s Day event featuring aphrodisiac appetizers, exotic rhythms, tarot readings, performances, a raffle, and a no-host bar.

Sweet Valentine’s Cruise Pier 431/2; 673-2900, www.redandwhite.com. Feb 14, 5pm; $48 adult, $34 youth. Join the Red and White Fleet for a romantic, fun, two-hour cruise of the San Francisco Bay, including a lavish appetizer buffet by Boudin and a complimentary beverage.

Transported SF Valentine’s Singles Party Pickup at Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom; transportedsf.com. Feb 14, 7:30pm, $21.49. Join DJs Ana Sia and Felina aboard the biodiesel Transported SF bus for sultry sounds, schmoozing with other singles, and stops at gorgeous outdoor dancing locales.

Woo at the Zoo San Francisco Zoo; Sloat at 47th St; 753-7236, www.sfzoo.org. Sat/9, Feb 13-15, 6pm; Sun/10, Feb 17, noon; $75. This multimedia event, conducted by Jane Tollini of the now-defunct Sex Tours, explores the sexual and mating behaviors of animals. Also featuring champagne and romantic refreshments.

BAY AREA

Flamenco, Candlelight and Roses Café de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 287-8700, www.cafedelapaz.net. Feb 14, 5:30, 6, 8, and 8:30pm; Feb 15-16, 6:30pm; $75-115. The nuevo Latino café celebrates the sweet side of love with three days of dinner plus a show, featuring the acclaimed Caminos Flamencos dance company.

Nest Firecracker Valentine Event Nest, 1019 Atlas Peak, Napa; (707) 255-7484. Sat/9-Sun/10, 10am-6pm, $5. Celebrate Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day together while shopping for unique gifts and making art projects with scrapbook artist Janine Beard, all to benefit the "Nest Egg" fund through the Arts Council of Napa.

Sweetheart Tea Yerba Buena Nursery, 19500 Skyline, Woodside; (650) 851-1668, www.yerbabuenanursery.com. Sat/9, noon, $25. Enjoy a traditional tea service with a special Valentine’s Day menu, followed by a stroll through the nursery’s gorgeous gardens.

Week of Valentines at Habitot Children’s Museum Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge, Berk; (510) 647-1111, www.habitot.org. Fri/8-Sat/9, 9:30am-4:30pm; Feb 12-14, 9:30am-1pm; $6 per child, $5 for accompanying adult. Contribute to a large heart sculpture and create handmade cards from recycled materials. Bring valentine-making supplies to receive a free adult admission pass.

FILM, MUSIC, AND PERFORMANCE

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 100 34th Ave; 1-866-912-6326, www.legionofhonor.org. Feb 14, 5:30pm, $10-20. The Cinema Supper Club at the Legion of Honor presents this film as part of "The Real Drama Queens" series, including a special exhibition opening at 5:30pm, dinner seating at 6pm (reservations made separately; call 750-7633), and film screening at 8pm.

BATS Improv Valentine’s Day Show Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, bldg B, Marina at Laguna; 474-6776, www.improv.org. Feb 14, 8pm; $10 advance, $15 at the door. Whether you’re flying solo, with friends, or on a date, this audience-participation show is the perfect place to enjoy the funny side of romance.

The Best American Erotica Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia; 282-9246, www.moderntimesbookstore.com. Feb 13, 7:30pm, free. Celebrate the 15th anniversary of the series with this showcase of standout stories, including a hot and edgy piece from Susie Bright.

Boston Marriage Theatre Rhinoceros, 2926 16th St; 861-5079, www.therhino.org. Feb 7-March 2, call or see Web site for schedule, $15-35. Join Anna and Claire and their crazy maid for Theatre Rhinoceros’s version of David Mamet’s same-sex romp.

Brainpeople Zeum, 221 Fourth St; 749-2228, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 16. $20. American Conservatory Theater presents the world-premiere production of this newest work by José Rivera, screenwriter of The Motorcycle Diaries, about two women who reckon with their pasts in an apocalyptic future.

The Eyes of Love Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post; 393-0100, www.milibrary.com. Feb 14, 7:30pm; $15 members, $25 public. Back by popular demand, chanteuse Helene Attia will select from her vast repertoire of love songs, classic and contemporary. Admission includes hors d’oeuvres, libations, and dessert.

Hope Briggs and Friends: A Musical Valentine Herbst Theatre, War Memorial Veterans Bldg, 401 Van Ness; 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Feb 17, 3pm, $25-50. Celebrated soprano Hope Briggs shares favorite opera arias alongside 15-year-old singing sensation Holly Stell and virtuoso violinist Dawn Harms.

How We First Met Herbst Theatre, War Memorial Veterans Bldg, 401 Van Ness; 392-4400, www.howwefirstmet.com. Feb 14, 8pm, $22-35. Real audience stories are spun into a comedy masterpiece in this one-of-a-kind hit show.

In Search of the Heart of Chocolate Delancey Street Foundation, 600 Embarcadero; 310-0290, www.chocumentary.com. Tues/12, 6:30 and 7:30pm, $10. Bay Area filmmaker Sarah Feinbloom screens her new chocumentary, about Noe Valley’s Chocolate Covered and its customers. Screenings followed by a chocolate reception featuring art and live music.

I Used to Be So Hot Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. Feb 14, 7 and 9pm; Feb 15-16, 8pm; $20. InnerRising Productions presents comedian Mimi Gonzalez, a Detroit native who’ll take you on a journey through sexual politics and queer discovery.

Lovers and Other Monsters Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; 377-4202, thrillpeddlers.com. Feb 12-16, 8pm; Feb 17, 7pm; $20-34.50. With a diabolical nod to Valentine’s (and Presidents’) Day, Thrillpeddlers presents a weeklong rotating lineup of live music, exquisite torture, and expert testimony, including Jill Tracy, Jello Biafra, and Creepshow Camp horror theater.

Miss Ann Peterson’s Broken Heart Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom; 1-800-838-3006, www.tangolamelodia.com. Feb 13-16, 8pm, $15. See the premiere of Tango la Melodia’s new multimedia production, a three-night concert featuring original music, poetry, and performance set in the romantic, sexy Roaring ’20s.

Mortified: Doomed Valentine’s Show Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St; www.makeoutroom.com, www.getmortified.com. Fri/8, Mon/11, 8pm; $12 advance, $15 at the door. Share the pain, awkwardness, and bad poetry associated with love as performers read from their teen-angst artifacts. The creator of the nationwide and NPR phenomenon, David Nadleberg, will be in attendance in celebration of the release of Mortified: Love Is a Battlefield (Simon Spotlight).

Not Exactly Valentine’s Show Purple Onion, 140 Columbus; 567-7488, www.talkshowsf.com. Mon/11, 7pm, $18-20. Presented by Talk Show Live, Beth Lisick talks about her latest work and performs from her slam repertoire, chocolatier Chuck Siegel of Charles Chocolates gives an interview and tasting, Vicki Burns performs a program of "sort-of romantic standards," and Kurt Bodden reads a short story by James Thurber.

Philosophy/Art Salon: What is Erotic? Femina Potens Art Gallery, 2199 Market; 217-9340, www.feminapotens.com. Feb 16, 6:30-8:30pm, $10-25. Philosopher Rita Alfonso joins erotica writer Jennifer Cross and artist Dorian Katz for a brief show-and-tell followed by a Socratic dialogue on the question "What makes for erotic art?"

Romeo and Juliet: Gala 40th Anniversary Screening Castro Theatre, 429 Castro; 863-0611, www.thecastrotheatre.com. Feb 14, 7pm; $25 adult, $12.50 youth. Marc Huestis and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura present a 40th-anniversary screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s romantic classic, with star Olivia Hussey in attendance and a live musical performance.

Valentine’s Day Film Program: Labor of Love Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, McBean Theater; www.exploratorium.edu. Sat/10, 2pm, free with museum admission ($9-14). In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, the Exploratorium presents a program of short, expressive films about people who love what they do.

BAY AREA

The Gin Game Pacheco Playhouse, 484 Ignacio Blvd, Novato; 883-4498, www.pachecoplayhouse.org. Feb 14, 8pm, $10 special Valentine’s Day price. Bay Area theater vets Norman A. Hall and Shirley Nilsen Hall star in D.L. Coburn’s production of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize-winning play in which two residents of an "aged home" find comfort and competition in the constant shuffling of cards and eventually unravel bits of their past they may rather fold than show.

Giselle Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Lower Sproul Plaza (near Bancroft at Telegraph), Berk; (510) 642-9988. Feb 14-16, 8pm; Feb 17, 3pm; $34-90. Cal Performances presents Nina Ananiashvili and the State Ballet of Georgia performing the beloved ballet, accompanied by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra.

Love Fest La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 849-2568, www.lapena.org. Feb 14, 7:30pm; $12 advance, $14 at the door. HBO Def Poet Aya de Leon hosts this alt-V Day evening of spoken word and music that focuses on love of self, spirit, community, family, peace, and democracy, including readings from her collection of "Grown-Ass-Woman" poems.

Songs of Love Two Bird Cafe, 625 Geronimo Valley, San Geronimo; 488-0105, mikelipskinjazz.com. Feb 14, 7-9pm, free. Jazz vocalist duo Mike and Dinah Lee present a Valentine’s Day concert at Two Bird, which will feature a special menu.

Viva la Musica! St. Mark’s Catholic Church, 325 Marine View, Belmont; (650) 281-9663, www.vivalamusica.org. Feb 14, 8-10pm, $15. Share a romantic musical evening with heart-melting chamber music, intimate solos, sassy choral numbers, and gifts of chocolate for audience members.

ART SHOWS

Flowers from a Nuclear Winter: A Live Art Installation by Rod Pujante Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, Phyllis Wattis Webcast Studio; 561-0363, www.exploratorium.edu. Feb 16, 11am-4pm, free with museum admission ($9-14). Cosponsored by the Black Rock Arts Foundation and the Exploratorium, Burning Man artist Rod Pujante performs a live demonstration of transparent-flower making, converting waste into a dreamscape.

Modern Love Lost Art Salon, 245 S Van Ness; 861-1530, www.lostartsalon.com. Feb 14, 5:30-8:30pm, free. Celebrate Valentine’s Day at an opening reception for this show of work selected from Lost Art’s library of more than 3,000 pieces from the mid-20th century.

BAY AREA

Red Cake Gallery: February Open House Call for directions to private home; (510) 759-4516, www.redcakegallery.com. Feb 23, 6-10pm; Feb 24, March 1, 1-4pm; Feb 25-29, 6-8pm; free. Have your cake and eat it too at this post-Valentine showcase of work by Red Cake artists, to be held in a private San Francisco home.

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS

Aphrodisiac Cooking Class Sur la Table, 77 Maiden; 732-7900, www.surlatable.com. Feb 15, 6:30pm, $170 per couple. Learn to make a delicious, sensual meal at this couples’ class hosted by chef Diane Brown, author of The Seduction Cookbook (Innova, 2005).

Chocolate, Strawberries and Lapdancing Center for Healing and Expression, 1749 O’Farrell; (510) 291-9779, www.slinkyproductions.com. Tues/12, 8pm; $110 per couple, $160 per threeple. Be the best seat in the house at the Slinky Productions lap dance class for couples, which includes chocolate, strawberries, and champagne.

Letterpress Valentines San Francisco Center for the Book, 300 De Haro; 565-0545, sfcb.org. Fri/8, 2-5pm, $65 (including materials). Experienced and novice printmakers alike can enjoy an afternoon making letterpress cards with Megan Adie.

Valentine Special: Xara Flower-Making Workshop Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, Skylight Area. Feb 14 and 16, noon-2pm, free with museum admission ($9-14). Attorney and Burning Man artist Mark Hinkley teaches attendees how to make fake flowers from recycled bottles. All materials provided; ages 6 and up.

BAY AREA

Celebrating the Masculine and Feminine Odd Fellows Hall, 839 Main, Redwood City; (650) 780-0769. Feb 16, 10am-6pm, $150-175. Join Valerie Sher, Jackie Long, and Jim Benson on a journey toward wholeness as we explore who we are as men and women.

A Night of Bond, James Bond Bay Club of Marin, 330 Corte Madera, Corte Madera; 945-3000. Feb 14, 7pm, $35-45 (includes drinks and appetizers). Skip the prix fixe dinner and join certified matchmaker Joy Nordenstrom for a Bond-themed workshop about cultivating passionate relationships, including a contest for best male and female Bond-inspired costumes.

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