SF

BART standoff continues as board modifies contract

Michael Redmond
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1

The BART Board of Directors voted 8-1 on Nov. 21, with conservative young Director Zakhary Mallett in dissent, to approve a hard-won contract with its unions, after removing Section 4.8, the paid family leave section that the district says was inserted by mistake.

The motion also directed management to negotiate a settlement over that issue with its unions, which have already approved the contract and now must decide whether they are willing to do so again without that provision or whether the possibility of another BART strike is once again looming.

The next day, BART’s largest unions, SEIU Local 1021 and ATU Local 1555, issued a joint statement: “We consider the Board’s actions to be unprecedented and illegitimate, and we’re considering our next steps, including possible legal action. The BART Board of Directors has disregarded the vote of more than 2,000 BART workers and has chosen to subvert the collective bargaining process, and we take their actions seriously.”

After meeting in closed session for about two hours, Vice President Joel Keller began the open session with a motion to remove Section 4.8 from the contract, approve the rest, and direct management to negotiate with the unions.

Mallett, the 25-year-old newbie who lives in unincorporated West Contra Costa County but whose District 7 includes part of San Francisco, spoke first: “Even before this hiccup, I was not in the position to support this contract. I find it too costly.”

But he was the only one to take that stance, with the rest of the directors calling the underlying contract a fair compromise, even if all said they couldn’t support the paid family leave provision that would add anywhere between $4 million and $44 million to a contract that was already going to cost the district an additional $67 million.

Director Gail Murray noted that the unions had given up raises for years when BART had budget deficits, and now that the district is running surpluses, it’s reasonable to give workers raises that amount to about 2 percent per year for four years.

“Our employees kept the system going…They’re the reason why we keep 40-year-old cars still running,” Murray said, later adding, “To say this contract is not a good contract is wrong.”

The rest of the board agreed, even while acknowledging it is more than they hoped to pay given the district’s capital needs and aggressive expansion plans.

“We’re probably paying more for this than we anticipated we would pay, and labor is probably giving up more than they want to, but that’s the nature of collective bargaining,” Keller said, who also began what turned into a chorus of criticism for how district negotiators signed off on a provision the board never agreed to.

“We ended on a sloppy note and that’s regrettable,” Keller said, pledging that if he’s elected president next month — an ascension that is customary for the vice president — he plans to launch a full investigation into what happened.

“I’m pained that we put ourselves in such adversarial positions with each other and that we lost the lives of two employees,” Director John McPartland said of the protracted labor negotiations and the fatalities that occurred while the unions were on strike Oct. 19. He called the contract “more than fair and equitable.”

Director James Fang, who represents western San Francisco, sounded the strongest criticisms of BART management and negotiators. “Yes, it was a mistake, but nobody has come forward and said ‘there was a mistake and I’m responsible,” Fang said, later adding, “The ones who signed this must be held to account.”

Fang then went further, albeit without specifics, when he said, “Every bit of management advice we’ve received has not worked out to the district’s best interests.”

Director Robert Raburn echoed Fang’s calls for accountability: “I’m still not clear on how that [contract provision] arrived and it hasn’t been accounted for by anyone at the district who said ‘I am responsible.'”

But he also said that the provision was clearly an error and not something arrived at through the negotiations: “Both parties agreed on a $67 million package and we should keep that intact because it’s fair.”

Reached by the Guardian while union leadership was conferring to plan next steps, SEIU Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told us, “We are about as up in the air as we’ve ever been.”

He called it “unlikely” that union leadership would simply submit the board-revised contract to an up-or-down vote by union membership, saying that he doesn’t think it would be approved.

And Daly echoed the concerns expressed by several BART directors about how this mistake happened and why nobody has taken responsibility or been held accountable: “If I were on that board, I’d have the general manager’s head, there’s no two ways about it.” (Steven T. Jones)

SF General reduces psych care

A 22-bed psychiatric unit at San Francisco General Hospital will be taken out of service, and reopened only if the facility experiences a high caseload of patients exhibiting the worst signs of psychiatric crisis.

As of Nov. 19, five patients were receiving care in that unit, 7B, according to spokesperson Rachael Kagan. None had symptoms that rose to the level of requiring acute care. Instead, they were classified as sub-acute patients, a distinction that essentially means they didn’t present an immediate threat to themselves or others.

But under a new policy that will take effect after they have been released, all 22 beds in 7B will be closed — unless they are needed for acute patients who do reach that critical threshold. The unit will be staffed only if patients can’t be accommodated in the hospital’s other acute psych unit, which has 21 beds.

The decision was made in response to a changing financial picture under federal health care reform, Kagan explained.

“There is a big push … to ensure hospitals are only providing acute care,” Kagan said, and this trend is driving efforts to reduce sub-acute patients. “It fiscally makes more sense,” she added, because insurers pay higher rates for acute care than for lower levels of treatment.

Yet some hospital staff members are nervous about the implications of this shift, because it means fewer patients will be able to access psychiatric care at SF General unless they represent a danger to themselves and/or the general public — at a time when demand for these services is on the rise.

“To us, it’s a matter of priority for the city,” said Brenda Barros, an employee at SF General who is active with hospital union SEIU 1021. “Do you want to take care of these people, or don’t you?”

Some staff members are doubtful that 7B will reopen. An internal SF General memo issued Nov. 18 informed the 7B staff: “Our census will be gradually reduced until we won’t have any more patients. Then 7B will be closed.” The memo added, “this came from [SF General CEO] Sue Currin due to budgetary constraints.”

However, a second internal memo went out the following day, to “clarify” the first one. In that message, Nursing Director Kathy Ballou wrote: “We are not closing psych beds or any beds.” Instead, beds in 7B would be closed unless “we get acute patients needing that level of care,” she wrote. “As in other hospitals, we are accountable to our operating budget.”

Further complicating matters, said Barros, is that patients can fluctuate rapidly between needing acute care and a lower level of attention. “They absolutely can swing back and forth.” She added that patients initially requiring a lower level of care could experience worsening conditions if they’re unable to secure an appointment in time to get help, and delays are very common.

Kagan emphasized that the unit wasn’t being closed down, but did confirm that sub-acute patients would no longer be able to receive treatment in 7B. Instead, those patients will be placed with various service providers throughout the city, she said. “The goal is to move the patients to their appropriate placement.”

Meanwhile, this shift coincides with an overall rise in citywide demand for psychiatric services. According to a report delivered to the Police Commission earlier this year, SF General had 6,293 patient admissions for psychiatric holds in 2012, a sharp increase from 5,837 in 2009.

While there were deep cuts to the city’s Department of Public Health during the economic downturn, Mayor Ed Lee has recently trumpeted a boost to city coffers thanks to growing economic activity. But if the city’s financial health has improved, it seems odd that its safety-net hospital would be put into the position of reducing psych care due to budgetary pressures when that kind of care is sorely needed.

For Barros, it’s a matter of whether or not city officials will decide to allocate more funding for mental health services. “If they don’t have enough money in Public Health,” she said, “then they need to put more into Public Health.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Alerts: November 27 – December 3, 2013

Michael Redmond
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0

WEDNESDAY 27

Harvey Milk and George Moscone Memorial Harvey Milk Plaza, Castro and Market, SF. tinyurl.com/MilkMoscone. 7pm, free. A candlelight vigil and march will be held in remembrance of the 35th anniversary of the murders of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. The event is meant to honor their memories and bring people together. It is being co-sponsored by a broad coalition, including the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

 

FRIDAY 29

 

Black Friday Roller Disco Party San Francisco Women’s Building, 3543 18th St, SF. (415) 820-3907. 8pm-12am, free. SF Indiefest and Black Rock Roller Disco present a Black Friday roller disco party inside the Women’s Building auditorium. Disco costumes encouraged! Skate rentals will be provided, or bring your own.

 

SATURDAY 30

 

Citizen Journalism Symposium East Bay Media Center, 1949 Addison, Berk. 3pm, free. Live streamers, bloggers and social media mavens will converge for a series of conversations on citizen journalism, featuring those who helped capture Occupy Wall Street protests and a discussion led by host Clark Sullivan on ethics in citizen journalism. Bring your smartphone, laptop, curiosity, and enthusiasm.

 

MONDAY 2

World AIDS Day forum San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market, SF. 6:30-8:30pm, free. This year’s forum, titled “Getting to Zero in San Francisco: How Close Are We?” offers attendees the latest news on San Francisco’s progress in fighting HIV/AIDS from experts in the field. They will also be informed about programs that are helping the city get closer to its goal of zero new HIV infections. The interactive town hall forum structure of the event enables it to be as informative as possible, and ensures audience engagement with the topic. TUESDAY 3 #GivingTuesday: Project Homeless Connect 3200 California, SF. (415) 292-1286 or sstickel@jccsf.org. 10am-8pm, free. People ages 12 and up are asked to come help put together personal hygiene kits for homeless people in San Francisco. Participants may come anytime during either of two shifts, which run 10am-1pm and 3-4:30pm. Afterward, everyone is invited to a Hanukkah Candle Lighting, which will begin at 4:30pm. The kits will be distributed by volunteers the following week at Bill Graham Civic Center Auditorium. This event is part of #GivingTuesday, which is a national day dedicated to charitable activities.

Why I’m resigning from the City College board

Sasha Cuttler
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15
Why I’m resigning from the City College board

By Chris Jackson

When I worked for the state legislature, a member once told an overly ambitious guy that there are those who get into politics to be someone and those who get into politics to do something, and we have enough of the first type.

Serving on the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees was always a means for me to work to connect underserved communities to education and eventually economic empowerment.

One of the first measures that I passed while on the board was to expand City College’s Community/Outreach Ambassador to the Mission and the Southeast campuses. Through this program, City College was better able to do outreach to underserved communities.

Be it by protecting CCSF’s GED program or child care sites, working with community leaders to continue to make the Mission campus an educational jewel to its residents, or working with Bayview advocates to ensure the Southeast campus’ survival and eventual growth, I came to the CCSF Board of Trustees on a mission to help ensure that our most vulnerable populations are given access to education as a means of equity.

Although I’ve had amazing success and even made a few mistakes along the way, I don’t want anyone to doubt my continued passion and commitment to the communities that CCSF serves. It is this passion to do something and not simply be a figurehead that has led me to the difficult decision to resign from the CCSF Board of Trustees.

The Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges, an unelected and publicly unaccountable organization, seeks to change the values and charge of City College from an inclusive, community-based and student-focused college to a simple junior college that serves the few and shares the values of the corporate education reform movement.

Even more disappointing has been our state Community College Board of Governors. Instead of performing its public-policy duties, the state Board of Governors, led by State Chancellor Brice Harris, has continued to allow itself to be bullied by the ACCJC to the point where there is a serious question of who really sets public policy for the 112 colleges in our statewide system: our publicly appointed Board of Governors or the unelected, unaccountable private ACCJC.

It pains me to see the scope of our class offerings pared back, our community-based campus continually threatened with closure, much-needed academic counselors laid off, and our Second Chance program for ex-offenders with an over 900-student waiting list. It pains me even more to be sidelined by Harris and our public Board of Governors and watch them shrink and cower to the power of Barbara Beno and her private ACCJC.

But in the face of this challenge to our public education, I see hope. Students like Trustee Shannell Williams, Student President Oscar Pena and former Trustee William Walker rallying students to stand up for their public education give me hope. The American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 and the Save CCSF coalition have become rallying points not just for the immediate CCSF community, but for the larger SF community. Their bravery in the face of the withering attacks on public higher education should be commended and be a model that others should follow. At this moment, there exists the base for a long-lasting coalition of students, educators, and community fighting for the high-quality, affordable education.

Thank you for the opportunity to do something to make an impact in people’s lives. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to serve on the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees.

Chris Jackson was elected to the CCSF Board of Trustees in 2008.

 

More than a memorial

Sasha Cuttler
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16
More than a memorial

When Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk were assassinated in their City Hall offices on Nov. 27, 1978, San Francisco changed in innumerable ways. Among those ways is the city lost two of the leading progressive advocates for renters and affordable housing ever elected here.

Today, as San Franciscans mark this tragedy with their annual memorial march, organizers and activists have broadened and elevated the event by enlisting the support of 20 community organizations now doing work to combat the eviction, gentrification, and affordable housing crises that are gripping the city.

“We wanted to make this even more than just a candlelight vigil,” David Waggoner, one of the organizers of the event, told the Guardian. “We want to use this time to remember Harvey and George’s legacy in really fighting for the underdog.”

He noted that attendance at the march has waxed and waned from year to year, but the coalition putting this one together promises to have a strong turnout this year because of the surging progressive activism around housing issues and the need to organize the community to save the soul of the city.

“There is very little to stop what’s happening with the rapid gentrification,” Waggoner said, but he also noted, “By building coalitions, the same way Harvey and George did, we can fight.”

“We’re not only honoring the history of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, but we’re honoring their legacy by making them relevant today,” Brian Basinger, head of the AIDS Housing Alliance/SF, told us. “The Milk March is going to be very exciting. We have over 20 community groups invited and helping us put it together.”

Basinger said the progressive activism will continue through the 25th annual World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, and that participants in both events will be asked to present their demands to the city for dealing with the AIDS and housing crises. That list will be presented at City Hall during a noon rally on Dec. 2.

He said that affordable housing issues are LGBT issues given that nearly 30 percent of the city’s homeless population identifies as LGBT, while that identification makes up just 15 percent of the overall city population.

“Those of us who are lucky enough to talk to the folks who knew Harvey remind us that it’s about coalition-building,” Basinger said, noting that many of Milk’s contemporaries are now being forced to leave the city by evictions or economic displacement.

One voice from that era who is still around and active is gay activist Cleve Jones, who was an intern in Milk’s office at the time of the assassination and wrote a poignant guest editorial in the Nov. 21 issue of the Bay Area Reporter about what Milk and Moscone advocated.

“They fought for renters, honored labor, and built coalitions to connect, not divide, us from each other,” Jones wrote. “They would, I’m sure, be pleased by the progress that has been achieved on some of the issues they cared about. But they would be alarmed by the growing chasm between rich and poor, they would be angered by the evictions of the elderly, disabled, and people with AIDS. They would be fighting to keep City College open and they would be outraged by the violence and despair experienced by so many in our city’s neighborhoods.”

Organizers of the event say they think this is just the kind of memorial that Milk and Moscone would have wanted.

“We want the housing crisis to be front and center,” Waggoner said. “We want this to be a time for people to connect with the legacy of Milk and Moscone in a very direct way.”

The march begins at 7pm in Milk Plaza, Castro and Market streets, and continues with a rally outside City Hall.

 

Activists organize, and some journalists chronicle, a progressive resurgence in SF

Sasha Cuttler
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131
Activists organize, and some journalists chronicle, a progressive resurgence in SF

While Mayor Ed Lee jets around the world, still too focused on fueling the economic fire that is gentrifying San Francisco and displacing its diverse population — and as the San Francisco Chronicle and other downtown boosters niggle on the margins of the city’s biggest issue — local activists and some media outlets are paying attention and pushing back.

The New York Times ran an excellent Sunday piece about the growing populist backlash here against Mayor Lee’s economic policies and his friends and benefactors in the tech industry, a story that the Santa Rosa Press Democrat also put on its front page, but which the Chronicle only briefly mentioned today on its business page in a short story wrapping all the high-end housing now coming online. Instead, on Sunday the Chron ran this pro-landlord garbage. 

Meanwhile, as we report in tomorrow’s edition of the Guardian, more than 20 local organizations have combined forces this year to organize and promote tomorrow’s (Wed/27) annual memorial march marking the 1978 assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk in City Hall, which will this year focus on their legacy of advocating for renters and keeping this city affordable by and welcoming of the working class and outsiders of all types.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: this is a struggle for the very soul of San Francisco, and it’s a struggle that we at the Guardian renew our commitment to with every issue we print. See you all on the streets tomorrow night starting at 7pm in Milk Plaza and Castro and Market.    

SF General reduces psychiatric care

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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14

A 22-bed psychiatric unit at San Francisco General Hospital will be taken out of service, and re-opened only if the facility experiences a high caseload of patients exhibiting the worst signs of psychiatric crisis, the Bay Guardian has learned.

As of Nov. 19, five patients were receiving care in that unit, 7B, according to spokesperson Rachael Kagan. None had symptoms that rose to the level of requiring acute care. Instead, they were classified as sub-acute patients, a distinction that essentially means they didn’t present an immediate threat to themselves or others.

But under a new policy that will take effect after they have been released, all 22 beds in 7B will be closed – unless they are needed for acute patients who do reach that critical threshold. The unit will be staffed only if patients can’t be accommodated in the hospital’s other acute psych unit, which has 21 beds.

The decision was made in response to a changing financial picture under federal health care reform, Kagan explained.

“There is a big push … to ensure hospitals are only providing acute care,” Kagan said, and this trend is driving efforts to reduce sub-acute patients. “It fiscally makes more sense,” she added, because insurers pay higher rates for acute care than for lower levels of treatment.

Yet some hospital staff members are nervous about the implications of this shift, because it means fewer patients will be able to access psychiatric care at SF General until they represent a danger to themselves and/or the general public – at a time when demand for these services is on the rise.

“To us, it’s a matter of priority for the city,” said Brenda Barros, an employee at SF General who is active with hospital union SEIU 1021. “Do you want to take care of these people, or don’t you?” 

Some staff members are doubtful that 7B will reopen. An internal SF General memo issued Nov. 18 informed 7B staff: “Our census will be gradually reduced until we won’t have any more patients. Then 7B will be closed.” The memo added, “this came from [SF General CEO] Sue Currin due to budgetary constraints.”

However, a second internal memo went out the following day, to “clarify” the first one. In that message, Nursing Director Kathy Ballou wrote: “We are not closing psych beds or any beds.” Instead, beds in 7B would be closed unless “we get acute patients needing that level of care,” she wrote. “As in other hospitals, we are accountable to our operating budget.”

Further complicating matters, said Barros, is that patients can fluctuate rapidly between needing acute care and a lower level of attention. “They absolutely can swing back and forth.” She added that patients initially requiring a lower level of care could experience worsening conditions if they’re unable to secure an appointment in time to get help, and delays are very common.

Kagan emphasized that the unit wasn’t being closed down, but did confirm that sub-acute patients would no longer be able to receive treatment in 7B. Instead, those patients will be placed with various service providers throughout the city, she said. “The goal is to move the patients to their appropriate placement.”

Meanwhile, this shift coincides with an overall rise in citywide demand for psychiatric services. According to a report delivered to the Police Commission earlier this year, SF General had 6,293 patient admissions for psychiatric holds in 2012, a sharp increase from 5,837 in 2009.

While there were deep cuts to the city’s Department of Public Health during the economic downturn, Mayor Ed Lee has recently trumpeted a boost to city coffers thanks to growing economic activity. But if the city’s financial health has improved, it seems odd that its flagship safety-net hospital would be put into the position of reducing psych care due to budgetary pressures when that kind of care is sorely needed.

For Barros, it’s a matter of whether or not city officials will decide to allocate more funding for mental health services. “If they don’t have enough money in Public Health,” she said, “then they need to put more into Public Health.”

Promo: Another Hole in the Head Film Festival

Maria Poblet
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0
Promo: Another Hole in the Head Film Festival

Returning for its tenth year, SF IndieFest presents Another Hole In The Head Film Festival. Celebrating three weeks of Independent Horror, Sci-Fi and Fantasy films, the festival will celebrate its tenth year with 57 feature films, 30 short films, new venues, extended dates, and a theatrical play to fill all your genre film needs.  The festival kicked off on last Wednesday with a production of Top Guys at Stage Werx in San Francisco which will continue to run until December 14. The official kick off for the film festival is November 29 (BLACK FRIDAY) at the Balboa Theater. The festival will continue at the Balboa until December 5, then it will move to the New People Cinema until December 19. For more information and tickets, please visit sfindie.com.

 

Chef Michael Anthony talks ‘The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook’

Sue Vaughan
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2

The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 352 pp., $50) takes you on a restaurant tour, beginning with Danny Meyer’s initial conception of opening this New York establishment, continuing past the chief steward and his wheelbarrow of fresh spring produce from the Greenmarket, around the harvest table where the floral designer pairs yellow sprays of sunflowers with splayed summer squash, into the kitchen during the staff’s family meal, past the pastry station where Nancy Olson creates her autumn peanut butter semifreddo, and ending at the dining table with a winter dish of guinea hen prepared by James Beard Award-winning chef Michael Anthony.

By the time you’ve read through this serious and seriously exquisite cookbook, ogled the colorful photos, and closed the enormous, masculine-elegant back cover, you’ve spent a whole year eating inside the Tavern. Your appreciation for the minute mechanics that run a restaurant will have widened, and your list of must-try recipes? Exploded. (I’ve already checked off the curious “Cauliflower with Quinoa, Prunes, and Peanuts” with happy results). Chef Anthony, making his first trip to San Francisco in December, spoke to me about his vision behind the book.

SF Bay Guardian Who did you write this cookbook for?

Michael Anthony For the fans of Gramercy Tavern who’ve eaten at the restaurant and have fallen in love with it over the years. Or, eventually, people who have not yet discovered it, who have heard of the name and want to become insiders. We wrote this book to translate the rich history of the last seven years — the time that I’ve been in the restaurant — to share those recipes with home cooks.

SFBG What do you mean by “translate”?

MA A professional cook uses jargon, a technical language that’s not familiar to most people who have never worked in a professional kitchen. So, we reevaluated the kinds of tools that one would use at home, the way in which I described how to execute a dish, and took into consideration the careful way I cook at home. I have three daughters, so I cook a lot at home.

SFBG Do your girls have a favorite recipe that you make at home?

MA My three daughters are 14, 11, and three and a half. The mushroom lasagna is a particular favorite of the eldest. The zucchini soup is a favorite of Colette, the 11-year-old. And Adeline eats everything [laughs].

In the book I mention this one silly scenario where I’ll wear my Japanese chef outfit and set up an open kitchen, write out the menu, and I serve [my girls] à la carte vegetable sushi at our open window.

SFBG What’s your trick to having a restaurant and a family at the same time?

MA We make an enormous amount of sacrifices to be a part of this business. The great news is there’s an amazing team at Gramercy Tavern, which allows us all to take days off, including me. And during that time at home I enjoy being home, cooking, and shopping at the Greenmarket. It’s a regular part of our lives.

SFBG You pay a lot of attention to vegetables. Where does this influence come from?

MA We have a fascination with vegetables. They’re a way for us to literally stay connected to the changing seasons and the growers. And for our guests, who, in a big city like this, can feel insulated from the changing seasons.

We’d all be a little better off if we allow ourselves to be seduced by the role that vegetables play in our dishes. It’s not about self-deprivation, not veganism, not vegetarianism — I’m not promoting that particular alternative. I’m just saying that when the vegetable component of the dish preoccupies the creative process, and the protein plays a slightly different role in the story, we eat a healthier variety.

SFBG Do you have a favorite vegetable?

MA It’s always changing. We’re just coming out of our first week of very cool, cold weather, so it’s shifted our salads to include things like roasted winter squash. Our soups are made from potatoes and parsnips and turnips. We’re serving things like sunchokes and salsify.

SFBG Tell me about the “harmonious scatter.”

MA It describes the way in which we plate food with intent. It’s not as simple as, say, Alice Waters saying that food is simply beautiful so just put it on the plate, but it’s not as forced as trying to over-manipulate the food. It’s somewhere in between. Sometimes the imperfections of seeing the cook’s hand in the dish lets you know that it’s handmade.

SFBG How does seasonality affect Gramercy Tavern?

MA When it gets warm in the spring it’s the perfect place to go for a carefully seasoned salad. Summertime when it’s sticky and hot, it’s a great place to come for a lightly grilled fish dish with a chilled cucumber garnish. In the wintertime, it’s an impressive use of the Greenmarket. It doesn’t mean the food is boring or dull, through the winter months, it just means that we have to be more creative with it.

SFBG I was drawn to the book’s Winter chapter the most, actually.

MA It’s a time when we can really draw a distinction between the way you guys [in the Bay Area] would be eating. People are always saying, “If only we had a growing season like in California.” But we don’t. So ultimately those are the times when we can really say that our food is the most distinctively different.

SFBG It’s like that moment where you think you think your fridge is empty, but you end up making something even tastier than you imagined for dinner.

MA I’m with you. Have you read Tamar Adler’s book, An Everlasting Meal?

SFBG I love that book.

MA Tamar’s a good friend, and she’s translated the notion that a meal is a continuation of a story, not the sum of a bunch of recipes. It’s how one meal forms the next. One season forms the next.

SFBG Can you interpret your term “American cooking”?

MA So, I think French food is all about harmony; there’s a very gentle feel, like looking at a wave. No sharp turns. Japanese food is actually more a state of mind. Like their language, there’s no intonation. It’s all about nature, the natural flavor with a very hidden hand of the chef.

American food is all about a lot of highs and lows. We use acidity, we use heat, as ways to make it exciting. In the same vein, we’re not bound by a lot of the traditions and rules that we learn, though we take great interest in them. We have a sense of freedom and openness to cooking … especially in a restaurant like Gramercy Tavern, anything and everything is permissible, in terms of sources of inspiration.

SFBG And American cooking at home?

MA I’ve demonstrated in the book how folks can take pleasure in cooking at home, without feeling trapped. “Oh, I can’t find that particular variety,” or “I don’t shop at the Greenmarket so I can’t do these recipes” — that’s not the case. The overriding message is cooking shouldn’t be a spectator sport. If you visit Gramercy Tavern and you like the dishes that we’re cooking, you can certainly easily find those ingredients at home.

SFBG What is the restaurant doing for Thanksgiving?

MA Well, Gramercy Tavern is closed for Thanksgiving, and that’s what we’re doing [laughs]. Everybody gets to go home and enjoy one of the few culinary holidays that we have in our culture. 

SFBG What are you doing?

MA I’m in charge of the turkey. I’m going to do one traditional slow-roasted bird, and I’ll serve that with a Swiss chard and mushroom stuffing. The other one is a spice-wrapped and apple-wood smoked turkey. With that one there’s never any leftovers. Just demolished. This year, since my in-laws are Jewish, it becomes Thanksgivingukkah. We’re including latkes, and the butternut squash soup with Brussels sprouts from The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook.

Chef Michael Anthony signs The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook Dec. 1, 11am-1pm, Blue Bottle Café, 300 Webster, Oakl; Dec. 2, he collaborates with Quince chef Michael Tusk on a special six-course dinner. For reservations call (415) 775-8500 or visit www.quincerestaurant.com/events.

Music Listings: November 20-26, 2013

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

WEDNESDAY 20
ROCK
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Screaming Females, Upset, Peace Creep, 9 p.m., $10.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. U.S. Girls, Chasms, Ether Island, 9 p.m., $7-$10.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. The Reverend Horton Heat, Larry & His Flask, Deke Dickerson, 9 p.m., $25.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Apt H, Neon Satori, Pharaohs, 8 p.m., $5.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Rocket Queens, BROFX, 9 p.m., $7.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Qui, Roland, Big Long Now, 8:30 p.m., $7.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Josh Berwanger Band, Mammoth Life, The Silhouette Era, 8 p.m., $10.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Self-Inflicted Wounds, Balms, Demimonde, DJ Ryan Smith, 9:30 p.m., $6.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. City Tribe, We Arsons, The Wooden Suns, 8:30 p.m., $5.
DANCE
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Sticky Wednesdays,” w/ DJ Mark Andrus, 8 p.m., free.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bondage A Go Go,” w/ DJs Damon, Tomas Diablo, & guests, 9:30 p.m., $5-$10.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “Electro Pop Rocks,” 18+ dance night with DJ Dan, SwitchBlade, Frank Nitty, more, 9 p.m.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Tainted Techno Trance,” 10 p.m.
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Housepitality,” w/ Marcel Vogel, James What, Tyrel Williams, Ben Bean, 9 p.m., $5-$10.
Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. “Qoöl,” 5 p.m.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Indulgence,” 10 p.m.
Lexington Club: 3464 19th St., San Francisco. “Friends of Dorothy,” w/ DJ Sissyslap, 9 p.m., free.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “What?,” w/ resident DJ Tisdale and guests, 7 p.m., free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Rock the Spot,” 9 p.m., free.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Burn Down the Disco,” w/ DJs 2shy-shy & Melt w/U, Third Wednesday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ DJ Big Bad Bruce, 10 p.m., free.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “We Are Monsters,” w/ Sammy D, Mozhgan, Jason Greer, 10 p.m., $5-$10.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Booty Call,” w/ Juanita More, Joshua J, guests, 9 p.m., $3.
Showdown: 10 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Nokturnal,” w/ DJs Coyle & Gonya, Third Wednesday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
HIP-HOP
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Lunice, Rockie Fresh, B. Bravo, 8 p.m., $10-$15.
Double Dutch: 3192 16th St., San Francisco. “Cash IV Gold,” w/ DJs Kool Karlo, Roost Uno, and Sean G, 10 p.m., free.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Latyrx featuring Skins & Needles, Forrest Day, DJ Aaron Axelsen, hosted by Blackalicious, 9 p.m., $25.
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Mixtape Wednesday,” w/ resident DJs Strategy, Junot, Herb Digs, & guests, 9 p.m., $5.
ACOUSTIC
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, 7 p.m., free.
Club Deluxe: 1511 Haight, San Francisco. Happy Hour Bluegrass, 6:30 p.m., free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, Every other Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., free/donation.
The Lost Church: 65 Capp St., San Francisco. Drea Muldavin, 8 p.m., $10.
JAZZ
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session, The Amnesiacs, 7 p.m., free.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6 p.m., free.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30 p.m., free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. The Cosmo Alleycats featuring Ms. Emily Wade Adams, 7 p.m., free.
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Ned Boynton & Friends, 6 p.m., free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. The Suppression of Sound: An Evening of Poetry and Music, with Thomas Sayers Ellis, James Brandon Lewis, and Raina J. León, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Michael Parsons Trio, Every other Wednesday, 8:30 p.m., free/donation.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. “Cat’s Corner,” 9 p.m., $10.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Fran Sholly, 8 p.m.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Ricardo Scales, Wednesdays, 6:30-11:30 p.m., $5.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Anya Malkiel, 7:30 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. Timba Dance Party, w/ DJ WaltDigz, 10 p.m., $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Bachatalicious,” w/ DJs Good Sho & Rodney, 7 p.m., $5-$10.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Cafe LatinoAmericano,” 8 p.m., $5.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Jorge Ben Jor, 8 & 10 p.m., $35-$55.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Mitch Woods & His Rocket 88s, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $15.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Big Bones & Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Takezo, 9:30 p.m.
SOUL
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Soul Train Revival,” w/ Ziek McCarter, Third Wednesday of every month, 9:30 p.m., $5.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Daley, 7:30 p.m., sold out.

THURSDAY 21
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Nova Albion, The Foreign Resort, 9 p.m., $7-$10.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. The Rock Collection, featuring Stu Allen, Greg Anton, Mark Karan, Melvin Seals, and Robin Sylvester, 9 p.m., $10-$13.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Howe Gelb, 9 p.m., $18-$20.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Norma Jean, Vanna, KEN Mode, Exotic Animal Petting Zoo, Name, 7 p.m., $13-$18.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Lemme Adams, Hungry Skinny, Fox & The Law, Electric Shepherd, 8 p.m., $7.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Dengue Fever, Seventeen Evergreen, 8 p.m., $16-$18.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Build Them to Break, The Trash Pop Icons, Protected Left, 8:30 p.m., free.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. The Kimberly Trip, Poeina Suddarth, Claire on a Dare, Drivers, 8 p.m., $8.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Albert Hammond Jr., Rathborne, 9 p.m., $21.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. White Barons, Hornss, Winter Teeth, Rock Bottom, 9:30 p.m., $7.
DANCE
Abbey Tavern: 4100 Geary, San Francisco. DJ Schrobi-Girl, 10 p.m., free.
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “Tubesteak Connection,” w/ DJ Bus Station John, 9 p.m., $5-$7.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “¡Pan Dulce!,” 9 p.m., $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” ‘80s night with DJs Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests, 9 p.m., $6 (free before 9:30 p.m.).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “XO,” w/ DJs Astro & Rose, 10 p.m., $5.
Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “The Crib,” 9:30 p.m., $10, 18+.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Turbo Drive,” w/ Anoraak, Marrow, plus DJs Devon, MyKill, and Mr. Smith, 9:30 p.m., $15.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Afrolicious,” w/ DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, and live guests, 9:30 p.m., $5-$8.
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Beat Church,” w/ Mint, Humpfree Lowgart, residents, 9 p.m., $5-$10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “I Love Thursdays,” 10 p.m., $10.
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “SoLuna,” w/ resident DJ Miquel Penn, Third Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Never Knows, Exotic Club, Bézier, DJs Nihar & Mashi Mashi, 9:30 p.m., $6.
Laszlo: 2532 Mission, San Francisco. “Werk It,” w/ DJ Kool Karlo, Third Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Night Fever,” 9 p.m., $5 after 10 p.m.
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. Alland Byallo, 10 p.m., $10 before 11 p.m.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursday,” w/ DJ Jay-R, 9 p.m., free.
Raven: 1151 Folsom St., San Francisco. “1999,” w/ VJ Mark Andrus, 8 p.m., free.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. “Popscene,” w/ Deptford Goth, Sohn, 9:30 p.m., $13-$15.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Awakening,” Coldharbour Recordings Night with Khomha, Beat Service, Grube & Hovsepian, 9 p.m., $20 advance.
SPARC: 1256 Mission, San Francisco. “Surya Dub Mission,” w/ Kush Arora, J-Boogie, DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, 7-10 p.m., free with RSVP (must be 18+).
The Tunnel Top: 601 Bush, San Francisco. “Tunneltop,” DJs Avalon and Derek ease you into the weekend with a cool and relaxed selection of tunes spun on vinyl, 10 p.m., free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bubble,” 10 p.m., free.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Base,” w/ Nathan Barato, 10 p.m., $5-$10.
HIP-HOP
Eastside West: 3154 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” w/ DJ Madison, 9 p.m., free.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Cypher,” w/ resident DJ Big Von, 10 p.m., $5-$10.
Park 77 Sports Bar: 77 Cambon, San Francisco. “Slap N Tite,” w/ resident Cali King Crab DJs Sabotage Beats & Jason Awesome, free.
Showdown: 10 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Tougher Than Ice,” w/ DJs Vin Sol, Ruby Red I, and Jeremy Castillo, Third Thursday of every month, 10 p.m.
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Peaches,” w/lady DJs DeeAndroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, Umami, Inkfat, and Andre, 10 p.m., free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Acoustic Open Mic, 7 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Yesway, TaughtMe, Magic Magic Roses, 8:30 p.m., $8.
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. The Neckbeard Boys, 8 p.m.
The Lost Church: 65 Capp St., San Francisco. The New Thoreaus, Ghost Lore, 8 p.m., $10.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Tipsy House, Third Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
JAZZ
Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Doug Martin’s Avatar Ensemble, 7:30 p.m., free.
Bottle Cap: 1707 Powell, San Francisco. The North Beach Sound with Ned Boynton, Jordan Samuels, and Tom Vickers, 7 p.m., free.
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Dick Fregulia’s Good Vibes Trio, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Ralph Carney’s Serious Jass Project, 9 p.m.
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Art Lewis Trio, 7 p.m., free.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Shannon Wolfe & Grant Levin, 8:30 p.m., free.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Charlie Siebert & David Udolf, 7:30 p.m., free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Jam with Eddy Ramirez, 7:30 p.m., $5.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 7:30 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. “1002 Nights: A Celebration of the Life & Music of Cheb i Sabbah,” w/ Jai Uttal, Sukhawat Ali Khan & Party, Jef Stott, Momo Loudiyi, Opium Sabbah, Eva El Beze, Karsh Kale & The Midival Punditz, DJ Rekha, Dub Gabriel, Janaka Selekta, Shabi Farooq, Radiohiro, Fabian Alsultany, Little John, DJ Sep, Tarun Nayer, DJ Dragonfly, Jimmy Love, Bob Duskis, Maneesh the Twister, DJ Amar, many more, 7 p.m., $10-$20 suggested donation.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Pa’Lante!,” w/ Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky, 10 p.m., $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Julio Bravo y Su Orquesta Salsabor, 8 p.m., $12.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Jueves Flamencos,” 8 p.m., free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Gary Flores & Descarga Caliente, 8 p.m.
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. The Verdi Club Milonga, w/ Christy Coté, DJ Emilio Flores, guests, 9 p.m., $10-$15.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Septeto Nacional de Cuba, 8 & 10 p.m., $23-$28.
REGGAE
Pissed Off Pete’s: 4528 Mission St., San Francisco. Reggae Thursdays, w/ resident DJ Jah Yzer, 9 p.m., free.
BLUES
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. Bill Phillippe, 5:30 p.m., free.
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Jarekus Singleton, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $18.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Chris Ford, Third Thursday of every month, 4 p.m.; Wendy DeWitt, 9:30 p.m.
COUNTRY
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Twang Honky Tonk & Country Jamboree,” w/ DJ Little Red Rodeo, 7 p.m., free.
EXPERIMENTAL
The Luggage Store: 1007 Market, San Francisco. Erors, Mountain vs. Building, 8 p.m., $6-$10.
Swedish American Hall: 2174 Market, San Francisco. Thomas Dolby: The Invisible Lighthouse Live, The synth-pop pioneer turns his attention to film for this transmedia event that combines documentary movie footage, live narration, and — naturally — electronic music and sound design., 8 p.m., $25-$60.
SOUL
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Soul: It’s the Real Thing,” w/ The Selecter DJ Kirk & Jon Blunck, 10 p.m., free.

FRIDAY 22
ROCK
50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. The Rabbles, The Wearies, Red Elk, Feed Me Jack, Modern Kicks, 8 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Papa, Panic Is Perfect, Bent Shapes, 9:30 p.m., $12.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Lumerians, Factrix, Li Xi, 9 p.m., $12-$15.
Connecticut Yankee: 100 Connecticut, San Francisco. Pony Fight, 1906, The Quart of Blood Technique, 10 p.m.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Friday Live: The Whoa Nellies, DJ Emotions, 10 p.m., free.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Moonbeams, Slowness, Venus Beltran, 9:30 p.m., $7.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Wax Idols, Metal Mother, Opulence, DJ Omar, 9 p.m., $10.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. John Vanderslice, Doe Eye, 8:30 p.m., $15.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Protest the Hero, Architects, The Kindred, Affiance, 7:30 p.m., $20.
Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery): 2183 Mission, San Francisco. Brave Ulysses, Downfall, Waterfly Spigot, Black Bones, Rundown Radio, 8 p.m.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Brocas Helm, Hatchet, Exmortus, Midnight Chaser, 9 p.m., $10.
DANCE
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. SnowGlobe Pre-Party with Amon Tobin (DJ set), Machinedrum, Just Blaze, G Jones, Mr. Rogers, Vin Sol, Stylust Beats, Digital Rust, Bogl vs. Dials, plus many more, 10 p.m., $20-$30 advance.
Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. Poolside, Pacific Disco, Papa Lu, 9:30 p.m., $10 advance.
BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “U-Haul,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & China G, 10 p.m., $5-$10.
Cafe Flore: 2298 Market, San Francisco. “Kinky Beats,” w/ DJ Sergio, 10 p.m., free.
The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Boy Bar,” w/ DJ Matt Consola, 9 p.m., $5.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Dark Shadows,” w/ DJs Daniel Skellington, Melting Girl, Owen, and Mz. Samantha, 9:30 p.m., $7 ($3 before 10 p.m.).
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “F.T.S.: For the Story,” 10 p.m.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “120 Minutes,” w/ House of LaDosha, Santa Muerte, Chauncey CC, 10 p.m., $10-$15.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Fever,” 10 p.m., free before midnight.
The Grand Nightclub: 520 4th St., San Francisco. “We Rock Fridays,” 9:30 p.m.
Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. Sharam Jey, J. Remy, Laura Lisbona, Jeff Hinchman, 9 p.m., $10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Escape Fridays,” 10 p.m., $20.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “HYSL,” 9 p.m., $3.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “I ♥ the ‘90s,” w/ DJs Samala, Teo, Mr. Grant, & Sonny Phono, Fourth Friday of every month, 9 p.m., $5.
Manor West: 750 Harrison, San Francisco. “Fortune Fridays,” 10 p.m., free before 11 p.m. with RSVP.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “F-Style Fridays,” w/ DJ Jared-F, 9 p.m.
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. “Dirtybird Players,” w/ Catz ‘N Dogz, Cause & Affect, J.Phlip, Leroy Peppers, Worthy, 9 p.m., $10-$20.
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. Aphrodite, Jamal & Audio Angel, Kimba, Chris the Junglist, Audio 1, Micah J, Kirin Rider, Sychosis, 10 p.m., $13 advance.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Acid Test,” w/ D’Marc Cantu, Tyrel Williams, Bai-ee, Miguel Solari, Fil Latorre, 9:30 p.m., $12-$15.
Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. 100% Silk Label Tour, w/ Octo Octa, Magic Touch, Coyote Clean Up (on the upstairs stage), 9 p.m., $13-$15.
OMG: 43 6th St., San Francisco. “Release,” 9 p.m., free before 11 p.m.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. Dubfire, DJ Rooz, Mossmoss, Bob Campbell, Bardia F, Keith Kraft, 9:30 p.m., $13-$20.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Pump: Worq It Out Fridays,” w/ resident DJ Christopher B, 9 p.m., $3.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. Super8 & Tab, 9 p.m., $20 advance.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. Blaus, Lenny Kiser, King James, Twin Spin, 10 p.m., $15.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bionic,” 10 p.m., $5.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Project X,” w/ Matth, Kepik, Beau Kelly, Rose, 10 p.m., $10-$30.
Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bridge the Gap,” w/ resident DJ Don Kainoa, Fridays, 6-10 p.m., free.
HIP-HOP
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Hella Fresh Fest,” w/ Zion I, Tribal Seeds, CunninLynguists, Pacific Dub, Richie Cunning, Rey Resurreccion, Rglnd & Duckwrth, MK Smth, more, 8 p.m., $25-$50.
EZ5: 682 Commercial, San Francisco. “Decompression,” Fridays, 5-9 p.m.
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Flow,” w/ The Whooligan & Mikos Da Gawd, Fourth Friday of every month, 10 p.m., free befoe 11 p.m.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Homesick Elephant, 7 p.m.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Supermule, Cahalen Morrison & Eli West, The Barbary Ghosts, 9:30 p.m., $9-$12.
Dolores Park Cafe: 501 Dolores, San Francisco. Keeva, Beryl Baker, 7:30 p.m.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Jason Powers, Karmina, XY Unlimited, 9 p.m., $10.
The Lost Church: 65 Capp St., San Francisco. “Once Silent Hollows,” w/ Jean Marc, Vessna Scheff, and David Colon, 8 p.m., $10.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Get Offa My Lawn, 9 p.m.
The Sports Basement: 610 Old Mason, San Francisco. “Breakfast with Enzo,” w/ Enzo Garcia, 10 a.m., $5.
Swedish American Hall: 2174 Market, San Francisco. William Fitzsimmons, Denison Witmer, 8 p.m., $20.
JAZZ
Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Johnny Smith, 8 p.m., free.
Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Chuck Peterson Quintet, Fourth Friday of every month, 5:30 p.m.
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Jerry Oakley Trio, 7:30 p.m., free.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Palace Hotel: 2 New Montgomery, San Francisco. The Klipptones, 8 p.m., free.
Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Voices for the Poppy: A Special Benefit Concert, Meklit Hadero hosts music and poetry by Tiffany Austin, Tom Sway, Prasant Radhakrishnan, Todd Thomas Brown, Schuyler Karr, and Michael Warr., 7:30 p.m., $15-$50.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Steve Lucky & Carmen Getit, 7:30 p.m., free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Carol Luckenbach, 7:30 p.m., $8.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Sebastian Parker Quartet, 9 p.m.
Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Black Market Jazz Orchestra, 9 p.m., $10.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Joyce Grant, 8 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Baxtalo Drom, International shimmying for lovers of Balkan music, bellydancers, and burlesque., Fourth Friday of every month, 9 p.m., $5-$10.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10 p.m., $5.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Taste Fridays, featuring local cuisine tastings, salsa bands, dance lessons, and more, 7:30 p.m., $15 (free entry to patio).
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Orquesta Borinquen, 8 p.m.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cuban Night with Fito Reinoso, 7:30 & 9:15 p.m., $15-$18.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Septeto Nacional de Cuba, 8 & 10 p.m., $26-$30.
REGGAE
Gestalt Haus: 3159 16th St., San Francisco. “Music Like Dirt,” 7:30 p.m., free.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. The Green, Kimie, Extra Classic, 9:30 p.m., sold out.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Jarekus Singleton, 7:30 & 10 p.m., $20.
Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Eldon Brown, 8:30 p.m.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. David M’ore, 4 p.m.; Eugene Huggins, 9:30 p.m.
Tupelo: 1337 Green St., San Francisco. Marshall Law Band, 9 p.m.
FREE
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Danilo y Universal, 8 p.m., free.
FUNK
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Loose Joints,” w/ DJs Centipede, Damon Bell, & Tom Thump, 10 p.m., $5.
SOUL
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Marcus Cohen & The Congress, Kev Choice Ensemble, 9 p.m., $12-$15.
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Soul Crush,” w/ DJ Serious Leisure, 10 p.m., free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Sissy Strut,” w/ The Handsome Young Men (DJs Ponyboy, Lil MC, Katie Duck, & Durt), Fourth Friday of every month, 10 p.m., $3-$5.

SATURDAY 23
ROCK
Amoeba Music: 1855 Haight, San Francisco. Nik Turner’s Hawkwind, 2 p.m., free.
Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Wild Eyes, Buffalo Tooth, 10 p.m., $5.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. That’s Not Her, Scissors for Lefty, Vela Eyes, 9:30 p.m., $10-$12.
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Nobunny, Nubs, Primitive Hearts, G. Green, DJ Kevin Spaghetti, 9 p.m., $12.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Lee Gallagher & The Hallelujah, Coo Coo Birds, Be Calm Honcho, 9:30 p.m., $10-$12.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. The Entrance Band, Raw Geronimo, 9 p.m., $12-$15.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “The Hop,” w/ The Royal Deuces, Cole Walker & His Rhythm Section, Kountry Kittens Burlesque, DJ Tom G, more, 9 p.m., $13.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Brother JT, Carlton Melton, Life Coach, Suzuki Junzo, 9:30 p.m., $8.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Shine On,” w/ Electro Group, Cruel Summer, Corey, Tepid Joy, 9 p.m., $6.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. The Impersonations, Mane, 7:30 p.m., $8.
Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. The Parmesans, Cash for Gold, Mary Jones’ Lights, Staring@Stars, 9 p.m., $8-$10.
Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Finntroll, Blackguard, Metsatöll, 9 p.m., $25.
Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery): 2183 Mission, San Francisco. Garrett Miranda, The Resistance Panel, Skitzofrenik, The Residuals, 8 p.m., $5.
Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Attik Door, Moxie Kids, Field of Stones, Rage Against Florence & The Machine, 9 p.m., $8.
DANCE
BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Evolution,” w/ Marco Da Silva, Christopher B, 10 p.m., $10-$15 advance.
Cafe Flore: 2298 Market, San Francisco. “Bistrotheque,” w/ DJ Ken Vulsion, 8 p.m., free.
Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Villainy: The Dance Club with a Dark Side – Celebrating 50 Years of Doctor Who,” w/ DJs Tomas Diablo, Donimo, Chris Zachos, Daniel Skellington, and Prince Charming, 9:30 p.m., $5-$8.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Bootie S.F.,” w/ A+D, DJ Dada, Smash-Up Derby, DJ Tripp, DJ Lex, Barney Iller, Teknacolor Ninja, more, 9 p.m., $10-$15.
S.F. Eagle: 398 12th St., San Francisco. “Sadistic Saturdays,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., free.
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. Shangri-La, Asian queer dance party., Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $15-$20 (free before 11 p.m.).
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Trap City,” w/ DJ Sliink, UltraViolet, Napsty, Audio 1, Lé Swndle, Astro, WolfBitch, Thizz Markie, 10 p.m., $15 advance.
Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. Helena, Spektor, D-Bryk, 9 p.m., $10.
Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Set,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $20.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Bounce!,” 9 p.m., $3.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Blunted Funk,” w/ resident DJs Sneak-E Pete & Chilipino, Fourth Saturday of every other month, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 10 p.m.).
Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. “Bass Cabaret: A Titanic Experience,” w/ Stephan Jacobs, Gydyr, Jake Lamante, Nebakaneza, plus burlesque & circus performers, 10 p.m., $22-$60 advance.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. Monarch 2-Year Anniversary, w/ Danny Daze, DJ M3, Shiny Objects, Dust Red Skies, Queen Majesty & Saboteur, Columbo Ahmed, Mozhgan, Jacob Fury, 9 p.m., $10-$20.
Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “Thanksgifting,” w/ Deekline, DJ Icon, Brad Robinson, Barney Iller, Ejagz, Nugz, Clarkie, Mystr Hatchet, DJMK, Alvaro Bravo, DJ Dane, 9 p.m., $15-$20.
Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. “Gameboi S.F.: Annual Thanksgiving Dinner & Canned Food Drive,” w/ VJ LaRock, 9:30 p.m., $8-$15.
Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “World Town,” w/ Chocolate Puma, Trevor Simpson, 9 p.m., $25 advance.
The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Porno,” w/ DJs James Torres & Trixxx, 9 p.m., $5.
Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery): 2183 Mission, San Francisco. “Requiem,” w/ DJs Xiola, Owen, and Calexica (in the back room), 9:30 p.m., $5.
Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Life,” w/ David Garcia, David Paul, The Whooligan, Tim Brown, Frankie Jr., J-Trip, 10 p.m., $20.
Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. Chris Garcia, 10 p.m., $10-$30.
HIP-HOP
John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “Nice,” w/ DJ Apollo, Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $5.
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Alexander Spit, 9 p.m., $8.
ACOUSTIC
Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, Saturdays, 4-6 p.m., free.
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Wave the Sea, 7 p.m.
The Lost Church: 65 Capp St., San Francisco. Erin Brazill & The Brazillionaires, Rusty Stringfield, 8 p.m., $10.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Br’er Rabbit, 9 p.m.
St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church: 2097 Turk, San Francisco. Anne & Pete Sibley, The T Sisters, 8 p.m., $12-$15.
JAZZ
Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Lori Carsillo, 7:30 p.m., free.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Panique, 9 p.m., free.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Steve Lucky & Carmen Getit, 7:30 p.m., free.
Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Octobop, 7:30 p.m., $10.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Robert Stewart Experience, 9 p.m.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Lisa Lindsley, 8 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Pura,” 9 p.m., $20.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10 p.m., $5.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. La Gente, La Chamba, DJ Kush Arora, 9:30 p.m., $10-$15.
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Somos el Son, DJ Good Sho, 8 p.m., $15.
Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Saboriche, 8 p.m.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Mango,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 3 p.m., $8-$10.
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “El SuperRitmo,” w/ DJs Roger Mas & El Kool Kyle, 10 p.m., $5.
Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Peña Eddy Navia & Pachamama Band, 8 p.m., free.
REGGAE
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. The Green, Kimie, Skins & Needles, 9:30 p.m., sold out.
Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Barrington Levy, Mango Kingz, DJ Smoky, Rozone, 9 p.m., $25-$45.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, 7:30 & 10 p.m., $22.
Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Robert “Hollywood” Jenkins, 7:30 p.m.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Dave Workman, Fourth Saturday of every month, 4 p.m.; Curtis Lawson, 9:30 p.m.
SOUL
Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Nightbeat,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and Dr. Scott, Fourth Saturday of every month, 9 p.m., $3.

SUNDAY 24
ROCK
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. The Shivering Lilies featuring Lily Holbrook, Matt Jaffe & The Distractions, 7 p.m., $10.
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Thy Art Is Murder, I Declare War, Fit for an Autopsy, The Last Ten Seconds of Life, Kublai Khan, 6:30 p.m., $10-$12.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Mercury in Retrograde, Bitter Fruit, DJ Adee Roberson, 8 p.m., $5-$10.
DANCE
440 Castro: 440 Castro, San Francisco. “Sunday Furry Sunday,” Last Sunday of every month, 4-10 p.m., $1.
The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “Replay Sundays,” 9 p.m., free.
The Edge: 4149 18th St., San Francisco. “’80s at 8,” w/ DJ MC2, 8 p.m.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Dub Mission,” w/ Mr. E, DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, 9 p.m., $6 (free before 9:30 p.m.).
The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “T.Dance,” 6 a.m.-6 p.m.; “Sunday Sessions,” 8 p.m.; “Local Love,” Fourth Sunday of every month, 8 p.m.
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Stamina Sundays,” w/ DBridge, Method One, Lukeino, Jamal, 10 p.m., free.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Sweater Funk,” 10 p.m., free.
Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Jock,” Sundays, 3-8 p.m., $2.
MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Bounce,” w/ DJ Just, 10 p.m.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Direct to Earth,” w/ Marc Houle, Solar, Bob Campbell, Max Gardner, Patrick Gil, 9 p.m., $15.
Otis: 25 Maiden, San Francisco. “What’s the Werd?,” w/ resident DJs Nick Williams, Kevin Knapp, Maxwell Dub, and guests, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 11 p.m.).
The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. DJ Marc deVasconcelos, 10 p.m., free.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Gigante,” 8 p.m., free.
The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Cognitive Dissonance,” Fourth Sunday of every month, 6 p.m.; “No Parking on the Dancefloor,” w/ resident DJs Dutchboy & Gehno Aviance, 11 p.m., $5.
HIP-HOP
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Return of the Cypher,” 9:30 p.m., free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Br’er Rabbit, The Family Crest, 6 p.m.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Don DiLego, Misisipi Mike, The California Sons, 8 p.m., $8-$10.
Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Sam Johnson, 4 p.m.
The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Sunday Bluegrass Jam, 4 p.m., free; The Ring of Truth Trio, 8 p.m.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Spike’s Mic Night,” Sundays, 4-8 p.m., free.
Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. “iPlay,” open mic with featured weekly artists, 6:30 p.m., free.
Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. The Barren Vines, 6 p.m., free.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Seisiún with Marla Fibish, 9 p.m.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Happy Family Singers, Yard Sale, 5 p.m., free.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church: 1755 Clay, San Francisco. “Sunday Night Mic,” w/ Roem Baur, 5 p.m., free.
JAZZ
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30 p.m., free.
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” 10 p.m., free.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Jazz Revolution, 4 p.m., free/donation.
The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 7:30 p.m., free.
INTERNATIONAL
Atmosphere: 447 Broadway, San Francisco. “Hot Bachata Nights,” w/ DJ El Guapo, 5:30 p.m., $10 ($18-$25 with dance lessons).
Balancoire: 2565 Mission St., San Francisco. “Tardeadas Tropicales,” 3 p.m.
Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Brazil & Beyond,” 6:30 p.m., free.
El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Salsa Sundays,” Second and Fourth Sunday of every month, 3 p.m., $8-$10.
Old First Presbyterian Church: 1751 Sacramento, San Francisco. Melody of China: 20th Anniversary Concert, 4 p.m., $14-$17.
Thirsty Bear Brewing Company: 661 Howard, San Francisco. “The Flamenco Room,” 7:30 & 8:30 p.m.
REGGAE
Il Pirata: 2007 16th St., San Francisco. “Ragga Ragga,” w/ DJs Vinny Ras, Kure All, & Theory, Last Sunday of every month, 7 p.m., free.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Sean Chambers, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $18.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. HowellDevine, 8:30 p.m., free/donation.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Blues Power, 4 p.m.; The Door Slammers, 9:30 p.m.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 8 p.m., free.
Swig: 571 Geary, San Francisco. Sunday Blues Jam with Ed Ivey, 9 p.m.
EXPERIMENTAL
Center for New Music: 55 Taylor St., San Francisco. Into the Thicket, w/ Anne Rainwater, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.
SOUL
Delirium Cocktails: 3139 16th St., San Francisco. “Heart & Soul,” w/ DJ Lovely Lesage, 10 p.m., free.

MONDAY 25
ROCK
Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Social Studies, Ash Reiter, The She’s, 9 p.m., $6.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Paws, Surf Club, Tiaras, Pro Fan DJs, 9 p.m., $10.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Will Sprott, Devotionals, DJ Neil Martinson, 9 p.m., $10.
DANCE
DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Death Guild,” 18+ dance party with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, & guests, 9:30 p.m., $3-$5.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Wanted,” w/ DJs Key&Kite and Richie Panic, 9 p.m., free.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Vienetta Discotheque,” w/ DJs Stanley Frank and Robert Jeffrey, 10 p.m., free.
HIP-HOP
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Jel & Serengeti, 9 p.m., $10.
ACOUSTIC
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. The Pick Bluegrass Jam, Fourth Monday of every month, 6 p.m., free; The Earl Brothers, Fourth Monday of every month, 9 p.m., free.
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. West Coast Songwriters Competition, 7 p.m.
The Chieftain: 198 Fifth St., San Francisco. The Wrenboys, 7 p.m., free.
Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, 9:30 p.m., free/donation.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Open mic with Brendan Getzell, 8 p.m., free.
Osteria: 3277 Sacramento, San Francisco. “Acoustic Bistro,” 7 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Peter Lindman, 4 p.m.
JAZZ
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Le Jazz Hot, 7 p.m., free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. City Jazz Instrumental Jam Session, 8 p.m.
The Union Room at Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. The Session: A Monday Night Jazz Series, pro jazz jam with Mike Olmos, 7:30 p.m., $12.
Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Gayle Wilhelm, 7:30 p.m., free.
REGGAE
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Skylarking,” w/ I&I Vibration, 10 p.m., free.
BLUES
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 7:30 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Bachelors, 9:30 p.m.
Tupelo: 1337 Green St., San Francisco. Chris Ford, 9 p.m.
SOUL
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “M.O.M. (Motown on Mondays),” w/ DJ Gordo Cabeza & Timoteo Gigante, 8 p.m., free.

TUESDAY 26
ROCK
Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. French Cassettes, Black Cobra Vipers, Waterstrider, 9:15 p.m., $7.
Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Rode Down, Spooky Flowers, FayRoy, 9 p.m., $8.
Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Rare Monk, Vinyl Spectrum, 7:30 p.m., $8.
Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Ego Likeness, Servitor, The RaZor Skyline, DJ Unit 77, 9 p.m., $10.
Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Future Twin, Week of Wonders, Twin Steps, Randumbly Chillaxin, 8:30 p.m., $6.
The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Monster Magnet, Royal Thunder, Anti-Mortem, 8 p.m., $25.
The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. The Nerv, Go Time, Nihilist Cunt, DJ Mashi Mashi, 9:30 p.m., $6.
DANCE
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “High Fantasy,” w/ DJ Viv, Myles Cooper, & guests, 10 p.m., $2.
Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Soundpieces,” 10 p.m., free-$10.
Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Switch,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & Andre, 9 p.m., $3.
Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Shelter,” 10 p.m., free.
Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Tight,” w/ resident DJs Michael May & Lito, 8 p.m., free.
HIP-HOP
Double Dutch: 3192 16th St., San Francisco. “Takin’ It Back Tuesdays,” w/ DJs Mr. Murdock and Roman Nunez, Fourth Tuesday of every month, 10 p.m., free.
Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “True Skool Tuesdays,” w/ DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist, 10 p.m., free.
ACOUSTIC
Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Andy Padlo, 7 p.m. continues through.
The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Julianna Barwick, Mark McGuire, 8 p.m., $12.
Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Claes Cem, Kingsborough, Austin James Hicks, 8 p.m., $7.
Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Song session with Cormac Gannon, Last Tuesday of every month, 9 p.m.
The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Toshio Hirano, 8:30 p.m., free.
JAZZ
Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Gerry Grosz Jazz Jam, 7 p.m.
Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Kally Price & Rob Reich, 7 p.m., free.
Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6 p.m., free.
Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Chris Amberger, 7 p.m.
Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. M.B. Hanif & The Sound Voyagers, 7:30 p.m., free.
Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, 7 p.m.
Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. West Side Jazz Club, 5 p.m., free.
Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Eric Wiley, 8 p.m.
Tupelo: 1337 Green St., San Francisco. Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz Band, 6 p.m.
Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. “Tuesday Night Jump,” w/ Stompy Jones, 9 p.m., $10-$12.
Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Tommy Igoe Big Band, 8 p.m., $22.
INTERNATIONAL
Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Descarga S.F.,” w/ DJs Hong & Good Sho, 8 p.m., $12.
The Cosmo Bar & Lounge: 440 Broadway, San Francisco. “Conga Tuesdays,” 8 p.m., $7-$10.
F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Underground Nomads,” w/ rotating resident DJs Amar, Sep, and Dulce Vita, plus guests, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 9:30 p.m.).
REGGAE
Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. “Bless Up,” w/ Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi, 10 p.m.
BLUES
Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Ron Thompson & The Resistors, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $15.
Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Dr. Mojo, 9:30 p.m., free.
The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Powell Street Blues Band, 9:30 p.m.
FUNK
Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Boogaloo Tuesday,” w/ Oscar Myers & Steppin’, 9:30 p.m., free.
SOUL
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Lost & Found,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and guests, 9:30 p.m., free.

Charges dropped in police-resident brawl at Valencia Gardens

Sasha Cuttler
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285

After spending the weekend and Monday in jail, D’Paris “DJ” Williams’s was released this morning (Tue/19) at 2am. Williams was initially charged with felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon in a widely publicized brawl between police and residents of Valencia Gardens on Friday, but the case was discharged pending further investigation, according to the District Attorney’s office.

It was Friday afternoon, and 20-year-old Williams was having a very good day. As his cousin Dave (last name withheld due to his fear of retaliation) tells it , Williams had just finished applying for a job at Goodwill, and spent the afternoon enjoying the Batkid festivities along with thousands of his fellow San Franciscans. On his way to visit his cousin in the Valencia Gardens housing complex in the Mission, plainclothes officers spotted Williams riding his bicycle on the sidewalk.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

According to the SFPD, the plainclothes officers identified themselves as police, displayed their badges, and when Williams “failed to comply” with their orders to stop, they caught up to him and attempted to detain him. As they struggled to put Williams on the ground, nearby neighbors came out to defend him.

“He became combative, resisted arrest, and multiple subjects came out of that residence and formed a hostile crowd around the officers,” Gordon Shyy, a spokesperson for SFPD, told the Guardian.

In layperson’s terms, a brawl broke out.

Someone allegedly threw a cane that nearly hit an officer. An officer let loose haymaker punches towards a backpedaling neighbor, as a crowd shouted them down. By the end, Williams and three of his cousins’ neighbors were bloodied and bruised as they were taken into custody.  

Williams was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon, which Shyy said was for biting an officer. Shyy maintains that the officers pulled him aside for a traffic infraction of riding a bicycle on a sidewalk, and the officers decided to detain Williams because he ignored their calls to stop and continued toward the residence.

But just why they decided to pull Williams over is questionable.

The officers were undercover, plainclothes narcotics and gun seizure agents called the “Violence Reduction Team,” Shyy said. Why such specialized officers would leave their vehicle only to make a traffic citation is still unclear, and the SFPD declined to answer that question.

“What were these guys doing stopping DJ for a traffic violation?” Jensen said, incredulous, to the Guardian.

When asked how the officers justified their use of force, Shyy read directly from the police report: “Williams continued to resist by pushing his upper body against the sidewalk and tried to get to his feet. Williams was unhandcuffed and unsearched at this point. From my knowledge and experience I know this is a high crime area and people in this area often carry weapons. I believed if Williams were able to free himself from us, he may attempt to access a weapon.”

Not long after, Williams’ friend Travis Jensen, a local photographer who was teaching Williams the trade, took to Instagram to sound the horn, describing it as police misconduct.

“This isn’t the DJ I know,” Jensen said of the SFPD’s characterization of how Williams reacted. None of the men involved have criminal records, as far as Jensen knows, and were just concerned about their friend.

Video of the incident widely circulated around the internet, riding the wave of Batkid publicity. All were taken to SF General Hospital, according to the SFPD.

The cops, having no other information except that Williams was riding his bike on the sidewalk, were afraid Williams would have a weapon. In the end, all he had on him was a Capri Sun and a cupcake.

Now that the case is discharged, does Williams have to wait in fear? Not likely, Public Defender Jeff Adachi told the Guardian.

“The reason you discharge cases is you can’t prove them,” Adachi said. Though this shouldn’t be taken as sacrosanct, he clarified, it’s likely Williams can leave the incident behind him. “If I was advising him I would say the case was discharged, and they’re not going to file. Generally speaking if they could, they would file it now.”

A protest is planned for tonight at 5pm in front of SFPD’s Mission station, which Williams’ cousin Dave said was a “peaceful protest. I’ll make sure of that.”

On the Cheap: November 20 – 26, 2013

Michael Redmond
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0

Listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.

WEDNESDAY 20

“The Diversity of Habitable Zones and Their Planets” Randall Museum, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.randallmuseum.org. 7:30pm, free. San Francisco State astrophysicist Dr. Stephen R. Kane discusses, among other things, advancements in knowledge about “planets in highly eccentric orbits” and “super-Earths.” Geared for adults but all ages are welcome.

“Lyrics and Dirges” Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-1320. 7:30pm, free. Reading with a mix of prominent, emerging, and beginning writers, including Charles Kruger, Monica Wesolowska, Airial Clark, and others.

Michael McClure City Lights, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. The legendary Beat author reads from his recently reissued Ghost Tantras.

THURSDAY 21

Bay Street Tree Lighting Bay Street Emeryville, 5616 Bay, Emeryville; www.baystreetemeryville.com. 6-8pm, free. The shopping center ushers in the winter-holiday season with the lighting of its 34-foot tree, plus a light and sound show, photos with Santa, hot chocolate, and more.

Holiday Craft Fair Simple Family Health, One Rio Vista, Oakl; www.simplefamilyhealth.com. 6-9pm, free. Nine different craft artists — fleece hats, cute polka-dot items, fascinators and headbands, and more! — share their wares.

Paul Koudounaris Bone Room Presents, 1573 Solano, Berk; www.boneroompresents.com. 7pm, free. The author discusses and signs copies of his macabre, beautifully-photographed books The Empire of Death and Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs.

Karen Luk Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF; thirdthursdaysf.wordpress.com. 5-8pm, free. The author and illustrator discusses her new release, Steampunk ABCs, at an appropriately steampunk-y event (hint: costumes encouraged!)

“Survival Not Extinction: A Fundraiser for Tribal Rights” Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, 2323 Mission, SF; (415) 503-1254. 6pm, free. A gallery, short film, raffle, photo booth, and other activities highlight this happy-hour fundraiser for Survival International, an international rights organization working to assist the Awá tribe of Brazil. The bar will donate 10 percent of its proceeds from the evening, so show up thirsty.

FRIDAY 22

“Pancakes and Booze Art Show” Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF; www.pancakesandbooze.com. 8pm, $5. Through Sat/23. Over 75 underground and emerging artists display their works — plus a performance by Xpander Xperience, a photo booth, body painting, and an all-you-can-eat pancake bar.

“Rude, Glued, and Screwed” Red Door Studios, 50-A Bannam Place, SF; www.collagemuseumsf.com. 7-10pm, free. Opening exhibition celebrating the launch of the Collage Museum of San Francisco, curated by Winston Smith.

SATURDAY 23

“Art and Ideas Day Festival” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Noon-9pm, free. In conjunction with its current “Dissident Futures” exhibit, YBCA hosts a festival aiming to inspire explorations of “possible futures,” with workshops, lectures, performances, interactive media and more presented by robotic experts, food activist, designers, environmentalists, and other experts.

“Magic Makers: The Bay Area’s Queer Art and Craft Fair” Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th Ave, Oakl; themagicmakers.wordpress.com. 1-8pm, free. A marketplace and showplace for Bay Area queer artists. Hey, the gift-giving season is approaching — and what better presents than jewelry, prints, body-care products, candles, and other items created by local makers?

“Operation: Fork 4!” Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl; (510) 444-6174. 6pm-midnight, five cans of food or $10. Cobra 1st Legion hosts this costume party-dance party-food drive (with help from the Bay Area Ghostbusters). The Alameda County Community Food Bank benefits from donations, and Disastroid, Victoria and the Vaudevillians, MHA, and Maritime Wilderness provide the tunes. Costumes are encouraged.

“Ukranian Holodomer: Genocidal Famine of 1932-33 (80th Anniversary)” Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF; (650) 281-6927. 2pm, free. Speakers, including survivors and witness accounts; music; and a documentary screening highlight this historical commemoration of the Ukraine’s tragic famine.

SUNDAY 24

“Patchwork Indie Art and Craft Festival” Jack London Market Building, 55 Harrison, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. 11am-5pm. Over 140 local artists gather to sell handmade goods, including art, housewares, paper crafts, and clothing. Plus: food trucks, free DIY craft stations, a DIY gift-wrap booth, and more.

“Thangs Taken: Rethinking Thanksgiving” La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; www.lapena.org. 7pm, $10-25 sliding scale. Artists and activists come together to explore Thanksgiving’s complex history through music, dance, spoken word, and other avenues. Produced by the Free Land Project and curated and hosted by Ariel Luckey. *

 

This Week’s Picks: November 20 – 26, 2013

Michael Redmond
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Gossip! Guns! Girl power!

THURSDAY 11/21

 

Shipwreck: The Hunger Games Edition

Erotic fanfiction writing gets competitive at Booksmith’s monthly literary event, Shipwreck! Six writers are given a popular literary work to destroy in whichever filthy ways their hearts desire, and the audience votes for its favorite. This month’s sacrificial prose is none other than Suzanne Collins’ post-apocalyptic, YA novel The Hunger Games. Pregame for that midnight screening of Catching Fire with hilarious, smutty fiction and an open bar. All works will be read by Shakespearean Thespian in Residence, Sir Steven Westdahl, to ensure that voting is done fairly. The winning writer gets to pick the next ship to wreck and will defend his or her title. Will Katniss find time to choose between Peeta and Gale while she’s, you know, fighting a war? Will Peeta and Gale choose each other? Anything is possible! (Kirstie Haruta)

7pm, $10

Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

www.booksmith.com

THURSDAY 11/21

 

BiteLife

Thursdays provide a portal to unpredictable adventures for those who wander into the weekly NightLife series at Cal Academy. This week’s 21+ event, BiteLife, allows attendees to snack and sip while learning what the hell is happening while they snack and sip (internally). Get a backbone and learn about your guts from Gladstone Institute’s associate investigator Dr. Katie Pollard. Guests will also be able view their own microbes with Academy researcher James Angus Chandler and dance their butts off to music by ’80s-spinning soul-funk DJs, Sweater Funk, in the same night. Local, bite-sized, sustainable food from Earl’s Organic Produce, Whole Foods, and 4505 Meats will be available for the gourmands in the crowd. (Hillary Smith)

6pm, $12

California Academy of the Sciences

55 Music Concourse Dr., SF

(415) 379-8000

calacademy.org/events/nightlife

THURSDAY 11/21

 

“Behind the Scenes: Randy Thom on Sound Design”

Music is the ultimate mood-setter, not only in our iPod, laptop, and stereo-spotted lives, but in the lives we escape to on the big screen. Academy Award-winning sound designer Randy Thom, who’s worked on films ranging from Cast Away (2000) and The Incredibles (2004), discusses his use of sonic design to cut through the endless possibilities of noise, in order to set the stage, manipulate a mood, and craft a unique, cinematic story. He’ll take examples from Wild at Heart (1990) starring Nicolas Cage, where an overtly sensual sound design, along with Angelo Badalamenti’s entrancing score, transform the realism of a Southern fugitive romance into a lyric, tender escape. Stick around after the discussion to enjoy the film! (Kaylen Baker)

7pm, $9.50

Pacific Film Archive Theater

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-1412

bampfa.berkeley.edu

THURSDAY 11/21

 

Marijuana Deathsquads

Indie “super group” GAYNGS, dedicated to delivering a tongue-through-cheek tribute to ’80s easy-listening R&B and white-suited soul, represented “The Gaudy Side of Town.” This other project from Poliça’s Ryan Olson must reside in the darker part of, well, Minneapolis. Its latest LP, Oh My Sexy Lord, sounds like something that crawled out screaming from the same sort of despairing (yet somehow cozy) pit Crystal Castles call home. A cavern crowded by an excessive amount of drums and haphazard wires supporting any number of laptops, controllers, and a Nintendo. (Plus a couch for guests like Justin Vernon or Har Mar Superstar to crash.) (Ryan Prendiville)

With Poliça

8pm, $25

Fillmore

1850 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

FRIDAY 11/22

 

“Let Us Compare Chronologies”

Even if you are not doing aerial work — for which Joe Goode Annex’s two-story ceilings are ideally suited — the studio’s spaciousness makes it a welcome option compared to other local performance venues, which can too often hem the dancers in. Now with risers in place, even the sightlines have improved. Katharine Hawthorne, a fiercely intelligent thinker, debuted as choreographer at the Annex last February. She is now returning in a double bill with dancer-choreographer James Graham, still best known locally as a Gaga teacher. Calling their joint endeavor “Let Us Compare Chronologies,” since both works examine the concept of time, Graham’s quartet Guilty Survivor takes a look at what the 1980s represented in a gay man’s life; Hawthorne’s Timepiece delves into the connection of time to order and disorder. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/23, 8pm, $15–$30

Joe Goode Annex

401 Alabama St., SF

eventbrite.com/event/9028407209

FRIDAY 11/22

 

“3-Minute Reads”

Though “the Writer” almost always calls to mind a solitary figure — J. D. Salinger wrapped in a blanket by his Cornish hearth, Jane Austen bent and scribbling over a desk — most writers agree that having a community of peers creates unparalleled motivation and feedback. The Grotto creates such a space, while offering classes to new writers on topics like the short story and the memoir. Come cheer on more than 50 of these fledglings as they each read fresh, cheeky three-minute snippets from a variety of works-in-progress. (Baker)

6pm, free

Book Passage

1 Ferry Building, SF

(415) 835-1020

www.bookpassage.com

FRIDAY 11/22

 

“All Good Things Must Come to An End”

We hear it for every lost keepsake, graduation, and heartbreak. Usually, the words fall short of comforting and land somewhere closer to stale. But SOMArts is breathing new life into the phrase with “All Good Things…,” an ephemeral art exhibition featuring such pieces as a caramelized sugar installation, a sand mandala, and a massive camera obscura throughout the gallery that choreographs the sun’s changing light. The opening reception will glorify transience with edible art, chess with melting pieces, and a performance piece in which the audience shatters dishes. The expression “once in a lifetime” has never been truer; the only record of the exhibit will be audience impressions dictated to cassette recorders. (Janina Glasov)

Through Dec. 21

6-9pm, free

SOMArts Cultural Center

934 Brannan, SF

(415) 863-1414

somarts.org/allgoodthings

SATURDAY 11/23

 

9 to 5

Pour yourself a cup of ambition and head to the Castro for Peaches Christ’s first tribute to 9 to 5, the 1980 comedy about three office mates (Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda) battling their sexist pig of a boss (Dabney Coleman). The movie has it all (gossip! guns! girl power!), so the stage show that accompanies the screening, Work!, should be one to remember, especially with Pandora Boxx (of RuPaul’s Drag Race), Heklina, and Peaches filling the leads — three among few performers with hair bigger than Parton’s. (Cheryl Eddy)

8pm, $25-55

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

SATURDAY 11/23

 

Magic Makers Queer Art & Crafts Fair

Love arts and crafts? Tired of running up against heteronormativity and cultural appropriation in art spaces and craft fairs? Then join Magic Makers for a stunning array of arts and crafts in a safe, queer-friendly space. From the zines of womyn, trans*, genderqueer, API collective Moonroot, to the herbal remedies of Shooting Star Botanicals, to the dazzling accessories of burlesque beauty the Lady Miss Vagina Jenkins, Magic Makers will feature some of the Bay’s craftiest queer artists. This fair is all about storytellers, healers, and dreamers, so come on out and support these friendly, socially aware creators, and get inspired to create something of your own. (Haruta)

1pm, free

Temescal Art Center

511 48th St, Oakl.

www.themagicmakers.wordpress.com

SATURDAY 11/23

 

The Entrance Band

If the sometimes sing-song lyrics of this recent Mazzy Star opener feel superfluous (the latest maudlin goth single “Spider” off new album Face the Sun or earlier jam “Still Be There” being notable exceptions) it’s to the credit of the instrumentals. Singer Guy Blakeslee’s guitar, hung upside-down and strung in a manner that perhaps only he understands, singularly emits distinctive, appropriately captivating sounds. When given space to just play, as is the case on the latter half of “Fine Flow,” Blakeslee exhibits exactly that, speeding off towards psych horizons and looping back on himself effortlessly. With drummer Derek James and bassist Paz Lenchantin fitting so comfortably in that groove with him, words often can’t help but break the spell. (Prendiville)

With Raw Geronimo

9pm, $12-15

Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com

MONDAY 11/25

 

PAWS

In its purest form, pop music is the sound of growing up. It doesn’t require a theory for what matters; if it feels significant, it must be. On Cokefloat!, the debut from Glasgow’s PAWS, the lessons come quickly but at cost. Opening with “Catherine 1956,” Philip Taylor regards the loss of his mother and her lasting words, “Toughen up because/Life goes on/You can’t live your life in fear.” If the ferocious fun trio fearlessly cribs its riffs from decades old alternative rock — Dinosaur Jr., the Breeders, Violent Femmes — at least it does that old guard justice. I’d like to say it sounds dated, but I must not have outgrown this yet. Does anyone? (Prendiville)

With Surf Club, Tiaras

8pm, $10

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

TUESDAY 11/26

 

The Moth: “Temptation”

Temptation is otherwise known (at least according to the dictionary) as “the action of tempting or fact of being tempted, especially to evil; enticement, allurement, attraction.” While the desire to do and obtain things is universally shared, this definition can’t begin to explain why humans find evil so attractive, nor why our vices come to us in such personal, wrapped-and-beribboned shapes and sizes. Audience members at this round of the Moth StorySLAM should come with a their own tale of temptation in mind, because names will be pulled from a bag throughout the night, giving 10 people the chance to tell wicked, funny, failed, or won stories of allure for five minutes onstage. Each storyteller gets a score, and the winner gets a chance to perform in the GrandSLAM. (Baker)

6pm, $8

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 779-6757

moth.org/events

 

Rep Clock: November 20 – 26, 2013

Michael Redmond
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Schedules are for Wed/20-Tue/26 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ATA GALLERY 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $4-10. “Periwinkle Cinema: Smoke and Ruin,” short films, Wed, 8. “Double Feature,” two short films by Lawrence Rickford, Thu, 8. “GAZE #6: Luminous Impulse,” all-animation show, Fri, 8. “Other Cinema,” works about the “(no-zones) of the American West” by Jeanne Finley, Katherin McInnis, and others, Sat, 8:30.

BALBOA THEATRE 3630 Balboa, SF; cinemasf.com/balboa. $10. “Popcorn Palace:” The Iron Giant (Bird, 1999), Sat, 10am. Matinee for kids.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS’ HALL 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.bfuu.org. $5-10 suggested donation. JFK: The Case for Conspiracy (Groden, 2003), Thu, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-12. Contempt (Godard, 1963), Wed, 4:45, 7, 9:15. •Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955), Thu, 7, and Rumble Fish (Coppola, 1983), Thu, 9:05. “Happy 100th Birthday to Benjamin Britten,” Fri, 7:30. This event ($20) presented by the Asawa SOTA Instrumental Music Department; more info at sfsota.org/britten. “Peaches Christ Productions presents:” 9 to 5 (Higgins, 1980), with stage show premiere of Work!, starring Pandora Boxx, Heklina, and Peaches Christ, Sat, 8. More info for this event ($25-55) at www.peacheschrist.com. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939), presented in 3D, Sun, 1, 3:30, 5:45, 8.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. The Armstrong Lie (Gibney, 2013), call for dates and times. Blue is the Warmest Color (Kechiche, 2013), call for dates and times. Running from Crazy (Kopple, 2013), call for dates and times. Persistence of Vision (Schreck, 2012), Thu, 7. The Singularity (Wolens, 2013), Sun, 7. Filmmaker Doug Wolens in person.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $10. “Midnight Movies:” Oldboy (Park, 2003), Fri-Sat, midnight.

COPPOLA THEATER Fine Arts Building, SF State University, 1600 Holloway, SF; creativestate.sfsu.edu. Free. “Hungarian Film Festival,” documentary and narrative films, Fri, 4-10; Sat, 9am-10pm; Sun, 5-10.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Dark Star: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck:” Forty Guns (Fuller, 1957), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” Your Day Is My Night (Sachs, 2013), Wed, 7. “Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema with Randy Thom, Sound Designer:” Wild at Heart (Lynch, 1990), Thu, 7; Colors (Hopper, 1988), Sat, 6; The Incredibles (Bird, 2004), Sun, 3. “Fassbinder’s Favorites:” Vivre sa vie (Godard, 1962), Fri, 7. “Afterimage: Agnès Varda on Filmmaking:” Cléo From 5 to 7 (1961), Fri, 8:45. “Love Is Colder Than Death: The Cinema of Rainer Werner Fassbinder:” Lola (1981), Sat, 8:45; Veronika Voss (1982), Sun, 6.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. American Promise (Brewster and Stephenson, 2013), Wed-Thu, 6:15, 9. The Counselor (Scott, 2013), Wed, 7, 9:15. City College of San Francisco’s Festival of the Moving Image, two different showcases of student films, Thu, 7, 8:45. “SF Film Society’s Cinema By the Bay Festival:” Holy Ghost People (Altieri, 2013), Fri, 7 and 9:30; The Genius of Marian (Fitch, 2013), Sat, noon; Redemption Trail (Sjogren, 2013), Sat, 2:15; American Vagabond (Helke, 2013), Sat, 4:30; Along the Roadside (Lisinac, 2013), Sat, 6:45; “Street Smarts: YAK Films’ Dance Then and Now,” Sat, 9:30; “The SF State of Cinema: Shorts from SFSU Alumni,” Sun, noon; The Other Side of the Mountain (Jang, 2012), Sun, 2:15; “Essential SF,” honoring the Bay Area film community, Sun, 5; The Illness and the Odyssey (Minott, 2013), Sun, 7; Dear Sidewalk (Oelman, 2013), Sun, 9:15.

SWEDISH AMERICAN HALL 2174 Market, SF; www.cafedunord.com. $30-60. “The Invisible Lighthouse,” live music and film with Thomas Dolby, Thu, 8.

TANNERY 708 Gilman, Berk; berkeleyundergroundfilms.blogspot.com. Donations accepted. “Berkeley Underground Film Society:” Holy Ghost People (Adair, 1967), Sun, 7:30.

VICTORIA 2961 16th, SF; www.savethewaves.org. $5-50. “Save the Waves Film Festival,” docs about ocean conservation and surfing, plus live music and speakers, Fri, 6.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “Films by Fassbinder:” Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970), Thu, 7:30. *

 

Film Listings: November 20 – 26, 2013

Michael Redmond
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, Sam Stander, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Broken Circle Breakdown This Belgian movie by director Felix Van Groeningen arrives bearing major awards (from the Berlin and Tribeca festivals) and promising to nab plenty more of them. Why, you ask? I haven’t the faintest idea. Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) is leader of a bluegrass group; Elise (Veerle Baetens) is a tattoo artist until she meets him, they get together, and it’s discovered that when she opens her mouth Alison Krauss falls out. They have a child, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), who develops cancer at age six or so, and whose prospects are grim. So far, so ordinary — Once (2007) meets Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), a tearjerker in which people sing high lonesome American roots music (in English, too) well enough, but not so well that you ever stop wondering “Why are these Belgians doing this?” The expected tragedy hits halfway through, and that’s when the movie really gets into trouble. Its protagonists fall apart, understandably, but in irksome ways — mostly picking on each other — with particularly annoying sequences occurring in both past and present tense. It’s hard to tell which one is worse, the arch flashback wedding scene, her deciding to rename herself “Alabama,” his endless onstage outburst about Yahweh, the climactic psychedelic flashback crisis montage, or the wholly gratuitous final … well, never mind. This was originally a stage play, and in the usual way that seeing musicians act and actors play instruments live is exciting, it probably worked well in that medium. But on film it seems like a contrived pileup of ill-matched ideas and plot devices. Don’t take my word for it, though: From Seattle to Osaka, apparently there’s been nary a dry eye in the house. So knock yourself out. (1:50) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Delivery Man Twenty years ago David Wozniak (Vince Vaughn) “put love in a cup” 600-plus times to finance a family trip to Italy. His mother was sick, his father couldn’t afford it, and with time running out, David embarked on a harebrained scheme to make (a lot of) “it” happen. The sperm bank that paid him $23K for his “seed” overused it, and 18 years later he has 533 kids, 143 of which are on a hunt to find their biological father, “Starbuck.” (This also the name of the 2011 Canadian comedy on which The Delivery Man is based.) With a premise this quirky you’ll have a hard time finding something to hate, even if this is technically a film about runaway jizz. This heartwarming Thanksgiving release isn’t really appropriate for youngsters (unless you’re been trying to find a entrée to explain sperm banks) but the way Delivery Man deals with the seemingly limitless generosity contained in each of us is both touching and inspiring. Maybe David’s contribution to “Starbuck’s Kids” doesn’t obligate him to reveal his identity, but he’s desperately attached, and goes embarrassingly far outside his comfort zone to interact. The kids’ emotional stake in this is murky, but the way their search for identity finds a voice in tune with the current tech-confident yet socially-confused younger generation could make Delivery Man relevant to more generations than X or Y. (1:45) Four Star, Presidio. (Vizcarrondo)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Jennifer “Your BFF Who Happens to Have An Oscar” Lawrence returns as fierce fighter Katniss in this blockbuster-to-be. (2:26) Balboa, California, Marina, Presidio, Shattuck.

Nebraska See “Born to Lose.” (1:55) Embarcadero.

Persistence of Vision The Holy Grail of cartoon features is The Thief and the Cobbler, which can never really be “found” — after nearly 30 years of work the unfinished film was taken from its creators’ hands and released in crudely patched together form. (You can find online Garrett Gilchrist’s Recobbled Cut, a fan edit utilizing storyboards and other materials that give a much better idea of its potential than these bastardized versions.) Would it have been the greatest full-length animation ever, as mastermind Richard Williams intended? Maybe: The sequences he did manage to finish are extraordinary, with dazzling background designs and amazing sight gags. But this Arabian Nights-inspired comedy adventure was perhaps always doomed by his ambition, perfectionism, and inability to find a grounding narrative spine. The film was ultimately torpedoed by financing woes (a completion bond company seized it when Williams failed to deliver a finished film by deadline), but all the money in the world might simply have allowed its writer-director to never stop tinkering with it. A Canadian who moved to London in the mid 1950s, he started his own animation studio there, achieving considerable success via shorts, TV specials, umpteen commercials, movie credits sequences (notably for the Pink Panther films), and as the Oscar-winning animation director on 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. All the while (as of 1964) he was working on Thief, driving his talented staff to exhaustion, but also exhilarating them with its tortuously frame by-frame-produced quality. It all dragged on so long that several collaborators and voice actors (including Vincent Price) died en route; so many animators passed through that when Disney’s Aladdin came out in 1992, the current team was horrified yet not entirely surprised to see that it had clearly ripped off several design concepts from their own still-unfinished film. Kevin Schreck’s documentary about this fascinating saga is missing (archival interviews aside) one voice — Williams’ own, since understandably the outcome was so embittering he now refuses to discuss it. Schreck will be present (via Skype) to answer questions after this first Northern California screening at Rafael Film Center. (1:23) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

ONGOING

About Time Richard Curtis, the man behind 2003’s Love Actually, must be enjoying his days in England, rolling in large piles of money. Coinciding with the 10-year anniversary of that twee cinematic love fest comes Curtis’ latest ode to joy, About Time. The film begins in Cornwall at an idyllic stone beach house, as Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) describes his family members (Bill Nighy is dad; Richard Cordery is the crazy uncle) and their pleasures (rituals (tea on the beach, ping pong). Despite beachside bliss, Tim is lovelorn and ready to begin a career as a barrister (which feels as out of the blue as the coming first act break). Oh! And as it happens, the men in Tim’s family can travel back in time. There are no clear rules, though births and deaths are like no-trespass signs on the imaginary timeline. When he meets Mary (Rachel McAdams), he falls in love, but if he paves over his own evening by bouncing back and spending that night elsewhere, he loses the path he’s worn into the map and has to fix it. Again and again. Despite potential repetition, About Time moves smoothly, sweetly, slowly along, giving its audience time enough to feel for the characters, and then feel for the characters again, and then keep crying just because the ball’s already in motion. It’s the most nest-like catharsis any British film ever built. (2:03) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

All Is Lost As other reviewers have pointed out, All Is Lost‘s nearly dialogue-free script (OK, there is one really, really well-placed “Fuuuuuck!”) is about as far from J.C. Chandor’s Oscar-nominated script for 2011’s Margin Call as possible. Props to the filmmaker, then, for crafting as much pulse-pounding magic out of austerity as he did with that multi-character gabfest. Here, Robert Redford plays “Our Man,” a solo sailor whose race to survive begins along with the film, as his boat collides with a hunk of Indian Ocean detritus. Before long, he’s completely adrift, yet determined to outwit the forces of nature that seem intent on bringing him down. The 77-year-old Redford turns in a surprisingly physical performance that’s sure to be remembered as a late-career highlight. (1:46) Albany, Opera Plaza, SF Center. (Eddy)

American Promise This remarkable look at race, education, parenting, and coming-of-age in contemporary America is the result of 13 years spent following African American youths Seun and Idris (the latter the son of filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson). At the beginning, the Brooklyn pals are both starting at the exclusive Dalton School, where most of their classmates are rich white kids. This translates into culture-clash experiences both comical (a 13-year-old Idris estimates he’s been to 20 bar mitzvahs) and distressing, as both boys struggle socially and academically for reasons that seem to have a lot to do with their minority status at the school. Culled from hundreds of hours of footage — a mix of interviews and cinéma vérité — Brewster and Stephenson’s film captures honest moments both mundane and monumental, sometimes simultaneously, as when Seun’s mother, driving the kids to school, discusses her battle with cancer as his younger siblings trill a Journey song in the back seat. (And even this seemingly light-hearted aside takes on heft later in the film.) Extra props to Brewster and Stephenson, who clearly made a conscious choice not to edit out any of their own foibles — for the most part, they’re caring, involved parents, but be warned: strident homework nagging is a recurrent theme. (2:20) Roxie. (Eddy)

The Armstrong Lie “This is a story about power, not doping,” a talking head points out in Alex Gibney’s latest doc, The Armstrong Lie. Gibney, an Oscar winner for 2007’s Taxi to the Dark Side, set out to make something more along the lines of The Armstrong Return, shadowing Lance Armstrong as he prepped for his 2009 Tour de France comeback. He envisioned crafting a “feel-good movie,” especially when Armstrong notched an impressive third-place finish — a feat intended to silence those performance-enhancing drug rumors once and for all. In the end, it only amplified the skepticism that loomed over his accomplishments. And as the evidence against Armstrong mounted, Gibney scrapped his original concept and went in a decidedly darker direction. Armstrong’s critics, interviewed for Lie, admit they spotted the acclaimed documentarian among Armstrong’s Tour de France entourage and feared he was “buying into the bullshit.” Among these voices are Armstrong’s former US Postal Service teammate, Frankie Andreu, and his wife, Betsy, who’d been excoriated by their former good friend and his supporters for speaking out against him. A feel-good movie, this is not. And ultimately, Gibney’s film probes deeper than Armstrong’s flaws; it’s careful to point out that drug use is widespread among professional cyclists, who are surrounded by an insular, high-stakes culture that encourages it. The sports world lives and dies by the next world record or superhuman achievement. Is it any wonder that elite athletes seek out that extra competitive edge? And that Armstrong, in fully-inflated ego mode, would believe he had the power to rearrange reality to keep his victories intact? (2:03) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Best Man Holiday (2:00) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Book Thief One of those novels that seems to have been categorized as “young adult” more for reasons of marketing than anything else, Markus Zusak’s international best seller gets an effective screen adaptation from director Brian Percival and scenarist Michael Petroni. Liesl (Sophie Nelisse) is an illiterate orphan — for all practical purposes, that is, given the likely fate of her left-leaning parents in a just-pre-World War II Nazi Germany — deposited by authorities on the doorstep of the middle-aged, childless Hubermanns in 1938. Rosa (Emily Watson) is a ceaseless nag and worrywart, even if her bark is worse than her bite; kindly housepainter Hans (Geoffrey Rush), who’s lost work by refusing to join “the Party,” makes a game of teacher Liesl how to read. Her subsequent fascination with books attracts the notice of the local Burgermeister’s wife (Barbara Auer), who under the nose of her stern husband lets the girl peruse tomes from her manse’s extensive library. But that secret is trivial compared to the Hubermanns’ hiding of Max Vandenburg (Ben Schnetzer), son of Jewish comrade who’d saved Hans’ life in the prior world war. When war breaks out anew, this harboring of a fugitive becomes even more dangerous, something Liesl can’t share even with her best friend Rudy (Nico Liersch). While some of the book’s subplots and secondary characters are sacrificed for the sake of expediency, the filmmakers have crafted a potent, intelligent drama whose judicious understatement extends to the subtlest (and first non-Spielberg) score John Williams has written in years. Rush, Watson, and newcomer Schnetzer are particularly good in the well-chosen cast. (2:11) Metreon, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Blue is the Warmest Color The stars (Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux) say the director was brutal. The director says he wishes the film had never been released (but he might make a sequel). The graphic novelist is uncomfortable with the explicit 10-minute sex scene. And most of the state of Idaho will have to wait to see the film on Netflix. The noise of recrimination, the lesser murmur of backpedaling, and a difficult-to-argue NC-17 rating could make it harder, as French director Abdellatif Kechiche has predicted, to find a calm, neutral zone in which to watch Blue is the Warmest Color, his Palme d’Or–winning adaptation (with co-writer Ghalya Lacroix) of Julie Maroh’s 2010 graphic novel Le Blue Est une Couleur Chaude. But once you’ve committed to the three-hour runtime, it’s not too difficult to tune out all the extra noise and focus on a film that trains its mesmerized gaze on a young woman’s transforming experience of first love. (2:59) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Blue Jasmine The good news about Blue Jasmine isn’t that it’s set in San Francisco, but that it’s Woody Allen’s best movie in years. Although some familiar characteristics are duly present, it’s not quite like anything he’s done before, and carries its essentially dramatic weight more effectively than he’s managed in at least a couple decades. Not long ago Jasmine (a fearless Cate Blanchett) was the quintessential Manhattan hostess, but that glittering bubble has burst — exactly how revealed in flashbacks that spring surprises up to the script’s end. She crawls to the West Coast to “start over” in the sole place available where she won’t be mortified by the pity of erstwhile society friends. That would be the SF apartment of Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a fellow adoptive sister who was always looked down on by comparison to pretty, clever Jasmine. Theirs is an uneasy alliance — but Ginger’s too big-hearted to say no. It’s somewhat disappointing that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really do much with San Francisco. Really, the film could take place anywhere — although setting it in a non-picture-postcard SF does bolster the film’s unsettled, unpredictable air. Without being an outright villain, Jasmine is one of the least likable characters to carry a major US film since Noah Baumbach’s underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007); the general plot shell, moreover, is strongly redolent of A Streetcar Named Desire. But whatever inspiration Allen took from prior works, Blue Jasmine is still distinctively his own invention. It’s frequently funny in throwaway performance bits, yet disturbing, even devastating in cumulative impact. (1:38) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Vogue. (Harvey)

Captain Phillips In 2009, Captain Richard Phillips was taken hostage by Somali pirates who’d hijacked the Kenya-bound Maersk Alabama. His subsequent rescue by Navy SEALs came after a standoff that ended in the death of three pirates; a fourth, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, surrendered and is serving a hefty term in federal prison. A year later, Phillips penned a book about his ordeal, and Hollywood pounced. Tom Hanks is perfectly cast as Phillips, an everyman who runs a tight ship but displays an admirable ability to improvise under pressure — and, once rescued, finally allows that pressure to diffuse in a scene of memorably raw catharsis. Newcomer Barkhad Abdi, cast from an open call among Minneapolis’ large Somali community, plays Muse; his character development goes deep enough to emphasize that piracy is one of few grim career options for Somali youths. But the real star here is probably director Paul Greengrass, who adds this suspenseful high-seas tale to his slate of intelligent, doc-inspired thrillers (2006’s United 93, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum). Suffice to say fans of the reigning king of fast-paced, handheld-camera action will not be disappointed. (2:14) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Carrie Is the world ready for a candy-covered Carrie? It’s a sad state of affairs when the best thing about a movie, particularly a wholly superfluous remake like this, is its creepy poster. That’s the closest thing this Carrie has to offer next to that retina-scorching, iconic 1976 image of blood-saturated Sissy Spacek that continues to lend inspiration to baby Billiths everywhere. Nonetheless, like a shy violet cowering in the gym showers, this Carrie comes loaded with potential, with Boys Don’t Cry (1999) director Kimberly Peirce at the helm, the casting of Julianne Moore and Chloe Grace Moretz in the critical mother-daughter roles, and the unfortunately topical bullying theme. Peirce makes a half-hearted attempt to update the, um, franchise when the tormented Carrie (a miscast Moretz) is virally videoed by spoiled rival Chris (Portia Doubleday), but the filmmaker’s heart — and guts — aren’t in this pointless exercise. We speed through the buildup — which unconvincingly sets up Carrie’s torments at home, instigated by obviously mentally ill, Christian fundamentalist mom Margaret (Moore), and at school, where the PE teacher (Judy Greer) pep-talks Carrie and Sue Snell (Gabriella White) is mysteriously hellbent on paying penance for her bullying misdeeds — to the far-from-scary denouement. Let’s say mean-spirited reflexive revenge-taking is no real substitute for true horror and shock. Supposedly drawn to Carrie for its female-empowerment message, Peirce nevertheless isn’t cut out to wade into horror’s crimson waters — especially when one compares this weak rendition with Brian De Palma’s double-screen brio and high-camp Freudian passion play. (1:32) Metreon. (Chun)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (1:35) Metreon.

The Counselor The reviews are in, and it’s clear Ridley Scott has made the most polarizing film of the season. Most of The Counselor‘s detractors blame Cormac McCarthy’s screenplay, the acclaimed author’s first that isn’t drawn from a prexisting novel. To date, the best film made from a McCarthy tale is 2007’s No Country for Old Men, and The Counselor trawls in similar border-noir genre trappings in its tale of a sleek, greedy lawyer (Michael Fassbender) who gets in way over his head after a drug deal (entered into with slippery compadres played by Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem) goes wrong. Yes, there are some problems here, with very few unexpected twists in a downbeat story that’s laden with overlong monologues, most of them delivered by random characters that appear, talk, and are never seen again. But some of those speeches are doozies — and haters are overlooking The Counselor‘s sleazy pleasures (many of which are supplied by Cameron Diaz’s fierce, feline femme fatale) and attention to grimy detail. One suspects cult appreciation awaits. (1:57) Metreon, Roxie. (Eddy)

Dallas Buyers Club Dallas Buyers Club is the first all-US feature from Jean-Marc Vallée. He first made a splash in 2005 with C.R.A.Z.Y., which seemed an archetype of the flashy, coming-of-age themed debut feature. Vallée has evolved beyond flashiness, or maybe since C.R.A.Z.Y. he just hasn’t had a subject that seemed to call for it. Which is not to say Dallas is entirely sober — its characters partake from the gamut of altering substances, over-the-counter and otherwise. But this is a movie about AIDS, so the purely recreational good times must eventually crash to an end. Which they do pretty quickly. We first meet Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) in 1986, a Texas good ol’ boy endlessly chasing skirts and partying nonstop. Not feeling quite right, he visits a doctor, who informs him that he is HIV-positive. His response is “I ain’t no faggot, motherfucker” — and increased partying that he barely survives. Afterward, he pulls himself together enough to research his options, and bribes a hospital attendant into raiding its trial supply of AZT for him. But Ron also discovers the hard way what many first-generation AIDS patients did — that AZT is itself toxic. He ends up in a Mexican clinic run by a disgraced American physician (Griffin Dunne) who recommends a regime consisting mostly of vitamins and herbal treatments. Ron realizes a commercial opportunity, and finds a business partner in willowy cross-dresser Rayon (Jared Leto). When the authorities keep cracking down on their trade, savvy Ron takes a cue from gay activists in Manhattan and creates a law evading “buyers club” in which members pay monthly dues rather than paying directly for pharmaceutical goods. It’s a tale that the scenarists (Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack) and director steep in deep Texan atmospherics, and while it takes itself seriously when and where it ought, Dallas Buyers Club is a movie whose frequent, entertaining jauntiness is based in that most American value: get-rich-quick entrepreneurship. (1:58) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Ender’s Game Those entering Ender’s Game in search of homophobic threads or politically unsavory themes will likely be frustrated. After all, Orson Scott Card — once a board member of the National Organization for Marriage, and here serving as a producer intent on preserving the 1985 novel that netted him acclaim — has revisited what was initially a short story multiple times over the years, tweaking it to reflect a new political climate, to ready it for new expedient uses. Who knows — the times are a-changin’ fast enough, with the outcry of LGBT activists and the growing acceptance of gay military members, to hope that a gay character might enter the mix someday. Of course, sexuality of all sorts is kept firmly in check in the Ender‘s world. Earth has been invaded by an insect-like species called the Formics, and the planet unifies to serve up its best and brightest (and, it’s implied, most ruthless) young minds, sharpened on first-person-shooters and tactical games, to the cause of defeating the alien “other.” Andrew “Ender” Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is the knowing hybrid of his sociopath brother Peter (Jimmy Pinchak) and compassionate sister Valentine (Abigail Breslin) — of the trinity, he’s “the One,” as Han Solo, I mean, Harrison Ford, cadet talent-spotter and trainer Colonel Graff, puts it. Ender impresses the leather off the hardened old war horse, though the Colonel’s psychologically more equipped cohort Major Anderson (Viola Davis) suspects there’s more going on within their chosen leader. Director-screenwriter Gavin Hood demonstrates his allegiance to Card’s vision, valorizing the discipline and teamwork instilled by military school with the grim purpose and dead serious pleasure one might take in studying a well-oiled machine, while Ender is sharpened and employed as a stunningly effective tool in a war he never truly conceived of. This game has a bit more in common with the recent Wii-meets-Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Godzillas of Pacific Rim than the winking, acidic satire of Starship Troopers (1997), echoing a drone-driven War on Terror that has a way of detaching even the most evolved fighter from the consequences of his or her actions. The question is how to undo, or rewrite, the damage done. (1:54) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Free Birds (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (1:32) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Kill Your Darlings Relieved to escape his Jersey home, dominated by the miseries of an oft-institutionalized mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and long-suffering father (David Cross), Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) enters Columbia University in 1944 as a freshman already interested in the new and avant-garde. He’s thus immediately enchanted by bad-boy fellow student Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), a veteran of numerous prestigious schools and well on the road to getting kicked out of this one. Charismatic and reckless, Carr has a circle of fellow eccentrics buzzing around him, including dyspeptic William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) and merchant marine wild child Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston). Variably included in or ostracized from this training ground for future Beat luminaries is the older David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), a disgraced former academic who’d known Carr since the latter was 14, and followed him around with pathetic, enamored devotion. It’s this last figure’s apparent murder by Carr that provides the bookending crux of John Krokidas’ impressive first feature, a tragedy whose motivations and means remain disputed. Partly blessed by being about a (comparatively) lesser-known chapter in an overexposed, much-mythologized history, Kill Your Darlings is easily one of the best dramatizations yet of Beat lore, with excellent performances all around. (Yes, Harry Potter actually does pass quite well as a somewhat cuter junior Ginsberg.) It’s sad if somewhat inevitable that the most intriguing figure here — Hall’s hapless, lovelorn stalker-slash-victim — is the one that remains least knowable to both the film and to the ages. (1:40) SF Center. (Harvey)

Last Vegas This buddy film may look like a Bucket List-Hangover hybrid, but it’s got a lot more Spring Breakers in it than you expect — who beats Vegas for most bikinis per capita? Four old friends reunite for a wedding in Vegas, where they drink, gamble, and are confused for legendary men. Morgan Freeman sneaks out of his son’s house to go. Kevin Kline’s wife gave him a hall pass to regain his lost sense of fun. Kline and Freeman trick Robert De Niro into going — he’s got a grudge against Michael Douglas, so why celebrate that jerk’s nuptials to a 30-year-old? The conflicts are mostly safe and insubstantial, but the in-joke here is that all of these acting legends are confused for legends by their accidentally obtained VIP host (Romany Malco). These guys have earned their stature, so what gives? When De Niro flings fists you shudder inside remembering Jake LaMotta. Kline’s velvety comic delivery is just as swaggery as it was during his 80s era collaborations with Lawrence Kasdan. Douglas is “not as charming as he thinks he is,” yet again, and voice-of-God Freeman faces a conflict specific to paternal protective urges. Yes, Last Vegas jokes about the ravages of age and prescribes tenacity for all that ails us, but I want a cast this great celebrated at least as obviously as The Expendables films. Confuse these guys for better? Show me who. (1:44) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Vizcarrondo)

Running From Crazy Can one ever escape one’s toxic genetic legacy, especially when one’s makeup, and even one’s genius, is so entangled with mental illness, the shadow of substance abuse, and a kind of burden of history? Actor, author, healthy-living proponent, and now suicide prevention activist Mariel Hemingway seems cut out to try, as, eh, earnestly as she can, to offer up hope. Part of that involves opening the door to documentarian Barbara Kopple, in this look at the 20th century’s most infamous literary suicide, Mariel’s grandfather Ernest Hemingway, and just one of his familial threads, one full of lives cut deliberately short. For Running From Crazy, Kopple generally keeps the focus on Mariel, who displays all the disarming groundedness and humility of the youngest care-taking, “good” child. Her father, Ernest’s eldest son, Jack, regularly indulged in “wine time” with his ailing wife and, according to Mariel, had a pitch-black side of his own. But we don’t look to closely at him as the filmmaker favors the present, preferring to watch Mariel mountain climb and bicker with her stuntman boyfriend, meet up with her eldest sister Muffet, and ‘fess up about the depression that runs through the Hemingway line to her own daughters. Little is made of Mariel’s own artistic contributions in acting, though Kopple’s work is aided immeasurably by the footage Mariel’s rival middle sister Margaux shot for a documentary she planned to do on Ernest. Once the highest paid model in the world, Margaux leaves the viewer with a vivid impression of her brash, raw, eccentric, and endearingly goofy spirit — she’s courageous in her own way as she sips vino with her parents and older sister and tears up during a Spanish bull fight. Are these just first world problems for scions who never hesitated to trade on their name? Kopple is more interested in the humans behind the gloss of fame, spectacle and sensation — the women left in the wake of a literary patriarch’s monumental brand of masculinity and misogyny. And you feel like you get that here, plainly and honestly, in a way that even Papa might appreciate. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Thor: The Dark World Since any tentacle of Marvel’s Avengers universe now comes equipped with its own money-printing factory, it’s likely we’ll keep seeing sequels and spin-offs for approximately the next 100 years. With its by-the-numbers plot and “Yeah, seen that before” 3D effects, Thor: The Dark World is forced to rely heavily on the charisma of its leads — Chris Hemsworth as the titular hammer-swinger; Tom Hiddleston as his brooding brother Loki — to hold audience interest. Fortunately, these two (along with Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Idris Elba, and the rest of the supporting cast, most of whom return from the first film) appear to be having a blast under the direction of Alan Taylor, a TV veteran whose credits include multiple Game of Thrones eps. Not that any Avengers flick carries much heft, but especially here, jokey asides far outweigh any moments of actual drama (the plot, about an alien race led by Christopher Eccleston in “dark elf” drag intent on capturing an ancient weapon with the power to destroy all the realms, etc. etc., matters very little). Fanboys and -girls, this one’s for you … and only you. (2:00) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

12 Years a Slave Pop culture’s engagement with slavery has always been uneasy. Landmark 1977 miniseries Roots set ratings records, but the prestigious production capped off a decade that had seen some more questionable endeavors, including 1975 exploitation flick Mandingo — often cited by Quentin Tarantino as one of his favorite films; it was a clear influence on his 2012 revenge fantasy Django Unchained, which approached its subject matter in a manner that paid homage to the Westerns it riffed on: with guns blazing. By contrast, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is nuanced and steeped in realism. Though it does contain scenes of violence (deliberately captured in long takes by regular McQueen collaborator Sean Bobbitt, whose cinematography is one of the film’s many stylistic achievements), the film emphasizes the horrors of “the peculiar institution” by repeatedly showing how accepted and ingrained it was. Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, an African American man who was sold into slavery in 1841 and survived to pen a wrenching account of his experiences. He’s portrayed here by the powerful Chiwetel Ejiofor. Other standout performances come courtesy of McQueen favorite Michael Fassbender (as Epps, a plantation owner who exacerbates what’s clearly an unwell mind with copious amounts of booze) and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, as a slave who attracts Epps’ cruel attentions. (2:14) California, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy) *

 

Gray days

Michael Redmond
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3
Gray days

arts@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY New DIY record labels? Minimalist two-person ukulele bands? These are not the signs of fast-paced, modern, glossy hi-tech lifestyles. While San Francisco is at a crossroads, on the verge of an identity crisis splintered throughout many a start-up, at least a few of SF’s musicians (and likely plenty more) have made an artist’s leap farther north to even grayer Portland, Ore.

Magic Fight’s Alex Haager is one of those expatriates. He started a new indie label — Breakup Records — and moved to Portland with his partner, Sierra Frost, another musician, from the bands clintongore and Downer Party. “It’s a great place for music and a great place to live if you make less than 200k a year. And we like the rain.”

They started the label last month with an indeterminate interest in dreamy, brainy pop acts. There are already plans to release records by Frozen Folk, Magic Fight, Jesus Dude Mom, and a few more in the next six months or so. Right now, the roster of acts soon to be rolled out is all from the Bay Area.

“We each have tight relationships with some great independent bands whom we have worked with in different capacities over the years,” says Haager, from his newish home in Portland. “Our goal is to help grow the bands that inspire us — especially musicians with approaches and aesthetics that we find interesting within the realms of what can be considered pop.”

“Frankly, we’re both underwhelmed by garage rock. We plan to release records that offer an alternative to the overly nostalgic, blasted out stuff that has become so prevalent in California in the last 10 to 15 years. We want to showcase what the West Coast sounds like to us.”

One of the label’s first releases will be the debut EP of Kitten Grenade, a deceptively named duo made up of old-timey vocalist-ukulele player Katelyn Sullivan and drummer Ben Manning. Breakup previewed it with a single release a few weeks back, for a song titled “Gray.”

The minimalist pop track is arresting — occupying a space between bright and dark, it’s both melancholy and lightly fluttering over heavier vibes, with much of those emotions pinned to Sullivan’s jazz-inflected vocals. “That was very intentional,” says San Francisco’s Sullivan, who lives in the Mission. “‘Gray’ started out being about my inability to make decisions, and is another play on opposites; it felt like a great song to pick as our first single.”

The video for the track, shot in black and white, similarly plays with light and dark shadows. It features crisp repetitive images cropped in closely around Sullivan’s face and bare shoulders, and dancing orchids and roses twirling around her. Like Georgia O’Keeffe’s storied paintings, the close-ups of the flowers can resemble female sexual organs, in particular the still from the video that was chosen for the cover of the single.

“In a way, the orchid in the image — with its vaginal undertones — could represent purity, which then fades into the muddled gray of the real world in the background. Using it as the cover wasn’t so much planned as it was a happy accident. It’s an image that happened to be in our video that really resonated with me,” Sullivan says.

The full four-track debut EP, Nice Day, on Breakup is coming in January 2014. Sullivan — who calls Philz Coffee, the Phone Booth, El Rio, and Hog and Rocks her favorite local spots — says the album title references her experience with drummer Manning when they were recording during the “beautiful San Francisco summer we had this year.”

So why go with a label full of SF ex-pats? Turns out Sullivan played music with Frost before, in her previous ukulele band, Hate Factory. “[I] have always admired her smarts and knowledge when it comes to music,” says Sullivan of Frost. “Both Alex and Sierra are working musicians, but they’re also excellent at playing a supportive creative role. In terms of building my band, they’ve really helped me realize what’s in my head when on stage, in the studio, and representing myself out in the world, which can be hard and weird. It’s wonderful to be a part of something during its beginning stages.”

Sullivan, whose long-running influences are Fiona Apple and Joli Holland, got her own start doing musical theater on the East Coast. She came to California to study visual arts and later began writing music. She met Frost around then and they formed Hate Factory, another charming act with a defiant name: “Although most people who hear the name Kitten Grenade imagine shredding guitars and screaming metal ballads, it really does fit the theme of our little indie folk band. The name has actually been with me for a long time, and was the name of my thesis project in art school. Kitten Grenade in itself is all about juxtapositions and opposites. I really like names that trick you.” she explains. “I mean, when you hear the name Hate Factory, you don’t think of two cute girls playing ukuleles.”

While Sullivan and Manning await the release of their EP on Breakup, they’ll play a few local shows including opening the BFF.FM launch party for the new local radio station Best Frequencies Forever, with the Happy Hollows next week (Nov. 27, 9pm, $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com.)

“If you haven’t seen Kitten Grenade yet, you definitely should,” says Haager. “She’s basically an angel.”

As for Haager’s concert schedule, he’ll flee the life of Portland comfort momentarily for the Bay Bridged’s annual Bay Brewed festival Dec. 7 at Public Works. Also, he too is looking forward to a new release through Breakup: a split cassette EP with Oakland-based Frozen Folk. And of course, he’s excited about Kitten Grenade’s debut.

“It’s simple and elegant and will encourage you to fall in love.”

 

WORLD MUSIC MAYHEM

Longstanding global music-mashers Dengue Fever (of LA) and New York City’s Balkan Beat Box (originally from Tel Aviv) both arrive in SF on extended tours this week. Led by Cambodian singer-songwriter Chhom Nimol and guitarist Zac Holtzman, Dengue Fever will release its Girl from the North EP Dec. 3 — its first release in more than two years, on its own label, Tuk Tuk Records. It plays the Independent this Thu/21 with locals Seventeen Evergreen (8pm, $18. 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com). BBB is releasing new videos, including one for “Suki Muki,” a single off 2012’s Give (Nat Geo Records), and a remix of “Suki Muki” by Ori Kaplan’s alter ego DJ Shotnez. It plays with Canadian Bhangra-Celtic fusion act (really) Delhi 2 Dublin at the Regency Fri/22 (8:30pm, $27. Regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness, SF. www.theregencyballroom.com).

 

Gobble online

Michael Redmond
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2
Gobble online

culture@sfbg.com

FOOD AND DRINK As Thanksgiving nears, along with the daunting task of writing up the grocery list, more food-savvy family chefs are swapping the commercially manufactured Broad Breasted White for a heritage turkey, which promises better flavor through a higher standard of bird life. Famous local grower Bill Niman of BN Ranch is trying to give his free-range, GMO-free, organic heritage birds a wider audience by offering them for order: starting at $98.98 for an eight-10 pound bird, delivered anywhere in the US, through his website, www.bnranchtotable.com. We caught up with him to ask what all the cluck’s about.

SF Bay Guardian What breeds of heritage turkey do you raise on BN Ranch?

Bill Niman Narragansett, Standard Bronze, and Spanish Blacks.

SFBG What is an average lifespan?

BN From hatching to market, probably 28 weeks.

SFBG How many do you raise for one holiday season?

BN This year we have about 8,000 heritage turkeys.

SFBG What do your turkeys eat?

BN It’s a GMO free ration. We’ve been struggling for about three years now to get something that’s GMO free, and this year we were able to do that 100 percent.

SFBG The other distinguishing factor of heritage turkeys, besides lifespan and feed, is their ability to mate on their own?

BN As extraordinary as that might sound. [Laughs.] And they can fly. And they don’t get sick. And they’re hearty. And they’re interesting, and intelligent. It’s all the things you’d expect from any animal in the barnyard.

SFBG What’s the basic personality of a heritage?

BN Turkeys are really cruel to each other, in the pecking order and whatnot, surprisingly cruel — but they’re really friendly to humans. When they’re young, 6 to 8 weeks old, they fly up and land on your shoulder, they follow you around, and in a sense we become surrogate mothers. You can call, and they follow you. I suspect these turkeys that we raise are so close to being feral, they’re so much like their wild ancestors. They could fly away anytime they want to. But they waddle up to the building, and say, “Kill me and eat me.” That’s probably how turkey became part of Thanksgiving, because they’re ready to be eaten in the fall.

SFBG How do you manage to see the turkeys as both animals and as meat?

BN You mean sending them to slaughter? Well, it is difficult, and it doesn’t get easier with numbers. What’s important is to make sure the animals only have one bad day on the farm. For me and our operations, it’s essential that we are at the slaughterhouse, making sure that it’s done as properly and as humanely as possible. We do that because we respect the animals, but we also know that there’s a very direct correlation between the eating quality of the animals and their temperament at slaughter.

SFBG What about flavor?

BN They rule in taste tests, the heritage turkeys. The entire bird, even though it has a white breast, has the wonderful characteristics of the dark meat.

SFBG Got any favorite Thanksgiving preparation?

BN Yes I do. You cook the turkey till the breast meat is done, take it out, remove the leg and thigh, put them back in covered, and roast them for an additional half an hour, while the breast stays on the carcass on the counter, warm and covered.

 

Born to lose

Michael Redmond
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0
Born to lose

By Dennis Harvey

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Alexander Payne may be unique at this point in that he’s in a position — which, of course, could easily be changed by a flop or two — of being able to make nothing but small, human, and humorous films with major-studio money on his own terms (re: casting and final cut). As he’s said, in a better world this would be the norm rather than a singular achievement. It’s hazardous to make too much of a movie like Nebraska, because it is small — despite the wide Great Plains landscapes shot in a wide screen format — and shouldn’t be entered into with overinflated or otherwise wrong-headed expectations.

Still, a certain gratitude is called for. As usual, most of the year’s better films have been ones (too indie, too foreign) that won’t get the big drumbeat of awards-consideration thumping. And notably this year, most of the ones that will have been American movies made by foreign directors (i.e. Gravity, Dallas Buyers Club, 12 Years a Slave, Prisoners, etc.) Nebraska is, finally, a win by the home team.

It is also the first time Payne and his writing partner Jim Taylor weren’t involved in the script, and the first one since their 1996 Citizen Ruth that isn’t based on someone else’s novel. (Hitherto little-known Bob Nelson’s original screenplay apparently first came to Payne’s notice a decade ago, but got put off in favor of other projects.) It could easily have been a novel, though, as the things it does very well (internal thought, sense of place, character nuance) and the things it doesn’t much bother with (plot, action, dialogue) are more in line with literary fiction than commercial cinema.

Elderly Woody T. Grant (Bruce Dern) keeps being found grimly trudging through snow and whatnot on the outskirts of Billings, Mont., bound on foot (he’s no longer allowed to drive) to Lincoln, Neb., 900 miles away. Brain no doubt fuzzed by age, not to mention decades of drinking and tuning out the Mrs. (June Squibb as Kate, who in a moment of restraint greets his latest forcible return with “You dumb cluck!”), he’s convinced he needs to collect the million dollars waiting for him there. After all, he got a notice he’d won that amount in the mail. Never mind that it was just some Publishers Clearing House-type flier in fact promising nothing while attempting to sell magazine subscriptions. Woody didn’t read the fine print, and won’t be dissuaded. Something bigger than reality — or senility, even — is compelling him to make this trek. Finally, long-suffering younger son David (Will Forte), a stereo salesman whose girlfriend of two years just moved out, agrees to drive him in order to simply put the matter to rest. None of this will be particularly easy or pleasant, even if David is used to dad being problematic (or as Bob Odenkirk as older brother Ross puts it, “[He] never gave a shit about us”). Perhaps selectively deaf, Woody is no conversationalist, and claims that he’s sobered up are quickly dashed when he stumbles into their first-night motel room and bashes his head in the dark, requiring stitches. This fool’s mission acquires a whole extended family-full of other fools when father and son detour to the former’s podunk farming hometown.

There, a slew of Grants — the men all close-mouthed, the women all gabby — prove eager to believe Woody has struck gold, coming up with variably imaginary reasons why they should share in his newfound wealth. Likewise greeting this reunion with eyes full of dollar signs is Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach), a former business partner who by Woody’s reckoning has actually owed him money for 40-odd years.

Nebraska has no moments so funny or dramatic they’d look outstanding in excerpt; low-key as they were, 2009’s Sideways and 2011’s The Descendants had bigger set pieces and narrative stakes. But like those movies, this one just ambles along until you realize you’re completely hooked, all positive emotional responses on full alert. There are minor things to quibble about (mother Kate could be less of a shrew — it’s always a bit bothersome when the only significant female role in a movie evokes the “b” word), but so much that’s so deeply satisfying you hardly want to get out of your seat at the end.

Having apparently considered and bypassed bigger names (like Jack Nicholson, who for my money was too snarky — too Jack Nicholson — for 2002’s About Schmidt), Payne has a perfect cast, from 1970s almost-stars Dern and Keach to pliant-faced comedians playing straight Forte and Odenkirk. Forte (who also does good dramatic work in another upcoming seriocomedy, the Irish Run & Jump) in particular does the kind of ballasting act that attracts little attention to itself but perfectly harmonizes with other actors’ higher notes. We can feel how David has probably always undervalued himself, as well as how his wishing the people around him were kinder just might, eventually, make them so.

It’s a great pleasure just to watch the timeless flat vistas — timeless because these characters stayed behind in towns everybody else has been leaving for decades — of Phedon Papamichael’s photography, which recalls other great black and white rural movies of the color era like Hud (1963) and Paper Moon (1973). Nor should anyone overlook the soundtrack by Mark Orton of SF’s own Tin Hat, whose other members also contributed to an acoustic score that at an unusual moment of high-profile movies dominated by American roots music — neotraditionalist 1960s folk in Inside Llewyn Davis, bluegrass in the Belgian Broken Circle Breakdown — feels at once the most modest, effective, and emotionally authentic derivation of the lot.

 

NEBRASKA opens Fri/22 in Bay Area theaters.

Out of the fog

Michael Redmond
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Out of the fog

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM In movies, maybe more than in life, trouble awaits outsiders who poke into cults that don’t take kindly to outsiders. Sound of My Voice (2011) is a recent example, but The Wicker Man (1973) remains probably the gold standard of “Pardon me, but I’ll be infiltrating your society, passing judgment, and suffering the inevitable consequences” cinema. For every recruitment-happy group (step right up, young ladies, and throw your lot in with 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene), there are plenty more that would just as soon be left alone.

A new entry into this genre, Holy Ghost People, comes courtesy of Mitchell Altieri, half of the directing duo known as the Butcher Brothers (the other “brother,” Phil Flores, co-wrote and co-produced). You may remember the BBs from their 2006 breakout, The Hamiltons — about a family with a bloody secret. It’d make a perfectly nightmarish double-feature with another recent indie horror, Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are. Holy Ghost People, which borrows its title and some archival footage from the 1967 documentary about Pentecostal churchgoers in West Virginia (now in the public domain, it’s viewable on YouTube), aims more for dread than gore, and represents an artistic step forward for the San Francisco-bred pair.

If certain choices don’t entirely work (a bookending voice-over feels unnecessary, given the film’s vivid visuals; the score can feel intrusive at times), Holy Ghost People is bolstered by some blistering performances, chiefly from co-writer Joe Egender as Brother Billy, the boyish leader of a church compound tucked into the Southern wilderness. (The film was shot at a summer camp — a setting not used so creepily since the first few Friday the 13th flicks.) Stumbling not-so-innocently into Billy’s lair are unlikely friends Wayne (Brendan McCarthy) and Charlotte (Emma Greenwell), who pretend to be spiritual wanderers when really they’re searching for Charlotte’s long-lost sister, last seen spiraling into junkie oblivion.

Anyone — but particularly Billy, whose tidy pompadour and welcoming words can’t hide the fact that he’s as sinister as the serpents he handles during sermons — can see that Wayne, a haunted alcoholic, and Charlotte, who’s battling her own demons, aren’t who they claim to be. Still, they’re cautiously accepted by lower-ranking members, including Sister Sheila (Cameron Richardson), a soft-spoken blonde whose beauty is marred by prominent facial scars.

As events get freakier in God’s country (or is it?), Holy Ghost People doesn’t quite offer a grand payoff to all that suspense — though it does establish a new clause to that old cinematic rule about guns: If you see a poisonous snake in the first act, damn certain it’ll bite someone by the end.

Holy Ghost People kicks off the San Francisco Film Society’s fifth annual Cinema By the Bay Festival, which showcases movies made “in or about the Bay Area,” as well as works made by artists with Bay Area connections. This agreeably loose thematic structure allows the Tennessee-shot Holy Ghost People to share marquee space with SF-centric doc American Vagabond, by Finnish director Susanna Helke.

American Vagabond, about homeless LGBT youth, is particularly timely in light of the SF Board of Supervisors’ recent vote to close parks overnight. Golden Gate Park is home for James and Tyler, a young couple who’ve fled their close-minded families, dreaming of a better life in the rainbow capital of California. Guided by James’ poetic, confessional narration — as well as other voices that chime in to share their experiences — American Vagabond is a specific, deeply personal story that also offers a broader comment on how gay youths and the homeless are treated, even in a city as progressive as SF. And it does take some unexpected turns, as when James reunites with the family that rejected him — though the reasons for the reconciliation are not happy ones.

Elsewhere in the fest, take note of Berry Minott’s The Illness and the Odyssey, a medical whodunit of sorts that explores the history and controversy surrounding Lytico-Bodig, a neurological disease found almost exclusively in Guam. For years, scientists have believed that finding its cause would be like “a Rosetta stone,” according to Dr. Oliver Sacks, resulting in cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and related illnesses. But since nobody can settle on a hypothesis — is it infectious? Caused by plants? The result of a curse? — and nobody really wants to share research (what, and let that Nobel Prize slip away?), there’s been little progress other than clashing speculation, to the great annoyance of those in Guam whose families are affected by the disease. Ultimately, The Illness and the Odyssey is more about the scientific process than anything else, with plenty of prickly personalities (in both current and vintage footage) stepping up to share their views.

Also worth a mention: In Hak Jang’s The Other Side of the Mountain, a Korean War-era romance (with musical numbers) that happens to be the first-ever North Korea/US cinematic co-production. And don’t miss “Street Smarts: YAK Films’ Dance Then and Now,” an Oakland-born phenomenon that has spawned a international array of films showcasing so-called urban dance — staged on subway cars, in intersections, and other unexpected places — of the most limber, slinky, sassy, acrobatic, and awe-inspiring varieties. *

CINEMA BY THE BAY FESTIVAL

Fri/22-Sun/24, $10-$25

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St, SF

www.sffs.org

 

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