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Gatsby who? Check out these cool rep flicks instead! Plus: more new movies.

Sue Vaughan
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This week: two, count ’em two, series dedicated to oft-overlooked films produced outside the mainstream, dedicated to the seamier things in life: “I Wake Up Dreaming 2013” at the Roxie (Dennis Harvey’s take here), and “Girls! Guns! Ghosts! The Sensational Films of Shintoho” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (I drool here.)

Short takes on wider releases below, including The Great Gatsby, a film adaptation that finally realizes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s deathbed wish: that one day, his most beloved work would be shot in garish 3D. Clearly, only suckers read books anymore.

Aftershock Dumped into theaters without fanfare or advance screenings, this collaboration between co-scenarist/producer/star Eli Roth and Chilean director Nicolás López deserves better — it’s possibly the most luridly entertaining of numerous recent jokey homages to retro grindhouse cinema. Roth plays a character known only as Gringo, a divorced Yank lawyer on vacation traveling around Chile with two local friends, brash Pollo (Nicolás Martínez) and mopey Ariel (Ariel Levy). Their tour of raves, clubs, drugz, and tail-chasing — the rare warm-up half-hour that’s actually very funny and enjoyable — comes to an abrupt halt in Valparaiso. Partying with three newly met multinational lady friends (Lorenza Izzo, Andrea Osvárt, Natasha Yarovenko) they find themselves caught in a major earthquake — and the carnage that it causes is just the beginning of their woes, as crisis piles upon crisis. Spinning ’70s disaster-flick tropes toward crass gore-horror, Aftershock is gleefully trashy enough to get away with outrageous cruelties, including mortal harm served out to characters shockingly high on the cast list. (1:30) (Dennis Harvey)

The Crumbles The awkward slackers and damaged hipsters of The Crumbles live in a sun-strafed, paved-over Los Angeles habitat of coffee shops, taco trucks, bookstores, budding filmmakers, and living room band practice. Darla (Katie Hipol) is slouching nowhere fast when her zany, charismatic cool-girl chum Elisa (Teresa Michelle Lee) enters the picture, looking for a place to crash. Elisa’s wacky, erratic, and unreliable, but she’s also capable of generating real excitement — and a mean little keytar hook — and the girls’ band, the Crumbles, gets off the couch and threatens to get all involved to bust out of their shells. Though director Akira Boch never quite dips into the deep background of his characters’ various dysfunctions — the threatened readings of Darla and Elisa’s psychic friend never quite sheds light — the first-time feature filmmaker has a real feel for the drifting, up-for-anything quality of Cali 20-somethings and an appreciation for their highs and lows that makes this familiar, loving, lets-put-on-show-kids update compelling. (1:13) Roxie. (Kimberly Chun)

The Great Gatsby Every bit as flashy and in-your-face as you’d expect the combo of “Baz Luhrmann,” “Jazz Age,” and “3D” to be, this misguided interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale is, at least, overstuffed with visual delights. For that reason only, all the fashion-mag fawning over leading lady Carey Mulligan’s gowns and diamonds, and the opulent production design that surrounds them, seems warranted. And in scenes where spectacle is appropriate — Gatsby’s legendary parties; Tom Buchanan’s wild New York romp with his mistress — Luhrmann delivers in spades. The trade-off is that the subtler aspects of Fitzgerald’s novel are either pushed to the side or shouted from the rooftops. Leonardo DiCaprio, last seen cutting loose in last year’s Django Unchained, makes for a stiff, fumbling Gatsby, laying on the “Old Sports” as thickly as his pancake make-up. There’s nothing here so startlingly memorable as the actor and director’s 1996 prior collaboration, Romeo + Juliet — a more successful (if still lavish and self-consciously audacious) take on an oft-adapted, much-beloved literary work. (2:22) (Cheryl Eddy)

Kiss of the Damned This first feature by Xan Cassavetes isn’t remotely like the Method-y angstfests her late father John used to direct (although he did act in upscale genre movies like 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and 1978’s The Fury). Instead, it’s an homage to the erotic European horror movies of the late 1960s through early ’80s, with further nods to Dario Argento, 1983’s The Hunger, and other fan-bait. Mysterious Djuna (Joséphine de La Baume) is immediately attracted to hunky screenwriter Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia), and vice versa. But she’s reluctant to follow through, and when he presses, she explains why: she’s a vampire, albeit the respectable kind who only “hunts” wild animals. When he decides that is a drawback he can deal with, they seem set to spend an undead eternity together. Unfortunately, they soon get an unwelcome guest in Djuna’s sister Mimi (Roxane Mesquida), a classic “bad girl” type who has no such compunctions about feasting on “stupid humans,” and whose recklessness threatens the cover of any associated fellow vampire. Like its models, Kiss drags at times, and probably will seem too arty and slow to those attuned to mainstream current horror cinema. But if you’re a dweeb enough to know who the likes of Jean Rollin and Jess Franco are, this aesthetically slavish (on a faithfully low budget) salute to their sexy-bloody vintage schlock should amuse, with Steven Hufsteter’s original score an encyclopedia of vintage Eurotrash soundtrack tropes. (1:37) (Dennis Harvey)

Love is All You Need Copenhagen hairdresser Ida (Trine Dyrholm) has just finished her cancer treatments — with their success still undetermined — when she arrives home to find her longtime husband Leif (Kim Bodnia) boning a coworker on their couch. “I thought you were in chemo” is the closest he comes to an apology before walking out. Ida is determined to maintain a cheerful front when attending the Italian wedding of their daughter Astrid (Molly Blixt Egelind) — even after emotionally deaf Leif shows up with his new girlfriend in tow. Meanwhile brusque businessman and widower Philip (Pierce Brosnan), the groom’s father, is experiencing the discomfort of returning to the villa he once shared with his beloved late wife. This latest from Danish director Susanne Bier and writing partner Anders Thomas Jensen (2006’s After the Wedding, 2004’s Brothers, 2010’s In a Better World) is more conventionally escapist than their norm, with a general romantic-seriocomedy air reinforced by travel-poster-worthy views of the picturesque Italian coastline. They do try to insert greater depth and a more expansive story arc than you’d get in a Hollywood rom com. But all the relationships here are so prickly — between middle-aged leads we never quite believe would attract each other, between the clearly ill-matched aspiring newlyweds, between Paprika Steen’s overbearing sister in-law and everyone — that there’s very little to root for. It’s a romantic movie (as numerous soundtracked variations on “That’s Amore” constantly remind us) in which romance feels like the most contrived element. (1:50) (Dennis Harvey)

Peeples Kerry Washington and Diahann Carroll star in this Tyler Perry-produced family drama set in the Hamptons. (1:35)

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s This glossy love letter to posh New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman — a place so expensive that shopping there is “an aspirational dream” for the grubby masses, according to one interviewee — would offend with its slobbering take on consumerism if it wasn’t so damn entertaining. The doc’s narrative of sorts is propelled by the small army assembled to create the store’s famed holiday windows; we watch as lavish scenes of upholstered polar bears and sea creatures covered in glittering mosaics (flanking, natch, couture gowns) take shape over the months leading up to the Christmas rush. Along the way, a cavalcade of top designers (Michael Kors, Vera Wang, Giorgio Armani, Jason Wu, Karl Lagerfeld) reminisce on how the store has impacted their respective careers, and longtime employees share anecdotes, the best of which is probably the tale of how John Lennon and Yoko Ono saved the season by buying over 70 fur coats one magical Christmas Eve. Though lip service is paid to the current economic downturn (the Madoff scandal precipitated a startling dropoff in personal-shopper clients), Scatter My Ashes is mostly just superficial, fan-service fun. What do you expect from a store whose best-selling shoe is sparkly, teeteringly tall, and costs $6,000? (1:33) (Cheryl Eddy)

The zero-sum future

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The zero-sum future

tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s going to take longer, sometimes, to get from here to there. Acres of urban space are going to have to change form. Grocery shopping will be different. Streets may have to be torn up and redirected. The rules for the development of as many as 100,000 new housing units in San Francisco will have to be rewritten.

That’s the only way this city — and cities across the country — can meet the climate-change goals that just about everyone agrees are necessary.

Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University, lays out that case in a new book. He argues, persuasively, that the era of easy “automobility” — a time when people could just assume the ease and convenience of owning and using a private car as a primary means of transportation — has come to an end.

Henderson isn’t suggesting that all private vehicles go away; there are places where cars and trucks will remain the only way to move people and supplies around. But in the urban and suburban areas where most Americans live, the automobile as the default option simply has to end.

“In 10 years, there will be less automobility,” he told me in a recent interview. “It’s a simple limit to resources.”

And the sooner San Francisco starts preparing for that, the better off the city and its residents are going to be.

 

BIG NUMBERS

Henderson’s book, Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco, focuses largely on the Bay Area. But as he points out, the lessons apply all over. The numbers are daunting: Cities, Henderson reports, “use 75 percent of the world’s energy and produce 78 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.” He adds: “Transportation is the fastest growing sector of energy use and [greenhouse gas] emissions, and this fact is in great measure owing to the expansion of automobility.”

And the United States is the biggest culprit. This nation has 4 percent of the world’s population — and 21 percent of the world’s cars.

To turn around the devastating impacts of climate change, “America will need not only to provide leadership, but also to decrease its appetite for excessive, on demand, high-speed automobility.”

And buying a lot of Priuses, or even electric cars, isn’t going to do the job. “Americans must undertake a considerable restructuring of how they organize cities, and that must include the rethinking of mobility and the allocation of street space.”

The Bay Area is about to enter into a long-term planning cycle that, according to groups like the Association of Bay Area Governments, will involve increased urban density. ABAG, according to its most recent projections, would like to see some 90,000 new housing units in San Francisco.

That’s got plenty of problems — particularly the likelihood of the displacement of existing residents. Henderson agrees that more density is going to be needed in the Bay Area — but he’s surprisingly bullish on the much-denigrated suburb.

“It’s actually quick and easy to retrofit suburbia,” he told me.

And like so much of what he discusses in his book, the primary solution is the old, venerable, human-powered contraption known as the bicycle.

“Existing communities like Walnut Creek are eminently bikeable,” Henderson told me. He suggests expanding development in three-mile circles around BART stations — after getting rid of all the parking. “We could easily get 20 to 30 percent of the trips by bike,” he noted.

In fact, he argues, it’s easier to put bicycle lanes and paths in the suburbs than in San Francisco. The streets tend to be wider, there’s more room in general — and it’s fairly simple to provide barriers from cars that make biking safe for everyone.

In fact, a lot of European cities are less dense than San Francisco — and have far fewer drivers. Even in California, the city of Davis is famous for its bike culture; “In Davis,” Henderson said, “There are all these children riding their bikes to school.”

 

ACRES OF PARKING

One of the most profound changes San Francisco is going to have to make involves coming to terms with the immense amount of scarce space that’s devoted to cars. Parking spaces may not seem that big — but when you combine the 300-square-foot typical space (larger than many bedrooms and offices) with the space needed for getting into and out of that space, it adds up.

“Parking for 130 cars amounts to about an acre, and the aggregate of all non-residential off-street parking is estimated to be equal in area to several New England states.”

Cars need more than a home parking space — they need someplace to park when they’re used. So in a city like San Francisco that has more than 350,000 cars, a vast amount of urban land must be devoted to parking. In fact, Henderson estimates that parking space in San Francisco amounts to about 79.4 million square feet — or about 79,400 two-bedroom apartments. Off-street parking alone takes up space that could house 67,000 two-bedroom units.

And it’s hella expensive. Building parking adds as much as 20 percent to the cost of a housing unit. He cites studies showing that 20 percent more San Franciscans could afford to buy a condo unit if it didn’t include parking.

But the city still mandates off-street parking for all new residential construction — and while activists have managed to get the amount reduced from a minimum of one parking space per unit to a maximum of around eight spaces per 10 units, that’s still a whole lot of parking.

And if San Francisco is expected to absorb 90,000 more housing units, under current rules that’s 72,000 more cars — which means a demand for 72,000 more parking spaces near offices, shopping districts, and parks. Crazy.

So how do you get Americans, even San Franciscans, to give up what Henderson calls the “sense of entitlement that we can speed across town in a private car?” Some of it requires the classic planning measures of discouraging or banning parking in new development (AT&T Park works quite well as a facility that is primarily accessed by foot and transit). Some of it means putting in the resources to improve public transit.

And a lot of it involves shifting transportation modes to walking and bicycles.

San Francisco has had significant success increasing the use of bikes in the past few years. But there are limits to what you can do by tinkering around the edges, with a few more bike lanes here and there.

There are, for example, the hills. And there’s grocery shopping for a family. Those things need bigger shifts in the use of urban space.

San Francisco’s street grid, for example, sends travelers straight up some nearly impossible inclines. Young, healthy people in great physical condition can ride bikes up those hills, but children and older people simply can’t.

Henderson suggests that the city could install lifts in some areas, but there’s another, more radical (but less energy-intensive) solution: Reroute the grid.

If city streets wound around the sides of hills, instead of heading straight up, walking and biking would be far easier. That would involve major changes, particularly since there’s housing in the way of any real route changes — but in the long term, that sort of concept should, at least, be on the table.

Bikes with cargo trailers make a lot of sense for shopping, Henderson told me — and once big supermarkets get rid of all that parking, the price of food will come down.

 

THE POLITICS OF NEO-LIBERALS

The biggest challenge, though — and the heart of Henderson’s book — is political. Transportation, he argues, is inherently ideological: “It matters how you get from here to there.” And he notes that progressives, who are willing to think about social responsibility, not just individual rights, see the choices very differently than the neo-liberals, who in this city are often called “moderates.” If the neo-libs have their way, he says, the changes will be too little, too late, and mostly ineffective.

Because Americans are facing a series of choices — and there are no solutions that preserve the old way of life without sacrificing the future of the planet. It’s entirely a zero-sum game: We can slow global climate change, or we can keep driving cars. (Oh, and electric cars — which still require large amounts of power, mostly from fossil-fuel plants — aren’t going to solve the problem any time soon.)

We can shift to bicycles and transit as our primary ways to get around, or we can leave our kids an ecological disaster of unprecedented scope. We can overhaul the entire way we think about urban planning — to make streets friendly to bikes and buses — or we can go down a deadly path of no return.

We can accept the fact that moving around cities may be a little slower, particularly while we adapt. Or we can join the climate-change deniers. “There are a lot of neo-liberals out there who say we can’t start controlling automobility until we have a gold-plated transit system,” Henderson told me. “But this is not a chicken and egg problem. First you have to create the urban space. Then you can build a better system.”

Film listings

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

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The San Francisco International Film Festival runs through Thu/9 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; New People Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Sundance Kabuki Cinemas 1881 Post, SF. For tickets (most shows $10-15) and complete schedule, visit festival.sffs.org.

OPENING

The Crumbles The awkward slackers and damaged hipsters of The Crumbles live in a sun-strafed, paved-over Los Angeles habitat of coffee shops, taco trucks, bookstores, budding filmmakers, and living room band practice. Darla (Katie Hipol) is slouching nowhere fast when her zany, charismatic cool-girl chum Elisa (Teresa Michelle Lee) enters the picture, looking for a place to crash. Elisa’s wacky, erratic, and unreliable, but she’s also capable of generating real excitement — and a mean little keytar hook — and the girls’ band, the Crumbles, gets off the couch and threatens to get all involved to bust out of their shells. Though director Akira Boch never quite dips into the deep background of his characters’ various dysfunctions — the threatened readings of Darla and Elisa’s psychic friend never quite sheds light — the first-time feature filmmaker has a real feel for the drifting, up-for-anything quality of Cali 20-somethings and an appreciation for their highs and lows that makes this familiar, loving, lets-put-on-show-kids update compelling. (1:13) Roxie. (Chun)

The Great Gatsby Baz Luhrmann reunites with his Romeo + Juliet (1996) star Leonardo DiCaprio for this long-awaited 3D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel. (2:22) California, Four Star, Marina, Presidio, Vogue.

Kiss of the Damned This first feature by Xan Cassavetes isn’t remotely like the Method-y angstfests her late father John used to direct (although he did act in upscale genre movies like 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and 1978’s The Fury). Instead, it’s an homage to the erotic European horror movies of the late 1960s through early ’80s, with further nods to Dario Argento, 1983’s The Hunger, and other fan-bait. Mysterious Djuna (Joséphine de La Baume) is immediately attracted to hunky screenwriter Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia), and vice versa. But she’s reluctant to follow through, and when he presses, she explains why: she’s a vampire, albeit the respectable kind who only "hunts" wild animals. When he decides that is a drawback he can deal with, they seem set to spend an undead eternity together. Unfortunately, they soon get an unwelcome guest in Djuna’s sister Mimi (Roxane Mesquida), a classic "bad girl" type who has no such compunctions about feasting on "stupid humans," and whose recklessness threatens the cover of any associated fellow vampire. Like its models, Kiss drags at times, and probably will seem too arty and slow to those attuned to mainstream current horror cinema. But if you’re a dweeb enough to know who the likes of Jean Rollin and Jess Franco are, this aesthetically slavish (on a faithfully low budget) salute to their sexy-bloody vintage schlock should amuse, with Steven Hufsteter’s original score an encyclopedia of vintage Eurotrash soundtrack tropes. (1:37) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Love is All You Need Copenhagen hairdresser Ida (Trine Dyrholm) has just finished her cancer treatments — with their success still undetermined — when she arrives home to find her longtime husband Leif (Kim Bodnia) boning a coworker on their couch. "I thought you were in chemo" is the closest he comes to an apology before walking out. Ida is determined to maintain a cheerful front when attending the Italian wedding of their daughter Astrid (Molly Blixt Egelind) — even after emotionally deaf Leif shows up with his new girlfriend in tow. Meanwhile brusque businessman and widower Philip (Pierce Brosnan), the groom’s father, is experiencing the discomfort of returning to the villa he once shared with his beloved late wife. This latest from Danish director Susanne Bier and writing partner Anders Thomas Jensen (2006’s After the Wedding, 2004’s Brothers, 2010’s In a Better World) is more conventionally escapist than their norm, with a general romantic-seriocomedy air reinforced by travel-poster-worthy views of the picturesque Italian coastline. They do try to insert greater depth and a more expansive story arc than you’d get in a Hollywood rom com. But all the relationships here are so prickly — between middle-aged leads we never quite believe would attract each other, between the clearly ill-matched aspiring newlyweds, between Paprika Steen’s overbearing sister in-law and everyone — that there’s very little to root for. It’s a romantic movie (as numerous soundtracked variations on "That’s Amore" constantly remind us) in which romance feels like the most contrived element. (1:50) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Peeples Kerry Washington and Diahann Carroll star in this Tyler Perry-produced family drama set in the Hamptons. (1:35)

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s This glossy love letter to posh New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman — a place so expensive that shopping there is "an aspirational dream" for the grubby masses, according to one interviewee — would offend with its slobbering take on consumerism if it wasn’t so damn entertaining. The doc’s narrative of sorts is propelled by the small army assembled to create the store’s famed holiday windows; we watch as lavish scenes of upholstered polar bears and sea creatures covered in glittering mosaics (flanking, natch, couture gowns) take shape over the months leading up to the Christmas rush. Along the way, a cavalcade of top designers (Michael Kors, Vera Wang, Giorgio Armani, Jason Wu, Karl Lagerfeld) reminisce on how the store has impacted their respective careers, and longtime employees share anecdotes, the best of which is probably the tale of how John Lennon and Yoko Ono saved the season by buying over 70 fur coats one magical Christmas Eve. Though lip service is paid to the current economic downturn (the Madoff scandal precipitated a startling dropoff in personal-shopper clients), Scatter My Ashes is mostly just superficial fun. What do you expect from a store whose best-selling shoe is sparkly, teeteringly tall, and costs $6,000? (1:33) Clay, Shattuck. (Eddy)

ONGOING

The Angels’ Share The latest from British filmmaker Ken Loach (2006’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley) and frequent screenwriter collaborator Paul Leverty contains a fair amount of humor — though it’s still got plenty of their trademark grit and realism. Offered "one last opportunity" by both a legal system he’s frequently disregarded and his exasperated and heavily pregnant girlfriend, ne’er-do-well Glaswegian Robbie (Paul Brannigan) resolves to straighten out his life. But his troubled past proves a formidable roadblock to a brighter future — until he visits a whiskey distillery with the other misfits he’s been performing his court-ordered community service with, and the group hatches an elaborate heist that could bring hope for Robbie and his growing family … if his gang of "scruffs" can pull it off. Granted, there are some familiar elements here, but this 2012 Cannes jury prize winner (the fest’s de facto third-place award) is more enjoyable than predictable — thanks to some whiskey-tasting nerd-out scenes, likable performances by its cast of mostly newcomers, and lines like "Nobody ever bothers anybody wearing a kilt!" (not necessarily true, as it turns out). Thankfully, English subtitles help with the thick Scottish accents. (1:41) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

At Any Price Growing up in rural Iowa very much in the shadow of his older brother, Dean Whipple (Zac Efron) cultivated a chip on his shoulder while dominating the figure 8 races at the local dirt track. When papa Henry (Dennis Quaid) — a keeping-up-appearances type, with secrets a-plenty lurking behind his good ol’ boy grin — realizes Dean is his best hope for keeping the family farm afloat, he launches a hail-mary attempt to salvage their relationship. This latest drama from acclaimed indie director Ramin Bahrani (2008’s Goodbye Solo) is his most ambitious to date, enfolding small-town family drama and stock-car scenes into a pointed commentary on modern agribusiness (Henry deals in GMO corn, and must grapple with the sinister corporate practices that go along with it). But the film never gels, particularly after an extreme, third-act plot twist is deployed to, um, hammer home the title — which refers to prices both monetary and spiritual. A solid supporting cast (Kim Dickens, Heather Graham, Clancy Brown, Red West, newcomer Maika Monroe) helps give the film some much-needed added weight as it veers toward melodrama. (1:45) SF Center. (Eddy)

The Big Wedding The wedding film has impacted our concepts of matrimony, fashion, and marital happiness more than all the textbooks in the world have affected our national testing average; but it’s with that margin of mediocrity I report from the theater trenches of The Big Wedding. With this, the wedding movie again peters to a crawl. Susan Sarandon (an actress I love with a loyalty beyond sense) is Bebe, the stepmother/caterer swept under the rug by the selfishness of her live in lover Don (De Niro), his ex-wife/baby momma Elle (Diane Keaton) and their racist wackjob future in-laws. When Don and Elle faced the end of their marriage, they tried to rekindle with a Columbian orphan. Cue Ben Barnes in brownface. Alejandro is set to wed Amanda Seyfried and when his mother ascends from Columbia for the wedding, he decides Don and Elle have to act like their marriage never ended &ldots; which makes Bebe a mistress. Surprise! A decade of caring selflessly for your lover’s kids has won you a super shitty wedding you still have to cater! To give you a sense of the conflict management on display, Bebe — the film’s graceful savior —drops a drink on Don before fleeing the scene in her Alfa Romeo; she’s the one character not determined to act out her more selfish urges in the style of an MTV reality show. Despite some less imaginative conflicts and degrading "solutions," this blended family still speaks some truth about the endearing embarrassment of the happy family. (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Blancanieves If you saw the two crappy overblown Hollywood takes on Snow White last year, my condolences. This is probably its best cinematic incarnation ever not made by someone called Walt. Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves transplants the tale to 1920s Spain and told (à la 2011’s The Artist) in the dialogue-free B&W style of that era’s silent cinema. Here, Snow is the daughter of a famous bullfighter (a beautiful performance by Daniel Giménez Cacho) who’s paralyzed physically in the ring, then emotionally by the death of his flamenco star wife (Inma Cuesta) in childbirth. He can’t bring himself to see his daughter until a grandmother’s death brings little Carmencita (the marvelous Sofía Oria) to the isolated ranch he now shares with nurse-turned-second-wife Encarna — Maribel Verdú as a very Jazz Age evil stepmother. Once the girl matures (now played by the ingratiating, slightly androgynous Macarena García), Encarna senses a rival, and to save her life Carmen literally runs away with the circus — at which point the narrative slumps a bit. But only a bit. Where The Artist was essentially a cleverly sustained gimmick elevated by a wonderful central performance, Blancanieves transcends its ingenious retro trappings to offer something both charming and substantiative. Berger doesn’t treat the story template as a joke — he’s fully adapted it to a culture, place, and time, and treats its inherent pathos with great delicacy. (1:44) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Company You Keep Robert Redford directs and stars as a fugitive former member of the Weather Underground, who goes on the run when another member (Susan Sarandon) is arrested and a newspaper reporter (Shia LaBeouf) connects him to a murder 30 years earlier during a Michigan bank robbery. Both the incident and the individuals in The Company You Keep are fictive, but a montage of archival footage at the start of the film is used to place them in the company of real-life radicals and events from the latter days of the 1960s-’70s antiwar movement. (The film’s timeline is a little hard to figure, as the action seems to be present day.) Living under an assumed name, Redford’s Nick Sloan is now a recently widowed public interest lawyer with a nine-year-old daughter, still fighting the good fight from the suburbs of Albany, NY — though some of his movement cohorts would probably argue that point. And as Nick heads cross-country on a hunt for one of them who’s still deep underground, and LaBeouf’s pesky reporter tussles with FBI agents (Terrance Howard and Anna Kendrick) and his besieged editor (Stanley Tucci) — mostly there to pass comment on print journalism’s precipitous decline — there’s plenty of contentious talk, none of it particularly trenchant or involving. Redford packs his earnest, well-intentioned film with stars delineating a constellation of attitudes about revolution, justice, and violent radical action — Julie Christie as an unrepentant radical and Nick’s former lover, Nick Nolte and Richard Jenkins as former movement members, Brendan Gleeson as a Michigan police detective involved in the original investigation, Chris Cooper as Nick’s estranged and disapproving younger brother. But their scrutiny, and the film’s, feels blurry and rote, while the plot’s one major twist seems random and is clumsily exposed. (2:05) Albany, SF Center. (Rapoport)

The Croods (1:38) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Disconnect (1:55) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center.

Evil Dead "Sacrilege!" you surely thought when hearing that Sam Raimi’s immortal 1983 classic was being remade. But as far as remakes go, this one from Uruguayan writer-director Fede Alvarez (who’d previously only made some acclaimed genre shorts) is pretty decent. Four youths gather at a former family cabin destination because a fifth (Jane Levy) has staged her own intervention — after a near-fatal OD, she needs her friends to help her go cold turkey. But as a prologue has already informed us, there is a history of witchcraft and demonic possession in this place. The discovery of something very nasty (and smelly) in the cellar, along with a book of demonic incantations that Lou Taylor Pucci is stupid enough to read aloud from, leads to … well, you know. The all-hell that breaks loose here is more sadistically squirm-inducing than the humorously over-the-top gore in Raimi’s original duo (elements of the sublime ’87 Evil Dead II are also deployed here), and the characters are taken much more seriously — without, however, becoming more interesting. Despite a number of déjà vu kamikaze tracking shots through the Michigan forest (though most of the film was actually shot in New Zealand), Raimi’s giddy high energy and black comedy are replaced here by a more earnest if admittedly mostly effective approach, with plenty of decent shocks. No one could replace Bruce Campbell, and perhaps it was wise not to even try. So: pretty good, gory, expertly crafted, very R-rated horror fun, even with too many "It’s not over yet!" false endings. But no one will be playing this version over and over and over again as they (and I) still do the ’80s films. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

42 Broad and morally cautious, 42 is nonetheless an honorable addition to the small cannon of films about the late, great baseball player Jackie Robinson. When Dodgers owner Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) declares that he wants a black player in the white major leagues because "The only real color is green!", it’s a cynical explanation that most people buy, and hate him for. It also starts the ball curving for a PR shitstorm. But money is an equal-opportunity leveling device: when Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) tries to use the bathroom at a small-town gas station, he’s denied and tells his manager they should "buy their 99 gallons of gas another place." Naturally the gas attendant concedes, and as 42 progresses, even those who reject Robinson at first turn into men who find out how good they are when they’re tested. Ford, swashbuckling well past his sell-by date, is a fantastic old coot here; his "been there, lived that" prowess makes you proud he once fled the path of a rolling bolder. His power moves here are even greater, but it’s ultimately Robinson’s show, and 42 finds a lot of ways to deliver on facts and still print the legend. (2:08) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

From Up on Poppy Hill Hayao (dad, who co-wrote) and Goro (son, who directed) Miyazaki collaborate on this tale of two high-school kids — Umi, who does all the cooking at her grandmother’s boarding house, and Shun, a rabble-rouser who runs the school newspaper — in idyllic seaside Yokohama. Plans for the 1964 Olympics earmark a beloved historic clubhouse for demolition, and the budding couple unites behind the cause. The building offers a symbolic nod to Japanese history, while rehabbing it speaks to hopes for a brighter post-war future. But the past keeps interfering: conflict arises when Shun’s memories are triggered by a photo of Umi’s father, presumed lost at sea in the Korean War. There are no whimsical talking animals in this Studio Ghibli release, which investigates some darker-than-usual themes, though the animation is vivid and sparkling per usual. Hollywood types lending their voices to the English-language version include Jamie Lee Curtis, Christina Hendricks, Ron Howard, and Gilllian Anderson. (1:31) Shattuck. (Eddy)

GI Joe: Retaliation The plot exists to justify the action, but any fan of badass-ness will forgive the skimpy storyline for the outlandish badassery in GI Joe: Retaliation. Inspired by action figures and tying loosely to the first flick, Retaliation starts with a game of "secure the defector," followed by "raise the flag," but as soon as the stakes aren’t real, the Joes outright suck. They don’t have "neutral," which is maybe why a mission to rescue and revive the Joes as a force is the most ferocious fight that ever pit metal against plastic. The set pieces are stunning: a mostly silent sequence with Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Jinx (Elodie Yung) on a mountainside will leave the audience gaping in its high speed wake, and a prison break featuring covert explosives is nonstop amazing. You’ll notice an emphasis on chain link fences and puddles (terra nostra for action figures) and set pieces conceived as if by kids who don’t have a concept of basic irrefutable truths like gravity. It’s just that kind of imagination and ardor and limitlessness that makes this Joe incredible, memorable, and a reason to crack out your toys again. (1:50) Metreon. (Vizcarrondo)

In the House In François Ozon’s first feature since the whimsical 2010 Potiche, he returns somewhat to the playful suspense intrigue of 2003’s Swimming Pool, albeit with a very different tone and context. Fabrice Luchini plays a high school French literature teacher disillusioned by his students’ ever-shrinking articulacy. But he is intrigued by one boy’s surprisingly rich description of his stealth invasion into a classmate’s envied "perfect" family — with lusty interest directed at the "middle class curves" of the mother (Emmanuelle Seigner). As the boy Claude’s writings continue in their possibly fictive, possibly stalker-ish provocations, his teacher grows increasingly unsure whether he’s dealing with a precocious bourgeoisie satirist or a literate budding sociopath — and ambivalent about his (and spouse Kristin Scott Thomas’ stressed gallery-curator’s) growing addiction to these artfully lurid possible exposé s of people he knows. And it escalates from there. Ozon is an expert filmmaker in nimble if not absolute peak form here, no doubt considerably helped by Juan Mayorga’s source play. It’s a smart mainstream entertainment that, had it been Hollywood feature, would doubtless be proclaimed brilliant for its clever tricks and turns. (1:45) Albany, Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Iron Man 3 Neither a sinister terrorist dubbed "the Mandarin" (Ben Kingsley) nor a spray-tanned mad scientist (Guy Pearce) are as formidable an enemy to Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) as Tony Stark himself, the mega-rich playboy last seen in 2012’s Avengers donning his Iron Man suit and thwarting alien destruction. It’s been rough since his big New York minute; he’s been suffering panic attacks and burying himself in his workshop, shutting out his live-in love (Gwyneth Paltrow) in favor of tinkering on an ever-expanding array of manned and un-manned supersuits. But duty, and personal growth, beckon when the above-mentioned villains start behaving very badly. With some help (but not much) from Don Cheadle’s War Machine — now known as "Iron Patriot" thanks to a much-mocked PR campaign — Stark does his saving-the-world routine again. If the plot fails to hit many fresh beats (a few delicious twists aside), the 3D special effects are suitably dazzling, the direction (by series newcomer Shane Black) is appropriately snappy, and Downey, Jr. again makes Stark one of the most charismatic superheros to ever grace the big screen. For now, at least, the continuing Avengers spin-off extravaganza seems justified. (2:06) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Jurassic Park 3D "Life finds a way," Jeff Goldblum’s leather-clad mathematician remarks, crystallizing the theme of this 1993 Spielberg classic, which at its core is more about human relationships than genetically manufactured terrors. Of course, it’s got plenty of those, and Jurassic Park doesn’t really need its (admittedly spiffy) 3D upgrade to remain a thoroughly entertaining thriller. The dinosaur effects — particularly the creepy Velociraptors and fan-fave T. rex — still dazzle. Only some early-90s computer references and Laura Dern’s mom jeans mark the film as dated. But a big-screen viewing of what’s become a cable TV staple allows for fresh appreciation of its less-iconic (but no less enjoyable) moments and performances: a pre-megafame Samuel L. Jackson as a weary systems tech; Bob Peck as the park’s skeptical, prodigiously thigh-muscled game warden. Try and forget the tepid sequels — including, dear gawd, 2014’s in-the-works fourth installment. This is all the Jurassic you will ever need. (2:07) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Kon-Tiki In 1947 Norwegian explorer and anthropologist Thor Heyderdahl arranged an expedition on a homemade raft across the Pacific, recreating what he believed was a route by which South Americans traveled to Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. (Although this theory is now disputed.) The six-man crew (plus parrot) survived numerous perils to complete their 101-day, 4300-mile journey intact — winning enormous global attention, particularly through Heyderdahl’s subsequent book and documentary feature. Co-directors Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg’s dramatization is a big, impressive physical adventure most arresting for its handsome use of numerous far-flung locations. Where it’s less successful is in stirring much emotional involvement, with the character dynamics underwhelming despite a decent cast led by Pal Sverr Hagen as Thor (who, incredibly, was pretty much a non-swimmer). Nonetheless, this new Kon-Tiki offers all the pleasures of armchair travel, letting you vicariously experience a high-risk voyage few could ever hope (or want) to make in real life. (1:58) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Mud (2:15) California, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont.

No Long before the Arab Spring, a people’s revolution went down in Chile when a 1988 referendum toppled the country’s dictator, Augusto Pinochet, thanks in part to an ad exec who dared to sell the dream to his countrymen and women — using the relentlessly upbeat, cheesy language of a Pepsi Generation. In No‘s dramatization of this true story, ad man Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal) is approached by the opposition to Pinochet’s regime to help them on their campaign to encourage Chile’s people to vote "no" to eight more years under the brutal strongman. Rene’s well-aware of the horrors of the dictatorship; not only are the disappeared common knowledge, his activist ex (Antonia Zegers) has been beaten and jailed with seeming regularity. Going up against his boss (Alfredo Castro), who’s overseeing the Pinochet campaign, Rene takes the brilliant tact in the opposition’s TV programs of selling hope — sound familiar? — promising "Chile, happiness is coming!" amid corny mimes, dancers, and the like. Director-producer Pablo Larrain turns out to be just as genius, shooting with a grainy U-matic ’80s video camera to match his footage with 1988 archival imagery, including the original TV spots, in this invigorating spiritual kin of both 2012’s Argo and 1997’s Wag the Dog. (1:50) Shattuck. (Chun)

Oblivion Spoiler alert: the great alien invasion of 2017 does absolutely zilch to eliminate, or at least ameliorate, the problem of sci-fi movie plot holes. However, puny humans willing to shut down the logic-demanding portions of their brains just might enjoy Oblivion, which is set 60 years after that fateful date and imagines that Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by said invasion. Tom Cruise plays Jack, a repairman who zips down from his sterile housing pod (shared with comely companion Andrea Riseborough) to keep a fleet of drones — dispatched to guard the planet’s remaining resources from alien squatters — in working order. But Something is Not Quite Right; Jack’s been having nostalgia-drenched memories of a bustling, pre-war New York City, and the déjà vu gets worse when a beautiful astronaut (Olga Kurylenko) literally crash-lands into his life. After an inaugural gig helming 2010’s stinky Tron: Legacy, director Joseph Kosinski shows promise, if not perfection, bringing his original tale to the screen. (He does, however, borrow heavily from 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1996’s Independence Day, and 2008’s Wall-E, among others.) Still, Oblivion boasts sleek production design, a certain creative flair, and some surprisingly effective plot twists — though also, alas, an overlong running time. (2:05) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Oz: The Great and Powerful Providing a backstory for the man behind the curtain, director Sam Raimi gives us a prequel of sorts to 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. Herein we follow the adventures of a Depression-era Kansas circus magician named Oscar (James Franco) — Oz to his friends — as he cons, philanders, bickers with his behind-the-scenes assistant Frank (Zach Braff), and eventually sails away in a twister, bound for a Technicolor land of massively proportioned flora, talking fauna, and witches ranging from dazzlingly good to treacherously wicked. From one of them, Theodora (Mila Kunis), he learns that his arrival — in Oz, just to clarify — has set in motion the fulfillment of a prophecy: that a great wizard, also named Oz, will bring about the downfall of a malevolent witch (Rachel Weisz), saving the kingdom and its cheery, goodhearted inhabitants. Unfortunately for this deserving populace, Oz spent his last pre-twister moments with the Baum Bros. Circus (the name a tribute to L. Frank Baum, writer of the Oz children’s books) demonstrating a banged-up moral compass and an undependable streak and proclaiming that he would rather be a great man than a good man. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this theme is revisited ad nauseam as Oz and the oppressively beneficent witch Glinda (Michelle Williams) — whose magic appears to consist mainly of nice soft things like bubbles and fog — stand around debating whether he’s the right man for the task. When the fog clears, though, the view is undeniably pretty. While en route to and from the Emerald City, Oz and his companions — among them a non-evil flying monkey (voiced by Braff) and a rather adorable china doll (Joey King) — wander through a deliriously arresting, Fantasia-esque landscape whose intricate, inventive construction helps distract from the plodding, saccharine rhetoric and unappealing story line. (2:07) SF Center, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Pain & Gain In mid-1995 members of what became known as the "Sun Gym Gang" — played here by Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie — were arrested for a series of crimes including kidnapping, extortion, and murder. Simply wanting to live large, they’d abducted one well-off man (Tony Shalhoub) months earlier, tortured him into signing over all his assets, and left him for dead — yet incredibly the Miami police thought the victim’s story was a tall tale, leaving the perps free until they’d burned through their moolah and sought other victims. Michael Bay’s cartoonish take on a pretty horrific saga repeatedly reminds us that it’s a true story, though the script plays fast and loose with many real-life details. (And strangely it downplays the role steroid abuse presumably played in a lot of very crazy behavior.) In a way, his bombastic style is well-suited to a grotesquely comic thriller about bungling bodybuilder criminals redundantly described here as "dumb stupid fucks." There have been worse Bay movies, even if that’s like saying "This gas isn’t as toxic as the last one." But despite the flirtations with satire of fitness culture, motivational gurus and so forth, his sense of humor stays on a loutish plane, complete with fag-bashing, a dwarf gag, and representation of Miami as basically one big siliconed titty bar. Nor can he pull off a turn toward black comedy that needs the superior intelligence of someone like the Coen Brothers or Soderbergh. As usual everything is overamped, the action sequences overblown, the whole thing overlong, and good actors made to overact. You’ve got to give cranky old Ed Harris credit: playing a private detective, he alone here refuses to be bullied into hamming it up. (2:00) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Place Beyond the Pines Powerful indie drama Blue Valentine (2010) marked director Derek Cianfrance as one worthy of attention, so it’s with no small amount of fanfare that this follow-up arrives. The Place Beyond the Pines‘ high profile is further enhanced by the presence of Bradley Cooper (currently enjoying a career ascension from Sexiest Man Alive to Oscar-nominated Serious Actor), cast opposite Valentine star Ryan Gosling, though they share just one scene. An overlong, occasionally contrived tale of three generations of fathers, father figures, and sons, Pines‘ initial focus is Gosling’s stunt-motorcycle rider, a character that would feel more exciting if it wasn’t so reminiscent of Gosling’s turn in Drive (2011), albeit with a blonde dye job and tattoos that look like they were applied by the same guy who inked James Franco in Spring Breakers. Robbing banks seems a reasonable way to raise cash for his infant son, as well as a way for Pines to draw in another whole set of characters, in the form of a cop (Cooper) who’s also a new father, and who — as the story shifts ahead 15 years — builds a political career off the case. Of course, fate and the convenience of movie scripts dictate that the mens’ sons will meet, the past will haunt the present and fuck up the future, etc. etc. Ultimately, Pines is an ambitious film that suffers from both its sprawl and some predictable choices (did Ray Liotta really need to play yet another dirty cop?) Halfway through the movie I couldn’t help thinking what might’ve happened if Cianfrance had dared to swap the casting of the main roles; Gosling could’ve been a great ambitious cop-turned-powerful prick, and Cooper could’ve done interesting things with the Evel Knievel-goes-Point Break part. Just sayin’. (2:20) Embarcadero, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist Based on Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid’s award-winning 2007 novel, and directed by the acclaimed Mira Nair (2001’s Monsoon Wedding, 2006’s The Namesake), The Reluctant Fundamentalist boasts an international cast (Kate Hudson, Martin Donovan, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Om Puri) and nearly as many locations. British-Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed (2010’s Four Lions) stars as Changez Khan, a Princeton-educated professor who grants an interview with a reporter (Schreiber) after another prof at Lahore University — an American citizen — is taken hostage; their meeting grows more tense as the atmosphere around them becomes more charged. Most of the film unfolds as an extended flashback, as Changez recounts his years on Wall Street as a talented "soldier in [America’s] economic army," with a brunette Hudson playing Erica, a photographer who becomes his NYC love interest. After 9/11, he begins to lose his lust for star-spangled yuppie success, and soon returns to his homeland to pursue a more meaningful cause. Though it’s mostly an earnest, soul-searching character study, The Reluctant Fundamentalist suddenly decides it wants to be a full-throttle political thriller in its last act; ultimately, it offers only superficial insight into what might inspire someone’s conversion to fundamentalism (one guess: Erica’s embarrassingly bad art installation, which could make anyone hate America). Still, Ahmed is a compelling lead. (2:08) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Renoir The gorgeous, sun-dappled French Riviera setting is the high point of this otherwise low-key drama about the temperamental women (Christa Theret) who was the final muse to elderly painter Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet), and who encouraged the filmmaking urges in his son, future cinema great Jean (Vincent Rottiers). Cinematographer Mark Ping Bin Lee (who’s worked with Hou Hsiao-hsein and Wong Kar Wai) lenses Renoir’s leafy, ramshackle estate to maximize its resemblance to the paintings it helped inspire; though her character, Dédée, could kindly be described as "conniving," Theret could not have been better physically cast, with tumbling red curls and pale skin she’s none too shy about showing off. Though the specter of World War I looms in the background, the biggest conflicts in Gilles Bourdos’ film are contained within the household, as Jean frets about his future, Dédée faces the reality of her precarious position in the household (which is staffed by aging models-turned-maids), and Auguste battles ill health by continuing to paint, though he’s in a wheelchair and must have his brushes taped to his hands. Though not much really happens, Renoir is a pleasant, easy-on-the-eyes experience. (1:51) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Sapphires The civil rights injustices suffered by these dream girls may be unique to Aboriginal Australians, but they’ll strike a chord with viewers throughout the world — at right about the same spot stoked by the sweet soul music of Motown. Co-written by Tony Briggs, the son of a singer in a real-life Aboriginal girl group, this unrepentant feel-gooder aims to make the lessons of history go down with the good humor and up-from-the-underdog triumph of films like The Full Monty (1997) — the crucial difference in this fun if flawed comedy-romance is that it tells the story of women of color, finding their voices and discovering, yes, their groove. It’s all in the family for these would-be soul sisters, or rather country cousins, bred on Merle Haggard and folk tunes: there’s the charmless and tough Gail (Deborah Mailman), the soulful single mom Julie (Jessica Mauboy, an Australian Idol runner-up), the flirty Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell), and the pale-skinned Kay (Shari Sebbens), the latter passing as white after being forcibly "assimilated" by the government. Their dream is to get off the farm, even if that means entertaining the troops in Vietnam, and the person to help them realize that checkered goal is dissolute piano player Dave (Chris O’Dowd). And O’Dowd is the breakout star to watch here — he adds an loose, erratic energy to an otherwise heavily worked story arc. So when romance sparks for all Sapphires — and the racial tension simmering beneath the sequins rumbles to the surface — the easy pleasures generated by O’Dowd and the music (despite head-scratching inclusions like 1970’s "Run Through the Jungle" in this 1968-set yarn), along with the gently handled lessons in identity politics learned, obliterate any lingering questions left sucking Saigon dust as the narrative plunges forward. They keep you hanging on. (1:38) Opera Plaza, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Chun)

Scary Movie 5 (1:35) Metreon.

The Source Family Under the guidance of charismatic, luxuriously-bearded leader Father Yod (once named Jim Baker, later known as YaHoWha), the Source Family operated one of the country’s first health food restaurants. They lived in a Hollywood Hills mansion, wore flowing robes, assumed dreamy new names, meditated, and studied Father Yod’s custom blend of Eastern and Western philosophy and mysticism. As the home movies that comprise Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille’s documentary, The Source Family, suggest, there were golden moments aplenty, even as the mainstream began to view the group with suspicion (and an aging Father Yod’s decision to take multiple wives confused some members — particularly the woman he was already legally married to). Tapping into the group’s extensive film and psych-rock music archives, as well as interviews with surviving members, The Source Family offers a captivating look at what had to be the most earnest (and most photogenic) cult of the 1970s. (1:38) Roxie. (Eddy)

Trance Where did Danny Boyle drop his noir? Somewhere along the way from Shallow Grave (1994) to Slumdog Millionaire (2008)? Finding the thread he misplaced among the obfuscating reflections of London’s corporate-contempo architecture, Boyle strives to put his own character-centered spin on the genre in this collaboration with Grave and Trainspotting (1996) screenwriter John Hodge, though the final product feels distinctly off, despite its Hitchcockian aspirations toward a sort of modern-day Spellbound (1945). Untrustworthy narrator Simon (James McAvoy) is an auctioneer for a Sotheby’s-like house, tasked with protecting the multimillion-dollar artworks on the block, within reason. Then the splashily elaborate theft of Goya’s Witches’ Flight painting goes down on Simon’s watch, and for his trouble, the complicit staffer is concussed by heist leader Franck (Vincent Cassel). Where did those slippery witches fly to? Simon, mixed up with the thieves due to his gambling debts, cries amnesia — the truth appears to be locked in the opaque layers of his jostled brain, and it’s up to hypnotherapist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) to uncover the Goya’s resting place. Is she trying to help Simon extricate himself from his impossible situation, seduce Franck, or simply help herself? Boyle tries to transmit the mutable mind games on screen, via the lighting, glass, and watery reflections that are supposed to translate as sleek sophistication. But devices like speedy, back-and-forth edits and off-and-on fourth-wall-battering instances as when Simon locks eyes with the audience, read as dated and cheesy as a banking commercial. The seriously miscast actors also fail to sell Trance on various levels — believability, likeability, etc. — as the very unmesmerized viewer falls into a light coma and the movie twirls, flaming, into the ludicrous. (1:44) SF Center. (Chun)

Upstream Color A woman, a man, a pig, a worm, Walden — what? If you enter into Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color expecting things like a linear plot, exposition, and character development, you will exit baffled and distressed. Best to understand in advance that these elements are not part of Carruth’s master plan. In fact, based on my own experiences watching the film twice, I’m fairly certain that not really understanding what’s going on in Upstream Color is part of its loopy allure. Remember Carruth’s 2004 Primer? Did you try to puzzle out that film’s array of overlapping and jigsawed timelines, only to give up and concede that the mystery (and sheer bravado) of that film was part of its, uh, loopy allure? Yeah. Same idea, except writ a few dimensions larger, with more locations, zero tech-speak dialogue, and — yes! — a compelling female lead, played by Amy Seimetz, an indie producer and director in her own right. Enjoying (or even making it all the way through) Upstream Color requires patience and a willingness to forgive some of Carruth’s more pretentious noodlings; in the tradition of experimental filmmaking, it’s a work that’s more concerned with evoking emotions than hitting some kind of three-act structure. Most importantly, it manages to be both maddening and moving at the same time. (1:35) Roxie. (Eddy)

The warriors arena: How are you going to get there?

Zelda Bronstein
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The warriors arena: How are you going to get there?

The Warriors and the all-star lineup of nearly every political consultant in town launched a new public relations offensive this week with the release of a new, spiffy set of drawings and a rewritten plan for a waterfront arena. And opponents of the project pretty much shrugged and said: So, what?

Sure, it looks nicer than it did before. Sure, there’s a pedestrian walkway around the arena. Yeah, there’s glass on the inside that will give spectators a nice view of the Bay. Oh, and there’s room for a cruise ship terminal, to give the whole thing a veneer of maritime use.

But the problems with this project have never been the architecture of the 12-story structure or the inevitably dubious links to the water. “The design was never the point,” Randy Shandobil, a spokesman for the Waterfront Alliance, told us. “Is this the best place to put a big arena?”

The new plan calls for a slightly smaller arena — 125 feet high instead of 135 — with slightly less retail space and seating inside. The glass sides will not only allow fans to look out, but allow people walking around the outside to view in and see something going on inside. The scoreboard will probably be visible; the actually play on the floor less so.

The visuals presented by the architects, Snøhetta and AECOM, indicate that the arena will perch on a large pad raised significantly above the level of the current Piers 30-32. From the ground level, the arena looks like a giant flying saucer, taller than AT&T Park, that’s plopped down below the Bay Bridge.

Craig Dykers, a representative of the architects, told a Board of Supervisors committee May 6 that the arena will fill a need for some sort of project along the open stretch of waterfront from the Ferry Building to AT&T Park. His presentation made it sound as if that undeveloped area was by nature a blight; thousands of joggers, walkers, bicyclists and people enjoying the unimpeded views of the Bay might disagree.

In fact, the project will change more than the two piers; it will create a busy residential and commercial shopping district that will increase foot and vehicle traffic even when there are no games or concerts scheduled.

This is, by any standard, a very different project from what the Warriors first proposed back in November, 2012. That’s why the Waterfront Alliance is asking that the scoping sessions for the environmental impact report on the project ought to go back to square one.

No matter what you think about the design, or the views, or the impact on the city’s priceless waterfront, there’s a problem that’s glaringly obvious, and Sup. Scott Wiener made the point very clearly:

This absolutely has to be a transit-first arena. There’s no way that part of the city can handle even half of the 5,000 cars that have been counted at the Warrior’s current home, Oracle Arena in Oakland. And much of that impact is going to fall on the subway, or light-rail vehicle system.

“It absolutely has to have good LRV service,” Wiener said.

The problem: “Our current system is not even meeting our current needs. I have a lot of constituents who say, when there’s a Giants game you just don’t take the subway because there’s not going to be any capacity. We’re close to a breaking point now, even past it. and our ten-year capital plan puts to the side most of Muni’s unmet capital needs.”

Jennifer Matz, the Mayor’s Office point person on waterfront development, said she agreed with Wiener. “I recognize this challenge,” she said. “There needs to be more of a holistic approach.”

But Wiener wasn’t backing down. Adding the capacity that will be needed to serve the new arena, and the new Giants development, and the new residents moving into the waterfront neighborhood, is not going to be cheap. “Where,” he asked, “is the money going to come from?”

Peter Albert, who works for the Municipal Transportation Agency, is looking into the number of passengers that will be riding Muni — and BART, and Caltrain — and the capacity those systems plan to add. But he had no answer to Wiener’s question.

That’s because there is only one answer: The taxpayers will have to come up with something in the range of a billion dollars to solve Muni’s capacity problems in the next few years — or else the developers will. And right now, there’s not a lot of political will at City Hall to ask for either.

Solomon: The Orwellian warfare state of carnage and doublethink

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By Norman Solomon

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion — and reflexive “doublethink,” which George Orwell described as willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.”

In sync with media outlets across the country, the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday’s front page: “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say.” The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, “rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast.”

Much less crude and weighing in at 1,000 pounds, CBU-87/B warheads were in the category of “combined effects munitions” when put to use 14 years ago by a bomber named Uncle Sam. The U.S. media coverage was brief and fleeting.

One Friday, at noontime, U.S.-led NATO forces dropped cluster bombs on the city of Nis, in the vicinity of a vegetable market. “The bombs struck next to the hospital complex and near the market, bringing death and destruction, peppering the streets of Serbia’s third-largest city with shrapnel,” a dispatch in the San Francisco Chronicle reported on May 8, 1999.

And: “In a street leading from the market, dismembered bodies were strewn among carrots and other vegetables in pools of blood. A dead woman, her body covered with a sheet, was still clutching a shopping bag filled with carrots.”

Pointing out that cluster bombs “explode in the air and hurl shards of shrapnel over a wide radius,” BBC correspondent John Simpson wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: “Used against human beings, cluster bombs are some of the most savage weapons of modern warfare.”

Savage did not preclude usage. As a matter of fact, to Commander in Chief Bill Clinton and the prevailing military minds in Washington, savage was bound up in the positive attributes of cluster bombs. Each one could send up to 60,000 pieces of jagged steel shrapnel into what the weapon’s maker described as “soft targets.”

An unusually diligent reporter, Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times, reported from Pristina, Yugoslavia: “During five weeks of airstrikes, witnesses here say, NATO warplanes have dropped cluster bombs that scatter smaller munitions over wide areas. In military jargon, the smaller munitions are bomblets. Dr. Rade Grbic, a surgeon and director of Pristina’s main hospital, sees proof every day that the almost benign term bomblet masks a tragic impact. Grbic, who saved the lives of two ethnic Albanian boys wounded while other boys played with a cluster bomb found Saturday, said he had never done so many amputations.”

The LA Times article quoted Dr. Grbic: “I have been an orthopedist for 15 years now, working in a crisis region where we often have injuries, but neither I nor my colleagues have ever seen such horrific wounds as those caused by cluster bombs.” He added: “They are wounds that lead to disabilities to a great extent. The limbs are so crushed that the only remaining option is amputation. It’s awful, awful.”

The newspaper account went on: “Pristina’s hospital alone has treated 300 to 400 people wounded by cluster bombs since NATO’s air war began March 24, Grbic said. Roughly half of those victims were civilians, he said. Because that number doesn’t include those killed by cluster bombs and doesn’t account for those wounded in other regions of Yugoslavia, the casualty toll probably is much higher, he said. ‘Most people are victims of the time-activated cluster bombs that explode some time after they fall,’ he said.”

Later, during invasions and initial periods of occupation, the U.S. military dropped cluster bombs in Afghanistan and fired cluster munitions in Iraq.

Today, the U.S. State Department remains opposed to outlawing those weapons, declaring on its official website: “Cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility. Their elimination from U.S. stockpiles would put the lives of its soldiers and those of its coalition partners at risk.”

The State Department position statement adds: “Moreover, cluster munitions can often result in much less collateral damage than unitary weapons, such as a larger bomb or larger artillery shell would cause, if used for the same mission.” Perhaps the bomber(s) who stuffed nails and ball bearings into pressure cookers for use in Boston had a similarly twisted rationale.

But don’t expect explorations of such matters from the USA’s daily papers or commercial networks — or from the likes of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” or the PBS “NewsHour.” When the subject is killing and maiming, such news outlets take as a given the presumptive moral high ground of the U.S. government.

In his novel 1984, Orwell wrote about the conditioned reflex of “stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought . . . and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.”

The doublethink — continually reinforced by mass media — remains within an irony-free zone that would amount to mere self-satire if not so damaging to intellectual and moral coherence

Every news report about the children killed and injured at the finish line in Boston, every account of the horrific loss of limbs, makes me think of a little girl named Guljumma. She was seven years old when I met her at an Afghan refugee camp one day in the summer of 2009

At the time, I wrote: “Guljumma talked about what happened one morning last year when she was sleeping at home in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley. At about 5 a.m., bombs exploded. Some people in her family died. She lost an arm.

In the refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul, where several hundred families were living in squalid conditions, the U.S. government was providing no help. The last time Guljumma and her father had meaningful contact with the U.S. government was when it bombed them.

War thrives on abstractions, but Guljumma was no abstraction. She was no more or less of an abstraction than the children whose lives have been forever wrecked by the bombing at the Boston finish line.

But the same U.S. news media that are conveying the preciousness of children so terribly harmed in Boston are scarcely interested in children like Guljumma.

I thought of her again when seeing news reports and a chilling photo on April 7, soon after 11 children in eastern Afghanistan were even more unlucky than she was. Those children died from a U.S./NATO air strike. For mainline American journalists, it wasn’t much of a story; for American officials, it was no big deal.

“Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip,” Orwell observed, “but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.”

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

Ish says

Andrew Lam
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Ish says

culture@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN [Caitlin Donohue: Although I originally contacted former Stanford University football offensive guard and current Apple employee Ish “Mr. Marina 2013” Simpson for help in writing a style guide to the Marina, he wrote me back a rundown so evocative that I hated to paraphrase his words. And so this week, I’ve given my style column over to him. Check out sfbg.com for my recap of the glorious March night he was crowned king of SF’s preppiest neighborhood, and don’t forget, you can add flair with a belt.]

I buy a lot of clothes, but not many in person. I love to buy, hate to shop, so I buy mainly online. There are some stores and brands I’ve shopped at in the Marina, but since you asked me to explore I was able to find a lot of cool stores that I didn’t know existed. There are more men’s stores in the Marina than I realized.

My fellow Marina gentlemen don’t usually take too many risks when it comes to fashion. The guys I see downtown or in the Castro are usually very fashion-forward. But some of the best-looking guys in the Marina I’ve seen do rock bespoke suits and shirts. Classy. Men’s fashion here steers toward preppy or sailor styles. The women take way more risks, and Marina women are definitely some of the most fashionable in the city.

>>WHERE IT ALL BEGAN: CHECK OUT OUR COVERAGE OF ISH’S VICTORY AT THE MR. MARINA PAGEANT

G-STAR RAW

“If someone says, ‘Hey, I like your shirt,’ you have to say, ‘Yeah, it’s G-Star Raw!’ Whatever.” All store photos by Anna Latino

This place intrigued me because I saw one in Barcelona when I was there in December 2011. I talked to the guy working here and he said the brand is Dutch and it’s way bigger in Europe. Makes sense: the name is just terrible, and they only sell G-Star Raw clothes. That means if someone says, “Hey, I like your shirt,” you have to say, “Yeah, it’s G-Star Raw!” Whatever. They had a nice selection of belts, which I love. Belts are a great way for conservative dressers to express some flair. I loved the colorful chinos (a staple in my wardrobe). I also loved this one cardigan they had.

2060 Chestnut, SF. (415) 567-7224; 76 Geary, SF. (415) 398-5381, www.theswimminghorses.com

MARINE LAYER

“Cool threads that you’d wear out to bars on a Thursday night.”

This place on Chestnut has cool shirts and hoodies. Also, some nice scarves. The clothes are advertised as being extremely soft and they aren’t lying! The fabrics are nice and I like the bold, yet muted colors. I’ve had some friends buy their stuff and it has a worn-in, vintage look. This is a good place to grab some cool threads that you’d wear out to bars on a Thursday night.

2209 Chestnut, SF. (415) 346-2400; 498 Hayes, SF. (415) 829-7519, www.marinelayer.com

THE BLUES JEAN BAR

I’ve bought a few pairs of jeans from here and it’s always a great experience. I kind of don’t like how all of the jeans are behind the bar and you have to ask for them, but I also kind of like it too. Many hot girls work there, so you’re not shopping by yourself and you get a great female opinion when you try your jeans on. They give you great recommendations on fit and style, and they will tell you how to care for your jeans and whether or not you should have them tailored.

1827 Union, SF. (415) 346-4280, www.thebluesjeansbar.com

HIGH SOCIETY

This shop is one I just discovered that sells both women’s and men’s clothes. They had a great selection of slim-fitting jeans and blazers. They had a cool leather jacket I liked. This is the place to go if you’re looking for a nice outfit for date night with a pretty young lady.

1969 Union, SF. (415) 447-0447, www.highsocietybrand.com

BRANDY MELVILLE

This is for the ladies! I like the style of the women that like shopping here. Every time I walk by there are a lot of good-looking girls in there. The music they have jamming is awesome, the ladies working there are gorgeous, and the clothes are awesome (in this man’s opinion!) I like the material they use for their clothes, very light and breathable; at least it looks like it is. I loved the camo pants, the flowing dresses, and the printed shirts.

2085 Chestnut, SF. (415) 292-7754, www.brandymelvilleusa.com

EYE HEART SF “POP DOWN SHOP”

“They have awesome clothes for Sunday Fundays”

This is your go-to spot for gear that is meant to be worn when partying! This brand was born in San Francisco and the guys behind it take pride in representing this great city. They have awesome clothes for Sunday Fundays (tanks!), holidays (special gear for St. Patty’s, Cinco de Mayo, etc.), sporting events (Giants, Warriors, Niners), and for music festivals (break out your JammyPacks). This should be one of the first places to shop at when you’re going to be out in the sun having a great time.

1980 Union, SF. www.eyeheartsfshop.com

Stage listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Opens Sun/21, 11am. Runs Sun, 11am. Through July 21. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns after a month-long hiatus with his popular, kid-friendly bubble show.

ONGOING

Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm (May 11, show at 8pm). Through May 18. Lynne Kaufman’s play (starring Warren Keith David as the spiritual seeker) moves from Berkeley to San Francisco.

The Bereaved Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through April 27. Crowded Fire Theater launches its Mainstage season with Thomas Bradshaw’s wicked comedy about “sex, drugs, and the American dream.”

Boomeraging: From LSD to OMG Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Tue, 8pm. Through May 28. Comedian Will Durst performs his brand-new solo show.

The Bus New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $32-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 28. NCTC performs James Lantz’s tale of two young men whose meeting place for their secret relationship is a church bus.

Carnival! Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstreetmoon.org. $25-75. Wed/17, 7pm; Thu/18-Fri/19, 8pm; Sat/20, 6pm; Sun/21, 3pm. 42nd Street Moon performs the Tony Award-winning musical.

The Expulsion of Malcolm X Southside Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.fortmason.org. $30-42.50. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 5. Colors of Vision Entertainment and GO Productions present Larry Americ Allen’s drama about the relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad.

Ghostbusters: Live On Stage Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through April 27. Rhiannastan Productions brings the beloved 1984 comedy to the stage.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

The Happy Ones Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Third Flr, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $22-62. Wed/17-Sat/20, 8pm; Sun/21, 2:30pm. An Orange County appliance store owner finds his life turned upside down in Julie Marie Myatt’s drama at Magic Theatre.

How To Make Your Bitterness Work For You Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.bitternesstobetterness.com. $15-25. Sun, 2pm. Through May 5. Fred Raker performs his comedy about the self-help industry.

I’m Not OK, Cupid 🙁 Shelton Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.leftcoasttheatreco.org. $15-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 4. Left Coast Theatre Co. presents a new collection of one-act, LGBT-themed comedies about dating and relationships.

The Lost Folio: Shakespeare’s Musicals Un-Scripted Theater, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 18. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs a fully-improvised, full-length musical inspired by Shakespeare.

The Lullaby Tree Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, SF; www.secondwind.8m.com. $15-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 4. In the face of the ever more extensive and controversial spread of GMO foods worldwide — not to mention last year’s state battle over Prop 37 — Second Wind premieres founding member and playwright Ian Walker’s half-whimsical, half-hardheaded drama about a boy searching for his mother in the underworld and a small band of lawyers and environmentalists going toe-to-toe with a multinational over the ownership of a mysterious crop of genetically engineered corn. It will eventually become plain that the two stories are linked, but first a ten-year-old boy (Samuel Berston) befriends a somewhat shrunken giant (Davern Wright) in an attempt to find his mother (Evangeline Crittenden) in an enchanted and hostile land of dragons. Elsewhere, Tim (Walker) and law partner Nod (Wright) prepare to do legal battle with a modern-day dragon, in the person of a corporate attorney (Cheryl Smith) for the ominous Mendes Corporation (read: Monsanto). They will argue over the ownership of the corn that has sprung up on the banks of a drowned town, and which may spell environmental disaster for the nature preserve surrounding it. In this fight Tim and Nod are in uneasy, ultimately disastrous alliance with activist Callie (Crittenden), whom Nod distrusts and with whom Tim is hopelessly smitten. The result is a convoluted plot and a fitful production (co-directed by Walker and Misha Hawk-Wyatt) in which a three-pronged story precariously balances the fairy tale, the romance, and the legal battle. It’s the last prong that offers the more interesting if formulaic scenes, in which the politics of GMOs mesh with the swashbuckling machinations of the attorneys. But the less compelling strands converge and take precedence, forcing things down a sentimental and forgettable road. (Avila)

reasons to be pretty San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through May 11. Completing a trilogy of plays about body awareness and self-image (along with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig), Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty begins with a misconstrued remark that quickly gathers enough weight and momentum to tear three sets of relationships apart in the span of a two-hour play. The SF Playhouse production begins with a bang, or rather an awesomely knock-down, blow-out breakup fight between a righteously pissed-off Steph (Lauren English) and her awkwardly passive boyfriend Greg (Craig Marker), who has inadvertently referred to her as “regular” in a conversation with his jerkish buddy Kent (Patrick Russell), which she takes to mean he finds her ugly. English’s Steph is at turns ferocious and fragile, and her comic timing as she eviscerates Greg’s looks in a mall food court zings, while the hyperkinetic Russell elevates the condition of noxiously irredeemable douchebag to an artform. But terrific acting and polished design can only make up so much for a script that feels not only flawed, barely scratching the surface of the whys and wherefores each character has internalized an unrealistic view of the importance of conventional beauty standards, but also already dated, with its circa-2008 pop culture references. Ultimately it gives the impression of being a rerun of a Lifetime television drama that wraps itself up into a too-neat package just in time for the final credits to roll to its admittedly kickass soundtrack (provided by Billie Cox). (Gluckstern)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. It seems a no-brainer. Not just the HBO series itself — that’s definitely missing some gray matter — but putting it onstage as a drag show. Mais naturellement! Why was Sex and the City not conceived of as a drag show in the first place? Making the sordid not exactly palatable but somehow, I don’t know, friendlier (and the canned a little cannier), Velvet Rage Productions mounts two verbatim episodes from the widely adored cable show, with Trannyshack’s Heklina in a smashing portrayal of SJP’s Carrie; D’Arcy Drollinger stealing much of the show as ever-randy Samantha (already more or less a gay man trapped in a woman’s body); Lady Bear as an endearingly out-to-lunch Miranda; and ever assured, quick-witted Trixxie Carr as pent-up Charlotte. There’s also a solid and enjoyable supporting cast courtesy of Cookie Dough, Jordan Wheeler, and Leigh Crow (as Mr. Big). That’s some heavyweight talent trodding the straining boards of bar Rebel’s tiny stage. The show’s still two-dimensional, even in 3D, but noticeably bigger than your 50″ plasma flat panel. (Avila)

Sheherezade 13 Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. $25. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through April 27. Wily West Productions presents a short play showcase.

Show Me Yours: Songs of Innocence and Experience Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $27. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through April 27. New Musical Theater of San Francisco performs a new musical revue written by Pen and Piano, the company’s resident group of writers and composers.

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through May 18. Self-awareness, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement — for these things we turn to the professionals: the self-empowerment coaches, the self-help authors and motivational speakers. What’s the good of having a “self” unless someone shows you how to use it? Writer-performer Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook wants to sell you on a better you, but his “Better Than You” weekend seminar (and tie-in book series, assorted CDs, and other paraphernalia) belies a certain divided loyalty in its own self-flattering title. The bitter fruit of the personal growth industry may sound overly ripe for the picking, but Bodden’s deftly executed “seminar” and its behind-the-scenes reveals, directed by Mark Kenward, explore the terrain with panache, cool wit, and shrewd characterization. As both writer and performer, Bodden keeps his Steve Seabrook just this side of overly sensational or maudlin, a believable figure, finally, whose all-too-ordinary life ends up something of a modest model of its own. (Avila)

Stuck Elevator American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-85. Tue-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm (no evening performances Sun/21 or April 28). Through April 28. American Conservatory Theater presents the world premiere of Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jafferis’ musical (sung in English with Chinese supertitles) about a Chinese immigrant trapped in a Bronx elevator for 81 hours.

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 1. Thrillpeddlers and director Russell Blackwood continue their Theatre of the Ridiculous series with this 1971 musical from San Francisco’s famed glitter-bearded acid queens, the Cockettes, revamped with a slew of new musical material by original member Scrumbly Koldewyn, and a freshly re-minted book co-written by Koldewyn and “Sweet Pam” Tent — both of whom join the large rotating cast of Thrillpeddler favorites alongside a third original Cockette, Rumi Missabu (playing diner waitress Brenda Breakfast like a deliciously unhinged scramble of Lucille Ball and Bette Davis). This is Thrillpeddlers’ third Cockettes revival, a winning streak that started with Pearls Over Shanghai. While not quite as frisky or imaginative as the production of Pearls, it easily charms with its fine songs, nifty routines, exquisite costumes, steady flashes of wit, less consistent flashes of flesh, and de rigueur irreverence. The plot may not be very easy to follow, but then, except perhaps for the bubbly accounting of the notorious New York flop of the same show 42 years ago by Tent (as poisoned-pen gossip columnist Vedda Viper), it hardly matters. (Avila)

BAY AREA

The Arsonists Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $35-60. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through May 12. There’s a lot of humor to be found in Alistair Beaton’s crackling translation of Max Frisch’s The Arsonists, playing now at the Aurora Theatre, but much of the laughter it elicits is of the nervous variety, as the play’s mostly protagonist, the effete, bourgeois Herr Biedermann (Dan Hiatt) inadvertently signs off on his own destruction when he invites an uncouth arsonist to come and stay in his attic (Michael Ray Wisely). “If we assume everyone is an arsonist, where does that get us?” becomes his standard deflection, as one arsonist becomes two (adding in the unctuous, nihilistic Tim Kniffin), and the empty attic a repository for giant drums of gasoline, a detonator, and fuse wire — arousing the suspicions of a chorus of firefighters (Kevin Clarke, Tristan Cunningham, Michael Uy Kelly), who act as the conscience and guardians of the township. Although on the surface the scenario is patently absurd, the message that passivity in the face of evil is like helping to measure out the fuse wire that will eventually claim your life, is relatively clear. “Not every fire is determined by fate,” point out the firefighters right in the first act. Hiatt, as Biedermann, strikes an admirable balance between loathsome and powerless, while Gwen Loeb shines as his socialite wife, Babette, as does Dina Percia as his agitated housemaid, Anna. (Gluckstern)

Being Earnest Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through April 28. TheatreWorks performs the world premiere of Paul Gordon’s musical take on Oscar Wilde’s comedy.

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage & Shipwreck Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Shipwreck runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through May 5. Voyage runs Sat/20, April 27, and May 4, 3pm. Last year in the Shotgun Players’ production of Voyage, the first part of Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia trilogy (also playing in repertory through May 4), we were introduced to a tight circle of Russian thinkers and dreamers, chafing against the oppressive regime of Nicholas I. In the second part, Shipwrecked, we find them older, perhaps wiser, struggling to keep their revolutionary ideals alive while also juggling familial concerns and personal passions. Focused mainly on Alexander Herzen (Patrick Kelley Jones) and family, Shipwrecked travels from Russia to Germany, France, Italy, and the English Channel, buffeted from all directions by the forces of the uprisings and burgeoning political consciousness of the European proletariat. It’s an unwieldy, sprawling world that Stoppard, and history, have built (made somewhat more so by the Shotgun production’s strangely languid pace during even the most dramatic sequences) but it’s worth making the effort to spend time absorbing the singular world views of Russian émigré Herzen, his impulsively passionate wife Natalie (Caitlyn Louchard), the cantankerous, influential critic Vissarion Belinsky (Nick Medina), professional rabble-rouser Michael Bakunin (Joseph Salazar) and up-and-coming writer Ivan Turgenev (Richard Reinholdt) as they desperately seek to carve out both their personal identities and a greater, cohesive Russian one from the imperfect turmoil of Western philosophy. (Gluckstern)

Fallaci Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-89. Wed/17 and Sun/21, 7pm (also Sun/21, 2pm); Thu/18-Sat/20, 8pm (also Sat/20, 2pm). Berkeley Rep performs Pulitzer-winning journalist Lawrence Wright’s new play about Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci.

A Killer Story Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu-Sat, 8pm (pre-show cabaret at 7:15pm). Through May 18. Dan Harder’s film noir-inspired detective tale premieres at the Marsh Berkeley.

Love Letters Various Marin County venues; www.porchlight.net. $15-30. Through April 28. Porch Light Theater performs A.R. Gurney’s romantic play at four different Marin venues; check website for addresses and showtimes.

“Pear Slices” Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 28. Nine original short plays by members of the Pear Playwrights Guild.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-77. Opens Wed/17, 8pm. Runs Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and April 25 and May 23, 2pm; no matinee April 27; no show May 24); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2). Through May 26. Mark Wing-Davey directs Berkeley Rep’s take on the Bard.

The Whipping Man Marin Theatre Center, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $36-57. Wed/17, 7:30pm; Thu/18-Sat/20, 8pm (also Sat/20, 2pm); Sun/21, 2 and 7pm. Marin Theatre Company performs the Bay Area premiere of Matthew Lopez’s Civil War drama.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Alonzo King LINES Ballet LAM Research Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; www.linesballet.org. Fri/19 and April 26-27, 8pm; Sat/20, 6pm; Sun/21 and April 28, 5pm; April 24-25, 7:30pm. $30-65. The company celebrates its 30th anniversary spring season with a collaboration between choregrapher Alonzo King and composter Edgar Meyer.

“Another Way Home” and “The Fox and the Beast” Joe Goode Annex, 401 Alabama, SF; www.cieloverticalarts.com. Fri/19-Sat/20, 8pm. $18. Cielo Vertical Arts presents a new aerial dance work with music by Jesse Olsen Bay, followed by a new work by Fog Beast.

“Anywhere But Here” SF Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; www.goathall.org. Sat/20-Sun/21, 8pm. $15. Goat Hall Productions, San Francisco’s Opera Cabaret Company, presents this show of works by Mozart, Weill, and Menotti.

“The Buddy Club Children’s Shows” Randall Museum, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/21, 11am. $8. Comedy magician Phil Ackerly performs.

“Concert to End Bullying” Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; ayayale.tix.com. Sat/20, 8pm. $25-150. Stage and screen star Taye Diggs and the Yale Whiffenpoofs join forces for this show benefitting the New Conservatory Theatre Center’s Youth Aware Program.

“Crosscurrent” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.975howard.com. Fri/19-Sat/20, 8pm. $15. Original dance theater, improvisation, and live music with dancers Daria Kaufman and Bianca Brzezinski, and composer Richard Warp.

CubaCaribe Festival This week: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.cubacaribe.org. Fri/19, 7pm. $35. Next week: Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl. April 26-27, 8pm; April 28, 2 and 7pm. $25. Master artists performing music and dance from the Caribbean Diaspora.

“Goodbye Taxes, Hello Mary Lou” Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF; www.brickandmortarmusic.com. Fri/19, 9pm. $10. Music by Jugtown Pirates, a performance by Salacious Underground Burlesque, and more.

“Mission Position Live” Cinecave, 1034 Valencia, SF; www.missionpositionlive.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Stand-up comedy with rotating performers.

“The Naked Stage” Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Sat, 8pm. Through April 27. $20. BATS Improv performs an improvised stage play.

“The Original Scratch-N-Sniff Variety Show” 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.questforzest.org. Thu/18, 7pm. $10. Variety show with “scratch-n-sniff elements” between acts.

Red Hots Burlesque El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.redhotsburlesque.com. Wed, 7:30-9pm. Ongoing. $5-10. Come for the burlesque show, stay for OMG! Karaoke starting at 8pm (no cover for karaoke).

“Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir: Revolt of the Golden Toad Bay Area Tour” Various Bay Area venues; www.revbilly.com. April 22-27. The performance artist and activist visits the Bay Area for book readings from The End of the World, as well as a variety of performances and direct action events.

“San Francisco Magic Parlor” Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

“Sheetal Gandhi: Bahu Beti Biwi” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Fri/19-Sat/20, 8pm; Sun/21, 7pm. $25-35. The North Indian choreographer and performer presents a work that combines dance, vocalization, and percussive text.

BAY AREA

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Berk; www.calperformances.org. April 23-27, 8pm (also April 27, 2pm); April 28, 3pm. $30-92. Four programs highlight the company’s annual Cal Performances residancy, including two Bay Area premieres.

“The Divine Game” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. April 29, 8pm. $20. A spur to thought, to reading, to listening, to sparring over the meaning and magnitude of art — they’re all there in the brilliantly expansive, acute, and sometimes barbed observations of professor Vladimir Nabokov (a delighting, animated John Mercer), as he expounds on the subject of Russian literature in this simply staged but witty, well-honed dramatic reading from First Person Singular and adapter-director Joe Christiano. Presented as part of Shotgun’s Monday night Cabaret series, The Divine Game, drawing verbatim on Nabokov’s Cornell lectures of the 1950s, is an invitation to a heady walk down several byways in the land of great literary art, and there are few more discerning or inspiring guides whether or not you share in every conclusion about the relative merits and demerits of Chekhov (Joshua Han) or Dostoyevsky (Brian Quackenbush) — both of whom appear onstage alongside their idiosyncratic peers Gogol (Colin Johnson) and Tolstoy (Jess Thomas). There’s a frisson of mental joy in a distillation like, “Chekhov’s books are sad books for humorous people,” or the sweet-talking yet penetrating pronouncement that, “Of all the great characters that a great artist creates, his readers are the best,” and their cumulative impact over the course of 90 minutes offers enough inspiration for several reckless bookstore sprees. (Avila)

“Flamencio from Sevilla to Jerez” La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; www.eventbrite.com. Sun/21, 7:30pm. $25-40. Spanish flamenco artists Javier Herida and Kina Menez perform.

“Man, Oh Man!” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.oebgmc.org. Sat/20, 7pm; Sun/21, 5:30pm. $15-25. The Oakland-East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus performs a program of “music written for men to sing,” from chants to a world premiere.

Billy and the golden toads

Andrew Lam
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1
Billy and the golden toads

Reverend Billy Talen and his Church of Stop Shopping — which evolved from anti-consumerism street theater in San Francisco in the 1990s into a venerable New York City protest/performance institution — is bringing its creative environmentalist prayers and ploys back to the Bay Area next week.

Talen is a talented talker and writer whose most recent book, The End of the World, is a poetic plea for people to finally get serious about climate change, loss of biodiversity, and other environmental indicators that are passing irreversible global tipping points, all of them fed by the relentless growth of global capitalism.

“When Hurricane Sandy hit New York, there was no discussion of the underlying causes,” Talen told us. “There’s a disconnect. We have a 1,000-mile wide storm that seems to be aimed at Wall Street, and we’re not mentioning Wall Street.”

Billy and his crew are, using street theater to make their point. As he spoke, Talen said he was surrounded by two dozen costumes of the extinct Golden Toad that his crew has been donning to invade and engage in media-friendly civil disobedience at branches of Chase Bank, which the Rainforest Action Network concluded is the leading investor in carbon-emitting projects.

“Amphibians are going extinct around the world, and if I can mix my metaphors, that’s the canary in the coal mine,” Talen said, calling climate change a systemic result of an economic system predicated on consumption and growth. “Corporations are made to not be sustainable. They have to expand every quarter.”

Talen begins his visit on Monday, April 22, with a 7pm reading at Booksmith, 1644 Haight Street, and he wraps up on April 27 at 8pm with a full 17-member Church of Stop Shopping performance at Victoria Theater, 2961 16th St., SF. In between, they’ll be Lone Mountain College in SF on April 24, Pt. Reyes Dance Palace on April 25, the Chalkupy event at Oakland City Plaza on April 26, the Live Coast West taping on April 27 — and perhaps exorcising a Chase Bank or two along the way.

New forms

Andrew Lam
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0
New forms

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN What’s in a lookbook? When you’re a styling collective that works with one-of-a-kind vintage items, the question is somewhat challenging. Only one person can buy each outfit in Retrofit Republic‘s newest “Tastemakers” style book, after all.

But co-founder Julia Rhee explains to me in an email that her brand is about way more than call-and-response trend manufacturing. “We could’ve exclusively sourced from the big box stores when we started our business,” she writes. “But we wanted to show clients that we don’t have to live in a throwaway culture that constantly churns out fast fashion with no regard to the environment.”

Rhee and co-founder Jenny Ton counsel clients who make appointments at their private showroom for styling tips that unique pieces that don’t quite fit can be adjusted. “When in doubt, roll it, cuff it, belt it,” she says.

 

“Tastemakers” lookbook: Brown Boi Project founder B. Cole

 

>>CLICK HERE TO READ LAST YEAR’S SFBG PROFILE ON RETROFIT’S STYLE 

Angie Chang, founder of Women 2.0 and Bay Area Geek Girl dinners

 Given the preponderance of grown-and-sexy types at the release party for their newest lookbook on April 13 at the SoMa-sleek Tank18 tasting room, it would seem that SF (a town whose picked-over thrift stores should tip you off on our luv for secondhand) is down for the Retrofit message.

Or maybe there’s another message the party people were responding to. Because instead of populating their campaigns with traditional models, Retrofit is known for making mannequins out of the Bay’s social changers. “Tastemakers” features food justice activist-sustainable chef Bryant Terry, feminist tech networker Angie Chang, founder of genderqueer youth leadership advocates Brown Boi Project B. Cole. Past books have included Supervisors Jane Kim and David Chiu.

Founder of Four Barrell Coffee Jeremy Tooker

“As people of color, we’re not often given the space to be positively highlighted and affirmed that we are beautiful,” Ton writes. “So instead of waiting for that space and change to happen, we decided to take it into own hands, on our terms, to be the change we want to see in fashion and in this world.”

CAN YOU SAY Мишка?

Мишка lookbook photos by Chris Brennan

Five-panel ball caps printed with fresh fruit, outer galaxy scenes, or Harvey Comics panels. A cutely patterned cut-and-sew collection that includes button-downs speckled with astrological signs, classical sculptures interspersed with spray paint bursts, pot leaves and one-eyed skeleton heads arranged in Nordic ski sweater patterns. This is the look of Мишка (pronounced “Mishka,” in case your Cyrillic skills are rusty), the Brooklyn brand that opens its first SF store this week.

Are we really becoming the outer borough to Silicon Valley’s Manhattan? The fact that Мишка, a Greenpoint brand, is opening up its first store in the city next to a tattoo shop on 25th Street in the Mission is one sign that: yep, maybe. Or maybe it says more about how the Internet is globalizing hipster culture — the brand already has stores in Tokyo and Los Angeles.

Мишка is the kind of low brow movie-inspired streetwear brand (read: many hats and t-shirts) that inspires hordes of young enthusiasts so gung ho that the brand’s national marketing coordinator Leigh Barton tells me, her bloodshot eyeball-adorned fingernails lightly gripping a cappuccino cup in a Haight Street coffee shop a few blocks from where she was hosting last week’s warehouse sale, kids will show up to stores ready to work for free, just for good vibes and freebies to further their sartorial addiction.

The company already has a passionate Bay Area fan base, and co-founder Mikhail Bortnik tells me in an email the feeling is mutual. “The art, music, and culture that has been oozing out of the city for decades has influenced our brand and art greatly,” he writes.

SF store manager Chris Brennan actually shot a lookbook last summer featuring the Bay’s new crop of hip-hop heartthrobs: Chippy Nonstop, Antwon, and Trill Team 6 were among the models — which makes sense given that Мишка’s a hybrid project — Bortnik and co-founder Greg Rivera also run Мишка Records, which recently released Cakes Da Killa’s rad sophomore effort The Eulogy and had its hand in Das Racist’s early mixtape glory as well. Keep an eye out to see how the company will be contributing to the ongoing rhythms and melodies here in the Bay.

Мишка SF opening party Fri/12, 7-9pm, free. Мишка, 3422 25th St., SF. www.mishkasf.com


Boooooooooooks: 2 spots to buy ’em cheap

Andrew Lam
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0
Boooooooooooks: 2 spots to buy ’em cheap

Since you might be having a hard time finding the funds for your 1. your ticket to Phu Quoc and 2. the Opening Ceremony-Spring Breakers mall trash collection you’ll need for those white sand beaches, you should at least let us help you out with the third essential component of your hypothetical spring escape: books!

You’ll need them for those hypothetically long hours in the sun, and lucky you, two epic sales are going on shortly so you can save your ducats for neon logo cropped tees and duty-free Toblerones. You might also hit up Adobe Books, which has been served its final eviction notice in the face of incoming yuppie muck *sad face*

Friends of the San Francisco Library book fair

What: 250,000 specimens of all kinds of media, the sale of which will not only augment your lit-loving vacay, but also go towards supporting the good old SF Public Library, YAY. If you’re a Friend of the public library with a capital “F,” you can hit up the space on Tuesday night for a special preview, which we hope goes down like those videos from the ’80s of crazed parents trying to bumrush Toys ‘R’ Us for the best Cabbage Patch Doll.

Cop: There’s gonna be hardcover books for $3, and $1 DVDs and CDs since no one knows what those things are anymore — but for the purposes of your Vietnam getaway, immerse in the $2 paperback section. (Please, not The Beach.)

Fri/3-Sun/7, 10am-6pm, free. Fort Mason Center Pavilion, SF. www.friendssfpl.org

Chronicle Books “Back to School” warehouse sale

What: James Franco specifically told us that spring break was forever, but apparently Chronicle Books didn’t get the memo — it’s celebrating the childrens’ return to classes with this storewide sale — selected titles are 65 percent off. 

Cop: You can get the discounted price on all of Chronicle’s titles in travel, literature, food and drink, etc. We are particularly intrigued by the new NPR book, though the book of Andy Warhol fashion sketches may be better suited to your hypothetical vacay.

April 11-12, 9am-7pm; April 13, 10am-3pm, free. Chronicle Books warehouse, 680 Second St., SF. www.chroniclebooks.com

Live Shots: K-Pop’s Night Out, Ashley Monroe, and more at SXSW, Day 1

Tony Robles
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1

Photos and words by Bowerbird Photography

Fans made scrawling lines all through Austin, Texas, waiting to gain access to countless shows, as the SXSW 2013 music festival kicked off on Tuesday night.

Some eager devotees sat cross-legged, tolerating the intense Texas sun since 9am according to a chatty security guard, for the K-Pop Night Out showcase. In the SXSW hierarchy, badges trump wristbands, leaving hardcore fans without tags to load up on patience, scour listings for shows with free access, and pray capacity doesn’t max.

The Geeks, a punk band from Seoul, kicked off the K-Pop lineup — and their music was loud and fast. The lyrics, although mostly screamed in English, were unintelligible. It was all you could want from a punk act. The lead singer’s face-ripping seizures and crotch-grabbing agonies made the perfect counterpoint to his nice boy, real life personality. (He wore cute red Keds and white socks, after all.)

Over at the Empire Control Room, rising star, Ashley Monroe, brought a polished sound and mainstream appeal to SXSW, after appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno Monday night.  We expect to hear her a lot more at weddings, as couples make goo-goo eyes during their first dance.

For those who want to steer clear of the madness, it’s getting real in the Whole Foods parking lot with free preview concerts, clean bathrooms, and healthy samples. Buggaboo, a laid-back, broad strumming, stomp-along Austin band stopped shopping carts in their tracks.

Another act, Mike Love (not to be confused with the Beach Boys singer) came from Hawaii, bringing hippy goodness with reggae flair that paired well with the imported bananas we shared. He whipped out the beatbox, singing along to the loops he laid with lyrics that favored staccato pronunciation of multisyllabic words like “positivity” and “beautiful,” to embrace their full, upbeat, rhythmic potential.

In addition to the music, people watching at SXSW provided its own entertainment. Sitting on the curb on Tuesday’s balmy night, and chatting with eager travelers from Mexico to Australia, felt good enough when standing in another line proved too much.

Mall the right moves

Andrew Lam
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0
Mall the right moves

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN The fact that that our conversation is taking place to beat of Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2012 seminal classic “Call Me Maybe” leads me to believe that T-We Tea owner Christopher Coccagna is being real when he says he’ll be holding 12:30pm dance parties for the FiDi lunch set in the darling tea shop he just opened in the neighborhood.

It also leads me to believe that Crocker Galleria may be downtown’s most fun mall — or at least, that it’s on the way.

“I was totally down on having a retail store,” Coccagna tells me as we ship cups of his “Chai Me” blend in his small shop’s kiki parlor. For years he sold at events like the Renegade Craft Fair, consterning regulars who often ran out of his cheekily-titled single origin teas (“Bicurious George,” “Sexpot,” and “Hipsters in Wonderland”) before the next sales opportunity. But the five-year lease contracts often associated with renting commercial space scared the young business owner away.

In contrast, Crocker Galleria is offering him a much more flexible agreement and he’s been presiding over his space, lovingly decorated in fuchsias and Moroccan poufs since February. “I’m going for Euro pop, eclectic, and adorable,” Coccagna says.

Does Topshelf Boutique have FiDi’s new look? Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

That craft-fair-over-corporate-chic aesthetic may speak to Cushman and Wakeman retail manager Sabrina Goris’ plans for Crocker. In the past few years, Versaces and Dolce and Gabbanas have been vacating the center. At the moment, Ralph Lauren’s shuttered doors make a great visual metaphor for this sea change, although not as good as the expensive tiling floor work that Versace left behind for new tenant VIP Luggage. The turnover has made way for a mix of tenants who count 85 percent local owners among them.

Goris partners with local business nonprofits like La Cocina and Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center to attract new entrepreneurs to their first brick-and-mortar location. La Luna Cupcakes, a La Cocina grad, is set to open in Crocker this spring and Tomboy Tailors, the city’s best genderqueer place for a butch dandy to get a perfectly tailored three-piece, went through the Renaissance program and also opened at Crocker this year.

The challenge with the space is figuring how to make the robust lunch crowd that comes for the mall’s top floor food court stay to shop. Every Thursday from 11am to 3pm a year-round farmer’s market sets up on the first floor, opening on Tuesdays during the summer as well. The mall even hosts a concert series to get shoppers in the glass doors.

Like the rest of the universe, Crocker is experimenting with pop-ups, too. On the first floor, a quartet of small local clothing and accessory companies opened a single storefront in February. Surf brand After Eleven and its irreverent pizza cross t-shirts, Topshelf Boutique, kids shirts and zoo-themed tees from Animal Instinct, and Embergrass Jewelry bring a fresher fashion tone to the mall. Their pop-up run’s was recently extended — it’ll now be open until the end of March.

Christina Ruiz, who opened Topshelf Boutique originally in a van that traveled about, bringing gauzy, bright dresses, studded button-downs, cat-eye sunglasses, and the occasional vintage piece to shoppers, has had a lot of luck in the pop-up space. She admits that originally, she wasn’t sure if the Topshelf’s club casual style would sell to the big-money downtown types.

“I was surprised that I sold so well,” she says. “I worked as a bartender for a long time when I didn’t have to dress up for anything.” She’s grown to appreciate the day job schedule, though. “I really like it here because [customers come through] Monday to Friday, 10am to 6pm. That’s so not traditional for retail.”

Office workers who wear studs, tea shop kikis, a mall that could be kind of cool — sounds like a different kind of commercial community is being built. Says Coccagna of this mall magic: “you can feel the shift here.”

Crocker Galleria 50 Post, SF. www.thecrockergalleria.com

 

Next, the Treasure Island sellout

Zelda Bronstein
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82
Next, the Treasure Island sellout

Now that he’s done such a bang-up job negotiating a deal for the CMPC hospital, leaving the supervisors to clean up the mess, does anyone think that the hurry-up-and-finish-in-time-for-a-China-trip talks with Rose Pak and Willie Brown (who has his own interests here, too) will have a good outcome for San Francisco?

Because I don’t.

Nothing the mayor has directly negotiated with private interests has been anything but a disaster for the city. America’s Cup, the Warriors arena, CPMC … the guy just can’t seem to say No. And you really don’t want someone who gives away the story to be representing the city when there are billions of dollars and the future of a huge new neighborhood (on a sinking island in the middle of a rising bay) at stake.

I still don’t see how intense residential and commercial development works on TI, when there’s only one overcrowded artery on and off the island. In New York, people who live on Staten Island are used to using the (free, heavily subsidized)  ferry — 60,000 a day take the boats into Manhattan. That’s going to be a huge stretch for people who live on TI, where there will be limited shopping (even for things like groceries) — and at this point, I don’t see the developer, or the city, purchasing and paying for enough cheap ferry service to make it an effective form of transportation.

That said, if we can make it work as a transit-first community, I have no problem with developing Treasure Island — but I don’t see Lee getting the level of civic benefits out of Lennar and the China Development Corporation that San Francisco needs to make this pencil out. Hasn’t happened yet. 

 

Stardust tea in Japantown: Crown and Crumpet re-opens in a quicker format

Andrew Lam
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0

The beloved tearoom Crown and Crumpet Tea Room – which closed down its previous Ghirardelli Square location nine months ago – reopened in the first floor lobby of Japanatown’s New People entertainment hub and shopping center.

After deciding not to renew the lease on their waterfront space, Crown and Crumpet owners, husband and wife team Amy and Chris Dean were asked to open up a Japantown location by the folks behind New People. To the Deans the neighborhood seemed like a natural fit.

“We partner with the J-Pop festival and have a lot of fans like Lolita girls who love Crown and Crumpet and Japantown as well,” Amy Dean tells me on my trip to the shop on its first day up and running. “Because we collaborate with them a lot they asked if we would open up a Crown and Crumpet here.”

The new space is significantly smaller than its old location, which is why it has appropriately enough, been packaged a “tea stop café” as opposed to a tearoom. Dean explains, “we wanted to make it a little different so that people would know it is a casual, quicker version of our old shop. It’s a quicker experience but you still get afternoon tea.”

Crown and Crumpet is currently working to create cinema snacks and bento boxes for the movie theater in New People’s basement. The casual vibe is reflected in the shop’s prominent positioning of its to-go service, and it’s on the way to selling Blue Bottle coffee. (As of right now, Amy and Chris are working to get their degree from Blue Bottle’s training program before they can start brewing).

But though the small space might not allow for as much lingering as the Ghirardelli Square location, but that doesn’t mean vistors won’t want to stick around. From the giant teacup clock hanging on the wall to trademark floral-and-polka-dot tablecloths to the staff’s coordinating aprons, Crown and Crumpet’s a sweet sight.

The three-tiered afternoon tea was the standard order among customers on the afternoon I visited. Amy Dean personally explained each item on the plates as she simultaneously ran around working out some standard opening day kinks. The service was stacked: petit fours on top, crumpets and a scone in the middle, and sandwiches on the bottom level of the tray.

I opted to try out their signature stardust black tea, which was delightfully sweet but more importantly, sparkled! The blend has tiny silver shimmering specks in it.

Crown and Crumpet is still working to open up a bigger location, similar to its former site. The Deans aim to open that up before Christmas in the Union Square neighborhood. “We tentatively have a space where we hope to include a library area for the men as well as a party room,” Dean says.

There is no denying Crown and Crumpet’s Tea Stop Café offers a different experience compared to the old shop. But with 110 reservations on the books for its second day of service, and 62 visitors by the time I visited on Friday, it would seem customers still have a sweet spot for the place. “It’s really amazing that we have so many people that love us,” says Dean. “There are other tearooms in San Francisco but we really pay attention to details, the charm, and whimsicalness of it all.”

Crown and Crumpet Tea Room 1746 Post, SF. (415) 771-4252, www.crownandcrumpet.com

 

Here, here

Andrew Lam
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1
Here, here

STREET SEEN As the author of a style column, I spend time trawling the city for innovative new local designers. Clothes that are made here, cute ones. Let me hear about them, I’ll put it in print, swear down.

But there’s not… that much of them. Speaking historically, of course. In the heyday of garment manufacturing, San Francisco churned out mountains of readywear — more than any other city in the country besides New York and Los Angeles.

Then we started to export our business overseas. You’ve heard about how Levi-Strauss used to have a factory on Valencia Street — not just the artsy pop-up shop they opened in 2010? Your jeans aren’t made here anymore guys, unless you’re copping from newbie “Kickstarter brand” Gustin (www.weargustin.com), Holy Stitch (www.juliandash.com), Self Edge (www.selfedge.com), or one of the other small local lines that have popped up in the denim giant’s wake.

These companies cater to locavore customers who “expect their clothing labels to read like restaurant menus,” as Modern Luxury put it in a 2011 article about the state of the SF garment industry. Making clothes locally means less turnaround time, less environmental impact — not to mention the sweet San Francisco cache that locally made palazzo pants hold.

Problem is, the garment factories that the industry needs have been greatly reduced in number.

In a Hayes Valley cafe, Gail Baugh sits at her laptop, shutting it with a morning-time, capable air when I sit at her table. Her outfit says boardroom, accented with exceptions. A beautifully-patterned scarf, and large brooch-like earrings suit this no-nonsense type with a degree in chemistry of textiles, 35 years of experience in the garment industry, and a byline on the book on fashion. Really, Baugh’s The Fashion Designer’s Textile Directory is a best-seller in its particular category on Amazon, she tells me.

She is the president and one of five founding members of PeopleWearSF (www.peoplewearsf.org), a Bay Area garment industry trade association that was formed in 2011 to fill the vacuum left by SF Fashion Industries, which played the role for 75 years before the garment industry collapse. PeopleWearSF’s members flip up to $25 million in yearly sales volume, though it also includes rank beginners in the clothes game.

“If you want a vibrant economy, you have to make stuff,” Baugh tells me matter-of-factly. Her organization — and SFMade (www.sfmade.org), the no-fee membership group who represents local producers and whose cheery stickers adorn a host of local retailers’ windows and product labels here in the city — provide networking opportunities to their members. These include 40-some brands, including outdoor label Triple Aught, longtime Mission District purveyor of pretty Weston Wear, and Babette, the flowing line of neutral-toned women’s wear based out of an Oakland warehouse. Those three manufacture locally, but not all PeopleWearSF members do.

Both trade associations work with public policy — specifically, through the Mayor’s FashionSF Economic Development Initiative — to provide more resources to the garment factories that were once much more prevalent in San Francisco. Efforts to keep the sew-shops open have to operate through a multi-pronged approach. It’s not just soaring rents that close the factories’ doors, but a dwindling high-skilled workforce pool that’s willing to work for the wages typically offered by the factories.

“Sharing resources, communicating issues — it’s a good business policy,” says Steven Pinksy, whose wife started Babette in 1968 and who was also a founding member of PeopleWearSF. Joiners, in other words, are welcome.

Those looking to jumpstart their Bay fashion career could do worse than attend tonight’s Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center’s panel discussion on starting small in fashion, featuring experts from PeopleWearSF, Apparel Wiz, Sheila Moon Apparel, and CBU Productions.

“Manufacturing Micro” Wed/27, 6-9pm, $20. Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, 275 Fifth St., SF. tinyurl.com/manufacturingmicro

American horror story

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1
American horror story

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM “Go look in the refrigerator.” Normally, that’s not a particularly sinister phrase. But if the fridge in question happens to be sitting in Jeffrey Dahmer’s Milwaukee kitchen, circa 1991, it contains the following: a box of Arm & Hammer, condiments (mustard, ketchup, steak sauce), and a freshly severed human head.

With details like that, there’s no wonder the Dahmer case continues to fascinate, 22 years after his capture (and 19 years after he was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate). Chris James Thompson’s The Jeffrey Dahmer Files, a documentary with narrative re-enactments, is savvy to the fact that lurid outrageousness never gets old. It also plays off the contrast between Dahmer’s gruesome crimes and his seemingly mild-mannered personality.

And thankfully, these aren’t cheesy, America’s Most Wanted-style re-enactments. We see Jeffrey (Andrew Swant) going about a mix of mundane and fraught-with-meaning tasks: being fitted for new glasses, eating a hamburger, shopping for 10-gallon drums, and buying way more bleach than one man could possibly ever need. We never see him kill, though we do witness him entering a hotel with another young man — and leaving with a suspiciously heavy suitcase. Swant isn’t a dead ringer for Dahmer, but he has the same “serial killers look like everybody else” quality. It’s unsettling, and goes a long way toward explaining why, as real-life Dahmer neighbor Pamela Bass recalls here, the Jeff she knew (“kinda friendly, but introverted,” Bass says) hardly seemed like a murdering cannibal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSzeu6ohgeA

But Wisconsin’s most passionate body-part hoarder (since Ed Gein, anyway) was 100 percent authentic, a fact made abundantly clear to the homicide detective assigned to the case, Pat Kennedy (who made that stomach-turning fridge peek), and medical examiner Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen, tasked with identifying Dahmer’s torn-asunder victims. “We were dismantling someone’s museum,” Jentzen remembers of the crime scene, a tidy one-bedroom in a rough part of town where, months earlier, flippant cops had ushered a dazed teenager back into Dahmer’s clutches, believing his tale that the younger man had stormed out after a domestic spat. Oops.

Since Dahmer is dead and his crimes have been well-documented — in books by Dahmer’s father and others, true-crime specials, and the 2002 narrative film that gave future Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner his breakout role — The Jeffrey Dahmer Files does well to concentrate on people whose lives have been forever changed by the case, two because of their jobs and one due to an unfortunate coincidence. Though Kennedy and Jentzen offer compelling interviews, Bass’ participation is key; unlike the two men, who’ve no doubt told their stories dozens of times before, her emotions still feel raw.

She speaks about getting to know her across-the-hall neighbor — he stood out for being the only white guy living in the Oxford Apartments, a fact made more notable when it was revealed he killed mostly men of color, many of whom were also gay. (As his victims’ families would no doubt agree, if Dahmer’d had a taste for rich white girls, his story would certainly have played out differently.)

Not only did Bass have to deal with the revelation that she’d been living next to a killer (“I remember a stench, an odor”), she found herself surrounded by a media circus, harassed by gawkers, and blamed by strangers for “not doing anything.” Even after she’d moved — the entire apartment building was torn down — the stigma of having been Dahmer’s neighbor lingered.

Kind of like the killer’s own notoriety. Speaking of, the Akron, Ohio house where Jeffrey Dahmer grew up (and committed his first murder) has been on the market for six months. Refrigerator included.

THE JEFFREY DAHMER FILES

March 1-7

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St, SF

www.roxie.com

 

No traffic for the rich

Zelda Bronstein
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147
No traffic for the rich

The more libertarian elements of the Bay Area have been complaining for years about carpool lanes on the freeways. If everyone’s stuck in traffic, and those lanes are open, why can’t everyone use them — and cut back on congestion?

Now, heeding those complaints (and moving in the fast lane toward privatization of the highway system), the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is moving to allow single-occupant vehicles to use the carpool lanes — for a price.

So the people who can afford to spent ten bucks extra a day can save time, too — and everyone else has to sit in traffic. A couple of problems with this scenario.

For one thing, the idea that moving more cars to the carpool lane will ease congestion on the rest of the road has no basis in fact or reality. Freeways are like jails — the more you build, the faster they fill up. Double the size of I-80 and soon it will still be as crowded. Build another Bay Bridge and it will be choked with cars in a year. That’s been the entire experience of American highway construction since World War II.

An open freeway encourages people to drive. When the price of waiting in traffic gets high enough, people either use transit or … carpool.

Which is the point of the carpool lanes. If a couple of people leave their cars at home, freeing up space for everyone else and in the process cutting down on fossil-fuel emissions, then they get to ride in a less-crowded lane. The carpool lanes are supposed to be more empty; that’s the idea.

Then there’s this notion of first-class and second-class highway travel.

In a perfect world, people whose time is worth more money would sacrifice cash to get where they’re going, and by sitting in traffic for half an hour less would earn tha extra money back at work, and all would even out. But even the most academic-minded economists know that’s not how the real world works. (Of course, in a perfect world we’d have such fast, cheap and effective transit systems that nobody would drive around the Bay Area at all.)

No: What will really happen is that wealthier people who want to go shopping or out to dinner or whatever and drive without sitting in traffic will get to do that, and poorer people will lose even more of their time to the commute, which they can’t afford to do anyway, and the level of economic inequality in the Bay Area will get worse. So will the air quality.

Brilliant idea.

Nite Trax: DJ Sprinkles lays it out

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Nite Trax: DJ Sprinkles lays it out

The phenomenal house DJ and experimental musicmaker on mainstream visibility, transgender globalism, Bay Area queer culture, and the “shopping mall diversity” of the current dance music scene.

Techno has always had room for theorists and intellectuals, from Derrick May to the Mille Plateaux label roster, and social activists, like Moodymann and Underground Resistance. Most of that discourse usually takes place musically, however, with concepts emerging from the vinyl itself. The celebrated DJ Sprinkles, a.k.a. Terre Thaemlitz, the American head of Japan-based label Comatonse, tops all that by making intellectually grounded music glimmering with poetic touches and expounding in interviews and writing on such heady, heated topics as essentialism, gender idenitity, surveillance, and authenticity. She leads workshops, goes on speaking engagements, and isn’t afraid to let loose in interviews. (For example — see below — rather than “born this way” platitudes, she considers her queer identity “beat this way.”) 

It’s a beautiful thing, especially in the rare context of controversial truth and radical opinion pouring from the mouth and keyboard of an outspoken transgender major player on the stubbornly homogenous global house-techno DJ scene. Of course, it all comes down to the music — we’ll get a treat when Sprinkles (who chose the name because he wanted something that sounded “totally pussy” in opposition to macho DJ culture, to buck the testosteronal scene) performs Sun/24 at Honey Soundsystem — and Sprinkles certainly has the goods. He’s released umpteen pieces in an astoundng breadth of genres under multiple pseudonyms over the past 20 years. Masterpiece deep house album “Midtown 120 Blues” siezed the top of several best of 2009 charts and was, typically, followed by Soulnessless, a 30-hour “mp3 album” of music and video. Because why the hell not?

I got a chance to exchange emails with Sprinkles before her appearance here. It’ll be an interesting return to the Bay Area, where she lived for several years before decamping to Japan. Here’s all she had to say.    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY79cyv8pH8

SFBG It’s been 13 years since you lived in Oakland, is that correct? Can you tell me why you decided to leave and what it was like to live here then, with regards to the music, political, and queer scene?

DJ SPRINKLES Yes, it’s been a long time. I used to live across the street from a hotel where the Unabomber once stayed. Honestly, I can’t say I miss California. I never really connected with any queer or transgendered communities in SF or Oakland. Whenever I tried, they seemed immersed in West Coast spiritualism and zodiac bullshit, which I found completely alienating. Most of the transgendered people I met there were prone to metaphysics — by which I mean they were ideologically (and economically and medically) invested in defining their transgenderism in relation to a perceived split between their “physical bodies” and their “true inner selves.” I’m an anti-essentialist, non-op, materialist, anti-spiritualist… so that clearly wasn’t a match with my own transgendered identity.

There was also a weird conservatism in SF’s queer scenes that I associated with the fact a lot of people in SF had been raised in conservative Midwestern towns, so they were in SF to “live the life.” I felt there was a lot of unacknowledged parody and role play going on — people trying to overcome a life of repression and closets by wrapping themselves in rainbow flag culture. Yet, when going to buy groceries or such, I still found myself being harassed as a “fag” on the street like in any other town in the US. I felt my four years there was all quite standard. I don’t really think of the Bay Area as a “special place” for being queer and transgendered.

US identity politics have a particularly inextricable link to the concept of the ghetto — not only as a place of economic strife and forced communal ostracization from a “white middle-class mainstream,” but also as a self-invested “safe space” for non-mainstream social movements. This is part of migrant culture. For example, after my grandparents passed through Ellis Island, they immediately moved to a place where people spoke the same language as their homeland, etc. The Castro, New York’s West Village, Little Italy, China Town… these are all migrant-based communities formed by people seeking safety in numbers in the face of not being welcome elsewhere — these two dynamics of “safety” and “alienation” are inseparable to most US identity politics. So these communal zones all display the problems and contradictions of cultural identification that plague mainstream US culture as an “immigrant nation” that is simultaneously “anti-immigrant” – because the “immigrant” is a brutal reminder that there are no “real Americans” beyond Native Americans, which the majority are not. And of course, the fact that recent generations of immigrants are primarily people of color does not jibe with conventional black/white US race discourse, which continues to be largely devoid of other browns, as well as the concept of the person of color as a willing immigrant (as opposed to the descendant of a slave). This history and context is peculiar to the US social landscape, and it creates a lot of weird identity essentialisms and hostilities around gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class…

Not to say other countries don’t have their own fucked up ways of causing and dealing with social problems, but moving to Japan and realizing that pretty much the entirety of Western identity politics did not function here was a big life experience. It was like leaving the Earth’s gravitational pull — it didn’t mean gravity no longer existed, but almost everything I had internalized and believed I understood about my relationship to gravity was no longer helpful in understanding the dynamics of dominations at work in this other context. I wasn’t freed of gravity, but lost in weightlessness. I had to learn to feel weight in a completely different way. This is why so many of my projects dealing with my own immigration and cultural issues consistently invoke the rather limited and problematic US language of black/white race relations. It is a critical gesture intended to highlight the limitations of my having been raised amidst that US language and social conditioning, yet now living within a non-US context with few tools to work with.

Because music’s value is so often tied to an essentialist concept of racial authenticity, it becomes difficult and risky to ask an audience to question their relationships to the very value systems through which they likely purchased the album – but that is also why I choose to work with audio. Not because of its possibilities, but its all-too-clear limitations. Since I am unable to believe in the authenticity or purity of identities of any kind, when I invoke “identifiable” sounds (a “queer” sound, a “black” sound, etc.) I am doing so to question the social relationships around their construction, proliferation, and distribution. The moment we become lazy about our use of those “identifiable” sounds — the minute we take it for granted that the essentialist associations they have come to carry are unquestionable and real reflections of material social experiences — everything becomes one-dimensional and shallow. This is why almost all music is one-dimensional and shallow! [Laughs.] For example, if I can beat a dead horse, my problem with Madonna’s “Vogue” is not that it was “inauthentic,” but that its terms of discourse misrepresented its relationship to vogueing by actively erasing the very contexts of Latina and African-American transgendered culture that inspired it (via lyrics about “It makes no difference if you’re black or white, a boy or a girl”… it TOTALLY made a difference, and THAT SOCIAL REALITY is where any real discussion on vogueing BEGINS.). So I’m interested in these other directions of audio discourse that cannot even occur if one is preoccupied with conflated essentializations of identity and sound. There is never a true point of origin for anything. It’s all referential and contextual. In my opinion, there is no point in discussions focussing on identifying the source of a sound or style — that is a hopelessly futile exercise, although it is the dominant exercise! It’s a distraction from the real discussions needing to be held, and those are discussions on relations of domination.

As a DJ in the late ’80s and early ’90s, there were a lot of drag queens asking me to play Madonna’s “Vogue” when it first came out. I refused, but I could understand their requests. We all have very complicit and complex relationships to dominations, and a perverse desire to celebrate our visibility within the dominant mainstream, no matter how unfamiliar or distorted that reflection may be… often because we are conditioned to feel so unhappy with what we see in the mirror to begin with. Mainstream visibility is like getting approval of the Father. It’s a mental and abusive process. It is also totally standard. So I get it… But there is also that which remains unrepresented and invisible to most. That which existed, and may have already been lost, but did so without seeking approval of the Father. And again, this is generally not a freed or liberated space, but a space of intense hatred for the Father. These are difficult things to speak of and represent, because any act of representation has the potential to be a violation of the cultural site it wishes to speak of. So to speak of them requires obfuscating or complicating the usual functions of language – not through vague poetry, but unexpected flashes of clarity coming from unexpected vectors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2iKF_11WbY

SFBG You left during the first Internet boom I believe, and now SF is in the middle of a second one (although a bit different than the first —  the first wave seemed to have much more geeks and freaks in it, while this one seems much more regimented and Ivy League, even while many longtime residents are still feeling the results of “global recession”). When was the last time you were back here? And what are some of your recent thoughts on how house music is being affected by economic circumstances?

DJ SPRINKLES I was only back once about 10 years ago, visiting friends for a few days. When I moved away at the end of 2000, internet and web development had already undergone a rigid formalization. Years earlier, a web designer did a bit of everything. By 2000, developers were already split into specific teams focussing on interface, coding, page flow, etc… all processes were specialized, departmentalized, corporatized. I hadn’t heard about the “second internet boom” there, but the way you describe it doesn’t surprise me since it would surely be an extension of that regimentation that took place in the first boom.

And in a way, the same can be said of this “second boom” (third?) around house music. In the same way almost all websites have taken on the same continuity and feel, so has electronic dance music. You buy an album, and all the tracks sound similar — as opposed to the old days when an electronic dance track like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” was tacked on to the end of an otherwise standard soul-band album that didn’t sonically match it at all. Today’s music consumer experience is much more streamlined and organized, which affects how people produce an album as well. Younger generations — 20-somethings — grew up amidst this homogenization, so I am fairly sure they do not feel what I am speaking of… although they may recognize it as a historical process.

I try to play with discontinuity and mixing things up, like in my K-S.H.E album, “Routes not Roots,” which had monologues and ambient tracks interspersed between house cuts. But I once made the mistake of reading people’s blog comments, and they really seemed upset about this kind of thing. “Way to ruin the mix,” or “Why the fuck didn’t you put that monologue at the end of the album?” They have no patience for non-homogeneity. The same goes for my Comatonse Recordings website itself — people seem utterly confused and helpless. If one doesn’t do everything completely standard and at the same level, people get disoriented. It’s a kind of cultural compression going on, similar to audio compression, where everything has to be “punched up” to the same intensity or people feel lost. What the fuck is so wrong with being lost? Why would you expect — let alone insist — your interactions with non-mainstream media to be completely mainstream in process?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8iF7JQiz50

SFBG I’ve been hanging out recently with the new, young generation of ACT-UP activists who are transcending mere ’90s revival and undertaking a lot of energizing political discourse and action. Were you involved in the queer activist movement back then — or now? Would you characterize your musical project as a form of activism, especially in its more intellectual and challenging aspects?

DJ SPRINKLES That’s nice to hear. Although you use the term “action,” I assume the real interesting stuff has little to do with demos and “direct actions,” and more to do with communal education initiatives, etc.? My direct action days were mostly during the late ’80s and early ’90s, while living in New York. Most of those activities were in conjunction with various caucuses in ACT-UP, and WHAM! (Women’s Health Action & Mobilization).

I do consider my audio and other projects “political” — in theme, and also in their attempts to (dis)engage with standard industry practices. But clearly this is something different than direct action “activism” or community outreach, because my main social engagements are with people working for labels, distributors, music festivals, museums, and other culture industries. Maybe “culture jamming” is a better way to put this kind of political activity. Personally, I found myself distanced from direct action groups because the terms of identification they cultivated out of strategic necessity so often folded back into essentialisms that excluded me on a personal level. So I was always advocating for the recognition and acceptance of something other than myself (like the way “born this way” ideologies take over discussions of LGBT rights… I consider myself more “beat this way,” my queer identity being primarily informed by material ostracism and harassment than by some mythological self-actualization and pride). That, combined with the mid-’90s move away from direct action toward CBO’s (Community Based Organizations) — largely because the tactics of direct action had been so thoroughly coopted by mainstream media – was pretty much the end of my serious direct action involvements. Over the years, enunciating this process has become the core political act of my projects and activities. I do not do this to discourage people from forms of direct action, but as a simultaneous form of critical analysis that hopefully contributes in other ways to our various attempts to react to dominations.

SFBG Do you feel that, as the means of production and distribution have been more and more democratized in the past decade, house and techno music-making and DJing have been living up to their potential as a form of resistance to mainstream capitalism and culture, or do you feel they’ve become more homogenized and/or annexed by neoliberal, bourgeois culture?

DJ SPRINKLES I do not believe the means of production and distribution have become more democratized. I take issue with the way people always confuse “commercial accessibility” with “democratization.” The breadth and variation of today’s music production strategies is no more than a shopping mall diversity. We are all working with similar software on similar platforms. Mac, Windows, Unix… Banana Republic, Abercrombie & Fitch, The Gap… Having said that, if these musics had a potential, I believe it was lost back in the ’90s when anti-sampling legislation (mostly focusing on hip-hop) laid the groundwork for today’s electronic music. It basically reinvigorated house with “musicianship,” “authorship,” and all that crap which used to play far less of a role in this genre’s early days. And the younger generation – basically, today’s 20-somethings who grew up after the whole sampling debates — really don’t seem to understand how record label legal departments work.

So they list up all the samples they recognize in a track in the comment fields of music websites, which is putting the producers they wish to support at risk. There is no sense of how we can cultivate — let alone protect — “underground” media and information in this online era. Everything is about “sharing,” when in fact we need to be developing a parallel discourse around meaningful information distribution patterns, including strategically withholding information from the web. The cliché idea of making “everything accessible for everyone” is not only naîve, but negates the social and cultural specificities that give certain forms of media their alternative values, in particular collage and sampling. Anyone who has used a random image taken from a Google image search on their blog page, and then gotten an email from Getty Images’ legal department asking for back royalties, knows what I’m talking about. Treating subcultural musics as though they are meant for “everyone” — whether this is being done by fans, or the labels and online distributors themselves — is the biggest sign of people not understanding the media they are dealing with. And since all of that is SOP these days, it’s pretty much a sign that the sample-based genres of house is dead. Is talking about house’s political potential in 2013 really all that different than the trend of talking about the radical politics of ’60s rock during the ’80s?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4M3-t9lw7o

SFBG I feel like, with parties like Honey Soundsystem, there is a huge resurgence of interest in an underground queer dance music culture — a kind of new underground opposed to corporate or low-quality dance music (yet still taking place in corporate spaces). Is this phenomenon occurring in Japan as well? Do you feel there are specific possibilities with this, not just in terms of opportunity for queer DJs to travel but of transformation of queer discourse and politically actualizing a new generation?

DJ SPRINKLES Hey, low-quality is where it’s at. It’s what it’s all about. What was Chicago house if not low quality? It’s important to place value within the “low” in order to counter conventional associations between the terms “good,” “high quality” and “upper class.” I’m not talking about celebrating kitsch, or that kind of petit-bourgeois trivialization of the “low.” I’m talking about finding other values in the “low” that cannot find expression within a language developed to express everything in terms of “low vs. high.” This is ultimately about the identification of other values amidst class struggle.

I don’t think house resonates as a queer medium anymore. Those days are over. Today it is primarily a white, heterosexual, European phenomenon. That was the case early on. I mean, how many Americans became aware of house music in the ’80s by buying Chicago house sold back to us on UK compilations? The US has always treated its own history of electronic music like utter shit… The US is such a fucking rock’n’roll shithole. So I think for people to appreciate house music’s queer roots, and to actively invest in those themes today, requires people becoming deliberate and explicit about those interests. But whether that deliberate action would focus on “queer visibility” or not is another issue. It doesn’t have to focus on “visibility” — especially since visibility has become such an oppressive aspect of dominant LGBT movements. Explicitness can also be about closets. Not only the usual closets born of heterosexism, but less considered closets around sexuality and gender that have been formed by the actions of the “born this way” LGBT mainstream. Well, that’s the direction I try to take it… reflecting on, and constructing, queer and transgendered histories that are as skeptical of Pride[TM] as they are angry about violence. And I do believe, globally speaking, queer and transgendered experiences are much more informed by violence than pride. So this should be reflected in how and where we make noise. In my opinion, music that functions in completely standard ways – socially and economically – does not have much potential for reflecting queer or transgendered contexts in politically precise, helpful or meaningful ways. You end up with essentialist, humanist shit like Lady Gaga’s, “Born This Way.” She is not somebody I would consider an ally.

You know, American media is so fixated on the idea that sexuality and gender must either be biologically predetermined, or a personal choice. The “it’s not a choice” argument is a common theme in television shows, etc. Both of these options revolve around a fiction of free will. Like, if it’s not a choice, then the only other possibility must be some supra-social, biological reason that cannot be questioned. Both of these conclusions preserve the status quo brutality of how culture forces gender and sexual binaries upon us. The thought that our absence of choice might be rooted in social tyrannies – not biological predispositions – remains unthinkable. The mainstream has it half right when they say, “it’s not a choice,” but it’s a half-truth that has been twisted into a decoy from the real issues at hand – the inescapability of the hetero/homo and female/male paradigms. We are given no other choices through which to understand our genders and sexualities. Sexuality is far greater than two or three. The same goes for gender — and yes, I’m speaking biologically, human bodies are way more diverse than A or B. To argue that the reason you deserve rights under a humanist democratic system is because of genetics is a retreat into feudalist logic. It’s the same as an aristocrat arguing that their rights and privileges were deserved because of their family blood-line and DNA. “Born this way” is antithetical to any democratic argument for rights rooted in a social capacity for understanding and transformation. It is astounding that the majority of people cannot comprehend that any “born this way” argument is a complete obliteration of their social agency. “I can’t help it, so give me the same rights as you…” Fuck that. We shouldn’t be asking to participate in the rights and privileges of those who have oppressed us. We should be trying to divest those groups of privileges. That is the best way to help ourselves and minimize the violence we enact on others.

Humanist legislative practices are still rooted in feudal ideologies, and I am convinced the long-term repercussions of this is a cultural entrenchment that makes any democratic project (including US-brand democracy, socialism or communism) an impossibility. We can already see how the post-Cold War world is retreating into clan-based, privatized, anti-state organization structures. Capitalism is increasingly liberated of democratic agendas because — surprise! — capitalism works better with slavery. Capitalism is not about the distribution of wealth, and everyone’s equal chance to partake in a petit-bourgois lifestyle. It is about the isolation of wealth. There is no doubt in my mind that today’s moral insistence that all people must work at whatever job society throws them, and the accompanying presumption that all lower-class unemployed people are “lazy” (which is perpetuated by many lower-class peoples themselves), is an argument for slavery: forced labor in return for base subsistence at best. How is that not the reality of poverty under globalized capitalism?

…and that’s why I hate Lady Gaga. [Laughs.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JtoRxqK8s

SFBG You have some fascinatingly poetic thoughts about the intersection of transgender issues and immigration, the idea of “living as a ghost” in politicized and police-monitored spaces. Do you have any current thoughts on how globalization continues to affect transgender issues?

DJ SPRINKLES I think the fact that the world’s two largest economies around gender transitioning are in Thailand and Iran, yet the aesthetics of those economies follow largely western models of beauty and body, says a lot about how globalization affects transgendered issues. Thailand’s dominant transgendered culture revolves around the “Ladyboy” — a very essentialist transgendered model that is rooted in heterosexism and the cultural/ideological necessity for some men to “unbecome-man” in order for “straight men” to have sex with other men. Western transgendered discourses love to fetishize the “Ladyboy” as some kind of locally celebrated and accepted third-world transgendered native other, but this is patent orientalism. It refuses to envision how the strict regimentation of social codes for those transgendered people can be oppressive, or how the mythical “transgendered native’s special place at the edge of the village, possibly as a shaman” is a form of segregation. People also never address how such cultures are invariably patriarchies, and their models for transgenderism almost exclusively revolve around the MTF paradigm. And far as I know, Thailand has still not lifted their government prohibition on homosexual government employees, which is relatively new legislation passed just a few years back. This is all part of that context of transgendered production.

Meanwhile, Iran is a country where Islamic law prohibits homosexuality by fatwah. Since the ’70s, gender transitioning has been promoted as a way for men who have sex with men to avoid the death penalty, although many transitioned people still face the possibility of being murdered by their families or local communities. The cost of their procedures is partially subsidized by the Iranian government itself. While some Westerners have attempted to portray that as “progressive,” clearly it is the opposite. Many post-op transsexuals find themselves ghettoized, unemployed and cut off from the family structures that play such important roles in Iran’s social structure.

In both Thailand and Iran one can see how the global growth of gender-transitioning economies is connected to heterosexism and homophobia — something current Western gender analyses attempt to separate from gender transitioning through clear ideological divisions between gender and sexuality. While I believe these divisions between gender and sexuality are important and do have social value in the West, it is clear that the West is not the world. And the West has surely not overcome its heterosexism and homophobia, either. I believe it is more than coincidence that the global proliferation of gender transitioning technologies is happening parallel to medical industries’ attempts to divest of their previously blatant attempts to cure homosexuality, due to such methods falling out of cultural favor in the West and elsewhere. I also believe it is more than coincidence that today’s inescapable “born this way” arguments serve and justify today’s medical agendas so well.

For sure, my stance on medical transitioning has always been that I support peoples’ abilities to transform their bodies as they see necessary. Considering how few options for gender identification are offered to us, I can understand how a person can become no longer able to live within one’s body as it has been defined and shaped by social gender constraints. But, for obvious reasons, I am unable to believe those medical systems which propagated today’s gender binary are capable or willing to offer us a way out of our gender crises. Those industries move us further and further away from cultural environments that enable transgendered people to build medically unmediated relationships to our bodies. I just can’t accept that the medical industry’s methods for mediating our suffering are the only way. It really angers me… particularly since so many transgendered people are impoverished and without health care…

Hmm, you’re probably getting an idea as to why I am never invited to perform my more thematic projects in the US — just to DJ some house and go back home to Japan. [Laughs.]

SFBG Speaking of essentialism, ha: Any food or restaurants you miss from living here?

DJ SPRINKLES Mexican food…! It’s shockingly absent in Japan… and when you do find some, you generally wish you hadn’t. But what a weak note upon which to end this interview. [Laughs.]

Baby-carrot steps

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Baby-carrot steps

San Francisco is known for its discerning foodies and exotic culinary offerings, but not every neighborhood has access to nutritious, let alone gourmet, fare. Yet several programs have sprouted up recently to boost businesses that want to improve environmental practices or benefit their surrounding communities.

Carrotmob, an international organization that runs campaigns in San Francisco, encourages local consumers to make purchases at targeted businesses in order to help the establishments meet sustainability goals. “We refer to it as ‘sustainability,’ but that encompasses a broad range of issues,” explains Nisha Gulati, an organizer with the group. “A Carrotmob can range from anything from helping to reduce climate change, to carrying fair trade products.”

There is one day left for socially conscious diners to support Carrotmob’s campaign to benefit the Old Skool Café, a Bayview restaurant that employs at-risk youth. The 1940’s-style supper club, which held its grand opening last fall, is a nonprofit “designed to provide solid alternatives to a life of crime and poverty by providing jobs and a community of support,” according to the website. For every $25 dinner voucher purchased online via the “mob,” 15 percent will be dedicated to a college scholarship fund for its crew of young servers and cooks.

This past weekend, Carrotmob held a kickoff for its second San Francisco campaign to help Valencia artisan cheese vendor Mission Cheese apply for and maintain bike parking, and to install water-saving devices.

Gulati says Carrotmobbers have spent more than $1 million at 250 campaigns around the world since 2008, helping businesses achieve socially just or climate-friendly improvements. While the endeavor deserves points for creativity, we can’t help but bristle at Carrotmob’s tagline: “In a boycott, everyone loses. In a Carrotmob, everyone wins.” (Hello? Ever heard of the Anti-Apartheid Movement? The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ boycott against Taco Bell? Those boycotts produced some winners, we think.)

Meanwhile, there’s a push underway to bring healthier food to the city’s Southeast sector. While Fresh & Easy Markets in the Bayview and other locations may or may not shut their doors (stay tuned), the Southeast Food Access Coalition (SEFA) has started partnering with Third Street corner stores to improve residents’ access to healthy food options. The coalition is a collaborative of residents, community based organizations and city agencies focused on public health and food access.

The phrase “food desert” is typically used to describe low-income areas where stretches of pavement are dotted with liquor stores peddling unhealthy products. While corner stores in upscale neighborhoods may have vats of fresh chilled salads for sale under curved glass cases, stores in food desert areas typically carry little more than high-sodium chips, sugary soft drinks and alcohol.  A SEFA survey found that 60 percent of Bayview residents do their grocery shopping outside the area, and 33 percent reported that there were produce items they wanted but couldn’t buy in the area. 

Lee’s Market and Ford’s Grocery are two corner stores participating in the program, which aims to transform businesses’ food product offerings to promote overall health in a neighborhood disproportionately impacted by diabetes and other kinds of disease. In exchange for stocking fresh foods, the stores receive access to retail technical assistance, promotion efforts by SEFA and other government incentives. Similar efforts are underway in the Tenderloin.

In late January, District 10 Sup. Malia Cohen joined representatives from SEFA and other community organizations for a store “reopening” to raise awareness about the healthier product offerings. “Within one week of stocking fresh produce, Lee’s Market sold out of its inventory,” Cohen’s aide Andrea Bruss told the Guardian via email, “demonstrating that there is a demand from these communities for fresh foods.”

The happiest city — for some

Zelda Bronstein
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169
The happiest city — for some

Not to go all gloomy on a day when it’s finally not cold and the sun is out and San Francisco was just named the happiest city in America, (based on things like the number of shopping centers and cultural events), but really: Let’s not all jump up and down and celebrate. This is a very happy city for people who have money; it’s becoming a very anxiety-filled city for everyone else.

I’ve gotten quite a few comments and emails from friends on our cover story this week, and most of them go something like this:

“Great story. Really scary. I hope they don’t Ellis Act my building or I won’t be able to stay here, either.”

If you’re a renter in San Francisco, and you’ve been here a while, and you’re under rent control, chances are you’re nervous about your future. Because if you get evicted, you’re almost certainly leaving town. Maybe you can find a place in Oakland that’s smaller than what you currently have at twice the price, or maybe you can’t. 

This is a city under immense pressure, and while the economically secure can happily go to shopping centers and see the Opera, I would say a majority of the current residents of San Francisco are more stressed about their future than they have been in years. And that doesn’t seem to be addressed in the happiness calculus.

Buy me love

Andrew Lam
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0
Buy me love

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN You are welcome to spend Valentine’s Day as I will this year: corralled onto a dark dancefloor with 200 similar atheists in the face of the love goddess. But as many of you will be happily celebrating with partners (hiss!), I’ve assembled this four-pack of completely locally-made Valentine’s Day gifts. You’re welcome (pfft.)

TOURANCE FAKE FUR RABBIT ROBE, $178

You can’t get more luxe than this without killing something, and unless it’s vintage, I find artifacts of animal death incredibly unsexy. Tourance makes all its faux fur right here in the city, so if your Valentine isn’t much for Hef wear, check out the line’s vests in faux fox and mink, and its throw blankets modeled on chinchilla fuzz or inspired by mane of lion. Highly recommended for those of us too embarrassed by the word “snuggle” to ever ask to be embraced — nuzzling comes naturally when you just unwrapped the softest garment known to personkind.

www.tourance.com

 

RECCHIUTI’S CREATIVITY EXPLORED DOG ART CHOCOLATES, $21

 

Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

I am not a fan of gifting chocolates on V-Day to anyone but the most perfunctory recipient (the sweet woman who lives above you, the office manager, one’s priest.) That being said, it is possible to make a case for the originality of this four-pack of burnt caramel bites. The foursome is only available at Recchiuti’s Dogpatch shop, which is tucked into the flank of the factory where the chocolates are made (next to the company’s super-fly Chocolate Lab café, which is doing two dinner seatings for a special Feb. 14 menu.) The doggie designs were born as art made by developmentally-disabled adults at community gallery Creativity Explored, an echo of the for-sale exhibition you’ll find behind Recchiuti’s cash register. And in addition to all these things: doggies. People love those guys.

807 22nd St., SF. (415) 826-2868, www.recchiuti.com

VARIANCE OBJECTS HARNESS, PRICES START AT $240/SET

Why does BDSM fashion have to be so damn obvious? Everybody knows you’re there to be roughed up, do we really need to drop hundreds of dollars on the same industrially-accessorized black patent leather that everyone’s wearing? I love Variance Object’s founder Nicole Rimedio for making beaded bondage gear for your kinky-yet-discreet angel. “I love the idea that I may be wearing a rope to bind my lover’s body, but that most everyone else thinks is just an onyx necklace,” Rimedio told me in an email. The line includes pieces strung with super-strong cord that can be worn around the calves, looped underneath the crotch, or tied around wrists. Most everything is modular, for versatility/variety’s sake.

www.varianceobjects.com

SF BEER WEEK, PRICES VARY

 

Photo via Yelp

Although you will get side-eyed by many Valentines if you suggest that a bottle of Miller High Life is an adequate way to celebrate Cupid’s aim, warm fuzzies while boozing are still totally possible. Per usual, V-Day falls in the thick of the Bay Area’s marquee week for gourmet brew events, SF Beer Week. So take your low-key, suds-loving babe to Thirsty Bear’s $20-25 “Chocolate, Beer, and Cupid” night to sip coco-vanilla cask ale while making your own chocolates (feel free to bring your boo’s favorite aphrodisiac throw-in for xxxtra points.) Also happening on Feb. 14: sweet and sour beer pairings at The Monk’s Kettle, four limited release brews on tap, with sweet bites from Socola Chocolatier at Speakeasy Brewery’s newly-opened, Kelly Malone-designed tap room. Elixir, Noc Noc, the Sycamore, Rosamunde’s Mission location, La Trappe, and Blackbird are all doing V-Day Beer Week specials as well.

Various Bay Area locations, www.sfbeerweek.org

 

Exploratorium Explainers educate while the city waits for new Pier 15 location

Andrew Lam
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The Exploratorium is in the middle of an epic move to its new home at Pier 15 — its new location is set to open April 17th at 330,000 square feet, five times the size of its former digs at the Palace of Fine Arts. But while staff is busy nesting the Explainers, the museum’s science-savvy youth docents, have been hard at work. The volunteers have been hosting pop-up exhibits around the city. Needing a science fix, I stopped by their event last week at the Tenderloin National Forest.

There are two kinds of Explainers: the diverse group of high school Explainers, the museum’s youngest paid employees who engage visitors at exhibits, lead demonstrations, and help run various museum operations. Field trip Explainers perform the same tasks, but as experienced young educators, take more leadership roles.

Both were present on the afternoon of Jan. 31, when I enter the Tenderloin National Forest. I’m greeted to the slice of urban wilderness by the familiar Exploratorium logo printed on black flags, and by lots of friendly folks in orange vests — the Explainers themselves, who had transformed this pocket of urban wilderness into a wonderland of interactive science exhibits. 

The first thing that catches my eye was a fruit and flower dissection demonstration, meant to teach about the various parts of a plant. Senior field trip explainer Kat Stiff asks the students, “does anyone know what a flower is made out of?” One boy in the back proudly shouts, “Cauliflower?” 

Most of the students seem more interested in the giant magnifying glasses on the table than the lesson. As I watch Stiff’s demonstration, a girl with a magnifying glass comes up to me and starts to sift through my hair with her newfound tool. I ask her if she spots anything and to which she responds, “yes. Hair.”

Across from the plant dissection workshop is the outdoor cart – which has gone with the Explainers to most of their recent events. The cart bears a poster illustrating different clouds, and a plastic soda bottle that helps you create your own cumulus formations. Before I can get started on my own personal sky, high school Explainers Zakiya Percy and Terrance Gee quiz me on my cloud knowledge.

What is a cloud made of? I should definitely know this… I know that water is involved… After I fail to pick up on their hints for the other two ingredients, they reveal that a change in pressure and the inclusion of dust particles is also necessary.

Gee does a demonstration for me. With about a half-cup of water at the bottom of the plastic liter soda bottle, he lights a match, blows it out, and places it upside-down over the opening of the bottle. He does this, he says, to add dust particles to the water. Gee caps the bottle, and I help by pumping air into it until it’s about to pop. He takes the cap off, and dollhouse-sized clouds float out. I am then quizzed again on what type of cloud we just made. The answer: fog, because of our low elevation.

As I head towards the back of the forest, Phanna Phay, a high school Explainer supervisor, is sitting down doing card tricks. Smack dab in the middle of the space is a brick oven where Explainers are helping kids heat up pizza donated by Inner Sunset favorite Arizmendi Bakery. All the way in the back, kids paint wooden veggie cut-outs, which will to be used to decorate the nearby Hotel Senator’s rooftop garden.

These pop-up Explainer exhibits have appeared at the Ferry Building and Civic Center farmer’s markets, and even aboard a ferry bound for Jack London Square.

Senior field trip explainer Lia Frantti tells me about these previous events. “We were doing our fruit and flower dissection [at the farmer’s market], so that people who are shopping for those fruits and vegetables can stop and think about where they are coming from and how they are growing. We were on the ferry boat talking about navigation and finding north.” 

When I ask Frantti about the benefits these pop-up exhibits have brought to the Exploratorium she explains, “it’s been really nice because people often put us in this hole of a children’s museum – which we’re not. Adults and children can definitely have an equally amazing experience at the Exploratorium. At some of the other spots we’ve been at, we have had more adults stopping by. So that has been a little bit different to have less youth and more adults spending time with us.”

Looking forward to the museum’s new digs? When it re-opens, the Exploratorium will have triple the exhibition space, and double the number of classrooms. Acclaimed San Francisco chef Loretta Keller of Bon Appétit will head a sidewalk café on the west side of the pier, and there will be a waterfront café on the east side. The event in the Tenderloin was the last full scale Explainer exhibit until the Exploratorium settles into its new space. But the group will be holding outdoor events featuring the plant dissection table, mainly along the Embarcadero.

Sunday parking, free — for some

Zelda Bronstein
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Sunday parking, free — for some

If you drive your car Sunday morning to a restaurant for breakfast, or if you go to a Yoga class, or if you’re going to work or shopping, you have to plug the meters now, or you’ll get a pricey ticket. Almost 1,800 people got caught up in the new crackdown on Sunday parking.

Which is fine with me; I think people who drive should pay to park, and as long as you can stay a couple of hours, most of the meters in the city are a bargain.

But for some people, there are no Sunday meters, and no tickets. Those are the ones who don’t bother with the meters and just park in the middle of the street while they’re going to church.

I’ve been complaining about this for a long time, and nothing seems to change:

If you go to see the (secular) Mime Troupe in Dolores Park and you stick your car in the middle of the street, you get a ticket. If you drink at a (secular) bar or eat at a (secular) restaurant and you leave your car in the Valencia Street median, you get cited. You can’t double park while you run in for a (secular) cup of coffee at Muddy Waters.

And now everyone engaging in secular activities has to pay to park, and the people who go to church get to park in the middle of the street, illegally, free of charge, and with full impunity.

I called Paul Rose, the MTA spokesperson, and asked if this harsh crackdown on Sunday meters would also include a crackdown on people who park illegally in the middle of Valencia Street, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. I’ll let you know if he does.

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