SoMa

Cue the clowns

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› steve@sfbg.com

The circus doesn’t come to San Francisco, but its performers do, sexy and talented dreamers who bring a creative energy that has transformed the city’s nightlife and counterculture. Spinning aerialists and dancing clowns now proliferate at clubs and parties, and their number has more than doubled in recent years.

They come from towns across the country — often via Burning Man, where they discover their inner performers, dying to burst out, and other kindred spirits — to a city with a rich circus tradition, which they tweak and twist into something new, a hybrid of the arts and punk sideshow weirdness. It’s the ever-evolving world of Indie Circus.

One of the biggest banners these performers now dance and play under is Bohemian Carnival, which draws together some of the city’s best indie circus acts, including Vau de Vire Society, the clown band Gooferman, and Fou Fou Ha, acts that fluidly mix with one another and the audience.

Last Saturday, as families across the country shopped and shared Thanksgiving leftovers, this extended family of performers rehearsed for that night’s Bohemian Carnival. Fou Fou Ha was in the Garage, a SoMa performance space, working on a new number celebrating beer with founder/choreographer Maya Culbertson, a.k.a. MamaFou, pushing for eight-count precision.

"Do it again," she tells her eight high-energy charges, who look alternatively sexy and zany even without the colorful and slightly grotesque clown costumes they don for shows. I watch from the wings as they drill through the number again and again, struck by how the improvised comedy at the song’s end changes every time, someone’s new shtick catching my eye and making me smile.

"That’s what we love the most, the improv element to it," Culbertson tells me. "We see how far you can take it and not break character."

As Fou Fou Ha wrapped up and headed home to get ready for the show, Gooferman and Vau de Vire were just starting to rehearse and set up over at the party venue, DNA Lounge. Reggie Ballard was up a tall ladder setting the rigging, the dancers stretched, Vau de Vire co-founder Mike Gaines attended to a multitude of details, and Gooferman frontmen Vegas and Boenobo the Klown played the fools.

"I feel like I’m on acid," Vegas said evenly, his long Mohawk standing tall.

"Are you?" Boenobo said, perhaps a little jealous.

"No, I wish," Vegas replied. "But that’s why it’s weird."

"Huh," Boenobo deadpanned. "Weird."

Fucking clowns. I decide to chat up a dancer, Rachel Strickland, the newest member of Vau de Vire, who stretched and unabashedly changed into her rehearsal clothes as she told me about why she moved here from North Carolina in July 2007.

"I waited a long time for this. I always knew I wanted to come to San Francisco and work on the stage, doing something in the line of Moulin Rouge, with the costumes and that kind of decadence and debauchery," Strickland said, oozing passion for her craft and the life she’s chosen, one she said has met her expectations. "I danced as much as I could my whole life and I have an overactive imagination, so it’s hard to shock me."

Not that Vau de Vire hasn’t tried. Shocking people out of their workaday selves is what the performers try to do, whether through vaudeville acts, dance routines, feats of skill, or just sheer sensual outlandishness. Vau de Vire choreographer Shannon Gaines (Mike’s wife of 19 years) also teaches at the local indie circus school Acrosports and, with beatboxer and performance artist Tim Barsky, directs its City Circus youth program, which combines hip hop and other urban art forms with circus.

Gaines has been a gymnast and dancer all her life, skills that she’s honed into circus performances she does through five different agencies, often doing corporate events "that involve wearing a few more clothes" and other more conventional performances.

"The other seems like work to me. But this," she said, a wry smile coming to her lips, "is like dessert. This is what excites me."

She’s not the only one. With their growing popularity, San Francisco’s indie circus freaks are juggling an increasingly busy schedule and developing even bigger plans for the new year, including a national tour and an extravaganza called Metropolus that would reinforce San Francisco’s reputation as the best Big Top in the country.

As Boenobo told me, "It’s a moment in time when there’s something big developing in San Francisco."

MIMES AND PICKLES


The circus arts are ancient, but San Francisco’s unique role in morphing and perpetuating them trace back to the 1970s when Make-a-Circus arrived here from Europe — where circus traditions are strong — and the local, organic Pickle Family Circus was born.

Wendy Parkman, now a board member at San Francisco Circus Center, the circus school she helped develop in conjunction with the Pickles and legendary performer Judy Finelli, worked for both circuses and described how they derived from San Francisco’s vibrant arts scene and its history of grassroots activism.

"It was just a wonderful, spontaneous bubble, a renaissance of circus activity," Parkman told the Guardian. "It was an outgrowth of the fabulous ’60s and the involvement of people with community and politics and art."

Parkman and many others trace the local lineage of a renaissance that came to be known as New Circus back to the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which in 1959 started doing political theater that incorporated comedy (or more specifically, Commedia dell’Arte), music, farce, melodrama, and other aspects of clowning.

"It really started with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and it flourishes here because of the rich arts culture that we’ve always had here," Jeff Raz, a longtime performer with both original SF troupes who started the San Francisco Clown Conservatory and recently had the title role in Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo, told the Guardian.

"San Francisco felt like a place where things could happen that were socially and politically relevant," Parkman said. "Circus has always been a people’s art form. It’s a great way of getting a lot of people involved because it takes a lot of people to put on a show."

Perhaps even more relevant to the current indie circus resurgence, both Make-a-Circus and the Pickle Family Circus reached out to working class neighborhoods in San Francisco, where they would do parades and other events to entertain the people and generate interest in the circus.

"It was happy, healthy, and accessible to people of all ages, classes, and backgrounds," said Parkman said, who noted that things began to change in the 1980s as funding for the arts dried up and Pickle hit hard times.

"The Pickle Family Circus was a grassroots circus that was part of a real renaissance. Unfortunately, it didn’t go very far," Dominique Jando, a noted circus historian who has written five books on the circus and whose wife teaches trapeze at the Circus Center, told the Guardian.

Still, the Pickle legacy lives on in the Circus Center and Acrosports, making San Francisco and Montreal (birthplace of Cirque du Soleil, whose influence has also propelled the indie circus movement) the two major hubs of circus in North America. Unlike Europe, Russia, and China, where circus training is deeply rooted and often a family affair passed from generation to generation, Jando said, Americans don’t have a strong circus tradition.

"We are really the poor children of the circus world. There is not the same tradition of circus here that there is in Europe," said Jando, a native to France who now lives in San Francisco. "Learning circus is like ballet, and it’s not really in the American psyche to work and train for seven years for a job that offers modest pay."

Homegrown spectacles like Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus commercialized the circus and transformed it into the three-ring form that sacrificed intimacy and the emphasis on artistry and narrative flow. Traditionally in Europe, the clowns and music structured a circus performance, with the punctuation and interludes provided by the acrobats and other performers of the circus arts.

"It’s the superhuman and the supremely human, who are the clowns," is how Raz defines circus. "Clowns are becoming more central to the circus, the supremely human part, and that has a lot to do with our times."

Raz, Jando, and Parkman all pointed to the sterile excesses of the televised, digitized, Twittering, 24/7 world we live in as feeding the resurgence of circus. "It points to a demand by the audience to see something more down to earth and real," Jando said. "There is a need to go back to basics."

"It’s a response to the overly technological world we’re living in. People want to go back to what the human body can do and be in the same place as the performers," Parkman said. "One of the concepts of the Pickles was that it was drawing on the European model. I’d say what’s going on now in San Francisco is an offshoot of what the Pickles did."

Raz said the rise of Indie Circus and its influence on the local arts scene is consistent with his own experiences as an actor and clown. He used to keep two resumes, but performers today are often expected to be steeped in both disciplines, letting one inform the other and opening up new forms of creative expression.

"That melding that you’re looking at, from the club scene to Burning Man, is seeping into a lot of the world," Raz said. "Circus is very much a living art form."

Somehow," Jando said, "it has become a sort of counterculture on the West Coast."

INDIE, THE NEW NEW CIRCUS


Boenobo and Vegas haven’t done any real training to become clowns. They’re performers who use the clown shtick to build a fun and fantastical world off their solid musical base.

"There has to be whimsy. People take themselves so seriously," Boenobo said, noting that it was in response to the serious-minded Winter Music Conference in 2001 where he had the idea of having the members of his new band, Gooferman, dress as clowns. It was a lark, but it was fun and it stuck, and they’ve been clowns ever since.

"The clown thing floats my boat. It is a persona I really dig. And the band kicks ass. We’re all just super tight. The Bohemian Carnival is just a bunch of friends, like a family ejected out of different wombs," he said.

The band does kick ass. Setting aside the clown thing, their tunes are original and fun, evoking Oingo Boingo at its early best, particularly since the summer, when Boenobo and Vegas brought in a strong new rhythm section. But it’s the collaboration with Vau de Vire and the other groups that round out Bohemian Carnival and really bring it to life.

"People say it just blew my mind, and that is the immortality of it," Boenobo said. "It’s super-fucking gratifying, really. It’s just stupid."

They performed last month at the Hillbilly Hoedown inside a giant maze made of hay bales in Half Moon Bay, with the clowns and circus performers creating a fantastical new world for the partygoers. As Gooferman played, Shannon broke the rules and danced atop a hay bale wall behind the band, conveying pure danger and backwoods sex appeal.

"The Gooferman character is called Bruiser or Shenanigans," Shannon said of her performer alter egos. "She does the things that you’d get kicked out of a party for, but I can get away with it."

She considers herself more of a "fluffer" than a dancer, and while Gooferman plays, she gets the band and crowd charged up by pushing the limits of silliness and composure herself and seeing if they’ll follow. "So they’re thinking, wow, if she can do that, I can do all kinds of things."

Their world not only includes practitioners of circus arts (contortionists, aerialists, trapeze artists, clowns, and the like), but also the fashion scene (including outlandish local designers such as Anastasia), painters, sculptors, dancers, actors, fire artists, and DJs like Smoove who bring a certain zany flair to the dance parties.

"It’s hybridized. So it’s not just circus arts with some musical backing," Boenobo said. Instead, it creates a fun and whimsical scene that makes attendees feel like they’re part of something unusual, fun, and liberating. "Immersion is very important."

That’s why the Bohemian Carnival and its many offshoots try to break down the wall between the performers and the audience, who often show up in circus or Burning Man styles, further blurring the borders.

"When you break down that big third wall, there’s no pretense," Mike Gaines said. "It’s really about the party and the community."

Clowns circulate in the crowd, interacting with the audience while aerialists suddenly start performing on ropes or rings suspended over the dance floor. It draws the audience in, opens them up, makes them feel like they’re part of something.

"All of the sudden, people get to realize the dream of running away with the circus, but they get to leave it at the end of the night," Boenobo said with a wink, "which they generally like."

"The line of where circus starts and ends has been blurred," said kSea Flux (a.k.a. Kasey Porter), an indie circus performer who earlier this year started Big Top Magazine (www.bigtopmagazine.com) to chronicle the growing culture. "I love the old-school circus, but as with everything, it needs to be able to evolve to continue to grow."

When he joined the indie circus movement five years ago, performing with the Dresden Dolls, Flux said it transformed his life. He quit his corporate job and started developing his art and trying to make a living in the circus arts, including promoting the culture through the magazine.

"I found the circus and was completely filled with a new life," Flux said, noting that it was through his long involvement with Burning Man that he was exposed to the circus scene. "I think Burning Man gives a platform for it. People get stuck in their jobs and there’s this great week when you can let go and be what you want to be."

That’s also how the talented aerialist and hooper who calls herself Shredder got into this world, which she’s now explored in both the traditional circus and the indie variety, preferring the latter.

"I didn’t even know it was possible, but I just love it," said Shredder, who worked as a firefighter, EMT, and environmental educator before getting into performing through Burning Man, where Boenobo set up the Red Nose District in 2006 for all the many offshoots of the indie circus world that attend the event.

Shredder developed hula hoop and aerial routines, training hard to improve her skills and eventually was hired by the Cole Brothers Circus in 2006 to do aerial acrobatics and hooping. Founded in 1882, Cole is a full-blown circus in the Ringling Bros. tradition, with a ringleader, animals, and trained acrobats. Shredder toured 92 cities in 10 months until she felt the creativity and joy being snuffed out by the rote repetition of the performances.

"We did the exact same show everyday. It was like Groundhog Day but worse; same show, different parking lot," said Shredder, who later that Saturday night did a performance with more than a dozen hula hoops at once. "Then I heard about Vau de Vire through some fellow performers and I just heard they were doing really well and I wanted to be with a group like that … I was just so happy that they were willing to help me design my vision as an artist."

COMING TOGETHER


The Bohemian Carnival name and concept was actually an import from Fort Collins, Colo., where Mike and Shannon Gaines created the Vau de Vire Society as part of the performance and party space they operated there in a 100-year-old church that they purchased.

Mike’s background was in film; Shannon was a dancer; and the world they created for themselves was decidedly counterculture. So was their space, the Rose Window Experimental Theater and Art House, which they operated from 1997 to 2001 and lived in with 20 of their bohemian friends.

"It allowed us to really get to know ourselves. We had all day to just rig up any kind of performance we could imagine," she said. "If you had a crazy idea, you could just come on over at 3 a.m. and do it."

Their signature events were themed parties that would open with performances of about 30 minutes, usually combining music, dance, and performance art, followed by a dance party that was essentially an all-night rave. Initially the performances just drew off of the creativity of their friends, including those Shannon danced with. The themes were often risqué and sometimes included nudity.

The performances evolved over time, bringing in talent such as Angelo Moore of the band Fishbone, who is still a regular part of their crew. They were all attracted to the freaky side of performance art, which drew them toward sideshow, vaudeville, and circus themes and expanding what was technically possible. "We ended up getting a rigger in and just flying around the theater," Mike said.

In 2000, they did their first Bohemian Carnival event. "That’s when we started dabbling in the circus," Mike said.

While the events gained regional acclaim in newspapers and were supported by notables figures, including the town’s mayor, there was a backlash among local conservatives, including some who objected to how a traditional church was being used for raves by these bohemian freaks.

In 2001 they decided to search for a new home. "We looked around for the place that would be most accepting of what we were doing," Mike said.

San Francisco was known to be accepting of their kind, and there were groups here that were edging toward similar kinds of parties, including Infinite Kaos and Xeno (and its predecessor, Awd), as well as the band Idiot Flesh, not to mention the more serious circus being done at the Circus Center and Teatro Zinzanni.

"San Francisco, in this country, is a real hotbed for circus. So we were like, ‘Now we can bring in legitimate circus performers," Mike said. Shannon got a job teaching at Acrosports, allowing her to be immersed full-time in her art and to help grow her community.

Serendipitously, in August 2001, indie rocker Boenobo of the band Chub — a funky ska outfit whose members would wear different costumes to each of their performances — formed Gooferman, which wasn’t originally the clown band it is today: "The idea was you had to be in a costume and you had to be stoned." They morphed into a full-blown clown band, and began collaborating with circus performers.

"But it never coalesced until recently," Boenobo says.

That process probably began around Halloween 2004 at the Vegoose Festival in Las Vegas, when Vau de Vire Society was asked to fill eight hours’ worth of programming and turned to their San Francisco brethren for help, Mike said. They drove or flew about 100 people to the event.

It was also the year Boenobo staged the GoofBall in San Francisco, drawing together a variety of entertainment that helped change the nature of the traditional dance party. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the year that reviled President George W. Bush won a second term and when longtime Burning Man artists staged their ill-fated revolt against the event (see "State of the art," 12/10/04).

"When people get too serious, they need this shit even more," Boenobo said of the increasingly irreverent, naughty, and participatory parties he was throwing.

Meanwhile Fou Fou Ha was developing its act. Culbertson and Raymond Meyer were waiting tables at Rose Pistola in 2000 and decided to put their big personalities to work for them, bringing in other performers such as Slim Avocado and setting up routines to perform at CellSpace and other venues.

"We’re sort of like the children of Cirque du Soleil in a way, but we wanted to give it an edge," Culbertson said. "It’s sort of like the second wave vaudeville … now with more of a rock edge."

Fou Fou Ha’s shows play off the dark and surreal kind of performance that is more European than American, a style Culbertson was exposed to while studying choreography during her Fulbright scholarship in Holland in the late 1990s. When she returned to the United States in 2000, "I wanted to form a [dance] company." But she wanted it to be fun. "People really like the idea of serious dance combined with comedy, where you can fall out of your pirouette," she said.

"We’re kind of like guerilla circus," Slim, a trained ballerina, said. "It’s a whole new movement. It’s like ’30s cabaret, but edgier."

Boenobo started the Red Nose District on the playa at Burning Man in 2006, drawing together his Bohemian Carnival friends, a local group of stilt- walkers known as Enhightned Beings of Leisure, installation artist Michael Christian’s crew from the East Bay, the Cirque Berserk folks from Los Angeles, and others from the growing circus world.

"It’s a safe environment to be and do what you want," Gaines said of Burning Man, noting how those breakthroughs on the playa then come back home to the city. And that ethos carries into Vau de Vire, which is truly a collective of like-minded friends, one that eschews hiring outside performers for their shows. "They’re all just part of it," he said.

What they’re all part of — Vau de Vire, Gooferman, Fou Fou Ha, and the rest of the Indie Circus folk — has begun to make a strong imprint on San Francisco nightlife and counterculture. From a performer’s perspective, Boenobo said, it feels good. "Our local family is super comfortable with one another," he said, something he’s never felt before after 25 years as a indie rocker. "It’s rare to not have a lot of ego to deal with, and it’s super rare with this kind of high-quality performance."

But they want more. As Flux said, "We want to take over the world."

WHAT’S NEXT


Slowly, the circus collective members are moving toward becoming full-time freaks. Already, Mike Gaines said most of the 12 to 15 regular Vau de Vire performers practice their art full-time, subsidizing their performances by being instructors in dance or the circus arts.

That’s not to say the parties, with their large number of performers, are lucrative. "With circus, you get a million more people on your guest list, so circus is complicated from a promoter’s perspective," Joegh Bullock of Anon Salon, which incorporates circus acts into its parties, including the upcoming Sea of Dream party New Year’s Eve. "But we love it and wouldn’t do a show without it."

To pay the bills, "we also do a lot of corporate gigs," Gaines says, not proudly. Fou Fou Ha does as well, including performing at the Westfield San Francisco Centre this holiday season. They’re all dying to take their show on the road, but that, too, takes money. "Sponsorship is the key if we’re going to tour with 60 people," said Mike, who’s been working hard on a deal and said he feels close.

Boenobo’s latest plan is Metropolus, a circus-style extravaganza he’s planning (along with Bullogh and Gaines) for next Halloween, hoping to ferry guests (using buses or perhaps even art cars from Burning Man) among several venues in town (such as Mighty, 1015, Temple, and DNA Lounge) and a huge circus tent he wants to erect in Golden Gate Park.

In addition to circus-style entertainment drawn from across the country, he wants to precede the Saturday night finale with three days and nights of workshops and smaller-scale performances. His goal is for Metropolus to because a signature event for San Francisco and the indie circus scene, the equivalent of the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas; the Winter Music Festival in Miami; or the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

The time seems right, with the current financial meltdown creating opportunities even as it makes funding their world domination plans difficult. "Each time you have a crisis like we’re having now, it’s a ripe time for circus," Jando said, noting that circus boomed during the Great Depression and after each of the two World Wars.

And after going through years of pure absurdity in Washington, DC, and on Wall Street, Raz said the clowns of the world — from Stephen Colbert’s conservative television character (who Raz says employs clown techniques in his comedy) to a singer named Boenobo — now have a special resonance with people. As he said, "One of the things clowns do is they live the folly large."

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CLOWN’S EYE VIEW

I’ve been following Indie Circus for years, intending to add it to the profiles of various Burning Man subcultures (see www.steventjones.com/burningman.html) that I’ve written for the Guardian, but my reporting on this story began in May. And at the suggestion of Gooferman frontman Boenobo the Klown, I decided to start from the inside and let him turn me into a clown.

As makeup artist Sharon Rose transformed me into a happy clown backstage at DNA Lounge, I asked Boenobo what I should do (besides interview people). We just needed to clown around, keep the drunks from crowding the performers, help clear the stage between acts — whatever needed doing. "We’re the scrubs," he told me, clown-to-clown.

As we spoke, the acrobats stretched, a corpse bride goofed off as she prepared for her aria, members of the Extra Action Marching Band started to slink in, clowns applied their makeup, and female performers occasionally came back from the stage and whipped off their tops.

When Gooferman went on, I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, so I stood next to the stage, watched, and awkwardly tried to be a little goofy in my dancing. A tall, beautiful blond woman stood next to me, catching my eye. She was apparently alone, so after a couple songs, during a lull, I asked her, "So, do you like clowns?"

"I am a clown," she said with a grin.

"Really?" I said. "You don’t look like a clown."

"But I am," she said. "I even do clown porn."

She turned out to be 27-year-old porn star Hollie Stevens, who told me she "grew up as a clown" in the Midwest before moving to California and getting into porn seven years ago. She even starred in the film Clown Porn and still sometimes dons the red nose and face paint for her public appearances, usually just for her own amusement. Stevens once appeared on the Jerry Springer Show as a clown, even getting into the requisite fight on stage with a friend.

"Clowns, you either love them or you hate them," she said, and she loves them.

I asked why she was there and she said that she’d come to see Boenobo. They had talked but never met, and shared a sort of mutual admiration. It was a clown thing. Clowns … they get all the hot chicks.

While we talked, an acrobat worked the pole on the stage, followed by an aerialist performing above the dance floor, one scene woven seamlessly into the other. The clowns of Gooferman puttered around the stage, removing equipment to get ready for the next act, flirting with the girls, trying to scam more drink tickets, or simply entertaining others and themselves.

The life of a clown is rarely dull.

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UPCOMING INDIE CIRCUS EVENTS

DEC. 5–6


Acrosports Winter Cabaret

639 Frederick, SF

8 p.m., $5–$15

www.citycircus.org

DEC. 12


Auditions for Acrosports’ City Circus

Call (415) 665-2276, ext. 103 for appointment

DEC. 12-14


Frolic: CircusDragBurlesque Festival

Featuring Fou Fou Ha, Anna Conda, and more

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

8 p.m., $100

www.counterpulse.org

1-800-838-3006

DEC. 20


Open House and Holiday Carnival

San Francisco Circus Center

755 Frederick, SF

10 a.m.–4 p.m., free

Pratfalls and Rising Stars

7 p.m., $12 adults, $8 children

San Francisco Circus Center

Tickets and info at www.circuscenter.org

DEC. 20


Storytime Festival, featuring Vau de Vire Society

4–7 p.m., "Tales of Enchantment," (G-rated show) 8–11 p.m., "Storytime for the Inner Child," (R-rated show)

$30–$50

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

www.storytimefestival.org

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>>More: Read Marke B.’s club review of Bohemian Carnival

Flambuoyancy

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Phew! I just adore being a second-class citizen again, now that Proposition 8 has passed. It makes me feel so edgy, so alt, so very underground. Thank you, Pope Pius the 5000th and the Angel Macaroni! I finally get to break back out my favorite little victim pumps — you know, the star-spangled ones with exquisite ruby handcuff heels — and shove my overwhelming gayness down those tender asshole bigot throats once again. Confrontational! It seems the 1990s really are back at last, and I’m ready for some massive kiss-in action, minus the scuffed oxblood Docs and sleeveless Mervyn’s flannels this time, please.

11/4: never FGGT.

At least I still have the love of my dance floor brothers, sisters, and others — gay or straight — to help me keep my head up under the tacky 99-cent-store weave of despair. If they love me so much, why don’t they marry me? Oh, right. So here, in honor of losing my civil rights at the precise moment of gaining a black president, is a thuper-gay Thuper Ego thpectacular for you.

HONEY SUNDAYS Those sticky-sweet DJ darlings of the altQ scene’s squirmy underside — Pee Play, Ken Vulsion, Kendig, Robot Hustle, and Josh Cheon, otherwise known as Honey Soundsystem — have launched a weekly for party peeps into killer tracks that raise the tired genre house roof into a glistening rainbow of wondrous WTF. Lemme tell ya, it’s been a long time coming. Expect everything from Kendig’s trademark minimal techno and classic house glides to Hustle’s rarest disco, Vulsion’s echoey rave-ups to Cheon’s proto-new wave hoof-twisters, topped off by Pee Play’s bottomless crate-digging mindfucks. All with an ahistorical, four-on-the-floor hard homo energy and some ostentatious faggotty flair, and all going down every Sunday at the gorgeously remodeled Paradise Lounge in SOMA. Sundays, 8 p.m.–2 a.m., free. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, SF. (415) 621-1911, www.honeysoundsystem.com

TIARA SENSATION There’s good drag, there’s bad drag, and then there’s drag so surreal it bends the arc of history into "holy shit!" The latter is surely the agenda at this paste-gem prom every Monday at the Stud, hosted by my all-time favorite gender clown DJ Down-E and House of Horseface’s Mica. Part DIY craft fair, part "oh no, she din’t" dance party, it’s all odd in a lovely way. With frequent appearances by the inimitable Glamamore, hands down the most creative queen in the city, and tunes from somewhere left of Pluto — still a planet in my heart — it’s a crackin’ good post-weekend jolt of incredulity. Too bad I missed the Obama, the Musical performance. Mondays, 10 p.m., free. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. (415) 863-6623, www.myspace.com/tiarasensation

MARICON This one’s not for a leetle while yet, but it’s hot enough to stuff in your pink Blackberry before the deluge of other Thanksgiving Eve throwdowns hits. If you miss DJ Bus Station John’s sadly departed Double Dutch Disco monthly or, for those with any semblance of long-term memory left, DJ Derek B. and Lady Bass’s early-aughts Off the Hook bashes, get ready to relive the freakin’ freestyle and electric boogaloo days you never really lived through to begin with, maybe. Derek B. — my long-lost sister — and the usually punk rock Trans Am crew are bangin’ the boombox with this one-off, fronting effervescent electro tunes and lavender-bandannaed performances by drag cholitas Kiddie, Glamamore, Hoku Mama, and Holly Peno, plus free churros. Get your womp on and Robocop. Nov. 26, 10 p.m., $5. The Gangway, 849 Larkin, SF. (415) 776-6828, www.myspace.com/transamtheclub

Arrr, SF’s Pirates Press in the spyglass

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By Jen Snyder

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sound advice and the name of the game for Eric Mueller, 27, who founded Pirates Press, a San Francisco vinyl record brokerage company, in 2005. Coasting on the rise – and fall – of the CD and the renewed popularity of vinyl, Pirates Press has brought in more than $5 million in sales this year.

The walls of Pirates Press’ SOMA office are coated with candy-colored singles and full-lengths – some with pictures, others with etchings. Some of these albums are as much visual art as they are musical art.
“Jocks collect baseball cards and nerds collect records,” explains Mueller, trying to make sense of the variety. “A lot of people collect something. For those people vinyl is great.”

It’s amazing to me that in a world where an album is just one click away, record manufacturing is doing so well. I love records for the way they look on my shelf, the smell of the jacket, and the pop and hiss of the needle, but in an iPod world is that enough to keep a so-called dead product alive?

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Downtown’s planner

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> amanda@sfbg.com

The battle for the district 1 supervisor’s seat is being framed largely by politically conservative groups, funded by real estate and development, that are spending thousands of dollars supporting former planning commissioner Sue Lee over school board member Eric Mar.

An incestuous web of independent expenditure and political action committees have collectively spent enough against Mar to blow the $140,000 cap off the voluntary expenditure ceiling that all the candidates in that district agreed to.

The money’s coming from the Building Owners and Managers Association, Plan C, the Coalition for Responsible Growth, and the San Francisco Association of Realtors. Although these groups can’t legally work directly with candidates, they typically swap funds among each other and receive outside support from the deep pockets at the Chamber of Commerce, Committee on Jobs, and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

According to Ethics Commission executive director John St. Croix, the $140,000 cap was lifted on Friday, Oct. 24, which means the candidates are now free to spend up to their individual campaign limits, which are different for Lee, Mar, and Alicia Wang, the other major contender for the seat.

All three are receiving public financing — but so much outside money is being spent in support of Lee that, to keep pace, the individual spending caps for Mar and Wang have been raised and are now higher than Lee’s.

AGAINST THE NEIGHBORHOODS


Lee, who worked for Willie Brown’s mayoral administration and was public relations director for the Chamber of Commerce, now runs the Chinese Historical Society of America. Her voting record on the Planning Commission has been consistently pro-development and anti-neighborhood. Some examples from her final months on the commission:

•<\!s> On April 10, 2008, she approved a mixed-use development at 736 Valencia St. and removed community benefits and below-market-rate unit requirements — against the wishes of community members and housing rights activists.

•<\!s> On March 27, 2008, she was the only commissioner to vote against modifications to a rooftop remodeling project at 1420 Montgomery St. that would have pacified neighbors concerned about the scale and character of the plan.

•<\!s> On March 13, 2008 she supported a conditional-use permit for a formula-retail paint store at Cesar Chavez and South Van Ness despite concerns about its effect on nearby small businesses.

•<\!s> On Feb. 28, 2008, she approved a remodeling of a two-story flat on Potrero Ave. that opponents, including the next-door neighbors, characterized as a demolition in disguise.

"Her voting record for the past three years is crystal clear," one lawyer who represents neighborhood interests at the commission told us. "Given a choice between supporting neighborhood interests, long-term residents and the interests of the little guy or supporting development interests and the big- money people who are busy in our residential neighborhoods, she chooses the latter every time."

The lawyer, who regularly appears before the planning panel and asked not to be named, added: "She has supported big-box retail in our neighborhoods over the objections of neighbors. She has supported the destruction of rent-controlled housing and low-scale, more affordable housing that is being remodeled out of existence."

"She’s a total pay to play," said Robert Haaland, a labor activist with Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which is deeply vested in independent expenditures supporting Mar. "Her donations can be tracked back to decisions she made as planning commissioner."

For example, Lee voted in favor of a plan by Martin Building Company to convert a city-owned building on Jessie Street into 25 luxury condos that now rent for about $3,000 a month. Martin’s owner, Patrick McNerney is a Lee campaign donor. Also contributing to Lee is Eric Tao of AGI Capital, which helped finance the Soma Grand development, a project opposed by sustainable growth organizations like Livable City, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF, and the Sierra Club. Lee voted in favor of it.

In 2006, Lee approved lifting the downtown height restrictions from 150 feet to 250 feet for a 189-unit building with ground level retail on Howard Street. The project sponsor, Ezra Mercy, gave Lee’s campaign the maximum legal donation of $500.

In fact, her campaign has received thousands of dollars in individual contributions — and according to our analysis, more than half has come from real estate developers, attorneys, and builders, including some who appear frequently before the Planning Commission, such as executives from Wilson Meany Sullivan, CB Richard Ellis, and Millennium Partners.

Lee did not return a call seeking comment.

MISLEADING THE VOTERS


The same day the spending cap was lifted, Mar alleged the local Democratic Party’s name was being improperly used by a new group calling itself the "San Francisco Democratic Club." First reported by Paul Hogarth on the online news site BeyondChron, the club is apparently composed of Democratic County Central Committee defectors who disagreed with the party’s endorsements for the Nov. 4 election.

The group’s treasurer, Mike Riordan, is also a deputy political director of PG&E’s Stop the Blank Check Committee, which is mounting the $10 million campaign against the Clean Energy Act. PG&E gave $30,000 to this new democratic club, the members of which have not been revealed.

Riordan hired DCCC member Tom Hseih’s firm to send robocalls in Cantonese to Asian voters urging support for Lee over DCCC-endorsed Mar. The endorsement script referred to the group as the "San Francisco Democratic Party Club." Mar said it was a misleading way to align this new club with the DCCC.

When asked if the club’s use of the Democratic Party name and membership to support candidates and issues that haven’t received the party’s vote was their intention, Hsieh told the Guardian, "Yeah, and you know what? That’s covered under the First Amendment."

Sup. Aaron Peskin, who chairs the DCCC and spoke on its behalf in support of Mar at two recent rallies, said, "at minimum, it’s misleading. At maximum it’s a violation of the party rules and punishable by removal." He said there was a credible argument and evidence supporting Mar’s allegation, but that it’s something the DCCC would have to deal with in its own house, likely after Nov. 4.

Anniversary Issue: Culture isn’t convenient

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› molly@sfbg.com

San Francisco is the playpen of countercultures.

— R.Z. Sheppard, Time (1986)

I live near Church and Market streets, which means I’m stumbling distance from an organic grocery store, my favorite bar, several Muni stops, and a 24-hour diner. It also means the street outside my apartment is usually loud, the gutters are disgusting, there are rarely parking spots, and transients sleep, smoke, panhandle, and play really bad music near my front doorstep.

Actually, until recently, they did a lot of this on my front doorstep. Then the landlords — without asking us first — installed a gate. And I hate it. Yes, my stairs are cleaner. I suppose my stuff is safer. But I’m no longer as connected to my community. I’m separated from the life that’s happening on the street — the very reason I moved to this neighborhood in the first place. I fear I’ve lost more than I’ve gained.

Lately our city’s approach to entertainment and nightlife has been like that fence. While protecting people from noise, mess, and potential safety concerns, we’re threatening the very things we love about this city. Thanks to dwindling city budgets and increasingly vocal NIMBYs, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to manage nightclubs, plan street fairs, and organize outdoor festivals. And as we continue to build million-dollar condos at a brisk place, the city is filling up with affluent residents who may not appreciate the inherent messiness of city living. We’re at risk of locking away (and therefore losing) the events that make this a vibrant place where we want to live.

The recent history of this issue can be traced to the 1990s, when dot-com gold brought live/work lofts to otherwise non-residential neighborhoods — and plenty of new residents to live in them. Those newcomers, perhaps used to the peace and quiet of the suburbs, or maybe expecting more comfort in exchange for their exorbitant monthly rent checks, didn’t want to hear the End Up’s late-night set or deal with riffraff from Folsom Street Fair peeing in their driveways. Conflicts escalated. The Police Department station in SoMa, responsible for issuing venue permits and for enforcing their conditions, embarked on a plan to shut down half the area’s nightclubs. Luckily, city government and citizens agreed to save the threatened venues and the police captain responsible for the proposal was transferred to the airport, the San Francisco equivalent of political exile. In 2003, the Entertainment Commission was formed, in part to take over the role of granting venue and event permits.

But as Guardian readers know, the problem was not solved. As we’ve covered in several stories ["The death of fun" (05/23/06), "Death of fun, the sequel," (04/25/07), "Fighting for the right to party" (07/02/08)], beloved events and venues are still at risk. How Weird Street Fair was forced to change locations. Halloween in the Castro District was cancelled altogether. Alcohol was banned at the Haight Ashbury Street Fair and restricted at the North Beach Jazz Festival. Fees are still increasing. Rules are getting more stringent. As we predicted, it’s getting harder and harder to have fun in San Francisco. And while it’s the job of the Entertainment Commission to prevent problems while protecting our right to party, it has never been given enough funding, staff or authority to properly do its job.

So why should we care? Our legendary nightlife, festivals, and parades bring international tourists to our city — where they stay in hotels, eat at restaurants, shop at stores, and otherwise pump money into our economy. Street fairs give us ways to connect to our neighbors and our neighborhoods. Free events (which, if permit fees increase and alcohol sales are prohibited, will be a thing of the past) give equal access to fun and frivolity to people in all income brackets — and most raise money for charities and nonprofits. Particular venues and happenings provide an important way for those in the counterculture — whether that’s LGBT youth or progressive artists — to meet, mingle, and support each other. And none of that captures the intangible quality of living in a city where freedom, tolerance, and the pursuit of a good time are supported. And all this is one of the reasons many of us moved here, where we pay taxes (and parking tickets), open businesses, start organizations, and contribute to our already diverse and vibrant population.

But if we don’t establish a way to protect our culture, personally and legally, we may lose it. Instead, we need an overarching policy that establishes our values as well as the legal ways we can go about supporting them. The Music and Culture Charter Amendment, in the works for more than three years and currently sitting before the Board of Supervisors, aims to do exactly this.

The most important part of the amendment, created by a coalition of artists, musicians, event planners, club owners, and concerned citizens who call themselves Save SF Culture, would be to revise San Francisco’s General Plan to include an entertainment and nightlife element, just as the current plan contains an entire section devoted to the protection of (presumably mainstream) dance, theater, music, and art, calling them "central to the essence and character of the city." Not only would this amendment mandate that future lawmakers try to preserve events and venues, it would give a roadmap on how to do this effectively — most notably by creating a streamlined, transparent, online permitting process for special events.

Yet even if this important amendment passes and wins the mayor’s signature (which is hardly a sure thing), that’s just the beginning of a process of figuring out how to sustain San Francisco’s culture in the face of potentially threatening socioeconomic changes. At the very least, the next step will be giving the Entertainment Commission the full funding and staff (it currently operates with five of the eight staffers required). And once our beloved clubs and events are out of immediate danger, it will be time to form a coalition of citizens, government officials, and city planners to decide how and where culture in our city should grow, asking questions like whether or not we want a large-scale amphitheater or if we need to designate an area as an entertainment district. Most important, the city needs to develop a framework for resolving the inevitable conflicts with NIMBYs in a way that promotes a vibrant culture.

Yet there’s also a role in this process for each citizen of San Francisco. We need to remind ourselves and our neighbors that tolerance is one of our core civic values, tolerance for different races, classes, genders, sexual identities, and for the potentially noisy, messy, chaotic ways our culture supports those differences. If we erect a gate — physical or metaphorical — every time we’re uncomfortable or inconvenienced, we’ll turn San Francisco into the sanitized, homogenous, boring suburbs that I moved to Church and Market to escape. *

Anniversary Issue: Beyond the automobile

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› steve@sfbg.com

More:

Download the the transportation roundtable discussion (DivShare)

Transportation is the linchpin of sustainability. Fix the transportation system, and almost every other aspect of the city’s ecological health improves: public health, conservation of resources, climate change, economics, and maintaining our culture and sense of community.

The region’s unsustainable transportation system is the biggest cause of global warming (more than half the Bay Area’s greenhouse gas emissions come from vehicles) and one of the biggest recipients of taxpayer money. And right now, most of those public funds from the state and federal governments are going to expand and maintain freeway systems, a priority that exacerbates our problems and delays the inevitable day of reckoning.

It’s going to have to change — and we can do it the easy way or the hard way.

“We’ll get to a more sustainable transportation system. The question is, are we going to be smart enough to make quality of life for people high within that sustainable transportation system?” said Dave Snyder, who revived the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and founded Transportation for a Livable City (now known as Livable City) before becoming transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. “People will drive less, but will they have dignified alternatives? That’s the question.”

That notion — that transportation sustainability is inevitable, but that it’ll be painful if we don’t start now in a deliberate way — was shared by all 10 transportation experts recently interviewed by the Guardian. And most agreed that needed reform involves shifting resources away from the automobile infrastructure, which is already crowding out more sustainable options and will gobble up an even bigger piece of the pie in the future if we continue to expand it.

“Yeah, it’ll be more sustainable, but will it be just? Will it be healthful? Will it be effective? Those are the questions,” said Tom Radulovich, director of Livable City and an elected member of the BART Board of Directors. “You can’t argue against geology. The planet is running out of oil. We’re going to have a more sustainable transportation system in the future. That’s a given. The question is, is it going to meet our other needs? Is it going to be what we need it to be?”

And the answer to all those questions is going to be no — as long as politicians choose to fund wasteful projects such as a fourth bore in the Caldecott Tunnel and transferring $4 billion from transit agencies to close California budget deficits accruing since 2000.

“Our leaders need to be putting our money where our collective mouth is and stop raiding these funds,” Carli Paine, transportation program director for Transportation and Land Use Coalition, told us. “I’m hopeful, but I think we all need to do more.”

 

TRANSIT AND BIKES

There is reason to be hopeful. With increased awareness of global warming and high gasoline prices, public transit ridership has increased significantly in the Bay Area. And one study indicates that the number of people bicycling in San Francisco has quadrupled in the last few years.

“Look at what’s happening on the streets of San Francisco: you have biking practically doubling every year without any new bike infrastructure. I think the demand is out there. The question is, when is the political leadership going to catch up to demand?” Jean Fraser, who sits on the SPUR and SFBC boards and until recently ran the San Francisco Health Plan under Mayor Gavin Newsom, told us.

But the political leadership and federal transportation spending priorities are behind the times. Of the $835 million in federal funds administered by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for the nine Bay Area counties in 2006-07, 51.4 percent went to maintain and expand state highways. Only 2.5 percent went for expansion of public transit, and 2.4 percent for bike and pedestrian projects. Overall, Paine said, about 80 percent of all state and federal transportation funding goes to facilities for automobiles, leaving all modes of transportation to fight for the rest.

“Historically we favor the automobile at the expense of all those other modes,” Radulovich said at a forum of experts assembled by the Guardian (a recording of the discussion is available at sfbg.com). “It’s been given primacy, and I think everyone around this table is saying, in one way or another, that we need a more balanced approach. We need a more sustainable, sensible, and just way of allocating space on our roads.”

Yet the Bay Area is now locking in those wasteful patterns of the past with plans for about $6 billion in highway expansions, which means the MTC will have to spend even more every year keeping those roads in shape. Highway maintenance is the biggest line item in the MTC budget, at $275 million.

“We can’t pay for what we have now — to maintain it, repair it, seismically retrofit it — so why we’re building more is kind of beyond me,” Radulovich said. “We continue to invest in the wrong things.”

The experts also question big-ticket transit items such as the Central Subway project, a 1.7-mile link from SoMa to Chinatown that will cost an estimated $1.4 billion to build and about $4 million per year to run.

“There are 300 small capital projects we need to see,” Snyder said. “That’s really the answer. The idea of a few big capital projects as the answer to our problems is our problem. What we really need are 100 new bike lanes. We need 500 new bus bulbs. We need 300 new buses. It’s not the big sexy project, but 300 small projects.”

The most cost-efficient, environmentally effective transportation projects, according to renowned urban design thinkers such as Jan Gehl from Denmark, are those that encourage walking or riding a bike.

“I think Jan Gehl put it best, which is to say a city that is sweet to pedestrians and sweet to bicyclists is going to be a sustainable city,” Fraser said. “So I think focusing on those two particular modes of transportation meets the other goals of the financial viability because they’re the cheapest ways to get people around — and the healthiest ways — which I submit is one of the other criteria for sustainable transportation…. And it helps with the social justice and social connections.”

 

IT’S GOOD FOR YOU

In fact, transportation sustainability has far-reaching implications for communities such as San Francisco.

“I think of sustainability in two ways,” Fraser said. “The first is sustainability for the environment. And since I have a background in health care, I think of a sustainable transportation system as one that’s actually healthy for us. In the past at least 50 years, we’ve actually engineered any kind of active transportation — walking to work or to school, biking to school — out of our cities.”

But it can be engineered back into the system with land use policies that encourage more density around transit corridors and economic policies that promote the creation of neighborhood-serving commercial development.

“If my day-to-day needs can be met by walking, I don’t put pressure on the transportation system,” Manish Champsee, a Mission District resident who heads the group Walk SF, told us.

The transportation system can either promote that sense of community or it can detract from it. Champsee said San Francisco needs more traffic-calming measures, citing the 32 pedestrian deaths in San Francisco last year. Almost a third as many people are killed in car accidents as die from homicides in San Francisco — but murder gets more resources and attention.

“There’s a real sense in the neighborhoods that the roadways and streetscapes are not part of the neighborhood, they’re not even what links one neighborhood to another. They’re sort of this other system that cuts through neighborhoods,” said Gillian Gillette of the group CC Puede, which promotes safety improvements on Cesar Chavez Street.

Radulovich notes that streets are social spaces and that decisions about how to use public spaces are critical to achieving sustainability.

“A sustainable transportation system is one that allows you to connect to other people,” he said. “Cities have always thrived on connections between humans, and I think some of the transportation choices we’ve made, with reliance on the automobile, have begun to sever a lot of human connections. So you’ve got to think about whether it’s socially sustainable. Also economically sustainable, or fiscally sustainable, because we just can’t pay for what we have.”

So then what do we do? The first step will take place next year when Congress is scheduled to reauthorize federal transportation spending and policies, presenting an opportunity that only comes once every four years. Transportation advocates from around the country are already gearing up for the fight.

“We’ve built out the freeways. They’re connecting the cities — they’re pretty much done. So what do we need to do to make streets more vibrant and have more space for people and not just automobiles?” asked Jeff Wood, program associate for the nonprofit group Reconnecting America and the Center for Transit-Oriented Development.

Then, once communities such as San Francisco have more money and more flexibility on how to spend it, they can get to work on the other sustainability needs. “The key component is having all the transportation systems fully linked,” Paine said. That means coordinating the Bay Area’s 26 transit agencies; expanding on the new TransLink system to make buying tickets cheaper and easier; funding missing links such as connecting Caltrain from its terminus at King and Fourth streets to the new Transbay Terminal; and timing transfers so passengers aren’t wasting time waiting for connections.

And the one big-ticket transportation project supported by all the experts we consulted is high-speed rail, which goes before voters Nov. 4 as Proposition 1A. Not only is the project essential for facilitating trips between San Francisco and Los Angeles, it takes riders to the very core of the cities without their having to use roadways.

Paine also notes that the bond measure provides $995 million for regional rail improvements, with much of that going to the Bay Area. And that’s just the beginning of the resources that could be made available simply by flipping our transportation priorities and recognizing that the system needs to better accommodate all modes of getting around.

At the roundtable, I asked the group how much a reduction in automobile traffic we need to see in San Francisco 20 years from now to become sustainable — with safe streets for cyclists and pedestrians, free-flowing public transit, and vibrant public spaces. Sarah Sherburn-Zimmer, an organizer with SEIU Local 1021 and the Transit Not Traffic Coalition, said “half.” Nobody disagreed.

That may sound outrageous by today’s standards, when cars use about 30 percent of our roadways to handle about 5 percent of the people-moving (a similar ratio to how Americans constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but use more than 25 percent of the world’s resources). A sustainable, just, efficient mix would drastically beef up the operating budgets of Muni, BART, and other transit agencies, and transfer all the capital set aside for new freeways into new transit lines that would better serve, for example, the Sunset and Excelsior districts.

Alternative transportation advocates insist that they aren’t anti-car, and they say the automobile will continue to play a role in San Francisco’s transportation system. But the idea of sustainability means beefing up all the other, more efficient transportation options, so it becomes faster, cheaper, and easier to walk, bike, take transit, or rideshare (probably in that order of importance, based on the resources they consume). As Fraser said of residents choosing to drive cars, “We should make it so it’s their last choice.” *

 

Anniversary Issue: First, do no harm

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> sarah@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom announced last week that San Francisco is "on pace" to build a historic number of homes in a five-year period.

"Despite the housing crisis facing the nation, San Francisco is bucking the trends and creating a record number of homes," Newsom said. "Once again, San Francisco is leading the way."

But where?

Newsom notes that his housing-development plans will triple what San Francisco produced in the ’90s, and double the past decade’s housing production. He claims that he has increased the city’s production of affordable housing for low- and very-low-income households to the highest levels ever.

But he doesn’t point out that most people who work in San Francisco won’t be able to afford the 54,000 housing units coming down the planning pipeline.

The truth is that, under Newsom’s current plans, San Francisco is on pace to expand its role as Silicon Valley’s bedroom community, further displace its lower- and middle-income workers, and thereby increase the city’s carbon footprint. All in the supposed name of combating global warming.

So, what can we do to create a truly sustainable land-use plan for San Francisco?

•<\!s> Vote Yes on Prop. B

In an Oct. 16 San Francisco Chronicle article, Newsom tried to criticize the Board of Supervisors for not redirecting more money to affordable housing, and for placing an affordable housing set-aside on the ballot.

"There’s nothing stopping the Board of Supervisors from redirecting money for more affordable housing," Newsom claimed. "Why didn’t they redirect money to affordable housing this year if they care so much about it?"

Ah, but they did. Newsom refused to spend the $33 million that a veto-proof majority of the Board appropriated for affordable housing last year. Which is why eight supervisors placed Prop. B, an annual budget allocation for the next 15 years, on the Nov. 2008 ballot.

•<\!s> Radically redirect sprawl

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s executive director, Gabriel Metcalf, notes that existing Northern California cities —San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose — already have street, sewer, and transit grids, and mixed-use development in place.

"So we don’t have to allow one more inch of suburban sprawl. We could channel 100 percent of regional growth into cities. Instead, we hold workshops and ask ‘How much growth can we accommodate?‘ The answer is none, because no one likes to change."

Metcalf said he believes people should be able to work where they want, provided that it’s reachable by public transit.

"What’s wrong with taking BART to Oakland and Berkeley, or Caltrain to San Jose?" Metcalf said.

•<\!s> Don’t do dumbass growth

Housing activist and Prop. B supporter Calvin Welch rails at what he describes as "the perversion of smart growth in local planning circles."

The essence of smart growth is that you cut down the distance between where people work and live, Welch explains.

"But that makes the assumption that the price of the housing you build along transit corridors is affordable to the workforce that you want to get onto public transit," Welch adds. "If it’s not, it’s unlikely they’ll get out of their cars. Worse, if you produce housing that is only affordable to the community that works in Silicon Valley, you create a big problem in reverse, a regional transit shortage. Because you are building housing for folks who work in a place that is not connected to San Francisco by public transit."

Welch says the city also needs to invest more in transit infrastructure.

Pointing to Market-Octavia and the Eastern Neighborhoods, Welch notes that while the City Planning Department is calling for increased density there, Muni is proposing service cuts.

"This is beyond bizarre," Welch said. "It will result in dramatic increases in density in areas that are poorly served by transit. That’s the dumbest kind of growth."

Welch says sustainable land use has local employment opportunities at its heart.

Noting that 70 percent of residents worked in San Francisco 20 years ago, Welch says that only a little over 50 percent of local jobs are held by San Franciscans today.

"Most local jobs are held by people who live outside San Francisco, and most San Franciscans have to go elsewhere to find work. It’s environmentally catastrophic."

•<\!s> Protect endangered communities

Earlier this year, members of a mayoral task force reported that San Francisco is losing its black population faster than any other large US city. That decline will continue, the task force warned, unless immediate steps are taken.

Ironically, the task force’s findings weren’t made public until after voters green-lighted Lennar’s plan to develop 10,000 (predominantly luxury) units in Bayview-Hunters Point, one of the last African American communities in town.

San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Fred Blackwell has since recommended expanding his agency’s certificate of preference program to give people displaced by redevelopment access to all of the city’s affordable housing programs, an idea that the Board of Supervisors gave its initial nod to in early October. But that’s just a Band-Aid.

And community leader and Nation of Islam Minister Christopher Muhammad has suggested creating "endangered community zones" — places where residents are protected from displacement — in Bayview-Hunters Point and the Western Addition.

"It’s revolutionary, but doable," Muhammad said at the out-migration task force hearing.

•<\!s> Don’t build car-oriented developments

BART director and Livable City executive Tom Radulovich predicts a silver lining in the current economic crisis: "The city will probably lose Lennar."

He’s talking about two million square feet of office space and 6,000 square feet of retail space that Lennar Corp., the financially troubled developer, is proposing in Southeast San Francisco.

"We should not be building an automobile-oriented office park in the Bayview," Radulovich said. "Well-meaning folks in the Planning Department are saying we need walkable cities, but Michael Cohen in the Mayor’s Office is planning an Orange County-style sprawl that will undo any good we do elsewhere. This is the Jekyll and Hyde of city planning."

•<\!s> Buy housing

Ted Gullicksen at the San Francisco Tenants Union says that since land in San Francisco only increases in value, the city should buy up apartment buildings and turn them into co-ops and land-trust housing.

"The city should try to get as much housing off-market as possible, grab it now, while it’s coming up for sale, especially foreclosed properties," Gullicksen said. "That’s way quicker than trying to build, which takes years. And by retaining ownership, the city also retains control over what happens to the land."

•<\!s> Work with nonprofit developers

Gullicksen said that the city should work with small nonprofits, and not big master developers, to create interesting, diverse neighborhoods.

Local architect David Baker says nonprofits are more likely to build affordable housing than private developers, even when the city mandates that a certain percentage of new housing must be sold below market rate.

"Thanks to the market crash, very little market rate housing is going to be built in the next five years, which means almost no inclusionary," Baker explains. "During a housing boom, you can jack up that percentage rate to 15 percent, or 20 percent, but then the boom crashes, and nothing gets built."

Gullicksen says the good news is that planners are beginning to think about how to create walkable, vibrant, and safe cities.

"They are thinking about pedestrian-oriented entrances and transparent storefronts, about hiding parking and leaving no blank walls on ground floors. Corner stores, which are prohibited in most neighborhoods, are a great amenity.

"San Francisco needs to figure out where it can put housing without destroying existing neighborhoods, or encroaching on lands appropriate for jobs."

•<\!s> Design whole neighborhoods

Jim Meko, chair of the SoMa Leadership Council, was part of a community planning task force for the Western SoMa neighborhood. He told us that one of the most important things his group did was think about development and preservation in a holistic way.

"WSOMA’s idea is to plan a whole neighborhood, rather than simply re-zoning an area, which is how the Eastern Neighborhoods plan started," Meko said. "Re-zoning translates into figuring out how many units you can build and how many jobs you will lose. That’s a failed approach. It’s not smart growth. If you displace jobs, the economic vitality goes elsewhere, and people have to leave their neighborhood to find parks, recreational facilities and schools."

Meko noted that "housing has become an international investment. It’s why people from all around the world are snapping up condos along the eastern waterfront. But they are not building a neighborhood."

San Francisco, Meko said, "has the worst record of any US city when it comes to setting aside space for jobs in the service and light industrial sector. But those are exactly the kinds of jobs we need. The Financial District needs people to clean their buildings, and I need people to repair my printing press. But I don’t like having to pay them $165 an hour travel time."

•<\!s> Practice low-impact development

Baker recommends that the city stop allowing air-conditioned offices.

"We’ve got great weather, we need to retrofit buildings with openable windows," he said. "We should stop analyzing the environmental impact of our buildings based on national tables. This stops us from making more pedestrian friendly streets. And people should have to pay a carbon fee to build a parking space."

A citywide green building ordinance goes into effect Nov. 3 and new storm water provisions follow in January, according to the SFPUC’s Rosey Jencks.

This greening impetus comes in response to San Francisco’s uniquely inconvenient truth: surrounded by rising seas on three sides, the city has a combined sewer system. That means that the more we green our city, the more we slow down the rate at which runoff mixes with sewage, the more we reduce the risk of floods and overflows, and the more we reduce the rate at which we’ll have to pump SoMa, as rising seas threaten to inundate our sewage system.

The SFPUC also appears committed to replacing ten seismically challenged and stinky digesters at its southeast plant.

•<\!s> Strictly control the type of new housing

Marc Salomon, who served with Meko on the task force, told us he thinks the city needs to create a "boom-proof" development plan, "a Prop. M for housing." That’s a reference to the landmark 1986 measure that strictly limited new commercial office development and forced developers to compete for permits by offering amenities to the city.

The city’s General Plan currently mandates that roughly two-thirds of all new housing be affordable — but the city’s nowhere near that goal. And building a city where the vast majority of the population is rich is almost the definition of unsustainability.

"Too much construction is not sustainable at any one time, nor is too much uniform development," Salomon said. "If we see too many banks, coffee shops or dot-com offices coming in, we need hearings. We need to adopt tools now, so can stop and get things under control next time one of these waves hits. And since infrastructure and city services are in the economic hole, we need to make sure that new development pays for itself." *

Feast: The fixe is in

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› paulr@sfbg.com

In the horse race of American shibboleths, it’s neck and neck between "choice" and "democracy" down the unending stretch. But maybe not in the kitchen. Well-settled folk wisdom teaches that the best kitchens more closely resemble autocracies or fiefs than serene republics. "A kitchen is not a democracy" — what sage said this, or should have? And out there in the dining room, it can be equally true that choice is sometimes more a burden than a benefit. Many of us have known the quiet horror of sitting down in a Chinese restaurant and being handed a menu whose numbered items run into the hundreds and whose heft is like that of an appropriations bill. Choice is not always for the faint of heart.

One of the reasons I retain a particular affection for Chez Panisse in Berkeley is its fixed menu. It changes every night, but on any given night, they serve what they serve. The presentation of the menu card is something of a formality, a polite advisory. You are being clued in but not actually consulted. And, in a strange way, you relax, as if you’re strapping yourself into an airline seat. You surrender your autonomy, say your little prayer, and trust in the fates to take you (and your luggage) where you want to go. And that’s what happens. There’s no point worrying, since it’s out of your hands. You’re free to direct your energies elsewhere.

As far as I know, Chez Panisse is the only restaurant in the Bay Area that uses this kind of absolutely set menu, the king of the prix-fixes. (And only downstairs. If it’s choice you seek, upstairs you must go, to the excellent café.) But in recent years, I have noticed a gentle bloom of lesser prix-fixes: some offered beside a regular à la carte menu, others that give a few options for each course. While quite a few of the restaurants are French, as we would expect, an increasing number aren’t — so you won’t necessarily get stuck with crème brûlée for dessert.

The prix-fixe isn’t for everybody all the time, of course. There have been moments when I’ve forsaken a tempting one because I didn’t want dessert (which is almost always one of the courses offered). At other times, a dish on the regular menu strongly appealed. Prix-fixe dishes have long seemed quite mainstream to me; they’re the kind of things a kitchen can produce without too much struggle that appeals to a broad swath of customers. In return, you generally do get more for your money. The greatest prix-fixe deal I ever came across was at Hawthorne Lane, in the autumn of 2001: three courses for $28 at one of the best restaurants in the city, where even the modest dishes were memorable. Those were strange days, true, and the restaurant itself is no more, having morphed into Two. But silently, with only my lips moving, I compare all subsequent prix-fixes to that one.

The George W. Bush Wirtschaftswunder has brought, among other delights, steady upward pressure on prices, especially food prices. Yet there is at least one restaurant in the city where you can get three courses for less than $20 — only a nickel less, but still. The restaurant is Le P’tit Laurent (699 Chenery, SF. 415-334-3235, www.leptitlaurent.com), an atmospheric bistro in the heart of the Glen Park village. On nights when rain smears the windows, the street scene looks almost Parisian. Inside it’s warm and cozy, with bustle. The prix-fixe is available until 7 p.m. and includes soup or salad, a main dish (perhaps sautéed prawns or roasted veal), and a dessert from the dessert menu, maybe the sublime profiteroles. My lone sorrow here is that if you want the restaurant’s excellent cassoulet, you’ll probably end up having to order it à la carte.

Only slightly more expensive, at $23.50, is the three-course prix-fixe at Zazie (941 Cole, SF. 415-564-5332, www.zazisf.com), another bistro that feels authentically French, though more Provençal than Parisian. The prix-fixe possibilities here are marked on the menu card with asterisks; soup, salad, mussels, salmon, and chocolate pots de crème are some of the staples. Quite like France. A bonus draw is the restaurant’s large rear garden, which is made habitable even on chilly winter nights by those heating trees you often see at ski lodges.

In a much more urban quartier we find Le Charm (315 Fifth St., SF. 415-546-6128, www.lecharm.com), which since the mid-1990s has been an oasis of civilized clattering in the scruffy heart of SoMa. The prix-fixe is a little pricier here — $30 for three courses — but the cooking might also be a bit more urbane. Recent starter choices included salmon carpaccio and escargot, while among the desserts lurked a financier and a sablé. The restaurant also has a small patio for the al fresco–minded, and let’s not forget that SoMa tends to be warmer and less windy than the city’s more westerly neighborhoods.

Not all prix-fixes must be French. One of the better deals of the non-Gallic — indeed, of any — sort going at the moment can be found at Roy’s (575 Mission, SF. 415-777-0277, www.roysrestaurant.com), an outpost of the Hawaiian-fusion chain. The restaurant’s three-course set menu changes seasonally and, at the moment, costs $35 — making it something of a successor to the $28 Hawthorne Lane bonanza. There is typically a choice among two or three starters and a like number of desserts, with a slightly greater variety (perhaps three or four possibilities) among main courses. The San Francisco version of Roy’s doesn’t much resemble its older siblings on the islands; those places are rustically elegant, while ours is unmistakably urban, with a lot of glass, hard surfaces, high ceilings, and gloss. But the food is excellent, and at $35 for a full dinner in such a stylish setting, it’s a bit of a steal.

Firefly (4288 24th St., SF. 415-821-7652, www.fireflyrestaurant.com), which turns 15 this fall, has been well worth seeking out all these years, prix-fixe or no. (The prix-fixe — $35 for any starter, main course, and dessert — is a post-millennium wrinkle.) From the beginning, the restaurant has offered its wondrous shrimp-and-scallop potstickers while providing for the tastes of vegetarians and flesheaters alike, with no apparent fuss. It’s as good as a neighborhood restaurant could be, in a gastronomically-minded city where many of the best restaurants are in the neighborhoods. And with a prix-fixe option allowing a full range of motion across a supple and changeable bill of fare, it’s also an enduringly good deal.

Far to the west, near the shores of the sea, we find Pisces (3414 Judah, SF. 415-564-2233, www.piscessf.com), a seafood house with a minimalist look (including a bold black facade) New Yorkers would call "downtown." The twist here is not one but two prix-fixes, one for $23, the other for $33. What does the extra $10 buy you? A choice of desserts, for one thing; the $23 folk must settle for, say, vanilla-bean crème brûlée. A little ordinary, but there are worse fates, surely; how often do bad crèmes brûlées turn up? The price premium also results in somewhat tonier savory dishes — Dungeness crab cake rather than clam chowder as a first course, for instance, or ahi rather than salmon as a main course. On the other hand, if you want cioppino, the famous seafood stew, you might end up spending less, since sometimes, even in America, less is more.

Lately one has heard a good deal of crashing and clatter coming not from restaurant kitchens but from Wall Street. The great leviathans of finance seem to be going down like torpedoed battleships, while the press struggles to decide if the nation is — pick your cliché — "drifting," "stumbling," or "sinking" into a recession. Whatever. Are we there yet? I would not be so bold as to suggest that prix-fixes are the answer to the many and large problems afoot in this land, but I do think prix-fixe menus are about value, and value is a value from which we stray at our peril. The last time the economic sky looked quite this ominous was seven years ago, after a terror attack and the popping of the dot-com bubble. We began to take a bit less for granted in that strange autumn, and people seemed to awaken for the first time in years to the understanding that champagne did not, in fact, flow from their taps. It made sense to spend more prudently, to look for deals. That was then and this is now, and suddenly now is looking a lot like then. While the high and mighty ponder their big fixes, the rest of us can once again enjoy our small ones.

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

Feast: 5 fierce cooking classes

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There’s something perfect about a cooking class for an adult — it’s a way to learn a new skill without making a huge commitment (Sure, I want to learn Italian — but who has time to spend a semester on it, only to know how to ask for directions?); it’s a way to get closer to existing friends or to meet new people (especially singles-themed events); and it has a practical application (One must eat. One mustn’t necessarily, say, do cross-stitch). So I’ve researched a selection of what the Bay Area has to offer, whether you’re looking to strengthen partnerships, find new ones, or just change your relationship with your kitchen (it is, apparently, more than a place to keep your beer). The most important thing I’ve learned is that many classes offer similar tips, skills, and seasonal menus. And all intend to demystify or intensify your relationship with food. So when choosing a class, consider what it is you really want to get from it. Do you want to know how to make a gourmet meal for a dinner party? Do you want to meet new people and have a good time? Do you want to put some food in your freezer? Or do you just want to figure out what your gas range-top is good for other than lighting cigarettes when your Bic’s out of fuel? Lucky for you, in a culinary-focused city like this one, there’s a class for all of you. Here are some of my favorites.

THE CULINARY SALON


The only thing more charming than Chef Joe Wittenbrook is his teaching space: a quaint street-level apartment with a picture window in Duboce Triangle. Wittenbrook’s focus is on the whole experience. This is not necessarily the class where you’ll perfect techniques, but you’ll learn more than you ever expected to — from the origin of the foods on your menu to special tips and tricks. His classes are small — a recent Saturday course had five students — and are therefore intimate and casual, made friendly and warm by Wittenbrook’s outgoing personality. Don’t forget the wine — you’re welcome to imbibe during class as well as the European family-style meal you’ll share together afterward. Or, get four or six friends together and you can have him to yourself.

16-B Sanchez, SF. (415) 626-4379, www.theculinarysalon.com

FIRST CLASS COOKING


The structure of these courses, hosted by Emily Dellas at her stunning SoMa loft, is similar to Wittenbrook’s: everyone gets a list of recipes, takes turns preparing dishes, and shares the resulting meal together. As a food-lover without much formal training, though, her approach is to pass on her love for cooking to those who might be intimidated by it, demystifying dishes like profiteroles (the pastry base of cream puffs and éclairs). She likes to create menus that people can not only prepare themselves, but can feel good about eating on a regular basis — light, healthy, and seasonal. Her courses have room for about 10 people apiece, which means less hands-on time for each person, but the potential for a more festive atmosphere. Bring a friend and a bottle of wine.

www.firstclasscooking.com

PARTIES THAT COOK


Though Parties That Cook does host public classes (in particular, one for singles at Sur La Table), its specialty is creating cooking-themed events for corporate team building or private gatherings. And the experience it provides is part class, part catered meal. PTC will come to your house or help you rent a space, bring ingredients and cooking utensils, organize staff to help with hands-on instruction, and, when the meal is done, serve you and your guests restaurant-style. As an ideal option when you want to create a special event according to your tastes, PTC can accommodate up to 600 people. PTC even offers a recipe deck, complete with illustrated instructions on 30 different small dishes, that you can purchase as party favors.

601 Minnesota, SF. (415) 441-3595, www.partiesthatcook.com

COOKS BOULEVARD


Though the independent kitchenware store hosts a variety of cooking classes, the cornerstone of its educational program is Essential Knife Skills, held monthly in the gorgeous, spacious teaching kitchen at the Katherine Michiels School. The concept of the course is to teach basic safety and techniques for wielding a cook’s most important weapon, with each of up to 10 people getting to practice at their own station (and getting one-on-one attention). A bit more formal than the private cooking classes, the course is divided in half by a lovely cheese-and-cracker break. Although it’s geared toward — and useful to — anyone, this seems like an ideal class for the intermediate cook who wants to develop the ability to cook more efficiently and beautifully. (Parents take note: the company Apron Strings [415-550-7976, www.apronstringssf.com] also hosts classes for kids at this lovely location.)

1335 Guerrero, SF. (415) 647-2665, www.cooksboulevard.com

FOOD WIZ


Like Dellas, chef Marcus Gordon wants to teach that cooking should be fun and "anybody can do it." The native New Yorker hosts small classes (limited to five people) in the remodeled kitchen of his Noe Valley home, offering hands-on experience, tips and tricks, a shared meal after the class (including a cocktail — but no drinking during class), and even food to take home. Most importantly, he wants his students to realize they can make better-than-restaurant cuisine at home and to enjoy his recipes of foods "that really jump around on your tongue."

29th St. (between Church and Dolores), SF. www.foodwizsf.com

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

Chocolate. It’s what’s for dinner.

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By Meghan McCloskey

I’m not the kind of girl who craves chocolate. I don’t need boxes of candy from my boyfriend to know he’s into me. Hell, I’d rather get a sweater or even a cheesy bouquet of flowers than a fatty gift that’ll up my waistband.

But since last week I’ve changed forever, thanks to Orson, a trendy restaurant in SOMA known for its forward thinking and groundbreaking use of chocolate in its main dishes. That’s right. I said chocolate. For dinner.

Since Orson’s debut in February 2008, executive chef Elizabeth Falkner and her crew have been playing with chocolate in a way that Willy Wonka couldn’t even have imagined. By some miracle, they’ve found a way to include the sweet, classic dessert ingredient in the restaurant’s savory entrées and appetizers—and have consequently created newfound chocolate-consumed barbarians like myself.

Seriously, don’t mess with me.

chocolate.jpg
Photo by Cheryl Mazak at gogetyourgirlon.com.

A Prop. M for housing

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Editors note: This is something I have supported and written about in detail. Marc makes the case nicely — T.R.

By Marc Salomon
San Francisco’s future as a creative and diverse progressive beacon is at risk due to the Planning Department’s Eastern Neighborhoods plan. The planning staff has decided the city’s need for luxury housing is so significant that it has set the development bar too low, allowing big builders to cash in on market rate housing.

Planning staff has labored to produce an inelegant community benefits and affordability model that has so many unproven moving parts it might barely work for current conditions but cannot be counted upon to provide for changing circumstances in the future.

But there is an existing successful city policy, passed by the voters in 1986 to control office sprawl, that can serve as a model for harnessing the insatiable demand to build profitable luxury housing, both for the benefit of existing San Franciscans as well as those of the non-rich who would seek refuge here in the future as so many of us did in the past.

Proposition M imposed a 950,000 square foot annual limit on office space. When applications to build exceed that cap, developers may offer up additional sweeteners to increase the chances of their projects being permitted.

The Western SoMa Citizens Planning Task force broke off from Eastern Neighborhoods planning process in 2004, and is nearing completion on its democratic, participatory, community-based plan. One policy that has caused consternation among the development types, who expect to run planning processes unhindered, has been a proposal to replicate Prop M, but this time, applied to housing.

Moment of truth

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› news@sfbg.com

The controversial and long-awaited Eastern Neighborhoods Community Plan — which includes a thicket of thorny planning and financing issues that will largely determine San Francisco’s socioeconomic future — has finally arrived before the Board of Supervisors.

Neither developers nor community activists are happy with the plan approved Aug. 7 by the Planning Commission, which sets zoning, policies, and funding levels for new development in the Mission District, eastern SoMa, Potrero Hill, and the Central Waterfront.

Developers objected to the fee levels and affordable-housing requirements, saying they would discourage growth, but the compromise plan of less than $16 per square foot in development fees (which vary widely, depending on many factors) and a maximum 20 percent affordable-housing requirement have left public needs severely underfunded. San Francisco Planning Department estimates indicate the fee structure will yield only about $150 million for the area’s $400 million in infrastructure needs.

“The plan right now is not balanced in favor of diversity and real neighborhood needs,” said Sup. Tom Ammiano, who plans to introduce a long list of amendments to the plan in conjunction with Sup. Sophie Maxwell and neighborhood groups that include the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, the South of Market Citizen Action Network (SOMCAN), and the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association.

On the other side of the equation, the Residential Builders Association and other developers say the city will end up with little development activity if they ask for too much, and they’re threatening legal action if the city pushes too hard. “Our members certainly aren’t happy, and the industry isn’t happy,” RBA president Sean Keighran told the Guardian, saying the plan allows for too little development. “Many of our members are meeting with attorneys and considering their options.”

The Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee will begin working through the myriad conflicts Sept. 15 with a series of at least four hearings running through Sept. 23, when the plan could head for the full board. But given the complex political dynamics at play — and the fate of Proposition B, the affordable housing set-aside measure that could help narrow the funding shortfall — key parts of the plan could be delayed until at least January, when the new board is seated, making the stakes of this November’s election even higher.

Political priorities will determine the plan’s emphasis, and the balance of power on the board now seems to favor increasing the amount of affordable housing that will be required in the eastern neighborhoods, home to much of San Francisco’s remaining working class. The supervisors also are leaning toward asking developers to pay more for parks and other infrastructure needs.

Planning Department staffer Steve Wertheim said the goal has been to “make the fees as feasible as possible” for developers and “to find a sweet spot” that will satisfy developers as well as community activists. While he said the commission “was as aggressive as possible with the tools we had available, we would have to subsidize every house if we want [more] affordable housing.”

Planners say they are constrained by city studies indicating that developers won’t build if required to offer more than 20 percent of their housing units below market rates. “As a resident of San Francisco, I would love to see housing cheaper. But we can’t make affordable housing requirements so high that we end up getting no housing at all,” Wertheim said. “We’ve done as much as we can, but the whole city has to commit.”

Indeed, the plan’s funding shortfall raises citywide questions. Tony Kelly, president of Potrero Boosters, said the unspoken assumption in the Eastern Neighborhood Plan is that voters will need to approve Prop. B: “This plan is a big argument for the housing fund.” Either the proposition passes or San Francisco simply becomes steadily less affordable for working families.

Keighran thinks there’s been too much focus on affordable housing. “This one goal should not take priority over the other goals,” Keighran said. “We feel we’re being asked for so many different things from so many different people.”

Yet the activists argue that San Francisco will lose its working class and families if the market alone is allowed to determine what kind of housing is built. The city’s own general plan states that 64 percent of new housing should be affordable. The activists are urging the supervisors to prioritize community needs over developer profits.

“It’s a huge, sprawling plan that has a lot of detail, and the details we wanted to see aren’t there,” said Nick Pagoulatos, coordinator of the MAC. “In terms of the housing, it’s a complete disaster for our housing needs…. The housing we’re seeing is the same old housing we’ve always seen in our neighborhoods, which is mostly market-rate housing.”

Given the amount of light industrial land in the plan area that would be zoned for housing — enough for an estimated 7,500 new units — Pagoulatos said the community has gotten very little. The Planning Department estimates that less than 30 percent of the housing developed under the plan will be considered affordable — less than half of what the city needs — and even getting to that level will require more funding, perhaps by creating new redevelopment districts.

Among other problems in the plan, Pagoulatos said there isn’t nearly enough land set aside for the fully affordable projects that nonprofit entities seek to build with city affordable-housing funds. “If we don’t get that, then we didn’t get anything for all the concessions that we’ve made,” he said.

While the plan now includes modest new affordable housing and community benefits requirements for developers who want to exceed the plan’s height and density limits, activists say the community isn’t getting enough for offering this carrot. They propose to require that 100 percent of the units exceeding current entitlements be affordable.

“Our main concern is there isn’t enough affordable housing in the plan,” said Chris Durazo, community planning director for SOMCAN. “We want the Board of Supervisors to get involved and take this seriously. They need to understand how this community is growing. The families here now should be able to remain here.”

SOMCAN formally appealed the Planning Commission’s approval of the plan’s environmental impact report, which didn’t include detailed traffic studies that must eventually be completed. “We’re appealing it based on them punting the traffic and transportation plan,” Durazo said.

Kelly said that was emblematic of the cursory approach planners have taken toward sizing up and providing for the needs of residents in the affected neighborhoods. “This whole plan is going to move forward with less than half the money for neighborhood improvements they say are necessary,” Kelly said. He notes that the population of the 94107 ZIP code could double under the plan, which makes no provisions for increasing transit services for that higher population or securing new land for parks.

“The gap in affordable housing and the loss of light industrial jobs is matched by a lack of funding for community improvements,” said Kelly, who said his association focuses on that latter issue but is supportive of community groups that focus on housing and jobs.

In fact, there has been an unprecedented level of community organizing and collaboration among groups of all political stripes around this plan, work that is expected to pay off more at the board level than at the commission level.

“Because the board and the commission are two very different political bodies, others may come out that weren’t at the commission hearings,” said Wertheim, noting that developers were well-represented at the commission level. “But the one thing I’ve learned from this whole process is not to be surprised.”

Keighran seemed to sense the changing dynamics. “Planning takes methodical procedural work,” he said. “Politicians are not best suited to doing planning.”

But the activists say this plan should be a reflection of the city’s values, not simply a product of discussions between developers and planners. Yet they understand that politics can cut both ways, particularly during an election season.

“Of course we need more housing, but building $6 million condos isn’t the answer,” said Marc Salomon of the Western SoMa Task Force, which broke away from the Eastern Neighborhoods planning process — a process he criticizes. “It’s not about housing people, it’s about investment. It’s ‘How do we give the developers what they want and give the natives the bare minimum, or just enough that they don’t burn down City Hall?'<0x2009>”

Salomon fears the Eastern Neighborhoods will continue to suffer from political pandering. “The [supervisors] are all looking for their next move,” Salomon said. “The discourse has moved so far to the right that you can’t be against market-rate housing. And what they’re doing is developing market-rate housing to suit developers, and at the same time purging this city of progressives.”

“Not tough”

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It wasn’t long ago that I stood in a small gallery, getting the same feelings I have on the F train in August: I’m going to get stampeded or dehydrate, and no one will notice. But since the Tea Elles had come highly recommended and was the only band playing, I stuck it out — along with a pack of sweaty citizens who, despite the B.O.-heavy sauna atmosphere, didn’t budge from the front of the room.

Months later in SoMa, I’m sitting in an airy kitchen with three of the four Tea Elles. It’s a bit like you imagine the "cool kid" dorm room to be: people with rolled cigarettes and guitars filing in and out and obscure music crackling out of a boom box.

"We picked the name, thinking Tea and Elles are like British and French. The most pansy, flamboyant name, which is kind of fitting for what we are doing," drummer Jigmae Behr tells me. "I mean, we’re not tough."

It’s true, the Tea Elles — which includes vocalist-guitarist Jeremy Cox, guitarist-vocalist Amelia Radtke, and bassist-vocalist Tanner Griepentrog — are not "tough." But funny enough, I’d have to say they’re kind of punk. Kind of punk and kind of surf — and kind of psychedelic too. Oh, yeah, and they’re also amazing.

The randomness of the band’s music is its most enticing aspect. It’s like a cocktail made by a mad scientist that hangs out at your favorite record store — a little Billy Childish with some Ventures and a dash of Syd Barrett thrown in. It makes a lot of sense when you hear it, but I’m amazed someone made this monster walk.

And the Tea Elles aren’t alone. The more independent shows I go to, the more I see this style emerging. Behr has his theory. "There was a mass consciousness," the 26-year-old explains, rolling another cigarette. "There were a lot of kids all over the country, going to the same shows, buying the same records, and loving the same bands. We all made these projects that came from the same cesspool. We are just all coming through the same filter of a punk aesthetic.

"So we evolved and whatever direction we take is going to be through that lens. If we decide we’re gonna be surf-oriented, or have more girl group harmonies, it’s all coming through that lens."

Oh. Where was I when everyone was getting so awesome? While some of us feel like having instant access to every type of media in the world has become daunting, other young musicians are pulling muses from every vine they can reach. And in a city like San Francisco, where — unlike Los Angeles or New York City — you won’t have a talent scout from MTV at every show, these performers seem to be making music for all the right reasons.

"When I’m writing a song or playing music I’m not thinking about any of that shit," says Cox, 19. "I’m thinking about a handful of people whose music I like."

The so-called egocentric notion of a frontperson is out, too, along with the idea that a band would ever release an album — unless it was done independently. It’s as if groups like the Tea Elles never imagined anyone would ever help them, although David Fox of local art collective Wizard Mountain recently recorded the band free of charge. That session, along with a recent Portland, Ore., jaunt means the Tea Elles probably have enough material for a full-length, which means I can finally stop listening to the melodic howling of "Chance of a Trance" on the outfit’s MySpace page. Before the band left for Portland, they felt that their songs weren’t "album material" — but apparently now they are. And regardless of whether San Francisco listeners are finally handed a DIY-burned CD or some indie label gets wise to the Tea Elles’ innovation, I just want to hear them. (Jen Snyder)

TEA ELLES

With Maus Haus and Ty Segall

Fri/5, 8 p.m., call for price (Sew-Op benefit)

Cellspace

2050 Bryant, SF
(415) 648-7562

www.myspace.com/teaelles

G-List: 6 laundromats that don’t suck

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The G-List is a weekly list of things to do and places to go by Justin Juul

As a Los Angeles transplant, I enjoy talking shit on my old hometown even more than most San Franciscans. But there are a few perks to living in the city of douchebags that a man doesn’t notice until he’s moved on. For starters, the weather is better there. No getting around that. But there are other reasons I occasionally consider going back to hell and one of them is so constantly irritating I could die. Talkin’ bout laundry ya’ll.

Every apartment I had in LA came with a laundry room. But not here. Of the five crappy apartments I’ve had in SF, only two of them have had laundry facilities. The building I live in now is the worst. Not only does it lack an onsite washroom, but the nearest Laundromat is almost a mile away. Which doesn’t really matter because I wouldn’t want to go there even if it was right next door. The thing about doing your laundry at Laundromats is that it takes almost an entire day. You have to stuff your shit in bags, truck the whole pile down the street, and then sit and twiddle your thumbs until it’s done. Doing laundry is pretty much the most boring shit ever –a total waste of time. Unless, of course, you know where to go.

All of the Laundromats on this list have special features you won’t find at regular places. They make washing fun.

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Brainwash
Drink beer, eat food, and wash the stains from your soiled sheets with stand up comedians, SoMa punks, and a bunch of crazy swingers from a nearby Sex Cult. Brainwash is the best show in town because it’s the only Laundromat that serves alcohol. Plus, the music is usually pretty rad and the wi-fi is free.
1122 Folsom, SF

Punk’s latest clubhouse

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

A fire-breathing dinosaur graces the sign above the entrance to Thrillhouse Records, a Bernal Heights hole-in-the-wall wonder of a record shop. Duck in the door and you’ll find several shelves of punk, garage-rock, and metal LPs; cassettes and seven-inch singles; a zine library and a sizeable rack of DIY publications for sale; a mixtape trading bin (make one, leave it, and take one); and an awe-inducing black and white Iron Maiden tapestry that hangs above a colorful array of flyers for local shows past and upcoming. Add to this the impassioned music wafting from the turntable in the corner, and you’re fully enveloped in a warm, curious niche of the Bay Area music scene.

The San Francisco underground punk-rock community has found much to celebrate in Thrillhouse, which evolved from a few friends’ drunken pipe dreams to a wood, wax, and plastic reality under the benevolent oversight of Fred Schrunk. He’s a lanky, meek 26-year-old who wore a black hoodie and a big grin when we met at a coffee shop in SoMa last week. Schrunk was excited about the package slated to show up at the shop that afternoon: a box containing vinyls of the new Black Rainbow single, the label’s 11th and newest release, which would hopefully be ready to be folded into seven-inch sleeves upon arrival. Just as exciting was talk of the upcoming Thrillfest, a store-sanctioned live music extravaganza in the dying days of August.

As Schrunk told it, Thrillhouse opened in January 2007 as a not-for-profit record store at 3422 Mission Street: all its proceeds go toward improving the shop and its contents, and it’s operated daily by local volunteers in the spirit of the late punk HQ Epicenter on Valencia Street. The label was conjured up mid-2007 by Schrunk and Shawn Mehrens, the vocalist for Thrillfest act Yankee Kamikaze, and store sales have funded the label’s new releases and reissues, which include a single by Onion Flavored Rings and a re-ish of Fleshies’ Baby LP. The Simpsons buffs will know the origins of the store’s name — it’s Milhouse’s desired user name for the Bart-coveted video game Bonestorm — and the handle speaks considerably to the enthusiasm of the volunteers who pop in and out of the storefront.

Radek Lecyk, a quiet, friendly young man from Poland who moved to San Francisco four years ago, was staffing a four-hour shift at the store one recent Tuesday afternoon. After selecting Fugazi’s terrific Margin Walker EP (Dischord, 1989) for play on the shop turntable, he explained how he "waited and waited" with anticipation for Thrillhouse’s opening after reading about its plans in a 2006 issue of Maximumrocknroll. For Lecyk and many others, the store has been a great meeting place for bands and show-goers of all ilks and ages. The shelves reflect the community’s generation-spanning nature: new label releases from Shotwell and the Reaction sit comfortably alongside releases from old-schoolers like Hickey, Sharp Knife, and Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits.

Idyllic as all this is, the ultimate get-together is still on the way. "Shitloads of people were in need of shows for summer," explained Schrunk, who earlier this year pleaded with his friends in San Pedro’s Toys That Kill and San Diego’s Tiltwheel to play SF, where the groups hadn’t been in some time. He came up with an incentive: if they made the trip, these outfits could play a super-rad, end-of-summer festival rather than the typical bar gig. Both bands thankfully agreed, although this meant actually having to deliver on the event. It was an intimidating prospect, but one that proved possible with the assistance of local venue bookers and the store’s newsletter, which reeled in enough performers to fill five nights.

Anybody wanting in on the bill needn’t worry about booking: there’ll be a free-for-all show at a secret city location Aug. 21. "Anybody that shows up with guitars and cymbals can play three songs," exclaimed Schrunk, who also highlighted the Aug. 24, Nor Cal vs. So Cal baseball game at Jackson Park across the street from Thee Parkside, which hosts the festival’s final show that night.

Thankfully, the fun won’t stop there: attendees can look forward to more label action this year with the release of the new LP by locals Surrender. Schrunk asked if I’ve ever seen them live before. I hadn’t, but it was nothing to be embarrassed about: he smiled and, in the sharing spirit of his label and store, sang their praises: "You should see them sometime — they’re really great."

THRILLFEST

With Fucking Buckaroos, Tiltwheel, Nothington, and more

Aug. 20–24

Knockout, Parkside, Kimo’s, and other SF locations

www.myspace.com/thrillfest

www.thrillhouserecords.com

Goat Hill Pizza

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› paulr@sfbg.com

While the denizens of Washington, DC must nourish themselves with Capitol Hill Blue, we of the Blessed Realm have easy access to Goat Hill Pizza, and although there aren’t any goats on Potrero Hill any more, in blue or any other color, the views are still magical, the pizza is pretty good, and a longtime spirit of San Francisco abides, despite the passing of a third of a century and the ebb and flow of various funny-money economic tides.

Goat Hill is more than a pizzeria with a view (though a better view you won’t easily find), more than a place long famed for its Monday night, all-you-can-eat pizza dim sum extravaganza (though a better deal you won’t easily find): it’s a kind of community center, a locus of mingling, with the restaurant’s co-owner, Philip De Andrade, serving as mingler-in-chief as he moves from table to table, chatting and checking. The restaurant’s long walls are regularly hung with paintings for sale, and, on certain warm weekend afternoons, the place becomes a kind of art gallery that smells of linguica and cheap red wine — just the sort of environment in which to stumble across a surviving Beat writer or unheralded master painter.

Goat Hill is a still-glowing ember of a bohemian San Francisco where life’s riches were enjoyed but neither obsessed over nor paraded as status symbols. If, in a sense, it’s an ambassador from the past, it’s an envoy that’s survived a host of Bible-worthy plagues, from earthquake, disease, and fire to the dot-com boom-bust (in with the Porsches, out with the Porsches!) and the long adventure in misrule that began with a stolen election and will eternally bear the name of the unbearable George W. Bush. The little man will be gone soon, holding hands with Dick Cheney in one of their undisclosed locations while Mesopotamia burns, but Goat Hill will still be there, packing them in on Monday nights.

While a wait for a table is generally an annoyance for people who are hungry to eat dinner, the Monday-night wait at Goat Hill is rather festive, especially in mild weather. Clots of people loiter on the sidewalk and in the street near the door, chatting and flirting and occasionally taking the long view down the slope of Connecticut Street to the city’s luminous skyline, which seems close enough to touch. Of all the skyline views I’ve observed over the years, only those on the eastern slopes of Russian Hill are the equal of those on the north face of Potrero. With a view like that, who needs food? And yet, from time to time, the host does emerge from the restaurant to call out a name, and a party of people — maybe a twosome, but just as likely a sixsome or even more — eagerly marches inside.

The dim sum comparison is as old as time, but it isn’t quite apposite. (Visitors to Goat Hill’s arriviste location in the SoMa flatlands will find the all-you-can-eat deal in effect every day.) Whenever I’ve had actual dim sum at a Chinese place, the servers check off little boxes on a tab when we’ve chosen items to eat, so the final bill varies. At Goat Hill, you pay a flat fee (at the moment $10.95 per head), which buys you unlimited access to the salad bar along with unlimited access to the pies that emerge regularly from the kitchen. A pie arrives; its topping is announced, and, as at a Sotheby’s auction, you point or mumble or in some other way indicate an interest, and you are given a slice. But step lively, because the next pie could be just seconds behind. Or, minutes might elapse, an interval in which you can thoughtfully chew your crust rinds. Some of these can look a little scorched.

The toppings themselves show signs of being drawn from the culinary equivalent of an auto dealership’s parts bin. There’s pepperoni, of course, and also pepperoni with sausage, and sausage with mushroom. (No pepperoni with mushroom.) How about ground beef with green onions ("Italian hamburger"), or spinach with tomato and feta cheese, or chicken with sun-dried tomatoes? Green bell pepper makes repeated appearances, as does pineapple, with ham or with sausage, with or without chunks of jalapeño pepper.

Linguica — the garlicky Portuguese sausage — is underrated as a pizza topping; its flavor is every bit as potent as pepperoni’s, but (at least at Goat Hill) it’s richer and less salty. This last is always an important consideration for the pizza eater who is beyond 30 years of age. I love pizza, and I retain an affection for the sort of pizza gluttony Goat Hill enables, but the older you get, the more likely you are to be sorry the next day not to have exercised more restraint in enjoying your pizza. (The pizza crusts, incidentally, are sourdough and find a nice middle ground between crackery and bready, but the rinds nonetheless have a way of piling on paper plates around the tables. Only across the way, at a table filled with avid men in their 20s, did I notice the crust rinds being efficiently dispatched. It was like watching bright-eyed jackals polish off a wildebeest carcass, bones and all.)

The salad bar, amid all this crust, is not an afterthought. Although it has the look of something you’d find at Howard Johnson’s, complete with sneeze shield, it does offer a broad range of non-bloating items, including kidney beans and chickpeas, tomato slices, mushrooms, lettuce, grated cheese, beets, pepperoncini, and, of course, choice of dressing, to be ladled from big crocks. There’s even a view, at no extra charge.

GOAT HILL PIZZA

Sun.–Thurs., 11:30 a.m.–10:30 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.

300 Connecticut, SF

(415) 641-1440

www.goathill.com

Beer and wine

AE/DC/DISC/MC/V

Noise does not preclude conversation

Wheelchair accessible

We be clubbin’? Just barely

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

One night around 11 this spring, I stepped out of a cab at Sixth and Mission streets, only to enter a chaotic scene. Enhancing the block’s usual charms — destitute dudes in wheelchairs, crack enthusiasts, an old man in a denim skirt clutching a baguette — was a row of police cruisers parked in the street. Officers roamed the block, herding people around.

Had I stumbled onto a grim tragedy? Nope. I was just trying to catch a hip-hop show. Like the other 150 people waiting outside Club Six, I was hoping to get into KUSH, a party hosted by the Demolition Men. My chances seemed slim. I was on the guest list, but the list was "closed." So I stood in the long but well-behaved line. Security yelled at us to keep on the sidewalk, though the sidewalk ended well before the line did. Finally a guard bellowed at us to leave.

Half the line drifted away. The rest remained, texting friends inside the club and trying to devise a way in. Soon, with a combination of threats and cajolery, police and security began clearing the sidewalk around the club. A short, powerfully built man pleaded with stragglers, the way tough guys plead with you not to force them to kick your ass. Someone addressed him. He was Angel Cruz, Club Six’s owner, whom I’d interviewed for this story by phone. I introduced myself. He signaled a guard, and suddenly I was inside.

If this was New York City or Los Angeles, I might have felt the smugness engendered by such special treatment. But this was San Francisco, and all I felt was weariness. The club had devoted two rooms to the party, yet only one was full. Still, the vibe was friendly, and Jacka tore it up with his radio smash, "All Over Me." Although I heard some dudes got salty over the guest list, there were no arrests.

Sadly, such scenes are typical. Actually, we were lucky: I’ve seen cops shut down shows entirely over trifling incidents, usually ones occurring outside the club. This state of affairs affects more than the club-goers. Owners make less at the bar, promoters make less at the gate, and performers have fewer places to perform. Hip-hop, in its myriad forms, is one of the most popular genres on earth, and San Francisco is a world-class city. Yet this town seems hostile toward this musical nightlife with such revenue-generating potential. Why?

Naturally there’s no simple answer, and even investigating is difficult. Owners don’t want to alienate the police, promoters don’t want to alienate owners, and the San Francisco Entertainment Commission wants cooperation among all concerned. Few people I interviewed would name names or particular events, and some would only speak off the record, due to the delicate web of professional relationships involved. Even so, common issues emerge.

"Hip-hop is synonymous with fights and shootings, to authority figures," said Desi Danganan, whose Poleng Lounge is one of the few venues committed to the music. "The police are very hesitant about any club that plays hip-hop. That was one of the first things that came up, ‘Are you playing hip-hop?’<0x2009>"

The association between hip-hop and violence is nothing new: violence is the theme of many raps. Yet this is hardly the case with all hip-hop. The Bay Area in particular has produced an abundance of progressive, nonviolent lyricists, from veterans Hieroglyphics to up-and-comer Trackademicks. Yet the distinction is lost on the city and the police, according to Fat City general manager Hiroshi Naruta. "They don’t know the difference between hyphy and backpacker," he said.

Unlike the Panhandle-based Polang, Fat City is in the SoMa District, a longtime site of contention between police and clubs. As a result, the venue is shying away from booking hip-hop. "I want to," Naruta said. "But I don’t want pressure from the city or SFPD."

"Pressure," of course, is a nebulous concept and hard to substantiate, but according to John Wood, political director of the SF Late Night Coalition, there are typical tactics. "If the police feel your venue is creating a nuisance, they show up every night, check your permits, walking into your venue, upsetting your customers," he said. "They do frequent inspections with the fire department and the building department, and get you for every little violation. Short of suspending permits and filing lawsuits, there’s lots of ways city bureaucracy can make it difficult to do business."

But just how much of a "nuisance" do hip-hop shows create? Are they really that violent? No more than other genres, according to Robert Kowal, whose Sunset Promotions has brought everyone from Grandmaster Flash to Jurassic 5 to SF. "The city has safety as its primary concern," he acknowledged. "Occasionally some shows have problems the police have to deal with. Almost without exception that label gets thrown at hip-hop, when most events, including hip-hop, are very cool."

"Right now there’s a gun problem in SF," Kowal continued. "Instead of addressing that, the city wants to blame entertainment and specifically hip-hop. But violence is rare inside the venue itself."

Wood concurred with this assessment. "There have been incidents where there were shootings," he said, "not in the clubs, but a block away, that may have possibly involved people who were at the club. Frequently police will blame the club for incidents in the neighborhood."

An SFPD spokesman, Sgt. Steven Mannina, wouldn’t respond to this contention. It’s worth noting that much of SoMa can get rough, even during the day. To the contrary, Kowal believes venues like Club Six have improved the tone of the neighborhood: "Angel Cruz deserves a lot of credit. That Club Six is open four nights a week has enabled other bars and restaurants to open around it. That area has been somewhat revitalized."

Wood suggests an influx of new neighbors may, in fact, be the main issue. "The city’s changing," he explained. "It’s older demographically, wealthier, more harried, and professional. Aside from hip-hop and violence, people are less tolerant about noise young people create." Yet that lack of tolerance among the condo crowd may also be rooted in fear. "Neighbors sometimes freak out when a club is bringing large groups of minorities into the neighborhood," Wood added, "whether they’re behaving or not."

That assessment was echoed, mostly off the record, by many I interviewed. But veteran hip-hop commentator Davey D didn’t pull punches. "They just don’t want black people there," he said. "For a city that prides itself on being progressive, when it comes to nightlife, it has the most reactionary policies that seem based around race, using words like ‘urban’ as cover."

Regardless of hip-hop’s alleged role in violence, this spring the city attempted to deal with the issue via two pieces of legislation: one required a hefty $400 permit per show, and the other was an anti-loitering law, empowering police to clear the area around a club. Both proposals were bad ideas: the former threatened to stifle local entertainment, and in an era of eroding civil liberties, the latter promised to give police discretion to arrest people just for being in the club’s vicinity. Even more disturbing is Sgt. Mannina’s assertion in April that "this is an enforcement strategy around clubs that field operations have already launched." How can this be, if it was not yet a law? "I thought it was already in place," he said.

Clearly the police act as though it is, given what I witnessed outside Club Six. In the meantime, it’s tough to understand why SF hip-hop fans must, for instance, travel to Petaluma to see local acts like Andre Nickatina. "You want to know the solution?" a club owner asked, off the record and out of frustration. "There is no solution."

Orson

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› paulr@sfbg.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ORSON

Dinner: Mon., 6–10 p.m.

Tues.–Sat., 6 p.m.–midnight

508 Fourth St., SF

(415) 777-1508

www.orsonsf.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Fairly noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Centiclubs

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "It’s like an old ship. Things break, things fall apart, and you just keep bailing water and hope you hit land someday!"

That’s Guy Carson, Café Du Nord owner and ex-Hotel Utah booker, on owning a 100-year-old club. Yes, there are the inevitable aches and pains attendant with a structure erected just two years after the great ‘quake, as well as eerie little trap doors and escape hatches from the Prohibition era. But, oh, the stories the Du Nord, House of Shields, and Hotel Utah — a troika of oases overflowing with libation and live music that have all hit the century mark in the past year — could tell. ‘Member the time PJ Harvey played a not-so-secret show at the Utah, triggering round-the-block queues? Or the first San Francisco show by rock legends the Zombies at the Du Nord? Or the rumored gunfight played out by Comstock Lode robber baron William Sharon in front of his then-men’s social club, now known as the House of Shields?

‘Course you don’t. So much has been lost in the mists of Bay Area mythology and Barbary Coast conjecture. But there’s always word of mouth — in full effect at the shambling, loving June 19 celebration of the Utah’s centennial, as Birdman Records’ David Katznelson presented witnesses like owner Damian Samuel, a ukulele sing-along by music writer Sylvie Simmons and Bart Davenport, and tributes by artists who have stomped Utah’s boards, including Paula Frazer and Greg Ashley.

Since its days as Al’s Transbay Tavern (name-checked in 1971’s Dirty Harry) through the years owned by screenwriter Paul Gaer (who brought in Robin Williams and puppet shows), the venue has not only been instrumental in establishing a beachhead for local bands — Cake was considered a resident outfit in the 1990s and Counting Crows, Jewel, and Tarnation were onetime regulars ("For a while I used to say that the Hotel Utah was Geffen’s A&R department," recalls Carson). Its communities include "open mic–ers, the regulars, and the people who live in the building," Samuel offers. "It’s a live amoeba of sorts that has its own direction." He says the UK’s Noisettes now call the Utah its home base, and past staffers include ex-booker Mike Taylor (Court and Spark), Cory McAbee (Billy Nayer Show), and Shannon Walter (16 Bitch Pile-Up). One of Samuel’s fave tell-alls: in 1997 he had to walk future Guns N’ Roses guitarist Buckethead around the block so he could make a dramatic entrance onstage. "Here I am walking him around in SoMa, a chicken bucket on his head," Samuel recalls. "He kept saying, ‘I didn’t realize this block was so long.’<0x2009>"

Uptown, a century ago, the House of Shields also threw open its doors — in a much more hush-hush way: the venue began life as a men’s social club, and the only women permitted in until the ’70s were, says owner Alexis Filipello, "working girls." These days, the venue that got its name from its ’30s owner Eddie Shields is more likely to see indie artists like Sean Smith and Beam than highly establishment swells sneaking a stiff drink, but the crowd remains raucous, gathered around the elegant bar originally meant for the Pied Piper watering hole in the Palace Hotel across New Montgomery. When artist Maxfield Parrish made his Pied Piper of Hamelin mural (1909) far too long for the piece, the bar was sent over to Palace cobuilder William Sharon’s other nightspot. After Filipello bought the watering hole in 2003, she restored the natural wood, refurbished the moldings, reupholstered the booths, and jettisoned the "funky" taxidermy. "It was just such a beautiful old location, a piece of San Francisco’s history," she recalls. "We did a lot of work to get it back up to its beauty." No plans, however, for the firmly closed underground passage that links House of Shields to the Palace. Persistent rumors have it that in 1923, President Warren Harding died, not in the Palace as officially reported, but in the Shields’ speakeasy, and was transported through the tunnel back to his suite to avoid Prohibition-period scandal.

The ground is still shaking, happily, around Café Du Nord, which hit its 100th in October. In the next year Carson hopes to create a coffeehouse/art space upstairs next to the club, where performers can show their work, then play a show upstairs at the Swedish American Hall — which has hosted performers ranging from Cat Power to Michael Hurley — or downstairs at the Du Nord. He also plans to install an elevator where the Du Nord women’s room now sits, renovating the space so he can do the unique, one-off shows he prefers.

Carson is striving to continue nurturing the creative spirit of the Utah. "The difference between then and now is that everything costs so much. Our overhead here is so high, you can’t fail," he says. Back in ’90 when Gaer hired him at the Utah, he adds, "it wasn’t a big financial nut to crack, and we ran it like a living art experiment. I really miss those days. It was fun!"

QUESTION AUTHORITY?

MEGAFAUN


Backwoods Table of the Elements crustastic jams? The Durham, N.C., trio also joins Akron/Family at the High Sierra fest for a Mega-Akron set. Wed/2, 8:30 p.m., pay what you can. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org. Also Thurs/3, 9 p.m., $8. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. www.12galaxies.com. Fri/4–Sat/5, check Web site for times, $30–<\d>$168. High Sierra, Quincy; www.highsierramusic.com

BATTLEHOOCH


Kooky, crunchy spazz-tastic moves for kids? The SF band dons Baagersox guise for the first anniversary Lazerdance dance-off Thursday, then goes into seven-piece mode Saturday. Thurs/3, 10 p.m., $5. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.theknockoutsf.com. Also Sat/5, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

RETRIBUTION GOSPEL CHOIR


All-boy rock testimonials from Low’s Alan Sparhawk? Tues/8, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Fighting for the right to party

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› steve@sfbg.com

It’s become increasingly difficult and expensive to stage street fairs, concerts, or other parties in San Francisco, a trend chronicled by the Guardian over the past two years (see "Death of fun," 05/23/06 and "Death of fun, the sequel," 04/25/07). But event and nightlife promoters have responded with a proposed ballot measure that would write the right to party into the city’s charter.

The "Promoting and Sustaining Music and Culture in San Francisco" charter amendment would acknowledge the importance of special events to the city’s character, streamline the process for obtaining city permits, and require the nine-plus city departments that promoters must deal with to submit reports outlining how their policies and fee structures will need to be altered to comply with the new mandate for fun.

The measure was developed by the Save SF Culture Coalition, whose members include the Entertainment Commission, Black Rock City LLC (which stages Burning Man as well as events here in town), the Late Night Coalition, and the Outdoor Events Coalition (a group formed last year to counter city policies and neighbor complaints that threatened to scuttle the North Beach Jazz Festival, How Weird Street Faire, concerts in Golden Gate Park, and other events). The measure is sponsored by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and has picked up four other supervisors as cosponsors, so it needs just one more vote for the Board of Supervisors to place it on the November ballot.

"It was long overdue that the city produce a master plan and vision that promotes a sustainable environment for music, culture, and entertainment throughout the city," Mirkarimi said.

In fact, event promoters say they’ve been hit by a quadruple whammy that threatens their livelihoods and the vibrant nature of the city: rising fees charged by city departments looking to close budget gaps, increased concern over alcohol consumption and other liability issues, more conflicts over noise in increasingly dense neighborhoods such as SoMa, and the ability of a handful of complaining neighbors to create event-killing permit conditions. And those last two problems are only likely to get worse as the city grows.

"We want the city to create a sustainability policy that will save our outdoor events in the face of all the development that is going on," said John Wood, a member of the Late Night Coalition and a promoter who also serves on the San Francisco Love Fest board of directors. "We need to be able to say, ‘This is city policy and you’re not following it.’"

Promoter and club owner Terrance Alan was an original member of the Entertainment Commission, which was formed in 2003 in part to resolve complaints over noise and manage relations between nightclubs and their neighbors. But he said the agency has little staff and no leverage over other city departments involved in permitting, which includes the Planning, Building, Port, Police, Fire, Health, and Recreation and Park commissions and departments, as well as the Municipal Transportation Authority and Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT), the body that approves street-closure permits.

"We have been completely unsuccessful at getting their attention," Alan said. But this new measure, he said, would "set the stage for ongoing discussions that need to be happening."

Or as Wood put it, "It would give us ammunition in the future battles we’re going to have. It’s not going to make those battles go away."

Recreation and Park Department spokesperson Rose Dennis said her agency must deal with many competing concerns, ranging from budgetary issues to being responsive to complaints raised by citizens. "We understand that it might feel heavy-handed, but we have a duty to do so because we have to balance a number of concerns," Dennis said. "[Event promoters] have a bottom line, and we have a bottom line. We have a lot of people to serve."

Yet she said the department will comply with the measure and adjust its policies, fees, and procedures as needed if the measure is approved by voters.

At a June 27 Board of Supervisors Rules Committee hearing, there was lots of support for the measure and no real opposition. "We’re concerned about the future of arts and culture in San Francisco," Steven Raspa, who does special events for Black Rock City, said at the hearing.

All three committee members voiced support for the measure, but because it needed some minor changes, a final vote was pushed back to July 9. Proponents characterize the measure as trying to bring some balance to a situation in which the loudest wheels — those of NIMBYs complaining about noise or party detritus — keep getting greased.

"The bureaucracy is hearing from these neighborhood groups all the time," Wood said. "We feel that we are the majority and we need to demonstrate that politically."

Amanda Witherell contributed to this report.

To read the measure or learn more, visit www.savesfculture.com

The commissioner’s conflicts

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Before the June 5 special meeting of the San Francisco Planning Commission got underway, Michael Antonini had an announcement.

Dressed in a charcoal suit and red-checked tie, with his white hair combed back over his skull, the longtime commissioner disclosed that he was a part owner of a condominium in the eastern neighborhoods, where a years-long rezoning effort is nearly complete. That means Antonini is among the people who could benefit from increased land values due to zoning upgrades.

As a result, Antonini begrudgingly declared that he would have to recuse himself from hearings involving the eastern neighborhoods until the potential conflict is dealt with.

"Hopefully this can be resolved in the next few weeks and I’ll be able to participate at later hearings," Antonini said at the meeting.

But it was a bit late to be complying with the state’s conflict-of-interest laws: Antonini had already actively taken part in meetings in which the plan was discussed. And Antonini also neglected to mention that after he and his son purchased the condo, he voted on two other projects that appear to be within steps of it.

Public records show that Antonini bought the $515,000 condo at 200 Townsend Street in 2003 with his real estate agent son, John. Commissioner Antonini and his wife own a 25 percent stake in the property through a family trust the couple created in 1997. His son holds the majority interest.

Antonini worked hard to play down his stake in the condo at the June 5 meeting. It’s not an investment property, he made clear to the commissioners. There’s no rent generated from it. He’s a mere minority holder in a family trust that controls the condo, and it was purchased as a residence for his son and his wife.

"Because I did not believe our fractional interest in John’s condo represented a conflict, I did not consider reclusing [sic] myself from projects near the condo," Antonini wrote to the Guardian.

But the laws on this are pretty clear. The state’s Political Reform Act of 1974 prohibits public officials from participating in decisions that will have a "foreseeable material financial effect on one or more of his/her economic interests." It also states that any "direct or indirect interest" worth more than $2,000 poses a potential conflict, for which a 25 percent stake in a half-million dollar condo would seem to qualify.

RECUSE ME


Other public officials in similar situations have recused themselves long before the issue became a potential political liability.

Sup. Bevan Dufty bought into a three-unit residential property on Waller Street with two co-tenants in December 2006. He immediately sought advice from the city attorney, who told him he no longer could vote on the Market-Octavia Plan, a series of land-use changes in Hayes Valley, Duboce Triangle, and elsewhere that was similar in scope to the current rezoning efforts in the eastern neighborhoods. The supervisor also couldn’t vote on a major Laguna Street redevelopment project or on legislation making it easier for seniors to convert rental units to condos.

Antonini told us that "only in the last month" did the city attorney warn some officials involved with plans for the eastern neighborhoods that if they held property in the area, there could be a conflict of interest.

"We’ve been working on [the eastern neighborhoods] for the whole six years I’ve been on the planning commission," he said at the meeting. "It’s a little troubling that this issue of conflict is raised now rather than at the very beginning."

The law does make an exception when the economic interests of the "public generally" could also be enhanced by a government decision such as those that have an impact on a large section of the city like the eastern neighborhoods. But the city attorney’s office concluded for now that the condo indeed may pose a conflict. And in the meantime, Antonini told us that the Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento, which helps enforce the state’s Political Reform Act, is being consulted to determine "whether our fractional interest in the condo truly represents a conflict of interest."

The eastern neighborhoods planning process isn’t the only legislation that created a potential conflict for Antonini. The commissioner voted in January 2007 to approve construction of 26 new single-room occupancy units at 25 Lusk Alley, not far from his property at 200 Townsend. The project’s sponsor, Michael Yarne, is a land-use attorney who today works for the mayor’s economic development office. The project was approved, according to meeting minutes.

The project itself relied on a contentious legal loophole in which developers claim their units are "single-room occupancy," a necessity because the area permits residential efficiency hotels where the poor and working-class used to live. Allowing such SRO hotels in areas zoned for light industrial uses enabled the city to preserve some forms of affordable housing. But builders can turn around and lease the opulently large units such as the ones at 25 Lusk, which bear little resemblance to genuine SRO rooms, to well-heeled clients.

"They are allowed where normal residential units are not allowed, because historically SROs were always extremely affordable housing," community organizer Calvin Welch said. "The whole notion of market-rate SROs is a new invention, and that’s why they’re controversial. They’re basically the new version of live-work lofts."

In November 2006, Antonini also voted to approve a liquor license for a new full-service restaurant and wine bar at 216 Townsend, even closer to his son’s condo.

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT


State ethics laws say that a public official has a conflict if his or her property comes within 500 feet of a project the official will be scrutinizing and voting on.

Conservatively measuring from the furthest corners of each property, Google Earth puts both the proposed restaurant and SRO within 500 feet.

Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles–based Center for Governmental Studies and co-author of the state’s Political Reform Act, said a public official could face $5,000 in civil penalties for each conflict-of-interest violation. But it’s not common for the chronically under-resourced FPPC to go after local officials, he said.

Mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard wrote in an e-mail that "we take any allegations of conflicts of interest seriously" but added there is a disagreement over whether the "public generally" exception applied to the eastern neighborhoods and that the City Attorney’s Office was seeking additional input from the FPPC.

As for the two projects he voted on near the condo, Antonini apparently told the mayor’s office he had looked into whether 25 Lusk fell inside 500 feet. "Based on his understanding at the time," Ballard wrote, "they didn’t."

That’s a stretch, at best. The projects are in the same block. We walked them off and found that Antonini would have to be splitting hairs to argue that they are outside the boundary — and even in that case, it would be only by a few feet. The rusty red paint job, black trim, and stylish, outsize windows of 200 Townsend are easily viewable from the backside of 25 Lusk.

"If there is a legitimate argument that they did fall within the 500-foot radius, this should be clarified," Ballard stated. "However, given the relative insignificance of the two projects cited in your e-mail and Antonini’s long-standing reputation as an ethical and hard-working commissioner, we don’t have any reason to believe that he would have knowingly and/or willingly violated the state’s Fair Political Practices Act."

But the Lusk Street project was by no means insignificant. "They are highly regulated," Welch said of SROs. "You cannot convert them to tourist hotels without going through a very long and cumbersome process. They are valued for affordable housing so highly that the city regulates their conversion to tourist uses." So instead, the "corporate suites," as Welch calls them, masquerade as SROs. The project was approved in the end, but two commissioners — Christina Olague and Sugaya Hisashi — voted against it.

Antonini told us that he believes 25 Lusk is more than 500 feet away, and as for the restaurant, planning staff recommended approval.

The commissioner told us, "I was the one who brought public attention to the issue of my possible conflict. I believe it is a small issue when compared to my body of work on behalf of San Francisco over the last six years."

The June 5 meeting where Antonini made the disclosure about his son’s condo was part of a long and detailed process that will determine the fate of vast sections of Potrero Hill, SoMa, the Mission District, and Dogpatch. The official planning process for the targeted 2,200-acre area began back in 2001, and the commissioners could approve new zoning plans next month before sending the proposal to the Board of Supervisors.

For much of San Francisco’s history, the city sections poised for rezoning have been home to light industry and blue-collar jobs. But housing has encroached over the last 15 years, and the planning commission is prepared to allow between 8,000 and 10,000 new units over the next 20 years. That will almost certainly increase the value of land in the area.

Residential developers built thousands of pricey condos in the SoMa District during the 1990s, exploiting another divisive zoning loophole that created waves of animosity across the city and aided in a takeover of the Board of Supervisors by a progressive bloc of candidates.

Live/work lofts, as developers called them, were built in areas zoned for light industrial commercial purposes. Wealthy buyers would ostensibly operate businesses out of their homes or live in them as working artists as the zoning required, but few have complied with the letter or — having found ways to narrowly abide by it — the spirit of the law.

"The city turned its head," housing attorney Sue Hestor said. "We have 3,000 units that are supposed to be occupied by artists and probably 90 percent of them are not occupied by artists at all. It’s blatantly illegal."

Antonini has managed to maintain friendships with local moderate Democrats over the years despite being an elected member of San Francisco’s Republican Party County Central Committee. Willie Brown first appointed him to the powerful planning commission in 2002, and he’s been a reliable vote for developers and other large business interests. Mayor Gavin Newsom reappointed him in 2004 and earlier this year tried to engineer Antonini’s election as president of the commission.

Beretta

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› paulr@sfbg.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BERETTA

Dinner: nightly, 5:30 p.m.–1 a.m.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–3 p.m.

1199 Valencia, SF

(415) 695-1199

www.berettasf.com

Full bar

AE/DISC/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

The Queer Issue

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In this issue:

>>Scandalous Pride events

>>The Hot Pink List 2008: up-and-comers

>>Where to get married

>>Why not to get married

>>Charo spills the cuchi

>>Superhero tranny flushed into the ’70s

>>Visions of cruising past

>>Queercore makes a comeback

>>Once a riot grrrl, always an artist

>>Fresh Meat still breaks transgender ground

>>Lesbian pregnancy from hell

>>A gay pornocopia

>>The Busy World is Hushed

>>Apichatpong offers filmic bliss

Oh, hai, happy Pridez! Time again to lean back languidly and reflect — not just in your makeup mirror lined with curlicue lavender CFLs, but on where we are as a community. As usual, we straddle an odd queer moment. Yes, legalized same-sex marriage, California-style, is all the rage. Even my radical queer eye teared up when happily balled and chained couples streamed out of City Hall June 17. And you can bet I’ll be on the front lines fighting that awful November ballot initiative, defining marriage as exclusively between one tree and one Mormon.

Some queers want to get married (see "Tie the same-sex knot,"), some don’t ("Down with legitimacy,"). Others, like me, are simply hiding from their boyfriends. It’s yet another great diversity among us. The overall feeling at City Hall, though, besides sheer jubilance, was one of relief more than revolution. Four years ago, during the Winter of Love, rebellion — even talk of secession — crackled in the city’s air. But that scary "M" word, marriage, went the way of The L Word long ago into mainstream territory. Wedding rings were the new septum rings; now they’re just the new freedom rings. "What’s the big deal?" is the whole point.

The weird thing is that right as we’re being carried over the threshold of legal normalization, our outlaw history is roaring back in a big way. Eight years ago, a DJ named Bus Station John set out to highlight gay men’s bathhouse and hi-NRG disco heritage by playing old-school records, many of which he’d amassed from people who’d passed on from AIDS. This was a revelation to the new queer generation, raised with effective HIV meds but led to believe that gay musical history started with Madonna. It was a return of the repressed — an inspiring, AIDS-obscured swath of yesteryear suddenly came to light.

Now you can’t go anywhere without seeing mustaches, aviator glasses, and hipster variations of the clone look. The filming of Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk biopic Milk this winter costumed the city in pristine White Riot chic. Wonder of wonders, we even have a brand new SoMa leather bar, Chaps II, named after Miracle Mile’s infamous ’80s watering hole, Chaps — joining the great new retro Truck bar, expanded Hole in the Wall Saloon, Eagle Tavern, and Powerhouse. Take that, Internet! Queercore homeboy innovators Pansy Division ("Queercore, many mornings after,") get canonized with a doc at this year’s Frameline Film Fest. Most intel queers I know are gobbling up Terence Kissack’s recent tome, Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895–1917 from Oakland’s AK Press.

But the past isn’t just for gay men. The Fresh Meat festival has been breaking transgender performance ground since the millennium began ("Rare, medium, well-done,"). Nineties riot grrls are making strong artistic marks ("Heart shaped box," page 49), and I can’t step into a dyke bar lately without being immediately corralled into a Journey sing-along by Runaways look-alikes. The turbo-awesome current exhibition at the GLBT Historical Society (www.glbthistory.org), "Dykes on Bikes: 30 Years at the Forefront," reminds us not only that boobs are still illegal, but that rad women of all shapes and colors have led us from Gay Freedom Day to this week’s Pride. And it’s no surprise that the original Daughters of Bilitis, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, were the first couple to get legally married here, 53 years after starting the first official, highly persecutable, lesbian organization.

As we move seemingly inexorably toward mainstream acceptance, it’s nice to know that the heroes of our struggle, people who did things differently, are still fresh in our minds. This year the Guardian pays tribute to the LGBT underground past and present, and raises a toast to our deliciously shameless future.

› marke@sfbg.com

Hair gel and haymakers: Michael the Boxer kicks ass, buzzes heads

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By Philip Eil

If you think You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is just another escapist summer fantasy, think again. Ass-kicking hairstylists, unlike talking panda bears and aging, yet acrobatic archaeologists, really do exist. Just ask Michael Onello, the owner of Michael the Boxer, the only boxing gym/barbershop in the Bay Area. Michael is a boxing trainer/barber who offers both services – boxing and barbering — at his SOMA shop. I headed over there last Friday, looking for a buzz cut and advice on my right hook.

michaeltheboxer.jpg
Michael, with the uppercut

I’ll admit, I had no idea what to expect from a haircut/boxing joint. The Rocky IV and Shampoo montages playing in my head seemed highly incompatible. But when I hopped in the barber’s chair and started talking with Michael, the place started to make sense. “My grandfather was a barber, my father was a barber,” he told me as he was trimming my sideburns. During the haircut, I flipped through a copy of his book, Boxing: The American Martial Art, A 12-week Course. “How’s that look?” he asked, holding a mirror up to the back of my neck. “Excellent,” I said. “When can I throw some punches?”

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