Stage Archives — Page 106 of 135 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Uncivil unions

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April 21, 2009

steve@sfbg.com

Who really cares about an appointment to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors? There isn’t a delicate balance of power on the board or any major initiative at stake in this fairly obscure district. San Francisco certainly has more pressing issues and concerns.

Yet the Board of Supervisors’ April 14 vote to reject Larry Mazzola Jr. and select Dave Snyder for that board says more about San Francisco’s political dynamics, the state of the American labor movement, the psychological impact of the recession, how the city will grow, and the possibilities and pitfalls facing the board’s new progressive majority than any in recent memory.

It was a vote that meant nothing and everything at the same time, a complex and telling story of brinksmanship in which both sides of the progressive movement arguably lost. And it was a vote that came at a time when they need each other more than ever.

"It was a win for the Newsom-oriented elements of labor," Sup. Chris Daly, who helped spark the conflict, told the Guardian.

The bloc of six progressive supervisors who shot down Mazzola — who helps run the powerful plumbers union and was the San Francisco Labor Council’s unwavering choice for an appointment that has traditionally been labor’s seat on the bridge board — is the same bloc the unions helped elected last year. It is also the same bloc that has been fighting the hardest to minimize budget-related layoffs.

The vote says a tremendous amount about the crucial alliance between progressives and labor, how that delicate partnership formed, and what the future holds.

PLUMBERS VS. PROGRESSIVES

The Mazzola name carries a lot of weight in San Francisco labor circles. The Web site for the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry Local 38 (UA 38) features a photo of U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis standing between Larry Mazzola Sr. and Larry Mazzola Jr., the father and son team that runs the union.

But the Mazzolas and their union are also controversial. As the Guardian has reported ("Plumbers gone wild," 2/1/06), the union owns a large share of the Konocti Harbor Resort (which a lawsuit by the Department of Labor said was a misuse of the union’s pension funds) and owns the Civic Center Hotel, which tenants and city officials say has been willfully neglected by a union suspected of wanting to bulldoze and develop the site. The plumbers and other members of the building trades have also fought with progressives over development issues and generally back moderate-to-conservative candidates.

Sup. Chris Daly and several progressive groups locked horns with the union over the hotel a few years ago, and Mazzola Sr. responded by opposing Daly’s 2006 reelection campaign, targeting him with nasty mailers and donating office space to Daly’s opponent, Rob Black. Yet more progressive unions like Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents city employees, convinced the Labor Council to back Daly and union support helped Daly win.

So when Mazzola Jr. came before Daly’s Rules Committee last month, the supervisor unloaded on him, and Mazzola gave as good as he got, telling Daly he didn’t want his support and defiantly telling the committee he didn’t know much about the bridge district, or its issues, but he expected the job anyway. Those on all sides of the issue agree it was a disaster.

"He was just patently unqualified for the position," Daly told the Guardian. Mazzola tells us his experience with labor contracts would be an asset for the position, but he admits the committee meeting didn’t go well. "I was caught off-guard and put in a defensive mode that altered my planned presentation," Mazzola told us.

Whatever the case, Sup. David Campos joined Daly in keeping the Mazzola nomination stuck in committee while the progressive supervisors privately asked labor leaders to offer another choice. "We said, ‘Give us anyone else as long as they can intelligently talk about transportation issues and the bridge district," Daly said.

But labor dug in. "It seemed as though the board was trying to dictate to labor what labor should do," Michael Theriault, who heads the San Francisco Building and Construction Trade Council. And the other unions decided to back the trades, for a number of complicated reasons.

"The reason we supported Larry Mazzola is because this was important to the plumbers union," said Mike Casey, president of the Labor Council and head of Unite Here (which includes the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). "To the extent we can support the trades, we want to."

So when the four most conservative members of the Board of Supervisors used a parliamentary trick to call the Mazzola nomination up to the full board on April 14, the stage was set for the standoff.

THE STATE OF LABOR

Labor is truly a house divided, despite its universal interest in minimizing recession-related layoffs and taking advantage of a new Congress and White House that is generally supportive of labor’s holy grail: the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it far easier to form unions.

The April 25 founding convention of National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) in San Francisco caps a years-long battle between Sal Rosselli’s United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and their SEIU masters (see "Union showdown," 1/28/09). Rosselli and many others say SEIU under Andy Stern has become undemocratic and has climbed in bed with corporate America, while SEIU says getting bigger has made the union better able to advocate for workers. Both accuse the other of being power-hungry and not fighting fair.

"Inside SEIU, we’ve been struggling for four years basically on a difference of ideology and vision of what the labor movement is," Rosselli told us. David Regan, who SEIU named as a UHW trustee after ousting Rosselli, told us the union divisions have been overstated by the media. "Everyone is together in pushing the Employee Free Choice Act," he said, glossing over the fact that the legislation is in trouble and recently lost the support of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Nationally, SEIU has been at war with all of the most progressive unions. The union recently made peace with the California Nurses Association after a particularly nasty struggle that involves many of the same dynamics as SEIU vs. NUHW, including accusations by CNA that SEIU was a barrier to achieving single-payer healthcare and was illegally meddling in its internal affairs.

SEIU is also accused of breaking up Unite Here, which fought the most high-profile labor battle here since Newsom became mayor in its contract fight with the big hotel chains. Last month, a large faction from the old Unite affiliated with SEIU, whose officials say they were just helping out after the end of what all knew was a bad marriage. "This is an example of a merger that didn’t take," SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette told us. But the building trades have backed Unite Here in its fight against Sterns’ SEIU. As Casey told us, "We’re in a major fight over our right to exist. There’s no other way to characterize it."

Yet in San Francisco, SEIU plays a different role. Local 1021 is the advocate for the little guy, representing front-line city workers who deliver social and public health services. It is the union facing the deepest layoffs in the coming city budget fight and is still negotiating contract givebacks with the Mayor’s Office. The union’s biggest allies in City Hall are the exact same six supervisors who voted against Mazzola.

So why this standoff? SEIU, Unite Here, and other progressive unions share the Labor Council with the building trades, which are traditionally more conservative and friendly with downtown and, these days, starting to really get desperate for work. "We have thousands of guys on the verge of losing their homes and families," Theriault said. "We are desperate."

That was one reason the San Francisco Labor Council last year cut a deal with Lennar Corporation to back Proposition G, which lets Lennar develop more than 10,000 homes in the southeast sector of the city. Daly, who wanted firmer guarantees of more affordable housing, was livid over the deal and has been at odds with the council ever since. But Daly said labor’s undercutting of progressives goes back even further and includes the early reelection endorsement Rosselli’s UHW gave Newsom in 2007, which helped keep big-name local progressives out of the race.

Tenants groups, affordable housing advocates, and alternative transportation supporters form the backbone of progressive politics, but on development projects, they often clash with the trade unionists who just want work. And labor expects support from the progressive supervisors. As Mazzola pointed out, "It was labor that got most of those guys elected."

But labor has its own fights on the horizon. SEIU fears deep city job cuts if the Mayor’s Office can’t be persuaded to start supporting new revenue measures. NUHW is getting challenged by SEIU for every member the try to sign up. And Unite Here’s hotel contracts start expiring in six months, reopening its battle with downtown hotel managers.

"We’re going to be in a real war with some of those employers," Casey said. Yet he said its actually good time for the otherwise distracting fights with SEIU over how nice to play with big corporations. "I embrace this fight because I think this is exactly the struggle we need to have in the labor movement."

But the Mazzola fight was one that neither side relished.

TO THE BRINK

The Board of Supervisors chambers was filled with union members flying their colors on April 14, but the progressive supervisors were just as unified, voting 6-5 to reject Mazzola. All that was left was the political posturing, the decision of what to do next, and the fallout.

"I am disappointed and surprised by the board’s action," Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who voted for Mazzola and publicly called it "a sin" to deny him) told us, refusing to confirm the private joy over the outcome that many sources say he has expressed. "What shocked me is a majority of the board turned their back on labor."

Daly admits that the standoff hurt progressives. "I’m not sure who came up with it, but it’s certainly true that the Sean Elsbernds of the world were able to take full advantage of the situation to drive a wedge between unions and progressives," Daly said.

Yet Daly noted how ridiculous is was for Sups. Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier to be publicly professing such fealty to labor while opposing revenue measures that would minimize layoffs. "At the same time the plumbers were attacking me, I was sponsoring paid sick days," Daly said. "It’s the six members of the board that are the most pro-labor who voted against Larry Mazzola."

Politically, Elsbernd says the progressives misplaced their hand. "I think the easy middle ground for them was to reject Mazzola and send it back to committee," Elsbernd said. Others echoed that point. Instead, supervisors appointed Synder, a widely acclaimed transportation expert who created the modern San Francisco Bicycle Coalition then started Transportation for a Livable City (now Livable City) before becoming the first transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

"I don’t like how that went down, and I’m not happy with the inability of the board and labor to come to an agreement," Snyder told us. "I was stuck in the middle. I wish they had sent someone the board could have agreed to."

After the vote, Snyder went back to the SPUR office and resigned. SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf admits that labor leaders lobbied him to pressure Snyder to withdraw his name, and that he asked Snyder to do so. But Metcalf said he didn’t want to lose Snyder, whose vast knowledge of transportation issues as been a real asset to SPUR. "It was his choice and not my preference."

"This issue is not why I left SPUR, but it was the precipitating event," said Snyder, whose progressive values have occasionally differed from SPUR’s stands. "My sense of social justice has more to do with class issues than I was able to pursue at SPUR."

In fact, the clashes between progressives and developers (who are often backed by the trade unions) often revolve around how much affordable housing and community benefits will be required with each project approval. Snyder said the defining question is, "How do we accommodate development in San Francisco and maintain progressive values in a capitalist economy?"

He didn’t answer that question, but it is one the building trades also understand. Theriault said he supports holding developers to high standards, even when progressives have block certain projects to get them. "I’m okay with that as long as I see the endgame," Theriault said.

He expects the progressive board to listen to labor more than Daly or Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, who Theriault said helped shore up the progressive opposition to Mazzola (which Peskin denies). "With the exception of Daly, the relationships are reparable. But they have to show some independence from Daly and Peskin," Theriault said. "The real fear for me is what comes next."

Theriault was referring to things like new historic preservation standards that supervisors will soon consider, as well as the string of big development projects coming forward this year. And for progressives, they hope their efforts to save city jobs will be followed by labor support for progressive candidates for the Board of Supervisors (such as Debra Walker and Rafael Mandelman) in next year’s election.

"The one thing I know about labor is, we’ve been screwed by politicians on the left and the right," Casey said. "Are we angry about this and disappointed? Yes. But does that mean the alliance between labor and progressives is dead? No. We’re going to work through this stuff, talk, take deep breaths, and move forward."

NUHW’s founding convention takes place April 25 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Everett Middle School, 450 Church St., San Francisco.

Live shots: Devendra Banhart at the Independent

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April 15, 2009

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Text and photos by Ariel Soto. Devendra Banhart performs again Thu/16 at Yoshi’s SF

“You’re a sexy beast!” someone shouted from the crowd, as Devendra Banhart made his way onto the stage of the Independent to a sold out show, Tuesday, April 14th. After the openers, The Healing Curse, left the stage, Devendra started with an acoustic set and then later was joined by his band, serenading his fans with songs of about sweet little birds, wild wolves, and Latin love.

Here, my Dearie: Jacqui Naylor knows Blossom Dearie

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April 15, 2009

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By Johnny Ray Huston

When Blossom Dearie passed at the age of 84 this February, the world of jazz and cabaret lost perhaps its lightest, sweetest, and wittiest voice, not to mention a pianist of subtle grace. But Dearie’s contributions to recorded music, the American songbook, and even children’s television remain for people to discover and veteran fans to celebrate. The singer and songwriter Jacqui Naylor is paying tribute to Dearie in concert this week at Yoshi’s SF. We recently discussed the singular charms of Dearie, and her influence, via email.

Jacqui Naylor

SFBG When was the first time you saw Blossom live on stage? What impressions or favorite memories do you have from her performances?
Jacqui Naylor I first saw Blossom with my vocal teacher, Faith Winthrop, in 1997 in San Francisco at the Great American Music Hall. I fell in love with her unmistakably sweet voice, quirky delivery and unmatched style.
Blossom’s voice was small and large at the same time and she used her nice range to tell the story of a song with sincerity, rather than over singing it, sometimes with a little sweet vibrato at the top and sometimes with an almost speaking quality in her middle and lower register. I appreciated that she made the most of every lyric, especially with such a diverse repertoire, everything from lovingly sung ballads to wit-filled swing tunes and songs that she wrote. I was also struck by the fact that she was selling her CDs herself and taking the time to sign them for people. I have a few that I cherish from that evening. She is the only artist from whom I’ve felt compelled to get a signature.

Blossom Dearie sings “Surrey With the Fringe on Top”

SFBG Did you know Blossom?
JN I saw Blossom on a number of occasions in New York and met her through my distributor, John Nustvold, from Ryko/Warner. He is also a big fan of her work and was hopeful to get her music out to more people. We dreamed that maybe there were even some unreleased tracks that we could help bring to market.
I should say here that Blossom not only inspired me musically but also in her business savvy, since she was one of the first artists to own her own label, Daffodil Records. It was great to meet her and tell her how much she had affected me, inspiring my own Ruby Star Records and my determination to find a sound that was uniquely mine. It is because of her that I stopped worrying about whether I sounded like a traditional jazz singer and instead focused on telling the stories of the songs I chose to sing in a ways that felt true to me. Because of her, I also began to imagine bringing humor to my music and shows by reinterpreting the idea of modern cabaret songs, and by writing songs that might inspire people. Many of the songs Blossom chose to sing touted words of spring, birds, love, flight, and yes, blossoms. And even when she sang the most cruel and humorous cabaret song, she did so with a sense of compassion, humility and good fun. Famous for refusing to sing unless her audience was quiet, Blossom did so politely and without malice. A true talent with a lot of grace and charm.

After the jump: Schoolhouse Rock, grape-peeling appeal, great live clips, “Blossom’s Blues” and Dearie’s musicianship,

Fit to print?

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April 15, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Not long ago, before newspapers themselves were an endangered species, survival among journalists at the country’s leading papers was already a Darwinian proposition, especially for people of color. As playwright Tracey Scott Wilson limns the terrain in The Story, you need only add class, gender, and race to the equation to make things get very dicey—and very complicated—very fast.

Enter Yvonne Robinson (a sharp and charming Ryan Nicole Peters), an ambitious rookie reporter just hired to the local African American community section of a big Washington paper, a section hard-won by editor Pat (Holily Knox) and reporter Neil (Dwight Huntsman) as a corrective to the flagrantly racist coverage of the Metro section. But bright, highly educated Yvonne sees the position as stepping-stone to bigger things, beginning with the Metro section — plans she discusses with her secret lover, the white editor of the Metro department (Craig Marker), himself nervously aware of the minefield of racial politics around them. Frustrated by Pat’s dull assignments, Yvonne finally hits on a career-making feature when she discovers and interviews the culprit in an infamous ongoing case involving a murdered white schoolteacher in the black ghetto. Yvonne’s confessor: a bright, highly educated young girl gang member (Kathryn Tell). Yvonne’s refusal to betray her sources, however, and other details surfacing in the wake of her sensational story, soon throw her credibility in doubt, enraging colleagues and dividing the newsroom as the walls close in.

If the plot sounds far-fetched, it’s actually not far from real events. The Story draws on the Janet Cooke scandal of the early 1980s — Cooke, a young African American reporter at The Washington Post, won a Pulitzer Prize for a heart-rending 1980 feature on a heroin-addicted inner city child whom she later admitted was made up. Wilson makes recent history speak with dramatic and intellectual depth to a set of issues surrounding the everyday, real-world contexts of career, ambition, and racial perceptions and self-perceptions in American society.

Director Margo Hall’s smart and swift West Coast premiere, a coproduction between SF Playhouse and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, channels well the play’s fleet dialogue and triple-latte energy — perhaps as much an homage to the representation of newspapers in popular culture as an accurate setting of the action at a big-city newspaper. Framed by Lisa Clark’s abstract set, a repeating series of banner headlines across the back of the stage, Hall’s cast proves sharp and engaging. At the same time, Wilson’s penchant for inter-cutting the rapid-fire dialogue between different but simultaneous scenes can seem strained at times, inadvertently pointing up the artificial nature of the set-up at least as much as the resonant ambiguity in the words and situations themselves. Nonetheless, that ambiguity and complexity make The Story well worth following through its various twists and turns — not only in terms of plot, but in the unfolding reactions and re-reactions of the audience, as our sympathies and judgments zigzag.

THE STORY

Through April 25

Tues, 7 p.m.; Wed-Sat, 8 p.m. (also Sat, 3 p.m.), $30-$40

SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF

(415) 677-9596

Wiggletronics

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April 15, 2009

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO “Many people confuse us with Spain,” MC Kalaf of worldwide dance sensations Buraka Som Sistema says — a back-end hint of fado-like melancholy mixing into his unfailingly chipper voice — when we talk over the phone about how the fab foursome has finally put their homeland, Portugal, on the club-must map. Buraka, two of whose members hail originally from Angola and two from that sunny strip along the Atlantic, represents a double bubbling up of the repressed: the crew has exploded onto the nightlife radar by melding the underground sounds of Luanda’s bumping kuduro dance movement with Lisbon’s buzzy, overlooked electronic music scene.

Last year Buraka’s sophomore release Black Diamond (Enchufada/Sony BMG) quickly shot up the hit lists of beats connoisseurs by jumping the current trend of streaming developing-world rhythms through the latest sonic technology. “We took the sound of the Lisbon suburbs where many Angolan immigrants live — our suburbs are not like your ‘Desperate Housewife’ suburbs — and used our years of dance music on it, and the crowds loved it,” says Kalaf.

Kuduro is often translated as “stiff bottom,” heh, or “hard ass,” referencing the form of lowdown, hips-wiggling motion that sometimes accompanies the deliciously uptempo sound, a hybrid of sensuous zouk, raucous soca, and free-flow hip-hop that shares an affinity for analog atmospherics with early dub. (Or rather, that dance is mostly reserved for women — men tend to go pop and lock crazy, as you can see in the video below.) Along with Kalaf, Buraka members Li’l John, DJ Riot, and Conductor apply their extensive hip-hop, house, and breakbeat production experience to blow the lid off kuduro’s possibilities.

The superkinetic results reference everything from Ed Banger hardcore and hyperdub freakouts to Orb-esque kaleidoscopics and the late ’80s Sheffield bleep scene. Scoring MIA to guest on “Sound of Kuduro” helped kick that track up the club charts, and basing the excellent “Kalemba (Wegue-Wegue)” on a misheard lyric from the classic Afro Acid house remix of More Kante’s “Yeke Yeke” gave fanboys a theoretical boner. Live, Buraka’s a tornado, with toasting MCs, fierce singers, and, as Kalaf points out, “anything that makes you scream.” Last time the crew was here, a topless female fan stormed the stage. Kalaf half-joked that an upcoming tour of Japan is brief because “if they throw us out of the country, at least we won’t lose a lot of money.”

Some things get lost in the laptop filtration, however. Kuduro isn’t just a groove; like rap, it’s built on extended narratives of hood life. Buraka jettisons those for catchy calls to the dance floor and global unity “I’m from Angola,” Kalaf admitted, “and even I can’t follow most of what they say.” And, for all the talk on its records of the primacy of Africa, the group has yet to tour the continent. “We’re going in 2010,” Kalaf said, “and to be honest, I’m a little afraid. It may be mental.” But Buraka has helped bring the Angolan guests on its tracks an international audience, while waking up the Western world to yet another vital cultural expression on its edges. Let’s get suburban, y’all.

BURAKA SOM SISTEMA

Tue/21, 8 p.m., $14. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com For more on Buraka’s kuduro connections, click here.

Leonard Cohen skips, sings, outlasts his audience at the Paramount

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April 13, 2009

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Leonard C-2-4c-MJK sml.jpg
02, you too: A still from Live in London.

By Kimberly Chun

O to be as spry and energetic at 74: Leonard Cohen launched his three-performance stand at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland last night, April 13, with an approximately three-hour concert that had the audience chuckling with amazement when the singer-songwriter came back for a fourth encore. “I tried to leave you,” he moaned.

Cohen had the crowd in his clenched fist throughout multiple standing ovations and a set that fundamentally mirrored that of his recent Live in London DVD and CD. And he put up a good fight, alternating between standing with his knees slightly bent, hands grasping mic and chord, in a boxer’s posture, and kneeling as if a humble mendicant – the latter his favorite way to open an emotionally intense song.

The songwriter received bursts of appreciative applause for lines like, “You told me again you preferred handsome men / but for me you would make an exception,” and, “You fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind, / we are ugly but we have the music,” from “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” a song about written about his affair with Janis Joplin. So long ago, yet still so vivid. This beautiful loser has morphed into a wiry, elegant slip of a man, skipping gracefully off the stage after each encore then back. From afar, Cohen resembles less William Burroughs, a Blues Brother, or a Bogart-esque “Tough Jew” like Bugsy Siegel than a smiling Stuart Little-like gent, revealing a snowy white pate beneath the fedora and a fiercely ingenuous grin. There’s a hard-won innocence to the performer, though he was less chatty and more focused than on the recent Live in London. Likewise backup vocalists the Webb sisters chose to chartwheel rather than do-si-do to that key reworked phrase, “All the lousy little poets / coming round / tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson / and the white girls dancin'” in the charred apocalyptic ode “The Future.”

LC-Band4-4c-MJK sml.jpg
“Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”: A still from Live in London.

Live Shots: Yonder Mountain String Band at the Fillmore, 4/10

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April 13, 2009

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Text and photos by Ariel Soto

Yonder Mountain String Band has serious groupies. I mean really hardcore groupies. I talked to several String Band fans in the audience before the show. For one person it was his 36th time seeing Yonder Mountain and he has plans to follow the band through California and then up to Oregon for their tour. There was another woman in the audience who said she saw them at least 70 times … how is that even possible? By then I was excited for the show to get started — who were these string strummers? Once the band made its way to the stage the Fillmore was thoroughly saturated with sweet smelling smoke, feet were stomping, and hippy skirts were twirling as the folksy, bluegrass notes weaved their way between the band’s eager, dare I say, obsessed, devotees.

Can Fun police itself?

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April 13, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones

Yesterday’s Bring Your Own Big Wheel event showed how a weird, community-based event that draws thousands of people and even has a real element of danger can be remarkably responsible, well-organized, and self-policing, without any help from police or other city officials, who mostly stayed at bay until the event was over.

Nonetheless, as the Examiner reports today (joining the Guardian’s years-long campaign against the Death of Fun), city officials continue to insist on expensive permits and the hiring of too many police officers on overtime for most events, making it increasingly difficult to stage the fun that makes San Francisco what it is.

The next big test is whether the Mayor’s Office can get the SFPD to back off of its demand that the How Weird Street Faire pay almost $10,000 up front. While senior mayoral adviser Mike Farrah has gotten involved with mediating the dispute, the latest word from the SFPD is they want their money by May 1 or else. Organizers say they won’t have the money until the day of the May 10 event when they collect donations.

As Lt. Nicole Greely wrote to How Weird organizer Brad Olsen just this morning, “Although we appreciate your position, it would be unwise for the SFPD to risk public money by not collecting the required fees prior to the event. If the event is the only way your group is able to pay for police services, we are all betting that the event will be as successful as you hope. However, a rainy day or other unforeseen problem would mean that you would be unable to fulfill your financial obligation and that is an inappropriate risk for a City agency. Possibly seeking a loan from another source would be an option.”

Species twists at Move(men)t: A Men’s Dance Festival

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April 9, 2009

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By Rita Felciano

In the history of dance, the male of the species occupies a curious position. In some cultures only men were allowed to dance in public. In Western aristocratic education, dancing was a requirement for a future courtier. But until fairly recently, ballet choreographers consistently undervalued male dancers, and it was women who pioneered modern dance. In the 1930s, however, Ted Shawn’s all-male ensemble did much to break down the prejudice against men in dance. In the Bay Area, every decade or so brings about a refocusing on masculine performances. There is an energy — both virile and tender — to these presentations that, in the past at least, made them very special experiences for men and women alike. Some of that, unquestionably, had to do with the testosterone that just bounced off the walls. Even so, to see so many guys cooperating with each other is still not something we are accustomed to seeing on stage. The latest incarnation of all-male dancing, "Move(men)t: A Men’s Dance Festival," now in its second year, includes Mark Foehringer, who has long choreographed for men; Folawole Oyinlola, of Nigerian descent, who excels in improvisation; Kegan Marling, perhaps best known in his partnership with Jane Schnorrenberg; and Joe Landini’s new San Francisco Moving Men. Ten choreographers in all will show their chops in the tiny but hopping Garage performance space.

MOVE(MEN)T: A MEN’S DANCE FESTIVAL Fri/10–Sat/11, 8 p.m., $10-$20. The Garage, 975 Howard, SF. (415) 885-4006. www.brownpapertickets.com

Live Review: Bridez at the Knockout 4/2

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April 8, 2009

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By Laura Mason

Members of lo-fi favorites Bridez hang out in this “candid” pic.

We may pride ourselves on this city’s intellectual panache or European debonaire, but the real ego tripping starts with the thriving rock & roll pedigree ingrained in the underbelly of San Francisco that I suspect is the real reason the city’s 20-something set gets dressed in the morning.

This snarling, sweating rock & roll animal is the perfect companion to the stiff drinks and barroom sleaze that dominate our night lives, and bottle-feeding this beast is Bridez. Their lo-fi gospel is true blue, rough-hewn and rife with cool angst, fronted by a singer who could be the testtube lovechild of Karen O., Lou Reed and Courtney Love. Chanteuse Liza Thorn, formerly of So So Many White White Tigers, has impressively mastered a white-hot on-stage swagger most girls only have the courage to do in front of a bedroom mirror, and is quickly blooming into the blazing frontwoman San Francisco needs.

Trip at the ‘Brain’

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April 8, 2009

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CULT HORROR "I am a genre terrorist," legendary Italian "B" filmmaker Lucio Fulci professes in an interview on the freshly released two-disc edition of his 1990 film Cat in the Brain (Grindhouse). "I perform my commercial deflagration, then I get bored and move on." Likely aware of his more successful compatriot Dario Argento’s moniker, the "Italian Hitchcock," perhaps the late Fulci fancied himself as a sort of Italian Howard Hawks with mild frontal lobe damage: whimsically genre-tripping (comedies in the ’50s, westerns in the ’60s, thrillers in the ’70s) while mastering and exploding conventions. But this would be something of a fanciful delusion. Fulci’s mid-career adoption of giallo, the "spaghetti horror" he helped pioneer and perfect, trapped him in an almost literal genre hell of his own making. With the success of the breakout Zombie (1979), blood-and-gore-thirsty fanboys cried out for more, and Fulci, eager for the commercial success that mostly had eluded him to that point, demurred.

It’s fitting then, that the hallucinatory Cat in the Brain would star Fulci as himself, a director tortured to the point of madness by brutal, graphic visions of his past and current productions: limbs hacked off with chainsaws, numerous decapitations, heads cooking in microwave ovens, and generally just a lot of gorings, stabbings, slicings, slittings, flayings, and disembowelings. When a psychiatrist suggests he is suffering from an identity crisis due to work stress, Fulci objects, "If I made films about love no one would buy a ticket."

But don’t assume Cat in the Brain is Fulci’s attempt to drive the final nail in giallo‘s coffin, much as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (2007) tried (and failed) to do to its 21st-century offspring, torture porn. It’s certainly bad enough to do so: Fulci’s acting is painfully garish, the edit (featuring footage cobbled from his past films) is out to lunch, and the atypically pedestrian score is worthy of the worst MacGyver episode. But much of Cat‘s perverse charm, like much of giallo, comes from its chainsaw-rough edges. Fulci’s meta conceit may be more Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (a 1994 release he derided as a rip-off) than 8 1/2 (1963), but it’s still satisfying. In the end he has perpetrated a cinematic rope-a-dope, a "statement of innocence in the form of a joke," as his journalist daughter writes in the DVD’s liner notes. The maestro of splatter held an abiding affection for the genre after all, despite his alter ego’s haunted visions. Fulci’s messy violence and gore might not have always been in the best of taste, but for the man himself, they set the stage for an awful lot of good, clean fun.

El Paso passages

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April 8, 2009

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At the poetic heart of acclaimed playwright Octavio Solis’s aching, wild, and poignant new drama, Lydia — receiving a beautifully cast and memorable West Coast premiere at Marin Theatre Company under the direction of MTC’s Jasson Minadakis — is a mysterious connection between two very differently challenged and empowered young women: the severely brain-damaged Ceci Flores (Gloria Garayua) and her family’s new undocumented Mexican maid, Lydia (Adriana Gaviria). The house they live in, along with Ceci’s sharp and sensitive younger brother Misha (David Pintado) and her upbeat but overworked mother Rosa (Wilma Bonet), also comes stalked by some serious, restlessly conflicted, and grieving machismo — aloof yet violent patriarch Claudio (Luis Saguar); renegade big brother and guilt-ridden shit-kicker Rene (Lakin Valdez); and hunky first cousin Alvaro (Elias Escobedo), a newly discharged Vietnam vet turned border patrol agent. But leave it to Solis to put the real muscle in the most compromised of female bodies.

Ceci, played with a deft physical dynamism by Garayua, is the play’s vivacious narrator. When not addressing us in physically fluid gestures and urgently poetical language from some residual place inside her own battered head, she lies at the front of the stage in the center of her family’s living room, her quaking body a kind of Richter scale of emotional energy registering every molecule of feeling in the tumult around her. She was transformed into this state two years earlier, on the eve of a happier transformation, her quinceañera, after a mysterious car accident that still eats away at her family, especially her father, and older brother Rene, who was at the wheel.

The other motive force, Lydia, arrives with her own near-death experience behind her, something left purposely vague but giving her presence a sense of destiny, especially when it becomes clear that she alone can understand and speak for the seemingly vegetative Ceci. Lydia is also an unexpected balm to the suffering Claudio and a seminal inspiration to the burgeoning poet in Misha. Meanwhile the threat of deportation hangs over her in the person of the zealously authoritarian Alvaro. Before the end, Lydia will become the catalyst for still one more startling transformation, amid joyful memories and torturous longing associated with childhood play and flowering sexuality among the siblings and their cousin.

San Francisco’s Solis is one of the theater’s great poets of the border, in senses both banally specific and relentlessly far-reaching. Like many of his plays (including Bethlehem, Santos y Santos, and El Otro), Lydia is set just this side of the geopolitical divide between Mexico and the United States, where no lines physical, social, or otherwise actually divide people very neatly — but rather messily and haphazardly. The doubling and blurring of identities among his characters is one of Solis’s tried-and-true dramatic avenues into this reality, this border condition, a world forever straddling and negotiating two others to which it can never wholly belong. It’s the great paradoxical beauty of his work that in its concrete social and cultural details, hilariously accessible yet indigenous humor, and the sheer lyricism it inspires, this uniquely unsettled world gathers universal force and significance.

LYDIA

Through Sun/12, see stage listings for schedule, $20–$51

Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley

(415) 388-5208

www.marintheater.org

The new razzle dazzle

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April 8, 2009

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More on SFBG:

>>Q&A with artist Nick Cave

>>A guide to artists with famous namesakes

Where is the center of the Earth? According to artist Nick Cave, it lies somewhere between a night out at Taboo with Leigh Bowery and a Brazilian Carnaval parade. It can be found in Liberace’s glittering stage getups and Yoruba ceremonial hunting dress. Other possible coordinates include Yinka Shonibare’s Africanized rococo costumes, Cockney pearly suits, the hautest of haute couture, and the fun fur tribes of Black Rock City.

Thankfully, for us, Cave’s crocheted, sequined, bedazzled, embroidered, dyed, and encrusted vision of the heart of the world can be found locally. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ "Meet Me At the Center of the Earth" presents the largest exhibit to date of the Chicago artist’s work, which straddles the realms of sculpture, high fashion, body art, and dance with a visual ferocity and level of workmanship that is alternately stunning and inspiring.

Cave’s art practically dares you to play chicken with your thesaurus. One would have to borrow a page (or several) from the descriptive reveries of Thomas de Quincey or Ronald Firbank to fully convey the cluster fuck of beading, psychedelic hair furs, plastic tchotchkes, yarn, tin toys, buttons, second hand sweaters, and enough sequins to cover a thousand ’80s cocktail dresses that he has quixotically and painstakingly pieced together.

The centerpieces of "Meet Me at the Center of the Earth" are undoubtedly Cave’s Soundsuits — wearable sculptures that take their name from the sounds created by their movement. They fill YBCA’s largest gallery like some other-wordly pantheon of gods and monsters. Arranged in an X-shaped configuration with paths running down the center of each axis, the suits form a giant visual nod to the exhibit’s title. X, of course, marks the spot, and hanging above the room’s center is the Earth itself, swathed in several shades of inky sequins. On the adjacent walls hang two huge and possibly glitzier tondi — the Italian Renaissance term Cave uses for these round hangings — which serve as flattened counterparts to the globe.

The display lets you explore the Soundsuits from every angle. Designed to cover the entire body, the suits hide any individual traces of the wearer by creating a second skin, and then some. The suits with towering, festooned cage structures — which bring to mind both Balinese funeral pyres and Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers — still have a vaguely human outline at their core, whereas the suits patterned in all sort of brilliantly colored fur-like human hair could very well be studies from an unrealized Jim Henson project. This lycanthropic aspect of the Soundsuits is explored most humorously in Cave’s more recent pieces, which take the reverse tactic of fashioning knitwear pelts for taxidermy models of bears and beavers.

While much of Cave’s work, to quote New York Times critic Roberta Smith, "fall[s] squarely under the heading of Must Be Seen to Be Believed," it also begs to be heard. It is unfortunate that YBCA wasn’t able to more fully integrate the sounds of the suits into their display. Although there is an adjacent gallery that shows several videos of the Soundsuits in action — including great footage of Cave and a posse of pom-pom covered lion dancer-clown hybrids inciting massive dance parties in public — the suits themselves stand silent. The audio/visual divide enforced by the two-gallery layout seems to point to the larger issue of static mannequins being the curatorial norm for costume and textile-related exhibits. I guess we’ll have to wait until May, when choreographer Ronald K. Brown stages his Soundsuit performances, to see Cave’s creations in action.

Cave writes in an artist’s statement for the show that he hopes "we will dream together" One would have to have a heart of stone not to take up the challenge and the invitation delivered by Cave’s art — and implicit in the exhibit’s title — to create another scene, to go beyond what’s familiar, and to transform oneself. I left YBCA dreaming of raiding craft stores, thrift shops, and fabric outlets. I dreamed of painting the town red, cerulean, silver, magenta, and neon green with sequins and glitter. I dreamed of dancing. I’ll see you at the center of the Earth. I’m halfway there.

NICK CAVE: MEET ME AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

Through July 5, $3–$6 (free first Tues.)

Tues.–Wed., Fri.–Sun., noon–5 p.m.; Thurs., noon–8 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

All photos by Jim Prinz

Move(men)t: A Men’s Dance Festival

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April 7, 2009

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PREVIEW In the history of dance, the male of the species occupies a curious position. In some cultures only men were allowed to dance in public. In Western aristocratic education, dancing was a requirement for a future courtier. But until fairly recently, ballet choreographers consistently undervalued male dancers, and it was women who pioneered modern dance. In the 1930s, however, Ted Shawn’s all-male ensemble did much to break down the prejudice against men in dance. In the Bay Area, every decade or so brings about a refocusing on masculine performances. There is an energy — both virile and tender — to these presentations that, in the past at least, made them very special experiences for men and women alike. Some of that, unquestionably, had to do with the testosterone that just bounced off the walls. Even so, to see so many guys cooperating with each other is still not something we are accustomed to seeing on stage. The latest incarnation of all-male dancing, "Move(men)t: A Men’s Dance Festival," now in its second year, includes Mark Foehringer, who has long choreographed for men; Folawole Oyinlola, of Nigerian descent, who excels in improvisation; Kegan Marling, perhaps best known in his partnership with Jane Schnorrenberg; and Joe Landini’s new San Francisco Moving Men. Ten choreographers in all will show their chops in the tiny but hopping Garage performance space.

MOVE(MEN)T: A MEN’S DANCE FESTIVAL Fri/10–Sat/11, 8 p.m., $10-$20. The Garage, 975 Howard, SF. (415) 885-4006. www.brownpapertickets.com

Clean Power SF will take center stage at joint meeting

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April 6, 2009

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By Rebecca Bowe

Last Friday, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi declared 2009 the “make-or-break year” for San Francisco’s ambitious Community Choice Aggregation program. Also known as Clean Power SF, the program would establish the city and county as an electricity purchaser for residents and businesses currently served by PG&E, and put S.F. on track for achieving 50 percent renewable power generation. At an April 3 LAFCo (Local Agency Formation Commission) meeting, it was announced that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has agreed to sit down with LAFCo for a meeting about CCA for the first time ever — a sign that things could actually start moving forward.

The process of getting Clean Power SF off the ground has been fraught with delay, in part because the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission — which is tasked with implementing the program — dropped the ball on a series of deadlines. During the last couple monthly meetings, LAFCo, which is charged with overseeing CCA implementation, has vented frustration about the feet dragging at the PUC and questioned the agency’s commitment to the effort. However, the tone shifted some at the April 3 meeting.

CCA director Michael Campbell, who was hired by the SFPUC, noted that the city agency is getting back on schedule — and announced the launch of a new Web site. Two new LAFCo staff positions were approved recently by the Board of Supervisors, providing further momentum.

Visceral reality

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April 1, 2009

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Already a veteran Irish Republican Army volunteer serving his second penitentiary term at age 27, Bobby Sands was leader of Republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze, a.k.a. Long Kesh, outside Belfast in 1981. Early that year he commenced a hunger strike joined by numerous other inmates, an action intended to define IRA incarcerates as political rather than criminal prisoners while boosting international attention for the independence cause.

After 66 days, he was the first of 10 participants to die. The strike’s cessation five months later (participants joined in at staggered intervals) was claimed as a victory by Conservative P.M. Margaret Thatcher and the mainstream British press. Yet the inmates won most of their demands, IRA membership surged, and the "Iron Lady" was thereafter target No. 1 for patriotic loathing among Irish free-staters.

Hunger is the first feature by Steve McQueen, the London photographer, sculptor, and maker of often black and white shorts created primarily for the more rarefied atmosphere of museums and galleries. Their minimalist rigor is very much present here in the exactitude of composition as well as their emphasis on physical detail and visceral experience. It took Julian Schnabel until The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) to find a full-length subject that suited his tactile sense while excusing a lack of narrative instinct or interest; McQueen’s got there on the first try. Hunger is completely realized, without compromise. It’s convincingly ugly in an aesthetically beautiful way, cool to the touch, admirably near-perfect, and off-putting.

We’re introduced to Sands only after several lesser figures take brief center stage: Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), a guard whose work weighs heavily on him; new prisoner Davey (Brian Milligan), who refuses to wear "the uniform of a criminal," thus joining the already in-progress "blanket protest"; and older cellmate Gerry (Liam McMahon), who introduces him to the "dirty protest." That protest consisted of caking walls with smeared feces, directing urine into the corridor, and letting uneaten food rot. We finally glimpse Sands (Michael Fassbender) during visiting hours; he puts up a fierce fight as he and others are violently dragged to a forced shave-and-wash.

Hunger is clinical, politically neutral, almost purely observational — interested in simply displaying rather than commenting on the sacrifices made. It’s not unlike McQueen’s series of postage stamps commemorating British soldiers killed in Iraq — created as part of his role as "official war artist" — that were opposed by the Royal Mail and Ministry of Defense.

Ethical debate is limited to one, 17-and-a-half minute shot in which Bobby and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) lay out personal, political, and religious arguments for and against a potentially lethal strike. It’s only in the subsequent, equally stock-still sequence — a guard sweeping an entire hall-length of piss — that the director’s severity risks feeling schematic.

Needless to say, the final act is unrelenting, with its hallucinations, open sores, and actors starved under medical supervision to scarifying effect. But McQueen finds unsentimental poetry in surprising places throughout, from the snowflakes falling on Lohan’s beating-scarred knuckles to Sands’ lifeless face as a winding sheet is drawn over it. The institutional palette, bare-bones use of sound, even the fully exposed sinewy-to-sticklike male bodies turn docudrama into a kind of exquisite art project, at once devastating and hermetically sealed. *

HUNGER opens Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters.

Green and stimulated

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March 31, 2009

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By Rebecca Bowe

At a March 30 event hosted by Change SF, representatives from Green for All, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and other grassroots organizations opened up a dialogue about green jobs and federal stimulus spending with District 10 Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of climate protection initiatives, Wade Crowfoot.

Participants spoke about projects they’re engaged in that are aimed at promoting environmental justice, green-jobs training and environmental education, and voiced support for programs that can boost prospects for disadvantaged workers by preparing them for jobs in the green sector. Supervisor Maxwell, a panelist, praised the audience for their work, saying, “It makes me feel like I’m not out of my mind when I’m asking, who are we stimulating with the stimulus package?”

At this stage of the game, Maxwell’s question has yet to be answered with any real clarity. Crowfoot noted that as part of the economic-recovery package, San Francisco is slated to receive some $7.7 million from a U.S. Department of Energy community block grant for energy efficiency and conservation purposes. Additionally, the city will receive some $1.5 million as part of a federal weatherization assistance program, he said, which seeks to curb the energy consumption of low-income residences. Crowfoot threw out some thoughts on how the funding might be used — including energy retrofits on city buildings, initiating a program to replace inefficient boilers, and working alongside existing community-based programs — but on the whole the outlook was vague, as he characterized these suggestions as still being “in the universe of interesting ideas.” Applications for specific project funding are due in late April, he noted. We tried calling a few times today to get more details, but haven’t heard back yet.

Sonic Reducer: Lil Wayne, the Mae Shi, Starfucker, and more this weekend

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March 26, 2009

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Pros to go: “A song by the Mae Shi celebrating the life and work of Xtian Bale.”

You have until Monday to find your place in the sun – or in the shadows. More fun musical offerings than we could fit into print – as usual in super-sweet SF.

Lil Wayne
The Nawlins rapper is said to pumped a good deal of performance-enhancement production values into his stage show – courtesy of a full band, a smoke machine, pillars of fire, and a set of backup dancers. But will Wayne deliver the goods? Or at least appear on time? With T-Pain, Gym Class Heroes, and Keri Hilson. Fri/27, 7 p.m., $42.50-=$147.75. HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose. www.livenation.com

The Mae Shi, Pre, and Past Lives
Hey, it’s all good here. Well, I’ve never seen Pre but the Mae Shi are monsters (gag songs or no) and Past Lives – a band of ex-Blood Brothers – impressed at South by Southwest. Seems to me, though, that Skin Graft’s Pre combines squealing girly vocals with propulsive, clanging post-punk in a way that I’m sure SF kids can get with. Fri/27, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

Starfucker
Don’t hold the fucked-up name against them – the Portland, Ore., combo could be the next Glass Candy, with a newly amplified sense of humor. With Grand Lake and Guidance Counselor. Sat/28, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

Bonfire Madigan
Sometime SF dweller Madigan Shive whoops it up for her blessed b-day – and for the release of her new EP. With Excuses for Skipping. Sun/29, 8 p.m., $12. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.

White Magic
The Brooklyn psych-folk spell-casters send us spiralling. With Avocet. Sun/29, 5 p.m., $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

Ang Lee: Let’s talk about sex?

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March 26, 2009

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By Danica Li

Ang Lee and James Schamus have, in tandem, produced and directed nearly a dozen movies. They count between them a trio of Taiwanese family dramas, a civil war epic, an Austen-derived austerely British comedy of manners, an encounter with the Hulk, and a Chinese-language film about flying warriors and a green sword of destiny that grossed a whopping 200 million bucks worldwide. The duo took the stage at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall recently, in conversation with the Berkeley English Department’s Professor Jeffrey Knapp. The premiere topic of conversation for the first half-hour? Sex.

I diagnose this as program coordinators On the Same Page‘s gesture at edginess and being “with it” — or at least as an effort at warding off the buttoned-up stodginess and rehearsed, by-rote deliveries that have plagued past presentations (see: Stephen Hawking, Garry Wills). For starters, the audience was treated to a presentation clip in which a series of explicit splices from 2007’s Lust, Caution were cross-cut with characters from Lee’s other films expressing distaste and affecting grimaces, a dynamic that ended with a raunchily symbolic big bang (taken from 2003’s Hulk). It was enough to provoke a smattering of laughs from the audience, and was an easy enough segue into the first question: Why do so many of Lee’s films involve sex, as it were?

An unguarded moment from Ang Lee’s 2007 film Lust, Caution

Dirty duo

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March 25, 2009

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In what maybe can only be considered a sign of the times, bad attitudes abound in two lean productions on either side of the Bay this week. The first comes courtesy of Dostoevsky, badass of 19th-century Russian literature, whose rascal Raskolnikov (an excellent Tyler Pierce) stalks feverishly across Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage in a bracingly focused new adaptation of Crime and Punishment by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus. The 90-minute intermission-less crime-and-punishment spree — which marks the return of director Sharon Ott, the Rep’s artistic director from 1984 to 1997 — is largely psychological in nature. It takes place after the fact of the double homicide at the novel’s heart without any doubt about the perpetrator or the motive — although Inspector Porfiry (a charmingly avuncular but cunning J.R. Horne), playing smooth cat to Raskolnikov’s bumptious mouse, would have his only suspect believe otherwise for now. (Delia MacDougall rounds out a fine cast as the prostitute Sonia and others in the immediate orbit of Raskolnikov’s fervid, convoluted designs.)

No, this is a man already caught; he just hasn’t realized it yet. In the play’s shrewdly concentrated vantage on the novel, it’s Raskolnikov’s slow dawning grasp of his actions and fate that matters. And even then it’s only, for Dostoevsky the Christian existentialist, the beginning, as evinced by the echoing question, "Do you believe Lazarus rose from the dead?" To this end, Christopher Barreca’s inspired scenic design evokes the reclusive and open-ended nature of his predicament at once: so daunting the difference between inside and out, but so many ready passages spring open too through these thin partitions, as a mind "unhinged by theories" contemplates what separates itself from the other.

This division comes back in an aggressively funny, coolly insouciant piece of theater terrorism now up in a laser-focused, captivating production (and I mean captivating — you don’t dare budge for the 60-minute duration) from Cutting Ball Theater. The Bay Area premiere of Will Eno’s Thom Pain (based on nothing) is nothing you want to miss, or a nothing you want very much to see, especially if you ever wondered what might have happened if Groucho Marx had postponed his birth until he might be cast in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Bay Area audiences were introduced to Eno’s blazing wit and word play last year in Berkeley Rep’s local premiere of Tragedy: A Tragedy, but Thom Pain, a tortuous and wonderfully hostile-hospitable monologue exploring that same thin membrane between a Me and a You, achieves a kind of ideal setting and performance in this intimate production executed to the hilt by a very impressive Jonathan Bock, under admirable direction by Marissa Wolf. The less you know going in, the better. Just go, dig a finger into your collar, clench you buttocks, a try not to laugh for an hour.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Through Sun/29, see stage listings for schedule

$16.50–$71

Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison, Berk.

www.berkeleyrep.org

THOM PAIN (BASED ON NOTHING)

Through April 5, Thurs–Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 5 p.m.

$15–$30

Cutting Ball Theater

Exit Theater, 277 Taylor, SF

www.cuttingball.com

Fluffy bunners

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March 25, 2009

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Look about you, horny toad. There may not be wee lambykins gamboling on your microlawn or the scent of fresh asparagus pervading your water closet yet, but all the mad party signs of spring are sneaking up to floor you: secret sunset shindigs (www.pacificsound.net), hunky Jesus Easter bonnets (www.thesisters.org), blackout drag road trips to Reno (www.trannyshack.com), and, that ultimate in vernal equinoxious signals, a flood of out-of-state gay porn stars looking for extra cash on Rentboy.com and the back pages of the Bay Area Reporter. Spring has sprung! And will probably be passed out in its stiff leather chaps, turquoise Lycra dress shirt, knock off Gucci wraparounds, and George Michael stubble on the corner of 18th and Market soon.

That’s right, those "Oscars of gay porn," the annual GayVN Awards, are coming upon us yet again, as the Castro Theatre plays host to the biggest circle jerk in the butt biz for another year. Downsizing, of course, is out of the question, despite the rash of porno pink slips being fisted out across the industry, which has been hit hard by a combo of economic deflators, internal tussles, and continued grappling with amateur Web competition. (We’ll see if the upcoming onslaught of 3-D dick flicks provides the stimulus package our local studios — second only to backwoods Eastern Europe in terms of sticky-fingered output — so sorely need.)

No, GayVN organizers are gut-pumping all the lubricious glitz they can into a whole weekend of kiki hurrah, with pre-parties, post-parties, Tupperware parties, and brunches that no one will eat at galore. Inflatable personality Janice Dickinson hosts the awards ceremony itself, with backup from homegirl Margaret Cho and Alec Mapa from Ugly Betty (ha!). Online erotic video-on-demand powerhouse Naked Sword, a.k.a. the giant candy-colored Flash octopus that froze my dinky Windows and made me cry with my pants down, will host the official afterparty, Shameless — "the party you’ll never forget, or remember!" — with some big-name DJs and performers I already can’t! It’ll be a wondrous semi-tragedy unfolding in fast motion, worth it if only to ogle the prancing scene. Just please try not to look at the camera when it’s over.

GAYVN AWARDS CEREMONY Sat/28, 7 p.m., $95. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. gayvnawards.avn.com

SHAMELESS GAYVN AFTERPARTY Sat/28, 10 p.m., $25. Wunderland, 181 Eddy, SF. www.nakedsword.com

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TINGEL TANGEL CLUB

The louche cabaret monthly celebrates a year of mingling salacious New York City talent and West Coast underground hotness. Original Cockettes Rumi and Scrumbly, singer Novice Theory, "hypersexual" musicians SlowMo Erotic and more light up the stage, and ever-crushable JD Samson of Le Tigre will Sam Ronson the turntables afterward. Tingel Tangel Le Tigre — it’s an anagram.

Wed/25, 8 p.m., $16. Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF.

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FUCK MIAMI

Oh dear, is it that time of year again? Half our stellar nightlife talents (and a lot of pre-tanned wannabes) will be sucked into the studiously Spandexed and belotioned black hole that is the Winter Music Conference in Miami. If you’re too broke — or too allergic to aggressive slickness and pushy V.I.P. chicks — to jet to the coca beach, share the moment with a slew of worthy left-behinds at this lengthy affair.

Fri/27, 4 p.m.- 2 a.m., free. Mars Bar, 798 Brannan, SF.

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"HOMELESS NIGHT"

This party promises to be wronger than shitting in a urinal: anarchic drag weekly Charlie Horse is hosting a homeless-themed night. Partially controversial gender clown Monistat joins perky Percocetted hostess Anna Conda to present shameful acts by talented messes to actually help benefit homeless services. La-da-dee, la-da-dah, don’t try to rip the wigs off these queens or they will cut you.

Fri/27, 10 p.m., free. The Cinch, 1723 Polk, SF.

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LOOK OUT WEEKEND

Happy hours are all the populist rage, especially in these queasy economics, no? One of the biggest and brightest, Look Out Weekend, is moving into new quarters at Vessel off Union Square. The delicious electronic stylings of Oh Land and DJing by the Magnificent Seven complement yummy eats and fashionable freaks at the relaunch. Will L.O.W. 2.0 be as raucous as the first version? Hey, it’s free, so go see for yourself.

Fridays, 4 p.m.-9 p.m., free. Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF.

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ROYALTY

Well! It may be a bit bombastic, but the name just fits. SF soulful house music king DJ David Harness inaugurates a new monthly to rain some of that ol’ hands-in-the-air spirit down on the children-in-waiting at the lovely Triple Crown. The Crown’s sound system is winning extreme plaudits, so be prepared for a high-fidelity throwdown.

Fri/27, 10 p.m., $5. 1760 Market, SF.

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DEVOTION

A few years ago, DJ Ruben Mancias packed up his little glam-house weekly at the EndUp, Devotion, and skedaddled to NYC to find fame, fortune, and a lot of really neat T-shirts. He’s occasionally popped back into town to show off each, and remind Latin- and soul-tinged house fans of past EndUp glories. Devotion’s eight-year-anniversary will find him back at the space with Oakland house princes Cecil and Dedan warming up. Memories!

Sun/29, 8 p.m.-4 a.m. The EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF.

A six-pack of rock picks

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March 24, 2009

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THEE OH SEES AND EAT SKULL

Fuzz is the new black — at least according to the gospel preached by Thee Oh Sees and Eat Skull. The two West Coast combos will take the beer- and noise-soaked pulpit at the Eagle Tavern to bang out hazy sermons of garage wit and wisdom. (L.C. Mason)

With Grant Hart and the Fresh and Onlys. Thurs/26, 9 p.m., $5. Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., SF. (415) 626-0880. www.sfeagle.com

DARK DARK DARK

Dark Dark Dark released its debut album in 2008 on Rhode Island’s Supply and Demand label. The group’s folky, rootsy instrumentation and female-to-male vocal tradeoffs take over the Caretaker’s House. (Andre Torrez)

Fri/28, 8 p.m. www.myspace.com/darkdarkdarkband

TRANS AM, EZEE TIGER, FUTUR SKULLZ

Imagine you’re in high school: Trans Am are the electronics nerds who jam to Rush, Anthony Petrovic of Ezee Tiger is the misunderstood indie guy who is into the Flaming Lips and Lightning Bolt while you’re still spinning Sublime, and Futur Skullz are the long-hairs who know metal is cool five years before you will — and who just got busted for stealing Dad’s whiskey. (Mason)

Sun/29, 9 p.m., $14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455. www.bottomofthehill.com

T-MODEL FORD AND GRAVEL ROAD

A hard-drinking, potty-mouthed blues legend with a rap sheet long enough to impress any modern thug, wizened oldster T-Model Ford has been rolling around the Deep South since the early 20th century. But he isn’t a walking geriatrics case — backed by Gravel Road, he can stomp the blues till the stage caves in. (Mason)

With the Ferocious Few and Ramshackle Romeos. Sun/29, 8 p.m., $10. Thee Parkside, 1600 17th St., S.F. (415) 252-1330. www.theeparkside.com

WOODEN SHJIPS, EARTHLESS

Wooden Shjips bring straight-outta-1971 fuzz rock. Earthless boasts the drummer from Rocket From the Crypt and Hot Snakes, and shares the Shjips affinity for retro sounds — with a knack for the Sabbath- and Zep-tinged blues. (Torrez)

With Eyes. Sat/28, 9:30 p.m., $10. Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016. www.cafedunord.com

BARN OWL, HOLLY CAUST

More trance-inducing psychedelia from a seemingly endless supply of West Coast bands pumping out the experimental sounds of the other and extra-ordinary: Barn Owl creates dark chamber-like atmospheres, while Holly Caust specializes in over-modulated guitar assault. (Torrez)

With Tecumseh and Oaxacan. Sun/29, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. 415-923-0923. www.hemlocktavern.com

Kennedy, compounded

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March 18, 2009

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HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING It’s chaos theory’s maxim that the mere brush of a butterfly’s wings might produce a ripple effect sufficient to changes history. But let’s face it: it’s more interesting to muse upon the big what-ifs, like assassination attempts. What if Lincoln or Archduke Ferdinand had survived? What if Reagan hadn’t?

Are such speculations actually useful, or just a glorified party game? Clearly Koji Masutani thinks it’s the former, since he’s gone to the trouble of making Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived. As presented by the director and foreign policy historian James G. Blight, this new documentary makes the case that Kennedy’s nonconfrontational tactics on the world stage during his presidency would surely have carried over to preventing that "quagmire" known here as the Vietnam War (and over there as "the American War"). Had he lived, of course.

Parallels to our moment are hard to resist. Like Obama, JFK’s election was viewed as a landmark and greeted with messianic excitement unequalled by a Democrat until now. He arrived at a time of equally daunting if very different emergencies — the Cold War’s peak boiling point, the civil rights movement heating up at home — and likewise faced hostile Republican lawmakers as well as skeptical press.

Masutani charts six occasions on which JFK dodged armed conflict that might have triggered (or so reasoning went) World War III. The Cuban Missile Crisis is the obvious one. Others, all four-alarm calls for anti-commie action, include resisting engagement in Laos and Vietnam, as well as over the Berlin Wall’s construction. In archival footage Kennedy looks alternately uncomfortable and good-humored defending his policies, as he’s accused of "appeasement toward communism," "utter incompetence," and "mismanaging the news" by rationing his statements to prevent hysteria outbreaks in an already paranoid nation. "This generation of Americans has already seen enough war and hate," he pronounced. Amen.

Alas, that fateful open-car ride in Dallas placed Lyndon B. Johnson in office. Though it evidently tormented him, LBJ saw no alternative to an ever-expanding Vietnam incursion. Some 58,000 U.S. lives and 2 million native ones later, it remains the quagmire by which all our blunders abroad are measured.

These days, not everyone thinks Kennedy was as golden as that Camelot glow suggested. But Virtual JFK does convince us that things would have turned out quite differently, at the very least, had he missed taking a premature powder. May history not repeat itself.

VIRTUAL JFK: VIETNAM IF KENNEDY HAD LIVED

Fri/20-Tues/24, see Rep Clock for times, $6–$9

Red Vic, 1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

Burning Man season in San Francisco

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March 17, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones, aka Scribe

Burning Man is more than an annual event popular with San Franciscans: it is a year-round culture, one that really comes into season right around now as the art projects take shape and the myriad theme camps starting fundraising. And recently, there have been some fun and inspiring manifestations of this festive season.

Opulent Temple, Burning Man’s biggest and most enduring large-scale sound camp (and my former camp), threw a massive March 6 fundraiser in a Treasure Island warehouse, featuring legendary DJ Carl Cox (and a long list of other spinners) and mind-blowing art pieces by the Flaming Lotus Girls and Peter Hudson. The NBC news clip above insightfully focuses on how the Bay Area’s art communities help each other during hard economic times.

Then last week, there was the benefit party for Hollis Hawthorne, a friend of the Guardian and Burning Man families who is in coma. The event at Slim’s turned out a wide range of talented acts and community-minded burners that raised a staggering amount of money for a one-night event to bring Hollis home to the Bay Area.

The Burning Man story itself came to the stage in San Francisco in January as “A Burning Opera: How to Survive the Apocalypse,” and after receiving critical acclaim for this talented production’s limited engagement, the crew will hold two fundraisers this week to stage another run: Wednesday at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence “Burning Bingo” event and this Saturday evening at Café Flore.
There’s also the release of a film about the event, “Dust & Illusions” (an early version of which I reviewed here) by Oliver Bonin (who was embedded with the Flaming Lotus Girls at the same time I was). Among other showings is one at Chicken John’s place on March 28.
Meanwhile, the company that stages Burning Man, Black Rock LLC, is about to be homeless. That well-entrenched crew is getting bounced out of its Third Street headquarters to make way for a massive new UC hospital on the Mission Bay site. Word is they’re still looking for the right digs and only have until next month to find them.