Stage

Hot sexy events October 13-19

Andrew Lam
-
0

Support your local sex workers! We are lucky to live in a city where those salacious somebodies that will take their kits off in the name of our pleasure and payment don’t have to lay down and take it when the man gets all censorious and grabby – lucky to live in a city where St. James’ Infirmary exists, that is. The Lusty Ladies agree, and on Sat/16 they’re holding their annual Playday for St. J’s – 16 hours of girl-on-girl-on-call for justice.

For there was a time where if you got picked up providing sex to paying customers, you got stuck. We’re talking hypodermic needles – part of a policy that used to go down in SF that forced sex workers to give up blood samples in jail for mandatory STD testing. As you can imagine, this was not always done in the most respectful of manners. Enter St. James’, founded by sex worker advocacy group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). The center holds a health clinic, trainings and support groups, hormone therapy programming, peer counseling, and oh so much more. Why on earth not head down to the Lusty to make sure our ladies – and gentlemen – of the night continue to be treated as such?

Original Plumbing Bathhouse Reception

Celebrate the notion that a photo-heavy magazine of transmen is one of the most hot publication debuts to hit the racks in 2010 – Original Plumbing’s fourth issue is out! And it features a hunky lineup of working stiffs, all of whom will be at the wine and cheese reception, open to all genders and levels of ab definition.

Thu/14 7 p.m., free

Eros

2051 Market, SF

(415) 255-4921

www.originalplumbing.com


Spanking and Paddling

Don’t worry, consoles the description of this Edu Kink offering: “there will be plenty of spanking time.” That’s because even though this is technically a class on spanking – its possible childhood associations, how to deal with them should they arise, on technique, and enjoying the spank on the receiving end – Edu Kink’s Paideia workshop series has a focus on lecture leading to experience. So prepare you that booty, naughty kids.

Fri/15 7:30-10:30 p.m., $15-$25 sliding scales

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.edukink.org


Pink Blues Dance

What better way to amp up for Mission Control’s pansexual play party than this week’s warmup: a chance to swing those hips to the down ‘n’ out blues on the dance floor. Costumes not required, but membership to the club (and a smile) is. 

Fri/15 9 p.m.-2:30 a.m., $20-$30 members only

Mission Control 

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org 


Naked Girls Reading

What’s that chill that just ran down your spine? Are you frozen in fear by a classic ghost story, channeling the pre-Halloween vibe – or are you just naked? It could easily be both at this storytelling series that pairs the city’s sexologists and stage presences with a favorite book, a mic, and little else. Watch for the SF Ghost Society’s Elissa Fricano’s tales of personal encounters with the world beyond.

Sat/16 8 p.m., $15-$20

Center for Sex and Culture

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 225-1155

www.sexandculture.org

 

Peter Acworth’s Birthday Deviance

Everyone needs a little extra attention on their birthday. And on the founder of Kink.com’s 40th, you can only imagine what form that personal touch will take. Our town’s foremost world-class fetish porn palace opens its virtual doors to members who want to join in on the fun online. Visit www.theupperfloor.com on Saturday evening and watch live as hot doms and slaves create sexy mayhem during a celebratory dinner in Peter’s honor.

Sat/16 6:30-11 p.m., free for Kink.com members, $.25 cents per minute for nonmembers

www.theupperfloor.com


Lusty Lady Playday RXXX

That’s right, get your dirty, dirty prescription for a Saturday in the hospital – or rather, nurse’s office. The Lusties will be pulling on the rubber gloves for a day of sexual healing. Girl-on-girl action all day long, with a portion of the proceeds going to everyone’s favorite hustler health care provider, St. James’ Infirmary.

Sat/16 11 a.m.-3 a.m., $5 before 10 p.m., $10 after

The Lusty Lady

1033 Kearny, SF

(415) 391-3126

www.lustyladysf.com


How To Be a Top Presenter

Have you been there, done that when it comes to the sex education classes at Good Vibes and the host of other venues around our pervy city that like to teach on the tactics of titillation? Take your love of lovin’ to the next level with this little one-off. Dr. Charlie Glickman is sharing the secrets of his sexpert trade: how to plan and orchestrate sex ed for adults.

Tues/19 6-8 p.m., $20-$25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com

 

Treasure Island Music Fest preview, take one

Andrew Lam
-
0
Treasure Island Music Fest preview, take one

Cords. Pedals. Buttons. Plugs and pieces. What is electronic music but a soundtrack of electricity flowing from one plastic part to another; a collection of volts humming and vibrating in an ironically harmonious fashion that somehow manages to tantalize our organic bones and flesh? Treasure Island’s Saturday lineup is dedicated to the electronic elements of today’s sound waves, but the event’s artist grouping distorts the genre’s seemingly obvious definition to one that is tattered with new sound bytes and unlikely additions.

Out goes the assumption that “electronic music” equals tranquilized club kids, and in come the offshoots of chill wave, electro-pop, electro-rock, folktronica, dance rock, and all kinds of made-up names. From the dance-party infiltrators, LCD Soundsystem, to the “next level shit” of Die Antwoord, each of the 13 acts playing Saturday’s Island stage hold unique qualities. DeadMau5 and Kruder and Dorfmeister remain strictly digital; Little Dragon and Holy Fuck incorporate traditional instruments; French duo Jamaica bans synth completely, while Miike Snow and Wallpaper might consider their vintage plug-in pianos family members. When it comes to defining today’s electronic scene, DJs and professional remixers definitely count, but the full set of rules is still TBD.

Music is what frees us from our overloaded lives, cutting through our webbed-out existence with sounds that take us “away from it all,” yet electronic music seems to work as both an escape and a reminder. Aren’t we tired of hearing our computers bleep? How about those ridiculously catchy videogame noises and horrid ringtones that rot the brain? Electronically-inclined musicians are adding such sounds to their repertoire, disguising them with mustaches and wigs, tangling them with bass and dreamy melodies then handing them back in a totally rad new package.

It’s a streamlined recycling process, melting, molding, and converting junk sounds into something that injects new movement into our robot routines. No, not everything has been thought of before — here is one area where fresh sounds are being discovered.

In fact, things are so new and up in the air that some bands included in the electronic half of this weekend don’t even consider themselves part of the genre. Sarah Barthel, half of the newest blog sensation Phantogram, is one example, though she and bandmate Josh Carter use a fair amount of outlet-powered instruments like samplers, synths, beat machines, and loop machines. “Sound has so many options today. It’s mind boggling and amazing,” she says while riding in a tour van to Atlanta.

Phantogram’s mysterious electro-rock doesn’t necessarily call out “brand new” when it spins, mostly due to its throwbacks to ’90s trip-hop. But similar to a fair portion of Saturday’s bill, the duo is living somewhere off the classic genre map.

“People will ask, ‘Where’s your drummer? Why don’t you have one?” and I just tell them, ‘We don’t want one,'” Barthel says with a laugh, remembering that just moments prior she had expressed her excitement over Phantogram’s newest addition to the tour family— a real drummer to replace their box with buttons. “In general, we’re just trying to go for a different aesthetic. And typically, more traditional elements like a live drummer wouldn’t fit that. But right now, it’s totally working.”

Electronic music today is full of contradictions — as many loopholes as loops. Anything goes and nothing fits quite right, which is why Antoine Hilarie of Jamaica doesn’t even know how to answer the question, What is electronic music?

“I don’t have the slightest idea, to be honest,” he says, before taking it a philosophical step farther and questioning the point of my question altogether. “Genre-defining is a bit obsolete in my opinion. These days I only listen to bands I like, whether they’re rap, electronic music, rock, or folk.”

It’s a genre that can incorporate all genres, meaning it’s own definition is completely lost for words. But none of the bands on Saturday will be playing unplugged. And if the power does disconnect any of our electric artists, we’ll have a very quiet island. 

TREASURE ISLAND MUSIC FESTIVAL

Sat/16, noon–11 p.m.; Sun/17, noon–10:30 p.m.;

$67.50–$475

Treasure Island, SF

www.treasureislandfestival.com

 

Hula heartbeat

Andrew Lam
-
0
Hula heartbeat

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Quite a few hula companies populate the Bay Area, but none is led by a kumu hula (teacher) quite as charismatic as Patrick Makuakane. Watch him warm up an audience, and you’d think he could charm cash out of a bunch of IRS agents. Then he steps on stage, grabs a drum, and starts to chant, and you know that this is an old soul, somehow still in touch with hula’s roots as a spiritual practice. “We love that duality about him,” explains Makani da Silva Santos, one of his longtime dancers.

Makuakane’s choreography for his Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu company, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, reflects his complex personality. He is as much at ease creating hulas based on pop songs as he is at excavating meaning out of ancient chants or creating politically searing dance dramas.

Hula, like many other dance forms—Indian, Balinese, West African—was born in rituals that both strengthened a group’s identity and attempted to get in touch with the Divine. In Hawaii, that meant paying tribute to natural forces, particularly the goddess Pele. But missionaries who colonized Hawaii in the 19th century and tried to force Christianity on its people prohibited hula. They considered all Hawaiian culture crude and lascivious. They almost succeeded when King David Kalakaua restored hula and other native customs, saying famously: “Hula is the language of the heart and therefore the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people.” Even so, long after the king’s death, hula had to be practiced in secret. Makuakane’s stark 1999 The Natives are Restless unsparingly looks at that sorry part of Hawaiian history. In one haunting passage, a “priest” tattoos a cross onto bare-chested women.

You can’t miss hula’s deep connection to the earth. Often the dancers wear garlands, head-dresses, and anklets made from flowers and plants. Watching the dancers sway, step, and turn in unison, bent knees opening and closing, feet firmly planted on the ground, you can sense that they are engaged in something that goes beyond simple entertainment, even when dressed in modern garb.

That doesn’t mean hula isn’t also great fun to do and to watch — Don Ho was not all that wrong. Makuakane once told an interviewer that he wanted two things for his dancers: to have fun and to develop a sense of community. Watching her mother in Makuakane’s classes at the age of eight, da Silva Santos first experienced that sense of belonging, When Makuakane asked her whether she wanted to dance, it made her feel special to be invited into this group of grownups. (There were no children’s classes at the time). Twenty-five years later, she is still at it and hopes that one day her daughter “will also dance hula because it’s a link to my Hawaiian culture.”

In addition to dancing with the company for many years, da Silva Santos has undergone the Uniki process, an extensive formal training in Olapa (master dancer) and Ho’opa’a (master chanter) which, as she explains, demands a “disciplined frame of mind” to study the “deeper meanings of the ancient chants and practices”. Does she speak Hawaiian? “I am learning,” the Vallejo resident says. Even after all these years she — in the company of other dancers — still makes her own leis. They no longer have to fashion the skirts themselves. “Fortunately, we now have seamstresses,” she laughs. “Though I do sometimes miss those long nights working together.”

Along with works from the repertoire, Na Lei Hulu will premiere Ke Kumulipo, based on the epic Hawaiian chant of creation. If past celebrations are any indication, you can expect to see many of the students who take hula classes every week for the sheer fun of it — as well as the more than 40 professional dancers.

25 YEARS OF HULA: A SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY PERFORMANCE

Sat/16 through Oct. 24

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

3301 Lyon, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.CityBoxOffice.com

 

Stage listings

David Talbot
-
0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Habibi Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Previews Thurs/14-Sun/17, 8pm. Opens Mon/18, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Nov 7. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present the world premiere of a play by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh.

Nina and the Monsters Shotwell Studios, 3252A 19th; 509-8656, 509-8656. $10-15. Opens Fri/15, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sun/17 and Oct 24, 2pm). Ninjaz of Drama with Footloose present a modern-day fairy tale.

Proof Exit Stage Left Theatre, 156 Eddy; www.belljartheatre.com. $20. Opens Fri/15, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 30. Bell Jar Theatre presents David Auburn’s award-winning play.

Susie Butler Sings the Sarah Vaughan Songbook Exit Theater Cafe, 156 Eddy; (510) 860-0997, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Opens Sat/16, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 20. Local actress and singer Susie Butler takes on the Sassy songbook.

 

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Phoenix Theatre, Stage 2, 414 Mason; 433-1235, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. A one-woman musical starring Karen Hirst, with book and music by Anne Doherty.

Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a show by Brian Christopher Williams.

*The Brothers Size Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Dates and times vary. Through Sun/17. Magic Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play, directed by Octavio Solis.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 22. Actors Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ sultry, sweltering tale of a Mississippi family, directed by Keith Phillips.

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

Disoriented Off-Market Theater, 960 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 17. A trio of solo performances by Asian-American women.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm (also Sat/16, 1pm). Through Oct 24. 42nd Street Moon presents the Sondheim musical farce, starring Megan Cavanagh.

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Oct 27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. Outside of an actual castle, it would hard to say what could serve as a more appropriate stand-in for Kronborg castle of Helsingør—also known as Elsinore—than the isolated fortress of Alcatraz Island, where WE Players are presenting Hamlet in all its tragic majesty. As audience members tramp along stony paths and through prison corridors from one scene to the next, the brooding tension the site alone creates is palpable, and the very walls impart a sense of character, as opposed to window-dressing. Deftly leaping around rubble and rock, a hardy troupe of thespians and musicians execute the three-hour production with neat precision, guiding the audience to parts of the island and prison edifice that aren’t usually part of the standard Alcatraz tour package. Incorporating movement, mime, live music, and carefully-engineered use of space, the Players turn Alcatraz into Denmark, as their physical bodies meld into Alcatraz. Casting actress Andrus Nichols as the discontent prince of Denmark is an incongruity that works, her passions’ sharp as her swordplay, the close-knit family unit of Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius are emphatically human (Benjamin Stowe, Misti Boettiger, Jack Halton), and Scott D. Phillips plays the appropriately militaristic and ego-driven Claudius with a cold steel edge. (Gluckstern)

IPH… Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, 647-2822, www.brava.org. $15-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/16. Brava Theatre and African-American Shakespeare Company present the US premiere of an adaptation of Iphigenia at Aulis.

*Jerry Springer the Opera Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th; www.jerrysf.com. $20-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/16. Highbrow meets low in one big, boisterous mono-brow middle as one of the baser of daytime talk-show hosts meets his audience and maker—or anyway Jesus and Satan—in a TV show purgatory that really is purgatory. The form is operatic, the subject matter the stuff of soap, and the resulting tawdry spectacle all but irresistible in Ray of Light Theatre’s production of the 2003 British musical by Richard Thomas (music, book and lyrics) and Stewart Lee (book and lyrics). If the conceit feels a bit one-note, it’s a note taken very cleverly and ably for all its worth. A smart, smarmy and dyspeptic Patrick Michael Dukeman excels in the title role, as the chorus, meanwhile, comprised of Jerry’s rabid studio audience, puts the unbridled hooligan glee in glee club, lending Wagnerian weight to such key phrases as “step-dad” or “chick with a dick.” The grand and just slightly sleazy Victoria Theatre makes the perfect venue for this fine irreverence, filling it charmingly with rafter-shaking vulgarity and mayhem.

Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal slice of eyeball is comprised of three playlets variously splattered with platelets, all directed by Russell Blackwood and bridged by a rousing burst of bawdy song from the full cast. Rob Keefe’s Lips of the Damned (after La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric) takes place in a rat-infested museum of atrocities just before the fumigating starts, as an adulterous couple—comprised of a kinky married lady (a vivacious Kara Emry) and a naïve hunk from the loading dock (Daniel Bakken)—get their kicks around the guillotine display, and their comeuppance from the jilted proprietor (Flynn DeMarco). Keefe’s delightfully off-the-wall if also somewhat off-kilter Empress of Colma posits three druggy queens in grandma’s basement, where they practice and primp for their chance at drag greatness, and where newly crowned Crystal (a gloriously beaming Blackwood) lords it over resentful and suspicious first-runner-up Patty Himst (Eric Tyson Wertz) and obliviously cheerful, non-sequiturial Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt). When fag hag Marcie (Emry) arrives with a little sodium pentothal snatched from dental school, the truth will out every tiny closeted secret, and at least one big hairy one. Kiss of Blood, the 1929 Grand Guignol classic, wraps things up with botched brain surgery and a nicely mysterious tale of a haunted and agonized man (Wertz) desperate to have Paris’s preeminent surgeon (DeMarco) cut off the seemingly normal finger driving him into paroxysms of pain and panic. Well-acted in the preposterously melodramatic style of the gory genre, the play (among one or two other things) comes off in a most satisfying fashion. (Avila)

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 30. Custom Made Theatre Company presents the 2005 play by New York’s Stephen Adly Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the A Train), which places purgatorial Judas (Kristoffer Alberto Barrera) on trial to determine his deserved fate for dropping a dime on Jesus and all that jazz. Flamboyant, sycophantic and horny prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Ben Ortega) and defense attorney Loretta (Amelia Avila) call between them a series of brow-raising witnesses—including Mother Teresa (Brandy Leggett), Sigmund Freud (Catz Forsman), and Satan (Richard Wenzel)—as Judas (seated on the upper tier of Sarah Phykitt’s suitably imposing split-level set) stares stoically in relative silence or appears in a series of childhood flashbacks. Characteristically funny and streetwise, as well as versed in the Catholic rigmarole as filtered through a NYC-boroughs sensibility, Guirgis’s play is also unusually tedious in its jokey, poky unfolding since—offering not much more than a cipher in the largely mute Iscariot—the proceedings lack a strong sense of dramatic stakes. It feels more like a revue than a play, or like an unnecessarily long-winded excuse for the final, well-turned concluding monologue by a heretofore marginal character (a speech delivered with admirable understatement by director Brian Katz). (Avila)

Love Song Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Oct 23. An offbeat comedy by John Kolvenbach, directed by Loretta Janca.

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Oct 20, Oct 27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Scapin American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-90. Tues-Sun, times vary. Through Oct 23. Bill Irwin, the innovative former Pickle Family clown and neo-vaudevillian turned Broadway star, makes a San Francisco return at the helm—and in the title role—of American Conservatory Theater’s production of Moliere’s classic farce. It’s an excuse for some arch meta-theatrical high jinx as well as expert clowning, a love fest really, with many fine moments amid a general font of fun whose heady purity seems like it should fall under some FDA regulation or other—clearly, somebody has paid someone to look the other way, and for once the corruption is unreservedly welcome. Joining the fun is Irwin’s old comrade-in-arms and, here, sacks, Geoff Hoyle, as miserly and dyspeptic daddy Geronte. Other ACT regulars and veterans flesh out a winning cast, among them the ever versatile and inimitable Gregory Wallace as Octave, a flouncing Steven Anthony Jones as put-out patriarch Argante, René Augesen as boisterously unlikely “virgin” Zerbinette, and a wonderfully adept and scene-stealing Judd Williford in the role of Scapin sidekick Sylvestre. As for Irwin, his comedic sensibility shows itself scrupulously apt and timeless at once, and his sure, lithesome performance intoxicating and age-defying. As a director, moreover, he gives as generously to each of his fellow performers as he does to his adoring, lovingly tousled audience. (Avila)

The Shining: Live The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-77891, www.darkroomsf.com. $7-10. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. The Dark Room becomes the Overlook Hotel in this stage production of the horror classic.

Sunset Limited SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Nov 6. This 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy exhibits some of the best and worst of the celebrated author, but significantly more of the latter. It sets an aging white academic and failed suicide (Charles Dean) in a room with his rescuer and would-be savior, a poor black social worker (Carl Lumbly), who has just snatched him from a railway platform ahead of a tête-à-tête with a train called the Sunset Limited. Both characters remain nameless, emphasizing the abstract pseudo-Socratic dimensions attendant on the dialogue-driven realism here (staged with a knowing wink in director Bill English’s scenic design, a partially walled wood-framed shack with see-through slits between the thin horizontal planking). The black man is a born-again Christian and ex-con convinced Jesus has just given him a major assignment. His dogmatic certainty is matched by the white man’s nihilism and despair. “I believe in the primacy of the intellect,” the miserable prof tells his host, who’s locked the door on his self-destructive guest in an effort to buy time to change his mind. Leaving aside the historically clichéd, problematic and baggage-heavy dynamic of a poor black American devoted to the welfare of a rich white one, neither man moves from his respective position one inch (at least until perhaps and partially at the very end), which constrains the dramatic development. Moreover, both sides argue feebly, mainly by gainsaying whatever it is the other one says, making this not a great intellectual debate either. SF Playhouse’s production sets two fine actors at this heavy-handed twofer, but little can be done to redeem so static and arid an exercise. (Avila)

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 31. TheatreWorks presents Tracy Letts’ tale of friendship and redemption in a Chicago donut dispensary.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 31, 5pm). Through Oct 31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

 

BAY AREA

Angels in America, Part One Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sat/16. Pear Avenue Theatre kicks off its fall “Americana” program with the Tony Kushner play.

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

Whiskeyfest whispers

Andrew Lam
-
0

What words could be more beautiful to hear upon entrance into the skyscraper-y, shiny den of downtown’s Marriot Marquis? From the mouth of a woman in a blazer and matching knee-length skirt: “It smells like a frat house on a Saturday morning!” Ah, last Friday’s Whiskeyfest, you came to conquer my liver, but you left after conquering my heart.

To the tune of 250 whiskies, no less! Once ensconced in the hotel’s basement ballroom and properly attired with our souvenir tote and tasting glass, naught could be seen but opportunities to drink myself into an unproductive Saturday of cowering from the Blue Angels. Row upon row of the finest whiskies – the even finer ones available only for the special VIP tasting hour, whose $150 price tag may have seemed a little step were one not aware of the general admission’s $110 bar tab.

 

And who, pray tell, is buying these steeply priced passes into madness? Well, from the looks of Whiskeyfest SF, mainly older white men. Shocking. But more interestingly, also a secret cabal of rumor-mongers and shit-stirrers! Indeed. SFBG received this mind-blowing scoop (along with a pair of hefty pours of the 23-year aged malt) from Old Rip Van Winkle‘s crown prince of marketing management, J. Preston Van Winkle. 

See, Old Rip’s got little to prove in this big old world of bourbon. Our SFBG resident spirits expert, Virginia Miller (who will know doubt be sniffing and sipping through a slightly more sophisticated, taste and mouth feel-oriented version of this coverage later this week) pointed me towards their table right off the bat, so we knew it would be good and smooth beyond measure. 

Their brand has been starting fights and making horses kick since the days before Prohibition, and its Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve is the highest rated bourbon whiskey in the world. In. The. World. Thank you, Kentucky. Preston tells me that at this stage, there’s not too much marketing to be done. “It’s more like relationship management now,” he tells me, standing next to dad Julian the Third at their pouring table. 

So why the devil would one pay the reported price of $1,200 to have a Whiskeyfest booth and suffer the badgering of alternative newspaper reporters? Preston says there’s more at stake here than mere sales figures. And now we’re talking honor – or at least the Internet’s perception of it. “There’s a whole subculture of whiskey people,” he begins, not sounding too much like he cottons to this particular set of website forum-frequenting deviants. “There’s an active rumor mill. As soon as we don’t show up, there’s ‘a hostile takeover,’ we’re ‘shutting the doors.’ ”

“Yep, we’re still here pops. Get used to it.” Preston Van Winkle (left, navy polo) deflects the haters at Whiskeyfest 2010. Photo by Paula Connelly

The message board freaks seem to have won this round. “It’s easier just to come to [Whiskeyfest] and suffer the consequences and generate buzz that we don’t need. That and John Hansell has been good to us,” he smiles, a twinkle appearing at the mention of the kingpin behind the Fest-editor of sponsoring rag Malt Advocate, a twinkle which hopefully eclipsed the pain he must endure by unhelpfully-generated buzz. 

So rapt was I held by these revelations from the junior Van Winkle, I began to venture further into his whiskey wonderland. It gets weirder. Turns out, his family didn’t start their eponymous whiskey brand. Pappy Van Winkle actually brought the brand from another bloke after Prohibition. What is truly nutty is that Pappy had been making whiskey all along, just not with his last name as the brand (he sold his original three brand names in favor of reinvigorating the Van Winkle label). Preston and I surmise that the original owners were playing on the fairytale story of the man who sleeps for twenty years after escaping his nagging woman and drinking some booze belonging to ghosts partial to lawn bowling. Good whiskey being that which knocks you out so long you miss your harpy wife’s death.

Preston, when did you start drinking whiskey yourself? Answer: one year old. “My parents didn’t believe in store bought cough syrup,” he tells me in a slight Louisville drawl. 

The Van Winkle wares having been thoroughly sampled, our cadre moved on, threading amidst the refrigerator-shaped men in blazers and kilts through the tables of un-aged Koval white whiskey, of Japanese whiskey, of ryes, bourbons, scotchs, and a host of non-whiskey related items like Crop’s Bloody Mary-ready organic tomato vodka and Quelque Chose, a beer from the Unibroue brewery of Quebec that is meant to be boiled in its own bottle, then served hot at the temperature at which its foam emerges. Like mulled wine it was, a perfect antidote to the October pre-anxiety over Christmas commercials and family visits.

We emerged at the other side predictably weary, having missed all 12 of the expert seminars (who were we, really, to attend?), but done our darnedest to sample what we could of the high rolling whiskey lifestyle – as well as having reinforced the notion that the high rolling whiskey lifestyle is an elixir best meant to be sipped, and preferably not at a level of motion characterized by the lurch to the next nearest table of sampling whiskies. Also, even men in suits get fresh after too many fancy scotches. Whiskeyfest, til we meet again. 

 

Our Weekly Picks: October 6-12, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

WEDNESDAY 6

MUSIC

Caribou

Electronic music whiz Dan Snaith, a.k.a. Caribou, has a spirited stage show. In contrast to the solo job of the albums, Caribou gigs include a full live band and have been known to feature multiple drummers and percussionists (including Snaith himself), plus trippy, projected visuals. For a taste of his knack for polishing 1960s psych and ’70s krautrock weirdness with a modern dance club sheen, check out this year’s Polaris Music Prize runner-up, Swim, or 2003’s excellent Up In Flames. (Landon Moblad)

With Emeralds

9:30 p.m., $18

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

1-800-745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

THURSDAY 7

PERFORMANCE

Ralph Lemon

Early in his career Ralph Lemon made intimate, highly formal, nonnarrative dances. Then he engaged in huge, multiyear, multidisciplinary enterprises that took him from Abidjan to Beijing and Kyoto. Now he has come home — sort of. Lemon was raised in Minnesota, but in researching his family he encountered a now 102-year old Mississippian with whom he has worked for the last eight years on How Can you Stay in the House and Not Go Anywhere? The work consists of a performance, film, and visual arts installation — all on one ticket. Lemon’s work has always been well considered and choreographically cogent. No reason to think How Can You? will diverge from the norm. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/9

8 p.m., $25–$30

Novellus Theater

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

MUSIC

Glass Candy

The music industry is a fickle mistress, and when bands take a long time to release material it becomes really easy to forget their past accomplishments. Take Glass Candy: it’s been a minute since the band made any significant waves, instead laying low the past few years and releasing 12-inch singles on trusty record label Italians Do It Better. The band’s style is a mash of disco and contemporary electronics that recall the best John Carpenter scores if they had blasé vocals by Nico. Candy’s singer Ida No remains the group’s greatest asset, and her delivery manages to be silly and sexy at the same time. This show proves that Italians Do It Better understands how to properly conduct a comeback, casting Candy, the label’s biggest successes, as headliners on an all-star bill that includes spin-off outfit Chromatics and, most surprisingly, label owner Mike Simonetti with a DJ set. (Peter Galvin)

With Chromatics, DJ Mike Simonetti, Soft Metals, and DJ Omar

9 p.m., $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

MUSIC

Tera Melos

Roseville three-piece Tera Melos storms Bottom of the Hill for a night of loud, mathy, prog-inspired rock ‘n’ roll. With new album Patagonian Rats fresh off the presses, Tera Melos seems poised to make some noise in indie-rock circles all over the country. Guitarist Nick Reinhart possesses a bottomless bag of wildly frantic riffs and finger taps, while the rhythm section thrashes along with shifting time signatures and complex song structures. Tera Melos isn’t the first or only band to make this kind of music these days, but it’s certainly one of the best. (Moblad)

With Skinwalker and Glaciers

9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

DANCE

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company

If you are at all interested in seeing out how mature artists — let’s say, with a track record of more than 35 years — keep turning out good work, there is probably no better way than to keep watching the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Jenkins’ MO — she suggests ideas; the dancers come up with responses; she edits the responses — has worked remarkably well, even for San Francisco Ballet dancers, who certainly are not trained along the lines of individual responsibility. This one-night stand offers a return of the wondrous first section of last year’s Other Suns I and a preview peek at Light Moves. Jenkins works for the first time with multimedia artist Naomie Kremer, who creates moving images based on her own paintings. (Felciano)

8 p.m., $18–$26

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

3200 California, SF

(415) 292-1200

www.jccsf.org/arts

 

FRIDAY 8

MUSIC

Fool’s Gold

Drag rock is very big right now. Who needs authenticity when you can see a band like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros being all folk, as if everyone just forgot about Ima Robot? (Oh wait, we did.) Well, same deal with Fool’s Gold and afropop. Of course, Vampire Weekend tries to do the same thing (it’s also known as Graceland-ing), but Fool’s Gold doesn’t have that annoying ka-ching of a cash register in every one of its songs. With a pair of ’60s throwbacks opening, it should make for a musical voyage through time and space. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Bitter Honeys and Soft White Sixties

8:30 p.m., $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell St., SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

MUSIC

“Tankcrimes Brainsqueeze”

Tankcrimes is a resolutely underground Oakland record label, kicking out small-scale, mostly vinyl releases of criminally overlooked punk and metal bands. Focusing on breakneck tempos, DIY values, and that delicious intersection between punk’s manic energy and metal’s lumbering power, the label has nurtured a small stable of unimpeachable acts. “Tankcrimes Brainsqueeze” is a two-day festival celebrating these crossover crusaders, headlined by Richmond, Va., party animals Municipal Waste and Oakland’s own splattercore dungeon masters Ghoul. Hard-punning death metallers Cannabis Corpse will also appear. Look forward to 48 hours of demented double-time, disemboweled corpses, and decimated beer supplies. (Ben Richardson)

With Vitamin X, Toxic Holocaust, Direct Control, A.N.S., Voetsek, Ramming Speed, and more

Fri/8, 7:30 p.m.; Sat/9, 7 p.m., $15–$17 (two-day pass, $30)

Oakland Metro

630 Third St., Oakl.

(510) 763-1146

www.oaklandmetro.org

 

MUSIC

Davy Jones

As a member of the Monkees, Davy Jones was one of the original teen idols — he sang lead on some of their biggest hits, including “Daydream Believer” and “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.” Unlike many of the other early pop heartthrobs, however, he has since gone on to a highly successful four-decade (and counting) career in show biz. His many other memorable performances and appearances over the years include a variety of acclaimed stage roles, television cameos (think The Brady Bunch) and solo albums. Expect a little bit of everything at these intimate shows. (Sean McCourt)

Fri/8, 8 p.m.; Sat/9-Sun/10, 7 p.m.

(also Sat/9, 9:30 p.m.), $45–$47.50

Rrazz Room

Hotel Nikko

222 Mason, SF

(415) 866-3399

www.therrazzroom.com

 

SATURDAY 9

EVENT

“Behind the Scenes on Treasure Island with Harrison Ellenshaw”

Now considered a swashbuckling classic, Disney’s Treasure Island (1950) was the first entirely live-action film that the studio produced. And one of the people who helped bring the tale of Long John Silver to life was the immensely talented Peter Ellenshaw, who created a series of matte paintings that provided the wondrous sense and grand scope of the various background scenes. His son Harrison, an equally accomplished artist in his own right (having worked on projects such as The Empire Strikes Back (1980)) will be on hand today to discuss his father’s work on the perennial pirate favorite, sharing some of his family’s history and the secrets that went into creating the magic for Walt Disney. (McCourt)

3 p.m., $9–$12;

Screenings, 1 and 4 p.m. daily through Oct. (except today), $5–$7

Walt Disney Family Museum Theater

104 Montgomery, Presidio, SF

(415) 345-6800

www.waltdisney.org

 

MONDAY 11

DANCE

WestWave Dance Festival

Monday nights are livening up this fall during WestWave Dance’s 19th annual contemporary choreography festival. Designed to allow new and established choreographers to develop and present work without the hassles of self-production, the festival presents 20 choreographers from the Bay Area and beyond in four showcases through December. Evening two of the series is an eclectic mix of choreographers hailing from various backgrounds and aesthetics: Viktor Kabaniaev, Tammy Cheney, Rachel Barnett, Annie Rosenthal Parr, and Kara Davis’ project-agora deliver to audiences a sampling of what our rich and unique contemporary dance scene has to offer. (Emmaly Wiederholt)

8 p.m., $22

Cowell Theater

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

www.westwavedancefestival.org

 

MUSIC

Valient Thorr

Chapel Hill, N.C’.s Southern rocking punks Valient Thorr may sound good on record, but they have to be seen to be believed. Frontperson “Valient Himself” is a bearded lunatic, flying around the stage and spreading the rock gospel with the verbose alacrity of a storefront preacher. The band behind him provides no-holds-barred punk-rock rave-ups with a hefty dose of Southern rock filigree and a dash of unhinged weirdness. New platter The Stranger was produced by knob-god Jack Endino, who thickened the sound without diluting the band’s digressive tendencies. The Thorriors will be cranking it out from atop Bottom of the Hill’s lofty stage, raining down sweat while they do it. (Richardson)

With Red Fang and FlexXBronco

9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

TUESDAY 12

MUSIC

PS I Love You

Sure, the White Stripes blew the doors open for guitar drum duos to rock and have mainstream success, but the Black Keys proved that it wasn’t all just a quasi-incestuous fluke. Now all the boys feel comfortable doing it together. We’re not going to try and claim that Ontario, Canada’s PS I Love You is the only stripped down, sticks and picks outfit in town tonight, but if the spiraling, echoing post-pop songs off their just released first album (the single “Facelove” in particular) are any indication, you’d be hard up to find one that gives it to you like this. (Prendiville)

With Gold Medalists and Downer Party

9 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk St., SF

www.hemlocktavern.com 


The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

 

No brains required

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
No brains required

Dead Rising 2

Blue Castle (Capcom)

Xbox 360/PS3/PC

GAMER If Dead Rising was a videogame homage to Dawn of the Dead (1978), then Dead Rising 2 has taken a big leap forward in the George Romero zombie timeline, landing somewhere near the patchy neighborhood of 2005’s Land of the Dead.

Set a few years after the events of the original, the sequel depicts a society well past the shock and dismay of the zombie outbreak: it’s begun to make money off it. At the game’s outset, motocross driver Chuck Greene is a contestant on a competition TV show called Terror is Reality, where the goal is to slice up zombies on a motorcycle outfitted with chainsaws. This is not a game that takes itself terribly seriously. The original Dead Rising had plenty of goofy material, from Mega Man costumes to psychopathic clowns, but it was also grounded so strongly in its homage to the Romero film that the goofiness felt like icing on a cake. Here, goofiness takes center stage. This isn’t quite a criticism, mind you, and the silly fun you have in Dead Rising 2 beats the pants off watching 2007’s Diary of the Dead any day.

After his appearance on Terror is Reality, and an apparent terrorist attack that caused zombies to break into the show’s studios, Chuck finds himself quarantined on a patch of the Vegas strip with three days to solve mysteries and make sure that his daughter receives her daily shot that prevents her from turning into a member of the undead. As in the original, you’re largely free to go where you like for the three days, but dilly-dallying comes at the expense of saving other survivors. That clock is always ticking down, and it quickly becomes clear that it’s impossible to do everything the game offers in the time given, forcing you to make choices about whom to save and which mysteries to investigate.

This isn’t some complex moral exercise: the real reason to play Dead Rising 2 is to kill lots of zombies. We’re talking thousands upon thousands, filling every screen. Luckily, Las Vegas is packed with the tools of zombie disposal, from lawnmowers to novelty foam fingers, and the game introduces a new system of combining items to make them doubly efficient and doubly hilarious. Grab that rake and attach a car battery and you have an electric rake — perfect for zapping zombies at a safe distance.

Other than the new location and the combo items, developer Capcom didn’t mess much with the formula; in fact, a number of the game’s sections are indistinguishable from the first title. The option to play cooperatively with a friend is welcome, but the multiplayer portion is more afterthought than anything. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but there aren’t a lot of games in the “zombie sandbox” genre and the overwhelming wealth of stuff to do in Dead Rising 2 suggests you’ll be slicing up zombies and making yourself laugh for a long time to come.

Now is the time

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Now is the time

arts@sfbg.com

STAGE The recent appointment of L. Peter Callender as artistic director of the African-American Shakespeare Company is exciting news, and not only for the San Francisco–based operation founded in 1994 by Sherri Young. With the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre recently rocked (though thankfully not tumbled) by the untimely deaths this year of its founding directors, Stanley E. Williams and Quentin Easter, the revitalization of a serious theater devoted to “coloring the classics” comes as especially welcome and timely. Moreover, the arrival of Callender — who, as a preeminent Bay Area actor for two decades, brings excellent experience and connections — promises a broadening of AASC’s programming as much as an overall increase in proficiency.

Case in point is AASC’s first outing under Callender’s leadership, IPH …, Irish playwright Colin Teevan’s 1999 adaptation of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis. The U.S. premiere, directed by Dylan Russell, proves an uneven production, but it offers energy, invention, and, not least, Callender himself in a central role. Indeed, whatever its limitations, IPH … has no trouble expanding to fit the cavernous Brava Theater (coproducer for this season opener), which says something about the heft of the company now and going forward.

Callender plays King Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces assembled at Aulis, en route to make war on Troy, whose Prince Paris has made off with Greek beauty Helen, wife of Agamemnon’s brother and Sparta’s king, Menelaus (Dorian Lockett). It’s a family affair, in other words, to which whole nations of people are unfortunately tied. But before the slaughter commences on the battlefield, Agamemnon must sacrifice one of his very own: beloved daughter Iphigenia (a warm and spirited Traci Tolmaire). A soothsayer has told him it is the condition under which the goddess Artemis will release his ships, now stranded in a dead calm.

In Russell’s expansive staging — which includes effective use of Matt McAdon’s gracefully sloping three-level set and Wesley Cabral’s large video backdrop — Callender’s Agamemnon stirs in nightmares at center stage, haunted and agitated like a giant unused to helplessness. Confronted by the bullying of his humiliated brother and facing the wrath of his proud, outraged, and grief-stricken wife, Queen Clytemnestra (an elegant and imposing C. Kelly Wright), Agamemnon musters all his regal strength. Only before his adorable and adoring daughter does he seem barely up to the task at hand. Callender excels as a leader of men brought to the very brink of emotional collapse by this cruel test of allegiance, responsibility, and resolve. (At times, however, disparities in acting ability can make it seem as if the actors onstage are in separate productions, as when Callender and Lockett’s kingly brothers square off.)

Of course, leaders of state rarely sacrifice their own in waging war — very much to the contrary. All too easy to have other, far less powerful people sacrifice theirs, hence the importance of ideas of “sacrifice” on behalf of a “nation,” whatever that is. (Interestingly, Jon Tracy’s In the Wound, currently making its premiere in a production by the Shotgun Players, is an adaptation of the same Greek myth that takes heated exception to this notion of national sacrifice). The drama as adapted by Teevan emphasizes familial conflict and presents us with the ultimately willing figure of Iphigenia, accepting her own death out of paternal love and a sense of civic obligation and a greater destiny. But the play’s very title suggests an underlying ambivalence, and Teevan frames the story from the world- and war-weary perspective of an old servant (Peter Kybart), who gives us the tale as a flashback, seen from the other side of 10 years of bloody and pointless conflict.

The playwright also balances all with a strain of mischievous humor, centered in a chorus of four catty, flirty women (Natalia Duong, Lisa Tarrer Lacy, Marilet Martinez, Sarita Ocon) who sing their narration to familiar melodies from the “classics” of American pop music — for instance, discoursing ravenously on the manly attributes of Achilles (Luke Taylor) to the tune of Peggy Lee’s “Fever.” The gambit has a generally crowd-pleasing effect, though as presented here it goes on a bit long, diluting the central emotional content of the play.

IPH …

Through Oct. 16; $15–$35

Brava Theater Center

2781 York, SF

(415) 647-2822

www.brava.org

Scroll of sound

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Scroll of sound

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC One of the singular ironies among the speedy online dissemination of sounds has to be the rediscovery of so many 1960s- and ’70s-era women singer-songwriters who came, sang, and seemingly disappeared in the wake of Joni, Judy, and Joan. Singular among Judee Sill, Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton, and those other ladies of the canyon is Linda Perhacs, the maker of Parallelograms, an achingly beautiful ode to nature and an all-too-brief testament to one young woman’s life, first released on Kapp in 1970 and most recently re-released in 2008 by Sunbeam.

From the start, psychedelic and folk-rock aficionados have been swept away by Parallelograms‘ opener "Chimacum Rain," as Perhacs’ overdubbed harmonies pour down like a sweet shower in the Olympic Peninsula while she tenderly pieces out, "I’m spacing out, I’m seeing/ Silences between leaves." But the title track is the heart of the album. A child of both Joni Mitchell and Free Design, with its jazzy washes of atonal color, circling Celtic guitar figure, and exploratory electronic effects, "Parallelograms" is a genuinely haunting masterpiece of experimental psychedelia — a future-folk madrigal that has inspired artists as disparate as Daft Punk (which used her "If You Were My Man" demo in 2007’s Electroma) and Devendra Banhart (who sang with Perhacs on "Freely," from 2007’s Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon).

It’s a recording informed by the natural world of Perhacs, born Linda Jean Arnold in Southern California, raised among the the redwoods of Mill Valley, and relocated once more to Topanga Canyon as a young dental hygienist. By day, she’d work on the teeth of the famous and talented in Beverly Hills, and on the weekend, she and her husband, artist Les Perhacs, would venture into the "very raw wilderness" of Big Sur, Mendocino, and Alaska, she tells me today from LA, where she continues to apply her healing powers to celebrated smiles. "I’d walk the beaches in Baja, California, or the Sea of Cortez, Canada or the Pacific Northwest. I’d spend a lot of time alone walking — that’s when I started to write songs. It just seemed to come naturally in the middle of such beauty. I was just describing what I was seeing."

That vision — and its sonic incarnation — was recognized by Oscar-winning film composer Leonard Rosenman, a patient who had studied with Arnold Schoenberg and befriended Perhacs. Once he heard her rough demo and saw her "scroll" — her sketchlike notation for the song "Parallelograms," which she saw as a "moving sound sound-sculpture" — Rosenman decided he had to record her. "He said, ‘I could live a lifetime and only come up with two ideas this good,’" recalls Perhacs. The composer gave Universal Records a demo of two of her more conventional songs, secured funding, and assembled such ace players as guitarist Steve Cohn and percussionists Shelley Mann and Milt Holland to play on the LP, telling Perhacs, "If you see the executives from Universal walking in with suits, switch to another song because they’ll never understand this piece." In Perhacs’ words, "He supported me, but let the creativity of a young person come through."

Perhacs’ rare vision continues to shine through, though she never tried to replicate Parallelograms‘ many-layered vocals and effects live until recently. In fact, her forthcoming San Francisco Art Institute concert of new material — and a few songs from the 1970 classic, she promises — is only her third public performance. Rather, after making her powerful, influential sole disc, life — and spirit — called Perhacs, who passionately holds forth on theosophist Annie Besant’s thought forms (which find a place in Perhacs’ SFIAF concert), Paramahansa Yogananda, and Sister Josefa Mendez’s unabridged The Way of Divine Love.

"I’m a trained nurse," explains the songwriter, who remembers making music at age 5. "I know this stuff isn’t good for people. I know I lost a bunch of close friends in the ’70s. "Paper Mountain Man" — we lost him at 33. He was being a space pilot with his mind, and we lost him. I knew the dangers, and I knew from working on entertainment personalities in Beverly Hills. I didn’t want that world. I knew it would have an effect on an unformed personality. My sense of caution told me, ‘Do not go on the road and try to live that kind of life.’ My sense of inner balance told me, ‘Keep your balance.’"

The lack of label promotion and the first pressing of Parallelograms, badly remixed for AM radio, discouraged Perhacs from pursuing music further, until a 2003 visit by Wild Places’ Michael Piper, who first reissued the album on CD using the original LP. Shortly before his visit, Perhacs had almost died of pneumonia, but she soon discovered that her album had found a second life, too: "I was really weak when this guy got a hold of me and said, ‘The Internet has sent the album all over the world. I just felt guilty that you didn’t know what was going on.’" Perhacs had hung on to her own masters as well as demos she made after Parallelograms, and with Piper’s help, the original mix and never-before-heard songs like "If You Were My Man" were finally released. A vinyl version of Parallelograms as it was meant to be heard is due soon on Mexican Summer.

And Perhacs is making new music, inspired and supported by such friends and fans as We Are the World’s Aaron Robinson and Robbie Williamson, and Julia Holter, who performed with her not long ago at Red Cat in LA — a new community akin to her long-ago Topanga Canyon creative milieu. "When we had a budget it went really quickly and was very organized," she says sweetly today. "We all have straight gigs, as you call them, so it’s hard to get us all together to rehearse or record." Nevertheless, she adds, "I felt very comfortable with what I stayed with, which was spiritual pursuit. Going on the road did not feel right to me, but at this stage of my life, I don’t feel vulnerable — you could put me in the middle of a million people and I would feel solid with the choices I made."

LINDA PERHACS
With Julia Holter and CLoudS
Sat/9, 7 p.m., $17
San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall
800 Chestnut, SF
www.human-ear.org

Her band

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Her band

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Mention the name Corin Tucker, and for many people, what comes to mind is a voice: the charged vibrato that was one of the signature elements of the sound of Sleater-Kinney. But before Tucker formed Sleater-Kinney, she’d sung differently in other bands, such as riot grrrl pioneers Heavens to Betsy, where her guitar was tuned lower in a manner that made it possible to tap into submerged feelings and experiences.

The new album by Corin Tucker Band, 1,000 Years (Kill Rock Stars), makes it clear that Tucker is more than just the tell-tale voice of Sleater-Kinney — she’s a songwriter who can add another wrinkle of emotion to a song with a change in tone, as on “It’s Always Summer,” where the annoyance that briefly grips her voice on the line “It’s always something” makes the hope in the chorus of the song that much sweeter. Working with producer-arranger-instrumentalist Seth Lorinczi and drummer Sara Lund, Tucker has fashioned a record that moves through different themes and sounds, evoking everything from Carole King piano ballads to acoustic Led Zep to Nuggets-worthy guitar riffage.

To a degree, the heart of 1,000 Years can be found just before the halfway mark with the one-two punch of “Handed Love” and “Doubt.” According to Tucker, the first song is the sort of just-divorced scenario Tracey Thorn explores in different ways on her recent solo album Love and Its Opposite (Merge). There’s something a little wilder and darker to Tucker’s approach to the subject, with the past’s failed pleasures as alluring as a drug, and a sense of menace in the spaces and silent moments around her voice’s quiet, minimalist dance with a keyboard. The same tension between restraint and abandon tells a different story in “Doubt,” a love song to rock ‘n’ roll that affirms that no worthy responsibility can fully kill off a love of the boogie and the beat. I recently talked with Tucker about the new album.

SFBG You’ve been based in Portland for around 15 years now. How has it changed?

CORIN TUCKER It’s so different. If you went down the street where I used to live, Alberta, it’s completely different. It’s unrecognizably built up. Sometime I wonder, how do people make their money here? The recession has been brutal in Portland and Oregon because we don’t make something concrete. The timber industry was our industry and that’s gone now. I guess we make Nike and Adidas.

But in terms of culture and film and arts, Portland is growing. The music scene has totally grown.

SFBG One thing the Sara Marcus book Girls to the Front (Harper Perennial, 384 pages, $14.99) re-reminded me of is the fact your lyrics with Heavens to Betsy had more of a storyline than a lot of riot grrrl recordings. While your new album doesn’t sound like Heavens to Betsy, it also feels rich in narrative.

CT That’s something I enjoyed about making this record. I relate to storytelling in songs and working on the lyrics to paint a little picture. That’s is sort of my natural songwriting style, and it’s something I return to easily.

SFBG Was it difficult to choose the sequencing of the songs? I wonder because the album moves through different terrain and different sounds, including your voice — you sing differently from song to song.

CT The record wound up having more variety than I expected when we began. I expected it to be quieter and acoustic — a straightforward solo album. But as Seth [Lorinczi] and I worked on it, we naturally drew on our different musical backgrounds.

SFBG In a way, the way the guitars were tuned in Sleater-Kinney seemed to place your voice in a certain elevated spot. On 1,000 Years you might have a wider ground to stand on as a singer.

CT I wanted to use different voices on the record. Not necessarily different characters, but different sides of my voice that I didn’t think people had heard before — or if they had, in Heavens to Betsy, that was so long ago. Part of the challenge and opportunity of making a solo record is figuring out how to give it enough variety so that you can take people through a journey.

SFBG One song I want to ask about is “Handed Love.” I like that it’s elliptical, and I get a dark feeling from it.

CT I think that might be one of my favorite songs. It has an interesting evolution. I started writing it on guitar and vocals, and it was pretty flat and straightforward. It was a mid-tempo rocker.

The song is sort of looking at relationships from the point of being a little bit older and being a female. I have a couple of friends who are newly divorced and I just kinda put myself in their shoes. It seemed like a difficult thing to navigate, when you have your heart broken and have to keep it together.

Seth had this idea [laughs], ‘What if we do this song with only ‘ooo’ vocals in the background?’ There’s this really beautiful choir part that comes in at the end, and that’s where we began recording it. He stripped away all the guitar and we had this vocal chorus and a drum machine. Then it kept evolving. Finally, he tried a Wurlitzer organ and I loved it.

SFBG That song and the follow-up track, “Doubt,” both have great moments where the sound is sort of stripped away. I get the sense that you had fun working with Seth.

CT It was a really enjoyable process. We just set it up as this project we were working on, and there was a lot of tinkering. The door was wide open in terms of what we could do and how we would look at things. He’s talented as a musician and as a producer and arranger.

SFBG Because it was a solo project and because you were working with him, was there a sense that songs could change as you worked on them?

CT Definitely. When I wrote “Half a World Away,” it was a ballad on guitar — very quiet and super slow. Seth had this idea that we should rock out. We started working on it, and he had this idea of taking the guitar parts and making them sparse and prickly and fast. Then when we started playing with Sara Lund, she brought a whole new dynamic to the song with the percussion. She brought in these African bells, because the song is about Lance [Bangs, Tucker’s husband] going away to Africa, and she had all these ideas about illustrating angst with percussion. That song became something I really love that is completely different from the original demo.

SFBG One other song I wanted to ask about is “Riley” because it has such a classic rock riff. Do you know a Riley?

CT No. He’s more of a fictional character.

SFBG I know a Riley.

CT You do? Is he down and out?

SFBG No, he’s a funny Filipino queen.

CT [Laughs] In 2007 and 2008, it just felt like such a dark time — so many friends had lost their jobs, or were getting divorced. Seth and I talked about Patti Smith literally every day while we were recording. Just Kids (Ecco, 320 pages, $16) came out while we were making the record, and she’s such a great inspiration. She’s one of those people who can write songs that are about friendship and helping your friends through something difficult. That song is really inspired by her and Lenny Kaye.

SFBG “Thrift Store Coats” starts out a lot like most people’s idea of what a solo recording would sound like — a voice and a pretty piano arrangement. But then suddenly it turns loud and powerful.

CT I have to give credit to Seth. He thought we could draw people into the story and the lyric and then have the whole band come to the stage and add power and a sense of protest.

SFBG I know your son is named Marshall in part because of Marshall Tucker Band — is Corin Tucker Band a nod to Marshall Tucker Band?

CT Yes, it is. The funny thing is that my daughter Glory thinks that every mom has her own band. At soccer practice the other day she started a band with her friend — who is one — called Glory Tucker Band.

CORIN TUCKER BAND

With the Golden Bears

Mon/11, 8 p.m., $17

859 O’Farrell, SF

(888) 233-0449

www.gamh.com

Live Review: Jon Spencer Blues Explosion detonates at Bimbo’s, 9/29/10

John Elberling
-
0
Live Review: Jon Spencer Blues Explosion detonates at Bimbo’s, 9/29/10

Walking up to Bimbo’s and seeing “Jon Spencer Blues Explosion” sprawled across the marquee in big, bold font, I kept thinking how crazy it was that the group hadn’t performed in SF in over eight years. Though just coming off a five-year hiatus, JSBX has been spewing their sweaty mix of punk, blues, and good old-fashioned rock and roll for nearly two decades. With all three members of the New York trio well on their way into middle age, last Wednesday (9/29/10) was a reminder that these guys were doing their thing long before groups like the White Stripes or the Black Keys were even blips on the radar. And beyond that, it proved they haven’t lost a single step.

San Francisco’s Thee Oh Sees opened the evening with a solid set of psych-rock tunes. Sounding like a Nuggets compilation jam-packed along side-squeals of distortion and reverb-drenched vocals, the band set the table nicely for the evening’s headliners. Frontman John Dwyer led the charge, despite dealing with some mic and guitar technical issues. When the band allowed themselves to stretch their legs, like on a tension-building groove late in the set, their attention to dynamics and song structure really came to the foreground. I kept thinking how much better they’d probably sound while bursting eardrums at a dank basement party, but the more posh confines of the Bimbo’s stage still allowed them to get their point across.

Throughout a nearly two-hour set, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion struck a perfect balance between the fragmented, lo-fi blues-rock deconstruction of its early material and the more accessibly polished version found on later albums. As Spencer and Judah Bauer traded off beefy guitar riffs, it became clear why these guys have never needed a bassist. Spencer’s voice sounded just as awesome as on record, and came complete with his trademark rockabilly-style slapback effect on the mic. Drummer Russell Simins was an animal behind the kit, keeping clockwork-perfect time while maintaining patterns as hard-hitting as they were tactful and funky.

My favorite aspect of the show, however, was the way the set was structured. The band went from song to song with a sense of reckless abandon, one song starting immediately after — or segueing into — another. Only Spencer’s pauses to yell “Blues Explosion!!!” (I swear he must’ve uttered those words 75 times) into the mic broke up the flow now and then. At times, a whole song wasn’t even played to completion before the band would suddenly change gears and start playing something different altogether. It all hung together wonderfully — especially during a particularly memorable transition from “Wail” into 2002’s Plastic Fang highlight “She Said” — and brought across a sense of JSBX’s early reputation for wild spontaneity. Other highlights included early hit “Afro” and Bauer taking over vocal duties for “Fuck Shit Up.”

After blowing through close to around two-dozen songs, the set unfortunately lost some momentum during a 30-minute encore. But with eight years between San Francisco sets, it’s tough to blame JSBX for wanting to get their kicks in as long as they could.

   

Getting out the in-jail vote

Mary Magee
-
1
Getting out the in-jail vote

Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Eileen Hirst reminded me today that 75-80 percent of the people behind bars at the San Francisco County Jail are still in the pre-trial stage. Hirst first shared that stastic with me earlier this year, when the jail got dumped from the list of buildings that will be earthquake retrofitted, if voters approve Proposition A this fall.

And today the percentage resurfaced in the context of efforts to get out the vote. Because if your case is pre-trial, this means that you have not yet been found guilty and so are still eligible to vote—provided that you are not on parole for a felony conviction. And with several races and measures still in play on the ballot, this means that in-jail voters could be of pivotal importance this November. 

Either way, Hirst tells me that the Department of Elections and the Sheriff’s Department are  working hard to educate inmates about their voting rights.

“We have an office called Prisoners Legal Services, where they do voter education and facilitate applications for absentee ballots,” Hirst said. “We work closely with the Department of Elections to make sure prisoners are aware of their rights, and we carry applications and absentee ballots back and forth, between Elections and the jail.”

According to the Department of Elections’ Voting Guide for Ex-Offenders, a person who has been convicted of a felony can still register and vote if they have completed their prison term for a felony, including any period of parole or supervised release.

are on federal or state probation; and/or are incarcerated in county jail as a condition of felony probation or as a result of a misdemeanor sentence.

“If you have been convicted of a misdemeanor, you can register and vote, even while on probation, supervised release, or incarcerated in county jail,” the Elections Department brochure states.

“To restore your right to vote if you have been convicted of a felony, you only need to complete and return a voter registration form,” the brochure continues. “No other documentation is required.”

Hirst estimated that on any given day, there are 1800-1825 prisoners at the county jail, but she did not have up-to-date information on which districts these prisoners are from.

“Years and years ago, we did a pin map by hand, and we found that they came from every district in town, but were concentrated in the Bayview, the Western Addition and the Mission,” Hirst recalled.

She noted that the county jail population is 50-55 percent African American, 25-30 percent Latino, and the remainder is “white, Asians and other”—statistics that suggest that the D10 and D6 races will likely be the most impacted by the in-prison vote.

She also noted that C.L.A.E.R. executive director Sharen Hewitt has been one of the leading figures in San Francisco in terms of getting out the in-jail vote.

“Sharen really made it a priority and educated a lot of prisoners,” Hirst said.

 

 

 

Quick Lit: Oct. 6-Oct. 12

David Talbot
-
0

Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week

Litquake 2010 goes out with a bang featuring novelists, scientists, poets, comedians, sexy storytellers, and more, culminating in this year’s not-to-be-missed Lit Crawl.


Wednesday, Oct. 6

“The Art of Narrative Nonfiction”
Much is said about how to write fiction, but what about non-fiction? This panel moderated by best-selling author David Ewing Duncan will discuss the techniques for turning a biography into a National Book Award Winner. Featuring Tamim Ansary, Frances Dinkelspiel, Richard Rhodes, and T.J. Stiles.
6 p.m., free
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
www.litquake.org

Bawdy Storytelling
Hear real people sharing their bona fide sexual exploits in ten minutes or less. Storytellers are an eclectic mix of authors, poets, comedians, actors, and regular people, including Tim Barsky, Stephen Elliot, Johnny Funcheap, Jow Klocek, Joe Kukura, and Morgan.
7 p.m., $10
Blue Macaw
2565 Mission, SF
www.litquake.org

“The Complex Societies of Ants and Honeybees”
Join Litquake and the California Academy of Sciences for a discussion led by two leading experts, Mark W. Moffett and Dr. Thomas D. Seeley, on our planet’s smallest and most complex social organizations. Co-sponsored by KQED, and moderated by KQED’s QUEST TV series producer Amy Miller.
7 p.m., $15
Morrison Planetarium
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse
Golden Gate Park, SF
www.litquake.org

“Dance, Intergenerational Trauma, and the Diaspora”
Learn about the Katherine Dunham Technique at this lecture featuring Eyla Moore, teacher at ODC, Dance Commons, Hip Line, and Dance Fitness Studio, and Aliyah Dunn Salahuddin, dancer and tutor in City College of San Francisco’s African American Scholastic Program.
3 p.m., free
City College of San Francisco
Ocean Campus
Rosenberg Library, Room 305
50 Phelan, SF
(415) 239-3854

Flight of Poets
Internationally renowned sommelier Christopher Sawyer pairs six talented local poets with six great wines carefully selected to illuminate their work. Featuring Camille T. Dungy, Robin Ekiss, Paul Hoover, Ada Limón, Zachary Mason, Christopher Sawyer, and Matthew Siegel.
7 p.m., $15 includes wine flight 
Hotel Rex
562 Sutter, SF
www.litquake.org

The Funny Side of Sex
Join Daily Show correspondent Kristen Schaal as she celebrates her first book, The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex, along with Scott Jacobson, co-author of the new book Sex: Our Bodies Our Junk, illustrator Michael Kupperman, and actor and writer Ted Travelstead. This evening of live and uncensored sex-humor unfolds at San Francisco’s legendary Cobb’s Comedy Club. Co-sponsored by Chronicle Books.
8 p.m., $15
Cobbs Comedy Club
915 Columbus, SF
www.litquake.org

Lit on the Lake
Celebrate East Bay writers at this litquake event featuring acclaimed novelists including Melanie Abrams, Elaine Beale Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Jacqueline Luckett, Lisa Braver Moss, and Kristin McCloy.
6 p.m., $5-$10 donation
Gondola Room
Lake Chalet
1520 Lakeside, Oakl.
www.litquake.org

100th Literary Death Match
Celebrate the kickoff of a worldwide Literary Death Match tour where judges, W. Kamau Bell, Mark Fiore, and Jane Smiley, will pass centurial judgment on a must-see lineup featuring readers Jason Bayani, David Corbett, Kari Kiernan, and Joel Selvin. Hosted by Todd Zuniga, Elissa Bassist, Alia Volz, and M.G. Martin.
7 p.m., $15
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
www.litquake.org

Radar Reading Series: Litquake Edition
This monthly literary series brings in first-time novelists, playwrights, shoplifting poets, and riot girl historians for readings, followed by a Q&A session hosted by Michelle Tea. Featuring Chinaka Hodge, Tao Lin, Sara Marcus, and Beth Pickens.
6 p.m., free
Latino Reading Room
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
www.litquake.org

Thursday, Oct. 7

Booksmith Bookswap
Bring a book you passionately love but can part with and learn about dozens of new, fantastic books. Ticket price includes two drinks, appetizers, and a 20% discount card to purchase books after the event.
6:30 p.m., $25
Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
www.litquake.org

Feminine Wiles
Hear witty women read from their most recent books, featuring Elif Batuman, Marisa Crawford, Katie Crouch, Thaisa Frank, Joyce Maynard, Kaya Oakes, and Shawna Yang Ryan.
7 p.m., free
Noe Valley Recreational Center
295 Day, SF
www.litquake.org

The International Homosexual Conspiracy
Author Larry-bob Roberts offers humorous insights into the absurdities of modern life and queer culture, from contemporary topics like mistaken first impressions, to sustainable yet unaffordable pants, and critiques of bourgeois mindsets.
7 p.m., free
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia, SF
www.mtbs.com

Litquake Bites
Local food and books, two of San Francisco’s favorite pastimes, converge at this delicious and informative lunchtime event featuring presentations and tastings by four innovative food purveyors and authors including Sarah Billingsley, Gordon Edgar, Steve Sando, and Amy Treadwell.
Noon, free
Book Passage
1 Ferry Building, SF
www.litquake.org

Stories on the Stage
Hear short fiction stories about love lost, love never found, and love perpetually out of touch with authors Daniel Handler, Daniel Alarcón, and Yiyun Li. Directed by Sean San José, co-founder of Campo Santo, the award-winning resident theater company of San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts.
7:30 p.m., $25
Roda Theater
Berkeley Repertory Theatre
2025 Addison, Berk.
www.litquake.org

Friday, Oct. 8

All-Memoir Women’s Night
From finding love in foreign lands to struggling with poverty, from being in the sandwich generation to making the perfect brownie, women are fearless when it comes to exploring life and its myriad joys and challenges. Hear authors Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, Katherine Ellison, Laura Fraser, Frances Lefkowitz, Meredith Maran, Kate Moses, Janice Cooke Newman turn inward to provide us with stories that delight, dismay, and entertain. Emceed by Litquake co-director Jane Ganahl.
6:30 p.m., $5-$10 donation
Paris Ballroom
501 Geary, SF
www.litquake.org

“How to Write and Sell Erotica”
Join a panel of editors, anthologists, and published authors as they offer practical tips and personal insights about how to write and sell all forms of erotica. Find out what magazines, websites, anthologies, and book publishers you can sell your work to, as well as  tips on how to write more marketable erotica.
7:30 p.m., $5-$15 donation
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.sexandculture.org

“It’s All Over But the Crying”
Enjoy a night of author talks on the world of sports, from the infinite variations of major-league baseball to the international phenomenon of the World Cup, with Alan Black, Howard Bryant, Dan Epstein, Dan Fost, David Henry Sterry, Jason Turbow, and Michael Zagaris. Special multimedia presentation by Bay Area sports photographer Michael “Z Man” Zagaris. Emceed by Litquake co-director Jack Boulware.
7 p.m., $10
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
www.litquake.org

Jonathan Lethem
Novelist, essayist, and short story writer Jonathan Lethem will discuss his latest novel, Chronic City. Co-presented by Litquake and San Francisco’s Jewish Community Center.
11 a.m., $20
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California, SF
www.litquake.org

Litquake at the Bikestore
In the late 19th century, an accountant named Frank Lenz quit his job to cycle around the world. Two years later he mysteriously disappeared during the final leg of the journey. Hear author David V. Herlihy discuss this mystery and his new book The Lost Cyclist. In conjunction with Green Apple Books.
7 p.m., free
Public Bikes
123 South Park, SF
www.litquake.org

Saturday, Oct. 9

Lit Crawl
Get your fill of literary entertainment at galleries and bars across the Mission, where each phase offers crawlers a choice of attending readings happening simultaneously at over a dozen venues. With best-selling authors, poets, professors, bawdy story-tellers, amateurs, and professionals, it’ll be tough to choose three.
Phase I 6pm-7pm, Phase II 7:15pm-8:15pm, Phase III 8:30pm-9:30pm; free
Various venues along the Valencia Street Corridor
Mission District, SF
www.litquake.org

Sunday, Oct. 10

Social Justice with Claudette Colvin
Attend this social justice event featuring a conversation between Enid Lee and Civil Rights legend Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery bus in 1955 and was the star witness in the federal case Browder v. Gayle, which desegregated the Montgomery buses. Also featuring a performance piece by Awele Makeba and a performance by poet, activist, and spoken word artist Bryonn Bain.
1:30 p.m., free
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
www.litquake.org

Tuesday, Oct. 12

Bill Bryson
Hear the author of At Home in conversation with Roy Eisenhardt.
8 p.m., $20
Herbst Theater
401 Van Ness, SF
www.cityboxoffice.com

Left in the Dark
Authors R.A. McBride and Julie Lindow celebrate twentieth century movie theatres and movie going in this book titled, Left in the Dark: Portraits of San Francisco Movie Theatres, a collection of personal essays and fine art photographs that casts the theatres as characters within the city’s cultural landscape.
7 p.m., free
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus, SF
www.litquake.org

Joseph O’ Neill
The award-winning novelist of Netherland will be discussing his new family memoir, Blood-Dark Track.
7 p.m., $20
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California, SF
(415) 292-1200

Stage listings

David Talbot
-
0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Opens Thurs/7, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Previews Wed/6, 7pm; Thurs/7-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 6pm. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm (also Oct 16, 1pm). Through Oct 24. 42nd Street Moon presents the Sondheim musical farce, starring Megan Cavanagh.

Love Song Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Oct 23. An offbeat comedy by John Kolvenbach, directed by Loretta Janca.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. $24. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Opens Thurs/7, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 31, 5pm). Through Oct 31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

BAY AREA

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Previews Wed/6-Thurs/7, 8pm. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Oct 20, Oct 27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. TheatreWorks presents Tracy Letts’ tale of friendship and redemption in a Chicago donut dispensary.


ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Phoenix Theatre, Stage 2, 414 Mason; 433-1235, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. A one-woman musical starring Karen Hirst, with book and music by Anne Doherty.

Aida War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, 864-1330, www.sfopera.com. $25-320. Wed/6, 7:30pm. San Francisco Opera presents Verdi’s classic, a co-production with English National Opera and Houston Grand Opera.

And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. Call for reservations. Mon-Thurs, 10 and 11:45am.; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/10. YouthAware Educational Theatre presents a multimedia play by James Still, directed by Sara Staley.

Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a show by Brian Christopher Williams.

*The Brothers Size Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 17. Magic Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play, directed by Octavio Solis.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 22. Actors Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ sultry, sweltering tale of a Mississippi family, directed by Keith Phillips.

Disoriented Off-Market Theater, 960 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Sun/10 and Oct 17, 7pm (also Wed/6 at CounterPULSE). Through Oct 17. A trio of solo performances by Asian-American women.

*Faux Real Climate Theater at TJT, 470 Florida; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/9, 10pm). Through Sat/9. A drag queen stripped bare? Not on your life. But in baring some soul and some truth ("two lies" per), Fauxnique (aka Monique Jenkinson; aka a woman as a man as a woman&ldots;) does some productive and fascinating (re)working of this sly semi-confessional form. In a show that begins by asking, via David Bowie, "whatchya gonna say to the real me?", Fauxnique undresses drag by singing (very ably) as often as syncing and otherwise playing knowingly with the "reveals" inherent in the drag tradition, taking audiences back with her to high school in Denver in the 1980s for a herstory lesson like few others. Questions about identity and art mingle with hip, hilarious, wonderfully "haute," and seriously hardworking solo cabaret (assisted by transgresser-dresser and prop boy Kegan Marling). Originally unveiled in 2009, and fresh from a London debut, Faux Real returns for an extended but still too-brief run courtesy of the mighty little Climate Theater, currently ensconced in the Jewish Theatre’s luxurious little space. (Avila)

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Oct 27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. As part of an artistic residency, We Players presents an island-wide interactive performance of the Shakespeare play.

IPH… Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, 647-2822, www.brava.org. $15-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 16. Brava Theatre and African-American Shakespeare Company present the US premiere of an adaptation of Iphigenia at Aulis.

*Jerry Springer the Opera Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th; www.jerrysf.com. $20-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 16. Highbrow meets low in one big, boisterous mono-brow middle as one of the baser of daytime talk-show hosts meets his audience and maker—or anyway Jesus and Satan—in a TV show purgatory that really is purgatory. The form is operatic, the subject matter the stuff of soap, and the resulting tawdry spectacle all but irresistible in Ray of Light Theatre’s production of the 2003 British musical by Richard Thomas (music, book and lyrics) and Stewart Lee (book and lyrics). If the conceit feels a bit one-note, it’s a note taken very cleverly and ably for all its worth. A smart, smarmy and dyspeptic Patrick Michael Dukeman excels in the title role, as the chorus, meanwhile, comprised of Jerry’s rabid studio audience, puts the unbridled hooligan glee in glee club, lending Wagnerian weight to such key phrases as "step-dad" or "chick with a dick." The grand and just slightly sleazy Victoria Theatre makes the perfect venue for this fine irreverence, filling it charmingly with rafter-shaking vulgarity and mayhem.

Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers presents its signature Halloween show, with three one-act Grand Guignol terror plays.

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 30. Custom Made Theatre presents Stephen Adly Guirgis’ meditation on the meaning of forgiveness.

Olive Kitteridge Z Space at Theater Artaud, 450 Florida; (800) 838-3006, www.zspace.org. $20-40. Wed-Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sun/10. Page-to-stage company Word for Word takes on two chapters’ worth of Elizabeth Strout’s celebrated 2008 novel, comprised of a loosely connected set of stories surrounding the title character (played with cunning subtlety by Patricia Silver) and her immediate circle in a coastal town in Maine. In "Tulips," we find the thorny but shrewd Olive, a former math teacher, and her patient husband Henry (Paul Finocchiaro), the town’s longtime pharmacist, transitioning not so smoothly into their retirement years. Olive—itchy, cantankerous and vaguely at a loss despite her sharp wit—resents her grown son’s (Patrick Alparone) happily distant life in New York and battles with the neighbors until her husband’s stroke leaves her at sea, unexpectedly vulnerable and open to the kindness of neighbors and strangers alike (played by an ensemble that includes Jeri Lynn Cohen, Nancy Shelby, and Michelle Belaver). In "River," Olive, now a widow, begins a gradual, unlikely and bumpy romance with a recently widowed former academic (Warren David Keith). Director Joel Mullennix grabs hold of colorful details along the way—like the summer influx of rollerbladers and bicyclists—to further enliven the verbatim staging of these stories, but the effort can feel a little forced at times, as if betraying a sense that these well-acted, gently poetical and thoughtful stories and their complex protagonist do not always make for the most stimulating drama. (Avila)

A Picasso Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; (866) 811-4111, www.apicassoonstage.com. $12-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/9. Expression Productions presents Jeffery Hatcher’s drama about the authenticity of three Picasso paintings.

Pinocchio Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat-Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Sun/10. Young Performers Theatre presents a new production of Carlo Collodi’s puppet tale.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Scapin American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-90. Tues-Sun, times vary. Through Oct 23. Bill Irwin, the innovative former Pickle Family clown and neo-vaudevillian turned Broadway star, makes a San Francisco return at the helm—and in the title role—of American Conservatory Theater’s production of Moliere’s classic farce. It’s an excuse for some arch meta-theatrical high jinx as well as expert clowning, a love fest really, with many fine moments amid a general font of fun whose heady purity seems like it should fall under some FDA regulation or other—clearly, somebody has paid someone to look the other way, and for once the corruption is unreservedly welcome. Joining the fun is Irwin’s old comrade-in-arms and, here, sacks, Geoff Hoyle, as miserly and dyspeptic daddy Geronte. Other ACT regulars and veterans flesh out a winning cast, among them the ever versatile and inimitable Gregory Wallace as Octave, a flouncing Steven Anthony Jones as put-out patriarch Argante, René Augesen as boisterously unlikely "virgin" Zerbinette, and a wonderfully adept and scene-stealing Judd Williford in the role of Scapin sidekick Sylvestre. As for Irwin, his comedic sensibility shows itself scrupulously apt and timeless at once, and his sure, lithesome performance intoxicating and age-defying. As a director, moreover, he gives as generously to each of his fellow performers as he does to his adoring, lovingly tousled audience. (Avila)

The Secretaries Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 255-7846, www.crowdedfire.org. $15-25 (pay what you can previews). Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/9. Crowded Fire revives the 1994 black comedy by New York’s Five Lesbian Brothers, a gleefully inappropriate bit of feminist satire that feels like the love child of John Waters and Valerie Solanas. Set in the front offices of the Cooney Lumber Mill in Big Bone, Oregon (delightfully rendered in Nick A. Olivero’s scenic design with New Yorker-like illustrations of the surrounding environs), the story follows narrator Patty (Elissa Beth Stebbins) as she recounts her initiation into a snappy coven of office ladies who not-so-secretly fell (rather than fall for) the town’s lumberjacks as if they were so much old growth forest. The mayhem and humor amuse, but probably seemed a lot fresher 16 years ago, making the simple plot seem thinly stretched. Nevertheless, the play’s details are nicely taken care of in artistic director Marissa Wolf’s fluid staging, featuring lots of play with fluids and a robust ensemble. In addition to Stebbins’s well-wrought and raunchy innocent, Leticia Duarte rocks her power-suit commandingly as no-nonsense supervisor and pack/pact-leader Susan; Eleanor Mason Reinholdt proves scarily endearing as the deceptively mincing, food-obsessed Peaches; Khamara Pettus has Norma Desmond eyes as Susan’s jealous onetime favorite Ashley; and Marilee Talkington approaches comic perfection in lovingly crafted twin roles: the boundingly predatory butch Dawn; and Patty’s hetero love interest and sexual-harassment-workshop–graduate, Buzz. (Avila)

The Shining: Live The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-77891, www.darkroomsf.com. $7-10. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. The Dark Room becomes the Overlook Hotel in this stage production of the horror classic.

BAY AREA

Angels in America, Part One Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 16. Pear Avenue Theatre kicks off its fall "Americana" program with the Tony Kushner play.

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

In the Red and Brown Water Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $32-53. Tues, 8pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Wed, 7:30pm, Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 10. Marin Theatre Company presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play.

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

She Loves Me Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (825) 943-7469, www.CenterREP.org. $36-45. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2:30 and 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Sun/10. Center REPertory company presents a musical choreographed and directed by Robert Barry fleming.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Bijou Martuni’s, 4 Valencia; 241-0205, www.dragatmartunis.com. $5. Sun/10, 7pm. The live cabaret showcase celebrates Oktoberfest.

"Blue Room Comedy" Club 93, 93 9th St; 264-5489. Free. Tues/12, 10pm. A weekly series that takes comedy to new lows.

Dancing on Glass CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission. 626-2060, www.counterpulse.org. $20-25. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 7pm. A dark comedy about outsourcing, by Ram Ganesh Kamathan.

Drag Queens of Comedy Castro Theatre, 429 Castro. 254-3362, www.comedyinthecastro.com. $35-45. Sat/9, 10:30pm. A riotous extravaganza with performances by Miss Coco Peru, Jackie Beat, Lady Bunny, Heklina, and others.

Echo: A Poetic Journey Into Justice City of Refuge United Church of Christ, 1025 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Sat/9, 7pm (also Oct 16, 7pm). Progeny Theater Project presents a drama about sex trafficking by Regina Y. Evans.

Fifi and Fanny Live at the Texas Whorehouse The Garage, 975 Howard; 518-1517, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm. Fifi and Fanny take on the queers of Texas with music and comedy.

Filipino Comedy Improv The Garage, 975 Howard; 518-1517, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Wed/6, 8pm. The Garage and Bindlestiff Studio present sketch comedy.

A Funny Night for Comedy Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Sun/10, 7pm. Natasha Muse and Ryan Cronin host a standup program with interviews.

How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $25-30. Thurs/7-Sat/9, 8pm. A new interdisciplinary performance work by Ralph Lemon.

Margaret Jenkins Dance Comedy Kanbar Hall, Jewish Community Center, 3200 California; 292-1233, www.jccsf.org. $18-26. Thurs/7, 8pm. The company celebrates its 37th anniversary with a preview of its latest work.

Standup Comedy Cafe Royale, 800 Post; 641-6033, www.caferoyale-sf.com. Free. Mon/11, 7pm. Cara Tramontano hosts a night of comedy.

Zaccho Dance Theatre Market Street (between Powell and First); 252-4638, www.sfartscommission.org. Free. Thurs/7-Sun/10, 1-5pm. The company presents a site-specific performance devoted to African-American contributions to SF.

BAY AREA

Circus Oz Zellerbach Hall, UC campus; (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.com. $22-52. Thurs/7-Fri/8, 8pm; Sat/9, 2 and 8pm; Sun/10, 3pm. A new production by the Aussie steampunk group.

Drumline Live Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael; www.marincenter.org. $25-45. Fri/8, 8pm. A 40-member stage performance created by the team behind the movie of the same name.

Freeland Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Stage, Berk; (510) 601-0182, www.speakoutnow.org. Call for price. Fri/8, 8pm. A hip-hop journey from the streets of Oakland to the wild west, written and performed by Ariel Luckey and directed by Margo Hall.

Pilobolus Dance Company Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the flags, San Rafael; www.marincenter.org. $20-75. Sat/9, 8pm. A performance by the 40-year-old dance and performance company.

Ebony Hillbillies string along Hardly Strictly’s biggest year yet

Andrew Lam
-
1

Nine hundred thousand people and over 70 bands braved the drifting fog banks for this weekend’s 10th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. With a crowd that size, you have to think logistics. So at my interview with HSB bankroller-birthday boy Warren Hellman well before the madness, I asked who were the up and comers to look out for. I chicken-danced our way through Speedway Meadows accordingly.

“The Ebony Hillbillies,” Hellman told me, chuckling over lead singer – and as the band’s press kit explains, “bones” of the group — Gloria Gassaway’s penchant for abrupt audience interaction. The HSB performance would be its first in the Bay Area, and Hellman was happy to have been its means of infiltration, particularly for Gassaway’s no-nonsense stage presence. “She’s quite a woman,” he said.

Quite a woman indeed. the Hillbillies, hailing from Jamaica, Queens, are helping to sustain the tradition of African-American string bands that started with the genre’s inception in the Appalachians in the 1920s. Black pioneers in the music can seem ironic now, particularly at events like Hardly Strictly where the audience is majority white. 

But so it goes — and some of the weekend’s most exciting shows flew from the fiddles, banjos, and diddly bows of black groups like the Hillbillies and Carolina Chocolate Drops, firmly establishing that bluegrass (and neo-bluegrass, and string bands, and jazz, blues, rockabilly, country, rock ‘n’ roll, everything else that falls under “hardly) doesn’t have to be just for the honkies.

“I love making the audience have a good time. You come to see the show, you want to be entertained, but you also want to enjoy yourself,” Gassaway tells me when we catch up with her after the group’s set on Friday. 

Sporting matching moccasins with fiddle player Henrique Prince, and with purple feathers threaded into her hair, the ebullient Gassaway exchanged my compliment on her flair with an insight into her cultural heritage. Although they were born with blood from the Catawba tribe of the South and North Carolina borderland, Gassaway’s father instructed Gassaway and her siblings never to reveal the secret of their Native-American-ness to teachers at school so that they could avoid possible discrimination. 

“He told us, tell them you’re from Mexico, or African-American, or something – just not Native,” she says. She says she held onto that learned denial until a trip to Europe, during which she realized the beauty of her background. Now Gassaway sports turquoise jewelry onstage while playing the string music that her Black and Native ancestors must have heard almost a hundred years ago. “I’m Native, and I wear my heritage proudly,” she tells me.

Although the Hillbillies’ current configuration experienced its debut in San Francisco this weekend, it was by no means the first time individual band members had played in the City by the Bay. Bass player William Saltner recalled his last time here in the early ’60s. Saltner, a two-time Grammy winner for songwriting – he wrote “Where is the Love?” and co-wrote “Just the Two of Us” – was working with Miriam Makeba, who at the time was exiled from her home in apartheid South Africa. 

“We don’t play bluegrass, we play old tyme music,” Saltner clarifies backstage. “But we claim bluegrass in this crowd,” he continues with a sly smile.

That kind of genre-bending, always evident at HSB, continued throughout the three days of 2010’s festival. MC Hammer kicked off the weekend at his yearly performance at the middle-schooler’s show on Friday morning. Randy Newman, a newly bluegrass-friendly Elvis Costello, Robert Earl Keen, the Avett Brothers, Joan Baez, and Patti Smith all turned in stellar sets that could hardly fall into the “strictly” category. The diversity was reflected in the varying age demographics of the crowd, who for the most part eschewed the sanctity of the blanket that had reigned in years past – those faithful early risers that spread their tarps in front of stages in the small hours of the morning saw their space quickly infiltrated by standing room-only, stage-switching attendees. 

Temperatures in the high 60s did nothing to stem the tide of music fans that flooded the peaks and valleys of Golden Gate Park for the free festival, but they did threaten the Hillbillies’ chances of starting up a dance party with their stomp-ready old tyme strings with their opening act at the Banjo Stage on Friday. “Are you cold?” Gassaway inquired from her seat on stage. “Because I sure am!”

The cold weather seemed to make it difficult to keep strings in shape – the action stopped a few times so that a stoic Norris Bennett could tune his diddley bow, and then later his banjo to perfection. But the challenge seemed to energize the group’s firestarter. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when you can pull Hellman onstage for a little unscheduled entertainment, which Gassaway managed to accomplish in a moment when she spotted the man enjoying the show from the stage’s sidelines.

Perhaps he had it coming for hyping Gassaway’s sass. Hellman did his best to represent the honkies though, bowing out his legs and wagging his elbows in a “broke-legged chicken” dance on her command. But for all his obedience, he’s got a ways to go as far as Gassaway is concerned. A fact which she let him (and us now) know in the intro of a song entitled “Big Fat Men,” an ode to the joys of obese lovers.

Which the wiry Hellman could hardly be described as. Yet. But he’s got a good coach. “I’ve been feeding him cheesecake,” Gassaway tells me. Blow out the candle first, Warren – number ten was a good year for Hardly Strictly.

 

Party Radar: Felabration, New Wave City, Castro Street Fair, more

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Party Radar: Felabration, New Wave City, Castro Street Fair, more

Lovevolution’s daytime portion may be cancelled this weekend, but that’s no reason to sit this one out — as I wrote this week in Super Ego, there’s tons of great Love Weekend events, plus a bunch more happenings. Funz! Read about all the official Lovevolution parties still going on here, and check out the below for even more.

But first, I promised a look at the Silent Disco movement, which is finally hosting an official, non-underground event this weekend — so I can write about it without getting it busted, heh. Silent Frisco is taking place on Saturday afternoon at the brand new Jones bar, which has been pumping the fact that it’s a mainly outdoor venue in the heart of the city. (Sat/2, noon–10 p.m., $15, Jones, 620 Jones, SF. www.sunsetpromotions.com). You get special wireless headphones that pick up a signal broadcast from the DJ booth (with two DJ channels to choose from for maximum hubbub.) Although the idea’s been around a while, the actual movement originated at the Bonnaroo festival in 2007 and has toured the world since. SF’s DJ Motion Potion has been there from the beginning and he told me it’s quite bonkers. Wildly diverse-styled DJs for this installment are Jeffrey Paradise, Disco Shawn, Centipede, MoPo himself, and a special secret guest. Get into it.

 

 

WE & THE MUSIC: FELABRATION

Afrobeat and soulful house luminary DJ Said of Fatsouls Records is back with his awesomely deep monthly We & the Music party, this time featuring local decks master David Harness for a celebration of Nigerian legend Fela Kuti, as Nigeria celebrates its 50th anniversary. It looks so young!  222 Hyde is gonna have a major dance attack on its hands …

Fri/1, 9pm, $10. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

 

NEW WAVE CITY 18TH ANNIVERSARY

Surely this means that the neverending monthly retroland of New Wave City is the longest-operating club in the city? Join DJs Skip, Shindog, Low Life, Melting Girl, and more to sing along to all your favorites from the ’80s at a club that started looking back right when that decade ended.

Sat/2, 9pm-3am, $12. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.newwavecity.com

 

CLUB LEISURE GRAND REOPENING

Soooo too cool for school, but not so cool it freezes you out. This great indie club is back at a new location, bringing with it “the best in classic Britpop, Madchester, 90s Indie, Mod, dancey shoegaze, power pop, and 60s soul on the first Saturday of every month!” It’s an Oasis, everybody, with free champagne until they run out. DJs Aaron Axelson and Omar preside.

Sat/2, 10pm-3am, $8. Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF. www.sfcatclub.com

 

CASTRO STREET FAIR

Hot fun — or at least tacky tchotchke shopping and muscle man cruising — at this huge affair that streatches all up and down Castro from Market to your future trick’s house. Also music and dancing, with several stages (the line-dancing stage behind Castro Theater is my personal fave) and performances by Pepperspray, Adonisaurus, DJ Jim Hopkins, and many more. PLUS: You could win an Atlantis cruise from GayCities.com. O.M.G.!

Sun/3, 11am-6pm, donation requested. Market and Castro, SF. www.castrostreetfair.org

 

BIONIC 12-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Another long runner! This funky house and chill techno joint has moved around a bunch, but never lost its good-footin’. Celebrate a dozen with DJs Justin V. of !!!, UK’s Simbad, and residents Solar, Nikola Baytala, Conor, and Kwai LeCheif.

Sun/3, 9:30pm, $7. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

 

NSFR(estaurant): My dinner with Dixie

Andrew Lam
-
0

All photos by Benjy Feen

I had a blind date with Dixie De La Tour, but I wasn’t nervous. If all else failed, at least she would bring stories to tell. And how – De La Tour is the founder and emcee of Bawdy Storytelling, a randy live series with two events next week (Wed/6 and Sat/9) that will bring writers, comedians, and normal folk-like to the stage to share corset-busting sexcapades with an audience of vicarious pervs.

“I don’t know how this got to be my life,” says Dixie, now installed across the restaurant table from me behind a glass of sweet tea, wearing a dashing fedora and magnetic waves of dyed red hair. Her blue eyes have the intent gaze in them that you can see on people that know how to hold the attention of the room. “I don’t have a degree in it like every other pervert in this town.”

It is true that De La Tour seems to have lucked out on the manner in which she makes her money. By day, she scouts scammers at Fling.com, a national dating site for casual hookups. Perhaps she’s a natural fraud-finder – the woman’s spent a life facilitating honest, fun sexual encounters. She’s also a contributor at She Loves Sex, a collection of blogs about all things sexual related to women, told in a knowledgeable women’s voice. For the site, De La Tour recently interviewed Rebecca, a soccer mom from Florida who has started a successful chain of swinger’s parties in between PTA meetings and classes towards her master’s in public relations. 

Bawdy Storytelling, started four years ago, runs through a different theme each month. Adderall Diaries writer Stephen Elliott and that webmaster savior of the perpetually broke gadabout, Johnny Funcheap will be spinning yarns at next week’s Litquake edition of Bawdy (Wed/6), which actually is not themed at all, but rather a collection of the all-star lineup’s “best true stories.”

Maybe she’s got no degree, but Dixie does have a history in the psychology of human sexual relations. Over her rum cake — and to the passing interest of our server — De La Tour tells me that she got the party started at the first Kinky Salon XXX edition. Well c’mon Dixie, story time. She obliges. 

Dixie De La Tour fires up the Bawdy crowd

Having transplanted from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and an unsatisfying heterosexual monogamous relationship with a bookie, De La Tour was in her element in late ’90s San Francisco. “You know that girl whose always down for the sex party? People would call me up and I’d be like, I’m there!” She became the doorperson for the original Kinky Salon parties at Mission Control, back in the days when the get-togethers were more “salon” and less “kinky” – there hadn’t been sex, at least as acknowledged by the party planners, for the first few Kinkys.

But one month, founders Polly and Scott decided to change the nature of their get-together. De La Tour recalls a woman arriving at the party who told her “I’m from New Hampshire and this is my first San Francisco sex party!” Well, by the time De La Tour had gotten off her shift and into the mix at Kinky, there was talking, there was certainly drinking, but at least explictly, no sex. 

“There was a bullhorn by the stage,” she remembers, fully in the swing of her tale. 

It is at this time that I should explain that Dixie has explained that she is herself, “not that big of an exhibitionist.” De La Tour is a facilitator, the person at the swinger’s party who loves nothing more to make introductions and get the fucking going… for others. That’s what she likes.

So back to the bullhorn. Having made the most of her time off door duty, she is a bit inebriated at this point. She takes the bullhorn and, having installed herself on stage in front of the party, booms to New Hampshire woman “Connecticut! Go have sex with that guy!” — or some such thing (having told me she is “much more interesting after two beers,” I am obliging her and my notes are a bit sparse from this point in the evening). She remembers them immediately going to have sex, although others from the night remember it differently. Good storytelling is all about the broad strokes.

But regardless, the rest is undisputed. Dixie soldiers on with the bullhorn, roaming about the club until she actually does encounter a couple copulating in the Pink Room and begins to shout very, very dirty things into the bullhorn at them. “Say my name, say you like my big dick” she shouts (“really, things that were not making very much sense,” she tells me, looking through that deadly scope of hindsight). Suddenly, couples rush into the Pink Room, and Dixie has officially started the orgy. Er, party. 

Later, she runs into the original fuckers in another room utilizing a fucking machine. She is stripped of her bullhorn, installed on said machine, and is chagrined (remember, not a big exhibitionist) when the tables are turned and the woman from this couple begins to yell her name into the bullhorn. “Yeah, you like my big dick, Dixie?” Partygoers rush into the room to see the performance, and aid in her enjoyment of machine. She is eventually brought to climax when a woman Eskimo kisses her. 

This is told with a smile, and by the end of it, we notice our server is frozen in her rounds of filling water glasses. “What on earth are you two talking about?” she says, giggling. But this is San Francisco, and as she is clearly intrigued, Dixie hands her a card that has all the Bawdy Storytelling events inscribed on its back. 

After our (professionally inclined) date, I feel as though I have met someone very special, someone who has the cojones to nurture a community that often stays behind closed doors. De La Tour tells me you can learn a lot from hearing a person talk for ten minutes, perhaps more than you can learn having a good time with them at a swinger’s party. 

And the connection is contagious. De La Tour started Bawdy Storytelling as a “coffee klatch for pervs,” where people would gather about the table and talk about how last night’s Kinky Salon went for them. Soon others wanted to sit in on the talks around the table, which led to Bawdy’s current public incarnation. And then everyone wanted to share a story, which led to Bawdy’s set program of four to six speakers a night, “so that people could see there was a set lineup and they weren’t on it,” De La Tour tells me. “Somebody’s always walking up to me and saying hey I got one for you!” This last line enunciated with a pointed finger and an intensification of that blue-eyed stare.

How nice to get sexuality out into the open. How nice to find meaning and simpatico in our sex. How nice to be Dixie De La Tour.

 

Bawdy Storytelling Graphic Confessions

Wed/6 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com

www.litquake.org


Lit Crawl: Bawdy in the Alley

Sat/9 8:30-9:30 p.m., free

Clarion Alley between 17th and 18th St., SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com

www.litquake.org

 

Flagging in the Park: the whirl story

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

“This is the gayest thing I’ve ever done in my life!” laughed my friend Ricky Strawberry as he twirled around and around, unfurling lengths of tie-dyed cloth to Hi-NRG dance tracks from a live DJ in the sunshine. If you know Ricky Strawberry, that’s pretty damn sparkly pink unicorn in a rainbow thong bathing under a Splenda waterfall gay. In fact, it was the gayest thing anyone in my pinko posse had ever done, as well, and we had a ball. It was gay, it was amazing, it was gaymazing, and you should do it too.

It? Flagging in the Park, the summertime monthly gathering of fluttering human butterflies in the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. I wrote about it in this week’s Super Ego nightlife column — and it happens for the final time this year on Sat/2, 1 p.m.- 4p.m. 

Flagging — or flag dancing, wherein the dancer whirls around waving psychedelic-patterned, weighted pieces of fabric — has been around for several decades. I remember the first time I saw it was in the ’80s at a giant outdoor picnic in Detroit organized by Metra magazine, but it really took hold inside gay clubs during the ’90s, when circuit parties were on the rise. (Flag dancing of a non-gay-specific kind, using actual flags with poles, is an ancient art still practiced especially in Italy and New Orleans — and in Midwestern marching bands.) The exact gay origins are fuzzy — men dancing with giant fans at disco clubs were a common sight, and you will see lots of flaggers at the disco-celebrating Remember the Party event next weekend, for instance, which acts as a reunion for patrons of the classic Trocadero Transfer venue in the ’70s and ’80s.

Like many alternaqueers of my generation, flagging was a turnoff in the ’90s — it was too associated with annoyingly relentless circuit music, mainstream gym culture, and bad drugs in my mind. But that was a long time ago, and like a lot of things from that time, a rediscovery after old conflicts have died out puts things into a totally different perspective. (You don’t see much flagging in mainstream gay clubs these days, and the music at Flagging in the Park is a bit more fun and interesting than I thought it would be. For the October installment, the DJ is Steve Sherwood.) I was able to appreciate the art in a different context, and without prejudice. Flagging in the Park is a beautiful event, full of rich historical meaning. It welcomes everyone — there are also large contingents of hula-hoopers, poi-twirlers, and other talents — and has taken on a more spiritual aspect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me3rZ99ArbU

When I went in August (I had heard about it for months, and was encouraged to finally attend by my friend Steven Satyricon’s lovely writeup over at The Juice Box site) I was lucky enough to see the organizer, Xavier Caylor, be sainted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for his community work. And Flagging in the Park (FITP) really does bring in a bunch of donations for community organizations, as well as provide community healing. “Without grief, you can’t have joy,” said Xavier, referencing the spirits around us in the AIDS Grove. Xavier took over FITP 10 years ago, and he teaches a flagging class at Gold’s Gym in the Castro every Wednesday, 6 p.m.-8 p.m. He’s also several thousand degrees of hotness, yowza. I wanted to know more about how he got involved, and some of the spiritual aspects of the art. His story is below — and you should drift on by this Saturday afternoon to see for yourself. Xavier provides plenty of free flags to borrow, and flagging really is a bit of good exercise, I discovered. 

XAVIER CAYLOR: “I picked up my first set of flags from a friend of a friend at a party on Will Rogers Beach in 1997. I was hooked and we proceeded to flag everywhere we could: at home, in clubs and circuit parties. I heard about FITP from a fellow that I met at a circuit party in Palm Springs; he told me of a community of good friends that met during the summer months at a park in SF. I managed to contact someone and planned a weekend getaway from So. Cal. to attend in July of 1998.

“In 1998 the recently dedicated National AIDS Memorial Grove was young, the flaggers met in the then newly planted fern grove and gravel circle on the far West side. Twenty people gathered on what was a truly magical day for me; I was amazed with the variety of people, flags, and energy there – like a kid in a candy store. I not only left my heart in San Francisco but gave it freely to a tie-dye artist that became the catalyst for me moving here in just three short months. For the next few years he and I co-produced the event, popularity soon crowded us out of the circle and into the meadow. I have been producing the event since 2001 less two years that a friend took it and moved it to Dolores Park. Originally the events were planned a few days in advance around a sunny weather forecast. In 2002 this changed, acquiring permits and making these outreach events for charity brought a whole new dimension to our gatherings.

“What does the event mean to me? It was and is a magical space where love was born and flourishes, where flaggers can come out of the clubs and into nature. Held in a place that was built out of grief, mourning, and reflection by something that devastated our community and for a few hours we pour color, love, celebration, and heritage carefully back while raising consciousness by giving back. It is the place that our tribes come together to socialize, bond, and strengthen community. It is also a place that people walking through the park can happen upon a surreal event, take it in for a minute, and leave having had the opportunity to try something new or just stop and take in the music and visuals before moving along to where ever it is they are going. I usually plan 3 or 4 FITPs per year between May and October — the last one was supposed to be the final one this year, but we had such a great crowd and great vibe that we decided to have one more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd3pX-Ys1wI

“If you’ve picked up flags you’ve most likely been asked by someone to show them how to do “it.” I’ve been showing friends since day one, taught at workshops in SF, NY, SD, and Dallas. I’ve been involved with group and solo performances, led people in tie-dye, and given away hundreds of flags while traveling to parties in Brazil, Australia, Thailand, Spain and the UK ,not to mention many cities around the US.

“About my class at Gold’s Gym: When I moved to San Francisco Club Universe, 177 Townsend, on Sundays was known as Pleasuredome and was a venue with a huge stage that flaggers flocked to weekly to play and share their art. It was a beacon to flag dancers on the West coast and beyond, introducing a steady stream of club goers weekly to the glowing fabric twirling in the U.V. flooded stage. It’s close in 2002 was a blow to the dance and flag communities. In 2007 I approached the management at Gold’s and asked if I could hold a weekly space for flaggers to come and practice – I was envisioning a free space that I would hold for a year with the purpose of re-energizing my tribe and reviving that weekly space. Troy at Gold’s Gym enthusiastically offered me a position and added the class to their Group X fitness program – I’ve been teaching Wednesday nights since. It is a place that people that have never flagged can come and learn – I have flags for use and set up black lights to make them come to life. The community comes to practice, play and socialize. I support new and old flaggers at the gym and outside of the gym by leading tie-dye classes/open studios so people can make their own flags. Weekly pre class discussions are opportunities to share history, personal stories and current events. Other flow toys (like poi and fans) show up from time to time and I support them if and when I can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC4qFjeSTvg

“The group of guys that started FITP in 1996 shared a common experience, they had all gone to a week long experience in consciousness building in San Diego called the Miracle of Love which used active meditation techniques developed by Osho Rajneesh. Those flaggers came together in 1998 to bring those techniques to the gay community through a weekend seminar that is still going strong called the ‘Men’s Inner Journey.’ It was through delving deep into the techniques of active meditation that I realized what a spiritual event flagging is. Though people don’t usually make the connection between flagging and meditation, there is a point when the body and mind are so engaged that in the exuberance of the dance the mind is set free to a place of stillness. I believe that meditation something lacking in our lives and something we need to recharge our spirit and connect with our soul.

“Flagging is a visually appealing dance that has lived primarily in the gay community for the past 40 years. It touches on spirituality by being an alternative form of meditation palatable for people on the go. I am proud to be one of the many that keeps this art form flourishing by holding the space to pass it to the next generation of artists. www.flaggercentral.com is a great resource for our community.”

Expansive roles

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Expansive roles

arts@sfbg.com

STAGE Ogun Size has shaped up into a complex, intriguing character across the first two plays staged so far in the Bay Area debut of Terrell Alvin McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays. The Magic Theater last week opened The Brothers Size, the second play in the celebrated trilogy, in an electric production sharply directed by Octavio Solis. Its choice minimalism (including a spare but evocative car garage set from scenic designer James Faerron and scenic/lighting designer Sarah Sidman) gives just the right lift to three fine, exuberant performances and full rein to the 20-something playwright’s delicate, volatile drama set in and around a Louisiana bayou housing project.

Ogun is an important but secondary character in the first play, In the Red and Brown Water (now up at Marin Theater Company, as part of an unprecedented three-company production that includes an offering by ACT in late October). That play focuses instead on his onetime love, Oya. Her dire fate gets alluded to in passing here, with understated pain, as Ogun (played by the impressively dynamic Joshua Elijah Reese) recounts neighborhood news to brother Oshoosi (a vital and wry Tobie Windham). Recently paroled, the excitable, silver-voiced, and perennially irresponsible Oshoosi is very reluctantly working alongside (and under the wary eye of) his older brother in the latter’s automotive repair shop.

Ogun’s wary eye soon also falls on Elegba (played with a magnetic, mercurial charm by a terrific Alex Ubokudom), the third and final character in a coiled little story of love, loyalty, jealousy, and desire that teases meaning from notions of brotherhood while brooding on the inevitable singularity and alienation at the heart of life. Elegba was already deemed complex by Oya in the first play, but here he is both more lifelike and ethereal, grounded in an almost preternatural obsession to have and control his former prison mate, Oshoosi. The jealous battle for Oshoosi that ensues is alternately boisterous, eerie, and wrenching. In the end, we watch Ogun Size grow larger — an expanse of feeling that increases the capacity of a heart bereft but open — as he finds himself, per force, alone again. Expanding like the universe itself, Ogun’s fate makes the infinity of his love still larger.

GOING OUT TO PLAY


A friend and I went to a restaurant the other day, and while it’s always a little like being in a play, this was ridiculous — also stimulating, and even quietly ecstatic. I won’t give you the intimate, somewhat bizarre details of our half-hour interaction. Not because it’s private, but because it’s up for grabs: you can have it yourself if you want, exactly as we did.

True, it was never going to be an ordinary lunch. We expected something unusual since, although we entered a real San Francisco eatery, it wasn’t a meal we were after but a performance, designed by the London-based experimental troupe Rotozaza. Etiquette, which runs through this weekend courtesy of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is participatory theater approaching some sort of outer limit: the audience goes Ark-like by twos (you can be paired up with another bewildered stranger or go with a friend) and performs the piece for one another. This takes place amid a roomful of unwitting patrons there strictly for the usual, namely a meal.

The first thing you notice is that this table doesn’t come with a menu, not even a bar list. There’s a glass of water, but you’ll hesitate to touch it. Instructions come via headsets. There are other intricacies best not revealed here, but as the encounter unfolds you find the lines between theater and "real life" dissolving, and your identity softening at the edges like a once-crusty crouton atop a bowl of soup. Meanwhile, the headphones, the concentration of your partner, the voice in your ear, the world of the tabletop, the knowledge that you are in a play, watching a play, and that, hell, you are the play — all this makes it surprisingly easy to shrug off any inhibition you might otherwise feel about making a "scene" in a restaurant.

The scene is your own in that you inhabit it, but then it is also dictated to you, bound by certain constraints. This tension is part of the delight generated by the piece. The audience-member-as-performer accepts, just as any actor does, the work of the playwright and instructions of the director. Within that there is room for individual choice and interpretation, but any action or decision comes circumscribed by the larger form. Day-to-day we all play our parts, of course, more or less self-consciously. But I never realized what a relief it might be to have your everyday encounters literally scripted for you. I suddenly thought I knew why pirates have parrots on their shoulders. I’d naively assumed it was the man feeding lines to the bird.

While Etiquette‘s parts are gender-specific, the participants might be of any sex, no matter the role. In fact, the idea of liberation from ascribed roles comes woven, in subtly layered fashion, into the very narratives unfolding and overlapping across the table. If the foundation of identity relies on the cultural and social forms we inherit, how liberating it is, even momentarily, to sit down in public and embrace play in all its forms.

THE BROTHERS SIZE

Through Oct. 17, $20–$60

Magic Theatre

Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, SF

(415) 441-8822

www.magictheatre.org

ETIQUETTE

Through Oct. 3, $8–$10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Stage listings

David Talbot
-
0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Opens Sat/2, call for time. Runs Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. As part of an artistic residency, We Players presents an island-wide interactive performance of the Shakespeare play.

Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Opens Thurs/30, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers presents its signature Halloween show, with three one-act Grand Guignol terror plays.

The Shining: Live The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-77891, www.darkroomsf.com. $7-10. Opens Fr/1, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. The Dark Room becomes the Overlook Hotel in this stage production of the horror classic.

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Phoenix Theatre, Stage 2, 414 Mason; 433-1235, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. A one-woman musical starring Karen Hirst, with book and music by Anne Doherty.

Aida War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, 864-1330, www.sfopera.com. $25-320. Wed/29, 7:30pm; Sat/2, 8pm; Oct 6, 7:30pm. San Francisco Opera presents Verdi’s classic, a co-production with English National Opera and Houston Grand Opera.

And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. Call for reservations. Mon-Thurs, 10 and 11:45am. Through Oct 10. YouthAware Educational Theatre presents a multimedia play by James Still, directed by Sara Staley.

Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a show by Brian Christopher Williams.

The Brothers Size Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 17. Magic Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play, directed by Octavio Solis.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 22. Actors Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ sultry, sweltering tale of a Mississippi family, directed by Keith Phillips.

*Etiquette Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $8-10. Thurs-Sat, noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm; Sun, noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm. Through Sun/3. Rotozaza presents a participatory performance piece for two people.

*Faux Real Climate Theater at TJT, 470 Florida; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/9, 10pm). Through Oct 9. A drag queen stripped bare? Not on your life. But in baring some soul and some truth (“two lies” per), Fauxnique (aka Monique Jenkinson; aka a woman as a man as a woman&ldots;) does some productive and fascinating (re)working of this sly semi-confessional form. In a show that begins by asking, via David Bowie, “whatchya gonna say to the real me?”, Fauxnique undresses drag by singing (very ably) as often as syncing and otherwise playing knowingly with the “reveals” inherent in the drag tradition, taking audiences back with her to high school in Denver in the 1980s for a herstory lesson like few others. Questions about identity and art mingle with hip, hilarious, wonderfully “haute,” and seriously hardworking solo cabaret (assisted by transgresser-dresser and prop boy Kegan Marling). Originally unveiled in 2009, and fresh from a London debut, Faux Real returns for an extended but still too-brief run courtesy of the mighty little Climate Theater, currently ensconced in the Jewish Theatre’s luxurious little space. (Avila)

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Oct 27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

IPH… Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, 647-2822, www.brava.org. $15-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm (also Mon/4, 8pm). Through Oct 16. Brava Theatre and African-American Shakespeare Company present the US premiere of an adaptation of Iphigenia at Aulis.

Jerry Springer the Opera Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th; www.jerrysf.com. $20-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 16. Ray of Light Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of the operatic farce by Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas.

KML Holds the Mayo Zeum Theater, 221 4th St; www.killingmylobster.com. $10-20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 7 and 10pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Sun/3. Killing My Lobster presents its fall comedy show, directed by co-founder Paul Charney.

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 30. Custom Made Theatre presents Stephen Adly Guirgis’ meditation on the meaning of forgiveness.

Olive Kitteridge Z Space at Theater Artaud, 450 Florida; (800) 838-3006, www.zspace.org. $20-40. Wed-Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Oct 10. Page-to-stage company Word for Word takes on two chapters’ worth of Elizabeth Strout’s celebrated 2008 novel, comprised of a loosely connected set of stories surrounding the title character (played with cunning subtlety by Patricia Silver) and her immediate circle in a coastal town in Maine. In “Tulips,” we find the thorny but shrewd Olive, a former math teacher, and her patient husband Henry (Paul Finocchiaro), the town’s longtime pharmacist, transitioning not so smoothly into their retirement years. Olive—itchy, cantankerous and vaguely at a loss despite her sharp wit—resents her grown son’s (Patrick Alparone) happily distant life in New York and battles with the neighbors until her husband’s stroke leaves her at sea, unexpectedly vulnerable and open to the kindness of neighbors and strangers alike (played by an ensemble that includes Jeri Lynn Cohen, Nancy Shelby, and Michelle Belaver). In “River,” Olive, now a widow, begins a gradual, unlikely and bumpy romance with a recently widowed former academic (Warren David Keith). Director Joel Mullennix grabs hold of colorful details along the way—like the summer influx of rollerbladers and bicyclists—to further enliven the verbatim staging of these stories, but the effort can feel a little forced at times, as if betraying a sense that these well-acted, gently poetical and thoughtful stories and their complex protagonist do not always make for the most stimulating drama. (Avila)

A Picasso Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; (866) 811-4111, www.apicassoonstage.com. $12-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 9. Expression Productions presents Jeffery Hatcher’s drama about the authenticity of three Picasso paintings.

Pinocchio Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat-Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Oct 10. Young Performers Theatre presents a new production of Carlo Collodi’s puppet tale.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Scapin American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-90. Tues-Sun, times vary. Through Oct 23. Bill Irwin, the innovative former Pickle Family clown and neo-vaudevillian turned Broadway star, makes a San Francisco return at the helm—and in the title role—of American Conservatory Theater’s production of Moliere’s classic farce. It’s an excuse for some arch meta-theatrical high jinx as well as expert clowning, a love fest really, with many fine moments amid a general font of fun whose heady purity seems like it should fall under some FDA regulation or other—clearly, somebody has paid someone to look the other way, and for once the corruption is unreservedly welcome. Joining the fun is Irwin’s old comrade-in-arms and, here, sacks, Geoff Hoyle, as miserly and dyspeptic daddy Geronte. Other ACT regulars and veterans flesh out a winning cast, among them the ever versatile and inimitable Gregory Wallace as Octave, a flouncing Steven Anthony Jones as put-out patriarch Argante, René Augesen as boisterously unlikely “virgin” Zerbinette, and a wonderfully adept and scene-stealing Jud Williford in the role of Scapin sidekick Sylvestre. As for Irwin, his comedic sensibility shows itself scrupulously apt and timeless at once, and his sure, lithesome performance intoxicating and age-defying. As a director, moreover, he gives as generously to each of his fellow performers as he does to his adoring, lovingly tousled audience. (Avila)

The Secretaries Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 255-7846, www.crowdedfire.org. $15-25 (pay what you can previews). Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 9. Crowded Fire revives the 1994 black comedy by New York’s Five Lesbian Brothers, a gleefully inappropriate bit of feminist satire that feels like the love child of John Waters and Valerie Solanas. Set in the front offices of the Cooney Lumber Mill in Big Bone, Oregon (delightfully rendered in Nick A. Olivero’s scenic design with New Yorker-like illustrations of the surrounding environs), the story follows narrator Patty (Elissa Beth Stebbins) as she recounts her initiation into a snappy coven of office ladies who not-so-secretly fell (rather than fall for) the town’s lumberjacks as if they were so much old growth forest. The mayhem and humor amuse, but probably seemed a lot fresher 16 years ago, making the simple plot seem thinly stretched. Nevertheless, the play’s details are nicely taken care of in artistic director Marissa Wolf’s fluid staging, featuring lots of play with fluids and a robust ensemble. In addition to Stebbins’s well-wrought and raunchy innocent, Leticia Duarte rocks her power-suit commandingly as no-nonsense supervisor and pack/pact-leader Susan; Eleanor Mason Reinholdt proves scarily endearing as the deceptively mincing, food-obsessed Peaches; Khamara Pettus has Norma Desmond eyes as Susan’s jealous onetime favorite Ashley; and Marilee Talkington approaches comic perfection in lovingly crafted twin roles: the boundingly predatory butch Dawn; and Patty’s hetero love interest and sexual-harassment-workshop–graduate, Buzz. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Angels in America, Part One Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 16. Pear Avenue Theatre kicks off its fall “Americana” program with the Tony Kushner play.

Bleacher Bums Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona, El Cerrito; (510) 524-9132, www.ccct.org. $18. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/3. A sports comedy conceived by Joe Mantegna, directed by Joel Roster.

La Cage Aux Folles San Mateo Performing Arts Center, 600 N. Delaware; (650) 579-5565, www.broadwaybythebay.org. $20-48. Dates and times vary. Through Sun/3. Broadway By the Bay presents the gay musical based on the play of the same title.

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

In the Red and Brown Water Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $32-53. Tues, 8pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Wed, 7:30pm, Sun, 7pm (also Sat/2, 2pm). Through Oct 10. Marin Theatre Company presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play.

In the Wound John Hinkel Park, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (no one turned away). Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Sun/3. Shotgun Players’ annual free performance in Berkeley’s John Hinkel Park is this year an impressively staged large-cast reworking of the Illiad from playwright-director Jon Tracy. In the Wound is actually the first of two new and related works from Tracy collectively known as the Salt Plays (the second of which, Of the Earth will open at Shotgun’s Ashby stage in December). Its distinctly contemporary slant on the Trojan War includes re-imagining the epic’s Greek commanders as figures we’ve come to know and loath here in the belly of a beast once know by the quaint-sounding phrase, “military-industrial complex.” Hence, Odysseus (Daniel Bruno) as a devoted family man in a business suit with a briefcase full of bloody contradictions emanating from his 9-to-5 as a “social architect” for the empire; or Agamemnon (an irresistibly Patton-esque Michael Torres) as the ridiculously macho, creatively foul-mouthed redneck American four-star commander-clown ordering others into battle. While the alternately humorous and overly meaningful American inflections can feel too obvious and dramatically limiting, they’re delivered with panache, amid the not unmoving spectacle of the production’s energetic, drum-driven choreography and cleverly integrated mise-en-scène. (Avila)

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

MilkMilkLemonade La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/2. Impact Theatre presents Joshua Conkel’s off off Broadway play about a lonely gay man trapped in a chicken farm.

She Loves Me Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (825) 943-7469, www.CenterREP.org. $36-45. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2:30 and 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Oct 10. Center REPertory company presents a musical choreographed and directed by Robert Barry fleming.

Trouble in Mind Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Sun/3. It’s old enough be considered a period piece, but at no time does Aurora Theatre’s production of Alice Childress’ 1955 comic drama Trouble in Mind feel dated. Set backstage on Broadway, Trouble depicts the rehearsals of a play entitled Chaos in Belleville—an anti-lynching melodrama penned by a white author. The often hilariously manic director, Al Manners (Tim Kniffin) alternately patronizes, bullies, and flatters the predominantly black cast into portraying the basest plantation stereotypes—right down to the names “Petunia” and “Ruby”—all the while touting the work as an important statement about race relations. But the real lessons in race relations and breaking through the color barriers occur as the rehearsals progress and the cast, middle-aged “character actress” Wiletta Mayer (Margo Hall) in particular, begin to question the veracity of the script and the directorial instincts of Manners. Trouble’s exceptional cast keeps the dialogue crackling and the pace urgent, save for a heart-breakingly deliberate reminiscence powerfully delivered by Rhonnie Washington. As for the timeliness of a piece which highlights among other things the dearth of strong theatrical roles for African-Americans, it’s interesting to note that actors Elizabeth Carter, Jon Joseph Gentry, Margo Hall, and Rhonnie Washington are all making their Aurora Theatre debut with this particular play. (Nicole Gluckstern)

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

 

“Best of the Fringe Encore Performances” EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; 673-3847, www.sffringe.org. Fri/1-Sat/2, 7 and 8:30pm; $20. Four highlights from this year’s SF Fringe Festival get repeat performances.

“Blue Room Comedy” Club 93, 93 9th St; 264-5489. Free. Tues/5, 10pm. A weekly series that takes comedy to new lows.

“Body and Sound Arts Festival Concert” Kunst-Stoff Arts, 929 Market; www.dancemonks.com. Fri/1, 7pm; $15-30. An interdisciplinary arts festival dedicated to improvisation.

“Clown Cabaret at the Climate” The Jewish Theater, 470 Florida; 704-3260, www.climatetheater.com. Mon/4, 7 and 9pm; $10-15. Rising star clowns and seasoned pro clowns perform.

“The Ethel Merman Experience” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia; 241-0205, www.dragatmartunis.com. Sun/3, 7pm; $5. Rock gets the brassy Merman treatment.

“Free Night of Theatre” Union Square; www.tixbayarea.com. Wed/29, 10-am-4pm and 6pm; free. A sixth anniversary kick-off performance celebration in which free theater tickets are distributed.

“Funny Girlz” Brava Theater, 2781 24th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/29, 8pm; $25. Kung Pao Kosher Comedy presents a smorgasboard of female comedians.

Insides Out!/Indecision Collision Stage Werx, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, wwwbrownpapertickets.com. Thurs-Fri, 8pm (Insides Out!); Sat, 8pm (Indecision Collision); $12-20. A pair of solo performances by Katie O’Brien.

“ODC/Dance: Architecture of Light” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St; www.odctheater.org. Thurs/30-Sat/2, 8pm; $20-500. ODC celebrates the opening of its new building with performances.

“Qcomedy Showcase” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia; www.Qcomedy.com. Mon/4, 8pm; $5-16. Karen Ripley, Zoe Dunning, Pippi Lovestocking, and others perform.

Lizz Roman and Dancers Danzhaus, 1275 Connecticut; 970-0222, wwwlizzromandancers.com. Thurs/30-Sat/2 (also Oct 7-9), 8pm; $20. A new performance by the local company, with lighting by Jenny B.

“The Romane Event” Make Out room, 3225 22nd; 647-2888, www.pacoromane.com.Wed/29, 7:30pm; $7. Paco Romane hosts Tim Lee, Harmon Leon, and others.

“Rotunda Dance Series” San Francisco City Hall; www.dancersgroup.org. Fri/1, noon; free. Performances by Joanna Haigood/ZACCHO Dance Theatre.

Smuin Ballet Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon; (415) 978-2787, www.smuinballet.org. Fri/1 (through Oct 9), 8pm; call for prices. The company kicks off a new season with two premieres by Trey McIntyre.

“Swan Lake: Ballet for the People By the People” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/1-Sat/2, 8pm; $10-15. ArtFace Performance Group presents an unconventional take on a classic.

“Trine” The Garage, 975 Howard; 518-1517, www.975howard.com. Fri/1-Sat/2, 8pm; $10-20. RAW presents work by Paco Gomes and Dancers and Damage Control Dance Theater.

BAY AREA

Bay Area Playback Theatre Belrose Theatre, 1415 5th Ave, San Rafael; 499-8528, www.BayAreaPlayback.com. Sat/2, 7:30pm; $18. Stories told by audience members are turned into imrpov theater by a troupe.

“The Funniest Bubble Show on Earth” The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Sun/3, 11am (through Nov 21); $8-11. The Amazing Bubble Man (aka Louis Pearl) returns with his show.

Mark Morris Dance Group Zellerbach Hall, UC campus, Berk; (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. Thurs/20-Sat/2, 8pm; Sun/3, 3pm; $34-72. The acclimaed dance company returns with a triple-bill of premieres.

False witness: Yael Hersonski on “A Film Unfinished”

Sue Vaughan
-
0

Documentaries that “tell” the Holocaust tend to employ archival footage generically as a kind of historical flavoring. It’s rare that we are asked to contemplate either the provenance of the images or the individual lives depicted. Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished simultaneously confronts both of these gaps with a taut historiography of several reels of Nazi propaganda footage. Even in the German film’s inchoate form, we easily apprehend the propagandistic moves to further manipulate an already constructed reality (the Warsaw Ghetto) for objective “proof” of the necessity of Hitler’s Final Solution. And yet here before us, flowing at the speed of life, are the faces and places that would be destroyed within months of the filming.

Hersonski attempts to extricate the documentary value of this footage using frame-speed manipulations and edits which call attention to telling movements. She also films elderly survivors watching the footage alone in a darkened theater. In their capacity for recognition and incredulousness, they unravel the German point-of-view. By weaving these live responses with diary entries of those consigned to the ghetto along with the deposition of a German cameraman, Hersonski draws a fragmentary, highly specific account of the Holocaust’s crisis of representation. We discussed the film in a recent email exchange.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: The question of how to use archival footage responsibly is one that haunts the great Holocaust-themed films — Night and Fog (1955), Shoah (1985), and the films of Péter Forgács all find very different solutions. Can you describe the way your own attitudes regarding the appropriation of this archive developed during the time you worked on A Film Unfinished?

Yael Hersonski: During the last decade I became more and more preoccupied with the thought of the near future, when no Holocaust survivors will be left to remember — the time when the archives will be the only source of witness. I’ve tried to examine the possibilities of exploring the image like an archaeologist analyses a palimpsest, and to excavate, by cinematic means, new layers of reality from beneath the known imagery. I admit that [at one] time I felt that Night and Fog and Shoah were all that a filmmaker could express facing such an inconceivable, unprecedented event. For [Shoah director Claude] Lanzmann, the Holocaust lies firmly outside the archive as the ultimately Other, a black hole which threatens to swallow every visual witness, and thus resists the film archive and its raptures.
Forgács faces the impossibility of bearing witness exactly by confronting the contemporary viewer (who knows how it all ended) with private documentation which was abruptly stopped when the photographer himself was no longer capable of documenting, nor his dear ones of being documented. Forgács’ films introduce me again and again to the immense capacity of footage to reveal, in the form of a private history, the traces of an inconceivable past.

My aim in showing the Warsaw Ghetto footage (for the first time in its entire length) and confronting the images with many points of view about the filmmaking itself was not to tell “the true story” of the Warsaw Ghetto, nor to expose the evil of Nazi propaganda (which was obvious even to the German filmmaker who discovered the reels in 1954), but to make the viewers question the way they see these images and through them perceive the past.

SFBG: Did you set out to interrogate the decontextualization of these images in more conventional visual histories of the Holocaust and Warsaw Ghetto? The logic of many Holocaust documentaries, wittingly or not, is that the content of these images can be separated from the context in which they were made — that what we see speaks for itself. Your film challenges this assumption in many ways.

YH: I’ve always felt that the images from the Holocaust were mainly used the same way: as illustrations for many different stories, as visual background between interviews. We see the same images over and over again, [both] because the quantity of footage is finite (only 10 percent from what the Nazis documented on film survived the war), [but also] because of sheer laziness of filmmakers who find it more comfortable to use what’s [familiar]. The superficial use of an image enables it to show almost nothing — or merely repeats the humiliation of the victims that were captured on film as an anonymous helpless crowd. I emphasize a moment [by slowing it down] in which a woman is protesting against the humiliation caused by filming merely by means of her gaze and her body language. When I know this woman was probably murdered a short time after her image was taken, and when I hear at the same time the cameraman who was filming her speaking about how he could not even imagine what was going on, I feel closer to the reality of that image than I did before.

SFBG: How did you come to the idea of having the survivors respond to the archival footage in place of a more traditional question-and-answer interview? As viewers separated from these events, we’re able to treat these archival images as content — whereas I imagine for the person who was there, it’s inescapable that the footage literally represents how they were seen by the Germans. Were you concerned that you might be putting your subjects through a kind of secondary trauma by having them view the footage in such a way that they didn’t have their hands on the controls?

YH: I was looking not only for survivors from the Warsaw Ghetto, but for those who could actually recall the event of the filming in May 1942. I was quite amazed to locate more than the five survivors I interviewed for the film, because obviously the filming was a negligible event compared with the unimaginable horrors that went on there. When speaking with the survivors, I explained to them in detail how the filming would be done — that they would watch the whole film, alone, on the big screen, that it contained atrocious scenes (I described these), and that obviously it would be a difficult experience. Some of the survivors indeed refused to watch it, and some hesitated. Only those who felt it was their personal obligation to [speak to] the silent images, those who told me that the worst horrors exist not in any footage but in their own memories, [those who thought] it important to add their own point of view to the Nazi perspective — only these people were invited to be filmed. Still, I stopped the screening every time a reel was over and asked if they wished to continue. All of them asked to watch to the very end and felt a great relief after doing so.

The decision to film [the survivors] inside a cinema hall and to show the footage in 35mm stemmed from three [priorities]. First of all, I wanted to intensify the experience of the screening as much as I could, for I knew I would not — not in any case — film these survivors again. After they had given me their approval, I knew I had only one chance. I was also aware that the time of interview would be short, since all of them are physically too fragile to sit for more than two hours in such an intense emotional state. If there was a chance someone could recognize a person in the film or add any other important historical information about the footage, the only way to help them remember was to isolate them from their domestic surroundings and show them the film on the big screen.

The second reason relates to the character of the survivors as witnesses. Roughly [speaking], we can say that there are those survivors who won’t talk about the past, who remain silent merely to be able to live…and there are those who ceaselessly tell their stories, who give lectures and interviews, write books, and so on. They find witnessing [to be] their very vocation and destiny. The survivors who were filmed belong to the group who speaks. They have told their stories many times, and because they can’t tell it all any one time, their memory [often narrows] to [a] single narrative. Other details have remained in a less accessible memory. By changing the traditional scenery of the interview and creating a new interactive space [in which] the survivors were not just storytellers but also viewers and witnesses who comment, I hoped to help them to release some of the memories which [remained unspoken] by them.

The third reason was aesthetic: it was important for me to maintain [every aspect] of the film in relation to the archival documents and documentation itself. My initial idea, even before watching the footage for the first time, was to think of these archives as if they were a brain, with memories and even a subconscious. The labyrinth of the archive, with its knowns and unknowns, the desire to restore and remember, which is simultaneously the impulse to destroy and forget, can be used as a metaphor for our own memories and forgetfulness.

SFBG: Given your film’s deliberate consideration of the way the Nazi footage represents a constructed, stage-managed view of the Jews in the ghetto, I think many viewers might be curious why you choose to visually recreate the interview with Willy Wist. Why is this transcript recreated visually, while the various diary entries are only read?

YH: First of all, the diaries were written, [whereas] the preliminary interrogation with the cameraman was recorded on audio reels (the audio reels were recycled for the next interrogation, and therefore only the paper protocols survived). I insisted on emphasizing the various manners of documentation. Until we found the interrogation’s protocol, the only fact we knew about the cameraman was his name. When I first read the protocols, I was amazed to [discover] what a rare witness I was faced with. These images that we were educated to see in bits and pieces, as if they were some kind of an “objective” anonymous documentation of past events — suddenly there was a specific gaze of a cameraman, with his own impressions, speculations, inner monologues and so on, and he describes himself shooting scenes we can actually see in the footage. [It] enabled me to see the footage not merely as a sequence of images but as a real trace of reality, and as the atrociously painful (for the viewer) medium between the perpetrators and their victims. I knew I’d have to create the cameraman’s witness with different tools to distinguish it from other kinds of testimony, to emphasize the presence of a single gaze behind a single camera.

There is another crucial reason for delivering the texts from the protocols visually. After watching the footage for the first time, I felt there was no way to show it all without having any visual breaks between the different reels. At a certain point, our psychological mechanism of self-defense [prevents us from] absorbing more images, and we find ourselves looking yet not seeing. My goal here was quite the opposite: I was trying to figure out a way to enable the viewer to keep his gaze constantly fresh and involved. My solution was to produce visual breaks which would allow the viewer to dive into these dark waters again and again. Delivering the cameraman’s protocols in a visual way was something that helped me do this. But I was very strict in not changing even a single word from the protocols, not dramatizing it in any way, not working with the actors to establish an imaginary character of a cameraman, not interpreting his words, and most of all, not judging him in any way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khut0kKn-c8

A Film Unfinished opens Fri/1 in Bay Area theaters.

A hardly strictly kind of guy

Andrew Lam
-
0

It is not everyday that a San Francisco Bay Guardian culture writer finds herself going for an interview in the Financial District. Something about the fumes of avarice making poor atmosphere for the creative process. But high above the Starbucks and town cars is the banjo-packed office of a rich man who puts on the best free bluegrass festival of the year. And so, for Warren Hellman and his Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (Fri/1-Sun/3), I braved the world of name tags and extravagant corner offices.

Much has been written on the avuncular nature of Hellman. He is an ex-president of Lehmann Brothers, and as chairman of Hellman and Friedman and founding partner of his own venture capital firm, falls just shy of Forbes’ 400 Richest Americans list. He’s a born and bred adherent to a downtown-centric vision of the city, but counts among his buddies union activists and some of the city’s well-known liberal muckrakers. 

But I guess Hellman just likes what he likes. And after I’ve breached the security check-in that takes place in his megalithic office building’s lobby, traveled up to Hellman and Friedman’s well-appointed offices, chit-chatted with his amiable receptionist, and been installed in his office to wait for the man’s arrival from a meeting next door, I realize that central to this category is bluegrass music. His corner office is comfortably packed with stacks of banjos and guitars, a signed CD from Emmylou Harris that wishes him a happy birthday, a metal sculpture that wears aviator sunglasses and a white cowboy hat, thank you plaques from the Berkeley music venue Freight and Salvage, where Hellman is a keystone donor and acted as chairman for the club’s fundraising campaign in years past. It’s impossible to avoid the music in the room, indeed the music is the room

Hellman arrives shortly, limping slightly, but enthused at the prospect of our interview. I tell him it’s great to meet you, Mr. Hellman, an honorific he doesn’t cotton to – Warren it is. He’s wearing a long sleeve denim button down – a look he favors, judging from photos of him taken at different shows and events.

It comes as a shock to the system in this day and age, to meet a billionaire with progressive friends (or, in my case, a billionaire at all), an older man with tattoos who likes to talk glowingly of his trips to Burning Man ensconced in his skyscraper office above the downtown grid. “There’s no fights there!” he tells me of the desert art festival. “Sure, there’s lots of pot, but there’s no violence.” Warren perhaps falls into the eccentric rich guy archetype, but the philosophy inherent in his personal pastimes at times seep here and thre into his politics, at least sporadically. He’s the kind of guy that will endorse the installation of a massive underground parking lot in Golden Gate Park, yet still support closing down the streets that access said lot so that Sundays amongst the trees and museums can be car-free affairs.

So first for the obvious question: why bluegrass, Warren? “People like to ask these ethereal questions,” the man muses in response. I realize quickly that Hellman pulls few punches, answering questions quickly before detouring into favorite stories that more or less illustrate his point. He’s a good talker. “Why do you like bluegrass – why do you like smoked salmon?” 

Fair enough, but why choose to spend your birthday putting on three days of music for the riff-raff (besides the obvious PR bonanza it affords the businessman)? With this query, the billionaire’s eyes alight with a thoroughly unmonetized joy. “It’s the single most fulfilling thing – this is as close to heaven as I’m gonna get,” Hellman says. “To be able to give something that’s really fun to a lot a people that seem to have the same love it as I do… it’s just really fulfilling. And if I could hang out with anyone in my life, it would not be the president of Lehmann Brothers and Goldman Sachs.” 

Hardly Strictly seems to be at its a place that allows Hellman to mingle with people outside the financial business. He’s endowed the festival to continue at least 15 years after he dies. “I’d like it to go on more or less forever,” he says. His desire for meetings of minds across ideological, professional, and personal differences is evident even in the way he conducts our interview — which he treats as though he is meeting a friend for the first time. 

Hellman’s typical routine for this weekend? “You could say what are the peaks of ecstasy,” he chuckles. He worries all week leading up to the event about the weather – this weekend’s sweaty days have perhaps precluded this part — attends the Friday morning MC Hammer (yes, Hammer’s a regular performer at the event) concert for middle schoolers, and then zips around from stage to stage in his golf cart throughout Saturday and Sunday, reaping praise by the untold hundreds of thousands that come to the park to check out the six stages of tunes provided by Hellman each year. 

Oh, and there’s the matter of his band’s performance as well. Hellman plays banjo and sings for the Wronglers, who will be taking the stage at Hardly Strictly at 11 a.m. on Sun/3. They debuted at the festival, and now play gigs all over the country. His travels with the band bring him to bluegrass events year round – when he’s not racing horses, another hobby – and into contact with some great potential acts for Hardly Strictly.

One such group, Hardly Strictly newcomers the Ebony Hillbillies, an all African-American outfit from Jamaica Queens, are Hellman’s personal don’t-miss pick for this weekend. He’s also looking forward to perennial favorites Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Emmylou Harris.

Our time is up, and Hellman’s assistant enters the room to tell him that his next appointment is waiting in the lobby, which doesn’t seem to enthuse him in quite the same fashion that our interview did. Or maybe he’s just good at pretending.

“Oh crap. Well, that was the most fun I’m going to have all day,” he says. Hellman exhorts me to set up another appointment with assistant to talk (“I barely got to find out anything about you!”) and insists on playing me a song about Hardly Strictly that was sent to him by a woman impelled to compose it by her therapist but finally it is time for me to vamoose. We sit convivially, tapping our feet to the beat, Warren every so often blurting out “You have to listen to this part!” Soon, he escorts me to my journey back away from the skyscrapers of the Financial District and returns to his tightly regimented meeting schedule. Moments after our parting, I catch a flat on my bike and am forced to hail a cab to bring me to a neighborhood endowed with such pedestrian things as a bike store. It’s less infuriating than it would have been sans Hellman meet up — I’m still satisfied by our morning time brush between two worlds. 

 

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

Fri/1 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m., 2 p.m.-7 p.m.; Sat/2 and Sun/3 11 a.m.- 7 p.m.

Speedway Meadows

Golden Gate Park, SF

www.strictlybluegrass.com

 

Hot sluts!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
59
Hot sluts!

culture@sfbg.com

SEX ISSUE Forget those uptight pricks: sluts are awesome. There’s no shame in harboring a voracious appetite for sexiness in all its myriad expressions. Combined with a well-developed ethical stance and safe practices, it’s one of the joys of being human. In honor of the enormous, charitable Folsom Street leather and fetish fair (Sun/26, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., donations requested. www.folsomstreetfair.org), we wanted to honor some of our favorite local sluts with the pervy attention they want and deserve. 

>>CLICK HERE FOR PICS OF OUR FAVORITE HOT SLUTS!

SLUTTIEST CELLULOID

You’ve always wanted to watch your neighbors bang, right? Well moan enthusiastically in honor of the Good Vibrations Indie Erotic Film Festival, which every year puts the call out for the cream of the amateur blue filmmaker crop, then assembles the spunkiest for your viewing pleasure at the Castro Theatre. You too can be in the audience, which will ooh and aah its approval to choose the sexiest, steamiest home-screw, the lucky winner receiving a $1,500 money shot. So how does SF get it on? This year’s 12 finalists include preggo smut (Jeannie Roshar’s “Bun in the Oven”), good old-fashioned wordplay like Benjamin Williams’ “The Filth Element,” and sci-fi sexin’ (“Orgasm Raygun” by Martin Gooch). The fest precedes a range of specialty nights around town coordinated by Good Vibes, including Lebso Retro: A Dyke Porn Retrospective (Wed/22 at the Women’s Building). It’s gonna be a hot ticket, so grab a seat, relax your rear, and revel in the sight of sexy San Francisco.

Thurs/23 pre party: 7 p.m., $10; screening: 8 p.m., $10. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. (415) 621-6120, www.gv-ixff.org

 

SLUTTIEST QUEEN

“I’m so honored to be named Sluttiest Queen,” inimitable alternative drag goddess Suppositori Spelling tells us. “It’s nice to see that my work hasn’t gone unnoticed. I have so many performances that require nudity that when I drop my skirt lately it’s often met with a wave of yawns from my audience. I think they’re more shocked by the presence of panties nowadays.” (Her audience, found at her raucous weekly drag show Cocktailgate — Sundays, 9 p.m., $5. Truck, 1900 Folsom St., SF. www.trucksf.com — sheds a few panties themselves when she’s on stage.) “I could tell you stories so dirty hot that this paper would burn like a Koran in Florida” she continues, “but I’m so shy and reserved. I will say this, though: as far as the queer sex scene in San Francisco goes, we seem to be in the flush of a renaissance. I keep stumbling upon things that even make me blush — like the gentleman who preferred a visible handjob on public transportation during rush hour as foreplay. But I encourage whatever floats your boat or creams your Twinkie. I just want to clarify, however, that “ouch” is not a safe word!”

Suppositori emcees the Seventh Street stage at Folsom Street Fair from 11 a.m.–2 p.m., followed by a special performance at 2:30 p.m., and then a “hanky code” themed Cocktailgate at its regular time.

 

SLUTTIEST BOYS

Dan and JD, a.k.a. Two Knotty Boys, are no strangers to the twists and loops of BDSM performance. Native San Franciscans both, they not only create mesmerizing stage shows in which they bind nubile flesh to their will, but also produce end results so visionary that you’d be excused for leaving off the “fetish” and dubbing it merely “fashion.” A ever-so-tightly cinched halter top of gleaming white cord, a barely there cobweb bikini that requires an expert hand to remove, overlays of skirts and dresses that hobble the wearer seductively and at the same time, show off the contours of the female body. It’s neat, it’s adjustable, it’s sexily professional work. It’s easy to see why the duo has filmed more than 100 video tutorials and taught countless workshops in the Bay and beyond for their eager fans: the Boys have tied up hundreds of women but, unlike some humiliation artists, they have never tied down their subjects’ beauty and comfort.

www.twoknottyboys.com

 

SLUTTIEST PARTIERS

Was it written on the rock hard abs of some San Franciscan sex god that all coital gatherings in this city have to be stark and stoic? Thankfully, the colorful gang over at Kinky Salon never got that memo. Creators Polly and Scott have created a swinger’s playland party in the pink and purple rooms of Mission Control whose focus is flair: playful costume themes have focused on everything from kitty cats (the upcoming Pussyfest) to undersea adventure and fairy tale characters. You’ve never lived, it would seem, until your Snow White costume has been peeled off on the couch in the Harem Room by Tinkerbell and Captain Hook. More recently, the team has created a new magazine to celebrate the vast array of sexualities that their partygoers lay claim to: San Fran Sexy. The rag includes erotic history lessons from sexologist Dr. Carol Queen, memoir pieces from Bawdy Storytelling’s Dixie De La Tour, photos from recent Kinky Salon soirees, and news of sensual events to come.

www.kinkysalon.com

 

SLUTTIEST ROCKERS

“If the Meat Sluts were a Pink Lady, we’d be Rizzo! We ain’t no prudes like Sandy!” says BB Rumproast of rockin’ band the Meat Sluts (www.myspace.com/themeatsluts). In a world of vegan dogs, her XXX-chromosomed trash rock-punk explosion is an all-beef foot long. The four women are cookin’ on stage — literally. In addition to the occasional back up steak dancing alongside their guitar licks and growls, the Meat Sluts have shared space at shows with a live hot dog-maker and a meat grinder flinging sausage and baloney onto hungry fans. It’s messy, carnivorous fun — the perfect expression of the group’s embrace of hedonistic appetite that could care less about what’s considered “ladylike” at the table of the musical establishment. “We are loose and crazy and not ashamed of it! We love man meat! We love weenies! Beef baloney, Slim Jims, T-bones, bring it ON!” says Rumproast. To quote the Sluts’ rager rally cry “Johnny Con Carne,” that’s what we call makin’ bacon.

The Meat Sluts play Dodgyfest 3, Oct 2, 7 p.m., $10. Thee Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. www.theeparkside.com

 

SLUTTIEST BLOGGER

Fleur De Lis SF has a bone to pick with the way hot and horny females are portrayed. “Women are just as sexual as men and they should own it,” the blogger tells us. Need proof? Check out the blog she started this summer — just make sure your hands are free and you’ve got a little privacy while you do so. Her posts are missives from a professional woman’s enthusiastic exploration of sensual subcultures in “one of the sexiest cities in the world.” Though her identity is clad in secrecy, Fleur De Lis SF’s escapades with Craig’s List Casual Encounters, BDSM clubs, and randy run-ins at the grocery store will leave you slicker than a Slip ‘N Slide in 90 percent humidity. Erotic inspiration notwithstanding, what we love about this new It slut is her candor and assertiveness. “Mainly, I want to educate people to embrace sex and sexuality,” she says. “I want people to accept who they are, and who are we are sexually is a huge part of who we are as people.”

fleurdelissf.wordpress.com

 

SLUTTIEST MAN ACTION

For the past few years, hunky leatherman cruisers have been blessed with the return of a SoMa bar crawl, which, while hardly rivaling the infamous Miracle Mile of the 1970s and ’80s, at least offers hide-lusting bar-hoppers an array of options. Truck, Hole in the Wall, Powerhouse, the Eagle, Lone Star — all make for a daisy chain of fellow cock-seekers. But the piece de resistance is surely Chaps II, which gives itself wholly over to man-action bliss. The original Chaps, owned by Chuck Slaton and Ron Morrison, was notorious for its Crisco-minded shenanigans, and Chaps II, opened in 2008 by David Morgan, continues the proudly perverse tradition, with parties devoted to rope play, piss play, fisting, and sports gear aficionados, as well as regular nights simply dedicated to the Holy Grail of slutty manhood: cheap ass. (For those unfamiliar — cheap ass tastes like chicken parmesan.) Kudos to you, Chaps II, for keeping the BDSM spirit alive — and serving a healthy round of Jäger shots to boot.

1225 Folsom, SF. (415) 255-2427, www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com

 

SLUTTIEST ROBOTS

Drilldo, Intruder MK II, the Satisfyher, Scorpion, the Little Guy, Annihilator, the Octapussy — these are some of the friendly, dripping sex robots you’ll meet at FuckingMachines.com, part of the Kink.com kingdom. The machines put a bevy of heaving beauties through the motions with their dildo-studded fingers and pulsating hacksaw thrusts. Designed by lucky site users, who submit their moving-parts fantasies, and the fiendishly clever sex-elves at the Fucking Machines workshop (with many of the machines fabricated on site at Kink’s HQ in the Mission Armory), these fascinating thingamabobs range from devilishly dirty to actually kind of cute. There’s even one modeled on Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, albeit renamed Fuckzilla and outfitted with a huge silicone phallus. The whole shebang is overseen by the enthusiastic Tomcat, who drives the point home that, yes, a chainsaw outfitted with 20 fake tongues “challenges the whole idea that women need someone to buy them dinner to get pleasure.” Fucking machines themselves have been around since the 1960s, he notes, “but when we started in 2001, we wanted to capitalize on the tech wave, while approaching the machine construction like sculpture.” Good thing the Fucking Machine bubble didn’t burst.

 

SLUTTIEST SLÜT

Burlesque heroine Baroness Eva Von Slüt knows what she’s got, and she’s happy to show it to you. The inked, buxom platinum blonde dove into burlesque in 2002, but she’s never been afraid of flaunting her dangerous curves onstage. “Whatever the thing is that women have that they hate their bodies, I just don’t have it. I don’t compare myself to other people because I know I look good.” Von Slüt produces her own burlesque shows, plays party-jumping jams with partner DJ Mod Days, and heads up the vocals for no less than two sexy bands — Thee Merry Widows, an all-girl psychobilly explosion of fishnets, red lipstick, and leather dresses, at whose shows Von Slüt will bust out in pasties and sequined panties, and the White Barons, a stripped down, hard-edged punk outfit in which Von Slüt lets her rebel growl loose. So what gets this freight train whistling? Purrs the lady, “Self-confidence and kindness. Also, I am a bit of a cougar, so gentlemen 10 years younger. I’m not opposed to men my age or older, but gosh they’re just so sweet when they’re young!”

Catch Von Slüt’s DJ session on Wednesday, Oct. 13 at Butter, 354 11th St., SF. www.myspace.com/missevavonslut

 

SLUTTIEST FREE-FOR-ALL

There are a lot of gay musclemen at the Folsom Street Fair, and there are a lot of steamy, shirtless gay man-parties surrounding the event (causing quite a few Monday morning tragedies). But what about everyone else? “I was talking to my friends at Kink,” says Folsom organizer Demetri Moshoyannis, “and they said that once the fair ended, all the leathermen had a place to go, but everyone at the Kink booth just had to go home. So this year we teamed up with them to change that.” The result? A glorious-sounding omnisexual dance party called Deviants that’s open to everyone. The acknowledgment that gay muscle men aren’t the only ones who can get down and dirty into the wee hours is refreshing. But so is the musical lineup — the Juan Maclean, Zach Moore from Space Cowboys, Australia’s Stereogamous — which offers something beyond the carnival circuit-music at many of the other parties. Musclemen are welcome, too, of course, as long as they’re willing to shake their chains on the dance floor.

Sun/26, 6 p.m.–2 a.m., $30 advance. 525 Harrison, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org/deviants

 

SLUTTIEST PIE

It’s not too many harems that offer you 40 different ways to satisfy your cravings. But hot, lip-smacking loving can be yours — in three different locations or for delivery, no less! — whenever that urge to do something naughty hits, whether you like it on your lunch hour or for a post-bar dirty stopover. Oh, Pizza Orgasmica, you sure do know what gets us going. The local chain has umpteen big, salacious pies with nookie-themed names for your perusing. And although the Ménage à Trois, with it’s cuddle puddle of five salty cheeses, will leave you panting, and the Latin Lover’s barbeque sauce, chicken, zucchini, onions, and cilantro make for a meaty, spicy affair, the sluttiest pie award has got to go to the Farmer’s Daughter. She looks like a demure little milkmaid (after all, you can find her on the vegetarian menu) — but once her drizzles of creamy bianca cheese hit your tongue, and her fresh corn and broccoli fill your mouth … it’s a tumble in the hay you won’t soon forget. Old MacDonald would be scandalized.

Various locations, www.pizzaorgasmica.com

 

SLUTTIEST CLOWN

When it comes gender-bending sexual escapades, we landlubbing bipeds tend to give short shrift to our finned, feathered, and multi-legged Earthmates. That’s why we’re giving a hearty bottoms up to the California Academy of Science’s Amphiprion ocellaris. The showy orange and white striped fish, whose common name is clownfish, is best known as the aquatic brat in Finding Nemo. But we don’t care about Nemo’s celebrity — or his billions. We salute him for his ability to shift from male to female when needed, giving her access to the entire spectrum of fishy sexuality. One of the planet’s rare sequential hermaphrodites, all clownfish are born male (protandrous hermaphrodites) but become female when the female in a breeding pair dies. You may never look at a clownfish the same way again — and you should certainly go and look at them at the Cal Academy aquarium (www.calacademy.org), where the San Franciscan clownfish ride tiny fixies, design websites, and sip Blue Bottle. Kidding! But maybe we should rethink always calling them “Nemo.” How about Nema for a change? Or Nemo-ma. Or, oh goddess of LGBT fish love, Nemaphrodite.

 

SLUTTIEST BUFFET

It’s lunchtime Friday and you need a juicy thigh in your mouth: Gold Club is there. And no, we’re not talking about the lovely ladies popping, dropping, and locking it all over the SoMa strip club’s pleasure poles. Carnal urges take on new meaning when it comes to the joint’s $5 all you can eat Friday buffet, an omnivorous affair stuffed with roast beef, lasagna, fresh veggies, hummus, brownies, and their signature breasts (or as one Yelper so memorably dubbed them, “fried chicken tit-tays!”) The spread attracts a diverse crowd of office workers and lap-dance connoisseurs of all genders, endowed with an appetite for crispy skin and jiggling glutei maximi alike. So pair your plate with a $4 happy hour cocktail — available until 7 p.m. — and don’t forget to share your savings with the working women up front.

Gold Club’s all you can eat buffet Fridays 11 a.m.– 2 p.m., $5. 650 Howard, SF. (415) 536-0300, www.goldclubsf.com

Slutty profiles written by Marke B., Caitlin Donohue, Johnny Ray Huston, and Diane Sussman.

1...848586...135Page 85 of 135

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org