Style

FEAST: 6 all-you-can-eat buffets

-
0

If I have an Achilles heel when it comes to dining out, it is a persistent inability to make up my mind about the entrée. Who can ever pick just one? Wouldn’t that seafood linguine be pleasantly enhanced with just a morsel of roasted quail? Isn’t the fun of eating Chinese food in passing the plates around so everyone gets to try everything? Happily for my hardwired grazing gene, there is a contingent of restaurants in the Bay Area that cater to my need to nosh, with fixed-price all-you-can eat buffets. These aren’t Vegas-style troughs either — the quality of the food in no way suffers from the fact that there’s a lot of it. And the cuisine spans the globe, from South America to the Middle East. (Nicole Gluckstern)

ESPETUS


Rule number one for dining at Espetus: leave your vegetarian friends at home. It’s not that the restaurant doesn’t have any meatless options — there’s a whole steam table–salad bar area where you can load up on black beans and fresh fruit — but the sight of a king-size rack of ribs circling the room on a silver platter can put even the most tolerant veg-heads off their feed. However, for the eager omnivore, this Brazilian churrascaria offers more than a dozen meaty delights straight from the grill, served by wandering waiters who carve slices off skewers of salt-rubbed sirloin and Parmesan-dusted pork loin until you indicate your state of satiety by turning a tabletop dial from green to red. Even this ploy might not save you — the last time I was there and we went to red, the headwaiter marched over, turned the dial back to green, and forced us to try his filet mignon. Bless him, it was superb.

1686 Market, SF. (415) 552-8792, www.espetus.com

HELMAND


Back when I worked in North Beach, I walked past Helmand every day and tried to imagine what Afghan cuisine might entail. Content with stuffing myself with 50-cent dim sum and Cafe Trieste instead, I never ventured inside until I discovered the well-stocked, all-you-can-eat lunch buffet for $9.95. I can now report back with certainty — Afghan cuisine means yogurt-based sauces, lots of lamb, and even a mouthwateringly delicious okra-and-tomato stew (bendi). The baked pumpkin in sugar (kaddo) is universally praised, and the leek-filled ravioli (aushak) are morsels of delectable pungency.

430 Broadway, SF. (415) 362-0641, www.helmandrestaurantsanfrancisco.com

TODAI


Todai might be the best reason to take BART to Daly City. Located a hop, skip, and jump away from the station, this Olympic-size smorgasbord of Japanese food makes Sushi Boat look like the kiddie pool. At Todai you’ll find sushi aplenty (including roll-your-own), plus an array of salads, shabu shabu, calamari, unagi skewers (yum!), grilled meats, gyoza, udon, teriyaki, tempura, crab legs, and even bite-size cream puffs and green tea–flavored cheesecake chunks. The high school cafeteria atmosphere is on the cheerless side, but the inexpensive carafes of hot sake do help to alleviate any lingering flashbacks of social unease.

1901 Junipero Serra Blvd., Daly City. (650) 997-0882, www.todai.com

GOAT HILL PIZZA


Like most people who have grown up accustomed to a regional variety of pizza, I admit to pizza crust favoritism — in my case, a preference for thick and bready, Rocky Mountain–style. Goat Hill somehow manages to trump my predilection with a specialty of its own, the sourdough crust. Not only does it adequately sop up all that extraneous cheese grease, but it also complements all kinds of toppings, from the familiar (pepperoni) to the esoteric (linguica). Best of all, every Monday night at the Potrero Hill location and daily at the Howard Street address, it’s all-you-can-eat, plus salad.

300 Connecticut, SF. (415) 641-1440; 525 Howard, SF. (415) 357-1440. www.goathill.com

STAR OF INDIA


Though my love of Indian food is generally all-encompassing enough to overlook some of the more common blunders cheap Indian restaurants are prone to (too much grease, not enough spice), it’s nice to be able to sidestep caution and go straight for the gustatory gusto. The daily buffet at Star of India is blessedly low on the grease index, and at $8.95 for unlimited trips to the steam table, I can overlook the spice issue. The vindaloo is fiery enough, the sag paneer delightfully smooth, and the assorted pickled veggies a great little garnish. Chai tea and a dessert option are included.

2127 Polk, SF. (415) 292-6699, www.starofindiaonpolk.com

CLUB WAZIEMA


Vegetarians, rejoice! Club Waziema’s got the $9 all-you-can-eat platter especially for you. Boasting the most incongruous decor of any Ethiopian restaurant in town, the restaurant has a bordello-chic look — complete with crushed velvet wallpaper — that only highlights the pleasure of plowing your fingers into spongy blankets of piping hot injera and stuffing them full of collard greens, spicy lentils, and vegetable stew. Sip a glass of delicate honey wine with dinner, or wait until afterward and start in on the G-and-T’s from the full-service bar.

543 Divisadero, SF. (415) 346-6641, www.clubwaziema.com *

To Helltrack and back

-
0

FILM I had a lot of hope for Rad. Every month in BMX Action there’d be a new scrap of news about some top pro who was going to ride in the movie, including my personal favorite racer, “Hollywood” Mike Miranda. When photos of the Helltrack — site of the film’s climactic race — came out, you could lean your ear to the ground and hear the hearts of BMX groms beat just a little faster.

I watched the movie at Cinedome 7 East in Fremont with my buddy Dave. The opening footage of pro freestylers Eddie Fiola, Ron Wilkerson, and Brian Blyther killing it at Pipeline Skatepark seemed poised to fulfill the print hype, until we became aware of the backing tune, “Break the Ice,” by John Farnham: “Getting ready to break the ice / Feels like time is standing still / Aiming right for your heart / Getting ready to take another spill.” The Rad soundtrack was cheesy even in 1986, especially to a 15-year-old punk rock kid.

And the movie? Pure Hollywood schmaltz: local hero Cru Jones (Bill Allen) beats a corporate greed-meister at his own game. But more than two decades later, Rad wears a little better. For a movie directed by a stunt performer, it did hit the crucial themes of being a BMX kid: riding your bike all day, getting chased by the cops, jumping anything that crossed your path, and having big dreams about being one of the handful who could make a living at it. It’s no wonder old-timers on the chat boards at vintagebmx.com and os-bmx.com are constantly making Rad references. Rad is the BMXers’ Rocky Horror Picture Show. It got no love in the theaters, and it hasn’t officially been released on DVD, but it’s achieved timelessness as a cult classic. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

Over the phone from SoCal, Rad star Bill Allen talks BMX, berms, and bicycle boogies.

SFBG You had stunt riders doubling for you in the film, but had you been into BMX at all before you made Rad?

BILL ALLEN I came at it from an actor’s standpoint and not a BMX background at all. The ugly truth of it is my mother wouldn’t let me have a bicycle growing up, but of course I always rode my friends’ bikes and got into trouble anyway.

SFBG How was it working with the professional riders on Rad?

BA There were a lot of actual BMX guys from the freestyle and the racing worlds and a lot of stunt guys, and they pretty much all had the same crazy blood pumping through their veins. And I tend to hang out with stunt guys anyway, so it was a great time.

SFBG Did any crazy, unscripted stuff happen while you were filming?

BA I remember fooling around on the bike and nearly cracking my skull open just before I had to go do a take. Use those helmets. They really can save you. Also, I don’t know if many people know this, but in [Rad director] Hal Needham’s style of filmmaking, he’d start off a situation like Helltrack with half a dozen cameras or more and just let the guys go at it. So a lot of the stunts that you see are not stunts — these guys really are going down hard.

SFBG What was Helltrack like in person?

BA It was unbelievable. That first drop-off would give you heart attacks just standing there looking at it. And these were teenagers having to do these things, like going into that Kix cereal bowl and off the spoon. There were a bunch of little berms where I know at least one guy broke his ankle — really incredibly dangerous stuff that had never been tried before.

SFBG I’m sure a lot of people ask you about the bicycle boogie scene.

BA Oh god. [Pause] It’s [like] being beaten over the head with an ’80s stick. It’s just very indicative of that time period, and that’s not always a great thing, if it’s the ’80s we’re talking about.

SFBG What about the ass-sliding? Another classic Rad moment …

BA It was really cold, and they gave us these wetsuits which did zero good if you’re just gonna be in and out of the water. It was one of the less glamorous parts about the job.

SFBG When was the last time you watched Rad?

BA Probably 10 years. It’s hard for me to watch anything as an actor. You just wish you could change everything. But the racing sequences are stellar, and I guess that’s why people watch the movie time and time again.

SFBG Is it true that they’re thinking of doing a Rad sequel?

BA I think that’s one of those rumors that refuses to die. They haven’t even put the movie out on DVD yet, but people ask about [a sequel] all the time.

SFBG The time is ripe for a Rad revival — did you know that, for the first time, BMX is going to be a sport in the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

BA I did not know that. That’s incredible. That’s so cool! (Cheryl Eddy)

For more on Bill Allen, visit www.billallenrad.com; to sign the online petition for a Rad DVD release, visit www.petitiononline.com/RAD/petition.html.

 

Dine Listings

-
0

Welcome to our dining listings, a detailed guide by neighborhood of some great places to grab a bite, hang out with friends, or impress the ones you love with thorough knowledge of this delectable city. Restaurants are reviewed by Paul Reidinger (PR) or staff. All area codes are 415, and all restaurants are wheelchair accessible, except where noted.

B Breakfast

BR Saturday and/or Sunday brunch

L Lunch

D Dinner

AE American Express

DC Diners Club

DISC Discover

MC MasterCard

V Visa

¢ less than $7 per entrée

$ $7–$12

$$ $13–$20

$$$ more than $20

DOWNTOWN/EMBARCADERO

Boulevard runs with ethereal smoothness — you are cosseted as if at a chic private party — but despite much fame the place retains its brasserie trappings and joyous energy. (Staff) 1 Mission, SF. 543-6084. American, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Brindisi Cucina di Mare cooks seafood the south Italian way, and that means many, many ways, with many, many sorts of seafood. (PR, 4/04) 88 Belden Place, SF. 593-8000. Italian/seafood, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Bushi-tei melds East and West, old and new, with sublime elegance. Chef Seiji Wakabayashi is fluent in many of the culinary dialects of East Asia as well as the lofty idiom of France, and the result is cooking that develops its own integrity. The setting — of glass, candles, and ancient lumber — shimmers with enchantment. (PR, 3/06) 1638 Post, SF. 440-4959. Fusion, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

Café Claude is a hidden treasure of the city center. There is an excellent menu of traditional, discreetly citified French dishes, a youthful energy, and a romantic setting on a narrow, car-free lane reminiscent of the Marais. (PR, 10/06) 7 Claude Lane, SF. 392-3515. French, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Chaya Brasserie brings a taste of LA’s preen-and-be-seen culture to the waterfront. The Japanese-influenced food is mostly French, and very expensive. (Staff) 132 Embarcadero, SF. 777-8688. Fusion, D, $$$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Cortez has a Scandinavian Designs-on-acid look — lots of heavy, weird multicolored mobiles — but Pascal Rigo’s Mediterranean-influenced small plates will quickly make you forget you’re eating in a hotel. (Staff) 550 Geary (in the Hotel Adagio), SF. 292-6360. Mediterranean, B/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Cosmopolitan Cafe seems like a huge Pullman car. The New American menu emphasizes heartiness. (Staff) 121 Spear, SF. 543-4001. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

NORTH BEACH/CHINATOWN

Maykadeh Persian Cuisine is a great date restaurant, classy but not too pricey, and there are lots of veggie options both for appetizers and entrées. Khoresht bademjan was a delectable, deep red stew of tomato and eggplant with a rich, sweet, almost chocolatey undertone. (Staff) 470 Green, SF. 362-8286. Persian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Michelangelo Cafe There’s always a line outside this quintessential North Beach restaurant, but it’s well worth the sidewalk time for Michelangelo’s excellent Italian, served in a bustling, family-style atmosphere. The seafood dishes are recommended; approach the postprandial Gummi Bears at your own risk. (Staff) 597 Columbus, SF. 986-4058. Italian, D, $$.

Moose’s is famous for the Mooseburger, but the rest of the menu is comfortably sophisticated. The crowd is moneyed but not showy and definitely not nouveau. (Staff) 1652 Stockton, SF. 989-7800. American, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Pena Pacha Mama offers organic Bolivian cuisine as well as weekly performances of Andean song and dance. Dine on crusted lamb and yucca frita while watching a genuine flamenco performance in this intimate setting. (Staff) 1630 Powell, SF. 646-0018. Bolivian, BR/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Rico’s touts its salsas, and they are good, but so is almost everything else on the mainstream Mexican menu. (Staff) 943 Columbus, SF. 928-5404. Mexican, L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.

SOMA

AsiaSF Priscilla, Queen of the Desert meets Asian-influenced tapas at this amusingly surreal lounge. The drag queen burlesque spectacle draws a varied audience that’s a show in itself. (Staff) 201 Ninth St, SF. 255-2742. Fusion, D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Bacar means "wine goblet," and its wine menu is extensive — and affordable. Chef Arnold Wong’s eclectic American-global food plays along nicely. (Staff) 448 Brannan, SF. 904-4100. American, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Basil A serene, upscale oasis amid the industrial supply warehouses, Basil offers California-influenced Thai cuisine that’s lively and creative. (Staff) 1175 Folsom, SF. 552-8999. Thai, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Big Nate’s Barbecue is pretty stark inside — mostly linoleum arranged around a pair of massive brick ovens. But the hot sauce will make you sneeze. (Staff) 1665 Folsom, SF. 861-4242. Barbecue, L/D, $, MC/V.

Butler and the Chef brings a taste of Parisian café society — complete with pâtés, cornichons, and croques monsieurs — to sunny South Park. (PR, 5/04) 155A South Park, SF. French, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

NOB HILL/RUSSIAN HILL

Crustacean is famous for its roast Dungeness crab; the rest of the "Euro/Asian" menu is refreshingly Asian in emphasis. (Staff) 1475 Polk, SF. 776-2722. Fusion, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

East Coast West Delicatessen doesn’t look like a New York deli (too much space, air, light), but the huge, fattily satisfying Reubens, platters of meat loaf, black-and-white cookies, and all the other standards compare commendably to their East Coast cousins. (Staff) 1725 Polk, SF. 563-3542. Deli, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

La Folie could be a neighborhood spot or a destination or both, but either way or both ways it is sensational: an exercise in haute cuisine leavened with a West Coast sense of informality and playfulness. There is a full vegetarian menu and an ample selection of wines by the half bottle. (PR, 2/06) 2316 Polk, SF. 776-5577. French, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Grubstake might look like your typical Polk Gulch diner — sandwiches and burgers, open very late — but the kitchen also turns out some good mom-style Portuguese dishes, replete with olives, salt cod, and linguica. If you crave caldo verde at 3 a.m., this is the place. (Staff) 1525 Pine, SF. 673-8268. Portuguese/American, B/L/D, ¢, cash only.

*Matterhorn Restaurant offers dishes that aren’t fondue, but fondue (especially with beef) is the big deal and the answer to big appetites. For dessert: chocolate fondue! (Staff) 2323 Van Ness, SF. 885-6116. Swiss, $$, D, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

CIVIC CENTER/TENDERLOIN

Mekong Restaurant serves the foods of the Mekong River basin. There is a distinct Thai presence but also dishes with Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and even Chinese accents. (PR, 1/06) 791 O’Farrell, SF. 928-2772. Pan-Asian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Olive might look like a tapas bar, but what you want are the thin-crust pizzas, the simpler the toppings the better. The small plates offer eclectic pleasures, especially the Tuscan pâté and beef satay with peanut sauce. (Staff) 743 Larkin, SF. 776-9814. Pizza/eclectic, D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Pagolac For $10.95 a person you and two or more of your favorite beef eaters can dive into Pagolac’s specialty: seven-flavor beef. Less carnivorous types can try the cold spring rolls, shrimp on sugarcane, or lemongrass tofu. (Staff) 655 Larkin, SF. 776-3234. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢.

*Saha serves "Arabic fusion cuisine" — a blend of the Middle East and California — in a cool, spare setting behind the concierge’s desk at the Hotel Carlton. One senses the imminence of young rock stars, drawn perhaps by the lovely chocolate fondue. (PR, 9/04) 1075 Sutter, SF. 345-9547. Arabic/fusion, B/BR/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

HAYES VALLEY

Frjtz serves first-rate Belgian fries, beer, crepes, and sandwiches in an art-house atmosphere. If the noise overwhelms, take refuge in the lovely rear garden. (Staff) 579 Hayes, SF. 864-7654; also at Ghirardelli Square, SF. 928-3886. Belgian, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Hayes Street Grill started more than a quarter century ago as an emulation of the city’s old seafood houses, and now it’s an institution itself. The original formula — immaculate seafood simply prepared, with choice of sauce and French fries — still beats vibrantly at the heart of the menu. Service is impeccable, the setting one of relaxed grace. (PR, 7/06) 816 Folsom, SF. 863-5545. Seafood, L/D, $$$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Sauce enjoys the services of chef Ben Paula, whose uninhibited California cooking is as easy to like as a good pop song. (PR, 5/05) 131 Gough, SF. 252-1369. California, D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Suppenküche has a Busvan for Bargains, butcher-block look that gives context to its German cuisine. If you like schnitzel, brats, roasted potatoes, eggs, cheese, cucumber salad, cold cuts, and cold beer, you’ll love it here. (Staff) 601 Hayes, SF. 252-9289. German, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.

*Zuni Cafe is one of the most celebrated — and durable — restaurants in town, perhaps because its kitchen has honored the rustic country cooking of France and Italy for the better part of two decades. (PR, 2/05) 1658 Market, SF. 552-2522. California, B/L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

CASTRO/NOE VALLEY/GLEN PARK

La Ciccia offers the distinct cuisine of Sardinia — Italian yet not quite — in an appealingly subdued storefront setting in outer Noe Valley. Pizzas are excellent, and the food is notably meaty, though with some lovely maritime twists. A unique and riveting wine list. (PR, 6/06) 291 30th St., SF. 550-8114. Sardinian/Italian, D, $$, MC/V.

Côté Sud brings a stylish breath of Provence to the Castro. The cooking reflects an unfussy elegance; service is as crisp as a neatly folded linen napkin. Nota bene: you must climb a set of steps to reach the place. (Staff) 4238 18th St, SF. 255-6565. French, D, $$, MC/V.

Eric’s Dig into the likes of mango shrimp, hoisin green beans, and spicy eggplant with chicken in this bright, airy space. (Staff) 1500 Church, SF. 282-0919. Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.

Eureka Restaurant and Lounge combines, in the old Neon Chicken space, a classic Castro sensibility (mirrors everywhere, fancy sparkling water) with a stylish all-American menu that reflects Boulevard and Chenery Park bloodlines. Prices are high. (PR, 12/06) 4063 18th St. SF. 431-6000. American, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

*Firefly remains an exemplar of the neighborhood restaurant in San Francisco: it is homey and classy, hip and friendly, serving an American menu — deftly inflected with ethnic and vegetarian touches — that’s the match of any in the city. (PR, 9/04) 4288 24th St, SF. 821-7652. American, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

HAIGHT/COLE VALLEY/WESTERN ADDITION

Metro Cafe brings the earthy chic of Paris’s 11th arrondissement to the Lower Haight, prix fixe and all. (Staff) 311 Divisadero, SF. 552-0903. French, B/BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

New Ganges Restaurant is short on style — it is as if the upmarket revolution in vegetarian restaurants never happened — but there is a homemade freshness to the food you won’t find at many other places. (Staff) 775 Frederick, SF. 681-4355. Vegetarian/Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Raja Cuisine of India serves up decent renditions of Indian standards in an unassuming, even spare, setting. Low prices. (Staff) 500 Haight, SF. 255-6000. Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Rotee isn’t the fanciest south Asian restaurant in the neighborhood, but it is certainly one of the most fragrant, and its bright oranges and yellows (food, walls) do bring good cheer. Excellent tandoori fish. (PR, 12/04) 400 Haight, SF. 552-8309. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, $, MC/V.

Tsunami Sushi and Sake Bar brings hip Japanese-style seafood to the already hip Café Abir complex. Skull-capped sushi chefs, hefty and innovative rolls. (Staff) 1306 Fulton, SF. 567-7664. Japanese/sushi, D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Zazie is one of the best, possibly the very best, of the city’s neighborhood French bistros. The excellent food is fairly priced and the service well-honed; even diners in the open-air garden at the rear of the restaurant will feel coddled. (PR, 1/07) 941 Cole, SF. 564-5332. French, B/BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

Ziryab brings a touch of eastern Med class to a slightly sketchy block of Divisadero in the Western Addition. The menu graciously innovates Middle Eastern standards while adding a California twist or two for fun. Faux stonework lends a Vegas air to the setting. (PR, 3/07) 528 Divisadero, SF. 269-5430. Middle Eastern, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Zoya takes some finding — it is in the little turret of the Days Inn Motor Lodge at Grove and Gough — but the view over the street’s treetops is bucolic, and the cooking is simple, seasonal, direct, and ingredient driven. (PR, 12/05) 465 Grove, SF. 626-9692. California, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

MISSION/BERNAL HEIGHTS/POTRERO HILL

Cafe Phoenix looks like a junior-high cafeteria, but the California-deli food is fresh, tasty, and honest, and the people making it are part of a program to help the emotionally troubled return to employability. (Staff) 1234 Indiana, SF. 282-9675, ext. 239. California, B/L, ¢, MC/V.

Caffe Cozzolino Get it to go: everything’s about two to four bucks more if you eat it there. (Staff) 300 Precita, SF. 285-6005. Italian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Caffe d’Melanio is the place to go if you want your pound of coffee beans roasted while you enjoy an Argentine-Italian dinner of pasta, milanesa, and chimichurri sauce. During the day the café offers a more typically Cal-American menu of better-than-average quality. First-rate coffee beans. (PR, 10/04) 1314 Ocean, SF. 333-3665. Italian/Argentine, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Il Cantuccio strikingly evokes that little trattoria you found near the Ponte Vecchio on your last trip to Florence. (Staff) 3228 16th St, SF. 861-3899. Italian, D, $, MC/V.

Chez Papa Bistrot sits like a beret atop Potrero Hill. The food is good, the staff’s French accents authentic, the crowd a lively cross section, but the place needs a few more scuffs and quirks before it can start feeling real. (Staff) 1401 18th St, SF. 824-8210. French, BR/L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Circolo Restaurant and Lounge brings Peruvian- and Asian-influenced cooking into a stylishly barnlike urban space where dot-commers gathered of old. Some of the dishes are overwrought, but the food is splendid on the whole. (PR, 6/04) 500 Florida, SF. 553-8560. Nuevo Latino/Asian, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Couleur Café reminds us that French food need be neither fancy nor insular. The kitchen playfully deploys a world of influences — the duck-confit quesadilla is fabulous — and service is precise and attentive despite the modest setting at the foot of Potrero Hill. (PR, 2/06) 300 De Haro, SF. 255-1021. French, BR/L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.

*Delfina has grown from a neighborhood restaurant to an event, but an expanded dining room has brought the noise under control, and as always, the food — intense variations on a theme of Tuscany — could not be better. (PR, 2/04) 3621 18th St, SF. 552-4055. California, D, $$, MC/V.

Dosa serves dosas, the south Indian crepes, along with a wealth of other, and generally quite spicy, dishes from the south of the subcontinent. The cooking tends toward a natural meatlessness; the crowds are intense, like hordes of passengers inquiring about a delayed international flight. (PR, 1/06) 995 Valencia, SF. 642-3672. South Indian, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Double Play sits across the street from what once was Seals Stadium, but while the field and team are gone, the restaurant persists as an authentic sports bar with a solidly masculine aura — mitts on the walls, lots of dark wood, et cetera. The all-American food (soups, sandwiches, pastas, meat dishes, lots of fries) is outstanding. (Staff) 2401 16th St, SF. 621-9859. American, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack offers a tasty, inexpensive, late-night alternative to Pasta Pomodoro. The touch of human hands is everywhere evident. (Staff) 18 Virginia, SF. 206-2086. Italian, D, $, cash only.

Foreign Cinema serves some fine New American food in a spare setting of concrete and glass that warms up romantically once the sun goes down. (Staff) 2534 Mission, SF. 648-7600. California, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Front Porch mixes a cheerfully homey setting (with a front porch of sorts), a hipster crowd, and a Caribbean-inflected comfort menu into a distinctive urban cocktail. The best dishes, such as a white polenta porridge with crab, are Range-worthy, and nothing on the menu is much more than $10. (PR, 10/06) 65A 29th St, SF. 695-7800. American/Caribbean, BR/D, $, MC/V.

Herbivore is adorned in the immaculate-architect style: angular blond-wood surfaces and precise cubbyholes abound. (Staff) 983 Valencia, SF. 826-5657; 531 Divisadero (at Fell), SF. 885-7133. Vegetarian, L/D, $, MC/V.

MARINA/PACIFIC HEIGHTS/LAUREL HEIGHTS

*Quince doesn’t much resemble its precursor, the Meetinghouse: the setting is more overtly luxurious, the food a pristine Franco-Cal-Ital variant rather than hearty New American. Still, it’s an appealing place to meet. (PR, 7/04) 1701 Octavia, SF. 775-8500. California, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

Rigolo combines the best of Pascal Rigo’s boulangeries — including the spectacular breads — with some of the simpler elements (such as roast chicken) of his higher-end places. The result is excellent value in a bustling setting. (PR, 1/05) 3465 California, SF. 876-7777. California/Mediterranean, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Rose’s Cafe has a flexible, all-day menu that starts with breakfast sandwiches; moves into bruschettas, salads, and pizzas; and finishes with grilled dinner specials such as salmon, chicken, and flat-iron steak. (Staff) 2298 Union, SF. 775-2200. California, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Rosti Getting half a chicken along with roasted potatoes and an assortment of vegetables for $7.95 in the Marina is cause for celebration in itself. (Staff) 2060 Chestnut, SF. 929-9300. Italian, L/D, $, AE/DISC/V.

Saji Japanese Cuisine Sit at the sushi bar and ask the resident sushi makers what’s particularly good that day. As for the hot dishes, seafood yosenabe, served in a clay pot, is a virtual Discovery Channel of finned and scaly beasts, all tasty and fresh. (Staff) 3232 Scott, SF. 931-0563. Japanese, D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.

Sociale serves first-rate Cal-Ital food in bewitching surroundings — a heated courtyard, a beautifully upholstered interior — that will remind you of some hidden square in some city of Mediterranean Europe. (Staff) 3665 Sacramento, SF. 921-3200. Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Sushi Groove is easily as cool as its name. Behind wasabi green velvet curtains, salads can be inconsistent, but the sushi is impeccable, especially the silky salmon and special white tuna nigiri. (Staff) 1916 Hyde, SF. 440-1905. Japanese, D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

SUNSET

Sea Breeze Cafe looks like a dive, but the California cooking is elevated, literally and figuratively. Lots of witty salads, a rum-rich crème brûlée. (Staff) 3940 Judah, SF. 242-6022. California, BR/L/D, $$, MC/V.

So Restaurant brings the heat, in the form of huge soup and noodle — and soupy noodle — dishes, many of them liberally laced with hot peppers and chiles. The pot stickers are homemade and exceptional, the crowd young and noisy. Cheap. (PR, 10/06) 2240 Irving, SF. 731-3143. Chinese/noodles, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Tasty Curry still shows traces of an earlier life as a Korean hibachi restaurant (i.e., venting hoods above most of the tables), but the South Asian food is cheap, fresh, and packs a strong kick. (PR, 1/04) 1375 Ninth Ave, SF. 753-5122. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Tennessee Grill could as easily be called the Topeka Grill, since its atmosphere is redolent of Middle America. Belly up to the salad bar for huge helpings of the basics to accompany your meat loaf or calf’s liver. (Staff) 1128 Taraval, SF. 664-7834. American, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Thai Cottage isn’t really a cottage, but it is small in the homey way, and its Thai menu is sharp and vivid in the home-cooking way. Cheap, and the N train stops practically at the front door. (PR, 8/04) 4041 Judah, SF. 566-5311. Thai, L/D, $, MC/V.

*Xiao Loong elevates the neighborhood Chinese restaurant experience to one of fine dining, with immaculate ingredients and skillful preparation in a calm architectural setting. (PR, 8/05) 250 West Portal, SF. 753-5678. Chinese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Yum Yum Fish is basically a fish store: three or four little tables with fish-print tablecloths under glass, fish-chart art along the wall, and fish-price signs all over the place. (Staff) 2181 Irving, SF. 566-6433. Sushi, L/D, ¢.

RICHMOND

*Pizzetta 211 practices the art of the pizza in a glowing little storefront space. Thin crusts, unusual combinations, a few side dishes of the highest quality. (PR, 2/04) 211 23rd Ave, SF. 379-9880. Pizza/Italian, L/D, $.

Q rocks, both American-diner-food-wise and noisy-music-wise. Servings of such gratifyingly tasty dishes as barbecued ribs, fish tacos, and rosemary croquettes are huge. (Staff) 225 Clement, SF. 752-2298. American, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

RoHan Lounge serves a variety of soju cocktails to help wash down all those Asian tapas. Beware the kimchee. Lovely curvaceous banquettes. (Staff) 3809 Geary, SF. 221-5095. Asian, D, $, AE/MC/V.

Singapore Malaysian Restaurant eschews decor for cheap, tasty plates, where you’ll find flavors ranging from Indian to Dutch colonial to Thai. Seafood predominates in curries, soups, grills, and plenty of rice and noodle dishes. (Staff) 836 Clement, SF. 750-9518. Malaysian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Spices! has an exclamation point for a reason: its Chinese food, mainly Szechuan and Taiwanese, with an oasis of Shanghai-style dishes, is fabulously hot. Big young crowds, pulsing house music, a shocking orange and yellow paint scheme. Go prepared, leave happy. (Staff) 294 Eighth Ave, SF. 752-8884. Szechuan/Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.

BAYVIEW/HUNTERS POINT/SOUTH

Bella Vista Continental Restaurant commands a gorgeous view of the Peninsula and South Bay from its sylvan perch on Skyline Boulevard, and the continental food, though a little stately, is quite good. The look is rustic-stylish (exposed wood beams, servers in dinner jackets), and the tone one of informal horse-country wealth. (PR, 3/07) 13451 Skyline Blvd., Woodside. (650) 851-1229. Continental, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Cable Car Coffee Shop Atmospherically speaking, you’re looking at your basic downtown South San Francisco old-style joint, one that serves a great Pacific Scramble for $4.95 and the most perfectest hash browns to be tasted. (Staff) 423 Grand, South SF. (650) 952-9533. American, B/BR/L, ¢.

Cliff’s Bar-B-Q and Seafood Some things Cliff’s got going for him: excellent mustard greens, just drenched in flavorfulness, and barbecued you name it. Brisket. Rib tips. Hot links. Pork ribs. Beef ribs. Baby backs. And then there are fried chickens and, by way of health food, fried fishes. (Staff) 2177 Bayshore, SF. 330-0736. Barbecue, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/MC/V.

BERKELEY/EMERYVILLE/NORTH

Café de la Paz Specialties include African-Brazilian "xim xim" curries, Venezuelan corn pancakes, and heavenly blackened seacakes served with orange-onion yogurt. (Staff) 1600 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-0662. Latin American, BR/L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Cafe Rouge All the red meat here comes from highly regarded Niman Ranch, and all charcuterie are made in-house. (Staff) 1782 Fourth St, Berk. (510) 525-1440. American, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

César You’ll be tempted to nibble for hours from Chez Panisse-related César’s Spanish-inspired tapas — unless you can’t get past the addictive sage-and-rosemary-flecked fried potatoes. (Staff) 1515 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 883-0222. Spanish, D, $, DISC/MC/V.

OAKLAND/ALAMEDA

Mama’s Royal Cafe Breakfast is the draw here — even just-coffee-for-me types might succumb when confronted with waffles, French toast, pancakes, tofu scrambles, huevos rancheros, and 20 different omelets. (Staff) 4012 Broadway, Oakl. (510) 547-7600. American, B/L, ¢.

La Mexicana has a 40-year tradition of stuffing its customers with delicious, simply prepared staples (enchiladas, tacos, tamales, chile rellenos, menudo) and specials (carnitas, chicken mole), all served in generous portions at moderate prices. (Staff) 3930 E 14th St, Oakl. (510) 533-8818. Mexican, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Nan Yang offers too many great dishes — ginger salad, spicy fried potato cakes, coconut chicken noodle soup, garlic noodles, succulent lamb curry that melts in your mouth — to experience in one visit. (Staff) 6048 College, Oakl. (510) 655-3298. Burmese, L/D, $, MC/V. *

Innervisions

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but cinema’s eternal enfant terrible Jean-Luc Godard did direct Contempt, Band of Outsiders, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, Masculine-Feminine, Two or Three Things I Know about Her, and Weekend (and a few others too) in the four years leading up to the political explosions of 1968. These trenchant, tenacious films are as good a record as any we have of an era when light-speed changes in culture and politics only seemed to make history grind to a halt. Each represents a blast of here-and-now consciousness.

Given the feverish tenor of this output, the relative quietude of 1967’s Two or Three Things I Know about Her (playing at the Castro Theatre in a striking new 35mm print from Rialto Pictures) comes as something of a surprise 40 years on. Sandwiched between the hyperventiutf8g back-and-forth of Masculine-Feminine and Weekend ‘s apocalyptic moan, the film is the eye of the storm of Godard’s ’60s, that crucial moment between impact and explosion. The director supposedly got the idea for Two or Three Things from reading a news piece on the phenomenon of middle-class Parisian women working as prostitutes to pay for their bourgeois accoutrement. This loaded role comes to life in Juliette, introduced to us twice, via a typically Brechtian flourish, as both character and actress (Marina Vlady).

Her life’s arrangement is not a story so much as a situation for Godard, and correspondingly, the film isn’t a narrative but rather a study. The Summer of Love notwithstanding, Two or Three Things isn’t concerned with Juliette’s sexuality (any sensuousness is incidental to Raoul Coutard’s color-mad cinematography) or psychology (something that Godard never has much use for, especially when it comes to his female characters); a poster for Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu is the only evidence of female suffering here. For Godard, prostitution is simply an apt metaphor for the dreary life of the new, amorphous Paris to which the "her" of the title refers: the Paris of the outer rings, then being settled by a disassociated middle class and recently set ablaze by more indignant communities.

So then, will the real belle du jour please stand up? It’s Juliette who tends to occupy the frame, sleepwalking through boutiques and barren apartment spaces (like Woody Allen’s, Godard’s film style often seems a matter of real estate), but Two or Three Things‘ most intimate presence isn’t visualized at all. Throughout the film Godard himself interrupts with a whispered, reflective voice-over: an existential director’s commentary track 30 years before DVD technology made this kind of authorial expressivity standard-issue.

No one Godard film is any more "Godard" than another, though Two or Three Things does feel unusually direct in its peripatetic meditations. Conversations, when they occur, are still tête-à-tête volleys (talk never flows with Godard), but more often than not it seems the characters are simply verbalizing their own reveries on life in the pseudocity. The maestro reserves the most powerfully searching musings for his own voice: in particular, the famous "clouds in my coffee" sequence, in which he parses the irresolvable tension between "crushing" objectivity and "isoutf8g" subjectivity amid extreme, lyrical close-ups of a coffee’s swirl, bubbles bursting and shades swallowed by the closeness of his voice.

As with most things Godard, there are multiple meanings to this series of shots, which simultaneously emphasize existential dread and a remarkable capacity for abstraction. It’s direct contact with an imagination on fire, reveling in the difference between thought and expression. Of course, a film built entirely on asides — in addition to Godard’s and Juliette’s reflections, we get many landscapes surveying Paris under construction and the usual café dialogues — is as likely to be a soporific as a revelation; reverie and sleepiness are frequent bedfellows in the movie theater and never more so than here. Certainly, Two or Three Things lacks the pop frisson of Masculine-Feminine or Weekend, but it’s also, in many ways, a more palatable work — not least of all for a toning down of the toxic sexism that mars Godard’s best, angriest work.

Two or Three Things will always be thought of as a stepping stone, though the film’s beauty lies in its singularity. In another, less famous but no less profound voice-over sequence, Godard contemplates the nature of his representations of reality ("Should I have talked about Juliette or the leaves?") while Juliette has her car washed. As the car (lollipop red, of course) shuttles from station to station, so too does Godard’s mind lurch from idea to idea before settling on an underlying truth: the necessity for an indefatigable "passion for expression." The world can be anything he wishes to make it. It’s a beautiful, surprisingly hopeful idea, and for a moment all that followed Two or Three Things slips away, leaving us only this unwieldy, pregnant now. *

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER

March 30–April 5

Mon.–Wed. and Fri.–Sun., 7 and 9 p.m. (also Wed. and Sat.–Sun., 1, 3, and 5 p.m.), $6–$9

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

>

Taking the heat

-
0

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Sockywonk lost her mouth on account of the chemo. We were sitting around wondering about lunch, which is one of my three favorite things to wonder about, and she said (and I quote): "I wonder if I have my mouth back."

I looked up from my prayer book, or food journal, and asked, "Excuse me?"

"I wonder if I can handle the salsa at Papalote," she said. She’s been off the sauce for a couple months and off chemo now for maybe one month. Her head’s starting to get fuzzy, but she hadn’t yet tested her capacity for spicy hot — which used to be considerable. For a while even black pepper was fucking with her, mouthwise.

Weird, huh?

Well, a lot of things are weird. Golf … and I’ll never understand why San Francisco lets churchgoers park in the middle of the street on Sundays. Excuse me? Separation of church and state?

My bright orange skirt was perfectly color-coordinated with my flower-print shirt, which screamed every color of the rainbow and then some. It was sunny and warm and lunchtime in Noe Valley. Sockywonk looked about as badass and beautiful as ever, with her old-man-style Florida-style straw hat, bald head, blue jeans, watch chain …

"That’s a man," some guy said to some other guys sitting at a sidewalk table on 24th Street. Not only did he not try to conceal his voice, he seemed to say it louder than normal. Sockywonk pretended not to hear, poor thing, but she had to, unless chemo took her ears too.

Now, I was never one for chivalry, not even as a dude, but it occurs to me retrospectively that this was perfect weather for new leaves. Spring!

I’m so lucky to have this wavy-world restaurant column in which to do everything over again. Instead of just keeping walking, I grabbed on to my dear girlfriend’s elbow, turned her to face the speaker, and corrected him: "She’s not a man," I said. "Look. Tits!"

And there isn’t a shade of a dot of a doubt in my mangled mind that the Wonk would have lifted her shirt — had this actually happened — and showed them. And his friends would have hooted and high-fived us, and the guy would have felt like an idiot, and Socky’s dog, Barkywonk, would have sniffed his pant leg and pissed on it, assuring him that he was, in fact, an idiot.

You don’t make fun of sick people, everybody knows. And, for the record, Sockywonk has long, pretty, and very girly hair when she doesn’t have cancer.

The question was, did she have her mouth back?

She did!

The test was that zip-zooey orange salsa they have at Papalote, made with roasted tomatoes and pumpkin seeds. It’s ridiculously good, and nice and spicy, and Papalote is my new favorite taquería on the strength of this salsa alone. But everything else was great too.

The chips were fresh, warm, free …

We got a fish taco and a shrimp taco that time, and then a couple days later, when we had to go back on account of bad days, we got a Soyrizo burrito and a carne asada burrito. I’ll let you guess who ordered which.

Chorizo is probably my least favorite kind of sausage in this wide world of wonderful sausages. Soyrizo … well, Sockywonk swears by it, that’s all I’ll say.

And they don’t have carnitas, which is strange and tragic, but the carne asada was great, and the tortilla was griddled, not steamed. And the salsa is addictive. You can buy a jar of it for six bucks, I think, and five bucks the next time if you bring back the jar. Sockywonk used to do this before chemo took her mouth. Even though she lives a short walk from 24th and Valencia. Because you never know when you’re going to wake up in the middle of the night needing a little heat.

Speaking of which, we both had unreasonable plans of getting lucky later, since it was St. Patrick’s Day and all the boys in the world and a lot of lesbians would be drunk. She went to a show; I went to Oakland. I was supposed to meet some friends at opening night of the new lesbian bar Velvet. Oakland’s first? That’s what my friends said. I didn’t believe it, until I saw the two block–long line waiting to get in.

And just kept driving. *

PAPALOTE MEXICAN GRILL

Mon.–Sat., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.–9 p.m.

3409 24th St., SF

(415) 970-8815

Takeout available

Beer

Credit cards not accepted

Bustling

Wheelchair accessible

>

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

David Lazarus, who is a pretty good consumer reporter over at the San Francisco Chronicle, got himself badly singed in a blogosphere flame war a couple weeks ago when he wrote a column arguing that newspapers should start charging for their content online. No more free newspaper Web sites; if you gotta pay half a buck to the buy the print product, you shouldn’t get it electronically for free.

It’s kind of an insider industry debate, and frankly, this stuff is starting to bore me, and nobody else should care much — except that in his fights with bloggers and in a follow-up column March 23, Lazarus got into an issue that is crucial for all of us to think about and understand in the new media world.

Lazarus argues that if the Web content is free, there won’t be any money to pay professional reporters (like him). Some of the folks who went after him said, in effect, so what? With tens of thousands of bloggers out there working for free, who needs David Lazarus? Who needs to pay for any news on the Web? Who even needs newspapers; why can’t the blogosphere just make its own news?

What that argument amounts to is a failure to understand that there will always be — and must, for the sake of democracy, always be — people who work in the news business. By that I mean people who are paid full-time to follow politicians, monitor city hall, and investigate wrongdoing.

They may not work in what are now traditional newsrooms or at traditional news outlets. But the typical blogger, who comments on other news reports and does some citizen journalism while holding down a day job or going to school, isn’t going to fill the role of full-time reporters. It’s not that the bloggers aren’t smart or good writers or, frankly, better reporters than a lot of the pros out there. It’s just that this job can’t be a part-time gig.

Lazarus misses the fact that giving away newspaper stories isn’t anything new. The alternative press figured out years ago that newspapers can operate like radio stations — put the content out free and sell ads around it — and make enough money to hire staff.

But the bloggers don’t seem to understand that hiring staff is key. Look at Daily Kos. It’s a huge success in part because Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who runs the site, is a great writer and very talented, but it’s also because he does it as a full-time gig. He doesn’t charge for anything; he takes ads. But that pays for at least one full-time staffer and soon, I think, will pay for more.

The time will come (and I bet it’s sooner than later) when Daily Kos or another similar site will have enough money to decide to hire a full-time political blogger to, say, cover the presidential race. That person may not be someone who went to journalism school, and he or she may not write with the style or sensibility of the San Francisco Chronicle or the New York Times or the Washington Post. But that reporter-blogger will be able to do what most citizen journalists can’t — that is, devote full time to the job — and thus will get original stories, real news. That’s never going to change. *

Superlist No. 828: MMA fight clubs

-
0

› superlists@sfbg.com

You’ve seen them on cable reality shows or pay-per-view: muscle-bound men with the temperament of abused pit bulls smashing and kicking each other into bloody pulps while the crowd roars with approval. It might be the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Pride Fighting Championship, Vale Tudo, or a host of other names given to the brutal — and increasingly popular — realm of mixed martial arts (MMA).

A combination of standard Western boxing, traditional Thai boxing known as Muay Thai, jujitsu, and other fighting techniques, MMA has only been legal in California for one year, a selling point for many local martial arts schools. Some of the competition’s brightest stars hail from Bay Area clubs. A course in MMA is a serious exercise in masochism. Could you be the next champ?

Twenty-four-year-old Gilbert Melendez, last year’s winner of the Pride FC held in Nagoya, Japan, trains exclusively at Fairtex Muay Thai Fitness (132–140 Hawthorne, SF. 1-888-324-7839, www.fairtex.com). The vast gym holds heavy bags for striking, a full-size boxing ring, ample floor space for grappling and yoga, a full range of free weights and machines, and an almost constant feed of fighting competitions on the facility’s numerous wide-screen televisions.

Eduardo Rocha Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy (3600 Grand, Oakl. 510-207-6640, www.cateambjj.com) trains students in grappling fundamentals, but Rocha and some of his advanced students spend a lot of time training for competition. The training atmosphere is intimate, and Rocha’s students took top honors at the 2006 Pan-American Jiu-Jitsu Championships.

Located in the Dogpatch, Universal Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (2572 Third St., SF. 415-282-5700, www.ubjj.com) offers classes in MMA on Wednesday nights.

While Ralph Gracie Jiu-Jitsu (www.ralphgracie.com) has two locations, one in Berkeley (1500 Ashby, Berk. 510-486-8000) and the other in San Francisco (178 Valencia, SF. 415-522-477), Gracie and his brothers have been opening new academies around the world every month. Gracie, himself a champion, retains black belts who trained under him to run his academies. Kurt Osiander, nicknamed the Rhino, heads the San Francisco academy; Carlos "Sapoa" Oryzune instructs at the Berkeley academy.

One of a few schools that split from Fairtex a few years ago after the 2003 shooting death of Fairtex San Francisco founder Alex Gong, Fight and Fitness (734 Bryant, SF. 415-495-2211, www.fightandfitness.com) can be found in SoMa about a block away from the Hall of Justice. Inside the small and musty gym, fighters train at all levels with instructors such as Bunkerd Faphimai, a three-time world champion in Muay Thai. A row of championship belts hangs from a 20-foot rafter.

Another Fairtex offshoot lies back across the bridge near downtown Oakland. Pacific Ring Sports (659 15th St., Oakl. 510-444-5269) offers many of the same classes as Fight and Fitness. The facility is about twice the size, however, and its boxing classes are among the most popular in the Bay Area. The room has a large weight room, a boxing ring, wrestling mats, and a bunch of punching bags. MMA classes are taught twice a week, while Muay Thai, jujitsu, and boxing remain mainstays of the curriculum.

World Team USA (2575 Ocean, SF. 415-333-3496, www.worldteamusa.com) claims to train MMA fighters, but its strong suit is Muay Thai. The MMA classes are a little more than an hour long, much shorter than at some of the other gyms, but this school offers a good base for someone who might not be looking to fight professionally — and lots of kids’ classes too.

Open Door Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (2935 Chapman, Oakl. 510-532-3803) is very close to I-880 and about a 15-minute walk from the Fruitvale BART Station. The style of jujitsu taught here is meant for total-body strangulation, so it isn’t the place to learn some mean-ass strikes. Kids can take self-defense classes here too. *

Superlist No. 825: Restaurants with DJs

-
0

› superlists@sfbg.com

It’s a fact: lousy music can spoil a dining experience. We’ve all been to the too-loud restaurant where talking over the cheap sound system quickly becomes a losing battle. And nobody goes back to the place that put the Lionel Ritchie Millennium Collection on loop, or the hole-in-the-wall with the wonderfully authentic foreign food and the borderline torturous background music. Avoid aural indigestion by trying one of the many restaurants that have gone to great lengths to ensure the ambiance is as pleasing to your ears as the food is to your taste buds. The best time to hear dinner’s new soundtrack is typically during the weekend; however, a few eateries serve DJs with midweek meals.

Big-name residents such as Tom Thump lay down the tracks at Frisson (244 Jackson, SF. 415-956-3004, www.frissonsf.com), the quintessential meals and wheels of steel restaurant. With the main dining room’s circular layout and warm colors, the new American cuisine’s premium quality, and the neosoul, jazz-infused electronic audio, Frisson has the right chemistry.

Many DJs spin into the wee hours of the morning, but Levende Lounge (1710 Mission, SF. 415-864-5585, www.levendesf.com) DJs don’t hit the decks until breakfast. Live electronic music, a self-service Bloody Mary bar, and a build-your-own Benedict menu option reinvent Sunday brunch. Levende strives to bring up-and-coming local talent as well as internationally recognized names to the table.

Residents Sabrina and Benji set the mood for the stunning, floor-to-ceiling bay view and noteworthy fusion of California and pan-Asian cuisine at Butterfly (Pier 33, Embarcadero, SF. 415-864-8999, www.butterflysf.com).

Eastside West (3154 Fillmore, SF. 415-885-4000, www.eastsidewest.com) creates a live music feel by putting resident DJ Morgan on a small stage. Its American regional menu features home-style favorites such as macaroni and cheese and buttermilk fried chicken. The mix usually includes Top 40 hits, so you may find yourself humming along between bites.

Head to North Beach’s Impala (501 Broadway, SF. 415-982-5299, www.impalasf.com), where you’ll instantly be transported south of the border. Here the tequila goes down as smooth as the tunes, which residents D-Tek and Zhaldee often infuse with a Latin flair.

If it weren’t for the flatware and delicious rolls in front of you, you’d swear Mas Sake (2030 Lombard, SF. 415-440-1505, www.massake.com) were a nightclub. Resident DJs Kimani, Solarz, Booker, and Chris Fox keep the mashups pumping all dinner long.

Lose yourself in the hypnotizing tunes, jungle decor, and flavorful Thai food at Lingba Lounge (1469 18th St., SF. 415-647-6469, www.lingba.com).

Hit up Poleng Lounge (1751 Fulton, SF. 415-441-1710, www.polenglounge.com) on a Friday or Saturday night if a little hip-hop, a dash of soul, and some Asian fusion cuisine sounds like a recipe for a good time.

DJ Adrian keeps things mellow at Mecca (2029 Market, SF. 415-621-7000, www.sfmecca.com) on Thursdays and Fridays with old-school electronica from the ’70s and ’80s.

As you might expect, Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack (18 Virginia, SF. 415-206-2086) serves pasta dishes galore, but there’s a little something extra on the menu on Fridays and Saturdays: rotating DJs who spin everything from oldies to new wave and punk — but never house music.

At Nihon (1779 Folsom, SF. 415-552-4400, www.nighonsf.com), DJ Gray spins house and lounge while diners enjoy sushi and other Japanese fare.

Sushi Groove South (1516 Folsom, SF. 415-503-1950) is another chic sushi spot where resident DJs spin nightly.

DJs Michael Anthony, B-Smiley, Didge Kelli, and Drunken Monkey make the dinner-in-bed experience at Supperclub (657 Harrison, SF. 415-348-0900, www.supperclub.com) all the more cozy by channeling chill ambient and other funky forms of electronica through the sound system.

DJs only spin in the lounge at Sutra Restaurant and Lounge (100 Brannan, SF. 415-593-5900, www.sutrasf.com), where Asian fusion and downtempo are on the platters. *

SATURDAY

-
0

March 24

EVENT/MUSIC

Bittersweet 16: A Fundraiser
for Kitchen Sink Magazine

After four superlative years, the award-winning quarterly will soon vanish from newsstands, a bankrupt publisher and the closure of the Independent Press Association the cause of death. But they will not go quietly. Inspired by jazz funerals, the editors have planned a series of fundraisers to pay for their final issue. This one features performances by Conspiracy of Beards and Michael Zapruder, as well as raffle prizes from Amoeba Records, the Believer, and local artisans. (Nathan Baker)

9 p.m., $5–$10
Edinburgh Castle Pub
950 Geary, SF
(415) 885-4074
www.kitchensinkmag.com

MUSIC

Secret Chiefs 3

Trey Spruance’s Secret Chiefs 3 are not so much a real band as a collection of virtual bands, each dedicated to exploring its own esoteric musical traditions. The band’s lineup has been in flux since Spruance started the project in the mid-’90s; the current touring ensemble is a septet featuring a three-piece string section and a new drummer, Peijman Kouretchian, who brings a jaw-dropping command of both complex Middle Eastern polyrhythms and modern metal chops. SC3 will be performing songs ranging in style from apocalyptic surf rock to Persian math metal to sweeping cinematic epics. (Will York)

With Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
9 p.m., $19
Slim’s
333 11th St., SF
(415) 255-0333
www.slim’s-sf.com

Angel’s wing

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Kudos to SF Playhouse for its part in introducing Bay Area audiences to Stephen Adly Guirgis. Guirgis is a member of New York’s LAByrinth Theater Company — a collective that includes playwright John Patrick Shanley and actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Guirgis has been making a name for himself during the past decade as an actor, director, television writer, and more particularly, the author of several engagingly sharp and gritty off-Broadway comedies.

SF Playhouse had a hit on its hands last season with its slick West Coast premiere of Guirgis’s 2002 Our Lady of 121st Street. In that play, a circle of former Catholic schoolmates from Harlem reconvenes in the old neighborhood for the funeral of their bad ol’ but beloved teacher, Sister Rose. Alternately saint and sinner, more or less like the rest of them, Rose is seemingly larger than life now that she’s gone. Really gone: as the play opens, someone has swiped her embalmed remains from the mortuary, throwing the whole service into limbo as the characters, in a state of anxious expectancy, rip open both fresh and long-festering wounds. Together their stories slyly interrogate the nature of free will, right and wrong, and our ambivalent reliance on forms of moral accountability. Artistic director Bill English’s shrewd casting and razor-sharp staging brought the high-spirited ensemble work and Guirgis’s loosely interlocked scenes to life.

In Jesus Hopped the "A" Train, a Guirgis play originally produced in 2000 and now at SF Playhouse, a young Puerto Rican man named Angel Cruz (Daveed Diggs) finds himself in jail — after bursting into the church of a cult leader responsible for brainwashing his best friend and shooting the former in the ass. Angel, having tried every other means of rescuing his childhood pal, cannot see much of a crime in this desperate act. Mary Jane Hanrahan (Susi Damilano), the public defender initially assigned to his case, begs to differ. Yet something draws the haggard but upright lawyer to the recalcitrant Angel’s side. In a monologue addressed to the audience, she recounts a childhood memory of a similar (if not quite as illicit) act by her working-class Irish father.

Angel’s plight and Mary Jane’s legal defense make up one half of the play. Brutally assaulted in jail and in dire threat of being killed after his target, the Sun Myung Moon–like Reverend Kim, unexpectedly dies, Angel soon finds himself in a special protective custody lockdown wing at Rikers Island prison. The wing is overseen by a guard named Valdez (Gabriel Marin), whose frustration with institutionalized justice has given way to sadism. A deeply shaken Angel shares the yard with a kindly born-again serial killer named Lucius Jenkins (Carl Lumbly) as the latter fights extradition back to Florida, where he would face the death penalty.

As an exploration of ethics and the nature of personal responsibility, Jesus Hopped the "A" Train takes a slightly different route from Our Lady but winds up in notably similar territory. It teases out volatile questions from complacent notions of faith and justice while demonstrating the playwright’s marked gift for dialogue that is gritty but also dazzlingly vibrant and ferociously funny. English again shows judiciousness in direction and casting, and Lumbly in the role of Lucius is a real coup. Lumbly (the Berkeley actor best known for work in films and television shows such as Alias) turns in a finely tuned performance that is one of the best things on a Bay Area stage at the moment. Also, Diggs, a relatively young actor recently seen in Magic Theatre’s production of Elaine May’s triptych Moving Along, continues to prove himself capable of great things. The resulting production is a winner, no matter what a jury may decide.

UNDER THE RADAR


Last week Jess Curtis/Gravity’s Under the Radar slipped into San Francisco from Berlin for a smooth and gentle (except when it didn’t want to be) landing on the CounterPULSE stage. It’s a decidedly unsentimental and altogether moving night of dance theater that is, despite the name of the company, anything but heavy.

Two years in the making, this cabaret-style movement-based exploration of virtuosity and disability — or the mental limits we set for one another and ourselves — features an international seven-member ensemble. It’s composed of dancer-singer-musician-performers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and (in the case of the Chico-born, longtime Bay Area–based Curtis) the United States. Under the Radar‘s winning chemistry includes casual, puckish humor (the performers, who variously play instruments as a band or climb into harnesses for aerial solos or duets, watch each other perform with admiring and catty commentary that is surely meant to prod stultified consciences). The evening’s almost nonchalant quality belies its technical rigor, striking eclecticism, and inspired invention.

Axis and other dance companies have long made integrated work (for disabled and other performers) a staple of the Bay Area dance scene, and the addition of circus and cabaret elements is not in itself new either. But Under the Radar‘s highly theatrical amalgam is nonetheless freshly inventive, fun, and lovely to behold. What willingly comes down to earth can rebound to heavenly heights. *

JESUS HOPPED THE "A" TRAIN

Through April 21

Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; $18–$60

SF Playhouse

533 Sutter, SF

(415) 677-9596

www.sfplayhouse.org

UNDER THE RADAR

Through April 1

Wed.–Sun., 8 p.m., $18–$30

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 435-7552

www.counterpulse.org

www.jesscurtisgravity.org

>

SxSW rocking, mocking

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Every spring I wing toward Austin, Texas, and the South by Southwest conference and music fest like some PBR-swilling, Lily Allen–aping mockingbird, in the hope of getting my imagination kick-started by some mysterious band of outsiders from Leeds, Helsinki, or Cleveland, armed with only guitars, samplers, or taste-testing facial hair. Little did I realize I’d be clocked in the noggin instead by This Moment in Black History’s Chris Kulcsar at the Blender Balcony at the Ritz. Last I recall, the spazztastic singer had just dashed up the stairs into the audience, nodding approvingly at TMIBH’s righteous thrash. I felt the heel of his kicks against my skull moments later. "Did he just jump over me?" I asked a bespectacled Joe Indie Rocker beside me. "Well, actually, he kicked you in the head," he answered. Glad to be a part of the spectacle — spare me the head trauma next time.

Oh South by — more than 10,000 participants strong, more than 1,400 acts bringing their all and driving $24.9 million in revenue to the self-proclaimed "Live Music Capital of the World." Oh me (oh my) — little slumber, one missed jet, a new zit every hour (just call me Stresstradamus), and drawn by the promise of cool sounds, cold beer, hot barbecued pork and brisket-taco brunches by the cold, gray light of a hangover, industry hugging and mugging, wheeling and dealing, and special guests who just might not be that, er, special at this point ("Every time you see those words on the schedule, just insert ‘Pete Townshend,’ " one wag claimed after Townshend dropped in at both his girlfriend Rachel Fuller’s acoustic show and a Fratellis gig). Oh, the rumored celeb-actor sightings — Kirsten Dunst, Owen and Luke Wilson, Michael Pitt doing a Keanu with his neogrunge Pagoda. Oh, the surreal parties — bunnies getting jiggy with indie at the eighth annual Playboy "Rock the Rabbit" after-hours wingding with bunnies, Ghostland Observatory, and popscene’s Omar, as well as the usual Blender (showing "the stupidest rock movies ever" at its slick, MTV-ish clubhouse), Spin, Jane, Filter, and Fader fort exclusivity rites, filled with guest-listlessness, Fratellis performances, and gratis Absolut peartinis, Heinekens, and mini–Vitamin Waters. If you’re a glutton for hard-drinking pleasure or heavy metal punishment (see the free Mastodon by the Lake show, the Melvins’ Stubbs-packing powerthon, and some two dozen Boris performances), then SXSW is for you.

But for a three-time SXSWhiner like myself — and a very random sampling of festgoers accustomed to challenging Elijah Wood to rasslin’ matches — the fest generally underwhelmed this year. It’s still the biggest cross-the-board overview of the music biz around. But demanding party people with insectlike attention spans wanted to know, where were the Bloc Parties? (Oh, naturally they were there, playing oodles of shows, but did anyone give a bloc?) Tellingly, the Horrors were here, but where were the thrills (and I don’t mean the Irish combo)?

Yesteryear’s exciters such as the Gossip and Hella showed, and Spank Rock, Girl Talk, Simian Mobile Disco, and Flosstradamus repped, yet seriously, is Amy Winehouse all that? Sure, she could croon a ’50s R&B-inflected pop tune and rock a Ronettes-style beehive, but her performance was more memorable for the number of times she hiked up her low-riding jeans than her songs. "I’m dwunk," she slurred during her packed show at La Zona Rosa. "It’s not funny." Are Razorlight and Albert Hammond Jr. truly godhead? Caveat: I caught neither, but fess, when thin-blooded popsters like Peter, Bjorn, and John and Pete and the Pirates are vaunted as the hottest shit to stream from the cultural Sani-Jons, then something is very wrong. The fact that the Black Lips were on so many lips is perfectly understandable: they’re a fine garage punk band — onstage heaves or no — and worthy of the humps they’re getting years along, but we all know that. I wanted my mind blown as well as punted.

Barring that, where were Arcade Fire, Of Montreal, LCD Soundsystem, TV on the Radio, Deerhoof, OOIOO, and so many others currently touring — but perhaps too sensible or established to play a seemingly requisite dozen times? Whither MIA, the Hives, Queens of the Stone Age, Feist, Marilyn Manson, and others with anticipated 2007 albums to hawk? Are Coachella and its Rage Against the Machine reorientation giving SXSW a run for the splashy reunion buck (sorry, RATM guitarist Tom Morello’s Nightwatchman show with Slash, Perry Farrell, etc., doesn’t cut it)? Are SXSW’s sideshow and party scenes undercutting the panels and showcases? Perhaps the coastside cynics are spoiled because we think a Hoodoo Gurus gathering just doesn’t measure up to recent no-shows like Whitehouse.

Still, the ole rocks do get off, if when you least expect it, wandering past a bar, ears caught by some new emanation. That happened to me, when I stumbled on inspired, powerful performances like those of Toronto’s stunning, vibes-focused Hylozoists at Habana Calle and the Björkish–Kate Bushy lady band Bat for Lashes. And then not so unexpectedly, when you brave the puke and garage smells of the Beauty Bar Patio for an all-Bay hyphy throwdown with an energized Federation, packing their stunna glasses at night, an ebullient Saafir, and a speaker-mounting Pack. The fact that you have to go all the way to Texas for the latter makes SXSW the beloved monster that it is — it’s just getting harder to cut through the noise.

Back in black: Black Lips, Black Angels, This Moment in Black History, Black Fiction.

Some words never stop being fun: Holy Fuck, Holy Shit!, Shitdisco, Fucked Up, Psychedelic Horseshit.

All ze buzz: Paolo Nutini, Earl Greyhound, Pop Levi, Albert Hammond Jr., and Cold War Kids. *

For more on South by Southwest, click here.

Screaming for vengeance

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

It was the unquiet dead, whispering in the dark, who set John Cobbett on his path.

In December 2001, Cobbett — a longtime Mission District rocker and guitar hero with such notably heavy outfits as Slough Feg, Ludicra, and Hammers of Misfortune — was on the East Coast visiting his identical twin brother, Aaron, a photographer living in Brooklyn, just across the East River from the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center.

"I visited the site. It was at night and freezing cold," Cobbett notes. "I remember the sounds of the cranes and demolition machinery wrenching huge slabs of twisted metal and concrete from the wreckage. All through the night these eerie, mournful sounds reverberated off the surrounding towers. It was an incredibly haunted place."

The wound at that time was still so fresh, you see. But the grief, fear, and uncertainty were being transformed, alchemically, inexorably, into something very different: a television spectacle and a justification for war far removed from the dust, the heat, and the stench of burning corpses that Cobbett says lingered in his brother’s neighborhood for months.

As the tragedy played out — the dead painstakingly named and numbered, the TV newscasters falling easily into the cadence of wartime rhetoric — Cobbett realized he had to respond. But the methods of political rock seemed far too self-righteous, and even patronizing, given the scale of bloodletting and demagoguery.

The way forward was finally revealed one month later, during the 2002 Super Bowl halftime show, which included a performance by U2 and a remarkable moment of patriotic kitsch: at the show’s climax, Bono, with the names of the 9/11 victims scrolling overhead on a huge banner, opened his leather jacket to reveal the Stars and Stripes beneath.

The crowd went wild, but for Cobbett it was shameless propaganda. The phrase "trot out the dead" leaped into his head, and music and lyrics quickly followed.

"I got so fucking pissed," Cobbett says. "These victims are rolling over in the superheated rubble below Ground Zero. It was so cheap and so tawdry. I decided, ‘I’m going to take these motherfuckers to task.’ "

Gloriously rocking and extraordinarily angry, "Trot Out the Dead" would become one of several jaw-dropping centerpieces of The Locust Years (Cruz del Sur Music), a record that took five more years and several new band members to complete and may well be one of the most urgent and affecting works of rock ‘n’ roll — not to mention protest music — produced by a band in San Francisco or anywhere else. It is the soundtrack to the George W. Bush years, a musical wail of sorrow and fury all the more overwhelming for its mythic metal lyrics and its seamless blend of prog rock ambition, hard and heavy bombast, and massively killer riffage.

If this sounds over the top, well, it is, a fact to which Cobbett gleefully cops.

"No matter how ridiculous we are, no way can we get more stupid and ridiculous than the real thing," he says. "No matter how grandiose I can get with a metal song, there’s no way I can go to Iraq and start a war. No matter how sanctimonious I get, there’s no way I could match what was coming out of Rumsfeld’s mouth. The shit coming out of those people’s mouths — it was gold."

HAMMERS COME AND GO


One of five siblings born to a middle-class Rochester, NY, family ultimately sundered by divorce, the teenage Cobbett wound up in Washington, DC, in the 1980s and quickly fell in with the breakthrough hardcore scene of the era. Minor Threat, Bad Brains, and the Obsessed were his bread and butter, but with the emergence of Revolution Summer’s early emo bands in 1986, the music became, in his words, "specious and cloying."

Taking his cue from a friend who said he’d like San Francisco, Cobbett spontaneously packed his gear and hit the road. "Within a week I was living in the Mission District," he says, "and still do."

Before too long he had fallen in with Chewy Marzolo, a drummer with the heavy and hardcore outfit Osgood Slaughter. That carried them both into the 1990s, at which point the musical chairs began in earnest. Cobbett joined the Lord Weird Slough Feg, a band packing equal parts Celtic folk mythos and old-school metal pomp. There he connected with vocalist Mike Scalzi, who would later help define Hammers’ sound with a manly, operatic holler that would do Rob Halford proud.

Marzolo, meanwhile, was busily following what he calls a "one-band-to-the-next continuum" all the way to Cobbett’s first incarnation of Hammers of Misfortune in 1998. Along the way he founded Poverty Records, a vital imprint that documented the Mission’s explosion of grimy and creatively unfettered rock ‘n’ punk with a slew of 7-inch records and CDs from such essential bands as Fuckface, Lost Goat, Towel, and Hickey.

After an initial outing as Unholy Cadaver — a devil-voiced combo that congealed around San Francisco’s cultish homegrown black metal scene, along with such peers as Weakling and Ludicra — Hammers’ lineup was refined and completed with the addition of vocalist-bassist Janis Tanaka, late of L7 and Stone Fox. Black metal became not an end in itself but a subordinate element in a larger musical palette that came together on Hammers’ full-throttle debut, The Bastard (tUMULt, 2001). Despite its acoustic flourishes, spooky harmonies, medievalist illustrations, and Joseph Campbell–inspired lyrics, it ain’t no teenage Dungeons and Dragons fantasy adventure rewarding its heroes with heaps of treasure and experience points. The Bastard turns out to be an ecological revenge fantasy, in which the "trolls of wood and stone" storm the village to "slay the ones who chop and cut / Slay them in the their wooden huts." It’s a wicked metaphor for the fate awaiting those mortals who dare abuse the blessings of nature.

Despite the record’s subcultural acclaim from magazines such as Terrorizer and Lamentations of the Flame Princess — and the admiration heaped on its follow-up, The August Engine (Cruz del Sur Music, 2003), a hard rock parable of cliquish music-scene self-destruction — Hammers of Misfortune had chosen a road that was neither wide nor easy. What kind of metal was this anyway? True? Black? Epic? These fine points of genre fidelity may seem irrelevant to a die-hard music fan, but for labels the difference is a record they can sell or not. "I loved Hammers the first time I heard them, and it never occurred to me to question or examine their sound, which was this gloriously confusional, amazing, and intricate chunk of mind-blowing music, metal or otherwise," says Andee Connors, who put out The Bastard on his tUMULt imprint. "It might be confusing for folks who are very strict with their genre divisions."

There is only so much small labels can do, however, and Tanaka’s departure to play with pop vocalist Pink was another monkey wrench. The addition of Jamie Myers on bass and vocals carried Hammers through The Locust Years‘ recording sessions until she too took a bow, moving to Texas to raise her first child. Scalzi, disinclined to divide his time between two bands, also departed, to focus his attention entirely on Slough Feg.

ANTHEMS FOR DARK DAYS


Today Hammers are touring with a refreshed and potent lineup, teaming Marzolo and Cobbett with bassist Ron Nichols; vocalist and second guitarist Patrick Goodwin of retro muscle rockers Dirty Power; and the musically omnivorous vocalist Jessie Quattro, who was raised on Doc Watson and the hymns and "occasional barking" of Pentecostal Christianity. Sigrid Sheie, a classically trained pianist, has been a constant on the last two records, bringing musical formality and some of the most boss Hammond B-3 and Leslie keyboards heard in rock since the ’70s heyday of Deep Purple — particularly notable on "Election Day," the penultimate track on The Locust Years. The tune is a whirlwind instrumental workout that recalls such classics as Focus’s "Hocus Pocus" and Edgar Winter’s "Frankenstein."

The song is a joy to hear simply as rock ‘n’ roll and exemplifies the real musical exuberance Hammers bring to what is otherwise grim and woeful fare. The whole record leavens its bleak social commentary with what Cobbett describes as "little-kid enthusiasm" for rocking out in high style. The lyrics, while not necessarily dactylic hexameter, are still richly allusive as metalhead poetry, inviting listeners to suspend their disbelief, find their own meaning, and let the emotional sweep of the music fill in the blanks. Anything unstated by, for example, "Chastity Rides," a harmonically gorgeous paean to the Platonic ideal of politically conservative virtue, is made ever so explicit by the snarling, minor-key instrumental bridge. The same technique is also applied to great effect in "War Anthem," a stirring call to arms that blatantly steals its sentimental grandeur from "The Star-Spangled Banner" then yanks the veil aside to reveal the bald-faced rapacity of the masters of the war on terror — be they Islamofascists, Christian supremacists, or military-industrial profiteers.

From the record’s opening moments, with Cobbett’s guitar wailing like a thousand 9/11 banshees, to the dreadful prophecy of "Famine’s Lamp" — certainly one of the great rock ‘n’ roll dirges — clear through to the gleaming, high-tech, satellite-guided apocalypse of the album-closing "Widow’s Wall," The Locust Years appeals to me as a ferocious summation of all the shameless hypocrisy, betrayal, and avarice of the last six years. It is tremendously cathartic but not necessarily hopeful. The album’s title — borrowed from Winston Churchill, who coined the phrase in reference to the declines and compromises of the 1930s and their resolution in the gas chambers and killing fields of World War II — is an embittered indictment of the flag-waving, churchgoing citizen-consumer. Good Germans all, dutifully following their leader as the abyss yawns ever wider.

LITTLE USE FOR ILLUSION


No one in the band has any delusions that their underground heavy metal record is going to change the world — and not one of them seems willing to suck up to a music industry that would only turn it into focus-group approved, prechewed rage against the generic machine. Hammers is truly a Mission District group, deeply rooted in a seething community of fiercely — even dysfunctionally — independent musicians, labels, and fans with roots dating back at least 20 years.

But Hammers of Misfortune are also a band with a mission and a message — and a whole of good rockin’ to come. Sheie modestly hopes for at least a European tour and enough earnings to not have to worry about covering practice-space fees — then confesses she thinks the record deserves a Grammy. Quattro is in a similar mood, daydreaming of playing to an arena of "30,000 screaming fans." I hope it all comes true in spades.

As for Cobbett, he’s been touring with Ludicra and, fresh from exhibiting Hammers at South by Southwest, has a new concept album germinating in his mind. Something to do with a perfect storm known as Hurricane Katrina and the drowned city of New Orleans. Another victim of the locust years, to be immortalized in song.

The gods of metal are angry and sharpening their swords. *

HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE

With Genghis Tron and Kylesa

Sun/25, 9 p.m., $10, all ages

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

>

Mythic pizza

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

The perfect pizza, like its near relations the perfect golf shot, the perfect holiday, and the perfect sentence, is an apparition of memory. We all have some recollection of a pie (or three-wood from the rough to within 10 feet of the pin) that achieved sublimity. We might have eaten this pie in Rome or Naples, on Chestnut Street or Columbus Avenue, or even in our own kitchen. What we know for sure is that no pie before or since has topped it.

I was reminded, in the course of a recent jaunt into the mountains, how imperfect so many California pizzas seem to be and in what ways. The jaunt was spontaneous and came to an inglorious end at a "road closed" sign hanging from a shut gate in a blizzard at 8,000 feet. But an hour or so before that rebuff it had been lunchtime, and we’d stopped in the as yet unthreatening slush to eat at what looked like it might be one of the last restaurants we would pass before scaling the summit.

The pie, presented with great cheer, consisted of a soft, thick, bready crust, like a piece of insulation, carpeted with "Mexican" ingredients, mostly seasoned ground beef, melted cheddar cheese, and raw onions. Since we were hungry and had brought little food of our own, we ate it up and were grateful, and I probably wouldn’t have thought any more about it if we hadn’t eaten the night before at Gialina, Sharon Ardiana’s new restaurant in the reborn Glen Park.

Apparently, while I was blinking, this quaint and intimate village in its sleepy hollow under Diamond Heights has seen fit to give itself an extreme makeover. The most stunning change is the advent of Canyon Market, which opened last fall in a sleek if chilly space of concrete, plate glass, and bakers’ racks and is a full-scale supermarket, something like a cross between Rainbow Grocery and Whole Foods. The market offers meat, fish, and poultry, as well as a good selection of produce, much of it organic. For many Glen Parkers, the market (like the BART station) is no more than a few minutes’ walk away — a blessing, though parking in the village center isn’t difficult. We spent a few minutes wandering through the market while waiting for a table at Gialina, just across the street. The new restaurant is a lot like the original Delfina: narrow, deep, noisy, busy. And word seems to be out that these are among the best pizzas in the city — maybe the best outright — and, given the improvement in the city’s pizza culture in recent years (Pizzeria Delfina, Pizzetta 211, A16), that is saying something.

Let us begin with the crusts, which are hand-shaped into a form that resembles a circle with corners. Around the edges runs a thick bready bead that will sate the puff fanatics among you, but the central plain of each pie is about as thin as seems physically possible. "Cracker thin" is a cliché (and therefore punishable, in my perfect world), but these are even thinner than that.

Toppings, you might suppose, would be applied sparingly, so as not to snap all those points. But the pies are pretty well laded up, though not Sierra-style. The only pizza we came across that couldn’t fairly be described as hearty was the margherita ($10), and it was lovely anyway. The smear of oregano-scented tomato sauce and shreds of mozzarella had been baked to a slightly caramelized bubbliness; the fresh basil leaves scattered (postoven) across the top were like water lilies in a pond.

Ardiana must have a slight thing for pizza bianca — "white" pizza, i.e., without tomato sauce — since two of the better pies on her brief menu are tomato sauceless. The wild nettle pizza ($13) brings that au courant green together with chunks of green garlic, shavings of pecorino, and flaps of pancetta whose edges are lightly crisped by the oven’s heat. This is a fine combination, but it’s bound to change or disappear soon, when the green garlic season ends.

An even finer combination is a pie of broccoli rabe mingled with fennel-breath Italian sausage and blobs of gamy fontina cheese ($13). This is very close to a classic Italian sauce for orecchiette and is quite convincing on a pizza.

We did not get to the puttanesca pie — echo of another classic pasta sauce — but for red-blooded fireworks, the atomica ($12) will more than do. The ancillary toppings here are mushrooms and mozzarella, but the principal actor is the chile-fired tomato sauce, which packs some real heat.

Among the first courses, we found the meatballs ($9) in a spicy tomato-parmesan sauce to be tasty but slightly rubbery. Better was the antipasti plate for two ($11), an array of grilled bread, salume, spicy black and green olives, herbed ricotta, roasted red beets, marinated wild mushrooms, pickled baby carrots, and frisée salad with radish coins — plenty there to keep two people busy while their pizzas are in the oven.

The dessert Goliath is the chocolate pizza ($9), a squarish crust heavily drizzled with hot chocolate sauce and crushed hazelnuts and festooned with mascarpone kisses. It is fabulous, but it does represent starch overkill as some of the other choices do not. The place is noisy, and only in part because of the Scandinavian Designs–looking blond wood panels on the wall. Many of the patrons bring their tiny infants in for a night on the town — or village. In today’s Glen Park, this must be the latest adventure in babysitting. *

GIALINA

Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 5–11 p.m.; Sun., 4–10 p.m.

2842 Diamond, SF

(415) 239-8500

www.gialina.com

Beer and wine

AE/DC/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

>

A half-century of lies

-
0

View pictures of Leola King’s legendary Blue Mirror club here.

Leola King has lived your life, the lives of three friends and then some.

She’s traveled to Africa with the legendary entertainer, Josephine Baker. She’s featured jazz great Louis Armstrong at a popular Fillmore nightclub she helmed in the 1950s called the Blue Mirror, where she also once convinced a roomful of patrons to drink sweet champagne from the heel of her shoe.

She’s played host to the crusading television journalist Edward R. Murrow.

She’s even had a fling with championship boxer Joe Louis. From the ring at Madison Square Garden, he glanced toward her front-row seat, which she’d secured by chance during her first trip to New York, and had his lackeys retrieve her for a date afterward. Their rendezvous appeared as a gossip item in an Ohio paper and remains in its archives today.

Most of all, Leola King has come as close as anyone possibly can to experiencing bureaucratic hell on earth. For half a century, she’s been fighting with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, which has taken four pieces of her property, wiped out a restaurant and two nightclubs she owned, and left her with a string of broken promises.

Her story is evidence that the ugly local chapter of Western Addition redevelopment history still isn’t over – and it’s a demonstration of why so many African Americans in this town will never trust the Redevelopment Agency.

————————-

Beginning in the 1940s, King successfully operated a series of restaurants and nightclubs in the city, remarkable enough in an era that imposed a double-paned glass ceiling on black, female entrepreneurs.

“Back when I first moved onto Fillmore, it was very popular,” King told the Guardian. “Market Street didn’t have shit. They didn’t have traffic. They didn’t have nothing on Market Street.”

During the height of King’s accomplishments, the Redevelopment Agency infamously launched an ambitious project to clear out “blight” in the neighborhood. It was part of a nationwide urban-renewal trend, and while the project here still won’t be finished until 2009, it’s widely regarded as one of America’s worst urban-planning disasters.

In theory, Western Addition residents who were forced to give up their homes or businesses were given a “certificate of preference,” a promise that when the sometimes decaying buildings were turned to kindling and new ones built, the former occupants could return.

In practice, it didn’t work out that way. An estimated 5,500 certificates were issued to families and business owners shortly before the second phase of Western Addition redevelopment began in 1964. Some 5,000 families were dislodged and many of them fled to other sectors of the city (including Bayview-Hunter’s Point, which is today slated for its own redevelopment), or outside of the Bay Area completely.

Only a fraction of the certificates have benefited anyone. The agency has lost contact information for more than half of the holders, and redevelopment commissioners now openly admit the program is a joke.

“If we’re going to boast about being this diverse community in San Francisco, and we’re going to allow our African American population to become extinct, then how can we show our faces in government if we’re not really doing anything about it?” asked London Breed, a redevelopment commissioner appointed by Gavin Newsom in 2005. “And not just putting black people in low-income housing. There [are] a lot of middle-class African Americans all across America, specifically in the East Bay and in other places. Why do they choose to live in the East Bay over San Francisco?”

A renewed interest in the certificates by City Hall led to hearings this month, and District 5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has planned another for April.

King obtained two certificates, and attempts to later redeem them both devolved into costly legal wrangling with the agency that lasted more than two decades. She has never regained what she lost.

Leola King’s story is about more than certificates of preference. It’s a story about the troubling legacy of urban renewal.

King welcomes guests into her home on Eddy Street near Fillmore with ease. The living room in what is little more than a two-bedroom converted garage apartment swells unimaginably with antiques – three stuffed chairs with vinyl slips, crystal chandeliers, an ornate dining-room table, lamps, a fur throw.

She insists that she’s just 39 years old, but public records put her closer to 84.

When the Guardian first visited with her in person, she was dressed in black cotton leisure attire. Two chestnut braids cascaded from a gray Kangol-style cap, which she smoothed with her hands as they hugged a pair of light-skinned cherub cheeks.

King made her way west after spending her earliest years behind the barbed wire of a Cherokee reservation in Haskell, Ok. Her mother died when King was young, and her restless father had meandered off to Los Angeles. Her grandparents oversaw her adolescence before she trailed after her father to California, where he was establishing a chain of barbecue restaurants. She married a man at just 14, and a year later, she was a mother. Tony Tyler, her son, is a San Francisco tour guide today and remains a close confidant and business partner.

It was 1946 when she first landed in San Francisco and eventually started her own barbecue pit at 1601 Geary St., near Buchanan, historic building inspection records show. She called it Oklahoma King’s, and hungry San Franciscans were lured to the smell of exotic buffalo, deer and quail meats.

“That end of Fillmore was very popular all the way down until you got almost to Pacific [Avenue],” she said. “Heavily populated. There was at one time in that area of Fillmore over 100 bars alone. Lots of hamburger places. That’s where I had the barbecue pit.”

By 1949, however, Congress had made urban renewal federal law with the goal of leveling slums and deleting general “blight,” still the most popular and awkwardly defined threshold for determining where the government can clear homes and businesses using eminent domain.

The first redevelopment zone in the Western Addition, known as A-1, included Oklahoma King’s. She was paid approximately $25,000 for the property, but offered no relocation assistance or other compensation for the revenue she lost as a result of ceasing her day-to-day business.

Forging ahead, she opened in 1953 what became a hub of jazz and blues entertainment in the Fillmore, the Blue Mirror, at 935 Fillmore Street. The place was decorated with brass Greek figurines on the walls, a circular bar and velvet festoons. King spent a year hopping onto buses full of tourists and begging the driver to drop them by her nightclub for a drink. Before long, her brassy personality had attracted world-class performers, each of them adding electricity to the club’s reputation.

“She was the type of woman who knew how to handle people,” a Blue Mirror regular later said in the 2006 collection of Fillmore jazz-era photography, Harlem of the West. “She could talk to the pimps and hustlers. She didn’t play around, and they knew how to conduct themselves in her club.”

A musician who formerly worked there told the Guardian the Blue Mirror was one of the few places on Fillmore that actually provided live entertainment at that time. Bobbie Webb backed up B.B. King, Little Willie John, T-Bone Walker and others as a young saxophonist at the Blue Mirror with his band the Rhythm Rockers. He said the other establishments nearby on Fillmore were mostly bars except for headlining auditoriums where mainstream acts like James Brown and the Temptations performed. Smaller venues abounded up the street on Divisadero, he said, save mostly for King’s Blue Mirror and the Booker T. Washington Hotel.

“[King] didn’t only have a personality” said Webb, who now airs a show Tuesdays on 89.5 KPOO, “she was a beautiful lady. Personality just spoke for itself. All she had to do was stand there.”

But like virtually everyone in the neighborhood at that time, King rented the place where the Blue Mirror operated. Redevelopment again reached her business in the early 1960s. State booze enforcers, she says, claimed to have witnessed a bartender serving alcohol to a minor and her liquor license was taken away. When the Redevelopment Agency showed up shortly thereafter to sweep the block away, she was ejected without compensation because she wasn’t at that time technically in business.

Two more commercial and residential properties she owned on Post and Webster streets respectively were also eventually taken under redevelopment.

She pressed on, encouraged by Jewish business owners in the area she’d befriended, including liquor wholesaler Max Sobel and Fairmont Hotel operator Benjamin Swig.

“Whenever I’d lose something, they’d say, ‘Keep on moving. Don’t stop, because you’ll lose your customers. When you open back up, they won’t know who you are.’ They’re the ones who told me, ‘Go get another spot.'”

—————————-

By the time King began work on her third business in the Fillmore, urban renewal projects had wreaked havoc on minority communities across the nation, including neighborhoods in west-side Boston, downtown Atlanta, the celebrated 18th & Vine District of Kansas City and elsewhere.

King opened the Bird Cage Tavern at 1505 Fillmore St. in 1964 near O’Farrell complete with a jukebox, 30-foot mahogany bar, a piano and a gilded birdcage. Then-police chief Thomas J. Cahill tried to block her liquor-license renewal by complaining to the state about “winos” and “prostitutes” in the neighborhood, records show, but regulators dismissed the claims.

“We had viable businesses all around us,” King said. “I had one fellow I worked with a lot named Willie Jones. He was a blues singer. The interesting thing was, I had music in the daytime at the Bird Cage. I specialized in afternoon jazz.”

Despite a triumphant resettlement, nonetheless, the redevelopment agency arrived yet again and bought her building during the expansion of it’s A-2 redevelopment phase and served as landlord for the Bird Cage, a barber shop and a liquor store as it waited for another two years deciding what to do with the building.

On the agency’s watch, a fire broke out next door to the Bird Cage that led to water damage in her space. Federal Housing and Urban Development records show that no insurance claim was ever filed by the Redevelopment Agency. King says the agency removed some of the bar’s contents, mostly kitchen supplies, and made only stopgap repairs to the building anticipating that she would later be ousted anyway. The items they took, she says, were never returned.

The agency then evicted all of the building’s tenants in 1974. This time, King stood fast and had to be forced out by the sheriff. The agency promised relocation assistance, but those empty assurances became her biggest headache yet. In fact, she would spend the next 25 years quarreling with the agency over relocation terms.

King and the agency searched fruitlessly until 1977 for a suitable replacement building before King purchased her own out of desperation at 1081 Post St. She was then forced to begin another endurance test of working to actually extract money from the agency owed to her for properly outfitting the new building.

Meanwhile, the Bird Cage’s leftover furnishings – from oil paintings, rugs and curtains to an ice maker, wood shelving and an antique porcelain lamp – were destroyed when the agency amazingly chose to store them on an outdoor lot off Third Street during her move, a fact later confirmed by an agency employee in an affidavit.

“They moved it all out,” King said, “all these antiques and stuff, into this field where the weather ate it up.”

The agency’s initial response was to determine how it could best avoid legal liability. Redevelopment officials finally offered her about $100,000, which she needed desperately to keep things moving with the Bird Cage’s new location, but King insists today the materials were worth closer to $1 million.

As she was fighting to reopen her bar business, she attempted to redeem an earlier certificate of preference given to her when she’d lost a residential property on Webster Street to redevelopment. In 1983, she bought a condemned, 12-unit apartment building on Eddy Street hoping to rehabilitate it using a federally backed loan.

The deal only led to more trouble. The agency paid for its own roving security to patrol Western Addition properties it had purchased, and before 1431 Eddy St. was ever officially conveyed to King (as well as two other neighboring developers), thieves gutted the building of windows, doors, plumbing, light fixtures and other hardware. (Two buildings belonging to neighboring developers were also hit, and the agency addressed their losses the same way.)

Almost immediately, the agency told her she’d purchased the building “as is” and that they weren’t responsible for the break-in. But according to an internal 1983 memo marked “confidential,” later unearthed when friends of King submitted a records request to the agency, staffers clearly were concerned about the legal implications of offering one building for sale “as is” and actually providing another one on the date of delivery that had been thoroughly burglarized.

The memo shows that the possibility of a lawsuit was of greater concern to the agency than any obligation to compensate King for the lost hardware, regardless of whether proper security was the agency’s responsibility. Records show they did discuss a settlement of little more than $2,000, but King considered the stolen goods to be worth thousands of dollars more.

She managed to eventually finish the rehabilitation of her Eddy Street property after several years of work, and while she lives there today, time and angst took their toll. Each step of the transition to what she hoped would someday become her new bar, Goldie’s on Post Street, involved a seemingly endless round of yet more negotiations, letters, legal threats and bureaucratic backbiting before the agency would lift a finger and allocate money for contractors, necessary seismic upgrades, architects and equipment.

In 1997, then-Rep. Ron Dellums (now Oakland mayor) wrote a letter to top local HUD official Art Agnos (later a San Francisco mayor) on King’s behalf.

“On August 26, Ms. King met with a member of my staff and detailed issues surrounding a 25-year dispute she has attempted to resolve with HUD and the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency,” Dellums wrote. “Your expeditious attention to this matter is [a] request, as Ms. King is elderly and experiencing health problems. The resolution to this issue would allow her to live the remainder of her life with some piece of mind.”

It was too late. The federally backed loans she’d received from HUD to rehab her Eddy Street property, from which the Redevelopment Agency strictly enforced repayment, fell into default. Loans leveraged against her other remaining properties began to slip, too, all while she fought with the forces of redevelopment to recreate what she had once proudly possessed.

King’s story may seem like an unfathomable streak of bad luck, but there’s a paper trail for all of it. And her battle, laid out in hundreds of pages of documents saved by King over several decades and reviewed by the Guardian, was ultimately unsuccessful..

By 1997, King was submerged in bankruptcy proceedings and would lose pretty much everything that she owned, including an Edwardian landmark home on Scott Street near Alamo Square where she’d lived for years (partially burned in a 1986 fire, believe it or not) and a residential building on Sutter Street.

Goldie’s was to be her final resting place, a roost from which she hoped to feature cabaret dancing, fresh crab at happy hour, a refined art deco aesthetic and live music performances. She lost that, too. Today, it’s Diva’s just off Polk Street.

Urban renewal won.

———————-

Hopeful press accounts lately foretell a jazz revival in the Fillmore District fueled by enterprising developers deft at financing lucrative redevelopment projects through tax incentives and low-interest loans half a century after the promise of “renewal,” now described euphemistically as “historic preservation.”

But with such a sordid history behind them, it’s no wonder residents of Bayview-Hunter’s Point, many of whom escaped Western Addition “renewal” in the first place, are leery of a pending years-long plan to redevelop nearly 1,500 acres in the southeast neighborhoods.

Bayview newspaper publisher Willie Ratcliff led a petition drive last year in an effort to put the plan before voters. Over 20,000 petition signatures were certified by elections officials, but City Attorney Dennis Herrera ruled the petitions were technically invalid because circulators hadn’t presented the full text of the redevelopment plan to signers. Redevelopment foes have since sued to have Herrera’s decision tossed.

“The misuse by these people is just unbelievable,” King said. “They were fighting me every inch.”

Thanks to Susan Bryan for joining the Guardian in reviewing hundreds of pages of public and personal records preserved in Leola King’s estate. Bryan is currently working with Monkey Paw Productions on a documentary about King’s life

Emergency exits

-
0

› marke@sfbg.com

I’ve got one copy of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace strapped under my right foot, one strapped under my left. The new 1,400-page Penguin Classics translation by Anthony Briggs makes for a great pair of platforms. My fantasy party posse’s at my side: Felicia Fellatio rocking a hot red bandito bandanna, a full white tutu, and a number 5 Tim Hardaway jersey; Baby Char Char in an oversize pajama-print homeboy hoodie and a pair of random, paint-spattered Levi’s; Nova all angles on her retro-future ’80s Nagel dangling neon banana earrings, turquoise ruffled skirt, and shoulder-padded acid-washed cropped jacket trip; and Hunky Beau in Juicy Couture pipe pants and war paint.

Somebody else is in the corner, wearing pink panties on his head and a giant chain, but no one knows his name.

I feel great. I just finished six weeks of Third Street Gym boxing boot camp, and you could bounce a full congressional subpoena off my abs, darling. (OK, that’s a lie — but I think about going to the gym every time I light up a smoke. That should count for something, no?) We’re out the door to my drag idol Juanita More’s weekly Saturday all-nighter, Playboy, at the Stud (www.juanitamore.com), when suddenly it hits me: today is Saturday, right? I better check the Internet.

I put down my flask of Cuervo and log on, and this little box of "gay news" pops up. (How does the Internet know? Oh, that’s right: all my online porn accounts.) "UN Confirms Anti-Gay Death Squads in Iraq" the top headline reads. Kidnappings, mutilation, charred bodies found by the road. Hmm. A few clicks later: "Iraqi Leaders OK Gay Pogroms." According to activists, Shiite militias are engaging in one of the "most organized and systematic sexual cleansings in history" with the government’s two-cheeked kiss of approval, and the US is refusing asylum to gay Iraqis.

Oh dear. Suddenly the thought of whooping it up while my gay Iraqi rainbow family burns seems kind of, you know, gross.

I’m so fucking sick of feeling powerless against this stupid war. Of always tucking the grief of it somewhere in the back of my mind as I down another shot and hit the dance floor. Not only is it a major buzzkill among other omnipresent buzzkills — global warming, fundamentalist terror, constant surveillance, government-sanctioned queer discrimination, bad hair days — but, as a citizen of the allegedly participatory democracy that started the whole thing, I feel somehow responsible, no matter whom I voted for however many times. And just admitting that, I feel like a spoiled American. It sucks.

On top of that, I have to watch myself and many of those around me struggle to keep the flame of resistance sparkling. It seems exhaustion has seeped into our consciousness and may actually be taking root. I fondly recall the first exhilarating flush of protest — of taking back the streets until my pumps wore through on the first night of "shock and awe," of lying down and blocking traffic in an orange jumpsuit (on purpose for once) as the bombs continued to rain down on civilians half a world away, of wildly dancing with Code Pink and cute Puerto Rican socialists in the NYC streets during the 2004 Republican Convention, hoping the nets the cops threw over us wouldn’t snag my weave. Sure, I still bang my pan with a stick at the occasional ANSWER weekend protest, despite my massive hangover. But after four years of war, it often seems I’m banging fruitlessly. If a club freak chants in a vacuum, will the killing please stop now?

Thank goddess I’ve got the beautiful souls I’ve met at the clubs around me. The kind of nightlife I love is inherently subversive: when one kind of music, location, or style becomes dominant, a host of alternatives immediately springs up. That energy refuels my rebellious spirit and keeps my fight up during the day. Yes, yes, partying is an escape from reality — but it’s also a play space, a way to work out the anxieties of the world by fooling with your identity, a place to push the boundaries of society into a personal utopia.

To me, underground nightlife can also be a fascinatingly warped mirror of the problems facing the world, its trends the raw expression of deep-seated angst. As W. consolidated his political power in the early ’00s, nightlife fashions and music (and drugs) returned to the tastes of the Reagan and Thatcher ’80s, when angular pop and cold synths were a loud rebuke to false sincerity and hubris. The recent explosion of pre-AIDS-era disco and imagery in many gay clubs may be an unconscious wish to transport ourselves to the time before the Republicans’ disastrous "morning in America." And the vibrant local hyphy scene is based on auto sideshows: literally wasting gas (use it while you got it!). Now, well into W.’s second term, we’re reliving the rococo styles of Bush the Elder without irony. Dance floors are looking like a punk rock Cosby Show, and I’m into it.

But that’s all theoretical musing. The most important thing about nightlife is community, whether you’re a full-time club kid or just going out for a drink after work with your friends. You want to be around other people, to not feel so alone in this crazy world, to make a connection. You walk into a bar, and suddenly you’re in a minisociety, one you hope you can handle better than society at large.

Can this community make a difference? Sure. The nightlife community, gay and straight, was instrumental in the fight against AIDS (and still is). It banded together to defeat the antirave legislation of the early ’00s. Tons of parties raise money for good causes. Currently, party-oriented groups such as the League of Pissed Off Voters (sf.indyvoter.org), which reaches out to young people through DJ events, and the SF Party Party (www.sfpartyparty.com), which influences local politics by combining education with clubbing, are doing their best to change the world.

"People on the left these days seem to think that denying themselves pleasure is the only way to take back the government. The early energy of protest against Bush has turned into a kind of self-punishment. That’s so dry and boring — and ultimately useless," says Dr. Stephen Duncombe, editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader and author of the new book Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. I called him because I wanted to talk about the guilt some of us feel about partying when the world’s going to shit. He’s been a prime mover in theatrical resistance groups such as Reclaim the Streets, the Lower East Side Collective, and the utterly fabulous Billionaires for Bush. (He’s also kind of cute in a young-professor-at-NYU way.)

"We should be using the positive energy of nightlife to show people that politics can be both entertaining and transformational," he continues. "Politics should be a fun, interactive spectacle, like the kind nightlife provides. No one wants to get involved with something if it seems like more work."

Yet still I worry. What would life be like if the war were here? What if I were a gay Iraqi? I trolled the Internet gay hookup sites to find a gay Iraqi to talk to about it. All I could find at first were half-naked American soldiers stationed in the Middle East (we are everywhere!). I eventually came upon a Western-educated gay Iraqi refugee living in Jordan who identified himself as Arje. He said I was being foolish. "Go out and have fun," he replied when I wrote that I didn’t feel like partying off the weight of the world. "Have a dance for me."

TUESDAY

-
0

March 20

EVENT

“Four Years Later: American Soldiers Share Their Stories on the Anniversary of the War”

Once a skilled firefighter, National Guard Sgt. Brett Miller was unable to dial a phone number after a roadside blast in Iraq left him with a brain injury. But Miller is one of the lucky ones. After four years of war in Iraq, more than 3,000 soldiers have died and countless others been permanently disabled. Miller and fellow veterans Army Sgt. Camille Evans and Infantry Officer Paul Reickhoff will mark this grave anniversary trading traumatic war tales at InForum’s “Four Years Later.” (Joshua Rotter)

6:30 p.m., $7-$20
Commonwealth Club of California
595 Market, second floor, SF
(415) 597-6705
www.commonwealthclub.org

MUSIC

Two Sheds

There are clips floating around YouTube of Two Sheds performing in a San Diego television studio. The cameras track across the soundstage and dissolve between Unplugged-style close-ups of fret boards and musicians, who look perfect under the parcan lighting. Though they clearly nail renditions of “Perfect” and “For Theresa,” the sterile TV-land setting seems an unbefitting package for Two Sheds, whose charm lies in the direct, personal effect of singer Caitlin Gutenberger’s lyrical inventions. (Nathan Baker)

9 p.m., $7
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St., SF
(415) 647-2888
www.makeoutroom.com

People’s choice

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"We ram dancehall and cork party / Papa Jammy in your area."

Johnny Osbourne

The 1980s was a turbulent decade in Jamaica. Government control had shifted from Michael Manley’s socialist-leaning People’s National Party to Edward Seaga’s free market–oriented Jamaican Labour Party. As Prime Minister Seaga tilted the country’s foreign policy to the right, American political and economic meddling in the region, combined with the nascent drug trade from Colombia to Miami via Jamaica, threw the island into flux.

Against this backdrop, in the Kingston ghetto enclave of Waterhouse, record producer and engineer Lloyd "King Jammy" James embraced the emerging digital reggae era and became its king. E-mailing from his office in London, reggae historian and author David Katz asserts that it was James who revolutionized Jamaican music overnight in 1985 with the release of Wayne Smith’s "Under Mi Sleng Teng," precipitating the shift from analog to digital. None of the precious few digital rhythms that came before "Sleng Teng" had its tremendous impact; Katz notes, "Jammy was the one who embraced the use of technology in its totality, in such a way as to be far in front of his rivals."

James honed his talents in the 1970s, working alongside another major production figure, Osbourne Ruddock, otherwise known as King Tubby. While assisting Tubby, James moonlighted and recorded albums for Black Uhuru and Johnny Osbourne. By the mid-’80s, James was ready to strike out on his own, and he recruited several impressive vocalists and toasters from his neighborhood.

Indeed, James is revered as much for his ability to discover raw talent as for his innate mixing skills. You’ll find visual evidence of the latter in several recently posted YouTube videos that show James executing dub versions of songs by Smith, Johnny Clarke, and others. Seeing James use all 10 fingers on the faders certainly authenticates his mastery. Now VP Records has released another document that reveals James’s genius.

The New York label has amassed a four-double-disc collection of King Jammy 12-inch single releases, circa 1985 to 1988. Selector’s Choice organizes each batch of recordings by "riddim," or common backing instrumental, which enables club and radio DJs to easily play several different artists with the same musical arrangement consecutively. For instance, disc one features the Tempo riddim with individual songs by Nitty Gritty, Pad Anthony, and Tonto Irie, and also the Stalag riddim with work by Smith, Osbourne, and Dean Frasier. The collection is a DJ’s nirvana.

Other chapters in Selector’s Choice show the evolution of Jammy’s roster from a primarily vocalist-focused endeavor — composed of reggae legends Nitty Gritty, Little John, and Tenor Saw — to a toaster-oriented team with key artists such as Ninjaman, Admiral Bailey, Major Worries, and Shabba Ranks. On the phone from his still-Kingston-based studio, James explains that back in the day, aspiring artists lined up down the block, drawn to his yard by the amount of good riddims the studio produced. "We never kept anybody out," he says. "We invited everybody to come in."

Katz notes that the toasters James attracted added value to his stable. "[Toasters such as] Josie Wales were very influential," Katz says of the Wild West–inspired micsmith. "Josie had style, verve, wit, and longevity, and he spoke of reality but was also humorous." Wales inspired fellow toaster Admiral Bailey, who became tremendously popular in dancehall with his rapid rhymes, producing hits for Jammy such as "Big Belly Man," "Jump Up," and "No Way Better Than Yard," all included on Selector’s Choice. Bailey in turn shaped James’s biggest find, Shabba Ranks, who later went on to greater popularity and a Grammy award on the Digital B label, with Jammy’s apprentice Bobby "Digital" Dixon at the helm.

But as Selector’s Choice deftly proves, James was the dominant hitmaker between 1985 and 1989, a reign born partially out of a love for his profession. James describes producing music during the mid-’80s as a joyful experience, one that saw him craft hits almost daily. "It was a very good [studio] environment," James says. "All the artists, producers, everybody used to live close, like a family. We used to cook and eat [together], go in the studio, and work hard."

A hard workday typically entailed building two or three new riddims with musicians Wycliffe "Steelie" Johnson and Cleveland "Clevie" Brownie or with Smith, and then voicing artists into the night. James kept his personal living quarters in the same building as his studio, so at the end of the session he could just walk a few meters to the bedroom and catch some z’s. Music journalist Rob Kenner relays personal details such as these — and the backstory of each song — in Selector’s Choice‘s liner notes. Kenner’s revelations about the dual meanings of tracks such as Nitty Gritty’s "Hog in a Minty" and Major Worries’ "Babylon Boops" add another layer to the greatness of James’s productions.

Many label compendiums try to account for every session, take, and rough draft a producer laid hands on. Selector’s Choice instead packs its eight 20-song discs with true dancehall smashes, records that bear the unmistakable stamp and production ethic James uses to this day. He summed up his creative philosophy this way: "I’d rather do original music than covers, because I learned that you own that stuff and it lasts longer." *

www.vprecords.com

SFIAAFF: These monsters are real

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"Even though it’s difficult to be human, let’s not turn into monsters." This is said as a reprimand to Gyung-soo (Kim Sang-kyung), a mildly successful stage actor, by one of his colleagues early in South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s Turning Gate (2002). Gyung-soo repeats the words twice more in the film — first to make amends with his old friend Sung-woo after a liquor-soaked spat and then over the phone in a failed attempt to shame the woman, Myung-sook (Ye Ji-won), who eventually leaves him for Sung-woo.

Yes, it’s difficult to be human, especially in a Hong film, given that his characters’ attempts to satiate their own emotional needs often devolve into cruel and childish displays of selfishness. With each repetition Gyung-soo seems to be reassuring himself that he understands the significance of his friend’s words, but with each successive film, Hong seems to suggest that maybe no one really does understand.

Hong writes in his director’s statement for his most recent feature, Woman on the Beach (2006), "Repetition is a great framework and basis for filmmaking. On the other hand, if repetition is part of a person’s behavior, we can take that as an indication of obsession. I wanted to see through repetition, but also to reduce repetition." Like Sung-woo in Turning Gate or Woody Allen throughout his messily imbricated career, Hong’s films grapple with the question of seeing through repetition: can we ever do something over as an intervention rather than a symptom? It is the problem many of the characters in Hong’s films — particularly the men — struggle with, stumble over, deny, and often by movie’s end, are unexpectedly forced to confront.

Indeed, Hong’s entire oeuvre seems like evidence of a repetition compulsion to tell variations of the same story. It’s a tale that goes something like this: an unexpected reunion between two middle-aged buddies gradually sours when old insecurities and jealousies are played out in a pathetic rivalry over a woman, resulting in innumerably consumed bottles of soju (real), some of the most spectacularly uncomfortable sex scenes ever committed to film (fake), and damaged egos all around.

In The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) we revisit the popular vacation locale twice in two subtly interlocking narratives told from the perspectives of a college professor and his student who recently ended their affair. Later in the aforementioned Turning Gate, Gyung-soo falls in love with a stranger on a train, though he’s clearly trying to regain his crushed pride after Myung-sook uses and drops him. Woman Is the Future of Man (2004) focuses on two old friends reuniting to see the woman they both once loved. It’s a meeting that leaves all parties disappointed. In 2005’s Tale of Cinema (Hong at his most meta) a sad-sack filmmaker attempts to re-create the courtship portrayed in his rival director’s film — which he claims was inspired by events from his own life — with its lead actress to predictably lukewarm effect.

Watching Hong’s films back-to-back is a bit like experiencing one of the protracted drinking jags his characters frequently undertake. You emerge bleary-eyed with a hangover from the desperation and ugliness you’ve witnessed. Exactly what happened and who got fucked (over) remain a blur, but the mundane conversations and chance encounters that incrementally and elliptically contributed to the general unpleasantness are strangely crystal clear. Such a viewing binge sets into relief the careful orchestration behind the happenstance realism often attributed to Hong’s matter-of-fact style of filmmaking. The conversations no longer seem mundane, encounters are only chance for the characters involved but not for the viewer, and the deadpan humor of many of the films’ situations becomes more apparent, as does Hong’s subtle skewering of romantic comedy and buddy movie clichés (such maudlin scores!).

What then can we make of all the women who are both objects of and obstacles to the men’s internal returns? While it’s tempting to read Woman Is the Future of Man‘s title as a neon arrow pointing toward the way out, Woman on the Beach suggests a necessary detour through another popular excursion destination: Shinduri Beach. Gray and lifeless in the off-season, this small town on Korea’s west coast serves as the natural backdrop (much like the breathtaking scenery of Mount Odae in Power) for two overlapping love triangles, which in typical Hong fashion form as quickly as they dissolve and neatly bisect the narrative.

Film director and lech Joong-rae (Kim Seung-woo) is trying to hammer out a new script but seems more interested in putting the moves on the headstrong girlfriend, Moon-sook (Ko Hyeon-gang), of his friend Chang-wook (Kim Tae-woo). Chang-wook, clearly aware that he has been dishonored, drives back to Seoul with Moon-sook. Two days later Joong-rae randomly interviews (and later sleeps with) a woman named Sun-hee (Song Seon-mi), whom he repeatedly compares to Moon-sook. Sun-hee eventually crosses paths with the woman she resembles, despite her and Joong-rae’s slapstick precautionary measures to avoid such an encounter. The women’s claws are soon retracted as the soju hits their bloodstreams, and Moon-sook calls it like it is: "Two women shouldn’t be fighting dirty over a man. It’s boring. This is why hell is boring."

Not all of Hong’s characters are such astute, self-critical observers. Their rapacious appetites — for sex and booze (often in combination); for love (often hastily declared while drunkenly having sex); for recognition from their peers and families; in short, for a balm to ease the atrophying routine of middle age — brings to mind another Korean monster currently stalking theaters, whose own indiscriminate satisfaction of its needs also invariably damages those closest to it.

At the same time, to call them monsters, however loutishly or cruelly they treat each other, would be to resolutely condemn them. Hong’s meticulous direction and his actors’ extremely nuanced (even when under the influence) performances refrain from going so far. Much in the same way that a competitive skater or gymnast repeatedly watches footage of their falls to pinpoint the exact moment and cause of mechanical error, Hong’s films let us see up close, again and again, the ways in which the veracity of our needs and desires causes us to fumble our relationships — with lovers, with friends, with strangers — regardless of our intentions. In the words of Aaliyah, "If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again." Hong is willing to grant his characters, however confused or outright pathetic, at least that much. *

RETROSPECTIVE: HONG SANG-SOO

March 16–25

For schedule, call or see Web site

(415) 865-1588

www.asianamericanfilmfestival.org

>

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I am not taking sides yet in the Carole Migden–Mark Leno race; the election is still a blessed 14 months away. But I think that at this point I can stake out a clear position against calling one of the candidates a "kiddie porn king."

I wish this were a joke, but it’s not. A former aide to Migden, Michael Colbruno, who (like most of the rest of the known world) has a blog, posted an item earlier this month headlined "Kiddie Porn King in Senate Race."

Colbruno clearly supports his former boss, who is defending her State Senate seat against Assemblymember Leno. That’s fine. But attacking Leno as a kiddie porn king is the exact sort of nasty, sleazy, Karl Rove–style stuff that ought to have no place in a San Francisco campaign.

Let me lay out the background here, since it’s a case study in how political smears are created.

About a year ago Republicans in the state legislature started work on a bill that was aimed at cracking down on child molesters. It wound up on the ballot as Proposition 83, a draconian law that, among other things, would have barred any registered sex offender from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park and required them to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for life.

Leno and Migden both opposed it.

But in the meantime, while the bill was being debated, Leno, chair of the Public Safety Committee, tried to offer a less heinous alternative. His measure was called AB 50, and while it tightened laws on sex crimes, it didn’t include the bracelets or the 2,000-foot residency requirement (which many law-enforcement types said were ineffective and unworkable).

During discussions on the bill, Leno tells me, Assemblymember Todd Spitzer, an Orange County Republican, approached Leno with an offer. "He told me that if I would accept several amendments, he’d support my bill," Leno says.

One Spitzer amendment would have tightened the laws on child pornography. At the time, possession of kiddie porn was a misdemeanor on the first offense; Spitzer’s proposal would have made it a felony if the offender possessed more than 100 pieces.

Sure, said Leno. No problem. (Spitzer, by the way, confirmed this account to me.)

That, in retrospect, was a mistake; in fact, I could argue that Leno was set up by the GOP. Because shortly afterward, the right-wing media blew up. Leno was accused of supporting the child-porn lobby; according to the likes of Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Leno was arguing that 99 pieces of kiddie porn were just fine. (The federal felony standard, by the way, is 75. Leno’s bill was amended — with his support — to 25, then one.)

Let’s remember: Leno’s bill actually tightened the existing law. I have two kids, and I’m not about to defend the peddlers of underage smut, but I really don’t think AB 50 made Leno a kiddie porn king.

I shudder to think about this becoming a campaign issue; I can already see the hit pieces (or whisper campaigns) circuutf8g in Marin and Sonoma counties, the more conservative parts of the district. Mark Leno, kiddie porn. Hard to turn that around.

Paul Hefner, a spokesperson for Migden’s campaign, told me she doesn’t approve of the post and wants to see a positive race. Good for her. But I suspect that if she were as offended as I am, she would call Colbruno and tell him to take that shit down. Now.

UPDATE: After ppress time for the print edition, Migden’s office informed me that the senator had asked Colbruno to take the post down. Colbruno told me he would do so. That was the right outcome; now let’s hope we don’t ever have to go through all of this again*

“The woman is the culprit”

-
1

By Steven T. Jones
Omigod. Like, omigod. Where do I even begin to dissect the comments by Gavin girlfriend Jennifer Siebel in today’s Chronicle Style section profile ? Let’s start with the money quote: “the woman is the culprit,” which she spoke in reference Ruby Rippey-Tourk, who had sexual relations with the mayor even though she was his employee and the wife of his right hand man. To be fair, maybe Siebel didn’t realize that she is the first Newsom proxy to attack Rippey-Tourk in print, something many journalists and women’s groups feared might happen in the election year. Because in reading this profile, she seems to be perfect for Newsom in several key ways: she’s gullible, good-looking, well-born, and not terribly smart. But that isn’t even the most interesting revelation in this article, which is that this relationship (which she claims is already “love” after six months) was arranged by Newsom’s political advisors (“after running a background check, one of the mayor’s staffers invited her”) and the Wilsey family (who is leading the oppositon to Healthy Saturdays and has convinced Newsom to oppose it) just as the news of Newsom dating a 20-year-old hostess broke and when the Rippey-Tourk affair was heading in that direction.

Abolish PG&E Corp.

-
0

OPINION Pacific Gas and Electric Corp. is a holding company whose only property is Pacific Gas and Electric Co., a regulated utility. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) exercises little regulatory oversight over PG&E Corp. Oversight by federal authorities has been curbed by recent legislation, which abolished most of the consumer protections of the New Deal’s Public Utilities Holding Company Act. To protect ratepayers and stockholders, PG&E Corp. should be abolished and its corporate charter revoked.

All of PG&E Corp.’s income comes, in effect, from tax minimization strategies, which allow PG&E Corp. to keep revenue that would otherwise be paid as income taxes. What are the consequences?

• The creation of the holding company constitutes a legal money-laundering strategy that has greatly benefited the holding company. A 2002 brief by California’s attorney general says that PG&E Corp. collected $663 million in net revenues from 1997 to 1999 by avoiding payment of income taxes.

• From 2000 to 2004, Mark Bumgardner of the CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) wrote in a 2006 report, "PG&E Corporation has been able to save $683 million in Utility taxes…. Since the benefits of being able to write off unprofitable affiliates for tax purposes is [sic] solely for the Holding Company’s benefit, DRA allocated 100% of the tax department’s costs to PG&E Corporation."

• Top officers at PG&E Corp. made out like bandits: President Robert D. Glynn’s total pay skyrocketed from $2 million in 1998 to $34 million in 2003, despite the fact that he led the company into bankruptcy.

• Almost all of PG&E Corp.’s revenues from 2001 to 2004 came from its regulated utility. PG&E Corp. got to keep an extra $1.346 billion from 1997 through 2004 by taking advantage of the tax benefits available to utility holding companies, if the attorney general and the DRA’s Bumgardner are correct.

The CPUC and the legislature created the holding company in a series of decisions and laws in the mid-1990s. However, the idea that deregulation California-style would bring competition and lower electric rates has proved to be false. Abolish the holding company, and this lucrative PG&E Corp. tax dodge ceases to exist.

To deal with PG&E’s high rates and unresponsive electric service, San Francisco public power activists and public officials tried to take over PG&E’s San Francisco grid in 2001 and 2002. In Yolo County, just west of Sacramento, activists and elected officials worked for years to drive out PG&E and replace it with electrical service from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. The SMUD charges 30 percent less than PG&E and far exceeds PG&E in the use of solar and wind power per customer. PG&E spent a record $50 per customer — at least $15 million, on 300,000 voters in Sacramento and Yolo counties — in November 2006 to turn back the public power challenge.

For others in Northern California, a return to traditional regulation as it functioned before the deregulation disaster may be the best that can be expected. Abolishing the holding company — a step the CPUC has the power to take — would be a good place to start.

Dan Berman

Dan Berman is the author of Who Owns the Sun? and is a longtime public power activist in Northern California. He lives in Davis and can be reached at danmberman@gmail.com.

“Rust” never sleeps

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Between Kirsten Greenidge’s rumbling and ambitious Rust and Chantal Bilodeau’s titilutf8g if more staid Pleasure and Pain, a metatheme is already emerging from the Magic Theatre’s annual three-play Hot House festival. Both Greenidge and Bilodeau merge a contemporary identity-focused story line and a fractured mise-en-scène to explore the porous border between mundane reality and individual and collective fictions.

Rust centers on a troubled patch in the high-flying career of football star Randall Mifflin (Mikaal Sulaiman). The Mighty Miff, to his fans, has temporarily retired for vague reasons having to do with the corruption of the game’s ideals, setting off a controversy embodied by two comically artificial-looking TV sportscasters (Eric Fraisher Hayes and Lance Gardner) complete with navy blue blazers, puffy microphones, plastic hairdos, and even banks of stadium floodlights strapped to their backs. Miff, meanwhile, stays home in edgy seclusion playing video games and collecting antique mammy-shaped cookie jars (and other fixtures of a commercial culture once saturated with antebellum black caricatures). To the growing concern of his wife (April Matthis) and friends (Nicole C. Julien and Donald Lett), it becomes clear Randall is being haunted over the phone by the ghosts of product icons Aunt Jemima, here known as Ella Mae Walker (Cathleen Riddley), and Uncle Ben, or Mr. Peale (L. Peter Callender), who plead with him to deliver the race.

A subplot features a yuppie brother (Gardner) and sister (Matthis) in the process of selling their late parents’ old house. Out of one wall steps a life-size version of Mary-Mary-Anne (Julien), a pickaninny the brother instantly recognizes from childhood as Farina, the cereal icon, one of many racist commercial images their mother bitterly pasted behind the wallpaper in a kind of symbolic burial. Mary-Mary-Anne leads the siblings on a hunt for the cookie jar now in Randall’s possession, as the two plot strands come together — along with an eerie set of lantern-wielding Gold Dust Washing Powder twins, Omas (Lett) and Snipe (Hayes) — in an antique shop operated by a drunken dealer named Gin George (Callender).

Setting these grotesque caricatures in motion among flesh-and-blood moderns is just one of the ways Greenidge’s uneven but vital, imaginative, and ambitious comedy theatrically realizes the uneasy blending of stereotypes and real life. It does so in a way particularly reminiscent of Suzan-Lori Parks’s work. As the enduring force of blackface caricature, and the white supremacist ideology behind it, threads its way into the present day, it becomes clear that the subtle negotiations and compromises attendant on personal and collective identity in 21st-century American culture stand in need of a little schooling, if not an exorcism.

The protagonist in Bilodeau’s Pleasure and Pain has her own problem with private demons bearing down on her social world. Peggy (Jennifer Clare) is an attractive, perky, semiawkward, almost unbelievably sheltered 21st-century young woman groping toward a more or less ’50s-style sexual awakening with an overactive fantasy life she half worries, half hopes will leave her "out of control." Needless to say, she gets her ambivalent wish. Her daydreams — ruled by a strapping dominator (Andrew Utter) dressed in casual S-M gear — soon spill out into her workaday world, which is split between secretarial duties alongside former babysitter and comically unguarded confidant Ruth (a sharp and amusing Catherine Smitko) and a prematurely settled home life with her schluby fiancé (Max Moore).

Not exactly new territory. Pleasure and Pain lacks anything like the imagination — let alone psychological or social import — of Luis Buñuel’s Belle du Jour or even a film by Catherine Breillat. Its limited journey is fairly dull. All the passing allure of bare midriff and lash could have come out of a Good Vibrations catalog circa 1978. *

PLEASURE AND PAIN RUST

Through April 1

See Web site for schedule, $20–$45

Magic Theatre

Fort Mason Center, bldg D, third floor

Marina at Laguna, SF

(415) 441-8822

www.magictheatre.org

>

God chillin’

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER O brother, where art thou, blog-worthy, buzz-besieged bands? Whither the classes of 2004 and ’05? As memory fades and fads pass, the Klaxons and Beirut had best look to the respective fates of Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, both of which have spawned second albums at a time when Britney Spears’s postpartum-postbreakup cue-ball cutes (uh, was she actually a musician, mommy?) score almost twice as many hits as Beyoncé or any ole artist who has actually issued fresh tracks in the last four years. How has blogosphere-borne hypey held up? Can the viral gospel survive, with or without fast-buck comps with the word "Hitz" in their titles? (Was I dozing through Now That’s What I Call Indie! Vol. 23?) Was there any substance to the sound of the mid-’00s when it comes to Arcade Fire and CYHSY — two indie taste sensations that musically mimed Talking Heads and, in their number, resembled villages more than singular villains? Can they bring sexy back sonically, even though they never bumped billiard balls with the naked-noggined queen of pop?

From the sound of the last CYHSY show I caught at the Warfield, the Philly–New York sprawl seemed well on its way to sell-out-by staleness. Out were the frothy, Afropop-derived David Byrne–ing campfire rhythms. Enter monotonous, monochromatic indie rock.

Yet although CYHSY’s new (and still bravely self-released) ‘un, Some Loud Thunder, peters to a dull roar by the time "Five Easy Pieces" rolls around, the full-length still impresses with its sense of aural experimentation. Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann throws fuzz, shmutz, and the noise equivalent of cat fur and tumbleweed over the proceedings, futzing the opening, title track into a cunning combo of foregrounded murk and tambourine-shimmy clarity. CYHSY cut through the fog of pop with the dissonance-laced sweetness of a cockeyed, choral "Emily Jean Stock" and the Dylanishly titilutf8g manifesto tease of "Mama, Won’t You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning?" Some Loud Thunder is a freakin’ busy record — with the emphasis happily on the freak — and it’s almost as if CYHSY were trying to reach beyond the easy, cumbersome cool of their name (always suspected to be a major part of their appeal) and toward, hoo-boy, depth. Too bad the lyrics aren’t often up to the musical intrigue on such songs as "Satan Said Dance" and "Goodbye to Mother and the Cove," making CYHSY sound like the E.E. Cummingses of indie, for whatever that’s worth. "Gravity’s one thing and / Gravity’s something but / How about coming down …," Alec Ounsworth whinnies. "Weird but you’re back talking." Wonderfully weird, yes, though is it unfair to ask if you have anything to say?

Back also, in priestly black, are Arcade Fire, who have plenty to tell in the three years since Funeral was unveiled. Amid the majestic choral sheen, synth pop flock, and Tijuana brass of their new album, Neon Bible (Merge), Win Butler and party have unearthed and dusted off the lost threads of connection between the teary tough-guy sentimentality of Gene Pitney and Roy Orbison, the jittery junked-up teardrops of "Little Johnny Jewel" and Suicide, and the quavering, coaguutf8g pop syrup of the Cure and OMD. Arcade Fire have crawled through a creaky, darkened looking glass and found a lost, perhaps losing world populated with forlorn soldiers, urban paranoiacs, rough water, guiding lights, lions and lambs, and idling vehicles.

Cloaked in increasingly trad folk and ’80s pop-song structures, engineering by Markus Dravs (Björk) and Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls), and contributions by members of Calexico, Wolf Parade, and Final Fantasy, Arcade Fire thankfully put lyrical clichés to work during Neon Bible‘s clamorous service, to the end of genuine storytelling. They’re preaching the gospel of transcendence through music and art — something that now seems unique to rock, in contrast to rap — questioning a holy war in "Intervention" ("Working for the church while my family died / Your little sister is going to lose her mind / Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home / Hear the soldier groan / He’ll go it alone") and the god-fearing hysteria of "(Antichrist Television Blues)" ("Don’t want to work in a building downtown / I don’t know what I’m going to do / Because the planes keep crashing, two by two"). Arcade Fire are far from the first to fire artful shots in response to wartime, but Neon Bible — as bold and beautiful, as hysterical and hopeful, as corny and acute as a rockin’ soap opera or Jesus Christ Superstar — feels like the best album of 2007 so far. *

ARCADE FIRE

June 1–2, 8 p.m., $31.50

Greek Theatre

UC Berkeley, Gayley Road, Berk.

www.ticketmaster.com

GET OUT

NICE BOYS


The Portland, Ore., upstarts with mighty fine shaggy rooster cuts step up with ’70s-style glitter pop. With Time Flys and Apache. Wed/7, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

OLD TIME RELIJUN


K Records’ wrecking crew just might find a deity at the bottom of a beer stein. With Tussle and the Weasel Walter Quartet. Wed/7, 10 p.m., $5. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. (415) 550-6994

BUNNY RABBIT


CocoRosie’s girly rapper protégé freestyles with a thumb-sucking bounce. Is her Lovers and Crypts (Voodoo-Eros) for reals? With Tha Pumpsta and Bruno and the Dreamies. Thurs/8, 8 p.m., $6. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. (510) 444-7263. Tues/13, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

EMPTY ROOMS


A new self-titled EP finds the Bay Area moodniks waxing gothily. With Worship of Silence and This Isn’t It. Sun/11, 9 p.m., $6. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300

Axis power

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

It has been noted in the mostly laudatory press surrounding their collection of 10-inch EPs, Transparent Things (Tirk/Word and Sound), that Fujiya & Miyagi aren’t Japanese. Nor are they a duo. They are in fact three white friends from Brighton, England, whose openly acknowledged obsession with Neu’s motornik pulse and Can’s subdued funk has resulted in some very infectious, kraut-tinged electronic pop songs as well as gentle speculation about whether Fujiya & Miyagi are simply derivative or being cheekily open about their influences.

Anticipating their critics, the band even declare at one point as a chorus, "We’re only pretending to be Japanese!" But Fujiya & Miyagi seem too polite to be doing all this as a piss-take, yet too self-conscious to claim sui generis innocence by way of a strange musical synchronicity. After all, I don’t think I am the only person who thought they were Japanese when I first heard them.

To some extent, all bands wear their record collections on their sleeves early on. Some simply loathe admitting it. Initial Stereolab singles were basically remakes of Neu’s "Hallo Gallo" (although so were Neu’s subsequent albums) with vocal window dressing snatched from ’60s French yé-yé pop. It was the unexpected synthesis of the two that made them sound so fresh. By now Fujiya & Miyagi’s warm-cold instrumentation — guitars compressed into brittle chirps, warm analog synth washes, percoutf8g drum machines — is a familiar palette (again, think Stereolab or some DFA productions), but David Best’s vocal style fogs up the transparency of the homage.

Best’s clipped, affectless approach works well to underscore his distanced lyrics, whether he’s detachedly recounting the scuffs incurred while falling in and out of love ("Collarbone" and "Sucking Punch," respectively) or cataloging the commodities around him ("Transparent Things"). His rolled r‘s and staccato delivery also uncannily invoke the quieter Damo Suzuki of Can’s 1972 album, Ege Bamyasi, or the 1973 disc Future Days (both Mute).

Granted, James Murphy stands accused of swagger-jacking Mark E. Smith’s extra syllables (Smith, appropriately enough, donned Suzuki vocal drag for the Fall’s "I Am Damo Suzuki" — perhaps Fujiya & Miyagi’s chief precedent). And Beck’s skinny-white-boy take on Prince circa Midnite Vultures (Interscope, 1999) is no more or less suspect than Justin Timberlake’s Off the Wall falsetto.

Appropriation is an old and often circular debate in music, one inflected by racial politics as much as the vagaries and entitlements enabled by whatever strength so-called postmodernism still holds as a position. The earnest love of kraut Fujiya & Miyagi see reflected in their music may come off as a studied imitation to some, but when "Collarbone" hits its breakdown, and Best breathily beatboxes the old "knee bone connected to the shin bone" nursery rhyme like he wants to rock your body, Fujiya & Miyagi momentarily sidestep the anxiety of influence and become simply a great pop group. *

1...120121122...131Page 121 of 131

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