Television

Our weekly picks

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WEDNESDAY (24th)

MUSIC

Noise Pop: The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger

Noise Pop is in full effect, and Sean Lennon manages to pull double duty with the most important ladies in his life, performing with Plastic Ono Band as well as a group that includes his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhr. The latter project, dubbed Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger, presents lavish folk songs not too far-flung from Lennon’s solo output, including a few spaced-out covers of that material. But Muhl’s harmonies lend a new depth and tone to the sublime psych gems. Performing under the pseudonyms Amatla and Zargifon, the duo is joined at this performance by members of Cornelius’s band (Keigo Oyamada, Shimmy Hirotaka Shimizu, Yuko Araki), adding to the full sound. (Peter Galvin)

With If By Yes (Petra Hayden and Yuka Honda)

8 p.m., $20

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

MUSIC

Noise Pop: Harlem, Young Prisms

Best party of Noise Pop probably has to be the Harlem show. The Bay Area isn’t trifling when it comes to garage rock, but the Texan trio can hang with the best of them (and in fact, they have some ties to them). They’ve got the best rock ‘n’ roll invocation of Caspar the Friendly Ghost since fellow Austin boy Daniel Johnston, and a handsome guitar sound. And yeah, they have a song called “Psychedelic Tits” that Jayne Mansfield would be proud to dance to regardless of whether Frank Tashlin was watching. They can write about unhappily blasting ABBA in the rain in the South of France and make it sound like the best time. Opening for them are Mexican Summer signees Young Prisms, one of the best new bands in San Francisco. (Johnny Ray Huston)

With Best Coast, the Sandwitches

8 p.m., $12

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

MUSIC

Jimmy Scott and the Jazz Expressions

There is nothing quite like Jimmy Scott singing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” I’ve seen Scott testify when singing this song — even at 85 years old, he grabs hold of it with ferocity. That’s how it is when a song tells the story of your life, and Scott, well he’s the kind of singer who turns a song into a story. Back in the ’60s, Scott brought fearless singing on songs such as “Day By Day.” In recent years, his takes on standards like “All of Me” have had an increased sense of mischievous humor. If you haven’t seen Jimmy Scott live, you should, because there is no one quite like him, and no document of a concert in Tokyo, no matter how enjoyable, can match the experience. (Huston)

8 p.m., $18

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

THURSDAY (25th)

FOOD/SPOKEN WORD

“In the Defense of Food”

Food. It’s one thing that can bring people together, create tears of joy, make mouths water, and conjure dreams. Although many of us try to fight the temptation to indulge in delectable bites, we are, in fact a society obsessed with savory morsels that bring us to our knees, and keep us begging for more. So let’s talk about it. Poetri, the star of the original Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, will unleash his inner love for food, and top spoken word artists from the Bay Area will also spend the evening praising unforgettable treats. And yes, food sampling and wine tasting are on the menu. (Elise-Marie Brown)

6 p.m., $20 (RSVP required)

Museum of the African Diaspora

685 Mission, SF

(415) 358-7200

www.moadsf.org

DANCE

Robert Moses’ Kin: The Cinderella Principle

When Robert Moses formed his dance company 15 years ago, he called it Robert Moses’ Kin. Moses knows that families today no longer just run along bloodlines. Nontraditional, blended, interracial, same-sex, single parent, no-kids families have become common. Hence The Cinderella Principle: Try These On to See If They Fit, an hour-long, full company work for which he collaborated with playwright Anne Galfour. The choreographic impetus came from interviews with people who are engaged in redefining kinship. Since dance companies often refer to themselves as family, Cinderella seems a particularly appropriate subject for a choreographer to undertake. The live music by Todd Reynolds includes beat boxer Kid Beyond. Cinderella will be joined by two works from 2008, Toward September and Hush. (Rita Felciano)

8 p.m (also Fri/26-Sat/27), $20-35.

Yerba. Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

VISUAL ART

Jill Storthz: Woodcuts

San Francisco has a lot of artists, but how many artists have San Francisco in heart and mind? Jill Storthz does — she’s written about the city’s influence on her work’s “splintered ramshackle quality entwined with colored light, earth, and space. Points for use of the word ramshackle, no doubt, but Storthz’s woodcuts have a lightness and grace to them, and the piece on the postcard for her latest show is rich with color in a manner that doesn’t listlessly parrot Mission School motifs. Storthz doesn’t draw within the lines of color theory — in other words, her art is distinct, not derivative. (Huston)

5:30–7 p.m. (through March), free

The Grotto

490 2nd St, SF

www.jillstorthz.com

www.sfgrotto.org

FRIDAY (26th)

ART/PHOTOGRAPHY

Third Annual International Juried Plastic Camera Show

What happened to the days when a basic point-and-shoot camera with film could make life exciting? We didn’t have the option of viewing photos instantly — instead, we had to march over to the one-hour photo and wait as our roll of film was developed. Whether the pictures came out in focus or not, the whole point was to document a moment in time when something worthy of a photo took place. At the Juried Plastic Camera Show, renowned photographers will showcase their work with the use of low-grade cameras — sans all the fancy equipment — and unveil beautiful pieces at that. (Brown)

6 p.m., free

RayKo Photo Center

428 Third St., SF

(415) 495-3773

www.raykophoto.com

MUSIC

Noise Pop: Atlas Sound

Buffalo Springfield died so that we might have Neil Young, and Peter Gabriel gave up the ghost with Genesis so his angelic 1980s pipes could blast from the boombox of an adolescent John Cusack. Sometimes branching off is a good idea. So it is with the music of Atlas Sound, the more-than-side project of Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox. The group’s recent album Logos (Kranky/4AD, 2009) is a hodgepodge of druggy, reverbed, and blissed-out beauty recorded whenever, wherever, and with whatever from 2007 to 2009. (Brady Welch)

With Geographer, Magic Wands, Nice Nice

8 p.m., $16-18

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.noisepop.com

FILM

Downstream

As recent entries The Book of Eli, The Road (2009), and I Am Legend (2007) have demonstrated, it’s easy to nuke a fascinating sci-fi genre into ponderous, sentimental meh-ness. (Not every postapocalyptic film can be as cool as 1979’s Mad Max.) Self-distributed Downstream avoids the heart-tugging route, for the most part: after his scientist father is killed, a boy grows up to be a straggly-haired drifter in a ravaged world where there’s no gas and very few women (thanks to cancers caused by genetically altered food). His one hope is of finding a rumored city kept civilized by clean energy. Its over-reliance on split-screen can be distracting, but Downstream deserves props for approaching dystopia from an intriguingly green perspective. (Cheryl Eddy)

Fri/26-Sat/27, 8 p.m.; Sun/28, 7 p.m.; $12

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

(415) 863-7576

www.downstreamthemovie.com

MUSIC

Brian McKnight, Lalah Hathaway

Tonight, two respected R&B singers come together in one of the most soulful towns. Brian McKnight has made an imprint with his singing and songwriting on such hits as “Back at One” and “Anytime.” He also plays nine instruments. His timeless voice is an inspiration to several of today’s R&B singers. Opening for McKnight is Lalah Hathaway, daughter of the legendary Donny Hathaway. Her buttery alto tone is reminiscent of her father’s voice, but she injects her own timbre and control into every note. (Lilan Kane)

8pm, $50–$75

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 302-2277

www.thefoxoakland.com

SATURDAY (27th)

EVENT

Monster Jam

A stampede of horsepower comes thundering into the Bay Area today as the Monster Jam series of monster truck races and events hits Oakland, featuring ground-shaking custom creations such as “Iron Man,” “Donkey Kong,” “Maximum Destruction,” and the long-running fan favorite “Grave Digger.” Spectators will be treated to both races and full-on “freestyle” events — where the 10,000 pound muscle machines fly through the air at distances up to 130 feet and reach heights up to 35 feet in the air — not to mention crushing cars aplenty. Get in touch with your inner gear-head and speed on over to the Coliseum early, where a pit party precedes the night’s main events, allowing fans to get up close and personal with the burly beasts. (Sean McCourt)

3 p.m. pit party, 7 p.m. main event; $7.50–$30 ($125 for an all access pass)

Oakland Coliseum

7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl.

(800) 745-3000

www.monsterjam.com

MUSIC

California Honeydrops

It’s cold season, so if you are experiencing a sore throat, grab some California Honeydrops. Their music makes you feel good. Originating in the Oakland subway stations in 2007, California Honeydrops has played worldwide. Led by vocalist and trumpeter Lech Wierzynski, the band embraces roots, blues, and New Orleans-style horn lines to create a modern sound with a traditional influences. The playful rhythm section includes Chris Burns on the keys, drummer Ben Malament, and bassist Seth Ford-Young, with spicy shouts from saxophonist Johnny Bones. Bring your dancing shoes. (Kane)

$10–$15, 7:30 and 9 p.m.

Red Poppy Art House

2698 Folsom, SF

(415) 826-2402

www.redpoppyarthouse.org

ART/FILM

Cartune Xprez: 2010 Future Television

Combine images of old Sunday morning cartoons, live video theater, and psychedelic colors and shapes into a cosmic video and you’ve got Cartune Xprez: an out-of-body dream sequence come to life. Many of the directors will be on hand to explain the concepts for their work, so don’t be scared if you misinterpret their tour de force. Artists who have presented at Cartune Xprez in the past include Shana Moulton, Day-Glo maniacs Paper Rad, and collage visionary Martha Colburn. (Brown)

8 p.m., $5

LoBot Gallery

1800 Campbell, Oakl.

www.lobotgallery.com

SUNDAY (28th)

EVENT/LIT

“Meet Ann Bannon: Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction”

Pulp fiction isn’t just Tarantino kitsch. For pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian writers, the creation of pulp titles with something more — a way to forge community, share desires, and spark imagination. For some, if not all, this meant pulp was a political act. It would be difficult to find a better representative of lesbian pulp fiction than Ann Bannon, whose five-volume Beebo Brinker Chronicles has seen numerous reprints and recently inspired a stage play. In conjunction with the West Coast premiere of the stage version of Beebo Brinker, Bannon is coming to town for a tea party. Heat it up and add honey. (Huston)

1 p.m., $20–$40

Brava Theater Center

2789 24th St., SF

(415) 641-7657

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

Rep Clock

David Talbot
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Schedules are for Wed/24–Tues/2 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

AUTOBODY FINE ART GALLERY 1517 Park, Alameda; www.autobodyfineart.com. $5. "Hunger," short zombie films by Bay Area filmmakers, Sat, 8.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. Zeitgeist Addendum: The Resource-Based Economy, Thurs, 7. "Noise Pop Film Festival:" Blood Into Wine (Page and Pomerenke), Fri, 7; Downtown Calling (Nicholson), Fri, 9; •Lou Barlow: Goodnight Unknown (Harding) and The Mountain Goats: Life of the World to Come (Johnson), Sat, 2; Woodstock: Now and Then (Kopple), Sat, 4; The Secret to a Happy Ending (Weissman), Sun, 2; All My Friends Are Funeral Singers (Rutili), Sun, 4:15. For info on these screenings, visit www.noisepop.com.

CAFÉ OF THE DEAD 3208 Grand, Oakl; (510) 931-7945. Free. "Independent Filmmakers Screening Nite," Wed, 6:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (Herzog, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:15 (also Wed, 2:30, 4:45). •Fight Club (Fincher, 1999), Fri, 7, and Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001), Fri, 9:40. Up (Docter, 2009), Sat, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:15. "German Gems:" Tender Parasites (Becker and Schwabe, 2009), Sun, noon; Miss Stinnes (von Moeller, 2009), Sun, 2; Being Mr. Kotschie (Baumgarten, 2009), Sun, 4:15; Vision (von Trotta, 2009), Sun, 7; The Bone Man (Murnberger, 2009), Sun, 9:15. Call for Mon-Tues program information.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10. Broken Embraces (Almodóvar, 2009), call for dates and times. An Education (Scherfig, 2009), call for dates and times. Fish Tank (Arnold, 2009), call for dates and times. North Face (Stölzl, 2008), call for dates and times. "2010 Oscar Nominated Short Films," Wed-Thurs, call for times. "The Cinema of Jan Troell:" Everlasting Moments (2008), Sat, 7:15; The Emigrants (1971), Sat, 2 and March 6, 2; The New Land (1972), Sun, 2 and March 6, 7; "Dancing," "Reflexion 2001," and "Their Frozen Dream," Sun, 7; As White as Snow (2001), Mon and March 4, 7; Il Capitano (1991), Tues, 7.

HERBST THEATRE 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 392-4400. $20. Examined Life (Taylor, 2008), Thurs, 7:30.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. •Shellmound and In the Light of Reverence, Wed, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. "CinemaLit Film Series: Reel Criminals — The Heist:" A Fish Called Wanda (Crichton, 1988), Fri, 6.

MEZZANINE 444 Jessie, SF; www.sffs.org. $15. "SF360 Film + Club," sneak preview of a film about Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, Sun, 8.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. "Film 50: History of Cinema:" Pursued (Walsh, 1947), Wed, 3. "African Film Festival:" In My Genes (Nyong’o, 2009), Wed, 7. "Before ‘Capraesque:’ Early Frank Capra:" The Younger Generation (1929), Thurs, 7; So This Is Love (1928), Fri, 7; The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), Fri, 8:30; It Happened One Night (1934), Sat, 6:30. "The Kids Are Alright: Post-Fifties Musicals and the Rise of Youth Culture:" Pink Floyd the Wall (Parker, 1982), Thurs, 8:35; True Stories (Byrne, 1986), Sat, 8:35; Fruit Fly (Mendoza, 2008), Sun, 5:30. "L@te: Friday Nights at BAM/PFA:" "Paul Clipson and Gregg Kowalsky; Keith Evans," Fri, 7:30. This event at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft, Berk. "Celebrating Amateur Film:" "Sid’s Cinema: A Tribute to Amateur Filmmaker Sid Laverents (1963-85)," Sun, 3.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. The Yes Men Fix the World (Ollman, Price, and Smith, 2009), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:15. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Herzog, 2009), Thurs-Sat, 7, 9:35 (also Sat, 2, 4:30. Small Change (Truffaut, 1976), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:30 (also Sun, 2, 4). The Beaches of Agnès (Varda, 2008), March 2-3, 7, 9:20 (also March 3, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. "Noise Pop Film Festival:" Austin, TX: Live Music Capital of the World? (Christ), Wed, 7; P-Star Rising (Noble), Wed, 9:15. For info on these screenings, visit www.noisepop.com. Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 (Lerner), Wed-Thurs, 6:40, 8, 9:30. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Daniels, 2009), Thurs, 6:45. The Cove (Psihoyos, 2009), Thurs, 8:50. Call for Fri-Tues program information.

SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfcinema.org. $10. "Darkest Americana and Elsewhere: Films, Video, and Words of James Benning:" "James Benning: American Dreams," Fri, 7; "James Benning: Landscape Suicide," Fri, 8:15. "Australian Avant-Garde: A Historical Overview," Tues, 7:30. Presentation Theater, University of San Francisco, 2350 Turk, SF. Same price and contact info. "James Benning:" Ruhr (2009) with "Fire and Rain" (2009), Sat, 7:30. McBean Theater, Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF. Same price and contact info. "James Benning: Milwaukee to Lincoln, Montana Lecture," Sun, 3.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. "The Story of India:" Freedom (2007), Thurs, noon. Large-screen video presentation.

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF; www.downstreamthemovie.com. $12. Downstream (Bartesaghi, 2009), Fri-Sat, 8; Sun, 7.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com/films. $10-25. La Maison De Himiko (2005), through March 4, call for times. "Noise Pop Film Festival:" Blood Into Wine (Page and Pomerenke), Thurs, 7:30; The Heart is a Drum Machine (Pomerenke), Thurs, 9:30. For info on these screenings, visit www.noisepop.com.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. "Freaks, Punks, Skanks, and Cranks:" To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore (Sumerel, 2008), Thurs, 7:30; Gold (Levis, 1968), Sat, 7:30.

Rep Clock

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Schedules are for Wed/17–Tues/23 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $5-6. “OpenScreening,” Thurs, 8. For submission info, contact ataopenscreening@atasite.org. “Birgit Ulher, Gino Robair, and Bill Hsu: An Evening of Electroacoustical Audio-Visual Improvisations,” Fri, 8. “Other Cinema:” Nausicaa: Tales of the Valley of the Wind (Packard), plus other Damon Packard films, Sat, 8:30. San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the US National Committee for the United Nations Developent Fund for Women presents: Thing With No Name Sun, 7.

BRIDGE 2010 Geary, SF; www.peacheschrist.com. $13. “Midnight Mass:” Teen Witch (Walker, 1989), Sat, midnight.

CAFÉ OF THE DEAD 3208 Grand, Oakl; (510) 931-7945. Free. “Independent Filmmakers Screening Nite,” Wed, 6:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. •Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (Jones, 1983), Wed, 2:35, 7, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Gilliam, 1988), Wed, 4:3, 9:85. A Single Man (Ford, 2009), Thurs, 2:30, 4:35, 7, 9:05. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (Herzog, 2009), Feb 19-25, 7, 9:15 (also Fri/19-Sun/21 and Feb 24, 2:30, 4:45).

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10. Broken Embraces (Almodóvar, 2009), call for dates and times. An Education (Scherfig, 2009), call for dates and times. Fish Tank (Arnold, 2009), call for dates and times. That Evening Sun (Teems, 2009), Wed-Thurs, call for times. North Face (Stölzl, 2008), Feb 19-25, call for times. “2010 Oscar Nominated Short Films,” Feb 19-25, call for times.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. Comandante (Stone, 2003), Wed, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Reel Criminals — The Heist:” The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Sargent, 1974), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Film 50: History of Cinema:” Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945), Wed, 3. “African Film Festival:” Wrestling Grounds (Ndiaye, 2006), Wed, 7; Prince of Broadway (Baker, 2008), Thurs, 7:30. “Masters of Asian Cinema:Yasujuri Ozu and Hou Hsiao-Hsein:” That Night’s Wife (Ozu, 1930), Fri, 7; A City of Sadness (Hou, 1989), Sat, 8. “The Kids Are Alright: Post-Fifties Musicals and the Rise of Youth Culture:” Bye Bye Birdie (Sidney, 1963), Fri, 8:30; Hair (Forman, 1979), Sun, 5:30. “Before ‘Capraesque:’ Early Frank Capra:” The Way of the Strong (1928), Sat, 6:30. “For the Love of It: Seventh Annual Festival of Amateur Filmmaking,” Sun, 3. “Alternative Visions: Three by Nathaniel Dorsky,” Tues, 7:30.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Brothers (Sheridan, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:20. Harmony and Me (Byington, 2009), Fri-Mon, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat-Sun, 2, 4). The Yes Men Fix the World (Ollman, Price, and Smith, 2009), Feb 23-24, 7:15, 9:15 (also Feb 24, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Wed-Thurs. See film listings. “BikePorn3,” Fri-Sat, 11:20.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. “The Story of India:” Ages of Gold/Meetings of Two Oceans (2007), Thurs, noon. Large-screen video presentation.

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF; www.sfcinema.org. “Apparent Motion: Program One,” Sat, 3; “Program Two,” Sat, 8; “Program Three,” Sun, 1; “Program Four,” Sun, 6.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com/films. $10-25. Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (2003), Wed-Thurs, call for times. La Maison De Himiko (2005), Feb 18-March 4, call for times.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Freaks, Punks, Skanks, and Cranks:” “Target Video Presents: San Francisco Punks,” Thurs, 6, 8, 10; “Target Video Presents: Survival Research Laboratories Performance Films,” Sat, 7, 9.

Rep Clock

David Talbot
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Schedules are for Wed/10–Tues/16 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. The Black Rock: The Untold Story of the Black Experience on Alcatraz (Epps, 2009), Fri, 8.

BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; www.thrillville.net. $10. "Thrillville’s Valentine Beach Party:" Beach Blanket Bingo (Asher, 1965), Sun, 7:30. With star Donna Loren in person.

BERKELEY HILLSIDE CLUB 2286 Cedar, Berk; (510) 848-3227. $12. "Tenderness: A KPFA Valentine Evening with Two Films By Haydn Reiss," Sun, 7.

BRIDGE 2010 Geary, SF; (415) 668-6834, bebopsociety@gmail.com. Free-$4. "Bebop Nights," Cowboy Bebop anime celebration and screening, Sat, midnight.

CAFÉ OF THE DEAD 3208 Grand, Oakl; (510) 931-7945. Free. "Independent Filmmakers Screening Nite," Wed, 6:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. •The Fisher King (Gilliam, 1991), Wed, 2, 7, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam, 1998), Wed, 4:35, 9:35. •A Serious Man (Coen and Coen, 2009), Thurs, 7, and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Herzog, 2009), Thurs, 9:05. "Midnites for Maniacs: A Valentine’s Tribute to John Hughes:" Some Kind of Wonderful (Deutch, 1987), Fri, 7:30; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Hughes, 1986), Fri, 9:30; National Lampoon’s Vacation (Ramis, 1983), Fri, 11:45; Sixteen Candles (Hughes, 1984), Sat, 2; The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), Sat, 4:15; Pretty in Pink (Deutch, 1986), Sat, 6:30; Planes Trains and Automobiles (Hughes, 1987), Sat, 8:45. Tickets are $10 for each day. "Justin Bond: Close to You," live concert of Carpenters music, Sun, 8:15. For tickets ($25-75), call (415) 963-0611 or visit www.ticketweb.com. Broken Embraces (Almodóvar, 2009), Mon, 1:30, 4:15, 7, 9:30.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10. Broken Embraces (Almodóvar, 2009), call for dates and times. An Education (Scherfig, 2009), call for dates and times. Fish Tank (Arnold, 2009), call for dates and times. "Mostly British Film Festival:" London River (Bouchareb, 2009), Wed, 7. That Evening Sun (Teems, 2009), Feb 12-18, call for times. Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942), Sun, noon. Free screening.

DESIGN WITHIN REACH POTRERO STUDIO 2299 Alameda, SF; (415) 734-9172. Free. The Designer Jens Quistgaard: A Saucepan for My Wife (Guldberg, 2009), Thurs, 6.

GOLDEN GATE CLUB 135 Fisher Loop, Presidio, SF; (415) 778-7142, ext 18, www.iicsanfrancisco.esteri.it. Inside Buffalo (Kowornu), Fri, 6:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. "CinemaLit Film Series: Reel Criminals — The Heist:" The Great Train Robbery (Crichton, 1979), Fri, 6.

METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO 150 Eureka, SF; www.mccsf.org. $10. Cure For Love (Pelletier and Willings, 2009), Sat, 7. With co-director Christina Willings in person.

OPERA PLAZA 601 Van Ness, SF; (415) 267-4893, www.stephaniesimage.com. Stephanie’s Image (Allen, 2009), Feb 15-21, call for times.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. "Film 50: History of Cinema:" Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), Wed, 3. "African Film Festival:" "Dance Dance Revolution: Contemporary African Dance on Film," Wed, 7. "Complicated Shadows: The Films of Val Lewton:" The Body Snatcher (Wise, 1945), Thurs, 7; Isle of the Dead (Robson, 1945), Thurs, 8:40; The Ghost Ship (Robson, 1943), Sat, 7; Bedlam (Robson, 1946), Sat, 8:30. "Before ‘Capraesque:’ Early Frank Capra:" Rain or Shine (1930), Fri, 7; Platinum Blonde (1931), Fri, 8:50; The Matinee Idol (1928), Sun, 2. "The Kids Are Alright: Post-Fifties Musicals and the Rise of Youth Culture:" West Side Story (Wise and Robbins, 1961), Sat, 4; Absolute Beginners (Temple, 1986), Sun, 4:15. "Alfred Leslie: Cool Man in a Golden Age:" "A Golden Age: Short Films by Alfred Leslie" (1965-2008), Tues, 7:30.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Sita Sings the Blues (Paley, 2008), Wed-Thurs, 7:15, 9:15 (also Wed, 2). Annie Hall (Allen, 1977), Fri-Sun, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sat-Sun, 2, 4). Antichrist (von Trier, 2009), Mon-Tues, 7:15, 9:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. San Francisco Independent Film Festival, through Feb 18. See film listings.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. "The Story of India:" Power of Ideas: Spide Routes and Silk Roads (2007), Thurs, noon. Large-screen video presentation.

VIZ CINEMA New People, 1746 Post, SF; www.newpeopleworld.com/films. $10-25. Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (2003), through Feb 18, call for times.

VOGUE 3290 Sacramento, SF; (415) 346-2288, www.mostlybritish.org. $12.50-30. "Mostly British Film Festival," Wed-Thurs. Check web site for program information.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. "Jacques Tati: Genius of French Comedy:" Playtime (1967), Thurs, 7:30.

Alerts

David Talbot
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alerts@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, FEB. 11

Let BART know


Protest the upcoming BART Board meeting, which follows BART attorney Dale Allen’s announcement that BART intends to "vigorously fight [a lawsuit brought by friends of Oscar Grant] based on their contributing actions to the tragic accident." Ex-BART police officer Johannes Mehserle is being tried for murder in the case.

9 a.m., free

Kaiser Center

20th St. Mall, third floor

344 20th St., Oakl.

indybay.org/oscargrant

Responding to Mein Kampf


Attend this exhibit by French artist Linda Ellia, where pages of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) have been transformed by artists, youths, and citizens into transformative artistic responses to the text creating a new book, Notre Combat (Our Struggle).

11 a.m., $10

Contemporary Jewish Museum

736 Mission, SF

(415) 655-7800

She wrote it


Attend the first lecture in the Radical Women’s 2010 Feminist Theory Series for a discussion with author and socialist feminism pioneer Clara Fraser on her book Revolution, She Wrote.

7 p.m., free

Radical Women

625 Larkin, Suite 202, SF

(415) 864-1278

V-Day East Bay


Celebrate the diversity and strength of local women at this performance of Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues starring local women. Proceeds benefit global women’s organizations.

8 p.m., $10

La Peña Cultural Center

3105 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 849-2568?

Eat right


Dine and do good. Pick up a copy of Young Workers United 2010 Restaurant Guide to Guilt-Free Eating, which recognizes restaurants in San Francisco that provide good working environments and delicious food.

6:30 p.m., $5–$10 suggested donation

Women’s Building

Audre Lorde Room

3543 18th St., SF

(415) 621-4155

FRIDAY, FEB. 12

Black Rock


Attend this screening of the Kevin Epps film, The Black Rock: The Untold Story of the Black Experience on Alcatraz, which chronicles the role of African Americans in the history of Alcatraz.

8 p.m., $6

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

www.blackalcatraz.com

SATURDAY, FEB. 13

Save Stowe Lake Boathouse


Enjoy free festivities and snacks for the whole family at this historic boathouse building and help send a message to the SF Recreation and Park Department that you oppose the take-over of the top floor of the boathouse for an indoor, privately-owned restaurant. Rain cancels.

11 a.m., free

Stowe Lake Boathouse

Golden Gate Park

50 Stow Lake Drive, SF

www.savestowlake.org

TUESDAY, FEB. 16

MTA Not ATM


Protest Muni’s service cutbacks and fee hikes at this rally and press conference preceding a 2 p.m. MTA board meeting. Demand that the city implement progressive taxes instead of "taxing" the people who rely on Muni to get to work.

1 p.m., free

Steps of City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF

(415) 821-6545

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Memorial for Charles Lee Smith (1925-2010), passionate pamphleteer

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Memorial for Charles Lee Smith (1925-2010), passionate pamphleteer

Memorial services for Charles Lee Smith, a classic liberal activist whose hero was Tom Paine and whose passion was pamphleteering, will be held at 3 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 12, at the Friends Meeting House, Walnut and Vine, in Berkeley. He died at his Berkeley home on Jan. 7 at 84.

His wife Anne said that Charlie, as we all called him, fell in December and never fully recovered. She brought him home under hospice care on Jan. 5 and she and his two sons Greg and Jay were with him his last three days.

Charlie first contacted me in the early days of the Guardian in the late l960s. I soon realized that he was my kind of liberal, always working tirelessly, cheerfully, and quietly to make things better for people and their communities. He was a remarkable man with a remarkable range of interests and causes that he pursued his entire life.

He campaigned endlessly for causes ranging from the successful fight to stop Pacific Gas and Electric Co. from building a nuclear power plant on Bodega Bay to integrating the Berkeley schools to third brake lights for cars to one-way tolls on bridges to disaster preparedness to traffic safety and circles to public power and keep tabs on PG@E and big business shenanigans.


When he first began sending tips our way, he was working with, among many others, UC Berkeley Professor Paul Taylor with his battles with the agribusiness interests. He was helping UC Berkeley professor Joe Neilands on his public power campaigns. I remember a key public power meeting that Joe and Charlie put together in a Berkeley restaurant. It brought together the sturdy public power advocates of that era. Charlie did much of the staff work and was seated at the speaker’s table next to the sign that read, Public Power Users Association.

I credit that event and its assemblage of public power activists as inspiring the Guardian to make public power and kicking PG@E out of City Halls a major crusade that continues to this day. Charlie and Joe rounded up, among others, then CPUC commissioner Bill Bennett, consumer writer Jennifer Cross, William Domhoff, the UC Santa Cruz political science professor who was the main speaker, and Peter Petrakis, a student of Neilands’ in biochemistry who researched and wrote the Guardian’s early pioneering stories on the PG@E/Raker Act scandal. (See Guardian stories and editorials since l969.) The room was also full of veteran public power warriors from PG@E battles in Berkeley, San Francisco, and around the bay.

Charlie was a lifelong volunteer for the Quakers and pamphleteered on many of their projects.

My favorite story was how he was helping Dr. Ben Yellen, a feisty liberal pamphleteer in Brawley. Yellen and Charlie were political and pamphleteering soulmates, but Charlie was operating in liberal Berkeley and Yellen was in very conservative Imperial County.

Yellen was blasting away at the absentee land owners who were cheating migrant laborers on health care, on high private power costs of city dwellers, and the misuse of government water subsidies. And so he had trouble getting his leaflets printed in Brawley. He would send leaflets up to Charlie and Charlie would get them duplicated and then send the copies back to Yellen. Yellen would distribute them, mimeographed material on legal-sized yellow construction paper, under windshield wipers during the early morning hours and into open car windows on hot afternoons.

Charlie relished promoting Yellen as a classic in the world of pamphleteering and loved to talk about how Yellen followed up his pamphleteering with several pro per lawsuits, an appearance on CBS’ 60 Minutes television show, and a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Charlie liked to talk about his triple play of information distribution. He pamphleteered on street corners, prepared more than 50 bibliographies of undiscussed issues (including the best bibliography ever done on San Francisco’s Raker Act Scandal), and circulated his personal essays and cut and pasted newspaper articles. Almost every day, he would take the newspapers from the sidewalk near his house and put them on the front porches of his neighbors. He got some exercise, since his house was on a Berkeley hill, and he endeared himself to his neighbors. He was given the title of “Mayor of San Mateo Road.”

Charlie pamphleteered on more than l50 “undiscussed subjects,” as he called them, in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco. He sometimes went out to Palo Alto, Santa Rosa, and Napa, with occasional excursions to Boston and London. His subjects were practical and straightforward but breathtaking in their range: humanizing bureaucracy, employee suggestions, penal reform, illiteracy, migant labor, water, energy, land reform, ombudsmen, coop issues, library use, land value taxation, transportation, disaster recovery planning. He handed out KPFA folios and an occasional Bay Guardian.

He often combined pamphleteering with doing bibliographies to spread the word about the undiscussed subjects.  On the first Earth Day in l970 at California State University, Hayward, Charlie spoke about the evils of automoblies. Then he distributed his bibliography of the Automobile Bureaucracy. In recognizable Charliese, he produced a blizzard of numbered citations on a summary of his speech so the audience could read further on his issues.

He considered pamphleteering as a noble form of communication that “went on during the colonial Period for a l00 years before the revolution and the arrival of Tom Paine in l775,” as he put it in his own pamphlet, “Pamphleteering: an old tradition.” He wrote that his main contribution “is the novel use of sandwich boards to screen out the disinterested while reaching the already-interested and open-minded persons with leaflets on the street, but not invading anyone’s privacy.”

Sometimes, Charlie had news close to home.

He said that giving out pamphlets to one or two people at a time was like holding a meeting with those persons and thus it was possible to have a “meeting” with several hundred people nearly anywhere within reasonable limits. He concluded that pamphleteering was “basic to building support for worthwhile projects” and claimes that it “may even be more effective than other forms of expensive communication.”

Charlie knew how to work the streets, but he also knew how to work inside the bowels of the bureaucracy. He worked for the California Division of Highways (now Caltrans) from l953 to 1987, mostly in an Oak Street office in San Francisco. I admit when Charlie talked to me about fighting bureaucracy, as he often did, I had trouble understanding how he was going about it. But Charlie had his ways.

Executive Editor Tim Redmond recalls that Charlie worked for Caltrans back in the days when the very thought there might be transportation modes other than highways was heresy.

He was an advocate of bicycles, carpools and public transit and Redmond thought that, when he first met Charlie in l984, “he must be like the monks in the middle ages, huddled in a corner trying to preserve knowledge. Nobody else at Caltrans wanted to talk about getting cars off the roads. Nobody wanted to shift spending priorities. Nobody wanted to point out that highrise development in San Francisco was causing traffic problems all over the Bay Area–and that the answer was slower development, not more highways.

“But Charlie said all those things. He told me where the secrets of Caltrans were hidden, what those dense environmental impact reports really showed, and how the agency was failing the public. I had a special card in my old l980s Rolodex labeled ‘Caltrans: Inside Source.’ The number went directly to Smith’s desk.” Charlie usually carpooled from Berkeley to his San Francisco office.

Charlie wrote a leaflet about the “Work Improvement Program” that then Gov. Pat Brown instituted in l960. It was, he wrote, a “novel program to get all state employees to submit ideas to improve their work.” Charlie labeled it “corrupt” and laid out the damning evidence. No appeal procedure. No protection for the employee making suggestions that the supervisor or organization didn’t want to use. No requirement for giving the employee credit for the idea or for following up the idea.

Charlie noted that he was a generalist with lots of ideas, read lots of publications, and was “sensitive to the problems that bother people.” He noted that there were l,500 employees in his Caltrans district who submitted 236 suggestions. Charlie submitted 35 of them.  But, he noted wryly, “my supervisor, Charles Nordfelt, did not respond at all to any of my suggestions.” And then, to make neatly make his point, Charlie listed a few of his suggestions, all of them practical and useful.

Many were adopted without Charlie ever getting credit. Others were adopted decades later. For example, he pushed the then-heretical idea of collecting tolls on a one-way basis only, instead of collecting them two ways. He noted that the tolls are now  being collected on the wrong side of the bridge. They should, he argued,  be collected coming from  the San Francisco side, where the few lanes of the bridge open up to many lanes. This would reduce or eliminate congestion. .

He listed other suggestions that showed his firm and creative grasp of the useful idea. Putting the third stop light on vehicles (which was finally put into effect in 1985). Numbering interchanges. Installing flashing red and yellow lights at different rates. (He  explained that his wife’s grandfather was color blind and drove through a flashing red light when she was with him.) Getting vehicle owners to have reflective white strips on the front bumpers of their cars, helping police spot stolen vehicles. Some of his suggestions are still percolating deep in the bureaucracies and may yet go into effect.

Charlie never got the hang of the internet but he covered more territory and reached more people in his personal face-to-face way than anybody ever did on the internet.

Charlie was born on a homestead farm eight miles from Weldona, Colorado. He attended a one-room school house and then moved on to a middle and high school in Ft. Morgan, Colorado. He got “ink in his blood,” as he liked to say, by working on the school paper called the Megaphone and then as a printer’s devil at the weekly Morgan Herald.

He was drafted into the army in l943 and served as an infantryman with the 343rd regiment, 86th Infantry Division. He was severely sounded in 1945 in the Ruhr Pocket battle near Cologne, Germany, the last major battle of the war. He suffered leg and hip injuries and had a l6 inch gouge  out of his right hip that cut within a quarter inch of the bone. He spent six months in the hospital. He was recommended for sergeant but he refused the promotion and ended the war as a private first class.

After his recovery, Charlie came to the Bay Area and took his undergraduate work at Napa Community College and San Francisco State, then did graduate work in sociology at the University of Washington, and in city and regional planning at the University of California-Berkeley.

In 1949, Charlie joined the American Friends Service Committee and became a lifelong volunteer, working on a host of projects. He did everything from helping with a clothing drive in Napa to being part of the crew that built the original Neighborhood House in Richmond.

Charlie met Anne Read in l954, a college student in Oregon, when she was on an AFSC summer project in Berkeley. Charlie visited the project, spotted Anne, and double dated with her. When she returned to Oregon State for her senior year, Charlie wrote her every single day. The two were married the following summer in June of l955.

Charlie is survived by Anne, two sons Greg and Jay, daughter-in-laws Karen Vartarian and Andrea Paulos, and granddaughter Mabel.

The family asks that, in lieu of flowers, please send a donation in Charlie’s name to the American Friends Service Committee, 65 9th St., San Francisco, Calif. 94l03.

I asked Anne why Charlie, the inveterate communicator, had not taken to the internet. Charlie, she replied, was a print guy and simply could not understand the internet. “He never ever used email,” she said. “He still thought he had to go to a library to make up a bibliography. I think Charlie was so sure that making a bibliography meant a lot of hard work, he couldn’t possibly do it on the internet.”

Well, Charlie, you may have missed the internet but you covered more territory and reached more people in your direct personal way with good ideas than anybody ever did on the internet.

Here are some of Charlie’s favorite pamphlets:
Governor Pat Brown’s Work Improvement Program
Pamphleteering: An Old Tradition
Short Statement on Plamphleteering

Rep Clock

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Schedules are for Wed/3–Tues/9 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Return to Gaza and Lebanon,” short films, Thurs, 8. “Summertime Movie,” short films, plus poetry reading by Erik Noonan with live music by Rad Cloud, Fri, 8.

CAFÉ OF THE DEAD 3208 Grand, Oakl; (510) 931-7945. Free. “Independent Filmmakers Screening Nite,” Wed, 6:30.

CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF ARTS Timken Auditorium, 1111 Eighth St, SF; http://tarasbulbasalta.blogspot.com. Free. When the Pueblo Was Hollywood (Windhausen, 2009), Fri, 7pm.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. •Brazil (Gilliam, 1985), Wed, 1:55, 7, and 12 Monkeys (Gilliam, 1995), Wed, 4:30, 9:40. •9 (Acker, 2009), Thurs, 1:35, 5:15, 9, and Coraline (Selick, 2009), Thurs, 3:15, 7. It’s Complicated (Meyers, 2009), Fri, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30. Dionne Warwick performing live, Sat, 8. For tickets, visit www.cityboxoffice.com. Gone With the Wind (Fleming, 2009), Sun, 2, 7. Theater closed Mon-Tues.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10. Broken Embraces (Almodóvar, 2009), call for dates and times. An Education (Scherfig, 2009), call for dates and times. Fish Tank (Arnold, 2009), call for dates and times. A Town Called Panic (Aubier and Patar, 2009), call for dates and times. Trimpin: The Sound of Invention (Esmonde, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 6:45, 9. “Mostly British Film Festival:” The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948), Sun, 4, 7; Balibo (Isaac, 2009), Mon, 7; Bran Nue Dae (Perkins, 2009), Tues, 7.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Film 50: History of Cinema:” The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1919), Wed, 3. “What’s A Matta U? Considering the College Experience Through Film:” Pieces of April (Hedges, 2003), Wed, 7. “African Film Festival:” Sacred Places (Téno, 2009), Thurs, 7. “Watching the Unwatchable: Films Confront Torture:” Seven Moments (Cardozo, 2008), Thurs, 8:30; Archaology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi (Cruz and Mulford, 2008), Sun, 5:30. “Complicated Shadows: The Films of Val Lewton:” The Curse of the Cat People (Fritsch and Wise, 1944), Fri, 7; The Leopard Man (Tourneur, 1954), Fri, 8:30. “Screenagers:” “12th High School Film and Video Festival,” Sat, 2:30. “The Kids Are Alright: Post-Fifties Musicals and the Rise of Youth Culture:” The Music Man (Da Costa, 1962), Sat, 5:30; Pennies from Heaven (Ross, 1981), Sun, 3. “Before ‘Capraesque:’ Early Frank Capra:” Submarine (1928), Sat, 8:20. “Alfred Leslie: Cool Man in a Golden Age:” “A Cool Man: Short Films by Alfred Leslie,” Tues, 7:30.

PARAMOUNT 2025 Broadway, Oakl; www.paramounttheatre.com. $5. Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940), Fri, 8.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. M. Hulot’s Holiday (Tati, 1963), Wed-Thurs, 7:15, 9:15 (also Wed, 2). Pirate Radio (Curtis, 2009), Fri-Sat, 7, 9:25 (also Sat, 2). Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Stuart, 1971), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:25 (also Sun, 2, 4:15). Sita Sings the Blues (Paley, 2008), Feb 9-11, 7:15, 9:15 (also Feb 10, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (Wiseman, 2009), Wed, 6. Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009), Wed, 9. “Gay.com Presents:” Watercolors (Oliveras, 2008), Wed-Thurs, 5:45; Misconceptions (Satlof), Wed-Thurs, 8; Murder in Fashion: The Andrew Cunanan Story (Waller), Wed-Thurs, 9:50. San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Feb 4-18. See film listings.

THEATER 39 Embarcadero at Beach, SF; (415) 561-6251, www.oceanfilmfest.org. $8-12. “Seventh Annual San Francisco Ocean Film Festival,” Wed-Sun. Check web site for program information.

VOGUE 3290 Sacramento, SF; (415) 346-2288, www.mostlybritish.org. $12.50-30. “Mostly British Film Festival,” Feb 4-11. Check web site for program information.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Jacques Tati: Genius of French Comedy:” Trafic (1971), Thurs, 7:30.

Alerts

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WEDNESDAY, FEB. 3

No time to let up

Help raise money for the earthquake victims in Haiti at this fundraiser lunch and dinner where 100 percent of the proceeds go to the 3 million people in need of aid. Sen. Leland Yee (D-SF, San Mateo), SF Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, and Betty Yee, chair of the state Board of Equalization will be on hand.

Lunch 11 a.m.–3 p.m.;

dinner 5 p.m.–9 p.m.; $20 minimum

Moonstar Buffet Restaurant

383 Gellert, Daly City

(650) 992-2888

THURSDAY, FEB. 4

La Pelanga por Haiti

Help raise money for Partners in Health, an aid agency with more than 20 years’ experience in Haiti and more than 4, 000 Haitian employees, at this community street party featuring DJs Posoule, Papicultor, China tu Madre, and Juancho 3000 spinning cumbia, salsa dura, dancehall, hip-hop, Haitian kompa, and more. East Oakland artist Favianna Rodriguez will be selling prints; 100 percent of proceeds will be donated.

9 p.m., $5–$20 donation

Sub-Mission Arts

2183 Mission, SF

lapelanga.com

BayNVC workshop

Learn how to be a resource for your community at this workshop with Miki Kashtan from the Bay Area Nonviolent Communication and North American Leadership programs. Brush up on skills like how to stay present in a challenging situation and how to reflect understanding during conflict.

4:30 p.m., free

First Congregational Church of Oakland

2501 Harrison, Oakl.

(510) 433-0700 to register

Stand with Haiti

Attend “Stand with the People of Haiti: What the U.S. Government Isn’t Telling You,” a benefit dinner for Haiti. Pierre Labossiere of the Haitian Action Committee will discuss how U.S. policies contribute to chronic malnutrition and poverty in Haiti. The event is a Black History Month forum sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition.

7 p.m., $10–$20 donation

Centro del Pueblo

474 Valencia, SF

(415) 821-6545

SATURDAY, FEB. 6

Get on the march

Attend this organizing meeting for the March 20 antiwar protest in San Francisco. The meeting is open to all antiwar organizations and individuals and will be followed by mass outreach. A Jan. 9 meeting approved a plan for the protest to begin at Civic Center and march to downtown hotels in solidarity with the Local 2 hotel workers.

2 p.m., free

Centro del Pueblo, 2nd floor auditorium

474 Valencia, SF

(415) 821-6545

TUESDAY, FEB. 9

500 Years Later

Watch this award winning documentary directed by Owen ‘Alik Shahadah chronicling the struggle of people of African descent from enslavement through the continued fight for human rights, filmed in more than 20 countries.

7:30 p.m., $6 donation

Artists Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 821-6545

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Double vision

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Double vision

The just-reissued Vampires of Dartmore album Dracula’s Music Cabinet (Finders Keepers) includes a track titled “Hallo, Mr. Hitchcock,” in which beloved Hitch silently answers a series of phone calls from a manic, murderous prankster. The track isn’t used in Johan Grimonprez’s latest unconventional film essay Double Take, but it would be ideal material for the movie. Like his fellow Europeans the Vampires, Grimonprez has a fatal attraction to the master of suspense — an exploration of the nature of fear, particularly Cold War fear (and its relevance to 21s century scaremongers), his movie toys and teases its way toward a climax in which the master director meets his doppelganger.

Double Take‘s voice-over narration — co-authored with Tom McCarthy — suggests that such an encounter can only be bad: any man who sees his double, even the great Hitchcock, is doomed. This conceit is really just an element of drama within Grimonprez’s masterful many-layered montage. He combines Hitchcock’s appearances in movies and on television with footage of vocal and physical Hitchcock impersonators, creating a hall-of-mirrors experience that is frequently funny. More incitefully, he forwards the idea that The Birds (1963) has connections to the Bay of Pigs and to terror by air both then and now. If this seems like a ludicrous theoretical stretch, it helps to know that Grimonprez has a wry sense of humor, and that his 1998 movie Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y still might be the best movie about September 11, 2001, even if it predates that landmark moment by over three years. In other words, Grimonprez is prescient.

He’s also rather sweet. Double Take‘s final scenes linger on one Hitchcock impersonator, Ron Burrage, and what seems to be his lifelong male partner. This particular Hitch has a nuanced appreciation of the absurdity of his life and dual identity, which makes his singular mortality all the more poignant. Grimonprez is anything but a sentimentalist, but unlike many filmic theorists, he allows himself to have a heart as well as a brain.

DOUBLE TAKE

Fri/12, 7:15 p.m., Roxie

“Waiting for Guffman” forever!

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By Louis Peitzman

In honor of SF Sketchfest’s Jan. 31 screening of Waiting for Guffman (1996) with star Fred Willard in person, I tried to interview the entire cast of the film. I failed. I did, however, speak to four cast members — two of Corky’s actors and two Blaine councilpeople — who reflected fondly on their experience and humored my fanboy questions. Where are these characters now? And, of course, is Broadway finally ready for Red, White and Blaine?

Fred Willard (Ron Albertson, travel agent)

On getting involved with director Christopher Guest: “I was in Spinal Tap. I’d worked with Michael McKean and Harry Shearer before, and I knew Rob Reiner. I was doing a show called Fernwood 2 Night at the same time he was doing All in the Family. We would pass in the halls and say hello, how are you. I would say mostly it was because of Harry Shearer, who’s a fairly good friend and who I’ve worked with. So I got in Spinal Tap, and then I was in a movie that Eugene Levy wrote and directed in Toronto called Sodbusters, which is kind of a spoof of Shane. Then next I knew, I got to know Christopher Guest.”

On the improv process: “[Guest] calls you and discusses your character and kind of aims you in the right direction. But there’s nothing, no lines written down. So he films a lot and then cuts out what he doesn’t need, and puts in what moves the plot forward, as he puts it. Which always kind of frustrates me, because some of the funniest stuff that not only I do but that a lot of people do, doesn’t really move the plot forward, but it’s just stuff I’d enjoy seeing. But he likes his movies about 85, 86 minutes. And that way, I think, a lot of people I find tell me they watch them over and over, which you can’t do with a two-and-a-half hour movie.”

On creating Ron: “First, [Guest] kind of gave me everything. He said I was a high school athlete. It was his idea, the penis reduction joke. In fact, he wanted to have a scene where I was running, you know an old film clip of me running the hurdles, and each hurdle being knocked over. That never was filmed or put in the movie, which I’m kind of glad about. He pretty much told me that Catherine [O’Hara] and I were like the Lunt and Fontanne of this little town, that we’d been in every production and when we had to audition, it was just kind of a technicality. We considered ourselves the pros of all the amateurs. I can say we’re about the most annoying couple I’ve seen in film.”

On the Chinese restaurant scene: “[Guest] just said, all right, what we’re going to do is, you’re going to take Eugene Levy and his wife out, because this is their first show and you’re going to try to make them more comfortable, because they’re the newcomers. So my key there is, in making them more comfortable, we would make them as uncomfortable as possible. And I didn’t know that Catherine was going to be drinking and get kind of tipsy during this scene, which added a whole nother dimension. And Eugene is a perfect victim. … [Guest] said the Chinese restaurant scene, we’ll probably film for two hours and then cut it down. And my first thought is, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to think of to say for two hours?’ But the night we did it, it was filmed late at night. We’d finished another scene. We got to the restaurant and we started filming, and went on and on. And finally, he said, cut, that’s it. And I said, ‘Wait a minute, Chris. There’s more! We can still do more!’”

On what Corky sees in the talentless Ron and Sheila: “I would think what Corky sees is a kind of commitment that we have. We probably show up on time, we probably bring baked goods to the cast. We probably have a lot of input and show off a lot of interest. I was going to say we’re probably very good with our lines in the script, but we probably aren’t actually. We probably make up for it by discussing points in the script and pointing out how we could improve our parts.”

On whether or not Ron and Sheila have a happy marriage: “Oh, no. [laughs] You could see that there’s just so much tension, with Sheila’s drinking and Ron kind of domineering her.”

On where Ron and Sheila are now: “If they stayed in Hollywood, they’d probably be running a little acting studio out in North Hollywood where they teach acting, and spend most of the class discussing their near-Broadway adventures, and how they were probably just as glad they never went to Broadway because it would be like prostituting their talents.”

On whether or not Broadway is ready for Red, White and Blaine: “I think it might be wonderful, yes. We were doing some promotion for Chris’s last movie, For Your Consideration, and someone asked, ‘I hear rumors that they want to do Waiting for Guffman on Broadway.’ And Chris was kind of swatting away the idea. He’s not too enthralled with that. And I yelled over to him, ‘Chris, does this mean we’re going to Broadway?’”

On a possible sequel: “I wrote an idea for a Waiting for Guffman, part two, and got it to [Guest]. And he discussed it with me, and said, ‘Well, I have several other ideas.’ That was before we did the next movie. I thought that was going to be the only one, and I said, ‘Chris, come on, this is my opportunity. Let’s do another one.’”

Catherine O’Hara (Sheila Albertson, travel agent)

On getting involved with Christopher Guest: “I worked with [Guest] — it was for HBO years ago, with Fred Willard and him. And we had a great time together. And I hoped to work with him again, and then I got a call about Waiting for Guffman.”

On the improv process: “It’s thrilling and exhilarating and scary. Really scary on the first couple of days, especially the first day, when you first open your mouth. Because there’s no rehearsal and you know, you open your mouth on camera, with the camera rolling, and you hope to God that you made a good choice. You’re locked in from that point on.”

On the outlines: “[Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy’s] outlines are inspiring, because they’re filled with funny ideas about these people. Everything that’s on the page is very well chosen. I think Waiting for Guffman was just a few pages — they’ve gotten longer. Because in Guffman, we all kind of traveled around as a group, so it would say, ‘They have rehearsal.’ Whereas the other stories, we sort of split up into different couples and different groups, so there were more pages.”

On creating Sheila: “They gave us the idea that Ron and Sheila ran a travel agency but had never been anywhere. So right there, you start thinking, ‘Why would I have never been anywhere when I have a travel agency?’ And you can make whatever choices you want, and there’s no discussion. You don’t have to run anything by Chris. You just come out with it on camera, and he can use it or not. But it’s so freeing that way, because everyone’s imaginations can be limited by directors or writers when it’s fully scripted. … You are totally free to create your own world and present their ideas with whatever voice you choose. And you just start rolling.”

On Sheila’s talent, or the lack thereof: “I would like to claim that I show the least talent. I think the others were probably thinking ahead to their careers outside of this movie. [laughs] But I showed no potential in Sheila’s performance.”

On playing a bad actor-singer: “Oh, it’s fun. It’s fun to try to ride the fine line of bad acting and not be too bad. You just want to be sincerely bad. But the best is — I mean, the saddest of the best in life, is when people kid themselves. And we’re all doing it every day, I’m sure. But you know, when someone sincerely believes that they have a right to be performing or doing whatever they’re doing in life and they don’t have talent or what it takes to pull it off. But they love it, and you can’t take that away from them. They love it and they get so much out of it and they believe they’re born to do it. And God bless them.”

On whether or not Ron and Sheila have a happy marriage: “What did Fred say? [laughs] I don’t think they have a healthy marriage. I think their marriage might last, just because, who else is going to be with them? [laughs] I think it’s a sad, codependent kind of relationship. They’re so deeply into their own whatever the hell they’ve got going on, I’m not sure they’d have the wherewithal or nerve or whatever, to leave each other.”

On the Chinese restaurant scene: “I loved that we had that [Chinese restaurant] scene. … I think I maybe did run that by him right before we did that. I asked him if I could be drunk and he said yeah. It was great because, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that Sheila’s burying deep down, in my mind anyway. And some of that got to come out because she was not editing herself and not aware of being on camera.”

On where Ron and Sheila are now: “They probably are together, but then she’d still be drinking if they are. No, maybe she’s gone sober. Sober and he found a true love for her, taking care of her through her rehab. And there are a lot of people in this city and every city who are acting in maybe not big famous ways, but they’re acting and they’ve got their groups of friends who they work with, and I’m sure Ron and Sheila could survive. And Ron, he’s got such nerve, he’d get them in the door.”

On whether or not Broadway is ready for Red, White and Blaine: “Oh, sad. Sad to say. Well, you know, I’ve seen some sad stuff on Broadway. Maybe. Let’s be honest.”

Michael Hitchcock (Steve Stark, councilperson)

On getting involved with Christopher Guest: “I’m a member of the Groundlings theater in Los Angeles, which is a comedy/improv troupe. And one night I was doing an all-improv show over there, and I found out afterwards that [Christopher Guest] had been in the audience. And I was glad I didn’t know ahead of time, because I would have been really nervous. I found out he wanted to interview me regarding Waiting for Guffman. He doesn’t really do auditions, per se — he interviews people he’s interested in. He kind of scours various improv theaters and comedy places.”

On the improv process: “Chris’s movies are so different from anything else that you’d ever imagine, because it’s such a creative experience, I think, for everyone involved. You just don’t get that in a scripted thing, and there’s obviously nothing wrong with scripted material—there’s writers who are usually very good at what they do and have written great things. But on something like this, you get to create your character.”

On creating Steve Stark: “We sat down, for my part, I was a councilman and we talked a little bit about it ahead of time. And he asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘Well, I would like to be someone who really wanted to be in the show but didn’t make it. And I’m kind of secretly in love with you.’ And he said, ‘All right, let’s try that.’ I chose for myself the occupation of being a pharmacist, because growing up, I had a job in a pharmacy, so I knew a lot about that. I knew about the pharmacy life. In improv, you obviously want to have specific information, so I could draw on life experience for that.”

On what makes Christopher Guest movies unique: “You never rehearse. So there’s never like a trial run of improv information. The first time anyone talks is when the cameras roll, which I really, really like. I think a lot of people don’t do it that way. Chris is one of the few people who actually do it like that and I love it. You can’t really plan ahead. You have no idea what the next person is going to say. It just makes it so invigorating. Certainly scary but invigorating at the same time. The weird thing about watching any Christopher Guest movie if you’re in it, is thinking, ‘I don’t even remember saying that.’ It’s so weird to look at them and go, ‘Oh my gosh, I really said that?’ You kind of forget, because you obviously film it more than one time.”

On where Steve is now: “In one of the reshoots, Corky and Steve Stark end up together in New York. And that was filmed and not used. So I’ve always thought, well, maybe he did. But in my own mind, I think poor Steve is probably at the pharmacy, hoping against hope that Corky moves back to town.”

On the gay subtext: “I think in that kind of a situation, the small town kind of situation, he was married and had a wife and kids. He probably didn’t even know himself exactly what was happening.”

On the Christopher Guest family: “It’s truly like a family reunion getting together. And Chris, to his credit, in subsequent films you usually get paired up with somebody new, so there’s a new chemistry and a new kind of playing around, which I just love. And plus, what’s great, he usually hires the same crew, too, so the people behind the scenes are familiar faces, which makes a huge difference when you’re flying by the seat of your pants in an improv situation.”

On whether or not Broadway is ready for Red, White and Blaine: “I think if a chandelier fell down. If you could get a chandelier to fly down, then yes, certainly. I think Broadway would certainly be ready for Red, White and Blaine. Some of the other Broadway shows, you kind of wonder how they got up there. If you actually look at Red, White and Blaine, it’s pretty well produced. So that’s what I really liked about Chris’s approach. It’s not like people are stumbling over their lines or falling over each other. Corky was a taskmaster: those people knew their lines and knew their dances and the scenery came in at the right time. In real life, that scenery could never have fit on the stage. So I thought, good for Corky. He had it figured out.”

Deborah Theaker (Gwen Fabin-Blunt, councilperson)

On getting involved with Christopher Guest: “I had met Catherine and Eugene and all of the SCTV people at the Second City, because they’d been there over the years. I was the lead actress on a series that Eugene Levy created for George Lucas called Maniac Mansion … That was my first big job, and then, I performed out here—there was a Second City in Los Angeles back in 1990, and Chris Guest just coincidentally happened to come to one of the shows we did. And he left me a note. There was no real audition. There was never any audition. I think he just called the people he liked.”

On the improv process: “What Chris has created is a two-sided thing, because you never feel the same about a script. You rarely get a script that passes your desk or that you see that you go, ‘Oh my God, this is fantastic.’ Improvising your own material and creating your own character ruins you for the real world. It’s just so inventive and so much more fun to do a movie that way that any scripted material pales in comparison. It’s almost like he’s ruined us for real movies.”

On creating Gwen: “In the outline, I was a city councilwoman — pretty much all we knew. I decided from watching dailies with them, I better come up with something more, because it could be very easy to get cut. I decided to make myself the last surviving descendent of Blaine Fabin, so that was me. But when we were meeting, talking about the character, he said, ‘I see you as the sort of woman who wears open-toed sandals with pantyhose,’ and I went, ‘Oh, I got ya.’ I used my friend’s name — her last name was Blunt — because we could pick our own character names. And I know that Mike Hitchcock, Steve Stark, also used his friend’s name.”

On holding her own against the wackier characters: “I think you only manage to be funny in that situation if you don’t try to be, if you just kind of go so deep or invest so much in your own viewpoint or whatever viewpoint your character has. I’ve never gotten a laugh if I’ve tried to be funny, ever. I don’t know why that is, but it is, so I always find — and to me, the things that are the best material are weird nuances of people’s behavior or their strange idiosyncrasies.”

On the comedic contributions of hair and makeup: “Look at Catherine with her ‘Texas claw,’ what they called the ‘Texas claw,’ where her bangs are so high, because women in Texas would wear their hair that way. To me, that was hilarious. And then there was the inspired bit that our makeup artist Kate Shorter put in of all the performers having those red dots by their eyes when they do the stage show. That just cracked me up.”

On the reality TV connection: “It’s just about — I hate to say it — the audacity of hope, that they all think they could be Broadway stars. It’s the same kind of misguidedness that you see on American Idol with the contestants who are as flat as pancakes and couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but they’re just so convinced that this is their big moment. There’s something borderline tragic but borderline sweet about how hopeful everybody is about having a show business career without having any talent. Now you see, it’s been backed up by all these years of reality television. You see all these competitors who are so earnest and so sincere in their desire to do whatever they cannot possibly do because they just don’t have a shred of talent.”

On how difficult Gwen’s life really is as a Fabin: “I think it’s her delusional creation of a dynasty. In that little place, she’s a big fish in a little pond only by reminding everyone that she’s a Fabin. People don’t honestly care or remember, but to her, that’s all she’s got to go on, so she’s going to milk it for every ounce that she can.”

On where Gwen is now: “I think that she would now be the mayor and she’d be a despot. I think that she’d have been all sweet and congenial all the way through. And then finally, once she got a little bit of power, she’d go completely power-hungry, because she’s a Fabin after all.”

On whether or not Broadway is ready for Red, White and Blaine: “There were rumors that at some point they were trying to make this into a musical. … If they did do it as a musical, it would have to be done with a sense of irony, and I don’t know if they could pull that off. The film was presented as verite, as a documentary. The musical in and of itself wouldn’t work as a musical without the framework of the documentary, so I don’t know. Hard to say.”

SF Sketchfest presents Waiting for Guffman with Fred Willard in person

 

Sun/31, 2 p.m., $15
Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center
1118 Fourth St, San Rafael
www.sfsketchfest.org


 

 

Marijuana goes mainstream

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6
Marijuana goes mainstream

I’ve smoked marijuana on and off for most of my adult life, usually in the evening to help let go of the anxieties associated with being a progressive wage slave in an increasingly conservative capitalist country.

Buying my pot, which is California’s biggest cash crop, has always been a criminal transaction: in hushed tones or coded language, I arrange to meet a dealer I’ve been set up with through friends. And when I meet him (they’ve always been men), I give him cash in exchange for an eighth- or quarter-ounce of whatever kind of pot he’s selling.

I don’t know what variety I’m buying, who grew it, or how it was grown; whether violence or environmental degradation have occurred along the supply chain; or even whether it is an indica or sativa, the two most basic cannabis families that have differing effects on users.

I’ve been completely in the dark, both in terms of what I was buying and who was benefiting from the transaction, but that changed recently. I obtained a doctor’s recommendation to legally smoke weed — honestly citing anxiety as my affliction — and set out to explore the area’s best cannabis clubs.

It was a little strange and disorienting at first, this new world of expert purveyors of the finest Northern California marijuana and the various concentrates, edibles, drinkables, and other products it goes into. But what eventually struck me is just now normal and mainstream this industry has become, particularly in San Francisco, which has long led the movement to legalize marijuana.

Unlike in cities such as Los Angeles, where the rapid proliferation of unregulated pot clubs has made headlines and raised community concerns, San Francisco years ago made its clubs jump through various bureaucratic hoops to become fully licensed, permitted, and regulated, free to join the mainstream business community, pay their taxes, and compete with one another on the basis of quality, price, customer service, ambiance, and support for the community.

As Californians prepare to decide whether to decriminalize marijuana for even recreational use — on Jan. 28, advocates plan to turn in enough valid signatures to place that initiative on the fall ballot — it’s a good time to explore just what the world of legal weed looks like.

Pretty much everyone involved agrees that San Francisco’s system for distributing marijuana to those with a doctor’s recommendation for it is working well: the patients, growers, dispensary operators, doctors, politicians, police, and regulators with the planning and public health departments.

“It works and it should continue to be replicated,” Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who created the legislation four years ago that led to the current system, told us. “It’s now mainstream.”

Public health officials agree. “In general, we’re very happy about our relationship with the industry and their commitment to the regulations,” said Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, San Francisco’s environmental health director. “We did this well and we did it cooperatively with the clubs.”

Bhatia said there are now 22 fully-permitted clubs (and two more under review) in San Francisco, less than half the number operating when the regulations were created. He also said the city no longer receives many complaints from neighbors of clubs.

Misha Breyburg, managing partner of the nonprofit Medithrive, which opened just a few months ago on Mission Street, supports the process too. “The regulations generally are not easy, but I think that’s okay,” he said. “The process was long and cumbersome and stressful, but very fair.”

Martin Olive, director of the Vapor Room, one of the city’s largest and best dispensaries, agrees that the permitting process professionalized the industry: “I’m proud to be here because the city government has been amazing.”

Richard Lee — founder of Oaksterdam University in Oakland, which teaches marijuana cultivation and is the main financial backer behind the initiative to legalize and tax pot — said San Francisco and Oakland have demonstrated that cannabis clubs can function like any other legitimate industry and become a real asset to their neighborhoods and the local economy.

“Once they started legalizing the clubs, they had no more problems,” Lee told us. “It really is boring and really not a big deal. It’s only the prohibition that makes it exciting and a little scary.”

In fact, Lee said that normalizing and legalizing the marijuana industry is the best way to deal with the problems associated with the illegal drug trade, such as violence, creation of a criminal class, respect for law enforcement, wasted public resources, lost tax opportunities, unsafe growing operations, and environmental damage.

“We need to end cannabis prohibition to end the violence,” Lee said.

Bringing marijuana above ground also has created an artisanship that’s similar to the wine industry, elevating cultivation practices to an art form, improving the science behind it, and making users more sophisticated about subtle differences in taste and effect among the dozens of varieties now on the market.

But the growers themselves still exist in a murky gray area. Although they can get some legal cover as registered caregivers to a cooperative’s members, they’re still exposed to thefts, shakedowns, logistical difficulties, and raids by federal agents or even local police, such as the series of raids in the Sunset District last fall that targeted even legitimate growers for the clubs.

“Right now, cultivators have no air cover at all and they’re getting mixed messages,” Mirkarimi said, calling for the city to better protect growers and even consider getting into the business of growing pot for the clubs and patients. “General Hospital should dispense medical cannabis.”

That issue and others related to the city’s relationship with the industry are currently the subject of a working group convened by Sup. David Campos, a byproduct of which is the proposal to create a Medical Cannabis Task Force to advise the Board of Supervisors, an item the board was scheduled to vote on Jan. 26.

Mirkarimi said he’s also concerned about current rules that ban smoking in clubs that are within 1,000 feet of schools or drug treatment facilities, which has served to prohibit smoking in all but a few San Francisco clubs. Oakland bans smoking in all its clubs. “That’s where the laws could be modified, because you don’t want to take away that social vibe,” Mirkarimi said. “San Francisco needs to be a leader in activating the next step.”

Olive, whose club allows smoking and has a great social scene, agrees that something is lost when the clubs are forced to be simply transactional.

“This is a social healing medicine, and we’re here to promote an inviting atmosphere where people can share their stories,” Olive said. “The whole point is not to just come in and get your medicine, but to be a part of a community.”

That community can range from young stoners to dying old patients, who can both benefit from their communion. “It’s the hippies and the yuppies. Everyone comes here,” Breyburg said. Or as Olive told me, “There is something intrinsically rewarding to sharing a joint with someone, as silly as that sounds.”

The voter-approved Proposition 215 and state law are deliberately vague on what ailments qualify for a doctor’s recommendation, spawning a sub-industry of physicians who specialize in pot, like the ones at the clinic I visited, Dr. Hanya Barth’s Compassionate Health Options in SoMa.

The busy clinic charges around $130 for an initial visit and patients walk away with a legal recommendation, which is all state law requires to legally use marijuana (the clinic recommended also buying a $100 state ID card or a $40 card from the Patient ID Center in Oakland, but I didn’t need them to enter any of the clubs I visited).

The long forms patients fill out even suggest anxiety as an affliction that pot can help, but the clinic also asks patients to sign a waiver to obtain detailed medical records supporting the recommendation. When Barth learned that I have a shoulder separation for which I underwent an MRI a few years ago, she requested those records and added “shoulder pain” to my “anxiety” affliction.

“My goal is not just to give people a recommendation. I look at how I can help or support the person beyond just giving them a recommendation,” Barth told me, illustrating her point by showing me two packs of cigarettes from patients whom she said she convinced to quit smoking.

Her vibe combines the healer and the old hippie, someone who sees a plethora of uses for marijuana and generally thinks society would be better off if everyone would just have a puff and chill out. The clubs also don’t draw distinctions based on their customers’ reasons for smoking.

“There is a distinct difference between medical use and recreational use,” Olive said, telling stories about amazing turnarounds he’s seen in patients with AIDS, cancer, and other debilitating diseases, contrasting that with people who just like to get high before watching a funny movie, which he said is also fine.

But Olive said there’s an important and often under-appreciated third category of marijuana use: therapeutic. “They use cannabis to cope, to unwind, to relax, to sleep better, or to think through problems in a different way,” Olive said.

This third category of user, which I officially fall into, seems to be the majority people I encountered in the local clubs. And while it may be easy for cannabis’ critics to dismiss such patients as taking advantage of laws and a system meant to help sick people, Olive says they play an important role.

“They make it easier for the cannabis clubs to give it away to the people who really need it,” Olive said, referring the practice by most clubs of giving away free weed to low-income or very sick patients, which is supported by the profits made on sales.

The Vapor Room is widely regarded as having one of the best compassionate giving programs, and Olive estimated that the operation gives away about a pound per week through local hospice programs and by giving away edibles and bags of cannabis vapor at the club.

Some of the profits are also used to offer free massage, yoga, chiropractic, and other classes to their members, a system being taken to new heights by Harborside Health Center in Oakland, which has fairly high prices but uses that revenue to offer an extensive list of free services and laboratory analysis of the pot it sells, identifying both contaminants (such as molds or pesticides) and the level of THC, the compound that gets you high.

Olive said there’s also a positive psychological impact of legitimizing the use of marijuana: “It no longer feels like you’re doing a bad thing that you have to be sneaky about.”

As I created my list of the clubs I planned to review, I found abundant online resources such as www.sanfranciscocannabisclubs.com and www.weedtracker.com. But an even better indicator of how mainstream this industry has become were the extensive listings and reviews on Yelp.com.

I combined that information with recommendations from a variety of sources I interviewed to develop my list, which is incomplete and entirely subjective, but nonetheless a good overview of the local industry and the differences among the clubs.

Also, like our restaurant reviewers, I didn’t identify myself as a journalist on my visits, preferring to see how the average customer is treated — and frankly, I was amazed at the high level of friendly, knowledgeable customer service at just about every club. To comply with city law, all the clubs are fully accessible by those with disabilities.

So, with that business out of the way, please join me on my tour of local cannabis clubs, in the (random) order that I visited them:

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DIVINITY TREE

While the reviews on Yelp rave about Divinity Tree (958 Geary St.), giving it five stars, I found it a little intimidating and transactional (although it was the first club I visited, so that might be a factor). But if you’re looking to just do your business in a no-frills environment and get out, this could be your place.

The staff and most of the clientele were young men, some a bit thuggish. One worker wore a “Stop Snitching” T-shirt and another had “Free the SF8.” But they behaved professionally and were knowledgeable and easy to talk to. When I asked for a strain that would ease my anxiety but still allow me enough focus to write, my guy (patients wait along a bench until called to the counter) seemed to thoughtfully ponder the question for a moment, then said I wanted a “sativa-dominant hybrid” and recommended Neville’s Haze.

I bought 1/16 for $25 and when I asked for a receipt, it seemed as though they don’t get that question very often. But without missing a beat he said, “Sure, I’ll give you a receipt,” and gave me a hand-written one for “Meds.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: three years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: A transactional hole in the wall

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy. Membership available but not required

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GRASS ROOTS

Located at 1077 Post St. right next to Fire Station #3, Grass Roots has the feel of a busy saloon. Indeed, as a worker named Justin told me, many of the employees are former bartenders who know and value customer service. With music, great lighting, and nice décor, this place feels comfortable and totally legit. Whereas most clubs are cash-only, Grass Roots allows credit card transactions and has an ATM on site.

The steady stream of customers are asked to wait along the back wall, perusing the menus (one for buds and another with pictures for a huge selection of edibles) until called to the bar. When asked, my guy gave me a knowledgeable breakdown of the difference between sativa and indica, but then Justin came over to relieve him for a lunch break with the BBQ they had ordered in and ate in the back.

Justin answered my writing-while-high inquiry by recommending Blue Dream ($17 for a 1.2-gram), and when I asked about edibles, he said he really likes the indica instant hot chocolate ($6), advising me to use milk rather than water because it bonds better with the cannabinoids to improve the high. Then he gave me a free pot brownie because I was a new customer. I was tempted to tip him, but we just said a warm goodbye instead.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: five years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: A warm and welcoming weed bar

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

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HOPENET

Hopenet (223 Ninth St.) is one of the few places in the city where you can smoke on site, in a comfortable, homey style, as if you’re visiting a friend’s apartment. In addition to the loveseat, two chairs, and large bong, there is a small patio area for smoking cigarettes or playing a guitar, as someone was doing during my visit.

Although the small staff is definitely knowledgeable, they all seemed stoned. And when I asked about the right weed for my writing problem, a gruff older woman impatiently dismissed any indica vs. sativa distinctions and walked away. But I learned a lot about how they made the wide variety of concentrates from the young, slow-talking guy who remained.

He weighed out a heavy gram of White Grapes for $15, the same price for Blue Dream, and $2 cheaper than I had just paid at Grass Roots. That was in the back room, the big middle area was for hanging out, and the front area was check-in and retail, with a case for pipes and wide variety of stoner T-shirts on the walls.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: seven years

Price: Low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: Like a converted home with retail up front

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

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VAPOR ROOM

Vapor Room (607A Haight, www.vaporroom.com) is San Francisco’s best pot club, at least in terms of feeling like an actual club and having strong connections to its community of patients. It’s a large room where customers can smoke on site, giving this collective a warm, communal vibe that facilitates social interaction and fosters a real sense of inclusiveness.

Each of the four large tables has a high-end Volcano vaporizer on it, there’s a big-screen TV, elegant décor, and large aquarium. There’s a nice mix of young heads and older patients, the latter seeming to know each other well. But, lest members feel a little too at home, a sign on the wall indicates a two-hour time limit for hanging out.

Its early days in the spot next door were a bit grungier, but the new place is bright and elegant. It has a low-key façade and professional feel, and it strongly caters to patients’ needs. Low-income patients are regularly offered free medicine, such as bags full of vapor prepared by staff. Mirkarimi said the Vapor Room is very involved in the Lower Haight community and called it a “model club.”

But they’re still all about the weed, and they have a huge selection that you can easily examine (with a handy magnifying glass) and smell, knowledgeable staff, lots of edibles and concentrates, a tea bar (medicated and regular), and fairly low standardized pot prices: $15 per gram, $25 per 1/16th, $50 per eighth. And once you got your stuff, grab a bong off the shelf and settle into a table — but don’t forget to give them your card at the front desk to check out a bowl for your bong. As the guy told me, “It’s like a library.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Warm, communal hangout

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————-

MEDITHRIVE

The newest cannabis club in town, MediThrive (1933 Mission, www.medithrive.com) has a bright, fresh, artsy feel to it, with elegantly frosted windows and a welcoming reception area as you enter. This nonprofit coop takes your photo and requires free membership, and already had almost 3,000 members when I signed up a couple weeks ago. Tiana, the good-looking young receptionist, said the club recently won a reader’s choice Cannabis Cup award and noted that all the art on the walls was a rotating collection by local patients: “We’re all about supporting local art.”

The decorators seemed to have fun with the cannabis concept, with a frosted window with a pot leaf photo separating the reception area from the main room, while the walls alternated wood planks with bright green fake moss that looked like the whole place was bursting with marijuana. There’s a flat-screen TV on the wall, at low volume.

The large staff is very friendly and seemed fairly knowledgeable, and the huge selection of pot strains were arranged on a spectrum with the heaviest indica varieties on the left to the pure sativas on the right. Lots of edibles and drinkables, too. The cheapest bud was a cool steel tin with a gram of Mission Kush for $14 (new members get a free sample), while the high rollers could buy some super-concentrated OG Kush Gold Dust ($50) or Ear Wax ($45) to sprinkle over their bowls.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: three months

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Professional, like an artsy doctor’s office

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Very low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————

KETAMA COLLECTIVE

At 14 Valencia St., Ketama is a testament to how silly it is that clubs within 1,000 feet of schools aren’t permitted to allow smoking on site. This former café has a large, comfortable seating area and full kitchen, both of which have had little use since a school opened way down the street last year, causing city officials to ban smoking at Ketama.

Pity, because it seems like a great place to just hang out. Yet now it just seemed underutilized and slow. The staff is small (one door guy and a woman hired last summer doing sales), and we were the only customers during the 20 minutes I was there (except for the weird old guy drinking beer from a can in a bag who kept popping in and out).

But it still had jars of good green bud, several flavors of weed-laced drinks and edibles, and a pretty good selection of hash and kief at different prices, and the woman spoke knowledgeably about the different processes by which they were created. To counteract the slow business, Ketama has a neon sign out front that explicitly announces its business — another indication the industry has gone legit.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: five years

Price: Low

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: Dirty hippie hangout, but with nobody there

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but free membership required

————

MR. NICE GUY

Belying its name, Mr. Nice Guy (174 Valencia St.) thrilled and scared me, but not necessarily in a bad way. Located across the street from Zeitgeist, the thug factor here was high and so was the security, allowing no human interaction that wasn’t mediated by thick Plexiglass, presumably bulletproof.

After initially being told by a disembodied voice to come back in five minutes, I submitted my doctor’s recommendation and ID into the slot of a teller’s window, darkened to hide whoever I was dealing with. Quickly approved, I was buzzed into a small, strange room with three doors.

I paused, confused, until the disembodied voice again told me, “Keep going,” and I was buzzed through another door into a hallway that led to a large room, its walls completely covered in brilliant murals, expertly painted in hip-hop style. Along the front walls, a lighted menu broke down the prices of about 20 cannabis varieties.

Then finally, I saw people: two impossibly hot, young female employees, lounging nonchalantly in their weed box, like strippers waiting to start their routines. The only other customer, a young B-boy, chatted them up though the glass, seemingly more interested in these striking women than their products.

I finally decided to go with the special, an ounce of Fever, normally $17, for just $10. I opened a small door in the glass, set down my cash, and watched the tall, milk chocolate-skinned beauty trade my money for Fever, leaving me feeling flushed. It was the best dime-bag I ever bought.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: ???

Price: Moderate, with cheap specials

Selection: High

Ambiance: Hip hop strip club

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: High

Access/Security: High security but low scrutiny

————-

BERNAL HEIGHTS COLLECTIVE

Bernal Collective (33 29th St. at Mission) seemed both more casual and more strict than any of the other clubs in town — and it also turned out to be one of my favorites.

After refusing to buy pot for a guy out front who had just been turned away, I entered the club and faced more scrutiny than I had at any other club. It was the only club to ask for my doctor’s license number and my referral number, and when I tried to check an incoming text message, I was told cell phone use wasn’t allowed for “security reasons.” On the wall, they had a blown-up copy of their 2007 legal notice announcing their opening.

But beyond this by-the-book façade, this club proved warm and welcoming, like a comfortable clubhouse. People can smoke on site, and there’s even a daily happy hour from 4:20–5:20 p.m., with $1 off joints and edibles, both in abundant supply. Normal-sized prerolled joints are $5, but they also offer a massive bomber joint with a full eighth of weed for $50.

The staff of a half-dozen young men were knowledgeable about the 20 varieties they had on hand and offered excellent customer service, even washing down the bong with an alcohol-wipe before letting a customer take a rip from the XXX, a strong, sticky bud that was just $15 for a gram.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: five years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: High

Ambiance: A clubhouse for young stoners

Smoke On Site: Yes

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Fairly tight

————-

LOVE SHACK

This longtime club (502 14th St.) has had its ups and downs, the downs coming mostly because of its location on a fairly residential block. After taking complaints from neighbors, the city required Love Shack to cap its membership, although that seems to be changing because the club let me in, albeit with a warning that next time I would need to have a state ID card. It was the only club I visited to have such a requirement.

Once inside this tiny club, I could see why people might have been backed up onto the street at times. But the staff was friendly and seemed to have a great rapport with the regulars, who seemed be everyone except me. The knowledgeable manager walked me through their 20-plus varieties, most costing the standard street price of $50 per eighth, or more for stronger stuff like Romulan.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum was the $10 special for Jack Herrer Hash, named for the longtime legalization advocate who wrote The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a classic book on the history of the movement.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: eight years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Small, like a converted apartment

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Tight

————-

COFFEE SHOP BLUE SKY

Blue Sky (377 17th St., Oakland)is based on the Amsterdam model of combining marijuana dispensaries with coffee shops, although it suffers a bit from Oakland’s ban on smoking. Still, it’s a cool concept and one that Richard Lee sees as the future of marijuana-related businesses because of the synergy between smoking and grabbing a bite or some coffee.

Most of Blue Sky is a small coffee shop and smoothie bar, but there’s a little room in back for buying weed. “We’ve got the best prices around,” said the guy who checked my ID, and indeed, $44 eighths and $10 “puppy bags” were pretty cheap. Customers can also sign up to do volunteer political advocacy work for free weed.

The only downside is the limited selection, only four varieties when I was there, although the woman at the counter said the varieties rotate over the course of the day based on the club’s purchases from growers.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: 14 years

Price: Low

Selection: Very limited

Ambiance: A fragrant little room behind a coffee shop

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HARBORSIDE HEALTH CENTER

I have seen the future of legitimized medical marijuana businesses, and it’s Harborside (1840 Embarcadero, Oakland). With its motto of “Out of the shadows, into the light,” this place is like the Costco of pot — a huge, airy facility with a dizzying number of selections and even a “rewards card” program.

All new members are given a tour, starting with sign-up sheets for daily free services that include yoga, chiropractic, acupuncture, reiki, consultations with herbalists, and classes on growing. Then we moved to a section with the clones of dozens of pot plant varieties available for purchase (limit of 72 plants per visit), along with a potted marijuana plant the size of a tree.

Harborside is also blazing the trail on laboratory services, testing all of its pot for contaminants and THC content, labeling it on the packaging just like the alcohol industry does. Some of the smaller clubs don’t like how over-the-top Harborside is, and they complain that its prices are high. But those profits seem to be poured back into the services at this unique facility.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: three years

Price: High

Selection: Huge

Ambiance: A big, open shopping emporium

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Tight

————-

SANCTUARY

The people who run Sanctuary (669 O’Farrell St.), the first club to fully comply with the new city regulations and get its permanent license, have been active in the political push for normalizing medical marijuana, as a wall full of awards and letters from politicians attests. Owner Michael Welch was commended for his work by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, where Sanctuary employee Tim Durning has been an active longtime member and former elected officer.

Sanctuary has a generous compassionate giving program and caters to lots of poor residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood. While the club is prohibited from allowing smoking, they fudge the restriction with a Volcano vaporizer. “A lot of patients are on fixed income and live in the SROs, where they can’t smoke, so we let them vaporize here whether they buy from us or not,” Durning told us.

Those who do buy from them find a huge selection — including 20 different kinds of hash and 17 varieties of buds — at a wide price range. Staffers know their products well and take their business seriously, giving a regular spiel to new members about responsible use, which includes maintaining neighborhood relations by not smoking near the business.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: five years

Price: Low to moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Campaign headquarters for the marijuana movement

Smoke On Site: No, but vaporizing OK

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

GREEN DOOR

If low prices or a huge selection of edibles are what you seek, Green Door (843 Howard St., www.greendoorsf.com) could be the club for you.

Eighths of good green buds start at a ridiculously low $25 and go up to just $50 (the cheapest price for eighths at many clubs and also the standard black market price). If that’s not low enough, super-broke users can buy a quarter-ounce bag of high-grade shake for $40.

If you didn’t already have the munchies going in, you’ll get them perusing the huge menu of edibles: from weed-laced knockoffs of Snickers bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for just $5 to cupcakes, ice cream, or Chex party mix. They have lots of hash and other concentrates as well.

Somehow, the club also manages to have a strong compassionate giving program and contibutes to local civic organizations that include the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Maitri AIDS Hospice, and Friends of the Urban Forest.

The club itself is a little sterile and transactional, with an institutional feel and employees stuck behind teller windows. But even though that and the steady flow of tough-looking young male customers raise its thug factor a bit, the employees all seemed friendly and helpful, giving free edibles to first-time customers.

Prepackage buds

Open for: 8 years (4 here, 4 in Oakland)

Price: Cheap

Selection: High for edibles, moderate for weed

Ambiance: Like a community bank of cheap weed

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy access, high security

————–

RE-LEAF HERBAL CENTER

While I had heard good things about Re-Leaf (1284 Mission St.), my first impression was that it’s a little sketchy. As the door guy was checking my recommendation card and ID, I asked whether they allow smoking on site. He looked as if this was a difficult question, paused, and finally told me to ask the people behind the counter.

The small club was blaring gangsta rap when I entered, after a while lowering the volume to compete less with the blaring television set to an ultimate fighting match. It had two small fridges filled with tasty-looking edibles and lots of vaporizers and other merchandise for sale, but only eight varieties of marijuana.

But the service was good, and after knocking $5 off my gram of Jim Jones (a variety I only found here) because I was a first-time customer, he told me it was OK to smoke on site. I sat down on the couch, but there were no bongs, vaporizers, pipes, or even ashtrays to use.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: two years (three years at previous SF location)

Price: Fairly low

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: A loud head shop that also has some weed

Smoke On Site: Yes and no

Thug factor: Moderate to high

Access/Security: Easy

Joel from MST3K talks ‘bots and breakups

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Swoon- so dreamy! Gypsy, Crow, Joel, and Tom Servo from “MST 3K”

Here’s the scene. You’re watching a B movie, or a C movie, a D movie- do the grades go lower? At any rate, it’s in grainy glory on your television. A werewolf is stalking a yokel through the misty woods, or a catastrophic fire is testing the limits of the staff of a hospital, or atomic fallout is causing mysterious happenings on a deserted island. Along the bottom of the screen, there is a row of silhouettes- a janitor stuck in space and his robot companions, one fashioned from a gumball machine and the other from gold, with a beak. They’re all riffing along like there’s no tomorrow, injecting sass into some of the greatest movie failures of the modern age. This is truly, a wonderful premise. This is “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” The show was one of cable TV’s biggest cult hits in the ‘90s, spawning websites and online fan forums back in the days when those things were still the domain of the technologically savvy with time on their hands. Joel Hodgson created the show, built the robots, starred and wrote scripts- for the first hundred episodes. Then he left the show entirely. “MST3K” continued on without him, but for many die hard fans, the success of the Hodgson shows could never be duplicated.

Lucky for us, he’s back. Hodgson has assembled the original cast of the show for a live production called “Cinematic Titanic,” which will provide the same bad old movies and razor sharp verbal barbs on stage. Thanks to the SF Sketchfest, it’s coming to the Castro next week as the comedy festival’s closing night strong finish. Don’t worry, you’ve still got ample time to get up your homemade space jumpsuit or robot ‘fit. We had the chance to breathlessly moon over Hodgson the other day and he was just dreamy.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: I’ve gotta tell you, I’m a huge fan of the show. We watched it all the time when I was little.,/em>
Joel Hodgson: Oh great! And it didn’t screw you up or anything?

SFBG: Nope. Me and my dad had a whole tradition; we’d pick up a pizza and watch the show together.
JH: Oh, that’s really great. We meet a lot of people like you on the road, a lot people that started watching the show back then.

SFBG: How long have you been doing the “Cinematic Titanic” shows?
JH: Oh man. I just knocked something over. Okay. Two years. We did our first show two years ago at Industrial Light and Magic in San Francisco at the Lucas Films complex.

SFBG: You left “Mystery Science Theater 3000” after 100 shows. I read somewhere that it was because you were tired of performing in front of the camera.
JH: That’s what I said. But it was a bit of a dodge. I was fighting with my partner [producer Jim Mallon]. That’s why I quit. I lied to everyone, basically.

SFBG: Well then it must have been really sad to leave the show.
JH: I really regret leaving the show. But I did it in the hopes that it would live on. The nature of [my troubles with Mallon] was the kind of thing that would wreck the show. Surprisingly it worked out. Mike [Nelson, Hodgson’s replacement on the show] got in there and did a great job.

SFBG: How long will you be doing the “Cinematic Titanic” shows?
JH: I love “Cinematic Titanic.” It’s a really great job to write riffs. Its one of those things, I love it. But I have to go get in the right frame of mind to do it. I have to go exercise first. For four hours a day, I write. It’s really great fun.


“Cinematic Titanic” takes on another gem of the silver screen

SFBG: Do the robots make it to the live shows?
JH: No it’s the actors themselves, Trace Beaulieu and Kevin Murphy and everyone.

SFBG: How’s that? You were used to performing with puppets before.
JH: It’s actually much better. We all met doing stand up. [Since we’re performing in person] we can be ourselves, which is kind of useful. Its fun.

SFBG: But don’t you miss Tom Servo and Gypsy and the rest of the gang?
JH: That’s a good question. But the thing is, they’re the embodiment of Trace and Josh. It’s like… what’s it called… god, I just have no idea what this thing is called.

SFBG: What are you talking about? I want to help you figure it out.
JH: You know, like in the Wizard of Oz… where there’s the dream version and then the real life manifestation of somebody… what is that called? I don’t know.

SFBG: You got me. Are you stoked to come back to San Fran then? The city it all started in.
JH: We’re super excited. It’s a great city to perform live in. It’s been a year since we’ve performed here. The Castro’s a great theater, too.

SFBG: You folks will be riffing on “Danger on Tiki Island,” a thriller about an atomic bomb test that causes strange happenings on an isolated island. Sounds great.
JH: “Danger on Tiki Island” has the worst monster in movie history. Who ever made him must have been really rushed. He looks the Michelin Man after he’s been in a fiery car crash. So yeah, that’ll be fun.

Cinematic Titanic: “Danger on Tiki Island”
Tuesday, February 2, 7 p.m., $25
Castro Theater
429 Castro, SF
(866) 468-3399
www.sfsketchfest.com
www.thecastrotheater.com

This week’s best helps for Haiti

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By Caitlin Donohue

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Don’t let Wyclef pick up your slack, get involved in Haiti relief. Photo by Brian Solis

So tomorrow night at 8 p.m. George Clooney’s hosting an MTV telethon called “Hope for Haiti.” Jay-Z, Beyonce, Rihanna- their big-hearted shenanigans are for Wyclef Jean’s charity, Yelé Haiti and it’s playing not only on “music television” but also every network ever!

“ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, BET, the CW, HBO, CMT, PBS, TNT, Showtime, Comedy Central, Bravo, E! Entertainment Network, National Geographic Channel, Oxygen, G4, Centric, Current TV, Fuse, MLB Network, Epix, Palladia, SoapNet, Style, Discovery Health and Planet Green. Canada’s CTV, CBC Television, Global Television and MuchMusic”

MuchMusic? I heard about the show on the “Jersey Shore” marathon last night. Gonna be bangin’. Conversely, your altruism could join in with the stellar efforts of the admirable givers right here in town to help out Haiti. In the face of the devastation that the earthquakes have wrought in one of the world’s poorest nations, our hamlet’s dynamic creative class is doing their part making it easy to do good. Below are but a few of the benefits taking place over the next week and a half or so.

****

Eats

Bake Sale for Haiti
Local bakeries are teaming up to offer special sweets whose sale goes straight to Partners in Health, a medical care network that has had a presence in Haiti for 20 years.
Sat/22 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Three locations:
Pizzaiolo
5008 Telegraph, Oakland
Gioia Pizzeria
1586 Hopkins, Berkeley
Bi-Rite Market
3639 18th St., SF

more after the jump…

The mighty uke

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The mighty uke

MUSIC The ukulele has gone viral, again, via YouTube phenomena like the adorable Uke Kid and virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, who both perform interpretations of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” — originally by George Harrison, himself a professed uke-aholic.

The history of the ukulele is choppy. It has passed through waves of cultural significance and kitsch popularity. Its origins are commonly misremembered — it first appeared in Portugal as a small Madeiran guitar. Brought by Portuguese cane workers to Hawaii in the 19th century, it was given its new name of “ukulele,” which translates to “jumping flea.” King Kalakaua, a major proponent of the Hawaiian cultural renaissance, fell for the instrument and incorporated it into performances at royal gatherings.

The ukulele floated from Honolulu to the Bay for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, where “the Hawaiian Pavilion” launched the first continental fad for Hawaiian songs and the uke. The Bay Area soon became an international gateway for the ukulele.

Today’s vibrant ukulele scene continues this legacy. The current crop of Bay-based ukulele players have little connection to the instrument’s Hawaiian history and utilize the uke for a wide spectrum of musical genres: the Corner Laughers play bouncy indie power pop; Tippy Canoe incorporates early country music, ’30s jazz and ’60s pop; Ash Reiter accents her jazz-infused indie folk with the ukulele; Uni and Her Ukelele takes ideas from burlesque dancers, comedians, light rock and soul; and in a haphazard YouTube video made by Sandy Kim, ubiquitous garage rocker Ty Segall plays a ditty on the uke.

“As soon as I picked up the uke, I started writing a song,” explains vocalist-ukester Emily Ritz of HoneyComb. “Its size was perfect, and I liked the challenge of making a uke sound dirty, dark, and dangerous.” Influenced by everyone from Billie Holiday to Joanna Newsom, Ritz turns the ukulele into something mysterious and haunting.

Some Bay Area ukesters emerge from the kitsch appeal that the goofy-ginger TV personality Arthur Godfrey left in his wake. Godfrey learned to play the ukulele from a Hawaiian shipmate while he was in the Navy, and when he went on television to promote the new plastic ukuleles, more than 9 million ukuleles were sold, in the second great-wave of ukulele popularity.

Camp taste has an allure, and Uni and Her Ukelele — deliberately spelled the British way, according to Uni, because “I just like how the ‘e’ and ‘l’ loop together in cursive” — mine that appeal by including mermaids, rainbows, and unicorns as subject matter. “While I was learning the basic chords on the ukulele, I found it easier to write more quirky songs,” Uni explains via e-mail from New Zealand. “Fun is a good place to start.”

Post Godfrey, the ukulele’s second wave ended with the annoying falsetto voice of Tiny Tim. Baby boomers threw their plastic strummers into their closets, associating the instrument with all things cheesy. Many guitar distributors ceased making ukuleles during the 1990s, but a third resurgence began in the early aughts, due in part to two significant events: Paul McCartney played the instrument at a tribute concert after George Harrison’s passing, and Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwoole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World” medley became familiar through countless radio-plays, movies, commercials, and weddings. Now even the iPhone has an application that mimics and teaches ukulele chords.

Introductions to the ukulele are often random rather than contrived, much like the ebb-and-flow history of the instrument. Ash Reiter, who fronts a band of the same name, got a uke as a gift from a friend in high school. She later acquired her own, only to have it stolen at a performance with fellow ukesters. She stopped playing, but eventually inherited another one from her grandfather. “It’s one that he got while he was stationed in Hawaii for a while,” Reiter says. “It’s just one of the few things that we shared, and I remember he used to sing a lot of dirty songs that he learned in the war on it, like ‘One-Eyed Dick.’ Then when he was in the nursing home, I would play the ukulele for him.”

Like all good things, the ukulele comes in different shapes and sizes: there are traditional pear-shaped ukes; pineapple-shaped ukuleles that produce a mellower sound; DIY ukuleles made from cigar boxes and plastic lollipop knobs. Godfrey designed the first baritone ukulele, and then there is the “banjulele” popularized by Englishmen George Formby during the ’30s and ’40s. Formby is also an inspiration for Karla Kane, vocalist and ukulele-player of the Corner Laughers, who describes its sound as “twangy” and explains that she found her 1930s banjulele at an antiques fair in San Rafael.

Berkeley-based ukulele artisan Peter Hurney specially designed Tippy Canoe, a.k.a. Michele Kappel-Stone, a ukulele. “At the time I was playing a ukulele that was all black, and he came up to me and said, ‘You need an ukulele that matches your personality,'<0x2009>” explains Kappel-Stone. The two collaborated and chose imagery from a 1913 Bauhaus poster, which circles the ukulele’s sound hole.

Musically, each of these Bay Area musicians advance the uke in different ways. “We put the ukulele on almost every track on the new album,” explains Kane of the Corner Laughers. “But a lot of people don’t even recognize it because we put a lot of cool effects on it. I have an electric ukulele, so I put it through an amplifier, and a space-echo box, and distortion.”

Uni and her Ukelele write songs on the uke, whereas Ash Reiter uses the ukulele only occasionally, often as an accent or a layer within the song. Outside the Bay Area, the instrument has been used by everyone from Kate Bush to Elvis Costello to tUnE-yArDs in recent years. As Tippy Canoe says, “I love that it is such a universal instrument. Anyone can pick it up and play it.” In the Bay Area, and beyond, an increasing number of bands are doing exactly that.

HONEYCOMB

With Annie Bacon and her Oshen, the Spindles

Wed/20, 9 p.m., $7

Elbo Room

647 Valencia St., SF

www.elbo.com

THE CORNER LAUGHERS

With Photons

Sat/23, 7:30, $7

The Make-Out Room

3225 22nd Street

www.makeoutroom.com

ASH REITER

Feb. 17, 8 p.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell St., SF

www.rickshawstop.com

TIPPY CANOE, MIKIE LEE PRASAD

With Anna Ash

March 4, 9:30 p.m. $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk St., SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

tlhIngan maH!

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tlhIngan maH!

EVENT Encompassing an entire universe of exotic worlds, cutting-edge technology, and larger-than-life characters, the realm of Star Trek has inspired fans and captivated their imaginations since the first episode of the original television series was broadcast back in 1966.

Created by Gene Roddenberry, who wove many of the pressing social issues of the 1960s into the fabric of the Star Trek ethos, the franchise has continued to live on through several spin-off television series, feature films, books, video games, and more.

San Francisco — which also happens to be home to the fictional headquarters of “Starfleet Command” — will be filled with sci fi fans this weekend for an official Star Trek convention featuring luminaries from the series such as the legendary William Shatner, the newly knighted Sir Patrick Stewart, and several other notable actors.

Two fan favorites who will be in attendance on Saturday are J.G. Hertzler and Robert O’Reilly, best known in the Star Trek pantheon for their roles as the Klingons Martok and Gowron. Both will be making a rare appearance in full costume and makeup, and will be doing some light-hearted improv in character, including what they call “Kling Bling” — a bit of Klingon hip-hop.

Hertzler, who spent several years at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco before beginning his television career, enjoys stepping back into the character, which not only allows him to entertain fans but to interject political and social commentary into the proceedings.

“The thing about being a Klingon is that it allows you to rant. It’s on the edge of acceptable human behavior, but it’s all acceptable if you’re a Klingon,” Hertzler laughs.

The fervor with which fans embrace Star Trek is admired by O’Reilly, who also notes that many Trekkers have gone on to make valuable scientific contributions to society after being inspired by the series.

“People really feel deeply about Star Trek. If you see who the fans are, they’re scientists, astronomers — they’re very bright people,” O’Reilly says. “I’ve talked to astronauts who have said, ‘I wanted to be an astronaut because I watched Star Trek and I wanted to get up there.'”

Both actors, who have also done a great deal of work on the stage during their careers, are proud and appreciative of the connections they and others in the series have made with fans over the years, which they say can transcend differences even in culture or location.

“It’s truly amazing, I correspond with fans who live everywhere,” Hertzler says. “Because of Star Trek, I have friends all over the world.”

OFFICIAL STAR TREK CONVENTION 2010

Sat/23, 11 a.m.–9:45 p.m.;

Sun/24, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; $20–$65

Westin St. Francis

335 Powell, SF

(818) 409-0960

www.creationent.com

Getting tasted: SFBG hits the food TV awards show

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Text and photos by Paula Connely and Caitlin Donohue

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Lady knows how to take a picture: Tasty Award presenter Debi Mazar shops “the wierd stuff” at the show’s New People after-party

The first annual awards show for food, travel and fashion TV, the Tasty Awards, took over Sundance Cinemas last night with a good old B-List celeb, red carpet . It was an interesting look at where we get our information on cuisine and leisure these days, and a nice chance to watch semi-famous people get hella nervous when the video on the big screen behind them fails to cue.

The program was hosted by drinking and travel television star Zane Lamprey of “Three Sheets,” who opened the night with the remark, “ Without fashion and food, the world would be naked and hungry.” “Three Sheets” won a well deserved award for “Best Drink or Beverage Program on TV.” Unfortunately, Lamprey mentioned that the future of the show’s fifth season is “about as unstable as Steve McKenna with a shot in his hand,” so if you haven’t been watching, check it out so we can continue to enjoy his hilarious and educational worldwide drinking adventures.

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“Best Comedy Series” winner Jolene Sugarbaker takes a break from casseroles and dropping in on the neighbors to celebrate her Tasty

The Tasty nominees were a clear indication of where we’ve moved in the last few years when it comes to information on cuisine, fashion and other leisure activities. The night paid surprisingly little attention to big network shows and stars (although Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and “Cake Boss” chalked up five awards between the two of them), lauding instead local shows (“Check, Please Bay Area”) and relatively little known personalities from Internet video. “Best Comedy Series” winner and trailer park trendsetter Jolene Sugarbaker and “Best Home Chef” in a Series” Average Betty were two representatives of this new breed of food and travel stars. Also honored was YouTube and Flip as “Best Technological Innovations” for their roles in making Internet video the super hot bizness that it is these days.

Sex & Romance

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Sex & Romance

BEST RESTAURANT TO SPARK ROMANCE

Café Jacqueline

Small, chic, and oh so French, this North Beach gem is an ideal spot to sip wine with your candlelit date while waiting for your made-to-order soufflé.

1454 Grant, SF. (415) 981-5565

BEST ONLINE PERSONALS

Eros-guide.com

Like Craigslist but without all those pesky non-sex-related categories, Eros is the definitive guide to escorts, strippers, BDSM partners, and “adult” dating.

www.eros-guide.com

BEST PLACE FOR SINGLES TO MEET SOMEONE

The Cellar

This small subterranean dance club features reasonably priced drinks, theme parties, and singles nights.

685 Sutter, SF. (415) 441-5678, www.cellarsf.com

BEST FIRST DATE SPOT

Foreign Cinema

Upscale cuisine, excellent cocktails, an adjacent art gallery, and a backdrop of films projected onto the wall in the outdoor patio make this a classy choice for a first night out.

2534 Mission, SF. (415) 648-7600, www.foreigncinema.com

BEST PLACE FOR AN ILLICIT TRYST

Bathrooms at the Lexington Club

Girls like going to the loo together — especially at the Lexington, SF’s favorite lesbian bar.

3464 19th St., SF. (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com

BEST BREAKUP SPOT; BEST CRUISING SPOT

Dolores Park

On a sunny day, this sprawling, multifaceted public park is jam-packed with people. Once you finish the breakup talk, just hop to the next blanket over to find your rebound.

Dolores, between 18th and 20th Sts., SF

BEST PLACE TO BUY WEDDING WEAR

Dark Garden

This versatile shop offers quality custom corsets for all your costume, special occasion, and seduction needs.

321 Linden, SF. (415) 431-7684, www.darkgarden.net

BEST PLACE TO HAVE YOUR WEDDING CEREMONY

San Francisco City Hall

Say your vows with simple sophistication in the rotunda of this gorgeous historic building.

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF. (415) 554-4933, www.sfgov.org/cityhall

BEST HOT TUB RENTAL

The Hot Tubs on Van Ness

Clean, comfortable, and calming, each room at the Hot Tubs offers a redwood sauna, a hot tub, a seating area, and controlled lighting and music.

2200 Van Ness, SF. (415) 441-8827, www.thehottubs.com

BEST FLOWER SHOP

Church Street Flowers

Friendly petal peddlers offer a selection of quality blooms in traditional and creative arrangements.

212 Church, SF. (415) 553-7762, www.churchstreetflowers.com

BEST COUPLES COUNSELOR

Marriage Prep 101

This husband-and-wife team hosts informative, proactive, practical sessions to help your relationship succeed.

417 Spruce, SF. (415) 905-8830, www.marriageprep101.com

BEST PLACE TO BUY LINGERIE


My Boudoir: Best Place to Buy Lingerie
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

My Boudoir Lingerie

The exquisite yet low-key purveyor of intimate finery delights shoppers with a diverse selection of reasonably priced, well-crafted bras, panties, teddies, and more.

2029 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-1502, www.myboudoir.net

BEST PLACE TO BUY SEX TOYS; BEST CONDOM SELECTION

Good Vibrations

It’s famous for a reason: a great selection of toys, books, and accessories; helpful staff; and a comfortable atmosphere.

603 Valencia, SF. (415) 552-5460; 1620 Polk, SF. (415) 345-0400; 2504 San Pablo, Berk. (510) 841-

8987; www.goodvibes.com

BEST PLACE TO BUY FETISH GEAR

Mr. S Leather/Madame S Boutique

Between the two of them, Mr. and Madame S can satisfy any of your leather or latex needs, be it for bondage clothing, kinky sex toys, or sexy bedroom hardware.

385 Eighth St., SF. (415) 863-7764, www.mr-s-leather.com, www.madame-s.com

BEST ADULT VIDEO STORE

Superstar Satellite

Home of independent, gay-themed, and top Hollywood movie releases, Superstar is also beloved for its collection of gay adult films.

474 Castro, SF. (415) 863-3333, www.castromoviestore.com

BEST STRIP CLUB

Lusty Lady

The world’s only unionized, worker-owned peep show, the Lusty is a perennial award winner.

1033 Kearny, SF. (415) 391-3991, www.lustyladysf.com

BEST SEX CLUB

Eros

Spa by day and sex club by night, this clean Castro locale provides steam, saunas, showers, lube and condoms, and a diverse selection of music and porn for its male clientele.

2051 Market, SF. (415) 255-4921, www.erossf.com

BEST SEX EDUCATION RESOURCE

Center for Sex and Culture

Is there anything the center doesn’t do? Workshops, classes, social gatherings, a library, archives, and special events are all part of its mission of providing the public with nonjudgmental, sex-positive education and support.

(415) 255-1155, www.sexandculture.org

BEST SEX WRITER

Virgie Tovar

This sex educator, sexual enhancement coach, phone sex operator, and former radio host titillates readers with Destination DD: Adventures of a Breast Fetishist.

www.myspace.com/thevirgieshow, www.breastfetishist.com

Sex & Romance

BEST SWEET PIECE OF ASS


Cake Gallery: Best Sweet Piece of Ass
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

Scoring a sweet piece of ass in SoMa has never been difficult, but finding it gushing with chocolate or vanilla? And in a box? For that you’ll have to head to the Cake Gallery, where a three dimensional ass-cake is actually one of the tamer selections on the menu. The policy here is to quickly whip up “anything your demented mind can imagine.” A giant penis spurting Bavarian jizz? Pssh. If you can’t conjure anything crazier than that for your sister’s Quinceañera, you can peruse an album of past creations for ideas: trannies swimming in rivers of piss, clam bumpin’ lesbians, and iconic cartoon characters engaged in bizarre sex acts are just the tip of the iceberg here. Think big! The only order that might get you a sidewise glance is a “normal” one.

290 Ninth St., SF. (415) 861-2253, www.thecakegallerysf.com

BEST APHRODISIAC WITH ADMISSION

Most San Francisco foodies worth their salt wouldn’t consider dating someone who didn’t like oysters. Obvious body-part references aside, oysters are supposedly one of the saltiest, slipperiest, juiciest aphrodisiacs on the planet (due to high levels of libido-increasing zinc) — plus there’s something both sexy and classy about the whole process of eating them. The largest oyster festival on the West Coast, O’Reilly’s Oyster Festival, then, seems like a good place to take someone if you’ve got ulterior motives. With attractions like the “Shuck and Suck Competition” (winner gets innuendo-filled bragging rights for a whole year), cooking demonstrations, an oyster history exhibition, and live music, North Beach’s oystery weekend pretty much completely rocks. Add that other great aphrodisiac — beer — to the equation, and you’d better have some smooth moves planned for when the sun goes down.

Second weekend in May, Fort Mason’s Great Meadow, SF. www.oreillysoysterfestival.com

BEST DAREDEVIL FIRST DATE

Let’s face it: San Francisco’s dating scene is exhausting. The excess of attractive, successful single people who live and date within the city limits practically guarantees that whoever you’re dating is probably dating someone else; and if someone wants to settle down with you, you’re not quite ready because your three other options are just too good to discard. That means there are a lot of first dates happening all over the city. And how many times can you go for a cup of coffee at an anarchist café, or dinner at a new trendy restaurant, or an indie show at a tiny dive? For an out-of-the-ordinary meet-and-greet, trek your asses up Diamond Heights (specifically, to Douglass Street between 19th and 20th) to the Seward Slides, sit on the empty pizza box you brought with you, and get ready to shoot headfirst down the awesomest hidden hillside slides in San Francisco. Plus, you’re less likely to run into your date’s other poly partners.

Seward and Douglass Sts., SF.

BEST ROMANTIC ACTIVISM

What’s more romantic than equality? A place to celebrate it right in the center of one of our favorite neighborhoods. That’s what we’ve got with Heart of the Castro Wedding Chapel, a charming locale for commitment ceremonies that opened on the heels of the California Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex marriage. The chapel is run by a collective of friends and activists striving to keep the institution legal while also providing dream weddings for couples who never thought they’d have one. Want something simple and elegant? Something crazy and kooky? The folks at Heart will help you plan it, and then they’ll host it in their lovely Victorian suite. Want a big party in December? Or quickie nuptials tomorrow afternoon? Either way, they’ll try to accommodate you. Indeed, they’re so dedicated to your happiness, they’ll even help you find a different venue if theirs doesn’t work for you. With reasonable prices and a great mission, we love Heart of the Castro so much it makes us want to marry them.

4052 18th St., SF. (415) 626-7743, www.heartofthecastro.com

BEST DOGGIE STYLE

Forget the Hallmark cards and expensive rings. Valentine’s Day was made for one thing only: boning. You know it, we know it, and all the animals on God’s green earth know it. If you need proof, book a spot at the SF Zoo’s annual Woo at the Zoo for a multimedia, champagne-soaked rundown of the myriad fornication styles the Coital Creator has bestowed upon Her beastly children. Gasp at the site of a horse’s schlong as it enters an unsuspecting mare. Wince at the violent lovemaking rituals of sharks. Imagine penguin orgies and simian BDSM parties. By the time the show’s over, your animal-loving date will be hornier than a bonobo and ready to get down, monkey-style, in the backseat of your Jaguar (or VW Rabbit, if that’s how you roll). If you hear screams of ecstasy in the parking lot after the show, listen closely — we bet some of ’em are human.

1 Zoo, SF. (415) 753-7080, www.sfzoo.org

BEST FLOATING LAP DANCE

OK, so the dancers on the Mermaids Cruise don’t actually dress like Disney’s Ariel, but they still do a pretty good job of satisfying whatever deep and dirty fetish you have for that under-the-sea siren. Book a spot for you and your friends any Friday or Saturday — or charter a private ride on another night of the week — and you’ll find yourself trapped on a boat for a two hours with an open bar and randy strippers like goth girl Candy, Brazilian kitten Cheetah, Southern belle Trillian, or hip-hop hottie Vanity. They may not have fish scales, but we bet men and women alike won’t be able to keep their eyes off the mermaids’ tails. Heteros, homos, singles, and couples are all welcome on the restored classic motor vessel. And if women aren’t your thing, the company has a Merman Cruise too.

(415) 859-7052, www.mermaidscruise.com

BEST HIPSTER HOOKUP HANGOUT

Want to pick up a hipster punk but can’t handle another night in the Mission. Your best bet is Hemlock Tavern, run by the same folks responsible for Valencia Street favorite Casanova. Located in Polk Gulch (otherwise known as the Tenderloin with higher rent), the Hemlock has a 360-degree bar, plenty of PBR, a pool table, an enclosed and heated smoking room, and bags of peanuts for a dollar — all well worth riding a fixed gear across town for. Plus, there’s often live music in a side room. When the giant red arrow on the wall lights up, you can pay a small cover to see the music or simply stay in the larger bar area and watch music-lovers in tight jeans and studded belts parade past you. Another bonus: this might be the only non-gay bar in San Francisco where the line for the men’s room is longer than the one for the ladies’, which means plenty of opportunity for hitting on cute hipster boys.

1131 Polk, SF. (415) 596-7777, www.hemlocktavern.com

BEST NEXT STEP IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP


Filbert Street Steps: Best Next Step in Your Relationship
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

It’s quite possible that the only thing cuter than twosomes of cooing birds are the cooing couples who watch them. For your own chance to go “awwww” with your amore, head over to the Filbert Steps. Yes, this is the locale for feel-good-movie-of-all-time The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, featuring the tiny cherry-headed conures that make their homes in the trees lining the steps for most of the year. To get there, take your sweetie and your fixie through the Broadway Tunnel to Washington Square Park, and head up Telegraph Hill to the base of Coit Tower. Check out the WPA murals on the way, then descend 28 stories down the wooden stairs until you hear distinctive squawks from the flock. Next? Look. Listen. Lock lips. What you do after that is between you, the birds, and the bees.

Filbert and Telegraph Hill Blvd., SF. www.coittower.org

BEST BEER GOGGLES DOWN BELOW

The thing about shelling out for drinks when you aim to impress a hottie is that they go away so quickly (the drinks, definitely; the hottie, possibly). By the time your crush is rattling ice in the base of their empty vodka-cran-lime glass, the object of your financed affections may have moved on to the other end of the bar. But strike up a good rapport with someone at the Lucky 13, Zeitgeist, the R Bar, or Ace’s, and you can spend your hard-earned bucks on a longer-lasting investment with clearer purpose — and a better chance of big returns. The answer? Underwear bearing the bar’s logo. If your paramour accepts the gift, you know you’re on the same page — and possibly on your way to a private, postbar fashion show. Just make sure you get ones you like. After all, both rejection and romance can end with you having to wear them.

BEST BAR FOR A BOOTY CALL

Smooth-talking, heavy-handed bartenders and a packed house of good-looking, hormonal twenty- and thirtysomethings boozing it up in muted, raucous style are part of what make Solstice a classic among booty-call bars. If you’ve already got a FWB, this place will get you in the mood — and do it in style. And if you’re simply looking for a bed buddy, you’ll have your pick of young execs with flushed cheeks, loosened ties, and skirts deliberately pushed up high-thigh. The menu’s got classy down-home bar food like Kobe beef sliders with sweet potato fries or gorgonzola mac ‘n’ cheese, so you can satisfy any “not before you buy me dinner” roadblocks. Add in that happy hour that starts at 5 p.m. and food is available until midnight (that’s seven hours to score), and you’re looking at pretty good odds. Speaking of looking good, everyone does after a bottle of wine, so take advantage of Monday’s half-off special.

2801 California, SF. (415) 359-1222, www.solsticelounge.com

BEST VIOLET BLUE


Violet Blue: Best Violet Blue
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

Beloved San Francisco sex writer Violet Blue recently started seeing red when she realized porn actress Ada Mae Johnson had adopted her moniker in 2001 — using it to make 300 films, which earned her the coveted “Best New Starlet” award from Adult Video News in 2002. The conflict came to a head at the 2006 Exotic Erotic Ball, where confusion ensued when SF Violet Blue (her given name) and porn star Violet Blue both attended. Last year the writer of sex books and columnist for SFGate.com sued her doppelgänger to get Johnson to change her stage name. After the writer won an initial victory in the courts earlier this year, the porn star finally changed her name — first to Violetta Blue, then to Noname Jane. We’re happy for Blue, though we assume Noname doesn’t feel the same. She’s probably green with envy.

www.tinynibbles.com, www.myspace.com/nonamejane

BEST DISNEY WITH LUBE

Whoever thinks a DVD is the best way to see gay porn never watched it on 8mm. The undoctored color, the absence of grunting, the lurid, jumpy detail … how could you not prefer that to the glossy, homogenous automatons in contemporary adult films? Of course, finding gay porn by way of the DVD’s lasered predecessor isn’t easy — which is where Super8Man comes in. This 8mm-afficionado has collected an impressive number of such films, exhibiting the grainy fantasies at various clubs and venues — like Artists’ Television Access — throughout the city. So keep an eyeball out for this showman and his varied and nuanced delights. Perhaps you’ll even get to see his personal favorite: a madcap vignette of two guys fucking in a van while a wheel man zips them through town with the back doors swinging open. It’s like Disney’s North Avenue Irregulars with lube!

www.super8men.com, www.handbookmen.com

BEST MÉNAGE À MEATLESS

It’s said that vegetarians have the freshest smelling genitals around. But the folks at Millennium seem to know something about the way a flesh deficit affects a vegetarian’s sex life in other ways. Apparently, noncarnivores feel an intense yearning for a four-course meal and an all-night session of cruelty-free lovemaking every month. That’s why they host an Aphrodisiac Dinner and optional accompanying overnight package in a Love Suite at The Hotel California every Sunday closest to the full moon. Gone are the days of curry-scented, low-budget establishments and a grabass session in the VW bus — high-rolling horny vegans can now feast and fornicate in upscale style. You can opt only for the meal ($45), but we suggest the full package ($192) for a more satisfying dessert.

580 Geary, SF. (415) 345-3900, www.millenniumrestaurant.com

BEST SWINGIN’ SEX CLUB

It isn’t just the jazz bands that are swingin’ in North Beach. Private club Twist offers couples the opportunity to engage in that other kind of swinging, away from home. Located in a two-story commercial space, Twist provides a club atmosphere for adults who want to play you-show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine with style, sophistication, and secrecy — the club is invitation-only (apply online), very big on etiquette, and very specific about not giving away details about its patrons. No drugs are allowed, but unlike many sex clubs, there is a bar, though it’s BYO wine and beer (no hard alcohol). Visitors like the art on the walls; the washable black covers on couches and beds; and the supply of fluffy towels, condoms, and lube in every room. Voyeurs and exhibitionists love transparent room dividers, while shyer types like the downstairs dance floor and DJ. No single men are allowed, and couples are asked to arrive, participate, and leave together, so this is an especially appealing and safe place for single ladies. Plus, they get in free!

(415) 812-7221, www.twist-sf.com

BEST GALLERY-WORTHY GLAMOUR SHOTS

Looking for a sexy gift? Or maybe a titillating mantelpiece? We suggest photos of you naked, in your favorite corset, or wrapped around your lover, taken at Erosfoto, the boudoir photography studio run by gallery-exhibited artist Suzanne Jameson. A far cry from mall-quality glamour photos, Jameson’s prints fuse fine art principles with her subjects’ ideas, making the result of each private session tasteful and uniquely sexy. Even better, Jameson’s an expert in helping the women and couples she works with feel comfortable. She encourages models to bring their own music, clothing, lingerie, jewelry, and props — or to borrow some from her extensive collection. She also can provide makeup and hair artists upon request — indeed, many brides-to-be kill two birds with one erotic stone by using portraits as nuptial gifts for their spouses and a chance to test out wedding day hair and makeup. The pictures aren’t cheap — it costs $600 for a two-hour session — but you’re welcome to split the cost with a friend who wants to pose too. You get a DVD with digital negatives, and you keep all rights to the photos.

1483 Guerrero, SF. (415) 706-5237, www.erosfoto.net

BEST DARING DRESS-UP CLOTHES


Stormy Leather: Best Daring Dress-Up Clothes
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

While roses and rosé may do it for some, others need latex and leather to get them in the mood. The latter lotharios need look no further than Stormy Leather. This SoMa warehouse is a dream for playing daring dress-up, carrying everything from sweet silk corsets to sadistic leather whips — and everything in between. We especially like its line of latex clothing, with styles ranging from Cat Woman to Marilyn Monroe–esque, and the selection of corsets, including the ruffled Colette and military-themed Sergeant. Since Stormy’s a manufacturer as well as a retailer, you can have items custom made to fit your size and preferences (yellow extra small? red silk 5X?) — and the knowledgeable staff to help you figure out what, exactly, those preferences are. What’s even sexier is how involved Stormy is in the community, providing classes in fetish play, hosting art shows, and sponsoring burlesque troupe Twilight Vixen Revue.

1158 Howard, SF. (415) 626-1672, www.stormyleather.com

City Living

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City Living

BEST LOCAL BLOG

N Judah Chronicles

Crazies, crashes, coins! Public transportation is way more exciting than the freeway. Share your tales of Muni woe (and whoa!) with blogger Greg Dewar.

www.njudahchronicles.com

BEST LOCAL WEB SITE

BeyondChron.org

Politics, current events, and culture coverage for people smart enough to distrust “the Voice of the West.” BeyondChron.org is the FUBU of local news sources.

www.beyondchron.com

BEST TATTOO ARTIST

Freddy Corbin, Temple Tattoo

Corbin’s work can be found on the arms and necks of hipsters from here to China. Intricate, original, and flawless. In a word: gangsta.

384 17th St., Oakl. (510) 451-6423, www.templeoakland.com

BEST TATTOO SHOP

Black and Blue

The renowned female artists at B&B may not be able to pee while standing (we think), but they’ll man up to the needles any day. The best tattoos in town.

381 Guerrero, SF. (415) 626-0770, www.blackandbluetattoo.com

BEST POLITICIAN YOU LOVE TO HATE

Gavin Newsom

Is it his creepy smile, his perfect hair, or his questionable policies and personal life that irritates everyone so much? Whatever it is, the dude fucking sucks.

BEST POLITICIAN

Gavin Newsom

Er, time out. Newsom’s not that bad. He’s kind of sexy in a Zoolander sort of way, and he did stand up for gay marriage. Plus, he’s related to Joanna. Thumbs up, dude. You win.

BEST LOCAL NONPROFIT

Homeless Prenatal Program

Being homeless sucks, but homeless and pregnant? Come on! Luckily, HPP has been assisting homeless mothers-to-be with their situation since 1998.

2500 18th St., SF. (415) 546-6756, www.homelessprenatal.org

BEST EMERGING ARTIST

Nanci Price Scoular

Scoular’s abstract painting style is like an onion, revealing layer after layer of the artist’s struggle to belong.

www.pricescoular.com

BEST ART COLLECTIVE

Liberation Ink

Liberation Ink designs T-shirts and accessories for liberal arts majors, cute activists, and hippies with fashion sense. All profits support local grassroots organizations.

(415) 294-3196, www.liberationink.org

BEST TOURIST SPOT LOCALS SHOULD VISIT

Alcatraz

Wading through hordes of blissfully ignorant, clam-chowder-chomping tourists is never much fun, but sometimes the destination is worth it. Alcatraz is such a place — the best, in fact.

www.nps.gov/alcatraz

BEST LOCAL AUTHOR

Broke-Ass Stuart

Stuart’s city guidebooks may fly off the shelves these days, but the dude’s still broke as shit. It doesn’t stop him from having fun, though, and it shouldn’t stop you either.

www.brokeassstuart.com

BEST LOCAL ZINE (PRINT)

The Loin’s Mouth

Read about the ups and tragic downs (plus anonymous sexcapades!) of Tenderloin dwellers every month in The Loin’s Mouth.

www.theloinsmouth.com

BEST LOCAL ZINE (WEB)

Big Top Magazine

Circus freaks, sideshow performers, exhibitionists, and straight-up weirdos. Big Top Magazine gives a voice to them all. Finally!

www.bigtopmagazine.com

BEST LOCAL RECORD LABEL

Six Degrees

Dedicated to the sweet and sexy sounds of international genre-bending, Six Degrees offers the best in contemporary music from across the globe.

www.sixdegreesrecords.com

BEST LOCAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

McSweeney’s

Like books? Pirates? Clever writing with a socially conscious twist? Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s wants you!

www.mcsweeneys.net

BEST TV NEWSCASTER

Dennis Richmond

In a perfect world, all news anchors would be like newly retired Richmond: cool, composed, and confident enough to rock the same mustache through decades of facial hair trends.

www.ktvu.com

BEST LOCALLY PRODUCED TV SHOW

Check, Please! Bay Area

Regular Bay Area residents review San Francisco’s finest restaurants. No pretense, no expertise, no bullshit. Genius!

www.blogs.kqed.org/food

BEST RADIO STATION

Energy 92.7 FM

Indie rock’s cool and all, but sometimes you just wanna bump Rihanna, Britney Spears, or Gunther. Cut a rug at Energy 92.7, the ass-movingest radio station in the Bay.

www.energy927fm.com

BEST STREET FAIR

Folsom Street Fair

More cock than a chicken fight! More ass than a donkey show! Break out those chaps and grab some lube when the sprawling granddaddy of leather events hits in September.

www.folsomstreetfair.org

BEST DOG-WALKING SERVICE

Mighty Dog

Most dog walkers stop after a stroll, but Mighty will take Fido to the beach, give him a trim, and maybe even introduce him to some hot tail.

1536 Alabama, SF. (415) 235-5151, www.mightydogwalking.com

BEST PET GROOMER


Little Ark
Grooming Shop: Best Pet Groomer
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Little Ark Grooming Shop

Dogs make nice child substitutes, but they can get dirty as hell. Clean ’em up at Little Ark, the best groom shop in town.

748 14th St., SF. (415) 626-7574

BEST VETERINARIAN

Pets Unlimited

Sick pets suck. They whine all day, smell nasty, and repel potential lovers. Get them fixed up at Pets Unlimited.

2343 Fillmore, SF. (415) 563-6700, www.petsunlimited.org

BEST CAMP FOR KIDS

Camp Galileo

Art, science, and outdoor activities for students from prekindergarten to entering fifth grade. Summer camp for creative types.

(415) 595-7293, www.campgalileo.com

BEST DENTIST

Dr. Natasha Lee, Better Living Through Dentistry

Drugs and alcohol will do the trick temporarily, but if you really want a better life, fix your grill at Dr. Lee’s.

1317 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 731-9311

BEST DOCTOR

Dr. Scott Swanson, Parkside Chiropractic

Need a backiotomy? Head to Parkside Chiropractic, where Dr. Swanson will snap your spine back into action.

2394 31st Ave., SF. (415) 566-7134, www.parksidechiro.com

BEST MASSAGE THERAPIST

Joshua Alexander, CMT

He will listen to your body and honor what he hears with a plethora of techniques, including energy work modalities ranging from Swedish and deep tissue to shiatsu and polarity.

Castro and Market, SF. (415) 225-3460, www.joshuaalexandercmt.com

BEST MECHANIC

Pat’s Garage

Cars may never be as environmentally friendly as bicycles, but they get substantially closer at Pat’s, San Francisco’s premier green auto shop. Plus, organic coffee!

1090 26th St., SF. (415) 647-4500, www.patsgarage.com

BEST PLACE FOR A HAIRCUT

Dekko Salon

If you’re looking for a truly individualized experience, get your hair styled at swanky Dekko, San Francisco’s most luxurious hair and art gallery.

1325 Indiana, SF. (415) 285-8848, www.dekkosalon.com

BEST DAY SPA

Blue Turtle Spa

Cruelty-free skin products and beauty services for your worldly vessel. Animals shouldn’t have to suffer just so you can look pretty.

57 West Portal, SF. (415) 699-8494, www.blueturtlespa.com

BEST SHOE REPAIR

Anthony’s Shoe Repair

There’s nothing worse than showing up to a party in a scuffed-up pair of kicks. Anthony will restitch, resole, and stretch your shoes back to freshness.

30 Geary, SF. (415) 781-1338

BEST TAILOR

Cable Car Tailors

Throw your thrift store finds in a bag with some oversize slacks and wait for CC Tailors to work their magic.

200 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 781-4636

BEST ROOMMATE REFERRAL SERVICE

Craigslist

Where else can you find someone actively seeking a “sex-positive, 420-friendly, artsy-fartsy new housemate who likes cats and cooks vegan”?

www.craigslist.com

BEST LOCAL ANIMAL RESCUE

San Francisco SPCA

Rescuing distressed pooches and wayward felines since 1868, this SPCA outpost offers a stunning array of humane services.

2500 16th St., SF. (415) 554-3000, www.sfspca.org

BEST LAUNDROMAT

Brainwash

Drink beer, eat food, and wash duds with stand-up comedians, SoMa punks, live bands, and swingers from nearby One Taste Urban Retreat Center.

1122 Folsom, SF. (415) 861-3663, www.brainwash.com

BEST BICYCLE MECHANIC

Bike Kitchen

Give a man a bike; he’ll ride until it breaks. Give him the tools to fix a bike (the Bike Kitchen’s raison d’être); he’ll ride for life.

1256 Mission, SF. (415) 255-2453, www.bikekitchen.org

City Living

BEST PIRATES ON THE DIAL

We love the independents, and it doesn’t get much more independent than pirate radio. West Add Radio, on 93.7 FM, features some of the most adventurous musical programming in the city — from minimal techno crew Kontrol and Green Gorilla Lounge’s M3 to Cobain in a Coma, a show about music, celebrity gossip, and homo drug culture with a cult following, and Pancake Radio, with prolific DJ Ryan Poulsen. The advantage to flying under FCC radar? Anything goes — the seven dirty words, explicit lyrics, inappropriate banter, obscure kraut rock — if you’re lucky enough to pick up the signal. Otherwise, you can access the live stream and podcast archive online. (Hurray for the Internet.) In addition to its radio programming, West Add has become known for its parties, most significantly the monthly Italo-disco Ferrari at Deco Lounge, but also quirky nights such as “Merry Crass-mas,” a tribute to CRASS. West Add has also started releasing the free zine WAR in collaboration with Aquarius Records. Radio’s not dead!

www.westaddradio.com

BEST DRIVEWAY OF DESTINY

Driving in these eco-conscious times may be unfortunate, but since 2002, when artists Harrell Fletcher and Jon Rubin stenciled fortunes into each of its parking spaces, the North Beach Parking Garage has offered a curious kind of hope. Some fortunes are cookie classics (“Opportunity is fleeting”). Others are enticingly bawdy (“There is a party inside you” abutting “Your lovers [plural] will never wish to leave you”). Some contain road rage management tips (“It is often better to not see insult than to avenge it”) or reality checks (“Your trouble is that you think you have time”). The best of ’em trigger intriguing dilemmas for the superstitious — do you cast a shadow over your day by parking in “A whisper separates friends”? Do you wait for “You are not a has-been” to become free? If you need to come up for air, hit the garage’s roof: its lovely view of Saints Peter and Paul Church and the Transamerica Pyramid (along with nearby Chinatown clotheslines) will wipe your mind clear of ontological philosophizing.

735 Vallejo, SF. (415) 399-9564

BEST AMAZING JOURNEY INWARD


The Melvin M. Sweig Interfaith
Memorial Labyrinth: Best Amazing Journey Inward
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

The ancient mystical tradition of the labyrinth lives on in front of Grace Cathedral with the ostentatiously named Melvin M. Swig Interfaith Memorial Labyrinth. Laid out in terrazzo in the meditation garden to the left of the cathedral entrance is a replica of the medieval 11-circuit labyrinth on the floor of Chartres Cathedral. A labyrinth is not a maze; there is but one path, and it leads to the center. Yet as with so many other things in life (childhood, religion, partying), the point is the journey. The walk through the labyrinth is surprisingly long and circuitous, one well suited to embodying your preferred metaphor. It’s difficult not to be contemplative as you slowly wend your way through the three stages of the labyrinth: purgation (the walk in), illumination (standing at the center), and finally, union (walking out). You may not have achieved perfect spiritual balance by the time you exit, but you can’t help feeling slightly more enlightened.

1100 California, SF. (415) 749-6300, www.gracecathedral.com

BEST MICROWAVE TOSS

Most people just throw their broken electronics in the trash. If your conscience won’t let you contribute to the 220 tons of e-waste dumped annually in the United States alone, consider hauling the dot matrix printer you’ve been guiltily hiding in the basement for the past 15 years to an electronics recycling service. Green Citizen boasts of its ability to recycle “anything with a plug.” CEO James Kao acknowledges that the actual output of reusable material is often small — consider alkaline batteries, which must be carefully broken down to get at a mere 3 mg of zinc. But the larger advantage is the safe disposal of the toxic substances within your cast-off gadgets, which can leach into the soil if left in landfills. Green Citizen even assigns a unique serial number to every item it recycles, so its various parts can be traced all the way to their final destinations. There’s a small fee for certain items, usually well under $10, but you’ll be a bit more free of guilt. Now about all that consumption …

591 Howard, SF. (415) 287-0000, www.greencitizen.com

BEST NO-NONSENSE KNOT REMOVAL

Forget the soothing new age music, bubbling indoor waterfalls, and arcane aromatherapy. Sometimes you’re broke, your back is full of knots, and all you want at the end of a rough week is a no-nonsense deep-tissue massage. At Jin Healing for Women a 60-minute full body will set you back $39 — or $30 if you buy a six-hour package. For that price, who cares if they don’t serve cucumber water or slather you in organic clay? The massage style falls somewhere between shiatsu and Swedish: the masseurs use oil, acupressure, and plenty of strength. The best part of the massage is arguably the hot towel treatment at the end. Some may complain that the place is too noisy — it’s not uncommon to hear the receptionist answering the phone or people talking outside — but it’s nothing that earplugs or an iPod can’t block out. While Jin Healing for Women is advertised as serving women only, some have found that men are not turned away if accompanied by a female friend or family member.

999 Powell, SF; 3557 Geary, SF. (415) 986-1111

BEST BUDGET SHRINKS

It’s not easy being blue — especially if you’re short on green and your health insurance doesn’t cover mental health services. Or if you don’t have health insurance at all. Luckily, the California Institute for Integral Studies offers “mind-body-spirit” counseling and psychotherapy on a sliding scale based on your income. The friendly CIIS therapists are graduate students and postgraduate interns working under the supervision of an instructor. With five counseling centers across the city, each with its own specialty, CIIS has expertise in a wide range of “therapeutic orientations,” including somatic, transpersonal, psychodynamic, and gestalt, as well as more conventional modes of psychotherapy. The holistic approach and alternative fee system make CIIS an ideal counseling center for a city like San Francisco.

www.ciis.edu/counseling

BEST BEATS KEEP BOPPIN’

North Beach has come a long way since the days when Lawrence Ferlinghetti et al. drank gallons of cheap red wine at Caffe Trieste. Though it’s now more frat boy than the best minds of a generation starving, hysterical, and naked, North Beach does sometimes remember its poetic beat heritage. For a weekend each May, Kerouac Alley — recently repaved with cobblestones and stone tablets engraved with quotes by Western and Chinese poets — is home to dozens of emerging and established artists showcasing their recent work in the open air for Art in the Alley. Live music, painting, poetry, and sculpture bring back the creative bohemian buzz that enveloped North Beach before the blonde beer haze did, and the art is always on display at fab sponsor Vesuvio bar for a couple of weeks before the festival. Perhaps best of all, at the end of the alley is surreal karaoke bar Bow Bow’s, where bartender Mama Candy serves a mean Tokyo Tea. After some heady art and a couple of those, you’ll be shouting lines from Howl yourself.

Kerouac Alley, between Columbus and Broadway, SF. www.vesuvio.com

BEST [EUPHEMISM] WAX

Women’s products and services are all about euphemism. Douche becomes a feminine cleansing product; a period becomes “celebrating one’s femininity.” And of course, the bikini wax, or Brazilian, is really a way to get hair off your cha-cha. Lonni of Lonni’s Punani dispenses with all niceties with the candid name of her Potrero Hill waxing service. Her motto? “Keeping San Francisco smooth one pussy at a time.” The name and motto may be blunt, even crass, but the end results will indeed leave a woman’s naughty bits smooth and ingrown-free. Lonni, a certified aesthetician and a pastry chef with a degree in sociology, forgoes mood lighting and new age music for bright environs, a rocking soundtrack, and fingers quick enough to make you forget she’s ripping hair off your most sensitive regions. (House calls are also offered.) And she doesn’t just stick to the punani: “manzilians” are happily performed as well.

1756 18th St., SF. (415) 215-7678, www.lonnispunani.com

BEST PUPIL PAINTER

Master artists don’t always work on canvas or paper. Steven R. Young, BCO, uses little plastic orbs as his canvases. And his work never appears in museums: you see it on people’s faces, and most of the time, he’s so good you never know it’s there. Young paints eyes — false eyes, replacements for people who have lost a real eye to accidents, disease, or surgery. The ocularist gets referrals from the top surgeons in the Bay Area, but his studio hardly looks like a doctor’s office: he has the TV blaring much of the time, and he jokes around with his customers, particularly kids. In the end, though, he’s all business as he replicates, by hand, with tiny, fine brushes, the exact look of a customer’s companion eye, restoring much comfort and confidence. His shop also handles the fabrication and custom fitting. The results can be uncanny — we’ve known people who went to Young for a prosthesis, and even from very close you couldn’t tell the fake eye from the real one.

411 30th St., Oakl. (520) 836-2123, www.stevenryoungocularist.com

BEST DRUG-FREE ALTERED STATE


Kelly Vogel at Float: Best Drug-Free Altered Stat
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Sometimes other people are just too much to bear. And it’s always their fault, isn’t it? The guy at the liquor store forgets to stock your brand of cigarettes. Some yuppie in a fancy car nearly runs you off the road. Your manager fires you, your landlord evicts you, your friends diss you. Don’t you wish you could just make them all disappear for a while? Well, if you’ve ever seen the movie Altered States, you know all about sensory deprivation chambers, those weird water tanks psychology students use to study brain chemistry and sleep cycles. In a deprivation chamber you are utterly alone. Your body is suspended in warm water, your ears are submerged so you can’t hear a thing, and it’s totally dark, odorless, and soundproof. The entire world melts away, and you’re left with raw brain waves. Outside of a ketamine trip, it’s the most detached experience humanly possible. Lose yourself at Float, then, an art gallery with a room full of deprivation tanks.

1091 Calcot Place, Unit 116, Oakl. (510) 535-1702, www.thefloatcenter.com

BEST LOOK TIGHT, HAIR DID

Everybody’s meetin’ Down at Lulu’s — for new clothes and a new hairdo. Co-owners Seth Bogart (of raunchy electro-rap band Gravy Train!!!) and Tina Lucchesi set up shop two years ago and describe the Down at Lulu’s ambience as “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls takes a field trip to the candy factory.” Which is another way of saying that this is a place for hot-blooded people who aren’t afraid of color or taking a dare. They’ll cut you — and you’ll like it! They’ll bleach you and they’ll blow you — dry — and you’ll come back for more! If you’re a girl, you can find the purse you love while you’re waiting for your dye job to set. If you’re a pouty-lipped boy with shaggy hair, ask them to style you like Matt Dillon circa 1979 and you’ll be sure to send a rebel army of crushes over the edge. Down at Lulu’s, that’s where it’s at.

6603 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 601-0964, www.downatlulus.com

BEST REVOLUTION ON WHEELS


Clancy Fear of Pedal Revolution:
Best Revolution on Wheels
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

You know, the hippies weren’t just dirty, fatuous potheads with annoying slogans and bad taste in clothes. They were also big into causes. You say you want a revolution? Well, c’mon — we all wanna change the world. There’s got to be an easier way than adopting a baby from Mali, you know? I mean, you’re gonna have to feed and water that kid for, like, 18 years — without the benefit of Brangelina’s army of nannies. How about this for a solution? Not only is Pedal Revolution a full-service bike shop, with both new and used rides, but it’s also a nonprofit that helps at-risk youth gain valuable skills to keep them off the streets. It accepts tax-deductible donations of bicycles, and for $30 a year you can become a member and work on your bike at the Community Membership Workbench, which will give you some skills and save you a bundle on repair costs. Also, the shop’s got really cool logo T-shirts, which means you can show you care without, you know, growing dreadlocks and playing hacky sack in Golden Gate Park.

3085 21st St., SF. (415) 641-1264, www.pedalrevolution.org

BEST STROBOSCOPIC ZOETROPER

Burning Man has inspired and elevated some amazing Bay Area artists over the years, but Peter Hudson, a.k.a. Hudzo, has become a star both on and off the playa using a unique medium: stroboscopic zoetropes. Hudzo is a San Francisco carpenter and stagehand who has designed sets for the San Francisco Opera, Kink.com porn flicks, and the upcoming Milk movie. His first piece for Burning Man, Playa Swimmers, used strobe lights and precise molds of the human form to give the appearance of figures swimming in the desert sands. He’s returned every year with steadily more ambitious projects, which culminated last year in Homouroboros: a bicycle- and drum-powered carousel that conjured up the vision of a monkey swinging from limb to limb, then taking a bite from an apple delivered by a snake slithering down a vine. Installations in San Jose, Minneapolis, and other cities followed. Now Hudzo is busy putting together his next piece, Tantalus, working with a huge group of committed volunteers out of his SoMa home.

www.hudzo.com

BEST PURIFICATION SCRUB-DOWN


Imperial Spa: Best Purification Scrub-down
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Housed in a fortresslike former bank building with a forbiddingly windowless exterior, Imperial Spa is easy to mistake for a more, ahem, sensual retreat than it is. This traditional Korean spa, however, turns out to be a model citizen, complete with hot and cold pools; an array of sauna rooms, including an ultratoasty “yellow clay fomentation” space; and its own unforgettable twist: a “purification” body scrub that essentially takes off the top layer of epidermis. Women lie on plastic-lined tables with little to hide behind apart from a teensy towel draped over the booty, while industrious ladies in black bras and panties soak them down, then proceed to zealously scrub every single part of the body with what feels like a scouring pad. And that means every part — parts that you never imagined being attacked with such vigor. Don’t be afraid; don’t be very afraid — you’ll never feel silkier than when you emerge, after an application of milky essential oils, cleaner than you’ve ever felt. Men are also welcome, although their purification scrub is administered by a man, minus the bra and panties.

1875 Geary, SF. (415) 771-1114, www.imperialspa.biz

BEST TIBETAN FREEDOM FIGHTER

It’d be far too easy and predictable for the Guardian to give Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius a sarcastic Best of the Bay award for spending the last year beating up the homeless and their advocates in a succession of articles. But Nevius reached a new level of hilarity April 10. When the controversial Olympic torch made its way to San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom was so worried pro-Tibetan demonstrators would clash with supporters of Beijing and the Olympic Games that he clandestinely diverted the torch’s route at the last minute. The result, according to Nevius, is that the swelling crowds of people who were defending China near the ballpark, where the torch was originally expected to pass, didn’t threaten the critics of China’s human rights record. In other words, Nevius seemed to imply that Newsom saved free speech. Uh, yeah. All the red flags in the world are no match for the colossal figures who appeared in San Francisco to support Tibet and condemn Beijing — including actor Richard Gere and motherfucking Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu, you might recall, sleeps with a Nobel Peace Prize around his neck. The pro-Tibet movement doesn’t need Gavin Newsom. Nice try, though, Nevius.

BEST MOVING ONWARD AND UPWARD

Ever-lurking danger in the streets means that many city kids barely leave their own block, let alone experience the pleasure of long bike rides. But thanks to Cycles of Change, East Bay youth are learning how to venture through the urban jungle and beyond safely on two wheels. The 10-year-old collective, headed by Maya Carson and Grey Goykolevzon, draws inspiration from the famed Bikes Not Bombs project and other like-minded organizations. Run in the basements of approximately 13 Alameda County schools, COC takes kids on training rides and shows them how to obey the rules of the road and navigate safe routes from home to school. Serious bike club members pedal up into the hills on longer rides and also learn marketable skills like bicycle repair and how to run their own after-school programs. The organization, soon to be a nonprofit, would love you to donate any unwanted nonrusty, functional bikes to its bike shop in Alameda.

(510) 595-4625, www.cyclesofchange.org

BEST GIRL-TO-GIRL SUPPORT

It takes a girl to understand the issues other girls face today regarding relationships, body image, pregnancy, and parents who don’t understand, or can’t help, or worse, abuse them. It also takes a girl who’s worn those shoes to know how to help another girl get where she wants to go. For the past 10 years, the young women who run GirlSource have been training local low-income teens for their future, by teaching them how to build a Web site, digitally edit photos, take leadership roles, and express themselves through writing. The results are impressive. After receiving SAT prep and counseling on all the teen issues that can thwart potential co-eds, most of the girls participating in the program go on to attend college, where GirlSource continues to support them. Some of them come back to offer peer counseling to new girls coming up, thus completing an important cycle in creating better community.

1550 Bryant, Ste. 675, SF. (415) 252-8880, www.girlsource.org

BEST BLING RECYCLING

Before you run down to Best Buy for a new laptop or television set, check out Midtown Loan, San Francisco’s most respected and experienced (50 years in the biz!) pawnshop and cash-advance boutique, for better deals. Conveniently located on beautiful Sixth Street, right where the Civic Center and Tenderloin neighborhoods join up with SoMa at Market Street, Midtown Loan stocks only the finest used jewelry, timepieces, diamonds, tools, and electronics. But that’s not all. Midtown Loan is a working person’s dream come true: a place where you can actually trade your unwanted luxury items for cold hard cash and even get a cash advance on your next paycheck while you’re at it. Got an extra MacBook Pro lying around? A Rolex you never wear? Throw the whole bundle into a dirty backpack and run down to Midtown Loan before your snooty neighbors catch on.

39 Sixth St., SF. (415) 362-5585, www.midtownloan.net

BEST TORCHBEARER FOR THE ’60S

The Unity Foundation, a lively nonprofit, was founded in 1976 to keep the flames of the l960s alive and “promote world peace, cooperation, and unity.” Its founder and president, Bill McCarthy, is a classic ’60s entrepreneur, renowned for producing the stunningly successful 20th- and 30th-anniversary Summer of Love celebrations in Golden Gate Park. Unity accomplishes its ambitious mission through cultural and educational events, media campaigns, and a monthly television program on SF Access, channel 29, called Positive Spin, which is produced by McCarthy himself. Unity hosts annual Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for children in the Mission District, organizes a weekly street-cleaning program, and has thrown three Unity Fairs in the Mission. The foundation also puts together special public service announcements for the United Nations and presents UN-specific segments on its TV program. McCarthy recently set up his own camera crew to get exclusive coverage of a speech by UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon at San Francisco’s World Affairs Council. The United Nations Association, a grassroots UN support group, has recognized Unity with its top national citizenship award.

744 Treat, SF. (415) 550-1092, www.unityfoundation.org

BEST WAY TO SUSTAIN YOURSELF

Isn’t it time you stopped just eating healthy and started eating with a conscience? Eat with the Seasons can help you do just that. The community-supported agriculture program, developed a few years ago by farm-family descendant Becky Herbert, delivers locally grown, sustainably produced, high quality organic foods to a drop-off point near you. In conjunction with farms located in San Benito and Santa Cruz counties, Eat with the Seasons assembles personalized produce boxes stamped and sealed with your name on them. Every week you choose what seasonal fresh produce you feel inclined to graze on, how many cage-free eggs you want to fry up, the amount of fair trade coffee you can slurp down, and how much grass-fed beef you fancy barbecuing. Then the Seasons folks collect it all, wrap it up, and deliver it to various drop-off locations in the Bay Area. That means next Sunday you can sleep in without worrying about being late to the farmers market snatch-and-grab.

(831) 245-8125, www.eatwiththeseasons.com

BEST KIDS IN THE ALLEY

Owing to an unfortunate blip in city zoning laws, alleyways less than 32 feet wide don’t count as — or get spruced up as — streets, and for years Chinatown’s alleys were dark, dirty, and dangerous. Enter Adopt-an-Alleyway, whose youthful volunteers, all from local high schools and colleges, beautify and monitor the neighborhood’s walkways, issuing regular “alleyway report cards” to the local press. AAA also runs the Chinatown Alleyway Walking Tour, which squires you along the back streets under the guidance of locals aged 16 through 23. You’ll get a dose of sightseeing and some interesting nuggets of history — such as the fact that Waverly Place was once known as Fifteen-Cent Lane because of its multiplicity of cheap, queue-braiding barbers, and that Spofford Alley was home to Sun Yat-sen’s secret revolutionary headquarters. You’ll also get honest opinions about an aging neighborhood from young people interested in civil rights and housing issues, and who provide an emotional connection and a real sense of place to tourists, of all people. You may, however, also get a good-natured lecture on litter (meddling kids).

(415) 984-1478, www.chinatownalleywaytours.org

BEST SERENITY FOR YOUR BUCK

When you walk into the lovely surroundings of the Mindful Body holistic health, fitness, and well-being studio in Pacific Heights, the first thing you notice is the silence. The receptionists speak like calm kindergarten teachers, and you find yourself moving more carefully and opening doors as if they might break. The place oozes relaxation — even the bathrooms, equipped with shower stalls and clean robes, smell ultra-aromatherapeutic. “Through a consistent practice of ‘mindful’ or focused activities, we learn how to tap into our inner intelligence and make choices leading to a life of integrity, fulfillment, peace and harmony,” says founder Roy Bergmann. OK, then! As long as it comes with a back rub. Yoga classes for $15 (with price breaks for memberships and packages) and $70-per-hour massages are definitely a draw here, and the services offered, including the not-as-scary-as-it-sounds Chinese organ massage, or chi nei tsang, are top-notch and myriad. But it’s the highly qualified and serenity-minded staff that really make the Mindful Body a bargain. The friendly teachers, facilitators, and masseurs are worth their weight in Zen.

2876 California, SF. (415) 931-2639, www.themindfulbody.com

BEST SYMPHONY OF INSTRUCTION

In an ideal world, every public school in America would have a music program, complete with appreciation classes, live performances, instruction in playing instruments, and a full curriculum of classical, contemporary, and multicultural styles. Until this utopian vision is realized, though, at least we have Adventures in Music, the San Francisco Symphony’s fantastic community education program. Operating in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District, the program has been working with students in first-through-fifth grades for five years, training teachers to integrate music into their classrooms, providing kids with instruments and educational supplies, presenting participatory in-school performances four times a year, and bringing classes on a field trip to Davies Symphony Hall for a special concert. AIM encourages students to learn musical concepts and terminology, to become familiar with the sight and sound of different musical instruments, and to understand critical listening as well as music as a medium of artistic expression. And yes, AIM’s education bridges musical genres, ranging from Western classical to traditional Chinese.

(415) 552-8000, www.sfsymphony.org

BEST QI TO HIGHER LEARNING

Western medicine is great for acute problems — like, say, restarting your ticker after a heart attack. But for chronic, systemic, or difficult-to-diagnose ailments, the Eastern approach still seems to have the market cornered on treatments that actually work. (This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.) Acupuncture, acupressure, herbal remedies, medical qigong, and a variety of movement and body work techniques ease the pain of sleep disorders, headaches, chronic fatigue, and joint injuries for many. Which is why we love Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College, a Berkeley institution that not only trains future practitioners but also provides consistent, affordable clinic services to the community. Student workers are skilled and well supervised — but if you’re still not comfortable with them, you can work with a pro for a slightly higher price. The relief you may find from your migraines or your tennis elbow, though, will be priceless.

2250 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 666-8234, www.aimc.edu

BEST DIY DEMYSTIFICATION

They say that once you learn how to ride a bike, you’re pretty much set for life — until the tire pops, your bar tape frays, and the shifting gets a little funky. A bicycle repair class can be a daunting thing, but Dan Thomases’s “Bike Maintenance in Three Parts,” offered every three months or so, clears an essential path toward demystifying your rock hopper or 10-speed. The three-part series is run out of Box Dog Bikes, a Mission shop co-owned by Thomases, and takes you from repairing flats to replacing cables and trueing wheels. The Sunday-evening classes are cheap, and more important, small — making for lots of individualized instruction and talk therapy between you, Thomases, and your bike. Thomases says he was inspired by his dentist dad, who schools his patients on preventative maintenance. “I’m hoping the classes will give people an idea of what it takes to be responsible for your bike.”

494 14th St., SF. (415) 431-9627, www.boxdogbikes.com

Classics

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Classics

BEST RESTAURANT

Zuni

This mid-Market foodie haven proves that industrial-chic decor, organic ingredients, and a kick-ass oyster bar are a timeless combo.

1658 Market, SF. (415) 552-2522, www.zunicafe.com

BEST BAR

Gold Dust Lounge

World-class jazz, absurdly low happy hour prices, and a storied history have kept the Gold Dust a Union Square mainstay since 1933.

247 Powell, SF. (415) 397-1695

BEST MUSIC ORGANIZATION

Community Music Center

With campuses in the Richmond and Mission districts, the Community Music Center has been making music education accessible to all since 1921.

544 Capp, SF. (415) 647-6015, www.sfcmc.org

BEST ARTS ORGANIZATION

Intersection for the Arts

The Bay Area’s original alternative arts venue, Intersection for the Arts, has been going against the grain since 1965.

446 Valencia, SF. (415) 626-2787, www.theintersection.org

BEST RETAIL SHOP


City Lights Bookstore: Best Classic Retail Shop
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY ARLENE ROMANA

City Lights Bookstore

Responsible for legitimizing the paperback and making San Francisco the center of the literary universe, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s North Beach shop remains fiercely independent.

261 Columbus, SF. (415) 362-8193, www.citylights.com

BEST LANDMARK

Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco’s postcard perfect landmark, only northern exit, and beacon for destination suicides, this iconic suspension bridge has been rockin’ that orange vermillion hue since 1937.

Hwys. 101 and 1, SF. www.goldengate.org

BEST HISTORICAL BUILDING

Coit Tower

Coit Tower, the art deco phallic symbol on Telegraph Hill, has been proudly crowning San Francisco since 1933.

1 Telegraph Hill, SF. (415) 362-0808

BEST RESOURCE FOR BAY AREA HISTORY

San Francisco City Guides

This all-volunteer army of local history buffs doles out free walking tours that delve deep into the heart of San Francisco’s past.

100 Larkin, SF. (415) 557-4266, www.sfcityguides.org

BEST CLASSIC AUTHOR

Armistead Maupin

Armistead “Teddy Bear” Maupin’s iconic Tales of the City newspaper series has been published in novel form, turned into a television series, and translated into 10 languages.

www.armisteadmaupin.com

BEST CLASSIC ARTIST

Richard Diebenkorn

The driving force behind the West Coast’s flirtation with figurative painting by way of abstract impressionism, Diebenkorn found inspiration in his Berkeley surroundings.

www.diebenkorn.org

BEST CLASSIC MUSICIAN

Carlos Santana

Revered by guitar buffs, fusion enthusiasts, and stoners everywhere, Santana began his career during the peak of the ’60s rock era and produced the last No. 1 single of the 20th century (“Smooth”).

www.santana.com

BEST CLASSIC ACTIVIST

Wavy Gravy

With his tie-dyed armor, clown nose, and perpetual force field of bubbles, Wavy Gravy — living ice cream flavor, Woodstock MC, and ’60s impresario — now flies his activist freak flag over Camp Winnarainbow.

www.wavygravy.net

BEST CLASSIC POLITICIAN

Harvey Milk

As the first openly gay man elected to public office, Milk helped usher in a new politics — smashing glass ceilings for minority candidates everywhere, igniting the local LGBT rights movement, and establishing San Francisco as a town without closet doors.

BEST SONG ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO

“I Left My Heart in San Francisco”

Whether it’s Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra crooning about the fog that chills the air and the little cable cars climbing halfway to the stars, there’s nary a dry eye when this tune climaxes.

BEST FILM MADE OR SET IN SAN FRANCISCO

Vertigo

In this 1958 gumshoe thriller, Hitchcock introduced the world to San Francisco the character, complete with impossibly steep hills, panoramic views, and gorgeous architecture.

Classics — Editors Picks

BEST LAST OF THE RED-HOT DADAS

Alternative theater is a precarious vocation at best, even in an alternative kind of town. Venues come and go, companies founder and fold, everyone wants to move to New York, and hardly anyone breaks even. Despite the tough climate, one stalwart survivor of the downtown downturn continues to expand — and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The EXIT Theatre has been a haven for experimental small productions since its 1983 inaugural performance in the lobby of a nearby residential hotel, and has supported the advancing artistic endeavors of a host of Bay Area faves including mugwumpin, RIPE, Cutting Ball, Art Street Theatre, Crowded Fire, Banana Bag and Bodice, foolsFURY, stealth DIVA Sean Owens, and master illusionist Christian Cagigal. Founder and host of the annual San Francisco Fringe Festival, the EXIT attracts performers and audiences from around the world. Additional festivals such as the DIVAfest, Labor Fest, and the fondly remembered Absurdity Theatre Festival keep them coming back for more.

EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF. (415) 673-3847, www.theexit.org

BEST BAND-AIDS FOR BRUISED FANS

In a mega-festival concert world where a bottle of water can cost more than $5, we’re lucky to have Rock Medicine, a nonprofit emergency response service celebrating its 35th anniversary that hands out earplugs, patches up cuts and scrapes, and gets over-excited and dehydrated kids back to the show — all for free. Made up of volunteer paramedics, doctors, and other helpful, rockin’ citizens, the Rock Medicine program is run by the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, part of the free love legacy of the 1960s. As the concerts of the famous era got bigger and more and more kids flocked to the Bay Area, concert mogul Bill Graham contacted clinic head Skip Gaye, and Rock Medicine was born. Now the organization tries to be present at every humongous musical shindig that takes place, with representatives usually located at a table bearing a giant jug of Gatorade. Rest assured, you’ll never surf the mosh pit without some helpful medical back-up.

www.rockmed.org

BEST PLACE TO SCORE CRANK


Laughing Sal at Musée Mécanique:
Best Place to Score Crank
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY ARLENE ROMANA

In the style of London’s Madame Tussauds or the Musée de la Magie of Paris, San Francisco’s own Musée Mécanique is dedicated to exhibiting the beauty of childhood esoterica. Dan Zelinsky’s private collection of hand-cranked musical instruments, antique arcade machines, and automated guignols — many that date from the turn of the century — give visitors a wondrous pre-digital toy experience. Among the many objets d’art, highlights include the automated Drinking Man, who imbibes spirits at the drop of a quarter only to have the liquid recirculate to the cup through his arm; Naughty Marietta, who is seen through the hand-cranked Cail-O-Scope in various states of undress; Laffing Sal, one of the most famous and frightening exhibits purely because of her laugh, and the Orchestrion, a mechanical orchestra that plays a hideously enchanting racket. While some may find these strange machines and life-like dolls less entertaining than disturbing, the Tim Burton weirdo in us adores them.

Pier 45, shed A, Fisherman’s Wharf, SF. (415) 346-2000, www.museemechanique.org

BEST REHAB TRACK RECORD

Most rehab centers are cushy, designed for spoiled brats whose parents, managers, or partners are so sick of desperate phone calls and missing jewelry they’ll pay any price for a month of addict-free peace. But what addicts really need is a place that takes no shit and offers real results, providing a path to self-sustenance and a community dedicated to change. That’s what the Delancey Street Foundation, a privately-funded rehab center, has been supplying to San Francisco’s hard life crowd for more than three decades. Unlike many other such facilities where the failure rate is as hopeless as Britney Spears’ attempt to raise children, Delancey Street boasts a 98 percent success rate. And it’s free. All you have to do is show up and prove your dedication to self-improvement. If you pass the test, you’re given a room and an apprenticeship at one of the organization’s 12 former-addict-run enterprises. Selling Christmas trees, frothing lattes, and moving furniture may not be a catered month by the ocean, but it works.

600 Embarcadero, SF. (415) 957-9800, www.delanceystreetfoundation.org

BEST PANGLOBAL WHIRL

Where can you see a hip-hop dance troupe, a moving human sculpture in Indian classical style, and a Scottish highland romp dedicated to the Celtic god of fire, all in the same short weekend? The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival was founded in 1978, the first city-funded multicultural dance event in the country. Since then it’s played host to some 14,000 artists performing in more than 100 genres at various locales. This year the festival celebrated its 30th anniversary with flair, expanding its season to four weekends and adding new programming, like film screenings and dance classes. A $100,000 grant enabled festival directors to fly artists in from overseas for the first time. Sadly, Ethnic Dance Fest comes but once a year, but the auditions held in January at the Palace of Fine Arts are open to the public — audience members can expect a standing-room-only, casual atmosphere, and a different act every 10 minutes.

(415) 474-3914, www.ethnicdancefestival.org

BEST MONUMENTAL URINAL

There is much to celebrate about the ever-static interior of the beloved House of Shields as it begins its second century of operation. The yellowing Charles McCabe clipping on the wall tells no lies when it proclaims, “Time Stands Still at the House of Shields.” But our favorite relic is not the ruggedly handsome Victorian back bar, the ornate wood paneling, or even the long closed tunnel connecting the old basement speakeasy to the Palace Hotel across the street. And although we enjoy the quirky music programming at this downtown live venue (everything from live blues standards to “twee pop punk”), there’s something more. Discreetly tucked away in the men’s room is the largest single-user urinal we’ve ever seen. No chance of missing the mark with this one. Laid on its back, the mammoth porcelain plumbing fixture could double as a short bathtub. They just don’t make ’em like they used to.

39 New Montgomery, SF. (415) 392-7732, www.houseofshields.com

BEST CRYSTAL COVER-UP


Jeff Fairclough of Mark Harrington Glass:
Best Crystal Cover-up
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY ARLENE ROMANA

So you’re house-sitting at a friend’s swank Noe Valley Victorian, and you decide it couldn’t do any harm to have a few people over and crack a few beers. Before you know it, a misfired attempt to crowd-surf off the billiard table knocks a priceless Wedgwood bowl on the floor, dashing it to pieces. You may not be as screwed as you think. Mark Harrington Glass in the Mission has been repairing glass, crystal, and china by hand since 1932. Co-owner Linda Gotelli says they stay afloat because they’ve cultivated a “niche” in glasswork: they do everything by hand. This is safer for the glass and allows them to take on odd-sized objects, like a five-foot tall antique Italian olive oil jar. Gotelli says she expects her customers to be honest, but admits that the company offers “invisible repairs” capable of fooling all but the most knowledgeable antiquers.

286 Sanchez, SF. (415) 931-6809, www.markharrington.com

BEST STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

The Swedes get to take credit for Ikea and H&M; Legos and modern furniture go to the Danish; the Norwegian cruise around glorious fjords. Finns export Finlandia, while the Icelandic claim Björk and ram scrota soup as their own. If these many accomplishments don’t make Bay-transplanted natives of those consonant-heavy countries lucky enough, they also get a shared cabin in Tahoe (replete with ski boats), a cabin in Clear Lake, and a loft in the city that hosts fabulous parties. All this comes with membership in the Young Scandinavians Club, a 58-year-old organization that encourages pride in Nordic heritage and tons of drinking and wakeboarding with tall, tan, white-toothed, blonde people. So dig into your family genealogy and find old Swedish grandpa Gustaf, or marry Henrik, that green-card-seeking Norwegian, to join. People who have lived in a Scandinavian country for more than six months are also invited into the club. Just say ja.

(415) 346-7450, www.ysc.org

BEST DETOUR TO UTAH

The Hotel Utah Saloon looks like it was hastily assembled out of whatever was lying around — a giant stuffed deer thrusts its head and shoulders through the wall near the door, while the second floor gallery seems to float on the stern of a small wooden boat. You get the feeling that if you came back the next day you might find it completely rearranged, or vanished altogether. This isn’t surprising in a place as old as the Utah, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year. In the early evening, the bar fills with regulars trading anecdotes with tattooed, comely, competence-oozing barmaidens. Around 9 p.m., the music starts and a younger set drifts in. Over the years, the unpretentious Utah has hosted Robin Williams, musical outfit Cake, and countless local bands — yet the door will rarely set you back more than $8. The food runs a tad pricey, but the fried cheese sandwich (“fried cheese” sandwich or “fried” cheese sandwich? Our lips are sealed) is worth it and ample enough for two.

500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300, www.hotelutah.com

BEST LITTLE WAREHOUSE IN PORT COSTA

A daytrip to Port Costa is not usually on anyone’s must-do list, unless you ride a Harley, in which case you’re probably already there. This Best of the Bay pick aims to change that. Tucked along the lazy meander of the Carquinez Strait, Port Costa (pop. 250) is exactly the sort of place time forgets. What isn’t forgotten in Port Costa is the art of having a good time — most evident when bellied up to the bar at the Warehouse Café. Filled to bursting with the fanciful detritus of saloon decor such as leather booths, elegantly fringed lampshades, a campy tribute altar to Marilyn Monroe, 1980s-era video games, and a 9-foot tall polar bear in a glass case, the 100+ year-old former grain warehouse also features live music and barbeque on summer Sundays and an everyday list of more than 400 international beers, which you get to pick out of an enormous walk-in cooler on your own — if you ask nicely first.

Warehouse Café, 5 Canyon Lake, Port Costa. (510) 787-1827

BEST SHROOMIN’

Forget that shady dude in the Haight: the best people to score shrooms with are the members of the Mycological Society of San Francisco, a nonprofit formed in 1950 to promote an exchange of information about gathering and eating mushrooms. (Sorry, but we’re not talking about the mushrooms that go with psychedelic felt posters.) The society welcomes any newcomers interested in moving past the white button salad staple to learn about where to gather mushrooms and how to detect poisonous specimens. Lectures and meetings held by professional mycologists are held monthly, and group gathering expeditions provide a chance to bond in the outdoors with your fellow enoki enthusiasts. An adjunct culinary society hosts potluck dinners every month, with every dish, from the chanterelle salad to the candy cap mushroom cookies (trust us, they’re delish) featuring the fungi among us. And don’t forget the biannual fungus fairs, which help the public learn more-l (groan) about mushrooming and mycology.

www.mssf.org

BEST SUBCULTURAL CIRCULATION

Skateboarding may have been born on the streets of Los Angeles, but the sport and/or lifestyle would’ve been destined to a future of irrelevance — remember Rollerbladers? — had it not been hijacked more than 25 years ago by the San Franciscan gangstas who run Thrasher Magazine. The founders of the lo-fi zine — now a globally distributed glossy — dedicated themselves to defining what it meant to be a skateboarder as opposed to a surfer bro who occasionally rode around on a piece of wood. The current editorial team, headed by local legend Jake Phelps, carries on that tradition today, infusing a distinct SF feel into modern global skate culture. Thanks to Thrasher‘s coverage of underground music, fashion, and events, skateboarding has grown into a full-fledged subculture with its own set of rules, a truly bizarre crew of nonconformist leaders, and an indisputable spot at the top of the pop culture food chain.

www.thrashermagazine.com

BEST SLICES OF HISTORY

For 30 years the Inner Sunset’s Milano Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant has been helping folks get their piece of the pie. It’s a real-deal mom-and-pop pizza joint where an old TV flickers above the clinking of plates and glasses and the rumbling of the streetcar. The staff buzzes about while friends sit at tables eating heartily, drinking $5 pitchers of IPA, and conversing amiably. Photos line the walls — and this is what really makes Milano special: three decades’ worth of San Francisco memories. Old-time regulars hold up Milano T-shirts, athletes show off regional title trophies, and would-be actors and actresses stare with dramatic intent. There are sepia-toned shots of the owners’ family and a loving memorial to Jack and Dolores, namesakes of the Jack and Dolores Special (Canadian bacon, garlic, onions, feta, and pesto). Many autographed pics of local music acts whose members have worked at Milano are also displayed, including one of DJ Shadow, taken at Milano by Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone. But even if you never become quite that famous, at least there’s a hot slice waiting for you.

1390 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 665-3773

BEST DREAM FACTORY

No other Bay Area film production house possesses the charm, history, and long-term awesomeness of Francis Ford Coppola’s 39-year-old art collective turned premier cinematic dream factory, American Zoetrope. The legendary company has put out some of the world’s most acclaimed titles (the Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, Lost in Translation), nurtures local up-and-coming directors and screenwriters, and represents the apex of the classy side of San Francisco’s movie industry. Coppola’s reach doesn’t stop with film, of course. His empire has grown to include an award-winning literary magazine, a distinguished winery, and a restaurant and bar called Café Zoetrope in the fabulously triangular and historic Sentinel Building, American Zoetrope’s operational home base (and also where the Kingston Trio recorded many of their hits, the Caesar salad was reportedly invented, and the Coppola family has its pied-à-terre). Coppola’s team congregates at the bar after work to drink with other esteemed locals like Lawrence Ferlinghetti or chat with legendary tale-spinning bartender Peter.

www.zoetrope.com

BEST VIVACIOUS UNDERGROUND VENUE

Café Du Nord turned 100 this year, but the roster of live performers that enlivens this well-appointed, intimate, literally underground music venue remains anything but musty. Forward-thinking (if history-respecting) music makers Rykarda Parasol, Nada Surf, and Raised by Robots joined spunky old-schoolers like Rickie Lee Jones, Was (Not Was), and the Lady Tigra on the schedule this year, and the sometimes raucous Porch Light storytelling series, organized by writers Beth Lisick and Arline Klatte, keeps San Francisco’s literary scene on its toes. Located beneath the Swedish American Hall, Du Nord features several holdovers from its speakeasy days, including trapdoors and an elaborate system of tunnels, and the ghosts of illicit-grog-swilling artists, working girls, and con men are said to sometimes join in the modern-day revelry. Yet updates abound: owner Guy Carson is building a daytime café and gallery adjacent to the music hall; featuring musicians’ art in exhibits that tie in with shows, it’s slated to open in mid-September.

2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

BEST PAPER CLIPS WITH A PAST

Need staples? Forget Staples — or any of those other impersonal office supply Borgs from Planet Big Box. For every kind, shape, size, and width of pencil, pen, notebook, or eraser you need, we have Patrick and Company, a 135-year-old purveyor of business necessities that’s been providing all manner of indispensable items since San Francisco was a set of tin shacks in the sand dunes (well, at least the outer reaches of it). Long before the Great Quake hit, the Patrick family was keeping lowly company clerks up to their visors in ticker tape and hand-cranked calculators. But the five Bay Area Patrick’s locations don’t limit themselves to stocking the manila-tinged totems of daily drudgery — they also feature a wide variety of colorful and collectible stickers and other yummy must-wants that add a splash of color to your beige cubicle. Plus: office furnishings! OK, we know, office supplies may not be the most exciting things in the world (to some), but at Patrick and Company they at least come with a history.

Various locations. www.patco.net

Nightlife and Entertainment

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BEST REP FILM HOUSE

Red Vic

From rock docs to cult classics, this Upper Haight co-op’s schedule has kept its cozy couches filled with popcorn-munching film buffs since 1980.

1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Runners up: Castro, Roxie

BEST MOVIE THEATER

Balboa Theater

Packing the house with film festivals, second-run faves, indie darlings, and carefully chosen new releases, this Richmond gem offers old-school charm with a cozy neighborhood vibe.

3630 Balboa, SF. (415) 221-8184, www.balboamovies.com

Runners up: Castro, Kabuki Sundance

BEST THEATER COMPANY

Un-Scripted Theater Company

The Un-Scripted improv troupe elevates comedy from one-liners and shtick to full-fledged theatrical productions with a talented cast and eccentric sensibilities.

533 Sutter, SF. (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com

Runners up: ACT, Shotgun Players

BEST DANCE COMPANY

Hot Pink Feathers

Blurring the line between cabaret and Carnaval, this burlesque troupe drips with samba flavor (and feathers, of course).

www.hotpinkfeathers.com

Runners up: DholRhythms, Fou Fou Ha!

BEST ART GALLERY

Creativity Explored

The cherished nonprofit provides a safe haven for artists of all ages, abilities, and skill levels while making sure that great works remain accessible to art lovers without trust funds.

3245 16th St., SF. (415) 863-2108, www.creativityexplored.org

Runners up: 111 Minna, Hang

BEST MUSEUM

De Young

Golden Gate Park’s copper jewel boasts stunning architecture, one hell of a permanent collection, and an impressive schedule of rotating exhibitions.

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF. (415) 750-3600, www.famsf.org/deyoung

Runners up: Asian Art Museum, SF MOMA

BEST MIXED-USE ARTS SPACE

CellSPACE

From aerial circus arts to metalsmithing, fire dancing to roller-skating parties, CellSPACE has had its fingers all over San Francisco’s alternative art scene.

2050 Bryant, SF. (415) 648-7562, www.cellspace.org

Runners up: SomArts, 111 Minna

BEST DANCE CLUB

DNA Lounge

DNA scratches just about every strange dance floor itch imaginable — from ’80s new wave and glam-goth to transvestite mashups and humongous lesbian dance parties.

375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.dnalounge.com

Runners up: Temple, 1015 Folsom

BEST ROCK CLUB

Bottom of the Hill

San Francisco’s quintessential “I saw ’em here first” dive, Bottom of the Hill consistently delivers stellar booking, cheap drinks, and great sound.

1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

Runners up: Slim’s, The Independent

BEST HIP-HOP CLUB

Club Six

Six blurs the line between high and low, offering an upstairs lounge in which to see and be seen and a basement dance floor for those who want to show off their b-boy prowess.

60 Sixth St., SF. (415) 531-6593, www.clubsix1.com

Runners up: Poleng, Milk

BEST JAZZ CLUB

Yoshi’s

Nothing says “Bay Area” quite like Yoshi’s masterful combo of classic cocktails, inventive maki rolls, and world-class jazz acts.

510 Embarcadero West, Jack London Square, Oakl. (510) 238-9200; 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600; www.yoshis.com

Runners up: Jazz at Pearl’s, Biscuits and Blues

BEST SALSA CLUB

Cafe Cocomo

Smartly dressed regulars, smoking-hot entertainment, and plenty of classes keep the Cocomo’s floor packed with sweaty salsa enthusiasts year-round.

650 Indiana, SF. (415) 824-6910, www.cafecocomo.com

Runners up: El Rio, Roccapulco

BEST PUNK CLUB

Annie’s Social Club

The club maintains its cred by presciently booking on-the-rise punk and hardcore bands and adding a sprinkle of punk rock karaoke, photo-booth antics, and ’80s dance parties.

917 Folsom, SF. (415) 974-1585, www.anniessocialclub.com

Runners up: Thee Parkside, 924 Gilman

BEST AFTER-HOURS CLUB

Endup

Where the drunken masses head after last call, the aptly named Endup is probably the only club left where you can rub up against a fishnetted transvestite until the sun comes up. And after.

401 Sixth St., SF. (415) 646-0999, www.theendup.com

Runners up: Mighty, DNA Lounge

BEST HAPPY HOUR

El Rio

“Cash is queen” at this Mission haunt, but you won’t need much of it. El Rio’s infamous happy hour — which lasts five hours and begins at 4 p.m. — consists of dirt cheap drinks and yummy freebies.

3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com

Runners up: Midnight Sun, Olive

BEST DIVE BAR

500 Club

A mean manhattan might not be the hallmark of a typical dive, but just add in ridiculously low prices, well-worn booths, and legions of scruffy hipsters.

500 Guerrero, SF. (415) 861-2500

Runners up: Broken Record, Phone Booth

BEST SWANKY BAR

Bourbon and Branch

Mirrored tables, exclusive entry, fancy specialty cocktails, and a well-appointed library root this speakeasy firmly in “upscale” territory.

501 Jones, SF. (415) 346-1735, www.bourbonandbranch.com

Runners up: Red Room, Bubble Lounge

BEST TRIVIA NIGHT

Brain Farts at the Lookout

“Are you smarter than a drag queen?” Brain Fart hostesses BeBe Sweetbriar and Pollo del Mar ask every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at this gay hot spot. Maybe.

3600 16th St., SF. (415) 431-0306

Runners up: Castle Quiz (Edinburgh Castle), Trivia Night (Board Room)

BEST JUKEBOX

Lucky 13

Bargain drinks, a popcorn machine, and Thin Lizzy, Hank 3, Motörhead, and Iggy on heavy rotation: Lucky 13 never disappoints.

2140 Market, SF. (415) 487-1313

Runners up: Phone Booth, Lexington Club

BEST KARAOKE BAR

The Mint

It may be nigh impossible to get mic time at this mid-Market mainstay, but once you do, there are hordes of adoring (read: delightfully catty) patrons to applaud you.

942 Market, SF. (415) 626-4726, www.themint.net

Runners up: Encore, Annie’s Social Club

BEST CLUB FOR QUEER MEN

Bearracuda at Deco

Bears at the free buffet, bears on the massage table — bears, bears everywhere, but mostly on the dance floor at this big gay biweekly hair affair in the Tenderloin.

510 Larkin, SF. (415) 346-2025, www.bearracuda.com

Runners up: The Cinch, The Stud

BEST CLUB FOR QUEER WOMEN

Lexington Club

With a pool table, a rotating gallery of kick-ass art, and regular rock DJ nights, this beer-and-shot Mission dive has been proving that dykes drink harder for more than a decade.

3464 19th St., SF. (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com

Runners up: Cockblock, Wild Side West

BEST CLUB FOR TRANNIES

Trannyshack

Say hello, wave good-bye: Heklina’s legendary trash drag mecca hangs up its bloody boa in August, but it’s still the best bang for your tranny buck right now.

Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. (415) 252-7883, www.trannyshack.com

Runners up: AsiaSF, Diva’s

BEST SINGER-SONGWRITER

Curt Yagi

Multi-instrumentalist Curt Yagi has been making the rounds at local venues, strumming with the swagger of Lenny Kravitz and the lyrical prowess of Jack Johnson.

www.curtyagi.com

Runners up: Jill Tracy, Kitten on the Keys

BEST METAL BAND

A Band Called Pain

If you didn’t get the hint from their name, the Oakland-based A Band Called Pain bring it hard and heavy and have lent their distinct brooding metal sound to the Saw II soundtrack and Austin’s SXSW.

www.abandcalledpain.com

Runners up: Thumper, Death Angel

BEST ELECTRONIC MUSIC ACT

Lazer Sword

Rooted in hip-hop but pulling influences from every genre under the sun, the laptop composers seamlessly meld grime and glitch sensibilities with ever-pervasive bass.

www.myspace.com/lazersword

Runners up: Kush Arora, Gooferman

BEST HIP-HOP ACT

Beeda Weeda

Murder Dubs producer and rapper Beeda Weeda may make stuntin’ look easy, but he makes it sound even better: case in point, his upcoming album Da Thizzness.

www.myspace.com/beedaweeda

Runners up: Deep Dickollective, Zion I

BEST INDIE BAND

Ex-Boyfriends

San Francisco outfit and Absolutely Kosher artists the Ex-Boyfriends dole out catchy power pop with a shiny Brit veneer and a dab of emo for good measure.

www.myspace.com/exboyfriends

Runners up: Gooferman, Making Dinner

BEST COVER BAND

ZooStation

A mainstay at festivals, parties, and Slim’s cover-band nights, ZooStation storm through the U2 catalog (they take on more than 140 of the band’s tunes).

www.zoostation-online.com

Runners up: AC/DShe, Interchords

BEST BAND NAME

The Fucking Ocean

Fuck Buttons, Holy Fuck, Fucked Up, Fuck, indeed: the time is ripe for band names that can’t be uttered on the airwaves, and the Fucking Ocean leads the pack. George Carlin would be so proud.

www.myspace.com/thefuckingocean

Runners up: Stung, Gooferman

BEST DJ

Smoove

Ian Chang, aka DJ Smoove, keeps late hours at the Endup, DNA Lounge, 111 Minna, Mighty, and underground parties all over, pumping out power-funk breaks.

www.myspace.com/smoovethedirtypunk

Runners up: Jimmy Love, Maneesh the Twister

BEST PARTY PRODUCERS

Adrian and the Mysterious D, Bootie

Five years in, the Bay’s groundbreaking original mashup party, Bootie, has expanded coast-to-coast and to three continents. This duo displays the power of tight promotion and superb party skills.

DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.bootiesf.com

Runners up: NonStop Bhangra crew, Mike Gaines (Bohemian Carnival)

BEST BURLESQUE ACT

Twilight Vixen Revue

Finally, someone thinks to combine pirates, wenches, classic burlesque, and foxy lesbians. This all-queer burlesque troupe has been waving its fans (and fannies) since 2003.

www.twilightvixen.com

Runners up: Sparkly Devil, Hot Pink Feathers

BEST DRAG ACT

Katya Ludmilla Smirnoff-Skyy

Gorgeous costumes, a glamorous backstory, and a jam-packed social calendar are reasons enough to catch this opera diva, but it’s her flawless mezzo that keeps fans hurling roses.

www.russianoperadiva.com

Runners up: Charlie Horse, Cookie Dough

BEST COMEDIAN

Marga Gomez

One of America’s first openly gay comics, San Francisco’s Marga Gomez is a Latina firebrand who’s equally at home performing at Yankee Stadium or Theatre Rhinoceros.

www.margagomez.com

Runners up: Robert Strong, Paco Romane

BEST CIRCUS TROUPE

Vau de Vire Society

Offering a full-on circus assault, the wildly talented and freakishly flexible troupe’s live show delivers plenty of fire performances, aerial stunts, and contortionism.

www.vaudeviresociety.com

Runners up: Teatro Zinzani, Pickle Family Circus

BEST OPEN MIC NIGHT

Hotel Utah

One of the city’s strongest breeding grounds for new musical talent, Hotel Utah’s open mic series opens the floor for all genres (and abilities).

500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300, www.hotelutah.com

Runners up: Queer Open Mic (3 Dollar Bill), Brain Wash

BEST CABARET/VARIETY SHOW


Hubba Hubba Review: Best Cabaret/Variety Show
PHOTO BY PATRICK MCCARTHY

Hubba Hubba Revue

Vaudeville comedy, tassled titties, and over-the-top burlesque teasing make the Hubba Hubba Revue the scene’s bawdiest purveyor of impropriety.

www.hubbahubbarevue.com

Runners up: Bohemian Carnival, Bijou (Martuni’s)

BEST LITERARY NIGHT

Writers with Drinks

This roving monthly literary night takes it on faith that writers like to drink. Sex workers, children’s book authors, and bar-stool prophets all mingle seamlessly, with social lubrication.

www.writerswithdrinks.com

Runners up: Porchlight Reading Series, Litquake

BEST CRUSHWORTHY BARTENDER

Laura at Hotel Utah

Whether you just bombed onstage at open mic night or are bellied up to the Hotel Utah bar to drink your sorrows away, the ever-so-crushworthy Laura is there with a heavy-handed pour and a smile. She’s even nice to tourists — imagine!

500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300, www.hotelutah.com

Runners up: Chupa at DNA Lounge, Vegas at Cha Cha Cha

Nightlife and Entertainment — Editors Picks

BEST CREEP-SHOW CHANTEUSE

There’s just something about the inimitable Jill Tracy that makes us swoon like a passel of naive gothic horror heroines in too-tight corsets. Is it her husky midnight lover’s croon, her deceptively delicate visage, her vintage sensibilities? Who else could have written the definitive elegy on the “fine art of poisoning,” composed a hauntingly lush live score for F.W. Murnau’s classic silent film Nosferatu, joined forces with that merry band of bloodthirsty malcontents, Thrillpeddlers, and still somehow remain a shining beacon of almost beatific grace? Part tough-as-nails film fatale, part funeral parlor pianist, Tracy manages to adopt many facades yet remain ever and only herself — a precarious and delicious balancing act. Her newest CD, The Bittersweet Constrain, glides the gamut from gloom to glamour, encapsulating her haunted highness at her beguiling best.

www.jilltracy.com

BEST CINEMATIC REFUGE FOR GERMANIACS

Can’t wait for the annual Berlin and Beyond film fest to get your Teuton on? The San Francisco Goethe-Institut screens a select handful of German-language films throughout the year at its Bush Street language-school location. For a $5 suggested donation, you can treat yourself to a klassische F.W. Murnau movie or something slightly more contemporary from Margarethe von Trotta. Flicks are subtitled, so there’s no need to brush up on verb conjugations ahead of time. And the Bush Street location is within respectable stumbling distance of many Tendernob bars, not to mention the Euro-chic Café de la Presse, should your cinematic adventure turn into an unexpected Liebesabenteuer. Unlike SF filmic events offering free popcorn, free-for-all heckling, or staged reenactments of the action, Goethe-Institut screenings need no gimmickry to attract their audiences — a respectable singularity perhaps alone worth the price of admission.

530 Bush, SF. (415) 263-8760, www.goethe.de

BEST UNFORCED BAY AREA BALKANIZATION

Despite all the countless reasons to give in to despair — the weight of the world, the headline news, those endless measured teaspoons — sometimes you just have to say fuck it and get your freak on. No party in town exemplifies this reckless surrender to the muse of moving on better than the frenetic, freewheeling proslava that is Kafana Balkan. No hideaway this for the too-cool-for-school, hands-slung-deep-in-pockets, head-bobber crowd. The brass-and-beer-fueled mayhem that generally ensues at Kafana Balkan, often held at 12 Galaxies, is a much more primitive and fundamental form of bacchanal. Clowns! Accordions! Brass bands! Romany rarities! Unfurled hankies! The unlikely combination of high-stepping grannies and high-spirited hipsters is joined together by the thread that truly binds: a raucous good time. Plus, all proceeds support the Bread and Cheese Circus’s attempts to bring succor and good cheer to orphans in Kosovo. Your attendance will help alleviate angst in more ways than one.

www.myspace.com/kafanabalkan

BEST GOREY BALL

There’s no doubt about it — we San Franciscans love to play dress-up. From the towering Beach Blanket Babylon–esque bonnets at the annual Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Easter Sunday to the costumed free-for-all of All Hallows Eve, the more elaborate the excuse to throw on some gay apparel, the more elaborate the apparel. This makes the annual Edwardian Ball tailor-made for San Francisco’s tailored maids and madcap chaps. An eager homage to the off-kilter imaginings of Edward Gorey, whose oft-pseudonymous picture books delved into the exotic, the erotic, and the diabolic within prim and proper, vaguely British settings, the Edwardian Ball is a midwinter ode to woe. From the haunting disharmonies of Rosin Coven to the voluptuous vigor of the Vau de Vire Society’s reenactment of Gorey tales, the ball — which now encompasses an entire three-day weekend — is a veritable bastion of dark-hued revelry and unfettered fetish.

www.myspace.com/edwardianball

BEST PROGRESSIVE LOUD ‘N’ PROUD

We love Stephen Elliott. The fearless writer, merciless poker opponent, and unrepentant romantic’s well-documented fall from political innocence — recounted in Looking Forward to It (Picador, 2004) and Politically Inspired (MacAdam/Cage, 2003) — has kept him plunged into the fray ever since. Like most other ongoing literary salons, Elliott’s monthly Progressive Reading Series offers a thrilling showcase of local and luminary talent, highlighting up-and-comers along with seasoned pros — shaken, stirred, and poured over ice by the unflappable bar staff at host venue the Make-Out Room. All of the proceeds from the door benefit selected progressive causes — such as, most recently, fighting the good fight against California state proposition 98. Books, booze, and ballot boxing — a good deed never went down more smoothly or with such earnest verbiage and charm.

www.progressivereadingseries.org

BEST UNDERAGE SANDWICH

When it comes to opportunities to see live independent music, most Bay Area venues hang kids under 21 out to dry. Outside of 924 Gilman in Berkeley and the occasional all-ages show at Bottom of the Hill, the opportunities are painfully sparse. But thanks to members of Bay Area show promotion collective Club Sandwich, the underground music scene is becoming more accessible. Committed to hosting exclusively all-ages shows featuring under-the-radar local and national touring bands, Club Sandwich has booked more than a hundred of them since 2006, ranging from better-known groups like No Age, Marnie Stern, and Lightning Bolt to more obscure acts like South Seas Queen and Sexy Prison. Club Sandwich shows tend to cross traditional genre boundary lines (noise, punk, folk, etc.), bringing together different subcultures within the Bay Area’s underground music scene that don’t usually overlap. And the collective organizes shows at wildly diverse venues: from legitimate art spaces like ATA in San Francisco and Lobot in Oakland to warehouse spaces and swimming pools.

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

BEST BEER PONG PALACE

Pabst Blue Ribbon, American Spirits, track bikes, tattoos, stretchy jeans, slip-ons, facial hair, Wayfarers. Blah, blah, blah. If you live in the Mission — and happen to be between 22 and 33 years old — you see it all, every night, at every bar in the hood. Boooring. If you’re sick of all the hipster shit, but not quite ready to abandon the scene entirely, take a baby step over to the Broken Record, a roomy dive bar in the Excelsior that serves gourmet game sausage, gives away free beer every Friday(!), rents out Scrabble boards, and isn’t afraid to drop the attitude and get down with a goofy night of beer pong or a bar-wide foosball match. The cheap swill, loud music, and street art will make you feel right at home, but the Broken Record’s decidedly Outer Mission vibe will give you a much-needed respite from the glam rockers, bike messengers, “artists,” and cokeheads you have to hang out with back in cool country.

1166 Geneva, SF. (415) 255-3100

BEST VOLUPTUOUS VISIBILITY

Every June, the Brava Theater quietly morphs into the center of the known universe for queer women of color. And what a delectable center it is. Over the course of three days, the Queer Women of Color Film Festival, produced by the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, screens more than 30 works by emerging filmmakers for a raucously supportive audience — an audience that happens to be cute as all hell. In fact, some would call the festival the cruising event of the year for queer women of color. Of course, the films are worth scoping too. Students of QWOCMAP’s no-cost Filmmaker Training Program create most of the festival’s incredible array of humorous and sensitive films, which explore topics such as romance and family ties. For festivalgoers, this heady mixture of authentic representation, massive visibility, and community pride (all screenings are copresented with social justice groups) is breathtakingly potent. It’s no wonder a few love connections are made each fest. Want just a little more icing on that cake? All screenings are free.

(415) 752-0868, www.qwocmap.org

BEST DANCE-FLOOR FLICKS FIX

The San Francisco Film Society is best known for putting on America’s oldest film fest, the San Francisco Film Festival. But the organization also hosts a TV show, publishes an amazingly vibrant online magazine, and throws a slew of events throughout the year under its SF360 umbrella, a collection of organizations dedicated to covering film in San Francisco from all angles. There’s SF360 movie nights held in homes across the city, Live at the Apple Store film discussions, and special screenings of hard-to-see films held at theaters throughout the Bay Area. But our favorite SF360 shindig is its monthly SF360 Film+Club Night at Mezzanine, which screens underground films to a room of intoxicated cinephiles who are encouraged to hoot, holler, and at times — like during the annual R. Kelly Trapped in tha Closet Singalong — flex their vocal cords. Past Film+Club screenings have included a B-movie skate-film retrospective, prescreenings of Dave Eggers’s Wholphin compilations, and an Icelandic music documentary night, at which, we’ll admit, we dressed up like Björk.

www.sf360.org

BEST HORIZONTAL MAMBO ON HIGH


Project Bandaloop: Best Horizontal Mambo on High
PHOTO BY TODD LABY

Normally when one mentions doing the horizontal mambo, nudges and winks ensue. But when Project Bandaloop gets together to actually do it, the group isn’t getting freaky, it’s getting wildly artistic — hundreds of feet up in the air. The aerial dance company creates an exhilarating blend of kinetics, sport, and environmental awareness, hanging from bungee cords perpendicular to tall building walls. The troupe is composed of climbers and dancers, who rappel, jump, pas de deux, and generally do incredibly graceful things while hoisted hundreds of feet up in the air. Founded in 1991 and currently under the artistic direction of Amelia Rudolph, Project Bandaloop’s company of dancer-athletes explores the cultural possibilities of simulated weightlessness, drawing on a complete circumferential vocabulary of movement to craft site-specific dances, including pieces for Seattle’s Space Needle and Yosemite’s El Capitan. (Once it even performed for the sheikh of Oman.) Now, if there were only a way to watch the rapturous results without getting a stiff neck.

(415) 421-5667, www.projectbandaloop.org

BEST YODELALCOHOL

From the sidewalk, Bacchus Kirk looks like so many other dimly lit San Francisco bars. Yet to walk inside is to step into a little bit of Lake Tahoe or the Haute-Savoie on the unlikely slopes of lower Nob Hill. With its raftered A-frame ceiling, warm wood-paneled walls, and inviting fireplace, the alpine Bacchus Kirk only needs a pack of bellowing snowboarders to pass as a ski lodge — albeit one that provides chocolate martinis, raspberry drops, and mellow mango cocktails rather than hot cocoa, vertiginous funicular rides, and views of alpenhorn-wielding shepherds. This San Francisco simulation of the après-ski scene is populated by a friendly, low-key crowd of art students, Euro hostelers, and diverse locals — no frosty snow bunnies here — drawn by the congenial atmosphere, the pool table, and that current nightlife rarity, a smoking room. Tasty drinks and lofty conversation flow freely: if you leave feeling light-headed, you won’t be able to blame it on the altitude.

925 Bush, SF. (415) 474-4056, www.bacchuskirk.org

BEST COCKTAILS WITH CANINES

Plenty of bars around town call themselves pooch-friendly — as if a pampered shih tzu housed in a Paris Hilton wannabe’s purse, its exquisitely painted paw-nails barely deigning to rest atop the bar, represents the be-all and end-all of canine cocktail companionship. The Homestead, however, goes the extra mile to make four-legged patrons of all shapes and sizes at home with its “open dog” policy. Permanently stationed below the piano is a water dish, and the bar is stocked with an ample supply of doggie treats. At slack times, the bartenders will even come out from behind the bar to dispense said treats directly to their panting customers. Talk about service! As for the bipeds, they will undoubtedly appreciate the Homestead’s well-worn 19th-century working-class-bar decor (complete with a potbellied stove!) and relaxed modern-day atmosphere. It’s the perfect spot to catch up with old friends — either furry or slightly slurry — and make a few new ones.

2301 Folsom, SF. (415) 282-4663

BEST VISA TO MARTINI VICTORY


Bartender Visa Victor: Best Visa to Martini Victory
PHOTO BY NEIL MOTTERAM

When überfancy personalized cocktails started popping up all over town, it was only a matter of time before we of the plebeian class started demanding our fair share. Looking to be poured something special, but can’t afford a drink at Absinthe? Want to sample a few stupendously constructed tipples in the Bourbon and Branch vein with limited ducats? Score: Visa Victor the bartender has what you want. Once a journeyman slinger, Visa has started filling regular shifts — typically Wednesdays and Sundays — at Argus Lounge on Mission Street. What he offers: his own DJ, a well-populated e-mail list of fans, and an array of unique ingredients including rare berries, savory herbs, and meat. Yes, meat — his recent bacon martini turned out to be not just an attempt to tap into the city’s growing “meat consciousness” but damn good to boot. And hey, we didn’t have to take out a phony second mortgage to down it.

BEST JAZZ JUKE

Pesky Internet jukeboxes are everywhere: any decent night out can be ruined by some freshly 21-year-old princess bumping her “birthday jam” incessantly. The old-school jukebox, on the other hand, has the oft-undervalued ability to maintain a mood, or at least ensure that you won’t be “bringing sexy back” 27 times in one evening. Aub Zam Zam in the Upper Haight maintains an exceptional jukebox chock-full of timeless blues, jazz, and R&B slices. Selections include Robert Johnson, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Taj Mahal … the list of smooth crooners and delicate instrumentalists goes on and on. This is in perfect keeping with Aub Zam Zam’s rep as a mighty fine cocktail lounge, established in the 1940s. New owner Bob Clarke has made the place a lot more welcoming than it was in the days of notoriously tyrannical founder Bruno, who proudly boasted of 86ing 80 percent of the Zam Zam’s would-be customers. But Clarke’s kept at least one thing from Bruno’s days besides mouthwatering drinks: his favorite juke jams.

1633 Haight, SF. (415) 861-2545

BEST FUNNY UH-OH

It’s hard to tell if the entity known as Something with Genitals is a comedy act or a cultural experiment designed to monitor human behavior under unusual circumstances. Take, for example, the night one member of this duo, sometimes trio, of dudes made his way through the crowded Hemlock Tavern on cross-country skis. When he finally maneuvered himself onto the stage, the lights went out and the show was over. Sometimes no one gets onstage at all. Instead the audience gets treated to one of the group’s ingeniously simple short films, which are way better at summing up every one-night stand you’ve had than a regular joke with a punch line. Check out their video on MySpace of a guy who strikes up a conversation with a shrub on some Mission District street, invites it to a party, offers it a beer, asks it to dance, shares some personal secrets and heartfelt dreams, then proceeds to drunkenly fuck it, and you’ll wonder if they’ve been reading your diary. Funny uh-oh, not funny ha-ha.

www.myspace.com/somethingwithgenitals

BEST WEIRD EYE FOR WEIRD TIMES

Even if you’re not in the market for stock footage — the chief focus of Oddball Film + Video, which maintains an archive crammed with everything from World War II clips to glamour shots of TV dinners circa 1960 to images of vintage San Francisco street scenes — you can still take advantage of this incredible resource. Director and founder Stephen Parr loves film, and he loves the unusual; lucky for us, he also loves sharing his collection with the public. RSVPs are essential to attend screenings at the small space, which in recent months has hosted such programs as “Shock! Cinema,” a collection of hygiene and safety films (Narcotics: Pit of Despair) from bygone but no less hysterical eras, and “Strange Sinema,” featuring yet-to-be-cataloged finds from Oddball’s ever-growing library (a 1950s dude ranch promo, an extended trailer for 1972 porn classic Behind the Green Door). Other past highlights have included programs on sex, monkeys, India, and avant-gardists and nights with guest curators like Los Angeles “media ecologist” Gerry Fialka.

275 Capp, SF. (415) 558-8117, www.oddballfilm.com

BEST SWEET ISLE OF ROCK

It doesn’t get much sweeter, in terms of massive multistage music gatherings soaked with mucho cerveza and plenty of sunshine: looking out over the bay at our sparkling city from the top of a Ferris wheel as Spoon gets out the jittery indie rock on the main stage below. That was the scene at last year’s inaugural two-day Treasure Island Music Festival, a smooth-sailing dream of a musical event presented by the Noise Pop crew and Another Planet Entertainment. The locale was special — how often do music fans who don’t live or work on the isle ever get out to that human-made spot, a relic from the utopian era of “We can do it!” engineering and World’s Fairs. The shuttles were plentiful and zero emission. The food was reasonably priced, varied, and at times vegetarian. About 72 percent of the waste generated by the fest was diverted to recycling and composting. Most important, the music was stellar: primo critical picks all the way. This year’s gathering, featuring Justice, Hot Chip, and the Raconteurs, looks to do even better.

www.treasureislandfestival.com

BEST WHITE-HOT WALLS

Pristine walls couldn’t get much more white-hot than at Ratio 3 gallery. Chris Perez has a nose for talent — and an eye for cool — when it comes to programming the new space on Stevenson near SoMa. The curator has been on a particular roll of late with exhibitions by such varied artists as psychedelia-drenched video installationist Takeshi Murata, resurgent abstractionist Ruth Laskey, and utopian beautiful-people photog Ryan McGinley, while drawing attendees such as Mayor Gavin Newsom and sundry celebs to openings. Perez also has a worthy stable of gallery artists on hand, including local legend Barry McGee (whose works slip surprisingly well among recent abstract shows at the space), rough-and-ready sculptor Mitzi Pederson, op-art woodworker Ara Peterson, and hallucinatory dreamscape creator Jose Alvarez. Catch ’em while the ratio is in your favor.

1447 Stevenson, SF. (415) 821-3371, www.ratio3.org

BEST ON-SCREEN MIND WARP

When edgy director of programming Bruce Fletcher left the San Francisco Independent Film Festival (IndieFest), fans who’d relied on his horror and sci-fi picks were understandably a little worried. Fortunately, Fletcher’s Dead Channels: The San Francisco Festival of Fantastic Film proved there’s room enough in this town for multiple fests with an eye for sleazy, gory, gruesome, unsettling, and offbeat films, indie and otherwise. There’s more: this summer Dead Channels teamed up with Thrillpeddlers to host weekly screenings at the Grand Guignol theater company’s space, the Hypnodrome. “White Hot ‘N’ Warped Wednesdays” are exactly that — showcasing all manner of psychotronica, from Pakistani gore flick Hell’s Ground to culty grind house classics like She-Freak (1967). Come this October, will the Dead Channels fest be able to top its utterly warped Hump Day series? Fear not for the programming, dark-dwelling weirdos — fear only what’s on the screen.

www.deadchannels.com

BEST BACKROOM SHENANIGANS

Everyone knows when Adobe Books’ backroom art openings are in full swing: the bookstore is brightly lit and buzzing at an hour when most other literature peddlers are safely tucked in bed, the crowd is spilling onto the 16th Street sidewalk, and music might be wafting into the night. Deep within, in the microscopic backroom gallery, you might discover future art stars like Colter Jacobsen, Barbra Garber, and Matt Furie, as well as their works. Call the space and its soirees the last living relic of Mission District bohemia or dub it a San Francisco institution — just don’t try to clean it up or bring order to its stacks. Wanderers, seekers, artists, and musicians have found a home of sorts here, checking out art, bickering over the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the time line of Mission hipster connections that runs along the upper walls, sinking into the old chairs to hang, and maybe even picking up a book and paging through.

3166 16th St., SF. (415) 864-3936, adobebooksbackroomgallery.blogspot.com

BEST HELLO MUMBAI


DJ Cheb i Sabbah at Bollyhood Café: Best Hello Mumbai
PHOTO BY NEIL MOTTERAM

India produces more movies than any other place on the planet, although you’d scarcely know it from the few that make it stateside. But the American Bollywood cult is growing, and Indian pop culture is dancing its eye-popping way into San Francisco’s heart with invigorating bhangra club nights and piquant variations on traditional cuisine. Bollywood-themed Bollyhood Café, a colorful dance lounge, restaurant, and bar on 19th Street, serves beloved Indian street food–style favorites, with tweaked names like Something to Chaat About, Bhel “Hood” Puri, and Daal-Icious. The joint also delights fans of the subcontinent with nonstop Bollywood screenings and parties featuring DJs Cheb i Sabbah and Jimmy Love of NonStop Bhangra. The crowd’s cute, too: knock back a few mango changos or a lychee martini and prepare to kick up your heels with some of the warmest daals and smoothest lassis (har, har) this side of Mumbai.

3372 19th St., SF. (415) 970-0362, www.bollyhoodcafe.com

BEST POP ‘N’ CHILL


Sheila Marie Ang at Bubble Lounge: Best Pop ‘N’ Chill
PHOTO BY NEIL MOTTERAM

When people get older and perhaps wiser, they begin to feel out of place in hipstery dive bars and tend to lose the desire to rage all night in sweaty dance clubs. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to party; it just means they’d rather do it in a more sophisticated setting. Thank goddess, then, for Bubble Lounge, the Financial District’s premier purveyor of sparkling social lubricant. For a decade, this superswanky champagne parlor has dazzled with its 10 candlelit salons, each decked out with satin couches, overstuffed chairs, and mahogany tables. BL specializes in tasters, flights, and full-size flutes of light and full-bodied sparkling wines and champagnes. But if poppin’ bub ain’t your style, you can always go the martini route and order a specialty cocktail like the Rasmatini or the French tickler — whatever it takes to make you forget about the office and just chill.

714 Montgomery, SF. (415) 434-4204, www.bubblelounge.com

BEST REGGAE ON BOTH SIDES

Reggae may not be the hippest or newest music in town, but there are few other genres that can inspire revolutionary political thought, erase color lines, and make you shake your ass all at the same time. Grind away your daily worries and appreciate the unity of humanity all night long on both sides of the bay — second Saturdays of the month at the Endup and fourth Saturdays at Oakland’s Karibbean City — at Reggae Gold, the Bay Area’s smoothest-packed party for irie folk and dance machines. Resident DJs Polo Moquuz, Daddy Rolo, and Mendoja spin riddim, dancehall, soca, and hip-hop mashup faves as a unified nation of dub heads rocks steady on the dance floor. Special dress-up nights include Flag Party, Army Fatigue Night, and the Black Ball, but otherwise Reggae Gold keeps things on the classy side with a strict dress policy: no sneakers, no baseball caps, no sports attire, and for Jah’s sake, no white T-shirts. This isn’t the Dirty South, you know.

www.reggaegoldsf.com

BEST MEGACLUB REINCARNATION

Its a wonder no one thought of it before. Why not combine green business practices with a keen sense of after-hours dance floor mayhem, inject the whole enchilada with shots of mystical spirituality (giant antique Buddha statues, a holistic healing center) and social justice activism (political speaker engagements, issue awareness campaigns), attach a yummy Thai restaurant, serve some fancy drinks, and call it a groundbreaking megaclub? That’s a serviceably bare-bones description of Temple in SoMa, but this multilevel, generously laid out mecca for dance music lovers is so much more. Cynical clubgoers like ourselves, burnt out on the steroidal ultralounge excesses of the Internet boom, cast a wary eye when it was announced that Temple would set up shop in defunct-but-still-beloved club DV8’s old space, and feared a mainstream supastar DJ onslaught to cover the costs. Temple brings in the big names, all right, but it also shows much love for the local scene, giving faves like DJ David Harness and the Compression crew room to do their thing. The sound is impeccable, the staff exceedingly friendly, and even if we have to wade politely but firmly through some bridge and tunnel crowd to get to the dance floor, we can use the extra karma points.

540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

BEST BANGERS AND FLASH


Blow Up: Best Bangers and Flash
PHOTO BY MELEKSAH DAVID

Disco, house, techno, rave, hip-hop, electroclash … all well and good for us old-timers who like to stash our pimped-out aluminum walkers in the coat check and “get wild” on the dance floor. But what about the youth? With what new genre are they to leave their neon mark upon nightlife? Which party style will mark their generation for endless send-ups and retro nights 30 years hence? The banger scene, of course, fronting a hardcore electro sound tinged with sweet silvery linings and stuttery vocals that’s captured the earbuds and bass bins of a new crop of clubbers. Nowhere are the bangers hotter (or younger) than at the sort-of weekly 18-and-over party Blow Up at the Rickshaw Stop, now entering its third year of booming rapaciousness. Blow Up, with resident DJs Jeffrey Paradise and Richie Panic and a mindblowing slew of globe-trotting guests, doesn’t just stop with killer tunes — almost all of its fabulously sweat-drenched, half-dressed attendees seem to come equipped with a digital camera and a camera-ready look, as befits the ever-online youth of today. Yet Blow Up somehow leaves hipper-than-thou attitude behind. Hangovers, however, often lie ahead.

www.myspace.com/blow_up_415

BEST SCRIBBLER SMACKDOWN

It may not be the Saudi tradition of dueling poets, in which two men swap lines until one can’t think of any more couplets (and is severely punished), but the Literary Death Match series, put on by Opium magazine, is San Francisco’s excellent equivalent, though perhaps less civilized. Try to remember the last poetry reading you attended. Tweedy professors and be-sweatered Mary Oliver acolytes, right? Literary Death Match is not this mind-numbing affair. It’s competitive. It’s freaking edge-of-your-seat. And everyone’s drunk. Readers from four featured publications, either online or in print, do their thing for less than 10 minutes, and guest “celebrity” judges rip participants apart based on three categories: literary merit, performance, and “intangibles” (everything in between). Two finalists duke it out to the literary death until one hero is left standing, unless she or he’s been hitting up the bar between sets. Who needs reality television when we’ve got San Francisco’s version — one in which literary aspirations breed public humiliation, with the possibility of geeky bragging rights afterward?

Various locations. www.literarydeathmatch.com

BEST MISTRESS OF MOTOWN

Drag queens — is there nothing they can’t make a little brighter with their glittering presence? Squeeze a piece of coal hard enough between a perma-smiley tranny’s clenched cheeks and out pops cubic zirconium, dripping with sparkling bon mots. Yet not all gender illusionists go straight for ditzy comic gold or its silver-tongued twin, cattiness. Some “perform.” Others perform. And here we must pause to tip our feathery fedora to she who reps the platinum standard of awe-inspiring cross-dressing performance: Miss Juanita More. No mere Streisand-syncher, class-act Juanita dusts off overlooked musical nuggets of the past and gives them their shiny due. Despite punk-rock tribute trends and goth night explosions, Juanita’s focus stays primarily, perfectly, on that sublime subcultural slice of sonic history known formerly as “race music” and currently as R&B. Her dazzling production numbers utilize large casts of extras, several acts, and impeccable costumery that pays tribute to everything from Scott Joplin’s ragtime to Motown’s spangled sizzle, dirty underground ’70s funk to Patti LaBelle’s roof-raising histrionics. When she’s on spliff-passing point, as she so often is, her numbers open up a pulse-pounding window into other, more bootyful, worlds.

www.juanitamore.com

BEST AMBASSADORS OF DREAD BASS

That cracked and funky dubstep sound surged through Clubland’s speakers last year, an irresistible combination of breakbeats energy, dub wooziness, sly grime, intel glitch, and ragga relaxation. Many parties took the sound into uncharted waters, infusing it with hip-hop hooks, Bollywood extravaganza, roots rock swing, or “world music” folksiness. But only one included all those variations simultaneously, while pumping local and international live acts, fierce visuals, multimedia blowouts, and an ever-smiling crowd of rainbow-flavored fans: Surya Dub, a monthly lowdown hoedown at Club Six. The Surya crew, including perennial Bay favorites DJ Maneesh the Twister and Jimmy Love, and wondrous up-and-comers like Kush Arora, Kid Kameleon, DJ Amar, Ripley, and MC Daddy Frank on the mic, describes its ass-thumping sound as “dread bass,” which moves beyond wordy genre description into a cosmic territory the rumble in your eardrums can surely attest to. Surya Dub keeps it in the community, too, helping to promote a growing network of citywide dubstep events and spreading their dread bass gospel with parties in India.

www.suryadub.com

BEST HELLA GAY BEST OF THE BAY

Very few things in this world are gay enough to warrant the Nor Cal Barney modifier “hella,” but for tattooed karaoke-master Porkchop’s sort-of-monthly series at Thee Parkside, Porkchop Presents, the term seems an understatement. At least three times a season, the mysterious Porkchop gathers her posse of scruffy boozehounds and butt-rockin’ hipsters to the best little dive bar in Potrero for a daylong celebration of the gayest shit on earth. Past events have included Hella Gay Karaoke, Hella Gay Jell-O Wrestling, a Hella Gay Beer Bust, and the all-encompassing nod to gaydom, Something Hella Gay, an ongoing event during which gay folks go drink-for-drink to see who’s the gayest of them all. Join Porkchop and her crew of lowbrow beer snobs at Thee Parkside for arm wrestling competitions, tattoo-offs, and hella gay sing-along battles. You probably won’t win anything because the competition is so stiff and the rules are so lax, but you can rest assured that the smell of stale cigarettes, cheap beer, and sweaty ass will stay in your clothes for at least a week after the show. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

Best of the Bay 2009: Classics

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Best of the Bay 2009: Classics

Editors Picks: Classics

BEST LEFTOVER HEROES

Hey, are you gonna eat that? If the answer is “no,” and you have a commercial kitchen of any kind, call Food Runners, the nonprofit associated with Tante Marie’s Cooking School and its matriarch at the helm, Mary Risley. The volunteer-powered organization picks up leftovers from caterers, delis, festival vendors, hotels, farmers markets, cafeterias, restaurants, and elsewhere, and delivers still-fresh edibles to about 300 soup kitchens and homeless shelters. For more than 30 years, everything from fresh and frozen foods such as produce, meat, and dairy, to uneaten boxed lunches and trays of salads and hot food, to pantry staples ordered overzealously and nearing expiration has been saved from the compost heap and delivered to those who could use a free meal or some gratis groceries. The result has yielded untold thousands of meals and a complete cycle that reduces food waste, feeds the hungry, and preserves resources all around.

(415) 929-1866, www.foodrunners.org

BEST DARKEST KISS

Remember those freaky goth kids your church leaders warned you against in high school? The ones who wore black lipstick, shaved off all their eyebrows, and worshipped Darkness? Well, they grew up, moved to San Francisco, and got really effin’ hot. If you don’t believe it, head to the comfortingly named Death Guild party at DNA Lounge. Every Monday night, San Francisco’s sexiest goths (and baby goths — this party is 18+) climb out of their coffins and don their snazziest black vinyl bondage pants for this beastly bacchanal, which has decorated our nightlife with leather corsets and studded belts since 1992. And even if you dress more like Humbert Humbert than Gothic Lolita, the Guild’s resident DJs will have you industrial-grinding to Sisters of Mercy, Front 242, Bauhaus, Throbbing Gristle, and Ministry. Death Guild’s Web site advises: “Bring a dead stiff squirrel and get in free.” Free for you, maybe, but not for the squirrel.

Mondays, 9:30 p.m., $5. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409. www.deathguild.com

BEST BLACKBOARD THESPIANS

A completely adorable acting troupe made up of schoolteachers and schoolteacher look-alikes, the Children’s Theatre Association of San Francisco — a cooperative project of the Junior League of San Francisco, the San Francisco Board of Education, and the San Francisco Opera and Ballet companies — has been stomping the boards for 75 years. What the players may lack in Broadway-caliber showmanship, they widely make up for with enthusiasm, handcrafted costumes and sets, and heart. For decades, the troupe has entertained thousands of public school students during its seasonal run every January and February at the Florence Gould Theater in the Palace of Legion of Honor. This year’s production was a zany take on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which included a wisecracking mirror and rousing original songs. We applaud the CTASF’s bravery for taking on some of the toughest critics in the business — those who will squirm and squawk if the show can’t hold their eye.

www.ctasf.org

BEST AUTO REPAIR QUOTES

We’re not sure if you can get a lube job at Kahn and Keville Tire and Auto Service, located on the moderately sketchy corner of Turk and Larkin. And if you can, we can’t vouch for the overall quality, or relative price point of the procedure. But the main reason we can’t say is also why we love the place so much. Instead of sensibly using the giant Kahn and Keville marquee to advertise its sales and services, the 97-year-old business has been using it since 1959 to educate the community with an array of quotations culled from authors as varied as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Gore Vidal — plus occasional shout-outs to groups it admires, such as the Quakers during their peace vigils a block away. Originally collected by founder Hugh Keville, the quotes range in tone from the political to the inspirational and tongue-in-cheek, and the eye-catching marquee was once described by Herb Caen as the city’s “biggest fortune cookie.”

500 Turk, SF. (415) 673-0200, www.kk1912.com

BEST EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE

The cozy Molinari Delicatessen in North Beach has been in business since 1896, just enough time to figure out that the secret to a really kick-ass sandwich is keeping it simple — but not too simple. The little piece of heaven known as the Molinari Special starts with tasty scraps, all the odds and ends of salamis, hams, and mortadella left over from the less adventurous sandwiches ordered by the customers who came before you. The cheese of your choice comes next, topped generously with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, roasted red peppers, and even pepperoncini, if you ask nicely. As for bread: we’re partial to Dutch crunch, but rosemary, soft white, and seeded rolls are available. Ecco panino: you get a sandwich approximately as big as a baby’s head — for only $6.25. It’s never quite the same item twice, but always sublime.

Molinari Delicatessan, 373 Columbus, SF. (415) 421-2337

BEST PASSED-ON JEANS

Most clothes turn to garbage over time — but there are a few notable exceptions, timeless garments that actually gain value after being used up, tossed aside, and then rediscovered. Leather jackets are like that, so are cowgirl dresses and butt rock T-shirts. But none of that stuff maintains its integrity, or becomes more appealing when salvaged, like a great pair of jeans. And there’s no place more in tune with this concept than the Bay Area. Why? Well, it’s easy to say that we lead the thrifting pack simply because denim apparel was born here, but the truth is that we wouldn’t be anywhere without Berkeley’s denim guru, Carla Bell, who’s been reselling Levi’s and other denim products for 30 years. What began as a side project in Bell’s garage has grown into a palace of fine thrifting: Slash Denim the first and last stop when it comes to pre-worn pants and other new and used articles of awesome.

2840 College, Berk. (510) 841-7803, www.slashdenim.com

BEST BALLER’S PARADISE

When you think about baseball and food, hot dogs inevitably come to mind, but that’s just because marketers have been pumping them at stadiums for decades. Real baseball fans can see through the bull. Sure, they might shove a wiener in their mouth every now and again out of respect for tradition. But when a true fan gets hungry, she or he wants real food, not mystery meat. Baseball-themed restaurant and bar Double Play — which sits across from the former site of Seals Stadium and is celebrating its 100th birthday this year — makes a point of thinking outside the bun. D.P.’s menu features everything from pancakes and burritos to seafood fettuccine and steak, with nary a dog in sight. Otherwise, the place is as hardcore balling as it gets. Ancient memorabilia decks the walls, television sets hang from the ceiling, and the backroom contains a huge mural depicting a Seals versus Oakland Oaks game — you can eat lunch on home plate.

2401 16th St., SF. (415) 621-9859

BEST TSUNAMI OF SWEETS

Most small businesses fail within the first year of operation, so you know if a spot’s been around a while it must be doing something right. For Schubert’s Bakery that something is cakes and they’ve been doing them for almost 100 years. To say they’re the best, then, is a bit of an understatement. When you purchase a cake from the sweet staff at Schubert’s, what you’re really getting is 98 years’ worth of cake-making wisdom brought to life with eggs, sugar, flour, and some good old S.F. magic. Schubert’s doesn’t stop with cakes — no way. There are cherry and apple tarts, pies, coffee cakes, Danish pastries, croissants, puff pastries, scones, muffins, and more. If it’s sinfully delicious, Schubert’s has your back. Just be careful not to peruse their menu in the aftermath of a breakup or following the loss of a job. Schubert’s may seem nice and sugary on the outside, but it gets a sick thrill out of sticking you where it hurts: your gut.

521 Clement, SF. (415) 752-1580, www.schuberts-bakery.com

BEST ARCHITECTURAL XANADU

If you compete in a category where you’re the only contestant, does it still matter if you win? In the case of the Xanadu Gallery building, yes, it does. The building that houses the gallery is Frank Lloyd Wright’s only work in San Francisco and provides a fascinating glimpse of him evolving into a legendary architect. The structure’s most prominent feature is the spiral ramp connecting its two floors, a surprisingly organic structure that reminds viewers of the cochlear rotunda of a seashell and presages Wright’s famous design for New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Visitors are delighted and surprised upon entering the Maiden Lane building, as a rather small and cramped walkway into the gallery expands into an airy, sun-filled dome: the effect is like walking out from a dark tunnel into a puff of light. The Xanadu Gallery itself features an extensive collection of international antiquities, which perfectly complements this ambitious yet classic gem.

140 Maiden Lane, SF. (415) 392-9999, www.xanadugallery.us

BEST FIRST CUP OF COFFEE

As the poor departed King of Pop would say, “Just beat it” — to ultimate Beat hangout Caffe Trieste in North beach, that is. And while Pepsi was the caffeinated beverage that set Michael Jackson aflame, we’re hot for Trieste’s lovingly created coffee drinks. Founded in 1956 by Giovanni “Papa Gianni” Giotta, who had recently moved here from Italy, Trieste was the first place in our then low-energy burg to offer espresso, fueling many a late night poetry session, snaps and bongos included. Still a favored haunt of artists and writers, Trieste — which claims to be the oldest coffeehouse in San Francisco — augments the strident personal dramas of its Beat ghosts with generous helpings of live opera, jazz, and Italian folk music. You may even catch a member of the lively Giotta family crooning at the mic, or pumping a flashy accordion as part of Trieste’s long-running Thursday night or Saturday afternoon concert series. Trieste just opened a satellite café in the mid-Market Street area, which could use a tasty artistic renaissance of its own.

601 Vallejo, SF. (415) 392-6739; 1667 Market, SF. (415) 551-1000, www.caffetrieste.com

BEST ON POINT EN POINTE

We’re fans of the entire range of incredible dance offerings in the Bay, from new and struggling companies to the older, more established ones (which are also perpetually struggling.) But we’ve got to give tutu thumbs up to the San Francisco Ballet for making it for 76 years and still inspiring the city to get up on its toes and applaud. Those who think the SF Ballet is hopelessly encrusted in fustiness have overlooked its contemporary choreography programs as well as its outreach to the young and queer via its Nite Out! events. For those who complain about the price of tickets, check out the ballet’s free performance at Stern Grove Aug. 16. This year the company brought down the house when it performed Balanchine’s “Jewels” (a repertory mainstay) in New York. We also have to give it up for one of the most important (yet taken for granted) element of the ballet’s productions: the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, which provides the entrancing accompaniment to the oldest ballet company in America.

www.sfballet.org

BEST INTENTIONAL MISNOMER

If the Spinsters of San Francisco have anything to say about it, spinsterhood isn’t the realm of old women who cultivate cat tribes and emit billows of dust when they sneeze. Instead it’s all about stylish young girls who throw sparkling galas, plan happy hours, organize potlucks, and do everything in their power to have a grand ol’ time in the name of charitable good. Founded alongside the Bachelors of San Francisco, the Spinsters first meeting was held in 1929. In the eight decades that followed, the Spinsters evolved into a philanthropic nonprofit that supports aid organizations and channels funds back to the community. Specifications for prospective spinsters are quite rigorous: applicants must be college-educated, unmarried, and somewhere in the prized age bracket of 21 to 35. At the end of the year, members decide by ballot vote to heap their wealth and plenty into the coffers of a single chosen charity. Past recipients include City of Dreams, the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, and the Center for the Education of the Infant Deaf.

www.sfspinsters.com

BEST GHOSTS IN THE WOODWORK

Situated on the shore of Lake Merritt in Oakland, the Scottish Rite Center boasts hand-carved ceilings, grand staircases, and opulent furnishings — hardly the typical ambiance of your average convention center. But if the ornate woodwork isn’t enough to distract you from whatever you came to the center to learn about, its history should: following San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, the East Bay saw a population explosion that quickly outgrew Oakland’s first Masonic temple and led to cornerstone laying ceremonies at this shoreline site in 1927. Today the center’s ballroom, catering facilities, and full-service kitchens — along with an upstairs main auditorium and one of the deepest stages in the East Bay — make it a favorite setting for weddings and seminars. It’s also the perfect place to wonder how many ghosts crawl out of the woodwork at night, and trace the carved wooden petals that decorate the hallways with the tip of a chilly finger.

1547 Lakeside Dr., Oakl. (510) 451-1903, www.scottish-rite.org

BEST GEM OF A FAMILY

For more than seven decades, the name Manis has meant that a jewel of a jewelry store was in the neighborhood. Lou Manis opened Manis Jewelers in l937 at l856 Mission St. Three months after the Kennedy assassination in l963, he moved the store to 258 West Portal Ave. Manis Jewelers is still at this location, still a classic family-owned store with an excellent line of watches and jewelry, and still offers expert watch and clock repair, custom design, and reliable service. Best of all, that service is always provided by a Manis. Lou, now 89, retired six years ago, but his son Steve operates the store and provides service so friendly that people drop by regularly just to chat. Steve’s daughter, Nicole, works in the store on Saturdays, changing batteries in watches and waiting on customers. She was preceded in the store by her two older sisters, Anna and Kathleen, and Steve’s niece and nephew.

258 West Portal Ave., SF. (415) 681-6434

BEST NEVER FORGET

Since 1984, the Holocaust Memorial at the Palace of the Legion of Honor has been a contemplative and sad reminder of one of the biggest genocides in human history. The grouping of sculptures — heart-wrenching painted bronze figures trapped and collapsed behind a barbed-wire fence — sits alongside one of the city’s most breathtaking views and greatest example of European-style architecture. Yet it has never, in our opinion, fully received its due as an important art piece and historical marker. The memorial was designed by George Segal, a highly decorated artist awarded numerous honorary degrees and a National Medal of Honor in 1999. Chances are that many Legion of Honor patrons — plus the myriad brides posed in front of the palace’s pillars for their photo shoot — overlook this stark homage to the six million people exterminated by the Nazis during World War II. But it’s always there as a reminder that as we look to the future, we must remember the past.

100 34th Ave., SF. www.famsf.org/legion

8, 9 … 2010

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8, 9 … 2010

1. SF garage rock goes pop This year saw Bay Area garage rock go pop in style and impact without losing its soul. I’m thinking of the Fresh and Onlys, and of Ty Segall’s second solo effort Lemons (Goner), a lovely one. I’m thinking of Girls’ Album (True Panther/Matador), which threw down the crossover-move gauntlet with no shame in its game: Christopher Owens’ interviews were as entertaining as his music and brasher — his real talk about sex and drugs made good headline fodder for the excitable British press, but contained the kind of truth that honors life over rules or boring definitions. The secret keeper, though, was the Mantles’ self-titled debut on Siltbreeze. Drew Cramer’s lead guitar and Michael Oliveras’ vocals were even better live, the mark of a band in bloom.

2. The AfroSurreal In May, D. Scot Miller helped put together a special AfroSurreal issue of the Guardian, a collection of words and visions journeying beyond the potential of Barack Obama’s presidency. The Kehinde Wiley piece on the cover wasn’t the only AfroSurreal image on this paper’s front pages — just last week, Conrad Ruiz’s Godzilla-size Yes We Can stomped around the city. Musically, AfroSurrealism manifested in the mind- and mirror-bending quality Dam-Funk’s Toeachizown (Stones Throw) and the rehab hallucinations and Dante-like funeral marches of Chelonis R. Jones’s Chatterton (Systematic). It floated in through cracks in the time warp as well: the ghetto opera of 24 Carat Black’s Gone: The Promises of Yesterday (Numero Group); the proto-punk of Death’s For the World to See (Drag City), especially “Politicians in My Eyes”; and weirdest of all, the gothic funk and skronk of Wicked Witch’s Chaos: 1978-1986 (E.M.).

3. 21st century goth From blackness to deathly whiteface — something gothic this way came in 2009, thanks to Cold Cave’s Cremations (Hospital Productions) and Love Comes Close (Matador). Both staked a claim that the genre is as applicable as death metal to a post-Bush presidency globe. But while those albums notched acclaim and attention, the similar yet more audacious Cure and Cabaret Volatire moves of Jones’ months-earlier Chatterton went ignored and unappreciated. Evidence of racism, proof that German techno only gets appreciated years after the fact, or both?

4. Hauntological mutations In 2009’s sonic mansion, ghosts haunted the hallways leading to and from the gothic banquet hall, and hauntology — a Derrida term applied to music by the critic Simon Reynolds — continued to morph, just as any self-respecting specter should, well beyond dubstep. The maze-like passages of Rooj’s The Transactional Dharma of Rooj (Ghost Box) and Broadcast and the Focus Group’s Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age (Warp) both suggested that spirits have short attention spans, while Demdike Stare’s Symbiosis (Modern Love) traded seances on wet afternoons for retro-futurist meetings with medieval wicked witches.

5. Library music For evidence that the past resides in and fuels the present, go to the library. Specifically, to the abundant compilations and Web sites dedicated to library music — the scores of incidental music produced and recorded for soundtrack use on film, television, and radio. In the wake of his gorgeous book The Music Library (Fuel Publishing), Jonny Trunk released more albums devoted to library labels. The Parisian DJs Alexis Le-Tan and Jess put out a pair of Space Oddities library collections — one electronic, one psychedelic — on Permanent Vacation. Wax Poetics published a lengthy piece to the subject. In an interview, Trunk noted that his Scrapbook (Trunk) shares the same fast-change aesthetics of Broadcast and the Focus Group’s hauntological recordings, just one example of how library music of the past forms the music of now.

6. The new ambient The new ambient is not afraid of extreme melancholy, or long compositions — no longer only Kompact, it can be epic. One of the form’s peak representatives is San Francisco’s Brock Van Wey, whose White Clouds Drift On and On (Echospace) bravely strived for, and sometimes reached, sublime solitude. Another was Klimek, whose Movies is Magic (Anticipate), on which a track such as “pathetic and dangerous” lives up to its death-knell title. The last was Leyland Kirby. His three-CD contribution sums up the current moment in both its title and the name of its label: Sadly, the Future is No Longer What it Was (History Always Favours the Winners).

7. 2009=1989, synthpop and shoegaze I explored this theme in last week’s Decade in Music issue. See: Atlas Siund (in particular “Shelia,”), Crocodiles, Fuck Buttons, Loop, Night Control, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Washed Out (responsible for two of this year’s most gorgeous tracks, “Belong” and “Hold Out”), Wavves, and the xx.

8. How old is now? As the music industry continues to fracture, reissues or uncovered old sounds were as vital and revelatory as new releases. In San Francisco, this meant new rereleases by San Francisco Express, the Units, and most excitingly, Honey Soundsystem’s work on behalf of Patrick Cowley and Jorge Socarras’ Catholic project. Beyond SF, it meant a one-of-a-kind treasure like Connie Converse’s How Sad, How Lovely (Lau derette): one woman, one guitar, one tape recorder, and perhaps the best music of this sad, lovely year.

Our weekly picks

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Our weekly picks

WEDNESDAY 16th

FILM

Free Form Film Series: "Awesome and Painful"


The folks from Lost Media Archive and the FFFF (Free Form Film Festival) have a Christmas treat for y’all: a screening of the "universally loathed" Star Wars Holiday Special. Before that, six dudes from various parts of the U.S. will treat viewers to experimental videos. With titles like Hulk Smash, Cakestain! and Polygon Sun, it’s likely — well, very likely (I did some interweb research) — that these videos are of the laffy taffy, low-tech, seizure-inducing variety. While this might suggest everything jejune and sarcastic, I would also qualify that suggest with smartly so. (Spencer Young)

8 p.m., $6

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.atasite.org

THURSDAY 17th

FILM

Kenneth Anger: Restored Prints


Not one to dabble so much as drench himself in the occult, Kenneth Anger has been dubbed a weirdo. Committed to the underground, his short films are weird, too, but in an interesting and entertaining kind of way as opposed to creepy and cloying. Two of the Anger movies showing tonight — Scorpio Rising (1960) and Kustom Kar Kommandos (1964) — worship handsome James Dean-type men and their equally handsome machines through serene, phantasmagoric pans across shiny engines, belt buckles, and bulging biceps, all queerly contrasted with 1960s pop. The other two films on the program, Fireworks (1947) and Rabbit’s Moon (1950/1971) are equally hunky-dory. Also, the 82-year-old weirdo might be in attendance. (Young)

7 p.m., $7–$10

Phyllis Wattis Theater

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

MUSIC

Popscene Holiday Gala with Mike Relm


‘Tis the season for video mashups. The holidays always make me want to break out the TV Carnage DVDs — nothing says gift quite like John Ritter making horrified faces to Rosie O’Donnell’s performance in Riding the Bus With My Sister (2005). Mike Relm is one of SF’s chief video turntablists, with a resume that includes Mike Patton’s Peeping Tom project. He won my heart by naming his debut DVD Clown Alley, after the defunct semi-North Beach burger dive known to inspire the Guardian’s own Marke B. to break into song. He makes the scene at Popscene’s festive gala. (Johnny Ray Huston)

With DJ Sharp

10 p.m.–2 a.m., $5–$10

330 Ritch

330 Ritch, SF

(415) 541-9574

www.popscene-sf.com

FRIDAY 18th

PERFORMANCE

Hubba Hubba Revue’s Chrismanukkah


Hubba Hubba Revue is big in England. Word of the SF burlesque troupe’s shenanigans had reached my burlesexual friend Lou Lou, who knows about tassel-twirling because, back in Blighty, she’s a "maid" who flounces about the stage between acts cleaning up the dancers’ tossed underthings. Lou Lou was convinced "the maid" was a universal feature of burlesque shows, and was surprised to learn that in the Hubba Hubba Revue, her role is played by a man-monkey named Zip the What-Is-It, bald but for a tuft of hair on his crown. Things are different here. But they do have lovely ladies stripping all retro-like and enough shiny bells and whistles to keep even the burlesque-shy (does such a person exist?) jaw-dropped and fancy free. The troupe’s holiday celebration promises peace and goodwill to (wo)man, and performances by Bunny Pistol, Professor Shimmy, and Meshugga Beach Party, a Jewish folk surf jam experience. (Caitlin Donohue)

9 p.m., $12–$15

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

www.hubbahubbarevue.com

LIT

Glam Gender Release Party


You can never have too much drag for the holidays. Or can you? No, no you can’t — especially if your stocking is not only filled with enough bird seed to size you up to a triple-D cup, but also with the ravishing new book Glam Gender, a glossy to-die-for tome self-published by photographer Marianne Larochelle and art director-stylist-drag legend Jose Guzman Colon, a.k.a. Putanesca. Contained within is an encyclopedia of the most well-known local drag queens of the past decade, including many no longer with us. The project, with punchy bios written by paparazzi punk Bill Picture, was "such a beautiful thing to work on," Putanesca told me. "It’s a real community celebration, and also a bit insane." Freshly released, the book will be available — along with glorious prints and most of the queens themselves — at zany Victorian wonderland Finn’s Funhouse. Watch your dress. (Marke B.)

6–10 p.m., free

Finn’s Funhouse

814 Grove, SF

www.glamgender.com

MUSIC

Super Adventure Club


Up-sides to cold weather: the dependable absence of mosquitoes, eggnog, layers of $4 Goodwill sweaters that nicely camouflage Christmas cookie bulge, and socially acceptable hibernation. Wait, scratch that last one — you’re going out. You’ll wanna brave those arctic winds for multitasking duo Jake Woods and Michael Winger, who combine their strange genius to form Super Adventure Club, a band you could like for the name alone, but don’t have to because their punchy riffs on everything from German "üntz" music to French love songs deliver a restorative kick to the circulation system. I straight up challenge you to get through their set — or that of headliners Diego’s Umbrella — without jumping about like a crazy person. You’ve got a tough first step past the front welcome mat, but know — just know — that your winter woes are about to melt like a square snowflake in funky town. (Donohue)

With Diego’s Umbrella and How To Win at Life

9 p.m., $8

Elbo Room

(415) 552-7788

647 Valencia, SF

www.elbo.com

SATURDAY 19th

EVENT

Renegade Craft Fair


December mall jaunts tend to induce claustrophobia, Santa terrors, and unpredictable, Manchurian Candidate-style reactions to all those cheery Christmas carols. Avoid the commercial hustle at the Renegade Craft Fair, founded in 2003 in Chicago — where a Renegade Handmade store remains open year-round — and now a multicity phenomenon. SF’s version opens shop just in time for the last-minute gift scramble, with more than 150 local DIY denizens (who had to apply to participate, so you won’t have to sift though sub-par crap) offering up all manner of bow-worthy ideas: fabric goods, silkscreened art, jewelry, accoutrements for babies, housewares, toys, stationary, and more. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/20

11 a.m.–7 p.m., free

Herbst Pavilion, Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

www.renegadecraft.com/holiday-sf

PERFORMANCE

Trannyshack Star Search


The queen, apparently, is not dead. Beloved and be-loathed trash-drag emporium Trannyshack glitter-axed its weekly operations at the Stud last year. But like the chunky-jewelried zombie ass-slave Mrs. Roper hostess that she is, Heklina rises from the ash heap of Manhunt addiction to bring back the Trannyshack Star Search competition, thirsty for new blood to fill her ghoulish needs. She’ll be joined onstage by the wonderfully horrific Peaches Christ to oversee performances by "special" guest judges Sherry Vine and Kembra Pfahler of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. Hoku Mama, Putanesca, Princess Kennedy, and Anjie Myma also judge the 10 hopefuls, and DJ Omar glam-sluts up the crowd, if that’s even more possible. (Marke B.)

10 p.m.–3 a.m., $15–$20

DNA Lounge

(415) 626-1409

375 11th St., SF

www.dnalounge.com

EVENT/PERFORMANCE

Circus Ignite!


Does it seem like circus is everywhere? It’s true. And that’s not just in local venues, mainstream media, and fashion. Circus groups are taking their clowning, juggling, stilting, and acrobatics out of American cities and into under-served communities across the world. They’re entertaining, educating, inspiring self-esteem, and fostering cross-cultural communication in communities affected by natural disaster, dislocations, and military conflicts. One such group is Dreamtime Circus, a fantastic organization that launched with a trip to India last year and plans to spend next spring in Peru. Help support the cause by attending this weekend’s fundraiser, featuring DJs, a silent auction, and performances. (Molly Freedenberg)

9 p.m.–4 a.m., $12–$20

Siberia

314 11th St, SF

(415) 552-2100

www.dreamtimecircus.org

EVENT/MUSIC

Carols in the Caves


Candlelight. Cave acoustics. Ancient instruments playing age-old carols. And you as part of the angel choir. Could there be anything more classically festive than Carols in the Caves? The brainchild of percussionist/musician the Improvisator (a.k.a. David Auerbach), this tradition has been delighting audiences for 24 years in a variety of caves and wine cellars around the Bay Area. This time Auerbach brings his dulcimers, flutists, drums, and bells to Hans Fahden Vineyards, a gorgeous property on a ridge above Calistoga that features panoramic views of Mount Saint Helena. Buy your tickets, save some extra cash to purchase wine, and get ready to settle in to a sound spa for the mind. (Freedenberg)

2 p.m. (also Sun/20), $45

Hans Fahden Vineyards

4855 Petrified Forest, Calistoga

(707) 224-4222

www.cavemusic.com

FILM

The Birds


So … 500,000 European starlings did an air show in Bodega Bay, I mean Sacramento, this past week. Video evidence is flying across the Internet. It’s official, a real-life version of The Birds (1963) can’t be far off. Of all of Hitchcock’s classics, this is the one best served by the big screen. If you’ve only seen it on TV, you don’t know it. Out of your gilded cages, Melanie Daniels fans, and into the Castro to fend off angry beaks with your impeccably manicured hands. (Huston)

2:30 and 7 p.m. (double feature with Notorious), $7.50–$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

SUNDAY 20th

MUSIC

Brian Setzer Orchestra


Brian Setzer has made a long-lasting career of resurrecting musical styles from the past with his formidable talents. He first came to fame as leader of the Stray Cats, energizing traditional rockabilly with his scorching guitar skills. He then went on to revamp swing and the classic big band sound of the 1930s and ’40s with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, whose hits included a cover of Louis Prima’s "Jump Jive An’ Wail." Tonight’s stop here in SF is part of Setzer’s seventh annual "Christmas Rocks!" tour, featuring revved-up versions of timeless holiday songs like "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas," as well as selections from his own hit discography.(Sean McCourt)

8 p.m., $55–$69.50

The Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 775-7722

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

TUESDAY 22nd

VISUAL ART

Taravat Talepasand: "Situation Critical"


Bay Area artist Taravat Talepasand’s explorations of cultural mores in Iran and America manifest as everything from motorcycles to graphite drawings. Her second show at Marx and Zavaterro casts a sharp eye at xenophobia and assorted manias circa-1979, among other things. "Situation Critical" should be worth a visit simply to see the nightmarish Disney-esque painting Ayatollah Land. (Huston)

10:30 a.m.–5 p.m., free

Marx and Zavattero

77 Geary, second floor, SF

(415) 627-9111
www.marxzav.com

Rep Clock

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Rep Clock

Schedules are for Wed/16–Tues/22 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $7. "Free Form Film Festival:" Star Wars Holiday Special (Binder, 1978), plus experimental videos, Wed, 8. Other Cinema:" "New Experimental Works," Sat, 8:30.

CAFÉ OF THE DEAD 3208 Grand, Oakl; (510) 931-7945. Free. "Independent Filmmakers Screening Nite," Wed, 6:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. "Hitch for the Holidays:" •Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954), Wed, 2:30, 7, and Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1943), Wed, 4:45, 9:10; •Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940), Thurs, 2, 7, and Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964), Thurs, 4:30, 9:30; Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Fri, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30; •The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963), Sat, 2:30, 7, and Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946), Sat, 4:55, 9:20; •The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935), Sun, 1:30, 6, and North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959), Sun, 3:30, 8; •Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951), Tues, 2:30, 7, and The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock, 1956), Tues, 4:35, 9. Theater closed Mon.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (Miller, 2009), call for dates and times. "Short Films from the 2009 Sundance Film Festival," Wed-Thurs, call for times.

EXPLORATORIUM 3601 Lyon, SF; www.exploratorium.edu. Free with museum admission ($9-14). A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Sat, 2.

GRACE NORTH CHURCH 2138 Cedar, Berk; (510) 464-4640, www.verticalpool.com. $6-10. The Greater Circulation (Alli, 2005), Fri, 8.

JOYCE GORDON GALLERY 406 14th St, Oakl; (510) 465-8928, www.joycegordongallery.com. Free. One Time (Doukas, 1969-71), Thurs, 8.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. "An Evening with Mark Morris:" Cello Suite #3: Falling Down Stairs (Sweete, 1995), Wed, 7; Cabin in the Sky (Minnelli, 1943), Wed, 9. "A Woman’s Face: Ingrid Bergman in Europe:" Autumn Sonata (Bergman, 1978), Thurs, 7. "Otto Preminger: Anatomy of a Movie:" Carmen Jones (1955), Fri, 6:30; Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Sat, 6:30 and Sun, 5; Skidoo (1968), Sat, 8:30; Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), Sun, 7. "Four by Hungarian Master Miklós Janksó:" Silence and Cry (1967), Fri, 8:40.

PARAMOUNT THEATRE 2025 Broadway, Oakl; 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com. $5. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Stuart, 1971), Fri, 8.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. It Might Get Loud (Guggenheim, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7:15, 9:20 (also Wed, 2). Not Quite Hollywood (Hartley, 2009), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:25 (also Sat, 2, 4:15). The City of Lost Children (Jeunet and Caro, 1995), Sun-Mon, 7, 9:25 (also Sun, 2, 4:20). Scrooged (Donner, 1988), Tues, 7:15, 9:25.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Call for shows and times.

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 151 Third St, SF; www.sfmoma.org. $10. "Kenneth Anger: Restored Prints," Thurs, 7. With Kenneth Anger in person.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. "Back in the GDR: The Berlin Wall and the Former East Germany on Film:" Night Crossing (Mann, 1981), Thurs, noon. Large-screen video presentation.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. "The Joy of Life:" "Short Films by Curt McDowell," Thurs, 7:30; "Holiday Free Surprise Screening!", Sat, 7:30; Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (Henson, 1977), Sun, 2.<\!s>

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