Television

Hank Plante busts the mayor!

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Why did Mayor Newsom buy a $51,000 Chevy car in Colma when the only Chevy dealership in San Francisco is going out of business? Scroll down for the KPIX video showing how Hank Plante busts the mayor.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

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Photo by Paula Connelly

Newsom’s driver and new Chevy Hybrid Tahoe SUV vehicle, parked in front of the Ark toy store on 24th Street, during a press conference launching the Shop Local–Get More campaign. The city bought the car from a dealership in Colma for $51,000.

It was marvelous. Simply marvelous. Hank Plante busts the mayor.

Let me set the scene: The reporters and small business leaders on Wednesday (Dec. 5) were packed in the Ark, a toyshop on 24th Street, for a press conference to launch formally the “Shop Local–Get More” campaign aimed at getting San Franciscans and everyone else to shop local in San Francisco this holiday season.

Steve Falk, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, laid out the chamber’s extensive program for its members to give substantial discounts to customers. Gerald Johnson, owner of the Ark, explained how his store would give 10 per cent off your next purchase with a purchase of more than $100. Mayor Newsom, who rolled in late in his city car, gave a zippy little talk about the values of shopping local and helping out the merchants and business community during tough times.

Newsom is at his best at these informal occasions, a little pep talk here, a genial smile and gesture there, lots of jutting jaw, no tough questions please. Then came time for questions and Newsom visibly relaxed for what he hoped would be some Noe Valley soft balls.

Hank Plante, the savvy political editor of KPIX Television (Channel 5), was positioned in the front of the crowd with his television cameraman and his camera was whirring away. He led off with a timely question.

“Mr. Mayor, you want people to shop in San Francisco. You know the car dealerships are in trouble. Can you tell us why you didn’t buy your new official city car here in the city?”

Newsom replied testily, “Uh, I have no idea. Thanks for the Gotcha question and I don’t have a clue. I didn’t have anything to do with the purchase of that car.” He said he would find out what happened and get back with the answer.

Plante reported the exchange in the KPIX newscast that night. He said, “We’re losing our last Chevy dealership” in San Francisco. He said that the new car was a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV that cost $51,000 at a dealership in Colma. He pointed out that the Chevy was one of the “most visible purchases the mayor made this year.” Marie Brooks, from Ellis Brooks Chevy dealership on Van Ness Avenue, told Plante, “I think it’s wrong for one of our city officials to buy anything outside the city.” Ellis Brooks is a family-owned car dealership and one of the oldest and most famous local names in selling cars in Northern California.

Plante reported that Newsom kept ducking the question and later refused to allow the press corps to take a picture of him leaving the press conference in his gleaming black hybrid car parked in front of the toy store (see pic above.) KPIX showed video footage of Newsom not getting into the car and walking down 24th street.

Plante had nailed a point that has been agitating the small (and big) business community for years. Scott Hauge, a prominent small business leader and founder and president of Small Business California, was at the press conference and picked up on the point immediately. In his followup email to small business people in the city, Hauge noted he had attended the press conference “where the mayor was promoting a shop SF campaign.

“I applaud the mayor and others like the SF Chamber, Bay Guardian, Small Business Commission and Hotel Council for their efforts. What I didn’t hear was anything the city will do to require SF City agencies to buy from SF companies located in SF.”

Then Hauge zeroed in. “SF government does not have a very good track record in this area. In fact the mayor was asked why he did not purchase his hybrid vehicle in SF and he said he didn’t know why. Now is the time to push this issue. SF businesses have a higher cost of doing business because of mandates imposed on us. It seems to me that the least the city can do is buy from SF businesses.” I think he’s spot on.

And so Plante, Hauge, the Guardian, and small (and big) business in San Francisco are waiting anxiously for Newsom’s explanation why he bought a $51,000 city Chevy vehicle in Colma and not in San Francisco where our last Chevy dealership is on hard times and going out of business. And we are all waiting even more anxiously to hear what the mayor plans to do to correct this Shop- outside -San Francisco-syndrome and get the city working to spend its tens of millions of dollars of city tax dollars on businesses and services in San Francisco.

P.S. Full disclosure: the Guardian is a sponsor of the Shop Local campaign. And we sent a delegation to the press conference: Sales and Marketing Director Jennifer Lachman, Vice President of Operations Daniel B. Brugmann, Online and Print Advertising Coordinator Rebecca Frank, Assistant to the Publisher Paula Connelly who took the press conference photos, and myself. We are happy to pitch in on this critical and timely endeavor to put as much instant cash as possible into our local businesses and our community.

Our contribution, as a locally owned, independent newsweekly, is our own Shop Local campaign featuring a key marketing line derived from an analysis provided by the Business Alliance of Local Living Economies (BALLE), using a formula created by the consulting firm Civic Economics. This data is dramatic. It shows that if our 600,000 or so Guardian readers would spend $l00 with locally owned, independent businesses in San Francisco during the holiday season, that would inject $99 million into the San Francisco economy. Immediately.

That’s nearly $15 million more dollars than the city would see if that money were spent on chain stores that send their revenues back to headquarters. That’s because money spent at local businesses tends to stay and circulate in the community and create more local jobs and economic activity and of course more tax dollars for the city. The Guardian is also leading a national Shop Local campaign among alternative papers that would put several billion dollars in total into local economies all over the country. As Guardian Executive editor Tim Redmond puts it, “A sustainable community needs a sustainable economy, and that starts with locally owned, independent businesses.”

Unsolicited advice for the mayor and anybody else at City Hall who keeps sending our money outside of town: check the policy of the San Francisco International Airport that mandates locally owned small businesses get most of the juicy airport franchises. That policy works and works well. When I go through the airport, I always stop to get something to eat at Klein’s Deli. Klein’s was named after Deborah Klein, a Guardian circulation manager in the mid- 1970s who became a restaurant entrepreneur in San Francisco. For many years, she ran Klein’s Deli on 20th Street atop Potrero Hill. B3

Click here to watch yesterday’s KPIX newscast.

Click here to see Guardian photo coverage of the press conference.

Dark knight

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TV EYED You know a show has gotten under your skin when it begins to trigger nightmares. That’s the case with Showtime’s Dexter, now winding up its third season after building, with frustrating slowness, its intertwined partnership narratives revolving around serial killer-turned-crime fighter Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall). Dexter was carefully trained by his adopted hero-cop father to blend in, closet his antisocial blood-thirsty desires, and channel those murderous impulses toward bad apples who slip the scales of justice. Sounds like another "post-racial," pro-assimilation narrative cluttered with Twilight and True Blood vampires looking for acceptance?

As developed from the 2004 novel by Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the series does wink at the unsavory secret history of superheroes: the difference between, say, Batman and Dexter is that the latter obviously gets off on his kills. Luckily the Miami Metro Police abounds with murderers within and without, although, Dexter, for all his sinister smarts, doesn’t seem to be self-aware enough to realize that his redemptive retraining and repurposing could be applied to the evildoers he so methodically destroys.

The nightmares enter the picture by way of the crack writing and insinuating acting — particularly by Hall, the golden boy with dead eyes, who was also so adept at unpeeling his character’s layers as Six Feet Under‘s dutiful gay conservative, and Jennifer Carpenter, who portrays his impulsive police officer sister, Debra, and rolled her cubist eyes to queasy effect in the title role of 2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose. As for Dexter — so busy holding down a job as a blood-spatter forensic specialist at Miami Metro and solving crimes in order to satisfy his blood lust — is there a more untrustworthy narrator on television?

This season centers on Dexter’s continuing trust issues in the form of two partnerships that threaten to rock his world: his upcoming nuptials to damaged but increasingly grounded, pregnant girlfriend Rita (Julie Benz) and his accelerating friendship with Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits), an ambitious, charismatic assistant district attorney who thinks Dexter has done him the favor of stabbing his brother’s murderer, and seems to understand his needs. Their closeness develops to the point where Dexter mentors Miguel in his first righteous kill, but there’s more to Miguel than meets the eye — leave it to the cutthroat lawyer to really give it his so-called bleeding-heart-liberal public defender nemesis as the series teases out and critiques some of the politically conservative undertones of its quasi-pro-capital-punishment narrative. While the pregnant Rita satisfies her hunger pangs with chocolate at home, it appears that Dexter has created another monster of his own.

www.sho.com/site/dexter/home.do

Cue the clowns

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› steve@sfbg.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Huh," Boenobo deadpanned. "Weird."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MIMES AND PICKLES


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INDIE, THE NEW NEW CIRCUS


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMING TOGETHER


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT’S NEXT


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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CLOWN’S EYE VIEW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The life of a clown is rarely dull.

————

UPCOMING INDIE CIRCUS EVENTS

DEC. 5–6


Acrosports Winter Cabaret

639 Frederick, SF

8 p.m., $5–$15

www.citycircus.org

DEC. 12


Auditions for Acrosports’ City Circus

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

DEC. 12-14


Frolic: CircusDragBurlesque Festival

Featuring Fou Fou Ha, Anna Conda, and more

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

8 p.m., $100

www.counterpulse.org

1-800-838-3006

DEC. 20


Open House and Holiday Carnival

San Francisco Circus Center

755 Frederick, SF

10 a.m.–4 p.m., free

Pratfalls and Rising Stars

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

San Francisco Circus Center

Tickets and info at www.circuscenter.org

DEC. 20


Storytime Festival, featuring Vau de Vire Society

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

$30–$50

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

www.storytimefestival.org

————

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

Cossu

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› paulr@sfbg.com

Having spent many months — too many months — watching presidential aspirants address television cameras from cavernous halls, I stepped into Cossu recently and found it oddly familiar. The restaurant is cavernous, and it even has a spotlit stage, although not for presidential candidates or other bloviating politicos but live musical acts. It also, until recently, was called Pasha.

The place has changed hands and changed chefs, according to one of our servers, and it’s even (we were reassured) been redecorated. It didn’t look much different to me, I must say: the lighting tends toward nightclub dimness; the walls, flooring, and tented ceiling are all a red-burgundy shade — like being inside a huge box of red wine — and, in a slight ergonomic crisis, the square tables are still awkwardly low, with awkwardly low ottomans and banquettes to sit on. The tables are also still set with brass inlays that say "Pasha." I didn’t particularly care for Pasha, so I wasn’t particularly thrilled to see a recurrence of the name. On the other hand, it’s hard to read table inlays in dim light. So, a wash there.

The big change has been in the kitchen, where executive chef Hijam Senhaji turns out a "Moroccan fusion" menu. As one of our servers told us, the idea is (if I might be allowed a moment of Emerilspeak) to kick it up a notch. The result is mostly impressive; if you’ve liked the food at Saha, Medjool, or the original Baraka, you’ll likely like the food here. Of course there are traditional tagine and couscous dishes, but the cooking can soar well beyond the old boundaries. It can also catch the occasional wing in power lines.

The best dishes have at least one foot firmly planted on the soil of tradition. The bastilla, for instance — a packet of phyllo pastry filled with something savory, like a giant flaky raviolo — is a staple in Moroccan cooking (and, under various other names, throughout the Mediterranean). Cossu’s Essaouira version ($14) is filled with a mix of shrimp and calamari in a chermoula paste — a fragrant blend of garlic, herbs, lemon juice, olive oil, cumin, coriander, and (guessing by the color) some saffron. The bastilla reaches the table looking like a big fat wallet and isn’t sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. Some might account this omission a small mercy.

Another traditional Moroccan preparation is the salad of shredded spinach called bakoula ($8). It’s not exactly a beauty queen; in fact it looks like one of those clumps of wet grass you sometimes have to pull from the lawn mower, if you happen to have mowed a damp lawn. But it’s punctuated with slivers of green olive and imbued with the haunting, sour-salty flavor of preserved lemons. Even served cold, it casts a spell.

While you wait for the next treat to appear, you gnaw on your warm sesame-seed bun and nibble at your plate of green and black olives in their spicy marinade. (A word to the wise: most of the olives are pitted, but not all.) Maybe you’ve opted for the French fries ($6) as a kind of intermezzo; they’re wonderfully slender and tender-crisp, but they offer no discernable hint of Moroccan (or indeed any) fusion.

The kitchen saves the bulk of its innovative effects for the big dishes. Slices of Muscovy duck breast ($26) don’t, to me, suggest north Africa in the least, but the meat is expertly roasted to order (we asked for rare and got it rare — lovely reddish-pink flaps, with plenty of juice), and it’s sauced with a viscous, honey-like essence of apricot and cinnamon. As someone who is wary of the usual pairings made between fruit and flesh, sweet and savory (pork with apples or cherries comes instantly to mind), I found this combination to be winsome — and, in my experience, unique.

Well, semi-unique, since the sauce accompanying the black and white tuna ($24), also featured a cunning deployment of cinnamon, a supple and sublime spice we occidentals tend to underuse. Here the cinnamon was added to a tomato coulis, with the result being a distant relative of barbecue sauce. The fish itself, meanwhile, was sprinkled with black sesame seeds, seared to order, and presented on a bed of saffron rice.

So far, so good with these fusion dishes. The kitchen even served the duck with a pine-nut-and-parsley couscous, to distinguish it from the saffron rice. But both plates were piled high on one side with the same, not particularly interesting, medley of sautéed vegetables, mostly green and yellow summer squash, carrot tabs, and shreds of red cabbage. Of course these are all estimable — and colorful — foodstuffs; they are good for us and even, to a degree, seasonal. But they also suggest a kind of mass production that’s not quite consistent with the high ambition of turning out distinctive food, plate by plate. It’s especially jarring when the stars of each plate are so distinctive; it’s as if cheap tires have been fitted to a Lamborghini.

Is this disjunction a lingering ghost of Pasha? We attempted an exorcism by inquiring about dessert but were told our choices were limited to baklava and coffee. I like baklava well enough, but because it’s suffered overexposure on these hither shores — like tiramisù — and drifted in the direction of cliché, I almost never order it and didn’t here. Our knowledgeable and radiant server quietly supported us in this choice. She and her troupe, in fact, were altogether cosseting. *

COSSU RESTAURANT, BAR, AND LOUNGE

Tues.–Sun., 6 p.m. to closing

1516 Broadway, SF

(415) 885-4477

www.pasharestaurant.com

Full bar

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Sticky buns

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› le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS This Thanksgiving I am thankful for sushi, pre-cum, the hangtown fry, clam chowder, big green salads, soft-boiled eggs, carnitas tacos, biscotti, roasted chickens, cum, day-old sticky buns, and Canada. However, I have no plans for Thanksgiving dinner.

How can this happen? My favorite holiday! My only holiday!

Deevee and Gilley are going camping. I’m invited, but don’t like to be cold. The Maze invited me to San Diego for dinner with his parents. I like to be warm, but the train ticket costs $150 and you have to spend half the time on a bus. What kind of train ticket is that?

My new favorite country is Canada. Truth be told, Canada was my old favorite country too, only for different reasons. I used to like Canada because it seemed less like a country than other countries, the mouse sleeping next to the elephant. Its people, peaceful and funny.

Second City Television was my favorite TV show. "O Canada" stirred me more than "The Star-Spangled Banner." I almost died in Canada, in the late 1990s, and have only been back once since, to play cowboy songs for elderly shut-ins in Ottawa.

That was five years ago, and I was in a van. You don’t need a passport to get into Canada, just to come back. I learned. The hard way. I’m afraid to fly and can’t afford to and have no plans to visit my new favorite country, but that’s OK. Apparently, it will come to me.

In Canada all the animals are moose. If you have mice, and you trap one, you will find on closer inspection that your mouse is a little tiny moose. If you have a cat and a dog, you have a moose and a moose. Small ones. If you go to the zoo, or the circus, and they feature an elephant, it will be played by a humongous moose. And if you see an actual-size moose — say, on the side of a small road in the mountains — then that’s a moose too.

Thanksgiving in Canada happens in October and is not a big deal, according to my Canadian. After work I picked him up at the airport, and I took him out for sushi and then to a downtown hotel with clawfoot bathtubs.

We hardly slept that night, or the next, or the next. The groundwork had been laid online, which doesn’t sound right, I realize. But besides sex, we drove around and talked about food, and movies, and food. Fuck history, Canadians know as much about American barbecue as most Americans do. We’d eaten at a lot of the same places in the South. He knew where to get fried chicken in Missouri, and Buffalo wings in Buffalo. I showed him where to go for breakfast in San Francisco, lunch on the Sonoma Coast, and dinner in the wine country.

He bought me a bottle of great whiskey and a big book about road food. All weekend that weekend I didn’t check my e-mail or answer my cell phone, and my friends worried about me. They needn’t have. I was visiting Canada, in the comfort of my own county and country. And I found it infinitely sweet, hospitable, romantic, and, best of all, game.

The boys around here, you know, the too-cool-for-drool outside-the-box ones who describe themselves on the dating sites as open-minded, adventurous, looking for new experiences, blah blah barf … I hate to say this, my rad hipster sexually-liberated countrymen, but you were just schooled in all of the above by a middle-aged Canadian tweed with daughters and a favorite toothpaste.

He didn’t know I was trans when he first wrote to me, just liked my pics and words and food-itude. I told him right away. I told him and showed him: look, man, an outtie. And unlike you, he shrugged. Never been with a body like mine, he said, never even thought about it. But … he couldn’t wait to find out.

And did.

And loved it. And loves me. He said so.

"I love you too," I said. And I took him back to the airport and then went to play soccer as usual.

My new favorite restaurant is Sushi Man. Just for the name. That’s all. The sushi was … well, nobody got hurt or anything. I got sashimi hamachi and some saba, and the steamed spinach thing with sesame seeds, which was great. Better than the sushi. Nice atmosphere, surreal service, nobody there … *

SUSHI MAN

Daily: 5 p.m.–10:30 p.m.

731 Bush, SF

(415) 981-1313

Beer & wine

MC/V

A long look

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› paulr@sfbg.com

If you’re old enough to remember Loongbar — and I’m too polite to ask — you might experience a moment of confusion about Long Bar. You might wonder if there’s a familial connection, and why did the name of the restaurant split in two (some kind of verbal mitosis?), and what happened to the other O? But … no worries, as the Aussies say. Long Bar (whose principals are Alan Walsh and Bill Garlock) has nothing to do with Loongbar, the Mark Miller venture of the late 1990s that lived its brief life in a spectacular Ghirardelli Square setting before ending up in the hands of the actor Don Johnson under the name Ana Mandara.

Long Bar was, until spring 2007, the Fillmore Grill, a stalwart of that stylish street and a pubish sort of place. If your idea of a smart pub includes a long bar, then you won’t be too disappointed by the morph. Long Bar is aptly named; its bar (of Honduran mahogany) might not be quite the match of the big daddy that helped make Stars famous, but it is sizable, with seating for at least a dozen atop posh-looking stools, each with an unimpeded view to the large flat-screen television mounted on the wall, a window on the world of sports.

As impressive as the bar is, it takes up only a quarter or so of the dining room, with the rest given over to the usual suspect (tables and chairs in various configurations), a color scheme heavy on a cayenne or burnt-sienna hue — rich and warm, if under inflected — and, most appealing, a small selection of U-shaped, low-rise booths in a far corner. Long Bar isn’t what you’d call beatifically quiet (another sense in which the name is spot-on; will anyone ever open Quiet Bar?), but the noise level in the booths is far from unbearable, even as the restaurant fills up with Pacific Heightsers, some fresh from a movie at the Clay Theater across the street.

They’re hungry, of course, the P.H. crowd: they want good food but not fancy food, and they want it at a reasonable price, since, like everybody else, they must be feeling the wind a bit these days. What is a reasonable price? That, as Hamlet might say (in a yet-to-be-imagined turn as restaurant planner), is the question, and it’s a tricky one to try to answer in the midst of our present economic maelstrom. I will note that Long Bar’s main-course prices range mostly from the high teens to the mid-20s, which isn’t exactly bargain-basement country, but could be worse. A strong theory of relativity obtains in restaurant pricing, and any calculus must consider where the restaurant is located and who’s likely to go there.

So while it seems quite possible that the bulk of the clientele — vigorous, middle-aged-looking people who don’t appear to be poor — would consider Long Bar moderately priced, I would have to cogitate a bit before agreeing. Then I would agree. A grilled salmon filet perched on a bed of quinoa salad dotted with cauliflower florets, for $22? That’s not bad for casually sophisticated cooking.

Of course, no bar would be complete without a full complement of bar food, and bar food is so often deep-fried and greasy, maybe on the theory that the grease helps soak up excess alcohol, as if it’s some kind of blotter. (A friend recently told me a similar story about the therapeutic powers of tripe, which, prepared in a stew called menudo, is commonly served in Mexico on Sundays, when some people might need help clearing away the haze left by the previous night’s revels.)

Fried onion rings are often a spectacular example of this kind of cooking. Hence their migration to fast-food-land. But executive chef Ryan McDonald’s version ($6) was notable for its restraint. The rings were cut from red onions, for one thing, then given a tempura batter, which fried up strong and dry, without sogginess or a sheen of grease on the plate. We dipped the rings in the companion ramekin of plain ketchup, which was fine, though not quite as fine as the rings themselves.

Monterey calamari ($12) was a more typical item, with the rings and tentacles swaddled in a heavy golden coat of bread crumbs. Despite the slightly lurid look, the seafood itself was tender and gently sweet-briny, with a colorful salad of frisée and slivered carrot and lime aioli on the side for balance.

Comparably golden, though not as heavy, were crab cakes ($16), a matched pair of plump pucks made with a generous amount of actual crab meat (filler is a perennial problem for crab cake aficionados) and plated with a fabulously tart little salad of apple threads and tendrils of watercress. Lemon-caper aioli provided a final zest kicker.

Yes, the Long Bar kitchen has a flair for salads, of all things. Even the caesar ($9) was excellent, despite a lack of anchovies. The croutons were crunchy and plentiful, the Parmesan shavings were piled up like drifts in a blizzard, the dressing was notably lemony, and the romaine spears were immaculate and crisp. I did wonder why, given the considerable scale of the caesar, why no grilled-chicken upgrade is offered. With a little protein, this salad could easily pass as a light main course.

Desserts, we were told, are due for an upgrade, from a pastry chef whose arrival is imminent. In the meantime, the choices are a bit TGI Friday’s but perfectly serviceable: mud pie ($8), a fluffy chocolate mousse under a glossy cap of dark chocolate; and mango cheesecake ($8), also fluffy, in a graham-cracker crust that’s worth its weight in … well, graham crackers, at least.

LONG BAR

Dinner: Sun., Tues.–Thurs, 5–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 5–10:30 p.m.

2298 Fillmore, SF

(415) 440-1700

www.longbarsf.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

SPJ honors ‘The Vanishing Journalist’

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down for the full SPJ awards program, press release on the winners, and Tom Honig on “The Vanishing Journalist”)

The Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists held an inspired and inspiring Excellence in Journalism awards program last Thursday night at the Yank Sing restaurant in San Francisco.

The room was full of reporters and editors who have been laid off or merged out, and many others fearful of being laid off or merged out. This point was made eloquently by Bruce Newman, who won the criticism award for his movie reviews in the San Jose Mercury News, and announced in his acceptance remarks that his position of movie critic had been eliminated five weeks ago.

Yet, despite the problems of the media and the economy, the award winners and their work this year were extraordinarily worthy. The program was excellent. The food was good. And Ricardo Sandoval, the incoming SPJ president, and Linda Jue, the outgoing SPJ president, and many of the award accepters made the crucial point: that the worse the news is, the more SPJ and good journalism are needed.

And so SPJ chose this year to give its premier award, the Journalist of the Year award, to “The Vanishing Journalist.” And they chose Tom Honig, the distinguished former editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, to accept the award. Honig was the classic California community journalist:he started on the old Palo Alto Times in sports, then to the Sentinel in l972, to the cops and courts beat to reporter for eight years, to assistant city editor and then to city editor, copy desk chief, managing editor in l99l, and then editor in l992.

He left the Sentinel on the last day of November, 2007. His exit was illustrative: His Singleton/Media News publisher had told him he would have to lay off at least three more editorial staffers from the newsroom, after previous cuts had reduced the newsroom from a high of 43 in 2005 to 30 last year. The Sentinel’s accountant pointedly told Honig that if he left, that would save three positions. So Honig made the ultimate sacrifice and laid himself off. (He is now in a new career, as an account executive in Armanasco Public Relations in Monterey.)

“The people that run newspapers today–describe them how you will–might understand finance and they understand budgets,” Honig said. “They do, after all, understand that news organizations are in trouble. What they don’t understand is that the indiscriminate budget cuts are only hastening their own demise. You know what? You need good reporters and editors. You just do…

“It’s us– the journalists–who carry with us the knowledge and integrity that money simply cannot buy. We carry on because we know the power of questioning authority, questioning those even that we agree with –and giving those we disagree with a fair airing of their views. The talking heads on television and radio can’t do that.”

Here are Honig’s complete remarks:

by Tom Honig

I’m accepting this award on behalf of the hundreds – thousands – of veteran reporters, photographers and editors that have helped and inspired me over the years. We’re honoring the vanishing journalist tonight, and I do want to say a few words on his and her behalf.

I’d have to say that the most noteworthy thing about my career is how unnoteworthy it really has been. Some reporters go to war zones. Others call the White House their beat. But for most of us – it’s the school board. The library board. The fire that leaves a family homeless. We are the people who get it done, day in and day out – giving people the opportunity to understand their own community.

I’m truly honored that I would be asked to accept this award on behalf of all those who have come and gone before me. I once looked at my decision to spend my career in a small town – Santa Cruz, California – as something to be slightly embarrassed about. I now think of it only with pride.

I think of the writing advice I got from editors older than I who taught me strategies to get out of my own way and let the story tell itself.

When you work at a community paper, you don’t need focus groups and readership studies. People talk to you in the super market. Actually, they bitch at you in the super market. Or at the gym. Or when you’re out grabbing a sandwich at the deli. You do an investigation into misspent funds in a small town and you get a good story, but you also get a tearful phone call from a city manager who’ a really nice guy but who knows he fouled up. You do the story anyway, but you feel bad and later you keep running into him and you hope he’s doing OK.

But you do your job, and some days you don’t think much about it. But when it’s all over, you take some time, look back and realize that you’ve been part of something very special. You did good journalism. You did what the best investigative journalism does – reveal the truth to those who may or may not want to hear it.

The public doesn’t often understand the value of their local newspaper – even as they rely upon what’s there. I’m partial to local newspapers. The kind of journalism we achieved over the years in Santa Cruz I would stack up against any of the big boys. And being right there as part of the community … we knew about credibility long before the think tanks started doing their studies.

The people that run newspapers today – describe them how you will — might understand finance and they understand budgets. They do, after all, understand that news organizations are in financial trouble. What they don’t understand is that the indiscriminate budget cuts are only hastening their own demise. You know what? You need good reporters and editors. You just do.

Many of you are embarking on new ventures, on new forms of digital and online journalism as traditional outlets start to disappear. Some of you are launching these ventures on your own. We have Knight News Challenges and we have startups and we have incredible energy from those just embarking on their careers. That’s all to the good. It’s us – the journalists – who carry with us the knowledge and the integrity that money simply cannot buy. We carry on because we know the power of questioning authority, questioning those even that we agree with – and giving those with whom we disagree a fair airing of their views. The talking heads on television and radio don’t and can’t do that.

It’s the story – in whatever form it takes – that’s king. It’s the truth that we seek. As we move forward, we won’t have the old support system around us, the older, wiser editors who have seen ’em come and seen ’em go. We won’t have the structure that has carried us forward all these years. It’s breaking down, and it’s not our fault.

I couldn’t be more encouraged by the energy and the values of young journalists. But I’m also encouraged by others – those, like me, who are certified vanishing journalists who are still around, still available to help, still thinking that there’s good work to be done.

We still know a few things. We know about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. We know the value of explaining a society to itself without fear or favor. Those are values we can’t afford to lose. Dean Singleton can try to take it all away so he can make up for his poor business decisions and cover his huge debt. We can’t let him.

Again. I accept this award on behalf of all the great journalists I’ve known and learned from. It’s truly an honor to be the one accepting on their behalf, and I thank you very much.

The American imagination

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> amanda@sfbg.com

REVIEW If you’re one of the 200,000 San Franciscans who voted for Barack Obama, maybe you’re staring at that map of red and blue states wondering, "How could 56 million people vote for John McCain? Why is there still this incredible swath of crimson belting our country?"

Similar questions have been burning in the minds of liberals since the 2000 election. In 2005, San Francisco resident Rose Aguilar turned them into a quest: "One night, after spending several hours online, sending articles to friends who were probably sick of me barraging them with e-mails and practically falling over political books and magazines I had yet to open, I realized it was time to leave my comfort zone. I needed to turn off my computer and get out into the streets to find out why people vote the way they do and find out if we’re as divided as we’re led to believe."

Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey into the Heartland (PoliPoint Press, 221 pages, $15.95) is the result of Aguilar’s six-month road trip through reliably red states to ask people why they identify with one party over another, or vote for certain candidates, or don’t vote at all.

Aguilar, the host of Your Call, a public interest radio show on KALW, kept her mic keyed up and conducted hundreds of interviews as she and her boyfriend, Ryan, traveled by van through Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Montana. Some of these talks are with the hotel employees and restaurant owners one might typically encounter on a cross-country road trip. But Aguilar and her partner also venture to places they wouldn’t normally go — places that are mainstays in the lives of many Americans. Malls and churches provide the setting for much of the narrative, but the duo also attend their first gun show, chill out at a water park, and take in a bull-riding event. Nearly every experience is charged with politics — even at Oklahoma’s Bullnanza, Aguilar discovers riders who are heavily sponsored by the US Army.

Aguilar’s easy prose style, no doubt fine-tuned by her daily radio conversations, makes this part-travelogue, part-political inquiry a quick read, with a fine balance of visual observation, first-person anecdote (she outlines the challenges of roadside dining when you’re a vegan), and political fine-tuning. Aguilar discovers that most people like to talk about politics, but feel they shouldn’t. In Kerrville, Texas, she meets two closet Democrats, one who is a registered Republican because there are never any Democrats on the local ballot.

The phenomenon of closeted politics recurs as Aguilar travels deep into red state territory. She also criticizes the media for failing to adequately portray America’s nuances. "We breathe the same air, we live under the same political system, we’ve probably seen the same television and news shows, and most of us grew up going to public schools," she writes. "Yet because we might vote differently once every four years, we find ourselves stereotyped in the national media and separated by red and blue borders."

While exposing the impact of political peer pressure, Aguilar also encounters jarring social inconsistencies — billboard advertisements for strip clubs compete with signs for mega-churches throughout Dallas. With an awareness of such juxtapositions, she seeks a deeper truth in her talks with gay conservative environmentalists in Montana, Republican funders of local Planned Parenthood chapters, and a pro-war Texas vegan. Their tales make her book an important piece of evidence on America’s political complexity. Red Highways uncovers a country full of fierce individuals prone to herd mentality.

Aguilar finds islands of unquestionable compassion. Speaking with churchgoer Bob Bartlett after a service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian church in Austin, she asks him: ‘I noticed that this is a progressive church. What does that mean exactly?‘

‘It means we’re open to everybody’s thoughts and we’re open to everyone, no matter what your nationality is or what your religion is or what your sex is. We like all of it.’

"CNN or MSNBC should send a reporter here to challenge stereotypes by doing a segment about religious Republicans who attend progressive churches in conservative-leaning states. This one wasn’t hard to find. There must be others," she concludes.

In a Sept. 29, New Yorker article revisiting Lionel Trilling’s The Liberal Imagination, a collection of essays written more than 50 years ago, Louis Menand wrote, "A key perception in The Liberal Imagination is that most human beings are not ideologues. Intellectual coherence is not a notable feature of their politics. People’s political opinions may be rigid; they are not necessarily rigorous. They tend to float up out of some mixture of sentiment, custom, moral aspiration, and aesthetic pleasingness."

Menand goes on to point out that such assumptions need critical attention. Perhaps now, as the country decompresses from two years of campaigning that resulted in the election of the first black president to lead this diverse, complex, and deeply wounded populace, as people who voted Republican are already speaking about their pride in this historic moment, and as political commentators are already talking about the "purpleness" of the country and blurring of hard lines between states and political stances, writers and reporters like Aguilar will start to look more closely at who we really are. Red Highways deserves a place in the library of modern political Americana.

Why we waited — too long

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OPINION The California Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in May finally allowed same-sex couples their constitutional rights to marry. This was justice for the 4,000 same-sex couples issued marriage licenses in San Francisco from Feb. 12 to March 11, 2004. We were lucky to be one of those couples — but within five months the courts had voided all 4,000 licenses. I marched with hundreds to City Hall that day and angrily waved my nullified marriage license in the air. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon provided a balm, saying with a laugh, "Oh well, guess we have to go back to living in sin."

Over the past four years, we’ve continued to wear our rings and celebrate our wedding anniversary. When the County Clerk’s office offered us a refund for our marriage license, we requested the refund go toward the city’s legal battle over same-sex marriage. It appeared that San Francisco had won that battle on May 20, 2008.

But we decided not to remarry until after the November election, when we would know if California agreed with the state Supreme Court. Attorney General Jerry Brown assured us that these wedding licenses could not be voided, but the memory of seeing couples in tears on March 12, 2004, when we had just been married the day before, was reason enough to wait.

In our hearts, we knew that Proposition 8 was likely to pass; since 1980 we have witnessed California consistently shoot itself in the foot by voting for petition-driven propositions.

In the past three months, one of us has devoted nearly 60 hours in an effort to defeat Prop. 8. The irony is that back in January, Troy was precinct captain for Obama in the California primary. He most likely talked to a good portion of voters out in the Sunset District who voted in favor of Prop. 8. And while the Mormon Church funded most of the Yes on 8 campaign, it is now clear that their message got through to many of California’s minorities, who turned out in record numbers to vote for Barack Obama. The No on 8 campaign should have targeted those communities; instead it only showed white people in its television ads. Now we are the ones with a dream deferred.

Marriage was not something we always believed in. When you’re used to outsider status, sometimes you learn to roll with the injustices perpetrated upon you. When Mayor Gavin Newsom and the city offered us a taste of it back in 2004, it didn’t take much to realize how much we were missing. The marriage itself was one of the best days of our lives, and having it voided was a very, very bitter feeling I won’t soon forget.

To those of you so motivated to vote for Prop. 8, we can simply tell you this: in a world of massive problems, of great economic and environmental woes we are only now beginning to feel acutely, can we bring it upon ourselves to actually join together with all of our brothers and sisters and confront all hatred with an idea of a greater social good? Can we imagine a world where our children aren’t judged by the gender of the ones they love, but by the content of their character?

Yes we can.

Victor Krummenacher is a musician and contributing designer for Wired magazine. Troy Gaspard is a surly activist and frugal trader.

The people’s election

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› news@sfbg.com

By midnight Nov. 4, the drama was long over: John McCain had conceded, Barack Obama had delivered his moving victory speech — declaring that “change has come to America” — and the long national nightmare of the Bush years was officially headed for the history books.

But in San Francisco, the party was just getting started.

Outside of Kilowatt, on 16th Street near Guerrero, the crowd of celebrants was dancing to the sounds of a street drummer. In the Castro District, a huge crowd was cheering and chanting Obama’s name. And on Valencia and 19th streets, a spontaneous outpouring of energy filled the intersection. Two police officers stood by watching, and when a reporter asked one if he was planning to try to shut down the celebration and clear the streets, he smiled. “Not now,” he said. “Not now.”

Then, out of nowhere, the crowd began to sing: O say can you see /By the dawn’s early light …

It was a stunning moment, as dramatic as anything we’ve seen in this city in years. In perhaps the most liberal, counterculture section of the nation’s most liberal, counterculture city, young people by the hundreds were proudly singing The Star Spangled Banner. “For the first time in my life,” one crooner announced, “I feel proud to be an American.”

Take that, Fox News. Take that Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and the rest of the right-wing bigots who have tried to claim this country for themselves. On Nov. 4, 2008, progressives showed the world that we’re real Americans, too, proud of a country that has learned from its mistakes and corrected its course.

President Obama will let us down soon enough; he almost has to. The task at hand is so daunting, and our collective hopes are so high, that it’s hard to see how anyone could succeed without a few mistakes. In fact, Obama already admitted he won’t be “a perfect president.” And when you get past the rhetoric and the rock star excitement, he’s taken some pretty conservative positions on many of the big issues, from promoting “clean coal” and nuclear power to escautf8g the war in Afghanistan.

But make no mistake about it: electing Barack Obama was a progressive victory. Although he never followed the entire progressive line in his policy positions, he was, and is, the creature of a strong progressive movement that can rightly claim him as its standard-bearer. He was the candidate backed from the beginning by progressives like Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi (a Green). And only after his improbable nomination did moderates like Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sen. Dianne Feinstein jump on the bandwagon.

From the start, the young, activist, left wing of the Democratic Party was the driving force behind the Obama revolution. And while he has always talked to the Washington bigwigs — and will populate his administration with many of them — he would never have won without the rest of us. And that’s a fact of political life it will be hard for him to ignore, particularly if we don’t let him forget it.

For a few generations of Americans — everyone who turned 18 after 1964 — this was the first presidential election we’ve been able to get truly excited about. It was also the first presidential election that was won, to a significant extent, on the Internet, where progressive sites like dailykos.com raised millions of dollars, generated a small army of ground troops, and drove turnout in both the primaries and the general election. The movement that was built behind Obama can become a profound and powerful force in American politics.

So this was, by any reasonable measure, the People’s Election. And now it’s the job of the people to keep that hope — and that movement — alive, even when its standard-bearer doesn’t always live up to our dreams.

The evidence that this was the People’s Election wasn’t just at the national level. It showed up in the results of the San Francisco elections as well.

This was the election that would demonstrate, for the first time since the return of district elections, whether a concerted, well-funded downtown campaign could trump a progressive grassroots organizing effort. Sure, in 2000, downtown and then-Mayor Willie Brown had their candidates, and the progressives beat them in nearly every race. But that was a time when the mayor’s popularity was in the tank, and San Franciscans of all political stripes were furious at the corruption in City Hall.

“In 2000, I think a third of the votes that the left got came from Republicans,” GOP consultant Chris Bowman, who was only partially joking, told us on election night.

This time around, with the class of 2000 termed out, a popular mayor in office and poll numbers and conventional wisdom both arguing that San Franciscans weren’t happy with the current Board of Supervisors (particularly with some of its members, most notably Chris Daly), many observers believed that a powerful big-money campaign backing some likable supervisorial candidates (with little political baggage) could dislodge the progressive majority.

As late as the week before the election, polls showed that the three swings districts — 1, 3, and 11 — were too close to call, and that in District 1, Chamber of Commerce executive Sue Lee could be heading for a victory over progressive school board member Eric Mar.

And boy, did downtown try. The big business leaders, through groups including the Committee on Jobs, the Chamber, the Association of Realtors, Plan C, the newly-formed Coalition for Responsible Growth, and the Building Owners and Managers Association, poured more than $630,000 into independent expenditures smearing progressive candidates and promoting the downtown choices. Newsom campaigned with Joe Alioto, Jr. in District 3 and Ahsha Safai in District 11. Television ads sought to link Mar, John Avalos, and David Chiu with Daly.

Although the supervisors have no role in running the schools, the Republicans and downtown pushed hard to use a measure aimed at restoring JROTC to the city’s high schools as a wedge against the progressives in the three swing districts. They also went to great lengths — even misstating the candidates’ positions — to tar Mar, Chiu, and Avalos with supporting the legalization of prostitution.

And it didn’t work.

When the votes were counted election night, it became clear that two of the three progressives — Avalos and Chiu — were headed for decisive victories. And Mar was far enough ahead that it appeared he would emerge on top.

How did that happen? Old-fashioned shoe leather. The three campaigns worked the streets hard, knocking on doors, distributing literature, and phone banking.

“I’ve been feeling pretty confident for a week,” Avalos told us election night, noting his campaign’s strong field operation. As he knocked on doors, Avalos came to understand that downtown’s attacks were ineffective: “No one bought their horseshit.”

A few weeks earlier, he hadn’t been so confident. Avalos said that Safai ran a strong, well-funded campaign and personally knocked on lots of doors in the district. But ultimately, Avalos was the candidate with the deepest roots in the district and the longest history of progressive political activism.

“This is really about our neighborhood,” Avalos told us at his election night party at Club Bottom’s Up in the Excelsior District. “It was the people in this room that really turned it around.”

The San Francisco Labor Council and the tenants’ movement also put dozens of organizers on the ground, stepping up particularly strongly as the seemingly coordinated downtown attacks persisted. “It was, quite literally, money against people, and the people won,” Labor Council director Tim Paulson told us.

Robert Haaland, a staffer with the Service Employees International Union and one of the architects of the campaign, put it more colorfully: “We ran the fucking table,” he told us election night. “It’s amazing — we were up against the biggest downtown blitz since district elections.”

The evidence suggests that this election was no anomaly: the progressive movement has taken firm hold in San Francisco, despite the tendency of the old power-brokers — from Newsom to downtown to both of the city’s corporate-owned daily newspapers — to try to marginalize it.

Political analyst David Latterman of Fall Line Analytics began the Nov. 5 presentation at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association election wrap-up by displaying an ideologically-coded map of San Francisco, drawing off of data from the Progressive Voter Index that he developed with San Francisco State University political science professor Rich de Leon. The PVI is based on how San Francisco residents in different parts of the city vote on bellwether candidates and ballot measures.

“Several of the districts in San Francisco discernibly moved to the left over the last four to eight years,” Latterman told the large crowd, which was made up of many of San Francisco’s top political professionals.

The two supervisorial districts that have moved most strongly toward the progressive column in recent years were Districts 1 (the Richmond) and 11 (the Excelsior), which just happened to be two of the three swing districts (the other being District 3–North Beach and Chinatown) that were to decide the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors this election.

Latterman said Districts “1, 3, and 11 went straight progressive, and that’s just the way it is.”

In fact, in many ways, he said this was a status-quo election, with San Francisco validating the progressive-leaning board. “A lot of people in the city didn’t see it as a chance for a drastic change citywide.”

In other words, keeping progressives in City Hall has become a mainstream choice. Whatever downtown’s propaganda tried to say, most San Franciscans are happy with a district-elected board that has brought the city a living-wage law and moved it a step toward universal health insurance.

The fate of the local ballot measures was another indication that Newsom, popular as he might be, has little ability to convince the voters to accept his policy agenda.

Voters rejected efforts by Newsom to consolidate his power, rejecting his supervisorial candidates, his Community Justice Center (as presented in Measure L), and his proposed takeover of the Transportation Authority (soundly defeating Proposition P) while approving measures he opposed, including Propositions M (protecting tenants from harassment) and T (Daly’s guarantee of substance abuse treatment on demand).

Asked about it at a post-election press conference, Newsom tried to put a positive spin on the night. “Prop. A won, and I spent three years of my life on it,” he said. “Prop B. was defeated. Prop. O, I put on the ballot. I think it’s pretty small when you look at the totality of the ballot.” He pointed out that his two appointees — Carmen Chu in District 4 and Sean Elsbernd in District 7 — won handily but made no mention of his support for losing candidates Lee, Alicia Wang, Alioto, Claudine Cheng, and Safai.

“You’ve chosen two as opposed to the totality,” Newsom said of Props. L and P. “Prop. K needed to be defeated. Prop. B needed to be defeated.”

Yet Newsom personally did as little to defeat those measures as he did to support the measures he tried to claim credit for: Measures A (the General Hospital rebuild bond, which everyone supported) and revenue-producing Measures N, O, and Q. In fact, many labor and progressives leaders privately grumbled about Newsom’s absence during the campaign.

Prop. K, which would have decriminalized prostitution, was placed on the ballot by a libertarian-led signature gathering effort, not by the progressive movement. And Prop. B, the affordable housing set-aside measure sponsored by Daly, was only narrowly defeated — after a last-minute attack funded by the landlords.

All three revenue-producing measures won by wide margins. Prop. Q, the payroll tax measure, passed by one of the widest margins — 67-33.

Latterman and Alex Clemens, owner of Barbary Coast Consulting and the SF Usual Suspects Web site, were asked whether downtown might seek to repeal district elections, and both said it didn’t really matter because people seem to support the system. “I can’t imagine, short of a tragedy, district elections going anywhere,” Latterman said.

Clemens said that while downtown’s polling showed that people largely disapprove of the Board of Supervisors — just as they do most legislative bodies — people generally like their district supervisor (a reality supported by the fact that all the incumbents were reelected by sizable margins).

“It ain’t a Board of Supervisors, it is 11 supervisors,” Clemens said, noting how informed and sophisticated the San Francisco electorate is compared to many other cities. “When you try to do a broad-based attack, you frequently end up on the wrong end (of the election outcome).”

We had a bittersweet feeling watching the scene in the Castro on election night. While thousands swarmed into the streets to celebrate Obama’s election, there was no avoiding the fact that the civil-rights movement that has such deep roots in that neighborhood was facing a serious setback.

The Castro was where the late Sup. Harvey Milk started his ground-breaking campaign to stop the anti-gay Briggs Initiative in 1978. Defying the advice of the leaders of the Democratic Party, Milk took on Briggs directly, debating him all over the state and arguing against the measure that would have barred gay and lesbian people from teaching in California’s public schools.

The defeat of the Briggs Initiative was a turning point for the queer movement — and the defeat of Prop. 8, which seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage, should have been another. Just as California was the most epic battle in a nationwide campaign by right-wing bigots 30 years ago, anti-gay marriage measures have been on the ballot all over America. And if California could have rejected that tide, it might have taken the wind out of the effort.

But that wasn’t to be. Although pre-election polls showed Prop. 8 narrowly losing, it was clear by the end of election night that it was headed for victory.

Part of the reason: two religious groups, the Catholics and the Mormons, raised and spent some $25 million to pass the measure. Church-based groups mobilized a reported 100,000 grassroots volunteers to knock on doors throughout California. Yes on 8 volunteers were as visible in cities throughout California as the No on 8 volunteers were on the streets of San Francisco, presenting a popular front that the No on 8 campaign’s $35 million in spending just couldn’t counter — particularly with so many progressive activists, who otherwise would have been walking precincts to defeat Prop. 8, fanned out across the country campaigning for Obama.

“While we knew the odds for success were not with us, we believed Californians could be the first in the nation to defeat the injustice of discriminatory measures like Proposition 8,” a statement on the No on Prop. 8 Web site said. “And while victory is not ours this day, we know that because of the work done here, freedom, fairness, and equality will be ours someday. Just look at how far we have come in a few decades.”

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, joined by Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and Santa Clara County Counsel Ann C. Raven, filed a legal challenge to Prop. 8, arguing that a ballot initiative can’t be used to take away fundamental constitutional rights.

“Such a sweeping redefinition of equal protection would require a constitutional revision rather than a mere amendment,” the petition argued.

“The issue before the court today is of far greater consequence than marriage equality alone,” Herrera said. “Equal protection of the laws is not merely the cornerstone of the California Constitution, it is what separates constitutional democracy from mob rule tyranny. If allowed to stand, Prop. 8 so devastates the principle of equal protection that it endangers the fundamental rights of any potential electoral minority — even for protected classes based on race, religion, national origin, and gender.”

That may succeed. In fact, the state Supreme Court made quite clear in its analysis legalizing same-sex marriage that this was a matter of fundamental rights: “Although defendants maintain that this court has an obligation to defer to the statutory definition of marriage contained in [state law] because that statute — having been adopted through the initiative process — represents the expression of the ‘people’s will,’ this argument fails to take into account the very basic point that the provisions of the California Constitution itself constitute the ultimate expression of the people’s will, and that the fundamental rights embodied within that Constitution for the protection of all persons represent restraints that the people themselves have imposed upon the statutory enactments that may be adopted either by their elected representatives or by the voters through the initiative process.

As the United States Supreme Court explained in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943) 319 U.S. 624, 638: ‘The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.'”

As Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin told the Guardian later that week: “Luckily, we have an independent judiciary, because the voters of California have mistakenly taken away a class of civil rights.”

But if that legal case fails, this will probably wind up on the state ballot again. And the next campaign will have to be different.

There already have been many discussions about what the No on 8 campaign did wrong and right, but it’s clear that the queer movement needs to reach out to African Americans, particularly black churches. African Americans voted heavily in favor of Prop. 8, and ministers in many congregations preached in favor of the measure.

But there are plenty of black religious leaders who took the other side. In San Francisco the Rev. Amos Brown, who leads the Third Baptist Church, one of the city’s largest African American congregations, spoke powerfully from the pulpit about the connections between the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the fight for same-sex marriage.

The next time this is on the ballot, progressive and queer leaders will need to build a more broad-based movement. That is not only possible, but almost inevitable.

The good news — and it’s very good news — is that (as Newsom famously proclaimed) same-sex marriage is coming, whether opponents like it or not. That’s because the demographics can’t be denied: the vast majority of voters under 30 support same-sex marriage. This train is going in only one direction, and the last remaining issue is how, and when, to make the next political move.

The progressives didn’t win everything in San Francisco. Proposition H, the Clean Energy Act, was taken down by one of the most high-priced and misleading campaigns in the city’s history. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. spent more than $10 million telling lies about Prop. H, and with the daily newspapers virtually ignoring the measure and never challenging the utility’s claims, the measure went down.

“This was a big, big, big money race,” Latterman said. “In San Francisco, you spend $10 million and you’re going to beat just about anything.”

But activists aren’t giving up on pushing the city in the direction of more renewable energy (see Editorial).

Latterman said the narrow passage of Prop. V, which asked the school board to consider reinstating JROTC, wasn’t really a victory. “I would not call this a mandate. I worked with the campaign, and they weren’t looking for 53 percent. They were looking for 60-plus percent,” Latterman said. “I think you’ll see this issue just go away.”

Neither Latterman nor Clemens would speculate on who the next president of the Board of Supervisors will be, noting that there are just too many variables and options, including the possibility that a newly elected supervisor could seek that position.

At this point the obvious front-runner is Ross Mirkarimi, who not only won re-election but received more votes than any other candidate in any district. Based on results at press time, more than 23,000 people voted for Mirkarimi; Sean Elsbernd, who also had two opponents, received only about 19,000.

Mirkarimi worked hard to get Avalos, Chiu, and Mar elected, sending his own volunteers off to those districts. And with four new progressives elected to the board, joining Mirkarimi and veteran progressive Chris Daly, the progressives ought to retain the top job.

Daly tells us he won’t be a candidate — but he and Mirkarimi are not exactly close, and Daly will probably back someone else — possibly one of the newly elected supervisors.

“It’s going to be the most fascinating election that none of us will participate in,” Clemens said.

The danger, of course, is that the progressives will be unable to agree on a candidate — and a more moderate supervisor will wind up controlling committee appointments and the board agenda.

One of the most important elements of this election — and one that isn’t being discussed much — is the passage of three revenue-generating measures. Voters easily approved a higher real-estate transfer tax and a measure that closed a loophole allowing law firms and other partnerships to avoid the payroll tax. Progressives have tried to raise the transfer tax several times in the past, and have lost hard-fought campaigns.

That may mean that the anti-tax sentiment in the city has been eclipsed by the reality of the city’s devastating budget problems. And while Newsom didn’t do much to push the new tax measures, they will make his life much easier: the cuts the city will face won’t be as deep thanks to the additional $50 million or so in revenue.

It will still be a tough year for the new board. The mayor will push for cuts that the unions who supported the newly elected progressives will resist. A pivotal battle over the city’s future — the eastern neighborhoods rezoning plan — will come before the new board in the spring, when the recent arrivals will barely have had time to move into their offices.

Obama, of course, will face an even tougher spring. But progressives can at least face the future knowing that not only could it have been a lot worse; for once things might be about to get much better.

Amanda Witherell and Sarah Phelan contributed to this report.

Memo to the Chronicle’s Matier & Ross

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Did you censor your PG&E story? Did your editors censor you? Did Hearst corporate censor you? Why is the Chronicle/Hearst so scared of PG&E?

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Memo to: Andy Ross of the Matier and Ross of the Chronicle’s local political column

From: B3

Re: Andy’s naming of the Guardian and me as the big losers in the last election

I see that Andy named the Guardian and me the big losers on the City Desk television show (6/11/08) in the Nov. 4 election because of the loss of the Clean Energy Act (Prop H) to PG&E. We were, he said in his election recap, “tilting at windmills” to go up against PG&E and seemingly ready to continue on “tilting at windmills?”

We appreciate the plug. And we’re sorry that we can’t live up to the standards of PG&E and Hearst. We’ll work on it. (Perhaps my recent blogs on how Hearst has for decades worked in lockstep with PG&E to black out or marginalize the PG&E/Raker Act scandal will explain our problem.)

In the meantime, I do have some questions for you and Phil. Why, if the H citizens forced PG&E to spend more than $l0 million on its Big Lie campaign, the largest in San Francisco history, and the campaign got more than 40 per cent of the vote with very little money, and the Guardian and I are such big losers, isn’t the H story a big story? And if it is a big story, why did you not run anything in your column about the campaign or the underlying PG&E/Raker Act scandal? Did you censor your own copy? Did your editors censor you? Did Hearst corporate censor you?
Who over there at the Chronicle/Hearst is so scared of PG&E? Why?

More: can you tell me specifically why you didn’t bother to correct any of the PG&E lies? And, specifically, just what it is that you find so frightening about clean energy and public power?

Let me add a critical point: even the smarter PG&E officials and campaign people admit privately that the H campaign had good arguments and that it is now just a matter of time before PG&E starts losing, sooner or later. And I think sooner rather than later.

I emailed a version of the above memo to Matier and Ross the day after the City Desk show. They did not respond by blog time late Monday afternoon. I will try again with this blog. B3

Click here to read previous blog, Extra! Hearst tries to bury the clean energy act

Yee and Fewer enthused about elections

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By Alex Jacobs

Norman Yee and Sandra Fewer’s campaign party kicked off with a bang as Barack Obama was announced the President Elect at 8pm. Displayed on an enormous flat screen television, the news was met with wild applause and jubilant cheers. Both schoolboard candidates were ecstatic about the Obama victory.
“It’s so exciting,” said Sandra Lee Fewer.
Fewer told the Guardian that running in this historic election was a wonderful experience.
“I am very hopeful for this country, for this city, and hopeful that there will be change,” said Fewer.

Backroom brokers

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s not the invisible hand of Adam Smith tossing hate mail on your doorstep this fall like ugly confetti. It isn’t a distinct and independent group of candidates and civic organizations that just happen to be saying the same things, either. There is a carefully orchestrated campaign going on to undermine the progressive agenda, block affordable housing and clean energy, and give Mayor Gavin Newsom a majority on the Board of Supervisors.

It’s well funded; it’s serious; it’s based on lies — and it’s a threat to rent control, sustainable environmental policies, universal health care, the city’s living wage law, and the rest of the accomplishments and goals of the progressive majority on the board.

If that sounds overblown, listen to what the organizers of this campaign are saying themselves.

On Aug. 15, after progressives took control of the Democratic County Central Committee and installed Sup. Aaron Peskin as chair, John Keogan, the head of a year-old organization called the San Francisco Coalition for Responsible Growth, a pro-downtown group founded to counter the progressive movement, announced his intentions in a letter to allies.

"CRG are [sic] preparing for an all-out attack with other like-minded groups and now is our time to stand-up [sic] and be counted," Keogan wrote. He asked members to support "taking SF on a sharp turn to the right."

Those "other like-minded groups," according to campaign finance reports, are a Who’s Who list of downtown-based organizations that have consistently fought to roll back tenant protections and slash government spending on social services: the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Committee on Jobs, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the Association of Realtors, the Chamber of Commerce, Plan C, and the Police Officers Association.

By law, political candidates can only raise and spend limited amounts of money. But organizations like BOMA, the Realtors, and Plan C can put as much cash as they want into supporting and opposing candidates — as long as the efforts are "independent."

But the orchestration of the attacks on supervisorial candidates Eric Mar, John Avalos, and David Chiu, and the support for their conservative rivals, Sue Lee, Ahsha Safai, and Joe Alioto, is so sophisticated it’s impossible to believe that these groups and candidates aren’t working together.

Between Sept. 9 and Oct. 20, public records show, the groups spent a combined $363,754 ($178,177 in District 1, $104,308 in D3, and $81,269 in D11) on independent expenditures attacking Avalos, Mar, and Chiu and supporting their opponents. They also spent $20,000 supporting Eva Royale in her long shot race for the solidly progressive District 9 seat.

The landlords and downtown aren’t the only ones organizing. All that spending, and the threat of even more to come considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars these downtown groups still have in the bank, has served to unite tenant and labor groups in ways unseen in previous San Francisco elections.

"There’s an unprecedented coalition between tenants and labor," labor activist Robert Haaland told us. "We’re working together to defeat the landlord candidates, who are also anti-labor."

"We have a tremendous fear that the spending and progress on health care and social services will be rolled back," Tim Paulson, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, told us. "Anything less than our candidates [being elected in each of the three swing districts] will pose a real danger to the movement."

NEWSOM’S SLATE


One of the central players in this attempt to take the city away from the progressives and hand it over to downtown is Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is actively supporting Alioto, Lee, and Safai.

Eric Jaye, the mayor’s chief political advisor, has no formal role in the three district campaigns, but Newsom rarely makes a move in local politics without consulting Jaye. In fact, when reporters call the mayor’s press office to ask for comments on local candidates and initiatives, they are typically referred to the private consultant.

Jaye told us he’s talked to all of Newsom’s candidates. "I told them to run on district issues," he said.

The mayor and the latest member of the Alioto clan to seek office (Joe’s sister, Michela, is already on the board) have walked precincts together. And Newsom is so involved with the downtown effort he’s skipping a major Democratic Party gala (where he was slated to get an award) to spend time instead with the Republican-led Coalition for Responsible Growth (CRG).

Jaye’s main job this fall is running the PG&E campaign against the Clean Energy Act, Proposition H. So far PG&E has spent more than $10 million on the effort, and that number will grow in the final week before the election. Part of that same campaign has been propping up Newsom ally Carmen Chu, who has benefited from thousands of dollars of PG&E spending on her race. Chu’s face is all over PG&E’s No on H fliers.

Another central operator is Alex Tourk, the former Newsom aide who resigned after learning that the mayor had been sexually involved with Tourk’s wife. Tourk is now running the CRG operation.

"They brought me on board to do a volunteer campaign that, yes, they funded, but which seeks to inform voters in a non-partisan fashion where the candidates in D1, 3, and 11 stand on key issues," he said.

That campaign’s goal was to get 10,000 people to mobilize — he called them, using a term popularized by Richard Nixon, the "silent majority."

Tourk maintains that door-hangers the group has been distributing don’t endorse any candidates or push any initiatives. But the messages fit exactly with the overall downtown strategy — they seek to discredit the progressives by linking them with controversial ballot measures such as Proposition V, which would urge the School Board to save the military recruitment program, JROTC.

The supervisors have nothing to do with JROTC, but downtown and the Republican Party are using it as a wedge issue.

CRG is facing some political heat of its own: SF Weekly reported in its Oct. 22 issue that CRG’s recently elected president, engineer Rodrigo Santos, accepted money for professional work from someone who had business before the Building Inspection Commission while he served as commission president. Santos is a Republican, like several key Newsom appointees.

Making matters worse are revelations that Mel Murphy, vice president of the inspection commission and a CRG member, distributed invites in City Hall to an Oct. 17 CRG fundraiser for Safai and Alioto. City officials aren’t supposed to do political work at City Hall.

Alioto’s filings show that on Oct. 17, he received $500 from the firm of Santos and Urrutia’s structural engineer Kelton Finney and $250 from S&U engineer Calvin Hom.

PG&E’S FAKE DEMOCRATIC CLUBS


Political consultants Tom Hsieh Jr. and Jim Ross are involved in the District 1 race (Hsieh also responded to the Guardian on Safai’s behalf) — and are using PG&E and downtown money to support Sue Lee.

Beyond Chron reported Oct. 27 that Hsieh has been sending robocalls in Cantonese to voters saying that Lee is endorsed by the "San Francisco Democratic Party Club." Actually, the Democratic Party endorsed Mar.

What is this new "party club" anyway? Well, the Web site reported, the club started raising money just two weeks ago, and already has collected $30,000 from PG&E, $2,000 from the Chamber of Commerce, $5,000 from GGRA (Golden Gate Restaurant Association), and $70,000 from the Committee on Jobs. Another new club, called the Richmond Reform Democratic Club, is opposing Mar — and has $18,000 from the Committee on Jobs, $5,000 from PG&E, and $2,000 from BOMA.

In television ads paid for by the Realtors, a voiceover tries to link Mar, Avalos, and Chiu to Sup. Chris Daly, whose popularity outside his district is low — although neither Mar nor Chiu has much of a discernable connection to Daly. Avalos was a Daly City Hall aide.

One of the Realtors ads was so utterly inaccurate and deceptive — it claimed Chiu and Avalos support decriminalizing prostitution, when both have publicly opposed the decriminalization ballot measure — that Comcast pulled the ad off the air when Chiu filed a complaint.

Fog City Journal uncovered what appears to be illegal collusion between the police union and Safai. Although candidates are barred from coordinating with groups making independent expenditures on their behalf, POA president Gary Delagnes told FCJ editor Luke Thomas that Safai had given the group a photo of him to use on a mailer, a copyrighted image that Thomas took. Safai denied wrongdoing, but refused to answer further inquiries about the matter.

It’s a pitched battle — labor, the tenants, and the Democratic Party against the landlords, PG&E, downtown interests, and the Republicans. It’s pretty clear which side you want to be on.

Steven T. Jones, Sarah Phelan, and Amanda Witherell contributed to this report.

Action Alert: Public Access in Peril

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0

We’ve been saying for a while now that statewide cable franchising agreements are problematic and now the chickens are coming home to roost. In Los Angeles, Time-Warner Cable is seizing all 14 public access channels, to be replaced by only 4 government-only channels which will leave no public access broadcasting in the nation’s 2nd largest metropolitan area. And here in San Francisco, Access SF is having to fight to retain funding the city is planning to return to the General Fund from the 5% cable franchise fees. SF residents, please put your supes on alert that stripping public access television of franchise fee funding is unacceptable.

Downtown’s dirty tricks

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5

By Steven T. Jones

So everyone knew that downtown financial interests (such as the Committee on Jobs, Chamber of Commerce, Police Officers Association, the Association of Realtors, BOMA, PG&E, etc., not the mention their enablers at the Chronicle and Examiner) would be spending big money this election to try to buy the Board of Supervisors. And we knew they’d fight dirty, particularly in the swing districts of 1, 3, and 11.

But a couple of revelations from the past 24 hours show that the attacks that are filling mailboxes and the airwaves aren’t simply dirty – they’re dishonest, unethical, and perhaps even illegal. The Fog City Journal stumbled onto a great story that appears to show illegal political collusion between Dist. 11 supervisorial candidate Ahsha Safai (the real estate developer candidate of Mayor Gavin Newsom who refused our request for an endorsement interview and won’t return our phone calls) and the POA.

And the Chronicle reports on the complaint that Dist. 3 candidate David Chiu filed with the Ethics Commission after a television ad falsely claimed that he supports legalizing prostitution, despite his consistent opposition to Prop. K, the ballot measure that would do so. The commercial and several mailers also falsely claim that Dist. 11 candidate John Avalos still works for Sup. Chris Daly, who downtown is trying to make the poster child for all that’s wrong with San Francisco.

Of course, PG&E and downtown’s bagman, attorney Jim Sutton, have already been the subject of the biggest fines that the Ethics Commission has ever levied for illegal campaign behavior. So perhaps they’re content to just keep lying now and worry later about paying fines with their seemingly bottomless reservoirs of cash.

Hope blows

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Hope does not spring eternal. It springs for about three years and four months. Just kidding. It springs eternal. For me it does, but I kind of wish it didn’t. My friends who have given up seem happy, and I look at them, laughing the dark laugh and drinking heavily, and I think, I want that. Thus the fascination with self-destructive habits like, yes, drinking, but also self-pity, insomnia, and burning the roof of your mouth on hot pizza.

You probably noticed that Cheap Eats has become a kind of a blues tune, featuring repetition and heartache. I’d love to stay right there, believe me, and close my eyes and just ever-so-slightly sway, real sexy, like buildings, while the harmonica, "brings it home" and the ice in everyone’s glasses melts.

This sounds nice, doesn’t it? Trust me. It does.

However, and this is a terrible attitude, I know: I keep having hope. Which springs eternal, like cockroaches.

But I would like to learn hopelessness, and am thinking about getting a television. That’s Earl Butter’s advice. "Don’t do drugs," he said, over coffee, down at the coffee shop, ’cause I asked. "Do TV."

Yeah! Food Network, I thought. That’s something I’ve heard about. As usual, Earl Butter has his finger on the pulse of — well, on my pulse.

And let’s be clear: I say learn hopelessness instead of be hopeless not because I’m a new age hippie chick, but the opposite. A chicken farmer. As chicken farmers know (from shoveling shit, chopping off heads, and watching the hawks circle) we are all, ultimately, hopeless. It springs eternal too! But it gets overlooked, so you have to learn it.

This week’s dating disaster blues song is too sad and scary to sing, even for me. So let’s cut the one-four-five, shitcan the harmonica player, shoot the piano player, and, pending his mommy’s permission, effectively turn Cheap Eats over to an adorable three-year-old boy named Boink, who loves to cook and hates to eat. I’m seeing a kind of an alternative weekly cooking show, wherein Boink, with the help of his washed-up chicken-farming nanny, invents pesto soup and generally tries to poison his little sister, who eats anything and is just the cutest little sweetie-pie ever to hit the alternative weekly world since Matt Gonzalez circa 10 years ago.

Let’s call it … I know: Cheap Eats! The first episode begins right now, with Boink at the counter doing what he does best: raising dust. Dust is his word for clouds of flour he inspires by 1) sticking his hands in the mixing bowl, 2) bringing them to face level and clapping, and 3) repeating steps one and two. His whole face, eyebrows, hair, clothes … he is coated in "dust."

I am standing nearby, holding Boink’s cute little sister Popeye the Sailor Baby, who is spewing puke all over me. I’m soaked. If her brother and I were to hug right now we would make, between us, a most disgusting batter.

In fact, let’s make it: puke pancakes! I’m disgusted, not because of the state of my nannywear, but because the day before, I am remembering, standing there dripping sickness, Popeye and me shared fresh figs under their back yard fig tree, alternating bites, while Boink tortured the chickens. I give myself 24 hours before I’m puking all over my nanny.

This feels more like a medical certainty than a prediction, but 24 hours later I feel fine. I feel great. Home, and clean, and hopeful, I call my TV-watching friends the Mountains and invite myself over for dinner. They accept! I e-mail the TV-watching couple I wrote about last time, and invite myself over after dinner for late-night meaningless sex. They accept!

In my car I listen to the debate, and begin to feel it. By the time the ribs and chickens come off the grill, I am on the Mountains’ bathroom floor, missing dinner and cell-phoning my couple to cancel them, too. I was off by six hours, but not off. Puke springs eternal.

My new favorite restaurant is Patxi’s, the Chicago pizza place in Hayes Valley. There are a couple other sources for deep-dish pizza in town, but none come as close to the East Bay’s great Zachary’s as this. In fact, um, I think I might like Patxi’s better. Meat slice (and they do sell stuffed slices) had pepperoni, sausage, and jalapeños — genuinely hot ones. Great crust, soccer on TV … *

PATXI’S

Tues.–Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

511 Hayes, SF

(415) 558-9991

Beer & wine

AE/MC/V

Bomb(ers) away: Roller Derby 2.0

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By G. Martinez Cabrera

I can see the Kezar Pavilion from my bedroom window. It isn’t a very attractive building. Its Spanish red tiles, chipped peach paint, and round arched entranceway make it look a little bit like those old stand-alone Taco Bells that were around in the ‘70s. As with a lot of buildings in big cities, you could pass by it a million times and never think about why it exists or why it matters or who it matters to. But like any old gym, long faded dreams of glory are everywhere in Kezar. You just have to know where to look.

This became clear to me after spending some time with members of the San Francisco Bay Bombers. If you’re of a certain age, you might remember the name. In the ‘70s, the Bombers playing at Kezar was an Event with a capital “E”. Roller derby was as big then as any other sport — some say bigger. Coaches and team managers who’ve been around the game for decades are quick to explain that in its heyday, the Bombers would get more television viewers for its games than the A’s, the Raiders, or the 49ers.


From the mouths of babes … and Bombers. Video by Jamie Moore and G. Martinez Cabrera.

$850 billion reasons to vote for Sheehan

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My brother called me this morning a bit upset. He runs a small construction firm in upstate New York and he’s bummed about the bailout bill.

“I think I’m the only company in the United States that isn’t getting something out of this,” he said. “I should be making wooden arrows or importing rum.”

And, indeed, as MSNBC reports, there are lotsa goodies in the bill:

Tucked into pages 262 and 263 of the bill, for example, are provisions that will aid the manufacturers of “certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.” The bill will exempt the arrows from an excise tax of 39 cents. There are also tax breaks for race-track owners, for rum imported from Puerto Rico, for worsted wool makers, Hollywood film and television production companies and on and on.

Cindy Sheehan is having fun with this; she and her pals took to the Hyatt hotel across from the federal reserve with a message:

bailout08a.jpg

The dobro mastery of Jerry Douglas in all its glory on ‘Glide,’ at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

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jerrydouglasglidecd.jpg

JERRY DOUGLAS
Glide
(Koch)

By Todd Lavoie

Universally regarded as the finest dobro player in contemporary music, Jerry Douglas has long been the go-to source for the most evocative of resonator-guitar textures.

Starting off as a session musician back in the ’70s and ’80s – and having worked along the way with everyone from bluegrass pioneers David Grisman and Ricky Skaggs to country artists as varied as Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Trisha Yearwood – Douglas eventually launched a solo career which established him as one of the forerunners of the burgeoning “newgrass” movement. Proponents of the newgrass sound wanted to expand the boundaries of bluegrass by drawing from other traditional acoustic-based styles – particularly jazz – and the drive to rescue the dobro from pigeonholing was certainly understandable, given the perceived limitations many folks had up until that point.

The instrument has been frequently, almost predictably, used in film and television scores to introduce a Southern setting – often rural and run-down in nature – thanks to its ability to fashion moods from its lazy slides between notes. Sure, its “we’ll-get-there-when-we-do” slides and slow finger-pickings easily summon up images of sweltering afternoons under a merciless sun. But the dobro can do so much more – and Douglas has made it his mission to prove exactly that.

Newsom reacts to Yes on 8 ad

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You Tube has already posted this parody of the Yes on 8 ad that features Newsom

By Saadia Malik

Mayor Gavin Newsom yesterday commented on the television ad urging California voters to approve Proposition 8 and reinstate the unconstitutional ban on same sex marriage, telling a small crowd of reporters, “The commercial was weak.”

The ad uses footage of Newsom’s May 15 speech to the jubilant City Hall rally that followed the California Supreme Court ruling that the ban on same sex marriage is unconstitutional. The ad claims that decision could trigger litigation against individuals’ personal beliefs, a move to revoke the churches’ tax-exempt status, and a push to teach children about same-sex marriage in public schools.

“Whether you like it or not,” is the Newsom statement that the Yes on 8 campaign turns into a mantra, associating it with their doomsday predictions about what same sex marriage will bring. At the end of the 30-second ad, the narrator declares, “We don’t have to accept this.”

Newsom sneered when asked about the commercial during an outside press conference at Justin Herman Plaza, saying “I’m not surprised they took comments completely out of context.”

“California will say no to Prop 8,” Newsom said confidently. “This is not a big issue anymore, from my perspective.”

The subtle ebb of Beach House at Swedish American Hall

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beachhouse6.jpg

By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

Beach House’s slow melodies and ethereal lyrics are filled with mysterious, “Holy Moments,” captured in simple couplets, like “Pick apart the past, you’re not going back / So don’t you waste your time,” surrounded by atmospheric, somber, lightly strung-together pearly words that create a tone reminiscent of a short I saw on Friday, Footnotes to a House of Love, directed by Laida Lertxundi, at Artists’ Television Access.

Set in the desert of Southern California, the 16-mm color film is a collection of collaged cuts of empty dilapidated wooden rooms, loosely hanging screen doors, and parallel views of lovers caressing. The chopped scenes fuse together to create a sense of place that is more fulfilling than any individual shot, much like the sentiment that Beach House captures.

This mood is similar to the manner in which Beach House’s meditative melodies wash over their audience, as they did Sunday, Sept. 28, at the Swedish American Music Hall. If you’ve ever felt heartbroken, or any moderate pain at all, you can interpret Beach House’s abstract lyrics filled with mild images – “I’ll pour some tea for us” (“Astronaut”) – stuck somewhere in nostalgia (or maybe in the imagined future), and suit them to fit your own emotional state at the time.

Nefertiti Jones back from the Slow Club!

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7

By Bruce B. Brugmann

I was elbowing my way past the bar last night at a Guardian party at the Elbo Room. Suddenly, an apparition suddenly appeared out of the crowd and declared loudly:

“Why haven’t you put my picture on the front page of the Guardian?”

She was a striking woman, flailing her arms, and it took me a moment to figure out who it was.

She was Nefertiti Jones, the female singer and banjo player I had wrangled with many years ago at the Slow Club on Hampshire Street.

Nefertiti was a waitress and a singer in those days when we had our offices at 520 Hampshire Street. My office was right above the bar of the Slow Club and, when the club had entertainment, I got the full blast upstairs.

In fact, when I was on the phone, people remarked that I must be in a cabaret somewhere.

Finally, I got annoyed and complained to the owner of the club. In no time, the apparition that was Nefertiti came charging into my office, demanding to know why I was trying to shut down her singing career and demanding that I stop making complaints about her.

I took one look at Nefertiti and decided I didn’t want to wrangle with her. But I told her I would stop complaining on one condition: that she would let me know when she was on stage so I could go down and listen to her like a normal Slow Club gentleman. I did, we became good friends, and I was sad when she went off to New York one day.

Well, she was back, in full plumage, bristling with stories about her success as a singer and entrepreneur in New York. And she said she was performing later in the evening at the Hotel Utah.

So I asked Mary Samson, a friend of hers from Slow Club days, to catch the show and write up a review.

NefJones.jpg

Nefertiti Jones Back from the Slow Club!

The very talented Nefertiti Jones was in town last night for a short set at Hotel Utah. An iconic San Francisco pop songstress who worked below the old Bay Guardian building at the Slow Club as a waitress, Nef, as she is known to her fans, frequently played Café DuNord and the Elbo Room.

She was an opening act at the Fillmore before returning back to her hometown of New York City over seven years ago. Nef is in town for a few days and graced the stage at Hotel Utah last night where she brought down the house with familiar songs from her San Francisco days as well as new ones from her recent album. With a raw acoustic version of her regular band, last night’s set featured two guitars and a drummer on Hotel Utah’s intimate stage. Fans went down memory lane when Nef opened her set with “Got my Gun” an older original tune that had fans singing along with every word. She had the audience on its feet with ”Blink”; a beautiful rock song off her album “Life is Perfect” .

Nef had a huge fan base last night, including a crowd of X- Slow Club staff, and many others who have followed her career throughout the years. Someone even shouted to her between songs “MOVE BACK !” Nef currently plays with Jimi Bones, her husband of two years and you can hear her music and read more about her at: http://www.myspace.com/jonesbonesband

Viva Nef-Star!

Besides Nefertiti’s music career, she and her husband Jimi own Jonesbones Productions, a full service music studio and production company. Nef and Jimi have written and recorded songs for many emerging young artists as well as their own album “Life is Perfect”. They are at work on their second album to be released fall of 2008.

Nefertiti is currently creating a music program at the Founding Center, (NYC’s largest and most respected social service agencies) in conjuction with Gibson Guitars. Nef has freelanced as a casting director of the past 5 years in New York and specializes in “real people casting” ; she is gifted at finding the right people in the clubs and on the streets of New York.

Nefertiti also works as an actor and has been featured in five national television commercials.

http://www.jonesbonesproductions.com

Speak, memory

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0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

(1) War demands chronicling as few human endeavors do, with representations spanning from cave drawings to cell phone photographs. German experimental filmmaker Hito Steyerl considers the volatility particular to the filmic war document in her elegant short November (2004), playing in Kino21’s series "How We Fight: Conscripts, Mercenaries, Terrorists, and Peacekeepers" (kicking off Sept. 25 and continuing through October, with the last program screening Nov. 23). Steyerl’s essay-film turns on her reexamination of some spunky "feminist martial arts" footage she shot of her friend Andrea Wolf in light of the woman’s later martyrdom as a Kurdish freedom fighter. Competing renditions of Wolf commingle, each containing elements of documentary and fiction, with the only real truth being Wolf’s sublimation as a "traveling image."

(2) The YouTube hell of the footage captured in Iraq and Afghanistan — as dramatized in Brian de Palma’s angry Redacted (2007) and the damaged fictions of Michael Haneke — was perhaps foreseen by Walter Benjamin in 1936: "The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ." So it is that the crudeness of the digital loops shot by coalition forces and insurgents alike countervails the US military’s computerized advancements. "How We Fight" opens with a compilation of this undigested material: footage from both sides synthesizing an implacable wave of mutilation. Insofar as any war can be said to have a film aesthetic, Iraq’s is that of the surveillance shot — the natural complement of the conflict’s signature weapon, the IED. As if we were watching some perverted version of the Bazinian long take, we observe, in a real time blighted by dirty pixelation and distorting zooms, as a convoy approaches an explosion.

(3) In an expanding field of unprocessed moving images, the documentary increasingly sees its own role shift to that of an interpreter of visual information already at hand. How else to explain all the recent documentaries dedicated to contextualizing id-like streams of footage from the battlefield and newsroom? It remains to be seen which of these works will deliver as lasting an indictment as Winter Soldier (1971), a collectively directed project that counterposes soldiers’ colored 8mm footage from Vietnam with the mauve black-and-white of their testimonies. For "How We Fight," Kino21 screens the rarely seen Interviews with My Lai Veterans (1970), a short film that cuts to the same bone.

(4) The issue of how these films garner testimony is of paramount importance, as evidenced by Errol Morris’ problematic probe of Abu Ghraib’s "bad apples" in Standard Operating Procedure. Exemplary in this regard is Heddy Honigmann’s Crazy (1999). The Dutch filmmaker is a master interviewer who treats her subjects as autonomous beings — Honigmann isn’t afraid to prod, but she’s not after dramatic effect. In Crazy, she stitches together interviews with Dutch veterans of United Nations peacekeeping missions by asking them to share songs they associate with their deployments. The music, which ranges from Cambodian pop to Guns N’ Roses’ take on "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door," opens the channels of memory in unexpected ways and midwifes the guarded soldiers toward reflection and emotion. The passages in which Honigmann holds close-ups of the veterans listening to their songs possess a plaintive mystery unavailable to Morris’s occupied camera.

(5) In the singular, combat films of all kinds often extol the false premises and ideals endemic to war. But taken as a collective enterprise, war documentaries pull back the curtain on the state-sponsored stagecraft and reveal the threads connecting disparate battles. We’re ever reminded that "only the dead have seen the end of war." But if we take Hito Steyerl’s spin through one particular labyrinth of war-scarred images at face value, even they may not be safe.

"HOW WE FIGHT PROGRAM ONE: IRAQI SHORT FILMS"

Thurs/25, 8 p.m., $6

Through Nov. 23

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

www.atasite.org, www.kino21.org

Congratulations, Paul Krugman

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I read the fleeting news break headline on the television monitor at the gym this morning. Paul Krugman, an op ed columnist for the New York Times, on Monday had been awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

The Times story said the prize committee lauded Krugman for “having shown the effects of economies of scale on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity.” And it went on to explain that Krugman had “developed models that explain observed patterns of trade between countries, as well as what goods are produced and why.”

That is all quite appropriate. But I think Krugman deserved this kind of recognition for the superb op ed column he has been doing in the Times since l999. On

Click here to read Paul Krugman’s column from today’s New York Times.

Click here to read the New York Times story on Krugman’s Nobel prize win.

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