Theater

Events listings

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Events listings

Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 11

Food for Thought Participating restaurants in the Mission District, SF; www.missiongraduates.org/foodforthought. All day, free. Enjoy some of what the Mission has to offer while helping to invest in it’s future at this annual dine-out fundraiser for Mission Graduates, a nonprofit that prepares Mission youth for college careers. Participating restaurants will donate 25-100% of your total bill.

THURSDAY 12

From the Hood to the House San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, SF; (415) 674-6117. 7pm, $75-500. A benefit to honor Reverend Cecil Williams’ 45th anniversary at Glide featuring Maya Angelou, Rita Moreno, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows, San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and more.

Sugar Rush 111 Minna, 111 Minna, SF; (415) 626-5470. 7pm, $60. Attend a sweet fundraiser benefiting Spark, a local youth empowerment organization that organizes one-on-one apprenticeships, featuring unlimited dessert-tastings from high end restaurants like Boulevard, Chez Panisse, Range, Humphry Slocombe, and more.

FRIDAY 13

A Country Called Amreeka Arab Cultural and Community Center, 2 Plaza, SF; (415) 664-2200. 7pm, $5-10 suggested donation. Hear Syrian- American civil rights lawyer and author Alia Malek discuss her new book A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories.

Drinking and Dancing The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF; (415) 407-0225. 8pm, free. A sport under recognized, dancing with a drink-in-hand requires coordination with your beverage, your partner, the music, and your liver. Join in the open floor competition followed by a knockout tournament. Stronger drinks awarded more points.

Farming and Food Golden Gate University School of Law, 536 Mission, SF; (415) 442-6636. 9am, $30. Attend this Environmental Law and Policy Conference that takes a look at the role law and policy plays in shaping aspects of food.

Green Festival Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 8th St., SF; 1-800-58-GREEN. Fri. Noon-7pm, Sat. 10am-7pm, Sun. 11am-6pm; $15. Discover the latest in renewable energy and green technology, savor Fair Trade, organic, and natural foods and beverages, and learn how to incorporate sustainability at home at this annual festival that integrates all aspects of environmentalism into one fun and educational event.

Masked Soirée DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF; (415) 626-1409. 9pm, $18. Enjoy a sexy soirée with live music, performances by Burlesque Deviant Nation models, suspension acts, an art auction, and a costume contest with free subscriptions to Deviant Nation magazine.

Young Workers United Station 40, 3030B 16th St., SF; (415) 621-4155. 7pm, free. Buy art, dance, and donate money to benefit Young Workers United, a nonprofit dedicated to improving working conditions of young people and immigrants in low wage, service sector jobs.

SATURDAY 14

Coats for Cubs Buffalo Exchange, 1210 Valencia, SF; 1555 Haight Street, SF; 1-866-235-8255. Starting Nov. 14 through Earth Day on April 22, 2010. Bring your real fur apparel, including trims and accessories, to any Buffalo Exchange store and help provide bedding and comfort to orphans and injured wildlife. Condition of fur is unimportant.

Golden Gala Castro Theater, 429 Castro, SF; (415) 863-0611. 8:15pm, $35. Attend this tribute to Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, appearing live in-person, featuring performances by SF Golden Girls and a "Golden Girls Gone Wild" contest with cash prizes.

Mural Walks Café Venice, 3325 24th St., SF; (415) 285-2287. 11am, $12. Tour over 60 murals in this 10-block walk organized by Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors Center. Other walking tours available, go to www.precitaeyes.org for details.

BAY AREA

A Day at Pixar Pixar Animation Studios, 1200 Park Ave., Emeryville; (415) 227-8666. 11am for VIP and 1pm for Family ; $35-149, advanced tickets required. Experience the world of Pixar films behind the scenes at this fundraiser for San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum. See art, sculptures, and other items from the Pixar archives, get a crash course on how to draw Pixar characters, and watch a selection of Pixar short films. VIP ticket holders can also enjoy special full length movie screenings, discussions with crew and staff, and discounts at the Pixar store.

SUNDAY 15

Outdoor Bootcamp Kezar Stadium Track, Frederick at Stanyan, SF; www.02athletics.com. 7am, free. Get motivated and start moving your ass at this free weekly workout session.

BAY AREA

Fur Ball Fundraiser Hopalong Animal Rescue, 5749 Doyle, Emeryville; (510) 267-1915×103. 1pm, $40. Help support Hopalong Animal Rescue at this fundraiser featuring live music, hors d’oeuvres, wine tasting, a silent auction, and special guest KTVU anchorman Frank Somerville. Hopalong offers rescue, placement, prevention and outreach programs to the community and strives to eliminate the euthanasia of adoptable animals.

MONDAY 16

Amy Goodman First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing, Berk.; 1-800-838-3006. 7pm, $15. Hear investigative journalist, Democracy Now! host, and New York Times best-selling author Amy Goodman discuss her new book, Breaking the Sound Barrier. Event to benefit KPFA radio.

TUESDAY 17

Gardening in Small, Urban Spaces San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin, SF; (415) 557-4500. 6pm, free. Permaculturist Fred Bove takes us beyond the herb garden with a discussion about the possibilities, and produce, that can be coaxed out of tiny spaces for little effort or money.


Goldies Extra: Thrillpeddlers spread devilish joy

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By Cheryl Eddy

thrillpeddlers.jpg
Russell Blackwood as the Empress of Colma in Hypnodrome Head Trips

If you dare! Venture down a dark, spooky stretch of Tenth Street to the Hypnodrome, home of San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers. Before the show even starts, you’ll notice one or two or ten wonderful oddities. Like, what’s that head doing in that box behind the bar? (It’s a “cephalic vivarium,” a prop from a past production, Hypnodrome Head Trips.) What’s the story with that old-timey player piano? (It’s a family heirloom belonging to Thrillpeddlers director Russell Blackwood.) And yikes — is that box seat on the far right decorated to look like a padded cell? (Yes.)

Of course, this instant intrigue is exactly what Blackwood — who founded the company in 1991 with childhood pal Daniel Zilber — wants his audiences to feel. Thrillpeddlers are America’s preeminent producer of plays from the Grand Guignol, the infamous Parisian theater that peddled thrills (if you will) from 1897-1962.

“To get to the Grand Guignol, you would take the Metro to Montemartre, and walk past brothels and the Moulin Rouge, and turn down this dead-end alley to the [theater] at the very end. Going there was a whole experience on its own,” Blackwood explains. “I knew that [the Hypnodrome is] not in the best neighborhood here. But that’s part of the unusual experience, just getting to our theater.”

The company has had the Hypnodrome, which seats 45, for five years. One defining characteristic is the array of “shock boxes” that line the theater’s last row. Blackwood’s father, who is the Thrillpeddler’s set designer, recently redesigned the boxes to incorporate a variety of themes (Egyptian tomb, heaven and hell, the above-mentioned padded cell, etc.) Each box is tricked out with devices designed to lend an extra-sensational experience, with “spandex panels, compressed air, all kinds of glow-in-the-dark things, vibrator pads, and several different buzzers,” Blackwood discloses with devilish joy.

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Still from Thrillpeddlers’ Titus Andronicus, 2006

There’s history involved here, and it goes back further than William Castle. “The Grand Guignol and many other Parisian theaters had private boxes with grillwork fronts, so you could see out, but you had to really look in to see in. The Grand Guignol was the last Parisian theater to still have those in the 1960s,” Blackwood says. “The idea of there being a theater where a housewife could have a midday tryst with a lover was just too charming for me. So all of the boxes have curtains that close, and as long as it’s brighter onstage than it is in the box, we can’t see in, but they can see out. And we have had things go on!”

Beth Wilmurt

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Beth Wilmurt

arts@sfbg.com

Beth Wilmurt’s whole approach to acting is a little unexpected, not unlike the devastatingly unassuming characters she can manifest — most recently, an excellent ensemble turn this year in Marcus Gardley’s This World in a Woman’s Hands at Shotgun Players. Over beers and enchiladas in the Mission District, she even confesses to a certain ambivalence. "Joy Carlin [who directed her this summer in Aurora Theatre’s Jack Goes Boating] just told me the other day, ‘You think like a dramaturge and a director, but not like an actor.’ And I started to realize maybe I’m not as interested in thinking like an actor. It’s not as fun. I like more conceptual things. I like thematic things. Sometimes I don’t even attend to character."

Wilmurt worked regularly in musicals at Concord’s Willows Theatre while still at San Francisco State University, where she and her companion of 18 years, director-playwright Mark Jackson, met as classmates in the drama department. In 1995 she formed Art Street Theatre with Jackson, Kevin Clarke, and Jake Rodriguez, and moved swiftly into bold experimental work, including a radically reinterpreted version of Romeo and Juliet (called R&J), which she called "Shakespeare thrown into a blender." That same spirit and method of blowing apart a classic and reconstituting it from the outside-in powers her memorable "two-minute Hamlet," a tour de force of physical technique and imagination tucked into Jackson’s generally stunning The Death of Meyerhold (2004). It also found an exceptional outlet in 2008’s Yes, Yes to Moscow, a wonderfully deft, insouciant, and absolutely telling deconstruction of Chekhov’s Three Sisters developed by Wilmurt and Jackson in collaboration with German theater artists during a stint at Berlin’s Deutsches Theater.

Can an actor of such versatility and so many successes really be ambivalent about acting? Yes and no. "I’d love to transition into directing, but I see that I am not quite right for directing either," Wilmurt explains. "I’m not a leader; I’m a follower. I’m an ensemble member, yet I have this mind like a director." She readily admits that living with a director may have something to do with this. But it’s clear there’s a more basic inclination at work, an intellectual curiosity and a capacity to forgo ego in the name of collaboration and its subtler satisfactions. It’s this very trait that lends her acting a seamlessness and flexibility — and makes her an artist to watch.

www.artstreettheatre.org/beth

>>GOLDIES 2009: The 21st Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards, honoring the Bay’s best in arts

Thrillpeddlers

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Thrillpeddlers

If you dare! Venture to the Hypnodrome, home of San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers. The company is America’s preeminent producer of plays from the Grand Guignol, the infamous Parisian theater that peddled thrills (if you will) from 1897-1962; the Hypnodrome, which seats 45, has been in operation for five years. The brave can choose to sit in "shock boxes" that line the theater’s back row — each box is tricked out with buzzers and other devices designed to lend an extra-sensational experience. These special seats also add enhancement to a Thrillpeddlers tradition: a blackout "spook show" (three minutes of pitch-black mayhem!) that is part of every performance.

This year marks Thrillpeddlers’ 10th "Shocktoberfest," an evening-length show compiling a few short plays. Typical for the company, the current bill combines an original work, Phantom Limb, with an authentic Guignol relic, 1922’s The Torture Garden.

"The Grand Guignol was the first theater to have an operating room onstage, with an on-stage surgery, or to set plays in insane asylums," director Russell Blackwood explains. "They started their work in the theater of naturalism, so they were going to places that the theater would never deal with prior to that." Naturally, Parisian audiences back in the day lapped up the gore — and so do "Hypnodromers," repeat offenders who see every Thrillpeddlers show six or seven times.

Shocktoberfest 2009 shares marquee space with a newer, non-Grand Guignol Thrillpeddlers endeavor: the "Theater of the Ridiculous Revival." The second annual incarnation features the musical Pearls Over Shanghai, first performed 40 years ago by legendary San Francisco theater troupe the Cockettes. It’s been a huge hit, extended from its summertime run through New Year’s weekend.

Thrillpeddlers is now known worldwide, thanks in part to its Web sites, thrillpeddlers.com and grandguignol.com — resources that have inspired other companies to take up the Grand Guignol. If Blackwood has his way, spines will be tingled in San Francisco and beyond for years to come.

"Spook shows, like Grand Guignol, like Theater of the Ridiculous, are this very, very marginal part of entertainment history. It’s the kind of thing that when I would read about it, I would want to see it, and I couldn’t help but feel like there were other people out there who maybe had heard of it and would want to see what it was like live," Blackwood says, with the satisfaction of someone who’s found what he was looking for.

www.thrillpeddlers.com

www.grandguignol.com

>>GOLDIES 2009: The 21st Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards, honoring the Bay’s best in arts

Nol Simonse

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Nol Simonse

arts@sfbg.com

Nol Simonse has no preconceptions about what he wants in a boyfriend, except one. "He has to be able to cut and color a mohawk," the 36-year-old dancer explains before a rehearsal at Dance Mission Theater. His own have ranged from huge to skull-hugging and have tapped into all the colors of the rainbow.

His hair might be the first thing you notice about the tall, reed-thin, and (currently) blond Simonse. But it’s not what you remember once you’ve seen him on stage, with or without an adorned head. He can melt to the floor and give the impression he’s spilling out of his skin; the next moment, he might be caressing some invisible tendril and reaching for the sun. No wonder he is ubiquitous in San Francisco dance.

Simonse has been dancing for major companies like Janice Garrett and Dancers and Stephen Pelton Dance Theater since 2002. Garrett calls him "an amazingly soulful" artist; Pelton admires him because he is always "fully present within the movement." Simonse was a founding member of Kunst-Stoff, was part of Dandelion Dance Theater’s Undressed Project, and has been dancing with choreographers as different as Sue Roginski, Christy Funsch, Heidi Schweiker, Kara Davis, and Sean Dorsey. Filmmaker Greta Schoenberg shot 2006’s Hopscotch with him. When ACT approached him about working with a group of SF Ballet dancers for their The Tosca Project, his response was "why not?" His appetite for dance is insatiable. Simonse needs a database to track his schedule. Instead he writes himself notes "on little sheets of paper — I don’t do computers."

All this activity is not what Simonse expected when he moved to the Bay Area from Virginia, having dropped out of college because he "couldn’t dance 12 hours a day and party all night." He was living in a Tenderloin hotel when he met Tomi Paasonen, cofounder with Yannis Adoniou of Kunst-Stoff. "I hadn’t been dancing for a while, but Tomi told me all I had to do was shake around and be weird." That gig yielded him his first paying job: "I was a pig — a very big pig."

Shortly after that momentous debut, Simonse met ballet teacher Augusta Moore, who encouraged him to seriously pursue his training. His last piece with Kunst-Stoff was Less Sylphides, Adoniou’s deconstruction of one of the great classical ballets. Simonse hasn’t stopped dancing since. Except — ah, yes — he now also choreographs.

>>GOLDIES 2009: The 21st Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards, honoring the Bay’s best in arts

Monique Jenkinson

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Monique Jenkinson

johnny@sfbg.com

"It takes a village to make a solo," Monique Jenkinson, a.k.a. Fauxnique, quips over drinks at the Lone Palm, before finding a sequin from her blouse in the peanut jar. She would know: equal to Justin Bond’s best endeavors on the stage of Climate Theatre, and complete with a Maria Callas homage as fierce as any by onetime Climate queen Diamanda Galas, her revelatory and inspirational show Faux Real deploys Trannyshack-schooled drag, pro athlete caliber dance, and first-person dialogue to mine diamond truths about the relationship between women and gay men. It’s on a par with the 1990 film version of Sandra Bernhard’s Without You I’m Nothing.

If such references send your fagometer off the charts and you’ve missed Faux Real, for shame, child. But if they mean nothing to you, Jenkinson is must-see because of her technical excellence, ability to create beauty, and rare personable flair for drama. These qualities mark her early collaborations with Kevin Clarke in the evidently Nina-mad duo Hagen and Simone, her 2003 win as Fauxnique at the Miss Trannyshack contest, a performance as her teen idol Edie Sedgwick in a L.A. play, her artistic partnership with longtime love and "music librarian" Marc Kate on SilenceFiction’s song-video "Lipstique," and Faux Real. "I’ll write some, do some movement, see how the writing works with the movement, make some movement around the talking, and figure out the sequencing," says Jenkinson. "I kind of have to move my body to jog my mind."

Does the mind rule the body, or the body rule the mind? I dunno, but from hamstrings to heartstrings, Jenkinson’s viscerally refined explorations of that question thrill. She’s capable of "finding the breath" in a lipsync with thespian precision that would garner Lypsinka’s approval, but she’s also capable of singing "This Charming Man" with a pitch-perfect pent-up fervor. She offers a unique kind of proof that drag queenery isn’t about dick size.

The latest challenge for this "socially conscious aesthete" is Luxury Items, currently at ODC Theater. "I go back to Oscar Wilde a lot, and in his life, he had trouble living within his means," Jenkinson says, discussing its inspiration. "[A recession is] not the time for an ‘Oh my god, shoes!’ piece, and yet it is. I’ve always had to make sacrifices for a beautiful thing. You have to know about sacrifice to know true luxury."

www.fauxnique.net

>>GOLDIES 2009: The 21st Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards, honoring the Bay’s best in arts

Marching on Chevron

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Marching on Chevron

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Although the 250-seat Roxie Theater auditorium was filled to capacity for the Nov. 1 screening of the controversial film “The Yes Men Fix the World,” the real action took place on the city’s streets when audience members took the film’s anticorporate message directly to an oil giant’s door.

Activists from Global Exchange co-organized the San Francisco film premiere to protest alleged human rights abuses and environmental devastation by Chevron Corporation, California’s largest corporation and the fifth largest in the world. The theatrical protest followed the film and ran from 16th Street to a Chevron station at Market and Castro streets.

Antonia Juhasz, director of Global Exchange’s Chevron Program, introduced the film, riling up the crowd when she said, “After viewing this film, we will be so inspired we won’t know what to do with ourselves. But we need to take this energy and direct it toward affecting change.”

The film chronicles the exploits of “Yes Men” Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, following the pair as they perform various publicity stunts in an attempt to illustrate the greed and corruption of the free-market system and draw attention to their progressive causes.

Currently being sued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for recently staging a fake press conference on global warming, the duo have been called world-renowned troublemakers because of antics like announcing live on BBC that the Dow Chemical Company would finally clean up the site of the Bhopal, India, gas leak and compensate the victims.

Although the film does not directly reference Chevron, it aspires to hold corporations accountable for impacts to the communities they operate in. Juhasz said that although Chevron spends billions of dollars on advertising campaigns, it operates with blatant disregard for the environment.

Chevron spends less than 3 percent of its expenditures on alternative energy, operates a coal company, and is among the world’s largest corporate contributors to global warming, she said.

“We want to link communities in the struggle against this corporation, demanding policy changes and building pressure where Chevron operates,” Juhasz said. “By targeting one company, the whole industry is affected and eventually energy policies can be changed.”

The procession was led by protestors dressed as Chevron officials, cleaners, and absurd imaginary products. “Today we are demonstrating what Chevron is actually doing,” said Rae Abileah, grassroots coordinator for CodePink, the antiwar group that participated in the event. “We are just showing what a mockery this all is and that we can rise up as people to transform our world.”

As “I Will Survive” blared from speakers, the procession had a party-like atmosphere that attracted bystanders. Larry Bogad, an associate professor at UC Davis, came up with the concept and told us that “by using surprise, humor, imagination, and protest to engage people, we can stimulate thought and draw a deeper and wider attention to the issue.”

For David Solnit, organizer with the Mobilization for Climate Justice, the unusual nature of the event was exactly what made it so effective. “We are taking a popular film that deals with corporate power and trying to break down the barrier between consuming media and taking action,” he said.

Bichlbaum, one of the film’s stars, attended the protest and spoke about the importance of the grassroots movement. “If I can do it, anyone can … You need your feet and a bunch of friends. That is much more important than a business card.”

Juhasz said the destination for the procession was a symbolic choice. “This is an independently-owned Chevron station. The target is not the station, but a theatrical event to draw attention to the issue in the spirit of theater and fun.”

Although he didn’t attend the event, the station’s owner, David Sahagun, told the Guardian: “Employees told me that the crowd was well behaved and did a good job making their point.” As former president of the San Francisco Small Business Network, he stressed the struggles of locally-owned businesses in the face of large corporations and said he was “trying to be a community partner”

Chevron officials did not return calls seeking comment.

Events listings

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Events listings

Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 4

Cliff House Centennial Cliff House, 1090 Point Lobos, SF; (415) 666-4006. 6:30pm, $175. Celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the third Cliffhouse built in 1909 after the first two buildings were destroyed by fire. Featuring celebrity hosts, music and dancing, history exhibits, and hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. Proceeds to benefit the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Dress in evening or vintage attire.

THURSDAY 5

CulturShock Space Gallery, 1141 Polk, SF; www.culturcosm.com. Shop local at this Bay Area art and fashion showcase featuring local vendors, music by DJ ExtraLars, and full bar service.

FRIDAY 6

Abby Denson Modern Times, 888 Valencia, SF; www.abbycomix.com. 7pm, free. Hear graphic novelist Abby Denson read from her new book Dolltopia and bring your own made-over doll to compete to win a signed copy of the book.

Mission Muralismo deYoung Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.missionmuralismo.com. Attend the kickoff of a yearlong series of programs at the deYoung in partnership with Precita Eyes Muralists called "Street Art San Francisco" inspired by the book Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo, which chronicles the art of the Mission District of San Francisco.

SATURDAY 7

Exploratorium 40th Anniversary Exploratorium, Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon, SF; (415) EXP-LORE. Sat.-Sun. 10am-5pm, free. Enjoy free admission to the Exploratorium all weekend in honor of their 40th. Highlights to include bubble master Tom Noddy, behind-the-scenes floor walks; and an amazing Exploratorium sculpture.

Fabulous Food Festival Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 8th St., SF; (415) 388-7208. Sat.- Sun 10am-5pm, $10. Explore what’s new in food and cooking before the start of this holiday season by sampling from food exhibitors, checking out lectures and cooking demos, and playing with cookware. Great for entertaining and for gifts.

Haight Ashbury Literary Journal All Saints Church, 1350 Waller, SF; (415) 751-9226. 7pm, $10. Help support the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal at this benefit featuring readings from California Poet Laureate Al Young, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Q.R. Hand, and L.J. Moore.

John Hodgman Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 392-4400. 8pm, $20. Join author and humorist Hodgman, best known for his role as Resident Expert on "The Daily Show," in conversation with Merlin Mann. His latest book, More Information Than You Require, revels in a culture saturated with experts of every stripe.

Rock Star Art Party Jellyfish Gallery, 1286 Folsom, SF; (415) 651-4604. 6pm, donations welcome. Attend this art auction to benefit the Ripper Journey Foundation, a fund created in the memory of Tom Kennedy to achieve his dream of sending his art car, "Ripper the Friendly Shark," around the world to promote peace.

Artists Against Violence 111 Minna, SF; (415) 704-5082. 4pm, free. Attend this fundraiser titled, "Independent artists against violence on women" featuring art by August, Betsy Vaca, Cliff Smith, Nina Robinson, and more and raffle drawings for skateboards, headphones, cosmetics, and more.

SUNDAY 8

Amiri Baraka San Francisco Public Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; (415) 557-4277. 1pm, free. See the poet, playwright, essayist, and living legend Amiri Baraka deliver a talk on the first year of the presidency of Barak Obama.

Indie Mart Street Fair Thee Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF; www.indie-mart.com. Noon-6pm, free. Check out some awesome local designers and vintage vendors while enjoying bands, DJs, drinks, and ping pong at this unique outdoor street fair.

Women Scientist Art Workshop Venus Gallery, 627 Cortland, SF; (415) 829-8465. Noon, free. Drop into this hands-on art workshop and create portraits of women scientists while learning about density, solutions, and solutes.

BAY AREA

Dancing with the Queers Veterans Memorial Building, 200 Grand, SF; (510) 763-1343. 11:30am; $15 per class, $52 for series. Learn the Tango or Cha-Cha from national same-sex ballroom champions Zoe Balfour and Citabria Phillips. No experience or partner necessary.

Wonderfest Stanley Hall, UC Berkeley, between Hearst Mining Circle and Gayley Road, Berk; (415) 577-1126. 10am, free. Attend this Bay Area science festival featuring talks like, "Do robots make better astronauts?," "Which stars support intelligent life?," in addition to a science expo with art, books, and gadgets, and more.

TUESDAY 10

Combining Work and Cancer Westin St. Francis, 335 Powell, SF; (866) 541-1972, RSVP recommended. 6:30pm, free. Attend this interactive seminar to learn more about balancing cancer and a career, like the value of working through treatment, your rights in the workplace, and more.

BAY AREA

Israel vs. Utopia Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-1320. 7:30pm, free. This new book written by Israeli American journalist Joel Schalit attempts to define the instability of Israel as a metaphor and America’s troubled love for it. Schalit will discuss the book and other perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


Music listings

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Music listings

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Black Whales, Harbours with Heather Marie Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

Can’t Find a Villain, Custo, Audiodub, Monbon, My Pet Monster Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

Evangelicals, Holiday Shores, Fake Your Own Death Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Grooming the Crow, Vagabondage, T & A El Rio. 8pm, $5.

Housecoat Project, Eva Jay Fortune, Ol’ Cheeky Bastards, Yes Gos Hotel Utah. 8:30pm, $6.

If Your Hands Were Metal That Would Mean Something, Lee Koch, Timmy Curran Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $12.

Lights, Stars of Track and Field, Mick Leonardi Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Little Dragon, Nite Jewel Independent. 9pm, $20.

Pete and J, Allofasudden Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $8-10.

Jimmy Thackery Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $18.

White Rabbits, Local Natives, Glass Ghost Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

BAY AREA

Puscifer, Uncle Scratch’s Gospel Revival Fox Theater. 8pm, $39.50-79.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"B3 Wednesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Colin Brown Band.

Backyard Alchemy: Jesús Diaz, Scott Amendola, Jaz Sawyer Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

"Jazz Mafia Wednesdays" Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10:30pm, $14. With Shotgun Wedding Symphony.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Marcus Shelby Jazz Jam Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Muziki Roberson and the Go Ensemble Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

Trio 3 Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 7:30pm, $35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Country Jam Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Freddie Clarke Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm; $12.

Gaucho, Michael Abraham Jazz Session Amnesia. 8pm, free.

Meklit Hadero El Valenciano, 1153 Valencia, SF; (415) 425-3604. 9pm, $7.

Jason Movrich Blarney Stone, 5625 Geary, SF; (415) 386-9914. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afreaka! Attic, 3336 24th St; souljazz45@gmail.com. 10pm, free. Psychedelic beats from Brazil, Turkey, India, Africa, and across the globe with MAKossa.

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Hump Night Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. The week’s half over – bump it out at Hump Night!

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

Magic Booty Snacks Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 8pm. With Planet Booty, Sweet Snacks, and magician Brad C. Barton.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*"Alternative Tentacles 30th Anniversary Incest-A-Thon" Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $22. With Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, Citizen Fish, Star Fucking Hipsters, and MIA.

Mickey Avalon, Beardo, Ke$ha Slim’s. 9pm, $26.

Blues Control, Hank IV, Celine Dion Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Hanson, Hellogoodbye, Steel Train, Sherwood Regency Ballroom. 6:30pm, $30.

Mat Kearney, Vedera Fillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

Mum, Sin Fang Bous Independent. 8pm, $23.

New American Mob, Inferno of Joy, Disciples, High and Tight Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $8.

Port O’Brien Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Tainted Love Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $15.

Tempo No Tempo, Maus Haus, Man/Miracle Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

White Cloud, Happy Hollows, Grand Lake Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

BAY AREA

Puscifer, Uncle Scratch’s Gospel Revival Fox Theater. 8pm, $39.50-79.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Kenny Brooks Coda. 9pm, $7.

Nick Culp Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Pete Escovedo and the Latin Jazz Orchestra Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26.

Laurent Fourgo Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7:30pm, free.

"Full Moon Concert Series: Mourning Moon" Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF; www.luggagestoregallery.org. 8pm, $6-10. With Andrew Raffo Dewar.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

Kat Parra Jewish Library, 1835 Ellis, SF; (415) 567-3327. 7pm, free.

Mark Robinson Shanghai 1930. 7pm, free.

Esperanza Spalding Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $20-37.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Ashleigh Flynn, Alden, Ruth Gerson, Heather Combs Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Flamenco Thursdays Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30pm; $12.

Greensky Bluegrass Mission Rock. 10pm, $8-10.

Shannon Céilí Band Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Snakeflower II, Becky Lee, Earthmen and Strangers, Ignot Rot Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Those Darn Accordions, Big Lou’s Polka Casserole, Bella Ciao with Tom Torriglia Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, B Lee, and special guest Natural Self spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Holy Thursday Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Bay Area electronic hip hop producers showcase their cutting edge styles monthly.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro. Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest. Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

Solid Club Six. 9pm, $5. With resident DJ Daddy Rolo and rotating DJs Mpenzi, Shortkut, Polo Mo’qz and Fuze spinning roots, reggae, and dancehall.

Studio SF Triple Crown. 9pm, $5. Keeping the Disco vibe alive with authentic 70’s, 80’s, and current disco with DJs White Girl Lust, Ken Vulsion, and Sergio.

FRIDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*"Alternative Tentacles 30th Anniversary Incest-A-Thon" Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $22. With Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, Ludicra, Munly and the Lupercalians, and Knights of the New Crusade.

Battlehooch, Ghost and the City, Picture Atlantic Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Miles Benjamin, Anthony Robinson, These United States Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Bravery, Howling Bells Warfield. 9pm, $27.

Devo, Reggie Watts Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $40-75. Performing Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo.

Dinosaur Jr., Lou Barlow, Violent Soho Fillmore. 9pm, $30.

Disgust of Us, Pidgeon, Moggs Sub-mission Gallery, 2183 Mission, SF; www.disgustofus.com. 8pm, $8.

Hallelujah the Hill, Mist and Mast, Pancho-san Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Mark Hummel and Rusty Zinn Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Langhorne Slim, Dawes Independent. 9pm, $15.

DJ Lebowitz Madrone Art Bar. 6-9pm, free.

Kally Price Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

"Revival Tour" Slim’s. 8pm, $15. With Chuck Ragan, Jim Ward, Frank Turner, Konrad, Joey Cape, Audra Mae, and Anderson Family Bluegrass. 8pm, $15.

Stung, Darkwave Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Tarran the Sailor and the Ancient Rugged Revival Elbo Room. 10pm, $10-15. Five and Diamond’s two-year anniversary party.

TrEas Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm.

Venetian Snares, Wisp, Nero’s Day at Disneyland DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20.

*Walken, One Hundred Suns, Frontside Five, Floating Goat Annie’s Social Club. 9:30pm, $7.

BAY AREA

Dropkick Murphys, Youth Brigade, Flatliners, Insurgence Fox Theater. 7:30pm, $25.50-29.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Pete Escovedo and the Latin Jazz Orchestra Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $28.

Lucid Lovers Rex Hotel, 562 Sutter, SF; (415) 433-4434. 6-8pm.

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra Coda. 10pm, $12.

Pat Martino Quartet featuring Tony Monaco, Larry Goldings Trio Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-65.

Terry Disley Experience Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Cuban Nights Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8:30pm, $15. With Fito Reinoso.

George Lammam Ensemble Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 10:30pm.

Hasmik Harutyunyan, Kitka St. Gregory Nyssen Episcopal Church, 500 DeHaro, SF; (415) 255-8100. 8pm, $15-25.

Rob Reich and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Whiskey Richards Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Audion, Dinky Mighty. 9pm, $15. Spinning an electronic light show.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Prismatic Anniversary Temple. 10pm, $10. With DJs Colette, Andrew Phelan, George Cochrane, and more spinning house, deep house, and hip hop.

Deathtripp Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5. Green and Wood spin coldwave, deathrock, post-punk, doom, and more.

Deep End 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With DJs Keith Kemp, Dub U, DJG, and more spinning dubstep and techno.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Hella Tight Amnesia. 10pm, $5.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Popscene vs. Tricycle Records Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $12-15. With Acid Girls, Jokers of the Scene, Frail, and Silver Swans.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

Strangelove: tribute to NIN Cat Club. 9pm, $6. DJs Tomas Diablo, Joe Radio, Unit 77, and more spinning goth and industrial.

Upper Playground and Sonic Living Happy Hour Laszlo. 6-9pm, free. Resident DJs Amplive and Tourist with special guests. Drink specials and giveaways.

Whateva Mezzanine. 9pm, $20. With DJs Marc Ashken, Eric Sebastian, and Worthy.

SATURDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

*"Alternative Tentacles 30th Anniversary Incest-A-Thon" Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $22. With Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, Alice Donut, Victims Family, and Burning Image.

Browntown West, Starlene, DJ Tony Bottom of the Hill. 2pm, $15.

Chali 2na, Gift of Gab, Mr. Lif Independent. 9pm, $20. Hosted by Lyrics Born.

Devo, Reggie Watts Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $40-75. Performing Freedom of Choice.

Los Dryheavers, Get Dead!, Stagger and Fall Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $8.

Entertainment, Blessure Grave, Entropy Density Kimo’s. 10pm, $6.

*"Fog Rising" Broadway Studios. 2pm, $15. With Witch, Saviours, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Red Fang, Night Horse, and more.

Greasetraps Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $10.

Will Hoge, Paul Freeman Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $12.

Low Red Land, Ketman, Wandas, Cannons and Clouds Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Mantles, Finches, Little Wings Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Mister Loveless, Downer Party, Holy Rolling Empire Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Moped Amnesia. 10pm.

Serena Ryder, Eoin Harrington Hard Rock Café San Francisco, Pier 39, SF; (415) 956-2013. 7pm, $10.

Shants, Caleb Nichols House of Shields. 9pm, $5.

Sista Monica Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Still Flyin’, Yellow Fever, Nodzzz Café du Nord. 10:30pm, $10.

Sweedish, Mr. Mime, Anaura Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Tyrone Wells, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, Matt Hires Slim’s. 8:30pm, $18.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Alphabet Soup Coda. 10pm, $10.

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Pete Escovedo and the Latin Jazz Orchestra Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $28.

Savion Glover Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7 and 9:30pm, $30-75.

John Kalleen Group Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

Milton Nascimento Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-75.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

Sara Tavares Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-65.

Patrick Wolf Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

"Abolitionists in the Round: A Benefit for the International Justice Mission" Elbo Room. 6-9pm, $15. With David Greco, Rick Hardin, Matt Langlois, Jane Lui, and more.

African Dance and Drum Festival African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; (415) 378-4413. 9pm, $25.

Bluegrass Bonanza Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Carnaval Del Sur Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, $15. Live Flamenco music and dance.

Earthquake Kitchen Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

Freddy Nunez Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Debaser Knockout. 11pm, $5. Wear your flannel and get in free before 11pm to this party, where DJ Jamie Jams and Emdee play alternative hits from the 1990s.

Everlasting Bass 330 Ritch. 10pm, $5-10. Bay Area Sistah Sound presents this party, with DJs Zita and Pam the Funkstress spinning hip-hop, soul, funk, reggae, dancehall, and club classics.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Four G’s Magazine Club Six. 9pm, $10. Issue release party featuring DJs Beset, Boo Boo Danger, and B.Souuza, and a live performance by Bored Stiff.

Gemini Disco Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Disco with DJ Derrick Love and Nicky B. spinning deep disco.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Leisure Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $7. DJs Omar, Aaron, and Jet Set James spinning classic britpop, mod, 60s soul, and 90s indie.

New Wave City DNA Lounge. 9pm, $7-12. Eighties dance party with Skip, Shindog, Lowlife, and Dangerous Dan.

Rebel Girl Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $5. "Electroindierockhiphop" and 80s dance party for dykes, bois, femmes, and queers with DJ China G and guests.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Sixties soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Slayers Club Anniversary Club Six. 9pm, $10. Featuring David Last with MC Zulu, Mochipet, and Kush Arora, and DJs Freddie Future, Lokae, Manitous, and more spinning dubstep and electronic.

So Special Club Six. 9pm, $5. DJ Dans One and guests spinning dancehall, reggae, classics, and remixes.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Battle of the Bands" DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With Sagacious Past, Novak, Afterthought, Wooden Jesus, and more.

Birds and Batteries, Telegraph Canyon, DJ Elise Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Exene Cervenka, Sean Wheeler and Zander Schloss Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Common Rotation, Liz Clark, Justin Trawick Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Dutchess and the Duke, Greg Ashley, El Olio Wolf Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

David Gray, Lisa Hannigan Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF; www.livenation.com. 8pm, $37.50-50.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Chuck Prophet Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $15.

Samuel James Union Room at Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $10.

Jay Nash, Shane Alexander Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $8-10.

Panther, Death Sentence: Panda!, Shakes Gown Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Saosin, POS, Innerpartysystem, Eye Alaska Fillmore. 8pm, $17.50.

Ten Foot Tall and 80 Proof Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

BAY AREA

Pixies, Rain Machine Fox Theater. 8pm, $49.50-64.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

John Abercrombie with Mark Feldman, Drew Gress, and Joey Baron Florence Gould Theatre, Legion of Honor, 34th Ave at Clement, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 2pm, $35-50.

Carolina Chocolate Drops Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 3 and 7pm, $5-50.

Ornette Coleman Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-85.

Pete Escovedo and the Latin Jazz Orchestra Yoshi’s San Francisco. 2 and 7pm, $5-28.

Frank Jackson and Larry Vuckovich Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

Rob Modica and friends Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 3pm, free.

Jane Monheit Sir Francis Drake Empire Ballroom, 450 Powell, SF; www.bayareacabaret.org. 4 and 7pm, $45.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Chicago Afrobeat Project Mojito, 1337 Grant, SF; (415) 596-3986. 9pm, $10.

Enrique Bunbury Warfield. 8pm, $52-62.

Fiesta Andina! Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7pm, $10. With Eddy Navia and Sukay.

Marla Fibish, Erin Shrader, Richard Mandel and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Grupo Falso Baiano Coda. 9pm, $7.

La Yumba Café Cocomo. 9pm, $20.

Smoke Free Tour Rock-It Room. 9pm, $15. Featuring live performances by Mega Banton and Prestige.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, J Boogie, and guest Jah Yzer.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ian Anderson Warfield. 7:30pm, $45-75.

Asa Random, Weekend, Cheetahs on the Moon Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Bishop Allen, Throw Me the Statue, Darwin Deez Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $15.

Blind, Orchestra of Antlers, Commissure Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Dujeous Coda. 9pm, $7.

Everclear, Clayton Senne Independent. 8pm, $25.

Raveonettes, Crocodiles Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $25.

Jonas Reinhardt, Windsurf, Miracles Club, DJ Pickpocket Knockout. 9pm, $7. Presented by Donuts!

Vandaveer, Odessa Chen, Stripmall Architecture Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

BAY AREA

Pixies, No Age Fox Theater. 8pm, $49.50-64.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Amiri Baraka, Howard Wiley Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $20.

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

Andrew Speight and friends Shanghai 1930. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Suburban Revolt, Silver Folk Song Society Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm.

Toshio Hirano Amnesia. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synth-pop with Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, Miz Margo, and Lexor.

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Krazy for Karaoke Happy Hour Knockout. 5-9pm, free. Belt ’em out with host Deadbeat.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Earthmen and Strangers, Nectarine Pie, Becky Lee and Drunkfoot Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

fun., Dusty Rhodes and the River Band, AB and the Sea Bottom of the Hill. 8pm, $12.

Game Rebellion, CU Next Weekend Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Imogen Heap Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Over the Rhine, Katie Herzig Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $25.

Paramore, Paper Route, Swellers Warfield. 7:30pm, $32.

Parson Redheads, Blank Tapes, Monahans Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

Emily Wells, Simple Citizens Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $10.

Wild Thing, Kim Phuc, Ruleta Rusa Knockout. 10pm, free.

Saul Williams, American Fangs Independent. 8pm, $20.

BAY AREA

Pixies, Black Gold Fox Theater. 8pm, $49.50-64.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Louis-Virie Blanche and Constant Creation Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $20.

"Booglaloo Tuesday" Madrone Art Bar. 9:30pm, $3. With Oscar Myers.

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

"Jazz Mafia Tuesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Spaceheater’s Jazz Furnace.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Barry O’Connell, Vinnie Cronin and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJs What’s His Fuck, Johnny Repo, and Chaos.

Drunken Monkey Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, free. Rock ‘n’ roll for inebriated primates like you.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Gialina: Good pizza deserves a second chance

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4

By Sarah C. Jimenez

gialinapic1009.jpg

Back to the pizza place. It was inevitable, I know. The place that last month my novia and I had a fit in and walked out of after not getting service—not getting a simple greeting after 10 minutes. We, the brown lesbianas in the corner, watched as the perfect white couple who came in long after us sipped their Peronis contently, while we were still hoping to maybe get waters. Our usual efficient and jovial server who, in the past, has always delivered pristine service, had been replaced with…well, no server at all. We’d been crushed that our favorite pizza place had not only blatantly offended us, but shattered our much anticipated pizza fantasies we’d toyed with all day.

The return to Oz started with a middle of the day phone-call while banging away at my computer like Schroeder at his piano, trying to meet a deadline: “Dinner tonight…. Tickets to Wicked…. Call in sick to work?” my girlfriend had pleaded. Giving up a $200 bar shift was not hard. Getting glammed-up for theater was not hard. Going to dinner back at the place where we’d last left with nothing but our stubborn dignity was.

Hot sex events this week: Oct 28 – Nov 3

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0

Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

lucha-lamour-web.jpg
Michelle L’amour, Miss Exotic World 2005, performs at Lucha VaVOOM at the Fillmore on Friday.

————-

>> Sex & Memory: Writing from your own experience
Jen Cross teaches this course on documenting the amazing experiences you have in (and out of) bed, whether for your lover or a publisher. Then stay for the Erotic Reading Circle!

Wed/28, 5:30pm
$10-$30
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
sexandculture.org

————-

>> Erotic Reading Circle
Carol Queen and Jen Cross host this monthly gathering in celebration of longtime writers, newly inspired daydreamers, and non-judgmental listeners of all orientation.

Wed/28, 7:30pm
$5+
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
sexandculture.org

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>> See Me, Hear Me, Drink Me
This hetero-centric event gives men and women a chance to find out what the opposite sex thinks, make some new connections, and explore difficult topics, thanks to a 90-minute kick-off of free-flowing communication followed by a fun and playful cocktail party. The topic tonight? Slow sex and Intimacy, brought to you by OneTaste’s Robert Kandell.

Wed/28, 7:30pm
$5/women; $15/solo men; $10/men with female friend
Authentic SF
115 10th St, SF
www.authenticsf.com

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>> Rock Strip n’ Roll
Hubba Hubba Revue’s Kingfish hosts this scintillating night of rock and performance, featuring Live Evil, Electric Vagina, Gods of Rock, Honey Lawless, Hot Pink Feathers, and more.

Thurs/29, 9:30pm
$10
Rouge
1500 Broadway, SF
www.hubbahubbarevue.com

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>> Thrillville’s Halloween Gore ‘n’ Snorefest
Halloweenie-movie and burlesque freaks will love Thrillville’s event, featuring surf punk music by The Deadlies, tassel-twirling goodness from Lady Monster, and two super sleazy rock’n’schlock cult classic films: Chainsaw Hookers and Zontar: The Thing from Venus!.

Thurs/29, 7:30pm
$12
Balboa Theater
3630 Balboa, SF
www.thrillville.net

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Teeny ‘Tiny’

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Teeny ‘Tiny’

THEATER A reunion between Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone and playwright Tony Kushner is a notable event. This is a relationship that goes back to the original production of Angels in America, after all. Currently up: Tiny Kushner. The amusingly self-effacing title, however, flagging an evening of short works by still one of the biggest names on the American theatrical landscape, ends up disappointingly prescient.

Flip Flop Fly! concerns a postmortem lunar encounter between two eccentric female historical figures: American entertainer and self-styled interplanetary composer Lucia Pamela (Valeri Mudek); and the Hitler-loving Queen of Albania (Kate Eifrig). The meeting delivers little more than a fairly tired clash between a naïve but boundlessly imaginative American and a crustily authoritarian European, climaxing in a Mel Brooks moment of musical harmonizing.

Next comes Terminating or Sonnet LXXV or "Lass Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein" or Ambivalence. Terminating is a high point, witty and wisecracking, in a New Yorker sort of way. Terminating‘s clever riffing on love and our existential, species-defining "ambivalence" also comes buoyed by J.C. Cutler’s terrific turn as former patient Hendrick, a slovenly yet charming manic trying to worm his way back onto the couch, and into the bed, of his rattled lesbian analyst (an equally solid Eifrig).

Then comes the interminable East Coast Ode to Howard Jarvis: a little teleplay in tiny monologues, a facile comedy concerning a tax evasion scheme rifling through the lower echelons of New York’s state bureaucracy, generated from afar by a cartoonish white supremacist with what he considers the mother of all tax loop holes. The wearying, jaggedly-paced series of scenes features a large set of social and ethnic caricatures by Lichtscheidl (who is dutiful but not quite up to the task) set against a backdrop of print-heavy IRS forms that, as a text, frankly begins to look no less interesting than the one being performed.

Also thin is Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker in Paradise, another light take on potentially weighty themes in a fanciful setting, this one affably shared by a thousand-eyed "recoding angel" (Eifrig) and Nixon’s old shrink (Cutler).

If the evening means to showcase the breadth of Kushner’s work, there’s actually small reward in its repetitious themes and gestures — but, rather than highlighting larger, probing concerns, they instead feel like deeply grooved habits of form and rarely give rise to anything very inspired. The marked exception is the last piece, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, which, while problematic and dated, has the merit of being truly angry and at least fitfully commanding in its encounter between Laura Bush and a group of dead Iraqi children in heaven on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Here the play and playwright have something to voice and it carries. (Robert Avila)

TINY KUSHNER Through Nov 29, $27–$-71. Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk. (510) 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org

Anti-doofus agenda

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Anti-doofus agenda

arts@sfbg.com

LIT/MUSIC With influences ranging from the Cuban Revolution and Malcolm X to musical orishas such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Sun Ra, Amiri Baraka is renowned as the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the 1960s that became, though short-lived, the virtual blueprint for a new American theater aesthetic. The movement and his published work — such as 1963’s signature study on African American music Blues People and the same year’s play Dutchman — practically seeded "the cultural corollary to black nationalism" of that revolutionary American milieu.

Baraka lives in Newark, N.J., with his wife and author Amina Baraka; they have five children and head the word-music ensemble Blue Ark: The Word Ship and co-direct Kimako’s Blues People, an art space housed in their theater basement for some 15 years. I spoke with him on the eve of an upcoming visit.

SFBG What brings you to the Bay Area this time around?

AMIRI BARAKA We’re doing two sets at Yoshi’s with Howard Wiley. Those are the kinds of musical things we have a nice time doing. I hope to bring the poetry and music to Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. And I’m giving a talk at the library.

SFBG What will you be discussing?

AB Obama and his first 10 months, based on an essay I wrote a few months ago called "We’re Already in the Future." I support Obama and I think that the people who supported him initially should keep supporting him because they are forgetting the huge difficulty he faces. This society, they don’t want any kind of change. They do not want him, first of all. Only 43 percent of the white people even voted for him, and a lot those people resent the fact that white America is now mulatto. That election proved that it’s not white America, it’s multinational America, so they’ve set up this roadblock to almost anything he does.

Anytime you can, you see how doofus Americans are, to oppose their own quality of life improvement, their own health care. They’d rather mope along with little health care or none simply because the corporations have convinced them it’s bad for them — it shows you that we have a real education gap in America. Not to mention the racism, which is behind a lot of it, big time.

The people who support Obama need to stand together to fight the right wing. It’s the right wing that is the enemy. Those huge corporations including those mouthpieces they have. The media is just absurd, with [Sean] Hannity, [Bill] O’Reilly, [Glenn] Beck, Rush Limbaugh. These guys are just too much. If they’re not racist, there is no such thing as racism.

SFBG I know that you spent some time in SF. What are your impressions of our city?

AB I was a visiting professor at San Francisco State for about three or four months, that was the extent of my residency. I like San Francisco. I’m drawn to the vibe there. The last time I was in San Francisco, I was reading at Ferlinghetti’s bookstore [City Lights]. Most of my stuff is in Oakland, but whenever I’m in Oakland, I stop by San Francisco.

Seems to me that San Francisco is very expensive, like New York. I live in Newark, N.J., which is 12 miles outside of New York City — it’s got that Oakland-San Francisco relationship. When you’re dealing with New York, you have that high-rent district all the way around. San Francisco is a beautiful city, but going there and being there are two different things.

SFBG Happy birthday. I know you just turned 75. Any wisdom to impart from three-quarters of a century?

AB I’ve been 75 for about five days. I can say that you really need to take care of yourself. That’s the cliché: "If I knew I was going be this old, I would have taken better care of myself," but it’s some better wisdom than what you hear generally.

SFBG You coined the term "Afrosurreal Expressionism." Can you share your definition?

AB If you know the African tales or even African writers and African cultures, then you know they understand the concept of having relationships reversed, which exposes new concepts and dimensions. They understood the power of the conscious and unconscious mind to change the dimensions of the world. The various forces of nature that people developed, that people saw as gods, these elemental forces: the wind, the water, the sun, the moon. They understood how human beings interrelate to those forces. Henry Dumas’ work dealt with these changing dimensions, and people who do strange things in realistic situations. It was Surrealism that changed the relationship to things. Dumas influenced Toni Morrison, who was his editor at Random House. He was a strong writer and he went out of here in a tragic way, being murdered by the police. His stories and poems are Afrosurreal, with African psychology imposing these dimensions on reality.

SFBG What is the role of the artist in the current climate, and what are the tools we can use to bring about social change?

AB The way things work: cause and effect, action and reaction. The ’60s and the ’70s were a period of intense struggle. The Black Arts Movement and the antiimperialist movement laid the foundation to get Obama elected. But then you get a reaction, and it has been quite evident. Imperialist commerce has taken over the arts. Once we were struggling to get black movies made — now we see what kinds of movies are being made by black people, and they are very backward. Act, react. We have to struggle anew to do something about these backwards elements.

Black people have 27 cities: we need 27 theaters, 27 galleries, 27 periodicals. We need to have poets, rappers, painters, actors struggling to raise the consciousness of the people. That is the role of the artist. Black people still live in these ghettos and these ‘hoods. There may be more of a black middle-class, but they often are the ones helping to keep us duped and bamboozled. This is a struggle that has to be. This is reality — like they say, "Keep it real." This is a struggle that has to be.

AMIRI BARAKA WITH THE HOWARD WILEY TRIO

Nov. 9, 8 p.m., $16–$20

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

www.yoshis.com

Global informing

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Global informing

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE For too many years ethnic dance, traditional dance, folk dance, culturally-specific dance — whatever label you stick on it — has been a stepchild on American stages. Considered of little interest to observers beyond the cultural groups in which its practitioners were based, general audiences admired its colorfulness and derided its lack of innovation. Yet with increased exposure, traditional dance forms have become more respected and have done their part to make the world more of a global village.

With the art form less under siege, stirrings have been coming from within the genre by dancers pushing at the traditions’ parameters. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. In the mid-1990s flamenco dancer Joaquín Cortés bared his chest and started performing to pop and jazz. Purists shuddered when Kathak dancer Akram Khan started to integrate modern dance practices into his performances. At the SF Ethnic Dance Festival this year, winds of change can also be felt at the venerable Ethnic Dance Festival. This year Los Lupeños de San José, one of the Bay Area’s oldest Mexican companies, performed a hot mambo with the women in anything but long flouncy skirts, and Indonesian dancer Sri Susilowati’s mourning dance was full of contemporary accents.

Traditional dancers who want to rethink conventions often feel homeless because they don’t fit into any established performance categories. That’s where Performing Diaspora steps in. CounterPULSE’s two-year initiative culminates in three weeks of performances starting November 5.

Debbie Smith, cultural program coordinator at the Arab Cultural and Community Center, is one of the three curators who chose 13 artists from the more than 60 who applied from throughout California. As "a little white girl from Texas" (as she calls herself) who speaks Arabic and is trained in Egyptian folk dance, she has learned to live with the sensitivities that surround fears about dilution of content and about perceptions of being less than respectful to well-defined art forms.

Since Performing Diaspora is the first festival of its kind, the curators had to feel their way into this new arena. It was a delicate process because "the need for support in dance is so great," Smith explains. "We did not know what we would get, though we were looking for artists who served traditions without wanting to be confined by them."

What the Festival got were artists like Charlotte Moraga, the primary dancer of the Chitresh Das Dance Company. Twenty years ago at San Francisco State University, the jazz dancer from Florida stumbled into her first Kathak class when the jazz class she wanted was full. The festival also got Devendra Sharma from Fresno, who learned Nautanki, a traditional folk music theater style from northern India, from his father.

At a recent work-in-progress showing, Moraga’s A Conference in Nine, based on a Sufi poem, A Conference of Birds, was performed with jazz, North Indian, and South Indian musicians. It looked as traditional and contemporary as you would want. The same was true for Sharma’s Mission Suhani, a reinterpretation of one spunky woman’s refusal to be cheated out of her dowry.

Almost half Performing Diaspora’s lineup hails from beyond the Bay Area, with artists who have made rethinking traditions a core element of their work, and those who only recently entered this wobbly territory. But the most unexpected participant in Performance Diaspora is a local: Kunst-Stoff’s Yannis Adoniou, best known for his ballet-based postmodernism. He will present Rembetiko, a work-in-progress based on the underground culture of Greeks who returned from abroad at the turn of the 20th century. "My uncle was a rembetiko musician", Adoniou says. "I used to dance to his music when I was five."

Performing Diaspora

Nov 5-22 (Thurs-Sat, 8 p.m.), $15–$25

CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2060, www.counterpulse.org

Music listings

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Music listings

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 28

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Jace Everett, Kevin Meagher Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Former Ghosts, White Hinterland, Common Eider King Eider Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Sean Hayes, Killbossa Independent. 8pm, $16.

Hot Shears, Tank Attack Knockout. 9pm, $6.

Joe Buck Yourself, Jesse Morris and the Man Cougars, .357 String Band, DJ Eva Von Slut Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $10.

David Landon Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

MC Chris, Whole Wheat Bread, I Fight Dragons Slim’s. 8:30pm, $5.

Amy Milian, Bahamas Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $15.

Nathan Moore, Fred Torphy Connecticut Yankee, 100 Connecticut, SF; www.theyankee.com. 9pm, $12.

Struck By Lightning, Aftermath, Man Among Wolves, Witness the Horror Thee Parkside. 8pm, $6.

William Elliott Whitmore, Hoots and the Hellmouth, Ferocious Few Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"B3 Wednesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Nick Rossi Trio.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Cindy Blackman’s Another Lifetime Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $30. Tony Williams tribute.

Mads Tolling Quartet Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20.

"Meeting of the Minds" Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $30-70. With Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, and Edgar Meyer.

Phat Man Dee Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St., SF; (415) 704-3260. 8pm, $7-15.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Freddie Clarke Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30pm; $12

Gaucho Amnesia. 8pm, free. Michael Abraham Jazz Session.

Ben Jordan Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Odes with Kevin Taylor Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Club Shutter Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Goth with DJs Nako, Omar, and Justin.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blowie, Luv and Rockets, Jealousy Knockout. 9:30pm, $8.

Marc Broussard, Matt Hires Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $30.

Dodos, Ruby Suns Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $18.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Jesse Grant, Elektrik Sunset, John Predny Kimo’s. 9pm, $6.

Lorne Smith’s Guns for San Sebastian, Booty Cooler Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Mumiy Troll Independent. 8pm, $25.

MurderMurder, Piles, Josef Van Wissem Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Joshua Radin, Watson Twins Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

"Rock Strip N’ Roll 3: A Naughty Good Time for Halloween" Rouge Night Club, 1400 Broadway, SF; www.myspace.com/liveevilrock. 9:30pm, $10. With Live Evil, Godz of Rock, Electric Vagina, burlesque performances, and more.

Shonen Knife, Ty Segall, Kepi Ghoulie: Electric! Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $14.

Tainted Love Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $15.

Third Date Blondie’s, 540 Valencia, SF; (415) 864-2419. 9pm, free.

Times New Viking, Axemen, Clipd Beaks, Work Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

*Valient Thorr, Early Man, Hightower, Nihilist Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $10.

"Witch Tits Homo Halloween Party" Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5-10. With dance jams spun by DJ Campbell, Durt, and Jean Jamz; live music by Try the Pie and Imogen Binnie; and a fashion show.

Your Cannons, In the Dust, Gem Tops, Foreign Resort Hotel Utah. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audrey Shimkas Trio Shanghai 1930. 7pm, free.

Terry Disley Washington Square Bar and Grill, 1707 Powell, SF; (415) 433-1188. 7pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Erik Jekabson’s New Orleans Quartet Coda. 9pm, $7.

Laurent Fourgo Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7:30pm, free.

Yasmin Levy Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $25-65.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

Dave Mathews Yoshi’s San Francisco (in the lounge). 6pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Swing with Stan Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass and Old Time Jam Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Charming Hostess Red Poppy Art House. 7pm, $10-15.

Dunes El Rio. 9:45pm, $5.

Flamenco Thursdays Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30pm; $12.

Brent Jordan Union Room at Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $5.

Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $30-90.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Tribal Seeds Rockit Room. 8pm, $10.

Jozef Van Wissem, Diego Gonzalez, Lickets, Mira Cook Amnesia. 9pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, B Lee, and special guest Ibeke Shakesdown spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Bingotopia Knockout. 7:30-9:30pm, free. Play for drinks, dignity, and dorky prizes with Lady Stacy Pants.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Popscene Halloween Party 330 Ritch. 9:30pm, $8. With DJs Aaron and Nako and live performances by Veil Veil Vanish and Danger.

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest.

Solid Club Six. 9pm, $5. With resident DJ Daddy Rolo and rotating DJs Mpenzi, Shortkut, Polo Mo’qz and Fuze spinning roots, reggae, and dancehall.

Wonderland Ruby Skye. 8pm, $40. Enter a fantasy world inspired by Alice and Wonderland to benefit at-risk youth.

FRIDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Art Brut, Princeton Café du Nord. 10:30pm, $16.

Bayonics, Orgone Elbo Room. 10pm, $15.

Blue Flames, Society’s Child El Rio. 10pm, $6.

Ronnie Baker Brooks Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Death Valley High, Perfect Machines, Killola, Pinky Swear, Protoman Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $7.

Fast Times Broadway Studios. 8:45pm, $40. First 500 drinks free; proceeds benefit the Steven David Cannata Scholarship Fund.

DJ Lebowitz Madrone Art Bar. 6-9pm, free.

Luce, Felsen Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Lucha Vavoom Fillmore. 9pm, $32.50.

Melt Banana, All Leather, We Be the Echo Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Moonspell, Divine Heresy, Secrets of the Moon, DJ Rob Metal Thee Parkside. 9pm, $15.

Monophonics Coda. 9pm, $10.

No Age, Residual Echoes, Magic Bullets Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Nobunny, East Bay Grease, Apache Dropout Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Pine and Battery, New Montgomery, OONA, Hi-Nobles Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Skee-Lo, 40 Love, Aquarius, ADDX Rock-It Room. 9pm, $15.

Sleepy Sun, Antlers Independent. 9pm, $14.

Sound Junkies El Rincon. 9pm, $10.

Super Diamond, Knights of Monte Carlo Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $22.

BAY AREA

"Evil 105’s Subsonic Halloween Spookfest" Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, Daly City; www.ticketmaster.com. 6:30pm, $40. With Faint, Basement Jaxx, Infected Mushroom, Crystal Method, Flosstradamus, Steve Aoki, and more.

Regina Spektor, Jupiter One Fox Theater. 8pm, $37.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Dee Dee Bridgewater Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-70. Tribute to Lady Day.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Lucid Lovers Rex Hotel, 562 Sutter, SF; (415) 433-4434. 6-8pm.

Lisa Mezzacappa and friends Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $15. Edgar Allen Poe-themed performances.

Nicholas Payton, Don Byron Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $35-60.

Pedestrian Deposit, Acre, Brandon Nickell, Work/Death, Infinite Body Lab, 2948 16th St, SF; www.thelab.org. 9pm, $8.

Sandra Aran Group Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

Marcos Silva Yoshi’s San Francisco (in the lounge). 6pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Cuban Nights Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8:30pm, $15. With Fito Reinoso.

*"Dark Side of the Uke" Knockout. 10pm, $6. Tatami Mats perform Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon with their all-ukelele ensemble, plus Frisky Frolics and DJ dX.

Toshio Hirano, Michael Musika, Vanessa VerLee, Karl Young, Jessie Woletz Li Po Lounge. 8:45pm, $5. Art opening for Jeremy Rourke.

Joe Henley Band Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Pamela Means, Thomasina and the Jam Dolores Park Café. 7:30pm, free.

Orquesta La Moderna Tradicion Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $18.

Sonny and the Sunsets, Sean Smith and the Present Moment, Donovan Quinn, Sandwitches Amnesia. 9pm, $7. With DJ Patty P.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

All Hallow’s Eve DNA Lounge. 9pm, $13. Guild, Meat, and Hubba Hubba co-present this party with DJs Decay, BaconMonkey, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, and more.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $15. With DJs Jeffrey Paradise and Richie Panic spinning dance music.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

FreakBeat Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $25. DJs Paul Oakenfold and Rooz spinning progressive house, tech house, and techno.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Hallonasty Mighty. 9pm, $10. With DJs Ron/E, Worthy, Laura, and more spinning heavy grooves from the whole musical spectrum.

Halloween Friday Mezzanine. 9pm, $25. With DJs Zach Moore, Syd Gris, Kramer, and Adnan Sharif.

Hov-o-ween Medici Lounge, 299 9th St., SF; (415) 501-9162. 9pm, $3. Featuring a deathrock costume contest with DJs Voodoo, Purgatory, and BatKat spinning goth, industrial, deathrock, glam and more.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

Suite Jesus 111 Minna. 9pm, $20. Beats, dancehall, reggae and local art.

SATURDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

GG Amos and the GG3 Riptide. 9pm, free.

Chris Kid Anderson Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Bayonics, Orgone Elbo Room. 10pm, $15.

Built to Spill Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

"Club Silencio and the Coalition of Aging Rockers present Caroly n Keddy’s Super Secret Scary Halloween Show" Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Corner Laughers, Desoto Reds Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $7.

Dead Souls, Spellbound, Reptile House Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $7.

Fast Times Maggie McGarry’s, 1353 Grant, SF; (415) 399-9020. 9pm, free.

Grannies, Mongoloid, Steel Tigers of Death El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Loquat, LoveLikeFire Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $14.

Pop Rocks Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $10.

Rattler, Bang Maiden, Hate Breeders Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

*Slough Feg, Totimoshi, Grayceon, Serpent Crown El Rio. 4pm, $8.

Tori Sparks Union Room at Biscuits and Blues. 8:30pm, $10.

Stone Foxes, Wendy Darling, Buxter Hoot’n Hotel Utah. 8:30pm, $10.

Super Diamond, Knights of Monte Carlo Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $22.

*Swingin’ Utters, Throw Rag, Thee Merry Widows Slim’s. 9pm, $16.

Triple Cobra, DJ Omar Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $12.

Wallpaper Mezzanine. 8pm, $25.

Wil Blades Soul Solution Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

BAY AREA

"Hell-O-Ween 2009" Uptown. 9pm, $10. With Sonic Seducer and the Hobo Gobbelins.

"Hippie Halloween Costume and Dance Party" Art House Gallery and Cultural Center, 2095 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 482-3336. 8pm, $13. With Spirit Wind as Santana, Pearl Essence as Janis Joplin, Cosmos Factory as Creedence Clearwater Revival, and others.

Johnny Vegas and the High Rollers 19 Broadway. 9:30pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Larry Dunlap Yoshi’s San Francisco (in the lounge). 6pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

James Cotton Superharp Band with Hubert Sumlin Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-65.

"Jazz Mafia’s Seventh Annual Mobsters Ball" Coda. 10pm, $10.

Marco Benevento Trio Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 9pm, $25. Halloween dance party.

Proteges of Hyler Jones Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $22.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Albino! Independent. 9pm, $18. Special Star Wars-themed Halloween show.

BooGrass Plough and Stars. 9:30pm, $6-10. Featuring some scary bluegrass, a costume contest, games, treats, and more.

Carnaval Del Sur Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, $15. Live Flamenco music and dance.

Halloween Spectacular Amnesia. 8pm, $7. With Cretatous and Bob Saggath.

Sila and the Afrofunk Experience Café du Nord. 10pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Big Top Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; (415) 431-1151. 9pm, $10. A homoween disco circus featuring a costume contest, drag performances, and go go boys with DJs Kevin Graves and Marcus Boogie.

Cock Fright Underground SF. 9pm; $8, $5 with sports costume. With DJs Earworm and Matt Hite slaughtering the dance floor and performances by Hugz Bunny and Suppositori Spelling.

Dress to Kill Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. A Fringe Halloween party with costume contest and the best indie rock music videos with added special effects.

Hacksaw Halloween Poleng Lounge. 10pm, $12. Featuring Mixhell, a duo with Brazilian heavy metal drummer Igor Cavalera and Laima Cavalera on the turntables.

Halloween Booootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Mash-up party with Adrian and Mysterious D, Dada, and more, plus a costume contest (including "Best Mash-Up Costume"!) and live performances.

Famous: Sin and Celebrities Glas Kat. 9pm, $30. Dress as your favorite Hollywood icon and dance down the red carpet with DJs Fuze, Jerry Ross, Mauricio, and more.

Ghost Ship California Ave., Hanger II, Treasure Island, SF; www.kraaksmak.com. 9pm, $40. With DJs Kraak and Smaak and Fort Knox 5.

Heaven and Hella Suite 181, 181 Eddy, SF; (415) 345-9900. 10pm. With DJs Mindmotion, One G, and Mark Divita spinning dance beats and radio hits. Costume contest for complimentary bottle service.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Kiss of Death Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 10pm. Featuring a costume contest and DJs Frenchy Le Freak, Pheeko Dubfunk, and Martin Aquino.

Monster Bash Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Boos and booze all night with DJ White Mike.

Night of the Living Bass Mighty. 9pm, $20. A costume party with DJs Wolfgang Gartner, Uberzone, Syd Gris and more.

Nightmare on 6th Street Club Six. 9pm, $18. With DJs Maseo of De La Soul, Shortkut, Jah-Yzer, Serg One, and more spinning soul, classic hip hop, reaggae, and dancehall.

Nightmare on Van Ness Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $60. Multiple levels featuring a live performance by LMFAO and DJs E-Rock, Scene, Mark Farina, Dale Martin, BB Hayes, Sam Issac, and more.

Saw VIII Masquerade Extravaganza Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; (415) 341-7314. 9pm, $20-50. Featuring a costume contest with cash prizes, and two spooky levels of music with DJs Mindmotion, Sake1, and more.

SF Halloween Ball San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF; (415) 816-7763. 9pm, $45-100. An upscale Halloween costume party with DJs remedy, cut 5, vangeli, and more spinning mainstream, top 40, mashups, and house.

Spider Ball Bently Reserve, 400 Sansome, SF; (415) 288-0202. 10pm, $55. Featuring DJs and live performances by Vibe Squad, Beats Antique, Random RAB, Resident Anti-Hero, Tamo, and more to support the Black Rock Arts Foundation.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

Teenage Dance Craze Halloween Party Knockout. 10pm, $3. Scary teen beat, twisters, and surf rock with DJs Sergio Iglesias, Russell Quann, and Howie Pyro.

Thriller Lexington Club. 9pm, free. Featuring a Michael Jackson inspired costume contest and DJs Durt and Ponyboy startin’ somethin’ on the dance floor.

Zombie Ball Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; (415) 861-9199. 9pm, $15. With a live performance by the Hi Rhythm Hustlers and guest Cari Lee and DJs spinning teen beat tunes.

SUNDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Built to Spill Fillmore. 7pm, $25.

Dirty Projectors, Little Wings Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $18.

Flyleaf, Paper Tongues Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $25.

Lucero, Jack Oblivion, John Paul Keith and the One Four Fives Mezzanine. 8pm, $22.

*Possessed, Impaled, Sadistic Intent, Witchhaven DNA Lounge. 6pm, $25.

Jason Reeves, Curtis People Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Brittany Shane, Misisipi Mike and Gayle Lynn, Vandella Make-Out Room. 8:30pm, $7.

Skinny Puppy, Vverevvolf Grehv Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

Tori Sparks Union Room at Biscuits and Blues. 8:30pm, $5.

UFO, Travis Larson Band Independent. 8pm, $25.

BAY AREA

Shonen Knife, Ty Segall, Dreamdate, DJs Zola and Jen Schnade Uptown. 9pm, $14.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Brenda Wong Aoki and Mark Izu Ensemble Yoshi’s San Francisco. 2pm, $5-20. Performing Japanese ghost stories and jazz.

Giovanni Allevi, Patrizia Scascitelli Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-35.

Marc Cary Focus Trio Florence Gould Theatre, Legion of Honor, 34th Ave at Clement, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 2pm, $25.

Rob Modica and friends Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 3pm, free.

Pamela Rose Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $22.

SF Contemporary Music Players ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell, SF; (415) 278-9566. 4:30pm, $5-10. Performance and discussion of Ken Ueno’s "Archaeologies of the Future."

"SFJAZZ Beacon Award" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $20-50. Honoring John Handy.

SFJAZZ High School All-Stars Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, 701 Mission, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 3pm, $5-15. Playing Duke Ellington and the sounds of the Harlem Renaissance.

"SIMM New Music Series" Musicians Union Hall, 116 Ninth St, SF; (415) 905-4425. 7:30pm, $10. With Reconnaissance Fly and Noertker’s Moxie.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Boulder Acoustic Society Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10. With special guest.

Fiesta Andina! Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7pm, $10. With Eddy Navia and Sukay.

Mucho Axé Coda. 8pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Breakfast in Bed Supperclub. 5am, $15. Halloween After-Party with DJs Syd Gris, Alain Octavo, Cosmic Selector, Dulce Vita, and more.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and guest Teleseen.

Fresh Ruby Skye. 6pm, $25. A Halloween weekend T-Dance with DJ Tony Moran.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Shuckin’ and Jivin’ Knockout. 10pm, free. Rock, doo-wop, jivers, stompers, and more on 78 rpm with DJs Dr. Scott and Oran.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Airborne Toxic Event, Henry Clay People Fillmore. 8pm, $21.

*Big Business, Triclops! Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Chevelle, Halestorn, After Midnight Project Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $28.

Emerald Triangle Independent. 9pm, $15.

Land of Talk, Eulogies Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $10.

Tiger Lilies, Vinsantos Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

Trawler Bycatch, Seim and Rossfunke, 1-2-3 Knife Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

Nice Guy Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14.

Reptet Make-Out Room. 8pm.

SF Contemporary Music Players Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 278-9566. 8pm, $28. Performing "Maid to Order," music of Leroux, Ueno, Dennehy, and RB Smith.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Belle Monroe and Her Brew Glass Boys Amnesia. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

Armin Van Buuren Ruby Skye. 9pm, $30. With DJs Alain Octavo and Syd Gris.

TUESDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ashford and Simpson Rrazz Room, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason, SF; 1-866-468-3399, www.therrazzroom.com. 8pm, $47.50-55. Performing through Nov 14; check website for showtimes.

Astral, Ghosts and Strings, Moonlight Orchestra, Seabright Elbo Room. 8pm, $6.

Atlas Sound, Broadcast Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

B-Cups, Minks, Started-Its Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Layce Baker and the Black Diamond Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Cage the Elephant, Morning Teleportation, Shackletons Slim’s. 8pm, $16.

Chinese Stars, All Leather, Casy and Brian, Sensitive Hearts Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Jeffrey Foucault and Andy Friedman, Dave McGraw Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $10.

Kawabata, ?Alos, 3 Leafs Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $10.

Imelda May Independent. 8pm, $15.

Queen Latifah Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $39.50-49.50.

Ron Thompson Union Room at Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $10.

Verbal Abuse, Rat Damage, Steeples Knockout. 10pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Claudia Acuna Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $20.

"Booglaloo Tuesday" Madrone Art Bar. 9:30pm, $3. With Oscar Myers.

Conscious Jazz Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

Euliptian Quartet Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm.

"Jazz Mafia Tuesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Joe Bagale.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJs What’s His Fuck, Taypoleon, and Mackiveli.

Drunken Monkey Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. Guest DJs, free pool, and $1 Hamm’s.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Mixology Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, (415) 441-2922. 10pm, $2. DJ Frantik mixes with the science and art of music all night.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Events listings

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Events listings

Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

FRIDAY 30

Bedbugs: Modern Vampires City College of San Francisco, Science Building, room 300, 50 Phelan, SF; (415) 239-3580. Noon, free. Hear Johnson Ojo, Ph.D. from the San Francisco department of health describe the life cycle of bedbugs, our 21st century vampires. Dr. Ojo will discuss the factors that have led to their reemergence and current public health measures to control infestations in San Francisco.

Ghost Walk Palace Hotel, 2 New Montgomery, SF; (415) 557-4266. 6:30pm, free. Learn about the spooky history of the historic Palace hotel, how King Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii, died there in 1891, how it was rebuilt after burning in the 1906 quake, how President Warren G. Harding died in office there in 1923, and more tragedies and heartbreaks that keep the halls buzzing with spectral visions and mysterious occurrences.

Postmortem Legion of Honor, 100 34th Ave., SF; (415) 750-3548. 8pm, $85. Dance among the undead at this "Ghoulish Gala," combining complimentary potions and witches brews with the current mummy exhibit featuring Irethorrou, a 2,500 year old Egyptian mummy.

BAY AREA

Hallowmas Orinda Masonic Temple, 9 Altarinda, Orinda; (925) 787-9247. 6:30pm, $29. Join other women and girls from the Bay Area to celebrate the Pagan New Year at this annual Womyn’s Ritual and Spiral Dance accompanied by an artisan and craftswomen marketplace.

SATURDAY 31

Classic Ghost Stories North Beach Library, 2000 Mason, SF; (415) 355-5626. 2pm, free. Be a part of the Sitdown Readers’ Theater and help read aloud classic ghost stories like "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James and "Thrawn Janet" by Robert Louis Stevenson or bring your own favorites.

Costume Walk Yerba Buena Children’s Garden, 4th St. at Howard, SF; (415) 543-1718. Noon, free. Children under 10 and their families are invited to participate in interactive performances and games for kids followed by a costume parade.

Creature Features Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF; (415) 561-0360. 3pm; $10-16, discount in costume. Begin your Halloween festivities with creepy creatures, plants, giant insects, a haunted Victorian house on wheels, and more. Including candy for the kids and a cash bar for adults.

Drop Dead Sexy Block Party Broadway between Montgomery and Columbus, SF; www.megahalloweensf.com. 8pm, $35. Buy a wristband and gain access to multiple clubs for costume contests and DJs spinning hip hop, R&B, mashups, top 40, electro, and more.

End of the Night Justin Herman Plaza, Market at Embarcadero, SF; journey.totheendofthenight.com. 7pm, free. Be a part of this city wide game of tag spanning

San Francisco’s haunted cityscape on Halloween. Players try to make it through six checkpoints on foot or by public transportation, without being caught by chasers. Those caught become chasers themselves.

Freakshow Terra Gallery, 511 Harrison, SF; www.terrasf.com. 9pm, $30. Attend a 1930’s circus big top Halloween party featuring a freakshow with aerialists, jugglers, clowns, DJs spinning indie, pop, and alternative sounds, and more.

Halloween Party Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF; (415) 703-8964. 9pm, $15 with costume. In response to years of violence in the Castro, Peaches Christ and Helinka are hosting a fright-night featuring a costume contest, midnight drag show, classic horror films projected on screens, and DJs spinning creepy dance music.

Make Drag, Not War Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF; www.againstmilitarism.org. 7:30pm, $20. Join Iraq Veterans Against War (IVAW) for a night of activist drag and dance theater featuring the drag debut of more than a dozen Iraq veterans as a benefit for Dialogues Against Militarism (DAM).

Spider Ball Bently Reserve, 400 Sansome, SF; spiderball.com. 10pm, $55. Dress to impress at this decadent Halloween party and fundraiser for the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF) and enjoy DJs, live acts, and more.

Spiral Dance Ritual Kezar Pavilion, 755 Stanyan, SF; www.reclaiming.org. 7:30pm, $20-100. Honor the dead and celebrate renewal at this spiral dance ritual happening on the day of the year when the veil is thin between the worlds of the living and the dead.

SUNDAY 1

Dia de los Muertos Concert San Francisco Symphony, Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; (415) 864-6000. 2pm, $15-65. Celebrate Latino culture at this family concert featuring music, dance, art, and storytelling from the traditions of the Day of the Dead.

MONDAY 2

Dia de los Muertos 24th St. and Bryant, SF; www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 7pm, free. Join thousands of families, community members, artists, and activists for the annual Day of the Dead procession and public altar exhibit. Procession ends at a Festival of Altars in Garfield Park, located at 26th and Harrison.


Live Shots: Matisyahu, Fillmore, 10/22/09

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Text and photos by Ariel Soto

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The Fillmore Theater was filled with yarmulkes and heart-pumping beats last Thursday as Matisyahu, a Hasidic Jewish reggae singer, bounced
his way across the stage. The eclectic crowd at the sold-out show seemed to represent everyone, from religious diehards to So-Cal blonds in high heels. Matisyahu’s lyrics convey his strong religious beliefs, but somehow he’s able to reach a broad and diverse crowd. With his long payots swaying to each reggae beat, one might imagine they were dreads and this was a Rasta show straight from Jamaica. But isn’t that what makes going to see music so great? There are no rules, just pure creativity and a smorgasbord of cultures and ideas around every bend.

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Pics: Trolley Dances salve Muni woes

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Text and photos by Ariel Soto

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For once, taking Muni was actually a pleasure. This weekend saw the San Francisco Trolley Dances dip and twirl along Muni stops, which meant riders had their noses pressed against the glass as salsa dancers shimmied along the street, chasing the J-Church as it made its way from Dolores Park to Balboa Park Pool. The annual event featured dance companies from around the Bay Area as well as the young and talented swimmers of the SF Merionettes Synchronized Swim Club. The piece “Journey through time in no time because it is time” performed by the Deep Waters Dance Theater, was especially inventive and witty, mixing theater, poetry and dance in a piece that revolved around the ideas of more time and less time, and the time in between, ending with the audience pointing to the sky, looking up towards a new time of “infinite possibilities.” Oh, if only every ride on Muni could be quite as enjoyable and entertaining as this one.

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Other participating dancers and companies included: Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Epiphany Productions Sonic Dance Theater, Kathleen Hermesdorf, and Rosamaria Garcia and Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos

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Night of the living theater

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Night of the living theater

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER A small Texas ‘burb has just suffered attack by a horde of reanimated corpses, which can happen to anyone. But as luck would have it, the members of a bold experimental San Francisco theater company have taken it upon themselves to alight on the ravaged community, channel their story to the world, and thereby bestow on the good folk of Harwood "the healing that only theater can provide."

The actors of "the Catharsis Theatre Collective," dressed uniformly in black pants and tees, give or take a beret, begin by introducing themselves to the audience and explaining their modus operandi: in-depth interviews with a cross-section of the town’s population, whose personalities and stories they will then assume and relay to the audience as a living, breathing, documentary account.

We get reincarnations of the town’s mayor (Damian Lanahan), for instance, who happens also to be a car salesman, amid gradual intimations of a political cover-up and regular references to the superior craftsmanship in various makes of Toyotas. Or we hear from the proprietor of a local tavern (Ariane Owens) as she intones last call to her regulars on the night in question: "OK folks, you don’t have to go out and face the undead, but you can’t stay here." And, at steady intervals, we get the reenacted tale of three unlikely allies — an unabashed rocker dude (Ian Riley); a prissy and reluctant high school party chick (Owens); and an egotistical accountant (Drew Lanning) — holed up together through the night in an out-of-the-way cabin, where they battle an army of brain-eating creatures risen from the local cemetery (for reasons various characters are at pains to hypothesize over) while bickering ferociously among themselves.

As this familiar-sounding scenario of late-night TV and the multiplex develops, so too does another, equally familiar-sounding, meta-narrative, as we the audience get treated to the thoughts and feelings and interpersonal exchanges of the Catharsis members themselves, wrestling with the awesome responsibility of their task.

The real theatrical mavericks behind this Laramie-style "Zombie Project" are, of course, the members of Sleepwalkers Theatre, the talented young San Francisco–based company exclusively devoted to producing original plays. This gem is penned by Tim Bauer, a San Francisco playwright and former Texas resident, whose eye and ear for the culture clashes attendant not only in zombie movies but also between the humbler masses and certain rarified sections of the theater world makes Zombie Town a consistently witty treat. Sleepwalkers’ artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp directs with an equally strong parodic sense a lively cast of living and post-living characters — played to perfection by an ensemble that could hardly be sharper or funnier were it to have a mining pick protruding from its collective forehead.

ZOMBIE TOWN

Through Nov. 7

Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m., $14–$20

Exit Stage Left

156 Eddy, SF

www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com

Music listings

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Music listings

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Annie’s Acoustic Punk Night" Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $5. With Get Dead!, Officer Down, and special guests.

"Asian Hip-Hop Summit" Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. With Dumbfoundead, Lyraflip, Surilla, DJ Zo, Rising Asterisk, Power Struggle, Mandeep Sethi and MC Humble, and more.

Blind Pilot, Low Anthem, Mimicking Birds Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Brandi Carlile Fillmore. 8pm, $26.

*Alice Cooper Warfield. 8pm, $35-55.

*Fu Manchu, ASG, It’s Casual Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $15.

Ezra Furman and the Harpoons, BrakesBrakesBrakes, Rachel Goodrich Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Honest Thomas, Stomacher, Orchestra of Antlers Kimo’s. 9pm, $4.

Edna Love with the Ed Ivey Band Rasselas Jazz. 8pm, free.

Mindless Things, Shangorillas, Teutonics, Sweet Bones Knockout. 10pm, $5.

Kevin Russell Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Ryan Montbleau Band Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $12.

Spits, Davila 666, Pets, Re-Volts Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Sugarplums, Khi Darag El Rio. 8pm.

USE, Won-Fu, Scrabbel Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $10.

Kurt Vile and the Violators, Wooden Shjips, Young Prisms Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

ACA and Patrick Cress’ Telepathy Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St., SF; (415) 704-3260. 8pm, $7-15.

"B3 Wednesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Adrian Giovenco.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

"Benny Goodman Centennial Salute" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $25-65. With Eddie Daniels Quartet and Jim Rothermel Swingtet.

Stephen Merriman Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Spanish Harlem Orchestra Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $16-24.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

"The Ukelele: Reimagined" Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $25-65. With Jake Shimabukuro.

Willy Billy Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Ben Brown Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

BrownChicken BrownCow String Band Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Back40 Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

*"Budget Rock 8 Kick-Off" Eagle Tavern. 9pm, $6. With MC Brontez, Cheap Time, Hunx and His Punx, Primitivas, and Young Offenders. Part of Budget Rock 8.

Phil Crumar and the Wonderfuls Make-Out Room. 8pm, $8.

Chris DeJohn and Neutral Ground Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $6.

Don’ts, Finn Riggins, Total Hound Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Emmitt-Nershi Band, Assembly of Dust Independent. 8pm, $17.

Heart Warfield. 8pm, $62.50-85.

High Like Five, David Baron, Look the Moon, Mongols Slim’s. 8pm, $13.

Hit the Lights, There For Tomorrow, Fireworks, Sparks the Rescue, This Time Next Year Bottom of the Hill. 6:30pm, $12.

Jibbers, Lucabrazzi, Sprains, Karate Chop Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $6.

Daniel Johnston, Hymns Warfield. 8pm, $25.

Kid Sister Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $20.

Kommunity FK Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; (415) 831-1200. 6pm, free.

Letters, Google Maps, Jen Grady House of Shields. 8pm, $5.

Mammatus, Glitter Wizard, Bare Wires El Rio. 9pm, $6.

Matisyahu, Jillian Ann Fillmore. 9pm, $15.

Moira Scar, DOG, Taraval Technique Luggage Store, 1007 Market, SF; (415) 255-5971. 8pm, $6-10.

Needtobreathe, Serena Ryder, Alternate Routes Café du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Noah and the Whale, Robert Francis Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 8pm, $16.

Oceanroyal, Northern Son Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

Sir Lord Von Raven, Jail Weddings, Sermon, Naysayers Knockout. 9:30pm, $8.

Spits, Davila 666, Modern Action, Meat Sluts Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

"Stevie Ray Vaughn Tribute Show with Alan Iglesias" Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $16.

Tainted Love Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $15.

BAY AREA

Echo and the Bunnymen, She Wants Revenge Fox Theater. 8pm, $42.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Laurent Fourgo Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7:30pm, free.

John Kalleen Group Shanghai 1930. 7pm, free.

Liliana Trio Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

Mo’Fone Coda. 9pm, $7.

David Sanborn Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $30-35.

Marcos Silva Yoshi’s San Francisco (in the lounge). 6pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

"Afro-Cuban Keystones" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $25-65. With Omar Sosa Quartet featuring Tim Eriksen, and John Santos Sextet.

Ceili Chicks Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Flamenco Thursdays Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30pm; $12.

High Country Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Honey, Love Dimension, Nectarine Pie, Dos Hermanos, Lotus Moon Amnesia. 9pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, and B Lee spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Bingotopia Knockout. 7:30-9:30pm, free. Play for drinks, dignity, and dorky prizes with Lady Miss Stacy Pants.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Gymnasium Matador, 10 6th St., SF; (415) 863-4629. 9pm, free. With DJ Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, hip hop, and disco.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Higher Learning Poleng Lounge. 9pm, $10. With DJs Gabe Bondoc and Mel.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest.

Toppa Top Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, $5. Jah Warrior, Jah Yzer, I-Vier, and Irie Dole spin the reggae jams for your maximum irie-ness.

FRIDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bouncing Souls, Bayside, Broadway Calls Slim’s. 8pm, $21.

Boys Like Girls, Cobra Starship, Maine, A Rocket to the Moon, Versa Emerge Warfield. 6:30pm, $27.

Alma Desnuda, Still Time Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $15.

Dynamic Coda. 10pm, $10.

"An Evening with Lloyd Cole" Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 8pm, $20.

Liam Finn and Eliza Jane, Jason Lytle Independent. 9pm, $15.

Girl in a Coma, Black Gold Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Helios Creed, Chrome, Galaxxy Chamber, Toiling Midgets Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Islands, Jemina Pearl, Toro Y Moi Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

*Kowloon Walled City, Madrago, Lucika, Cartographer Annie’s Social Club. 8:30pm, $7.

DJ Lebowitz Madrone Art Bar. 6-9pm, free.

Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $20.

Manicato, Raw Deluxe Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $10.

Mi Ami, These Are Powers, Gowns Knockout. 10pm, $5.

*Necessary Evils, Black Time, Golden Boys with Greg Ashley, Wounded Lion Thee Parkside. 7pm, $10. Part of Budget Rock 8; with MC John O’Neil and DJs Mitch and Icki.

Joe Pug, Lauren Shera, Guella Hotel Utahl. 9pm, $10.

Amelia Ray Argus Lounge. 9pm, $5.

Steely Dan Nob Hill Masonic Exhibition Hall, 1111 California, SF; www.livenation.com. 8pm, $69-255. Performing Aja.

"TigerBeat6 Label Night/Dance Party" Elbo Room. 9pm, $7-10. With Kid 606, Pigeonfunk, Ghosts on Tape, Pooterhoots, CLAWS vs. DJ Peeplay, and DJ Oonce Oonce.

Train Fillmore. 9pm.

BAY AREA

Mika, Gary Go Fox Theater. 8pm, $29.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

"Cultural Encounters: Friday Nights at the deYoung presents Jazz at Intersection" Wilsey Court, de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; www.deyoungmuseum.org. 6:30pm, free. With Jon Jang and Unbound Chinatown featuring Ms. Min Xiao Fen.

Larry Dunlap Yoshi’s San Francisco (in the lounge). 6pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Lucid Lovers Rex Hotel, 562 Sutter, SF; (415) 433-4434. 6-8pm.

Michael McIntosh Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

"Music and Magnetism" Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-70. With Melody Gardot.

David Sanborn Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35-40.

Terry Disley Experience Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

Vince Laetano Trio Vin Club, 515 Broadway, SF; (415) 277-7228. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

"Cuban Keyboard Maestro" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-70. With Gonzalo Rubalcaba Quintet.

Cuban Nights Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8:30pm, $15. With Fito Reinoso.

Judea Eden Band, Bitter Sweet, Blair Hansen Dolores Park Café. 7:30pm, free.

Rob Reich and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Seconds on End Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Sparlha Swa Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-15.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Blow Up Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $15. With DJs Jeffrey Paradise and Richie Panic spinning dance music.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm. Gymnasium Stud. 10pm, $5. With DJs Violent Vickie and guests spinning electro, disco, rap, and 90s dance and featuring performers, gymnastics, jump rope, drink specials, and more.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Lucky Road Amnesia. 9pm, $6-10. Featuring live performances by Sister Kate and DJs spinning Balkan, Bangra, Latin, and more.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Makeout Session Club Six. 9pm, $5. With DJs Noah D, Ultravioetntrldphil, and Tblackheart spinning dubstep.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

6 to 9 800 Larkin, 800 Larkin, SF; (415) 567-9326. 6pm, free. DJs David Justin and Dean Manning spinning downtempo, electro breaks, techno, and tech house. Free food by 800 Larkin.

Supperclub anniversary Supperclub. 10pm, $20. With DJs Mark Farina, Honey Digon, Rooz, and more spinning house and techno.

Track Meet Club Six. 9pm, $10. A hip hop producer beat battle with special judges Keeley and Mr. Dibia$e.

Very Best 103 Harriet, 103 Harriet, SF; (415) 431-3609. 10pm, $13. Featuring Radioclit and Esau Mwamwaya.

SATURDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bouncing Souls, Bayside, Broadway Calls Slim’s. 8pm, $21.

*"BYOQ: Bring Your Own Queer" Music Concourse Bandshell, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.byoq.org. Noon-5pm, free. With Honey Sound System, Rainbow Death Pony, Excuses for Skipping, Lucky Jesus, performances by La Chica Boom and Diamond Daggers, and more.

*Cannabis Corpse, Ramming Speed, Acaphalix El Rio. 10pm, $7.

Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard, John Roderick Bimbo’s 356 Club. 9pm, $25.

Goodie Mob, Scarface Fillmore. 9pm, $36.

Rachel Grimes and Sarah Cahill Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 7:30pm, $17.

John Lee Hooker Jr. Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Jeremy Jay, Sea Lions, Black Umbrella Knockout. 9pm, $8.

*Mummies, Brentwoods, Fevers, Donny Denim and the Spaghettoes Bottom of the Hill. 8pm, $5. Part of Budget Rock 8; with MC Mike Lucas and DJ Tina Boom Boom.

*Mummies, Younger Lovers, Harold Ray Live in Concert, Okmoniks, Cormans Thee Parkside. 8pm, $5. Part of Budget Rock 8.

Meshell Ndegeocello, Beatropolis Independent. 9pm, $25.

*No Bunny, Rock n’ Roll Adventure Kids, Personal and the Pizzas, Pizzas, Johnny and the Limelight Thee Parkside. 3pm, $5. Part of Budget Rock 8; with MC Personal Pizza and DJs Big Nate and Ayapapaya, plus a pizza-eating contest.

Rykarda Parasol, Nero Nava, Murder of Lilies Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Sounds, Shiny Toy Guns, Semi Precious Weapons, Foxy Shazam Warfield. 9pm, $30.

Steely Dan Nob Hill Masonic Exhibition Hall, 1111 California, SF; www.livenation.com. 8pm, $69-255. Performing The Royal Scam.

Stirling Says, Finest Dearest, System and Station Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Stymie and the Pimp Jones Luv Orchestra Coda. 10pm, $10.

Three Bad Jacks, Mighty Slim Pickins, Naked and Shameless Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

"Chief Conguero" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $22-70. With Poncho Sanchez.

"Crescent City Classic" San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-50. With Henry Butler.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Dave Matthews Yoshi’s San Francisco (in the lounge). 6pm, free.

Jack Pollard Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

David Sanborn Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35-40.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brent Amaker and the Rodeo Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

Carnaval Del Sur Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, $15. Live Flamenco music and dance.

Gas Men Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Claudia Gomez Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

Toshio Hirano Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

Orixa, Kapakahi, DJ DeeDot Elbo Room. 10pm, $12.

Prince Diabete and Band Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; (415) 454-5238, www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 8:15pm, $17.

John Rybak Cafe Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 441-4099. 8pm, free. With Perry Spinali

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Barefoot Bhangra Party San Francisco Buddhist Center, 37 Bartlett, SF; (415) 289-2019. 7pm, $10 donation. Featuring beginners dance lessons.

Barracuda 111 Minna. 9pm, $5-10. Eclectic 80s music with Djs Damon, Phillie Ocean, and Mod Dave, plus free 80s hair and make-up by professional stylists.

Big Up Magazine Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $20. With DJs Cyrus, Cluekid, Kutz, and more spinning dubstep to celebrate Big Up’s one year anniversary.

Bonobo Mighty. 10pm, $13.

Dirty 30s Suede, 383 Bay, SF; (510) 692-7069. A birthday celebration for Quincy with DJs Mind Motion, Romero, and Fresh spinning hip hop.

Go Bang! Go Boo! Deco SF, 510 Larkin St; (415) 346-2025. 10pm, $5. A scare-abration featuring Pat Les Stache and Steve Mak spinning 70’s/ 80’s disco with resident DJs Eddy Bauer, Nicky B., Sergio and Stanley.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

soundscape Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF. 10pm, $5. With DJs C3PLOS, Brighton Russ, and Nick Waterhouse spinning soul jazz, boogaloo, hammond grooves, and more.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

Tocadisco Club Six. 9pm, $10. With DJs David Harness, Dan Suda, Peter Gielow, and more spinning house.

SUNDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Brutal Sound Effects Festival #67" Hemlock Tavern. 8pm, $7. With Compression of the Chest Cavity Miracle, Elise Baldwin, Sgt. Cobra Queef, David Kendall, Horseflesh, and VSF.

*"Budget Rock Record Swap and Batter Blaster Breakfast" Thee Parkside. 1pm. $5. With Sector Zero, Box Elders, Impediments, Wild Thing, Slippery Slopes, and Outdoorsmen. Part of Budget Rock 8; also with MC Bruce Belden, the Last Punk on Earth; and DJs Carolyn Keddy and Mike.

Discipline, Farewell Typewriter Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

Gossip, Men, We Are the World Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $22.

*Gris Gris, Thee Oh Sees, Dan Melchior Und Das Menace, Fresh and Onlys Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10. Part of Budget Rock 8; with MC Anthony Bedard and Bob McDonald, and DJs Lil Duce and DJ Cityhobb.

Rakim, Rhymefest Slim’s. 9pm, $27.

Jonah Smith, Jenn Grinels, Christopher Hawley Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Steely Dan Nob Hill Masonic Exhibition Hall, 1111 California, SF; www.livenation.com. 7:30pm, $69-255. Performing internet requests.

"West Fest" Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.2b1records.com/woodstock40sf. 9am-6pm, free. Celebrate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock with Jefferson Starship, Country Joe McDonald, Leslie West, Jerry Harrison with Ronnie Montrose, and more.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Terry Disley Washington Square Bar and Grill, 1701 Powell, SF; (415) 433-1188. 7pm, free.

Rob Modica and friends Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 3pm, free.

David Sanborn Yoshi’s San Francisco. 2 and 7pm, $5-35.

Songstresses from the Edge Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento, SF; (415) 474-1608. 4pm, $15.

"A Timeless Hipster" Florence Gould Theatre, Legion of Honor, 34th Ave at Clement, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 2pm, $30-50. With Mark Murphy with Vinny Valentino.

Josh Workman, Noel Jewkes, Michael Zisman Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 3pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Paul Bertolino, Billy and Dolly, Trevor Childs Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

"Debut from Cuba" San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25. With Alfredo Rodriguez.

Quinn DeVeaux and the Blue Beat Review, Bodice Rippers, Emperor Norton’s Jazz Band Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

Fiesta Andina! Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7pm, $10. With Eddy Navia and Sukay.

Mestiza Coda. 8pm.

John Sherry, Kyle Thayer and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

"Tropicalismo Titan" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $30-70. with Gal Costa.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludachris, and guest Jon AD.

5 O’Clock Jive Inside Live Art Gallery, 151 Potrero, SF; (415) 305-8242. 5pm, $5. A weekly swing dance party.

45 Club the Funky Side of Soul Knockout. 10pm, free. With dX the Funky Gran Paw, Dirty Dishes, English Steve, and the 14th Floor.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Last Sunday Bollyhood Café. 5:30pm, $2. With DJs spinning dance hall, soul, and R&B.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Growing Pains Tour" Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. With Mestizo, Robust, Digital Digital, Nocando, and Delmon Crew.

Goh Nakamura, Jane Lui, Gabe Bondoc Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Sentinel, Malbec, St. Leonards Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Sunset Rubdown, tUnE-y ArDs Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $18.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Brubeck Brothers Quartet Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

Richard Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Barefoot Nellies Amnesia. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Case of the Mondays Triple Crown. 10pm, free. Rotating DJs spinning hip hop, soul, electronic, reggae, and more.

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Congress with Valerie Troutt Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Alela Diane, Marissa Nadler Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

"An Evening with Emilie Autumn" Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Fracas, STDs, Kill Crazies, Poison Control Knockout. 10pm, free.

Heavy Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

Kirkwood-Dellinger, 300 Pounds, Dana Alberts Rock-It Room. 9pm.

Lahar Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $5.

Le Loup, Nurses, French Miami Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Nico Vega, Scene of Action, Endless Hallway Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

*Pelican, Black Cobra, Sweet Cobra Independent. 8pm, $15.

Pictures of Then Kimo’s. 9pm, $5.

Pierre Le Robot, Weatherbox, Little Brazil, Raised by Robots Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Eliot Rose, Powerdove El Rio. 8pm, free.

Slow Poisoner Brainwash, 1122 Folsom, SF; www.theslowpoisoner.com. 7:15pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Michael Chase Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; (415) 552-6066. 9pm.

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

"Jazz Mafia Tuesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Dublin and the Hip-Hop Medicine Band.

Marcus Roberts Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $15-20.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

Slow Session Plough and Stars. 9pm. With Vince Keehan and friends.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck, DJ Freddy MacNugget, and DJ Animal.

Drunken Monkey Lounge Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. Random tunes and random chaos.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Zombies! Blood! Theater!

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By Nicole Gluckstern

For reasons I shall never quite fathom, the majority of the year’s horror films will inevitably be released closer to Christmas than to All Hallows Eve, thwarting my autumnal desire to have the holy bejeebus scared out of me over popcorn and stale nachos. Fortunately for my seasonal predilection, a number of Bay Area theatre companies are staging live performances of creepshow classics, serving up shock, splatter, and suspense — though probably not nachos – for the rest of October (and beyond).

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Zombie Town

Zombies run amok at the EXIT Theatre! “Zombie Town” and “Zombie: A New Musical”. SF Fringe favorites Sleepwalkers Theatre present “Zombie Town”—”a documentary play”—by Tim Bauer directly across the hall of the EXIT Theatreplex from Anthony R. Miller’s Heavy Metal Zombie musical extravaganza. How can you possible go wrong? Flip a coin, or heck, go two nights in a row. “Zombie Town” ($14-$20) plays through Nov 7, “Zombie: A New Musical” ($15) will close Halloween Night. It’s Zombieriffic! EXIT Theatre, 8 p.m., 156 Eddy, SF, www.sffringe.org.

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Brain-Dead Alive

Primitive Screwheads: “Brain-Dead Alive.” Wear your oldest clothes to this performance, the Primitive Screwheads are firm believers in blood, lots and lots of blood. Buckets of it. All over the place, themselves, you. It’s a beautiful thing. This year’s adaptation of Peter Jackson’s “Dead Alive” promises blood, flying limbs, horror, hilarity, more blood, and a bonus lineup of spooky opening bands, including a rare performance by Fringe Festival favorites and “Mortified” house band LIVE EVIL who play on Halloween Night. Now that’s entertainment! Through October 31, 7:30 p.m., Great Star Theatre, 636 Jackson, SF, $20, www.primitivescrewheads.com.

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The Torture Garden

Thrillpeddler’s Shocktoberfest: “The Torture Garden”. Shockingly naturalistic, turn-of-the-previous-century, Grand Guignol theatre was the great-grandparent of slasher flicks and racy peepshow farces, and San Francisco’s premiere Grand Guignol devotees, the Thrillpeddlers, have been dishing up both every Halloween for ten years strong. This year they’re presenting a brand new translation of Grand Guignol master playwright Andre de Lorde’s “The Torture Garden,” plus another modern original, “The Phantom Limb,” penned by Thrillpeddler’s regular Rob O’Keefe. An up close and all too personal intermission demonstration of their working model of an 18’th century guillotine will give you more bang for your buck than any snoozy Friday the Thirteenth marathon ever will. Thursdays and Fridays through Nov 20. 8 p.m. The Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF. $25, www.thrillpeddlers.com

“Burning Opera”: The fire’s almost out

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By Molly Freedenberg. Photos by Michael Rauner.

Time is running out on the beloved (and only a bit controversial) Burning Opera: How to Survive the Apocalypse, the Mark Nichols/Erik Davis vehicle that attempts to both explain and capture the ethos of SF’s favorite (and favorite to ridicule) festival: Burning Man. The wildly popular show that opened October 5 at Teatro Zinzanni ends its three-week run (extended an extra week due to demand) tomorrow (Wed, Oct 21) night, with a limited number of tickets still available for tonight and tomorrow’s shows.

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Librettist Erik Davis opens the Burning Opera by transforming from middle-aged geek to heckling dessert bunny “Bulldada,” whose commentary throughout the show is not only funny, but accurately captures one element of playa culture: irreverence for everything, including Burning Man itself.

Despite some technical difficulties (sound is hit-or-miss, and some lyrics are hard to decipher) and occasionally coming off as unpolished, the show has been delighting audiences with its remarkable range, combination of history and present-day culture, inside jokes, and a surprising mix of earnestness and irony.

Of course, most of those delighted are burners – people who get the jokes. If Burning Man were a summer camp (and in many ways it is), this opera would be what the counselors do for each other at the end of the year talent show – if the counselors were trained in musical theater. Which is exactly what makes it fantastic and hilarious, but potentially off-putting to non-burners, jaded old-schoolers, and anyone who doesn’t genuinely enjoy musicals and satire. I’d also argue that the longer one has gone to Burning Man and the more one knows about it, the more you’ll get from the show. (In particular, even my veteran burner friends had questions about historical references, most of which I could answer because I’d read Brian Doherty’s fantastic book This is Burning Man.)

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